Archive for the 'Afghanistan' Category

In Miliband Encourages Terrorism we covered the recent visit to India, the connection drawn by Miliband between the Mumbai attacks and the solution to Kashmir, and the hardening of the Indian world view as a result of this political pressure.

Continuing with but expanding on this same theme, Professor M.D. Nalapat of Manipal University gives us a raw reaction to the Miliband visit and the message he brought.

Someone forgot to tell Britain’s foreign secretary and would-be prime minister, David Miliband, that the Union Jack no longer flies over New Delhi’s Viceregal Palace, now renamed “Rashtrapati Bhavan,” or “Head of the Nation House.” During his visit to India last month, his hosts found Miliband’s conduct and views so offensive that a relatively junior official from the External Affairs Ministry was trotted out to insist that India did not need “unsolicited” advice.

The official was referring to Miliband’s motif during the visit – that New Delhi ought to make concessions on Kashmir so the Pakistan army would assist NATO with more sincerity and efficacy than it has since the 2001 NATO-Taliban war started in Afghanistan.

Clearly, Miliband is unaware of the dynamics of decision making in a democracy. He appears to view India in the same league as China, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, in each of which a single institution – the Communist Party, the army and the monarchy, respectively – calls the shots.

Were Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee to follow Miliband’s peremptory advice – enabling the Pakistan army to gain through diplomacy concessions that they have thus far been unable to wrest by jihad – not only would domestic politics in India be inflamed to Bangladeshi proportions, but the Wahabbis that control the Pakistan army would be able to recover some of the ground they have lost with regard to public opinion and moderate civil society.

As for Afghanistan, Miliband has fallen into the same delusion as did former U.S. President George W. Bush in 2001 – that the Pakistan army is interested in the defeat of the Taliban. In reality, so dense are the linkages between the army and the Taliban that the lower ranks would sabotage any order from the generals to seriously do battle with the jihadists, should any of the top brass give such a command …

It is ironic that elements in so many NATO states would like to see India punished in Kashmir for achieving precisely what the alliance has itself failed to do in Afghanistan, which is to beat back the jihadists. In 2001, this writer suggested to friends in the U.S. administration that it was India rather than Pakistan that would be the more desirable ally in the War on Terror. But George W. Bush chose Pakistan. Fortunately for him, he will be on perhaps the second volume of his memoirs before the consequences of this error of judgment become evident in his country.

The Captain’s Journal has discussed the Pakistani duplicity before too, and it’s time to update this perspective with more recent observations, but first we’ll briefly rehearse some background.  In Joint Ingelligence Centers, we warned against the use of isolated joint intelligence centers due to the difficulty of force protection.  But we assumed that these centers would actually be conducting aggressive and meaningful intelligence gathering.  As it turns out, this assumption may be false, and thus far these centers have not been successful due to the Pakistani forces.

Some U.S. military officers say mistrust among the staff of a new intelligence outpost in Afghanistan’s remote Khyber Pass is limiting its effectiveness.

While officers remain hopeful about the Khyber Border Coordination Center, the security situation along the critical supply lines in the area remains dicey, the Washington Post reported Monday.

NATO, Afghan and Pakistani troops man the center with the goal of reducing Taliban activity and keeping trade and military supplies moving.

Along with language and logistical issues still being worked out, there has been some grumbling that the Pakistani contingent has been less than enthusiastic about cracking down on guerrillas and local bandits.

“There’s a hell of a lot of lip service,” said one U.S. officer who remained anonymous. “The Pakistanis talk a good game but don’t play a good game.”

This perspective of Pakistani intentions isn’t dissimilar to that of Professor Nalapat.  In fact, it’s a fairly safe bet that India’s current administration is not only confirmed in its intention to combat terror within its own borders, but that it’s message to Miliband was only a warmup for the same thing for the U.S. administration.

India has warned US President Barack Obama that he risks “barking up the wrong tree” if he seeks to broker a settlement between Pakistan and India over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

MK Narayanan, India’s national security advisor, said that the new US administration was in danger of dredging up out of date Clinton administration-era strategies in a bid to bring about improved ties between the two nuclear armed neighbours.

“I do think that we could make President Obama understand, if he does nurse any such view, that he is barking up the wrong tree. I think Kashmir today has become one of the quieter and safer places in this part of the world,” Mr Narayanan said in an interview with CNBC TV18.

