Succeeding in Afghanistan - Henry Jackson...

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By George Grant

Succeeding in Afghanistan

First published in 2010 by The Henry Jackson Society

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About The Henry Jackson Society

The Henry Jackson Society: Project for Democratic Geopolitics is a cross-partisan, British think-tank.

Our founders and supporters are united by a common interest in fostering a strong British, European and American commitment towards freedom, liberty, constitutional democracy, human rights, governmental and institutional reform and a robust foreign, security and defence policy and transatlantic alliance.

The Henry Jackson Society is a registered charity (no. 1113948).

For more information about Henry Jackson Society activities, our research programme and public events please see www.henryjacksonsociety.org.

About the Author

George Grant is the Governance, Strategy & Terrorism Section Director at The Henry Jackson Society. He is the author of a number of briefing papers with relevance in this field, including an analysis of the political, economic and philosophical drivers of radical Islamism in the Muslim World as well as a report on China’s rise in Africa, and what it means for the continent’s democratic and economic prospects. Prior to working at the Henry Jackson Society, George worked for a number of newspapers, including The Sunday Times, The Scotsman and the Daily Mail. He holds Masters Degrees in History (with Honours) from the University of Edinburgh and Investigative Journalism (with Distinction) from City University, London.

By George Grant



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Foreword by General Jack Keane (retired)

The war in Afghanistan embodies the greater struggle presently taking place in the Middle East, Central and Southern Asia and North Africa. In all of these places, Islamist extremists are waging a violent ideological conflict to impose their radical ideology onto Muslim society at large. To succeed, these extremists believe they must drive the West, with its democratic ideas, out of the region. This was the logic that largely drove the strategic decision to attack the United States on 11th September 2001.

America’s extraordinary response to these attacks - where US forces, allied to the Northern Alliance, launched an invasion of Afghanistan within just a few weeks of 9/11 - brought about an unexpected and rapid collapse of the Taliban regime. This was followed by al-Qaeda’s fleeing the sanctuary of the Taliban and the protection of the rugged, difficult terrain of Afghanistan.

Just as happened in Iraq, where violent extremists attempted to take control of the country following the downfall of Saddam Hussein’s corrupt and brutal regime, so the Taliban are attempting the same in Afghanistan today. We should not be surprised that the Taliban will not go quietly after so many years of uninterrupted strangulation of the Afghan people. Unquestionably, the commitment of the West’s resources - principally those of the United States - to the major war effort in Iraq contributed in some degree to the Taliban’s re-emergence in Afghanistan.

We are now into the ninth year of a war which inevitably tests the mettle and resolve of democratic societies to not only understand the nature of the war, but, more importantly, how to measure progress and how to define victory.

The centre of gravity for conventional warfare is, of course, the enemy, where land, air and maritime forces oppose a similar capability. As such, defeat of those forces or the seizure of terrain and/or population centres are obvious determinants of success. In irregular warfare - such as the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq represent - the centre of gravity is not the enemy, it is in fact the people. In such a conflict, there are no obvious metrics for success which the public can easily recognise, but rather a series of obscure benchmarks such as level of violence, measurements of stability or instability


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and, of course, the harsh reality of the number of casualties. Moreover, adding to the frustration and confusion, at times, is that combat operations against the enemy must be viewed in terms of what their likely impact on the people is to be. Indeed, although the enemy may be known to be in a specific location in a town or village and are vulnerable to an attack, that operation must be measured against the risk of harming or alienating the population. Sometimes, the operation will not be conducted because a supportive population is a higher priority in winning the war than killing or capturing insurgents. This places a premium on understanding the people, establishing relationships that earn trust and taking risks to protect the population. And in doing so our young officers and NCOs are part mayor; negotiator; community consultant; chief engineer for reconstruction; and the leader in charge of protecting the lives of the people.

These irregular wars are not only more complicated but require time to forge relationships with the people; time to understand a more decentralised and, at times, invisible enemy; and time to assist in establishing responsive local governance in a secure, stable environment. We have learned, painfully, that security is the necessary precondition for responsive governance and economic development.

Our goals in Afghanistan, while often discussed and debated, seem apparent: to establish a secure and stable Afghanistan, capable of governing itself, with the ability to support its people, while ensuring that Afghanistan is not a safe-haven for violent extremists who will prey on the Afghan people, their neighbours or other countries of the international community. Moreover, a secure and stable Afghanistan is in the vital interests of the United States, the United Kingdom and other NATO countries, and it is key to the stability of Central and Southern Asia.

This body of work is both unique and invaluable. In one place the reader gains insight into the recent history of Afghanistan; the nature of the current conflict; the nine year war with its accomplishments, challenges and setbacks; and, finally, what is needed to succeed in Afghanistan.

General Jack Keane (retired) Former Vice Chief of Staff, US Army

Foreword

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Acknowledgements

I am honoured that General Jack Keane (retired) agreed to provide the Foreword to this report and would like to thank him for doing so. I am also grateful to the many helpful interlocutors with knowledge of the situation in Afghanistan, who have provided invaluable input and feedback as the work for this report progressed, though particular mention should be reserved for my colleagues Dr Alan Mendoza and Davis Lewin at the Henry Jackson Society for their input. Any mistakes contained within this report are however mine alone.


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ConTenTS

Foreword iAcknowledgements iiiAcronyms v

exeCUTiVe SUmmAry 1

inTrodUCTion 5

CHAPTer i – THe CoUrSe oF oPerATionS BeTWeen 2001-2009 8 And WHy THey did noT SUCCeed Afghanistan 2001-2005 8 The British Military Strategy Between 2006-2009 13

CHAPTer ii – THe STrATeGy For SUCCeSS in AFGHAniSTAn 18 The Need for a Counterinsurgency Approach 18 Basic Operational Concepts – Clear, Hold, Build 20 The Problem with Counterinsurgency 24 The Nature of War 26 Building Hampshire in Helmand? 27 Intelligence 28 No Guns Without Money – Eliminating the Taliban’s Finances 31 The Imperative of Good Governance 33 Reconciliation with the Taliban 38 The Need for International Legitimacy 41

CHAPTer iii – TALiBAn diViSionS 43 What Motivates the Insurgency? 43 Strategic and Operational Divisions Within the Insurgency 46 The Role of Pakistan 49

CHAPTer iV – THe rAmiFiCATionS oF FAiLUre 51 The Ramifications for Western National Security 52 The Ramifications for Regional Stability 54 The Ramifications for Development & Human Rights in Afghanistan 56 The Relationship Between Underdevelopment and Support for Terrorism 58

ConCLUSion 60

Endnotes 63Bibliography 68

Contents

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LiST oF mAin ACronymS USed in THiS PUBLiCATion

Amn Afghan Mission Network

AnA Afghan National Army

AnP Afghan National Police

Coin Counterinsurgency

ConoPS Concept of Operations

dFid Department for International Development

FATA Federally Administered Tribal Areas

FCo Foreign & Commonwealth Office

FCr Frontier Crimes Regulation

GdP Gross National Product

HiG Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin

ied Improvised Explosive Device

iSAF International Security Assistance Force

iSi Inter-Services Intelligence

nATo North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

oeF Operation Enduring Freedom

PrT Provincial Reconstruction Team

UK United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland

Un United Nations

US United States of America


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exeCUTiVe SUmmAry

• The conflict in Afghanistan can and must be won. The purpose of this report is to explicate the strategy currently in place; to argue why it is the right one; and to emphasise that success in Afghanistan is not just a humanitarian imperative, but a strategic one also. The worst option that the governments of Coalition forces could therefore take is to pledge an unconditional withdrawal from Afghanistan without understanding that the current strategy is both viable and necessary.

• The war in Afghanistan is first and foremost a war for the support of the people. Without that, neither the Afghan government nor the insurgents have any hope of victory. Consequently, the strategy the Afghan government and its Coalition partners must pursue if they are to succeed is one that makes the security of the people, and the improvement of their quality of life, its overriding objective.

• operations in Afghanistan have not succeeded to date because, until recently, neither the correct strategy, nor the resources necessary to execute it, were in place. Between 2001-2005, the strategic focus of operations was on eliminating al-Qaeda and the Taliban, with far too little attention paid to eliminating the conditions that give rise to, and sustain, such insurgents in the first place. What effort there was to rebuild the country’s shattered infrastructure and improve quality of life for ordinary Afghans was focused predominantly in and around the capital of Kabul. There was very little focus placed on the Pashtun-dominated south, from where the majority of Taliban insurgents originate.

Executive Summary

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• The British-led expansion of nATo operations into the south in 2006 was a reaction to the hitherto unchecked growth of the insurgency in the region, and a recognition of the fact that a greater focus on bringing security and development to the south was necessary if this growth was to be checked. However, the British operation was both insufficiently resourced and overly focused on targeting insurgents as opposed to securing population centres, particularly in its early phase. Though the British strategy did evolve towards one that made protecting the population its primary focus during this period, it was never afforded sufficient resources to allow this to occur.

• The US-led surge that began at the start of 2010 is part of a renewed counterinsurgency strategy that differs fundamentally from the course of operations between 2001-2009 in that it is making the security and development of population-centres its primary focus, and is for the first time being afforded the resources necessary to make success a possibility.

• Counterinsurgency is undeniably resource-intensive. Clearing and then effectively holding ground for sufficient time to enable development to take place requires a significant amount of troops, resources and time. However, this is precisely what is needed if progress is to be made in Afghanistan. The lesson of counterinsurgency conflicts from malaya to iraq is that where policy-makers seek easy victories and a swift withdrawal, they get neither. Far better to commit to the long haul, the result of which may be better progress and a quicker withdrawal than anticipated.

• Perception is everything in counterinsurgency, and the setting of arbitrary and concrete withdrawal dates will convince the Afghan people that to support the government-side now will invite retribution at the hands of the Taliban after Coalition forces withdraw. it also emboldens insurgents to continue conflict, as they are presented with a survival target to reach rather than the prospect of an open-ended and morale-sapping commitment from Coalition forces to resist them.

• it must be emphasised, however, that this report is not calling for the retention of international forces in Afghanistan until they have created Hampshire in Helmand. What is required is a


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commitment to remain until such time as domestic capacity has been developed to a sufficient level for Afghans to carry progress forward independently, which is a realistic goal.

• Central to the development of this domestic capacity must be a resolute commitment to the development of good and effective governance. Corrupt government is not only hugely wasteful, it is fatally corrosive to the development of a belief amongst the people that they do not need to look outside the law, including to insurgents, to have their interests represented. it likewise delegitimises the international effort in the eyes of the domestic publics whose governments are committing so many of their men and so much of their time to Afghanistan. Unless what is going on in Afghanistan is seen as legitimate by this latter constituency, it will be impossible for those governments currently engaged there to retain the necessary commitment to make success a possibility.

• Another vital condition for success in this conflict is that reconciliation and reintegration efforts only take place from a position of strength. Certainly, the option should always be there for individual insurgents to lay down their arms if they so choose, but for the government allied to the Coalition to open up broader negotiations whilst in a position of weakness will only convince insurgents that it is beatable and encourage them to fight harder.

• it is also important to understand that the insurgency in Afghanistan is not the homogenous entity it is often portrayed as being, but a deeply divided consortium of competing interests. motivationally and operationally, very real differences exist, which can and must be exploited. Though an ideological hardcore undoubtedly exists within the insurgency, the majority of insurgents in Afghanistan are motivated by much the same grievances that cause the population at large to withhold their support from the government. This latter group will be convinced to stop fighting if it becomes clear both that they cannot win because of a resolute Coalition commitment to the cause, and that the Afghan government is in a position to offer them a genuine alternative to conflict through the redress of grievances and the opportunity of economic empowerment.

• Finally, it is imperative to emphasise the costs of failure, which will

Executive Summary

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extend far beyond Afghanistan if they are allowed to materialise. Failure in Afghanistan would greatly hinder Western counter-terrorism efforts and could be disastrous for regional security, not least in neighbouring, nuclear-armed Pakistan. moreover, the message that would be sent out to both terrorist movements and hostile state actors worldwide - that the West can be taken on and overcome by violent means - is not one that anyone with a care for safeguarding our national security should wish to send.

• The argument that withdrawal from Afghanistan would reduce the grievances that islamist extremists have against the United Kingdom and its allies, and by extension reduce the threat of terrorism, is a fallacy. islamist extremists do not hate the West for where it is deployed, but for what it stands for. it must be remembered, however, that in every country in which extremist movements operate, they constitute just a fraction of the population, and one that draws sustenance from the disillusionment and anger of the people at large. The conditions most likely to generate this disillusionment and anger are corrupt and oppressive government, poverty, and insecurity.

• Whether in Afghanistan or elsewhere, the surest way of combating the appeal of extremist movements is not for the West to draw into itself but to use its considerable influence to promote security, development, accountability, respect for human rights and adherence to the rule of law. This is precisely what is being attempted in Afghanistan at present, and it is why this effort must continue to be afforded the support necessary for it to succeed.


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inTrodUCTion

The purpose of this report is to make the case for why the conflict in Afghanistan can and must be won, to explicate the strategy currently being pursued, and to argue that this approach is the right one. It also seeks to provide an overview of the course of operations since 2001 and to explain why progress has until recently remained elusive. At the heart of this report is the argument that winning the conflict in Afghanistan is about much more than the mere elimination of insurgents; it is about the elimination of the conditions that give rise to those insurgents in the first place. The surest way of eliminating the conditions that sustain the insurgency in Afghanistan is through the pursuit of a properly resourced, population-centric counterinsurgency strategy, such as that which NATO forces and the Afghan government are now seeking to implement. There can be no doubting the scale of the task being confronted in Afghanistan. Particularly in the current economic climate, with casualties increasing and the war losing public support, the temptation for governments to withdraw from Afghanistan is stronger than ever. Many have already committed to doing so, or will do so imminently.

This report argues that premature withdrawal from Afghanistan would be disastrous, not just for the people of Afghanistan, but also for those countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States that are currently engaged there. Policymakers and others now questioning whether the cost of the conflict can be justified need to be under no illusions about the cost of failure, examined at length in the final chapter of this report. However, it is important to make clear that this report is not arguing for the retention of foreign forces in Afghanistan until such time as the country attains Western standards of living, or anything near it. What is being called for is far less ambitious and much more manageable, namely the retention

Introduction

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of the commitment to Afghanistan until such time as withdrawal does not precipitate the collapse of the economic and security infrastructure currently being put in place, but its slow and steady continuation under Afghan auspices. The report is divided into the following four chapters, all of them mindful of the broad principles that have just been outlined.

Chapter i outlines how we got to where we are now. It provides a broad overview of the course of operations in Afghanistan between 2001-2009 and why they did not succeed in eliminating al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and bringing stability to the country. The argument of Chapter I is that the essential reason for this failure was that the primary focus of operations was always the elimination of enemy personnel as opposed to the elimination of the conditions that gave rise to, and sustained them, in the first place. That is, there was a lot of focus on killing members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and far too little focus on nation building. Though an increased appreciation of the need to provide security and livelihoods for the Afghan people did develop throughout this period, far too few resources were made available to enable this to happen. The chapter is separated into two sections, the first looking at the course of the conflict between 2001-2005, and the second focusing on the period following the expansion of NATO operations in 2006, with a specific emphasis on the British experience in Helmand province.

Chapter ii forms the backbone of this report and seeks to explain how we can succeed in Afghanistan. It is in this chapter that the basic operational concepts of counterinsurgency are outlined, accompanied by arguments as to why the counterinsurgency approach is the right one if we wish to succeed in this conflict. Chapter II is at pains to make clear that the counterinsurgency approach that is being attempted at present is of a fundamentally different nature to operations between 2001-2009, in that it has not only made the protection of the population its principal focus, but it has also been afforded the resources to make success a possibility. This chapter also looks at the problems with counterinsurgency and the nature of war, as well as providing a few principles regarding intelligence gathering and targeting the insurgency’s finances. Chapter II also places a strong emphasis on the importance of good governance in a counterinsurgency environment, as well as the vital importance that what is being attempted there has genuine legitimacy, not only in the eyes of the Afghan people, but also in the eyes of the domestic publics of those countries engaged in the conflict. Finally, this chapter touches upon negotiations with the Taliban, and the necessary conditions under which reconciliation and reintegration can take place.


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Chapter iii of this report looks more closely at the makeup of the insurgency in Afghanistan, and importantly, the divisions that exist within it. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first looks at the differences in the motivations of insurgents to fight the government and its NATO allies; the second investigates the operational and strategic divisions within the insurgency; and the third section examines the insurgency’s crucial relationship with Pakistan. The argument of this chapter is that the Taliban are very far from the homogenous entity that they are often portrayed as being, and that they can be both divided and beaten if the correct pressure is applied.

Chapter iV, the final chapter of this report, examines the ramifications of failure in Afghanistan. This chapter argues that failure in Afghanistan would have disastrous consequences, not only for the people of Afghanistan, but also for the international community, including the United Kingdom and the United States. This chapter is split into four sections. The first section examines what the ramifications of failure would be for Western national security, looking specifically at the dangerous and very real psychological boon that would be given to terrorist movements worldwide if the West is seen to have been taken on, and overcome, by violent means. In addition, this section examines the negative ramifications of being closed out of Afghanistan on a geo-political level and the increased potential for successful terrorist operations directed against the West in future, should the Taliban be afforded access to a full state apparatus. The second section looks at the regional implications of defeat, particularly for instability in neighbouring, nuclear-armed Pakistan. The third section argues that premature withdrawal from Afghanistan would be an unacceptable betrayal of the Afghan people as well as all those others who have given so much, including their lives, to try and bring about progress in the country. It argues that failure would be to condemn the people of Afghanistan to yet more conflict and abuse, and that this is an intolerable outcome, not least because it is avoidable. The fourth and final section of this chapter touches upon the inter-relationship between under-development and support for terrorism, and argues that whether in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or indeed the Middle East, support for positive development efforts should not be encouraged merely for altruistic reasons, but for strategic ones also. It argues that far from withdrawing from these places, the West must use its considerable influence to promote economic opportunities, democracy and the rule of law.

