Archive for the 'Afghanistan' Category

From MSNBC (lengthy excerpt with important ending):

Over the last six months, U.S. troops have wrested the school away from insurgents. They’ve hired Afghan contractors to rebuild it, and lost blood defending it.

But the tiny school has yet to open, and nobody’s quite sure when it will.

American commanders have called the Pir Mohammed primary school “the premier development project” in Zhari district, a Taliban heartland in Kandahar province at the center of President Barack Obama’s 30,000-man surge.

The small brick and stone complex represents much of what American forces are trying to achieve in Afghanistan: winning over a war-weary population, tying a people to their estranged government, bolstering Afghan forces so American troops can go home. But the struggle to open Pir Mohammed three years after the Taliban closed it shows the obstacles U.S. forces face in a complex counterinsurgency fight — one whose success depends not on firepower, but on the support of a terrified people.

Similar battles are taking place across the country. In Marjah, for example, a former Taliban stronghold in neighboring Helmand province, several schools have opened since American-led troops overran the district in February. But many parents are still too afraid of violence and Taliban threats to let their children attend.

In Senjeray, too, “there are teachers … and we’ve found them and talked to them,” said Capt. Nick Stout, a company commander from the 101st Airborne Division’s 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment. “We say, ‘When the school’s built, do you want to come teach?’ And they say, ‘No, no, I don’t, not at all.'”

Perched amid majestic mountain crags at the base of a fertile river valley, the village of Senjeray resembles a walled fort, 10,000 people living in a labyrinth of steep, hardened mud walls.

Pir Mohammed sits at the southeastern edge of the village, a pair of modest, single-story buildings that once served hundreds, maybe thousands of children. A small plaque at the entrance engraved with black words on light gray marble indicates U.S. troops refurbished the school “in friendship with the People of Afghanistan” in November 2002 — one year after the American invasion.

Canadians finished the school and opened it in 2005. But in 2007, Taliban fighters attacked it, breaking windows and busting doors off hinges. They took away a dozen students, cut the fingers off some and killed the parents of others, said Bismallah Qari, a 30-year-old black-bearded mullah from Senjeray.

The Taliban opposes Western-style education, and apparently saw the school as a symbol of government authority. Qari said the Taliban also believed children would be forced to study Christianity there.

Since then, Senjeray’s children have had only one place to go: a handful of Islamic madrassas run by conservative mullahs like Qari that some American commanders say are radicalizing a new generation of Afghan youth, turning them away from President Hamid Karzai’s government and the NATO coalition.

Speaking through an interpreter as American troops searched a recently filled hole in his madrassa they suspected held a weapons cache, Qari said he wanted his kids to attend Pir Mohammed, too, but “we can’t do it.”

“The Taliban won’t allow us to go there,” he said. “They’ll kill us, they’ll kill our children.”

Pir Mohammed occupies ground highly valued by the insurgency — part of a corridor the Taliban use to traffic arms and guerrillas through villages along the Arghandab River and into Kandahar city.

In April, American troops seized the school in a military operation backed by Afghan troops. They found it in ruins, its rooms reduced to toilets littered with needles, apparently for drug use.

When Stout’s unit arrived in May, he deployed two platoons to protect the school round the clock. On their second day, a U.S. soldier was shot in the lung, but survived.

For weeks, firefights erupted almost daily.

U.S. engineers knocked down walls and trees nearby where insurgents hide. Afghan security forces set up checkpoints on surrounding roads. And armored American trucks stood guard to defend the school’s crumbling outer walls.

The school itself was turned into a de facto military base: Stout’s men stacked sandbags in the windows and installed machine gun nests on the rooftops. They filled rooms with metal boxes of ammunition and anti-tank rockets, and slept on cots inside it.

The American occupation drew the ire of village elders. In mid-July, more than 300 turbaned men from Senjeray urged the provincial governor to pressure the Americans to leave Pir Mohammed. Stout said that in meetings afterward, elders told him the Taliban had pressured them to do so. Nevertheless, they reiterated the plea — and made a crucial promise in return.

“They were saying, ‘Look, if you get out of the school, we’ll protect the school,'” Stout recalled. “They said, ‘We got it. We’ll keep attacks from happening. And people will go there.'”

Withdrawing, in fact, was exactly what Stout wanted. It fit with the wider strategy of letting Afghan forces take on security, and freed Stout’s troops to secure more ground elsewhere.

So the American platoons pulled out in mid-August, leaving their Afghan counterparts in charge.

Instead of the peace the elders promised, attacks actually increased, Stout said. Within days, the school suffered two grenade assaults and a pair of shoulder-fired rocket strikes, one of which killed a seven-year-old boy playing outside.

At meetings that week with mullahs and elders, Stout’s team displayed a poster-sized photo of the wounded boy just after the explosion, his face bloodied with shrapnel.

“We said, ‘Look, how does this sit in your stomach? Does this bother you?'” Stout recalled. “We told them: ‘These people clearly don’t care about you, your family, or your livelihood.'”

The elders agreed, and Stout made a proposition: “Come bleed with us and defeat the bigger problem, help drive the insurgents out.”

