2006-2009: Re-Surgency -- Excerpt from (Mis)Understanding Afghanistan
2006 —?“No one had been in combat before, not since Korea anyway. Our leadership did all their tours in sunny Cyprus and Bosnia. We trained on doctrine developed (who knows when); we had no idea if our doctrine and tactics worked... They came at us in waves, I guess, thinking they'd over-run us... I guess we learned our doctrine worked. So did they." — NATO Soldier, Kandahar 2006, Interview. (57)
2007 —?“[2007] was a frustrating tour. The Taliban didn't come out to play; they’d just shoot-and-scoot and [take] off. We'd get a vehicle blown up, took casualties, and they were no where to be seen." — NATO Soldier, Kandahar 2007, Interview. (58)
2008 —?”We were being led by the nose. The Taliban would pop-up in one area; we would concentrate all our force, go there, and fight them. While our back was turned, they were taking the fight to the villagers; places we had no troops; because, we thought they were fighting us... but they were destabilising, intimidating people, in what we thought were safe secure areas. We caught on near the end but just ended up chasing them around the province, playing ‘whack-a-mole’. We'd chase them out in the day and they came back at night or as soon as we left." — NATO Intelligence Officer, Kandahar 2008, Interview. (59)
Troops Levels: 30,000
The focus on Kabul by ISAF and the Afghan government neglected the countryside, the price of which led to lawlessness and a resurgence of the Taliban in the south where expanding NATO forces were met with heavy fighting in the summer of 2006. (60)
Client-patron relationships of the Kabul government left the south abandoned where local tribal structures, formerly hierarchically-structured Durrani Pashtuns, had been eroded during the civil war — giving way to the emergence of local strongmen. (61)
Relating to governance, an initially welcoming and supportive population in the south received no form of reconstruction benefits with residents suffering from a dire economy, no electricity, rebounding lawlessness, and no way to raise disputes with the central government who increasingly appointed corrupt officials, many complicit and competing for control of the south's growing illicit opium market. (62)
Relating to security, after the disbandment of local militias and failure to train and deploy an Afghan Army that only numbered 6,000 personnel, the Taliban, now unopposed, began creeping in from across the Pakistan border in the vacuum of insecurity left by the absence of international forces and lack of Afghan forces. (63)?An enveloping ‘insurgency’ would be an inaccurate term for description of events in the south in that it connotes an uprising of the population against a government. Rather, occurring in the south was a ‘resurgence’ of the Taliban in areas where there was an absence of government — a ‘resurgence’ that was less popularly welcomed than it was due to the degradation of local-tribal systems to ward-off external influences and threats. (64)
In 2006, NATO troops deploying to the south were to experience the heaviest fighting of the campaign and the largest combat operation in the NATO alliance’s history. (65)?Upon their arrival, the Taliban were emboldened to fight NATO nations. (66)?Viewed in the lens of the Soviet occupation that deployed Central Asian troops ahead of Russian units, NATO nations were perceived as being ‘lessor crusaders’ who could be ‘taught a lesson’. (67)?Taliban forces, for the first time, directed full frontal assaults against NATO troops — to be deeply disappointed after suffering catastrophic defeats and high-casualty rates. (68)?By 2007, the Taliban in Kandahar restricted themselves to mostly indirect attacks, frustrating NATO soldiers who suffered casualties from an adversary they barely saw. (69)
ISAF adopted an ‘enemy-centric’ approach — somewhat abating lawlessness but without development. New ‘counterinsurgency’ strategies developed by US forces in Iraq were slowly diffusing to Afghanistan; although, mainly in concept rather than practise. (70)?These included the newly created counterinsurgency doctrinal manual's ‘Clear, Hold, Build’ strategy where forces were to ‘clear’ areas of insurgents, ‘hold’ the territory so insurgents could not return, and ‘build’ local governance and development capability for long-term self-sufficiency. (71)
NATO forces in the south focused on the ‘clear’ stage but did not have the force projection numbers for the ‘hold’ stage — resulting in a pattern where NATO troops primarily conducted operations to remove Taliban fighters, just to return to their bases (Forward Operating Bases or ‘FOB’). (72)?NATO controlled the street in the day, but the Taliban emerged from the hills at night — with the population caught in the balance.
