Archive for the 'Afghanistan' Category

Soldiers with the US Army’s 6-4 Cavalry prepare to leave on a patrol
from Combat Outpost Lowell in eastern Afghanistan January 7, 2009.

We have raised the issue of Georgian and more broadly European involvement in the search and decision-making for a new logistics line for Afghanistan.  As to the proposed supply line through Georgia, we observed that:

… interestingly, this leaves us vulnerable yet again to Russian dispositions, even with the alternative supply route.  Georgia is the center of gravity in this plan, and our willingness to defend her and come to her aid might just be the one thing that a) kills the option of Russia as a logistical supply into Afghanistan, and b) saves Georgia as a supply route.  Thus far, we have maneuvered ourselves into the position of reliance on Russian good will.  These “thawed relations” might just turn critical should Russia decide again to flex its muscle in the region, making the U.S. decisions concerning Georgia determinative concerning our ability to supply our troops in Afghanistan.  Are we willing to turn over Georgia (and maybe the Ukraine) to Russia in exchange for a line of supply into Afghanistan, or are we willing to defend and support Georgia for the preservation of democracy in the region and – paradoxically – the preservation of a line of supply to Afghanistan?

Stratfor weighs in on the logistical maelstrom (at the time of writing of this article, the Stratfor analysis was still available through Google organic search, but not by direct URL for non-registered users).

With little infrastructure to the east, the Pentagon is forced to go north, into Central Asia. Though some fuel is shipped to Western forces in Afghanistan from Baku across the Caspian Sea, there is little indication that existing shipping on the Caspian could expand meaningfully. Additionally, there would be the challenge of transferring cargo from rail to ship back to rail on top of the ship-rail-truck transfers that are already required in Afghanistan.

But even if Caspian shipping was not a problem and if there was sufficient excess seaworthy capacity, there remains the problem of Georgia. Though politically amenable at the moment, it is unstable; furthermore, with some 3,700 Russian troops parked in both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russian military forces are poised to sever the country’s east-west rail links.

These realities will likely drive the logistical pathway farther north, through Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and through Kazakhstan to Russia proper (some U.S. transports already utilize Russian airspace).

Turkmenistan presents its own challenges, as it is particularly isolated after years of authoritarian rule and continues to suffer from the legacy of what was essentially a state religion of worshipping the now-deceased Turkmenbashi. His successor, Gurbanguly Berdimukhammedov (who is rumored to be the Turkmenbashi’s illegitimate son), continues to struggle to consolidate power and is left with a series of delicate internal and external balancing acts. In short, enacting new policies under the new government remains problematic to say the least.

There is another choice: Use a Russian or Ukrainian port of entry where organized crime will be a particularly serious problem (as well as espionage with any sensitive equipment shipped this way), or use a more secure — and efficient — port that will require a rail gauge swap from the European and Turkish 1,435 mm standard to the 1,520 mm rail gauge standard in the former Soviet Union.

All of this is complicated, but the linchpin is working out an agreement to use Russian territory. This presents an even more profound challenge than Russia’s real (but not unlimited) capacity to meddle in its periphery.

While there are a number of outstanding questions — where exactly U.S. supply ships might dock to offload supplies, whether a transfer of cargo from the Western to Russian rail gauge might be necessary, whether the route would transit Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan or both, etc. — these are minor details in comparison to the Russian problem. If there is an understanding with Moscow, the rest is possible. But that understanding must entail enough reliability that Russia cannot treat U.S. and NATO military supplies like natural gas for Europe and Ukraine.

Without an understanding between Washington and Moscow, none of this is possible.

The problem is that while the Kremlin has been reasonably cooperative up to this point when it comes to U.S. and NATO efforts in Afghanistan, such an understanding may not be possible completely independent of the clash of wills between Russia and the West. There is too much at stake, and the window of opportunity is too narrow for Moscow to simply play nice with the new American administration without a much broader strategic agreement and very real concessions. Nevertheless, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, U.S. Gen. Bantz Craddock, has been making overtures to Russia about improving relations.

General David Petraeus is also involved in the efforts to line up a logistics pathway to Afghanistan.  “The top US military commander for the Middle East and Central Asia has denied reports the US is planning to open a military base in Kazakhstan.

Speaking in the Kazakh capital, Astana, Gen David Petraeus also said the US had no plans to withdraw its military presence from neighbouring Kyrgyzstan.

The general is in Kazakhstan for talks on the role of Central Asian states in supporting America’s Afghan operations.

Gen Petraeus and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev discussed the partnership between their countries, and Kazakhstan’s role in supporting US operations in Afghanistan.  Kazakhstan has recently signed an agreement allowing the transit of non-military US supplies to Afghanistan.”

Assuming the veracity and accuracy of this report, it would appear that the probability is that the chosen line of supply directly involves Russia, although only for so-called “non-military” supplies.

