It has been said that armies train to fight the last war (or sometimes, two or three wars ago).  There is a pressing need to keep the training, equipment and tactics up-to-date.  On the other hand, as I pointed out in my post “Patriotism, Big Flags and Military Regression,” the military-industrial complex can become self-serving to the point of the regression of the military, this regression nurturing careerism, expensive military toys, and retirement opportunities for officers leaving the military if cooperation with weapons manufacturers has opened the right doors.  And I pointed out that because this sort of thing deprives the right programs of the dollars necessary for force protection and training, it is evil.  So care must be taken as to how monies are spent in matters military.  Lives are literally on the line.

I am certain that tactical maneuvers must be practiced until they are second nature.  Squad rushes should be performed and practiced, but when the most likely application of firepower will be in an urban setting, to focus too heavily on these tactics is to remember the lessons of World War II and the Korean War, and to forget the lessons of Fallujah and Ramadi.  In fact, the training for tactics to properly effect MOUT (Military Operations on Urban Terrain) is not only necessary and desired by Marines and Soldiers (because this is what they will most likely be doing in Iraq), but it is also slow in coming, and is not nearly frequent enough.  Marine Corps training at Twentynine Palms and the Mohave desert facilities is state of the art, appropriate, and the right thing at the right time.  At SOI (School of Infantry), Marines war against each other with chalk bullets, and getting hit by these bullets is painful, leading to incentive not to get hit.  This is outstanding and praiseworthy training.  But more is needed.  Marines need to engage in Arabic language classes, IED technology classes, more urban warfare simulations, and war gaming.  In summary, training needs to relevant to the threats sustained by the troops; therefore, the highest risks should receive the greatest attention.

The calculus is simple.  While Marines should be well-rounded, the training on weapons and tactics should be a mathematical function of the probability of usage, need and application.  This approach helps to set the boundary conditions for smart expenditures of money.  So let’s rehearse something that is probably a smart expenditure of money.  Later we’ll visit something that probably isn’t.  First, the smart money.

The U.S. Joint Forces Command is engaged in something called Urban Resolve.  To explain the reason for the program’s existence, USJFC informs us that:

In military operations since World War II, United States forces have preferred to bypass major urban areas to avoid the costly combat expected inside cities.

The urban environment contains extremely complex terrain, with urban canyons, complicated infrastructures, and subsurface maneuver space.

The explosive growth of the world’s major urban centers, changes in enemy strategies, and the global war on terrorism have made the urban battlespace potentially decisive and virtually unavoidable.

Some of our most advanced military systems do not work as well in urban areas as they do in open terrain. Therefore, joint and coalition forces should expect that future opponents will choose to operate in urban environments to try to level the huge disparity between our military and technological capabilities and theirs. 

The plan to address the needs in urban warfare — as proposed by the USJFC — is rather complex, relying on things that do not directly involve the Marine or Soldier in the field, at least not yet.  The initial stages involves a lot of war-gaming, tabletop reviews, and battlefield modeling and simulations.  I don’t know exactly how this might work, but I have an idea that might approximate what will happen.

Any gaming, modeling or training that is done should be probabilistic.  Probabilistic Risk Assessments (PRA) are commonly used in industries in which failure is not an option, e.g., the airline industry, and the commercial nuclear power industry.  Probabilistic analysis requires Monte Carlo simulation techniques.  These probabilistic techniques are applied to data that has been mined and cataloged concerning the nature of reality, that is, how and why things happen the way that they do given certain initial conditions.

Using probabilistic techniques, the analyst may then, based on certain assumptions and initial conditions, “play roulette” with the next event.  Monte Carlo simulation will account for the fact that one event is more probable than the alternate event, and each individual path of events, or “history,” will use these techniques throughout the chain of events at each new event to evaluate the likelihood of various consequences and make choices based on mathematical probabilities.  The virtue of the method is that with enough histories simulated, given that no history, or chain of events, is exactly like the previous or subsequent chain of events, the analyst gets a comprehensive picture of the kinds of things that can happen and how to plan for them.

