For more on the question of whether the Somalia raid might serve as an alternative template for counterterrorism in Afghanistan in the abandonment of a counterinsurgency strategy, I’m going to heavily excerpt from a post I just wrote for the Washington Independent in which Col. Daniel Roper, the head of the Army-Marine Corps COIN Center, addresses the question.

In Roper’s view, counterterrorism is a prophylactic measure, a treatment of the symptom after the patient has fallen ill, while counterinsurgency addresses root-cause economic, social, legal and political failures that contribute to insurgency. Counterinsurgency is about “addressing political dynamics at the local level, through existing or adapting governance structures,” Roper said. “If we focus on the symptoms we’ll never solve the causes.”

It was impossible to divorce Afghanistan from its regional context, Roper continued, citing “profoundly transnational dynamics.” To discuss extremism in Afghanistan without discussing “the dynamics in Pakistan” was folly, and you “can’t have a coherent talk about the dynamics with Pakistan without [discussing] India” and other regional players. At the same time, Roper praised “increasingly successful attacks of drones that are killing militants, not civilians.”

So all of that regional talk is well-taken. But the fact remains that the Somalia strike succeeded. I asked Roper if there was some specific condition in Somalia that allowed Special Forces to acquire sufficient intelligence to execute the strike that doesn’t exist in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Roper was justifiably hesitant to speak to the Somalia raid before all the facts were in. “Within the borders of Afghanistan,” he continued, “there are places where [insurgents] are inaccessible, for whatever reason, collectively, either getting the intelligence we need to have sufficient confidence to conduct an operation or we may not have the resource to take advantage” of that intelligence.

This explanation… isn’t an explanation. It remains obscure (perhaps rightly so) how it was we were to acquire sufficient intelligence in an impermissible environment like Somalia to kill Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan but can’t in the more-permissive environs of Afghanistan. Roper’s concession on the efficacy of the drone strikes makes the Somalia-but-not-Afghanistan case harder as well. If we can do it in Waziristan…

The root-cause approach to the problem, however, is the right focus. The resources necessary to combat the conditions that allow terrorism to have a social currency depend on a baseline level of security. And if we don’t provide it for at least some bridging period in Afghanistan, it just won’t be provided. 

Update: To clarify that last paragraph, let me bring something up from comments. I guess my language is inelegant, but no, it’s not an argument for universal interventionism. It’s to say that were we to reduce our security presence in Afghanistan ahead of competent Afghan forces, there would be security backsliding that would complicate the counterterrorism mission. The right move in Somalia and Yemen is not to get into Somalia or Yemen. The right move in Afghanistan is to create the conditions for responsible extrication from the security piece.