Posted on 11/15/2008 11:17:07 PM PST by Dawnsblood
David Kilcullen writes that Afghanistan is still winnable. But only just. In a George Packer-edited New Yorker email interview Kilcullen summarizes the problem: (hat tip Small Wars Journal)
(1) We have failed to secure the Afghan people. That is, we have failed to deliver them a well-founded feeling of security. Our failing lies as much in providing human security—economic and social wellbeing, law and order, trust in institutions and hope for the future—as in protection from the Taliban, narco-traffickers, and terrorists. In particular, we have spent too much effort chasing and attacking an elusive enemy who has nothing he needs to defend—and so can always run away to fight another day—and too little effort in securing the people where they sleep. (And doing this would not take nearly as many extra troops as some people think, but rather a different focus of operations).
(2) We have failed to deal with the Pakistani sanctuary that forms the political base and operational support system for the Taliban, and which creates a protective cocoon (abetted by the fecklessness or complicity of some elements in Pakistan) around senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.
(3) The Afghan government has not delivered legitimate, good governance to Afghans at the local level—with the emphasis on good governance. In some areas, we have left a vacuum that the Taliban has filled, in other areas some of the Afghan government’s own representatives have been seen as inefficient, corrupt, or exploitative.
(Excerpt) Read more at pajamasmedia.com ...
This is an overly dismissive and simplistic view that ignores the realities on the ground.
Securing the Afghan people? What Afghan people? Pushtuns? Tajiks? Uzbeks? Nuris? Baloch? To name a few.
There is no unified Afghan national identity. We are cutting deals with each tribe/warlord as we go along. Afghan quarreling and infighting is as ingrained and permanent as poppies.
As far as Pakistan, any fool can see that is the central theater for al Qaeda.
We are bombing them further into the stone age every day. We are conducting ground raids and have spec ops teams all over.
No we haven't occupied ground in Pakistan, that's not needed yet, our decapitation campaign is degrading AQ constantly with no casualties of our own.
There are layers of deployments planned for years in the future to make our presence more robust so that we can starve out AQ and the Taliban by ending their narcotics business and creating self-sufficiency for the Afghanis.
Too much doom and gloom.
Maybe I’m just obtuse. Is our mission in Afganistan to terminate enemies of the USA, or is it not? I would think that any problems between the government and the citizens are Afgan problems and other than providing security to the extent we are able and infrastructure necessary to our mission there, the social and political problems should be left to our hosts in their country.
Accomplish our mission then leave.
“Too much doom and gloom.”
The “experts” have consistiently overestimated the gloom and doom.
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