The Pakistani military leadership recently weighed in supporting Musharraf.

With Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s allies routed in last month’s parliamentary elections and civil society led by lawyers aggressively calling for his dismissal and trial for his actions in the “war on terror” over the past eight years, Musharraf has received a boost with the top military brass putting their weight behind the presidency.

Faced with rising militancy, the military did not have much option but to close ranks and back the US push to tackle Taliban and al-Qaeda militants head-on.

At a Corps Commanders conference in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Thursday, army chief Lieutenant General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani rejected suggestions of “distancing of the army from the president”, adding that “any kind of schism, at any level” wouldn’t be in the national interest, according to a statement

Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the chief of the Jamaat-i-Islami party and a leader of the All Parties Democratic Movement, called the Corps Commanders’ proclamation “disappointing”. In a statement released to the national press, he said the move was an intervention by the military in politics.

The Corps Commanders’ meeting took place soon after Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, US Armed Forces, had met in Pakistan with top military leaders, as well as with Musharraf.

The Pakistani brass knows that the NWFP and FATA of Pakistan has become an ad hoc sovereign state that threatens both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The generals might be the only glue that both holds Pakistan together and continues to support the counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan.  However, this support may be irrelevant, as Musharraf’s political opponents may be on the verge of a coalition which would remove him from power.

Pakistan’s two largest political parties — which won last month’s national elections — sealed a power-sharing deal yesterday, raising doubts about President Musharraf’s political future.

The accord between Asif Ali Zardari, the de facto leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and widower of the murdered former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and the Pakistan Muslim League (N) led by Nawaz Sharif, another former Prime Minister, cleared the way for the formation of an anti-Musharraf government.

“We feel that the country is on the verge of making history,” said Mr Zardari. “This was also the desire of Benazir Bhutto and we also intend to stick to the road to democracy; we are aware of the problems that the country is facing.”

Mr Sharif said that his party would be part of a federal coalition led by the PPP, which is expected to name its prime ministerial candidate this week. The PPP has won 120 seats in the new 342-seat National Assembly, and the Muslim League 90, bringing them close to the two-thirds majority required to strip Mr Musharraf of his powers to dismiss Parliament. The Assembly is expected to meet in ten days’ time.

Mr Zardari said that he had nothing personal against the President but Mr Sharif suggested that he had no future once the new government was formed. “I do not think we have recognised Musharraf’s existence; we consider him an unconstitutional and illegal president and would not like our sacrifices that we made during the last eight years to go down the drain,” said Mr Sharif, who was ousted by Mr Musharraf in a military coup in 1999.

This power move will play directly into the hands of the Taliban and al Qaeda.  We’ve previously discussed the nature of the Pakistani elections, and how they weren’t the rejection of the Islamic parties and sharia law that they have been made out to be.  Rather, the elections were a rejection of [a] Musharraf, and [b] the inability of the moderate Islamists to govern.  The Taliban and other extremists didn’t participate because democracy runs directly contrary to their ideology. The Pashtun have rejected the global war on terror, and the Taliban are using this lever in their public relations efforts.

KHAR, March 9: Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leader Maulana Faqir Mohammad has said that the United States is the “number one terrorist” and the entire Muslim Ummah, in particular Pakistan, has been suffering because of its hegemonic policies.

Addressing a gathering in Bajaur Agency’s Aanayat Kalley area, the Maulana said that Pakistan had been turned into a battlefield because of President Pervez Musharraf’s pro-US policies.

“Waging jihad (holy war) against the US and its allies is an obligation of every Muslim, irrespective of state boundaries,” he said.

“Pakistan is our country. We love it. Osama bin Laden and Mulla Omar are also sincere to Pakistan and its people and they don’t want war with them,” he said.

“Bush is our enemy number one and till his defeat everywhere in the world, we will continue our war.”He said the “Taliban have every right to attack troops and installations” because of Pakistani rulers’ anti-Mujahideen policy.

He told the gathering that no person would be pardoned for “spying for the US forces”.

The Taliban leader warned the Afghan refugees in Bajaur “to leave their jobs in the Afghan government or vacate the area”.

Musharraf has only the generals in his corner, and this won’t be enough.  As for the boast that no person will be pardoned for spying for the U.S. forces, the Taliban recently proved once again their willingness and capability to conduct terror operations to be true to their threats.

Taliban militants have shot dead a spy chief in southeastern Afghanistan, officials said on Sunday. The district intelligence chief Habib Khan was kidnapped from his house by unidentified gunmen, late on Sunday.

His body was found in Dwa Manda district in the morning, local officils confirmed. Purported Taliban spokesman Zabeehullah Mujahid said their men were responsible for killing the district intelligence chief.

The killing of government officials, especially those working with police, Afghan national army and intelligence agencies, is rampant in the southern and southeastern parts of Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, Admiral Fallon again declared that there would be no spring offensive in Afghanistan.

The top military commander in the Mideast said Wednesday that he does not expect Taliban forces in Afghanistan to launch a spring offensive this year. If anything, he said, he sees the momentum continuing to swing in the direction of coalition forces.

“The spring offensive is going to be by our people, as they move out and take advantage of the situation that they helped create through their good works there in the fall of last year,” Adm. William Fallon told the House Armed Services Committee.

While the Taliban continue to recruit jihadists to come to Afghanistan to fight U.S. troops.

The leader of al Qaeda in Afghanistan has urged more Muslims to join and finance the group’s war there, saying Western troops are close to defeat.

“Your brothers in Afghanistan are waiting for you and longing to (welcome) you,” Mustafa Abu al-Yazid said in an audio recording posted on an Islamist Web site.

“The time for reaping the fruit of victory and empowerment has come … The infidel enemy has been badly wounded at the hands of your brothers and is close to its demise so assist your brothers to slaughter him,” added the militant leader, speaking with an Egyptian-sounding accent.

As long as NATO and U.S. command doesn’t get in the way of the campaign or relegate them merely to a training role, 3200 Marines should have a great opportunity to kill the enemy this summer.

