Stasis is losing

By Dave Anderson:

The US plan for the 2010 campaign season in Afghanistan was simple.  Beat up on the Pashtun aligned Taliban movement in Afghanistan by launching large scale clearing missions in the Pashtun heartland by the new surge brigades.  After that, drop in governments in multiple boxes, unpack those boxes, and break the support of the Taliban and other anti-government fighters from the general population by providing public goods including security that anti-government fighters can not credibly promise.  The maximally achievable end-state in this process is a legitimate Afghan government with a monopoly of force in larger areas of the Pashtun south.  That government with its enhanced legitimacy would need to rely less on foreign forces which will draw down next year.  The minimally desirable and achievable end-state is the large scale clearing missions inflict sufficient casualties on the Taliban fighters and their supporters that they become willing to cut less favorable deals. 

Those goals do not look like they will be achieved.  The large clearing operation in Marjah is a bleeding ulcer.  The ultimate clearing operation in Khandahar city is being delayed again because the local elites don't want the Kabul government interfering with their region.  Anti-government fighters are also effectively reacting to the US doctrine of clear-hold-build.  They are clearing out of regions before main-force units can run them over in firepower heavy fights, but re-infilitrating once the clearing operations are completed so the holding and building operations can never get started effectively. 

In this counter-insurgency fight with the political, military and economic constraints the United States and the rest of NATO bear, stasis is defeat of maximal goals, and often a defeat of the lesser goals as well.  Time is on the side of the home team, which in this case is the Taliban and other Pashtun militia groups.  They know they will be in Afghanistan in three years with vital interests there.  Foreign fighters may still be there but they know that they are fighting for secondary or tertiary interests. 

When stasis means defeat for the foreign forces of the US and NATO, locals are working towards achieving their best positions to start the jockeying as the West's influence and forces draw down over the next eighteen months.  The Guardian reports that President Karzai is looking after his interests in cutting a deal with the relevant, long term actors, including Pakistan and India instead of carrying out the wishes of the US and his other major funders. 

President Hamid Karzai has lost faith in the US strategy in Afghanistan and is increasingly looking to Pakistan to end the insurgency, according to those close to Afghanistan's former head of intelligence services...

Privately Saleh has told aides he believes Karzai's approach is dangerously out of step with the strategy of his western backers. "There came a time when [Karzai] lost his confidence in the capability of the coalition or even his own government [to protect] this country," a key aide told the Guardian....

Local actors and local interests will dominate unless the US and NATO are able to achieve smashing victories in the next six months.  Those types of victories are highly improbable, so we should expect to see local deals being cut or a CIA sponsored coup to allow the US public to be sold a need to "reset" the timeline with our new best friend in Kabul.