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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE LONG WAR - Year 8 - 2009
Counterinsurgency Field Manual: Afghanistan Edition by N C Fick & J A Nagl 
Counterinsurgency Field Manual: Afghanistan Edition By Nathaniel C. Fick, John A. Nagl January/February 2009 Two years ago, a controversial military manual rewrote U.S. strategy in Iraq. Now, the doctrine's simple, powerful - even radical - tenets must be applied to the far different and neglected conflict in Afghanistan. Plus, David Petraeus talks to FP about how to win a losing war. Scott Nelson/Getty ImagesFor the past five years, the fight in Afghanistan has been hobbled by strategic drift, conflicting tactics, and too few troops. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, got it right when he bluntly told the U.S. Congress in 2007, "In Iraq, we do what we must." Of America's other war, he said, "In Afghanistan, we do what we can." It is time this neglect is replaced with a more creative and aggressive strategy. U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is now headed by Gen. David Petraeus, the architect of the U.S. military's counterinsurgency strategy widely credited with pulling Iraq from the abyss. Many believe that, under Petraeus's direction, Afghanistan can similarly pull back from the brink of failure. Two years ago, General Petraeus oversaw the creation of a new counterinsurgency field manual for the U.S. military. Its release marked a definitive break with a losing strategy in Iraq and reflected a creeping realization in Washington: To avoid repeating the mistakes of the Vietnam War, the U.S. military would have to relearn and institutionalize that conflict's key lessons. At the time, the doctrine the manual laid out was enormously controversial, both inside and outside the Pentagon. It remains so today. Its key tenets are simple, but radical: Focus on protecting civilians over killing the enemy. Assume greater risk. Use minimum, not maximum force. For a military built on avoiding casualties with quick, decisive victories, many believe such precepts veer far too close to nation-building and other political tasks soldiers are ill-equipped to handle. Still others attack the philosophy as cynically justifying the United States' continued presence in Iraq - neocolonialism dressed up in PowerPoint. Either way, the manual's critics recognize a singular fact: The new counterinsurgency doctrine represents a near total rethinking of the way the United States should wage war. But such a rethinking has never been more necessary. Technological advances and demographic shifts point to the possibility of an increasingly disorderly world - what some military strategists are calling "an era of persistent irregular warfare." The United States' conventional military superiority has pushed its enemies inevitably toward insurgency to achieve their objectives. And in a multipolar world where small wars proliferate, there is reason to believe that this doctrine will shape not only the next phase of the fights in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the future of the U.S. military. The surge in Iraq has been a primary consequence of the new counterinsurgency doctrine's influence, and it has clearly succeeded in improving security there. The conventional wisdom about what to do in Afghanistan is now coalescing around two courses of action that mirror steps taken during the past 18 months in Iraq: a similar surge of more troops and a willingness to negotiate with at least some of the groups that oppose the coalition's presence. If it is true that a new plan is needed in Afghanistan, it is doubly true that Afghanistan is not Iraq. Conflating the two conflicts would be a dangerous oversimplification. The Iraq war has been mostly urban, largely sectarian, and contained within Iraq's borders. The Afghan war has been intrinsically rural, mostly confined to the Pashtun belt across the country's south and east, and inextricably linked to Pakistan. Because the natures of the conflicts are different, the strategies to fight them must be equally so. The very fact that Pakistan serves as a sanctuary for the Taliban and al Qaeda makes regional diplomacy far more necessary than it was in Iraq. Additional troops are certainly needed in Afghanistan, but a surge itself will not equal success. Two myths persistently hamper U.S. policy in Afghanistan. First is the notion that the notorious border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan is ungovernable. The area, whose terrain resembles the front range of the U.S. Rocky Mountains along a border roughly the distance from Washington to Albuquerque, New Mexico, is home to the international headquarters of al Qaeda as well as much of the Taliban insurgency. However, the absence of a Western-style central government there should not be misconstrued as an absence of governance. The Pashtun tribes along the border have a long history of well-developed religious, social, and tribal structures, and they have developed their own governance and methods of resolving disputes. Today's instability is not the continuation of some ancient condition; it is the direct result of decades of intentional dismantling of those traditional structures, leaving extremist groups to fill the vacuum. Re-empowering local leaders can help return