As Péter Marton unintentionally helped to highlight, I am of two minds on the questions of “surging” in Afghanistan. For the simple fact that Afghanistan is not an urban insurgency while Iraq is/was, comparing an increase in troop numbers to that of Iraq is daft (though it raises the interesting question of why the Soviets wanted so badly to force rural villagers into the cities). But there is no way to escape the simple realization that right now, low troop numbers force an over-reliance on air strikes, and many of these strikes have become deeply counterproductive to the mission there.
That being said, more troops can only help if they are used effectively: creating zones of control, holding territory they sweep, and so on. I mean this seriously: we have got to move beyond the candyland listing of all the wonderful things we want to do there: yes, let’s use special forces if they’re capable (some are not, and this is important to remember: SOF are not a cure-all); yes let us “curb corruption” and “enable legitimate local leaders to govern;” yes, let us address the narcotics problem, but without a needless and counterproductive eradication campaign that will collapse the rural economy and throw thousands into even abjecter poverty; and so on and so on.
In the last year or so, discussion of Afghanistan in the popular press has rarely moved beyond platitudes. None of the above solutions are particularly new or innovative in listing—the real challenge comes in implementation. Curbing corruption, for example, is one of those wicked problems for which platitudes are worse than counterproductive. The police, for example, face a range of problems from bad training (thanks, Germany!) to low salaries. All of these combine to create the structural conditions for corruption, and take many years to iron out. Salaries are an enduring problem in Afghanistan: in Nuristan, for example, bureaucrats literally cannot be paid enough to live and work in isolated and fun-less Parun.
As for those extra troops? I like the idea of concentrating them along the Kabul-Kadahar section of Highway 1. But how about massing them along the border? Right now, the Afghan-specific problems from insurgency and corruption can be solved with current troops levels; the real challenge comes in shutting down cross-border traffic. The military has these passes mapped fairly well—they probably even know which ones are the best and easiest for infiltration, exfiltration, and cross-border attacks. Securing the border would do wonders for Afghanistan. Yet it wouldn’t solve everything, or even most of the problems facing NATO.
Spreading the troops too thinly won’t work—that will just create a marginal improvement in a few areas, which no real change to the dynamic currently running the insurgency. Closing the border, or creating inviolable safe zones outside of Kabul (getting back to the old ink blot strategy), would go much further than sprinkling them around like so much security salt on insurgency roast.
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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{ 9 comments }
Josh, I think you’re not right to be faulting yourself. I don’t mean this to be a compliment contest. This is a matter of fact: all the time it was quite clear you never meant that simply “putting more things into the i-Rack” (to quote a classic) could be good in and of itself.
Perhaps it’s quite clear to the two of you because of offline correspondence or something, but if you don’t say “more troops alone will not solve the problem,” I don’t know that’s what you think. I see you guys ripping on Ignatius (an easy target) for saying “more troops alone will not solve the problem.” I take that to mean, unless you say otherwise, that the overall strategy is just fine; more guys will do the trick. That’s my point in responding to posts that criticize people who debate the merits of escalation in Afghanistan–I don’t think you really believe it, but I’d like you to say so.
Ignatius falls for the same trick I complained about above: 1) a facile assumption that simply waving one’s hands and saying “let’s solve all problems at once” is helpful or appropriate; and 2) an assumption that the conditions that enabled the Iraq surge to work in some way are in place in Afghanistan.
What Ignatius didn’t do was prioritize how troops should be used, how non-military approaches should be stacked to maximize effectiveness, and so on. At least on my end, that’s the complaint, and part of what I tried to address above.
No, I’m definitely pleased that you are more specific in this post about what to do with troops and what to expect of them.
Still, I am not convinced by the argument that 15k more troops will dramatically reduce the use of air strikes, that these troops will come close to being enough to seal cross-border pathways for insurgents, or that the illicit trade of narcotics that funds both the insurgency and destabilizing forces in the government itself will just go away.
15k seems to be nothing more than a symbolic increase, and the bulk of them probably would have a better role defending a symbol like the Kabul-Kandahar road.
Ian,
Below is a link to a post by Josh from April, 2008. I sent in a number of comments to it, as a discussion was started by it. I have also made these points at my blog, since long ago now, making it clear that sending more troops to just, say, hang out at Kandahar Airfield, is not what I’m talking about – though it should be fairly obvious anyway, without its being explicitly said.
Ok, so the link:
http://www.registan.net/index.php/2008/04/06/why-we-fight/
Both Josh’s post and my comments are relevant to what you are saying.
15000 more troops won’t make much of a difference unless concentrated in Helmand to stop poppies there.
But the additional Afghan troops they could train might change a lot – together with the other 50.000 the US will send in once the situation in Iraq allows for a big shift in forces (my guess: spring 2011).
On a brighter note: the most important factor in the long run will be the 6 million children in school now. Once they graduate and start to take over public functions, they will slowly transform Afghanistan from a ignorant backwater to a more modern country, and the Taliban will become a thing of the past.
“The police, for example, face a range of problems from bad training (thanks, Germany!) .”
On the contrary. As far as I can see, the problem was that Germany’s “train the trainer” approach wanted to intall a too high level of training taking too much time, and didn’t realize what we now know Afghanistan really needed: a lot of ok cops now, not just a few good ones now and more good ones later.
I’d say the 20.000 or so police trained by Germany are better policemen than those trained by the US. However, the US trained just as many in 1/4 the time – and tought them how to fight like soldiers, too. That’s the main thing lacking in the German training,
- because they believed the Taliban more or less finished (but they weren’t alone in this befief – cf the Iraq invasion …)
- because back then everybody thought a more “civil” police is what Afghanistan needs to get away from 30 years of war (might still be true for the north) and
- because military and police are very strictly separated in Germany due to historic reasons …
Now, as the US, UK etc want to use the police as a paramilitary force in the south, it makes a lot of sense to let them handle that part of the training, too …
Peter,
Thanks for the link back to that post–it was a good discussion and a good reminder of why static and/or theoretical conceptions of Afghanistan make for bad arguments. Unlike Fabius, the reason I am skeptical about the surge is not because the country is fated to be violent and chaotic.
I will point out, though, that only a contrary commentor managed to bring out the underlying assumptions (solid ones) in a post that resorts too often to vituperating an easy target. That form of argument, along with saying “You don’t like boots on the ground? Oh, then you must like air strikes that kill dozens of children” is ineffective. I say this at the same time as I deeply respect your knowledge of Afghanistan issues.
My skepticism about a troop increase (and it is not opposition to it, since at this point it’s a foregone conclusion) has more to do with the fact that we a) are not committing the real number needed (since we don’t have that many) and b) no one else is willing to put in more with us.
I believe that there are non-military steps we could consider first (first, and then possibly put more men in) like a heavy aid increase to those areas which are not huge security risks.
Here is Josh quoting himself one of that old post’s comments:
Ian,
You’re absolutely right. Though I would temper my own position (which I at least hope has been consistently expressed) that security doesn’t matter much without development. However, development requires security to work. They go hand in hand.
“we a) are not committing the real number needed (since we don’t have that many) and b) no one else is willing to put in more with us.”
Ian, I wish I could argue with that – but in fact that is true.