Surrogate Armies: Redefining the Ground Forces

To accelerate the Taliban's removal from power in Afghanistan, the U.S. has allied itself with a loose coalition of ethnic groups under the banners of the Northern Alliance, Eastern Alliance, and southern Pashtun tribes. This union provided a backhanded strike at the Taliban regime by re-igniting a ground war with only a modest deployment of U.S. ground forces. While the operation in Afghanistan falls under the mantle of "war," U.S. foreign policy has grappled with smaller engagements throu...