Pashtun / Pashtunwali / Pashtunistan (catch all)

[Bob's World]

Yaderyne,

Welcome Aboard, and thanks for the link. I enjoyed the article. Here's my take based off my current thoughts on small wars.

1. Similarities of differing insurgencies. The description provided by the authors was the strongest point of the article. The simple answer that they did not highlight was that both groups were conducting a version of Mao's Protracted War. IMO, it's THE playbook for a people's rebellion, social movement, or gang warfare. In each case, you take Mao broadly and apply it for METT-TC (Mission, Enemy, Time, Troops, Terrain, Civilians) in a given situation.

2. The Sine Qua Non of Counterinsurgency: Legitimacy. I disagree with this assertion, and IMO, it is something that we get fundamentally wrong when trying to understand small wars. Instead, the sine qua non of small wars is control. Legitimacy is merely a subset. For instance, does a farmer out in the boondocks care if Karzai is legitimate? No. He cares about his farm and his family. In terms of control, he wants to know who to go to IOT get fair settlements when he has disagreements with his neighbor.

Mike

I think it is probably more useful to consider any and all governments as "legitimate." I realize that flies in the face of traditional logic, but traditional logic also creates tremendous obstacles to effectively dealing with governments who's legitimacy WE disapprove of; and also causes us to overlook problems with the nature of the legitimacy of a government that WE do approve of. Bottom line on legitimacy is that what is important is that the populace served by any particular government recognizes its source of legitimacy.

The U.S. gets into a lot of trouble in meddling efforts to manipulate who gets into, gets removed from, or sustain in government over the populaces of others. We value OUR approval of such governments over how well the populaces of those same states approve. This is what, in my opinion, causes a manipulating outside state to become the target of a nationalist insurgency movement when the people act out to attempt to get a government whose legitimacy they recognize.

So, we ask the wrong question. We ask: "Is this government legitimate by our standards." What we should ask is "Does the relevant populace recognize the legitimacy of this government."

Next, "Control." The majority position that comes up over and over is that a measure of effective governance is its ability to control the populace. This is a slippery slope. Most people don't want to be "controlled," so much as they want the government to control the things that enable them to pursue their lives in relative peace and security. A fine nuance, but the government needs to exert reasonable (as defined by the populace) control over the environment the populace lives within, not over the populace themselves.

[MikeF]

I think it is probably more useful to consider any and all governments as "legitimate." I realize that flies in the face of traditional logic, but traditional logic also creates tremendous obstacles to effectively dealing with governments who's legitimacy WE disapprove of; and also causes us to overlook problems with the nature of the legitimacy of a government that WE do approve of. Bottom line on legitimacy is that what is important is that the populace served by any particular government recognizes its source of legitimacy.

Does this include 'shadow' governments (i.e. ISI in Iraq, Taliban in AfPak)?

Next, "Control." The majority position that comes up over and over is that a measure of effective governance is its ability to control the populace. This is a slippery slope. Most people don't want to be "controlled," so much as they want the government to control the things that enable them to pursue their lives in relative peace and security. A fine nuance, but the government needs to exert reasonable (as defined by the populace) control over the environment the populace lives within, not over the populace themselves.

Agreed, but my definition of 'control' has adapted over the last year. Today, it's more towards a 'social contract' defined by laws and LE rather than physical control. For instance, I believe that I can leave my apartment, go to the store, and conduct my business in a safe environment. I trust that the police are patrolling the streets, and our judicial system will take action when someone violates the laws. I feel secure. That's why events like Ft Hood, Colombine, and Va Tech scare folks. They attempt to unravel the social contract and present it as an illusion of control. So, in this sense, control is more of a feeling of security not manipulation by the gov't.

