In recently released article Why are we in the Helmand Province? I a argued for the legitimacy of the Marines’ presence in the Helmand Province, contra the pronouncements of the population-centric counterinsurgency proponents who wish to deploy U.S. troops to population centers such as Kabul, Kandahar, Herat and Jalalabad.  We must go where the insurgents recruit, train, raise their largesse and take safe haven.

Greyhawk at the Mudville Gazette later discussed the fact that we mustn’t let Kandahar become like the cities in Anbar, Iraq, controlled by the insurgents, before we take action (to which I responded on one issue raised by Greyhawk in Insufficient Numbers of Marines).  But the fall of Kandahar is proceeding apace, and my arguments for deploying U.S. Marines in the Helmand Province are not to be construed as arguments against deploying them in Kandahar, as sufficient numbers of Marines are available to accomplish both.

Tyler Hicks is reporting from Kandahar, and the streets are anything but secure and bustling with trade.

Tyler Hicks has three rules when photographing in a dangerous, unstable city like Kandahar, Afghanistan. Keep moving, watch the crowd and always listen to your translator and driver.

“It doesn’t matter where you are in the city — there’s always a possibility that you’re moments away from being killed,” said Mr. Hicks, 40, who has been working in Afghanistan for The New York Times since 2001. “So you shave off risk anywhere you can. It’s that bad.”

Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan, was the Taliban’s headquarters from the mid-1990s until its overthrow in 2001. Today, Islamic militants are once again operating inside the city, planting roadside bombs, almost daily, and carrying out a number of suicide attacks.

Mr. Hicks prefers working early in the morning when there are fewer people on the street, dressed in traditional clothing and traveling in a car. He often photographs from the window or limits his time on the street to just minutes, but is still able to create images with a startling intimate feel.

“Working is very difficult because no matter how much you try to fit in, once you get out of the car with your cameras, you’re identified and faced with a lot of unfriendly stares,” Mr. Hicks said.

Kandahar doesn’t see or interact with many foreign troops.  In fact, Michael Yon also reports from Kandahar on just what happens with the troops based around Kandahar.

Slowly, surely, the city is being strangled.  Signaling the depth of our commitment, security forces are thinner in Kandahar than the Himalayan air.  During the days and evenings, there were the sounds of occasional bombs—some caused by suicide attackers, and others by firefights.  The windows in my room had been blown out recently and now were replaced.  We came here to kill our enemies, but today we want to make a country from scratch …

An American convoy of MRAPs approached from the front and a soldier in the lead vehicle shot a pen-flare, causing everyone to pull off the road.  The convoys are more menacing from the outside and in fact I kept the camera down and this is exactly why Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is concerned about adding too many troops.  Can’t argue with his reasoning; convoys and troops truly are menacing despite that U.S. and British soldiers are very disciplined.  It must look far worse to Afghans.  Most Afghans never talk with foreign soldiers and those who do normally only see us in passing.  In fact, most soldiers never leave base.  Our forces at KAF (Kandahar Airfield) have a base so large that this commercial jet is about to land there after flying dangerously over this unsecured road.

It isn’t the number of troops that’s the problem, it’s what they are doing.  More correctly, the number of troops is the problem in that there aren’t enough of them to secure Afghanistan, but the ones who are there are doing the wrong things.  So there are two large  problems, and both need to be fixed in order to be successful.

Kandahar is badly in need of two or three U.S. Marine Regimental Combat Teams with Air Task Force support.  There is a need for Army mechanized troops – perhaps in other parts of Afghanistan, but the debate between mechanized and foot-borne (or dismounted) soldiering is more than merely academic.  Kandahar badly needs to see troops.  Afghans in Kandahar need aggressive policing.  They need to speak with troops, observe them patrol every day, and feel the protection afforded by Marines with rifles who will fire them at the Taliban.  They need to see the Afghan National Police teamed up with the Marines and interacting with the people rather than tearing out through the city aboard trucks like Yon observed.

Kandahar needs to be a dismounted campaign.  Living on large mega-bases and patrolling in vehicles just won’t do.  No protection from the Taliban is afforded by Soldiers in MRAPs, and no policing and population control can be conducted from the seat of a vehicle, any more than intelligence can be gleaned from mounted patrols.  Kandahar is slowly falling to the Taliban, and the only alternative to ceding this human and physical terrain to the enemy is aggressive, large scale troop presence conducting dismounted patrols.  But for the patrols to be effective, General McChrystal’s tactical directive limiting fires in certain situations must be rescinded.  The Marines and smart and adaptable, and don’t need McChrystal’s advice, as they have been doing and winning counterinsurgencies longer than has McChrystal.  The good general is trying to teach his granny to suck eggs.

Lt. Col. Christian Cabannis fully adheres to and advocates the doctrines of population-centric counterinsurgency.

Christian Cabannis met a social worker before deploying to Afghanistan. Not for his own wellbeing, but to better understand the task at hand. It was his mother’s idea.

Her son is a lieutenant colonel in the US marines and the commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion 8th Marine Regiment.

