So how do you win one of these counterinsurgency thingies anyway?

Convnetional battles as we know them are almost meaningless in the kind of war we are fighting in Afghanistan, unless lots of our guys get killed or we accidentally kill lots of civilians. Killing lots of insurgents doesn't really mean a whole lot. We do it all the time. We most certainly kill a lot more of them than they do of us. We do make an effort to go out and kill their key leaders, and we do a pretty good job of it. But all the really does is buy us time in the region of influence under that leader until another guy is either sent to replace him or a junior guy grows into the role vacated by the dead or captured guy.

So what constitutes a substantive battle in a counterinsurgency. Not what you might think. This week we won a pretty big battle and nobody outside of its participants will realize it or look upon it that way. GIRoA (the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan) held the Consultative Peace Jirga this week. Around 2,000 delegates and leaders (including 300 women, totally unprecedented) showed up for this thing. Insurgents put a lot of time and effort into making sure it didn't happen. GIRoA put a lot of time and effort into making sure it did. A couple of failed rocket attacks on opening day were brushed aside and the Jirga happened much according to plan. GIRoA won a pretty big battle this week. And I'm pretty friggin tired because of it.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/...ce-jirga-zj-04