Pakistan’s response to US foreign policy towards South Asia 1977–1993

Relations between the USA and Pakistan have been tenuous since the 1947 partition of British India and the subsequent creation of the former. The 1979 Soviet intervention in Afghanistan focused the attention of the international community on South Asia. This article will examine the foreign policies of three successive US Presidential Administrations between 1977 and 1993, and how their decisions and corresponding actions were interpreted by the Pakistani government and its people. The key finding is the trend of the ebb and flow of US interest in Pakistan. The primary research conducted for this article shows that Pakistanis recognize this trend and consider it hypocritical of the US government. The current conditions in South Asia are ominously similar to those of 1992 with the drawdown of US and NATO troops from Afghanistan. Policy-makers would be wise to review the events of 1977–1993 so that the cycle is not repeated again.     

Panjwai: a tale of two COINs in Afghanistan

The US Army has two approaches to counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan. One is hard, or combat-focused, and the other is soft, or development-focused. This study examines two US Army task forces deployed to Panjwai District, Afghanistan from 2012 to 2013. CTF 4-9 and 1-38 offer a meaningful comparison because they pursued these contrasting approaches among the same population and against the same enemy at the same time and place. The study compares each unit’s approach and finds that neither approach was successful absent the other. The article concludes by recommending further research into combining the approaches at the operational level.     

Regaining Strategy: Small Powers,Strategic Culture,and Escalation in Afghanistan

Abstract

In Western operations in Afghanistan, small European powers escalate in different ways. While Denmark and the Netherlands have contributed to Western escalation through integration with British and US forces, Norway and Sweden have done so by creating a division of labour allowing US and British combat forces to concentrate their efforts in the south. These variations in strategic behaviour suggest that the strategic choice of small powers is more diversified than usually assumed. We argue that strategic culture can explain the variation in strategic behaviour of the small allies in Afghanistan. In particular, Dutch and Danish internationalism have reconciled the use of force in the national and international domains, while in Sweden and Norway there is still a sharp distinction between national interest and humanitarianism.     

Concepts of Legitimacy: Congruence and Divergence in the Afghan Conflict

ABSTRACT

Revisiting the US-led counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan, we examine to what extent the concepts of legitimacy of the Taliban and the US counterinsurgents showed congruence with pre-existing Afghan notions of legitimacy. We move beyond dominant approaches of social contract theory and materialist legitimacy by using a threefold model of legitimacy to assess the different concepts of legitimacy. Both the Taliban and the US, we argue, diverged markedly from historically developed notions of legitimate rule. The article demonstrates that counterinsurgents need to be aware of and adapt to local norms. Moreover, we point towards relevant norms in the case of Afghanistan.     

A Good Ally - Norway and International Statebuilding in Afghanistan, 2001-2014

The article examines the findings of the Commission of Inquiry established by the Norwegian government in 2014 to evaluate all aspects of Norway’s civilian and military contribution to the international operation in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014. Concerned with the wider implications of the Commission’s findings, it focuses on two issues in particular: (1) Norway’s relations with the US, a close and long-standing strategic ally whose resources, capabilities and dominance of decision-making dwarfed that of all other coalition partners in Afghanistan; and (2) Norway’s record in the province of Faryab, where, from 2005 to 2012, a Norwegian-led Provincial Reconstruction Team was charged with bringing security, good governance and development to the province. How Norway prioritised and managed relations with the US highlights and helps to problematise the challenges – political, practical and moral – facing small and medium-sized powers operating in a coalition alongside the US. Norwegian efforts in Faryab are revealing of the dilemmas and contradictions that plagued and, ultimately, fatally undermined the international intervention as a whole. As such, Norway’s experience provides a microcosm through which the inherent limitations of the attempt to transfer the structures of modern statehood and Western democracy to Afghanistan can be better understood.     

Countering the Quetta Shura: a viable strategy to US policy in Afghanistan

The US strategy in Afghanistan has fallen short of neutralizing the insurgency that threatens the future stability. The primary insurgency's leadership council, the Quetta Shura, has effectively managed influence through a shadow government and superior tactics in recruiting marginalized tribal leaders, leading to a questionable outcome once Coalition forces withdraw in 2014. This article summarizes the threat posed by the Quetta Shura, coinciding with the deficiencies in the current US policy, and recommends a more viable strategy conducive to the current circumstances, based on historical and cultural precedence. Coalition forces have put a great amount of time, money, and effort into establishing a more stable Afghanistan. The USA needs a more aggressive strategy to counter the aspirations of the insurgency, thereby giving the Afghans the opportunity to further progress in the future. Under the current circumstances and policies, a peaceful transition after the Coalition withdrawal is becoming more unlikely.     

