Counterinsurgency
General McChrsytal’s strategy, the one Obama has endorsed, is COIN, or counterinsurgency, which unlike counterterrorism, includes political, economic, and psychological factors, a much more complex strategy based on solid governance combined with luring the population away from the insurgents and their misconstrued version of Islam. But the counterinsurgency applied to Afghanistan is heavy on military emphasis with little or no socio-economic framework, explaining why the NATO force McChrystal now leads has failed, and failed miserably. A successful counterinsurgency has to pay attention to security, local politics, and the socio-economic milieu. These elements work collectively. Ours is a comprehensive strategy only in designation. In practice it is a militarized strategy, what historians call “exceptionalism”, the belief in the the divine right of America to bring liberty and “shine light unto” other nations. This mentality is reminiscent of Mill’s famous essay, in which he asserts that the most humanitarian option for Great Britain was to conquer India. But unlike Britain we are not planning to be there for the long haul. According to Obama’s plan, by 2011, Afghanistan will be calm enough for the American forces to pull out, another assumption that is, at best, very dubious.
It is true that the longer we keep this disliked and paralyzing presence, the longer we postpone the possibility of an independent sovereign state (which by definition is one that doesn’t have an overwhelming American military presence), and we deprive the Afghans of dignified self determinism, but leaving now, before fulfilling our promise of rebuilding the country will most likely lead to sectarian bloodshed and anti-Western Jihadists walking on Kabul, and being in a position to launch another attack, perhaps nuclear this time. According to the Commission on Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, “Were one to map terrorism and weapons of mass destruction proliferation, all roads intersect in Pakistan.” More specifically, all roads lead to FATA, Federally Administrated Tribal Areas of the Afghanistan—Pakistan border, where the Taliban are very much at home.
The Afghan army, military experts agree, has to reach 240,000 well-trained soldiers to approach anything resembling effectiveness. Obama’s plan depends heavily on training an additional 100,000 new soldiers over the next three years. It has taken eight years to train the first 100,000 soldiers and the timeframe of three years seems overly ambitious at best. Then the question is not whether the army can deal with the Taliban, but whether they want to. The ranks of the Afghan armed forces are plagued by centuries-rooted web of clan and tribal allegiances (current Afghan army is disproportionately Tajik lacking troops from Helmand and Qandahar provinces). Add growing fundamentalism within the ranks and the army will likely not rise to the challenge. A Tajik backlash in Pashtun regions sexed-up by extremist rhetoric and mass defection will more likely be the result.
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Courtesy image by Pixabay
