COIN -v- CT debate

[Presley Cannady]

They aren't the same thing so no cleavage is required. Our big error was in conflating the two initially. AQ is one problem, Afghanistan is another.That conflation still exists in the eyes of many and it excessively complicates things. Those are two separate problems and contrary to all the hotshot strategists, Pakistan is another. When all is said and done, the two separate nations who do share similar and related large, troublesome majorities are in fact recognized nations with polities and borders. Like it or not -- and the Pushtuns do not -- those two nations are not going away and neither is going to give up territory to the Pushtuns if for no other reason than to keep them divided and therefor easier to control.

But there you have it, how could we not conflate AQ, the Taliban, Pakistan and Afghanistan? AQ lives, eat, sleeps, bathes, and travels with the former ruling clique of Afghanistan, a group which in turn works, plays, fights, trades and intermarries within a Pashtun landscape spread from Kandahar to Miranshah.

Pashtun radicals likely overreach in Pakistan, but let's be frank. They did once hammer their Afghan neighbors across 90 percent of that country's territory and ruled for almost five years, a situation Islamabad found extraordinarily positive from their security point of view. If that's no longer to be the case, then how do you achieve it without building an Afghan state that can secure its territory?

Thus one solution is required for AQ who are simply in Pakistan (possibly) and Afghanistan (to a lesser extent) as a result of diplomatic failures by many including the US. As you point out, they have no infrastructure to protect -- nor any population. The key factor is that they can leave their current location and settle in elsewhere. They are essentially a law enforcement problem and military efforts will have only a marginal effect on them.

They have no infrastructure, but they certainly have population--14 million in Afghanistan and 28 million in Pakistan. Surely they have lowered expectations when it comes to population security, and as we seem to agree they have little infrastructure to protect, and if they lived in pockets the size of Los Angeles with 30,000 police watching over them then yes, I'd agree we're talking about a police problem. But that's just it, the 400+ clans aren't just gangs fighting a turf war. Their semi-nomadic, ranging across vast tracts of hostile terrain. If your lawmen need to be supplied from the air to deal with even a decent sized cluster of heavily armed fighters, then I think we've effectively blurred the line between law enforcement and military operation.

Afghanistan is a military problem at this point but only because we foolishly made it one -- now we have to solve that.

The Pashtun did rule almost the whole of Afghanistan when the war started--city and countryside. Exactly how is law enforcement adequate to that problem?

Pakistan is not a military problem and we should work very hard to avoid making it one. It is a diplomatic problem, purely and simply. Handled correctly, it can make life uncomfortable for AQ -- but that handling entails ensuring that Afghanistan does not become a destabilizing threat to Pakistan.

I've no argument here, but as you point out preventing the war from spilling unendingly into Pakistan requires securing Afghanistan. Is this not counterinsurgency?

We have not done well with any of the three -- but most of that failure stems from making Afghanistan a military problem in the false hope we could make it a friendly democracy. What happens when the folks in DC do not do their homework...

So what was the alternative, negotiate with Mullah Omar whose starting position was that Taliban-ruled Afghanistan was to "try" Osama bin Laden? Did we have a chance in hell of putting together a Taliban-FBI joint task force to stamp out AQ's leadership, training camps, and access to points of entry and departure?

Realize that you aren't going to defeat AQ? That would be a good start. You can marginalize them, reduce their damage ability to a bearable level and it would help if everyone would realize they are not a military problem and they are not going to be defeated -- indeed, by upping their threat appearance and wrongly using military effort we merely enhanced their appeal temporarily.

So how does law enforcement deal with a gang that had the means and will to kill thousands of Americans on their homeland in a matter of hours and lives in an area where the threat of WMD proliferation is extraordinarily high?