sponses to the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan since Oc

tober 2001. Taliban insurgencies in both countries have grown i

strength during this period, though the United States and its part

ners have dedicated significant amounts of time and effort to stabi

lize the region. Pakistan and Afghanistan represent the epicenter i

this long war because machinations in these two countries led t

the emergence of the first Taliban neo-emirate with Pakistan’s sup

port. The Taliban consequently harbored al-Qaeda before and dur

ing the September 2001 attacks on the United States. Al-Qaeda an

affiliated armed groups now benefit from sanctuary across the bor

der in Pakistan. The border regions between Afghanistan and Pak

istan—known as the Pashtun Belt—are inexorably linked to th

future stability of South Asia and to the security of the Unite

States. This book lies at the intersection of international securit

studies, military strategy, and the operational art of counterinsur

gency and offers general policy and strategy prescriptions for bring

ing durable stability to this vital region. 

“This work provides a clear, concise, and well-documented analysis of th

complex cross-border counterinsurgency that is at the center of U.S. militar

operations in South-Central Asia. It provides a careful and insightful evalua

tion of U.S. and Pakistan counterinsurgency operations and recommendation

about how to apply methods that have proven successful. Colonel Cassidy i

a soldier-scholar whose keen strategic leader perspectives make this book es

sential reading for anyone interested in better understanding the challenge

and opportunities that characterize the current and future struggle.”

—Major General Gregg F. Martin, 48th Commandan

U.S. Army War Colleg

“An essential guide to the complex conflict dynamics of the Pashtun Bel

Cassidy’s conclusions—hope for Afghanistan but not for Pakistan—shoul

serve as a vital wake-up call for policy makers.”

—Theo Farrell, professor, Department of War Studies

King’s College Londo

“This study of the campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan could not be mor

timely. It is penetrating in its analysis, frank in its language, and profoun

in its description of recent operations. It helps to frame the debate fo

NATO’s endgame in Afghanistan.” 

—Mark Urban, defence editor of the BBC’s Newsnight and author o

Task Force Black: The Explosive True Story of the Secre

Special Forces War in Ira

War, Will, and Warlords

Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan

and Pakistan, 2001–2011

Robert M. Cassidy

Marine Corps University Press

Quantico, Virginia
Disclaimer

The views expressed in this book are solely those of the author.

They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the organizations

for which he works, Marine Corps University, the U.S. Marine

Corps, the Department of the Navy, or the U.S. government.

Marine Corps University Press

3078 Upshur Avenue

Quantico, Virginia 22134

www.tecom.usmc.mil/mcu/mcupress

Copyright © 2012 by Robert M. Cassidy. All rights reserved.

1st Printing, 2012

PCN 10600008200

Published by Marine Corps University Press, Quantico, VA.
CONTENTS

Preface ....................................................................................v

Acknowledgments .................................................................xiii

Maps................................................................................xiv-xv

Chapter 1 Introduction and Historical Overview........................1

Chapter 2 Afghanistan to 2009: The End of The Beginning?......31

Chapter 3 Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us?.................61

Chapter 4 The Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan, 2009–2011:

Hard but Hopeful?.................................................................109

Chapter 5 The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011:

Hard and Not Hopeful ..........................................................149

Chapter 6 The Prospects for Peace: Anarchistan or

Perfidistan?...........................................................................191

Chapter 7 Operational Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan

until 2011 .............................................................................223

Key Terms and Abbreviations ................................................237

Bibliography.........................................................................239

Photo Captions and Credits ...................................................257

Index ...................................................................................259

About the Author..................................................................271

iii

PREFACE

The first part of this book’s title highlights three essential realities that help explain the environment in Afghanistan andPakistan. First, the Afghan people have faced tumult, conflict, and war since July 1973, when Muhammad Daoud Khan

usurped Muhammad Zahir Shah. A corollary to this is the fact that

the Pakistani state has helped foment insurgent proxy war and terrorism in Afghanistan since 1973. In fact, fomenting insurgencies

in Afghanistan by proxy is in the metaphorical DNA of the Pakistani

security apparatus. Second, protracted irregular wars are a contest

of will, as insurgents use the art of the ambush, armed propaganda

in the form of spectacular violence, and cross-border sanctuaries

to protract the war to erode the will of the counterinsurgents so

they give up the fight. The insurgents can win if they can prolong

the war while not exhausting their own will. In other words, as

Henry Kissinger so aptly noted, “The guerrilla wins if he does not

lose.” The counterinsurgents lose if they do not win before their

domestic political will is exhausted. Third, warlords, or feudal

barons, run criminal patronage fiefs or insurgent-terrorist networks

that operate across the borders and exist outside and inside the

states as well as serve as state proxies in some cases. Patronage

has long been a reality in South Asia. However, the growth and

scope of warlord-led insurgent and criminal networks that began

before the Soviet-Afghan War, but intensified after the Soviet-sponsored government fell in February 1992, have helped catalyze support for the insurgencies by their predatory, venal, and violent

practices against the people. War, will, and warlords, therefore, are

central to any understanding of what has transpired in Pakistan and

Afghanistan. 

The second part of the title simply describes the book’s scope.

This book compares the catalysts and the growth of the insurgencies in the Pashtun Belt on both sides of the Durand Line over the

last 10-plus years. The Afghan and Pakistani Taliban insurgent

movements have grown in strength during this period, even though

the United States and its partners have dedicated significant

amounts of resources, effort, and time to pacify the region. The

v
vi

analysis that follows discerns and elucidates the reasons for the

resurgence of the insurgency in Afghanistan and for the emergence

of one in Pakistan. This work also explores the implications of what

has transpired during this long war, arriving at some general policy

and strategy prescriptions for bringing durable stability to the region. It posits that explanations for the catalysts of these two insurgencies relate to a paucity of analysis and resources that

exacerbated or created grievances among the local populations, excessive or inappropriate applications of lethal force, and ill-prepared

approaches to information operations that failed to integrate information narratives with the use of military force. 

The framework for this analysis uses a set of questions and rationale to examine and compare the insurgencies and the responses to

them in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The comparison of these two

cases from the perspective of each country should reap useful insights

for those hoping to better understand the complex challenges engendered in South Asia. This volume also aims to explain some of the

cause and effect linkages, illumining why the prospects for durable

peace and stability among the people in Afghanistan and Pakistan

are still in peril. As a theoretical underpinning, this book enlists a

straightforward analytical model contained in Analyzing Insurgency

by John D. Waghelstein and Donald Chisholm to explore the catalysts

associated with the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban and the emergence of the Pakistani Taliban. Specifically, elements of this model

help frame questions concerning legitimacy and credibility.1

Afghanistan and Pakistan represent the most crucial effort in this

protracted war because they are where the first neo-emirate formed

and they harbored and abetted al-Qaeda in devising the September

2001 attacks on the United States. Al-Qaeda and affiliated armed

groups benefiting from safe haven in Afghanistan started this long

war, strategically, symbolically, and philosophically. These same

groups now benefit from sanctuary across the border in Pakistan. It

is essential to prevail in this effort because Afghanistan and Pakistan

are inexorably linked to the future stability of South Asia and to the

security of the United States and its allies. The U.S. Interagency Policy Group’s March 2009 white paper on Afghanistan and Pakistan

1 John D. Waghelstein and Donald Chisholm, Analyzing Insurgency (Newport, RI: U.S. Naval

War College, 2006), 6–12
stipulated that the core goal of the United States must be to disrupt,

dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda; reduce its safe havens in Pakistan;

and prevent its return to both Pakistan and Afghanistan.2

Methodological Framework

Purpose and Scope

Two central questions and two related questions guide and inform this study. First, after over 10 years at war in the region, did

U.S. and Coalition forces in fact finally get the inputs right? Second,

what are the prospects for bringing some degree of durable stability

to the region? A correlative to the first question is, how have the

United States and its partners done in view of the ostensibly renewed and new insurgencies? A correlative to the second question

poses, what is to be done to achieve some notion of sustainable

governance and security? The purpose of this book is to explore the

U.S.-led Coalition and the U.S.-supported Pakistani efforts in countering the Taliban/al-Qaeda insurgencies in both of these countries

to date. The corollary purpose of this study is to learn from the efforts of the last 10-plus years, to discern best practices across both

counterinsurgency efforts, and to craft recommendations for more

effective counterinsurgencies and strategies. 

This book lies at the intersection of international security studies,

military strategy, and the operational art of counterinsurgency. For

conventional militaries to be successful in counterinsurgency and irregular warfare, they must adapt their means and methods to meet

the exigencies of a range of lethal and nonlethal actions and activities. In addition, the methods of Coalition partners should generally

be collaborative, designed to adequately implement the principles

and tenets of counterinsurgency in complementary ways. This book

identifies best and worst practices in both counterinsurgency and

counterterrorism operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan with the

aim of crafting recommendations for more effective counterinsurgency. By analyzing this particularly complex challenge from both

sides of the border, this work provides explanations for the ostensibly

vii

2 U.S. White House National Security Council, White Paper of the Interagency Policy Group’s Report on U.S. Policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, (Washington, DC: White House, March

2009), 1.
viii

lamentable performances in Afghanistan and Pakistan up to 2009. A

better understanding of the success or failure in how the United

States, along with its partners, adapts to meet the exigencies of the

dual Taliban insurgencies among the Pashtun populations on both

sides of the Durand Line will point to recommendations for improving performance and increase our opportunities for ultimate success.

Analytical Framework

This analysis employs a comparative approach, structuring questions

around three variables to frame the inquiry on these two associated counterinsurgencies. The comparison of the two approaches through the same

set of analytical questions adds rigor to this study. The purpose of the

questions, which are informed by the corpus of counterinsurgency literature and doctrine, is to illuminate the causes for the resurgence of the insurgency in Afghanistan and for the emergence of the full-blown

insurgency in Pakistan. A parallel purpose is to amplify the catalysts for

the insurgencies and to understand how to remove or mitigate these with

the aim of achieving some notion of enduring peace and stability among

the Afghans and Pakistanis. This study also enlists the analytical model

contained in Waghelstein and Chisholm to explore the catalysts associated

with the rise of the Afghan and the Pakistani Taliban. Specifically, elements of this model help frame questions concerning the perceived legitimacy of the efforts; the credible use of force; and the integration of the

former with information operations to shape perceptions and build legitimacy for these efforts. The security challenges endangered by the principally Pashtun Afghan and Pakistani Taliban insurgencies cannot be

decoupled because there is some degree of symbiosis and collusion. While

Afghanistan and Pakistan are distinct polities with uniquely complex challenges, each cannot ultimately succeed without mutual cooperation that

leads to complementary, not contradictory, relations.3

Definition of Terms and Questions to Frame Analysis

In general terms, an insurgency is an armed political competition

3 Alexander L. George, “Case Studies and Theory Development: The Method of Structured, Focused Comparison” in Diplomacy: New Approaches in History, Theory, and Policy, ed. Paul Gordon Lauren (New York: Macmillan, 1979), 44, 49, 57, 61–62. Steven Van Evera, Guide to

Methodology for Students of Political Science (Cambridge, MA: Defense and Arms Control Studies

Program MIT, 1993), 33. Waghelstein and Chisholm, Analyzing Insurgency, 6–12.
for the control of the population. Counterinsurgency is the political

and military response to the insurgents’ efforts to wrest control of

the population. Counterinsurgency in this era must intrinsically

focus on protecting the preponderance of the population and killing

or capturing the small number of people who comprise the insurgent cadre and the leaders who represent the core of the insurgency. Moreover, successful insurgencies are animated by

ideologies or grievances that resonate with their leadership and the

relevant populace. It is not possible to beat an ideology with bullets

alone. In counterinsurgency, “The only piece of key terrain to be

captured is the four inches between the ears of the target audience”—that is, influence over and support from the relevant population. Those who can control the population, physically and

psychologically, by best protecting it and administering services

and predictable justice will in the end prevail. It is important to do

these things better than the insurgent and to be perceived as doing

these things better by the people. Legitimacy, the capacity to use

force credibly, and efficacy in shaping the information environment

are the sine qua non of success in counterinsurgency. These are

not the only requisites for conducting counterinsurgency successfully, but these three variables are crucial to the efforts in

Afghanistan and Pakistan. Definitions of these terms with related

focused questions appear below.4

Legitimacy is based on the will of the population. Governments

govern via a mix of consent and coercion. Legitimate governments

rule principally with the consent of the governed. Illegitimate governments tend to rely mainly or mostly on coercion. A government

that derives its authority from the consent of the governed has legitimacy. It may employ coercion against criminals or foreign

threats, but most of its citizens willingly accept and support it. All

activities should develop or sustain the authority and acceptance

of the government and its security forces by the governed. Legitimacy exists when the population perceives that the government is

meeting expectations for the reasonable administration of security,

ix

4 These ideas are consistent with the body of literature on counterinsurgency. See Bernard B.

Fall, “The Theory and Practice of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency,” Naval War College Review

17 (April 1965): 21–38; Peter Paret and John W. Shy, Guerrillas in the 1960’s (New York: Praeger

Publishers, 1962), 31–51; and John D. Waghelstein, “Che’s Bolivian Adventure,” Military Review

59 (August 1979): 39–48. The key terrain quote is from the latter.
x

justice, and services. The onus is on the counterinsurgent to determine what the population defines and perceives to be effective and

legitimate governance. Grievances stemming from gaps in the public’s expectations for services, justice, and security undermine legitimacy. The two questions below inform the analysis of this

variable: 

• Are the grievances of the population the same as the insurgents’ grievances?

• What have the counterinsurgents done to ameliorate or exacerbate those grievances?5

Capacity to use force credibly is the prudent and disciplined application of coercive force discriminately to improve security while

minimizing death or damage to the civilian populace and their

property. In counterinsurgency, discriminating between insurgents

and civilians is more difficult because insurgents operate among

the people. The protection of the civilian population outweighs the

destruction of enemy forces. Credible force includes effective

arrangement of command and control modalities to effectively integrate a variety of lethal and nonlethal operations to provide security in a complementary way. There are two questions that frame

the analysis of this variable: 

• How well are the counterinsurgents’ leadership, doctrine, and

organizations prepared to conduct counterinsurgency?

• How well have the counterinsurgents employed force to secure and separate the population from the insurgents (and thus

avoided excessive civilian casualties)?6

Efficacy in shaping the information environment is the capacity

to match actions and ideas effectively through all modern information means available to develop and sustain the perception of legitimacy for the counterinsurgent effort in the minds of a significant

portion of the population. To address grievances and build support,

the counterinsurgent must influence a realistic set of expectations

5 See Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Publication 3-24, Counterinsurgency Operations

(Washington, DC: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2009), III-11–III-12 for the definition of legitimacy. Also,

see U.S. Army, FM 3-0, Operations (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2008), A4; and

U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps, FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5, Counterinsurgency (Washington, DC:

Department of the Army/Headquarters United States Marine Corps, 2006), 1-21–1-25. See

Waghelstein and Chisholm, Analyzing Insurgency, 6–10.

6 FM 3-0, A4, and FM 3-24, 1-21–1-25. 
among the populace. Shaping the information environment is directly related to legitimacy and the capacity to use force credibly.

All operations should be consistent with the information narrative.

Perceived inconsistencies between actions and words reduce the

credibility of the force and undermine the legitimacy of the effort.

The following two questions direct the analysis of this variable: 

• How well have the counterinsurgents integrated information

operations with security operations to convince the population of

the legitimacy of their enterprise and actions?

• How well have the insurgents employed action and information operations to win the support of the population and delegitimize the state?7

Organization of the Book

Chapter 1 provides a short historical background on the tumult

and war engendered in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region

from 1973 until 2001. It also offers a relevant, essential, and concise

description of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Chapter 2 analyzes the efficacy and adaptability of the Coalition

forces and the Afghan government and national security forces in

responding appropriately to the resurgent insurgency in

Afghanistan for the first eight years. This chapter focuses on three

fundamentals of sound counterinsurgency: legitimacy, the credible

use of force to protect the population, and the integration of action

with information operations. 

Chapter 3 analyzes the efficacy and adaptability of the U.S. government, the U.S. Central Command, the government of Pakistan,

and Pakistani national security forces in responding appropriately

to the emergent insurgency in Pakistan for the first several years.

This chapter also focuses on the same three fundamentals of sound

counterinsurgency discussed in chapter 2. 

Chapters 4 and 5 examine efforts to adapt in Afghanistan and

Pakistan during the ninth and tenth years of the war to discern if

the civilian and military leadership sufficiently applied counterinsurgency methods to potentially reverse the momentum of these

xi

7 FM 3-24, 1-24–1-25; Eric V. Larson and others, Understanding Commanders’ Information Needs

for Influence Operations (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2009), xiii–xv; and Waghelstein and

Chisholm, 10–11.
xii

two distinct but related insurgencies. The rationale for this temporal

segmentation and distinction is the not insignificant and discernible

changes in leadership and methods on both sides of the border beginning in the summer of 2009. These chapters also analyze the

two efforts to counter Taliban insurgencies through the three fundamentals of counterinsurgency delineated in chapters 2 and 3. 

Chapter 6 compares and contrasts the conclusions and inferences from the two cases examined. It then digests the observations

and conclusions in the study to arrive at policy and strategy implications. This chapter recommends improvements and relevant

changes for the two counterinsurgencies to make desirable outcomes more likely. 

Chapter 7 is a short epilogue that explains the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command’s approach to counterinsurgency at the operational level in Afghanistan, beginning from the

inception of the headquarters in November 2009 until the end of 2011.

Before this period, the war in Afghanistan lacked both a comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign plan and an operational-level headquarters to orchestrate that campaign.
xiii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I

would like to thank managing editor Shawn H. Vreeland,

graphic designer W. Stephen Hill, and all the staff at the Marine

Corps University Press for their steadfastness and meticulousness. Thanks to Anna Hendricks at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies for her assistance with the index. Heartfelt

appreciation also goes to all those scholars and experts on South

Asia who were generous with their time and granted me interviews.

I would also like to express my gratitude to my wife and two children for their patience with me and for their support for the time I

invested in this project.

This book is dedicated to those who have served and sacrificed

in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Our aims there are noble and the consequences of not prevailing in the long term would be grave indeed.
xiv
xv

1

INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL OVERVIEW 

To the ferocity of the Zulu are added the craft of the Redskin

and the marksmanship of the Boer. 

—Winston S. Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force

It is a costly wisdom that is bought by experience.

—Roger Ascham

To paraphrase the Winston Churchill quote above, the Pashtuns

combine the ferocity of the Zulu, the craftsmanship of the Native

American, and the marksmanship of the Boer. These comparisons

evoke a vivid idea of the resilience engendered in those 40-million Pashtun tribal people who populate both sides of the Durand Line. The second quote pertains to the heavy costs that armies pay in blood and

treasure when they are not prepared for the wars they undertake. The

Soviet armed forces paid for their experience in blood during the nine

years and 50 days they fought in Afghanistan. On Christmas Eve 1979,

Soviet forces conducted a conventional assault on Kabul and other key

points in Afghanistan with the dual aim of implanting a stable Sovietfriendly government and quelling an insurrection. The last Soviet forces

withdrew on 15 February 1989 after suffering nearly 14,000 killed, leaving behind a precarious pro-Soviet government and an ongoing civil war.

In Afghanistan, the great and powerful Soviet Union failed to win a small

irregular war. The first U.S. forces entered Afghanistan on 7 October

2001, and the United States and its Coalition partners have been fighting

there for over 10 years since October 2011, also paying dearly for their

experience with blood and money.1

History is an ironic and ruthless mentor. Thanksgiving Day 2010

marked the date that the duration of the U.S.-led Coalition’s operations

in Afghanistan surpassed the length of the Soviet occupation and the

1

1 For the Soviet missteps and losses in Afghanistan, see Robert M. Cassidy, Russia in Afghanistan

and Chechnya (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, 2003), 18–20. Established in

1893 and demarcated by the British, the Durand Line is the poorly marked border between what

is now Pakistan and Afghanistan. 
2 War, Will, and Warlords

Soviet-Afghan War. The Coalition, comprising troops from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), has been waging a counterinsurgency against the Taliban movement, another movement of radical

mujahideen that includes among its ranks and file some of the same

leaders and fighters who successfully fought an insurgency against the

Soviets. The Soviets spent more than nine years trying to counter the

mujahideen but failed. The Soviets paid punishing costs during their

long and bloody effort in Afghanistan but did not absorb that experience

to sufficiently adapt . The Soviets failed, not because they employed too

many forces, but because they employed a combination of too few heavy

mechanized forces and exceedingly brutal and inappropriate methods.

The Soviets embraced the misbegotten notion that punishing the population was effective, rather than the converse and correct approach to

insurgents, which is an emphasis on moral rectitude and the protection

of the population. The Soviets also operated with dysfunctional command and control modalities; concentrated their forces not in the rural

areas, but near the population centers; employed airpower excessively

and indiscriminately; and failed to integrate the civil and military components of their “counterinsurgency” effort. 

During the current war in Afghanistan, the United States and its partners have committed mistakes similar to those that the Soviets committed, though to a lesser degree. The American military began the war

with a force almost exclusively focused on and prepared for large conventional wars. Moreover, the Pentagon under Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld misconstrued the Soviet experience in determining that

a “light footprint” was the solution to avoid a Soviet-like defeat. Thus,

too few troops; exceedingly cumbersome command and control arrangements; a reliance on airpower that resulted in civilian deaths year after

year; and initial troop concentrations near population centers also

plagued the American-led effort in Afghanistan until 2009. This was

partly attributable to the fact that the U.S. government diverted its attention and resources to the war in Iraq instead of focusing on the war

it needed to prosecute in Afghanistan.2

2 For details on the real and perceived lessons from the Soviet-Afghan War, see Seth G. Jones,

In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan (New York: W.W. Norton & Company,

2009), 161–63; and Oleg Kulakov, Lessons Learned from the Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan:

Implications for Russian Defense Reform, Research Paper 26 (Rome: NATO Defense College,

2006), 6–7. For a distillation of these, see Robert M. Cassidy, “The Virtue of Punishment: the

Enduring Salience of the Soviet War in Afghanistan,” Defense Concepts 4 (Fall 2009): 6–7.
Fortunately, after eight years of extreme parsimony, improvisation, and neglect, 2009–11 witnessed an unprecedented degree of

emphasis, outstanding military leadership, an increase in military

forces and civilian capacity, and more resources in Afghanistan and

Pakistan. The United States and its partners now have a strategy

that informs operations in Afghanistan and emphasizes more effective cooperation with Pakistan. Afghanistan is crucial in this protracted global war because it is where the first neo-emirate formed,

and its Taliban government harbored and abetted al-Qaeda, allowing

its members to orchestrate the September 2001 attacks on the United

States, as well as other prior attacks, from Afghan soil. Nonstate

armed groups with safe haven in Afghanistan started this long war—

strategically, symbolically, and philosophically. These same groups

now benefit from sanctuary across the border in Pakistan. It is essential to prevail in Pakistan and Afghanistan because these countries are inexorably linked to the future stability of South Asia and

to the security of the United States and its allies. The body of extant

American national security strategies also stresses that this war is

the defining struggle of our generation, a struggle that emphasizes

protracted insurgencies without spatial or temporal limits. The unclassified version of the White House’s March 2009 white paper on

Afghanistan and Pakistan prescribes that the core goal of the United

States must be “to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda and its

safe havens in Pakistan, and to prevent their return to Pakistan or

Afghanistan.” A corollary imperative is to develop increasingly selfreliant Afghan security forces that can sustain counterinsurgency

and counterterrorism efforts there with reduced U.S. aid.3

The Soviets fighting in Afghanistan also proved to be miserably

inept at denying insurgents external support and cross-border sanctuary in Pakistan. Since it is unlikely that a counterinsurgency campaign can succeed if the insurgents retain the benefit of sanctuary

Introduction and Historical Overview 3

3 On the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and its support of al-Qaeda sanctuary, see

David Isby, Afghanistan: Graveyard of Empires; A New History of the Borderlands (New York:

Pegasus Books, 2010), 30–39 and 57–58. See Robert M. Cassidy, “The Long Small War: Indigenous Forces for Counterinsurgency,” Parameters 36 (Spring 2006): 47–48, for a distillation of

the imperatives in the U.S. National Security Strategy and the National Military Strategic Plan

for the War on Terror that stress success in the long war against terrorists and insurgents. For

the direct quote from the White House’s white paper, see U.S. White House National Security

Council, White Paper of the Interagency Policy Group’s Report on U.S. Policy toward Afghanistan

and Pakistan, (Washington, DC: White House, March 2009), 1.
4 War, Will, and Warlords

and external support, border security and sanctuary denial are imperative missions for Coalition and indigenous security forces operating there today. The combined Coalition and indigenous security

forces in Afghanistan and the Pakistan security forces have yet to

secure the border with Pakistan to deny the Taliban and al-Qaeda a

continuous flow of fighters and supplies. In fact, it is not possible

to completely seal the border. The Durand Line is over 1,500 miles

(2,430 kilometers) in length and passes through some of the most

rural and unforgiving terrain on the planet. Also, when the British

diplomat H. Mortimer Durand helped draw the line bearing his

name to mark the de facto border, he drew it right through the Pashtun Belt, bifurcating entire villages, tribes, and even some families.

Moreover, the notion of redrawing borders, even very bad borders,

is typically fraught with more mayhem than the option of leaving

them in place. The removal or shifting of the Durand Line is not

likely anyway. Barnett R. Rubin, a leading expert on Afghanistan,

once remarked to me that it is “better to make the border irrelevant

than to move it.” This reality points to the second conundrum engendered in the region, which is the exponentially more complex

challenge of stabilizing the Pashtun tribal areas in Pakistan to eliminate their use as sanctuaries by the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda.4

The epicenter of global jihad has shifted from Afghanistan to

Pakistan since the initial successes of Operation Enduring Freedom

in 2001 and early 2002. The reasons for this are complicated and

many and will appear in a subsequent chapter on the war in Pakistan. It suffices here to stress that if a massive bomb were to detonate somewhere in America or Western Europe tomorrow, it will

likely be postmarked from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas

(FATA). South Asia expert Shaun Gregory has gone so far as to offer

4 For one explanation of the Pashtuns in general and the establishment of the Durand Line in

particular, see Stephen Tanner, Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the

War against the Taliban, revised edition (Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2009), 214–19. The idea

that changing the border is a bad idea stems from a discussion with Barnett Rubin at the U.S.

Naval War College, Newport, RI, on 3 September 2009. The Pashtun Belt comprises those areas

generally, but not necessarily, populated exclusively by Pashtuns in the tribal areas along the

Pakistani-Afghan border. In Pakistan, it is typically the area west of the Indus and includes Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and half of Baluchistan. In

Afghanistan, it generally includes the eastern provinces along the Pakistani border and the southern provinces. For the seminal work on the Pashtuns, see Olaf Caroe, The Pathans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958).
TATA (Taliban Administered Tribal Areas) as an alternative moniker

to describe these lawless Pashtun lands just over the Durand Line

inside Pakistan. What’s more, Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman

Malik has observed that “all roads lead to FATA” in the context of

planning, training, recruiting, and orchestrating regional and global

bombing attacks in the name of jihad. The tribal areas of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province (known as the North-West Frontier

Province until 2010) and Baluchistan are also Afghan and Pakistani

Taliban insurgent sources of support and sanctuary. In fact, Pakistan has supplanted Afghanistan as a “key state for the training

and indoctrination of al Qaeda recruits for operations abroad and

for the training and support by al Qaeda for those indoctrinated

and radicalized elsewhere.”5

The cases of Najibullah Zazi and David C. Headley underscore

the gravity of the threat that continues to germinate in Pakistan. Of

Pashtun ethnicity and American citizenship, Zazi was apprehended

by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in September 2009 for “conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction.” He was in possession

of a laptop with bomb-making instructions and was allegedly plotting an attack in New York City. A resident of Aurora, Colorado, he

had reportedly traveled to Pakistan’s Pashtun tribal areas several

times the previous year, apparently to receive training and guidance.

Also known as Daoud Gilani, David Headley is an American citizen

who has been implicated as an alleged conspirator in the Mumbai

terrorist attack of November 2008. Headley’s connections to Pakistan run very deep. His father was a Pakistani diplomat, and his

American mother once owned a bar in Philadelphia that she named

the Khyber Pass. Headley grew up in Pakistan before returning to

America to live upstairs from the bar. Headley anglicized his name

and allegedly went undercover to spend several months in India

conducting reconnaissance for the assault on that Indian resort city.

He was allegedly working for Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (Army of the Faithful; also known as “LeT”), a Pakistani jihadist group with links to

both al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence DirecIntroduction and Historical Overview 5

5 Bruce O. Riedel, The Search for al Qaeda (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008),

1–13; Shaun Gregory and James Revill, “The Role of the Pakistan Military in the Stability and

Cohesion of Afghanistan,” Contemporary South Asia 16 (March 2008): 39–61. The Rehman Malik

quote is from Jones, Graveyard of Empires, 339. Also, see Shaun Gregory, “Al Qaeda in Pakistan,”

Pakistan Security Research Unit Brief Number 5, University of Bradford, UK, 1 March 2007, 4.
6 War, Will, and Warlords

torate (ISI). Responsibility for the Mumbai attack lies with LeT.6

The tribal areas of Pakistan have become a sanctuary for violent

militant groups. It is where local insurgents, global terrorism, drug

smuggling, and state-sponsored instrumental perfidy converge. AlQaeda and the new Afghan Taliban, the most infamous and threatening of these groups, are resurgent in these areas. Other militants

include the Haqqani network, which works with the Afghan Taliban

and al-Qaeda; Lashkar i Jhangvi; Jaish-e-Mohammed; LeT; and the

Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. This syndicate of jihadist terrorists

works with al-Qaeda and at least shares a partial ideological affinity.

The Pakistani Taliban also emerged here, and this mélange of jihadist militant and terrorist groups colludes and cooperates in common purpose when the opportunities arise. Indeed, one long-time

South Asia intelligence expert has described the FATA as the epicenter of global jihad. There are also a host of foreign fighters from

places as far ranging as Chechnya, the United States, and Africa

who benefit from the sanctuary afforded by the lack of governance

and security in these tribal areas. According to Steve Coll, “There is

no nexus on earth more favorable to al Qaeda’s current leaders than

the radicalized Pashtun militias in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border

region, American policy in the region must take special account of

this specific, daunting political-military challenge.”7

The militants and other actors in the border region have a long

history of war, resilience, and brotherhood. The tribal areas witnessed American support for the mujahideen who fought the Soviets as well as the genesis of both al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Osama

bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri had a unique 30-year

history of comity and collaboration with the Pashtun Islamist tribal

6 There are multiple open source reports of these cases. See David von Drehle and Bobby Gosh,

“An Enemy within: The Making of Najibullah Zazi, Time, 12 October 2009; Joe Barrett and others, “For Terror Suspect, a Life of Contradictions,” Wall Street Journal, 12 December 2009, A6;

and Pir Zubair Shah, “Drone Reportedly Killed Filipino in Pakistan,” New York Times, 22 January

2010, A8.

7 The South Asia intelligence expert is Bruce Riedel, and he explains the gravity of the threat

emanating from Pakistan’s tribal areas in his Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future

of Global Jihad (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2011), 92–105. Also, see Don

Rassler, “Al-Qa’ida’s Pakistan Strategy” CTC Sentinel 2, no. 6 (June 2009): 1–4; and John Rollins,

Al Qaeda and Affiliates: Historical Perspective, Global Presence, and Implications for U.S. Policy

(Washington, DC: U.S. Congressional Research Service, 2010), 6–10. Steve Coll’s quote is from

“The Case for Humility in Afghanistan,” Foreign Policy online, 16 October 2009, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/16/the_case_for_humility_in_afghanistan. 
networks located in Baluchistan, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and the

FATA, until bin Laden’s death in May 2011 . One South Asia expert

and former senior White House advisor argues that the region is

al-Qaeda’s top priority for a host of reasons. For one, because the

odds for success are better in Afghanistan than elsewhere, al-Qaeda

is convinced it can replicate the Soviet defeat with the United

States. Most significantly, “Afghanistan is situated next to al

Qaeda’s important sanctuary, Pakistan.” In spite of some limited

successes, up until the end of 2011, Pakistan had failed to capture

senior al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders and willingly allowed them to

regenerate. Worse still, according to Bruce Riedel, “Since 2003 al

Qaeda and the Taliban have become all but inseparable.”8

This hub of jihadists may not pose an existential threat to the

United States, but it does pose what is arguably the single gravest

threat of attack. Militant jihadists associated with al-Qaeda have

been waging an irregular war against America since before the

first World Trade Center attack in 1993. In December 1992, bombs

went off outside the two most expensive hotels in Aden, Yemen,

killing a tourist and a hotel worker. This attack was traced back

to the Yemeni Tariq al-Fadhli’s group of jihadists and appeared to

be directed at the hundreds of U.S. military personnel transiting

Yemen on their way to support Operation Restore Hope in Somalia.

Al-Fadhli was associated with Osama bin Laden’s core al-Qaeda

leaders and received funding and probably some inspiration for

the attack from bin Laden. Again, there is some arguable evidence

that may show that Afghan Arabs associated with the al-Qaeda

core leaders helped train Somali guerrillas to shoot down U.S. helicopters in 1993, using lessons gleaned from shooting down Soviet

helicopters in the Soviet-Afghan War. Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists

also perpetrated an attack against Americans at the Office of the

Program Manager–Saudi Arabian National Guard in November

1995. Al-Qaeda operatives were also responsible for the twin

bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, as well as the USS Cole (DDG 67) suicide attack in October 2000. Despite these blatant acts of aggression, the United

States did not acknowledge this war until al-Qaeda masterminded

Introduction and Historical Overview 7

8 Riedel, Search for al Qaeda, 1–13 and 122–23. The quote on Pakistan as sanctuary is from

page 122, and the last quote is from page 123.
the 11 September raids in which over 3,000 people were killed.9

Those who persist in challenging the rationale for the war in

Afghanistan tend to highlight the fact that 15 of the 19 terrorists who

perpetrated the 11 September attacks were Saudi citizens. However,

we should understand and remember that Osama bin Laden personally recruited the leader of the raid, Muhammad Atta, in al-Qaeda’s

Afghan sanctuary in early 2000. Atta, an Egyptian studying in Germany, arrived in Kandahar to join al-Qaeda and impressed bin Laden

with his ruthlessness, smarts, and zeal. Bin Laden also recruited all

of the so-called “muscle hijackers” himself in Afghanistan. These

were the militants who gained control of the passengers during the

hijackings. He selected these 15 attackers from the large pool of alQaeda’s Saudi volunteers in the tribal areas of Afghanistan. Lastly,

since 9/11 and since moving to Pakistan’s tribal areas in late 2001

and early 2002, al-Qaeda and its associates have struck across the

globe, “in London, Casablanca, Madrid, Algiers, Islamabad, Mombasa, Bali, Mumbai, New Delhi, Islamabad, Riyadh, Doha, Amman,

Sharm al-Shaykh, Taba, Mogadishu, and a host of other places.” The

means and methods of this global takfir jihad are constrained only

by imagination and not at all by any notion of the norms and codes

of international conduct. Al-Qaeda’s strategic aim remains the recreation of a transnational caliphate approximating the geographic

scope of the Ottoman Empire at its peak. Its methods include consolidating its safe havens in the Pashtun Belt and fighting a prolonged guerrilla war to exhaust the United States and ultimately drive

it from the Muslim world entirely. Elaborating on these methods, the

next section explores the historical factors underlying the long war

in Afghanistan and how the Pashtun Belt came to serve as a sanctuary for the insurgents waging it.10

8 War, Will, and Warlords

9 Jason Burke, Al Qaeda: the True Story of Radical Islam (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 141–42.

See Rick Atkinson, “The Raid That Went Wrong,” Washington Post, 30 January 1994, A1, for

Somali militia training on lessons from Afghanistan on how to shoot down helicopters. See

David H. Shinn, “Somalia’s New Government and the Challenge of al-Shabab,” CTC Sentinel 2,

no. 3 (March 2009): 1–5, on al-Qaeda training camps in Somalia during 1993. See Mohammed

M. Hafez, “Jihad after Iraq: Lessons from the Arab Afghans Phenomenon,” CTC Sentinel 1, no.

4 (March 2008): 1–5, for general trends relating to the dispersion of the Afghan Arabs to Africa

and to other locations across the globe after 1992. See Tanner, Afghanistan, 289–92, for 11 September death toll.

10 Riedel, Search for al Qaeda, 4–8, 10–12, and 122–25. The catalogue of locations in quotations

is from Riedel, page 10. Takfir is used here to mean that true believers must agree with al-Qaeda’s

interpretive notion of Islam or die as apostates for not believing what the movement believes.
Historical Overview of a Long War

We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we

are content with blood, we will never be content with a master. 

—Attributed to an old Pashtun tribesman in Stephen Tanner, Afghanistan

The above quote is attributed to a Pashtun tribal elder in 1809.

Another Pashtun aphorism that helps amplify the paradoxical nature

of the Pashtuns—and of the Afghan and Pakistani border areas—is,

“The war is over, now the real fighting begins.” Even though the

notion of Afghanistan as the “graveyard of empires” has appeared

so often in writing that it belongs in the graveyard of clichés, there

has been one persistent historical contradiction connected with the

Pashtun Belt: the difficulty for foreign powers with Afghanistan,

even for one as ostensibly well-intentioned as America, has never

really been about how to invade, as the three Anglo-Afghan Wars

in 1839–42, 1878–80, and 1919 attest. The British muddled through

with an inconsistent approach to the Great Game, one in which they

lost as much as they gained in the Hindu Kush and one that waxed

and waned between punitive operations, payments, betrayals, and

alliances with the tribes. Lord Lytton and several British governments of the Victorian-era Great Game never quite answered with

a satisfactory policy the question of “what to do next with

Afghanistan, which was too troublesome to be annexed but too dangerous to be ignored?” Likewise, the Soviet invasion and occupation

from 1979 to 1989 saw the Soviets largely defeat themselves by

using the wrong forces and the wrong methods in trying to install

a government that was anathema to Afghans. The difficulty lies in

securing, governing, and even helping develop Afghanistan. Misfortune seems to be the fate that awaits foreign armies who dither

too long on predatory occupations in the Hindu Kush.11

The Americans, however, are neither the Soviets nor the British.

Nor is America really an empire (although the pundits do pontificate about this), and Afghanistan was not invaded in 2001 to colonize it. The American invasion was a just and measured response

to the attacks on U.S. soil that originated from the global jihadist

sanctuary in the Pashtun Belt. The American-led effort to bring susIntroduction and Historical Overview 9

11 Tanner, Afghanistan, 129–219 and 320. The Lord Lytton quote is from Tanner, 213.
tainable governance and security to the region is also not a predatory effort of an empire bent on colonial occupation. After the Taliban was defeated in 2002, most of the Afghan people harbored

high expectations for security, prosperity, and just governance.

What transpired between 2002 and 2009 to arrive at two full-blown

insurgencies that stalemated the Coalition and government security

forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan is the subject of the subsequent

section. This portion of the study frames the historical context from

1973 to 2001. It begins with a short but essential explanation of

Pashtunwali, the way of the Pashtun.

It is important to understand that Pashtuns were preponderant

among the Taliban movement that ruled Afghanistan until the end

of 2001. All Pashtuns are not necessarily Taliban, but the movement, old and new, is a Pashtun one. An explanation for the provision of sanctuary by the Pashtuns in Pakistan to the Taliban and

al-Qaeda, both during the anti-Soviet jihad and during the current

anti-U.S./NATO insurgency, partially lies in the Pashtun’s social

code. Pashtunwali is an unwritten but widely practiced code of values and precepts that seems profoundly foreign when compared to

a Westerner’s norms and mores. The code’s core tenets include tolerance, independence, self-respect, hospitality, respect, forgiveness,

justice, honor, and revenge. The code is the self-enforcing “sum

total of the tribes collective expectations of their members to conform to the norms and customs that ensure the group’s survival as

a socio-cultural entity.” For Pashtun males, personal independence

is a supreme tenet of Pashtunwali.12

After independence, personal honor is next in importance, and

it represents a male’s obligation to safeguard the inviolability of his

person, property, and women. A third Pashtun tenet is revenge, or

badal, which prescribes that man must exact revenge for any violation of his honor lest he lose social status as an outcast. The

fourth key precept of Pashtunwali is hospitality, which requires the

10 War, Will, and Warlords

12 Afghan hill tribes also have their own cultural code called nang, or the “honor code of the

hill men.” Pashtunwali seems to resonate more deeply among the hill tribes, who, not surprisingly, have also traditionally been more warlike. See Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason,

“No Sign until the Burst of Fire,” International Security 32 (Spring 2008): 59–64, for insights on

the Pashtun code. The direct quote is from Johnson and Mason, “No Sign,” 60. Haider Mullick,

Pakistan’s Security Paradox: Countering and Fomenting Insurgencies, JSOU Report 09-9 (Hurlburt

Field, FL: 2009), 40–42.
provision of refuge and protection to all those who require it. This

cultural emphasis on independence, honor, revenge, and hospitality—coupled with some of the most prohibitive terrain in the

world—has helped defeat most efforts to subjugate the Pashtuns.

Three decades of a policy designed to engineer the Pashtun Belt in

a way that supplants the traditional tribal structures and empowers

radical mullahs have managed to conflate Pashtun honor precepts

with the Islamist notion of jihad and create a fertile breeding

ground for zealots.

There is one more unique aspect of Afghanistan that warrants

clarification as a prelude to a broad historical overview of the 38

years of strife and war inflicted on the Pashtuns. The question is

whether the region is “governable,” and some pundits have overstated the notion that Afghanistan is not governable by claiming

that Afghanistan has never been governed or by asserting that the

region has always been at war. This argument too belongs in the

graveyard of poorly informed clichés. In fact, from 1880 until 1973

Afghanistan enjoyed a greater degree of generally continuous stability than many European countries did during the same period.

Indeed, this was one of the most stable periods in Afghanistan’s

modern history. During these years, Afghanistan saw only six

rulers, all of whom (with one exception from 1928 to 1929) hailed

from the same tribe. During this period, Afghanistan had but one

civil war, one foreign war in 1919 against the British, and one coup

d’état without casualties in 1973. Particularly notable was the relative peace and prosperity under the rule of Muhammad Zahir

Shah from 1933 to 1973, which was attributable to a style of governance that carefully balanced the needs of the central government

to operate the state in a way congruent with the character, desires,

and expectations of the populations residing in the periphery, people who exhibited a propensity for unencumbered local rule. This

was most manifest in the central government’s circumspect and

limited imposition of taxes, conscription, and societal engineering.13

Historically, what has been true is that Afghanistan has proven

Introduction and Historical Overview 11

13 Thomas Barfield. Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010): Olivier Roy, Afghanistan: Internal Politics and Socio-Economic Dynamics

and Groupings (Geneva, Switzerland: UNHCR, 2003), 1–2;
exceedingly hard for foreigners to rule, especially if the nature of

that rule is marked by oppressive and overly centralized governments. Before 1747, Afghanistan did not exist as a state, and from

1978 to the present, state apparatuses, whether imposed externally

or internally, have been strongly contested. During those periods

when Afghanistan has experienced stability, it has been under a

Pashtun head of state. Afghan, in fact, was the old Persian term for

“Pashtun.” Long ago, before Afghanistan emerged as a country, the

Persians had also coined another epithet for Afghanistan—Yaghestan, which roughly translates to “the land of the rebellious or the

incorrigibly ungovernable.” This epithet regained relevancy with

the onset of the 1970s and what has become 38 years of strife and

war in the region.14

The 1970s: The Decade of Perdition 

In retrospect, the decade of 1970s witnessed a range of events

that augured poorly for peace and stability in the Middle East and

South Asia. It began in 1971 with the insurgency and ultimate secession of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) from Pakistan, an

act that occurred with Indian support. This was a national trauma

for Pakistan that still resonates today. The year 1972 saw the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) attack and murder Israeli athletes in cold blood at the Munich Olympics. In 1973, Muhammad

Daoud Khan deposed Zahir Shah of Afghanistan and ushered in

what turned out to more than three decades of conflict and war.

The Israeli Defense Forces’ victory during the Yom Kippur War of

1973 led Egypt on a path toward an ultimate peace agreement later

in the decade that would take Egypt’s relatively large conventional

army out of the balance in regional forces. This essentially made it

almost impossible for the remaining Arabs allied against Israel to

entertain the notion of defeating Israeli forces by purely conventional means. The logical result for Israel’s Arab enemies was for

them to find and exploit vulnerabilities to undermine Israel’s military prowess. The retribution for the collective Arab loss of face

during the 1973 war soon followed as the Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC) used oil instead of tanks to destabilize

12 War, Will, and Warlords

14 Sarah Chayes, The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan after the Taliban (New York:

Penguin, 2006), 68–69.
oil markets and harm the prosperity of Israel, the United States,

and the West. In April 1975, the United States ended its painfully

long and unsuccessful war in Vietnam, reaching its absolute political, economic, and military nadir just in time for the bicentennial

festivities of 1976. The latter 1970s witnessed still more troublesome developments before things became even worse at the end

of the decade. In July 1977, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq deposed Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan, and in April

1978 the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew Daoud in a bloody coup. Zia’s subsequent use of political

Islam as an instrument to radicalize his state, combined with the

inept Afghan PDPA leadership, accelerated the path to war for the

Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand Line.15

The year 1979 was the worst—and most momentous—year of

the decade in terms of catalyzing wars and planting the seeds for

local and global jihad. Uncannily and auspiciously, as Peter L.

Bergen has illumined in his recent book The Longest War, 1979 was

also the first year of a new century on the Muslim calendar. From

the events of 1979, Hizballah (Party of God; Lebanese radical Shia

group) and al-Qaeda ultimately emerged, along with emphases on

irregular war and suicide bombing that have proven to be increasingly effective in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The first cataclysmic

event was the Iranian Revolution in February, which, with the emergence of Ayatollah Khomeini as the supreme ruler, made the export

of radical eschatological jihad fashionable. Although the Iranian

brand of jihad by proxy was Shiite, the notion of transnational jihad

would ultimately resonate with radical Sunni Wahhabist-Salafists

as they came to employ a similar approach in the 1990s.16

Introduction and Historical Overview 13

15 The author grew up during the decade of the 1970s and this is from personal experience. For

detailed accounts on Pakistan, see Brian Cloughley, War, Coups, and Terror (New York: Skyhorse

Publishing, 2009), 30–49, or Stephen P. Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan (Washington, DC: Brookings

Institution, 2004), 90–130 and 170–73. Also, see Zahid Hussain, Frontline Pakistan (New York:

Columbia University Press, 2007), 18–23, for Zia’s deliberate politicization of Deobandi Sunnism. 

16 See Giles Kepel, The War for Muslim Minds (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2004), 33–34.

Wahhabism, the dominant form of Islam in Saudi Arabia, aims to purify Sunni Islam of any

practices that deviate from the teachings of Muhammad and his compatriots. Salafism is a Sunni

Islamic movement that views the first three generations of Muslims as models for how Islam

should be practiced. Salafism is also sometimes used as a synonym for Wahhabism. After this

manuscript was in final editing, the author discovered the Muslim calendar fact while reading

Peter Bergen, The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda (New

York: Free Press, 2011), 12.
Another important event of 1979 was the signing of the EgyptIsrael Peace Treaty. This was the culmination of the 1978 Camp

David Accords, which, by co-opting Egypt and removing that state

from the alliance of Arab states committed to the destruction of Israel, made a conventional military defeat of the Israeli Defense

Forces a virtual impossibility. Thereafter, the remaining enemies of

Israel were compelled by necessity to revert to irregular and unconventional methods, employing terrorism and guerrilla techniques to chip away at the Israeli military preeminence in

conventional warfare for the remainder of the century.17

The next crucial event of 1979 occurred in the Kingdom of Saudi

Arabia on 20 November when homegrown terrorists seized and

held the Grand Mosque in Mecca until they were dislodged by

Saudi security forces with the assistance of French commandos in

a very bloody fight. This ugly crisis terrified the kingdom’s leaders

and caused them to seek solutions to rid themselves of this indigenous and volatile menace. The next day, waves of violent student

protesters also animated by Islamist ideology stormed the U.S. embassy in Islamabad and burned it to the ground. The solution for

assuaging the Saudi leadership’s angst about its internal militants

arrived in the form of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Eve, after which the anti-Soviet jihad increasingly became a

magnet for foreign Islamist fighters. The Saudis were anxious to divest themselves of their internal jihadist problem by readily dispatching their own mujahideen to fight alongside the indigenous

Afghans who prosecuted their guerrilla war against the Soviets during the 1980s. In addition to their supply of mujahideen, the Saudis’

financial support for the jihad in Afghanistan was consistent and

not insignificant. Ultimately, Saudi financial support to the madrassas in Pakistan played no small part in propagating Islamist dogma

and in proselytizing radical Islamist militants. Funding for the

madrassas in Pakistan continues to flow from Saudi Arabia and

other Gulf states to this day and is not at all helpful for the efforts

to counter Islamist extremism and militancy in the region.18

14 War, Will, and Warlords

17 Kepel, War for Muslim Minds, 32. 

18 See Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower (New York: Random House, 2007), 101–13, for insight on the consequences of this decade and of 1979. For an account of the assault on the U.S.

embassy in Islamabad, see Steve Coll, Ghost Wars (New York: Penguin, 2004), 21–29.
Besides the Saudis, Pakistan, and the United States, several other

countries willingly and profligately funded and armed the struggle

against the Soviet invaders. The Pakistanis were willing to support

the anti-Soviet insurgency simply because of self interest and security concerns. The largesse of the Americans, the Saudis, and the

others would strengthen General Zia’s grip on the state, and support for the insurgency would help both undermine an ally of Pakistan’s archnemesis India and remove the encroachment on its

western flank. For President Ronald W. Reagan’s government in the

United States, support for the anti-Soviet jihad offered an ideal opportunity to bleed its archnemesis white at a relatively low cost and

with some degree of deniability, and it would also achieve payback

for the Soviets’ support of the North in the Vietnam War. Others

supported the jihad for a host of ideological, geopolitical, or simply

pragmatic reasons; included among these nations were the Chinese,

the Egyptians, the British, the Israelis, the Turks, and the Swiss. In

terms of qualitative or quantitative assistance—in other words, discernibly substantive support—Pakistan, the United States, Saudi

Arabia, and China were among the most helpful contributors to the

jihad. However, the causality for the strife and conflict that precipitated the Soviet invasion can be traced back to July 1973 when

Daoud took control of the Afghan state. This is explained below.19

Afghanistan Slips toward War 

The date when Afghanistan began to slide down the road to war

is 17 July 1973. During that month, former Prime Minister Muhammad Daoud overthrew the king, Zahir Shah, in a bloodless coup

and declared Afghanistan a republic. Daoud did not kowtow to the

Soviet leadership, as he proceeded to reduce the long-standing

Afghan reliance on the Soviet Union, cooling relations with it. He

quickly reduced the number of Soviet advisors in the Afghan army

and removed Soviet-affiliated PDPA ministers. More importantly, his

resumption of dictatorial methods alienated both the urban leftist

intelligentsia and the Islamic faithful. He suppressed the press and

responded to dissent by executing or jailing all dissidents, whether

Communist, Islamic, or Pashtun. By 1975, the future guerrilla leadIntroduction and Historical Overview 15

19 Tanner, Afghanistan, 250–70.
ers Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Burhanuddin Rabbani, and Ahmad Shah

Masood were already meeting in Peshawar to plot insurrection

against the state. The Soviets, who were very dissatisfied with

Daoud, reputedly persuaded the two rival PDPA factions—Khalq

(the people) and Parcham (the banner)—to reunify in 1977 and

pave the way for the next coup. Daoud’s apparent obstreperousness

also vexed the senior Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev. During a 1977

meeting, Brezhnev called Daoud on the carpet, and Daoud brazenly

shouted back and banged his hands on the table. The April 1978

assassination of a leading Parcham labor activist, Mir Akbar Khyber,

was the final impetus for Daoud’s demise. When the fallen activist’s

funeral turned into a demonstration, Daoud instinctively responded

by arresting Communist activists, precipitating a military coup involving several armor brigades (this coup is known as the Sawr

[April] Revolution because it occurred in the Afghan lunar month

of Sawr). By the morning of 28 April 1978, Daoud was dead.20

The Marxist military leaders promptly handed power over to the

leader of Khalq, Nur Muhammad Taraki, who proclaimed the beginning of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA). Babrak

Karmal, the leader of the Parcham PDPA faction, assumed the position of deputy premier. Though the Soviet Union quickly resumed

relations with the new regime, the culminating success of the Sawr

Revolution marked the end of intra-PDPA comity. Taraki promptly

removed Parcham elements from government and conveniently dispatched Karmal to Czechoslovakia as Afghanistan’s ambassador.

Hafizullah Amin, another Khalq leader became Taraki’s deputy.

Taraki publicly announced total Khalqi control over the state apparatus and that the Parcham bloc ceased to exist. Early on the new

regime declared that its policies would be consistent with the principles of democracy, freedom, Islam, and the inviolability of the

person. However, by October 1978 the government replaced the traditional green flag with a red Communist flag and announced a

radical reform agenda that was divorced from reality and the expectations of a large portion of the populace. Amin played a principal role in promulgating a social program that included land

16 War, Will, and Warlords

20 Robert S. Littwak, “The USSR in Afghanistan,” in Foreign Military Intervention: The Dynamics

of Protracted Conflict Intervention, ed. Ariel L. Levite, Bruce W. Jentleson, and Larry Berman

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 70–73; and Tanner, Afghanistan, 230–34. 
redistribution, the banning of certain religious practices, and equal

rights for women. This agenda caused deep resentment across all

walks of Afghan life, from the cities to the tribal areas. Pashtun

mountain tribesman in the east grabbed their rifles, and revolts

broke out all over the country. The government impulsively responded with executions and mass arrests. The regular units of the

Afghan army began to melt away, and by the end of 1978, the guerrillas had established safe havens for supply and training in Pakistan across the Durand Line. In February 1979, KGB-advised

Afghan troops botched an assault to rescue the U.S. ambassador

from criminals holding him hostage, and he was killed in the fray.

In April, the 17th Afghan Army Division mutinied in Herat and

joined rioters and rebels for three days of plundering and killing,

during which they killed 100 Soviet advisors and their families. The

rebels even paraded the city with Soviet heads impaled on their

staffs. By September, when a Soviet-backed plot to oust Amin instead resulted in Amin murdering and replacing Taraki, the Soviet

leadership faced the hard decision of reducing or increasing its

commitment to the PDPA regime. For his part, Amin refused to

moderate his socialist domestic agenda, continuing to fuel the insurgency. By November, the Soviets had decided to increase the

ante with an outright invasion.21

The Radicalization of Pakistan

During the latter half of the 1970s, concurrent developments on

the other side of the Durand Line, manifested by changing Pakistani policies toward political Islam, were to reap consequences

for the anti-Soviet insurgency, as well as for both the Afghan and

Pakistani insurgencies of the twenty-first century. The reign of General Zia lasted from July 1977 to August 1988. His use of religion

for politics has had a deep and lasting influence on Islam and Islamist dogma in Pakistan. General Zia’s conflation of puritanical

Islam and politics represents the singular most discernible reason

why the FATA and the Pashtun areas both became and remain incubators for local and global jihad. The ISI’s guerrilla training program integrated the teaching of a radical version of Sunni Islam

Introduction and Historical Overview 17

21 Littwak, “USSR in Afghanistan,” 71–72, and Tanner, Afghanistan, 231–34. 
(Deobandism22) that Zia espoused and that he, by deliberate design, promoted by using the Pakistani state to proselytize through

laws, public school curricula, and the proliferation of madrassas

(religious seminaries). According to Zahid Hussain, the Afghan

jihad directly influenced over 100,000 foreign Islamist radicals.

Even before the Soviet tanks rolled across the Amu Darya, Zia

began to use Islam to legitimize his military rule and to turn Pakistan into an ideological Islamist bulwark. His program for Islamicization in Pakistan became “the most important feature of his

eleven-year rule” and its raison d’être. Zia empowered the clergy

when he introduced a rigid interpretation of sharia (Islamic law

based on the Koran), and he found willing allies among the religious parties, some of whom had close links to the military. He

supported Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), the “Society for Islam,” and

strengthened its virulently anti-American student arm. The JI student arm was responsible for attacking the U.S. embassy in November 1979. Moreover, when the embassy attack occurred, most

of the security forces had been outside of Islamabad, protecting

Zia while he was proselytizing Islam himself. General Zia also coopted the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), or the “Society for the Community of Islam,” as well as other Islamic groups by bringing in

Islamists to occupy important government posts.23

In fact, the Zia regime opened up thousands of Islamic religious

schools throughout the country. The government began to disperse

a disproportionate amount of the monies raised from the compulsory Islamic charity tax (zakat)—taxes that Zia had instituted—to

fund these new madrassas. The Pakistani state also began to recognize the “degrees” conferred by these seminaries as the equivalents of college degrees. It also considered the young male holders

of these certificates as qualified to preside over sharia courts. The

problem was that the “education” received at most of these semi18 War, Will, and Warlords

22 Deobandism originated in British India at a madrassa in Deoband, near Delhi. The Deobandis

established madrassas throughout northwestern India and the area that would become Pakistan,

and they trained ulema (Islamic religious scholars) to conservatively interpret Islamic doctrine

and enforce societal adherence to this interpretation.

23 Zahid Hussain, Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle with Militant Islam (New York: Columbia

University Press, 2007), 16–20. See Coll, Ghost Wars, 26–36, for insights on Zia, the JI, and the

U.S. embassy attack in 1979. 
naries was more of a religious indoctrination than an objective education. In many cases, these were centers employed to inculcate

the dogma of a very interpretive and skewed version of Deobandi

Islam, one that most closely approximated the Saudi version of

Wahhabist Islam that al-Qaeda espouses. Before Zia, only a small

minority of Pakistanis subscribed to this reactionary and purist

school; a greater majority adhered to the more inclusive Sufi traditions of Barlevi Islam. The process of Islamicization under Zia

therefore required the parallel conversion of moderate Muslims to

puritanical Muslims. Pakistan’s embrace and support of political

Islam and a growing network of madrassas helped convert the

tribal areas into nurseries and then into assembly lines that would

“churn out tens of thousands of radicalized young men” who

would fight against the Soviets or who would later form the core

of the Taliban. A young Mullah Muhammad Omar would subsequently graduate from one of these religious schools, fight with the

mujahideen against the Soviets, and bring about what would have

seemed to be the apotheosis of Zia’s experiment in political Islam—

the Taliban-ruled Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.24

Beating the Bear: The Anti-Soviet Jihad

It can also be persuasively argued that the Soviets defeated

themselves in Afghanistan. The Soviet forces that invaded

Afghanistan were structured and trained for full-scale conventional

warfare. Moreover, the Soviet military doctrine at the time envisaged the employment of forces on flat or undulating terrain, such

as the plains of central Europe. This big war approach was characterized by “heavy tank and mechanized formations, massed and

echeloned to conduct breaches of dense defenses, followed by rapid

advance into the enemy rear to encircle and destroy him.” These

offensives were to be supported by air-ground attack, long-range

artillery, and airmobile assaults throughout the depth of the

enemy’s defense. The Soviet doctrine sought quick and decisive

victory. Afghanistan confirmed what was already suspected about

the general fighting capacity of the Soviet Army—it relied more on

Introduction and Historical Overview 19

24 Hassan Abbas, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2005), 103–4 and

107–8. 
a concentrated quantity of forces and artillery preparation than on

flexibility and maneuver. However, there is a more disturbing contradiction—Soviet experts in the armed forces knew what to do to

win in Afghanistan but did not do it because of the military’s cultural reluctance. In other words, the institution was resistant to

change. There was no desire to change the doctrine, training, and

organization of an army that was well adapted for a European war

against its principal adversary, the United States.25

The foremost theme of the Soviet strategy beginning in December 1979 was its determination to limit the level of its military commitment. Unfortunately, the Rumsfeld Pentagon subsequently

misconstrued the lessons of the Soviet-Afghan War when it was

conceiving the 2001 invasion and opted for a small force that was

able, with its Northern Alliance indigenous paramilitary forces and

overwhelming airpower, to topple the Taliban regime rather swiftly.

However, the lean quantity of forces in Afghanistan during the early

years was grossly inadequate for restoring security across

Afghanistan and from preventing the Taliban’s and al-Qaeda’s flight

into Pakistan. Similarly, in view of the size force it was willing to

commit, a plan of conquest and occupation was not feasible for the

Soviets, nor was it ever considered. From the beginning, the Soviet

strategy was based on the rejuvenation and the employment of the

DRA’s army. It seemed that the Soviets initially believed that they

confronted a limited insurgency in Afghanistan. Yet, they eventually

realized that the support of the population for the resistance was

so strong that it exceeded the puppet DRA forces’ capacity to

counter it effectively.26 

In fact, Soviet operations in the war did not aim so much at defeating the mujahideen as they aimed to intimidate and terrorize

the population into abandoning areas of intense resistance and

withdrawing support for the insurgents. The methods and weapons

20 War, Will, and Warlords

25 Scott R. McMichael, “The Soviet Army, Counterinsurgency, and the Afghan War,” Parameters

19 (December 1989): 21–22. Olivier Roy, The Lessons of the Soviet/Afghan War, Adelphi Paper

259 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1991), 51–52, cited in Robert M. Cassidy, Russia in Afghanistan and Chechnya (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute,

2003), 11–12.

26 Robert F. Baumann, Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and

Afghanistan, Leavenworth Paper Number 20 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute,

1993), 135.
employed—deliberate destruction of villages, high-altitude carpet

bombing, napalm, fragmentation bombs, and the use of boobytrapped toys—testified to the intent of the Soviet military’s effort

to terrorize the Afghan civilian population. These methods, together with a scorched-earth policy and the heavy mining of key

highways and the perimeters of towns, also resulted in the destruction of a large part of agricultural lands. Moreover, according to a

1984 report by French doctors working in the resistance-controlled

areas, more than 80% of the casualties inflicted by the Soviet military were civilian.27

The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a limited one because the Soviets fought for limited aims while the mujahideen fought an unlimited war in which they saw only two options: death or victory.

Moscow intentionally limited both the scope of its operations and

the amount of forces it committed. On the other hand, for the

Afghans it was a total war—a war for the survival and the future of

their country. To be sure, the Soviet military did not lose the fight in

Afghanistan, it simply failed to win—it did not achieve its goals.

Moreover, the army that returned from Afghanistan was battered,

physically and psychologically. On the other hand, the mujahideen

were not victorious but remained unvanquished nonetheless: “The

guerrillas quickly established that they would not attain a resounding

victory, but could sap the invaders’ will to fight on.” Essentially, the

Afghan guerrillas proved Henry A. Kissinger’s maxim: “the guerrilla

wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not

win.” The Afghan resistance fighters effectively countered the Soviet

strategy of annihilation by conducting a protracted war of attrition.28

The vast space of Afghanistan and the limited quantity of

friendly troops practically guaranteed an irresolvable temporal and

spatial dilemma for the Soviets. For most of the war in Afghanistan,

Soviet troop strength was between 80,000 and 115,000, but at least

30–35% of that was dedicated to securing lines of communications

Introduction and Historical Overview 21

27 Alex Alexiev, The War in Afghanistan: Soviet Strategy and the State of the Resistance (Santa

Monica, CA: Rand, 1984), 2–3. 

28 The first quotation is from Scott E. McIntosh, “Leading with the Chin: Using Svechin to Analyze the Soviet Incursion into Afghanistan,” The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 8 (June 1995):

429; Stephen J. Blank, Afghanistan and Beyond: Reflections on the Future of Warfare (Carlisle

Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 1993), 1. The second quotation is from Henry Kissinger,

“The Vietnam Negotiations,” Foreign Affairs 47 (January 1969): 214. 
and bases. For example, the defense of convoy units against ambush, “the most venerated tactic in the guerrilla repertoire,” posed

an enormous security problem. Even still, the lack of good highways and the frequency of mujahideen ambushes had already congested the transportation network in Afghanistan. The Soviets’

principal priority was the control of their lines of communications

back across the Amu Darya to Soviet territory and freedom of

movement along Highway 1, the Ring Road. Their second priority

was the disruption of the mujahideen’s logistics. As a result, the

contradiction of concentration and dispersion, which stems from

unfavorable time and space factors, was clearly manifest in

Afghanistan: the majority of Soviet forces were concentrated on

their bases and their lines of communications, and the rest of their

forces were inevitably over dispersed in the valleys and the mountains, hunting guerrillas.29

The Soviets brought their entire panoply of a superpower’s military technological tools to bear against the mujahideen and the

Afghan people. However, the Russians failed to recognize that

technology is no substitute for strategy and will. In fact, maximizing technology by using force indiscriminately, coupled with the

absence of anything approximating a campaign to protect and secure the noncombatant population, helped undermine the Soviets’

efforts in Afghanistan by alienating that population. For instance,

the Soviets introduced and tested several new technologies during

the Soviet-Afghan War. The most notable of their new weapons

were the BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicle, the BTR-80 armored personnel carrier, the 82mm automatic mortar, the self-propelled

mortar, the AGS-17 automatic grenade launcher, the BM-22 multiple rocket launcher system, the Mi-8T helicopter, the SU-25

ground-support aircraft, and the ASU-74 assault rifle. In addition,

the Soviets introduced several models of the Mi-24 attack helicopter during the war. However, despite all this technology,

Afghanistan was a war for the light infantry, and the Soviets did

not have sufficient numbers of light infantry formations—airborne, air assault, reconnaissance, or special forces (Spetsnaz)—

22 War, Will, and Warlords

29 Baumann, 149–50, and 164. The direct quotation is from Baumann, 164. Milan Hauner, The

Soviet War in Afghanistan: Patterns of Russian Imperialism (Philadelphia: University Press of

America, 1991), 92–93.
to conduct complementary counterinsurgency throughout the

countryside.30

Thus, the Soviet strategy in Afghanistan essentially focused on

the use of high technology and tactical mobility, mainly provided

by helicopters, as a means to inflict casualties on the Afghans while

at the same time holding Soviet casualties to a minimum. In fact,

the Soviets used their technology to conduct a combination of the

scorched earth method and “migratory genocide.” There were numerous reports that showed that Soviet forces, especially attack

helicopters, were used to destroy villages and burn crops to force

the population—the main source of support for the mujahideen—

to leave the country. Other reports implied that the Soviets were

declaring zones for using all sorts of firepower free from constraints

in areas where there was strong resistance. According to one expert

on the Soviets, “The Soviet monopoly on high technology [in

Afghanistan] magnified the destructive aspects of their behavior.”