But this choice might burden any upcoming decisions on the Ukraine and Georgia and whether they are allowed to enter into NATO, as well as other important European issues such as whether missiles will be deployed in Poland.  While not learning much from the Stratfor analysis, they are on target with their analysis of the affects of the decision-making as it pertains to Russia.

Stratfor says “there is too much at stake, and the window of opportunity is too narrow for Moscow to simply play nice with the new American administration without a much broader strategic agreement and very real concessions.”  Concessions indeed.  And while the route selected will be moderately to significantly less problematic that the alternatives, and while Gates, Petraeus and Craddock might actually believe (for now) in Russian good intentions, they should remember that Russia is ruled by ex-KGB, bent on regional hegemony for at least what they consider to be their near abroad.

The alternative through Georgia still exists, as long as the U.S. is willing to play hard ball and defend her sovereignty (as well as defend her as a line of logistical supply to Afghanistan).  More specifically, the line of supply is as follows.  First, supplies (including military supplies) would be shipped through the Mediterranean Sea through the Bosporus Strait in Turkey.

And from there into the Black Sea.  From the Black Sea the supplies would go through Georgia to neighboring Azerbaijan.

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

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

But it isn’t obvious that this line of supply is impossible, however impractical it may be.  U.S. military leadership should remember that an alternative exists to the Russian line of supply to Afghanistan.  It will be too late to act to secure a line of supply through Georgia at some point in the future, but until then, the U.S. should carefully examine the Russian demands for this logistical aid.  The Russian demands are likely to evolve and expand, and it is this expansion that will prove to be troubling.  Russia is playing nice now.  This won’t last forever.

Prior:

New Afghan Supply Route Through Russia Likely

U.S-Georgia Strategic Partnership

The Logistical Battle: New Lines of Supply to Afghanistan

The Search for Alternate Supply Routes to Afghanistan

Large Scale Taliban Operations to Interdict Supply Lines

More on Lines of Logistics for Afghanistan

How Many Troops Can We Logistically Support in Afghanistan?

Targeting of NATO Supply Lines Through Pakistan Expands

Logistical Difficulties in Afghanistan

Taliban Control of Supply Routes to Kabul

Interdiction of U.S. Supplies in Khyber Pass

The Torkham Crossing

Taliban and al Qaeda Strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan

Before The Captain’s Journal is a strategy blog, we are first and foremost a logistics and tactical blog (logistics and tactics, techniques and procedures – TTP – is our first interest).  We are also a Marine blog, and so naturally, when McClatchy published their article (U.S. Marines find Iraq Tactics don’t work in Afghanistan), we were interested.  Several money quotes are given below, followed by commentary and analysis.

DELARAM, Afghanistan — On a sunset patrol here in late December, U.S. Marines spotted a Taliban unit trying to steal Afghan police vehicles at a checkpoint. In a flash, the Marines turned to pursue, driving off the main road and toward the gunfire coming from the mountain a half mile away.

But their six-ton vehicles were no match for the Taliban pickups. The mine-resistant vehicles and heavily armored Humvees bucked and swerved as drivers tried to maneuver them across fields that the Taliban vehicles raced across. The Afghan police trailed behind in unarmored pick-up trucks, impatient about their allies’ weighty pace.

The Marines, weighted down with 60 pounds of body armor each, struggled to climb up Saradaka Mountain. Once at the top, it was clear to everyone that the Taliban would get away. Second Lt. Phil Gilreath, 23, of Kingwood, La., called off the mission.

“It would be a ghost chase, and we would run the risk of the vehicles breaking down again,” Gilreath said. The Marines spent the next hour trying to find their way back to the paved road.

The men of the 3rd Batallion, 8th Marine Regiment, based at Camp Lejeune, are discovering in their first two months in Afghanistan that the tactics they learned in nearly six years of combat in Iraq are of little value here — and may even inhibit their ability to fight their Taliban foes.

Their MRAP mine-resistant vehicles, which cost $1 million each, were specially developed to combat the terrible effects of roadside bombs, the single biggest killer of Americans in Iraq. But Iraq is a country of highways and paved roads, and the heavily armored vehicles are cumbersome on Afghanistan’s unpaved roads and rough terrain where roadside bombs are much less of a threat.

Body armor is critical to warding off snipers in Iraq, where Sunni Muslim insurgents once made video of American soldiers falling to well-placed sniper shots a staple of recruiting efforts. But the added weight makes Marines awkward and slow when they have to dismount to chase after Taliban gunmen in Afghanistan’s rough terrain.

Even the Humvees, finally carrying heavy armor after years of complaints that they did little to mitigate the impact of roadside explosives in Iraq, are proving a liability. Marines say the heavy armor added for protection in Iraq is too rough on the vehicles’ transmissions in Afghanistan’s much hillier terrain, and the vehicles frequently break down — so often in fact that before every patrol Marine units here designate one Humvee as the tow vehicle.

