Small Wars Journal

The Civilian Surge Myth

Tue, 10/20/2009 - 11:23am
The Civilian Surge Myth - Steven Metz, The New Republic.

How can we snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in Afghanistan? There's one solution that has attracted analysts of all stripes: a "civilian surge," where development and political advisers working for (or contracted by) the State department and the US Agency for International Development flood the country and turn the tide against the insurgents.

The logic, at least, is sound: It takes more than military success to defeat insurgents. Insurgency grows where a corrupt and weak government does not provide security, justice, and opportunity. Unless these underlying problems are resolved, the military can kill insurgents forever, and more will emerge. Insurgency is a symptom of deeper ills. The rub is that these deeper ills are not military, but political, economic, and social--things that armed forces are not prepared to fix...

There is consensus on the problem and general agreement on the solution, but absolutely no sense of how to make it happen. There is little chance that the United States will mobilize enough civilian capability to re-engineer backward states and keep it in the field during a protracted insurgency...

More at The New Republic. Also see the discussion at Small Wars Council.

Comments

mal,

you seem to be implying that we clearly identify ISLAM as our enemy and act accordingly.....attack every place where Islamic threats are actively working against us and/ or our allies. Is this correct?

mal (not verified)

Tue, 10/20/2009 - 7:06pm

What Is Victory?
If defeating the Taliban is not our goal, what is?

By Andrew C. McCarthy

Rarely has there been such a dramatic disconnect between rhetoric and reality. On Afghanistan, the national-security Right talks about "victory," concerned Democrats talk about "success," and Obama allies such as Sen. John Kerry talk about the "fulfillment of our mission." They arent talking about the same thing. The somnolent press is content to court, rather than clarify, this confusion, but thats no reason for the rest of us to go along for the ride.

What is "victory" or "success"? What is this "mission" of ours that must be fulfilled?

Staunch supporters of our military are seething as President Obama dithers over Gen. Stanley McChrystals request for an additional 40,000 troops. Their frustration would be justifiable if the main issue were Obamas inconstancy. Months ago, the president endorsed the counterinsurgency strategy of McChrystal, his hand-picked commander. Now, he is balking. In what has become a habit for Obama, he changes the rationale for his temporizing almost daily: from the need to study further a situation he had purportedly studied plenty before backing McChrystal; to the notion that a counterterrorism strategy, rather than counterinsurgency, may be the way to go; to the latest excuse, floated this weekend by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, that the uncertainty hovering over Afghanistans fraud-ridden election makes a deployment decision premature.

Whatever the explanation on offer, the conservative reaction is always the same: "Isnt this the war Obama said we had to win?" Nothing has changed, the national-security Right reasons: The Taliban are still our enemies; if they take over Afghanistan they will give safe haven to al-Qaeda, and we will be in grave danger of another 9/11. So why wont Obama just give McChrystal what he needs to defeat the Taliban?

That would be enough for me, too, if General McChrystals plan were to defeat the Taliban. But its not.

The issue is not Obamas inconstancy; it is the dubious nature of the mission. And I dont mean the "mission" implied by the Rights rhetoric; Im talking about the mission as it is conceived by the theater commander. In a lengthy essay for the magazine section of last Sundays New York Times, Dexter Filkins, who was granted extraordinary access to General McChrystal, states the matter succinctly:
What McChrystal is proposing is not a temporary, Iraq-style surge -- a rapid influx of American troops followed by a withdrawal. McChrystals plan is a blueprint for an extensive American commitment to build a modern state in Afghanistan, where one has never existed, and to bring order to a place famous for the empires it has exhausted.
Do you favor such a proposal? Is this what you thought American troops were being sent to Afghanistan for? Is this the mission we thought we were setting out to accomplish when American military force was unleashed after the September 11 attacks?

On the right, we like to pride ourselves on seeing things as they are. Abortion is the killing of the unborn, not the "right to choose." Illegal aliens are illegal aliens, not "undocumented immigrants." "Reform" is not a term we would ever use for a government grab of a sixth of the private economy -- and if this "reform" of health care consists of rationing and death panels, we say, "Hey, this consists of rationing and death panels." We dont usually abide a situation in which Robert "Were Gonna Let You Die" Reich is the only guy in the room calling a spade a spade.

