Situation Currently in Afghanistan

I have not blogged about Afghanistan in a while, since:

Some Statistics on Afghanistan (April 2020) | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

Will probably be a addressing it more in the near future. There was New York Times article today that I thought was worthwhile. It is here: The Taliban Close In on Afghan Cities, Pushing the Country to the Brink

One of the odd things when we were doing the insurgency work on Iraq and our later more theoretical insurgency work, we never were asked by our various contracting agencies to look at Afghanistan in particular. This is odd, as we kind of nailed the prediction on Iraq (see Chapter One of America’s Modern Wars). In the end I do have a chapter on Afghanistan in that book and were asked to brief the military advisor to the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in late 2005 and again in late 2008. This also lead to a briefing with the Chairman of NIC.

I still think there is value in having us do an independent analysis of the situation in light of our correct predictions for Iraq and Bosnia (see Appendix II of America’s Modern Wars). I also have a very brief chapter in my book on “Withdrawal and War Termination.” Needless to say, this was a subject I proposed to several agencies that we do more work on, and there was absolutely no interest. So instead I write books. Now, I don’t control the budget over at DOD and other agencies. Sometimes their priorities mystify me.

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.
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Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.
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His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) , The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019), The Battle for Kyiv (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2023), Aces at Kursk (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024), Hunting Falcon: The Story of WWI German Ace Hans-Joachim Buddecke (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024) and The Siege of Mariupol (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2024).
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Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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4 Comments

  1. Interesting article in the NYT. It’s tone is similar to other reports I have read about the increasing power and popularity of the Taliban compared to the central government which is seen as corrupt and incompetent. In which case I wonder whether there is any real point in staying and prolonging a costly and doomed war.

    I am reminded of the Vietnam war, another “Hearts and Minds” war that was lost by Western allied forces. I am not sure that Western governments and militaries know how to fight a Hearts and Minds Campaign. They just assume it is another shooting war and the damage thus inflicted on the local civilian population means the Taliban/Viet Cong win politically. There seems to be a cultural blindness that prevents Western militaries from formulating a successful strategy. How should a Hearts and Minds war be fought successfully? There may be some clues in the Malayan Insurgency and the East Timor intervention.

  2. Seems to me that Afghanistan is an area around which to build a wall (metaphorically speaking) until feudalism/clanism is ended by the people of Afghanistan. Other models could be advertised/demonstrated/modeled for the viewing pleasure of the populace and consideration of the populace, but it’s the people who will decide; after all, imposed democracy would be an oxymoron.

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