Afghanistan wave 4
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- 2009 COIN Strategy Good
- COIN Wins Hearts and Minds
Winning the warThe war can be won--- success hinges on COIN in southern Afghanstan Massoud, 10 – part of the Afghan resistance, (7/30/10, Yahya, Foreign Policy “Afghans can win this war,” http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/07/30/afghans_can_win_this_war?page=0,2) There is a great potential in local, bottom-up action: No one should underestimate the commitment and power of ordinary Afghans. It was ordinary Afghans who successfully resisted 150,000 Soviet soldiers and won the war with far less international backing than the Afghan government receives today. The impact of these missed opportunities is beginning to be felt by the Afghan government's international partners. War fatigue is beginning to grip Europe and the United States. Under public pressure, Canada has already announced its withdrawal from Kandahar, and the Netherlands is very likely to follow suit in the wake of the collapse of its cabinet over the issue of extending its mission in Uruzgan. Obama has also announced that the United States will commence a gradual troop withdrawal in 2011. It is clear that Afghanistan's allies face serious economic and political limitations at home and cannot function as an unending source of support. The outcome of the operations in Kandahar and Helmand has the potential to reverse this gloomy state of affairs. A victory would be a boon to the counterinsurgency campaign, possibly even leading some governments to reconsider their planned troop withdrawals. Discernible progress would also allow NATO forces to begin the important task of transferring responsibility to the Afghan National Security Forces and the Afghan National Army, a crucial step for the Afghan government in reassuming control over its own security. For these reasons, much hinges on the campaign currently being waged in Afghanistan's southern provinces. The Afghan government and its international partners must act jointly and swiftly for these operations to succeed. Only then can Afghans finally achieve the peace they have long strived for, and will U.S. and European leaders rest assured that this country will no longer act as an incubator for extremists who threaten not only Afghanistan's population, but the entire world. This war is tiresome, but it can be won. 2009 COIN Strategy GoodNo offense--- all their evidence assumes the first 7 years of COIN--- not the renewed COIN strategy of 2009 O’Hanlon and Shejan, 10- Michael O’hanlon, senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, specializing in defense and foreign policy issues, and Hassina Sherjan, president of Aid Afghanistan for education, (2010, “Toughening it out in Afghanistan,” p. 31-32) In fact, we could lose in Afghanistan. Had we stayed with the strategy used during the war's first seven years, we probably would have lost. Had the strategy not changed, Afghanistan could have been torn apart, and NATO gradually demoralized to the point of giving up, by a combination of Afghan Taliban fighters; militia leaders like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Jalaluddin Haqqani, Anwar ul-Haq, Saifullah Mansoor, and Yunus Khalis; drug lords and other criminals; al Qaeda elements; corrupt officials; and angry Pashtun tribes. I These various militias and factions hardly agree on what should replace the current government, but most are agreed on the goal of defeating the new Afghan democracy and driving NATO away. They are relatively effective in cooperating, or just informally joining their efforts (with the Taliban most active in the south, the Haqqani group in the center, and Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami in the northern parts of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border regions).2 Under the new strategy that has been taking shape since early 2009, the situation is beginning to improve. Using official documents, historical analogies, core principles of counterinsurgency, and our own analyses and observations, this chapter explains the current strategy of the foreign coalition and to a considerable extent at least of the Afghan government for trying to win this war. Most of that strategy is fairly sound, but to succeed, the strategy will have to improve further and evolve with the course of events. COIN Wins Hearts and MindsClear-hold-build is within reach---COIN wins over hearts and minds O’Hanlon and Shejan, 10- Michael O’hanlon, senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, specializing in defense and foreign policy issues, and Hassina Sherjan, president of Aid Afghanistan for education, (2010, “Toughening it out in Afghanistan,” p.74-75) CRITICISM 10: "We Can't Really Bring Afghanistan into the Twenty-First Century” This critique alleges that Afghanistan is such a conservative, tribal, rural, and traditional land that any Western-led effort at democratization and modernization of the country is bound to fail. Some suggest that our efforts to promote the equality of women, integrate the country with the outside world, and strengthen the urban-based government of the country will simply inflame the anger and opposition of many Afghans, especially Pashtuns living in villages and towns in the south of the country, where the extremist message of the Taliban has the most resonance. This argument is wrong for two principal reasons. First, most Afghans do want to live in the twenty-first century. Their enthusiasm for the 2009 presidential election campaign-if not necessarily for its tainted outcome-demonstrated their interest in democratic elections, for example.ls Second, NATO will not force more change on them than they are ready to accept themselves. To be sure, elements of Afghanistan are quite conservative, and issues such as religious tolerance and gender equality will take time to address. But that is in pan what the normal peacetime development process in coming decades is for. The imperative now is to win the war and defeat the insurgency. Some reforms can be undertaken now, to the extent that Afghans themselves want them. In fact, they already are happening; I I some two million Afghan girls are in school, for example. Other changes . , can happen gradually. As for what Afghans want, just look at the polls. People consistently oppose the Taliban. This survey result cannot come from fear of the Taliban-if individuals were giving the answers they thought Taliban elements wanted them to give, they would be pro-Taliban rather than anti-Tali ban. And while many Afghans indicate dissatisfaction with the Afghan government and with the foreign presence, that dissatisfaction has so far not turned into any meaningful support for the Taliban. The surveys seem reasonably accurate, consistent from one to another, and reflective of a people's desire for a more modern and democratic life As for what NATO is after, it is trying primarily to provide security for the population, build up Afghan security forces, create roads and better utilities, improve health care and education, and provide the people with economic alternatives to opium. It is hard to fault these goals or to believe they run counter to Afghan culture or mores. For the most pan, Afghans have expressed anger with NATO because of its failure to deliver on such goals-not because of the goals themselves. And while the country may not reach desired levels of education, health care, and other quality of life indicators soon, simply getting on the right path will win over most Afghans-as was evident a few years back, when economic conditions were worse than they are now, but public opinion was much more favorable toward NATO because trends were generally in the right direction. Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. 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