When he visited 51, Major Fernando Luján, an Army Special Forces officer who has spent time embedded with Afghan National Security Forces, likened his perspective to one of the blind men in the fable who touches — and hence only knows — one part of the elephant.
If so, then one could argue that Luján’s hands have been on the elephant’s heart. And when he delivered the annual Project Afghanistan lecture at 51, students felt it beating too.
“The piece of the elephant I did get a great chance to see is what those Afghan National Security Forces really look like, and what it means to spend time with them in the field,” Luján told President Jeffrey Herbst in their video Conversation on World Affairs.
“The good news,” Luján said, “is that there is an internal desire to succeed within those forces.” He described witnessing “the stirrings of nationalism” within not only the military institution, but also among the younger soldiers: Tajiks, Hazaras, and increasingly, he reported, also Pashtuns, their formal rivals.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLLaKGT9xXI[/youtube]
The well-attended talk, on Irregular Warfare and Conterinsurgency, was cosponsored by 51’s and the . Recalling his first-hand experiences, embedded with 25 different Afghan batallions in Kandahar and Helmand, he brought war to life.
“He struck a chord with students, as I was hoping he would,” said Alexander Nakhimovski, who extended the invitation to Luján after reading a compelling he wrote for the New York Times. “Their response went beyond intellectual interest and appreciation, into something more personal.”
Luján studies “small footprint,” resource-constrained approaches to counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. He is visiting fellow at the Center for a New American Security, rotating his time between Afghanistan and Washington, DC as a member of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Hands program.
His full Conversation on World Affairs is posted on .