Seeing the Other Side of the COIN: A Critique of the Current Counterinsurgency (COIN) Strategies in Afghanistan
Seeing the Other Side of the COIN:
A Critique of the Current Counterinsurgency (COIN) Strategies in Afghanistan
by Metin Turcan
Download the Full Article: Seeing the Other Side of the COIN
Though the international visibility of Tribalized Rural and Muslim Environments (TRMEs) such as rural Afghanistan has dramatically increased for almost nine years with the efforts of Coalition Forces (CF) in Afghanistan, TRMEs have rarely been studied from Counterinsurgency (COIN) perspective. Although there has emerged a vast literature at the strategic level on the COIN efforts of the CF in Afghanistan and the prospective policies of the international community to resolve the current insurgency, unfortunately, we are still unable to see the other side of the COIN at the tactical level, or view on the ground.
The utmost aim of this article is to attack many “dogmas” currently exist in the COIN literature, and challenges traditional COIN wisdom available in the literature. It also aims to lay out a different perspective regarding the COIN efforts in rural areas at the tactical level, a rarely studied level from COIN perspective. This is, therefore, not an article of problem solver. It may be regarded, instead, as an article of problem setting at the tactical level and concerning Afghanistan in general. It claims that the current situation in rural Afghanistan do not conform to established frames or assumptions in the literature, and the current literature is, thus, far behind from figuring out what the real problem is.
Human beings are members of a whole, in creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain, other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain, the name of human you cannot retain.
-Sa’adi Shirazi (13th century Islamic poet)
Download the Full Article: Seeing the Other Side of the COIN
Metin Turcan, who holds a MA Degree on Security Studies from Naval Postgraduate School, is currently working as a security advisor in the Interior Ministry of Turkey. He served in southeastern Turkey (1999,2004,2006,2008), Iraq (1999,2003,2005) and fulfilled liaison and training missions in Kazakhstan(2004), Kyrgyzstan(2004), and Afghanistan(2005).
