Category Afghanistan

Presentations from HAAC – Group Discussion: Could We Have Won the War in Afghanistan, 2001 – 2021?

The fourth event of the second day in the Pike & Gallows Conference room was a group discussion on whether we could have won the war in Afghanistan. I opened the discussion with a brief 12-slide presentation, built from my original presentation that morning. It is here: Could We Have Won

We then went into a general discussion around the conference room. I have not checked to see if we got a good video of that.

Anyhow, part of the reason that I added that to the program is that first: I think it actually does need to be discussed. Second, I have thought about blogging about that in depth, although I am spread so thin right now that I have held off doing so. I have not seen anyone else seriously discussing this.

The first presentation of the day was my monstrosity, Iraq, Data, Hypotheses and Afghanistan (which I later turned into the book America’s Modern Wars): NIC Compilation 3.1

The second presentation of the day was Lessons Learned from Haiti 1915-1934 by Dr. Christopher Davis of UNCG: History as an Enemy and Instructor

The third presentation of the day was Estimating War Deaths (in Iraq) by Dr. Michael Spagat of Royal Holloway University of London: Iraq Deaths

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We had a total of 30 presentations given at the first Historical Analysis Annual Conference (HAAC). We have the briefing slides from most of these presentations. Over the next few weeks, we are going to present the briefing slides on this blog, maybe twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursday). In all cases, this is done with the permission of the briefer. We may later also post the videos of the presentations, but these are clearly going to have to go to another medium (Youtube.com). We will announce when and if these are posted.

The briefings will be posted in the order given at the conference. The conference schedule is here: Schedule for the Historical Analysis Annual Conference (HAAC), 27-29 September 2022 – update 16 | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

The nine presentations given on the first day are all here: Presentations from HAAC – Air Combat Analysis on the Eastern Front in 1944-45 | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

Presentations from HAAC – Iraq, Data, Hypotheses and Afghanistan

Attached is the first presentation for the second day of the conference. It was an old presentation that I gave at the National Intelligence Council (NIC) back in 2008. It was still relevant: NIC Compilation 3.1. Most of this is discussed in my book America’s Modern Wars.

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We had a total of 30 presentations given at the first Historical Analysis Annual Conference (HAAC). We have the briefing slides from most of these presentations. Over the next few weeks, we are going to present the briefing slides on this blog, maybe twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursday). In all cases, this is done with the permission of the briefer. We may later also post the videos of the presentations, but these are clearly going to have to go to another medium (Youtube.com). We will announce when and if these are posted.

The briefings will be posted in the order given at the conference. The conference schedule is here: Schedule for the Historical Analysis Annual Conference (HAAC), 27-29 September 2022 – update 16 | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org).

The nine presentations given on the first day are all here: Presentations from HAAC – Air Combat Analysis on the Eastern Front in 1944-45 | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org).

Body Counts – What Can They Tell Us?

A new posting from William (Chip) Sayers. This is his tenth post here. He will be presenting at our Historical Analysis conference: Who’s Who at HAAC – part 1 | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org) and Schedule of the Historical Analysis Annual Conference (HAAC), 27-29 September 2022 – update 13 | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org).

——————-William (Chip) Sayers————————–

Body Counts – What Can They Tell Us?

There has been a lot of back and forth on the web lately about how many casualties Russia has taken in Ukraine, how much equipment they’ve lost and how they are going to replace those troops and weapons. I’ve decided it’s time to look into this subject and bring my own experiences to the table. 

In Vietnam, these kind of metrics seemed to have no utility other than to corrupt the officer corps with fake and exaggerated body counts, or worse, counting dead civilians as combatants. Or so the legends say. Gen. Westmorland demanded a high body count, so that’s what he got. And while the numbers looked impressive, it eventually became apparent that the numbers weren’t tied to anything concrete. Would another 50,000 North Vietnamese dead cause Ho Chi Minh to capitulate? Another 100,000? In the end, Hanoi admitted they had lost a million men in their bid to take over the South. Clearly, Uncle Ho was ready to fight to the last North Vietnamese soldier. When your opponent’s pain threshold is that high, the body count really doesn’t tell you anything. Or so it would seem.

