Archive for the 'Afghanistan' Category

U.S. Army soldiers with the 1-6 Field Artillery division patrol an area where there has been reported Taliban presence February 18, 2009 in Gandalabog, Afghanistan. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images).

Back in the days when The Captain’s Journal was arguing with General Rodriguez about the badly devolving security situation in Afghanistan it was difficult to see around the bend to a brighter future.  But General McKiernan is showing the way.

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan offered a grim view Wednesday of military efforts in southern Afghanistan, warning that 17,000 new troops will take on emboldened Taliban insurgents who have “stalemated” U.S. and allied forces.

Army Gen. David McKiernan also predicted that the bolstered numbers of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan – about 55,000 in all – will remain near those levels for up to five years.

Still, McKiernan said, that is only about two-thirds of the number of troops he has requested to secure the war-torn nation.

McKiernan told reporters at the Pentagon Wednesday that the extra Army and Marine forces will be in place by the summer, primed for counterinsurgency operations against the Taliban but also ready to conduct training with Afghan police forces.

McKiernan said what the surge “allows us to do is change the dynamics of the security situation, predominantly in southern Afghanistan, where we are, at best, stalemated.

“I’m not here to tell you that there’s not an increased level of violence, because there is,” he said.

The 17,000 additional troops, which President Barack Obama approved Tuesday to begin deploying this spring, will join an estimated 38,000 already in Afghanistan.

Another 10,000 U.S. soldiers could be headed to Afghanistan in the future as the Obama administration decides how to balance its troop levels with those from other nations and the Afghan army. The White House has said it will not make further decisions about its next moves in Afghanistan until it has completed a strategic review of the war, in tandem with the Afghan government.

Whatever the outcome of the review, McKiernan said, “we know we need additional means in Afghanistan, whether they are security or governance-related or socioeconomic-related.”

The estimated level of 55,000 troops needs “to be sustained for some period of time,” he said, adding that could be as long as three to five years.

Actually, we have called for more.

Properly resourcing the campaign will require at least – but not limited to – three Marine Regimental Combat Teams (outfitted with V-22s, Harriers and all of the RCT support staff) and three Brigades (preferably at least one or two of which are highly mobile, rapid reaction Stryker Brigades).  These forces must be deployed in the East and South and especially along the border, brought out from under the control of NATO and reporting only to CENTCOM.

The command has been changed as we had hoped and U.S. troops now report to CENTCOM, but we still need more troops.  John Nagl has called for as many as 600,000 troops.  So how can all of this be considered a “brighter future?”  Simple.  We are now being honest with ourselves about the campaign.

General McKiernan then makes the following head-turning statement.  “We’re not going to run out of people that either international forces or Afghan forces have to kill or capture.”  He adds that “ultimately, the conflict will be solved not by military force – but through the political will of the Afghan people.”

McKiernan is right of course about the will of the Afghan people being determinative in the campaign, and of course counterinsurgency experts are right to note that the application of soft power is a necessary corollary to kinetics.

But take careful note of the General’s sobering words: “We’re not going to run out of people that either international forces or Afghan forces have to kill or capture.”  Reliance on cheap, manufactured copies of the Anbar awakening, splitting off the “moderate” Taliban from the irreconcilables, and new electrical distribution systems is whistling through the grave yard.  There are hard core kinetic operations that await us, and this is going to get a lot harder before it gets easier.

In a little known and poorly publicized report on the Danish part of the NATO effort in Afghanistan, they have begun to negotiate with the Taliban on their own.

Danish soldiers in Afghanistan have begun negotiating with the Taliban to try to break the deadlock there, a newspaper reported Monday, as a poll suggested most Danes considered the war unwinnable.

Troops had been holding talks with the Taliban as wiping out the insurgency was proving so difficult, a Danish officer told the Jyllands-Posten daily.

“We have already held several meetings with local chiefs where the Taliban were represented,” Lieutenant Colonel Bjarne Hoejgaard told the paper after a six-month mission in Afghanistan.

“We cannot get around it. We must intensify the dialogue and the negotiations with the Taliban if we want to have peace in Afghanistan, because we cannot eliminate the enemy,” he said.

This report was also picked up by the Globe and Mail.  Oh, and Hamid Karzai saw it as well.  The report apparently got his panties in a wad, because he responded that only the “government” in Kabul would be allowed to surrender to, um, negotiate with the Taliban.

Talks with Taliban insurgents must only take place through Afghan government channels, President Hamid Karzai’s office warned Tuesday after reports surfaced of dialogue led by Danish soldiers.

Presidential spokesman Homayun Hamidzada told reporters he was unaware of a report in a newspaper, which cited a Danish officer saying that Taliban were represented at soldiers’ talks with local chiefs.

“We must intensify the dialogue and the negotiations with the Taliban if we want to have peace in Afghanistan, because we cannot eliminate the enemy,” the lieutenant colonel was quoted as saying on Monday after a six-month mission.

Asked about the report, Hamidzada said he had not seen it.

“But the policy of the Afghanistan government is, any talks or dialogue should take place through government, not by the friendly countries who have a presence in Afghanistan,” he said.

Remember, Karzai is the one who said directly to Afghan 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’.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has recently said that the NATO effort must be expanded in Afghanistan, and that this effort must not be seen as an “American” war.  But with such attitudes among the NATO “warriors” who serve there, it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which it won’t become America’s campaign, good or bad.

Prior: Petraeus on Pursuing the Enemy

Jim Landers of the Dallas News is on the front line with U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.  All of his observations are interesting, but there are two that are particularly poignant.