The average quantity of “high technology” airborne platforms in

Afghanistan was around 240 attack helicopters, 400 other helicopters, several squadrons of MiG-21 and MiG-23 jet fighters, and at

least one squadron of SU-25 ground attack aircraft. Afghanistan

also saw the first operational deployment of the SU-25.31

In the end, “The Kremlin’s leadership simply was unwilling to

make a larger troop commitment when the numbers that might be

necessary for victory were unclear in the first place, and the political and economic costs of such escalation would be too high.” As

a result, the Soviets chose to conduct the war with a heavy reliance

on bombing and airpower—an approach that surely kept the mujahideen from achieving quick victory but which, by itself, could

not destroy the resistance. As long as the mujahideen were willing

to suffer the punishment required to sustain and to protract their

struggle for national survival, and as long as neighboring states

provided sanctuary and external support, the inevitable outcome

was a stalemate. The Afghan resistance to the Soviets also highlighted the salience of deeply rooted political and cultural values

Introduction and Historical Overview 23

30 Lester W. Grau, The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan

(Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1996), 205.

31 Joseph W. Collins, “The Soviet-Afghan War: The First Four Years,” Parameters 14 (Summer

1984): 50–51.
for sustaining the will to persevere. The resilience of the guerrillas

in the face of the Soviets’ vastly superior resources is partly attributable to the Pashtuns’ innate and enduring propensity to resist

“authority in defense of tribal autonomy and individualism.” In

view of the Soviets’ indiscriminate and brutal use of lethal force

against the Afghan population, the Pashtun code’s emphasis on revenge certainly contributed to an increase in the people’s support

for the insurgents. Ingrained Islamist precepts and values, such as

the emphases on holy war against nonbelievers and martyrdom,

also reinforced the tribal code. Finally, real and perceived grievances towards the Russians bolstered a deep animus. For example,

these grievances stemmed from the brutal and indiscriminate use

of lethal force against population centers, which resulted in significant civilian casualties; the general mistreatment and dehumanization of the civilian population; and the imposition of a

Soviet-style social engineering program through the proxy government in Kabul. These are above and beyond the simple reality that

the Afghan population loathed being occupied by the Soviets.32

Wars among Warlords and the Rise of the Taliban

The Pashtun is never at peace, except when he is at war.

—Pashtun proverb

When the Soviets left Afghanistan on 15 February 1989, they

continued to support the PDPA-DRA government they had installed

under President Muhammad Najibullah with funds and materiel

until the Soviet Union itself expired on 25 December 1991. The mujahideen were only able to topple the Soviet-backed government

three years later in 1992. In essence there were three reasons for

the unexpected endurance of the Najibullah regime. First, although

very unpopular, the PDPA regime was better organized and had the

support of the Afghan army formations as they existed. Second,

much of the initial fighting after the Soviet departure witnessed

overconfident commanders who were inept and untrained in conventional war (but skilled in guerrilla warfare), such as Gulbuddin

24 War, Will, and Warlords

32 The direct quote is from Douglas A. Borer, Superpowers Defeated: Vietnam and Afghanistan

Compared (London: Frank Cass, 1999), 234–35; and Bard E. O’Neill, Insurgency and Terrorism,

2nd ed., (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), 85. 
Hekmatyar’s attempt to assault Afghan army positions directly,

with strong encouragement from their Pakistani advisors. The battles for Jalalabad were an example of this. These types of ill-advised

operations caused the Afghan commanders to defeat themselves.

Lastly, although traditionally Afghan warlords and mujahideen do

loosely unite to repel foreign invasions with guerrilla techniques,

they have also typically exhibited a tendency toward great disunity

and factional conflict when the foreign threat departs or dissipates.

The period between 1989 and the emergence of the Taliban in 1994

was no exception. The mujahideen gradually extended their influence and control over a larger portion of the country during Najibullah’s three-year reign after the Soviet withdrawal. They tried

to work toward some agreement as to who would be the leader of

Afghanistan after the PDPA fell. The result was the 1992 Pakistan

Agreement, which the Pakistani government brokered among the

mujahideen. It called for a revolving presidency to be shared between former resistance leaders. It also provided that the thousands

of rank-and-file fighters would join the Afghan police force or demobilize. On paper, the agreement provided for a peaceful transfer.

Instead, the “Yaghestan complex” recurred. When Burhanuddin

Rabbani tried to assume power, civil war broke out between his

forces, which were allied with Ahmad Shah Masood’s forces, and

the ISI-backed forces of Hekmatyar. Rabbani and Masood’s government forces won the first of many battles for Kabul, and Rabbani

assumed duties as prime minister. Their forces then captured Najibullah at the Kabul airport as he was trying to flee and they detained him inside the United Nations compound until the Taliban

seized Kabul in September 1996 and murdered him.33

The Taliban movement emerged in 1994 in response to the poor

security situation resulting from local warlord infighting and the

poor governance of the Islamic State of Afghanistan in Kabul, a

fractious and tenuous coalition of former anti-Soviet resistance

commanders. The long-suffering Afghan people had become

amenable to a movement that pledged it would establish security

Introduction and Historical Overview 25

33 See Richard H. Shultz and Andrea J. Dew, Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias: The Warriors of

Contemporary Combat (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 179–81. The idea to note

Pakistani encouragement of Hekmatyar’s wasteful attack is from Tim Hoyt, comment on manuscript draft, 26 February 2010. See Tanner, Afghanistan, 271–73, on Afghan Interim Government

and Hekmatyar attacks on Jalalabad.
and justice under the rule of strict sharia law. After the abdication

of Muhammad Najibullah on 28 April 1992, Afghanistan experienced a spate of factional infighting that brought about more destruction, a collapse of order, and extensive atrocities, all of which

alienated a population in search of peace after a decade and a half

of war. The Taliban emerged from “a generation of leaders who had

received their education in Pakistan’s border madaris [madrassas]

in NWFP [North-West Frontier Province; now known as the Khyber

Pakhtunkhwa Province] and Baluchistan.” Its leaders comprised a

group of Pashtuns who embraced the puritanical Islam propagated

by the network of religious schools in Pakistan’s Pashtun areas.

They aimed to take control of the Afghan state and cleanse it of its

“impurities.” The slowly emerging support by the Pakistani ISI and

other militant groups, such as JUI, partially explained their ultimate, if fleeting, good fortune. From the worldview that held sway

in Islamabad, the Taliban represented the ideal instrument through

which to sustain its policy of strategic depth across the northwestern frontier. The core Taliban leadership’s leadership council (rahbari shura) comprised former mujahideen commanders who

stopped fighting after the abdication of the Soviet-sponsored Najibullah government in 1992 to return to their Islamic studies. The

members of the leadership council were former brothers-in-arms

or personal friends of Mullah Omar, the movement’s leader, or

emir.34

The movement initially began as the immediate response to the

depravities of a local warlord who had raped several girls during

the summer of 1994 in Kandahar. Local people asked Omar for help

and he called on his brother-in-arms to exact justice on the perpetrator and to dissuade his followers. They subsequently responded

to other calls for assistance to beat back the predatory militias in

Kandahar. As more of the population began to support the actions

of the inchoate Taliban, the momentum gave them countrywide aspirations. They recruited their fighters from the madrassas in

Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Taliban movement grew in strength

and expanded its territorial control by battles or by payments and

26 War, Will, and Warlords

34 Thomas Ruttig, The Other Side: Dimensions of the Afghan Insurgency: Causes, Actors, and Approaches to Talks AAN Thematic Report 1 (Berlin: Afghan Analysts Network, 2009), 5–6; and Stephen

P. Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2004), 190 and 218.
persuasion of local leaders. In September 1996, the Taliban ultimately took Kabul, torturing and murdering Najibullah in the

process. They hung his mutilated body for public display in the

city. Earlier that year, the Taliban leadership allowed Osama bin

Laden and his coterie to take sanctuary in eastern Afghanistan. In

1997, the Taliban proclaimed the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,

and by 1998 the movement essentially controlled all of Afghanistan

except the Panjshir Valley, Badakhshan, and portions of Takhar.

After the Taliban refused to give up Osama bin Laden after the 9/11

attacks, the United States and its Coalition partners began Operation Enduring Freedom on 7 October 2001, and the Taliban regime

collapsed in Kandahar that December. Defeated but not destroyed,

the key leadership fled to Pakistan and the foot soldiers returned

to their villages. Before moving to the next chapter, which begins

with the fall and flight of the Taliban from Afghanistan to Pakistan,

the short aside below illumines some unorthodox insights on the

Taliban and al-Qaeda.35

Al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Quo Vadis?

What are the Taliban and what is al-Qaeda? What is the Taliban

movement’s worldview? How do they fight? How do the Taliban

compare and relate to al-Qaeda? To begin with a bit of hyperbolic

metaphor, the Taliban don’t surf. Nor do they generally read Clausewitz, and they do not typically wear wristwatches. The principally

Pashtun Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan abominate

foreign occupation, or any central government’s exertion of too

much control over their tribal homes and lands. With the license

of a small bit more of overstatement, the mountain tribes who inhabit the austere region along the Afghanistan and Pakistan border

hail from a different world. They live in mud huts, eat from packed

mud floors, and are innate and consummate guerrilla fighters. In

temporal terms, some of these Pashtun tribes have considered

themselves Pakistanis for a mere 60 years or so, Muslims for about

1,400 years, and Pashtuns for well over 2,000 years. Indeed, one

might presume that it would seem exceedingly obvious to any amateur or neophyte anthropologist which one of the aforementioned

Introduction and Historical Overview 27

35 Ruttig, The Other Side, 5–6.
identities would be most deeply ingrained among the Pashtuns.

They live in landlocked poverty and blissful ignorance. The notion

of surfing is as outrageous in their context as is the notion of Western liberal democracy. “Victory or death” is more than just a typical

guerrilla cliché fit for a bumper sticker: it is a reality in Afghanistan

and Pakistan. This is particularly true when the Pashtun code; militant Salafism; and perceived injustices from non-Pashtun Afghans,

non-Pashtun Pakistanis, or worse still, foreigners, combine. For the

radical core among the Islamist Taliban insurgents and their alQaeda associates, the mantra is “Islam or death.” The Taliban do

have more time. The core leaders will not quit until we take away

both their capacity and their will, to convince them of their defeat.

September 11th resulted from takfir terrorists imagining the

unimaginable in the most diabolical and destructive way.36

The Taliban do not pontificate on the typology of war through

the careful review of PowerPoint slideshows, either. They are adaptive and resilient, really practicing one kind of warfare continuously—that is, tribal war, guerrilla war. The mountain Pashtuns

have been practicing guerrilla warfare for centuries, and their irregular methods have been the bane of most powers who have attempted to subjugate them. Taliban is translated as “students, or

seekers of the truth.” However, the truth they seek, and propagate,

is a highly distorted and interpretive vision of Islam that brokers

no contrary or alternative views. Those who may object to the Taliban’s extremist and reactionary notion of Islam are considered

apostates, outside the realm of Islamist true believers, and subject

to all sorts of heinous atrocities. Essentially it is either subscribe to

their extreme version of Islam and imposition of Sharia or die the

death of the “nonbelievers.” In this, the Taliban proselytize a

Manichean view of religious ideology that is to a degree similar to

the ideology espoused by their allies in al-Qaeda. The Taliban don’t

surf now and never have. But, if we try to imagine the currently

unimaginable in an optimistic and constructive way, in 50 years,

28 War, Will, and Warlords

36 See Johnson, “On the Edge of the Big Muddy,” 118. The “Taliban don’t surf” is a somewhat

tongue-in-cheek paraphrase of “Charlie don’t surf,” the outrageous observation by the character

LtCol Bill Kilgore in the movie Apocalypse Now. Kilgore was urging his men to surf under enemy

fire soon after his cavalry squadron’s attack helicopters vehicles had obliterated a beachside

Viet Cong–controlled village. Charlie did not surf, but he never relented, either.
with a prudent commitment to enduring stability along the border

of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Pashtuns might snowboard in the

Hindu Kush.37

Al-Qaeda translates as “the base,” and its principal Arab architects, Abdullah Azzam and bin Laden, originally formed it as a

physical, material, and spiritual base in the Afghanistan-Pakistan

border region to support the Arab mujahideen during the latter half

of the anti-Soviet jihad during the 1980s. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, and for mainly specious reasons,

al-Qaeda went global during the 1990s, declaring jihad against

America, Israel, and all the putatively apostate Arab regimes allied

with the West in the greater Middle East. The common clarion call

of the Taliban and al-Qaeda was jihad to restore a theocratic Islamist caliphate, a throwback to the heyday and high-water mark

of Islam from centuries past. Essentially, before 2001, the difference

in their aims was that the Taliban’s aims were regional and alQaeda’s were global. The Taliban voluntarily hosted al-Qaeda between 1996 and 2001, and it benefited from bin Laden’s largesse

and from help fighting against the Northern Alliance from the 055

Brigade, which comprised mainly al-Qaeda foreign fighters. The

Taliban, who then controlled most of Afghanistan, advertently, or

inadvertently, provided Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda ilk sanctuary from which to plan and orchestrate the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings, the USS Cole attack, and the 2001 attacks on the

World Trade Center and the Pentagon.38

Introduction and Historical Overview 29

37 For detailed accounts on the Taliban, see Ahmed Rashid, Taliban (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001) and Descent into Chaos (New York: Penguin Books, 2008). 38 Quintan Wiktorowicz, “A Genealogy of Radical Islam,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 28

(2005): 84–87; Wright, The Looming Tower, 139–64 and 263–68. 

2

AFGHANISTAN TO 2009: THE END OF

THE BEGINNING?

The war is over, now the real fighting begins.

—an anonymous Pashtun

I

n retrospect it seems clear that defeating the Taliban in late 2001

and early 2002 was the easy part. When the Islamic Emirate of

Afghanistan refused to relinquish Osama bin Laden and his

other al-Qaeda lieutenants, vengeance was swift, if not massive.

When Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) began on 7 October

2001, the U.S.-led Coalition initially relied on limited special operations and airpower. Special operations forces conducted helicopter-borne and airborne raids against one of Mullah Omar’s

compounds and an airfield on 19 October. The air campaign focused on the destruction of air defense, infrastructure, command

and control, and political targets. The effects of the air campaign

were limited, and in some instances, harmful to the civilian population as they did not compel the Taliban to capitulate and they

generated unwanted civilian casualties. For example, U.S. aircraft

mistakenly hit a United Nations (UN) facility, a Red Cross food distribution center, and a Red Cross food convoy. The second phase

was more effective as it combined small teams of U.S. special operations and paramilitary advisors with Northern Alliance indigenous forces and airpower to bring the fight directly to the Taliban

and its al-Qaeda allies. About two months after the Twin Towers

collapsed, U.S. advisors marched into Kabul with Northern Alliance

forces on 13 November 2001.1

The Coalition used strategic airpower against tactical Taliban and

055 Brigade (al-Qaeda Arabs) formations to exact a severe lashing

in terms of casualties. The Taliban broke on 7 December 2001 and

abandoned Kandahar, its birthplace and stronghold. On 22 December 2001, an indigenous Afghan jirga (decision-making assembly)

31

1 See Shultz and Dew, Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias, 183–86; and Tanner, Afghanistan,

295–310, for a distilled account of OEF. 
inaugurated Hamid Karzai as the interim leader of Afghanistan.

That same day, in a tragic mistake, U.S. Air Force and Navy fighter

bombers, along with a Lockheed AC-130 gunship, attacked a convoy of tribal elders driving to witness the inauguration. A week

later, a U.S. air attack destroyed a village in Paktia Province near

the border because it had ostensibly contained a Taliban weapons

cache. Seventeen women and 25 children were casualties of that

attack. That same week the U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld decided to rely on surrogate tribal militias to do the heavy fighting in and around the Tora Bora cave complex, where bin Laden

and his followers were believed to be hiding. The American leadership was surprised and even ecstatic about the apparently rapid

defeat of the Taliban and the success of what it viewed as a revolutionary employment of air, special operations, and indigenous

forces. What the Rumsfeld Pentagon and the U.S. government were

not ecstatic about was the prospect of committing to rebuild

Afghanistan. Nor did they intend to do so. This chapter examines

the consequences of the poorly informed and overly economical

approach to Afghanistan between late 2001 and early 2009.2

Legitimacy

I am giving up warlordism, I am going to Kabul to be a minister.

—former Kandahar and current Nangarhar Provincial Governor Gul Agha

Shirzai in Sarah Chayes, The Punishment of Virtue

The competition is for legitimacy, not lethality.

—Thomas Rid and Marc Hecker, War 2.0: Irregular Warfare in

the Information Age

Both of the above quotes are relevant to this section because

both the overreliance on the warlords and on Coalition airpower in

the early years of the war in Afghanistan influenced the Afghan

people’s perception of the Coalition and the legitimacy of the

Afghan government’s efforts. This section analyzes the grievances

of the population and the insurgents in terms of unrealized goals

and expectations. It will ascertain, to the extent possible from open

source documents, how congruent the grievances of the general

populace were to those of the insurgents. This part also examines

32 War, Will, and Warlords

2 See Jones, Graveyard of Empires, 116–92. 
Afghanistan to 2009: The End of the Beginning? 33

what the Coalition and its indigenous partners did to ameliorate or

exacerbate those grievances. When combined forces defeated the

Taliban in the winter of 2001, the Afghans had reason to expect

some benefit in administration, development, and security from the

richest countries in the world. By 2001, many Afghans were beaten

down by decades of war and years of the Taliban’s draconian punishments. Moreover, the people of Kabul had never really accepted

the severe theocracy of the Taliban regime, which with its extremely

interpretive imposition of sharia law, proscribed and prescribed all

aspects of life, from its ban on kites to punishments of decapitation

and stoning. The native population was thus hopeful for a better

future after the Taliban’s defeat. According to one expert on

Afghanistan, America and its partners had two years to show tangible improvements for the people. Special operations, airpower,

and militias were sufficient to chase out the Taliban, but they were

not the preferred instruments to repair Afghanistan’s battered infrastructure.3

After over two decades of uninterrupted civil war, all of Afghan

society was “suffering from collective PTSD [posttraumatic stress

disorder].” What Afghans wanted from their government—order,

justice, public accountability, roads, schools for their children, and

qualified doctors—was no different from what most people want.

Because no one completely thought through what would happen

after the defeat of the Taliban, there was no real strategy for stabilizing the country, for building institutions for security and development. Nor was there sufficient infrastructure (unified

civil-military command modalities) or clear guidance from Washington about what the end aim in Afghanistan was, beyond crushing al-Qaeda. Into this vacuum flowed the venal side of

Afghanistan’s nature—warlords and militias, who were partially

assisted by earnest, but unwitting, U.S. special forces and infantry

commanders who were mopping up the countryside. Sarah Chayes

has noted that during the tumultuous post-Taliban period, it was

the U.S. and Coalition military forces who decided which villages

to search and which strongmen to partner. Midgrade Army commanders made decisions based on short-term tactical necessity, not

3 Tanner, Afghanistan, 302–3, 308–9, and 323–26. 
34 War, Will, and Warlords

necessarily with the long view of what consequences the empowered warlords would bring to the people. The people’s fear of a return of the “mujahideen nights,” the warlord predations during the

years before the Taliban, was tragically realized as many of these

same loathsome characters returned to exploit, extort, and disaffect

the population. As a result, the Afghan people would blame Karzai

and the Americans for legitimizing these “gun-rulers.”4

Twenty of the first group of 32 provincial governors who received

appointments in 2002 had been militia commanders, strongmen,

or warlords. Lower militia commanders also occupied the ranks of

the district governors. Tribal leaders and militia commanders who

had enamored themselves of Karzai or the Americans assumed positions of power and responsibility in most districts. For many of

these positions, any basis of popular support was tenuous at best,

and absent at worst. This practice often negatively affected the administrative structures in the provinces because these strongmen

were compelled to reward their followers with jobs to consolidate

their leadership. Warlord governors and chiefs of police possessed

the legal authority to appoint personnel for positions within the organizations they oversaw. Soon, close associates of the warlords

populated the department head positions of the provincial administrations, and similar practices held sway in the defense and interior ministries as well. In addition to undermining the perception

of legitimacy toward the government, this warlord nepotism was

also detrimental to the actual functionality of these institutions. For

instance, the Afghan National Police (ANP), who fall under the

Ministry of the Interior, were an especially conspicuous example of

ineptitude, corruption, and venality for several years despite efforts

to reform the organization. The ANP received considerably fewer

resources, less emphasis, and less oversight early on because the

focus was on building an army. Initially, the Germans had the task

of training the police, but their program was not aligned with the

realities on the ground in Afghanistan. They took too long to train

too few police officers. Moreover, in late 2003 the United States

hired private security contractors to produce police. The contractors

4 Chayes, The Punishment of Virtue, 148, 151, and 193. Afghans are very familiar with warlords,

and in the local language the term is topak salaran or “gun-ruler.” The direct quote is from

Chayes, 148.
Afghanistan to 2009: The End of the Beginning? 35

(DynCorp) proved to be inept, pushing too many police through

programs lacking substance and quality. This approach also failed

to identify and develop leadership, which is key to the effectiveness

of any such organization. In addition, many police units came to

comprise former members of militias. As a consequence, for several

years the Afghan police themselves were a catalyst for insurgent

support.5

There are some notable exceptions to this lack of popular support, however. For example, although Gul Agha Shirzai’s predatory

practices helped to alienate the people and catalyze the insurgency

in Kandahar, the people generally tend to support him as the current Nangarhar governor because he provides for them. Atta

Muhammad Noor, the Balkh provincial governor, is another exception. He is corrupt and imperfect, but he runs his province in a way

that garners much of the population’s support. Nevertheless, even

if some warlords had the skills to effectively administer their

provinces, the frequent failure of the Kabul government to provide

ample discretionary funds for community outreach with tribal elders and clergy undermined their efforts. In this manner, poor

provincial administration delegitimized the government and helped

create more fertile ground for an incipient insurgency to spread.6

The ethnic composition of the Afghan government was a potential source of grievance shared between the populace in the south

and east and the core Taliban. Pashtuns comprise 42 percent of the

population, which approximates 31 million in Afghanistan. The

Pashtuns preponderate in the south and east. As previously mentioned, the Taliban are a Pashtun movement. It is almost inconceivable among the Pashtuns that a non-Pashtun would be the leader

of Afghanistan. For all of its recorded history, except for two short

periods of non-Pashtun rule in 1928–29 and 1992–93, when it

briefly resembled Yaghestan again, Afghanistan has had a Pashtun

ruler. The country’s name even derives from the ancient Persian

term Afghan, which translates to “Pashtun.” Hamid Karzai is a

5 For insights on the missteps and problems with the creation of the ANP, see Mark Moyar, A

Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 191–211.

6 Antonio Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop (New York: Columbia University Press,

2008), 16–18. 
36 War, Will, and Warlords

Durrani Pashtun from the Popalzai tribe, the same tribe from which

the founder of the Afghan state hailed. However, given the Northern Alliance’s crucial role in defeating the Taliban, a higher number

of positions in the interim government went to the non-Pashtun

Tajiks and Uzbeks. Furthermore, although the people of Kabul

never really accepted the extreme theocratic program of the reactionary and simplistic Taliban regime, many Pashtuns did not initially view the advent of the Taliban as unambiguously bad or evil.

As cruel and as extreme as the Taliban were, they did impose some

timely, if severe, form of justice and created some order in place of

the disorder of the warlord years. Likewise, although many Pashtuns may have not have supported or embraced the ideology of the

Taliban, most would have recognized the significance of a Pashtun-dominated government in Kabul. The advent of Karzai’s Interim Authority, with underrepresentation among Pashtuns,

signaled the loss of Pashtun political influence. Many Pashtuns

viewed Karzai as a figurehead surrounded by non-Pashtuns and

foreigners. They tended to impugn him for enabling the ascent of

the non-Pashtuns in the government. Karzai’s alleged flaws

notwithstanding, he was in a tenuous position in 2001–3, with nonPashtuns blaming him for being soft on the Taliban and Pashtuns

blaming him for pandering to the Tajiks of the United Front.7

The composition and activities of irregular military units associated with Karzai’s interim government also likely aggravated Pashtuns inside and outside of the Taliban. The Northern Alliance’s

insistence on keeping its units in Kabul and the U.S. policy of employing irregular militias against Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants

robbed the Pashtuns of their historical sense of entitlement as the

principal source of Afghan troops. What emerged as the Afghan

Military Forces comprised principally non-Pashtuns as they engaged

in battles with the Taliban and their Pashtun sympathizers. To remedy this reliance on irregulars, the Afghan National Army (ANA)

would ultimately absorb these forces. But between the commencement of ANA recruitment in 2002 and 2004, an imbalance in ethnic

representation within the ANA leadership reinforced the Pashtun

perception of being marginalized. This was not necessarily a delib7 Amin Tarzi, “The Neo-Taliban,” in The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan, ed. Robert D.

Crews and Amin Tarzi (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 284–89.
Afghanistan to 2009: The End of the Beginning? 37

erate policy on the part of the Coalition or the inchoate Afghan state

but a result of who was allied with whom in terms of informal alliances and the initial use of Afghan Military Forces. The latter were

essentially ethnically based. The other factor is that there remained

underlying perceptions among the southern and eastern Pashtuns

toward the northern ethnic groups. These stemmed from historical

identity issues, the post-Najibullah internecine warlord years, and

the fact that the Northern Alliance helped the Coalition defeat the

Taliban. Although the Pashtuns represented 42 percent of the population and 50 percent of ANA troop strength, only 32 percent of

ANA officers and 36 percent of the noncommissioned officers were

Pashtuns. In contrast, the Tajiks, who represented 25 percent of the

population and 37 percent of ANA troop strength, comprised 56

percent of ANA officers and 53 percent of ANA noncommissioned

officers. The reasons for this imbalance are likely twofold. One possible reason is the rather ad hoc way in which the Afghan security

forces initially formed, which was co-optation of extant armed

groups. The other plausible explanation is that the Taliban was,

and still is, a Pashtun movement particularly popular among the

southern and eastern Pashtuns. As early as 2002, many Pashtuns,

and Karzai himself, recognized that “without the support of the

majority of the Pashtuns, governing Afghanistan could only be

done by reliance on foreign force.” A government that potentially

lacks legitimacy among 42 percent of the population is not sustainable in the long-term.8

In September 2002, insurgents began rocket, mortar, and improvised explosive device attacks, first directed at U.S. forces but subsequently directed at the Afghan government and its supporters.

The ranks of the emerging insurgency included former Taliban as

well as other rebellious Pashtun elements, such as the Hezb-i-Islami

(Party of Islam) of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani’s

tribal network in eastern Afghanistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The goals of these different factions

ranged from ejecting the Americans from Afghanistan to waging

global jihad in league with al-Qaeda. The new Taliban, or neo-Taliban, insurgents drew support from Pashtun resentment and griev8 Ibid. 
38 War, Will, and Warlords

ances toward the Tajiks of the United Front, some of whom had

murdered, raped, and pillaged among Pashtun communities in

2001–2 in retribution for past Taliban transgressions. The neo-Taliban also appealed to the populace’s desire for security, order, and

justice in response to inept, corrupt, or exploitative provincial governments. Many of these factors persuaded local leaders and tribal

elders to side with the insurgents for the time being. At first Karzai

did not seem to take the threat seriously, understating the number

of insurgents at 150 or so. Locally, the warlord militias and the police forces exhibited neither the capability nor the willingness to

stop the insurgency from spreading, and with far too few Coalition

and ANA forces on the ground, the insurgency slowly spread into

the villages, killing or threatening government supporters to establish shadow governments.9

Notwithstanding the grievances that the former Taliban and general Pashtun population shared, it is unlikely the Taliban would

have quit fighting, even if the Interim Authority had not marginalized them, because of their extreme ideological bent. Any secular

democratic government would have been an anathema to the Taliban’s radically circumscribed and puritanical worldview. They saw

it as their duty as faithful and committed jihadists to fight on and

not accept defeat. The lull in 2002 that followed the Taliban collapse

was likely necessary for them to regroup physically and to recover

psychologically from the shock of the rapid Coalition victory. 

The original Taliban’s ideology is a blend of Deobandi doctrine

with the most conservative rural village codes of behavior. This

version of the Taliban reduced penal and criminal laws to a very

narrow interpretation of sharia, and their marginalization of educated women and their rigid application of sharia made contact

with the West, whose culture they rejected, difficult. The neo-Taliban’s ideology, while fundamentally similar to the original Taliban’s, differs in that it seems to converge more with the narrative

of global jihad espoused by al-Qaeda. Beginning in 2002 and accelerating in 2003, the neo-Taliban rhetoric began to highlight notions

of the global war against the “Christian crusaders” and emphasized

comity with other jihad movements around the world as part of a

9 Moyar, A Question of Command, 197–98 and 209–11.
Afghanistan to 2009: The End of the Beginning? 39

common struggle. The invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent

2003 invasion of Iraq helped galvanize Islamist sentiments against

America and the West throughout the Muslim world. This increased

the perception of legitimacy for jihadist causes in Afghanistan and

Iraq, resulting in greater support for the neo-Taliban insurgency.

Deobandi madrassa students in what is now the Khyber

Pakhtunkhwa Province (formerly the North-West Frontier

Province), Pashtun village mullahs who were indoctrinated there,

and villagers unhappy with the government believed in the neoTaliban cause and began to align with the incipient insurgency.10

To increase the legitimacy of the insurgency and undermine the

Karzai government, Mullah Omar issued a fatwa (decree handed

down by an Islamic religious leader) in February 2003 announcing

that 1,600 Muslim scholars throughout Afghanistan had agreed that

it was every Muslim’s duty to wage jihad because the United States

had violated Islam’s boundaries and was oppressing the people of

Afghanistan. This fatwa also warned that anyone who collaborated

with the Coalition or the Afghan administration would be considered a Christian infidel and subjected to punishment according to

Omar’s harsh interpretation of Islam. The statement also urged the

Muslims of Afghanistan to wage jihad against the foreign forces or

to separate themselves from those forces. After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Omar issued a second fatwa on 1 April

2003 that repeated calls for Afghans to wage jihad against America,

decried the invasion of Iraq, and ordered the murder of anyone cooperating with the Americans. These fatwas were followed up in

2003 with an armed propaganda campaign targeting collaborators

to root out the government presence in Pashtun areas of the south

and east. The neo-Taliban began to combine the ideas engendered

in these statements with the propaganda benefit of increasingly violent acts to undermine the legitimacy and presence of government

workers. This campaign started with threats aimed at officials and

teachers, with the Taliban delivering “night letters” (shabnamah)

to the core of the Afghan administration system in the south in late

2003. The years 2004–6 saw a revival and resurgence of the Afghan

Taliban in Pakistan, with a commensurate and steady increase in

10 Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop, 11–15. 
40 War, Will, and Warlords

Taliban violent and coercive actions inside Afghanistan, such as

these threats. It is no coincidence that then–Lieutenant General

Ashfaq Parvez Kayani was the Director of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate from 2004 to 2007. The education system was

an important target because it was generally the only service that

the Afghan state was providing at the village level in the south.

Threats to teachers and attacks on schools thus signaled the arrival

of the Taliban. From March 2006 to March 2007, the Taliban killed

85 teachers and students and attacked 187 schools. The next section examines how the Coalition and Afghan National Security

Forces responded to these acts of violence.11

Force

They didn’t want to fight a guerrilla war—after Vietnam it had

ceased to be an option. In planning for the wrong adversary,

they failed to follow the ancient military dictum to know your

enemy. It was another failure of imagination.

—George Packer, The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq

Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor

that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists

in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions

while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs.

—Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

The two quotes above capture the essence of challenge the U.S.

confronted when al-Qaeda attacked the United States on 11 September

2001. First, the American military was almost exclusively prepared

for mid- to high-intensity conventional war on the plains of central

Europe or the deserts of Iraq. Its leadership, organization, and doctrine were optimized for maneuver by firepower for battles with similarly organized adversaries. No matter how much it reorganizes or

bends, a conventional military force “is still one hell of a poor instrument with which to engage insurgents,” a perceptive Rand study

noted near the end of the Vietnam War. The second quote relates to

the hubris of ignorance associated with poorly informed senior leaders who fail to anticipate the types of wars they face, or create, by

sending such forces into cultural settings where the only likely re11 Tarzi, “The Neo-Taliban,” 296–300; and Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop, 102–5.

Also see Riedel, Deadly Embrace, 80–85, for the revival of the Afghan Taliban in Pakistan. 
Afghanistan to 2009: The End of the Beginning? 41

sponse to Western tanks and bombs is jihad. In both Afghanistan and

Iraq, the U.S. government and its partners helped catalyze the insurgencies by the means they employed while they were encumbered

with the results of their partially successful offensives, which made

it necessary to conduct third-party counterinsurgencies without standing host-nation institutions and security forces. This section explores

how well U.S. leadership, doctrine, and organization were prepared

to conduct a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. It also examines the

employment of forces to secure and separate the populace from the

insurgents in order to avoid excessive civilian casualties.12

For all intents and purposes, the American military, in concert

with its Northern Alliance allies, was responsible for providing security after the Taliban’s defeat. Notwithstanding the paramilitary

militias of the Northern Alliance, this victory left Afghanistan essentially bereft of regular security institutions, and the American

military, along with its allied partners, was simultaneously compelled to adapt to an emergent insurgency and to raise indigenous

security institutions to combat this insurgency. This is the hardest

type of counterinsurgency to wage, particularly when most of the

third-party military is unfamiliar with counterinsurgency doctrine

and methods. Optimism is not a method and hopeful enthusiasm

does not equate to capacity. A military with a big-war focused culture, organization, and doctrine is not the ideal instrument to

counter insurgents. The Soviets and the American people have seen

these scenarios before—in Afghanistan and in Vietnam, respectively. They both ended very badly. Ironically, the American military institutional and cultural response to the outcome of Vietnam

guaranteed that it would be neither intellectually nor organizationally prepared for the world and the wars it faced as this century

began. As a result, some of its initial actions compounded the complexity of meeting an insurgency in the Hindu Kush, one of the

most optimal places in the world for guerrillas in terms of terrain

and traditions to wage their kind of warfare. Still, the American

military was the best military in the world for the wars it prepared

for, and during the first half of the first decade of this century, the

U.S. military adapted to become much better at fighting insurgents.

12 The direct quote is from Brian M. Jenkins, The Unchangeable War, RM-6278-2-ARPA (Santa

Monica, CA: Rand, 1970), 6. 
42 War, Will, and Warlords

A Tangential but Essential Précis: The Roots of

American Challenges in Afghanistan

The scope and length of this study allows for only an abridged

overview of why the American armed forces were not optimized

for fighting insurgents, before the study turns to the performance

of U.S. and Afghan security forces. For most of the twentieth century, the U.S. military generally embraced the big, conventional

war paradigm and fundamentally eschewed small wars and insurgencies. Thus, instead of learning from its many experiences in

Vietnam, the Philippines, the Banana Wars, and campaigns against

the Native Americans—for most of the last 150 years before 2001—

the U.S Army viewed these experiences as ephemeral anomalies

and aberrations, distractions from preparing to win big wars against

other big powers. The marginalization of counterinsurgencies and

small wars before 2004–5 impeded the U.S. military from fully

studying, distilling, and indoctrinating the extensive lessons that

small wars and insurgencies have provided to better face current

and emerging insurgencies. The U.S. military’s cultural inability to

attain a consensus on what went wrong in Vietnam created an

aversion to remembering Vietnam’s lessons, and essentially erased

most lessons from the experiences predating Vietnam. Military culture is a set of beliefs, attitudes, and values within the military establishment that shape shared preferences of how and when

military means should be used to accomplish strategic aims. It develops from the aggregation of historical experience, geography,

and political culture. Core leaders perpetuate and inculcate it.13

The contradiction stemming from the U.S. military’s unsuccessful struggle in the jungles and paddies of Vietnam was that the experience was perceived as anathema to the core elites of the

American military and hard lessons learned there about fighting

guerrillas were neither embedded nor preserved in the U.S. Army’s

institutional memory. The American military culture’s efforts to exorcise the specter of Vietnam, engendered in the shibboleth, “No

More Vietnams,” also prevented the U.S. Army as an institution

13 See Robert M. Cassidy, Peacekeeping in the Abyss: British and American Peacekeeping Doctrine and Practice after the Cold War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), 6–7, 231–35, and 238–50

for an in-depth analysis of American military culture in the twentieth century.
Afghanistan to 2009: The End of the Beginning? 43

from really learning from those lessons. In fact, the institution even

rejected the term counterinsurgency and came up with the more

bureaucratic, if less clear, term foreign internal defense (FID). Even

though many lessons existed in the U.S. military’s historical experience with small wars, the lessons from the Vietnam War were the

most voluminous. Yet these lessons were most likely the least read

since the U.S. Army’s intellectual rebirth after Vietnam focused almost exclusively on a big and preferred conventional war in Europe. Despite the fact that the Army essentially conducted peace

operations for a decade after the end of the Cold War, the first Persian Gulf War had so reinforced the culturally preferred, technologically enabled, decisive conventional war paradigm within the

U.S. military, that by 11 September 2001, the U.S. military still predominantly viewed its core and essential roles to be grounded in

conventional war. Even as late as March 2002, the National Training

Center at Fort Irwin, California—the U.S. Army’s premier desert

collective training opportunity—still focused exclusively on conventional battles with linear boundaries and phase lines. What’s

more, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld had decided to close the U.S.

Army Peacekeeping Institute in May 2002. In fact, the entirety of

extant current doctrine pertinent to counterinsurgency when this

long war in Afghanistan began was eight pages!14

Likewise, in 2001 the division combined arms team still remained the centerpiece of the U.S. Army's war-fighting structure

and doctrine. Even the Army’s Force XXI experiments at the beginning of the decade, intended as forward-looking efforts to fundamentally redesign the Army for information-age warfare, retained

the idea of the division as a basic building block. When OEF began,

the country’s biggest land-oriented service was organized around

brigades, divisions, and corps, the same organizations with which

it had fought and won World War II. What’s more, the U.S. military

had to rely on the same organizations, optimized for linear conventional battles, to command and control what was an exceedingly complex insurgency. It was the Army the U.S. government

14 Robert M. Cassidy, “Back to the Street without Joy,” Parameters 34 (Summer 2004): 73–75.

Fortunately, U.S. Acting Secretary of the Army reversed the Peacekeeping Institute decision and

ordered the Army War College Commandant to keep the institute open. See R.L. Brownlee,

Memorandum to the Army War College Commandant, 9 July 2003. 
44 War, Will, and Warlords

had at the time, and it was one that, unfortunately, had absorbed

almost nothing from what the military should have learned about

command and control of counterinsurgencies in Vietnam.15

In fact, the U.S. Army Center for Military History produced a

comprehensive study, titled Vietnam Studies: Command and Control 1950–1969, on the command and control lessons from that war.

In applying lessons learned in Vietnam to a similar future conflict,

this study makes two assumptions: the commitment of substantial

contingents of U.S., allied, and indigenous forces for an extended

period of time; and that U.S. objectives would include an early conclusion of the war on terms favorable to the host government and

the successful strengthening of indigenous forces, “thus enabling

them to assume responsibility for internal security.” It would be

imperative for the command and control structure to be capable of

close cooperation and support of indigenous and allied military

forces, paramilitary organizations, and other agencies of the host

country. The study describes unity of command as a prerequisite

to ensure both positive control by the U.S. political leadership of

the overall U.S. effort and the effectiveness of military operations

and advisory activities. Such a command structure should encourage improvements in the operational capabilities of the indigenous

forces and promote cooperation with them. Most interesting, in

view of how the quality of command and control arrangements

have ebbed and flowed in Afghanistan over the last decade, are the

recommendations for what “the optimum command and control

structure would include.”16

This report recommends the establishment of a unified theater

command directly under the Joint Chiefs of Staff that would exercise operational control over host-nation forces. The overarching

headquarters should also have operational control over the military

forces of participating allied partners as well as a combined planning group, with an officer of the host-nation as lead, and comprising representatives of the militaries providing forces in the theater

15 Robert M. Cassidy, Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror: Military Culture and Irregular War (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2006), 124–25. 

16 For the institutional lessons on command and control in Vietnam, see MajGen George S. Eckhardt, Vietnam Studies: Command and Control 1950–1969 (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center

for Military History, 1974), Chapter V.
Afghanistan to 2009: The End of the Beginning? 45

to bring the effort together. Subordinate headquarters for areas

where both indigenous and allied forces operated should also be

modified to function as combined staffs. Command and Control

1950–1969 urges the establishment of an organization similar to

the Civil Operations and Rural Development Support (CORDS) in

Vietnam, as soon as possible. This CORDS-like architecture should

directly control all civilian advisory efforts, especially those of the

Central Intelligence Agency, Department of State, and the U.S.

Agency for International Development. Without such control, the

study emphasizes, “Civil Affairs and counterinsurgency and pacification operations cannot be adequately coordinated.” The functions of such an organization would be most effective with an

arrangement similar to Military Assistance Advisory Groups. Last,

the report advises the theater headquarters should exercise command and operational control over the Military Assistance Advisory

Group assigned to the theater. Significantly, the U.S. military that

went into Afghanistan and Iraq had no on-the-shelf organization,

capability, or corps of advisors who were ready to train and equip

indigenous armies on a massive scale. The U.S. military was compelled to extemporize with the relatively few special forces groups

who did train for FID advisory roles but who did not include much

more than a dozen Pashto speakers at the time.17

As of early 2009, when the author provided the aforementioned

Army study on command and control to the International Security

Assistance Force (ISAF) two-star chief of operations, there still was

no CORDS-like organization nested under ISAF. At that time, the

structures for both the combined coordinating group and intermediate joint headquarters were in their embryonic stages. The unity

of command and effort for all actions and activities is absolutely

crucial in determining how effectively counterinsurgents employ

nonlethal and lethal methods to achieve sustainable security. In another seminal study on the interagency effort in Vietnam, the former head of CORDS noted that bureaucratic inertia and institutional

cultures (the tendency for various U.S. agencies to do their own

thing) impeded the successful unification and integration of effort

in Vietnam. Although CORDS was not a panacea, it did bring some

17 Ibid. 
46 War, Will, and Warlords

innovative improvements to unify the command and effort with a

single senior civilian manager working directly under the military

commander to better integrate interagency and military advisory

pacification efforts.18

American Challenges in Afghanistan

The challenges in Afghanistan for unity of command are even

more complex than in Vietnam as there are many more partners,

including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the UN,

and a plethora of nongovernmental organizations. Moreover, after

the Taliban regime collapsed, the U.S. command structure varied

between two-star division and three-star corps commands until the

establishment of Combined Forces Command–Afghanistan in 2003.

Command of ISAF rotated between European lead country commands every six months or so until a U.S. general assumed command in 2007. Getting a host of U.S. departments, multiple

international organizations, diverse U.S. and NATO conventional

and special operations formations, and fledgling Afghan security

forces to unify their efforts was, up until late 2009, one of the more

serious challenges in Afghanistan. How those forces acquitted

themselves in the employment of lethal and nonlethal force vis-àvis the relevant populations was the second biggest challenge.19

Success in counterinsurgency depends on building and selecting

the right people for key leadership positions, from the tactical level

to the strategic level. Recent scholarship identifies 10 critical characteristics of effective counterinsurgency leaders: initiative, flexibility, creativity, judgment, sociability, charisma, empathy, dedication,

integrity, and organization. Brevity dictates that this study amplify

the three most salient of these attributes—creativity, judgment, and

dedication. Creativity varies from the tactical to the strategic level,

but creative thinkers are essential because creative thinkers improvise innovative solutions to complex problems. Judgment is the use

18 See R. W. Komer, The Bureaucracy Does Its Thing: Institutional Constraints on U.S.-GVN Performance in Vietnam (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 1972), executive summary, for the failure to

integrate the U.S bureaucracy for unity of effort in Vietnam. See page ix for insights on agencies

doing their own thing.

19 For insights on unity of command and the integration of forces in Afghanistan, see Christopher J. Lamb and Martin Cinnamond, “Unified Effort: Key to Special Operations and Irregular

Warfare in Afghanistan,” Joint Force Quarterly 56 (January 2010): 41–43.
Afghanistan to 2009: The End of the Beginning? 47

of logic and intuition to evaluate problems and make sound decisions. It allows commanders to discern which actions and methods

may work against the insurgents. Dedication, or resilience, is crucial

because counterinsurgency creates a grueling and dangerous

rhythm. Excellent performance requires superiority in a substantial

number, but not all, of the listed attributes. Some leaders can improve these traits through self-development, but many leaders are

partly a product of the culture in which they have been immersed.

Military culture shapes leaders because the military is a closed system whose members serve for long periods. If a military culture eschews counterinsurgency as a core role, as the U.S. Army did for

the last 25 years of the last century, this can preclude the development of good counterinsurgency-capable leaders.20

The U.S. leaders who commanded in Afghanistan during the first

years of the resurgent insurgency generally deployed with little

knowledge of counterinsurgency. They were compelled to adapt in

contact because the U.S. military had theretofore almost exclusively

focused on its preferred paradigm of war—a big, conventional one.

To compound this, many regular Army leaders lacked creativity,

judgment, and the other identified attributes that are more important for counterinsurgency leaders than for conventional ones. The

contrast between special forces officers, who often exhibited those

attributes, and the regular Army officers, who often did not possess

them, was discernible. Special forces leaders worked closely and

constantly with their indigenous Afghan partners, and they thrived

on decentralized and dispersed operations. Early in the war, too

many commanders tended to operate from a few large bases from

which their forces would conduct sorties—large sweeping and raiding operations—only to fly back to base a week or two later. The

raids inflicted losses on the Taliban and, in some instances, on the

civilian populace, but they failed to stop the insurgents from recruiting among the population. However, those “commanders with

creativity, flexibility, judgment, and initiative figured out quickly

how to swim in the unfamiliar waters into which they had been

thrown.” For example, when Lieutenant General David W. Barno

20 Moyar, A Question of Command, 2–13. See Cassidy, Counterinsurgency and the Global War

on Terror, 99–126, for an analysis of American military culture in the context of counterinsurgency.
48 War, Will, and Warlords

became the Coalition commander in Afghanistan in 2003, he

shifted the focus of the effort toward the tenets of counterinsurgency and tried to focus on population protection. He assigned

American commanders ownership of geographic areas and directed

them to send small units into the Afghan villages to patrol relentlessly and to persist among the people.21

The problem was that there were never nearly enough troops to

persist among 31 million people in a rugged country about the size

of Texas. The Rumsfeld Pentagon opted for a very small force because it misconstrued the lessons from the Soviet war in

Afghanistan, thinking the Soviets lost because they had too many

forces. In fact, the Soviets lost because they had not only too few

but also the wrong kind of forces—mechanized forces optimized

for the big war in Europe—and these forces employed entirely inappropriate scorched-earth methods. Also problematic for the

Rumsfeld Pentagon, there was no apparent U.S. plan for what to

do after the Taliban was defeated. The quick defeat of the Taliban

in 2001 had persuaded the American prophets of a revolution in

military affairs that new technologies would allow the U.S. military

to destroy the Taliban from the air, making large ground forces unnecessary. This overreliance on airpower ended up inflicting civilian casualties on too many occasions, such as the mistaken killings

of civilians in November and December of 2001, the wrongful

bombing of an eastern Afghanistan wedding party in July 2002,

and the civilian casualties caused by an AC-130 gunship in Shindand in August 2008.22

To rebuild the country and provide security against the remnants

of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, Rumsfeld and Karzai had mistakenly

relied on Afghan warlords for these tasks. Many of these warlords

were venal and vicious men, men “who put personal gain before

the good of the country, committed atrocities, engaged in mobster

activities, and showed an inability to cooperate with others.” The

Coalition funded the expansion of these warlord militias to the

detriment of the Afghan people, and to the detriment of the overall

endeavor. The corruption and abuse of the warlords alienated the

21Moyar, A Question of Command, 194–211. The direct quote is from page 198 of this study.

22 For an analysis of the Soviet lessons in Afghanistan, see Jones, Graveyard of Empires, 161–

63; and Kulakov, Lessons Learned, 6–7.
Afghanistan to 2009: The End of the Beginning? 49

people in many instances. This behavior was widespread in the

south and the east, and it was manifest in the marginalization of

other tribal groups, the exaction of fees on the people for rendering

what should have been delivered basic services, and the worse

practices of physically brutalizing ordinary Afghans. As stated before, although justice is hugely important in most places, it deeply

resonates in the Pashtun culture. Moreover, the perception of injustice extends beyond civilian casualties. If people in power abuse

that power through greed and graft, if they charge ordinary Afghans

for services the state should provide, the Afghans also perceive this

as unjust and will likely be aggrieved by these abuses.23

The overreliance on airpower that attended the decisions to deploy a small force and to employ special operations forces in concert with Afghan militias in the early years of the war also resulted

in an inordinate and counterproductive number of civilian casualties. For the first several years of the war, the number of conventional forces hovered around 10,000, far too few to implement a

comprehensive counterinsurgency, especially considering that force

numbers in Iraq—a country of 26 million people, a smaller population than Afghanistan—surpassed 160,000 during the height of

counterinsurgency operations there. Compounding the relative

dearth of boots on the ground was a general unfamiliarity with the

fundaments of counterinsurgency and an emphasis on searches and

raids to “kill or capture the enemy.” In fact, the reality that sound

counterinsurgency was founded on “clearing, holding, and building” the populated areas did not emerge from the dustbin of expurgated lessons to enter U.S. Department of Defense discourse and

doctrine until 2005 and 2006. The reliance on airpower was particularly acute in 2006 when the U.S. Air Force carried out more than

2,000 air strikes in Afghanistan between June and November, a figure which signified a notable increase compared to previous years.

It increased further in 2007. The reliance on air strikes inevitably

led to significant numbers of unwanted casualties among the civilian population and to allegations of excessive force, “particularly

when 2,000-pound bombs were extensively used to deal with small

groups of insurgents.” Local Afghans often asserted that Coalition

23 Moyar, A Question of Command, 193–96. The direct quote is from page 194 of this book. 
50 War, Will, and Warlords

air strikes mistakenly targeted civilians, not Taliban, in these air attacks. Notwithstanding the actual number of civilian casualties,

Taliban propaganda aimed at inflating the number of civilian casualties was difficult to refute persuasively, especially given that the

Taliban were increasingly more adept at media operations. One

other unintended consequence of the dependency on airpower was

a potential perception among the Pashtuns that American forces

lacked conviction except when supported by substantial airpower.

This may have encouraged the resistance with the notion that the

United States did not have the forbearance for the long fight in

Afghanistan.24

The first years in Afghanistan served as an experiment for a

“new way in war,” one in which technology, special operations,

and airpower were intended to defeat the Taliban, hunt down alQaeda core leadership, and somehow pacify the historically resilient and warlike Pashtuns in eastern and southern Afghanistan.

To do this much, with so little expenditure in resources, troops, and

analysis and without a campaign plan or strategy, was tantamount

to hallucination, which one sage Australian trooper defined as “vision without resources or analysis.” From the rearming of warlord

militias to the use of airpower, to the use of the military for the disbursement of development aid, the United States was relying on

militarized solutions to Afghan problems. This experimental design

for stabilizing Afghanistan sought to rely on the least expensive investments that its senior leaders could conceive of, ones which

principally focused on the military instrument and punitive displays

of lethal force. This approach animated a host of adversaries and

created conditions that helped catalyze the neo-Taliban, but it did

not produce stability. 

To be sure, there were some success stories, though mixed. The

Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) represented a creative initiative that General Barno inherited and fully endorsed. The PRTs

were designed to ameliorate the poor governance and prevalent unemployment that helped push the population away from the

Afghan government and towards the Taliban. They comprised a

blend of Coalition military and interagency members who were re24 See Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop, 202–3, for insights on airpower and civilian

casualties. The numbers on air strikes are from page 202.
Afghanistan to 2009: The End of the Beginning? 51

sponsible for all kinds of nonmilitary counterinsurgency actions,

from diplomacy to development. These teams worked on building

relationships with local Afghan leaders toward the goals of better

administration and development. Their principal shortcoming

stemmed from the absence of unity of effort and command across

Afghanistan because they were subject to national direction and

because a CORDS-like architecture did not exist. In 2003 and 2004,

U.S. military advisors also helped reduce many of the problems

with the fledgling ANA, and that army today is one of the most respected state institutions. In 2008, with the assistance of U.S. and

other foreign advisors, the Afghan Ministry of the Interior pursued

a Focused District Development program that was aimed at overhauling the ANP, which theretofore had been a de facto recruiting

tool for insurgents due to its corruption, ineptitude, and predatory

abuse of the populace. This program vetted and trained entire district police forces and removed bad leaders, and although imperfect, was a step in the right direction, having an impact on how the

people view the police in redeveloped districts.25

Information Operations

We are an empire now and when we act, we create our own

reality. 

— attributed to a George W. Bush advisor

in Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos

The foreigners must like the topak salaran [gun-rulers, warlords].

— attributed to a Pashtun tribal elder 

in Sarah Chayes, The Punishment of Virtue

How the population perceives the legitimacy and rectitude of the

government and its partners in providing apt administration, security, and development is the essence of counterinsurgency. Perception creates reality and that perception stems from consistency in

deed and message. This section compares and contrasts how well

the insurgents and counterinsurgents in Afghanistan integrated information operations and security operations to persuade the population of the legitimacy of their enterprises and actions. 

25 Atiq Sarwari and Robert D. Crews, “Epilogue: Afghanistan and the Pax Americana,” in Crews

and Tarzi, Taliban and the Crisis, 316–18; and Moyar, A Question of Command, 200 and 206–7. 
52 War, Will, and Warlords

It is typically more difficult and costly for the counterinsurgent

to maintain legitimacy and order than it is for insurgent to undermine order and legitimacy. This difficulty increases in magnitude

for a third-country military force trying to sustain a good public

image when prosecuting counterinsurgency operations among the

indigenous population. The reality is that insurgents often find it

easier to appear successful in the information environment, simply

by blowing up people and things. Contrariwise, counterinsurgents

face the far more difficult task of building governments and institutions. Destruction has an immediate informational effect,

whereas construction projects are slow to achieve effects. Successful counterinsurgency, in other words, “is much less attention-grabbing and much more resource-consuming than effective

insurgency.” Recent research posits that the advent of both modern

information technology and the resurgence of insurgencies have

broken the military’s and the media’s shared monopoly on information and elevated the salience of public perception in the recent

and current counterinsurgencies (irregular wars) in Afghanistan

and elsewhere.26

One of the Taliban’s principal intended indigenous targets for

their influence operations are illiterate farmers and villagers, a not

inconsiderable and unimportant portion of the population. To appeal to this group, the Taliban messages portray the Coalition as infidel foreign invaders who aim to impose their Christian democratic

ways on the Afghan populace. The Taliban somewhat masterfully

conflate Afghan nationalism, Pashtun norms, and their extreme but

still resonant version of Islam to propagate against the “Western infidel foreign occupation.” (Indeed, the withdrawal of all foreign

forces has been one of the Quetta Shura Taliban’s enduring preconditions for a political settlement.) When Coalition security forces

initiate lethal operations that inadvertently result in alleged civilian

casualties, the Taliban are often quicker to initiate preemptive propaganda that either exaggerates or distorts the actual consequences.

Unlike their predecessors, the newly resurgent Taliban swiftly

adapted and embraced media and information operations after

2002. The old Taliban banned most media, but the revived Taliban

26 Rid and Hecker, War 2.0, 2–4. The direct quote is from page 3. 
Afghanistan to 2009: The End of the Beginning? 53

now recognizes the importance of news media in determining the

outcome of an irregular war of ideas. Learning from al-Qaeda’s successes with information warfare, the neo-Taliban now relies on

media as a powerful instrument in waging psychological warfare.

The Taliban’s global media campaign has two audiences: their supporters and potential guerrilla recruits, and the populations of their

enemies. The number of Coalition-induced “civilian casualties” has

become an important focus of the Taliban’s information operations.

In some instances, Taliban spokespersons have called the international media in Kabul within minutes of a NATO airstrike, thus getting their message on civilian casualties out before the official

Coalition statement and shaping the information environment to fit

the Taliban narrative. Whether the Taliban messages are inaccurate

or exaggerated, the fact that the Coalition has accidentally hit civilian targets previously lends a degree of advanced credibility to their

propaganda.27

Coalition media statements continuously downplay the sophistication and correctness of Taliban media operations that focus on

civilian casualties. They highlight the falseness of the Taliban reports and note the Taliban tactics of intentionally causing civilians

to be in the lines of fire to produce casualties. Although Coalition

media press releases persist in insisting that the Taliban’s swiftly

crafted reports on civilian casualties are factually wrong, it does

not matter. In Afghanistan, the first messages—whether correct or

incorrect and regardless of the means of transmission—tend to stick

and create a perception of reality. For example, there were several

instances in 2008 when cell phone calls placed directly to the presidential palace would plant erroneous and exaggerated first reports

of civilian injuries in the minds of senior Afghan leaders. Disabusing the senior Afghan leaders of these false reports with facts was

an uphill and time-intensive endeavor. Unencumbered by twentieth-century hierarchical bureaucracies with Cold War penchants

for overclassifying almost everything, the Taliban’s civilian-casualty

propaganda operations exhibit far greater celerity than the

NATO/Coalition media operations. There are also reports of the Taliban text messaging reporters in Kabul after every incident when

27 Ibid., 170–73 and 178–82. 
54 War, Will, and Warlords

U.S. forces called in close air support, thereby conveying the Taliban version of the damage and typically claiming civilian casualties. Not unlike the Chechens of the anti-Soviet mujahideen, the

Taliban would often attack Coalition forces from populated areas

to purposefully bait Coalition air strikes that would inevitably kill

civilians. They did this so effectively near Shindand in August 2008

that the fallout from both the contrived and real casualty figures

induced the Afghan president to repeat his hallmark performance

of histrionics over civilian casualties with senior U.S. civilian and

military leaders well into 2009.28

The Taliban’s focus on civilian casualties in their media operations has brought them four readily discernible advantages: a decrease in both the popular support for the government and its

perceived government legitimacy, an increase in guerrilla recruits,

impediments to freedom of Coalition action when real or contrived

civilian casualty incidents precipitate operational pauses (this

means operations are interrupted in a given area or areas), and an

increase in negative pressure on the public of NATO allies. In addition to using media to impugn the Coalition for alleged civilian casualties, the Taliban have proven increasingly adept at blending

their information operations with their lethal operations. One credible study identified the key strength of the Taliban leadership to

be its ability to integrate guerrilla tactics with assassinations and

suicide bombing to support its overarching political strategy to force

the Coalition/Afghan government to quit. In this way, the Taliban’s

chief strength lined up against the Coalition’s chief vulnerability to

integrate actions and ideas within an influence campaign. This

study indicated that “the enemy appeared to be succeeding in their

information operations primarily because they made propaganda

their main effort, while coalition forces tended instead to treat information as a supporting activity” and did not recognize armed

propaganda in their information operations doctrine. The Taliban

have skillfully used rumors and verbal persuasion and coercion to

make local officials and farmers do what they want. The use of

night letters to intimidate the people into compliance with the Taliban’s will is another effective use of propaganda. They have as28 Ibid. 
Afghanistan to 2009: The End of the Beginning? 55

sassinated many local government officials, schoolteachers, and

tribal leaders for not complying with these nighttime threats. In

many cases, there were few to no Afghan Security Forces or Coalition forces present to protect the population from either the threats

or the consequences of noncompliance. Thus, the people supported

the Taliban’s wishes.29

Antonio Giustozzi has described the Taliban’s armed propaganda as “a strategy of demoralization,” which included displaying

the bodies of executed “collaborationists,” mutilating the bodies of

interpreters working for the Coalition, and beheading prisoners, all

for the psychological propaganda effect. Suicide attacks were another key and powerful component of the strategy to erode the will

of the enemy. These were unprecedented in Afghanistan during the

Soviet war and generally anathema to Pashtun cultural norms. The

Taliban apparently adopted these heinous methods in May 2003

with al-Qaeda’s encouragement, and they started to implement

these slowly due to the challenge of finding a sufficient number of

local Pashtuns who were willing to blow themselves up. In

Afghanistan, the Taliban launched six suicide attacks in 2004 and

21 in 2005. In 2006 and 2007, however, they mounted between 135

and 145 suicide attacks that in aggregate inflicted almost 3,000 casualties. Ahmed Rashid has reported that many of the early suicide

bombers were deranged teenagers and orphans from asylums and

orphanages in Pakistan. The propaganda of the early attacks stimulated recruiting among a wave of foreign fighters who were flowing back to Pakistan in response to al-Qaeda’s call to help the

Taliban. The mujahideen glorified suicide attacks, referring to them

as the “missiles of Mullah Omar.” By 2006 they were mounting suicide attacks in the middle of Kandahar or outside the American

embassy in Kabul. The large number of foreign Arab volunteers

helped to expand the scope and number of suicide attacks after

2006 because they helped train the next generation of Taliban militants in skills such as bomb making and fund-raising.30

There are two other aspects of the Taliban’s evolving ideology

and information operations that warrant explanation. First, the neo29 Ibid., 180; and David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla (New York: Oxford University Press,

2009), 49–50 and 58–59. The direct quote is from page 58.

30 Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop, 108–9; and Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 366–67.
56 War, Will, and Warlords

Taliban’s ideological rhetoric ultimately expanded their scope of

jihad from their local one to one that increasingly embraced global

militant Islamism, particularly since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in

2003. The Taliban’s association with other insurgent and terrorist

groups broadened the movement’s outlook by connecting it to a

network of similarly disposed groups. By fall 2006, foreign fighters

and insurgents in Iraq also began to shift their attention toward

Afghanistan, an important symbol of jihad and home of an increasingly lethal insurgency that offered militants an opportunity to fight

the West. Unlike the Taliban at its inception in 1994 as a homogeneous Pashtun group, the new Taliban has expanded its affiliations

with a wider array of foreign and indigenous jihadist movements

who reside in Pakistan’s tribal areas. By 2007, the Taliban were

linked to a loose coalition of former anti-Soviet mujahideen, Pashtun tribesman, Pashtun clerics, Punjabi militants, Arab and Pakistani Islamists, and officials in the Pakistani government. The

suicide bombers comprised a mix of Afghan Pashtun refugees and

foreign fighters trained in Pakistan. The Taliban’s association with

this international jihadist network changed its narrative to become

more closely aligned with the universal aspirations of global jihad.

The Taliban leadership is now as inclined as any other Islamist militant group to raise concerns for the plight of insurgents in Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir, or Uzbekistan. Another telling change

reflected by the Taliban’s adaptive approach to information operations was when Mullah Omar issued a 30-point book of rules to his

subordinate commanders to improve their behavior and governance. The neo-Taliban still burned down government schools and

imposed harsh sharia justice, but the intention was to treat the population better to earn its support.31

Information operations and strategic communications were not

the strong suits of the U.S. government or the U.S. military when

this long war in Afghanistan began. There has been much effort and

money invested in making the U.S. bureaucracy better at this, and

there have been discernible improvements that vary across agencies

and organizations. However, by early 2009, the Taliban was still more

effective and agile than the Coalition in its information operations.

31 Robert L. Canfield, “Fraternity, Power, and Time in Central Asia,” in Tarzi and Crews, Taliban

and the Crisis, 232–35; and Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 362–63. 
Afghanistan to 2009: The End of the Beginning? 57

Even though he was supposedly oblivious to the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, former U.S. Secretary Rumsfeld did acknowledge that “our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in

today’s media age, but for the most part, our country, our government has not.” The impediments for the U.S. Army in conducting

information operations for irregular warfare, given its big conventional war genetics, were manifold: it saw itself as a stand-alone

army focused on military but not political transformation; it focused

on similarly organized enemies; it emphasized secrecy in psychological operations and control of hidden information operations; and it

looked for quantitative measures of effectiveness and rational interests, not for comprehension of cultural perceptions. Moreover, such

an army viewed emerging information technology in the context of

improving its own internal command and control, not to project

ideas and messages intended to influence alien populations. Reconciling the need for bottom-up, creative approaches to influence the

populace, one valley at a time, with the Defense Department’s proclivities for risk aversion and excessive control remains a challenge.

