We posted More Friday Night Music where we linked the greatest rock / blues guitarist ever – Stevie Ray Vauhgn.  In response, our good friends at the Small Wars Journal posted Battle of the Bands.  In response, we give you more of the greatest rock / blues guitarist God ever created.  Take note of the solo from 1:50 on.

Enjoy and have a good weekend.

From Scotsman.com:

Taleban militants stormed a prison in Afghanistan last night, blowing open its main gates with a car bomb and freeing more than 1,000 inmates.

Several suicide bombers, dozens of fighters on motorbikes and a number of rockets were also used in the carefully orchestrated operation at the jail in Kandahar.

Under cover of darkness, most of the 1,150 prisoners, including some 400 Taleban, are believed to have fled.

Some prisoners are believed to have been killed in the crossfire of a gun battle between police and the insurgents who managed to get inside the jail.

An unknown number of prison guards were also killed.

A state of emergency has now been declared in Kandahar city. Police and troops were on the streets and all residents were ordered to remain in their homes.

Officials said the attack, which lasted 30 minutes, began when a tanker full of explosives was detonated at the prison’s main gate.

Minutes later, a suicide bomber on foot blasted a hole in the back of the prison and around 50 fighters stormed inside. One shopkeeper selling vegetables near the prison said he saw prisoners escape after the attack and run toward pomegranate and grape groves lying behind the complex.

Abdul Quadir, the prison director, said: “They (the Taleban] used a truck to blow the gate open and all of the guards at the gate have been killed and are under rubble.”

Wali Karzai, brother of Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai and the president of Kandahar’s provincial council, confirmed: “All the prisoners escaped. There is no one left.”

Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Taleban, said 30 insurgents on motorbikes and two suicide bombers attacked the prison. He claimed that the attack had been planned for the last two month, “to release our Taleban friends”.

“Today we succeeded,” he said, adding that the escaped prisoners “are safe in town and they are going to their homes”.

The prison holds common criminals but also Taleban militants fighting Nato troops and the Afghan government.

Officials with Nato’s International Security Assistance Force said they were aware of the attack but had no details.

Last month, some 350 Taleban suspects held at the Kandahar prison ended a week-long hunger strike after a parliamentary delegation promised their cases would be reviewed.

Some of the hunger strikers are believed to have been held without trial for more than two years. Others received lengthy sentences after short trials.

Kandahar – the Taleban’s former stronghold and Afghanistan’s second-largest city – has been the scene of fierce battles between Nato forces and insurgent fighters over the last two years.

The US military has handed over an unspecified number of suspected Taleban fighters to Afghan custody under a programme agreed last year to transfer all Afghan prisoners from American detention.

You simply cannot make this stuff up.  In a scene reminiscent of Mad Max or The Road Warrior, 30 motorcyclists managed to take out a prison and release 1150 criminals, 400 Taliban among them.  Where was the force protection?  Where were the vehicle barriers (you know, those mechanically operated devices that flatten your tires if you go over them the wrong way)?  Where were the concrete truck barricades?  Where was the training?  Where was the supervision?  Forget expensive UAVs and road construction for a minute.  What about spending a little money on teaching the Afghan police about combat and force protection.  Failure to do so has cost us the freedom of 400 Taliban – and potentially U.S. lives to capture or kill them again.

If this is the state of the Afghan police, then Hamid Karzai was prescient when he said that Afghanistan would need U.S. troops for ten or more years.  The Afghan police appear to be completely inept.  But what we do over these next ten years is important.  Take careful note of the handover of Taliban to Afghanistan, resulting perhaps in part due to the delays in processing prisoners through Gitmo and anticipation of the recent SCOTUS decision.

Many lives were put in jeopardy to capture these Taliban, and it is far better to kill the enemy on the field of battle than it is to capture them, feed them and try them, or see them broken free by 30 motorcyclists.

We have previously discussed how Hamid Karzai wants the U.S. to stop arresting members of the Taliban because it was a disincentive to peace with them.  Pakistan’s version of this sentiment is remarkably similar.

Pakistan’s peace agreements with Taliban militants have drawn concern from NATO forces, Afghan officials and the U.S. government who worry they will be short-lived truces that only undermine the war against Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.

But a day before leaving on his first trip to Kabul, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi pushed back against critics during a forceful speech before parliament.

“When we talk of peace, we also have to tell our friends, who at times are cynical about the peace negotiations that Pakistan has undertaken,” said Qureshi. “Look at the spirit behind that negotiation. The spirit is not capitulation, the spirit is not compromise, the spirit is peaceful coexistence.”

As for the Afghanistan Taliban, one commander recently said “You know, the Taliban and the Americans are as different as fire and water. Maybe the water will kill the fire or the fire will kill the water, but one of these things has to happen.”  “If the foreigners did not have their planes, then within five days I guarantee we would be in the streets of Kabul.”