At that, the elders drew back.

Some said they didn’t know who had carried out the attack. Others said there were no insurgents in Senjeray. Most said they were mere farmers, and if they cooperated with the Americans, the Taliban would cut their heads off.

Stout rebutted with a grim warning: “As long as you guys tolerate this, as long as you turn your backs, your children are going to continue to suffer.”

The elders nodded. They promised to escort American troops through Senjeray, where attackers hidden on rooftops tossed grenades at U.S. patrols nearly every time they passed by.

But in the weeks that followed, nobody ever turned up.

Qari, the local mullah, said Senjeray’s residents were caught in the middle and could not control the insurgency.

“We told the Taliban we don’t want your support, and we don’t want the support of the U.S. Army,” he said. “We told them: ‘We can ensure our own security, just leave us alone.'”

Part of the difficulty of winning over people in Afghanistan is that NATO-led forces are trying to do it in full body armor.

American troops live in fortified bubbles surrounded by blast walls and dirt-filled barriers. Their window onto the country is often an alien landscape that’s hard to see through inches-thick bulletproof glass covered in dust.

On the ground, American strategy often rests on fragile agreements between two groups worlds apart: young muscle-bound troops with crew cuts and tattoos and conservative white-bearded elders in turbans.

There may be no place tougher to win hearts and minds than Zhari. Here is where the Taliban movement was founded 16 years ago. A few miles to the west is Singesar, where Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar once ran an Islamic school.

“Obviously there’s a lot of Taliban sympathy out there,” Stout said. “These people don’t give a damn about us … and quite frankly, why would they? We’re strangers, we’ve been here for a few months, we walk around the town with guns, 40 pounds of body army and (a lot of) grenades.”

Afghan troops, too, acknowledge the cold reception in Senjeray, where they are seen as foreigners trying to finish off an old war. Much of the Afghan army’s rank and file here is drawn from the north — Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazara — who fought the overwhelmingly Pashtun Taliban in the 1990s.

“The people in this town hate us,” said Lt. Said Abdul Ghafar, an ethnic Tajik soldier based at Pir Mohammed. “The Taliban tell them we’re not real Muslims, that we’re infidels. So the children throw rocks at us and won’t even say hello.”

Analysis & Commentary

This report is remarkably depressing.  The irony is that there is not a single problem discussed above with the U.S. campaign in Kandahar that couldn’t have also been said of the U.S. campaign in Fallujah or Baghdad in 2007.  We weren’t loved in the least.

But note what the focus of the discussion is not.  It isn’t about wasting time, resources and blood defending an inanimate object that can neither hurt you nor love you (i.e., the school).  It isn’t about the need to chase the insurgents and kill them.  It isn’t about force projection of U.S. troops.

Note now what the discussion is about.  The problem, says Stout, is that our boys are wearing 40 pounds of body armor and carry grenades.  The problem is that they don’t “give a damn about us.”  Stout’s focus is not on the legitimacy of U.S. troop actions, but of the ANA.

Is this the depth of strategic thinking among our officer corps?  We are failing in Kandahar because we are wearing 40 pounds of body armor and carrying grenades?

In Fallujah in 2007, the IPs are the ones who didn’t give a damn about what the population thought of them.  The fact that they knew they had the backing of the U.S. Marines made all the difference, and force brought legitimacy for the IPs.  The notion that body armor separates the Soldiers from the people is patently absurd.  What are we supposed to think about this?  That the solution to winning their hearts and minds is to jettison the body armor and grenades?  How many unnecessary deaths would that cause and how laughable would the U.S. Army appear to the population?  How does it say “we’re here to win” if we get rid of our weapons and allow ourselves to be shot?

In Fallujah and Baghdad in 2007, there was no focus on holding terrain or even attempting to stand up a legitimate government until the insurgency had been dealt a significant blow.  Recalling what we did in Iraq (from an Army officer):

One thing that I think many people forget about Iraq (or maybe it wasn’t reported?) is that in 2007 and 2008 we were killing and capturing lots of people on a nightly basis. Protecting the populace was A priority. When speaking to the folks back home, in order to sell the war, perhaps we said that it was the priority. But on the ground, I do not recall a single Commander’s Update Brief spending any time at all discussing what we had done to protect anyone. We were focused on punching al-Qaeda in the nuts at every opportunity and dismantling their networks. The reconcilables got the message loud and clear that they could take money and jobs in return for cooperation, or they would die a swift death when we came knocking down their doors in the middle of the night. The rest of the populace made it clear to them that they should take the offer. The only protection that the population got from us was good fire discipline so that we did not kill non-combatants. We made it clear that the government intended to win this thing and we did not send that message by delivering governance or digging wells. We shot motherf******s in the face.  Pop-COIN blasphemers, your scripture is false teaching.

This wasn’t just SOF.  This was everyone.  This posture is what I don’t currently see in our campaign for Afghanistan.

From Marine Corps Times:

Marines at Camp Lejeune, N.C. and Camp Pendleton, Calif., now have the option of pursuing intermediate and advanced language study before deploying to Afghanistan.

