Success in Afghanistan is beginning to come in the first muddy trickles after a long drought.Sounds good, but you always have to we wary of happy-talk. And you always have to worry about simpletons jumping to the wrong conclusions.
Small groups of Taliban fighters -- sometimes a dozen with a leader -- are approaching local Afghan government officials, asking what kind of deal they might get. "First, they want to be taken off any list, so they are not targeted," explains a NATO official in Afghanistan. "Second, they want protection from the insurgency. Third, some kind of economic opportunity."
In counterinsurgency doctrine, this is known as "reintegration." The official admits it is "spotty" in Afghanistan but spreading in all regions. "It is happening in small numbers -- drip, drip, drip. It has not yet changed the battle space. . . . It is not a tipping point, at this point." The goal is to push these numbers much higher, with more insurgents driven to negotiation and exhaustion, so they "put down their weapons and go home."
Eighteen months ago, Afghan insurgents had the morale that comes from momentum. But the surge in NATO operations, particularly Special Operations, has started to change the psychological battlefield. Special Forces now go after eight to 10 major objectives each night -- perhaps three-quarters of these raids result in the death or capture of an insurgent leader. Two Taliban shadow governors -- a key position in the leadership structure -- were killed in the last week. Such roles are quickly refilled, but replacements tend to be less seasoned and more frightened.
"We hear a lot of chatter," says the official, "from networks inside of Afghanistan." Some fighters don't feel "a moment of peace. They can't sleep. They keep moving all the time. They can't plan attacks because they are planning to survive." And this is opening up a "real rift" with Taliban "bosses leading from the relative comfort of Pakistan." While some units are well supplied, others are "not supplied, not paid, but told to keep fighting."
Lets say it is happening. Why? It's not because of SOF troops like the Rambo-loving author would like people to believe. First, SOF can't operate without security. That security is provided by the conventional forces in-country. The T-ban/AQ fighters feel constricted because of the patrols and security provided by the conventional forces. Day in and day out. While I'm sure the SOF raids help, the fact is it's conventional forces grinding down the enemy's ability to fight, disrupting their communications and logistics.
In Somalia TF Ranger was only able to operate because it had conventional forces to protects it's base. And those conventional forces were the ones who ended up rescuing them. At the beginning of the Afghan War it was large numbers of Northern Alliance troops that filled this role. When that force began to break down and wasn't replaced adequately or in a timely fashion is when the war started going against us. Because SOF troops, even with all the Air Power and PGMs in the world just aren't a substitute for competent, capable ground forces deployed in sufficient numbers. In the Iraq Invasion those SOF troops that succeeded were enabled by the conventional force. Those that failed (and there were plenty of failures) were forced to withdraw to the safety that only the massed conventional forces only the ground could provided.
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