Transitioning to Afghan-Led Counterinsurgency
Abstract
The death of Osama bin Laden and the upcoming tenth anniversary of the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan have triggered several important policy issues. This testimony poses several questions. What should the U.S. objectives be in Afghanistan? Based on these objectives, what are America's military options (and what would the implications be for transition)? Finally, what are the political options, including the possibility of a peace settlement? I argue that U.S. objectives in Afghanistan should be tied to narrow U.S. national security interests, and the U.S. military strategy should transition to an Afghan-led counterinsurgency strategy. This strategy would involve decreasing the U.S. military footprint and relying on an increasingly prominent role of U.S. Special Operations Forces to help Afghans conduct counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations. It would require assisting Afghan national and local forces degrade the insurgency and target terrorist leaders. Implementing this strategy would require decreasing the U.S. military footprint to perhaps 30,000 or fewer forces by 2014 and surging Afghan National Security Forces and Afghan Local Police. It would also include leveraging U.S. Special Operations Forces, CIA, and some conventional forces to conduct several tasks: train, equip, and advise Afghan National Security Forces; assist local communities improve security and governance from the bottom up (especially the Afghan Local Police and Village Stability Operations programs); conduct direct action operations against high value targets; provide a range of "enablers," such as intelligence, civil affairs, and military information support operations.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 10, 2011
- Accession Number
- ADA543113
Entities
People
- Seth Jones
Organizations
- RAND Corporation