War From the Ground Up (8 page)

In terms of the first instrument, the use of force, asymmetry is common sense. It means that one gains an advantage by fighting differently: attacking with overwhelming force, using airpower against people on the ground, attacking at night, not wearing uniform, the use of roadside bombs. All tactical actions seek an asymmetric advantage over the opponent.

In terms of the second instrument, the interpretive structure provided by war itself, asymmetry means that the actors in war, normally ‘sides', possess a different interpretive template of war. To return to the metaphor of war as a trial in which each side is its own judge, it may well be the case that both judges are using the same—symmetrical—criteria for judging the case; in this case there is an illusion that there is a single set of rules provided by war. Yet the discerning strategist may see that this is an illusion, and change his rules to his advantage. This is asymmetry in the strategic sense. By logic, once one side opts for strategic asymmetry, the other side is no longer symmetric either. Both sides are now in competition to construct more appealing strategic narratives of what the
conflict is about. Strategy becomes increasingly similar to rhetoric, the art of persuasion (which is the subject of
Chapters 8
and
9
).

This chapter has sought to describe the language of war in terms of an additional, and often unrecognised, possibility in terms of how we understand the ‘means' in Clausewitz's dictum of war being an extension of policy by other means. The actual use of armed force for political ends is the more obvious interpretation of the dictum. However, without harmonisation with the interpretive structure provided by war, the less obvious interpretation of the dictum, armed force may fail to have political utility because it is misunderstood.

The two means available in Clausewitz's dictum do not compete with one another; they are symbiotic. Force does possess a universal interpretive quality in the specific and extreme sense of physical destruction. Dead people cannot interpret anything. If force is used in this manner, typically in the context of unrestrained war, force does have a universally recognised literal sense. Although, even then, those still alive will interpret those deaths. The abuses that often accompany the absolute use of force may restrain an actor who looks beyond the fighting to its consequences. The International Criminal Court may, or may not, play an important role in this regard in the future.

The majority of conflicts, however, do not approach absolute states; their outcomes are defined in more subjective political terms. Because the utility of force in terms of its perceived outcomes is not wholly subject to literal interpretation, the strategist in war has to combine the physical and the perceived, the two possibilities of Clausewitz's dictum; their interaction is how the strategist achieves the goal of policy, which is the subject of the next chapter.

The notion that war involves armed opponents (one's own side and the enemy) is as old as war itself. For example, in
The Art of War
written by Sun Tzu in ancient China (possibly sixth century BCE), this idea is taken for granted. Polarity between two sides allows war to provide a see-saw-like outcome: defeat and victory are mutually exclusive; they are defined in inverse relation to one another.

In Afghanistan, in the earlier phase of the conflict, the coalition shoehorned the actual political situation into a construction that was more polarised than was the case in reality. The overly binary conception within which military force was used antagonised the political situation. The 2006 International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) deployment into Helmand Province, Southern Afghanistan, which was based on a British-led task force, exemplifies this.

One argument concerning the UK deployment into Helmand is about miscalculation: that the deployment was not the primary British governmental option in terms of the UK role in Afghanistan, but was a course that was not corrected when events unfolded to bring about such a move. The purpose of the deployment was then not clear, or at least, there were significantly different interpretations, creating a misalignment between policy and method. This argument, interesting though it is, lies outside the scope of this book. To offer a properly researched
evaluation of this line of argument would require far more access to UK government and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) policy documents than is currently available. Hence I take the UK deployment as a start point, and examine some of the issues that shaped the early development of the campaign once it had started.

The factor I focus on is the extent to which the interpretive framework of Clausewitzian war, in which armed forces are supposed to set military conditions for a political solution, was dragged into a circumstance that was in actuality far closer to the use of force for directly political outcomes.

On 4 June 2006 one of the earliest major contacts of the British army in Helmand took place in the village of Alizai, just east of the town of Nowzad, in northern Helmand. A Gurkha platoon was ambushed while driving through the village on its way to form an outer cordon to arrest
a suspected insurgent commander. The Gurkhas' role was part of a larger operation by the 3
^rd
Battalion the Parachute Regiment, called Op Mutay. The arrest operation turned into an intense six-hour battle for the Gurkha and Para soldiers. Before the operation, the local Afghan police commander advised the Gurkha platoon commander to expect a fight in the village and refused to go on the operation himself.
²
The Alizais are a tribe of northern Helmand, and this village was one of theirs. The symbolism that the British army's first big fight should be here was perhaps obvious to the Afghan police commander at the time. Yet in 2006 the language of the British army in Helmand was of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, ‘GIRoA', versus the Taliban.

This vignette exemplifies in microcosm a wider conceptual problem of the British campaign in 2006. A traditional, polarised view of the conflict was overly privileged, which encouraged the army and its political masters to understand those who offered armed opposition to the Afghan government primarily as a unified ‘Taliban' movement. This had reciprocal consequences, and encouraged the polarisation against British forces of actors and groups who were not particularly ideologically committed to the Taliban.

In a formal submission of evidence to the British parliament's 2009 report on Afghanistan-Pakistan, Lord Malloch-Brown, a Foreign Office minister in Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government, stated: ‘as with any good military action by this country over the centuries, we have stepped up our game and our commitment, and reinforced our effort to deal with an enemy who has been tougher than we initially thought would be the case. Please do not misunderstand me: it is not a surprise that we faced an insurgency in Helmand, which is the reason why we went there. We knew it was there, we wanted to take it on and it has been a hard fight'.
³
Apart from the fact that it has been a hard fight, this analysis is confused.

