I’m just a simple kind of guy; maybe that’s why I don’t understand this idea of concentrating in a few cities. I don’t believe it worked in the past for the British or for the Russians but then we aren’t the Brits or the Bear are we?
Seems to me the bad guys in Afghanistan are forcing us to fight their fight—they are good at non-linear hit and run type skirmishes. So what do we do? Establish ourselves in a series of non-linear enclaves (in the big inkblots AKA the cities or the smaller inkdrips AKA the villages) that are just perfect targets for the tactics employed by the opposition.

Here’s an alternative to consider. We establish ourselves in a couple of linear, protectable enclaves and then advance slowly out from that protection—this is more like bridgeheads or a couple of big blobs that keep getting bigger by swallowing up more territory slowly. I’d suggest we could have two such blobs that center on the North and the South of the country respectively.

The northern sector would span the northern provinces from Badakhshan province westward along the national border through the provinces of Takhar, Kunduz, Balakh, Jowzjan, Faryab and Sar-E-Pol. I accept that this may be too broad a spread; so, we could lop off pieces on the eastern and western extremes. This positioning would act as a something like a bridgehead for a forced entry from which forces would get pushed out to the South, SE and SW over time. Simultaneously, we would have a second enclave in the south across the provinces of Nimruz, Helmand, and Kandahar. This bridgehead/enclave would expand to the N , NE, and NW over time as we finished clearing, holding and building inside it.

If folks want to, we could also have a Fort Apache in Kabul Province. I’m not sure why we need one. We are long past the days of wars in which victory consisted of “I captured your capital city so I’ve won.” But, we did seem to need to have forces in Berlin to create an instant POW camp for the GSFG to guard in the event of WWIII in Europe. Since I’m advocating a return to a more conventional strategy, maybe we need to do that again too.

This “strategic” deployment brings us more in line with what we historically have trained for and done well--fight linear battles. It also forces the opposition to fight us on our terms rather than on theirs, if they choose to fight at all. By establishing the two enclaves along the southern and northern borders, we tend to have more defendable LOC leading into the enclaves from Turkmen-, Uzbek-, Tajik-, and Pakistan. As we expand them over time, the bad guys get caught in the jaws of a closing vice. And we have established ourselves, in the north at least, in areas where the bulk of the population is less likely to be Pashtun—the folks who seem to have the greatest problem with our presence in the region. In the southern enclave I propose, Baluchis are almost as prevalent as the Pashtuns I believe In the south we are also in a position to interdict the opium cash crop that may be funding much of the bad guys’ efforts. We could try to get the Pakistanis to provide pressure on the east as well, but that might be a bridge too far, especially since our senior leaders making speeches to alienate them.


Ready on the right? Ready on the left? Ready in the center? Weapons off safe! Commence firing!