Archive for the 'Afghanistan' Category

The administration has announced its Afghanistan strategy, parts of which are reproduced below.

Let me start by addressing the way forward in Pakistan. The United States has great respect for the Pakistani people. They have a rich history and have struggled against long odds to sustain their democracy. The people of Pakistan want the same things that we want. An end to terror, access to basic services, the opportunity to live their dreams and the security that can only come with the rule of law. The single greatest threat to that future comes from Al Qaida and their extremist allies. And that is why we must stand together …

So, today, I’m calling upon Congress to pass a bipartisan bill co-sponsored by John Kerry and Richard Lugar that authorizes $1.5 billion in direct support to the Pakistani people every year over the next five years, resources that will build schools, roads, and hospitals, and strengthen Pakistan’s democracy …

Now, we must make a commitment that can accomplish our goals. I’ve already ordered the deployment of 17,000 troops that have been requested by General McKiernan for many months. These soldiers and Marines will take the fight to the Taliban in the south and the east and give us a great capacity to partner with Afghan security forces and to go after insurgents along the border.

This push will also help provide security in advance of the important presidential elections in Afghanistan in August. At the same time, we will shift the emphasis of our mission to training and increasing the size of Afghan security forces so that they can eventually take the lead in securing their country. That’s how we will prepare Afghans to take responsibility for their security and how we will, ultimately, be able to bring our own troops home …

The additional troops that we deployed have already increased our training capacity. And later this spring, we will deploy approximately 4,000 U.S. troops to train Afghan security forces. For the first time, this will truly resource our effort to train and support the Afghan army and police.

Every American unit in Afghanistan will be partnered with an Afghan unit, and we will seek additional trainers from our NATO allies to ensure that every Afghan unit has a coalition partner. We will accelerate our efforts to build an Afghan army of 134,000 and a police for the of 82,000 so that we can meet these goals by 2011 …

At a time of economic crisis, it’s tempting to believe that we can short change the civilian effort. But make no mistake, our efforts will fail in Afghanistan and Pakistan if we don’t invest in their future. And that’s why my budget includes indispensable investments in our State Department and foreign assistance programs.

These investments relieve the burden on our troops. They contribute directly to security. They make the American people safer. And they save us an enormous amount of money in the long run because it’s far cheaper to train a policeman to secure his or her own village that to help a farmer seed a crop or to help a farmer seed a crop than it is to send our troops to fight tour after tour of duty with no transition to Afghan responsibility.

Analysis & Commentary

We fear that this strategy will be disastrous in the superlative degree.  Several points are in order prior to summary and conclusion.

1. This strategy places too large of a bet on similarities between Americans and Pakistanis.  We weighed in concerning the Pakistani elections one year ago amid the celebration among U.S. politicians that the Pakistanis had rejected religious extremism, saying that their analysis missed the point.  The elections rejected the incompetence of the official Islamic clerics who had poorly governed the tribal regions, but the party that had been put into power represented what those who were more familiar with Pakistani politics had feared – a voter rejection of the war on terror.  The Tehrik-i-Taliban (Taliban of Pakistan) and their supporters boycotted the elections and were untouched by the votes.
2. More money is exactly what the Pakistan government wants.  As one former Pakistani official told Dexter Filkins,  The reason the Pakistani security services support the Taliban, he said, is for money: after the 9/11 attacks, the Pakistani military concluded that keeping the Taliban alive was the surest way to win billions of dollars in aid that Pakistan needed to survive. The military’s complicated relationship with the Taliban is part of what the officialcalled the Pakistani military’s “strategic games.” Like other Pakistanis, this former senior officialspoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of what he was telling me.  “Pakistan is dependent on the American money that these games with the Taliban generate,” the officialtold me. “The Pakistani economy would collapse without it. This is how the game works.”As an example, he cited the Pakistan Army’s first invasion of the tribal areas — of South Waziristan in 2004. Called Operation Shakai, the offensive was ostensibly aimed at ridding the area of Taliban militants. From an American perspective, the operation was a total failure. The army invaded, fought and then made a deal with one of the militant commanders, Nek Mohammed. The agreement was capped by a dramatic meeting between Mohammed and SafdarHussein, one of the most senior officers in the Pakistan Army.“The corps commander was flown in on a helicopter,” the former official said. “They had this big ceremony, and they embraced. They called each other mujahids. ”“The army agreed to compensate the locals for collateral damage,” the officialsaid. “Where do you think that money went? It went to the Taliban. Who do you think paid the bill? The Americans. This is the way the game works. The Taliban is attacked, but it is never destroyed. “It’s a game,” the official said, wrapping up our conversation. “The U.S. is being taken for a ride.”
3. 17,000 troops have not been requested by General McKiernan.  This additional force presence meets only around 2/3 of what McKiernan had requested as of February 2009.  Furthermore, this request should be seen in the light of the fact that the U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan are so under-resourced that contractors are now being sought to provide Forward Operating Base (FOB) force protection.  Quite literally, contractors will be used to stand post at FOBs because there aren’t enough troops supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.
4. As we have pointed out before, the Afghan National Army is the most trusted institution in Afghanistan, and so the campaign must eventually expand, empower, train and equip the Army to protect the population.  The Police aren’t far behind in the trust the population places in it, but there are extreme problems with both corruption and drug abuse (on duty) within the police.  The Afghan Army is shot through with drug abuse as well.  The campaign has lacked force projection and destruction of the enemy’s power to intimidate the population, and it simply isn’t the time or season for the effort to rely so heavily on indigenous forces.
5. We have supported efforts at reconstruction and agricultural assistance, but it must be remembered that agricultural efforts won’t rid the country of Taliban.  We’ve pointed out a clever plan to replace poppy and opium as the crop of choice with pomegranates.  Asked about the how this plan might affect the Taliban, the proponent said “In the complexity of the tribal system in Afghanistan, the Taliban are in every element of society.  When I talked at the three tribal gatherings, the Taliban were present. I believe that if we don’t communicate with every faction of this problem, we’re not going to solve it.”  So the plan to replace poppy with pomegranates redounds to fixing Afghanistan as the opium supplier of the world while it continues to strengthen the Taliban because the plan has no parallel line of effort to kill the Taliban.

