Will the U.S. Troop Surge in Afghanistan “Succeed” as it Did in Iraq?

Washington, D.C. - Prior to the Iraq and Afghanistan military interventions, U.S. planners cut deals with the least democratic groups in both countries,  crippling U.S. “long term objectives” in the process. In Iraq, the U.S. empowered competing rag tag groups with self-serving motivations. In Afghanistan, the U.S. empowered warlords responsible for the devastation of the country during its decade-long civil war, figures credited for creating the conditions on the ground for Taliban reign.

The ousting of Saddam Hussein and Mullah Omar regimes received broad local and international support. However, the newly formed governments in Kabul and Baghdad were more preoccupied with establishing a foothold in the power structure than rebuilding and uniting their devastated nations. The surge strategy was adopted in response to a deteriorating political and security crisis in both nations, a strategy that could have been averted had the U.S. empowered unpolluted figures to begin with.

The groups which claimed the reign of power in Iraq neither had grass root support, nor believed in a democratic option for Iraq throughout their anti-Saddam political career. Rather, they were driven by a design to form Shia dictatorial and theocratic government. Once in power, the groups became entangled with two pressing objectives: expansion of their sectarian base by avenging the remnants of the Sunni rule; unleashing a campaign for personal and regional gains. In reaction to this Shia advocated assault from 2003 to 2006, the leading Sunni groups (including banned Baath Party members) reactivated their presence through forging an alliance with al-Qaida foreign fighters. This Sunni vs. Shia confrontation sparked Iraq’s 2006 full-fledged sectarian violence.

The marriage of convenience between al-Qaida and Sunni groups was short-lived.  Spurred by al-Qaida’s brutal control of Al Anbar population, tribal chief Abdul Sattar Abu Risha formed the Al Anbar Salvation Counsel to purge al-Qaida from the province.  Abu Risha’s anti-al-Qaida military campaign evolved into the Awakening Counsels phenomenon across the provinces.  Abu Risha emerged as a national hero for containing al-Qaida violence and proactively promoting cross sectarian governance.  [Note:  this scenario does not exist in Afghanistan].  By the end of 2006, al-Qaida was on the run. Meanwhile, the Shia-led parties in Baghdad were steadily turning hostile to each other, threatening the fragile stability of the political scene.  The U.S. troop surge was implemented at this juncture, to safeguard Baghdad government from further deterioration.  Even though the surge was adopted for political reasons, it was sold as a necessary measure of counterterrorism.

In Afghanistan, the source for the current insurgency momentum can be traced back to the initial U.S. reliance on figures documented for carrying out massive atrocities against Afghans during the civil war years. These empowered figures [warlords] were neither concerned about the country’s reconstruction, nor its security.  They crippled the prospect for stability, further deepened the culture of impunity, accelerated ethno-political divisions and served as catalysts to Afghan national reconciliation. This generated broad discontent among disenfranchised Afghans, particularly Pashtuns in the south and east who initially welcomed the fall of Taliban, but had nowhere else to turn to for justice in the aftermath.  Rather than focusing on a strategy to address these challenges, the U.S. instead embarked on an Iraqi style surge.

While the Iraq troop surge was portrayed as a success, a scenario negated by the current level of escalated violence across the Arab populated provinces from Kirkuk to Basra; a similar surge scenario is already underway in Afghanistan.  However, this is a counter-productive undertaking because the premises for an Iraq-Afghanistan analogy never existed for the following reasons:  First, no organized grass-root armed Afghan movement has risen against foreign al-Qaida fighters or Taliban in Afghanistan, as the Sunni Awakening Counsels did in Al Anbar.  Two:  al-Qaida is no longer thriving in Afghanistan.  According to official Afghan, UN and U.S. estimates, there are less than 100 active fighters in the country.  In contrast, the number of al-Qaida foreign and domestic fighters was in the thousands prior to the Awakening Counsels in Iraq.  Third: the threat to the Afghan government and Coalition forces is largely generated from a home-grown and cross-border insurgency, the Taliban.

The current U.S. proposed counterinsurgency strategy of arming Afghan village forces (independent militias) to battle “al-Qaida” and Taliban cannot be compared to the Iraqi Awakenings. It is more prone to stroke unrestrained civil strife among Afghans on the heels of the U.S. 2011 withdrawal.  Accordingly, a more effective and sustainable approach than the surge option is to come to terms with the Taliban insurgency, pursue a serious political framework allowing the newly formed Afghan High Peace Counsel to lead the process and drum up regional and international support. Unless this type of a political engagement takes hold, the U.S. surge will only serve as a perpetual quagmire in Afghanistan, as it has in Iraq.

Riyadh Jarjis and Shukria Dellawar are independent analysts based in Washington, D.C.