The Obama Administration released yesterday its list of 50 metrics, under three objectives, to designate progress in the war in Central Asia. While it’s important to have a cohesive set of tactics for the war itself—and this document makes our goals much more lucid than before—what strategy does the war itself fit? Are we once again confusing tactics for a larger strategic purpose?
I can’t really argue with any of them (“Objective 2a: Assist efforts to enhance civilian control and stable constitutional government in Pakistan”), but there’s a catch. There’s no detail into how any of these metrics, or larger objectives, are going to be achieved. It would be great for the United States to magically “Defeat the extremist insurgency, secure the Afghan populace, and develop increasingly self-reliant Afghan security forces that can lead the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism fight with reduced U.S. assistance,” as objective 3a states. And yes, certainly the “Ability of the ANSF to assume lead security responsibility” and “Effectiveness of Afghan border security efforts” are fine metrics (12 and 8, respectively, under the objective) of things to work on. But how do we know when we’ll have made progress on them? And how are we going to make progress on them? (Note that 3a and its metrics are representative of every other objective—a list of things that need to happen, but without any input on how we get there or how long it will take.)
Afghanistan (and this can not be said strongly enough) is not Iraq. It has never been run by an effective, modern central government for any sustained period of time. It is overwhelmingly a rural country (24% of the population lives in an urban area—nowhere near the 67% of Iraqis that do). Taking and holding large population centers wouldn’t seem to be an effective COIN strategy in a large, rural country. But that’s what the United States is trying to do.
Ultimately, I believe Afghanistan will become a lesson in hubris for the United States. No, America will not collapse because of failure in the Pashtun heartland (regardless of our recent economic problems, we’re not on the verge of societal collapse). But you can’t force a state to change into a liberal, democratic society overnight (or in eight years). A little humility would go a long way in showing us the right policy on Afghanistan.