“It’s possible that at this time there are elements, perhaps in the administration who are harking back to the pre-2000 era.”

The message is consistent, whether from the administration in India or Professor Nalapat.  Kashmir is a success for India.  Jihad has been beaten back, and to suggest that it be placed on the bargaining block is a reversion to the politics of previous administrations.  It simply won’t be acceptable.

A one final note, as a favor to Medvedev who recently pledged two billion in financial aid, the only remaining air base in central Asia, Manas in Kyrgyzstan, is soon to close, making air supplies to Afghanistan much more difficult.  Yet consider a map of Jammu and Kashmir, and the possibility of sea transit of supplies to India, truck transport to Indian-administered Kashmir, and then overflights to Afghanistan.

India may indeed be a far better and more productive partner in the global counterinsurgency in which we are engaged than Pakistan.

Continuing with the strategy The Captain’s Journal outlined approximately one year ago, the Taliban continue to target lines of logistical supply in the Khyber pass region of Pakistan.

Mohammad Sajjad/Associated Press (courtesy of NYT)

Local residents walk past a bridge destroyed by alleged Islamic militants Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2009 in the Pakistani tribal area of Khyber, near Peshawar (AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad)

Supplies intended for NATO forces in Afghanistan were suspended Tuesday after Taliban militants blew up a highway bridge in the Khyber Pass region, a lawless northwestern tribal area straddling the border with Afghanistan.

Hidayatullah Khan, a government official in the region, was quoted by Reuters as saying that the 30-yard-long iron bridge was located 15 miles northwest of Peshawar, the capital of the restive North-West Frontier Province.

Pakistani officials said they were assessing the damage and teams had been sent to repair the bridge. But it was not immediately clear how soon the trucks carrying crucial supplies for NATO forces would be able to travel through the Khyber Pass to Afghanistan.

Apparently supplies are already moving again.  The top U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan shrugged off any supply worries after Tuesday’s events, saying that traffic was already flowing again in Pakistan after the attack. “They made a bypass,” said Col. Greg Julian.

But amelioration of the temporary interdiction of supplies that occurred due to the bridge doesn’t change the overall strategic problem faced by NATO and the U.S.  We have strongly recommended creation of a supply route through the Caspian region, one that would surely be problematic but also one that would avoid the direct empowerment of Russia.

Myra MacDonald cites Stephen Blank, a professor at the U.S. Army War College who reached the conclusion that the United States will have to make concessions to win Russia’s cooperation on Afghanistan.  “Russia has the capability to exact a steep price for its cooperation, and it seems fairly certain that the Kremlin will strive to do just that,” he wrote. “One area in which it will likely try to exact that price is in the Caucasus and Black Sea regions, specifically in seeking NATO assurances that Georgia and Ukraine will not be offered membership in the alliance for the foreseeable future, if ever. It is a mark of the strategic malpractice of past U.S. policymakers in Central Asia and Afghanistan that Moscow now finds itself in position to potentially dictate conditions for participation in an endeavor that is clearly in Russia’s best interests.”

Russia knows just how important logistics was to their failed Afghan campaign.

The war was a contest by both sides to control the other’s logistics. The Soviet lines of communication (LOC) were a double lane highway network which wound through the Hindu Kush Mountains – some of the most inhospitable terrain on earth. The Soviet presence depended on its ability to keep the roads open. Much of the Soviet combat in Afghanistan was a fight for control of the road network. The resistance destroyed over 11,000 Soviet trucks. The DRA truck losses were reportedly higher. The Mujahideen ability to interdict the LOC was a constant concern to the Soviet and prevented them from maintaining a larger occupation force in Afghanistan.

It certainly is strategic malpractice, one might even say strategic malfeasance, to have placed us in the position of strengthening Russia in order to prosecute the campaign in Afghanistan.  Hard work must be done in order to prevent this exigency.  It is for lack of vision that the enemy strategy can be pointed out months before put into place, and yet be ignored by the Pentagon.

Military.com has an important article on the logistical state of affairs in Afghanistan.

The milk is now pulled from the mess hall by 9 a.m., to ration the limited supply.

At the Camp Phoenix base store nearby, the shelves look bare. There’s no Irish Spring Body Wash, no Doritos, no Tostitos Scoops, no Bayer Aspirin.