“I got nothing but mad props for 2/6. With another unit from October 2006 to April 2007, many of us often found ourselves questioning the logic of how we were doing certain things, and positing “why can’t we do such and such.” 2/6 came in and, well, did such and such. During the relief-in-place with the company that replaced us replaced my faith in the U.S. Marine Corps; I’ve never been more impressed.” (courtesy of Michael Totten)

The whole persona of the 2/6 [Marines], the way they’re running operations, is to provide for the citizens. The IPs [Iraqi Police] are like that too, they’re out there engaging the people. They [used to get] attacked so much that they were a military force, doing military-type operations. When they showed up, they showed up hard. Now it’s more ‘Hey what’s going on? How are you doing? What can we do for you?’ It’s yielded huge gains.” (courtesy of Bill Ardolino)

The Small Wars Journal blog has an interesting continuation of the debate over strategy in Iraq by Pete Mansoor, entitled Misreading the History of the Iraq War.  Part of Mansoor’s commentary follows:

In his latest missive on the U.S. endeavor in Iraq (“Misreading the Surge Threatens U.S. Army’s Conventional Capabilities”), Army Lieutenant Colonel Gian Gentile claims that the Surge forces and the new U.S. Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency doctrine had little effect on the situation in Iraq. Rather, U.S. forces paid off the insurgents, who stopped fighting for cash. Once again, Gian Gentile misreads not just what is happening today in Iraq, but the history of the war.

To borrow a quote from Ronald Reagan, “Gian, there you go again.”

Gentile’s analysis is incorrect in a number of ways, and his narrative is heavily influenced by the fact that he was a battalion commander in Baghdad in 2006. His unit didn’t fail, his thinking goes, therefore recent successes cannot be due to anything accomplished by units that came to Iraq during the Surge.

The facts speak otherwise. Gentile’s battalion occupied Ameriyah, which in 2006 was an Al Qaeda safe-haven infested by Sunni insurgents and their Al Qaeda-Iraq allies. I’m certain that he and his soldiers did their best to combat these enemies and to protect the people in their area. But since his battalion lived at Forward Operating Base Falcon and commuted to the neighborhood, they could not accomplish their mission. The soldiers did not fail. The strategy did.

This is a common narrative concerning the security plan and revised strategy for Operation Iraqi Freedom, i.e., “it’s all about the combat outposts.”  If the troops are on a FOB (Forward Operating Base), they cannot possibly engage in counterinsurgency.  This may be true under certain conditions for the mega-bases such as Camp Fallujah.  But this perspective seems very incomplete and truncated.  The experience of the Marines of 2/6 during Operation Alljah shows us why.

With the Anbar province pacified it might be difficult to recall the condition as recently as late 2006 in Ramadi and throughout the province.  The condition was bad almost beyond words, but with the success of the Marines and tribes in combating al Qaeda and other insurgents in the Western part of Anbar, the Eastern parts fell subject to their horror.  Fallujah, which had always been a very hardened city, was the new home to rogue elements from all across the globe.  Libyans, Chechens, and other hard core jihadist fighters called Fallujah home in early 2007.  They had utter and complete control, and were protecting a huge weapons cache in the industrial area, including small arms, explosive ordnance and chlorine.  The Marine command in this area of operations called Fallujah “unwinnable.”  At this point, the Anbar campaign could just as easily have taken a turn for the worse, and in fact could have turned completely in favor of the insurgency.

Into this came the Marines of the 2nd Battalion, 6th Regiment.  The population had clearly sided with the insurgents.  On one occasion the Marines witnessed the ultimate commitment being made by the locals (or perhaps the ultimate cowardice, or perhaps both).  The neighborhood children were sent out to demarcate the location of Marines on patrol by encircling the area and raising black balloons for insurgent mortars.  Soon enough, the mortar rounds started dropping.

Fallujah was pacified, but the Marines of 2/6 didn’t do it by living in combat outposts for seven months.  In fact, they were deployed to a FOB named Reaper, constructed specifically for 2/6 on the South side of Fallujah.  Upon 2/6 leaving Reaper, this FOB was never to see U.S. troops again.  This episode – the narrative, the FOB, the experiences, the unique things accomplished – remains not only important in the history of the Marines, but an un-mined jewel of counterinsurgency practice.

The Marines of 2/6 were rotated out to combination combat outposts / Iraqi police precincts for weeks at a time, and then rotated back to FOB Reaper to provide force protection for weeks, or conduct patrols, or nighttime census missions, or intelligence driven raids, or whatever the mission happened to be at the time.  These rotations were staggered so that the combat outposts were never unmanned, FOB Reaper always had adequate force protection, raids always had manpower, kinetic operations always took place against insurgents, checkpoints were always manned, and Iraqi police always had U.S. presence.  Sleep was a luxury, and all of the Marines were always busy.  Close and constant contact with the police and population and relentless kinetic operations against the insurgents was characteristic of the time that 2/6 spent in Fallujah.  The closest analogy that can be given of this operation is that of a swarm.  The Marines swarmed over Fallujah until the insurgents were killed or captured and the population sided with the U.S.  This close contact was not allowed to diminish the implementation of force protection.  While force protection was maintained, force projection was the hallmark of the final Marine Corp battle for Fallujah.

Whatever else can be said of the Iraq campaign, there were not enough troops (force size) to accomplish the mission (force projection).  This is not a fault of Gentile’s unit.  Concerning strategy, only Lt. Col. Gian Gentile and his reports can know if they accomplished the force projection needed to win a counterinsurgency.  If so, then his unit should be seen as a continuation of the overall campaign for Iraq.  After all, for those who claim that counterinsurgency takes ten to twelve years, it should not be surprising that a single deployment is only a part of the campaign rather than the thing in its entirety.  Time was necessary to convince the population that the U.S. troops were not “short-timers,” and thus Gentile may be right.  Neither the strategy nor the troops failed, but again, only Gentile knows if the force projection was adequate.

It all comes down to having enough troops and doing the right things with those troops.  Whether those troops man a checkpoint or conduct an intelligence-driven raid or take population census or go on patrols, where they live is only of logistical importance.  If it is beneficial to live at a combat outpost in some particular circumstance, then that’s where they should be.  If it is beneficial to live at a FOB but rarely spend time there because of constant contact with the population, they that’s where they should be.  While this experience raises the issue of Marine deployment length (7 months) and whether another branch of the service could survive longer deployments (e.g., 12 or 14 months) at the same pace, nonetheless, the salient points are unimpuned.  They key is what the troops do and how often they do it, not where they sleep.

