Here is the important point to keep in mind about the highly publicized attack most likely carried out by the Haqqani Network against the U.S. Embassy compound in Kabul: terrorism is the lowest form of warfare. I do not mean that pejoratively but rather analytically. It is a point I develop in greater depth in my book, Invisible Armies, a history of guerrilla warfare and terrorism, which should be out next year.
What do I mean by lowest? Not that it’s evil, although it usually is. Rather that it’s the least-demanding form of warfare. Carrying out conventional military operations requires a state with a complex bureaucracy, one able to recruit, train, and equip armies. Guerrilla warfare is similar to low-end conventional operations a la light infantry; it is typically carried out either by states (such as North Vietnam or Pakistan) facing a foe too powerful to defeat with conventional operations or by organizations (like the IRA, al-Qaeda, FARC, etc.) lacking a state structure altogether. The targets of guerrilla attacks tend to be the military forces of a state; the difference between guerrillas and regulars is that the former seldom if ever engage in frontal battle because they are too weak to do so. Terrorists are too weak to even engage in hit-and-run raids on enemy forces; therefore, they resort to targeting civilians, governmental leaders, off-duty soldiers and police, and other targets that may lack military value but have a considerable public-relations payoff.
Thus, in the case of Afghanistan, the Taliban and Haqqani Network have not had much luck in dislodging coalition forces from the ground they have occupied in the past year, particularly in Helmand and Kandahar province. Unable to carry out successful guerrilla operations–much less conventional operations–they increasingly rely on spectacular terrorist attacks that can nab headlines even if they can’t change the balance of power on the ground.
The latest attack in Kabul–like others in the capital before it–is part of this strategy. Objectively, the attack was a complete failure; few people were killed, and no Americans (at least if early reports are accurate). This was nowhere close to the Tet Offensive when a Viet Cong suicide squad was actually able to penetrate the U.S. embassy grounds before being wiped out. Yet, even if they achieved no military objective, the attackers managed to seize the world’s attention and cast doubt on the narrative of success propagated by NATO. In that very limited sense, the attack was a success, but we should not magnify its significance. Kabul still remains safe, as Ambassador Ryan Crocker noted in a recent interview:
The situation he found in Kabul this summer, he said, is considerably better than what he saw in 2002, when he helped set up the first post-Taliban government.
“It’s better than I thought,” he said. “The biggest problem in Kabul is traffic. Out in the provinces, even in Kandahar, you see traffic jams there. Kabul is a more liveable city by far than the Baghdad I left in 2009.”
Crocker is right, and one terrorist attack changes nothing–unless it leads to a cracking of our will, which is what the attackers are aiming to accomplish.
