New Guidance on Counter-Insurgency

[Bob's World]

I'm not arguing anything on behalf of POP-COIN. I am arguing that you need to go an hunt, harass, make life miserable for the bad guys, and only the bad guys Bad guys are only those trying to kill you or kill civilians.


Concur. Lots of Ambushes, lots of OPs. Lots of informer networks within the population. Find any excuse to visit villages and chat a bit to the locals. All good stuff.

The paradigm I'd want to establish is that ISAF never do any harm, to good people. The only people harming the good people are the Taliban. The people harming the Taliban are ISAF.
I don't want to promise the People I'll protect them from the Taliban (because I cannot). I will promise to avenge any deaths the Taliban cause (because I can) - and the Pashtun understand vengeance.

... and this, of course is why strategy applied the past several years has produced strategic damage out of tactical success.

As I understand the Taliban (and I am no expert, so this is intended to be a very general assessment) they are essentially a Pashto nationalist movement that is made up largely of members of the the Pashto populace living on both sides of the Afg/Pak border; that employ a fundamentalist Islamic ideology to provide the motivation for their movement.

I really see no way one can attack members of the Pashto populace that associate with the Taliban without having extremely negative effects with the larger Pashto populace from which these men originate. The tribe may well agree with the cause the Americans are supporting, yet as we have killed their kin, and likely non-Taliban members of the tribe as well in collateral damage, we have alienated the tribe as a whole. The more we engage, the stronger the Taliban become, not because more buy into their ideology, but because more are either sucked into the blood feud, or simply agree that the outsiders must be driven out.

This leads me to say that we do not simply need new ISAF COIN tactics; but rather we need a new overall strategic approach.

Most are coming on line to agree that the Westphalian construct of what a state is, or is not, is evolving. Yet few are willing to adjust how they think about dealing with such challenges to the old view of sovereignty. To this I simply suggest: "Free your mind, and your ass will follow."

How about this: We all recognize how important the Pashto populace is to both Afghanistan and Pakistan; and all should recognize by now that targeting the insurgent segment of that Pashto populace is destabilizing to BOTH of those countries; and also to the Western countries involved in the effort. Why not simply seek a new form of lesser included sovereignty that recognizes new rights for the Pashto populace without ripping apart the two states in which they reside? A form of dual-citizenship coupled with unique rights and governmental organizations that give the tribes a voice in both states.

How would this work exactly? I have no idea, this is evolving strategy in an evolving environment. Free your mind. Trust your damn parachute and go out the door.

All I know for sure is that what we are currently doing is not working, and the slight tweak of tactics proposed by ISAF is too little too late. But it is not too late to make a major change of strategy. One of my leadership sayings probably applies here:

"While it is sometimes right to do the wrong thing, it is never wrong to do the right thing."