Kilcullen on COIN and the adaptive Taliban

David Kilcullen, the Australian counterinsurgency guru who advised Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq, gave an hour-long talk tonight at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). The talk was broadly about counterinsurgency in U.S. foreign policy, but Kilcullen spent a good deal of time on the big story of the day: Afghanistan.

Kilcullen told The Guardian last week that Obama should either go big or go home to avoid a "Suez-like" disaster in Afghanistan. He elaborated on those comments tonight, explaining why he felt the middle ground was so dangerous. And he argued -- perhaps inadvertently -- that the strategies reportedly being considered by the Obama administration move too slowly, and give the Taliban time to adapt.

"They've shown the ability to absorb and adapt to significant increases in military presence," he said. "Anything less than about 20,000 troops going in at one time, they'll adapt... the worst place to be is in that middle band, 20-30,000 troops."

Asked to elaborate, Kilcullen pointed to the previous "surges" -- all of them small -- approved by the Bush and Obama administrations. The U.S. has gradually increased its troop levels in Afghanistan over the last seven years, from 7,000 in 2002 to roughly 68,000 today. Each time, Kilcullen said, the Taliban adapted to the increased troop levels. A few thousand extra troops were enough to displace the Taliban, but not fundamentally disrupt the group.

Kilcullen's remarks are significant because the Obama administration is considering this kind of "trickle" strategy. This is, in part, because of logistical limitations: As the Institute for the Study of War noted in September, there will only be five brigades (roughly 20,000 troops) available for deployment by mid-2010.

Here's how CBS News described the scenarios being considered at the White House last week:

The first combat troops would not arrive until early next year and it would be the end of 2010 before they were all there. That makes this Afghanistan surge very different from the Iraq surge, in which 30,000 troops descended on Baghdad and the surrounding area in just five months.

Evan pointed out to me that even 40,000 troops might not be enough to prevent the Taliban from "adapting." (Classical counterinsurgency doctrine calls for many, many more.) Asked about this, Kilcullen said the numbers "weren't set in stone," and said the more important question is how the troops are used. Like I said last week, I'm still not sure whether Kilcullen actually believes this, or whether he's just trying to avoid kneecapping Gen. Stanley McChrystal's plan.

Karzai's corruption

Kilcullen also weighed in on the question of corruption in Afghanistan. He described a "tsunami of illicit cash" washing through the country, causing corruption at virtually every level of the government.

"It generates a massive wave of popular anger. The people at the lowest level really see the government as being as much part of the problem as the insurgents are... there's a wave of popular anger, disillusion and discontent," he said.

"That creates space for the Taliban... to say, 'These guys are exploiting you. Partner with us and we will protect you.' The Taliban is basically pitching the population on the basis of a political argument."

There's a tendency to understate the importance of corruption at the national level. John Nagl and Richard Fontaine didn't explicitly dismiss it in last month's Los Angeles Times op-ed on local governance, but they suggested that it's a secondary problem.

Kilcullen, though, argued that a corrupt and ineffective central government often leads counterinsurgency to backfire.

"If your strategy is to connect the government to the population... and if the government is corrupt and exploiting the people... the better you do at your strategy, the worse it's going to get. You'll be connecting the government to the people you hate."

Kilcullen acknowledged that the U.S. has little leverage over Hamid Karzai's government. But he also said that few Afghans want the Taliban back -- 4-8 percent, according to polls -- and argued that reforms in Kabul are possible.