Afghan strategy and american troop increase

The election process is over. Karzai will be the President for the next 5 years save an unexpected turn of events such as a coup within his own regime. The opposition is finished. They will be outshunned unless there is a rapid change of momentum. Otherwise, over the next few years, the international community esp. USA will need someone to interact with. Witness the death of Arafat and the destruciton of the palestinian authority and the creation of two cousin opponents.Another head of state would have been a good thing but on the other hand the election was a diversion from the main issue which is the imbalance of forces between the US military and the Afghan military fighting the Taliban.

[the situation is not unlike some other long lasting ideological ideas of the past where one culture was winning over another cutlture. It's not unlike in the way that in both cases, there were two political ideologies that predominant the times. For ex. in the pelo war, you had democracy fostered in places directly by the conquest and aggression of imperial Athen, and the conservative lead greek allies.]

What should Obama decide upon as he is mulling over a possible troop "surge"?

1) Do not allow the muslim fundamentalists claim that they have ousted a second superpower in 25 years.

1.2) Do not allow the world to perceive an american defeat

2) Support Pakistan; it matters more than Afghanistan. Help Pakistan win the war against it's fundamentalist factions to the limit of what they ask for, and particularly do so by denying access in Afghanistan and over the border.

3) Keep surveillance to find and destroy Al Qaeda (this is the easy part actually)

4) Secure the Afghan regime, but get your troops out of harms way as fast as possible and reduce your cost and effectives on the ground as fast as possible.

Strategy: Coax the Afghan government into fighting  

Karzai isn't doing nearly enough for the defense of his own country. Let him feel some heat. Currently, he relies overwhelmingly on foreign troops to defend him. This is upside down. He must be forced into organizing a Northern Alliance 2.0, propping up his governors, and working out deals with opponents who will never reunite unless the US military stops being in between them. The latent civil war will not resolve itself in as long as the US plays the main combat role.

The US and its foreign allies must instead act as a stop gap against a possible Taliban change of momentum; secure the border and work with the Pakistanis to establish a program once the Pakistanis have taken control of their side of the border; continue to provide air support and intelligence to both countries, train and supply the afghan army, and carry in and out ground operations. They must gradually turn over security to the governors, but do so boldly initially - if only to lure the taliban out. 

The difference with Iraq

In Iraq, a full fledged civil war was going on. The Sunnis were fighting for their future. They came to a point in late 2006 and 2007 where they figured they could not win. They were in desperate help for an ally and that ally came in the form of the US army. The US army changed their approach and instead of fighting them like they did in 2004 and 2005 in Tikrit and Fallujah, offered them incentives in the form of money, yes, but also in the form of political protection against their Shia adversaries. The US successfully came in between both parties and the political process of forming a government and a constitution for the new country could move forward. The Surge itself provided the additional security needed to cement the truce, particularly in Bagdad which was the focal point of the sectarian violence.

The situation in Afghanistan is different. Here the war is between the taliban and the US government and his allies. The Taliban is fighting the Americans first, before hopefully one day take on their former civil war adversaries. The Karzai government is shielded by the presence of the US government but also by geography. In Iraq, both warring factions were intermingled in the infamous sunni triangle and there the fighting, assassinations and bombings were the hottest. In Afghanistan, the natural and indigenous opponents are seperated. Karzai, who, let us not forget, inherited the Northern Alliance victory in 2001 after the US invasion, is safe to the North in Kabul. To the south the Taliban is, into the valleys of southern Afghanistan but mostly in Pakistan. This is the Taliban mini state.

Pakistan

Today, the Taliban mini state is getting perturbed. The Pakistanis have decided that the slow decline in control of these tribal areas cannot be allowed to continue further. President Musharraf was able to walk a thin line between one faction that was supporting them, and had to an extent enabled them in the past, and another who saw them as an impediment to their security. He compounded the problem by not acting while the Pashtun Taliban was reorganizing after 2001. 

Today, all the cards are on the table. All hell broke loose as well. The current government realized this growing problem was becoming a threat to the sustainability of their regime. They decided to take a hard line with the invasion of the Swat valley a year ago, and are now doing the same in Waziristan as of this writing. The public reception is perhaps better than what Musharraf would have expected, and the Army did not break into two factions. But the stakes are still high for the Pakistanis. The worst thing for them now would be for the American to withdraw from Afghanistan. They would be, once again left on their own after they have undertook a costly and risky move against an element in their country that was once theirs and even seen as useful, particularly in the fighting against India. They have now rejected that openly and are paying the price currently in the form of a new set of explosions everyday. In the case of an american withdrawal, the Taliban would also be pushed back accross the border and allowed to regain strenght again, only to be left to confronted another day.