He is in charge of perhaps the most dangerous part of Afghanistan and also one of the poorest. So his mother wanted him to better understand what it is that motivates the poor and how to win their support.

He describes this mission as “armed social work”; providing hope for the needy and defence against the Taliban …

It is pure, modern counter-insurgency strategy (Coin) and what American and British generals believe is the key to winning this war. Lt Col Cabannis says that until recently the mission lacked the right focus.

Three years ago, Garmsir market was shot up and abandoned; the scene of pitched battles between British forces and the Taliban. But today UK and US troops have driven them away from the town and Garmsir is held up as a success story.

In the past three months, US marines have built on British efforts to establish meaningful local government …

He believes that many insurgents can be persuaded to put down their weapons and re-join society and there are discussions under way as to how to achieve this.

The marines’ success is in part due to sheer size; having the force strength to push into new areas, to stay there and to engage in what they call “consent-winning activities” on a much larger scale than Britain has been able to.

There is much left out of this account of the battle for Garmsir, Afghanistan.  The facts left out of the account actually causes this account to skew the interpretation and may change the context the reader places around the events, thus affecting the import of the story.

The British were unable to take and hold Garmsir, and so in 2008 the U.S. Marines 24th MEU initiated large scale operations to take it from the Taliban.  The operations relied on heavy kinetics, but was welcomed by the people of Garmsir.  The drive against the Taliban continued in such heavy military operations that the fire fights were at times described as full bore reloading by the Marines.  As if speaking to population-centric counterinsurgency experts who believe that they must win the population by nonkinetic means, town elder Abdul Nabi told the Marines “We are grateful for the security.  We don’t need your help, just security.”  The 24th MEU killed some 400 Taliban during their deployment.

In 2008 the Marines were doing the right things – they certainly didn’t lack focus.  But the 24th MEU had to leave, and they turned over to the British, who once again couldn’t hold the terrain, either physical or human.  Thus more U.S. Marine Corps operations had to be initiated in the Helmand Province in 2009.

Accompanying the fantasy-narrative that the lack of focus in the past has given way to a brilliant new strategy to win Afghanistan is a robust defense of the rules of engagement by Lt. Col. Cabannis.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

This is a big change since the spring. All U.S. forces in Afghanistan are now being told to protect civilians even if the enemy gets away. Over the last eight years, Afghans have been outraged by civilian deaths and it’s a big reason the U.S. is not winning.

“Killing a 1000 Taliban is great but if I kill two civilians in the process, it’s a loss,” Lt. Col. Cabaniss said.

Asked how many enemies have been killed so far, Cabaniss said, “I have no idea and it’s really irrelevant.”

“Body counts not something that you track?” Pelley asked.

“It doesn’t tell me that I’m being successful. It doesn’t tell me that at all. The number of tips that I receive from the local population about IED’s in the area, Taliban in the area, that is a measure of effectiveness,” Cabaniss explained.

This is an important exchange, and we should spend some time dissecting and analyzing it.  The reason the U.S. is not winning is force projection, or lack thereof.  There aren’t enough troops, as we saw with the 2008 campaign for Garmsir in the Helmand Province.  The ANP and ANA cannot possibly hold the terrain once it has been taken and won’t be ready for quite some time.  In fact, there is some indication that the locals themselves are a bit disgusted by the ROE.

But even for population-centric counterinsurgency advocates, this exchange is full of nonsense.  To be sure, the population may be one means of marginalizing the insurgents, getting intelligence on them, and then conducting intelligence-driven raids, killing or capturing them.  This was done en masse in Iraq, especially in 2007.  But in the interview Cabannis makes a leap from an enabling feature of counterinsurgency to the end or purpose of it.

If a Province has 1000 Taliban and the U.S. Marines kill them all, and along with them the Marines inadvertently kill two noncombatants, it’s preposterous to suggest that this is a loss.  This suggestion is tantamount to saying that for every noncombatant we kill greater than five hundred pop up in his place.

Further, why did Cabannis use the values of 1000 and 2?  Would it have been acceptable to have killed a single noncombatant if we had killed 1000 Taliban?  If so, is he suggesting that the ratio of generation to kill rate of insurgents is greater than 500: 1 but less than 1000:1?  Or perhaps if these suggestions sound a bit pedantic, it’s more likely that he is simply using theatrics and hyperbole to make a point.  But if one has to use theatrics, the point itself suffers from lack of credibility.

Finally, why is killing Taliban great?  If it’s great because it assures the population that they are protected, then we should endeavor to do more of it.  Killing noncombatants is never a good thing, but giving the insurgents safe haven amongst the domiciles of villages sends the opposite message than we intend.  It gives them operating space, and it tells the villagers that we won’t pursue the insurgents on their own terrain, and thus there is no protection from them once they come into your homes and villages.  The very time you need the protection is precisely the time we will abandon you to the enemy.

By now it’s old news that Obama has hearted the Taliban.

President Obama is prepared to accept some Taleban involvement in Afghanistan’s political future and is unlikely to favour a large influx of new American troops being demanded by his ground commander, a senior official said last night.