So why are we pretending that the mission in Afghanistan is something it is not? McChrystal is not trying to defeat the Taliban. Indeed, McChrystal tells Filkins it would be useless to attempt that. "You can kill Taliban forever," he says, "because they are not a finite number."

And here is the not-so-secret dirty little secret: Islamic militancy, whether in the form of the Taliban or its many other varieties, is "not finite." That is because neither its source nor its center of gravity is confined to Afghanistan. Nevertheless, we have chosen not to address the source, which is Islamist ideology, and we have chosen to fight only in Afghanistan, as opposed to the many places where the enemy rolls new fighters off the assembly line. We have made these choices because we lack the will for a broader fight.

Unwilling to admit that, we miniaturize the challenge. Thus, the war is said only to be in Afghanistan. The "challenge" is framed as isolating a relative handful of aberrant Takfiris -- the Muslims who claim the right to declare other Muslims apostates and kill them -- rather than confronting the fact that tens of millions of Muslims despise the West. And the mission is portrayed as high-minded nation-building, not anything so jingoistic as pursuing Americas national interests, vanquishing the militants whove taken up arms against our country, and demonstrating to jihadist sympathizers the dire consequences of joining the militant ranks.

Heres Filkins again: "At the heart of McChrystals strategy are three principles: protect the Afghan people, build an Afghan state, and make friends with whomever you can, including insurgents. Killing the Taliban is now among the least important things that are expected of NATO soldiers."

Listening only to the critique from the right, one could be forgiven for being under the misimpression that killing the Taliban is -- besides killing al-Qaeda -- the only important thing expected of NATO soldiers. Filkins, however, is right: Killing the Taliban is not a McChrystal priority. To his credit, the general is not hiding the ball. His written proposal elucidates what he believes he is in Afghanistan to do: build a nation. But if there had been any doubt, the game would have been given away by the slick-talking Emanuel.

The question, Obamas top aide told the Sunday shows, is not "how many troops you send, but do you have a credible Afghan partner for this process that can provide the security and the type of services that the Afghan people need?" If we were in Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda, having "a credible Afghan partner" would be irrelevant -- as it was in October 2001, when we first invaded. We only need a "partner" because our purpose is not victory. Our purpose is "this process" of ensuring Afghans security and government services -- neither of which they have ever had; neither of which it ever ought to be thought our obligation to provide.

"This process" is the gargantuan burden of building, from scratch, an oxymoronic sharia-democracy in a backwards, corrupt, fundamentalist Islamic armpit. And as if wed learned nothing from the ravages against us, the process absurdly assumes that Islam -- rather than being a major part of the problem -- is an asset that we can turn to our advantage. If such a process could work (it cant), it would take decades, cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and cause an unknowable number of American casualties.

But that is the McChrystal plan. The idea is not to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda but to build a modern nation-state that will eventually be both competent to fight and interested in fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda on its own.

Here is the irony. Those who favor McChrystals proposal argue, with great force, that a counterterrorism strategy -- i.e., attacking terror nests from remote bases -- cannot work. For that conclusion, they cite no less an authority than General McChrystal, who is the nations leading expert on military counterterrorism. But if "cannot work" is our criterion, then why would anyone favor a democracy-building effort in Afghanistan?

The real dirty little secret is that there is only one way to win the war, and that is to attack our militant enemies and their abettors globally. This being the case, our unwillingness to do that necessarily means anything else we try "cannot work." We have taken real victory off the table. What is left is a series of "cannot work" options, and our burden is to pick the least bad one.

So can we go back to what is best in us, forthrightness, and stop talking about "victory"? Those who favor the McChrystal plan should be prepared to tell us how many lives, years, and hundreds of billions they are prepared to sacrifice on an experiment in Afghan democracy building that will not defeat our global enemies -- and, in fact, will discourage the pursuit of our global enemies since, under our new doctrine, we cant unleash American might without making a similar sacrifice wherever we go.