Introduction

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CHAPTer iTHe CoUrSe oF oPerATionS BeTWeen 2001-2009 And WHy THey did noT SUCCeed

AFGHAniSTAn 2001-2005

From the beginning of US military operations in Afghanistan in 2001, the focus was clear: eliminate al-Qaeda and their Taliban hosts. Announcing the commencement of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) on 7 October 2001, President Bush began with the following statement:

“On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes against al-Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. These carefully targeted actions are designed to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations, and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime.”1

Only passing reference was made to the need to re-build the country in the wake of these operations, and the President’s remarks were hardly indicative of a commitment to a properly resourced and thought-through reconstruction programme:

“At the same time, the oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and our allies. As we strike military targets, we’ll also drop food, medicine and supplies to the starving and suffering men and women and children of Afghanistan.”2

Given the shock and anger that pervaded after the atrocities of 11th September, this focus was in many ways understandable. The scale of the


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9/11 attacks necessitated a military response against those that harboured the perpetrators and ensured that the US public would be united behind it. Yet in October of 2001 none of the serious and far-reaching strategic implications the attacks of the previous month carried with them had had time to be understood, much less incorporated into strategic posture and military doctrine. As a result, confronted with a surprise attack requiring an immediate response, policy as well as military strategy was informed by existing paradigms as perhaps best exemplified in the first Gulf War – above all that military campaigns should be conducted against clearly defined objectives; a preference for warfare reliant on air superiority; maximum mobility on the ground; and a strong basic predilection against getting involved in civil matters that vastly increase the political complexities inherent in the military action. Seen through this lens, a relatively straightforward focus on eliminating al-Qaeda and their Taliban hosts by means of a campaign of airstrikes and limited land warfare appears a reasonable response to the September 11 attacks.

Unfortunately, though understandable this response was also unsustainable and far from leading to the elimination of al-Qaeda and the Taliban as intended, this approach would end up actually making terrorist movements stronger. The focus on counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan at the expense of a more population-centric strategy was to characterise the American approach in the crucial months and years immediately following the invasion, squandering the vital opportunity to monopolise on the demoralised disarray into which the Taliban had been thrown, and the goodwill and high hopes of the Afghan people.

The routing of the Taliban and the seizure of Kabul that quickly followed the commencement of aerial and ground operations on 7 October was predictable enough. In surreal collaboration, the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, many mounted on horseback and armed with little more than sabres and Kalashnikovs, now found itself supported by the most advanced military superpower on earth. Within barely a month, on 9 November, the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif had fallen to the Alliance, and just four days later Kabul itself was seized as the panic-stricken Taliban fled the city.

With the Taliban gone and the country all but theirs, minds in Washington did not turn to reconstruction, maintaining instead as the over-riding focus the elimination of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, who had fled south and east to the border region with Pakistan. In December, the US-led coalition began a massive offensive in the Tora Bora region in the east, believing

The course of operations between 2001-2009 and why they did not succeed

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this to be where Osama bin-Laden and al-Qaeda were in hiding. Whether bin-Laden was ever in Tora Bora, or whether he was already in Pakistan, the Coalition failed to capture him, though several hundred Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives were captured or killed.3 On the back of Tora Bora, in March 2002, came Operation Anaconda, conducted in the Shahi-Kot Valley and Arma mountains in the Zormat region, in the southwest of the country. As with Tora Bora, Operation Anaconda resulted in the elimination of several hundred al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives by Coalition and Afghan forces, but little else.4 This was to be the pattern with all subsequent military operations in the period up to expansion of the NATO deployment and its assumption of overall control of operations in Afghanistan in 2006.

Had these operations been accompanied by a genuine commitment to reconstructing Afghanistan, and providing Afghans with a real stake in seeing the government succeed and the Taliban fail, then things could have been different. As it was, President Bush remained cautious of nation building, whilst Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld remained altogether opposed. Indeed, in 2001 and 2002, not a single dollar was appropriated from the Department of Defense (DoD) for the Afghan Government or development.5 As was to be the case in Iraq, Rumsfeld could not make the connection that the army’s “full-spectrum dominance” on the battlefield could only be achieved if accompanied by a concomitant effort to actually rebuild the countries it invaded.6

What little nation building did take place was focused principally in and around the capital of Kabul, whilst the rest of the country, including the Pashtun-dominated south - from which almost all Taliban fighters are drawn - was for the most part neglected. Though $5.3 billion was spent on developing the Central Zone in and around Kabul between 2001-2009, just $1.2 billion went to the South in that time, and a mere $993,000 to the South West.7 Under the Bonn Agreement of December 2001, which laid the framework for the governance and security arrangements of post-Taliban Afghanistan, NATO’s 5,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was mandated to provide security only in “Kabul and surrounding areas”, with its expansion into other areas being stipulated as a possibility at some unspecified future date.8

The reconstruction and development that did take place was insufficiently resourced, poorly coordinated and consequently much less effectual than it should have been. Lack of oversight and endemic corruption meant that much of the money never reached its intended target, whilst poor


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coordination between donors and the Afghan government meant that money that was spent often reflected donor priorities, not Afghan ones.9 There was also a disproportionate focus on humanitarian relief at the expense of infrastructure projects, which were longer-term, more complex and often riskier. For instance, the donor community and the Afghan government failed singularly to focus sufficiently on the energy supply, one of the most fundamental prerequisites for improving quality of life. Until 2005, the entire country generated just 286 megawatts of electricity, enough for a small town of 100,000 people.10

Though $36 billion was spent on aid between 2001-2009, out of a total of $62 billion pledged, by 2008 the number of Afghans with access to clean drinking water was still just 23 per cent and the proportion with access to adequate sanitation just 13 per cent. The number of children dying before their fifth birthday was at the same level as in 2000, at 257 deaths per 1,000 births.11 The situation was worst in the years immediately following the invasion, with one frustrated US army officer succinctly summarising the lack of commitment to the reconstruction effort: “We cannot spend seven times more in Bosnia and Kosovo than we do in Afghanistan and then pretend we are doing nation building.”12

The failure of the Afghan government and its international partners to capitalise on the goodwill of the Afghan people in the early years and to make genuine progress on the redevelopment front was unquestionably a major factor behind the revival of the Taliban insurgency. With the lights never on, the water still dirty and the jobs still elusive, Afghans began to question whether the new world order was quite so desirable after all. This was particularly the case given reports of widespread corruption within the new government.

The situation was not helped by the fact that what American attention there was on Afghanistan quickly became diverted as preparations were made for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The view in Washington seems to have been that with the Taliban ejected from power and al-Qaeda in disarray, Afghanistan could be ticked off as a strategic success in the new War on Terror, and operations moved elsewhere. Had they read a little more Afghan history, they might have recognised the truth in the sage words of the last British governor of the Northwest Frontier, Sir Olaf Caroe, that “Afghan wars only become serious when they’re over”. As it was, by invading Iraq, the US and its allies opened a second front before finishing the first, and without the necessary resources to prosecute both campaigns effectively. The question


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of which front was to take priority was answered definitively by Admiral Michael Mullen, Chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, when he remarked in a Congressional testimony in December 2007 that “in Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must.”13 The extent of the disparity can be seen by the fact that by 2008, the US had spent $608.3 billion in Iraq over five years, and just $162.6 billion in Afghanistan over seven years.14

The lack of commitment to Afghanistan also manifested itself in the failure to properly develop good governance in the country. President Karzai has been criticised for rejecting, or at least not taking seriously, the fledgling institutions of government the UN and others were trying to build. Karzai’s first cabinet contained numerous warlords and powerful regional personalities, many of whom have been guilty of heinous human rights violations.15 The sentiment of many delegates at the Loya Jirga where the new cabinet was announced in June 2002 was summarised by one female activist: “This is worse than our worst expectations. The warlords have been promoted and the professionals kicked out. Who calls this democracy?”16 In this, Karzai had the implicit support of the US, who were happy to put warlords on their payroll as a cheap way to keep the peace in the regions and to provide information about al-Qaeda.17 Rather than nation-building, creating legitimate state institutions and rebuilding the country’s shattered infrastructure, the US pursued a strategy which, though changing the personnel governing Afghanistan, failed to improve the structures by which they did so.

The inevitable consequence of all this neglect was disillusionment amongst ordinary Afghans and the progressive erosion of the legitimacy of the state. This was to be ruthlessly capitalised upon by the Taliban, which offered itself up as the defender of ordinary Afghans against the capricious machinations of Karzai, the warlords and their foreign backers. So ineffectual were the political and economic reconstruction efforts outside of Kabul that the Taliban were able to start establishing shadow governments to rival the official government in everything from judicial matters, to schools, to the delivery of essential services. In 2007, the Taliban even unveiled a 23-page shadow constitution18, and by the start of 2010, they had established shadow governments in 33 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.19

More worrying still was the fact that some Afghans actually started to prefer working through the Taliban system, particularly in areas where the official government was perceived as capricious or arbitrary. In the eyes of too many, the Taliban were seen as cruel but fair.20 By contrast, in areas where the


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local Afghan government representatives showed themselves to be efficient, honest and to govern with genuine care for the welfare of the people, the Taliban approach was much less successful.21

The failure of the Afghan government and its international partners to prevent the explosion of the country’s opium economy was also a major factor behind the resurgence of the Taliban. Revenues from the opium industry account for as much as 50 per cent of the Taliban’s finances, its single biggest source of income. It is a basic point that no organisation can survive without money, particularly not one that needs to fight a war. The failure of the Afghan government and its partners to provide alternative livelihoods and prevent the opium boom in the first place was a major contributor to the revival of the insurgency. By 2006, the estimated revenue from opium cultivation in Afghanistan was $3.1 billion, fully 46 per cent of the country’s entire GDP of $6.7 billion.22 Without this revenue, it is quite probable that the Taliban would have been unable to ratchet up and then sustain the insurgency on the scale that it did upon the escalation of hostilities in 2006.

THe BriTiSH miLiTAry STrATeGy BeTWeen 2006-2009

By the start of 2006, it was clear to almost everybody that the strategy in Afghanistan was not working, particularly in the Pashtun-dominated south of the country, the Taliban’s heartland. With the intention of finally bringing some real progress to Afghanistan, the decision was made to significantly expand operations outside of Kabul and the immediate vicinity, particularly in southern areas.

In July 2006, NATO took over from the United States in assuming overall responsibility for the international mission in Afghanistan, to be led by the United Kingdom. This section of the report will outline the course of British operations between 2006 and 2009, which bore the brunt of the conflict, and why they failed to achieve success. It was during this period that the focus shifted from hard military power directed at destroying the Taliban toward a softer approach aimed at securing the civilian population. This latter approach, known as Counterinsurgency or COIN, is what is presently being undertaken in Afghanistan and, as will be the focus of Chapter II of this report, offers much the best hope of success.

One of the principal reasons the British were unsuccessful in securing the population in areas where they did make this their primary focus was because they had insufficient resources for the task. Counterinsurgency


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is extremely resource intensive, in terms of men, money and time. The resumption of US control of the mission in the south and the ‘Surge’ in troop numbers and resources that began at the start of 2010 is a direct recognition of this fact. These troops are not there to simply try and destroy more Taliban, but to actually secure the population. Chapter II will outline how this counterinsurgency strategy works and why it must be supported if we are to succeed in Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, the primary objective for the British at the outset of operations in 2006 was not to clear and hold population centres, rather they pursued a kinetic strategy directed principally at the elimination of insurgents. The British effort was further compromised by the fact that, by attempting to ‘take the fight’ to the insurgents, British forces were quickly drawn well beyond their intended theatre of operations, greatly reducing their ability to secure the population, if not eliminating it altogether.

The original plan was that British forces would secure the so-called Afghan Development Zone (ADZ) in Helmand province, a 400 square kilometre triangle running between the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, the economic capital of Gareshk and the Nad-e-Ali District, before slowly expanding their sphere of influence outwards as security improved. The Department for International Development (DFID), the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and other civilian actors charged with reconstruction efforts would move into areas secured by British forces, taking over from the small and under-resourced American Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Helmand. 3,150 soldiers were charged with providing this security, barely half a brigade’s strength.23 Even if British forces had confined themselves to the ADZ, which they did not, the numbers were insufficient for the task.

Though the proportion varies relative to environment, classic counterinsurgency doctrine identifies a 50:1 ratio between the population and the counterinsurgent as the ideal.24 The population of the ADZ is in excess of 500,000, a little over one third of Helmand’s 1.4 million inhabitants. Given that Afghan security forces were virtually non-existent in Helmand in 2006, the British deployment provided a population-counterinsurgent ratio of approximately 166:1, in one of the most inhospitable environments on earth. The situation was made dramatically worse by the fact that no sooner had the British deployed than the force commander, Brigadier Ed Butler, came under strong pressure from the newly appointed Governor of Helmand Province, Mohammad Daoud, to deploy his troops outside of the ADZ. Daoud claimed that various settlements were on the cusp of


15

falling to the Taliban and would do so if the British did not shore them up immediately.25 Appreciating the political imperative to support the governor in this situation, Butler sent his men out to the peripheries, to Garmsir in the south, and Sangin, Musa Qala and Now Zad in the north, a vast area of difficult terrain covering more almost 5,000 square kilometres.26

But by dispersing his forces so thinly in pursuit of insurgents, Butler made the fulfilment of his most important objective, securing the key population centres to enable reconstruction and development, quite impossible. Indeed, Butler had ignored what Clausewitz identified as the highest and simplest law of war, that of “keeping one’s forces concentrated”. The deployment to the peripheries ensured that the Taliban could engage the British on their terms as opposed to vice versa, and the isolated British garrisons, known as “platoon houses”, simply acted as a magnet for insurgents. Throughout the summer of 2006, British forces found themselves besieged for up to forty days at a stretch, in intolerable heat of up to 50 degrees celsius, and it was all they could do just to stay alive, let alone secure the population.

As one British officer commented with regard to these operations:

“No real thought is going into what we are doing and why. We have done next to zero ‘pacification ops’ amongst the people and these we must do if we are to win the people over. Our resources are limited and so we should keep ourselves to an area we can influence in a coherent manner rather than spreading ourselves about the province in an incoherent, uncoordinated and not mutually supporting way. We seem to ignore all the lessons of the past, and particularly of those in Malaya.”27

The lessons of Field Marshal Templar in Malaya were precisely those that have been outlined, principally that in a counterinsurgency campaign the population is the prize, and that no campaign can succeed unless it secures its base areas first.

The disastrous start to the Helmand campaign has been much maligned, not least from within the military. Indeed Brigadier Butler himself has subsequently complained bitterly that he argued strongly before the deployment that the resources being committed were insufficient to the task. However, the fact is that the first British operations from 2006 were not only compromised by insufficient resources, but by a strategy that made the elimination of insurgent targets, as opposed to securing the population, its primary focus. It is certainly the case that the British recognised the need


16

to hold ground and to secure the population, but the focus on eliminating insurgents, combined with the fact that they simply did not have the resources to hold ground, always ensured that this never happened. The one problem compounded the other.

Indeed, the CONOPS (Concept of Operations) of 12 Mechanised Brigade, which took command in April 2007, was the pursuit of an ‘oil-spot’ strategy, to steadily expand zones of security from the key towns of Lashkar Gar and Gareshk, as well as along the upper Sangin valley, to the north.28 In reality, the way 12 Brigade sought to clear these areas of insurgents was by engaging them in pitched battles, which the Taliban invariably lost. Yet the ground that was claimed was not subsequently held, so the Taliban were able to return when the British departed. The lack of real progress led the Brigade’s frustrated commander, Brigadier Lorimer, to liken these operations to “mowing the lawn”.29

As time went on, the military became more and more cognisant of the need to secure the population if they were ever to see some progress. The strategic concept of ‘Clear, Hold, Build’, that forms the basis of counterinsurgency doctrine, was put at the heart of British operations. Recognising that the mere killing of insurgents would never be enough, then-Brigadier Andrew Mackay, the commander of 52 Infantry Brigade that took over from 12 Brigade in October 2007, went so far as to describe the ever-rising Taliban body count as “a corrupt measure of success”.30

Yet in spite of this, lack of resources ensured that the improvement in security for the population remained elusive. Even with the draw-down from Iraq and the significant scaling-up of troop-numbers in Afghanistan that followed, the number of soldiers deployed in Afghanistan remained insufficient for the task of securing the population. This lack of resources would continue to fatally undermine the efficacy of British operations right up until they gained the vital support that has been provided by the US-led troop surge that began at the start of 2010.

The next section of this report will focus on the counterinsurgency strategy that NATO and the Afghan Government are now pursuing in Afghanistan. On 1 December 2009, after several months of well-publicised deliberation, President Barack Obama announced the deployment of an additional 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan, marking a major and necessary shift in the course of the conflict.31. This is by no means to infer that victory is now inevitable, however. Issues still persist and mistakes continue to be made. Moreover,


17

valuable time and legitimacy has been lost over the past nine years, in the eyes of both the Afghan public and the publics whose governments have committed so heavily to Afghanistan. Nonetheless, it is important to recognise that the strategy being pursued in Afghanistan at present does differ significantly from the course of operations between 2001-2009, and it is imperative that policymakers do not succumb to those demanding withdrawal before the new strategy has had a chance to take effect. A properly resourced counterinsurgency approach can yield genuine progress in Afghanistan, and the next chapter will seek to explain how.


