Articles by Herschel Smith

In Musa Qala: The Argument for Force Projection, and Clarifying Expectations in Afghanistan, we discussed ongoing counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan in light of the battle for Musa Qala, Afghanistan’s “battle of Fallujah” that never occurred.  We discussed the heavy bombing approach, the evacuation of families from the city, the lack of adequate force projection to take and hold Musa Qala, the British desire to negotiate with the Taliban, and disparate doctrines held by Australia (more forces are necessary) and the U.S. (advocating the small footprint COIN approach).

Continuing with this theme, we noted that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was prepared to talk tough to NATO in order to get more troops dedicated to the campaign in Afghanistan.  While various main stream media reports and blog entries are hailing Musa Qala as a great victory, Gates has directly admitted that the campaign needs to undergo a transition.  “Gates called for overhauling the alliance’s Afghan strategy over the next three to five years, shifting NATO’s focus from primarily one of rebuilding to one of waging “a classic counterinsurgency” against a resurgent Taliban and growing influx of al-Qaida fighters.”

So how did this summit of NATO leaders turn out?  The British still want to pay enough money to split the Taliban, but intend to send no more troops into theater.  The Australians, along with every other NATO member who has troops in theater, will draft a ‘plan’ to make the Afghanistan campaign more successful, but intend to send no more troops.  Gates was reduced to platitudes like: ” … while the United States also ha[s] no plans to send more troops in the short-term, [we will be] trying more creative ways to encourage other NATO members to increase their presence in Afghanistan.”

While the Taliban would most surely like to have held Musa Qala, they determined that withdrawal and reversion to more clandestine tactics were strategically superior.  “As Afghanistan has headed into its bitterly cold winter, the Taliban have retreated from direct combat operations and have resorted to roadside bombs to target coalition forces, says Major Michael Bassingthwaighte, a commander in Australia’s Reconstruction Task Force based in Tarin Kowt …  With the coming of winter, many Taliban fighters had fled across the unpatrolled border into Pakistan or to distant homes for the Islamic holiday period of Eid.  He expects the tempo of Taliban combat operations to increase after the poppy harvesting season finishes in April, a period when the Taliban find it hard to recruit fighters.”

The Afghanistan campaign suffers most particularly in the South.  The south continues to move steadily in the wrong direction. Instability has spread to a number of previously benign provinces. Some countries, especially European ones that have contributed to NATO’s forces, are unenthusiastic about the shooting war they find themselves involved in. After a summer of repeatedly retaking the same two districts of Kandahar province, the Canadian commander, Brigadier-General Guy Laroche, commented: “Everything we have done in that regard is not a waste of time, but close to it”.

There are signs, too, that as the insurgency meshes itself tightly with the drugs trade, a sizeable proportion of the population may feel it has a vested interest in prolonged insecurity which allows narcotics production to flourish.

The winter is at least a moment to pause and reflect on strategy for next year. At Musa Qala, NATO and Afghan forces easily defeated the Taliban but as diplomats in Kabul, the capital, concede, a far greater challenge is then defending against reinfiltration. Securing territory means getting the support of local people. In Helmand, for example, this requires teams of anthropologists and political officers to deal with a mosaic of tribal interest groups, an approach used by American forces elsewhere in the country. That means a greater emphasis on reconciliation and negotiation with local Taliban leaders, as well as training Afghan forces so they are able to take the lead in military operations.

Politically the challenges are no easier. The Afghan public, particularly in the south, is gloomy about the future. Dismay over corruption and wrangling between different ethnic groups suggest that Afghan leaders, such as President Hamid Karzai, will need substantial support from outsiders for a long time yet. America is backing the idea of sending a “super envoy” to co-ordinate international efforts in Afghanistan. But the government remains unable even to reach out across areas of the south. Where it cannot reach there may need to be more controversial “tribal solutions”, such as village militias to provide local security and efforts to empower tribal elders and local systems of justice.

But it must be remembered that the tribal solution was implemented in Anbar from a position of strength.  Far from being unable to reach areas of Anbar, Marines were deployed all over the province, engaged in kinetic and constabulary operations as well as public relations, reconstruction and engagement of the population in paying labor.  We have also argued at The Captain’s Journal that the solution to the poppy problem is not to spray or use other means to kill the crops.  This might be seen as out-terrorizing the terrorists.  The solution to the insurgency problem is to target the insurgents, and the solution to the drug problem is interdiction and reconstitution of the agricultural industry in Afghanistan.  But this requires force projection.  It also requires largesse, civil affairs, diplomacy, and other arms of “soft power.”  But soft power is founded on the pretext of hard power, not the other way around.

There is currently a policy review underway for the Afghanistan campaign.  “Amid rising concerns about lagging progress in Afghanistan, the top U.S. commander in the region has launched a review of the American mission there with a major focus on counterterrorism efforts, a senior U.S. military official said Sunday.  Adm. William Fallon, the head of U.S. Central Command, has ordered senior staff to conduct a thorough review of the six-year-old war against al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan, the senior official confirmed to CNN.  The review has been under way for several weeks, and Fallon is not considering any new recommendations until its completion, the official said.  The study, first reported by The New York Times, is focused on efforts by U.S. troops along Afghanistan’s rugged border with Pakistan.”

The first quarter of 2008 should reveal the results of this policy review.  Unless the campaign in Afghanistan is taken as seriously as it has been in Iraq, the policy review will not have been successful.  There are troops available for deployment in Afghanistan, but they are currently in Germany and South Korea.  Will the Pentagon have the courage to engage in global strategic thinking, or will the deliverance of this study be more platitudes about being creative?

See also Future COIN in Afghanistan, Small Wars Journal Blog

In blogging as well as life, quick reactions that lack hard analysis are rarely beneficial or valuable.  This is why I don’t participate in blog bursts.  If you want snappy, timely blogging that lacks substance and takes on the appearance of tantrums, you can go elsewhere.  If you want your analysis later and correct, you can stop by The Captain’s Journal.  At least that is the intent, whether my articles fully comport with this ideal or not.

Tantrums fairly well describes the reaction(s) to W. Thomas Smith’s alleged dishonesty concerning his reporting from Lebanon.  But before I respond to his critics, let’s cover some detail regarding the alleged dubious reports by Smith.

That reporter who questioned the Smith account of his experiences in Lebanon was Christopher Allbritton.  You can study his letter to Kathryn Lopez (editor at National Review), but the only substantive, factual allegation I can find against Smith is the following:

… he’s a liar. Hezbollah never invaded east Beirut on the 29th. And they don’t have 200 “heavily armed” militiamen downtown. I passed by today. There are about 40 guys down there with no weapons at all. They sit around, smoking shisha in jeans and t-shirts.

Smith responded (in part) with the following clarification (I have redacted Smith’s response as well as Allbritton’s charges for the sake of brevity):

A reporter recently contacted NRO questioning the accuracy of two blog posts I filed for “The Tank” while I was in Lebanon this past September and October.

On September 25, I filed a post, in which I described a “sprawling Hezbollah tent city” near the Lebanese parliament as being occupied by “some 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen”: According to the e-mail, my detractors said that, “…there are rarely 200 people there at all — much less ‘heavily armed,’” and, “…at least once a week I walk or jog through this area. I have never seen a civilian carrying a weapon.”

