For weeks, the United States public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan war against what it was told was a “city of 80,000 people” as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marjah was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centers in Helmand.

It turns out, however, that the picture of Marjah presented by military officials and reported by major news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as an historic turning point in the conflict.

Marjah is not a city or even a real town, but a few clusters of farmers’ homes amid a large agricultural area that covers much of the southern Helmand River Valley …

The ISAF official said the only population numbering tens of thousands associated with Marjah is spread across many villages and almost 200 square kilometers, or about 125 square miles (editorial note, approximately eleven miles squared) …

So how did the fiction that Marjah is a city of 80,000 people get started?

The idea was passed onto news media by the US Marines in southern Helmand. The earliest references in news stories to Marjah as a city with a large population have a common origin in a briefing given on February 2 by officials at Camp Leatherneck, the US Marine base there.

The Associated Press published an article the same day quoting “Marine commanders” as saying that they expected 400 to 1,000 insurgents to be “holed up” in the “southern Afghan town of 80,000 people”. That language evoked an image of house-to-house urban street fighting.

The same story said Marjah was “the biggest town under Taliban control” and called it the “linchpin of the militants’ logistical and opium-smuggling network”. It gave the figure of 125,000 for the population living in “the town and surrounding villages”.

From Thomas Johnson and Chris Mason at Foreign Policy.

The war in Afghanistan, as we have written here and in Military Review (pdf), is indeed a near replication of the Vietnam War, including the assault on the strategically meaningless village of Marjah, which is itself a perfect re-enactment of Operation Meade River in 1968. But the callous cynicism of this war, which we described here in early December, and the mainstream media’s brainless reporting on it, have descended past these sane parallels. We have now gone down the rabbit hole.

Two months ago, the collection of mud-brick hovels known as Marjah might have been mistaken for a flyspeck on maps of Afghanistan. Today the media has nearly doubled its population from less than 50,000 to 80,000 — the entire population of Nad Ali district, of which Nad Ali is the largest town, is approximately 99,000 — and portrays the offensive there as the equivalent of the Normandy invasion, and the beginning of the end for the Taliban. In fact, however, the entire district of Nad Ali, which contains Marjah, represents about 2 percent of Regional Command (RC) South, the U.S. military’s operational area that encompasses Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Zabul, Nimruz, and Daikundi provinces. RC South by itself is larger than all of South Vietnam, and the Taliban controls virtually all of it. This appears to have occurred to no one in the media.

Nor have any noted that taking this nearly worthless postage stamp of real estate has tied down about half of all the real combat power and aviation assets of the international coalition in Afghanistan for a quarter of a year. The possibility that wasting massive amounts of U.S. and British blood, treasure, and time just to establish an Afghan Potemkin village with a “government in a box” might be exactly what the Taliban wants the coalition to do has apparently not occurred to either the press or to the generals who designed this operation.

In reality, this battle — the largest in Afghanistan since 2001 — is essentially a giant public affairs exercise, designed to shore up dwindling domestic support for the war by creating an illusion of progress. In reporting it, the media has gulped down the whole bottle of “drink me” and shrunk to journalistic insignificance.

Analysis & Commentary

The U.S. Marine Corps over the last several years in Iraq and Afghanistan has customarily been engaged in heavy combat operations.  More than 1000 Marines perished in Iraq, most in the Anbar Province.  Regardless, whatever the Marines are engaged in, they will officially hype their exploits and stretch the narrative, always redounding to the benefit of the Marines.  It’s part of the history, mystique and political strategy of the Corps.  The U.S. Marines are the best strike fighters and shock troops in the world.  No matter, this narrative isn’t enough, and it is crafted and molded until the Corps takes on mythical proportions.  The fact that their reputation precedes them and intimidates the enemy only justifies the strategy.

That most so-called journalists don’t know enough to be able to effectively cover the Marines is amusing, but reaches the point of being  sad for analysts who spend time asking the wrong questions and reiterating what we all already know.  Marjah is an approximately eleven mile squared area of operations comprising tens of thousands of farmers rather than an urban setting.  So who didn’t already know that?  The closest thing to a major urban center in Helmand is Now Zad.  How is this “revelation” significant to worthwhile analysis of what the Marines are doing?

In Why are we in the Helmand Province? I addressed the notion that Marjah is a “worthless postage stamp” of land by pointing out that targeting Kandahar (as a population center) without a coupled effort to shut down the Taliban recruiting grounds and support network (as well as means of financing) would be analogous to giving the Taliban free sanctuary in Pakistan, just on a moderately smaller scale.

U.S. counterinsurgency strategists can claim until their last breath that counterinsurgency should be “population-centric,” but if we honestly believed that axiom we wouldn’t care about sanctuary in Pakistan.  Control over population centers and good governance would be enough to marginalize the insurgents and render them powerless in spite of their sanctuaries – or so the doctrine claims.

But we know that the enemy must be stalked and killed, so we are in the Helmand Province, and Marjah was the last battle space for heavy kinetics.  Policing of the population must now ensue in these areas.  Kandahar will be next, and the buildup will be slow and deliberate, after, of course, we have finished with major operations in Helmand.

But if it isn’t one thing it’s another, and in addition to enduring bad analysis we must also deal with incomplete analysis that stops short of asking the hardest of questions.  Consider this recent Washington Times editorial.

The recent battle in Marjah in Afghanistan’s Helmand province was a key test case for new rules of engagement that emphasized protecting civilians rather than killing insurgents. The town was taken, but whether that was because of the new rules or despite them remains to be seen.

The rules of engagement are probably the most restrictive ever seen for a war of this nature. NATO forces cannot fire on suspected Taliban fighters unless they are clearly visible, armed and posing a direct threat. Buildings suspected of containing insurgents cannot be targeted unless it is certain that civilians are not also present. Air strikes and night raids are limited, and prisoners have to be released or transferred within four days, making for a 96-hour catch-and-release program.

In Marjah, the enemy quickly adapted to the rules, which led to bizarre circumstances such as Taliban fighters throwing down their weapons when they were out of ammunition and taunting coalition troops with impunity or walking in plain view with women behind them carrying their weapons like caddies …

The fighting has wound down in Marjah, which may or may not validate the rules of engagement. Most of the local Taliban either melted away to the frontier or simply put down their weapons and are still there. The true test will come when NATO implements rules of disengagement. When coalition forces pull out, Marjah may well go back to being the Taliban stronghold it always has been, and those who cooperated with NATO and Afghan government authorities will be held to account.

True enough with respect to the rules of engagement (as we have pointed out before), this commentary ends with a non sequitur.  It was predestined – the Marines were going to take Marjah, and there was nothing that the Taliban could do about it.  The conclusion of the battle was firm and fixed regardless of the rules of engagement, and they have won Marjah in spite of the ROE and not because it it.  The outcome of the operation says nothing to validate the ROE.

