Support Your Local Sheriff

I've long flogged the need to get local defense forces into the fight in Afghanistan (as I advocated in Iraq). When we talk about troop densities needed to win, these part-time forces have a vital role to play as long as they aren't stressed by trying to make them do more than they can. Forces from special forces to security guards have their roles. I've also emphasized the need for local forces in light of the fragmentation and poverty of Afghanistan that precludes the use of a national security force from the central government to provide security.

This RAND report discusses the local option. The main points I'd like to highlight:

Afghan and NATO officials have increasingly focused on protecting the local population as the linchpin of defeating the Taliban and other insurgent groups. Certain steps are important to achieving this objective, such as building competent Afghan national security forces, reintegrating insurgents, countering corruption, and improving governance. This document focuses on a complementary step: leveraging local communities, especially the use of traditional policing institutions, such as arbakai, chagha, and chalweshtai, to establish security and help mobilize rural Afghans against the Taliban and other insurgents. Effectively leveraging local communities should significantly improve counterinsurgency prospects. Gaining the support of the population—especially mobilizing locals to fight insurgents, providing information on their locations and movements, and denying insurgent sanctuary in their areas—is the sine qua non of victory in counterinsurgency warfare. By tapping into tribes and other communities where grassroots resistance already exists, local defense forces can help mobilize communities simultaneously across multiple areas. The goal should be to help cause a “cascade” or “tip,” in which momentum against the Taliban becomes unstoppable. In 2010, a growing number of communities in Kandahar, Helmand, Paktia, Herat, Paktika, Day Kundi, and other provinces mobilized and fought against insurgents. These cases present significant opportunities for counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan.

And:

[Local] security forces are vital but should be small, defensive, under the immediate control of jirgas and shuras, and supported by national security forces.

Remember, these local defense forces have limited static defense capabilities. They can't be asked to act like mobile troops or police. Nor can they be asked to hold against numerically superior enemy forces. So we must supervise them and support them with greater force if the enemy tries to intimidate all of these forces by wiping out a local defense force unit.

And ultimately, these forces must be the basis of security across the country, supplemented by a much smaller national force that the Afghan central government can afford to pay.

And have no doubt, the locals will need to defend themselves from the Taliban, who have abandoned their brief formal flirtation with kinder and gentler methods.