Small Wars Journal

COIN in Afghanistan Requires New Thinking

Thu, 07/23/2009 - 10:12pm
Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan Requires New Thinking

By John House

Special to American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, July 23, 2009 -- International forces in Afghanistan must garner popular support among residents to defeat the insurgency, the director of counterinsurgency training there said yesterday.

"This is different from conventional combat, which is terrain or enemy focused," Army Col. John Agoglia, director of Counterinsurgency Training Center Afghanistan, said during a "DoDLive" bloggers roundtable.

"Counterinsurgency is population-focused," Agoglia said in his update on the center's doctrine, curriculum and methodologies. "How we operate in and amongst the population will determine the outcome more than traditional measures, like capture of terrain or attrition of the enemy."

Making sure all involved in the war see counterinsurgency "as a mindset, and not just a training event, ... and that this mindset permeates all actions they take," is one of Agoglia's guiding principles.

A counterinsurgency mindset that encompasses prevention of civilian casualties, fosters public trust in the government and establishes conditions for economic growth is necessary to win the war, Agoglia said.

He talked about the judicious application of military force, and emphasized that preventing civilian casualties is a priority.

"It's getting people to understand that sometimes it is better to back away from a fight than risk killing civilians and alienating those who you are supposed to be protecting," he said. This can be complicated, he acknowledged, "especially when you are dealing with an enemy who's intentionally putting themselves in with civilians."

Another key objective in the counterinsurgency campaign is fostering public trust in the government. "We're trying to reconnect formal government at the district level with the informal government out there at the tribal, village and municipal level," Agoglia said.

The center's curriculum includes conducting a village "shura," or town meeting, that emphasizes the importance of local input on decisions affecting the community.

One of the biggest challenges Agoglia sees within the formal Afghan government is corruption. "We have to work through the Afghan system to help establish rule of law to instill anti-corruption programs," he said. The key to stopping corruption, he added, is to have a formal police force that is trained to serve and protect.

Combined Security Transition Command Afghanistan, headquarters for the counterinsurgency center, is helping Afghans fight corruption in its role to train, equip, advise and mentor the Afghan national security forces. Pay and rank reform, electronic banking, and biometric screening are just a few programs implemented to reduce corrupt practices, Agoglia noted.

International forces signed an agreement with the Afghan national government July 21 to commit to eliminating corruption there and increase public trust.

Partnership is an important aspect to the counterinsurgency fight, too. Agoglia pointed out that while coalition nations may have varying restrictions on their military activities, all are contributing seriously to helping the Afghans.

While insurgents garner support through intimidation and threats, Agoglia said, "we will win this war by working together with our Afghan partners to provide the population a viable alternative," in terms of security, freedom from intimidation and conditions that will foster economic well-being.

As the counterinsurgency mindset and resources are increasingly applied, the impact will become evident, Agoglia said. "There is a lag time between resources, implementation, and effect," he explained. "It'll take some time, but I think we're going in the right direction, definitely."

(John House works in the Counterinsurgency Training Center Afghanistan public affairs office.)

Related Sites:

Combined Security Transition Command Afghanistan

"DoDLive" Bloggers Roundtable

Comments

j2hess (not verified)

Fri, 07/24/2009 - 5:27pm

My rule-of-thumb is that cultural change takes about a generation - not necessarily a biological generation, but enough time for the new ideas to work their way into operational management. Under pressure of war, COIN however has leap-frogged the normal change process with the result that understanding is very unevenly distributed within the Army.

I appreciate Gentile's invocation of Clausewitz - there are conventional and unconventional ways of thinking about war - one convention succeeds another but the best strategists avoid the trap of all conventions.

If I may press him to offer a bit of his own unconventional thinking, how does Gentile recommend that we execute a enemy-centric COIN strategy given the conditions noted by J Pate, that the Taliban is part of the Pushtun population?