Those who have been following our discussions on the state of Pakistan know that one particularly acute vulnerability of the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan is the stability of the Pakistani regime, and thus the stability of the lines of supplies to NATO forces through Pakistan.  These lines are both over land and air space, and their use is critical to the success of the campaign given that Afghanistan is land-locked.  The Pentagon knows how important these lines are, and thus they have been studying Plan B (h/t Wretchard).

WASHINGTON, Nov. 14, 2007 – The U.S. military is examining different contingencies for supplying American troops in Afghanistan if supplies can no longer be shipped through Pakistan, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said today.

Morrell hastened to add that the unrest in Pakistan following President Pervez Musharraf instituting a state of emergency has not impinged on U.S. supply lines through or over Pakistan.

Morrell said at a Pentagon news conference that the supply line issue “is a very real area of concern for our commanders in Afghanistan, because 75 percent of all of our supplies for our troops in Afghanistan flow either through or over Pakistan.” This includes about 40 percent of the fuel shipped to U.S. forces, which comes directly from Pakistani refineries. No ammunition goes through Pakistan, the press secretary said.

“Supplies to our troops in Afghanistan continue to flow freely through Pakistan, and for that we are grateful,” he said. “But the U.S. is not taking the passage for granted. Planners are working on contingency supply lines to our troops if it becomes necessary to alter the way we now support our troops.”

Morrell could not say what the contingency plans are, but was confident troops would be supplied if a “Plan B” were needed. “We are a can-do operation,” he said. “They’ll figure out a way to get it done if it needs to get done.”

Plan B may have begun to emerge.

A NATO official said Wednesday that Uzbekistan has allowed some members of the alliance, including the United States, to use an air base on its territory in a signal of thawing relations with the West.

Uzbekistan evicted U.S troops from an air base in the Karshi-Khanabad region, 90 miles from the Afghan border, in 2005 after the U.S. criticized a crackdown on unarmed demonstrators in the eastern city of Andijan in May that year.

President Islam Karimov said in December that he favored good relations with the United States and Europe. Since then, a base in the country has since been used as a transit point for troops and equipment headed to Afghanistan, NATO’s Central Asia envoy, Robert Simmons, told reporters in Moscow. He did not name the base.

But all is not well just yet.  If this is plan B, it needs much more work.  The base being referred to is Termez, and little more than troops can transit through this air base right now.

Uzbekistan is once again allowing the US to use a base in the south of the country for operations in Afghanistan.

US troops attached to Nato forces would be allowed to use Termez airbase if travelling on German planes, the US military told the BBC.

US troops were evicted from Uzbekistan in 2005 after the US condemned it for shooting protesters in Andijan city.

German forces were allowed to continue using the airbase at Termez, on the border with Afghanistan.

Uzbekistan has made no comment on the new arrangement, but a US military spokesman said US troops “can use the German air-bridge from Termez to Afghanistan on a case-by-case basis”.

The spokesman said the US had no bases of its own, had not requested any bases from the Uzbek government and had no plans to do so.

Perhaps this is posturing rather than showing our full hand, but plans had better be in place to strengthen ties with Uzbekistan very soon.  Prosecuting the global war on terror will involve working with some very unsavory characters, and the insult to Karimov in 2005 was stupid.  How he governs his country is none of our concern as long as he is an asset rather than a detriment to the long war.  We must be practical, and hopefully these several years since the icy relations with Uzbekistan have given us wisdom.

General Petraeus warned us.  In testimony before Congress in September of 2007, he said “You cannot win in Iraq solely in Iraq.”  He also said that “It is increasingly apparent to both coalition and Iraqi leaders that Iran, through the use of the Quds force, seeks to turn the Iraqi special groups into a Hezbollah-like force to serve its interests and fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq.”

Fast forward to the recent trip by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Iraq.  Alireza Jafarzadeh gives us some sense of what this was like for Iraq

Behind the orchestrated pomp and pageantry during the visit to Baghdad last weekend by the Iranian ayatollahs’ president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it was hard to miss the revulsion of Iraqis of all stripes. Adjectives like “historic” could not disguise the frustrating reality for Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs: outside of Iraqi political spheres dominated by Tehran surrogates, they are seen as enemies of a secure, non-sectarian and democratic Iraq.

The greeting parties, in the Baghdad airport and later in various government buildings, were who’s who of Tehran’s proxies in Iraq’s government. They “listened to Ahmadinejad,” according to McClatchy News Service, “without need of translation into Arabic, clearly comfortable hearing his Farsi.” Not surprising; for more than two decades, they were employed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Qods Force, and the Ministry of Intelligence. Learning Farsi was a job requirement.

Outside of the very limited segment of Baghdad where Ahmadinejad visited, there was outrage. A young Baghdad resident told the New York Times, “I think Ahmadinejad is the most criminal and bloody person in the world. This visit degrades Iraq’s dignity.” Up north in Kirkuk, where Arab tribes and political parties rallied against Ahmadinejad’s visit, a tribal leader told the Times, “How can we tolerate this? Today we live under the regime of the clerics. The Iranian revolution has been exported to Iraq.” An Iraqi businessman added, “His visit is intended to reassure his followers here,” but is “provoking and enraging” the rest of Iraq … “Your mortars preceded your visit,” one placard read. Another read, “We condemn visit of terrorist and butcher Ahmadinejad to Iraq,” according to the Associated Press.

But those mortars fell strangely silent during the visit.  Azzaman is reporting what most main stream media is not, when they observe that:

Sunday was perhaps Iraqi capital’s quietest day since the country plunged into violence shortly after the U.S. invasion in 2003.

No car bomb explosions, shelling or kidnapping were reported and analysts attributed the calm to the landmark visit by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Daily bombings, explosions and kidnapping have become part of life in Baghdad.

But the calm that descended on the restive capital on Sunday and Monday night was unprecedented, analysts said.

Many attributed the quiet to government’s decision to cordon off large parts of Baghdad and ban traffic in many districts and over several bridges.

But an Iraqi intelligence source said groups fighting U.S. troops and those responsible for the ongoing violence had put a temporary halt to their activities.

This shows, he said, how influential Iran has become in Iraq and the role it plays in assisting and arming these groups.

It didn’t take long for the bombs to begin again in Iraq after Ahmadinejad’s visit.  “Two bombs went off within minutes of each other in a crowded shopping district in the capital Thursday, killing at least 53 people and wounding 130—a reminder that deadly attacks are a daily threat even though violence is down.”