The Marines have found other differences:

In Iraq, American forces could win over remote farmlands by swaying urban centers. In Afghanistan, there’s little connection between the farmlands and the mudhut villages that pass for towns.

In Iraq, armored vehicles could travel on both the roads and the desert. Here, the paved roads are mostly for outsiders – travelers, truckers and foreign troops; to reach the populace, American forces must find unmapped caravan routes that run through treacherous terrain, routes not designed for their modern military vehicles.

In Iraq, a half-hour firefight was considered a long engagement; here, Marines have fought battles that have lasted as long as eight hours against an enemy whose attacking forces have grown from platoon-size to company-size.

U.S. military leaders recognize that they need to make adjustments. During a Christmas Eve visit here, Marine Commandant Gen. James T. Conway told the troops that the Defense Department is studying how to reconfigure the bottom of its MRAPs to handle Afghanistan’s rougher terrain. And Col. Duffy White, the commander of the Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force, said he anticipates that Marines will be wearing less armor by spring, when fighting season begins again.

Commentary & Analysis

As regular readers know from our body armor coverage and analysis, we have been preaching the virtues of weight reduction in body armor for months, and even years (focusing on the weight of SAPI plates).  Further, the Marine Corps was lethargic to react to known problems with troop transport, abandoning an urgent request for MRAPs in 2005.  The Marines had chosen to run Amphibious Assault Vehicles across desert terrain, and one particularly brutal example of the consequences of this choice was the loss of fourteen Marines near Haditha in August 2005.

Marine Commandant Conway has lamented the heaviness of the force now, and if there is a need for lighter, faster-moving all-terrain vehicles, then the Corps cannot be as slow to react as it was in Anbar.  We have also commented that some TTPs (such as satellite patrols) won’t have the same value in the rural terrain of Afghanistan versus the urban terrain of Iraq.  Having said that, the lectures of the Marines will stop and the analysis will start.

First of all, the Marines do not carry “60 pounds of body armor each.”  Someone has misled the journalist, or the journalist has simply gotten the wrong data, and unfortunately the misinformation has made it’s way into print.

The Modular Tactical Vest, the outer tactical vest in lieu of what the Army uses (Interceptor Body Armor vest) carries the same front, rear and side SAPI plates as the Army, and although the Marine MTV consists of slightly more soft panel protection than the IBA which adds a couple of pounds, the weight of all body armor fielded for the Army and Marines equals roughly 32 pounds, give or take a few ounces.

The balance of the weight to which the journalist refers is a hydration system, ammunition, weapon (which is hooked to the vest by a carabiner) and other odds and ends (e.g., ballistic glasses, gloves, tools, etc.).  These things would be carried by the Marine whether there was body armor or not.  So roughly half of the weight is non-negotiable.  Further, a backpack adds much more weight to the system.

Second, the McClatchy reporter says the following: “The Afghan police trailed behind in unarmored pick-up trucks, impatient about their allies’ weighty pace,” as if the U.S. Marines were holding up the Afghan police.  This is embarrassing for McClatchy, even if they aren’t embarrassed.  The notion of the Afghan police being anything but rife with corruption is absurd, and there was a reason that the police didn’t go out ahead of the Marines.  It’s the same reason that of the nine dead and twenty seven wounded in the Battle of Wanat, not a single one was Afghan Army.  They were all U.S. Army.  There wasn’t a chance in hell that the police would have gone it alone without the Marines, and they likely wouldn’t have even contributed to the fight.

Third, this example shows the need to adapt, and adapt the Marines will.  But Marines who have to chase the Taliban through the hills need more Marines.  Counterinsurgency will require more force projection, this being done in the rural rather than urban areas (the McClatchy article does have this right).  Intelligence-driven raids and kinetic operations will ensue upon adequate contact with the population, with the Marines providing them the security they need from the Taliban.

The real fight will start when the Marines are waiting for the Taliban in their mountain lairs because of what the people have told them.  Or, when the Taliban can’t come out of their caves because the Marines own the terrain.  Dismounted patrols will suffice just fine with enough Marines, and the question of all-terrain vehicles won’t be such a weighty issue.

Corporal William Ash, a squad leader from 1st Platoon, Bravo Company, Battalion Landing Team 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), along with a stray dog lead a patrol through a city in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. When the platoon moved into the area, they found two stray dogs, and each time the Marines head out on patrol the dogs are right at the Marines’ side.

The Marines will ramp up force projection in Afghanistan, and McClatchy reports like the one above won’t take on the importance they do with minimal forces.  The Marines will adapt, improvise and overcome.  McClatchy, on the other hand, should do a much better job of understanding Tactics, Techniques and Procedures.  And in order to have any respectability whatsoever, they need to get the data right concerning simple things like body armor weight.

