Its aim would be to prevent the Taliban from overthrowing the current Afghan government and prevent that country from becoming a base of operations for al-Qaida and other transnational militants to launch attacks against the United States. U.S. forces would undertake combat operations in eastern and southern Afghanistan while simultaneously building up and training the Afghan National Security Forces to assume the major responsibility for the defense of their country.

In May 2009 Obama appointed U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal as commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. In June 2009 Secretary of Defense Robert Gates ordered, through U.S. Central Command, a "multidisciplinary assessment of the situation in Afghanistan." On Aug. 17, prior to the submission and subsequent leaking of the McChrystal report, Obama reiterating his support for his earlier announced strategy for Afghanistan.

It is not known whether McChrystal's grim assessment of the situation in Afghanistan or his expected request for up to 40,000 additional U.S. troops shocked the administration to begin to reassess its own reassessment. There is widespread skepticism emanating from news outlets and the blogosphere concerning the bases for the Obama administration's decision and delay.

The administration states that one reason contributing to the reassessment is alleged fraud in the August Afghan national elections. Critics argue that this claim is bogus and a poor rationale because no one should have expected a pristine electoral process in a war-torn developing country.

On the contrary, the history and demographics of Afghanistan clearly support the administration's view.

A flawed Afghan election is not simply an excuse for retreat or a justification for overruling the recommendations of a field commander. The extent of support among the populace for the Afghan central government is one factor in evaluating and developing an effective counterinsurgency policy. That is, how much of the strategy and resources should be devoted to either a top-down or a bottom-up approach to security and governance? It is not an inconsequential question.

In 2004 I was a U.S. Army military adviser and embedded trainer to the Central Corps of the Afghan National Army. An observation that I made during one of my many visits to the Afghan army base at Pol-e-Charkhi provides a vignette to understand the complex nature of Afghan society and the influence a central government might or might not exert on this multiethnic, multilingual, and multi-religious tribal state.

The Afghan National Army prides itself as being the one truly national organization bringing together all the various groups such as Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Hazaras, Tajiks and Turkmen into a single unified fighting force. For the most part this was true, but potential fault lines remained.

I got to the Afghan battalion (kandak) formation toward the end of the morning briefing. Standing at attention in perfect company formations, it looked as disciplined and cohesive as any that I've seen in the U.S. Army or coalition forces. Then the order "fall out" was given. The battalion immediately dispersed into separate human islands of Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Hazaras, Tajiks and Turkmen.

That vignette may seem insignificant compared to the complexities of designing a strategy for the current situation in Afghanistan, except that a successful strategy is greatly dependent on creating and training an effective Afghan National Security Force to take over the fight against the Taliban.

In a recent series of blogs in The New Yorker, Steve Coll brilliantly captures the essence of the problem. Sections of it are well worth quoting:

"The political-military history of Afghanistan since 1970 is one in which outside powers have repeatedly sought to do with Afghan security forces what the U.S. proposes to do now. It is also a history in which those projects have repeatedly failed because the security forces have been infected with political, tribal and other divisions emanating from unresolved factionalism and rivalry in Kabul.

"Soviets tried to 'Afghan-ize' their occupation. … But the factional and tribal splits within the army persisted, defections were chronic and a civil war among the insurgents also played out within the army, ensuring that when the Soviet Union fell apart and supplies halted, the army too would crack up and dissolve en masse. (I happened to be in Kabul when this happened, in 1992. On a single day, thousands and thousands of soldiers and policemen took off their uniforms, put on civilian clothes and went home.)

"Finally, during the mid-nineteen-nineties, a fragmented and internally feuding Kabul government, in which Karzai was a participant for a time, tried to build up national forces to hold off the Taliban but splits within the Kabul coalitions caused important militias and sections of the security forces to defect to the Taliban."

Afghanistan has a history of weak central control and strong tribal structures that have provided local authority, legitimacy and rule of law. The cohesion and effectiveness of an Afghan central government may be better achieved bottom-up, winning over and knitting together coalitions among tribal groups before the Taliban beats us to it.

(Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D., is a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq.)

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

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