Afghanis fighting for Afghanistan

[Afghan] Police fought a three-hour gunbattle in the center of an Afghan provincial capital Monday, finally killing two Taliban militants who stormed a multistory market with dozens of civilians inside, an official said. (AP)

The above AP article recounts an isolated clash between Afghani police forces and Taliban fighters in the small regional capital of Paktia. The incident was anecdotal and small in scale: there were no more than 2 to 5 insurgents, the police did what police do, it took place in a remote area of Afghanistan, and it isn't going to affect the greater strategic situation of the country. However, I believe it could potentially be significant if it is a sign of things to come.

What's the big deal?

The big deal is that since 2001, the American forces have taken over the security for the Afghan people in its entirety.  As a result, the central government is shielded from its own regional foes by foreign troops fighting their war for them. The big deal is that the firefight took place in Paktia province, one of the many areas in the South and the East controlled by the Taliban where no Afghani national troops - nor any provincial militia, have dared opposing them for the past 8 years.

This may be an isolated incident - and other similar clashes certainly have occurred in the past years here and there, but the frequency of precisely this type of incident will be the largest measure of success for the new American strategy in the area, and the biggest factor in the stability of the country and the sustainablity of the central government for years to come.

In the next year and a half, Afghanis fighting for Afghanistan is more important than the reduction of corruption, the quantity of american military operations, or the success of the agricultural and infrastructure development program, while all important in their own right. Only the stability of Pakistan - and their continued military pressure on insurgent groups on their side of the border, rivals in importance.

The reason is simple: the Americans are interposed between two warring factions while the fighting ability of the central Afghani fighting capabilities were allowed to wither over the years. Remember the Northern Alliance? It ceased to exist because it's lost its purpose. For this, a lack of American forethought is to blame.

Still, while the new American strategy in Afghanistan now favors more embedding american forces with Afghani troops to fight a scaled up insurgency, the emphasis must be more on finding local allies rather than building a national army from the ground up. It takes time to raise an army and assure proper hierarchy and control; it takes much less to deal with local leaders, hand them a wad of cash, put a rifle in their hands, and make them comprehend they will either have to fight for it or loose it. A local solution is even more important because the country is so fragmented ethnically and geographically, so isolated and poor in some of the Taliban regions, and lacking a concentrated national resource like Iraq did which increase the tendency for decentralization.

The problem in other words, is incentives: neither the central Afghani, nor provincial leaders will have incentives in as long as the american forces are taking the bullets day in and day out for them. As a result, a proper dialogue - violent tho it may be to start with, between the warring factions of Afghanistan cannot resume and cannot resolve itself efficiently (short of a complete destruction of one of the factions, but that is impractical and unfeasible).

My fear is that if the local approach to the problem lacks proper emphasis, and if embedded military actions become the exception rather than the norm by the force of things, the American generals in July 2011 will have very few sectors to recommend for troop draw down. It is thus better to start sooner and move aggressively if you truly want to become the "cavalry over the hill" rather than continue to be the protector of a defenseless ally.

The isolated incident between the handful of police and insurgent forces in the tiny border province of Paktia must be a sign of things to come if we are to witness a successful and more durable counter insurgency in the next year and a half.