10-27-2009, 05:59 PM
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#1
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Picture of the Day Guru
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Sunny San Diego
Posts: 8,756
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Taliban Outnumbered 12-1 in Afghanistan?
Would sending more people there make much of a difference? Obviously a different aproach seems to be needed.
http://my.earthlink.net/article/top?...10271171527477
Quote:
"The U.S. and its allies already have ample numbers and firepower to annihilate the Taliban, if only the Taliban would cooperate by standing still and allowing us to bomb them to smithereens," said Andrew Bacevich, a professor of international relations and history at Boston University, and one-time platoon leader in Vietnam.
"But the insurgents are conducting the war in ways that do not play to (allied) strengths."
The Taliban rebels are estimated to number no more than 25,000. Ljubomir Stojadinovic, a military analyst and guerrilla warfare expert from Serbia, said that although McChrystal's reinforcements would lift the ratio to 20-1 or more, they would prove counterproductive.
"It's impossible to regain the initiative by introducing more foreign forces, which will only breed more resentment and more recruits for the enemy," he said. "The Soviets tried the exact same thing in Afghanistan in the 1980s with disastrous results."
McChrystal's defenders say the U.S. has learned from Soviets' mistakes. At his instruction, NATO troops are increasingly abandoning heavy-handed tactics.
"In the end this (conflict) cannot be solved by military means alone, and in that sense a precise figure of Taliban fighters is not the point," said NATO spokesman James Appathurai.
The U.S. says it's already adjusting its strategy to shift the focus from hunting down and killing Taliban fighters to protecting civilians - in some cases allowing insurgent units to remain untouched if they are not deemed an imminent threat.
McChrystal has also insisted that ground commanders use airpower only as a last resort and when they are absolutely sure civilians are not at risk. As a career Special Forces officer, McChrystal is likely to use small maneuverable units rather than large, heavily armed formations.
Also, experts say guerrilla numbers are not the most important factor in a counterinsurgency campaign. Instead, the number of U.S. troops depends on more complex calculations, including the size and location of the population, and the extent of the training effort for the Afghan security forces.
Appathurai said the goals of the Afghanistan strategy are key to determining how many forces are required. The goal is to have enough troops in populated areas to protect the citizenry and to provide the forces needed to train the Afghans.
In addition, while there may be as many as 25,000 Taliban, it is not a monolithic group like an army, with a clear chain of command that has to be confronted soldier for soldier. Instead, it is a scattered and diverse mix of insurgents, some more ideologically motivated than others.
There are currently about 104,000 international troops in Afghanistan, including about 68,000 Americans. Afghan security forces consist of 94,000 troops supported by a similar number of police, bringing the total Allied force to close to 300,000 members.
The 12-1 ratio may be misleading because two-thirds of the Allied force is made up of Afghans, who lack the training and experience. The Taliban usually fight in small, cohesive units made up of friends and fellow clansmen. A more meaningful ratio, then, might be 4-1 or 5-1.
Historically in guerrilla wars, security forces have usually had at least a 3-1 advantage.
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