The shooting yesterday of two American civilians by a suspected Afghan National Army instructor at a shooting range in northern Afghanistan has thrown into sharp relief one of the challenges of trying to quickly build effective Afghan security forces capable of securing the country. In part as a response to the slow growth in size and competence of the Afghan National Army and Police, the past year has seen a growing international effort to create security at the village level in Afghanistan by working directly with villagers. This effort has been through both formal programs such as the Afghan Public Protection Force (APPF) and less formal ones such as support reportedly given to members of the Shinwari tribe in the Achin district of Nangarhar. Perhaps the most ambitious and controversial of these efforts is the Local Defense Initiative (LDI), a program created and run by Special Forces. In early June I was in Afghanistan to conduct research on LDI, including lengthy conversations with several special operations commanders responsible for these operations. Most importantly, I was able to spend six days embedded with a joint special operations-local defense team in the Khakrez district of Kandahar.

Read on

By Austin Long

In an earlier post, I discussed what a counterterrorism footprint in Afghanistan might look like in terms of forces. This raises the question of how the U.S. could transition to this sort of posture from where we are today, holding aside for the moment whether this force would be effective. It would not do so overnight -- in fact it would take about three years -- and the way it goes about it will have consequences.

First, the Obama administration should embrace the expansion of Afghan security forces, especially the Afghan National Army, called for in the McChrystal Report. It will cost the United States billions of dollars, but even in the current financial climate a few billion is essentially loose change in the U.S. budget (at its peak the Iraq war was costing $10-12 billion per month, compared to some $2 billion per month in Afghanistan). Over the next year, U.S. force levels should stay where they are currently, or perhaps even increase slightly to demonstrate resolve. The year 2010 would be a time of feverish arming and training of Afghan forces while coalition forces hold the line. Then beginning in early 2011 the United States should begin to drawdown its conventional forces as Afghan forces stand up. By the time of the 2012 presidential election, the United States has shifted fully to the posture described above (essentially a 20-month drawdown).

The strategic goal of the above transition is to ensure the survival of an Afghan state while acknowledging that probably 20-30 percent of the country (i.e. much of the Pashtun regions in the south and east) will be under the de facto control of militants. Right now they control about 10-20 percent of the country, so rather than seeking to reverse this control, the approach is to contain it as this will limit al Qaeda's potential haven to the provinces noted above. The transition will also ensure that the United States has continued access to the bases it needs through reassurance to the government and local allies. Both the government and local allies will also continue to benefit from U.S. aid, further reducing their incentive to turn on the United States.

During this transition, the United States will have to work carefully to continue supporting Karzai's newly re-elected central government as it builds up local allies. Tying the local allies to the central state in some way would help with this and an expanded Afghan Public Protection Program (AP3) provides a means to do this. AP3 is a newly created program to form local self defense forces in Afghan districts, using U.S. Special Forces as trainers and advisers. A slight shift in emphasis could enable AP3 to be used to build up local forces in non-Pashtun areas such as Panjshir that will act to contain the militants as well as in anti-militant Pashtun areas. Additional aid (i.e. payoffs) could be made available to those participating in the program. Some will argue that this increases the risk of warlordism, which may or may not be true but is also irrelevant to the strategic goal of disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al Qaeda and its allies.

The transition will also mitigate the moral hazard endemic to support to counterinsurgency. Put simply, at the moment the United States and its allies are more committed to a stable, democratic Afghanistan than is the Afghan government. The McChrystal report rightly notes the massive problems with corruption and poor governance in Afghanistan that hobble the counterinsurgency effort. Yet as long as we are willing to pour ever more troops into the country, we have no leverage over the government. We cannot, in this circumstance, credibly threaten to cut support. With a transition to a small footprint and the development of local allies, we will clearly signal that the Afghan government has to do more. The transition will, to be clear, not solve this problem but it will at least be a step in the right direction.

Austin Long is an assistant professor at Columbia University's School of
International and Public Affairs and co-author with William Rosenau of The
Phoenix Program and Contemporary Counterinsurgency (RAND, 2009).

