The United States won the war in Afghanistan in 2002. That’s right — seven years ago. How do I know? Because Bernard Finel says so. He even quotes some other dude as saying basically the same thing:

This war should have been over the moment we disposed of the Taliban.

Fellas. It was. And that’s exactly the problem. The U.S. had 5,200 troops in Afghanistan in 2002. It still had only 15,200 troops in 2004 when the insurgency was already picking up steam. The United States, as is its wont, considered the war won and the job done when it wasn’t. That is why we are where we are today.

Just in case this is somehow difficult to grasp, let me repeat: The United States hasn’t been fighting a full-scale war in Afghanistan for the past eight years. It had a light military presence in the country for seven years while its enemies regrouped. Because it neglected Afghanistan and failed to commit what was needed and finish what it had started, it is now in an unsalvageable situation. No amount of “we-chased-the-Taliban-away-and-destroyed-al-Qaeda’s-camps-and-we-won-we-won-we-won” fantasising will change this fact.

Although Obama didn’t specifically say much about anything in Tuesday’s speech — in comparison, Bush’s January 2007 address read like a Petraeus PowerPoint — we did get a few numbers:

• 30,000. The number of extra troops to be sent to Afghanistan. It may be inadequate in terms of commonly used counterinsurgent/civilian ratios for COIN campaigns, but compared to Bush’s Iraq “surge” it’s a massive increase in troop strength — close to 50 percent. Not only will it have a profound social impact in the U.S., it will be very visible on the ground and affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Afghans. Unfortunately, it will also generate huge media interest in the West, leading to a parallel surge of bad reportage and stupid punditry.
• 18. The number of months until the start of drawdown. Also known as “a year and a half”. Incidentally, also the number of months Obama allocated for his promised Iraq withdrawal. While this time frame has nothing whatsoever to do with Afghanistan, there is nothing arbitrary about it either. Simply put, it is the longest period of time a politician can describe in a difficult speech using months instead of years without sounding like a slimeball.
• 6. The number of years the U.S. neglected Afghanistan, according to Obama. Also the number of House Republicans who opposed authorising Bush to invade Iraq.
• 2011. Year of the promised “responsible transition” of U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. Also the year of U.S. pullout from Iraq. Also the year of the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Also the year of Canada’s announced departure from Afghanistan. (The Dutch will leave in 2010. The German mandate expires the same year.) Also the year when Obama will start preparing for his re-election campaign. Also the year when, according to Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the world will end.

Christian pretty much said it all, but let’s not forget the human dimension:

During a nationally televised address Tuesday, a visibly tired and worn President Obama informed the country that he was going out for a pack of cigarettes and would be back in 10 minutes or so.

At press time, it was already getting dark and he had not yet returned.

Tom Ricks lists the top 10 COINdinistas, and Schmedlap, not unreasonably, takes issue with the omissions.

My question, though, is this: who are the top practitioners of COINcraft — or whatever you prefer to call inventive soldiering these days — on the ground in Afghanistan right now? No, I don’t mean McChrystal and Rodriguez. Who — and where — are the McMasters and McFarlands of this war?

Reuters:

U.S. President Barack Obama vowed on Tuesday to ‘finish the job’ of an unpopular and costly eight-year war in Afghanistan, and officials said he could announce an increase of around 30,000 troops next week.

Okay. If by “finishing the job” he means achieving the core goals he set in his March White Paper — “disrupting terrorist networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan”, “promoting a more capable, accountable, and effective government in Afghanistan” etc. — I think it’s safe to say that’s not gonna happen. He simply won’t have enough time on his clock. According to David Kilcullen’s recent estimate, even failing counterinsurgency campaigns usually take 9-11 years. By my count, that would put us way past the end of Obama’s second term.

To realise just how hard this stuff is, look at the massive international efforts in Bosnia and DR Congo. Fourteen years after the war, Bosnia is still beset by ethnic divisions and hatred, according to The Washington Post:

In June, the international envoy who oversees the rebuilding of Bosnia invoked emergency powers that he said were necessary to hold the country together. Although U.S. and European officials have been trying to get Bosnia to stand on its own feet for years, many Bosnian leaders say the only thing that can permanently fix their gridlocked government is for Washington to intervene — again — and rewrite the treaty that ended the war in 1995.

In the DRC, more than 4 million people have died since 1996, yet by its own admission the United Nations has failed miserably in its efforts to bring about peace:

The massive U.N. peacekeeping effort in eastern Congo has failed to deliver a knockout blow to Rwandan rebels while local insurgents have seized new territory under its nose, United Nations experts said Wednesday.

Far from resolving the root causes of the violence, the presence of the world’s biggest peacekeeping mission has aggravated the conflict in North and South Kivu provinces, the report seen by Reuters Wednesday said.

Just sayin’.

I’m going to recommend a couple of things that y’all should read, ay-sap. One you can download for free; the other you need to pay for. One you can digest pretty quickly; the other is academic and requires a little effort.

The first one is the new Oxfam Afghan poll (sort of), titled The Cost of War. You can download it here. It is important because it represents a good cross-section of rarely heard Afghan public opinion. The paper notes, among other things, that Afghans don’t see the presence of foreign troops as one of the major causes of the current war:

Seven in ten (70%) individuals saw unemployment and poverty as a major cause of the conflict, while almost half (48%) pointed to the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Afghan government. Other factors that individuals identified as major drivers of the conflict were: the Taliban (36%); interference by other countries (25%); Al Qaeda (18%); the presence of international forces (18%); lack of support from the international community (17%); warlords (15%); and criminal groups (14%).

