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The coming weeks will set the course for the closing of U.S. action in Iraq.  Given the recent flurry of activity to put the final pieces in place, it is wise to reflect on the failure of counterinsurgency thus far in Iraq, and ascertain exactly what more proposed troops will do, how they will do it, and what would demarcate a victory.

There is no doubt that positive reports can be found concerning the state of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), and particularly so when the reports come straight from the front by Milbloggers. There is of course progress being made, but this progress may be characterized as slow, arduous and dangerous, whether from Milbloggers or main stream media.

The Marines, Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen involved in OIF have performed marvelously, have done everything that has been required of them, and have made progress despite the overly-restrictive rules of engagement, lack of appropriate equipment (e.g., fourteen Marines getting killed by an IED due to driving down a desert road in an Amphibious Assault Vehicle) and lack of adequate forces to do the task at hand.

The emphasis on force protection for U.S. troops has led to low casualties, by design, compared with previous wars.  This is an admirable feature of the war planning for OIF. But it is becoming clear that the application of counterinsurgency (COIN) tactics in Iraq, and particularly for the Anbar Province, have been a dismal failure as it regards effecting the desired outcome.

In Eschatology and Counterterrorism Warfare I discussed the exodus that is occurring from Iraq, with the Anbar and Diyala Provinces being particularly hard hit. There are now 1.4 million displaced Iraqi citizens and every day sees three thousand more who flee the country. Working the back alleys and neighborhoods where there is no constant U.S. presence, the Sunni insurgents are waging a campaign of murder and intimidation to demonstrate that neither the Iraqi government nor U.S. forces can protect people.

It is stylish to cite David Galula and claim that the U.S. approach to Iraq has been too heavy handed. The solution, it is claimed, is to see that 80% of the solution is and will always be political. But just to show how utterly irrelevant Galula’s system is to Iraq, consider a single quote: “The battle for the population is a major characteristic of the revolutionary war. . . . The objective being the population itself, the operations designed to win it over (for the insurgent) or to keep it at least submissive (for the counterinsurgent) are essentially of a political nature. . . . And so intricate is the interplay between the political and military actions that they cannot be tidily separated; on the contrary, every military move has to be weighed with regard to its political effects, and vice versa.”

It sounds nice. Now take a closer read: “The objective being the population itself, the operations designed to win it over (for the insurgent) …,” has exactly backwards what the insurgents and counterinsurgents have been doing.  The U.S. has been trying to win over the population, not keep it submissive, and the insurgents have been trying to keep them submissive, not win them over.   If anything, intimidation has been the one and only tactic of the insurgency.  The premise being false, the system then suffers in misapplication. Perhaps a more poignant example comes from a West Point essay, “Hearts and Minds as a Misleading Misnomer.”

The easiest way to understand legitimacy is to ascertain how or to whom a citizen turns to solve his or her social, political or economic problems. If citizens desire educational reform, and they rely on the government to fix that, then the government’s system has legitimacy … similarly, if citizens have decided that the insurgent’s system will best provide land reform, then the insurgent has captured legitimacy from the regime … in many instances (the Viet Cong was a great example), terror, violence, and coercion are short-term “sticks” that the insurgency employs until the long-term “carrots” (solving citizen problems) validate their proposed system.

This philosophy marks the COIN training in the U.S. armed forces today. Solving social, political and economic problems is the hallmark of successful COIN, it is believed, and hence the U.S. attempts to do it better than the insurgents.  Far from being too late or not vigorous enough in the application of Galula’s views, we have applied his theories with a vengeance.

Yet upon serious reflection, the reader will see that something is deeply wrong. The insurgents in Iraq have never transitioned to the next phase of insurgency, the phase we’ll call “system validation.” The only interest that they have shown in education has been to threaten and kill teachers and professors; in the words of one Baghdad citizen, “I forced my son to leave school. It’s more important that he be alive than educated.”

Among conservative Milbloggers, of which I am one, it is not popular to say that our strategy is wrong in Iraq, perhaps because it is seen as a reflection on the troops rather than of the leadership. But the idea that a failure rests on the shoulders of the troops is surely false and just plain wrongheaded.  With perfect troops, the wrong strategy will doom U.S. efforts. In addition to studying positive reports about the successes in Iraq, it is useful to study contrary viewpoints to round out our understanding of the situation.

Some reports directly from Iraq paint a picture of the nation as a killing field, leading exactly to the exodus we are witnessing.

The last three months have been the worst in Iraq’s history. There have been more killings of innocent people than the worst days and months the country has passed through in the past.

According to official figures at least 100 innocent Iraqis perish everyday. The figures of course cannot be trusted as many more murdered Iraqis are buried as relatives find it unnecessary to report their deaths.

Our municipalities now spend more time collecting human corpses form (sic) the streets of major cities, particularly in Baghdad, than gathering garbage.

Most of these corpses do not carry identity cards and hospitals lack the means to identify them. Many are buried in mass graves.

Closer to home, in testimony before Senate Armed Services Committee, Lt. General Michael D. Maples admitted to a badly deteriorating security situation in Iraq.  NCOs who have been to Iraq report stories reminiscent of the wild west: “The locals have repeatedly conveyed to us horrid tales of shop owners being pulled from their places of business and executed directly outside their storefronts, or mysterious uniformed men driving up and snatching people right off the street, never to be heard from again. Most of the wealthy homes now stand empty, their owners having fled to less politically free but certainly less volatile Middle Eastern countries.”  The Anbar Province is described as a wasteland.

Ramadi has been laid waste by two years of warfare. Houses stand shattered and abandoned. Shops are shuttered up. The streets are littered with rubble, wrecked cars, fallen trees, broken lampposts and piles of rubbish.

Fetid water stands in craters. The pavements are overgrown. Walls are pockmarked by bullets and shrapnel. Side roads have been shut off with concrete barriers to thwart car bombs. Everything is coated in grey dust even the palm trees. The city has no functioning government, no telephones, and practically no basic services except sporadic electricity and water supplies. It has been reduced to a subsistence economy.

There are stray cats and wild dogs, but few cars or humans. Ramadi’s inhabitants have either fled, or learnt to stay indoors.

Concerning amelioration of the violence, Maliki stopped the targeting of the Sadrists, and the U.S. is in what is called by the U.N. Security Council a ‘security partnership’ with the Iraqi government.  The U.S. can no longer take unilateral action in Iraq, of course, unless the political will exists stateside to do so.  This is doubtful.

So why the failure of the Galula model for COIN? What is so different about Iraq? Perhaps the following list is a beginning point for what will without a doubt be the subject of many future dissertations at war colleges.

First, treating the disenfranchised sect as if they were “in play.”  Robert Haddick (Westhawk), similar to Michael Rubin, recommending that the U.S. give up on Sunni reconciliation, comments:

As General Abizaid predicted, Iraqi society, at least the Sunni Arab portion, rebelled against the “antibody.” Since then, the U.S. military has attempted to fight a counterinsurgency campaign, using several standard techniques. Mr. Zalmay Khalilzad, America’s very demanding ambassador in Iraq, has forced Iraq’s political elites to form a “national unity” government. He has also worked tirelessly on political reconciliation with Iraq’s rebellious Sunni Arab community. The U.S. has spent the past two years developing and mentoring an Iraqi army and police force. Military operations have been restrained and highly discrete, with the aim of targeting those who might intimidate the population, while also attempting to avoid alienating the population into siding with the insurgents.