This picture can be used to evaluate relative risk.  Risk is the product of probability and consequences, which means that the analyst may focus his energies on those things that pose the highest risk.  Something may have a low probability, but very high consequences (e.g., high casualty rate).  This kind of thing, while not as important as those things that are high probability and high consequences, still may require some attention.

Finally, this method relies on correct data, so the analyst is required to interview, use expert witness and testimony, record history, watch video of actual war footage using cameras carried into battle, use audio recordings, catalog experiences of the infantry, interrogate the enemy, mine statistics, etc.

Questions like these will be important in tabletop reviews and computer simulations:

1. What is the probability that the enemy has a particular weapon or weapons system?
2. What is the probability that they know how to use it correctly?
3. What is the enemy’s motivation?
4. Where is the enemy initially located?
5. What is likely to be his tactics upon being engaged?
6. Has the enemy pre-staged the area?
7. What is likely to be our response given our training?
8. Is this the correct response?
9. Is there a better response?
10. Are we under time constraints?
11. Will collateral damage ensue from the altercation?
12. If so, is this collateral damage acceptable?
13. What is the command and control of our troops, and how much latitude have they been given?
14. How much latitude do our troops need?
15. How much latitude does the enemy have?
16. Can the combatant be ascertained and discerned from the non-combatant?
17. Are changes in our weapons systems needed in order to effect a successful altercation?
18. Do our troops have the right weapons sytems for the ensuing altercation, and if not, can they be aquired within the necessary time frame?

The USJFC summarizes the advantages of this virtual battlefield thusly:

The DCEE uses its analytic, faster-than-real-time simulations nearly continuously. It uses simulations to support wargames and human-in-the-loop events simultaneously. As the DCEE continues to mature, the total number of modeled battlespace elements possible will soon be more than one million individual entities. This expanding capability, combined with the high definition and clarity of modeled global population areas, will provide a virtual capability second to none. The ability to replicate multiple iterations of an issue quickly is an important additional capability that permits rapid examination of issues.

Ultimately, a distributed environment that incorporates virtual simulation, concept development, real-world situations, and optional live field training in a seamless environment is a significant transformational capability.

Good, because unless this is tested in the field, the alleged advantages are unproven and perhaps even dangerous.  And the Marines (that is, the grunts doing the heavy lifting) will need and benefit from this virtual battle space.

As a final note, if you think that this is perhaps beyond the comprehension of the typical Marine, think again.  Take a wild guess as to how many Marines already play commercially-available, complex war games on their free time with the aid of a computer, head-sets and the internet, while online with several hundred other people in their “guild?”

We have seen over the past couple of years the growth in influence of the Shiite majority in Iraq, including the fielding of a Shiite army (Mahdi army).  This influence caused new Prime Minister Maliki to pressure — even threaten — the U.S. concerning recent skirmishes between the U.S. and al Sadr’s militia, saying that “this won’t happen again.”

In a special to Gulfnews.com, Sami Moubayed observes:

The journalist Ellen Knickmeyer coined a very important phrase on August 24 in The Washington Post, saying a “Shiite Giant” has emerged in the Arab world.

This is very true. The mind of this giant is based in Tehran. He has got arms powerful arms, in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Bahrain.

On a daily basis we hear the names of various Shiite leaders who have become iconic, national, pan-Arab and pan-Islamic names in the Arab and Muslim world. This Shiite giant has been created by a variety of politicians and leaders including clergymen such as Ayatollah Khomeini, Moosa Al Sadr, Mohammad Hussain Fadlallah, Ali Al Sistani and Ali Khamenei. It has military leaders such as Moqtada Al Sadr and Hassan Nasrallah, and pragmatic politicians such as Abdul Al Aziz Al Hakim, Nabih Berri and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

This giant was born out of the Islamic revolution of 1979, since one of its objectives was to emancipate the Shiites around the world. Before that they had been an underclass in most Arab countries, being poor, underdeveloped, uneducated and had very limited social mobility.

