Archive for the 'Afghanistan' Category

This is one more in a series at The Captain’s Journal following Marine operations in the Helmand Province, Afghanistan.  A brief synopsis of their accomplishments thus far can be found here.

A U.S. Marine fires at a Taliban position near the town of Garmser, a main assembly and staging point for jihadists entering Afghanistan (AP Photo).

U.S. Marines fire on Taliban positions from a sand berm, May 2 (AP Photo).

The Marines continue to take the battle to the Taliban in Garmser.

The spring offensive is well launched – by NATO.

Or, put another way, pre-emptively provoked by the U.S. Marines Expeditionary Force.

If the best defence is a good offence, American troops recently arrived in the southern provinces have wasted no time taking the battle to the Taliban, putting an entirely different complexion on combat tactics in the heartland of the insurgency.

Joining forces with British troops who have responsibility for NATO operations in Helmand province, these battle-hardened Marines – many of them veterans of fierce combat in the Iraqi city of Ramadi two years ago – hurled themselves into the insurgency cauldron last week, with the objective of dislodging Taliban fighters from strongholds north of the border with Pakistan.

Although the British have a base in the town of Garmser, NATO’s most southerly outpost, and have battled strenuously to maintain it against encroachment, the vast surrounding district, much of it inhospitable desert, has been essentially free movement territory for the neo-Taliban.

Garmser is a main assembly and staging point for jihadists as they enter Afghan soil. It is also a key transit route for smuggling in arms and smuggling out opium – the vascular network that pumps blood into the insurgency.

The claims and counterclaims – success versus failure – have been fast and furious. While American authorities claimed on the weekend to have killed nine militants, Taliban spokesperson Qari Yosuf asserted it was the insurgents who had killed nine Americans.

There have been no official reports of U.S. casualties from the fighting. But provincial government sources, along with aid workers in the region, accuse the Marines of conducting aggressive door-to-door searches, rousting civilians from their homes, arresting innocents and forcing upward of 15,000 Afghans to flee into the hot desert for safety.

None of these claims has been confirmed. However, the U.S. propensity for using air strikes and artillery and mortar barrages in support of their ground troops has much of the domestic media here caterwauling about a suddenly “Americanized war” in Afghanistan.

Caterwauling indeed.  The British didn’t really hold any terrain inside Garmser proper, and their role in this specific operation was transport (h/t Rogue Gunner).  “Although British framework operations are currently focused further north, in the areas of Lashkar Gar, Sangin, Gereshk and Musa Qaleh, the British Task Force has had an important role to play facilitating the move of the MEU down through the province.”

This report on the Marines is somewhat amusing.  Whether the “claims and counterclaims” have been fast and furious being quite irrelevant, the success of the Marines has been fast.  The Provincial Government is fabricating information about the operation because they don’t know what else to do, but the shock of rapid success will hopefully give way to an understanding of what a change in strategy can accomplish.  It is certainly the case that the combat action has been directed and aggressive, with the Marines “unleashing earsplitting barrages of machine gun fire, mortars and artillery” at Taliban positions.

O’Neill, the company commander, says all-day potshots by Taliban fighters are little more than nuisance attacks. The militants use binoculars and have forward observers with cell phones to try to aim better at the Marines, he says.

“This is pure asymmetric harassment,” he says. “They’ll pop out of a position and fire a rocket or mortar.”

But in a bleak British assessment of Garmser a week ago, the UK is said to be losing the battle.

In Garmser, the Scottish infantrymen hope to push the Taliban back and fill the town with people again. The continuing marine operation may help that objective.

But the main British effort is concentrated in northern Helmand, and local governance is weak in Garmser, where most of the town elders and administrators have fled to the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.

And as the poppy harvest draws to a close, commanders expect a fresh spurt of fighting in the coming weeks. Combined with the stream of Taliban from Pakistan, British officers recognise they are only holding the line.

“I’m under no illusions. We are not stopping the movement north,” said Den-McKay. “We’re just giving them something to talk about.”

Perhaps an alternative picture is emerging for the chaps in the UK – that of aggressive contact with the enemy by enough troops on the ground to accomplish the mission?  One can only hope that NATO is watching closely.

Prior:

Marines Mired in Red Tape in Afghanistan

Marines Engage Taliban in Helmand Province

Operation Azada Wosa – “Stay Free”

Enemy activity appears to be increasing in Afghanistan according to ISAF medical personnel.

U.S. commanders have been braced for a “spring offensive”, a pick-up in violence tied to the season, when warmer weather allows the Taliban to work their way over the mountains from hideouts in north-western Pakistan and into Afghanistan.

In the first few weeks of this spring, there was little change in the level of violence compared with last year, officers say. But in recent days, at least in one key region along the border, that picture has shifted, even if it may be still too early to say that a renewed Taliban offensive has started.

“A lot of things are starting to happen in the area,” Lieutenant-Colonel Kathy Ponder, the chief nurse at the combat support hospital, which put out the call for more blood to treat the wounded from a roadside bomb, told Reuters on Thursday.

“The Taliban seem to be picking up on the IED (improvised explosive device) blasts and we’re getting a lot of gunshot wounds. The intel we’re getting is that they are targeting our area, so we’re ready. We’re making sure we’re overstocked on what we need.”

Wednesday afternoon’s attack, just north of the city of Khost, near the Pakistan border, targeted a U.S. military patrol. Two U.S. soldiers and one U.S. civilian were killed, and two U.S. soldiers were wounded. The wounded pair lost both of their legs, hence the call for large amounts of blood.

But according to U.S. personnel, its all just a myth.

“There is no such thing as a spring offensive,” Colonel Pete Johnson, the commander of a taskforce from the 101st Airborne Division that is responsible for security in six Afghan provinces along the border with Pakistan, told Reuters.

“I think this year this myth is finally going to be debunked. Last year was the same thing — it never materialised. This year it has not materialised and it won’t materialise.”

