Columbia International Affairs Online: Working Papers

CIAO DATE: 07/2010

Shaping the War in Afghanistan: The Situation in the Spring of 2010

Anthony H. Cordesman

April 2010

Center for Strategic and International Studies

Abstract

•Shape: Create the military conditions necessary to secure key population centers; limit the flow of insurgents. •Clear: Remove insurgent and anti-government elements from a given area or region, thereby creating space between the insurgents and the population; •Hold: Maintain security, denying the insurgents access and freedom of movement within the given space; and, •Build: Exploit the security space to deliver humanitarian relief and implement reconstruction and development initiatives that will connect the Afghan population to its government and build and sustain the Afghanistan envisioned in the strategic goals. •Transfer: Shift responsibility and activity to Afghan government, ANSF, and Afghan people.