2001-2021 ANALYSIS: Contextualizing Strategy -- Excerpt from (Mis)Understanding Afghanistan

“Most of us, me included, had a very superficial understanding of the situation and history, and we had a frighteningly simplistic view of recent history, the last 50 years.” — General Stanley McChrystal, Commander of ISAF 2009-2010, reflecting on counterinsurgent strategy. (117)

This final section provides an analysis of US-led counterinsurgency strategy: first, in reflection of Afghanistan’s pre-9/11 ethnographic record; and, second in reflection of emerging patterns of US/NATO security institutions involved in the conflict. [EDIT: The analysis presented here is preliminary and serves to build deeper patterns presented in further chapters.]

Strategy in the Context of Afghanistan's Pre-9/11 Ethnographic Record

On ‘War-fighting Strategies’ —?“Wars are... tied to the seasons and the agricultural cycle. Campaigns begin in spring or early summer after the snows are melted and all the passes open. They end by early fall because snow comes early in the mountains and the whole country is shut down by winter storms.”

On ‘Implications for Diplomacy’ —“Afghans respond to threats because they take a realistic view of them... At a minimum, negotiations can postpone action against them and, because most Afghan governments have historically proved willing to accept bribes or play off one power against another, diplomacy has been a way to turn dangerous situations to their advantage.”

On ‘Expectations of Victory, Defeat, and Compromise’?—“Afghans take a very pragmatic view of victory and defeat. Neither is assumed to be permanent. Even if you kill an enemy his descendants will seek revenge and no victory is ever complete enough to make a ruler truly secure. Victory and defeat are also the products of expectations that can bring about either by mere belief they will occur... No one wants to be caught on the losing side, so if it looked like one side were going to win, factions would desert to the expected winner in such numbers that they did win, usually without a battle.”

On ‘Assumptions about Rivals and Allies’?— “Afghans live with the belief that today’s enemy is tomorrow’s potential ally and vice versa... New allies are asked few questions, for such changing alliances are based on immediate need and not long-term commitment. Self- interest, not ideology, is deemed to be the glue that unites allies. Bitter enemies in one context can become allies if they have useful power or influence... In cases where neither side is able to win, but there are no grounds for an alliance, rival groups often tacitly agree to limit the damage they could do on one another when it is mutually advantageous.”

Anthropologist Thomas Barfield, 'Afghan Styles of War and Diplomacy', written 18-months before the fall of the Twin Towers. (118)

Afghanistan is one of few countries with an extensive ethnographic record -- capturing strategic historical patterns and intricacies of its inhabitants' way of life from the earlier anthropological of works of Frederik Barth and Louis Dupree to as far back as British Colonial accounts and records of orators trailing Alexander's hellenic armies. (119)

Specifically, Afghanistan’s pre-9/11 ethnographic record [presented in an earlier chapter] places the events that unfolded post-9/11 and the reactions of ‘the population’ in response to policy-orientations in greater context when examined alongside the pre-emptive analysis, or foresight, of anthropologists most familiar with the region and its long-term strategic patterns. (119)

Usama bin Laden (UBL) predicted a US invasion of Afghanistan would prompt a localised insurgency of the Afghan people; but this did not happen. As the balance tipped in US favour, Afghan Taliban consistently defected to the winning side. Described by a Northern Alliance commander, the circumstances were?“a case where one group of foreigners was used to drive out another” -- where each party was able to claim some part in the victory, congratulating one another on their ability to use the other to sway results to their favour. (120)?

The low visibility of US forces using unconventional approaches of a mix of Special Forces, local militias, but backed by definitive air-power aided perception of a non-invasion. Where US interests coincided, there was cooperation; where they did not, UBL escaped as proxy-Afghan forces lacked interest to pursue. Defections and rapid shifting of alliances set ‘no clear winners or losers’ amongst the factions that participated. The only obvious losers were those that fled to Pakistan: AQ and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Everyone else had a claim to some part of the victory -- perhaps, with the exception of the US, who did not declare victory or an end to the war. (121)

If these events were surprising to the outside observer (e.g. the international community), even more so would be the Afghan factions’ near unanimous cooperation to peacefully form a government and agree on the selection of a single Afghan leader. The Bonn Accord acted as historical template for reconciliation and restoration of order where, although the majority of fighting was conducted by non-Pashtun leaders of the Northern Alliance, they were quick to accept a Pashtun of royal Sadozai lineage, Hamid Karzai, as the interim leader in belief that the selection of a non-Pashtun leader would cause rejection and continued hostilities amongst Pashtun factions.

