FID or COIN? does it matter

[Infanteer]

Well, as I told MG Carter this morning, we are really dealing with two insurgencies. The rank and file fighter is primarily fighting a resistance movement. They fight because we are here and because they can draw an honest wage for an honorable Pashtun profession to do so. I would like to think that I would be an insurgent if I were Afghan.

This is the bulk of the insurgency, but it is not the aspect of the insurgency that the COIN effort must focus on to resolve. The COIN effort must go after the top of the insurgency, the senior leadership that are much more the Revolutionary insurgents; who believe they have a superior legitimacy than Karzai does. Once this is resolved, and no amount of population centric tactics nor killing of insurgent fighters will resolve it; you can then take a much more palatable position in support to the emergent, legitimate government, and reduce presence in a manner that takes the steam out of the larger, rank and file, resistance insurgency. Not "go after" as in KILL (though some may well just have to eat that bullet); but go after as in targeting the causal factors of illegitimacy and lack of mechanisms recognized and trusted by the populace for shaping government.

This makes sense to me sitting where I am. I regularly get fed stuff on TBSL this and HVI that which bears little relevence to what I watch unfold in and around the villages. Unlike a Bosnia or a Iraq, where a more base, intercine violence occured which required a strong security force presence to prevent revolutionary elements from exploiting or thriving, there is a much more "violence as usual" feel around here. No mass graves or targeted killings, just 100 little wars for 100 various reasons that we've stumbled into - despite being as friendly as hell, many of these folks simply don't want us clattering around their countryside and think it is logical and acceptable to take a whack at us.

To date, the best explanation of COIN is "a violent political campaign" and right now we're working with a fickle electorate.