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

By Austin Long

In a recent USA Today op-ed, Bruce Riedel and Michael O'Hanlon make the case that a reduced U.S. presence in Afghanistan focused only on counterterrorism missions against al Qaeda won't work. Both men have considerable stature and experience, with Riedel recently heading up a major review of policy in the region for the Obama administration. Yet after numerous personal discussions and debates over the past few weeks with everyone from U.S. military officers to some of the most prominent scholars of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, I am firmly convinced that a shift to a "small footprint" counter-terrorism mission is not only possible but will best serve U.S. national security. To use a military term of art, the bottom line up front is that the United States could successfully transition to an effective small footprint counterterrorism mission over the course of the next three years, ending up with a force of about 13,000 military personnel (or less) in Afghanistan.

But most of the discussion about what a counterterrorism posture would actually look like on the ground has been vague. Riedel and O'Hanlon sum it up as "a few U.S. special forces teams, modern intelligence fusion centers, cruise-missile-carrying ships and unmanned aerial vehicles." No one has attempted to put flesh on this skeleton in terms of numbers and locations of U.S. troops, so I'm proposing the following as a possible small footprint counterterrorism posture.

First, this posture would require maintaining bases and personnel in Afghanistan. Three airfields would be sufficient: Bagram, north of Kabul, Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, and ideally Kandahar, in the insurgency-ridden south of the country. This would enable forces to collect intelligence and rapidly target al Qaeda in the Pashtun regions where its allies would hold sway. Kandahar, in the heart of Taliban territory, might be untenable with a reduced U.S. presence, so an alternate airfield might be needed, potentially at Shindand, though this would not ideal.   

In terms of special operations forces, this posture would rely on two squadrons of so-called "Tier 1" operators, one at each forward operating base. These could be drawn from U.S. special mission units or Allied units such as the British Special Air Service or Canada's Joint Task Force 2. In addition, it would require a battalion equivalent of U.S. Army Rangers, U.S. Navy SEALs, U.S. Marine Special Operations Companies, British Parachute Regiment, or some mix, with basically a company with each Tier 1 squadron and one in reserve at Bagram. These forces would work together as task forces (let's call them TF South and TF East), with the Tier 1 operators being tasked with executing direct action missions to kill or capture al Qaeda targets while the other units would serve as security and support for these missions. In addition, two of the four battalions of the 160^th Special Operations Regiment, basically one at each airfield, would be used to provide helicopter transport, reconnaissance, and fire support for the task forces. One battalion might be enough but two certainly would, thus ensuring that no targets get away for lack of lift. Note that according to Sean Naylor's reporting my direct action task forces are structured like the regional task forces in Iraq in 2006 that were tasked to hunt al Qaeda in Iraq.

Both task forces would be capable of acting against targets elsewhere in the Pashtun regions, but al Qaeda operatives would likely only feel even relatively secure in a fairly limited geographic area.  TF East in Jalalabad would likely need to operate principally in the heartland of the Haqqani militant network (Khost, Paktia, and Paktika provinces) as this would be where al Qaeda's principal ally in the east could best protect its members, who are not generally Pashtun. For similar reasons, TF South would principally operate against al Qaeda targets in Kandahar, where the Quetta Shura Taliban is strongest, and some of the surrounding provinces such as Helmand and Uruzgan.

In addition to these two task forces, I would retain the three Army Special Forces' battalions and other elements that appear to be assigned to Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan. While TFs South and East would focus purely on direct action, these Special Forces units would partner with local forces to collect intelligence and secure specific areas. These local forces would in many cases be from non-Pashtun ethnic groups (Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras), which would limit their ability to be effective in the Pashtun areaa but would likely include at least a few Pashtun tribes that see more benefit working with the Afghan government and the United States than against them. Rather than serving an offensive purpose against al Qaeda like TF South and East, Special Forces would essentially serve a defensive purpose to secure Afghan allies and reassure them that the United States is not going to abandon them.

