US
moves toward Afghan guerrilla
war By Brian M Downing
The United States is beginning an
interesting new dimension to the 10-year-old war
in Afghanistan. Counter-insurgency efforts will be
complemented by an expanded unconventional warfare
campaign in many insurgent-controlled areas. This
change in approach may have a considerable impact
on the stalemate and hasten meaningful
negotiations.
The US is training scores of
special forces teams to infiltrate into and
operate in areas that the Taliban and other
insurgent forces have gained control of in the
past few years. Such operations have been in
effect for a few years now, but the program is
enjoying greater support. Many recently retired
special forces personnel
are being asked to return to
active duty - a sign that the program is
significant and growing.
The teams will be
inserted into insurgent-dominated districts,
chiefly in the south and east, and charged with
conducting reconnaissance, interdicting the
movement of men and materiel, directing air
strikes, killing political and military leaders,
and otherwise wreaking havoc in the insurgents'
base areas.
The teams will likely be
accompanied by Pashtun scouts from the particular
districts who will provide knowledge of the
terrain, mountain trails, hiding places, and local
notables - friendly or not. Some of these scouts
will be defectors whose loyalties will have been
thoroughly looked into, though suspicions will
remain. This aspect of the effort parallels the
Chieu Hoi program of the Vietnam War, which placed
Vietcong defectors with US troops conducting
operations in tough areas.
It is hoped
that the scouts, in conjunction with special
forces teams, may in some districts be able to
form local guerrilla bands to further weaken
Taliban control - an insurgency within an
insurgency. Even when the Taliban ruled most of
Afghanistan (1996-2001), there were regions that
resisted them and even formed insurgent bands to
fight them. Today, many local tribes dislike the
Taliban but acquiesce to them owing to
intimidation or to the perception of their
inevitable ascendancy. The identities of such
tribes are reasonably known in Kabul and will be
likely areas of concentration.
Efforts to
build anti-Taliban insurgencies will draw from
1990s programs that lured mujahideen fighters to
the government side after the withdrawal of Soviet
troops from certain provinces. The Afghan social
group (qawm) was useful in attracting
defectors as one member on the government side
used social ties to attract other members of his
qawm.
The program seeks to further
reduce the insurgents' momentum, throw their
logistics and base areas into disarray, force them
to withdraw prime troops from contested districts,
and in time, bring the insurgents to a negotiated
settlement.
Across the Durand Line? Special forces teams might be used in
cross-border operations into Pakistan, especially
into the North Waziristan tribal area where the
Haqqani network, al-Qaeda and kindred groups enjoy
safe havens. Another prospective area would be in
the northern part of Pakistan's Balochistan
province, which is another insurgent base area and
only 150 kilometers from the reasonably secure
towns of Kandahar and Lashkar Gah.
United
States special forces personnel have trained
Pakistani militias along the frontier and so
already have knowledge of the terrain and the
troops operating there. Furthermore, the US has
built its own intelligence network inside
Pakistan, which has been successful in targeting
leaders of the Haqqani network and most notably in
finding and killing Osama bin Laden.
This
intelligence network greatly irritated the
Pakistani army and Inter-Services Intelligence
service (ISI), and cross-border operations by US
special forces will only increase the irritation.
The US must be prepared for this. Only a few
months ago, a cross-border incident led to a
crisis in US-Pakistani relations, the constriction
of US/International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF) supply convoys, and eventually to an
apology from General David Petraeus, then the US's
top man in Afghanistan.
Since then,
however, events have put the Pakistani army and
ISI on the back foot. The discovery of Bin Laden
living comfortably near an army base, increased
revelations of ties with various militant groups,
and most recently suspected complicity in the
murder of Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times Online's
Pakistan bureau chief, have cast a harsh light on
a darker part of Pakistan.
Many countries
are looking on Pakistan as a rogue state - and a
failing one. Nonetheless, stepped-up cross border
activity may bring not only increased tension
between the US and Pakistan, but also firefights
between their troops.
Prospects Guerrilla operations
and the smaller troop levels they require will
allow the US to rely less heavily on supply routes
winding through Pakistan - a country whose
military is now deemed unreliable. A lighter
logistical load can be increasingly borne by
northern routes from Russia - a country whose
commitment to containing Islamist militancy is now
deemed quite reliable.
The US has already
reduced its reliance on Pakistan for logistics. A
year ago, the preponderance of US/ISAF supplies
came through Pakistan, but today only 40% do so,
and that number is slated to dwindle to 25% by the
end of 2011. Pakistan is becoming less important
to the US.
Special forces operations will
reduce the need for massive firepower, which has
long been a source of irritation in the Afghan
people and a recruitment attraction for insurgent
groups. Heavy fire power will be confined to
extracting a beleaguered team or on identifying a
sizable insurgent force.
Guerrilla warfare
could well allow the US to increase its
effectiveness against the insurgents while at the
same time reducing its troops levels and
expenditures. Both will be welcome in the
increasingly restive US public. Unconventional
warfare might even intrigue the public, which
retains considerable attraction for imaginative
forms of war, resonant as they are with romantic
figures such as T E Lawrence and less illustrious
green berets of the Vietnam War.
President
Barack Obama's reduction of troop levels will
almost certainly require consolidation into a
number of enclaves in the south and east where
counter-insurgency operations have met with
success and some Pashtun tribes remain hostile to
the Taliban. This will in effect cede more
territory to the insurgents, but paradoxically
this will have advantages. The more territory
ceded to insurgent groups, the more territory they
must defend from US guerrilla forces.
Many
observers will wonder why such unconventional
warfare hasn't already been more widely put into
effect. After all, the Taliban have controlled
large parts of the south and east for a few years
now and the US has long had a number of troops
capable of such ops. Indeed, one of the principal
missions of the green berets during the cold war
was to organize insurgencies behind Soviet lines
in the event Western Europe were to fall to the
the Red army.
Unfortunately, bureaucratic
inertia and doctrinal commitment to conventional
warfare won out, until recently. Many might even
wonder if such operations would have been a more
effective response to the September 11, 2001,
attacks than overthrowing the Taliban and
occupying a country so fragmented and fractious.
But wisdom comes only late in the day.
Brian M Downing served with
indigenous forces during the Vietnam War and is
the author of The Military Revolution and
Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and
Social Change in America from the Great War to
Vietnam. He can be reached at
brianmdowning@gmail.com.
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