The tribal awakening in Ramadi, Iraq, was unique in that Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha was able to lead a council of tribal elders, mostly who believed approximately the same things and who saw themselves as part of a coherent Anbar province, to work with the U.S. Marines providing intelligence and policing to assist in expelling al Qaeda in Iraq from the Anbar Province.

There are those, Amir Teheri among them, who believe that part of the U.S. difficulty in Afghanistan has to do with the forced imposition of a centralized power structure in Afghanistan.  But the detractors of such an arrangement have their history as well to which they can point.  There is a dubious past concerning tribal militias that gives the population concerns over the proposed awakening in Afghanistan.

A US-backed plan to form local forces to fight insurgents, like those that had some success in Iraq, has met with alarm in Afghanistan where memories are fresh of the 1990s war between local factions.

The plan, still in a pilot phase, is officially being developed at the request of the government of President Hamid Karzai as a way to empower villagers to protect themselves amid an upsurge in insurgent violence.

But it is being pushed by the United States, Afghanistan’s key ally, with US ambassador to Kabul William Wood saying in late December that there were simply not enough Afghan or international troops to deploy into all villages.

Under the programme, the United States would give members of certain local communities training, clothing and other supplies to “restore their own capacity to protect themselves”, Wood said.

They would be linked into military back-up but the United States would not provide them with weapons, he said, careful to stress that “this is not a recreation of tribal militias or any other kind of militia.”

“We are trying to strengthen the villages, we are trying to strengthen the tribes,” he said, calling these new groups “community guards”.

These groups would likely have weapons. But officials have been vague about who would supply them, with some saying it would be the interior ministry and also insisting the groups could not be called “militias” as they would fall under government supervision.

The guards would be chosen by local-level traditional councils, said Barna Karimi, deputy director of the Independent Directorate of Local Governance (IDLG) set up by Karzai more than a year ago.

The directorate is tasked with reviving these councils, called “shuras”, which fell into disarray during Afghanistan’s three decades of war.

It is starting its work in Logar and Wardak provinces, Karimi told AFP.

Security has plummeted in these two strategic areas, close to the capital and criss-crossed by important roads that are regularly attacked by insurgents and common criminals.

Some of the 20,000-30,000 extra US soldiers due to be in place by summer, in Afghanistan’s own Iraq-style “surge”, are expected to head to these provinces.

Official insistence that the plans for “community guards” do not amount to the establishment of militias has done little to allay public fears amid warnings it could lead to factional warfare like that seen in the 1990s.

Even Karzai, whom the United States has said requested help to create the guards, said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune newspaper last month that the creation of tribal militias would be a bad idea.

“If we create militias again, we will be ruining this country further,” he said. “That is not what I want.”

The communist government of the 1980s poured money into tribal forces because its own security structures were unable to defeat an Afghan uprising against the 1979 Soviet invasion.

Some of these factions grew into powerful forces that later battled each other for control of the government in a devastating civil war that ended only with the Taliban’s seizure of power in 1996.

Observers said it would be better to reinforce the Afghan police and army than set up militias that the government one day might not be able to control.

“We are concerned,” said Nader Nadery from the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.

“We have tried to disarm groups for many years now, and this means to rearm some people,” he said, referring to a UN-backed government programme to persuade the country’s myriad armed factions to hand in their weapons.

Lawmaker Ahmad Joyenda was more emphatic.

“I am totally against militias. They will end up fighting again,” he said.

The government could not even control its own police force, added Joyenda, referring to police corruption.

This analysis suffers from being a bit clunky and simplistic.  The Russian mistake, among other things, was in not conducting counterinsurgency in the rural areas, restricting their presence to the urban population centers.  This is a mistake that the U.S. is currently making in the campaign due to lack of troops.

Yet the account does have dire warnings for the U.S. plan.  The U.S. is currently searching for a plan that doesn’t involve large increases in troop presence, and because none is forthcoming, the only viable option seen is to engineer an awakening on the scale and of the type of the Anbar revolt against al Qaeda.

Yet the problem is just that – this awakening would be engineered rather than natural, and if it’s not a natural fit, then it will fail.  Either way, U.S. forces will be in Afghanistan for a protracted period of time, and force projection will be necessary until a natural solution floats to the top among the flotsam of the wreck that is Afghanistan.

Here is yet another commentary opposing the notion of a troop increase for Afghanistan.  Listen to the logic.

Vice President-elect Joe Biden’s visit to Afghanistan this month — even before President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration — will underscore the new administration’s priority to ending the war there. But their planned “surge first, then negotiate” strategy isn’t likely to work.

The Obama-Biden team wants to weaken the Taliban militarily then strike a political deal with the enemy from a position of strength. This echoes what the Bush administration did in Iraq, where it used a surge largely as a show of force to buy off Sunni tribal leaders and other local chieftains. Current Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen has already announced a near-doubling of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, to up to 63,000, by mid-2009.