This was particularly true in Lebanon and Iraq, the two countries in which today, the Shiites enjoy a vary different standing.

This “Shiite Giant” has raised fears in the Arab world. It caused King Abdullah of Jordan to express fears that a Shiite Crescent was emerging in the Arab world. Earlier this year Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak made similar comments on Al Arabiya TV, saying that the Shiites were more loyal to Iran than they were to their own countries.

This observation makes one wonder exactly what kind of Iraq we are leaving behind (i.e., will the Shiite majority in Iraq be a proxy for Iran)?  There is news now concerning the cohesion of the three main groups in Iraq and the future of the country.  From Arab News:

BAGHDAD, 7 September 2006 — Iraq’s dominant Shiite alliance yesterday submitted a draft of a new law to govern the division of the country into autonomous regions …

The United Iraqi Alliance, the dominant Shiite parliamentary bloc, is promoting a “law of regional formation

It is a distinctly American pathology, this denial that 9/11 occurred.  Sometimes it takes on ridiculous and circus-like attributes, as with Professor Steven Jones:

Yet five years after the terrible event, some believe there is more to the story — that the official version of events is wrong. Just days before the anniversary, Steven Jones, a professor of physics at Brigham Young University in Utah, was suspended on paid leave because he argued explosives brought down the towers.

Conspiracy theories, many accusing the United States government of orchestrating the attacks, grew in popularity. A documentary called Loose Change, collecting these theories and stating them as the truth, became a underground hit on Google’s online video website and YouTube.com.

The fact that there is no dispute on the technical details of the failure modes of the WTC is unconvincing to the crackpot purveyors of wild stories of U.S. complicity and pre-planted explosives.  I am sitting at my desk studying again the FEMA document “World Trade Center Building Performance Study: Data Collection, Preliminary Observations, and Recommendations,” FEMA 403, September 2002, co-sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers.  I am as impressed now as I was when I first received this document in the mail at how much detail is contained in the document, how much study it took to put this mammoth tome together, and how conclusive it is as to the failure modes and overall comprehension of the accident sequence.

Further, there are other such studies available.  The NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) has performed an extensive study of the same sort of thing I discussed above in their report “Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers.”  This is part of a larger effort to catalogue and archive issues (mostly technical) pertaining to the WTC and its collapse.

For those who believe that they know how buildings are supposed to collapse, you need to study the design reports of the WTC.  Ironically, the innovation in the structural design that made it possible to construct such a behemoth structure to begin with, was the undoing of the structure upon the crash of the airliners into the building.  There was no structural steel, per se (in the usual sense of the word, i.e., beams).  Both the axial stiffness and lateral stability were provided by the skin of the building.  Unfortunately, while the structure was designed to withstand the direct crash of an airliner into the building, the designers failed to consider the addition of heat due to the payload of jet fuel.

The intense heat generated by the burning of the jet fuel caused a reduction in the yield strength of the metal skin, causing it to buckle and be unable to sustain the mass of floors above.  When one floor began to relocate to the floor beneath it, the problem ceased to be static and became hopelessly fatal, with dynamic loads that the structure was entirely incapable of supporting.  Since the structural support was provided by the very skin which was buckling, there was no recovery, and the building was doomed.

Soon after this event, professors of engineering at various institutions produced calculations very quickly which demonstrated that the structure was not able to withstand the temperatures generated by the combustion of the jet fuel.  As a side note, it has been suggested by the naysayers that the fire was caused by the combustion of diesel fuel.  Not only is this false, it is absurd.  Diesel fuel doesn’t burn hot enough to cause the temperatures seen by the structure, and there wasn’t enough of it to cause the weakening and collapse of the building.

But there is a different kind of denial.  While it is deadly for Europe to deny the influx of Muslim extemism, it is at least understandable that stolid and comfortable people would fail to heed the warnings of 9/11.  What is so troublesome is that many in the U.S. still do not understand those warnings, and the U.S. is still, it seems, not on a war footing.

