Special to WorldTribune.com

By Brian M Downing

After the absence of meaningful discussions with the Taliban over the winter, the latter’s spring offensive has begun, chiefly with a wave on IED attacks but also a sizable ground attack in eastern Afghanistan.

The new fighting season comes amid reports of widespread war-weariness in the country and the withdrawal of U.S. and other ISAF troops.

It will shape negotiations and the pace of the U.S. withdrawal.

Four things will be watched closely:

The efficacy of the Afghan National Army (ANA); the ability of the insurgents to sustain their ground attacks; the growing Afghan opposition to the insurgents; and the development of local truces between insurgents and ANA garrisons.

Despite glowing reports of progress from training cadres, the ANA has thus far not shown significant willingness to fight, preferring instead to remain in defensive positions. Further, the ANA is rent by ethnic antagonisms. The officer corps is disproportionately Pashtun, especially after the ouster of many non-Pashtun officers over the last five years.

The rank and file, however, comes disproportionately from the non-Pashtun Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara peoples, who are regarded as inferiors by the haughty Pashtuns.

Too often, an ANA soldier – usually a Pashtun – suddenly kills several American, ISAF, or Afghan troops before going over to the insurgents. This is hardly conducive to unit cohesion or combat efficacy, as soldiers and advisers must be on watch for attacks from within.

In mid-April of this year, approximately 200 Taliban troops overran an ANA outpost in Kunar province. The thirteen-man garrison was killed; Taliban losses are uncertain. The defeat, while not staggering, underscores two serious problems: the failure of local intelligence to detect the assembly of 200 enemy troops in a district; the failure of adjacent forces – indigenous and American – to respond with artillery, air power, and helicopter-borne reaction teams to the rare opportunity of getting at a sizable force of an enemy that carefully avoids large-scale engagements.

Unless these problems are addressed, the Taliban may well have found a template for success: infiltrating superior numbers of fighters near isolated outposts then overwhelming them, one ofter another, district after district. This will demoralize exposed garrisons and likely lead to the abandonment of many of them.

There are many shortcomings in the ANA, but it’s important to bear in mind that the ANA is not expected to hold every outpost or wage a successful counterinsurgency or defeat the Taliban in a conventional campaign. In fact, the ANA’s mission is rather limited. It is expected mainly to continue a war of attrition – the true nature of the war over the last few years, claims of counterinsurgency notwithstanding – and inflict at least as many casualties on insurgents as it takes.

The ANA is not as well trained or motivated as most insurgent forces, but they are far more numerous and have superior logistics behind them. Perhaps most significantly, they will be fighting mainly from fortified positions against concentrated enemy forces – a tactical advantage that might lead to heavy insurgent casualties.

The Taliban themselves might be unsure of their ability to sustain ground assaults on ANA positions. The war over the last six years has seen a shift away from ground attacks in favor of IEDs and assassinations. Occasional ground assaults such as ones on Bagram airfield and in Kabul itself have brought no substantive advantage, only high insurgent casualties.

After almost thirty-five years of war, no Afghan – Taliban or ANA or civilian – looks forward to more years of fighting, especially if they appear as costly and inconclusive as recent ones. The term “kill-ratio” has been diligently avoided by the U.S. military ever since the Vietnam War, but the numbers this year will be closely watched, though probably not well promulgated.

The disposition of local tribes toward the Taliban will be of paramount importance. Over the last year, several parts of the country have turned against the Taliban, seeing them as obstacles to peace and economic development and as harbingers of an annoyingly harsh form of Islam. Elders have raised local levies and fought Taliban bands, driving them out of several districts. Though hostile to the U.S. and the Kabul government as well, these local militias have begun to accept arms from the U.S., which bodes ill for the Taliban.

Observers will also look for informal truces worked out between insurgent bands and ANA garrisons. Such local agreements were common enough in parts of Afghanistan after Soviet troops pulled out in the late eighties. After all, insurgent fighters sought to expel foreign troops, not advance the ambitions of commanders or impose Islamic law or conquer the whole of Afghanistan. The same can be said today.

A large number of such truces could ease the fighting and force the hands of the more intemperate commanders who have been rising to power after more moderate predecessors were killed or captured. Such truces are parts of what might be called an “Afghan way of war” – accepting a negotiated settlement rather than taking unnecessary casualties.

Americans were dismayed by this Afghan way of war back in 2001 when Northern Alliance bands parleyed with the enemy, came to an agreement, and broke off the fighting – even against Al Qaida troops at Tora Bora, which allowed Osama bin Laden to slip away into refuge in Pakistan. Americans may now look forward to this Afghan way of war as helpful in disentangling them from Central Asia.

Brian M Downing is a political/military analyst and author of The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.

  Afghan National Army, IED attacks, Pashtun, Tora Bora, Tracking the Taliban spring offensive: What to watch for