18

CHAPTer iiTHe STrATeGy For SUCCeSS in AFGHAniSTAn

THe need For A CoUnTerinSUrGenCy APProACH

It should be clear by now that the conflict being fought in Afghanistan is not a conventional war between two competing armies; it is an insurgency, and in an insurgency victory is not brought about by defeating the enemy but by winning the hearts and minds of the people. In and of themselves, the Taliban present an insignificant military threat, and certainly not one that Western forces would have any difficulty eliminating quickly. The precise number of men the Taliban has under arms at any one time is uncertain, though current estimates put the number in the region of 30,000-40,00032 in a country of approximately 28 million people.33

Facing them are some 140,000 ISAF & US soldiers and almost 120,000 soldiers from the Afghan National Army (ANA).34 & 35 This provides a Coalition-Taliban force ratio of more than 7:1 even before enormous disparities in weaponry, technology and training are taken into account. The idea that the Taliban could confront Coalition forces on the field of battle and prevail is clearly absurd, and indeed, whenever the Taliban do so they are in almost every case defeated. The heavy reliance of the Taliban on indirect combat methods, in particular the use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), which now account for roughly two-thirds of Coalition fatalities, is a direct consequence of this disparity.36

Yet nine years since US and NATO forces entered Afghanistan, the Taliban have not been defeated and the war has not been won. Clearly then, the conflict in Afghanistan cannot be viewed as one in which the elimination


19

of insurgents by military means is either a possibility or a pre-requisite for victory. What is required for victory in Afghanistan is not the elimination of insurgents, rather the elimination of the conditions that give rise to - and sustain - insurgents in the first place. This means eliminating the conditions that cause the general population to lend their support to the insurgents, or at least to withhold it from the government. Fundamentally, the war in Afghanistan is a war for the Afghan people. Without their support, victory for the Afghan government and ISAF will be impossible. Equally, without the support - or at least the acquiescence of - the people, the Taliban have no hope of victory.

After more than three decades of near continuous, bloody conflict, that has left hundreds of thousands dead, and that has crippled the country economically, the Afghan people need to believe that the government can deliver in three crucial areas if they are ever to give it their support:

First, and fundamentally, the Afghan people need to believe that the government can win. There aren’t many backers for a losing side.

Second, the Afghan people need to believe that the government can put in place the necessary security framework to ensure that neither they nor their families will be at risk of retribution if they do support it. Even if the people believe that the government will ultimately prevail, this is small incentive to support it if the likely consequence of doing so is punishment at the hands of the Taliban.

Third, and finally, the Afghan people must believe that the government offers them and their children a better future. If, for all its talk of final victory and better security, the government cannot hold out any prospect of economic betterment for impoverished Afghans or their children, then its support will suffer correspondingly. Central to this is the condition that the government itself adheres to the rule of law.

It has been the failure of both the Afghan government and its Coalition partners to convince the Afghan people that they can deliver in these three areas that lies behind their lack of progress in the conflict to date.

It is important to emphasise in light of this, therefore, that Western politicians must be extremely careful about what they say with regards to Afghanistan. Remarks such as those uttered by President Barack Obama, that American

The strategy for success in Afghanistan

20

troops will begin to withdraw in 2011, or by Prime Minister David Cameron that “we can’t be there for another five years, having been there for nine already”, are hugely dangerous.37 They may be intended to placate sceptical domestic publics and may well be borne of genuine conviction, but they have the added consequence of sending a message loud and clear to ordinary Afghans that we are not truly committed to seeing this mission through. Make no mistake that the Taliban are ruthless in conveying this message to Afghans, with the added threat that to support government efforts now will be to invite bloody retribution later.

At a major international summit held in Kabul in July, both the Afghan government and its international partners expressed their intention to transfer responsibility for frontline security operations to Afghan forces by 2014.38 If, by that date, Afghan forces are capable of taking such responsibility, then withdrawal of international forces will be both a desirable and an appropriate next step. If, however, Afghan forces are not capable of assuming such responsibility by this time then it would be both wrong, and grossly irresponsible, to press ahead with the withdrawal of international forces regardless. By setting such a rigid and arbitrary deadline for effective withdrawal of foreign forces, there is the very real danger of generating precisely the climate of fear and uncertainty amongst ordinary Afghans that will make a responsible withdrawal of foreign forces by 2014 impossible.

In a conflict such as this, perception is everything. It has long been the bitter lesson of counterinsurgency warfare that where governments seek quick victories and a swift withdrawal, they get neither. Far better to commit properly and for the long haul, the result of which may well be better progress and a quicker withdrawal than is anticipated. In the words of Sir Robert Thompson, whose experience in Malaya and subsequent advisory work for the Americans in Vietnam contributed to his unrivalled understanding of counterinsurgency:

“It is a persistently methodical approach and steady pressure which will gradually wear the insurgent down. The government must not allow itself to be diverted either by countermoves on the part of the insurgent or by the critics on its own side who will be seeking a quicker and simpler solution. There are no shortcuts or gimmicks.”39

BASiC oPerATionAL ConCePTS – CLeAr, HoLd, BUiLd

In order to succeed in Afghanistan, NATO forces must continue to pursue and


21

to sufficiently resource the population-centric counterinsurgency strategy currently underway in the country. Mao Tse-tung, in seeking to explain how to conduct an effective insurgency, famously said that the insurgent must be to the people as a fish is to water.40 The implication here is two-fold. First, that the insurgent must make himself completely at home amongst the people with whom he interacts. Second, that he cannot hope to survive without their sustenance. The fundamental objective of a counterinsurgency is to deny the insurgent that sustenance. The basic operational concepts that must be pursued in order to make this happen follow the line of what is commonly known as ‘Clear, Hold, Build.’

The ‘Clear’ phase of the operation, as the name implies, involves clearing an area of insurgents in order that reconstruction and development work can take place free from insurgent interference. The military tactics involved in the ‘Clear’ phase will vary depending on the terrain and the size and composition of the insurgency, but what is crucial is that the area selected is an extension of an area already held by the government side. What cannot happen, as was the experience of the British in Helmand upon their arrival in 2006, is that forces allow themselves to be drawn by insurgents into remote areas unconnected with one another. When this happens, counter-insurgents become little more than islands open for attack, quite unable to protect the population and reconstruction teams, which is their fundamental objective. In order to clear the area of insurgents, it is necessary to saturate it with sufficient forces that insurgent units are compelled to disperse within the area or preferably to withdraw entirely to a neighbouring area still under their control or where control is disputed.

As distinct from more conventional military operations, where insurgent units are engaged and eliminated, and an area declared ‘clear’ before the military immediately moves on to the next area, here the emphasis is on ensuring that the insurgents do not come back. Clear operations will be a waste of time unless they are immediately followed up by ‘Hold’ operations. If there is no follow-up then the Clear operation becomes nothing more than a sweep through the area, which will quickly revert to its original state once forces withdraw. In this scenario, the security and reconstruction necessary to persuade the population to support the government will not materialise and the whole operation will have been for nothing.

The purpose of the ‘Hold’ operations is to enable the next phase that is required for success - the ‘Build’ - to take place. What is required here is that forces remain in place for as long as is required to enable the sufficient


22

development of an area such that withdrawal does not precipitate collapse but the slow and steady continuation of this development under domestic auspices.

What distinguishes this population-centric Clear, Hold, Build approach from the more traditional, enemy-centric and kinetic approach is that the killing of insurgents is not actually a prerequisite for success. Rather, what is necessary is that the insurgency be denied access to the population, where, bereft of sustenance, it withers and dies.

Insurgencies are, in almost every case, a reaction to grievances over the failings of the status quo. They exist so long as these failings exist, and in Afghanistan, the failings so far as the population are concerned are chronic insecurity, a dearth of economic opportunities, lack of access to basic amenities and a dysfunctional and corrupt government. They are, in short, the kind of things that make people angry and disenchanted wherever in the world they live. The insurgency depends on these failings for its survival, and they, combined with its own claims to be able to rectify them, form the backbone of its popular narrative.

It is the need to keep the population angry and disenchanted with the government and its allies that explains why insurgents actively target humanitarian aid workers and reconstruction teams. Although these workers may claim to be neutral actors seeking only to serve the population, what they are in fact doing is improving conditions on the ground under the auspices of the Afghan government, and threatening the insurgency’s entire narrative in the process. Those critics of the conflict who argue that the Clear, Hold, Build strategy is futile because it will merely compel the insurgents to lie low until such time as Western forces withdraw misunderstand the nature of this conflict. The insurgents cannot afford to allow the domestic security and economic infrastructure to develop unmolested to such a level that not only will insurgents find it extremely difficult to launch attacks and to threaten the population, but that the population decides to switch its allegiance to the government altogether.

The logical corollary of this, and an added advantage of the counterinsurgency approach, is that the insurgency, if it wishes to survive, now has to engage the counterinsurgents who are freezing them out from the population. To do so, however, is to engage on the counterinsurgents’ terms, not the insurgents’. This puts the insurgents at a further disadvantage, and is quite distinct from the course of operations upon the initial expansion of ISAF in 2006. At that


23

time, insufficient numbers of ISAF forces allowed themselves to be drawn by the insurgency into isolated positions, away from the population centres, where the insurgents could engage on their terms. This was not the way to win the conflict, and this is why the current approach offers a much better chance of success.

Though the new strategy is still at an early phase, making a firm assessment impossible at this stage, there are nonetheless signs that it is already starting to bear fruit. In Sangin, a region of Helmand province that has hitherto proved extremely difficult to pacify, the number of violent incidents dropped by 80 per cent in the month July-August.41 This has been credited on all sides - by the military, by British officials, and by local Afghans – as the consequence of the newly reinforced counterinsurgency approach. The reinforcement of the British commando battalion stationed there with a battalion of US marines has put sufficient forces on the ground to protect the population centres and block insurgent infiltration routes into the area. This has been combined with an extensive commitment to working more closely with the local population in order to persuade them to restrain tribal elements aligned with the Taliban and to expel insurgents operating amongst them. The efficacy of these efforts has been further enhanced by the existence of another vital component of good counterinsurgency: a commitment to good governance, provided in the form of the widely respected and notably uncorrupt new district governor, Mohammad Sharif.42

Combined with a growing sense of revulsion at the brutality of the insurgentsi, who now account for more than three quarters of civilian deaths, the population-centric counterinsurgency approach being undertaken in Sangin appears to have convinced a critical mass of the population there to withdraw their support for the insurgents and to start lending it to the counterinsurgents.43 “Before, tribes gave space to the Taliban, gave food, support in the night. Now they are not letting them into the irrigated areas [around Sangin]”, one tribal elder told The Times newspaper recently. “Security is better” added another, with a third observing that “people believe now that the Government will support us. If there is peace, they will start reconstruction”.44

The evidence coming out of Sangin at present correlates with the assertion of

i. The decision of the Taliban to hang a seven-year old boy in Sangin in June, in order to punish his family for lending their support to the government, has caused considerable disgust and anger amongst the local population.


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this report that a properly resourced, population-centric counterinsurgency strategy can work in Afghanistan, and is starting to do so. Though the resources required for this approach are greater in the short-term than the more limited resources hitherto being afforded to the conflict, in the long-term the counterinsurgency approach is undoubtedly more resource efficient since it offers the possibility of lasting - as opposed to merely temporary - progress.

THe ProBLem WiTH CoUnTerinSUrGenCy

The biggest problem with counterinsurgency is that it is undeniably extremely resource intensive. By making daily interaction of the counterinsurgents with the population a central component of the strategy, counterinsurgency also increases the risk of military casualties, at least in the short-term. These are not considerations to be taken lightly. However, the argument of this report is that it is precisely this approach that is required now if we are ever to bring about progress and reduce casualties, both military and civilian, in the future.

The reason that successful counterinsurgency operations are so resource intensive is because they are geared towards the protection of the population as opposed to the mere elimination of insurgents. Winning the population requires winning their confidence and trust; principally that the counterinsurgents can provide them with security from attack, but also that they can facilitate the provision of a better future. In a conflict such as Afghanistan where the insurgents interact with the population to such a great extent, providing this security requires a lot of manpower, both for the population and for the reconstruction teams involved in rebuilding the country’s shattered infrastructure.

As was mentioned in the previous chapter, current counterinsurgency doctrine calls for a population-force ratio of approximately 50:1. In Helmand, which has a population of roughly 1.4 million, the number of forces required would be around 30,000 on this ratio. For the first time since the start of the conflict this force level has now been achieved. As outlined in the Basic Operational Concepts, if these forces are to be effective they cannot merely sweep across the countryside, declare an area to be ‘clear’ and then move on or withdraw. Instead, they must remain in place for as long as is necessary to enable the successful execution of the ‘Build’ phase of operations.

The second problem with the counterinsurgency approach is that, by


25

deploying soldiers in amongst the population, as opposed to permanently housing them in heavily fortified bases - save for when they venture out in heavily fortified patrols - the likelihood that those soldiers will take casualties is increased. However, this interaction with the population is precisely what is needed if the level of conflict is to be reduced, and with it the number of casualties, in the long-term.

The failure, or perhaps unwillingness, of many ISAF-contributing countries to appreciate this fact has been greatly to the detriment of operations in Afghanistan. The problems arising from this casualty aversion quickly became apparent upon the expansion of ISAF operations to the south of the country in 2006. In seeking to placate wary voters, and reduce the likelihood of casualties, governments placed a combined total of 71 caveats on what their soldiers could or could not do.45 These led to the paralysation of the entire NATO effort and made effective reconstruction efforts quite impossible.

The reluctance to operate with and among the Afghans meant that ISAF was incapable of protecting the population from attack and enabling the reconstruction teams to operate as they needed to. This in turn contributed to the Afghans not throwing their weight behind the government, which ensured that operations would fail, as indeed they did. The problem was further compounded by the fact, as already detailed, ISAF did not have enough men on the ground to secure the population even if it had been more willing to do so.

The outcome of these two problems - casualty-aversion and too few men on the ground - was recourse to air power to combat the insurgency. Between June and December 2006 there were a staggering 2,100 air strikes on insurgent targets, more than were conducted in the first four years of the conflict combined.46 Because combatants operate amongst the population in an insurgency, and because even precision air strikes are liable to cause considerable collateral damage, the inevitable consequence of this reliance on airpower was a huge number of civilian casualties. In May 2006 alone, 750 air strikes were conducted in the south, resulting in some 400 civilian and Taliban casualties, though revealingly, it is not certain how many of each.47 For very obvious reasons, civilian casualties are absolutely the last thing a campaign needs if it is to succeed in winning the population. Commenting on this, one British officer serving in Helmand later described the campaign as “a textbook case of how to screw up an insurgency… We’ve been grotesquely clumsy - we’ve said we’ll be different to the Americans


26

who were bombing and strafing villages, then behaved exactly like them.”48

Recognition of the unsustainably flawed nature of this approach led directly to the importance that General Stanley McChrystal placed upon his soldiers interacting and working with the Afghan people as much as possible prior to his resignation in June 2010.ii Indeed, his rules of engagement, which placed formidable restrictions on when soldiers could or could not open fire, drew severe criticism from some quarters of the military, who argued that the stringency of these restrictions potentially endangered the lives of coalition forces.49 McChrystal rightly responded to this criticism with what he called “insurgent math”, namely that for every civilian counterinsurgents kill in seeking to eliminate the enemy, ten new insurgents are created from amongst the population.50 General McChrystal’s successor as commander of ISAF and US forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, has affirmed his belief that General McChrystal’s approach was the right one and has if anything tightened the rules of engagement further still.51

THe nATUre oF WAr

At this point it is worth making a note on the nature of war, an understanding of which is critical in order to develop an appreciation of the conflict in Afghanistan. Too often, warfare is portrayed as a rational activity where a cause leads simply and predictably to an effect. The reality is that warfare represents a complex, dynamic and unpredictable interaction between emotion, chance and reason. As the 19th century German Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke famously observed: “no plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first contact with the enemy’s main strength”.

The implications of this for any conflict, Afghanistan included, are profound and extensive. First a conflict will evolve at both the tactical and the strategic level in reaction to events, many of which may be unintended or unanticipated. These alterations will not necessarily be an indication of ‘failure’, but an inevitable reflection of the nature of war. Second, things will go wrong and tragedies will happen, but this is not a reason to conclude that the conflict is being lost or that it is un-winnable. The terrible incident that took place on 13 July 2010, where an Afghan soldier shot dead three British soldiers on the base in which they were serving together is a poignant

ii. General McChrystal’s sudden resignation as commander of the mission in Afghanistan was precipitated by his decision to allow the publication of open criticism of the Obama administration by himself and his staff in an article published by Rolling Stone magazine.


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but good example of this.52 Almost immediately, questions were being asked by the media about whether the new strategy of working more closely with the Afghans was misguided because it invited incidents such as this. Yet these reports are unappreciative of the fact that the alternative of not working with the Afghans is far worse, and the current strategy is a very clear recognition of that fact. What happened here was a horrendous incident that was, unfortunately, part of the nature of war. It must not deflect from the strategy that gave rise to it, which remains the right one.

BUiLdinG HAmPSHire in HeLmAnd?

Sceptics of the conflict, and there are more than a few, will argue that what is being attempted in Afghanistan is a utopian pipe-dream that will take decades, if not centuries to accomplish. This is doubly problematic, it is argued, because the counterinsurgency approach necessary to bring about improvements is so resource intensive, and we are in the midst of an economic crisis.

However, it must be emphasised that what is not being called for here is the retention of foreign forces in Afghanistan until such time as the country attains Western standards of development. The objective in Afghanistan is not to create Hampshire in Helmand. Rather what is required is that forces remain until such time as the domestic security and economic infrastructure is developed to the level that withdrawal does not precipitate total collapse but the slow and steady continuation of this development under Afghan auspices. This is an objective that is achievable.