On the other hand, we all know that the Marines announced their offensive prior to its start for the specific reason of avoiding noncombatant casualties.  That Taliban escaped was irrelevant.  But is it?  Will the Taliban simply slither away only to come back later and cause long term counterinsurgency problems in this area?

Will our focus on the population (to the detriment of killing insurgents) come back to haunt the campaign?  Will we be dealing with these same insurgents later, walking with their women holding their weapons, knowing that the U.S. troops will not fire on them?  What do the people of Marjah think about the rules of engagement?  How long will this operation last, and will the horrible Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police be able to fill in behind the Marines?

The analysts at Foreign Policy called Marjah a “Potemkin village.”  John Robb did this as well with Fallujah in a post entitled Potemkin Pacification (as best as I can tell, he took it down about as soon as it went up).  There were a number of reductionist articles that sounded about the same when Operation Alljah began in Fallujah early in 2007.  Most of these articles focused on the “horrible” conditions of Fallujah when the Marines locked it down.

In April – June of 2007 heavy kinetics ensued between the Marines and insurgents in Fallujah.  The follow-on work involved heavy policing, gated communities, biometrics and neighborhood programs to watch and defend their turf.  It was found that most IEDs were vehicle-borne, so the decision was made to prohibit vehicle traffic.  When the population in a major urban center must walk everywhere, it provides a significant incentive to find and turn in insurgents and their weapons.

One narrative for counterinsurgency is that it must focus on turning the human and physical terrain into Shangri La, and if it doesn’t, it’s fake.  Of course, it is the narrative that is fake.  There will be heavy lifting in Marjah still to come, for it isn’t Shangri La.  Fake narratives by so-called analysts will continue.  But for the motivated journalist there are salient questions that must be answered.

As usual, Tyler Hicks is providing the best pictorial documentaries of Marine Corps operations in Helmand, and C. J. Chivers’ coverage is indispensable.  But the Marjah narrative is yet to be written, much less the narrative for the Helmand Province (Now Zad claimed many Marine lives).  Other than C. J. Chivers, we have yet to even approach anything that could be considered good analysis of the Marine Corps campaign in the Helmand Province, and Marjah remains fertile ground for reporting and analysis.

Prior Featured: Second Guessing the Battles of Wanat and Kamdesh

UPDATE:

Richard Lowry of Marines in the Garden of Eden fame writes to remind me that not all analysts missed the significant aspects of Marjah.  His article Marjah – Another Fallujah? is worthy reading.  Also check out his New Dawn.

MARJA, Afghanistan — As American Marines and Afghan soldiers have fought their way into this Taliban stronghold, the performance of the Afghan troops has tested a core premise of the American military effort here: in the not-too-distant future, the security of this country can be turned over to indigenous forces created at the cost of American money and blood.

Scenes from this corner of the battlefield, observed over eight days by two New York Times journalists, suggest that the day when the Afghan Army will be well led and able to perform complex operations independently, rather than merely assist American missions, remains far off.

The effort to train the Afghan Army has long been troubled, with soldiers and officers repeatedly falling short. And yet after nearly a decade of American and European mentorship and many billions of dollars of American taxpayer investment, American and Afghan officials have portrayed the Afghan Army as the force out front in this important offensive against the Taliban.

Statements from Kabul have said the Afghan military is planning the missions and leading both the fight and the effort to engage with Afghan civilians caught between the Taliban and the newly arrived troops.

But that assertion conflicts with what is visible in the field. In every engagement between the Taliban and one front-line American Marine unit, the operation has been led in almost every significant sense by American officers and troops. They organized the forces for battle, transported them in American vehicles and helicopters from Western-run bases into Taliban-held ground, and have been the primary fighting force each day.

The Afghan National Army, or A.N.A., has participated. At the squad level it has been a source of effective, if modestly skilled, manpower. Its soldiers have shown courage and a willingness to fight. Afghan soldiers have also proved, as they have for years, to be more proficient than Americans at searching Afghan homes and identifying potential Taliban members — two tasks difficult for outsiders to perform.

By all other important measures, though — from transporting troops, directing them in battle and coordinating fire support to arranging modern communications, logistics, aviation and medical support — the mission in Marja has been a Marine operation conducted in the presence of fledgling Afghan Army units, whose officers and soldiers follow behind the Americans and do what they are told.

That fact raises questions about President Obama’s declared goal of beginning to withdraw American forces in July 2011 and turning over security to the Afghan military and the even more troubled police forces.

There have been ample examples in the offensive of weak Afghan leadership and poor discipline to boot.

In northern Marja, a platoon of Afghan soldiers landed with a reinforced Marine rifle company, Company K, Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, which was inserted by American Army helicopters. The Marine officers and noncommissioned officers here quickly developed a mixed impression of the Afghan platoon, whose soldiers were distributed through their ranks.

After several days, no Marine officer had seen an Afghan use a map or plan a complicated patrol. In another indicator of marginal military readiness, the Afghan platoon had no weapons heavier than a machine gun or a rocket-propelled grenade.

Afghan officers organized no indirect fire support whatsoever in the week of fighting. All supporting fire for Company K — airstrikes, rockets, artillery and mortars — was coordinated by Marines. The Afghans also relied entirely on the American military for battlefield resupply.

Moreover, in multiple firefights in which Times journalists were present, many Afghan soldiers did not aim — they pointed their American-issued M-16 rifles in the rough direction of the incoming small-arms fire and pulled their triggers without putting rifle sights to their eyes. Their rifle muzzles were often elevated several degrees high.

Shouts from the Marines were common. “What you shooting at, Hoss?” one yelled during a long battle on the second day, as an Afghan pulled the trigger repeatedly and nonchalantly at nothing that was visible to anyone else.

Not all of their performance was this poor.

Sgt. Joseph G. Harms, a squad leader in the company’s Third Platoon, spent a week on the western limit of the company’s area, his unit alone with what he described as a competent Afghan contingent. In the immediacy of fighting side by side with Afghans, and often tested by Taliban fighters, he found his Afghan colleagues committed and brave.

“They are a lot better than the Iraqis,” said the sergeant, who served a combat tour in Iraq. “They understand all of our formations, they understand how to move. They know how to flank and they can recognize the bad guys a lot better than we can.”

Capt. Joshua P. Biggers, the Company K commander, said that the Afghan soldiers “could be a force multiplier.”

But both Marines suggested that the Afghan deficiencies were in the leadership ranks. “They haven’t had a chance yet to step out on their own,” Sergeant Harms said. “So they’re still following us.”

Shortfalls in the Afghan junior officer corps were starkly visible at times. On the third day of fighting, when Company K was short of water and food, the company command group walked to the eastern limit of its operations area to supervise two Marine platoons as they seized a bridge, and to arrange fire support. The group was ambushed twice en route, coming under small-arms fire from Taliban fighters hiding on the far side of a canal.