I can’t possibly know what someone else saw or witnessed or where they were jogging or on what day. But I do know this: The Hezbollah camp in late September — and up until the time I left in mid-October — was huge (“sprawling”). And though the tents were very large and many of them closed, I saw at least two AK-47s there with my own eyes. And this from a moving vehicle on the highway above the camp. And in my way of thinking, if a guy’s got an AK-47, he’s “heavily armed.”

Did I physically see and count 200 men carrying weapons? No. If I mistakenly conveyed that impression to my readers, I apologize. I saw lots of men, lots of them carrying walkie-talkie radios, and a tent city that could have easily housed many more than 200. I also saw weapons, as did others in the vehicle with me. And I was informed by very reliable sources that Hezbollah does indeed store arms inside the tents. And they’ve certainly got the parliamentarians and other government officials spooked and surrounded by layers of security.

My detractors’ argument that they had never seen weapons in the camp does not mean there is an absence of weapons. But don’t take my word for it. For further reading, I would recommend this recent AP article (and multiple others) about the increasing prevalence of armed civilians in Lebanon. I would say I was justified in believing not only my sources, but also my own eyes in this case …

Second, with regard to the post I filed September 29, in which I reported that between 4,000-5,000 Hezbollah gunmen had “deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling ‘show of force’”: My detractors have said this event, “simply never happened,” because “every journalist in town would have pounced on that story, and he’s the only one who noticed?

In retrospect, however, this is a case where I should have caveated the reporting by saying that I only witnessed a fraction of what happened (from a moving car), with broader details of what I saw ultimately told to me by what I considered then — and still consider to be — reliable sources within the Cedar Revolution movement, as well as insiders within the Lebanese national security apparatus. As we were driving through that part of town, I saw men I identified as Hezbollah deployed at road intersections with radios. I was later told that these were Hezbollah militants deploying to Christian areas of Beirut, and there were four or five thousand of them …

Let me briefly mention some of my sources in Lebanon: extremely reliable men and women, who also enabled me to gain access to members of parliament, mayors and other municipal leaders, the grandson of a late president of Lebanon, one of the highest-ranking (perhaps the highest-ranking) Muslim clerics in Beirut, multiple high-ranking military and intelligence officers, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the head of the national police, and the special forces and counterterrorist strike force commanders.

At the time I read this response, my reaction was “fair enough,” but I took the opportunity to send Tom a letter saying that I have found good sources to be better than anything else, and probably better than mine and his own eyes.  Good sources, I said, are around for the long haul.  They are part of the cultural milieu and social framework.  They can “see” things that we cannot.  I can ascertain subtle changes in my neighborhood, local political scene, and all manner of things far beyond the capabilities of a foreigner.  A foreigner, for instance, had better not attempt to make his way through the backwoods of Appalachia without knowing something about the people.  I, on the other hand, would be quite comfortable doing this.  It takes more than eyes to see and understand your surroundings – it takes personal history.

I thought everything was done with this story, but the confessions and self deprecation began at National Review Online.  Worse still, blogs and main stream media publications alike picked up on this story in an orgy of self righteous outrage and indignation (I am not linking them because not a single one of them is worth the time of my readers).  Frankly, it was unseemly and embarrassing – at least it would have been embarrassing for me if I had participated.

It doesn’t take a writer as prolific as Thomas Smith to regret at some point something that was said or ignored.  It only takes living with another person such as a wife or husband.  But a good example of missing the boat in the professional military writer’s community comes from no less than Michael Yon, a prolific and popular writer in his own right.

In the recent dispatch, Men of Valor Part II, I wrote the following:“ . . . by systematically and in relatively short order demolishing Iraq’s government infrastructure, firing its staff en masse, disbanding its army, our combined militaries in Iraq could only accomplish the mission by rebuilding the country from scratch.” (italics original).

As a writer, I could have used more precision with the six key words. I have seen the extent to which Coalition forces spend great energy and suffer risks to avoid destroying Iraq’s physical infrastructure. Yes, many Iraqi government buildings stand with shattered concrete and twisted rebar, hollowed by our bombs and missiles; but the vast majority of Iraqi infrastructure was intentionally spared. In fact, US forces have been (and are) forbidden to attack infrastructure. Our people use lethal force to protect Iraqi infrastructure.

I have covered in some detail the physical destruction done intentionally by al Qaeda to Iraq’s infrastructure (the damage isn’t limited to water supplies and the electrical grid, as proven by this attack against oil pipelines).  I understand what Michael Yon was trying to say in the post.  But this debate belongs stateside, four years ago, and includes the question should we have invaded to begin with (along with the horrible decisions by Paul Bremer).  This debate shouldn’t get mixed up with the bravery of our men in uniform, or better put, our warriors don’t deserve to have their carefully targeted combat described in this manner.  Given that I have a son who earned the combat action ribbon for service under fire, I appreciate Michael’s “clarification.”  He didn’t use the word “apologize” as did Smith, but I get the sense that he regrets having used those words.  He should not have used those words, and he should have clarified them, as he did.

I don’t know Christopher Allbritton from Adam, and the fact that he says that something must be so doesn’t make it so.  While Thomas Smith’s clarification is welcome and appreciated, I don’t believe it adds anything to the story.  As to Allbritton, I would not have given him the time of day had I been the recipient of his letter.  I have followed Tom’s work for years now, and while I have a sincere appreciation for his style, hard work, and passion with which he writes, I also feel a kinship with Tom first because he is a man of faith (the Christian faith as am I), and secondly because he is a Marine as is my son (someone stupidly called Tom an ex-Marine, forgetting that there is no such thing as an “ex-Marine”).  I generally have very good judgment when it comes to people, and it brings me some degree of joy that I am proven right this time around too.

There is an important update to Smith’s sources in Lebanon.

It’s one thing to be embroiled in the recent media circus surrounding my reporting from Lebanon; it’s quite another to learn that in the midst of that circus – though having nothing to do with it – one of my strongest sources while I was in Lebanon, Gen. Francois Hajj, was assassinated Wednesday.

Hajj, 55, a Maronite Catholic and the director of operations for the Lebanese Army, was killed in a car-bomb attack, on the route between his home and his office at the Ministry of Defense in Beirut. It’s been reported that he “was considered a leading candidate to succeed the head of the military, Gen. Michel Suleiman [Sleiman], if Suleiman is elected president” …

During my time in Lebanon – September and October of this year – Hajj was one of my strongest sources. And despite my railing against the often under-reported threat of Hezbollah activities in Lebanon – as well as what I perceived to be problems within the military — Hajj pulled some serious strings enabling me to gain greater access to elements within the defense structure from which I had been previously barred.

Smith describes one meeting with Hajj: “As I entered his office — his desk covered with several huge maps of Lebanon, a couple of cell phones, and a single pack of Marlboros – Gen. Hajj was discussing something (unintelligible to me because it was in Arabic) with another general. The other general and I shook hands, he left the office, and Hajj ordered coffee for the two of us. We discussed everything from current security operations in Lebanon to the recent fighting at Nahr al-Bared. He then showed me an exclusive video tape – not seen by outsiders [he told me] – of the fighting at Bared, including some truly grisly images of killed Fatah al-Islam fighters.”

While I don’t know Allbritton, I do know that an Army doesn’t long survive without good intelligence.  My judgment now is as it was before.  Sources – good sources – can sometimes be better than your own eyes.  Smith’s sources were good, and this raises a question – not about Smith, but about Allbritton.  What story, exactly, is it that he is getting, and why does it disagree so markedly with the one given by Army intelligence?   Perhaps Allbritton should be questioning the authenticity and truthfulness of his own writing.

