Koran-burning and the Failure of Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan

Anti-American violence has been wracking Afghanistan since Afghans discovered U.S. personnel burning Korans at Bagram Air Base. Grotesquely sacrilegious in this conservative Islamic society, the Koran-burning by Americans illustrates the divergence between the counterinsurgency policies grandly proclaimed in Washington and the on-the-ground reality in Afghanistan.

Former Centcom commander and commander in both Iraq and Afghanistan, General David Petreaus oversaw the development the US Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual 3-24, later famous as FM 3-24. Beginning in December 2006, FM 3-24 was widely disseminated as the US military training doctrine. FM 3-24 emphasized “protecting the population” was a key element of a culturally sensitive counterinsurgency campaign.

Counterinsurgency advocates promised the doctrine embedded in FM 3-24 would to turn door-kicking US combat soldiers into culturally respectful “hearts-and-minds” warriors, who were as ready to dig wells, build schools and nurture small businesses as they were to give battle to the Taliban. WHAM, the military tagged it, “Winning Hearts and Minds.” The counterinsurgency advocates promised the doctrine would produce “strategic corporals,” reborn counterinsurgency soldiers whose actions could impact the war far above his rank. As New Yorker writer Nicholas Lemann wrote about the ideal counterinsurgency soldier: “He’s Gandhi in IED-proof armor.” The reality, as we have seen with the Koran-burning, is much different.

The recent case of Koran-burning, ostensibly by “strategic corporals,” is even more absurd given the US military was painfully aware of the problems of Koran-burning. In late 2009, I was embedded with a unit of Kentucky soldiers, who encountered a mob of rioting Afghans protesting an alleged Koran-burning by US troops. Softball-sized rocks rained on the team’s convoy of armored MRAPs, breaking windshields and antennas. “It was kind of a hell of fire, if you will,” the unit commander, Colonel Mike Farley, told me. In spite of the counterinsurgency indoctrination, this latest Koran-burning speaks to both a failure of training and a woeful dearth of institutional memory. The US military prides itself on being a “learning organization.” Looks like they are flunking this subject.