The bases recently added two new courses in Pashto and Dari which are Afghanistan’s main languages. The new courses were added in answer to demand from operational forces, most now working to tame Helmand province in the country’s south.

The basic language course is unchanged. Marines will still complete about 40 hours of live instruction and 100 hours of computer-based self-study which will help them master about 50 words and phrases.

But motivated Marines who have a knack for languages can now boost their communication skills with intermediate and advanced options.

The intermediate course will emphasize two-way communication teaching Marines how to ask questions and interpret basic answers. This will help them gather intelligence by understanding descriptions of colors, clothing and vehicles; and how to discuss locations and directions. Through intermediate study, Marines will learn about 200 words and phrases. The whole evolution takes about 80 hours of live instruction and 72 hours of self-study.

The advanced course will help Marines expand their vocabulary to 600 words and phrases through 160 hours of live instruction and 72 hours of self study. By the courses end, they should be able to communicate mission-specific information.

The classes aren’t designed to make marines fluent, but they will provide them with the ability to interact with village elders, farmers or children with a better understanding of their culture and more words and phrases to work with, said George Dallas, director of the Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va.

The courses, detailed in Marine administrative message 652/10, will be available through 2014. Participation is at a unit commander’s discretion.

If I was commanding officer it would certainly be my “discretion” to have as many Marines trained as deeply as possible in the indigenous language before deployment.

While I have derided the many civil affairs projects implemented with no security, thus wasting time and money, and while I have certainly been a proponent of force projection in all phases of a counterinsurgency campaign, this is one area where I have focused my advocacy.  I can’t think of a greater skill to take to Afghanistan than an understanding of the language.  Language training is right up there in importance beside skill in weapon use, fire and maneuver tactics and having good logistics.  After all, we are trying to find and kill an enemy who hides among the indigenous population.

This is a good development.  More is needed.

Regular readers know that I am no proponent of the high value target program.  The middle of the night raids by SOF operators, the temporary stays in prison, the quick release, the lack of embedded of SOF with infantry and thus the lack of participation in the holistic counterinsurgency effort, etc.

While I am not opposed to making life hard for insurgents, I believe that the program is just generally ineffective.  Now comes Hamid Karzai to ensure its complete failure (edited for brevity).

Afghan security forces are freeing captured senior Taliban for payment or political motives, with President Hamid Karzai and his powerful brother among those authorizing and requesting releases.

The practice is so systemic that the Taliban have a committee focused on getting their fighters out of jail. It undermines the deterrent effect of arrest and the potential of the prisoner population as a card to play in peace talks, analysts say.

The releases, which were confirmed to Reuters by several sources familiar with a range of cases, also raise questions about the capacity and political will of Afghan security forces meant to be taking over from foreign troops starting next year.

But cases uncovered by Reuters including that of Ghulam Haidar, a top insurgent in the southern Taliban heartland of Kandahar, suggest that a web of complex loyalties and widespread corruption are undermining the fight against the insurgency.

Ghulam Haidar, meaning “servant of God”, is a common name in Afghanistan so when Canadian forces turned one of the most dangerous men in Kandahar city over to their Afghan counterparts in March, they may not have realized who he was.

Days later he was walking free again, according to three sources who have investigated prisoner releases or have seen documents about Haidar’s capture. They asked not to be named because they are not authorized to release information.

“They took this guy into custody in mid-March, but he was out again in a few days. This is a classic example of what has been happening,” one former Western official told Reuters.

A Kabul-based source with links to Western intelligence services confirmed Haidar was a Taliban leader known to have a major role in the insurgency around the city.

Yet his freedom was requested by Karzai’s younger brother Ahmad Wali Karzai, head of the Kandahar provincial council.

Dubbed “AWK” by Westerners working in Kandahar, he has an iron grip on the city but his loyalties are considered less solid. A U.S. government cable dated 2009, released by WikiLeaks, described him as a corrupt drug trafficker.

“When Ghulam Haidar was in (Afghan) custody AWK asked for his release,” said a second source, who rejected the idea that Haidar could have been set free because he was a double agent.

“If the Afghan government had good agents within the Taliban things should have gotten better — but that is obviously not the case,” the source added.

Ahmad Wali Karzai said he had never asked for the release of a Taliban prisoner and had not heard of Ghulam Haidar.

“I am the person most wanted by the Taliban, with nine suicide attacks against me,” he told Reuters by telephone.

“I would be the last person to release the Taliban — my position is for more tough measures against them.”

The Defence Ministry and National Directorate of Security, President Karzai’s office and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force all declined to respond to questions on Ghulam Haidar’s case or the wider issue of Taliban releases.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry, which controls the police, said it had not been involved in release of any Taliban.

“We have no evidence and no examples that detained Taliban were released by government officials,” Zemarai Bashary said.

Haidar was one of the most high-profile insurgents in recent years to slip through prisoner release mechanisms that are designed to prevent innocent men from languishing in prison but are regularly exploited by the Taliban to free key commanders.