As for the Pakistani Taliban, they are about to take control of Peshawar.

The provincial capital might slip into the hands of groups of militants within a few months if the government did not take adequate measures to arrest the growing trend of militancy.

The district is surrounded by tribal Khyber Agency in the west, Darra Adamkhel, Frontier Region Peshawar in the south and Mohmand Agency and Shabqadar town of Charsadda district in the north. Militant groups have been gaining strength for the past several months in all these towns.

Militants have now spread to innumerable villages of the Peshawar district. Radicals have thickly populated Matani, Mashokhel, Mashogagar and Badhber villages close to Darra Adamkhel.

The militants associated with two groups of Khyber Agency led by Mangal Bagh and Haji Namdar have been gathering vigour in Sheikhan, Sarband, Regi and Nasir Bagh while two militant groups of Mohmand Agency have established their writ in Mathra, Michni, Daudzai and Khazana villages.

It would appear that the “peaceful coexistence” doctrine has proven itself to be problematic.

Background & Report

In Competing Strategies in Afghanistan we documented the push by Hamid Karzai, Secretary Miliband and Secretary Des Browne to negotiate with the Taliban.  The Canadian liberal Senators have now put their weight behind the same plan, with the Tory Senators waffling over the idea.

The wide-ranging report also calls for the military to extend tour lengths to between nine and 12 months from the current six-month rotation, something that is being actively considered by Canada’s war planners.

“We’re aware this is a very contentious issue related to families,” Kenny said. “But it will have significant advantages in terms of creating a better relationship in Afghanistan.”

The Senators said it would also cut down on the number of soldiers who have to deploy several times to the country, and presumably ease the emotional burden on their families.

But the most contentious recommendation of the report, and the one least likely to be accepted by the Tories, is that Canadian soldiers and government officials try to make contact with the Taliban insurgency. The government has repeatedly rejected this course of action even though other NATO countries have made it a common practice.

“We’ve been very careful about it,” Kenny said, noting that Tory Senators objected to the recommendation. “We believe that these communications should take place only in circumstances where we think that some specific progress can be made.”

TheStar.com even showed a nice picture of what reconciliation looks like with a picture of Taliban surrendering their weapons.

But a different picture has been painted of the Taliban intentions.

“In the daytime we are farmers; at night we are Taliban,” he said, smiling.

Recent news reports published across the world would suggest the insurgency in Afghanistan is close to being defeated. In particular, they have focused on the southern province of Helmand, where a surge in US troops has allowed Nato-led forces to take new ground.

But when The National interviewed two Taliban commanders this month, it heard, and saw, a radically different story.

In the spring of 2007, Ghafar and his colleague, Zahir Jan, travelled to Kandahar from their homes in Helmand, where they claimed innocent women and children had been buried under the rubble of buildings destroyed by air strikes. At the time, both said they were fighting to defend their religion, their country and their families.

Since then, the violence has continued unabated. The Taliban and foreign soldiers – most notably the British – have suffered heavy casualties. Thousands upon thousands of Afghan civilians have been forced to flee the fighting.

Given the intensity of the combat, two men who live through it on a daily basis could be forgiven for feeling at least a little weary. Yet, if anything, Ghafar and Zahir Jan appeared more relaxed and determined than they were a year ago.

Speaking on the condition that the location of the interview would not be revealed, they came across as happy and eager to fight. For them, each death – no matter whose side it is on – means they are a step closer to bringing the conflict to an end.

“You know, the Taliban and the Americans are as different as fire and water. Maybe the water will kill the fire or the fire will kill the water, but one of these things has to happen,” Zahir Jan said …

Offhandedly, they said the United States deserves to be attacked on its own soil and suggested the Taliban could eventually send suicide bombers to the United States. They said they were “thousands times more confident” of victory in Afghanistan than they had been before, thanks largely to growing support from the population and improved weaponry.

“We have very advanced rockets. You can split them into three parts and carry them on donkeys. Then you just walk along and when you see a convoy of troops you can fix them together and fire them very quickly,” Zahir Jan said.

“If the foreigners did not have their planes, then within five days I guarantee we would be in the streets of Kabul.”

Analysis & Commentary

It has been said that the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan now includes a mixture of drug runners, criminals, warlords, and Taliban.  True, as we have noted in The Disaggregation of the Taliban.  But as we have also noted, wheat is replacing poppy throughout Afghanistan as the money crop, and nothing stops the Taliban from extortion of farmers over the safe transport of wheat.  In fact, nothing has stopped the Taliban from extortion of wireless phone companies in Afghanistan.  The problem is not wheat, wireless phone companies or poppy.  The problem is the Taliban.

