Your question has been answered, as you requested. However what this article is saying, in effect, is that I'm not sure it matters any more what we think the victory conditions are, I think the turning point may have been reached where victory is no longer possible. If the majority of the tribes have indeed turned against the Coalition, along with the Taliban, our goose is cooked. We can keep it up for a long time, as long as we're willing to pay the price, but I doubt we can win.

If the turning point hasn't been reached, it remains true that to win, we need to decide what we consider a victory condition, and how to reach it. And I don't see any signs of that by Harper, or Bush, or NATO, or the UN.

...Afghanistan have the loyalties of the tribes turned and then not turned again? If we can't interrupt the trajectory over a period of a few years from this point forward then we're definitely in trouble, particularly on the home front, but at this point, based on this little time depth, I'm extremely unwilling to foresee doom. We just don't know at this point.

I look at what I'm seeing and I see a bunch of guys that have been building up their resources because they knew we were coming down South and they knew that we were going to be different from what came before. We've more boots on the ground, we've more resources generally, and we're doing a bit better job COIN-wise, near as I can see. We're coming into what has been a less contested theatre of operations for them and they're concerned; they see a potential turning point here and they're focussing a lot of resources on it. Yes, they've built up their capabilities over the past few years, but that's far from the entire story. There's a goodly amount of stuff that's being done right.

As to the meat of the above article, as I see it the Taliban's doing better with the tribes because up to now they've been largely unopposed - the Yanks look to me like they've been over emphasizing the kinetic options. When I look at this piece what I get out of it is three things: 1) statements about two major political factions (Hekmatyar and Khalis) that we already knew - it's been re-stated in particularly explicit form of late, but really we already knew where they stood, 2) Gul, a guy who backs the Taliban as a means of advancing his country's national interest thinks local networks of tribes might be getting ready to rise up, but offers little in the way of data other than statements to the effect that that's how it works in Afghanistan, and 3) there's a heck of a lot of political warfare coming out of the tribal areas of Pakistan. While I think much of it is correct, a lot of the stuff in there is coming from a very distinct viewpoint - to be clear, I think the picture of what's going on in Pakistan is pretty clear, but the really salient question is what's going on on the ground in Afghanistan and the article is pretty speculative on that (not to mention, I think, biased by its own national interest). For me, what's new here is really just increased the Taliban op tempo - none of this is really grounds, alone, for a conclusion that it's the beginning of the end. If it intensifies and can be sustained, sure, a real serious problem, but right now? Way too early to tell.

Contra the "poli-sci" approach that seems to be dominating the article, I look at the stuff that's being attributed to the Afghanis on the ground and I see a population that's in play - we capitalize on that and start getting people off the fence (and most of them seem really to be on the fence) and progress can be made. Up to this point, IMHO, we really haven't tried and it's premature to say that the effort's lost.

"We declared war on terror, it's not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I'm sure we'll take on that bastard ennui." - Jon Stewart.

Yanks alwasy over emphasize the kinetic options.

If we aren't willing to offer Afghanis real options and benefits for coming off the fence in our favour, they won't. And we aren't. And we won't, because Harper isn't the sort of man who has the flexibility of mind to say something like "let's set up a legal opium market for them." Nor is he going to spring a few billion dollars to do real economic work in Afghanistan, he'd much rather use that money for tax cuts at home.

The bottom line in Afghanistan has always been this:

The Taliban will do whatever it takes to win.

The Coalition won't.

Conclusion: it may take a long time or a short time, but the Taliban will win.

That's what I said in 2001, and that's what I say now. And that will only change if we get serious about winning. And simply putting in more troops is not enough - it has to be followed by a serious economic plan and a serious plan to build up the Afghani government to something credible. If it isn't, we're just playing politics with Afghani tribes until we lose to people who grew up there and know the game better than we ever can. People who aren't going away - their commitment isn't for two years, it's for life, and if we kill them, there are plenty of replacements for them.

...lacks flexibility on an issue you're not showing much yourself. To recap your position as I'm hearing it, since 2001 it's been your a priori assertion that we aren't going to win, based not on any rigorous assessment of the politico-military situation on the ground, but primarily on your assertion that we lack the will, the wherewithal, and the strategic vision to do so whereas the Taliban, who are apparently ten feet tall, have all of these things in spades. Doesn't it strike you that asserting as an article of faith that we aren't going to "win" because we won't do what's necessary and then asserting that if we won't do what's necessary (which you've already asserted we won't) we should leave, is firmly under the heading labelled "self-fulfilling prophecy"?

As I see it there's a bunch of folks out there that are crying doom so as to weaken the willingness of the western powers to invest the necessary resources on a cause that they assert is doomed (Gul and his proxies cited in the article mentioned above prominent among them). If they can get the western powers not to invest those resources, then the Taliban actually can win over the long term when the western powers withdraw their military forces. If you support the western involvement in Afghanistan to even the limited extent that you do, I don't see how you can make disastrous cases like that above - you're cutting the throat of the effort you say that you minimally support. You want to advocate that the west must invest more resources (much more!) lest the entire enterprise be jeopardized, and that given how close to the wire it all is we must as a major priority maintain the capability to extricate ourselves, then I'm right there with you - but casting all this in terms of "I can't see the plan to win, we're not going to win, why the hell do we have people out there in the first place" that's a self-fulfilling prophecy that plays into the hands of a rather nasty set of bastards (i.e., Gul, the ISI and the current batch of "great gamers").