KALAGU, Afghanistan – Sgt. Corey Tack guns the engine of the 18-ton armored truck up a snow-streaked, gravelly hill. He parks on a spot with a commanding view of the valley between white, jagged mountains. Sgt. Oscar Macias opens the 400-pound back door and jumps out.

Facing a night of midteen temperatures and heavy frost, the soldiers start digging holes for their sleeping bags.

“A mortar hits in the middle here, bang, we’re all dead,” said Macias, from Rio Hondo, Texas. “But if it hits over there, you’ll be in a hole and the shrapnel will go over your head.”

The confident, weather-burned faces of these soldiers tell a story. They’re battle-tested and undefeated. They sense the enemy knows and avoids their truck with its red-and-white banners that read “Hooligans.” But they also know they are not winning the battle against insurgents in Afghanistan.

“When I first rolled in, it was kill everybody and everything,” Macias said with exaggeration.

No more.

“Even if you do take their leaders out, there’s always somebody else to replace them,” he said.

These Cavalry Scouts say there aren’t enough American troops here to cover a country the size of Texas.

They know their enemies roam unchecked across much of the bleak high plains. They know the enemy is winning on the information front, spreading propaganda about U.S. soldiers smashing down doors in the middle of the night to rape, pillage and murder.

To win, they know they have to hand over security to their Afghan counterparts, who often come to a fight ill-equipped and stoned on hashish.

The hash smoking “happens a lot – more than I know or want to know,” said Sgt. 1st Class Bruce Kobel, a Lewiston, Maine, firefighter with the Vermont National Guard who is training Afghan soldiers here. “It’s like, you learn there’s an accepted level of corruption. Well, there’s also an accepted level of drug abuse, too. It’s part of their culture.”

Macias’ observation runs right in line with reports to The Captain’s Journal from field grade officers in Afghanistan.  Kill a mid-level Taliban commander, and they stay low for a few weeks to regroup and realign.  Then the violence starts again, and the cycle continues.  The Special Operations Forces campaign against high value targets, however effective it might have been to get us far enough to stand down troops in Iraq and switch focus to Afghanistan, is now failing us.  A HVT campaign is no replacement for counterinsurgency.

We have previously commented on the corruption in Afghanistan and how it will cause the campaign to fail if it proceeds unchecked (because it legitimizes the Taliban shadow government).  But we learn something new with Landers’ report from the front lines.  Hash smoking is not only rampant within Afghan culture (we knew this), but the Afghan Army doesn’t control it among their own.

This is yet another example of reverse legitimacy.  It would almost be better for the population not to see the Afghan Army at all than to see them staggering towards their home on patrol, stoned on Hashish.  The Captain’s Journal thinks that it’s time to throw away the bongs and pick up a rifle.  Without being able to turn over to a legitimate Afghan Army, all will be lost in Afghanistan.

Edward Joseph writing for the Washington Post gives us a glimpse into how some of the former anti-Soviet Mujahideen feel about the U.S. presence in Afghanistan.

I recently visited the exhibit during a seven-week mission to evaluate a U.S. program assisting local governments in Afghanistan. On our way out of the museum, we bumped into a prominent mujahed fighter and his entourage. When an American in our group told him that the United States would never forget the Afghan fighters’ struggle against the Soviets, he smiled and nodded proudly. “And we also can never forget your fight against the Taliban now,” the American added. With that, the mujahed’s smile vanished — and so did he, with all his people, after an awkward goodbye.

A full sixty percent of the Afghan population see the Taliban as the biggest threat to Afghanistan.  This Mujahideen can be counted as one of the irreconcilables, and Petraeus has noted that we must pursue and kill them.  But the author goes on to discuss what turns out to be an important underlying problem in Afghanistan: corruption.

Everywhere I went, people complained about corruption. “The government is corrupt from A to Z,” said a road contractor working in one of the most dangerous provinces. The pressure, he explained, begins with “suggestions” that he hire officials’ relatives and friends and rent vehicles only from certain providers; it ends with the officials telling him exactly how big a cut of his profits they’ll take to let the project continue.

This theme is so ubiquitous that it isn’t difficult to find reports of corruption.  It applies to everything in life.

When it comes to governing this violent, fractious land, everything, it seems, has its price.

Want to be a provincial police chief? It will cost you $100,000.

Want to drive a convoy of trucks loaded with fuel across the country? Be prepared to pay $6,000 per truck, so the police will not tip off the Taliban.

Need to settle a lawsuit over the ownership of your house? About $25,000, depending on the judge.

“It is very shameful, but probably I will pay the bribe,” Mohammed Naim, a young English teacher, said as he stood in front of the Secondary Courthouse in Kabul. His brother had been arrested a week before, and the police were demanding $4,000 for his release. “Everything is possible in this country now. Everything.”

Kept afloat by billions of dollars in American and other foreign aid, the government of Afghanistan is shot through with corruption and graft. From the lowliest traffic policeman to the family of President Hamid Karzai himself, the state built on the ruins of the Taliban government seven years ago now often seems to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it.

Ubiquitous corruption is now causing a major problem in the counterinsurgency campaign.  Some of the population is beginning to contrast the massive, systemic corruption of the current regime with Taliban rule.

Some in Kabul have become nostalgic for Taliban times. “At least, with the Taliban, we had security,” one mechanic told me after we haggled over the cost of my motorcycle repair. “No one would steal my tools. Now life is dangerous, the cost of food and gas are expensive, and the government does nothing for us. They work only for themselves, because they know this won’t last” …

[Some] seem nostalgic about the Taliban government’s honesty and integrity, despite the harsh rules. One recent cartoon in The Kabul Times showed a $100 bill on a human body, pointing to an Afghan government ministry and saying, “If you need help, don’t go in there without me!”

