Danger Room: I’m also mystified to our approach to drug policy over there [Afghanistan - Will edit]. Do we have a single approach to narcotics there?

Mullen: The overall strategy is to replace the poppies with crops that will provide a standard of living for the farmers. I was there in Helmand [province] the other day… with a full-blown poppy crop sitting there. At the high level, the strategic approach is to create an agriculture capability that moves to what it used to be. Y’know, there was a time a few decades ago where they fed their own people and actually exported agriculture. So I think from an overall strategic approach, that’s where we’re headed. There are some tactical things that we’ve got to work our way through. But, as ambassador [Richard] Holbrooke said, we are out of the eradication business. That’s not the strategy any more.

Danger Room: And you agree with that?

Mullen: Yes, I do. I think it’s got to be a standard of living issue, be an income issue. These farmers, they’ve got to be able to feed their families.

While this isn’t exactly a full-throated endorsement of legalization, Mullen’s comments suggest that the military is willing to make a few tactical concessions for the sake of pacifying Afghanistan.

On a related note, the issue of Afghanistan’s opium production has always struck me as one of the few counterinsurgency-related problems that can be addressed by the United States’ overwhelming superiority in resources and infrastructure. If farmers are selling their crops to opium refiners, why not simply pay above-market prices for poppies to undercut drug suppliers? The estimated cost of this approach certainly isn’t prohibitive:

Most prominent among these proposals is an analysis by the Senlis Council, a drug-policy research group with offices in London, Brussels and Kabul. The council argues that the United States and Britain waste more than $800 million a year, as well as soldiers’ lives, trying futilely to eradicate poppies.

Instead, it calculated two years ago, Afghanistan’s whole crop could be purchased for about $600 million – the “farm gate” price, not the street value of the heroin into which it is refined, which is over $50 billion. (The “farm gate” estimate has gone up as the crop has increased, and may be $1 billion now.)

We’ve also used similar programs to combat the narcotics trade in India and Turkey in the 1970s:

There is an American precedent for buying. In the late 1960s, the Nixon administration, fighting a heroin epidemic, pressured Turkey, then the world’s chief grower, to eradicate its poppy crops.

Unable to do that (both because of corruption and because peasant farmers in Turkey can vote), Turkey started licensing farmers in 1974 to grow poppies for the morphine trade, and the United States gave protected-market status to Turkey and India in 1981, obligating itself to buy 80 percent of the raw material for American painkillers from them. Why not, the Senlis Council and others argue, let Afghanistan join the legitimate supply chain?

Sounds like a reasonable plan to me.

Related posts...

• Studying Vietnam Doesn’t Really Help
• Agnosia Afghanistania
• The Taliban as Mafia

If you want to argue that getting involved in Iraq in the first place was a stupid decision, fine. I agree with you. But trying to argue that the Surge “failed” at this point — even if Iraq someday descends anew into civil war — simply isn’t a credible option anymore.

Related posts...

• “We are out of the eradication business”
• A few data points for Jonah Goldberg
• Processolatry

I’ve written about this topic before, and I continue to think that the prime lesson to be learned, if there is one, is that the host government matters AND that the US can’t really influence any such government to become what it is not (i.e. a co-dependent shaky edifice).

But we need to back up a theoretical level first before approaching diving in more fully into the Thomas/Barry article.  A construct I find very helpful is the distinction (made by Thomas PM Barnett) between War and Peace.  If we take the Iraq II example, the War phase was the period of the invasion and the overthrowing of Saddam Hussein.  In Afghanistan it was the (very quick) routing of the Taliban from power with aid from the Northern Alliance.

The Peace (or Stabilization/(Re)construction) phase is much harder and much longer lasting.  Basically everything starting from the rise of the insurgencies in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  It’s a little tricky in that the “peace” phase requires a great deal of military might, so the peace phase is not simply civilian reconstruction, infrastructure building, economic recovery, and the growing capability of a national government (complete with national army/police, etc.) though those latter points are really the sign of ultimate victory in the peace phase.