These are all classic counterinsurgency gambits, designed to provide an attractive alternative to the insurgency, with the hope of drying up its support. Unfortunately, the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign has failed. The failure rests more with Saddam Hussein’s legacy than it does with American tactics. Iraq’s Sunni Arabs were never “in play,” ready to be talked or bribed into supporting the Shi’ite/Kurdish majority government in Baghdad. As for Iraq’s Shi’ites and Kurds, they have thirty years of very painful memories. And the recent failures at reconciliation have done nothing to improve trust among Iraq’s sects.

If Haddick is right, and I believe that he is, the effort to win the hearts and minds of the Sunni minority was doomed from the beginning.  The overthrown sect had too much at stake simply to crumble and acquiesce to Shi’ite and/or Kurdish rule, or so they thought.  The situation was never conducive to the application of Galula’s principals.  We tried to fit a square peg into a round hole, and all the more so each time it didn’t work.

Second, ignoring the affects of a thousand-year religious war within the population in Iraq.  Sunni-Shi’ite relations constitute a thousand year religious war, and to assume that democracy (or freedom) would heal divisions and become seminal in the region with the overthrow of Saddam’s regime might have been hamhanded and naive.  At the very least, plans to address this deeply held religious divide should have been made, and security in such a powderkeg would certainly necessitate more force projection and quicker response to the initial violence upon toppling of the regime.

Third, failing to recognize the affects of the previous regime having trained the Iraqi people to cower in fear of violence.  American freedom for several hundred years has created an indomitable spirit that would make an occupation of the U.S. impossible for foreign troops, no matter how many there were or how long they tried.  Iraq is the perfect contrast.  Saddam’s secret police created such a culture of fear and treachery that they were ready-made for the brutality employed by the insurgency.  They have decades of simply staying alive under their belt as preparation for the terrorists.  They knew exactly what to do, and it didn’t include sustaining risk to assist the U.S. in hunting down the enemy.

Fourth, oil money.  The scandalous and idiotic oil-for-food program poured money into a region that was otherwise destitute because of sanctions, and this money didn’t go to the people who needed it.  So even sanctions didn’t help to strip the enemy of his funds.  In the broader region, the ready availability of large sums of cash make it easy to hire mercenaries, from both inside and outside Iraq, to battle U.S. troops.  The easy availability of oil money also creates criminal elements when there is no stable government to police them.

Fifth, the nexus of terrorism and technology.  Just forty years ago, an insurgent may backpack a single artillery shell along the Ho Chi Minh trail for months, only to see it used in a second, and then turn around to hike the trail and do it all over again.  Technological advances and the cheap availability of high tech equipment has radically changed the face of terrorism.

The world is now characterized by the near-instantaneous proliferation of information and misinformation, ease-to-use communication systems, and technologies that provide cheap, readily improvised WMD capabilities. At the same time, the development of our cultural, social, economic, industrial, and political structures offers vulnerabilities never dreamed of by earlier terrorists. This presents unprecedented problems for security forces, problems that are neither purely military nor purely law enforcement, but a mixture of both, with a lot of complex intelligence demands. All this places complex strains on governmental jurisdictions, and the intersection of the public and private sectors, not to mention civil liberties, cultural traditions, and privacy.

We were utterly unprepared for the toll that IEDs would take on U.S. troops, and even after it became obvious that this was a leading tactic of the enemy, we reacted with lethargy.

Sixth, not recognizing the dynamic scope of the battlefield.  Recently captured intelligence documents show an undeniable link between Iran and the violence in Iraq.  John Little comments that “If these documents actually surprised anyone in our intelligence community we’re in trouble. Finding supporting documentation is a good thing but Iran’s desire to destabilize Iraq, and their willingness to deal with anyone in the process, should have been well understood before these documents were siezed.”  But we may indeed be in trouble, not learning our lessons from years gone by.  Michael Rubin points out that from even before the war began going on into the first months of the war, Iran was training militia and sending huge sums of money and materiel into Iraq.  Their plans have been active for years.  Over to the west, insurgents pour in across a Syrian border that has not been securred.  The battlefield, both for military actions and so-called “nonkinetic” actions to win the people, is dynamic.  As one insurgent is killed, another pops up in his place, coming not from any action the U.S. has or has not taken in Iraq, but rather, coming from hundreds or even thousands of miles away due to a religious hatred that has been taught to him from birth.  The war in Iraq is both figuratively and quite literally a war without borders.

Seventh, the utilization of violence as an exclusive-use procedure by the insurgents.  The insurgents have not yet transitioned from violence to “system validation.”  There is no compelling need to do so, as Iranian influence in eastern Iraq exceeds that of the U.S., many of the Sunnis want nothing of reconciliation, and there is an exodus of refugees from Iraq to other parts of the world.  The success achieved by the insurgents (and Shi’ite militia) ensures the continued use of violence.  There is no need to fix something that isn’t broken.

It has been said that successful COIN warfare takes ten years on average.  Even if this is true, we do not have ten years to perform COIN operations in Iraq.  And the U.S. public is not to blame.  Four years has been given to the administration, and at least the first couple (after the toppling of the regime) were squandered.  This squandering of time and resources, while it affected public sentiment in the U.S., affected Iraq even more.  The U.S. public, even now, is likely to give the administration longer than the situation on the ground in Iraq will allow.  The critical path to solving Iraq doesn’t rest with public sentiment.  If Iraq is a killing field sustaining an exodus of refugees to Syria and Jordan as it appears is the case, we simply do not have ten years.  The basis for this boundary condition is Iraq, not the U.S.  The same COIN strategy, six years from now, will see the annihilation of the Sunni population and rise of Iran as the only true power in Iraq.

I have been vocal in pointing out the effects of inadequate force projection in Iraq.  It appears at the moment that there will be a modest troop increase.  But force projection is not the same thing as force size.  Victor Davis Hanson’s observations point to a different problem than one of force size.  Hanson’s recommendations focus on the what and how of U.S. engagements.

There have been a number of anomalies in this war, as a brilliant American tactical victory in removing Saddam has not translated into quick strategic success. But one of the most worrisome developments is the narrowing of the recent debate to the single issue of surging troops, as if the problem all along has just been one of manpower.

It hasn’t. The dilemma involves the need to fight an asymmetrical war of counter-insurgency that hinges on what troops do, rather than how many are engaged. We have gone from a conventional victory over Saddam Hussein to an asymmetrical struggle against jihadist insurgents to what is more or less third-party policing of random violence between Sunnis and Shiites.

Our past errors were not so much dissolving a scattered Iraqi military or even de-Baathification, but rather giving an appearance of impotence, whether in allowing the looting to continue or pulling back from Fallujah or giving a reprieve to the Sadr militias.