According to one report, NGOs now dedicate an average of 7 to 8 percent of their budget to paying bribes—sometimes called “facilitation fees” or “marketing fees” on paper—many directly to government official coffers. USAID and military organizations seem able to avoid much of the corruption, but ordinary Afghans face it regularly. There are at least four phrases in Dari specifically for persons who demand bribes, my favorite being chor sat o bist, “420,” the code for corruption.

“It’s not that the system is corrupt,” the U.S. State Department’s new anti-corruption director told me in September, inside a heavily guarded compound in Wazir Akbar Khan. “It’s that corruption is the system.”

Corruption undermines legitimacy of the government, especially for the poor and lower middle class.  This has been and is being exploited by the Taliban, whether in Afghanistan or Pakistan.  The PakTribune has a remarkable anecdotal account of this kind of exploitation.  It is a lengthy account, but necessary if we wish fully to understand one of the tools that the Taliban have used to come back to power.

It was during a visit to Peshawar that I met a senior police officer. He narrated a story which was brow-raising. He told of a person from Bannu who lent Rs 40,000/ to a man he knew, who promised that he would return it within a specified time. He told the borrower that he had saved up the said amount to help pay for his children`s education. When the agreed time lapsed, he asked him to return the amount. The borrower started making excuses and after a few months he flatly refused and challenged the lender to do what ever he could. There is a Pukhtun word for it “Laas Da Azaad De”.

The man went from pillar to post to seek justice but with no result. The police proved incapable as the borrower was a powerful man with strong connections. When he tried to knock on the door of the court for justice he was dismayed to hear that it would take months for the case to come to a hearing and years to reach a final judgment. After all that, the chances were that the verdict would go against him as he was up against powerful people. To top it off, he was told he had to pay Rs. 1000/ upfront every time he wanted to put his case forward for a hearing. This amount did not include the amount he was going to pay the lawyers. When he calculated it, the approximate amount turned out to be more than the actual amount he was going to seek justice for.

At the end of every day, he would go back home heart broken; cursing his luck to be living in a country where there was no justice for the middle or poor classes. He tried to persuade the borrower by pleading with him, explaining how desperately he needed the money for his children’s education. He even offered a discount or to split the amount into installments, but all in vain. It was like hitting a brick wall. He felt dejected, helpless and powerless to see his children suffering just because he came from strata of a society pushed against the wall.

One evening, he heard a knock on the door. He opened it and saw two strangers with bushy beards standing outside. Thinking they were there to collect ‘Chanda’, he asked with irritation what they wanted. They told him that they saw him crying in the mosque and on enquiry they were told that someone was refusing to pay his money back. With a surprised look on his face, he asked them who they were.

“We are local Taliban” Then they asked if he would let them have his side of story. He saw a ray of hope and ushered them in. After listening to his story, the Taliban told him that the borrower had committed an un-Islamic act, and if he wanted they could persuade him to return the said money. “We want your permission”. His heart jumped with flickering optimism and immense joy and without any hesitation, he gave them his consent. Before they left the premises they asked for 72 hours.

According to the police officer, the Taliban went to the influential man and told him it was un-Islamic not to pay the amount he had borrowed from the man. They threatened that if he did not pay the debt back within 48 hours; he would bear the consequences. They also told him how Taliban had previously dealt with people like him. Shivers went through the spine of the ‘powerful’ man as he knew what their threat meant. With a dry mouth, frightened face and shaking body he nodded his head in agreement, promising he would pay back the amount. The next day, he went to the house of the lender and paid back the full amount he had refused up until then. He apologised for the delay and requested him to tell the Taliban not to harm him or his family and to let them know that he had returned the money. The Taliban never went back to ask whether he got the money back, but they must had been watching the development. From that day on, according to the police officer, that man became a strong supporter of Taliban. Could anyone blame him?

When Taliban justice is seen as free of corruption, the people can overlook its harshness – at least, some of them.  As long as corruption is the way of life in Afghanistan and the Taliban are seen as the anti-corruption faction, the campaign will be very hard to prosecute, and in fact no lasting good is likely to come of it.

The application of soft power is necessary in Afghanistan, and this power doesn’t necessarily mean more largesse.  But it does mean that we must be clever and crafty regarding the politics, governance, mentoring and instruction of the Afghan government, and the accountability we demand of the current (and future) regime.  We must not be as politically stolid as we were in Iraq.  We might just win the military campaign and lose the country because we back a corrupt regime.

In NATO and Poppy: The War Over Revenue, we discussed the U.S. and NATO program (then in the planning stages) to eradicate poppy since it provides a revenue stream to the Taliban.  The Taliban also create income from marble quarries in Pakistan, extortion of cell phone providers in Afghanistan, ransom from kidnapping, and “protection” of small businesses.

The plans are finalized now and U.S. forces will fire on drug related individuals without proof that they are connected to any military objective.

NATO will remain within international law when it proceeds with new measures to kill drug traffickers in Afghanistan and bomb drug processing laboratories to deprive the Taliban of its main financing, the alliance’s secretary general said Wednesday.

The official, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said that “a number of buffers and filters” had been put in place to safeguard the legality of combating what he termed the nexus between the insurgency and narcotics.

“It is according to international law,” he said. “And if nations at a certain stage think that they would rather not participate, they will not be forced to participate.”

Two weeks ago, the alliance was embroiled in controversy after Gen. John Craddock, the NATO commander who is also chief of American forces in Europe, said troops in Afghanistan would fire on individuals responsible for supplying heroin refining laboratories with opium without need for evidence.