Mr Obama appears to have been swayed in recent days by arguments from some advisers, led by Vice-President Joe Biden, that the Taleban do not pose a direct threat to the US and that there should be greater focus on tackling al-Qaeda inside Pakistan.

Mr Obama’s developing strategy on the Taleban will “not tolerate their return to power”, the senior official said. However, the US would only fight to keep the Taleban from retaking control of the central government — something the official said it is now far from capable of — and from giving renewed sanctuary to al-Qaeda.

Bowing to the reality that the fundamentalist movement is too ingrained in national culture, the Administration is prepared, as it has been for some time, to accept some Taleban role in parts of Afghanistan, the official said.

That could mean paving the way for insurgents willing to renounce violence to participate in a central government, and even ceding some regions of the country to the Taleban.

Mr Obama, the official said, is now inclined to send only as many more troops to Afghanistan as are needed to keep al-Qaeda at bay. Downing Street said that the US President had discussed Afghanistan with Gordon Brown yesterday during a 40-minute video conference call.

Sending far fewer troops than the 40,000 being demanded by General Stanley McChrystal would mean that Mr Obama is willing to ignore the wishes of his ground commander.

General McChrystal, along with the US military’s other top officials, insist that only a classic, well-resourced counter-insurgency strategy has a chance of staving off defeat in Afghanistan. Losing the war, they further argue, would provide al-Qaeda with new safe havens from which to mount attacks on the US and elsewhere.

After two days of meetings in the White House Situation Room with his war Cabinet, Mr Obama, according to the official, kept returning to one central question: who is our adversary?

The answer was, repeatedly, al-Qaeda, with advisers arguing that the terror network was distinct from the Taleban and that the US military was fighting the Taleban even though it posed no direct threat to America.

Ah.  And there is the crux of the issue, isn’t it?  An unstated assumption, it is.  The Taliban pose no direct threat to America, or in other words, they won’t harbor al Qaeda in the future.  They aren’t globalists, and they won’t befriend those who would be globalists or who would participate in the transnational insurgency they call jihad.

Well, I have argued that the burden of proof is on those who claim that the Taliban are no threat at all since they have proven otherwise in their history.  I have further argued that their claims to being innocuous are dubious given their previous devotion to AQ and their recent statements.

But putting that issue aside for a moment, there is something very troubling that stands out in this report.  The administration has elsewhere argued that AQ is primarily (or completely) in Pakistan and is preparing to focus major assets and attention on the Pakistani effort at routing AQ.  They have now signed on to the notion that the Taliban won’t harbor AQ and are even prepared to offer them a place in the seat of government.

Yet instead of sending McChrystal his requested troops for the campaign, they are preparing to send only those troops needed to “keep AQ at bay.”  Keep them at bay where?  In Afghanistan?  But we’ve signed on to the notion that the Taliban will route them from Afghanistan, not harbor them.  If this is true, then not only will no more troops be needed, the ones currently there can come home.  The Taliban can combine with the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police to do our work for us.

Alas, it is such simple logic, and it’s sad that the administration couldn’t see through the greatest weakness of its own argument.  They don’t even believe it.

Here at The Captain’s Journal, in keeping with the best coverage and clearinghouse of information on the Marines in Now Zad, here is a fairly recently posted video.  I recognize it to be some new spliced in with some previous video.  God bless the Marines in Now Zad.  Thanks to Lance Corporal Mckellips for editing and posting the video.

Amid robust public debate concerning counterinsurgency and whether it works – and if so, what brand works – two successful counterinsurgency campaigns may be briefly studied to ascertain the common elements.  At the recommendation of Professor Gian Gentile I have studied a paper by Karl Hack entitled “The Malayan Emergency as Counter-Insurgency Paradigm,” The Journal of Strategic Studies Vol. 32, No. 3, 383-414, June 2009.  Hack argues (quite persuasively) that during the Malayan emergency (1948 – 1960, repeatedly cited for COIN examples) Britain applied distinct elements to different phases of the campaign, with the notion of winning hearts and minds coming after a phase of aggressive patrols, population control, etc.  It is naive, argues Hack, to believe that the blend of policies found at the optimization phase will work at the outset of the conflict.  This is important to remember as we ramp up reconstruction teams for Afghanistan in unsecured areas.

The next successful example is the campaign for Anbar.  The much heralded tribal awakening (lead by Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha) unique to Ramadi followed on the heels of significant kinetics to shut down the smuggling lines of Sheik Risha and even kill his tribal members in noteworthy gunfights.  In Haditha it required sand berms surrounding the city (to keep fighters from infiltrating from Syria) along with a police strong man, Deputy Commander Lt. Col. Muhada Mahzir.  In Al Qaim it required heavy kinetics by the U.S. Marines followed on by a police chief strong man named Abu Ahmed.  In Fallujah it required heavy kinetics by the U.S. Marines followed on by biometrics, aggressive policing and patrols, gated communities, payment to the Sons of Iraq, and aggressive Iraqi police (and this in 2007 following even heavier kinetics during al Fajr in 2004).

