U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Derek Renaud offers some tips to an Afghan national army soldier trying to zero in his weapon on the Kabul Military Training Center, Afghanistan, March 17, 2009. Renaud is assigned to Camp Alamo Mentor Group's Basic Warrior Training Branch. He is also in charge of the range and mentors Afghan recruits as they learn to use their new M16s. U.S. Army photo by Guy VolbFrom Reuters:
It is a cliché that, in counterinsurgency, one must be among “the people”. In Iraq, the U.S. Army did this to great effect under the leadership of General David Petraeus, moving large numbers of soldiers off the enormous bases and into smaller, community-oriented security outposts. As a result, in densely populated urban areas like Baghdad, an active presence of troops played a significant role in calming the worst of the violence. The Western Coalition forces in Afghanistan, however, face an altogether different problem. Kabul is not Baghdad - far less of Afghanistan’s population lives there than in Iraq, and the insurgency is concentrated outside the country’s largest urban areas. In many urban areas-Herat in the west, Jalalabad in the east, Mazar-i Sharif in the north-a westerner is far safer in the city itself than out in the countryside.
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My Comment: A good analysis on why Afghanistan is different form Iraq, and why the war must be fought with a different strategy.