After the bridge was seized, Captain Biggers prepared his group for the walk back. Helicopters had dropped food and water near the bridge. He ordered his Marines and the Afghans to fill their packs with it and carry it to another platoon to the west that was nearly out of supplies.

The Marines loaded up. They would walk across the danger area again, this time laden with all the water and food they could carry. Captain Biggers asked the Afghan platoon commander, Capt. Amanullah, to have his men pack their share. He refused, though his own soldiers to the west were out of food, too.

Captain Biggers told the interpreter to put his position in more clear terms. “Tell him that if he doesn’t carry water and chow, he and his soldiers can’t have any of ours,” he said, his voice rising.

Captain Amanullah at last directed one or two of his soldiers to carry a sleeve of bottled water or a carton of rations — a small concession. The next day, the Afghan soldiers to the west complained that they had no more food and were hungry.

It was not the first time that Captain Amanullah’s sense of entitlement, and indifference toward his troops’ well-being, had manifested itself. The day before the helicopter assault, at Camp Leatherneck, the largest Marine base in Helmand Province, a Marine offered a can of Red Bull energy drink to an Afghan soldier in exchange for one of the patches on the soldier’s uniform.

Captain Amanullah, reclining on his cot, saw the deal struck. After the Afghan soldier had taken possession of his Red Bull, the captain ordered him to hand him the can. The captain opened it and took a long drink, then gave what was left to his lieutenant and sergeants, who each had a sip. The last sergeant handed the empty can back to the soldier, and ordered him to throw it away.

The Marines took the latitude to oust the ANP forces upon initial entry to the town of Aynak in the Helmand Province, and install a better ANP unit they had brought with them.  In the case of the worthless ANA officer in Marjah, no amount of training or retraining will help.  This ANA unit is completely dysfunctional from the top down, and the only solution to its problem is to sack the officer and install a new one – and to do so immediately.  Until they see consequences, they won’t change.

Whether they understand formations or not, if this unit is indicative of the state of the ANA we will be in Afghanistan for a very long time – decades, not years.  They suffer from the same problems we have noted in Concerning the Importance of NCOs (citing From Why Arabs Lose Wars, Norvell B. De Atkine), with entitlement mentalities and very flat organizations that don’t recognize the value of NCOs.  The strength of the U.S. military is, quite literally, the NCOs and enlisted men.

C.J. should keep up the good reporting and watch his six.

Prior:

Afghan National Army category

Afghan National Police category

Attacking behind a vanguard of special operators and backed by an Army Stryker battalion, the 6th Marine Regiment has been conducting a textbook takeover of the Afghan city of Marjah.

Meticulously planned and methodical in its execution, the operation is well on its way to fulfilling its goals of driving the Taliban out of this opium-poppy center of 80,000 souls, while minimizing casualties and destruction.

In dramatic night helicopter assaults, lead Marine elements cordoned off Marjah, setting the stage for follow-on waves to maneuver into the city.

That’s not as easy as it sounds: The Taliban, knowing the attack was coming, planted roadside bombs, mines and booby traps by the hundreds — forcing frequent pauses to disarm them. And broad irrigation canals (funded by US taxpayers back in the 1950s, the last time we tried to modernize Afghanistan), also impede progress, requiring the emplacement of tactical bridges.

For the Marine infantryman shouldering a 100-pound ruck, there can be a lot of hurry-up-and-wait.

But these obstacles were foreseen by the planning staff, and the 6th Marines’ motto is “Keep Moving.” One by one, the IEDs are dismantled as the Marines push deeper into the city. There’ve been some foiled ambushes, as well as firefights with Taliban stay-behinds. But the gunmen are no match for our Marines.

Our troops are doing everything asked of them superbly. But as they take control of the city, the question becomes, “Now what?”

This is a major operation, involving over 15,000 US, British, other NATO and Afghan troops. Marjah’s the main objective, but not the only one. The mission is to wrest a key opium-growing, income-producing region from the Taliban — and keep it.

Once our fighters have done their part, though, the Afghan government has to step up. Thousands of Afghan troops are “participating,” but, thus far, the heavy lifting’s been done by the US and our NATO allies. Afghan soldiers tagged along to show the flag, learn how to operate, and help us deal with the locals. They still can’t do any of this stuff on their own.

Yet ultimate success in the Marjah district depends on the Kabul government delivering meaningful aid programs at the pick-and-shovel level. Above all, it has to impose its authority with competent, reasonably honest police and Afghan National Army soldiers capable of protecting the surrounding countryside. That’s a tall order for the troubled regime of President Hamid Karzai.

The Marjah operation’s a prototype — the first big test of Gen. Stan McChrystal’s refurbished approach that emphasizes cutting back combat actions focused on killing Taliban fighters in favor of securing population centers and bidding for popular support.

The unanswered question is whether you can win a war of any kind without killing your enemies in large numbers. Can this population really be won over? Can the Karzai government gain and sustain the people’s loyalty? Or do the Taliban merely rally elsewhere, denying us decisive results? Stay tuned.

It isn’t over yet, but when it is, it will have been a textbook takeover.  I’m in the school which advocates killing the enemy in large numbers.

Prior:

The Battle for Marjah

Announcing the Marjah Offensive

No Secrets to Marine Plans for Marjah

Operation Moshtarak, the assault on the Marjah District in the Helmand Province started today.  The press has been looking at it for months from various angles with stories stressing that secrecy has been lost, or that civilians will be killed, or with speculation on why the military is publicizing Operation Moshtarak in the first place. These stories all contain grains of truth but none of them is even close to telling the real story.  Here it is: when the Marines crossed the line of departure today, the battle for Marjah had already been won.

That is not to say there will be no fighting – there will be – pockets of Taliban will need to be cleared out along with a ton of IED’s.  Just as they did last summer in Now Zad the Marines spent months talking about what they were going do in Marjah while focusing their efforts at shaping the fight behind the scene.  Like a master magician General Nicholson mesmerized the press with flashy hand movements to draw attention away from what was important.  The press then focused on the less important aspects of the coming fight.  Just like a magic show the action occurred right in front of the press in plain view yet remained out of sight …

The current Marjah operation is a replay of the Now Zad operation last summer.  Back then the Marines were in the news, constantly saying they did not have enough Afghan security forces (Karzai sent a battalion the day he read that story despite virulent protests from RC South) and that they didn’t have enough aid money (the embassy responded by sending more money and FSO’s).  Those complaints were faints – the Marines welcomed the Afghans, ignored most of the FSO’s and because they have their own tac air, artillery, and rocket systems they were able to cut out both the big army command and control apparatus in Bagram and the Brits who head RC South at the Kandahar Airfield.

Okay, stop there.  Let’s briefly assess what Tim is saying.  I don’t believe this analysis.  Not that I know enough to dispute it, but it isn’t compelling – not yet.  Tim goes on to explain that Scout snipers and Recon have been in Marjah killing Taliban for quite a while, and many or most of the bad guys are already dead.  Shaping the battle space, we are.

