by Major General Nick Carter, British Army
Download the Full Article: 800 Words on the Last Year in Afghanistan
The last year has seen significant change in southern Afghanistan. An uplift of over 20,000 US troops, and more importantly, a huge increase in Afghan security forces has more than doubled the number of forces in Helmand and Kandahar. When I arrived in southern Afghanistan last October there was one weak Afghan Army brigade in Helmand and one in Kandahar, the original capital of Afghanistan. When I left a year later these had increased to nearly six. The Afghan Police has also been uplifted by 30%. These reinforcements have made possible the disposition of our forces to be realigned so that our counter insurgency strategy can focus on protecting the population.
Download the Full Article: 800 Words on the Last Year in Afghanistan
Major General Nick Carter was ISAF Regional Commander South until November 2010. He assumed command of 6th United Kingdom Division in January 2009 and was responsible for the preparation and training of the Task Forces deploying on Operation Herrick. The Division then became a CJTF and assumed responsibility for RC-South in November 0f 2009
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I had two thoughts as I read this article.
#1: This quote at the end: "Next summer will be the time to judge it. For this is when the insurgency traditionally goes on the offensive, and if it is markedly better than last summer, we can then be sure that our approach is working."
If "it" refers to our progress, then this sounds too close to what we've been doing every year since 2006: waiting until the fighting season to see if what we did the last year is working. Too short-term in my opinion, and allows most everyone to get out of accountability since they rotate out before that time comes.
If "it" refers to the insurgency, then that mirrors a lot of the "if things get worse, we are doing the right things" language and seems to make a mockery of our metrics.
I've become more and more surprised at how much we rely on metrics- after having seemingly learned the limits of using numbers to measure progress in conflict a la MacNamara's whiz kids in Vietnam. This follows the line of thinking that if violence goes down we are winning and if violence goes up we are winning (either way, we are "winning").
#2: This over-emphasis on the positive reminds me of what was coming out of Vietnam right before Tet and has come out of Afghanistan since 2002: "the enemy is on the ropes". As new leaders who came in this past summer start to brief their closing-in-on 6 month progress, things seem very cheery from the briefing rooms of the headquarters.
There's no doubt great things have been done at the tactical level in the past year. At the "high operational" level, headquarters have been filled out, Afghan institutions founded, numbers of ANSF expanded impressively, and enough information produced to make one wonder if the "Information Dominance Cell" has become the "Dominated by Information Cell". It may well mean we are going towards a path of greater stability and thus governance and development will shortly follow. But if things look bleak next summer, how many more of these rosy reports will populations back home tolerate? And how many more representative bodies will keep the money flowing?
Grant Martin
MAJ, US Army
NTM-A/CSTC-A
The above comments are the authors own and do not reflect the position of the US Army, NTM-A/CSTC-A, DoD, or ISAF.
Grant,
I appreciate your comments, as I take them in the context of your other posts. I won't argue with them, they have tremendous validity.
I will however proudly stand up to defend "General Nick" in any audiance. It was my tremendous privelege to serve as the SOCOORD/SOPLE (we evoled from US to NATO terms on my watch) for Regional Command-South and work closely with this remarkable officer for the first half of his tour. I do not grant praise lightly, but General Nick Carter is not only a first-rate leader, he is also a tremendous person; and he truly does understand insurgency far better than the vast majority of his peers at the NATO flag level.
No one appreciated better than he did the impossibility of the task he had been given. But he took the forces he had avialable, and the constraints of the tactics he was told to employ, and shaped and implemented extremely well within those constraints.
Are the results in Marjah enduring? Hardly. Will efforts in Kandahar defeat the Taliban influnce among their base supporters? Not likely. But he treated Afghan officials with due respect, be they civilian or military; while at the same time holding them to task to PERFORM. He also made it one of his highest priorities to attempt to understand and tear down the complex systems of patronage-driven exclusion that denies virtaully half of the populace access to influence government or to participate in economic oppourtunity.
That he offers a mere 800 words as his closing thoughts is appropriate. I encourage him "in a dull moment" to write the book that tells the full story as well, as it is a story worth telling.
De Oppresso Liber,
Bob
Bob-
No issues with your points at all. In fact, the closer one gets to the ground that I've found, the more one can't help but be proud of the progress and tactical success of our forces and the Afghan forces.
I guess I just have a little more doubt that our tactical success can be turned into lasting stability. I think the true test of things will be at the earliest in 2016- two years after we've transitioned lead to the Afghans. Up until then I think we should ignore most metrics, positive and negative trends, and concentrate on supporting the Afghans in building something they can sustain with reasonable future Intl. Community funding.
My main problem today is that I don't see us ignoring short-term metrics, I don't see us attempting to help the Afghans (as opposed to lead them), and lastly- I don't see us building something they can (or will want to) sustain.
- Grant