With the Bonn Agreement, swift gains began to lose momentum as the international community’s designs for Afghanistan’s future began diverging from Afghan norms.

The US did not declare victory after the defeat of the Taliban; and, the Taliban were not included in the Bonn Accord deliberations — a lost opportunity to negotiate an official surrender of the Taliban in exchange for a negotiated reconciliation and reintegration of Taliban fighters who feared retaliation from formal rivals. (122)?For the remainder of the conflict, they would remain an outlier in search of a place within a new Afghanistan from which they were now excluded.

“Promising Taliban fighters and participations in a new Afghanistan would have gone far to relieve their well-founded fear of being vulnerable to future attacks by their former enemies. It would have also made the Bonn Agreement appear less of a zero-sum victor’s peace.” -- Anthropologist
Thomas Barfield (122)        

Initial preoccupations of the international community after Bonn were that the country would be subject to ‘Balkanisation’ — a paradigm templated by a previous decade of peacekeeping intervention to halt genocide during the ethnic-fragmentation of former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe. Overlooking the cooperation at Bonn, this scenario did not fit historical Afghan views of political order that did not link ethnicity with nationalism and where ethnic-groups felt secure enough in local regions to cooperate at a national level. (123)?Even with co-ethnics on other sides of the border, Afghan regional leaders recognised that breaking the country up into smaller parts left them vulnerable to co-option or domination by neighbours — an undesirable alternative where they would have less power or influence if absorbed into a larger entity. (124)

“The choice of working together was infinitely more practical than starting a new conflict to break up the country. In this respect, Afghan leaders were like poker players who wanted to continue gambling whether or not they won or lost a particular hand. They had no interest in ending the game by dividing the table on which it was played.” -- Anthropologist
Thomas Barfield (124)        

The international community pressured the adoption of a highly centralised government with a powerful presidential office over a decentralised federal parliamentary system with a prime minister in fear that the latter could pave way for future dissolution of the country. Viewed externally, the strong centralised government during the reign of ‘Iron Amir’ Abdur Rahman was seen as a period of external stability; although, this overlooked how this century of centralised rule had been internally detrimental to Afghanistan’s regions. The default system that survived historical political turmoil was decentralised and the decision to adopt a centralised ‘top-down’ system ignored how the regions had become more autonomous after two decades of lawlessness and conflict. Rather than relying on existing power-structures, Afghanistan’s new government was destined to start over and reign (again) from (‘the kingdom of’) Kabul. (125)

The imposition of ‘top-down’, not ‘bottom-up’, solutions that reflected the interests of international donors, rather than local communities, weakened and disenfranchised local customary institutions at the village level that provided the stable governing role in times of chaos. Justice sector reform established the imposition of a Western punitive legal system which would not resonate amongst localised communities with longstanding restorative justice codices for resolving disputes. (126)?More devastating to community order and customary institutions would be the top-down allocation of funds and resources pursued in the naivety that foreign aid and assistance would be fairly distributed in a society where wealth redistribution acted as a means for social climbing and subordinating rivals. (127)?Rampant corruption at the top disenfranchised localised communities that were starved of resources and subjected to systems of patronage by rivals and Kabul elites.