the border region to an acceptable level of stability. Second, Afghans are not committed xenophobes, obsessed with driving out the coalition, as they did the British and the Soviets. Most Afghans are desperate to have the Taliban cleared from their villages, but they resent being exposed when forces are not left behind to hold what has been cleared. They also cannot understand why the coalition fails to provide the basic services they need. Afghans are not tired of the Western presence; they are frustrated with Western incompetence. On a recent helicopter flight above the razor-sharp ridges of the Afghan southeast, a U.S. general noted to one of us that, just as the United States had failed to conduct counterinsurgency in Iraq effectively until 2007, it had similarly failed in Afghanistan by focusing too much on the enemy and not enough on providing security for the Afghan people. It is almost too late. In the next phase of the Afghan war, the U.S. military must finally do what it has often failed to do in the past: follow some of the basic precepts of counterinsurgency, as detailed in the field manual, no matter how paradoxical they may appear. Paradox 1: Some of the best weapons do not shoot. 1-1. Afghanistan is one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world. Per capita GDP is $350, just one tenth of Iraq's. Life expectancy is 44 years. Nearly three quarters of the population is illiterate. The country has 50 percent more land than Iraq, but a fifth of the paved roads. Security is crucial, but it is development - enabled by responsible governance - that will secure a lasting peace. 1-2. Afghans' greatest concerns, according to polling by the Asia Foundation, are access to electricity, jobs, water, and education. Those who think the country is moving in the right direction can rightly cite instances of successful reconstruction efforts as the primary cause for optimism. For these reasons, security must not be seen simply as a necessary precondition for development efforts. Development often creates security by bolstering people's confidence in their government and providing a positive, tangible alternative to the Taliban. Take the National Solidarity Program. Under this initiative, villages elect a community council to oversee a development project chosen by village vote. Local people contribute a portion of the capital, labor, or materials, and allocated aid funds are distributed transparently. The results of this bottom-up process have been remarkable: Although the Taliban has burned hundreds of schools across Afghanistan, almost no schools built under this program have been destroyed, largely because the Taliban knows it would win no allies by destroying them. 1-3. Although all development is critical in this impoverished country, roads are the single most important path to success in Afghanistan. In Ghazni province last summer, one of us spoke with an Afghan road builder whose shirt was covered in dried blood. He'd been shot by the Taliban a day earlier for working with the coalition, but he was back the next morning with his paving crew because he thought that finishing that road was the best way to bolster security in his village. Indeed, the U.S. general who was critical of U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan pointed at Afghanistan's ring road from the window of his Black Hawk helicopter, and declared, "Where the road ends, the Taliban begins." Paradox 2: Sometimes the more you protect your force, the less secure you may be. 2-1. The U.S. military, designed to inflict overwhelming and disproportionate losses on the enemy, tends to equate victory with very few body bags. So does the American public. The new counterinsurgency doctrine upends this perceived immunity from casualties by demanding that manpower replace firepower. Soldiers in Afghanistan must get out among the people, building and staffing joint security stations with Afghan security forces. That is the only way to disconnect the enemy from the civilians. Persistent presence - living among the population in small groups, staying in villages overnight for months at a time - is dangerous, and it will mean more casualties, but it's the only way to protect the population effectively. And it will make U.S. troops more secure in the long run. 2-2. This imperative to get out among the people extends to U.S. civilians as well. U.S. Embassy staff are almost completely forbidden from moving around Kabul on their own. Diplomacy is, of course, about relationships, and rules that discourage relationships fundamentally limit the ability of American diplomats to do their jobs. The mission in Afghanistan is to stabilize the country, not to secure the embassy. 2-3. Counterinsurgency strategy suggests that victory requires 20 to 25 counterinsurgents for every 1,000 residents. Current troop strength in Afghanistan, including Afghan forces, are about a third of that level. The stark alternatives are to deploy more troops or to change the mission. Paradox 3: The hosts doing something tolerably is often better than foreigners doing it well. 3-1. The United States and its allies cannot remain in Afghanistan indefinitely. Building a capable Afghan security force and a credible Afghan government is the fastest, most responsible exit strategy. U.S. efforts so far have been mixed. An army can only be as good as its government, and the government of President Hamid Karzai has been crippled by corruption and connections to narcotrafficking. His recent decision to replace the much-reviled minister of the interior is a sign that persistent U.S. complaints about poor governance might be getting through. National elections scheduled for this year provide an incentive for the Afghan government to continue to improve, and serve as a major point of leverage for U.S. policy. 