In my last two posts in this series, I discussed two deep challenges to a planned troop escalation for counterinsurgency purposes: the enormous number of troops needed and the lack of a legitimate host government. In this final post in the series, we'll deal with a dangerous and contradictory facet of the emerging strategy: arming local militias.
From the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual:
"The [counterinsurgency] doctrine explains why increased tactical risks can reduce strategic risk for U.S. forces. ...In COIN, the counterinsurgent assumes more of the immediate costs of ultimate victory." p. xviii
"Will Americans supply greater concentrations of forces, accept higher casualties, fund serious nation-building, and stay many long years to conduct counterinsurgency by the book? If we reject the manual and take the nihilistic military route, we will become the enemy we fight." p. xxxviii-xxxix
This is the rationale for more troops: not to deploy more deadly force, per se, but to position more forces among the population and have them accept lower levels of force protection and higher thresholds for triggering the use of 'defensive' violence, accepting greater short term tactical risk for long-term strategic gain. The counterinsurgent, in this doctrine, accepts greater risk of injury and death while living among the local population. They get to know the population, and the population becomes not only acquainted with them but with their restraint in the face of provocation. They thus build stronger bonds with the community, reap the resulting better intelligence, and can be more precise when targeting the insurgents--being more sure that those they target are insurgents after all.
This underlying principle--accepting short-term risks to personal safety in the face of violence for the purpose of long-term strategic gain oddly makes of counterinsurgency strategy a sort of backsliding cousin to Gandhian nonviolence. (I could explore, though, the very bright line distinction between the two and the way in which that even judicious use of force undermines the principles counterinsurgency strategy seeks to utilize, but I want to stay on point...). Even if you're committed to a life of nonviolence (as I am), this kind of attitude in the military is certainly a positive development.
However.
The troop increase is only one piece of the proposed strategy, and one should not assume that simply because "counterinsurgency" is the buzzword surrounding a request for more troops that any new troops in theater will be used in ways consistent with the spirit of counterinsurgency doctrine. For example, if the new troops are used to just continue current tactics in larger numbers--like, for instance, the rage-inducing, insurgency-driving night home raids--we'll find out very quickly that yes, there are worse things than the status quo circa December 2008.
But worse, the other planks of the proposed strategy flatly contradict the principles of counterinsurgency being used to justify more troops in theater. Case in point: arming local militias. This is one of the "lessons learned" from Iraq that the military would like to apply to Afghanistan. But Iraq voices have posed serious questions about the long-term effect of arming local militias. And, without intending to do so, they phrased it almost precisely in terms of the principles of counterinsurgency.
In his book, No End in Sight, Charles Ferguson relayed his former Kurdish bodyguard's (and current New York Times freelance journalist) Warzer Jaff's concerns:
Warzer Jaff...argued that the United States was purchasing short-term safety for American troops by further destabilizing the long-term situation.
Warzer Jaff: ...They [the Americans] armed and they're financially supporting three hundred people in Adhamiya and other sunni areas also. But I think that policy is not going to be a good thing for the Iraqis and the Iraqi government, because I think the Americans, they're not doing that to stabilize Iraq. I think mostly they're doing that to make the American losses in Iraq low, to make attacks on Americans be low, so that the Americans, they don't read every day in the news that several American soldiers were killed...
Charles Ferguson: And so when the Americans withdraw, the Iraqi government will be even weaker and there will be even more conflict between the various militia groups?
Warzer Jaff: Correct.
--No End in Sight, p. 472-474
Note the way Ferguson and Jaff phrase the problem: by arming local militias, the U.S. is "purchasing short-term safety for American troops by further destabilizing the long-term situation." This strategy runs exactly counter to COIN in at least two ways: it weakens the hand of the host nation vs. the local militias (remember, counterinsurgency strategy needs a legitimate host nation government providing security for the population), and it puts danger away from our troops and back into the laps of the civilian population.
Afghan voices, who have a long experience with warring militia groups, warn of the bad consequences of this aspect of the proposed U.S. strategy in almost exactly the same terms as Ferguson and Jaff. From WAPO:
A second dilemma facing U.S. planners is whether to shore up a weak and corrupt central government or seek help in the volatile and murky arena of local and tribal politics. The regime in Kabul wields little authority in many rural areas, so U.S. military officials hope to reach out directly to traditional and tribal leaders. They plan to propose the creation of local defense committees similar to the "Awakening" groups used in Iraq.
But the idea of raising local defense forces has aroused concern among foreign experts and Afghan citizens, who warn it could stir up old ethnic and tribal hostilities; re-arm a factionalized populace the United Nations just spent millions to disarm; and raise the specter of previous experiments by the pro-Soviet government of the 1980s and other regimes that led to fratricidal violence.