Although widely known for corruption and helping only a little in the campaign against the Taliban, the Karzai government is not why NATO and U.S. forces are in Afghanistan.  There are many corrupt governments in the world, but only a few of them have Taliban.  Criminality, drugs, corruption, lack of infrastructure, and a host of other things have managed to divert attention off of the real problem in Afghanistan.

When reconciliation with the Sunni insurgency began in Anbar, Shiekh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha and his tribe had already begun to fight al Qaeda.  Over the course of the next two years the Sunni insurgency would lay down arms, put on police uniforms, and maintain security for the population while working alongside Americans.  In Fallujah in 2007, the Iraqi Police worked hard to emulate and impress the Marines, whom they almost worshiped.  The most recent reconciliation involves more than 500 such fighters in Sunni enclaves within mostly Shi’a Balad, Iraq, these fighters also agreeing to be tried in court for any crimes.

What’s the difference?  The Sunni fighters in Iraq didn’t fight for religious reasons.  The compelling reasons were political and financial.  Any reconciliation with rogue elements in Afghanistan must target warlords, criminals and other non-religiously motivated people.  Rather than these elements, NATO is choosing the only group which will not ever reconcile due to their belief system – the Taliban.

Just like Baitullah Mehsud of the Tehrik-i-Taliban who has recently said that he wants to “fight against Americans,” the Afghan Taliban commanders see that the West and their world view are unable to be reconciled, and they want attacks on American soil again.

Unlike the Pakistani Taliban who are overt with their views, the Afghan Taliban are playing NATO for fools.  “In the daytime we are farmers; at night we are Taliban.”  Even if violence had essentially disappeared from the scene in Afghanistan, leading to the redeployment of NATO forces home, the problem will not have gone away.  The radical ideology remains, and not just in the countryside.  Secret Taliban cells are spreading lessons of jihad in Kabul University.

There exists a once in a generation opportunity to defeat one of the most dangerous, violent and insidious forces on the planet, but for the sake of temporary peace it seems that some are willing to stand down from the fight, pretending that the intentions of the Taliban are sincere.  While this game is futile and pointless, the real problem is that it is affecting strategy and wasting valuable and irreplaceable time in the campaign.  Thus, we play the game at our own peril.

Report (from the New York Times)

United States marines pushed the Taliban out of this village and the surrounding district in southern Helmand Province so quickly in recent weeks that they called the operation a “catastrophic success.”

Yet, NATO troops had conducted similar operations here in 2006 and 2007, and the Taliban had returned soon after they left. The marines, drawing on lessons from Iraq, say they know what to do to keep the Taliban at bay if they are given the time.

“There is definitely someone thinking out there,” said Capt. John Moder, commander of Company C of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, speaking of the Taliban. “That’s why we need these people to be at least neutral to us,” he said, gesturing to the farmers who have been slowly filtering back to harvest their fields.

Originally sent to Garmser District on a three-day operation to open a road, the marines have been here a month and are likely to stay longer. The extension of the operation reflects the evolving tactics of the counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan, building on the knowledge accumulated in recent years in Anbar Province in Iraq.

The district of Garmser, a fertile valley along the Helmand River, had been under control of the Taliban and members of Al Qaeda for most of the last two years and much of it had become a war zone, as the Taliban traded fire with British troops based in the district center. One of the largest poppy-growing areas in the country, Garmser District has been an important infiltration route for the insurgents, sending weapons and reinforcements to the north and drug shipments to the south to the border with Pakistan.

Previous operations by NATO forces to clear the area of Taliban had yielded short-lived successes, as the Taliban have re-established control each time, Afghans from the area said. It is a strategy the insurgents have employed all over Afghanistan, using roadside and suicide bombs as well as executions to terrorize the people and undermine the authority of foreign forces and fledgling local governments.

In Garmser those with the means gave up and fled to the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. Interviewed there by telephone, they said they had been living as refugees for almost two years and were still afraid to return — and to be identified, for fear of retribution from the Taliban.

But Company C served in Anbar Province, once one of the most intractably violent areas of Iraq, which quieted last year under a new strategy of empowering local groups called Awakening Councils, which now provide security. The marines were confident they could put that experience to good use here.

Only when you win over a critical balance of the local population and empower them to stand up to the insurgents can you turn the situation around, several marines said.

First Lt. Mark Matzke led a platoon for nine months last year in the Anbar city of Ramadi, where he said he got to know every character in a small neighborhood, both the troublemakers and the power brokers. But it was only when he sneaked in after dark and listened to people’s grievances in private that he was able to work out a strategy for protecting them from the insurgents.