3-2. At the end of the day, the coalition's performance is less important than how well the Afghans themselves perform. Every coalition decision and every operation should be guided by two questions: Does this further the legitimacy of the Afghan government? And is that government deserving of our support? As tribal elders in Ghazni province recently said, they feel "slapped on one cheek by the government, and on the other cheek by the Taliban." The United States can and should take the lead in training Afghan soldiers and bureaucrats to be more effective, but even this task is not being given the commitment it deserves. Currently, the U.S. teams advising the Afghan Army are staffed at just half their authorized strength; the police mentor teams are manned at barely a third of the necessary staff. The low priority assigned to this keystone of any successful counterinsurgency strategy is an unacceptable flaw of U.S. policy to date. Paradox 4: Sometimes the more force is used, the less effective it is. 4-1. In 2005, the coalition conducted 176 close air support missions (in which aircraft conduct bombing or strafing in support of ground troops) in Afghanistan. In 2007, it completed 3,572 such missions. Bombs - even "smart" bombs - are blunt instruments, and they inevitably kill people other than their intended targets. Each civilian death at the hands of the coalition further diminishes the finite amount of goodwill toward the United States among the Afghan people. Each civilian death undermines the legitimacy of the Afghan government the United States seeks to support. Each civilian death, when refracted through the Taliban's propaganda campaign, strengthens the narrative of America's enemies. 4-2. If military units commit to using less force, then it is imperative that others on the battlefield, particularly civilian security contractors, do the same. One of us had a nightmarish experience recently while riding in a convoy protected by Afghan security contractors on a dark highway near Jalalabad. We repeatedly hurtled through national police checkpoints without stopping and finally crashed into a stopped minibus filled with people. The momentum of our heavily armored SUV threw the bus off the roadway, but the guards refused our orders to stop and help, citing fears of ambush. Afghan civilians do not distinguish between excessive force used by soldiers and excessive force used by contractors. In a war where perception creates reality, we all suffer the consequences. Paradox 5: Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction. 5-1. Cross-border raids into Pakistan to pursue insurgents have strained U.S. relations with Pakistan at this critical juncture in the Afghan campaign. Pakistan is, of course, inextricably connected to the Afghan insurgency. The Pashtun belt, as the border area between the two countries is known, constitutes the real battleground in this war. Counterinsurgency operations in Pakistan, therefore, are a necessary component of any strategy in Afghanistan. Without Pakistani support, however, unilateral cross-border raids will create more blowback than they are worth. 5-2. A better strategy for persuading Pakistan to act as an ally - and not a spoiler - in Afghanistan involves giving up the short-term tactical gains of such raids in favor of the regional diplomacy necessary to broaden and deepen the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. Even after Islamist extremists bombed the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad in September in an attempt to assassinate the new civilian leadership of Pakistan, the Pakistani Army remains more focused on the perceived threat from India than on the actual threat from inside its own country's borders. U.S. and international efforts to broker confidence-building measures between India and Pakistan are likely to have a far greater impact on Pakistani counterinsurgency efforts than any number of unilateral U.S. raids. 5-3. More U.S. troops are absolutely necessary to turn the tide in Afghanistan, but American troops are a short-term answer to a lasting set of problems. Supporting Afghan and Pakistani governments that can meet the needs of their own people - including security - must be the long-term solution. The paradoxes of counterinsurgency detailed here, counterintuitive though they may be, provide the best guideposts on the rocky trail toward success. It will not be the death or capture of every last enemy fighter that wins this war, but creating a position of strength from which to negotiate a lasting political solution to a cycle of conflict with no other end in sight. Nathaniel C. Fick, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, served as a U.S. Marine infantry officer in Afghanistan and Iraq. John A. Nagl, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, served as a U.S. Army officer in Iraq and helped write