So, yes, send more troops to Iraq — but only if they are going to be allowed to hunt down and kill vicious and sectarians in a manner that they have not been allowed to previously.

This surge should be not viewed in terms of manpower alone. Rather it should be planned as the corrective to past misguided laxity, in which no quarter will now be given to die-hard jihadists as we pursue victory, not better policing. We owe that assurance to the thousands more of young Americans who now will be sent into harm’s way.

Whether we take Haddick’s approach or Hanson’s approach (giving up on the Sunnis and leaving versus forcing their hand by a drastic strategy change), 2.0E4 more troops doing the same things and pursuing the same strategy will bring disrepute to U.S. warfighting capabilities and more U.S. casualties.  It has been said that the difference between the Viet Cong and the jihadist is that the VC didn’t follow us home, and the jihadist will.  And so they will indeed.  Yet we are waging partial war with forty year old COIN doctrine that is more applicable to the VC than the jihadists.  A different paradigm is needed, one that squarely faces the murder and suicide cult that is jihadism; that doesn’t patrol Marines down city streets to get sniped without ever firing a shot at the enemy because we have hamstrung our own snipers with our rules of engagement; that recognizes that mothers don’t care about an education for their children compared to keeping them alive; that recognizes and addresses the dynamic battlefield where borders and foreign fighters are as important as the local government; and that realizes that mutual trust will be difficult, or perhaps impossible, in a land where lies and deceipt are ubiquitous and constant.

A moderate troop size increase coupled with the same strategy and tactics will be likened – and properly so – to Olmert’s last desperate battle with Hezballah where, in order to save face and make the war effort appear as a victory for Israel, he sent more IDF troops to their deaths and then retreated.  It will neither appear as a victory nor accomplish anything good.

Eschatology, or the study and philosophy of the last things, is key to the proper understanding of counterterrorism warfare, but not usually mentioned in the same breath. Theologians do not usually engage in discussions of military strategy, and infantry officers do not usually read books in religious philosophy. Yet, on a grand scale, the two are intimately connected, and eschatology is the determinative factor in the motivation of the terrorist, even if his view of the end only involves the fulfillment of secular goals such as the will to power.

The Baathists had threatened to retaliate should the “crime” of executing Saddam Hussein be committed, saying that “The Baath and the resistance are determined to retaliate, with all means and everywhere, to harm America and its interests if it commits this crime.” FNC had reported just prior to Saddam’s execution from they U.S. officers in contact with the tribal leaders supportive of anti-coalition efforts that these tribal chiefs were propositioning them to “release Saddam, and he and the U.S. would handle the Iran problem together.”

Even for those who rejected the religious eschatology of victory embraced by al Qaeda and Ansar al Sunnah, they were loyal to the end, and hopeful for a resurgent Sunni rule in Iraq led by Saddam. Those who sided with the terrorists (Saddam’s secret police and the Fedayeen) merely found expediency in objectives: the driving of the coalition forces from Iraq.

So determined are the anti-coalition forces that they are willing to pursue a “scorched earth” policy to achieve their objectives. It was reported on October 23, 2006, that 500 000 Iraqi citizens had fled Iraq (primarily from the Anbar Province) to Syria. As of December 3, 2006, it is reported that 700 000 Iraqi citizens are in Syria and another 700 000 in Jordan, for a total of 1.4 million displaced citizens. One anecdotal piece of evidence is given to us by an otherwise non-remarkable person in the Anbar Province:

The gunman stood at the foot of his bed. “Are you al-Jaboury?” he yelled. It was 2 o’clock on a stifling July morning, and al-Jaboury had been sound asleep next to his wife. After hearing his name, the young Iraqi police officer didn’t hesitate. Grabbing the gun he had been stashing under his pillow every night since he’d joined the police 18 months earlier, he shot the intruder in the throat. The gunman’s accomplices all fled.

But the danger wasn’t over. “I knew the insurgents would come back, and maybe they would blow up the whole house,” al-Jaboury says. “My wife blamed me for joining the police. She said that I am a Sunni and that I know that the insurgents don’t like this, and that I would get killed sooner or later.” The next day, al-Jaboury left his wife, his daughter, and his home in the troubled Diyala province and took off in a neighbor’s pickup truck, loaded with fruit, and headed for Syria. He had $300 in his pocket.

Literally splitting families apart, the insurgents are willing to destroy the population and infrastructure to effect their end. They are willing to do this for the same reason that the 50 million dollar bounty on the head of Bin Laden is meaningless to those with whom he lives. They believe that they will win.

Until they are no longer convinced that victory awaits them, U.S. government largesse means nothing to the insurgents. No amount of so-called “nonkinetic” operations on the part of U.S. forces will “win the hearts and minds of the people” when wives are concerned about their husbands siding with the police for fear of them getting killed by insurgents.

This problem is exacerbated and compounded when religious pre-commitments are involved. Secular eschatology doesn’t compare in strength to religious eschatology. The Baathists need to see tangible results in time and space. When final defeat becomes obvious, although not yet fulfilled, the remnant might be persuaded to stand down, or simply disappear from the scene. Those who have a religious commitment need not see tangible results in time and space, and so nothing can dissuade them from their deadly adventures.

Guerrilla warfare is not the unique development of the twentieth century. Francis Marion fought the forces of Cornwallis to a standstill in the swamps of South Carolina, with an eschatology that was at least in part based on religious commitment. Even in the twentieth century, Vietnam was not the first example of such tactics. In my studies of World War II many years ago, I was fascinated to learn about the existence of “Hitler’s Werewolves.” A brief description of their accomplishments follows.

What did the Werwolf do? They sniped. They mined roads. They poured sand into the gas tanks of jeeps. (Sugar was in short supply, no doubt.) They were especially feared for the “decapitation wires” they strung across roads. They poisoned food stocks and liquor. (The Russians had the biggest problem with this.) They committed arson, though perhaps less than they are credited with: every unexplained fire or explosion associated with a military installation tended to be blamed on the Werwolf. These activities slackened off within a few months of the capitulation on May 7, though incidents were reported as late as 1947.

… Goebbels especially grasped the possibility that guerrilla war could be a political process as well as a military strategy. It was largely through his influence that the Werwolf assumed something of the aspect of a terrorist organization. Where it could, it tried to prevent individuals and communities from surrendering, and it assassinated civil officials who cooperated with the Allies. Few Germans welcomed these activities, but something else that Goebbels grasped was that terror might serve where popularity was absent. By his estimate, only 10% to 15% of the German population were potential supporters for a truly revolutionary movement. His goal was to use the Werwolf to activate that potential. With the help of the radical elite, the occupiers could be provoked into savage reprisals that would win over the mass of the people to Neo-Nazism, a term that came into use in April 1945.