In Afghanistan, there have been examples of best practices by

brigade and battalion commanders who have learned how to match

actions with ideas to convince the people of their legitimacy and rectitude. However, before 2009 there really was not a large degree of

operational coherence or a way to capture, distill, analyze, and

broadly disseminate these observed practices, either within theater

or from one region to another, or back to institutional training bases

of the troop-contributing countries within the alliance. Likewise,

there was not a great deal of migration of practices from Iraq to

Afghanistan, or vice versa. This does not mean there was none of

this, but only that there was too little of it and it was not organized.32

Postscript

By early 2009 in Afghanistan, the linkages among insurgents,

terrorists, narcotics traffickers, and warlords were growing and becoming increasingly more complementary. Up until the late 2010/

early 2011 reversals, the resurgent Afghan Taliban was prosecuting

32 Rid and Hecker, War 2.0, 68–69, 35–36, 42–43, and 50. See Kilcullen, Accidental Guerrilla,

69–70, for best practice information operations in Afghanistan. The direct quote is from page

68 in War 2.0.
58 War, Will, and Warlords

an increasingly potent insurgency in the south and east of

Afghanistan. The principal sources of the resurgent insurgency include corruption, oppression, poverty, bad governance, and Islamist

movements that are metastasizing throughout Afghanistan and

neighboring countries. The Karzai government has found it exceedingly difficult to extend its mandate and control outside the capital

of Kabul and into Afghanistan’s vast and austere hinterlands. The

most pernicious aspect, and a crucial cause for the steady regeneration and growth in insurgent capacity, is that most of the senior

al-Qaeda leadership, and a preponderance of the Taliban senior

cadre have been afforded relatively unimpeded sanctuary in and

around the FATA across the border in Pakistan. In part, this grave

situation evolved as a result of the U.S. government’s decision in

mid-November 2001 (during the early stages of OEF) to allow the

Pakistani Air Force to transport hundreds of Pakistanis from the

then-encircled northern city of Kunduz to Peshawar. This evacuation “turned into a mass extraction of senior Taliban and al Qaeda

personnel, dubbed ‘Operation Evil Airlift’ by appalled Special

Forces soldiers on the scene.”33

Worse still, there was apparently no joint U.S.-Pakistani accountability for determining who was who among this mélange of InterServices Intelligence, Taliban, and al-Qaeda fighters at their

disembarkation point in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province

(now named the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province). The following

month the United States then failed to commit American ground

forces to block the escape route of al-Qaeda from Tora Bora, allowing Osama bin Laden and several dozen of his senior leaders to escape a potential encirclement to flee into Pakistan, where a number

of key leaders remained as of this printing. The corpus of counterinsurgency doctrine and experience from the last 60 years and

before points to one enduring truism about counterinsurgency, one

with huge implications for the long war in Afghanistan and Pakistan: counterinsurgents cannot be successful without denying the

insurgents sanctuary and external support. Experience across coun33 See Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 91–92, for insight on the Kunduz airlift. See Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason, “Terrorism, Insurgency, and Afghanistan,” in Countering Terrorism

and Insurgency in the 21st Century, vol. 2, ed. James J. F. Forest (Westport, CT: Praeger Security

International, 2007), 453–78, for analysis of the insurgent and terrorist safe haven in the FATA. 
Afghanistan to 2009: The End of the Beginning? 59

terinsurgencies has shown that very few counterinsurgencies have

ever succeeded by affording the insurgents cross-border sanctuary.

The sanctuary in the wild and unregulated tribal areas on Pakistan’s northern border remains an increasingly grave impediment

to any chance of success in Afghanistan. This is as true of the FATA

on Afghanistan’s border as it was true of the Ho Chi Minh Trail on

Vietnam’s border. A major objective for the counterinsurgent, beyond isolating the insurgents from the population, must be to deny

the insurgency access to external support, without which insurgencies have seldom achieved their full potential. The prospect of successfully reducing the sanctuary in Pakistan is the subject of the

next chapter.34

34 See Andrew J. Birtle, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine 1942–

1976 (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2006); Peter Paret and John W. Shy,

Guerrillas in the 60’s, rev. ed. (New York: Praeger, 1962); and FM 3-24 for body of doctrine.

61

3

PAKISTAN TO 2009: WITH US OR AGAINST US?

We can love our enemies but only after we have defeated

them.

—Taliban leader quoted in Ahmed Rashid, Taliban

Pakistan is exponentially more complex than Afghanistan. If

Afghanistan is a challenging conundrum, Pakistan is the puzzle

nested within the enigma that relates directly and inexorably to

security and stability in Afghanistan. It seems that part of the problem

in Pakistan stems from an inherent propensity for intransigence and

duplicity. Another part of the challenge in working with Pakistan is that

the history of the United States and Pakistan is stained by the Americans’ calculated Cold War geopolitical maneuvering, which many Pakistanis rightfully perceive as less than steadfast and consistent support.

The contradictions within Pakistan, in its political and military cultures,

also contributed to a relationship that ebbed and waned commensurate

with Pakistan’s fear and loathing of its archnemesis, India. The paradox

of Pakistan’s internal and foreign policy machinations were exceedingly

manifest on 11 and 12 September 2001 when al-Qaeda terrorists struck

key targets on the U.S. eastern seaboard and the U.S. delivered the ultimatum to Pakistan to be “with us or against us.” Before 11 September

2001, from General Zia’s era through the General Pervez Musharraf era,

Pakistan had served as a sanctuary for the physical, philosophical, and

materiel support for radical Islamist militant groups operating against

India, in Kashmir, and in Afghanistan. The legacy of Zia’s infusion of

puritanical and political Islam among the Pashtuns seemed to be informed by the assumption that Pakistan would be able to control Islamist militancy in Afghanistan.1

That assumption turned out to be a false one. The government of

Pakistan and its agents in the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI)

supported the rise of the Taliban, and Pakistan was one of only three

states to officially recognize the Taliban regime in 1996. Pakistan also

1 See Mariam Abou Zahab and Olivier Roy, Islamist Networks: The Afghan-Pakistan Connection

(New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 80–81.
62 War, Will, and Warlords

continued to support the Taliban with advisors and subsidies until September 2001. During this period, the Taliban regime, in return, afforded

sanctuary for ISI-supported militant groups to train and equip insurgents and terrorists to attack Pakistan’s perceived external and internal

enemies. The long-embraced Pakistani security concept of strategic

depth that underpinned this support turned out to be spurious. During

the triumphant but ephemeral rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the

border essentially vanished, with Pashtun tribes on both sides steadily

slipping toward Islamist militancy and criminality. As early as 1997,

Olivier Roy presciently observed that the Pakistani support of the Taliban amounted to “the de facto absorption of Afghanistan,” which “will

accentuate centrifugal tendencies in Pakistan.” After 12 September

2001, when Pakistan officially decided to fight alongside the United

States in the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, it rhetorically cut

all ties to the Taliban and began to prosecute security operations in the

tribal areas, with greatly varying degrees of efficacy. These reputed

changes to what was theretofore a pro-Taliban policy catalyzed a backlash among radicalized tribal militants of various flavors who began to

target the Pakistani state with increasingly violent effect from 2003 to

early 2009. Instead of the Taliban providing strategic depth for Pakistan,

the converse is now apparently the case, and discerning friend from foe

in Pakistan has become difficult. This chapter examines the effectiveness of the Pakistani security forces’ counterinsurgency operations in

the tribal areas until the spring of 2009.2

Legitimacy

A deep-seated popular belief exists that combating terrorism

serves U.S. interests and not those of Pakistan.

—Marvin G. Weinbaum, “Hard Choices in Countering Insurgency and

Terrorism along Pakistan’s North-West Frontier”

Pakistan was the hub of a radiating network of Islamist groups

and organizations that by 2000 were asserting a pro-Pakistani

agenda across the region.

—Shaun Gregory, “The ISI and the War on Terrorism”

The notion of legitimacy is more complex in Pakistan, again, because of the dichotomous and duplicitous nature of that state’s in2 These insights are attributed to Olivier Roy and Ahmed Rashid in Rashid, Taliban, 186–87.

The direct quotation is attributed to Roy on page 187 of Taliban.
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 63

ternal and external security policies. The fusion of politics with virulent Islam, which first occurred in the religious schools under Zia’s

deliberate Islamicization program, is now ingrained in most of the

country’s public school curricula. Reinforced over decades by

schools that inculcated an ideology of Islamic superiority, much of

the Pakistani public at large was generally amenable to the government’s support for the Taliban in the second half of the 1990s. As

far as the (Pashtun) people in the tribal areas were concerned,

many of them did ultimately embody the radical Islamist apotheosis

of Zia’s experiments with religious engineering. Many of them also

surely supported their Pashtun Taliban brethren; some were linked

by the mercenary necessities of smuggling opium and other illicit

items, and more than a few may have been sufficiently radicalized

to support al-Qaeda’s narrative of global jihad. To be certain, most

of the people did deeply favor Pakistan’s deliberate policy of supporting Islamist guerrillas in Afghanistan, Kashmir, and elsewhere.

And while one can now easily make a cogent argument against the

long-term soundness of Pakistan serving as a hub for transnational

militants, Pakistan’s senior leadership, including the director of the

ISI, had in fact embraced the promotion of militant proxies, viewing

them as serving Pakistan’s regional security policy until 11 September 2001 and beyond. Thus, when General Musharraf pledged that

Pakistan was “with” the United States in its war on terror, and

therefore against its former proxies, he did indeed nominally implement a huge reversal in security policy, which some in his government and many among the populace perceived as inimical to

Pakistan’s security.3

By September 2008, Musharraf was gone, and Pakistan, the

tribal areas, and Afghanistan were far less secure, with full-blown

insurgencies and spates of suicide attacks occurring more frequently against all types of targets. Events would seem to have validated the “deep-seated” belief against supporting the U.S. in the

war on terror. That is, if the perception that Pakistan unambiguously worked to combat terrorism were indeed a true one. Pakistan’s action or inaction has done far more to enable the Afghan

3 For insight on Islamist dogma in the public schools curricula, see Shaun Gregory and Simone

Valentine, Pakistan: The Situation of Religious Minorities (United Kingdom: Writenet, United

Nations High Commissioner for Refugees report, 2009), ii. 
64 War, Will, and Warlords

Taliban than to disable them. The Pakistani ISI and security forces

have produced very few empirical or helpful results in the context

of fighting the Afghan Taliban. The worst case is that actors in the

employ of Pakistan have deliberately supplied, trained, or protected

the Afghan Taliban to retain them as an instrument in pursuit of

the Pakistanis’ security imperative of strategic depth. (A full analysis of Pakistan’s relationship with the Quetta Shura Taliban is beyond the scope of this study; the term “Quetta Shura” stems from

Mullah Omar’s relocation of the Taliban to Quetta, Pakistan, in winter 2002).

This section explores the grievances of both the Pakistani population and the Pakistani Taliban that helped undermine their belief

in the legitimacy of the Pakistani government. These grievances

helped catalyze an insurgency inside Pakistan. Until 2009, both the

general public and the insurgents, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan

(TTP; also referred to as the “Pakistani Taliban”) and the Tehrik-eNifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM), seemed to share a common

resentment of the government’s security policy and its increasingly

diminished capacity to govern competently and justly. Where the

public and the Pakistani Taliban diverged was on the radical ideology of Islamist jihad. In general, the Pakistani citizenry of the Punjab and the Sindh do not necessarily or fully embrace the radical

proclivities of Wahabbist or Deobandi Islamism that al-Qaeda, TTP,

and TNSM espouse. The public in the core of Pakistan and the nonTaliban Pashtuns on the periphery do empathize with the plight of

Muslims whom they perceive as victims of the United States and

the Western war against them. A short review of some of the preexisting context that potentially shaped the Pakistanis perceptions

follows.4

The history of Pakistan’s on-and-off partnership with the United

States over the past six decades had led most Pakistanis to perceive

American influence as a principal determinant of their country’s

fate and as a “heavy hand behind the actions of their leaders.” Pakistanis have always been critical of this partnership: left-of-center

4 For a concise distillation of the TTP and TNSM, see Hassan Abbas, “A Profile of Tehrik-iTaliban Pakistan,” CTC Sentinel 1, no. 2 (January 2008): 1–4. Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan translates

as the “Taliban Movement of Pakistan,” and TNSM as the “Movement for the Enforcement of

Islamic Sharia.”
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 65

Pakistanis have decried American “imperialism” whereas Islamists,

especially after the Iranian Revolution and the anti-Soviet jihad in

Afghanistan, have pursued anti-Western agendas to varying degrees. In the 1990s, Washington’s stiff-armed response to Pakistan’s

nuclear aspirations strengthened the mistrust of the Unites States

in the Pakistani public’s perception, and even right-of-center nationalists began to question America’s reliability as a partner. The

fact that, after the Soviet Union expired, U.S. attention quickly

shifted away from South Asia—and the mujahideen mess it helped

to create there—compounded these doubts. Thus, any decisions or

actions that saw Pakistan’s cooperation with the United Stated before or after 11 September 2001 must be examined within the general context of prevalent Pakistani anti-Americanism. Lastly, any

study of the Pakistani government’s legitimacy during the period

from the fall of 2001 to the spring of 2009 is largely linked to the

Musharraf era.5

When Musharraf became the head of the Pakistani state in 1999,

he inherited a harvest of Islamist tendencies that were significantly

more acute than those of the leaders who had preceded him. By

2001, Pakistan was the home to a potpourri of more than 24 armed

jihadist militias and 58 religious political parties. By the late 1990s,

the jihadist groups had grown into large armies of devoted men

who were intrepid and quite willing to give their lives in pursuit of

their goals and the honor of their “struggle.” Above all, these militias were galvanized by their unwavering commitment to free Kashmir from India’s tyranny. However, they were equally dedicated in

their opposition to America and Israel, whom they perceived as the

same in their threats to Islam. Their core formed around battle-seasoned veterans of jihad who had cut their teeth in the struggles of

the mujahideen against the Soviets and of the Taliban against the

venal warlords. The seminal work on this topic, Hassan Abbas’s

Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism, explains that the militants and militias hailed from all social classes in Pakistan and from all areas of

the country, including from the traditionally nonweapon bearing

areas of Sindh and Punjab Provinces, thus showing that much of

the country had been sufficiently radicalized as a result of both the

5 Daniel Markey, Pakistani Partnerships with the United States: An Assessment (Seattle, WA:

The National Bureau of Asian Research, 2009), 5–6. Direct quote is from page 5.
66 War, Will, and Warlords

Soviet-Afghan War and the subsequent Taliban era. Abbas, an expert on Pakistan who served in the Pakistani government under the

second Bhutto regime and during the early Musharraf years, has

noted that the militias also provided an ideology, an occupation,

and a new family for the unemployed youth of Pakistan in which

they discovered brotherhood and bonding. They considered themselves the elite vanguard of Allah’s cause as they developed a contagious pride that would ultimately inspire thousands of other

like-minded radicals to follow them. There were many of these militant groups that either emerged from the Soviet-Afghan War or in

the 1990s as autonomous groups, or as Pakistani proxies for employment as irregulars in Kashmir and Afghanistan. Among these

many jihadist groups were the TNSM, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT),

Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami

(HuJI).6

The “Paranoidistan” syndrome, while curious, also cannot be

discounted. It is manifest in a heightened propensity of the people

in Pakistan to construe conspiracies and cabals in the absence of

facts or evidence. This inclination toward conspiracy theories was

also to influence the Pakistani public’s perceptions of both Pakistan’s and America’s responses to 11 September. As people began

to discuss the events of 9/11 in Pakistan, they became afflicted by

a self-imposed rash of skepticism and doubt about the veracity of

the attacks. The Pakistani public considered it peculiar that the majority of the U.S. news media could so confidently identify Osama

bin Laden as the perpetrator of the plot while the smoke of the

World Trade Center was still rising. They questioned how halftrained pilots could maneuver such large jet planes through the obstacles of skyscrapers to direct them onto their designated targets.

The public in Pakistan was also perplexed by the notion that bin

Laden, hunkered down in a remote cave in Afghanistan and with6 Abbas, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism, 201–2. Punjab has historically been a big contributor

to the Pakistani army. However, Baluchistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and the tribal areas are generally the places with traditional gun-bearing folk. For more information on these Pakistani

based militant groups, see Hassan Abbas, “A Profile of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan,” 1–4, and

“Defining the Punjabi Taliban Network,” CTC Sentinel 2, no. 4 (April 2009): 1–4; and Syed Manzar Abbas Zaidi, “The Taliban Organization in Pakistan,” RUSI Journal 154 (October 2009): 40–

47. See note 4 for translation of TNSM. LeT stands for the “Army of the Faithful,” HuM for

“Movement of Holy Warriors,” and HuJI for “Islamic Movement Struggle.” 
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 67

out any means of communication except human messengers, could

coordinate such a complex operation. For instance, Abbas notes

that no less than a senior Pakistani intelligence officer incredulously

posited to him “that this operation needed a gestation time of at

least two years in which the don’ts seemed to be of far greater importance than the dos.” This same intelligence officer also argued

that the perpetrators who had prepared the attack had to know

what all the major European and American intelligence agencies

were then routinely monitoring. He also questioned who in an organization such as al-Qaeda would have been in possession of such

detailed knowledge. A large number among Pakistan’s population

concluded that such a complex operation was far beyond the capabilities of al-Qaeda. Others actually imagined that Israeli Mossad

agents must have infiltrated al-Qaeda, one of whom had to have

ultimately assumed control of the cell that eventually conducted

the attack on the orders of Mossad, “while his subordinates joyfully

carried out his order in the belief that they were carrying out

Osama’s instructions.”7 

Stranger still were the extant perceptions of the populations in

the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) adjacent to Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (since renamed the Khyber

Pakhtunkhwa Province), people who had always viewed the government in Islamabad to be equally as alien as its British Raj predecessors had been to them. The inhabitants of this area are mostly

illiterate and as completely ignorant of the outside world as it is of

them. The FATA is one of the poorest regions in Pakistan with poor

infrastructure, high poverty, and little employment. Its economy

depends on the smuggling of weapons and drugs to and from

Afghanistan. Being Pashtuns, its residents do not differ greatly from

their tribal brethren on the other side of the Durand Line: they are

devoutly pious; intensely loyal to their own tribe; bound by the

Pashtun way (Pashtunwali); and obdurately resistant to any developments imposed from the outside that might change how they

live. Since the nineteenth century these tribes have been very

loosely governed by the antiquated Frontier Crimes Regulations,

which call for collective punition of tribes and villages when the

7 Abbas, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism, 223. The direct quote is from the same page.
68 War, Will, and Warlords

tribes fail to administer sufficient punishment against crimes. Since

the inception of Pakistan as a state in 1947, and before it under

British rule, no outsiders have really governed the FATA. Any efforts

to exert a degree of control in the FATA have relied on the timetested British methods of subsidies (bribes), personal contacts between the government’s political agents and the tribal maliks

(chieftains), tribal customs for dispute resolution, acceptance of

Islam as an ethical fundament, and the threat of severe punishment. In fact, so alien was the FATA to Pakistan proper that, until

2001–2, there were four large areas in the agencies along the border

with Afghanistan that had never witnessed a Pakistani military

presence. The Pashtuns in these tribal lands have never welcomed

the presence of either the Pakistani military or ordinary Pakistani

citizens, neither before nor after September 2001.8

A comprehensive analysis of the myriad real and perceived

grievances that helped catalyze such a diverse array of groups and

people is beyond the scope of this study. But the most important

points of grievance among both the population and the future insurgents in Pakistan were the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan’s abandonment of the Taliban and embrace of the United

States in the war on terror, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Corollary

and intervening factors that helped catalyze the insurgency were

the exodus of al-Qaeda and former Taliban from Afghanistan to

Pakistan’s tribal areas after their defeat and the jury-rigged victory

of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), the major Islamic political

party in Pakistan, in the October 2002 parliamentary elections.

These two factors stimulated popular support for the Islamist insurgencies in mutually reinforcing ways. For the tribal areas particularly, both the unprecedented appearance of Pakistani army

forces and the Pashtuns’ continued exclusion from the mainstream

political system were sources of resentment and unrest. Both the

Pakistani army’s heavy-handed methods of employing force in the

tribal areas and the U.S. reliance on drone strikes further aggrieved

segments of the local populace and stimulated more recruits and

support for insurgency. The ultimate spark that ignited full-blown

8 Cloughley, War, Coups, and Terror, 123 and 186; International Crisis Group, Pakistan’s Tribal

Areas: Appeasing the Militants, Asia Report Number 125 (Brussels, Belgium: International Crisis

Group, 2006), i.
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 69

TTP and TNSM insurgencies aimed at the Pakistani state was the

government’s assault on the Red Mosque (Lal Masjid) in July 2007.

After amplifying the principal grievances, the next section examines

the use of force in Pakistan’s war against militants.9

By the fall of 2001, Pakistan’s polity and public were anti-American as a result of both general American policy omissions after the

Soviet-Afghan War and specific Pakistani xenophobic perspectives

inculcated as part of its educational curricula. Its military and security forces had a deeply Islamic prejudice and were closely tied

to both the Taliban regime and a host of other jihadist proxies. In

many instances, ISI and army advisors were embedded with the

Taliban and included among them Islamist ideologues, which were

products of Zia’s Islamic program. Moreover, the most fertile

ground for vehement anti-Americanism and radical Islamist militancy was in the Pashtun tribal areas, where political Islam overlaid

a deeply entrenched tribal code. The Pashtun tribesman have

fiercely resisted outside encroachment for millennia. The arrival in

the tribal areas of Afghan Arabs and Taliban seeking refuge from

the U.S. invasion likely reinforced both their shared social conventions and their hatred of America. There are insights from the Pashtuns in the tribal belt after the Taliban exodus from Pakistan

revealing their empathy for their oppressed brothers who shared

their worldview and took up arms against the Western invaders.

The perception that the government sold them out was a strong

one. It is not so surprising that when America induced Pakistan to

flip all of these activities and proclivities essentially upside down

that the public and the more radical groups were opposed in varying extremes.10

Musharraf’s 12 January 2002 speech to the nation was the real

break from the past and a declaration of support for America’s war

on terror. It was also a catalyst for resentment among both the general public and the Islamist militias who considered the speech to

be an explicit betrayal of their Muslim brothers in Afghanistan.

Even before the American-led campaign began in Afghanistan and

before Musharraf’s public pledge of support, Pakistani Islamists

9 On the consequences of the MMA victory, see Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 240–50. For a detailed account of the Red Mosque assault, see Cloughley, War, Coups, and Terror, 191–93. 

10Canfield, “Fraternity, Power, and Time in Central Asia,” 229–30. 
70 War, Will, and Warlords

were speaking out in support of the Taliban in mass meetings. Pakistani Mufti Shamzai, a former advisor to both Zia and Mullah

Omar, and a member of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), issued a fatwa

in September 2001 that called on all Muslims to wage jihad against

the United States if its military forces attacked Afghanistan. The

fatwa also declared that citizens of Muslim countries that supported

the United States would no longer be obliged to obey their governments. Following the announcement of the U.S. campaign, many

of the Islamist groups joined the Pak-Afghan Defense Council,

which was founded in December 2000 to protest previous United

Nations (UN) sanctions against the Taliban. During a wave of antiAmerican public demonstrations in the autumn of 2001, these

protests against the U.S. campaign also began to assume a strictly

Pashtun face. For example, in Karachi, 80 percent of the demonstrators were Pashtuns. Most of the Pakistani volunteers captured

in Afghanistan in late 2001 were also Pashtuns. Just before Musharraf’s address, there was a mass meeting in Akora Khattak, which

congregated the entire array of Pakistani armed and unarmed Islamist groups (a veritable potpourri of Harakats, Jami’ats, and

Sipahs) to protest the UN Security Council Resolution that authorized the invasion. After the 12 January speech, several of these militant groups, including those returning from the fight in

Afghanistan, coalesced to decide what manner of violence they

would cause to express their disillusionment with the government’s

decision. As a consequence, the first half of 2002 witnessed a spate

of gruesome attacks against Westerners and religious minorities,

which included the kidnapping and murder of American journalist

Daniel Pearl.11

To compound the challenges in the Pashtun areas, the parliamentary elections of 10 October 2002 saw the MMA—a coalition

of six Islamic parties—come to power in the North-West Frontier

Province and as part of a coalition government in Baluchistan’s

provincial government. JUI leaders in both provinces openly declared that they supported the Taliban. A member of parliament

from Kohat helped secure the release of hundreds of Taliban and

11 Zahab and Roy, Islamist Networks, 60–65 and 79–81. Harakat is “movement,” Jami’at means

“society,” and Sipah generally translates as “friends.”
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 71

al-Qaeda fighters detained by authorities. Not surprisingly, an increase in attacks against U.S. and Coalition forces operating in the

adjacent Pashtun provinces in Afghanistan followed this development in the spring of 2003.12

It was during the period between late 2002 and 2007 that the

blend of empowered Pashtun Islamic parties, increasingly militant

Islamist groups, al-Qaeda foreign fighters, and Afghan Taliban coexisted in the tribal areas under favorable conditions for regeneration and cooperation. Mullah Omar had instructed the Taliban to

keep in touch after they fled Afghanistan and to wait for instructions. During this period, Taliban commanders were taking stock

of their losses, excavated caches of weapons, and fulfilling fundraising requirements. In his analysis of the Taliban’s resurgence, Robert

L. Canfield found that funds for the Taliban flowed in “from businessmen in Karachi, goldsmiths in Peshawar, wealthy Saudis and

Kuwaitis,” and even from “sympathetic officers” in the Pakistani

army and ISI. Pashtuns who resented the harsh treatment of Afghan

civilians at the hands of the Coalition forces and a host of new recruits were assembling in the tribal areas of the North-West Frontier

Province. In the Baluchi capital of Quetta, the JUI essentially

handed over the suburb of Pashtunabad to the Afghan Taliban. It

was during this time that Mullah Omar also regenerated his Taliban

shura (Arabic for “council”) in Quetta.13

By 2003, a loose coalition of personally linked and tribally affiliated Islamist militias had begun to operate under the TTP label. In

addition to local grievances, they resented the Coalition presence in

Afghanistan, and they were determined to implement a strict Islamic

agenda. The Pakistani Taliban also connected to emerging networks

of like-minded groups who included the Afghan Taliban, al-Qaeda

leaders, and other Islamist organizations. The insurgency in Pakistan

gathered strength beginning in 2004 when, under pressure from

Washington, the government deployed tens of thousands of troops

to North and South Waziristan to seal off infiltration routes into

Afghanistan. The presence and actions of these forces helped generate more recruits and support for the Taliban. Over the next several

12 See Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 249, on the JUI support of the Afghan Taliban. Zahab and Roy, 77. 

13 See Canfield, 229, for the direct quotations on funding sources.
72 War, Will, and Warlords

years, the TTP gathered strength in the remaining tribal agencies and

then in adjoining districts of the province then known as the NorthWest Frontier Province. In the process, they killed off or scared away

hundreds of traditional tribal leaders to establish local control.14

The legitimacy of the TTP cause relied on the support of those

local populations in the tribal agencies whose expectations for infrastructure and economic improvements remained unfulfilled. In

the districts of the North-West Frontier Province, locals resented

both the incompetence and the corruption of provincial officials and

local police. An Islamic judicial system that pledged to mete out

swifter justice than the Pakistani courts also drew local support for

the TTP. For its part, the Pakistani government was unwilling to see

the TTP threat to state as a full-blown insurgency within its borders.

Since Islamabad did not traditionally view the tribal areas as part

of Pakistan proper, it saw the TTP as a threat to contain or deflect

toward Afghanistan but not one it necessarily needed to defeat. The

government’s operations against these militants were usually inconclusive and incomplete. This discernible absence of any steadfastness in the government’s policies also brought into question its

legitimacy in the minds of the insurgent leadership.15

Since 2004, Pakistan has experienced the emergence of a collection of jihadist groups whose operators describe themselves as

the Pakistani Taliban and who have established a network of miniemirates wielding local sharia justice within large areas of the

Pashtun Belt, including the FATA and the region now known as

the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. While a range of commanders

in the Pakistani Taliban have conducted operations in several different agencies, in late 2007 several of those insurgent leaders

loosely unified under the banner of the TTP. They conducted operations under the professed leadership of Baitullah Mehsud who

was based out of South Waziristan in the FATA. Notwithstanding,

there was no concrete proof that this TTP cluster in fact operated

under the positive command and control of Mehsud.16

14 Marvin G. Weinbaum, “Hard Choices in Countering Insurgency and Terrorism along Pakistan’s North- West Frontier,” Journal of International Affairs 63 (Fall/Winter 2009): 75–76. 

15 Ibid. 

16 C. Christine Fair, “Pakistan’s Own War on Terror: What the Pakistani Public Thinks,” Journal

of International Affairs 63 (Fall/Winter 2009): 41–42. 
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 73

The TNSM is the other discernibly significant component of Pakistan’s internal insurgent threat that became increasingly more active in and around Swat after 2002. Islamist militancy in general,

and from the TNSM in particular, is not a new phenomenon in

Swat. Since 1995, the TNSM, led by Sufi Muhammad Khan, has

confronted the Pakistani government, sometimes violently, over

this militant group’s endeavors to impose extreme Islamic reforms

in the district. The Pakistani government detained Sufi Muhammad

in 2002 because his efforts to recruit large numbers of young Pakistanis to cross into Afghanistan to fight on the side of the Taliban

in its last days of power stirred tremendous controversy. Beginning

in the summer of 2007, Pakistani security forces were fighting insurgent groups affiliated with the TNSM, a group that subsequently

seized the Swat Valley in late October 2007 and that was allied with

and ultimately subsumed under the TTP.17

The accelerant for this simmering fire in Pakistan’s Pashtun Belt

was the Red Mosque assault by the elite Special Services Group beginning on 10 July 2007. For several months the Islamist militants

who controlled this mosque in the heart of Islamabad had been

taunting the government with increasingly bold challenges to its

legitimacy. The brothers who ran the Red Mosque, Mullah Abdul

Rashid Ghazi and Maulana Abdul Aziz, also commanded a veritable army of religious zealots, both male and female, who were

eager to earn martyrdom. What’s more, fatwas emanating from the

mosque had called for the overthrow and death of Musharraf.

When the militants began kidnapping Chinese nationals and setting

alight government buildings, the government was compelled to take

control of the situation. The Special Services Group assault was inevitably a violent affair as it faced heavily armed and fanatically

devoted resistance. The ensuing battles incurred the deaths of at

least a dozen soldiers and a hundred jihadists. The Red Mosque

was also a turning point that changed everything as the militant

groups operating in the tribal areas and elsewhere concluded from

it that the state was their enemy. It was a propaganda windfall as

well, and one day after the siege al-Qaeda issued a video indicting

Musharraf as the stooge of the Crusaders and Zionists. This prop17 Weinbaum, “Hard Choices in Countering Insurgency,” 78. 
74 War, Will, and Warlords

aganda entreated militants throughout Pakistan to exact revenge.

Still, years of the state’s pusillanimous accommodation and support

of Islamist groups did not prepare either the public or the militants

for the shock attendant to such a violent assault. It precipitated a

huge backlash. Over the next several months Pakistan confronted

its most serious insurgent threat since the Bengali secessionist insurgency of 1971.18

In April 2008, the government released Sufi Muhammad, hoping

he would provide a moderating influence on the more militant

local Islamist franchises that Maulana Fazlullah, his son-in-law, directed. The Taliban operating in Swat had embarked on organized

armed resistance to the local official administrators and had also

attacked the landed middle classes and others who had refused to

submit to Fazlullah’s edicts. The Taliban in Swat had readily repulsed all previous attempts by the Frontier Corps (FC), with regular army officers in command, to reimpose state control. Most of

the local police had in fact deserted their posts in fear of the Taliban’s wrath. The Pakistani army and other paramilitary government forces were prepared to make a peace deal if it meant a

cessation of the attacks against its troops and if it brought an end

to humiliating defeats at the hands of the TTP. Notwithstanding

the string of earlier futile and disappointing peace deals with militants elsewhere, public and media support for finding a political

resolution in Swat then existed. National and provincial leaders of

the recently elected Awami National Party saw Sufi Muhammad’s

demands to impose a sharia law system in the district as acceptable if the accommodation brought peace to the area. The government and Sufi Muhammad agreed to a cease-fire in February 2009.

Chapter 5 of this study addresses the consequences of that arrangement.19

Up until May 2009, the Pakistani army’s typically preferred

method of exerting influence across the tribal belt was to leverage

personal and tribal rivalries to divide the militants. The army did

employ the old British-style punitive raids to punish insurgents in

18 See Owen Bennett Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,

2009), 7–10; and Cloughley, War, Coups, and Terror, 190–92, for detailed accounts of the Red

Mosque attack. 

19 Weinbaum, “Hard Choices in Countering Insurgency,” 78. 
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 75

response to attacks or ambushes against army posts and convoys,

but these were generally short-lived. These forays normally ended

with cease-fire agreements that ceded something to the militants

in return for pledges on the latter’s part to refrain from attacking

army units and from proselytizing their cause among the more populated districts. It seemed that the Pakistani government and security forces never provided any means of enforcing these

agreements. They also conveniently accepted pledges by the insurgents to curtail support to the Afghan Taliban at face value. This

approach of pursuing a policy of appeasement after marginally useful punitive offensives, which the Pakistanis pursued in the tribal

areas for several years, was fundamentally flawed and ineffective.

Worst still, it was counterproductive in sustaining the legitimacy of

the government in the perception of the population. Because the

Pakistani security forces typically reached these peace agreements

with Pashtun militants from a position of weakness, in the minds

of the Pashtuns, the legitimacy was conferred upon the militant

tribal groups, not the government. By late 2007, polls of the Pakistani public showed its traditionally favorable perception of the

Pakistani army in decline, its concern about Islamist militant groups

on the rise, and little and falling support for military operations in

the tribal areas. Popular support for Pakistan’s alliance with the

United States in the war on terror was at 15 percent.20

Although Pakistan continues to view some insurgent and terrorist groups as convenient proxies to help pursue its foreign policy

toward Afghanistan and India (through the Afghan Taliban and the

LeT, for example), the government has embarked on a low intensity

conflict (LIC) against several elements of the TTP, employing units

of both the regular army and the paramilitary FC, with largely varying degrees of success and commitment. Pakistan’s security forces

have suffered numerous defeats and have codified these losses on

the ground in several controversial peace agreements with the jihadists, all of which have been on terms advantageous to the militants, and most of which were ignored by the TTP and TNSM

before the ink was dry. While the Pakistani army’s lack of capacity

20 Weinbaum, “Hard Choices in Countering Insurgency,” 76. The Washington based International Republican Institute November 2007 polling data was cited in Cloughley, War, Coups,

and Terror, 193–94. 
76 War, Will, and Warlords

for genuine counterinsurgency among the Pashtuns has undoubtedly influenced its lack of stomach for such operations, another

important variable was that the Pakistani public did not wholly

support these types of operations until early 2009. Until May

2009—after peace deals over Swat were broken and subsequent insurgent advances were made into Buner—the Pakistani public did

not recognize or perceive the existential threat engendered in the

collusive aspirations of TTP and TNSM militants. Without popular

support, at least from the Pakistani heartland, Pakistan’s military

leadership did not consider full-measure military operations to

pacify the Pashtun Belt possible. It is also possible that the Pakistani

army may not have viewed the use of force there as a sensible use

of resources. The Pakistani army is intimately interwoven with the

Pakistani state, for good or ill, and the institution has traditionally

benefited from the perceived adulation of Pakistan’s populace. For

this reason, the Pakistani army’s sensitivities to conducting operations in the tribal areas that were unpopular in Pakistan hampered

it from doing so to any effect.21

Force

The Taliban should not be allowed to impose their way of life

on the civil society of Pakistan. 

— attributed to Pakistani army Chief of Staff General Ashfaq Kayani

in Marvin Weinbaum’s “Hard Choices in Countering Insurgency

and Terrorism along Pakistan’s North-West Frontier”

Without popular support, military action, long-term holding

operations, and dedication of national resources are unlikely

to be enough to defeat the Pakistan Taliban and other militants

groups. 

—C. Christine Fair and Seth G. Jones, “Pakistan’s War Within”

In September 2001, Pakistan did not face a burgeoning internal

insurgency. But, after the government’s assault on the Red Mosque

in July 2007, already percolating insurgencies emanating from the

North-West Frontier Province proper and the FATA began to expand

in size and scope, projecting increasingly violent attacks into Pakistani urban areas outside the tribal belt. Success in countering in21 Fair, “Pakistan’s Own War on Terror,” 42. 
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 77

surgents in the twenty-first century relies on a host of skills and capabilities, but the most fundamental requirement is to win and sustain popular support for military and civil actions. Both good

administration and the credible use of legitimate force designed to

serve and protect the relevant populations generally tend to garner

some notion of popular support. Between 2002 and 2009 the Taliban in Pakistan, in collusion with al-Qaeda and other jihadist

groups, slowly began to impose their extreme Islamist way of life

on the people in the tribal areas. Among the reasons for this were

the lack of governance, resources for development, services, and

any notion of credible government-provided security and justice in

these areas. Not only did military actions lack popular support because of the factors associated with legitimacy illuminated in the

previous section, but the way in which the Pakistani security forces

operated in the tribal areas further undermined their efforts in

achieving the public support and concomitant legitimacy required

to sustain those actions. The reasons for the latter pertain directly

to the Pakistani military’s organization and methods for conducting

counterinsurgency. This section explores both the will and the skill

of Pakistan to counter insurgents. 

In some respects, the explanation for the Pakistani army’s unsuitability for counterinsurgency in 2001 is strangely similar to the

rationale for the U.S. military’s previous resistance to adapting for

counterinsurgency. The main Pakistani army almost exclusively focused on preparing for and fighting conventional wars with India

for the five and half decades it existed before beginning forays into

the FATA in 2002. The Pakistani army has also been more inexorably wedded to both India and the existential threat perceived in

India because it has often justified its several military coups based

on the rationale associated with securing the Pakistani state against

India. In fact, the literature on Pakistan is replete with the idea that

most states have armies, but Pakistan’s army has a state. That army

and the country’s leadership, both civilian and military, have consistently viewed the significantly larger, more resource rich, and

populous India as an invidious threat to their existence since the

bloody partition of 1947.

Pakistan has never won any of the wars with India, and the government, the military, and the public manifest a fear of the Indian
78 War, Will, and Warlords

military and India’s intentions that approximates paranoia. Moreover, in general terms, even when the will and the intent exist to

affect military cultural change, it takes some time, typically from 5

to 10 years. More than a dozen years elapsed between the time of

the demise of America’s conventional Soviet nemesis and the time

the U.S. military was finally compelled to adapt to counterinsurgency during the crucible of Iraq. Thus, U.S. expectations that the

Pakistanis were willing and capable of readily changing their leadership, organization, and doctrine from focusing on the real and

continuous conventional threat embodied by India to the threat

stemming from the insurgents in the tribal areas, which the Pakistanis did not yet view as an existential threat, were likely overstated. At the beginning of this century, the United States

unequivocally possessed the premier military in the world in terms

of leadership, equipment, organization, and doctrine for conventional war. Pakistan is a weaker state than the U.S. in every way,

and its conventional military also reflects this relative weakness.

To be candid, Pakistan has a relatively mediocre military that lost

all four wars it fought with India (some would characterize Pakistan’s 1999 Kargil War with India atop the ridges along the line of

control in the disputed Kashmir region as half of a war, but the

troops fighting there clearly might not).22

Daniel Byman’s excellent analysis on the counterinsurgency capabilities of poorer countries generally suggests that less-developed

countries such as Pakistan pose a host of obstacles when relied on

to be U.S. allies in counterinsurgency. Such allies are often less than

ideal counterinsurgents because of both political and military flaws.

The military cultures of these countries frequently exhibit a dearth

of initiative; poor unity of and integration of command across

forces; soldiers who are unwilling to fight; challenges with learning,

creativity, and training; bad officers and noncommissioned officers;

and poor intelligence. The political effects of the structural weaknesses inherent in a state like Pakistan can fuel the insurgency by

impeding development and aid, alienating the military in the mind

of the population, promoting endemic corruption, and presenting

opportunities for the insurgents to penetrate the military. The cor22 Examples of this literature include Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan; Cloughley, War, Coups, and

Terror; and Abbas, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism.
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 79

ruption and discrimination associated with weak states are sometimes related to the causes of the insurgencies to begin with, and

also shape how such allies counter them. The implications of such

weaknesses extend beyond the battlefield to impact the very relationship between the indigenous regime and the United States. In

other words, a state like Pakistan cannot successfully prosecute

counterinsurgency without first instituting both political reforms

and military reforms but is also likely to resist or subvert any reforms that threaten the extant power structure. In Pakistan, that

power structure has always been closely related to the Pakistani

army’s perception of itself as the guardian of the state and its perception by the public. Ultimately, the U.S. must be realistic about

how far it expects the Pakistani military to go to adapt and about

how well that military will counter insurgents.23

Even for the best military, counterinsurgency is indeed very difficult. It requires both political adroitness and superb military skill.

It requires leadership, a high degree of initiative, creativity, motivated soldiers, and unity of command across forces. But military

leadership in a place like Pakistan is generally quite poor compared

to the United States. Effective counterinsurgency requires small

unit initiative to operate with uncertainty in and among the population. This is often absent in the militaries of struggling countries. What’s more, many developing world militaries have a

garrison mindset where they fight from 0900 to 1700 and then return to their garrisons for the night. Successfully defeating insurgents also demands creative leaders and institutions that are

willing to learn. There is no evidence to suggest that the Pakistani

army has an objective and deliberate process for learning or gleaning lessons from previous experiences in successfully or unsuccessfully fighting against irregulars and militants. This is, in part,

attributable to a weaker professional military education system

where institutions tend to perpetuate existing doctrine rather than

changing that doctrine to correct for mistakes. Counterinsurgency

also requires motivated soldiers who have faith in their leaders

and government, and who are more likely to brave the perils of

fighting “among the people.” If command unity and the integration

23 Daniel Byman, “Friends Like These: Counterinsurgency and the War on Terrorism,” International Security 31 (Fall 2006): 81–83. 
80 War, Will, and Warlords

of forces and agencies into one coherently holistic counterinsurgency campaign is a challenge for the U.S., it is an even bigger

problem in a place such as Pakistan, where coordination and information collaboration are generally poor. In this context, commanders of different forces often do not communicate with one

another either. In terms of Pakistan’s coordination of its military

operations with the Afghan side of the Durand Line, this was an

abysmal shortcoming up until at least 2009.24

Furthermore, a military fighting an insurgency is more likely to

gain the support of the population if it is not perceived as corrupt

or engaged in illegal functions. A relatively low level of corruption

transmits the message that the military is doing the right thing,

operating in the interests and service of the country. Corruption

within Pakistan, and within the Pakistani military, goes beyond

the pale of any relative expectation for corruption. In fact, Pakistan

is considered one of the most corrupt countries in the world. A

military dictatorship, such as Musharraf’s regime, compounded

this problem because “an illegitimate and repressive regime has

several pernicious effects on the tactical and organizational aspects

of counterinsurgency.” Polities that are autocratic and dictatorial

tend to limit the flow of information, particularly if that information is unfavorable to the regime. Such regimes also tend to deliberately compartmentalize information and to neither identify nor

critically examine mistakes. Absent civilian oversight, the military

organizations serving under military dictators also experience less

pressure to adapt their methods and doctrines. These military institutions are not necessarily accountable to the general public or

elected leaders and are less apt to fix mistakes or to undertake unwanted organizational changes. Military regimes also tend to exacerbate existing levels of corruption, as senior military figures use

their positions to gain personal wealth at the public’s expense,

even if this impairs overall military efficacy. This was certainly true

of Pakistan’s military dictators. The “coup-proofing” associated

with military regimes also impedes the open flow of information,

but it has a pernicious influence on the military as well. Coupproofing values loyalty over quality, and it sees senior officers in

24 Ibid., 90–95. C. Christine Fair asserted that the Pakistanis did not have any way of capturing

lessons for operations in the FATA. C. Christine Fair, telephone interview, 21 January 2010.
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 81

their positions because of their loyalty to the regime, not necessarily because of their competence. In such regimes, leadership,

creativity, initiative, and charisma are in short supply, and sometimes these are even viewed as a threat. Lastly, a military dictatorship’s inherent lack of regime legitimacy makes it very difficult for

its military to be perceived as legitimate. This is compounded

when the regime closely cooperates with an unpopular foreign

power.25

The Pakistani army was woefully prepared for conducting what

it saw as LIC operations in the tribal northwest when this war

began. To adapt to counterinsurgency and irregular warfare would

require a sea change in Pakistan’s strategic perspective, one that

continues to regard India as the country’s principal national security threat. Adaptation would also necessitate a change in deployment patterns, organization, equipment, doctrine, and the

curricula at Pakistani professional military education institutions.

This is simply because, not unlike the U.S. military’s preferred war

on the plains of Germany, the Pakistani army is almost exclusively

prepared for a ground war with India on the plains of the Punjab.

In its efforts to counter an internal, tribally based insurgency in

the Pashtun northwest, it has over time proven to be marginally

capable of clearing an area but “reluctant to remain and provide

continuing security or address the complaints that left the area vulnerable to insurgent penetration in the first place.” Moreover, the

Pashtuns’ acute sensitivity to, and resentment of, deploying predominately Punjab regular army units in their tribal areas has compelled Pakistan’s generals to depend more heavily on the less

motivated, less capable, less equipped, and locally recruited FC

units for operations there.26

The Pakistani armed forces have fought several campaigns in the

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province and the FATA since 2004, losing

about 2,000 soldiers killed and over 3,500 wounded as a result. In

each instance, the Pakistani forces have fought using the high-intensity conventional doctrine for which they were trained, organized,

and equipped. Characteristically, this approach witnessed heavy fire25 Byman, “Friends Like These,” 95–107. The direct quote is from page 103.

26 Weinbaum, “Hard Choices in Countering Insurgency,” 77. 
82 War, Will, and Warlords

power, destruction, and displacement of the civilian population. To

quote the popular adage, if the only tool you have is a hammer,

everything looks like a nail. As previously expounded upon, the Pakistanis followed up most of these campaigns by arranging cease-fires

and peace deals with the jihadists. U.S. leaders and other analysts

have strongly criticized this modus operandi for the Pakistani military’s failure to adapt to counterinsurgency operations. Moreover,

the Pakistani military has met pressure from senior U.S. diplomats

and military leaders to retrain and reorganize for counterinsurgency

with staunch resistance because the Pakistani leadership still sees

its principal threat as coming from an Indian onslaught across its

eastern borders and onto the plains of the Punjab, the heartland of

Pakistan. Pakistan’s lack of political will—which stems from its

deeply ingrained strategic calculus to deter and counter India with

nuclear, conventional, and proxy irregular capabilities, combined

with a military culture and doctrine built to stop a conventional invasion by the Indian army—constitute the principal impediments to

the Pakistani army’s adaptation to traditional counterinsurgency.27

One of the obstacles that hinders the Pakistanis’ ability to effectively prosecute counterinsurgency is doctrinal. The Pakistani

army does not event purport to conduct traditional and comprehensive counterinsurgency focused on protecting the population.

It prefers to describe its operations in the tribal areas with the LIC

lexicon as a hedge against being compelled to truly adapt itself

from a conventionally oriented institution focused against India.

This distinction between counterinsurgency and LIC has important

operational implications because it provides the Pakistani army

with the doctrinal rationale not to adopt a counterinsurgency orientation as it views its operations against insurgents as lying at

the low end of a conventional-conflict continuum. Several other

factors help explain the very mixed results of Pakistan’s efforts to

counter the Taliban.28

First, Pakistani security forces lack the capacity to clear and

27 Sameer Lalwani, Pakistani Capabilities for a Counterinsurgency Campaign: A Net Assessment

(Washington, DC: New America Foundation, 2009), 4–6. For an in-depth explanation of Pakistan’s nuclear capability and its army’s relationship to the state, India, and irregulars, see Jones,

Pakistan: The Eye of the Storm, 203–25, and 257–90.

28 C. Christine Fair and Seth G. Jones, “Pakistan’s War Within,” Survival 51, no. 6 (December

2009–January 2010): 162. 
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 83

hold areas while winning the support of the local population.

(Current counterinsurgency doctrine and practice generally prescribe four essential components to drive insurgent influence

and control out of key areas: shape, clear, hold, and build.) This

lack of capacity to carry out all four components is related directly to Islamabad’s reluctance to espouse counterinsurgency,

both operationally and doctrinally. As a result, their operations

have precipitated the serious displacement and destruction of

local populations and property. For example, in May 2009 the

Pakistani security forces launched Operation Rah-e-Rast (also

known as the Second Battle of Swat) to clear areas of Swat, and

their destructive methods precipitated a swell of internally displaced persons, estimated to be over three million people. Likewise, when the Pakistani army launched Operation Sher Dil

(Lionheart) into the Baujur Agency of the FATA in August 2008,

it flattened entire villages with artillery, bombings, and bulldozers, causing 400,000 people to flee Baujur. Second, while the security forces have been increasingly more willing to prosecute

operations against militant groups they view as a threat to Pakistan, they are unwilling to conduct operations against groups

they see as pursuing Pakistan’s interests in Afghanistan and

India. Notably, both of the aforementioned operations specifically targeted the Pakistani Taliban, and not the Afghan Taliban,

because the Pakistanis see the Afghan Taliban as helping pursue

their strategy of strategic depth in Afghanistan. This deliberate

policy of supporting the ostensibly “good” mujahideen has

stressed Pakistan’s social foundation and imperiled the state

when wayward surrogates have turned against it. Third, domestic political considerations have shaped the Pakistani army’s decisions as it moderates its actions in view of retaining popularity.

Polls of the Pakistani public have revealed that a large number

of citizens have been leery of operations targeting fellow citizens.

Some Pakistanis have impugned the government for attacking

fellow Pakistanis on behalf of Washington. Fourth, military and

civilian institutions in Pakistan have proven to be lamentably

unable to integrate political, economic, and social factors with

their military operations. The Pakistanis have thus far been unable to hold and build after they have cleared areas because they
84 War, Will, and Warlords

have no civil-military plans and no civil-military capacity for implementing plans if they had them.29

Pakistan has used a variety of forces to conduct its “low-intensity” campaigns, including the army, the FC, the Frontier Constabulary, and the Frontier Police. In addition to its Army Strategic

Forces Command, the Pakistani army comprises 9 corps; 550,000

active-duty troops; and 500,000 reservists. General Ashfaq Kayani,

the chief of army staff, has often stipulated that the bulk of the

army will remain disposed along the Indian border, not conducting

counterinsurgency. The FC, a paramilitary formation that is part of

the Pakistan Ministry of Interior, is under the operational control

of the military. It comprises 80,000 troops that are separated into

the two subordinate commands of the FC North-West Frontier

Province and FC Baluchistan. The FC North-West Frontier Province

is almost homogeneously constituted of ethnic Pashtuns, whereas

the FC Baluchistan does not exclusively comprise ethnic Baluchis.

Both the population of the tribal areas and the army have been

averse to operations in the North-West Frontier Province and the

FATA because of the perception that the army is dominated by ethnic Punjabis.30

In terms of determining the types and composition of security

forces that would be most apt for countering the militants and insurgents in the settled and unsettled tribal areas, some have asserted that the FC North-West Frontier Province should be the

preferred force for operations in the tribal areas because its locally

recruited personnel have the language skills and knowledge of the

local terrain, both human and physical. Two factors argue against

this, though: there have been reports of FC complicity with the Taliban, and the FC lacks the leadership, training, and equipment to

prosecute genuine populace-oriented counterinsurgency. U.S. Army

Special Forces have been engaged in training the FC in counterinsurgency over the last couple of years. The Frontier Constabulary

is a police force designed to provide order in the settled areas out29 Fair and Jones, “Pakistan’s War Within,” 162–63 and 176–77. For analysis on displaced persons in the Baujur Agency of the FATA and the Pakistani security forces’ inability to hold and

build, see Ahmed Rashid, “Pakistan’s Continued Failure to Adopt a Counterinsurgency Strategy,”

CTC Sentinel 2, no. 3 (March 2009): 7–9.

30 Fair and Jones, “Pakistan’s War Within,” 163–64. 
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 85

side the FATA and to provide border security. It has confronted the

brunt of the violence in the settled Pashtun areas. This force is illsuited for countering insurgents as it is poorly equipped and poorly

trained, with antiquated arms and almost no personal protection.

The Frontier Police of the North-West Frontier Province generally

have had low morale, bad equipment, and poor training. Insurgents

have often targeted them for violent attacks, which have unsurprisingly led to capitulation and high rates of desertion.31

Pakistan’s military operations in North and South Waziristan

from 2004 until early 2009 miserably failed to deny the Taliban and

al-Qaeda sanctuary and to arrest cross-border movement due to an

approach that wavered between excessive punitive operations and

appeasement. The International Crisis Group has found that poorly

planned and badly executed Pakistani military operations “are also

responsible for the rise of militancy in the tribal belt, where the

loss of lives and property and displacement of thousands of civilians have alienated the population.” Pakistan’s unwillingness and

inability to provide good governance to the populations in the FATA

has also helped empower the militants who impose their own version of administration and harsh justice. What’s more, the typically

minimalist governance in the FATA was a deliberate policy of Pakistan, which viewed the region as outside of Pakistan proper and

as a useful buffer for its strategic depth concept. The antiquated

and repressive Frontier Crimes Regulations, coupled with exclusion

from the political mainstream, have also generated grievances in

the FATA that help fuel support for the jihadists. The Musharraf

regime, to deflect pressure from Washington to mitigate radical militancy in the FATA, talked but never acted on political reforms for

the region. One sustainable way of addressing the extremism is

through the extension of civil and political rights as well as the rule

of law, all reconciled with local norms and sensitivities. Instead,

the Pakistani government has followed up bludgeoning yet blundering punitive raids with appeasement disguised as peace deals

in which the Pakistani security forces released insurgents, returned

their weapons, abandoned security checkpoints, and allowed foreign jihadists to stay if they renounced violence. This was followed

31 Ibid., 164–65. 
86 War, Will, and Warlords

by the army’s return to barracks, which facilitated the growth of

the insurgency; the establishment of parallel Taliban hierarchies in

the FATA, which spread to the North-West Frontier Province; and

freedom of action to recruit, train, and arm both Afghan and Pakistani Taliban.32

The Musharraf regime’s policy of supporting the “good” jihadists

warrants some explanation since it contributed to the resurgence

of the Afghan Taliban and ultimately backfired in a perfect symbiosis of Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban, and al-Qaeda, all safely

nested in their tribal area havens, orchestrating attacks outward in

every direction. Ahmed Rashid best described the duplicity epitomized in Pakistan’s policy: “with one hand Musharraf played at

helping the war against terrorism, while with the other he continued to deal with the Taliban.” The ISI was the vehicle for Pakistan’s

perfidy. In a report to Musharraf in fall 2001, it predicted that America’s reluctance to commit ground troops would deny it a quick victory and that the Taliban, supported by thousands of Pakistani and

al-Qaeda militants, would be able conduct a guerrilla campaign

from the mountains. Musharraf consequently allowed the ISI to

continue its supply of fuel, ammunition, and arms to the Taliban

in contravention of his pledges to the United States and a UN Security Council resolution. ISI supply trucks and fuel tankers continued to roll through the Khyber Pass in the north and Chaman in

the south even after September 2001. The Pakistani army-owned

National Logistics Cell, an organization established during the Soviet war with Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) funding to run guns

to the Afghan mujahideen, managed the transport. So, even as

some ISI officers were helping America nominate Taliban targets

for U.S. bombers, other ISI operatives were refreshing the same Taliban’s arms and ammunition. The rationale for this duplicity, from

the perspective of the ISI, was its fear of a post-Taliban Northern

Alliance government in Kabul that would be an Indian proxy. The

ISI did not want to fully abandon its only proxy in Afghanistan,

and it was concerned that the U.S. would again abandon the region

after Kabul fell.33

In the winter of 2002, after the JUI Party became part of the

32 International Crisis Group, Pakistan’s Tribal Areas, i.

33 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 76–79. The direct quote is from page 78.
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 87

coalition provincial government in Baluchistan, the ISI helped accommodate Mullah Omar in Quetta with the use of JUI-run safe

houses. Mullah Omar consequently reconstituted his shura there

and designated four senior commanders to organize the insurgency

in Afghanistan’s southeast provinces of Zabul, Uruzgan, Helmand,

and Kandahar. All four of these commanders—Mullah Baradar

Akhund, Mullah Dadullah, Mullah Akhtar Usmani, and Mullah

Abdul Razzaq—were linked to Osama bin Laden and were diehard

believers of global jihad. The Haqqanis organized the new insurgency against the Coalition in Afghanistan’s eastern provinces.

Jalaluddin, the senior Haqqani, had been a fierce and effective mujahideen commander against the Soviets with the support of the

ISI and CIA. A long-standing protégé of the ISI, al-Qaeda ally, and

former Taliban minister, Jalaluddin and his son Sirajuddin helped

reconstitute the neo-Taliban from their sanctuary in Miranshah,

North Waziristan, in the FATA. This network helped fleeing Taliban

with money and accommodations. Every time the United States has

tried to target Haqqani, someone seems to tip him off well in advance. The Haqqanis remain protected proxies of Pakistan to this

day. The ISI also supported the shiftiest of the former and present

insurgent leaders when the Iranians let Gulbuddin Hekmatyar go

free. Hekmatyar was the favorite of the ISI during the Soviet-Afghan

War, and this allowed him to set up in the Shamshatoo refugee

camp outside Peshawar where many of his former mujahideen

lived. His group has cooperated with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

After Operation Enduring Freedom began, the tribal areas became

safe havens where the Taliban and al-Qaeda escaped because the

Pakistani army did not deploy forces on the Afghan border of North

and South Waziristan. Haqqani organized this escape by hiring

young Mehsud and Wazir tribesmen to provide safe passage as

guides for those fleeing Tora Bora. Some of these same guides got

rich in the process and later emerged as commanders of the Pakistani Taliban. For two years, until the spring of 2004, Pakistan’s

military did nothing to stop the militants from consolidating in the

Waziristans, perhaps believing that a Talibanized belt in the FATA

would put pressure on Kabul and not threaten Islamabad.34

34 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 242–44 and 268–70.
88 War, Will, and Warlords

To be fair, Pakistan’s challenging geography compels its military

to defend almost every piece of its territory, but its worries about

the Punjab are well founded as that region’s major cities, industrial

centers, and communication lines are all located relatively close to

a border that poses few geostrategic obstacles to an Indian tank invasion across its plains and deserts. In the event of an attack, Pakistani military planning assumes that even a compact and agile

force would be unable to defend this border and that the military

would have no time to raise new formations or to shift large numbers of troops from the north because Pakistan’s rail and road networks are so poor. 

Perhaps even more significantly, because a static linear defense

would likely set the stage for a deep Indian penetration of Pakistan

while simultaneously limiting Pakistani freedom of maneuver, Pakistan developed its Riposte Doctrine, named after the fencing term

for a counterattack, to attenuate this dilemma. Riposte is an offensive-defensive doctrine, and it envisions a limited but rapid advance

by Pakistani forces to seize Indian terrain, which could then be

traded for any Pakistani territory occupied by India after the war.

Riposte nominally requires six Pakistani corps. Even when Pakistan

does deploy more forces to meet the insurgencies in the tribal areas,

its perception of India as the main threat will remain. Any efforts

to reorganize and retrain the Pakistani military forces for comprehensive counterinsurgency would necessarily have to exclude the

minimum heavy forces required to defend its eastern border.35

Not to exonerate Pakistan for its lack of will and capacity to help

fight the Taliban but to illuminate its perspective on India, some

80 percent of Pakistan’s military assets are typically disposed to

counter the Indian threat. This was the case even in April 2009,

when the Taliban had de facto control over 11 percent of Pakistan’s

territory. The reason for this is every time the Pakistani army looks

at its rival army it sees its large inventory of battle tanks as a threat.

The Pakistan army sees the Indian army’s three strike corps and

notes their purpose. The Pakistani army looks at the Indian army

and notices that the weapons of several Indian corps are pointing

at Pakistan. The Pakistani army looks at the Taliban out in the tribal

35 Lalwani, Pakistani Capabilities, 42. 
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 89

areas and sees no main battle tanks, no armored fighting vehicles,

no ballistic missiles, and no ground attack aircraft. The United

States would like the Pakistan army to help eliminate what it sees

as threats to the homeland, but the Pakistani army still has to defend the border against India. This conventional requirement and

fixation on India partly explains why the Pakistani army, on a recurring basis, has demonstrated its inability to counter insurgents

without punishing costs in lives lost, the wholesale destruction of

property, and significant displacements of civilian populations.

Heavy-handed military operations among civilians over a sustained

period of time alienate the people and create fertile ground for recruiting new insurgents. Also, for the Pakistani security forces to

endure the risks and costs of a deliberate campaign against the militant groups in the northwest border regions would require some

notion of support by the local population, as well as the general

Pakistani public. Until early 2009 in Swat, when the insurgency

spread to the heavily populated Malakand Division of the since-renamed North-West Frontier Province, this public support for fullmeasure military action against the Taliban was discernibly

absent.36

Information Operations

If Pukhtoon [Pashtun] nationalism and Islamic radicalism ever

mutate into one movement, it will first happen in the tribal

areas.

—Owen Bennett Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm

It is education of which the mullahs are fearful. Widespread

literacy would erode their powers.

—Brian Cloughley, War, Coups, and Terror

Education and knowledge are indeed inimical to the dogma and

ignorance that generally characterize the creed the Islamists embrace. Yet the tribal areas have witnessed an increasing convergence of Islamist militancy and Pashtun nationalism as a result of

the propagation of simplistic and distorted interpretations of Islam.

The dogma that animates the TTP is not dissimilar to the contorted

36 Lalwani, Pakistani Capabilities, 52–53. Weinbaum, “Hard Choices in Countering Insurgency,”

77–78.
90 War, Will, and Warlords

puritanism that stimulates the Afghan Taliban. The Pakistani insurgents espouse a similar interpretive blend of Deobandi and Wahhabi Islamism as the Afghan Taliban. It is a creed of death and

destruction, prescribing what to believe about which god and condemning those who do not believe it. It relies on illiteracy, tribal

mores, and misogyny to construct its myopic narrative. What’s

more, the six-decade-long relationship between the United States

and Pakistan helped create this situation. Short-term, ill-informed

policy choices have ultimately compounded the challenges in the

Pashtun Belt, rather than having resolved them for the long-term.

The radical Islamist narrative may have its roots in the Deobandi

school of Sunni Islam and in Wahhabi Sunni doctrine, but those

roots were well watered by highly injudicious U.S. policy decisions.

To name just two examples, allying with despots and supporting

the unrequited proliferation of Islamist ideology and jihadists

against the Soviets were exceptionally ill conceived. The United

States had established a pattern of supporting dictators in Pakistan

in the early years, beginning with General Ayub Khan from 1958

to 1969 and ending with Musharraf from 1999 to 2008. Moreover,

America’s relentless support in the 1980s of General Zia, who was

both a dictator and an Islamist zealot, in waging the anti-Soviet

jihad, wrought the singularly most harmful effects in terms of the

proliferation of Islamist extremists and the persecution of non-Islamic and minority groups in Pakistan. 

How the information domain and information operations shaped

the population’s perception of the Pakistani government’s capacity

to provide administration, security, and development is one focus of

this section. A deep and wide anti-Americanism, predating September 2001, influenced the public’s receptivity to both Pakistan’s and

America’s efforts to influence it by words and actions. One portion

of the population already either passively or actively supported the

Islamists’ agenda, as attested to by the MMA victory in October 2002.

The perception that created this reality was twofold: the view that

U.S. policy in the region had been inconsistent in deed and message

for many years, and the fact that both Pakistani Pashtuns and Muslims empathized with their coreligionist and co-ethnic brethren who

were standing up to, but getting crushed by the “Western infidel bullies” who invaded Afghanistan. This section also explores how well
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 91

the government and the insurgents integrated information operations

with lethal operations. The disadvantages from the combined effects

of these two factors in terms of information operations and Pakistani

popular perceptions accrued against the United States.37

The history of U.S.-Pakistan relations is fundamental to the Pakistani public’s perspective. In every respect, this relationship has

been one of convenience, not conviction. Historically, Pakistan has

proved willing to alter its priorities to fall within the established parameters of America’s aspirations. Pakistan’s aim in this, however,

has been to guarantee the continued stream of American economic

and military aid that Pakistan deemed essential for its existential rivalry with India. For its part, the Pakistani military has espoused a

threefold approach to security that focused on Islam as a unifying

element, competition with India as the principal objective of its foreign policy, and friendship with America as a way to underwrite the

costs of it large military expenditures associated with the latter. Paradoxically, this approach has resulted in an aggregation of historically imprudent steps that culminated in extreme Islamist militancy

in the tribal areas, one which poses a grave threat to both Pakistan

and its benefactor. As early as 1951, the U.S. State Department identified the potential for Islamist politics in Pakistan as a problem:

“the other main threat to American interests in Pakistan was from

reactionary groups of landholders and uneducated religious leaders

who were opposed to the present Western-minded government and

favor a return to primitive Islamic principles.” However, during the

ensuing five decades, American policy did little to dissuade Pakistan

from embracing purist Islam as its state ideology. As a consequence,

the Pakistani Islamist leaders’ support grew beyond their receptive

local populaces to include civilian bureaucrats and military intelligence officers. In sum, the contradiction lies in the fact that the U.S.

quid pro quo approach to its relations with Pakistan in fact contributed to the creation of an information environment (pro-Islamist

and anti-America) inimical to U.S. interests.38

Nor has the U.S. government excelled in information operations

in Pakistan since September 2001. According to one long-serving

37 Rid and Hecker, War 2.0, 2–4.

38 Hussain Haqqani, “The Role of Islam in Pakistan’s Future,” Washington Quarterly 28 (Winter

2004–2005): 93–94.
92 War, Will, and Warlords

U.S. expert on Pakistan, “American public diplomacy has not distinguished itself in Pakistan in recent years.” The U.S. has significantly circumscribed the number of personnel dedicated to Pakistan

and likewise has essentially eliminated its cultural programs because of the deteriorating security there. The U.S. government has

never dedicated public diplomacy programs to the FATA and terminated its programs in the North-West Frontier Province over a

decade ago. It often seems that Washington’s notion of strategic

communications entails frequent high-level official visits combined

with public statements to sustain support for the Pakistani government. Similar to its challenges with aid and development programs,

the United States has often been more perplexed by the perception

it was trying to create with its public statements and programs than

it was concerned with understanding how most Pakistanis perceived them. Another South Asia expert has noted that “it would

be wise for the U.S. and Pakistani governments to better understand how people across Pakistan variously understand the problems” confronting them. In other words, in conceiving information

policies aimed at gaining the support of the Pakistani public for

both Pakistan’s and America’s efforts to disrupt and defeat Islamist

insurgents, both governments need to better understand how that

public views the state’s efforts.39

Winning a war of ideologies will depend as much on influencing

the Pakistani population as it will on the resilience and effectiveness

of the Pakistani security forces. An increase in Pakistani support for

military operations against the Taliban does not necessarily equate

to support for the war against al-Qaeda. Moreover, a rejection of the

Taliban by Pakistanis does not translate to repudiation of the extreme Islamist ideas that underpin the agenda of al-Qaeda and its

affiliates. Likewise, a Pakistani eschewal of the Taliban’s agenda and

worldview does not equate to its embracing the West or abandoning

the sharia’s tenets. The public in Pakistan is highly suspect of U.S.

activities in the country. Approximately one quarter of the population believed that America’s only interest in Pakistan was to locate

and capture Osama bin Laden, with little concern for the costs it

39 Weinbaum, “Hard Choices in Countering Insurgency,” 85–86. Fair, “Pakistan’s Own War on

Terror,” 52. The first direct quote is from Weinbaum, page 85, and the second direct quote is

from Fair, page 52.
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 93

would incur in terms of Pakistani lives lost in the process.40

The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 increased the Pakistani people’s mistrust of the Unites States because as long as they view the

war on terror as an American war, the possibility of it becoming popular with the ordinary Pakistanis is indeed a remote one. By 2004 the

war in Iraq began to get very negative press within the Muslim world.