I’ll come back to that in a second, but first the Thomas-Barry article:

One that he [Gen. McChyrstal] has read—and reread—is a 1999 book called A Better War, written by Lewis Sorley, a retired Army lieutenant colonel. Sorley argues that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the United States could have won in Vietnam—if only the U.S. Congress hadn’t cut off military aid to South Vietnam…

Not until Gen. Creighton Abrams replaced Gen. William Westmoreland as U.S. commander in 1968 did the Americans smarten up and begin to fight a true counterinsurgency, focusing on protecting the population by a strategy of “clear and hold.” Instead of shoving aside the South Vietnamese Army, Abrams built up the local forces until they could stand and fight largely on their own—as they did in 1972, repulsing North Vietnam’s Easter Offensive with the aid of American airstrikes.

Sorley argues however that by this point in the game, even though the US was winning, the civilian population back home had already given up and were pushing the politicians (in this case Nixon who had run a pledge of winding down Vietnam).

In 1973, President Nixon and the North Vietnamese signed a peace treaty that allowed Hanoi to keep 150,000 troops in South Vietnam, just waiting on orders to march. In 1974, breaking Nixon’s promises of continued support to Saigon, the U.S. Congress cut off all aid to South Vietnam. Without logistical support or air cover, the South Vietnamese Army collapsed in 1975 and the communists swept into Saigon.

All of which sounds logical enough to me.  I can easily imagine that had the US Congress not cut off the air power to South Vietnam, the South Vietnamese government could have stayed in some stalemate scenario, certainly not in any sense winning against the Vietcong but at least not losing or being overrun.

Arguably as it stood the US won neither the War or Peace phase of Vietnam.  Though it seems they were doing at least somewhat better by the end.  As a result of that reality, the Vietnam era military adopted the Powell Doctrine which emphasized overwhelming force and a quick exit so as not to get bogged down in foreign countries.

By the Barnett reckoning, The Powell Doctrine over-emphasized (or only emphasized) the War phase to the exclusion of the peace phase.  We saw this in Somalia, Haiti, Iraq War I and so on.  The Powell Doctrine later got merged I would say with Art Cebrowski’s notion of Net-centric Warfare.  Netcentric argued that much smaller forces (than originally imagined by the Powell Doctrine), through the use of increased communications technologies and platforms, could achieve overwhelming victory….in the War phase note.  The Netcentric theory lay at the heart of The Rumsfeld Doctrine of light footprint and massive air/logistical power combined with special forces on the ground.  This guided both the Iraq and Afghanistan War phases.

And as per the War phase, it born fruit.  But it completely missed the Peace phase and there neither the Powell Doctrine nor the Net-centric Warfare was of any use and as a result the US lost the peace in both countries for a number of years.

Into that peace breach has bolted counterinsurgency doctrine–now called population-centric (versus net-centric) warfare. Names like Petraeus, Nagl, McMaster, and now McChyrstal.  Unfortunately as the Sorley book and the Thomas-Barry article demonstrates, the COIN crowd still thinks in terms of war and not peace.  The consequence of which is the threat to the President that if he doesn’t follow McChyrstal’s prescription fully then he (Obama) is at fault for losing the war in Afghanistan.  This actually gives the ideological spin ground to groups like The Taliban who will similarly claim that they won the war against the US.  They didn’t; they won the peace. Or at least they haven’t lost, which for an insurgency is all they need to do…not lose.

To wit:

Now, in Afghanistan, McChrystal is implementing a strategy that draws on the lessons of Iraq—and looks an awful lot like the “pacification” program adopted by General Abrams in Vietnam in 1968. By ratcheting back the heavy use (and overuse) of firepower, McChrystal has reduced civilian casualties, which alienate the locals and breed more jihadists. At the same time, U.S. Special Operations Forces use the intelligence gleaned from friendly civilians to find and kill Taliban leaders. That is precisely what the Phoenix Program was designed to do 40 years ago in Vietnam: target and assassinate Viet Cong leaders. McChrystal is focusing on recruiting and training Afghan Army and police so they can take over the job of securing Afghanistan as soon as possible. “Afghanization” of the war is much the same as “Vietnamization,” the strategy adopted—successfully, Sorley argues—before Congress voted an end to aid to the South.