Creation of utopia or comprehensive state-building wasn’t in the stable of features brought to bear on either campaign discussed above, and yet they were more than marginally successful.  But creation of the circumstances necessary for population control wasn’t quick or easy, and there are no magical formulae to incant in order to effect these conditions.  That’s why Gentile has argued that the center of gravity may not be the population, and it must be discovered by the forces involved in the conflict.  I have gone further and argued that a campaign may not (and in many cases probably doesn’t) have a center of gravity, necessitating multiple lines of effort.

In all cases of successful counterinsurgency there have been enough troops (and the necessary tactics) to effect population control, and thus the idea of small units in forbidding human and physical terrain such as Wanat and Kamdesh are a profoundly bad idea, leading in the end to dead U.S. troops and ruined national reputation before the population we wish to control.

Andy McCarthy argues that McChrystal should be granted his troops for the campaign in Afghanistan (while also strangely arguing that the strategy isn’t clear – why would we sacrifice troops if the strategy isn’t clear?), and then later argues against the practice of counterinsurgency.  More correctly, he is arguing against the practice of state building and population-centric counterinsurgency.  The opposing view is expressed by Joshua Foust when he expresses doubt about the fact that the Marines can successfully occupy Garmsir but haven’t brought enough ANA and ANP forces or good Afghan governance with them for any kind of staying power.  The Marines “thought” they had it right each time they swept through Garmsir.

But the facts are suitable to another narrative.  The British could never hold Garmsir, which is why the U.S. Marine Corps 24th MEU was deployed there in 2008.  They subsequently turned over to the British, who then could not hold the terrain.  Hence, Operation Khanjar was necessary to once again retake Garmsir.  The problem is not that the basic schema was wrong.  The problem is that there have never been enough troops implementing the right tactics to hold the terrain once it has been taken.  The 24th MEU had to leave.  More U.S. Marines should have been deployed because creating good governance and population control – and killing the enemy – don’t happen overnight (as if we can wave a magic wand and deploy good governors and policemen).

McCarthy is right in that creating a utopia is neither a possibility nor a necessity in Afghanistan, but wrong in the implicit presupposition that counterinsurgency done right cannot work.  Foust is right in that there needs to be follow-on stability, but as we have pointed out the ANA and ANP cannot now provide that security and population control.  We have much less with which to work in Afghanistan than we did in Iraq.  That’s why General Petraeus said that of the “long war,” Afghanistan would be the longest campaign.

Poverty doesn’t create radical Islamic insurgencies, since Bangladesh is among the most impoverished countries on earth but doesn’t suffer from the transnational actors that afflict Pakistan and Afghanistan.  Raising Afghanistan from its impoverishment to a nation of relative wealth may be an impossible task, but may be unnecessary (contra the population-centric COIN advocates).  The Taliban continue their propaganda campaign, lately by telling us effectively that they won’t allow al Qaeda back in (or at least that they have no global aspirations).  This is a dubious claim given the mutual admiration, respect and even love between UBL and Mullah Omar. Hakimullah Mehsud, new head of Pakistan’s Tehrik-i-Taliban (and who may be much worse than the deceased Baitullah Mehsud), has said that the relationship between al Qaeda and the TTP is one of love and affection.

As for Garmsir, there are fighters that simply must be killed.

CAMP DELHI, Afghanistan, Oct 3 (Reuters) – On the frontline of Washington’s counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, intelligence officer Hajji Mir Hamzai stands before a map and tells a young Marine where the Taliban are next likely to strike.

“I know here and here, I have heard they want to place bombs,” Hamzai, an Afghan who works for the National Directorate of Security points to a wall and tells Captain Trevor Hunt through a translator.

Hunt wants to know if any of the Taliban in Garmsir district can be turned into allies.

“All Taliban are the same,” said Hamzai, whose three brothers were killed in two separate suicide attacks by the Taliban.

“There is another type which is also called Taliban. They are simple. They are not politicians, they are just locals … But the ones that fight, the only way is to kill them,” said Hamzai, who uses a network of undercover agents to gather information.

As there is in every insurgency, there are locals who will put away their weapons when they learn that the costs are too high to continue – but the corollary is that until they are persuaded of this fact they will not put away their weapons.  But there is a hard core element that must be killed.  This requires troops, as does long term securing and controlling the population.

We needn’t create a utopia, any more than we need to impose Western-style democracy.  The religious and social underpinnings aren’t even in place to support such framework.  But we must kill the globalists and we must control the population until such time as a reliable security apparatus is prepared to fill in behind us once we leave.  This will be a long-duration effort.  At one and the same time, this is the maximum and minimum we can hope to accomplish in this campaign.  We don’t have the national resources or staying power to do more, but if we do less we will likely suffer having to repeat Operation Enduring Freedom because of the mistakes made the first time around.  This is the nexus which defines success.

Following up on our coverage and commenting on recent attacks in Nuristan, Afghanistan, and the consequent deaths of eight U.S. Soldiers, ABC News has an interesting account.

The remote base in northern Afghanistan where eight U.S. soldiers were killed this weekend in a deadly battle was well-known inside the military as extremely vulnerable to attack since the day it opened in 2006, according to U.S. soldiers and government officials familiar with the area.