“The Taliban operate a commission for prisoners affairs and effecting releases is among its responsibilities,” said Michael Semple, a Harvard University fellow with over 20 years experience in Afghanistan and extensive contacts with the Taliban.

“It’s systemic. It is well beyond the level of having the occasional success,” he added.

Another source also confirmed the committee’s existence, although in practical terms most release operations were conceived and directed at the local level.

In cases like Ghulam Haidar, political connections are key.

One of the most high-profile examples in recent years was the 2007 release of Dastagir, a Taliban leader from northwestern Badghis province. President Karzai himself ordered the commander freed after village elders promised he would renounce violence.

His return to battle united feuding Taliban factions and he was personally responsible for the deaths of at least 32 Afghan policemen in attacks he organized before he was killed in 2009, said a government source from western Afghanistan.

Sometimes cash is more effective.

One source told Reuters Ahmad Wali Karzai had paid tens of thousands of dollars to secure the release of another Taliban commander, Anwar Shah Agha, who operates in the area to the west of Kandahar city and was captured in May 2009.

He was released by Afghan security forces in Kabul in March 2010, and has since returned to the battlefield.

Some Taliban are freed legally but with a worrying lack of transparency, said Kate Clark, senior analyst at Afghanistan Analysts Network who has studied Taliban releases. She cited the case of Akbar Agha freed late last year by Karzai.

“He was pardoned secretly and is now living under semi-house arrest. He was quite senior, and put away for kidnapping UN staff including a British woman,” Clark said.

“Pardoning criminals is a constitutional right of the president’s, but the lack of transparency, the fact that he does not necessarily announce the pardons, is concerning for anyone looking at it from a rule-of-law perspective.”

“What are we really fighting for? We risk our lives to catch them and bring them in and then they just release them,” said a Kabul-based source who followed the Ghulam Haidar case.

The releases attracted the notice, and anger, of Karzai’s Western backers, according to a cable released by WikiLeaks.

“Both (Karzai and the attorney general) authorize the release of detainees pre-trial and allow dangerous individuals to go free or re-enter the battlefield without ever facing an Afghan court,” the August 2009 cable from the embassy in Kabul said.

It goes on to list 150 pre-trial releases from one Afghan detention facility since 2007, including 27 prisoners who had been held at Guantanamo Bay by the United States.

The complex lines of the Afghan conflict also mean today’s enemy can be tomorrow’s friend. Ghulam Haidar, for example, is from the Popalzai tribe like the Karzais. Tribal loyalties run deep in Afghanistan.

I predicted that prisons would be problematic in Afghanistan, and they are.  As for the bastard Wali Karzai, it’s no surprise that his name comes up.  We have discussed this man before.

It isn’t just that the high value target campaign is generally ineffective and a misuse of highly skilled SOF troopers, and it is both.  No, it’s more than that.  The Afghanis are conspiring to ensure that what little to moderate effectiveness it could have has been neutered.

Prisons are generally problematic for counterinsurgency.  As I have argued before, there is no replacement for killing the enemy on the field of battle.

Rosie DiManno is one of my favorite reporters and columnists.  In her latest she heaps great scorn and opprobrium on the Canadian withdrawal from Kandahar (quoting at length).

There are two occupying armies in Kabul: NGOs and ISAF.

The non-governmental agencies are in their element, many underscrutinized in their aid and development budgets, as literally billions of donation dollars flow through the capital.

Little of that largesse has substantially improved civilian life. But the humanitarian hyenas drive around in chauffeured SUVs, usually reside in highly secured compounds with extensive domestic staff, and enjoy a lively social whirl in restricted clubs where Afghans are rarely found — beyond serving alcoholic drinks they’re not permitted to imbibe.

Planet ISAF is equally insulated behind high UN and NATO walls, though officials in tandem with Afghan ministry representatives conduct weekly media briefings where not much of significance is ever discussed. The Kabul bureau for journalists is a surprisingly soft gig as most reporters rely ever more on stringers to bring back the goods, take all the risks.

Though International Security Assistance Force convoys venture out daily, the city’s security responsibility has for the past year been Afghan-led. Unlike their ISAF counterparts, barely visible from within their heavily armoured vehicles, Afghan security forces — national army and police — are dangerously exposed in mini pickup trucks.

If the Afghan National Police, in particular, is loathed by the citizenry as hooligans and extortionists, a considerable number in cahoots with insurgency elements, one can almost understand their treason and criminality: Pay is negligible, dangers omnipresent, command-and-control corrupt. For many Afghans who enter the police training program, the true objective is a year or two of shakedown opportunity, after which they can return to their villages with a useful nest egg.

I am not a cynic about Afghanistan’s potential to rise from the ashes of civil war, chronic misrule and international neglect. Its rich mining resources alone should provide economic buoyancy if ever properly administered rather than exploited by covetous multinationals. Even the corruption that exasperated donor nations endlessly drone on about — while their own NGOs and development contractors take their cut — is, in fact, a time-honoured alternative system of governance, arguably the only quasi-capitalism that works here.

