Counterinsurgency and Soft Power: Will the twain ever meet? A discussion of the American approach to deterri

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Counterinsurgency and Soft Power:

Will the twain ever meet?

A discussion of the American approach to deterring the

Afghan population from supporting the Taliban insurgency.

Master of Arts in History, American Studies

Graduate School for Humanities

Universiteit van Amsterdam

Lena Harding

12750476

Supervisor: Dhr. Prof. Dr. Ruud Janssens

June 2020, Amsterdam

We are not going to turn one of the poorest countries in the world, that was plunged into 30 years of war, into an advanced, industrialized, Western-style democracy. What we want to

achieve is Afghanistan's capacity to secure and govern itself. – David Petraeus

The United States and other advanced democracies will win only if moderate Muslims win, and the ability to attract the moderates is critical to victory. We need to adopt policies that appeal to moderates, and to use public diplomacy more effectively to explain our common

interests. We need a better strategy for wielding our soft power. - Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

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Executive Summary

Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush and his cabinet took a hard-line approach in Afghanistan to drive the Taliban from power. This would conversely deny al Qaeda the ability to operate in the region. An integral aspect of this approach was the level of hard power used in order to declare a victory over the Taliban in just two months. The consequences of these actions involved a war-torn country, a discouraged population and an insurgency waiting to reform, rebuild and recruit.

The following research question will be answered in this thesis: Could the American counterinsurgency approach have the capability to deter the Afghan population from supporting insurgencies? This question will be answered on the basis of the development of American power relations in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2014, the political support for the counterinsurgency approach and the Taliban’s ability to re-emerge off the back of America’s pitfalls in the war against terrorism.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the counterinsurgency doctrine in the context of its implementation in Afghanistan. In doing so, counterinsurgency has been analysed in the classical context of theorists such as Major General C. E. Callwell and David Galula, before being placed in conjunction with General David Petraeus’s contemporary doctrine, Field Manual 3-24, that has characterised the Afghanistan War. What is clear from this analysis is that insurgencies are distinctly different from transnational terrorism in that they are located in certain regions, often building their reputation and governance by exploiting the weakness of the lawful government. Therefore, the threat posed by insurgencies is different to that posed by terrorism.

My aim in this thesis is to expand the literature on soft power in the Middle East by demonstrating that counterinsurgency in Afghanistan was ultimately an unsuccessful strategy because the Afghan public was resistant to American soft power for a number of reasons. This is based on the observation that the ‘hearts and minds’ theory is unsuitable in a society predominantly controlled by fear. The Taliban does not need to be one of the ‘good guys’ and therefore Afghan public support is not as essential to its operational capabilities. Further, the hard power military projection into Afghanistan at the War on Terror’s onset did not come in conjunction to a soft power strategy, but America instead resorted to it eight years later.

Acknowledgements

I would like to extend a special thanks to my supervisor Prof. Ruud Janssens, for his expert advice, encouragement and by-weekly Zoom meetings. His teaching style and guidance throughout the writing process of this thesis and the rest of this degree have been invaluable.

Special recognition must also be extended to René Sertons and Sylvia Padmos for generously taking the time to proofread my work throughout this degree, but especially for my thesis.

Finally, a big thank you to my family and friends for their support and for putting up with me during the writing process.

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List of Abbreviations

ANA Afghan National Army

CIA Central Intelligence Agency

COIN Counterinsurgency

FET Female Engagement Team

FM 3-24 Field Manual 3/24: Insurgencies and Countering Insurgencies

GDP Gross Domestic Product

ISAF International Security Assistance Force NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation NSC National Security Council PFC Private First Class

SGT Sergeant

UN The United Nations

UNSC The United Nations Security Council

US The United States of America

War on Terror War against terrorism

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Introduction

On the 5th_{of May 2019, the United States (US) Airforce conducted a series of airstrikes in}

the Bakwa and Delaram districts of the Farah province of Afghanistan. Alleging that the operation’s targets were suspected drug labs, the airstrikes resulted in over 60 civilian deaths including fourteen women and children. This was by no means the first time that such attacks had occurred and resulted in civilian casualties. It is almost a norm after nearly two decades of the war against terrorism in Afghanistan. A report by the United Nations (UN) Assistance Mission in Afghanistan found that the airstrikes did not have a sufficient nexus to the Taliban’s war-fighting operations to warrant their classification as military objectives, but that it was instead a matter for law enforcement.1_{Additionally, this incident was a matter of}

international humanitarian law, which determined that drug facilities were not lawful targets of an attack.2_{This is one of many examples of America’s turn to ‘quick-fix’ and hard-power}

military solutions that have created substantial problems towards reaching America’s goals in the War on Terror. And yet, despite the humanitarian, legal and financial cost, America’s military might has remained at the forefront of its mission in Afghanistan.

Since the September 11 attacks (9/11), three American administrations have attempted to create an Afghan state that is inhospitable to insurgencies.3_{Yet policy makers}

and scholars alike have struggled to define or agree on the necessary attributes of a stable and permanent post-Taliban state. The process of creating and sustaining a secure society required a prolonged effort to engage people at a local and national level throughout Afghanistan. Regardless of over 30 years of Taliban intimidation, American troops wrongly believed in the willingness for cooperation of the Afghan population.4_{American intervention}

required improvisation in a foreign, mountainous territory with a divided and repressed population. Achieving even minute strategic success in such a context was never going to be quick, easy or cheap.5

1_{"Afghanistan Probe: 'At Least 60 Civilians' Killed after US Military Airstrikes on Alleged Drug Labs", UN}

News, October 2019, https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/10/1048851. ; Thomas Gibbons-Neff, "U.S. Disputes

Finding That Airstrikes on Afghan Drug Labs Killed 30 Civilians" New York Times, October 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/world/asia/afghanistan-airstrikes-civilians.html.

2_{"UN Report Find Alleged Drug Facilities Were Not Lawful Targets - Airtrikes Caused Significant Civilian}

Casualties", OHCHR, October 2019,

https://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25110&LangID=E.

3_{For a succinct explanation, see Paul B. Rich, “A Historical Overview of US CounterInsurgency Policy,” Small}

Wars and Insurgencies 25, no. 1 (2014): 5–40.

4_{Kristina Wong, "Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan: Is It Working?", ABC News, October 2011,}

https://abcnews.go.com/US/counterinsurgency-afghanistan-working/story?id=14694736.

5_{Karl W. Eikenberry, "The Limits of Counterinsurgency Doctrine in Afghanistan: The Other Side of the}

COIN", Foreign Affairs 92, no. 5 (2013), 59–74, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23527517.

