Afghanistan is Not Iraq

General David Petraeus continues his campaign to convince the US public that he knows what he's doing in Afghanistan. And the short of it is, the strategy used in Iraq is not exactly the one we need in Afghanistan.

Petraeus was quick to note the “enormous difference between Iraq and Afghanistan.” Afghanistan, for example, lacks Iraq’s huge oil revenues and its “muscle memory” of strong central government institutions.

These, as well as culture differences between the two countries, require a different approach to conducting counterinsurgency operations, he said.

“You have to apply [them] in a way that is culturally appropriate for Afghanistan,” he said. For example, a key strategy shift that accompanied the troop surge in Iraq – in which U.S. troops lived within the Iraqi communities they helped to secure – won’t necessarily work in Afghanistan, Petraeus said.

“You don’t move into a village in Afghanistan the way that we were able to move into neighborhoods in Iraq,” he said. “You have to move on the edge of it, or just near it, but you still have to have a persistent security presence.”

Petraeus expressed confidence that the operations under way in Afghanistan ultimately will succeed, but he tempered expectations. “It will be very difficult, and you won’t see the dramatic turnaround that we have seen in Iraq,” he said.

One big difference between the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is that there’s a nearly universal understanding of why the United States is fighting in Afghanistan, Petraeus said. “There is absolutely no debate about the fact that that is where the 9/11 attacks came from,” he said.

There's no doubt that Afghanistan has to be handled differently than Iraq, even though (in theory) the same basic practice of counterinsurgency is key to operations within both theaters. It will be very difficult, especially with our government's inability to integrate civil (non-military) strategies into the theater and the corrupt government in that nation. It's easy to say "SysAdmin," harder to actually find government civilians willing to go into a war zone. So the best Petraeus can do, in the meantime, is to remind us that this is from where the planners behind 9/11 came. Well, no shit.

Realizing why we went into Afghanistan - over seven years ago - doesn't really excuse why we don't have a plan for getting out of that region. What Petraeus won't tell is whether there is a better strategy to contain terrorists operating from Af-Pak other than occupying the country with more than a hundred thousand foreign troops. One could argue - one OUGHT to argue - that a strategy of containment from outside the country, combined with good intelligence operations (I know, it's a stretch) might be far less expensive and far more productive than the current strategy.

Comments

[NVH]

Squeezing the gap like Barnett wants to right? Using his SYSADMIN civ forces with the Marines for security and backup to teach them to do democracy their own way? Not a bad idea J., I still think you need a 100K worth of troops to do it from the outside though.

[Ray]

Until the military and politicians get their act together there's no hope of bringing Afghanistan to a "satisfactory" conclusion. How can the Afghan government govern without first having a common theme with our forces.
Every representative ambassador from the Western forces involved goes to the Afghan government with a different agenda from the others. The government of Afghanistan cannot hope to sort out it's corruptions or anything else until there's a common strategy.
The Afghan problem is wider than yet envisaged- even Iran may have to be involved in the solutions, and possibly China too.
Pakistan is a separate problem; it has lost 5000 people to suicide bombings, and thus has more involvement-personally- than we do, although Gordon Brown says the main threat to UK is from Pakistan, not Afghanistan.
Civilian priorities must be addressed- they can't be bombed into existence.

R.