In the mean time, I regret that Thomas Smith is no longer at NRO.  I will miss his perspective at NRO very much.  As for Allbritton, he is a flash in a pan, and his five minutes of fame are over.  I will never read his prose again, and am sorry to have spent even the two minutes it took to read it.  Thomas Smith will land on his feet.  The quality of my judgment remains intact, and it is my hope that this humble little blog can still correspond with Tom in his future endeavors.

Not too long ago, sending anonymous Christmas letters and cards to the wounded was impossible.

The U.S. Postal Service will not deliver any letter, post card, or package that is not addressed to a specific individual. Anything sent to “A Recovering Soldier,” “Any Wounded Soldier,” or “Any Service Member” is unacceptable.

“We cannot accept any mail that is not specifically addressed to an individual or an organization at the medical center,” says Terry Goodman of Walter Reed.

Sometimes one of these letters will make it through to the medical center. If that happens, it is returned to sender. Goodman says officials are just following Department of Defense policy designed to ensure the safety of patients and staff at all military hospitals.

And don’t try to contact Walter Reed or any other military medical facility to get the name of a wounded service member to write. Because of medical privacy regulations, hospital officials  can’t give out that information.

But Soldiers’ Angels and American Red Cross have stepped up to the plate, trustworthy servants of the armed forces that they are.

A holiday greeting or a “Get Well” wish can brighten the day of a servicemember recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

However, hundreds of thousands of cards addressed to “Any Servicemember,” or a variant thereof, were returned to senders last year due to security concerns. A Defense Department policy in effect since 2001 specifically forbids the delivery of generically addressed mail to servicemembers.

This year two organizations have stepped in to ensure this type of mail makes it to servicemembers and does what it’s intended to do … boost morale.

Soldier’s Angels and the Red Cross serving the metropolitan Washington, D.C.-area will collect, screen, and deliver the well-wishes of those who want to brighten the day of a wounded servicemember recovering away from home this holiday season.

Those wishing to send a letter or a card to a recovering servicemember should send those cards to either:

Soldiers’ Angels
1792 E. Washington Blvd.
Pasadena, Calif. 91104

or 
 
We Support You During Your Recovery!
c/o American Red Cross
P.O. Box 419
Savage, MD 20763-0419

But time is short.  Your letter or card needs to be in the mail very soon.  If you feel inclined to contribute more this Christmas season, there are many good charities associated with our service.  Ralph Peters has a very moving commentary in the New York Post, Semper Fi, Semper Fi: Injured Marines Fighting On.  He ends a very personal account of his visit with wounded Marines by saying:

You can donate to the Warrior and Family Support Center project via credit card by phone at 1-888-343-HERO or on the Web at ReturningHeroesHome.org.

To give by mail, send donations to:

Returning Heroes Home
P.O. Box 202194
Dallas, TX 75320-2194

Checks should be made out to Returning Heroes Home, Inc. This is a nonprofit 501c3 endeavor; all donations are tax-deductible.

All contributions, in any amount, will help our wounded warriors. Please give to those who gave so much.

Here is a short presentation of their mission and plan for the future.

Whatever you are inclined to do, please do so soon.  I thank you, and our wounded warriors thank you.

In Musa Qala: The Argument for Force Projection, we discussed the Afghan and NATO battle to retake Musa Qala, and expanded into the small footprint characteristic of the counterinsurgency campaign, along with an Australian officer’s call for more forces.  The battle is being hailed as a victory, with “hundred’s of Taliban dead while two British soldiers and one U.S. soldier lost were killed.  Actually, with seven U.S. soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division wounded, this constitutes a casualty ratio of 10:1 or slightly greater, which is routine in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  To be precise, hundreds of Taliban were said to be killed or captured, but many are still reported to have fled prior to the battle.

While it is a positive sign to win back Musa Qala, the operation required heavy air power, and the city was deserted of families after the battle.  The battle for Musa Qala is a poster child for the Afghanistan campaign, with the British having entered into a gentleman’s agreement with tribal leaders to prevent the return of the Taliban (in agreement for British force departing the area), when the tribal leaders clearly lacking the means to enforce their end of the agreement.  Adequate troops didn’t exist to perform reconstruction or constabulary operations for Musa Qala, and the question remains how either Afghanistan or NATO will now have the forces necessary to maintain order in Musa Qala when they did not before.

A telling indication of the U.S. expectations was given to us in preparation for a summit of NATO leaders concerning the Afghanistan campaign.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates sharply criticized NATO countries Tuesday for failing to supply urgently needed trainers, helicopters and infantry for Afghanistan as violence escalates there, vowing not to let the alliance “off the hook.”

Gates called for overhauling the alliance’s Afghan strategy over the next three to five years, shifting NATO’s focus from primarily one of rebuilding to one of waging “a classic counterinsurgency” against a resurgent Taliban and growing influx of al-Qaida fighters.

“I am not ready to let NATO off the hook in Afghanistan at this point,” Gates told the House Armed Services Committee. Ticking off a list of vital requirements — about 3,500 more military trainers, 20 helicopters, and three infantry battalions — Gates voiced “frustration” at “our allies not being able to step up to the plate.”

The defense secretary’s blunt public scolding of NATO, together with equally forceful testimony Tuesday by Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put on display the growing transatlantic rift over the future of the mission in Afghanistan. The Bush administration over the last year has increasingly bristled at what it sees as NATO’s overly passive response to the Taliban, but European leaders have repeatedly rebuffed entreaties by Gates and President Bush to do more.

In recent months, officials said, Bush and his advisers have grown more concerned about the situation in Afghanistan, where, in contrast to Iraq, violence is on the rise and the U.S.-led coalition is struggling to adjust to changing conditions on the ground. As the White House reviews its Afghanistan policy, officials have concluded that wide-ranging strategic goals set for 2007 have not been met despite tactical combat successes.

Gates has made a stark admission; the campaign in Afghanistan has gone from one of rebuilding to one of classical counterinsurgency.  More involvement is necessary by NATO forces.  But Australia is prepared to talk tough as well.

Australia’s new Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon will deliver a blunt message to NATO countries meeting in Scotland on Friday, telling them that there will be no more Australian troops sent to Afghanistan until European countries increase their commitment.

Before the conference of defence ministers kicks off in Edinburgh this weekend, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been outlining his country’s future strategy in Afghanistan.

NATO is not winning, but they are not losing either.

Australian aid workers have told ABC Radio’s AM program that it is better to have the 40,000 allied troops in Afghanistan, but they are not enough to be the solution.

When Mr Fitzgibbon is in Edinburgh, his simple message will be that the new Labor Government could send more troops, but only if countries like Spain and Germany also send more troops to the south.

Also in preparation for the upcoming meeting, Mr Brown gave a speech in the British House of Commons.

“Let me make it clear at the outset, that as part of a coalition, we are winning the battle against the Taliban insurgency,” Mr Brown said.

“We are isolating and eliminating the leadership of the Taliban. We are not negotiating with them.”

But indeed Britain does support negotiations with the Taliban and sees a role for them to play in the new Afghanistan.  “Britain will support deals with Taliban insurgents to give them places in Afghanistan’s new government and military, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced yesterday, distancing himself from the Canadian and U.S. strategy of refusing to sit down with the Taliban.  In a speech to the House of Commons announcing a new Afghanistan strategy, Mr. Brown said that Britain will join Afghan President Hamid Karzai in making money and job offers to “former insurgents.”

