Max Boot has a generally favorable review of General Stanley McChrystal’s strategy in Afghanistan in the WSJ:
Gen. McChrystal’s decision to set up a Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell means creating a corps of roughly 400 officers who will spend years focused on Afghanistan, shuttling in and out of the country and working on those issues even while they are stateside.
Today, units typically spend six to 12 months in a war zone, and officers typically spend only a couple years in command before getting a new assignment. This undermines the continuity needed to prevail in complex environments like Afghanistan or Iraq. Too often, just when soldiers figure out what’s going on they are shipped back home and neophytes arrive to take their place. Units suffer a disproportionate share of casualties when they first arrive because they don’t have a grip on local conditions…
In a tribal society like Afghanistan’s, the key to effectiveness is having personal relationships with tribal elders, which argues for keeping troops in place much longer than currently is the case…
It’s an intriguing approach, and one that Gen. McChrystal, a veteran of special operations, is now migrating to the conventional military world. The new Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell is an attempt to strike a balance between personnel needs and war-fighting needs, and it is a move in the right direction.
Boot then goes on to cite the example of a 19th century British officer, Col. Sir Robert Warburton, who spent 30 years “going native,” making a real fighting force out of the Khyber Rifles and pacifying ancient fueds. But Warburton’s example is perhaps less than entirely hopeful:
Warburton retired in May 1897. Within months the frontier was aflame with a great uprising that took tens of thousands of troops to suppress.
This is a hard region to deal with in any manner. It is no joke, they call this region, “The Graveyard of Empires”, with good reason. I think they are looking more at the tribal aspect of the whole situation. To me, the approach appears to be much wiser.
Yes, you’ve got to “channel” (as in divert, not the LA definition) the Tribe’s desires rather than confronting them head-on or trying outright total suppression.
What the example tells me is that just one man -no matter how gifted- is the solution.
The approach sounds good, but it needs to be grounded in a solid, teachable doctrine which may be updated based on experience. From what I understand, the general form of the Special Forces doctrine is a very good first approximation to Col. Warburton’s experience. I would say it’s the difference between looking/hoping for the next George Patton and training current soldiers to be the most capable and professional warfighters possible. The former might work miracles, but the latter gives better results in the long run.
Warburton didn’t really pacify anything, he suppressed the feuds. One doesn’t have to result to force to suppress, bribery is another way, and this is far from exhaustive.
When Warburton left, the suppression ended and the frontier lit up. We saw the same in Iraq. Sadaam paid off many of the clan chiefs and that ended when he was removed. The clans revolted without the payola, and we didn’t suppress it until we began doing the same thing.