Ten American troops were killed at the weekend in two surprise attacks that caused alarm in Nato’s US-led coalition.
In one, hundreds of insurgents attacked a pair of isolated outposts in eastern Afghanistan, killing eight US soldiers and several Afghan policemen in the deadliest battle in 15 months. Scores more Afghan policemen were reportedly captured by the Taleban.
In the other an Afghan policeman opened fire on the American soldiers with whom he was working in central Wardak province, killing two and injuring three.
It was unclear whether the policeman was working for the Taleban or simply ran amok but the attack fuelled the distrust that many Nato soldiers already feel for the Afghan security forces that they are supposed to be working with and training as part of the coalition’s eventual exit strategy.
The integration of ‘friendly’ indigenous armed personnel into the midst of U.S. military units in an active or ‘hot’ war zone carries with it the risk of exposing U.S. personnel to harm by ‘unfriendly’ indigenous personnel mixed in with the ‘friendlies’ in those units.
That’s the way of it. There is no quick and easy technological ‘fix’ or strategy, policy,doctrine or tactic that will effectively reduce this sort of danger. Its a sort of ‘pay to play’ type of situation except that what we are ‘paying with’ to ‘play’ are the lives of our servicemen.
This is an inherent cost of participating in counterinsurgency. You can’t win it with U.S. troops alone without overwhelming destructive force being applied against the insurgents unless you are willing to mercilessly apply that force and not care about the tremendous number of non-combatant civilian casualties that will be the consequence of the application of ovewhelming destructive force.
And that’s something, that, because of who we are and what we believe, we will not do.
The Soviets did it to ethnic groups within the Soviet Union with varying degrees of success, but we, thanks be to our Lord, are not Soviet communists.
Therefore, the integration of indigenous personnel into military operations and even our military units will be a fact of life and we had either ‘suck it in’ and get used to it or seriously consider the situation ‘unwinnable’ because of the restraints that we place on our own conduct.
In any case, our military personnel who are putting their lives on the line deserve a national leadership that strives toward strategic goals with policy, doctrine and tactics that makes their sacrifices in Afghanistan worth their cost.
The necessary strategy, policy, doctrine and and tactics should not be the product of petty and internecine political maneuvering and bickering back here in the United States of America.