SOF cannot kill enough Taliban (or any other enemy) to win a campaign.  As for killing HVTs, regular readers know what I think about that tactic.  It remains an unimpressive distraction.  The Taliban – all of them – need to be killed, not chased away only to come back later.  With Lt. Col. Allen West, I don’t believe in holding terrain.  And it would be better to leave the mid-level commanders alive and let his troops see him fail rather than give new Taliban a chance to prove their mettle at being a new commander.

Shaping the battle space.  It sounds nice, and it’s what we claimed we were doing in Now Zad.  But go back and study my Now Zad category, the most comprehensive coverage of Now Zad anywhere.  We weren’t shaping the battle space.  We were losing Marines and Marines’ legs to IEDs, Marines were sleeping in Hobbit Holes at night, and for more than one year we had inadequate force projection – all of this while the population had left, the Taliban were using Now Zad as an R&R area and daring us to a fight, and we had an unmitigated opportunity to kill the enemy without even so much as a chance of killing noncombatants.  Yet in a tip of the hat to population-centric COIN, we refused because there was no population to protect – as if the Taliban wouldn’t leave Now Zad and go back to the population.

The Marines who bravely fought in Now Zad are heroes and the fact that we own it now is a testimony to their skills, courage and honor.  The brass who developed the strategy (or lack thereof) superintended a failure.  Now Zad was a failure entirely because brass didn’t resource the effort.  We let the Marines in Now Zad suffer while we sent infantry battalions to sea on wasted MEUs.  Finally, as to this notion that the Marines constantly complained that they didn’t have enough ANA in Now Zad, there wasn’t any ANA – period.  There was no ANA in Now Zad.  It was all Marines.

Back to Marjah.  Tim gives me pause if he claims that Marjah is a repeat of Now Zad.  Joshua Foust compares and contrasts coverage of Marjah, and concludes that there are contradictory reports from even reporters in the same locale and talking to the same people.  One report stands out, though.  This campaign is heralded as the point at which the ANA stands up.

For a second day US marines and Afghan troops have been clearing houses one by one of explosives.

One villager says they knocked on his door this morning and he saw Afghan soldiers in the lead and Americans following. He says he thinks the operation is going well.

But what is the ANA really doing?  “As Marines unloaded equipment needed to build an outpost at Five Points, others manned “fighting holes” — what the Army calls foxholes. Most of the Afghan soldiers sat in their trucks, with the engines running and the heaters at full blast.”

Last, it would appear that the only thing consistent about the reports is that a dozen noncombatants have been killed.  Predictably, McChrystal has prostrated himself before Karzai.  To be sure, we should pay the family, Marine officers should sit with surviving kin, and so on and so forth.  But the public nature of the posturing after such events is becoming a silly overreach, as if we are attempting to convince the American or Afghan public that there is any such thing as riskless war – war conducted in laboratories by men wearing white coats, where mistakes are mere failures to follow procedure and can be fixed by retraining men and retooling paperwork.  It’s all a lie.  The noncombatant deaths aren’t a mistake in procedure or protocol.  They are a tragedy of war, a tragedy that can only be avoided by losing the campaign or losing our own warriors.

Prior:

Announcing the Marjah Offensive

No Secrets to Marine Plans for Marjah

KARARDAR, Afghanistan — The Marine infantry company, accompanied by a squad of Afghan soldiers, set out long before dawn. It walked silently through the dark fields with plans of arriving at a group of mud-walled compounds in Helmand Province at sunrise.

The company had received intelligence reports that 40 to 50 Taliban fighters had moved into this village a few days before, and the battalion had set a cordon around it. The Marines hoped to surprise any insurgents within.

But as the company moved, shepherds whistled in the darkness, passing warning of the Americans’ approach. Dogs barked themselves hoarse. The din rose in every direction, enveloping the column in noise. And then, as the Marines became visible in the bluish twilight, a minivan rumbled out of one compound. Its driver steered ahead of the company, honking the van’s horn, spreading the alarm. Spotters appeared on roofs.

Marine operations like this one in mid-January, along with interviews with dozens of Marines, reveal the insurgents’ evolving means of waging an Afghan brand of war, even as more American troops arrive.

Mixing modern weapons with ancient signaling techniques, the Taliban have developed the habits and tactics to evade capture and to disrupt American and Afghan operations, all while containing risks to their ranks.

Bruce Rolston reacts with some head-shaking at one of the supposed signaling techniques – kite flying.

The only quibble I have is with some of of the low-tech “signals” Chivers offers. One of the photo captions refers to shepherd’s whistles, and the article refers to kites. This is probably an indication either Chivers or someone he interviewed has been paying too much attention to the fever-dreams of fobbits.*

Kite flying is ubiquitous in Afghanistan, but it would be a lousy choice of signal of an enemy presence, relying for success in a pinch on two fairly unreliable things: wind, and boys (not to mention daylight). Even if it worked, presumably you’d have to do something special, like fly a different kite, to distinguish it from all the other kites. Its use as a signal of the presence of troops seems to be another one of those Afghan “urban legends,” a classic example of false correlation in intelligence reporting. Kite flying is fairly unusual to Westerners, so patrol reports can often mention it just as an observation …

I once made the rare mistake of passing on an RFI on local kite-flying patterns along these lines from a higher headquarters to our guys uncritically. I was rapidly slapped down by one of the guys in Tacnet email for passing on a junk request, something along the lines of “the kids are flying kites around me now. They were flying them yesterday. If I walk to the next village they’ll be flying there. They’ll be flying them tomorrow if there’s any wind… tell them to factor that into their analysis and get back to me when they have something useful to ask me.”

Bruce goes on to point out that infrequent patrols can lead to misunderstanding of the atmospherics.  Valid point.  But the Marines – the ultimate foot warrior – are not usually bound to vehicles, and are more diligent still to ensure contact with the population (even if they ensure force protection for sleep or down time).  More likely, they will soon learn that kite flying is more common in Afghanistan than the U.S.

That doesn’t detract from the salient point of the article and it shouldn’t cause us to lose attention to a critical aspect of these engagements, namely that these networks must be dismantled.  A well placed sniper’s bullet to a spotter on the roof or the arrest of one of the farmers or shepherds (and long term detention) should convince them that there isn’t any mileage in siding with the insurgents.

What evidence do I have that such an approach would work?  It should be remembered that the usual objection to robust tactics is that they don’t comport with population-centric counterinsurgency doctrine.  It should also be remembered that the doctrine is, after all, just doctrine.  It’s usually left to the Lance Corporals and Sergeants in the field to find what works.  In Ramadi as I have pointed out before, it was robust tactics.

Costa … dedicated a portion of his time to cracking the insurgents’ methods of communication.

“Generally there was a guy putting up gang signs, which could either send a rocket-propelled grenade through your window or some other attack your way,” said Costa, who began to realize the significance of unarmed people on Ramadi’s streets providing information via visual cues.

