In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan

Understanding Insurgencies

An insurgency is a political-military campaign by nonstate actors who seek to overthrow a government or secede from a country through the use of unconventional—and sometimes conventional—military strategies.³ Insurgent actions also cover a range of unconventional tactics, from small-scale ambushes and raids to large-scale, lethal violence. ⁴ They usually involve four principal actors.

The first are insurgents, those hoping to overthrow the established national government or secede from it.⁵ In Afghanistan after the 2001 fall of the Taliban, key insurgent forces included the remnants of the Taliban, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami, the Haqqani network, al Qa’ida and other foreign fighters, criminal groups, and a host of Afghan and Pakistani tribal militias. The second is the local government, which includes the government’s security forces, the army and police, as well as key national and local political institutions. In states with weak central governments, such as Afghanistan, tribal militias may also serve these purposes. The third group consists of outside actors: external states and other nonstate entities, which might support either side. Outside actors can tip the balance of a war in favor of either insurgents or the government, but they can rarely win it for either side. There were two sets of external actors in Afghanistan. The United States, NATO forces, and the United Nations supported the Afghan government; the international jihadi network and some individuals from neighboring states—such as Pakistan and Iran—supported the insurgents.

Finally, the local population is the most important group; it is for their hearts and minds that the war is being fought in the first place. The support of the population is the sine qua non of victory in counterinsurgency warfare.⁶ As one study of the insurgency in El Salvador concluded: “The only territory you want to hold is the six inches between the ears of the campesino.”⁷ Each side needs money, logistics, recruits, intelligence, and other aid to achieve its objectives.⁸ Support is especially critical for insurgents, who must fight asymmetrically. Political scientist Daniel Byman writes,

Pity the would-be insurgent. He and his comrades are unknown to the population at large, and their true agenda has little popularity. Indeed, most countries around the world oppose their agenda. Many of the fighters are not experienced in warfare or clandestine operations, making them easy prey for the police and intelligence services. Their families are at the mercy of government security forces. The government they oppose, in contrast, is relatively rich, has thousands or even millions of administrators, policemen, and soldiers, and enjoys considerable legitimacy.⁹

If insurgents manage to separate the population from the government and external forces, however, and acquire its active or passive support, they are more likely to win the war. In the end, the exercise of political power depends on the tacit or explicit agreement of the population—or, at worst, on its submissiveness.¹⁰

While outside actors often play an important role, they rarely stay for the duration of the conflict, and the result of the war is almost always a function of the struggle between the local government and insurgents.¹¹ My analysis of insurgencies since 1945 shows that successful counterinsurgency campaigns last for an average of fourteen years, and unsuccessful ones last for an average of eleven years. Many also end in a draw, with neither side winning. Insurgencies can also be brutal, drawn-out affairs: more than a third of all insurgencies last more than twenty years, with the incumbent governments winning slightly more than twice as often as the insurgents.¹² Again, only a few of these conflicts are fought—and won or lost—by foreign armies. Most countries quickly tire of having their troops deployed abroad, as the Soviets did during their Afghan campaign. Moreover, most local populations view foreign armies as occupiers, which impedes success.¹³ A lead indigenous role, on the other hand, can provide a focus for national aspirations and show the population that they—and not foreign forces—control their destiny.

Research on past cases suggests that two factors correlate strongly with the beginning of an insurgency: weak governance and a well-articulated cause from insurgent leaders. Competent governments that can provide services to their population in a timely manner are rarely beset with insurgencies. But there are also uncontrollable factors: countries with low per-capita incomes are at a greater risk of insurgency. Geographical factors are important too. Mountainous terrain can have a compounding effect on the grievances of a restive population.¹⁴ David Galula, a French military officer and counterinsurgency expert, wrote that the ideal location for insurgents is a landlocked country with mountains along the borders, a dispersed rural population, and a primitive economy.¹⁵ If ever a country matched this description, it surely would be Afghanistan.

Governance Collapse

Weak and ineffective governance—the ability to establish law and order, effectively manage resources, and implement sound policies—is a necessary precondition for the rise of insurgencies.¹⁶ It creates a supply of disgruntled locals eager to find other ways of governing themselves. Political scientist Stathis Kalyvas explains:

Insurgency can best be understood as a process of competitive state building rather than simply an instance of collective action or social contention…. State building is the insurgent’s central goal and renders organized and sustained rebellion of the kind that takes places in civil wars fundamentally distinct from phenomena such as banditry, mafias, or social movements.¹⁷

If insurgents take advantage of weak governance and assume state-like functions, they can raise tax money, set up administrative structures, and begin to perform government functions.

In the Canipaco Valley of central Peru, for example, the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) guerrillas “assumed control and organized every aspect of the inhabitants’ daily life. Sendero undertook the administration of justice and played the role of a moralizing force. Shining Path settled marital conflicts, supervised the work of teachers, mediated the relationships between the comuneros and those authorities and state functionaries who were not obliged to quit, executed thieves who robbed livestock from the herders and even organized recreation.”¹⁸

In Vietnam, the Vietcong were able to establish a highly sophisticated five-level “shadow” administrative infrastructure run by close to 40,000 full-time employees by the end of 1968. “One of the striking conclusions from interviewing [Vietcong] defectors,” wrote Jeffrey Race in War Comes to Long An, “is the total absence of government movement in revolutionary areas for years at a time, except on occasional large-scale sweep operations which had little impact on the Party’s local apparatus.”¹⁹ According to another account, “peasants conscripted into the revolutionary organization became more than soldiers in a temporary fighting force; they potentially became subjects integrated into a new institution founding the basis for a nation- state.”²⁰ Even before Vietnam, in the Philippines during the 1950s, “one government was legal, but in these areas had little or no physical control. The insurgent government was illegal, but had partial or complete control and enforcement capability.”²¹

A key essence of weak governance, then, is enforcement. Following Max Weber, any government that cannot control a monopoly on physical force will be unable to force people to comply with the state’s laws.²² Since the Enlightenment, philosophers in the tradition of Hobbes and Kant have seen a link between strong and responsible governments with peace and order. Even Adam Smith, the English economist and philosopher famous for advocating a minimal government role and the invisible hand of the market, supported a strong and competent security force to establish domestic order.

So how does weak governance contribute to the outbreak of an insurgency? By definition, weak states cannot meet the basic needs of their population.²³ They cannot consolidate authority over all their territory and they often do not succeed in maintaining order within the territory they do control.²⁴ They fail to use state resources to promote security or serve the public interest.²⁵ Weak states lack sufficient bureaucratic and institutional structures to ensure the functioning of government. They often lack trained civil servants and thus can barely operate school systems, courts, welfare systems, and other essentials for social functioning.²⁶ It is not just that law and political institutions in these states are ineffective. It is that the faith in law and political institutions that underpins policing and order does not exist.²⁷ Without confidence in the rules of society, including the quality of contract enforcement, the police, and the courts, the general public will look to other organizations to provide structure and order.

Political scientists David Laitin and James Fearon, who examined all civil wars and insurgencies between 1945 and 1999, found that “financially, organizationally, and politically weak central governments render insurgency