The current fight has two principal centers of gravity: the Afghan people and the American people. Our enemies understand this, and have made them their primary targets. For the United States, the key to securing center of gravity is winning “hearts and minds.” The Afghan people must believe that their government offers them a better life than the insurgents do, and they must believe that the government will prevail. If they have doubts on either score, they will withhold their support. The American people must believe that the war is worth the sacrifice in lives and treasure that is involved in prosecuting the war, and they must believe that progress is being made toward achieving our war objectives. If these conditions cannot be met, Washington will be forced to abandon the fight before the Afghan government and people are capable of standing on their own. The enemy has a clear advantage when it comes to this fight: they only need to win one of the centers of gravity to succeed, whereas the United States must secure both. Making matters even more complicated, a “Catch-22” governs the fight against the insurgency: efforts designed to secure one center of gravity may undermine the prospects of securing the other. For example, increased troop deployments to Afghanistan might increase our chances of securing the support of the Afghan people, but could erode support for the war among the American people, who must incur higher costs in lives and resources, at least in the near-term.
The key to securing the centers of gravity in the current war is to recognize that our forces have overwhelming advantages in terms of combat power and mobility but a key disadvantage in terms of intelligence. Simply stated, if coalition forces know who the insurgents are and where they are, they can quickly suppress the insurgency. The Afghan people are the best source of this intelligence. But this knowledge can only be gained by winning locals’ hearts and minds—that is, by convincing them that the insurgents’ defeat is in their interest and that they can share intelligence about them without fear of insurgent reprisals.
Toward this end, General McChrystal’s strategy, as best it can be divined from his leaked report, conforms closely to the criteria for waging a successful counterinsurgency, the key elements of which are:
- Providing enduring security to the population;
- Undertaking economic reconstruction and development; and
- Supporting efforts at responsible, effective—and legitimate—governance.
As is evident, the successful execution of this strategy will depend on far more than military muscle. The military may create, by providing security, the conditions necessary for success in the economic and political dimensions of the conflict. But military force alone cannot create the end state the administration seeks. With respect to securing the population, General McChrystal’s assessment concedes that the “level of resourcing is less than the amount that is required to secure the whole country.” This would seem to infer that the 40,000 troop request is designed to enable the administration’s strategy, as put forth in march 2009, to be executed, rather than to minimize the risk that the strategy fails. History shows that it is not necessary to secure the entire population at once to defeat an insurgency. General mcChrystal’s strategy focuses on securing certain key areas initially and, as these areas are secured and more Afghan forces become available, progressively expanding the effort into contested areas, securing an ever-greater part of the country over time.
A key element of this strategy involves fielding substantial numbers of Afghan security forces, which are the only forces that can credibly provide long-term security to the Afghan people. General McChrystal has presented a realistic estimate of the number of indigenous Afghan security forces needed to accomplish this objective, to include roughly a quarter million troops in the Afghan National Army (ANA). He correctly projects that it will take time to stand this force up, and for it to become effective. In addition to the training and equipping of the ANA, the general wisely plans both to embed advisors with Afghan units at every level, and to have them partner with American units. Not only will this enable Afghan forces to function with more confidence during their transition from training to conducting operations, but it will also provide opportunities for American commanders and advisors to better distinguish between Afghan officers who are capable and those who are incompetent, those who are honest and those who are corrupt, and those who are loyal to the government and those who have a different agenda. Most importantly, the process offers the best prospect of advancing the day when Afghan security forces can begin a large-scale substitution for the NATo forces currently bearing the brunt of the war effort.
This brings us to the matter of effective governance. It is no exaggeration to say that in waging a counterinsurgency the objective is not to outfight the enemy but to “out-govern” him. A legitimate government responsive of its people’s needs is capable of both mobilizing the resources needed to defeat the insurgency and employing them in a way that denies the insurgents’ claim to represent the true will of the people.
The Obama Administration is right to concern itself with the Karzai regime’s ability to govern effectively. This concern argues for extending the partnering relationships that General McChrystal plans to implement beyond combat units to include the Afghan national government’s ministries as well as the provincial and district governments. President Karzai should understand that our support is conditional on his willingness to remove ineffective or corrupt administrators. Particular emphasis should be given to the interior ministry, which is responsible for the country’s police forces, the front-line force in this type of insurgency warfare. of course, the embedding of American and NATo coalition support personnel in these organizations should also accelerate the development of more efficient and effective ministries and governance at the province and district levels. With unity of command, this approach facilitates the effective integration of the military, reconstruction, governance and intelligence elements of the counterinsurgency campaign.