Brown is referring to an effort underway by Hamid Karzai to obtain the loyalties of the lieutenants of Mullah Omar and thus split the organization.  The price for this loyalty is a place at the table in the new Afghanistan.  The U.S. brought the Anbaris into a peaceful solution to the insurgency from a position of strength rather than weakness, and the indigenous Anbaris were not, for the most part, fighting from a perspective of religious jihad.  This fact and the stark difference it presents against the backdrop of the Taliban seems to be lost on NATO and the Brits.  This circus-like atmosphere is made worse given the solution proferred by the NATO secretary general: increased involvement by Japan in the Afghanistan campaign!

Force projection is needed in Afghanistan, and this force projection will involve kinetic operations to capture and kill Taliban.  Co-opting them into a new Afghanistan defeats the original purpose of the war, and deprecates the sacrifices of the men who have died in Afghanistan to make the U.S. safe.  NATO will not be able to do the bidding of the U.S.  This is our task, and the message over the last year of the campaign is that it will be done by us and not someone else.

In June of 2007 we discussed Constabulary Operations and Prison Overcrowding, in which I said that “I do not believe in the healing, therapeutic or rehabilitative powers of imprisonment,” but that we were facing a prison overcrowding problem of major proportions going forward if we continue to engage in constabulary operations in Iraq.

In the following articles:

Religion and Insurgency: A Response to Dave Kilcullen
Smith Responds
A Modest Proposal

I discussed my views concerning religion and insurgency, and that contrary to Kilcullen’s view that there isn’t a single fighter who actually fights for the insurgency in Iraq for religious reasons, religion can provide a robust understanding of the motivations of all peoples in all of their actions, not just insurgents.

It appears that the commanders who are concerned with pragmatic affairs and who are faced with actual, real life day-to-day problems are following counsel that is similar to my own as it regards prisons (they need to be emptied or more need to be constructed) and religion (we need to know and act on what the enemy believes).

Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, commanding general of detainee operations in Iraq, is fighting what he has called “the battlefield of the mind.” He has instituted extensive screening of incoming prisoners and has made available about 30 training and education courses, including religion and civics, to the 25,188 prisoners under his control.

At a news conference last week, he said that once a person is in custody at his facilities, Camp Cropper near Baghdad and Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, “we spend a lot of time learning about them now, studying their motivations . . . why they’re fighting, who they fight for — more so than we’ve ever known before.”

At Cropper and Bucca, he said, there is “an assessment phase, and we take 72 hours and then we work really hard on categorizations.” Based on those assessments, which include having imams evaluate prisoners on their religious beliefs, a decision is made about where to house them in the detention facility.

As Stone was describing his program, the Multi-National Force-Iraq Joint Contracting Command was advertising for 12 contract intelligence analysts to work for Stone at Cropper and Bucca for six to 18 months, beginning in March.

Their jobs will be mainly to “conduct in-processing assessment of new detainees coming into the theater internment facilities,” according to the statement of work. They will screen the circumstances of each detainee’s capture and any sworn statements or intelligence about the person contained in an accompanying packet.

After that, the work statement says, the contracted analysts will “determine what category a detainee is assigned to based on age, religion, threat level and insurgent group affiliation.” They will also decide “where to place the detainee in the segregation plan.”

Stone said the compounds are not organized by geographical areas, so most prisoners “don’t really know each other.” Because extremists are “generally the guys that know each other . . . and they come in to set up kind of a gang court,” people from the same areas are spread out across the prison.

The courses they take, almost all of which are voluntary, include basic education, vocational training and religion. The religion course, run by one of 43 imams working on the program, lasts four days.

The civics course, which each detainee must take before he is released, covers “why you should try to get an education — why you should try to have a job,” Stone said. Other courses touch “on how you control anger, the oath of peace, the sacredness of life and property and references back to the Koran,” he added. The demand for classes has “stripped” the 150 teachers he has available.

“I don’t change people,” Stone said. “Those people or God changes them, not me, but we do set in motion the ability to have that change take place.”

Stone sees the overall program as working with detainees so that “they cannot conduct an insurgency inside the wire.” He added that he hopes that detainees “someday maybe even work with us and, of course, by telling us who the bad guys are.”

One result already seen, he said, is that moderates in the prisons are identifying extremists, thus facilitating their segregation from the rest of the population. At Camp Bucca, about 1,000 extremists were identified and pulled from among the 21,000 prisoners, and “that made a big difference,” he said.

In addition to being theologically and anthropologically sound, this approach is pragmatic – and it is the approach we have advocated from the beginning.

At my request, Jack Holt kindly made a transcript available from the bloggers interview with Colonel Rice who leads the Army Wounded Warrior Program.  I was unavailable to participate in the interview, but here is a sample.

CHARLES “JACK” HOLT (chief, New Media Operations, OASD PA): All right, sir. Thank you very much.

COL. RICE: All right, well thank you for inviting me to talk to you about the U.S. Army Wounded Warrior Program. I’m honored to lead the U.S. Army Wounded Warrior Program and to serve the nation’s severely wounded, injured and ill soldiers and their families. This progress is here to serve those who have given so much to this country through their service.  The U.S. Army Wounded Warrior Program follows the war ethos, “I will never leave a fallen comrade.” We assist and advocate for severely wounded soldiers and their families for as long as they need us, wherever they are located. The primary way the U.S. Army Wounded Warrior Program makes a difference in their lives — in the lives of the severely wounded soldiers and their families, is by taking the time to really listen to their needs.  Every soldier in this Program is assigned a specialist who gives them  personalized recovery assistance in navigating government and non-profit  organizations on their behalf to ensure they get the help and support their families need. Our soldiers gave us their best, and we now remain committed to  giving them ours.  The U.S. Army Wounded Warrior Program is part of a larger Army initiative that is focusing on providing more comprehensive services to our soldiers and their families. We are in the forefront of an important transformation that is building the health care model for the future for the military’s wounded warriors.  For more information on this program, or to obtain support services, any soldier or his loved one can call: 1-800-237-1336. They can also visit our website at: www.aw2.army.mil, where I recently posted the first entry in our new Army Wounded Warrior blog. Please take the time to learn more about the Program, our dedicated staff, and the severely wounded soldiers we serve. As director of the Army Wounded Warrior Program, my duty is also my honor, and I will continue to work every single day to make sure that no soldier is left behind.

Read the whole interview.  Those who have followed this humble blog for a while know that this is a pet issue of mine, this issues of wounded warriors, caring for our fallen and injured, and properly managing our health care for these brave men.  Regarding the so-called Walter Reed scandal, I have weighed in that General Weightman was probably not the right man to sack when the scandal broke.  The problems were an ineffective and inefficient Department of Defense bureaucracy that didn’t support the wounded warrior when he left Walter Reed and went home, not when he was there.  But be that as it may, the message today was that we are under management that cares and understands that the DoD must treat this holistically.

The advancements in battlefield medical care (e.g., Navy Corpsmen, Marines qualified as combat lifesaver, etc.) have ensured a drop in battlefield deaths, and yet a commensurate increase in battlefield wounded and “disabled.”  The goal, then, is to ensure that the term “disabled” doesn’t really apply – to rehabilitate, to retrain, and to enable.  May God grant them success.

As one final followup item, my regular readers also know that TBI (traumatic brain injury, the signature wound of the war due to IEDs) is a pet concern of mine.  Here are two very interesting links for your study.