When a reporter visited the base a few months after it opened, soldiers stationed in Kamdesh complained the base’s location low in a valley made most missions in the area difficult.

“We’re primarily sitting ducks,” said one soldier at the time.

Known as Camp Keating, the outpost was “not meant for engagements,” said one senior State Department official assigned to Afghanistan, and brings “a sad and terrible conclusion” to a three-year effort to secure roads and connect the Nuristan province to the central government in Kabul …

The base, located less than 10 miles from the Pakistan border and nestled in the Hindu Kush mountains, was attacked almost every day for the first two months it was opened, hit by a constant stream of rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire.

By the third or fourth month of the base’s existence, resupply had been limited to nighttime helicopter flights because the daytime left helicopters and road convoys too exposed to insurgent attacks. That remained true through the weekend.

The base had several near-misses with enemy fire over the years. In 2006, all daytime helicopter flights landing at the valley floor were cancelled when an American Blackhawk was nearly hit with an incoming rocket as it was taking off. After the incident, helicopters were banned from landing anywhere but an observation post some three hours’ walk above the base on a nearby ridgeline. Even then, helicopters filled with troops or equipment were rushed during offloading, as pilots were keen to take off before drawing hostile fire.

And like many other remote and rural parts of Afghanistan, the local population had begun souring on the American presence after airstrikes had hit civilians in the neighboring villages.

The initial military goal was to establish the base as a one of 13 Provincial Reconstruction Teams set up throughout Afghanistan to help with reconstruction projects, civil affairs and basic safety for the local population. Within a year, the PRT had been moved to a safer, more hospitable base in the western section of the province.

Camp Keating, along with two other outposts near the border, was then intended to help patrol and oversee the stretch of the Pakistan border. U.S. officials were concerned that the nearby mountain passes were being used by militants to infiltrate Afghanistan and set up for attacks.

American officials were often divided over whether the U.S. effort in the mountainous region could be sustained.

According to an American who has consulted with U.S. forces on their deployment into Nuristan, the effort in the north can only be seen as a failure.

“What have we done there in the last three, four years,” he said. “We didn’t gain anything. We weren’t able to open the road up or make the area secure.

Despite the inherent physical vulnerabilities of Camp Keating, until this weekend, the base had suffered no casualties from hostile fire. The base itself was named after Lieutenant Benjamin Keating, who was killed in vehicle accident nearby in Nov. 2006.

But on Saturday, a force of as many as 300 insurgents attacked the vulnerable base in what the military has termed a “complex” attack that began in a neighboring village mosque. According to an Afghan translator for American forces in Nuristan, the village mosque was used to store the weapons and ammunition used in the attack. The rules of engagement generally prevent U.S. forces from searching or attacking Afghan mosques.

According to the Afghan translator, most of the insurgents were local. Eastern Nuristan has long been filled by the insurgent group led by former mujahedeen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, called Hezb-e-Islami. U.S. officials believe that Hekmatyar is hiding in Pakistan, and helps coordinate insurgent attacks throughout eastern Afghanistan.

One U.S. military official told ABC News that they believe the insurgents started a fire as they began to attack. “They burned the base down,” said the official.

The smoke from the fire initially limited the air support U.S. soldiers requested, according to a military official. The fighting lasted “throughout the day” as there were signs that the insurgents were able to breach the base before being “repelled.” As insurgents fired from three or four different locations above the base, they also maneuvered and over took one of the observation posts on higher ground, taking out a post meant to protect Camp Keating from enemy fire.

The outpost at its peak was home to roughly 100 U.S. soldiers and a few dozen Afghans from both the national army and police force. According to reports, the base was down to half that size when the attack came over the weekend.

Patrols in the neighboring villages and mountaintops were often limited by the lack of U.S. forces, and forced commanding officers to stay on base for fear of being over-run while on patrol.

“American officials were often divided over whether the U.S. effort in the mountainous region could be sustained.”  This was wasted effort on a juvenile disagreement, and they should have been reading The Captain’s Journal.  The answer was and remains simple.  Just as we have noted in our analysis of the Battle of Wanat, this has all of the markings of lack of force projection: inability to go on patrol for fear of being overrun, lack of logistics because of the danger to helicopters, no roads open to NATO traffic, bad location regarding the terrain because of lack of better choices, inability to connect with the population because of the necessity to focus on survival, and massing of enemy forces to near half-Battalion size.

From Jelawur, Afghanistan there is a similar account concerning lack of forces from a Stryker Battalion.

So far, the Army mission has been an uneasy mix of trying to woo elders with offers of generators, roads and other improvements while fighting a nasty war with an often-unseen enemy.

Bravo Company arrived in Afghanistan with 24 Strykers, the first of the eight-wheeled combat vehicles outfitted with high-tech communications and surveillance gear to arrive in Afghanistan. A third of the vehicles are now out of service due to bomb attacks or maintenance …

The Taliban presence is strong enough in some areas that children are afraid to go to school.

