Who Still Has Patience For The Military Strategy In Afghanistan?

U.S. Army Pfc. Shawn Williams gives the thumbs-up to members of his unit as he is evacuated after being injured by a roadside bomb in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, June 17, 2011. Williams is assigned to the 25th Infantry Division's 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team. U.S. Navy photo by Lt. j.g. Haraz N. Ghanbari

Washington Losing Patience with Counterinsurgency In Afghanistan -- Michael Hirsh and Jamie Tarabay, National Journal

It isn’t just people who are dying in Afghanistan. So is an entire concept of war.

John Nagl is the kind of guy who brings to mind F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wicked line in The Great Gatsby about people who succeed at such an early age that “everything afterward savors of anticlimax.” A star at West Point and a Rhodes scholar, the native Nebraskan was only 37 when he landed on the cover of The New York Times Magazine in January 2004. In that article, Nagl offered an inside-the-Sunni-Triangle tutorial on what he came to call “graduate-level war.” Nagl’s mantra: “We have to outthink the enemy, not just outfight him.” In an era when small but wily bands of nonuniformed insurgents could stymie America’s mighty military machine with stealthy guerrilla attacks and roadside bombs planted in the night, the U.S. had to figure out how to hunt down the bad guys and cut off their support from the local population. Nagl, after studying the British and French colonial experience, as well as America’s handling of the Vietnam War, helped to develop what has since become famous as U.S. “counterinsurgency doctrine,” or COIN. As his celebrity grew, Nagl proselytized about it everywhere, even on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.

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My Comment: Washington is not losing patience with Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan .... they lost it a long time ago.

The Example of Musa Qala -- Counter Insurgency: The Right Way And the Wrong Way

Corporal Vanessa Larter and Corporal Shaun Lindsay are administrating medical care to a young Afghan girl, which took place during a Village Medical Outreach (VMO). The girl will require surgery later on and it will be performed at Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team (KPRT).

From The Captain's Journal:

We have previously covered the secret negotiations between MI6 agents and mid-level Taliban commanders, the result of which was the agreement between British forces and one Mullah Abdul Salaam who had promised military help when British and U.S. forces retook Musa Qala late in 2007. The military assistance never materialized, and instead of engaging in the battle, Salaam and his “fighters” stayed in his compound in Shakahraz, ten miles east, with a small cortège of fighters, where he made increasingly desperate pleas for help. “He said that he would bring all the tribes with him but they never materialised,” recalled one British officer at the forefront of the operation. “Instead, all that happened was a series of increasingly fraught and frantic calls from him for help to Karzai.”

For this he was rewarded with rule of Musa Qala. But not more than half a year later relations between Salaam and the British have badly degraded. The British have accused him of corruption and thuggery, while he has accused the British of undermining his “authority.” Salaam is “feathering his own nest” while reconstruction is not forthcoming.

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We have already pointed out that the British grunts are among the bravest on earth, but the problems here are associated with strategy and force projection. The campaign didn’t begin well in Musa Qala, with the British appointing by fiat a man who had neither moral authority nor personal investment in the area. The situation has degraded since then.

Musa Qala is a thorny set of problems, but this could also have been said of the Anbar Province. But the U.S. Marines had continual force projection for a protracted period of time, and when kinetic operations needed to be mixed with biometrics and gated communities, this transition was instantaneous. Then when Lt. Colonels had to be at city council meetings, they participated as warrior-scholars.

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My Comment: The Captain's Journal's closing remarks hit it on the money. This is why the U.S. succeeded in Anbar, Iraq, and this is what we must do to succeed in Afghanistan.

The U.S. Marines have had significant success in the Garmser area of operations in the Helmand Province, but the 24th MEU will be rotating out soon. Whether the replacements are U.S. Marines or British forces, the strategy must be one of being the most powerful tribe in Helmand. Only then can a society be [re]constructed so that forces can turn over to legitimate governmental authorities and stand down. It is a proven paradigm, and without it, we will fail in Afghanistan.

There is no magic to perform, no secret Gnostic words to utter, no tricks. Troops are necessary, and warrior-scholars who can fight a battle as well as govern a city council meeting. Under-resourced forces and shady deals with corrupt, second rate, has-been Taliban commanders (or religiously motivated hard core Taliban commanders) simply won’t do the job.

But while we now know what we must do to win, I do not have confidence that the British will do it right. They lack the resources, the political will, and the proper intelligence to win over the civilian populations in their jurisdiction. They failed in Basra, Iraq, ..... and they are failing here.