ISAF Fails at COIN

Our counter-insurgency doctrine states that for COIN forces to win the insurgents have to be defeated; for the insurgents to win, they have to survive. It is quite evident, based on the high level of insurgent activity in the 2014 fighting season, that Hekmatyar's Hizbi-Islami, the Haqqani Network, and the Taliban have survived the long 13-year long counterinsurgency effort mounted by NATO / ISAF in Afghanistan. Some observers believe that NATO is more suited for strategic level interventions and a cold war environment than a counterinsurgency environment. They believe the NATO organization (ISAF) is not structured for and does not do counterinsurgency well. Read more in "In Afghanistan the west suffered from institutional failure. Let's learn from it", by Afzal Amin, The Guardian, October 28, 2014.