In a sign of how under-resourced and poorly constructed this plan is, the administration plan was met with praise from both Presidents Zardari and Karzai – Zardari because Pakistan gets the right answer to their query to “show me the money,” and Karzai because he wants international forces to play a secondary role to Afghan forces.

It should be remembered that Karzai has aggressively sought a Status of Forces Agreement similar to the one under which the U.S. currently operates in Iraq.  Karzai also happens to be the Afghan President who said to Taliban leader Mullah Omar “My brother, my dear, come back to your homeland. Come back and work for peace, for the good of the Afghan people. Stop this business of brothers killing brothers.”

The Afghan Army and Police aren’t ready for a rapid or massive turnover of authority to them.  The government isn’t prepared to be the foundation for these institutions due to the endemic corruption, and the U.S. shouldn’t be ready to settle with any insurgents without first having a fight.

Finally, the most troubling aspect of the administration plan is its failure to address the issue of the Taliban.  Al Qaeda is mentioned, but the hosts for AQ training camps receive little attention.  In fact, while disparate and factious, the Taliban mission has steadily harmonized over the past few years: to “support the regional war and then the global war against Western hegemony; this is the concept driving the neo-Taliban.”

The globalist jihad movement of al Qaeda has been merged with the Tehrik-i-Taliban of Pakistan.  The TTP shout to passersby in Khyber “We are Taliban! We are mujahedin! We are al-Qaida!”  There is no distinction.  A Pakistan interior ministry official has even said that the TTP and al Qaeda are one and the same.

TTP chief Baitullah Mehsud has said “We want to eradicate Britain and America, and to shatter the arrogance and tyranny of the infidels. We pray that Allah will enable us to destroy the White House, New York, and London.”  Now there are even indications that the original Afghan Taliban under Mullah Omar have morphed into an organization that desires regional Islamist revolutions.

There are some indigenous poor who might be able to be stripped away from the hard core Taliban fighters, but the campaign is much more than a counterterrorism operation against some al Qaeda fighters.  It is a full blown insurgency that must be defeated with a full orbed counterinsurgency.  Anything else won’t do.  There still aren’t enough troops in the plan, and it is more likely to cause the diminishing of respect for American troops across the globe than simply withdrawing completely and going back in to topple the next problematic regime.

Regular readers of The Captain’s Journal know what we believe regarding negotiations with the Taliban.  Some indigenous poor may be stripped away from the hard core Taliban, but the hard core Taliban cannot be reconciled.  We needn’t rehearse this issue again.  But there is a recent analysis on negotiating with the Taliban that has both an important and related observation.

The premise underlying negotiations is that the insurgency can be short-circuited by splitting commanders who are fighting because of grievances like the civilian deaths in U.S. military operations away from true believers loyal to Taliban founder and Osama bin Laden ally Mullah Mohammad Omar.

Other experts have serious doubts. They say Omar and the leaders of associated militant groups believe that President Hamid Karzai’s government has lost popular support and they are winning against U.S.-led military forces. So long as they are of that view, there can be no peace, these experts say.

“Afghanistan was created by God for this kind of guerrilla fighting. It has high mountains and long valleys and narrow trails,” said Wahid Mughzdah, a former anti-Soviet fighter-turned-political analyst who worked in the Foreign Ministry during the former Taliban regime. “Al-Qaida and the Taliban understand that America doesn’t have a chance of success in this country.”

Further, he said, the Taliban are no longer only concerned with imposing Islamic rule on Afghanistan, but have adopted al-Qaida’s aim of staging Islamist revolutions throughout Asia and the Middle East.

We’ve already dealt with the evolution of the thinking of the Tehrik-i-Taliban to a much more global perspective in Resurgence of Taliban and al Qaeda, something Nicholas Schmidle calls the next-gen Taliban.  Until now The Captain’s Journal has always been careful to distinguish between the Tehrik-i-Taliban of Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban led by Mullah Omar, emphasizing that the globalist perspective had thoroughly set in to the TTP world view, but somewhat less so for the Afghan Taliban.

Some may object that Wahid Mughzdah is exaggerating, but if so, for what purpose?  In either case, this data point suggests that there is less difference between the Tehrik-i-Taliban and the Afghan Taliban than we thought.  It is only a single data point, but it is an important one.  File this away with the label “very important” and tag it to make it easily search-able for instant recall.

Another nonsense Strategy Page article.