It isn’t difficult to catalogue actions to begin to hold the radical Ayatollahs and their henchmen accountable.  Here at The Captain’s Journal we have advocated the formulation and funding of an insurgency within Iran to assist in toppling the regime.  Some bolder recommendations from various corners (Newt Gingrich) have involved targeting oil.  For the more faint of heart there is simply political pressure and funding of opposition within Iran.

But even this last option is too much for the State Department.  As we pointed out three months ago, “In an overlooked and almost silent murder, the State Department recently worked directly against both the objectives of the executive branch of the government and the security interests of the United States by killing a program that would have aided democracy in Iran.”

The former director of President Bush’s flagship democracy program for the Middle East is saying that the State Department has “effectively killed” a program to disburse millions of dollars to Iran’s liberal opposition.In an interview yesterday, Scott Carpenter said a recent decision to move the $75 million annual aid program for Iranian democrats to the State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs would effectively neuter an initiative the president had intended to spur democracy inside the Islamic Republic.”In my view, this pretty much kills the Iran democracy program,” Mr. Carpenter said of the decision by the State Department to subsume the program. “There is not the expertise, there is not the energy for it. The Iran office is worried about the bilateral policy. I think they are not committed to this anymore.”Mr. Carpenter, who headed the Middle East Partnership Initiative and was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs until he left the Bush administration this summer, predicted the $20 million devoted to supporting the activities inside the Islamic Republic would be relegated to what he called “safe initiatives” such as student exchange programs, and not the more daring projects he and his deputy, David Denehy, funded, such as training for Web site operators to evade Internet censorship, political polling, and training on increasing recruitment for civil society groups.

Within a month or two of General Petraeus reminding us that we cannot win in Iraq if we engage Iraq alone, the State Department killed the sole remaining democracy project for Iran.  This intransigence within professional government employees and recalcitrance of even the administration to deal with Iran would be merely a strategic blunder if so many sons of America had not shed blood on Iraqi soil.  Because of blood, this stubborness has become sin – a failure in righteousness and morality and decency.  The blood of American warriors awaits vindication.

On February 27, 2008, In Everyone Thought the Taliban Would Not Fight!, The Captain’s Journal said:

The “whack-a-mole” brand of counterinsurgency didn’t work in Iraq, and will not work in Afghanistan.  For COIN operations to succeed, two elements must be present as we have learned in Iraq.  First, the force size must be right.  If there aren’t enough troops to take, hold and rebuild, the campaign will fail in the brave new world of the global religious insurgency.  Second, having the right force size in itself does nothing to ensure the proper use of those troops.  The corollary or companion axiom for force size is force projection … Pushing the insurgency into surrounding areas doesn’t work, either short term or long term.

On March 2, 2008, stating that there would be no significant reduction in U.S. force presence in Iraq for the time being, General David Petraeus said:

“Al Qaida is trying to come back in.  We can feel it and see it, and what we’re trying to do is rip out any roots before they can get deeply into the ground.  Al Qaida is incredibly resilient, and they are receiving people and supplies through Syria — although numbers through Syria are down as much as 50 percent.”

“The key is to hang on to what you’ve got. You cannot, in your eagerness to go after something new, start to play ‘Whack-a-mole‘ again. You have to hang onto the areas you’ve cleared; you have to have that plan to do before you go.”

The Captain’s Journal obviously keeps good intellectual company.  Concerning the terror campaign in Afghanistan at the moment, one has to consider the recent history of Iraq and the campaign of brutality in which al Qaeda engaged in order to get the context right.  Reminiscent of our article Hope and Brutality in Anbar, Entifadh Qanbar writing at The New York Sun gives us a recent rundown of the houses of horror al Qaeda used to brutalize and torture their victims in Iraq.

• Baquoba, June 2007: Discovery of the first torture house. Victims had drill holes in their bodies and deep gouges caused by blow torches; an Al Qaeda flag was in the torture house; many of the torture wounds were in the bottom of the feet of the victims. Torture equipment included: Drills, blow torches, chains hanging from the walls and ceiling, blood trails, saws, drills, knives, weapons, masks, and handcuffs. An execution site outside of building where Iraqi victims were lined up and shot.

• Khan Bani Saad, August 2007: Discovery of rooms filled with torture tools and murdered Iraqi victims.

• Arab Jibour, near Dora, south of Baghdad, August 2007: Blood splattered on the walls. Piles of corpses found outside the house.

• Tarmiyya, September 2007: Nine prisoners were freed; many victims had been chained in place.

• Muqdadiyah, December 2007: Beds wired for electrical shock with electricity still on. Masks, whips, bloody knives, and chains hanging from ceiling on the site. Twenty-six bodies found buried on site: most had hands tied and were shot in the head. Locals said Al Qaeda was intimidating the area with threats of torture and execution.

Al Qaeda overplayed their hand with the Iraqis, an example of which was hardened Sharia law unlike anything the Iraqis had ever seen.  In one instance, al Qaeda had warned street vendors not to place tomatoes beside cucumbers because the vegetables are different genders.  Under such oppression, the Iraqis could acquiesce or fight.  Fighting meant certain death if they had to go it alone, or if the U.S. troops were “short timers.”  It became apparent that the U.S. was the stronger horse in Iraq (Bin Laden had believed that al Qaeda would be the stronger horse), and that they were around to stay.  In other words, the population felt that the U.S. could secure them from the violence perpetrated by al Qaeda.

Back to Afghanistan.  The population’s concern has to do with exactly the same thing: security.

Afghan lawmaker Helaluddin Helal says [the gains don’t] matter. Helal, a former general, says the Taliban tactics have badly damaged NATO’s reputation in Afghan eyes. So has the growing separation between the Afghan people and their government.

He says people are far less inclined now to report suspected bombers in their midst. Not because they support the Taliban, but because they fear that the police can’t protect them if the Taliban comes after them.

In addition to the roads and other infrastructure being built in Afghanistan, robust offensive kinetic operations must be present to inhibit Taliban activity, and the force size is not yet appropriate for this force projection.  In Center of Gravity versus Lines of Effort in COIN, we argue that there isn’t a single center of gravity in counterinsurgency.  Rather, an insurgency is “a loosely coupled and dynamic machine, or even organism, which has no tipping point, thus requiring in response parallel lines of effort that target different aspects in different ways and with different means – sometimes simultaneously and sometimes sequentially.”

