Here is the latest op-ed co-authored by one of my favorites, Dr. John Nagl, calling for a COIN strategy in Afghanistan even though General McChrystal has one underway. The article argues COIN as the superior strategy over CT operations.
Favorite quote:
To understand why, consider the analogous case of Iraq over the last three years. In January 2007, the "surge" of combat forces began as part of a new counterinsurgency strategy that emphasized clearing areas of fighters, holding that territory and building the infrastructure and institutions that had been so badly lacking -- just as Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has proposed for Afghanistan.
At the time, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's Shiite-led government was widely viewed as weak and sectarian. An overwhelming number of Sunni Arabs -- who formed the center of gravity of the insurgency -- rejected its legitimacy and had boycotted the December 2005 elections that brought it to power. The Maliki government had done little to allay these feelings; on the contrary, elements of its security forces participated in sectarian violence against Sunnis through 2006. As Sunnis became further alienated from the central government, the cycle of violence began to spiral out of control.
Army Gen. David H. Petraeus' counterinsurgency strategy aimed to arrest this process by using American troops to protect the population -- predicting, correctly, that until basic security was restored in key neighborhoods and communities, extremists on both sides of the sectarian divide would continue to inflame the situation. With U.S. forces clearing and holding territory and demonstrating to the Sunnis that they had a reasonable alternative to Al Qaeda and its sectarian warfare, the extremists were sidelined. Security began to improve, and the political space necessary for reconciliation began to open.
While it does make an argument for COIN over CT operations, it is counter intuitive to an article co-authored by Nagl earlier this year.
If it is true that a new plan is needed in Afghanistan, it is doubly true that Afghanistan is not Iraq. Conflating the two conflicts would be a dangerous oversimplification. The Iraq war has been mostly urban, largely sectarian, and contained within Iraq’s borders. The Afghan war has been intrinsically rural, mostly confined to the Pashtun belt across the country’s south and east, and inextricably linked to Pakistan. Because the natures of the conflicts are different, the strategies to fight them must be equally so. The very fact that Pakistan serves as a sanctuary for the Taliban and al Qaeda makes regional diplomacy far more necessary than it was in Iraq. Additional troops are certainly needed in Afghanistan, but a surge itself will not equal success.
I am not trying to play "stump the chump" here, but rather pointing out that the Af/Pak strategy debate has now devolved into dangerous oversimplification.
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