The U.S. believes that many al Qaeda leaders have fled to southwest Pakistan (Baluchistan) to escape the increasing number of U.S. UAV missile attacks in the Pushtun tribal areas along the Afghan border. The UAV attacks are apparently following al Qaeda into Baluchistan. Both Britain and the U.S. are sending more trainers to Pakistan, to show the paramilitary Frontier Corps better techniques for dealing with the Taliban. The Frontier Corps recruits from the local tribes and normally acts as a rural constabulary. Fighting the heavily armed and fanatical Taliban is often more than the Frontier Corps troopers can handle.

The Baluchi tribes are not as violently opposed to the government as the Pushtun ones. While the Pushtun tribes want independence, the Baluchis mainly want more autonomy (and a larger share of the money from the oil and gas fields on their territory.) The Pushtun tribes (15 percent of the population, in the north and east, along the Afghan border) and the Baluchi tribes (four percent, in the southwest) do not get along with the majority Punjabis (45 percent of the population) or Sindhis (14 percent) in the eastern lowlands. The resulting violence has been going for over a thousand years.

Many Indians are coming to regard Pakistan as a failed state. Politically and economically unstable, with far more factional violence than India, the Pakistani leaders seem unable to agree among themselves, or act in concert, to solve fundamental problems. Not a lot of change since the nation was created 60 years ago, and many aspects of Pakistani society have gotten worse. Prospects are not good.

The big problem with Pakistan is that the many factions are more into themselves than they are “Pakistan.” The military, the Pushtun tribes, the Baluchi tribes, various religious factions and the few hundred families that own most of the country, all see themselves as more important than Pakistan. For the country to survive, there has to be more “civil society” (lots of Pakistanis of put the needs of the country above their partisan goals.) The Taliban are basically another faction, combining conservative tribal and extremist religious elements. The Taliban solve nothing, and just cause a lot of violence. Most Pakistanis realize this, and are willing to fight against the Taliban, but less enthusiastic about fighting for Pakistan.

In Indian controlled Kashmir, about twenty soldiers, civilians and terrorists were killed in the last few days. While the Islamic radicals have lost much of their capabilities there, the intense hostility between Kashmiri Moslems and Indian police remains.

In the Swat Valley, the Taliban have ordered all aid or advocacy groups out of the area. The Taliban plan to impose a strict Islamic lifestyle, which won’t work. Just like it didn’t work in Afghanistan in the 1990s. But the idea lives on.

Sometimes I wonder what those guys are smoking over at the Strategy Page.  So much of their analysis is interesting and timely, but they don’t do a good job of staying between the ditches.

Where to begin.  First of all, the Taliban are more than just troubling folk who cause violence.  They are taking over much of Pakistan, and their leaders, Baitullah Mehsud and others, have communicated a global ambition and vision.

Second, the Pakistanis have done nothing to cause us to believe that most of them are willing to fight the Taliban.  “Settlement” after “ceasefire” after “settlement” with the Tehrik-i-Taliban has allowed the continuing strengthening of the Taliban and the diminution of the writ of state in the NWFP and FATA.

Third, a strict, Islamic lifestyle has worked in the NWFP and FATA because of the threat of death to those who oppose it.  It also worked in Afghanistan until the Taliban were overthrown during the initial stages of Operation Enduring Freedom.  Have the analysts at the Strategy Page forgotten that the Taliban were still in charge of Afghanistan during 9/11?

Finally, while the Pakistani political leadership has certainly shown the factious nature and incompetence in governing, that hasn’t caused the Taliban extremism in the NWFP and FATA.  Pakistan may be an almost failed-state, as are many nations in the world.  Not all of them have al Qaeda or the Taliban.  Poverty doesn’t lead to militant, Islamic radicalism, and militant, Islamic radicalism isn’t just another brand of insurgency seeking more influence and governmental legitimacy.

It appears that details of the administration’s plan for Afghanistan is leaking out piece by piece.

President Barack Obama has been given a new Afghan war strategy that calls for linking aid to Pakistan to its willingness to fight extremists and narrowing the U.S. mission to preventing attacks on American soil from there or Afghanistan, said people familiar with the plan.

The strategy will entail increasing Afghan security forces and strengthening crop substitution to deny opium revenue to the Taliban, Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, said March 21 …

Previewing the new strategy, Holbrooke said the U.S. favors greater investment in agriculture to wean Afghanistan away from the opium poppy production that finances the Taliban insurgency. Opium is the raw ingredient in heroin …

The draft plan suggests raising U.S. non-military assistance to Pakistan, especially for job creation aimed at those drawn to militant action for money, while conditioning military help on measurable cooperation against extremists in the border province of Baluchistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where the Taliban has regrouped.

Measurable cooperation against extremists.  This sounds nice, but is naive in the superlative.  Regular readers of The Captain’s Journal know about the games of duplicity in Pakistan.

ONE SWELTERING AFTERNOON in July, I ventured into the elegant home of a former Pakistani official who recently retired after several years of serving in senior government posts. We sat in his book-lined study. A servant brought us tea and biscuits.

Was it the obsession with India that led the Pakistani military to support the Taliban? I asked him.

“Yes,” he said.

Or is it the anti-Americanism and pro-Islamic feelings in the army?

“Yes,” he said, that too.