The ‘build’ stage was hard to address amidst insecurity. Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) civilian components struggled to develop expeditionary capabilities that enabled them to operate and deliver services in a conflict-zone. Many initial development activities followed empty ‘measure of performance’ models (e.g. ‘how many schools did we build’) that bolstered statistics of ‘winning’ rather than meaningful ‘measure of effectiveness’ models focused on ‘impact’. (73)?In such a model, schools and clinics built in the absence of teachers or medical staff to fill them sat as empty buildings — at times used by the Taliban to teach recruits how to build IEDs. (74)
Unable to defeat NATO forces, the Taliban shifted focus to the population. (75)?Initially, the Taliban had attempted positive approaches to fill gaps left by the inadequate central government aimed at garnering legitimacy: establishing shadow governments to provide governance and convening Taliban courts to adjudicate local disputes. (76)?Hardly popularly supported, the Taliban recruited limited local cooperation, mostly youth angered by NATO-caused civilian casualty incidents, relying mainly on an influx of foreign volunteers to fill their ranks. (77)?Local residents began withdrawing passive support after witnessing the Taliban's perceived weakness through their inability to defeat NATO forces.
By 2008, the Taliban took the fight from NATO to the population, marked by a suicide bombing against civilians at a dogfight in Kandahar with a death-toll in the hundreds. (78)?The bombing marked a change in tactics where the Taliban began targeting the Afghan population and government; ensued by an intimidation campaign where the Taliban assassinated prominent local leaders that weakened tribal structures — a situation that initially perplexed NATO forces thinking ‘the fight’ was between them and the Taliban but resulted in spreading violence to destabilise Afghan communities. (79)
The legitimacy of the Afghan government did not fare well during this period either. The second-rounds of Presidential and Parliamentary elections were rampant with ballot stuffing and voter-fraud — highlighting the corruption and ineptness of the national government. (80)?Although Karzai won this election with a narrow margin of barely 50%, his popularity amongst Afghans wained as his government was marred in continuous corruption scandals and experienced a deteriorating relationship with international donors.
In 2009, a US envoy led by incoming ISAF commander General Stanley McCrystal conducted a study on the state of the Afghanistan campaign that led to calls for a change in US strategy. (81)?Concluding that NATO nations did not have the force projection numbers to control the south, where violence and instability were rampant, the US subsequently began diverting troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to quell increasing insurgent violence.
Excerpt from: (Mis)Understanding Afghanistan, Chapter 2: The Situational Context of US-Led ‘Counterinsurgency’ in Afghanistan (2001-2015), Pp. 128-132.
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:
57.?Interview, WC, NATO Infantry Soldier, OP Medusa 2006.
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58.?Interview, JC, NATO Infantry Soldier, OP Athena 2007.
59.?Interview, JD, Intelligence Officer, Kandahar Insurgency 2008.?
60.?Johnson 2007.
61.?Giustozzi 2003; Giustozzi 2004.
62.?Giustozzi and Ullah 2006.
63.?Chayes 2006.
64.?Barfield 2010; Giustozzi and Ullah 2006; Giustozzi 2012.
65.?The largest operation, OP Medusa, was Canadian-led. Operations in the south included NATO nations: British (3,300), Canadian (2,300), Dutch (1,900), Australian (300). (See: Farrel 2017; Fraser 2018)
66.?Fraser 2018; Johnson and Mason 2007.
67.?The ‘lens of the soviet occupation’ refers to impressions during the Soviet Occupation where the Soviet military sent central asian units (comprised of Khazaks, Uzbeks, and other central asian republics) to the front lines rather than ethnic Russians -- much to the disappointment of Afghan resistance warriors who seen the Central Asian units as inferior and non-committed proxies. (See: Barfield 2010)
68.?Fraser 2018.
69.?Johnson and Mason 2007.
70.?Eikenberry 2013.
71.?Ucko 2013. Newly created counterinsurgency doctrinal manual refers to FM 3-24.
72.?Farrel 2017.
73.?Connable 2012; Kilcullen 2010.
74.?Interview, DJ, NATO Intelligence Officer with multiple deployments to Kandahar from 2006-2009.?
75.?Johnson and English 2008.
76.?Kilcullen 2009.
77.?Giustozzi 2008.
79.?Giustozzi 2009; Johnson and DuPee 2012.
80.?Barfield 2010.
81.?Brand 2011; McChrystal 2009.