Afghanistan Troop Number Calculations

Meditate on this:

[John] Nagl’s rule of thumb, the one found in the [US Army] counterinsurgency manual, calls for at least a 1-to-50 ratio of security forces to civilians in contested areas. Applied to Afghanistan, which has both a bigger population (32 million) and a larger land mass (647,500 square miles) than Iraq, that gets you to some large numbers fast. Right now, the United States and its allies have some 65,000 troops in Afghanistan, as compared to about 140,000 in Iraq. By Nagl’s ratio, Afghanistan’s population calls for more than 600,000 security forces. Even adjusting for the relative stability of large swaths of the country, the ideal number could still total around 300,000–more than a quadrupling of current troop levels. Eventually, Afghanistan’s national army could shoulder most of that burden. But, right now, those forces number a ragtag 60,000, a figure Nagl believes will need to at least double and maybe triple. Standing up a force of that size, as the example of Iraq has shown us, will take several years and consume billions of U.S. dollars.

And that’s just the Leviathan side of Barnett’s duo–this excludes the entire other army (on top of the 600,000) of engineers, aid workers, construction project leaders, humanitarian/conflict negotatiators, reconstruction crews, etc.  I have a hard time seeing how this happens.

McCain to Jump on Obama Afghan Bandwagon

But without a lot rational thought/planning involved it would appear.

Per Abu Muquawama, Eli Lake reports that McCain will call for a surge in Afghanistan, story here.

Charlie (an expert in COIN) from AM comments:

Ok, this is six kinds of interesting. Charlie would love to know which specific “strategy” has been nominated for export….and whether it was based on any assessment of, you know, Afghanistan. There are some basic COIN best practices that might improve the situation in Afg (one word: sanctuary), but the broader population centric approach would require significant changes to be successfully applied there. And if McCain’s crew think they can blindly transfer “lessons” from the Anbar Awakening to the assorted tribes in Afg (and NWFP?) then we’re gonna have some real fireworks.

Also, and Charlie hates to be pedantic, but there’s the minor matter of where exactly these troops would come from. Obama says Iraq, but McCain has largely campaigned on maintaining current troop levels there. Of course with the current admin back-peddling a bit on this same issue now, perhaps McCain has some wiggle room. But this is not the place to send (more) ill-equipped and poorly trained National Guard troops when you’ve run out of active duty units.

There are two Talibans (at least), Northern and Southern.  But seems unlikely they could be totally split off from one another.  Afghanistan is far more rural than Iraq (more urban terrain).  And as with the flipping of the Sunni Tribes in Anbar there doesn’t seem to be a parallel–perhaps some tribal chiefs in the border regions who have been terrorized/killed by the Taliban/AQ elements could be persuaded.

In true McCain form, no details offered, just promises of victory.  Just like balancing budgets, winning wars, and the rest, he has a “comprehensive strategy”–just no details to go along with it.  Comprehensively detail deficient.