Which Afghanistan Strategy? They Ask

I have been reading stuff about how best to go forward in Afghanistan. I watched several TV Sunday shows this morning and listened to political pundits and government officials give their take on what kind of strategy would work best in a war that has dragged on for some eight years now. I also read Gen. Stan McChrystal’s assessment report, but not perhaps with the kind of serious attention it deserves. For the questions I am going to raise below have been probably answered there. Having no military background or military knowledge, I probably did not see the nuances and implications hidden in the strategy laid out before me.

For one, for all the talks about increasing the number of ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) as well as the Afghan military and police forces, I didn’t see in the report any piece of information about the total number of insurgents we’re dealing with in Afghanistan. That number is important, and if we have no idea how many insurgents there are right now, how can we determine the right amount of resources to use against them?

Perhaps it’s safe to say that we don’t have much knowledge about the enemy, their source of funding, their habits and characteristics, their elusiveness as they weave themselves in and out of villages and communities even as they take advantage of their familiarity with local traditions. If we want to win, we have to know the enemy first.

Of course, the ones who know them the most are the locals themselves. It makes me wonder why, instead of increasing the number of US/NATO forces, we are not creating or recruiting counterinsurgency groups out of brave local villagers whose mission and only mission will be to go after the bad guys. It seems to be an appropriate response (counterinsurgents vs. insurgents) in a society whose social infrastructure remains tribal and where warlords continue to play a dominant leadership role. Why not identify and mobilize them, those anti-Taliban tribal leaders (the likes of the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, a relentless Taliban fighter who served as the commander of the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan), who will do everything they can in order to attain a state of well-being and dignity for their country and their people? But even if they have less lofty interests with which to motivate them to join – money, jobs, etc., -- their occupying the frontline in this war should be all worth it. Organizing and mobilizing them, of course, will require support and resources, but the effort should not be as expensive.

The tactic of using local militias has already been proven successful in Iraq. By coopting and convincing Sunni insurgents to come to our side, we helped create a group, the Sunni Awakening that largely became instrumental in booting al-Qaeda out of Iraq.

The second question I have in regard to the report is whether a population-centric approach precedes the achievement of an environment of security rather than the other way around. That is, can political, economic, and social programs be used as means to achieve security, or should security be achieved first before these programs can have an impact on winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people? If the latter, then what we’re doing in Afghanistan is more of a communication campaign, rather than effectively engaging the Taliban.

To engage the Taliban, we should not put the population on the defensive. If we do so, we make them all the more feeble and weak. We have to empower them instead, put them on the offensive, and make this war their war. It will offer them moral clarity. It will make them strong stakeholders in the future of their country.

Our long-term support should come in the form of training and education, effective governance and the rule of law, a free-market economy. Meanwhile, the short-term ones, the more urgent ones, necessitate equipping them with tools they will need to fight off the bad guys: communication tools like cell phones and computers that can immediately connect them to the US/Nato and Afghan security forces when they need their help; weapons that can incapacitate the enemy; access to an underground network of freedom fighters and informants that can give them hidden yet real protection, and more.

The current strategy is a step ahead of what needs to be done first. We must engage the enemy first.