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Volume 88 • Number 4
The contents of
Foreign Affairs
are copyrighted.©2009 Council on Foreign Relations,Inc.All rights reserved.Reproduction and distribution of this material is permitted only with the express written consent of
Foreign Affairs
.Visit www.foreignaffairs.org/permissions for more information.
Flipping the Taliban
How to Win in Afghanistan
Fotini Christia and Michael Semple
After seven
years of the Bush administration’s neglect and mis-management of Afghanistan,President Barack Obama was promptin ordering the deployment of 21,000 more U.S.troops.Over 55,000U.S.soldiers will soon be on the ground there.The replacement of General David McKiernan with General Stanley McChrystal at thehead of U.S.operations in Afghanistan is also intended to increaseforce projection there.The United States’allies are under pressure tofollow suit,if not with combat troops,then at least with training andmoney.All are concerned about the Taliban’s recent success at persuad-ing thousands of young Afghan men to sacrifice themselves to fight theforeign occupation.The Taliban’s followers have pushed the Afghangovernment and its allies out of large swaths of the countryside andcrept up to the gates of Kabul,bringing an alternative administrationand sharia courts to the vacated areas.The Taliban leader MullahMuhammad Omar recently oªered,ironically,to give safe passage to
nato
forces that choose to leave the country,just as the mujahideenoªered safe passage to Soviet troops two decades ago.Although sending more troops is necessary to tip the balance of power against the insurgents,the move will have a lasting impact only if it is accompanied by a political “surge,”a committed eªort to persuadelarge groups ofTaliban fighters to put down their arms and give up the[
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Flipping the Taliban
How to Win in Afghanistan
Fotini Christia and Michael Semple
Fotini Christia
is Assistant Professor of Political Science at MIT.
Michael Semple
is a regional specialist focusing on Afghanistan andPakistan,with extensive experience dialoguing with the Taliban.
fight.Both the recent interagency white paper on U.S.policy towardAfghanistan and Pakistan and Obama’s March 27 speech announcing anew U.S.strategy for Afghanistan acknowledged that integratingreconcilable insurgents will be a key complement to the military buildup. Yet U.S.policymakers have not adequately developed a vision of how toachieve reconciliation.Admitting their lack of knowledge about the pre-cise character of the insurgency,they equate reconciliation with merely cajoling Taliban foot soldiers into crossing over to the U.S.side.Such a minimalist approach is unlikely to deliver peace.Whatis required instead is a nimble,sophisticated political campaign that isbuilt on a proper understanding of the nature of the insurgency andthat,combined with the reconciliation eªorts of the Afghan govern-ment,the United States’
nato
allies,and Pakistan,enables insurgentcommanders and their supporters to realign with the Afghan govern-ment.The overriding lesson of the U.S.experience in Iraq—first itsfailures and more recently its successes—is that no occupying power canhope to quash an insurgency by killing and capturing its way to victory.It must make friends,especially among its enemies.In Afghanistan,a counterinsurgency strategy that includes a credible attempt at recon-ciliation is more likely to achieve stability than one that relies solely on foreign troops and victories in the battlefield.
where the wind blows The idea
that large groups of armed men bent on killing Americansand other Westerners can be persuaded to change sides may seemfanciful at first.But it is not—at least not in Afghanistan.Aftercontinuing uninterrupted for more than 30 years,war in Afghanistanhas developed its own peculiar rules,style,and logic.One of theserules is side with the winner.Afghan commanders are not cogs in amilitary machine but the guardians of specific interests—the interestsof the fighters pledged to them and of the tribal,religious,or politicalgroups from which these men are recruited.Few factors have moti- vated individual Afghan commanders over the years more than thedesire to end up on the winning side.They have often switchedcamps midconflict.In doing so,they have not declared their loyalty to a new cause or a diªerent tribe;they have argued that changing
Flipping the Taliban
foreign affairs
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July/August 2009
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