Moreover, recall that over everything else, Afghanistan is a war for the hearts and minds of the people. The alternative to the government that is being offered to Afghans is hardly the Swedish Social Democratic Party. Opinion poll after opinion poll in Afghanistan reveals that the vast majority of Afghans reject comprehensively the alternative being offered to them by the Taliban. Just 6 per cent said they wanted the Taliban in charge of Afghanistan in a major poll released at the start of this year, as compared with 90 per cent who favoured the government. Equally encouraging was that fully 70 per cent said they felt things in Afghanistan were going in the right direction, as opposed to just 40 per cent in 2009.53 The main reason that support is withheld in spite of this is because the Taliban are still in a position to retaliate against those who do so. Far and away the biggest problems confronting Afghans - as the poll again supports - are lack of


28

economic opportunity, lack of security and a weak and corrupt government that can deliver neither.54 These are all problems that are within the government side’s power to rectify. The ball is firmly in their court. Sceptics will argue that in an environment such as Afghanistan, such opinion polls can only really be conducted in areas where the government has at least some control, and so are bound to be biased. If this is so, what it actually shows is that where the government does have control of an area and security exists, support from the people quickly follows.

inTeLLiGenCe

Though the separation of the population from the insurgency is vital in order to succeed in Afghanistan, this is of course easier said than done. This is especially so in a country such as Afghanistan, where insurgents are often physically indistinguishable from the population, and indeed, often are the population.

No operation of this nature can succeed, therefore, without good intelligence. It makes it almost impossible to distinguish the insurgent from the civilian before he opens fire, in turn making it exceedingly difficult to engage militarily on anything but the insurgent’s terms. Moreover, in addition to reducing the likelihood of successful contacts with insurgency, lack of intelligence also increases the likelihood of generating civilian casualties, which is absolutely the last thing that needs to happen if the support of the people is to be won. This is why it is so important that the intelligence-gathering effort is taken seriously and is properly resourced at every level.

Poor intelligence about the insurgency was another failure that marred ISAF operations when they commenced in the south in 2006. Newly-arrived NATO officers described the intelligence available to them at the time as “appalling”, and were shocked to discover that between 2002-2005, the US had not actually monitored Taliban activity in four provinces in the south, nor in the Taliban leadership’s base in Quetta in Pakistan, at all. Ironically enough, the reason for this was because the Americans did not believe any al-Qaeda leaders were operating there, and it was the elimination of al-Qaeda, not nation-building, that dictated the course of US operations between 2001-5.55

Good intelligence on insurgents will tend to come from four main sources. First, advanced monitoring technology such as satellites, radio-intercepts and similar electronic intelligence; second, the operations of professional


29

agents on the ground; third, from captured or surrendered insurgents, and fourth from the local population amongst whom the insurgents operate.

It is beyond the remit of this report to go into specific intelligence-gathering techniques on the technological or professional level, except to say that such activity needs to be properly resourced, as it was not in Afghanistan in the early part of the conflict, and it needs to be as well integrated as possible. It is not sufficient for one intelligence branch to gather information in an area without ensuring that this information is then shared with others who may be in need of it. The Afghan Mission Network (AMN), a project aimed at improving intelligence-sharing among forces in Afghanistan, is a good example of the commitment to integrating intelligence efforts that is so important in a conflict such as this.56 Moreover, it is also important that collaboration takes place with other intelligence agencies. This is especially relevant in Afghanistan, where cross-border insurgent activity, particularly into Pakistan, is pervasive.

The main argument that needs to be put forward here, however, is that much of the most vital intelligence on insurgent activity will come from day-to-day interaction between the counterinsurgents and ordinary members of the population. This makes the case once again for the counterinsurgency approach, where the emphasis is very much on extensive interaction with the people. This is extremely important, because as well as getting a better sense of the dynamics and potential grievances at play in an area that is the natural corollary of such interaction, the people are also more likely to be forthcoming with intelligence if they come to know and trust those to whom they are imparting that information.

It was an ironic but perhaps understandable mistake made by Coalition forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq in the early stages to keep the population and the military separated as much as was possible. Not only was this seen as desirable from the military perspective, since it reduced the risk of incurring casualties, it was also seen as being desirable from the people’s view also, as it was reasoned that they were inherently wary of foreign forces. Given that the insurgency operated amongst the population, the result was that almost the only time civilians ever came into contact with the military was in an offensive context. Almost no positive, non-kinetic contact could take place. The consequence of not operating amongst the population is that far from gaining a positive association in the minds of local people, as a force that can be known and trusted and that brings security, the military comes to be viewed almost exclusively as a hostile and alien actor that brings nothing but


30

violence and insecurity with it whenever it appears.

Two additional points should be made here with regard to maximising the potential for this kind of intelligence-gathering. First, foreign forces operating amongst the people must have access to good interpreters as frequently as possible. This may sound self-evident, but coalition forces have frequently lacked an interpreter capable of informing them of local grievances and concerns. Sometimes, even when an interpreter has been available, basic problems, such as the fact that he has not spoken the same dialect as the local people, has resulted in poor translation and commensurate difficulties.57 The second, and related point, is that counterinsurgents are briefed as well as possible on local dynamics and local grievances before entering an area. The consequences of inserting foreign forces into a country, whilst ignorant of extant dynamics, conflicts and grievances, and how this insertion might affect them, is a topic that has been expounded upon at length by former Australian Army officer and counterinsurgency advisor to General Petraeus, David Kilcullen. Kilcullen has argued persuasively that in their pursuit of al-Qaeda across the globe, the US and its allies unnecessarily created a host of new enemies for themselves, so-called ‘accidental guerrillas’, by not understanding the theatres into which they were sending their armed forces.58 In the case of Afghanistan, complex dynamics such as the infiltration and disruption of tribal structures by Islamist elements, and honour-codes such as Pashtunwali, impose loyalties and behavioural obligations upon many Afghans that may be far from immediately evident, or even logical to Western minds.iii

The final component without which good intelligence-gathering will be much more difficult is an efficient, honest, and properly resourced police

iii. Pashtunwali is the traditional code of conduct to which members of the Pashtun tribal group are expected to adhere. Conformity to Pashtunwali has been held to define what it means to be genuinely Pashtun. The injunctions of Pashtunwali date back to an era when a man depended upon his immediate relations, as opposed to laws, for protection, and when to refuse hospitality could be to effectively condemn a man to death. Obligations such as the offering of hospitality to strangers (Nang), fierce loyalty to relatives and other members of the community (Sabat), and the duty of defending one’s property and family from incursions, wherever they may reside (Tureh), are all central to Pashtunwali.

An appreciation of the obligations imposed by Pashtunwali is central to understanding how and why the loyalties and behaviour of many Pashtuns may differ from what might otherwise be considered rational. For instance, blood feuds amongst Pashtuns have been known to go on for generations, and support for - or opposition to - NATO or US forces operating in an area may have as much to do with settling some local score as with a broader desire to see them succeed or fail. Likewise, if an insurgent is part of the family, this may impose an obligation to support him regardless of whether or not sympathy for the ideology or objectives of the Taliban as a whole is shared. Conversely, Taliban brutality directed against relatives or friends, and in particular women, may lead to Pashtun support for Coalition forces.


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force. The failure of the Afghan government and its international partners to properly develop the Afghan National Police (ANP) has been seriously to the detriment of operations in Afghanistan. Not only has training been almost non-existent in many cases, but poor security checks have made the ANP a favourite target for infiltration by insurgents, and low to no pay has led to rampant corruption. Not only has this decimated the ANP’s ability to conduct its day to day policing duties, it has also made it ineffectual as an intelligence gathering organisation. Ordinarily, the police should be one of the primary gatherers of intelligence in an area; a good understanding of the local community and the development of relationships with the people is part of a police force’s raison d’ être. In the case of the ANP, this interaction frequently takes place only to extort money.59 If the people despise the police and cannot even trust that they might not be talking to an insurgent, they will certainly not come to them with intelligence.

Fortunately, the current surge of men and resources into Afghanistan has also been accompanied by a renewed emphasis on properly training and equipping the ANP, and improving the Afghan security services generally, and already, vast improvements have been made.60 As late as autumn of last year it was being reported that some areas had just one trainer for every 466 recruits, meaning that in reality, many were not receiving any training whatsoever. The extra resources and focus on developing the Afghan security services has seen that figure fall dramatically to one trainer for every 29 recruits.61 This development of Afghanistan’s indigenous security services is obviously a pre-requisite for success. Western forces will not be in Afghanistan forever, and it is therefore vitally important that this commitment to enhancing domestic capacity continues.

no GUnS WiTHoUT money – eLiminATinG THe TALiBAn’S FinAnCeS

The next element that needs to be addressed if the insurgency is to be defeated is its finances. An insurgency can be disciplined, well-trained and ideologically committed, but ultimately it cannot last long without money.

Undoubtedly the biggest single source of revenue for the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan comes from opium. Precise estimates are difficult to obtain and liable to change, but it is generally reckoned that the opium industry accounts for between 40-50 per cent of the Taliban’s revenues.62 The remainder comes from taxation of local populations in areas of their control,


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various forms of criminal activity including kidnappings and extortion, and donations from local and international support networks.63

In order to be sustainable, all of these revenue streams depend upon the insurgents retaining control of the areas from which they originate. The logic clearly follows, therefore, that the more of these areas the government controls, the less will be the revenue available to the Taliban. This is why here too this report advocates a counterinsurgency approach as the best way to eliminate the Taliban’s finances. By pursuing a strategy that makes killing insurgents more important than holding and gaining ground, it is very difficult to effectively eliminate the revenue streams that sustain the insurgency. So long as all the insurgents are not eliminated in an area, which they almost certainly never will be, they can always regroup, re-establish their income lines with the population and so continue to attract new recruits to replenish themselves. This ceases to be the case if the ground is taken away from them for good.

This is especially true when dealing the opium problem. It is no coincidence that the regions with the highest levels of opium cultivation in Afghanistan are in the south, where the insurgency is strongest. Consistent with this, the worst affected of these southern regions are Helmand and Kandahar.64 In seeking to eradicate opium cultivation in these areas, a number of different strategies have been adopted. These have included paying farmers to sell their opium crops to the government instead of the insurgents, targeting the drug traffickers and production facilities instead of the farmers, and simply destroying opium fields wherever they are found. Whilst all of these approaches may have their place, it is important to emphasise that attempting them in areas not secured by government forces is liable to do as much if not more harm than good. It is a general principle of counterinsurgency that the government can only demand loyalty and cooperation from those in areas it has secured. To ask the same of those in insurgent-controlled areas is effectively to ask them to risk their lives and the lives of their families.

Additionally, the government cannot order people to stop doing something unless it is in a position to provide them with an alternative. This is all the more important in a country such as Afghanistan, where the means of earning an income are so scarce. The reasons for opium being such an attractive option to cultivate, in comparison to other crops such as wheat,


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are numerous.iv First, it grows well in poor soil; second it always fetches a good price; third it will keep for an extremely long time; and fourth, growing and selling it requires a very limited infrastructure network. Transporting wheat to market, for instance, requires good roads, which are in short supply in rural Afghanistan. Selling opium is far easier, since the insurgents will come straight to their door. In other words, if the government wants farmers to stop growing opium, it must be certain that it can provide them with a viable alternative. Efforts taking place at the time of writing to push through a trade deal between Afghanistan and Pakistan, allowing impoverished Afghan farmers access through Pakistan to the enormous Indian market, is a good example of the sort of progress that is required if the country is ever to move on from opium cultivation.65 This principle applies just the same to any other activity the government may object to its citizens partaking of. Simply destroying opium crops, or demanding that people stop doing what they are doing without providing them with an alternative will create profound resentment, and may even generate new insurgents. A survey of 42 Taliban foot soldiers conducted in 2008 revealed that 50 per cent of them were farmers whose poppy fields had been targeted by government eradication efforts.66

THe imPerATiVe oF Good GoVernAnCe

It has been stated repeatedly that winning an insurgency requires winning the support of the people, and in this effort perception is everything. The Afghan people must believe that the Afghan government - supported initially by NATO and the international community - offers them a better future, and to generate this belief a sense of stability and predictability must accompany everything the Afghan government and its allies undertake. Success in Afghanistan requires the adoption of a steamroller approach, where progress is perceived on all sides: by the Afghan people, by the insurgents and by the international community, as steady, inevitable and unstoppable. This is one of the main reasons why the Afghan government must operate within the rule of law.

The biggest problem with governments that operate outside the law is that they are unpredictable. Those who seek to start a business cannot be certain that they will not have their assets seized; those who register dissent cannot be certain that they will not be mistreated or even killed; and

iv. For extensive data on opium cultivation in Afghanistan, see the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s Afghanistan Opium Surveys.


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nobody can be certain of a fair trial in the courts. Inevitably, this creates a situation where the people cannot trust the government to represent their interests, with the result being that they cease to support it altogether. A dictatorship in a stable country can operate outside the law and survive for a time, though history has proved that dictatorships will always fail in the long-run. However, in a country such as Afghanistan, where instability is rife and there is a very clear alternative to the government, the government cannot afford to forfeit the legitimacy and support it garners from operating within the law. It is a damning and extremely concerning indictment of the Afghan government’s performance in this regard that one of the common answers given by Afghans when asked why they support the Taliban is: “they may be brutal, but at least they are fair”.67 The implication here is clear: there is nothing to stop the government from enacting tough laws if that is what is needed, so long as they are evenly and fairly applied.

The next problem with governments that act outside of the law is that they are unproductive and inefficient. It has been frequently asserted that the reconstruction component of the strategy is vital for winning the people, but this is made immeasurably more difficult if the government does not act within the law. For one thing, funds intended for development projects do not reach their destination and basic services fail to be delivered as finance is diverted into the pockets of corrupt officials. Indeed, corruption is one of the most debilitating malaises that can afflict a country. It serves to stifle development and prevents ordinary people from improving their lives. The Niger Delta is one of the most oil-rich regions on earth, yet rampant corruption and concomitant mismanagement ensures that its residents are the poorest in Nigeria, and subsist on less than a dollar a day. In Afghanistan, the problem is worse still. According to Transparency International, Afghanistan is now the most corrupt country on earth after Somalia, a state that has had no functioning government at all since 1991. During his tenure, General McChrystal went so far as to describe corruption as the greatest single threat facing Afghanistan: “It is greater, in my view, probably than the insurgency, although the insurgency is more immediate, more obvious… Corruption is more corrosive.”68 This situation cannot persist if the government wishes to win the support of its people.

The final problem with governments that act outside the law is that they are unaccountable. Unaccountable governments almost never make decisions in the best interests of their citizens and almost always make decisions in the best interests of themselves and the clique that keeps them in power. A government that does not act in accordance with the law forfeits the right to be called a government and cannot then expect its people to support it


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or indeed to obey the law. Indeed, if the people know that the government does not and will not represent their interests and address their grievances, why should they support it? They will go elsewhere to have those interests represented and grievances addressed, which means outside the law, and potentially to the Taliban. Quite aside from its inherent immorality, which is reason enough, that is why the government must operate within the law.

However, it must be recognised that in a country as undeveloped as Afghanistan, the temptation to operate outside the law and to succumb to corruption, particularly at the lower levels, is immense. Afghans are no more corrupt by nature than anybody else. The two things that lead to corruption and other extra-legal activity are lack of safeguards - so that those tempted to act improperly have no fear of the consequences - and lack of money, so that those in positions of power are driven to act outside the law for want of an alternative. Both of these problems exist in the extreme in Afghanistan, and both are rectifiable.

The scale of the challenge confronting Afghanistan is immense, and nobody, including the Afghans, expects it to be dealt with overnight. What they do want to see, however, is that the country is at least travelling in the right direction, albeit slower at times than they might like. The role of the international community in helping Afghanistan deal with these problems is extremely important. Riven by three decades of near continues conflict, desperately poor, and with no history of stable and accountable governance, Afghanistan cannot be expected to deal with these problems on its own. The international community cannot solve the problems within Afghanistan; that has to be done by the Afghans. However, what it can do is provide the help, the pressure and the support for the Afghan government and others to deal with the problem so that when this support is ultimately withdrawn the framework has been put in place such that Afghans can continue to make progress on their own.

One obvious example of where the international community can help to eliminate the pernicious low-level corruption that most directly affects the daily lives of ordinary Afghans is through the provision of adequate funding to enable the authorities to pay their personnel properly. According to one senior British military source who served in Helmand in 2009, the majority of police officers at the time not only received virtually no training, but also, in many cases, virtually no pay. What actually happened was that recruits were given a gun, put on a check-point and left to fend for themselves. The result, inevitably, was rampant corruption as police demanded bribes


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from everyone they could extort from just to earn a basic living. This is not a problem that is impossible to deal with, and indeed, additional resources since the start of the surge have helped to redress it. This process must continue.

However, though ensuring that development and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan are properly resourced is vital, it is equally important to ensure that this money is being properly spent. Though President Karzai may not like it, the fact is that he and his government depend upon international assistance for survival, and the international community must use the influence it wields in that regard to maximum effect. Where Afghanistan is lacking the accountability mechanisms to ensure that money is spent correctly and efficiently, the international community can assist the government to put those mechanisms in place through technical assistance and the provision of skilled personnel. It is not the place of the international community to tell the Karzai government what policies to adopt, and in fact that would be very counterproductive in an environment where accusations of being nothing more than a foreign stooge carry real weight. Indeed, there is evidence that the recent standoff between President Karzai and President Obama, where Karzai went so far as to threaten to join the Taliban if the Americans did not stop pressuring him, was intended to signal his operational independence loud and clear.69 However, what the international community can and should legitimately do is ensure that financial assistance is not misappropriated, that the systems of government are operating efficiently and that the policies that are adopted stay within the rule of law.

