How force to space ratio works in Afghanistan

Max Boot:

“I HOPE people who say this war is unwinnable see stories like this. This is what winning in a counterinsurgency looks like.”

Lt. Col. William F. McCollough, commander of the First Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, is walking me around the center of Nawa, a poor, rural district in southern Afghanistan’s strategically vital Helmand River Valley. His Marines, who now number more than 1,000, arrived in June to clear out the Taliban stronghold. Two weeks of hard fighting killed two Marines and wounded 70 more but drove out the insurgents. Since then the colonel’s men, working with 400 Afghan soldiers and 100 policemen, have established a “security bubble” around Nawa.

Colonel McCollough recalls that when they first arrived the bazaar was mostly shuttered and the streets empty. “This town was strangled by the Taliban,” he says. “Anyone who was still here was beaten, taxed or intimidated.”

Today, Nawa is flourishing. Seventy stores are open, according to the colonel, and the streets are full of trucks and pedestrians. Security is so good we were able to walk around without body armor — unthinkable in most of Helmand, the country’s most dangerous province. The Marines are spending much of their time not in firefights but in clearing canals and building bridges and schools. On those rare occasions when the Taliban try to sneak back in to plant roadside bombs, the locals notify the Marines.

The key to success in Nawa — and in other key districts from Garmsir in the south to Baraki Barak in the center — has been the infusion of additional United States troops. The overall American force in Afghanistan has grown to 68,000 from 32,000 in 2008. That has made it possible to garrison parts of the country where few if any soldiers had been stationed before. Before the Marines arrived in Nawa, for instance, there were just 40 embattled British soldiers there.

The chronic troop shortfall made it impossible to carry out the kind of population-centric counterinsurgency strategy that has paid off in countries from Malaya to Iraq. NATO forces could enter any district but not hold it. As soon as they left, the Taliban would return to wreak vengeance on anyone who had cooperated with them. One NATO general compared it to “mowing the lawn.” That ineffectual approach allowed the Taliban to regroup after 2001.
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Some in the White House and Congress imagine that our troops can muddle along at current levels while training the Afghan security forces to take over. But this ignores the brutal logic of war: Either you have the initiative or the enemy does.

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“If you’re not sticking next to the Afghans,” one American officer tells me, “they’re going to hell.” But if United States soldiers and officials do stick close by their Afghan counterparts, substantial improvements are possible. Nawa and Baraki Barak make that clear.

Poor governance is an argument for, not against, a troop surge. Only by sending more personnel, military and civilian, can President Obama improve the Afghan government’s performance, reverse the Taliban’s gains and prevent Al Qaeda’s allies from regaining the ground they lost after 9/11.

When you solve the force to space problem other issues tend to resolve themselves.

We tried the small foot print strategy in the early years of the war and it worked to some extent because al Qaeda was distracted by the war in Iraq. They diverted most of their resources to Iraq, but once their loss in Iraq became clear, they started moving their war effort back to Afghanistan and the tempo sharply increased. But the same strategy that defeated them in Iraq will work in Afghanistan if we devote the kind of resources we are now using in Nawa.

Nicholas Kristof makes the case for fewer troops in his op-ed today, but I do not find it persuasive. His sense of history is based on a failed use of counterinsurgency strategy, but when it is done right, it works about 90 percent of the time and we are already seeing examples of how it works in Nawa.

While there are al Qaeda troops in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, another defeat like the one in Iraq will further weaken the movement and make it more difficult for them to sustain operations elsewhere.

The Washington Post has more on the efforts in Nawa. You have to wonder if the Obama administration is paying attention tot he effects of the additional troops.