And then the retired Pakistani official offered another explanation — one that he said could never be discussed in public. The reason the Pakistani security services support the Taliban, he said, is for money: after the 9/11 attacks, the Pakistani military concluded that keeping the Taliban alive was the surest way to win billions of dollars in aid that Pakistan needed to survive. The military’s complicated relationship with the Taliban is part of what the official called the Pakistani military’s “strategic games.” Like other Pakistanis, this former senior official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of what he was telling me.

“Pakistan is dependent on the American money that these games with the Taliban generate,” the official told me. “The Pakistani economy would collapse without it. This is how the game works.”

Read the whole thing.  If Holbrooke thinks that the games are finished because his contacts tell him so, then his is sadly mistaken.  Further, we have dealt with this issue of poppy and opium being the sole contribution to Taliban wealth.  The Taliban are able to turn a profit from kidnapping, mining operations, taxes on small businesses, and even pomegranates.  Stopping opium production only means that the Taliban turn to other means.  It doesn’t make them go away.

On another front, Rich Lowry of the National Review weighs in with prose on what hasn’t worked in Afghanistan.

If Afghanistan is far from lost, it isn’t susceptible to quick fixes, either. Scaling back our commitment to focus on only counter-terrorism operations — targeted strikes against high-value targets — risks a generalized collapse that would make much of the country a safe haven for terrorists and empower the extremists across the border threatening the Pakistani government. A regional meltdown would become all too possible. Reconciling with elements of the Taliban is another fantasy, since there aren’t moderate Taliban with whom to reconcile. Less-committed local fighters can be pulled away from the insurgency, but only if the insurgency is first beaten back.

No, the only way we can succeed in Afghanistan — i.e., create  a government minimally competent and decent enough to sustain itself — is by undertaking the hard work of counter-insurgency, as we did in Iraq with the surge.

So has someone  been reading The Captain’s Journal, we asked Rich?  Rich responded:

I’m with you hersch! How can we leave huge chunks of hemand prov open and uncontested to the insurgents and then conclude the war’s not working?? (I don’t think the development piece has been really been tried either)

Right.  Helmand Province, Khost, and all of the rest in Eastern and Southern Afghanistan.

The 101st Airborne on patrol near Bagram Air Base, North of Kabul.

Regular readers of The Captain’s Journal know that we haven’t covered the missile strikes or supposed hits on high value targets (HVT) in either Afghanistan or Pakistan.  This strategy, i.e., attacking mid- to high-level commanders in the hopes that the organization or ideology will disintegrate, is wasteful of time and resources.

Note that our objection has nothing to do with collateral damage, or the alleged benefit of these strikes to Taliban recruitment.  We simply believe that the strategy will fail.  And fail it has indeed, at least thus far.  But it appears as if not only will the U.S. continue to engage in strikes to HVT, the program is set to expand into Quetta, Pakistan.

President Obama and his national security advisers are considering expanding the American covert war in Pakistan far beyond the unruly tribal areas to strike at a different center of Taliban power in Baluchistan, where top Taliban leaders are orchestrating attacks into southern Afghanistan.

According to senior administration officials, two of the high-level reports on Pakistan and Afghanistan that have been forwarded to the White House in recent weeks have called for broadening the target area to include a major insurgent sanctuary in and around the city of Quetta.

Mullah Muhammad Omar, who led the Taliban government that was ousted in the American-led invasion in 2001, has operated with near impunity out of the region for years, along with many of his deputies.

The extensive missile strikes being carried out by Central Intelligence Agency-operated drones have until now been limited to the tribal areas, and have never been extended into Baluchistan, a sprawling province that is under the authority of the central government, and which abuts the parts of southern Afghanistan where recent fighting has been the fiercest. Fear remains within the American government that extending the raids would worsen tensions. Pakistan complains that the strikes violate its sovereignty.

But some American officials say the missile strikes in the tribal areas have forced some leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to flee south toward Quetta, making them more vulnerable. In separate reports, groups led by both Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of American forces in the region, and Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, a top White House official on Afghanistan, have recommended expanding American operations outside the tribal areas if Pakistan cannot root out the strengthening insurgency.

Many of Mr. Obama’s advisers are also urging him to sustain orders issued last summer by President George W. Bush to continue Predator drone attacks against a wider range of targets in the tribal areas. They also are recommending preserving the option to conduct cross-border ground actions, using C.I.A. and Special Operations commandos, as was done in September. Mr. Bush’s orders also named as targets a wide variety of insurgents seeking to topple Pakistan’s government. Mr. Obama has said little in public about how broadly he wants to pursue those groups.

Just to be clear because the New York Times is not, when they refer to the Taliban, they mean the original Afghanistan Taliban under the command of Mullah Mohammed Omar, not the Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP) under various commands, most specifically Baitullah Mehsud.  The TTP resides mostly in the FATA and NWFP (while they also send fighters into Afghanistan), while the Afghan Taliban fight in Afghanistan and seek safe haven and rest in and around Quetta, Pakistan.

We have previously discussed our principled objection to the centerpiece of the Afghanistan / Pakistan operation being cloak and dagger raids and missile strikes against HVT.  It isn’t counterinsurgency; it’s counterterrorism.  But a much more pragmatic objection is that it simply doesn’t work.  It has been tried and failed now for more than six years.  The new strategy of “more of the same” won’t work.

