Crosshairs - Military Matters in Review

  More than two millennia ago, a Greek city-state’s strategy often centered upon destroying an enemy city-state’s crops. If the hoplite infantry’s shields and spears defeated the defending hoplites, they won the food and therefore the war. If they failed, they went home.

 In the first decade of the 21st century, the United States and its allies are doing something similar in southern Afghanistan, but it’s more complicated. First, the opium trade, rather than a food crop, is the strategic asset. If the map of Afghanistan was a bulbous sack and you poured poppy seeds in the small end, they would fall into the bottom provinces, with Helmand Province collecting most of the seeds. Ironically, when the Taliban controlled Afghanistan, they banned poppy cultivation in 2000, leaving the United States an opening to win hearts and minds by encouraging it when it expelled the Taliban after 9/11.

 Now the poppy chickens have come home to roost, and the Taliban have twisted their religion to take over the opium trade. In a region of few, and dangerous roads to take crops to market, if you tell an impoverished  farmer you’ll buy all the poppies he can produce and deliver them to market for him, he’ll likely jump at the deal. Add extortion and taxation and you’ll reap as much as $300 million a year for Taliban coffers. That represents as much as 90 percent of the world’s opium production, and will pay for Taliban military operations in the southern provinces for the year. Thus, the opium trade makes up nearly 60 percent of the country’s gross national product. So the poppies have to go. The United States is ponying up $250 million to replace poppies with wheat, and another $200 million for infrastructure to get the crops to market.

 Afghanistan is not a city-state, but it’s also not a nation-state. It’s groups of families, tribes and clans protected by local warlords, or oppressed by Taliban leaders. So it must become a nation-state, with a visible central government that the Afghans know, respect, and support. This means a proactive government free of corruption. Until this happens, farmers and villagers have no choice of leadership than either warlords or the Taliban. As much as they may despise the Taliban’s savagery in the name of religion, they often get the Taliban by default.

 This brings the two-fold mission that the United States is undertaking: (1) work with the government in Kabul; and (2) provide security in the rural areas until the Afghans can handle their own. The second requires the same difficult strategy that has succeeded in many an anti-guerrilla campaign. And we’re going to work on it in August with 20,000 Marines and soldiers moving into Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul Provinces, down in the bottom of that bulbous sack. They must win the hearts and the minds of the people by protecting them and training them to protect themselves when they are not present -- and eventually when they leave for good. It’s a tough job to move in as foreigners and try to make friends with farmers while fighting the Taliban terrorists. The Taliban make it tougher by fighting only when they think they can win, and forcing the United States and its NATO allies to use supporting arms that aren’t smart enough to kill just the enemy. But that’s the same tough strategy guerrillas have used for centuries.

 For the Taliban, it’s an all-or-nothing struggle. According to Agence France-Presse, the Taliban leadership set May 5 as the target date to launch Operation Nasrat (Victory), targeting Afghan officials and international diplomats with a wave of suicide bombings and other attacks. This comes in addition to attacks from across the border in Pakistan. So the Pakistani sanctuary also has to be eliminated, and officials say it will take a decade for the Pakistani army to do its share.  

 For the United States, it’s also an all-or-nothing struggle. This is not a Greek hoplite war against another city-state, where the losers can go home and say, “Well, we tried.” It would be disastrous to our nation-state if the United States decided the struggle wasn’t worth the time, money, and blood, and went home. Much more is at stake in this war than Afghanistan’s crops, be they poppies or wheat.

 This article may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to Crosshairs - Military Matters in Review by Fred Edwards. Visit http://www.milmat.net for more Crosshairs.