All of which, like in the Vietnam example, still believes that the way to win the peace (though incorrectly called war) is through the creation of a national government.  And here Vietnam I think does have something to tell us, something the COINdinistas are missing:

A more immediate observer, NEWSWEEK correspondent Ron Moreau, recalls patrolling with South Vietnamese infantry in 1973. The South Vietnamese troops, Moreau says, had become utterly dependent on U.S. air power. Without it, they were reluctant to venture forth against the enemy. Moreau, who now covers the war in Afghanistan for NEWSWEEK, sees the same rickety, corrupt power structure in Kabul that he recalls from Saigon and doubts that America can prop it up indefinitely.

So I can imagine a ramped up COIN in Afghanistan having some tactical success as insurgents will do what they have always done in such situations and blend in with the crowd, put down their guns, and/or flee to the sanctuary next door in Pakistan (!!!!), just waiting out the occupiers because they know the host government is a fraud. In the Vietnam example, per Sorley’s assertion of winning the war, the entire sanctuary for the Vietcong in Cambodia and Laos would have to have been eradicated.  Instead of course we got Nixon’s air raids like we have now in the tribal lands of Pakistan-Afghanistan.  We definitely were not going to invade and try a population-centric war in Laos and Cambodia, and even less so in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state that is officially a US ally.

But The Taliban don’t have tanks and are not the Vietcong. They are not even The Taliban of the 1990s who ended the Afghan civil war (those Taliban did have tanks for example).  As I’ve highlighted before, if you wanted to really win peace against the Taliban in the south and east it would require a third way between state-based COIN favored by the current crowd (Nagl, Exum, McChyrstal) and withdrawing/muddling through looking for the exits, you would have to do so at the tribal (not state) level.

So per Sorley’s thesis, I cannot in any manner imagine a replay of the Congress (even one that wants the US military out of Afghanistan) cutting off funds for military trainers and air power in Afghanistan.  So I imagine a shaky largely corrupt not particularly effective Afghan government with essentially no reach beyond Kabul could continue for some indefinite period of time even without a surge of troops and a new COIN strategy in Afghanistan.  With some more troops and a new COIN strategy I imagine more battles we will be won but there will be no followup.

Here the better contrast is Iraq which had a history of a strong central state and even there the state has been seriously weakened and power has shifted out in many directions.  Afghan has a (short) history of only a very weak central state and that was before the brutal Soviet invasion/occupation, a bloody Civil War, another war and now insurgency over the last decade.  Getting back to that even weak central state status seems totally impossible given that scarred 30 year history. If COIN is implemented, it will achieve some initial tactical wins–which will be proclaimed by pro-COIN right-wingers in the US as “turning the corner”, “approaching victory”, “within reach of success”–which will go on for some period of time, with no real followup, i.e. no real victory in the Peace phase.  Eventually then the eventual scale-back, scale down will have to take place at which point the right will say the left “lost the war just like they did in Vietnam.”

All of which is completely stupid but will I imagine be politically sell-able given the stupidity of our foreign policy commentariat and the media.

Related posts...

• Governments Matter: Afghanistan Edition
• Pak-ghanistan
• “We are out of the eradication business”

But White House officials are resisting McChrystal’s call for urgency, which he underscored Thursday during a speech in London, and questioning important elements of his assessment, which calls for a vast expansion of an increasingly unpopular war. One senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the meeting, said, “A lot of assumptions — and I don’t want to say myths, but a lot of assumptions — were exposed to the light of day.”

Among them, according to three senior administration officials who attended the meeting, is McChrystal’s contention that the Taliban and al-Qaeda share the same strategic interests and that the return to power of the Taliban would automatically mean a new sanctuary for al-Qaeda.

The use of the parenthetical thought makes me guess that was Biden who is directly quoted there.  As a sidenote saying “I don’t want to say myths” says myths.

Anyway, this question of what exactly the relationship would be/is between the (Afghan) Taliban and al-Qaeda is the central one strategically.  And I have to say I don’t know.  There’s evidence suggestive of both directions.  For the record between the fork in the road that is the counterinsurgency strategy of Gen. McChyrstal (with Gen. Petraeus and Adm. Mullen supporting) and the Biden plan (with Gen. Jones? and maybe Jim Webb supporting?) which is a counterterrorism only focus, I would lean towards option #3, the John Robb approach (i.e. open-source counterinsurgency).  But that will likely not happen, so we are left the with the population-centric, really Afghan city-centric, counterinsurgency strategy and the counterterrorism one.

