What's Next in Afghanistan

Today, the Pentagon announced it was sending approximately 12,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, approximately 8,000  Marines and one Army Stryker Brigade with about 4,000 Soldiers.  This will be the first time a Stryker Brigade has been deployed and these will be the first truly Armored Combat Vehicles to be deployed to Afghanistan to date.  Time will tell how it fares on the narrow, unimproved roads that are characteristic of the country. 

Defense Secretary Gates and President Obama have hinted that they will soon unveil a new way forward in Afghanistan.  General Petraeus has H.R. McMaster and a team of Officers conducting a review of the options there.  Numerous advisors who I greatly respect have weighed in on this issue, their names will be familiar to those of you who read regularly. 

• John Nagl, former Army Officer, current president of CNAS, and widely regarded as a counterinsurgency expert was recently a member of a panel talking about Afghanistan on NPR's Diane Rehm Show, you can listen to the segment here.
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• David Kilcullen, former advisor to General Petraeus and Condoleeza Rice, who writes for Small Wars Journal testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, an edited version of his statement can be found here.
  

Obviously a new top down strategy is what is needed here.  Here are some of my thoughts.

• Figure out what we want Afghanistan to look like. What are our strategic goals for Afghanistan and the region?  These need to be modest.  Afghanistan is in many ways stuck in the far past.  They simply do not have modern infrastructure outside of the major cities.  There is no road network, communication network etc.  People go there entire lives never knowing what exists outside of their valley.  The United States cannot afford to bring Afghanistan into the modern world, at least not in the near term, and certainly not with military forces.  Many other Government organizations will need to be involved, including the State Department, Agriculture, etc.  

• Stop the Drone War.  The fact that we have the capability to drop precision munitions and fire hellfire missiles with impunity from un-manned drones piloted by Airmen sitting in trailers in the Arizona Desert is a testament to the unmatched reach of our Armed Forces.  But in this conflict, the technology is doing more harm than good.  Kilcullen writes:  "If we want to strengthen our friends and weaken our enemies in Pakistan, bombing Pakistani villages with unmanned drones is totally counterproductive,"   Every civilian death, intentional or not, has drastic consequences on our ability to influence the populations of both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  I believe we have become too dependant on Air Strikes, which inevitably kill or maim innocent civilians.  David Kilcullen set forth the following rules to determine whether to carry out an attack on Pakistani soil.  

1) The target in question poses a threat to the international community (not solely to U.S.forces or interests in Afghanistan);
2) It is located in an area outside of effective Pakistani or Afghan sovereignty (e.g. in a non-controlled area of FATAor in a micro-haven elsewhere)
3) Pakistan has tried but failed to extend its sovereignty into the area, or to deal effectively with the target on its own
4) The target is positively identified and clearly distinguishable from surrounding populations, reducing the risk of collateral damage to a level acceptable to elected political leaders.

Enough for now, obviously there will be more news in the days ahead.