“Will there be increases in fighting and insurgent activity. Absolutely. But it’s a weather-based construct, a seasonal construct, not a deliberate execution of an offensive. Increased activity is not a coordinated offensive.”

But what difference does this make?  This argument has become rather passé.  The Taliban know that any “fire and maneuver” engagement of U.S. forces brings a disadvantageous kill ratio.  They tried it again in Garmser with the Marines, and lost.  This is why The Captain’s Journal had previously clarified the issue of a “spring offensive” in the context of distributed operations and what it does or doesn’t mean.  “When NATO speaks of a spring offensive, they are talking tactical maneuvers and larger scale kinetic fights.  When we speak of a spring offensive, we are talking about guerrilla tactics – small teams, fire and melt away, etc.”

There has been a disaggreagation of the Taliban into smaller groups of tribal and commander affiliation, fighting for different causes (with the only common goal being the overthrow of the Karzai government), sometimes competing with each other.  This makes the notion of a Taliban command and control quaint, but fairly useless (During questioning of the Presidential candidates Bill O’Reilly flatly stated that Taliban command and control was Quetta, and while this might have been true a year ago, it is doubtful that a literal command and control exists for Taliban).

So the supposed spring offensive to which U.S. commanders have so sardonically referred is not applicable to the current scene.  We have suggested that the tactics will rely on fire and melt away rather than fire and maneuver, IEDs, suicide tactics, guerrilla tactics and intimidation of the population.  In this way, the disaggregation of the enemy along with his focus on terror tactics make Afghanistan look somewhat more like the Anbar Province than it did a year ago.

In Pakistan, Baitullah Mehsud is playing the Pakistani officials for fools as he repeatedly enjoins negotiations, then withdraws from the same, and then hints at them again.  Mehsud’s forces, rather than fight the Pakistan Army in fire and maneuver, simply set up a series of checkpoints and road blocks in South Waziristan.  The Pakistani Army responded with one of their own.  The population tires of this, the Pakistani Army tires of this and agrees to withdraw troops from South Waziristan, and Tehrik-e-Taliban gains their objective.

While Quetta cannot be said to be a literal command and control, as we observed earlier, there are dual Taliban campaigns, one in Pakistan (focused in Waziristan against the Pakistani government, led by Baitullah Mehsud) and the other focused on Afghanistan (focused on Southern Afghanistan where Quetta serves as a rallying point for fighters crossing the border).

Mapping the route the cross-border militants take, Mr Walsh said the insurgents crossed from Balochistan, whose capital Quetta was considered to be the Taliban headquarters by Nato commanders.

“They muster in remote refugee camps west of Quetta — Girdi Jungle is most frequently mentioned — before slipping across the border in four-wheel drive convoys that split up to avoid detection. Sometimes sympathetic border guards help them on their way.

“Inside Afghanistan the fighters thunder across the Dasht-i-Margo — a harsh expanse of ancient smuggling trails which means “desert of death” — before reaching the River Helmand. Here, the sand turns to lush fields of poppy and wheat, and they reach Garmser, home to the most southerly British base in Helmand.”

British officers told Mr Walsh that they had ample evidence that many of the enemy were Pakistani. While remaining coy about their sources of intelligence, they spoke of hearing Punjabi accents and of finding Pakistani papers and telephone contacts on dead fighters.

Four months ago, Den-McKay said, British Gurkhas shot dead a Taliban militant near a small outpost known as Hamburger Hill. Searching the fighter’s body, they discovered a Pakistani identity card and handwritten notes in Punjabi.

There are dual fronts in the campaign, one in Afghanistan and the other in Pakistan.  These two fronts are part of the same insurgency / counterinsurgency campaign.  The expensive UAVs that fly overhead are merely further testimony to the necessity for force projection on the gound when reports arrive of more young sons of America who have had their legs blown off from IEDs.

Since Afghanistan may more closely resemble Anbar in terms of its reliance on terror tactics, the pretext for success in Anbar becomes all the more important.  Al Qaeda terror would have won the day without extreme force projection by the U.S.  The Taliban will not engage in fire and maneuver, and arguments about whether a “spring offensive” will materialize are childish, wasteful and irrelevant.  The Taliban will engage in fire and melt away, and the chase must ensue to hunt them down and kill them with the utmost violence.

In The Disaggregation of the Taliban we noted that the analysis by David Ignatius concerning the diminution of al Qaeda and the Taliban was likely overly optimistic.  The Taliban insurgency has strengthened.  But if The Captain’s Journal is quick to point out overly optimistic assessments, we are equally quick to claim the successes when they exist.  Take careful note of the assessment offered by Ignatius concerning al Qaeda.

The most interesting discovery during a visit to this city where Osama bin Laden planted his flag in 1996 is that al-Qaeda seems to have all but disappeared. The group is on the run, too, in Iraq, and that raises some interesting questions about how to pursue this terrorist enemy.

“Al-Qaeda is not a topic of conversation here,” says Col. Mark Johnstone, the deputy commander of Task Force Bayonet, which oversees four provinces surrounding Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. Lt. Col. Pete Benchoff agrees: “We’re not seeing a lot of al-Qaeda fighters. They’ve shifted here to facilitation and support.”

You hear the same story farther north from the officers who oversee the provinces along the Pakistan border. A survey conducted last November and December in Nuristan, once an al-Qaeda stronghold, found that the group barely registered as a security concern among the population.

Al Qaeda is defeated in Anbar, and is taking a beating in Tarmiyah, Mosul, and throughout the balance of Northern Iraq.  But if the assessment Ignatius gives us is correct, the power of al Qaeda is waning in the tribal areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan as well.

The Asia Times must be read with caution due to the exaggeration in which this source sometimes engages, and so we sat on this report for several days while waiting for confirmatory analysis.  The assessment by David Ignatius serves as this confirmation.  Some (Asia Times) reports attempt to give excuses for al Qaeda and Taliban failures while they accidentally divulge important truths about the same.  There was recently such a report, humorously entitled Al Qaeda adds muscle to the Taliban fight.

