Flooding any area with large numbers of armed people will always have larger ramifications than just the security implications in the immediate area. In Afghanistan, we have to look to the borders, to Pakistan and to Iran, to understand the implications of an escalation. In both cases, escalation poses grave risks for U.S. interests. Let’s [...]
Archive for March 25, 2009
Drop Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, Part 5: Iran
Posted: March 25, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Afghan National Army, Afghanistan, ANA, COIN, counterinsurgency, Iran, ISAF, Obama
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Drop Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, Coda: Remembering Oscar Romero
Posted: March 25, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: COIN, counterinsurgency, El Salvador, Romero
Yesterday was the anniversary of the assassination of Oscar Romero. Romero was killed by “counterinsurgents” backed by the U.S. government. The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual still cites the Salvadoran counterinsurgency as an example of success, despite the “30,000 politically motivated killings between October 15th 1979 and December 1981.” …Preachers and teachers know very [...]
Drop Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, Part 4: Arming the Corrupt Border Police
Posted: March 25, 2009 in UncategorizedTags: Afghan Border Police, Afghanistan, Blackwater, COIN, Congressional Research Service, counterinsurgency, DynCorp
In my first post in this series, I briefly mentioned the idea of a “seal,” i.e. a frontier that blocks the counterinsurgent’s opponents from escaping U.S. firepower and establishing a safe haven. The counterinsurgent wants to trap the opponent in a given geographic area and then convince the local population to expel them into the [...]