My second recommendation is Decoding the New Taliban, a collection of scholarly articles edited by Antonio Giustozzi. It’s not this blog’s policy to link to commercial outlets, but I’m sure you’ll find a place to buy it online in no time. When you get it, start from Thomas Ruttig’s piece on Haqqani — a real eye-opener even for us who have met the old man.

They may have looked like a farce, but at the local level the Afghan elections actually did change the balance of power, and in a relatively peaceful manner, Noah Coburn and Anna Larson write in an excellent new AREU briefing paper. Their conclusions:

Local elections matter and need to be prioritised by both national and international actors.

Elections in 2009 were not a complete failure: people did vote and power balances did change at the local level; but

There is an urgent need to reassess (especially international) expectations of what an ‘electoral success’ might look like. In a context in which an ongoing insurgency meant that much of the country was not represented at the polls, and with a flawed voter registration process that has been a poor substitute for a valid census, it was misguided to expect elections this year to be a test of ‘democracy’ in Afghanistan

Preparations for 2010 parliamentary elections must begin now if the polls are to be seen by the voting public—and the international community—as worthwhile and credible.

So he quits.

I’ll be very interested to hear what Obama has to say about Afghanistan when he finally lays out his strategy, presumably next week. How does he explain a troop increase to bolster a COIN campaign when the host government clearly has lost its legitimacy? Or will he use this as an opportunity for a face-saving exit instead? Has Abdullah just handed Obama the ticket out?

Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai, has been on the CIA payroll for much of the past eight years, The New York Times reports, citing current and former American officials:

The relationship between Mr. Karzai and the C.I.A. is wide ranging, several American officials said. He helps the C.I.A. operate a paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, that is used for raids against suspected insurgents and terrorists. On at least one occasion, the strike force has been accused of mounting an unauthorized operation against an official of the Afghan government, the officials said.

Mr. Karzai is also paid for allowing the C.I.A. and American Special Operations troops to rent a large compound outside the city — the former home of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban’s founder. The same compound is also the base of the Kandahar Strike Force. ‘He’s our landlord,’ a senior American official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Mr. Karzai also helps the C.I.A. communicate with and sometimes meet with Afghans loyal to the Taliban. Mr. Karzai’s role as a go-between between the Americans and the Taliban is now regarded as valuable by those who support working with Mr. Karzai, as the Obama administration is placing a greater focus on encouraging Taliban leaders to change sides.

A few things are immediately evident:

1. The American military and the American intelligence apparatus appear to be waging two different wars in the region. On the one hand, there is the resource-hogging, politically unpalatable and oft-ridiculed “population-centric” counterinsurgency fight ISAF is currently engaged in (however imperfectly); on the other hand, there is the shadowy, violent and so very sexy counterterrorism mission headed by an agency which famously owes no explanations and isn’t accountable to anyone. By their nature, these missions are not mutually exclusive. But there is mounting evidence that Mr. COIN and Mr. CT aren’t exactly cross-pissing in brotherly bliss.
2. There are two Karzais: one is a liability; the other, an asset. You cannot get rid of one without losing the other. Hence, from the point of view of the war effort, their combined usefulness is nil.
3. In August, a report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee revealed that the Pentagon’s Joint Integrated Prioritized Target List — a roster of 367 approved terrorist targets — had been expanded to include 50 “nexus targets”, or Afghan drug lords with links to the insurgency. Since Mr. Karzai, a “suspected” drug boss, obviously isn’t on the list, the only conclusion one can draw is that the United States is wiping out his competitors for him.

There is a remarkable statistic in Jane Mayer’s superb piece [abstract] on the Predator war in The New Yorker:

It appears to have taken sixteen missile strikes, and fourteen months, before the C.I.A. succeeded in killing [Baitullah Mehsud]. During this hunt, between two hundred and seven and three hundred and twenty-one additional people were killed, depending on which news accounts you rely upon.

Remember, this took place under the best of circumstances, with friendly governments in both Islamabad and Kabul, a steady flow of human intelligence from the ground, and 100,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan. With all the talk of a classic COIN campaign in Afghanistan not being worth the cost, and of resorting to a cheaper off-shore CT option instead, it’s easy to forget what it actually takes to kill a guy with a flying robot. And it’s not only the man-hours and the innocents incinerated — it’s also the inevitable moral damage to a war-fighting nation’s psyche. What else is a suicide bomber who targets an army patrol and kills 10 bystanders but a drone sent from afar by a deft operator¹ to carry out an assassination? Scott Horton sums up the dilemma:

Saying ‘no’ to predator drones would not serve the nation’s security interests. But reconsidering the troubling deviations from American traditions of civilian-military control over weapons systems and accountability for their use is an imperative.

See also:

Revenge of the Drones (appendix 1) — New America Foundation
Analysis: A look at US airstrikes in Pakistan through September 2009 — The Long War Journal
Suicide Attacks in Afghanistan (2001-2007) — United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan

¹Amir is a fifteen-year old boy who was born in Pakistan to a family from Gardez. He has spent half of his life in Pakistan and the other half in Gardez. He is uneducated and spent only two days in a madrassah when his father asked him to leave and start working with him. He was greatly influenced by a local mullah (religious leader) who told him to go to Kabul to kill the ‘Angrez’. [...] He claims that the Gardez mullah gave him 200 Afghanis and told him that he is in fact giving him heaven. The mullah told the boy that jihad is farz, required against the foreigners that have come to occupy Afghanistan and if he manages to kill a foreigner, he would go to heaven.