Articles by Herschel Smith

Friday night music based on reader feedback after listening to Giovanni Gabrieli last Friday night: “Sheesh.  Military blog.  Seems like you should be doin’ rock and roll.”

My response: I am a trombone player, so I make no promises for the future.  I will put more brass music on the site on Fridays, but you wanted rock … okay … you’ve got it.  Turn it up to maximum, put your face near the speakers, and let the avalanche of sound plaster your hair to your head.

Jefferson Starship: Jane

Waziristan has seen Taliban violence in the past months, and many tribal elders have been killed.  The recent accords between Pakistan and Waziristan is a victory for the Taliban, but recent U.S. Military action would seem to indicate that the U.S. is not willing to allow this region to continue being safe haven for the Taliban. 

The Taliban have wreaked violence and havoc throughout the border provinces recently as a prelude and harbinger of the accords between the Pakistan and Waziristan.  Courtesy of The Word Unheard:

Militant groups opposed to the United States and Pakistan Army have almost taken over control of the volatile and troubled South Waziristan district where the Pakistani Army last year launched major operations, and after heavy casualties, claimed to have cleaned up the place and restored peace.

That peace, as is now turning out, is purely on the terms of Taliban and its armed fighters, who have reorganized and emerged as the de facto rulers of the area. Some 60 notable Maliks and elders of the region, who collaborated with the US and Pakistan Army, have been shot dead in the last 18 months.

The groups, led by trained Taliban commanders have taken physical control. New offices have been opened all over the Agency to recruit youngsters and fighters for ‘jihad’ inside Afghanistan, Kashmir and against the Pakistan Army.

It is thus no surprise that attacks against government installations have now become a routine affair. Attacks against candidates, pro-government clergymen and government officials have increased in the neighboring Afghanistan as the war-ravaged country prepares to hold the first ever parliamentary elections on September 18.

The groups collect money and ask for generous donations. Foreigners are escorted by local Taliban to visit mosques, mostly during the night, crying and wailing before the faithful, asking them for help against the infidels and their supporters, a number of local tribesmen confirmed.

This is a bleak picture, but it is still unclear how the Pakistan-Waziristan accord will effect the Afghanistan war effort and the strength of the Taliban.  I posted earlier posing the question whether Musharraf would consider Waziristan as Pakistani territory and if the U.S. military would have the freedom to operate inside the region of Northern Waziristan, concluding that the Taliban had cleaned up in the deal with Musharraf, and that the U.S. would be prohibited from entering this area.

As it is turning out, this question might have a somewhat more complicated answer than I had previously granted.  There are recent reports of U.S. military action in Waziristan:

Miran Shah, 21 Sept. (AKI/DAWN) – Security forces have arrested 10 people from Lawara Mandi area near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in the North Waziristan Agency, officials said. The action was taken after six US helicopter gunships intruded into the Pakistan airspace following clashes between the allied forces and Taliban across the border. The intrusion by US helicopters prompted the military and political authorities to proceed to the area along with tribal elders, including parliamentarians. It was the first action by the security forces since the peace accord reached between the government and militants early this month.

The authorities, sources said, believed that Taliban guerrilla might sneak into Lawara Mandi after clashes with the US-led allied forces in Pipali area of Afghanistan close to the North Waziristan Agency.

The sources said that army and paramilitary forces in collaboration with the tribal elders, including MNA Maulvi Nek Zaman, besieged a cluster of houses in Lawara Mandi on Tuesday night and asked local residents to hand over suspects.

There seems to be subtle political pressure from the administration on Pakistan, and Hamin Karzai knows that battling the Taliban in Afghanistan will not pacify the region, and he bluntly told the U.N. that action inside Pakistan is necessary:

“We must look beyond Afghanistan to the sources of terrorism. We must destroy terrorist sanctuaries beyond Afghanistan, dismantle the elaborate networks in the region that recruit, indoctrinate, train, finance, arm and deploy terrorists.”

The U.S. Military knows that the coming weeks and months in Waziristan are crucial, and is watching the developments in that region.  In fact, they might be doing more than watching.  It is no mistake that helicopters chased the Taliban across the border in recent firefights, in this instance continuing the chase rather than suspending operations upon reaching or crossing the border.

It is possible that the U.S. Military is trying to help Musharraf and the anti-Taliban tribal elders in Waziristan along with the process of honoring the accords that have been reached.  The message may be that there will be no peace in the region – no matter what accord has been reached – until and unless sanctuary has been denied to the Taliban.