From many hundreds, al-Qaeda now has fewer than 75 Arabs involved in the Afghan “war on terror” theater, but the group is more lethal in that it has successfully established a local franchise of warriors who have fully embraced al-Qaeda’s ideology and who are capable of conducting a war of attrition against the coalition in Afghanistan.

In the years following the United States-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, al-Qaeda lost hundreds of members, either killed or arrested or departed to other regions. These included diehard Arab ideologues such as Mustapha Seth Marium (arrested) and commanders Abu Laith al-Libbi (killed) and Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi (arrested) .

And this month, news of the death in January of Abdul Hameed, alias Abu Obaida al-Misri, from Hepatitis B, was released to Western intelligence. He was a most-trusted aide of al-Qaeda deputy Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri and had been appointed by Osama bin Laden as the head of the khuruj (revolt) in Pakistan. He was in his mid-50s.

While al-Qaedawas suffering losses, Pakistan’s tribal areas became increasingly radicalized, which al-Qaedawas able to tap into to reinvigorate the Afghan insurgency. When military operations chopped off its vertical growth, it grew horizontally.

This defied intelligence estimates, polls, analysis and strategic opinions. Former US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld was of the opinion that by 2003, as a result of US military operations in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda had been destroyed as an organization and it was unable to strike against US interests.

However, the US National Intelligence Estimate report in July 2007 said al-Qaeda had regrouped and posed a threat to the US homeland. Recently, US President George W Bush also said al-Qaeda was a serious threat.

The year 2007 was important for al-Qaeda’s development as severalstand-alone Arab groups operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas, including Libyans and Egyptians, either merged into al-Qaeda or made an alliance in which they would be subservient to al-Qaeda’s command.

With al-Qaeda losing key members, a vacuum should have been created, but that did not happen, and another figure has emerged – Maulana Ilyas Kashmiri. He is a veteran fighter of the Kashmir struggle, groomed by Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence’s India cell.

Islamabad’s clampdown on activities in Kashmir and being arrested a few times disheartened Kashmiri, and he moved to the North Waziristan tribal area. He was soon followed by his diehard Punjabi colleagues and they made Afghanistan their new battlefield.

This year, a “crossbreed” of fighters – a combination of Arab command and that of Kashmiri, as well as an alliance with tribal warlord Baitullah Mehsud – is expected to spring some surprises in Afghanistan.

There is no reason to discuss the fact that Arab fighters have almost disappeared from the scene unless intelligence has already seen signs of this.  The public relations arm of al Qaeda jumped into action with the Asia Times, as they have many times before, since it is customary for them to regurgitate what they’re told without much critical analysis.

To  be sure, Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud is a very real threat, and has in fact actually made very real threats.  “Allah willing, Musharraf will suffer great pain, along with all his aides. The Muslims will never forgive Musharraf for the sin he committed.  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.”  Note that Mehsud doesn’t make our destruction contingent upon our presence in Afghanistan or Pakistan.  He threatens to destroy the U.S. because we are “infidels.”  This is not a local insurgency.  It is a transnational insurgency.

The global jihad is not finished, and will be carried forward by the new breed of Taliban that has aspirations beyond the borders of Pakistan.  The Afghanistan campaign will proceed forward against primarily the Taliban (with perhaps also some Kashmiris), indigenous both to Afghanistan and Pakistan.  But despite the attempt by the Asia Times to put a good face on al Qaeda, they are diminishing in both numbers and effectiveness.  Despite their recruitment efforts, they are losing their global jihad to U.S. forces, and their very propaganda efforts tell us so.

David Ignatius has a very positive analysis in his latest commentary at the Washington Post.

The most interesting discovery during a visit to this city where Osama bin Laden planted his flag in 1996 is that al-Qaeda seems to have all but disappeared. The group is on the run, too, in Iraq, and that raises some interesting questions about how to pursue this terrorist enemy.

“Al-Qaeda is not a topic of conversation here,” says Col. Mark Johnstone, the deputy commander of Task Force Bayonet, which oversees four provinces surrounding Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. Lt. Col. Pete Benchoff agrees: “We’re not seeing a lot of al-Qaeda fighters. They’ve shifted here to facilitation and support.”

You hear the same story farther north from the officers who oversee the provinces along the Pakistan border. A survey conducted last November and December in Nuristan, once an al-Qaeda stronghold, found that the group barely registered as a security concern among the population.

The enemy in these eastern provinces is a loose amalgam of insurgent groups, mostly linked to traditional warlords. It’s not the Taliban, much less al-Qaeda. “I don’t use the word ‘Taliban,’ ” says Alison Blosser, a State Department political adviser to the military commanders here in the sector known as Regional Command East. “In RC East we have a number of disparate groups. Command and control are not linked up. The young men will fight for whoever is paying the highest rate.”

But this analysis is far too positve.  Hamid Karzai is so concerned about the resurgence of the Taliban and future departure of U.S. troops (and consequent Taliban violence) that he has warned the U.S. against arresting Taliban.  It’s time to talk and negotiate, Karzai believes.

But there is more to this problem than meets the eye.  We have previously discussed how the Afghan Taliban have jettisoned a strict command and control structure in favor of distributed operations.  We have also examined how the Pakistani Taliban have fractured into multiple distinct but connected groups in The Taliban: An Organizational Analysis.

Turning to a more in depth analysis, Ashley J. Tellis, writing for The Washington Quarterly, gives us an important analysis in Pakistan’s Record on Terrorism: Conflicted Goals, Compromised Performance.  Part of his analysis is given below pertaining to the current makeup of the Pakistani Taliban.