During the presidential race in 2000, Texan Governor George W. Bush made a campaign promise that his future administration would not do peacekeeping missions anymore.6_{He maintained that a continuation of American humanitarian work would}

negatively impact the efficiency and morale of the US Army.7_{Five years later, the task of}

implementing a new regime in Afghanistan demonstrated how vital the Afghan public was to establishing a long-lasting governmental system that would stabilise the country.8_{By the end}

of his presidency, there would be around 33,000 American troops in Afghanistan.9

Counterinsurgency is defined by the US Department of State as “comprehensive civilian and military efforts taken to simultaneously defeat and contain insurgency and address its root causes”.10_{It seeks to incorporate and synchronise political, economic, and}

security components that build up and legitimise the central government. It aims to protect the population from insurgent violence while also marginalising insurgent groups and reducing their capabilities. Counterinsurgency was introduced under the direction of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) commander Stanley McChrystal and masterminded by General David Petraeus in 2009, who had led a similar – though not identical – operation in Iraq. Counterinsurgency aimed to deter the public from the appeal of insurgent groups such as the Taliban through bolstering the Afghan security forces and government, win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the population and create a functioning economy that was not reliant on American or foreign aid. Winning ‘hearts and minds’ refers to a strategy used by the American and Vietnam governments during the Vietnam War (1955-1975) to win the popular support of the Vietnamese public in order to defeat the Viet Cong insurgency.11_{What is crucial to establish is that the ‘appeal’ to insurgent groups, in this}

context, does not equate to an agreeance or support of Taliban rule. What it does mean, is that in many cases the Taliban was able to offer a more consistent form of leadership than that of

6_{Michael R. Gordon, "The 2000 Campaign: The Military; Bush Would Stop U.S. Peacekeeping in Balkan}

Fights", New York Times, 21 October 2000, sec. U.S., https://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/21/us/the-2000-campaign-the-military-bush-would-stop-us-peacekeeping-in-balkan-fights.html.

7_{Victoria K. Holt and Michael G. Mackinnon, "The Origins and Evolution of US Policy Towards Peace}

Operations", International Peacekeeping 15, no. 1 (February 2008), 26. https://doi.org/10.1080/13533310701879860.

8_{Rufus Phillips, "Counterinsurgency in Vietnam: Lessons for Today", The Foreign Service Journal, April 2015,}

https://www.afsa.org/counterinsurgency-vietnam-lessons-today.

9_{"Interactive: Ten Years of War", al Jazeera, June 2011,}

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/2011/06/201162215293134264.html.

10_{“U.S. Government Counterinsurgency Guide", United States Government Interagency Counterinsurgency}

Initiative, January 2009, https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/119629.pdf, 12.

11_{The more formal term for winning ‘hearts and minds’ is ‘pacification’. In the case of this thesis, however, it is}

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the Karzai government, which was both in the process of becoming legitimate, while also attempting to govern the war-torn country.

The counterinsurgency strategy was a gamble by the new Obama administration to avoid prolonging the disaster in Afghanistan. In that sense, America’s use of hard power military force at the onset of the war against terrorism reaped such negative results as time went on, that the incoming administration wanted a new approach.12_{Secretary of Defense}

Robert Gates had decided that the war needed “fresh thinking” and “fresh eyes”.13_Petraeus

had detected the rise of an insurgency and used his initiative to counter it in Iraq.14_Having

secured apparent success in Iraq by 2005, Petraeus wanted to incorporate counterinsurgency into the army’s official curriculum and update the 20-year-old doctrine.

This thesis is an investigation into American power relations in Afghanistan. It attempts to answer the question of why America’s counterinsurgency strategy could not deter the Afghan public permanently from the Taliban’s influence. By analysing America’s refocus from insurgent groups such as the Taliban, towards targeting the public and securing the ‘hearts and minds’, the counterinsurgency doctrine serves as the leading source in this thesis. As the blueprint guide to counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, a textual analysis of its shortcomings is necessary to understanding the reasons for the strategy’s overall failure.

Fundamental to this research is professor Joseph S. Nye Jr.’s ‘Soft Power’ theory.15

There is a near universal acceptance of Nye’s definition, which stresses the ability to achieve outcomes through attraction or a positive image rather than coercion or payment. Soft power is seen as an alternative option, or in conjunction to, hard power. It is a means to an undefined end. By changing the military role in Afghanistan in terms of troop deployments, their ability to function as social workers, educators and builders, America could challenge the Taliban by compelling the Afghan public – over time – to stand up to the oppression of their rule. What this thesis will demonstrate, is that while Nye’s theory can be applied to almost every region in the world, there are key flaws that prohibit its successful application in Afghanistan. Most importantly, that the Taliban did not require the public’s support to rule oppressively but was instead able to function through the power of fear. While American

12_{Hard power, as the term indicates, is associated with the use, or threat of military might and forceful political}

power.

13_{Hy Rothstein and John Arquilla, Afghan Endgames: Strategy and Policy Choices for America’s Longest War}

(Georgetown University Press, 2012), 63.

14_{Fred Kaplan, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, Reprint}

edition (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), 81.

15_{International Relations scholar and professor at Harvard University Joseph Nye coined the term “Soft Power”}

in 1989.

forces have spent millions of dollars building up the legitimacy of the Hamid Karzai government, they have been unable to create a strong enough opposition to eliminate the Taliban’s power.

While Nye did not discover soft power, he was the first academic to present the idea in full analytical rigor. The soft power theory has attracted the scholarly attention of policy makers and academics more recently because it seemingly offers an alternative method to spreading influence in global affairs. Soft power could therefore substitute what has traditionally been secured using hard military or economic power. For example, professor Giulio Gallarotti noted in 2011 that “Taking an aggressive and unilateralist approach to increasing the security of Americans by wiping out such threats has generated reactions from target nations that have enhanced those threats all the more”.16_{In the context of the war}

against terrorism there was no clearer manifestation of this than the self-defeating elements of the Bush administration’s pledge to eradicate threats of terrorism. Nye’s theory has also been the subject of much debate when applied to the Middle Eastern context. Writing for the Hoover Institution in 2003, historian Niall Ferguson noted that “The trouble with soft power is that it’s, well, soft”.17_{While many of the Afghan public wore clothes with American}

branding, or watched Hollywood films, this did not equate to an increased attraction to the American system of governance. As this thesis will show, American aid was willingly received by both the Afghan public and the government, however the allocation of funding did not necessarily go towards building a better society or strengthening the regime.

This thesis will draw upon the debates in Washington DC, during the discussion and implementation period of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. These cover America’s inability to spread soft power across Afghanistan as it could in many other countries and the ISAF’s short-sighted counterinsurgency operations. The political debates during this time will show why, despite the historical evidence suggesting otherwise, America continues to place hard power methods at the forefront of its strategy and consequently why it remains bogged down in the region.18_{These discussions will be used to support the overall notion that}

16_{Giulio M. Gallarotti, "The Power Curse: The Paradox of Power in World Politics", Division II Faculty}

Publications, January 2011, 11, https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/div2facpubs/58.

17_{Niall Ferguson, "What Is Power?", for the Hoover Digest, Hoover Institution Press, April 2003, no. 2,}

https://www.hoover.org/research/what-power.

