Analyzing The Inevitable

By Steve Hynd

I promised readers a breakdown of McCrystal's Afghanistan report [PDF] today, but there's been so much good (and bad) stuff written about it this morning that I'm as well outsourcing it rather than go over the same ground.

Spencer Ackerman has a good breakdown of the report from a fairly sympathetic viewpoint.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal�s strategy review says that the Afghanistan war needs to be properly resourced. But there are so, so, so many elements within it that place that statement within a subordinate context. For instance: �Additional resources are required, but focusing on force or resource requirements misses the point entirely.� And: �Resourcing communicates commitment, but we must also balance force levels to enable effective [Afghan force] partnering and provide population security, while avoiding perceptions of coalition dominance.� And: �We cannot succeed simply by trying harder; ISAF must now adopt a fundamentally new approach� in addition to a proper level of resourcing.�

That approach is familiar to anyone who read McChrystal�s counterinsurgency guidance or the �metrics� he set out with Ambassador Karl Eikenberry. Protect the population. Give the population material reasons to support the Afghan government and NATO. �Prioritize responsive and accountable governance,� which appears like a pipe dream now that Hamid Karzai looks to have stolen an election. Reorganize the NATO command to better fit these missions. Reverse the Taliban�s momentum in the next year � or, he doesn�t say explicitly, mitigate failure.

Meanwhile, Joshua Foust puts his finger right on the major problem.

it�s getting increasingly difficult to tell the difference between reviews like this and Taliban propaganda. That is, we are all, insurgent and counterinsurgent alike, in agreement that �the rampant corruption in the surrogate Kabul administration, the embezzlement, drug trafficking, the existence of mafia networks, the tyranny and high-handedness of the warlords� (in the words of Mullah Omar) are a game-ending problem. Only the Taliban�s solution is to set up effective governance institutions, while ours, according to the McChrystal report, is to send in more troops.

As Michael Cohen writes: "if the Afghan government is riddled with corruption and ISAF doesn't understand how to prosecute a counter-insurgency strategy . . . why exactly are we prosecuting a counter-insurgency strategy"? Michael also touches on one of my own worries - that the U.S. and its allies are great at writing about COIN but terrible about putting paper theory into practise.

McChrystal is arguing for a wholesale change in military culture not just among US troops, but among all the members of the ISAF coalition. Why does he think this is realistic or even achievable? This seems particularly relevant when one considers that domestic support in NATO countries for the current mission is declining precipitously. It's one thing to counsel this for the US Army, but McChrystal is pushing for a multi-national change in culture and military tactics.

Wouldn't it make more sense, not to change the military culture so dramatically, but to work with what you have? I suppose on some level I applaud McChrystal's ambition, but I'm just not sure why he thinks ISAF can achieve the goal he has laid out.

I've a lot of sympathy with Joshua Foust's call for dealing with "Afghanistan on its own terms" though - we really do need to stop talking, Friedman-like, as if every Afghan was a child who can be bribed with shiny toys and candy to act against what they see as their own interests. But I disagree that anti-occupation advocates are refusing "to take responsibility for the monumental human rights and security disaster that would result" from a flat out withdrawal. I feel that, like Iraq, that disaster is going to happen on its own and was always going to whenever and however the Taliban eventually failed. There are lots of signs that in the meantime the occupation's presence is making that coming disaster worse by arming strongmen and increasing factional rivalries with their bribes. And...let's face it, Joshua...many anti-occupation advocates have been saying we shouldn't be occupying Afghanistan since before we were occupying Afghanistan, so they aren't responsible. Others came to it slowly, myself included, and should indeed accept the responsiblily - including by continuing to advocate for what we believe will ameliorate the inevitable disaster when US troops eventually leave, however we see that.

Judah Grunstein found himself pleasantly surprised by how well the McChrystal review laid out the varying strands of the insurgency, perhaps remembering the Bush-years tendency to lump every insurgent under the label "Al Qaida" in Iraq or "Taliban" in Afghanistan. But his optimism that McChrystal and his advisors could clearly see what they were about soon fled.

Unfortunately, my optimism was short-lived, since kinetic operations to increase security are only part of the COIN equation, with far greater emphasis placed on establishing the host government's legitimacy and effectiveness. And the section on the insurgency's strength was immediately followed by a discussion of the Afghan government's weakness. This, in particular, is devastating:

There are no clear lines separating insurgent groups, criminal networks (including the narcotics networks), and corrupt GIRoA officials. Malign actors within GIRoA support insurgent groups directly, support criminal networks that are linked to insurgents, and support corruption that helps feed the insurgency. (pp. 2-9/2-10)

Damning, too, is the fact that we seem to know our enemies far better than we know our so-called friends:

ISAF Shortcomings. Afghan social, political, economic and cultural affairs are complex and poorly understood. ISAF does not sufficiently appreciate the dynamics in local communities, nor how the insurgency, corruption, incompetent officials, power-brokers, and criminality all combine to affect the Afghan population. (p. 2-10)

The Achilles' heel of the report, and any COIN-based approach to stabilizing the country, is that success continues to be defined as a function of the Afghan government's perceived legitimacy, which is itself a function of its effectiveness. And it's obvious to everyone that the Afghan government is both corrupt and incompetent.

Renard Sexton at FiveThirtyEight has more on just how illigitimate not just the Afghan government but the occupation itself is coming to be seen by an international audience. He could easily have added in a new poll that shows Poles overwhelmingly (77%) back withdrawal of their own contingent of troops.

So the only possible "save" for COIN in Afghanistan, more troops or not, is to manufacture some legitimacy for the Afghan government. That may be what's afoot with an announcement that an election vote recount "compromise" will proceed by examining "just a sample of votes". Who exactly is that a compromise between? And how is it supposed to convince Afghans, rather than the international community, that the vote wasn't fatally crooked? It sounds like a set up, not a save, to me.

I'll leave the final word to Captain Lynch of "Free Range International" blog (h/t Foust), writing from Afghanistan:

None of us expect the report to change how ISAF operates or change the trajectory of the Afghan Campaign.  We lost the day Bin Laden walked away and we have been inflicting the death of a thousand cuts upon ourselves since 2001. 

That's the short, short version of all the analysis of McChrystal's review.