In the comments of an earlier post BernardFinel.com » The Missing Piece in Afghanistan: Negotiations several questions arose.

aarun writes:

Would going enemy-centric really alter the insurgent’s calculation enough to get them to the negotiate? Didn’t the Soviets essentially wage an enemy-centric campaign to no avail?

And what would an enemy centric military campaign look like when most of the leadership is in Pakistan? Even more drone strikes?

Even if an enemy centric campaign was successful in persuading reconcilable Taliban to stop fighting, it seems likely that it would simultaneously create more “hard-core” leaning fighters due to heavy collateral damage, high civilian casualties, etc. Furthermore, even if the strategy could dissuade accidental guerrillas from siding with the insurgents, the coalition still must also have a viable alternative to offer — jobs, protection from the Taliban, etc.

In the same thread, Eric Blair writes:

I think the idea is to use negotiation as a means to persuade reconcilable Taliban to stop fighting. And through this method reduce the fighting power of the enemy.

Blair has got it most right, from my perspective.  Where I disagree with Blair is perhaps the stress on the concept of “reconcilable” insurgents.  We’re already focused on the “reconcilables.”  Unfortunately, our definition of “reconcilable” is someone who can be reconciled to the concept of outright defeat, where the insurgents are disarmed and unempowered, though perhaps paid off financially.  I don’t see that as a sound basis for ending the conflict, because while you might get some “$10 dollar Taliban” to jump ship for that deal (I suspect we overestimate the number of such fighters) you won’t get the leaders to give up the fight, and they don’t really need masses of foot soldiers to continue.

My proposal is much more radical in a sense.  I’m arguing that the best way to make use of the current “surge” is to think of the major Afghan insurgents — minimally QST, HiG, and the Haqqani network — as formal combatants with whom we seek a negotiated end to hostilities.  Our carrots would be some sort of power-sharing — either nationally, or more likely in terms of regional autonomy.  Our sticks would be our ability to degrade their combat power in Afghanistan.  So contra aarun above, the goal isn’t to target their senior leadership.  It is to talk to their senior leadership in a formal setting.  You don’t want to kill them, and indeed, you don’t want to isolate them.  You want them to be able to clearly see and understand that their ground forces are being severely degraded in the short-run.

The goal is also not focused on “accidental guerillas” nor on the population.  They are largely irrelevant to this strategy.  As a matter of law and ethics, you want to fight according to accepted laws of war — non-combatant immunity, discrimination, proportionality, etc.  But, the concept of military necessity would be weighed more on battlefield factors than on some grand theory of winning hearts and minds.

We don’t need a viable alternative to offer.  This is a cold hearted approach that says the only people that matter are the people with the guns.  The sole goal of this approach is to get Mullah Omar to the bargaining table on the assumption/hope that he and his cronies are realistic enough to understand that if they hope to govern even a small piece of Afghanistan in the next decade, their best bet to do so will come from a negotiated solution.

There are four major challenges this approach, and one minor challenge.

(1) It is probably impossible to sell domestically in the United States.  Enough said.

(2) It is very likely that Omar and the other insurgents have much broader goals and that they won’t settle for anything less than the whole of Afghanistan.  I don’t know if that is true or not.  Various analysts read the tea leaves differently on this score.  And as far as I know, we’ve never actually reach out, even indirectly, to gauge their willingness to negotiate.

(3) It is even more likely that the insurgents think they can wait us out.  Negotiations may get them half the pie quickly, but they may be willing to try to get the whole thing at some point down the road.  That said, they’ve been out of power for eight years, and if they are realistic, they know they are looking at another five to ten years before they can even hope for outright victory, during which a lot can happen.  Again, I don’t know how this would play out.

(4) Operationally, it may not be possible to target insurgent forces effectively enough to send a clear signal to insurgent leader that their forces are being degraded.  This approach only works if we are able to actually target those forces systematically.  I don’t write about operational matters usually — except in broad terms — because I don’t have enough ground knowledge to assess operational issues.  My sense, however, from reading the literature is that the main criticism against “enemy-centric” operations is that they are politically counter-productive, not militarily ineffective.  In other words, the reason the pop-centric COIN guys are opposed to it is not because you can’t do it, but rather because all it does is make more insurgents in the long-run and fails to eliminate the underlying causes of the insurgency (assumed to be some sort of legitimacy/security gap).  If, on the other hand, it turns out that we can’t actually clear insurgents through combat sweeps, then this approach isn’t viable for operational reasons.  I’ll defer to others with more knowledge and experience on this issue, but as I say, I don’t think I seen many argue that it is beyond our capabilities to erode insurgent combat power if we choose to do so.

(5) The minor challenge is the human rights one.  Yes, a negotiated solution would turn over big chunks of the country to brutal thugs and religious fanatics.  But the answer is pretty simple, I think: a robust internal resettlement program for people who don’t want to live under Taliban rule and a generous asylum program abroad for people at genuine risk of retribution.  Ultimately, I doubt we’ll ever be able to guarantee educational rights for girls in areas where the insurgency is now strong, so it isn’t clear to me how much we’re surrendering in that case.  We’re better trying to lure people interested in that sort of life to other parts of the country where the combination of religious fanaticism and Pashtun nationalism is not fused into a durable violent movement.

Look, ultimately, I don’t think this is a good idea.  I think we ought to be turning the whole thing over to the Afghans.  But if you want to transform the situation in 18-24 months, I think inevitably, you need to be focused not on “victory” but on negotiations, and using our increased combat power to shape the environment to make our adversaries willing to negotiate in good faith.  It may still not be possible, but that’s the only way I see to square the circle.