The Invisible Forces

This German Major General notes the population of the command area he oversees. And he notes the number of Coalition and Afghan security forces he commands. Regional Command North is basically controlled despite some incursions by Taliban from outside his command area.

The curious thing about this is the numbers provided. The number of Afghans are 8 to 10 million. Let's call it 9 million. And the number of troops to protect them? About 11,000 Coalition forces and 9,000 Afghan army troops. The general also mentioned national police, which are less numerous than the army, so let me guess 6,000 of these. The only other force the general mentioned was the new local police effort, of 550. So let's call it 26,550 security forces.

This isn't close to having troops numbering 2% of the population to be secured, which is considered the standard ratio for a successful counter-insurgency. That is a very crude measure for the big picture, of course. We were winning in Iraq without that percent for the entire country, achieving it only at the end after we were already clearly victorious. Arguing we had the numbers to win in Iraq was a near-constant theme during that fight on this blog. But it is commonly used to argue whether we can or can't win, and the fact is the number isn't close to 1% in Regional Command North, where we clearly hold the ground and deny it to the Taliban. It is actually 0.3%.

So how is the north secured? Well, in the bias of counting that was clearly evident in Iraq, not all security forces are counted. Back then, only US and Western troops tended to be counted when toting up the troop density. Iraqis were ignored. Today in Afghanistan, Afghan national forces are generally counted, so we're making progress. But this still isn't enough. Afghan tribes and villages have their own informal local self defense forces. These are off the radar screen but perform valuable local defense roles. Those new local cops? Those are really men who'd still be there defending their homes even if not in that program. The local police effort is an effort to regularize and control these existing local forces and not a recruiting effort to bring new people into the fight.

Having tribes on your side helps--as this flip in Helmand demonstrates. The tribes are a type of invisible military force. By getting a tribe to side with us, we deny their help to the enemy and put their forces in the service of our side. Clearly, Regional Command North already has the help of the vast majority of the tribes and villages in the area. Otherwise, the number of security forces deployed there would be completely inadequate.

We have to rely on the locals to provide their security. We can't be everywhere and it would be a waste of their skill sets (not to mention money) to have our troops pulling guard duty in quiet areas.