Flashback to 2008: some perspective on the pace of our strategic realignment

Things have been sort of slow around here lately. August in DC is pretty awful, if you ask me: the weather is usually the worst of the year, the streets are clogged up with tourists, and nobody can get any work done because everybody goes on vacation. (This is especially true if you work with or around Europeans!) And so the torpid pace seems to have impacted us around here, or at least me.

None of this is really a problem for the Gentle Reader, I'm sure, seeing as you've likely been busying yourselves with Loren Thompson's new blog. Well, actually, it's the Lexington Institute's blog, not Thompson's personal blog. And he assures us (via Small Wars Journal) that "it isn't awful." Heh. So good luck with all that. I'm gonna stick to my "ill-mannered rants masquerading as analysis," personally.

So as I may have mentioned, I've been meaning for a while to jump into the Afghanistan strategy debate -- despite Dave Dillege's consternation, everyone else is. And maybe I'll get to that this weekend, but for right now I just want to take a look back to last November at some of Dave Kilcullen's thoughts.

At the time of this email interview, optimism about the new Obama administration's increased focus on Afghanistan was tempered by what seemed like a negative turn in the coalition's furtunes. Nine months later, we can comfortably say that this was more than a temporary blip. The U.S./ISAF mission seems almost certain to meet with some far less expansive definition of success, if not with outright failure. It was interesting to read back yesterday and see what priorities Kilcullen identified for the newly-elected president.

The email exchange starts with George Packer asking "so how bad is it [in Afghanistan]?" DK responds:

It’s bad: violence is way up, Taliban influence has spread at the local level, and popular confidence in the government and the international community is waning fast. It’s still winnable, but only just, and to turn this thing around will take an extremely major effort starting with local-level governance, political strategy, giving the Afghan people a well-founded feeling of security, and dealing with the active sanctuary in Pakistan.

Sounds about like today, right? Seriously, if you read those words in this morning's paper, wouldn't they seem consistent with what most of what we're hearing in the lead-up to the Afghan presidential election next week? But I digress. Kilcullen goes on:

A normal U.S.government transition takes six to nine months, by the time new political appointees are confirmed, briefed, and in position. But nine months out from now will be the height of the Afghan fighting season, and less than a month out from critical Presidential elections in Afghanistan. If we do this the “normal” way, it will be too late for the Obama Administration to grip it up. I think this is shaping up to be one of the smoothest transitions on record, with the current Administration going out of its way to assist and facilitate. That said, the incoming Administration has a steep learning curve, and has inherited a dire situation—so whatever we do, it’s not going to be easy. [emphasis mine]

Which is exactly where we are today: nine months out, and right at the height of Afghanistan's fighting season. And how about that progress? Well, the administration moved to appoint key personnel, along with engaging in an "AfPak" strategic review. That got us a bland restatement of the counter-terror, counter-sanctuary mission, along with some pretty vague platitudes about building Pakistani counterinsurgency capabilities and so on. Now we seem to be approaching the close of yet another "strategic assessment/review," this one conducted by GEN McChrystal's staff and a crew of subject-matter experts. But what's that going to tell us, really? Probably what we already know: that there has been little to no progress over the last nine months on the focus areas of the "extremely major effort" that Kilcullen identifies: "local-level governance, political strategy, giving the Afghan people a well-founded feeling of security, and dealing with the active sanctuary in Pakistan."

"[W]e are being both out-fought and out-governed for four basic reasons," he continued.

(1) We have failed to secure the Afghan people. That is, we have failed to deliver them a well-founded feeling of security. Our failing lies as much in providing human security—economic and social wellbeing, law and order, trust in institutions and hope for the future—as in protection from the Taliban, narco-traffickers, and terrorists. In particular, we have spent too much effort chasing and attacking an elusive enemy who has nothing he needs to defend—and so can always run away to fight another day—and too little effort in securing the people where they sleep. (And doing this would not take nearly as many extra troops as some people think, but rather a different focus of operations).

(2) We have failed to deal with the Pakistani sanctuary that forms the political base and operational support system for the Taliban, and which creates a protective cocoon (abetted by the fecklessness or complicity of some elements in Pakistan) around senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.

(3) The Afghan government has not delivered legitimate, good governance to Afghans at the local level—with the emphasis on good governance. In some areas, we have left a vacuum that the Taliban has filled, in other areas some of the Afghan government’s own representatives have been seen as inefficient, corrupt, or exploitative.

(4) Neither we nor the Afghans are organized, staffed, or resourced to do these three things (secure the people, deal with the safe haven, and govern legitimately and well at the local level)—partly because of poor coalition management, partly because of the strategic distraction and resource scarcity caused by Iraq, and partly because, to date, we have given only episodic attention to the war.

Yep.

An in-depth examination of these points is probably going to have to wait for another time (and probably ought to be performed by someone with more granular knowledge of the situation than me, like maybe Andrew Exum, who was on the assessment team). But I think it's fair to look back and consider how, despite all the sound and fury, the last nine months haven't gotten us much closer to a time where this thing looks do-able. I'd contend that this has as much to do with structural, situational factors as much as it does misguided coalition efforts or resource constraints, though it's certainly encouraging to see our strategy, TTPs, and resource availability being reconsidered.

"The war in Afghanistan will be won or lost in the next fighting season, i.e. by the time of the September [sic] elections." That's what Kilcullen told George Packer last November. Well, the presidential election takes place in six days. And in a counterinsurgency, if you're not winning, you're losing.

I don't think we're winning.