Sending more forces into Afghanistan is a losing strategy. The Soviets couldn’t tame the country with more than 100,000 troops.

So that’s the logic.  100,000 troops didn’t work for the Soviets, so a troop increase won’t work for the U.S.  But this is a non sequitur, and the author either knows it and wrote it anyway and is thus a liar, or doesn’t know it and shouldn’t be writing commentaries for anyone, especially the Wall Street Journal.

The comparison is void because of differences in the campaigns.  Many of NATO forces are unable to fight in offensive operations due to restrictive rules of engagement from their countries of origin.  Many of the countries whose forces are in Afghanistan aren’t practicing counterinsurgency, but rather are confined to Forward Operating Bases doing force protection.  Finally, there aren’t enough troops in general to contact the population and provide security, and thus the countryside is being lost.

This last point is critical.  Russian military strategy focused on urban population centers rather than rural terrain, and this was the determinative error made in their campaign.  To the extent that NATO and the U.S. forces are duplicating this error, we will lose.  The practice of counterinsurgency requires constant contact with the population, and not just in urban centers.

There is a variant of the criticism of a troop increase, and it is more sophisticated.  It comes from Amir Taheri.

On advice from Karzai, Khalilzad, and a number of other Afghan exiles, the Bush administration, which had little knowledge of Afghanistan, was sucked into a project founded on a number of illusions. The chief illusion was that Afghanistan could develop a system of highly centralized government headed by a U.S.-style president and a strong executive branch. That scheme ignored Afghanistan’s historical and geographical realities. Afghanistan emerged as a loosely knit independent state in the 18th century and was accepted as a buffer setting the limits of the Tsarist, Persian, and British empires in Central Asia. A patchwork of ethnic and religious communities, Afghanistan developed a system of rule in which tribal chiefs and Muslim clerics enjoyed a great measure of autonomy under the nominal suzerainty of a distant king who never tried to impose his will throughout his realm by force. The idea that Afghanistan is a land of unruly tribes was generally recognized in the Muslim world. It was not for nothing that Muslims always referred to Afghanistan as Taghistan (“The Land of Insolence”).

The Taliban knew all that and never tried to impose central control over the country. They preferred to secure the allegiance of local tribal and religious leaders with a mixture of bribery and deference. It is well known that the Taliban conquered more land with Samsonites full of crisp U.S. dollar notes than with Soviet-style AK rifles.

The best structure for Afghanistan is that of a loose federation in which its 18 ethnic and religious communities enjoy full economic, cultural, and administrative autonomy. Yet the system developed in Afghanistan since 2002 has gone in the exact opposite direction. The Afghan president today has powers that no Afghan king ever dreamt of. The problem is that these powers cannot be used without provoking violent resistance from a majority of Afghans — and such violence cannot be dealt with except by force. President Karzai, a member of a minor Pashtun (Pathan) tribe who lacks a constituency of his own, cannot master the force needed to impose central-government control throughout his unruly land. He has been trying to do so by relying on American power. The result is that the U.S. has been sucked into Afghan politics as another tribe, albeit one that has greater firepower than the rest.

So be it, and I am not disputing Taheri’s account of one of the failings of the campaign thus far.  But if Taheri doesn’t like the trajectory of our actions thus far in Afghanistan, I don’t like the trajectory of his critique.

It may never be known how bad and unworkable is the notion of a centralized government and how bad the security situation would have been if we had conducted counterinsurgency from the start.  Taheri’s recommendations are likely better than what we have been pursuing, but that misses the point in Afghanistan.

The point thus far is that there have been too few troops and too loose a coalition of forces with lack of central oversight committed to a singular strategy to conduct classical counterinsurgency.  That means that rather than counterinsurgency, we have conducted counterterrorism – a special operations campaign against high value targets.  Kill a mid-level Taliban commander, it takes two weeks for another to rise in his place, and for two weeks you have quiet human and physical terrain.  In two weeks all hell breaks loose again.  Kill the next commander, and the cycle repeats itself.

I have heard this cycle directly from SOF field grade officers from Afghanistan, these officers implementing the strategy even though they knew it would only succeed for a short duration.  We can implement Taheri’s strategy today, and it wouldn’t be able to be effected by the number of troops currently in Afghanistan because security cannot be provided for the population.  Neither, for that matter, can the tribes provide security in provinces such as Helmand where it is projected that there are between 8000 – 20,000 hard core Taliban fighters.

A re-visitation of the strategy will be necessary in 2009, and maybe Taheri’s approach is the correct one to take.  But no strategy will succeed without more troops.

Adding to our coverage and analysis of the logistics for Operation Enduring Freedom, it appears that negotiations are all but finished for a new supply route through Russia.