18_{A more in-depth analysis of soft power is in the first chapter. To persuade the populace, soft power is}

attractive power; it is able to operate independently from hard power tactics, such as threats or payments. If soft power is effective, the public and the government should want to emulate the system of rule or the values of the US.

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counterinsurgency was a vague, ‘one-size-fits-all’ strategy that was fundamentally too little, too late.

The strategy’s doctrine, as codified in Field Manual (FM) 3-24: Insurgencies and Countering Insurgencies was jointly published by the US Army and the Marine Corps and followed a “clear, hold, and build” plan: clear insurgencies, hold the area and build support and services.19_{In a sense, FM 3-24 framed ‘insurgency’ as a contest between the Taliban and}

the Afghan and coalition governments over the undecided population. The manual’s theory suggested that the public would flock to the side that could provide the best services. This thesis will instead evaluate the concept of fear as a key deciding factor of public support and discuss the limitations of an over-dependence on foreign funding on both the public and the legitimacy of the government.

The counterinsurgency concept consists of police or military might without engaging in direct warfare. This is in contrast to counterterrorism, which uses military techniques to eliminate terrorists. While insurgencies have been in existence since organised states have been, counterinsurgency only appeared in the late nineteenth century. British Major General C. E. Callwell, in his book Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice, published in 1896, stands as the first author to seriously address counterinsurgency. He defined ‘classical’ counterinsurgency in his analysis of colonial empires to be “Campaigns undertaken to suppress rebellions and guerrilla warfare in all parts of the world where organized armies are struggling against opponents who will not meet them in the open field”.20_{Following World}

War I, soldier and military historian B. H. Liddell Hart implemented Callwell’s theory in ‘The Indirect Approach’ strategy. In an attempt to reduce high casualty rates during military conflict, Liddell Hart observed that “In strategy, the longest way round is often the shortest way home”.21_{For this investigation into Afghanistan, the modern approach to}

counterinsurgency will demonstrate that the American experience was a failure against Liddell Hart’s theory because it the “longest way round” was simply too expensive in regards of life and money to deem it a success.

19_{U.S. Department of the Army, “Field Manual 3-24: Insurgencies and Countering Insurgencies”, In}

Homeland Security Digital Library Washington, DC: Marine Corps Warfighting, Publication No. 3-33.5, 2006,

https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=468442, Foreword ; FM 3-24 provided a much-needed course change for US forces in Afghanistan, focusing the attention of commanders on civilian factors that were not traditionally the concern of the military. While many had acknowledged that the conventional hard power tactics were unsuitable for this conflict and therefore adapted them, there were others who were still fighting in a counterproductive manner in 2006.

20_{Major C.E. Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice (London: Harrison and Sons, 1899; reprinted}

1903) 1.

21_{Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy: The Indirect Approach (Faber, 1967), 319.}

In this thesis, I will discuss the ability to spread soft power through a successful counterinsurgency campaign. Whether, for example, it is possible to conduct

counterinsurgency peacefully using the military, while also dissuading the public from the notion that America is the oppressor. Because the Taliban cannot be dissuaded as easily as the general Afghan public, counterinsurgency instead targeted potential sympathisers by reassuring and coercing them to support the American-backed side, in order to demonstrate that they could be on the side of the ‘good guys’.

America’s use of hard power military force during the initial years of the Afghanistan War had negative implications for their standing amongst the local population. It caused a wide-spread sense of distrust and impeded America’s efforts to spread soft power and their ability to persuade the population to support the coalition. Counterterrorism as a model of warfare is unique to the post-9/11 world. Counterterrorism has been more broadly recognised as an offensive measure to stop the operational capabilities to undertake terrorism of an adversary. Therefore, a consequence of the War on Terror has been the militarisation of counterterrorism, which has made it a form of warfare in its own right. This military counterterrorism is designed to keep relentless pressure on terrorist operatives often through targeted and consistent strikes against their operatives, networks and key resources while supporting other government efforts to undermine the legitimacy and appeal of their claims. Alternatively, a traditional counterinsurgency model focuses on coercive and indirect ways to separate insurgents from the local population.22

The counterinsurgency model of warfare is presented as a competition between the insurgents and the government for the loyalties of the local population. This competition can be waged through a variety of means that include the use of force, but also in evolving the provision of security, governance and development. The overall goal here was to undermine public support for the insurgency in order to build the capacity of the government. Yet its greatest limitations were the different approaches used to achieving this end. While some advocate the direct use of force to destroy a territorial stronghold of the Taliban before it becomes big enough to threaten the government, others advocate for starving the Taliban of popular support by winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the population. Counterinsurgency offers the discriminate use of violence against insurgents over a prolonged period of time. This differs from the counterterrorism approach, which predominantly focuses on the

22_{Michael J. Boyle, "Do Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency Go Together?" International Affairs (Royal}

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sporadic but ruthless use of force against terrorist operatives in order to degrade their capabilities. The ultimate objective of counterinsurgency is to draw the population away from insurgency and towards a progressive government.

Roadmap

This thesis proceeds in four chapters. First, I will provide a brief theoretical overview of the contemporary American counterinsurgency doctrine, FM 3-24, soft and hard power dynamics in the war against terrorism and the Afghan context. Before anything else, the incentives that the counterinsurgency strategy sought to produce for the Karzai government and the local population must be established. Second, I will look at counterinsurgency’s theoretical aspirations and place it beside its practical application. Through the combined analysis of Afghanistan’s urban centers and rural villages, I will demonstrate that the counterinsurgency doctrine seemed unlikely to produce the grand results that America wanted to achieve in the country. Third, I will evaluate the prospect of winning the public’s ‘hearts and minds’ in Taliban strongholds and a climate of fear. This will demonstrate the limitations of using soft power after, instead of in conjunction with, hard power. It will also split Afghan society into three vital sections: the urban, rural, and female public. Finally, I will delve more deeply into the nature of the current Taliban. A review of current literature on the debates surrounding the neo-Taliban demonstrates that the neo-Taliban insurgency is entirely different from its historical counterpart of the 1980s and 1990s.

To answer the research question, I will draw upon criticisms of soft power and counterinsurgency by scholars such as professor Colin Gray of the Strategic Studies Institute and professor Christopher A. Sims. I will also place the statements made by

counterinsurgency apologists such as David Kilcullen and John Nagl in debate with those against the strategy in Washington DC, to investigate whether soft power has the capability to reduce insurgency recruitment in a way that counterinsurgency had failed to do, or whether it appears to be too little too late. It uses newly declassified documents such as Pentagon memos and investigative journalists to establish the pretence under which the Afghan War began to demonstrate a progression of the Taliban resurgence and the consequential American military shift. I will demonstrate that without the ability to adapt to the rapidly evolving nature of insurgency more effectively, and without an incorporated understanding of the threat as well as the host-nation, American success in the region was highly unlikely from the beginning.

