By Steve Hynd
A report in the London Times yesterday pointed out that General McChrystal isn't the only one taking a leaf out of FM 3-24 in Afghanistan.
[The Taliban] have studied Western counter-insurgency tactics that emphasise defending the population and winning over hearts and minds � the very change in approach adopted recently by US forces. This summer, the Taleban produced a 13-page �code of conduct� ordering fighters to avoid civilian casualties where possible and abstain from the summary executions that lost them so much popularity in the past.
With the Afghan Government incapable and often uninterested in providing even basic services in rural areas, the Taleban have stepped into the breach, copying the successful �bombs and charity� approach pioneered by Hezbollah and Hamas.
David Kilcullen, the Australian counter-insurgency expert who advised the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, warned that the Taleban�s shadow government � calling itself the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan � is providing a parallel system of courts, clinics and policing. They even have an ombudsman�s office near Kandahar, where people can complain about excesses by Taleban commanders. �Sometimes they fire or even execute Taleban commanders for breaking the code of conduct,� he said. �A government that is losing to [an insurgency] isn�t being out-fought, it is being out-governed .�
It's all too easy to forget that counter-insurgency lies, in large part, in being better at many of the elements that support an insurgency than the insurgents are. In Afghanistan, the Taliban have created legitimacy by their actions in governance as much or more than they have frightened people into aquiesence by their actions under arms. The Afghan government and it's Western allies, on the other hand, have failed to govern and create legitimacy despite a massive armed presence that has caused almost as many civilian deaths as the insurgents have. There's little prospect, following the poison pill of the presidential election, of that changing.
COIN doctrine is explicit: the governing body that creates legitimacy and support among the population wins war.
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