Koran, Kalashnikov, & Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan, by Antonio Giustozzi

Given the current trendy thinking in counterinsurgency circles, Giustozzi was bound to make a splash by trying to catalogue the resurrection of the Taliban in 2002-3 and how it came to dominate swaths of Afghanistan in 2006-7. In a broad sense, he does an admirable job of doing exactly that—by tracking the pathetic record of the reconstruction effort and the thousands of broken promises we made, the overindulgent rotation of military units that prevent any single brigade from developing competence in their AO, and some of the ways in which the structure of Afghan society, both pre- and post-Taliban, have contributed to the creation of the “space” needed for the Taliban to surge, Giustozzi has laid out why the Afghan mission is so difficult. He even finds time to weakly condemn western leaders, in particular American leaders, for assuming the country would solve itself while they invaded Iraq. But for anything other than a sketch—an overview—this book falls badly short.

Part of this is a major case of observer bias on my part. While the insurgents have made enormous strides in the South of the country, I am pretty familiar with the east, which is also a major area of insurgent activity. Giustozzi makes some eye-popping claims, like how some Hazara groups were joining the Taliban in Ghazni, or that Nuristan has a history of rebellion against the government, that really deserved the same depth of treatment he gave to the tribal dynamics of Helmand, Uruzgan, and Kandahar. The fact that he even placed charts detailing how Nuristan and Kunar have been uncontested infiltration points for most of the 21st century, yet never really explored how this might have been affecting the security environment, is borderline unforgivable.

But it isn’t unforgivable. Digging through his endnotes (annoyingly clustered by paragraph or page instead of by citation, so a single number leads to upwards of a dozen separate references), we can see that Giustozzi interviewed a lot of UN people, but they were all either based at or specialized in the south—particularly Kandahar. This isn’t a crime by any stretch, since understanding the south of the country is vital, but so is understanding the east… and to be frank, the east is vastly more complex and vulnerable.

This is one of the primary criticisms Christian laid out against it: the study, especially in its length, is simply too broad. Far more revealing, however, is Kip at Abu Muqawama’s complaint.

His discussion of ISAF and Coalition Forces in Chapter 6 is exceedingly ill-informed, especially when compared to that of Daniel Marston and Carter Malkasian’s chapter on Afghanistan in Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare.

His discussion of Taliban tactics describes a rag-tag bunch of insurgents incapable of posing a serious threat to ISAF forces while poorly describing the effects of weapons such as the RPG-7 and DShK. Complex Taliban ambushes and long-range engagements, including accurate mortar fire, are not featured in his account despite their prevalence in the country.

Such shortcomings are for Giustozzi the result not of deliberate acts of omission but of a failure to consult with those who could have provided insight into the military side of the insurgency and counterinsurgency that he attempts to describe. While Kip knows and has tremendous respect for (among others cited and thanked by Giustozzi) Massoud Karokhail, Eckart Schiewek, Michael Semple , and Barbara Stapleton, none would qualify as knowing much about insurgency per se or the specific design of ISAF’s counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan. Neither would any, besides Karokhail perhaps, be able to describe with much sophistication detailed tactics of either the Taliban, Afghan, or Coalition forces. Had Giustozzi sought this expertise, he could most definitely have found it, particularly from Lieutenant General David Barno at the NESA center.

In other words, Giustozzi isn’t a member of the Boy’s (and Girl’s) Club of COIN experts, so how dare he comment. This is particularly galling because he is complaining Giustozzi’s account, which by now is at least 18 months out of date, doesn’t capture recent events in the insurgency. If Kip really thinks the Taliban pose a serious threat to ISAF, then perhaps he can explain why, even at the now-discarded Want firebase in Nuristan, a couple dozen troops were able to hold off a sustained assault by several hundred insurgents. Giustozzi isn’t arguing that they’re not deadly, he’s arguing that, like any out-matched insurgent group, they cannot match ISAF in a full battle.

It is surprising Kip would disagree with this take. Similarly, Kip doesn’t like how Giustozzi gets ISAF’s counterinsurgency campaign wrong. In Chapter 6.5, here are some relevant passages of what Giustozzi argues:

With the US regular army taking the lead in 2002, an attitude prevailed that was radically different from that initially adopted by the Special Operations Forces in the search for the remnants of the Taliban and their Arab allies. Rather than operating in small units and spending weeks in the same location trying to forge links with the local population, the new arrivals carried out large sweeps covering many districts with large concentrations of force (‘clear and sweep’). The conventionalisation of the US campaign in Afghanistan was the result of the creation of Combined Joint Task Force 180 under the command of a regular army general [General Dan K. McNeill], a development which marginalized Special Operations Forces…

A typical conventional counter-insurgency operation would involve rapidly occupying a village, rounding up the men, interrogating them, arresting a few and then proceeding with hearts and minds deliveries, such as providing medical services…

The shift away from big ‘clear and sweep’ operations and towards more village-focused ones reached its apex in the first half of 2005. Soon, however, a backlash followed, with yet another new command of Combined Joint Task Force 76 assessing that the local focus of military operations was leaving the enemy unaffected in most areas, allowing it to reorganise. During the second half of 2005, therefore, US forces changed tack again and started pursuing the Taliban more aggressively into their sanctuaries, leading to more intense fighting and heavier casualties on both sides. With the appointment of British General Richards to lead an expanded ISAF in 2006, there was once again a return to a more patronage-based strategy.

This picture he paints, including the repeated presence of Bomber McNeill (may he never again return to the country) speak to a total strategic incoherence that lies at the heart of why operations there are so dysfunctional. That Kip doesn’t see that, despite his lengthy complaints of how the Army is dropping the ball, is surprising and disappointing.

Giustozzi, however, does an admirable job of discussing the many ways in which the Afghan government has been failing its citizens. While the idea that the ANP and ANA are corrupt and untrustworthy institutions isn’t new to this book, the ways in which those instances of corruption are exceptions to generally good relations would have made his case far stronger. By noting that, even though the police are corrupt in some areas, and even though sometimes that corruption has driven people to embrace the Taliban, the ANP is still a generally trusted institution says far more about the nature of the reconstruction (namely, that the West is seriously dropping the ball in its training efforts) than the Taliban itself. By missing insights such as this—and Giustozzi had access to the 2004 and 2006 Asia Foundation surveys just like the rest of us—the book is missing critical nuance that would have made it a killer.

Even so, this book is a vital overview of what is going on in the country. Unlike most attempts to explain Afghanistan, Giustozzi does himself a favor by staying deliberately vague in most places—he avoids going into too much mistaken depth. Maybe that’s the problem with Afghanistan—it requires literally years of intensive study to really know the country, and even then it is difficult to know about more than one area at a time. Having a book like this, which provides a good snapshot of the country and many ideas for more serious study, is vital to building a complete picture of the war.