In the aftermath of Operation DESERT STORM in 1991, various interested parties were pushing the Pentagon for a casualty count on the Iraqi side. I’m sure some wanted to thump their chests over the “kill ratio” between Iraqi casualties and the ludicrously low figures on the Allied side; while others apparently wanted to use the presumably large number of Iraqi losses to highlight the wanton brutality of the campaign we had pursued. The obvious source, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of Coalition Forces, wasn’t interested in sharing numbers. Schwarzkopf was a field-grade infantry officer during the Vietnam War and he had seen the dark side of body counts and wanted no part of them. While there would be little of the corrosive effect on the officer corps after a short, victorious war, he also knew how badly the US Army’s credibility had suffered over the issue in Vietnam. There would be no body count from Operation DESERT STORM.

The question, then, got punted over to Defense Intelligence Agency where I was working at the time. I know the analyst who had to respond and I know that he basically made up a number out of whole cloth to get the action off his desk during a very busy time. If I recall correctly, that number was 100,000, with no distinction between killed or wounded, or if they were all KIA, as reported by some in the media. I had Col Dupuy’s model in hand and had used it to support my team’s effort during the war, so I could have come up with a far more reasonable estimate, but no one asked me. Some months later, another analyst I knew wrote an article for Foreign Affairs on the Iraqi casualty account. He rightly derided the 100,000 estimate. However, he made his estimate by counting vehicles destroyed and multiplying by crew capacity—certainly more reasonable than a complete WAG, but unlikely to be very accurate—particularly as most destroyed Iraqi vehicles had already been abandoned by their crews. So far as I’m aware, no one has ever done a serious, forensic study of the question since then and basically, nothing has been learned or understood about Iraqi casualties from ODS.

Flash forward 12 years: A few months after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a couple of colleagues and I were asked to do a study of the nascent Sunni insurgency and come up with tips the U.S. Army could use to protect its personnel from ambushes. For my part, I went back to a series of “How we did it” monographs the Army put out in 1971-1974 in that brief period of time when we were looking at our efforts in Vietnam as a victory. After 1975, no one in the Army wanted to hear anything about Vietnam, and this series of monographs went into dusty archives, presumably never to see the light of day. In large measure, I was simply feeding the Army its own forgotten history, and they were very happy to receive it. 

Over the course of the project, I created a database from the Army’s information about various incidents they were involved in. In particular, I was interested in incidents which resulted in casualties to either side. For the U.S. side, I counted those personnel who were listed as KIA and those who were listed as Seriously Wounded in Action, or SWIA. I considered those personnel who did not return to duty within 72 hours as being WIA. I did not count those soldiers who put a band-aid on it and returned to duty within that 72-hour window. To count as an insurgent casualty, I only included those whose body was in our possession. i.e., enemy KIA where we actually had possession of the body and those who were captured and in custody. Some of the Enemy Prisoners of War (EPWs) may have been wounded, but there was no information with which to break that out. Any insurgent who was believed to have been killed or wounded but was not in our possession was not counted.

Eventually, I ended up with a database of some 27,000 incidents evaluated for 80 different conditions over a period of a year and a half of operations. Some of the conditions I tested for included things like what kind of attack it was: small arms, Improvised Explosive Device (IED), mortar, complex, etc. The Army counted an attack as “complex” if two different types of weapons were used, e.g., small arms and Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs). I believed the Army’s definition was not helpful, as the purpose of that categorization was to indicate a higher level of training and tactical competence. So, I only counted an attack as being in the complex category that actually required integration of differing elements, such as small arms and mortars or a vehicular IED and coordinated sniper fire, etc.

In analyzing these incidents, certain trends seemed to fall out. The Iraqi insurgents were never able to successfully stand up to Allied troops in an infantry fight. Insurgent mortarmen were hopelessly inept. Even IED attacks rapidly dropped in effectiveness. Some of these things were due to the quick adaptation by Allied troops. They got better defensive armor and tactics, but experience was the key. It was difficult to watch Allied casualties spike with the rotation of a new unit into combat, but this was followed rapidly by a drop in losses. Often, the final rate was lower than that of the previous unit, indicating an effective process of disseminating lessons learned through the force. In contrast, there was no sign whatsoever of a similar process on the insurgent side. Their casualty rates increased incessantly to the point that something had to give. That something was the “Sunni Awakening,” when they realized that it would be better to seek our protection from the Shia militias than to fight us.