Only time will tell how this ends.  But in the mean time, the great Taliban chase should continue unabated.  There is no substitute for killing the enemy in war.

Musharraf is trying to survive, and in doing so has ceded control over breakaway provinces to the Taliban.  Yet he defends those same provinces as being Pakistani territory, denying that the U.S. has authority to enter those provinces.  The U.S. administration will face a coming decision on military action directly against the Taliban in Pakistan.

The counterterrorism community has been tracking for a couple of weeks the gradual diminution of Pakistan sovereignty in seven Western breakaway provinces in Pakistan, and the signing of accords, or truces, with the Tribal leaders in those regions.  These tribes are closely connected to the Taliban and al Qaeda, many of whom have made these regions their safe haven from NATO attacks inside Afghanistan.  The most recent post by Andrew Cochran at the Counterterrorism Blog (Is Musharraf Buying His Survival and is Bush Giving up on Him?) poses some interesting questions for official U.S. policy and Bush’s position concerning these developments.

The State Department endorsed this Pakistan retreat, and Bush had supportive words a few days ago concerning, saying:

“What he is doing is entering agreements with governors in the regions of the country, in the hopes that there would be an economic vitality, there will be alternatives to violence and terror.”

Today the song sounds a little different.

NEW YORK (CNN) — President Bush said Wednesday he would order U.S. forces to go after Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan if he received good intelligence on the fugitive al Qaeda leader’s location.

“Absolutely,” Bush said.  The president made the comments Wednesday in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.  Although Pakistan has said it won’t allow U.S. troops to operate within its territory, “we would take the action necessary to bring him to justice.”

But in response, Musharraf, in New York on Wednesday at the United Nations, said:

“We wouldn’t like to allow that at all. We will do it ourselves.”

This is an interesting development, and the U.S. military establishment should take notice.  Musharraf has ceded control over the breakaway provinces to the Taliban and tribal leaders, essentially abdicating Pakistani sovereignty over these provinces.  The question naturally arises, “Will the U.S. then feel the freedom to take the necessary military action in those provinces to address the Taliban threat?”

The answer from Musharraf seems to be no.  Musharraf wants to survive, and is thus playing the game that he sees as necessary to this end, but when speaking of those areas that have broken away from Pakistan, he sees those areas as Pakistani territory.

The Taliban indeed have safe haven.  They have been given unmitigated control over the provinces, yet they have the protection of being considered Pakistani territory.  But Musharraf is certainly playing a game.  He said of Bin Laden:

“This notion that anybody who has a record as a terrorist will get safe haven — we would not even think of doing that.”

Yet this is exactly what he is doing, and he admitted it recently.

For the first time, Pakistani President Pervez Musharaff has revealed that his government may know the general whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

Speaking at a meeting in New York earlier this week, Musharaff conceded that bin Laden may well be in his country, according to people who heard his comments. 

“We believe he is somewhere between Bajaur, Pakistan, and the province of Kunar in Afghanistan,” he said at a meeting connected to his appearance at the United Nations.

The extent of the U.S. victory in Afghanistan against the Taliban will be directly proportional to the extent to which action is taken directly against the Taliban in their safe havens in the breakaway provinces.

The New York Times covered the fact that some of the tribes in the al Anbar Province are joining forces to fight the insurgents.  But not all tribal leaders are going along with this plan.  We also find out that the police believe that the U.S. pressure to fight the insurgents is beyond the scope of what they should be asked to do:

In Fallujah, police say residents have turned against them because of the collective-punishment tactics used by US forces. “The Americans started pushing us to fight the resistance, despite our contracts that clearly assigned us the duties of civil protection against normal crimes such as theft and tribal quarrels,” a police lieutenant said. “Now, 90% of the force has decided to quit rather than kill our brothers or get killed by them for the wishes of the Americans.” 

This sounds remarkably similar to ideas expressed in the Afghanistan war by fighters who were allegedly there to kill Taliban fighters.  Quoting from my post Afghanistan’s Lessons for Iraq: What Strategy?

Awol Gul was calm and relaxed as B-52s pummeled a mountain behind him and Al Qaeda sniper fire rang out in the distance. “They’ve been under quite a bit of pressure inside there,” he said. “It is likely that they have made a tactical withdrawal farther south. They have good roads, safe passage, and Mr. bin Laden has plenty of friends.

“We are not interested in killing the Arabs,” Mr. Gul went on to say. “They are our Muslim brothers.”

