A Counterfactual Look at the Afghan War: the “SOF-only” COA and its Implications for the Future
Articles
Fri, 10/22/2021 - 12:41am
by Michael Perry
Introduction
The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan began as a war to combat transnational terrorism but quickly evolved into something deeper and more profound. To combat terror emanating from a foreign country the U.S. sought a cooperative Afghan government, and thus the war became an exercise in first toppling an uncooperative regime in the Taliban, and second establishing an effective government with a monopoly on force. The first step proved easy, while the second led to a revival of counterinsurgent theory and doctrine in the U.S. military, as the deposed Taliban fought to undermine the newly established government. With President Biden’s announcement all U.S. troops will be withdrawn after 20 years of engagement, it’s natural to take stock of what’s been achieved. Most now recognize the error in the strategy of deploying large numbers of U.S. and Coalition troops to augment the Afghan defense forces. Economically, through 2017 the combined efforts of the Afghan War had cost $877 billion, a price tag few would argue is justified by the realized returns.
Many have even argued the large deployments of U.S. troops to Afghanistan have been counterproductive. Micro-level studies of popular sentiment in Afghanistan have shown the Taliban is more popular in many regions than the Coalition,[ii] and macro-level studies have shown an approximate threefold increase in global terrorist manpower.[iii] Throughout the war an alternative course of action (COA) that was often floated, but never materialized, was a light-footprint approach made primarily of special operations forces (SOF), who would continue to train the Afghan National Security Force (ANSF) that was created after the 2001 disposal of the Taliban regime, coordinate air support, and provide direct assistance on the ground when necessary. It’s unclear whether such a COA is presently feasible given the terms of U.S.-Taliban negotiations and uncertainty surrounding what level of support the global community will provide Afghanistan moving forward, but this essay asks not whether this SOF-only COA is feasible now, but whether it was feasible from the outset. In particular, I'll describe the initial stage of the Afghan War which was, in fact, prosecuted using only U.S. SOF and local Afghan militias, describe the state of Afghanistan immediately following the Taliban ouster, and argue that a continuation of the SOF-only COA could have achieved the U.S.' strategic objective in Afghanistan. Comments will be made on the relevance of this analysis to the future of Afghanistan as well as to future U.S. engagements in counterinsurgencies.
https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/counterfactual-look-afghan-war-sof-only-coa-and-its-implications-future