“You’re watching something on the street like that happening, and you’re like, ‘What the hell is that guy doing?’” he recalled. “And then the next thing you know, insurgents start coming out of the woodwork.”

“Signalers” — the eyes and ears of insurgent leaders — informed the insurgent strategists who commanded armed fighters by using hand and arm gestures. “You could see the signaler commanding troops,” Costa recalled. “He just doesn’t have a weapon.”

To curb insurgents’ ability to communicate, Costa decided on a revolutionary move: He and his unit would dismantle the enemy’s communication lines by neutralizing the threat from signalers. Sparing no time, he set a tone in Ramadi that signalers would be dealt with no differently from their weapon-wielding insurgent comrades.

“We called it in that we heard guys were signaling, and the battalion would advise from there,” he said, recalling the first day of the new strategy. “We locked that road down pretty well that day.”

In ensuing weeks, coalition forces coordinated efforts to dismember the insurgent signal patterns entrenched in Ramadi. This helped tamp down violence and create political breathing room, which in turn allowed the forging of key alliances between local tribal sheiks and coalition operators. The subsequent progress was later dubbed the “Anbar Awakening,” a societal purging of extremism by Anbaris that ushered in a level of stability unprecedented since U.S. operations in Iraq began.

With insurgents, there is nothing new under the sun (Eccl 1:9).  With counterinsurgents, we seem to want to reinvent our doctrine when it isn’t necessary.  Just ask the enlisted men what they did “back in the olden days.”

In a rare break from traditional military secrecy, the U.S. and its allies are announcing the precise target of their first big offensive of the Afghanistan surge in an apparent bid to intimidate the Taliban.

Coalition officers have been hinting aloud for months that they plan to send an overwhelming Afghan, British and U.S. force to clear insurgents from the town of Marjah and surrounding areas in Helmand province, and this week the allies took the unusual step of issuing a press release saying the attack was “due to commence.”

Senior Afghan officials went so far as to hold a news conference Tuesday to discuss the offensive, although the allies have been careful not to publicize the specific date or details of the attack.

“If we went in there one night and all the insurgents were gone and we didn’t have to fire a shot, that would be a success,” a coalition spokesman, Col. Wayne Shanks, said before the announcement. “I don’t think there has been a mistake in letting people know we’re planning on coming in.”

The risks could be substantial, however. By surrendering the element of surprise, the coalition has given its enemy time to dig entrenched fighting positions and tunnel networks. Perhaps worse for the attacking infantrymen, the insurgents have had time to booby-trap buildings and bury bombs along paths, roads and irrigated fields. Such hidden devices inflict the majority of U.S. and allied casualties.

[ ... ]

At times, the U.S. took a similar tack in Iraq, signaling in advance that the 2007 troop surge there would focus on Baghdad. Likewise, Pakistan’s military telegraphed its intention last year to attack insurgents in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan.

“It is a fascinating tactical decision to advertise an assault openly before it commences,” said Michael O’Hanlon, director of foreign policy research at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Analysis & Commentary

Let’s not overdo the surprise and offer too many superlatives at announcing the Marja offensive.  A similar strategy was taken for Operations al Fajr and Alljah, both in Fallujah.  The U.S. Marines have a rich history of using intimidation as one of the many tools in their bag.  My problem isn’t with announcing the offensive.  It comes at a more basic level than that.

Taking a quick detour through another perspective, Joshua Foust weighs in with a nonplussed reaction.

… there is some logic to the focus on Kandahar. It isn’t the most important city evar (sic)  (after all, the Taliban would have stopped there in 1994 if it were), but the city does have a lot of significance, if only because most Kandaharis are pissed off at our mismanagement of the place. So why do we have such a laser-focus on Helmand? Why spend all the time, resources, money, and most importantly lives to secure something no one in charge can describe as important apart from assertion?  I fear the real answer is opium.

I have also spoken strongly against targeting the poppies.  I cannot speak directly to whether the Marines are targeting poppy in Helmand at the moment, but my objections to the handling of the Marja offensive are much more basic and foundational.  If there is no one in charge who can explain why we are in Helmand, let me do it (sigh) once again.

The argument to control the streets of Kandahar makes sense if that argument doesn’t also hinge upon removing the Marines from Helmand where the fighters recruit, train, raise their support, and get ingress to and egress from Afghanistan.  In Now Zad Taliban fighters have been so unmolested that they have used that area for R&R.  The city of Now Zad – with an erstwhile population of 30,000+ civilians – is deserted with only insurgents remaining to terrorize the area so that inhabitants don’t return.  The Marines are so under-resourced that they can only fight the Taliban to a standstill.  It is so dangerous in Now Zad that the Marines deployed there are the only ones to bring two trauma doctors with them.

It is a strange argument indeed that sends Marines to Kandahar while the insurgents in Now Zad have separated themselves off from civilians and invited a fight.  So send more Marines to Kandahar to control the streets.  The Taliban bullying will stop once a Regimental Combat Team arrives.  This should not be too difficult to pull off.  As I have said before, there are so many Marines at Camp Lejeune that some units are not even in the same barracks, and more barracks are being built.  Not since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom has the Corps been so large with so many Marines garrisoned in the states.  Furthermore, if they aren’t in the states they are on board amphibious assault docks doing nothing.  Entire Battalions of Marine infantry – doing nothing for nine months.

The only limitation on troop levels in Afghanistan comes with logistics.  But more to the point, we could put the entirety of every Army on earth in Kandahar for the next two years, and upon leaving, the Taliban who have slithered away into parts of Kandahar and Helmand would simply come back, intimidate their way to power once again, and create safe haven for globalists.  Is this so heady and difficult that someone in charge cannot explain it as Foust charges?

I do not now and have never bought into the idea of population-centric counterinsurgency (when applied as an exclusive-use procedure).  Intimidating the Taliban out of Marja (so that you can protect the population and create governance) will only displace them to somewhere else.  Their fighters must be killed if we are ever to be able to leave Afghanistan.  Playing whack-a-mole in Helmand (or Kandahar – or anywhere else) only prolongs the agony, for Afghanis and for us.

Haji Zair, 45, has just been appointed the new district governor of Marjah, a Taliban stronghold in the center of Afghanistan’s Helmand province. His first goal is just to be able to live there.

The area is still controlled by the Taliban, the last major bastion of the fighters in the southern part of Afghanistan’s most violent province, and for now, Zair only enters the district by day, retreating to his home outside by nightfall.

“The Taliban cannot resist the Marines. They have crushed the Taliban all over the province,” said Zair. “I hope the situation will get better and I can go and live there.”

Some 10,000 U.S. Marines are already Helmand. Most arrived in the first half of last year as part of an earlier escalation ordered by Obama. Obama’s latest push to turn the tide against a worsening insurgency will nearly double the Marines contingent over the next few months.