The Underlying Causes of Violent Conflict in the North Waziristan Tribal Areas of Pakistan

ABSTRACT

Following the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Pakistan and the merged Tribal Districts, particularly the North Waziristan Tribal District (NWTD), experienced increasing violent conflict. This paper examines the causes of conflict in North Waziristan from the perspective of local communities. The study is based on qualitative primary data collected in NWTD. The study identifies deep-rooted internal factors such as poor socio-economic conditions, political exclusion, degradation of local institutions and culture, introduction and promotion of Jihadi culture and militancy as the main drivers of conflict in NWTD. External factors, like the USSR and US invasions in Afghanistan, a porous border and unseen international actors, have contributed to the start and even escalation of the more recent conflict, but mainly through exacerbating internal factors. The study recommends that policies aiming to reduce violent conflict in this region pay due attention to the significance of addressing the underlying internal drivers of conflict.     

Casualty Rates of US Military Personnel During the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Abstract

In Operation Iraqi Freedom, which ended in August 2010, nearly 3500 hostile deaths occurred among US military personnel and 32,000 more were wounded in action (WIA). More than 1800 hostile deaths occurred during Operation Enduring Freedom (in and around Afghanistan) through 2014 and about 20,000 were WIA. A larger proportion of wounded personnel survived in Iraq and Afghanistan than during the Vietnam War, but the increased survival rates were not as high as some studies have asserted. The survival rates were 90.2% in Iraq and 91.6% in Afghanistan, compared with 86.5% in Vietnam. The casualty rates varied between the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and before, during, and after the respective surges. Amputation rates are difficult to measure consistently, but I estimate that 2.6% of all WIA and 9.0% of medically evacuated WIA from the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters combined resulted in the major loss of a limb. Elevated non-hostile death rates (including deaths due to accidents, illnesses, homicides, or suicides) resulted in about 220 more deaths in Iraq and about 200 more deaths in Afghanistan than would have been expected in peacetime among populations of the size deployed to those two conflicts.     

Bridging the Gap: Mobilisation Constraints and Contractor Support to US and UK Military Operations

The increasing use of private military and security companies (PMSCs) has attracted considerable scholarly attention due to its corrosive effects on US democracy. Drawing on neoclassical realism, this article provides a comparative dimension to the study of the political drivers of military privatisation by analysing contractor support to US and UK operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Domestic political constraints have shaped both US and UK response to the need for more boots on the ground, increasing the propensity to use contractors as a force multiplier in spite of their problematic impact on military effectiveness.     

Counterinsurgency American style: Considering David Petraeus and twenty-first century irregular war

This article examines the complex legacy of David Petraeus who was a key figure in the emergence of the US military shift towards counterinsurgency doctrine in the years after 2006. Although Petraeus has been perceived by critics as a publicity seeker, he can be credited with laying the foundations for a more serious commitment to COIN involving in particular in integrating conventional and Special Forces in arenas like village stability operations. The article looks a Petraeus's role in both Iraq and Afghanistan: it concludes that, in the case of Afghanistan, it is too early to assess whether counterinsurgency has had a decisive impact of the outcome of the war against the Taliban.     

Small footprint,small payoff: The military effectiveness of security force assistance

After 15 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, many now see ‘small-footprint’ security force assistance (SFA) – training, advising and equipping allied militaries – as an alternative to large US ground-force commitments. Yet, its actual military efficacy has been little studied. This paper seeks to fill this gap. We find important limitations on SFA’s military utility, stemming from agency problems arising from systematic interest misalignment between the US and its typical partners. SFA’s achievable upper bound is modest and attainable only if US policy is intrusive and conditional, which it rarely is. For SFA, small footprints will usually mean small payoffs.     

US paramilitary programs in comparative perspective: CIA,the US Army Special Forces,and the question of organizational form

Assumed in the long-standing debate over which agency, CIA or the Department of Defense, should conduct US paramilitary operations is the idea that these organizations’ paramilitary programs are fundamentally the same kinds of things. This article questions that assumption by investigating the organizational forms underlying these agencies’ paramilitary programs in four empirical cases drawn from South Vietnam and post-9/11 Afghanistan. A typology is constructed around two identified organizational forms: “franchising” for CIA vs. “company ownership” for the US Army Special Forces. Different paramilitary organizational forms are found to have significant operational implications that should inform the paramilitary transfer debate.     

Turning gangsters into allies: the American way of war in Northern Afghanistan

ABSTRACT

The American way of war in Afghanistan presents a conundrum for proponents of 21st-century state-building projects. How can liberal peace proponents engage in efficient state building without sacrificing their ideals? The US learned that state-building allocates a degree of command and control to powerbrokers operating in the shadows to launder aid money, traffic illicit narcotics, and engage in extrajudicial punishments. These clients failed to represent the liberal values foreign patrons endorsed, because the latter not only offered resources without conditions but also rewarded bad behavior. This issue is examined by looking at the case of post-2001 northern Afghanistan, where powerful warlords should have held greater control over their paramilitary forces, limited predatory behavior, and built stronger relationships with the community. Instead, warlords-turned-statesmen expanded their material and social influence in the north, while holding onto the informal instruments of racketeering and patronage that overwhelmed Western ideals and shaped the predatory state present in Afghanistan today. Moreover, paramilitaries were influenced by material, social, and normative incentives that rewarded violent and predatory behavior and further eroded already weak community control mechanisms at the subdistrict level.     

