Before the COINdinistas Start Spinning the UN Report...

By Derrick Crowe

You're going to hear a lot of crowing about the
reduction in NATO-caused civilian casualties in Afghanistan during the
last few months compared to the same time last year. (Read the full
report here
in PDF format.) This reduction took place in the context of a
massive spike in overall violence and a continually degrading security
environment in that country. Before the supporters of the
president's brutal, costly counterinsurgency strategy (referred to
without affection as "COINdinistas") get started this week, I want to
reiterate a
point I made a couple of months ago when the last round of silly,
disingenuous pro-counterinsurgency celebrations took place:

Selective Interpretation

COIN doctrine as interpreted by [COINdinistas] with the aid of the
stats [they] used asserts something like this: McChrystal and friends
reduce by 28 percent the number of civilians they kill, while the
Taliban increase the number they kill. The local population's animosity
builds toward the Taliban, triggering a shift in political support to
the U.S. and allies, a withdrawal of support for the Taliban and an
influx of intelligence to the counter-insurgents.

This interpretation, however, is a very academic exercise with major
blind spots as to the actual dynamic in Afghanistan and [and it's a
gross distortion of] the actual COIN doctrine described in the U.S.
Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual:

"Progress in building support for the [host nation]
government requires protecting the local populace. People who do now
believe they are secure from insurgent intimidation, coercion, and
reprisals will not risk overtly supporting COIN efforts. The populace
decides when it feels secure enough to support COIN efforts. (p. 179)"

"During any period of instability, people's primary interest is
physical security for themselves and their families. When [host nation]
forces fail to provide security or threaten the security of civilians,
the population is likely to seek security guarantees from insurgents,
militias, or other armed groups. This situation can feed support for an
insurgency. (p 98)"

"Counterinsurgents should not expect people to willingly provide
information if insurgents have the ability to violently intimidate
sources. (p. 120)"

Here's
Stanley McChrystal explicitly stating that COIN doctrine requires you
to protect the population from the insurgents.

Note that all of these statements deal with the importance not just
of the protection of civilians from killings by counterinsurgents, but the
protection of the people in general. Counterinsurgency doctrine
says that people aren't going to switch to your side if they think
they'll get killed for it, no matter how low you drop the rate at which
you cause civilian deaths. In other words, a drop in casualties caused
by U.S. and allied groups is not sufficient for the hoped-for dynamic
to take hold, according to COIN doctrine. It must be paired with an
increase in security from insurgent violence as well.

...

So, even if ... McChrystal and Co. were killing fewer civilians,
they still hadn't managed to increase security for civilians in
Afghanistan as measured by the total civilian deaths caused by the
parties to the conflict. ...Even if McChrystal proved he could drive
down civilian casualties when he puts his mind to it, he's also managed
to prove over the last year that he can't protect the population.

People who claim to actually believe in the efficacy of and the
necessity for actual counterinsurgency in Afghanistan need to start
screaming, right now, about what's going on in Afghanistan under General
McChrystal because their credibility is now unambiguously on the line.
...The problem is, though, that an honest reading of counterinsurgency
doctrine should have indicated that the system was already blinking red
in 2009, but for whatever reason people continued to sing the praises of
Saint Stanley McChrystal and took up gross distortions of COIN doctrine
to do so. Numerous prerequisites for success as articulated by COIN
doctrine remained absent and/or further degraded over 2009, including
host nation government legitimacy and security for the local population,
yet many writers focused on one particular statistic
(casualties caused by pro-government forces) because it let them tell
the story they wanted to tell.

If you see a person crowing about how the new U.N. reports shows
the "strategy is working" and we're on our way to victory, know that
you're looking at a disingenuous snake-oil salesman who's hoping you
can't read.