Last July, in the biggest operation of the eight-year-old war, around 4,000 Marines pushed south of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, into Taliban-controlled areas, setting up patrol bases along the way to try and secure the area.

They left one area largely untouched: Marjah, a town surrounded by a dense warren of irrigation canals.

With the new reinforcements on their way as part of Obama’s 30,000-strong troop drive announced last month, the Marines’ commander does not bother to keep his plans a secret.

“Well it’s pretty obvious, there’s only one place left: that’s Marjah. I don’t think its any great leap of logic to say where we’re going next,” said Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, commander of all the Marines in southern Afghanistan.

“We’re bringing in 10,000 Marines. It’s not a secret. There’s only one place left in the entire area of operations where the enemy is at,” he said.

Marjah is strategic, lying just west of the provincial capital. The town is surrounded by lush farmland crisscrossed by canals that water the opium poppy crop, making it a hub for the narcotics trade in central Helmand.

Taliban insurgents are thought to have sought refuge in Marjah after a U.S. Marine operation in Garmsir to the south in April 2008 scattered fighters into other areas. Militants drove out the weak police force, killing the police chief and wounding the then district governor and created a relative safe-haven.

British and Afghan forces carried out isolated offensives there, but without enough forces to hold the ground, they could not prevent the Taliban from reclaiming the area once they had left. Now with much larger numbers, the U.S. Marines plan to go into Marjah and stay there.

“We’re preparing for a fight,” said Nicholson. “Really the enemy has three options in Marjah.”

“One is to stay and fight and probably die. The second one is to make peace with his government and reintegrate. And the third one is to try to flee, in which case we’ll probably have some people out there waiting on them as well,” he said.

The focus on Marjah and other towns along Helmand’s “green zone” — the lush area either side of the river — plays into overall commander General Stanley McChrystal’s new war strategy of protecting population centers and driving insurgents from towns.

Militants are still able to wage their campaign outside towns, frequently attacking smaller patrol bases and laying an increasing number of roadside bombs.

Last year was the deadliest for foreign forces in Afghanistan since the war began. More than twice as many Americans died in 2009 as in 2008, and violence has continued into this year despite the winter that normally sees a lull.

A U.S. Marine and a British journalist were killed by a roadside bomb on Saturday in the Helmand valley.

Nicholson said he hoped the influx of new troops would eventually allow him to move beyond the towns.

“I’m pretty confident that when we get the rest of our Marines in here, when we get the rest of the Afghan security forces in here and we get the rest of the British — because the UK is building up as well — we will have enough security forces here to get after those last pockets where the enemy’s at.”

No, it isn’t a secret, just as the campaign in the Now Zad district wasn’t a secret, and when it was finally fully engaged with the right number of Marines, the Taliban had scurried away knowing that death awaited them if they didn’t leave.  Partial success, that was.  We cleared Now Zad, but the killers were allowed to escape to Marja and other whereabouts.

Nicholson’s statement is troubling.  The second option – “make peace with his government and reintegrate” – makes it clear that he is treating this as a classical insurgency / counterinsurgency campaign.  I fear that we have not yet understood that it is that, but much more.  There is a religious element, and if a man has fought for years in Garmsir, Now Zad and Dahaneh, and is now in Marja waiting to die at the hands of the U.S. Marines, or to flee across the border to his religious zealot allies, the Pak Taliban, then he cannot possibly be reintegrated with his government.

Nicholson knows that, but it appears that he isn’t smart to the possible game of fake peace.  The decoy.  The great ruse.  The Taliban know that we are short timers there, and that the ANA cannot possibly fill in behind the Marines.  Making peace with elements of the Taliban sounds like a nice idea, but it comes with all sorts of hazards and unintended consequences.

… let’s assume for the purposes of argument that Pakistan does not drop its resistance to tackling Afghan militants in its border regions. (Pakistan argues it cannot tackle everyone at once and has its hands full fighting the Pakistani Taliban; its critics say it is hedging its bets ahead of any eventual U.S. withdrawal, when it might want to use groups like the Haqqani network and the Afghan Taliban to counter Indian influence in Afghanistan.)

At that point, a major U.S. military success in Afghanistan could be the only way to break the stalemate. An in that light, Yon’s focus on the Arghandab River Valley becomes essential reading.

We’ll return to Myra’s point momentarily.  Michael performs far-reaching analysis, from use of the Russian experience in Afghanistan (The Bear Went Over the Mountain) to the revised tactical directive issued by General McChrystal (ROE).  Michael doesn’t weigh in himself on the ROE.  He does honestly point out that the ROE will cause additional casualties.  Petraeus also confesses that Afghanistan will get bloodier than it is now.  It will so for more reasons than simply adding more troops (or better said, it could be less bloody than it is going to be).

The question is not whether there is ROE.  Michael points out that the Russian ROE turned the population completely against them because they essentially had no ROE.  We do, we did, and we will in the future.  The question is more nuanced than that.  I am aware from a number of sources the nature of combat and other operations in Fallujah in 2007 (and at other points in the campaign for Anbar), and the ROE were more robust than currently in place in Afghanistan; or in other words, McChrystal’s tactical directive is more restrictive than the ROE in effect while the Anbar Province was being won by the U.S. Marine Corps.  In order to believe that the revised tactical directive is beneficial to the campaign one must believe that the ensuing casualties for which it is at least a contributing cause will be less in the long run than if a more robust ROE were in place with its accompanying increased force protection.  We’ll see.  Troop morale and public opinion mean everything to the campaign.

Michael continues by pointing out that the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is fictitious.  Taliban cross with impunity through this imaginary border, and the coming battle will be for Afghanistan’s South.

In Helmand, the fight is serious, and friendly troops are spread far too thinly. Some experts believe that focusing on Helmand before securing Kandahar was a strategic error. Most districts in Kandahar are said to be under Taliban control or heavy influence. Some areas of the south are under complete, uncontested Taliban control …

The Taliban want Kandahar and are in a good position to get it. The year 2010 likely will mark a true Battle for Kandahar, though it probably will not be punctuated by the sort of pitched battles we saw in places like Mosul and Baghdad. This remains unknown.

Armies from at least three countries have ventured into the Arghandab River Valley: British, followed by Soviets, and more recently Canadians; all were unsuccessful.

Michael compares and contrasts the Russian campaign with the coming U.S. and ISAF operations, and then rehearses a bit of recent history for us.

The enemy is not defeated, but our people were now operating among them. U.S. casualties continued during the next three months but there are indications that the enemy is today in disarray. The enemy became afraid to sleep indoors where they might be killed by an airstrike—or by U.S. soldiers, who have a tendency to burst in during periods of maximum REM sleep. The Taliban were terrorized and began sleeping in the orchards at night, rigging homes with explosives, which they arm at night. (I’ve heard similar reports from Pakistan. Pakistanis have said that drone strikes are demoralizing and terrorizing the Taliban, and though drone strikes are controversial, some Pakistanis want to see the strikes increased.)

