The Taliban’s Political Program - Dan Green, Armed Forces Journal.
At their core, insurgencies are about political power struggles, usually between a central government and those who reject its authority, where the objective of the conflict is the population itself and the political right to lead it.
Thus, the center of gravity in this type of warfare is not the enemy’s forces per se, but the population. The centrality of politics to this type of warfare means that counterinsurgent forces must craft a political strategy that is sensitive to the needs of the population, seeks to secure its loyalty to the government, mobilizes the community to identify, expel or fight the insurgent, and extends the authority and reach of the central government. To achieve these goals, a government must have a political strategy that separates the insurgents from popular support so they can be killed or imprisoned. If a political plan is implemented poorly, or not at all, insurgent forces will capitalize on the grievances and frustrated hopes of the community to entice it away from the government. The community may then assist the insurgent with a safe haven to rest, re-arm, re-equip, recuperate and redeploy to fight another day.
In the long run, because this conflict is not about how many casualties counterinsurgent forces impose on the insurgents but about the will to stay in the fight, foreign counterinsurgents tend to grow weary of the amount of blood and treasure they must expend. The insurgent could lose every military engagement, but still win the war if the government does not win the population over to its program, policies and plans...
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Comments (4)
Mr. Green's essay provides an operational construct to compliment MAJ Gant's One Tribe at a Time. They suggest that we work with the existing structures (decentralized) rather than working against the tide (centralized govt). Combined, they offer a viable alternative of decentralized population-centric counter-insurgency compared to the centralized government pop- centric COIN McChrystal proposal. This plan merits careful analysis and discussion.
Over the last four years, the military adapted and implemented COIN to provide security. We implemented measures to break the enemies will to fight in Iraq; however, we still lack comprehensive doctrine to implement the political arm of war that brings the peace. To date, this political maneuvering is more of an art than a science, and it is best represented by the charasmatic leadership of Crocker/Patraeus with the Maliki gov't.
Hopefully, we will see increased debate and analysis on clarifying the political aspect of warfare.
However, questions still remain. Back to Mr. Green's essay,
1. Do we have the wisdom, discretion, and discernment to implement an Afghan Political Service to conduct micro-politics?
2. What is the cost?
3. What is the endstate?
Posted by MikeF | November 7, 2009 12:43 PM
MikeF,
Thank you for reading my article and I'm glad you thought some of its ideas had merit. On your first point, I don't think the bureaucracy in D.C. will ever really adapt to fielding a Political Service as I would like to have and, I believe, the problem set requires, but the Afghan Hands program is a step in the right direction. This takes leadership at State and USAID and both of them are very bureaucratically conservative.
I'm not sure what the cost would be but it would be relatively small when compared to the military expenditures. I think the civil service academies are probably the most expensive part of it but these don't have to be large, per se, and a lot of the benefit of my proposal is just organizing ourselves better and resourcing the things that may not cost much but are really important for providing a positive program to the local population and sustaining this effort for the long haul. My eventual goal is to have something like a CSTC-A type organization for building the Afghan state in the countryside.
The end state is a basically functioning state at the Kabul level and in the provincial capitals and a slow process of expanding the state to the districts and villages taking into account traditional authority structures and mores and recognizing that the perfect should not be the enemy of the good.
Thanks again for reading my article. The title should be "Defeating the Taliban's Political Program" but, for whatever reason, it didn't make it to the published article on the website but it is the title for the article on the cover of Armed Forces Journal.
-Dan
Posted by Dan | November 9, 2009 8:12 AM
Dan,
You might want to check out Steven Pressfield's "Interview With a Tribal Chief #6: It Was Easier Fighting the Taliban."
http://blog.stevenpressfield.com/2009/11/interview-with-a-tribal-chief-6-it-was-easier-fighting-the-taliban/
I think Chief Zazai would probably agree with you.
Mike
Posted by MikeF | November 9, 2009 10:43 AM
There is an excellent article in the Nov/Dec 09 Military Review that covers much of the same territory as Dan Green's article. However, these authors recommend a bottom-up, tribal/district approach to reconstruction:
http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20091231_art004.pdf
Posted by Anonymous | November 9, 2009 3:28 PM