This reassurance and support of local allies is a crucial and underappreciated part of a small footprint posture. The non-Pashtun groups were the United States' critical allies in 2001 and remain staunchly opposed to the Taliban and other militants. The Tajiks of the Panjshir Valley, for example, are probably more anti-Taliban than the United States is. With U.S. support, these groups will be able to prevent the expansion of militants outside Pashtun areas. Local allies in Pashtun areas will enable collection of intelligence to support the task force operations. Supporting local allies does not mean abandoning the Afghan government any more than supporting local allies in the Awakening movement in Iraq's Anbar province meant abandoning the government of Iraq. Balancing the two will require some deftness and will be the focus of another post.

Finally, a few more "enablers," to use another military term of art, would be required. First, this posture would need some additional special operations personnel focused on intelligence collection, along with a substantial complement of intelligence community personnel to collect both human and signals intelligence. Second, it would require a substantial complement of unmanned aerial vehicles including Predators, Reapers, and a few other specialized types along with their support personnel. Third, a few AC-130 gunships for air support would be needed, along with combat search and rescue teams from Air Force Special Operations Command.

It should be clear that "small footprint" is a relative term. This special operations posture alone would be roughly five battalions of ground forces, four aviation squadrons, and a few odds and ends, probably in the neighborhood of 5,000 U.S. and NATO troops. In addition, a conventional force component would be needed to serve as a quick reaction force, provide security for the bases, and protect convoys. A conservative estimate for this force would be a brigade or regimental combat team, giving a battalion to each base, another 4,000, roughly. For additional air support, two squadrons of fighter-bombers (F-15E, A-10, etc.) would probably be sufficient, adding another 2,000 personnel.

Finally, my proposed posture would require additional staff, logistics, and support personnel (medical for instance), some but not all of which can be contractors, adding another 2,000 military personnel. This would be a total force of about 13,000 military personnel and some number of supporting intelligence community personnel and contractors. This is a high-end estimate, and some military personnel I have spoken to think this mission could be done with half this number of troops, but the posture described above errs on the side of caution. This is small compared to the current posture in Afghanistan, smaller still than the forces implied in Gen. McChrystal's report, and tiny compared to the peak number of forces in Iraq. On the other hand, it is vastly larger than any other purely counterterrorism deployment, and how we get there from here will be the subject of my next post.

Austin Long is an assistant professor at Columbia University's School of
International and Public Affairs and co-author with William Rosenau of The
Phoenix Program and Contemporary Counterinsurgency (RAND, 2009).

THIBAULD MALTERRE/AFP/Getty Images

By Austin Long

According to the Times of India and Pakistan's Daily Times, India's Army chief, Deepak Kapoor, chided Pakistan on Wednesday for overkill in its nuclear arsenal. The Times of India quotes him as saying:

There is a difference between having a degree deterrence, which is required for protection, and going beyond that. If the news reports of (Pakistan) having 70 to 90 atomic bombs are correct, then I think they are going well beyond the requirement of deterrence." 

This statement raises two questions. First, if Pakistan's arsenal is too large, what does that say about India's arsenal? A 2008 assessment in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists puts the number at around 70, with the expectation that it will grow in the coming years. If accurate, this would indicate rough parity in arsenals. Of course, the Indians might argue that their arsenal must be big enough to deter both China and Pakistan, while the Pakistanis need only deter India.

Second, and more difficult to assess is the question of is this enough for deterrence? The United States sought to grapple with this issue throughout the Cold War, though it was perhaps most acute during the early years of the Cold War. One assessment by the U.S. Navy in 1957 argued "[t]he first 10 delivered weapons would produce a major disaster with fully a quarter as many casualties as the first hundred." In contrast, a subsequent assessment under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara put the threshold of diminishing returns for additional warheads against the Soviet Union at roughly 1,000.

This latter estimate achieved the destruction of roughly 25 percent of the Soviet population and 60 percent of its industrial capability.  As long as the United States had high confidence that this many warheads would survive a Soviet first strike, it was deemed to have "assured destruction."