“Through listening to their grievances, you could figure out that the people did not like the insurgents,” he said. But their biggest fear was that the marines would pull out, he said, leaving them at the mercy of insurgents who would treat them as collaborators.

As trust was built up, the people began to side with the marines and started to tip them off about who the insurgents were and where to find them. “You just need to give them confidence,” he said.

In this village, only the poorest laborers and farmers have started filtering back, Lieutenant Matzke said, adding, “These people are completely broken.” They refused all assistance at first, he said, but after talking for a couple of hours they admitted they could use the help, but were afraid to accept it for fear of the Taliban.

The people were glad when the Taliban were driven away, the marines said, and that is a sentiment they need to nurture. “We need to convince the people we are here to help, and to exploit the fact that we can help,” Captain Moder said.

As a first step, the marines promised to provide a strong security cordon so those villagers who had fled could return without fear to rebuild their homes and reopen the bazaar.

When on patrol, the marines carry a small gadget the size of an old Polaroid camera that takes fingerprints, photos and an iris scan of people they meet. It is used to build a database of the residents so they can easily spot strangers, the marines say. The Afghans accepted the imposition without protest.

Observation on the ground, information from the populace and control of key commerce and transportation routes are all ways to prevent the Taliban from seeping back into the area, Col. Peter Petronzio, commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, said in an interview.

“You need physically to be there,” he said. “You need to continue to move about the population, let your presence be known, but do it in a way so that you are not smothering and overwhelming. You have got to let life go on.”

But the villagers remain scared, uncertain how long the marines will stay and who will follow in their wake.

“I don’t think I will go back until complete peace and security comes,” said one elder, who said he had heard his house had collapsed under bombardment. “This is not the first time we have suffered. Several times we have seen such operations against the Taliban, and after some time the forces leave the area and so the Taliban find a way to return.”

“If NATO really wants to bring peace and make us free from harm from the Taliban,” he said, “they must make a plan for a long-term stay, secure the border area, install security checkpoints along the border area, deploy more Afghan National Army to secure the towns and villages, and then the people will be able to help them with security.”

Analysis & Commentary

The statement about Anbar being quieted by empowering local groups is a bit of a dumbed down version of the Anbar campaign, and doesn’t do justice to the kinetic fight against both al Qaeda and the Sunni insurgency.  It also doesn’t do justice to the fight between the Sunni insurgency and al Qaeda even before being empowered by the U.S. (much later in the campaign).  Its continual repetition implies that all NATO has to do is have a few meetings with tribal elders and arm their sons, and the Taliban problem will suddently be over.  It is doltish.

The Sunnis in Anbar are stubborn people (according to Iraqis with whom we have spoken), and much more secular that the al Qaeda jihadists who flooded from across the globe to fight (Shiekh Abdul Sattar abu Risha was a chain smoker).  Al Qaeda’s brutality, U.S. kinetic operations, relationships built with tribal leaders (viz. Captain Travis Patriquin), a string of combat outposts in Ramadi, biometrics and gated communities in Fallujah, sand berms around Haditha, and a complex puzzle of other factors made up the campaign in Anbar.  The Anbar narrative is too complex to throw a few words at it in an article about Afghanistan.  If a journalist cannot draw this out in a single article, they s/he shouldn’t try.

Nonetheless, security does play a premier role in the discussion above, and in earlier reports about the Marines in Helmand it had been stated that the Marines were to continue through Afghanistan on a NATO command wish list of chores.  Apparently the idea of secure, hold and build has dawned on command and they are allowing the Marines to stay as they should.

It’s just not correct to say that the COIN tactics are evolving in Afghanistan.  U.S. Army units have been at combat outposts for quite a while, and the Marines are simply conducting well-rehearsed and finely-tuned COIN learned in the school of hard knocks in Anbar.  For the most part NATO forces are still conducting force protection at FOBs, with each country’s forces undermanned.  As for evolving tactics, there is no comprehensively agreed to strategy or set of tactics or even rules of engagement; there is merely an aggregate of disparate missions and strategies thrown together into a messy brew.

It is interesting that biometrics is being used – albeit on a small scale – in a tip of the hat to Operation Alljah.  Without biometric and census data the Marines won’t know who is who, and without the Marines, biometric data is useless.

The people have spoken to let us know what will be necessary to return en masse to their homes and rebuild society.  Security.  It is a theme we have discussed before, and shows once again that long term force projection is required.

Finally, it really is annoying to see ‘marines’ misspelled (a capital M should be used), and since the article is not discussing marine life in the sea and the spelling rules are fairly simple, it is profoundly poor that this kind of mistake continually makes it through journalists and editors.

