Tom Perriello: Comments on Security

With news of another major suicide bomb attack in the South making headlines, I wanted to pass along an unofficial summary of a dozen or so interviews with security experts from various Embassies, UN offices, NGOs, and the Afghan government.

Overall, most security experts agree that the insurgency has shifted its emphasis from the bolder frontal attacks on international forces that we saw in summer 2006 to asymmetric tactics, i.e. “shoot and scoot” operations, suicide bombings, and IEDs. This is a regression for the insurgency, and NATO and OEF operations have driven much of this shift. Most analysts credit the successful targeting of mid-level insurgent leaders (top leaders assumed to be safely in Quetta) with hindering Taliban operations. MORE

Experts disagree a bit about how much of this shift in the insurgency was driven by necessity and how much was a strategic calculation that they could do more for their cause by using tactics that bait international troops into retaliations likely to incur higher collateral damage. The latter camp sees the insurgency as shifting its strategic emphasis from shifting the balance of military power to shifting the balance of public opinion.

Despite tactical victories, the combination of civilian casualties, information ops by the Taliban, and most of all deep loss of faith in the government by civilians may well have outweighed these gains. The perception in the conflict areas and in Kabul is of a growing security threat that promises increased asymmetric warfare in the short-term and possibly an insurgency likely to outlast international commitments in the longer term.

Suicide Bombings

• The number of suicide bombing attacks almost doubled in 2007 (44 v. 71 by 30 June of 06 v. 07).
• An unusually high number of suicide bombs target security forces or political leaders (75-100% depending on source), rather than civilian sources.
• But the vast majority of casualties are civilians (75%+). This has been blamed on bad aim, poor execution and the nature of the attacks. So far, these are not “professionalized” suicide bombers and the death/suicide ratio remains relatively low.
• Increasingly, the Afghan Police are the target of choice for suicide and other attacks. This is clearly because they are a public symbol of the government and because they are highly exposed and under trained. However, some have also noted that the police are a symbol of corruption for many, and thus not the most sympathy-inducing targets. Obviously there are thousands of police putting their lives on the line for their communities and country every day, and they deserve praise, but the perception of widespread corruption is a reality.

The Information War

The real battle right now is for "hearts and minds", a phrase that has entered local lexicon (see earlier post about Kandahar). The insurgents are eager to frame the government as a corrupt patronage system and international troops as foreign occupiers, and they are having some success:

• On civilian casualties, the international forces lose both ways. Even when civilians die from an insurgent attack, the GOA and ISAF/US get blamed for failing to protect the people.
• The insurgency frames its effort not as the new Taliban but as the Mujahadeen jihad against foreign occupiers, which has much more emotional resonance than the Quetta ideology. Reformists here talk about the Taliban’s PR machine with that seething jealousy that progressives used to exhibit when describing the conservative media machine in the US.
• The Taliban has a statement ready within an hour of most incidents, while the international community is often stuck in turf battles between the UN, ISAF and OEF operations. Independent verification of civilian casualties takes weeks.
• While compensating victims is good policy, the approach here has created perverse incentives for locals to claim very high civilian casualty rates to land big paychecks. Nevertheless, even those figures adjusted down based on subsequent verification suggest that about half of the civilian casualties in 2007 are from international and government forces.

Root Causes of Insurgent Support

I have touched on this in past posts and will only say a brief word here. The terms insurgency, anti-government elements (AGEs) and Taliban are used somewhat interchangeably, but the most frequent is insurgency. Most analysts agree on the components driving the insurgency, but vary on the relative importance of each factor.

• Pragmatic – once the people lost faith in the government as a common enterprise and saw it as just another patronage (largely Popolzai, but varying by district) network, many feel like they are choosing between a corrupt Government official demanding a bribe and an insurgent offering one. Without a dog in the fight, that is not a tough choice.
• Anti-Occupation Sentiment – the insurgency has good reasons for framing itself as opposing the foreign occupier, which has much more emotional resonance than the Taliban legacy. The weekly reports of civilian casualties, arbitrary detention, and the emasculating act of breaking into people’s private homes, including women’s quarters, of course exacerbates this sentiment.
• Islamist Ideology – most see this as the weakest factor for must of those offering support for the insurgency but remains a high motivation for the most dedicated fighters in the movement.
• Tribal Conflicts and Organized Crime – distinct but related violence in the South is motivated by tribal or family rivalries (often directed against leaders from a group controlling local government hiring and contracts) and organized crime (e.g. many of the attacks on World Food Program convoys are believed to be by criminal elements).

Good Governance = Security

Because I have written about it elsewhere, I have said less here about justice and good governance becoming the single biggest factor affecting security in Afghanistan. But the toxic combination of corruption, incompetence, and complicity (at least) with warlords and organized criminal networks is creating a fissure between the people and the government within which the insurgency grows.

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