New commitment to old Afghanistan strategy
Posted: Monday, August 10, 2009 2:06 PM
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Kabul, Afghanistan
Reporter's Notebook
By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent
KABUL, Afghanistan – The ‘new’ U.S. strategy
in Afghanistan has a familiar ring to it.
"You can't kill your way to victory here, Jim," the U.S. Army Brigade Commander began, cocking his cap back off his forehead, as he often did before making a point. "You must protect the population, separate the enemy from that population, and then, quickly, bring good governance to the people so they reject the enemy when he tries to return."
The colonel called this a "new" strategy, fully supported by Washington, and based on proven counter-insurgency practice. He believed this would radically alter the course of war in Afghanistan and lead, hopefully, to a "tipping point" – shifting momentum away from the Taliban and towards coalition forces.
But, this comment wasn’t something I pulled out of my reporter's notebook from my recent trip to Afghanistan – although it could be. It's actually a quote from then-Col. John 'Mick' Nicholson, commander of Task Force Spartan, in Eastern Afghanistan, back in April of 2006.
Interestingly, Nicholson's boss at the time was Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the then-commander of U.S. and NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.
Now fast-forward more than three years. I am back in Kabul, but I kept flashing back to that earlier conversation as I listened to Eikenberry, now the new U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, define for me what he called "the conditions for success" here.
"First you must secure the area and separate the people from the enemy, Jim. But right behind that, steps have to be taken to help the government of Afghanistan..." My thoughts drifted as Eikenberry went on to describe the need for "good governance" and a "sense of justice." I was thinking instead about how I'd heard this "new doctrine" before, almost word for word.
My point: There's little really new about the Obama administration's "new strategy" in Afghanistan.
True, as reported in Monday's New York Times, there's been a clear shift in counter-narcotics tactics, away from indiscriminate poppy eradication – which hurt farmers, but not the Taliban – while going more aggressively after the drug lords and smugglers.
But the much touted "clear-hold-build" paradigm, and the need for both "military" and "civilian" surges, are ideas lifted right out of the U.S. military's counter-insurgency handbook, drawn up by Gen. David Petraeus himself.
This strategy was, in fact, formulated during President George W. Bush's administration and applied by Bush, despite resistance from his own advisors, in Iraq.
What is new – and a potential breakthrough – is the commitment that the U.S. government appears to have made to the strategy in Afghanistan.
Congress has allocated tens of billions of new dollars, not just to the fight, but, for instance, to turning Afghanistan back into the agricultural powerhouse it was before 30 years of war destroyed it.
The mission matching the means
When Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke recently paid a visit to staffers in Kabul at what he called "the most important embassy in the world," he made this "new commitment" his first talking point.
"I can assure you that President Obama is personally committed to this mission, and that the resources you've required for so many years are now being made available to you,'' Holbrooke promised. During his remarks, I caught a glimpse of now-Gen. 'Mick' Nicholson, standing among the crowd, and beaming with approval.
This was payback, I thought, for those years when the boots and weapons and intelligence assets flowed mostly out of Afghanistan and into Iraq.
Over the years covering the U.S. war in Afghanistan, I've often been struck by the disconnect between U.S. commanders on the ground and the politicians back home. It felt like a constant tug of war between the mission and the means.
In 2006, Nicholson, and a few others, spoke eloquently of the ways to win "trust and confidence" in Kunar or Nuristan, and other Taliban strongholds, but their hands often seemed tied by other priorities, usually in Iraq.
The unspoken truth back then was that, despite gains made in several successful battles, there were never enough U.S. troops, or Afghan forces, to hold those gains, or build the Afghan infrastructure. Clear-hold-build was still-born.
‘Surge’ of troops
Today, there are some encouraging signs. Embedded with the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, I met up with Col. Bill McCollough, a 40-something battalion commander, who sounded much like Nicholson, years before.
"It's all got to happen at the same time," the Minnesota native told me, as if from the same page. "While we're establishing security you have to be doing job creation, you have to be enabling governance. Because those things contribute to security, too."
I stifled a smile. In other words, I thought, you have to do a lot of "nation building." That’s what the Bush administration talked about, but never committed to.
Now, McCollough, a driven professional who honed his counter-insurgency skills in Iraq, says he has what he needs to make the (not so) new strategy work.
His battalion was part of the so-called "surge" of Marines – over 10,000 in all – who since June have spread across Helmand and other parts of southern Afghanistan, the heart of the Taliban insurgency. And they've learned from past mistakes, a Marine spokesman recently said, effectively, that U.S. Marines won't clear what they can't hold, and won't hold where they can't build.
Committed to the long haul?
This shift in commitment – if not in strategy – hasn't been lost on Afghans.
Haroun Mir, a U.S.-educated Afghan analyst from Kabul, says he's encouraged by the pledge to make Afghanistan Obama's number one foreign policy priority.
"If Afghans perceive that the U.S. and NATO mission here is short-term, just temporary, they'll start siding with the Taliban, only out of fear of reprisals if the Taliban returns to power," said Mir.
He admitted that he was an optimist, and thinks the U.S. effort has ''been on the ‘right path’ for several years now. ''We are winning the war. But we have to continue, it's just a question of commitment.''
That commitment certainly won't be easy, especially if the numbers of U.S. dead and wounded continue to rise through this fighting season, as Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, warned in an interview in the Wall Street Journal. "We've got to stop [the Taliban's] momentum, stop their initiative. It's hard work,'' he said.
But his plan to put troops into heavily populated areas isn't a new strategy. Thousands of Canadian forces have been doing just that for several years in Kandahar, trying to "separate the enemy from the people," with little success.
What is new (that word again) is the commitment of large numbers of U.S. forces to reinforce those Canadian units in the South.
U.S. military experts, quoted in Sunday's Washington Post, said that these security and political commitments will last at least a decade and potentially cost the U.S. more than the war in Iraq.
Mir agreed with the time line. "It could take another decade," he said, "to convince the Taliban that fighting is useless."
But that begs the question, is America that committed?
Jim Maceda is an NBC News Correspondent based in London who just returned from an embed with U.S. Marines in Afghanistan's Helmand province. He has reported on the war in Afghanistan since 2001.