In Rethinking Insurgency, Professor Steven Metz states that “Decentralized, networked organizations tend to be more survivable. No single node is vital. They may not have a “center of gravity.”  Professor Metz also uses his heady and highly useful paper to examine the notion of transnational insurgencies.  In part, he observes that it is:

… more likely that a regime born out of insurgency would be focused inward, concentrating on consolidating power. In this era of globalization and interconnectedness, new regimes are particularly vulnerable to outside economic and military pressure and thus unlikely to undertake actions which would give the United States or some other state a justification for intervention. Even if the Iraqi or Afghan insurgents won, for instance, they would probably have learned the lessons of 2001—serving as a host to transnational terrorists is a dangerous business.

This is true enough for indigenous insurgencies (some of the Sunni insurgency was indigenous and some was al Qaeda, or foreign), but in Resurgence of Taliban and al Qaeda we examined the influx of foreign jihadists into the NWFP and FATA of Pakistan, and how this is a globally born transnational insurgency.  The lesson is that indigenous insurgencies might remain local, but globally born insurgencies are transnational by nature.  For this reason Admiral Michael Mullen can make the prediction he did concerning the insurgency in this region.

“Defense Department officials told members of Congress on Wednesday that Al Qaeda was operating from havens in “undergoverned regions” of Pakistan, which they said pose direct threats to Europe, the United States and the Pakistani government itself. Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, predicted in written testimony that the next attack on the United States probably would be made by terrorists based in that region.”

This prediction is doctrinally solid for what is at its core a transnational insurgency.  Counterinsurgency doctrine, that is, lines of effort, transnational movements, the trust of the population, robust kinetic operations against the enemy, and logically sequential actions such as take, hold and rebuild, far from being dry doctrine on the pages of a book, is critically important to the present and future campaigns in which the U.S. is engaged and will engage.

The News from Pakistan recently carried a commentary on the threat that the Taliban pose to the stability and future of Pakistan.  In part it states:

The sudden rise of the “Pakistani Taliban” initially puzzled the Afghan Taliban. It could be true that the Afghan Taliban initially saw this as a welcome development that would help the cause of resisting the invaders in Afghanistan and leverage the Musharraf administration’s pro-US policies. But the Afghan Taliban grew suspicious when the self-styled Pakistani Taliban, awash with money and weapons, turned their guns on Pakistan. In January, Mullah Omar withdrew recognition from Baitulah Mehsud.

To stop Afghanistan from turning into a permanent base for anti-Pakistan destabilisation activities, Pakistani officials will have to think out of the box. This will not be possible without the help of the Afghan Taliban.

The best idea to emerge is for Islamabad to declare neutrality in the war in Afghanistan. According to this idea, Pakistan could talk to both the Taliban and the Karzai administration while maintaining equal distance from both. Islamabad already has a working relationship with Kabul but will need to restore the lost relationship with the Taliban. If the Pakistani broker can establish its credentials as a neutral party, there can be hope for brokering peace between Kabul and its local enemies …

With the newly elected federal parliament preparing to take over in the next few days, hopes are growing that Pakistan’s Afghan policy will finally be freed from US blunders in Afghanistan.

One can sense in this commentary the loss of Pakistani confidence that the U.S. can win the COIN campaign.  Consider what this commentary recommended.  First of all, the notion that Mullah Omar withdrew recognition from Baitullah Mehsud is exaggerated, and we pointed out that the Afghani Taliban under the leadership of Mullah Omar has split with the Pakistani Taliban, but refused to condemn them and also denied that Mehsud was expelled.  We also discussed the fact that there are two distinct lines of Taliban now, and that the Pakistani Taliban are of a different generation, with different tools and weapons, different views (more willing to conduct suicide missions), and just as radical in their beliefs.

But the Pakistani mind now fears the Pakistani Taliban.  At first the Taliban (i.e., the Afghani Taliban) were free to roam about FATA and NWFP as a safe haven from their operations in Afghanistan.  But the truce with the Taliban brought foreigners into the region who now target the Pakistani regime.  The tribal regions are like an independent state that now threatens both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The Afghani Taliban cross into Pakistan for safe haven, and when being pursued by the Pakistani Army, Baitullah Mehsud crosses into Afghanistan to avoid capture.

This fear is driving at least this commentator to recommend trying to leverage this split by siding with the Afghani Taliban in a war on the Pakistani Taliban, while at the same time declaring neutrality in the Afghani COIN campaign being waged by the U.S.  This strategy will fail, as Mullah Omar will have no interest in siding with the Pakistani regime to attack a brother jihadist like Mehsud.  If nothing else, this would deplete his own forces from the fight in Afghanistan.

Mullah Omar still has his eye on the prize.  In a recent interview on an Arabic-language Web site, a Taliban commander threatened to increase attacks on Kabul — not only through suicide bombings, but by targeting roads in the north and east in a bid to cut off the capital.

Prior:

U.S. Intelligence Failures: Dual Taliban Campaigns

Taliban Continue Fronts in Pakistan and Afghanistan

Concerning Killing Bad Guys and Sacking Worthless Officers

Resurrgence of Taliban and al Qaeda

The Marines, Afghanistan and Strategic Malaise

Misinterpreting the Pakistani Elections

Pashtun Rejection of the Global War on Terror

Everyone Thought the Taliban Would Not Fight!

NATO Intransigence in Afghanistan

In yet another sign of the inept and useless United Nations, the U.N. Security Council has authorized further sanctions against Iran.

The United Nations Security Council has authorized further sanctions against Iran over its failure to suspend its uranium enrichment activities. Iran maintains that its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful and does not fall under the Security Council’s remit.

Fourteen of the fifteen council members voted in favour of Resolution 1803, citing Iran’s refusal to suspend “uranium enrichment and heavy-water related projects” as required in earlier resolutions, and “taking issue with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) right to verify design information provided to it.” Indonesia abstained. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei has been asked to report back to the Security Council on whether Iran has fully suspended enrichment activities within 90 days.

So the dance over nuclear weapons continues, with Iran still destabilizing the Iraqi regime.

The former number two US commander in Iraq charged Tuesday that Iran is still training, funding and arming Shiite extremists in Iraq, with the aim of keeping a weak government in Baghdad.

