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Adviser: Iraq approach likely in Afghanistan

An adviser to incoming U.S. Central Command boss Gen. David Petraeus predicts that the general will seek to re-create his Iraqi success in Afghanistan, using many of the same methods that appear to have turned the tide in Iraq over the last 18 months.

“It can be safely assumed that he will apply many of the lessons learned from Iraq to what has until recently been a forgotten war” in Afghanistan, retired Lt. Col. John Nagl told a packed audience at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. Nagl, who retired this year to become a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, was speaking as part of a panel on “Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare,” held to promote a book of the same name edited by two of the other panelists, Daniel Marston, a research fellow at the Strategic and Defense Studies Center at the Australian National University, and Carter Malkasian, director of the Center for Naval Analyses’ Stability and Development Program.

Nagl, who is headed to Iraq July 25 to advise Petraeus and who co-authored the Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual produced under the guidance of Petraeus when the latter commanded the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., highlighted one lesson in particular from Iraq: “Foreign powers cannot win counterinsurgency campaigns, but they can enable and empower host nation governments to do so, and one of the most important tools they have to accomplish this task is the use of combat advisers.”

With that in mind, he said, “perhaps the single most pressing need is for a larger Afghan National Army and police force, and additional American and allied advisers to help them fight our common enemies.”

Malkasian also focused on the important role played by “police and other community self-defense forces” in quelling the violence in Iraq, particularly in the Sunni areas. “The thing that made them more effective than anything else … was their ability to collect intelligence,” he said, adding that by late 2006 police and community self-defense forces in the Sunni areas “were capturing and killing twice as many insurgents per policeman as their counterpart was in the Iraqi army.”

However, he said, Afghans are still waiting for a similar model to be implemented in their country.

“The lessons of Iraq have not fully been transferred over to Afghanistan to learn how to do this the right way,” Malkasian said.

“The ANP [Afghan National Police] … have potential, a potential that has not been exploited,” he continued, noting that the Afghan government and coalition governments had capped ANP strength at 82,000 police. “Even combined with the ANA [Afghan National Army], which is projected to be 86,000 people, that is not enough to protect a population of 33 million.”