In a letter to Gen. Egon Ramms, a German who heads the NATO command center responsible for Afghanistan, General Craddock said that “it was no longer necessary to produce intelligence or other evidence that each particular drug trafficker or narcotics facility in Afghanistan meets the criteria of being a military objective.”

General Ramms questioned the legality of the proposal, warning that it would violate international law and rules governing armed conflict. General Ramms’s letter was leaked, provoking a debate within NATO about the conditions and circumstances under which troops could attack drug laboratories.

Mr. de Hoop Scheffer ordered an investigation into the leak. “Our enemies and opponents in Afghanistan are reading this leak,” he said. “They are not stupid.”

Aside from the effeminate hand wringing over whether this program is “legal,” the program is an attempt to avoid conducting counterinsurgency.

The notions of herion, opium and drug cartels carry connotations of evil, and properly so.  But that isn’t the point.  When the Marines engaged the Taliban in the Helmand province they purposely avoided any destruction of crops, poppy and otherwise.  Turning the farmers into insurgents was not in the mission plan, and the Marines are smart fighters.

Concerning a recent example of Texas National Guard in an agricultural program to compete with the Taliban farms for seed production, we warned that it is one thing to win the competition, and quite another to ensure that the Taliban don’t co-opt the program and turn it to their favor.

Yet another example of this comes from a clever plan to replace poppy with pomegranates.

POMEGRANATES are the key to eliminating heroin, a pioneering charity founder has claimed.

James Brett is spearheading a campaign to persuade farmers in Afghanistan to switch from growing poppies to growing the super-fruit.

He was in Cardiff yesterday as a guest speaker at the annual conference at City Hall of Cymorth Cymru, the organisation that represents people in supported housing.

“I recognised that Afghanistan not only grew the best pomegranates in the world,” said James, who founded the charity Pom 354.

“They also produced more than 90% of the world’s heroin.

“From research I undertook I came to realise that sales of pomegranates on the global market could outstrip the value to Afghanistan of the opium industry.

“With Pom 354 we are putting in place something that is completely viable for the farmers, and that’s vital to the sustainability of the project in Afghanistan.”

Many families in the war-torn country rely on growing poppies, which are turned into heroin, which in turn is smuggled through Europe and has destroyed countless lives in South Wales.

James added: “The tribal elders [in Afghanistan] are very happy that someone has come and started a project they can believe in.

“There’s a lot of unity there and we’re just getting ready to get started on a large scale.

“We’re looking at installing a factory in Kandahar to produce pomegranate concentrate and, if possible, pomegranate jam.

“We’d like to see at the end of this year containers of fresh pomegranate leaving Afghanistan for supermarkets.

“There’s a lot of interest in pomegranates in the West because of its health benefits.

“Over the course of the next 10 years we would like to plant 45.9 million trees, which would cover an area slightly larger than the areas which are used for poppy production.”

The program sounds promising so far.  As for the Taliban?

Asked whether he had been in contact with the Taliban, Mr Brett 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 what is the solution to the evolving pomegranate problem?  How will we prevent it from becoming a revenue stream for the Taliban?  Will we shoot pomegranate dealers on sight?

The problem is that we have tried everything – from special operations and air raids on high value targets, and now to poppy eradication – instead of classical counterinsurgency with enough troops to accomplish the mission.

The problem isn’t poppy any more than it is marble quarries, small businesses, wheat seed or pomegranate farmers.  There is no solution to the problem of the revenue stream except to kill or capture the Taliban.  Why is this so hard for strategists and staff level officers to understand?

This generation’s Ernie Pyle, Michael Yon, has posted a very important Powerpoint presentation.  His post is entitled The Eagle Went Over the Mountain.  Michael has posted some very important prose on the campaigns in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  But sometimes all a good journalist has to do to be good is find and send on the important things he finds.  The trick is in knowing what’s important.  Every unit planning a deployment to Afghanistan, and even those who are not, should spend time studying this presentation for its worth in the fundamentals of tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP).  The Powerpoint presentation is linked just below.

the_eagle_went_over_the_mountain3

Here is one excerpt on a common tactic.

The bait and ambush attack is one of the most common ambush techniques used by the enemy.  The enemy is very observant and has noticed how aggressive Marines are compared to other coalition forces.  They have use this to their advantage on several occasions and have drawn Marines into complex ambushes with catastrophic results.

In this scenario a platoon minus was patrolling the town when they were engaged with sporadic small arms fire from a distance.  They returned fire and were moving further into the town when they were engaged by a single enemy fighter who fired on the platoon and broke contact.  The platoon chased the fighter through the town when they suddenly found themselves in a dead end.

The enemy attacked the platoon from the rear and pushed them further into the dead end.  The enemy had driven the platoon into a fire sack and they ambushed the platoon from the roof tops.  This continued until aviation assets came over head and broke the ambush.

Here is a visual depiction of the tactic.

This is only the beginning of the discussion concerning logistics ambushes, fire and maneuver tactics, development of enfilade fire, and even the thickness of the mud walls of the Afghan homes (18″ thick, resistant even to 20 mm Vulcan).  As few of the summary points of the presentation follow:

Fire Control: Enemy forces have demonstrated a high level of fire control in numerous engagements.  They have shifted and focused their fires on what they perceived to be the greatest threat.  Ambushes have generally been initiated with bursts of machinegun fire followed by volleys of RPGs.  The beaten zone of the RPGs have been within six inches to a foot.  This shows a very developed system of fire control and points to a section leader controlling these fires.  The complexity and size of some of these ambushes point to a platoon and company level command structure.