Dog Helps TBI Victim
Battlefield Brain Injury: The Lessons from Iraq (highly technical article written by an M.D.)

Ever since the British pulled out of Musa Qala, Afghanistan, in October of 2007, the Taliban have committed atrocities against the population and subjugated them to Taliban rule, and with forces more powerful than the Afghan police in Musa Qala, the agreement between British forces and the tribal leaders to prevent the Taliban from entering Musa Qala was rendered powerless and irrelevant.

Almost immediately after the British pullout from Musa Qala, the Taliban rolled in.  British officials believed the Taliban to be too deeply rooted to be eradicated by military means, and heretofore had intended to court the alleged more “moderate” members of the Taliban to attempt to divide their organization.

But the brutality of the Taliban occupation, along with the direct refusal of the Taliban ever to negotiate with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, apparently convinced NATO that negotiations would have redounded to no positive results.  So NATO planned operations against the Taliban that months ago was billed as Afghanistan’s Fallujah.  A series of air attacks killed various Taliban leaders over the intervening months, but this didn’t weaken the Taliban hold on the area.

The assault on Musa Qala began on December 7, with Afghan forces in the lead.  Heavy arial bombardment  preceded the advance of Afghan forces from the South, while U.S. forces were flown in by helicopter just North of the city.  Approximately seven soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division were wounded after being air assaulted in about 14 kilometers North of Musa Qala and engaging in a five or six hour gun fight with Taliban forces.  Two NATO soldiers perished as a result of the operations against the Taliban.  Several significant Taliban leaders were killed or captured during operations.

British forces have said that they wouldn’t take something they have no plan to hold, and at the moment NATO and Afghan forces, in anticipation of Taliban counterattacks, are digging in and fortifying their positions.  But while U.S. forces battled some of the Taliban as the fled North, most fighters simply melted away into the terrain.  These fighters will live to fight another day, under cover of darkness, in the shadows, planting roadside bombs, and shooting innocent Afghanis.  Afghanistan’s “battle of Fallujah” didn’t occur, as the forces necessary to encircle the Taliban forces and chase them until captured or killed didn’t exist.  While the Taliban lost some fighters and indeed some significant local leaders, they know better than to engage NATO forces in kinetic operations for any protracted period of time.

Australian Army Colonel Don Roach has argued for a larger force size in Afghanistan.

… NATO-backed International Security Assistance Force and its Afghan army allies are stretched too thinly in Oruzgan province, home to the 370-strong Australian Reconstruction Task Force, which is facing a growing threat from resurgent Taliban militants … “One of the fundamental principles of a counter-insurgency is you can always do with more forces,” said Colonel Roach, who is on the headquarters staff of the ISAF, serving as its senior liaison officer with the Afghan army and police in Regional Command South. “You can go into an area and leave and Taliban will come back and chop peoples heads off.”

At The Captain’s Journal, we agree with Colonel Roach’s axiom, but it should be noted that this is not a given in COIN doctrine.  In fact, Military transition teams in Afghanistan are designed with exactly the opposite idea in mind.

MiTT training is a major part of the Pentagon’s new approach to counterinsurgency. A MiTT embeds with an Iraqi or Afghan unit. The team itself is small–10-15 soldiers, usually of more advanced rank, from staff sergeant to colonel–but designed to work with almost any size unit from battalion to division. Their goal is to make the local troops self-sustaining: tactically, operationally, and logistically. Aside from providing training and expertise, MiTTs also provide a huge morale boost to their foreign counterparts as they have the power to call in air support and reinforcements otherwise not at the disposal of the local police and military. The MiTT should encourage the locals to go on the offensive and gain the confidence needed to later fight on their own: a necessary component of our we-stand-down-as-they-stand-up exit strategy. Transition teams also leave a small footprint in hostile areas that might be stirred up by a larger U.S. presence. Such small groups remain in the shadows and emphasize the achievement of Iraqi and Afghan forces–something that greatly reduces the political fallout of U.S. operations.

But this may be more pedantic than wise.  The Anbar Province in Iraq has also seen its share of tribal leaders and concerned citizens stepping up to be counted, but in order for this to obtain, a tank had to be parked outside the home of Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, the most powerful figure in Anbar, to protect him from al Qaeda attacks.  There is no replacement for force projection.  The British reaction to the Taliban re-entry into Masu Qala is befuddling given the nature of power in this region.  Agreements come and go, but without the means to enforce the agreements, it seems odd that the British would have relied on this “gentleman’s understanding” with the tribes in the area.

The British want other NATO forces to shoulder more of the burden in Afghanistan, the Canadians are there only because the U.S. says they have to be there (according to a recent poll), and there are roads through Afghanistan that, in a less dangerous situation, might force competition against the poppy trade.  Yet this road is too dangerous because of bombs, shootings and Taliban influence to be relied upon for commerce.

The ruined Afghan police truck smoldered on the highway in the village bazaar, flames rising from its cargo bed. The village was silent. Its residents had hidden themselves ahead of a U.S. patrol.

The remains of a second truck, a tanker, sat on its wheel rims 100 yards to the north. To the south, another patrol was removing two other freshly burned tankers from the highway, clearing the lanes so traffic might pass.

The Americans examined the police truck. Holes marked where bullets had passed through. The front passenger door was gone; a rocket-propelled grenade had struck and exploded there.

This vehicle graveyard on Highway 1, roughly 50 miles south of Kabul, the Afghan capital, symbolizes both the ambitions and frustrations in Afghanistan six years after the Taliban were chased from power.

Highway 1 is the country’s main road, the route between Kabul and Kandahar, the country’s second largest city. It lies atop an ancient trade route that, in theory, could connect Central Asia and Afghanistan with ports in Pakistan, restoring Afghanistan’s place as a transit hub for something besides heroin.

The highway, which has been rebuilt with $250 million from the United States and other nations, accommodates a daily flow of automobiles, buses and ornately decorated cargo carriers, which the soldiers call “jingle trucks.”

The Afghan and U.S. governments say the road’s restored condition is a tangible step toward a self-sufficient Afghanistan.

But Highway 1 remains bedeviled by danger, extortion and treachery. Police corruption and insurgent attacks sow fear and make traveling many sections of the road a lottery. The risks limit its contribution to the economy and underscore the government’s weakness beyond Kabul.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has ordered Marines to stay in the Anbar Province (rather than deploy to Afghanistan) where they will likely be conducting public relations missions and handing out food bags to the Anbaris, but force projection is needed in Afghanistan.  Yet as long as the small footprint counterinsurgency advocates hold sway, the campaign appears to be proceeding apace in Afghanistan.  Doctrine can indeed color the lenses through which we see the world.

Concerning the poorly named ‘National Intelligence Estimate’ on the state of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a leading Iraqi newspaper Azzaman has an interesting editorial response.

U.S. President George W. Bush’s statements on dangers of Iran’s nuclear program have become almost meaningless and are made solely for rhetorical parade purposes indicating that Iran is about to reap yet another victory.

This means that war is a possibility only in the imagination of those betting that Iran is no longer a crucial player in the big powers’ geopolitics of the Gulf and Iraq.

As for the Arabs, they now look like simple-minded people who the U.S. administration could drag to the conference in Annapolis to sit down side by side with the Israelis in the belief that a war with Iran was imminent.