Perhaps the biggest criticism that has been levelled at Hamid Karzai is that he has tended to see good governance as the projection of powerful tribal personalities rather than as the building of institutions. From its inception in 2002, Karzai’s government has contained numerous warlords and other regional power players whose commitment to honest citizen-service is dubious at best.70

Last year’s presidential elections suffered from significant irregularities, including high levels of voter intimidation, ballot-stuffing and a general lack of transparency that ensured Hamid Karzai’s re-election, whatever the popular will.71 Not only did Karzai’s refusal to countenance a fair election play directly into the hands of his Taliban adversaries - who were claiming throughout that the elections were a sham - they also seriously undermined the development of one of the most vital components of a peaceful democracy: a loyal opposition. Where opposition politicians are consistently


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denied the possibility of gaining power by operating peacefully within the system, they will frequently resort to operating violently outside of it. When this happens, the ordinary business of government becomes almost impossible, since power becomes about little more than violent suppression of opponents, who in turn see violence as the only viable route to power.

Moreover, failure to respect the will of the people in an election will frequently have the added consequence of convincing them to look to sources of authority other than the government to represent their interests, which in Afghanistan could mean the Taliban. Finally, the accusations of fraud levelled at Karzai generated a great deal of international condemnation and questions being asked about why the international community continues to sustain an administration that fails to respect its people in this manner. For all of these reasons, President Karzai needs to realise that what took place in the 2009 presidential elections was neither in his long-term interests nor his country’s, and such behaviour cannot be repeated in the future.

Nonetheless, it is necessary to appreciate that the socio-political climate in Afghanistan makes a transition to democratic accountability extremely difficult, and understanding the logic that governs Karzai’s actions in this regard is important. Karzai’s dilemma as President in Kabul is that Afghanistan has never had a strong and viable central government. Instead, governance and power-projection has taken place almost exclusively at the regional level. This is a real problem for the implementation of a genuinely democratic system based on the principle of one-man-one-vote. For people who have never experienced centrally directed government, and indeed whose only experience of external intervention in their area has been pernicious, persuading them to sacrifice the collective-security that can be obtained by operating through regional power-brokers, however imperfect, is extremely problematic. One-man-one-vote is only appealing to people if they can be certain that their interests are better served by representing themselves than by working as a collective. Though President Karzai recognises that this system does not serve the people well at all, since these power-brokers are always liable to abuse their positions of power, he nonetheless continues to use it to his advantage.

Yet in the long-run this modus operandi is inherently flawed. It ensures that the central government remains beholden to a small clique of corrupt and abusive oligarchs as opposed to the people whose interests it must serve if it is to retain its legitimacy. Over time, the government becomes trapped in a vice of its own making, since the more it operates through such power-


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brokers, the more dependent upon them it becomes for its survival. This is because the government must necessarily serve the interests of the power-brokers if it is to retain their support, which will very often be at odds with those of the people. The further loss of popular legitimacy that is the inevitable consequence of this will result in the government becoming still more dependent on the power-brokers for its survival and so on. This is how tyrannies are born. The only way out of this trap is through the steady improvement of security and services and a corresponding commitment to greater accountability, that over time will transform the popular perception of the government from something that is abusive, corrupt and inefficient, to something that actually improves quality of life and is worthy of support.

The rejection by the Afghan Parliament of no fewer than 17 of the 24 names Hamid Karzai put before them as nominations for his cabinet in January 2010 is an encouraging sign that Afghan parliamentarians are increasingly ready to oppose President Karzai’s perpetuation of power-broker politics.72

The cabinet that Karzai originally proposed included a number of unsavoury personalities, including former warlord Ismail Khan, as well as a number of close allies of another veteran warlord, Abdul Rashid Dostum. The replacements put forward by Karzai excluded these individuals and perhaps represented the beginnings, however reluctant, of an effort to break away from this old style of government. It is imperative that the international community also uses every tool at its disposal to move Afghan governance in a more legitimate and credible direction and to persuade President Karzai and those who work with him to look beyond short-term survival and to the future.

reConCiLiATion WiTH THe TALiBAn

The principles so far outlined form the backbone of the strategy that needs to be pursued if the government and its international allies are to gain the upper hand against the insurgency in Afghanistan. The next section of this report will briefly discuss what needs to be done to persuade insurgents to lay down their arms and reintegrate, which is itself necessary if the strategy is to succeed. At the London Summit of January this year, the international community threw its weight fully behind the principle of negotiations with the Taliban. To facilitate this process, it was agreed to establish an international Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund, managed jointly by the United Nations Development Programme and the Afghan Ministry of Finance, to fund both reintegration and reconciliation activities. As of February 2010, $160 million


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had been donated to this process, with speculation that total funding could amount to $1.5 billion.73

Reconciliation and reintegration is a normal and necessary component of counterinsurgency warfare, but it is important to emphasise that it must be only be conducted under the right conditions. The first and most important condition that must be in place if negotiations with an insurgency are to yield positive results is that they take place from a position of strength. The government side must have secured the advantage against the insurgency before reconciliation is offered as a serious option. Certainly, the option should always be there for individual insurgents to lay down their arms if they so choose, but for the government to open up broader negotiations whilst in a position of weakness will only convince insurgents that it is beatable and encourage them to fight harder.

At the time of writing, it is clear that the Taliban leadership believes that it is winning and it has therefore stuck to its long-standing precondition that negotiations will only be undertaken once all foreign forces have left Afghanistan. President Karzai’s determination to negotiate with the senior Taliban leadership regardless is therefore highly misguided.74 Indeed, the Taliban leadership have repeatedly stated that they want no such association with Karzai and have promised to punish him according to Sharia should they ever come to power.75 This situation will only change if the Taliban finds itself in a position of weakness. For now, proposing negotiations with the Taliban leadership only serves to strengthen them, both by enhancing their status and by ‘proving’ that the Afghan government and NATO are in a weak and desperate situation.

Concomitant with weakening the Taliban before negotiating, the government must also provide alternative livelihoods for insurgents to pursue. As stated repeatedly, reconstruction and development efforts are central to winning the people in a counterinsurgency and the same principle applies with the insurgents. Though the Taliban undoubtedly possesses an ideological hardcore, Islamist fanaticism is not what motivates the majority of insurgents to take up arms. Indeed, it is estimated that anywhere between 80-90 per cent of insurgents in Afghanistan fight for pragmatic reasons such as lack of alternative economic opportunities and resentment at the corruption and failings of the government.76 This is why it is essential that the international community maintains its commitment to provide the necessary funds both for reconciliation and reintegration programmes and for the reconstruction effort more generally.


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An extensive set of interviews conducted recently with more than 50 Afghan officials, elders, community leaders and former and current insurgent leaders revealed that even insurgent leaders conceded that poverty and unemployment were principal reasons for fighting. Other reasons included a sense of disempowerment, anger over government corruption and injustice, civilian casualties, criminality and local conflicts.77 However, it is worth making the point once again that without the sense that the counterinsurgents are winning to accompany it, an economic incentive is not enough. In most cases it is unlikely that a reintegration scheme could match the spoils or status offered by an insurgency.

A further consideration for policy makers is the potential for reintegration and reconciliation programmes to be abused. There is the potential for insurgents to ‘reintegrate’ by day and fight by night, or that insurgents ‘agree’ to stop fighting, only to use this time to re-group and re-arm. Though these problems will always exist, they are only exacerbated if the government side looks unlikely to succeed or if it opens up broad negotiations prematurely.

One other dimension to be borne in mind when it comes to reintegration programmes is the potential for them to generate hostility from law-abiding citizens. If money and jobs are thrown at former insurgents without a parallel commitment to improving the daily lives of ordinary people, this is bound to cause profound resentment on the latter’s part. Moreover, it could lead to the possibility of citizens going so far as to ‘join’ the insurgency for a time, only to ‘renounce’ their ways and claim the reward.

A further component that is vital if insurgents are to surrender is that they can be certain they will not be subjected to abuse if they do so. There is a very strong temptation, when dealing with insurgencies, for governments to act outside the law. The usual arguments run along the lines that the processes of law are too cumbersome, that the normal safeguards in the law are not designed for an insurgency and that a terrorist deserves to be treated as an outlaw anyway. As well as being morally wrong, this approach creates more problems than it solves. Reconciliation and reintegration programmes offered from a position of strength are all very well, but persuading insurgents to lay down their arms and come over to the government side will be exceedingly difficult if the government also has a reputation for torturing or even murdering those in its custody.

A final and related point to bear in mind is that if peace and stability is ever to be brought to Afghanistan, the vast majority of insurgents are ultimately


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going to have to be reconciled and reintegrated within the population. If insurgents have been demonised as lesser beings not even worthy of due process, it is going to be very difficult for society to accept them back into the fold and turn them into productive members of the community.

THe need For inTernATionAL LeGiTimACy

Thus far it has been argued that in order to succeed in Afghanistan both the Afghan people and the insurgents must be persuaded that the government - supported by its Coalition partners - will prevail, and that the alternative it offers to the Taliban is a desirable one. There is a third constituency, however, without whose support success in Afghanistan will be almost impossible, and that is the domestic publics of those countries that are committing so many resources to the conflict. Unless these publics can be persuaded that what is being attempted using their young men and their money is legitimate, then their governments will be unable to sustain that commitment for very long.

There can be no question that the conflict in Afghanistan is becoming increasingly unpopular with the publics of countries deployed there, and the cost of this unpopularity has already made itself keenly felt. As early as February 2007, then-Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s government fell on account of the Left’s attack on the deployment in Afghanistan. It was reinstated a few days later, but with a wafer-thin majority.78 At the start of August this year the Dutch ended their four-year mission in Afghanistan, withdrawing their 1,950-strong contingent from Uruzgan province.79 Canada, with 2,800 troops in Kandahar, has pledged to withdraw all its forces by the end of 2011.80 In the United Kingdom and the United States, the two nations with the greatest commitment to Afghanistan, the conflict is now opposed by a majority in both countries.81

In order to convince the publics of these countries that this is a war that is worth fighting, that is, that it has legitimacy, they must be persuaded of three things. First, that the ramifications of failure in Afghanistan outweigh the costs of success. Unless these publics can be persuaded that success in Afghanistan is truly in the national interest of their own country, they will not lend the conflict their support. Without that support the war cannot be won, because no democratic government can continue to defy its voters indefinitely, especially not on an issue of this magnitude.

The second thing needed in order for the mission to win legitimacy with these publics is that they be persuaded not only that what we are trying


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to avert in Afghanistan is worth the cost, but that what we are trying to implement is legitimate also. It is not sufficient to convince Western publics that by committing so much to Afghanistan we are preventing the materialisation of one form of tyranny, only to put another in its place. As has been stated already, NATO is not trying to create Hampshire in Helmand, but what Western publics do expect is that the government we leave behind is at the very least one that respects the basic human rights of its citizens and adheres to the rule of law. President Karzai must deliver this if he wants the publics who are committing so much to his country to allow their governments to see this process through.

Finally, domestic publics must be convinced that real progress is being made and that the war is winnable. A sense that the war is being lost and a desire to withdraw go hand-in-hand, and the Afghan conflict is no different. The best way to convince people that progress is being made is, obviously, to make some real progress. This report has argued consistently that the counterinsurgency strategy is the best way to do that. However, it must not be forgotten that the vast majority of ordinary people do not follow the conflict closely enough to detect progress or setbacks save for what is clearly presented in the media. Quite understandably, the statistic that makes the headlines more powerfully than any other is Coalition deaths and casualties. By definition, these can only ever be bad news. If real progress is being made, but this is not being picked up by the media, the government should think seriously what to do about this. One possibility could be the publication of a quarterly, concise and readily understandable progress report which, on the basis that it compiles all the progress and setbacks into an easily digestible format, might just make some headlines. If the only news that ever comes out of Afghanistan is negative, then persuading domestic publics that maintaining the commitment there is worthwhile becomes almost impossible.


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CHAPTer iiiTALiBAn diViSionS

In order to beat the insurgency in Afghanistan, and indeed to believe that it can be beaten, it is necessary to understand its composition. To read many Western media reports, not to mention the public declarations of the Taliban leadership, it could easily be assumed that the insurgency is a truly homogenous entity, directed by a single and coherent leadership and driven by ideological conviction and religious fervour alone. The truth, however, is quite different. Indeed, it could well be argued that even the use of the term ‘Taliban’ to describe all the insurgents fighting in Afghanistan is misleading and unhelpful, since it affords this divided consortium of competing interests a great deal more homogeneity than it deserves. The purpose of this chapter will be to outline the different motivational, operational and strategic divisions that exist within the insurgency in Afghanistan, and to explain how and why these divisions must be both understood and consequently exploited if it is ever to be overcome.

WHAT moTiVATeS THe inSUrGenCy?

Every insurgency - and particularly an Islamist insurgency - needs a cause, and the Taliban is no different. The Taliban’s basic cause is the expulsion of all foreign forces from Afghanistan and the overthrow of the current government as a precursor to the establishment of an Islamic state, governed by the Taliban according to its austere and highly doctrinaire interpretation of Sharia law. Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s spiritual leader, has warned that in its unwavering struggle to fulfil these objectives, “the jihad will go on, even for a thousand years”.82

Taliban divisions

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Yet the implementation of a hard-line Islamist regime is not the only motivating factor driving the Taliban insurgency, and nor is it one for which the majority of its fighters would be willing to pursue for anything like a thousand years. Rather this over-arching cause is the metaphorical roof of a many-roomed house within which all manner of insurgents can find shelter. However, no roof is sustainable without foundations, and the foundations of the Taliban insurgency - that is the motivations of individual groups and factions within the Taliban - are, for the most part, much more parochial and mundane. Grievances over poverty, unemployment, lack of educational opportunities and resentment at the corruption and failings of extant authorities serve as the principal drivers of the Taliban insurgency at the local level.

When, as it did following the London conference in January 2010, the Taliban leadership proclaims that its insurgents fight not out of any desire to “accumulate wealth or other mundane goals… [rather] the objective of the Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate is more lofty and exalted than that the rulers of the White House could imagine” they are presenting to the world only the public cause, but not what lies behind it.83 What truly sustains this cause are - for the most part - precisely the same ‘mundane goals’ that the Taliban leadership pretends could not be further from its insurgents’ collective mind.

In seeking to break down these motivations, analysts have referred to three ‘Tiers’, or layers, within the insurgency. At the top, there are the ‘Tier 1’ Taliban, which consists of the leadership and the ideological hardcore. Below them are the ‘Tier 2’ Taliban, which consists of foreign fighters who have come to Afghanistan specifically to fight the government and its NATO allies. The third and final group, the ‘Tier 3’ Taliban, consists of all those who fight for reasons of a more pragmatic than ideological nature. Within this group are the dispossessed, the unemployed, and those whose experiences at the hands of the government or its allies have been sufficiently negative. Both military and civilian sources have estimated that as many as 80-90 per cent of those who fight the government at present belong to this latter group.84

The Afghan government and NATO cannot bring the type of seventh century Islamist tyranny to Afghanistan that Mullah Omar wants put in place, but it can bring the kind of development and security necessary to convince these Tier 3 Taliban that fighting the government is not the only satisfactory way to earn a living and bring about change. The so-called ‘$10 Taliban’ is a frequently used and some would argue misleading description of this group,


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but in a country where unemployment is running at almost 40 per cent and average income is just $2 a day, such an incentive is not to be dismissed.85

It is also worth recalling that though Mullah Omar may say all his men are ready to fight for a thousand years, the reality is that many of them are as weary of fighting as everybody else. One Taliban commander in Helmand went on record recently to say that after years of fighting NATO forces in Afghanistan, he and many others have wearied of conflict and just want an ordinary stake in society. “There are a lot of people like me”, he says. “We have decided to cooperate with the government but the government has to trust and cooperate with us”.86 Radio intercepts obtained by Coalition forces have also revealed an insurgency that is both frightened and demoralised, one whose fighters frequently complain about a lack of food and other basic items necessary for survival and a corresponding lack of military equipment. It is important to remember that, in the words of Sir Robert Thompson: “Insurgents are not a race apart and ten foot tall. They can be just as frightened as you or I.”87

This is why the focus of operations in Afghanistan must be geared principally towards providing security and development, as has been the argument throughout this report. It is not just ordinary Afghan civilians who can be won over if conditions improve; many insurgents fall into this category as well. However, as with the population at large, better opportunities on their own are not enough. The Taliban must also be convinced that they can be protected from insurgent reprisals if they do decide to lay down their arms, and in the long-term, they must be convinced that it is the government side, and not their own, that is going to prevail. Finally - as was touched upon in the previous chapter - these insurgents must also be persuaded that the government will not mistreat or kill them if they do decide to lay down their arms.

It is also important to make the point that, even for those insurgents for whom the Islamist objective is a serious end, the question must be asked as to why they should feel so utterly embittered as to advocate such a radical solution. Very often the answer will be because such individuals have failed to succeed under the existing system or because they have suffered sufficiently at the hands of the ruling authorities or its allies as to advocate a total overhaul of the status quo. It is worth recalling that the emergence of the Taliban in the 1990s was a direct consequence of the appalling conditions that prevailed in Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, where rival warlords competed violently for territorial and administrative control,

Taliban divisions

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seizing farms at random, raping women, abusing and robbing the population and taxing travellers at will. Pledging to cleanse society of its ills, the Taliban put forward a plan to restore peace, disarm the population and enforce Sharia law as an alternative to the utterly capricious rule of the warlords.88 At root, few grievances are anything but local.

STrATeGiC And oPerATionAL diViSionS WiTHin THe inSUrGenCy

The second way the insurgency in Afghanistan needs to be divided is along its strategic and operational lines, which are also nothing like as coherent as many might believe. Though the Taliban is undoubtedly the dominant insurgency fighting in Afghanistan, it is not the only one. Indeed, within the Taliban itself there are important divisions. Operationally speaking, there are five insurgencies operating in Afghanistan at present. First, there are the Taliban’s three regional commands: the northern command, eastern command and southern command. In addition there are two separate fronts, the Hezb-e-Islami group (HIG), operating in north-eastern Afghanistan, and commanded by Gulbuddin Hekmetyar, and the Haqqani Network, operating out of North Waziristan in Pakistan and commanded by Jalaluddin Haqqani.89 These commands do not combine to form a unified whole, like the different regiments of an army, but are often divided and have even been known to fight one another, just as they fight the government and NATO.