As I have pointed out, heavy reliance on proxy fighters to accomplish U.S. mission objectives can have unintended consequences, one of which is, in some cases, failure to achieve mission objectives.

The Marines in Ramadi are quite capable of counter-insurgency (COIN) operations and the proper conduct of “small wars.” The bone of contention is the doctrine of use of proxy fighters to effect stability while signficant enemy remain. To the extent that this remains a pivotal doctrine of COIN strategy, it may be a failing strategy.

As backdrop for this post, I will give a few points to help the discussion below make some sense. My post Ramadi, Iraq: A Mess, continues to be one of the most visited posts I have made since the start of blogging, visited by multiple visitors every day since its post date of August 1, and many of the visits continue to be from military personnel using military network domains. In part, my thinking about Ramadi led me to publish my post on The Debate Over Diminished Force Projection. In my post Afghanistan’s Lessons for Iraq: What Strategy?, I argue that premature cessation of operations to combat the enemy (and hence, the premature invocation of counterinsurgency tactics) is counterproductive. In my post Will we Lose the Anbar Province?, I stated:

Remembering Iraqi politics is necessary to understand why these things have happened, and invoking the lessons of Vietnam is not very helpful. Politics teaches us that to refer to “Iraqis

My Marine son would laugh at this panty-waist list of “torture” techniques. 

We now learn what the techniques are to which the pitiful John McCain and Lindsey Graham are so opposed.  Courtesy of RWN, here they are:

The techniques sought by the CIA are: induced hypothermia; forcing suspects to stand for prolonged periods; sleep deprivation; a technique called “the attention grab” where a suspect’s shirt is forcefully seized; the “attention slap” or open hand slapping that hurts but does not lead to physical damage; the “belly slap”; and sound and light manipulation. 

Now compare this to what our own men go through who train for the military.  In School of Infantry, my son has undergone sleep deprivation, heat, cold, being wet for extended periods of time, 100 pound backpacks and 40 pounds of body armor on 20 mile hikes, being assailed by leeches, ticks, chiggers, and snakes, and food deprivation.  The things that went on on boot camp … well, I say this honestly, I cannot discuss, because they inform young Marines that the things that go on in boot camp are not to be divulged.  I am also circumspect enough to know that I cannot discuss the things I know about boot camp at Parris Island.  But I can say without a shadow of doubt that the “torture” technques outlined above are panty-waist and pathetically laughable compared to what a young Marine goes through in boot training.  Also see one commenter to my post Harsher Prisoner Treatment Justified:

Actually, waterboarding is in fact a humane way to interogate (sic) prisoners because they aren’t physically injured. I have been waterboarded in special forces training and I can tell you that is terrifying. You really think you are going to die, but, in fact, you are being closely monitored and in no real danger.

I knew about SERE training for our own men, but failed to mention it in my initial post on this subject.  The link I gave you is worth the read, but fails to convey the real hardship that some of our special forces operators and pilots go through.  I have heard about it first hand from a pilot.  The prisoners at Gitmo have it good compared to our own men in uniform.

John and Lindsey, can we please cease and desist with the whimpering and hand-wringing now?  It embarrasses you.

My Marine son would laugh at this panty-waist list of “torture” techniques. 

We now learn what the techniques are to which the pitiful John McCain and Lindsey Graham are so opposed.  Courtesy of RWN, here they are:

The techniques sought by the CIA are: induced hypothermia; forcing suspects to stand for prolonged periods; sleep deprivation; a technique called “the attention grab” where a suspect’s shirt is forcefully seized; the “attention slap” or open hand slapping that hurts but does not lead to physical damage; the “belly slap”; and sound and light manipulation. 

Now compare this to what our own men go through who train for the military.  In School of Infantry, my son has undergone sleep deprivation, heat, cold, being wet for extended periods of time, 100 pound backpacks and 40 pounds of body armor on 20 mile hikes, being assailed by leeches, ticks, chiggers, and snakes, and food deprivation.  The things that went on on boot camp … well, I say this honestly, I cannot discuss, because they inform young Marines that the things that go on in boot camp are not to be divulged.  I am also circumspect enough to know that I cannot discuss the things I know about boot camp at Parris Island.  But I can say without a shadow of doubt that the “torture” technques outlined above are panty-waist and pathetically laughable compared to what a young Marine goes through in boot training.  Also see one commenter to my post Harsher Prisoner Treatment Justified:

Actually, waterboarding is in fact a humane way to interogate (sic) prisoners because they aren’t physically injured. I have been waterboarded in special forces training and I can tell you that is terrifying. You really think you are going to die, but, in fact, you are being closely monitored and in no real danger.

