Legitimacy and local recruitment

By Dave Anderson:

The key to the Obama strategy is for the Afghan national security forces to stand up so that the US and ISAF can stand down. Let's embark upon an interesting little counterfactual from the last time there was significant civil strife in the United States to see where there might be at least one problem with this strategy.

It is 1965 and the white South is actively opposing civil rights and integration efforts. Federal troops have been called in numerous times to enforce court orders. President Johnson has decided that several counties in Mississippi are effectively in states of rebellion and the Mississippi National Guard's loyalty is questionable if called upon to enforce orders that most of its officers and NCOs personally oppose. President Kennedy decides to federalize National Guard units from other states to enforce desegration orders in the South. (yes, I know I am messing up history here, and I am questionable on the law, but this is a counter-factual).

The following week, a National Guard infantry battalion from Boston is in Jackson. It is 98% Irish Catholic. The week after that, a battalion from Brooklyn which is half Italian and half Jewish is in Tupelo. The week after that, a battalion from Pittsburgh is in Gulfport.

Should there be any problems? After all, these battalions are American troops on American soil and the soldiers all speak the same language and share an emerging mass culture.

Those security units would face the same problem. None of them would have local legitimacy nor knowledge of the relevant social mileau. Even though their uniforms are the same as the Mississippi National Guard with the same flag patch on the shoulder, they would be considered "foreigners" or at least "Damn Yankee carpetbaggers..." and the security problem would not be greatly improved as the local elites would have no vested interest in working with the outsiders who are trying to impose their own agenda....

The Afghan National Army is a volunteer force. It is one participant in a civil war. It is on the side that is primarily made up of Tajiks, Hazera, Uzbeks and some Pashtuns. The primary other participants is a broad array of Pashtun groups. The ANA is backed by foreigners and its goal is to reduce Pashtun primacy and impose a moderately strong central government.

Expanding the ANA by expanding Tajik and Uzbek recruitment would be very similiar to sending the Massachusetts and New York National Guard to Mississippi during the 60s. It would expand the numbers and may do some good in the short term, but the local legitimacy of collaborators and allies would be diminished. The question for the ANA is how to recruit Pashtuns and split the insurgencies from the "local" and "accidental guerrillas" who are fighting for issues that are salient only within a limited geographic and political scope and those fighting for much larger causes and scopes.