“We’re having the same problems all over Afghanistan,” said Randy Barnes, who manages warehouses for the Army & Air Force Exchange Service, which operates stores at many of the bases where U.S. troops are deployed in the war on terror here.

For the Soldiers at Camp Phoenix, about 650 of whom are from the Illinois National Guard, the missing supplies underscore what senior military officials have been saying for months: U.S. and coalition troops must find new routes to supply what will be a rapidly growing force in Afghanistan, ones that avoid the treacherous border areas of Pakistan where convoys have been ambushed.

Supplying an army in any war is crucial; it’s not just bullets and bombs, but everything from fuel to lettuce, that must be shipped in by the ton and the truckload. And a country like Afghanistan — landlocked, mountainous and with few good roads — poses enormously difficult challenges even without attacks by militants.

Gen. David Petraeus, the chief of U.S. Central Command, announced late last month that the military had reached transit deals with Russia and several Central Asian states to the north of Afghanistan, to provide an alternate route from Pakistan. But it’s not yet clear whether any new route would be able to absorb the heavy traffic.

“It is very important as we increase the effort in Afghanistan that we have multiple routes that go into the country,” Petraeus said …

The supply-route challenge is politically sensitive; as long as the U.S. and coalition troops depend on Pakistan to move supplies, it’s difficult to be too critical of its government’s help in the war on terror. Some in Washington have questioned Pakistan’s commitment.

But a route through Russia and neighboring countries is not necessarily a long-term solution either. The over-land route is much longer and more expensive, and dealing with repressive regimes in Central Asia also could pose political dilemmas.

This is a significant story on the state of affairs of logistics in Afghanistan, rounded off by a stupid comment at the end of the quote.  There are no political dilemmas with which to deal.  Ending every repressive regime is not in the bag of tricks that we should expect the U.S. military or the State Department to perform.  Repressive regime or not, we should make allies with the countries with whom we must deal.

This is true – except for Russia, who is still, in our estimation, an enemy posing as a friend.  It won’t take much for them to revert from being a temporary friend to being an erstwhile friend.  Maybe the switch has already begun.  When General David Petraeus recently stated that agreements had been reached for transit of supplies via Russia, he was quickly corrected by Russia.

The shocking intelligence assessment shared by Moscow reveals that almost half of the US supplies passing through Pakistan is pilfered by motley groups of Taliban militants, petty traders and plain thieves. The US Army is getting burgled in broad daylight and can’t do much about it. Almost 80% of all supplies for Afghanistan pass through Pakistan. The Peshawar bazaar is doing a roaring business hawking stolen US military ware, as in the 1980s during the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union.

within a day of Petraeus’ remark, Moscow corrected him. Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Maslov told Itar-Tass, “No official documents were submitted to Russia’s permanent mission in NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] certifying that Russia had authorized the United States and NATO to transport military supplies across the country.”

A day later, Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, added from Brussels, “We know nothing of Russia’s alleged agreement of military transit of Americans or NATO at large. There had been suggestions of the sort, but they were not formalized.” And, with a touch of irony, Rogozin insisted Russia wanted the military alliance to succeed in Afghanistan.

They are playing hard ball, as we predicted that they would.  For Afghan logistics, The Captain’s Journal has strongly recommended the route that passes through the Bosporus Strait, Georgia to neighboring Azerbaijan, across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan, and from there South to Afghanistan.  So what do the Russians think about our proposal?

Russian experts have let it be known that Moscow views with disquiet the US’s recent overtures to Central Asian countries regarding bilateral transit treaties with them which exclude Russia. Agreements have been reached with Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Moscow feels the US is pressing ahead with a new Caspian transit route which involves the dispatch of shipments via Georgia to Azerbaijan and thereon to the Kazakh harbor of Aktau and across the Uzbek territory to Amu Darya and northern Afghanistan.

Russian experts estimate that the proposed Caspian transit route could eventually become an energy transportation route in reverse direction, which would mean a strategic setback for Russia in the decade-long struggle for the region’s hydrocarbon reserves.

The Asia Times gives us the summary of the Russian position.

Medvedev made it clear Moscow would resist US attempts to expand its military and political presence in the Central Asian and Caspian regions. He asserted, “This is a key region, a region in which diverse processes are taking place and in which Russia has crucially important work to do to coordinate our positions with our colleagues and help to find common solutions to the most complex problems.”