“If we send our children to school during the day, then the Taliban will come kill the parents at night,” said one elder in a meeting with Bravo Company soldiers in the village of Adirah.

The company had 152 soldiers when it arrived, more than a dozen short of its authorized strength. Since then, some platoons have been depleted by injuries.

“I don’t have enough troops for everything they want me to do here,” said Capt. Jamie Pope, the company commander …

The problems aren’t as severe as they are in Nuristan, but lack of forces is crippling the counterinsurgency effort all over Afghanistan.  Protecting the population as a strategy is an absurd pipe dream without the necessary forces in places to do the work.  Force projection is a necessary precondition for the other aspects of counterinsurgency.  Counterinsurgency requires troops.

CBS News has come into possession of video taken before and after the Battle of Wanat that in my opinion adds a significant amount to our understanding of the physical circumstances and surrounding terrain of the outpost.  It also contains an interview with Sergeant David Dzwik and David Brostrom, Jonathan Brostrom’s father.

David Brostrom cogently questions the tactics (i.e., he questions the heavy kinetics as does the Cubbison report), but I seriously doubt whether he is correct in saying that “you just lost that village.”  Protecting the population meant heavy kinetics early on in the campaign for Anbar (and even later in 2007), and it certainly meant having more troops than they had at Wanat.

In fact, this sad story is a testimony to silly, religiously-held counterinsurgency doctrine and what it can mean to a campaign.  The notion that deploying a platoon of Soldiers amongst hundreds of Taliban will invite anything other than heavy kinetics is absurd.  It certainly won’t invite the confidence of the population.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Prior: Battle of Wanat category

Jules Crittenden notes that General McChrystal’s speech to London’s Institute for Strategic Studies caused a disturbance in the administration, especially because of McChrystal’s categorical rejection of the small footprint counter-terrorism model (advocated by Senator Kerry and VP Joseph Biden), saying that it would lead to Afghanistan becoming Chaos-istan (also see NYT).

Obama is said to be angry with McChrystal, and the never-serious National Security Adviser Jim Jones responded to McChrystal by saying that it’s better for military advice to come up through the chain of command.  Secretary of Defense Gates said he would salute and carry out whatever orders Obama gives.  Of course … he must do so or resign.

But there is something else in the wind concerning McChrystal and Obama having nothing to do with McChrystal.  Spencer Ackerman attempts to align McChrystal with Obama’s strategic vision (h/t Greyhawk), but he’s stretching and embellishing the case.  McChrystal has now gone on record basically saying that the small footprint model is stupid and won’t work, no matter how long Obama’s review takes.

A more emotional reaction comes from the Huffington Post, where they believe that McChrystal’s speech is an assault on the chain of command and the constitution (and the sky is falling and the world is coming to an end tomorrow).  On the other side of the isle, a bellicose reaction comes from Mackubin Thomas Owens at NRO’s Corner.  The reactions range from attempting to align McChrystal’s vision with Obama’s to almost-horror, even among ostensibly conservative commentators, that McChrystal would have “circumvented” the chain of command.

I won’t comment here on the issue of Generals offering counsel in a public manner because there is too much history to rehearse.  But in order to place this in context, remember that Obama campaigned almost constantly on the dearth of focus on Afghanistan and how the campaign in Iraq was usurping much-needed resources.  The campaign hasn’t stopped, and as late of March 2009 Obama was saying the same things from the offices of the White House: “To focus on the greatest threat to our people, America must no longer deny resources to Afghanistan because of the war in Iraq.”

Obama has the authority to lay out whatever communication protocol he wishes, but the American people have a right to know and approve strategy.  Yes – approve strategy.  Americans do that by the vote.  It might be done after the fact, during the next Presidential race or even before that when Senators and Congressmen are elected.  Or it might be done by public opinion swaying the political winds of the day.  Either way, America has a right to know about strategy whether the conversation is initiated by McChrystal or someone else.

When sons of America are sacrificed to a cause, it has always been and still is part of the warp and woof of the national conversation.  It should be so.  Obama can politicize the war in Afghanistan, but what he cannot consistently and legitimately do is complain when the same national conversation he initiated turns the question on him.  The Presidency is not a monarchy.

After the Army’s AR 15-6 investigation, General Petraeus has ordered a new investigation of the Battle of Wanat, in what may be deemed a victory for the fathers of both 1st Lt. Jonathan Brostrom and Private Gunnar Zwilling who had requested such an investigation.

The increased attention brought to bear on the Battle of Wanat comes partially as a result of an unpublished study by an Army Historian at the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth named Douglas R. Cubbison which I have reviewed as I stated two months ago.

I found that Mr. Cubbison did a remarkably able job of laying out the framework, historical and military, for the engagement, and made careful use of the facts to weave a narrative together of the event and things that lead to it.  Where I found Mr. Cubbison’s study lacking was his focus on heavy kinetics and the lack of meetings with elders.  In other words, the failure at Wanat had to do with the failure to implement proper counterinsurgency, i.e., winning hearts and minds, or so much of his study concluded.