Washington has no more option left from now on but to appease Iran with regard to Iraq file. Washington needs Iran’s protection when the hour for withdrawal strikes.

Iran is not naïve and stupid. It has longstanding strategic interests in Iraq with a bearing on developing the country’s oil riches. It wants to link Iraq’s economy intricately with its own so that no government will be in a position in the future to shun Iran’s hegemony.

Washington was late in giving Iran the clean bill of nuclear health. But as arrangements for U.S. withdrawal are being made, it had no choice but to pursue the path of appeasement.

The U.S. should have signed a memorandum of understanding with the government in Tehran rather than Baghdad for plans calling for long-term military presence in the country.

It is not the first time the U.S. dupes the oil-rich Gulf states. The U.S. has deceived these countries several times in the past on fears of external threats.

But belatedly the countries have discovered the U.S. deceit. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad allayed these fears by appealing to them to enter into security partnership to protect themselves against ‘external dangers’ much far beyond the Gulf’s borders.

The Arab Gulf states have come to realize that Iran as a neighbor is the country to stay while America which has been using them has created the Iranian scourge for its own narrow political interests.

This is a scathing rebuke of the NIE and its conclusions.  There is obvious hatred of Persian hegemony in these words, but they are valuable if for no other reason than as a display of what Arab Sunnis think about the U.S. and its “appeasement” of Iran.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates fired at Iran soon after the release of the NIE, saying:

“Astonishingly, the revolutionary government of Iran has, for the first time, embraced as valid an assessment of the United States intelligence community — on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. And since that government now acknowledges the quality of American intelligence assessments, I assume that it will also embrace as valid American intelligence assessments of:

— Its funding and training of militia groups in Iraq;

— Its deployment of lethal weapons and technology to both Iraq and Afghanistan;

— Its ongoing support of terrorist organizations — like Hezbollah and Hamas — that have murdered thousands of innocent civilians; and

— Its continued research on development of medium-range ballistic missiles that are not particularly cost-effective unless equipped with warheads carrying weapons of mass destruction.”

But like those who went before him with Middle Eastern concerns and issues, Gates wrongly ascribes Aristotelian logic to the situation.  The radical Mullahs in Iran care not one bit about their inconsistency, and know all of the things that Gates discusses, while at the same time revelling in the release of the thinking of the U.S. ‘intelligence’ community.  So the damage has been done.

We have pointed out that the U.S. will be in Iraq for years, and possibly decades, due to the inability of Iraq to field armed forces capable of border security and conventional operations.  That day of reckoning to which Azzaman refers when the U.S. withdraws may not be coming for quite some time, and the dancing and celebrating of the Iranian elite may be a tad too soon.  Even U.S. field grade officers recognize the evolving mission for what it is: containment of Iran.

Behind a maze of concrete blast walls rising from a desolate desert landscape that once was the scene of pitched battles between the armies of Iran and Iraq, a new American base is springing to life.

Located 4 miles from the Iranian border near the Iraqi town of Badrah, Patrol Base Shocker has been home to 240 soldiers and contractors, including 55 U.S. troops, a handful of Department of Homeland Security officers and a contingent of soldiers from the Eastern European nation of Georgia since the base became operational in mid-November.

The base lacks the comforts of many of the larger U.S. bases in Iraq, but it is luxurious compared to some of the dozens of small patrol bases that have sprung up around Iraq as part of the new counterinsurgency strategy, most of which are intended to be temporary. Here there are trailers for soldiers to live in, hot showers, a dining facility and a cavernous gym complete with new running and rowing machines.

And though the U.S. troops here were deployed as part of the surge of U.S. brigades dispatched to Iraq earlier this year, they will not be withdrawn when the surge brigades are drawn down, something U.S. commanders have said will happen by the middle of next year.

Instead, the intention is to maintain “a continuous presence” in the border area, training Iraqi border guards, looking for smuggled weapons and monitoring the flow of goods and people from Iran, according to Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch of the 3rd Infantry Division, under whose command the base falls.

The new base along the Iranian border illustrates another shift in the U.S. military’s Iraq mission. From toppling Saddam Hussein to searching for weapons of mass destruction to defeating Al Qaeda in Iraq, checking Iran’s expansive influence within the new Iraq has emerged as a key U.S. goal.

Containing Iran “is now clearly part of our mission,” Lynch said in an interview during a tour of the base.

Clearly Secretary Gates and the leadership at the Pentagon is aware of the Iranian issue, and while we at the Captain’s Journal would like to have seen more done to “persuade” Iran to behave, the wheels are in motion.  But one lesson from the story must be that there is no valid reason and no legitimate excuse for divulging operational security.

In an atmosphere where the Department of Defense crafts regulations concerning military bloggers because they are concerned about OPSEC, it is strange that the national intelligence infrastructure would be so eager to release information that cannot be helpful to U.S. interests, and cannot help but be helpful to the enemy.  Regardless of the information communicated, it was a profoundly bad idea to issue the NIE.  Nothing good came from it.  As a result of the decision to do so, the Iranians are celebrating, and the Sunni Arabs are fearful and angry over being taken for fools once again.

Ralph Peters has an interesting analysis in the Armed Forces Journal of the campaign as it is currently being waged in Iraq, entitled Dishonest Doctrine: A Selective Use of History Taints the COIN Manual.

A year after its publication, the Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual remains deeply disturbing, both for the practical dangers it creates and for the dishonest approach employed to craft it.

The most immediate indication of the manual’s limitations has been Army Gen. David Petraeus’ approach to counterinsurgency in Iraq. The manual envisions COIN operations by that Age of Aquarius troubadour, Donovan, wearing his love like heaven as he proceeds to lead terrorists, insurgents and militiamen to a jamboree at Atlantis. Although the finalized document did, ultimately, allow that deadly force might sometimes be required, it preached — beware doctrine that preaches — understanding, engagement and chat. It was a politically correct document for a politically correct age.

Entrusted with the mission of turning Iraq around, Petraeus turned out to be a marvelously focused and methodical killer, able to set aside the dysfunctional aspects of the doctrine he had signed off on. Given the responsibility of command, he recognized that, when all the frills are stripped away, counterinsurgency warfare is about killing those who need killing, helping those who need help — and knowing the difference between the two (we spent our first four years in Iraq striking out on all three counts). Although Petraeus has, indeed, concentrated many assets on helping those who need help, he grasped that, without providing durable security — which requires killing those who need killing — none of the reconstruction or reconciliation was going to stick. On the ground, Petraeus has supplied the missing kinetic half of the manual.

The entire article is worth the study.  Dave Dilegge at the Small Wars Journal has a response to this article by Peters (among other things), which is also well worth the study time.  Dave makes several powerful points, among them the lack of understanding Paul Bremer brought to the political scene in Iraq.  I will not weigh in with detail concerning these articles, but I will provide several thoughts.

First, I am not convinced that this is an “either-or” choice.  Rather, I still see things as a “both-and” relationship.  Heavy kinetic kinetic operations to kill or capture the insurgents was and is still necessary, along with settling with the (presumed and erstwhile) enemy with broad, sweeping programs and negotiations.  I have from the very beginning supported the idea of payment for concerned citizens as my articles show (see Concerning the Tribes, Are we Bribing the Sheikhs?, and Payment to Concerned Citizens: Strategy of Genius or Shame?).