This is political speak for the fact that Russia wants to ride the coattails of the American taxpayer and fighting men to importance in the region, and will resist any attempt of the U.S. to expand logistical routes.  Russia will be just fine with the U.S. solving its Islamic militant problem in Chechnya by fixing Afghanistan, but wants the U.S. out of the region as soon as this is done.  Another way of saying it is that the U.S. needs to hurry its preparations for logistical routes through the Caspian region.

Underscoring their commitment to hegemony in the region, Russia snared a new Naval base on the Black Sea, courtesy of Abkhazia.  Time is wasting, and the Soldiers are running out of milk, Aspirin and soap.

Prior:

Will Russian-Afghan Logistics Dictate Foreign Policy?

New Afghan Supply Route Through Russia Likely

U.S.-Georgia Strategic Partnership

In an interesting and rather strange Asia Times article on the intertwined relationship between Iran, the U.S., Afghanistan and Pakistan, pro-Iranian commentator Kaveh L Afrasiabi sees possible cooperation between Iran and the U.S. on logistical supply routes to Afghanistan and other things associated with Operation Enduring Freedom.  If one can get by the dreaming, he makes this interesting statement.

“The difference between then and now is that the US officials are now distinguishing between the ‘good Taliban’ versus the ‘bad Taliban’ and hoping to sow divisions between them and reach a compromise with the former, perhaps as part of an emerging post-Karzai scenario,” said a Tehran University political scientist. The scholar added that he believes Iran does not like this “new approach” and finds it “simplistic and defeatist”.

He adds that the existing Karzai regime is backed by Iran.  The Captain’s Journal is no fan of Karzai, and we have already mentioned that a break with his administration might be necessary.  But it’s unlikely that Iran and the U.S. have mutual interests in anything.  For every U.S. interest, there is a corollary counter-interest by Iran, with regional Persian hegemony being the ultimate aim.

But of interest is that it is now understood worldwide that the U.S. is trying to delineate between “good” and “bad” Taliban.  True enough, there will be some amount of adolescents, teenagers and ne’er-do-wells who got sucked into the Taliban and might be able to be separated from the pack.  But we believe that this fraction is somewhere between very small and vanishingly small.  Hear carefully the words of one Taliban.

Abdul Shafiq is around 30 years old and has sacrificed his family life for two things: reading the Koran and fighting.

After years in exile following the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan, this Taliban commander is back in the mountains of his birth, having left behind his old life with his family for one mission: chasing out the “infidel” Americans.

Abdul Shafiq — an assumed name — looks like any other Afghan, except that he has never been as unhappy as in times of peace.

In hiding in Kabul, he rarely spends two nights in the same place, taking a break before returning to the fight.

In the mountains, he heard of new US President Barack Obama “who will change nothing” and of Palestine “where something is happening”.

His future seems set: “As long as the Americans are here, we will fight them,” says the Taliban militant, whom AFP could only meet through local intermediaries …

It was in the northern mountains that he heard, over Taliban combat radio, on September 11, 2001 that planes sent by Al-Qaeda, had struck at the heart of the United States.

“That was beautiful, delicious to hear, everyone was happy,” the warrior says with a smile.

But when the United States invaded Afghanistan the following month, Shafiq and his comrades soon realised they could not withstand the deluge of US bombs and fled. Some went to Pakistan. Others, like Shafiq, went west to Iran.

The Iranian government and the Taliban may have little in common, but they shared virulent opposition to the United States.

Iran took in Taliban in their thousands … In Kabul, the US army, sure of itself, branded the Taliban finished.

It was then that Shafiq slipped quietly home to Wardak. “They told us that the Americans were stopping the Taliban much less,” he says.

He took charge of a group of 30 men who lived on the move, going from one safehouse to another, he says.

Even before then, the Taliban started to regroup. “Everything is structured. The orders come from our leaders in Pakistan …

So much for Iran’s suspicion of the Taliban as suggested by Kaveh L Afrasiabi.  There are many lessons wrapped up in this one interview, only parts of which are included above.  Iran supports the Taliban.  The hard core Taliban will fight until they die or we lose.  They get their orders from leaders Pakistan.  They believe that the U.S. has stood down in the effort to roust the Taliban.

