Dr. Bernard Finel wrote a thought-provoking new piece for Foreign Affairs. Finel often brings pragmatism and fresh analysis to over-saturated and one-sided debates on a variety of issues, especially Afghanistan.
He believes the US must alter its COIN approach, which would ultimately force insurgents to re-calculate their will to keep fighting and pave the way for a negotiated, compromised peace-plan. Excerpts from the article, published today:
On the other hand, a robust enemy-centric COIN campaign to eliminate insurgent strongholds and reduce their combat power would make an insurgent victory unlikely. Once both the insurgents and NATO forces acknowledge this reality, they will be left to haggle over the details of what comes next.
To convince senior insurgent leaders to compromise, Washington will have to keep consistent pressure on insurgent strongholds.
The logic of an enemy-centric COIN campaign is not to hold territory but to demonstrate that the insurgents cannot hold territory either.
I whole-heartedly agree with the emphasis on inducing formal negotiations and acknowledging that their must be some kind of a compromise. There will be no unconditional surrenders. I am not convinced, however, that an enemy-centric COIN strategy will foster the conditions necessary or sufficiently break the insurgent’s will to keep fighting.
First, an underlying assumption is that the insurgents actually believe they can hold contested territory in the first place. In several instances, NATO operations into insurgent strongholds have led to the militants simply scattering, far from putting up the type of fight one would expect from a group that thinks it can withstand the onslaught. I think the insurgents already know it’s extremely difficult from them to hold territory when it is actually contested. Thus, they often choose to withdraw and move to another area — only to return if and when international forces fail to hold the territory they were displaced from. In other words, further demonstrating to insurgent’s that they cannot hold territory does not seem like it would yield a fundamentally different strategic calculation if they are indeed fully aware of that fact already.
Second, Finel does not explain how exactly this enemy-centric strategy would play out operationally. To me, it sounds like a giant wack-a-mole strategy in which international troops sweep through one insurgent stronghold — possibly resulting in significant collateral damage that perpetuates more violence – and then proceed to the next insurgent stronghold, leaving the one they just cleared open for re-infiltration. Sure, the insurgents might get tired of trying to establish themselves in key strategic areas if they keep getting kicked out, but our troops will likely be just as tired of playing cat and mouse. More importantly, the people of theses areas will be the real victims.
Admittedly, as Finel mentions, McChrystal may be advocating a population-centric approach yet is equally concentrating on going after the enemy in areas where its influence is the greatest. I don’t see a problem or contradiction with that.
Where I see a potential issue is if our troops fail to hold any of the territory they capture, allowing insurgents to return and repeating the cycle endlessly.
Finally, if the goal is to encourage a negotiated solution, it’s not clear that we need to shift our strategy at all. Already — and apparently as far back as two-plus years ago — there is mounting evidence that senior leaders of the Taliban and Hezb-e-Islami are and have been responding to overtures from the Afghan government and the UN. Consequently, it may be more appropriate for the US not to change its military strategy, but to alter its mindset about the efficacy of negotiations with leaders of the insurgency.
[...] such talks to occur in the near-future) with the insurgent leadership. But as I mentioned in an earlier post, this can only be achieved if the US changes its mindset — not the commander — toward [...]