Counter-terrorism rather than counter-insurgency, Juan Cole contends

Below you can find some major parts of Juan Cole's post today, June 22, 2010, on his blog Informed Comment, and my outline/comments on them. You can go to Cole's award-winning blog for the full article.

Cole reconstructs some of the present sniping within the Obama Administration over what the appropriate strategy in Afghanistan should be. The conflict revolves around the counter-insurgency strategy of General McChrystal, a strategy that now is in effect. On the other side, Cole identifies some of those who are opposed to this strategy, including Cole himself. The other strategy worth considering - and supporting - is a "minimalist" strategy of counter-terrorism. He also thinks that a third approach endorsing the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country would result in a brutal Taliban victory, which he finds unacceptable.

If you have been following the posts on our blog, you know that we have been in support of a planned withdrawal of troops. Our position has been influenced by Afghan citizens like Malalai Joya. My impression of Cole's position is that he is grasping at straws when he discribes - and supports- a counter-terrorism strategy.

So, Cole says, it is counter-insurgency versus counter-terrorism, with the withdrawal of troops off the table. It is up to President Obama to decide the strategy that will prevail [between two bad options]. Here is some of what Cole suggests.

One, get rid of Gen. McChrystal, and plan to disgard the counter-insurgency strategy.

If Obama doesn’t fire McChrystal, he will never be respected by anybody in the chain of command that leads to his desk. Moreover, moving McChrystal out now would be a perfect opportunity to pull the plug on the impractical counter-insurgency campaign that the latter has been pursuing, which probably has only a 10% chance of success. (A RAND study found that where a government that claimed to be a democracy actually was not, and where it faced an insurgency, it prevailed only 10% of the time. Sounds like President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan to me.)

[....]

Two, Obama should move toward support of a counter-terrorism strategy. [This approach would preclude bringing additional U.S. forces to Afghanistan. It is not clear whether the number of troops already stationed in the country would be kept at the same level or reduced.] He does offer an idea of what counter-terrorism would include: "intelligence work, deployment of special operations forces against small, specific targets, and use of air strikes and drones."

The most recent roots of this grudge match go back to the dispute within the Obama administration last year over how to deal with Afghanistan. Eikenberry, a former general, had been one of McChrystal’s predecessors as commander of US troops in Afghanistan. And Biden had spent decades either chairing or being ranking minority member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. These seasoned observers of Central and South Asia concluded that the best the US could do in Afghanistan was small-scale targeted counter-terrorism. Counter-terrorism implies intelligence work, deployment of special operations forces against small, specific targets, and use of air strikes and drones. Biden is said to have suggested getting most US troops out of Afghanistan and just striking at al-Qaeda wherever it popped up, especially in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

Three, more on what the ineffective counter-insurgency strategy entails.

In contrast, McChrystal’s plan called for counter-insurgency, which implies large-scale conventional military campaigns, to “take, clear, hold and build.” That is, the US troops would take territory now held by insurgents, would clear it of Taliban or other militants, would hold it for the medium or long term so as to reassure local elders that they were in no danger from returning Taliban, and would use the opportunity to build infrastructure and services. Biden’s target was the largely Arab, foreign al-Qaeda, organized as small terrorist cells; but McChrystal wanted to root out the Taliban and their new Mujahidin allies, a much larger force that had roots in Pashtun society in a way that al-Qaeda does not. McChrystal’s plan required a massive troop escalation and the conquest by the US of large swathes of Pashtun territory in the southeast and southwest of the country. The hope was that while the US did counter-insurgency on a large scale, NATO and US troops would be training and equipping a large Afghanistan National Army of 200,000 and a similarly sized police force, and that in a few years the country could be turned over to them.

Four, reasons why counter-insurgency will fail.

Eikenberry worried, in cables later leaked, that going beyond counter-terrorism to large-scale counter-insurgency was impractical because:

A big US troop escalation would have the effect of actually making the Afghanistan security forces more dependent on the US, not less, and so significantly delay the day when they could or would step up to security duties on their own;

A large-scale counter-insurgency campaign requires a strong Afghan political partner for the ‘hold’ and ‘build’ phases. But there is no such partner. President Hamid Karzai stole the presidential election last year, and is notoriously unreliable. The Afghanistan National Army will not soon be able to take over from the US troops as they take and clear wide swathes of territory.

Five, Obama hedged.

Obama backed McChrystal against Biden and Eikenberry, but threw McChrystal a curve ball by talking about beginning a troop withdrawal in summer of 2011 (thus taking a little piece of the Biden plan and inserting it awkwardly in the middle of Gen. McChrystal’s years-long counter-insurgency struggle– and thus inevitably undermining the latter).