Next thought.  I know that this tactic has been referred to as “renting hearts and minds.”  I am not naive concerning exactly what we are accomplishing with this approach.  We have killed those who would not reconcile with us in Anbar, while giving work and money to those who would.  This situation cannot last forever, and real political and economic progress must be eventually made in Iraq for this temporary solution to bear fruit.

Third thought.  There is a robust belief that the campaign as currently constituted doesn’t bear any relationship whatsoever to the one envisioned by FM 3-24.  This quote I am providing is straight from Iraq from a field grade officer: “Petraeus  is directing a counterinsurgency strategy, which is good, but the “Petraeus” counterinsurgency plan that was rolled out last winter is dead and buried, and that is also good.”

Fourth thought.  I am aware that robust force protection is being practiced as part of the campaign, as well as the fact that hundreds of combat outposts throughout urban and other areas of Iraq presented a logistical nightmare of mammoth proportions.  Combat outposts were merely a means to an end, and to the degree that they are helpful they should be used and to the degree that they are harmful or unnecessary or even impossible given the boundary conditions of force protection, then they should be jettisoned.

But they should be engaged or jettisoned within the correct context and after being applied the same way they were in Anbar.  Among the hundreds of things that are not generally understood about the Anbar campaign (which is why I began the category The Anbar Narrative), is the issue of combat outposts.  The Marines do seven month deployments rather than twelve or sixteen month deployments, and so the notion of sixteen months at a combat outpost seems ludicrous.  Further, the Marines never stayed at combat outposts for the full deployment.  Combat outposts (in combination with Iraqi Police Precincts later in the campaign) were a duty rotation, along with FOB security, patrols, kinetic operations, etc.  Marines are rotated through combat outposts, and carry all necessary supplies and ordnance with them on the rotation, causing much less logistical problems than the idea of deploying Soldiers for more than a year at a single location with logistics being relied upon to deploy all supplies to location.  Marines were never at a combat outpost for more than a couple of weeks at a time — just the right amount of time to carry all provisions in a backpack.  It is an austere lifestyle, to be sure.

The point is that acceptance or rejection of a tactic should be based on a sound understanding of how that tactic has and has not been employed in the past rather than theoretical  doctrine.  As one final thought for today, sadly, the Afghanistan campaign continues to unravel.  I have just seen an account over Fox News of the desire of the population in Afghanistan to negotiate and bring the Taliban into the ranks of the government in order to stop the violence (the Taliban are checking off military win after gruesome slaughter of innocents after successful intimidation of the locals, and so on, while also asserting that they will never negotiate with Karzai, regardless of what the populations of America and Afghanistan wish to believe).  Secretary of Defense Gates has denied the request of the Marine Commandant to deploy Marines to Afghanistan.

So be it.  He is in charge.  But if I read the signs correctly, even if we have rejected (at least part of) FM 3-24 in Iraq, the campaign in Afghanistan has used the small footprint model to the extreme.  And we are about to lose Afghanistan.  For lack of kinetic operations against the enemy, it will soon turn into a magnificent, remarkable loss that American history will be unable to avoid.  While settling with the Taliban is far different from settling with Anbaris who were fighting for nationalistic reasons rather than religious fanaticism should be obvious, it will be the subject of future articles.  But suffice it to say at the moment that our loss in Afghanistan will be a painful subject for the history books – and a topic in war college classrooms for decades.

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, as inadvertently divulged in the recent statement by Omar al Baghdadi (or Abu Ayyub al-Masri), has become a flat organization.  Baghdadi has in large measure lost command and control of the lowest ranks of his organization. 

Background

Omar al Baghdadi is the name given to the leader of al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.  In February of 2007, Nibras Kazimi constructed a time line and description of the emergence of Baghdadi at the New York Sun, and followed this up in March of 2007 at his own blog, Talisman Gate, with further description of his identify and lineage.  In July of 2007, the Multinational Force captured a terrorist named Khaled Abdul-Fattah Dawoud Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, also known as Abu Shahid.  This man divulged a number of significant details about the al Qaeda organization, including the fact that al Baghdadi was a fictitious character and Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian jihadist, was still the commander of al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

Mashhadani was a leader in the Ansar al-Sunna terrorist group before joining al Qaeda in Iraq two and a half years ago.  He served   as the al Qaeda media emir for Baghdad and then was appointed the media emir for all of Iraq, and served as an intermediary between AQI leader al-Masri, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.  In fact, communication between senior al Qaeda leadership and al-Masri frequently went through Mashhadani.  Along with al-Masri, Mashhadani co-founded a virtual organization in cyberspace called the Islamic State of Iraq, in 2006, as a new Iraqi pseudonym for AQI.  The Islamic State of Iraq is the latest effort by al Qaeda to market itself and its goal of imposing a Taliban-like state on the Iraqi people.  This is what we have learned or confirmed from Mashhadani’s capture.  In his words, “The Islamic State of Iraq is a front organization that masks the foreign influence and leadership within al Qaeda in Iraq in an attempt to put an Iraqi face on the leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq.”  To further this myth, al-Masri created a fictional political head of the Islamic State of Iraq known as Omar al-Baghdadi.  Al-Baghdadi, who has never been seen, is actually an actor named Abu Abdullah al- Naima.  Al-Masri maintains exclusive control over al-Naima as he acts the part of the fictitious al-Baghdadi character.  To make al-Baghdadi appear credible, al-Masri swore allegiance to al-Baghdadi and pledged to obey him, which was essentially swearing allegiance to himself since he knew that Baghdadi was fictitious and a creation of his own. Al-Zawahiri has repeatedly referred to al-Baghdadi in video and Internet statements, further deceiving Iraqi followers and perpetuating the myth of al-Baghdadi.  Mashhadani confirms that al-Masri and the foreign leaders with whom he surrounds himself, not Iraqis, make the operational decisions for al Qaeda in Iraq, and to be clear, al Qaeda in Iraq is run by foreigners, not Iraqis.  According to Mashhadani, in fact, al-Masri increasingly relies only on foreigners, who make up the majority of the leadership of AQI.  He does not seek nor trust the advice of Iraqis in the organization.  This highlights the significance of the operation our forces conducted a few weeks back to kill Khalil, Khaled and Khatab al-Turki, three foreign al Qaeda leaders who had been sent into Iraq to help al- Masri shore up the organization in northern Iraq.  And finally, according to Mashhadani, al Qaeda in Iraq leader al- Masri has increasingly become more isolated and paranoid, especially of the Iraqis within al Qaeda in Iraq, as operations have killed or captured additional AQI leaders.  Mashhadani, in his own words, says, “The idea of al-Baghdadi is very weak now because other insurgent groups have realized that the concept of al-Baghdadi is controlled by the al Qaeda foreign fighters in Iraq.”  Al-Masri started — he also says:  Al-Masri started overpowering us and acted on his own accord by controlling the distribution of funding.  Al-Masri also controlled the content of these publications attributed to al-Baghdadi.  The capture of Mashhadani and his statements give us a more complete picture of al Qaeda in Iraq.  And although the rank and file are largely Iraqi, the senior leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq, as we have previously stated, is mostly foreign.

To this information, Kazimi quickly responded that it wasn’t likely that al Qaeda could pull off such a stunt, and then he followed this up with a reaffirmation of the existence of al Baghdadi.

-‘Abu Omar al-Baghdadi’, the ‘Prince of the Faithful’ in Al-Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq, is not a fictitious character as he’s been repeatedly characterized by US officials and military officers.

