By Christopher Biggers, columnist for Asia Chronicle.

While U.S. President Obama decides how to spend his waning political capital, the situation in Afghanistan collapses. Obama must choose one of two strategies: Deciding whether to conduct a counterinsurgency (COIN) with the proper force ratios or opting for a “light troop footprint.” Now is not the time for cutting corners.

With the healthcare agenda taking a large blow with last week’s vote by the financial committee, the ongoing discussion to send more troops to Afghanistan highlights further cleavages in the Democratic Party. As a result, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the ISAF commander in Afghanistan, may run into a stumbling block if his plan to obtain further resources to police the insurgency is denied. This possibility comes as the President prepares to make a difficult decision weighing the low public support for the war - as reflected in recent polls - and the risks to his already fractured party.
With the conflict ratcheting up this year with an increase in civilian deaths and the emplacement of IEDs, the military leadership on the ground has been pushing for a COIN approach. However, the problem of fully promoting such a doctrine comes in the form of increased risk to US and allied troops due largely to the inexperience of executing COIN operations.

This situation is further complicated in our 24-hour news society with the so-called “CNN effect” making it unacceptable to wage a costly war. Consequentially, Americans are confronted weekly with the casualties, both foreign and domestic, putting additional pressures on the Presidency as political will is weakened.

In the attempts to hedge the risks to American and allied troops, the US has traditionally opted for the technological solution, by placing eyes in the sky in the form of UAVs with hellfire missile payloads. As a result, policy makers have taken a ‘light footprint’ approach by cutting troop strength, and relying more on surgical air strikes in what has become a narrowly defined counterterrorism (CT) strategy. In doing so, UAVs have played an important role in this approach by targeting the ‘enemy power centers’ which are often formulated as members of the enemy leadership.

Although leadership targets are meant to fragment the enemy into smaller more manageable groups, the cultural terrain in Afghanistan has made many of these ‘decapitation’ attacks ineffective. In fact, the resulting air strikes in many of these operations have produced negative externalities by activating the population, increasing the size of the enemy, and their respective support. However, that is not to say the US should not go after leadership targets but to imply a different approach focused more on credible HUMINT (i.e. Human Intelligence), which other strategies such as COIN would help facilitate.

In the event the President makes the tough choice of utilizing a COIN approach, the outcome would create a troop and a civilian surge with the aim of developing better relations with the local populace further supporting indigenous police and military units.

In other words, US and Afghan troops would be more visible on the ground increasing their interaction with the populace in order to reduce the pockets of state exclusion and the associated exploitation by insurgents. Gen. McChrystal has tried to negotiate current obstacles with a COIN doctrine in mind, as observed recently when sending out orders to reduce civilian casualties.

However, as the September Kunduz air strikes on fuel trucks by US-led NATO forces demonstrate, the good will and the associated military gains developed in recent months are easily invalidated fostering hostility toward allied forces. This recent air strike comes nearly four months after the May Garani attacks where 140 civilians were killed by US forces in a similar manner.

Such incidents carry valuable lessons for the direction of US strategy. On a macro level, these attacks reify the problems of promoting counterterrorism at the expense of counterinsurgency as such disastrous operations decrease future opportunities for enhancing operational effectiveness. For example, due to the nature of the local culture, the Afghani code of conduct, or Pashtunwali, contains notions of ‘revenge’ (or badal), which is often intertwined with familial concepts of honor, creating broad obligations to punish aggression against members of the tribe.

When US forces and allied troops kill indiscriminately, they create more enemies from the local populace and perhaps even provide an opportunity for insurgents to exploit the vulnerable. In this light, it’s possible the Taliban could convince bereaved family members to support their cause on the basis of badal. In fact, since the Taliban recruit locally, US strikes and the ensuing grievances may give them a tactical advantage as strategic communication can be customized to fit a respective ethnic group using locally acquired tacit knowledge.

The success of this approach has been highlighted in recent reports as the Taliban have used other concepts in Pashtunwali such as ‘hospitality’ (or melmastia) in order to gain a foothold within local communities in the Sangin valley.

In addition, these incidents directly show how ineffective air strikes can be without proper intelligence on the ground. As German troops had called in attack positions to allied forces, their inability to properly determine the nature of the threat [i.e. pattern of life] reflects the dire need to renegotiate the so-called ‘caveats’ placed on foreign forces by their respective governments.

Such scenarios reiterate the very comical nature of what ISAF has come to mean to international observers and reporters alike: “I Saw Americans Fight”. Even despite these restrictions, had there been a genuine counterinsurgency strategy in effect, the possibility of obtaining reliable intelligence exponentially increases giving rise to opportunities to separate, detect, and target enemy combatants.

On the micro level, these examples illustrate not only the constraints on allied forces conducting operations but also the fundamental problem when individual troops and commanders are unable to change their perspective towards a newly proposed strategy.

The conservative organizational culture of the military institution can at times overcome the novelties of a new doctrine, especially one that has been utilized infrequently or disseminated improperly. As one American soldier put it, “It’s better to be judged by twelve than carried by six” – when referring to the improper use of deadly force and the resulting court marshal. Because troops remain largely separate from the population, inappropriate force protection measures are often utilized due to a trust deficit. Without a COIN strategy such deficits worsen over time until commanders are prepared to map the human terrain, identify the local social networks as well as build a rapport with those they are trying to protect.

Although the US is determined to find some resolve in Afghanistan, commanders still have to face issues of organizational discipline and by extension concerns for maintaining ‘intellectual capital’ through developing a proper learning institution.

Further blood and treasure will certainly be required if the US chooses to further develop the principles of a COIN strategy while trying to convey them effectively to troops on the ground. However, the sooner the US implements a strategy that decreases the base for the insurgency to acquire additional resources, the better.