William S. Lind (yes, I know his background) has some advice for the NATO commander in Afghanistan – you know, that other war that’s being lost at the moment:
1. Stop fighting the Pashtun. The war in Afghanistan is in part a civil war, and the Pashtun always win Afghan civil wars. NATO’s presence won’t change that outcome, although it may delay it. If NATO doesn’t want to end up on the losing side, it needs to make peace with the Pashtun, then if possible ally with the Pashtun. […]
2. Stop attacking the Taliban. […]. Every engagement with the Taliban, won or lost, moves you farther away from peace with the Pashtun. Drop the sweeps, “big pushes,” etc. Stop talking about body counts; those bodies are almost all Pashtun.
[…]3. Remember one of John Boyd’s favorite admonitions: we don’t want to be attacking the village, we want to be in the village. […] encircle them and take prisoners, not kill them. [..]
4. Eliminate all airstrikes. […]
5. Finally, accept that Afghanistan will remain Afghanistan. […] At best, NATO may be able to leave Afghanistan what it once was, a state with a weak central government, powerful local war lords, a narco economy and chronic, low-level civil war. It would probably help if the monarchy were restored. Anything more as a strategic objective is unattainable.
We cannot turn third-world tribal societies into Western democracies, especially after we – and I’m including Russia in the “we” here – destroy whatever advances they have made in the past.
The NATO members should be taking this advice on board and supporting a policy that will get NATO troops out of that conflict as soon as posisble.