-‘Abu Omar al-Baghdadi’ is the pseudonym used by Khalid Khalil Ibrahim al-Mashhadani, who should not to be confused with Khalid Abdel-Fattah Daoud al-Mashhadani, who allegedly told American interrogators that ‘Al-Baghdadi’ is a fictitious character after he was arrested on July 4.

-Khalid Abdel-Fattah Daoud al-Mashhadani, ‘Abu Shehed’, is not as senior in the hierarchy of the Islamic State of Iraq as claimed by US officials. He should not be confused with ‘Abu Muhammad al-Mashhadani’ who is the ‘Minister of Information’ for the Islamic State of Iraq. Abu Shehed’s first cousin, Adel al-Mashhadani, is more senior, for he leads Al-Qaeda’s battalions in the Fadel neighborhood.

Recent Statement / Press Release by al Qaeda

On behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq (a.k.a. al Qaeda), Omar al Baghdadi recently issued a message entitled “As for the Scum – It Disappears like Froth (Koran 13:17).” Al-Baghdadi announces the launch of a new raid against the Awakening, the U.S.-backed tribal movement aimed at expelling Al-Qaeda from Iraq.

In the first part of his message, Al-Baghdadi criticizes the mujahideen of the Awakening movement for taking a nationalist approach, which entails embracing “unbelievers” who are Iraqi citizens (e.g., Shi’ites) and rejecting pious Muslims who are not Iraqi citizens (i.e. the non-Iraqi mujahideen affiliated with the ISI). Elaborating on this point, he rebukes the Awakening movement for adopting a political platform in which rapprochement among Iraqis takes priority over defensive jihad, which, he says, is the personal obligation of every Muslim in Iraq today.

Al-Baghdadi then announces the formation of a force called the Al-Sadiq Brigades, which specializes in “killing every apostate and unbeliever,” and has already killed some “apostates” who were involved with the Awakening movement, such as tribal leader Abu Al-Rishawi of the Al-Anbar province. He also announces the launch of a new raid on the Awakening movement, which he says will continue until the end of the 20th of the month of Muharram (about two months from now).

Al-Baghdadi states that the raid, named after Al-Qaeda explosives expert Abu ‘Omar Al-Kurdi (reportedly killed in 2006), will target anyone involved with the Awakening movement:

“…I call upon every mujahid in Iraq who yearns for Allah and for the world to come… especially the mujahideen of the ISI, to attack [the Awakening movement] using three [methods involving] explosives… with hand grenades, with IEDs… and [by carrying out] martyrdom operations.

“Those who have [already] decided… to undertake a martyrdom operation should do so during the days [of the raid]. If anyone is still hesitating… we urge him… to hurry up [and carry out] a martyrdom operation, which is most harmful to our enemies and has the greatest impact [on them]. Thus you shall tear out [their] hearts… and put an end to their greed. As they have already [admitted], they are unable to stop [a fighter] who wishes to die for the sake of Allah. Their [military] apparatuses and authorities… are unable to deal with this [threat]. He who cannot carry out an attack by means of explosives… should at least kill three apostates during the raid in [some other] manner of his choice…”

Analysis & Observations

There have been heavy political ramifications surrounding the issue of how the insurgency is constituted.  The point must be made, it has been believed, that we are fighting al Qaeda in order to prevent the waning of support for the campaign in Iraq.  But as we have discussed before, the term “al Qaeda” had been used as a surrogate for the broader insurgency.  The insurgency was originally constituted by foreign (al Qaeda) leadership, and supplemented mainly by Iraqis (Bill Ardolino also weighed in with respect to the idea of local versus foreign fighters).  Just today, MEMRI carried an account by two Saudi jihadists who were surprised to be combined with so many Iraqis upon arrival in Baghdad, Iraqis who didn’t trust them and took their participation to be meddling in their affairs.

But true to their professionalism, U.S. forces in Iraq have not gotten caught up in political debates, and have waged a smart campaign to take advantage of information and intelligence concerning the makeup of the insurgency.  Operation Alljah in Fallujah involved heavy kinetic operations to kill or capture many insurgents, among them Africans, Chechens and men of Far Eastern descent.  There was no shortage of foreign fighters allied with al Qaeda in the recent operations of the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, but there were also indigenous fighters, and separating the two groups was pivotal to campaign.

Payment for concerned citizens, a tactic we have strongly advocated, was successfully used in Fallujah to bring work to heads of household.  This, combined with robust security (gated communities and biometrics), caused some indigenous fighters to begin to return home from Fallujah to al-Qaim where they could be carefully reintegrated into society.

The reason it is important to know the makeup of the enemy is that the strategy for defeating them is a function of how they are constituted.  Fortunately, U.S. forces have been wise in their choices, and the combination of tribal negotiations, payments, kinetic operations and reconstruction have caused the support for the insurgency to dissipate at the lowest levels – the fighters.  The indigenous Iraqis have gone home in large part, and while the Strategy Page recently discussed al Qaeda fighters moving back to Afghanistan, we were discussing this more than a month ago in Regional Flux and the Long War.  The foreigners have been killed or captured, have left Iraq, or have headed North to Mosul and Kirkuk, as we discussed in Operations in Northern Iraq: Hard Times for the Terrorists.

Al Qaeda is increasingly left with fewer fighters to do the work.  But what is more interesting than what was intended to be communicated in this most recent statement was what was not intended to be, but slipped out anyway.  Al Baghdadi, or al Masri, has divulged al Qaeda operational security, of course, without this intention.  Carefully note what has been said: “Those who have [already] decided… to undertake a martyrdom operation should do so during the days [of the raid]. If anyone is still hesitating… we urge him… to hurry up [and carry out] a martyrdom operation, which is most harmful to our enemies and has the greatest impact [on them] … He who cannot carry out an attack by means of explosives… should at least kill three apostates during the raid in [some other] manner of his choice…”

We have known for some time now that due to actionable intelligence the Multinational Force has increasingly targeted senior and mid-level al Qaeda leadership, and many have been captured or killed.  But al Baghdadi’s statement is the most stark admission to date that the organization has gone flat.  Note what happened.  The most senior al Qaeda in Iraq leader used a press release to issue tactical level orders to the lowest level ground troops.  The statement is not a rehearsal of what he has told his emirs, but rather, is spoken in the present tense imperative.  He is issuing orders.  The formation of the so-called Al-Sidiq Brigades is a media ploy, as this group includes whatever foreign fighters he has left in his organization.  He isn’t bifurcating his forces, he is temporarily renaming them for purposes of morale.

Whether al Qaeda in Iraq has an Iraqi face and Omar al Baghdadi actually exists, or al-Masri is still playing a shell game with a fictitious character, is quite irrelevant.  U.S. forces are fully engaged in knowledge of the insurgency and are using the appropriate tactics to address each part of it.  Whoever is in charge of al Qaeda has no command and control.  He has lost his officers.  The only analogue for us would be to ponder the idea of a Battalion of Marines being sent to Iraq, told to find their way there, split up, their NCOs taken away from them, and orders issued by their commanding officer to go find some enemy and kill them, with each individual Marine working alone and having a quota.

As good as the U.S. Marines are, this experiment is not likely to turn out very well, and yet this is the state of al Qaeda in Iraq.  Petraeus has said that no one should be ready to do end zone dances yet, and we have discussed the existence of some hard line Ba’athists and Fedayeen Saddam in Mosul that must be dealt with.  Yet when the most dangerous enemy lacks command and control, the situation is very favorable and the advancements undeniable.