One of the things that convinced me that this result was inevitable was what happened with casualty rates on both sides with regard to IEDs. In the first months of the insurgency, it took only three IED emplacements to cause a U.S. KIA or SWIA. By the end of my study, this was up to over 30 to 1 and the insurgents were actually losing more personnel involved with IEDs than we were (not all of insurgent losses were IED trigger-men scooped up during an attack, or from emplacement teams who were caught in the act—some were from raids on IED factories, or from the movement of bombs where careless insurgents blew themselves up, etc.). Much of this data was collected before our realization of the extent our troops were suffering from traumatic brain injuries, so the real cost to our personnel was not completely captured. However, the enemy did not know this, either, so it didn’t influence their decision to change sides.

One of the most important findings I made was of a major inflection point in insurgent combat effectiveness in November, 2004. It appeared quite clear that many of their best people—if not the very heart of the insurgency—died in the fight for Fallujah. This should come as a surprise to no one, given the fight they put up, and the lack of escape routes we afforded them. From that point on, insurgent effectiveness dropped and continued a literal death spiral as moderately experienced insurgents were killed or captured only to be replaced by personnel with less experience and a lower life expectancy on the battlefield.

Ironically, the insurgency didn’t recognize what was happening and intensified its attacks. While the burnout of the Sunni insurgency was predictable by the end of 2005, it took another year for it to fully manifest itself. In the meantime, the increasing numbers of attacks—resulting in increasing Allied casualties, despite plummeting insurgent effectiveness—caused U.S. analysts to believe Iraq was a lost cause when, in fact, Allied forces were on the cusp of victory. Eventually, Sunni insurgents were forced to face the inevitable truth that that they could not win in a two-front war against both us and the Shia militias and to continue was tantamount to sect suicide. They knew that they would never be able to return to their position of domination over Iraq and would suffer mightily at the hands of the Shia they had previously oppressed. So, they took the only reasonable option available: they sought our protection from the Shia majority. This startling outcome was entirely predictable, if one paid close attention to the data.

A further myth I was able to disprove was the threat of “bleed out.” Counter-terrorism analysts were highly concerned that trained Iraqi military personnel turned insurgents would begin to exit Iraq with their skills and perpetrate acts of terrorism around the world. However, their bombmaking skills had no application anywhere outside of Iraq as it was almost entirely based on the use of artillery shells—not something you would find lying around Western Europe. Their small arms skills were almost non-existent, the vast majority of their “sniper” attacks were almost certainly lucky shots (I was able to identify the work of only one or two actual snipers from the data), fewer than one in ten of their RPG attacks hit anything, and they seemed completely baffled by the mortars they employed, often failing to put rounds inside the fence at a sprawling logistics base or walking their rounds off a target they came close to hitting with the first shot. Either their former soldiers didn’t join the insurgency, or they were completely incompetent. Either way, the “bleed out” threat never materialized.

Certainly, I would never advocate for a simple body count. If you ask for bodies, that’s exactly what you will get. And as we saw in Vietnam, that sometimes became problematic. However, the careful collection and analysis of combat loss statistics can be of great value.

To bring this back home, can body counts and other loss statistics be of value in analyzing the war in Ukraine? Yes, but with this caveat: those of us operating in the unclassified realm have very little access to good, useful information necessary for such analysis. Furthermore, the Ukrainian government not only recognizes the utility of good propaganda, they are masterful in its employment. And that’s a complement. However, it makes our job more difficult in sorting out truth from fiction. 

One final vignette: When the U.S. gave Stinger missiles to the Mujahideen insurgents to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, a coworker of mine was the point-man on watching the results. After a week of successful action, he wrote a piece saying that the Soviets had lost seven aircraft, or about one per day. That evening, Dan Rather read his report, verbatim on the CBS evening news, and in the succeeding months, the media and other analysts based their estimates of Russian aircraft losses on the “one per day” comment. In fact, you can find claims of Soviet losses to this day, based on that report. In reality, the Soviets took quick action, lowering their losses significantly, albeit at a high cost to the effectiveness of their Air Force. However, I have often wondered if perhaps Mr. Gorbachev trusted the Western news media more than his own generals on this issue (a not entirely unreasonable position), and eventually came to the determination that Afghanistan wasn’t worth it based on a little piece of unintentional propaganda.