I would suggest that we are doing a goodly amount in Afghanistan, some of it critical. Contrary to your assertion that we are only keeping the Taliban from taking power, I see that we are slowly building the capacity of the Afghanis to stop the Taliban themselves - that's something that is discernably happening, though slowly. I don't think that one can assert that the Afghani government forces are irrelevant to the equation - no, they don't have the resiliance that western forces do and they don't dominate the battlefield in the same way, but they have fought effectively and of late have been doing rather well in exchanges against the Taliban, near as I can tell. We've gotten to the point where the Afghanis represent the majority of forces on the ground, from literally zero a few years ago and they are becoming increasingly effective. Further, I would suggest that there are very clear signs of what the UN and NATO think are victory conditions and how they are seeking to reach them - I sure see them; hell, the whole deployment to the south is the living embodiment of those victory conditions and how to achieve them.

Further, I'd suggest that we do offer the Afghanis something that they very much want, more than anything else near as I can tell, in return for getting off the fence - a chance at stability and a life free from corruption at the hands of either the warlords or the present weak, de facto decentralized government. The only way of building that chance near as I can see is via COIN work on the ground. We'll have to handle the narcotics issue very delicately - and that will entail far more casualties among our publics here in the west than we will ever suffer on the battlefield in Afghanistan - but over a period of years and perhaps decades, this is something that we may be able to pull off via a lot of investment in alternate lifeways. (As an aside, I wouldn't put too much good into the Taliban decision to ban poppy production a) they already had a lot in the pipeline that they controlled, and b) I have a very strong feeling that they banned production to cut the competing warlords off from their sources of revenue - they may have justified this by calling poppies un-Islamic, but they were willing to use it during their ascendancy, as they are presently.)

"We declared war on terror, it's not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I'm sure we'll take on that bastard ennui." - Jon Stewart.

We don't offer them a hill of beans, since we are not willing to commit the forces or the money to take on the Warlords, extend the writ of the government beyond the capital, or even defeat the Taliban. That is my judgement of the situation, and we simply disagree on it. If not agreeing with your take is sufficient to make me an inflexible Harper like figure, so be it.

Time will tell if who is closer to correct. In this case, as with my predictions before the Iraqi invasion, I hope I am wrong. I really, really don't expect to eat crow on this, however.

Finally, I will note that the majority of Canadians now oppose Afghanistan.

That number isn't going to get any better.

Another prediction I don't expect to eat crow on.

Because like me, most Canadians don't see any appreciable progress. They notice that the Taliban is STRONGER now than it was last year, when it was stronger than... the year before that.

You know what I hate more than almost anything else? I hate doing things by half - especially when it means spending lives and not actually winning. I hate the calculus of divinding lives by damn near zero. If we want to win in Aghanistan, fine. I'm for it. I'd love to. Let's do it. But my judgement is that we aren't doing enough. We (the Coalition, not just Canada) is doing, by my judgement, about 5% of enough.

Y'know, considering that I actually came out in favor of staying in Afghanistan (something I'm reconsidering) I find it amusing that we've spent this much time debating the issue.

...that makes me suggest that you are being inflexible, Ian - it's the fact that your take was formed in 2001 and continues to this day in the face of drastically changing circumstances that makes me think your position on the matter inflexible. We're in agreement that we're not doing near enough and we're in agreement that at the end of the day we'd like to "win" - where we differ is mainly in how we believe things are going and what the prospects are for "victory". My appreciation of unconventional warfare and counterinsurgency leads me to the conclusion that political positions, be they held by the pols or expressed by influential elements of the electorate, that specifically express a willingness to withdraw in the face of trying circumstances are critically dangerous to any successful counter-insurgency campaign, a danger made all the more acute in our specific case by the lack of clarity in the minds of the Canadian public (and Canadian policy makers, for that matter) as to what our involvement entails and what is seeks to achieve and is actually achieving. If you want to "win" in Afghanistan a large part of it, probably the largest single element at the immediate time, given current circumstances in Afghanistan and in the domestic political sphere, is not crying from the rooftops that we are engaged in a fruitless effort. It may well turn out that this is the case, given eventual military-politico realities on the ground in Afghanistan, but to attempt to convince the Canadian electorate of it at this point guarantees that the effort is fruitless.

I frankly don't mind spending this much time debating the issue - we have people out there on the sharp end; it's appropriate that Canadians debate that extensively. From where I sit, as something of a student of counterinsurgency, I have to say that this simply isn't an issue that boils down to political terms, where grudging support and resolute support amount to largely the same thing. I don't think that one can hold that defeat is inevitable, but that Canadian troops should be "expended" in a doomed effort to hold a nonexistent line. If you don't believe that the endeavour holds a reasonable prospect of success, then it's my contention that you should be advocating the withdrawal of our forces.