“I think we have to keep the pressure on them,” said Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, who until recently was second in command in Iraq in charge of day-to-day military operations.

“What they ought to stop doing is training surrogates, funding surrogates and supplying weapons to them, which they are still doing today,” he told reporters …

Odierno acknowledged that Iraq needed good relations with Iran, but questioned whether Iran is being “helpful,” citing its continued support for Shiite extremists.

The general alluded to a boast on Monday by Ahmadinejad that he was able to visit Iraq openly, unlike other foreign leaders who made unannounced visits that lasted just a few hours.

“My comment is I’m not surprised. Because over the last 12 months whenever a visitor would come from the United States, we needed to foil a rocket attack, he said.

“Guess what? That is because it was being done by an Iranian surrogate.”

The blog dedicated to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently linked my post entitled State Actors in Transnational Insurgencies.  Maybe they will link this one too, when I say that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a criminal terrorist who deserves the death penalty and the Iranian Mullahs deserve to be imprisoned because of their fomenting of terror across the globe.

In the town of Darra Adam Khel in the NWFP of Pakistan, the Taliban attacked a tribal meeting.

DARRA ADAMKHEL/ PESHAWAR, March 2: A powerful blast hit a tribal peace jirga near the Zarghunkhel checkpost in Darra Adamkhel on Sunday, killing at least 42 people and wounding another 58.

The jirga of Zarghunkhel, Akhurwal, Sheraki, Bostikhel and Toor Chapper tribes had been convened to discuss the formation of a Lashkar to drive militants out of the area, sources said.

It was not clear if the blast was the work of a suicide bomber, but local officials said that a teenager had detonated explosives just after the meeting had ended.

A severed head was found at the site and the officials believed it was that of the bomber. Some people identified the teenager as a youth from the Sheraki area of Darra, a hub of militants.

Security forces, it may be mentioned, launched an operation against militants in Darra Adamkhel in January in which scores of security personnel and militants have been killed.

Izat Khan, a tribesman injured in the explosion, told Dawn at the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar that the blast took place when the tribal elders were finalising modalities for raising the tribal force.

“I fell and became unconscious just as I was about to leave the meeting,” Mr Khan recalled. He pointed out that no official of the political administration or the army was there and said he had doubts about the official statement that the blast had been caused by a suicide attack.

This is the fourth explosion during the past three days in the NWFP and Fata. On Friday, an explosion killed three police personnel and a blast in Swat during the funeral of one of the slain police personnel killed 46 people. A suicide bomber hit a vehicle of Levies Force in Bajaur tribal region on Saturday and killed two people and wounded 24 others.

The jirga was attended by over 1,000 tribesmen. It had started at about 9am and ended at two hours later after unanimously deciding to form a Lashkar and calling upon the army to withdraw troops from the area. The meeting also sanctioned action against militants, who were attacking people in the name of Islam.

Tribal elder Haji Gul Rahim said most of the people attending the jirga had dispersed and about 200 people were discussing measures for security on the Indus Highway.

Witnesses said that the blast site was littered with human flesh and severed limbs. They said that the blast was so intense that it caused severe burn injuries.

Maulana Sabir Afridi, convener of the jirga, Haji Zar Khan, Haji Nazer, Haji Jamal Hussain, Malik Mohammad Nawaz and Haji Khan Mohammad Din were among the dead.

The Christian Science Monitor is reporting that recent attacks have disrupted an expected post-election calm.

In four separate incidents over the weekend, suicide bombers struck large gatherings in Pakistan, shattering a fragile sense of optimism that has prevailed since national elections on Feb. 18.

The hope has been that those elections, by empowering Pakistan’s moderate, secular parties, could help stem Pakistan’s rising tide of extremism, which has left about 500 people dead this year. But for the last week, the elections have not brought a much needed sense of calm and euphoria.

But in what seems to be a stepped-up effort to sow chaos and fear, suicide bombers struck on Friday in Lakki Marwat, in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, killing a district superintendent of police, CNN reports. The following day, militants struck again during that police official’s funeral in Swat Valley – where the Army is still battling Taliban militants – killing 46 people. On Saturday, a suicide bomber targeted the vehicle of a security official in Bajaur Agency, a Taliban enclave near the border of Afghanistan, killing 21 people, the Associated Press reports.

Perhaps the inept analysts in the MSM expected a post-election calm due to empowering secular parties in Pakistan, but readers of The Captain’s Journal knew better.  In Misinterpreting the Pakistani Elections, we summarized the elections thusly: “The less ideologically driven voter abandoned the Islamist party, but then, he never voted for that party for the purposes of institution of sharia law anyway.  He voted for jobs, sewers, electricity, water supply and good governance several years ago and got none of what he voted for. Hence, he overthrew the clerics this time around.  The die-hards joined the Taliban.  There are various colors and stripes of jihadists the world over, from Salafism to Wahhabism, from the purist Sunni radicals in Saudi Arabia to the Shi’a Mullahs and their followers in Iran.  But one common element among them all is the utter rejection of democracy.  Democracy is deemed to be directly contrary to Islam, and the Taliban, al Qaeda and their sympathizers and advocates sat out the election.  They had no stake in it.”

The voters rejected two things: (1) Musharraf’s administration, and (2) the more moderate Islamicists (i.e., the ones who failed at administrating a state, but who also never saw Sharia law as being implemented through violence.  The religious extremists didn’t vote or run for office.  As to the future of Pakistan, we have consistently pointed out that there are two Taliban fronts; one in Afghanistan and the other in Pakistan.  There has been a resurgence of the Taliban and al Qaeda (with the new focus on suicide missions as we pointed out), and because the Pashtun have rejected the concept of a global war on terror, U.S. and Pakistani forces find unfriendly human terrain in the NWFP and FATA, and not just due to Taliban presence.  When the people do not support the campaign, the campaign finds the way hard and toiling.

The U.S. expects for there to be continued kinetic operations against the Taliban, and Musharraf soldiers on in implementing operations against them.  At some point it is likely that these operations will devolve into talks with the Taliban because the Army, the regional tribes, and the population in general will not support continued kinetic operations.  How long Musharraf can continue to press these operations without toppling his regime remains an open question.

