COUNTERINSURGENCY STRATEGY IN AFGHANISTAN

Counterinsurgency Strategy in Afghanistan

Counterinsurgency Strategy in Afghanistan

Introduction

The US counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan has lacked a coherent strategy from the very beginning. No serious review of the country's condition prior to the invasion was taken and as a result the United States finds itself in one of the most costly military engagements in its history. Military planners relied on conventional war planning methods to oust the Taliban government but had little in mind for what the country should do following that event. The influx of foreign troops and NGO organizations, coupled with their problematic relationship with the new Afghan government, has put the Afghani people through yet another period of violence and conflict. Afghanistan's recent history of war and conflict with the Soviets and the subsequent civil wars left issues still unresolved. As a result, the United States and its allies have inherited these issues (Tariq and Osman, 2008). Factional and ethnic militias are a serious problem in the country and for decades, Afghanistan has undertaken no serious effort to address the underlying causes of these essential grievances. Major factors such as ethnicity and culture of the different peoples of Afghanistan have been a constant problem for planners and military personnel. Only until recently have they begun to realize that these factors are essential to building the country again and restoring peace. Military strategists and civilian consultants are hard at work trying to decipher the Afghan ethos in an attempt to pacify the serious grassroots resistance to their efforts of security and stability. Not until 2006 was a codified strategy adopted in the form of the Counterinsurgency Field Manual did the US and its allies realize that conventional warfare would not be the strategy of Success (Tanner and Stephen, 2009). The central argument of this thesis seeks to define Afghanistan and its conflict as in need of a unique strategy that takes into account the many factors such as history, ethnicity, regional identity, religion, and most pressing, current military and political circumstances. Only when a comprehensive and tailored approach is adopted will we see a lasting change in the environment. Moreover, insurgency in Afghanistan is not unlike insurgencies that have occurred in other parts of the World. The nature of conflict and war in most cases destines an end to hostilities at some point. This resolution is by no means final or lasting in some cases, but in order to make it so, a select and specific set of tools is utilized to mitigate a return to violence and instability.

Consulting Afghanistan's vibrant and multiethnic population in search of local solutions has only just begun to show results. If the US had taken steps to analyze and study the country's history and culture, many solutions would be easier to implement. Coalition forces are now consulting indigenous security groups, Islamic methods of conflict resolution and Pashtun tribal code in an effort to make gains in Afghanistan. However, traditional military thinking is slow to resort to such methods (Fitzgerald and Gould, 2009).

Traditional war and force are easy for the US to implement, but in order to succeed in Afghanistan, these methods will not work. Afghanistan, known as the graveyard of empires, shares the 21st century era of instant media. War is now an unusually public and a graphic ordeal (Fitzgerald and Gould, 2009). Therefore, public opinion, international cooperation and the utmost effort to mitigate civilian causalities becomes paramount. Success in Afghanistan will use a broad scope of methods and new attitudes in order to convey the stated wishes of the international community and make clear that a war of causalities and destruction is not ...