World Policy Journal piece

Below is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for this month's World Policy Journal. In it I argue that a too-narrow focus on counterinsurgency operations has undermined the mission in Afghanistan. The challenge today is recalibrating our approach to combine the right combination of military and non-military tools. You can download the full article here.

Buying Time in Afghanistan By Carl Robichaud, World Policy Journal, Fall 2007:   Afghanistan is increasingly seen as Iraq in slow motion. It is not. The headlines of car bombs and casualty tolls echo each other, but mask deep differences in each society and in the dynamics of each insurgency. As Iraq has descended into civil war, Afghanistan’s center has held. The government remains weak, but power holders and the public show no appetite for a return to internecine fighting. The insurgency remains solvent because of safe havens across the border in Pakistan, but has been unable to expand upon its toehold in Afghanistan or offer a compelling alternative to the status quo. MORE

Updates on fighting in Kandahar and Farah

Coalition forces continue to fight on two fronts this week against Taliban offensives in both Arghandab (Kandahar Province) and Gulistan (Farah Province).

Kandahar:  The Taliban have been driven from Arghandab for now, with the loss of fifty men (“They have received heavy casualties, faced humiliation, and they are gone,” assured Assadullah Khalid, governor of Kandahar Province.)

But will they be gone for long? The big question mark is the longer term implications of the loss of Mullah Naqib, the  Alokozai leader who died of a heart attack two weeks ago. Abdul Rahim Jan, a tribal elder from Panjwai, was quoted by the Globe and Mail saying “Mullah Naqib protected Kandahar...This is a big loss. It’s like a thousand people died.” In the same story, Sarah Chayes noted that “Arghandab was the finger in the dike. Now you have a wall of water bearing down on the city.”

Chayes argues, in a comment on Registan.net, that Mullah Naqib was "the recognized and universally respected 'elder' of one of the most important tribes in the Afghan south. His moral authority was accorded him by his tribesmen, based on his human and leadership qualities." She notes that "Over the next few weeks, Mullah Naqib’s tribe will put forth a new leader, and he is someone whom, along with government officials, it would make sense for international officials to have contact with, since he will be the democratically selected representative of a large and crucial segment of the population of this region." It is a promising sign that the local population rejected the Taliban when they sought to move into the power vacuum.

Farah: The other front making news this week is in westerly Farah province, where a Taliban force (estimated by one official at 700 men) raided a police outpost and held some terrain. Fighting has gone on for five days now.

In Farah, skirmishes have been commonplace since February between rebels and the British troops. The province is arid and sparsely populated with marginal strategic value outside of its proximity to Iran.  Are the recent attacks receiving attention because of their significance or their timing? In any case, the local authorities featured in this Reuters story were alarmed by the scale of Taliban attacks, and have called for coalition airstrikes.

"Gulistan district is still controlled by the Taliban," Ikramuddin Yawar, the police chief for western Afghanistan, told Reuters. "We want assistance from NATO to support us from the air."...in the west, the chief of a district near Gulistan and Bakwa warned his area would also fall to the rebels unless foreign air power was brought into play

TPMtv with Barnett Rubin

Barnett Rubin, in a video interview with Joshua Micah Marshall

A Chat with Barnett Rubin, Part I: A few weeks ago Dr. Barnett Rubin, one of the world's premier Afghanistan experts at NYU, created a stir with a series of blog posts about signs the Bush administration might be gearing up for a military campaign against Iran. Last week I interviewed Rubin about the Bush administration's war talk against Iran and I asked him, Is there really any evidence that Iran is helping arm the Taliban, as the Bush administration keeps claiming?

London confronts Beijing over Chinese weapons in Taliban hands

The BBC reports today that London has privately complained to Beijing that Chinese-made weaponry has being found in the hands of the Taliban. Normally this is not news -- Afghanistan is awash in small arms, much of it manufactured in China. However, the article implies (citing conversations with experts) that because the type of weaponry includes HN-5 anti-aircraft missiles and armor piercing ammo it is unlikely that it was provided by the traditional channel (Pakistan's ISI) and may instead be coming through Iran.

I'm not sure I buy the assumption that the ISI wouldn't provide high-tech weaponry to the Taliban simply because these arms could be used against them -- weapons transfers went to militants in the past under similar circumstances. Moreover, the flow of arms through any of these nations does not guarantee official complicity -- there are lots of smugglers and corrupt officials willing to run guns to make a buck.

Nevertheless, there is an interesting story here. It is not that Chinese weapons are in the hands of the Taliban or that the Taliban is getting arms from across the Iranian border (which US officials have credibly demonstrated). It is instead why Britain chose this moment to raise these questions for the first time with Beijing. Has the nature of these transfers changed? Is this conversation a function of the tensions surrounding Iran and its nuclear program?

Taleban 'getting Chinese arms' By Paul Danahar, (BBC): The BBC has been told that on several occasions Chinese arms have been recovered after attacks on British and American troops by Afghan insurgents. The authorities in Beijing have promised to carry out an investigation. This appears to be the first time Britain has asked China how its arms are ending up with the Taleban. At a meeting held recently at the Chinese foreign ministry in Beijing, a British official expressed the UK's growing concern about the incidents...MORE   

Image: A Chinese-made HN-5 (Hongying 5 "Red Cherry") shoulder launched missile (an improved version of the Russian-made SA-7). FAS.

