Can the Anbar model work in Afghanistan?

[Old Eagle]

I think that the scholar - warrior construct was from Samuel Butler.

Back to the thread -- in Afghanistan, which was my corner of this war, one has to be very careful about not recreating the tribal militias that destroyed the country after the Soviets left and opened the door for the Taliban. The international community made a huge effort to DDR the militias and replace them with non-tribal based entities. That effort was clearly fits and starts, but the last thing Afg needs is another 30 years of civil war. (Although it wasn't very "civil" at all.)

[GBNT73]

Afghanistan is a whole new level of difficulty -- at least one order of magnitude. Iraq is going well now in large part (in my opinion) because they had a history of civil society (starting sometime after the British forced the Shia tribes to settle and before 1920). The Sunni tribes had to balance against the Hashemites who the British put into power and thus, civil society developed to counter the political threat from the Hashemites, the religious threat from the Shia and the economic threat from the chalabis in Mosul and the other economic powers in Basra.

Afghanistan has never had that. Only in the cities that were waypoints on the trade routes did substantial non-tribal and non-religious markets exist. I think the US Treasury Dept had a small study or survey (2005 or '06?) that (while it may have been too small to be taken as broadly representative) determined that the presence of a hawalla center was the primary indicator of market-based power structures over tribal-based patronage and the associated hierarchical dependencies. That includes only the cities that had thriving markets that dealt not only in goods and services, but currency exchanges as well. Put another way, the places where people trusted other people with their money (both for credit and for capital savings) were the only places that were able to overcome the tribalism. This only happened in the cities. Elsewhere, the rural populations (the other 85%+/- of the overall population) are still stuck in tribalist hierarchies and the persistent warrior economy.

They did not address other factors since they were only looking at the presence or lack of regulated financial markets. The other factor I think is important is the enforced democracy, which forces people to choose parties. These parties will not meet the poeple's needs, but, as people create wealth and develop their private property tradition, they will see reason to step out of the their tribes to found new parties. These grass-roots parties will actually represent them, rather than the Big Men or Chiefs that rule their lives now. That transition will be violent -- very violent -- as the Big Men and Chiefs fight to maintain the status quo and the people muster together to fight back because they have wealth and private property at stake. I don't think that will happen for at least a generation, and only then if the youth get Western liberal educations.

I say Western because Middle and Far Eastern societies are so exclusive and their educational sectors' capabilities vary so much. India certainly won't take on that burden, and the SE Asian societies can not. Well, maybe Indonesia or the Philippines, with large subsidies and Australian/American help. Korea is able but is it willing?? But that is getting way outside my knowledge realm.

So, I think that the social balancing game is the best hope for civil society to grow and long term success in Afghanistan. We are starting to see that in the threat-balancing aspect, but the tribes have played that game for eons and are prepared to continue ad infinitum. To break the reinforcing cycle of violence and the balancing cycles of threats and alliances, there must be alternative political and economic developments that break those loops and give people something to invest in besides paying homage to their cantankerous old tribal chief/council or simply maintaining their warrior economy in the fight against the Taliban, the HiG, the US, the Karzai government, and each other.

But that's just me.

[Cavguy]

The blog had an excellent post about a CNAS interview conducted recently. I skimmed through it and it's got some tremendous quotes and perspective.

For Hacksaw!

we talked with plenty of senior officials who echoed our observation that there doesn’t seem to be a strategic end state that every player agrees upon. We have the rhetoric of a representative Afghanistan at peace with itself and its neighbors – that’s not what I mean. And until we have a defined strategic end state, it’s very hard to come up with the intermediate objectives we need to get there, and until we have the intermediate objectives, it’s hard to figure out how to resource to meet them.

Good analysis:

The second observation is the absolute fundamental nature of the question of government legitimacy. And time and again, every prominent Afghan official we spoke with, or private citizen – former officials as well – voiced a real concern at the declining – not so much the declining popularity, although that’s a problem, but the declining legitimacy of the current government in Afghanistan and they point to three reasons for this. One is corruption, endemic corruption at every level, and I do mean every level. We sat with the vice president, who looked us in the eye, on the record, and said this government is corrupt from top to bottom.

I didn't know this:

There’s an awful lot of Afghans that are getting ready to try to take things into their own hands, which some Americans will think that’s an opportunity we should seize. Some Americans will think that puts at risk a lot of our security, our efforts to build a national legitimate security structure, and we can maybe discuss that more later.

