Why should academics and policymakers prioritize a state's acquistion of  "... the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory"? Obviously, this monopoly is fundamental to masking the violence of the state in daily domestic affairs, but...
The chasm between Pakistani and Western reactions to last week's NATO attack on Pakistani forces seems to be growing if official actions/statements, media reports, conversations with friends on all...
Last night PBS' POV program aired the Danish documentary film "Armadillo" (filmed 2009; released 2010) about a Danish-British Forward Operating Base in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.Although much of...
How is it that time and time again we are persuaded to hang on for another year in Afghanistan with the mantra that counterinsurgency (a.k.a. COIN) will really work this time. While I certainly...
The participation of four Russian counter-narcotics agents in a US/ISAF raid on four heroin labs in Afghanistan has left many pundits wondering whether the war in Afghanistan as well as US/NATO/ISAF--Russian relations are entering a new phase. Â However, before one can speculate, there are a few misconceptions in news reports that I think should be clarified and corrected in order to place the story into its proper context.First, several news papers have adopted the narrative that the Soviet military was "defeated" in Afghanistan. The NY Times report (10/29/2010) states,"The operation, in...
The Karzai regime's three day "National Consultative Peace Jirga" is now concluded. As expected, the 1,400 member Jirga (and 200 guests) decided to proceed with a plan to offer amnesty to the Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami -- i.e. yes, the same groups which were firing rockets at the Jirga tent. The Taliban have made it quite clear that they have no desire to negotiate an end to hostilities until foreign forces leave. So it is unlikely that the Jirga's decisions will create a path to peace. The main thing that the Jirga demonstrated was the willingness of the Karzai regime to compromise and...
Recently, while discussing the war in Afghanistan with a conflict studies program in the mid-west, I had a rather odd debate with a leftist professor who was devil's advocating what he claimed was a "neo-conservative" position (based on some of his recent interaction with naval officers and RAND researchers).His main argument revived the "stabbed in the back" hypothesis from the Vietnam era. The argument essentially posits that counter-insurgency is a cumulative body of knowledge first pioneered by the Britons. According to this position, Americans have been remarkably successful at applying...
Washington and its "partner" in Kabul are simultaneously pursuing different strategies to try to bring the war in Afghanistan to a conclusion. While the US has opted to pursue a "whack-a-mole" military strategy across Southern Afghanistan that drives the Taliban from one district only to have them pop up in the next one, the Karzai regime is moving forward with its reconciliation strategy. In essence, the Americans have foregrounded a military strategy while the Karzai regime (with some support from the UN) is promoting a political strategy. The US has sidelined the "grand reconciliation"...
[I don't mean to rail on the Washington Post's coverage of the war in Afghanistan two posts in a row, but the coverage is honestly a bit dismal this week. In my last post, I showed why Rajiv Chandrasekaran's article "At Afghan outpost, Marines gone rogue or leading the fight against counterinsurgency?" completely misunderstood the strategic importance of the town of Delaram from which the report was written.]An Op-ed article in yesterday's WaPo by Michael O'Hanlon and Hassina Sherjan, "Five Myths About the War in Afghanistan" poorly argues the case for "toughing it out" in Afghanistan. Since...
Operation Moshtarak ("Together" in Dari), which is slated to move into a more active phase any day now, has been billed as the largest ground battle in Afghanistan since 2001 and the largest air assault since the Iraq War in 1991. The planned attack, which will be centered around the towns of Marjeh (Marjah) and Nad-E'ali (Nad-e-Ali) in Helmand Province, was announced in a press conference by the Pentagon last week. Villages have been leafleted and village leaders have been informed of the coming attack.It is not uncommon to advertise a planned offensive in the Afghan war, but the usual...
General McChrystal's strategic review concludes that the situation in Afghanistan is serious and getting worse, but "success is still achievable" as long as he gets more troops to wage a more aggressive counterinsurgency campaign.According to the review, the US/ISAF objective in Afghanistan is to get to a point where the "insurgency no longer threatens the viability of the state." To this end, it calls for a new strategy in which the focus is winning over the population.But I find this assessment striking:"Afghan social, political, economic, and cultural affairs are complex and poorly...