To be sure, Mr. Cubbison does outline a number of tactical failures, but as I stated two months ago, in my humble opinion Mr. Cubbison’s analysis goes awry when tackling the elements of population-centric counterinsurgency.  Colonel William B. Ostlund documents the kinetic engagements during the deployment in his analysis of lessons learned.

Ultimately, the task force was involved in 1,100 enemy contacts. Those engagements required:
●5,400 fire missions (expending 36,500 rounds).
●3,800 aerial deliveries (bombs and gun runs).
●23 Javelin anti-tank missiles.
●108 TOW missiles.
●Hundreds of grenades thrown.
The enemy routinely engaged at the maximum effective
range, but on at least five occasions were close enough to touch Americans. Twenty-six members of Task Force Rock gave their lives in Kunar Province. Other noteworthy Soldier statistics include:
●143 wounded.
●Three nominated for the Medal of Honor.
●Two nominated for the Distinguished Service Cross (one awarded by the time of this publication).
●25 Silver Stars awarded.
●90 Bronze Star Medals with Valor awarded.
●Over 300 Army Commendation Medals with Valor awarded.

Mr. Cubbison reviews this data and remarks that:

“TF Rock was unable to provide commensurate statistics for Shuras conducted, VETCAPS and MEDCAPS performed, quantities of Humanitarian Supplies distributed, economic development projects initiated, schools constructed, or similar economic, political and diplomatic initiatives.”

Later, he also concludes that population-centric counterinsurgency is not consistent with such heavy kinetics.  I have always attempted to be open, honest and clear with my readers on this issue.  I reject the single center of gravity focus of the Clausewitz school and favor the notion of lines of effort in any counterinsurgency campaign.  There is absolutely no reason to place protecting the population over against killing the enemy.  Moreover, many COIN campaigns can be more neatly placed into phases, with heavier kinetics dominating the initial stages and more population-centric tactics dominating the subsequent stages.

The Washington Post has a recent article that, while initially pointing to under-resourcing of the efforts in the smaller, less population-heavy provinces, nonetheless steps on the same terrain as the Cubbison study.

Before Brostrom moved to Wanat, he went home on leave to see his parents in Hawaii, where they had settled after his father retired from the Army. One evening, he showed his father videos from Afghanistan. Most of the clips were of Brostrom and his troops under fire at the Bella outpost.

In one video, Brostrom’s battalion fired artillery and white phosphorus, an incendiary weapon, at a distant campfire in the mountains where it had killed insurgents earlier that day. Someone had come to collect the bodies. The soldiers were determined to kill them.

“Here comes a mighty big explosion on this little candlelight ceremony that the Taliban is having for their buddies that died there earlier,” one of the soldiers says on the video. “This is going to be glorious. It is going to be a bloodbath.”

A few seconds later, the mountainside exploded with fire, and the soldiers let up a raucous cheer.

Human rights groups have criticized the United States for employing white phosphorus to kill enemy fighters, but this type of use is permitted under military rules. The elder Brostrom weighed his words carefully before he spoke. “How do you know those people dragging the bodies away weren’t villagers coming to get their relatives?” he asked.

“They are all [expletive] Taliban up there,” the son replied.

The father continued to press his doubts. The son maintained that the hard-nosed approach was the only thing keeping him alive in a hopeless corner of Afghanistan. Finally, the young lieutenant snapped. “You don’t understand,” he said.

“You’re right, son. I don’t,” the father replied. “I don’t understand it. But I am worried. I am really worried.”

[ … ]

A few days after the platoon arrived, a Wanat village elder gave Brostrom a list of Afghans who had been killed in a helicopter attack the previous week. The dead included insurgents but also several local medical personnel who had worked closely with U.S. soldiers. The incident had infuriated people throughout the valley.

On July 13, their fifth day at the Wanat base, Brostrom and Dzwik ordered all of the soldiers to rise at 3:30 a.m. and man their fighting positions. In Afghanistan, the hours just before dawn are typically the most deadly.

Shortly after 4 a.m., an estimated 200 insurgents let loose a torrent of rocket-propelled-grenade fire, destroying the base’s anti-tank missile system and its mortar tubes. Then they trained their guns on the observation post.

The Washington Post makes it seem as if the ham handedness of the U.S. efforts was at least a contributing cause of the event.  But there are many things that this account doesn’t tell us.  For instance, the town elders had tried to tell the U.S. troops for months that a large scale attack was imminent, and had in fact requested that the Army, which had tried for eleven months to get jirga approval for Vehicle Patrol Base Wanat, simply ignore the highly political inner workings of the jirga and put up the base without approval.

Eleven months delay allowed the Taliban to mass troops, and this plus the horrible terrain of Observation Post Top Side allowed the Taliban to successfully attack with some 300 fighters – near half Battalion size force.  Whether the people of the valley were infuriated or not had nothing to do with the massing of Taliban forces, the fact that the people had no control over the Taliban, or the fact that the elders had already informed the American troops that an attack was coming based on their own observations.

We have previously discussed the Taliban tactic of massing of forces to outnumber U.S. Soldiers or Marines.  The Battle of Wanat occurred in the Nuristan Province.  Not twenty miles from this battle and in the same Province, the Taliban have massed troops once again, killing eight American Soldiers and two Afghan troops.