Of these, the group least closely aligned to the Taliban leadership is Hekmetyar’s Hezb-e-Islami faction. Hekmetyar has never publicly sworn allegiance to the Taliban’s spiritual leader, Mullah Omar, and the group has insisted in the past that no cooperation has taken place between it and the Taliban at the leadership level, although tactical cooperation may have taken place at lower levels.90 In March 2010, Taliban and HIG factions broke into open conflict with one another in Baghlan province, north of Kabul, in an altercation that left some 60 insurgents from both sides dead. HIG representatives said that the fighting erupted after members of the Taliban ordered local people in the area to swear allegiance to Mullah Omar.91 In July 2010, it was reported that HIG has been providing intelligence on members of the Taliban to NATO and the Afghan government for several months, which has led to the death or capture of several commanders in the north, and could signal a major split within the insurgency.92

Negotiations with Hezb-e-Islami have been at the forefront of President


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Karzai’s current efforts to hold out the olive branch to insurgents. The fact that HIG have engaged with the Afghan government whilst NATO forces remain in the country marks a major strategic divide between it and the Taliban leadership, the latter having sworn repeatedly that no negotiations can take place until all foreign forces have withdrawn from Afghanistan, a line Hekmetyar himself used to follow in the past.93 Indeed, it is significant that many former HIG members have already made their peace with the Afghan government, and some actually serve within it.94 Hekmetyar himself has had a less than happy relationship with the Taliban in the past. A veteran of the Soviet-Afghan war, he and his party became entangled in the Afghan civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal. When the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in 1994, Hekmetyar allegedly refused to make a peace deal and fled into exile in Iran, and only returned to Afghanistan in late 2001 or early 2002, after the Taliban had been deposed. Hekmetyar’s current alliance with the Taliban, such as it is, would seem to be pragmatic at best, and not one that cannot be broken up if the right mixture of pressure and incentives are applied.

The Haqqani network is formally led by Jalaluddin Haqqani, another veteran of the Soviet-Afghan war, though failing health means that the network is today run by his sons, and in particular Sirajuddin Haqqani. Jalaluddin Haqqani’s Islamist credentials are certainly sounder than Hekmetyar’s, though this does not necessarily mean that he and his sons are in lockstep with the Taliban leadership. Indeed, Haqqani has in the past referred to Mullah Omar as an ‘illiterate and incapable leader’, whose men no longer fight for God and to defend the poor and the weak.95 Haqqani himself, though a Pashtun, is distinct in that he was born in Khost province, in eastern Afghanistan, whereas most of the Taliban leadership originate from Kandahar province, in the south.96 However, Haqqani has publicly sworn allegiance to Mullah Omar and his network have carried out numerous operations in the Taliban’s name. The possibility of bringing the Haqqani network’s leadership onto the side of the government and against the Taliban is undoubtedly smaller than it is with the HIG. Nonetheless, it is clear that divisions do exist and these must be exploited where possible. Moreover - as has been argued earlier - even within specific groups, very different motivations for fighting clearly exist. Those members of the Haqqani network whose reasons for opposing the Afghan government are principally of a pragmatic nature can therefore also be reconciled if the requisite improvements in the economic and security environment in Afghanistan are forthcoming.

Taliban divisions

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It is also worth noting briefly the divisions that exist between the Taliban and al-Qaeda, who are quite far from the synonymous entities that many believe them to be. A detailed analysis of al-Qaeda is beyond the scope of this report, principally because the group does not exist as an entity with any serious geo-political or military clout in its own right so much as an idea with the potential to motivate and inspire other movements around the world. Suffice to say that, for the present at least, the Taliban’s objectives are confined to Afghanistan, whereas al-Qaeda’s ambitions are global. Differing priorities and objectives have caused serious, though little publicised divisions between the al-Qaeda leadership and the Taliban, and attitudes toward al-Qaeda amongst rank-and-file Taliban range from praise to outright hostility.97 In addition to being seen as ‘foreigners’ by many within the Taliban, they are also viewed as weak and overly intrusive. It is a testament to the wariness amongst the al-Qaeda leadership of their potential to alienate indigenous Afghans, as they succeeded in doing to their spectacular cost in Iraq, that they tend to be careful not to press their agenda too hard with the Taliban. Indeed Osama bin-Laden himself has sworn allegiance to Mullah Omar as the acknowledged leader of the Islamist insurgency in Afghanistan. Tellingly, however, some analysts believe that even this was not sincere and that bin-Laden got a proxy to swear the oath for him in order to provide him with potential future room for manoeuvre.98 The intensely pragmatic nature of the relationship that exists between al-Qaeda and the Taliban was perhaps best summed up by one of bin-Laden’s sons, Omar, who said in an interview recently that: “If there were no more enemies left on earth, I believe they would fight each other.”99

As to the Taliban itself, the point has already been made about the divisions that exist at the motivational level, and exploiting these must be the primary focus of the Afghan government’s reconciliation and reintegration efforts at the present time. However, there is an additional division that exists between the leadership and the majority of the rank and file, at the geographical level. Whilst Taliban foot soldiers, and a few middle ranking commanders, confront the Afghan government and NATO in Afghanistan, the Taliban leadership, known as the Quetta Shura, is located almost in its entirety in and around the town of Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan, across the border in Pakistan. Effective targeting of the communication and supply channels between the leadership and the Taliban factions in Afghanistan have the potential to seriously disrupt the efficacy of the Taliban’s operations. Indeed, a significant and recent development, one which has the potential to seriously alter the fortunes of the Taliban insurgency, has been Pakistan’s


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decision to finally start taking the Taliban threat within its borders seriously and to support coalition efforts in Afghanistan.

THe roLe oF PAKiSTAn

The willingness of Pakistan to provide the Taliban with a safe haven, and even to actively assist the Taliban, has been one of the most serious impediments to progress in Afghanistan. Since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the Pakistani authorities, principally the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), have actively supported the Afghan Mujahedeen and their Taliban successors. Pakistani authorities have long considered support for the Taliban as one of the country’s strategic national interests. Following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the ISI tried to bring its various Afghan proxies to power in Kabul in search of a strategic ally that would keep its rival India out of Afghanistan, and the Taliban provided just such a government.100 The arrival of the US-backed and nominally democratic Hamid Karzai on the scene following the 2001 invasion presented Pakistan with a far less dependable ally. Though Karzai himself is a Pashtun, the dominant tribal group in Afghanistan and the one from which almost all Taliban fighters are drawn, he leads a government made up of a number of non-Pashtun tribal groups which have historically sought support from Pakistan’s rivals - India, Iran and Russia - in their struggle with the Pashtuns.101 As for Karzai himself, his entire political career has been defined in absolute opposition to the very people Pakistan has supported for so many years.

Recently, however, the threat posed by the Taliban has reached a level that not even Pakistan can ignore. The Pakistan-Taliban relationship has always been something of a Faustian pact and it was ultimately only a matter of time before tensions over their quite incompatible ideological and political objectives began to simmer over. The first serious open conflict between militants and the army took place in July 2007 with the army’s siege and subsequent assault on the Red Mosque in Islamabad, located just a couple of miles from the presidential residence, which had become a haven for the widows of suicide bombers and militants who threatened civil war if the government did not adopt Sharia law.102

Reprisal suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism were part of a deterioration of relations between the government and the Taliban that ultimately led to the launching of major offensives against militants in 2008 and 2009 and a greater readiness on the part of the ISI to hand

Taliban divisions

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over intelligence to US, UK and Afghan governments on the whereabouts of Taliban leaders operating in Pakistan, including members of the Quetta Shura.

On 20 August 2009, the US announced that it had killed the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, in a drone attack with intelligence supplied by Pakistan.103 On 15 February 2010 it was announced that Mullah Omar’s second in command, Mullah Baradar, had been captured in a joint Pakistani-US operation.104 A week later it was announced that Mullah Abdul Kabir, a senior military commander, had been captured in a similar operation along with another senior member, Mullah Mohammed Yunis.105 In March, it was reported that another four members of the Quetta Shura, Mullah Abdul Qayoum Zakir - who oversees the movement’s military affairs - Mullah Muhammad Hassan, Mullah Ahmed Jan Akhunzada and Mullah Abdul Raouf, had been arrested by the Pakistani authorities.106 Altogether that accounted for almost half of the Quetta Shura, a major blow to the Taliban.

Sceptics have argued that Pakistan’s efforts in this regard are borne more out of a desire not to be left out of any negotiation efforts between the Afghan government and the Taliban than out of a genuine desire to cooperate. Either way, it is clear that a divided Taliban can no longer count on the support of its most significant ally.

Taken altogether, these divisions within the insurgency matter. It is clear that the insurgency is not a united entity, either motivationally or operationally, and nor does it enjoy the axiomatic support of Pakistan that it once did. It is important that these divisions are understood and exploited by policymakers, as well as being intelligibly conveyed to the media and the domestic publics in countries committed to the conflict. The Taliban are not undividable and nor are they unbeatable. The final chapter of this report will explore why it is in the interests not just of the Afghans that the insurgency is beaten and that stability is brought to Afghanistan, but is also vital to our own national interests.


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CHAPTer iVTHe rAmiFiCATionS oF FAiLUre

“Using very meagre resources and military means, the Afghan mujahedeen demolished one of the most important human myths in history and the greatest military apparatus. We no longer fear the so-called Great Powers. We believe that America is much weaker than Russia; and our brothers who fought in Somalia told us that they were astonished to observe how weak, impotent, and cowardly the American soldier is. As soon as eighty [sic] American troops were killed, they fled in the dark as fast as they could, after making a great deal of noise about the new international order.” Osama bin Laden, 2000107

Defeat in Afghanistan is an unconscionable prospect for anyone concerned with safeguarding national security, countering international terrorism and promoting human rights.

Afghanistan itself would certainly become a safe haven for terrorist organisations if the Taliban returned to power, whilst a power struggle between regional actors including India, Iran and Pakistan to fill the ensuing power vacuum could generate massive regional instability. The deaths of almost 2,000 Coalition soldiers and tens of thousands of Afghans would have been for nothing, hundreds of billions of dollars would have been needlessly wasted, and the critical struggle to advance human rights in the region would have failed absolutely.108 Finally, defeat in Afghanistan would provide a massive psychological boon to terrorist movements around the world, lending dangerous credibility to the belief that the West can be taken on and overcome by violent means.

The ramifications of failure

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THe rAmiFiCATionS oF FAiLUre For WeSTern nATionAL SeCUriTy

The above quote of Osama bin Laden is particularly instructive when elaborating on this latter point. It is a fact not often appreciated that two of the defining episodes that led to the attacks on the United States on 11th September 2001 were the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in 1989 and the humiliation of the United States in Somalia in 1994. These episodes were significant because they led bin Laden to believe that global superpowers, though physically strong, are mentally weak, and that attacking them is not necessarily to invite inevitable destruction but can in fact yield genuine and desirable results.

This, indeed, was precisely the logic behind 9/11, the objective of which was not merely to strike a blow against the United States as an end in itself but rather to demonstrate the vulnerability of America to Muslims around the world and by extension the weakness of its puppet regimes in the Middle East and beyond. In so demonstrating this vulnerability, al-Qaeda hoped to light the fuse that would set off revolutions across the Muslim world, replacing secular regimes with Islamist ones and driving the US and its allies out of the region in the process.109

It is no small point, therefore, that to date this effort has failed absolutely. Since 9/11 there has been no massive Islamist uprising across the Muslim world and not a single regime has been replaced with an Islamist one. Moreover, al-Qaeda as it existed before 9/11 has been shattered to the point that it now exists more as an idea than as a force with any geo-political capabilities of its own.

To concede defeat in Afghanistan would be to rejuvenate al-Qaeda not just as a physical force but, perhaps more dangerously, as an ideology with real and meaningful credibility. For the hard-headed and practical terrorist, the lesson would be as just outlined, that al-Qaeda was right about the pusillanimity of the West in conflict situations. This would also be the lesson for the Islamist terrorist, with the addition that such an outcome would be understood as nothing less than the will of God.

In order to appreciate this latter point it is first necessary to understand the extremely orthopraxic interpretation of the Quran as adhered to by most Islamist movements, in which the earthly gains and losses of a believer


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can be directly attributed to their favour or otherwise in the eyes of God. Citing the example of Mohammed’s spiritual faithfullness being rewarded with abundant earthly success, today’s Islamist fanatics are convinced that, having turned their backs on the imported decadence and immorality of the world in order to embrace God’s true way, their faithfulness will be similarly rewarded. Any such ideologue starting to doubt whether their actions enjoyed divine sanction would surely have such uncertainties dissipated by victory over the West in Afghanistan.

In geo-political terms, a victory for the Taliban and al-Qaeda would be correspondingly disastrous. The somewhat clichéd proposition that Afghanistan would become a global safe haven for terrorists is no less true for being said so often. Terrorist organisations and other movements committed to challenging democratic countries by violent or subversive means would have not only a sanctuary in Afghanistan but the additional benefits of an entire state apparatus with which to enhance the efficacy of their operations.

This, indeed, was the situation in Afghanistan before the Taliban were ejected from power in 2001. Afghanistan was ruled by the Taliban, an organisation that stood implacably opposed to every human right that did not conform to its ruthless and highly doctrinaire interpretation of the Quran, and which loathed the West and all it stood for. Though the Taliban’s main interest was in enforcing its ideology upon the people of Afghanistan, its hatred of the West made it willing to offer sanctuary and support to al-Qaeda, an organisation whose objectives were - and remain - global. This alliance was what made the planning and successful execution of the 11th September attacks possible. If the Taliban are allowed to return to power in Afghanistan, there is no reason to doubt that such attacks on the West will not be attempted again. This is not speculation; al-Qaeda has itself stated explicitly and repeatedly that these are exactly its intentions.

It is important to recognise that al-Qaeda and those who share its ideology do not hate the West for where it is, but for what it stands for. Withdrawal from Afghanistan will not placate these individuals, just as it did not placate them before 11th September 2001, when not a single Western soldier was in the country. Even if the West were to withdraw from the Muslim world entirely, not just militarily, but socially and corporately also, this would not convince al-Qaeda to relent, indeed it would have the opposite effect. Clearly, the West cannot allow its agenda to be dictated to it in this way, particularly not when the consequence of doing so would be to make it


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weaker and more vulnerable. Nonetheless, it must be recognised that this is what al-Qaeda and its supporters seek. Withdrawal from Afghanistan will not make the West more secure. In addition to affording al-Qaeda and others the sanctuary and resources presently denied to them, it would send a message to other regimes hostile to the West that supporting such groups might no longer be contrary to their own strategic interests.

Without a secure base from which to conduct operations, the ability of non-state terrorist organisations to plan and execute attacks is greatly reduced. Though unquestionable tragedies, the bombings in Madrid and London have been conspicuous as the only successful strikes on Western targets since 9/11, in spite of dozens of attempts. Should the Taliban be allowed to return to power in Afghanistan, the ability of the West to monitor and disrupt terrorist operations of this kind would be greatly reduced, and an increase in the success rate and deadliness of similar operations in the future would be almost inevitable.

The example of Pakistan demonstrates well the very serious limitations imposed upon efforts to disrupt terrorist activity when denied the ability to operate effectively in the country where such activity is being carried out. The reluctance of the Pakistani authorities to collaborate in disrupting the activities of Afghan Taliban operating from within their country has been enormously damaging to the counter-insurgency effort in Afghanistan. As was argued in Chapter II, paramount to the success of any such effort is good intelligence. Distinguishing a terrorist from an ordinary citizen, and thus putting a stop to his activities, is almost impossible without it. Whilst Pakistan denied NATO good intelligence on the Taliban operating in their country, NATO’s ability to disrupt the consequent terrorism operations in Afghanistan was greatly impaired. Insurgents could not be captured in Pakistan, save for in high-risk covert operations, nor could intelligence be garnered from a population with which NATO was denied any interaction. The reluctance of the ISI to share its own intelligence on the Taliban has been the final impediment to what might otherwise have been a much more successful operation in Afghanistan to date.

THe rAmiFiCATionS For reGionAL STABiLiTy

In addition to increasing the risk to Western national security, failure in Afghanistan would also generate the possibility of widespread regional instability. The country likely to be most severely affected would be


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neighbouring, nuclear-armed Pakistan, and this is the principal reason why the government in Islamabad has finally started to take the threat posed by the Taliban seriously. Not only would the Pakistan-Taliban be rejuvenated psychologically, the material and logistical assistance that they would receive from across the border could seriously enhance the threat they pose to the Pakistani government. For all the focus on Afghanistan, the threat posed to Pakistan by insurgents is not one to be underestimated. It is worth recalling the events of April 2009, when a resurgent Taliban advanced to within just 60 miles of Islamabad, prompting very real concerns of a Taliban takeover of the country and its nuclear arsenal.110 It is also worth recalling that what precipitated this resurgence was the capitulation of the Pakistani government in the Swat Valley, granting carte blanche to the Taliban to exercise administrative and judicial control, thus placing even more territory in the hands of the Taliban, having already lost control of most of its tribal agencies bordering Afghanistan. To cede control of Afghanistan to the Taliban, even in just those regions bordering Pakistan, could result in a rejuvenation of the insurgency across the border which would, in the worst case scenario, pose an existential threat to Pakistan, and the seemingly fantastical but nonetheless real possibility of its nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of the Taliban.

The consequences of this scenario would be dire indeed. The absolutely unacceptable prospect of the Taliban gaining control of a nuclear arsenal would surely precipitate a massive incursion by Western countries or by India, with the potential to throw not only Pakistan, but the entire region into massive conflict. This is, however, the worst-case scenario and one that is unlikely to come to pass, though it is by no means impossible. More likely is that Pakistan would be able to withstand a renewed insurgency, but the fallout in terms of civilian deaths, displacement and further instability would nonetheless be severe.