Prior: Marines in Helmand

Seth G. Jones of RAND National Defense Research Institute has published Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.  It will required several assessments to analyze the entirety of the paper, and in lieu of attempting to assess the paper chronologically, we will address it thematically.  Several quotes will be supplied (mainly from Chapter 2 which is entitled Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare).  The last quote is from the recommendations section at the end of the paper.

RAND Study

One of the key challenges in waging effective counterinsurgency operations is understanding the variables that impact their success (or failure).  Most assessments of counterinsurgency operations tend to ignore or downplay the role of indigenous forces and mistakenly focus on how to improve the capabilities of outside forces to directly defeat insurgents. This might include revising the U.S. military’s organizationalstructure or increasing external resources (such as troops) to directly counterinsurgents. This approach assumes the recipe for a successful counterinsurgency is adapting the U.S. military’scapabilities so it can win the support of the local population and defeat insurgents. The problem with this approach is that it ignores or underestimates the most critical actor in a counterinsurgency campaign: the indigenous government and its security forces.

This mistake is common in the counterinsurgency literature. John Nagl argues, for example, that success in counterinsurgency operations is largely a function of an external military’s ability to adapt its organizational structure and strategy to win the support of the local population and directly defeat insurgents. But he largely ignores the role of the indigenous government and its security forces.

This focus on winning counterinsurgency campaigns by improving the capabilities of external actors has become conventional wisdom among numerous military officials and counterinsurgency experts. However, such a strategy is misplaced. While improving the U.S. military’sability to directly counter insurgents may be necessary to a successful counterinsurgency campaign, it is not sufficient. In particular, it underestimates the importance of indigenous forces: Most counterinsurgency campaigns are not won or lost by external forces, but by indigenous forces. The quality of indigenous forces and government has significantly impacted the outcome of past counterinsurgencies.

Indeed, there are dangers in focusing too heavily on a lead U.S. role and improving U.S. military capabilities to directly act against insurgents. First, U.S. forces are unlikely to remain for the duration of any counterinsurgency effort, at least as a major combatant force.  Insurgencies are usually of short duration only if the indigenous government collapses at an early stage. An analysis of all insurgencies since 1945 shows that successful counterinsurgency campaigns last for an average of 14 years, and unsuccessful ones last for an average of 11years. Many also end in a draw, with neither side winning. Insurgencies can also have long tails: Approximately 25 percent of insurgencies won by the government and 11 percent won by insurgents last more than 20 years.  Since indigenous forces eventually have to win the war on their own, they must develop the capacity to do so. If they do not develop this capacity, indigenous forces are likely to lose the war once international assistance ends.  Second, indigenous forces usually know the population and terrain better than external actors and are better able to gather intelligence. Third, a lead U.S. role may be interpreted by the population as an occupation, eliciting nationalist reactions that impede success.  Fourth, a lead indigenous role can provide a focus for national aspirations and show the population that they—and not foreign forces—control their destiny. Competent governments that can provide services to their population in a timely manner can best prevent and overcome insurgencies.

Recommendations section: Where possible, U.S. counterinsurgency forces should be kept to a minimum and supported with civil-affairs and psychological operations units.

Analysis & Commentary

Jones is obviously well-studied and presents the data clearly, and the citations above are all the more remarkable because of these facts.  Without even a careful reading of the text, Jones is calling for the small footprint model of counterinsurgency.

Jones presents data and analysis to support a number of self-evident truths, such as the need to stand up the country’s own counterinsurgency forces as U.S. forces stand down, the need for a government essentially without corruption, and so forth.  But the leap from these truths to the necessity for a small footprint is not obviously or logically a necessary one.

More to the point, it is remarkable that this analysis was written in 2008.  General Abizaid and his successors were under orders to train the Iraqi Security Forces, and while some forces were deployed in the field conducting regular counterinsurgency operations, many weren’t until the security plan.

The Marines didn’t pay much attention to things going on outside of the Anbar Province, having had that AO turned over to them in 2004.  After a halting start in Fallujah, al Fajr set the stage for things to come in the province.  To rehearse an old theme, the tribal turn against al Qaeda and the insurgency didn’t occur in a vacuum.  Not only did al Qaeda’s brutality aid the turning, Shiekh Abdul Abu Sattar Risha had smuggling lines completely cut by U.S. kinetic operations.  Al Qaeda had become brutal, but the U.S. was an impediment to the welfare of his tribe.  He chose to fight al Qaeda, and even after beginning this part of the awakening a U.S. tank was parked in his front yard to protect his home and family.  The Sunnis turned on al Qaeda and sided with the U.S. because it was advantageous to do so.

Force projection was the hallmark of the Marine campaign in Anbar, with constant contact with both the enemy and population.  The small footprint or minimal force projection model was not applied in Anbar.  Subsequently after implementation of the security plan in and around Baghdad, it is simply impossible to argue that the small footprint model was used by Petraeus.