While US/NATO militaries held the monopoly on funds and force, they did not hold a monopoly on ‘presence’: providing an opportunity for the Taliban to project a campaign of intimidation in a society where battles were won through perceptions of power and rarely fought. (128)?US military strategies sought to enhance legitimacy by routing-out insurgents and winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of local communities. In doing so, these strategies overlooked the ultimate perceived source of US legitimacy in Afghanistan:?funds. In this respect, US legitimacy was more undermined by top-down strategies of empowering a corrupt government, where needed resources did not reach local residents, than through military security strategy. Unswayed by the cruel and violent intimidation of the Taliban, US focus on ‘winning hearts and minds’ over ‘addressing community needs’ overestimated Afghan conceptual separations between ‘friends’ and ‘business’: communities were stuck with dealing with those that affected their local situations, not necessarily those they ‘liked’. International focus on empowering local institutions came late to the conflict, but were abandoned shortly thereafter.

Potentially most dire to US strategy would be the failure of enemy-centric ‘counter- terrorism’ approaches that ‘took the fight’ to ‘yagistan’ — the marginal regions — in belief they were extending the authority of the Kabul government in areas that had been historically ignored by governments and subdued through policies of indirect governance for centuries. (129)?The US military struggled to recognise when it had won. In the absence of enemies who had fled, the US began pursuing adversaries in marginal areas. Here they found both small pockets of enemy fighters but also local factions who for centuries resisted any outside interference in local affairs. Most military efforts, and many of the harshest battles, were focused in areas of little regional importance. (130)

Two themes regarding US intervention can be drawn and highlighted from this series on the?Situational Context of US-led ‘Counterinsurgency' Strategy in Afghanistan’: (1) that the population had been fairly supportive of the US effort to rebuild Afghanistan; and, (2) that the Taliban had been a fairly incapable adversary, if not militarily, than certainly in gaining popular support for their cause.

These themes must be considered amidst claims that the conflict in Afghanistan had been ‘un-winnable’. (131)?Unpacking this claim, the preceding themes would indicate that the conditions for success, a supportive population and an incapable adversary, were in fact present in Afghanistan (and perhaps more attainable had decision-makers been more familiar with the long-standing strategic patterns of Afghanistan’s pre-9/11 ethnographic record). (132)?

Anthropologist Thomas Barfield refers to this as the 'puffer fish strategy':?“Afghanistan sits in a dangerous neighborhood and its people are justly proud of their historical ability to maintain their autonomy... Living in a land whose crossroads status has been as much a curse as a blessing, Afghans have cultivated a puffer fish strategy to repel outsiders. Small puffer fish inflate their highly elastic stomachs with huge quantities of water and air when confronted by a predator, which turns them into a virtually inedible ball many times their normal size. Should their display fail to deter, the puffer fish liver contains a foul-tasting paralytic poison that makes eating one a rarely repeated choice. Afghanistan uses the hyperbole of history (unconquerable and a graveyard of empires) to exaggerate its strengths in order to deter invaders. It has relied on its indigestibility to get them to leave. But like the puffer fish, this is a tactic employed by the weak and vulnerable, not the strong and secure. It comes with a high price tag too, since when deterrence failed, the ensuing conflicts, particularly over the past thirty years, devastated both the country and its people. To change the status quo, there needs to be an end to violence within Afghanistan and threats to the country from its neighbors.” (132)        

Placing these premises on hold, the inquiry then turns towards the ‘institution’: to what extent was the intervention ‘un-winnable’, not due to conditions on the ground, but due to conditions within the institutions charged with developing and applying strategy (within these conditions) to induce a ‘winnable’ success.

Strategy in the Institutional Context of the 'Counterinsurgency Apparatus'

“We seem to play ‘whack-a-mole’. We hit the bad-guys and whack them down. When the mole is gone, we just sit on our thumbs and wait for it to pop up again. Then we get excited and whack it again because that’s what we do best. And then we just sit waiting around for the mole to let us know what to do next.” — NATO Intelligence Officer, Reflections on combat operations before, during, and after the surge, 2006-2012. (133)

Returning to the 'counterinsurgency apparatus', it is necessary to first reflect back upon the framework of the Joint Operations Phasing Model [EDIT: introduced earlier in the chapter this excerpt is derived from] where Phases 0-2 ('0-shape', '1-deter, '2-seize initiative') are conflict mitigating steps ‘left-of-bang’ — ‘bang’ being Phase 3 ‘dominate’ where major combat operations occur — and Phases 4-5 ('4-stabilise', '5-transfer to civil authority) are ‘right-of-bang’ as steps towards conflict transformation. Changes in counterinsurgent strategy in Afghanistan during the height of engagement from 2001-2014 present a pattern where the military continually reverted back to familiar and comfortable approaches that played to advantages —?Phase 3 ‘dominate’. (134)