After the debacle at Abu Ghraib prison, an information operations failure of colossal magnitude, Islamic groups all over the world increasingly perceived the Sunni insurgency in Iraq as a legitimate one. The

year 2004 also saw credible international Islamic scholars subsume

the second Palestinian intifada against Israel with the Iraqi insurgency

under one umbrella and argue the Islamist “logic” in favor of targeting

civilians. In September 2004, an Islamic scholar of ostensibly moderate views, Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, stamped his authoritative imprimatur on the Iraqi insurgency and helped galvanize the roughly

one billion Sunni Muslims worldwide. Iraq was an information operations failure in Pakistan as well because it resonated with both

would-be Taliban and ordinary citizens. Many militant organizations

in Pakistan that had been in close contact with al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan’s training camps before September 2001 were contemptuous of Pakistan’s about-face against the Afghan Taliban, and

cadres from organizations like TNSM provided the support from which

the Taliban could recruit. The invasion of Iraq, along with the U.S.

Global War on Terrorism narrative in general, exacerbated perceptions

in the region that America was at war with Islam, helping to fuel this

propaganda. Moreover, al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups in Pakistan

took advantage of this, propagating to shape popular perceptions

against the United States and other “apostate governments.” As late

as 2010, a survey of residents in the FATA showed that 80 percent of

the people polled believed that the purpose of the U.S. war on terrorism was to “weaken and divide the Islamic world.” 41

40 Ayesha Siddiqa, “Jihadism in Pakistan: The Expanding Frontier,” Journal of International Affairs 63 (Fall/Winter 2009): 57–59 .

41 Gilles Kepel, Beyond Terror and Martyrdom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008),

38–39. See Zaidi, “The Taliban Organization in Pakistan,” 46, on militant groups in Pakistan propagating against the U.S. war. See also Sherifa Zuhur, A Hundred Osamas: Islamist Threats and the

Future of Counterinsurgency (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, 2005),

33. For the FATA survey results, see Peter Bergen, Patrick Doherty, and Ken Ballen, Public Opinion

in Pakistan’s Tribal Regions (Washington, DC: New America Foundation, 2010), 1 and 3. 
94 War, Will, and Warlords

Effectively influencing the perception of the Pakistani populace

also relies on consistency in word and deed in improving the lives

of the Pashtuns in the tribal areas. The efficacy of aid and development programs is thus inextricably linked to influence, and the

American aid program in Pakistan has been relatively exorbitant in

costs and underwhelming in results. Policy here has been confused

and unable to agree on priorities, levels of funding, or the best ways

to flow funds. As has been the case in Afghanistan as well, coordination and collaboration between other donors and the U.S. Agency

for International Development have been poor. U.S. development

assistance, particularly in the FATA, must surmount deep-seated

suspicions that its efforts are self-serving and callous regarding indigenous life and death. This, in turn, would require a huge change

in the public’s perception of why America is involved in Pakistan

and the FATA in the first place. The promotion of development activities that are integrated with political and social reforms would

be a step to improve positive influence. On the other hand, while

America’s drone program has arguably been effective in eliminating

and disrupting Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders, it has not been an effective tool for improving U.S. and Pakistani influence over the

tribal populations. The reason for this is twofold. First, a number

of innocent civilian deaths collateral to the drone strikes has made

them deeply unpopular and serves as evidence of U.S. disregard

for Pakistani lives. Two, the United States and Pakistan have been

impeded by U.S. legal code to not acknowledge these attacks,

which might otherwise be used to influence the public mind and

the enemy psyche.42

Pakistan’s schools, both secular and sectarian, have also served

to bend the conceptions of generations of Pakistanis and Pashtuns

toward the superiority of conservative Sunni Islam over all other

religions. Working with the Pakistani government both to objectify

its public schools’ curricula and to arrest the proliferation of

madrassas whose principal aims are the mass production of Islamist proselytes would be a huge step along the way to part of a

long-term solution. Pakistan dedicates around 2 percent of its gross

domestic product to education, and more than 75 percent to its de42 Weinbaum, “Hard Choices in Countering Insurgency,” 85. Fair, telephone interview.
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 95

fense budget and debt repayment. As a result, illiteracy rates hover

around 60 percent. Worse still, with a school age-population that

the government estimates to be around 50 million, 30 percent have

no schooling while about 50 percent of those children who do attend school drop out in the first three years. Moreover, children in

Pakistan who do receive educations usually receive them from a

range of both government and private sources.43

There are now approximately 13,000 madrassas in Pakistan that

provide “education” for an estimated one-and-a-half million students. This figure is likely understated since the madrassas in the

tribal areas are not all transparent to the government. This contrasts with around 187,000 government schools with around 25

million students. The madrassas reflect the teaching of their religious tradition, as well as the preferences of their typically foreign

external sponsors, who are principally from Saudi Arabia, the Gulf

states, and Iran, and who provide considerable funds for the support of the schools. It is these funds, together with those from local

benefactors and landowners, which enable madrassas to offer education and usually food, texts, and even stipends on occasion.

Individuals or small groups typically own the schools, and their

control of them provides significant local political, social, and economic gravitas. The years since September 2001 have experienced

a notable rise in the number of madrassas within Pakistan: in 1988

there were 3,000 madrassas; in 2000 there were around 7,000; and

by 2003 there were approximately 11,000. In her fairly rigorous research, South Asia expert C. Christine Fair found that 13 percent

of the potential suicide bombers (shaheed, “martyrs”) were recruited from madrassas proselytizing radical Islamist curricula. Her

findings suggest that mosques and tabligh (small itinerate proselytizing groups) as well as friends or families accounted for a much

larger percentage of those recruited to be jihadists or militants than

public schools, which accounted for 13 percent, and madrassas,

which also accounted for 13 percent. Nonetheless, Fair also notes

that there is strong evidence that many of Pakistan’s religious militants and suicide attackers do come through madrassas. Moreover,

many suicide bombers operating in Afghanistan, but recruited in

43 Shaun Gregory, telephone interview, 23 January 2010.
96 War, Will, and Warlords

Pakistan, appear to be recruited from madrassas as well.44

Under U.S. and Western pressure in the aftermath of 9/11,

Musharraf did take a series of highly visibly steps to place the

madrassas under closer government scrutiny and control. Pakistan

promulgated an amended ordinance for madrassas to register with

the government, and it sought to compel the madrassas to modernize their curricula by excising extremely Islamist ideology. In

other instances, Pakistan security forces executed raids against

some of the more rabidly Islamist madrassas, and the government

undertook some measures to expel foreign students or preclude

their enrollment. Pakistan also arrested some of the reputedly highprofile “terrorists.” However, these efforts apparently had little impact since the number of madrassas continued to rise and because

the Islamic parties, upon whom Musharraf then still relied for political support, effectively resisted the modernization of the madrassas’ curricula based on the argument that such reforms were an

antireligious and anti-Islamic intrusion by the state. In addition,

the Pakistani government has proven unable to exert influence over

either the flow of foreign funds to the madrassas or over the movement of non-Pakistani jihadists within Pakistan. Equally important,

more than one third or more of the madrassas failed to comply with

even the minimal registration requirements prescribed by the government.45

The madrassas consequently blossomed under the tenure of the

Musharraf regime and its U.S. benefactors during the first eight

years of the war. The proliferation of madrassas, and the attendant

increase in proselytes, brought about grave implications for the war

on terror and for the wars on both sides of the Durand Line. For

one, this growth correlated to the return of the Taliban to the tribal

areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Second, the madrassas’ graduates have helped promote Islamism, radicalization, and

sectarianism within mainstream Pakistani society. Third, the continuation of insurgent and terrorist training within some madrassas,

particularly those in the Pashtun areas, allowed the Islamist militants to regain and sustain ideological momentum as Islamists ac44 Ibid.; C. Christine Fair, “Who Are Pakistan’s Militants and Their Families,” Terrorism and Political Violence (2008): 58–59.

45 Gregory telephone interview.
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 97

crued power in Pakistan, all while the government repeatedly withdrew from the tribal regions. The last consequence of the prosperity

of madrassas under the Musharraf regime was the fact that the

schools allowed local and foreign militants to forge closer ties while

undergoing indoctrination within them.46

An emphasis on the madrassas alone, however, overlooks the

broader problems with Pakistan’s educational curricula. The counterargument to the assertion that the madrassas are sources of both

Islamist ideology and recruits would posit that the madrassas have

had either very little or no impact on the major international terrorist events linked in various ways to Pakistan. Although the

madrassas are an important piece of the problem in that they play

a role in the inculcation of student radicals with the Islamist virtues

that animate their violent actions, most madrassas indeed seem to

provide very little pragmatic value to international terrorists for

whom expert knowledge of modern technology and science are essential. The weakness of the Pakistani education system as a

whole—its failure to deliver basic education for the majority of

young people, and in the substantive portions of that education for

those who do receive it—is arguably more pernicious as an incubator for terrorism. Long-standing government revisions to textbooks under General Zia in the 1970s and 1980s have also been

responsible for encouraging jihad in the defense of politicized Islam

to which Pakistan seemed to have wedded itself since then. For example, by the late 1990s, Pakistan’s National Bureau of Curriculum

and Textbooks still officially espoused a fourfold charter for children graduating from primary school to be proficient in the following areas: acknowledging and identifying the forces which may be

working against Pakistan; making speeches on holy war and martyrdom; understanding Muslim-Hindu differences and their attendant requirement for Pakistan to defend Islam; and describing the

“diabolical” designs that the Indians harbored over Pakistan.47

Thus, Pakistan’s public education system is a major source of

radicalization and Islamist convention because it has over the last

several decades inculcated such ideas through the educational curricula of approximately thirtyfold more students than those who

46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 
98 War, Will, and Warlords

graduate from the madrassas. In fact, in view of the emergence of

an indigenous al-Qaeda in Pakistan and the wider war on terrorism,

Pakistan’s public education system may have been more significant

than the madrassas as a source of militants. The Pakistan of

Musharraf did attempt to mitigate this more prevalent problem by

revising textbooks in government schools to be more moderate, but

the dearth of actual resources devoted to education, and the glacial

pace of implementation, translates to years of inertia and an incremental effort to replace Zia’s legacy. The subjective xenophobia

and Islamicization of Pakistan’s public education policy presents

wider challenges for information operations in the context of current security challenges, likely surpassing those programs embodied in the madrassas. 

Education is a crucial instrument in the war against extremism

and Islamist militancy in Pakistan, and future policy will need to

emphasize moderating, modernizing, and secularizing educational

curricula to create more objectivity and balance. Madrassas represent a smaller, but still critical piece, in the promotion of Islamist

militancy. After 11 September 2001, strangely enough, the madrassa

enterprise has flourished, and Pakistan’s efforts to reform it have

generally failed. It will remain exceedingly difficult to influence the

Pakistani population considering the wide infusion of xenophobia,

strict Islamist doctrine, and anti-Americanism across generations

of Pakistani youth who have been subjected to it in both public

and private schools. The Pakistani Taliban, in contrast, would consider objective and genuine education as an insidious threat to their

agenda. Pakistani newspapers often include reports of Taliban attacking and destroying schools in the tribal region. Real education

and knowledge are the enemies of the Taliban and their erstwhile

global jihadist partners. Some of the reasons for this deep-seated

loathing are further illumined below.48

While not entirely dissimilar to the Afghan Taliban’s ideological

narrative, the Pakistani Taliban’s armed propaganda and information

narrative is more severe, lying somewhere closer to the medievallike program that the original Taliban movement embraced and im48 Ibid. On Taliban views of education, see Pervez Hoodbhoy, Pakistan—The Threat from

Within, Pakistan Security Research Unit Brief Number 13 (Bradford, United Kingdom: University

of Bradford, 2007), 3.
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 99

posed. The Pakistani Taliban’s influence campaign builds on an odd

blend of Pashtun tribal values and Islamist creed. They have declared

polio vaccinations to be forbidden by Islamic law (haram) on the

grounds that they would render the new generation impotent. They

have targeted health workers for assassination and killed a doctor

from the Frontier Medical College in March 2007 for administering

polio shots to children. This slaying precipitated the resignation of

70 female health care providers who had been working in the FATA.

As a result, over 4,000 parents refused to vaccinate their children

and the government essentially abandoned polio vaccinations altogether. 

The Pakistani Taliban’s Islamist agenda is also highly misogynistic and targets women for separation in word and deed. It seeks

to reduce the space for women in public and calls for the total separation of the sexes. There are two genuinely tragic examples that

reveal the consequences of such a draconian agenda. During the

October 2005 earthquake in the northern tribal belt, local religious

elders refused to let male medical rescue workers dig out injured

female students who were buried in the rubble under their collapsed school. In April 2006 locals prevented male rescue workers

from moving female victims who had been injured in a stampede

that ensued during a weekly congregation at a local madrassa.49

The Pakistani Taliban has also employed cultural symbols to mobilize the Pashtuns. As a result of decades-long Islamist leaning

policies, there has been a reconceptualization of what it means to

be a Pashtun, and a nationalistic religiosity in the form of political

Islam has supplanted Pashtun nationalism as the ideology informing action. The Pakistani Taliban see their role fighting the Pakistani

security forces as one that makes them both better Pashtuns and

better Muslims. To rationalize their holy war against fellow Muslims they impugn Pakistani soldiers as proxies whom Americans

use against their brothers. In terms of influence and narrative, they

had also accused the Musharraf regime of being allied to infidels,

which also allows the Taliban to propagate their roles in violent

antigovernment attacks as the defense of the Islamic community

against apostates. In a similar vein, they have not viewed peace

49 Hoodboy, Pakistan—The Threat from Within, 3–4 and 10–11 for this and previous paragraph.
100 War, Will, and Warlords

deals with the security forces as really binding them in any way to

turn over foreign Islamist militants to the government. To them,

the foreigners are Muslim brothers within the community of Islam,

and the security forces are apostates allied with infidels. To be certain, the deeply embedded Pashtun tenets of hospitality and freedom also underlay their persistent refusals to give up Arab guests.

To deny hospitality under alien pressure would be an impingement

of their code and their fierce independence. Harboring like-minded

foreign fighters makes the mujahideen of Pakistani Taliban both

better Pashtuns and better Muslims.50

Notwithstanding the explanations of the TTP and TNSM in the

section on legitimacy, it will be helpful to elucidate several other

facts about the Pakistani Taliban before exploring the impact of

armed propaganda and lethal attacks on the insurgency. The TTP

is one of the larger groups and represents the purist form of Talibaninspired militancy. The organization emerged as a result of the large

exodus of foreign militants to the FATA after the fall of the Taliban

regime. For one, a necessary caveat is that the mix of insurgents and

terrorists are in nearly constant flux and adaptation, evolving and

coalescing or dispersing as they adjust to the ever changing operational environment. Newly forming groups typically remain de facto

protégés of more established parent organizations until they attain

a level of proficiency that supports independent action. Additionally,

there is some ebb and flow of partnering and outsourcing stemming

from the opportunistic targeting of mutually beneficial targets. The

LeT’s Mumbai attack of November 2008, for example, represents an

instance where the planning and execution allegedly included LeT

members with ISI collusion, and the effects benefited an even

greater number of groups operating in the tribal areas. For one, LeT

cannot survive in a vacuum, and these groups opportunistically cooperate and outsource to help one another survive and prosecute

operations from and in the tribal areas and beyond. Additionally,

the Mumbai attack precipitated beneficial and collateral effects for

all the extremist groups operating in the tribal areas simply because

the Pakistani security forces reaction to India’s reaction to the inci50 Shuja Nawaz, FATA—A Most Dangerous Place: Meeting the Challenge of Militancy and Terror

in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic

and International Studies, 2009), 27–28.
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 101

dent diverted attention and resources toward India and the East,

away from the tribal area safe havens along Pakistan’s western border. In other words, Mumbai heightened the India-Pakistan security

dilemma and thus pulled Pakistan's focus away from its security

operations against militants in the sanctuaries.51

In Waziristan, the likes of TNSM and Sipah-e Sahaba Pakistan

militants were drawn toward the band of tribal warriors associated

with the late Baitullah Mehsud, whose group became increasingly

radical as result of this influx of foreign elements. These international connections also allegedly brought Mehsud into close contact

with al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban. After their humiliating defeat in 2001, the TNSM rolled itself under the umbrella of Mehsud’s

growing Pakistani Taliban in the hope of stimulating a comeback.

The TTP are in general a part of the greater Taliban organization

embodied in the Quetta Shura and the Afghan Taliban. Jalaluddin

Haqqani’s militant organization (often referred to as the “Haqqani

network”), which intersects with the Taliban on both sides of the

Durand Line, serves as a meta-node in this network, which seems

to variously link every Islamist actor in the FATA, including alQaeda. His son Sirajuddin, also known as Khalifa, has surpassed

even his father in his reputation as a fierce mujahideen commander

and is purportedly in command of actual operations against Coalition forces in Afghanistan. The Haqqanis maintain substantial influence on both sides of the border and serve as a conduit from the

Afghan Taliban to the Pakistani Taliban and foreign fighters associated with al-Qaeda. American officials even suspect the Haqqanis

of the manifest flow of foreign fighters into Afghanistan from the

Middle East, Turkey, Chechnya, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan.52

Like the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban’s program also includes the aggressive use of armed propaganda to coerce the less

amenable among the people and to undermine the government’s

credibility and legitimacy. The notion that information operations

are easier for the insurgents because all they have to do is destroy

people and things remains true in Pakistan also. Death and destruc51 Zaidi, “The Taliban Organization in Pakistan,” 44–45. For a cogent and distilled explanation

of LeT and the November 2008 Mumbai attack, see Farhana Ali and Muhammad Shehzad,

“Lashkar-e Tayyiba Remains Committed to Jihad,” CTC Sentinel 2, no. 3 (March 2009): 13–16.

52 Zaidi, “The Taliban Organization in Pakistan,” 45–46.
102 War, Will, and Warlords

tion have immediate effects in an information-age media landscape.

Developing, administering, and protecting are slow and difficult in

Pakistan even in the absence of an insurgency. Armed propaganda,

or propaganda of the deed, is the incitement of an animated audience through violent acts rather than words. In an information-rich

environment, a “continuous stream of news images and stories”

can help reinforce the insurgent narrative and revive opposition to

the government. With most insurgencies, neither absolute victory

nor absolute defeat is likely. Instead, there is the contested area of

insecurity wherein notions of success or failure reside in the perceptions of the people living there. The key task for both counterinsurgent and insurgent is to manipulate these perceptions. In The

Insurgent Archipelago, John Mackinlay identifies three approaches

for propagating through violence: the deliberate approach, the owngoal approach, and by a continuous stream of random news.53

For the deliberate approach, militants attack a venue that draws

attention in the international media in order to guarantee that the

images of the deed are transmitted to every news channel in as

many languages as possible. The own-goal approach does not necessarily require any particular organization by the militants but

only a malleable public audience for counterproductive counterinsurgent actions, which the insurgents quickly capitalize to good effect via the news media. The third approach is particularly easy for

Islamic insurgents fighting Western forces in Islamic heartlands, for

it simply relies on the continuous flow of news stories that resonate

unfavorably with the public audience. For an example of the latter,

although television news teams in Pakistan and Afghanistan may

simply intend to report as objectively as they can about ongoing

operations, the recurring images of Western soldiers and combat

vehicles maneuvering through the streets of Muslim villages represent an illegal occupation of the ummah by infidels to radicalized

audiences in Muslim countries. Likewise, repeated images of uniformed Western troops and Muslim casualties animate opposition,

if not hatred, for such endeavors. Examples of the deliberate approach have included the bombing of the Islamabad Marriot in September 2008 and the Haqqani-sponsored attack on the Afghanistan

53 Rid and Hecker, War 2.0, 2–4; and John Mackinlay, The Insurgent Archipelago (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 124, 129–30, and 134. The direct quote is from Mackinlay, 129.
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 103

National Day parade in April of the same year. As a popular international hotel in the heart of Pakistan’s capital, the Marriot presented a venue where a massive attack would generate instant

attention across all media. The suicide blast killed 40, wounded

100, and created a 20-foot crater in front of the destroyed facade.

The attack on Karzai’s parade in Kabul was even more sensational,

where photographic images focused on “the sense of pantomime,

the rout of be-medaled parade soldiers scampering across the parade square before Taliban fire.”54

Finally, lethal operations in the tribal areas have not been consistent with information operations aimed at winning the support

of the population. In fact, the endless stream of drone attacks, coupled with the Pakistani army’s sledgehammer approach to pacification, would seem to play into the second two approaches

available to the insurgent for propaganda of the deed. Drone attacks, in particular, while effective in expunging Taliban and alQaeda leaders, also provide a relatively steady stream of

“own-goal” media images of Coalition actions that can be counterproductive in a war of ideas. Punitive raids, collective punishment,

and the devastation of villages may have served the British and the

Malakand Field Force well in 1897, but it is not the way to influence

public perception in the favor of the counterinsurgent during the

twenty-first-century information age. One glaring example of such

unwanted and counterproductive consequences in the information

sphere was the heavy-handed attacks on the Pashtun village of

Damadola in the Bajaur Agency of the FATA.55

In January 2006, a General Atomics MQ-1 Predator drone ostensibly targeting bin Laden’s number two attacked Damadola and destroyed a house, killing 18 people attending a dinner celebration of

Eid ul-Adha, one of the two holiest festivals of the Sunnis. The attack incited widespread and violent demonstrations throughout

Pakistan. Several months later, in October 2006, the Pakistani army,

supported by Predators, attacked and destroyed a madrassa outside

Damadola. The second strike killed 85 people, most of whom the

Pakistani government alleged to be militants, although no targets

54 Mackinlay, The Insurgent Archipelago, 141–42 and 133–34. The direct quote is from page 133.

55 Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla, 229–31.
104 War, Will, and Warlords

of high value were present during the attack. However, some residents and opposition politicians claimed that children had been in

the school. In May 2008, yet another Predator strike on Damadola,

which targeted a known al-Qaeda explosives expert, killed 16 people, among them women, children, and the targeted individual. 

It is already extraordinarily difficult for any Western partnered

effort, not matter how benign, to succeed with information operations among populations whose cultures we do not truly understand (and who do not truly understand our culture). It will be

impossible to do if the United States and its partners cannot sort

out who to protect and who to punish. Moral rectitude is absolutely

essential because the killing mathematics and calculus in the Pashtun lands help create exponentially more insurgent recruits for

every wrongful death. It is naiveté of the highest order to imagine

that U.S. technology, hollow “hearts-and-minds” actions, largescale military interventions, or wastefully shortsighted development

projects can successfully integrate the Pashtuns “without some

major political and cultural transformation.”56

Postscript

The FATA represents a crucial locale in the war, and Pakistan

has committed over 100,000 troops to the region since the war

began. The war there until 2009 was bloody, and the Pakistani

military exhibited a reluctance to fight those who it perceived to

be coreligionists. There were several attempts to craft a peace

agreement with the militants fighting in the tribal areas. All these

agreements have failed. Many now sense that the FATA is beyond

the control of the Pakistan government even if there was an

earnest push to gain control in the more restive agencies. As stated

previously, Shaun Gregory has suggested that “the very notion of

the Federally Administered Tribal Areas may now be a misnomer,

a more apt description being the Taliban Administered Tribal

Areas, or TATA.” The situation in Baluchistan, which comprises

about 50 percent Baluchis and 50 percent Pashtuns, similarly engenders disharmony between the people, the central government,

and expectations about control over resources. In Baluchistan, the

56 Ibid., 232. 
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 105

people live in the most abject poverty out of all of the provinces,

yet it is resource rich. The Pakistani regime’s obdurately oppressive and covetous approach to Baluchi resources, manifested in

the Pakistani military’s air strike and killing of the elderly Baluchi

nationalist leader Akbar Khan Bugti in 2006, also precluded helpful dialogue with the indigenous population. There was also some

proof to imply that the ISI employed its traditional strategy of

using religious radicals as instruments of perfidy. The government’s security forces remained detached from the proliferation

of the Taliban across Baluchistan, particularly since 2005, when

the Taliban ostensibly converted Baluchistan into an operational

sanctuary.57

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province has also seen a surge in violence since this war began, a surge which some suggest is the result of increasing resentment towards the central government and

one animated by an ideological world view that stems from Pashtun

nationalism conflated with Islamist militancy. The American-led

“war on terror” has exacerbated this resentment and the militants’

responses have become increasingly violent. As a consequence, this

war of attrition by suicide bombings in the Pashtun Belt witnessed

an estimated 163 people killed in 2006, while those killed in the

first half of 2007 had already climbed close to that level of violence.

While the U.S. drone war in Pakistan, as well as Pakistan’s combat

operations against fellow Pashtuns in Afghanistan, have not helped

attenuate these grievances, the Pakistani government also bears

some responsibility for this surge in violence because it heretofore

failed to engage with leadership in the province. The oligarchy in

Islamabad makes all the decisions about the war on terror, and the

people in the tribal areas, who live and die every day with these

decisions, do not even get a vote.58

The implications of Pakistan’s approach to Islamist extremism

are more difficult to discern and distinguish from the effects in

general that the U.S. war on terror has had upon the perceptions

and grievances of the global Muslim community. Many Muslims

have construed the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as attacks

on Islam, and this has spurred both moderates and radicals to op57 Gregory and Revill, “The Role of the Pakistan Military,” 46–48. 58 Ibid., 48–51. 
106 War, Will, and Warlords

pose Pakistan’s support for the America and its war on terror. Even

though the majority of Pakistan’s public may not support Islamist

militants, they also do not support Pakistan’s alliance with the

United States. The results of Pakistan’s efforts to help the United

States counter religious extremism are ambiguously marginal at

best and duplicitously complicit at worst. Some lowlights from the

first years after September 2001 include Musharraf’s inadvertent

contribution to the rise of the MMA; his unwillingness to go after

the Afghan Taliban; the storming of the Red Mosque; and the unabated propagation of Islamist dogma in the madrassas and public

school curricula. Given that prior to September 2001, Pakistan was

a full-fledged supporter of the Taliban and other surrogate Islamist

militant groups, there is a very thin silver lining to otherwise nebulous performance of Pakistan in the war on terror.59

After 2001, Musharraf did declare a reversal of policy, under

the pressure of a U.S. ultimatum. Musharraf’s “Hobson’s choice”

was to become a frontline state and ally of America in the war on

terror at an ultimately expensive price tag in terms of domestic

support for his military regime. However, the results of Pakistan’s

efforts in the war on terror have been mixed. Pakistan does continue to provide access through its ports and overland routes for

logistical support to U.S. forces in Afghanistan. It has also helped

capture a few high-value al-Qaeda operatives, including Abu

Zubaydah and Khalid Shaykh Muhammad. Moreover, Pakistan in

some instances deployed its own security forces to interdict suspected al-Qaeda positions. The government has also made some

modest attempts to arrest the growth and curricula of radical

madrassas, which are arguably germinating at least a portion of

the jihadists fighting in Afghanistan. Finally, under American pressure, Pervez Musharraf did in some measure expunge the military

and the ISI of Islamist-leaning members who were openly or passively supportive of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The most significant

of these was the 2001 removal of General Mahmood Ahmed, the

director general of the ISI. These measures have not been popular

in Pakistan and, as pointed out above, contributed to instability

in Pakistan. Still, Pakistan’s full and genuine commitment to com59 Ibid., 50–52.
Pakistan to 2009: With Us or Against Us? 107

bating al-Qaeda, and particularly the Afghan Taliban, is suspect.

There is open-source reporting that continues to link the ISI and

other official operators to the Afghan Taliban, LeT, and other shadowy jihadist groups. To be sure, the ISI has been interwoven with

Islamist groups for over three decades, a state that will likely continue indefinitely.60

60 Ibid.

4

THE PASHTUN BELT IN AFGHANISTAN, 2009–2011:

HARD BUT HOPEFUL?

Six years after the War on Terrorism began Pakistan has

emerged as the new Afghanistan.

— Shaun Gregory, “The ISI and the War on Terrorism”

Afghanistan today is in danger of capsizing in a perfect storm

of insurgency, terrorism, narcotics, and warlords. 

—Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason, “Terrorism, Insurgency,

and Afghanistan”

The previous two chapters analyzed how well the U.S.-led

Coalition countered the Taliban in Afghanistan and how well

the Pakistanis countered the insurgents in Pakistan for generally the first eight years of the war. The insurgent movements on both

sides of the border generally comprise Pashtuns who largely, but not

exclusively, conduct attacks in and around the Pashtun areas. As of

the spring of 2009, the Afghan and Pakistani insurgencies along the

Pashtun Belt showed no signs of relenting. In fact, the converse was

closer to the truth. The insurgencies were metastasizing, and in some

instances coalescing, at least for temporary reasons of opportunity.

The Afghan Taliban at that time had de facto control of large portions

of southern and eastern Afghanistan. There was also evidence that

the Taliban had established parallel hierarchies, or shadow governments, in most of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, though the strength of

those hierarchies ebbed in provinces further away from the Pashtun

Belt. Earlier in 2009, the U.S. general who then commanded the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) considered the counterinsurgents and insurgents to be at a stalemate. Likewise, in Pakistan

internal mujahideen expanded their control of terrain and increased

their attacks against the property and persons of the security forces,

government workers, and civilians. Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-eMuhammadi (TNSM) guerrillas had made advances in the district of

Buner that brought the threat to within 60 miles of Islamabad, the

capital city, and nearer to the country’s heartland, by April 2009. Dur109
110 War, Will, and Warlords

ing the same period, Baitullah Mehsud’s Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-eTaliban Pakistan [TTP]) irregulars held sway over large portions of

the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and continued to perpetrate

attacks against the state of Pakistan and its security forces.1

Three significant and discernible changes have come about since

the spring of 2009 that distinguish 2009–11 from the previous eight

years in Afghanistan and Pakistan. One is that the U.S. leadership has

recognized that Afghanistan and Pakistan are wars that must be won

because of the grave threat to the United States and its allies engendered by al-Qaeda operating from sanctuaries in the Pashtun tribal

areas. A corollary to this is the understanding that the key to stabilizing

Afghanistan and Pakistan are counterinsurgency campaigns that build

security, governance, and relative prosperity in the tribal areas. When

judiciously employed, limited direct action strikes against precise terrorist targets can complement the counterinsurgency efforts. Second,

it seems that the perception of the Pakistani leadership and population

has shifted to see the Pakistani Taliban as a genuinely serious threat

to the state and its citizens. As a result, there has been more willingness to go after the TTP and TNSM, as both militant groups are now

viewed as posing a threat to Pakistan. There is yet little empirical evidence that the Pakistanis are willing to help defeat the Afghan Taliban,

although the winter of 2010 witnessed Pakistan arresting an unprecedented number of senior Afghan Taliban in Pakistan. Third, the U.S.

leadership has finally acknowledged that the efforts in Afghanistan and

Pakistan must be complementary, and that the essence, the hub of the

threat, emanates from Pakistan’s border areas.2

Afghanistan

The Americans may have all the nice wristwatches, but we have

all the time. 

—an anonymous Taliban insurgent

Protracted wars are difficult and exhausting, especially for Amer1 See Robert D. Crews and Amin Tarzi, “Introduction,” 57, and Canfield, “Fraternity, Power,

and Time,” 230–7, in Crews and Tarzi, Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan; and Giustozzi,

Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop, 81–97, for insights on the resurgence of the Taliban. See Siddiqa, “Jihadism in Pakistan” 57–69; and Zaidi, “The Taliban Organization in Pakistan,” 40–7,

for an explanation of the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP.

2 See Fair, “Pakistan’s Own War on Terror,” 39–53, for insights on the shift in the Pakistani perception of the threat. 
The Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan, 2009–2011: Hard but Hopeful? 111

icans, whose impatience and fickleness make it hard to sustain support for a long war. Insurgents do in fact usually have all the time,

when compared to those who oppose them. When counterinsurgents

are stalemated with insurgents, this is generally not good because

counterinsurgents are losing if they are not winning. On the other

hand, not losing is often enough for the insurgent to see that he is

winning. In Afghanistan during 2009–11, the U.S. senior leadership

assessed the situation to be deteriorating but reversible. It was deteriorating because the resurgent Taliban considered itself to be winning, as it had gained control of the population and significant pieces

of territory in southern and eastern Afghanistan. To quote the sage

words of the great philosopher Baruch Spinoza, nature abhors a vacuum. The Taliban expanded its control of the Pashtun areas in

Afghanistan between 2005 and 2009 because there were an insufficient number of Coalition forces in the country to conduct a full-measure counterinsurgency. During 2009–11, there have been discernible

indications that warrant guarded optimism that the Coalition and its

Afghan partners can reverse the security situation in their favor. The

good news is that U.S. civilian and military senior leaders now have

a clear understanding of what needs to be done and how to do it.

The supremely important caveat emptor for the next 2 years is

whether the U.S.-led Coalition will be able to accomplish its campaign with the resources it has within a timeframe that the U.S. polity

will support. The following portion of this chapter assesses the variables of legitimacy, force, and influence in the context of counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan from the summer of 2009

through the end of 2011. 

Legitimacy

This is all a war of perceptions. . . . This is all in the minds of

the participants.

—Army General Stanley A. McChrystal, 2010

The then-commander of the ISAF articulated this percipient insight during a February 2010 press conference in Istanbul. Perceptions are the essence of the struggle for legitimacy among the

people living in the border tribal areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Reality is what the relevant populations believe and perceive. If the
112 War, Will, and Warlords

majority of the populace is convinced that the government, security

forces, and Coalition partners are committed to bringing sustainable

improvements in terms of administration, services, and security,

then it will likely confer its support for the government. If the converse is true, either due to the absence of governance and security

or because of corrupt government officials who abuse their responsibilities, then significant portions of the population will support

the insurgents, who seem to offer a better alternative. In places

where government security force control is tenuous but the population is still inclined to support the government, the Taliban have

used more coercive measures, including night letters and assassinations, to compel support from the population. As recently as December 2009, the Afghan ambassador to the United States

acknowledged that his country’s challenges included tenuous governance and nonexistent governance. By itself, the effort to build

government and security institutions from an abjectly poor and

largely illiterate population, devastated by more than 30 years of

tumult and war, is a Herculean one. However, some colossally bad

U.S. strategic decisions and North Atlantic Treaty Organization

(NATO) half measures during the first eight years of the war helped

compound this challenge. Unbelievably, the Coalition set the initial

ceiling for the Afghan National Army (ANA) at 35,000. This was

for a country that is bigger and more populous than Iraq, with a

history, geography, and populace notorious for successful guerrilla

wars.3

While improving how it governs is the responsibility of the indigenous government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, the

U.S. leadership did not initially do the development of governance

justice when it decided to maintain an economical presence focused almost exclusively on direct and lethal actions against terrorists. Moreover, the subsequent and extremely misguided

decision to invade Iraq led to a near debacle when most of the U.S.

government and U.S. military were compelled to focus on that war.

This same decision precipitated a handover of Afghanistan to the

NATO-led ISAF, which embodied its own set of imperfections and

disadvantages when it comes to counterinsurgency. Initially, hostile

3 Said Tayeb Jawad, Afghan ambassador to the United States (speech at Paul Nitze School for

Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC, 4 December 2009).
The Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan, 2009–2011: Hard but Hopeful? 113

warlords and criminal militias alienated the people. The Afghan

Military Forces (comprising warlord militias such as Masood’s and

Gul Agha Shirzai’s) are now gone, and there has been some

progress in curbing, but not eliminating, warlords in positions of

power. The grievances of much of the population now relate to an

expectation gap between what they expect from the government

and the security forces, and what they experience and perceive as

corrupt governance, insecurity, spotty services, and continued

poverty. The general population is also not enamored of the Taliban’s extremism or its ideology, although the Pashtun and Islamic

portions of the Taliban’s narrative do resonate. The Afghans are

likewise not enthralled by an overly centralized and controlling government in Kabul. They prefer local governance and local security

with some enablers and resources from the central government.

The Afghans want fundamental services such as education and

roads. There is good news in efforts to build and sustain legitimacy

because after years of parsimoniousness in knowledge, resources,

and leadership, the years 2009–11 saw big increases in all three,

manifested in some closing of the expectation gap. This section explains the problems associated with legitimacy and security, and

then reviews any positive changes to shape perceptions of legitimacy among the people.4

Although ISAF had an initial mandate to provide security only

in the environs of Kabul, by October 2003 the United Nations Security Council had authorized ISAF to expand its purview and control to all of Afghanistan. By October the following year, ISAF had

expanded its operations to the northern provinces, but it was yet

another two years after that before ISAF ostensibly assumed full

responsibility for the entire country. During this same period, a relatively small array of U.S. (Operation Enduring Freedom [OEF])

forces conducted operations mainly in the east and mostly, but not

exclusively, focused on manhunts. ISAF did not assume responsi4 There is no intention here to impugn the hard work done by a host of dedicated professionals

between 2002 and 2009. The efforts then were ad hoc and on a shoestring in terms of people

and resources. Between late 2003 and early 2005, for example, the military and civilian team of

LtGen Barno, USA, and Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad unified their efforts, instituted best-practice counterinsurgency tenets, and embraced the Provincial Reconstruction Team concept. However, they never had the resources to implement a full counterinsurgency campaign. See Lamb

and Cinnamond, “Unified Effort,” 43–44, on unified civil-military action. 
114 War, Will, and Warlords

bility for military operations in the southern provinces until July

2006. This is not to imply that ISAF formations were even close to

being in control of all the provinces in Afghanistan. This shift to

NATO/ISAF equated to responsibility without control, and without

anywhere close to the necessary resources. Until 2009, in fact, there

were still some provinces without an ISAF, ANA, or OEF security

presence. One report analyzing this time period noted that the civilian, economic, and military “resources available were far too limited to create the tolerable environment that would have prevented

the resurgence of the Taliban and other insurgent groups.” Not only

did NATO have difficulty in marshalling sufficient troops and resources in a reasonable amount of time, but it also had huge difficulties in coordinating the civil and military actions of those forces

into one unified effort. The host of national caveats tied to the use

of force and the roles of the Provincial Reconstruction Team presented huge, but not insurmountable, obstacles to unity of command and effort. The unity of command in ISAF also suffered from

the use of partly ad hoc NATO core headquarters that rotated in

and out on a six-month basis to constitute ISAF. NATO also impaired its own efficacy with its internally perceived institutional

contradictions pertaining to its role in the world. Indeed, NATO’s

inability to design or implement an effective counterinsurgency

campaign stemmed from its very nature as an institution of cooperative sovereign states.5

It was during the years of the Taliban’s resurgence that the lack

of effective security capacity and the absence of ISAF in the south

and southeast also precluded effective governance and government

presence. Because of the security vacuum in places such as Helmand, Kandahar, and Zabul, the neo-Taliban were able to carry out

their armed propaganda and assassination campaigns against local

government officials, including schoolteachers. For an insurgency

like the one in southern and eastern Afghanistan, security and governance must be implemented in tandem. If there is no credible security presence, there is no perception of confidence in the

government’s capacity to administer and protect. When the Taliban

5 Jens Ringsmose and Peter Thruelsen, NATO’s Counterinsurgency Campaign in Afghanistan:

Are Classical Doctrines Suitable for Alliances? UNISCI Discussion Paper Number 22 (Zurich:

UNISCI, January 2010), 62–66. The direct quote is from page 63 of this report.
The Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan, 2009–2011: Hard but Hopeful? 115

increasingly began to perform this role by administering justice, security, and control, it became the de facto “legitimate government”

in the absence of one. By 2008, the Afghans in the south, southeast,

and Kabul/central regions were reporting a degraded security situation. Increased criminality, high-profile attacks, and attacks

against poorly protected Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF)

outposts “contributed to decreased confidence in the government.”

However, very few Afghans want to see the Taliban return to power,

and most support the current form of government. Indeed, a majority of Afghans continue to support the overall effort of the government and also support the necessity of a strong international

military presence, at least for the moment.6

Karzai’s government has struggled with perceived legitimacy

because of endemic corruption; alleged family associations with

opium traffickers; on-and-off alliances with warlords; ostensibly

fraudulent August 2009 presidential election; and Karzai’s association with the non-Muslim, Western-dominated Coalition

forces. The August 2009 ISAF commander’s assessment noted

that the Afghan government had made some progress, but that

serious obstacles remained. The cause of the population’s lack

of trust in its government is twofold. For one, some government

officials have abused their power and given special treatment to

certain tribes or individuals. Secondly, the Afghan government

has not been capable of providing sufficient services, justice, or

security to the population. Even though the number of competent

officials and capable institutions has grown, it had not grown or

improved by August 2009 to sufficiently counter the problems

that continued to undermine its legitimacy. The above problems

explain the inability of the government to win the support of the

population. The assessment also recorded that in rural areas there

was little connection between the local population and the central

government because the top-down method of building government capacity had not succeeded in providing services that

reached local communities. General McChrystal observed that the

Afghan government had not supported or integrated “traditional

community governance structures,” which have been an impor6 NATO Public Diplomacy Division, Afghanistan Report 2009 (Brussels, Belgium: NATO, 2009),

5, 17–19. The direct quote is from page 17.
116 War, Will, and Warlords

tant historic component of Afghan society. The latter impaired

cohesion and increased instability at the community level, which

made communities more susceptible to insurgent machinations.7

Compared to no government or a Taliban government, Karzai’s

government is the best form of government that the Afghans now

have. Senior U.S. civilian and military leaders, such as former

Special Representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard C.

Holbrooke and former ISAF Commander McChrystal, demonstrated in their assessments and public speeches that they understood the challenges they faced in time and space, and they

garnered popular support. The people represent the object in

counterinsurgency. In other words, a principal objective in counterinsurgency is the “four inches between the ears” of the populace. In Afghanistan, the people exercise the rational person

phenomenon: weigh and decide on the risks and benefits; and

support the government when they have confidence in its capacity to deliver security, justice, the most basic services, and representation in the form of councils or shuras. Our efforts in

Afghanistan in the end will not meet with success if the people

do not believe in their government but instead support the Taliban cause. The 2010 Afghanistan and Pakistan Regional Stabilization Strategy issued by the State Department aimed to

improve government and security in concert, particularly at the

provincial, district, and local levels, “where most Afghans encounter their government.” The U.S. government, in order to

partner with the Afghans to build better governance, has increased the number of civilian technical advisers in key ministries and in both provincial capitals and district centers. The

increase in civilian presence generally saw the number of interagency experts triple from just over 300 in 2009 to over 1,000 in

2010–11. This strategy also calls for a reinvigoration of resources

and vigilance on anticorruption that has witnessed the creation

of an Anti-Corruption Task Force. This task force initially included among its members Sarah Chayes, an American expatriate

from Kandahar who has a deep understanding of Afghan civil

society and governance in Afghanistan. These increases in rep7 Gen Stanley A. McChrystal, Commander’s Initial Assessment (Kabul: NATO ISAF and USFORA, 30 August 2009), 2-8–2-9.
The Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan, 2009–2011: Hard but Hopeful? 117

resentatives from agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. Department of Agriculture,

U.S. Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration,

and Federal Bureau of Investigation supported the combined introduction of security forces and governance into the populated

Pashtun areas to create secured areas not amenable to Taliban

control.8

In a February 2010 press conference, then–Special Representative Holbrooke captured the scope and magnitude of the

changes in the U.S./Coalition approach to building legitimacy

and security in Afghanistan that began in 2009. His remarks at

the time noted that during 2009 in Afghanistan, the United States

decided to change ambassadors, reorganize the American embassy, change military commanders, reassess its military strategy,

and institute two major force increases. The buildup that President Obama announced during his West Point speech in December 2009 added another 30,000 troops in Afghanistan. The year

2009 also witnessed significant increases in civilian efforts and

some significant changes in U.S. strategy and operations. The

United States, in collaboration with NATO, established a new

command structure for training ANSF and began a whole series

of other programs that had been put in abeyance because of the

Afghan presidential election. That election was not optimal in

terms of legitimacy, but it was a process that was within the general parameters of the laws and constitution of Afghanistan. President Karzai won the election and is now the officially elected

leader of Afghanistan. Moreover, the American buildup in civilian

capacity continued on course, with a total civilian surge strength

of over 1,000 that peaked in 2010. What’s more, three other discernibly positive trends for improving the reality and perception

of legitimacy are slowly bearing fruit in the promulgation of bestpractice counterinsurgency directives; the National Solidarity Program (NSP), the genesis of which predates 2009; and the Afghan

Local Police (ALP) program, which was formerly framed as the

8 Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan

Regional Stabilization Strategy (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State, 2010), ii–iii. The direct quote is from page ii. Sarah Chayes, author of The Punishment of Virtue, has lived in Kandahar and Kabul since early 2002 and is a member of the Anti-Corruption Task Force.
118 War, Will, and Warlords

Local Defense Initiative (LDI) and initially began as the Community Defense Initiative.9

From the moment the then-new command team assumed command of ISAF in June 2009, it began to direct changes in how Coalition forces operated, issuing directives that clearly revealed a deep

understanding of the fundamentals of counterinsurgency, including

the centrality of the indigenous population for success. Initial guidance directed ISAF forces to protect and partner with the Afghan

people because ISAF was fighting for, and not against, the population. This guidance emphasized the belief that success ultimately

depends on effective partnering with the Afghan government to establish good governance as well as unity of purpose and credibility

of information. Four months later, and after they provided a detailed assessment of the situation in Afghanistan to the senior U.S.

civilian leadership, the senior ISAF commander presented an address in London in which he acknowledged a crisis in the confidence of the Afghan populace because of unmet expectations

between 2001 and 2009. The speech explicitly noted the “mismatch

between what they had hoped for and what they experienced.” He

emphasized the necessity of protecting more than killing because

“counterinsurgency mathematics” in a place like the Pashtun Belt

means every wrongful killing could in fact generate 10 more insurgents. In this speech he described the absolute necessity of winning

the war of perceptions among the villagers. He also acknowledged

that the Coalition forces and their Afghan partners had exacerbated

the security problems with underresourced, undercoordinated, and

underperformed operations. Lastly, the ISAF commander articulated the key steps toward reversing the perceived momentum of

the insurgents would be to promptly increase the ANSF, closely

partner with Afghans, improve governance capacity with a focus

on rule of law, fix the problem of predatory corruption, and focus

operations on those populated areas of the Pashtun Belt that were

most threatened.10

9 See Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, “Readout on the January 28 London Conference on

Afghanistan,” (briefing at Foreign Press Center, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC, 3

February 2010).

10 Gen Stanley A. McChrystal, “Commander’s Initial Guidance,” (Kabul: ISAF Headquarters, 13

June 2009) and “Special Address,” (address at International Institute of Strategic Studies, London, England, 1 October 2009).
The Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan, 2009–2011: Hard but Hopeful? 119

The NSP provides another good practice for building the legitimacy of the Afghan government in the minds of the rural population. The NSP facilitates elections to establish Community

Development Councils (CDCs) and builds the capacities of CDC

and community members (both men and women). The councils

identify priority subprojects, prepare Community Development

Plans (CDPs), and implement approved subprojects. The program

links the CDC to government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and donors to improve access to services and resources.

The NSP also builds capacity at the community level to enhance

the competence of CDC male and female members in terms of financial management, procurement, technical skills, and transparency. Once the CDC has been elected, an inclusive and

innovative inductive model is followed to develop a CDP. Moreover,

designing a CDP is an exercise that allows the CDC to map out its

development requirements and to prioritize them as well. Subproject proposals are then developed to apply for funding. The NSP

provides direct block grant transfers to a bank account established

by the CDC to support rehabilitation and development activities,

which these councils plan and implement. The funding for these

activities comes in the form of block grants that generally amount

to $200 (U.S. dollars [USD]) per family, with average grants of

$33,000 (USD) and maximum grants of $60,000 (USD) per community.11

A third initiative that has already discernibly increased both legitimacy and security in Afghanistan’s rural areas is the ALP. The

Afghan government approved the program in August 2010, and the

Coalition Forces Special Operations Component Command–

Afghanistan (CFSOCC-A) has masterfully overseen and orchestrated

the effort. The ALP has flourished, increasing from about 10 locations in early fall 2010 to over 50 validated sites and almost 8,000

local policemen by the end of 2011. Where the biggest problems are

in terms of control, influence, and confidence of the people in the

government near and in the southern and eastern Pashtun Belt, legitimacy is something the people seek, but they also want some

11 Blair Glencorse, telephone interview, 13 January 2010. Glencorse is a development expert

with the Institute for State Effectiveness in Washington, DC. He emphasized that the NSP was

a success story.
120 War, Will, and Warlords

ownership. In fact, in most instances, the people would prefer local

services, security, and governance. The U.S.-Coalition effort for the

first eight years engendered a centralized and top-down approach.

However, since June 2009, and with increasing emphasis and momentum since 2010, ISAF has focused more on empowering local

legitimacy through local security and local governance since “local

defense is what the people want.” The ALP has garnered the support of the people. As originally envisioned by then–Minister of the

Interior Muhammad Hanif Atmar and then-Minister Jelani Popal

(Independent Directorate for Local Governance), the LDI evolved

from the two similar previous initiatives, the Community Defense

Initiative and the Afghan Public Protection Program (AP3). Unlike

the Community Defense Initiative, but similar to the AP3, personnel

serving as security forces in the ALP receive pay for service via the

Afghan government’s Ministry of the Interior (MOI). Village shuras

select the security personnel, and district police chiefs help train

and equip them, with the support of the CFSOCC-A. Similar to but

much better thought out than its precursor programs, the ALP envisions that participating villages will receive economic development and other assistance, partly as incentives for participation in

the program. In aggregate, the funds dedicated to both salaries and

development over time, in the context of ALP programs, are not at

all insignificant in the context of rural Afghanistan, depending on

how many villages join the program.12

The ALP is an integral part of the overall Village Stability Operations (VSO) effort. Special forces teams conducting VSOs support

local government efforts under the direction and administration of

the MOI. As a sanctioned program, the local shura must vet ALP

members, who are then enrolled biometrically, trained, equipped,

and responsible to the District Chief of Police. The vetting process

incorporates the village elder/shura process as the first step in identifying suitable local police. Village elders recommend these

guardians, and in turn these guardians have a vested interest in

protecting the village to which they belong. The special forces

teams provide training focused on the Afghan constitution/rule of

12 Direct quote is from Seth Jones, telephone interview, 11 January 2010. Jon Klug, email interview, 10 February 2010. Maj Klug was at the time the executive officer of Army LtGen William

B. Caldwell’s initiatives group in Afghanistan. 
The Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan, 2009–2011: Hard but Hopeful? 121

law, policing ethics/morals, basic rifle marksmanship, and first aid.

What is also salient is the recognized and acknowledged MOI-sponsored equipping and facilitating role for the ALP. This provides

credible and discernible evidence of the Afghan government’s interest in the well being of its local populations. The Coalition special forces and Afghan commandos also remain responsive to

emerging security threats that might outmatch these local defense

programs.13

However, VSOs precede, assess, and create conditions where

ALP can work. ALP is one of several priority efforts that CFSOCCA elements undertake in rural village areas across Afghanistan, in

support of the comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign. As a

bottom-up effort to connect the people to security and acceptable

local governance, special forces teams conduct VSOs in strategically

important rural areas; in village communities and village clusters;

and along the lines of security, governance, and development to

undermine insurgent influence and control. VSOs are specifically

oriented toward insurgent-controlled or contested rural areas where

there exists limited or no military or police elements of the ANSF.

The VSO program helps with local security, reestablishes traditional

local governance mechanisms that are representative of the population in the form of shuras and councils, and promotes local development to improve quality of life within village communities

and districts. VSO and ALP efforts connect village clusters upward

to local district centers while national level governance efforts connect downward to provincial centers and then to district-level centers. As the insurgency in Afghanistan is principally rural, the VSO

program aims to project security and stability to insurgent-contested rural areas by focusing on security, voice, and minimum essentials for the local population. The VSOs are creating isolating

and delegitimizing effects to undermine insurgent influence in the

eyes of the population while simultaneously improving perceptions

by the people of the Afghan government’s legitimacy.14

With the new vim, vigor, intellect, leadership, and resources infused in both the civilian and military components of the ISAF

13 Ty Connett and Bob Cassidy, “VSO: More than Village Defense,” Special Warfare (July–September 2011): 22–27. 

14 Ibid.
122 War, Will, and Warlords

counterinsurgency campaign, it is quite likely that establishing partnered security and civil administration in previously uncovered locations in the southern provinces will convince the people that the

Afghan government can legitimately and credibly administrate and

secure them. Peter Bergen has previously expressed optimism about

the changes he noted in Afghanistan and Pakistan during 2009 and

2010. The main concern for many Afghans, he posited, is security,

and the troop surge will improve security. At least half of the

Afghan population also shows support for the increase in forces

and resources. Moreover, if the Coalition forces can simply secure

the ring road, this will be a favorable indicator of security. America

turned the war in Afghanistan off between 2002 and 2008, but it

has now turned this war back on, and Bergen noted that this is

good. But Bergen did provide his own caveat: “if we cannot discern

favorable progress toward ring road security within 18 months,

then we should start pulling out.” Counterinsurgency operations

(Operation Moshtarak [Together]) to regain Afghan government

control over the town of Marjah in southern Helmand Province

began during the second half of February 2010. This operation

aimed to build the population’s confidence in the government’s capacity to serve its people. Over time, Operation Moshtarak provided

examples of both good and bad practices from which to glean lessons that were then incorporated into the planning and execution

of Operation Hamkari (Cooperation), the theater’s main effort to

win the population and to arrest and reverse the Taliban momentum in the vicinity of Kandahar in 2010 and 2011. Operation

Hamkari began in earnest during September 2010. In turn, the lessons and best practices captured from these two operations are

serving to inform counterinsurgency operations in the Upper Helmand River Valley and in the other regional commands’ operational

environments during 2010–11.15

The purpose of Operation Moshtarak was as much about shaping the perceptions of the people as it was about militarily defeating

the Taliban in what essentially was an internal safe haven in central

15 Peter Bergen, telephone interview, 14 January 2010. The author served in ISAF Joint Command from June 2010 until July 2011 as a special assistant to the commander, ISAF Joint Command, and was very familiar with the planning, execution, and outcome of Operation Hamkari,

as well as the progress achieved in Marjah and the Central Helmand River Valley in the second

half of 2010.
The Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan, 2009–2011: Hard but Hopeful? 123

Helmand. Before the operation began, U.S. officials took some polls

aimed at gaining an understanding of what the local populace

wanted, how they saw local security conditions, what they perceived about Americans and the Taliban, and what would build

their confidence in the Kabul government. The answers helped inform the planning and execution of the operation. As it turned out,

people living near the Marjah area still held some positive perceptions about Americans, even recollecting how U.S. engineers built

dams in the region in the 1950s. All of those characteristics are explained by the psychological goal of this campaign, which was to

bring about a shift of perceptions among the fence-sitters and the

fearful among the Afghan people. Marjah also saw an off-the-shelf,

but imperfect, civil administration component, comprising economic development and political advisers who were standing by

in order to move in behind the fighting formations, along with

about 2,000 Afghan police paramilitaries, to hold and build governance. The composition and scope of this operation was without

precedent in Afghanistan, even though talented commanders had

previously tried to implement such proven practices in other areas

in the east. In early 2010, Marjah represented a principal safe haven

for the Taliban in the central Helmand river valley, a place where

tribal politics, insurgents, and narcotics trafficking converged. As

of 2011, Coalition forces and the ANSF had exerted control and influence in Marjah, reversing the Taliban’s momentum and pushing

them out of the populated areas. Partnered ANSF are providing increasing security, and the population is increasingly able to go

about its routine daily activities uninterrupted by insurgent attack.

Initially, there were problems in coordinating the development of

legitimate governance there, and in mismanaging expectations

about how long it would actually take to wrest Marjah away from

the enemy. The Taliban was deeply rooted in the area, and progress

proceeded slower than promised. However, as of this writing, Marjah is in good shape and security is holding. The following section

examines this in more depth to discern practices and adaptations

in leadership, organization, doctrine, and execution of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.16

16 On Operation Moshtarak, see Thom Shanker, “Afghan Push Went beyond Traditional Goals,”

New York Times, 20 February 2010, A6. 
124 War, Will, and Warlords

Force

Afghan lives are hard and short. They accept hardship, even

death, but what they won’t tolerate is injustice.

—Army Brigadier General John W. Nicholson Jr.,

Deputy Commander for Stability Operations

Then-U.S. Army Brigadier General John “Mick” Nicholson, the

officer who offered the above insight in early 2009, has served two

long tours in and around the Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan and in

2011 again served in Afghanistan as the ISAF chief operations officer. He is a seasoned counterinsurgent and a student of the Pashtun

tribes. Yet, the conversation from which this quote is derived was

in the context of mitigating the consequences of inadvertent civilian

casualties. The reality is that large parts of the U.S. military, its

leaders, its organizations, and its doctrine had largely adapted to

practice counterinsurgency by the winter of 2008–9. Many, like

General Nicholson, had served two or more tours in Afghanistan

or Iraq and had learned counterinsurgency in contact with the

enemy. In parallel, professional study and doctrine had changed to

reflect greater emphasis on counterinsurgency. However, the problem in Afghanistan in the early summer of 2009, which saw a resurgent Taliban convinced that it was winning, was still one, at least

in part, attributable to a dearth of security forces and cumbersome

command and control. This manifested itself in undesirable civilian

casualties in several provinces, where too few forces, operating

without the requisite integration and cooperation that would have

come with effective command and control, were conducting direct

action decoupled from what could be considered a half-measured

counterinsurgency. Special operations forces were “hammering

nails,” sometimes killing the wrong people, because they lacked

the nuance and local knowledge that would have been gleaned

from the persistent presence of Coalition forces conducting fullmeasure counterinsurgency, working in combination with ANSF.

On the other hand, those attempting counterinsurgency were too

few to clear, hold, and build, especially in the south. Fully comprehensive counterinsurgency inside Afghanistan required unity of

command and control for the whole panoply of direct, indirect, special, general, and civil actions. This section examines adaptations
The Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan, 2009–2011: Hard but Hopeful? 125

to counterinsurgency in leadership, doctrine, forces, and operations

since June 2009. 

U.S. military doctrine now equally weighs operations such as irregular warfare and stability operations that focus on the population with those related to offensive and defensive operations. This

parity reflects a significant paradigm change: it recognizes that

twenty-first-century conflict constitutes more than just regular combat between armed opponents. Even though current doctrine still

charges land forces to defeat enemies with offensive and defensive

operations, U.S. conventional and special forces will have to simultaneously shape the broader situation through nonlethal actions to

restore security and normalcy for the local population. Forces will

operate among the populace and not adjacent to them. Military

forces will often confront the enemy among noncombatants, with

little to distinguish one from the other, until fighting erupts. Winning battles will still remain important but it alone is not sufficient.

Winning the support of the indigenous population is just as important for success. Informing and influencing the populace is crucial

to successful mission accomplishment. Finally, within the context

of the current global security environment, the current U.S. doctrine professes that irregular warfare and stability operations are

equally as important as conventional regular combat operations.

This certainly was not always the case.17

The equal emphasis on irregular warfare and stability operations

that is currently manifest within the U.S. government and the U.S.

military stemmed from policy and strategy changes between 2005

and 2007. One of these documents merits some amplification. The

28 November 2005 Department of Defense Directive (DODD)

3000.05, Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction Operations, mandated stability operations as a core

U.S. military mission that the Department of Defense would prepare

to conduct and support. It prescribed that stability operations

would be given priority comparable to combat operations and be

explicitly integrated across all activities to include doctrine, organizations, training, education, exercises, materiel, leadership, personnel, facilities, and planning. The directive also mandated the

17 U.S. Army, FM 3-0, vii.
126 War, Will, and Warlords

incorporation of stability operations knowledge skills, such as foreign language capabilities, regional area expertise, and experience

with foreign governments and international organizations, into professional military education at all levels. The document essentially

dictated that the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Army

emphasize stability operations and counterinsurgency doctrine, education, and training, at levels commensurate with conventional

combat operations.18

Theretofore, U.S. military culture placed an almost exclusive emphasis on doctrine, training, and education for regular wars. As late

as 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who was leery of

stability operations and counterinsurgency, was about to close

down the U.S. Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute

(PKSOI) at Carlisle Barracks because he did not see the utility of

this institute. However, the expanding insurgency in Iraq during

late 2003 provided the impetus to compel the U.S. military to take

irregular warfare more seriously. DODD 3000.05 was the official

catalyst for an increase in intellectual energy and focus on those

operations that the U.S. Army previously labeled, with an intention

to diminish them it then seemed, low-intensity conflict. The proximate intellectual genesis of the DODD 3000.05 document ostensibly was two conferences in 2003 and 2004.19

In the middle of December 2003, the Operation Iraqi Freedom

Lesson Learned Conference at Fort Leavenworth convened a Stability Operations Working Group. All the other working groups at

the conference had as their foci the conventional operations during

the initial invasion of Iraq, before events deteriorated into a festering insurgency. The findings of the Stability Operations Working

Group argued for the institutional need to embrace stability operations and counterinsurgency equally as much as the preferred conventional model. These findings, almost to the word, ultimately

migrated to DODD 3000.05. This directive essentially stipulated that

the U.S. military must change its culture and embrace stability operations and counterinsurgency as central and valued missions, to

18 U.S. Department of Defense, DODD 3000.05. Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition,

and Reconstruction Operations (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2005), 1-4.

19 See Robert M. Cassidy, “Counterinsurgency and Military Culture: State Regulars versus NonState Irregulars.” Baltic Security and Defence Review 10 (August 2008): 56–58.
The Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan, 2009–2011: Hard but Hopeful? 127

be reflected in a balance of regular and irregular doctrine, training,

and education. The other conference was the fifteenth annual Army

War College Strategy conference convened between 13 and 15 April

2004, titled “Winning the War by Winning the Peace.” There, Panel

VI, “Implications for Military Capabilities and Force Structure,”

again underscored the imperative to emphasize counterinsurgency

in professional military education, beginning with precommissioning curricula through war college–level curricula. The reasons why

the U.S. Department of Defense found it necessary to mandate the

changes were unambiguous: the two burgeoning insurgencies in

both Iraq and Afghanistan. In the intellectual realm, Fort Leavenworth’s Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate issued interim counterinsurgency doctrine in 2004 and then issued the final manual,

Field Manual 3-24: Counterinsurgency, in December 2006. Decades

had elapsed since the U.S. Army had issued a counterinsurgency

manual. Also, the Joint Publication 3-24: Counterinsurgency Operations, ultimately appeared in October 2009. Both manuals emphasize the objective to protect the population, the requirement to

build indigenous capacity, the need to sustain legitimacy, and the

importance to establish unity of command.20

Insofar as leadership is of crucial importance in counterinsurgency, there were discernible contrasts between the senior leadership in Afghanistan in 2008–9 and 2009–11. The senior leaders,

both civilian and military, in 2008–9 were consummate professionals and genuinely talented leaders, but they were not steeply versed

and knowledgeable about counterinsurgency. They were very smart

and were catching up from years of exclusive immersion in conventional warfare at the National Training Center and the Combined Maneuver Training Center in Hohenfels, Germany. In 2008–9,

with the exceptions of Brigadier Generals John Nicholson (U.S.

