Should Germany leave Afghanistan? Is that the lesson of the recent airstrike in Kunduz? Not so fast. The incident near the city of Kunduz just happened to be the first since McChrystal's new counterinsurgency guidelines came out. But it had certainly better not be repeated. At this point, it remains to be seen if no similar tragedies occur in the future, as a result of similar decisions by American and other allied troops there. Incidents like this happened on numerous occasions in the past, and they may happen in the future - and who knows what the more distant future might hold if some of the influential pundits eventually get their way and have Afghanistan policy return "off-shore:" to relying on counterterrorism by bombs and missiles.
It is certainly a case for everyone to draw lessons from.
A stated purpose of bombing the stolen fuel tankers was to deny insurgents the opportunity to use them in an attack on the German base in Kunduz. For this, damaging the vehicles was required. But, for example, why not have rather a show-of-force flown over the target first, to clear the area of people? How is word from an informer, who reportedly needed to give a matching description of the scene to let the tactical operations center ascertain his presence near the site, reliable enough to prefer straight-off dropping a bomb in the middle of a very large group of people?
That this is enemy-centricity, is something even those not familiar with COINspeak may sense immediately.
Some more historical illustration: when US and British aircraft were flying sorties over the Iraqi No-Fly-Zones in the 1990s, they regularly had to bomb air defence sites deliberately set up in urban areas by Saddam Hussein's regime. Then also, it became imperative to avoid civilian casualties. Concrete-filled bombs came to be used therefore. A simple idea, which already could have reduced civilian casualties in Afghanistan, too, at times.
For this, one needs to go beyond hoping for mass kills against insurgents, and only go for so much destruction as can be safely expected to work for the larger political objectives, based on actually available information.
The Kunduz airstrike may be an as-yet premature example of an otherwise more general problem with Germany and other countries that have troops deployed in the relatively safer west and north of Afghanistan, namely that while in terms of doctrine the US is already following Approach 3.0, these countries are just going through the motions in pursuit of Approach 1.0 - and it would take something better than Approach 3.0 at least to win at this point. Euro-discourse often derides Americans for not recognizing "complexity" around them. The opposite is true in Afghanistan. The European countries present in the north are not particularly interested in learning a lot about the social context they are operating in, and they are generally slow to adapt to changes in their area of operations.
The essence of their policy is to survive the mission, not investing a lot in figuring out ways to make it work. But this alienation from the mission by governments, ministries and militaries alike may just continue to push up the price of something that one may have to pay for, or keep on paying for, anyway.
Being there and going through the motions is certainly insufficient in countering the spread of the insurgency, carefully orchestrated from safe havens well away from Kunduz, but in need of local agents and a wider constituency.
Germany's northern undertaking, once thought of as proportionally contributing to NATO's post-conflict peace-building effort, mainly by troops' mere presence on the ground, is now more aptly described as pre-conflict, and in places already in-conflict, peace-building - if such a term makes sense at all. But one could as well call it counterinsurgency. Importantly, it is a term that has an advantage over simply concluding that one is at war, as opposed to peace: it says more about what is needed in response.
Péter Marton is currently a research fellow of the Corvinus University of Budapest. He blogs about Afghanistan at http://statefailure.blogspot.com.
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September 14, 2009
Bernhard Lucke, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Platinum Contributor (503)
From my point of view, the idea of a "clean war" is ridiculous and immoral. What a funny idea to "warn" insurgents by several flights over, or using cement bombs (especially if you consider that the tanker thieves were monitored from the air all the time). Should the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been warned by such flights as well? This dangerous illusive thinking and all too often used to marginalize the cruelty of war.
From a military point of view, I think the decision to bomb the trucks was completely right, and the high death toll might have in fact some deterring impact. However, we must be aware that force will not solve our problems in Afhganistan. In fact, it is the core of the problem, and due to our failed or absent strategy.
The "complexity" in Afghanistan can be described with a few simple lines, as did Brian McCarthy (see http://www.atlantic-community.de/index/articlesview/Germany_is_ISAF...):
"[...] What occurred in Afghanistan is that a foreign army took up occupation of the state with the connivance of one of the many tribal chiefs who was, in time-honoured fashion, appointed as president of the country by the power of same invading army.The reason for the invasion is quite simplistic - to extract maximum revenge on a bunch of thugs calling themselves Al Qaida who carried out an atrocity in the USA and who are hiding out in the mountains. To cloak this piece of imperialist lash-back in claims that the invasion is to bring democracy by force to the Afghan people, is simply not credible and is drawing more and more recruits to join the rag-tag forces trying to oust the invaders. Of course this will lead to great numbers of citizens being swept up in the swirling conflict with their lives completely disrupted by the actions on both sides of the conflict. [...]"
The actual situation in Afghanistan exactly resembles the Soviet problem of the 80ties: Due to the lack of a political vision, it is attempted to resolve the conflict militarily. Similar to the Soviet strategy, now the Afghan allies shall handle it and the Afghan army be built in a manner that allows the withdrawal of western forces.
If that goal is realistic or not may not be easy to decide: it should be remembered that the Nadjibullah regime managed to stay in power for several years after the Soviet withdrawal, and eventually only fell when the new Jeltzin government stopped its aid and supplies.
However, from a geo-strategic point of view I find it very questionable whether it is worth to invest such huge resources for killing some terrorists. It is crystal clear that we are actually breeding terrorism in Afghanistan, not reducing it. But perhaps Afghanistan's occupation also serves the interests of a small minority of CEOs, and helps maintaining fossil structures of the economy, especially the energy market.
In any case, it is already now clear NATO's engagement in Afghanistan is a gross political failure, and very questionable from a moral point of view. It will remain a failure as long as no political solution is found, which should mean that Afghans themselves and not only the puppets of the west decide about the fate of their country.