And from an article on Minutemen of the Third Reich.(history of the Nazi Werewolf guerilla movement) The Werewolves specialised in ambushes and sniping, and took the lives of many Allied and Soviet soldiers and officers — perhaps even that of the first Soviet commandant of Berlin, General N.E. Berzarin, who was rumoured to have been waylaid in Charlottenburg during an incident in June 1945. Buildings housing Allied and Soviet staffs were favourite targets for Werewolf bombings; an explosion in the Bremen police headquarters, also in June 1945, killed five Americans and thirty-nine Germans. Techniques for harassing the occupiers were given widespread publicity through Werewolf leaflets and radio propaganda, and long after May 1945 the sabotage methods promoted by the Werewolves were still being used against the occupying powers. Although the Werewolves originally limited themselves to guerrilla warfare with the invading armies, they soon began to undertake scorched-earth measures and vigilante actions against German `collaborators’ or `defeatists’. They damaged Germany’s economic infrastructure, already battered by Allied bombing and ground fighting, and tried to prevent anything of value from falling into enemy hands. Attempts to blow up factories, power plants or waterworks occasionally provoked melees between Werewolves and desperate German workers trying to save the physical basis of their employment, particularly in the Ruhr and Upper Silesia.

In the end, the “Werewolves” were merely Hitler youth, lacked moorings and leadership, and lacked a cogent world view, and within a year or so they were finished. This is instructive. They saw that they had no chance to succeed, and vanished into the landscape in short order, lacking a vision for victory.

In this time of post-Saddam Iraq, we now have the knowledge that we have destroyed the only true enemy of Iran. Does the vision for the GWOT include considerations for the future of U.S. forces in the region to impede Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon? Does victory in Iraq include the notion of the creation of an ally in the GWOT? Does victory in Iraq mean that the Iraqis are able to stand on their own immediately, or is the lesser goal adequate – that of the U.S. providing security now so that some day this might take effect? And if we bring security, how would we do this? The casualty rate in December of 2006 rivals the casualties in the first and second battles for Fallujah.

It has been said to me recently by one serviceman that “since we were battling Saddam’s forces, defeat of the remaining Sunni insurgency in Anbar means victory.” This is true, given a minimalist definition of victory. But when the generals themselves cannot define an eschatology of victory, the servicemen are left to devise their own. With nuances, there will be as many definitions as are there are servicemen.

John Little has given us a tip to a breaking story about potential movement of the Marines out of Anbar altogether.  This is major … major … news.  ABC News is reporting the following (I will copy and paste at length, and then offer up [I hope] some interesting … and unique … observations):

ABC News has learned that Pentagon officials are considering a major strategic shift in Iraq, to move U.S. forces out of the dangerous Sunni-dominated al-Anbar province and join the fight to secure Baghdad.

The news comes as President Bush prepares to meet with Iraq’s president to discuss the growing sectarian violence.

There are now 30,000 U.S. troops in al-Anbar, mainly Marines, braving some of the fiercest fighting in Iraq. At least 1,055 Americans have been killed in this region, making al-Anbar the deadliest province for American troops.

The region is a Sunni stronghold and the main base of operations for al Qaeda in Iraq and has been a place of increasing frustration to U.S. commanders.

In a recent intelligence assessment, top Marine in al-Anbar, Col. Peter Devlin, concluded that without a massive infusement of more troops, the battle in al-Anbar is unwinnable.

In the memo, first reported by the Washington Post, Devlin writes, “Despite the success of the December elections, nearly all government institutions from the village to provincial levels have disintegrated or have been thoroughly corrupted and infiltrated by al Qaeda in Iraq.”

Faced with that situation in al-Anbar, and the desperate need to control Iraq’s capital, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace is considering turning al-Anbar over to Iraqi security forces and moving U.S. troops from there into Baghdad.

“If we are not going to do a better job doing what we are doing out [in al-Anbar], what’s the point of having them out there?” said a senior military official.

Another option under consideration is to increase the overall U.S. troop level in Iraq by two to five brigades (that’s about 7,000 to 18,000 troops).

Generals Casey and Abizaid, however, have both weighed in against this idea. And such an increase would only be sustainable for six to eight months. Far more likely, the official says, will be a repositioning of forces currently in Iraq. “There is a push for a change of footprint, not more combat power.”

In Racoon Hunting and the Battle for Anbar, after the Marines had said that Fallujah held iconic status to them, and losing it would be like losing Iwo Jima, I asked the question, “Will we lose this hallowed soil, this soil on which so much U.S. blood has been shed?”

Perhaps.  And then perhaps not.  There are two possibilities that I see.  Either we have ceded power to al Qaeda and asked the Iraqi security forces to take them out, or we are cordoning off the area, only to go in later to “clear” it.  On October 24, I said that we would not “clear” Ramadi Fallujah-style, and at the time I had what I thought were good reasons to take this position.

I believe that there is some possibility, however remote it may seem to the reader (and to me), that we are cordoning off the Anbar Province (and in particular Ramadi), in order to prepare an assault later “Fallujah-style.”  More Marine patrols where they are getting sniper attacks is not adding to security.  We are either getting out, or we’re getting serious.

I confess, I am at a point of indecision on this, because I think the military brass may be.  It might be left to the incoming SECDEF to make the decision.  More force projection, or do we turn it over to the Iraqis?

The war turns on this decision.

Ever since the publication of Unrestricted Warfare by two Chinese military strategists, the Chinese have been interested in the utilization of all assets – military, financial, communication, technological – to wage war.  It has been said that the Chinese admired, and were even jealous of, the the U.S. war strategy in Afghanistan.  Ostensibly, the use of proxy fighters (i.e, the Northern Alliance), technology (bombs guided to their targets by Air Force special forces operators), and political pressure were key ingredients to successful military operations in the twenty first century.

But if the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq haven’t taught us anything else, we have learned that “force transformation” with a few more special forces operators carrying gizmos and gadgets and electronic toys simply cannot replace a military.  In an insightful critique of Rumsfelf’s bold new vision, Opfor has this to say:

To some, his leadership was inspirational. To others, he was the guy who was single handedly dismantling a force that had barely survived eight years of Clinton-era defense cuts. The name for the pain was Transformation, Rumsfeld’s baby. The Pentagon’s “bridge to the 21st century.” And before September 11, it sounded and felt pretty slick. A lighter force, with emphasis on flexibility, technology, and force multiplication. Maximum effect, minimum loss cheered supporters.

In Afghanistan, Transformation was looking pretty good. A couple of hundred SPECOP warriors exploited our new, network-centric approach to warfighting and accomplished what the much-feared Soviet juggernaut could not. Who needs tanks? Who needs divisions? One foward air controller with a horse, a laptop, and a MILSTAR uplink to a B-52 could now do the heavy-lifting of an entire mechanized brigade.

And that’s when Transformation blasted off. The Air Force started delivering Raptors and Global Hawks while BRAC cut our fighter force by 20%. Money poured into the Army’s Future Combat Systems, the Marine led V-22 procurement, and the Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ships. New tankers for the Air Force, new EELV heavy lift rockets to facilitate our budding space weapons program, a new class of aircraft carrier and a new class attack sub. All very useful weapon systems, but all very expensive weapon systems.

Operation Iraqi Freedom was supposed to get the Transformation concept over that final, sizable high-cost hurdle. Afghanistan was mostly asymmetric, fought almost exclusively at the platoon and company level. OIF was Transformation’s real test. State v. State conflict, a real army -albeit ill-equipped and poorly trained- to prove the mettle of the new force. And again, Transformation worked. Less troops, higher tech did the job. Mission accomplished.

