The sum of the twelve largest population centers in Afghanistan is 5,649,162—and this is counting rural areas surrounding cities, not just the urban area itself.
That total is 21% of the population of Afghanistan (28,150,000). Remind me again how ISAF and NATO forces are supposed to protect the population of Afghanistan by not protecting 80% of the population of Afghanistan?
I’m curious to see whether we’ll also try to secure the main ring road, that reaches most of these cities, in Afghanistan. (You can see it visibly on this map, here: start at Towraghondi in the northwest, heading southeast down to Kandahar, then northeast up to Kabul, and northwest towards Kholm/Konduz, then west towards Mazar-e-Sharif, and southwest back towards Herat, bypassing Towraghondi.)
Protecting the cities, and the ring road, was the Soviet Union’s main battle plan in Afghanistan. True, there are dramatic differences between then and now. But the Soviets were also willing to kill upwards of a million Afghans to try to pacify the country. Along those lines, here’s a link to the first page of an article written in 1987.
Also, this. But, COIN is the new big thing, so, here goes nothing.