The question is not whether counterterrorism can work. It cannot -- any more than having a police station a hundred miles away could guarantee that the local bank would never be robbed. The question is why we should think nation-building -- the equivalent of lavish government welfare programs to address the "root causes" of bank robbery -- is a better solution.

negotiator6

Tue, 10/20/2009 - 6:22pm

Having worked the PRT initiative in the early days in Afghanistan on contract to USAID..just a few comments.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have just about drained most of the "available" and willing government civilians to support the Iraq and Afghanistan missions. During early 2003, it was difficult to find volunteers...and those who deployed were promised to some degree advanced promotions should they stay the six or nine months. Now that the 1st and 2nd tier has deployed..most simply do not wish to return under any circumstance.

My experience working under contract with USAID included exposure to many fine people...but, mostly office oriented individuals..and not those who work well in the field. In fact, because most AID personnel never left the Kabul compound (where they worked and lived back then), projects under construction were never validated..and many were not even started. Tiered organizations beginning with Louis Berger (the main contractor in Afghanistan for USAID) were subcontracted out to "selected" US NGO's..who also never left Kabul..who then subcontracted the project to perhaps and Indian or Pakistani company...who then subcontracted out to a regional Afghan group..who then used local labor.

Although, the early days were "organizational", the depth of tiers of decision, emails, meetings and such resulted in very few projects (except the Kandahar-Kabul Hiway) were completed. The system is broken when it comes to post conflict infrastructure development in a timely fashion.

Of course, the other and major constraint was security. When the ICRC regional representative was murdered in March of 2003...every NGO who subscribes to the UN security daily brief would not venture even into Logar Province, let along Paktia or Khost.

That said, the idea of a "civilian" surge of off the street civilians roaming around Helmand, Zubal, Pakita or Khost Province digging water wells or overseeing the construction of schools and clinics is an unfounded "dream".

And for those civilians or CA soldiers who may intend to deploy...the locals have heard just about every "relationship building concept" there is...meaning not much credibility after all these years. The locals know most will be there six or nine months..then a new face and a new promise.

We missed the opportunity beginning in early 2003 and I for one regret more emphasis on Afghanistan would of been made by the Bush Administration. The Soldiers and Marines are now paying a heavy price...many have more than three (3) tours to Iraq and Afghanistan..with more deployments in the future.

And lastly, having done road trips all around SE Afghanistan to include the road from Jaji to Khost (entering from the east), Ghazni, Pakita, Logal Provinces...the challenge of changing the lifestyle of the people in an attempt to have them "feel" connected to a central government in Kabul....well..this will never happen.

This may be an early straw in the wind that blows the sand from around our heads and forces us to face reality. Bluster and wishful thinking simply will not cut it.
The implications of our facing the reality that Metz outlines are as far-reaching as they are unpleasant to contemplate.

Mark Rogers

Schmedlap

Tue, 10/20/2009 - 3:20pm

We've already got several hundred from our State Dept, several hundred more from CIA, several hundred more from our other agencies (LE, for example). Not sure what our allies already have there in that capacity.

I posted the above comments.....forgot to fill in the name part.

Anonymous (not verified)

Tue, 10/20/2009 - 2:11pm

The author makes clear that our current policy of nation-building and requirement for civilian capacity isn't working. He recommends that we get away from our current strategy but doesn't put forth an alternative.

I've read that, during the British Raj, India was managed by a couple of thousand British civil servants (as well as several thousand British soldiers).

I suspect we could recruit a few motivated civil servants (mainly through monetary incentives) to serve in third-world s**t-holes like Afghanistan in order to help rebuild those places. 40 or 50 per cabinet-level dept sounds reasonable. Our NATO allies would likely be able to come up with a similiar number....even if it's only 40 per NATO country, that ought to work.

40 per cabinet-level department (560 folks), coupled with 40 per NATO ally (assuming 7 NATO countries = 280 folks), and throw in some civilian contractors familiar with civil governance (MPRI?) and we could get a decent civilian "surge" for Afghanistan. Some state-level civil servants might be interested as well.

Coupling this to an adjustment in our current military focus on big unit operations and putting more emphasis on the advisor role as well as empowering local village and district militias and governments may be an effective alternative.

We would still need regular combat forces in-country as we have the means that the ANA/ ANP still lack (airpower, artillery, ISR). But we could get our civilian surge and limit our civilian & military footprint while engaging in security assistance and nation-building. Like the British Raj, a couple of thousand civilans and a few thousand regular troops working with a even greater number of local troops.

I'm sure it won't be quite as easy as I've laid out....but that's my two cents.

Thoughts?