What Is Our Strategic Endstate in Afghanistan?

[Ron Humphrey]

Ski and Ron, I agree that the locals will ultimately determine their own so called end state (of course even the phrase end state is misleading, as there is never an end state), but that isn't the question, the question is what end state will "we" accept before we call "our" mission complete? .

If we consider Iraq as an example of deciding what we will accept it seems a lot lot calling audibles at the line. The circumstances will consistently change in the back and forth between ourselves and the enemy. In the end you call em as you see em.

The key it would seem would be to accept that we won't really know whats quote acceptable until we've established whats doable and then we have to see a crack in the opponents armor at which point we turn upfield and give it all we've got. An unfortunate fact but I have yet to see the crystal ball which shows us the play before the other teams lines up.

Perhaps contrary to the prevailing view, I think there is much we can do (and have done) to shape the direction the locals will go in. Yes we're a foreign body in Afghanistan, but so is the Taliban. The Taliban way of life is not the norm, yet they are now having success based on their strategy, not because they're local. We need to study their strategy and counter it. I know it sounds simplistic, but it doesn't appear we're doing that. Our strategy, or the perception if it, went astray somewhere relatively recently. .

I might propose that although the Tali way is not the norm it is however a condition with which the populous find themselves quite unfortunately very famililiar. In that sense perhaps the old adage (better the enemy known, then the friend you don't know.) applies. That comfort zone that so inundates cultures which exist for long periods under dictatorial type governments is something we really have to keep in mind. Think ( Stockholm Syndrome) on a massive scale.

Not sure about this just thinking about it?

The Taliban have upped their game considerably in recent months based on what I have been reading open source, so it is probably a safe bet to assume that they are now getting some degree of State sponsorship (directly or indirectly), and the list of possible sponsors are quite numerous. For our competitors it is desirable to have a U.S. and NATO tied up in Afghanistan, so they can maneuver elsewhere with less threat of U.S. intervention.

Unfortunately just about everything I've seen open source also seems to reflect this

I'm not there, so I can't feel or see the frustrations you're dealing with, but I think we can do better than we're doing now. I like Ron's idea, it would be worthwhile to show a graph of Afghanistan's social, political, economic, security, conditions from say 1975 to the present (and then somehow portray this to the Afghan people in a meaningful way for them). I suspect there were would be some rapid sharp increases starting in 2002/03 time frame; however localized they may be. As the article suggests, it may now be time to push into the hinterland and spread the wealth. You can't effectively oppose the Taliban by dropping bombs on villages they're occupying.

Just so theres no confusion niether am I, I have seen quite a few that are there express that frustration and others. I know we're trying hard to see what doing better would entail and thus the suggestions I made. I think your probably right about the hinterland somewhat but I still don't know that it's going to be anything like Iraq. IT would seem that this country has been controlled by governments that pretty much commuted to areas to reinforce or gain control and otherwise used mostly fear of informants to maintain their grips.

So whats to say we might not find ourselves in a situation where Larger regional FOB's might actually be in order for those areas further out?

Once again just trying to keep everything in mind and not necessarily count out a more effective blend of COIN/CON with constant adaptation to situation.