10 Steps to Victory in Afghanistan
10 Steps to Victory in Afghanistan – New York Times opinion.
1. Reform or Go Home – David Kilcullen: Counterinsurgency is only as good as the government it supports. NATO could do everything right – it isn’t – but will still fail unless Afghans trust their government. Without essential reform, merely making the government more efficient or extending its reach will just make things worse..
2. End Suicide Attacks – Robert Pape: To win in Afghanistan, the United States and its allies must prevent the rise of a new generation of anti-American terrorists, particularly suicide terrorists. The metric for measuring this threat is not the amount of territory controlled by the Taliban or Al Qaeda, but the number of people —to be recruited as suicide terrorists…
3. If You Can’t Beat Them, Let Them Join – Linda Robinson: Within a year, we must persuade large numbers of insurgents to lay down their arms or switch to the government’s side. Afghanistan’s doughty warriors have a tradition of changing alliances, but success will require both military operations focused on the insurgent leadership and, even more important, incentives for fighters at the local level. Mid-level insurgents and their followers should be offered a chance to join a revised version of the Afghan Public Protection Force…
4. Pump Up the Police – Anthony Cordesman: For all the disputes over strategy, virtually everyone agrees that we need to strengthen the Afghan security forces, make them true partners and put them in the lead. Afghans want lasting security, and they want it to have an Afghan face. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander there, wisely wants to double the size of the Afghan Army and increase the police forces to 160,000 men. This requires not just money, but also a commitment to send more trainers, embedded advisers and partner units…
5. Kick Out Corruption – Nader Nadery: To defeat the insurgency, the Afghan government and its main partner, the United States, need to win the confidence of the public. Accountability must replace the widespread immunity enjoyed by officials who abuse their power. Despite all the problems with our recent election, the incoming government will have a chance to start fresh, and a proper vetting of all new officials is the place to begin…
6. Learn to Tax From the Taliban – Gretchen Peters: Skeptics of state-building proposals question whether the Kabul government – now almost fully dependent on foreign aid – will ever be able to support the military and police forces being trained. Yet there has been comparatively little investment by the international community in helping Kabul collect taxes, even though insurgents and corrupt officials have proved it can be done…
7. Polls Have the Power – Merrill McPeak: By and large, my generation of military professionals trained for and thought about what we might call “Type A” war – modern war, featuring the clash of mechanized forces fielded by industrial states. Happily, we never had to fight the Soviets on the northern German plain, though Operation Desert Storm showed we might have been pretty good at it, had the balloon gone up. In Afghanistan we’re fighting a “Type B” war that is in some of its essentials “postmodern.” Like postmodernism itself, the concept has a variety of meanings and may not represent a coherent set of ideas…
8. Take a Risk – Andrew Exum: While in Afghanistan last summer as part of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s initial assessment team, I found many American and other international units more focused on protecting themselves than protecting the Afghan population. Traveling through the allegedly secure city of Mazar-i-Sharif with a German unit, for example, was like touring Afghanistan by submarine…
9. Don’t Believe That We Can Afford to Lose – Frederick Kagan and Kimberly Kagan: America cannot achieve even the minimal objective of preventing Al Qaeda from re-establishing safe havens in Afghanistan without a substantial increase in forces over the coming year. The Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan’s south is growing. The Afghan and international forces there now cannot reverse that growth. They may not even be able to stem it. That is the assessment of the top American commander there, Gen. Stanley McChrystal…
10. Pakistani Patronage – Paul Pillar: The government of Pakistan, through its intelligence agency, has long been a patron of the Afghan Taliban, and Gen. Stanley McChrystal recently warned that the collaboration continues. Pakistan sees the relationship as a way of hedging its bets in Afghanistan, an asset in its confrontation with India. It is difficult to define a clear benchmark for ending that aid because the Pakistanis refuse to acknowledge that any relationship exists…
In full at The New York Times.