The operational context surrounding the counterterrorism effort in the tribal areas and in Afghanistan has changed considerably to the disadvantage of the Western coalition since Operation Enduring Freedom began in 2001.  To begin with, the Taliban movement, which was never a tight and cohesive political entity in any case, has become any even looser network of affiliated individuals and groups since it was forced from power in Kabul.  Today, the Taliban “alliance” can be characterized as a disparate congeries of several elements united only by a common religious ideology, a desire to regain power in Afghanistan or in their local areas of operation, and a deep antagonism toward the United States and its regional allies.

Several distinct elements can be identified in the current Taliban coalition: the leadership council centered around Mullah Omar, other war councils, Taliban cadres, tribal networks of former mujahideen commanders, and “Pakistani Taliban” commanders.  Moreover, many drug lords in eastern and southern Afghanistan are either taxed or willingly contribute revenues that are indispensable for the Taliban war against Kabul.  Sundry former anti-Soviet commanders control small groups of fighters and are engaged primarily in criminal activities while offering their services as guns for hire.  Disaffected Afghan Pashtun tribes, most conspicuously the rural Ghilzai, feel disenfranchised in the current governing arrangements and subsequently continue to support the Taliban with manpower and sanctuary within Afghanistan.  Finally, al Qaeda, although distinct from all of the foregoing groups in that its focus of operations remains the global jihad, nonetheless collaborates with the Taliban to assist the later in recovering control of Kabul while continuing to preserve a sanctuary in the FATA in the interim.

The implication of such a diverse target set is that destroying the “Taliban” today has become much more difficult because its previously weak hierarchical structure has become even more diffuse with truly diverse entities coordinating as necessary, but each also carrying out their local agendas.  The complexity of Islamabad’s relations with many of the constituent elements in the Taliban coalition does not help.  Although Islamabad may readily cooperate in targeting some of the Pakistani Taliban commanders, the drug lords, the petty anti-Soviet commanders, and al Qaeda elements, the ties nurtured by its military and intelligence services with the Taliban leadership and the tribal networks of key former mujahideen commanders make these targets relatively inviolate, at least in the near term.  Therefore, winning the war on terrorism in Afghanistan will require combating all of these targets as well as dealing with the sanctuary enjoyed by various militant groups in Pakistan.

If Tellis is correct, this disaggregation of the Taliban will make it more difficult to conduct operations against them.

Context

A New York Times article published recently upon the occasion of Hamid Karzai’s visit to the U.S. went largely unnoticed, but the importance of this article can hardly be overestimated.

President Hamid Karzai strongly criticized the British and American conduct of the war here on Friday, insisting in an interview that his government be given the lead in policy decisions.

Mr. Karzai said that he wanted American forces to stop arresting suspected Taliban and their sympathizers, and that the continued threat of arrest and past mistreatment were discouraging Taliban from coming forward to lay down their arms.

He criticized the American-led coalition as prosecuting the war on terrorism in Afghan villages, saying the real terrorist threat lay in sanctuaries of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

The president said that civilian casualties, which have dropped substantially since last year, needed to cease completely. For nearly two years the American-led coalition has refused to recognize the need to create a trained police force, he said, leading to a critical lack of law and order.

The comments came as Mr. Karzai is starting to point toward re-election next year, after six years in office, and may be part of a political calculus to appear more assertive in his dealings with foreign powers as opponents line up to challenge him.

But they also follow a serious dip in his relations with some of the countries contributing to the NATO-led security force and the reconstruction of Afghanistan, and indicate that as the insurgency has escalated, so, too, has the chafing among allies.

Complaints have been rising for months among diplomats and visiting foreign officials about what is seen as Mr. Karzai’s weak leadership, in particular his inability to curb narcotics trafficking and to remove ineffective or corrupt officials. Some diplomats have even expressed dismay that, for lack of an alternative, the country and its donors may face another five years of poor management by Mr. Karzai.

Analysis and Commentary

The tendency for Afghanistan to blame Pakistan and Pakistan to blame Afghanistan is becoming so commonplace that it appears reflexive.  There is enough blame to go around, but Karzai’s recent rebuke of the U.S. carries the import of panic.  This is a critical development in the state of the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan.  Just when the recently deployed U.S. Marines are showing signs of rapid success in their area of operation, along with which General Dan McNeill has said that this infusion of Marines signifies a step change in the nature and pace of operations, the President of Afghanistan has signified his reluctance to continue cooperation in kinetic operations against the Taliban.

This is a revelation of gargantuan proportions.  It must be remembered that the Taliban are in many ways the ideological precursors of al Qaeda.  For Hamid Karzai to inform the U.S. that he no longer supports the arresting of Taliban would be analogous to Prime Minister Maliki telling the Multinational Force that we must win the hearts and minds of al Qaeda, and thus, arrests of their members in Iraq will no longer be tolerated because it might dissuade them from coming forward to surrender.

It ignores a fundamental point that is critical to the understanding of the campaigns in which we are now engaged.  Winning hearts and minds must occur from a position of strength rather that weakness, just as it did in the Anbar Province with the U.S. Marines.  Negotiating from a position of weakness means surrender, and the Taliban know that.  Although much of the population is amenable to nonkinetic operations to rebuild and reconstruct, there are certain elements whose hearts and minds will never be won, and unfortunately for those who see easy routes to victory, those elements must be killed.

Karzai is a weak leader, but given the situation, he can hardly be blamed for the vacillation.  Colonel Thomas F. Lynch gives us an important assessment of the situation that is stunning in its honesty and wonderful in its brevity.

… the U.S. “miscalculated” when it gave NATO control of the counter-insurgency mission in southern Afghanistan in 2006, thinking that peacekeeping and stability work would follow.

Instead, the Taliban insurgency flared up, forcing Canada and other NATO members into a combat role they were not expecting. That in turn, prompted the bickering over troop commitments that now plagues the alliance.

Lynch says NATO’s troop commitments are not what ails the mission.

“The mission in Afghanistan is not in jeopardy mainly because NATO members refuse to provide sufficient troops,” he says. “The real issue is the transitory and uncertain U.S. military posture in Afghanistan.”

