No, Its not that "we must"
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Jedburgh
It's that the Government of Afghanistan must. Best not to forget.
(just one more example of why I tend to get rather adament that we don''t fall into the habit of calling our own operations COIN when we assist another country with their insurgency, and similarly that we don't end up seeing their war as our war. No good can come from it)
Caught in the crossfire: the Pashtun tribes of Southeast Afghanistan
Thanks to MPayson for pointing this out.
From the summary and what the brief does: What is the problem? What should be done?
Quote:
In a new (Australian) Lowy Institute Policy Brief, Tom Gregg argues the importance of a more effective engagement of Afghanistan’s tribes, particularly in the country’s south east. This could help improve stability in a strategically important part of the country and avoid a situation where local tribes were turned against the Afghan national government and international military forces operating in the region.
Link:http://www.lowyinstitute.org/Publication.asp?pid=1157 (1Mb)
On a quick read well illustrated with anecdotes and worth a read - even for those due to deploy.
davidbfpo
Dorronsorro, Semple, Nathan, Exum
Went to a Center for American Progress conference today.
Gilles Dorronsoro, Micheal Semple and Joanne Nathan (corrected), all non-US experts who have been in Afghanistan since before 2001.
Each had a presentation on their field. Most of you have heard some of this: Dorronsorro (secure the cities first, etc..), and Semple's work with the Taliban are pretty well known.
Nathan, an Australian, asked: What's this COIN thing about? I read the manual and it said Clear-Hold-Build, but all you ever do is Clear, Clear, Clear. No administrative purpose or capability. Why are you clearing unless you have civilian capacity to Hold and Build? Where has this strategy ever been applied?
Even Andrew Exum didn't take a stab at answering that.
The big question that all were asked to comment on: What do you think of these people who see one small part of the country, then try to exprapolte what they saw there to a bigger picture about the country? (Obviously, the Hoh question).
They were pretty devastating in explaining just a snippet of what they know about the whole country, and why that kind of speculation is not useful.
Like Exum said, DC is usually full of generalists, and it was a rare opportunity to have three leading specialists in one place.
Certainly worth hearing every word yourself to build or assess strategy.
http://www.americanprogress.org/even...streaming.html
Steve
The best we can hope for?
From The Scotsman:http://www.scotsman.com/latestnews/G...p-a.5801195.jp
Quote:
Professor Anatol Lieven, from King's College London, said: "The best we can now hope and plan for is a reasonably functioning military state that can hold the north and west of the country, and a few Pashtun cities like Khandar and Jalalabad, and restrict the Taleban to the Pashtun countryside."
davidbfpo
Mutually Exclusive Nation
Quote:
...and restrict the Taleban to the Pashtun countryside."
So it follows that we'll be restricted to the few cities that can be quietly and slowly strangled?
Are there GREAT BIG FENCES we'll be erecting around these towns? If in one can you go to the other? If in one can you even step outside of it into that nasty pashtu countryside. Can any of those nasty pashtus step in?
My! How far our hubris has traveled? Got to hand it to our best and brightest, they've think-tanked us right into an impressively little box. Surrendering Konar and Nuristan now, eh? Somebody was putting in a trout hatchery in Konar. Wonder how that'll go now?
Guess my personal ambition to do a little flyfishing on the upper Kunar river ain't a happenin' thing.
Bummer...
Afghanistan - returning to the past?
S-2,
I suspect Anatol Lieven is looking at an end state for Afghanistan. As others have said e.g. Michael Semple there are many reasons why the Taliban will not regain power nationwide. If you look at the history of Afghan national government it's writ has rarely been national, so Lieven is returning to the past.
davidbfpo
I think we need demand that they make their case
Quote:
Originally Posted by
slapout9
BW, what do you do with Politcal leaders that do think it is in our National Interest? Where is some objective standard to measure it as opposed to some Vodoo motive.
Other countries do a better job of establishing and publishing their interests than the U.S. does. In fact, as an American you have to actively go out and search a wide range of documents and statements to sort out what our interests are, which causes them to be much more fluid than they should be in general, and also means that 10 different people on such a quest are apt to come in with 10 similar, but different answers.
So, good questions like:
"What do you believe America's top 5 interests to be, and could you explain which of those interests are so deeply rooted in Afghanistan that you are willing to risk damage to them everywhere else to wage a war over them in that one country?"
(Such a question is likely get a fuzzy answer as to what our interests are, and a rhetoric laced statement about terrorists or AQ in return. That should then open the door to hard questions about the nature of AQ as an organization and their operations and how to best deal with them around the globe in a whole of government approach in conjunction with our allies, who by the way, have their own national interests which some may be shocked to learn do not necessarily coincide with, nor subjugate themselves to US interests.)