In fact, the opposite is true.  If there is any legacy of the small footprint model it is that in part it led to the necessity for the surge and security plan.  The notion of standing up the Iraqi Army suffered in the wake of cultural differences (e.g., the foreign idea of NCOs) as well as porous borders and a transnational insurgency.  Without a heavier footprint than in the early phases of OIF, the institutions couldn’t stand up and become disentangled from corruption (and still haven’t completely).

Turning East to Operation Enduring Freedom, it is no secret that the campaign is under-resourced by a wide margin, as the retiring General McNeill has said so.  The strategy planned for the future of Afghanistan is to negotiate with the Taliban from a position of weakness rather than from a position of strength as was done with the Sunni insurgency in Anbar.  The desperation is obvious, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai while offering peace talks has said he would personally go and talk to the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar if he knew his whereabouts or “his phone number.”  This last point should be reconsidered for its power and pedagogical value.  Karzai is talking about making peace with (and thus legitimizing) the very forces which made safe haven for al Qaeda prior to 9/11.

The most recent success in Afghanistan, the Helmand Province, is a success because of force projection by U.S. Marines.  Security is the necessary precondition for standing up the institutions that Jones wants to rely upon.  As one tribal elder in Garmser said to the Marines after entering, “When you protect us, we will be able to protect you.”

This protection doesn’t come with the small footprint model of COIN.  The two most recent insurgencies in history, involving not only radicalized elements but also transnational engagement, are evidence that the large footprint model for COIN is a winner.  Seth Jones has made a number of salient observations concerning COIN in the RAND paper, but almost-failed-nation-states which are vulnerable to criminals and transnational insurgents require nontrivial force size and obvious force projection (such as was the case in Anbar).  Whatever good might come from Jones’ study, his paper, at least on this point, seems badly dated and out of context given the recent conduct of COIN in OIF and OEF.

Further reading:

International Herald Tribune, U.S. think tank: Pakistan helped train Taliban, gave info on U.S. troops

MSNBC, U.S. think tank: Pakistan officials help Taliban

The lobbying and the public relations campaign has been essentially completed, and the stage is set for a major shift in strategy in Afghanistan.  The teammates are Hamid Karzai – who has said that the West has bungled the war on the Taliban– and the British.  But the shift in strategy will not look anything like the surge or security plan for Iraq.  Rather, the British and Karzai are pushing for negotiations with the Taliban, and the British plans have been approved by the Cabinet.

It began with the British experiment with Musa Qala, and even though it went very badly, there has been no change in the long range plans.  Upon his recent visit to the U.S., Karzai made a stop at the New York Times to make sure that he communicated that he wanted the U.S. to stop arresting the Taliban and their sympathizers.  He has repeated this narrative within the last few days, and again made it clear what the real problem is with the campaign.  Western forces are to blame for rising violence in Afghanistan.

Karzai said in an interview on Indian television that the West risks losing peoples’ goodwill and that its forces should have done more to crack down on Taliban and al-Qaeda bases outside the country.

In the interview with CNBC TV 18 aired Monday, he didn’t directly mention bases in Pakistan, but his government has singled out that country in the past.

Karzai’s criticism — including his insistence that civilian casualties must stop — is important in light of his stated plan to stand for re-election next year. The president is often criticized in Afghanistan for being too close to the United States and Britain.

The president said Western forces did not focus on “sanctuaries of terrorists” despite his government’s warnings over the past five years.

“It was a serious neglect of that, in spite of our warning,” he said, adding that other former members of the Taliban who had given up arms were unfairly hunted down within Afghan borders.

“Some of the Taliban who have laid down their arms, who are living in the Afghan villages peacefully, who have accepted Afghanistan’s new order, they were chased, they were hunted for no reason, and they were forced to flee the country,” he said, according to Reuters.

The narrative is nonsensical, since the sanctuaries to which Karzai refers are the very places to which the Afghan Taliban flee for safe haven.  Karzai wants them targeted in Pakistan, but not in Afghanistan.  Nonetheless, the narrative is given additional weight by the British.  Once eager to get back into the “good war” in Afghanistan after the Basra disaster, the British are weary and reeling from the defections of high level generals to the civilian world.  Miliband turned up the rhetoric on the campaign, reiterating the tripe that there is no military solution to the problem, and the same notions were pushed by Des Browne, who not only endorsed talks with the Afghan Taliban, but also the negotiations with the Tehrik-i-Taliban in Pakistan.

The final act in this sorry play involves British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

As the deadliest year in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion in 2001 comes to a close, Gordon Brown is ready to talk to the Taliban in a major shift in strategy that is likely to cause consternation among hardliners in the White House.

