Yeah, this is not news. We are babes in the woods on this.
I got to know Matiullah Khan a bit during my recent tour. Guys like this are far more effective and have far greater legitimacy in the eyes of the populace. Matiullah even extends his legitimacy base across tribal lines fairly effectively and has been a great friend of SOF (US and Aussie) in Uruzgan; and the scourge of the Dutch who could not get past the fact that so much of his capacity was informal.
Does Matiullah make a ton of cash to ensure route Bear between Tarin Kowt and Kandahar stays open? Yes. Does he talk to the Taliban and use part of his payment to ensure that the Taliban don't attack his convoys? Also yes. That's just smart business. MG Carter always worried that he also used part of those funds to get the Taliban to attack other convoys to keep his business running.. He had no evidence of that; and personally I don't think he needed to provide those kind of incentives, but at the same time would not be overly surprised if he did either.
It's convenient to have someone to blame other than our own shortfalls at effective COIN, and guys like Matiullah become a convenient target. It's too bad, because these guys that have remained faithful to the people, and largely uncorrupted by the Karzai regime are arguably the hope for Afghanistan.
The Dutch however, were in bed with a competitor (who was widely known in Afghan circles as being hardcore Taliban) and while he helped maintain a circle of safety around the Dutch base, he also was constantly telling every Dutch official who would listen how evil Matiullah was.
Then there was Juma Gul, the Provincial ANP Chief. Like Matiullah, he is a protégé of Jon Mohammad Khan (former Uruzgan Gov and major power broker). The difference being that Matiullah is from and for Uruzgan, whereas Juma is from Kabul and for Juma. Somehow virtually all of some 600 new AKs he received "disappeared". No problem, he is the official ANP.... Then there is his Poppy eradication program. He was taking out acre after acre, and the Dutch were very proud of the success. Oops. Acre after acre of Jon Mohammed's tribal rival, but not a single plant from fields of Jon Mohammed's tribe. Last I saw of Juma he was spending the majority of his effort trying to get a sweetheart post back in Kabul, but that meant cranking up the bribe money to higher, so therefore cranking up the extortion locally.
Meanwhile, Matiullah, Also a Colonel in the ANP, goes to Kabul to see about getting his Tashkil extended. He had some 400 funded positions, and was paying another 1600 guys or so out of his pocket (at a much higher rate, and with much greater loyalty than the ANP pays), to include buying their weapons, ammo, vehicles, etc. Sort of like Moseby in a lot of ways. The response in Kabul? (according to Matiullah, I was not with him so who knows) the minister said for $50,000 he would consider the request. Matiullah told him to respectfully F-off. A few weeks later his Tashkil was cut in half, so I tend to believe his side of the story.
But all of these guys talk to each other. Much of the Taliban in southern Afghanistan are local boys who get paid to fight each summer following the Poppy harvest, and who reintegrate every fall back to normal life. They are a resistance insurgency and fight primarily because we are there, and because it is good, honorable Pashtun work. I know for a fact of one father who has one son in the ANP and one in the Taliban. He saw no conflict with that, it's just a good diversification of investment, Afghan style.
We have grossly mis-characterized the nature of the threat, the nature of the insurgency. We focus so much of our efforts in the south in places like Kandahar, Uruzgan, Helmand, and Zabul going after a resistance movement. This is the lower tier of the insurgency, and a resistance movement. The more we do, the more reason they have to continue. This is like digging at the base of a sand dune with an e-tool and is criminally incompetent COIN.
The top of the insurgency is much more political and much more a revolutionary movement. The Northern Alliance has a lock on the Government, so the greater Pashtun populace is largely excluded from participation in governance or economic opportunity. We throw a broad blanket of "Taliban" over them, but it's much more complex than that. The Northern Alliance and a Constitution that has placed the entire country in the position of owing patronage to Karzai personally have denied all hope to nearly half the populace, and they are happy to keep it that way. They suffered too long as the underdogs to Pashtuns to make reasonable concessions. (Yes, Karzai, AWK and many others are Pashtun, but then the tribal/family lines come into play as to who is in the circle of trust, and who is out. Look to the "outs" to find your Taliban)
To "win" the insurgency we must stop digging at the bottom and go to the top. We must drive efforts to scrap the current abortion of a constitution and encourage reconciliation and a new, better constitution designed for COIN rather than oppression. Not with the "Taliban" per se, but with the huge segment of the Pashtun populace that is excluded under the current system.
This is not rocket science, but neither is it warfare either. It's COIN, and that is social science and common sense. The warriors just want to wage war though, and the diplomats just deal with the existing government, and the developers just want to get out and build things for the people. My opinion, much of this is tragically misdirected to where it produces the least effect; while relatively effective and achievable options to go after resolving the top of the insurgency sit untouched.
I won't even get into our Pakistan ops; but they hurt more than they help due to the same misunderstanding of the nature of Insurgency in general, and in Afghanistan in particular.
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