Interlocking fields of fire: The enemy did an excellent job of placing fighting positions in locations where they could mutually support each other.  As elements of the platoon attacked one position, they would be engaged from multiple firing positions.  Several times during the engagement elements of the platoon would be pinned down from accurate fire coming from several directions until other elements could maneuver to destroy those positions.

RPG Volley Fire: Almost every time the enemy attacked the armored vehicles, the enemy attacked with volleys of 2-3 RPGs.  This demonstrated a high amount of coordination and discipline.  Often times these attacks came from multiple firing positions.

Combined arms:  The enemy demonstrated an advanced understanding of combined arms.  Most of their attacks on the platoon combined machine gun fire with RPGs, rockets and mortars.  Enemy forces used their PK machine guns to suppress turret gunners while several RPG gunners would engage vehicles with volleys of RPGs. They also attempted to fix the vehicles using RPGs and machinegun fire for attacks with rockets and mortars.

Fire and Maneuver: The enemy proved to be very adept at fire and maneuver. The enemy would fix Marines with RPG and machine gun fire and attempt to maneuver to the flanks.  This happened with every engagement.  If elements of the platoon were attacked from one direction, they could expect further attacks to come from the flanks.  This occurred both with mounted and dismounted elements of the platoon.

Anti-Armor Tactics: The enemy did not attempt to penetrate the crew compartment of the vehicles they engaged.  They fired volleys of RPGs to the front end of the HMMWVs in order to disable them and start a vehicle fire.  Once the crew evacuated, they would engage them with crew served weapons.  This demonstrates a very detailed understanding of the limitations of their weapon systems and a thorough knowledge of our armor vulnerabilities.

“Karez” Irrigation Ditches: The enemy utilized prepared fighting positions built into irrigation ditches to maneuver about the battlefield and attack the platoon.  These ditches ranged from four to seven feet deep and made any frontal attacks very difficult.  The enemy would attack from one position and rapidly maneuver to another.  This facilitated flanking attacks.  The enemy also used tree lines to stage their attacks from.  Many wooded areas are bordered with mud walls and irrigation ditches, which the enemy used for cover and concealment.

Massing Forces: The enemy was able to mass their forces to over 400 enemy on the battlefield on several occasions.  This was not normally the case in Iraq.  Situations here in Afghanistan can quickly escalate and even company sized elements can find themselves outnumbered, outmaneuvered and outgunned.  The enemy will not always mass but they will rally to defend their leadership or protect their interests.  They have conducted ambushes that have swelled to 400 fighter engagements and have also massed to that size to conduct attacks on Forward Operating Bases.

Defense in Depth: The enemy plans their defenses with depth and mutual support in mind.  In one ambush the enemy engaged the platoon from a tree line that was supported by fighting position to the north that were tied into the defense and prevented us from flanking the ambush site.  These machine gun positions had excellent fields of fire and machine guns were set in on the avenues of approach. The enemy fought to the death in the tree line to defend their base 200 meters to the north.  As the platoon attempted to attack the base from the flank, they were engaged from multiple machine gun positions with excellent fields of fire with interlocking fields of fire.

Fire Discipline: Engagements have lasted from two to forty hours of sustained combat.  Marines must be careful to conserve rounds because there may not be any way to replenish their ammunition and it is not practical or recommended to carry an excessive number of magazines.  Marines took a few moments to apply the fundamentals of marksmanship and this greatly improved the ratio of shots fired to enemy fighters killed.  Crew Served Weapons do not always need to be fired at the rapid rate.  Good application of shoulder pressure will tighten beaten zones and lead to effective suppression. Talking guns will help conserve ammunition.

Fire Control: Fire control was critical during the battle from the team to platoon level.  One of the main reasons the platoon did not take many casualties during the battle was due to the effective coordination between crew served weapons, precision fires, CAS, mortars and small arms.  This permitted the platoon to place pressure on the enemy force and focus fires as required to maneuver elements of the platoon to close with and destroy the enemy.  Enemy forces use water to reduce the dust signature around their battle positions and it can become very difficult to locate enemy firing positions in the chaos of battle.  Unit leaders can use tracers in the day time and lasers at night to mark targets for crew served weapons and small arms fire.   Vehicle commanders and drivers can walk gunners on target using ADDRACS, target reference points and the field expedient mil system (one finger, four fingers from the hay stack).  The impacts from MK-19 are easily seen and can be used to orient the other gunners.

Combat Load: Marines had to conduct numerous trench assaults and squad rushes during the eight hour battle and the heavy weight of their armor and equipment greatly hampered their movement.  After this battle all of the Marines reevaluated their combat load and reduced the amount of ammunition that they carried.  After the battle, Marines normally carried no more than 4 to 6 magazines and one grenade.  In the company ambush in Bala Baluk no Marine fired more than four magazines in the eight hours of fighting despite the target rich environment.

This is not nearly all of the important TP observations.  The entire presentation is worth the time to study and re-study, and there are a number of counter-tactics that the Marines found that they could use with success.  This extremely important observation concludes the presentation: Iraq has allowed us to become tactically sloppy as the majority of fighters there are unorganized and poorly trained.  This is not the case in Afghanistan.  The enemy combatants here will exploit any mistake made by coalition forces with catastrophic results.  Complacency and laziness will result in mass causalities.

The Recon Marines and the authors of this report have done a great service to the balance of U.S. forces in theater for providing this analysis both of the enemy TTP and successful defeaters for them.  While a new study is released from the think tanks about every week on Afghanistan, this presentation should be considered the most important thing to come out of Afghanistan in the past two years.  I have discussed this with Michael Yon, and on this we agree.

