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December 3, 2009
Exclusive: Surge Now, but Train for the Long Run
With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem.
The troopships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.
The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap, alas! as we are dear.
-- Rudyard Kipling
Arithmetic on the Frontier, 1886
In this early poem, Kipling compares the Afghan tribesman to the better trained and equipped British soldier, and sadly concludes “The odds are on the cheaper man” in such irregular warfare. Kipling understood how difficult it is to project power across the world, though he also understood the need for the British Empire to do so. It is too much to expect President Barack Obama to be familiar with Kipling’s work on the Northwest Frontier between Afghanistan and what is now Pakistan. But the Afghan strategy the president announced Tuesday night properly placed a priority on training local army and police units, which is how the British met their manpower problem.
“The 30,000 additional troops that I'm announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 – the fastest possible pace – so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers. They'll increase our ability to train competent Afghan security forces, and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight. And they will help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans,” said the president in his most concise statement of the purpose of the surge.
He has been criticized for not using the word “victory” in his speech, only that he wanted to “bring this war to a successful conclusion.” The president was only being realistic. Violence along the Afghan borderlands has been endemic for centuries and will continue. As F. G. Cardew stated in his 1903 book The Bengal Native Army, “service on the Indian frontier offers more experience of active soldiering than is to be found in any position elsewhere.” The U.S. concern is that it does not grow to a level that can overthrow the Kabul government and again make Afghanistan a haven for terrorist plots against American targets.
Counterinsurgency campaigns are very long and manpower intensive, and U.S. Army and Marine units remain overextended since their draconian reduction in the 1990s. The military part of “clear and hold” is only part of nation building, which cannot by its very nature be accomplished by foreign troops, no matter how benign their intent. Only soldiers, police and administrators drawn from the local population possess the necessary knowledge of the people, language, and culture to be effective in creating the national loyalty needed for victory. A primary requirement of security operations is to establish the legitimacy of the threatened government, just as the aim of insurgents and terrorists is to undermine that legitimacy. An allied government that is dependent on an American field army for its survival will not be seen as strong enough to rule.
Intervention by robust U.S. forces may be a necessity to save a friendly government from collapse, overthrow a rogue regime, or stabilize a perilous situation. But even if domestic political support could be maintained (problematic), it cannot be a long-term solution in any part of the world where conflict is endemic. It must always be remembered that terrorism is the weapon of the weak and we should not be driven into a panic by it. It is best handled by local security forces that can develop intelligence networks and conduct day-to-day police and paramilitary operations. Only if local authorities fail to contain the extremists can an insurgency develop capable of overthrowing the state. President Obama was correct when he said, “There's no imminent threat of the government being overthrown” in Afghanistan, which means there is time to train local forces.
The government in Islamabad has asked for more help in combating insurgents whose defeat in Pakistan is critical to success in Afghanistan. As President Obama said, there is a “fundamental connection between our war effort in Afghanistan and the extremist safe havens in Pakistan.” Yet, no one believes sending large-scale U.S. or NATO forces into Pakistan is the proper response. Pakistani security forces must be given arms, training and political support; whatever they need to win their internal war. This approach should be the first line of defense in America’s global strategy. If more capable and mobile light forces are needed to battle insurgents, U.S. aid should focus on giving allies those tools, rather than reconfiguring American units to perform these tasks as substitutes for local forces.
Too often, American commanders have opted for the expedient of using their own highly proficient units rather than think long-term about nation building. This has been an odd development in Afghanistan given that the Taliban were driven from the country in 2001 by local, Northern Alliance troops supported by U.S. Special Forces and air power. Of course, there are risks and trade-offs. It may be that Osama bin Laden escaped Tora Bora because there was an overreliance on local militias rather than U.S. troops. There must be a balance, but in the long run that balance has to shift towards local forces. The task is to make those local forces more capable and dependable; not the militia rabble of a warlord of dubious allegiance, but professional soldiers loyal to the central government.
The British Empire was able to police Southwest Asia by relying on well-trained local forces integrated with a small core of their own troops. When the Raj won the Second Afghan War (1878-1880), it was with a force that was only one-quarter British, and three-quarters Punjab, Sikh and Gurkha soldiers. There is no reason that Afghan soldiers with proper training, weapons and regular pay cannot outperform insurgents who lack the support of national institutions and resources.
Afghanistan needs the kind of Military Revolution that allowed the British to build a powerful local army in India, and to leave behind a strong central authority in Kabul when London withdrew its forces in 1880. The British left Abdur Rahman as Amir who had at his disposal a national army that was able to put down several rebellions. Britain controlled his foreign policy, but Rahman ran the country’s domestic affairs. His rule became strong enough that by 1896 he was able to institute a form of conscription that further strengthened the national government at the expense of local warlords and unreliable militias. When he died in 1901, for the first time in generations there was a peaceful succession to his son. As Afghanistan incubates a democratic system, the need for a professional military that can remain steady during political crises and corruption scandals is vital.
NATO had planed to expand the Afghan army from 80,000 to 134,000 soldiers by November 2011. This was a very modest effort eight years into the war. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown wanted the pace of training to double, and it must now do so if President Obama’s plan to start the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 18 months is to be met. The U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, wants 240,000 Afghan soldiers and 160,000 police officers, a total force still smaller than what has been built in Iraq. How long the U.S.-NATO withdrawal will take should properly depend on the situation on the ground. Obama pledged, “We’ll continue to advise and assist Afghanistan's security forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul,” which means an American presence beyond 2011.
President Obama is properly “convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda.” And the strategy he has approved after lengthy discussion with our commanders in the field and national security experts here at home is the right approach.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor William R. Hawkins is a consultant specializing in international economic and national security issues. He is a former economics professor and Republican Congressional staff member.
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