"We declared war on terror, it's not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I'm sure we'll take on that bastard ennui." - Jon Stewart.

The circumstances have changed for the worse, not the better - that is my take on the news I read. I am not an optimist on the situation, any more than I am in Iraq. IE. I predicted about what would happen (as I did with Iraq) and more or less it has happened. As with you, insurgency/counter insurgency is something I've studied, and anyone who's done that has studied Afghanistan.

Of course defeat isn't inevitable - if we're willing to do the right things. If we aren't, it is as close to inevitable as anything in human affairs is. It is, of course, possible that we could decide to the do the right thing - but the current glide path (ie. if nothing changes) is that we aren't doing them and we're going to lose.

As for grudging support - I don't want the Taliban back in charge, because I don't want Afghanistan being used as a major terror base. Unlike Iraq, where we didn't participate, the Taliban has every reason to hold a grudge against Canada. I am (just barely) willing to keep my finger in the dyke for another couple years, in hopes that when George Bush leaves office, the new President will take things seriously and do what needs to be done to win. If at that point it becomes clear he won't, you can bet that I will be calling for our troops out.

...is the degree of immediacy required for doing the "right things" - I look at the things you've put forward and see a bunch of good ideas. That said, I'm not sure that it's necessary to the ultimate success of the endeavour that those things happen immediately - it would be great if they did and it'll hinder us if they don't, but I'm pretty damned sure that it'll be an extended process to get everyone to commit to those measures. A major part of getting everyone there is demonstrating that at least some core partners are willing to make a long-term commitment, and to make a large enough commitment that we can shape the political aspect and the tactics on the ground in Afghanistan to our advantage. Afghanistan is running at a much lower intensity than Iraq and the current conditions are far, far more favourable for a successful counter-insurgency.

As to whether the Americans will suddenly come to their senses and do the "right things" and salvaging the situation, I would suggest that the probability of that occuring is very small - even if they suddenly developed the political will to do so, I maintain that they do not have the correct military doctrine for such a task (and are unlikely to employ such a doctrine effectively, given the way their forces work, even if they were to develop one). In short, this one is NATO's baby to fix - something that I do not think is beyond our capability to do and something that I think there is ample reason to attempt for a range of strategic reasons stretching well beyond Afghanistan itself.

"We declared war on terror, it's not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I'm sure we'll take on that bastard ennui." - Jon Stewart.

A hundred million is not enough. To be frank, a hundred million isn't real money. Not even close. Canada (read: Harper, Cabinet in this government is a bunch of eunuchs who know exactly who is boss) has a voice in NATO strategy, as it has in any other multilateral engagement where it is willing to supply troops and money. The more money and the more troops, the more voice. The more willingness to walk away from the table, the more voice.

Just like any other negotiation.

...Sovs and left Afghanistan to stew in its own juices, the result was the rise of the Taliban and a safe haven for al-Qa'eda, a safe haven they were not hesitant to exploit. What do you think would be the result of withdrawal without first establishing an independent government capable of suppressing the Taliban? How long do you think it would take al-Qa'eda to exploit a resurgent Taliban even more than they are currently in western Pakistan? Me, I'm thinking not long.

More to the point, in the modern world system one just doesn't get to pulverise weak powers and then not attempt to rehabilitate those powers after the dust settles, particularly if the folks doing the pulverising are the United States of America working in a UN framework with NATO allies onboard. Another example of Secretary Powell's famous "You break it, you bought it" dictum.

"We declared war on terror, it's not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I'm sure we'll take on that bastard ennui." - Jon Stewart.

I consider the Taliban as a teroristic group, do you?

...as a tactic. That said, I don't think that we can treat them in the same way we treat al-Qa'eda, not least because they are mostly ethnic Afghanis. Any lasting solution in Afghanistan is likely to involve some sort of negotiated settlement with a substantial number of Talbian adherents - the whole strategy, I think, should be to progressively pare off Taliban-affiliated groups and convince them that they'll get a better deal from the government than they will from the Taliban core (or at least that it would result in a cessation of hostilities against them); seems to me that that means that we can't lump them in with al-Qa'eda.

"We declared war on terror, it's not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I'm sure we'll take on that bastard ennui." - Jon Stewart.

that Bush kept calling the insurgents in Iraq terrorist but doesn't use it for the taliban. They both kill innocents, both want control of their respective countries, they both attack coalition soldiers and want to impose stricter religious edicts, but for some reason Bush doesn't call them terrorists. Its my own fault for listening to what Bush says lol. Thanks for the explanation.

...there is that until recently the classic tactic of suicide bombing has been pretty uncommon in Afghanistan. My understanding is that during the first part of 2006 there have been about 20 such attacks, between two and three times as many as during the preceding period since September, 2001.

"We declared war on terror, it's not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I'm sure we'll take on that bastard ennui." - Jon Stewart.