By Andrew Lubin | Published: August 26, 2010
The photo in Laura King’s Los Angeles Times article “‘Three cups of tea’ a byword for U.S. effort to win Afghan hearts and minds” shows why the war in Afghanistan is not going well for the United States.
As Ms. King so aptly explains, the phrase “three cups of tea” has been adapted from the Greg Mortenson best-seller of the same name by the American military as the basis of how to conduct a counterinsurgency campaign.
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By Mac McCallister | Published: June 16, 2010
Marc Ambinder, politics editor of The Atlantic, explains that there exists a general perception among theorists and policy planners in the Pentagon’s policy shop that General McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy has failed to sustain Hamid Karzai’s government in critical areas and is therefore destined to ultimately fail.
“This is not how the war is supposed to be going. . .”
So, why isn’t the war going as planned? Maybe we should assess the counterinsurgency effort from President Karzai’s perspective and focus less on our Americo-centric point of view.
What is President Karzai’s counterinsurgency strategy?
President Karzai’s “clear-hold-build-consolidate” approach to counterinsurgency is mostly political. Politics in counterinsurgency is about the distribution of power and political strategy all about influencing the will and actions of both your allies and adversaries.
Afghanistan is a place where you fear your friends as much as you fear your enemies.
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By Mac McCallister | Published: June 4, 2010
Two recent articles in the Washington Post and Time magazine describe the political realities faced by the U.S. military, when participating in local politics in Nangahar province, in eastern Afghanistan. Both articles go to great length to describe what many would perceive to be another example of a failed local engagement strategy—and both articles fail to shed light on the grassroots political dynamics in play.
According to both, in late January, select elders of the Shinwari, a Pashtun tribe in eastern Nangarhar province, approached U.S. military officials and offered to confront militants operating in their territory. They would also punish anyone who cooperated with the militants. In response, U.S. military officials decided that they would allow the leaders of those fighting the militants to help decide how the approximately $1 million in U.S.–funded development projects would be spent.
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By Mac McCallister | Published: May 27, 2010
Read Noah Coburn’s Connecting with Kabul. The information contained in this report is invaluable for the practitioner of population-centric COIN looking for insights into the importance of local patronage networks in Afghanistan. While Coburn’s work focuses strictly on Afghanistan, similarities in patterns of social networking behavior can be found in other traditional societies.
I personally witnessed many of the same characteristics highlighted by Coburn in the patronage networks of the Anbar tribal awakening movement while serving as the Tribal Advisor to the Multi-National Forces-West in 2005-2007.
Coburn explains:
- Afghan parliamentarians are first and foremost members of local patronage networks, which include formal and informal leaders.
- Patronage networks in rural Afghanistan are not strictly resource or service providers. They are also about social relationships and religious obligations and reinforced through marriage, business, friendship and other social and economic ties. The emphasis in patronage networks is on personal relationships rather than on legal-rational, bureaucratic authority.
- The local patronage network judges its representatives on their ability to provide for resources from the national government and the international community.
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By Steven Pressfield | Published: May 27, 2010
“Interview with a Tribal Chief” is one series that ran on the “It’s the Tribes, Stupid” blog. It featured interviews with Chief Ajmal Khan Zazai.
Freerange International has a report up about Chief Zazai being ambushed by Pakistani Taliban this past week.
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William S. McCallister is a retired military officer. While on active duty, Mr. McCallister served in various infantry and special operations assignments specializing in civil-military, psychological and information operations. He has worked extensively in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
