In those early days, the U.S. military in Afghanistan, for all its famous night-vision goggles, was blind to what has become known as the “human terrain”—the people it had come to liberate. No one has to explain to any soldier the tactical significance of a hill or a river or an airfield; whereas few soldiers on the Kandahar base had ever heard of Barakzais, much less the Popalzais and Alokozais and Ghiljais who had been left out in the cold. Their commanders similarly failed to recognize the mischief flowing every day from the fact that the interpreters on whom the Americans were wholly dependent—supplied by the governor’s helpful brother—were working for him.
Today efforts are being made to change that, as the military draws on a culture of “lessons learned”—the systematic practice of looking back at mistakes to see what can be done better. The generals in charge of the counterinsurgency strategy being implemented in Afghanistan are graduates of the hard school of Iraq, where the United States also paid the price of ignorance. Now, the generals—notably U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) chief David Petraeus and the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal—are working through multiple channels to build their forces’ ability to relate to the Afghan population.
By: Brant
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