A NATO official says talks on setting up an alternate supply route to Afghanistan are at an advanced stage — an issue of growing urgency because of intensifying attacks by pro-Taliban forces on convoys in Pakistan.

The official who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter says diplomatic efforts are nearing conclusion on the new route for military supplies that will pass through Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Moscow agreed last year to let the alliance use its territory to resupply the 62,000 Western troops in landlocked Afghanistan.

Some individual NATO members already use the so-called northern route to supply their forces in Afghanistan. But the alliance as a whole still relies on the route from Pakistan’s port of Karachi.

But we have also pointed out the alternative to Russia via Georgia.  Harder and more time consuming though it would be, it removes Russia as the center of gravity in the plan.  With supply to U.S. troops in Afghanistan being dependent upon Russian good will, it remains to be seen how much pressure relations with the Ukraine and Georgia will sustain.  For instance, without Russian cooperation in consideration, would the U.S. support membership in NATO for these two countries?

Russia is even now proving itself to be a recalcitrant neighbor.

Europeans likely didn’t need much more evidence of how unreliable a partner Russia can be, but this week the Kremlin gave them definitive proof.

In a pricing dispute with Ukraine, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ordered supplies of natural gas to Europe shut off, just as most of the continent was at the coldest point of what has been an unusually cold winter.

Europe relies on Russia for 25 percent to 40 percent of its natural gas, and 80 percent of that is shipped through pipelines that cross Ukraine. The cutoff was felt from Turkey to France and was particularly acute in the Balkans and southeastern Europe, where several countries declared states of emergency.

Russia claims that Ukraine is behind in its payments for gas and is seeking $600 million in late fees plus a higher price for future shipments.

In any reasonable part of the world, this dispute might be settled by mutually agreed-upon international arbitration. Whatever culpability Ukraine has in this dispute, Russia has motives other than financial. It resents Ukraine’s successful experiment with democracy, its support for Georgia in the recent conflict and especially its plans to join NATO.

All this comes as Russia is reeling from a financial crisis brought by the collapse of oil and gas prices and by the Kremlin’s custom of appropriating foreign-owned firms once they become profitable.

For the Europeans, Russian natural gas is the most readily available, but as long as the Kremlin uses price and availability as blunt instruments of foreign policy, they’d be foolish to rely on it.

This is a wake-up call for Europe to search for alternative sources delivered through more secure routes.

Is this a wake-up call that should have been heard in the office of the Secretary of Defense as well?

In addition to original reporting, sometimes blogs owners contribute to review and analysis of existing data and information that isn’t otherwise performed within the main stream media.  Myra MacDonald with Reuters has landed on the story of the Khyper Pass and the potential strategic partnership between the U.S. and Russia (while still not discussing the alternative via Georgia) to create new logistical lines of supply to Afghanistan.

She links to some well worn articles with the Washington Post, New York Times, IHT, a Robert Gates commentary for Foreign Affairs, and several other sources, and then asks some salient questions about the price of the partnership with Russia to provide a line of supply into Afghanistan, concluding with the following promise: “This is one I’m going to watch closely and I would appreciate comments and links to stories that illuminate the subject both before and after Jan 20.”

In addition to the commentary we have already provided on Gates’ article for Foreign Affairs, Myra misses the point that Google is our friend.  A word search on “Torkham crossing” or “Georgia strategic partnership” yields articles by The Captain’s Journal at the very top of the first page.

While the U.S. Army was claiming that there wouldn’t be a spring offensive in Afghanistan, we said approximately one year ago that there would be a two prong asymmetric offensive, one in Pakistan and the other in Afghanistan, with the focus of both being lines of logistical supply, and even providing a simple diagram of the strategic approach.  We have followed this problem through not only the potential for adverse consequences to Europe from the alleged thaw in relations with Russia, but the alternative to Russia, the Georgian supply route.

While Myra has been reading the New York Times, I have been having detailed discussions with Steve Schippert over logistics and consequences that go far beyond what the MSM has analyzed.  Don’t misunderstand – it’s a good thing that Myra has landed on this story when so many in the media are making a laughingstock of themselves by being focused on what clothing the political candidates are wearing at the moment.

But by ignoring the first of a kind, news-breaking, easy-to-find and more detailed analyses of the more serious Milbloggers such as Steve and me, Myra, like most in the MSM, has handicapped herself in the timeliness and depth of her analysis.  My analysis of the Khyber Pass / Torkham Crossing situation came even before the first Jamestown Foundation analysis of record I can find.

Sometimes blogs exist merely as a symbiont with the main stream media, and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Occasionally though, there is innovative, ground-breaking analysis and research performed by authors other than in the main stream media, however hard this may be for the MSM to accept.

Prior:

U.S-Georgia Strategic Partnership

The Logistical Battle: New Lines of Supply to Afghanistan

The Search for Alternate Supply Routes to Afghanistan

Large Scale Taliban Operations to Interdict Supply Lines

More on Lines of Logistics for Afghanistan

How Many Troops Can We Logistically Support in Afghanistan?

