Military Review English Edition May-June 2014 | Page 77

INSIGHT

Figure 3. The Korengal Valley

View of the Korengal Valleny from the Korengal Outpost, Kunar Province, Afghanistan (Geographical and Terrain data depicted via MedRView, supplied via
A688, Wanat and Pech Virtual Staff Ride, USACGSC, December 2011).

western colonialist regime under France. Ho Chi
Min’s communists were freedom fighters who
happened to be using the communist ideology to
assist them in fighting the greatest military power
in the world. Similarly, there are those within the
Army, such as Col. Gian Gentile, who think the
population-centric COIN doctrine is the wrong
framework with which to address Afghanistan.8
The debate continues, as does the fighting, and our
understanding of culture and history is still incomplete. After 10 years of war in Afghanistan, most
Army officers still cannot differentiate between
Sunni and Shia, Arabs and Persians, and Taliban
and al-Qaida.
Therefore, in the face of a pervasive lack of
understanding at the strategic and operational
MILITARY REVIEW

May-June 2014

levels, it might be premature to declare that COIN
has been the right or the wrong framework in
Afghanistan. However, we should be open to that
conclusion because the tribal governmental structure had never been replaced or even defeated by
the host-nation government. Our insistence that
the Karzai regime was the legitimate government
of Afghanistan has fostered little goodwill among
the Nuristanis.

Our Defeat in Afghanistan

In the future, military historians perhaps will categorize Korengal and Weygal campaigns as invasions into sovereign valley tribal states. In these
areas, at least, whether the current COIN framework was the correct approach is an open question.
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