The country has always been a suzerain for warlords; the original Taliban, for all their piety, were nothing less than another criminal gang, built on vast Pashtun tribal loyalties, armed and schooled in proxy sacking by Pakistan.

For Canadian combat troops and their support divisions in Kandahar, these past six years, Kabul was that mile-high mirage in the distant rear, redoubt of bureaucrats, la-la DMZ for pretend soldiers. Not one I ever met pined to be posted there. Even those sickened of life outside-the-wire, the perilous patrols and wearying village shuras, had no stomach for a politically massaged Kabul assignment.

In the pecking order of combat virility, even deployment as force protection for Canada’s Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kandahar city was viewed dimly: that place with the pool, surf and turf dinners and circle-the-wagon ramparts.

Ottawa has spent these past half-dozen years decrying the no-fight no-front caveats imposed by NATO troop contributors, and rightly so. The heavy lifting through the worst of the insurgency fell to Canada, Britain and Holland — latterly, Americans — while the likes of Germany, Sweden and Italy carved out relatively safe havens.

Now, we’re no different from the shirkers.

Make no mistake. Dress it up as both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff might like: If this new stay-in plan is put to effect as advertised, Canadian troops, highly valued for their combat skills, will be little more than decorative tassels on the Afghanistan uniform, their primary value to pick up the mentoring slack left behind by other bolting allies so that Americans can carry on their terrorist-tracking pursuits.

President Barack Obama is interested in Afghanistan only so far as preventing it from becoming once again a refuge for Al Qaeda and its assorted adjuncts, the ganglia of insurrectionists entrenched along the lawless border with Pakistan. While there is growing concern over Iran’s influence in Afghanistan, the U.S. objective is quite narrow and geopolitical; an exit segue it can live with.

It was NATO that always had the much grander vision for Afghanistan, if not the resolve or political commitment, not the troop contribution or — for far too long — the vigorous rules of engagement, to even begin imposing order on so large and complicated a battlefield.

With its shrinking ambitions for Afghanistan, NATO has confirmed its irrelevancy and inefficacy in the 21st century — the true reason for taking up this cause in the first place, and never mind building schools, emancipating women or laying down a democratic footprint. If Afghanistan has any future, it will be on the blood of Americans or via an ignominious rapprochement with the Taliban.

(Here’s adding insult to injury: The New York Times has reported that those promising secret talks between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war were actually being conducted with a Taliban imposter.)

So Canada is on board to shunt some 950 troops to Kabul next summer to run training programs until 2014. Having visited such instruction camps in Afghanistan, I’ve got news for you: The ANA, an institution respected by the citizenry, doesn’t need us for inside-the-wire training purposes; only for outside-the-wire command-and-control tutoring, which Harper insists we won’t provide. And the ANP, as constituted, is incapable of even A-B-C coaching. Better off opening up the cantonments and returning to Afghan men (and women) all those weapons collected in disarmament drives. At least then they’d have a chance of defending themselves against the next wave of marauders and power-hungry zealots.

As for Canadian soldiers turned into military metrosexuals: They make a nice latte in Kabul, guys.

Rosie is tough on the Canadian boys, or more precisely, the Canadian political establishment which is spearheading the “strategic redeployment” to Kabul.  A few observations are in order concerning Rosie’s commentary.

First, if Canadians believe that they will somehow be spared the onslaught of militant Islam because of proximity to the U.S., they can think again.  The U.S. cannot single-handedly defeat the transnational insurgency of radical Islam, and the regional AfPak insurgency is a significant and important element in the global campaign.

Second, Rosie hits an important nail on the head when she discusses the fact that it was always NATO which had the grand visions of nation-building in Afghanistan.  The U.S. had heretofore been primarily hunting and killing the enemy (although to be clear, that changed lately due to the influence of population-centric counterinsurgency dogma with McChrystal and Petraeus).  That NATO has now abandoned their lofty dreams of creating Shangi-La on the Asian continent is a pitiful testimony to what never could have happened anyway.  Not that woman’s rights or education for children isn’t a laudable goal, but there  is only so much the U.S. can do, and there is poverty and malfeasance of leadership on every continent.  All of those problems are not correctable.  Defeating the insurgency is possible, but a focus that has been lost in all the talk of creating legitimate governance.

Third, note how Rosie described the disconnectedness of the NGOs and ISAF to the population or countryside of Afghanistan.  Nothing could ensure loss any more than this.  For all the talk of knowing the population, we seem to know more about the huge bases we’re on than the people we are supposed to be winning.

Finally, of course it’s true that basic training in Kabul is a small part of the whole.  But this contribution by Canadian forces is pro forma.  The ANA needs to see good NCOs in action.  Instead, they will see good NCOs garrisoned at huge bases.  And as a certain Marine I know has remarked before, there is a difference between a garrison Marine and a grunt.  The ANA needs to be embedded with grunts.  Instead they get the garrison boys.  So much for Canada’s contribution to the campaign.

