STRATFOR's assessment of Afghan 'surge'. Worth reading.

[trof]

"STRATFOR is the world’s leading online publisher of geopolitical intelligence. Our global team of intelligence professionals provides our Members with insights into political, economic, and military developments to reduce risks, to identify opportunities, and to stay aware of happenings around the globe.'

"Reprinting or republication of this report on websites is authorized by prominently displaying the following sentence at the beginning or end of the report, including the hyperlink to STRATFOR."

"This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR."
http://www.stratfor.com/about_stratfor

OK, got all that out of the way.
I'll just reproduce a couple of paragraphs here, but if you're seriously interested in what they have to say, follow this link to the entire article.
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20091201_obamas_plan_and_key_battleground?utm_source=GWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=091202&utm_content=readmore

Obama's Plan and the Key Battleground
All war is about intelligence, but nowhere is this truer than in counterinsurgency and guerrilla war, where invisibility to the enemy and maintaining the initiative in all engagements is key. Only clear intelligence on the enemy’s capability gives this initiative to an insurgent, and only denying intelligence to the enemy — or knowing what the enemy knows and intends — preserves the insurgent force.

The construction of an Afghan military is an obvious opportunity for Taliban operatives and sympathizers to be inserted into the force. As in Vietnam, such operatives and sympathizers are not readily distinguishable from loyal soldiers; ideology is not something easy to discern. With these operatives in place, the Taliban will know of and avoid Afghan army forces and will identify Afghan army weaknesses. Knowing that the Americans are withdrawing as the NVA did in Vietnam means the rational strategy of the Taliban is to reduce operational tempo, allow the withdrawal to proceed, and then take advantage of superior intelligence and the ability to disrupt the Afghan forces internally to launch the Taliban offensives.

Obama mentioned Pakistan’s critical role. Clearly, he understands the lessons of Vietnam regarding sanctuary, and so he made it clear that he expects Pakistan to engage and destroy Taliban forces on its territory and to deny Afghan Taliban supplies, replacements and refuge. He cited the Swat and South Waziristan offensives as examples of the Pakistanis’ growing effectiveness. While this is a significant piece of his strategy, the Pakistanis must play another role with regard to intelligence.

Pakistan’s Role
The heart of Obama’s strategy lies not in the surge, but rather in turning the war over to the Afghans. As in Vietnam, any simplistic model of loyalties doesn’t work. There are Afghans sufficiently motivated to form the core of an effective army. As in Vietnam, the problem is that this army will contain large numbers of Taliban sympathizers; there is no way to prevent this. The Taliban is not stupid: It has and will continue to move its people into as many key positions as possible.

The challenge lies in leveling the playing field by inserting operatives into the Taliban. Since the Afghan intelligence services are inherently insecure, they can’t carry out such missions. American personnel bring technical intelligence to bear, but that does not compensate for human intelligence. The only entity that could conceivably penetrate the Taliban and remain secure is the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). This would give the Americans and Afghans knowledge of Taliban plans and deployments. This would diminish the ability of the Taliban to evade attacks, and although penetrated as well, the Afghan army would enjoy a chance ARVN never had.

trof here again: At this point we're way past 'should we even be there?'.
It's much too late for that argument. We are at 'OK, we're there. What's the best way to get out?' Although I don't hold much hope that the U.S. will be able to accomplish what STRATFOR says they'll have to, I do think we owe it to the Afghan people to at least try.
And I bet this post drops like a rock.
:-(

[HughMoran]

1. I certainly hope that the US is pursuing these sorts of strategies

We know that playing cat and mouse is a waste of time, the only way we can possibly "win" is to outsmart them as described in this article.

[kenny blankenship]

2. "We can't win, BUT LET'S TRY ANYWAY"

WTF?? Maybe we can't win all the way, but we can at least create half a million new orphans, and that's a start!

[Delphinus]

11. It's late,

and I want to make sure I understand what you're saying - are you saying it's a good idea to create half a million new orphans?

[kenny blankenship]

15. Apparently it's the best idea they can come up with: more war.

War creates orphans and otherwise destroys societies. They want to go on killing, even though the commitment is supposed to be time limited and there's very little chance for even temporary success and no chance at all that you're going to permanently "wipe out" Islamic extremist organizations in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2 years of fighting. Evidently they want to be able to say "We didn't win, but we killed as many of them as possible before we gave up and came home."

