Source: House Committee on Armed Services

Underlying General McChrystal’s August assessment of the war and the debate within the Obama administration is an assumption that there are not enough troops on the ground in Afghanistan.  In testimony before the House Committee on Armed Services, Gilles Dorronsoro explains that the focus on troop levels, rather than strategy correction, is a mistake and proposes an alternative strategy for the Coalition.

Misconceptions about the Taliban:

The United States has severely underestimated the strength of its adversary, undoubtedly the best guerrilla movement in Afghanistan’s history:

• The Taliban’s structure is resilient: centralized enough to be efficient, but flexible and diverse enough to adapt to local contexts.


• The Taliban’s military organization demonstrates high levels of professionalism in the provinces it dominates.


• The insurgency accepts heavy losses, contradicting claims that a majority of the Taliban are primarily financially motivated.


• By creating a sophisticated communications apparatus and building on the growing discontent of Afghans, the Taliban enjoy greater public support than the Coalition.

Flaws in the Counterinsurgency (COIN) Strategy:

This strategy may have worked in Iraq, but Afghanistan is different in several important respects: 

• In Iraq, the insurgency was initiated by a group of nationalist intellectuals who, as far as the rural population was concerned, were outsiders. In Afghanistan, the insurgency is often indistinguishable from the local population, making the ‘clear’ phase of the ‘shape, clear, hold, build’ strategy nearly impossible to execute.


• The Taliban enjoy rural support because they do not needlessly antagonize the population or disrupt daily life. This, compounded with xenophobia in the countryside, has led to local rejection of the Coalition’s forces.


• The police force is rife with corruption and inefficiency—and thus unable to secure cleared areas.


• The “ink spot” strategy— which involves subduing a large hostile region with a relatively small military force by establishing a number of small safe areas and then pushing outward until only a few pockets of resistance remain—is not working because of the social and ethnic fragmentation in Afghanistan. Stability in one district does not guarantee stability in a neighboring one because groups and villages are often antagonists and compete for the spoils of a war economy.

U.S. Policy Recommendations:

The Coalition should pursue a new “three-zone strategy” that focuses primarily on Afghanistan’s cities. Cities tend to be more pro-Western than rural areas and possess the infrastructure from which an Afghan state can be built.

• Strategic Zone: This zone is composed of urban centers, key roads, and provinces in which the Taliban opposition is weak or non-existent (mostly the northwest). The Coalition must aim to have these areas under total control.


• Buffer Zone: This zone separates the Strategic Zone from the Opposition Zone. Military force should be used carefully with the primary objective of protecting the territory immediately surrounding the cities.


• Opposition Zone: The Coalition must use force only defensively in this zone to prevent moves by the opposition into the other two zones. The opposition areas (comprised primarily of the south and eastern part of the country) are today causing the Coalition to suffer an unsustainable level of casualties with little to show in return.

• Contrary to popular belief, the war is not underfunded, but instead suffers from an egregious misallocation of resources. Rather than focusing on the South and East where the Taliban is most deeply entrenched, the Coalition should first refocus its military resources on the North where the Taliban can be beaten.


• Similarly, the Coalition should redistribute development resources to the North, rather than continue to pour development aid into the most dangerous parts of the country where it has so far achieved few lasting results.


• With its military and development resources concentrated in the North, the Coalition can reduce its casualties to a politically sustainable level, buy time to build the capability of the Afghan National Army, and in time hand over responsibility for maintaining security in the country to the Afghans.