Posted on 08/23/2017 7:19:07 AM PDT by Enlightened1
No one has ever really tamed Afghanistan and no one will.
We should never have tried.
A Cherokee proverb goes “A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then its finished; no matter how brave its warriors or how strong their weapons”. Ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu noted, in "The Art of War", that victory happens when you have destroyed the enemy's willingness to fight you. The enemy generally loses their will to fight when their mothers, wives, and daughters beg them to make it all stop.
To name just 3. Truth is, most insurgencies fail. The problem is, how do you define "victory" and "defeat". Most wars don't end with the Red Army marching into Berlin or an atomic bomb being dropped on Nagasaki. Most wars end inconclusively when one side or the other reaches a point of exhaustion but after the other side has expended so much of their resources that they just can't put the other guys away. So, they cut a deal. Maybe it holds, usually it doesn't.
The problem with Afghanistan is that they have a martial history stretching back to Alexander the Great - and probably for a lot longer before that. The other problem is, it's one of the most worthless places on earth. Lousy climate, no really valuable mineral resources. All they've ever contributed to the world is a lot of tribal violence. The only real way I can see to fix things is to wipe out the current population and resettle the land with Swiss immigrants but I don't see that as likely.
The British Empire FOMENTED many insurgencies as well. In India, I’m thinking of now. Remember, todays India was then called Hindustan, and it was a collection of competing and frequently warring tribal states. Divide and Rule.
Russia had basically won Afghanistan until we started feeding them. Insurgents lose all the time, the hard part is beating them while still being the good guys.
Actually the Republicans were the duly elected government. The victorious nationalists were the insurgents.
I know this is Wikipedia, so take with many grains of salt. Afghanistan apparently has mineral resources.
“This diverse geological foundation has resulted in a significant mineral heritage with over 1,400 mineral occurrences recorded to date, including gold, copper, lithium, uranium, iron ore, cobalt, natural gas and oil. Afghanistan’s resources could make it one of the richest mining regions in the world.”
China also has the largest number of neighbours (14) sharing its 22,000km land borders namely: North Korea, Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam.
The Roman recipe included decimation, which does not mean to destroy, but to kill every tenth one.
Line up all the inhabitants of a hostile village, then decimate. Word soon gets around.
We did pretty well against the Native Americans.
Malaysia is a success story. Of course, it took forty two years (1948 - 1990) and Gurkhas on hand to chop Communist heads off but they were eventually put down by the Brits and then the Malaysian government. Afghanistan? I’m not sure anyone has succeeded long term there since Alexander the Great and his men left behind blonde hair and blue eyes in the Afghan gene pool.
Where is that quote from?
“Khitan General: My fear is that my sons will never understand me... “
Genghis Kahn: “My grandchildren will eat from plates of silver and drink from cups of gold and never wonder from where these things came.”
As for the rest change Conan to Genghis Khan and it is right enough.
we secure a majority of afghanistan, and the majority of the afghans will embrace freedom and then they will fight forever for it.
three generations to make that happen.
but it starts now.
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but that approach is pointless and completely defeats the purpose when the aim of your military campaign is to defeat your enemy so you can do business with him.
That’s a quote from the movie Apocalypse Now.
Anyway besides tactics and will.... I would add strategy, psychological warfare, political psychology, intelligence and counterintelligence.
the Roman recipe:
According to Cassius Dio, 580,000 Jews were killed in the overall operations, and 50 fortified towns and 985 villages were razed to the ground, with uncounted more Jews dying of famine and disease.
I suppose the Bar Kokhba Genocide could be considered as as a Roman win.
Scots example might work. Pay off greedy, corrupt warlords long enough to wipe out true insurgents, while the pawns still think their commanders are on their side.
Offer exile to nominal top leaders. Repopulate region with friendlies. Repeat.
The Brits in Malaysia. An ugly business.
The USSR experience mirrored ours in South Vietnam in many ways (beyond the obvious guerilla war comparison). They were invited in by an Afghan government, and when losses became unacceptable they withdrew - leaving that government to survive for a few years on its own before falling.
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