One reason that it has failed – although not by any stretch the only reason – is that it doesn’t really put the enemy on the defensive.  That’s also the problem with the so-called negotiations that the current administration wants to pursue with the Taliban.  The deluge of noise on negotiations convinces no one that the Taliban are actually being compelled to negotiate, and everyone that the U.S. is pining for the end of the fight.

Gareth Porter with the Asia Times succinctly explains why this strategy won’t work.  “Jonathan Landay of McClatchy newspapers reported from Kabul on Sunday that experts on the Taliban express “serious doubts” about the splitting strategy, because insurgent leaders believe they are winning and the Hamid Karzai government is growing weaker.”

Recall that we’ve already discussed our opinion (The Coming Battle for Afghanistan) that Biden’s position that only 5% of the Taliban are incorrigible is simply daydreaming, and that in reality it is the indigenous poor that can be targeted for turning against the Taliban.  But simply put, the switching of sides is not something that can be engineered.  Force projection is necessary, and that for a protracted duration.  The Afghans must see the U.S. as the stronger horse in the race.

As for Pakistan, there is happy talk about the reinstatement of previously sacked Supreme Court judges in Pakistan to their posts and what this means about the rule of law.  The rule of law is disintegrating in Pakistan with the erstwhile Talibanization of the FATA and NWFP, and the ongoing Talibanization of Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad.  Supreme Court judges are a side show.

Regarding the objection that the Taliban cannot be defeated unless their safe havens are ended in Pakistan, this complaint rings empty when the forces have not been committed to win the campaign in Afghanistan.  The field is ripe for counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, and no HVT campaign in Pakistan will replace the need to do COIN in Afghanistan.  Afghanistan first, then Pakistan as the campaign proceeds – and after the Pakistani Army and the Taliban see that we’re serious about the campaign.

We have closely followed the implementation of the Taliban strategy (pointed out here at The Captain’s Journal one year ago and one half year before it began in earnest) to shut down lines of logistics via the Khyber region and through the Torkham Crossing.  The closing of the Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan has occurred due to entirely different reasons than enemy strategy.  Or has it?  Russia is asserting itself in what it considers to be its near abroad, and has essentially bribed the officials in Kyrgyzstan to close down the Manas Air Base.  This makes the U.S. utterly dependent on logistical lines that run through Russia to Central Asia.  Of course, this places the U.S. in a precarious position regarding membership of Georgia and Ukraine in NATO, as well as missile programs in Poland and elsewhere.  If the U.S. is dependent on Russia for logistics, then it is much more likely that Russia will be able to assert itself in the region with U.S. weakness because of dependence on Russian cooperation for logistics.

For this reason The Captain’s Journal had recommended approximately two months ago that the U.S. work harder on a potential logistical lines through the Caucasus region, specifically, from the Mediterranean Sea through the Bosporus Strait in Turkey, and from there into the Black Sea.  From the Black Sea the supplies would go through Georgia to neighboring Azerbaijan.  From here the supplies would transit across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan, and from there South to Afghanistan.

If this line of supply came to pass, then this leaves the issue of refueling for air supply and transit through the region unaddressed, since this was the primary mission of the Manas Air Base.  Stephen Blank, professor at the US Army War College, has written that of the potential replacements for Manas, none appear to be viable.  But unaddressed in Blank’s commentary is the potential to base air support in either Azerbaijan or Turkmenistan.

Returning to lines of logistical supply, as we recently reported, there are ongoing talks concerning the Caucasus region regarding the very routes we have discussed.  Furthermore, trial runs of supplies are ongoing to test these routes.

… the Air Force is working on contingency plans to move the tanker fleet to bases in the Persian Gulf if it loses basing rights to Manas.

The Azeri capital, Baku, is emerging as a leading candidate to substitute for Manas, should the Kyrgyz government refuse to reconsider its withdrawal of the basing rights.

American and Azeri officials said that the focus of the discussions on Monday and Tuesday was a surface route that would move supplies from the Georgian port of Poti on the Black Sea and overland to Baku, where they would cross the Caspian Sea to Aktau, Kazakhstan, and then overland across Uzbekistan into Afghanistan.

A second potential route would land cargo at the Caspian seaport of Turkmenbashi, in Turkmenistan, for transit into Afghanistan. Talks on supply routes have also been held with officials in Tajikistan, another neighbor to the north of Afghanistan.

One American official said the first “trial run” of cargo containers on the new route was conducted within the last two weeks, with shipments of lumber sent from Turkey to Georgia to Azerbaijan, and then onward toward Afghanistan.

So this report notes not one, but two potential lines of logistical supply over land, as well as the potential replacement of the Manas Air Base with Baku, Azerbaijan.  At this point it might be that the Russians backpedal on disallowing Manas to continue to function (thus the recent equivocation in the news), since U.S. involvement in the Caucasus (i.e., their near abroad) is the last thing they want.

But this logistical transit route is viable.  First to Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan is more developed than Turkmenistan, and is obviously the center of gravity of both of the potential logistical lines discussed above.  Baku would be almost ideal for an air base to support refueling operations for U.S. aircraft supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.  Turkmenistan is far less developed, and the only viable route for supplies would go through Ashgabat from the port city of Turkmenbashi, and then South to Kandahar or East to Kabul.