The real news here is not that there is continuing Taliban violence, but that The Captain’s Journal laid out the correct scenario for you before it happened.  You should continue to read TCJ for cutting edge analysis.

About a week ago we got the message that everything is going just swimmingly in Afghanistan.

Insurgent attacks have tumbled in eastern Afghanistan, notably along the border with Pakistan, in recent months compared to the same period in 2007, a US general said Sunday.

The fall was due to “aggressive operations” by Afghan security forces and their Western allies, as well as improvements in local governance, Brigadier General Joseph Votel told reporters.

The number of attacks so far in February was about 35 percent below that for the same month last year, said Votel, deputy commander of the US-led coalition force that works with a separate NATO-headed deployment.

“Our border attacks and incidents along the border … continues to go downwards. We are probably 40 to 50 percent below what we were a year ago,” he said.

“We attribute this to aggressive operations there that we have been conducting with the police, with the army, assisted by the coalition forces … and the growth of the government in the districts and in the provinces” …

Votel played down talk of an insurgent “spring offensive.”

“I think there is going be an offensive in the spring, the offensive is going to be us, the ANSF (the Afghan National Security Forces),” he said. “The government security forces will lead the operations and we will support.”

Today, reminiscent of our article The Marines, Afghanistan and Strategic Malaise, General McNeill painted a picture of NATO cowardice and intransigence.

Nato’s commander in Afghanistan voiced his “frustration” with the restrictions imposed on the Alliance’s forces yesterday and said these “national caveats” were hindering the fight against the Taliban …

Germany, for example, insists on keeping its 3,200 troops in the relative safety of northern Afghanistan where reconstruction – not combat  is their primary task.

Gen McNeill, an American veteran of the Vietnam war, said these restrictions were “frustrating in how they impinge upon my ability to properly plan, resource and prosecute effective military operations”.

Gen McNeill, 61, added: “It’s hard to mass [troops] when you sometimes have to ask all the way back to governments ‘may I use your force in this location in this manner’?”

As for deploying rapidly, Gen McNeill said: “If we can move faster than our adversary we have an edge over him. If I have to take the time to see who can make this move and who cannot if I request them, it’s hard to avail myself of speed. Therein lies the issue.”

He added: “It requires me to expend energies that without an imposition of such restrictions and constraints, I’d be able to put that energy into things that are far more important.”

Preposterous.  Apparently everything is not going just swimmingly in Afghanistan.  The ghost of General George S. Patton gives NATO a well deserved kick in the ass for their cowardice, along with the U.S. for our stupidity in having the hapless and pitiful NATO involved to begin with.  It’s way past time to remove the adolescents and put the adults in charge.

The publication of Army Field Manual 3-0, Operations, gives us a chance to pause and ponder definitions, concepts, and going forward doctrine for the global war on terror, much or most of which is likely to be small wars, irregular engagements and counterinsurgency.  But some background is in order before considering the new field manual.

In 2002, Antulio J. Echevarria II authored an interesting analysis entitled Clausewitz’s Center of Gravity: Changing our Warfighting Doctrine – Again!  There is probably no more copiously quoted military strategist than Clausewitz, and it pays to correctly understand what he said.  To begin, Echevarria briefly traces what he sees as the glasses through which the branches within the U.S. military have “seen” Clausewitz.

… each of the services – shaped by different roles, histories, and traditions—tended to view the CoG concept in their respective images. The U.S. Army and U.S. Navy, for example, typically thought in terms of a single CoG, which usually resided at the core of one’s land or naval power and provided the “source” of one’s physical and psychological capacity to fight. The U.S. Air Force, on the other hand, pursued the notion of multiple CoGs, each of which could be “targeted” from the air to achieve the paralysis of the enemy.  And, finally, the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC), with the difficult mission of conducting amphibious forcible entry operations, preferred for a time to think of the CoG as a key weakness, or critical vulnerability, the exploitation of which would give it a decisive advantage.

Echevarria argues that Clausewitz sees CoG neither as a weakness nor a strength, but a focal point at which force may be employed to force the enemy to become unbalanced and topple.  Much like the martial art of Jiu jitsu, the goal is to find the point of maximum leverage against the enemy and exploit it to upend the enemy.

Clausewitz did not distinguish between tactical, operational, or strategic CoGs. The CoG is defined by the entire system (or structure) of the enemy, not by a level of war … According to Clausewitz, a local commander might determine a center of gravity for the portion of the enemy’s forces that lay before him, providing those forces demonstrated sufficient independence from the remainder of the enemy’s forces. However, this separate CoG would only amount to a local rather than a tactical or operational CoG. For us to speak of a tactical CoG, the tactical level of war would have to exist independent of the operational and strategic levels of war. Similarly, for CoGs to exist at the operational and strategic levels of war, those levels of war would have to have an existence separate from the rest of warfare. This notion defies the principle of unity – or interconnectedness – that German military thinkers from Clausewitz to Heinz Guderian had ascribed to warfare.

Translating “On War” from the German, Echevarria gives us an important point in understanding Clausewitz.

The first principle is: To trace the full weight (Gewicht) of the enemy’s force (Macht) to as few centers of gravity as possible, when feasible, to one; and, at the same time, to reduce the blow against these centers of gravity to as few major actions as possible, when feasible, to one.

. . . reducing the enemy’s force (Macht) to one center of gravity depends, first, upon the [enemy’s] political connectivity [or unity] itself . . . and, second, upon the situation in the theater of war itself, and which of the various enemy armies appear there.

Antulio J. Echevarria II recommends a redefinition of CoG: “Centers of Gravity are focal points that serve to hold a combatant’s entire system or structure together and that draw power from a variety of sources and provide it with purpose and direction.”

This is a complex construction of thoughts, and it bears unpacking a bit.  Clausewitz’s background was in the physics, and so it necessarily stands to reason that a CoG should be single and unitary.  The CoG is a theoretical construct with which one can evaluate and predict the behavior of objects as they are acted upon by gravity.  It requires other things such as computation of the centroidal axis of an object.  For a single object, there is a single CoG.  For multiple objects there can still be a CoG as long as the objects are not dynamic.  But if the objects are moving in Cartesian space with respect to the other objects in a system, there can be no single CoG.

Clausewitz understood this, and while there are arguments for seeing an Army as a dynamic system, he is compelled to see it more as an object with a unitary CoG.  There are not multiple CoG, only one, and this point is critical to understanding Clausewitz.