Holding aside for a moment whether these numbers are right, does Pakistan have sufficient nuclear warheads to inflict this level of damage? This requires Strangelovian mathematics but unfortunately my copy of the indispensable tome of nuclear analysts, Samuel Glasstone's Effects of Nuclear Weapons, is in transit so the following assessment is really, really back of the envelope. First, let's assume that each warhead in Pakistan's arsenal is roughly 50 kilotons (kt), roughly three times the size of the Hiroshima bomb. It claims to have tested a weapon in this range in its 1998 series of tests, though independent observers think the yield was much lower based on seismic data. But for the sake of argument, let's give it to them, bearing in mind that actual yields and therefore lethal effects may be significantly less. A 50 kt weapon will produce lethal effects (mostly from prompt radiation and thermal effects) at a range of one to two miles from ground zero. Let's call it a mile and a half -- this means each weapon will cause immediate lethal effects over roughly seven square miles or eighteen square kilometers (km).

To cover all of Mumbai, with an area of about 600 square km, with this level of lethal effect would require about 33 weapons. However, there will be secondary fires and other effects from each explosion that would kill more people, so let's cut the requirement in half, to about 15 weapons. This would kill the entire population of Mumbai -- about 14 million. Delhi is more spread out with an area of about 1,480 square km. Covering it with lethal effects would require about 82 weapons, halved to about 40 weapons. This would kill the population of Delhi, another roughly 14 million. Bangalore, with an area of about 740 square km, would require about 20 weapons using the same math, killing about 6 million more. Thus with 75 warheads, Pakistan could expect to destroy India's three largest cities, killing a total population of 34 million. This is gruesome, but represents only 3 percent of India's population.

As a proxy for industrial destruction, 2008 estimates indicate that the three cities contribute roughly 15 percent of India's GDP.

Of course, this is just immediate lethal effects. Radioactive fall-out would kill more people and wreak more economic damage. But this would be limited if each weapon were airburst (that is detonated several thousand feet above the ground) in order to achieve maximum immediate effect. Even if the fallout effects tripled the lethality and economic effect (highly unlikely) Pakistan would still fail to achieve the criteria considered essential for the Pentagon in the early 1960s. Of course, some would argue the Pentagon was out to lunch with this assessment but it does provide at least a benchmark assessment.

The Pakistani military, rightly or wrongly, are at least as fearful of India as the United States was of the Soviet Union in the 1960s so using a similar benchmark seems plausible.

It is also important to note that this is 75 warheads that survive any initial Indian attack and also assumes that each warhead and delivery system is perfectly reliable. In reality, a reliability rate of 90 percent would be good and would mean Pakistan would need to launch about 83 warheads to have 75 actually reach the target and detonate. If the Pakistani's assume that an Indian first strike might destroy even 20 percent of their warheads, they would need to deploy about 105 warheads to have 83 survive. I am also assuming Pakistan's weapons can reach these targets, which is not a given as it does not appear to have operationally deployed 75 of its longer range Ghauri and Shaheen-II missiles. This means it likely has to rely to some degree on the shorter range Shaheen/M11 as well as aircraft to deliver some of these warheads, both of which are more vulnerable to Indian attack or air defense.

Finally, the same macabre math applies to the Indian arsenal. Killing the roughly 20 million people of metro Karachi, which sprawls across 3,500 square km, would require nearly 100 of the 50 kt warheads. However, this would represent over 10 percent of Pakistan's population and 20 percent of its GDP, closer to the assured destruction criteria.

Pakistan and India at present have nuclear arsenals of modest but significant size, capable of inflicting substantial damage on the other. They have helped keep the peace through several crises. However, neither is so large that it could be said to definitively exceed the requirements for deterrence.

PRAKASH SINGH/AFP/Getty Images

By Austin Long

The recent death of Baitullah Mehsud from a missile attack launched by a U.S. drone and the ensuing succession controversy for the leadership of the TTP can rightly be scored a tactical success for the United States and Pakistan. It also provides an opportunity to reflect on one of the major elements of U.S. counterinsurgency since 2001, a set of operations against so-called "high value targets" (HVTs) or "high value individuals" (HVIs). These operations are intended to capture or kill key leaders or facilitators of insurgent activity.