Lynch says the key to success lies in the politics of Pakistan, which has long viewed Afghanistan as a source of strategic depth against India: fear of India in the east, and fear of losing control of Afghanistan on its western frontier, have been a driving force in Pakistan since independence. That is why Pakistan helped create the Taliban as a puppet government in Kabul – and why elements of the Pakistan government still support them.

Lynch says only by convincing Pakistan – and the majority of Afghans – of its will to guarantee the security and stability of Afghanistan for decades to come, can the U.S. and its allies put an end to Taliban support, both from inside Pakistan, and from ordinary Afghans.

Consider that the U.S. has abandoned each country to their fates once before, withdrawing from the region soon after the Soviets retreated from Afghanistan.

Today, “our uncertain commitment to Afghanistan has the effect of bolstering Taliban propaganda (while providing) incentives for Pakistan to hedge its bets.”

NATO can claim military supremacy over the Taliban, says Lynch, but so what?

“Our focus on tactical military facts obscures the Taliban’s overall political success. Sanctuary in Pakistan has enabled the Taliban to evade decisive military engagement in order to rearm, regroup and train to fight another day,” he says.

Meanwhile, the Taliban spreads the message: “‘America will leave Afghanistan prematurely, as it has abandoned Afghanistan in the past; and when America leaves, we Taliban shall return to power and kill all Afghans who have collaborated with unbelievers.’

The commitment to the campaign in Afghanistan must be long term by the U.S., and it must be seen that way, in order for there to be success.  Karzai is only a reflection of the fear that grips Afghanistan.  He is a mirror of their feelings rather than a source of inspiration to his people.  The national feeling is that negotiations with the Taliban must proceed in order to bring them into the fold, and that failure to do so will only be the cause of untold violence and brutality when the Americans leave, as they surely will.

The failure to show commitment and resolve in the Afghanistan campaign up until recently has, it has been surmised, only led to a resurgence of the Taliban and al Qaeda, along with the creation of safe have in the tribal areas of Pakistan.  In reality, the situation is far worse.  We have lost the heart of the senior-most leader of Afghanistan.  Quick and decisive action by both the State Department and the DoD must set the context for future operations in Afghanistan.  Commitment must be forthcoming in terms of troops levels and strategy, but it is also apparent that the State Department has failed us once again when Karzai has to inform America by telling the New York Times that he is not happy with the us.

In Marines Engage Taliban in Helmand Province we discussed the beginnings of the Operation Azada Wosa (“Stay Free” in the local Pashto language) by the U.S. Marines in the Helmand Province.  The operation is going forward with success without serious Marines Corps casualties thus far.

The Taliban aren’t giving up without a fight. In groups of three and four, they open fire at the Marines with assault rifles or rockets, then flee. Sometimes they attempt infantry maneuvers, trying to draw the Marines in one direction with a feint, then attacking from another direction. “They were tactically sound,” Moder says. “It shows that they’ve done it before, that they might have been trained.”

Moder estimates his men have killed 30 Taliban fighters. Maj. Tom Clinton, executive officer of the Marines’ infantry battalion, could not confirm Taliban casualties, but he says the Marines are getting reports that wounded Afghan men are seeking medical treatment in Helmand’s capital, Lashkar Gah.

So far, U.S. casualties have been relatively light. Through Thursday afternoon, no Marines had been killed in the operation, although two died last month when a roadside bomb hit their supply convoy.

Six Marines had been injured, none critically: One was shot in the foot, perhaps accidentally; one suffered a concussion from a Taliban rocket or mortar attack; one was bitten by a dog; one fell from a roof and broke an ankle; two broke their legs; and two more sprained their ankles.

The nagging injuries and intense heat are sometimes a more immediate threat than the enemy itself, troops say. “Imagine carrying 75 to 120 pounds of gear and playing a football game where each quarter lasts three hours,” says 1st Lt. Mark Matzke, 21, of Arlington, Va.

Keeping them supplied with water, ready-to-eat meals and ammunition is a full-time operation. From Camp Dwyer, a handpicked team of two dozen Marines runs convoys to infantrymen in the field.

“We wanted to be called ‘The Nomads’ but they gave us ‘Wagon Wheel’ ” instead, says Gunnery Sgt. Javier Duarte, 34, of Miami. Before every convoy, Duarte usually gives the Wagon Wheel team a profanity-laden pep talk, then introduces the chaplain for a prayer.

The convoy heads outside Camp Dwyer’s concertina wire and into the desert on the way to the Marines fighting on the outskirts of Garmser. Along the way, they pass Afghans working in the fields, harvesting the poppy that could be turned into heroin and sold in Europe and the United States.

Back at Camp Dwyer, a special team of combat surgeons, doctors, nurses and medics plays cards and lounges in scarce shade, relieved that light casualties mean their skills haven’t been needed. Some of the doctors have trained in emergency rooms in Los Angeles and Baltimore, treating victims of gangland shootings.

The picture below is taken from DVIDS.  Click for high resolution version of the photograph.

Marines with Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, NATO – International Security Assistance Force conduct operations in Garmsir District, Helmand province, Afghanistan.

We recently discussed the first combat engagement of the Marines in Afghanistan, involving a town named Garmser.  The Marines are fully prepared and will push the operation through to success.  However, false doctrine dies hard in war, and the problems associated with the Afghanistan campaign become clearer with passing time and attention.  The Canadians are concerned about the recent addition of the Marines.

Bush has come to shove in southern Afghanistan (Editorial note: This is a pitiful pun – TCJ). The U.S. commander-in-chief has sent in the marines.

It’s reported that this has made NATO forces operating there uneasy.

It’s not that the Canadians and British and the rest of them don’t appreciate the extra manpower the 3,500 U.S. marines will provide, or the extra aircraft and light armoured vehicles they’ve brought.