Chapter 1 Power Relations with Counterinsurgency

Was America’s counterinsurgency in Afghanistan an unattainable solution?

Despite America’s abundance of military capabilities, financial assets and powerful resources, terrorist insurgencies in Afghanistan have remained some of the greatest challenges to the United States. The rapidly changing nature of the war against terrorism has nowhere been more clearly depicted than in Afghanistan. Here, traditional hard power methods of waging war, such as the use of cruise missiles, machine guns and tanks, could not be used successfully against non-state actors or to stabilise the region.23

Throughout the first decade of America’s military presence in Afghan, guerrilla movements such as the Taliban and terrorist organisations such as al Qaeda continued to carry out deadly assaults while simultaneously sustaining a steady influx of recruitment and sympathisers. At the same time, the US Army struggled to distinguish jihadist insurgents from the rest of the population because they were embedded within Afghan societies. Although persistent and forceful military efforts have been undertaken by the US Army and Air Force, as well as the Afghan National Army and ISAF, they have been unable to resolve this issue.24_{While insurgencies are by no means unique to this war, this chapter will}

demonstrate that it was the lack of doctrinal consideration on how to tackle the appeal of insurgent groups in the long term that severely compromised the capacity to control them. Further, it will analyse the lesser understood ways in which America can disrupt the cycle that sustains terrorists permanently, while simultaneously dissuading moderate Muslims to support the jihad because of an overuse of American power.

America’s strategic aim from the onset of the War on Terror has been to prevent another attack upon its homeland and its people. The right policy in Afghanistan is a crucial steppingstone to achieving America’s goal. While this thesis focusses on the Taliban as its primary case study of an insurgent group in Afghanistan, it is important to acknowledge that other insurgencies – such as the Haqqani Network, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as of 2013, Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin – pose unprecedented threats that prohibit lasting feelings

23_{Thomas Braun, "Beyond Counterinsurgency: Why the Concept Is Failing", Connections 11, no. 3 (2012), 84,}

https://www.jstor.org/stable/26326287.

24_{The ISAF was a NATO-led military mission in Afghanistan that was established by the United Nations}

Security Council Resolution 1386, December 2001, and the Bonn Agreement. Troop contributions included all NATO member states, as well as partner states.

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of security.25_{Low economic capacity, poor governance and a lack of adequate social and}

educational initiatives are key factors that contribute to continuing insecurity. In the case of Afghanistan specifically, these issues cannot be permanently resolved by a temporary foreign financial injection or military presence. This is what the Bush administration attempted to do during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, launched 7th_{October 2001.}26_{The use of}

hard power to quench the threat of insurgencies quickly proved an inadequate way to prevent their re-emergence as soon as that military force was removed. It swiftly became apparent that another, longer-term strategy of governance and nation-building was necessary.

This opening chapter will deal with the effective approaches and shortcomings of America’s turn to counterinsurgency in Afghanistan in 2009.27_{It was a shift away from the}

primary use of hard power counterterrorism tools, “the full wrath of the United States” as Vice President Dick Cheney had coined it in 2001. Such ‘tools’ included Air Force bombers, Navy fighter-bombers and automatic machineguns (the number of weapons dropped in Afghanistan each week for the first six months are recorded in figure 1). The hard power military conduct used by the Bush administration was criticised internationally. Human Rights Watch condemned America’s conduct in Afghanistan in a report titled ‘Enduring Freedom: Abuses by US Forces in Afghanistan’ in 2004 and professor Robert Pape wrote for Foreign Affairs in 2010 that “Each month, there are more suicide terrorists trying to kill Americans and their allies in Afghanistan, Iraq as well as other Muslim countries than in all the years before 2001 combined”.28_{By the end of the Bush presidency, a transformed}

approach to waging the war in Afghanistan was needed.29_{This chapter will provide an}

overview of the events in Afghanistan in the years leading up to counterinsurgency’s implementation, and a discussion of the conflicts in Washington, DC regarding the policy.

25_{The Haqqani Network is an Afghan guerrilla insurgency fighting the American-led NATO forces. The Islamic}

State of Iraq and the Levant gained global prominence after driving Iraqi forces out of large cities in Western Iraq. Heb-e-Islami Gulbuddin is a former Afghan militia and political party.

26_{Operation Enduring Freedom was the official name for the American government’s global War on Terror.} 27_{After growing doubts from American leadership and international allies that the situation could be rescued,}

the US military commander in Afghanistan – General Stanley McCrystal launched a counterinsurgency strategy to bolster support with the Afghan government.

28_{"Enduring Freedom", Human Rights Watch, March 2004,}

https://www.hrw.org/report/2004/03/07/enduring-freedom/abuses-us-forces-afghanistan. ; Robert A. Pape, "It’s the Occupation, Stupid", Foreign Policy, October 2010, https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/10/18/its-the-occupation-stupid/.

29_{James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (Penguin, 2004), 303.}

1. The Afghan Context

During the Afghan Civil War of 1996-2001, the Taliban had secured control over Kabul under the leadership of Mullah Omar and established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Their ideology combined an innovative reading of sharia Islamic Law and the Salafi jihadism that Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda’s founder, followed as well.30_{Taliban edicts forbade women}

from education, employment and independent public life. They further destroyed cultural statues and forced their radical ideology as the rule of law. This system of ruling was seen to the international community as barbaric, and Omar’s personal and insurgent connections to al Qaeda was sufficient for America to deem the Taliban government as an equal threat when invading Afghanistan.31_{To bin Laden, Afghanistan under the leadership of Omar was the}

only true Islamic country and the Taliban cemented an alliance with al Qaeda in the late 1990s.

Post-9/11, the Taliban refused to extradite bin Laden to the United States. America refused to negotiate with the Taliban when they offered to turn bin Laden over to a third-party country for fair trial. Bush instead decided that the Taliban would “share their [al Qaeda’s] fate” by not turning over the al Qaeda leader.32_{Bush certainly lived up to this}

threat. In the response to the 9/11 attacks, an American-led coalition action was initiated against al Qaeda and the Taliban. America used hard power warfare to remove the Taliban regime in just two months of war in Afghanistan. However, due to Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan, the insurgency was able to control the tempo of Operation Enduring Freedom by reforming on the border. By situating themselves in areas that were difficult to access for the American and coalition forces, the Taliban transformed the war into a full-fledged, nation-wide conflict has still not ended.33

As part of Operation Enduring Freedom, long term goals included the deterrence of state-sponsored terrorism and the reintegration of Afghanistan into the international community through a legitimate government and a strong Afghan National Army. When military force alone could not achieve these goals, there was a turn to counterinsurgency operations in 2009. Counterinsurgency is a holistic system-of-systems approach that was enacted to secure peace and stability within a region, in this case to legitimate the Afghan government. It is

30_{Sharia law is a code for living that Muslims strive to follow. It helps Muslims to understand how they should}

lead their lives according to God. Salafi jihadism is based on a belief in physical jihadism that the Salafi movement believe will return the Middle East to true Sunni Islam.