And so we have a dilemma even in Michael’s account.  These episodes of bursting in by U.S. Soldiers came to an end with McChrystal’s tactical directive, and the drone strikes into Pakistan which have so disheartened the Taliban don’t have an analogy with the ROE in use by Soldiers and Marines in Helmand and elsewhere in Afghanistan.

But Michael points out that fresh troops are indeed on the way, and that’s good.  More force projection is needed.  But I have titled this the battle for Kandahar and Helmand because the fight cannot be disentangled from Helmand any more than it can be from Pakistan.  Population centric COIN doctrine has driven us to Kandahar, but leaving Helmand alone is not an acceptable solution given that the Taliban train there, raise their support there, and take refuge in its scattered towns.

The Marines left the operations in Now Zad improperly resourced and thus the Taliban fighters garrisoned there escaped.  Marja is next, and the Marines’ claim is that “We won’t leave anywhere else uncovered. We won’t go anywhere we can’t clear, we won’t clear anywhere we can’t stay and we won’t stay anywhere we can’t build.”  Helmand and Kandahar may be seen as coupled, with operations in one place affecting operations in the other.

True enough, Pakistani Army operations on the imaginary side of the border mean something.  Back to Ms. MacDonald’s point, I have previously said that:

The conversation on Pakistan versus Afghanistan presupposes that the Durand Line means anything, and that the Taliban and al Qaeda respect an imaginary boundary cut through the middle of the Hindu Kush.  It doesn’t and they don’t.  If our engagement of Pakistan is to mean anything, we must understand that they are taking their cue from us, and that our campaign is pressing the radicals from the Afghanistan side while their campaign is pressing them from the Pakistani side.

Advocating disengagement from Afghanistan is tantamount to suggesting that one front against the enemy would be better than two, and that one nation involved in the struggle would be better than two (assuming that Pakistan would keep up the fight in our total absence, an assumption for which I see no basis).  It’s tantamount to suggesting that it’s better to give the Taliban and al Qaeda safe haven in Afghanistan as Pakistan presses them from their side, or that it’s better to give them safe haven in Pakistan while we press them from our side.  Both suggestions are preposterous.

That there is an indigenous insurgency (the so-called ten dollar Taliban) that bootstraps to the real religiously motivated fighters is irrelevant.  We had to fight our way through this group in Iraq too, and it is the nature of these insurgencies.  Complaining about it is acceptable – but using it as an excuse to abandon the campaign is not.  That every contact isn’t with Arabic or Chechen or Uzbek jihadists is irrelevant.  That doesn’t mean that Afghanistan is not a central front in the transnational insurgency called Islamic Jihad.  The Taliban are important inasmuch as they gave and would continue to give safe haven to globalists.

For this reason the campaign in Afghanistan must be successful.  Pakistan will take their cue from us and follow our lead.

By Tony Perry

November 8, 2009

Reporting from Nawa, Afghanistan

When 500 U.S. Marines descended on this Taliban stronghold overnight, Afghan civilians were immediately suspicious about the intentions of the heavily armed Americans.

One question dominated all others: How long will the Americans stay? Five months later, there is still no clear answer.

“The No. 1 question the Marines get is: ‘When are you going home?’ ” said Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, an Iraq combat veteran and now the top Marine in Afghanistan. “They can’t believe we’re staying.”

Three battalions landed 4,500 troops in Helmand province in the early hours of July 2, the largest airborne assault since Vietnam.

But the long-term U.S. commitment to Helmand is unclear, as President Obama and Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, continue to reevaluate U.S. strategy.

One issue is whether U.S. forces should be massed more closely to large population centers, including Kabul, the capital, which could mean depleting the forces in rural regions like Helmand.

In mid-June about 200 Marines arrived here to relieve a beleaguered British platoon. Days later, 500 more arrived in helicopters to establish a central base, called Geronimo, and then smaller ones, including Cherokee here in Nawa.

After 10 days of intense fighting, the Marines pushed Taliban fighters out of several small villages. The troops fanned out and announced to startled villagers that they had arrived to protect the population from the Taliban.

But a whisper campaign, which Marines blame on the Taliban, suggested that the Americans would leave as soon as President Hamid Karzai was reelected. The message was clear: Anyone who cooperates with the Americans is marked for death.

“They’re very hesitant to trust us, and I don’t blame them,” said Capt. Frank “Gus” Biggio, a Washington, D.C., lawyer and Marine reservist who heads a civil-affairs team in Nawa. “For centuries, they’ve seen foreigners come and go, promises made and broken.”

The 1st Battalion, 5th Regiment, which was assigned to protect Nawa, is set to return home to Camp Pendleton by Christmas. Advance elements of its replacement, the 1st Battalion, 3rd Regiment from Hawaii, have already come to be introduced to the elders and be seen in marketplaces and other gathering spots. They will be on a seven-month deployment.

The Marines have held numerous meetings with village elders to convince them that they will protect the community until Afghan security forces are strong enough to take over. In return, the Marines asked for information on Taliban fighters’ movements and methods, including roadside bombs.

Dusty, sunbaked Helmand is considered the insurgency’s heartland. A person who is helpful and friendly with the U.S. one day may be helping the Taliban the next, Marines said.

“There are no quick fixes here, no resting on your laurels,” said Lt. Col. William McCollough, commander of the 1-5. “It’s up one day, it’s down another day.”

In the 1960s, the U.S. poured millions of dollars into building canals to irrigate the province’s fields of corn, wheat and fruit trees.

Officials of the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development who arrived shortly after the Marines are planning to upgrade the canals, using local labor. They also hope that with more water, the farmers will not plant the opium poppies that supply the world heroin market and provide funds for the Taliban.

After the Marines arrived, Taliban fighters fled a few miles away to a community called Marja. The Marines have made no secret that, together with the Afghan national army, they plan to rout the Taliban from Marja in a sweep akin to that of the November 2004 battle of Fallouja, Iraq.

Nicholson, the Marine commander, calls Marja a “cancer in Helmand” that he is eager to eliminate.

Throughout the province — though not in Marja — Marines patrol daily, in Humvees or on foot, sometimes accompanied by Afghan soldiers. Marine civil-affairs teams, along with the civilian agencies, are working to win the confidence of villagers with small projects that hire local people to clear roads, take care of schools and build bridges.

The Marines are putting up plywood buildings to replace the hastily erected tents that house their troops, communication gear and other things. McCollough hopes the effort will thwart the village chatter about the U.S. leaving soon.

“In Afghanistan, that’s a permanent structure,” McCollough said of the buildings.

Though there may be anxiety about the future, everyday life for many people in Helmand has improved: Outside Nawa, the Taliban no longer has checkpoints on roads to extort money from people. A school, closed by the Taliban, is reopening.

