FID or COIN? does it matter

[LS]

Or maybe "complication," is a better word...

Is one reason I'm looking for justifications to use FID lenses for looking at AFG the fact that FID is (usually) conducted in support of IDAD, and IDAD is really what GIROA so desperately needs?

While FID explicitly recognizes this larger, civil context for "the fight," COIN gives it a more rhetorical nod...

[Klugzilla]

For what it is worth, I think we should be doing FID at the Afghan or Af/Pak level. Beneath that there should be an appropriate mix of COIN/CT/CN/PE/etc. based on the local environment. However, I get the feeling (not having been to that theater, only Iraq) that we have been conducting predominantly counterguerrilla operations. I'll defer to others who have been there.

[Ken White]

understand the problem. LS and others posted definitions, all of which I agree with. So IMO, we are now performing FID. Period. We are not performing COIN because the US has no insurgents to fight (That is not just a semantic quibble; whose insurgents are they?).

We are using COIN TTP to assist the Government of Afghanistan (GOA) with their COIN operation. We are also assisting them in the control of smuggling and other criminal operations. Well, that's mostly what we say, anyway...

LS said:

"we" (the US, the international community; external interested parties) are the center-of-effort and -gravity with respect to changing the situation on the ground. It's "our" strategies, our resources, our initiatives, etc. In the latter case (FID), it's very explicitly ~not~ the externals who are on the hook to win the thing.

'Win' is a very bad word to use with respect to either FID or COIN because the almost certain best end will be an acceptable outcome. One cannot win other than at a tactical level. So there's not going to be a win and that word needs to disappear. Neither will there be a defeat -- so that word should never appear.

Regarding the point in the quoted statement, perhaps a part of the problem is just that: It is "our" strategies, our resources, our initiatives, etc. and maybe a little less of that would let everyone know that what we're doing there is FID. As you say:

I don't think we're doing FID in AFG (we're not "doing both." We're fighting a COIN fight...). Our efforts to build ANSF are really in support of our own COIN (and other) objectives; not, as would be the case in a true FID-driven mission, IOT give GIROA the capacity to win this fight. Data points? The POI for ANSF are ours, not theirs. Less decisive, but still important (to my mind), the standards for training are ours; artificially high, especially in areas of human rights and other western constructs.(emphasis added /kw)

I believe that makes my point. As we all know, artificially high levels will fall precipitously absent an enforcer. So will most western constructs (not to mention that it takes more time to 'train' people when you try to change what they think...).

We went from MCO against an organized (more or less...) State force (also more or less...) to controlling the chaos of toppled governments to conducting military operations against bandits and insurgents (insurging against another government we helped establish) in support of nascent governments to the conduct of FID. Well, that's where we should be -- but we haven't quite arrived and the sooner we do the better off everyone will be. ADDED: That includes the meeting of our other objectives...

What's required is FID. We are NOT doing COIN but we using COIN TTP where appropriate to assist the host nation. 'Host Nation' is important -- it is NOT our nation.

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What follows is esoteric background from open sources to remind everyone how we got where we are; those who know all that obviously should ignore it.

What all the above amounts to is that MarcT was pretty well correct in the first response on the thread. We are doing FID and we were forced into it by several factors and we have been slow to adapt. While that's simplistic to some, it's accurate. We went to Afghanistan with no coherent plan because none of the active planners knew enough to do it properly and / or they were not listened to by senior people. We went to Iraq and walked into Saddam's little hornets nest that he told us he was preparing -- letting prisoners out of jails, weapons everywhere, medals to Russian Generals and again planning was flawed and good things were ignored. Not picking on anyone; those are just facts. Realize that in the case of both nations we were doing something no one had any experience with, no one in command had been in combat command at the echelon in which they were serving -- and in no combat at all with rare exceptions for ten years. Few had been trained to expect or do the things that would confront us. In both cases, some good plans were tossed aside by direction of...

All things considered we did it pretty well and -- this is important; what it was was not what it became and that is not what it now is.

Seems to me the 'problem' arose due to our method of entry and a lack of proper guidance from our Political Masters. None of them know enough to say 'FID' OR 'COIN' and frankly, the Army as an institution * -- and thus CentCom and DoD -- could not provide better guidance so everything just sort of happened. Our Personnel system and its rotational processes meant that about the time someone really learned the job; they moved. We compounded that by shifting the wrong units to Iraq and never placing units back in an AO or on a mission they had previously performed or were even suited for in some caes. Our doctrinal and training failure during the 90s * led to a learning curve exacerbated by the distraction of Iraq -- which was a different war on several levels but also latterly was a case of FID and Assistance to the Host Nation in the conduct of COIN operations.

Note in both cases, we overthrew the existing government and thus were not conducting FID but instead were conducting PreNatal Development which should have transmuted into today's FID once we had designed and installed a government which immediately began it's own transmutation into a new sovereign government. We just need to back off a bit.

We do not do FID well because we have to be in charge, we're impatient and anyone who doesn't do it our way is wrong. Thus we get to be overbearing and while we're tolerated for the 'help' we offer, we build up a lot of resentment. Trying to make the 'assisted[' nation an image of the US in some respects does not help. This thread is indicative of that dichotomy; we run around the world and get invovled in FID but all to often, overdo it and must run everything, therefor the Troops are confused; "Am I doing COIN or FID?" Answer is neither or both (depending on who one asks). Or it's 'c.' Both of the above. Or one today, the other tomorrow...

Not smart. Not at all.

* There were people in the services that knew what needed to be done in 2001-3 but they were not in positions to adequately influence planning. There were people in the services in the 1975-2000 period who strongly advised against dismissing nation building, COIN TTP and FID among other things. They were ignored.