by Octavian Manea
Download the full article: Interview with Dr. David Kilcullen
What would success and victory look like in a counterinsurgency (COIN) operation? What specific role should the Western expeditionary forces should have in this fight?
What would victory look like? It doesn't look like victory in a conventional military campaign. Insurgency is much like a disease. It has very negative symptoms that affect the whole of society. Victory in COIN is a lot less like military victory and a lot more like recovering from a disease. If you think about the last time you were sick, you may not able to get out of bed, you had to take medicine, you couldn't do the things you wanted to do, but gradually you got stronger and you were able to do more. You might have continued to take antibiotics for a few weeks until you were completely better, but basically, sooner or later, you forgot that you were sick.
When we see societies that have recovered from an insurgency, we typically don't see a single big military victory. What we see is a slow gradual improvement to the point where a society comes back to full functioning. Now in the case of Afghanistan the problem is that the country hasn't functioned properly for at least one generation. Afghanistan in particular is not a counterinsurgency in a classical sense. It is actually a stability operation. We really care about the Taliban because they make the country unstable. But there are other things that make the country unstable as well, including the Afghan government, the destabilization by Pakistan, the corruption and criminal activity, the drugs. There are a lot of things that must be dealt with. If we were to defeat the insurgents, in a military sense tomorrow, and not fix all those others problems, a new Taliban would arise next year. We must think more broadly than counterinsurgency in the context of Afghanistan.
What is the role of foreign forces? I think that the role of foreign forces is to create an environment that is conducive to stability and societal recovery. If you think that victory is when the society recovers, then what we have to do is to create an environment that fosters this recovery. But there are limits to what we can do: we can set the conditions for the Afghans to come together or Iraqis to come together and solve their problems. But the long history of counterinsurgency emphasizes that foreigners can't fix all these issues. It has to be the locals.
Download the full article: Interview with Dr. David Kilcullen
Interview with Dr. David Kilcullen conducted by Octavian Manea (Editor of FP Romania, the Romanian edition of Foreign Policy).
About the Author(s)
Octavian Manea was a Fulbright Junior Scholar at Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs (Syracuse University) where he received an MA in International Relations and a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Security Studies.
Comments
I agree that we are enabling the Karzai government, and that this is a bad idea. I would take it further and maintain that creating the Karzai government in the first place was a bad idea, but that's water under the bridge.
"Tough love" seems based on the assumption that the Karzai government has the capacity to govern as we think it should, but chooses not to, and thus that our influence can lead to better choices. I doubt that this is actually the case. If he hasn't the capacity to govern tough love (and this would apply as well to places like Yemen) is like telling a quadriplegic that you'll stop feeding him if he doesn't jump out of the wheelchair and dance the funky chicken. It doesn't matter how dependent he is if he hasn't the capacity to do what we want him to do.
Of coures we can let Karzai fall and tell ourselves that we'll deal with whoever succeeds him, but that of course raises the possibilities that nobody will succeed him (extended civil war) or that whoever succeeds him will have no interest in dealing with us.
In that sense we're caught between the goals we went there to achieve and the goals we picked up along the way (always a danger when goals are expanded along the way). We went there to disrupt and disable AQ and to deny them sanctuary in Afghanistan. Somewhere along the way the goal morphed into the larger (and probably unachievable) goal of providing governance for Afghanistan that satisfies us and is accepted by the populace as legitimate. The pursuit of the second goal may tell us to let Karzai collapse and try again later, but if this means we fail to achieve the first goal... well, that means we lose, and no American politician wants to be sitting in the chair when that happens.
The assumption that we can work with a successor also seems a bit presumptuous. We gave the Afghans one government, without being asked or invited. If it turns out to be a disaster, why would they want to give us a second try? Why would they want anything to do with us at all? What gives us the right - in their eyes, our eyes, or anybody else's eyes - to walk into Afghanistan and tell the Afghans how the place ought to be governed? It's not as if they volunteered to join this AA group, to use that analogy...
It has long been my position that the West in general has been so focused on its own problems coming from Muslim populaces of late, that we have little empathy for internal challenges at the very core of Muslim populaces caused by this new information age and "globalization."
The relatively simple invention of a printing press and the availability of Bibles that could be read, discussed, and in turn written about by common men created a theological upheaval in Christian populaces. The fact that religion was being used to exercise control of those same populaces by a Holy Roman Empire government, far away, and illegitimate in the eyes of many soon combined to fuel hundreds of years of bloody political upheaval and change as well. The end result was Western dominance around the globe, new ideas of what "nations" or "governance" looked like, and religion relegated to a far more supporting role in Western society.