Great point here

MR. FICK: Can I address your first question on why we’re failing at a more granular level? And I’m going to highlight four things. The first one is that I don’t believe we’re thinking about the concept of central governance in Afghanistan in the right way. We, through the constitution, have imposed a highly centralized form of government on Afghanistan in a place that doesn’t have a history of that form of governance, and there are historical and geographical and cultural reasons why that might not work. And maybe we should think of central government more in terms of being a service provider, of goods that have benefits of scale, things like national security and roads and power and a postal service.
And the actual governing should be done not by provincial and district governors whose loyalty stretches back to Kabul, but rather, by local structures whose loyalty stretches down to their people. Those might be tribal; they might religious; they might be social, but they’re not Kabul-facing. So I would highlight that, one, the issue of central governance as one reason.

This is my favorite - on ETT's

MR. FICK: The embedded training team of advisors that’s nominally our main effort. We say that the Afghan Security forces are our exit ticket – and so I’m going to use this phrase tongue-in-cheek – but as they stand up, we – (laughs.)
So these guys are two or three kilometers down the road. They don’t have NIPRNET. That’s military unclassified e-mail. They don’t have SIPRNET, military classified e-mail. They don’t have a DSN phone line. They have civilian cell phones – that’s it. How are they supposed to get the intelligence they need even to conduct operations? How are they supposed to do the coordination they need to do with their adjacent American maneuver battalion to do operations? This isn’t our main effort. We say it is, but it’s not.

[davidbfpo]

Maybe slightly off theme, but references have been made here to the "standing up" of Afghan security forces.

At a seminar this week at RUSI, London a speaker referred to the Soviet occupation era, when the USSR had 100-120K troops deployed, plus 300K Afgan National Army (or whatever it was then called). That was not enough then, so how on earth are 50K foriegn troops plus 50-100K Afghan security forces going to succeed now?

I suspect the actual troop strength figures are in the public domain, for foriegn troops and I have been polite for the current Afghan "boots".

When I see newsreel of similar numbers of Afghan and NATO/ISAF etc troops on patrol then I will start to accept "standing up". This is not to diminish the scarifice made by Afghans already and every day - I suspect often alone i.e without foriegners with them.

davidbfpo

[Eden]

Back to the thread -- in Afghanistan, which was my corner of this war, one has to be very careful about not recreating the tribal militias that destroyed the country after the Soviets left and opened the door for the Taliban. The international community made a huge effort to DDR the militias and replace them with non-tribal based entities. That effort was clearly fits and starts, but the last thing Afg needs is another 30 years of civil war. (Although it wasn't very "civil" at all.)

The resultant weakening of the tribes is one of the factors that has allowed for the resurgence of the Taliban and led to an escalation of violence. Many of the armed groups were not tribally based and needed to go; others, in hindsight, we probably would have been better of co-opting than disarming. Like most international efforts in Afghanistan, the DDR was applied uniformly over a complex society, became an end in and of itself, and failed to achieve its objective in the end - the 'R' in DDR.

Not to say it didn't have many benefits - it's just that we used a machete when we needed a scalpel.

[Old Eagle]

I think that one of the initial mistakes we (the Coalition, certainly not me personally) made was focusing too much on speed over quality when launching the initial SSR programs.

I also think that there may be opportunities to develop Vietnam-style RF/PF forces for local protection only, using the ANA for offensive operations.

[Ken White]

I think that one of the initial mistakes we (the Coalition, certainly not me personally) made was focusing too much on speed over quality when launching the initial SSR programs.

I also think that there may be opportunities to develop Vietnam-style RF/PF forces for local protection only, using the ANA for offensive operations.

I have heard but cannot verify that some folks have repeatedly posited the RF/PF idea but that the Afghan government is adamantly opposed. Possibly afraid of creating separate and competing fiefdoms. If true, I think that's a bad decision, the concept works, the problems are manageable and it should be even more effective in Afghanistan than it was elsewhere...

[Jedburgh]

RFE/RL, 23 Oct 08: Enlisting Tribes Against Militants In Afghanistan Carries Risks

.....Latif Afridi, a senior Pashtun politician and a tribal leader from the Khyber region west of Peshawar, says tribal uprisings against extremists can only work when there is a regional and international consensus on resolving various local rivalries and disputes. Such rivalries have complicated anti-terrorism efforts on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

If unresolved, Afridi says such disputes can escalate into civil war.

