U.S. to reinforce a bad strategy in Afghanistan

There is little doubt now that the U.S. will soon begin a significant transfer of military resources from Iraq to Afghanistan. Remarks this week from senior Pentagon leaders indicate that by September, the U.S. command in Iraq will announce the withdrawal of more brigade combat teams from that theater. Meanwhile, the U.S. government has already announced its intention to add in 2009 up to three brigades to the Afghan theater. The hope is that reinforcements to Afghanistan, paid for by withdrawals from Iraq, will be enough to ward off another summer of deterioration in Afghanistan’s security.

Unfortunately, Afghanistan needs more than simply more American soldiers in 2009. Without fundamental changes inside Pakistan, eastern and southern Afghanistan will always be under siege.

American officials are counting on Pakistan’s own deteriorating internal security situation to provide the logic for Pakistani action against the Islamic militants in its tribal areas. However, elements of Pakistan’s intelligence and military services don’t seem to view the world in this way. It is not likely that they view an increase in Islamist political violence in Pakistan’s cities as something that is relevant to the geopolitical calculations they have made. A little more trouble inside Pakistan is a small price to pay if the ISI can keep its Islamist proxies in the tribal areas in business. These ISI auxiliaries keep Afghanistan troubled and weak, and can again be sent to Kashmir and India if the need arises. Thus, Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen are regrettably mistaken if they believe that Pakistan has its own interest in reining in the militants on the Afghan frontier.

The Pakistani government has done virtually nothing in seven years to help stabilize Afghanistan. The Afghan government openly accuses the Pakistani intelligence service of organizing the insurgency inside Afghanistan; Afghan-Pakistan political relations have broken down. A fundamental tenant of offensive unconventional warfare operations is to possess a sanctuary from which your fighters can organize, train, and deploy. Likewise, a fundamental tenant of foreign internal defense operations is to deny the enemy an effective sanctuary. The U.S. and Iraqi governments were able to achieve this in Iraq. There is no prospect of the U.S. and Afghan governments replicating this success in Afghanistan without the full cooperation of the ISI and Pakistani government, which is simply not going to happen.

Thus, the U.S. seems to be reinforcing a failing strategy. Worse, if the U.S. adds three brigades to Afghanistan, it will make all of its forces their even more dependent on main supply routes that run through Pakistani territory. This will further reduce U.S. flexibility to strike against the very source of its problems with its Afghan campaign.

The U.S. needs a strategy that increases its leverage against, rather its dependence on, Pakistan. Such a strategy would make the Afghan-Pakistan frontier a true two-way road. But in order to achieve this condition, the U.S. would have to be willing to give up its main supply routes that effectively run through enemy territory. And this would mean having a completely different (smaller, lighter, unconventional) force structure in Afghanistan.

Is this a realistic solution? There would seem to be a lot for skeptics to criticize. But the current plan assumes a sudden burst of charity from the ISI. How realistic is that?