"Creating local militias would be a disaster," said Shukria Barakzai, a member of parliament from Kabul. "Who can guarantee they won't go to war? It would undermine central authority, civilian life would be under threat and nobody would be able to control them."
Arming local militias in Iraq flatly contradicted principles of counterinsurgency strategy. It had the effect of depressing attacks in the short term while sacrificing long-term stability. It was a strategy designed, in my view, with 2008 elections in mind--to take Iraq out of the headlines in the short term, and long-term consequences be damned. Repeating this tactic in Afghanistan will cause even more severe long-term difficulties, since there are ready-made fraction lines among groups far deeper and among factions with far more recent experience fighting each other than in Iraq. Going through with arming the local militias would signal that the public rationale for more troops--to wage a more successful counterinsurgency--was really just clever public relations for an escalation policy on autopilot.
The idea of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan is a myth. We plan to add more troops, but not enough to meet COIN minimum force levels. We plan to send them as part of a strategy that relies on the legitimacy of a host nation government, but no legitimate host nation government exists. We plan to send them for a strategy that requires that we take short-term tactical risk in exchange for long term strategic gain, and then tack on a policy of arming local militias that does just the opposite.
In short, the U.S. government is about to knowingly send insufficient numbers of troops, as defined by their own doctrine, into the graveyard of empires, and it is setting them up for failure. Shame, and shame on us if we're silent while they do it.
Often, escalation proponents dodge these issues with a rhetorical question: "I know what you're against...but what are you for? What's your solution?" The implication is that if you don't have a plug-and-play strategy ready, you're not credible. Further, this rhetorical question, posed at various times by critics during Get Afghanistan Right Week, rests on the flawed premise that not escalating is not an alternative.
When a person says, "Don't drink and drive," legitimate responses do not include, "Well, what's your alternative???" Not driving while drunk is the alternative, and if you'd get in a car after a fifth of whiskey because a concerned friend didn't have a way for you to drive home, well, you're kind of an idiot. The way of thinking that says "do something, no matter what" assumes that anything is better than the status quo. Quick reminder, folks: not attacking Iraq was a better idea, by far, than attacking Iraq. Kinda makes you wish we'd shown just a little more respect for the status quo, doesn't it?
As our incoming president considers his options in Afghanistan, he should consider every single other option besides upping our troop presence. During this process, he should pay special attention to the Afghans who will have to live with the consequences of his policies.
One skeptic is Roshanak Wardak, a medical doctor and legislator from Wardak province, less than an hour's drive south of Kabul. Overrun by Taliban fighters in the past year, the province has been targeted for an early deployment of the incoming U.S. troops and for a pilot project in the so-called community guard program. Wardak said many of her constituents oppose both plans.
"In my province, people are definitely suffering from the Taliban, but they are also very upset about the American troops coming in or trying to start militias," she said. "The Russians made those self-defense groups and set brother against brother. Now, everyone has a cousin or a nephew who has joined the Taliban. The elders are ready to let their sons protect their schools or markets, but they will never give them to fight the Taliban."
The Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan has its own ideas:
RAWA believes that the United Nations has not been able to address the problem properly. If the UN can send a large number of peace-keeping forces to places like Cambodia and Bosnia, why should it not be adopting a similar policy in Afghanistan? It is all the more important to have large peace-keeping forces in Afghanistan where most fundamentalist groups owe their power to the support of foreign countries. It is very unfortunate that UN activities are limited only to negotiating with fundamentalists, and it is very apparent that the UN is not willing to take any steps that would annoy them. We advocate that the UN view Afghanistan as the homeland of the Afghan people, and not as the property of a few armed militia. The UN should take into account the will of the people of Afghanistan and must not proceed according to the whims of the fundamentalists.
...
RAWA sees the presence and activities of armed fundamentalist bands as the root cause of the current disaster in Afghanistan. Therefore, we believe that the only way to restore stability and find a solution to the Afghan crisis is by fully disarming all the armed groups and their accomplices. This is possible only by a peace-keeping force not including troops from countries that have involved themselves in the Afghan infighting and that might support any bandit groups. The same peace-keeping force should supervise the convening of the Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly) and the formation of a government based on democratic values and comprised of neutral personalities. This government should be assigned the task of holding free and fair elections within a period not exceeding one year. It is only upon the completion of this task and the establishment of a national security force free from the clutches of fundamentalists that the job of peace keeping would be over.
Say what you want about these skeptics, but remember this: it's their country, their children, who will live with the consequence of our actions. Alternatives to escalation exist. The new administration should bend their considerable talent and intellect to finding them, implementing them, and then getting our people home.