Taking COIN strategy to Afghanistan

Washington Post:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates arrived in Afghanistan on Monday to weigh new strategies for quelling insurgent violence, which has escalated here in recent years despite increases in U.S. and NATO troop levels.

Senior defense officials said that under one initiative being considered, local tribesmen would be trained and armed to fight Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan, the stronghold of the radical Islamic militia. Attacks in that region have been particularly intense, and one senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States is "seeing early indicators that there may be some stepped-up activity by al-Qaeda."

"One of the clear concerns that we all have is that in the last two or three years there has been a continuing increase in the overall level of violence," with attacks "highly focused" in the south, Gates told reporters Monday.

"I'm not worried about a backslide as much as I am how we continue the momentum going forward," Gates said.

The tribal initiative would begin with a British pilot project in Helmand province and would be broadly similar to a U.S. military drive in Iraq that has recruited thousands of local fighters -- including tribesmen and former insurgents -- to police their neighborhoods, the officials said.

In Afghanistan, as in Iraq, the plan reflects a concern among senior U.S. officials that coalition forces have relied too much on the central government to build security forces, an approach they say runs counter to both tribal culture and the need for community policing.

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One of the reasons we were successful with this strategy in Iraq is that there had already been a good real of "red on red" fighting before we persuaded the tribes to join us in fighting al Qaeda. There has been some of that in Afghanistan but nearly as much. In the disputed areas the tribes are still largely bystanders waiting to see who wins, like many Iraqis were before the surge. What we need to do is empower the commanders on the ground to make the decision about who is worthy of trust. The colonels will be in charge of this strategy.