In response to U.S. Marine Corps Combat Action in Sangin, Old Warrior said:

… in my mind, if you go to war, go to war right. They are completely robbing most of these young men of the resources that are available to them. Also, as long as the Taliban is crossing over from Pakistan every minute, they will never cease to multiply and that blood vessel needs to be cut quickly. For every Taliban these men kill, another hundred cross the border to replace them. The fundamental strategy of this war is faulty, and it saddens me to see the young, brave men of the infantry, in particular, have to pay the price with their lives. -0311 Vietnam

Recall Lt. Col Allen West’s counsel regarding the difference between occupying terrain and chasing the enemy where he establishes himself.  Population-centric counterinsurgency isn’t any different than occupying physical terrain in time and space, except that the terrain is the mind and will of the population.  That’s why we have “human terrain teams” deployed in Afghanistan (and did in Iraq).

But just like the 80-100 foreign fighters crossing the Syrian border into Iraq for many months on end, and the Quds forces who came across the Iran-Iraq border (many even before the war began), Afghanistan is a theater in a larger, transnational insurgency.  In fact, the problem is even more pronounced in Afghanistan than it was in Iraq.  Iraq was a country.  It’s best not to think of Afghanistan as a country.  It’s also best not to think of the Taliban as a Pashtun insurgency.  It isn’t.  There are Uzbeks, Arabs, Afghanis, Pakistanis and others involved (even a smattering of Europeans).

In Games of Duplicity and the End of Tribe in Pakistan, and then again in Pakistan’s Games of Duplicity Part II, we discussed Pakistan’s gaming the system of largesse with U.S. lawmakers and various U.S. administrations.  There is an important intersecting issue here pertaining to a much-discussed Taliban and al Qaeda ideological alignments.  I previously observed that:

… they have evolved into a much more radical organization than the original Taliban bent on global engagement, what Nicholas Schmidle calls the Next-Gen Taliban. The TTP shout to passersby in Khyber “We are Taliban! We are mujahedin! “We are al-Qaida!”  There is no distinction.  A Pakistan interior ministry official has even said that the TTP and al Qaeda are one and the same.

Finally, recall our discussions of David Rohde’s remarkable captivity by the Taliban and his subsequent escape to Pakistani Army forces.  At the time I found it especially troubling and even somewhat amusing how little the presence of Pakistani forces mattered to Taliban sanctuary.  Now comes a report by The Nation that adds to our knowledge base of the events surrounding David’s captivity and escape, and the collusion of Pakistani ISI with the Taliban.  Extensive quoting is necessary.

On a Friday night in June 2009, New York Times reporter David Rohde and his translator made a dramatic escape from captivity in Pakistan, climbing over a wall while their Afghan Taliban guards slept. Rohde wore sandals and a traditional salwar kameez, and he had a long beard, grown during his seven-month imprisonment. The two men walked in the darkness of the city, a Taliban ministate, past mud-brick huts, and found their way to a Pakistani military base just minutes away.

Rohde had been a prisoner shared by two competing groups of Taliban fighters, both of which appear to have held him not as a political or military tool in their operations against the US and Afghan governments but for his monetary value as a hostage.

Rohde’s escape was an unexpectedly joyous ending to a harrowing episode for him, his wife, his colleagues and friends. But it was by no means the end of the story.

An Afghan who is well acquainted with several of the participants in the kidnapping has provided The Nation and the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute with new details about the perpetrators, as well as new information about what happened after Rohde’s escape. This source’s account reveals how Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) serves as an arbiter for the various Taliban groups that compete with one another for influence, loot and profits. According to the source, the ISI, acting on behalf of one Taliban faction, took two of Rohde’s guards into custody to interrogate them about how he escaped. Then, despite its knowledge of the men’s role in the kidnapping, the ISI simply set them free.

Though this new information merely lends more substance to already strong suspicions about the ISI’s close relationship with the Taliban, it’s still an explosive allegation: rather than cooperating with US authorities, Pakistan’s intelligence agency essentially became an accessory after the fact to Rohde’s kidnapping.

[ … ]

After capturing Rohde, Najibullah quickly saw dollar signs. Realizing that he might have to hold on to Rohde for a long time to shake loose real money in ransom, Najibullah brought him to Pakistan, where the American reporter, his translator and his driver were placed in the custody of the Haqqani network. Rohde, in his forthcoming book, explains how he had made a mistake his second night in captivity: desperate to stay alive, he told Najibullah that he could be traded for “prisoners and millions of dollars.”

The Haqqanis, a mujahedeen clan from Khost province, may be some of the most effective commanders battling US forces. They deploy terrorist tactics—waves of well-trained attackers wearing explosive vests deployed in operations such as the assault on the Kabul guesthouses, the assassination attempt against Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a series of large-scale actions against US combat outposts on the border near Pakistan.

The Haqqanis were even more effective against the Soviets in the 1980s, when they worked closely with the CIA. The late former Congressman Charles Wilson famously referred to Jalaluddin Haqqani back then as “goodness personified.” A former agency official who used to know Jalaluddin said, “I really regret the fact that we are tangling with him, because he is not a guy to fuck around with.”