I was recently discussing with someone the nature of the war we are in, attempting to explain that Iraq was, if we were able to sustain the motivation to win the war, a foothold in the middle east.  To the east is Iran, to the west, Syria.  Both were and are state sponsors of terror, and unless and until we tackle the problem of these two states, the GWOT will not be won.  Syria must be confronted, perhaps militarily, perhaps not, depending upon the power of our state diplomacy.  Iran must be confronted, more than likely militarily.  Saudi Arabia must be confronted for their financial support of terrorism, and Afghanistan must be won.  Finally, Pakistan must be dealt with over the Madrassas and schools of terror still allowed in the region.

The war will encompass military action, and that, far more than anyone has been willing to admit as yet.  It will require a State Department that is engaged and actually an ally of the policy of the war rather than an enemy of it.  It will require more police action, more border security, more special forces black operations, more CIA human intelligence, and more homeland security for ports.  It is — by my estimations — a 25 year war.

Iraq is only the beginning.  Yet the U.S. is suffering fatigue, due in part to the failure to learn the lessons of 9/11.  We engage in irrelevant talk of the relationship of Iraq to Al Qaeda prior to the war, and handwring over WMD that at the moment lack germane application to what is happening in the Middle East.  We pretend that we are in a world of 9/10.  So if we fail to learn the lessons of 9/11, what honor and tribute have we paid to the immediate victims of 9/11 and the subsequent deaths of U.S. troops who fight on our behalf trying to defeat radical, facist Islam?

Are rememberances of any avail if we refuse to admit what 9/11 means?

Yes: “Roundabout”

Whether it is the irregular meter, the great keyboard work, the difficult percussion, or the silky-smooth roaming bass line, the rock group Yes makes this piece one of the best rock songs ever written and performed, no matter what your age.  Go do a Google search on “Yes Roundabout MP3,” or better yet, the link at Progressive Rock Archives is below.  Midways down the page, hit play.  Disconnect from the week’s travails, turn up the volume and enjoy:

Roundabout

Courtesy of SWJ, this from the San Francisco Chronicle:

In the first and second years after the U.S. invasion, critics say, American troops were focused on kicking in doors and looking for bad guys, when they needed to take a softer approach to the local population. The military brought along civil affairs units to help Iraqis build schools and hospitals, but those efforts were often overshadowed by the damage done by air strikes and artillery bombardments.

That’s not to say those methods were not necessary at the time, but analysts say the insurgency was strengthened because the soldiers and Marines used too much force too often. And they didn’t simultaneously work closely enough with Iraqi leaders to provide security and to get the local population on their side…

I have gone on record favoring the approach used in Fallujah as opposed to the approach currently in use in Ramadi in my post “The Debate over Diminished Force Projection.”  The difference is in how the enemy is identified and defeated.  There are reports of Marines and Soldiers running — even within the protected government compounds — to avoid sniper fire in Ramadi, hoping to cover the government officials who want to make it to the next building without being shot.

The Strategy Page has this today:

September 8, 2006: In Iraq, the rate of attacks remains very high compared to this time last year. Over the past three months, attacks have average 800-1000 a week. Curiously, during the same period, attacks that are identified as “sectarian” have declined from about 20 percent of all incidents to about 10-12 percent. Incidents in Baghdad are also down, by about 10 percent, due to the concerted government/Coalition effort to get more personnel into difficult neighborhoods. Most attacks are still against civilians, with attacks on Government troops and police in second place, and Coalition forces a rather distant third. But in Anbar province, Al-Qaeda, which has come to dominate the insurgency in region, seems to be focusing on U.S. Forces, which have take (sic) some 75-85 percent of the attacks. 

Al Qaeda have made Ramadi their home, and even if we (or the Iraqis) win in Ramadi, it is likely that the next phase is Al Haqlaniyah.  So we need to deal now with how we will attack the issue of Al Qaeda in and among the population.  Even after Ramadi, the deal is not done.  There is more to go nearer to the Syrian border.