It deserves as wide a distribution as possible.  Thanks to Michael for posting this, and a special thanks to the brave warriors of the Force Recon Marines.

A confluence of events and articles is focusing attention on the question(s) “Why are we in Afghanistan?” and “Is it worth it?”  A main stream media reporter recently sent The Captain’s Journal a note questioning what would happen if the U.S. and Britain completely pulled out of Afghanistan?  This reporter isn’t alone.  The likes of Dr. John Nagl, Michael Yon, Bill Roggio and Dr. David Kilcullen have recently weighed in on a number of both directly and tangentially related issues concerning whether we stay in Afghanistan and what the campaign should look like if we do.  Since this also relates to our own advocacy of a particular strategy for Afghanistan, we’ll take a sweeping trek across this terrain.

David Kilcullen weighs in at The Small Wars Journal Blog with Crunch Time in Afghanistan-Pakistan (an edited version of his statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Afghanistan, 5th February 2009).  We’ll return to what Kilcullen says shortly, but first, there is a particular comment that runs in the same vein as the many of the objections to the campaign.  Excerpts are provided below.

… is it not better to cut the losses and leave now?  What is the downside of an immediate departure?  Loss of prestige? We have none to lose with any the groups we’re attempting to defeat.  Loss of deterrence? As Israel will discover, misapplied force encourages rather than discourages resistance. (Didn’t some guy named Galula say that about 50 years ago?)  The Taliban take over? Let them. As with Hamas, the only avenue to a positive outcome for us is to let them attempt to govern. If they succeed and create development and stability, we win. If they fail and destroy their popular support, we win … That al Qaeda will flourish? It’s more an identity than an entity, and we can’t defeat ideas with firepower. External events will determine al Qaeda’s viability.  The instability in Afghanistan spills over into Pakistan? Too late. We pretty much assured that when we underwrote the original mujahedeen back in the 80’s and then walked away after the Red Army bolted …  That heroin will flood the world? Legalize drugs and kill their funding source. (And that of the cartels.) (And we can shift the DEA budget to development work.)  That it will become a training ground (again) for terrorists? As long as there is a sea of disaffected people for them to swim in, terrorists will exist and their camps will be somewhere. True counterterrorism is social work – police, intel, development. The solution is social justice, not combat … Aid workers are a lot cheaper than warfighters, and the rising expectation of Pashtuns, driven by the awareness of their neighbors’ prosperity, will become an existential threat to the Taliban.

This objection to the campaign as it is currently constituted is the classic counterterrorism schema in which kinetic operations are reserved for high value targets and the population is changed from policing actions and social justice.  Seth G. Jones with RAND is a proponent of this model, i.e., that policing and intelligence are the answer to the problem rather than military action.

Aid workers would suffer the same fate as the Polish engineer who was recently executed by the Taliban.

When aid workers have no security they cannot perform the functions of an aid worker.  The Taliban will hardly create a stable regime, and Afghanistan would indeed become a haven again for AQ.  Furthermore, the mission of the Taliban (both Afghan Taliban and Tehrik-i-Taliban) is harmonizing into one of support for regional control and then confrontation of the West.  Baitullah Mehsud has made it clear that the goals of the TTP have evolved to one of global aspirations: “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.”

If the Taliban ever were just local rogues and thugs who wanted control over money and women, they aren’t now only that.  There has been a dovetailing not only of ideology but of forces as well.  The Tehrik-i-Taliban shout to passersby in Khyber “We are Taliban! We are mujahedin! “We are al-Qaida!” There is no distinction.  Bill Roggio has recently written about al Qaeda’s shadow army, operating in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda has reorganized its notorious paramilitary formations that were devastated during the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002. Al Qaeda has reestablished the predominantly Arab and Asian paramilitary formation that was formerly known as Brigade 055 into a larger, more effective fighting unit known as the Lashkar al Zil, or Shadow Army, a senior US intelligence official told The Long War Journal.

The Shadow Army is active primarily in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the Northwest Frontier Province, and in eastern and southern Afghanistan, several US military and intelligence officials told The Long War Journal on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject.

The paramilitary force is well trained and equipped, and has successfully defeated the Pakistani Army in multiple engagements. Inside Pakistan, the Shadow Army has been active in successful Taliban campaigns in North and South Waziristan, Bajaur, Peshawar, Khyber, and Swat.

In Afghanistan, the Shadow Army has conducted operations against Coalition and Afghan forces in Kunar, Nuristan, Nangahar, Kabul, Logar, Wardak, Khost, Paktika, Paktia, Zabul, Ghazni, and Kandahar provinces.

“The Shadow Army has been instrumental in the Taliban’s consolidation of power in Pakistan’s tribal areas and in the Northwest Frontier Province,” a senior intelligence official said. “They are also behind the Taliban’s successes in eastern and southern Afghanistan. They are helping to pinch Kabul.”

Afghan and Pakistan-based Taliban forces have integrated elements of their forces into the Shadow Army, “especially the Tehrik-e-Taliban and Haqqani Network,” a senior US military intelligence official said. “It is considered a status symbol” for groups to be a part of the Shadow Army.

There are no “reconcilables” in this group or the TTP.  The time delay in conducting legitimate counterinsurgency in Afghanistan has ensured that the Taliban have become radicalized.

Michael Yon has penned a sober (and sobering) analysis of the situation in Afghanistan.