Much ink has been spent spilled over the human rights record of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and both are undoubtedly repressive regimes, although there is evidence that Turkmenistan is slowly and gradually changing for the better.  There is also significant corruption in Turkmenistan.  But there is also indication that Turkmenistan is opening up to economic cooperation.  They have expressed an interest in becoming an associative partner in the ECO (Economic Cooperation Organization), and have recently opened their air space to NATO supply flights to Afghanistan.

The U.S. has a history of moral preening when it comes to working with unsavory dictators and political regimes, but this preening must be put aside in favor of functionality and logistics.  Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan have all expressed an interest in working with the U.S. to enable lines of logistical supply to Afghanistan.  This plan is, after all, what provided more than 40% of the supplies to Russian troops during their campaign.

Moreover, a stronger presence in the Caucasus region is in the interests of the U.S. in both the near and long term.  Stronger ties will serve to ensure continued supplies to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, cement critical relations in this region and Central Asia, and provide a counterbalance to Russia’s increasing hegemony in their near abroad.  It is the right time and circumstances to engage the Caucasus.

Postscript: The Captain’s Journal thanks Mr. Bob King, Instructor, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Department of Joint, Interagency and Multinational Operations, Leavenworth, for the encouragement to write this article.

Introduction

Several related but sometimes divergent reports are given below, followed by commentary and analysis.

Max Boot, Frederick Kagan and Kimberly Kagan, New York Times:

The main challenge is to overcome years of chronic neglect in terms of economic development, government services and above all security, which has allowed the insurgency free access to large swaths of the country. The good news is that the Taliban holds little appeal for most Afghans — a BBC-ABC News poll last month showed only 4 percent desired Taliban rule. The Sunni and Shiite insurgencies in Iraq, by contrast, maintained much greater support in their respective communities until they were defeated.

Even without much popular backing, Afghan insurgents are staging an increasing number of attacks, but major cities like Kabul and Jalalabad, which we visited, are relatively safe and flourishing. The civilian death toll in Afghanistan last year was 16 times lower than that in Iraq in the pre-surge year of 2006, even though Afghanistan is more populous.

Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times:

Ahead of the resumption of battle in Afghanistan now that the weather is warmer, the Taliban have a virtual siege all around the capital Kabul. They have significant control in the vital districts of Wardak, Logar, Parwan and Kapisa.

A second strategic ring to reinforce this siege comprises the provinces of Kunar, Nooristan and Ghazni. The four vital entry and exit routes for the Taliban’s supply lines – Nimroz, Herat, Nangarhar and Kandahar – are also heavily manned by the militants.

In addition, after striking peace deals with the Pakistani security forces, the newly formed United Front of Taliban in the Pakistani tribal areas is ready to pump at least 15,000 to 20,000 fresh fighters into Afghanistan. These are expected to start crossing the rugged – and unmanned – border in April …

“Five percent of the Taliban is incorrigible, not susceptible to anything other than being defeated,” Biden said. “Another 25% or so are not quite sure, in my view, of the intensity of their commitment to the insurgency. Roughly 70% are involved because of the money.”

In a weekend New York Times interview, Obama floated the idea of engaging with non-radical members of the insurgency, as Afghanistan heads toward August 20 elections that will test its ability to govern itself.

However, it appears that Washington has already missed the boat. The reason is the all-time high domination of al-Qaeda-influenced militants – the neo-Taliban – who are not willing to make any deal short of the withdrawal of foreign occupation forces and the restoration of the Taliban regime.

Despite the killing of a large number of important al-Qaeda commanders, these hardliners have a strong presence among the Pakistan militants allied with the three main commanders – Mullah Bradar, Sirajuddin Haqqani and Anwarul Haq Mujahid. These three have pledged their allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, who has transformed the Taliban into an ultra-conservative force compared to a few years ago when the Taliban were a Pashtun tribal movement.

Paula Newton, CNN:

Kabul is clogged with traffic and people and at the best of times there is no way to assure safety in this city. And it’s alarming for this correspondent to hear the same line from both the Taliban and one of the city’s top cops: Insurgents can hit the city anytime, anywhere.

That’s not to say the Kabul Police force isn’t trying. They are now talking about a double ring of security around the city and they’ve gotten better at enforcing it. Many cities around the world with many more resources, are having their own battle with terrorists and so in that context, the security forces here aren’t doing a bad job.

Securing this capital is a crucial test not only for the city’s police force, but for the whole country. They need to know they can stand on their own and sort out their own security without thousands of foreign troops turning their capital into a fortress.

Less than three years ago, foreigners could walk the streets of Kabul in relative safety and have the luxury and freedom to hail their own cabs and try out the local food. Some foreigners of course still do that, but the majority live in armed camps throughout the city, fearing both random attacks and targeted kidnappings …

The fact is, even if Kabul becomes more secure in the coming months it may remain virtually cut off from the rest of the country for some time. And then there’s still the issue of how to secure the city itself with a police force of grossly underpaid officers who claim they are on the take just to survive?

Commentary & Analysis

McClatchy recently had an interesting report on the importance of roads in counterinsurgency.  It’s lengthy but well worth the time.

Two hundred U.S. troops rumbled into a key Taliban stronghold Wednesday in a major operation to stop insurgents from infiltrating the Afghan capital from the south and to clear the way for the first sustained international aid effort in this remote valley.

