Democrats and Republicans, hawks and doves, foreign-policy professionals and laymen could all empathize with a strategy that, at the heart of it, was simply trying to win popular support. It was filled with the potential promise of showing the military’s soft side and demonstrating that soldiers could be culturally sensitive. Most importantly, the strategy was supposed to show Afghans that the United States and the host-nation government in Kabul could offer Afghans a better future than the Taliban ever could. The COIN strategy, in short, was all about good intentions.
Empirical Data
Has the COIN strategy in Afghanistan worked? One way to measure the strategy’s effectiveness is by looking at the death toll of the military personnel who are implementing it. If more U.S. military personnel (the counterinsurgents who are executing the strategy) are killed after its implementation, then the battle for hearts and minds may be said to have failed.
The empirical data shows that in the first nine years of the war in Afghanistan, one thousand U.S. military personnel were killed. That same figure of one thousand killed was reached in just the past twenty-seven months after the U.S. officially adopted COIN as the strategy in Afghanistan. In other words, since the time that United States sent thirty-three thousand additional troops as part of the Afghan “surge” and issued guidance to its military forces in Afghanistan to follow the COIN strategy, the number of U.S. troops killed doubled.
The political decision to implement the COIN strategy failed to recognize that more people with more guns on foreign territory cannot win the battle for hearts and minds. COIN, for all its positives, seemed to offer too romantic a notion of what was actually achievable, especially in a large-scale military campaign such as the one that Afghanistan ultimately became. Regardless of whether new U.S. military personnel smiled more or were culturally attune or were more ethically upright or whether they now teamed up with diplomats, aid workers or anthropologists (who normally donned bullet-proof gear and carried weapons), building trust in such an environment was simply impossible.
The Dissenters
Not all policy makers were persuaded by the utility of the COIN-based “surge” in Afghanistan. Vice President Biden expressed his doubts about the viability of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. The doubling in the number U.S. deaths since the implementation of COIN confirms Biden’s doubts.
Counterinsurgency proponents may argue that in the initial phase of a COIN-based surge strategy, there may be a natural spike in deaths (i.e. things may get worse before they get better.) But in a war that has gone on for eleven years, that argument can no longer be taken seriously, at least on political grounds.
COIN’s greatest tragedy was that it gave policy makers—who were facing difficult choices in Iraq and Afghanistan—the illusion that “victory” (or some sort of political resolution) was possible; that military power applied in a specific manner against an insurgency can lead to specific political outcomes.
In Iraq, it may have prevented a complete disaster (i.e. an all-out civil war), but it did not bring any clear strategic triumph. The ongoing COIN effort in Afghanistan may be too new to judge, but the recent data—especially the accelerating rate of U.S. casualties—seems to suggest that it has not worked either.
Henry Kissinger once wrote that “each generation is permitted only one effort of abstraction; it can attempt only one interpretation and a single experiment, for it is its own subject. This is the challenge of history and its tragedy.” Five years ago, COIN seemed like the right strategy. The empirical results on this experiment are now in, and they are not looking good.
Oleg Svet is a doctorate student in the war-studies department in King’s College London.
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Comments
The author puts too much stock in the idea that COIN was really backed as a way to "win" in Iraq, or in Afghanistan when it was instituted there. In fact I tend to doubt you could have found anyone in Washington who would have taken the bet that it would lead to us "winning" in either place in any really meaningful way. On the other hand COIN did a whole lot of other things, such as delaying indefinitely any need to acknowledge failure; extend us longer and deeper in both places; falsely pacify previous news coverage increasingly making it undeniable that coalition troops were being killed for nothing; cover up the military's appalling lack of backbone previously via telling the country it could "win"; and on and on and on. In other words, as in ever more these days, it was far more sham than real. So nobody should get upset today that it didn't accomplish what it was advertised as doing: What should make us upset is not being having fought hard enough in the first place to have shown that it couldn't really work in any realistic time-frame.
@ Sin Nombre! Sir, Object of strategy is to achieve the intended ends. I would not agree with the argument that the policy makers in Washington were just flirting with it. Nevertheless, no particular strategy can project an assured victory; it remains a judgment call or entails a fair degree of risk. @ Author: Having practiced COIN myself, I believe US COIN doctrine as expounded in FM - 3-24 is a wonderful effort. However, Afghanistan has some basic pecurliarities which are responsible for the apparent failure of US COIN strategy and has not been highlighted by the author. In my view, two aspects though inter-related are largely responsible for the ineffectiveness of US / NATO COIN effort in Afghanistan: 1. Extreme contempt of foreign presence. Emanates from the Great Game Era, wherein a number of russian and english agents appeared on Afghan Soil in pursuit of extending influence of their repective empires. A Pushtun Proverb narrated & explained to me by a Pushtun Tribesman; goes to say " First a lone foreigner comes, prepares maps and explores the routes, he is soon followed by an army which burn the villages and kills its inhabitants. So kill the first foreigner who comes through". Extreme hate and abhorance to the presence of foreigners in deeply imbued in the fabric of Afghan Society, hence winning hearts and minds is highly questionable under such an environment. 2. Question of legitimacy. Legitimacy of force (undertaking COIN) in the eyes of the host nation is a pre-requisite for success. However, given the predominance of cultural abhorance of foreign presence, it is almost an impossible task. Though, besides the question mark on the legitimacy of the Iraq War in the international community, US Forces enjoyed a fair degree of legitimacy in the eyes of local Iraqi's, which thus translated in to localised success (Anbar Province is a case in point). Additionally, the high proportion of "Green on Blue" attacks in Afghanistan, accounting for 45 fatal casualties of foreign troops in 2012 alone substantiates this argument. Whereas, this phenomenon was almost unheard of in Iraq .