The Iraq war, even during the worst times, never seemed like such a bog.  Yet there is something about our commitment in Afghanistan that feels wrong, as if a bear trap is hidden under the sand … We must also understand that Afghanistan is what it is. The military is acutely aware that Afghanistan is not Iraq.  The success we are seeing in Iraq is unlikely to suddenly occur in Afghanistan.  If we are to deal with moderate elements of the AOGs (armed opposition groups) we must do so from a position of strength, and this means killing a lot of them this year, to encourage the surviving “reconcilables” to be more reconcilable.

In fact, Dr. John Nagl waxes even darker in his forecast.

Col Nagl, an Iraq veteran who helped devise the successful strategy there under the aegis of Gen David Petraeus, told The Daily Telegraph that the gains made by the Taliban over the past two years need to be reversed by the end of the traditional fighting season in Afghanistan, around late September or early October, or else the Taliban will establish a durable base that would make a sustained Western military presence futile.

The forecast given by The Captain’s Journal to the querry from the MSM journalist was fundamentally that without U.S. and British troops in Afghanistan, the Taliban would be inside of Kabul within two weeks and the Karzai regime would collapse within one month to six weeks.  The Afghan police would be slaughtered, and the Army would last just a little longer than the police.  The Northern Alliance (which has been relegated to the sidelines by the U.S., and supported to some extent by India) would then be at civil war again with the Taliban.  Al Qaeda and a radicalized Taliban (such as the TTP) along with other international jihadist elements would have safe haven from which to train and launch attacks against Pakistan initially, and the West eventually.

To return to what Kilcullen advocates, he advises against the notion of a scaled-back effort performing counterterrorism operations against al Qaeda.  Whether we like it or not, we must provide security for the population and rebuild government legitimacy.  He also contrasts “chasing the Taliban around” with providing security, a dichotomy The Captain’s Journal rejects.  Having enough troops to chase and kill the Taliban should be part of an effective counterinsurgency strategy.  Petraeus has said so himself.

But Kilcullen is fundamentally right.  Counterinsurgency is the only viable option, short of pulling out of Afghanistan come what may.  Counterterrorism-policing operations against high value targets has failed us for six years in Afghanistan, and engaging only the soft side of COIN (i.e., sending more aid workers to rebuild the nation as the military bolted from the country) is a bizarre strategy to say the least.  As for Pakistan?  Again, listen to one Taliban who, when interviewed, gave away valuable intelligence concerning their perspective.  “If NATO remains strong in Afghanistan, it will put pressure on Pakistan. If NATO remains weaker in Afghanistan, it will dare [encourage] Pakistan to support the Taliban, its only real allies in the region.”

Afghanistan is as good a place to begin the regional counterinsurgency campaign as anywhere.

General Petraeus doesn’t read this blog, but here at The Captain’s Journal we’re happy with his words on Afghanistan.  True enough, he has focused on many things that should help the campaign: holding areas that we have cleared, having more enablers and trainers, and a surge of civilian capacity to match the effort by the military forces.  True enough, all of it.

But there is an interesting statement in his speech before the 45th Munich Security Conference which we shouldn’t gloss over.

… we must pursue the enemy relentlessly and tenaciously.  True irreconcilables, again, must be killed, captured, or driven out of the area.  And we cannot shrink from that any more than we can shrink from being willing to support Afghan reconciliation with those elements that show a willingness to reject the insurgents and help Afghan and ISAF forces.

Exactly the point we made in Counterinsurgency: Focus on the Population or the Enemy, and several hundred other articles prior to that.  But what is even more interesting than the comment by Petraeus is Joe Klein’s take on it in the context of Euro-sensibilities.

Richard Holbrooke and David Petraeus–appearing onstage together for the first time–emphasized the difficulty of the Af/Pak situation. Although Petraeus, a human power-point presentation, used phrases like “we must pursue the enemy tenaciously,” which clearly make the peacable Euros uncomfortable.

Indeed, the contrast between the British and German defense ministers said it all. The German, Franz Josef Jung, was archetypically skittish when it came to any mention of kinetics in Afghanistan, except to criticize the scourge of civilian casualties. His assessment of the situation was so ridiculously upbeat that the Afghan President Hamid Karzai praised it.

Joe Biden also used phrases like “pushing the reset button” on the U.S.-Russian relationship, an idea which seemed to suit and sooth the audience.

Our allies in Afghanistan.  Welcome to the old Europe – and the old Europe in Washington.

In The British Approach to Counterinsurgency we weighed in on the British Kajaki dam project (for readers unfamiliar with this project visit the links provided).  While brave and effective operations were necessary to deliver large turbines to the dam for electricity generation, we observed that this front in counterinsurgency was merely one, an important one also being that of focus on the enemy.

The point is that in order for infrastructure to work, the enemies of that infrastructure must be targeted. The dam won’t long operate if its operators are all killed, or if other replacement parts have to undergo such intensive operations in order to be deployed at the plant. Infrastructure is good, as is good governance. But for these softer tactics in counterinsurgency to be successful, the Taliban must be engaged and killed.

Soon after this “defense analysts” also weighed in with similar concerns.

… electricity supplies are likely to face disruption from Taliban attacks unless the region is cleared of militants, analysts said.

The area is not densely populated, so the power lines must cover many miles of hostile land to reach the remote villages that are due to be linked up to the dam. British troops in Helmand control an area of only a few miles radius beyond the Kajaki dam, so pylons and substations will have to cross what is now a stronghold for militants operating in the region.

“The power lines coming out of Kajaki are going to be extremely vulnerable to attack,” said Matthew Clements, Eurasia analyst at Jane’s Defence. “The arrival of the extra turbine is a major blow to the Taliban, so they are going to be keen to make sure the project fails.”