As for the Tehrik-i-Taliban in Pakistan, another Asia Times article gives us what The Captain’s Journal believes to be a correct snapshot of the evolution in their thinking.

In some places they aim to enforce strict sharia law. In others, the Taliban want to establish bases from which to work in support of the resistance against foreign forces in Afghanistan.

In yet other areas, the purpose is simply to create chaos and anarchy so that militants can engage the Pakistani armed forces and deter them from supporting the global “war on terror”.

However, the ultimate mission of the groups is steadily harmonizing, that is, to support the regional war and then the global war against Western hegemony; this is the concept driving the neo-Taliban.

Whether the Afghan Taliban who are committed to war against the U.S. in Afghanistan, or the TTP who are committed to war against the West from Afghanistan to New York and London, the goals and aims of the “Taliban” are gradually dovetailing.  There will be fewer and fewer “good” ones left, if there ever were any to begin with.

Even when significant U.S. casualties have been sustained as in the Battle of Wanat, the anti-Afghan forces have suffered greater losses.  In fact, in one recent engagement with the Marines, the Taliban suffered 50 losses as compared to none by the U.S. Marines.  This lends prima facie credibility to the notion that the Taliban are reverting to standoff tactics such as IEDs.  DoD data indicates that roadside bomb attacks are up sharply.

Afghan militants directed 3,276 roadside bomb attacks at Western troops last year, a 45 percent increase from 2007, U.S. Defense Department figures indicate.

The jump in the use of the bombs, or improvised explosive devices, highlights the more aggressive tactics being employed by militants against U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, USA Today reported Monday.

Some 161 troops from U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan were killed by IEDs last year, more than doubling in 2007 death toll of 75, Pentagon data show.

In Afghanistan, “an emboldened, increasingly aggressive enemy has increased the use of IEDs,” Defense Department spokeswoman Irene Smith told the newspaper.

But it was Mark Twain who popularized the phrase that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.  It isn’t just roadside bomb attacks that are up sharply.

Taliban fighters are increasingly hitting their targets directly instead of relying on bombs, according to a year-end statistical review that contradicts a key NATO message about the war in Afghanistan.

Public statements from Canadian and other foreign troops have repeatedly emphasized the idea that the insurgents are losing momentum because they can only detonate explosives, failing to confront their opponents in combat.

But an analysis of almost 13,000 violent incidents in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008, prepared by security consultant Sami Kovanen and provided to The Globe and Mail, shows a clear trend toward open warfare.

By far the most common type of incident, in Mr. Kovanen’s analysis, is the so-called “complex attack,” meaning ambushes or other kinds of battle using more than one type of weapon. The analyst counted 2,555 such attacks in 2008, up 117 per cent from the previous year.

Bombings also increased, but only by 63 per cent year-on-year for a total of 2,384 successful and attempted strikes in 2008.

Mr. Kovanen has spent years tracking the conflict in Afghanistan, first as a NATO officer and most recently at the newly established Kabul-based consultancy Tundra Strategic Security Solutions. The latest trends are disturbing, he says, because the Taliban need more manpower to launch complex ambushes.

“Clearly they are not as weak as the military claims,” Mr. Kovanen said.

The Globe and Mail then provides the following metrics.

IED attack
2007, 779
2008, 1,266

IED attempt/discovery
2007, 681
2008, 1,118

Complex attack
2007, 1,180
2008, 2,555

Total 2007, 5,113
Total 2008, 7,791

This data indicates what The Captain’s Journal has claimed for one one year now.  The security situation is degrading in Afghanistan.  There are fairly routine reports of how bad it is for the Taliban, usually from sources such as the Strategy Page with this report.  But the Strategy Page gets some of its information and analysis from official intelligence sources, the same ones which allow the damned lies to cloud the lies.  In the case of the Globe and Mail report, precise and comprehensive statistics cleared up the mess for us.

The U.S. Marines gave us a picture of what counterinsurgency can look like during their operations in the Helmand Province, and the statistics showed what the population knew about the campaign.  The security improved with the Marines in place.  The ISAF is yet to take up the challenge.

At a New York Times blog John Nagl weighs in on Afghanistan.

In 2007, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, was very blunt before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He admitted, “In Iraq, we do what we must.” Of America’s other war, he said, “In Afghanistan, we do what we can.”