After the initial successful 2001 invasion that defeated the Taliban, counterinsurgents remained relatively inactive: focusing on Kabul and ignoring the countryside where the Taliban regrouped, until 2006 when the Taliban re-emerged in force in Kandahar Province. From 2006 until 2009, this pattern occurred seasonally where counterinsurgents conducted intense combat operations during the summer ‘fighting season’ but lulled during the winter months when Taliban fighters would mostly return to sanctuaries in Pakistan during the poor weather. Consistent with the pattern, the 2010 ‘surge’ — focused primarily on kinetic enemy-centric operations against insurgents — saw intense combat operations once again that would soon lull afterwards, towards withdrawal at the end of 2014. Post-2015, the growing re-emergence of insurgents in Afghanistan had raised the possibility of a redeployment of US combat forces to ease pressure on embattled Afghan National Security Forces (continued to be supported by a kinetic Special Forces counter-terrorism mission).

This presents a very ironic pattern where America intervened?on part?of an insurgency (2001, supporting the Northern Alliance to oust the Taliban), sat mostly stagnant waiting for a new enemy to develop (2002-2005),?countered?that insurgency once enveloped in one (2006 and beyond), exhibited periods of high activity when there was a clear defined enemy force, and periods of inactivity when decimated, that characterises the cyclical pattern to the end of the engagement — much like the cyclical pattern of applying a topical ointment to a rash caused by a staph infection.

In these cases, counterinsurgents relied on their advantages: technological intelligence capabilities that could identify, track, and locate adversaries; and, technological capabilities of superior firepower, weaponry, and combat ability that could dominate and guarantee battlefield victory. Success in ‘enemy-centric’ operations is relatively easy to measure: counts of enemy-combatants killed or wounded and the retrograde of insurgent leadership. This evidences a strong pattern where counterinsurgents struggled to relinquish an ‘enemy-centric approach’ in favour of one that was ‘population-centric' (in?practise?or?application?as opposed to in?will?— in?will referring to the late introduction of ‘population-centric’ strategy orientation of Generals McChrystal and Petraeus that still resulted in a highly kinetic surge focused on attriting insurgent capability). Population-centric ‘counterinsurgency’ came late to Afghanistan (2009), lasting as a short-lived experiment (until 2011) with near immediate preparations for withdrawal (post-2012).

In conclusion, these patterns builds theory that US institutions exhibit ‘human problems' in that they demonstrate a bias towards being enemy-focused and a preference for technological solutions [EDIT: which becomes the focus of later chapters]. In regards to being ‘enemy-focused’, this refers to patterns where US/NATO forces increased effort when there was a defined enemy to fight but lulled during periods when the enemy was eradicated and it came time for building Afghan governance — to which ‘counterinsurgents’ were very ‘hands-off’. In regards to having a ‘tech-centric’ orientation, this refers to patterns where US/NATO forces accepted engagement in the ‘technological domain’ of the conflict, when it came to using coercive hard-power and military strength against the Taliban, but were reluctant to engage in the ‘human-domain’ of soft-power persuasive influence tactics in establishing civil governance. The proceeding chapter examines the institutional context of these ‘human problems’.

Excerpt from: (Mis)Understanding Afghanistan, Chapter 2: The Situational Context of US-Led ‘Counterinsurgency’ in Afghanistan (2001-2015), Pp. 145-154.

CITATION:

Gavriel, Alexei (2020) (Mis)Understanding Afghanistan: An Ethnographic Examination of 'Human Elements' Affecting the Nexus Between Understanding and Strategy in Population-Centric Conflict. Queens University Belfast. Doctoral Thesis.

