Outside View: Learning from the Soviet Union in Afghanistan

HELSINKI, Finland, Nov. 13 (UPI) -- One hopes that the Obama administration's soon-to-be-announced new strategy for Afghanistan will at least be as successful as the Soviet strategy executed between 1986 and 1992.

The McChrystal plan, presumably the basis for the Obama strategy, will initially focus on critical high-population areas that are contested or controlled by insurgents, not because the enemy is present but because it is here that the population is threatened by the insurgency. These fortified population centers will then be connected by securing the roads between them and protecting key infrastructure.

The assumption is that this strategy would prevent Taliban advances on key urban areas, while shoring up support for the central government and strengthening the Afghan army and national police. If successful, it would eventually allow Afghan-led forces to expand the fight to more remote regions where the Taliban have solidified control. Even conservative estimates made by national security adviser James Jones state that the enemy controls as much as one-third of Afghanistan.

According to Afghan expert Steve Coll, from 1986 to 1992 the Soviets, through their politically adept Afghan strongman President Mohammad Najibullah, a Ghilzai Pashtun, controlled an archipelago of Afghan cities, including Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Khost, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz and a number of smaller provincial capitals, each of which was ringed by layered defenses, with Afghan forces increasingly in the lead.

As Coll has noted, the Soviet urban-based ink-spot strategy eventually failed due to many of the same challenges the United States and the International Security Assistance Force face today.

"Partly they just ran out of time, as often happens in expeditionary wars," Coll wrote. "Their other problems included their inability to control the insurgents' sanctuary in Pakistan; their inability to stop infiltration across the Pakistan-Afghan border; their inability to build Afghan political unity, even at the local level; their inability to develop a successful reconciliation strategy to divide the Islamist insurgents they faced; and their inability to create successful international diplomacy to reinforce a stable Afghanistan and region."

Writing about Iraq in December 2006, I stated that if the situation in Iraq can be salvaged, it will not be done with troop surges alone but through a strategy involving the cumulative effect of hundreds of tailored efforts, executed bottom-up, city by city and region by region. Success is possible only by providing lasting security to the Iraqi people, effective governance and economic development based on local needs and tradition, not imported notions of them. The task ahead will require a long, arduous, neighborhood-by-neighborhood effort. In that respect, the fight in Afghanistan has similarities to Iraq, but there are also significant differences.

Rather than force central control in Afghanistan from Kabul, a coalition of the willing among the various tribal groups need to be created, bottom-up, village by village. These are the real sources of power and legitimacy in Afghanistan. On the other hand, government corruption, factional disputes and the lack of services for the countryside will never convince rural Afghans to depend upon or trust Kabul.

One of the best on-the-scene monographs available for working with Afghan tribes was written by U.S. Army Special Forces Maj. Jim Gant titled "One Tribe at a Time." It is a virtual "how to" book for gaining the trust and loyalty of Pashtun tribe members by living and working among them and, in particular, respecting and, when appropriate, participating in their way of life as defined by their ancient code of conduct, the Pashtunwali. Gant and his men proved that a relatively small, skilled team can have an enormous impact to separate the Taliban from the Afghan people.

Such a tribal-based strategy clearly complements and can effectively enhance and accelerate the urban, networked ink-spot approach of the McChrystal plan. Hopefully, the one-tribe-at-a-time method is part of the overall thinking behind the Obama administration's new policy.

No Afghan strategy will succeed without a broader southwest Asian initiative. Like Barack Obama, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev inherited a deteriorating military conflict in Afghanistan. According to Coll, "Gorbachev advocated U.N.-brokered regional negotiations aimed at stabilizing Afghanistan and isolating Islamist extremists. It failed, however, in part because the United States, until the end of 1991, continued to fund and support a 'military solution' for the mujahedin favored by Pakistan's army and intelligence service."

The Obama administration cannot afford to make the same mistake. Linking the new Afghan strategy with a broader southwest Asia formula would reinforce U.S. and ISAF efforts within Afghanistan by securing its borders both militarily and politically.

Pakistan has already begun securing its western border and eliminating Taliban and al-Qaida sanctuaries, an effort that needs to be sustained. Working with India to lessen tensions on Pakistan's eastern border and pursuing confidence-building measures between these two nuclear powers is clearly needed.

Success in southwest Asia cannot be achieved without effectively confronting Iran. This rogue nation continues to supply arms to terrorists and radical Islamic insurgents causing numerous deaths to innocent Muslim civilians as well as the governmental forces they target.

In the absence of Iran changing course, civilized nations must make it their declared policy to assist the Iranian opposition to free themselves from their oppressive and rogue dictatorship.

Change Iran and you can change the game in southwest Asia and the Middle East.

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(Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D., is a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve and a veteran of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.)

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(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)