As US forces fight to clear Taliban militia from the town of Marjah in Afghanistan's Helmand province, commanders need to look again at what we learnt in Iraq. A key cause of success in that country came when Sunni tribes flipped and decided to fight against hardcore al-Qaeda militants. Afghanistan is not Iraq, but the US and its allies would be foolish to ignore the lessons of the "Sunni Awakening" that took place in Iraq's al-Anbar province in 2006 and 2007. Properly applied, these lessons could help us use the increased military resources of the Afghan surge to accelerate a political victory in Afghanistan.
First, the US must fight the insurgency from the bottom up. Well into 2006, US efforts to engage tribal factions in Iraq were primarily top-down: military commanders and diplomats tried to negotiate grand bargains with high-profile (but not always influential) sheikhs to get their tribes to stop fighting as insurgents. Unfortunately, this strategy did not work. Al-Qaeda attacked these tribes with impunity, deterring others from rising up and seeking US assistance.
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