I knew about SERE training for our own men, but failed to mention it in my initial post on this subject.  The link I gave you is worth the read, but fails to convey the real hardship that some of our special forces operators and pilots go through.  I have heard about it first hand from a pilot.  The prisoners at Gitmo have it good compared to our own men in uniform.

John and Lindsey, can we please cease and desist with the whimpering and hand-wringing now?  It embarrasses you.

The contention between the House Intelligence Committee and the national intelligence community continues, while Condoleezza Rice continues to believe (falsely) that Russia will support sanctions.  Meanwhile, Iran continues its push to go nuclear.

The U.S. intelligence community still suffers from the Clinton administration’s stripping it thread-bare of human intelligence resources.  There is a woeful dearth of reliable and trustworthy information concerning the precise state of affairs of the Iranian nuclear enrichment program.  Even so, the U.S. intelligence community is sticking to its guns by refusing to revise the timeline for a nuclear Iran, in a showdown with the House Intelligence Committee.  At the same time, Israel’s foreign minister Tzipi Livni said on Sunday that the world may have as little as a few months to avoid a nuclear Iran, and called for sanctions.

Elsewhere we learn that the EU is capitulating and Condoleezza Rice actually believes that Russia and China will support the U.S. as it pertains to U.N. sanctions.  Of course, this is false.  As Dick Morris reported on FNC a few nights ago, and has reported elsewhere, Russia is practicing regional energy hegemony, and needs the natural gas supply from Iran to effect this control over energy.  Neither Russia nor China will support sanctions, and it is mystifying that Rice believes so.

Finally, we learn that:

Another of the U.S. officials said intel reports show Iran was experiencing significant problems with gyroscopes it has been trying to install on missiles that could deliver Iranian bombs to targets in the region and even further. 

In the total absence of consideration of a nuclear program, Iran is pursuing missile technology that it does not need to defend itself from any sort of regional aggression.

Prior:

• Iran’s Highly Enriched Uranium from Spent Fuel? Not Hardly
• Iran’s Heavy Water Reactor
• Highly Enriched Uranium Found in Iran

Over at RWN, John Hawkins publishes a piece by Right Thinking Girl on the embarrassing, shameful and unnecessary practices of the TSA.  I and my wife have had some of these same experiences, and there has been no dearth of ugly words from me directed at the semi-literates doing the searching.

But no amount of ugly words can change things.  The TSA still suffers from the ghosts of Norman Mineta, notwithstanding the inept people it has working for the administration.  So here is the two-part solution I propose to ensure that we have a safer tomorrow in our air adventures.

Since it is commonly known that the real purpose of the searches is not to make us safer, but rather, to create the appearance of being safer, let’s turn these searches into something useful rather than something shameful, where little old white ladies who use walking canes are patted down in front of people.  Let’s profile men of Arabic descent.  In order to assure that the courts do not interfere, the Congress should use the power given to it under Article III of the Constitution, where it can forbid the courts from taking up the matter in judicial review later.  Since little old white laddies who use canes do not blow aircraft up, this should be a step in the right direction.

Second, the Congress ought immediately to draft legislation ordering the termination of all TSA employees and outsource the job of transportation security to private companies.  Then the TSA employees can go and compete for jobs based on their qualifications.

Until and unless we do this, we are not taking the GWOT or our own transportation safety seriously.  We only pretend to.

Prior:

• Stupid Searches by TSA
• TSA Shows no Respect for Military: One More Reason to Loath Them
• Norman Mineta Leaves – Thank God!

In honor of the great post by Right Thinking Girl, I am making a new category called “TSA Ineptitude.”  I welcome my readers to send me input for this category as you encounter TSA ineptitude in the future.

If Afghanistan is the model for contemporary counterinsurgency operations, then the U.S. ought to rethink its strategy.  There is a role for both special operators and regulars in today’s warfare.  Cessation of regular operations too soon is counterproductive.

Bill Roggio is covering the fact that Pakistan has released more than 2500 al-Qaeda and Taliban, most of whom are heading to Waziristan.  Bill also covers the continuing operations in Afghanistan, stating that:

But the Afghan and Coalition efforts may merely be a holding action. Attempts to stabilize the provinces on the Pakistani border has been a difficult task as Taliban and al-Qaeda have used Pakistan’s Baluchistan and North West Frontier Provinces as bases of operations … The fighting in Afghanistan will only intensify.