In Fallujah we essentially caused the evacuation of the city of the civilian population, and hence, could use hard techniques and overwhelming force to kill or capture the enemy.  While this may not work to our advantage in Ramadi or other parts of the Sunni triangle, we don’t have to send mortar shells or JDAMs in to kill the enemy.  When Marines are running from building to building trying to protect government officials from being shot by sniper fire in the Ramadi protected zones, we have a problem.

Once again … and I feel like I am rewinding, play again, rewind, play again … “winning the heart and mind of the population” does not require us to leave the enemy alive and killing us or the Iraqis.  We will only win the cities and the people by killing Al Qaeda in the Sunni triangle.

This might involve Marine snipers, or it might involve more patrols, or it might involve a sweep of the city, or three-block strategy, or a series of mini-sweeps, or other tactics.  And I understand that Marines and Soldiers need to be on the ground, talking to the population, keeping the power grid functional, smoking with the men on the street corner, working with the locals to get people medical treatment, etc.

But you would have a hard time convincing me that business is operating properly with snipers shooting at “safe-zones.”  The way to win the population is to kill their enemy.  The Sunnis will not see Al Qaeda as their allies.  They are foreigners who are preventing the practice of business, worship, and a return to normalcy.

Many things can cause the diminution of a military.  During and after Vietnam it was the drug culture, political upheaval, and changes in core value systems in the family and society.  In measure, this was addressed by General Alfred Gray, the 29th Commandant of the Marine Corps, whom I hold in iconic status.  General Gray brought back the warrior ethos to the Marine Corps after the Vietnam era.  I requested that General Gray send my son an autographed picture of him as a boot camp graduation gift.  He kindly obliged with a picture of himself in cammies, autographed and with a nice note congratulating my son on becoming a “warrior.”  It is framed and hanging on our wall at home.  It is of note that he signed the photograph “General Al Gray, Marine.”

No pretentions, just “Marine.”

There are other dangers for our military, due in no small part to the military-industrial complex.  There is a very sobering piece entitled “Regression,” by William Lind.  In part he says:

When I was in Israel several years ago, I said to my host, a retired Israeli general with several interesting books to his credit, that I thought the IDF had begun to regress to the Second Generation after the 1973 war. He told me I was wrong; the regression had begun after the war in 1967.

The question of how it happened, and why maintaining the culture of a Third Generation military is so difficult even for armed services that have attained it—the Royal Navy lost it after the Napoleonic Wars, for reasons brilliantly set forth in Andrew Gordon’s The Rules of the Game, and the German Army lost it when the Bundeswehr was created, for political reasons—is of interest far beyond Israel. A number of Israelis have traced it in their case to the development of a large weapons R&D and procurement establishment, and I think there is a lot to that argument.

The virtues required in military officers involved in weapons development and procurement are the virtues of the bureaucrat: careful, even obsessive attention to process; avoiding risky decisions, and whenever possible making decisions by committee; avoiding responsibility; careerism, because success is measured by career progression; and generally shining up the handle on the big front door. Time is not very important, while dotting every i and crossing every t is vital, since at some point the auditors will be coming, and the politicians and the press will be waiting eagerly for their reports. Remunerative careers in the defense industry await those officers who know how to go along to get along. While the Israeli defense industry has produced some remarkably good products, such as the Merkava tank, getting the program funded still tends to be more important than making sure the weapon will work in combat. As time goes on, efficiency tends to become more important than effectiveness; not surprisingly, the simpler and more effective Israeli weapon systems came earlier, and more recent ones tend to reflect the American tendency toward complex and expensive ineffectiveness.

The Israeli inquiry into the Lebanon fiasco is unlikely to address this issue for the same reason it is not addressed in the United States: too much money is at stake. The R&D and procurement tail now wags the combat arms dog. Nor is the question of how to reverse the process and restore the virtues a Third Generation military requires in its officers an easy one. Those virtues—eagerness to make decisions and take responsibility, boldness, broad-mindedness and a spirit of intellectual inquiry, contempt for careerism and careerists—are not wanted in Second Generation militaries, and officers who demonstrate them are usually weeded out early. A Third Generation culture is difficult to maintain, and even more—impossible perhaps?—to restore once lost.