Army) and Lawrence D. Nicholson (U.S. Marine Corps) in southern

Afghanistan, the core U.S. general officer leadership team that surrounded General David D. McKiernan in 2008–9 comprised almost

all protégés from previous tours in heavy mechanized formations

in Germany and the United States. The wars they had devoted most

of their careers preparing for were wars against the Soviet military,

20 Lloyd J. Matthews, Winning the War by Winning the Peace, conference report (Carlisle, PA:

U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, 2004), 48–50. 
128 War, Will, and Warlords

or for the maneuvers in the Kuwaiti desert of 1991 and the conventional march up to Baghdad in 2003. General McKiernan was the

commander of the conventional phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom,

and shortly after the fall of Baghdad, before the insurgency

emerged, he returned home. One of his staff general officers, after

years of preparing for conventional war in Europe, had spent a few

months on the ground in Iraq as a brigade commander before the

insurgency emerged in earnest. Moreover, the ISAF commander and

the U.S. ambassador in 2008–9 had a far from close relationship

for coordination. They seldom spent time in the same room and

typically sent their subalterns to brief one another in their places.21

In contrast, in 2009–11 most of the general officers, as well as

Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry (who is a former Army lieutenant

general), hailed from light infantry and special operations backgrounds. During the decades in which the mainstream military eschewed counterinsurgency, the only formations that typically

received decent exposure to guerrilla warfare were airborne, light,

and special operations forces. These types of units usually exercised

at the Joint Readiness Training Center in Louisiana, which included

a guerrilla phase. Moreover, General McChrystal had been a voracious reader of counterinsurgency warfare ever since his father

served in Vietnam when McChrystal was in his youth. In fact, most

of the general officer leaders that served on McChrystal’s team during his year in command had served multiple tours in Iraq or

Afghanistan, with years of experience countering both insurgents

and terrorists. When Army General David H. Petraeus replaced McChrystal in June 2010, Petraeus had already served three long tours

prosecuting counterinsurgency in Iraq, culminating in his successful command of the “surge” by 2008. Earlier in his career, Petraeus

had also completed his doctoral dissertation at Princeton on the

lessons of the unsuccessful American counterinsurgency in Vietnam. The ISAF Joint Command (IJC) Commander, Army Lieutenant

General David M. Rodriguez, pulled four long tours leading counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell IV, commander of the NATO Training

Mission–Afghanistan (NTM-A) and the Combined Security Transi21 The author served at ISAF in the winter of 2008–9 and had entrée to the senior civilian and

military leaders. 
The Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan, 2009–2011: Hard but Hopeful? 129

tion Command–Afghanistan (CSTC-A) (the organizations responsible for training and equipping the ANSF), had counterinsurgency

experience in Iraq and was formerly the commander of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, the U.S. Army’s proponent

for counterinsurgency doctrine. Most, if not all of the one-star general officers and brigade and battalion commanders in 2009–11

were also seasoned counterinsurgents, with multiple tours in Iraq

or Afghanistan. Extremely smart leaders steeped in the study of,

and experienced in the practice of, counterinsurgency tend to be

more creative and judicious than smart leaders steeped in orthodoxy.

As an example, even though General McKiernan’s team was not

unfamiliar with the basic requirements for a counterinsurgency

campaign, his staff comprised mostly tankers with conventional

backgrounds who were learning counterinsurgency for the first time.

The campaign they espoused was fundamentally sound, as it did

seek to establish a secure environment, improve governance, promote development, and defeat the insurgency. Its three lines of operations, if limited, were also sound: security, governance, and

development. In addition, the ISAF planning factors during McKiernan’s time as the ISAF commander included shape, clear, and hold,

to build Afghan capacity and credibility. ISAF also initiated a best

practice experiment in the form of the AP3, which called for U.S.

special forces elements to raise, equip, and train village forces for

local security augmentation under the auspices of the MOI. It is also

true that too few forces and too few civilian experts put McKiernan’s

team at a significant handicap. However, it seemed to me, that the

ISAF leadership then exhibited a superficial, but growing, grasp of

the requirements for comprehensive counterinsurgency, which tolerated disjointed and spotty execution across Afghanistan. An approach that weaved lethal and nonlethal information operations was

absent because the senior leadership at that time allowed itself to

remain encumbered by poor command and control arrangements

that saw poor, to zero, civil-military integration and uncoordinated

actions across general, special, and indigenous forces. Although as

the ISAF Commander, McKiernan did repeatedly emphasize the importance of partnering with ANSF, there were very few operational

areas where Coalition forces were genuinely partnering. In 2008–9,
130 War, Will, and Warlords

Kunar Province was one shining exception where interagency personnel, the Afghan government, the ANSF, Coalition conventional

forces, and all types of special operations forces were fully integrated. The ideas in 2008–9 were generally correct but the execution

lacked integration and vigor.22

Contrariwise, the ISAF leadership’s approach in Afghanistan during 2009–11 has exhibited some significant improvements in terms

of the enduring tenets of counterinsurgency. To be certain, the near

tripling of civilian and military personnel was very helpful, as were

the increases in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance resources as they continued to shift from Iraq. However, a survey of

successful counterinsurgencies will show that what is more important is the logic underpinning the campaign, the unity of command,

and how well the range of actors and forces work together toward

common aims. The latter, more than the former, are what really

distinguish late 2009 and 2010–11 from early 2009 and before. For

the ISAF campaign assessment of the insurgency in Afghanistan

during the summer of 2009, the Coalition acknowledged that the

principles for how organizations effectively counter insurgents were

not new, but that the recommended approach would provide renewed vigor “to pursuing the basic tenet of protecting the population” and that it would be “nested within an integrated and

properly resourced civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy.”

This same assessment correctly recognized the imperative for

matching ideas and deeds because the war in Afghanistan is a war

of perceptions and ideas where perceptions stem from conditions,

such as the presence or absence of security, economic opportunity,

and governance. Changing perceptions requires changing how the

Coalition forces understand and operate in that environment. The

assessment also identified the population as the objective without

which ISAF cannot succeed. The ISAF senior leadership also directed Coalition leaders at all levels to renew their efforts to comprehend Afghanistan’s political and social fabric in order to better

meet the needs and expectations of the people.23

22 Personal insights derived from observing ISAF command during the winter of 2008–9. 

23 For one survey of several cases, see Cassidy, Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror,

127–63. McChrystal, Commander’s Initial Assessment, 2-2–2-5. The direct quotes are from page

2-2.
The Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan, 2009–2011: Hard but Hopeful? 131

Well-informed, intent-driven command and execution also characterized the positive developments in how civilians and military

personal began to cooperate in Afghanistan. The ISAF commanders

from summer 2009 until 2011 had, to a much greater degree than

anyone who preceded them, issued cogent, thorough, and straightforward guidance that cascaded to leaders at all levels. The ISAF

guidance on counterinsurgency issued during both the summers of

2009 and 2010 prescribed that subordinate leaders must think and

operate very differently if the effort is going to succeed. The guidance identified the will of the people as the objective and described

an effective offensive counterinsurgency operation as one that

wrests from the Taliban that which they cannot afford to lose—the

control of the people. It emphasized the need to earn the support

and confidence of the people while simultaneously precluding the

influence of the insurgents. The ISAF command in 2009–11 also encouraged leaders to contemplate counterinsurgency as an argument

to build the support of the population and charged them to win the

argument by leveraging local development and economic support

to marshal the local people and leaders to help create their own

success. The approach in Afghanistan since the summer 2009 has

also redoubled efforts to build relationships with community, tribal,

and religious leaders to better communicate, cooperate, and collaborate, and to better understand and address what local problems

and grievances catalyze instability and unrest. Lastly, partnering

with indigenous security forces, though still imperfect, has improved significantly, indeed exponentially during 2010 and 2011,

after the ISAF leadership directed its commanders to live, train,

plan, and operate together within integrated command and control

arrangements. For example, initial operations in Marjah in early

2010 saw about five Coalition soldiers to every Afghan, but now

this area sees one-to-one partnering ratios. For Operation Hamkari

in Kandahar and its environs, the aggregate of ANSF exceeds the

aggregate of Coalition force strengths, and the ratios approach 1

Coalition soldier to about 1.2 Afghan soldiers.24

Success in counterinsurgency relies on full partnering and ultimately transferring security requirements to indigenous security

24 Gen Stanley A. McChrystal, USA, “ISAF Commander’s Counterinsurgency Guidance,” (Kabul,

ISAF Headquarters, 25 August 2009), 3–4. 
132 War, Will, and Warlords

forces. It is one of the crucial lines of effort, a sine qua non for the

ultimate departure of the third-party counterinsurgents. Likewise,

the ISAF command renewed the effort with NTMA/CSTC-A and

raised the rank of its commander to lieutenant general, filling the

position with two of the most capable three-star generals in the U.S.

Army (Lieutenant Generals Caldwell and Daniel P. Bolger). To be

certain, this is a huge challenge and the effort has seen several missteps along the way, as the United States and its NATO partners rediscovered how to train, equip, and mentor indigenous forces in a

poorly developed country. Efforts to build a credible and effective

ANA have far surpassed attempts to do the same with the Afghan

National Police (ANP). Although former Minister of the Interior

Atmar did endeavor to make the police more effective and less corrupt, improvements in police units varied greatly across the country.

Until recently, many ANP were so venal and exploitative that what

they did with most efficiency was stimulate insurgent recruitment.

In fact, one analysis described the ANP as a “black hole for Western

money and training programs.” After the Germans failed to

promptly build a sufficient police capacity, the United States, by outsourcing police training to wasteful and inept private contractors,

essentially guaranteed the police would evade the enemy and exploit the people. The ANA, on the other hand, is a much more effective and credible force that enjoys a strong majority of public

support. Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak’s commitment to improve the army’s leadership and the ethnic diversification

have also reduced previous sources for Pashtun alienation and

drawn military-age Pashtun males to serve under the Afghan flag

instead of the Taliban’s.25

The objective for the ANA is to be able to conduct joint operations with Coalition forces and to increase its capacity to conduct

autonomous operations. Afghanistan’s national military objectives

are to secure its territorial integrity, defeat the insurgency, contribute to a stable environment, and contribute to regional stability.

Moreover, to assist the Afghan government in building indigenous

security capacity, NTM/CSTC-A identifies its priorities as develop25 Moyar, A Question of Command, 209–10. The direct quote is from page 209. Goals and composition of standing ANA units reflect ethnic representation proportional to the country’s demography. For example, the goal for Pashtun representation is 42 percent.
The Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan, 2009–2011: Hard but Hopeful? 133

ing and building leaders for today and tomorrow; generating competent, professional, and tactically proficient ANSF; accelerating

the growth of trained ANA to 134,000 by October 2010; increasing

reformed ANP to 109,000 by October 2010; developing the institutional training and educational base to generate and sustain ANSF;

and providing resources to operational forces. For standing ANSF

strength as of January 2011, NTM-A/CSTC-A reported 152,034 serving in the ANA and 116,856 in the ANP. Moreover, there is anecdotal evidence of the ANA generally being operationally proficient,

although exceptions also exist of poor ANA performance. Attaining

the end-strength of 171,600 trained ANA and 134,000 reformed and

trained ANP by October 2011 was a significant accomplishment,

and the final decision on end-strength numbers, probably around

350,000 for both ANA and ANP, is achievable. In 2010, the IJC also

implemented the Commanders Unit Assessment Tool (CUAT) to assess the capabilities of the ANSF. The CUAT represents a significant

improvement compared to the Capability Milestone (CM) system

that it replaced. The previous system was too narrowly focused on

quantitative measures and too rigid, as it assessed only a handful

of relatively meaningless measures and ignored the qualitative aspects of unit performance, such as leadership and effectiveness in

the conduct of operations. The CM system “overstated ANSF capabilities, yet it was often used uncritically as an indicator for ANSF

progress by policymakers and analysts.”26

Insights from the NTM-A/CSTC-A also revealed that ANA forces

have proven themselves capable in prosecuting the clear phase of

counterinsurgency, but that they may lack the strength and propensity to adequately participate in the hold phase. It seems that the

Afghan army units prefer offensive operations to the defensive operations required for the hold phase. In many instances, Coalition

military forces and Afghan army units will execute the clear phase

but not follow through with the persistent security presence to hold

an area, leaving the task of protecting the population to the ANP.

26 Obaid Younossai, Peter Thruelsen, Jonathan Vaccaro, Jerry Sollinger, and Brian Grady, The

Long March: Building an Afghan National Army (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2009), 6–7, 48. Klug,

email interview, 10 February 2010. See Adam Mausner, Reforming ANSF Metrics: Improving the

CUAT System (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2010), 1, for an

assessment of the CUAT system.
134 War, Will, and Warlords

However, ANP units do not currently have the capacity or the equipment to assume full responsibility for defense against a potential

Taliban counterattack during the transition from the clear to hold

phase. The training and equipment of ANP units also does not really

give them sufficient capacity to assume sole responsibility for area

defensive operations in the hold phase either. Yet, the Afghan National Civil Order Police (ANCOP) rank among the best-trained and

best-equipped police paramilitary forces, and they have been integrated into decisive operations in Helmand and Kandahar. ANCOP

formations currently support the hold phase to good effect. However, because there are still too few of them, the four ANCOP

brigades that do currently exist are being used too much, and their

high operational tempo in combat operations is leading to some attrition and retention challenges. The ANA is the most effective and

credible Afghan security institution, and it has performed well, if

imperfectly, in combat for crucial operations in Helmand and Kandahar. Relentless partnering, leadership, training, and equipment

have been the keys to its effectiveness. Ninety-five percent of the

ANA battalions (kandaks) are currently partnered with Coalition

forces. The ANP is generally not as effective or credible as the ANA,

but 2010 and 2011 called for a redoubling of effort to partner with

and improve the ANP. Eighty-seven percent of the police units are

now partnered for day-to-day operations in key terrain.27

Up until the end of 2011, Operation Moshtarak in Marjah and

Operation Hamkari in Kandahar offered the most significant examples of the ISAF shift to traditional counterinsurgency focused on

protecting the preponderance of the population and killing or capturing the core insurgent leadership infrastructure. Not surprisingly,

then, it also represented the most aggressive attempt at combined

action among U.S., NATO, ANSF, and interagency personnel to clear

and hold yet witnessed in Afghanistan. For too many of the previous eight years, NATO forces had mounted other large military operations to clear southern towns and cities of Taliban insurgents.

But instead of holding and building the NATO forces, almost with27 Klug, email interview, 10 February 2010. Also attributed to author’s personal experience reviewing and distilling assessments on the effectiveness of the ANSF in Afghanistan generally,

and for decisive operations in Regional Command South and Regional Command Southwest,

specifically.
The Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan, 2009–2011: Hard but Hopeful? 135

out exception, they would depart because they never had enough

soldiers, police officers, or civil administrators to remain behind

and hold the place on their own. Almost always after they left, the

Taliban returned to fill the vacuum until the Coalition forces would

return in time to clear the place all over again. Officers familiar

with this somewhat Sisyphean and highly ineffective approach to

security sardonically describe this as “mowing the lawn.” For Operation Moshtarak in Marjah, the largest Taliban stronghold, and

Operation Hamkari in Kandahar’s environs, the physical and philosophical epicenter of the Taliban, American and Afghan commanders were determined that this time they would do something that

they had never done before. They had Afghan government officials

and police forces assembled to move in behind them to build and

hold after clearing. The Coalition forces and the ANSF also remained to support and protect the populations in places like Nade Ali and Zharey. The decisive operations in Regional Command

Southwest and South also witnessed combined action formations

that comprised a much larger number of Afghan security forces

than previous operations. This combination made these unprecedented operations genuinely partnered ones. The Coalition force

ratios vis-à-vis the ANSF in Helmand are generally one-to-one, and

in Kandahar these ratios are better than one-to-one.28

This was the first time that NATO and Afghan officials marshaled a large team of Afghan administrators and an Afghan governor who moved into Marjah when the highly lethal clearing

operations culminated. The aim was for the Afghan government

to carry out programs in education, health, and employment as

soon as the area was secured. Almost 2,000 police officers were

standing by to help provide security and rule of law while civilians

established a government from the ground up in that impoverished

place, not an insignificant endeavor. In 2010–11, the U.S.-led Coalition and its Afghan partners maneuvered to secure a horseshoeshaped web of cities that ran for more than 200 miles along the

Helmand River, through Kandahar, and then on to the Pakistan

border. The horseshoe contains 85 percent of the population in

Kandahar and Helmand Provinces, the Taliban’s symbolic and

28 Dexter Filkins, “Afghan Offensive is New War Model,” New York Times, 12 February 2010, A1.
136 War, Will, and Warlords

physical base of support. Over the summer and fall of 2010, the

ISAF Coalition forces and their Afghan partners moved thousands

more troops into the area, in a push to “take away any hope of

victory” from the Taliban, according to ISAF headquarters. The

campaign had the corollary purposes of persuading the American

public that a new direction had arrived in the more than eightyear-long war and convincing the Afghan population that U.S.

forces and the Afghan government would protect them from the

Taliban. It also allowed the ISAF command, which in 2009 had reported conditions in the country as "grave and deteriorating," to

turn a new chapter, breaking cleanly from the failed methods of

the previous eight years.29

Another notable improvement in Afghanistan in 2009–11 included

the establishment of the three-star IJC to command and control at the

operational level, allowing the ISAF commander to shape the strategic

level. ISAF also established Task Force 435 under a three-star admiral

to institute rule of law reforms and improvements at national level.

The focus for operations during 2009–11 shifted to more legitimate,

credible, and discriminate uses of force. The ALP program is now

being implemented in earnest, and it benefits from the knowledge

about human terrain, physical terrain, and tribal dynamics that the

special forces community gleans from its Village Stability Operations

(VSO). VSO and ALP are important innovations with inherent potential for increasing local security capacity as special forces A-teams

work with indigenous elements to help protect local populations. ALP

essentially equates to community watch security with special forces–

trained commando kandaks serving as local strike forces from nearby

firebases. Efforts are under way to close more of the firebases and

have the commandos operate in and among the population to support

the local forces. This effort resembles Vietnam-era strike forces operating from firebases among the mountain tribes, and the ALP roughly

approximates the regional and popular forces that met with some success in Vietnam when they were led and equipped properly.30

29 Filkins, “Afghan Offensive is New War Model”; Shanker, “Afghan Push Went beyond Traditional Military Goals,” A6; Greg Jaffe and Craig Whitlock, “Battle for Marja Not Only Militarily

Significant,” Washington Post, 22 February 2010, A9. 

30 Central Command Commander’s Initiatives Group, conversation, U.S. Central Command

Headquarters, Tampa, FL, 16 December 2009; and Carlos Perez, interview, U.S. Special Operations Command Headquarters, Tampa, FL, 17 December 2009.
The Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan, 2009–2011: Hard but Hopeful? 137

The “Integrated Civilian-Military Campaign Plan” of August

2009 had as its purpose the improvement of command, control,

and coordination among all civil and military elements operating

at the regional, subregional, provincial, and district levels. To this

end, the U.S. government, along with indigenous and Coalition

partners, established an Executive Working Group for deputy-level,

civilian-military senior policy and decision making; a Provincial

Integrated Team to integrate and coordinate the collective international provincial-level leaders; and District Support Teams, which

combine civilian and military planning and activities in the assigned district. The aim of this document was an ambitious and

noble one: “that all civilian-military elements that conduct operations or activities in the same district or province coordinate and

develop plans, assessments, and coordination mechanisms that

synchronize the full spectrum of U.S. Government organizations,

military forces, and international partner efforts as well as nongovernmental organizations, UN, and the whole range of Afghan

partners operating in the area.” This would be of great help indeed,

but it is not clear that the interagency and civil-military effort will

ever achieve this degree of integration evenly across even the crucial Pashtun provinces in the south and east. Unity of effort requires the integration of lethal and nonlethal actions from the top

level (ambassador/theater commander) all the way down to the

district or local level. This is of particular importance for information operations, which make it essential to match ideas and implementation to win the war for perceptions. In addition, the Office

of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan published its Afghanistan and Pakistan Regional Stabilization Strategy

in February 2010. Two of the several key initiatives prescribed in

this document were to significantly increase the number of civilian

technical advisors in key central government ministries and in the

provinces and district centers, and to expand the capacity for building subnational governance, “focused mainly in key population

centers in the East and the South.” However, based on the theretofore underwhelming commitment of civilian capacity to help develop subnational governance, it is not certain whether the civilian

side of the effort will ever close the gap and catch up with the security line of operation. The next section revisits the integration
138 War, Will, and Warlords

of information operations in Afghanistan for counterinsurgent and

insurgent operations in 2009–11.31

Information Operations

The conflict will be won by persuading the population, not by

destroying the enemy. 

—Michael Flynn, Matt Pottinger, and Paul Batchelor, Fixing Intel: A

Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan

Both the insurgents and counterinsurgents have learned and

adapted their approaches to information operations from the experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last half decade. It still remains easier for the Taliban to influence perceptions through

destruction than it is for the Coalition to influence perceptions

through construction. The purpose in this section is to briefly assess

how well ISAF and the Taliban integrate information with action to

convince the relevant Afghan populations to support their efforts.

To be certain, the Coalition and its Afghan partners still have much

to improve. However, it is also evident that the ISAF leadership’s

knowledge and understanding about the information environment

has increased exponentially. This is manifest in the quote above,

which is attributed to the ISAF leadership during 2009–11, and it is

apparent in almost every medium of communication emanating

from ISAF headquarters, in interviews, speeches, directives, and

guidance. The military has also shown improvement in how it supports the influence narrative to protect, rather than harm, the people by being more circumspect and circumscribed in its

employment of lethal force. ISAF or special operations forces have

committed some tragic mistakes over the past 10 years, ones that

resulted in civilian casualties. In the Afghan operational environment, where actions communicate louder than words, killing the

wrong people risks undermining the entire endeavor. The United

States and its Coalition partners must convince the Afghan people

they are there to protect them. Taliban actions and media operations try to persuade the population that the obverse is true. 

31 Karl W. Eikenberry and Stanley A. McChrystal, United States Government Integrated CivilianMilitary Campaign Plan for Support to Afghanisan, (Kabul: U.S. Embassy–Kabul and ISAF, 13

August 2009), 28–30. See Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan,

Afghanistan and Pakistan Regional Stabilization Strategy, vi.
The Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan, 2009–2011: Hard but Hopeful? 139

The current ISAF and IJC team are convinced that forces in

Afghanistan have changed the way they operate and that they are

becoming more effective at persuading the Afghan people that

ISAF is there to protect them. Since the summer of 2009, the senior

leaders in Afghanistan have conveyed the importance of matching

action with influence from the moment they hit the ground by

stressing the need to communicate intentions and actions accurately to all audiences. In the initial and subsequent ISAF guidance

on counterinsurgency issued in August 2009 and 2010, respectively,

the emphasis on the imperative to gain and sustain the support of

the Afghan populations was unambiguous. This is because, in the

end, the people will determine who succeeds in Afghanistan. This

guidance underscored the requirement to understand the expectations, fears, and frustrations of the Afghans in order to protect them

in ways that do not disrespect their religion and culture. Coalition

actions communicate an argument for the future of Afghanistan

and its people, as do the actions of the Taliban. The people will ultimately decide which argument is more persuasive and attractive.

The guidance perspicaciously observes that the ISAF will not defeat

the principally Pashtun insurgency through attrition because the

mathematics of attrition in the Pashtun Belt, with around just 12

million Pashtuns on the Afghan side of the Durand Line, means

that more killing will generate more insurgents, ad infinitum. ISAF

will not win by killing insurgents alone, and an emphasis on lethal

operations during the first eight years of the war, the August 2009

document notes, resulted in more violence.32

In this vein, the ISAF counterinsurgency guidance has cautioned

against potentially self-defeating actions associated with large-scale

conventional military operations designed to capture or kill insurgents because of the risk of causing collateral damage or civilian

casualties. “If civilians die in a firefight, it does not matter who shot

them—we still failed to protect them from harm.” Killing the wrong

people creates more insurgents and undermines the very purpose

of ISAF. The documents also note that “mowing-the-lawn type” missions—the sporadic and temporary area search-and-depart opera32 Quoted by Alex Spillius in “Afghanistan: General Stanley A. McChrystal Says Troops Surge is

Starting to Work,” Telegraph (United Kingdom), 12 January 2010; McChrystal, “Commander’s

Initial Guidance.” 
140 War, Will, and Warlords

tions—are counterproductive. During his December 2009 speech in

London, General McChrystal, the ISAF commander at the time, also

demonstrated that he comprehended the centrality of information

operations when he emphasized the importance of shaping the perceptions of the villagers who, in the end, will decide whom they

support based on a rational calculation about who can protect them

and meet their expectations. Moreover, both the counterinsurgency

guidance and the London speech revealed a very clear understanding of the Taliban and their narrative. The substance of the guidance

and communications emanating from the ISAF leadership in 2009

and 2010 recognized that the Taliban are unpopular and lack a compelling context but do have proximity to the populace in many

places in the south, which affords them the capacity to coerce, administer, and adjudicate Islamic justice based on the sharia. The

Taliban influence the people by both coercion and the narrative by

which they propagate their claim to protect Afghan religion and culture against the infidel occupiers. They enlist the disenfranchised

and pay young men to fight for them. The counterinsurgency guidance also recognized that the Taliban also “exploit ISAF mistakes

and inappropriate actions to reinforce their argument.” This philosophical and doctrinal approach to the fundamentals of counterinsurgency has persisted since the change in ISAF commanders in

June 2010 and July 2011.33

As for influence and perceptions, the Taliban themselves believed that they were winning up until the beginning of 2010. The

Afghan people are still uncertain of who will prevail, and unless

convinced otherwise, some portions of the Pashtun population are

hedging their bets, since they have much more to lose if the Coalition departs before success is achieved. The Taliban also typically

incorporate their temporal advantage over democracies in a protracted war into their propaganda. They are convinced that they

have the moral high ground because they embody a form of traditional resistance to foreign invaders. One of the Taliban’s strengths

is the perception that a Taliban victory is ultimately inevitable because the foreigners will tire of the cost and effort, and depart. According to the ISAF director of intelligence during 2009–10, other

33 McChrystal, “ISAF Commander’s Counterinsurgency Guidance,” 2–3, and “Special Address.”

Direct quotations are from page 3 of the counterinsurgency guidance.
The Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan, 2009–2011: Hard but Hopeful? 141

Taliban strengths included an improving and expanding organizational capacity and geographic reach; a strengthening capacity in

their shadow governments; an increasing quantity and quality of

improvised explosive device attacks; and most salient, the continuing celerity and efficacy of their information operations, which is

their main effort. The Taliban influence narrative exploits the implied legitimacy of Islam by employing the theological lexicon of

sharia. This approach helps them frame their propaganda around

the struggle of good and evil. The Taliban language resonates more

strongly in terms of perceived legitimacy because of its Islamic language. The recurring core messages within this propaganda are that

the Taliban can restore order and security, the Afghan government

is corrupt, and ISAF forces are malign foreign intruders. Moreover,

emphasizing the foreignness of their opponents, the Taliban also

tap into deep-seated xenophobic sentiments associated with the

Pashtuns.34

Furthermore, the Taliban did support its propaganda with action

by establishing relatively strong and effective shadow governments,

particularly in the southern provinces. These parallel hierarchies

provided security, levied taxes, and administered their own brand

of harsh sharia justice. The Taliban courts also hear civil disputes

and complaints, meting out more prompt settlements than feeble or

nonexistent government judiciaries. The taxes they levy help pay

their fighters to provide security in areas under Taliban control. The

Taliban also exert energy on eliminating corruption, which supports

their influence narrative. The fact that the Taliban maintained freedom of action and movement over largely uncontested swathes of

southern Afghanistan reinforced the perception of strength, control,

and inevitable victory. Taliban commanders and mullahs often meet

with village elders in these areas to propagate the message that

NATO may come and go, but the Taliban will be in Afghanistan forever. However, there are some discernible disconnects that exist in

the Taliban’s extreme Salafi-Deobandi Islamist doctrine because

their ideological dogma undermines the Pashtun code (Pashtunwali)

34 Gen Barry McCaffrey, USA (ret), “Afghanistan Visit After Action Report,” West Point, NY, 5

December 2009, 5; MajGen Michael Flynn, “State of the Insurgency” (unclassified briefing, ISAF

Headquarters, Kabul, 22 December 2009), slides 14 and 17. For insights on the Taliban narrative,

see Dean Case and Rob Pawlak, “Winning the Battle of the Narratives in Afghanistan” (unpublished paper, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, 2009), 14–16.
142 War, Will, and Warlords

and culture in three ways. First, the Taliban shadow courts supplant

the traditional jirga and undermine the power and influence of local

tribal leaders. Second, when Taliban leaders issue harsh edicts or

orders to compel people to comply with them, this is anathema to

the Pashtun values of independence and tolerance. Moreover, there

are differences between the hill Pashtuns like the Ghilzai and the

lowland Pashtuns like the Durranis. The latter tend to be more hierarchical and became the dynastic families of the Afghan state.

Conversely, the Ghilzai Pashtuns, who have historically been the

warfighting Pashtuns, have a more egalitarian social order to which

hierarchical rule imposed from the centralized state has been anathema. In the West, government and governance are generally congruous, but among the Pashtuns and other ethnic groups in

Afghanistan this is not necessarily so. To them, governance is the

way communities rule themselves to preserve their social order,

whereas government is the action of ruling. In rural Afghanistan,

where the majority of the population resides, local populations expect to govern themselves. Both the Soviets and the Taliban failed

because once they gained power they attempted to impose a new

social design from the center. Lastly, the Taliban’s extreme justice

and harsh punishments provoke indignation even among some

Pashtuns. There was nothing like living under the cruel and extreme

theocracy of the Taliban for several years to convince the Afghans

that they do not want them back.35

However, what most reinforces the Taliban’s antiforeigner narrative, and what galvanizes both Islamist and Pashtun alike against

the Coalition, are air strikes that kill civilians. For the Taliban, an

actual or perceived instance of Coalition forces inflicting civilian

casualties is doubly helpful because it undermines the legitimacy

of ISAF and the Afghan government without damaging the Taliban’s image. As was the case in many of the insurgencies in the

last several decades, the optimality of real or perceived civilian casualties for the promotion of the insurgents’ narrative has led the

35 Case and Pawlak, “Winning the Battle of the Narratives in Afghanistan,” 16–18, 20. On Pashtunwali and the fault line between the Durranis and Ghilzais, see Johnson and Mason, “No Sign

until the Burst of Fire,” 58–64. See Thomas Barfield and Neamatollah Nojumi, “Bringing More

Effective Governance to Afghanistan: 10 Pathways to Stability,” Middle East Policy (Winter 2010):

40–52, for insights on the failures of overzealous regimes that have tried to impose a new order

on the rural periphery from the center.
The Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan, 2009–2011: Hard but Hopeful? 143

Taliban on more than one occasion to trick the Coalition into killing

innocents for propaganda value. Because perceived perceptions of

injustice resonate so strongly among the Pashtuns, the Taliban continue to improve their information operations with a view to exploiting or creating Coalition civilian casualty events. Of the 2,000

civilians who died in Afghanistan in 2009, either Coalition or

Afghan forces were responsible for mistakenly killing one-third of

them. The 2009 ISAF command tactical directive and counterinsurgency guidance were clearly designed to reduce civilian casualties.

Indeed, the second six months of 2009 did see less reliance on airpower or heavy firepower. Moreover, in an interview with Spiegel,

the ISAF commander in 2009 stated that his goal for civilian casualties was zero. This laudable but impossible goal did not change

under either General Petraeus or his replacement, Marine General

John R. Allen.36

Notwithstanding, there is still a long way to go, as evidenced by

two air strikes in September 2009 and February 2010 that inflicted

significant civilian casualties. Although minor in comparison to the

suffering caused by these events, one positive note to both tragedies

was the more effective and more prompt employment of media and

information operations to mitigate their consequences. The ISAF

commander himself was quick to communicate to the key audiences after each mishap. After that second incident, he appeared

on national television on 22 February 2010 to apologize for the

deadly NATO air strike in Uruzgan that killed 20 to 25 civilians on

21 February, which was the deadliest attack against civilians since

the September 2009 strike in Kunduz. He then pledged to redouble

ISAF efforts to regain the trust of the Afghan public and to build a

better future for all Afghans. That TV broadcast was another sign

of the Coalition's renewed effort to sustain popular support for the

2010–11 offensives, with the guidance that required taking all possible precautions to protect civilians. The ISAF Commander made

a similar apology in September 2009, during the first year of the

new strategy, when U.S. pilots bombed two hijacked fuel tankers

near the northern town of Kunduz. As many as 130 people were

estimated to have died or been injured in this attack. ISAF has lim36 Rid and Hecker, War 2.0, 214–15. Gen Stanley A. McChrystal, interview, Spiegel, 11 January

2010. 
144 War, Will, and Warlords

ited the use of airpower and made stricter rules of engagement on

the battlefield to try to protect the Afghan people and win their loyalty from the Taliban. The August 2009 ISAF Commander’s counterinsurgency guidance directed forces in Afghanistan to be more

circumspect about how and when they employed lethal force from

the air or on the ground. This was in response to a series of civilian

casualty incidents like the one in February 2009. This later one at

the end of September 2009 prompted the relief of one officer and a

reemphasis on ensuring the widest dissemination of the guidance.

Although ISAF is working hard to reduce civilian casualties, it must

be acknowledged that completely eliminating them is difficult, if

not impossible, in any war.37

The February 2010 Uruzgan incident also underscored the risks

associated with the increased employment of special operations

forces, the forces that called in the Uruzgan strike, in targeting Taliban leaders in lethal raids. Special operations direct-action missions emphasize the use of lethal and swift force, and Coalition

officials say they have led to a series of recently successful missions against key insurgent leaders. But a significant proportion of

the thousands of civilians who died at the hands of Coalition forces

since 2001 have been the result of wayward air strikes. Public ire

over such unjust killing is deep-seated. Afghans can frequently

recollect the deadliest mistakes, and these incidents have helped

reinforce Taliban propaganda victories. The theater employs special operations forces to target the middle and senior ranks of the

Taliban to disrupt command and control. According to the more

stringent rules for airpower in ISAF since 2009, troops should only

use airpower as a last resort when they cannot disengage a deadly

threat. Units who call in an air strike on a threat that is not imminent and grave must have supplementary confirmation that the

target is in fact a hostile one. While it is true that special operations

missions have recently led to the death or capture of a number of

mid- and senior-level Taliban commanders, NATO officers also report that a number of recent inadvertent civilian deaths have been

the result of special operations raids. What’s more, Afghan officials

37 Deb Riechmann and Heidi Vogt, “NATO Commander Makes Televised Apology to Afghans,”

Associated Press, 23 February 2010; McChrystal, “ISAF Commander’s Counterinsurgency Guidance,” 1–2.
The Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan, 2009–2011: Hard but Hopeful? 145

complain that special operations units are arresting or killing too

many civilians during night raids on homes.38

Second to airpower as a catalyst for alienating the Afghan population, night raids against illegitimate targets, or even raids against

legitimate targets that the Taliban convince people to perceive as illegitimate, have been controversial. In one respect, this persistent

source of tension between the Karzai government and ISAF stems

from long-standing Pashtun customs and mores about protecting the

home and family from intruders. The reality in this action-perception

tension is twofold. First, there are sometimes some genuinely key

Taliban commanders hiding in huts that represent a credible threat,

and these the ISAF forces should target. But, second, it is exceedingly

imprudent, given our goal of winning the war of perceptions, to attack the wrong houses and families, since this has the same effect

as mistaken air strikes do on both attrition math and Taliban recruitment. (Attrition math is when a mission aimed at killing two Taliban

leaders mistakenly kills two civilian noncombatants. Instead of removing two insurgents from the fight, this can catalyze another

dozen or more Afghan kin of the deceased to join the insurgency.

Attrition math is killing the wrong Pashtuns and creating more Taliban recruits. This is no way to win a counterinsurgency among the

Pashtun populations.) Put another way, the tension between direct

targeting and population protection stems from different organizational specialties and preference on using force. Both persistent security and engagement among the population and direct actions by

special operations units are necessary, but unless they are integrated,

collaborative efforts within one comprehensive counterinsurgency

campaign unified under one command pursuing a unified purpose,

these activities tend to undermine each other. This type of unified

effort would best be achieved by improvements in command

arrangements that see all theater special operations under a single

three-star ISAF deputy for special operations in order to protect the

many good people and kill the few bad people, not the converse.39

38 Matthew Rosenberg, “U.S. Special Operations Ordered Deadly Afghan Strike,” Wall Street

Journal, 22 February 2010. 

39 For an explanation of attrition math, see McChrystal, “ISAF Commander’s Counterinsurgency

Guidance,” 2–3. For insight on the unity of command for all types of special operations forces,

see Lamb and Cinnamond, “Unified Effort” 43–49. 
146 War, Will, and Warlords

There are also two innovations that have emerged within the

U.S. embassy, ISAF, and the Afghan government that exhibit the

potential to make the Coalition better and faster at positively influencing perceptions. One is the Government Media and Information Center, which increases the Afghan public’s access to timely

and accurate information. It is an Afghan-led and U.S.

embassy/ISAF–supported center for collaborative strategic communications. The center also provides facilities for media roundtables and media training on current issues, all aimed at improving

the quality and accuracy of reporting in Afghanistan. The center

serves as both a clearinghouse to vet information for correctness

as well as a vehicle to better connect the government to the people.

One beneficial outcome is that the independent media can now

obtain better information from the government more promptly,

which helps attenuate some of the Taliban’s media advantages.

The other initiative was the establishment of the operational-level

IJC Information Dominance Center and information centers at the

regional command level that combine multinational, interagency,

civilian, and military specialists with ISAF personnel and support.

The information centers serve as the regional hubs for clearing all

relevant open source information and knowledge about local conditions, expectations, and grievances. For the first time, there was

and is a single node for obtaining relevant information. Improvements in the handling and vetting of information has helped the

Coalition better understand and influence the population.40

In a war for perception, the objectives are the minds of the people. In the Pashtun Belt, being Westerners and non-Muslims makes

this no easy feat for U.S. and Coalition forces. However, it is clear

that Operation Moshtarak did indeed help to prove or disprove

which practices work, and which do not, so that the best serve as

benchmarks for subsequent operations in a reinvigorated and wellinformed campaign of counterinsurgency that includes an emphasis on combined and integrated action to protect, administer, and

influence the population’s will to rebuild its state. Moreover, Op40 USAID/Afghanistan, “Program Highlights: September 16–October 15 2009,” (Kabul: USAID,

October 2009), 3; and Michael Flynn, Matt Pottinger, and Paul Batchelor, Fixing Intel: A Blueprint

for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan (Washington, DC: Center for a New American

Security, 2010), 5 and 19.
The Pashtun Belt in Afghanistan, 2009–2011: Hard but Hopeful? 147

eration Hamkari, which began in earnest during September 2010

and continued to hold and build key population areas through

2011, was the real test of principles for the effort to drive out the

Taliban, win the perceptions and confidence of the populace, and

connect the people to the government, as it is set in the environs

around Kandahar—the physical, spiritual, and philosophical hub

of the Taliban movement. Chapter 7 will explain how well the

Coalition and Afghan forces prosecuted this campaign to wrest Taliban influence and control from the population in key areas, and

to reverse the momentum in Afghanistan.

5

THE PASHTUN BELT IN PAKISTAN, 2009–2011:

HARD AND NOT HOPEFUL

Americans are less popular in Pakistan right now than

the Indians. 

— Stephen P. Cohen

Hard, not hopeful, but not impossible, is an apt way to characterize this study’s assessment of Pakistan’s prospects ofdoing what needs to be done. Most of the Pakistani public

view America as the enemy, and some still support the effort of the

Taliban in Afghanistan. A very small proportion of Pakistanis actually perceive the United States as a genuine partner. Moreover, any

success in Afghanistan will be qualified and partial unless the Pakistani government and its security forces can likewise secure, stabilize, and establish some degree of governance in the tribal areas.

Few counterinsurgencies succeed when their insurgent opponents

benefit from sanctuary and support in territories across a de facto

but contested border that is impossible to seal. The Pakistani polity

and its army remain unconvinced and unwilling to attack or disrupt

the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani and the Hekmatyar networks that

provide support to the Afghan Taliban, and other associated Islamist militants. Ostensibly, it is not even the case that the Pakistanis are committed to simply not supporting and abetting the

Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other affiliated Islamist militant groups.

After 11 September 2001, the United States issued Pakistan an ultimatum that essentially compelled Musharraf to be on America’s

side against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, or to be on the enemy’s side.

In addition, Pakistan calculated that if it did not pledge support to

the war on terror, then the United States would likely seek a closer

alliance with India. Musharraf and the Pakistani government essentially said what they had to in terms of pledging support, but

did what they needed to in terms of pursuing their security interests

and preserving strategic depth. This duplicitous role was manifest

in Pakistan’s assistance in capturing several high-value al-Qaeda

149
150 War, Will, and Warlords

leaders on the one hand, while on the other hand, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) and others actively or passively

supported the regeneration of the Afghan Taliban in Quetta and

elsewhere. Similarly, the Pakistani army remains obdurately unwilling to genuinely adapt its organization, doctrine, and leadership to

what is required for best-practice counterinsurgency fundamentals.

The Indian bogeyman is sometimes more an instrumental threat

than a real one that provides the senior Pakistani military leaders

with their rationale for retaining a largely conventional orientation. 

Nevertheless, there have been some otherwise positive developments during the period between the spring of 2009 and the end of

2011. Pakistan now has civilian leadership that is capable of exerting

a limited measure of renewed control over its polity and its armed

forces. Also, portions of the Pakistani public and security forces now

recognize the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Tehrik-e-Nifaz-eShariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM) as grave and potentially existential

threats to the state. Consequently, the Pakistani security forces have

proven more willing and capable of prosecuting military operations

against these groups in relative terms. The Pakistanis’ military operations still exhibit conventionality, but the heretofore punitive character

of their operations is now to lesser degrees. During the first six months

of 2010, Pakistan did indeed help capture or arrest an unprecedented

number of senior Taliban leaders, including Mullah Baradar. But how

have legitimacy, the capacity to use credible force, and information

operations changed since late spring 2009?1 

Pakistan

Legitimacy

As a practical reality, however, there remains a significant gap

between popular public sentiment and actual policy outcomes

in Pakistan.

—Daniel Markey, Pakistani Partnerships with the United States:

An Assessment

The notion of building and sustaining legitimacy remains a chal1 For more insight on Pakistani duplicity, see Riedel, Deadly Embrace, 60–85; Steve Coll, “Don’t

Look Back,” New Yorker, 1 March 2010, 21–22; and Selig S. Harrison, “Pakistan divides U.S.

and India,” Los Angeles Times, 8 November 2010, http://articles.latimes.com/2010

/nov/08/opinion/la-oe-harrison-indopak-20101108.
The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011: Hard and Not Hopeful 151

lenge in Pakistan because of weak and corrupt governance; the

complex mosaic of ethnic and religious politics; and the still large

gap between the public’s expectations for good governance and the

government’s actual performance. This section examines the Pakistani population’s perception of legitimacy in the Pakistani government, the Pakistani armed forces, and the war against militancy.

For the latter, trust in the U.S.-Pakistan bilateral relationship is

salient. The section also explores what needs, if fulfilled, would

better close these expectation gaps. The situation is less dim than

it was under the Musharraf regime after the Red Mosque attack,

but it is still a somber one. Most of the population supports and respects the Pakistan Army as a credible and steadfast institution.

However, a large majority of Pakistani youths view Pakistan as

heading in the wrong direction, and few have trust in their government. They despair from the abysmal conditions of their lives and

do not have confidence that the government will help. Much of the

melancholy stems from a broken education system, which manifests itself in low enrollment, high illiteracy, few skills, and even

fewer jobs. This does not bode well for a populous country with a

relatively significant youth bulge. More potentially troubling is the

fact that both the army and religious educational institutions garner

the highest public support, while the government of Pakistan is the

lowest ranked state institution in terms of popularity. The good

news is that the chief of army staff, General Ashfaq Kayani, is at

least for the moment resolved in his support to sustain a degree of

civilian rule, although his scheduled retirement for November 2010

was postponed and waived for another several years.2

The America-Pakistan relationship, because it fluctuates between relative harmony and stinging acrimony at the senior level,

still compounds the challenges Pakistan faces in earning the support of its citizens. Stephen Cohen’s quote at the beginning of this

section pithily amplifies America’s image problem. Even senior

leaders in Pakistan who support the U.S. partnership frequently defend the relationship to the public as a necessary evil, rather than

a positive good. It is an easier argument to make publicly. Many

see the United States as imposing unrealistic demands of Pakistan’s

2 Brian Cloughley, Insurrection, Terrorism, and the Pakistan Army, Pakistan Security Research

Unit Brief Number 53, (United Kingdom: University of Bradford, 2009). 
152 War, Will, and Warlords

army and government while simultaneously imposing excessive

hardship and disruption on Pakistan’s civilian population as a result

of the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some even see America

as being responsible and accountable for the increased militancy

in Pakistan because of the Afghanistan invasion, collateral damage

from Predator attacks, and past policies that are perceived to have

unfairly targeted Muslims. This often seems an easier assertion

than it would be to impugn the indigenous militants themselves.

Also, because of the duplicitous and perfidious character of most

narratives in Pakistan, discerning who genuinely supports which

groups or institutions requires inferences and reconciliations of

seemingly incongruous public attitudes. Most Pakistanis would prefer not to live in an extreme Islamist state. The Pakistani public also

widely deplored the extreme but temporary period of Taliban rule

in Swat, which helped shift support against the militants. And very

few Pakistanis support the perpetration of terrorist violence against

U.S. citizens. Not surprisingly though, most of the population

would prefer not to live in a place encumbered and implicated with

ongoing U.S. lethal strikes and intelligence gathering.3

If Pakistan and its partners do not urgently address the flaws in

the government’s unreformed civil service bureaucracy, it will be

unlikely to increase the public’s confidence. The Pakistan People’s

Party (PPP), which runs the current coalition government at the

center, and the Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (PML-N), which

remains its principal opposition party, have an interest in investing

the resources, time, and political capital required to improve the

civil bureaucracy’s capacity both to meet the population’s needs

and to effectively implement government policy. Notwithstanding

General Kayani’s commitment to civilian rule, if the government’s

failure to deliver basic services and administration persists, this

would again provide an opportunity for a different, future military

leadership to intervene for the ostensible purpose of restoring good

government. There are ample precedents in Pakistan’s spotty history. The International Crisis Group in a 2010 report urged both the

PPP and PML-N “to resist the temptation to again use the bureaucracy for short-term political ends,” which would continue to un3 Markey, Pakistani Partnerships with the United States, 6. 
The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011: Hard and Not Hopeful 153

dermine its efficacy. The same report argued for the United States

and other international donors to assist in this reform by tying more

stringent conditions of transparency and accountability on future

aid. Otherwise, if the financial aid engendered in the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009, more commonly referred to as

“Kerry-Lugar-Berman,” flows directly to unaccountable institutions

without levying reforms, more waste and inefficiency will only continue to undermine popular support for the Pakistan government.4

What’s more, since a state manifests its power by legitimately

monopolizing coercive force by performing a host of critical administrative and judicial functions, such as taxation and conscription,

then the Pakistani Taliban not only challenged the state, they had

usurped it in the tribal areas. By 2009, the TTP had begun to establish parallel hierarchies of authority and justice by performing

police functions, eliminating rival militias, levying military service

on one male per household, taxing the populace, and meting out

sharia justice. In essence, these are most of the functions typically

ascribed to sovereign states. Even if the Pakistani Taliban did not

have direct aims of overrunning the government, its alternative governance, supported by a wing infused with extreme Islamist ideology, might have achieved its goal of a theocratic microstate. Taliban

control and reach far surpassed any previous semiautonomous

tribal fiefs that Pakistan tolerated during its first six decades as a

state. The very existence of such an entity was an affront that undermined existing perceptions about the legitimacy and credibility

of the central government.5

One solution for the Pakistani government that would help reverse

the lack of perceived legitimacy in the minds of the population in

the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) would be to normalize the FATA in terms of making it either a province itself, or subsuming it within the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. Provincial

status would give the population a sense of ownership, but the political agents and tribal maliks oppose provincial status because such

a change would greatly reduce their power and influence. Presently,

the population of the FATA perceives that the Pakistani government

4 International Crisis Group, Reforming Pakistan’s Civil Service, Asia Report Number 185 (Washington, DC: International Crisis Group, 2010), i–ii. 

5 Lalwani, Pakistan Capabilities for a Counterinsurgency Campaign, 21.
154 War, Will, and Warlords

is treating them “like Indians on a reservation” in America. Economic development and political inclusion would help stabilize the

FATA. The population in FATA comprises 300,000 males aged between 16 and 25 out of a total population of 3.5 million. It is extremely important for the Pakistani government to keep its promises

about normalizing the FATA as a legitimate and genuine province.

However, another recognized South Asia expert believes there are

solutions, but that Pakistan will not implement solutions to longterm problems. There is not enough realism about facts on the

ground, and there is so much to do given the low level of everything— health, literacy, and development. The Pakistani military has

willfully tolerated a relative degree of instability in the tribal areas

over the decades because it has served its purpose and because Pakistan does not view those areas as genuine parts of Pakistan proper.

For example, Islamabad could not have cared less about the tribes

in Baluchistan until it found hydrocarbon resources there and until

it began constructing its Gwadar Port project. The Baluchis need a

better deal, a quid pro quo, in view of the Punjabi elites’ covetous

approach. The people in the tribal areas of the FATA and Khyber

Pakhtunkhwa would likely want to see similar opportunities.6

Some have also asserted that excluding the FATA from political

participation as a province or as part of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Province has to stop. The people in the FATA want the areas to be

a province. A range of Pakistani public and private representatives

did make some progress toward understanding perceptions and expectation in the Mainstreaming FATA project. Between August and

November 2008, the Benazir Democracy Institute arranged three

roundtable workshops, each one comprising representation from

FATA regions in the north, center, and south. The workshops assembled a broad mix of FATA residents, tribal leaders, academics,

journalists, parliamentarians, lawyers, and current and former civil

and military officials. The workshops engaged in dialogue and consultations on what the people in the FATA want and about the need

for comprehensive reform. The unanimously overriding concern

among the participants was the need for security and peace in the

6 Shuja Nawaz, telephone interviews, 14 and 21 January 2010. The direct quote is from the 14

January 2010 interview. The last part of the paragraph that amplifies pessimism about Pakistan

implementing solutions is from Shaun Gregory, telephone interview, 23 January 2010. 
The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011: Hard and Not Hopeful 155

tribal areas as the sine qua non for development. Participants

blamed both the Taliban and the government for the then-deteriorating security conditions and emphasized that thousands of innocent tribal people had been brutally killed or injured, with

hundreds of thousands displaced. The attendees called for the government to exercise the writ of the state to establish peace and stability through dialogue that involved all stakeholders at the local,

national, and international level. The participants asked the government to use force only as a last resort and for the security forces

to get better at discriminating between hostile militants and innocent civilians to avoid civilian casualties. The participants also expressed the desire to bring the FATA into the mainstream polity of

Pakistan while also “safeguarding their centuries-old traditions, culture, and customs.” In other words, there was consensus among

FATA tribal leaders that they wanted to be a normal part of the Pakistani state, with its attendant state civil institutions.7

Specifically, the FATA representatives unanimously declared that

they wanted normalization, democracy, and peace. The participants

arrived at several concluding recommendations, which included

among them the extension of the Pakistani constitution’s jurisdiction to the FATA. They asked that the fundamental freedoms (justice, life, representation) codified in that constitution, and in the

corpus of existing international human rights conventions, also be

extended to the FATA. In addition, the groups asked that the Frontier Crimes Regulations be rescinded, replaced, or significantly

amended to make it consistent with the state’s constitution. The

FATA’s representatives in this project also recommended that the

jurisdiction of the Peshawar High Court and the Supreme Court of

Pakistan be extended to the tribal areas and that FATA courts be established to serve as the courts for settling civil disputes and to

serve as appellate courts for jirga decisions. The findings also implored the Pakistani government to respect, revive, and strengthen

the traditional institution of the jirga with codified legal protections.

Pending the final determination of their provincial status, the FATA

spokespeople asked for representation in the provincial assembly

7 Gregory, telephone interview, 23 January 2010. See Benazir Democracy Institute, Mainstreaming FATA, summary report (Peshawar: Shaheed Bhutto Foundation, 2009), 4–5. The direct quote

is from page 5.
156 War, Will, and Warlords

of then–North-West Frontier Province. The workshops’ recommendations also stressed the guarantee of political representation for

women and minorities. Furthermore, consensus prevailed for significantly curtailing the powers of the political agents, who administer the tribal agencies in the FATA. Lastly, it was clear that the

people want better education at all levels in the tribal areas.8

The Pakistani government needs to improve its administration

and services to the people of FATA. A slow and deliberate approach

to integration is one part of the solution. The United States never

really put the pressure on Pakistan to create solutions for enduring

stability in the tribal areas. If and when political party membership

rights are extended to the FATA, there will still be very few seats

on the national assembly. Moreover, the United States must determine more effective ways of persuading Pakistan to provide genuine governance to the FATA. There is some reason for optimism

about the stability of the Pakistani state, although others are less

sanguine about the government of Pakistan. Components of the solution include efforts to normalize the FATA politically and to adapt

the Pakistani army to best-practice counterinsurgency to meet grievances of the population. The crux of the challenge is that the U.S.

has no leverage over Pakistani policy and strategy. The government

of Pakistan talks but does not deliver on reforms. More still, Pakistan has not allowed any transparency on its operations in the

FATA, and the Pakistani government is the most intransigent, intractable, and dangerous piece of the problem. Pakistan’s approach

to the FATA has also been anemic and underwhelming.9

The crisis of legitimacy in the FATA also relates to the lack of

local indigenous leaders who are not Taliban. The Taliban in the

Waziri lands have killed off many tribal leaders to consolidate their

control, which leaves a dearth of legitimate local leaders. Also,

killing off a large number of tribal leaders did not even precipitate

a Pakistani army response because the capacity and credibility of

the Pakistani security forces were very low in the FATA from 2005

to 2007. What’s more, the army did not want to get involved. Onthe-ground observations between 2005 and 2007 revealed that pop8 Mainstreaming FATA, 6–8. 

9 Joshua T. White, telephone interview, 23 January 2010; and Fair, telephone interview, 21 January 2010. 
The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011: Hard and Not Hopeful 157

ular support for the Taliban spiked, generally because of American

support for Musharraf, whom the populace increasingly viewed as

a corrupt tyrant. The Red Mosque incident and the Musharraf

regime’s machinations against Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar

Muhammad Chaudhry (the most glaring example of which was

Musharraf declaring a fabricated state of emergency) converged to

heighten anti-Musharraf sentiment, which exacerbated anti-U.S.

sentiments among the Pakistani public.10

The effectiveness and popularity of drone strikes in the tribal areas

have also provoked much debate and controversy. Experts report that

over half of the FATA population supports drone strikes, although

they are opposed to punitive operations by the Pakistani army because the latter are more destructive. Drone strikes are effective in

disrupting al-Qaeda and TTP leaders, but the insurgents do capitalize

on the civilian casualties with their media operations when they

occur. Some indigenous tribes particularly support drone killings of

foreigners and Arabs. Moreover, American special operations “bootson-the-ground” raids seem to have a more discernibly negative impact on the Pakistani state and Pakistan’s core public than they have

had on the tribal areas, as the May 2011 bin Laden raid showed. There

is some Pashtun support for Pakistani army operations in the tribal

areas, but the Pakistani government claims that any expansion of

drone strikes or special operations missions into Baluchistan would

exacerbate the indigenous populace’s anti-U.S. and antigovernment

sentiments. It would seem that the Pakistani army does not want to

expand the drone fight into Baluchistan because it does not want the

U.S. to apply more pressure on the Afghan Taliban. The Pakistani

army and government also lever the perceived Indian threat as a way

to push back and manipulate the United States when it applies too

much pressure for more action. Finally, the public support for fighting

the TTP does not translate into any increase in support for the U.S.

Over the last several years, a majority of Pakistanis still considered

the United States as the enemy, while generally about 10 percent

viewed the U.S. as a partner.11

Notwithstanding, the Pakistani public’s support for Pakistani se10 Nick Schmidle, interview, Washington, DC, 3 December 2009. 

11 Gregory, telephone interviews, 23 January and 9 February 2010. Pew Research Center, Support

for Campaign against Extremism Wanes, 21 June 2011 (Pew Global Attitudes Project online).
158 War, Will, and Warlords

curity force operations exhibited a favorable shift in the spring of

2009. Two thousand and nine was a watershed year for the Pakistani public’s perception of the TTP. Before the Pakistani Taliban

offensives in Swat and Buner in the spring of 2009, the Pakistani

people were not willing to support military actions against their indigenous Taliban. Since then, there has generally been a greater

willingness among the Pakistani public and in the Pakistani armed

forces to fight against the TTP in defense of the Pakistani state. According to Steve Coll, the period from Benazir Bhutto’s assassination up until the time when the TTP overran Buner District in May

2009 was horrifying for the Pakistani public. There is now more

will and determination in the Pakistani army to fight against the

TTP in defense of the Pakistani state. Public opinion during the

spring and summer 2009 shifted to support Pakistan security forces’

operations against the Pakistani Taliban because the population

sees the TTP as an existential threat. There is a momentum in favor

of increasing the perceived legitimacy of the Pakistan government

in the eyes of its population, although Pakistanis are still viscerally

anti-American. There is also still an appetite for civil rule of the

military, and the United States needs to encourage, support, and

enforce this, if necessary.12

According to some experts, the operations in South Waziristan

in 2009–11 demonstrated that Pakistan’s armed forces are now

more serious about fighting militants and the Pakistani army is now

actually better, even if only relatively or marginally so. Before 2009,

any notion of hammer-and-anvil operations to dislodge and drive

out the Taliban from the tribal area safe havens was an illusory

game of “smoke and mirrors.” With the Pakistani security forces’

operations in 2009–11, some have perceived more of a genuine

hammer and anvil, though imperfect. Echoing a phrase from

Voltaire, Peter Bergen has aptly commented that the “enemy of the

perfect is not the reasonably okay.” No one really complains about

drone strikes either, he commented. As for trust and confidence as

indicators of the Pakistani leaders support for their bilateral relationship with America, Bergen believed U.S.-Pakistan relations

were better than any time since 1979. Moreover, if not probable, it

12 Steve Coll, interview, 3 December 2009. 
The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011: Hard and Not Hopeful 159

would not be impossible, and would be exceedingly helpful, if the

Pakistanis would ultimately relent in their passive, active, and perfidious protection and support of the Haqqani network. On the

other hand, the Afghan government in Kabul now receives about

$1.2 billion per annum in Indian support, which Pakistan perceives

as a harbinger for future Indian sway over Karzai’s government,

and with that, the growing threat engendered in this Indian encroachment on Pakistan’s western flank. In the mid to longer term,

if Pakistan can be convinced that the Kabul government is friendly

and relatively malleable, it is possible that Pakistan might be induced to give up Haqqani. The other option for a legitimate political

solution, as distasteful as it seems, may in the end also require and

see some form of reconciliation with the Haqqani network, if in the

process the Pakistanis can move it away from its violent and extremist agenda.13

Scholarly analyses also recognized a shift in public support for

Pakistani military operations against the TTP and TNSM. One essay

posited that “developments in Swat during the early spring brought

a dramatic reversal of attitudes across Pakistan toward the militants.” After Pakistan had repeated its traditional pattern of ceasefire agreements to appease the militants in February 2009, by spring

of that year it became evident in a similar cease-fire with Sufi

Muhammad of the TNSM that this insurgent group was committed

to undermining and eliminating all traces of state authority. The

Taliban’s harsh policies, including forced land redistribution and

puritanical sharia justice, began to horrify and alienate the people.

Two particular events stood out as catalyzing the population to oppose the Taliban’s rule in Swat, and elsewhere, and to support Pakistani army actions against them. The first event was the widely

disseminated video of Taliban militants flogging a young woman.

The other one was an April 2009 speech by Sufi Muhammad that

rather brazenly attacked and questioned the very notion of the Pakistani state. The final impetus for the shift in support was the advance of TNSM militants beyond Swat to the Buner and Lower Dir

Districts, bringing the Islamist radical threat within 60 miles of Islamabad. At that time, it became unambiguously clear to Pakistan’s

13 Peter Bergen, telephone interview, 14 January 2010. 
160 War, Will, and Warlords

public that the Taliban aspired to impose their extreme doctrine on

the entire country. Previous support for peace deals may have

stemmed from the general perception that the tribal areas were not

part of core Pakistan and that the Taliban would confine their activities to the Pashtun Belt. The Taliban advance into Buner most

likely persuaded Pakistanis to support military action because the

militants threatened to encroach on the heartland, drastically raising the costs of future failed peace deals. Specifically, the disturbing

video of the girl’s beating, combined with the Taliban attack beyond

the Indus, served to jolt the traditionally liberal populace of the

Punjab out of its complacency.14

One other notably positive development in the tribal areas for

building some popular support is the Pakistan branch of the U.S.

Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), which is a best practice for building a political

and development foothold that merits consideration for benchmarking in other areas in Pakistan, and even in Afghanistan. In November 2007, OTI launched a program in the FATA as an initial step in

support of the Pakistan's renewed efforts to better deliver services

to communities in the region. These efforts were also meant to facilitate the integration of the FATA populace into Pakistan's political

and economic mainstream through small community-enhancement

projects that will improve the economic and social environment in

the region. OTI also supports the government's efforts to increase

public access to information about its social, economic, and political

activities and policies in FATA. In Pakistan, OTI has been working

to build confidence and trust between the government and the FATA

tribal communities through a consultative approach that identifies

and implements small community-improvement projects. The program includes media and communication outreach activities and

quick, visible, small-scale community projects. The program was

undertaken from fall 2007 to fall 2010, in accordance with the government of Pakistan's plans.15

Given the desires and recommendations reported in the Mainstreaming FATA enterprise, OTI is one good program for economic

14 Weinbaum, “Hard Choices in Countering Insurgency,” 79–80; Fair, “Pakistan’s Own War on

Terror,” 44–48. The direct quote is from Weinbaum, 79.

15 USAID Office of Transition Initiatives, “Pakistan Fact Sheet,” January 2010. 
The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011: Hard and Not Hopeful 161

development and civilian governance that exhibits potential for

gaining popular support by addressing the people’s grievances.

Here is a model for U.S. development assistance that has succeeded

under the hardest of all possible circumstances in Pakistan, in its

remote and dangerous FATA. Under OTI, small teams of U.S. nationals working with hundreds of Pakistani colleagues have succeeded precisely by departing from the USAID's traditional

development playbook. OTI employs Pakistanis and buys its materials from local sources. It creates democratic mechanisms for local

ownership of all its assistance programs. And it rigorously measures

success in terms of outcomes, not outputs, using multiple means

of accountability. Former Special Representative for Afghanistan

and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke was reputedly so enamored of the

OTI during an early visit to Pakistan that he expressed surprise that

its budget was not much larger than its current size. This initiative

is a good one and suggests duplication elsewhere in the FATA to

stimulate development and meet the expectations of the population. On a somewhat different note, the next section explores to

what degree the Pakistani military has changed its approach in

terms of providing security and avoiding civilian casualties.16

Force

It will do what it must on the Indian border and what it can

on its Afghan one. 