The wider potential for instability in the region would come from the power struggle that would ensue amongst regional actors to ensure that a regime amenable to their own ambitions emerged in Kabul, or at least to prevent the emergence of a hostile regime. It is no secret that the rationale behind Pakistan’s support for the Taliban during the 1990s was the perceived necessity of countering the influence of India in the country, which was lending its support to non-Taliban elements, principally the Northern Alliance.111 In the wake of the 2001 invasion India was quick to lend serious diplomatic and economic assistance to the new government in


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Kabul. Several thousand Indians are involved in over a billion dollars worth of development projects in Afghanistan, from road-building, to sanitation projects, to the digging of wells, to the erection of power transmission lines and more besides. India is even constructing the country’s new parliament building.112 The ability of India, with an economy more than six times the size of Pakistan, to overshadow the latter’s own assistance efforts has already set alarm bells ringing in Islamabad. “Who is the beneficiary of this war on terror that requires the collaboration of Pakistan?” a retired Pakistani officer was recently quoted as asking. “India is again in Afghanistan, working against us.”113 In the event of a collapse of authority in Afghanistan this power-struggle would only escalate as not only India and Pakistan sought to fill the vacuum, but potentially other regional actors, including Iran and Russia.

THe rAmiFiCATion For deVeLoPmenT & HUmAn riGHTS in AFGHAniSTAn

Undoubtedly the most severely affected victims of failure in Afghanistan, however, would be the Afghans themselves. Whether or not the Taliban ultimately emerged victorious, what is almost certain is that the country would be plunged into a renewed state of civil war, with numerous competing factions, each with outside countries supporting them, vying for power and with Afghan civilians caught in the middle. Were this to happen, the worthy and necessary effort to advance human rights and the rule of law in the region would have utterly failed. Such an outcome would be unacceptable, firstly because it is preventable, and secondly because, when the US, the UK and their allies intervened in Afghanistan to remove the Taliban from power, they assumed the responsibility of putting something better in its place.

It has been said of the conflict in Afghanistan that it is a futile and even neo-imperialistic endeavour to impose foreign values and ideas upon a people who neither need nor want them. This culturally relativist prognosis has at its heart the essentially racist assumption that the same basic human rights that Westerners take for granted, such as freedom of expression, freedom from exploitation, the right to education, sexual equality and the right to choose the form of government under which one wishes to live, are somehow not appropriate for Afghans. This assumption is not only a grave insult to Afghans, it is also false. As has been elaborated upon in Chapter II of this report, an overwhelming majority of Afghans, fully 90 per cent, believe that for all its failings, the current government is the best hope for the country’s future, whereas just six per cent wish to see a return to


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Taliban rule.114 Consistent with the Constitution of Afghanistan, the current government is committed to a society in which “Freedom of expression is inviolable”; citizens “have the right to form political parties”; “Torture of human beings is prohibited”; and “The citizens of Afghanistan - whether man or woman - have equal rights before the law”.115 This is to be starkly contrasted with the Taliban who, to take a recent example, sliced off the nose and ears of a 19-year old girl and left her to die for “shaming” her husband by running away on account of the torture and abuse she suffered at his hands and the hands of his family. It was the husband himself who carried the punishment out.116

It is certainly the case that many in the West, whilst not denying that Afghans are entitled to the same rights and freedoms as other peoples, nonetheless oppose foreign intervention in Afghanistan on the grounds that it is not facilitating the advancement of these rights and is in fact making matters worse. Those who adhere to this point of view should ask themselves what the likely consequences of withdrawal from Afghanistan before such time as the government can defend the rights of Afghans on its own would be. In addition to the 140,000 NATO and US soldiers on the ground, foreign assistance is developing the Afghan National Army and other security services to levels far beyond what the government, with an annual GDP of just $23 billion, could possibly sustain on its own.117 Just as happened following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the likely fate of the Afghan government if left to fight the Taliban and the warlords unassisted would be collapse. Whether under the Taliban, who adhere to an interpretation of Sharia law medieval in its barbarity, or under the capricious and self-interested rule of the warlords, those human rights and freedoms which many Afghans are starting to enjoy would disappear and the vital infrastructure development currently underway would likewise cease.

Afghans themselves clearly recognise the necessity of the international presence to support the government until such time as it can stand on its own. According to opinion polls, some 60 per cent of Afghans support the NATO presence, the same number that have actually supported an increase in the number of international forces in the country in the form of the recent US and NATO troop surge.118 If given the choice, the Afghan people - like all people everywhere - will support any effort that offers them and their families security and economic opportunities, and which respects their basic human rights. The effort to create such an environment in Afghanistan is not a forlorn hope or even an arrogant exercise in neo-imperialism but a


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worthy and workable enterprise that can yield genuine results. If we have a care for human rights in Afghanistan, and if we wish for it to succeed and not become another rabidly anti-Western autocracy, then it is imperative that the international community remains in the country until such time as the Afghan government can provide the necessary levels of security and development to succeed without external support.

THe reLATionSHiP BeTWeen UnderdeVeLoPmenT And SUPPorT For TerroriSm

Finally, it is also worth re-emphasising the correlation between under-development and support for terrorism, and why development in Afghanistan and beyond should not just be supported for altruistic reasons, but for strategic ones also. One of the main objectives of this report has been to make the point that the vast majority of Afghans do not share the ideology of the Taliban, but that they withhold their support from the government because it has proved incapable of providing them with security and livelihoods. In addition, the reason why many Afghans have become radicalised is because they have suffered sufficiently at the hands of the authorities, or on account of the absence of authority, as to advocate a total overhaul of the status quo. In the case of Afghanistan and Pakistan, there is good evidence that support for the Taliban tends to be in inverse proportion to the level of development and opportunities in a given region.

It is perhaps no coincidence that one of the regions in which the Taliban enjoys the strongest support is the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), seven provinces bordering Afghanistan in Pakistan, which collectively make up one of the most underdeveloped and backward regions on earth. Under Article 247 of the Pakistani Constitution, no act of Parliament applies to any Federally Administered Tribal Area unless directly stipulated by the President.119 Instead the FATA are de jure governed by the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), a century-old piece of colonial legislation enacted by the British in 1901 that affords no constitutional, civic or political rights to FATA tribesmen. Amongst its 64 articles the FCR permits multiple forms of collective punishment, arbitrary arrest and the execution of any individual for the committing of an offence, for evading arrest or even if “a hue and cry has been raised against him” for the aforementioned.120 As early as 1954, the FCR was described as “obnoxious to all recognised modern principles governing the dispensation of justice” by the Pakistani Justice Alvin Cornelius.121 Just three per cent of the population in the FATA live in non-rural areas, modern


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infrastructure is almost non-existent and the region is virtually devoid of progressive external influences. Unsurprisingly it was in the inaccessible, undeveloped and isolated FATA that the al-Qaeda leadership found refuge after its flight from Afghanistan in 2001-2002, where it remains to this day.122 The almost complete disassociation of FATA from the outside world, the marginalisation and impoverishment of its people and the absence of political and civic freedoms is what has enabled the Taliban and al-Qaeda to take root and their popularity to flourish. Bereft of any alternatives, FATA tribesmen now de facto live according to the Taliban and al-Qaeda’s brutal code of behaviour in what they have renamed the “Islamic Emirate of Waziristan”.123

Those who argue that the best way to reduce the threat of terrorism is to reduce the level of Western influence in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and indeed the Middle East, are mistaken. In every country where al-Qaeda and its allies operate, they constitute a fractional minority of the population, and one that draws sustenance from the disillusionment and anger of the population at large. The conditions most likely to generate this disillusionment and anger are corrupt and oppressive government, poverty, and insecurity. To remove these conditions is to deprive groups such as al-Qaeda of the oxygen they need to survive. Consequently, far from drawing into itself, the West must pursue a forward strategy in all of these places, using its considerable influence to promote development; greater political and corporate accountability; the provision of economic opportunities for ordinary people; respect for human rights; and adherence to the rule of law.


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ConCLUSion

The argument that has run throughout this report is not only that the conflict in Afghanistan needs to be won, but that it can be won also. The means by which this success can be brought about is through the pursuit of a properly resourced counterinsurgency strategy, such as the one NATO and the Afghan government are seeking to implement at present. This strategy, correctly and methodically applied, offers the best hope of winning the support of the people of Afghanistan, a condition without which success will be impossible. The reason why there was so little progress in Afghanistan between the commencement of operations on 7 October 2001 and the start of the troop-surge at the beginning of 2010 was because too much emphasis was placed on eliminating insurgents, with not enough emphasis on eliminating the conditions that give rise to them in the first place.

This report has argued that winning the hearts and minds of people is not impossible, particularly not when the alternatives are the Taliban or the warlords, but that it will require three conditions to be put in place. First, the Afghan people need to believe that the government can win. Second, they need to believe that the government can put in place the necessary security framework to ensure that neither they nor their families will be at risk of retribution if they do support the government. And third, the Afghan people must believe that the government offers them and their children a better future. A counterinsurgency strategy offers the best hope of providing these three conditions because it makes clearing and then actually holding ground - in order that a secure environment can be established where reconstruction can take place - a fundamental prerequisite of success. This distinguishes it from more conventional methods of warfare, where clearing an area merely entails eliminating the enemy in that area before moving onto the next one, without necessarily holding the ground, or creating working structures of authority in its place. This means of warfare is extremely resource intensive, in terms of men, money and time, which


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explains its unpopularity. Unfortunately, as history has shown in conflicts from Malaya to Iraq, and now in Afghanistan also, counterinsurgency, as the name implies, is the best way to counter insurgency. Indeed, the evidence coming out of Afghanistan at present, in regions such as Sangin, suggests that this strategy can work, and is starting to do so. Moreover, though the resources required for the counterinsurgency approach are unquestionably extensive in the short-term, in the long-term this approach is undoubtedly more resource efficient, since it offers the possibility of lasting - as opposed to merely temporary - progress.

The purpose of this report has not been to provide a definitive analysis of all aspects of the conflict in Afghanistan, but to frame them through the lens of the counterinsurgency approach, and explain why this strategy is the one most likely to deliver progress.

It has also been important to emphasise the necessity of good governance as a central component of effective counterinsurgency, in addition to the military and reconstruction aspects. Unless the government behaves within the law, and is seen to do so, it will find it extremely difficult to persuade ordinary Afghans to support it, and to behave within the law themselves. It is also a vital component to success in Afghanistan that the conflict is seen as legitimate in the eyes of the publics of those foreign governments involved in the conflict. Without this legitimacy, it will be impossible for those governments to commit the time and resources to Afghanistan that are necessary to succeed. In order to succeed in Afghanistan it is not necessary to create Hampshire in Helmand. Rather forces must remain until such time as the economic and security infrastructure in the country has become sufficiently developed that withdrawal does not precipitate collapse, but the steady continuation of this development under Afghan auspices.

It must also be understood that the Taliban are not the unified entity that they are often portrayed to be, but a frequently divided consortium of competing interests. Motivationally and operationally, very real differences exist within the insurgency, which can and must be exploited. Convincing those insurgents who fight for pragmatic reasons, such as poverty, lack of opportunity, and resentment at the corruption and failings of the government, will require the application of much the same principles of counterinsurgency that need to be applied to win the population generally. These insurgents, who make up the majority, are not irreconcilable, but they do need to be offered a viable alternative to conflict for the future, as well as

Conclusion

62

to be certain that if they do lay down their arms, they will not be mistreated at the hands of the government. As for negotiations with the ideological hardcore, these must only take place from a position of strength, such as can be brought about if the counterinsurgency approach is properly applied.

Finally, it is imperative to emphasise the costs of failure, which will extend far beyond Afghanistan if they are allowed to materialise. Failure in Afghanistan would greatly hinder Western counter-terrorism efforts and could be disastrous for regional security, particularly in neighbouring, nuclear-armed Pakistan. Moreover, the message that would be sent out to terrorist movements worldwide - that the West can be taken on and overcome by violent means - would generate dangerous reverberations that go well beyond the immediate context of Afghanistan. It must be re-emphasised that the argument that withdrawal from Afghanistan will reduce the threat of terrorism to the United Kingdom and its allies is a false one. Al-Qaeda and those who share its ideology do not hate the West for where it is, but for what it stands for. The West was not in Afghanistan on 11th September 2001, and nor will its being absent from Afghanistan make attacks of that magnitude less likely in the future. Not even the strategic absurdity of complete Western withdrawal - socially, economically, politically and militarily - from every Muslim-majority country on earth would placate groups such as al-Qaeda, in fact the reverse is true. Whether in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East or beyond, the surest way for the West to reduce the threat of terrorism is to use its considerable influence in these places to promote positive development in the form of economic opportunities, democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law. It is the absence of these things that generates the disillusionment and anger amongst ordinary people that enables extremist and violent movements to sustain themselves.

Last, but by no means least, this report has argued that premature withdrawal from Afghanistan would be a tremendous betrayal both of the Afghan people and all those who have given so much, including their lives, to bringing progress to the country. It is simply unacceptable to intervene in Afghanistan and remain there for such a prolonged period, only to leave the job unfinished. Such an outcome would be doubly intolerable because it is also unnecessary. Defeat in Afghanistan is not inevitable. On the contrary, if the United Kingdom, the United States and others retain their commitment to Afghanistan, and continue to pursue the counterinsurgency approach being applied at present, then success will not be such a distant prospect as so many seem to think.


63

endnoTeS

1 President Bush Announces Military Strikes in Afghanistan, GlobalSecurity.org, (07/10/01) http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2001/10/mil-011007-usia01.htm (accessed 31/08/10)

2 Ibid.3 Committee on Foreign Relations: Tora Bora Revisted – How we Failed to get Bin Laden and Why it

Matters Today, United States Senate, United States Government Printing Office, Washington (2009)4 Soldiers Recount Anatomy of Operation Anaconda, ABC News (22/03/02), http://abcnews.go.com/

Nightline/story?id=128582&page=1 (accessed 31/08/10)5 Livingston, Ian; Messera, Heather & O’Hanlon, Michael: Afghanistan Index – Tracking Variables of

Reconstruction & Security in Post-9/11 Afghanistan, Brookings Institute (2010), http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/Programs/FP/afghanistan%20index/index.pdf p.2, (accessed 31/08/10)

6 Rashid, Ahmed: Descent into Chaos – Pakistan, Afghanistan & the Threat to Global Security, Penguin Books, London, (2010), p.173

7 Afghanistan – Money Well Spent?, IRIN (2010), http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88502, (accessed 31/08/10)

8 Agreement on Provisional Arrangements in Afghanistan Pending the Re-Establishment of Permanent Government Institutions, Government of Afghanistan, (05/12/01) http://www.afghangovernment.com/AfghanAgreementBonn.htm (accessed 31/08/10)

9 Afghanistan – Money Well Spent?, IRIN (2010), http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88502, (accessed 31/08/10)

10 Rashid, Ahmed: Descent Descent into Chaos – Pakistan, Afghanistan & the Threat to Global Security, Penguin Books, London (2008), p.186

11 Afghanistan – Statistics, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), (2010) http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/afghanistan_statistics.html, (accessed 31/08/10)

12 Rashid, Ahmed: Descent into Chaos – Pakistan, Afghanistan & the Threat to Global Security, Penguin Books, London (2008), p.189

13 Baker III, Fred: Success in Iraq, Afghanistan Critical to Military Way Ahead, Mullen Says, American Forces Press Service, United States Department of Defense (DoD), (17/12/07) http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=48436 (accessed 31/08/10)

14 Kilcullen, David: The Accidental Guerrilla – Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, Hurst & Company, London (2009), p.43

15 Parekh, Vikram: Analysis of New Cabinet - Warlords Emerge from Loya Jirga More Powerful Than Ever, Human Rights Watch (20/06/02), http://www.rawa.org/loyajirga2.htm, (accessed 31/08/10)

16 Ibid.17 Rashid, Ahmed: Descent into Chaos – Pakistan, Afghanistan & the threat to global security, Penguin

Books, London (2008), pp.128-918 Wilkinson, Isambard: Taliban Unveils Hardline Afghan Constitution, Daily Telegraph (29/09/07), http://

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1564573/Taliban-unveils-hardline-Afghan-constitution.html, (accessed 31/08/10)

19 Talbi, Karim: Shadow Taliban Government Rules Afghans’ Lives, AFP (26/10/10), http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gWl9u3ZojrsONNK4l9tiX5TViJyA (accessed 31/08/10)

20 Kilcullen, David: The Accidental Guerrilla – Fighting small wars in the midst of a big one, Hurst & Company, London (2009), p.47

21 Ibid., p.5322 Afghanistan - Fighting a losing battle against opium production , IRIN (19/03/07), http://www.

Endnotes

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irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=70511 (accessed 31/08/10) 23 Farrell, Theo: Improving in War – Military Adaptation and the British in Helmand 2006-2009, The

Journal of Strategic Studies, vol.33, no.4 (2010), p.824 LaGraffe, Dan: More NATO troops Required for Afghanistan, International Affairs Review (25/10/09),

http://www.iar-gwu.org/node/80 (accessed 31/08/10)25 Haynes, Deborah: Brigadier Ed Butler considered resigning over Helmand Mission, The Times

(10/06/10), http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7147159.ece (accessed 31/08/10)

26 King, Anthony: Understanding the Helmand campaign - British military operations in Afghanistan, International Affairs, vol.86, no.2 (2010), p.5

27 Ibid., p.928 Farrell, Theo: Improving in War – Military Adaptation and the British in Helmand 2006-2009, The

Journal of Strategic Studies, vol.33, no.4 (2010), p.1229 Ibid., p.1330 Rayment, Sean: No 10 Asked Army to Delay Afghan Attack Until After Gordon Brown’s Visit, The Daily

