'Hard Is Not Hopeless' in Afghanistan
Gen. Petraeus can succeed by following a strategy similar to the one that won in Iraq.
By John A. Nagl
Updated July 21, 2010 12:01 am ET
In Iraq, Gen. Petraeus's efforts to build professional host-nation security and local protection forces, as well as advise political leadership, eventually paid off. It allowed the country to stand on its own against internal and external threats with only minimal outside assistance—the definition of victory in a counterinsurgency. Several years from now, Afghanistan could be in similar condition, with al Qaeda defeated and Afghan security units protecting their own country with the help of U.S. advisers and air support. Getting there is the hard part.
The Afghan population, meanwhile, is rich with combat experience but short on soldiers who have graduated from staff colleges. They know how to fight, but not how to read. NATO efforts to build up the Afghan army and police suffered from a lack of resources until late in 2009, when Lt. Gen. Bill Caldwell was ordered to bring them up to speed. Talented as Lt. Gen. Caldwell is, he's still short on trainers, and he has to teach his Afghan recruits to read before they can become effective counterinsurgents. That will take time.
Napoleon Bonaparte once said, "All my generals are good—I want generals who are lucky!" Gen. Petraeus was fortunate when he took command in Iraq that years of outreach to the Sunni tribes were beginning to bear fruit. Former insurgents decided to join the Awakening movement to fight against al Qaeda. He organized them into "Sons of Iraq" militias that served as community police and drastically reduced violence levels. Recently deposed Afghan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal tried to follow the same script and succeeded on a small scale, but he was unable to win Afghan President Hamid Karzai's approval to expand the program nationally.