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2 Afghanistan and the future of
COIN By Brian M Downing
If we were overthrown, there would be
major chaos and confusion in the country and
everyone including every single oppressed
individual would blame you for it.-
Mullah Omar to President Bill Clinton, Sept
1999
A government that is losing to an
insurgency is not being outfought, it is being
outgoverned.- Bernard Fall
The United States-led effort in
Afghanistan placed a great deal of weight on
counterinsurgency (COIN) to defeat or at least
stymie the insurgency there. There are few signs
of success and the US is seeking negotiations with
Mullah Omar's Taliban in a less than attractive
bargaining position. Many feel that defeat or at least
unceremonious withdrawal
looms.
COIN has a long and intriguing
history going back mainly to colonial
administration and insurgencies in the post-World
War II era. It enjoyed growth after Fidel Castro's
band seized power in Cuba and the US looked for
ways to counter Soviet-backed insurgencies
elsewhere in the Third World. COIN was
romanticized once it became attached to the US
Green Berets - a force with considerable cachet in
the sixties. The war in Vietnam saw limited but
incoherent use of COIN and after Saigon fell
(1975), the doctrine was put away lest some future
president be tempted to get involved in another
insurgency - a prospect that seemed dim if not
absurd back then.
With the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, however, COIN gained new
attention and renewed romanticization. It
contributed to easing the Iraqi insurgency, or
seemed to, and it was confidently put into
practice in Afghanistan. Despite great hopes and
the leadership of General Petraeus, COIN has
failed to do more than carve out a few enclaves in
the south and east where security remains frail
and popular support is chiefly formal.
Even if Afghanistan ends badly, COIN
doctrine will not be put away as it was after the
last Huey hurriedly took off from Saigon in 1975.
It is a central part of American strategic
thinking and is being taught or put into practice
in Yemen, Uganda, Somalia, Mali, Thailand, the
Philippines, Colombia, and elsewhere. Learning
what went wrong in Afghanistan will be important
in shaping future foreign policy and military
budgets. Some problems inhere to Afghanistan,
others to American institutions and society.
Initial misallocation of
resources The insurgency in Afghanistan
developed, largely unnoticed, while the US's
attention and resources were shifted to Iraq.
After expelling the Taliban and al-Qaeda from
Afghanistan in late 2001, the US took insufficient
interest in rebuilding the country and little if
any in building a government. That would be
"nation-building" - a policy with considerable
opprobrium assigned it after the effort to bring
stability to Somalia ended in humiliation and
withdrawal.
Engineer battalions,
intelligence outfits, and special forces units,
which would have been useful in bringing order to
Afghanistan and preventing an insurgency, were
sent to Iraq. The hoped-for transition to a United
Nations government did not take place and a
vicious insurgency emerged - and paradoxically
though predictably, the US found itself involved
in nation-building for many years.
Afghanistan suffered from neglect.
Warlordism and banditry plagued the country and
the Kabul government, corrupt and inept, alienated
many if not most Afghans. The Iraq war had another
consequence. The Taliban saw the invasion of Iraq
as evidence of US designs to conquer the region
and control its resources and they were even more
determined to fight the invaders in Afghanistan
and return to power.
The heavy
hand The US countered the emerging
insurgency with conventional warfare, including
heavy firepower. This was how the US had fought
its wars since General Ulysses S Grant ground down
the rebels in the Civil War, and of course this
was how the Taliban had been driven out in 2001.
The American way of war has been to use
its decided firepower advantage to maximize enemy
casualties and minimize its own. Junior officers
had been trained to use artillery and air power to
protect the young men entrusted to them and avoid
the loss of morale and respect that casualties can
bring. US infantry units went through village
after village chasing an elusive enemy and winning
few friends along the way. Insurgents capitalized
on civilian casualties.
When COIN was
finally put into practice in 2009, after many fits
and starts, it had many resources to draw upon.
Well intended aid projects left a heavy footprint.
In the early sixties when David Galula was
developing the principles of COIN in Algerian
villages, he could contact a fellow junior officer
in an engineering or medical detachment and, in
short order, have a well dug or have a few medics
come in to inoculate children.
