Did the surge work in Afghanistan?

From the standpoint of keeping the Taliban out for the duration the soldiers were there, yes.

From the standpoint of 'nation-building', no.

From the standpoint of preventing Afghanistan from turning into other pariah/narco state? Unambigiously, no.

I believe even they said this about Vietnam. It was so much the United States was there for ten years and counting, it was that we were there once, ten times. Every time soldiers rotate out, the same sort of working relationships and trust that the previous unit built has to be started all over again. Regardless of troops leaving, or staying for year long deployments, the Afghans live there, and that is their home. So every time there is a troop rotation of any kind, its always back to the drawing board, because the Afghans are not going to take the new guys the same way as the old guys. This is why its so hard to build trust and buy-in with the Afghan people.

Afghanistan itself has always been a Hodge-podge of competing tribes only loosely held together by culture and religion. Very rarely to they ever come together 'for Afghanistan' unless they feel threatened by outside powers. So if you think or feel they are getting 'patriotic', in the context of their history, thats actually not a good thing and a sign more troubles are only brewing on the horizon.

Unless we, as a country, and I highly emphasize this point, in and out of the military complex, unless we as a country are committed to building them up to be partners in business the way we helped Germany and Japan, no amount of aid dollars or troop count will matter. Throwing dollar bills at the issue won't work, because the Afghans can see through the hollowness of it. The Afghans have their own agenda and it always baffles people who can only see it from the American Military perspective because the Afghan way of doing things seems ass-backwards. They function from a tribal perspective and Islam is really the only thing tying them together enough, to the point that Afghanistan can be called a 'country'. This is why all those aid dollars went down the hole trying to build up a stronger Afghan Government, psychologically the only real strong incumbent government they ever had was the Taliban, and even at that, the Taliban itself had to fight brutally, tooth and nail, to assert any sort of sovereign authority over the other competing tribes there.

The Durand line the British set up did not help, it cut the Pashtoon tribe in half, with the other half in Pakistan. Of course the Pakistanis wouldn't take kindly with Afghanistan reclaiming all that territory. Out to the west, the city of Herat on again and off again has fallen under Iranian political sway and jurisdiction, and that sliver of land is treated by the Iranians as lost territory. The more intelligent, western oriented Afghans, the cream of the crop that could have really shown leadership decided to move to America or Canada to get degrees and become doctors or engineers here while the Soviets and the Taliban ruled, and as bigoted as it may sound for me to say, we were left with the leftovers.

The Afghan diaspora in the US as a whole did not step up to the plate at all, and this hurt the troop surge as much as anything. Sure, we all remember tarjomans and contractors with Afghan descent helping us out there. But when you count those heads, then count the large Afghan Diaspora in the US and Canada, only a tiny minority really got involved, the rest just got their degrees in Engineering, their children forgot Dari and Pashto, and they just didn't care enough to help the US Military or even pitch ideas. Those folks just wanted the US military to do ALL the work, with the aid of a tiny portion of their Afghan brothers helping, and they saw utterly no reason to leave their posh-gated communities in California.

I don't think we were deliberately mal-intended either. But like all things which are led by people with no heart in the game, things fizzled out. I don't think Afghanistan is completely lost either. We just need to come clean on certain things, stop with the political correctness, say what needs to be said, and find some way to get the broader Afghan Diaspora back to the table with us. Otherwise, it'll go the way of Iraq when we left.

I think the entire Iraq War ruined our chances for success in Afghanistan. It diverted time and resources away from a winnable situation and likely led to the creation of more opposing forces. Furthermore, many junior AND senior leaders cut their teeth in Iraq and then tried to apply the lessons learned there in Afghanistan, which in my opinion was a mistake. They are 2 different battlegrounds and the same tactics did not apply. I could write a book about my feelings, thoughts, and research on this subject but I will leave it at this.

MAJ (Join to see)
I agree with CPT Michael Barden I think it accomplished the tactical mission to re-take and secure provinces and districts that had fallen to the Taliban, just like the surge in Iraq did with Baghdad and other major cities.

However, I think it also met the strategic mission at the time which was basically to train and emplace Afghan forces to fight while NATO forces retrograded. Which we have pretty much done.

Now the question is, do I agree with the strategic mission? Well I am just a simple enlisted Soldier and I do what I am told.