Changing US Afghan strategy?/Update: Flawed NATO strategy

People, not places:

New Afghanistan Commander Will Review Troop Placements

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who took over Monday as the top commander in Afghanistan, said he will launch a broad assessment of how U.S. and NATO troops are arrayed in the country to ensure his forces are focused on safeguarding key population centers and not hunting down Taliban fighters.

"We are going to look at those parts of the country that are most important -- and those typically, in an insurgency, are the population centers [see this post, Kandahar province: "Let's go to the map"]," McChrystal said in an interview shortly after pinning on his fourth star. He replaced Gen. David D. McKiernan, who was fired by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates after 11 months on the job.

McChrystal's comments suggested that he wanted to pull forces out of some of the more remote, mountainous areas of Afghanistan where few people live and where insurgent fighters may be seeking refuge. In recent months these isolated pockets have been the scene of some of the most intense fighting between U.S. troops and insurgents.

The debate over whether to use U.S. troops to hunt down the enemy in the remote mountains or employ them in cities and villages to protect the population against Taliban intimidation and attacks has dogged U.S. commanders since the beginning of the Afghan war in 2001. Some senior military commanders have argued that the U.S. has never committed enough troops to the country to execute a classic counterinsurgency strategy focused on safeguarding the Afghan people.

"We've got to ruthlessly prioritize, because we don't have enough forces to do everything, everywhere," McChrystal said. He added that he would be especially reluctant to commit his forces to rugged areas where it would be difficult to extend the reach of the Afghan government or spur economic development. "If you are not prepared to come in with a reasonable level of governance and a reasonable level of development, then just going in to hold [the ground] doesn't have a strong rationale," he said.

One area that is likely to receive scrutiny from the new commander is the Korengal Valley in eastern Afghanistan, where U.S. troops have for several years been locked in an intense battle that has produced more American casualties than just about any region of the country.

Senior U.S. officials in eastern Afghanistan say most of the hard-core insurgents battling American troops there are Korengalis who receive weapons, training and money from al-Qaeda and Taliban facilitators, crossing the porous border from Pakistan. In recent months, U.S. commanders have debated whether to increase the American force in the Korengal Valley in an effort to rout the insurgents, or simply leave the isolated area. A third option is to hold force levels in the area steady...

...McChrystal said the core of his review will focus on which areas the U.S., NATO and Afghan troops could secure with the current force levels [emphasis added].

In judging the effect his strategy was having on security, McChrystal said he will avoid such measurements as the number of insurgent attacks, enemies killed or raids initiated by U.S. forces. Instead he pledges to focus on indicators that shed light on local governance and economic development.

"One indicator might be how well commerce is moving," McChrystal said. "If an individual can move his product to market right away from his village or town, that is telling. If he's got to go through six checkpoints and pay a bribe at each one, that is a sign that you've got abuse of governance or an insurgency, depending on who's doing it [Afstan: Roads, dear boy, roads]."

He said he will also inquire regularly whether local government officials feel comfortable enough to live with their families in the areas they are serving. In places such as restive Konar province in the east and Taliban-controlled Zabol province in the south, most government officials move their wives and children to safer areas of the country...

The Canadians have been thinking the same way (I've also heard the importance of roads and the safety of officials stressed by well-informed people):

CF--with Afghans in lead--to "clear and hold" near Kandahar

More in this CP story:

Changing strategy
Focus on winning 'trust and confidence' of Afghans expert

Update: The outgoing NATO Secretary General points out a key flaw in the ISAF mission:

Making individual NATO members responsible for specific provinces in Afghanistan has hindered international cooperation efforts, NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in a magazine interview.

"All countries like to think they are the champions of reconstruction," NATO Secretary General De Hoop Scheffer said in an interview with Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland on Tuesday.

"But that has not stimulated real international military and civil cooperation, and from time to time it has even worked against it," he told the magazine.

De Hoop Scheffer, who is stepping down as NATO chief on August 1, said individual members of the 28-nation military alliance had become too focused on their own interests [emphasis added] during reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.

"In hindsight I would have chosen a stronger combination of military effort and reconstruction," he said...

At a meeting in Brussels last week, NATO ministers backed a U.S. shake-up of military command in Afghanistan based on a model used in Iraq.