Today, in
order to get that same engineering or medical
project, a village in Kandahar will endure the
presence of dozens of military and civilian
personnel - an irksome intrusion that reinforces
local notions of foreign occupation. An engineer
unit and a handful of medics might be able to
accomplish more on their own than if accompanied
by a brigade of consultants, aid workers,
non-government organizations, public relations
officials, and private contractors.
TE
Lawrence identified a simple truth of leading an
insurgency: "Do not try to do too much with your
own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than
that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you
are to help them, not to win it for them." This
principle has not always been translated into
counterinsurgency. Foreign engineers, despite good
intentions and seminars on cultural sensitivities,
do not always listen to local views on aid
projects and all too often dismiss the villagers'
folkways and impose their expertise.
The
presence of a large number of foreign troops is
seldom welcome by any people. Americans might
remember reading of their forbears' annoyance at
the presence of British troops back in the 18th
century - and they were not really foreign, yet.
Today, a large number of US troops in another
country, especially a traditionalist one, presents
significant problems.
The rank and file of
the US military are drawn from a swaggering,
coarse, and often violent youth culture. Trained
for war and away from familial restraints, they do
not all act responsibly out in the field or just
outside the perimeter of an operating base.
Entering and searching though family houses is a
routine part of COIN; laughing while doing so is
not. Even if 95% of soldiers act responsibly and
the rest do not, the effect on winning hearts and
minds will not be rewarding.
Routine
contact with locals all too often breeds contempt.
Soldiers see villagers as indifferent to their
sacrifices and reluctant to provide information
about insurgents. They see meetings with village
elders as merely forums for the disbursement of
American goods, with no attendant respect or
loyalty - and from the prejudiced view of the
combat unit, the locals know damn well where the
improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are. Afghan
soldiers sit back and watch the GIs pound the
ground and take the bulk of the casualties.
The relationship between soldier and
villager is filled with mistrust and often hatred,
much as it was in Southeast Asia almost half a
century ago. The books and films of that war are
well known to young soldiers today and they have
formed a dark template for looking upon the
villagers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Good things are
unlikely to follow from this and the results have
occasionally been lethal.
Safe
havens Foremost in COIN doctrine is denying
the insurgents the use of sanctuaries, either in
foreboding parts of the country at hand or in
adjacent countries. Algerian insurgents had the
mountains south of the coastal plain and the
walled areas of major cities. The Viet Cong had
the U Minh Forest inside Vietnam and mountainous
jungle areas just to the west in Cambodia and
Laos. US incursions and airstrikes had no lasting
effect.
In Afghanistan, during the Russian
war and today as well, Pakistan offers ready
mountain refuges to insurgents. Base camps and
supply trails from the old mujahideen days have
come back to service and Pashtun hospitality
straddles both sides of the rugged and ill-defined
frontier.
US pressure on Pakistan, a
putative ally that receives ample subsidies, has
led to only lethargic incursions into some
frontier areas, though never into North Waziristan
and other key base camp havens. Pakistani
intelligence offers help against renegade groups
like the Terikh-e-Taliban, but only rarely against
groups fighting in Afghanistan. Pakistan sees them
as allies in its long rivalry with India.
It has only belatedly dawned on US
intelligence that Pakistan is tied to many
insurgent groups. Failure to comprehend Pakistan's
strategic predilection with India is one of the
most egregious failures of US intelligence in many
decades. Instead, the Taliban have a stalwart
ally, US logistics are imperiled, and the war is
probably lost.
The Kabul
government The officials centered in Kabul
have been getting outgoverned soundly for many
years now. The Karzai government's corruption is
well known and efforts to press Kabul into reform
have been unsuccessful. Corruption is a painful
part of life inside Afghanistan where impoverished
people must pay bribes to obtain a driver's
license to even a death certificate. Litigants
know well that the scales of justice tilt
decisively in favor of those who toss in a few
coins.
A government can be corrupt yet
competent. The bosses of an American city in the
not-so-distant past took bribes routinely and
perhaps even openly but nonetheless built the
machinery to provide goods and services in an
effective manner. Afghans will tolerate copious
amounts of corruption. Indeed many practices
Westerners would deem corrupt are enshrined with
tradition. But too much corruption with too little
competence triggers outrage and a search for
justice from other sources.
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