Vital Perspective is reporting (from Jane’s Defence) that the Army and Marine Corps are putting the finishing touches on a new counter-insurgency manual that is designed to fill a crucial gap in U.S. military doctrine.  Afghanistan has lessons for our struggle in Iraq.  If this manual doesn’t mention and learn from our (at least partially) failed strategy in Afghanistan, then they should go back to the drawing board.

Much has been made about counterinsurgency warfare and the strategy the U.S. uses to attain peace and stability in Iraq.  The Washington Post recently published an article entitled In a Volatile Region of Iraq, U.S. Military Takes Two Paths.  In this article, the Staff Writer compares and contrasts two (allegedly) different approaches to securing peace and stability in the al Anbar province (the problems of which I have written on in my post Will We Lose the Anbar Province?).  I have also discussed the debate over force size and military footprint in my post The Debate Over Diminished Force Projection, which bears on the subject of force size and strategy and how various forces are utilized.

The Washington Post article is similar to those published previously, where the special forces operator is characterized as smart, patient, politically astute, and easily maleable and adaptable in new and challenging situations, while the non-special forces are depicted as dull, stolid, slow to adapt, and hopelessly educated and trained in the age-old military practices and stategy, much of which is too coarse and heavy-handed for the current situation in Iraq.  One is left to conclude that the regulars are knuckle-draggers.  It is an easy article to write — an easy story to tell.

The truth is neither of these depictions, and it is not somewhere in between.  The truth is more complicated.  As I have noted before from the U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Urban Resolve program:

In military operations since World War II, United States forces have preferred to bypass major urban areas to avoid the costly combat expected inside cities.

There is a huge difference between bypassing the troops (both regular and irregular such as the Fedayeen) on our advance to Baghdad, leaving the enemy behind, and killing the enemy if he can be identified and located, when he is identified and located.  The special forces might claim that the entire operation should have been a counterinsurgency operation, while the regulars might claim that we stopped conventional operations too soon, and much of the enemy was still intact when we switched over to counterinsurgency strategy.

There are those who are complaining that the regulars are not taking an approach that more closely resembles newer and more sophisticated counter-insurgency techniques.  But ironically, no one complains that the Afghanistan campaign was too “regular.”  In fact, it was nothing but irregular and Special Forces operations.  We primarily used the Northern Alliance to drive the Taliban from northern Afghanistan and Kabul, while we relied heavily on three tribal leaders / warlords, at least one of whom could not be trusted, to attempt closure with the enemy at Tora Bora.  The attitude of many of the fighters was in part responsible for the failure to close in on the enemy.  From the perspective of one fighter:

Awol Gul was calm and relaxed as B-52s pummeled a mountain behind him and Al Qaeda sniper fire rang out in the distance. “They’ve been under quite a bit of pressure inside there,” he said. “It is likely that they have made a tactical withdrawal farther south. They have good roads, safe passage, and Mr. bin Laden has plenty of friends.

“We are not interested in killing the Arabs,” Mr. Gul went on to say. “They are our Muslim brothers.”

We lost Osama bin Laden and hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Taliban fighters.  When the last cave was taken at Tora Bora:

On Dec. 16, Afghan warlords announced they had advanced into the last of the Tora Bora caves. One young commander fighting with 600 of his own troops alongside Ali and Ghamsharik, Haji Zahir, could not have been less pleased with the final prize. There were only 21 bedraggled Al Qaeda fighters who were taken prisoners. “No one told us to surround Tora Bora,” Mr. Zahir complained. “The only ones left inside for us were the stupid ones, the foolish and the weak.”

Today the Taliban and al Qaeda have control over Waziristan, have recently fought the Pakistani army to a draw, have seen 2500 of their fellow Taliban released, and have managed to inflict enough terror into Afghanistan that 267 schools have been forced to cease operations altogether.  If Afghanistan is the model for special operations, then we ought to rethink how we are conducting these operations.

There is a place for special operations, and certainly there is need always to adapt our techniques to the circumstances.  And with counterterrorist tactics being all the rage now, should I be bold enough to say that it is not the answer to all of our problems?

When we lose thousands of Taliban at Tora Bora, fighters are shooting at Marines and Soldiers in foxholes in Ramadi and U.S. forces will not hunt down and kill the enemy in response (while they also take bets as to when they will be attacked again), and no one in the chain of command can make a decision to kill 190 Taliban at a funeral because of “religious sensibilities,” may I suggest that we need to re-evaluate our strategy?  And to reflexively demur to special operations is easy, but not the answer.