Later this morning, Presidents Obama and Hamid Karzai will meet at the White House. Karzai will present to Obama his proposal for a peace offer to the Taliban leadership. Obama will extend U.S. support for the people and government of Afghanistan over the long term.
All this happens as thousands of U.S., NATO and Afghan forces are moving into the city and surrounding environs of Kandahar. Senior officials in charge of shaping the operation have cautioned against viewing Kandahar as an iconic invasion campaign. Unlike the February operation in Marja, where 15,000 NATO and Afghan troops invaded and a governance structure of unproven capability was essentially airlifted into an area under Taliban control, the approach to Kandahar involves bolstering governance and economic efforts in parts of Kandahar currently under government control and expanding them outwards into Taliban-held territory. That will require intense and persistent coordination between NATO militaries, NATO civilians, their governments back home, Afghan security forces, local Afghan government officials and national Afghan government officials. A source in Kandahar considers it all a pipe dream.
That source passed on the following assessment of how counterinsurgency efforts across Afghanistan are shaping up, over a year after Obama embraced them at the strategic level and nearly a year after Obama tapped Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Amb. Karl Eikenberry to implement them. The source's reluctant viewpoint, which is making its way through official channels in Afghanistan, is that the coordination necessary for successful counterinsurgency between civilian and military forces is not in evidence. Neither is the coordination between NATO and Afghan forces. Lumbering bureaucracy inhibits the rapid application of services and economic aid after military forces clear an area...
More at The Washington Independent.
Comments
The idea of "counterinsurgency" appears to be a viable way for success on paper. Military units, along with NGOs [non-governmental organizations], the Department of State, GIRoA [the Afghanistan government], and other government agencies work together to emplace the clear, hold, build strategy in key areas of the battlefield. Like communism, however, counterinsurgency methods are not proving to be effective in practice.
BG Flynn's paper was all about getting information to flow. And not just "sent up" by lower echelons to higher, but for these organizations like the SOIC and PRT, etc... to get out there and grab it themselves, then work together to build an aggregate of the information... The theater command is dieing for usefull information that can describe the situation on the ground yet they do not.
Now despite what everyone thinks about the situation on the ground (and you are all entitled to have an opinion), be real and admit that you aren't on the ground there. And if you are, admit that you don't leave the wire to find out for yourself what's going on in the various village areas and districts...
I'm reading these articles from Washington-based analysts that say the insurgency is being defeated because (a.) Insurgency Activity is trending down, or (b.) Because a school was built in the village...
But, these are dubious metrics, folks. I don't think people are asking the right questions...
Hey!! Down-trending insurgent activity can certainly mean that the insurgents are becoming firmly integrated into the population. It may mean that they don't feel threatened by the presence of NATO troops...
And--who reports that the school is actually staffed? Or that children are attending...? Oh, and... Wanna know what happens when you tell a Mullah that your patrol is coming around tomorrow to count the students attending? (In case you don't know; they stock the school with boys AND girls with smiling faces on...) It doesn't mean anything that the folks at headquarters brief it to be...
BUT, of COURSE we're successful in this war... More than half the NATO troops who come to Afghanistan are there for 2-6 months. (The Americans are the ones who stay for a year or more) ...Then they rotate out. You bet your [butts] that they are reporting these metrics in successful ways. There are promotions in order for jobs well done... ya know?
Outlaw 7: I do not think Small Wars Journal is necessarily taking a collective stand one way or the other on these issues. It is not a "one trick pony" and I think the editors do a damn fine job of posting a broad variety of articles. The discussions that take place are not representative of a Small Wars Journal "position" but are the opinions, views, and positions of the contributors. Your view is welcome and respected as are the views of those who differ from you. Just my 2 cents.
Looks like SWJ needs to revisit the General Flynn intelligence article concerning intel failures and the discussion on Kilcullen's "conflict ecosystem" needs to get even deeper instead of which author is right or wrong. Why is so much time wasted here on who is right or who is wrong?
Is it impossible to get agreement and then to discuss ways to fix it?---maybe that is the real argument around Kilcullen-at least he is saying "do something".
Looks like as well after the dust settled on Flynn's article that all his efforts at influencing the USAISC, Ft. H have also been for nothing as well as those of the COIC/JTCOIC-what a waste of time and money.