OK, Bob, our personal opinions coincide ....
for whatever they are worth - yours I suspect worth more than mine:
Quote:
from BW
But in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Philippines, and in dozens of other countrieis what we are really doing is countering AQ's UW campaign. THAT is the "War" for the U.S.; not any one particular area of operations where there are aspects of that complex problem set to be dealt with. In some of those countries we are helping to resolve nationalist insurgincies being inspired, supported, etc, by AQ. In others we are dealing with nodes of the UW network that AQ employs to execute this campaign. In others we deal more directly with AQ itself. In some we do all three. But in NONE of those countries are we in a war specific to that country. AQ is waging a global UW campaign, and no one country or insurgency they are working with is essential to them in the pursuit of their larger political goals. Similarly, no one country is essential to the US in the pursuit of our political goals.
My only semantic change would be to substitute "existential" for "essential" - in short, AQ's existence will not cease because of its plan being defeated in one country; and neither will the existence of the US if we suffer a "defeat" in one country. So, we can take a deep breath before darting from crisis to crisis.
Getting back to the larger point. AQ is setting or assisting those mulktiple "brushfires" by using a very small footprint in terms of its own operatives. I throw this out for discussion. Would not logic suggest that we (US) also follow the small footprint model if our target is AQ ?
Yet, we see estimates (IIRC ten-year projections) of trillion dollar costs for maintaining approximately a 100K force (present + in pipeline) in Astan. Based on GEN McChrystal's supposed request options that would not be optimum for what he wants to do (the 60-80K top range adds). That is scarcely a small footprint in either case.
Best to all
Mike
Yup, especially as to ...
this:
Quote:
from BW
... AND the public perception of the importance of this particular AOR in the context of the global mission-set and US interests as a whole.
Since 9/11, the political side of our ledger has been operating in non-stop crisis mode (with different pages flipping in and out depending on political posturing).
It still amazes me that there was no in-depth contingency plan to handle AQ in Astan - and that one had to be developed on the run immediately after 9/11. That was a problem caused by the political side of the ledger, not the military side (IMO).
Regards
Mike
Is McChrystal Going To Loose.
He will according to this Article from the new Military Review! he dose not have the right Strategy to win according to this article.
http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/Military...231_art004.pdf
Is there any merit to this article?
Moderator's note post copied to seperate discussion on the MR article: http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=8975
Johnson and Mason article
I'll leave aside the accuracy of their recollections of Vietnam. They point out the near-FUBAR state of the political effort in Astan. Their DRT concept seems a level too high. If Vietnam is any lesson, it is that security and political action must be solid at the village level. There are roughly 40,000 villages in Astan. That is the magnitude of the political action problem. No solution within our capabilities has been presented by anyone I've read.
Moderator's note post copied to seperate discussion on the MR article: http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=8975
Actually I take a different lesson from 'Nam
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jmm99
I'll leave aside the accuracy of their recollections of Vietnam. They point out the near-FUBAR state of the political effort in Astan. Their DRT concept seems a level too high. If Vietnam is any lesson, it is that security and political action must be solid at the village level. There are roughly 40,000 villages in Astan. That is the magnitude of the political action problem. No solution within our capabilities has been presented by anyone I've read.
The lesson I take is that when a couple of outside actors waging a much larger competition use the populace of some smaller state to wage their contest in a form of pawn warfare don't be so blinded by your own ends that you are oblivious to those of the populace involved.
We propped up a series of three different ass-hats in Nam because we didn't want the Soviets to go "+1" in the global pawn warfare game that defined much of the Cold War; while the Soviets backed the side seeking freedom from the widely hated scourge of Western Colonialism.
Today there are a large number of populaces across the Middle East also seeking to get out from under the remnants of Western Colonialism and the governments imposed by the West during the Cold War to assure "friendly" relations and the flow of oil...
Once again, I believe we have picked the wrong side, and that is a hard hand to play. This is why I strongly recommned that we co-opt the majority of the AQ message and ussurp them as the champions of the populaces of the Middle East in their quest for better governance. Such a move would sweep AQ's feet out from under them and bring the U.S. into line with our national principles.
But one'll never see this with their nose pressed against Afghanistan; or with their brain obsessed with rhetoric of the ideology AQ employs. Afghanistan is just one of many states in play, and ideologies are like socks, you need them, but you can change them too. Step back and the picture gets clearer.
Moderator's note post copied to seperate discussion on the MR article: http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=8975
Didnt see the last two posts
Amen.
I started writing my long winded reply and had to do some work, so missed the last two replies..which seem to me to pretty much sum it up.