And like a Shakespearean tragedy, Rumsfeld’s bold new vision for a brave new military collasped at the height of its success. The insurgency dug-in, and with each IED blast another hole was punched in the Transformation concept. Billion-dollar B2s flew helpless overhead as suicide bombers and roadside bombs took the lives of troops who lacked armor on their Humvess and on their bodies. 100 dollar bombs killed 100,000 dollar weapon systems. The highly touted, highly financed UAV force could only watch as car bombers exploded Iraqi marketplaces. What we needed was more troops. What we got was more gizmos.

Rumsfeld’s bold new vision for the military created a cultural milieu in which it was possible to envision remarkable military successes with what we now know to be inadequate force projection.  Like sycophants, the strategists around him wrote doctrine that created the theoretical framework to support this culture, and so the stage was set – as if a tragic theatrical production – for the situation we now face in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

We cannot shirk our responsibilities and hide the ugly truth.  The top military brass were complicit in this affair, at least some of them, but it all starts at the top.  And Rumsfeld was at the top.  Things now public began in secret some time ago in war gaming conducted by Marine General Anthony Zinni called “Desert Crossing.”  Zinni’s group came back with remarkably different recommendations than what ended up being put into place for the Iraq campaign:

The former CENTCOM commander noted that his plan had called for a force of 400,000 for the invasion — 240,000 more than what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved. “We were concerned about the ability to get in there right away, to flood the towns and villages,” USA Today quoted Zinni as saying in July 2003. “We knew the initial problem would be security.”

Army General Thomas “Tommy” Franks adjusted the concept when he assumed command of CENTCOM upon Zinni’s retirement. Yet even his initial version of OPLAN 1003-98 envisioned a need for 385,000 troops, according to the book, COBRA II, — before Rumsfeld insisted that the number be sharply reduced.

The plan called for 400,000 troops, Rumsfeld approved a fraction of 0.4 of that, for a total of 160,000 troops.  So in spite of all of the bluster about giving the generals all the troops that had been requested, we now know that this was a subterfuge.  It was all smoke and mirrors.

With its strict deference to rank, the military is “hard wired” to be impervious to peer review.  Yet this is exactly what is called for by war planners.  The civilian world does this every day.  Lawyers review the work of other lawyers, engineers review other engineers, and so forth.  In the very best reviews, rank and seniority mean nothing.  The good, bad and the ugly get heard, and the dissenting voices are encouraged and given a stage on which to speak.

But it all starts at the top, and Rumsfeld was unwilling to listen to his subordinates.  This obstinance, this unwillingness to bend and adapt and adjust and modify, limited the successfulness of an otherwise brilliant man.  But it did much more than that.  It placed our boys in harm’s way without what they needed to effect the mission and win the victory.

And thus has America’s experiment with “unrestricted warfare” ended.  I don’t really care whether China learns from this example.  But the U.S. must.

By now, John Kerry’s foolish and adolescent insult to U.S. servicemen and women has gone viral.  Michelle Malkin and Dan Riehl are covering this story and I won’t repeat the details.  In summary, Kerry said that if you don’t study hard, you end up “stuck in Iraq.”  Matt Drudge is carrying a humorous picture of what appears to be eight soldiers holding a sign up that says “Halp us Jon Carry – we R stuck (backwards K) hear n Irak.”

It is nice to see that this unit’s morale is high, and that they can find it in themselves to invoke humor in order to respond to Kerry’s insult.  But on a more serious note, Kerry made the statement because of the moral bankruptcy of his world view.  Kerry imagines that schooling, the state, a diploma, luck, chance, or some intangible or perhaps unknowable thing causes a man or woman to take up a job.  More to the point, Kerry imagines that being a warrior is a job.  And thus Kerry insults military men and women.

As opposed to the monastic view of the world in early medieval times, where the only holy and good thing was separation from the world, the reformation taught us something different about God’s calling in our lives:

In this view, Christians were called to be priests to the world, purifying and sanctifying its everyday life from within. Luther stated this point succinctly when commenting on Genesis 13:13: “What seem to be secular works are actually the praise of God and represent an obedience which is well–pleasing to him.” There were no limits to this notion of calling. Luther even extolled the religious value of housework, declaring that although “it has no obvious appearance of holiness, yet these very household chores are more to be valued than all the works of monks and nuns.”

Underlying this new attitude is the notion of the vocation or “calling.” God calls his people, not just to faith, but to express that faith in quite definite areas of life. Whereas monastic spirituality regarded vocation as a calling out of the world into the desert or the monastery, Luther and Calvin regarded vocation as a calling into the everyday world. The idea of a calling or vocation is first and foremost about being called by God, to serve Him within his world. Work was thus seen as an activity by which Christians could deepen their faith, leading it on to new qualities of commitment to God. Activity within the world, motivated, informed, and sanctioned by Christian faith, was the supreme means by which the believer could demonstrate his or her commitment and thankfulness to God. To do anything for God, and to do it well, was the fundamental hallmark of authentic Christian faith. Diligence and dedication in one’s everyday life are, Calvin thought, a proper response to God.

For Calvin, God places individuals where He wants them to be, which explains Calvin’s criticism of human ambition as an unwillingness to accept the sphere of action God has allocated to us. Social status is an irrelevance, a human invention of no spiritual importance; one cannot allow the human evaluation of an occupation’s importance to be placed above the judgment of God who put you there. All human work is capable of “appearing truly respectable and being considered highly important in the sight of God.” No occupation, no calling, is too mean or lowly to be graced by the presence of God.

Sin has created the necessity for police and armies.  War is certainly not the desired state of affairs, but as long as there are evil men on earth, there will be war.  As opposed to the shallow and foolish notion of all war as being evil, we know that there are good wars which serve as protections against evil.

As opposed to empty-headed ideas of warrior as a job, those who fight have been called by God to war in our stead.  It is not a job; it is a vocation.  Totally aside from irrelevant issues about how much education our servicemen and women have, it is God who has put in them the desire to be warriors, it is God who sustains them, it is God who has given them their victories.  It is God who has called them to this vocation.

And thus it is God whom John Kerry has offended.  And that is no joke.

Thematic in our discussions here have been that the best counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy is to provide the people with security.  Mothers want to know that their children can go to school and play in the yards and streets without fear of harm.  To use a heavily worn expression, the way to “win the hearts and minds of the people” is to give them peace.  This is true in Iraq at least of tribes and sects (the Sunni want protection from the Shia, the Shia from the Sunni, etc.).

We have shown that the force size to effect this security has been too small in Iraq, and that trust in local troops yields both uncertain results and an impedance to U.S. troops.  Moreover, constantly offensive operations against guerrilla forces is a tactic that has a proven track record.  Contrary to this, forces in Iraq, after the initial campaign to overthrow the regime, redeployed to well-gaurded bases, while failing to share the risk with the people and consistently conduct COIN operations against the enemy.  As an example of the success of properly conducted COIN operations, our good friend Michael Fumento has recently blogged directly from Ramadi concerning the strategic success of Combat Operation Posts.  These posts, scattered throughout Ramadi, ensure that the U.S. troops are close to both the people and the enemy, while also forcing daily operations against the enemy.

