Michael Evans, Defence (sic) Editor, London Times, January 4, 2010, had an article on Major-General Andrew Mackay saying the U.K. Ministry of Defence is institutionally incapable in Afghanistan. Major-General Mackay, who commanded 52 Infantry Brigade in Helmand, Afghanistan, when he was a brigadier, resigned in September after voicing personal doubts about the way the Afghan campaign was being run.
In a paper published by the MoD’s Defence Academy at Shrivenham, in Oxfordshire, General Mackay’s article, written jointly with Steve Tatham, a senior commander in the Royal Navy, says that messages from London often had no relevance at ground level to troops engaged in contact with the Taliban. They said the MoD had consistently failed to understand the motivations of the local Afghans.
Mackay and Tatham call for a new strategy which focuses less on winning battles against the Taliban and more on understanding their culture, economy and psychology.
This may be said about the U.S. Department of Defense and parts of our military in failing to learn the lessons from Vietnam. El Salvador, Iraq, etc.
Is the U.S. military institutionally incapable of keeping pace with the Taliban rapid changes and the associated willingness to adapt and quickly – at the same time? Do our institutions of democracy for the political paradigm and the U.S. military combined arms, massive fire power paradigm, have a place in Afghanistan?
It can be said that many in the Administration and the U.S. news media consistently fail to understand that what seems to be irrational behavior, by the Afghans, is entirely rational to the Afghans. The U.S. idea to offer democracy to Afghans is largely irrelevant to many local Afghan communities as they struggle through their traditional daily lives.
Hopefully the 30,000 “surge” will bring new thinking about engaging the Afghans at their local level with understanding as to what is relevant to them and not what is brought with the U.S. home grown institutions, intuitions and prejudices.