Six years after British troops were first deployed to oust the Taliban regime, the prime minister believes the time has come to open a dialogue in the hope of moving from military action to consensus-building among the tribal leaders. Since January 1, more than 6,200 people have been killed in violence related to the insurgency, including 40 British soldiers. In total, 86 British troops have died. The latest casualty was Sergeant Lee Johnson, whose vehicle hit a mine before the fall of Taliban-held town of Musa Qala.

The Cabinet on Friday approved a three-pronged plan that Mr Brown will outline for security to be provided by Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) and the Afghan national army, followed by economic and political development in Afghanistan.

Pakistan defends its participation in the negotiations with the Pakistani Taliban, saying that they aren’t engaged in talks with terrorist, but rather, “peace-loving” people.  Karzai sees the Afghan Taliban as peace-loving too and unrelated to the violence, and has struck deals with some of the hard core commanders.  The Afghanis believes it’s Pakistan’s fault, and the Pakistanis believe it’s all Afghanistan’s fault.

The British are tired and want to”negotiate,” the Norwegians are engaged solely in force protection, and the Germans are paying $30,000 per month to warlords for protection.  Gates has not had yet seen fit to pull the rug from under NATO command and retake authority over the campaign, and before Petraeus even becomes fully engaged in CENTCOM, the plans to capitulate are in full swing with him lacking the organizational authority to do anything about it.

The U.S. Marines who won the Anbar Province have had significant initial success in the Helmand Province in turning back Taliban control.  But whether because of lack of forces or simple unwillingness, NATO is recalcitrant and won’t learn from the example.  The NATO strategy being pushed is not one that will simply coexist alongside the U.S. strategy, any more than this approach succeeded in Basra.  It is literally in competition with the U.S. approach, and will work against the goals of the campaign.  Operation Enduring Freedom is becoming a testimony to a squandered opportunity, and the campaign is in very bad trouble.  If the West has indeed squandered an opportunity to kill the Taliban, negotiating with them is not the answer.

David Ignatius gives us another glimpse into the Main Man in Iran’s Fight with the United States.

Let’s try for a moment to put ourselves in the mind of Brigadier General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. For it is the soft-spoken Soleimani, not Iran’s bombastic President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who plays a decisive role in his nation’s confrontation with the United States.

Soleimani represents the sharp point of the Iranian spear. He is responsible for Iran’s covert activities in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan and other battlegrounds. He oversees the regime’s relations with its militant proxies, Hizbullah and Hamas. His elite, secretive wing of the Revolutionary Guard is identified as a terrorist organization by the Bush administration, but he is also Iran’s leading strategist on foreign policy. He reports personally to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his budget (mostly in cash) comes directly from the supreme leader’s office.

Soleimani is said to be confident about Iran’s rising power in the region, according to an Arab official who met recently with him. He sees an America that is weakened by the war in Iraq but still potent. He has told visitors that United States’ and Iran’s goals in Iraq are similar, despite the rhetoric of confrontation. But he has expressed no interest in direct, high-level talks. The Quds Force commander prefers to run out the clock on the Bush administration, hoping that the next administration will be more favorable to Iran’s interests.

“The level of confidence of these [Quds Force] guys is that they are it, and everything else is marginal,” says the Arab who meets regularly with Soleimani.

Soleimani has been adept at turning up the heat in Iraq, then lowering the temperature when it suits Iran’s interest. A good example was the Basra campaign in March when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki attacked the Mehdi Army, the Shiite militia headed by Muqtada al-Sadr. Though the Iranians had been backing Sadr, they made a quick switch to supporting Maliki. It was Soleimani himself who brokered the cease-fire that restored calm in Basra.

The simultaneous support for Maliki and Sadr is characteristic of Soleimani, according to people who know him well. Rather than pick a single ally, as Americans tend to do, he will choose at least two. By riding several horses at once, he maximizes Iran’s opportunities and reduces its risks.

Soleimani’s opportunism was evident during the heavy shelling of the Green Zone in March. The Iranians had supplied their Mehdi Army allies in Sadr City with very powerful 240 mm rockets and mortars, and they had bracketed their targets in the Green Zone so precisely that US casualties were rising sharply.

After a particularly heavy day of shelling, Genral (sic) David Petraeus sent Soleimani a message – “Stop shooting at the Green Zone.” The message was conveyed verbally by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. The Quds Force commander didn’t react immediately. But the heavy mortar fire on the Green Zone soon tapered off. Iran had flexed its muscles and demonstrated America’s vulnerability, and then opted for a tactical retreat.

The only compromise between full scale conventional war with Iran and abject surrender to Iraninan hegemony is selective targeting and fomenting an insurgency inside of Iran and its security apparatus (Qassem Suleimani himself should be targeted, and he should know that he is is a marked man).  As for the words from General David Petraeus to General Qassem Suleimani, they might have been more effective had they carried threats.