Islam today is under similar pressure as global voices and perspectives challenge those of local and regional leaders who similarly employ religion to shape all aspects of spiritual, physical and political life. Many of these populaces are also under governments that they see as being excessively controlled or manipulated by foreign powers.
It is not the role of those foreign powers to control, "contain", or even to shape this evolution. Muslims must work through this for themselves. But Western powers do need to stop making it all about us; take a moment or two to empathize with the people involved and focus on what we can and should control; and that is to reshape how the West engages and interacts with the Middle East.
Much in the United States was modeled after Rome. Here is one area where we would do well to learn from Rome's mistake. Perhaps those in the Middle East can learn from the mistakes of the West as well and find a smoother path to their own transition.
"Dr. Muthuswamy, how the heck do foreigners transform a religion that is foreign to them when they don't understand it, nor do they have any religious legitimacy within Islam?"
When we as a civilization were faced with a microbial threat called Smallpox, which we didnt understand to start with, we used modern problem-solving techniques to comprehend and neutralize the threat.
Some of the groundbreaking research into the roots of radicalism in Islam conducted in the past 10 years or so have give us a window into this problem. This is the premise and focus of my new book: Defeating Political Islam: The New Cold War.
I have created the following video (a detailed manuscript is in preparation) titled "Discrediting Jihad and Sharia as a Grand War Strategy," to elucidate these ideas:
http://www.moorthymuthuswamy.com/Grand%20Strategy.html
Hope this helps!
Sweeping the domineering religious component under the carpet when it comes to addressing radical Islam is just poor science. Its simply untenable, as we are finding out in AfPak theater at great cost.
Dayuhan,
Actually, IMO, Dr. K is spot-on on this one, and it is not contradictory at all.
He's not talking "regime change" type of activities. That type of legitimacy-destroying action is the antithesis of good COIN. I believe he is talking along the same lines I do (and thus, your similar reaction :-)
This is much more the AA meeting type of involvement. It is incumbent upon the one with the problem to admit their problem and take steps to address it. Some don't know what to do, so know, but have no inclination to change from behavior they prefer. This is where the group applies pressure and support to help the one with the problem to evolve.
In the case of Afghanistan we (the Coalition) are classic enablers of destructive behavior. We are the enablers of the Karzai regimes Poor Governance. We protect them from foreign and domestic challengers, we do their job for them all over the country, and we infuse them with unlimited cash to pursue their self-destructive ways; all while excusing them of all responsibility by leveraging the blame on the insurgent.
This is no different that providing a drunk with free booze, taking care of his family for him, and then blaming the entire thing on alcohol and the advertising campaigns of the alcohol industry.
But Karzai needs tough love, not enabling. We need to be willing to walk away if necessary to get his attention. We need to quit enabling poor governance under the misguided guise of "COIN." We need to realize that success is not preserving the Karzai government in power, but rather in the people of Afghanistan (former N. Alliance and former Taliban and non-aligned alike) achieving a government that they recognize as theirs. A government that is committed to serving the people rather than subjecting the people to their service.
This is all very attainable; but the Coalition needs its own AA meeting. We will not get better either until we understand that we are enabling poor governance, and exactly how destructive that behavior is.
At one point Dr. kilcullen says this:
<i>foreigners cant fix all these issues. It has to be the locals</i>
and at another this:
<i>we need to change the focus of governance in Afghanistan; away from extending the reach of the Afghan government towards reforming it. What we need is a process of governmental reform</i>
This seems to me so thoroughly contradictory that I wonder if I'm missing something. Adding up all the "we" references in the interview, it seems almost a proposal that "we" should govern Afghanistan, or at least decree how it should be governed. How does one reconcile this with the need for locals to do the fixing? Do we want the locals to do the fixing, but to do it our way, to achieve goals established by us?
With all due respect to Dr. Kilcullen, I am afraid that he is misreading the origin of modern insurgencies involving Muslim communities.
I have argued in the following piece that certain attributes of Islam, namely sharia and jihad have made governing very difficult in nations such as Pakistan. The very same attributes have driven Pakistan into backwardness, and into becoming a terror-infested nation.
Ultimately, in places such as Pakistan or in Afghanistan where Dr. Kilcullen talks about the need for "a process of governmental reform [in order to achieve competent governance]," there has to be religious reform. This is something he has consistently failed to appreciate (see his write up in 2007: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/05/print/religion-and-insurgency/)
In the following data analysis, I have discussed the pitfalls of Dr. Kilcullens thought process in greater detail:
http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers42/paper4138.html