The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. Counterinsurgency Field Manual: Afghanistan Edition The FP Interview with Gen. David H. Petraeus As America's most famous warrior-scholar looks to export his Big Ideas about fighting wars from Iraq to the arguably even tougher battlefield of Afghanistan, FP's executive editor, Susan Glasser, spoke with him in the Pentagon days after he took over his new command. Photo: Travis DaubGen. David Petraeus: In looking at which lessons learned in Iraq might be applicable in Afghanistan, it is important to remember a key principle of counterinsurgency operations: Every case is unique. That is certainly true of Afghanistan (just as it was true, of course, in Iraq). While general concepts that proved important in Iraq may be applicable in Afghanistan - concepts such as the importance of securing and serving the population and the necessity of living among the people to secure them - the application of those 'big ideas' has to be adapted to Afghanistan. The 'operationalization' will inevitably be different, as Afghanistan has a very different history and very different 'muscle memory' in terms of central governance (or lack thereof). It also lacks the natural resources that Iraq has and is more rural. It has very different (and quite extreme) terrain and weather. And it has a smaller amount of educated human capital, due to higher rates of illiteracy, as well as substantial unemployment, an economy whose biggest cash export is illegal, and significant challenges of corruption. Finally, it lacks sufficient levels of basic services like electricity, drinking water, and education - though there has been progress in a number of these areas and many others since 2001. One cannot adequately address the challenges in Afghanistan without adding Pakistan into the equation. In fact, those seeking to help Afghanistan and Pakistan need to widen the aperture even farther, to encompass at least the Central Asian states, India, Iran, and even China and Russia. FP: Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said that U.S. efforts in Afghanistan were really on the verge of failure. What's your incoming assessment? DP: I told [then] Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in September 2005 that Afghanistan would be the longest campaign in the so-called 'long war.' That judgment was based on an assessment I conducted in Afghanistan on my way home from my second tour in Iraq. And having been back to Afghanistan twice in recent months, I still see it that way. Progress there will require a sustained, substantial commitment. That commitment needs to be extended to Pakistan as well, though Pakistan does have large, well-developed security institutions and its leaders are determined to employ their own forces in dealing with the significant extremist challenges that threaten their country. FP: I was rereading an account of an Afghan veteran from Soviet operations there. After every retaliatory strike, he said, 'Perhaps one mujahideen was killed. The rest were innocent. The survivors hated us and lived with only one idea - revenge.' Clearly [U.S.] engagement in Afghanistan didn't start out in the same way as the Soviets' did, but one of the questions is whether all these occupations wind up similarly after seven years. DP: A number of people have pointed out the substantial differences between the character of Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and that of the coalition forces in Afghanistan, especially in the circumstances that led to the respective involvement, as well as in the relative conduct, of the forces there. Foremost among the differences have been the coalition's objectives: not just the desire to help the Afghans establish security and preclude establishment of extremist safe havens, but also to support economic development, democratic institutions, the rule of law, infrastructure, and education. To be sure, the coalition faces some of the same challenges that any of the previous forces in Afghanistan have faced: the same extreme terrain and weather, tribal elements that pride themselves on fighting, lack of infrastructure, and so on. In such a situation, it is hugely important to be seen as serving the population, in addition to securing it. And that is why we're conducting counterinsurgency operations, as opposed to merely counterterrorism operations. FP: Tell me where you see lessons from Iraq that might not apply in Afghanistan, and things that you will export. DP: We cannot just take the tactics, techniques, and procedures that worked in Iraq and employ them in Afghanistan. How, for example, do you communicate with the Afghan people? The answer: very differently than the way you communicate with the Iraqi people, given the much lower number of televisions and a rate of illiteracy in the Afghan provinces that runs as high as 70 to 80 percent. Outside Kabul and other big Afghan cities, Afghans don't watch much television; they don't have televisions. In Iraq, one flies over fairly remote areas and still sees satellite dishes on many roofs. In Afghanistan, you not only won't see satellite dishes; you also won't see electrical lines, and you may not even find a radio. Moreover, you can't achieve the same effect with leaflets or local newspapers because many Afghans can't read them. So, how do you communicate with them? The answer