—Sameer Lalwani, Pakistan Capabilities for a Counterinsurgency Campaign 

In 2007, when the U.S. still viewed the war in Afghanistan as a

backwater economy of effort, Admiral Michael G. Mullen, the

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, commented to the effect that

the United States will do what it must in Iraq and do what it can in

Afghanistan. The inference was more of the same level of economy

in Afghanistan given the then-ongoing American surge of troops

for a revived counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq. The U.S. has

since resolved the dilemma it faced when fighting two difficult wars

simultaneously and from 2009–11 refocused on its war of necessity

in Afghanistan. However, Pakistani civilian and military leaders still

16 Christian Brose and Daniel Twining, “Our Pakistan Problem,” Weekly Standard, 14 September

2009, 5.
162 War, Will, and Warlords

confront the very real dilemma of needing to be prepared to defend

against their existential nemesis, India, and of preparing for and

prosecuting operations against militants in the tribal areas. The Pakistani security forces have in fact shown some discernible improvement in how they conduct operations against insurgents. However,

experts’ views on the degree of adaptation vary from pessimistic

to almost Pollyannaish. This section relies on a number of interviews and current scholarship to examine and reconcile some reasonable generalizations about Pakistan’s willingness and

effectiveness in fighting insurgents. To achieve some sort of logical

flow, it begins with the skeptical perspectives and ends with the

more optimistic analyses. This study does not explore published

doctrine because Pakistani military doctrine is classified.17

To briefly recapitulate, the catalysts and evolution of the Taliban

insurgency in Pakistan emerged in three waves. First, there was a

regroup and resurge phase when Taliban and foreign fighters fled

across the border seeking sanctuary in Pakistan. In this phase, from

late 2001 until 2003, they benefited from the help of the Haqqani

network and loosely coalesced or cooperated with al-Qaeda. Second, there was a reconstitute and regenerate phase beginning in

2003, after which the U.S. invasion of Iraq provided further impetus

for resurgence and regeneration of Taliban insurgencies in

Afghanistan and Pakistan until 2007. The last phase began with the

Special Services Group assault on the Red Mosque, which generated an anti-Musharraf and antigovernment narrative. This narrative catalyzed an expansion of the TTP, more coalescence among

Taliban and foreign fighters, and opportunistic cooperation between

the TTP and the TNSM in FATA and what was then known as the

North-West Frontier Province. To be brutally candid here, the Frontier Corps (FC) and the Pakistani army’s responses to these metastasizing and increasingly colluding insurgencies during those same

years manifested a generally half-measured use of too few forces

lacking sufficient leadership, training, and doctrine to seriously

counter the militants. When they did act, Pakistani security forces

compounded the above by using punitive operations that over relied on firepower and destruction. Pakistan’s policy pattern of fol17 Lalwani, Pakistan Capabilities for a Counterinsurgency Campaign, 56.
The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011: Hard and Not Hopeful 163

lowing up operations of this nature with peace deals they were unwilling and unable to enforce only emboldened the Taliban. Instead

of countering the budding internal insurgency, Pakistani military

action between 2003 and 2008 essentially helped catalyze it.18

The FC, which conducted operations against the militants in the

FATA during this period, had lost its proficiency since the years

when it had served in Kashmir (Kargil). Another example of lapsed

proficiency was the degradation in the capabilities of the Pakistani

army’s Northern Light Infantry (NLI), which had been a part of the

FC until after the Kargil campaign of 1999. Before being subsumed

within the Pakistani army after Kargil, the NLI theretofore attracted

young aggressive leaders in search of tough and rewarding duty in

Kashmir. Over time the NLI stopped attracting top quality volunteers, and the Pakistani army was compelled to “volunteer” candidates for this regimental-sized formation. Moreover, the FC that

deployed into the FATA during 2004–6 was a weak shadow of its

former self. Its Kashmir regiments were no longer commanded by

lieutenant colonels; by that time, majors commanded regiments.19

The Pakistani army also missed an excellent opportunity when

it first deployed troops into the FATA to use those regiments that

were composed half of Pashtuns and half of Punjabis. Junior officers and noncommissioned officers who spoke Pashto would have

been much more effective. Instead, the Pakistani army forces that

deployed to the FATA looked and spoke like an alien force because

they were dressed in uniforms that were similar to U.S. Army uniforms and they did not speak the local language. Their presence

and appearance alienated the Pashtun population from the outset,

and this was exacerbated by their heavy-handed methods. Pakistan

never corrected this misstep, and it employed 11th Corps in the

FATA, a corps which had been based in Peshawar and had previously focused its training and preparation on Kashmir.20

Given that the U.S. Central Command (Centcom) and the Office

of the Defense Representative–Pakistan have only really provided

several years worth of genuine, if parsimonious, effort to train and

equip the Pakistani FC forces, a sustained persistent effort may bear

18 Coll, interview, 3 December 2009. 19 Nawaz, telephone interview, 14 January 2010. 20 Ibid.
164 War, Will, and Warlords

fruit. Before that, according to U.S. Army Special Forces accounts,

the consequences of Pressler Amendment proscriptions in previous

years contributed to having to train and equip anew after years of

no training or military-to-military relations. The FC, with sufficient

training, leadership, and equipment, can potentially become the

force of choice for the U.S.-Pakistan relationship and for stabilizing

the tribal areas. On the ground in Pakistan, the U.S. Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT) train-and- equip effort for the

Pakistani military was disjointed for the first five years. SOCCENT

Forward (Pakistan) in 2010 was dedicating approximately 140 personnel to the effort, which is called the Security Development Program. The Security Development Program comprises three lines of

operations: military-security, state-governance, and the USAID OTIPakistan. U.S. SOCCENT personnel have also observed and perceived more than a few instances when the Pakistanis would work

to undermine the U.S. efforts to improve the FC.21

It is not likely that the United States will see much more improvement of the Pakistani army in terms of what the American

military views as best-practice counterinsurgency fundamentals. It

is unlikely that the Pakistani military will adopt this term or adapt

much more to what it continues to call “low-intensity conflict operations.” The civilian-military gulf is a huge problem, which precludes the civil-military integration required for holding and

building after clearing. There is also a sense of a sentiment in Pakistan that embracing “counterinsurgency” is an embarrassment because it reveals that the government has acknowledged a state of

insurrection where Pashtuns are insurgents, not simply criminals

or terrorists. The Pakistani army still has a long way to go in holding and building areas after it clears them; it continues to stay on

roads and to destroy too many buildings and too much infrastructure. The Pakistani government and military forces should help

build and develop infrastructure instead of being an instrument of

destruction. Nevertheless, there is some cause for optimism, albeit

21 Timothy Hoyt, conversation, 26 February 2010, Newport, RI. LtCol Chuck Miller, interview,

SOCCENT Headquarters, Tampa, FL, 16 December 2009. The Pressler Amendment, once invoked, generally proscribed the U.S. military from performing International Military Education

and Training with the Pakistani military. Proscriptions were in place up until September 2001

for Pakistan’s nuclear transgressions. 
The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011: Hard and Not Hopeful 165

qualified, since there were some notable improvements in how the

FC and the Pakistani army performed during 2009 and 2010 in their

conduct of operations in South Waziristan, Swat, and Bajaur, where

they were more effective than in previous operations with similar

aims.22

However, the ISI is still colluding with militant groups. In one

estimate, during the latest Pakistani army offensive into South

Waziristan, most of the TTP fled from South Waziristan to Baluchistan. According to this perspective, the Pakistani army will not fight

the Taliban in Baluchistan or North Waziristan because of the

Afghan Taliban presence in the south and because of their proxy

Haqqani’s fiefdom in North Waziristan. Haqqani remains a useful

instrument and hedge for Pakistan’s doubts over the current and

future Afghan regime. In the duplicitous context of Pakistan security policy and behavior, it is in the interests of the ISI to support

Haqqani, Hekmatyar, and the Afghan Taliban because the ISI does

not perceive them as posing direct threats to Islamabad. In addition, the Pakistani army exhibits an anti-U.S. sentiment and does

not prefer to fight co-religionists. The other narrative the Pakistanis

employ is that they are unable, not unwilling, to operate in these

areas because they are stretched too thin and such an operation is

too complex and too unpopular in Pakistan and in the army. The

Pakistani army leadership has an eloquent and rehearsed narrative

about how its forces are doing as much as they can; about the

losses they have suffered, which have not been insignificant; and

about how the army is not ready to go into North Waziristan because it will be a tough fight against a resilient enemy. There are

two other corollaries to this narrative. One argument is that such

an operation would trigger a backlash in popular opinion because

they would be fighting fellow Muslims. The other one is that the

Pakistan army, and thus the state, might implode if pushed too far

in the fight against the Islamists. There are two more genuine reasons for this resistance: the Pakistani army leadership is very concerned about its stature and credibility in the eyes of the public and

will not undertake operations that may jeopardize this; and the Pakistani state has useful proxies such as the Haqqanis and the Afghan

22 White, telephone interview, 23 January 2010; and Seth Jones, telephone interview, 21 January

2010. 
166 War, Will, and Warlords

Taliban (Quetta Shura) that help Pakistan pursue its interests.23

A fairly balanced assessment would acknowledge that, although

the Pakistani army has effected some discernable improvements,

its preference and focus remains on India rather than internal militants. The Pakistani state and its army did prove during 2009 that

they were increasingly willing and capable of fighting militants who

challenged the authority of the state. Although previous Pakistani

army operations in the tribal areas “revealed serious deficiencies”

in their conduct of operations, both army forces and FC units

demonstrated improvements in clearing territory and integrating

their operations with local tribes in Bajaur and Swat during 2009.

However, Islamabad continues to use the tribal areas for training

surrogate groups for operations in India and Afghanistan, making

a distinction between these units and those such as the TTP and

TNSM that it has come to view as a threat. But the Pakistan military’s cultural preference and fixation on both a conventional war

model and conventional equipment—most appropriate for war with

India on the Punjab plain—have poorly prepared Pakistan’s forces

for dealing with this internal threat. Additionally, U.S. funding has

disproportionately favored the FC and the army while insufficiently

providing assistance to police and civil functions. Pakistan’s federal

and provincial governments have also not provided sufficient aid

either to the thousands of persons displaced by clearing operations

or toward development in the areas of conflict. Clearing without

having the capacity to hold and build is not consistent with counterinsurgency fundamentals.24

For example, when the Pakistani armed forces launched Operation Rah-e-Nijat (Path to Deliverance) beginning in October 2009

against the Taliban in South Waziristan after four months of preparation, this represented their largest military operation to date in

either FATA or then–North-West Frontier Province. The Pakistani

army’s stipulated mission was to clear the area of militants and to

stabilize the area because Islamabad had then considered South

23 The first sentence on the ISI is attributable to Jones, telephone interview, 21 January 2010.

The remainder of the paragraph is from Gregory, telephone interview, 23 January 2010. For excellent insights on how the Pakistanis negotiate and employ their narrative, see Howard B. Schaffer and Terisita C. Schaffer, How Pakistan Negotiates with the United States: Riding the Roller

Coaster (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2011), 51–76 and 163–78.

24 Fair and Jones, “Pakistan’s War Within” 181–82. The direct quote is from page 181 of this article.
The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011: Hard and Not Hopeful 167

Waziristan as the principal source of militant violence against the

state, attributing 80 percent of the terrorist attacks in Pakistan to

the TTP. By mid-November 2009, the Pakistani forces had occupied

almost all of their objectives, and the military announced the end

of the first phase of its operations. Although the army reported that

it had met stiff resistance by indigenous and foreign fighters, there

were no arrests, and there were no enemy dead bodies to show the

media to back up this report. In fact, there was scant evidence that

serious fighting occurred at all during the operation because most

of the insurgents fled in advance of the government offensive. Because of the lack of transparency for operations in the FATA, it was

not possible for outside media to confirm either the TTP or the Pakistani army’s claims of casualties. The army claimed that it killed

over 500 militants and lost over 70 soldiers in the fighting, but a

TTP spokesman refuted those claims, instead explaining that the

militants had carried out a planned withdrawal from their South

Waziristan strongholds with their forces remaining generally intact

and prepared to fight another day. There were also reports that the

army confined its operations to major roads and towns while the

insurgents dominated the forests and mountains. Overall, the Pakistani security forces did not arrest or kill any senior Taliban leaders, a fact that calls the effectiveness of the operation into

question.25

The flight of large numbers of insurgents and insurgent leaders

in the face of Pakistani army onslaughts was not without precedent.

The Bajaur campaign in 2008–9 also saw insurgents escape to other

agencies in response to an army push there. In fact, there is a similar pattern that has become clear from all of the previous Pakistani

security forces’ operations in the tribal areas: one in which they

fail to capture or kill a significant number of leaders or fighters because of a lack of timely intelligence. The South Waziristan operation also did not have the advantage of surprise because its lengthy

preparations and the oncoming winter weather made it evident to

everyone that the Pakistani army would have to begin the operation

before winter arrived in order to consolidate any gains before snowfall. As a result of the security forces’ telegraphed intentions, the

25 Rahimullah Yusufzai, “Assessing the Progress of Pakistan’s South Waziristan Offensive,” CTC

Sentinel 2, no. 12 (December 2009): 8–10. 
168 War, Will, and Warlords

insurgents were able to flee that tribal agency before the offensive

began to proceed in full measure. When the first snow fell in the

first half of December 2009, inclement conditions began to make

the movement of forces increasingly cumbersome. Since the Pakistani forces had considerable advantages in numbers and guns,

the TTP emulated the methods used by the Afghan Taliban, and by

other guerrillas in similar situations, and employed hit-and-run

guerrilla methods to harass the advancing Pakistani forces and attack isolated outposts, while retreating in the face of strength.26

Moreover, the Pakistani Taliban did in fact retaliate for the army’s

offensive into South Waziristan with attacks and suicide bombings

in Pakistan’s urban areas. The TTP also ordered other franchise

groups in the northern agencies inside the FATA to renew attacks

against the Pakistani security forces wherever possible to influence

public opinion and put pressure on the government. Sustained

guerrilla hit-and-run attacks against the Pakistani military units in

South Waziristan also occur on an intermittent basis. Although the

government’s overarching strategy for South Waziristan is not clear,

the military intends to hold the areas it cleared there until it can

diminish the threat posed by the TTP. Pakistan framed the second

phase of the operation as one to clear and consolidate their efforts

thus far, with plans to provide the political leadership and civil administration that has been absent for years. This remains to be seen

since the civilian component of what should be an integrated approach has been noticeably absent in Pakistan to date. Nonetheless,

the political administrator for South Waziristan has claimed that

development and reconstruction work would begin once the security forces restored peace. The operation in South Waziristan,

though a small step in the right direction, accomplished far less

than eliminating the insurgent threat, as the TTP has demonstrated

a relentless commitment and capacity to carry out brutal armed

propaganda attacks against urban targets in Pakistan. What’s more,

the TTP’s continued success in employing complex suicide attacks

against hard military targets testifies to the threat it still poses, in

spite of the fact that it lost some ground to the Pakistani military in

South Waziristan. The hardest part of pacification—holding, build26 Ibid., 10. 
The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011: Hard and Not Hopeful 169

ing, and protecting the population—has barely begun in this

agency. Big offensive sweeps with modern equipment and technology, without holding and administering in durable ways, is not

counterinsurgency.27

On the other hand, some Pakistani analysts are more confident

about improvements in the Pakistanis’ capabilities for this kind of

fighting. Notably, toward the end of the last decade, the FC did

make some effort to improve its performance. By this account, the

low troop morale attending heavy losses incurred while fighting

the militants, as well as an institutional response to the then-flagging Pakistani army’s public approval ratings of 10 percent, helped

bring about changes in the Pakistani army’s perception of what it

needed to do. The promotion of General Kayani to chief of army

staff also had a positive impact because Kayani saw improving the

army’s performance as a measure to improve its morale and its

credibility in the eyes of the public. There was also a generational

gap between strategists and analysts in the Pakistani army that was

manifested in military and FC operations in 2008, one that contributed to a low point in institutional cohesion. The Pakistani army

is moving away from coercive punitive operations such as these toward a relatively less punitive approach, one that also attempts to

emphasize the promotion of development. On an interesting sidenote, the victorious Pakistani cricket team captain’s public declaration in 2009 that he wanted to beat the Taliban may have

favorably influenced the public and the military perspective in Pakistan as his statement spoke to the necessity of prosecuting a war

against Taliban militancy.28

In another study published under the aegis of the Joint Special

Operations University (JSOU), Haider Mullick asserted that Pakistani security force operations in Swat during the spring and summer of 2009 marked a distinct shift toward counterinsurgency-like

operations. According to this JSOU study, “Junior officers were tired

of applying counterproductive brute force tactics for six years, pinning hopes on swift delivery of high technology U.S. gadgets and

frustrated by U.S. failure to control Afghanistan.” Animated by the

27 Ibid., 11–12.

28 Haider Mullick, telephone interview, 25 January 2010.
170 War, Will, and Warlords

renewed public support for countering militancy, and determined

by the recognition that the Taliban posed a grave threat, a number

of field-grade and company-grade officers effected a change in the

military mindset and methods from the bottom up. This adaptation

was fourfold. Relying on what they viewed as successful practices

in Bajaur during 2008–9, both the Pakistani army and the FC deviated from their previous firepower-intensive, hammer-sans-anvil

operations and adopted operations that saw them contain and

squeeze insurgent concentrations. Second, for the first time since

the war began, the military began to implement a presence-oriented

model that called for establishing small bases inside populated

areas after clearing them to aid in administration and enforce curfews. Third, Pakistani operations seem to have improved their precision targeting due to better human intelligence and the relocation

of civilians before attacks. Fourth, Pakistani junior officers have

learned that the enemy’s explosive experts, information officers,

snipers, and commanders were principally foreign fighters with

whom indigenous Pashtun Taliban leaders were often collocated.

The Pakistani intelligence officers exploited anti-Taliban and antiforeigner sentiments within the local population to better target

and kill the enemy.29

West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center journal, CTC Sentinel,

has also published an equally sanguine analysis of Pakistani adaptability that contends that Pakistani military operations in Bajaur,

Swat, and South Waziristan have demonstrated “a diligent institutional learning process that has produced significant tactical adaptations yielding increasing tactical success.” This study

characterized the Pakistani military’s adaptation process as a cumulative one that sees the military adapting as a result of learning

from operations against militants. The process is an incremental

one that will gradually change over time and not witness any dramatic and wholesale embrace of best-practice counterinsurgency

as currently envisioned by the United States. According to this assessment, Operation Sher Dil (Lionheart) in Bajaur during 2008–9

represented a change from a heavily punitive approach to a more

patient one that used discernibly different tactics and human intel29 Mullick, Pakistan’s Security Paradox, 54–57. 
The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011: Hard and Not Hopeful 171

ligence techniques to methodically clear the Taliban. The FC, this

report posited, also evolved into a more useful and competent local

force that helped erode insurgent influence by improving security

along the many routes in the agency over several months. Another

marked improvement noted during subsequent operations in Swat

from April to June 2009 was the deliberate displacement of the population before the assault. The purpose of this relocation was to

mitigate collateral damage and to make targeting more precise.

However, the assertion that the two-month blockade that the Pakistani military had established before the operation to cut off insurgent movement marked a positive change in Pakistani performance

during the South Waziristan operation of 2009–10 is not entirely

tenable. Many of the Taliban most probably fled because it was not

likely that the Pakistani army was able to genuinely seal this remote

and mountainous area.30

There are, however, some other insights that do merit some contemplation as positive, though they still represent incremental

changes to Pakistan’s will and skill in fighting militants. One is that

General Kayani is committed to improving the army’s leadership,

performance, and morale and that he is better able to focus his energy on these tasks because he is unencumbered with the responsibilities of ruling the state. Still, there will be no changes in army

force structure and procurement toward a counterinsurgency model

because Kayani will not accept changes of this sort outside the FC.

Also, the Pakistani leadership now recognizes that it may not be

wise to differentiate too greatly between the TTP and the Afghan

Taliban because it acknowledges that current and future collusion

among the two will not augur well for the Pakistani state down the

road. Another grounded insight is that all changes toward what we

view as counterinsurgency will be tactical and temporary. The army

is willing to look at new ways of doing things because it would

rather not be ineffective in the end. Last, another gaping shortcoming remains for counterinsurgents trying to build public support.

This is the lack of any serious civilian capacity to integrate with the

military for building and administering after clearing and holding.

Such a gap is partly the result of an ingrained intransigence on the

30 Sameer Lalwani, “The Pakistan Military’s Adaptation to Counterinsurgency in 2009,” CTC

Sentinel 3, no. 1 (January 2010): 10–13. The direct quote is from page 10 of this article. 
172 War, Will, and Warlords

part of the military to cooperate with civilian institutions.31

Moreover, the Pakistani army’s preponderance of Punjabis is a

limiting factor in its ability to conduct holding and building in the

Pashtun Belt. Another 2010 report, titled Prospects for Pakistan, offered an interesting explanation for the Pakistani army’s concern

over potential U.S. drone strikes and special operations raids inside

Baluchistan in the future. According to this report, the concern is

that the Pakistani army believes its Pashtun support in Baluchistan

would evaporate as a consequence of any U.S. targeting of ethnic

Pashtun Afghan Taliban in Quetta or elsewhere in the province.

This same study also sees the army’s operations in South Waziristan and Swat as evidence that the army can successfully carry out

forceful containment. But the Pakistani government continues to

fall very short in anything approximating the civilian side of development and reconstruction. It is quite possible that the Taliban are

using the typical guerrilla techniques of dispersion and concentration, in that they disperse and flee when the Pakistani army approaches but concentrate and fight in areas where army presence

is tenuous. A protracted war of attrition almost always favors the

insurgent. There is also some anecdotal evidence that suggests junior officers and soldiers are increasingly opposed to lethal campaigns against the Taliban. The Taliban, again, have been able to

alter the narrative on Pashtun identity, focusing less on traditional

Pashtun tribal grievances, such as provincial autonomy, and more

on factors associated with extreme Islamist religiosity.32

Ultimately, it will be important to keep any approach to stabilize

the Pashtun Belt as simple as possible. This means denying the Taliban from achieving their aspirations to control the people and the

territory. Such a goal is potentially more achievable on the Afghan

side of the Durand Line than it is on the Pakistani side. Some degree

of stability is possible for Afghanistan in three to five years. Pakistan, on the other hand, will require five to eight years to achieve

a similar level of stability in the tribal areas. If the NATO Coalition

and its Afghan partners continue to reverse the momentum in their

favor, particularly in the east, it could augur well for Pakistan to

31 Sameer Lalwani, telephone interview, 19 February 2009. The last sentence is an observation

by Tim Hoyt, comments on draft manuscript, 11 March 2010.

32 Jonathan Paris, Prospects for Pakistan (London, Legatum Institute, 2010), 7–8. 
The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011: Hard and Not Hopeful 173

genuinely and completely act as a partner to help stabilize the tribal

areas on both sides of the Durand Line. However, the fundamental

Pakistani challenge for the war against the Taliban in the tribal

areas is “not Pakistan’s national character or even the character of

its generals.” Instead, the problem is associated with Pakistanis’

perceived interests.33

The Pakistani security apparatus has discovered over several

decades how to best leverage its bad decisions, dysfunctions, grievances, and perceived existential and perpetual threats to extract

from the United States the military and financial assistance that it

thinks it needs to prepare for its wars against India. During the very

time when they benefited from this support, Pakistan’s generals

have resented their reliance on the United States’ largesse. For the

ISI to renounce its Afghan Taliban proxies completely, its leaders

“would have to imagine a new way of living in the world—to write

a new definition of Pakistan’s national security, one that emphasizes politics and economics over clandestine war.” For the time

being, notwithstanding the inferences and implications derived

from the Pakistani arrests of some senior Taliban commanders in

February 2010, there are still many generals in Pakistan who consider themselves masters of their old perfidious game, “to be not

so sweet that they will be eaten whole by the United States, but

not so bitter that they will be spat out.” It is to the perceptions of

the Pakistani leadership and public that this study turns next.34

Information Operations

The best chance to end Pakistani support for terrorism in

Afghanistan and India is to demonstrate in a visceral way that

its allies are losing and that if Pakistan does not stop backing

them it will end up with little influence in Afghanistan and

less security.

—Christian Brose and Daniel Twining, “Our Pakistan Problem” 

In Chapter 3, this book analyzed in detail the U.S.-Pakistan historical context, the enduring effects of political Islam, and the influence of skewed educational curricula on the sentiments of the

33 Coll, interview, 3 December 2009, and “Don’t Look Back,” 21–22. The direct quote is from

the article.

34 Coll, “Don’t Look Back,” 21–22. The direct quotes are from this article.
174 War, Will, and Warlords

Pakistani population. In addition to winning the war for the Pakistani public’s perceptions, information operations in the context

of Pakistan also include how well American actions support its

messages to influence Pakistan’s ruling civilian and military elites

to act in concert toward common interests in the region. As one

example, since the end of the Soviet-Afghan War, there has been a

persistent perception in the minds of Pakistan’s ruling oligarchy

that America’s traditional strategic attention-deficit disorder will

precipitate an ill-advised and premature withdrawal from

Afghanistan, leaving Pakistan to resolve the imbroglio again. 

This belief, in turn, informs the Pakistanis’ strategic depth rationale, what one can rightly perceive as the Pakistani security

elites’ propensity to hedge their bets by supporting the Afghan Taliban. It does seem that determined actions and words in

Afghanistan might potentially help achieve a shift in Pakistani perceptions and convince their leaders that the United States is committed to a long-term solution to stability in South Asia. Both the

counterinsurgency push in Afghanistan and the increasingly effective drone strikes in the tribal areas might help convince the Pakistani leadership that the United States is serious about persevering

in the Pashtun Belt until ultimately successful. As of 2011, some

guarded optimism existed at the operational level in terms of the

possibilities that the U.S. and its allies really can change the perceptions and the behavior of Pakistan’s leaders. This does not suggest that success in Afghanistan will alter Pakistan’s enduring

strategic rationale vis-à-vis India or its strategic depth corollary that

requires a benign and malleable regime in Afghanistan. This type

of change would require a tectonic shift in the realities and perceptions of the South Asian security dilemma. However, in late 2010

and 2011, the Coalition achieved discernible momentum against the

Taliban inside Afghanistan, and it was clear that the insurgency

was reeling and fractured in terms of the insurgent leaders that the

Coalition removed and the caches and safe havens its campaign

took away. The operational commander and his senior leaders did

espouse the notion that unambiguous and irreversible operational

success against the insurgency inside Afghanistan could undermine

Pakistan’s strategic depth approach and precipitate adjustments to

its support of the Afghan Taliban. This last section explores any
The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011: Hard and Not Hopeful 175

changes in the integration of action with information operations to

shape perceptions, by either the Pakistani government or the insurgents.35

First and foremost, the Pakistani army will be better able to favorably alter the perceptions of the population in the tribal areas

by operating in ways that help protect and better serve the nonmilitant portions of those populations. Heavy-handed punitive operations are not the solution because they tend to inflict civilian

casualties and destroy what little infrastructure exists in the tribal

areas. Less destructive and more constructive approaches to security operations in the FATA will improve how those populations perceive the army and the government. In this respect, the changes

that the army effected in how it operated in Swat and South

Waziristan during 2009–11, though marginal and incremental, also

improved the government’s positive influence over the population.

In a war of perceptions, the Pakistani army and the FC will be able

to more effectively win the public if they adopt more traditional approaches to countering the militants by helping govern and administer the tribal areas and by finding innovative ways to assist in

developing infrastructure, in concert with a much improved civilian

capacity to deliver and administer services and the rule of law.

Notwithstanding the myriad impediments to the Pakistani military’s

capacity to adapt to counterinsurgency, the dearth of CORDS-like

civilian capacity poses a much bigger challenge to its efforts. Without better governance, administration, and services, it will be very

difficult to persuade the population in the tribal areas that the Pakistani government is one they can trust. However, the people are

not endeared to the Taliban, particularly when the Taliban perpetrate acts of violence that harm innocent women and children and

35 The least plausible inference to be drawn from Pakistan’s serial capture of an unprecedented

number of senior Quetta Shura commanders in February 2010, however, is that this manifested

their willingness to go after the Afghan Taliban in the form of the Quetta Shura. The most convincing information I have from operating in Afghanistan in 2010–11 is that the Pakistanis arrested these leaders in February 2010 to exert more positive control and influence over the

Afghan Taliban leadership. The author served with the operational commanders and discussed

the effects of operational success in Afghanistan on the Pakistanis calculus. For more on the

logic of pursuing operational success to influence Pakistan’s strategic depth approach, see Ashley

J. Tellis, Creating New Facts on the Ground: Why the Diplomatic Surge Cannot Yet Produce a Regional Solution in Afghanistan, Policy Brief 91 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2011), 1–11.
176 War, Will, and Warlords

destroy schools and facilities that benefit the people.

In addition to propagating the consistency of Pakistani army action and rectitude, information operations must effective amplify

the heinous acts that the Taliban have committed against their fellow Pashtuns. Although the government and the military have

much to improve in the conduct of information operations, the Pakistani forces did implement some improvements in the conduct of

their operations in 2009–11. For example, during operations in Swat

during the spring of 2009, a discernible and apparently favorable

innovation was evident in the deliberate mass displacement of the

civilian population before the offensive to reduce civilian casualties

and better target the militants. Moreover, after clearing the area of

insurgents, Pakistani military forces cooperated with civilian officials to resettle internally displaced persons in order to reestablish

some notion of civilian administration and attempt some rebuilding

of the local economy. The long-term benefit of this effort remains

to be seen. During the Pakistani army’s operations in South

Waziristan in 2009–11, the Pakistani army also “experimented with

psychological operations, distributing leaflets supposedly from religious authorities and local tribes that warned the youth of false

jihad and blamed foreign militants for ushering destruction into the

tribal areas.”36

The Pakistani military has also better employed psychological

operations (PSYOPs) to counter the Taliban propaganda in South

Waziristan by air dropping leaflets in the areas (Miran Shah and

Mir Ali) with large concentrations of insurgents. The leaflets did

purport to emanate from the religious authorities, even citing the

Saudi Mufti-e-Azam Shaykh Abdul Aziz in its admonition to eschew faux jihad. Other leaflets targeted foreign fighters and impugned them for spreading unrest and inviting attack and

destruction. However, the effectiveness of these propaganda efforts

was questionable because the leaflets were printed in Urdu, which

neither the Arabs nor the Pashtuns in the tribal areas were likely

to read in large numbers. One can also infer from the low literacy

level in the FATA that this effort at influencing perceptions likely

failed to resonate widely and deeply. Subsequently, the Pakistanis

36 Lalwani, “The Pakistan Military’s Adaptation,” 11–12. The direct quotation is from page 12

of this article. 
The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011: Hard and Not Hopeful 177

did put to the test more sophisticated efforts at integrating ground

operations with PSYOPs, but the results remain unknown. This account also offers the debatable assertion that the negative publicity

attending the U.S. drone strikes, ones associated by perception with

the Pakistani army, has provided the Taliban with an “unquantifiable” but “massive” propaganda dividend. However, as discussed

below, another analysis of popular perceptions concerning drone

strikes does not necessarily support this argument.37

Research published in the last couple of years suggests that the

“Pakistanis are far from unified in their opposition to drone strikes.”

According to this analysis, there is growing evidence that seems to

demonstrate that many Pakistanis, particularly those in close proximity to the Taliban, do not oppose the U.S. drone war. Many in

the West perceive that the drone war in the tribal areas is exacerbating anti-Americanism in Pakistan. To be sure, the strikes seem

to be generally unpopular with Pakistanis. The Pakistani media regularly condemns the drone strikes, and even Pakistani senior leaders decry these strikes in public. However, even though there are

some who are prone to anti-Americanism, who likewise are inclined to opine against the strikes, the people in the FATA do not

necessarily perceive the strikes as violations of their sovereignty.

According to recent analysis, evidence from polling suggests that

the tribesmen are inclined to tolerate drone strikes that target foreign terrorists and Taliban leaders, such as the Mehsuds. In fact,

the public celebrated when a drone strike killed Baitullah Mehsud.

This analysis asserts that the people in the FATA—who have witnessed the Taliban murdering their leaders by the hundreds, destroying their schools, and flogging their women—favor drone

strikes.38

Moreover, most of the experts interviewed for this book—experts

such as C. Christine Fair, Peter Bergen, and Shaun Gregory, among

others—also support drone strikes but have varying views on how

they shape perceptions. Some consider drone strikes to be effective

in lethal effects but suggest that Title 50 of the U.S. Code precludes

37 Cloughley, Insurrection, Terrorism, and the Pakistani Army, 20–21. The directly quoted words

are from page 21 of this report.

38 See Brian G. Williams, “Pakistani Responses to the CIA’s Predator Drone Campaign against the

Taliban and al Qaeda,” Terrorism Monitor 7 (February 2010): 3–5. The direct quote is from page 5. 
178 War, Will, and Warlords

the United States from otherwise amplifying the information to influence the populations in FATA and Pakistan. As noted above, the

population in the FATA does favor drone strikes against foreign elements, with some caveats. On the other hand, although the unmanned aerial platform strikes may produce good effects in

disrupting Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership, they could have longterm unfavorable effects on information operations. Likewise, drone

strikes may indeed be effective in disrupting al-Qaeda and TTP

leaders, but the insurgents do capitalize on the civilian casualties

with their media operations when drones strikes occur, which may

mitigate their overall effectiveness.39

On the whole, the Coalition and the Afghan National Security

Forces in Afghanistan are more willing to allow journalists in war

areas. This is not the case in the FATA/Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Province, however. Access to journalists combined with some credible openness on the use of lethal force would help with drones

and ground operations. Drone strikes have pernicious effects that

exacerbate anti-Americanism within Pakistan’s educated elite. According to a report in the CTC Sentinel, “The paucity of contradictory information flowing into the FATA as well as the complete

dominance of the Taliban’s message means that the Taliban’s

twisted version of events is often the only one heard.” The Pakistani

Taliban, like their Afghan brethren, understand that the real war

unfolds in the media. However, the Pakistani government and its

security forces seem unable to either effectively counter the Taliban

media operations or physically shut down the Taliban’s principal

media studio, Amat. Amat propagates a continuous stream of proTaliban and anti-Pakistani military propaganda to shape the perceptions of the Pashtun population and the security forces. For

instance, one video labeled the Pakistani army as a box of soap and

purported that the army was cleansing Muslim brothers, a simple

but significant accusation in a Muslim state.40

The TTP has also employed persuasion, coercion, and armed

propaganda to good effect in the tribal areas. One video put forward

39 Fair, telephone interview, 21 January 2010. Bergen, telephone interview, 14 January 2010.

Nawaz, telephone interview, 21 January 2010. Gregory, telephone interview, 23 January 2010.

40 Schmidle, interview, 3 December 2009. See Arthur Keller, “Propaganda and Peace Deals: The

Taliban’s Information War in Pakistan,” CTC Sentinel 1, no. 8 (July 2008): 15–17. The direct

quote is from Keller, 16. 
The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011: Hard and Not Hopeful 179

a detailed argument on the duty of Pashtuns to follow their Pashtunwali code and to continue to provide hospitality to the Arab alQaeda guests. Other propaganda has emphasized the villainy of the

United States by amplifying the destruction of houses and the increase in orphans resulting from lethal strikes. The Pakistani Taliban

have also attacked newsstands and assassinated journalists for writing articles expressing unfavorable views about their movement.

They have likewise prosecuted an armed propaganda campaign

using coercion against Pashtun tribal leaders (maliks) and ordinary

Pashtun tribesmen. They have killed hundreds of Pashtun maliks

and tribal elders in the last several years, and they also employ night

letters to intimidate tribal leaders who might be inclined to support

the Pakistani government against the Taliban. In their regular killing

of ordinary tribesmen, the TTP’s motives may have been crime or

revenge, but for armed propaganda purposes, they pin the label of

“American spy” on the corpses. Though these victims seldom have

any link to the American government, the corpses are useful for

psychological warfare purposes. No amount of bombs or bullets will

overcome the kind of influence engendered in this Taliban propaganda war of guilt and fear. In other words, marksmanship training

and Kevlar vests will not alter the reality in tribal areas “or the near

total information dominance of the Taliban.”41

The societal tensions associated with decades of political religiosity stemming from deliberate policies begun under General Zia

also continue to influence context and perceptions in Pakistan. Religious parties will continue to operate in the political space through

coalitions of convenience, to apply pressure on what is a relatively

liberal tradition, to further marginalize minorities such as Christians

and Ahmedis, to implement harsher tenets of sharia and more public displays of piety, and to denounce Pakistan’s alliance with the

United States. Moreover, even if the public increasingly comes to

perceive the TTP as a threat and the Pakistani army gets better at

countering that threat, the Punjabi militants in Pakistan’s heartland

represent as much, or more, of an existential threat to the state because the Punjab is also now a main area for recruiting army officers and soldiers. The madrassa networks, along with such

41 Keller, “Propaganda and Peace Deals,” 16–17. The direct quote is from page 17. 
180 War, Will, and Warlords

ostensibly nonpolitical groups as Tablighi Jamaat, as well as the Islamic welfare organizations funded from the Arabian Peninsula,

will continue to influence the perceptions and opinions of the rural

and urban working masses. In this light, the continued and widespread Islamicization in Pakistan is a more serious problem than

the notion of Talibanization.42

Other scholarship published in the last couple of years supports

the view that Pakistan’s war of perceptions against extreme Islamist militancy goes well beyond the Taliban threat. In an article

from 2009, Ayesha Siddiqa asserted that Pakistan’s and America’s

failure to perceive the extremist threat beyond the Taliban precludes a holistic effective approach to the war on terror. In her

view, if Pakistan defeated the Pashtun Taliban insurgency tomorrow, it would not stop the growth of Islamist militancy in Pakistan.

Al-Qaeda is now purported to be in the Punjab districts that border

the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, and the Punjab has been the

home to terrorist groups since the 1980s. What’s more, the surge

in drone attacks against al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders in the tribal

areas has likely pushed them and their allies away from their FATA

sanctuaries to urban centers deep inside the Punjab or Sindh

Provinces. Although the public now identifies the militants in the

Punjab as Punjabi Taliban, these insurgents espouse the same

Salafist ideology as al-Qaeda, one that aspires to a return to the

halcyon days of puritanical Islam and the hegemony of the transregional caliphate. In fact, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba espouses doctrine

and aims that are no less Islamist and global than al-Qaeda’s. In

her piece, Siddiqa also identified another layer to the war of perceptions about the TTP—that the public loss of support for the

TTP has exacerbated tensions between the Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns in Pakistan, amplifying a long-standing perception of the

Pashtun tribes as the “perpetrators of violence.” She also admonished against misinterpreting the loss of sympathy for the TTP as

signifying any change in public attitudes about support for the war

in general. It has not.43

42 Paris, Prospects for Pakistan, 6–7. Direct quotation is from page 7. The term “Talibanization”

is from page 17 but appears in a host of works. Tablighi Jamaat translates to the “Society for

Spreading Faith.” This report also states that Tablighi Jamaat has allowed other violent militant

groups to actively recruit at its meetings. 

43 Siddiqa, “Jihadism in Pakistan,” 58 and 60–61. The direct quote is from page 58. 
The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011: Hard and Not Hopeful 181

Influencing perceptions among the Pashtuns in the tribal belt is

also about officials who involve themselves in illicit and corrupt

activities for personal economic gain, and it is also about justice.

According to one knowledgeable expert, “There is a powerful perception of the Taliban as a draconian but predictable enforcer of

justice.” The Pakistani Taliban’s narrative describes the government

as corrupt and venal. They also propagate the notion that their justice is better than the government courts because the Taliban exact

swift and impartial justice. In fact, when the population buys into

the Taliban program, they do see results, as extreme and imperfect

as they are. On the other hand, when they support the Pakistani

government, they see no results. This has an impact on influencing

whom the people support because it undermines their perceptions

about the legitimacy of the Pakistani state.44

It may also be the case that the Pakistani Taliban directly supports the Afghan Taliban. TTP insurgents can and do volunteer for

operations inside Afghanistan. The Quetta Shura effectively transferred guidance and control to internal Afghan and Pakistani mujahideen commanders during 2003–4. Between 2006 and 2007, after

Nek Mohammed was killed, the TTP became stronger and distanced itself from the Quetta Shura, which then began to be seen

as a revered but only titular overarching command element. However, the more territory that the Pakistan Taliban loses, the less capacity it will have to conduct successful training and recruitment.45

What has not been evident in any way thus far is any deliberate

effort by the government of Pakistan to overhaul the still heavily

xenophobic public educational curricula. This continues to play no

small role in influencing the public’s perception of Pakistan and

Islam, as well as how it views enemies, neighbors and nominal

“partners.” Likewise, it will be equally important for the government to aggressively regulate and curb the propagation of dogma

by the numerous Deobandi madrassas operating throughout the

tribal areas. A large part of a carefully considered, long-term solution would require more governance in the tribal areas and more

central government transparency and oversight for which madras44 Coll, interview, 3 December 2009. 

45 Mullick, telephone interview, 25 January 2010. 
182 War, Will, and Warlords

sas continue to employ radical Islamist dogma to shape the minds

of future jihadists. Another key factor that enables this widespread

proselytizing is the continuing stream of Saudi and Gulf state funds.

During 2009–11, Gulf funds were beginning to flow away from alQaeda and toward the Quetta Shura. According to a Pakistan security expert, funding now flows from the Gulf states principally to

the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani madrassas. Including and influencing the Saudis will be a crucial component in stemming the

flow of these funds and to any ultimate negotiated settlement.46

U.S.-Pakistani relations have consistently been characterized by

divergent aims. Pakistan has always persisted in getting something

that it needs, such as International Military Education and Training

stipends or supplementary funds, for cooperating with the United

States. One possibility for the U.S. to gain influence with the Pakistani polity would be to confer some qualified acknowledgement

of Pakistan’s nuclear status vis-à-vis India because it would potentially take the relationship to a new, higher level and because International Atomic Energy Agency protocols would actually create

more transparency and potential U.S. control over Pakistan’s extant

nuclear programs. Another step that would improve U.S.-Pakistan

relations would be to change the Coalition Support Fund to a mutual security agreement. Also, until the continuous tension between

India and Pakistan is resolved, the Pakistani military will never fully

and genuinely adapt to counterinsurgency. It will not fight the

Afghan Taliban or the Haqqani network in earnest while the Indian

threat still looms or is perceived through Pakistani military cultural

filters to be still looming. Even if India’s hostile intent toward Pakistan subsides, a full nine Indian corps are still poised and oriented

toward India’s western border with Pakistan, with 35 of 38 strike

airfields located along that same border.47

The Durand Line is not capable of being sealed as a de facto border, and the Taliban will continue to use it to flee into Pakistan for

sanctuary. Recognizing the line as the legitimate border would influence stability and some notion of normalcy in both Pakistan and

Afghanistan. According to Marty Stanton, a Pakistan expert at the

Centcom Pakistan-Afghanistan Center of Excellence, a rapproche46 Gregory, telephone interviews, 23 January and 9 February 2010. 

47 Nawaz, telephone interview, 21 January 2010. 
The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011: Hard and Not Hopeful 183

ment between the governments in Kabul and Islamabad is an important part of stabilizing both countries. Both governments should

formally accept the Durand Line as the official border. In this view,

Afghanistan should formulate and sign a nonaggression treaty with

Pakistan and formally pledge to limit Indian activities in Afghanistan.

Inside Afghanistan, the government should allow the people in the

provinces to elect their own provincial governors in order to allow

the Pashtun populations to genuinely govern themselves to some degree. Afghanistan should return to the pre-1973 model and methods

that worked, with an emphasis on local governance rather than the

emphasis on an overly centralized and presidentially empowered

government it has pursued since this form of government was codified by the Bonn Process between 2001 and 2004.48

Changing Pakistani strategic and military culture will take time,

especially considering that India still poses a discernible threat.

America, on the other hand, never rates more than 20 percent favorable support among the Pakistani population in most polls. In

information operations, the United States and Pakistan need to get

much better at trumpeting the successful actions of Coalition forces,

U.S. forces, and the Pakistani government. One message that would

resonate with Pakistani public perceptions would be to spotlight

and amplify when the Taliban have or are preparing to attack

schools and other soft targets where civilians, women, and children

are likely to congregate. As lamentable as the Pakistani educational

system is, Pakistanis still value education for their children very

much. Both the Pakistani and the Afghan Taliban’s armed propaganda attacks have targeted schools for destruction and singled out

teachers for death. When the Taliban on either side of the Durand

Line perpetrate atrocities that result in the arbitrary and unjust

killings of innocent women and children, this presents a vulnerability that both Pakistan and its U.S. benefactors should, but have

yet to, fully exploit in the information war. As other examples of

violations of acceptable norms of conduct and war, in 2011 some

Taliban-linked militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan began to either

kidnap or recruit children suicide bombers as young as 10 years

48 Ibid.; Martin Stanton, interview, U.S. Centcom Headquarters, Tampa, FL, 16 December 2009.

Retired U.S. Army Colonel Stanton is a Pakistan specialist with years of experience in the region.

He is currently the deputy of the Centcom Pakistan-Afghanistan Center of Excellence.
184 War, Will, and Warlords

old, and in Afghanistan, the insurgents also began to target and

shoot at medical evacuation helicopters.49

In terms of public diplomacy, the U.S. government tends to focus

too much on trying to directly reduce anti-American perceptions.

Instead, America would better help influence perceptions in Pakistan if it focused its public diplomacy on encouraging Pakistanis

to “see cooperation against militancy and extremism as being in

their own interest.” This would require American politicians as well

as diplomats to “avoid framing the neo-Taliban insurgency in religious terms”; to adopt a narrative of common threats and common

interests; and to amplify the draconian and drab realities of life

under Taliban rule, in both the tribal areas and the settled areas.

The U.S., according to one assessment, should also seek out opportunities to promote more dialogue with religious leaders to amplify the role of American aid and assistance in cultivating political

and social stability. In this vein, instead of seeking out the typical

Muslim leader whom the United States perceives to be moderate

according to its standards of liberalism, America must find Muslim

interlocutors who are both influential and moderate within “their

own contexts.” The U.S. government could also better help Pakistan help its people in the tribal areas and influence perceptions

by leading an expanded consortium of Pakistan’s partners and

friends to optimize the development effort in the FATA. This consortium might help Pakistan integrate the civilian side of its government to better administer reform and development.50

The challenge lies in the reality that the United States perceives itself to have too little leverage over Pakistani policy and behavior. This

is a result of a failure in imagination and of buying in to Pakistan’s

eloquent, persistent, and dishonest narrative refrain. This is, indeed,

untrue because the U.S. government actually has more latent leverage

over Pakistan than the converse. However, when America applies

pressure, Pakistan typically applies counterpressure to hold America

and its Coalition partners hostage over flight permissions, intelligence

cooperation, nuclear issues, and logistical routes through Pakistan.

Another narrative is for the Pakistanis to threaten the United States

49 Bergen, telephone interview, 14 January 2010.

50 Joshua T. White, Pakistan’s Islamist Frontier (Arlington, VA: Center on Faith and International

Affairs, 2008), 7–8. The direct quotations are from page 7. 
The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011: Hard and Not Hopeful 185

about pushing them too hard because if the U.S now believes that

the Pakistanis are untrustworthy allies, just imagine what it would

be like if they were our declared enemies, working deliberately

against U.S. interests. Senior Pakistani military leaders have been observed openly mocking how well they duped the U.S. government

during the Musharraf/Bush years. Essentially, the Pakistanis seem to

do what they want and say what they need to. Pakistan will not or

cannot do what is required in reeling in the madrassa problem. Deradicalizing the madrassas and providing better, and more objective,

public education options would be a big step in the right direction.

In pushing Pakistan to stabilize the border tribal areas, however, the

U.S. should not push Pakistan over the precipice of failure and instability. The Kerry-Lugar-Berman legislation is but one instrument for

the United States to apply leverage with the object of modifying Pakistan’s behavior. This is notwithstanding the fact that the Pakistanis

genuinely loathe the implications of this legislation because it aims

to circumscribe their duplicitous machinations by imposing conditions on the flow of aid dollars and arms transfer and support funds.

Kerry-Lugar-Berman, codified as U.S. law, prescribes the following

conditions for arms transfers for years 2010 through 2014, upon certification by the Secretary of State. Pakistan must: 

1) Demonstrate a sustained commitment to and make

significant efforts towards combating terrorist groups; 

2) Cease support, including by any elements within the

Pakistan military or its intelligence agency, to extremist

and terrorist groups; 

3) Prevent al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated terrorist

groups such as Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed from operating in the territory of Pakistan; 

4) Close terrorist camps in the FATA; and 

5) Dismantle terrorist bases of operations in other parts

of the country.51

For India and Pakistan, only a strategic breakthrough of the

51 Gregory, telephone interviews, 23 January and 9 February 2010. For more insight on U.S. conditions, Pakistani noncompliance, and U.S. legislation, see C. Christine Fair, Obama’s New AfPak Strategy: Can “Clear, Hold, Build, Transfer” Work? Afghanistan Papers No. 6. (Waterloo,

Canada: Center for International Governance Innovation [CIGI], 2010), 17–19.
186 War, Will, and Warlords

greatest magnitude will normalize relations. The United States must

work in earnest through diplomacy and influence the regional actors to convince the Pakistani army that its corporate identity is not

wedded exclusively to preparing for war with India or with fomenting insurgency and terrorism against Indian interests in the region.

Pakistan’s economic growth is in essence linked to India’s rapid

growth, whether the Pakistani elite is willing to recognize this or

not. Pakistan cannot sustain military modernization without that

economic growth. Moreover, increases in economic cooperation

will increase shared economic interests while at the same time they

will bring more prosperity to both Pakistan and India. There is an

unhelpful paradox that characterizes the typically stalled negotiations between Pakistan and India: Pakistan withholds political concessions because it feels vulnerable, and India withholds economic

concessions because Pakistan wants them. Normalizing relations

with Iran would also be hugely helpful. Also helpful would be to

enlist China to continue to engage more economically and diplomatically because Eurasian and South Asian long-term security and

stability are in China’s interests as well.52

It should by be exceedingly evident to both the U.S. and Pakistani leadership that the relationship needs to move beyond one

of sporadic and short-term expediency and duplicity and to move

forward toward something like an enduring strategic partnership,

which is more permanent and steadfast in galvanizing trust on both

sides. More than just consulting Pakistan on its grand strategic decisions, America should include Pakistan as a player in any regional

arrangements for stabilizing South Asia. Pakistan, instead of waiting it out and hedging about the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan,

would stand itself in better stead by actively engaging with NATO

and the other essential regional players to forge a lasting strategic

solution. One possible point of departure is to consider whether

the ISI can play a useful and helpful role in bringing about a political settlement in Afghanistan. The crux of Pakistan’s paranoia,

though, compels it to see its immediate security interests served by

expanding the influence and power of it Afghan Taliban proxies.

The key in influencing and modifying Pakistan’s behavior to be52 Coll, interview, 3 December 2009. 
The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011: Hard and Not Hopeful 187

come more convergent with U.S. strategic imperatives in the region

is to figure out what Pakistani desires and what it expects from the

relationship in the long term. If the United States, India, and

Afghanistan were to reconcile their expectations and address each

other’s grievances, might this not present some possibility of shaping and modifying the Pakistanis’ perceptions and security calculations to a degree that they would willingly serve as a bridge for a

peaceful solution between U.S./NATO and the Pashtuns?53

Postscript

Ultimately, the U.S.-led Coalition and its Afghan partners cannot

succeed against the Afghan Taliban insurgency without the willing

and capable support of the Pakistani government, army, and public.

This chapter and the previous one examined the efforts to counter

insurgents and militants on both sides of the Durand Line during

2009–11 There is some good news in that both counterinsurgencies

showed some discernible, though limited, improvements in building legitimacy, credibly employing force to protect the populations,

and influencing perceptions to support their secular governments

on the one hand and to oppose Islamist militancy on the other. Furthermore, operational momentum in the Afghanistan campaign by

2011 supported a more positive outlook for the prospects of stability

and peace among the Pashtuns. In Afghanistan, Operation Together

seemed to be a well-informed, well-planned, and well-executed test

for counterinsurgency practices that the Coalition can hone and use

as a benchmark for future operations in the Afghan Taliban heartland. Operation Moshtarak continues to secure and build security

and governance along the Helmand River Valley at the time of this

writing. Moreover, decisive operations in Regional Command South

under the auspices of Operation Hamkari began in earnest during

September 2010 and continued through 2011 to secure and build

key areas in city of Kandahar and its environs. Partnered Afghan

and Coalition security operations have wrested safe havens away

from the Taliban in the districts of Zharey and Panjwa’i, which outlay Kandahar proper. In both central Helmand and the environs of

Kandahar, combined forces have arrested and are increasingly re53 Paris, Prospects for Pakistan, 9–10. 
188 War, Will, and Warlords

versing the momentum in favor of the Afghan government and the

Coalition. These gains are still reversible, and although the results

of the holding and building phases of Operation Hamkari await the

2012 fighting season to confirm their permanency, the final outcome of Operation Hamkari will be telling in that Kandahar and its

environs represent the spiritual, philosophical, and physical epicenter of the principally Pashtun Taliban movement. Additionally,

the fact that Pakistani authorities captured several senior Afghan

Taliban commanders during early 2010 provided some degree of

benefit in disrupting the Taliban’s capacity to command and control, Pakistan’s dubious intentions notwithstanding.

The stark reality is that the challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan are distinct but linked. If one fails, both may fail. Only successful and sustainable stability and security within the Pashtun

Belt, on both sides of the Durand Line, can undermine the aims of

the Taliban. What’s more, it is imperative that the indigenous civilian and military leadership at all levels in both Pakistan and

Afghanistan exhibit the will and develop the capacity to provide

better and relatively less-corrupt administration to address the

grievances and meet the expectations of their populations. The

United States and its Western partners’ capacity to leverage conditions to compel host-nation improvements are also circumscribed

in both cases. In comparison, despite Karzai’s obduracy, the United

States has more leverage to influence the Afghan government, given

the leaders, resources, and forces it has invested there after more

than 10 years of war. Pakistan is the epicenter of local and global

Islamist militancy and is the exponentially more complex part of

the strategic problem. The progress in Pakistan has been more limited, and its arsenal of nuclear weapons combine with metastasizing and coalescing Islamist militant groups to augur worst-case

outcomes of nightmarish magnitude for regional and transregional

security. The limited number of U.S. troops in Pakistan and the U.S.

perception that Pakistan has more leverage in the transactional bilateral relationship between the two states constrains America’s

ability to influence Pakistan’s will and skill to counter its militants,

as well as its capacity to act against the Afghan insurgents who

benefit from sanctuary there. However flawed, in 2010–11, before

the bin Laden raid in May 2011, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship was
The Pashtun Belt in Pakistan, 2009–2011: Hard and Not Hopeful 189

at one of the highest historical points in trust, cooperation, and

comity since the war on terrorism began, one not likely to be manifested in the near future.

The fact is the “United States went into Afghanistan without a

comprehensive plan for winning the war beyond the military ouster

of the Taliban, or for the socio-economic rehabilitation of the country after decades of war.” Also, for the first several years, the U.S.

was apparently uninformed and inattentive about what it needed

to do to help Pakistan adapt itself to defeat its own blossoming insurgency. As a result, most of the Pakistanis’ operations and actions

until 2009 took the form of half-measured punitive raids and unenforceable peace deals that helped stimulate an expansion of insurgency and terrorism in and around the tribal areas and the

settled areas. Notwithstanding the historical truism that few counterinsurgencies succeed by tolerating massive insurgent external

support and sanctuary, at one point Pakistan was transshipping 80

percent of the cargo and 40 percent of the fuel to be consumed by

Coalition forces in Afghanistan, in addition to being a Taliban sanctuary. This fact imposed severe limitations on U.S. freedom of action for special operations forces inside Pakistan and presented a

big point of counterleverage for the government of Pakistan vis-àvis American demands to do more. A successful approach to pacifying the tribal areas will ultimately require much better joint

cooperation between the United States, Afghanistan, and Pakistan

to move toward countering the Taliban, while also garnering the

support of significant portions of those populations. The next chapter of this study will draw conclusions from these two distinct but

linked wars and proffer policy implications that should be topical,

and hopefully helpful, in thinking about future prospects and solutions in South Asia, and for the military in general.54

54 Nawaz, FATA—A Most Dangerous Place, 10–11. Direct quote is from page 10.

6

THE PROSPECTS FOR PEACE: ANARCHISTAN

OR PERFIDISTAN? 

The irony of history is inexorable.

—Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

The most remote place on earth has become the most

dangerous.

—Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason, “No Sign until the Burst of Fire” 

I

ronically, the Soviet government ordered its armed forces to invade

Afghanistan, but the Soviets, with a military culture that almost

exclusively espoused orthodoxy and conventionality in their way

of war, did not have the appropriate mindset or adaptability for success in counterinsurgency. Both the mountainous terrain and the

enemy in Afghanistan were ideally suited for guerrilla warfare. There

were no conventional “fronts” or “rears” to penetrate with massed

advances of heavy armor forces. The Soviets faced an unorthodox,

tenacious, and agile enemy. The insurgents were able to use guerrilla

hit-and-run tactics to mitigate the Soviet forces’ superiority in combat

systems. The contradiction of will and resilience, and the tolerance of

pain, that inheres in the logic of irregular wars and counterinsurgency

was also a determining factor in the Soviet failure in Afghanistan. The

Soviet Union was willing to accept far fewer casualties than the mujahideen were willing to accept. In a counterinsurgency, the weaker

side has two options—victory or death. The great power’s options, on

the other hand, are victory or going home. Consequently, the goal of

a quick and decisive victory for the Soviets quickly became unrealistic

because the Afghan mujahideen fought a guerrilla war against the Soviets to protract the war and exhaust their will.1

The U.S. war in Afghanistan differs from the Soviet war there because America is fighting against an enemy who attacked its homeland and who continues to threaten its citizens and its soil. However,

one can surmise from the spotty efforts to counter militants on both

191

1 Cassidy, Russia in Afghanistan and Chechnya, 33.
192 War, Will, and Warlords

sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border until 2009, that these kinds

of irregular wars against tribal warrior cultures are very difficult for

militaries with deep-seated propensities toward high-intensity conventional wars. This factor was particularly salient in both cases. For

most of the previous century, the U.S. military preferred the conventional paradigm and marginalized the unconventional model. The

U.S. military’s interpretation of its Vietnam War experience strengthened an enduring aversion to counterinsurgency and caused it to redouble its conventional efforts. The Gulf War perpetuated this

miscomprehension about the kind of wars the United States would

face and caused it to congratulate itself for “validating” the lessons

of Vietnam. Even the debacle in Somalia could not shock the Pentagon out of its orthodoxy. For the decade between the Gulf War and

the U.S. war in Afghanistan, the American defense establishment infatuated itself with a perceived technologically enabled revolution

in military affairs for which America, because of its technological

prowess, would be the principal beneficiary. 

When this war began the Pakistani army was likewise almost exclusively trained, equipped, and organized to fight a high-intensity conventional war with India. In fact, the Pakistani army perceives its

raison d'être and credibility as being inextricably wedded to defending

the state of Pakistan against an invasion by its existential enemy, India.

On numerous occasions, the Pakistani army has usurped what in a

democracy should be the civilian supremacy of its state and rhetorically justified these usurpations with the rationale that only the army

could run the state with sufficient efficacy to defend Pakistan from

India. Pakistan has a large conventional army, but it is still a weak and

less-developed country. Both the American military and the Pakistani

military began the war with embedded institutional and structural

propensities for conventional war. The United States retained these

preferences for over a decade after its great Soviet nemesis collapsed,

but Pakistan’s existential and traditional nemesis still exists, in both

capacity and intent. The Pakistani forces did adapt, but much less so

and more inadequately than American forces did, because Pakistan

has a weaker military in every way and because it is still predominantly

focused on the Indian armed forces. The other irony is that Pakistan

has still exhibited only a marginal capacity to counter militants in the

tribal areas, while Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate
The Prospects for Peace: Anarchistan or Perfidistan 193

(ISI) and other elements, have historically proven adept at fomenting

insurgency and terrorism in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Pakistan continues to play this double game, and the duplicity and perfidy engendered in its support of proxies have earned Pakistan the epithet

Perfidistan from this author. It is a fair one, even if overstated.

Anarchistan is hyperbolic, but it is a more accurate moniker than

Perfidistan. It is also a more justifiable appellation than Yaghestan, because the latter implies that Afghanistan is not governable while the

former more correctly implies that Afghanistan has been without legitimate rulers during periods of its history. Afghanistan is governable

in ways consistent with the Afghan people’s expectations and societal

norms. The near century of relatively continuous and stable rule that

preceded the beginning of unrest attending Zahir Shah’s overthrow in

1973 testifies to the fact that it is not impossible to govern Afghanistan.

It is also true that the Pashtun tribal areas that abut and overlap the

Durand Line represent remote, austere, and inhospitable areas; these

regions also currently pose the biggest danger to stability in South Asia

and to the security of Europe and the United States. This is because it

is in these sanctuaries that al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani

Taliban, the Haqqani network, and other Islamists cooperate, coalesce,

recruit, train, plan, equip, and rest for insurgent and terrorist actions

against Afghans, Pakistanis, Indians, Coalition forces, and citizens in

Europe and America. Fully countering the insurgencies on both sides

of the border will reduce and deny the areas as sanctuary to these

groups. To do that, Pakistani and Afghan civilian agencies and security

forces need to improve legitimate governance and protect the populations to win the war of influence and perceptions. The next sections

distill the previous analyses expounded in this book.

The Pursuit of Evil: 2001–2009

Evil can only triumph when good men remain silent.2

—Edmund Burke

Al-Qaeda embodies an evil that is not banal but is innovative

and ruthless, absent any compunctions or constraints in terms of

2 This was originally an Edmund Burke quote that has been paraphrased and distilled over time.

Burke originally conveyed this idea in a speech to Parliament titled “Thoughts on the Causes of the

Present Discontent,” on 23 April 1770. The original wording is, “When bad men combine, the good

must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
194 War, Will, and Warlords

killing, even massacring, innocent civilians. In terms of prosecuting

violent attacks against civilians, al-Qaeda proved on 11 September

2001 that its designs had no limits because its leaders and plotters

were capable of imagining the unimaginable in horrific terms. The

U.S. response was to pursue this organization and its associated

malefactors with the help of Pakistan and other partners. The desire

to exact vengeance was the catalyst for action against al-Qaeda’s

core leaders and their Taliban hosts, but the consequences and responsibilities of that action were not thought through within any

grand strategic context or in view of long-term ends for either

Afghanistan or Pakistan. The consequences of this hubris were actions and methods that also engendered the killing—inadvertent or

not—of innocent men, women, and children as a result of an overreliance on airpower and firepower in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

While all accidents are not avoidable, killing too many innocents

while pursuing the enemy nonetheless creates perceptions among

the Pashtun population of unjust and malign intentions on the part

of America and its Pakistani partners. A misunderstanding of the

Pashtun tribal areas; a lack of leadership and doctrine for counterinsurgency; a tendency to focus on hunting and killing terrorists

on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border; too few forces

equipped for full-measure counterinsurgency; and a reliance on

firepower platforms designed for war on the plains of Germany and

in the Indus Valley of the Punjab, all of these contributed to civilian

casualties that either catalyzed or revived the support for and participation in the metastasizing Islamist insurgencies in Pakistan and

Afghanistan from 2004 to 2007. 

Legitimacy 

This section recapitulates those grievances of the Afghan and

Pakistani people that helped catalyze the insurgencies from 2002

forward. It also reviews what the Afghan government and security

forces did or did not do to ameliorate or exacerbate those grievances. From the government and the Coalition, the Afghan people

expected security, justice, public accountability, and schools for

their children. However, there was no strategy for stabilizing the

country after the fall of the Taliban. Out of expediency, the U.S.-
The Prospects for Peace: Anarchistan or Perfidistan 195

led Coalition employed warlords and militias to compensate for a

failure in strategy and a dearth of resources. Warlord predations resumed anew, as many of these characters began again to exploit

and disaffect the people. Close associates of these warlords began

appearing in the provincial administrations. Alliances with warlords

undermined the perception of legitimacy and impaired the functionality of government institutions. The composition and activities

of the Afghan Military Forces, which were principally non-Pashtun

and led by warlords, also aggravated Pashtuns inside and outside

of the Taliban. The neo-Taliban drew support from these Pashtun

grievances. They also appealed to the populace’s desire for security,

order, and justice in response to inept, corrupt, or exploitative

provincial governments. Many of these factors persuaded local

leaders and tribal elders to side with the insurgents for the time

being. This increased the perception of legitimacy for the jihad

causes in Afghanistan and Iraq, resulting in greater support for the

insurgency. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq also added impetus for

Afghans to wage jihad against America.

In Pakistan, the most important points of grievance among the

population and the insurgents were the U.S. invasion of

Afghanistan; Pakistan’s abandonment of the Taliban and embrace

of the United States in the war on terror; and the U.S. invasion of

Iraq. Other factors that helped catalyze the insurgency were the exodus of al-Qaeda and former Taliban from Afghanistan to Pakistan’s

tribal areas after their defeat, and the victory of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal in the Pakistani parliamentary elections during 2002.

These two factors stimulated popular support for the Islamist insurgencies in mutually reinforcing ways. In the tribal areas of Pakistan specifically, the unprecedented appearance of Pakistani army

forces and the continued exclusion of Pashtuns from the mainstream political system were key grievances. Moreover, the Pakistani army’s heavy-handed employment of its forces in the tribal

areas, and the U.S. reliance on drone strikes there, also exacerbated

the people’s grievances and stimulated more support for the insurgents and militants in some instances. 

The final catalyst for an insurgency aimed at the Pakistani state

was the government’s assault on the Red Mosque in July 2007. It

is also important to note that by 2001 radical Islam was deeply in-
196 War, Will, and Warlords

terwoven into most of Pakistan’s public and private school curricula

as a result of former Pakistani general-cum-dictator Zia’s Islamist

politics, as well as by his successors’ continuance of his policies.

This influence made the Pakistani public more amenable to support

the Taliban. So, when Pakistan pledged that it was siding with the

United States in the war in Afghanistan, this represented a security

policy that some among its government elites, and among the Pakistani population, viewed as inimical to Pakistan’s security interests. Last, Pakistan’s cooperation with the United Stated must be

examined within the context of deep-seated anti-Americanism. By

the fall of 2001, Pakistan’s polity and public were anti-American as

a result of both general American policy omissions after the SovietAfghan War and specific Pakistani xenophobic perspectives inculcated from its educational curricula. 

Force

This portion reviews the leadership, doctrine, and organization

for countering insurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It also distills how efforts proceeded in both cases. In 2001, the American

military’s leadership, organization, and doctrine were prepared for

conventional war against similarly organized adversaries. In

Afghanistan, the U.S. government and military, along with their

partners, helped catalyze the insurgency by employing too few of

the wrong kinds of forces encumbered by unwieldy and disjointed

command arrangements. An overreliance on airpower and directaction lethal raids both derived from and compounded the fact that

there were too few of the wrong kind of forces because the killing

of the wrong Afghans—civilians and women, for example—tended

to generate more recruits for the reviving insurgency. It was a military that had absorbed almost none of the lessons it should have

learned from countering insurgencies in Vietnam and earlier conflicts. From Vietnam and other counterinsurgency experiences, the

U.S. military should have learned the imperative in counterinsurgency for a command and control structure that was capable of

unifying and integrating indigenous and allied military forces, paramilitary organizations, and other agencies. Lessons from Vietnam

pointed to the necessity of establishing unity of command to ensure
The Prospects for Peace: Anarchistan or Perfidistan 197

the effectiveness of military operations and advisory activities. 

That experience also suggested that an organization similar to

the Civil Operations and Rural Development Support (CORDS)

would have been the best way to organize advisors and reconstruction. The U.S. government and military that went into Afghanistan

also had no on-the-shelf organization, capability, or corps of advisors who were ready to train and equip indigenous armies on a

massive scale. Likewise, the U.S. leaders who commanded in

Afghanistan during the first years of the resurgent insurgency generally deployed with little knowledge of counterinsurgency. They

were compelled to adapt in contact with the insurgents because the

reality that sound counterinsurgency was founded on clearing,

holding, and building the populated areas did not emerge from the

dustbin of expurgated lessons in U.S. Department of Defense doctrine until 2005 and 2006. This extemporaneous approach for stabilizing Afghanistan sought to rely on the least expensive

investments that its senior leaders could conceive of, ones that principally focused on the military instrument and punitive displays of

lethal force. This approach animated a host of adversaries and created conditions that helped catalyze the neo-Taliban. What it did

not do very well was produce stability. 