Many in Pakistan and Afghanistan think that the best way to prevent such an outcome is to invoke another time-tested, Pashtun tradition -- the jirga or council of elders in which disputes are settled......

[sapperfitz82]

Seems we have a choice between backing the strongest (whatever we measure that by) tribe and getting a poor but near term solution or settling in for the long term and adopting a more colonial outlook with a constabulary and all the trimmings ala the Phillipines.

Personally, I don't think we have the collective willpower for the latter so we'd better pick a horse and ride it PDQ. It seems our strategic goal is an ambition toward the colonial by acting out the tribal favoritism. I mean colonial in this sense as in our strengthening a centralized democratic government and imparting western values (think girls in school). Exporting our culture as it were. Not the more commercial sense.

[Rex Brynen]

Canada ‘not onboard' with U.S. plan to arm Afghan militias

MURRAY BREWSTER
The Canadian Press
Globe and Mail, December 21, 2008 at 6:17 PM EST

OTTAWA — Washington's plan to arm local tribes to take on the Taliban in untamed districts of Afghanistan is possibly “counter-productive” and not something Canada supports, says Defence Minister Peter MacKay.

The proposal, which the U.S. military will experiment with as up to 30,000 additional American troops surge into the country next year, has been routinely discussed by NATO defence ministers, most recently at meeting in Cornwallis, N.S.

“The tribal militia idea that has been around for some time now is controversial; we are not onboard with that,” Mr. MacKay said in a recent year-end interview with The Canadian Press.

“Our preference is to continue with this more formal training process that leads to a more reliable, more professional soldier and Afghan national security force.”

[Mark O'Neill]

Canada ‘not onboard' with U.S. plan to arm Afghan militias

MURRAY BREWSTER
The Canadian Press
Globe and Mail, December 21, 2008 at 6:17 PM EST

Get in the way of a good idea.

The SOI in Iraq where (are) a militia that helped turned the war around.

every successful western COIN efort in living memory has done this. And some of the unsuccessful one that were temporarily successful. (read Colby and Komer about the RFPF in SVN).

I do not know who is advising this Canadian Brother, but he clearly knows s#$&t about COIN.

[jkm_101_fso]

"Test run" to occur in Wardak Province

U.S. to Fund Afghan Militias, Applying Iraq Tactic

By YOCHI J. DREAZEN
WSJ
23 DEC 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The Afghan government will formally start a U.S.-funded effort to recruit armed local militias in the battle against the Taliban in remote parts of the country, exporting the tactic to Afghanistan from Iraq.

The first militias will be established in Wardak Province, in eastern Afghanistan, in coming weeks, officials said. If the effort in Wardak is successful, U.S. commanders hope to create similar forces in other parts of Afghanistan in early 2009.

The militia push is part of a growing American effort to bypass the struggling Afghan central government and funnel resources to Afghan villages and provinces. Senior American officials have stepped up their criticism of Afghan President Hamid Karzai in recent weeks, making clear that they believe his government needs to do more to fight corruption and deliver basic services.

In Iraq, the U.S. decision to recruit tens of thousands of Sunni Arab fighters, including many former insurgents, is widely credited with improving the country's security situation.

http://sec.online.wsj.com/article/SB...140428437.html

[reed11b]

"Test run" to occur in Wardak Province



http://sec.online.wsj.com/article/SB...140428437.html

I do not think that supporting the villages is necessarily "anti-central government". I support this shift in strategy and think that it is over due. We still need to support and train the ANA and respect Karzai, but in a country that has never had a strong central government, recognizing and utilizing the regional and tribal forms of self-government that already exist only makes sense and weakens the Taliban’s efforts.
Reed

[TheCurmudgeon]

One strategy that might be transferable is to get the locals in the cities to stand up for themselves. The Sons of Iraq was a movement initiated by the locals. We just jumped on the bandwagon. It might be possible to push those same buttons. Car bombings that kill kids are "anti-Islamic" in the words of Karzai

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapc...omb/index.html

These type of acts eventually lead to the locals pushing out AQI with our assistance (at least my impression).

My limited experience with Afghans is that they don' like to kill themselves. They don't pick fights unless they are fairly sure they can get more out of it then they are going to lose. This reading of the people has two ramifications. First, my guess is that this type of tactic (suicide bombings) demonstrates an AQ influence even though the Taliban claimed responsibility. In and of itself this provides an opportunity to play the fractions which are likely to emerge against each other. Second, if we back the locals it needs to be in such a fashion that they feel they cannot lose or, even if they do lose they end up with more than when they started.

