Essay on "Contemporary Strategy"

Essay 5 pages (1991 words) Sources: 4

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Strategy-Afghanistan War

Contemporary Strategy

Treacherous Terrain/geography of Afghanistan.

One major problem for the allied forces was and continues to be unfamiliarity with counterinsurgency techniques. The great majority of units are trained in large-scale conventional maneuver warfare, and are skilled in armored operations. When it became necessary to withdraw troops from the eastern border to counter militancy in the west, there were few units that had experience of the very different tactics essential in counterinsurgency. It was necessary to conduct training within the geographical area for all units, not only those expecting to be directly involved in patrols, ambushes and attacks. The allied logistics, particularly those relying heavily on ground transport, are extremely prone to action by dissidents. There is also the issue of generally mountainous terrain and the variations caused by changing light conditions hence targets can be hard to find and identify (Jean, 2007).

Allied underestimated the Taliban

News 14 Carolina Staff (02/21/2010 06:08 PM) reported on Afghanistan, "They are squeezed," said Lt. Col. Brian Christmas, "It looks like they want to stay and fight but they can always drop their weapons and slip away. That's the nature of this war." However, on the same article it states, "instead, the insurgents rigged Marjah with bombs and booby traps to slow the allied attack, which began Feb. 13. Groups of Taliban gunmen stayed in the town, delivering sometimes intense volleys of gunfire on Marine and Afghan units slogging through the rutted streets and poppy fields." This indicates that the Allied force often underestimate the Taliban in counter attacking yet they often front a formidable counter attack to the Allied force in Afghanistan.

There is also general ignorance of the nature of the Jihad ideology and the fact that the jihad ideology has a different timeline. Muslim extremists have a long-term plan. They don't care if U.S. falls this century or the next, as long it falls. On the other hand, the U.S. think Muslim extremists don't have any brains which is a great misconception and undoing on the Allied force (Robert 2008). The rapidity and ease with which the Taliban were unseated in 2001 by a paltry 7000 soldiers, with very few casualties on the Allied forces side led to many misconceptions. Due to the long persistence of the Taliban, it turned out that not even the 130,000 soldiers deployed so far has been able to pacify Afghanistan.

Adding to the Taliban force is the considerable disruption which has been caused to tribes people, hundreds of thousands of whom have been forced to flee their villages to seek refuge in camps erected by the government and the UN High Commission for Refugees. This has led to the notable absence of young men in the camps. This has been assessed to show that many youths are joining the insurgents. These youths are said to be bitterly angry and the courageous among them have ended up joining Taliban, no matter whether they agree with their philosophy or not. It is apparent that the army's clearance operations and U.S. drone attacks inside Pakistan have created an unquantifiable but obviously most significant degree of extreme resentment in the tribal areas.

December, 2009, many Afghan tribal heads and local leaders from the Pashtun south and east -- the heartland of the Taliban insurgency -- called for U.S. troop withdrawals. "I don't think we will be able to solve our problems with military force," said Muhammad Qasim, a tribal elder from the southern province of Kandahar. "We can solve them by providing jobs and development and by using local leaders to negotiate with the Taliban."If new troops come and are stationed in civilian areas, when they draw Taliban attacks civilians will end up being killed," said Gulbadshah Majidi, a lawmaker "This will only increase the distance between Afghans and their government." (Gopal 2009).

The other incapacitation of the allied troops is the elusive nature of the Taliban leadership. Most of the top Taliban leadership has survived the war and escaped capture; many are in Pakistan and trying to mingle into Afghanistan. This will resuscitate the insurgency over and over since having integrated into the population, they train and influence the population giving rise to new insurgents

Failure to acknowledge the action and support provided by Pakistan.

There has been a feeling of non-recognition of the effort put by the Afghanistan government. In fact Clinton once told the U.S. Congress that "I think the Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists," which is the sort of pronouncement to which the world became accustomed during the horrible Bush years -- the arrogant insistence that everything bad that happened was the fault of everyone but Washington's finest. The resentment caused in Pakistan has been immense, and Clinton's words prompted a rare statement from the Chief of the Army Staff, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, who commented pithily on "pronouncements by outside powers raising doubts on the future of the country."

Command and inter-operability issues with U.S. (enduring freedom) and NATO

There has also been the issue of long running operation in Afghanistan. The war seems to run longer than it was initially intended to run. The resources that were initially allocated to the war has long been stretched. However, there is the dilemma of withdrawal of troops from the war zone.

The other issue impeding the smooth operation of the allied force is the resistance of the idea of permanent U.S. military bases which vexes many people in Afghanistan, which has a long history of resisting foreign invaders. The bases would have made it easier for operation in Afghanistan but this has long been met with great resistance.

The war in Afghanistan has repeatedly been the subject of protests around the world starting with the large-scale demonstrations in the days leading up to the official launch of U.S. Operation Enduring Freedom overseen by George W. Bush in October 2001 and there after. Many protesters consider the bombing and attack of Afghanistan to be unwarranted aggression. The deaths and injuries of caused directly and indirectly by the U.S. And NATO bombing campaigns is also a big concern of the protests. New organizations have voiced their opposition to the war; for example, in January 2009, Brave New Foundation launched Rethink Afghanistan, a national campaign for non-violent solutions in Afghanistan built around a documentary film by director and political activist Robert Greenwald in 2009.

Dozens of organizations planned (and eventually held) a national march for peace in Washington, D.C. On 2010, March 20.

Reluctance of UN/NATO to deploy in problem areas

Due to the harsh terrain of some parts of Afghan, that leads to vulnerability of the Allied Forces, the UN/NATO generally back off from some of these areas. The continued killing of the marines has led to the fear of the most risky areas. With this knowledge, the insurgents will always use these areas as their training grounds, attack fields, dwelling areas, arsenal, detention camps etc. This makes it so hard for the UN/NATO to deploy troops in these areas. There have been cases of abductions of troops in the high risk areas, killings of abductees and these makes it difficult for deployment of troops in such problem areas.

The other reason for the allied forces getting a lot of resistance in Afghanistan is due to the trade in poppy. The poppy eradication policy introduced by the international community, the United States in particular, as part of their War on Drugs, has been a disappointment, backed by the lack of alternative poverty elimination projects to replace survival sources lost as a result of poppy eradication. Rather than stopping poppy cultivation, poppy elimination has succeeded only in adding to the extreme poverty in rural areas and discontent, especially in the south of Afghanistan. The extermination of the poppy crops is not seen as a viable option because the sale of poppies constitutes the livelihood of Afghanistan's rural farmers. Some 3.3 million Afghans are involved in producing opium. Opium is reaps more profits than wheat and destroying opium fields could possibly lead to discontent or even riots among the impoverished population. Many alternatives to poppy elimination have been proposed, among them, controlled opium licensing for poppy for medicine projects. Bearing the consequences of poppy eradication, there has been a significance resistance to the allied forces occupation in Afghanistan. There is a general fear that the Afghanistan government will prohibit farming of poppy jus like the occupation forces.

Another major incapacitation is the ambushes on NATO/UN. In November and December 2008, there were multiple cases of major robbery, theft and arson attacks against NATO supply teams in Pakistan. Transport companies south of Kabul have been reliably reported to pay protection money to the Taliban. In an attack on November 11, 2008, Taliban fighters in Peshawar commandeered a convoy carrying NATO supplies from Karachi to Afghanistan. They took two military Humvees and showed them to the media as trophies. Such attacks just act to delay the mission that the allied… READ MORE

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