When the United States invaded Afghanistan, the Haqqanis sided with the Taliban, not Karzai. By 2002 the Haqqanis were almost on the ropes. Jalaluddin was injured in a US bombing raid. So the younger generation took over. Jalaluddin’s son Siraj, trained like his father in the twin arts of paramilitary warfare and charismatic religious leadership, was now in charge.

The Haqqanis are also known to live well. “They do business,” The Nation’s source said. “They’ve done business for years. They are involved in war, but if they find some business opportunity, they do it. They like buying houses and selling them and stuff like that. Now they have trucks and trucking equipment in Peshawar.”

Rohde’s kidnapping was in essence a business opportunity. Najibullah, the young commander who first captured Rohde, was not a subordinate of the Haqqanis; but by bringing Rohde to them, he would build up his reputation with the clan, giving him a safe base from which to conduct negotiations. Najibullah and his men brought Rohde across Afghanistan’s border to the Haqqanis to make it easier to hold him for an extended period, according to the source familiar with the kidnapping. In Pakistan, they figured, they were safe from American rescue efforts, since they understood that the Haqqanis had the protection of the ISI …

The Nation’s Afghan source said that guarding Rohde was a task shared by Najibullah and the Haqqanis, who provided the logistical support, housing and a secure environment in which to operate near Afghanistan. With so much money at stake, each faction was mistrustful of the other. Of Rohde’s three chief guards, one was a Haqqani loyalist and two were Najibullah’s men. So important was this operation to Najibullah that he had his brother Timor Shah act as a full-time guard for Rohde. (These details are corroborated in Rohde’s book.)

Not only were the Haqqanis and Najibullah eager to use Rohde for profit but the main Taliban Shura—the head council that oversees the Afghan Taliban—hoped to get involved as well, according to The Nation’s source …

Throughout his captivity, Rohde was well aware of the likely connections between the ISI and the Haqqanis who held him, though he said no ISI agents made themselves known during his captivity. “I didn’t witness any direct contact between the ISI and the Haqqanis.” That said, he was living proof, in a sense, that Pakistani authorities gave the Haqqanis full freedom to do as they liked. “What I did see,” he emphasized, “was that Pakistan forces never came off their bases, and the Haqqanis were allowed to operate their own Taliban ministate in North Waziristan.”

In Pakistan, Rohde’s escape was devastating for the Taliban. Not only had they lost their prize prisoner but the loss caused the Haqqanis and Najibullah to turn on each other. They were both convinced, in a case of mirror imaging, that the other one must have released Rohde as part of a secret arrangement in which they kept the ransom money for themselves. Instead of suspecting incompetence on the part of the guards, they believed someone was cheating and getting rich.

“There was a big problem between Siraj [Haqqani] and Najibullah,” the source familiar with the kidnappers told me. “A huge issue. Siraj was blaming Najibullah, that he’s the one who took money from the Americans and let the guy go. 
And [Najibullah] was blaming him, that he did it, because it was his compound.”

Even the Taliban Shura in Quetta got involved, the source said. They “thought that Siraj kept the money.”

To arbitrate the dispute about the kidnapping, the Haqqanis turned to the Pakistan government’s intelligence service, according to The Nation’s source. Siraj, the source said, turned over the two guards affiliated with Najibullah to the ISI for questioning. “One of them,” the source said, “was Najib’s brother Timor Shah.”

The guards were allegedly interrogated fiercely and tortured by the ISI. The interrogators demanded to know exactly how Rohde had escaped. Who had let him go, and why? Were the men paid a ransom they had not shared? In other words, the ISI was making sure that the relations between the Taliban factions weren’t destroyed by anyone’s betrayal.

Once the ISI was convinced that there had been no bribes and no ransom, Rohde’s guards were set free. Despite their role in the kidnapping, they were not charged in court or handed over to the Americans. After more than a month in custody, they were let go.

First, while this report ends with musings on civil war within the Taliban, there is no such war.  There might be individuals who battle each other for preeminence, but the various factions seem to me to get along remarkably well, from the Tehrik-i-Taliban to the Haqqani network, to the Quetta Shura, to al Qaeda.  Anyone who questions the religious and ideological underpinnings of Jalaluddin Haqqani’s fighters should make sure to watch this interview by the NEFA Foundation.  Regardless of the internecine battles, the Taliban factions are well connected.

Second, we have previously focused in on Matthew Hoh’s arguments to get out of Afghanistan because the enemy is in Pakistan.

Advocating disengagement from Afghanistan is tantamount to suggesting that one front against the enemy would be better than two, and that one nation involved in the struggle would be better than two (assuming that Pakistan would keep up the fight in our total absence, an assumption for which I see no basis).  It’s tantamount to suggesting that it’s better to give the Taliban and al Qaeda safe haven in Afghanistan as Pakistan presses them from their side, or that it’s better to give them safe haven in Pakistan while we press them from our side.  Both suggestions are preposterous.

This isn’t about nation-states and imaginary boundaries.  When we think this way we do err in that we superimpose a Western model on a region of the world where it doesn’t apply.  This is about a transnational insurgency, and it’s never better to give the enemy more land, more latitude, more space, more people, more money, and more safety.  Any arguments to this effect are mistaken at a very fundamental level.