“In Iraq we’ve seen that overhead power lines are extremely difficult to protect, and there’s no point generating electricity if you can’t distribute it,” said Paul Smyth, head of operational studies at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies.

The point about electricity is also similar to our observations on the grid in Iraq as well as irrigation and water supply systems.  So whatever happened to the dam?  Were our warnings prescient or merely an overreaction?  More on the dam shortly.

Thematically similar operations are being waged in Afghanistan by the Texas National Guard.

Fifty-two Texas National Guard men and women are planning an attack on a Taliban stronghold near here that other Army units estimate would take thousands of U.S. and Afghan soldiers to capture.

The Texans plan to win the battle of Khajanoor Farms without firing a shot …

A Texas National Guard Agribusiness Development Team plans to defeat the Taliban’s hold on the big wheat-seed farm at Khajanoor by building a larger, quality seed farm in the high mountain plains of Ghazni province.

If approved – and if the climate at 10,000 feet can be mastered – the Nawur Farm could free Ghazni’s wheat farmers from Taliban-approved suppliers and lousy products imported from Pakistan.

“It could also save lives,” said Col. Stan Poe of Houston, commander of the Texas agribusiness team …

“For seven years, we’ve been chasing the Taliban. They literally just come back,” said Illinois National Guard Col. David Matakas. “We can go in and kill a lot of people and do no good. It’s more important that we push forward with training the Afghan forces and focus on turning a district, a tribe or a village away from the Taliban, one at a time” …

Khajanoor Farms is in the code-red Andar District. A large force of Taliban fighters controls the 2,500 acres of wheat fields and subsistence plots from caves in mountains overlooking the farm.

Khajanoor was built in 1975 as a government farm to supply wheat seeds to five provinces. There are 96 farm buildings on the site, two wells and a crude irrigation system. The farm’s flour mill is a shambles.

Satellite photos show sharecropper farmers are still cultivating wheat for seeds, but much of the farm is broken down.

U.S. forces say the seed produced at Khajanoor is sold under Taliban control to farmers loyal to the Taliban cause.

The Texans had visited wheat farms in the far north Nawur district, an area populated by descendants of Genghis Khan known as Hazaris. Some of the Hazari farms were at elevations of 10,000 feet. Trees were growing at elevations 1,500 feet higher than you’d find in North America or Europe.

The Ghazni provincial government owns vast tracts of land in Nawur.

There’s plenty of water stored in a vast snowmelt playa called Daste Nawur.

Martin and James thought this offered a way to defeat the Taliban at Khajanoor Farms. They designed a giant, 20,000-acre wheat seed farm north of Daste Nawur that could provide seeds for most of Afghanistan’s wheat farmers.

The Hazaris were eager to help the Texans and willing to learn how to run a large farm …

Lt. Col. Al Perez of San Antonio is the agribusiness team’s market specialist. He’s been in the military for 23 years, both in the regular Army and the Texas National Guard.

“This is way much better than pulling the trigger,” he said. “Way, way better.”

So the plan is to compete with the inefficient Taliban-sponsored operation and send the local population on its way to independence from the thugs.

It’s a nice idea, and along with better language training, The Captain’s Journal supports such tactics.  We have applauded similar efforts by the Department of Agriculture.  So the proof of our support for the nonkinetic part of counterinsurgency is on the books.

But there is a subtle although important problem with this account.  Notice that kinetic operations and population-centric operations are placed in juxtaposition for purposes of contrast rather than complement.  This is a far better way, says Lt. Col. Perez.  Indeed it is, if it works without any focus on finding and killing the Taliban.

But the Taliban have proved resilient and adaptive.  To assume that they can be beaten by developing better seed assumes that they won’t take over “protection” of the new production operation.  Not so, for Taliban operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Taliban have made a significant amount of money in operations ranging from taxation of various local businesses, to “protection” for larger industrial operations, to kidnapping and extortion of cell phone providers.  With the Taliban unmolested in this region there is no assurance that they won’t strong-arm the operations for cash.  Mere operation of businesses has not proven to be enough incentive yet for the population to revert to armed resistance against the Taliban.

As for the status of the Kajaki dam?

Afghan workers have kept the power station running throughout the past 30 years of war and upheaval, and even now have negotiated with the Taliban so they can travel to work from their villages …

The Taliban hold sway in the countryside around the dam and even charge people for electricity, so they can be persuaded to let the workers keep the power plant running, the workers said.

“We do not have a problem with anyone,” Mr. Rasoul said. “We tell them we are working and producing electricity for everyone in the villages and towns.”

In the case of the dam, it hasn’t exactly been a nail in the coffin of the insurgency.  In fact, they are making money off of it.  It’s advisable to see soft operations such as this agricultural expedition as part of a whole rather than an alternative to targeting the enemy.  This was our argument in Center of Gravity Versus Lines of Effort in COIN.

The Texas National Guard deserves credit for innovative tactics in the counterinsurgency campaign.  It is apparently a long term program and it will be self-evident if successful.  But the program should not be seen as a replacement for other lines of effort, including targeting the enemy so that he doesn’t use his criminal enterprise to flip yet another soft counterinsurgency program to his favor.

Prior:

Financing the Taliban

Kidnapping: The Taliban’s New Source of Income

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Does COIN

The British Approach to Counterinsurgency

Defense Analysts Echo The Captain’s Journal Concerning Kajaki Dam

The Role of Electricity in State Stabilization

Targeting the Insurgency Versus Protecting the Infrastructure