The Strategic Risk versus Tactical Safety
The Strategic Risk versus Tactical Safety:
What Happens When We Lose the COG
by Jeremy Kotkin
Download the Full Article: The Strategic Risk versus Tactical Safety
GEN Petraeus’ COIN Guidance is published and on the bulletin boards in hundreds of staff offices in Kabul. As the vanguard of this new policy, Afghan Hands have a charter to operate under the COIN Guidance in concert with the mission statement developed for the program: “to build long-lasting, positive partnerships with GIRoA, Afghan entities, and civilians, in order to demonstrate the long-term commitment of ISAF to build capacity and capability within Afghanistan and deny support among the Afghan people to insurgents.” These two concepts, the COIN Guidance and the Afghan Hands Program intent before it, should operate in perfect harmony, each reinforcing the other. Afghan Hands, through eyes unencumbered of 9 years of standard operating tactics and procedures, should be allowed the professional scope to “get the job done” in ways which no other individual augmentee can.
COMISAF’s COIN Guidance, especially when wielded by Afghan Hands, should be the combination to take this war in a new, winning direction. It will, unfortunately, not take hold in an environment more concerned about tactical and shortsighted personnel safety and standard operating procedure where attempting to follow the strategic intent and spirit of the new guidance is met with UCMJ punishment. The strategy operationalized by the Commander’s COIN Guidance is failing in Kabul, the most visible expression of GIRoA’s power, to the perceptions of the center of gravity (the people) and this carries an unacknowledged risk to the entire campaign plan.
The current COIN strategy can be a winning one. Whether it is enacted by Trinqueir’s quadrillage, Marshal Lyautey’s oil-spot, or a modern version of the USMC’s Combined Action Platoons on a massive scale, ISAF is conducting a classic Galulian three line of operation plan focusing on security, the economy, and development. This, coupled with the Afghan Peace and Reconciliation Program and US anti-corruption efforts, are what Afghan stability desperately needs to germinate. The nature of Afghanistan and its history, however, should very strongly caution us from forgetting about the capital; yet, this is exactly what we are doing. Our strategy, focusing on the population centers in the outlying areas of the Key-Terrain Districts (KTDs), is leaving Kabul to the corruption of the central government and allowing the insurgent/guerilla to reoccupy spaces once cleared due to our own policies which segregate US/NATO Forces from the capital. The vacuum created by our absence is marking an easily followed path for the population to turn away from their government. Kabul, as the center of gravity’s (the population’s) capital, should be the most important oil spot; it should be the geographic center on which everything depends; the point against which all our energies should be directed. What we are doing through our own policies is voluntarily ceding this ground to the insurgent not because of his direct action, but because we are forcefully separating ourselves from the people and, in turn, creating a wedge between the people and their government.
Civilians in Kabul see our lack of effort; see a lack of economic assistance within easy reach yet kept behind hescos; and in a culture distinctly centered around bravery and honor, see us as cowards afraid to interact with them in their own largely stable and secure cities. Our actions speak louder than our words. We do not travel “outside the wire” (truly, the most pathetic line to hear from soldiers in Kabul bases; but it’s not entirely their fault — it’s the mindset they’re being inculcated with) and live up to our own Population Centric (PC)-COIN theory. Afghans realize this. In that realization, we cripple their trust in the very government we are trying to support. If people are the center of gravity, and the capability we are trying to promote is stability and trust, what does it say that we don’t even apply the Commander’s guidance here? Why do we think the Kabul bubble is immune from their youth being radicalized….by our very own actions no less? Basic COIN theory would have us separate the insurgent from the population. What we have done in Kabul is separate the population from ourselves. This has marked effects on them psychologically, economically, and civically.
Download the Full Article: The Strategic Risk versus Tactical Safety
Major Jeremy Kotkin is a Functional Area-59, Strategist, and assigned to ISAF through USFOR-A. In 2009, he was selected to become a member of CJCS’s Afghan Hands Program, attended Dari language training, and subsequently deployed with the first rotation of Afghan Hands in theater. He is currently embedded full-time in GIRoA’s Office of the National Security Council in Kabul. Previously, he published R.I.P. Mr. Charles Wilson, Father of the Taliban and Is the War in Afghanistan in the Interests of the United States and its Allies? for Small Wars Journal.
The comments and opinions are the author’s own and do not constitute the position of ISAF, the US Army, or DoD.