31_{Omar was married to one of bin Laden’s daughters.}

32_{President George W. Bush, "President Declares 'Freedom at War with Fear'", September 2001,}

https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html.

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rooted in the belief that longer-lasting success can be achieved by gaining the ‘hearts and minds’ than to kill a certain number of insurgents.34

2. Power Defined

A better understanding of power and the balance of soft and hard power is essential to addressing the issue of counterinsurgency as a failed policy in Afghanistan. By placing America’s relationship with power in the context of Operation Enduring Freedom, the reality was painfully clear: power had its limits, especially when pitched against an unconventional adversary.35

To understand the impact that American hard power had upon later counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan, one must first understand the concept of power in general. If the American-led allied forces had applied soft power, as defined by professor Joseph S. Nye Jr., in conjunction with their initial hard power approach, they would have had a more credible incentive for Afghan support. According to Nye, power is “the ability to influence the behaviours of others to get the outcomes one wants”.36_{Simply put, soft power is to be used as}

an alternative option, or in combination to, hard power. To persuade the populace, “soft power is attractive power”; it differs from influencing people because it can operate independently from hard power tactics such as threats or payments.37_{Yet, the attractiveness}

of soft power has led to an exaggeration of its effectiveness. Applying this theory to American power projection in the wake of 9/11, it is clear that their military capacity, abundance of natural resources and technological advancements equated to a mass amount of political, economic and military power. While their military capabilities demonstrated that they were able to remove the Taliban adversary from power, these resources have been unsuccessful in permanently eliminating the insurgency.

In relation to counterinsurgency, America’s power can be measured by its ability to deter susceptible individuals from actively or passively supporting the Taliban. As Nye contends, there are three ways for a nation to secure power over other individuals or groups, “you can coerce them with threats. You can induce them with payments. Or you can attract or co-opt

34_{Braun, "Beyond Counterinsurgency",, 77–84.}

35_{John Williams, Reika Stroh and Jason Smith, Counterinsurgency Meets Soft Power: An Alternative Approach}

to Deterring Terrorist Recruitment in Mindanao, Naval Postgraduate School, (Independent Publishing Platform,

2015), 102.

36_{Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, (Public Affairs, 2004), 14.} 37_ibid.

them”.38_{However, this is where an alternative reading of soft power highlights the theory’s}

flaws. Nye’s definition fails to consider the unexpected outcomes of non-state terrorist organisations. For example, America’s ability to influence the behaviours of others did not prevent the bombing of the World Trade Centre in 1993, or 9/11. Social power and the ability to transform the opinions of a religious, undemocratic culture has therefore remained to be a grave weakness in American foreign policy.

Much has been written regarding American power relations. For example, professors Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall noted in 2005 that power projection was “an actor controlling another to do what that other would not otherwise do”.39_{While this is true in the}

case of America’s hard power might, Nye’s soft power theory is not so easily applied to this definition. Nye’s theory is therefore of particular interest to this research topic in the Afghan context, because in almost every sense, power equates to control except for in this region. American militarism and hard power capabilities have not secured control, eliminated the Taliban, or reduced the anti-American sentiments. Nye points to soft power as a tool which can inspire people. It can be implemented under the government or military force, however it can also trickle into a society through branding, such as Coca Cola or a Hollywood movie. In Afghanistan, the hope of the American intervention was to persuade and encourage the populace to resist the authority of the Taliban. Essential to the theory was that neither the government nor the coalition forces could control the success of soft power. In that sense, the turn to a counterinsurgency strategy was a middle road between too much, and too little control.The increasing resort to ‘smart power’ – the combination of hard power and soft power strategies – was a self-conscious departure from the Obama administration without losing a grip on the situation in Afghanistan entirely.

The notion of soft power – attaining influence through the co-operation of a willing foreign power through the attractiveness of American ideas and principles – understandably has a greater appeal than its opposite, hard power. The question is whether or not soft power should substitute for hard power, and if this was possible, what are the likely advantages and disadvantages to this to America’s ability to influence? Regardless of whether hard power will retain its absolute utility in future conflict, there might be a possibility that soft power can have the same use, or perhaps even more so, at a fraction of the cost. When discussing

38_{Joseph S. Nye Jr., "The Benefits of Soft Power", Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, February}

2004, https://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/the-benefits-of-soft-power.

39_{Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, "Power in International Politics", International Organization 59, no. 1}

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the approach America should take, it is important not to view them as mutually exclusive: soft power can work alongside hard power; it can be both a success and a failure. Each form of power has limitations. The challenge of successfully using military force to rebuild Afghanistan did not mean that the only other policy instrument to use must be soft power. Therefore, an achievable strategy was essential. Perhaps, too much is expected of single forms of power.

Deploying a mixture of power appropriately, by considering the strengths and shortcomings of different forms of power – such as warfare or media influence – is more challenging in the Middle East than the rest of the world. This is due to a failure to understanding the cultural history and grievances of Middle Eastern countries. For this reason, in Soft Power, Nye limits his analysis. Where he dedicated sections to individual countries and their ability to be influenced by American power, Nye collectivised the entire Middle East in one short chapter. In the war-torn state of Afghanistan, soft power cannot currently work there. However, Nye attempts to apply his concept to gradually bring about a potential future state wherein Afghanistan is open to incorporation, “the key to success will lie in policies that open regional economies, reduce bureaucratic controls, speed economic growth, improve educational systems, and encourage the types of gradual political changes”.40_{Until the introduction of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, soft and hard power}

did not reinforce one another as much as they hindered each other. Therefore, it is undeniable that America’s initial overuse of military power prohibited a successful long-term strategy.

Once America began to reduce its hard power in late 2004, the Taliban began to resurge. This left the Bush administration in a catch-22 situation: a commitment to a hard power strategy and a dire need for a long-term, soft power policy. This explains why Nye’s theory of American influence does not work directly in Afghanistan. Even he referred to it as ‘The Special Case of the Middle East’ because none of the 22 countries were democratic, modern or in economic competition with the West.41_{Soft power is simply not as culturally}

appealing. Counterinsurgency was hence used as a middle ground; to reduce the insurgency’s impact by rebuilding relationships and discouraging recruitment, while counterterrorism operations were conducted on a nation-wide scale. While counterinsurgency required a tactical competence, it remained subordinate to strategy and politics.42

40_{Nye, Soft Power, 88.} 41_{Nye, Soft Power, 93.}

42_{Colin S. Gray, "Concept Failure? COIN, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Theory", PRISM 3, no. 3 (2012),}

29, https://doi.org/10.2307/26469743.