But the other NATO forces have been told they have to learn to operate in what’s called “the American way” alongside the marines, and they’re not quite sure how this is going to make the job of winning hearts and minds any easier when the Americans have left in seven months when their “mini-surge” is over …

The United Nations envoy, Kai Eide, has just warned that everything won in Afghanistan since the Taliban regime was overthrown seven years ago is in danger of being lost because of the fragmented international approach to securing and rebuilding the country and the weakness of the government of President Hamid Karzai.

The president himself had to be hustled away from the scene of an attack by insurgents near his palace in Kabul on Sunday while all those Afghan soldiers ran for cover.

And in the eastern part of the country yesterday, 19 members of a poppy-eradication team under NATO guard were killed in an attack.

Gen. Dan McNeill is the U.S. army officer who commands NATO troops in Afghanistan, and it’s he who says things must be done there, now, the American way.

Specifically, he wants the Canadians and other forces to deploy their soldiers for longer periods, make more effort to eradicate the cultivation of opium poppies and get more involved in reconstruction and humanitarian work.

The marines are under McNeill’s direct command and seem to have the same gung-ho approach that they exhibited in Iraq, where many of them served. McNeill himself has said they’re in the southern part of the country to “stir things up.”

In March last year, about 100 marines, it was reported, were sent packing for responding to an ambush using “Iraq rules” that violated the less violent rules of engagement that were supposed to be in place in Afghanistan.

It looks as if the Afghan war, at least for the next seven months, is to be played by Iraq rules, which don’t seem to have endeared a lot of people in that country to the American invaders.

Restoring security and rebuilding a country is a long, slow process. First, a region has to be cleared of insurgent fighters, then it has to be held to provide the security under which the third stage, rebuilding, can take place.

The marines might be in Afghanistan long enough to rout the insurgents where they are concentrated.

They might even be able to stop or reduce the traffic in fighters, arms, opium and money.

But when they have gone, someone else is going to have to hold what they’ve gained and someone else is going to carry on with the rebuilding.

When the marine mini-surge was announced in January, a Pentagon spokesman said it was to be “a one-time deal — that’s it.”

Maybe we should hope it’s not. Maybe we should hope that the Americans will be persuaded — if only because their allies aren’t up to the job — to stay long enough to finish what, after all, they started.

The Captain’s Journal has been critical of General McNeill, but we appreciate his sentiments and applaud his perspective with the deployment of the Marines.  He has a tough row to hoe because of the strategic differences within the NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The Canadians seem to assume that they couldn’t adopt a posture like the U.S. Marines on the one hand (such that they would be rather lost without the Marines in place), but on the other hand, seem to criticize the Marine posture as if it somehow cannot be successful because of failing to win hearts and minds (which begs the question why the Canadians want the Marines to stay?).  The Canadian narrative is so confused and contradictory that it brings into question just what the Canadians themselves would propose.

That question is also recently answered for us.  The Canadians want to talk to the Taliban.

Canadian troops are reaching out to the Taliban for the first time, military and diplomatic officials say, as Canada softens its ban on speaking with the insurgents.

After years of rejecting any contact with the insurgents, Canadian officials say those involved with the mission are now rethinking the policy in hopes of helping peace efforts led by the Afghan government.

The Canadian work on political solutions follows two separate tracks: tactical discussions at a local level in Kandahar, and strategic talks through the Kabul government and its allies. Neither type of negotiation appears to have made progress so far, though efforts are still in the early stages.

The Afghanistan campaign has faltered and proceeded haltingly when negotiations are pursued with the Taliban, most recently when the British used this approach in Musa Qala.  What affect has this approach had on the recent Pakistani negotiations with the Pakistani Taliban?  In this instance, Baitullah Mehsud has used the stand down in combat operations to his advantage.

Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, based in the South Waziristan tribal area, has ended peace talks with the Islamabad government, just a week after ordering a ceasefire against security forces. A spokesman for Mehsud is reported to have said the talks broke down because the government refused to withdraw troops from the tribal areas, the strategic backyard of the Taliban’s insurgency in Afghanistan.

Under a well-orchestrated program, the Taliban “switched off” their attacks on politically vulnerable Pakistan this month and they patiently allowed the Western-sponsored game of carrots and sticks involving tribal peace accords to play out, even letting anti-Taliban politicians into their region. For the Taliban, it was just a matter of buying time until the end of April to put the finishing touches to their spring campaign in Afghanistan.

It should be pointed out again just who the U.S. engaged in negotiations in the Anbar province.  The peace accord involved the tribes and muktars, not the more religiously motivated al Qaeda or Ansar al Sunna fighters.  Again it bears repeating: negotiations were never engaged with al Qaeda.  Not a single time.  Negotiations with the Taliban will not redound to success in the campaign any more than they would have with al Qaeda.  Winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan doesn’t refer to the Taliban.  It refers to everyone but the Taliban.

It should also be remembered that between the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the only province where major combat operations have ceased and the enemy has been vanquished is the Anbar Province where the Marines were assigned.

Even if confused by the more aggressive posture of the Marines, the Canadians appear to be concerned not about the fate of the Taliban, but of themselves.  The Marines might have a long term Afghanistan presence in their future.  A one-time seven month deployment may not be nearly enough.

After sitting idle mired in NATO bureaucratic red tape for six weeks, the U.S. Marines have finally been deployed into the Helmand Province where they have targeted a Taliban stronghold town called Garmser.

US Marines pushed into a stronghold of extremist Taliban resistance in southernmost Afghanistan Tuesday in their first major operation since deploying to Afghanistan last month …

Garmser in southern Helmand is an area of difficult desert terrain that extends down to the Pakistan border across which Taliban reinforcements and weapons are said to arrive to enter a growing insurgency.

Soldiers with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, based in the neighbouring province of Kandahar, were airlifted into forward bases in the area last week or moved in on convoys, ISAF said.

