Some of the frustrations expressed here are covered very well in a book I’d highly recommend to anyone even remotely involved or interested in our current involvement in Afghanistan (and elsewhere). ‘The Accidental Guerrilla – fighting small wars in the midst of a big one’ by David Kilcullen (ISBN 9781921372537) is a very well written treatise on the current style of warfare Western armies are forced to fight against irregular Islamic forces. The book is newly published, and so is quite up to date with some of the examples he uses in his arguments.
Kilcullen was a special advisor for counterinsurgency to Condolezza Rice (who?) and senior counterinsurgency advisor to General David Petraeus.
In a very early chapter, he cites an incident in Afghanistan in 2006 where an American Special Forces patrol was ambushed by a very large force of very competent and extremely professional Taliban. (When Coalition forces returned to the valley some time later, they were surprised at the sophistication of the ambush position and the high level of preparation that had been put into establishing it.)
As the patrol attempted to fight its way out of the valley, they came under fire from a large number of local people who were not part of the ambush, but simply farmers and villagers who rushed home to get their guns to join in the fight when it became apparent a fight was in progress. Interviewed afterwards, villagers said that it was the most exciting thing to happen in the valley in years and there was no way they could bear not to have taken part in it. (Bragging rights around the camp fire?)
It is from incidents like this that the book derives its name – many of the people Coalition forces find themselves fighting are not Taliban per se, but simply people who resent foreigners coming into their valleys and killing them. If it was my valley in rural Australia and an American military patrol came into it (as far as I was concerned) uninvited, I’m not sure whether I wouldn’t be dusting off my old .303 if I had one.