Not all that unlike the brand of ultra-survivalists and anti-taxation folk in our own country, if you stop and think about it. Deep inside, a large cross-section of the population empathize with them. Maybe not so strongly as to provide aid and comfort in the wake of an attack against one of our institutions, but there is fertile ground that can be worked with a hoe if governance and its institutions are already weak or corrupt.That tendency is evident in our preference for central government, and in our assumption that effective governance is a desirable thing. In many cases it may not be. If a group of people is accustomed to governing themselves, with nominal allegiance to a distant and abstract national entity, the prospect of an effective government - of a government that actually proposes to govern them - might be regarded as a direct assault on a treasured autonomy. We might see a police force and a courthouse as "delivering justice", the populace might see it as an attempt to impose a foreign system of justice.
I don't see, after 9 years at this effort, where we are any closer to understanding the dynamic.I suspect that the key question in Afghanistan is how the populace perceives the conflict: is the core conflict between the GIROA and the Taliban, with the foreigners intervening in support of the GIROA, or is the core conflict between the foreigners and the Taliban, with the foreigners setting up the GIROA as a local agent of their own devising? If the former, then yes, this is insurgency and we're doing FID. If the latter, then it is war, regardless of how badly we'd like to call it something else.
Great observations that play into my own struggle to define area denial. Reading your points brings home the fact that despite all the collections assets we have at our disposal, that harness military manpower, very few of them (at least that I can tell) are focused on identifying the root causes of why knuckleheads do what they do, and spend inordinant amounts of time and resources simply showing us the sypmtoms. I can't tell you how many times I have read reporting that does a great job making connections within the realm of Slap's four F's, and details what has or is about to happen, but simply canno fathom the reason why. It seems that assessment is often reserved for the human terrain folks, and that presents an inverse proportion of effort.The common insurgent weakness revolves around the relationship between insurgent leaders and their followers, both the rank-and-file fighters and the supporting populace. It's not universal, but where it exists it provides a key strategic target. If we look at "the insurgency" as a monolithic entity driven solely by resistance to bad governance, we can overlook this vulnerability.
Insurgent leaders are typically ideologically driven, and fighting for a particular desired end state, generally one in which they take political power. Insurgent followers are more typically driven by local issues that threaten them: they fight against an unacceptable status quo. The ideology of the leader is frequently less that significant (and often less than comprehensible) to the follower. The key to success for the insurgent leadership is in understanding those local grievances (which will vary widely from one locale to the next) and in presenting themselves as a solution or as an ally.
That dynamic presents an interesting challenge. The leadership may be diffuse and difficult to target; even when some of them are killed or captured new leaders emerge from the ideological core. If we target the followers, we end up punishing people who see themselves fighting for their own rights or their own survival, often exacerbating the issues that the core insurgent propagandists exploit. For me, the key to resolving a situation like this is to understand the core narrative of the followers in any given locale, identify the divergences between the narratives of leader and follower, and act to address the issues that motivate the followers. The idea is to drive a wedge between leader and follower, less a question of decapitation than disembodiment. We will never persuade the core ideologues, but if we can isolate them from their followers we can render them irrelevant.
Perhaps that's because it will always be easier to be the counterinsurgent than to actually resolve the insurgency across the spectrum.
Originally Posted by jcustis
Bookmarks