ISAF, the end of a story born from the comparison of two doctrines

02/01/15

It will certainly not be popular as Fukuyama's "End of History", but this reflection aims to tell the end of a story, that of ISAF. In these few lines the 12 tragic years of the battle for Afghanistan will not be retraced, but the all-American clash between counterinsurgency and counterterrorism and its epilogue of which the first symptoms occurred in Baghdad, but whose full manifestation is lived in these hours in Kabul.

The two neologisms, with which, for almost a decade, have been described operations strategies and tactics of the Pentagon, are born in Washington and manifest as a contradiction between two ways all Americans to perceive international relations the democratic and the Republican.

The counterterrorism imbued with the CIA and Tomahawks had sunk the US and its allies in the Iraqi quagmire, aggression and combat, the return to conventional war, the days of Fallujah and Abu Graib, the more than 4000 deaths of a campaign that started badly and ended worse. , that for the conquest of the oil wells of Mesopotamia, were the beginning of the end for a method of facing battles and campaigns based on concepts of linearity perched on the cold war.

After a long intellectual and military wandering, counterinsurgency is born with its 25 cornerstones, the fusion of military strategy and anthropology is determined, the conquest of mind and hearts, the determination of a friendly environment in which "you need to take off your glasses", walk among the people being clear and transparent, excellent guests and brilliant fighters, paying bribes and calling them western support, all with a careful look at the values ​​that differentiate the beauty of the West from the ugliness of an East sick with integralism.

It was the time of McKristall and Petraeus, of Kilcullen and Nagl, we could say of the 2.0 generals, the military counterparts of the group that created the myth of Apple in a California garage.

These military proconsuls of the new generation, people who had lived through the Vietnamese quagmire and were doing their utmost, in the new Obamian climate, to redesign the strategies of the pentagon, tried to fight for a new world in which the Americans could present themselves with the uniform of ' intellectual, perhaps gymnastic, of Wall Street, rather than with that of the John Wayne cowboy.

Today the end of ISAF, which occurred five years after the end of military operations in Iraq, delivers to the world yet another failure of American military doctrine, the counterinsurgency hangover has evaporated with its sick generals of protagonism to excess and the world is always the same, the story in this case too is not finished, but has only become complicated and has provided yet another lesson: the bombastic decalogues and the covers on Rolling Stone magazine are not enough, the announcements of the first black President of the US history or the coalition of willings, we need method and seriousness, understanding and empathy, in short, all that doctrinal paraphernalia set up by counterinsurgency. Maybe not!

If it is true that the Petraeus doctrine has imposed removing the glasses, the problem remains that Washington has used them for too long and then the Yankees, who emerged as liberators after the 2nd World War, from Indochina onwards have become oppressors, calculators and destroyers of worlds and balances, therefore this is what must be changed, otherwise not even 120 years of ISAF and counterinsurgency will be able to make any appreciable result.

A negative balance for the Afghan one, from Kabul the coalition has expanded throughout the country, an attempt has been made to control the opium trafficking, but they have had to retrace their steps, the armed forces of the central country have been educated and will be educated Asian people who, however, have begun to revolt against their instructors (phenomenon of green on blue nda) the silk road, which should have become the gas route has remained closed, so much so that even the folding of the military device, to date, fails to enjoy the rail transit route that should pass north to countries such as Turkmenistan.

As for military matters, Pakistan continues to guard the major Taliban strongholds and the Shura of Quetta makes itself felt strongly on the surviving Western troops, the Pasdaran remain the best mentors of some extremist groups and nothing or almost nothing has been done about arms trafficking, drugs and human beings, as well as on the control of the territory, where beyond the security bubbles created and defended with unspeakable battles, the rest of the vast territory remains no man's land.

What's behind it, remains complicated to understand and would force to take a position, it is not the intent of these lines, who won and those who lost is quite evident, the only question that remains an answer to give and for which is believed to have given sufficient elements is: why all this?

In the dramatic certainty that new Afghanistan and new ISAFs are close to the horizon, but there is no effective way to solve them.

Andrea Pastore

(photo: US Air Force / US Marine Corps)