Tribal Engagement Workshop (Bumped)
Previously posted at SWJ on 11 April 2010:
Tribal engagement in Afghanistan is an increasingly hot topic among U.S. Government,
academia, the think tank community and the blogosphere. Articles, blog posts
and papers on tribal engagement written by authors with recent experience in Afghanistan
collectively ignited a heated debate on the efficacy of pursuing this kind of sub-national
strategy — a debate that many in the national security community are watching closely.
With this in mind, Small Wars Foundation hosted a two-day
(TEW) focused on Afghanistan from March 24-25, 2010 in Fredericksburg, VA.
The TEW was cosponsored by Small Wars Foundation,
Joint Irregular Warfare Center, the U.S. Marine Corps
Center for Irregular Warfare, the
Counterinsurgency Center, and
Noetic. The workshop was
designed to address conceptual issues associated with tribal engagement and explore
the considerations that operators and planners would have to address in order to
implement a tribal or local engagement program.
The
TEW Summary Report is available now. We are working to organize and present
additional material via the TEW
Event Page. In the interim, there is a good amount of background information
there now.
The workshop was made possible in the first place through the vision, support
and engagement of Noetic. Small Wars Foundation extends its sincere thanks
to Ben Fitzgerald and team. The co-sponsors (Noetic, JIWC, CIW, and COIN Center)
all brought interest, expertise, and a variety of critical capabilities and support
to the table; their decisive engagement along with a diverse and expert group of
participants made the event a success. We would especially like to express
our gratitude to our speakers, facilitators, and analysis team: (list
of bios)
- Dr. David Kilcullen,
Caerus Associates
- Mr. Ben Fitzgerald,
- MAJ Jim Gant, SF, AFPAK Hands
- Mr. William McCallister
- Col T.X. Hammes,
Institute for National Security Studies
- Dr. Seth Jones,
- Dr. Amin Tarzi,
Marine Corps University
- LCOL John Malevich, Canadian Forces,
Center
- Ms. Kathleen McInnis,
- Mr. Mark Vinson, Institute for Defense
Analysis
- Mr. John Caldwell, Institute for Defense
Analysis
- Mr. Andrew Exum, CNAS
- Mr. Jason Fritz,
Noetic Group
As more outputs from the event become available, they will be posted on the