A very interesting post at Small Wars Journal by Jason Thomas, who recently returned from Afghanistan, working with "a USAID Implementing Partner in Afghanistan."
If I Had 5 Minutes with General Petraeus - An Australian Perspective on Afghanistan
Sanka freeze dried version:
1. Relax the COIN ROE. Regular Afghan respect use of force, and think the present level of restriction actually does not protect the populace.
2. Clear and hold, even, and especially over the winter, using special ops units. Winter with the locals.
3. Create special ops engineering savvy units that protect locals who contract with USAID and etc.. They must live locally.
4. Go Giulliani on the presence of Taliban at village level. Zero tolerance. They should go the way of the squeegee men.
5. Do what worked in Iraq vis the Anbar awakening. Hire away any local militia, now on the Taliban crime family payroll, make it worth their while to work for the Afghan government and ISAF.
6. Afghanistan, no more than Iraq was, is not a candidate for being the Pashtun Virginia Commonwealth. Don't expect that. The bar should be lower, but not as low as the cynical realist would have it.
The prime takeaway in the piece seems to be that there should be increased presence, all year round, at as many villages as possible, before we can hope to proceed with the project. That will probably take more troops, and more time. But, these are no doubt things that Petraeus has well in mind, and what is more, he oversaw the first iteration of such operations in Iraq.
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