The "foot soldiers" Are Not the Problem
Britain, Japan to help reintegrate Taliban foot soldiers – washingtonpost.com
Britain and Japan have agreed to head an international fund, expected to total up to $500 million over the next five years, as part of a broad plan to help lure Taliban fighters away from the insurgency with the promise of jobs, protection against retaliation, and the removal of their names from lists of U.S. and NATO targets.
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Reintegration is a key component of the Afghanistan strategy President Obama outlined last fall. U.S. officials have said that they believe that up to 80 percent of Taliban foot soldiers are fighting for money and because of local grievances rather than in support of an ideology. Earlier reintegration efforts have failed, officials have said, because of poor planning, inadequate security and insufficient financial support.
I have a great deal of respect for David Kilcullen, and his book, The Accidental Guerilla is a must-read for those interested in the issue of insurgency and counter-insurgency. But that said, we are likely making a fundamental mistake if we believe that these non-ideological “foot soldiers” are the center of gravity of the insurgency.
First, even if you shear off these “Taliban-for-hires,” you are still going to be left with a core of ideologically motivated or otherwise committed insurgents. They are a disproportionate part of the challenge.
Second, unless you plan to put every man of fighting age on the payroll, there is little evidence that you will eliminate their ability to recruit. There is also a moral hazard problem here, also. If we pay off former-insurgents at a higher level of pay than is available through normal economic activity, you create an incentive to punch your ticket as an insurgent in order to get into a DDR program.
Third, what is the long-term here? You out-compete the Taliban financially for the loyalty of apolitical fighters. Then what? The reality is that this creates a durable political economy that supports violence and warfare. There is going to be an entire class of people whose well-being depends on continued payments, and who have the ability to extort more money simply by turning back to violence. This is the institutionalization of an extortion scheme.
All of this is a way for us to avoid the real issue, which is the necessity of reconciling mid- and senior-level insurgent leaders. If the issue was just about the foot soldiers, you could kill your way to victory. But we can’t kill them nor buy them off ultimately for precisely the same reason — they aren’t the real problem.