Telegraph (26/09/09), http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6235775/No-10-asked-Army-to-delay-Afghan-attack-until-after-Gordon-Browns-visit.html (accessed 31/08/10)

31 Obama Details Afghan War Plan, Troop Increases, Associated Press (01/12/09), http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34218604/?gt1=43001 (accessed 31/08/10)

32 Kilcullen, David: The Accidental Guerrilla – Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, Hurst & Company, London (2009), pp.48-49 & Starkey, Jerome: Major-General Richard Barrons Puts Taleban Fighter Numbers at 36,000, The Times (03/03/10), http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7047321.ece (accessed 13/08/10)

33 Afghanistan Country Profile, CIA World Factook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html (accessed 31/08/10)

34 International Security Assistance Force - Troop Numbers and Contributions, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), (06/08/10) http://www.isaf.nato.int/images/stories/File/Placemats/100804%20Rev%20Placemat.pdf (accessed 31/08/10) & Garamone, Jim: Casualties Show Tough Week in Afghanistan, (09/06/10) American Forces Press Service, United States Department of Defense (DoD), http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=59557 (accessed 13/08/10)

35 Facts and Figures – Afghan National Army, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), (19/05/10), http://www.isaf.nato.int/images/stories/File/factsheets-june/June%202010-Fact%20Sheet%20ANA.pdf (accessed 13/08/10)

36 Security Incidents - Improvised Explosive Device (IED) Attacks, Afghanistan Conflict Monitor, (09/02/10) http://www.afghanconflictmonitor.org/incidents.html#docs4 (accessed 31/08/10)

37 Wintour, Patrick: Afghanistan withdrawal before 2015, says David Cameron, The Guardian (26/06/10), http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/25/british-soldiers-afghanistan-david-cameron (accessed 19/06/10)

38 Kabul Conference to pave the way for withdrawal from Afghanistan by 2014, The Daily Telegraph (20/07/10), http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/7899658/Kabul-Conference-to-pave-the-way-for-withdrawal-from-Afghanistan-by-2014.html (accessed 13/08/10)

39 Thompson, Robert: Defeating Communist Insurgency, Hailer Publishing, St Petersburg Fl (1966)40 Tse-tung, Mao: On Guerrilla Warfare, Dover Publications Inc, New York (2005)41 Coghlan, Tom: Tribal leaders turn against the Taleban after year-long negotiations, The Times

(13/08/10), http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/afghanistan/article2685139.ece (accessed 20/08/10)

42 Ibid.43 Afghanistan – Mid Year Report 2010, Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, United Nations

Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), (01/08/10) http://unama.unmissions.org/Portals/UNAMA/Publication/August102010_MID-YEAR%20REPORT%202010_Protection%20of%20Civilians%20in%20Armed%20Conflict.pdf (accessed 31/08/10)

44 Coghlan, Tom: Tribal Leaders Turn Against the Taleban After Year-Long Negotiations, The Times (13/08/10), http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/afghanistan/article2685139.ece (accessed 20/08/10)

45 Rashid, Ahmed: Descent into Chaos – Pakistan, Afghanistan & the Threat to Global Security, Penguin Books, London (2008), pp.350-4

46 Ibid., pp. 365-647 Ibid., p.36148 Lamb, Christina: Top Soldier Quits as Blundering Campaign Turns into ‘Pointless’ War, The Sunday

Times (10/09/06), http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article634344.ece, (accessed 31/08/10) 49 Harding, Thomas: ‘Courageous Restraint Putting Troops’ Lives at Risk’, The Daily Telegraph (06/07/10),


65

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/7874950/Courageous-restraint-putting-troops-lives-at-risk.html (accessed 31/08/10)

50 Hastings, Michael: The Runaway General, Rolling Stone Magazine (22/06/10), http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/119236?RS_show_page=3 (accessed 31/08/10)

51 Motlagh, Jason: Petraeus Toughens Afghan Rules of Engagement, Time Magazine (06/08/10), http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2008863,00.html (accessed 13/08/10)

52 Adams, Stephen: Three British soldiers killed by rogue Afghan soldier, The Daily Telegraph (13/07/10) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/7887072/Three-British-soldiers-killed-by-rogue-Afghan-soldier.html (accessed 31/08/10)

53 Afghan Opinion Poll, ABC News, BBC News, ARD, the Afghan Center for Socio-Economic and Opinion Research (11/01/10) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/11_01_10_afghanpoll.pdf (accessed 31/08/10)

54 Ibid.55 Rashid, Ahmed: Descent into Chaos – Pakistan, Afghanistan & the Threat to Global Security, Penguin

Books, London (2008), London, p.35956 New Network Connects ISAF Members in Afghanistan, Jane’s Defence Weekly (29/12/09) http://www.

janes.com/articles/Janes-Defence-Weekly-2010/New-network-connects-ISAF-members-in-Afghanistan.html (accessed 31/08/10)

57 Grey, Stephen: Afghanistan – Lost in Translation, StephenGrey.com (09/04/10), http://www.stephengrey.com/2010/04/afghanistan-lost-in-translation/ (accessed 31/08/10)

58 Kilcullen, David: The Accidental Guerrilla – Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, Hurst & Company, London (2009)

59 Oppel, Richard: Corruption Undercuts Hopes for Afghan Police, The New York Times (08/04/09), http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/world/asia/09ghazni.html (accessed 13/08/10)

60 Sengupta, Kim: NATO Will ‘Transform‘ Afghan Police Security Failures, Independent (15/01/10), http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/nato-will-transform-afghan-police-security-failures-1868603.html (accessed 31/08/10)

61 Jaffe, Greg: Training of Afghan Military, Police has Improved, NATO report says, The Washington Post (30/05/10), http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/29/AR2010052903172.html (accessed 31/08/10)

62 Stenersen, Anne: The Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan – Organisation, Leadership & Worldview, Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (2010), p.36 & Afghanistan Opium Survey 2010 – Winter Rapid Assessment, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), (01/02/10) http://www.unodc.org/documents/research/Afghanistan_Opium_Survey_2010_Winter_Rapid_Assessment.pdf, (accessed 31/08/10)

63 Stenersen, Anne: The Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan – Organisation, leadership & worldview, Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (2010), p.36

64 Afghanistan Opium Survey 2010 – Winter Rapid Assessment, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), (01/02/10) http://www.unodc.org/documents/research/Afghanistan_Opium_Survey_2010_Winter_Rapid_Assessment.pdf, (accessed 31/08/10)

65 Boone, Jon: Trade Deal Promises Bright Future for Afghanistan’s Farmers, The Guardian (19/07/10), http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/19/afghanistan-pakistan-trade-deal (accessed 31/08/10)

66 Stenersen, Anne: The Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan – Organisation, Leadership & Worldview, Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (2010), p.37

67 McGirk, Tim: Behind the Taliban’s Resurgence in Afghanistan, Time Magazine (16/09/09), http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1923303,00.html (accessed 31/08/10)

68 NATO’s Commander in Afghanistan - This is a War for the People, Military Operations News, United Kingdom Ministry of Defence (MoD), (03/03/10) http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/MilitaryOperations/NatosCommanderInAfghanistanThisIsAWarForThePeople.htm (accessed 31/08/10)

69 Karzai Threatens to Join Taliban, The Times of India (06/04/10), http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/Karzai-threatens-to-join-Taliban/articleshow/5765677.cms (accessed 31/08/10)

70 Parekh, Vikram: Analysis of New Cabinet - Warlords Emerge from Loya Jirga More Powerful Than Ever, Human Rights Watch (20/06/02), http://www.rawa.org/loyajirga2.htm, (accessed 31/08/10)

71 McDonald-Gibson: Afghan vote commission orders first ballots invalidated, AFP (10/09/09), http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i3xqZSi2U_mgENDm3TK0-yqI7I_g (accessed 31/08/10)

72 Shalizi, Hamid: New Karzai Cabinet Snubs Warlords, Reuters, (09/01/10) http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6080F620100109 (accessed 31/08/10)

73 Waldman, Matt: Golden Surrender? – Risks, Challenges, and Implications of Reintegration in Afghanistan, Afghanistan Analysts Newtwork (2010), p.2

Endnotes

66

74 Verma, Sonia: Karzai Calls on ‘Dear Taliban’ to Make Peace with his Government, The Globe and Mail (02/06/10), http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/karzai-calls-on-dear-taliban-to-make-peace-with-his-government/article1590191/ (accessed 20/07/10)


76 Up to 80 Percent of Afghan Taliban not Hardcore: UK, Reuters (03/02/10), http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6122DA20100203 (accessed 13/08/10)

77 Waldman, Matt: Golden Surrender? – Risks, Challenges, and Implications of Reintegration in Afghanistan, Afghanistan Analysts Newtwork (2010), pp. 2-4

78 Moore, Malcolm: Prodi back, amid Berlusconi taunts, The Daily Telegraph (25/02/07), http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1543805/Prodi-back-amid-Berlusconi-taunts.html (accessed 31/08/10)

79 Dutch Troops End Afghanistan Deployment, BBC (01/08/10), http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10829837 (accessed 13/08/10)

80 Key Facts and Figures, NATO – International Security Assistance Force (06/07/10), http://www.isaf.nato.int/images/stories/File/Placemats/100706%20Placemat.pdf (accessed 31/08/10)

81 Agiesta, Jennifer: Public Remains Unfriendly on Afghanistan, The Washington Post (10/06/10), (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/behind-the-numbers/2010/06/public_remains_unfriendly_on_a.html?wprss=behind-the-numbers (accessed 31/08/10) & Support for Afghan Mission at 38% in Britain, Angus Reid Public Opinion, (16/06/10) http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/support_for_afghan_mission_at_38_in_britain/ (accessed 31/08/10)

82 Stenersen, Anne: The Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan – Organisation, Leadership & Worldview, Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (2010), p.51

83 Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan: The Impracticable Decision of the London Conference, Al-qimmah Media (04/02/10) http://www.alqimmah.net/showthread.php?p=26583 (accessed 31/08/10)

84 Up to 80 Percent of Afghan not Hardcore: UK, Reuters (03/02/10), http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6122DA20100203 (accessed 31/08/10)

85 Afghanistan Country Profile, CIA World Factook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html (accessed 31/08/10)

86 Siddique, Abubakar: Peace With Taliban Remains Elusive, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (26/02/10), http://www.rferl.org/content/Peace_With_Taliban_Remains_Elusive/1969579.html (accessed 31/08/10)

87 Thompson, Robert: Defeating Communist Insurgency, Hailer Publishing, St Petersburg Fl, pp.36-788 Rashid, Ahmed: Descent into Chaos – Pakistan, Afghanistan & the threat to global security, Penguin

Books, London (2008), pp.12-1389 Themes - Haqqani Network, Institute for the Study of War, (2010) http://www.understandingwar.org/

themenode/haqqani-network (accessed 31/08/10) & Themes - Hizb-i-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG), Institute for the Study of War, (2010) http://www.understandingwar.org/themenode/hezb-e-islami-gulbuddin-hig (accessed 31/08/10)


91 Fighting Between Taliban and Allies in North Afghanistan, RFI (07/03/10), http://www.english.rfi.fr/asia-pacific/20100307-fighting-between-taliban-and-allies-north-afghanistan (accessed 31/08/10)

92 Shalizi, Hamid & Burch, Jonathon: Afghan Insurgents Supplying Taliban Intel to NATO – Officials, Reuters (08/07/10), http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SGE66300D.htm (accessed 31/08/10)

93 Salahuddin, Sayed & Graff, Peter: Karzai holds peace talks with insurgent faction, Reuters (23/03/10), http://in.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-47103820100322 (accessed 31/08/10)


95 Kabul Press: Haqqani: Today’s Taliban not fighting for Allah, Islamic Awakening Forums (24/06/08), http://forums.islamicawakening.com/f18/haqqani-todays-taliban-not-fighting-allah-swt-13517/ (accessed 31/08/10)


97 Stenersen, Anne: Al-Qaeda’s Allies – Explaining the Relationship Between Al-Qaeda and Various Factions of the Taliban After 2001, New America Foundation (2010)

98 Brown, Vahid: The Facade of Allegiance – Bin Laden’s Dubious Pledge to Mullah Omar, CTC Sentinel (2010)

99 Maclean, William: Bin Laden’s Son – No “Love” Among Qaeda-Taliban, Reuters (26/01/10), http://


67

www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60P4A320100126 (accessed 31/08/10)100 Rashid, Ahmed: Descent into Chaos – Pakistan, Afghanistan & the Threat to Global Security, Penguin

Books, London (2008), p.25101 Ibid., p.25102 Rashid, Ahmed: Descent into Chaos – Pakistan, Afghanistan & the Threat to Global Security, Penguin

Books, London (2008), p.382103 Obama: “We Took Out” Pakistani Taliban Chief, Reuters (21/08/09), http://in.reuters.com/article/

southAsiaNews/idINIndia-41873120090820 (accessed 31/08/10)104 Mazzetti, Mark & Filkins, Dexter: Secret Joint Raid Captures Taliban’s Top Commander, The New York

Times (15/02/10), http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/world/asia/16intel.html (accessed 31/08/10) 105 Shah, Pir Zubair & Filkins, Dexter: Pakistani Reports Capture of a Taliban Leader, The New York Times

(22/02/10), http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/world/asia/23islamabad.html (accessed 31/08/10)106 Mir, Amir: Pakistan Wipes out Half of Quetta Shura, The News International (01/03/10), http://

thenews.jang.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=27544 (accessed 31/08/10)107 Gerges, Fawaz: The Far Enemy – Why Jihad Went Global, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

(2005), p. 85108 Operation Enduring Freedom, iCasualties.org (19/07/10), http://www.icasualties.org/oef/ (accessed

31/08/10)109 Friedman, George: The Jihadist Strategic Dilemma, STRATFOR (07/12/09), http://www.stratfor.com/

weekly/20091207_jihadist_strategic_dilemma (accessed 31/08/10)110 60 Miles From Islamabad, The New York Times (26/04/09), http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/

opinion/27mon1.html (accessed 31/08/10)111 Baker, Aryn: The Key to Afghanistan: India-Pakistan Peace, Time Magazine (11/11/08) http://www.

time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1857953,00.html (accessed 31/08/10)112 India – Afghanistan’s Influential Ally, BBC (08/10/09), http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7492982.stm

(accessed 31/08/10)113 Baker, Aryn: The Key to Afghanistan: India-Pakistan Peace, Time Magazine (11/11/08) http://www.

time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1857953,00.html (accessed 31/08/10)114 Langer, Gary: Afghanistan – Where Things Stand, Center for Strategic and International Studies (2010) 115 The Constitution of Afghanistan, Government of Afghanistan (GoA), (2004) http://www.

afghangovernment.com/2004constitution.htm (accessed 31/08/10)116 ‘Shaming’ Her In-Laws Costs 19-Year Old Her Nose, Ears, CNN (18/03/10), http://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.

com/2010/03/18/shaming-her-in-laws-costs-19-year-old-her-nose-ears/ (accessed 31/08/10) 117 Afghanistan Country Profile, CIA World Factook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-

factbook/geos/af.html (accessed 31/08/10)118 Langer, Gary: Afghanistan – Where Things Stand, Center for Strategic and International Studies (2010)

& Afghan Opinion Poll, ABC News, BBC News, ARD, the Afghan Center for Socio-Economic and Opinion Research (11/01/10) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/11_01_10_afghanpoll.pdf (accessed 31/08/10)

119 The Constitution of Pakistan, Government of Pakistan, (2010) http://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/constitution/part12.ch3.html (accessed 31/08/10)

120 The Frontier Crimes Regulation (1901), Khyber Institute for Strategic Studies, (16/10/09) http://balkanisationofpakistan.rsfblog.org/archive/2009/10/16/frontier-crimes-regulation-fcr.html (accessed 31/08/10)

121 Khan, Amir Mohammad: Justice Denied, World Sindhi Institute, (01/12/2004) http://www.worldsindhi.org/relatedpress/dec04.html (accessed 31/08/10)

122 Rashid, Ahmed: Descent into Chaos – Pakistan, Afghanistan & the Threat to Global Security, Penguin Books, London, (2008), p.268

123 Ibid., pp.273-4

Endnotes

68

BiBLioGrAPHy

BooKS & BrieFinGS

Committee on Foreign Relations: Tora Bora Revisted – How we Failed to get Bin Laden and Why it Matters Today, United States Senate, United States Government Printing Office, Washington (2009)

Farrell, Theo: Improving in War – Military Adaptation and the British in Helmand 2006-2009, The Journal of Strategic Studies, vol.33, no.4 (2010)

Friedman, George: The Jihadist Strategic Dilemma, STRATFOR, http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20091207_jihadist_strategic_dilemma (07/12/09)

Gerges, Fawaz: The Far Enemy – Why Jihad Went Global, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2005)

Khan, Amir Mohammad: Justice Denied, World Sindhi Institute, http://www.worldsindhi.org/relatedpress/dec04.html (01/12/2004)

Kilcullen, David: The Accidental Guerrilla – Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, Hurst & Company, London (2009)

King, Anthony: Understanding the Helmand campaign - British military operations in Afghanistan, International Affairs, vol.86, no.2 (2010)

LaGraffe, Dan: More NATO Troops Required for Afghanistan, International Affairs Review, http://www.iar-gwu.org/node/80 (25/10/09)

Langer, Gary: Afghanistan – Where Things Stand, Center for Strategic and International Studies, http://csis.org/event/afghanistan-where-things-stand (11/02/10)


69

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‘if you believe in the cause of freedom, then proclaim it, live it and protect it, for humanity’s future depends on it.’Henry m. ‘Scoop’ Jackson(May 31, 1912 – September 1, 1983) U.S. Congressman and Senator for Washington State from 1941 – 1983


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