But the US military cannot defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan over the long run for reasons seen and to be seen. So the missing actor in this picture is the central Afghan government. It is not to say that the US doesn't or shouldn't have an interest in the whole affair, but the balance of responsibility in Afghanistan is currently vastly skewed. 

How the US military Strategy must change

The US must maintain the same troop level, or add or subtract according to a different strategy. A counterinsurgency is not for the Americans to fight, it is for the Afghan to fight. 

A surge inspired by Iraq will not work. In fact, as described above, the Iraq surge was not the main factor in the turn of events. The US strategy is what must change. They must abandon the small isolated posts pitched on top of a cliff in the middle of the mountains. First of all, there is nothing there but poverty to control. Let the taliban have its way in those valleys for now. People over there mostly are only inclined to fight the americans according to what one journalist called "valleyism". They just want the foreign troops to leave their countryside so they can resume living a life that doesn't extend further than the other valley next to them. Not all Taliban dream of exporting terrorism abroad. Most of these Talibans running those isolated valleys provide security and justice to these people and do not conflict direclty with the central government and can provide little to the the activist taliban who wish to reconquer Kabul but small scale hosting which cannot be prevented any worst than by having the tiny posts in the area. Most of these groups do not work together. Significantly augmenting the troop level to take over all the little villages in all the the little valleys is a ridiculous expenditure which would in any case not address the central problem, which is the latent unresolved civil war. 

The retracting from the tiny outposts is already in the works as was mentioned by Clinton this week. Instead, they must augment patrols of the border and, once the Pakistanis are holding the ground of the taliban on their side, they must establish a system of border control. This is the end game for both Pakistan and the US. 

(reviewed up to here)

Now, there is little chance that the Karzai government will actually be interested in moving into those poverty stricken valleys to take over from the Americans right away. In fact, as of now, the americans only control their posts and the rest of the land surrounding them belongs to the Taliban. Those areas are poor and the Karzai government probably have little interest in expanding energy to win over those valleys.

The key to victory

Since changing the strategy for the valleys is unlikely to coax the afghan government into fighting the Taliban, the americans must take the further bold action of handing over control carefully chosen larger population centers in the south, going up. They must hand it to the Karzai governor and say "here, you take care of this". They must do so where the Karzai government have governors in the region. The governors have interests there - if only their lives, and it will not go unnoticed. It doesn't matter how ready or not the Afghan army and police forces are. Let them get a bloody nose. They will have to scramble.

The US must retract to safer bases, they must forgo the holding and patrolling to the Afghan forces right now where it matters, where the Karzai government have interests. The border and the valleys can be patrolled and secured by the Americans and Pakistanis. What we need is a Northern Alliance army 2.0. The US must support the NA through intelligence and air, training, and punctual attacks. It's there as a stop gap in case the taliban is too succesful.

Right now, it's US vs Taliban. The ultimate plan of the Taliban is perhaps to topple the Karzai government, but they don't even see that far. They know they must get through the US first. Let it be Taliban vs Norther Alliance. Then the taliban can see where they stand. This is the indigenous conflict, the conflict with the US is temporary since the US is there as an occupier. It cannot be allowed to perdure continuously.

Counterargument

Now it could be advanced that the Afghan people is already getting it's nose bloodied. The Afghan people are afterall paying the highest price in deaths and material destruction. Could they sustain sustain a direct onslaught from a revivified Taliban?

Yes, the Afghan people are paying a heavy price, but it's mostly because they are caught in between two warring factions. One of them is fighting in their place. It's like a school bully who wants to get at a kid, but the kid's dad steps in in between them. The bully knows the dad will need to go eventually so he just waits and waits. A rapport of force cannot be established between the two boys until they have a go at each other. Then they will know where each one stands. Similarly, a political balance must be achieved in the country and it cannot be achieved until both factions measure up to one another. The first interaction they must have is through violence. This is why the elections while not only being a sham, did not resolve anything. While we think of elections as conferring legitimacy in our countries, it doesn't in Afghanistan: legitimacy must be won with the AK first before they can progress on the scale of political rapport. Unfortunately, the US Army cannot do that for them short of killing 80% of the Taliban's man flock, but this was for a different time in history.

The US has usurped an order of force that pre existed 2001 where the Taliban currently had the upper hand over the Norther Alliance. The Taliban had taken over in 1995 (?) aided by the Pakistanis. Now, the rivalry, or civil war, has been suspended for 8 years. The US must disengage and let it resume while acting as a stop gap and looking after it's own more limited interest in the region.