How Can the U.S. Win in Afghanistan?

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By Greg Mills, Military Strategy Expert

Putting Boots on the Ground. Past insurgencies have been won by troop saturation, ensuring a visible force presence and enabling borders to be sealed. While high-tech surveillance offers a modern force multiplier, there remains no substitute for boots on the ground. In Afghanistan as in Iraq, in an insurgency you cannot afford to concentrate and sequence combat power as you can do in general war. The enemy has shown that it can instantly react to adjustments and exploit the opportunities that arise when force levels are reduced or when coalition troops move out of an area. It is what officers refer to as the balloon effect: You squeeze one end, and the enemy moves to the other. 

Securing Adequate Intelligence. To paraphrase George Orwell, today we have information on everything but knowledge about much less. High-tech capability helps the intelligence-gathering exercise and can be a force-multiplier, but has its limits. The lack of knowledge of the situation in remote areas such as the Panjwayee district in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province illustrates the limitations of digital Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) systems such as eavesdropping, satellites, Predator and other “eyes in the sky”. The modern insurgency is, in the words of an American officer stationed in Afghanistan, “a bottom-up human intelligence fight” in spite of all the digital assets.

Operating in a Multinational Environment. In Afghanistan many of the European nations simply pay lip service to their commitment. This is reflected in resource constraints and political operating caveats. The adverse impact of this on operations has been limited by the redundancy within the coalitions. But it requires searching for the golden thread of expertise within the multinational environment, usually found among those native English-speaking countries.

Unity of Effort. Having a single actor with the authority to direct effort down all the lines of operation remains key to success today, as it was when the British used a committee system to achieve unity of effort in Malaya. In Afghanistan there exists a complex web of influence, with detailed and ongoing funding and development interaction between donors, the Government of Afghanistan, NGOs, and the international military. Iraq initially offered a much easier situation, where the U.S. was the clear leader, prior to Iraq’s national elections. Even then, however, the required synergy was not achieved, owing to the dual military (answerable to the Department of Defense) and civilian (answerable to the administration) reporting lines, the interagency process notwithstanding.

Public Diplomacy and Development. Getting the right message across with cultural nuances, and linking security and development, is as important—and difficult—to do today as it was in Vietnam. Moreover, as King’s College scholar-soldier John Mackinlay has observed, one needs to exploit and dominate the virtual war zone, merging the strategic and tactical realms of operation with the same ease as one’s opponents.[1]

Some military commanders are aware of these challenges and trying to address them. While he was the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan (a role he served in from May 2006 until February 2007, when he was replaced by U.S. General Dan McNeill, COMISAF X), General David Richards observed:

We have to deal with the strategic disjuncture between commitments and resources, between postmodern plans and the needs of a largely feudal society, and between the need for close cooperation between the governmental and nongovernmental communities and the reality of dealing with vested institutional interests; and also with the discontinuity between short-term Western political ideals and the importance of long-term, sustained commitment. Hence our strategic, but pragmatic approach to deal with Afghanistan’s insurgency, linking development and security intent.

It is what one senior American officer in the Combined Joint Task Force 76 based at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul described in 2006 as a “Clear, Hold, Build and Engage” strategy—clear the area from the enemy, hold the territory, build infrastructure and resources, and engage with the local community. The success of this approach will depend on ensuring better coordination and faster delivery among international and local actors, realizing political and capacity constraints, and, ultimately, allowing Kabul to take responsibility and control on its terms.

Greg Mills heads the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation and was, from May-September 2006, seconded to ISAF HQ in Kabul as a special adviser to the Commander. His publications include From Africa to Afghanistan: With Richards and NATO to Kabul (Johannesburg: Wits University Press.