The only purpose served by this is to make more Afghan orphans and to waste our own money and soldiers' lives. (well there are also some domestic political purposes served by this, but they are too disgusting to contemplate) For if the President can be believed, we'll tote up our final body count in a couple of years and come home. Pakistan's nukes will still be there and Taliban fighters will still be there, so those will remain as they are. But there will be more orphans in Afghanistan and America than there are today. That's the "net". Apparently they feel we "owe it" to the Afghan people.

[dgibby]

3. I'm against the surge,

but I'm recommending your post because the article is interesting and worth our consideration. Thanks.

[NJmaverick]

4. "Our global team of intelligence professionals provides our Members with insights into..."

Never heard of them, but I am willing to be open minded enough to click the link and check them out. One problem, while they offer up their own opinion of their expertise there were no resumes available to allow anyone to properly judge their self professed expertise. I found that troubling as it usually indicates they are not nearly as good as they claim to be.

[jezebel]

5. I'm suspicious of them because O'Reilly has them on often when he wants to bash Obama's foreign

policy decisions and claims they are the reputable place to get info from. So if he likes them I assume they are hard line neo-con.

[trof]

7. I don't think they're necessarily neocon.

From what I remember, the founder(?) is a former high level CIA intelligence analyst.
They make a lot of money from global corporations ( and some governments) who need to know current and forecast geo-political situations.

[Hangingon]

9. I have rea Stratfor for years and they are pretty good.

This article is good. We have a hrd job ahead of us because we must depend on the Pakistanis to get the job done.

[trof]

12. IMHO, the Pakistanis (ISI) are the weak link in the chain.

Therein lies the rub.
:eyes:

[Hangingon]

16. Their proposal for ISI sounds almost impossible to me.

I don't think we have the ability to get the Pakis to do this nor do we have the ability to ensure its security.

[trof]

14. See post # 7.

Corporations and governments wouldn't hire them if they didn't produce good info.
Just my opinion.

[Odin2005]

6. K&R

[Vinnie From Indy]

8. These are all very interesting and debate worthy points!

This is actually one of the best assessments of the difficulties of the job in Afghanistan for President Obama I have read lately. I agree that this war is all about Pakistan. Without Pakistan's direct help in denying sanctuary and as a primary intelligence resource, we are screwed no matter what we do or how long we stay. There is no getting around that point.

I think that the assessment should have explored more fully the ethnic, historical and cultural differences between the tribal peoples of Afgahnistan and the people of Vietnam in regard to the issue of insurgency. I believe that it is quite evident that the Vietnamese are by culture not defined by perpetually warring tribal factions. After the North vanquished the South in Vietnam the country has today become a generally peaceful country without constant internal warring between factions. The Afghans have almost always been at war with each other. My point is that even if the US received full support from the ISI and could render the Taliban "transparent" the Afghans will STILL go to war with each other after we leave because that is their culture by and large. Trying to fit the country together from the pieces available makes very little sense to me as the odds of success seem so small. In short, the concept of reuniting Vietnam as a democratic country seems to me to have been infinitley more achievable than the notion that it could work in Afghanistan and look how that turned out!

As tragic as it may sound, I think the discussion at a strategic level should most definitely include the exploration of the idea that best we might ever do is to partition the country and arm each faction to try and achieve some sort of balance of power between them. Basically, give the place back to the warlords and find an alternative that allows us to project substantial force without a substantial footprint in case we need eliminate a direct or growing threat to us here in the U.S.

K&R
Thanks for posting!

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. Losses from several months ago clearly show the issue with counterintelligence.

I'm specifically referring to the incident of the strike at the major opium manufacturers. Somebody in the pro-US Afghan forces had tipped the drug lord off and they had clearly prepared an ambush. I'd presume much of the recent shift in tactics has to do with counterintelligence in mind and I don't know how to improve counterintelligence without more boots on the ground.

[Arctic Dave]

13. Looks like the author of this article picked the same line Obama said as I did.

" but provided neither information on the magnitude of the withdrawal nor the date when the withdrawal would conclude"

The withdrawal will start in 2011 but will end ? 1, 3, 5 years?