At this point I’m agnostic on this one. 

If you follow the Afghan city-centric link, you will read an extremely perceptive post by Steve Coll on how a counterinsurgency strategy might resemble the later changed strategy of the Soviets.  The Soviets initially went in and did their classic scorched earth bloodletting counterinsurgency which of course failed.  They tried then to train a national army, put in a more solid leader, and control cities, leaving the countryside to the insurgents.

The Afghans don’t have that leader currently in charge.  And even if the McChyrstal plan is undertaken, the US will not be able to control the countryside yet again.  Nor of course the countryside that leaks over into Pakistan.

But more importantly in this networked age, the distinction between countryside and city is not entirely clear to me.  When the drugs and weapons are flowing into and out of both how do you create an economic ink-spot as opposed to just a military one that prevents the kinds of economic deals that fund various insurgent groups in Afghanistan?

There’s an argument that the Afghan Taliban would not be stupid enough to allow al-Qaeda back in since it cost them their power last time.   There were certainly Afghan Taliban who were willing to sell Osama up river in order to maintain power.  Mullah Omar of course was not one of them.  Has his mind really changed?  Somehow I doubt it, though again I doubt you can really build a nation-state in Afghanistan either.

The Afghan Taliban isn’t a totally unanimous crew as it once was, so maybe deals are possible with some but not others?

On the other hand, increasing troops inevitably will increase the insurgency–if only in numbers and not necessarily in the beginning as in force.  The insurgents could simply continue to do what insurgents do in contemporary warfare, namely wait out the occupiers and control the territory they are going to control.

But no one it seems to me can really predict what will happen if the US/NATO does not increase troop size (which really means begins the drawdown).  If you don’t raise in poker, you are about to show your cards.  There’s guesses, but neither Condi Rice saying that if you abandon Afghanistan will there automatically be another 9/11 nor Biden saying that there is no chance the Afghan Taliban would take al-Qaeda back.  I just don’t think anyone knows.

Here’s I think what we do know and what the President is caught between:

1. If you draw down, very likely a radicalized Taliban-like ideology spreads (is spreading already) into the “istan” countries of Central Asia.

2. If you increase, there’s no guarantee of anything except billions more dollars spent, lives lost and maimed, and probably no successful outcome. But if may, MAY, get you a managed chaos and a chance to save some face and leave later.

3. al-Qaeda continues to be and will continue to be a threat.  Whether in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and/or Somalia.

For more dissenting opinions from well informed people on this subject, read Spencer Ackerman here.

–

Last thought: Completely random.  When is some rapper going to insert a reference to Mc-Chyrstal (and probably a double entendre on “popping”) into a song.  I’ll give the 5 bones that Dan Drezner owes to me to said initiator.

Related posts...

• War Is Politics By Other Means
• Reviewing Obama’s War Part III: Rory Stewart
• Reviewing Obama’s War: Part II

Now they [The Taliban] are more like a mafia, in which case syndicate is a better term, but one that works against the grain of the US’ own policy in the region.  [i.e. You usually don't send aerial bombardments and tanks against The Cosa Nostra].

I’d like to flesh this out.

The Taliban–both Afghani and Pakistani versions thereof–are now bankrolled by opium production.  The Taliban run protection rackets and control the narcotics trade as their primary source of income. Supplanted in spots by kidnappings and the selling of human beings as well as the gun trade.  Just like the mafia.

The Taliban claim to protect an ethnic minority from imposition by a national government–whether Sicilians against the Italian state or Italians in NYC.  The Taliban hold up the banner of the Pashtun peoples.  Yet at the same time they terrorize the population they claim to defend.   Their “protection” comes at a steep price.

In order to claim legitimacy among the populace, they not only defend the ethnic group, they claim to defend the religious commitments of those people.  Think of the Italian Mafia’s relationship to Roman Catholicism here.  In the Taliban’s case, it is a virulent, extremist Sunni version of Islam.

The Italian (particularly Sicilian) Mafia began in many ways as a revolt against the landed aristocracy/tribal traditions.  Their early leaders may not have come from original aristocratic circles, and bought/bribed/fought their way into the local power structure diminishing the power of the old guard.  In the process they usually ended up becoming another form of aristocracy/hierarchy–i.e. dons.  Think of Vito Corleone killing and taking over the extortion ring of Don Fanucci in Godfather II.