Where the quantity or quality of military force and economic pressure can be controlled, soft power success remains ambiguous and gradual. It removes America’s ability to control the narrative, making it entirely dependent on the response. It seeks to encourage change on a voluntary basis. Soft power can, therefore, also have a negative effect. Nye does not consider that it is symbolically appealing for insurgents to attack the United States because of its reputation of being the leading, modern and secular – or to extremist orthodox Muslims, very Christian – global power. Attacking it shattered the security that came with living under the force of liberty and freedom. Professor Carnes Lord of the US Naval War College wrote in 2009 that insurgents “seek their status not so much in fighting for Islam, as they twist and trample Islamic laws, customs and mores; but in fighting the United States and its allies”.43_In

this sense, soft power can attract attacks, used by extremists as a recruiting tool. Used alone, soft power is weak because it has no deterrent power, unlike economic sanctions or military might.

The weakness in Nye’s theory is that he looks at the American ability to spread soft power as the leading example in much of his work. When analysing the ability for insurgent groups such as the Taliban in encouraging support, the same soft power theory can be applied to them too. This shifts the perspective of soft power from Nye’s view that the American model attracts different countries worldwide, to looking at the successful application of soft power by insurgent groups in encouraging resistance to the United States.

According to Nye, hard power is “a nations ability to coerce or induce another nation into a desired action through the use of threats”.44_{America’s commitment to a limitless war}

against terrorism has since tarnished its international reputation. The scale of hard power used during the first years of Operation Enduring Freedom, and the questionable legality and legitimacy led many to believe that it was a political choice to invade the Middle East instead of a necessary response. Many of the policies pursued in the first term of President Bush were justified on the basis of his emergency powers as Commander in Chief as opposed to being developed in partnership with Congress or the international community. Reeling from 9/11 and expectant of more attacks, the administration charged the CIA with discovering other plots and getting members of terrorist organisations to talk.

43_{Carnes Lord, “Public Diplomacy and Soft Power” in J. Michael Waller, Strategic Influence: Public}

Diplomacy, Counterpropaganda, and Political Warfare (2009), 66.

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The Bush administration provided the CIA with written authorisation to interrogate suspected terrorists in ‘black sites’ as part of operation GREYSTONE.45_{For example, the}

detention facility at Guantanamo Bay was set up to be outside the reach of US law, and the Geneva Convention’s Humanitarian Law of Armed Conflicts were largely ignored.46_During

the early stages of the Iraq War, the US Army and the CIA committed a series of human rights violations against prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.47_{The use of enhanced}

interrogation techniques and the black sites coupled with targeted killings and drone warfare, it is clear that the initial hard power response set a precedent for American autonomous and global power projection.

It is also unsurprising that Afghanistan as a society is not as susceptible to American soft power techniques. While hard power actions were necessary to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, the scale of power projected into the Middle East, coupled with the questionable legality of the Iraq War and the enhanced interrogation techniques at both Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib severely limited any willingness to cooperate with the American forces. By contrast, opening a dialogue from the start would have offered a diplomatic window that may have decreased malign behaviour from both insurgencies and governments. The Carnegie Endowment, a non-Partisan American think tank, noted in 2004 that “due to both the failure to reduce the ranks of Muslim sympathizers worldwide and the deleterious effects on America’s long-term position in Asia and elsewhere”, a re-examination of the entire policy in the region was essential if it wanted to emerge even partly successful.48

Soft power is successful when a state desires to emulate another state’s principles and values. For example, in the wake of the Second World War, America exported its democratic principles and financial freedom in policies such as the Marshall Plan in Europe. This effort to influence war-torn Europe demonstrated a more attractive system of governance than competing far-right fascism or far-left socialism. In the context of Afghanistan, the loss of soft power from 2001 has had the opposite effect for America on the international stage. As

45_{Charlotte McDonald-Gibson, “CIA torture report: Poland admits US used black site on its territory”,}

Independent, December 2014,

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/cia-torture-report-poland-admits-us-used-black-site-on-its-territory-9916550.html.

46_{The Humanitarian Law of Armed Conflicts were a group of international laws that ensured the humane}

treatment of wounded of captured military or non-military persons.

47_{Such abuses included, and were not limited to, physical and sexual abuse, torture, rape, murder and sodomy. ;}

Seymour M. Hersh, "Chain of Command", The New Yorker, May 2004, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/05/17/chain-of-command-2.

48_{Ashley J. Tellis, “Assessing America’s War on Terror: Confronting Insurgency, Cementing Primacy”,}

National Bureau of Asian Research and the Carnegie Endowment Analysis, 2004, vol 15, no 4, 4.

https://carnegieendowment.org/files/NBRAnalysis-Tellis_December2004.pdf.

Dr. Jean-Marc Blanchard of the School of Advanced International and Area Studies noted, America “diluted its soft power among mass publics as well as in specific regions, notably the Middle East”.49_{This created an opening for competing global powers such as China to}

emerge while the United States was bogged down in Afghanistan.

While critics of soft power are not necessarily opposed to the co-existence of hard and soft power, the idea that the latter can bring about more substantial change than the former has been disregarded by every American leader of the War on Terror because its results are nuanced and take longer. Both Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump have been openly sceptical about the effectiveness of the policy. Indeed, as Nye amended his soft power theory in 2020, he noted that “because soft power is rarely sufficient by itself and takes longer to accomplish its effects, leaders find the hard power of coercion or payment more tempting”.50

3. Counterinsurgency

Central to guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan were its subsets: insurgency and counterinsurgency. These terms are cryptic; the same debate that surrounds distinguishing a revolution from a rebellion re-emerges when differentiating an insurgent from a freedom fighter. Complicating matters further was the agenda of those who labelled them insurgents. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 demonstrated how subjective Western interpretations of insurgencies are. America’s support went to the Afghan jihad, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) even having provided $500,000 funding to the Mujahedeen.51_{In 2001, the same invasion took place}

but with a different invader, and the West redefined the second Afghan jihad as an insurgency. As the US Government Counterinsurgency Guide of 2009 observed, “The current campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan are not standard examples of direct COIN intervention, since troops were initially deployed to bring about regime change”.52_{Their changed approach}

placed them at a disadvantage to previous counterinsurgency campaigns. Previously, counterinsurgency campaigns in for example, the Algerian War (1954-1962), were launched in conjunction with the overall war effort to gain the support of the population rather than

49_{Jean-Marc F. Blanchard and Fujia Lu, ‘Thinking Hard About Soft Power: A Review and Critique of the}

Literature on China and Soft Power’, Asian Perspective 36, no. 4 (2012), 580

https://www-jstor-org.proxy.uba.uva.nl:2443/stable/pdf/42704806.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A9b65392fd85b821add1242d263867 361.

50_{Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Do Morals Matter? (Oxford University Press, 2020) 38.}

51_{Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the}

Cold War (Simon and Schuster, 2007), 143-146. ; Steve Coll, “Anatomy of a Victory: CIA’s Covert Afghan

War”, Washington Post, (July 1992) https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/07/19/anatomy-of-a-victory-cias-covert-afghan-war/1bd10b14-a0cc-441c-99cc-d2b5d1ba6e2d/.