Between 2002 and 2009, the Taliban in Pakistan, in collusion

with al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups, slowly began to impose

their extreme Islamist way of life on the people in the tribal areas.

Among the reasons for this were the lack of governance, a paucity

of resources for development and services, and no notion of credible government-provided security and justice. The way in which

the Pakistani security forces operated in the tribal areas further undermined their efforts in achieving the public support and legitimacy required to sustain those actions. The reasons for this were

fourfold. First, the Pakistani security forces lacked the capacity to

clear and hold areas while winning the support of the local population. This is related directly to Islamabad’s reluctance to espouse

counterinsurgency, both operationally and doctrinally. As a result,

the Pakistani military operations in the tribal areas precipitated the

serious displacement and destruction of local populations and property. Second, while the Pakistani army has been increasingly more

willing to prosecute operations against militant groups it views as
198 War, Will, and Warlords

a threat to Pakistan, the army has been reluctant until now to carry

out operations against the Afghan Taliban. This deliberate policy

of supporting the ostensibly “good” militants has stressed Pakistan’s society and military and endangered the state because its

surrogates have turned against it on occasion. Third, domestic political considerations shaped army decisions because the army continued to moderate its actions in view of retaining its traditional

popularity. Until 2009, a large number of Pakistan citizens were

leery of operations targeting fellow citizens. Some Pakistanis even

impugned the government for attacking fellow Pakistanis on behalf

of Washington. Fourth, during 2001–9, military and civilian institutions in Pakistan proved unable to integrate political, economic,

and social development and improvements with their military operations. Until the spring of 2009, the Pakistanis were unwilling or

unable to hold areas after they cleared them because they had no

civil-military plans and no civil-military capacity for implementing

any plans.

Information Operations 

This section reviews how well the insurgents and counterinsurgents in both cases integrated information operations and security

operations up until 2009 to persuade the relevant populations of

the legitimacy of their enterprises and actions. The truth is that it

is more difficult and costly for the counterinsurgent to maintain legitimacy and order than it is for insurgents to undermine order and

legitimacy. From the outset, the Taliban messages portrayed the

Coalition as infidel foreign invaders trying to impose their Christian

democratic ways. When Western security forces initiated lethal operations that inadvertently result in alleged civilian casualties, the

Taliban were often quicker to initiate media messages that distorted

the actual consequences. The neo-Taliban adapted and embraced

media and information operations much more so than the original

movement. Emulating al-Qaeda’s successes with information warfare, the Taliban began to heavily rely on media as a powerful instrument in waging armed propaganda. The number of

Coalition-induced “civilian casualties” became an important target

for the Taliban’s information operations. The Taliban also began to
The Prospects for Peace: Anarchistan or Perfidistan 199

attack Coalition forces from populated areas to bait them into conducting air strikes, which would inevitably kill civilians. 

The Taliban’s focus on civilian casualties in their media operations has brought them four readily discernible advantages: a decrease in popular support and perceived government legitimacy;

an increase in guerrilla recruits; impediments to Coalition lethal

military action when excessive civilian casualties, or a series of

civilian casualty incidents, have precipitated operational pauses because of angry reactions by the Afghan government or ordinary

Afghans; and an increase in negative pressure on the public in

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries. The Afghan

Taliban have also proven ruthlessly adept at using armed propaganda for psychological effect, among which suicide attacks have

become a key and powerful component of their strategy to erode

the Coalition’s will. Suicide bombings were unprecedented in

Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan War but have been trending

upward ever since their introduction in 2003. The Afghan Taliban

has also expanded their affiliations with a wider array of foreign

and indigenous jihad movements who reside in Pakistan’s tribal

areas. They are now as inclined as other Muslim militants to raise

their concerns for the plight of other jihads worldwide. In contrast,

information operations and strategic communication were not the

strong suits of the U.S. government and the U.S. military when this

war began. For all his flaws, the former Secretary of Defense Donald

Rumsfeld even recognized during the first five years of the wars in

Afghanistan and Pakistan that the enemies of the United States

were better at influence and media operations than the U.S. government was. 

The Islamist doctrine that animates the Pakistani Taliban relies

on a fertile field of deep-seated Islamist xenophobia and illiteracy.

The six-decade-long imperfect and inconsistent relationship between the United States and Pakistan has contributed to the current

situation. The U.S. deliberately pursued a policy of allying with

despots and supporting the unrequited proliferation of Islamist ideology to animate a holy war against the Soviets. As alluded to earlier in this book, General Zia al-Haq had the full support of the

United States in fomenting jihad against the Soviet occupation, and

his zeal, Islamist leanings, and instrumental conflation of politics
200 War, Will, and Warlords

with Islam have had the most lasting and pernicious effects on the

proliferation of Islamist militancy in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Central Intelligence Agency Director William J. Casey and Texas Congressman Charles N. “Charlie” Wilson knowingly supported the

Afghan mujahideen’s holy war against the Soviets, but they did not

foresee the long-term consequences of that rather shortsighted approach. Over three decades later, the Coalition has been fighting

for over 10 years in an effort to reverse this conspicuous display of

an American strategic attention deficit in terms of South Asia and

Pakistan. This was exceptionally ill-conceived, and the consequences are manifest in the Pashtun Belt where a deep and wide

anti-Americanism, predating September 2001, influenced the public’s receptivity to both Pakistan’s and America’s efforts to influence

it by words and actions. The U.S. government also did not excel in

information operations because it did not dedicate any persistent

public diplomacy programs to the Federally Administered Tribal

Areas (FATA). The public in Pakistan is always highly suspect of

U.S. activities in the country, and actions such as the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 served to increase the Pakistani public’s mistrust of the Unites States. Likewise, while America’s drone program

has been effective in disrupting Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders, it has

not been an effective tool for improving U.S. and Pakistani influence over the tribal populations because a number of innocent

civilian deaths collateral to the drone strikes have made their popularity questionable and exploitable by anti-U.S. factions in the

media. 

The Pakistani army’s sledgehammer approach to pacification was

also counterproductive in a war to influence perceptions. Pakistan’s

schools, both secular and sectarian, have also served to bend the

conceptions of generations of Pakistanis and Pashtuns toward the

superiority of conservative Sunni Islam over all other sects and religions. The Deobandi madrassas proselytize puritanical Salafist Islamist doctrine and receive funding principally from Saudi Arabia,

the Gulf states, and other Sunni contributors. Three distinct but

similar strands of Islamist creed converge and create relatively complementary ideological effects in Pakistan’s and Afghanistan’s border areas. These are the Wahhabist propensities, which stem from

longstanding Saudi influence and funding; the Deobandist influence
The Prospects for Peace: Anarchistan or Perfidistan 201

that emerged in nineteenth-century India but is somewhat similar

to the Wahhabist doctrine and has tangential links to the Arabian

Peninsula; and the Salafist, or purist, approach to the fundaments

of early Islam that connects both. Pakistan’s public education may

have been more significant than the madrassas as a source of militants. The subjective chauvinism and Islamicization of Pakistan’s

public education policy present wider challenges for information

operations in the context of current security challenges. Lastly, the

Pakistani Taliban’s armed propaganda and information narrative is

more extreme still than their Afghan brothers’ armed violence and

intimidation. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP; also referred to

as the Pakistani Taliban) and the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM) have targeted health workers for assassination, and

their Islamist agenda is also misogynistic, targeting women for separation in word and deed. In other words, the Draconian and cruel

worldview imposed by the Taliban discriminates against women

and greatly curtails their individual rights. This agenda prescribes

how women dress, proscribes work for them, and proscribes their

going to school in the worst instances. The Taliban’s media narrative also frequently impugned the Islamabad regime for being allied

to “infidels,” which allowed the Taliban to justify to their roles in

violent attacks against civilian officials.

The Pursuit of Peace: 2009–2011

The new administration in Washington would do well to remember who its true enemies are, while not trying to wage

war against an entire people who over 2,500 years of recorded

history have always defied conquest.

—Stephen Tanner, Afghanistan

There is reason for qualified optimism about operations in the

Pashtun Belt as of the end of 2011. It seems that civilian and military leaders on both sides of the problem recognize the salience of

the above quote. The effort will not succeed as a result of killing

too many of the wrong Pashtuns because according to the logic of

counterinsurgency arithmetic in the Pashtun Belt, this produces an

exponential increase in insurgent recruits. The true enemies are the

absence of an education that is not distorted by Islamist dogma and

the fickle nature of South Asian political and security machinations.
202 War, Will, and Warlords

The Indian and Pakistani security dilemma and Kashmir are the

real impediments to stability. However, three significant improvements occurred that make the 2009–11 time period stand out from

the first eight or so years in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

The first one is twofold: the U.S. leadership has recognized that

the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan must be won because of the

grave threat engendered by al-Qaeda, and that the best way to go

about this is a complementary approach to counterinsurgency that

protects the population, improves administration, and wins the perception of the people. Second, it seems possible, but not certain, that

portions of the Pakistani leadership and population have experienced

a shift in perception, seeing the Pakistani Taliban as a more genuine

threat to the state and its citizens. As a consequence, 2009–11 witnessed more willingness in Pakistan to go after the TTP and TNSM,

as both militant groups are now viewed as posing more of a threat to

Pakistan itself. There is little empirical evidence yet that the Pakistanis

are willing to help defeat the Afghan Taliban, although February of

2010 saw Pakistanis arrest senior Afghan Taliban in a number unprecedented since the beginning of the war. Third, the U.S. leadership

has finally acknowledged that the efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan

must be complementary and that the essence, the hub of the threat,

emanates from Pakistan’s border areas. 

Legitimacy

The grievances of much of the Afghan population now relate to

a gap between what people expect from the government and the

security forces and what they experience and perceive as corrupt

governance, insecurity, and continued poverty. The general population is also not enamored of the Taliban’s extreme rule or its ideology. Efforts to build and sustain legitimacy now manifest

discernible, if incomplete, improvements after years of parsimony

on the part of the U.S government in terms of emphasis, resources,

and forces. Karzai’s government has struggled with perceived legitimacy because of the endemic corruption, his associations with

warlords, and the ostensibly fraudulent August 2009 presidential

election. His association with the non-Muslim, Western-dominated

International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is also an exploitable

vulnerability in terms of legitimacy. 
The Prospects for Peace: Anarchistan or Perfidistan 203

The difference in 2009–11 is that the senior U.S. civilian and military leaders understood that efforts in Afghanistan will not meet

with success in the end if the Afghan people do not believe in their

government. The current campaign plan is fully partnered with

Afghans and civilian agencies. Its logic focuses on mobilizing the

Afghans against the Taliban by providing security, justice, and some

acceptable notion of representation at the local level. ISAF, ISAF

Joint Command, the embassies, and the international community

are working better together to address Afghan grievances that may

contribute to support for the insurgents and to manage Afghan expectations in terms of balancing local governance and requirements

with national governance requirements. The following programs

are but a few of the many efforts to mobilize the population to push

out Taliban control and influence. From late 2009 through 2011,

U.S. civilian and military organizations in Afghanistan underwent

a change of ambassadors, a reorganization of the American embassy, three changes in military commanders, a reassessment of

military strategy, and two major force increases as directed by the

president. Of these, first General McChrystal’s—then General Petraeus’s and General Allen’s—effective leadership, the National Solidarity Program (NSP), and the Afghan Local Police (ALP) are three

things that positively influence legitimacy and work to undermine

the Taliban, and they will be discussed below. 

From the moment the new leadership team arrived at ISAF headquarters in June 2009, it began to make changes in how Coalition

forces operated. The newly issued commander’s intent and subsequently issued counterinsurgency guidance and tactical directives

revealed a better understanding of the best-practice counterinsurgency fundamentals and the centrality of the indigenous population

to success. This initial guidance in the summer of 2009 directed

ISAF forces to protect and partner with the Afghan people because

ISAF was fighting for, and not against, the population. The guidance also emphasized the belief that success would ultimately depend on the effective partnering with the Afghan government and

its security forces to help build good governance as well as unity

of purpose in the conduct of both lethal and nonlethal operations.

Likewise, subsequent strategic communication emanating from the

ISAF leadership explicitly noted the mismatch between expecta-
204 War, Will, and Warlords

tions and experience. The first tranche of tactical directives, guidance, and orders all emphasized the imperative to protect the population, build credible and capable governance, and support

international and Afghan development efforts. General Petraeus’s

1 August 2010 counterinsurgency guidance and subsequent campaign adjustments also emphasized population protection and security as essential components. 

The NSP provides another good practice for building the legitimacy of the Afghan government in the minds of the rural population. The NSP facilitates elections to establish community

development councils and builds the capacities of these councils

and community members (both men and women). The councils

identify priority subprojects, prepare community development

plans, and implement approved subprojects. 

The third enterprise that will potentially increase both legitimacy

and security in rural area is the ALP initiative, which the Afghan

government fully endorsed in August 2010. This program emerged

earlier under the monikers of the Afghan Public Protection Program

and the Local Defense Initiative. The ALP holds more promise as

the Coalition Forces Special Operations Component Command–

Afghanistan (CFSOCC-A) has designed a broader, deeper, and more

aggressive plan to implement this initiative. Operation Moshtarak

(Together)—although somewhat imperfect in concept and slow because it focused on a determined enemy deeply ensconced in its

Central Helmand River Valley safe havens—has and will continue

to ultimately prove and disprove principles and practices for future

counterinsurgency efforts in the Pashtun Belt for 2012 and beyond.

In fact, the planning, preparation, and execution of Operation

Hamkari (Cooperation) for Kandahar has benefited from the lessons

derived from Moshtarak. The purpose of Operation Moshtarak was

as much about shaping the perceptions of the people as it was

about militarily defeating the Taliban. Before the operation began,

U.S. officials even took some polls aimed at gaining an understanding of what the local populace wanted; how they saw local security

conditions; how they perceived Americans and the Taliban; and

what measures would build their confidence in the Kabul government. The answers helped inform the planning and execution of

the operation. 
The Prospects for Peace: Anarchistan or Perfidistan 205

It is also true that Americans are now less popular in Pakistan

than the Indians. This alone highlights how difficult it remains to

mollify grievances and build support in Pakistan for its government

and military forces to better counter their insurgents. The good

news is most of the population supports and respects the army as

a credible institution. Nevertheless, a large number of Pakistani

youths do not have confidence in their government. Many of their

grievances stem from a broken education system and few jobs. This

does not augur favorably for a populous country with a youth

bulge. More disquieting, religious educational institutions garner

the second highest scores for public support while the Pakistani

government ranks the lowest. The U.S.-Pakistan relationship compounds the challenges Islamabad faces in earning the support of

its citizens. Many view America as forcing unrealistic requirements

on Pakistan. In addition, the Pakistani civil service bureaucracy

must radically reform or it will not possibly earn the public’s confidence. By the beginning of 2009, the TTP had begun to establish

parallel hierarchies of authority and justice by performing administrative and police functions in the tribal areas. There now also

seems to be an emerging consensus among the South Asia experts

and the populations of the FATA that the government might help

reverse the lack of perceived legitimacy by making the FATA a

province. The people in the FATA want to be part of the political

mainstream. The crisis of legitimacy in the FATA is also associated

with the dearth of local tribal leaders because the TTP has deliberately killed off hundreds of them.3

The effectiveness and popularity of unmanned aerial platform

strikes in the tribal areas have also provoked much debate and controversy. However, sources previously cited in this book have explained that over half of the FATA population supports these strikes,

although they oppose punitive operations by the Pakistani army

because the latter are more destructive. The exceptions would of

course include the population of Damodola, which has been the

recipient of excessive punitive assaults backed by attack helicopter

gunships as well as repeated drone attacks. Since May 2009, there

3 See Benazir Democracy Institute, Mainstreaming FATA, 4–5, for the results of the summer and

fall 2008 conferences with tribal elders and leaders from the FATA who declared they want the

region to be normalized.
206 War, Will, and Warlords

has also been a shift in public support for Pakistani military operations against the TTP because the Taliban’s harsh policies began

to alienate the people. One particularly disturbing event, the TTP’s

flogging of a young woman in 2009, catalyzed the people to oppose

the Taliban’s rule and to support army actions against them. Public

support for fighting the TTP, however, does not translate into any

increase in support for the United States. During the 2009–11 time

period, most Pakistanis still considered the U.S. as the enemy while

only a small percentage viewed the America as a partner. However,

one positive development in the tribal areas for building some popular support is the Office of Transition Initiatives, clearly a best

practice for building a political and development foothold. This program merits consideration for benchmarking in other areas in Pakistan, and even in Afghanistan, where it is also ongoing. 

Force

The reality is that large parts of the U.S. military—leaders, organizations, and doctrine—had adapted in large measure to best

practice counterinsurgency by the winter of 2008–9. In parallel, professional study and doctrine changed to reflect a greater emphasis

on counterinsurgency. The problem in Afghanistan in the winter of

2008–9 still stemmed from a dearth of resources like Intelligence,

Surveillance, and Reconnaissance; cumbersome command and control; and the absence of a coherent operational campaign that resourced, prioritized, and sequenced the above in the right time and

space. Special operations forces were still “hammering nails,” sometimes killing the wrong people because the few forces attempting

counterinsurgency were too few to clear, to hold, or to persist.

What’s more, U.S. military doctrine now equally weighs counterinsurgency equally with conventional operations. Most of the general

officers serving on ISAF and ISAF Joint Command staff from mid2009 through 2011, including the senior commanders, had served

multiple tours in Iraq or Afghanistan, and had years of experience

countering both insurgents and terrorists. Most, if not all, of the

one-star general officers and brigade and battalion commanders in

2009–11 were also seasoned in this type of war. Smart leaders, with

years of study and experience in counterinsurgency, tend to be better than those schooled and experienced only or almost exclusively
The Prospects for Peace: Anarchistan or Perfidistan 207

in conventional warfare. The new approach manifest in Afghanistan

from 2009 to 2011, to be certain, exhibited many positive improvements in implementing the enduring tenets of counterinsurgency.

The significant increases in civilian and military personnel were

very helpful in reversing momentum at the operational level in

Afghanistan. What was as important up until the end of 2011 was

the rationale underpinning the campaign and unity of command. 

The logic and intent behind the counterinsurgency, and how

forces pursued it, were what really distinguished late 2009 through

2011 from early 2009 and before. The U.S. embassy and the ISAF

Coalition correctly emphasized integrating civilian and military actions to protect the population to win the war of perceptions. Leaders

at all levels understood that changing perceptions required changing

how the Coalition forces operated. Well-grounded and intent-driven

command and execution also characterized the positive developments in how civilians and military personal cooperated in

Afghanistan. The ISAF command team’s written and verbal intent

continued to stress full partnering with indigenous security forces.

Efforts to build a credible and effective Afghan National Army far

surpassed attempts to do the same with the Afghan National Police.

The objectives for the Afghan army were to be able to conduct joint

operations with Coalition forces and to increase its capacity to conduct effective counterinsurgent operations with little to no Coalition

assistance. 

The decisive operations for 2010 and 2011—Operations

Moshtarak in Marjah and Operation Hamkari for Kandahar—represented the most significant examples of the shift to traditional

counterinsurgency as part of the new strategy. They also represent

the most aggressive attempts at combined action among U.S.,

NATO, Afghan National Security Force, and interagency personnel

to clear and hold witnessed in Afghanistan since the war began on

7 October 2001. Other notable improvements in Afghanistan from

mid-2009 through 2011 included the establishment of the three-star

ISAF Joint Command to command and control at the operational

level, allowing the ISAF commander to shape the strategic level

while leaving day-to-day operations to the three-star joint commander. To this end, the U.S. government, along with indigenous

and Coalition partners, established an executive working group for
208 War, Will, and Warlords

deputy-level, civilian-military senior policy and decision making; a

provincial integrated team to integrate and coordinate the international provincial-level leaders; and district support teams, which

combined civilian and military planning and activities in the assigned district. 

The Pakistani forces have in fact shown some improvements,

however limited, in how they conduct operations against insurgents. Pakistani civilian and military leaders still confront the very

real dilemma of needing to be prepared to defend against their existential nemesis, India, and preparing for other operations against

militants in the tribal areas. The security development program has

essentially provided relatively few years of genuine effort to train

and equip the Pakistani Frontier Corps forces so far. Plus, the ire

and acrimony engendered in the Pakistan senior leaders in 2011,

from the bin Laden raid in May and from the border incident that

killed about 24 Pakistanis at the end of November, bode poorly for

this effort. It is unlikely that the Pakistani military will adopt the

term “counterinsurgency” or adapt much more to what it insists

on calling “low-intensity conflict operations.” During the fall 2009

Pakistani offensive into South Waziristan, most of the TTP fled from

South Waziristan south to Baluchistan, and the Pakistani army will

not likely fight the Taliban in Baluchistan because of the Afghan

Taliban presence there. Nor is it probable that the Pakistani army

will venture into North Waziristan because of Haqqani’s influence

there. Haqqani remains a useful instrument and hedge for assuaging Pakistan’s doubts over the current and future character of the

Afghan regime. In the duplicitous context of Pakistan security policy and behavior, it is in the interests of the ISI to support Haqqani,

Hekmatyar, and the Afghan Taliban because the Pakistan security

practitioners do not perceive these elements as posing direct threats

to Islamabad. 

Though the Pakistani army has made some changes, its preference and focus remains the conventional fight against India rather

than the one against internal militants. Pakistan and its army did

prove during 2009–11 that they were more willing and able to fight

militants who challenged the authority of the state. During the Pakistani army’s conduct of operations in Bajaur and Swat during 2009,

both army forces and Frontier Corps units demonstrated improve-
The Prospects for Peace: Anarchistan or Perfidistan 209

ments in clearing territory and integrating their operations with

local tribes. When the Pakistani army advanced against the Taliban

in South Waziristan in October 2009, this operation represented its

largest military operation ever in either the FATA or what was then

known as the North-West Frontier Province. But because of the lack

of transparency for operations in the FATA, it was not possible for

outside sources to confirm the actual outcome. Both the army and

the TTP seemed to overstate their achievements. The army did telegraph the operation for months, and since there was little empirical

proof of much combat, it is likely that most of the TTP slipped away

to fight another day. The military is holding those areas it cleared

in South Waziristan though. 

For the Pakistani forces, there will be no dramatic and genuinely

full-measure embrace of counterinsurgency, at least as currently

conceived by the U.S. military. Despite this, the Frontier Corps has

become a more competent local force, and it remains the best

choice for building a genuine, but limited, capacity for counterinsurgency. It is also a good sign that General Kayani is, for now,

committed to improving the army’s subordination and servitude to

the civilian leadership of the government, notwithstanding all the

imperfections of President Asif Zardari’s regime. It is also possible,

but not verifiable, that the Pakistani leadership may now recognize

that it may not be prudent to make too much distinction between

the TTP and the Afghan Taliban because there has been some collusion among them in ways that are inimical to Pakistan. The unvarnished truth about Pakistan, though, is that its national security

apparatchiks have discovered over many decades how to best leverage their bad decisions, dysfunctions, grievances, and perceived

existential threats to extract from the U.S. government the military

and financial assistance that they think they need to prepare for

war against India. In this vein, Islamabad also continues to use the

tribal areas for training surrogate groups for operations in India and

Afghanistan. The ISI, to be sure, still conspires with militant groups

who are linked to the Taliban and the Haqqani network.

Information Operations

This last section reviews the capacity to integrate action with

ideas in both Afghanistan and Pakistan during 2009 through 2011.
210 War, Will, and Warlords

In Afghanistan, it has become clear that the senior Coalition and

American leadership understood that persuading the people, and

not killing them indiscriminately, will decide the outcome. It is also

clear that even though trends are positive in the war of perceptions,

there is still considerable room for improvement. It is evident that

the ISAF leadership’s knowledge and understanding about the information environment has increased manifold from previous

years. Forces in Afghanistan have changed the way they operate

and gotten better at persuading the Afghan people that the ISAF is

there to protect them. The senior Coalition commanders have cautioned their forces against potentially self-defeating actions associated with large-scale conventional military operations designed to

capture or kill insurgents because of the heightened risk of causing

collateral damage or civilian casualties. For their part, the Afghan

Taliban continues to use propaganda messages to emphasize their

temporal advantage over the troop-contributing Western polities in

a protracted war. The Taliban are convinced that they have the

moral high ground as they are resisting foreign invaders. One of

their strengths is the perception that a Taliban victory is inevitable

because the foreigners will tire of the cost and effort, and ultimately

depart. Moreover, the Taliban has supported its propaganda with

action by establishing relatively effective shadow governments, particularly in the southern provinces. The fact that the Taliban had,

before 2010, previously maintained freedom of action and movement over largely uncontested swathes of southern Afghanistan

also reinforced the perception of strength, control, and inevitable

victory. 

But the actions that most reinforce the Taliban’s antiforeigner

narrative, and the ones that galvanize both Islamist and Pashtun

alike against the Coalition, are air strikes that kill civilians. For the

Taliban, an actual or perceived instance of Coalition forces inflicting

civilian casualties is doubly helpful because it undermines the legitimacy of the ISAF effort and the Afghan government without

damaging the Taliban’s image. The ISAF command’s series of tactical directives, as well as the counterinsurgency guidance issued

in August 2009 and August 2010, were clearly designed to widely

propagate and inculcate an intent and mindset focused on protecting the population and reducing civilian casualties. Indeed, the sec-
The Prospects for Peace: Anarchistan or Perfidistan 211

ond six months of 2009 through 2011 did witness less reliance on

airpower or heavy firepower. Second to airpower as catalysts for

alienating the population were night raids against illegitimate targets, or even raids against legitimate targets that the Taliban influenced the people to perceive as illegitimate. However, during 2010

the ISAF leadership went a step further, issuing a directive to circumscribe night raids for these very reasons. The period from 2009

through 2011 also witnessed a markedly improved capacity in

Afghan partner forces to assume the lead on many night raids. In

2009–11 there were two potential best practice innovations. One

was the Government Media and Information Center (GMIC), which

increases the Afghan public’s access to timely, accurate, and credible information. The other initiative was the establishment of the

ISAF Joint Command Information Dominance Center and the Regional Commands’ similar but variegated centers that manage the

collection and use of unclassified and classified information to better prosecute the war. These centers include civilian experts from

the interagency and Coalition experts that collect, study, analyze,

and store open source and classified information on a host of critical subjects germane to mobilizing the population against the insurgents. The areas that these centers analyze range from the

insurgent network, criminal patronage networks, good and bad

government influences, and the effects of development spending.

These information centers are the regional hubs for clearing and

maintaining all relevant open source information and knowledge

about local conditions, expectations, and grievances, among other

things. The GMIC and the Presidential Information Center that

emerged concurrently with the former were partly in response to

the requirement to manage the informational effects of night raids

and consequence management. 

In addition to winning the war for the Pakistani public’s perceptions, information operations in Pakistan also include how well

America’s actions support its messages to influence the ruling civilian and military elites to act in concert toward common interests

in the region. There has been a persistent perception in the minds

of Pakistan’s ruling oligarchy that America’s traditional strategic attention deficit disorder will precipitate an ill-advised, premature

withdrawal from Afghanistan, leaving Pakistan to resolve the im-
212 War, Will, and Warlords

broglio again. For the Pashtun people in the tribal areas, the Pakistani armed forces will be better able to favorably influence people’s perceptions by operating in ways that help protect and better

serve the nonmilitant portions of those populations. In addition to

operating and propagating a consistent Pakistani military display

of moral rectitude, information operations must effectively spotlight

and amplify the dreadful and evil acts that the Taliban inflict on

their fellow Pashtuns. The Pakistani army did, however, implement

some improvements (if imperfect) in how it operated and treated

civilian noncombatants during their 2009–11 operations in FATA. 

For example, during operations in Swat during the spring of

2009, a favorable innovation was the deliberate mass displacement

of the civilian population before the offensive to reduce civilian casualties and better target the militants. Moreover, after clearing the

area of insurgents, the Pakistani military cooperated with civilian

officials to resettle the internally displaced persons, to reestablish

some notion of civilian administration, and to attempt some rebuilding of the local economy. The Pakistani armed forces did also

attempt psychological operations to counter Taliban propaganda in

South Waziristan. But the effectiveness of this, with leaflets printed

in Urdu instead of Pashto or Waziri, was doubtful. There is now

some growing anecdotal evidence that demonstrates that some Pakistanis in the more central provinces, Punjab for example, at least

rhetorically oppose the U.S. drone war. The Pakistani elite media

in Islamabad and other urban areas regularly condemn the drone

strikes, and even Pakistani leaders vociferously decry the strikes in

public. However, this may be attributable to anti-Americanism

among the Pakistani elite and media, who are inclined to opine

against the strikes. It is not at all clear or certain that most people

residing in the FATA necessarily see or perceive the drone strikes

as violations of their sovereignty, or as actions that are unambiguously inimical or anathema to their long-term stability and security.

In fact, when the drones kill foreign Arab fighters or tyrannical local

Taliban who are imposing an unwanted way of life by force, then

there is reason to believe the people in those locales see the lethal

strikes favorably. However, local support for drone strikes and general anti-American attitudes are not mutually exclusive. 

What is not evident thus far is any deliberate effort by the gov-
The Prospects for Peace: Anarchistan or Perfidistan 213

ernment of Pakistan to overhaul the still heavily xenophobic public

educational curricula. This continues to play no small role in influencing the public’s perception of Pakistan and Islam, as well as

how it views enemies, neighbors and nominal “partners.” Similarly,

it will be equally important for the government to aggressively regulate and curb the propagation of dogma by the numerous Deobandi madrassas operating throughout the tribal areas. The

Taliban has also employed persuasion, coercion, and armed propaganda more effectively than the government in the tribal areas.

Their propaganda has emphasized the villainy of the United States

in the perpetration of drone strikes. The Taliban in Pakistan have

also attacked newsstands and assassinated journalists for writing

articles expressing unfavorable views about their movement. They

have likewise prosecuted an armed propaganda and coercion campaign focused on intimidating or eliminating Pashtun tribal leaders

and ordinary Pashtun tribesmen. Aside from the Taliban propaganda and violence, there is one other crucial caveat. There are

many more dangerous Islamist groups in Pakistan, both with and

without state support, that have had a lasting influence on security

and ideology. If the TTP insurgency were to wither away next week,

radical Islamist dogma and militancy would continue to metastasize unless good education and relatively good governance emerge

for the Pakistani people. The Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), for example,

espouses an ideology and aspirations no less Islamist and violent

than those espoused by al-Qaeda. 

Policy Implications and Recommendations

Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced. 

—Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

Efforts to build and sustain legitimacy have witnessed a marked

improvement in Afghanistan and a marginal improvement in Pakistan

since 2009. The new civilian and military leaders in Afghanistan in

2009–11 have demonstrated in their policy, strategy, and operations

that they understand that meeting the expectations of the population

will be essential in garnering and sustaining support against the Taliban. The U.S. embassy and the ISAF Coalition have redoubled their

efforts to provide governance and security in areas of southern
214 War, Will, and Warlords

Afghanistan that had heretofore been forfeited to the Taliban insurgents and their shadow governments. The caveat emptor is that President Karzai displays a tolerance for a relatively unacceptable level

of corruption in his government. Karzai has not proven malleable to

U.S. and Coalition advice and pressure to reduce corruption and increase transparency. Moreover, including a reputed thug such as

Muhammad Fahim in the executive branch of government as his

deputy sends the signal that Karzai is still associating with questionable people. ISAF must leverage the gravitas embodied by the unprecedented Coalition leadership, resources, and momentum to

compel Karzai to comply with conditions to reduce corruption and

gradually wean out the more disreputable members of his administration to make room for an up and coming professional class.

Pakistan is equally corrupt. Moreover, a huge expectation gap exists in the minds of the population in the FATA because they want

the good governance, security, schools, and services that Pakistan

has heretofore been unwilling and unable to provide. All empirical

evidence, such as the Benazir Democracy Institute’s Mainstreaming

FATA study, suggests that making the FATA a province or subsuming

it within the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province (with the concomitant

rights and privileges associated with mainstream political normalcy)

would be one small step toward meeting some of the expectations of

the Pashtun population there. Corollary to this would be a deliberate

move on the part of the Pakistani government to rescind the Frontier

Crimes Regulations. However, in order to do this, Pakistan must expand its civil administration capacity and reform its civil service bureaucracy to make it relatively less corrupt and relatively more

effective at providing administration. Bringing a venal and inept administration to the FATA would only exacerbate the extant grievances

among the populations that now exist. But Pakistan has proven reluctant to do this even though the conference on mainstreaming the

FATA with the tribal leaders in 2008 showed this is what the people

there wanted. The United States and its partners must get smarter

and tougher in using incentives and disincentives to persuade Pakistan to improve and expand how it governs. The government, at

some point in the future, must also make the effort to reform public

and private education and curricula. To be sure, this book has amplified that fixing the massive education problems carry exceedingly im-
The Prospects for Peace: Anarchistan or Perfidistan 215

portant implications for influencing perceptions in directions favorable to the state.

The most discernible improvements in both Afghanistan and Pakistan during 2009–11 were manifest in the leadership and the conduct

of operations against insurgents and militants. Here also, positive

changes in Afghanistan seemed to surpass those in Pakistan. Compared to the previous eight years of neglect and muddling through,

ISAF exhibited a sea change in leadership, perspective, and execution

of that complex counterinsurgency endeavor. The ISAF command

team in 2009–11 comprised the first string of general officer counterinsurgency practitioners, with years of experience and study of this

kind of war. These officers have exhibited an appreciation for the

challenges associated with pacifying the Pashtuns in southern and

eastern Afghanistan. What’s more, the ISAF leadership has provided

a strategic vision and commander’s intent that were disseminated at

every level to the forces arrayed in theater; both of these stress the

imperative to prosecute the fundamentals of best-practice counterinsurgency by protecting and administering the population in ways that

help close the expectation gaps between what the people want and

need and what the host-nation government and security forces deliver. Moreover, the U.S. embassy and ISAF have issued strategic assessments that stipulate the necessities and modalities for unity of

command and integration of the civilian and military components of

the effort. The executive working group is an improvement, but lessthan-optimal civilian-military integration still precludes unity of effort

across provinces and districts. Benchmarking the lessons of CORDS

to establish a three-star equivalent civilian deputy to the ISAF commander would help improve unity of purpose, aims, and actions;

moreover, it would better prepare the whole enterprise in Afghanistan

for transition to an ultimate U.S. embassy lead, with a remaining formidable advisory element. The Taliban sanctuary across the Durand

Line still engenders a significant obstacle to successful counterinsurgency, and this problem still heavily relies on Pakistan for a solution.

Very few counterinsurgencies throughout history have met with

success when the insurgents have benefited from unimpeded sanctuary and external support. From 2001–11, the FATA, parts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province (or North-West Frontier Province, as it

was known until 2010), and parts of Baluchistan have continued to
216 War, Will, and Warlords

serve as havens for the succor, reconstitution, regeneration, and coalescence of the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaeda, foreign fighters, and other Islamist militant groups. Many of these

groups operated and colluded under the aegis and support of the ISI

because Pakistan’s military dictatorship and security oligarchy continued to perform in ways inimical to the interests of their nominal

U.S. partners. However, as this present study has revealed, there is

some reason for being more sanguine, albeit in a qualified way, given

the apparently possible shift in Pakistan’s willingness to counter the

Pakistani Taliban since May 2009 and because of its unprecedented,

and still inexplicable, arrest of several Afghan Taliban senior leaders

in Pakistan beginning in February 2010. The Pakistani armed forces

have not recognized or adapted to traditional counterinsurgency, but

they have shown some marginal improvements in conducting lowintensity conflict in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province and in South

Waziristan during 2009–11. During operations in Swat, the Pakistani

army experimented with evacuating civilians in ways that minimized

civilian casualties. In South Waziristan, it was holding areas it cleared

in the winter even if its capacity to build still fell short because of a

dearth of civilian capacity. Pakistan’s arrest of senior Afghan Taliban

and al-Qaeda operatives may have represented a net good in disrupting enemy infrastructure even if the likely intentions that underpinned those arrests may have been duplicitous in nature. While it

does seem that the Pakistani leaders’ and public’s perceptions of the

TTP have shifted, it is not likely that Pakistan will exhibit the genuine

will and skill to stabilize the tribal areas until it perceives the mix of

Islamist groups in the FATA to be a greater threat than India. Short of

that, the United States needs to get increasingly smarter and tougher

in how it leverages aid to Pakistan to compel improvements to the

Frontier Corps via the Security Development Program. The following

paragraphs address the influencing of perceptions among the populations in Afghanistan and Pakistan in directions favorable to the efforts of the United States and its Coalition partners. 

The period from summer 2009 to early 2011 also witnessed

progress in the war of perceptions. Though there remain considerable

areas for improvement, the approach by ISAF in Afghanistan since

2009 has been to more aptly integrate actions with ideas to influence

the perceptions of the Pashtuns and to convince them that the Afghan
The Prospects for Peace: Anarchistan or Perfidistan 217

government and the Coalition are pursuing goals that align with the

best interests of the people. Ever since the war in Afghanistan began,

airpower-inflicted civilian casualties and special operations night

raids have had a significantly deleterious influence on the population’s perception. Years of internecine warfare and death, coupled

with Pashtun sensitivities about justice and honor, have meant that

unjust killings have created support for the Taliban insurgency. From

2009 to 2011, counterinsurgency guidance, tactical directives, and intent unambiguously conveyed to all forces operating in Afghanistan

that being more judicious about limiting air strikes was an absolute

imperative in the war of perceptions. In addition, in early 2010, ISAF

established more stringent rules that circumscribed the widely abhorred practice of night raids into Pashtun homes. While many of the

precisely planned and well-informed raids did effectively disrupt Taliban leadership, the few that went awry due to friction or faulty intelligence greatly aggravated Pashtun perceptions of honor, justice,

and the sanctity of home. Circumscribing air strikes and night raids,

long in coming, is already reaping discernible benefits in influencing

the population. Moreover, the innovative GMIC and Regional Stability

Operations Information Centers now exist to improve the accuracy

and speed of media messages. This will now allow the Coalition and

the Afghan government to better amplify the misdeeds of the Taliban

and to expend less effort apologizing for raids gone wrong. Likewise,

General Petraeus’s August 2010 guidance for counterinsurgency continued with an emphasis on protecting the population and rooting

out poor governance and practices as they have been identified as

catalysts for the insurgency.

The Pakistani population’s perception of the Pakistani military

and its efforts to counter the Pakistani Taliban in the Khyber

Pakhtunkhwa Province and in South Waziristan improved beginning in late spring 2009. Conversely, popular sympathy for the Pakistani Taliban (TTP and TNSM) militants diminished significantly

in spring 2009. The Pakistani Taliban’s flogging of a young woman

and their advance to within 60 miles of Islamabad, along with the

recognition of those groups as expansionist threats to the state, precipitated a shift in public support for army operations against those

insurgents. However, the United States is not favorably perceived

within Pakistan. Very few Pakistanis see America as a genuine part-
218 War, Will, and Warlords

ner, and, more problematically, many perceive America as an

enemy. The fact that America is less popular in Pakistan than India

is an achievement of extraordinary magnitude. Part of the explanation is found in the fact that six decades of real and perceived shortsighted unreliability on the part of the U.S. have contributed to

Pakistani anti-Americanism. This may also partially account for

why Pakistan’s leaders have hedged their bets against a premature

U.S. departure by supporting the Quetta Shura, the Haqqani network, and other armed groups.4

Notwithstanding the above, popular anti-Americanism also stems

from the scope to which Islamist radicalism and xenophobic notions

imbue the population as a result of both public education curricula

and madrassa curricula tainted with a radical Islamist bent. The other

massively important perception that the United States and regional

players must learn how to better influence is Pakistan’s perception of

India as its gravest existential threat. A solution for Kashmir, which is

the sine qua non for any enduring rapprochement between India and

Pakistan, is beyond the scope of this work, but it is something astute

regional experts must study for the long view. To be sure, the key regional players—Pakistan, India, China, Russia, and others—have interests and roles that play a huge part in any long view, and in any

ultimate solution. America must also start taking a long-view to its

relationship with Pakistan and break from its past pattern of shortsighted expedients, which heretofore witnessed the backing of despots

and the unrequited support of the mujahideen. The latter ultimately

metamorphosed into the Islamist militants the United States is fighting

today, partly as a result of ill-conceived and inconsistent U.S. policies

in the past. The abysmal “education” system in Pakistan must ultimately become an enemy of militancy rather than a source of it. Resolving that huge problem is beyond the scope of this study, but

persistent and measured U.S. support of civilian control of the Pakistani military, as well as efforts to help its armed forces in improving

their effectiveness in countering militants, can only help create more

stability over time. Once the Pakistani state is out of imminent danger,

perhaps the U.S. government and other partners can find some long4 The TNSM predated the TTP but from about 2008 onward was subsumed under the TTP umbrella. The TNSM name still exists but is more typically referred to as the TTP or Swat Taliban

by geographical purview.
The Prospects for Peace: Anarchistan or Perfidistan 219

term approaches—ones that make sense in Pakistan—to help reduce

the Islamist dogma and xenophobia that currently plague its schools

and madrassas. Last, although it is not possible to interpret the Pakistani rationale for its arrests of some key Afghan Taliban leaders in

Pakistan during the winter of 2009–10, it is possible that the Pakistani

leaders’ perceptions of the American commitment to Afghanistan was

changing, ever so incrementally. They may have begun to perceive

that America and its partners intend to stay and succeed.

In another vein, this study strongly recommends that America

and its partners try to discern, benchmark, replication, and preserve

best practices discovered in Afghanistan and Pakistan for dissemination in both countries, as well as for potential use in other current and future contingencies that require the effective development

of security institutions, administration, reconstruction, and information operations. This conclusion does not argue for more wars

like Iraq and Afghanistan. It simply implores U.S. military institutions to better study and better absorb the knowledge and experiences gained in these wars, much of which was regained by

discovery because of the military’s propensity to forget or expunge

lessons of other foregone counterinsurgencies. Until now, the U.S.

government and its military have proven lamentably unable to understand or retain the lessons from previous counterinsurgencies,

those from Vietnam and before. The military can adopt these best

practices to improve the effectiveness of current operations and to

implement the indirect approach to countering insurgency and terrorist militancy, which the United States will increasingly be required to carry out in places like Africa. Furthermore, until summer

2009, there were too many instances where leaders and forces in

different parts of Afghanistan and Iraq were successfully experimenting with better counterinsurgency practices, yet no one was

identifying these practices for emulation in other provinces or theaters. It is much wiser to learn from the experiences of others than

to discover how to do counterinsurgency by filling body bags. The

latter is a sign of colossal incompetence. 

For building legitimacy, the NSP and the Office of Transition Initiatives have demonstrated the potential for replication elsewhere.

Likewise, with a few caveats, the Village Stability Operations (VSO)

and ALP initiatives are unambiguous best practices in the employ-
220 War, Will, and Warlords

ment of indigenous elements for community defense. Although

General Petraeus has referred to ALP as a “game changer,” this may

be overstated. As its resources and finite number of A Teams allow,

CFSOCC-A is undertaking VSO and ALP and replicating this fruitful

effort across parts Afghanistan where it makes sense. ALP is a powerfully helpful variable and corollary in the overarching counterinsurgency campaign, but it is not a “game changer” in and of itself.

The cessation of Pakistani sanctuary and support for the Afghan

Taliban would be a game changer. Nonetheless, VSO and ALP certainly warrant consideration for parts of Pakistan’s tribal areas. 

Also, although it is not an ideal counterinsurgency practice, the

Pakistani army’s experiments with displacing large numbers of

civilians before it advanced into Swat and South Waziristan might

again be put to good use there and elsewhere. Given that winning

the war of perceptions is essential to success, and considering how

poorly the United States and the Coalition were at information operations when the war began, it is important to take note of the

GMIC as a practice worthy of studying and adopting in other similar

circumstances. Moreover, building indigenous military and police

capacity is paramount in bringing counterinsurgencies to successful

conclusions and ultimately to seeing the United States exit the region, with only advisory groups remaining in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In fact, there was a conspicuous and problematic dearth of

knowledge, expertise, and organization for advisors and advising

units in the U.S. military when this war began. The initial efforts

in both Afghanistan and Iraq witnessed serious missteps and

restarts for several years. Since then, the former Multi-National Security and Training Command–Iraq and the Combined Security and

Training Command–Afghanistan did undergo significant improvements in how they are organized and how they approach the recruitment, training, education, and advising of indigenous leaders,

soldiers, and police. It is imperative to glean and retain these practices and organizational structures, to replicate and scale them for

other train-and-equip requirements. Given the world we have, it

would be a prudent idea to create scalable on-the-shelf regional security and training commands for the other geographic combatant

command regions and subregions. Somalia is as complex as Pakistan’s tribal areas are in its insurgency, terrorism, and governance
The Prospects for Peace: Anarchistan or Perfidistan 221

challenges. It would seem that some of the best practices noted

here might be put to good use there.

As the leaders of the U.S. military, the officer corps must do

more thinking and innovating when it comes to the future of war,

and it must overcome its general apathy toward history, various

foreign cultures, and scholarly study as well as erudition. Thinking

informed by a deep appreciation of military history and innovation

must become the reality and not just the bumper sticker of the day.

Until 2004, American military culture exhibited an unambiguous

preference for conventional warfare—combined arms maneuvers,

mobile armor and airmobile formations, and massing “effects”

while relying on technological superiority. What’s more, most of

the potential or real adversaries of the United States also knew this

as a possible weak spot, as evidenced as early as the debacle in Somalia during October 1993. It is also the rationale for how al-Qaeda

envisioned it would fight this global war against the U.S. and how

the terrorists would lure the United States into a protracted war of

attrition and exhaustion by inducing an overreaction—a Soviet-like

invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. (A corollary purpose of

the attack on the World Trade Center was to draw America into a

protracted guerrilla war in Asia, in Afghanistan.) Notwithstanding

that the initial invasion and success in toppling the Taliban and

forcing the flight of al-Qaeda was not the outcome that bin Laden

had sought, the U.S. invasion of Iraq—and the several subsequent

years of exhausting counterinsurgency in Iraq, with an unfinished

and temporarily forgotten war in Afghanistan—must have appeared

quite fortuitous to the likes of al-Qaeda. It also explains why Saddam Hussein established an effort to train his intelligence and Special Republican Guard cadre in guerrilla techniques in late 2002, in

anticipation of the then-imminent U.S. invasion. Industrial and

preindustrial tribal and warrior cultures who are resilient and cunning will continue to fight U.S. forces by employing irregular and

unorthodox methods while exploiting complex terrain to undercut

any American technological superiority. Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq,

and Afghanistan have not convinced our current and future enemies otherwise.5

5 See Bergen, The Longest War; Riedel, The Search for al Qaeda; and many others for al-Qaeda’s

intended modus operandi to weaken and exhaust America. 

7

OPERATIONAL COUNTERINSURGENCY IN

AFGHANISTAN UNTIL 2011

I reject the myth that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires,

. . . Afghans have never seen you as occupiers.

—Afghan Minister of Defense Abdul Rahim Wardak

We are not asking for victory by December or July 2011. What

we are asking is that by December, we have enough evidence to

demonstrate that our approach is headed in the right direction.

—American Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates

The two quotes above capture two realities of the counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan. On the one hand, within theInternational Security Assistance Force Joint Command

(IJC), the notion that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires is

wholly rejected. The U.S. and Coalition forces are not the Soviets

or the Victorian British, and the Afghans do not perceive their effort

in that light. On the other hand, however, the second quote unambiguously conveys the reality that time is ticking away. November

2010, the day after Thanksgiving to be precise, marked when the

duration of the current war in Afghanistan exceeded the duration

of the Soviet-Afghan War, which lasted nine years and 50 days.

Those now serving in IJC specifically, and those serving in

Afghanistan generally, do face pressing constraints in terms of finite

time, finite political will, and finite resources. The impetus is building to accelerate the pace and rate.1

Not coincidentally, the impetus to accelerate Coalition efforts to

help Afghans stabilize and secure their country converges with an

unprecedented degree of progress in a more coherent operational

plan, better leadership, improved command and control structures,

the most seasoned counterinsurgency forces in remembered his223

The reflections contained in this chapter stem from the author’s service with and for the commander of the ISAF Joint Command, Army LtGen David M. Rodriguez, and his senior staff.

These insights derive from collaborations and briefings conducted with and for LtGen Rodriguez;

LtCol Edward Ledford, USA; and the senior staff at ISAF Joint Command.

1 Peter Bergen, “Winning the Good War,” Washington Monthly, July/August 2009, 50.
tory, and a capacity to contest the Taliban in its historical areas of

strength in order to reverse the war’s momentum. The reality on

the ground is that the United States and its allies have redoubled

and accelerated their efforts to neutralize the Taliban leadership

and capacity inside Afghanistan in the key areas where the Coalition did concentrate its forces and resources in undertaking a comprehensive counterinsurgency. These efforts are building security

through partnered Afghan National Security Force (ANSF) operations, helping improve sufficient governance, and creating development opportunities. 

In 2011 the Coalition and its Afghan partners were implementing

the most coherent approach that the war in Afghanistan had seen

since 7 October 2001. The creation of IJC itself has improved command and control, unity of effort, and integrated civilian-military

actions and activities to an extraordinary degree. There is now one

coherent counterinsurgency campaign to protect the many and to

kill or capture core enemy leaders. This should not be misconstrued

as nation building, but it does signify a concerted effort that sees

counterinsurgency focused on a circumscribed number of key population areas, complemented by precise, direct lethal action to rupture the Taliban leadership and its support infrastructure. 

One War—Comprehensive Counterinsurgency 

Importantly, there is finally one war that fully combines counterinsurgency to protect the preponderance of the people coupled

with special operations to counter terrorists and Taliban leadership

infrastructure by killing or capturing the few hard-core militants

who will never give up. For the decisive operation of 2011, focused

on Kandahar and Helmand in the south, Coalition forces discernibly shifted the momentum and were on the verge of putting

the enemy between the horns of a dilemma. Soon, the Taliban will

face two choices: either be killed or reintegrate into society with

the government and people of Afghanistan. Unfortunately, however, Taliban insurgents do still have a third option. They can still

opt to flee to Pakistan and wait there, gathering strength and resources to fight another day in the future. This is partly attributable

to the fact that Pakistan is not as committed as the United States is

to bringing enduring stability and security in Afghanistan because

224 War, Will, and Warlords
Operational Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan until 2011 225

the Pakistanis do not necessarily share U.S. interests and goals in

the region. The sanctuary and support from which the Afghan Taliban benefit in Pakistan’s ungoverned tribal areas do indeed help

fuel the insurgency in Afghanistan in terms of succor, safe haven,

arms, and materiel. The cross-border sanctuary poses one of the

single biggest strategic risks to the efforts of Afghan forces and the

NATO Coalition to create durable security and stability. The capacity for insurgents to regenerate across the border in Pakistan’s ungoverned tribal areas presents a grave impediment to making

Afghanistan stable enough to secure itself and to preclude the return of al-Qaeda to use parts of Afghanistan as sanctuary in the future. State and nonstate passive and active support to the Afghan

Taliban in Pakistan is prolonging this war, making it one of attrition

and erosion. Conversely, convincing or compelling the Pakistanis

to do more to help reduce sanctuaries there would accelerate the

prospects for success and truncate the war.

In addition to the Taliban and their supporters, there are three

other enemies of the Afghans that constitute sources of grievances

that drive wedges between the Afghan government and the people

to catalyze support for the insurgency. First, a number of venal and

corrupt leaders in official Afghan government positions erode the

people’s trust and alienate the population through their improper

practices. Second, criminal patronage networks (power brokers)

operating inside, outside, or between official government channels

and Afghan society have thrived on the unevenly managed influx

of aid money and the previously imbalanced approach to help establish security, governance, and development. This past lack of

balance engendered by the international community’s efforts has

fueled criminal patronage networks. Last, bad past international

community practices have compounded or created grievances that

have alienated the populace in two ways. First of all, the U.S. and

Coalition security efforts for the first several years were inadequately thought through and exceedingly parsimonious in terms of

forces. The consequences of this stinginess and blitheness saw too

few forces relying on airpower and warlords, which caused excessive civilian casualties and alienated the population. In addition,

international donors did not fully understand the economic conditions on the ground; did not meter the influx of aid dollars, fair
prices, or fair salaries at the local level; and inadvertently undermined traditional tribal leaders. These factors also helped alienate

the populace and, to be certain, contributed to the growth of criminal patronage groups. 

Marginalizing or removing enemies of the Afghan people such

as these patronage groups will remove grievances that catalyze the

insurgency and help better shape Afghan governance from the district-level on up; it will also promote building Afghan security force

capacity to accelerate momentum toward the ultimate and shared

goal—a durably independent and stable Afghanistan. This will create conditions for thinning and ultimately withdrawing portions of

U.S. and NATO combat forces over time. To help make Afghanistan

stable enough to withstand present and future challenges, IJC planning and operations have focused on protecting and securing the

Afghans from all enemies that aggrieve them. Through lethal and

nonlethal operations in 2011, for example, the operational command has emphasized best-practice counterinsurgency fundamentals to improve human security and protect the people’s freedom

to pursue routine daily activities without intimidation or disruption

by the Taliban. In 2011, the campaign also combined direct lethal

operations to take insurgent leaders out of the fight as an integral

corollary to a comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign designed to turn the people against the Taliban. The IJC and the Regional Commands are also pursuing governance development

adapted within the Afghan context to connect the people to more

benign and credible governance from the bottom up, district by district and province by province. The Coalition does this by cultivating and partnering closely with better leaders and tailoring the

approach to governance development to address the grievances and

meet the needs of the people. The current plan focuses on steadily

building capacity over time to change the people’s perception of

their government from one of fear and uncertainty to one of trust

and confidence. Last, the Coalition is implementing counterinsurgency contracting guidelines and collaborating with both the international community and a myriad of anticorruption task forces to

marginalize criminal patronage groups and to bring prices and

salaries under control, that is, adapted to local conditions. All of

these efforts together, in the end, will connect the Afghans with

226 War, Will, and Warlords
Operational Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan until 2011 227

their government and their security forces to make their country

stable enough, relative to its Central and South Asian neighbors.

Most important, a stable Afghanistan will pose an enduringly inhospitable place for the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the future.

The Role of the ISAF Joint Command and the Afghanistan

Campaign

The years 2009–11 witnessed innovation, progress, and challenges, but mostly positive momentum for the IJC. The headquarters assumed command and control as the operational-level

command for the effort in Afghanistan in late 2009. As a result of

a recommendation by Joint Forces Command–Brunssum, members

of the troop-contributing countries fully activated the IJC on 12 November 2009. The IJC combined joint headquarters is located on

the north side of the Kabul International Airport and comprises

more than 1,100 personnel.

IJC headquarters exercises command and control over six individual Regional Commands, more than 350 forward operating

bases, and four major medical centers within the Combined Joint

Operations Area in Afghanistan. The IJC terms of reference has it

overseeing the day-to-day operations of most of the Coalition forces

in Afghanistan. The command’s responsibility for the operationallevel roles and functions in theater affords the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) commander, a U.S. Army four-star

general, the opportunity to focus his command staff at the strategic

and regional level in Afghanistan and South Asia.

Providing operational coherence between ISAF at the strategic

level and the Regional Commands at the tactical levels, IJC orchestrates focused comprehensive counterinsurgency operations, helps

build the capacity and professionalism of the ANSF through embedded partnering, and supports the training and expansion of better governance and economic development opportunities to

connect governance and security to the needs of Afghans down to

the district level. 

The Coalition effort has made big strides in partnering with the

ANSF and other organizations to prosecute complementary counterinsurgency operations. Moreover, the ANSF are achieving noticeable gains in capacity and professionalism and are increasingly
assuming the lead for mission planning and for executing operations throughout the Combined Joint Operations Area in

Afghanistan. The capacity of IJC to add operational-level logic

through more coherent planning, sequencing, and prioritizing of

forces and resources has contributed to the reality that the tactical

formations in the key regions have gained momentum in contesting

areas formerly ceded to the Taliban while at the same time these

forces have arrested the Taliban momentum in many key areas in

the Pashtun Belt. The effort in Afghanistan is, in fact, seeing discernible signs of steady progress.

The security in key areas of Afghanistan has been a top priority

for the ISAF/IJC campaign and has been the focus of Coalition

forces operating under the command of IJC for the past two years.

In Kabul, with the establishment of 25 Afghan National Police

checkpoints, highly visible and legitimate security measures are evident throughout the city. In Helmand Province, Coalition forces,

the Afghan National Army, and the Afghan National Police worked

together to remove improvised explosive devices from Helmand’s

second largest town, Gereshk. This successful operation, dubbed

Operation Omid Sey (Hope Three), essentially cleared improvised

explosives devices at a rate of one per hour. The increased security

evident in key terrain districts such as Kabul and Helmand has allowed the people of Afghanistan to participate in activities that

many people around the world take for granted, from development

projects to government elections. 

In September 2010, due to the capabilities of the ANSF, the people of Afghanistan participated in secure provincial elections and

cast more than 4.3 million ballots. Of particular note, Marjah saw

more than 400 locals casting ballots in six separate stations. This

was significant because until the beginning of 2010, the Taliban

dominated Marjah and the Central Helmand River Valley, which

was essentially an insurgent safe haven where Taliban intimidation

and opium driven criminality converged. In 2009, for example, it

was not possible for any Afghans to cast votes in Marjah because

the Taliban were deeply ensconced there. In addition to asserting

their freedom to vote during the September 2010 parliamentary

elections, local Afghans in the Central Helmand River Valley area

were increasingly demonstrating their confidence in government228 War, Will, and Warlords
Operational Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan until 2011 229

provided security, and exercising their freedom to pursue routine

daily activities, by attending the bazaars and attending schools. The

people are beginning to turn away from the Taliban and are frequently making clear their willingness to support the Afghan government in promoting stability and security in Helmand and

elsewhere around the country.

As the Afghan security forces continue to build capacity to provide durable security to the people of the Afghanistan, the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan will increasingly build

on engineering and agricultural projects that will improve services

and economic opportunities for the people and contribute to longterm stability. During 2010, the Musa Qal’ah District in Helmand

Province saw its bazaar reopen after five years, and it now serves

more than 500 shop owners. Other locations, Jalalabad in Nangarhar Province for instance, see Afghan women asserting their

freedom, confidence, and initiative by performing acts such as reconstructing a nursing hostel. Another example of successful development is evident in the northern province of Balkh, where there

is a $165-million project to construct a 75-kilometer (46.6-mile)

railroad line between Hairatan on the Uzbek border and the provincial capital of Mazar-e-Sharif. This project, pressing forward under

the aegis of the Afghan Ministry of Public Works, will have a huge

economic impact as almost half of Afghanistan’s imports pass

through Hairatan.

In essence, the IJC operational plan focuses on increasing the

credibility and capacity of the Afghan government to sufficiently

meet the expectations of the Afghan people in providing security,

delivering essential services, supplying access to either traditional

or informal—but predictable—justice, and nurturing development

as a stimulus for economic livelihood. Through security initiatives,

development projects, and the installation of more capable and benign government officials at the local level, the IJC combined team

continues to help its Afghan partners. As the Afghan government

and ISAF continuously assess the provinces where the transition

to an Afghan lead might be ready to start next, based on bottomup conditions from district to district and province to province, the

IJC will plan and prepare to shift from a military-based stabilization effort to a predominately civilian-led effort capable of sustain-
ing long-term economic development across Afghanistan. 

Every day, the IJC commander and staff continue to orchestrate

the operational effort toward the aims of creating sufficiently durable

and sustainable stability and security in Afghanistan, assisting the

country to better govern and secure itself as a long-term strategic

partner, and preventing al-Qaeda and its militant ilk from returning

and from benefiting from sanctuary in the region. Coalition forces

continue to engage in an extremely tough fight with a resilient

enemy. However, thanks to the hard work and resolve of the men

and women of the IJC and of all of their contributing partner civilian

and military forces, Afghanistan will ultimately emerge from over

three decades of war and turmoil as an independent and stable place.

A Grave Threat but Not a Graveyard

The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in the Pashtun

Belt on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan genuinely constitute the

epicenter for global jihad. If a huge bomb detonates in the United

States tomorrow, it will likely have a postmark tracing it back to

the Pashtun Belt astride the FATA. Thus, the most remote place on

earth has indeed become the most dangerous. The Taliban Administered Tribal Areas is a more accurate epithet to describe these

tribal areas. Most threat streams and strings lead back to the FATA

in the context of Coalition enemies coordinating regional and global

attacks. The reality is that Pakistan’s tribal areas have supplanted

Afghanistan as the essential place to inculcate al-Qaeda recruits for

operations abroad and for support to al-Qaeda by those radicalized

elsewhere. The tribal areas have become a safe harbor for local insurgents, global terrorists, drug smugglers, and perfidious state and

nonstate actors to converge and collude. A host of foreign fighters

also benefit from sanctuary afforded by the paucity of governance

and security there. There is no location currently more favorable

to al-Qaeda’s leaders than this Pashtun populated border region. In

fact, the area hosted the formation of both al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Osama bin Laden and his deputies have a unique 30-year history of collaboration with the Pashtun Islamist tribal networks

located in the Pashtun Belt. The region is al-Qaeda’s top sanctuary

because the odds for success are better there than anywhere else.

230 War, Will, and Warlords
Operational Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan until 2011 231

More disquieting still, al-Qaeda and the Taliban have cooperated

more closely since 2003. The menace emanating from the area requires an enduring strategic commitment to undermine it.2

Indeed, the terrorist and insurgent nexus in this sanctuary poses

the single gravest threat of attack on the United States. Osama bin

Laden himself recruited the leader of the 9/11 raid and all the muscle

terrorists in Afghanistan. Since 9/11, when the group was displaced

to Pakistan’s tribal areas, al-Qaeda or its associates have struck

across the globe—from London to Madrid, and from Algiers to

Amman. The cases of Najibullah Zazi, David Headley, and Faisal

Shahzad underscore the gravity of the threats radiating from Pakistan. Zazi, a Pashtun-American citizen, was apprehended by the

Federal Bureau of Investigation in September 2009 for conspiracy to

use a weapon of mass destruction because he was allegedly plotting

an attack on the New York City subway system. In 2008, he had traveled to the Pashtun tribal areas inside Pakistan to receive weapons

and explosives training. Headley, an American citizen whose father

was a Pakistani, has been implicated as an alleged conspirator in the

Mumbai terrorist attack of November 2008. He grew up in Pakistan

but later anglicized his name and went undercover to spend several

months in India, where he carried out reconnaissance for the subsequent assault perpetrated by Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. Moreover, U.S. authorities arrested Shahzad, an ethnic Pashtun, for the failed 1 May

2010 car-bombing attempt in Times Square. Authorities also suspected Shahzad of colluding with militants in the tribal areas.3

Analogies associated with the graveyard of empires, the Soviets

in Afghanistan, and the Vietnam War are also specious. The Americans are neither the Soviets nor the British of the Victorian era. The

Soviets defeated themselves by employing too few heavy mechanized forces fighting with methods suited for a large conventional

war. The British muddled through with an incoherent approach to

the Great Game. There are a host of reasons why Afghanistan is not

Vietnam. The top three are these: the Viet Cong did not fly suicide

2 Riedel, The Search for al Qaeda, 1–13, 122–23; Gregory and Revill, “The Role of the Pakistan

Military,” 39–61; Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires, 339; Gregory, “Al Qaeda in Pakistan”; and

Coll, “The Case for Humility in Afghanistan.”

3 Riedel, The Search for al Qaeda, 4–8, 10–12, and 122–25. See von Drehle and Gosh, “An Enemy

within”; and Barrett and others, “For Terror Suspect, a Life of Contradictions.” 
projectiles onto American soil and kill over 3,000 people; the United

States has now foregone conscription and has a seasoned, all-volunteer counterinsurgency-capable force; and there are no North Vietnamese Army regiments poised to invade from across the Durand

Line to fight with the Taliban against the Coalition in Afghanistan. 

Nor do the Afghans perceive the American-led NATO effort as a

predatory colonial occupation. After the Taliban’s bloody flight

from Afghanistan in 2001–2, most Afghans held high expectations

for improved security and prosperity because the United States and

its allies were the wealthiest countries in the world. The international community’s collective shortcomings in foresight, imagination, planning, and resources led to a slow but colossal

mismanagement of those people’s expectations. A misread of the

lessons from the Soviet-Afghan War also saw the United States opt

for a small force that overrelied on airpower and warlord militias,

while the effort was encumbered by convoluted chains of command and control. After almost eight years of muddling through,

the Coalition in Afghanistan now has an unprecedented degree of

superior leadership, forces, resources, and strategic insight. What

it does not have is much time to show a reversal in momentum.

Yet, despite these gains, al-Qaeda still benefits from sanctuary in

the FATA, and regenerated insurgencies persistently contest lethality

and legitimacy on both sides of the border.4

Final Thoughts

We’re not going to suddenly leave, turn off the lights, and go

home on that date [July 2011]. What will happen is, as we are

training up more and more Afghan security forces, they’re becoming more effective. We will transition so that they are starting to take over more responsibility for security, and slowly,

the United States troop presence, as well as coalition troop

presence, will diminish.

