Small Wars Journal

Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan: Is It Working?

Mon, 10/10/2011 - 5:20pm

Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan: Is It Working? By Kristina Wong, ABC News.

Counterinsurgency may not be the buzzword it was in 2009, when President Obama was deliberating strategy for the war in Afghanistan -- but it is still the Army's prevailing strategy in the war that passed the 10-year mark this weekend, a military official said.

So how are we doing with our latest strategy?

It's not so easy to tell, according to the official, Lt. Col. John Paganini, the director of the U.S. Army Counterinsurgency Center, because there's no easy way to measure its success and no specific end date on the books, though officials are aware U.S. war resources may be limited...

In an interview with ABC News, Lt. Col. John Paganini, director of the U.S. Army’s Counterinsurgency Center, explained how the counterinsurgency strategy being employed in Afghanistan is still the Army’s strategy there, despite having no concrete end date, no measurable metric of success and awareness that resources are limited.