Doing what we can has been insufficient in Afghanistan. Fortunately, an improving security situation and an increasingly capable Iraqi government now allow the United States to shift the balance of effort east, to America’s forgotten war.

This shift comes in the nick of time. The Taliban has been growing stronger in the poorly administered Pashtun tribal areas on either side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Last year was the bloodiest year on record for the international coalition, and service in Afghanistan is far more dangerous on a per-soldier basis than is service in Iraq. It is clearly time for a change in strategy.

The essence of success is counterinsurgency, which requires boots on the ground, and plenty of them — 20 to 25 counterinsurgents for every 1,000 people, or some 600,000 for all of Afghanistan, a country larger and more populous than Iraq. The additional 30,000 American forces on tap for deployment to Afghanistan over the next year are sorely needed, but obviously insufficient to protect all 30 million people in the country.

However, insurgencies are not defeated by foreign forces. They are defeated by the security services of the afflicted nation. Thus the long-term answer to the Taliban’s insurgency has to be a much expanded Afghan National Army. Currently 70,000 and projected to grow to 135,000, the Afghan army is the most respected institution in that troubled country. It may need to reach 250,000, and be supported by a similarly sized police force, to provide the security that will cause the Taliban to wither. Building such an Afghan Army will be a long-term effort that will require American equipment and advisers for many years, but since the Afghans can field about 70 troops for the cost of one deployed American soldier, there is no faster, cheaper or better way to win.

Would it hurt Nagl’s reputation for The Captain’s Journal to agree?  We might quibble slightly over the number of troops (Nagl hits the high side), and Afghanistan is a campaign that will evolve in the coming months.  We’ll see if it really takes that many.  But we have argued for more troops for over a year, along with the jettisoning of the notion that we can engineer a cheap “awakening” to prevent the necessity of actually conducting COIN.

As for the idea of reliance on the Afghan Army, recall what we said in The Likely Failure of Tribal Miltias in Afghanistan, where we point out the population had the highest confidence in the Afghan Army and lowest in tribal fighters.  Nagl is right.  The Army (and to a lesser degree the Afghan National Police) are our best bet for pacification of the countryside.

There is another entry in this same post that deserves a few words, that being from Parag Khanna.

Even if an additional 30,000 American and NATO troops were deployed in southern and eastern Afghanistan, the Taliban problem would not be reduced. It would merely be pushed back over the Pakistan border, destabilizing Pakistan’s already volatile North-West Frontier Province, which itself is more populous than Iraq. This amounts to squeezing a balloon on one end to inflate it on the other.

It doesn’t have to be this way, and this argument amounts to nothing more than the idea that we cannot militarily defeat the Taliban because they cannot be cordoned.  While the SOF high value target campaign with small footprint and low force projection cannot stop the ingress and egress of fighters, an adequate increase in the number of troops can indeed be successful, at least in terms of a deliberate, methodical approach to counterinsurgency.  The Afghan Taliban and the TTP both clearly believe that the first fight is their jihad is the U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

The refusal to engage Syria and Iran concerning the influx of fighters into Iraq was problematic, and it is true enough that Pakistan must be engaged sooner or later, whether by soft power, additional resources, political and diplomatic pressure, targeted raids and UAV strikes, and even eventually military operations if necessary.  But the first step is to increase troop presence in Afghanistan.  There is no need to engage in endless debates over Pakistan when the first steps haven’t even been taken for Afghanistan.

This is not a call to neglect regional strategy.  But it is a call to prevent the desire for perfection from being the enemy of progress.  We endorse Nagl’s counsel concerning Afghanistan, and he will just have to live down the connection with us.

The Captain’s Journal has made it clear before concerning the British that our gripe is not with the enlisted man who has been heroic and hard fighting, but with the officers and strategy-makers of the British Army who have let their experiences in Northern Ireland cloud their judgment in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We have also covered the deal the British struck with one Mullah Abdul Salaam, a so-called mid-level Taliban commander who allegedly sided with the British, with the British thinking that Salaam would field fighters when the British and U.S. attacked Musa Qala to retake it from hard core Taliban fighters.  As it turns out, Salaam was pretty much just a despicable and cowardly weasel.

