How the US deals with Afstan/Conspiracy theory

Two interesting pieces in the Wall St. Journal:

1) Afghanistan and Leadership

Gen. McChrystal needs more troops now precisely so Afghans can take over the war effort later.

'We're at a point in Afghanistan right now in our overall campaign," the U.S. general says, "where increasingly security can best be delivered by the extension of good governance, justice, economic reconstruction." Afghan security forces "fight side by side with us" more and more frequently, he adds, and American troops are working hard to develop the Afghan security forces. Coalition forces are focusing on securing the population, because "the key terrain is the human terrain."

This all sounds like Gen. Stanley McChrystal's proposed strategy for victory. But those words were spoken in May 2006 by Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, then the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan.

Should we be concerned that the McChrystal strategy advocates the same counterinsurgency approach that has failed to achieve success in years past? Not necessarily. The easy part of any counterinsurgency is formulating the strategy and tactics. The hard part is implementing them.

Achieving results requires, first and foremost, skilled and motivated tactical leaders in suf ficient numbers—the absence of which caused the 2006 strategy to fail. With the insurgent environment different in every Afghan valley, command must be decentralized. So finding and implementing the right tactics is primarily the job of battalion commanders and district police chiefs, not presidents or four-star generals.

The quality of counterinsurgency leaders determines whether the patrols and ambushes required to protect government personnel and the population are conducted. Leadership determines whether policemen serve as impartial administrators or engage in timeless abuses like stealing livestock and demanding bribes at roadside checkpoints—abuses that alienate the population more than air strikes or national electoral irregularities...

American troops in Afghanistan will never be so numerous that they can defeat the insurgents on their own, so Afghan forces must be given the good leadership they currently lack. The Afghan government will not have sufficient numbers of good officers for their expanding army and police any time soon. Gen. McChrystal intends to compensate by strengthening the partnership between American and Afghan forces.

The great challenge here is to determine how American leadership can improve the performance of Afghan forces. Although the U.S. government appears to have ruled out formal placement of Afghan troops under U.S. command, American commanders and advisers may well end up assuming de facto command of weak indigenous units, whether directly or through quiet guidance to Afghan officers. This arrangement usually produced success when employed in Iraq and Vietnam.

The Pentagon must also be shaken from its bureaucratic lethargy and compelled to dispatch more suitable officers as advisers to the Afghan forces. Too often we have sent officers who lacked the personality or experience to influence their Afghan counterparts for the better...

Mr. Moyar is a professor at the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Va., and the author of three books on counterinsurgency, including "A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq," published this month by Yale University Press.

2) Afghan War Units Begin Two New Efforts

The Pentagon is establishing two new units devoted to the Afghan war, highlighting the military's focus on the conflict even as the White House considers scaling back the overall U.S. mission there.

The units -- a so-called Afghan Hands program run out of the Pentagon and a new intelligence center within Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- are designed to help troops deepen their intelligence about the country's complex political and tribal dynamics.

The Defense Department also is expected to announce that Brig. Gen. John M. Nicholson, one of the military's top experts on counterinsurgency, will assume the helm of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Coordination Cell, a Pentagon office established earlier this year to improve the military's performance in Afghanistan [more here].

The moves underline the military's efforts to remake itself in response to the Afghan war despite the Obama administration's signals that it is far from committed to the current counterinsurgency approach.

President Barack Obama met with Defense Secretary Robert Gates Monday as part of the ongoing White House review of Afghanistan policy, which is being re-evaluated in light of the country's flawed presidential elections and the Taliban's recent gains.

A senior military official acknowledged that the Afghan Hands initiative, the most important of the new efforts, could be modified or scaled back if the White House decides on a new strategy. "None of this is inflexible or set in stone," the official said...

As for conspiracy theory, it has been rumoured that the White House itself leaked the McChrystal report to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post in order to set the scene for the administration's coming consideration of Afstan. Not sure if I buy that seeing the trouble caused, but who knows which Machiavels lurk where.