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My comment: Chip Sayer’s postings are completely independent of The Dupuy Institute. He emailed this to me last week and I did not get around to reading it until this morning, as I was copying and pasting it to the blog. There is a lot of significant statements in this posting, which I was tempted to place in bold. Some of these reinforce statements I have made in my books, in particular Modern American Wars. This is definitely a blog post worth reading slowly twice.

Hellfire R9X

Hellfire R9X. Source: https://newsroompost.com/world/hellfire-r9x-missile-that-knocked-down-al-qaedas-al-zawahiri-india-wants-us-silent-killers/5152768.html

The missile used to kill Al-Zawahiri in Kabul was the Hellfire AGM-114 R9X. Don’t know the range of this missile, but the AGM-114R Hellfire II has a range of 11,000 meters. It was fired from a “Reaper Drone.” The General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper is a UAV with a range of 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) and a cruise speed of 194 mph (313 kph). 

Not sure where they operated this from, but there were a lot of options.

 

Wikipedia notes (bolding is mine):

The Hellfire R9X is a Hellfire variant with a kinetic warhead with pop-out blades instead of explosives, used against specific human targets. Its lethality is due to 45 kg (100 lb) of dense material with six blades flying at high speed, to crush and cut the targeted person — the R9X has also been referred to as the ‘Ninja Missile’ and ‘Flying Ginsu‘. It is intended to reduce collateral damage when targeting specific people. Deployed in secret in 2017, its existence has been public since 2019. This variant was used in the killings of Jamal Ahmad Mohammad Al Badawi, accused mastermind of the 2000 USS Cole bombing, and Abu Khayr al-Masri, a member of Al-Qaeda‘s leadership. The weapon has also been used in Syria, and in Afghanistan against a Taliban commander. It was used twice in 2020 against senior al-Qaeda leaders in Syria; in September 2020 US officials estimated that it had been used in combat around six times. Hellfire missiles fired by a Reaper drone were used on 31 July 2022 to kill Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of Al-Qaeda, who had previously been involved in planning the 9/11 and other attacks on US targets. It was reported that the missile hit him on a balcony, causing minimal collateral damage. 

Interview video about Afghanistan

This is a video of an interview of William Lawrence (my brother) about his two deployments in Afghanistan: William Lawrence | Americans in Wartime Experience. He spent 23 months there.

It is part of series that the Americans in Wartime Museum has been doing on interviewing veterans: Americans in Wartime Experience

They have 529 interviews posted on-line now: Watch Voices of Freedom® Oral History Videos | Americans in Wartime Experience

I do have some pictures of some of the sites he is discussing. They were originally assembled for my book America’s Modern Wars.

Referenced at 7:50

The old and the new, Soviet tank park next to the Dyncorp compound near Kunduz, 4 May 2008 (photo by William A. Lawrence II).
U.S. Army near Kunduz, 5 May 2008 (photo by William A. Lawrence II).
German forces near Kunduz, 4 May 2008 (photo by William A. Lawrence
II).
Afghan village near Kunduz, 5 May 2008 (photo by William A. Lawrence II).

Not referenced:

Suicide bomber in Baghlan Jadid, April 2009. The bomber was walking down the road trying to set off an explosive device as the photographer passed by in a truck. The bomb failed to explode. The bomber was found later by the local Afghan police still wearing the harness, but with no explosives. They released him (photo by William A. Lawrence II).

Referenced at 15:30

The Tora Bora Mountains (photo by William A. Lawrence II, 14 February 2011).
Camp Lonestar, near Jalalabad, 7 October 2010 (photo by William A. Lawrence II).
Afghan police in training, 5 October 2010 (taken by William A. Lawrence II).
Afghan police in training, near Jalalabad, 15 August 2010 (photo by friend of William A. Lawrence II).
Graduation day for 500 Afghan Border Police officers. Their basic academy was six weeks long and they were trained in small unit tactics, firearms, law enforcement, and conducting mobile and dismounted patrols utilizing their police vehicles (photo by William A. Lawrence II, 2010).

Intelligence Failures

Someone just forwarded me this article: US intelligence community launches review following Ukraine and Afghanistan intel failings

‘Bout time. They should back date it to cover the 1991 Gulf War predictions and the failure in the late 1980s to predict the fall of the Soviet Union; oh, and maybe those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003, and those estimates of duration and losses during the war (see Modern American Wars). Also, might want to discuss the defenses of Tang Island in 1975 and the failure to secure the Marine Barricks in Lebanon in 1983. And then was the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Anything I am forgetting?

