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Abu Muqawama, Back From Afghanistan
Counterinsurgency blogger Andrew Exum, aka Abu Muqawama, is back from Afghanistan. Andrew explains:
I was asked by General McChrystal to be part of a small team of scholars and practitioners helping to conduct his 60-day review of strategy and operations in Afghanistan. So I have spent the past month traveling around Afghanistan conducting interviews and trying to evaluate ISAF’s operations.
The three main points Andrew took away from his visit are:
- Winning will be extremely hard.
- Gen. McChrystal has a great staff.
- Gen. McChrystal understands that counterinsurgency is about protecting the population.
What I’d be curious to know is whether Andrew thinks there’s much hope for the different NATO contingents working together effectively, or whether America will have to do the all the heavy lifting.
Cross-posted at Conventional Folly
One Response to “Abu Muqawama, Back From Afghanistan”
i think your question number 3 has a great deal of merit. Especially as relates the work of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams. The issue is one of equities given the diverse structure of the NATO teams from their counterparts within the US staffed teams. Issues such as the largess of the US Commander's Quick Reaction Funds and the availability of that funding, the various governance, economic, rule of law, governance, information and AG development training are all lines of operations common to each team. Yet, not all NATO teams subscribe or have the financial or NGO staffs capable of the outreach. So, programs are different as are their application. We need to solidify these programs at the ISAF level, to ensure everyone engaged in capacity building along the lines mentioned above, are on the same sheet of music. This will become very necessary once stability operations have become sustainable and the work of the NGOs and PRTs, across the spectrum of rural development, are able to assist their Afghan counterparts more effectively. While there is a PRT office that has an extended reach into all the PRTs, not all the programs and funding programs are the same. We need to develop a comprehensive and coordinated development effort inorder to ensure this happens. ISAF, through its NATO representation, is the place to begin the coordination of programs across the spectrum of civil government in the rural areas.