Supported by about 200 Afghan soldiers and their French army trainers, the 200 U.S. soldiers encountered no resistance.

But the locals’ reactions to their arrival ranged from skepticism to hostility. “Down To America” dabbed in whitewash greeted the U.S. column as it entered the Jalrez Valley from the U.S. base in Maydan Shahr, the capital of Wardak province.

Icy-eyed villagers stared as towering MRAP armored trucks and other vehicles towing trailers, generators and guns, protected by two helicopter gunships and two A-10 “tank-buster” jets, plowed parts of the valley’s main track into knee-high furrows of dense mud. The convoy halted traffic for hours and churned slowly through the main bazaar twice, filling the crisp winter air with choking clouds of diesel fumes.

“Everything was OK before they came here,” Mohammad Sharif growled as he sat in his dingy confectionery shop glaring at the American vehicles stopped outside. “We don’t want them to come here. We haven’t needed them for 1,000 years. This is our country.”

U.S. officers contend that the valley, about 50 miles south of Kabul, is under firm Taliban control and that the guerrillas enjoy strong support among the district’s ethnic Pashtuns, who constitute 30 percent of the Jalrez District’s impoverished population of about 66,000.

“This is where key leaders of the Taliban are located,” said Lt. Tyjuan Campbell of Apache Company, 2nd Battalion, 82nd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division.

U.S. and French officers said Taliban explosives experts produce roadside bombs and suicide vests in the valley. The insurgents also use the area to infiltrate Kabul and launch attacks, stealing through the mountains on narrow tracks and goat paths.

Campbell conceded that the U.S. force made no friends with its two-way, three-hour, fume-belching grind through the main bazaar’s narrow lane.

“I’m pretty sure they got quite upset. We rolled right through there and rolled right back again,” Campbell said as the sun set and the biting cold intensified.

The main force’s long column of vehicles was supposed to drive the 15 miles to the Jalrez Bazaar at around 40 mph. But a partially completed Chinese-built paved road gave way to a rutted, waterlogged track that forced the armored vehicles to slow to less than 10 mph at some points.

The convoy took four hours to reach the main bazaar, passing the abandoned, French-built agricultural center where it was supposed to establish a base.

Inside the bazaar, the U.S. trucks and Humvees idled for more than 45 minutes. Men crouched on the verges, and women wearing full-length burqas and cradling infants hurried by.

After the troops realized that they’d passed the agricultural center, the convoy had to turn around on the narrow track. The return journey took three hours.

Aziz Ahmad, one of several dozen drivers and passengers stalled by the convoy, at first expressed anger and resentment at the outsiders, complaining about the blockage and saying villagers “are afraid that fighting will now start here. They are scared.”

The situation looks bleak at this point.  So what might be able to turn it around?

But Ahmad said many residents would reconsider their views if the Americans paved the track.

“If they pave the road, that is a foundation for Afghanistan,” he said. “Things will begin to change.”

So in addition to potentially being a game-changer with the sentiments of the population, do roads help the security situation?  We’ve posed this question before, and the answer appears to be unequivocally that it does.

“I can’t tell you how important roads are,” said Colonel Pete Johnson, the commander of U.S. forces in southeast Afghanistan, where development lags central and northern areas and paved roads are minimal.

“If we pave roads, there’s almost an automatic shift of IEDs to other areas because it makes it so much more difficult for the enemy to emplace them … Roads here mean security,” he told Reuters in an interview last week.

So build them roads.  But don’t leave, because the insurgents will take them over, use them for transit and checkpoints, and defeat their intended purpose.  The insurgency must be defeated.  Win the population in order to develop an avenue into the heart of the insurgents.

Tech Sgt. Matt Wright, a C-130 loadmaster, catches what is left of a parachute after a load was dropped from their plane over Aberdeen during a training mission at Warfield Air National Guard base.

We have focused on logistical supply routes to Afghanistan, from India over Kashmir to Kabul (by air) and through Georgia and Azerbaijan to Turkmenistan over land and the Caspian Sea.  Friend of The Captain’s Journal David Wood of the Baltimore Sun has an article on logistics within Afghanistan.

Maryland Air National Guard cargo crews are prepping for an expected deployment to Afghanistan next year, flying a critical mission of air-dropping supplies to U.S. troops fighting in remote locations.

Delivering ammunition, rations and water by parachute from the Guard’s C-130J cargo planes is increasingly necessary in Afghanistan, not just because troops are being scattered to small, local bases as part of a new strategy, but also because of the growing danger that ground convoys will be attacked by Taliban insurgents, senior U.S. officers said. The more cargo that goes by air, the less risk to soldiers on convoys.

“We’re saving soldiers’ lives,” said Lt. Col. Mike Mentges, a Maryland Air National Guard pilot who flew missions there last year.

To make drops from altitudes ranging from 700 to 25,000 feet, a C-130 lowers its rear ramp, pitches its nose up sharply and unleashes up to a ton of cargo packed in pallets that float down under parachute canopies.