—U.S. President Barack Obama, interview with BBC Persian TV,

24 September 2010

During his December 2009 West Point speech, President Obama

232 War, Will, and Warlords

4 For details on the real and perceived lessons from the Soviet-Afghan War, see Cassidy, Russia

in Afghanistan and Chechnya, 18–20; Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires, 161–63; and Kulakov,

“Lessons Learned from the Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan,” 6–7.
Operational Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan until 2011 233

explained what he wanted done in Afghanistan. As a result of a

lengthy and deliberate strategy review, the president reiterated that

the overarching goal was “to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al

Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to

threaten America and our allies in the future.” He then stipulated

three corollary objectives to pursue that overarching goal in

Afghanistan: to deny al-Qaeda safe haven; to reverse the Taliban’s

momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government;

and to strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan’s security forces and

government so they can take the lead responsibility for

Afghanistan’s future. The IJC leadership has been pursuing these

objectives in earnest since the headquarters stood up in late 2009,

and Afghanistan finally had the inputs, in terms of forces and resources, right in the fall of 2010. There is some reason to be sanguine, but not Pollyannaish, since the effort is beginning to see

outputs in terms of arresting the Taliban’s momentum and reversing

the momentum in key areas where Coalition forces were focusing

their unprecedented strengths in command and troop strength to

overmatch the enemy.5

By the late fall of 2010 and during 2011, there were notable signs

of progress in a number of areas in the Central Helmand River Valley.

For example, Nawah-ye Barakzai used to be a place deserted of ordinary Afghans, a place where drug traffickers and the Taliban were

invested and where poppy was grown. That was until more than

1,000 Marines arrived in the area, disarmed improvised explosive

devises, and killed or captured hardcore Taliban leaders. The Marines

then began patrolling with their Afghan partners and putting counterinsurgency fundamentals into practice. Nawah is now an example

of what best-practice counterinsurgency looks like in Afghanistan—

a place with integrated security, governance, and development.

Today, the indigenous tribal leaders are connected to the district and

provincial government. Instead of 1,000 Marines, there are only 100

Marines near the city, and Afghan security forces—some locally recruited and trained—patrol the streets of Nawah.

5 Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation on the Way Forward in

Afghanistan and Pakistan” (speech, United States Military Academy, West Point, NY, 1 December

2009), http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-address-nation-way-forward-afghanistan-and-pakistan. 
Likewise, since September 2010 the city of Kandahar and its environs have seen combined Afghan and Coalition security forces

check the Taliban’s momentum, beginning with the tactical Operation Dragon Strike, a component of the IJC’s main effort (Operation Hamkari), which concentrated combined forces and resources

to take away the Taliban’s spiritual, physical, and historical epicenter inside Afghanistan. Operation Dragon Strike was the first major

attempt since 2001 to regain control of a city that is the Taliban's

spiritual center. The Coalition has learned and adapted from the

strategic and information operations lessons from Marjah, where

the initial hyperbole over Operation Moshtarak created the perception that the Marines overpromised and underdelivered. Influence

and intelligence-driven shaping operations preceded Operation

Hamkari for Kandahar, with all-out intelligence and engagement

shaping operations beginning in the summer before the fighting for

Panjwa’i and Zharey began in earnest. Lethal action also began in

Arghandab District before the heavier actions for Panjwa’i and

Zharey commenced in late September 2010. While positive signs of

progress are manifest, no one will be certain that the operation has

unambiguously reversed the Taliban momentum until 2012 when

the fighting season returns and when IJC begins to shift the decisive

operation from Regional Command South to Regional Command

East. How well these gains hold in and around Kandahar will reveal

the real conclusion there.

Operational-level planning, sequencing, and resourcing at IJC emphasizes connecting security and better governance to the Afghans

from the bottom up, district by district and province by province, to

the national government. The campaign concentrates on partnering relentlessly to improve Afghan security forces, putting them in the lead

for planning and conducting security operations as soon as they are

ready. The effort is focused on mobilizing the people to support the

government and to eschew the Taliban’s radical and merciless agenda

by meeting the people’s expectations and reversing the Taliban’s momentum in actions and perceptions. In the end, the IJC operational approach aims to make Afghanistan stable enough to withstand

challenges, preclude a Taliban takeover, and deny the country to alQaeda by neutralizing the insurgency and undermining the other enemies of the Afghan people who catalyze grievances that fuel the enemy. 

234 War, Will, and Warlords
Operational Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan until 2011 235

Afghanistan is a complex and heterogeneous mélange of ethnic

groups, tribal confederations, and geography. History reveals that

Afghanistan is much easier to invade than it is to govern and secure. But, history also shows that Afghanistan can be governed and

stably secured if it has governance and security that are adapted to

its character. The IJC leadership, with its Afghan and Coalition partners, is prudently and resolutely trying to help the Afghans build

durable security and stability for the long view, in order to preclude

grave threats from striking the homelands of the United States and

its partners ever again.

237

KEY TERMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

ALP Afghan Local Police program, formerly the

Local Defense Initiative (LDI)

ANA Afghan National Army

ANCOP Afghan National Civil Order Police 

ANP Afghan National Police 

ANSF Afghan National Security Forces 

CDC Community Development Council

CDP Community Development Plan

Centcom U.S. Central Command

CFSOCC-A Coalition Forces Special Operations Component

Command–Afghanistan

CIA Central Intelligence Agency

CORDS Civil Operations and Rural Development

Support (Vietnam)

CSTC-A Combined Security Transition

Command–Afghanistan 

DRA Democratic Republic of Afghanistan

FATA Federally Administered Tribal Areas

fatwa a decree handed down by an Islamic

religious leader

FC Frontier Corps 

GMIC Government Media and Information Center

Hezb-i-Islami “Party of Islam”

Hizballah “Party of God”; Lebanese radical Shia group

HuJI Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (Islamic Movement 

Struggle)

HuM Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (Movement of Holy Warriors)

IJC International Security Assistance Force

Joint Command

ISAF International Security Assistance Force

ISI Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (Pakistan)
238 War, Will, and Warlords

JI Jamaat-e-Islami (Society for Islam)

jirga Afghan decision-making assembly

JUI Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Society for the Community

of Islam)

LeT Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (Army of the Faithful)

LIC low intensity conflict 

malik Pashtun tribal leader

MMA Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (United Action Front), a

conglomeration of six religious parties in Pakistan

MOI Afghan Ministry of the Interior 

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization 

NSP National Solidarity Program 

NTM-A NATO Training Mission–Afghanistan

OEF Operation Enduring Freedom

OPEC Oil Producing and Exporting Countries

Pashtunwali unwritten but widely practiced Pashtun code of

values and precepts

PDPA People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan

PLO Palestinian Liberation Organization

PML-N Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz

PPP Pakistan People’s Party

PRT Provincial Reconstruction Team

PSYOPs psychological operations 

sharia Islamic law based on the Koran

shura Arabic for “council”

SOCCENT U.S. Special Operations Command Central 

TNSM Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (Movement

for the Enforcement of Islamic Sharia)

TTP Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan; also referred to

as the “Pakistani Taliban”

UN United Nations 

USAID U.S. Agency for International Development

VSO Village Stability Operations

zakat Islamic charity tax
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abbas, Hassan. Pakistan's Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army 

and America's War on Terror. London: M.E. Sharpe, 2005. 

.“A Profile of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.” CTC Sentinel 1, 

no. 2 (January 2008): 1–4. 

.“Defining the Punjabi Taliban Network.” CTC Sentinel 2,

no. 4 (April 2009): 1–4.

Abou Zahab, Mariam, and Olivier Roy. Islamist Networks: The 

Afghan-Pakistan Connection. London: Hurst, 2004.

Aboul-Enein, Youssef H., and Sherifa Zuhur. Islamic Rulings on 

Warfare. Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies

Institute, 2004.

Alexiev, Alex. The War in Afghanistan: Soviet Strategy and the State

of the Resistance. Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 1984. 

Ali, Farhana, and Muhammad Shehzad. “Lashkar-e Tayyiba Remains Committed to Jihad.” CTC Sentinel 2, no. 3 (March 

2009): 13–16. 

Anderson, John Lee. “The Taliban's Opium War.” New Yorker, 9 

July 2006.

Atkinson, Rick. “The Raid That Went Wrong.” Washington Post, 30

January 1994.

Barfield, Thomas. Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History. 

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.

Barfield, Thomas, and Neamatollah Nojumi. “Bringing More Effective Governance to Afghanistan: 10 Pathways to Stability.” Middle East Policy (Winter 2010): 40–52.

Barno, David. “Fighting the Other War: Counterinsurgency Strategy in Afghanistan, 2003–2005.” Military Review 87 (September–October 2007): 32–44.

Barrett, Joe, Douglas Belkin, Peter Loftus, and Eric Bellman. “For 

Terror Suspect a Life of Contradictions.” Wall Street Journal, 12

December 2009.

Baumann, Robert F. Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the 

Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan. Leavenworth Paper

Number 20. Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, 

1993. 

239
240 War, Will, and Warlords

Benazir Democracy Institute. Mainstreaming FATA. Summary report. Peshawar, Pakistan: Shaheed Bhutto Foundation, 2009.

Bergen, Peter. “Winning the Good War.” Washington Monthly, 

July 2009.

. Telephone interview with the author. 14 January 2010. 

. The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda. New York: Free Press, 2011.

Bergen, Peter, Patrick Doherty, and Ken Ballen. Public Opinion in 

Pakistan’s Tribal Regions. Washington, DC: New America Foundation, 2010.

Bernard, Cheryl. “Five Pillars of Democracy: How the West Can 

Promote an Islamic Transformation.” Rand Review 28 (Spring

2004): 10–13.

Bernsten, Gary. Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al 

Qaeda. New York: Crown, 2005. 

Birtle, Andrew J. U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency 

Operations Doctrine 1942–1976. Washington, DC: U.S. Army 

Center of Military History, 2006.

Blank, Stephen J. Afghanistan and Beyond: Reflections on the Future of Warfare. Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 1993.

Boot, Max. Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power. New York: Basic Books, 2003. 

de Borchgrave, Arnaud. “Al Qaeda’s Privileged Sanctuary.” Washington Times, 20 June 2002. 

Borer, Douglas A. Superpowers Defeated: Vietnam and Afghanistan

Compared. London: Frank Cass, 1999.

Brose, Christian, and Daniel Twining. “Our Pakistan Problem.” 

Weekly Standard, 14 September 2009.

Brownlee, R. L. Memorandum to the U.S. Army War College Commandant, 9 July 2003. 

Builder, Carl. The Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,

1989. 

Burke, Edmund. “Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontent.” Speech to Parliament, London, 23 April 1770. 

Burke, Jason. Al Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam. New York:

I.B. Tauris, 2006.
Bibliography 241

Byman, Daniel. “Friends like These: Counterinsurgency and the 

War on Terrorism.” International Security 31 (Fall 2006): 79–

115. 

Cable, Larry. “Reinventing the Round Wheel: Insurgency, CounterInsurgency, and Peacekeeping Post Cold War.” Small Wars and

Insurgencies (Autumn1993): 228–62.

Callwell, Charles C. E. Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice. 

London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1896.

Canfield, Robert L. “Fraternity, Power, and Time in Central Asia.”

In Crews and Tarzi Taliban and the Crisis, 212–37. 

Caroe, Olaf. The Pathans. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958.

Case, Dean, and Rob Pawlak. “Winning the Battle of the Narratives

in Afghanistan.” Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, 

2009.

Cassidy, Robert M. “Why Great Powers Fight Small Wars Badly.” 

Military Review (September–October 2002): 41–53.

. Russia in Afghanistan and Chechnya: Military Strategic 

Culture and the Paradoxes of Asymmetric Conflict. Carlisle, PA:

U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, 2003.

. Peacekeeping in the Abyss: British and American Peace

keeping Doctrine and Practice after the Cold War. Westport, CT:

Praeger, 2004.

. “Back to the Street without Joy: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam and Other Small Wars.” Parameters 34 

(Summer 2004): 73–83. 

. “The Long Small War: Indigenous Forces for Counterinsurgency.” Parameters 36 (Spring 2006): 47–62. 

. Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror: Military

Culture and Irregular War. Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2006.

. “Counterinsurgency and Military Culture: State Regulars

versus Non-State Irregulars.” Baltic Security and Defence Review

10 (August 2008): 53–85.

. “The Virtue of Punishment: The Enduring Salience of the

Soviet War in Afghanistan.” Defense Concepts 4 (Fall 2009): 6–

25.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Joint Publication 3-24, Counterinsurgency Operations. Washington, DC: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2009.
242 War, Will, and Warlords

Chaliand, Gerard, ed. Strategies de la guerilla: Guerres revolutionaires et contre-insurrections. Paris: Gallimard, 1984.

Chayes, Sarah. The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan after

the Taliban. New York: Penguin, 2006. 

Churchill, Winston S. The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An 

Episode of Frontier War. Kindle edition. Originally published in

1898.

Clayton, Anthony. The End of Empire: The Experience of Britain, 

France, and the Soviet Union/Russia Compared. Occasional 

Number 17. Camberley, UK: Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, 1996.

Cline, Lawrence E. Pseudo Operations and Counterinsurgency: Les

sons from Other Countries. Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2005.

Cloughley, Brian. War, Coups, and Terror: Pakistan’s Army in Years

of Turmoil. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2009.

. “Insurrection, Terrorism, and the Pakistan Army.” Pakistan Security Research Unit Brief Number 53. University of 

Bradford. Bradford, UK. 10 December 2009.

Cohen, Eliot A. "Constraints on America's Conduct of Small Wars."

International Security (Fall 1984): 151–81. 

Cohen, Stephen P. "The Jihadist Threat to Pakistan." Washington 

Quarterly 26 (Summer 2003): 7–25.

. The Idea of Pakistan. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004.

. Telephone interview with the author. 6 December 2009.

Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, 

Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. New York: Penguin, 2004. 

. “The Case for Humility in Afghanistan.” Foreign Policy 

Online. 16 October 2009.

. Interview with the author. New America Foundation, 

Washington, DC. 3 December 2009. 

. “Don’t Look Back.” New Yorker, 1 March 2010.

Coll, Steve, and Susan B. Glasser. “The Web as Weapon.” Washington Post, 9 August 2005. 

Collins, Joseph W. “The Soviet-Afghan War: The First Four Years.”

Parameters 14 (Summer 1984): 50–51.
Bibliography 243

Connett, Ty, and Bob Cassidy. “VSO: More than Village Defense,” 

Special Warfare (July–September 2011): 22–27.

Cronin, Audrey Kurth. “How al Qaeda Ends.” International Security (Summer 2006): 7–48.

Crews, Robert D., and Amin Tarzi, eds. The Taliban and the Crisis

of Afghanistan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 

2008. 

. “Introduction.” In Crews and Tarzi Taliban and the Crisis, 1–58. 

Dunn, Peter M. “The American Army: The Vietnam War, 1965–

1973.” In Armed Forces and Modern Counter-Insurgency, edited

by Ian Beckett and John Pimlott. New York: St. Martin's, 1985.

Eckhardt, George S. Vietnam Studies: Command and Control 1950–

1969. Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 

1974.

Edwards, Sean J. A. Mars Unmasked: The Changing Face of Urban

Operations. Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2000. 

Eikenberry, Karl W., and Stanley A. McChrystal. United States Government Integrated Civilian-Military Campaign Plan for Support

to Afghanistan. Kabul: U.S. Embassy and International Security

Assistance Force Headquarters. 10 August 2009.

Fair, C. Christine. “Who Are Pakistan’s Militants and Their Families.” Terrorism and Political Violence 20, no. 1 (2008): 49–65.

. “Pakistan’s Own War on Terror: What the Pakistani Public

Thinks.” Journal of International Affairs 63 (Fall/Winter 2009):

39–53. 

. Telephone interview with the author. 21 January 2010.

. Obama’s New Af-Pak Strategy: Can “Clear, Hold, Build, 

Transfer” Work? Afghanistan Papers No. 6. Waterloo, Canada:

Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), 2010.

Fair, C. Christine, and Seth G. Jones. “Pakistan’s War Within.” Survival 51 (December 2009–January 2010): 161–88. 

Fall, Bernard B. Street without Joy. New York: Schocken Books, 

1961.

. “The Theory and Practice of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency.” Naval War College Review 17 (April 1965): 21–38.

Farah, Douglas. Blood from Stones: The Secret Financial Network of Terror. New York: Broadway, 2004.
244 War, Will, and Warlords

Filkins, Dexter. “Afghan Offensive is New War Model.” New York 

Times, 12 February 2010.

Fitton, Robert A. Leadership Quotations from the Military Tradition.

Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993.

Flynn, Michael. “State of the Insurgency.” Unclassified briefing, 22

December 2009. Kabul: International Security Assistance Force

Headquarters, 2009.

Flynn, Michael, Matt Pottinger, and Paul Batchelor. Fixing Intel: A

Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan. 

Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, 2010. 

Fuller, J. F. C. The Foundations of the Science of War. 1926. Military Classic Reprint, Fort Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Press, 1993. First published in

1926 by Hutchinson, London.

Garnett, Sherman W. “Russia and its Borderlands: A Geography of

Violence.” Parameters 27 (Spring 1997): 4–21.

George, Alexander L. “Case Studies and Theory Development: The

Method of Structured, Focused Comparison.” In Diplomacy: 

New Approaches in History, Theory, and Policy, edited by Paul

Gordon Lauren. NY: Macmillan, 1979. 

Grau, Lester W. Changing Russian Tactics: The Aftermath of the Battle of Grozny. Strategic Forum Number 38. Washington, DC: In

stitute for National Strategic Studies, 1995.

. The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics

in Afghanistan. Washington, DC: National Defense University

Press, 1996.

. Bashing the Laser Range Finder with a Rock. Fort Leavenworth, KS: Foreign Military Studies Office, 1997.

Giustozzi, Antonio. Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop. New York: 

Columbia University Press, 2008. 

Glencorse, Blair. Telephone interview with the author. 13 January

2010. 

Greene, T. N., ed. The Guerrilla and How to Fight Him. Washington,

DC: Praeger, 1962. 

Gregory, Shaun. “The ISI and the War on Terrorism.” Studies in 

Conflict and Terrorism 30 (2007): 1013–1031.

. “Al Qaeda in Pakistan.” Pakistan Security Research Unit 

brief number 5, University of Bradford, UK, 1 March 2007. 
Bibliography 245

. Telephone interview with the author. 23 January 2010.

. Telephone interview with the author. 9 February January 2010. 

Gregory, Shaun, and James Revill. “The Role of the Pakistan Military in the Stability and Cohesion of Afghanistan.” Contemporary South Asia 16 (March 2008): 39–61.

Gregory, Shaun, and Simone Valentine. “Pakistan: The Situation of

Religious Minorities.” United Nations High Commissioner for 

Refugees’ report. Writenet: UK. May 2009. 

http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4b01856e2.html.

Gwynn, Sir Charles W. Imperial Policing. London: Macmillan, 1934.

Hackett, Sir John Winthrop. The Profession of Arms. London: The

Times Publishing House, 1962.

Hafez, Mohammed M. “Jihad after Iraq: Lessons from the Arab 

Afghan Phenomenon.” CTC Sentinel 1, no. 4 (March 2008): 1–

4. 

Handel, Michael. Masters of War: Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, and Jomini.

London: Frank Cass, 1992. 

Haqqani, Hussain. “The Role of Islam in Pakistan’s Future.” Washington Quarterly 28 (Winter 2004–2005): 85–96.

Harrison, Selig S. “Pakistan divides U.S. and India.” Los Angeles 

Times, 8 November 2010. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov

/08/opinion /la-oe-harrison-indopak-20101108.

Hauner, Milan. The Soviet War in Afghanistan: Patterns of Russian

Imperialism. Philadelphia: University Press of America, 1991.

Hoffman, Bruce. Al Qaeda, Trends in Terrorism and Future Potentialities: An Assessment. Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2003.

. “Redefining Counterterrorism: The Terrorist Leader as 

CEO.” Rand Review (Spring 2004): 15.

Hoffman, F. G. Decisive Force: The New American Way of War. 

Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996.

Holbrooke, Ambassador Richard. Readout on the January 28 London Conference on Afghanistan, Foreign Press Center, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC, 3 February 2010.

Hoodboy, Pervez. Pakistan—The Threat from Within. Pakistan Research Unit Brief Number 13, University of Bradford, UK, May

2007.

Horne, Alistair. A Savage War of Peace. London: Macmillan London Limited, 1977.
246 War, Will, and Warlords

Howard, Michael. War in European History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Hoyt, Timothy. Conversation with the author. 26 February 2009. 

Newport, RI. 

. Manuscript comments. Newport, RI. 26 February 2010. 

. Manuscript comments. Newport, RI. 11 March 2010. 

Huntington, Samuel P. The Soldier and the State: The Theory 

and Politics of Civil-Military Relations. Cambridge, MA: Belknap

Press, 1957. 

Hussain, Zahid. Frontline Pakistan. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

Ignatieff, Michael. “The Challenges of American Imperial Power.”

Naval War College Review 56, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 53–54.

Innocent, Malou, and Ted G. Carpenter. Escaping the Graveyard of

Empires: A Strategy to Exit Afghanistan. Washington, DC: Cato

Institute, 2009.

International Crisis Group. Pakistan’s Tribal Areas: Appeasing the

Militants. Asia Report Number 125. Washington, DC: International Crisis Group. December 2006.

. Reforming Pakistan’s Civil Service. Asia Report Number 

185. Washington, DC: International Crisis Group. February 2010.

Isby, David. Afghanistan: Graveyard of Empires; A New History of

the Borderlands. New York: Pegasus Books, 2010.

Janowitz, Morris. The Professional Soldier. New York: Free Press, 

1960.

Jaffe, Greg, and Craig Whitlock. “Battle for Marja Not Only Militarily Significant.” Washington Post, 22 February 2010. 

Jawad, Said Tayeb. Speech, Paul Nitze School for Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC, 

4 December 2009. 

Jeffrey, Keith. “Colonial Warfare 1900–39” In Warfare in the Twentieth Century: Theory and Practice, edited by Colin McInnes and

G. D. Sheffield. Winchester, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1988. 

Jenkins, Brian M. The Unchangeable War. Santa Monica, CA: Rand,

1970.

. Countering al Qaeda: An Appreciation of the Situation 

and Suggestions for Strategy. Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2002.

. “Redefining the Enemy: The World Has Changed, But Our
Bibliography 247

Mindset Has Not.” Rand Review 28 (Spring 2004): 16–23.

Joes, Anthony James. America and Guerrilla Warfare. Lexington, 

KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2000.

Johnson, Thomas H. “On the Edge of the Big Muddy: The Taliban

Resurgence in Afghanistan.” China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly 5, no. 2 (2007): 93–129.

Johnson, Thomas H., and M. Chris Mason. “Terrorism, Insurgency,

and Afghanistan.” Vol. 2 of Countering Terrorism and Insurgency in the 21st Century, edited by James J. F. Forest. West

port, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007.

. “No Sign until the Burst of Fire: Understanding the Pakistan-Afghanistan Frontier.” International Security 32 (Spring 

2008): 41–77.

. "All Counterinsurgency is Local." Atlantic, October 2008.

Jones, Owen Bennett. Pakistan: Eye of the Storm. New Haven, 

CT: Yale University Press, 2009.

Jones, Seth G. In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in 

Afghanistan. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009.

. Telephone interview with the author. 1 January 2010. 

. Telephone interview with the author. 21 January 2010. 

Keegan, John. A History of Warfare. New York: Vintage Books, 

1993. 

Keller, Arthur. “Propaganda and Peace Deals: The Taliban’s Information War in Pakistan.” CTC Sentinel 1, no. 8 (July 2008): 15–

18.

Kepel, Giles. The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2006.

. Beyond Terror and Martyrdom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 2008.

Kilcullen, David. The Accidental Guerrilla. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 

Kissinger, Henry. "The Vietnam Negotiations." Foreign Affairs (January 1969): 211–34.

Klug, Jon. Email interview with the author. 10 February 2010. 

Knorr, Klaus, ed. Power, Strategy, and Security: A World Politics 

Reader. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.

Komer, R. W. The Bureaucracy Does Its Thing: Institutional Constraints on U.S.-GVN Performance in Vietnam. Santa Monica, 
248 War, Will, and Warlords

CA: Rand, 1972.

Kulakov, Oleg. “Lessons learned from the Soviet Intervention in 

Afghanistan: Implications for Russian Defense Reform.” Research Paper Number 26. Rome, Italy: North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Defense College, 2006. 

Lalwani, Sameer. Pakistani Capabilities for a Counterinsurgency 

Campaign: A Net Assessment. Washington, DC: New America

Foundation, 2009. 

. “The Pakistan Military’s Adaptation to Counterinsurgency

in 2009.” Combating CTC Sentinel 3, no. 1 (January 2010): 9–13. 

. Telephone interview with the author. 19 February 2009. 

Lamb, Christopher J., and Martin Cinnamond. “Unified Effort: Key

to Special Operations and Irregular Warfare in Afghanistan.” 

Joint Force Quarterly 56 (January 2010): 40–53.

Larson, Eric V., Richard E. Darilek, Dalia Dassa Kaye, Forrest E. 

Morgan, Brian Nichiporuk, Diana Dunham-Scott, Cathryn 

Quantic Thurston, and Kristin J. Leuschner. Understanding 

Commanders’ Information Needs for Influence Operations. 

Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2009.

Liddell Hart, B. H. Strategy. 2nd ed. New York: Praeger, 1967. 

Litwak, Robert S. “The Soviet Union in Afghanistan.” In Foreign 

Military Intervention: The Dynamics of Protracted Conflict, edited by Aeriel E. Levite, Bruce W. Jentleson, and Larry Berman.

New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.

Lowe, Christian. “DOD Seeks Benchmarks for War on Terror.” Defense News, 14 March 2005.

Mack, Andrew. The Concept of Power and Its Uses in Explaining 

Asymmetric Conflict. London: Richardson Institute for Conflict

and Peace Research, 1974. 

. “Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars.” In Power, Strategy, 

and Security: A World Politics Reader, edited by Klaus Knorr. 

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.

Mackinlay, John. Globalization and Insurgency. Adelphi Paper 352.

London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2002. 

. The Insurgent Archipelago. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. 

Mao Tse-Tung. On Protracted War. Peking: Foreign Language Press,

1967.
Bibliography 249

. On Guerrilla Warfare. Translated by Samuel B. Griffith, II.

Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000.

Markey, Daniel. Pakistani Partnerships with the United States: An 

Assessment. Seattle, WA: National Bureau of Asian Research, 

2009. 

Matthews, Lloyd J. Winning the War by Winning the Peace. Conference Report, Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, 2004. 

Mausner, Adam. Reforming ANSF Metrics: Improving the CUAT System. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International 

Studies, 2010.

McCaffrey, Barry. “Afghanistan Visit After Action Report.” West 

Point, NY. 5 December 2009. 

McChrystal, Stanley A. Commander’s Initial Guidance. 

Kabul: International Security Assistance Force Headquarters. 

13 June 2009.

. “ISAF Commander’s Counterinsurgency Guidance.” 

Kabul: International Security Assistance Force Headquarters, 

25 August 2009. 

. “Commander’s Initial Assessment.” Kabul: International

Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and U.S. Forces- Afghanistan

(USFOR-A) Headquarters, 30 August 2009.

. “Special Address.” International Institute of Strategic 

Studies. London. 1 October 2009. 

. “‘Killing the Enemy is Not the Best Route to Success’: 

Spiegel Interview with General Stanley McChrystal.” By Susanne Koebl. Spiegel. 11 January 2010.

McInnes, Colin, and G. D. Sheffield, eds. Warfare in the Twentieth

Century: Theory and Practice. Winchester, MA: Unwin Hyman,

1988.

McIntosh, Scott E. “Leading with the Chin: Using Svechin to Analyze the Soviet Incursion into Afghanistan, 1979–1989.” Journal

of Slavic Military Studies 8 (June 1995): 415–31. 

McMichael, Scott R. “The Soviet Army, Counter-Insurgency, and 

the Afghan War,” Parameters 19 (December 1989): 21–35.

Metz, Steven, and Millen, Raymond. Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in the 21st Century: Reconceptualizing Threat and Response. Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, 2004.
250 War, Will, and Warlords

Miller, Chuck (lieutenant colonel). Interview with the author. U.S.

Special Operations Command Center Headquarters, Tampa, FL.

16 December 2009. 

Moorcraft, Paul. “Can Al Qaeda be Defeated?” Armed Forces Journal

(July 2004): 30–33.

Moyar, Mark. A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the

Civil War to Iraq. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.

Mullick, Haider. Pakistan’s Security Paradox: Countering and Fomenting Insurgencies. JSOU Report 09-9. Hurlburt Field, FL: 

Joint Special Operations University, 2009.

. Telephone interview with the author. 25 January 2010. 

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Public Diplomacy 

Division. Afghanistan Report 2009. Brussels, Belgium: NATO, 

2009.

Nawaz, Shuja. Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars 

Within. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 

. FATA—A Most Dangerous Place. Washington, DC: Center

for Strategic and International Studies, 2009.

. Telephone interview with the author. 14 January 2010. 

. Telephone interview with the author. 21 January 2010. 

Nicholson, John W., Jr. (brigadier general, USA). Conversation with

the author, 10 February 2009, Kandahar, Afghanistan. 

Obama, Barack. “Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation

on the Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Speech, 

United States Military Academy, West Point, NY, 1 December 

2009. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarkspresident-address-nation-way-forward-afghanistan-and-pak

istan. 

Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. “Press

Roundtable with General McChrystal in Istanbul, Turkey.” 

News transcript. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense,

4 February 2010.

Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“Afghanistan and Pakistan Regional Stabilization Strategy.” U.S.

Department of State. Washington, DC: 24 February 2010. 

O’Neill, Bard E. Insurgency and Terrorism: From Revolution to Apocalypse. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005.

Packer, George. The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq. New York: 
Bibliography 251

Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005.

Paret, Peter. French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria. New York: Praeger, 1964.

, ed. Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.

Paret, Peter, and John W. Shy. Guerrillas in the 1960’s. New York: 

Praeger, 1962.

Paris, Jonathan. Prospects for Pakistan. London: Legatum Institute,

2010. 

Perez, Carlos. Interview with the author. U.S. Special Operations 

Command Headquarters, Tampa, FL. 17 December 2009.

Petraeus, David H. “COMISAF’s Counterinsurgency Guidance.” 

Kabul: International Security Assistance Force Headquarters, 1

August 2010. 

Pye, Lucien W., and Sydney Verba, eds. Political Culture and Political Development Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 

1965. 

Rashid, Ahmed. Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism

in Central Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. 

. "Afghanistan: On the Brink." New York Review of Books,

22 June 2006.

. Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan,

Afghanistan, and Central Asia. New York: Penguin, 2008. 

. “Pakistan’s Continued Failure to Adopt a Counterinsurgency Strategy.” CTC Sentinel 2, no. 3 (March 2009): 7–9. 

. “Pakistan on the Brink.” New York Review of Books, 11 

June 2009.

Rassler, Don. “Al-Qa’ida’s Pakistan Strategy” CTC Sentinel 2, no. 6

(June 2009): 1–4. 

Rid, Thomas, and Marc Hecker. War 2.0: Irregular Warfare in the 

Information Age. Westport, CT: Praeger Security International,

2007. 

Riechmann, Deb, and Heidi Vogt. “NATO Commander Makes Televised Apology to Afghans.” Associated Press, 23 February 2010. 

Riedel, Bruce. The Search for al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and

Future. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008. 

. Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of 

Global Jihad. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2011.
Ringsmose, Jens, and Peter Thruelsen. “NATO’s Counterinsurgency

Campaign in Afghanistan: Are Classical Doctrines Suitable for

Alliances?” Research Unit on International Security and Cooperation Discussion Paper Number 22, Zurich, January 2010. 

Rollins, John. Al Qaeda and Affiliates: Historical Perspective, Global

Presence, and Implications for U.S. Policy. Washington, DC: U.S.

Congressional Research Service, 2010.

Rosenberg, Matthew. “U.S. Special Operations Ordered Deadly 

Afghan Strike.” Wall Street Journal, 22 February 2010. 

Roy, Olivier. The Lessons of the Soviet/Afghan War. Adelphi Paper

259. London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1991. 

. Afghanistan: Internal Politics and Socio-Economic Dynamics and Groupings. Paris: United Nations High Commissioner 

for Refugees’ Emergency and Security Service, March 2003. 

Rubin, Barnett. Discussion with the author, Newport, RI, 3 September 2009.

Ruttig, Thomas. The Other Side: Dimensions of the Afghan Insurgency: Causes, Actors, and Approaches to Talks. Afghanistan 

Analysts Network Thematic Report 1. Berlin: Afghan Analysts

Network, July 2009.

Sapolsky, Harvey M. “On the Theory of Military Innovation.” Breakthroughs (Spring 2000): 35–39.

Sapolsky, Harvey M., and Jeremy Shapiro. "Casualties, Technology,

and America's Future Wars." Parameters 26 (Summer 1996): 

119–27. 

Sarkesian, Sam C. America’s Forgotten Wars: The Counterrevolutionary Past and Lessons for the Future. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984. 

Sarwari, Atiq, and Robert D. Crews. “Epilogue: Afghanistan and the

Pax Americana.” In Crews and Tarzi, Taliban and the Crisis, 

311–55.

Scarborough, Rowan. “Metrics Help Guide Pentagon.” Washington

Times, 5 April 2005.

Schaffer, Howard B., and Terisita C. Schaffer. How Pakistan Negotiates with the United States: Riding the Roller Coaster. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2011.

Schein, Edgar. "Organizational Culture." American Psychologist

(February 1990):10–19. 

252 War, Will, and Warlords
Bibliography 253

Schmidle, Nicholas. To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous 

Years in Pakistan. New York: Henry Holt, 2009.

. Interview with the author. Washington, DC. 3 December 2009. 

Shah, Pir Zubair. “Drone Reportedly Killed Filipino in Pakistan.” 

New York Times, 22 January 2010. 

Shanker, Thom. “Afghan Push Went beyond Traditional Goals.” 

New York Times, 20 February 2010. 

Shinn, David H. “Somalia’s New Government and the Challenge of

al-Shabab.” CTC Sentinel 2, no. 3 (March 2009): 1–4. 

Shultz, Richard H., Jr. Global Insurgency Strategy and the Salafi Jihadi Movement. Institute for National Security Studies Occasional Paper 66. United States Air Force Academy, CO: Institute

for National Security Studies, 2008.

Shultz, Richard H., Jr., and Andrea J. Dew. Insurgents, Terrorists, 

and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat. New York:

Columbia University Press, 2006.

Shultz, Richard H., Douglas Farah, and Itamara V. Lochard. Armed

Groups: A Tier-One Security Priority. Institute for National Security Studies Occasional Paper 57. United States Air Force 

Academy, CO: Institute for National Security Studies, 2004.

Shy, John, and Thomas W. Collier. “Revolutionary War.” In Makers

of Modern Strategy, edited by Peter Paret. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986. 

Siddiqa, Ayesha. “Jihadism in Pakistan: The Expanding Frontier.”

Journal of International Affairs 63 (Fall/Winter 2009): 57–70.

Spillius, Alex. “Afghanistan: General Stanley A. McChrystal 

Says Troops Surge is Starting to Work.” Telegraph (UK), 12 January 2010. 

Stanton, Martin. Interview with the author. U.S. Central Command

Headquarters, Tampa, FL. 16 December 2009. 

Stoessinger, John G. Why Nations Go to War. 5th ed. New York: St

Martin’s Press, 1990. 

Summers, Harry G., Jr. On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1982.

Sun Tzu. The Art of War. Translated by Samuel B. Griffith. New 

York: Oxford University Press, 1982. 

Taber, Robert, and Bard O’Neill. The War of the Flea: Guerrilla Warfare in Theory and Practice. New York: Lyle Stuart, 1965.
254 War, Will, and Warlords

Tanner, Stephen. Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander 

the Great to the War against the Taliban. Rev. ed. Philadelphia:

Da Capo Press, 2009.

Tarzi, Amin. “The Neo-Taliban.” In Crews and Tarzi, Taliban and 

the Crisis, 274–310. 

Tellis, Ashley J. Creating New Facts on the Ground: Why the Diplomatic Surge Cannot Yet Produce a Regional Solution in 

Afghanistan. Policy Brief 91. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2011.

Thompson, Loren B., ed. Low-Intensity Conflict: The Pattern of Warfare in the Modern World. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 

1989. 

Tuchman, Barbara. The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. New

York: Ballantine Books, 1984. 

Tucker, David. “Fighting Barbarians.” Parameters 28 (Summer 

1998): 69–79.

Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers. 5th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

United States Agency for International Development 

(USAID)/Afghanistan. “Program Highlights: September 16–

October 15 2009.” Kabul: United States Agency for International Development, October 2009. 

United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Office

of Transition Initiatives—Pakistan. Fact Sheet. January 2010. 

U.S. Army. FM 3-0: Operations. Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2008.

U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps. FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5: Counterinsurgency. Washington, DC: Department of the Army/Headquarters United States Marine Corps, 2006. 

U.S. Central Command. Commander’s Initiatives Group conversation. U.S. Central Command Headquarters, Tampa, FL, 16 December 2009. 

U.S. Department of Defense. DoD Directive 3000.05. Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction 

(SSTR) Operations. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2005.

U.S. Marine Corps. Small Wars Manual. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1940.
Bibliography 255

U.S. White House National Security Council. White Paper of the Interagency Policy Group’s Report on U.S. Policy toward 

Afghanistan and Pakistan. Washington, DC, March 2009.

Utley, Robert M. Frontiersmen in Blue. New York: Macmillan, 1967. 

. Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian,

1866–1890. New York: Macmillan, 1973.

Van Dyke, Carl. “Kabul to Grozny: A Critique of Soviet (Russian) 

Counter-Insurgency Doctrine.” Journal of Slavic Military Studies

(December 1996): 690–91.

Van Evera, Steven. Guide to Methodology for Students of Political 

Science. Cambridge, MA: Defense and Arms Control Studies 

Program MIT, 1993. 

Von Drehle, David, and Bobby Gosh. “An Enemy Within: The Making of Najibullah Zazi.” Time, 12 October 2009.

Waghelstein, John D. “Che’s Bolivian Adventure.” Military Review

59 (August 1979): 39–48. 

Waghelstein, John D., and Donald Chisholm. Analyzing Insurgency.

Newport, RI: U.S. Naval War College, 2006.

Weigley, Russell F. Towards an American Army: Military Thought 

from Washington to Marshall. New York: Columbia University

Press, 1962. 

Weinbaum, Marvin G. “Hard Choices in Countering Insurgency and

Terrorism along Pakistan’s North-West Frontier.” Journal of International Affairs 63 (Fall/Winter 2009): 73–87.

White, Joshua T. Pakistan’s Islamist Frontier. Arlington, VA: Center on Faith and International Affairs, 2008.

. Telephone interview with the author. 23 January 2010.

Williams, Brian G. “Pakistani Responses to the CIA’s Predator Drone

Campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda.” Terrorism Monitor

7 (February 2010): 3–5.

Wiktorowicz, Quintan. “A Genealogy of Radical Islam,” Studies in

Conflict and Terrorism 28 (2005): 75–97.

Worley, D. Robert. Waging Ancient War: Limits on Preemptive Force.

Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, 2003. 

Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to

9/11. New York: Knopf, 2006. 

Younossai, Obaid, Peter Thruelsen, Jonathan Vaccaro, Jerry 

Sollinger, and Brian Grady. The Long March: Building an 
256 War, Will, and Warlords

Afghan National Army. Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2009. 

Yusufzai, Rahimullah. “Assessing the Progress of Pakistan’s South

Waziristan Offensive.” CTC Sentinel 2, no. 12 (December 2009):

8–12. 

Zaidi, Syed Manzar Abbas. “The Taliban Organization in Pakistan.”

RUSI Journal 154 (October 2009): 40–47.

Zuhur, Sherifa. A Hundred Osamas: Islamist Threats and the Future of Counterinsurgency. Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College

Strategic Studies Institute, 2005.
PHOTO CAPTIONS AND CREDITS

Front Cover: Soldiers from Company A, Special Troops Battalion, 101st

Airborne Division, conduct an air assault into a village inside Jowlzak Valley, Parwan Province, Afghanistan, on 11 February 2011. (U.S. Army photo

by Spec Scott Davis)

Chapter 1: U.S. Army soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division's 4th

Brigade Combat Team wait as bundles of fuel are dropped from a C-17

Globemaster III to Forward Operating Base Waza K'wah in Paktika

Province, Afghanistan, on 30 January 2011. (U.S. Army photo)

Chapter 2: Spec Jeremy Burton, a U.S. Army armored crewman assigned

to Company C, 1st Battalion, 66th Armored Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat

Team, 4th Infantry Division, keeps watch over the Arghandab River Valley,

Afghanistan, on 31 January 2011. (U.S. Army photo by Spec Breanne Pye)

Chapter 3: In the city of Marjah, Afghanistan, U.S. Marines and Afghan

National Army soldiers with Company B, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, take

cover behind a berm after receiving small arms fire on 13 February 2010.

Marines were inserted into the city at night by helicopters as part of a largescale offensive aimed at driving the Taliban from their last-known stronghold in Helmand Province. (U.S. Marine Corps photo)

Chapter 4: A Lithuanian Provincial Reconstruction Team soldier patrols

in Pasaband District in Afghanistan's Ghor Province on 5 February 2011.

(U.S. Army photo)

Chapter 5: U.S. Marine LtCol Michael Geffroy observes as explosive ordnance disposal team members place unexploded ordnance in line to be destroyed at Cigini, Afghanistan, on 10 December 2010. (U.S. Marine Corps

photo by Cpl Megan Sindelar)

Chapter 6: Afghan National Army SgtMaj Akhtar Muhammad takes questions from new recruits during Basic Warrior Training at Forward Operating

Base Thunder, Afghanistan, on 22 January 2011. (U.S. Army photo by Capt

Kenneth A. Stewart)

Chapter 7: U.S. Army Maj Trevor Nehls from Provincial Reconstruction

Team Zabul receives a turban from Barat Khan, the Shinkay District governor, in Shinkay District, Zabul Province, Afghanistan, on 6 January 2011.

(U.S. Air Force photo by SSgt Brian Ferguson)

257

259

INDEX

055 Brigade, 29, 31

9/11, 3, 8, 27, 40, 43, 61–63, 65–66, 93, 95–96, 98, 106, 149, 221

attacks against civilians, 194

Osama bin Laden, 231

Abbas, Hassan, 65–67

Abu Ghraib prison (Iraq), 93

Aden, 7

Afghan Arabs, 7, 69

Afghan Local Police (ALP), 117, 119–21, 136, 203–4, 219–20

Afghan National Army (ANA), 17, 36–38, 51, 112, 114, 132–34

Afghan National Police (ANP), 34–35, 51, 132–34

Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), 115, 117–18, 121, 123–

24, 129–31, 133–35, 224, 227–28

Pakistan relationship, 61, 64, 75, 83, 183, 187, 189

Taliban regime, 27, 31, 62, 66, 69–70, 87, 99, 116, 142

Afghanistan, 11, 28–29, 41, 44–45, 47, 56, 68, 71–72, 95, 160, 182,

184, 235

civilian population, 49–54, 71, 113, 119–21, 123, 131, 

136, 138–39, 142–47, 193–96, 203, 210–11, 216, 229, 

232, 234

corruption, 34, 48, 51, 58, 115–16, 118, 141, 195, 202, 

213–14, 226

Democratic Republic of (DRA), 16, 20, 24

"graveyard of empires," 9

Islamic State of, 25

Karzai government, 50, 54, 58, 86–87, 112–13, 115–18,

120–23, 129–30, 132, 135–37, 141–42, 145–47, 174, 183,

media, 102–3, 143, 211

188, 194, 202–5, 210, 213–214, 216–17, 225–26, 229

Ministry of the Interior, 34, 51, 120–21, 129, 132

narcotics, 6, 57, 63, 67, 115, 117, 123, 228, 230, 233

security forces, 4, 10, 17, 34–39, 42, 46, 55, 113, 119–

24, 132, 136, 178, 203–4, 207, 225, 233

Soviet-Afghan war, 1–2, 7, 9–10, 14–15, 19–24, 55, 65–
66, 69, 87, 90, 174, 191, 199–200, 223, 231–32

U.S.-led war, 1–2, 8–9, 44–50, 56–57, 68–71, 86–87, 90,

101, 105–6, 109–24, 127–32, 134–39, 149, 161–62, 170,

186, 191–92, 194–97, 203, 206–7, 209–11, 215–16, 219–

21, 223–24, 227

warlords, 25–26, 32–38, 48, 50, 57, 65, 113, 115, 195, 

202, 225, 232

Africa, 6, 219

Ahmed, Mahmood, 106

Ahmedi, 179

Akhund, Baradar, 87, 150

Akora Khattak (Pakistan), 70

al-Fadhli, Tariq, 7

al-Qaeda, 3–8, 10, 13, 19–20, 27–29, 33, 36–38, 40, 48, 50, 53, 55,

57–58, 61, 64, 67, 71, 74, 77, 85–87, 92–94, 98, 101, 103–7, 

110, 162, 178, 180, 185, 193–95, 197–98, 200, 202, 213, 215–

16, 221, 225, 227, 230–34

al-Qaradawi, Yusuf, 93

Amin, Hafizullah, 16–17

Amu Darya (river), 18, 22

Arab, 12, 29, 176, 179, 212

states, 14

volunteers, 55

Atmar, Muhammad Hanif, 120, 132

Atta, Muhammad, 8

Awami National Party, 74

Aziz, Maulana Abdul, 73

Aziz, Abdul, 176

Azzam, Abdullah, 29

Badakshan (Afghanistan), 27

Baghdad (Iraq), 128

Bajaur Agency (Pakistan), 83, 103, 165–67, 170, 208

Balkh Province (Afghanistan), 35, 229

Baluchistan Province (Pakistan), 5, 7, 26, 70–71, 84, 87, 104–5, 154,

157, 165, 208, 215

Banana Wars, 42

Bangladesh, 12

260 War, Will, and Warlords
Index 261

Barlevi Islam, 19

Bergen, Peter L., 13, 122, 158, 177

Barno, David W., 47, 50

Bhutto, Benazir, 158

Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali, 13, 66

bin Laden, Osama, 6–8, 27, 29, 31–32, 58, 66–67, 87, 92, 103, 230–

31

Bonn Process, 183

Brezhnev, Leonid, 16

Bugti, Akbar Khan, 105

Buner District (Pakistan), 76, 158–60

Bush, George W., 185

Byman, Daniel, 78

Caldwell, William B., IV, 128, 132

Camp David Accords, 14

Canfield, Robert L., 71

Casablanca (Morocco), 8

Casey, William J., 200

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 45, 86–87

Chaman (Pakistan), 86

Chaudhry, Iftikhar Muhammad, 157

Chayes, Sarah, 33, 116

Chechnya, 6, 54, 56, 101

China, 15, 186, 218

Christian, 179, 198

Cohen, Stephen, 149, 151

Cold War, 43, 53

Coll, Steve, 6, 158

Czechoslovakia, 16

Dadullah, Mullah, 87

Damadola (Pakistan), 103–4, 205

Deobandism, 18–19, 38, 64, 90, 141, 181, 200, 212–13

Dir District (Pakistan), 159

Durand, H. Mortimer 4

Durand Line, 1, 4–5, 13, 17, 67, 80, 96, 101, 139, 172–73, 182–83,

187–88, 193, 215
East Africa embassy bombings (1998), 7, 29

Egypt, 8, 12, 14

Eikenberry, Karl W., 128

Europe, 19–20, 40, 43, 193

Fahim, Muhammad, 214

Fair, C. Christine, 95, 177

Fazlullah, Maulana, 74

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 5, 117

Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), 4–7, 17, 37, 58–59, 67–

68, 72, 76–77, 81, 83–87, 92–94, 99–100, 103, 110, 153–57, 

160–63, 166–68, 175–78, 180, 184, 200, 205, 209, 212, 214–

16, 230, 232

Frontier Corps (FC), 74–75, 81, 84, 163–66, 169–71, 175, 208–9, 216

Gereshk (Afghanistan), 228

Germany, 8, 34, 127, 132

Ghazi, Abdul Rashid, 73

Gilani, Daoud. See Headley, David C.

Giustozzi, Antonio, 55

Great Britain, 9, 15, 103, 231

Great Game, 9, 231

Gregory, Shaun, 4–5, 104, 177

Gulf states, 14, 95, 182, 200

Gulf War, 43, 192

Gwadar (Pakistan), 154

Hairatan (Afghanistan), 229

Haqqani, Jalaluddin, 87, 101

Haqqani, Sirajuddin, 87, 101

Haqqani network, 6, 37, 102–3, 149, 159, 162, 165–66, 182, 193, 

208–9, 218

Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI), 66

Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), 66

Headley, David C., 5, 231

Hekmatyar, Gulbuddin, 16, 24–25, 87, 149, 165, 208

Helmand Province (Afghanistan), 87, 114, 122–23, 134–35, 228–29

Helmand River Valley, 122–23, 135, 187, 204, 228, 233

262 War, Will, and Warlords
Index 263

Herat (Afghanistan), 17

Hezb-i-Islami, 37

Hindu Kush, 9, 29

Holbrooke, Richard C., 116–17, 161

Hussain, Zahid, 18

India, 15, 61, 65, 75, 77–78, 81–82, 86, 88–89, 91, 100–101, 157, 

162, 166, 182–83, 186–87, 192–93, 201–2, 205, 216–18, 231

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 182

International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), 45–46, 109, 111–16,

118, 120–21, 124, 129–31, 135, 138, 140, 142–46, 202–4, 206–

7, 210–11, 213–17

ISAF Joint Command (IJC), 128, 133, 136, 139, 223–24,

226–30, 233–35

Iran, 13, 65, 87, 95, 186

Iraq, 2, 39–41, 45, 49, 56–57, 78, 93, 105, 112, 124, 126–30, 138, 

161–62, 195, 200, 206, 219–21

Islam, 11, 14, 18–19, 24, 29, 39, 56, 58, 61, 63–65, 68–75, 89, 91–

92, 95–99, 105–6, 113, 149, 152–53, 165, 172, 182, 187–88, 

194–97, 199, 201, 210, 213, 216, 218

Islamabad (Pakistan), 8, 14, 18, 73, 109, 159, 217

Marriot attack (2008), 102–3

Israel, 12, 14–15, 29, 65, 67, 93

Jaish-e-Mohammed, 6, 185

Jalalabad (Afghanistan), 25, 229

Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), 18

Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), 18, 26, 70–71, 86–87

jihad, 4–11, 13–15, 17–19, 29, 37–40, 56, 64–66, 69–70, 72–73, 75,

77, 82, 85–87, 90, 95–98, 106–7, 176, 182, 195, 197, 199, 230

jirga, 31, 142, 155

Kabul (Afghanistan), 1, 25–26, 31, 33, 35–36, 53, 55, 58, 86, 103,

113, 115, 228

Kandahar (Afghanistan), 8, 26–27, 31, 35, 55, 87, 114, 116, 122, 

131, 134–35, 147, 187–88, 204, 228, 233–34

Kargil War, 78, 163

Karmal, Babrak, 16
Karzai, Hamid, 32, 34–39, 49, 54, 58, 103, 115–17, 145, 158, 188, 

202, 214

Kashmir, 56, 63, 65, 78, 163, 193, 202, 218

Kayani, Ashfaq Parvez, 40, 84, 151–52, 169, 171, 209

Kerry-Lugar-Berman legislation, 153, 185

Khalq, 16

Khan, Ayub, 90

Khan, Muhammad Daoud, 12–13, 15–16

Khan, Sufi Muhammad, 73–74, 159

Khomeini, Ayatollah, 13

Khyber, Mir Akbar, 16

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province (Pakistan), 5, 7, 26, 39, 58, 67, 70–

72, 76, 81, 85–86, 89, 92, 105, 153–54, 156, 162, 166, 178, 

180, 209, 214–17

Kissinger, Henry, 21

Kohat (Pakistan), 71

Kunar Province (Afghanistan), 123, 130

Kunduz (Afghanistan), 58, 143

Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), 5–6, 66, 75, 100, 107, 180, 185, 213, 231

Lashkar i Jhangvi, 6

Mackinlay, John, 102

madrassa, 14, 18–19, 26, 39, 94–98, 103, 106, 180–82, 185, 200–1,

213, 218–19

Malakand Division (Pakistan), 89, 103

malik, 68, 153, 179

Malik, Rehman, 5

Marjah (Afghanistan), 122–23, 131, 134–35, 143, 207, 228, 234

Markey, Daniel, 150

Masood, Ahmad Shah, 16, 25, 113

Mazar-e-Sharif (Afghanistan), 229

McChrystal, Stanley A., 111, 115–16, 128, 140, 203

McKiernan, David D., 128–29

Mehsud, Baitullah, 72–73, 101, 110, 177

Miranshah (Pakistan), 87, 176

Muhammad, Khalid Shayk, 106

Muhammad, Nek, 181

264 War, Will, and Warlords
Index 265

mujahideen, 2, 6, 19–26, 29, 34, 54–56, 65, 83, 86–87, 100–1, 106,

109, 181, 191, 218

Mullen, Michael G., 161

Mullick, Haider, 169

Mumbai (India), 8, 100–1, 231

Musharraf, Pervez, 61, 63, 65–66, 69–70, 73–74, 80, 85–86, 90, 96–

98, 106, 149, 151, 157, 162, 185

Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), 68, 70, 90, 106, 195

Najibullah, Muhammad, 24–27, 37

Nangarhar Province (Afghanistan), 35, 229

Nicholson, John W., Jr., 124, 127

Nicholson, Lawrence D., 127

Noor, Atta Muhammad, 35

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 2, 10, 46, 53–54, 112, 

114, 117, 132, 134–35, 141–42, 172, 186–87, 199, 207, 225–

26, 232

Northern Alliance, 20, 29, 31, 36–37, 41, 86

North-West Frontier Province. See Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province

Obama, Barack H., 117, 232

Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC), 12–13

Omar, Mullah Mohammad, 19, 26, 31, 39, 55–56, 70–71, 87

Operation 

Dragon Strike, 234

Enduring Freedom (OEF), 4, 27, 31, 43, 87, 113

Hamkari (Cooperation), 122, 131, 134–35, 147, 187–88,

204, 207, 234

Iraqi Freedom (OIF), 126, 128

Moshtarak (Together), 122, 134–35, 146, 187, 204, 207,

234

Sher Dil (Lionheart), 83, 170

Pakistan, 3–5, 12–15, 18–20, 24, 27–28, 39, 55, 122, 180, 219, 233

Afghanistan border, 6, 9, 29, 58–59, 62, 67–68, 72–73, 

80, 96, 110, 162, 182, 192–94, 230

Anti-Americanism, 65, 69, 90–91, 98, 149, 157–58, 165,

177–78, 184, 196, 205, 212, 217–18
Pakistan (continued)

civilian population, 64–67, 69, 76–77, 82–83, 89, 91–94,

98, 103, 106, 149, 152, 154, 157–61, 166, 169, 174, 179,

184, 193–95, 198, 200, 202, 211–212, 213, 216–17

counterinsurgency, 58, 62, 76–84, 88, 109, 149, 166, 

170–71, 182, 194, 220

corruption, 72, 78, 80–81, 151, 181, 214

education, 94–98, 106, 151, 181, 183, 185, 196, 201, 206,

212, 214, 218

government, 64–66, 68–69, 71–79, 83, 85, 87, 90–92, 

94–97, 99, 101, 105, 107, 110, 112, 149, 151–59, 162, 166–

67, 172, 174–75, 178, 183–84, 187, 197–98, 201–2, 205,

211, 213–14

Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), 5–6, 17, 25–

26, 40, 58, 61–64, 69, 71, 86–87, 100, 105–7, 150, 165, 

173, 186, 192–93, 208–9, 215

media, 102–3, 200

nuclear program, 65, 182, 188

security forces, 4, 10, 58, 62, 64, 68–69, 71, 73–85, 87–

89, 91–92, 96, 99–101, 103–5, 110, 149–52, 154–58, 161–

73, 175–79, 182, 186, 189, 192, 195, 197, 205–6, 208–9,

211–12, 216–17

support for Islamic militants, 61–63, 65–66, 70–71, 75, 

87, 95, 100, 149, 218, 220, 224–25

tribal areas, 6, 8, 56, 62–63, 67–69, 72, 74, 76–77, 81, 

84–85, 88–89, 91, 94, 96–97, 99–100, 112, 154, 195, 199,

220, 225, 230–31

-U.S. relationship, 58, 61, 63–65, 69–70, 75, 78–79, 82–

86, 89–92, 94, 106, 110, 116, 149, 151, 153, 156, 158, 

164, 166, 170, 173–74, 179, 182–89, 194, 199, 216

Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz, 152

Pakistani People’s Party (PPP), 152

Paktia Province (Afghanistan), 32

Palestine, 12, 56, 93

Panjshir Valley (Afghanistan), 27

Panjwa’i District (Afghanistan), 187, 234

Parcham, 16

Pashtun, 1, 12–13, 15, 17, 24, 26–29, 35–39, 49–50, 52, 55–56, 62,

266 War, Will, and Warlords
Index 267

75, 81, 84–85, 96, 100, 103–4, 113, 117, 132, 140, 157, 163–

64, 170, 176, 187, 195, 210–13, 216–17, 231

Belt, 4, 8–9, 11, 72–73, 76, 90, 105, 109, 118–19, 124, 

139, 146, 160, 172, 174, 181, 188, 200–1, 204, 228, 230

customs, 10, 68, 145, 155, 217

militias, 6, 74

nationalism, 89, 99, 105, 141

Pashtunwali, 10, 67, 141–42, 179

tribal areas, 4, 5, 63, 67–71, 94, 109–10, 193–94

People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), 13, 15–17, 24–

25

Peshawar (Pakistan), 16, 58, 87

Petraeus, David H., 128, 143, 203, 215, 217, 227

Popal, Jelani, 120

Punjab, 56, 64, 65, 81–82, 84, 88, 160, 163, 166, 172, 179–80, 194,

212

Quetta (Pakistan), 71, 150, 172

Quetta Shura Taliban, 87, 101, 165–66, 181, 218

Rabbani, Burhanuddin, 16, 25

Rashid, Ahmed, 55, 86

Razzaq, Abdul, 87

Reagan, Ronald W., 15

Red Mosque (Lal Masjid), 69, 73, 76, 106, 151, 157, 162, 195

Riedel, Bruce, 7

Rodriguez, David M., 128

Roy, Olivier, 62

Rubin, Barnett R., 4

Rumsfeld, Donald H., 2, 20, 32, 43, 48, 57, 126, 199

Russia, 218

Salafism, 28, 141, 180, 200–1

Saudi Arabia, 7–8, 14–15, 95, 182, 200

Sawr Revolution, 16

Shahzad, Faisal, 231

Shamzai, Mufti, 70

sharia, 18, 26, 28, 33, 38, 56, 72, 140–41, 159, 179
Shia Islam, 13

Shindand (Afghanistan), 48, 54

Shirzai, Gul Agha, 35, 113

Siddiqa, Ayesha, 180

Sindh Province (Pakistan), 65, 66, 180

Sipah-e Sahaba Pakistan, 101

Somalia, 7, 191, 220–21

Soviet Union, 15–17, 25, 41, 65, 78, 90, 142

Army, 1–3, 7, 19–24, 127, 191

Spinoza, Baruch, 111

Stanton, Marty, 182

Sufi, 19

Sunni Islam, 13, 17, 90, 93–94, 103, 200

Swat (Pakistan), 73–74, 76, 83, 89, 152, 159, 165–66, 169, 171, 175,

208, 212, 216, 220

Tablighi Jamaat, 180

Tajik, 36–37

Takhar Province (Afghanistan), 27

Taliban, 4, 7, 10, 20, 25–29, 31–40, 47, 58, 65–66, 82, 84, 89, 92, 

94, 103, 105, 139–40, 142, 147, 152, 155–56, 170, 175–76, 

183–85, 189, 194, 196, 200, 203–4, 211–12, 221, 224, 226–30,

232–34

Afghan, 2, 19, 75, 86, 93, 106–7, 109, 112–17, 122–23, 

132, 149–50, 157, 165–66, 168, 171–74, 181–82, 186–88,

193, 195, 198–99, 201–2, 209–10, 215–16, 219–20, 225

collapse of, 46, 48, 68, 100

information operations, 50, 52–56, 114, 138, 141, 143–

46, 168, 177–79, 198–99, 201, 210, 213

Pakistani (TPP), 6, 64, 69, 72, 74–77, 83, 86–88, 90, 98–

101, 110, 150, 153, 155–59, 162–63, 165–69, 171, 178–

81, 193, 197, 199, 201–2, 205–6, 208–9, 213, 215–17

Pakistani support of, 61–62, 68, 70–71, 73, 86, 165

post-U.S. invasion, 48, 87, 114, 124, 134–36

Taraki, Nur Muhammad, 16–17

Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM), 64, 66, 69, 73, 75–

79, 93, 100–101, 109–10, 150, 159, 162, 166, 201–2, 217

Tora Bora (Afghanistan), 32, 58, 87

268 War, Will, and Warlords
Index 269

United Front, 36–37

United Nations, 25, 31, 70, 86, 113, 137

United States, 6, 13–15, 17–18, 20, 29, 34, 42, 79, 85, 89, 104, 151,

153, 156, 158, 166, 170, 205

counterinsurgency, 2–3, 41, 43, 45–49, 51–52, 110–11, 1

14, 116–18, 121–32, 134, 138, 161, 174, 191, 194, 197, 

203, 206, 219–21, 232

drone strikes, 68, 94, 105, 157, 174, 177–78, 195, 212

embassy in Afghanistan, 146, 207, 213, 215

government, 56, 71, 83, 90–92, 111–12, 116–17, 128, 137,

149, 152, 179, 184–85, 196, 199, 203, 208–9, 218–19

–led Coalition, 1–4, 7, 27, 31–33, 36–40, 53–56, 71, 87,

101, 103, 109, 111–12, 115, 117–24, 129–35, 137–40, 142–

46, 174, 178, 182–84, 187, 189, 193–95, 198–99, 203–4,

207–11, 213–14, 216–17, 220, 223–28, 230, 232–35

military, 7, 10, 31–33, 37, 40–51, 54, 56–57, 71, 77–78, 

80–82, 84, 86–87, 106, 111–13, 116–17, 120, 124–30, 132,

134–38, 146, 157, 161–62, 164, 173, 183, 186, 188, 191–

92, 196, 199, 203, 206–7, 209, 219–21, 226, 232

public, 70, 92, 136, 152

war on terror, 63, 75, 93, 105–6, 189, 194

Uruzgan Province (Afghanistan), 87, 143–44

U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID), 45, 94, 117, 

160–61, 164

U.S. Department of Agriculture, 117

U.S. Department of Defense, 48–49, 57, 125–27, 197

U.S. Department of Justice, 117

U.S. Department of State, 45, 91, 116, 146

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, 117

Usmani, Akhtar Mohammad, 87

USS Cole (DDG 67), 7, 29

Uzbek, 36

Uzbekistan, 56, 101, 229

Vietnam, 13, 15, 40–46, 59, 128, 136, 191, 196, 219, 221, 231–32

Village Stability Operations, 120–21, 136, 219–20

Wahhabi, 13, 19, 64, 90, 200–1
Wardak, Abdul Rahim, 132

Waziristan (Pakistan), 71–72, 85, 87, 101, 156, 158, 165–71, 175–

76, 208–9, 212, 216–17, 220

Wilson, Charles N., 200

Zabul Province (Afghanistan), 87, 114

Zahir Shah, Muhammad, 11–12, 15, 193

Zardari, Ali Asif, 209

al-Zawahiri, Ayman, 6

Zazi, Najibullah, 5, 231

Zharey District (Afghanistan), 135, 187, 234

Zia-ul-Haq, Muhammad, 13, 15, 17–19, 61, 63, 69, 90, 97, 197, 199

Zubaydah, Abu, 106

270 War, Will, and Warlords
271

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Colonel Robert M. Cassidy, USA, is a military professor at the U.S.

Naval War College, a senior fellow with the Center for Advanced

Defense Studies, and a member of the RUSI Advisory Board. His

experience and scholarship focus on strategy and irregular warfare.

He has served on deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, the Persian

Gulf, Egypt, and Grenada. He most recently served as a special assistant to the senior operational commander in Afghanistan in 2011.

Colonel Cassidy has published a number of articles and two previous books on stability operations and irregular war (Peacekeeping

in the Abyss: British and American Peacekeeping Doctrine and Practice after the Cold War and Counterinsurgency and the Global War

on Terror: Military Culture and Irregular War). He has a Ph.D. from

the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

sponses to the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakist

tober 2001. Taliban insurgencies in both countries ha

strength during this period, though the United States 

ners have dedicated significant amounts of time and ef

lize the region. Pakistan and Afghanistan represent the 

this long war because machinations in these two cou

the emergence of the first Taliban neo-emirate with Pa

port. The Taliban consequently harbored al-Qaeda bef

ing the September 2001 attacks on the United States. A

affiliated armed groups now benefit from sanctuary ac

der in Pakistan. The border regions between Afghanis

istan—known as the Pashtun Belt—are inexorably l

future stability of South Asia and to the security of 

States. This book lies at the intersection of internatio

studies, military strategy, and the operational art of c

gency and offers general policy and strategy prescriptio

ing durable stability to this vital region. 

“This work provides a clear, concise, and well-documented a

complex cross-border counterinsurgency that is at the center o

operations in South-Central Asia. It provides a careful and ins

tion of U.S. and Pakistan counterinsurgency operations and reco

about how to apply methods that have proven successful. Colo

a soldier-scholar whose keen strategic leader perspectives mak

sential reading for anyone interested in better understanding 

and opportunities that characterize the current and future stru

—Major General Gregg F. Martin, 48th 

U.S. Arm

“An essential guide to the complex conflict dynamics of the 

Cassidy’s conclusions—hope for Afghanistan but not for Pak

serve as a vital wake-up call for policy makers.”

—Theo Farrell, professor, Department o

King’s C

“This study of the campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan coul

timely. It is penetrating in its analysis, frank in its language, 

in its description of recent operations. It helps to frame t

NATO’s endgame in Afghanistan.” 

—Mark Urban, defence editor of the BBC’s Newsnight 

Task Force Black: The Explosive True Stor

Special Forc