More on NATO, Afghanistan and Counterinsurgency

Building on this post, Simon Shercliff is the senior defense adviser to the British Embassy in Washington, and he blogs today about recent conversations he’s been having about Afghanistan along the Boston-Washington corridor. While he doesn’t use the word “counterinsurgency,” it looks a lot like where his head is at.

A lot of the noise around the  discussion of “nation-building” in Afghanistan has become divorced from what we are trying to achieve. Put simply, we want to  get  the Afghan people to a stage where they are able to design and maintain their own way of life which is robust enough to repel the likes of Al Qaida from taking root there ever again (and from such a foothold in Afghanistan, then to attack us). Similar objectives exist for Pakistan. Ultimately, this means a long-term relationship  between our countries and the people of both Afghanistan and Pakistan built and sustained by mutual trust. That is why the Kerry-Lugar bill is so important – it sets the foundation for just such a relationship between Pakistan and the US. We want to reassure the Afghan people too that our commitment there will be long term, although of course not demonstrated by thousands of troops for the long term.