There was no uprising. When Afghan, British and US units closed in on Musa Qala last month, Mullah Salaam stayed in his compound in Shakahraz, ten miles east, with a small cortège of fighters, where he made increasingly desperate pleas for help.

“He said that he would bring all the tribes with him but they never materialised,” recalled one British officer at the forefront of the operation. “Instead, all that happened was a series of increasingly fraught and frantic calls from him for help to Karzai.”

So instead of fighting the Taliban, he and his men stayed home and screamed like school girls.  Some deal the British made – a pig in a poke.  But yet, he was the “only game in town” and spoke “bloody well,” so he was rewarded with governorship of Musa Qala by the British.

The British have since accused him of corruption, while Salaam has leveled counter-accusations of the British undermining his authority in testimony to how bad the relations have become.  Security is still problematic in Musa Qala, and Dexter Filkins at the New York Times gives us a little glimpse into the current state of affairs of Musa Qala.  Many themes here at The Captain’s Journal appear in the Filkins article, including the notion that the countryside is being turned over to the Taliban because there aren’t enough troops to protect the population.  But one exchange occurs regarding Musa Qala that is instructive for all such future tactics employed by either the British or U.S.

Mr. Hediat said he had no great gripes with the British soldiers who were occupying the town — for one thing, he said, they do not raid houses and peer at the women. But the biggest complaint, he said, was the Afghan the British installed as the district governor, Mullah Salam. The governor is unpopular and corrupt, demanding bribes and tributes from anyone who needs something.

“This is why people hate the British, because they put Mullah Salam in power, and they keep him there,” he said.

The CTC Sentinel at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, July 2008, has an important article by David C. Isby entitled “The High Stakes Battle for the Future of Musa Qala.”  Isby made several key conclusions.

Since the initial withdrawal from Musa Qala in 2006, the British image for military capability in general and counter-insurgency competence in particular has suffered a number of setbacks, by no means all in Afghanistan. The success of Iraqi forces in Basra in 2008 was widely seen as them doing a job that the British had left unfinished for political reasons. Britain’s relations with Kabul have suffered a number of setbacks, from the removal of diplomats following direct negotiations (bypassing Kabul) with the Taliban at Musa Qala in 2006 to Kabul’s rejection of Lord Paddy Ashdown to be the new UN envoy in Afghanistan. British differences with the government in Kabul have increased, and Britain has become the focus of much of the frustration with coalition efforts [page 12].

For the United Kingdom, it is a chance to show that the second largest coalition member in terms of troops in Afghanistan can demonstrate results on the ground commensurate with their status in bilateral and multilateral security relationships. As British policy is to channel aid through Kabul where feasible, this provides an opportunity for aid to be directed in Musa Qala in order to show a long-term commitment at preventing the Taliban from returning to burn schools and kill Afghans. If the United Kingdom fails in Musa Qala, its relations with coalition partners and Afghans alike is likely to be harmed, and it may have a further impact on its international standing.

The Musa Qala tactic stands out as one that should never be repeated.  It should also be noted that the Afghan population has very little confidence in tribal militias versus the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police (i.e., in spite of the corruption in the police and ineptitude in the Army, they are seen as better than the alternatives).  In the mean time, the British must find a way to dismember Salaam’s network of corruption in Musa Qala in order to restore confidence in their counterinsurgency capabilities.  Thus far they have failed – miserably.

Prior:

The Example of Musa Qala

Musa Qala and the Argument for Force Projection

Our Deal with Mullah Abdul Salaam

The Failure of Talking with the Taliban

One error made in the phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom following the invasion was the foisting of a democratic form of government on the country, and even more specifically, a parliamentary form of government.  It led to the ineptitude and intransigence of the government for a protracted period of time.  The position of Prime Minister, held now by Maliki, was used as much to prevent U.S. operations against rogue Shi’a elements as it was to serve the country.  Indeed, while performing a defensive political operation for Moqtada al Sadr, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and the SIIC and others, he had no problem allowing the U.S. to go after Sunni insurgents in Anbar and in and around Baghdad.  Even recently Marine Maj. Gen John Kelly has complained about the lack of funding flowing from Baghdad to Anbar.  Having a political authority and structure to which the U.S. was reportable hindered the progress of counterinsurgency, even if in the end a political authority was necessary for turnover of control.

Hamid Karzai wants the U.S. to make the same mistake in Afghanistan.  Even worse, he wants operational and strategic control over U.S. forces.