Contrary to this proven COIN strategy, UPI is reporting that troops in Afghanistan are redeploying to their barracks, thereby committing the same mistake we made in Iraq.

More than a month after Pakistan inked a peace deal with local leaders in the restive tribal region straddling its frontier with Afghanistan, some NATO troops are trying the same tactic on their side of the border, redeploying to barracks and relying on tribal militias to keep Taliban insurgents in check.

The truces are part of a new “hearts and minds” strategy on both sides of the border, as coalition and Pakistani authorities attempt to engage local tribal leaders and woo them away from Taliban extremists.

But the NATO deal, in four northern districts of Helmand province, comes as evidence mounts that the Pakistani truce in Waziristan has failed to reduce cross-border infiltration by Taliban fighters looking to engage coalition troops in Afghanistan.

So the strategy here is to let the tribes in Afghanistan send their fathers and sons to wage war against better trained and equipped fighters, potentially losing their lives, with these fighters being of the same or similar religious persuasion, while the U.S. troops redeploy to their barracks in safety.  Stunningly, this is the strategy employed as part of the doctrine to “win the hearts and minds of the people.”  The UPI article does make mention of one very important factor.

“The effort to engage the Taliban’s tribal base makes sense,” said Haqqani, “if at the same time you are degrading the ideological leadership through a military campaign.”

It is difficult to see how NATO forces will wage a military campaign while redeployed to their barracks.

In Ramadi is Still a Troubled City it was shown that Ramadi, capital of the al Anbar Province, is still a very deadly city, and that the region appears to be regressing, or devolving, into deeper trouble with the passage of time.  Al Qaeda brazenly attacks in daylight hours, recently even taking over a Hospital in Ramadi and executing wounded Iraqi soldiers and police.  It is an area awash in arms, and the flood of arms into the area may increase due to pressure from the Sunni tribes (who have ostensibly sided with the Iraqi central government against al Qaeda) for the U.S. to arm them for the fight against the foreign elements.

The redeployment of troops to Baghdad has hurt the effort in al Anbar.  Four Marines were killed July 29th, the very day that soldiers were pulling out of al Anbar to redeploy to Baghdad.  Three Marines with Regimental Combat Team 7 were killed Sunday, and Michael Fumento is blogging directly from Ramadi at the present.  He is reporting that the 1/6 Marines just arrived in Ramadi, and the enemy is testing them.  They lost three Marines to an IED today, October 9, 2006 (read all of Michael’s reports from the al Anbar Province at his web log).

About one third of the U.S. troops who have died in Iraq since September 1 have been killed in al Anbar.  The U.S. is paying for some of the same territory more than once, and losing confidence among the citizens due to the transient nature of force presence.  In complaints that mirror our concerns over Force Size, U.S. commanders privately disclose that the lack of force projection in al Anbar has hurt their efforts.

Commanders in western Anbar have long complained privately that they don’t have enough troops to control their area, which is about the size of South Carolina and includes notoriously violent cities such as Haditha, Rawah and Haqlaniyah.

“Any time you reduce forces it’s a concern,” said Marine Lt. Col. Norm Cooling, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Regiment which is scattered across western Anbar.

Few dispute that the U.S. military had to do something about the deteriorating security in the Iraqi capital, which threatened to spiral into fullscale civil war.

But the question is whether the U.S. has enough forces in the country overall to both regain control in Baghdad while also preventing Sunni insurgents in the west from using the U.S. military drawdown there to gain strength.

About a third of the 102 U.S. troops who have died in Iraq since Sept. 1 have been killed in Anbar, according to Pentagon reports.

“Where we’re not, the insurgency goes there. That’s just how an insurgency works,” said Capt. Chris L’Heureux, 30, of Woonsocket, R.I., who was also among those relocated to Baghdad.

U.S. commanders have also said that the reshuffling of forces makes it difficult to build trust among civilians and convince them to cooperate with U.S. forces.

For example, five different U.S. units were based in the western city of Hit in the space of just last year.

“It’s been like a transient area” in Hit, said Lt. Col. Ronald Gridley, the executive officer for Marine Regimental Combat Team 7.

“In a counterinsurgency,” he said recently, “you can’t throw put (sic) someone in there for 45 days and expect them to understand the communities, the different tribes, the different personalities involved.”

We have discussed both the positive and negative aspects of the alignment of some of the Sunni tribes in al Anbar with the Iraqi central government.  In the interest of full disclosure, it is meaningful and productive to hear voices of dissent.

“We heard a lot from the Americans and successive Iraqi governorates that they arrest hundreds of al-Qaeda men in Anbar and other places in Iraq,” said Ibrahim an electrical engineer in Hiyt, “but the number of these fighters is increasing daily”.

A former Iraqi intelligence officer believes the challenge in curbing violence may lie in the fact that the tribal leaders are not fully representative of the people in Anbar.

“There is no agreement among the tribes in Anbar to fight the foreign gunmen,” he told Aljazeera.net.

“The chieftains who attended the meetings with al-Maliki represent small tribes in the province and many of them reside outside Iraq for fear of assassination and so on.”

He believes the tribal leaders who met with al-Maliki have little clout over armed groups in western Iraq.

We have provocatively posed interrogatory with “Will we Lose the Anbar Province?”  The answer is that we have not yet lost, and we do not have to lose.  But winning efficiently and effectively will require U.S. force projection an order of magnitude greater than that of the enemy.

Following the Small Wars Manual, I have argued before that force projection and timeliness are critical for counterinsurgency operations, and that constant and perpetual offensive operations against guerrilla fighers is the way to effect security and thus stabilize territory.  Protracted duration is the enemy of victory in war and a sure path to defeat.  The al Qaeda high command letter to Zarqawi frankly admitted that “prolonging the war is in our interest.”  My arguments have been directly contrary to the Generals who have argued for a small footprint, believing that most effective way to achieve security is to use the minimum number of troops.  It is possible that the Generals have confused large force projection with the actual implementation of force.  There are even Generals who want to jettison the “kill-kill ethos” of the Army and Marines.  Yet this is certainly not the case.  The larger the force size, the smaller the probability that force will have to be exercised.  The two have proven to be inversely proportional.

The boots know that there aren’t enough troops, and haven’t been from the beginning.  In recent action in Iraq, we see what can happen with enough troops, versus the carnage that can ensue when the U.S. is not present.

… members of the Army’s 172nd Stryker Brigade are on a charm offensive. The soldiers spent 12 months in the restive city of Mosul, before having their tour in Iraq extended to help in the U.S.’s campaign to pacify Baghdad. The unit’s experience shows. They are alert but relaxed, carrying themselves with a gentle posture, weapons down, waving to the locals, talking with them. Kids hold hands with the Americans; an Iraqi mother hands a soldier her baby to hold. Locals invite U.S. officers in to sit and have glasses upon glasses of tea, orange Fanta, Pepsi and Arabic coffee. They don’t go into a house without a few Iraqi soldiers who can better gauge if someone looks suspicious. Walking out of one Iraqi home, Lieut. Colonel John Norris, commander of the Stryker 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment Tomahawks, enjoys a moment of guarded optimism. “Days like this you think, wow, they can really do it. If they can just stop the killing.”