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control the territory.53_{Because the counterinsurgency campaign was launched eight years}

after the Afghanistan War began, there was a higher risk of escalation and opposition to the approach than had been previously experienced.

Opposition to the counterinsurgency campaign was primarily, though not exclusively expressed through a push back against the Afghan National Army. They were the easier targets for attack when compared to American soldiers. The police often covered more remote areas and therefore required a framework that provided them with training to counter this.54_{Focussing on “key terrain district”, around 80 districts that formed the major}

population and economic centres of Afghanistan, the Afghan National Police demonstrated a presence among American reinforcements in an attempt to establish a legal authority. As already discussed, many insurgents blended in with the local populace, requiring the armed forces to sift through areas using a combination of hard power counterterrorism and more soft power counterinsurgency approaches. From the start of the counterinsurgency effort, it was clear that the coalition forces struggled to fight insurgents, while simultaneously attempting to convince the population that they could rebuild Afghanistan and introduce legitimate governance.

Of central importance to this thesis is the United States Army Field Manual (FM) 3-24: Insurgencies and Countering Insurgencies.55_{Written by Lieutenant General David}

Petraeus and Lieutenant General James Amos in 2006, the authors represented a change in the thinking of the Army and Marine Corps – who were originally the boots on the ground – in the way they would approach the conflict in the Middle East.56_{The role of a soldier was to}

be transformed to deal with insurgents as well as the general population, eliminating the former and convincing the latter in a comprehensive strategy. The impressive document skilfully tackled past counterinsurgency failures and issues, wanting to modernise the earlier manual by distinguishing insurgency from warfare.

The document provided a new military definition of both insurgencies as “an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict”, and counterinsurgency as “military, paramilitary, political, economic,

53_{David Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 1956-1958, (Santa Monica, CA, 2006), 14.}

54_{Cornelius Friesendorf and Jörg Krempel, "The Police and Counterinsurgency", Militarized versus Civilian}

Policing: (Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, 2011), https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep14499.7.

55_{FM 3-24, Foreword.}

56_{The publication of this document coincided with Petraeus’ instatement as leader of United States Central}

Command. Here, counterinsurgency efforts were dealt with from across the Middle East and North Africa but focussed in particular on the largest operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency”.57_{FM 3-24’s}

limitations are its one-dimensional perspective on the strategy that severely restricted its potential for success. It laid out a generalised strategy that did not distinguish urban from rural insurgencies or groups from individuals. Where Petraeus conducted a successful counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq, applying the same ideas to another country proved unsuitable. For example, its considerations of airpower: a vital aspect of counterterrorism that had a key role in consequential counterinsurgency operations, was confined to just a five-page annex.58_{Emphasising the need to rebuild relationships with the Afghan public, as well}

as controlling and legitimating their presence, the military sought to assist foreign governments in denying sanctuary to terrorist insurgencies, and develop a security apparatus they hoped to be long-lasting, stating “Soldier and Marines are expected to be nation-builders as well as warriors”.59

Based on previous lessons learned, the document produced a critical debate because it had focussed exclusively on examples of conflicts from Western nations during the twentieth century. The examples derived from selected experiences during the past that have considered only a minute subset of the many different forms of warfare.60_{In evaluating the}

manual, it is clear that by taking only a number of Western nations from the twentieth century limited the broader discussion and ability to understand how to deal with insurgents in Afghanistan. Some experts have argued that FM 3-24’s impact should have been measured by the commitment of military troops and civilian agencies in applying the counterinsurgency efforts. Adam Schilling of the Army Center for Analysis noted in 2010 that “the civilian surge is yet to materialize in the numbers required” and so “U.S. policy goals are not pursued as effectively as they should be”.61_{Therefore, a lack of a civilian surge demonstrated a failure}

from FM 3-24 to impact the populace in the counterinsurgency strategy.

By contrast, Major General Charles J. Dunlap concluded that it was not the manual that was flawed, but that “it does not seem to realize that even attempting to use American troops in that role is not just ineffective but actually counterproductive in many COIN scenarios”.62

FM 3-24’s ‘one-size-fits-all’ application in the Middle East therefore fell short of offering a

57_{Field Manual 3-24, I.}

58_{Dunlap, “Shortchanging the Joint Flight?”.4.} 59_{Field Manual 3-24, Foreword.}

60_{Braun, "Beyond Counterinsurgency", 83.}

61_{Adam Schilling, “Nation-building, Stability Operations and Prophylactic COIN,” PKSOI Perspectives, May}

2010, http://pksoi.army.mil/PKM/publications/perspective/perspectivereview. cfm?perspectiveID=10.

62_{Charles J. Dunlap, “Shortchanging the Joint Flight?: An Airman's Assessment of FM 3-24 and the Case for}

Developing Truly Joint COIN Doctrine, Introduction”, (Air University Press, 2008), https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep13876.4.

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coherent, pragmatic, overall solution for the challenge of counterinsurgency. As a result, the counterinsurgency strategy was vague, and often troops were left to dictate policy using their own common sense.63_{As the former US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, wrote}

for Foreign Affairs in 2013, “Blindly following COIN doctrine led the US military to fixate on defeating the insurgency while giving short shrift to Afghan politics and hence the political logic of the overarching campaign”.64_{In urban centres the military was distracted by}

their failing attempts to convince President Karzai to use the Afghan National Army to defeat the Taliban when they should have been assisting Karzai to deliver peace and build up Afghanistan.

From counterinsurgency’s application, the assumption that such operations could undo the memories of American force in Afghanistan was unrealistic. Political support for the strategy reflected this. The institutional factions in Washington, DC that had been around during the Gulf War re-emerged in the Afghanistan discourse. With a National Security Council that had many of the same figures present than that of the George H. W. Bush administration, neo-conservative leaders such as the Vice President opted for an approach where “the mission should define the coalition, not the other way around”.65_Thereby,

enacting the words of his famously unilateralist ‘Defense Strategy of the 1990’s’ that had recommended “if America had to stand alone, she would”.66

As Bob Woodward, investigative journalist and author of Obama’s Wars noted, Obama told Vice President Joe Biden that “There was no good option that would guarantee success” in the number of troops that would further be deployed in the region, speeding up the mission to produce a “concept and goal are to accelerate transition to Afghan authorities in 18 to 24 months from July 2009”.67_{In essence, politicians in the White House handed this war over to}

generals, who embraced nation building as the new military mission.68_{Western nations were}

not prepared to fight insurgencies with the necessary level of endurance or structures to conduct an effective fight.69

63_{Christopher Sims, Fernando Luján, and Bing West, "Both Sides of the COIN: Defining War After}

Afghanistan", Foreign Affairs 91, no. 1 (2012), 178, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23217161.

64_{Eikenberry, "The Limits of Counterinsurgency Doctrine in Afghanistan", 66.} 65_{Richard B. Cheney and Lynne Cheney, In My Time, (Simon & Schuster, 2001), 331.}

66_{Richard B. Cheney, “Defense Strategy for the 1990s: The Regional Defense Strategy”, January 1993,}

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb245/doc15.pdf.