Speaking at the Center for a New American Security along with Lt. Col. John Nagl, Sarah Sewall of Harvard University stated the following:

If the civilian is the center of gravity, securing and protecting is the main function of military forces, not destroying.  If restraint in the use of military force is fundamental to the successful campaign, then that is in fact the opposite of overwhelming force.

Sewall goes on to give nonkinetic operations a place of primacy over kinetic operations.  In finding a sole CoG, she is true to the Clausewitz idea of a unitary CoG.  But is this notion of locating and articulating a unitary CoG in counterinsurgency (COIN) based solely on Clausewitz, FM 3-24, the newly released FM 3-0, or something else?

Regarding the Counterinsurgency field manual, FM 3-24, the phrase “center of gravity” appears only three times (except for the definition), and the most interesting is found in section 4-12:

In model making, the model describes an approach to the COIN campaign, initially as a hypothesis.  The model includes operational terms of reference and concepts that shape the language governing the  conduct (planning, preparation, execution, and assessment) of the operation. It addresses questions like  these: Will planning, preparation, execution, and assessment activities use traditional constructs like center  of gravity, decisive points, and LLOs? Or are other constructs—such as leverage points, fault lines, or  critical variables—more appropriate to the situation?

Rather than CoG being the central doctrinal concept in COIN, a different concept begins to appear, that of lines of operation, appearing first in Section 1-36:

The Vietnamese conflict offers another example of the application of Mao’s strategy. The North Vietnamese developed a detailed variant of it known as dau tranh (“the struggle”) that is most easily described in terms of logical lines of operations (LLOs). In this context, a line of operations is a logical line that connects actions on nodes and/or decisive points related in time and purpose with an objective (JP 1-02). LLOs can also be described as an operational framework/planning construct used to define the concept of multiple, and often disparate, actions arranged in a framework unified by purpose. (Chapters 4 and 5 discuss LLOs typically used in COIN operations.) Besides modifying Mao’s three phases, dau tranh delineated LLOs for achieving political objectives among the enemy population, enemy soldiers, and friendly forces. The “general offensive–general uprising” envisioned in this approach did not occur during the Vietnam War; however, the approach was designed to achieve victory by whatever means were effective.  It did not attack a single enemy center of gravity; instead it put pressure on several, asserting that, over time, victory would result in one of two ways: from activities along one LLO or the combined effects of efforts along several. North Vietnamese actions after their military failure in the 1968 Tet offensive demonstrate this approach’s flexibility. At that time, the North Vietnamese shifted their focus from defeating U.S. forces in Vietnam to weakening U.S. will at home. These actions expedited U.S. withdrawal and laid the groundwork for the North Vietnamese victory in 1975.

Here the concept of lines of operation appear, by example, in a linear implementation.  If this line of operation doesn’t work, another will be implemented.  In FM 3-0, this concept is upgraded and explained as something other than unitary, singular, sequential actions (6-61).

Commanders may describe an operation along lines of operation, lines of effort, or a combination of both.  Irregular warfare, for example, typically features a deliberate approach using lines of operations complimented with lines of effort … with this approach, commanders synchronize and sequence actions, deliberately creating complementary and reinforcing effects.  The lines then converge on the well-defined, commonly understood end state outlined in the commander’s intent.

The concept of lines of operations and lines of effort appears many more times in FM 3-0.  If FM 3-0 represents an advancement over the Clausewitz doctrine of a unitary CoG, then what are we to make of this notion of COIN as “armed social science”?  This view certainly doesn’t cohere with Osama bin Laden’s summary of the psyche of the population in this part of the world: “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.”  Similarly, we have claimed that the Anbar campaign was won because the U.S. was the strong horse.

The seeds of this view are actually contained within FM 3-24 itself.  In Section 1-159, we read that “COIN is an extremely complex form of warfare. At its core, COIN is a struggle for the population’s support. The protection, welfare, and support of the people are vital to success.”  In Section 5-42, we read that “Essential services address the life support needs of the HN population. The U.S. military’s primary task is normally to provide a safe and secure environment.”  In Section A-60, we read that “Whatever else is done, the focus must remain on gaining and maintaining the support of the population. With their support, victory is assured; without it, COIN efforts cannot succeed.”

True enough within the right context, statements such as these give ammunition to those who see COIN as “armed social science,” and allow theoreticians such as Sarah Sewall to focus in on a singular CoG, that being the population.  Gaining their support is key, and kinetic operations are secondary or even tertiary in importance.  It is a small next step to the claim that restraint in military force in the key to winning the population.  How Sewall expects to provide security for the population without kinetic operations against the enemy remains a mystery.  After all, “armed social science” is more like U.N. “peace keeping” missions that routinely fail to keep the peace than it is the actual campaign in Iraq.

The security plan for Iraq, however, is in many ways modeled after the Anbar part of that campaign, in which military force was the pretext to the successes with the tribes, neighborhood muktars, and heads of households.  It might be countered that the focus on lines of operations (kinetic) and lines of effort (nonkinetic) represents a more tactical focus, but in the end, theory bows the knee to tactics and logistics because all counterinsurgency is local.

National unity, political reconciliation, fair participation in the political scene and infrastructure and services are all significant actors in whether the more local lines of operations have lasting effect.  But if FM 3-24 represents the softer side of COIN, FM 3-0 seems to see COIN as the multifacted complexity that it is.  Rather than see a singular, unitary CoG in COIN, FM 3-0 seems to view an insurgency as a loosely coupled and dynamic machine, or even organism, which has no tipping point, thus requiring in response parallel lines of effort that target different aspects in different ways and with different means – sometimes simultaneously and sometimes sequentially.

No astute observer of the campaign in Iraq – especially in Anbar and subsequently in and around Baghdad during the security plan – seeing the high number of intelligence driven raids, heavy use of air power, and kinetic operations against foreign terrorists and indigenous insurgents, can claim that kinetic operations have taken on a secondary or tertiary role to anything.  In other words, when the successful practice in the field doesn’t comport with the theory in the books, only the disconnected theoreticians can continue the mantras.  It was time to update doctrine to recognize the nature of the gains in Iraq.  By so robustly enveloping lines of operations and lines of effort within its pages, FM 3-0 may represent a significant advancement in military doctrine over FM 3-24.