From there they launched the operation named Azada Wosa, which means Be Free in the Pashtu language of southern and eastern Afghanistan …

Military officials say Helmand is a nest of hardcore Taliban fighters supported by international Islamic “jihadists” and the centre of Afghanistan’s booming opium and heroin trade.

But for reasons recommended by The Captain’s Journal in October of 2007, the Marines aren’t after poppy according to Major Tom Clinton.

The Marines are entering an area lush with opium poppies. The Marines don’t want to antagonize the local population by joining U.S.-backed efforts to destroy the crop. “We’re not coming to eradicate poppy,” Clinton says. “We’re coming to clear the Taliban.”

The town of Garmser has been under the control of Taliban fighters who have been expecting a fight for some time.

The Taliban presence in Garmser has been a running sore for British forces for the past year, but British commanders have not previously had the combat forces available to push the Taliban out.

The Taliban claims to have several hundred fighters in the area, with prepared bunkers and tunnel complexes that have proved resistant to frequent Western aerial bombing raids.

The Telegraph was able to interview two Taliban commanders operating in the Garmserarea last month, who said they expected to resist any assault by Western forces.

“It will be really difficult for the British,” said Mullah Ghafour, not his real name. “We have 20 kilometres depth of defences, with all kinds of mines. They have tried before to push us back. In Garmser it is a face to face fight.”

But the Taliban are facing the U.S. Marines, many of whom are veterans of the Anbar Province.  Being dug in is not helping the Taliban, who lost their command center today.

In one short engagement this morning, the Marines took rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire, and a Marine scout helicopter killed two insurgents with rockets and .50-cal machine gun fire.

The battle for the Taliban command center raged all day today, said Lt. Anthony Henderson, who commands the 1st Battalion 6th Marine Regiment, the core infantry unit of the 24th MEU.

Henderson said the Marines gradually pushed the Taliban back into a corner of the facility and then called in air strikes by Cobra attack helicopters with Hellfire missiles.

The Taliban are learning what General George Patton knew years ago, namely that fixed fortifications are monuments to man’s stupidity.  Inch by inch, room by room, the Marines are prepared to complete the battle, both kinetic operations and reconstruction of the area.

The Marines had prepared on Monday by cleaning weapons and handing out grenades. The leader of one of the three companies involved — Charlie Company commander Capt. John Moder — said his men were ready.

“The feeling in general is optimistic, excited,” said Moder, 34, of North Kingstown, Rhode Island. “They’ve been training for this deployment the last nine months. We’ve got veteran leaders.”

Many of the men in the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit served in 2006 and 2007 in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province in western Iraq. The vast region was once the stronghold of al-Qaida in Iraq before the militants were pushed out in early 2007.

Moder said that experience would affect how his men fight in Afghanistan. “These guys saw a lot of progress in Ramadi, so they understand it’s not just kinetic (fighting) but it’s reconstruction and economic development.”

But on the initial assault, Moder said his men were prepared to face mines and homemade bombs and “anybody that wants to fight us.”

One Marine in Charlie Company, Cpl. Matt Gregorio, 26, from Boston, alluded to the fact the Marines had been in Afghanistan for six weeks without carrying out any missions. He said the mood was “anxious, excited.”

“We’ve been waiting a while to get this going,” he said.

A while indeed.  Six weeks mired in red tape.  But progress has started, and the Taliban in this AO will surrender or die.

**** UPDATE ****

Welcome to Hugh Hewitt readers and thanks to Hugh for the link.  Also welcome to Pajamas Media readers.

In The Taliban and Distributed Operations we pointed to evolving tactics of Taliban fighters, saying:

This tactic of forcing decision-making down within the organization, dispatching smaller, self-sufficient groups of fighters, and maintaining looser communication is perfectly adapted to the Afghanistan countryside, which is less about MOUT (military operations on urban terrain) than in Iraq.  This guerrilla approach to warfare requires aggressive offensive operations to root them out in their hiding places.  It also requires that U.S. forces participate in the chase.  Fire and melt-away must become less attractive to the Taliban.

It is partially for this reason The Captain’s Journal has claimed that there would be a so-called spring offensive by the Taliban (which U.S. Army intelligence and command in Afghanistan has repeatedly denied that this offensive would occur).  When NATO speaks of a spring offensive, they are talking tactical maneuvers and larger scale kinetic fights.  When we speak of a spring offensive, we are talking about guerrilla tactics – small teams, fire and melt away, etc.

Antonio Giustozzi is a research fellow at the London School of Economics who has studied the evolution of the Taliban since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, and he recently reiterated the same points that we made.

“Today, the Taliban are essentially a guerrilla movement, whereas in the 1990s — even in the early days of 1994 or 1995 — they were never something like that,” Giustozzi says. “Even when they were fighting for power, they were not using these guerrilla tactics. They were more like an army moving along the highways and trying to occupy the provincial centers. In that sense, the main difference is the way they operate. It is not so easy to say what their actual aims are.” 

But he says that, too, might change.

“Essentially, they say what they want is just to get the foreigners out of the country,” Giustozzi explains. “But even in the early days, they were claiming that their main aim was to pacify the country and bring back law and order — not to become a kind of government which would stay in power indefinitely, which, of course, proved not to be correct once they actually took Kabul.”

As for ordinary Taliban foot soldiers, recent research suggests that the Taliban has been recruiting a younger generation of Afghans to carry out suicide attacks and to fight within its rank and file.

Working for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, Christine Fair last year studied the phenomenon of suicide bombings across Afghanistan. Her work led to important conclusions not only about suicide bombers, but also about the emergence of this new generation of Taliban fighters.

“The important big picture is Afghans like to tell you that this is a Pakistani phenomenon,” Fair says. “As we all know, there is Pakistani involvement. There is recruitment across the border. In the tribal areas, madrasahs figure prominently. But even if Pakistan went away, you still have a largely Afghan-driven insurgency.”