Gavriel, Alexei (2020) "Chapter 2: The Situational Context of US-Led ‘Counterinsurgency’ in Afghanistan (2001-2015)". In (Mis)Understanding Afghanistan: An Ethnographic Examination of 'Human Elements' Affecting the Nexus Between Understanding and Strategy in Population-Centric Conflict. Queens University Belfast. Doctoral Thesis. Pp. 110-155.

NOTES:

117.?Quoted in: Walsh 2011: np.

118.?Barfield 2000. This paper, and the strategic foresight of its analysis, will be revisited in later chapters.

119. See this volume (Gavriel 2020), Chapter 1 on The Historical Context of Conflict & Governance in Afghanistan (1500BCE-9/11).

120.?Barfield 2010: 59.

121.?This analysis is provided by Barfield in a publication mid-way through the conflict (Barfield 2010) and in an article published post-withdrawal (Barfield 2016).

122.?Barfield (2016: 10) adds that:?“[p]romising Taliban fighters and participations in a new Afghanistan would have gone far to relieve their well-founded fear of being vulnerable to future attacks by their former enemies. It would have also made the Bonn Agreement appear less of a zero-sum victor’s peace.”

123.?Barfield 2010.

124.?Barfield (2010: 60) furthers that:?“The choice of working together was infinitely more practical than starting a new conflict to break up the country. In this respect, Afghan leaders were like poker players who wanted to continue gambling whether or not they won or lost a particular hand. They had no interest in ending the game by dividing the table on which it was played.”

125.?In reference to Elphinstone’s (1815) ‘Account of the Kingdom of Caubul’ where he acknowledged that the government had little extension beyond the capital.

126.?Ghani 1978.

127.?Barth 1959; Lindholm 1982.

128.?Barfield 2000.

129.?Barfield 2010; Barfield 2016.?

130.?Barfield 2016.

131.?Farrell 2017; Isby 2011; Jones 2010.

132.?Barfield (2010: 74-75) describes this as the ‘puffer-fish strategy’:?“Afghanistan sits in a dangerous neighborhood and its people are justly proud of their historical ability to maintain their autonomy... Living in a land whose crossroads status has been as much a curse as a blessing, Afghans have cultivated a puffer fish strategy to repel outsiders. Small puffer fish inflate their highly elastic stomachs with huge quantities of water and air when confronted by a predator, which turns them into a virtually inedible ball many times their normal size. Should their display fail to deter, the puffer fish liver contains a foul-tasting paralytic poison that makes eating one a rarely repeated choice. Afghanistan uses the hyperbole of history (unconquerable and a graveyard of empires) to exaggerate its strengths in order to deter invaders. It has relied on its indigestibility to get them to leave. But like the puffer fish, this is a tactic employed by the weak and vulnerable, not the strong and secure. It comes with a high price tag too, since when deterrence failed, the ensuing conflicts, particularly over the past thirty years, devastated both the country and its people. To change the status quo, there needs to be an end to violence within Afghanistan and threats to the country from its neighbors.”

133.?Interview, NATO Intelligence Officer with multiple tours to Afghanistan between 2006 and 2012, 2018.

134.?The counterinsurgency apparatus could be described 'a system of systems' to reflect the multitude of organisations that make it up — from civilian and military actors, to divisions within these component parts, to the diversity of NATO nations — each with their own organisational cultures. Although not the focus of this inquiry, the counterinsurgency apparatus, as a 'system of systems', did not have a unified effort or strategy. Organisations duplicated effort and function — sometimes to a point of contradiction. Canada in Kandahar and the UK in neighbouring Helmand at times held contradictory policies towards opium and counter-narcotics efforts: the UK placing opium eradiaction as a major campaign objective and Canada seeing it as a non-military task to be addressed by local Afghan government or police. In another fieldwork-based case example, duplicate offices both working on counter-radicalisation were located down the hall from each other in the same building but had not heard of one another until introduced by a third party at a meeting. For the purpose of this inquiry, focus is limited to US-led strategic direction; however, it must be noted that 'strategy' as a whole was further confused by this 'system of systems’ with many sub-actors all doing their own thing: sometimes on the same page, sometimes in different books.