Targeting of NATO Supply Lines Through Pakistan Expands

Logistical Difficulties in Afghanistan

Taliban Control of Supply Routes to Kabul

Interdiction of U.S. Supplies in Khyber Pass

The Torkham Crossing

Taliban and al Qaeda Strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan

“Clearly, logistics is the hard part of fighting a war.”
– Lt. Gen. E. T. Cook, USMC, November 1990

“Gentlemen, the officer who doesn’t know his communications and supply as well as his tactics is totally useless.”
– Gen. George S. Patton, USA

“Bitter experience in war has taught the maxim that the art of war is the art of the logistically feasible.”
– ADM Hyman Rickover, USN

“There is nothing more common than to find considerations of supply affecting the strategic lines of a campaign and a war.”
– Carl von Clausevitz

“The line between disorder and order lies in logistics…”
– Sun Tzu

In January of 2008 The Captain’s Journal predicted that the so-called spring offensive by the Taliban would be more asymmetric than conventional and kinetic.  True, there have been stark reminders that the Taliban, in this case the Tehrik-i-Taliban, were capable of highly conventional and kinetic engagements, such as with the battle of Wanat.  But there have also been reminders of just how badly the Taliban lose when they choose to go head-to-head in kinetic engagements with U.S. forces, such as with recent Marine Corps operations with a kill ratio of 50:0.  True to our prediction, the Taliban has gone asymmetric.

Taliban fighters increasingly are deploying precision marksmen to fire on U.S. troops at greater distances throughout southern Afghanistan, military officials say.

It marks the latest Taliban shift to asymmetrical warfare and away from confronting U.S. troops in conventional fights, according to the top two commanders for the southern region.

Instead of gathering in company-sized units to take on foreign troops, Taliban forces also are resorting increasingly to explosives attacks and bombings, which require fewer people and pose less risk to themselves, the commanders said.

Explosives attacks rose by 33 percent last year, as did deaths of coalition troops, according to the International Security Assistance Force, which leads the coalition forces stationed here.

“They are reverting to tactics that tell us they are suffering heavy losses,” said U.S. Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, the deputy commander for the southern regional command.

The expanded use of precision marksmen comes as the fighting shifts from eastern Afghanistan to the south, where the Taliban are trying to protect opium production, which is reputed to be their economic base. The number of coalition troops killed in southern Afghanistan has increased sharply in the past two months.

So far, shooters have made use of long-barrel rifles, not specialized sniper weapons, and Nicholson said there was no indication that Taliban forces had trained snipers. Instead, they take advantage of the rough terrain to shoot at troops safely from afar, he said.

If the Taliban develop a corps of snipers, it would mark a major shift for U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan. When snipers began appearing in Iraq’s once-restive Anbar province in 2005, U.S. troops had a difficult time protecting themselves from attacks and began wearing more armor.

At one point, Iraqi insurgent groups began filming their sniper attacks, and the images of Marines falling to them became a rallying point for the insurgency.

Thus has the highly touted focus on high value targets and small footprint in Afghanistan come to ruin.  Satellite patrols don’t help in open terrain like they would in urban environs.  Body armor relies mainly on the SAPI plates for high power rounds, and the coverage area of the plates is fixed.

Combating snipers requires counterinsurgency practices, a larger footprint, and a true commitment to winning both the human and physical terrain.  The Taliban has learned from their conventional experiences, and while it is a sign of U.S. superiority that the Taliban has turned to sniping, it’s also a sign of Operation Enduring Freedom passing from one phase to another.  Counterinsurgency is necessary, and troops are required.

Apparently the U.S. – and by this we mean officers who weren’t part of the campaign for Anbar – is trying to imitate the Anbar awakening in Afghanistan.

The US yesterday outlined a controversial plan to organise local militias in Afghanistan to contain the growing strength of the Taliban, echoing tactics used by American commanders in Iraq.

The programme is formally an Afghan government project with UN and US backing, but much of the impetus is believed to have come from US military commanders hoping to replicate the Sons of Iraq militias – American-backed Sunni groups which have helped combat al-Qaida and Iraqi insurgents. The architect of that initiative, General David Petraeus, is now head of Central Command, and running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Community Guard programme will be launched as a pilot project in southern and eastern Afghanistan. The US envoy, William Wood, said the programme was intended “to strengthen local communities and local tribes in their ability to protect what they consider to be their traditional homes”.

Gordon Brown proposed a similar scheme a year ago, based on a traditional form of tribal militias, or arbakai, but it was criticised at the time by an American commander in Afghanistan as detracting from the work of the national police force.

However, American objections have since been dropped as it has become clear that the combined strength of the Afghan army and the Nato force may not enough to defeat a resurgent Taliban, even with 30,000 US reinforcements expected next year after Barack Obama takes office.

