Analysis
In fact, the al-Qaeda threat in Afghanistan was already greatly reduced even before last week’s raid. Gen. David Petraeus told reporters on April 9 in Kabul that he believes fewer than 100 al-Qaeda fighters remain in the country.
Certainly, following the death of the mastermind of Sept. 11, our continual commitment to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, who provided a sanctuary for bin Laden after 9/11, will come under increasing scrutiny in the weeks ahead. As will the annual military budget allocation for Afghanistan of $100 billion.
Nevertheless, it is almost impossible to disengage at this time. Even President Obama, when he took office, continued the war in Iraq—a war he always characterized as a war of choice rather than a war of necessity.
With over 100,000 U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan, and a counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy that the Pentagon says is making inroads with the population, U.S. military leaders are arguing strongly to finish the job. They perceive COIN as a success and don’t want to see the United States give up at this critical moment.
Maj. Gen. Mills Provides Assessment
One factor in the decision making for the future of the U.S. war effort is how well the American public understands the progress being made or lack thereof.
Military historian Kimberley Kagan founded the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a nonpartisan Washington think tank, to fill a gap in the knowledge and understanding for policymakers and the general public on the strategy and results in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. ISW provides analysis of military operations, briefs Congress, and holds public discussions.
Last week, Kagan interviewed Maj. Gen. Richard Mills at an event titled “Field Report: The Fight to Secure Helmand Province” co-sponsored by ISW and the Marine Corps Association and held at the Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C. They discussed Mills’s time as commander of Afghanistan’s Regional Command Southwest.
Enemy Near Collapse
The general paints a picture of a Taliban that in the last 22 months has been greatly weakened, demoralized, and needing to do something desperate to stay in the game. The death of bin Laden will not significantly impact the battlefield, Mills said. But he thinks it “will have a huge psychological impact on people like Mullah Omar and other members of the leadership to understand that the Americans do not forget.”
Helmand is one of the key provinces in Afghanistan in the COIN strategy. The British were first there and the United States came in the spring of 2009 adding enough additional forces so that a counterinsurgency campaign could begin in July 2009.
Helmand has deserts in the south. It also has lush agricultural areas that were converted from desert by irrigation made possible by the U.S. building the Kajaki Dam in the 1950s and ’60s. The land is ideal for poppy growing; Helmand is the world’s largest supplier of heroine. The Taliban used drug revenues to finance “a very resilient insurgency” when the Americans arrived, said Mills. There was no freedom of movement and most of the population had accepted Taliban dominance.
“Through a series of pretty rigorous battles all last summer and into the fall, I think that we took away the momentum of the enemy,” said Mills. He explained that the enemy likes to use improvised explosive devices and place them around encampments to restrict the coalition’s movement.
“We closed some bases, we thinned some forces down, developed some maneuvering capability, and went after him in places where he [the enemy] felt himself very safe, very secure; where he'd go to refit, retrain, resupply himself. We took the fight to the enemy,” and put constant pressure on him, said Mills.
Mills says that the Taliban like to fight “cyclically,” fight a few days and then take some days off.
“His leadership goes to Pakistan to take some days in the sun to relax a little bit and his foot soldiers go back to their villages and back to their homes, again, to take a vacation, if you will.”
Mills said they kept the pressure on throughout the winter months something the Taliban leadership wasn’t accustomed to.
Cutting the supply lines was taking a toll as was interdicting the drug trafficking. The enemy was running out of money, supplies, and ammunition. “We had very good intel that showed his subordinate commanders were selling personal equipment, such as cars in order to pay their troops,” Mills said.
The leadership was being decimated too. Mills said that when he first arrived, the enemy’s “battalion commanders” were skilled tacticians, and able to motivate insurgents on the battlefield.
“It was estimated to me at one point that the average battalion commander ... was about 35 years old. … By the time we left, that same [position] was about 23 because our Special Forces had targeted and eliminated from the battlefield those individuals. It had a devastating effect at the lower levels. It meant the promotion of younger, more inexperienced people, and it really took away some of the real motivators.”
Gradually, he said, the local people can see improved security. Mills gave the example of a “windshield tour” given at the end of last year around Lashkar Gah to the elders of a “hard-core” insurgent organization they were urging to negotiate. Mills said provincial Governor Mangal took them by bus and showed a school, a bazaar, and electric power—“things that people want.” These tangible results, he said, convinced them and others like them that peace and security can bring them what they most want.
Mills said that after security is assured, 80 percent of the people say they want education the most, according to an independent poll. It’s not hard to understand why.
“The Taliban denied them education. Helmand Province, a million and a half people live there. Ten percent of the men can read and write. Less than 1 percent of the women can read and write. The education was just destroyed by the Taliban.”
Whether the “nation building” successes in Helmand will be appreciated by policymakers at home with huge deficits weighing down is anyone’s guess. But from Maj. Gen. Mills’s perspective, there is some good news in how the war is going.