Reports of first surface-to-air missile attack in Afghanistan

One of the nightmares that keep Western planners up at night is the possibility that insurgents might get a hold of some MANPADS (Man-portable air defense systems). The most prominently discussed is the Stinger missile -- after all, many of the missiles the US provided to mujahideen for use against the Soviets have never been accounted for -- but there are plenty of Russian built surface-to-air missiles floating around that could prove disastrous in the wrong hands. Until this week, the threat of shoulder-launched missiles was the dog that hasn't barked.

Then on Sunday a C-130 transport plane was reportedly attacked in Nimroz province with a surface-to-air missile. NATO will neither confirm nor deny the incident, but the London Telegraph (by way of the Washington Times) reports that "The crew reported that a missile system locked on to their aircraft and that a missile was fired. It closed in on the large C-130, pursuing it as the pilots made a series of violent evasive maneuvers and jettisoned flares to confuse the heat sensors in the nose of the surface-to-air missile, or SAM." The article continues: "The C-130 attacked in Nimroz was flying at 11,000 feet at the time of the attack, which is within the 1.5- to 3.4-mile range of a shoulder-launched missile system such as the SAM-7."

The million dollar question is whether this will prove an isolated incident, or the start of a trend. Speculation has begun as to where these weapons are coming from; apparently there was a SAM-7 among the arms that was intercepted along the Iran border in April.

Taliban's failed first use of SAM still worrisome  KABUL, July 29 (Washington Post/LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH): Taliban militants used a heat-seeking, surface-to-air missile to attack a Western aircraft over Afghanistan for the first time last week, coalition military sources say. The attack with a weapon thought to have been smuggled across the border with Iran represents a worrisome increase in the capability of the militants that Western commanders had long feared.

Photo: DOD: An Afghan Mujahideen demonstrates positioning of a hand-held surface-to-air missile. 26 Aug 1988

Is less more?

Rory Stewart's piece in the Times today has it right and wrong. He's right in his assessment that a major infusion of troops, committed now, is not the answer to the insurgency. He's right that we should focus more of our energies in the stable areas of Afghanistan where money goes further and that we need more modesty in what we seek to achieve.

But Stewart is wrong on several counts. First, his assertion that the situation in Helmand (and Uruzgan, and Kandahar) has deteriorated because of the NATO presence is highly speculative. To wit:

Britain decided in 2005 to bring good government, security, rule of law and economic growth to Helmand Province. At the time, there were few Taliban attacks in the area. The British deployed some 4,000 soldiers last year and more civilian advisers to replace a few hundred international troops who had been in the province since the fall of the Taliban. The British effort failed. A year and a half later, with 7,000 British troops in Helmand, the provincial government is more corrupt, the streets less safe for citizens, the poppy crop larger and the legal economy and infrastructure more eroded.

Stewart essentially argues that "the foreign presence has provoked a wide Taliban insurgency". In fact, the insurgency was on the rebound well before the arrival of NATO expansion (which was implemented in response) and attributable to a mix of factors, including the increase of cross-border support, narcotics revenues, disillusionment with government corruption, etc. This is not to say that resentment doesn't fuel the Taliban, but to blame NATO for the intensification of the insurgency is akin to arguing that ambulances tend to cause car crashes.

Stewart argues that the counterinsurgency cannot succeed because "Afghan officials are simply not committed to state-building in southern Afghanistan, and many are connected to the drug trade." While accurate, this account omits mention that many of these officials were installed or permitted to retain power precisely because of a minimalist Western strategy (of which Stewart approves) that was adopted to avoid confrontation so the United States could keep its focus on counterterrorism/counterinsurgency goals. In other words, the reason southern leaders don't support state-building and drug control is because they are doing just fine, thank you very much, under the system that the West facilitated.

As an alternative, Stewart has an appealing plan: he writes that we can conduct development in the north and counterterrorism in the south without conducting counterinsurgency operations. A new counterterrorism strategy comprised of "intelligence, pragmatic politics, savvy use of our development assistance and on special forces operations" can combat the threat of jihadism not only in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan and Iraq. In other words, we can do more with less sacrifice if only we do it smarter.

This is precisely the message that Washington, Ottawa, and London are keen to hear. It may also be true. But Stewart has been pushing this line for several months now, but I have yet to hear how this approach might be operationalized. Do military experts believe they could do counterterrorism without creating a permissive environment? Can progress in the north, center and west be maintained if the Taliban are given latitude to operate the south? Can the government retain credibility and authority if the ballast of international support is withdrawn?

Where Less is More. KABUL: July 23, 2007 (NYT Op-Ed) By RORY STEWART: America and its allies are in danger of repeating the mistakes of Iraq in Afghanistan. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and even some Republicans are insisting on withdrawing from Iraq and sending more troops and resources to southern Afghanistan. The Bush administration’s gloomy National Intelligence Estimate last week on the fight against Al Qaeda will only lead others to make such calls.

But they should think again. The intervention in Afghanistan has gone far better than that in Iraq largely because the American-led coalition has limited its ambitions and kept a light footprint, leaving the Afghans to run their own affairs. MORE