Under extreme conditions such as bad weather or a firefight raging in the drop zone, the Guard can rig a pallet with a satellite location receiver and a steerable parachute, and the cargo will maneuver itself to precise coordinates as much as 10 miles away …

American commanders are trying to avoid the fate of Russia’s Red Army, which was defeated in 10 years of combat in Afghanistan in part because it couldn’t easily resupply its ground forces. Struggling to force their way through insurgent ambushes, improvised explosive devices and land mines, the Russians lost 11,389 trucks, 2,452 armored personnel carriers and command vehicles, and 147 tanks, according to a 1995 U.S. Army study.

The Marines have a fairly audacious plan to use UAVs to resupply their troops.

By this summer, combat troops in Afghanistan could be getting re-supplied by giant unmanned aerial vehicles, a Marine Corps general told Congress Wednesday.

The Marines are working with industry to build a cargo-carrying UAV capable of hauling up to 1,200 pounds of battlefield essentials — such as ammunition, water and batteries — to ground troops in remote places, Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. John Amos told the House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on defense.

The move is part of a short-term plan to find new ways to reduce the weight Marines carry into combat. Details are sketchy, but Amos said “I’m looking for something now. We want to get a solution into Afghanistan by this summer.”

This kind of out-of-the-box thinking is valuable because logistics is so much more difficult than it was in Iraq.  But sooner or later, the roads must be controlled, the physical terrain must be won, and the population must be secured.  This kind of air supply must be considered to be a temporary measure to be replaced upon increased force projection and success in counterinsurgency.  Two years from now if we are still relying on air logistics to the same extent in Afghanistan, the campaign will have been lost.

The Captain’s Journal is proud to be the most up-to-date and comprehensive clearinghouse for current information and analysis on military logistics anywhere.

Ever since The Captain’s Journal warned a year ago that logistical lines through Khyber would be targeted as part of the Taliban campaign, we’ve covered and analyzed the progress (or lack thereof) in developing new lines of supply.

There have been occasional problems further South in Pakistan, and while a smaller percentage of supplies goes to Kandahar from the port city of Karachi than through Khyber to Kabul, this recent attack may mark the beginning of a new phase of the Taliban campaign to interdict supplies in the South.

Gunmen in Pakistan on Tuesday torched a truck carrying supplies for NATO forces in neighbouring Afghanistan, leaving its driver and a helper wounded, police said.

Gunmen snatched the truck in Baluchistan province’s Soorab, 200 kilometres (120 miles) south of Quetta, and set it ablaze after wounding the driver and his helper, senior police official Khaild Baqi told AFP.

“The injuries to the driver were serious, but his helper’s condition is stable,” Baqi said.

Police chased the attackers and traded fire with them, but the search for them was continuing, he added.

Baqi said some 150 truckers parked their vehicles to protest against the attack but that the authorities were negotiating to persuade them to continue their journeys.

NATO and US-led forces in landlocked Afghanistan are hugely dependent on Pakistan for supplies and equipment, around 80 percent of which is transported through Pakistan.

Nobody claimed the responsibility for the attack.

Baluchistan has been rocked by a four-year insurgency waged by tribal rebels fighting for political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the region’s natural resources.

The province has also been hit by attacks blamed on Taliban militants.

On the other hand it may be the local insurgency rather than the Taliban, although Karachi already has elements of the Tehrik-i-Taliban, and Quetta is the home of the senior leadership of the Afghanistan Taliban.  Either way, this is not a good sign.

In other news, it appears that someone has been reading The Captain’s Journal.

US military officials have held talks with government and business representatives from Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan on the transport of supplies to Afghanistan, the US embassy in Baku said Tuesday.

The two days of talks in Baku, which concluded Tuesday, were aimed to “coordinate transportation issues that will facilitate the shipment of supplies to US, NATO and partner military forces operating in Afghanistan” through the Caucasus region, the embassy said in a statement.

It noted that the talks focused on “non-lethal supplies” and that “no military personnel are involved in the actual transportation of supplies through the Caucasus.”

The Asia Times recently summarized why we have been opposed to supply routes that go through and/or rely on Russia.

Moscow has every reason to encourage NATO to become more and more dependent on the northern corridor … a Russia-Iran understanding over the Afghan transit routes enables Moscow to exploit NATO’s dependence on the northern corridor, which, in turn, compels the alliance to be sensitive about Russia’s security interests and concerns and at the same time paves the way for Russia to play a bigger role in the stabilization of Afghanistan, which of course suits Iran.

Nothing good comes from the logistical transit routes through Russia.  To be clear, we had recommended approximately two months ago that the U.S. work harder on the Caucasus route, which is as follows.  First, supplies (including military supplies) would be shipped through the Mediterranean Sea through the Bosporus Strait in Turkey.  And from there into the Black Sea.  From the Black Sea the supplies would go through Georgia to neighboring Azerbaijan.

From here the supplies would transit across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan, and from there South to Afghanistan.  A larger regional map gives a better idea of the general flow path.

The problems are numerous, including the fact that the supplies would be unloaded in Georgia to transit by rail car or road, unloaded from rail or truck to transit again by sea, and finally loaded aboard rail cars or trucks again (after passage across the Caspian Sea) in Turkmenistan to make passage to Afghanistan.

But removal of the logistical lines from Russian control places Iran, the missile shield, and NATO membership for Georgia and the Ukraine back on the table while we still supply our troops in Afghanistan with ordnance and supplies.  The U.S. is not “over a barrel,” so to speak.  And the DoD and State Department should keep reading The Captain’s Journal.

Category: Logistics