Page 112 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

752 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan
Approaching ISAF operations in Afghanistan within

Galula’s frame of counterinsurgency

David VESTENSKoV

Introduction
hen the Danish parliament chose to join the US led Operation Enduring Free-
W dom in 2001, it was highly motivated by the principle of standing side by side
with an alliance partner who had suffered an attack (9/11). Logically, both the strategic
and the operational planning were left to the United States which relied on a classic
1
Clausewitzian center of gravity approach. This resulted in large-scale military opera-
tion against the enemy’s (the Taleban’s) strongholds – primarily the city of Kabul. At
this point, the primary objective for the military operation was to overthrow a regime
that sheltered the Al Qaeda terrorist leader responsible for 9/11 and secondarily to pre-
vent future terrorist networks from forming and working on Afghan soil.
The primary objective was accomplished within a few months while the secondary
objective was much more complicated than initially anticipated due to the fact that it
could be addressed from several angles, for example the democracy project that charac-
terized the period from 2003 to 2008. Despite the fact that NATO this is not a guiding
principle in the alliance, it was nonetheless what decision-makers from the member
countries claimed. Furthermore, the NATO ISAF forces carried out offensive operations
in compliance with the center of gravity model which is corroborated by analyses of
the Danish and British military activities in the Helmand Province from 2003 to 2008.
And though capacity building of both civilian and military institutions was carried out
concurrently, the offensive operations against the insurgency groups remained a core
element in the strategy.
In December 2006, the US military attempted to implement a strategy change in
Afghanistan, going from an enemy-centric focus to a population-centric focus. The
2
Counterinsurgency Doctrine was described in a US military field manual where work
performed by a French officer four decades earlier suddenly appeared in several refer-
ences. This marked the beginning of a revelation for David Galula and his thoughts on
the strategy of counterinsurgency (COIN).
This article will focus on the insurgency vs. the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan
2007-2013 based on the laws and principles of Galula’s theory as they appear in Coun-

1 Allen, Ralph L., ‘Piercing the Veil of Operational Art’, PARAMETERS, US Army War College Quarterly,
1995 (2013), 111–119; Carl von Clausewitz, Von Clausewitz, on war (London: Routledge, 2004).
2 United States and others, Counterinsurgency Field Manual [2006] (New York: Cosimo Reports, 2010).