KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - International forces have failed to quash the insurgency in Afghanistan because they have failed to understand the Taliban's common-touch campaign, a key architect of Canada's bold new "model village" strategy said Sunday.
At its heart, Prof. Thomas Johnson said, the counter-insurgency is "essentially an information war" the Taliban have been winning hands down.
"We need a change in strategy," said Johnson, the director of the Program for Culture and Conflict studies at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.
"All counter-insurgency is local (and) this is a rural insurgency. We need to go where the Taliban are operating 24/7, 365 days a year."
The only way to do that is to leave the military-secured bases that are essentially garrisons cut off from the country and people around them and go into villages on a full-time basis, he said.
"We need to embolden the traditional villager system so they can give the Taliban the finger," he said in an interview at the Canadian out-reach compound in Kandahar city.
Johnson's work caught the eye of Canadian Brig.-Gen. Jonathan Vance, the senior military commander in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province.
The two men, along with a couple of other experts, joined forces to design Canada's leading-edge approach of trying to normalize small population centres on the five main approaches to Kandahar, the country's second-largest city.
The aim is to create "model villages," where normal daily and economic activity can flourish in a secure environment under local Afghan leadership.
Vance, who has just won formal approval from Ottawa for the plan, has said he wants the villagers to feel a positive impact.
Exact details of the ongoing operation, which has the backing of Kandahar's governor, cannot yet be reported at the request of the military.
The Canadian government has been signalling a shift in strategy in recent months ahead of its commitment to end Canada's combat mission in 2011.
Outposts have been dismantled as thousands more American troops arrive in the region to take over more of the hard-edged military role.
Johnson said the United States and its allies did not understand that Afghanistan's centre of gravity is its rural Pashtun people.
As a result, he said, the attempt by the most powerful countries in the world to win hearts and minds in the region -- key to any military victory -- has been pitiful, he said.
"It is close to ridiculous, if not counterproductive," Johnson said.
"What makes sense to us, we assume makes sense to (ordinary Afghans) and that's not true."
In fact, he argued, the military should remove "hearts and minds" from its lexicon because they will never be won, and replace the notion with something doable, such as winning "trust and confidence."
Johnson, who has been studying and visiting Afghanistan for the past 25 years, has focused on the Taliban's local messaging.
He disagreed with Canadian Ambassador Ron Hoffmann, who recently said the Taliban had given up trying to win over the local population in favour of unabashed terror tactics.
While intimidation is part of the insurgent strategy, their propaganda has been effective in resonating with ordinary Afghans, he said.
The messaging, Johnson found, has an exceptional degree of co-ordination and sophistication that speaks directly to the Pashtun sense of identity and the oral traditions of an essentially illiterate society.
The insurgent language is not secular, but that of the jihad, tapping into religious and cultural wellsprings about which the western forces are largely clueless.
"We've been putting out secular messaging," he said. "It basically bounces off."
At the same time, Johnson said, the Taliban could be vulnerable to counter-messaging that employs the kind of approach they have exploited with such success.
For example, the Taliban attack Afghans who co-operate with the international community because they fear the collaboration could prove successful.
Offering up concrete examples of collaborative efforts improving local lives might be one way to counter their efforts.
Showing up those who plant improvised explosive devices as cowards who maim or kill women and children would be another way to tap into Pashtun sensibilities.