J Pate (not verified)

Fri, 07/24/2009 - 11:16am

Col Agoglia notes the complications of fighting an "enemy whos intentionally putting themselves in with civilians." But the problem is much worse than that: the Taliban are the civilians, they are primarily local people, citizens and natives of Afghanistan. Those who come from Pakistan are mainly the same people: the Pashtuns who were artificially divided from each other by Western powers. So alien soldiers from Western nations not speaking the language, not respecting or understanding the culture, primarily of the Christian religion are trying to force a local Muslim tribal population to bend to their will.

How would we react to the same thing being done inside the USA by a Muslim army that didn't speak our language or respect our culture? We know already: the American Revolution showed our intense desire and will power to control our own destiny despite the British speaking our language, sharing our culture, religion and in many cases being our relatives. How much more right do local Afghanistani citizens have to resist domination by outside alien forces than we that of the British?

gian p gentile (not verified)

Fri, 07/24/2009 - 11:00am

Based on the title of this article "Coin in Afghanistan requires new thinking," and based on the content of the article itself and quotes from it, there is no new thinking going on here at all.

It is the same principles of Coin that can be traced back to Galula, Thompson, FM 3-24, FM 3-07, Rupert Smiths "The Utility of Force," Surge talking Points, and even General McChrystal's newly released command guidance for Afghanistan. It may be right that these principles and adherence to them has brought about a New American Way of War and that they have eclipsed strategy for the Army in Afghanistan, I dont think so, but I may be wrong. In any case, there is nothing in any of this that reflects new thinking.

I disagree with the quote from the Colonel mentioned in the article that "Counterinsurgency is population-focused." It doesnt have to be, it can be enemy based but refocusing in that direction would require a Kuhnian-like paradigmatic shift in American Army in how it conceives of the idea of "counterinsurgency." And when I say enemy based I am not talking about doing Sherman's March to the Sea in the Korengal or asking American commanders to become the reincarnates of Tamerlane. But to accept the idea that the military focus of a counterinsurgency campaign can be against the enemy would mean to jettison the very foundations of population centric counterinsurgency that has been constructed over the past four years. This is a very hard thing to do with an Army that has been brought up on the idea of always "nesting" itself with higher headquarters.

Moreover, the Colonel in the article gets "conventional" war wrong. But so did the other Counterinsurgency experts of the past like Layautey, Galula, Thompson, Trinquier, and the rest. Even the father of the so-called "enemy-centric" approach to Coin, CE Callwell, he got conventional war wrong too. They have done this in order to set off the form of war that they were writing about, to show difference from it and from what they were and are doing. But the difference that they show ends up being caricatured in the extreme. For example in this article the Colonel states that conventional war is about being "enemy and terrain focused." Well, the grand master of "conventional war," Clausewitz would not have agreed with that statement: one can imagine him saying, "no, actually the nature of war involves terrain and fighting the enemy, but it is about more than that, it is about the political object." In that sense there is really no difference between Coin and Conventional, hybrid, whatever, except that Coin experts now and throughout modern history have tried to make it so in order to show difference.

To be fair to Callwell, Gulula, and the rest they probably needed to do this in order to explain things to their armies which very much were conventionally minded. But nowadays in the American Army there is no longer a need to do this because we are not conventionally minded anymore but the opposite; we are a counterinsurgency, wars-amongst-the-people, minded army. The problem though is one of extremes and the fact that this Counterinsurgency zeitgeist has definitely pushed us toward the Coin end. This is essentially a perversion of the American Way of War that has endured over time and it is one primarily, as historian Brian Linn has so cogently argued, one of adaptability, practicality, and utility. The ability to do Coin must be a part of the American Way of War, but it most certainly should not dominate it, sadly as it does now.

IntelTrooper (not verified)

Thu, 07/23/2009 - 10:36pm

Maybe I'm just in a bad mood today, but a couple things stick out to me:
<i>"This is different from conventional combat, which is terrain or enemy focused"</i>
Granted that is true in general, but when you're prevented from reaching a population due to your inability to traverse certain terrain types, you may start to feel different. Populations occupy terrain.
<i>"There is a lag time between resources, implementation, and effect," he explained. "Itll take some time, but I think were going in the right direction, definitely."</i>
You don't have "some time." You have about a year, if Secretary Gates and others are to be believed. And in my opinion, everyone has already had eight years to get this right.