Yet, as I have said many times in these columns, a Second Generation military, no matter how lavishly resourced, has no chance against Fourth Generation opponents. In this conundrum lies the fate of the state of Israel, and the fate of states everywhere.

I am quick to speak out on the need for advancements in technology when it comports with troop protection and effectiveness, and when the technology is something other than R&D adventurism.  I posted on “Thermobaric Weapons and Body Armor,” and I posted here and here on proper funding of the Marine Corps.  But if you’ll notice about these posts, the equipment, if successful, would redound directly to increased safety for troops and effectiveness of our forces.  And … immediately so.

There is a darker side of the military establishment.  This side nurtures careerism, avoidance of responsibility, networking, and bowing to political pressures.  May I speak for the grunt for a minute?  When the grunts see this, they always judge it for what it is, and they immediately lose all respect for those who behave this way.  This loss of respect is irrevocable.

The most technologically advanced equipment is no replacement for well-trained, well-led and motivated troops.  To be frank, for those who have their career as the premier concern, they should just step aside and save their reports the trouble of cleaning up their mess and suffering the consequences of their careerism.  For the military-industrial complex, I have more harsh words for you.  If you are selling inferior products to the military, doctoring or embellishing data just to make a sale when you know that some other product is better suited to the mission, or in any way endangering our boys at arms in order to make a buck, you may be able to keep up the pretensions before men, but God sees things that take place in secret.  He knows the thoughts and intentions of the heart, and there will be a day of reckoning.  That will be an awful day for you.

I was dropping my son off at Camp Lejeune the day after labor day, and I saw Daniel’s eyes light up, as he said “Awesome.  Big flag today!”  He proceeded to inform me of the size of the flag and to mark the days that they flew that size flag.  He then said something rather stunning to me.  He said, “There are no more patriots.”  I rode the rest of the way to his barracks in silence.  He got out of the car, hugged me tightly, and said, “I love you dad.”  I have noticed that things that a boy wouldn’t otherwise do when he is a teen or in his early 20’s, Daniel has no problem doing, even around other Marines.  Somehow, the things that the Marine Corps instills and teaches makes them into something different than they were before.  They have a certain confidence that seems unshakable.

As I drove away from the base, I thought, “I know at least one patriot who is left.  And, I’ll bet that there are more than 2500 more who have perished in Iraq.”

With boys like these, we may just be okay.

Following the counsel of John Hawkins at RWN, I am listing my top ten blogs.  Since my son is a Marine, it will be virtually impossible to unseat SWJ from the number one position (especially the Daily News Links page where you just point and click on the day you want).  I am personally invested in what the USMC does — my son’s life hangs in the balance.  Numbers 2 – 10 are subject to revision at any time.

10] Blogs of War (and companion site, Chronicles of War; friend John Little has been very kind to me, instructive when I started up, and very nice to blogroll my site).

9] Little Green Footballs (The MSM fear LGF for good reason)

8] Counterterrorism Blog (I cannot not read this every day; it tells me where the world is headed before we get there)

7] Polipundit (My friends Knighthawk, Oak Leaf and Ace have been good to me and have given me very kind words and a link from time to time for my better posts)

6] Jihad Watch (Tireless expose of the enemy)

5] Riehl World View (Dan Riehl is one of the world’s great bloggers; simply magnificent, and he has given me a link from time to time, and a post welcoming me to the world of conservative blogging a few months back — oh, and he also blogrolled me)

4] Right Wing News (John Hawkins operates a virtual clearinghouse of good information, and together with on-point analysis that is always correct and conservative, this is a daily read)

3] Strategy Page (Great military information, and as a Milblogger, I would be lost without a daily dose of SP)

2] Michelle Malkin (What can I say; wonderful, although I am still waiting for the first returned e-mail; do you know I am out here, Michelle?)