is, through tribal elders, via hand-crank radios receiving transmissions from local radio stations, through shura councils, and so on. FP: What people most want to know, of course, is: Where does this end? The counterinsurgency principles, your own statements in the past, have focused on the idea that such wars end with political solutions - you don't kill your way out of it. DP: One of the concepts we embraced in Iraq was recognition that you can't kill or capture your way out of a complex, industrial-strength insurgency. The challenge in Afghanistan, as it was in Iraq, is to figure out how to reduce substantially the numbers of those who have to be killed or captured. This includes creating the conditions in which one can have successful reconciliation with some of the elements fighting us. Progress in reconciliation is most likely when you are in a position of strength and when there are persuasive reasons for groups to shift from being part of the problem to becoming part of the solution. In Iraq, that was aided by gradual recognition that al Qaeda brought nothing but indiscriminate violence, oppressive practices, and an extremist ideology to which the people really didn't subscribe. Beyond that, incentives were created to persuade the insurgents that it made more sense to support the new Iraq. The challenge in Afghanistan, of course, is figuring out how to create the conditions that enable reconciliation, recognizing that these likely will differ somewhat from those created in Iraq. FP: Do you think that does involve speaking with warlords, people like [Gulbuddin] Hekmatyar, who up to now have been absolute non-starters? DP: Any such outreach has to be an Afghan initiative, not the coalition's. In Iraq, frankly, it was necessary for the coalition to take the lead in some areas where there was no Iraqi government or security presence. FP: Do you think there is something qualitatively or quantitatively new and different about the insurgencies that U.S. forces have encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan? DP: We looked at this issue closely when we were drafting the counterinsurgency manual. And we concluded that some aspects of contemporary extremist tactics are, indeed, new. If you look, as we did, at what [French military officer] David Galula faced in Algeria, you find, obviously, that he and his colleagues did not have to deal with a transnational extremist network enabled by access to the Internet. Today, extremist media cells recruit, exhort, train, share expertise, and generate resources in cyberspace. The incidence of very lethal suicide bombers and massive car bombs is vastly higher today. It seems as if suicide car bombs have become the precision-guided munition of modern insurgents and extremists. And while there has been a religious component in many insurgencies, the extremist nature of the particular enemy we face seems unprecedented in recent memory. FP: The counterinsurgency manual, an object of huge praise, is seen as a key moment in the rethink that put the war in Iraq on a different course. But it has not been uncontroversial. There are people on the left who see it as a form of neocolonialism; conservatives are skeptical of anything they see as nation-building, while others believe that by organizing to fight this kind of war, the United States risks not being prepared for a more conventional conflict in the future. How much of an intellectual debate have these principles stirred up? What do you say to these critics? DP: It's important to recognize the most important overarching doctrinal concept that our Army, in particular, has adopted - the concept of 'full spectrum operations.' This concept holds that all military operations are some mix of offensive, defensive, and stability and support operations. In other words, you've always got to be thinking not just about the conventional forms of combat - offensive and defensive operations - but also about the stability and support component. Otherwise, successes in conventional combat may be undermined by unpreparedness for the operations often required in their wake. The debate about this has been a healthy one, but we have to be wary of arguments that imply we have to choose - or should choose - between either stability-operations-focused or conventional-combat-focused training and forces. It is not only possible to be prepared for some mix; it is necessary. A wonderful essay that I read as a graduate student captures the essence of my view on this. The essay discussed the different schools of international relations theory, and it concluded that 'the truth is not to be found in any one of these schools of thought, but rather in the debate among them.' That is probably the case in this particular discussion. We would do well to avoid notions that we can pick and choose the kinds of wars in which we want to be involved and prepare only for them. FP: You said [that] even in 2005 when you were in Afghanistan, you reported to Secretary Rumsfeld that this could be the longest part of the long war. DP: I didn't say it could be. I said it would be. My assessment was that Afghanistan was going to be the longest campaign of the long war. And I think that assessment has been confirmed by events in Afghanistan in recent months. FP: Just how long did you have in mind? DP: Those are predictions one doesn't hazard. |