Six, all the strategies have shortcomings, but counter-terrosim makes more sense than the other, Coal suggests.

Both the Biden/ Eikenberry and the McChrystal approaches have drawbacks. Counter-terrorism focusing like a laser on al-Qaeda would be largely irrelevant now in Afghanistan, where there is virtually no al-Qaeda. But that policy is being pursued in the tribal belt in Pakistan, alienating the Pakistani public because the drones often also kill innocent civilians. And, a rapid draw-down of US troops in favor of newly trained Afghan recruits may not be practical, given the poor esprit de corps, illiteracy, drug use, corruption and over-representation of minorities in the Afghanistan National Army and police. What would happen if, as the US drew down, the provinces around Kabul started swiftly falling to the Taliban or allied insurgents?

Seven, but withdrawal is out of the question, at least for some, perhaps, lengthy period of time.

I know one Afghan scholar who for years went back and forth consulting with the Karzai government, who is convinced that if the US and NATO suddenly pulled up stakes, the Karzai government would fall within 3 days. Whatever you think of President Karzai, the prospect of him being hanged by Mulla Omar is hard to contemplate with equanimity.

Eight, the counter-insurgency strategy is far too ambitious and should therefore be phased out.

On the other hand, McChrystal’s plan is in my view far too ambitious and likely completely impractical. It assumes that the Pashtuns want US Marines in their villages and would prefer them to the Taliban or other insurgents (most of whom are actually from the same tribes as and therefore cousins to these villagers). It assumes that the Kabul government can provide a ‘government in a box’ (in McChrystal’s words) to the provinces once the US military has conquered them. But Kabul is not well governed itself, much less being able swiftly to provide services and expertise in the provinces on demand. It assumes that the US push won’t alienate ever more Pashtuns, pushing them into the arms of the Taliban. It makes no distinction between Eastern and Western Pashtuns. And it assumes that an Afghanistan National Army of double the current size can be swiftly trained and deployed to replace the US troops as they move on to the next conquest. None of these assumptions is warranted, as is becoming clear in Helmand Province, where McChrystal’s demonstration project was the small farming villages of Marjah. It hasn’t gone as well as was initially suggested.

Nine, the next planned phase of counter-insurgency is counterproductive and should, implicitly, be discontinued.

McChrystal’s next Big Idea was to attack Taliban strongholds the major southwestern Pashtun city of Qandahar (pop. about 1 million). Such an operation is extremely dangerous. If urban Pashtuns were alienated by it, they could go over to the insurgency in much greater numbers. (Right now, the Pashtuns are probably split 80-20 in favor of Karzai against the Taliban, but the US could easily push the rest of the Pashtuns into the arms of the insurgents if it isn’t careful. That would set the stage for another Afghanistan Civil War, since the northern ethnic groups– Tajiks, Hazarahs, Uzbeks, etc., absolutely despise the Taliban).

Ten, Afghanistan is a mess.

Afghanistan is a mess and likely will go on being a mess. It is the fifth poorest country in the world, is a major center of opium production and trafficking, has been wracked by decades of war (for much of which Washington is responsible), has a literacy rate of only 28%, and suffers from poor infrastructure and weak, corrupt, inefficient government. Its most troubled regions are populated by tribal people who have it as a code of honor to engage in feuds, and some of what the US sees as insurgency is just ordinary feuding. Tribes fall out with each other, and fight for a while until they make up. That way of life will eventually subside, when people become more settled, urban, and educated. But that day is a ways off for most Pashtuns.

Eleven, Cole supports counter-terrorism with reservations, that is intelligence work, special forces' operations, and air-attacks including drones. The focus is on suspected Al Qaeda areas in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He conveys great ambivalence about drone attacks on Pakistan

In the meantime, I think counter-terrorism in Afghanistan is the right policy, though I think the drone strikes on Pakistani territory are very problematic and concur with those CIA officers who hold that they do more harm than good.

Twelve, Cole suggests that a counter-terrorism strategy will require the U.S.-led occupation to have the capacity to keep the Karzai government from falling and at the same time become effective, and also have the time to train new Afghan security forces so they can stand up to the enemy or die. But this seems to conflict with his ideas of accelerating the training of Afghan troops [which is bound to take a long time, if ever], holding the number of U.S. troops where it is. and, implicitly, winning support from Afghan villagers. Cole does not refer to reconstruction as an element of counter-terrorism. It is also not clear how a counter-terrorism strategy would keep the government from falling, let alone rising.

What you need in Afghanistan is a way of keeping the government from falling while you train up the new security forces (which must be put in a position where they either stand and fight or risk destruction– without the ability to depend on US infantrymen). I think this minimalist goal can be achieved via counter-terrorism. The counter-insurgency campaign was a dead end.