Eight American soldiers and two Afghan troops have been killed in the deadliest attack on coalition troops for more than a year, officials say.

The battle happened in Nuristan province in the remote east of the country when military outposts were attacked, a Nato statement said.

The Taliban said it carried out the attack. Reports say local officials including a police chief were captured.

Violence has escalated in the east as insurgents relocate from the south.

In a statement, Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said that tribal militia launched attacks on the foreign and Afghan military outposts from a mosque and a nearby village.

The attack is thought to have taken place in the Kamdesh district of Nuristan, and lasted several hours.

About 300 militants attacked one outpost at the foot of a hill, before turning their fire on a US base on higher ground, attacking from two sides, a provincial police chief said.

One Nato spokesman called it a “complex attack in a difficult area”.

Counterinsurgency doctrine says that you must have the support of the population in order to flush out the insurgents.  But what the doctrine doesn’t mention is that force projection is the necessary pre-condition for any of that other doctrine to obtain.  The population will not ally with the weaker side, and not only are heavy kinetics necessary up front in any such campaign, but the troops necessary to pull this off must be in place.

While it might be easy to point the finger at failing to win hearts and minds, it’s much more difficult (and more salient) to ask why any counterinsurgent would be able to win hearts and minds by continually placing platoon-size forces into hostile provinces to be overrun by half-Battalion size enemy forces?

Prior:

Taliban Tactics: Massing of Troops

The Contribution of the Afghan National Army in the Battle of Wanat

Investigating the Battle of Wanat

Analysis of the Battle of Wanat

From Islandpacket.com:

Drenched in sweat, Army Capt. Aaron Hall peeled off his soggy socks and applied a liberal dose of foot powder before slipping on a dry pair and rallying his troops back to their throbbing feet. For an outfit used to being ferried from fight to fight in armored vehicles, a 50-mile march through the Appalachians was a little much.

Perhaps no unit better exemplifies the challenges presented by the Army’s transition from desert warfare in Iraq to rugged mountain campaigns in Afghanistan than the 3rd Infantry Division’s 4th Brigade, whose tanks and Bradley assault vehicles were among the first to rumble into Baghdad in the 2003 invasion.

Under a 2007 plan to grow the Army and diversify its forces, 4th Brigade is the only mechanized unit being ordered to ditch its tanks and Bradleys and relearn how to move through a war zone on foot.

Which is how Hall and his soldiers found themselves zigzagging through the mountains of north Georgia, trying to cover 50 miles in three days. Even after serving last year as a platoon leader in Iraq, Hall wasn’t used to that kind of exertion.

“Whenever they said ‘road march,’ it was pretty much get in your Bradleys and ride 20 miles,” said Hall, 28, of Canton, N.C. “Now, it’s put on your boots and your rucksack and start walking. We’re our own transportation.”

Commanders say the retooled brigade should be ready to deploy again late next year.

About 40 percent of the 3rd Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment’s soldiers are holdovers from the unit’s previous incarnation as the 4th Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment.

After the unit returned from its third Iraq deployment in December, its tank drivers, gunners and mechanics transferred to other units as the switch to light infantry took hold. Many infantrymen trained to fight with Bradleys, tracked vehicles that resemble small tanks, stayed and now are getting used to fighting on foot.

As a mechanized infantry unit, each soldier had a designated seat in a vehicle. As light infantry, a rifle company of 135 troops has just five vehicles — Humvees and trucks — to share.

1st Sgt. Chad Brown learned to count on the Bradley’s speed and lethal weaponry during his three tours in Iraq. His soldiers would travel to drop-off points shielded by the vehicle’s thick armor, then conduct foot patrols under cover of its mounted machine gun and 25 mm cannon.

“Going from mech my whole career to light infantry, there is a concern of, ‘Oh man, where is the heavy firepower?'<2009>” said Brown, 34, of Kingsley, Mich. “I’ve been shot at sitting in Humvees and in Bradleys, and obviously I feel much more comfortable sitting in a Bradley.”

For soldiers used to the protection of armored vehicles, getting them comfortable with the added exposure of maneuvering on foot is mostly about back-to-basics training, as that’s how troops just entering the Army learn to fight, said Maj. John Grantz, executive officer of the 3-15 Infantry.

Captain Hall is doing Marine-style humping.  But wait … WAIT … WAIT!  Maybe not.

In the interests of prompting, promulgating, promoting, protracting and prolonging highly destructive inter-service rivalries, I must ask the question, “where is the body armor?”  You know, that extra 32 pounds of weight (with the IBA) that drags you down?  And I see a day-pack (with hydration), but not the full backpack that comes in at 75+ pounds.  Tisk … tisk …

Recall our Marine in Helmand with 120 pounds plus a mortar plate? 

Okay, so much for the internecine rivalries.  I will be out of pocket for the weekend carrying a little bit less weight on my back through the Pisgah National Forrest and avoiding anything electronic or web-based including this web site.  Have a great weekend.  Go Army!  Go Marine!