It’s the glimmers of hope that make the realities in Iraq so heartbreaking. Residents of Ur say that with the Strykers around, sectarian murders have all but disappeared. Neighbors emerge from their homes to chat and allow their sons and daughters to play in the street. But the Iraqis and Americans know that such sanity won’t last. Though 12,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops have moved to the capital to try to defuse sectarian violence, the level of killing across the city remains as high as ever. That’s because the U.S. doesn’t have enough troops to maintain the peace in the areas they’ve secured, instead relying on Iraqi units who have yet to prove they can impose order. In Ghazaliyah, a west Baghdad neighborhood the 172nd Strykers cleared weeks earlier, violence has already gone back up to previous levels. For all the progress made in Ur, the troops know the cycle is bound to repeat itself there too. “We leave,” says Sergeant First Class Joshua Brown, as his Stryker pulls out of Ur city, “and it turns into f—— Somalia.”

Commanders in Iraq have recently called for more troops, but will stop short of directly saying that these troops need to be U.S. rather than Iraqi troops.  As we have pointed out, Iraqi soldiers can sometimes hinder U.S. efforts.

There is a revised field manual soon to be issued, including reformulated counterinsurgency doctrine.  But is has been pointed out that the number of troops required to uphold this strategy are not there in Iraq, and are not coming.

From IHT, we learn that Ibrahim al-Shimmari of the Islamic Army of Iraq is alleged to have made an overture to the U.S.

BAGHDAD, Iraq A purported spokesman for a Sunni insurgent group, the Islamic Army in Iraq, offered to open negotiations with the Americans in an audiotape aired by Al-Jazeera television on Thursday.

The tape was said to be from Ibrahim al-Shimmari, whose name has appeared in past statements by the group, which has claimed responsibility for a number of suicide bombings against civilians and attacks on U.S. troops.

The tape’s authenticity could not be independently confirmed.

“We are prepared for any negotiations, whether secret or public, on the condition only that they are sincere. We have no objection to mediators with international credentials, and it is possible to exchange letters,” the speaker in the tape said.

Al-Shimmari has offered such negotiations in past statements. He did not elaborate on the goal of any talks.

The Islamic Army in Iraq is believed to include former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, his intelligence service and former army officers. It rejected a call from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki earlier this year for insurgents to join the political process, saying it would not participate until there was a timetable for withdrawal of U.S.-led forces.

In sections of the tape not aired, the speaker on the tape said Iraq faces occupation by two powers — “the Crusader Americans and the Iranians … and the latter is the more dangerous,” Al-Jazeera reported.

He said his group was allied to former al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed June by a U.S. airstrike. But the speaker criticized al-Zarqawi, saying he “committed some mistakes,” including the killing of four Russian embassy workers who were kidnapped, then slain in late June.

In contrast to the Islamic Army, al-Qaida in Iraq is believed largely made up of Arab Islamic militants, though the group has tried to ally itself with Iraqi insurgents.

U.S. policy will soon have to consider the disposition of the remaining Baathists in the al Anbar province.  The foreign fighters such as al Qaeda pose an easy decision.  They are dedicated to the overthrow of the current regime by violent means as shown by the recently released letter from al Qaeda senior leadership to Zarqawi.  They will have to be killed.

But as the Strategy Page discusses, the issue of the Sunni insurgents is a more problematic situation.

When it comes to fighting the terrorists, tribal ties still matter. In central Iraq, three Sunni tribes are particularly linked to the Sunni Arab violence; the Bulaym, Janabi, and Shammar Jarba. They were mainstays of the old Saddam Hussein regime, providing many recruits for the secret police and Republican Guard. Tribal politics for these three is all about either regaining control of the government, or getting amnesty. The government has been discussing amnesty deals with many of the tribal leaders. The problem is that the tribes want amnesty for more people than the government believes it can get away with. Attempts to give amnesty to those known to have been involved in killing Americans, blew up when Americans got wind of it. Same thing happened in Iraq when the government proposed giving amnesty to Sunni Arab tribal officials who had participated in attacks on Kurds and Shia Arabs both before, and after, the fall of Saddam in 2003. What it comes down to is that there are thousands of prominent Sunni Arabs who have to be either pardoned, captured or killed, before there can be peace in Iraq.

High sounding phrases such as helping the Iraqis to “secure Ramadi,” and “winning the hearts and minds of the people,” might sound impressive in a hot-off-the-press master’s thesis, but are sometimes not very useful for formulating policy or doctrine.  The fact is that the U.S. administration will have to make a difficult decision.  Either we kill or capture the remaining Baathist elements in the al Anbar Province, or we formulate some sort of treaty, pact or agreement with them to secure the surrender of their weapons and the standdown of their armies, while stopping short of killing or incarcerating them.  These are the only two options.

If we decide for the former option, there is much work remaining, and it will be hard and bloody work.  There is no “winning the hearts and minds” of those for whom you have made it clear that you intend to kill them.  There is absolutely no reason for a person with a sure and certain death sentence to surrender.  If we decide for the later option, the objections from the U.S. will be understandably loud and emotional.

How can we make peace with those who have killed our sons?  But if we do not, how many more sons will we lose?

In a major expose of the plans of the Taliban, the Asia Times has an article entitled Taliban lay plans for Islamic intifada.

THE PASHTUN HEARTLAND, Pakistan and Afghanistan – With the snows approaching, the Taliban’s spring offensive has fallen short of its primary objective of reviving the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan, as the country was known under Taliban rule from 1996-2001.

Both foreign forces and the Taliban will bunker down until next spring, although the Taliban are expected to continue with suicide missions and some hit-and-run guerrilla activities. The Taliban will take refuge in the mountains that cross the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where they will have plenty of time to plan the next stage of their struggle: a countrywide “Islamic Intifada of Afghanistan” calling on all former mujahideen to join the movement to boot out foreign forces from Afghanistan.

Some of this is consistent with what we already know.  I have previously discussed the fact that the Taliban were preparing for a major spring offensive, and that they currently had 12,000 fighters and 500 suicide bombers at their disposal.  They claimed that by the spring they would have enough fighters to launch a major offensive against Kabul.  During this period of re-grouping and readying for a major fight, they were planning something more akin to special operations, with small teams crossing the border without identification and staying in Afghanistan for protracted periods of time.  These would be smaller, lighter and more dedicated incursions into Afghanistan than before.  But the real import of the article has to do with the magnitude of the planned operations.  The Taliban intend to launch a country-wide “intifada.”  Continuing with the Asia Times story:

The intifada will be both national and international. On the one hand it aims to organize a national uprising, and on the other it will attempt to make Afghanistan the hub of the worldwide Islamic resistance movement, as it was previously under the Taliban when Osama bin Laden and his training camps were guests of the country.

