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Outside View: Surely you’re joking, Admiral Mullen

By LAWRENCE SELLIN, UPI Outside View Commentator
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Navy Adm. Mike Mullen speaks at the kickoff of the 2009 USO Holiday Tour stop in Kandahar, Afghanistan on December 17, 2009. Mullen and his wife Deborah are hosting the tour, which includes performances and appearances by former tennis player Anna Kournikova, comedian Dave Attell, tennis coach Nicholas Bollettieri and musician Billy Ray Cyrus. UPI/Chad J. McNeeley/U.S. Navy
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Navy Adm. Mike Mullen speaks at the kickoff of the 2009 USO Holiday Tour stop in Kandahar, Afghanistan on December 17, 2009. Mullen and his wife Deborah are hosting the tour, which includes performances and appearances by former tennis player Anna Kournikova, comedian Dave Attell, tennis coach Nicholas Bollettieri and musician Billy Ray Cyrus. UPI/Chad J. McNeeley/U.S. Navy | License Photo

HELSINKI, Finland, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- A CBS news report filed by Kimberly Dozier states that U.S. Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met in Kandahar with five Afghan tribal elders. Pulling out his notebook, the admiral asked the Afghans what they need. Apparently the new fashionable counterinsurgency introductory question is "What do you need?" rather than "Are you fighting on our side?" or "Are we winning?"

In addition to new dams for irrigation purposes, Afghan elders made two requests, which were surprising only from the standpoint that, after eight years in Afghanistan, either request could possibly be considered surprising.

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The Afghan elders asked that their fighting men be trained in their own region near Kandahar instead of being sent to Kabul, where the elders say their southern Pashtun ways make them the butt of abuse from Northern Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmen and Hazaras. Really? This hasn't been done already? Especially since the center of gravity of the Afghan war is in the Pashtun areas of the south and east, one would think that it is an important consideration.

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To use Dozier's own words, the most striking comments made to Mullen by the Afghan elders was "Stop fighting for us." "You must understand our culture," one said. "It's insulting for you to die for us. We should be dying to take back our country, not you."

The Afghans asked that the Americans start sending more money and training their way. "One of your soldiers costs a million dollars a year. One of ours costs $6,000. So spend that money on us and we get 165 of our soldiers for one of yours."

Apparently, Mullen found these comments important enough to write down in his spiral notebook.

Dozier said Mullen was struck by the Afghans' "desire to take control of their own destiny," especially "the one statement that said essentially, 'Put us in the lead.'"

Really? Who else in the highest echelons of the Pentagon and our intelligence services are surprised by the sentiments expressed by these Afghan elders?

Please, please tell me that someone, anyone has provided that type of unvarnished information up the military chain of command within the last eight years and we realize that Afghanistan is a bottom-up fight, won by working closely within their tribal systems.

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I have no reason to question the veracity of Dozier's report but hopefully it is not representative of a conventional wisdom of the operational understanding of the Afghan War. If so, a portion of my previous article "In Afghanistan, it does take a village" (UPI, Dec. 16, 2009) needs repeating.

According to Special Forces NCO Mark Sexton and William Lind in "On War No. 325: How the Taliban take a Village," within Afghan villages there are three nodes of influence: village elders, the religious leader and the village security force.

Through either indoctrination or coercion, the Taliban replaces the traditional village beliefs or leaders with those that support the Taliban philosophy. Creating a network of these subverted villages, the Taliban can control and operate from large geographical areas, establish sophisticated communication capabilities, attack opportunistically and then melt back into these networked sanctuaries.

To counter the Taliban, U.S. and Afghan forces must be able to infiltrate and shape the village nodes of influence. Sexton and Lind write: "The U.S. and Afghan forces and government will need to identify individuals to use lethal and non-lethal targeting. This requires in-depth knowledge of tribal structure, alliances and feuds. Viable alternatives or choices need to be available to village leaders and villagers. Just placing U.S. and Afghan soldiers at an outpost and conducting token presence patrols and occasionally bantering with locals and organizing a shura once a month are not going to work."

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Through a decentralized and bottom-up approach starting at the village level, supplementing it with conventional infantry and air support as appropriate, the result will likely be a more effective means of executing all the elements of a successful counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan.

By all means, sir, give the Afghans the means to fight and win. It is, after all, their war.

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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. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army or U.S. government.)

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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.)

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