The path to victory is lined with fields of wheat

One key principle for running a successful COIN campaign is to separate the insurgents from the support of the population at-large. An insurgency enjoying high levels of public support will have an easier time hiding, recruiting, resupplying, and staging for attacks. Insurgent groups without broad support cannot convincingly claim to legitimately represent the wishes of the people.

British actions in Malaya during the 1950's provide a striking example of counter-insurgents acting to separate an insurgency from the people. Under the Briggs Plan, the British forcibly relocated 500,000 rural Malayan into concentration camps. Though angered at first, the Malayans soon came around as their standards of living increased and they were given money and ownership of the land inside the camps (they had previously not enjoyed ownership of the land on which they had resided). The Briggs Plan separated the population from the communist insurgents on two important levels: physically and mentally. Physically, because the insurgents no longer enjoyed the ability to hide among the people, nor could they receive resupply from the population (many starved). Mentally, because in the battle for hearts and minds, the guerrillas could not compete with the quality of life or ownership of land offered by the British.

Though it would be politically impossible in Afghanistan to put people into concentration camps (and would not be a successful strategy for this particular conflict anyhow), the same principle of needing to separate the people from the insurgents remains true today. For years, poppy production has linked the two. Poppies are a cash crop and the number one export in Afghanistan. Their cultivation and subsequent use in the drug trade provided $500 million to the Taliban and other criminal groups in Afghanistan last year.

After years of increasing poppy production, the numbers are finally starting to turn around. A number of factors are responsible for the change, including: changing weather conditions; the market value of opium falling by 20% over the past year, and by nearly 50% over the past two years; government pressure (over half of the farmers claimed this reason as most important in their decision to stop cultivating poppy plants); and a USAID program promoting the planting of wheat (COIN is not just a military issue- it involves economic development and civil administration among a whole host of other stability operations).

Past efforts to destroy or discourage poppy production failed to provide an alternative for poverty stricken farmers. Wheat now provides that needed alternative. USAID provides seed, fertilizer, and irrigation to the farmers, who in return grow wheat instead of poppies (the success of this program has been helped by the 50% increase in the price of wheat. It will be interesting to see what will happen when wheat prices decrease and opium prices increase).

Though not quite the same level of separation achieved by the British in Malaya, there are still many positive benefits to be realized in Afghanistan. First and foremost, the decrease in poppy production will put a dent in the Taliban's finances. Instability and lawlessness will also be lessened as more and more people rely on legal means providing for themselves. And as the guerrillas were necessary middle-men for the selling of Afghan poppy harvests to the outside world, at least one mental link between the people and the insurgency will also be cut with the farmers no longer seeing themselves as needing to rely on insurgents for an income.

Sustaining this decrease in poppy production could have fantastic long term effects on Afghanistan's stability. The increase in wheat fields may not be the type of surge military leaders had in mind, but they should accept and take advantage of it nonetheless.