Insurgency and Counterinsurgency Franchisees

So how about that proposal/idea that’s occasionally floated for those American-supported Tribal Lashkars in Afghanistan? [Lashkar = local tribal “defense” militia] Can the American-dominated counterinsurgency effort and the insurgents whose grievances are mostly non-ideological come to an Al Anbar-style agreement (usually cited as an idea for Eastern Afghanistan)? Unfortunately, it would require an intense level of micro-managing and an excellent knowledge of local politics that just doesn’t exist. It would also require some co-optable local authority figures whose influence extends past their own little valleys. Furthermore, the exact percentage of those insurgents who would fall into the economic-and-local-power-politics-grievances category is not known with any certainty. There are other factors too that make Eastern Afghanistan not as conducive to this strategy as al Anbar in Iraq was. For many in Eastern Afghanistan an American paycheck would be as good as a death certificate. For those locals who aren’t too xenophopic, the security dilemmas (esp. for many in the East) are just too great for most to consider joining any sort of American supported “Awakening.”

The strategy required to defeat the Taliban is not going to be found in some “silver bullet,” but rather in a comprehensive overhaul of how this campaign is run. That’s not a very original assertion. But this won’t stop the continuing appearance of often independently sourced quick fix proposals that have been given fuel by the ostensible (short-term) success of the al Anbar strategy.