Fighting the Last War, or Maybe the One Before That

It is no secret that there really is no substitute for “boots on the ground.” Indeed, one of the primary tenets of 4GW is that there is a keen necessity for culturally sensitive warriors who can properly mingle with and interpret local society—which is one of the primary reasons I’m such a big fan of the Army’s Human Terrain System, or HTS. More to the point, drawing lessons from the “surge” in Baghdad, we can see the critical importance of having enough troops to hold territory once it’s been swept of insurgents. Indeed, one of the big barriers to lasting, permanent progress in Afghanistan has been the manpower shortage—there are simply not enough troops to clear and secure Kabul, to say nothing of the insurgency-riddled south, so it is a bit daft to expect the Taliban to simply sulk away into Waziristan for anything more than a rest.

In that vein, I found this interesting passage in The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America’s Military by Dana Priest, a reporter for The Washington Post:

Plan Colombia, however, had two fatal design flaws. Although the Colombian military could win territory from the guerrillas and drug traffickers, it lacked the men to secure and hold it. The guerrillas usually just waited the army out, until its soldiers returned to their camps, then went back to business as usual.

A second flaw originated in the Washington policymaking process. In an effort to avoid the type of ghastly human-rights abuses waged by paramilitary forces fighting rebels in El Salvador, Congress drew a distinction between the fight against drugs and the fight against insurgents…

Plan Colombia was meant to buy time for the political and economic solutions to work. But the United States never threw its full diplomatic weight behind the Colombian peace process. It refused, for instance, to meet with the rebels or even to allow third parties to hold back-channel discussions…

What’s more, the economic centerpiece of Plan Colombia, “alternative development assistance”—i.e. replacing coca plants with other marketable crops and wildlife—went nowhere in the plan’s first two critical years, 2000-2002. By the beginning of 2002, not one coca plant had been pulled from the ground.

It’s almost like we’ve tried fighting a combined counterinsurgency/counternarcotics war before, and it went nowhere. I bring this up because administration officials like to point to Colombia as a rousing success to be emulated, an analysis that seems deeply separated from reality.

While the general arc of conflict in Afghanistan closely follows this pattern, looking at some of the latest news to come out of Afghanistan can be instructive as well. The still-growing Taliban resurgence (well after Spring came and went, thank you very much) is creating havoc around the entire country, from Kabul to Paktika. The U.S. has decided to expand its controversial (thanks to years of needless torture and execution) base at Bagram by as much as one-third—which is indicative of the British 30-year marathon they expect to finally triumph over the Taliban.

One of the biggest reasons the Taliban cannot be adequately controlled is a fundamental lack of manpower—which the European partners in NATO (with a few, quite notable, exceptions) seem unwilling to address. My only concern is: are things continuing along at their abysmal, glacial pace, with incremental battles, needless civilian casualties caused by a reliance on air power brought about by a paucity of ground troops, because our leaders just don’t care all that much?

Recall George W. Bush and his subordinates have gone public many times proclaiming how little they care about the activities of Osama Bin Laden (despite the very real fact of a famous man with ideas mattering in a war of ideas); coupled with the more recent Conservative Kool Aid that “insurgencies rarely win” (a curious assertion, given that thesis only really addresses Vietnam and Afghanistan III—what of actually successful insurgencies in East Timor, Malaysia, Congo, Rwanda, Colombia, Mexico, Tibet, India, Nepal, and Tajikistan?), makes me think they’re hoping to just wait it out.

Which would be a terrible idea, not least of which because of the message it sends to the very people we’re supposed to be helping.

This post was written by...

Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.

Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust

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