Must-Read on Afghanistan

REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih


Steven Pressfield has been spot-on with his coverage of the war in Afghanistan. That streak is continuing with his latest posting in the "One Tribe at a Time" series.

In this edition, he has a field report from recently returned embedded journalist Andrew Lubin. He points out the unfortunately not obvious no-brainer that the troop numbers are irrelevant to what the troops do once in country.

The first sign of successful “COIN” is when the local citizenry realizes that cooperating with Coalition troops improves their lives, and Charlie Company’s killing or driving the Taliban out of Nawa was an important first step. The next step was to build relationships with the locals, and to do that, the Marines went out on patrol two and three times daily. Showing up again and again in Nawa and the outlying villages, the Marines talked with shop owners, the money lender, farmers, children, the local Mullah, and everyone who would talk with them. In addition to becoming a familiar part of the landscape, their continued presence enabled them to ask questions as they bought small amounts of sodas, fruits, and vegetables from the shop owners: “What is the biggest problem facing your village? How would you solve it? Do your children go to school? Do you work?” Gathering this sort of intelligence, plus identifying key leaders and people of influence, enables the Marines along with Civil Affairs and USAID teams to sit with the village elders and address the issues of jobs and governance that will make Nawa a successful district again.

He concludes:

But none of this would be happening if the Marines weren’t out patrolling, which is why recent comments from the Pentagon are worrisome. Concerns were raised that more big FOB’s need to be built before more soldiers are dispatched, that the soldiers need more chow halls, MRW shops, and hardened bunks with wireless internet. This is wrong; the troops need to live and work with their Afghan partners, abandon their MRAPs [heavily armored vehicles] and walk through the villages meeting those local citizens who are looking to be their friends. If you don’t get out and work with the locals and simply patrol from inside an MRAP, it makes no difference how many troops Mr. Obama dispatches.

You can read the full article here.

My concern is not whether population-centric COIN practices work, but rather if the reshaped environment is self-sustainable leading to the permanent isolation of the Taliban willfully enforced by the villagers.