1] Small Wars Journal (Will stay number one for me; I became familiar with the concept of small wars when I began studying the USMC because of my son; it would be good for others to understand as well)

**** UPDATE ****

Actually, I am taking liberty with my number one blog, since it is only barely a blog, linking to a bunch of stuff, including books, news, manuals, quotes, discussion threads and blogs by others.  I hope that this liberty is okay.  It is a must read every day for me.

On June 23 I posted “Normal Mineta Leaves – Thank God,” sensing a slight upwards tick on the U.S. securometer.  But little seems to have changed.

On August 16, I posted “TSA Shows no Respect for Military: One More Reason to Loath Them.”

And now, courtesy of Mary Katharine Ham, we see this photograph:

If it were me doing the search, I would refuse unless my head was covered by a hood of shame so that people could not tell who I was.  Then I would do it to keep a job but inform my superiors what an asinine practice it was to search little old white ladies.

This proves that we still do not take the GWOT seriously.  We are not yet engaged in the fight.  What will it take for us to wake from our slumber?

The ghosts of Norman Mineta have not yet been exorcised.

Let me be clear on what I think.  The coalition forces are winning in Afghanistan.  From intelligence estimates, there are only several thousand Taliban fighters left in the mountainous region bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan.  To put this in context, several thousand is the number sitting in a medium to large church in any U.S. city on a Sunday, and perhaps 1/20 of the attendance at a typical college or professional football game on a Saturday.  This is simply a small force size considering the fact that just a few years ago the country was controlled by Taliban (excluding the region controlled by the Northern Alliance).

On September 3, the Strategy Page was reporting:

September 3, 2006: Over the weekend, NATO troops near Kandahar (in the west), killed over 200 Taliban, while losing four of their own troops. Nearly a hundred Taliban were captured. This was part of a NATO operation to cripple Taliban forces in the Kandahar area. It appears to have succeeded, as interrogations of captured Taliban showed that this was a major enemy force in the area, and contained many key leaders.

It is noteworthy that 200 Taliban is considered a “major enemy force.”  This is not even a company of fighters.  As for the success rate over the last eight months, the Strategy Page is reporting:

September 5, 2006: The Taliban Summer offensive is nearly over, as the cold weather begins showing up. Nearly 2,000 have died in the last eight months from the Taliban violence. Most of the dead have been Taliban, most of them Afghans, but about a third Pakistanis and about five percent of them other foreigners. Most of the civilian victims were targeted by the Taliban. These included teachers and other government officials murdered by the Taliban, as part of a terror campaign to gain control over tribes in the south. This has largely backfired, as the Taliban was not strong enough to maintain constant pressure on the tribes. Apparently, the high Taliban death toll is the result of keeping large groups of gunmen in action, as this was the only way to back up the smaller terror squads, in the face of tribal attempts to resist or retaliate. But army and coalition forces would constantly catch the large Taliban groups, and smash them with smart bombs and superior firepower. 

So there have been many Taliban deaths, and their ability to field a fighting forces has been seriously weakened and compromised in Afghanistan.  But the situation seems to be different within Pakistan.

Yesterday was an interesting day on the conservative blogosphere.  It all started with the announcement of the truce / agreements signed between the Pakistan government and the Pashtun Muslims.  Bill Roggio posted on these events, focusing on the underreported story of the Pakistan “surrender” to the Muslim extremist fighters.  This created a storm of posts, counterpoints, trackbacks and comments, Michelle Malkin supporting the idea of a surrender, while the Captain’s Quarters supported the idea of a slick deal where the Taliban were the losers (and Musharraf the winner); Dan Riehl weighed in supporting the idea of a slick deal by Musharraf, while many other small bloggers (like yours truly) weighed in affirming Roggio’s position.