First of all, Patraeus dusted off COIN strategy from Vietnam for his field manual and any critique must start with Vietnam. The author is right that COIN cannot work for an invading force; it doesn’t hide more weapons and more troops being brought into the theatre of war. In Vietnam, COIN was paired with napalm bombing to ‘pacify’ local villages. “Winning over hearts and minds” became an over-used cliche the Army and civilian leaders used until the end in 1974.I am not sure, however, that the US made a serious effort at COIN in Afghanistan. When Petraeus returned as commander in Afghanistan, he actually intensified the ‘counter-terrorism’ parts of the campaign. Drone strikes and strikes within Pakistan greatly increased. The focus of leadership was on killing militants and getting Bin Laden. The whole debate before the Afghan ‘surge’ about COIN or Counter-terrorism strategy, in hindsight, was little more than a smokescreen to occupy politicians and give the WH and Generals some extra room to figure out how to deal with the mess. Petraeus served President Obama well, including overseeing the killing of Bin Laden during his tenure. It may seem ironic that the writer of the modern COIN field manual was rewarded with the CIA directorship and is now commanding fleets of drones and special ops forces as a civilian. Just where he wants to be. He couldn’t stay in the Army much longer. What better gig could a retired General ask for than to compete with his former Army buddies on funding/developing the cutting edge technologies of future warfare.
I doubt that increasing casualties is a good way to support this argument; nor does the author really explain why increasing casualties necessarily invalidates a strategy, including COIN. Perhaps COIN has failed to achieve its objectives at the resource levels earmarked for it. The US appears set to leave Afghanistan because Afghanistan is not worth employing the extra military and strategic resources, rather than through an inherent flaw in COIN. In this sense it seems the same choice is being made in Washington as in Moscow; escalate or withdraw. Given that Afghanistan is not highly valued the bias is toward withdrawal as in 1988. A lack of willingness to escalate, with the expenditiure of men and materiale that escalation entails, does not equate to an inherent logical flaw in COIN.
In any type of armed conflict, metrics are important in determining the effectiveness of a strategy, tactic or approach. The question is often which metrics to choose to determine whether or not success is being achieved. This is even more difficult in selecting the metrics to be used in measuring success or failure in countering an insurgency. This question, in itself, has driven the IJC (the International Joint Command in Afghanistan) to distraction and down a number of rabbit holes in the past several years. Using a single metric can hardly be advised.In fact, determining success itself in overcoming an insurgency is difficult. The author himself flirts with this concept in his appraisal of the current state of affairs in Iraq while utilizing the concept of "decisive" success as requirement for the success of the approach in Afghanistan. While Iraq still suffers from political violence, it is unclear whether the current regime is under an existential threat from the groups who are performing those acts. If there is not sufficient popular support, then perhaps Iraq is suffering from the equivalent of Iraqi Timothy McVeighs; criminals who are banging their heads against a wall, refusing to accept that they have no hope of toppling the regime and installing one that suits their particular bent. If there is no viable insurgency in Iraq, one that actually stands a chance of toppling the current government and installing a different one, then has not the COIN approach worked there? Just because the end result does not necessarily suit the desires of an individual (a non-Iraqi individual), a group of individuals or even the United States government, if there is no real existential threat to the Iraqi government, is there an insurgency? And if there is no insurgency where one existed before, then how was that threat removed? Can it be successfully argued that the approach of counterinsurgency did not bring about the reduction of the insurgency to the point of political irrelevance? What is the goal of counterinsurgency? It appears that, for many, the answer to that question includes an evaluation of whether or not that particular observer approves of the government or domestic political reality that results. I would submit that the goal of counterinsurgency is to bring the internal political situation, for the most part, out of the realm of warfare... the reduction of the existential threat to the government... and into the realm of civil politics. Once the existential threat to the government is reduced or removed, then you are engaged in a stability operation sans insurgency. You may call this "nation building," and you may argue that nation building is something that we should not engage in, but that is another discussion. As for whether or not the approach has been successful in Afghanistan, the subject of this article, I would submit that we are no longer solely engaged in COIN in Afghanistan. We are engaged in a withdrawal from Afghanistan, and from my very recent experience there (having returned from my third tour there only a few weeks ago), my observation is that we are going through the motions of COIN while leaning more towards the "limited counter-terrorism" approach. COIN was only attempted in Afghanistan for a very short period, with a time limit placed upon it immediately following the installation of the first real counterinsurgent commander of the conflict. The conflict in Afghanistan is deeply complex; I know this from deep personal involvement in most areas of that country. The author chose a single metric upon which to base his hypothesis; that COIN has failed in Afghanistan. A simplistic analysis of such a complex conflict fails to provide sufficient analytical weight to support the author's hypothesis.
I would say the author's thesis fails on his main point alone, which is his point that U.S. 2,000 deaths (half of that in the last 27 months, including 9 in the last two weeks killed by Afghans) equals failure. That is a fallacy and the author doesn't even attempt to explain why he thinks that arbitrary measure signifies failure. Otherwise, the author misses the boat on at least two more points. He wrongly asserts that COIN started in 2006 in Iraq -- try 1899 in the Phillipines, or the 1920's in the Caribbean, or that little war in Vietnam. He then implies we're the only COIN practitioners in Afghanistan, which totally ignores the NATO coalition that has been there for quite some time. We might be bad at small wars, but the current American death toll is not an accurate measure of effectiveness.