Iran has mastered the art of small scale, covert intelligence warfare.  The U.S. will master the art as well if we are to be successful in Iraq and throughout the larger region.  Time is short.

Prior: Is Iran the Biggest Problem is Iraq?

The sentiment where one opposes the war but supports the troops has evolved into mocking the troops regardless of any war.  The Onion (famous for satirical or fake news) released a report entitled Love Letters from U.S. Troops Increasingly Gruesome.  The Captain’s Journal hates to bring any more attention to this sophomoric tripe (it really is very poorly done and inept), but its real value might very well be the instruction it gives us about the author in contrast with its subject.

According to a Pentagon report leaked to the press Monday, love letters written by U.S. troops have nearly tripled in their use of disturbing language, graphic imagery, and horrific themes since the start of the war.

The report, which studied 600 romantic notes sent over a period of two years, found a significant increase in terrifying descriptions of violence and gore, while references to beautiful flowers, singing bluebirds, and the infinite, undulating sea were seen to decrease by 93 percent.

“Not only are U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq less likely to compare their lover’s cheeks to a blushing red rose,” the report read in part, “but most are now three times more likely to equate that same burning desire to the ‘smoldering flesh of a dead Iraqi insurgent,’ and almost 10 times more likely to compare sudden bursts of passion to a ‘crowded marketplace explosion.'”

According to detailed analysis of the letters, the longer a U.S. soldier had been stationed in Iraq the more macabre the overall tone of his correspondence became. Troops who had been fighting for less than a year lapsed into frightening allegory only 15 percent of the time, while those who had been serving between two and three years described their affection for loved ones back home as more vibrant and alive than any of the children in the village of Basra.

Troops stationed in Iraq for four years or longer composed their letters entirely in blood.

“The more often U.S. soldiers are confronted with images of carnage, the more these elements become present in their subconscious and, ultimately, in their writing,” said Dr. Kendra Allen, a behavioral psychologist who reviewed the Pentagon’s findings. “This is precisely why we see so many passages like, ‘Darling, I miss the way your bright green eyes always stayed inside your skull’ and ‘Honey, how I dream of your soft, supple arms—both of them, still attached as ever, to the rest of your body.'”

Allen went on to say that many of the harrowing details found in the love letters were linked to specific events in Iraq. A bloody clash with Islamic extremists in late March resulted in more than 40 handwritten notes from a single battalion, all of which contained some version of the message “My love for you spills out of me like my lower intestine, my gallbladder, and my spleen.”

“Getting love letters from my husband used to be my favorite part of the week. But these days, they’re almost impossible to get through,” said Sheila Miller, whose husband, Michael, has been in Iraq since 2004. “Yes, it’s still flattering to be told that you’re as beautiful as a syringe full of morphine, or that you’re as much a part of his being as the shrapnel near his spine. But I’m really starting to worry about him.”

“My husband has never really been the romantic type, but even this is strange for him,” said Margaret Baker, the wife of Sgt. Daniel Baker. “How am I supposed to react to hearing that my name is the sweetest sound in a world otherwise filled with desperate cries of anguish? I made the mistake of showing [daughter] Gracie the birthday card her father sent her from Tikrit and she hasn’t spoken for a month.”

That’s enough for the reader to get the basic picture.  It’s a sad testimony to a narcissistic generation which has no value system except self worship.  But self worship inevitably leads to the mocking and denigration of others.  This mockery of the troops could very well have been written about World War II veterans and the horror they witnessed, or any other warrior in any other war.  It has nothing to do with the campaign for Iraq or Afghanistan.  It doesn’t even have to do with whether there can be good wars.

The authors are engaged in heartless, remorseless cruelty in the mocking of the pain and sacrifice of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines on their behalf.  To be able to benefit from the pain of others, and then to mock their benefactors, is a sadistic skill that only the darkest of souls is able to master.  The warriors who fight for America, however, stand in marked contrast to this.  The physical pain, the deprivation, the loneliness and time away from family all testify to the commitment and indomitable spirit of the American warrior.

On the one hand, you have the American warrior who is committed to give his very life if necessary for our protection and freedom, while still others will live out the balance of their lives with PTSD, traumatic brain injury or lost limbs.  On the other hand you have those who would mock this commitment and dedication. The contrast couldn’t be more stark.  America has a future only to the extent that the former rather than the later constitutes her soul.

Perhaps we’ve been a little too hard core with the military posts.  We’ll get back to war on Monday. Enjoy the weekend with the greatest rock / blues guitarist ever.  Our hard core readers will understand.  You demand red meat, here it is.