A few highlights:

  1. They are carrying out “…a sweeping internal review of how it assesses the fighting power of foreign militaries…” Wonder if anyone will call me.
  2. “…sent classified letter…pointing out that the agencies broadly underestimated how long the Ukranian military would be able to fend off Russian forces and overestimated how long Afghan fighters would hold out against the Talban last summer…” They probably need to add an adjective or two to this sentence like “grossly” or “sadly” underestimated or overestimated.
  3. “CNN has learned that one smaller intelligence agency within the State Department did more accurately assess the Ukrainian military’s capability to resist Russia.” Would like to see that estimate. It was done by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
  4. “Critics say the US might have moved to arm Ukraine sooner and with heavier weaponry if the intelligence community had assessed that it stood a fighting chance against the Russian army.”
  5. “…suggest a widespread acknowledge within the US government that the intelligence community needs to reassess how it judges the strength of other nation’s militaries…” This blog post is kind of relevant: Are There Only Three Ways of Assessing Military Power? | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org).
  6. The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research “…was also the leading dissenting voice in 2002, when the majority of US intelligence agencies assessed wrongly that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction prior to the Iraq war in 2003…:”
  7. “Current and former intelligence officials acknowledge that only looking at military ‘capabilities’ leaves out the quintessentially human factors that could prove decisive.” I think we have discussed one or two or several dozen times.



If there has been any consistent element to this story, it that we consistently have major intelligence failures decade after decade after decade after decade after decade after decade after decade after decade (did I get in all the decades?).

 

 

P.S. While we are at it, still dying to know who inserted a provision in the 2020 defense budget for validation testing of combat models and then who mysteriously removed that provision in the final budget. See: U.S. Senate on Model Validation | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org) and No Action on Validation In the 2020 National Defense Act Authorization | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org).

The Revival of ISIL

I have already discussed events in Syria and Iraq a couple of times. See:

In Case We Forget | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

More on the revived ISIL | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

This still does not seem to be getting a lot of attention. The LA TImes (of all people) just put out an article worth looking at: https://www.yahoo.com/news/foiled-prison-break-brings-sense-163148079.html

A few highlights:

  1. Two trucks attacked the prison.
  2. The fight lasted a week. It ended Wednesday.
  3. U.S. and UK forces involved.
  4. 1,600 prisoners gave themselves up. How many escaped? There were something like 3,500 prisoners there.
    1. “Some 800 Islamic State prisoners managed to escape, Amaq said Saturday.” Amaq is a news outlet affiliated with the Islamic State.
  5. The SDF has 10,000 fighters?
  6. 30 SDF were killed.
  7. Perhaps as many as 10,000 ISIL fighters survived after 2019.
  8. “This is just completely off the charts compared to the scale of the operations ISIS has engaged in for well over two years.” – yes, exactly. This is why I am blogging about this.

Now, for the Historical Analysis Annual Conference (HAAC) on 27-29 September 2022 I have two conference rooms reserved, one is larger than the other. On day 2 of the conference, I do have the larger conference room (amusingly named the “Pike and Gallows Conference Center”) scheduled for “Analysis of Unconventional Warfare.” I do have a shortage of presentations on “unconventional warfare” (or COIN or Irregular Warfare or whatever is the terminology of the day). I do think the subject does need to be further examined, especially in light of how successful we were in Afghanistan.

P.S. ISIL, ISIS, Daesh and Islamic State are all the same people.

 

Does this mean that we are four-for-four in our predictions?

Afghan village near Kunduz, 5 May 2008 (photo by William A. Lawrence II).

Well, I took the time over the last few weeks to post up most of my Chapter on Afghanistan from my book America’s Modern Wars. It was interesting to revisit what I had written. The 13 blog posts are summarized here:

Summation of Afghanistan Chapter | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

Note that our fourth to last sentence on the subject is: If history is a guide, then this government will be replaced one way or the other several years after we withdraw. This was written in early 2015.

I then continue: What will replace it is hard to determine, but will probably include a return to some extent of the Taliban, or perhaps with them leading the new government. It is also distinctly possible that the country will return back into civil war. None of this fulfills our objectives.

So, does my chapter on Afghanistan in America’s Modern Wars make us four-for-four?