COIN fights: A response to Etzioni

Etzioni both exaggerates and minimizes the influence of my book Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife on different components of US military doctrine, mischaracterizes my treatment of the Malayan Emergency, and unfairly denigrates the successes of counterinsurgency in Iraq from 2007 to 2011 while misattributing the reasons for its failures in both Iraq and Afghanistan.     

The year of the drone misinformation

This paper challenges the widely held view in the research communities around the world that US drone strikes on the Pakistan's north-western border area with Afghanistan lead to large-scale civilian casualties and are unpopular in that tribal area. As an example of that view the author analyses a recent research report, ‘The Year of the Drone’, produced by the New American Foundation, and argues that sources of the report are questionable and doubtful. The author, who is a native of the border area with Afghanistan and has lived almost all of her lifetime in the area, informs that the drone attacks are popular in the region and the reports about large-scale civilian casualties are baseless. She provides some evidence in support of her argument and cautions the researchers against the uncritical acceptance of the notions, like the drone attacks are unpopular or have killed civilians.     

Bringing it all back home: Hollywood returns to war

This essay looks at two Hollywood films Black Hawk Down and We Were Soldiers as reflective of a more general popular mood in the US that accompanied Operation ‘Enduring Freedom’ and the removal of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. In part this mood was a militaristic one, though this can also be seen as a rather belated response by Hollywood to invest moral purpose in the US military following an earlier spate of hostile Vietnam war films. The two films examined are different in form: Black Hawk Down is a combat film about extraction while We Were Soldiers is unusual for a US Vietnam war film for investing moral purpose in both the US combat troops as well as the Vietnamese enemy. Overall it is possible to conclude that both films contribute to a kicking by Hollywood of its earlier Vietnam war ‘syndrome’ which is likely to have wider cultural and political repercussions.     

Al Qaida on the US invasion of Afghanistan in their own words

This article consists of selected translations from captured interviews and dairies of Al Qaida members. The time period covered is from mid-2001 to early 2002 and concerns their operations in Afghanistan. The material clearly conveys a range of emotion, from confident to despondent, as well as efforts to contest the US actions. The first several pages give the reader context and some possible “lessons learned,” but the story(ies) are best told by the Al Qaida members themselves. All names are pseudonyms.     

Winning with warlords in Afghanistan

A fundamental contradiction has been built into America's intervention in Afghanistan since the first days of the war in 2001. On the one hand, US policymakers have viewed the promotion of liberal democracy, economic development, and strong centralized state institutions as essential to achieve victory over the long term. On the other hand, however, the US has relied on local warlords to win its battles against the Taliban from the first days of the intervention. The Obama administration's tortured policy review reflects the intractable dilemmas involved in trying to build a modern democratic state while relying on local warlords as crucial allies in the war against the Taliban.     

Operation ‘enduring freedom’: a victory for a conventional force fighting an unconventional war

The track record of the US military in unconventional wars has not been good and there were fears that Operation ‘Enduring Freedom’ might suffer the same fate as previous campaigns. This contribution explores why the Taliban were defeated so easily by the US in 2001. It challenges the view that America's victory was due solely to changes in its modus operandi or that the outcome heralds a change in the fortunes of the US when fighting unconventional war. It also questions the idea that America's victory was a consequence of Taliban incompetence. Instead, it explains the defeat of the Taliban in terms of the prevailing political conditions within Afghanistan, which made them vulnerable to attack. The essay concludes that current political circumstances could, in the long run, permit the resurrection of the Taliban and undermine the US-led coalition's victory.     

Hiding Death: Contextualizing the Dover Ban

Following the terrorist attacks against the US in 2001, the Bush administration reaffirmed the Dover ban, the policy that prohibited press coverage of military coffins arriving at Dover Air Force Base from conflicts abroad. Conventional wisdom holds that the Bush administration enforced the ban in the hope of maintaining public support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This understanding, though, is incomplete. If the Dover ban were enforced only in response to eroding public opinion, then other coalition states would have responded likewise to this shared incentive. I argue instead that maintaining public support is only one factor among many that led the US to uphold this policy. In addition to considering the influence of factors such as perceived media bias and casualty aversion, I focus on necropolitics and the related impetus for governments to regulate the observation of death. Through this interpretation, part of the American response to the involuntary loss of sovereignty on 9/11 was to exercise control over the observation of death by enforcing the Dover ban. Through comparing the press policies of the US, the UK, and Canada, I show that the necropolitical blow to sovereignty that only the US experienced triggered a repressive policy that only the US was able to maintain.