Afghan Soldiers Desperate for Pact with US

Another way to look at the issue is that since WWII this country has militarily intervened in numerous countries. Some of those interventions have left chaos in their wake and some have produced successful results — if one defines success as the existing government being able to sustain itself after U.S. forces depart. In some instances U.S. forces have remained in a country, however, only where no ongoing “actual” sustained combat activities are occurring such as in Korea. Thus, It appears that (perhaps by default) American policy permits retaining conventional sized and organized forces in countries requesting (?) our troops presence for an extended (multi-decade) period only when that nation’s geographical area is free of conflict.

Without addressing any personal biases on whether I believe military intervention is a positive or negative occurrence (and I am not certain one can logically take a stance on either extreme), our interventions seem to succeed when the country into which we intervene has an in-place government the population actually prefers to that of the opposing party, where the country has geographical borders that can be secured and thus eliminate the interjection and extraction of enemy forces at will exemplified by Korea and the Philippines or they have a neighboring country which is not actively supporting the opposing side. It also never seems to succeed when there is a viable opposition located in the country (at the time of our departure) which is led and armed sufficiently to withstand their eradication by government forces and the populations in which they operate are either supportive of them or neutral, i.e. do not actively support the government forces for whatever reason as exemplified by what occurred in Vietnam and seems to be occurring in Afghanistan.

Add to the above the critical factor that the military and police we leave behind must be capable of standing on their own and that appears to result when their ranks are filled by members of the same ethnic group as the greater majority of the local population; when they have the necessary organization and capable unit leadership, have a logistics system in place, and have the critically necessary air support. They cannot be viewed by their native peoples as corrupt or as the military force imposed on them by an outside power.

While we don’t , we could employ the once successful British colonial system of organizing, sufficiently arming, sustaining, and leading with American Officers native regiments sufficiently sized and stationed in an area whose objective is to apply the necessary violence as needed to crush any opposition – aided by U.S. provided air support. That would be a costly alternative since it appears we would gain nothing of economic value from Afghanistan to offset those costs – and a colonial era approach has certainly gone out of style.

The point being that both the Afghan Government and the Afghan National Army (ANA) is faced with a dilemma similar to that of the South Vietnamese Government and the ARVN when the U.S. withdrew its forces from that country. When American military forces are inserted into a country and effectively take over the conduct of an internal war to the benefit of one aide, that entity and its government have only a certain (albeit unspecified) number of years to be able to independently sustain themselves before the politically motivated U.S. government will cease supporting it. In all likelihood the average Afghan soldier is certainly uneducated if not illiterate, but the same cannot be said of their political and military leadership. Common sense (and they are cunning enough to have that common sense) dictated that before any Afghans effectively throw their lot in with and staked their future welfare and life span on the promises of an occupying power, they should have read its history.

From what I have read in blog articles recently being posted on sites such as “War on the Rocks,” in papers having appeared in other Journals, and from what I have heard from comments made by those who have been in Afghanistan during discussions on C-Span, etc it appears (at least to me) that a substantial part of the ANA consists of non-Pashtuns; therefore one would presume soldiers from the Northern Alliance areas. If true, their leaders should have been wise enough to inform this country they would support our efforts in Afghanistan, but only do so in their own tribal areas or slightly over its borders in return for military aid and assistance and noted they would not move further forward absent the U.S obtaining support from a sufficiently viable tribal groups among the Pashtuns and their providing military units to fight for us. They didn’t act with that common sense and now find themselves (or at least their men) potentially exposed deep into and disbursed throughout Pashtun territory. It will only take one or two post U.S. withdrawal defeats before self preservation takes over and those non Pashtun troops and their officers withdraw and head back to their tribal areas.

If the U.S. maintains advisers and provides air support liberally applied the above may not happen – at least until we withdraw completely. You can wager on that occurring if the Afghan National Army does not operate at a level where they can sustain themselves. Is it fair that they may run out of bullets as Carl noted, certainly not; but recall what happened to the South Vietnamese military. They believed the U.S. would support them after we withdrew. Then Congress began cutting the funds going to them and eventually their Air Force was all but grounded due to lack of spare parts, as an example. OF course, their leaders were still stashing money in their overseas accounts. Eventually, a conservative Republican President, who served as a Navy Officer in the Pacific during WWII, decided to no longer provide them air support. The result was as expected.

What will happen in Afghanistan remains to be seen, but in all likelihood the county will break up (again) into its tribal areas, the groups will fight each other along their internal tribal borders, much of those Taliban in temporary exile in Pakistan will return, etc. Does this country have a strategic national interest in preventing that from occurring — not really. Will Al Qaeda elements return to Afghanistan, perhaps; but so what — better they are located in that isolated country and if they appear to be a potential nuisance liberally applied suddenly appearing “numerous” Cruise Missiles or bombs from B-2’s can keep them on edge and on the move.

The stability operations / COIN occupation game is over for the U.S. in that country. The future as the philosopher is reported to have said is in their hands.