Mike

[jmm99]

The Johnson-Mason article compares Astan to Vnam; finds similar indigenous governance problems in both; bashes the so-called Big Army "Concept"; etc., etc.; but comes up with a proposed solution, starting here (pp. 6-7):

The Critical Difference

There is, however, one critical positive difference between Afghanistan and Vietnam—one which might salvage the war if decision makers grasp it. As we have argued, the central task is establishing legitimacy of governance to deny political control to the Taliban. In Afghanistan, as in South Vietnam, at the national level, this is simply impossible in the time available. It is beyond our power to change an entire society. However, in Afghanistan, this critical legitimacy does not have to be national; it can be local. Governance in the rural areas of Afghanistan has historically been decentralized and tribal, and stability has come from a complex, interlocking web of tribal networks.23 If Western leaders can think outside the box created by the Treaty of Westphalia and embrace non-Western forms of legitimacy, they could possibly reverse the descending trajectory of the war. Instead of focusing energy and resources on building a sand castle at the water’s edge, as we did repeatedly in Saigon after each new coup, we have argued for years that we should focus on rebuilding the traditional local legitimacy of governance in the existing networks of tribal leaders.24 A culturally adept policy would seek to reestablish stability in rural Afghanistan by putting it back the way it was before the Soviets invaded in 1979. This means re-empowering the village elders as contrasted with the current policy of trying to further marginalize them with local elections (and thus more local illegitimacy). Recent research has demonstrated conclusively that the Community Development Councils set up by the United Nations and the U.S. Agency for International Development in parallel to the tribal system increase instability and conflict, rather than reducing it.25 Reestablishing local legitimacy of governance is, in fact, the one remaining chance to pull something resembling our security goals in Afghanistan out of the fatally flawed Bonn Process and the yawning jaws of defeat. The tragedy of Vietnam was that there were no political solutions. The tragedy of Afghanistan is that there is a political solution, but we keep ignoring it in favor of trying to force them to be like us.

Implementation of this "crucial difference" would be via some 200 District Reconstruction Teams (DRTs), whose base areas would like something like so (p.12):

At the district level, there must be a very obvious Afghan face on the mission. The international element of security, some 70 or 80 American men and women, should be discreetly at the center of concentric rings of security, with police “security” in the outer ring outside the FOB, and the Afghan National Army in the middle ring inside the FOB providing the visible security. The locals will know the Americans are there, able to call in fire support for the Afghan army (and the local base) if necessary, but serving as the hidden “big stick” of the local forces while they, the local forces, have the confidence to conduct security operations in support of the local tribal leaders.

Curious that the article dumps on the Big Army "Concept", but retains the FOB focus point. In any event, the proposal is far different from the Marine CAPs pilot program, and its much bigger brother the Vietnamese Pacifcation program (of which, CORDS was only a part) - where both operated on the village-hamlet level sans FOBs.

Beyond summarizing what seems the meat of the proposal, I'll pass on a military evaluation. I would be interested in what Phil Ritterhof thinks of the proposal as compared to the Marine CAPs and associated Vnam programs.

As to the political situation in Astan, I've stated elsewhere that it is near-FUBAR (so the OP comment that it "does not bode well" is if anything charitable). Politically, I'd rate Astan lower on the scale than 1967-1972 Vietnam.

Best to all

Mike

[omarali50]

In most wars (all wars?) one side has to win for the other to lose. One would imagine that if the US and its allies are about to lose, somebody must be about to win. Who would that be? It can be more than one group. But it must be SOMEONE. I would like to submit that the US can still "win" in afghanistan because the taliban are NOT the Vietnamese communists. Left to themselves, a purely Afghan Taliban could indeed win an insurgency (though not necessarily all of Afghanistan). But they are not all alone. Just like the US and its allies are capable of mucking up local afghan forces that COULD have held most of Afghanistan with some help from their friends, the taliban have become ever more enmeshed with groups of jihadis that are so insane, they can snatch defeat from the jaws of any victory. I have to run, but I will expand on this idea soon inshallah. ....it aint over till the fat lady sings.