Same old, same old. We are doing great, but the minute we leave.......
Afghanistan: Winning or Losing? One Marine Speaks
from Op For by LTCOL P
A few days ago I asked my good friend and fellow Marine, commenter "Cracker Iota," if we were winning or losing in Afghanistan. He gave a quick, "Winning, but…" and promised more.
This is his full response:
"First the good news: We – the US, the coalition, NATO (i.e. ISAF and IJC) are winning. Period.
The COIN fight is going well (if continually hard fought); the ANSF are starting to step up; the coalition is kicking ass (especially the Anglosphere). [GEN Petraeus] seems preternaturally able to go from theater-level strategic issues to instantly able to track and address concerns on the smallest tactical level. He is the real deal, and a genuinely solid, respected leader. Our battalions and brigades and divisions and MEFs are kicking serious ass, and are doing so in the most professional and compassionate way that has ever been seen in the history of armed combat. It is the classic "three-block war" that Gen Krulak had preached back in the 90s: full on kinetic warfare, COIN, and humanitarian missions all intermingled, all going on nearly simultaneously. I am constantly amazed at the fire discipline and desire by our guys to always do the right thing. With tens of thousands more troops on the grounds and more kinetic actions now than a year ago, the CIVCAS numbers are down drastically. This does NOT reflect that the guys that came before were doing it poorly; it reflects that out troops now are building on TTPs that their predecessors built, and making them better. They are the best of the best. And the Special Ops are fucking up the insurgents' dope like you would not BELIEVE.
Now, the other shoe.
I am not sure that GIRoA and this country are ready to take the reins. Those in charge, those in the government (usually appointed via tribal cronyism that would make Huey Long blush), are generally in it to skim off as much as they can for themselves. It is a constant fight to make sure that American taxdollars aren't being flat-out stolen by a series of government officials. There are exceptions, but I am unsure if there are enough of them to make a difference. While the ANSF are making enormous strides, their starting point was from less than zero. Illiterate, tribal, dirt poor… if the American public think they will ever be on par with any American force, they are going to be very disappointed. There are rays of hope; their special forces, the nascent Air Force (mainly helos, some fixed wing props), but they are very few and very far between. "Afghan 'good enough'" is the catchphrase.
In short, I feel like we are at the very culminating point of a long battle, and things are going to start to cascade either for us or against us – or should I say, for the Afghan people or against the Afghan people. We are heavily armed, making tremendous use of cutting edge technology and tactics, and committed to helping those Afghans who want to be helped (and some who don't). But we are leaving. The timeline was slid from 2011 to 2014, but the surge here is complete, and we will now begin a gradual but guaranteed decline of boots on the ground. Will the Afghans stop trying to rape the coalition for every dollar they can and turn to the business of their country? The ANSF is growing leaps and bounds and, like a newly planted field, will in short order begin to grow and mature- if they are allowed to do so by their own government. Will GIRoA step up to the plate and take over the good works of the PRTs and ADTs and DSTs as we gradually begin to transition to GIRoA control ("transition" is going to be THE big watchword this year)? Will the American people – not war weary, because they are not invested in this far off war of convoluted goals and unclear endstates, but economically bloodied – will they have the economic stomach to finish the job, or – as more and more stories of Afghan incompetence and graft come to light (e.g. the Kabul Bank debacle, which is ongoing) – will they demand that we cease to support a welfare state of international proportion?
Another point is that the word "reconstruction" simply does not apply to much of this country. Reconstruction implies rebuilding something that had once been there. Much of this country is medieval. Iraq was a reconstruction job; the efforts in Afghanistan would be like teleporting back into the 1400s and trying to pull their culture and living conditions into the 21st century. Doable and noble even – but is that really why we are here, and really worth the lives of our best and brightest and billions upon billions of borrowed dollars? There is a story – perhaps apocryphal – about an American team moving up into some obscure valley where no coalition force had yet been. Once there, they engaged in a mini shura with some villagers to discuss their needs and the activity of any insurgents. The villagers asked them if, since they were American, if that meant that the Soviets were finally gone. Their valley had been a time capsule, and the Soviets absence of nearly 20 years had fully passed them by. This is that kind of twilight zone.
We need a clear – and perhaps painful – re-evaluation of our purpose for being here and our desired endstate. Womens' rights and economic development and electrification of the Afghan countryside are all very noble, but the reality is that no matter how hard we hammer this square peg of Western goals and standards, it may never fit the round hole of Afghan culture. Maybe it is time to stop being the world's policeman except in the most extreme cases (Rwanda would have been a valid case, as was the Balkans). One could argue that the extreme violence on the other side of our southern border should be of more immediate concern to the US than Afghanistan, save for the threat of the exportation of terrorism. If that is our concern, Pakistan is just as bad now as Afghanistan; will we go there next? Not likely.
Bottom line: we are surely winning, but will the Afghans pick up the ball as we hand it to them? I am cautiously optimistic, but there is a very real threat, not for us to lose this fight, but for the fight to be lost for us just as we hand the baton to the Afghans."
(Cracker Iota is a US Marine Reserve LtCol who is currently serving in Kabul, in a position with excellent access to the highest military levels of ISAF. In 2006 he served as the XO of a Military Training Team in Iraq, so he knows full well how long and hard a COIN campaign can be. Furthermore, he is a glass-half-empty kinda guy, and not given to wild optimism. Make your own assessments.) |