Fair describes the situation as a “cross-border phenomenon,” and says that “the insurgency is not going to be resolved if you think that the problem stops either at one side or the other of the Afghan border.”

Distributed operations include the use of suicide bombers, which we the Taliban have begun to see as their “smart bomb.”  While some of the ISAF generals have ridiculed the notion of an increase in Taliban violence, the top general in Afghanistan, Maj.Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, has gone on record saying that he expects increased insurgent activity.

Schloesser says violence “may well reach a higher level than it did in 2007,” now seen as the bloodiest year since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001. The United Nations says more than 8,000 people, mostly rebels, died in insurgency-related violence last year.

Schloesser says the rebels are no military match for NATO forces.

Instead, they are increasingly directing attacks against civilians and Afghan police and security forces protecting development projects.

“They are going for what is an easier target,” said Schloesser, who heads the 101st Airborne Division. He took up his command in Afghanistan on April 10.

With the indigenous insurgency and the fact that deployment of Taliban fighters is likely complete, focus on the border may miss the point.  Force projection is needed inside Afghanistan, and the guerrilla fighters must be chased in order to create the security for the creation of infrastructure.

In Taliban and al Qaeda Strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan we set out the intended strategy of attacking NATO supply lines through the Khyber pass.  This Al Jazeera video does a fairly good job of laying out the strategy and summarizing the importance of this plan to date.

This strategy is, according to an Asia Times report, in tatters, and according to a Globe and Mail report, meeting resistance.  The Asia Times report is lengthy but gives us a glimpse into the treachery involved  along the Khyner pass from a trader named Namdar, who apparently sold the Taliban out for $150 000 right around the time of the March 20 attack on 40 gasoline tankers.

Unlike in previous Taliban attacks in the area, local paramilitary forces chased the Taliban after this incident. The Taliban retaliated and five soldiers were killed, but then their ammunition ran out and they surrendered the two workers and tried to flee, but they were blocked.

The Taliban called in reinforcements, but so did the paramilitary troops, and a stalemate was reached. Eventually, the Taliban managed to capture a local political agent (representing the central government) and they used him as a hostage to allow their escape.

They retreated to their various safe houses, but to their horror, paramilitary troops were waiting for them and scores were arrested, and their arms caches seized. A number of Taliban did, however, manage to escape once word got out of what was happening.

The only person aware of the safe houses was Namdar, their supposed protector: they had been sold out.

Their worst suspicions were confirmed when Namdarbroke his cover and announced on a local radio station that Taliban commanders, including Ustad Yasir, should surrender or face a “massacre”, as happened when local tribes turned against Uzbek fighters in South Waziristan in January 2007.

Namdar said that he had the full weight of the security forces behind him, and he did not fear any suicide attack.

Al-Qaeda and the Taliban immediately called an emergency shura in North Waziristan to review the situation. Al-Qaeda’s investigations revealed that the CIA and Pakistani intelligence had got to Namdarand paid him $150,000 in local currency.

The immediate result is that Taliban operations in Khyber Agency have been cut off. This in itself is a major setback, as the attacks on supply lines had hit a raw NATO nerve.

In the broader context, Namdar’s betrayal vividly illustrates the dangers of traitors within the ranks of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The fear is that the various peace deals being signed now between the Islamabad government and selected tribal leaders could lead to a whole new batch of betrayals.

Namdar is a pawn, and the real power according to the Globe and Mail report is a tribal leader who owns a local army of fighters.

An Islamist warlord whose fighters are overrunning Pakistan’s famous Khyber Pass area may now be the only force stopping the Taliban from swooping in to cut off this key supply route for NATO in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Mangal Bagh, who leads a group called Lashkar-i-Islam, said in an interview that he has rebuffed an offer from Pakistan’s Taliban to join them. Although he voiced his disdain for the United States, his independence is likely to be significant for NATO troops fighting in Afghanistan.

Khyber agency is a 2,500-square-kilometre district that is part of Pakistan’s tribal belt, and truckloads of food, equipment and fuel for NATO troops wind through it daily to the bustling border at Torkham. Last week, fighting between Mr. Bagh’s men and a pocket of resistance around the town of Jamrut closed the Pak-Afghan highway for several days.

Mr. Bagh’s stronghold, the market town of Bara, is a 30-minute drive from the city-centre of the provincial capital, Peshawar. An escort of his heavily armed followers is needed to reach his fortified compound in the surrounding countryside.

“I’m not the ruler of Khyber, I’m the servant,” said Mr. Bagh, who had an unexpectedly gentle manner, as he relaxed with his Kalashnikov-toting men, drinking tea. “My aim is to finish all social evils.”

There have been repeated entreaties to combine forces from the Pakistani Taliban, who run other parts of the country’s wild northwestern border terrain, known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. A traditional jirga, a meeting of elders, was held between Lashkar-i-Islam and the Taliban about 40 days ago.

“I told them that what I am doing is enough. It is the right direction. There is no need to join you,” he said.

“The Taliban consists of religious scholars. We are fighters for Islam – laypeople. We don’t have any religious figures in our organization.”

However, he said that the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was “wrong” and that U.S. soldiers must leave.

Our assessment is that this is a mixed blessing.  First, Asia Times can give good information, but tends towards exaggeration, and it isn’t likely that the whole strategy of attacking NATO supply lines is in tatters.  Second, before beginning the dances of jubilation over the failure of the Taliban approach, remember that Mangal Bagh is no friend of the U.S.  It is likely that the battles in this area are just beginning.  The Taliban have not typically been inclined to give up after the first battle.

Continued CIA pressure must be brought to bear in this region, in addition to UAV strikes when known Taliban are observed.  This force must be balanced against the need to prevent targeting Mangal’s fighters, even if he is unfriendly to NATO efforts.  For now, at least, he must be considered a friend, even if a tenuous and potentially treacherous one at that.

Prior:

Taliban and al Qaeda Strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan

The Khyber Pass