Summation of Afghanistan Chapter

Afghan police in training, near Jalalabad, 15 August 2010 (photo by friend of William A. Lawrence II).

This is a summation of the 13 posts drawn (copied) from Chapter 21: Relating a Force Ratio Model to Afghanistan (pages 253-273) of America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam:


So What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan? | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

So What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan? – part 2 | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

So What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan? – part 3 | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

From that post:

At the time of that briefing, we had 110,790 troops there. The Dupuy Institute estimated insurgent strength between 15,000 and 25,000, with us leaning towards the higher figure. So if the insurgency was a regional or factional insurgency, then even at a force ratio of 4.43 to 1 (assuming 25,000 insurgents), we had an 84 percent chance of winning. Yet, it did not appear that we were winning. [bolding added for this post]”

So What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan? – part 4 | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

So What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan? – part 5 | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

From that post: 

The problem is if the insurgency is broadly based, then those surge forces needed to stay in place for the next ten years, with the expected continued losses and expenses. [bolding added for this post]

Dueling Surges | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

So What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan? – part 7 | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

So What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan? – part 8 | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

So What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan? – part 9 | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

So What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan? – part 10 | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

So What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan? – part 11 | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan? (part 12) – Political Will | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan? (part 13) – Conclusions | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

From that post:

If history is a guide, then this government will be replaced one way or the other several years after we withdraw. What will replace it is hard to determine, but will probably include a return to some extent of the Taliban, or perhaps with them leading the new government. It is also distinctly possible that the country will return back into civil war. None of this fulfills our objectives.

This was written in early 2015.  

What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan? (part 13) – Conclusions

Picture of area of the missing statue of the Buddah, destroyed by the Taliban government when they were in charge, near Bamiyan, August 2006 (photo by Nicholas Klapmeyer).

Continuing the discussion on Afghanistan drawn from pages 269-270 of America’s Modern Wars (2015):

CONCLUSIONS

One cannot but help to compare Iraq to Afghanistan. In the case of Iraq, we faced a regional or factional insurgency mostly based upon the minority Sunnis, we installed a government from the majority Shiite faction and then backed that with force ratios sufficient to suppress a regional or factional insurgency. We then bought off the Sunni insurgents by the tens of thousands bringing the violence rapidly under control, while at the same time conducted a surge. The end result was to create a very favorable situation on the ground, allowing us to withdraw and leaving behind trainers in a much more stable environment, and then withdrawn entirely in 2011. Still, the effort has been far from perfect, and the insurgency appears to be now renewed.

In the case of Afghanistan the government is under control of the majority ethnic group, with minority representation. The insurgency is also drawing mainly from that same majority ethnic group. The insurgency primarily appears to be domestically based. As the United Nations noted September 2006: “The insurgency is being conducted mostly by  Afghans operating inside Afghanistan’s border. However, its leadership appears to rely on support and sanctuary from outside the country.” The attempts to buy off the insurgents have not met with much success. The current surge has create a force ratio that should be sufficient to control a regional or factional insurgency, given sufficient time.

On the other hand, if this insurgency is broadly based, then we do not have a sufficient force ratio regardless of time. So, in that case, if we cannot buy off the insurgents, then our only option is to add another 100,000 to 200,000 troops to the war and invest several more years, with the attendant casualties and costs, trying to turn the war into our favor. Obviously, this precludes meeting any set withdrawal date.

Still, in all reality the current administration is not going to commit another 100,000 to 200,000 troops to Afghanistan for the next five or more years. This is not in discussion. It does not appear to be in consideration by the U.S. opposition party either.

Given our unwillingness to step up our commitment, then the only questions is whether a slower withdrawal will provide more tangible benefits than a fast withdrawal. This we have not examined. Still, this is not “winning” the war in any sense of the word winning. It is withdrawing with the situation on the ground unresolved and a government that is far from democratic or stable. We will be leaving behind trainers and other support people, but limited combat troops. If history is a guide, then this government will be replaced one way or the other several years after we withdraw. What will replace it is hard to determine, but will probably include a return to some extent of the Taliban, or perhaps with them leading the new government. It is also distinctly possible that the country will return back into civil war. None of this fulfills our objectives.

This was written in early 2015.  That ends my excerpts from Chapter 21: Relating a Force Ratio Model to Afghanistan, pages 253-273 (there were three pages of endnotes to the chapter). 

 

….

(to be continued)