It is increasingly becoming a lonely position to take, advocating for more troops in Afghanistan. The news wires are rife with experts claiming that to simply add more troops could backfire; Barnett Rubin and Rory Stewart have taken strong positions against the idea. The addition of more troops, they say, will unite the tribes in anger and ultimately expel us from the country, Soviet-style. Christian Bleuer has already examined in depth why this is simply not true—according to every metric we have of measuring public opinions in Afghanistan, they would still rather we stay. If we can, that is. Peter Bergen has noted the same, along with the pressing need for more security.
The Shigal Valley, leading to Nuristan, courtesy Flickr user BlosserAB.
The trouble is, more security is not forthcoming, at least from the outside. Bergen rightly notes that little if anything is coming from NATO, and we’re looking at a good solid year before anything appreciable is coming from the U.S. In the meantime, the numbers of police are horribly thin. While it’s true Afghanistan has an approximately normal concentration of police officers—1:387, equivalent to about Wales or South Africa—this is pathetically sparse for an active conflict zone. The Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual suggests a 1:20 or 1:25 ratio of security personnel to population; more realistic conflict areas like Kosovo saw security concnetrations of 1:50. Even New York City, with 40,000 cops, has a 1:200 security/population ratio. No matter which way you cut it, Afghanistan is not secure, and it is understaffed (the problem is vastly worse when you factor in corruption). Hell, the need for security is so great, there are reports of spontaneous militias forming in some parts of the country: a retread of the Northern Alliance, some have called it.
Security, however, isn’t much good without development. And development is where Afghanistan is truly lacking. Indeed, the two cannot exist without the other—they breed each others’ success. For the last several years, the development side of Afghanistan has lagged terribly behind its security, even though its security has been woefully under-resourced for the task it faces. Which means a holistic approach to development and security must be taken… precisely what the calls for “more troops” seem to lack. More troops are needed, without doubt (believe me), but they cannot be a constructive addition to the situation if they are not accompanied by a more focused approach to economic and political development.
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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{ 5 comments }
For (possible) clarification, I’m not sure that Barnett Rubin is strictly against the idea of adding troops, just against the idea of a strongly military-centric approach. I agree that he is against the idea of “simply add(ing) more troops.” The third sentence, however, sort of gives the impression that Rubin would never see additional troops as beneficial, even as part of a wider array of reforms and program implementations that he has advocated.
The “they say” part in the third sentence applies to Stewart, But to Rubin I’m not so sure.
Or supply a link to a Rubin article and I’ll admit I’m wrong (I do that on occasion). Perhaps I have been selectively reading Rubin’s articles?
BTW, some informed observers have taken issue with those polls and have commented on my article at the Complex Terrain Lab.
The Northern Alliance are non-Pushtun, and so, to the degree it is happening, we are looking at an internal ethnic war.
I think I came up with a great way to monitor the border which is also a way to bring in the millions of Americans who wish they could help out in some small way.
I’m not an expert on satellite technology, or infra-red, but I do know we can take far more pictures than we have the professionals to examine. So, we set up a website, and, show people small snapshots. We could probably have three or five people look at each one, and anytime it gets tagged, it starts going up the ladder.
This could operate in nearly real-time, allowing any movement of people over the mountains to be escalated to command structures. There’s no risk to U.S. security because none of the pictures will be located. You won’t know what stretch of mountains you are looking at, for all you know you could be looking at Southern California.
I think millions of Americans will sign up, and some people will spend a lot of time looking at pictures to protect the troops.
And if some loser is constantly wrong, or perhaps intentionally sending noise into the system, they are quietly ignored. They think they are still participating, but it makes no difference.
Ideally the person would use a simple tool to “circle” the figure they think might be human.
If not satellites, maybe a pair of U-2s flying up and back.
I only bring this up because this place seemed open minded enough to talk about some pretty non-standard ways to address the issue.
Christian,
I’ll admit I might be misreading Rubin’s bloggy glibness, but in posts like these, he really isn’t leaving much room for nuance, and pretty strongly mocking the idea of manpower increases. Elsewhere, he has been pretty open in claiming that if we increase troop numbers too much, we’ll trigger a Soviet response and unite the Pashtuns against us. But I could easily guilty of lumping him with Stewart and others — I don’t think I am, but I could be wrong.
I saw those comments on the Complex Terrain Lab. I’m glad Giustozzi finds those classified polls more reliable; I don’t. There are unclassified polls with limited distribution that strike me as more reliable, and their methodology sections give me a reasonable level of confidence that they’re not totally inaccurate. But the picture is still mostly rosy, at least in terms of outlook. For the open polls, I share your confidence in Asia Foundation’s work, and I personally am skeptical of the other polls I’ve seen performed by ABC/BBC, Environics, and others. They tend to have an overwhelming urban and northern bias, which naturally colors things.
I’d shy away from calling Johnson (who is not, by the way, a PhD or a “Dr.”) informed.
Josh,
Replicating SETI@Home, eh? That’s not bad. Those programs, though, tend only to work with a massive number of contributors. Unfortunately, I’m not yet convinced enough people care about Afghanistan for that to be feasible. Imagine the backlog!
Well, SETI is a distributed program, this is just a division of labor (sharing the load of millions of pictures among 100s of thousands of people). But I have written co-operative (not distributed) computer programs before.
I am guessing that there are millions of Americans who wish they could help, in any way, as long as it isn’t too dangerous or inconvenient, with America’s wars.
It’s just a technical matter, but there wouldn’t be a “backlog,” since only current/recent pictures would be distributed, instead there would be coverage gaps. I really imagine that one call from a, say, President, or even a widely reported (TV?) announcement, would bring in enough.
What’s the worst that could happen? Could the program cost more than a few million to develop (I’ll do most of the programming myself, and be forced to return the excess funds). That cost, compared to our other endeavors, is almost no cost at all.
By the way, the same technology could be used with the U.S. border, or the Iraq/Iran border.