Wood noted that Taliban roadside bombs doubled this year to 2,000, as did kidnappings, from 150 to 300. British officials said yesterday they had not been given details of the scheme, but supported it in principle.

“We encourage and support more Afghan ownership, particularly on security,” a Foreign Office official said.

Cheap imitation, we say.  Let’s rehearse one facet of the awakening in Anbar, that involving Abu Ahmed.

The 40-year-old is a hero to the 50,000 residents of Al-Qaim for having chased Al-Qaeda from the agricultural centre where houses line the green and blue waters of the Euphrates.

In the main street, with its fruit and vegetable stalls, its workshops and restaurants, men with pistols in their belts approach Abu Ahmed to kiss his cheek and right shoulder in a mark of respect.

It was not always this way.

He tells how one evening in May 2005 he decided that the disciples of Osama bin Laden went too far — they killed his cousin Jamaa Mahal.

“I started shooting in the air and throughout the town bursts of gunfire echoed across the sky. My family understood that the time had come. And we started the war against Al-Qaeda.”

It took three battles in the streets of Al-Qaim — in June, in July and then in November 2005 — to finish off the extremists who had come from Arab countries to fight the Americans.

Abu Ahmed, initially defeated by better equipped forces, had to flee to the desert region of Akashat, around 100 kilometres (60 miles) southwest of Al-Qaim. There he sought help from the US Marines.

“With their help we were able to liberate Al-Qaim,” he said, sitting in his house with its maroon tiled facade.

This alliance between a Sunni tribe and American troops was to be the first, and it give birth to a strategy of other US-paid Sunni fighters ready to mobilise against Al-Qaeda.

It resulted in the Sunni province of Al-Anbar being pacified in two years.

It wasn’t fabricated, it wasn’t drummed up, and it wasn’t the brainchild of some smarter-than-thou counterinsurgency specialist applying heretofore unheard-of tactics.  It was the families tiring of the brutality and fighting back, losing, and then turning to the U.S. Marines who had the force projection to turn al Qaeda back with the assistance of intelligence from the families.  Without force projection and troop presence, both on the part of the families and the sustaining force of the professional warriors, it wouldn’t have happened.

Again we say, cheap imitation.  Without troop presence it won’t happen in Afghanistan and further time will be wasted pining away after an Afghan awakening that never had a chance.

In an interesting twist on intelligence-gathering, the CIA has found a new tool in its arsenal of weapons.

In an effort to win over fickle warlords and chieftains in Afghanistan and get information from them, CIA officials are handing out Viagra pills in exchange for their cooperation, the Washington Post reports.

“Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people – whether it’s building a school or handing out Viagra,” an agency operative, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the Post.

The growing Taliban insurgency has forced the agency to get creative in how they obtain certain information from Afghan warlords and tribal leaders, including Taliban movements and supply routes.

CIA operatives use everything from toys and school equipment to tooth extractions to their advantage and note that if Americans don’t offer incentives, others, including Taliban commanders, will.

Afghan veterans told the Post that the usual bribes of choice – cash and weapons – aren’t always the best options because they can garner unwanted attention and fall into the wrong hands.

“If you give an asset $1,000, he’ll go out and buy the shiniest junk he can find, and it will be apparent that he has suddenly come into a lot of money from someone,” Jamie Smith, a veteran of CIA covert operations in Afghanistan, told the Post.

So rather than shiny junk, what’s better?

The ageing chieftains of rural villages, many of whom have wives who are much younger than them, have proved keen to accept the anti-impotency drug and in exchange give a mass of information on rebels’ movements and supply routes …

Jamie Smith, a veteran of CIA covert operations in Afghanistan, told a newspaper: “You’re trying to bridge a gap between people living in the 18th century and people coming in from the 21st century. So you look for those common things that motivate people everywhere.”

But not everyone is so happy.

I was disheartened and disgusted by Joby Warrick’s lighthearted coverage of the CIA’s Viagra bribes [“Little Blue Pills Among the Ways CIA Wins Friends in Afghanistan,” front page, Dec. 26].

Is the U.S. government “wholeheartedly committed to the full participation of women in all aspects of Afghan society,” as first lady Laura Bush stated on April 6, 2005? Or will women in Afghanistan continue to be sexual chattel to fickle aging and ailing warlords who can be bribed by American operatives so they can feel “back in an authoritative position”?

It seems that this operation spits in the face of every effort to advance the position of women in Afghanistan and throughout the world. Alas, maybe the CIA will continue to do “whatever it takes to make friends and influence people,” regardless of how many people have to be hurt in the process.

So this reader believes that sex hurts the woman to the very core of her ontological being, and therefore opposes the deal.  Whatever the case, it’s surely true that the CIA has undergone organizational learning from the days of the Clinton administration’s destruction of the HUMINT.