In addition to the drone attacks in Pakistan, these operations have been conducted by special operations task forces and CIA in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, these operations have achieved numerous tactical successes, most notably the death in 2006 of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Similar results have been achieved in Afghanistan, including the death in 2007 of senior Taliban (meaning here Quetta Shura affiliates) commander Mullah Dadullah.

However, these tactical successes have not always translated into more operational or strategic level success. According to a leaked 2006 Marine Corps intelligence assessment, the killing of Zarqawi had "little impact on the structure and capabilities of AQI, especially in al-Anbar." Likewise, the death of Mullah Dadullah had minimal effect on the Taliban, as it overran the district center of Ghorak in Kandahar province the month after his death. This limited effect is in stark contrast to the effects of Baitullah Mehsud's death, which has at a minimum caused serious disruptions to the internal unity of the TTP.

The explanation for this disparity is in the differing nature of insurgent organizations and leadership. Both AQI and the Taliban are what German sociologist Max Weber termed "bureaucratic-rational" organizations. They are characterized by functional specialization, hierarchy, and the crucial ability to quickly promote individuals to replace killed or captured leaders. AQI also had robust internal reporting mechanisms with dedicated "administrative emirs" to oversee logistics.

The Taliban may not quite be to that level but nonetheless has considerable organizational acumen. The TTP, in contrast, combines elements of what Weber termed "traditional" authority, in the form of tribal links, with "charismatic" authority, embodied in Baitullah Mehsud. Rather than an integrated chain of command as with AQI or the Taliban, the TTP relied heavily on Baitullah's personal authority to hold together a confederation of tribes and subtribes. Unless Baitullah's successor can replicate his charisma and ability to mediate disputes the organization will likely splinter.

Understanding the implications of organizational structure for high-value targeting is important for at least three reasons.

First, high-value targeting is not cost-free. It often requires the commitment of large quantities of scarce resources, principally intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets and special operations personnel. If the pay-off from these operations is of limited strategic significance, then these assets may be better used elsewhere.

Second, there are often collateral effects of high-value targeting, be it civilian casualties caused by a missile strike or the disruption of efforts to build local trust caused by a raid. Prioritizing high-value targets above other counterinsurgency operations can exacerbate these collateral effects.

Third, the arguments above apply to U.S. and Pakistani allies as well as adversaries. Tribal lashkars and other militias rely on traditional and charismatic authority, making them vulnerable to high-value targeting by insurgents.

These organizations should be replaced by or incorporated into the state bureaucratic structure as quickly as is feasible to reduce this vulnerability.

Austin Long is an assistant professor at Columbia University's School of
International and Public Affairs and co-author with William Rosenau of The
Phoenix Program and Contemporary Counterinsurgency (RAND, 2009).

JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images

By Austin Long

Mehsud's death will tell us a lot about what TTP, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, really is. If it is principally a confederation of tribal warlords led by the Mehsud clan and held together by Baitullah's personal gravitas, then the predictions of fragmentation will likely come true, especially if the government of Pakistan takes actions to exacerbate the dissolution of the TTP. 

For example, in an effort to weaken the Mehsud tribes ties to fighting, the Pakistani state has been registering the Mehsud internationally displaced persons from South Waziristan (and now in Dera Ismail Khan and Tank) before other IDPs in the area, the thinking being that they will be less likely to return to South Waziristan and fight. More efforts like this -- i.e. targeted incentives -- could do a lot.

Reports of infighting between Baitullah's potential successors Hakimullah Mehsud and Wali ur-Rehman suggest dissolution may be the likely path for the TTP, but other news stories say representatives of the Haqqani network might be able to mediate the succession battle for Baitullah Mehsud's position as head of the Pakistani Taliban. However, nothing has been confirmed.

On the other hand, if the TTP has became a well-structured insurgent organization such as Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) or the Afghan Taliban (the "Quetta Shura"), then the impact of Baitullah's death will likely be transitory at best. Neither the death of AQI leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006 nor the death of Taliban military commander and front man Mullah Dadullah in 2007 did much to disrupt the operations of either.

Austin Long is an assistant professor at Columbia University's School of
International and Public Affairs and co-author with William Rosenau of The
Phoenix Program and Contemporary Counterinsurgency (RAND, 2009).