Recent United States policy on Afghanistan has been fairly unified. President Barack Obama's administration has faced no obstacles in implementing its promise to deploy a significant increase in U.S. troops to Afghanistan in the hopes of overwhelming the Taliban and other insurgent forces. It is thus clear there is still quite a will among the American citizens to support this war (much more so than in Iraq).
Yet, the mere number of troops is arguably not the most important strategy in the overall mission of stabilizing the Afghan government. There are many who say that "reconciliation" is the key. In the July/August 2009 issue of Foreign Affairs, Fotini Christia and Michael Semple forward this idea in their article, "Flipping the Taliban: How to Win in Afghanistan." According to the authors, reconciliation is a process by which the Taliban can be dealt with by the Afghan government, the U.S. and NATO-led forces and the Pakistani government, which "enables insurgent commanders and their supporters to realign with the Afghan government" (p. 35).
This may sound whimsical at first, but a closer look at the nature of Afghani insurgencies suggests otherwise. Afghani fighters - even among the Taliban - are a very heterogeneous mix, with a history of switching sides in conflicts and disputes. This is at least partially true because they are not all driven by the same ideologies and interests. According to Christia and Semple, "few factors have motivated Afghan commanders over the years more than the desire to end up on the winning side. They have often switched camps mid-conflict. ... Their rationale was obvious: in a war that drags on, changing camps means living and holding on to power, as well as saving one's family and one's village" (p. 35-36).
So how then does one reconcile a significant amount of the current Afghani insurgents to a cause supported by these U.S.-led outside forces? It all starts with payment. Given the heterogeneous mix of interests among the insurgents, greater financial incentives to fight for the Afghan government - or at least not fight against it - could convince throngs of would-be enemies to become allies of the country's vulnerable government.
According to Michael O'Hanlon, in his April 2009 article for the Brookings Institute "Toward Reconciliation in Afghanistan," the size and population of Afghanistan suggest that there should be at least 600,000 security forces in the country during this conflict. The April count of security forces in Afghanistan was roughly 200,000 people, with 60,000 Western troops and 140,000 Afghan troops and police forces (p. 3). The U.S. is in the process of implementing another 30,000 troops and has agreed to help the Afghans double the size of their army (O'Hanlon, p. 4). Therefore, the total number of security forces in the country should reach 300,000 in the next year.
It is thus quite auspicious how Christia and Temple display a realistic capability for the U.S.-led forces to pay 250,000 current Afghani insurgents to side with the government. "In Iraq, the U.S. government put 100,000 Sunni gunmen on payroll, many - if not most - of them former insurgents, for about $300 a month each. That amounts to $30 million a month, a reasonable amount given the costs of the war. In Afghanistan, the same amount could be used to give as many as 250,000 insurgents about $120 a month, which is equal to the average monthly salary of a low-ranking member of the Afghan National Army," (p. 42).
Therefore, it is not out of the realm of possibility for there to be 550,000 security forces or more in Afghanistan at some point in the near future. But even more important than the overall number is the fact that a large chunk of these potential forces could be former insurgents, which obviously would weaken the insurgency as it stands today, and would provide the Afghan government with the most experienced and knowledgeable (of the country's conditions) forces they could find.
In the end, we will have to keep enhancing our counterinsurgency strategies in Afghanistan. With the incongruent mix of Taliban fighters, tribal leaders representing a mix of interests, but often merely seeking the best chance of survival, those associated with the country's robust drug trade, and many others, improving the Afghan government's ability to reconcile these often negotiable entities seems to be the wisest course of action for the U.S., our allies and the Afghan government. And it would best serve the needs of the Afghani people.