The Safe Haven Myth

This raises questions for countries attempting to coordinate cross-border counterterrorism policies and practices. How big does a safe haven have to be to qualify for a military campaign to eliminate it? Is a safe house big enough? How about an urban ghetto? Is there a difference between sanctuaries and safe havens? How safe do havens have to be? Do they even have to be physical?

Moreover, policymakers need to recognize that some terrorist groups -- the ones that survive and persist -- change over time. Before 2001, al Qaeda needed serious patches of territory to run training camps and field its paramilitary units. Now, the few remaining al Qaeda militants could not control that much space even if they wanted to. Al Qaeda's track record shows that eliminating one base of operations is no guarantee that terrorists won't simply establish another one somewhere else. Worse, once pushed underground, these militants inhabit havens that look more like cells than garrisons. Shape-shifting organizations like al Qaeda and its affiliates, in other words, put the lie to the assumption that safe havens and states are indistinguishable.

The current debate on Afghanistan strategy does not take into account such changeability and shades of gray. It generally hinges on two options: commit to a large-footprint counterinsurgency operation, saturating the country with thousands more troops; or turn to surgical counterterrorism options that don't require a large or continuous presence and focus on a much narrower set of goals and activities. Both strategies intend to create an Afghanistan that can survive without the security blanket of foreign troops, with some semblance of stability and some capability to self-police as the central benchmarks. Under that vision of success, Afghanistan would cease to be a resource for insurgents and terrorists.

But realities on the ground defy both resource-heavy counterinsurgency and more tactically nimble counterterrorism -- and suggest policy options that straddle the two strategies. The military could continue to target training camps in Waziristan, a suburb of Quetta, or a city block in Peshawar. At the same time, the forces in Afghanistan could create "safety zones" for civilians as outlined in international humanitarian law. The French did so during Operation Turquoise during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The United Nations established safe cities in Bosnia-Herzegovina during its 1992-1995 war and a no-fly zone over Kurdistan in Iraq in the late 1990s. These aren't perfect examples, but they show that the United States might be able to make a "model district archipelago" to help make the country more stable and safe.

International humanitarian law also identifies safe havens of another kind -- protected sites like schools, hospitals, and religious facilities. Such physical structures, usually located in urban areas, present a different set of potential problems, particularly in light of Gen. McChrystal's plan to withdraw from rural areas and focus on securing Afghanistan's cities. Security forces in Afghanistan will likely have to contend with an increase in clandestine cells of urban guerrillas, reliant on networks of safe houses, covert training sites, and other underground havens to conduct operations like last Thursday's Indian Embassy bombing in Kabul.

U.S. and coalition forces have already witnessed extensive sectarian targeting and the exploitation of mosques by insurgents in Iraq. In Afghanistan, girls' schools and hospitals have consistently been hit with insurgent violence. In Pakistan, the 2008 raid on the Red Mosque, where militants had taken refuge, demonstrated the strategic significance of a local event -- precipitating no small amount of bad press for the government and contributing to nationwide discontent. None of these locations were states; all of them were statutory havens; all of them hosted high-visibility events that challenged the security policies crafted to deal with them.

Ultimately, Obama and his advisors can use whatever language they want to describe this war, but recent history has shown that the right choice of words is key to continued legitimacy and a convincing claim of success. Pinning counterinsurgency and counterterrorism options to a narrow, neorealist vision of sanctuary is potentially misleading, could foster misguided expectations, and will most certainly miss out on some of the local dynamics that Centcom hopes to acquaint itself with through its new Afghan Hands program. If they've outlived their usefulness, then perhaps it's time to let this set of bumper-sticker buzzwords die.

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