The ideologue of the intifada is bin Laden’s deputy, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, who has assembled a special team to implement the idea. Key to this mission is Mullah Mehmood Allah Haq Yar. Asia Times Online was early to pinpoint Haq Yar as an important player (see Osama adds weight to Afghan resistance, September 11, 2004).

Oriented primarily towards Arabs, especially Zawahiri, Haq Yar speaks English, Arabic, Urdu and Pashtu with great fluency. He was sent by Taliban leader Mullah Omar to northern Iraq to train with Ansarul Islam fighters before the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. He returned to Afghanistan in 2004 and was inducted into a special council of commanders formed by Mullah Omar and assigned the task of shepherding all foreign fighters and high-value targets from Pakistani territory into Afghanistan.

He is an expert in urban guerrilla warfare, a skill he has shared with the Taliban in Afghanistan. His new task might be more challenging: to gather local warlords from north to south under one umbrella and secure international support from regional players.

In signs that the Taliban understand the significance of the GWOT, the extent of the intifada only starts in Afghanistan.  Its reach will be global, and the support of regional players will be sought.

A major first step toward creating an intifada in Afghanistan was the establishment of the Islamic State of North Waziristan in the Pakistani tribal area this year. This brought all fragmented sections of the Taliban under one command, and was the launching pad for the Taliban’s spring offensive.

Subsequently, there has been agreement between a number of top warlords in northern Afghanistan and the Taliban to make the intifada a success next year. Credit for this development goes mainly to Haq Yar.

Haq Yar was recently almost cornered in Helmand province in Afghanistan by British forces. Before that, he spoke to Asia Times Online at an undisclosed location in the Pashtun heartland straddling Pakistan and Afghanistan.

One of the weaknesses in the facist Islamic movement is the heavy reliance on individuals and personalities.  In this case, the Taliban have a real asset that they can leverage.  Haq Yar speaks multiple languages and is trained in guerrilla warfare, and he apparently has non-trivial negotiating skills.  However, his success will be restricted to the extent that he has to remain on-the-run.

Asia Times then shows that they have landed a significant catch.  They have a direct interview with Haq Yar.

Asia Times Online: When are the Taliban expected to announce the revival of the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan?

Haq Yar: Well, the whole Islamic world is waiting for the revival of the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan, but it will take some time. But sure, it will ultimately happen, and this is what the Taliban’s struggle is all about.

ATol: Can you define the level of Taliban-led resistance in Afghanistan?

Haq Yar: It has already passed the initial phases and now has entered into a tactical and decisive phase. It can be measured from the hue and cry raised by the US and its allies. Daily attacks on NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] forces are now routine and suicide attacks are rampant.

ATol: To date, the Taliban have been very active in southwestern Afghanistan, but traditionally success comes when a resistance reaches eastern areas, especially the strategically important Jalalabad. When will this happen?

Haq Yar: Well, I do not agree that the Taliban movement is restricted to southwest Afghanistan. We have now established a network under which we are allied with many big and small mujahideen organizations, and in that way we are fighting foreign forces throughout Afghanistan. In a recent development, the deputy chief of the Taliban movement, Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani, is now positioned in the eastern zone, including Jalalabad, from where he is guiding attacks on coalition forces. This eastern zone is also part of the Taliban’s stronghold.

ATol: What is the role of bin Laden and Zawahiri?

Haq Yar: We are allies and part and parcel of every strategy. Wherever mujahideen are resisting the forces of evil, Arab mujahideen, al-Qaeda and leaders Osama bin Laden and Dr Zawahiri have a key role. In Afghanistan they also have a significant role to support the Taliban movement.

ATol: Is the present Taliban-led resistance against the US and its allies a local resistance or is it international? That is, are resistance movements in other parts of the world led from Afghanistan?

Haq Yar: Initially it was a local movement, but now it is linked with resistance movements in Iraq and other places. We are certainly in coordination with all resistance movements of the Muslim world.

This last statement is signficant.  The letter from al Qaeda high command to Zarqawi shows a similar sentiment with the desire by Haq Yar for coordination of the “resistance” movements: in spite of assessments to the contrary, they do not want command and control to become too diffuse.

ATol: What is the Taliban strategy with groups like Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan (Khalis)?

Haq Yar: The Hezb-i-Islami of Hekmatyar and the Taliban are fighting under a coordinated strategy and support each other. The leadership of the Khalis group is now in the hands of his son, who is coordinating everything with Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani.

ATol: What is the Taliban’s weaponry? Is it old Russian arms or they have acquired new ones – and if so, where are they getting them?

Haq Yar: The Taliban have all the latest weaponry required for a guerrilla warfare. Where does it come from? Well, Afghanistan is known as a place where weapons are stockpiled. And forces that provided arms a few decades ago – the same weapons are now being used against them.

ATol: The Taliban contacted commanders in northern Afghanistan. What was the result?

Haq Yar: About one and a half years ago these contacts were initiated. Various groups from the north contacted us. We discussed the matter with [Taliban leader] Mullah Mohammed Omar Akhund and then, with his consent, I was assigned to negotiate matters with the Northern Alliance.

The first meeting was held in northern Afghanistan, where I represented the Taliban. Many individuals from various groups of the Northern Alliance attended the meeting and they all condemned the foreign presence in the country, but insisted that the Taliban should take the lead, and then they would follow suit. Another meeting was held after that in which various individuals come up with some conditions, and there was no conclusion. There was no collective meeting, but there are contacts.

In yet another instance showing the importance of timeliness in the defeat of the enemy, it appears that there might be a swelling of support for the departure of NATO troops.

ATol: What is the role of the tribal chiefs?

Haq Yar: The tribal chiefs have always been supportive of the Taliban and still are. How could they not be? The US bombed and killed thousand of their people and the puppet [President Hamid] Karzai government is silent. All Afghans are sick and tired of US tyrannies and daily bombardment, whether they are commoners or chiefs, and that is why they are all with the Taliban.

Actually, we have also worked on organizing that support. On the instructions of Mullah Mohammed Omar Akhund, I met with tribal chiefs last year and prepared the grounds for this year’s battle [spring offensive], and all tribal chiefs assured me of their support. And now there is support – it is there for everybody to see.

ATol: It is said that the Taliban are now fueled by drug money. Is this correct, and if not, how do they manage their financial matters?

Haq Yar: It is shameful to say that the Taliban, who eliminated poppies from Afghanistan, are dependent on the drug trade to make money. This is wrong. As far as money is concerned, we do not need much. Whatever is required, we manage it through our own limited resources.

ATol: Are you satisfied with the media’s role?

Haq Yar: Not at all. They do not publish our point of view. They never tried to talk to the genuine Taliban. Rather, they go after not genuine people who are basically plants and rejected by the Taliban leadership.

It would appear that there is much more to come in Afghanistan.  Yet another concern presents itself that we have discussed at the Captain’s Journal, and that has to do with the viability and stability of Musharraf’s regime, and the implications for a nuclear Taliban in the event of the fall of the Pakistan government.  The apparent strength of the Taliban makes this concern more salient than ever.