An Afghan Awakening?

The US is hoping to launch a second "Awakening" of tribal militias - this time in Afghanistan. While this idea might seem commendable, the more one examines Afghanistan, the less viable it seems without some significant changes from how it was accomplished in Iraq. While it will be important that we bring Afghans in the South and East who might otherwise ally themselves with the fundamentalist militias on board, accomplishing this by empowering the militias themselves will likely be a major mistake. Iraq's government had far more credibility at the national and local level, and provided both a pathway for integrating the militias in such a way that the government could eventually monopolize force in those areas, and in the transition could theoretically check potential excesses on the part of the Sons of Iraq, and thus helped balance power between combatant factions.

In Afghanistan, however, actual local governance is incredibly weak, since many officials aren't elected but appointed. If we pursue these tactics, we will be delegating more power to the tribes and people of Afghanistan in some ways, yes, but we will not be doing so in a sustainable manner. The Awakening in Iraq is working because it built on ties between Sunni communities and the militias; through the plan to integrate the militia members with the government, it in turn helped bind the militias to the government and thus would help reinforce the credibility of the Shia dominated government to Sunnis. The militia program in Afghanistan, however, seems to bypass the idea of building government credibility or ties between the militias and the government entirely:

During a weekend visit, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. focus on establishing a strong central government in Afghanistan may have been "overstated." He said the U.S. would now focus more on "enabling the communities, the tribes and their leaders."

"How strong the central government will be in the future, I think, is yet to be determined," he told reporters.

This is focusing on a legitimate problem but responding in a very risky way. I certainly have been critical of a Kabul-centric Afghan policy. That said, I don't think the solution is to create a parallel security force that does what the government is supposed to. Now, the creation of these militias is indeed only a first phase, but until we can integrate them with the de jure local governments they will require constant US handling to prevent them from further destabilizing Afghanistan in the long run. However, that integration cannot be effective until the people of Afghansitan see their local governments as legitimate, which means without fixing the problem of governance in Afghanistan this entire effort may be wasted.

To be fair, similar criticisms were voiced at the beginning of the Anbar Awakening, and fortunately many of these fears have not (yet) been realized. But again: different country, different problems. As we've already seen, Afghanistan there are the issues of governance to sort out. But there are also underlying problems in our military strategy, too. Where the United States had a significant ground presence in Sunni-dominated areas in Iraq, the ground presence in the turbulent regions of Afghanistan has proven inadequate. America cannot effectively combat today's hostile militias because when Americans (or whatever other ISAF force there is) go back to their bases, the Taliban can control the countryside. Replace "Taliban" with "warlords" and one can see why revitalizing non-governmental militias could be so dangerous. If warlords do come to control these militias, checking them will not be easy, since they, not the US, not ISAF, and not the Afghan government, will have the last words. Counterinsurgency needs to be population-centric to succeed, and without our soldiers being deployed accordingly, the militia strategy will indeed be counterproductive. If we do not want to send another hundred thousand or more troops into Afghanistan for a long, long time, we will need to begin deploying our men into the midst of the villages we hope to defend. Such a strategy may carry a higher cost in both blood and treasure, but there is no easy way to win this war.

Also in the news...

As the global economy flounders, Russia is organizing the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, in hopes of... "not creating a cartel." Keep in mind that Putin came up with the idea of a "Gas OPEC" in 2002 and that Gazprom board member and nominal Russian "executive" Medvedev hoped this organization would achieve OPEC's level of influence. How such an organization could achieve OPEC's influence without the power to manipulate the flow of gas is beyond me. And while yes, there are Russian ships cruising in the Carribbean again, those interested in geopolitics should be more concerned about Russia's energy deals than its military deployments. Russia's fleet is still not a viable challenge to the US on the open seas, and even if the era of "cheap gas" and today's falling energy prices ends, it still won't be enough - even when the gap between the US and USSR was narrowest, the US still had a clear naval advantage outside of the USSR's regional waters. However, because Gazprom intends to invest more in energy resources outside the post-Soviet sphere, Latin America is more important to the Kremlin for economic reasons than military ones. While countries like Bolivia and Venezuela are ideologically opposed to American influence and globalization, this does serve as a good reminder of why the US needs to stay politically active and economically open around the world - there are countries waiting to pick up where we left off, and they may not use such an advantage to our best interests.