When the conservative blogosphere speaks, seldom is there as stark a difference of opinion as there was yesterday.  Still, in spite of the differences, the fact that a deal was cut at all implies a very weary Pakistan government (and restive troops and intelligence apparatus).  The Strategy Page weighs in on this issue as well:

September 6, 2006: Pakistan has declared victory and acknowledged defeat in the Pushtun tribal territories along the Afghan border. The government has signed a truce deal with the tribes. Under the terms of the deal, the tribes promise to expel foreign Islamic terrorists from their territories, and not allow their own men to join Taliban operations in Afghanistan. Neither promise is likely to be kept. Even now, Islamic extremists are exercising more control in the tribal territories, forming militias that are able to defy the tribal elders. However, the government is now expected to keep its troops in bases near the urban areas (which the tribes do not control anyway), and send in millions of dollars in economic aid (which the United States is expected to provide). This charade will go on (for a year or so) until the violations of the deal become too much to ignore. At that point, the war between the government and the tribes will resume. Afghanistan is already complaining of an increase in Pakistani Pushtun Taliban crossing over to fight.

The government was not willing to pay the price, in lives and cash, to subdue the tribes. This is nothing new, the fierce and persistent resistance of the Pushtun tribes has defeated outsiders for centuries. But there was also a religious angle. The tribes are full of Islamic conservatives, and tribal religious leaders have been turning the fighting into a religious war. The government does not want to give Islamic conservatives elsewhere in Pakistan more ammunition. Moreover, a significant minority of the officers in the army are Islamic conservatives, and the fighting was causing unrest with that important group. So the government has declared victory, stopped fighting the tribes, and is hoping to come up with some kind of Plan B before the Islamic terrorism gets out of hand. 

I concur that the Taliban in Pakistan cannot be trusted to carry out their obligations.  If you want to see why, look no further than their actions towards their own fighters.  On September 2, the Strategy Page reported:

September 2, 2006: Pakistan has been signing truces with rebellious Pushtun tribes on its side of the border, and this has led to a noticeable increase in the number Pakistanis captured or killed fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The additional number of Pakistanis in Afghanistan is not great, perhaps only a few hundred, but these guys have guns and murderous intent, and have hurt Afghans and foreign troops. 

Notice what has led to the noticeable increase in the number of Pakistanis captured or killed in fighting.  The signing of truces with the Pakistan government.

Get the picture?  In order to effect a downsizing in the hostilities with the Pakistan government, the Pashtun tribes were willing to sell out their own in Afghanistan to be killed.  Not foreign fighters — their own tribesmen.

This is the Taliban that Musharraf has cut a deal with.

There is good news and bad news in Afghanistan.  As you know, there are ongoing operations in Afghanistan, and the coalition forces are becoming very good at killing Taliban fighters.  Operation Medusa, as of September 3, 2006, had netted 200 Taliban killed and 80 captured, as compared to 4 NATO casualties.  In case you’re not counting (or dividing), this is a kill ratio of 50:1.

From the Washington Times:

An Army commander just back from Afghanistan had some good news and bad news.  The good: The coalition is good at finding and killing Taliban and al Qaeda fighters. The bad: Nearly as fast as the terrorists are killed, they are replaced by new recruits from camps in Pakistan. 

I have mixed feelings about calling this “bad” news.  On the one hand, I hate to see that there are so many in the world who hate us and want to kill us.  On the other hand, the good news part of the story is that if there are those who do indeed want to kill us, we are fighting them over there instead of on U.S. soil.  The effects of fighting them on U.S. soil would be many more U.S. deaths and the complete destruction of the U.S. economy (and certainly the destruction of our way of life).

Now for the really bad news.  Bill Roggio (h/t Michelle Malkin) has a must read piece on the surrender of the Pakistani army to the Taliban in the region of Waziristan.  His opening volley in the piece is this:

Pakistan’s “truce with the Taliban is an abject surrender, and al-Qaeda has an untouchable base of operations in Western Pakistan which will only expand if not checked.

Bill continues by outlining the terms of the truce:

– The Pakistani Army is abandoning its garrisons in North and South Waziristan.
– The Pakistani Military will not operate in North Waziristan, nor will it monitor actions the region.
– Pakistan will turn over weapons and other equipment seized during Pakistani Army operations.
– The Taliban and al-Qaeda have set up a Mujahideen Shura (or council) to administer the agency.
– The truce refers to the region as “The Islamic Emirate of Waziristan.