67_{Bob Woodward. “Obama's Wars”, (Simon and Schuster, 2010) 291 and 362.}

68_{Bing West, "Groundhog War: The Limits of Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan", ed. Sebastian Junger, Tim}

Hetherington, and Janus Metz, Foreign Affairs 90, no. 5, 2011. 163–71, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23041786.

69_{Braun, "Beyond Counterinsurgency", 82.}

Extensive reliance on hard power presented a number of pitfalls for the later counterinsurgency strategy of rebuilding the core institutions of the Afghan state. According to Professor Marc Herold’s Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States’ Aerial Bombing, between 3,100 and 3,600 civilians were killed by Operation Enduring Freedom during the first two years.70_{The repercussions of the number of civilian deaths that came as a result of}

America’s power projection in the region have most notably been found in the lack of success of counterinsurgency strategies in winning back the ‘hearts and minds’. Having spent over $5.9 trillion on the war against terrorism since 2001, instruments of hard power have become intertwined with America’s military industrial complex.71_{Soft power institutions have}

therefore taken a subordinate role in the conflict. Instruments of hard power such as the Department of Defense for example, are significantly more funded and supported than civilising strategies because they yield quick-fix results. Yet, the overuse of hard power in Afghanistan has in fact achieved little in terms of change.

The Afghanistan Study Group was formed of a range of former policy makers and academics who were sceptical of the methods to intervention in Afghanistan in 2010. These included members of the State Department such as former chief of staff Colonel Lawrence B. Wilkerson and scholars such as Matthew P. Hoh from the Centre for International Police and Bernard Finel from the National War College72_{The Group reported their reservations of}

counterinsurgency in their 2010 report A New Way Forward, stating that “waging a lengthy counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan may well do more to aid Taliban recruiting than to dismantle the group”.73_{The way that counterinsurgency operations were implemented as a}

consequence, instead of a co-pilot of counterterrorism, would have the adverse effect: it may encourage unity among radical opposition groups, extend the conflict into neighbouring Pakistan or threaten the American economy further by remaining in the region.74_Instead,

their recommendation focused primarily on a physical withdrawal and continuing economic aid. However, this approach is also not without its flaws. Loosening control before the

70_{“Afghan Daily Casualty Count”, Wayback Machine, 14 June 2007,}

https://web.archive.org/web/20070614101539/http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold/AfghanDailyCount.pdf.

71_{Neta C. Crawford, “Costs of War: United States Budgetary Costs of the Post-9/11 Wars”, Watson Institute,}

Brown University, November 2018,

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2018/Crawford_Costs%20of%20War%20Estimates %20Through%20FY2019.pdf.

72_{"Signatories & Endorsements: A New Way Forward", Afghan Study Group, August 2010,}

http://www.afghanistanstudygroup.org/signatories-and-endorsements/.

73_{Afghanistan Study Group, "A New Way Forward: Rethinking US Strategy in Afghanistan", August 2010,}

http://www.afghanistanstudygroup.org/NewWayForward_report.pdf

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Taliban’s chances of resurgence have been eliminated could likely undo the efforts that have mounted since 2001.

As a ruling power, the Taliban’s ties to Pakistan could destabilize two regions at once.75_{This is because Pakistan has a history of military support for different factions within}

Afghanistan that date back as far as the 1970s. A difficult neighbour to Afghanistan, Pakistan has augmented Afghan insecurity by providing protection and intelligence to the Taliban and other insurgent groups. This was to prohibit a strong and legitimate Afghanistan from emerging and allying with India in the region. Suspending American aid to Pakistan, however, could lead them to seek aid from other such as Russia, Saudi Arabia or China. America’s coercive power is therefore severely limited in Pakistan.76_{By ensuring the stable}

control of Pakistan’s nuclear capability, dissuading it from seeking aid from adversaries and preventing it from sponsoring terrorist operatives, Pakistan can easily threaten these interests. While al Qaeda posed a global threat with its network reaching to over sixty countries, insurgencies – and specifically the Taliban’s grip – were restricted to one region. Because the Taliban government of 1996-2001 were unwilling to deny al Qaeda sanctuary, the leadership of Afghanistan had to be overturned to support America’s War on Terror. Therefore, eliminating the capability of the Taliban to rise to power, reduced the ability for al Qaeda to operate, influence and recruit in Afghanistan.

Conclusion

Despite the early success of Operation Enduring Freedom in removing the Taliban from power and crippling al Qaeda’s core leadership and bases, the defeat was merely temporary. The Taliban insurgency remains resilient almost two decades after the regime had been toppled in December 2001. What counterinsurgency required was adequate defence planning that would be flexible for the future, even if they were not required for current needs. These goals are vital war aims because they outlive the conflict, preparing every region in Afghanistan for independent governance.

The method used to pursue insurgencies in Afghanistan until 2006 was the military solution, which was no solution at all. Deterrence through force would never be successful in a hard power military effort and would be highly unconvincing even if it was. While

75_{Paul D. Miller, "It's not just al-Qaeda: Stability in the Most Dangerous Region", World Affairs 174, no. 6}

(2012), 63–72 https://www.jstor.org/stable/23210462.

76_{Vanda Felbab-Brown, "Why Pakistan Supports Terrorist Groups, and Why the US Finds It so Hard to Induce}

Change", Brookings, January 2018, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/01/05/why-pakistan-supports-terrorist-groups-and-why-the-us-finds-it-so-hard-to-induce-change/.

counterinsurgency is often deemed an entirely military task, the army is only a part of the entire strategy. FM 3-24 focussed on precisely this issue; rebuilding a leaderless nation in Iraq required the population to get on board with the principles of the United States. However, Afghanistan’s variety of powerful leaders such as the Afghan government, the Taliban, tribal leaders and warlords created almost the perfect parallel to Iraq. Petraeus’s doctrine was simply inadequate to deal with Afghanistan because the situation there had not been militarily dealt with in the same way. Afghanistan’s counterinsurgency consisted of legitimating the Afghan government while disengaging the wave of opposition groups to America’s presence in the region. The high expectations of military operations in Iraq were not transferrable to the situation in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan occupies a crucial geography; situated between Pakistan and Iran, with borders to China and close to both India and Russia.77_{Encouraging democratic growth using}

a balance of counterinsurgency and soft power may have had the potential to spread beyond Afghanistan’s borders. The ignorance to the difference in culture, history and society was – from the start – America’s biggest weakness. Fundamentally, religion and religious obligation in the Middle East has been overlooked in America’s foreign policy goals for the War on Terror. America failed to find a balance between counterterrorism and

counterinsurgency, flexible enough to be applied to both urban and rural regions, while making reconstruction and stabilisation the overall focus of its mission.

Counterinsurgency and Soft Power: Will the twain ever meet? A discussion of the American approach to deterri