While there was certainly serious tribal and factional tension, there was not a significant pre-existing Taliban insurgency in Helmand. There had been sporadic but intense individual fights involving coalition forces across southern Afghanistan pre-2006. However, if there were a more genuine Taliban-led insurgency in the south, its focus was on Kandahar more than Helmand. The ferocious fighting in 2006 between the Canadians
and insurgents in Panjwai District to the west of Kandahar city was arguably the Taliban leadership's focus in the south.

In Helmand, there was a spate of assassinations of people associated with the Afghan government in late 2005 and early 2006, but not widespread fighting. The British Secretary of Defence John Reid saw the mission in 2006 as a reconstruction mission. His statement at a Kabul press conference on 23 April 2006 about his aspiration that there might have been no shots fired has been taken out of context. The statement communicated his intention that British forces were not looking for a fight; this made sense at the time precisely because there was no large-scale insurgency in Helmand. This perspective is at odds with Lord Malloch-Brown's recollection of the facts. So where did the insurgency come from?

A large core of the ‘Taliban' of 2006 used to be on the Afghan government ‘side', in that they were the militia controlled by Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, the Provincial Governor from 2001 to 2005. Akhundzada stepped down as the Provincial Governor of Helmand in December 2005, largely due to British pressure in Kabul to have him removed, mainly because he was involved in narcotics and had abused his position in government to further his own interests: nine tons of opium had been found in his compound in June 2005. In a 2009 interview with the
Daily Telegraph
, Akhundzada stated what is common knowledge in Afghanistan, but has bizarrely not received much attention in the UK:

‘When I was no longer governor the government stopped paying for the people who supported me', he said. ‘I sent 3,000 of them off to the Taliban because I could not afford to support them but the Taliban was making payments'.
⁴

Akhundzada's argument exploits the polarised model through which the coalition viewed the conflict. Thus he presents himself as the victim who is forced to support his men by having the ‘Taliban' pay them. Akhundzada hides behind the idea of the ‘Taliban' to conceal his real agenda, which was to keep himself in power. Many of the ‘Taliban' in northern Helmand were his men, over whom he still exercised control. Akhundzada's actions in Helmand were consistent with his self-interest, in that his line has always been that only he can deliver security in the province; after he was sacked as governor, his subsequent actions could be interpreted as a message that he wanted to show that the coalition needed him because he was the only one who held real power. Akhundzada
had been shamed and lost face: a key factor given his family's importance in the province, which was perhaps not sufficiently recognised at the time.

Akhundzada's actions following his dismissal are only to be considered a change of ‘sides' if one erroneously imposes a polarised model of war on the conflict. Akhundzada and his men did not ‘change sides'; they remained on their own side. Akhundzada was, and remains at the time of writing, very close to President Karzai. The two families became friends in exile in Pakistan in the 1990s, and have intermarried.
⁵
After Akhundzada was dismissed, his brother became the Deputy Provincial Governor and he himself became a Senator in Kabul. He has consistently undermined the Provincial Governor Gulab Mangal, at the time of writing, and has sought to have Kabul appoint district governors and police chiefs in Helmand who are loyal to him. The Governor of Kajaki District in northern Helmand, for example, is at the time of writing Mullah Sharafudin Akhundzada, his brother-in-law. As long as such nuances are viewed through a polarised model, we fail to understand the politically kaleidoscopic dynamics of the conflict.

The majority of insurgents in Helmand in 2006 were Afghan militias, including Akhundzada's Alizai militia in northern Helmand, who were fighting for their interests.
⁶
There was a strong interplay between their motivations and that of the Taliban leadership, which had been trying to re-assert itself in the south from 2002. However, this relationship is better understood in terms of subscription to a franchise movement rather than as a unified, ideologically driven Taliban insurgency.

The same would apply to the other major block of the 2006 Helmand insurgency, who were fighters from the Ishaqzai tribe around Sangin. They had been badly abused by the representatives of the Afghan government when Akhundzada was the Provincial Governor, specifically by the Provincial National Directorate of Security Chief Daud Mohammed Khan, who was from the rival Alikozai tribe.
⁷
Ironically the Alizai and Ishaqzais who joined the insurgency overcame their previous hostility to one another to fight a new common enemy in ISAF and the reconfigured Afghan Provincial Government. These insurgent factions used the Taliban as a franchise which they could tap into for support. In this sense their behaviour was entirely consistent and logical in Afghan political terms.

Despite the popular conception of the Taliban surging over the Pakistan border in 2006 into southern Afghanistan, the majority of fighters in Helmand in 2006 were Afghans, albeit with support from groups of foreign fighters, who were mainly from Pakistan. The real surge in foreign fighters in Helmand, fighting in formed groups, seems to have come later in 2007 when a group from South Waziristan based itself in an area south of Sangin for the best part of the year. This foreign group became very unpopular in Sangin, as they were far more ruthless in the application of sharia law than the local insurgents, which contributed to the unsuccessful Sangin uprising against the Taliban in 2007 led by the Alikozai tribe.