My point is that these incidents offer opportunities that could be capitalized on in a similar manor as they were in Iraq.

[Rex Brynen]

While not rejecting a "local militias" model in Afghanistan, I would offer a few words of caution.

1) It is my sense—and I stand to be corrected by those on the ground—that the Taliban has not yet alienated rural Pashtun villagers to the extent that AQI started alienating Sunnis in Anbar and elsewhere.

2) The SoI were not just a reaction to AQI excesses—they were (and especially in Baghdad and central Iraq, were even more so) a reaction to the mobilization of Shi'ite militias against the Sunnis after the Samarra mosque bombing in February 2006. Essentially, tribal and insurgent leaders flipped when they learned to count, and realized that as a minority they couldn't fight a two-front war against the US and what was seen as a hostile, Iranian-backed Shiite government and armed groups. Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan feel no comparable sense of threat from a third party.

3) the SoI model only works if the insurgents are too weak to overwhelm local militias, or local militias too strong to make a tempting target. There are many parts of the south where, for reasons of geographic inaccessibility and lack of coalition/ANA boots on the ground, this isn't the case.

I'm not saying that local militias might not be part of the solution. However, attempts to use an Iraq-patterned approach cookie-cutter style is problematic

[Ken White]

...I'm not saying that local militias might not be part of the solution. However, attempts to use an Iraq-patterned approach cookie-cutter style is problematic

or maybe would go a step further and say local militias in Afghanistan must be approached with great caution and full acknowledgment that the Afghan is fickle and easily swayed by he who pays most...

Things we did in Iraq can be transferred to Afghanistan only with considerable thought and caution -- most will not work or will yield different results.

[Ron Humphrey]

While not rejecting a "local militias" model in Afghanistan, I would offer a few words of caution.

1) It is my sense—and I stand to be corrected by those on the ground—that the Taliban has not yet alienated rural Pashtun villagers to the extent that AQI started alienating Sunnis in Anbar and elsewhere.

Part of the reason focusing ISAF on larger urban communities seems a more effective use of them at least in the semi-short term.

2) The SoI were not just a reaction to AQI excesses—they were (and especially in Baghdad and central Iraq, were even more so) a reaction to the mobilization of Shi'ite militias against the Sunnis after the Samarra mosque bombing in February 2006. Essentially, tribal and insurgent leaders flipped when they learned to count, and realized that as a minority they couldn't fight a two-front war against the US and what was seen as a hostile, Iranian-backed Shiite government and armed groups. Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan feel no comparable sense of threat from a third party.

So does this equate to what may very likely become the situation they find theirselves in if/when the Paks stay focused on the Fata region and ANA with enablers maintains pressure on the more rural areas at least in terms of freedom of movement for those who represent the so called shadow govt of the Taliban?

3) the SoI model only works if the insurgents are too weak to overwhelm local militias, or local militias too strong to make a tempting target. There are many parts of the south where, for reasons of geographic inaccessibility and lack of coalition/ANA boots on the ground, this isn't the case.

If it is as you state does this not represent those areas which will either

- Have to find a way to team up in order to present harder targets or

-Look to find support from the central govt with the acceptable compromises that would entail

I'm not saying that local militias might not be part of the solution. However, attempts to use an Iraq-patterned approach cookie-cutter style is problematic

Well said

or maybe would go a step further and say local militias in Afghanistan must be approached with great caution and full acknowledgment that the Afghan is fickle and easily swayed by he who pays most...

Things we did in Iraq can be transferred to Afghanistan only with considerable thought and caution -- most will not work or will yield different results.

Would another way to state this be that its never wise to expect the same bad guys to repeat the same mistakes as before?

[Ken White]

Would another way to state this be that its never wise to expect the same bad guys to repeat the same mistakes as before?

That too...

But the Afghans are NOT Iraqis -- they are at the same time more honest and more devious.

[Ron Humphrey]

That too...

But the Afghans are NOT Iraqis -- they are at the same time more honest and more devious.

Not trying to sound smart-aleck at all Just haven't got past that English teacher who said you should always write in active vs passive form to avoid the "anonymous source" support inference.

Unfortunately it also tends to make it sound like I might actually think I have a clue

However let me assure you wholeheartedly I am most aware how rarely that is the case