The biggest change may be the flourishing marketplace. Under the Taliban, few storekeepers dared open lest they face extortion or punishment for selling Western goods.

But on Friday, dozens of stalls were open along two dusty streets, offering vegetables, fruit, candy, clothing, toys, motorbike parts and slaughtered chickens.

Several Afghans interviewed expressed differing opinions on whether the Americans would keep their promise not to leave abruptly. Some refused to talk about the Americans.

Nabi, 25, who goes by one name, has a U.S.-paid job clearing canals. He shrugged his shoulders when asked whether he thought the Americans would stay.

“I don’t know,” he said, with some hesitation. “Only God knows.”

This report has similar themes as those brought to us by Michael Yon concerning the permanence of structures and the desire (on the part of the Afghanis) to see the U.S. in the struggle for the long haul.  As a sidebar comment, both of these accounts serve as defeater arguments for Matthew Hoh’s arguments that the Afghanis don’t want us in Afghanistan (as pointed out by commenter Davod).  A counterinsurgency campaign is simply too complicated to sum up in a single line narrative, something that more maturity would have taught Mr. Hoh (Mr. Hoh should have given himself a couple more decades of wisdom and experience before weighing in on such serious national policy issues as whether the U.S. has business in Afghanistan).

But concerning Tony Perry’s informative report, the issue of patience and longevity is raised.  I have always been a proponent of seeing Afghanistan as the longest phase of the long war, and serious commitment is still necessary to win the counterinsurgency campaign.  But this report from Bing West also points to other themes in our stable of doctrines.

This is reminiscent of our counsel in Why We Must Chase the Taliban.  Yes, cut and run is not an option.  A sense of pseudo-permanence is required, and despite what the pundits claim the troops are available for this mission.  But eventually the enemy must be killed and it must be made highly unappealing to become a part of the insurgency.  This requires chasing and killing the enemy.

Christian Cabannis met a social worker before deploying to Afghanistan. Not for his own wellbeing, but to better understand the task at hand. It was his mother’s idea.

Her son is a lieutenant colonel in the US marines and the commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion 8th Marine Regiment.

He is in charge of perhaps the most dangerous part of Afghanistan and also one of the poorest. So his mother wanted him to better understand what it is that motivates the poor and how to win their support.

He describes this mission as “armed social work”; providing hope for the needy and defence against the Taliban …

It is pure, modern counter-insurgency strategy (Coin) and what American and British generals believe is the key to winning this war. Lt Col Cabannis says that until recently the mission lacked the right focus.

Three years ago, Garmsir market was shot up and abandoned; the scene of pitched battles between British forces and the Taliban. But today UK and US troops have driven them away from the town and Garmsir is held up as a success story.

In the past three months, US marines have built on British efforts to establish meaningful local government …

He believes that many insurgents can be persuaded to put down their weapons and re-join society and there are discussions under way as to how to achieve this.

The marines’ success is in part due to sheer size; having the force strength to push into new areas, to stay there and to engage in what they call “consent-winning activities” on a much larger scale than Britain has been able to.

There is much left out of this account of the battle for Garmsir, Afghanistan.  The facts left out of the account actually causes this account to skew the interpretation and may change the context the reader places around the events, thus affecting the import of the story.

The British were unable to take and hold Garmsir, and so in 2008 the U.S. Marines 24th MEU initiated large scale operations to take it from the Taliban.  The operations relied on heavy kinetics, but was welcomed by the people of Garmsir.  The drive against the Taliban continued in such heavy military operations that the fire fights were at times described as full bore reloading by the Marines.  As if speaking to population-centric counterinsurgency experts who believe that they must win the population by nonkinetic means, town elder Abdul Nabi told the Marines “We are grateful for the security.  We don’t need your help, just security.”  The 24th MEU killed some 400 Taliban during their deployment.

In 2008 the Marines were doing the right things – they certainly didn’t lack focus.  But the 24th MEU had to leave, and they turned over to the British, who once again couldn’t hold the terrain, either physical or human.  Thus more U.S. Marine Corps operations had to be initiated in the Helmand Province in 2009.

Accompanying the fantasy-narrative that the lack of focus in the past has given way to a brilliant new strategy to win Afghanistan is a robust defense of the rules of engagement by Lt. Col. Cabannis.

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This is a big change since the spring. All U.S. forces in Afghanistan are now being told to protect civilians even if the enemy gets away. Over the last eight years, Afghans have been outraged by civilian deaths and it’s a big reason the U.S. is not winning.

“Killing a 1000 Taliban is great but if I kill two civilians in the process, it’s a loss,” Lt. Col. Cabaniss said.

Asked how many enemies have been killed so far, Cabaniss said, “I have no idea and it’s really irrelevant.”

“Body counts not something that you track?” Pelley asked.

“It doesn’t tell me that I’m being successful. It doesn’t tell me that at all. The number of tips that I receive from the local population about IED’s in the area, Taliban in the area, that is a measure of effectiveness,” Cabaniss explained.

This is an important exchange, and we should spend some time dissecting and analyzing it.  The reason the U.S. is not winning is force projection, or lack thereof.  There aren’t enough troops, as we saw with the 2008 campaign for Garmsir in the Helmand Province.  The ANP and ANA cannot possibly hold the terrain once it has been taken and won’t be ready for quite some time.  In fact, there is some indication that the locals themselves are a bit disgusted by the ROE.

But even for population-centric counterinsurgency advocates, this exchange is full of nonsense.  To be sure, the population may be one means of marginalizing the insurgents, getting intelligence on them, and then conducting intelligence-driven raids, killing or capturing them.  This was done en masse in Iraq, especially in 2007.  But in the interview Cabannis makes a leap from an enabling feature of counterinsurgency to the end or purpose of it.

If a Province has 1000 Taliban and the U.S. Marines kill them all, and along with them the Marines inadvertently kill two noncombatants, it’s preposterous to suggest that this is a loss.  This suggestion is tantamount to saying that for every noncombatant we kill greater than five hundred pop up in his place.

Further, why did Cabannis use the values of 1000 and 2?  Would it have been acceptable to have killed a single noncombatant if we had killed 1000 Taliban?  If so, is he suggesting that the ratio of generation to kill rate of insurgents is greater than 500: 1 but less than 1000:1?  Or perhaps if these suggestions sound a bit pedantic, it’s more likely that he is simply using theatrics and hyperbole to make a point.  But if one has to use theatrics, the point itself suffers from lack of credibility.

Finally, why is killing Taliban great?  If it’s great because it assures the population that they are protected, then we should endeavor to do more of it.  Killing noncombatants is never a good thing, but giving the insurgents safe haven amongst the domiciles of villages sends the opposite message than we intend.  It gives them operating space, and it tells the villagers that we won’t pursue the insurgents on their own terrain, and thus there is no protection from them once they come into your homes and villages.  The very time you need the protection is precisely the time we will abandon you to the enemy.