The reported head of the Pakistani Taliban Beitullah Mehsud is not from an aristocratic family in the FATA. He was lower class and has rose to power by executing traditional tribal leaders who won’t succumb to his rule a little like Vito’s son Michael.  [Remember that Vito was born to a lower-class family and had to make a name for himsef].

What we call The Taliban is in reality a loose federation of families, clans, tribes, in a dense network of alliances and blood feuds, with a very complicated hierarchy dependent on power/prestige.  Again see the wiki on the structure of the Mafia for the obvious parallel.

The Mafia usually did not take frontal power but would simply buy off (through threats, bribes) local politicans.  Read Nicholas Schmidle’s brilliant account of the FATA region in the Af-Pak border area.  Sound familiar?  Whatever formal government/police/judicial system exists, the real power lies with this more informal and usually criminal form of practice.  “Some day you will do a favor for me.”

Very intriguingly the Mafia wiki tells me that after the Allied Invasion of Sicily, the Mafia sprang back to life after having been ruthlessly (though successfully) crusheed by The Fascists. In the language of Thoams Barnett, the war was won but not the peace, leading to a loss of local governance, exploited by criminal networks. Sound familiar in Afghanistan or the tribal regions?

Not to mention when public funding does come to an area (like Sicily in the 50s) the construction business is co-opted/run by guess who?  See Jersey (New), state in America for the answer.

If the US is going to give money to Pakistan for them to use on civilian projects in the Northwest Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas who do you think they are going to have to deal with? You’ve seen GoodFellas–you don’t make the payment on time, an “accident” happens and your restaurant burns down.

The Sicilian mafia when faced with coordinated government opposition retailiated with urban terror attacks, just as the Pakistani Taliban (and its ally al-Qaeda) have done with attacks on military installations, convoys, in addition to government political targets (the assassination of Benazir Bhutto), as well as civilian targets like the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.

The scene in FATA is (as Schmidle says) right out of the US Wild West of the 19th century–exactly the point at which the Mafia formalized in Italy by the way.  The approach of the US to train/equip the Pakistani Army for counterinsurgency is meant to “pacify” the region on the analogy of the US Army fighting the Native Indians in the West after the Civil War complete with “military outposts” and “population-centric warfare–gotta protect those covered wagons.  [In the case  of Pakistan there are no migrants to follow up the "civilization" after the genoicdal slaughter.  This is a recipe for intended Pashtun "pacification" which I'm worried has some serious potential blowback attached to it however much The Taliban are not liked in the region.]

The money set up for tribal region infrastructure, governance,and construction would be along the lines of the urbanization projects of the 20th century.  In each of those cases, Mafia were able to shift from rural to urban contexts.  Presumably in today’s globalized economic environments, those distinctions are less of importantce (rural/urban).

Over time a buildup of governance takes place and the only way to deal with Mafia is through anti-crime procedures (i.e. RICO, Witness Protection).  So long as we are still in the 19th century in FATA this won’t be the case.  It will still basically just be war and the consequences will be bloody and move in fits and starts. At some point a good number of these Taliban dudes will have to be worked with however unsavory an idea that is.

The Pakistani government had a deal with the Pashtun tribal chiefs, but that has largely broken down.   Nothing has yet replaced it in the back and forth that has been army incursions into the region (earlier resutling in serious losses but now with more advanced US backing some more tactical victories though no real strategic followup), periodic ad hoc treaties with the Taliban (only to be usually quickly broken), and the like.

The Mafia analogy is both disheartening and yet in some ways I think more hopeful.  On the depressing side, the fight against Mafia is a long term one, in fact one that is never ever completed.  On the plus side, over that long period there can be successes in limiting their influence or the spread of their violence to civilian population.  And moreover, this fight has been done before.  Again this helps reduce the fear of this as some alien Muslim ideological reality and see it (structurally) as something very familiar in our history.  Not extremely difficult, even horrific for the people involved, but not unknown in history.  Not unbeatable by any stretch.

Related posts...

• Agnosia Afghanistania
• “We are out of the eradication business”
• Pakistan’s Endgame for Afghanistan