The Afghan government has sent NATO headquarters a draft agreement that would give Afghanistan more control over future NATO deployments in the country — including the positioning of some U.S. troops, officials said Tuesday.

The draft technical agreement would put into place rules of conduct for NATO-led troops in Afghanistan and the number of additional NATO troops and their location would have to be approved by the Afghan government.

The agreement — an attempt by Afghanistan to gain more control over international military operations — would also prohibit NATO troops from conducting any searches of Afghan homes, according to a copy of the draft obtained by The Associated Press.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who met with Gen. David Petraeus on Tuesday and discussed how to prevent civilian deaths and the role of Afghan forces in U.S. missions, told legislators that his government sent the draft agreement to NATO about two weeks ago. As the head of U.S. Central Command, Petraeus oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Addressing parliament at its opening session, a frustrated Karzai said the U.S. and other Western military allies have not heeded his calls to stop airstrikes in civilian areas in Afghanistan. He warned that the fight against militants cannot be won without popular support from Afghans.

The Afghan president urged the U.S. and NATO to follow a new military strategy in Afghanistan that would increase cooperation with Afghan forces and officials to prevent the killing and maiming of civilians.

“We will not accept civilian casualties on our soil during the fight against terrorism and we cannot tolerate it,” Karzai told parliament.

In addition to strategic control, he wants tactical control over the actions of U.S. troops.

“The president has said there is a need to review our relationship and the way we move forward and we need to make sure that Afghans, particularly on the issue of searches and arrest, are in the forefront,” Hamidzada told The Associated Press during an interview at the heavily fortified presidential palace.

“We have to make sure that in the villages we don’t burst into people’s houses, we don’t arrest people arbitrarily and we don’t act on intelligence that is not verifiable,” he said.

He blames many of the problems on air power, and while it’s true that The Captain’s Journal has advocated increased troop presence with the population in Afghanistan (which should lead to more accuracy in the application of air power), this would most certainly mean an increase in intelligence-driven raids.  U.S. troops don’t need the hindrance of the ineptitude of the Afghan Army during such raids.  More correctly, the Afghan troops are still learning and being mentored.  In the battle of Wanat, of the nine dead and twenty seven wounded, all casualties were U.S. Army.  None were Afghan troops.

This is all from one Karzai who prostrated himself before Mullah Omar, beseeching him to return to the fold. On the first day of Id al-Fitr, President Hamid Karzai had a great treat in store for his people. In a speech he said: “A few days ago I pleaded with the leader of the Taliban, telling him ‘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’.”

Karzai is facing an election soon, and some of this may be posturing in front of the Afghan people.  Regardless of his motivation, he essentially wants the equivalent of the Iraq Status of Forces Agreement in Afghanistan, while he is begging Mullah Omar to return to Afghanistan and promising him protection.  The campaign is nowhere near this phase.

Given the state of affairs in Afghanistan, to give operational, strategic and tactical control of U.S. troops over to a foreign president would not only work contrary to the unity of command sought by placing U.S. troops back under CENTCOM with Petraeus in charge.  More to the point, it would have disastrous consequences for the campaign.

We haven’t yet made this colossal blunder in the campaign, but Karzai has made it clear that he wishes us to.  If Karzai presses this issue, he could become not just a hindrance to the campaign as he is now with his corrupt government.  Rather, he could become a very real enemy of the peace and stability of Afghanistan.  The U.S. might have to cut its ties with and support of Karzai.

Regular readers of The Captain’s Journal know that we oppose simplistic applications of the Anbar awakening to Afghanistan.  The reasons are involved and complicated, and the reader is advised to stop by our category The Anbar Narrative for a fuller explanation.  But one reason that the concept of tribal militias may fail in Afghanistan can be found in a report by the Asia Foundation (h/t Small Wars Council).  In the report the following table of results can be found.

Local militias – for whatever reason, corruption, internecine warfare, etc. – rank at the lowest of all institutions in which the Afghan population has confidence.  Training and institutionalizing the Afghan Army and ridding the police of corruption – along with more U.S. troops to kill Taliban and provide security for the population and confidence for the Army until the process is complete – are the best bets to a stable and secure Afghanistan.

U.S. soldiers on patrol along the Afghan-Pakistan border.