Afghanistan Mission Creep Watch - The Mismatch Version Posted by Michael Cohen

I was joking with a friend recently that if I ever wrote a book about US policy in Afghanistan it would be called "Mismatch" and for across the pond we have a good example of why.

Yesterday British Foreign Secretary David Miliband laid out a new (ish) approach for defeating the Taliban - political reconciliation:

Mr. Miliband called for “effective grass-roots initiatives to offer an alternative to fight or flight for the foot soldiers” of the Taliban. “Essentially this means a clear route for former insurgents to return to their villages and go back to farming the land, or a role for some of them within the legitimate Afghan security forces,” Mr. Miliband said. “Military pressure has an important role to play — these people must see the danger of remaining insurgents, but also believe that they will be protected from their former allies if they lay down their arms.”

To achieve that goal, Mr. Miliband said, the American-led coalition fighting the Taliban should work with the Afghan government to separate hard-line Taliban leaders from less ideological commanders.

“For higher-level commanders and their networks, we need to work with the Afghan government to separate the hard-line ideologues, who are essentially irreconcilable and violent and who must be pursued relentlessly, from those who can be drawn into domestic political processes,” Mr. Miliband said.

Now I actually think this is a very smart idea, although as Josh Foust points out, it's not exactly a new policy. Nonetheless, there almost certainly isn't a military solution to Afghanistan's problems and so a focus on political reconciliation - and separating core Taliban from occasional Taliban - is overall a good thing.

But for that process for work don't Afghan Taliban have to be convinced that it is in their interest to engage politically with the Afghan government? After all if they read the words of the President and other Administration officials, they might draw the conclusion that they are winning in Afghanistan and thus have little reason to come to the negotiating table.

The possible fly in the ointment with Miliband's strategy is that it doesn't seem to jibe with what the ISAF and US forces are doing militarily - and with what General McCrystal is saying publicly:

The U.S. and its allies must change their mission to focus on protecting the Afghan people -- even if it means temporarily allowing the Taliban to operate relatively freely in sparsely populated areas, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said in an interview Saturday.

The general, who did not say whether he would need additional troops, said his strategy is aimed at separating insurgents from noncombatants and increasing confidence in the Afghan government. He acknowledged that U.S. and alliance forces cannot routinely enter some areas.

"Practically speaking, there are areas that are controlled by Taliban forces," he said. Over time, McChrystal said, the command will "reduce" those areas, but the first priority will to be to make sure populated areas are free of insurgent influence.

To achieve political reconciliation you need to apply some sort of pressure on your opponent. The Dayton Peace Accords in Bosnia are perhaps a good example: we were to able to get all sides to the bargaining table but only after the facts on the ground had so dramatically changed that it was in each protagonist's interest to make a deal. And, for what it's worth, it was the use of military force that changed the political equation and made grudging reconciliation possible (well that and a lot of US peacekeepers).

But now we're relying on the good graces of the Taliban to "see the light" and a long-term strategy of placing a buffer (the US military) between the population and the Taliban. This isn't to say that McCrystal's operational strategy is wrong (although regular readers of the blog are well aware I'm not a fan) but if we're going to do it can we at least make sure everyone is on the same page - in other words can we make sure the political leaders are reading off the same page as the military leaders.

Instead, there seems to be a real mismatch between the goals lad out by the British Foreign Secretary and what the US and ISAF is doing on the ground.

Comments

[Fnord]

Sigh, this is just stupid.

Your basing your critiscism on a phantom named the Unified Taleban, projecting Viet-Cong comman unity onto a group of oppos varying from hilbilly rebels with AKs and lots of combat experience to fanatical ideological zealots. When you take that into account, then Milliband and McCrystals meaning become synergic: While the armed forces through intel will root out the fanatics (who the afghan civilians dont like much either) the repat program will (hopefully) be a good enough incentive to lure the hillbillies (lke the Korengal resistance) into "peace". Your Bosnia example rests on the same fallacy, in Bosnia we had european military formations fighting each other, with internal commandstructures. In Af/Pak we have basically a medieval complex system of interdependent communes to relate to.

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