Seeing things in terms of Pakistan or Afghanistan is a category error.  We aren’t dealing with European nation-states, but dangerous waters in which rogue elements freely swim, where they exchange ideas and are increasingly becoming radicalized, and where elements of the Pakistani ISI collude with the enemy rather than fight them.

As we focus on physical and human terrain in Afghanistan, it has become painfully obvious that no amount of focus or effort will secure that terrain when the very insurgents we fight are supported by the Pakistani ISI and given both safe haven and free passage across the border.

Finally, the Durand line is imaginary, and unless we chase and kill the insurgents where they are, the campaign in Afghanistan is doomed.  The press is filled with positive reports lately about progress in Afghanistan, but wherever the ebb or flow of the war is, they enemy awaits our withdrawal to reclaim his own territory.  Pakistan is an enemy in this campaign, not an ally.  Unless we take clear-headed action in the coming months to address this problem, not only will the opportunity to win the campaign be lost, but the opportunity to use this theater to wage war on our enemy will have been relinquished.  We will not find a better theater than this one.

I have previously discussed the notion of offensive posture in small unit maneuver warfare in Afghanistan.

In Odd Things in Counterinsurgency after detailing a Marine unit’s all-day efforts to locate a local elder’s home in order to befriend him (when in fact neither he nor his people wanted him to be located), I observed the following:

This effort is misplaced.  It would have been more effective to kill insurgents, make their presence known, meet villagers, find weapons caches, question young men, and interrogate prisoners (or potential prisoners).  They have given no reason for this tribal leader to ally himself with the Marines.  The Marines haven’t yet shown that they are there to win.  When the Marines get the Taliban on the defensive, the tribal leader will more than likely come to the Marines rather than the Marine searching him out.

The next patrol should focus on those fighters who were setting up the ambush.  Send a few Scout Snipers that direction.  Flank the insurgents with a squad or fire team, and approach the area where these men are supposed to be doing their nefarious deeds.  Find them, kill them. Do this enough and the Marines won’t have to search out the leaders.  Then it will be time to sit down and drink tea.  This is the recipe for success.

In the same province there is another example to study.

PressZoom) – NAWA, Afghanistan (Oct. 21, 2010) — The men of India Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, have spent enough time in Afghanistan to understand some of the workings of the Taliban presence there.

There’s no denying they’re fighting a crafty enemy. Combatants will usually engage the American and Afghan forces from a well-concealed position, and then dispose of their weapons as they flee. They don’t stay for long-drawn out battles.

They shoot and run.

And so during Operation Black Tip, Oct. 14, India Company saw much of what they’ve grown accustomed to — shooting and running. Except this time, it was a little different.

When Sgt. Bryan Brown’s squad started taking fire, they were the ones who ran. They ran toward the bullets. They ran to the enemy’s position to take away his ability to flee.

“It’s always impressive to see Marines running toward fire,” said 1st Sgt. William Pinkerton, the India Company first sergeant.

Not that the enemy didn’t try to run away, but a well-placed sniper team left them with limited escape options. The snipers suspect they killed one enemy combatant and wounded another, Pinkerton said.

The Marines are growing in their application of small unit tactics in the Helmand Province.  Not long after I observed that a different approach was needed the Marines showed that they were adapting to their environment.

Tim Lynch gives us yet another great example of the efficiency and effectiveness of U.S. Marine Corps small unit maneuver warfare in Afghanistan.

The 2nd Battalion 6th Marines is currently responsible for the southern, central and some of the northern portions of Marjah which is actually a series of villages organized around a gigantic grid of canals which were built by US AID back in the 60’s.  They are expanding their control block by block by spreading their Marines out into platoon and squad size outposts from which Marines foot patrol constantly.  The villains still offer battle but only on their terms which means they will fire on a patrol only when they have set up IED’s between their positions and the Marines.  When the Marines came back to Afghanistan in 2008 the Taliban had forgotten that they were not like other infantry.  The Marines maneuver when fired upon closing with and destroying those stupid enough to take them on.  After getting mauled time and again the Taliban learned to use small arms fire to augment IED blasts in an attempt to lure aggressive Marines into mine fields full of more improvised explosive devices.  Now the Marines maneuver to fix and then swarm with other units coming in from a different direction or with precision fire from drones.  To facilitate this they establish multiple small postions – partrol from them constantly and then push out to establish more small bases once the area they are working comes under their control.

This is outstanding reporting and analysis by Tim.  He has titled his post “Healing Ulcer” (so much for General McChrystal’s stupid notion of Marjah being a bleeding ulcer).  The entire Helmand Province is tough, and Sangin is especially tough right now.   A year ago and two years ago it was Now Zad.  But the Marines must have time and the commitment of the brass and the country – and more troops – and they will succeed and prevail.  They are the best troops in the world at small unit maneuver warfare, and their efforts in Helmand prove that once again.

From The Washington Post:

The Obama administration and its NATO allies will declare late this week that the war in Afghanistan has made sufficient progress to begin turning security control over to its government by spring, months before the administration’s July deadline to start withdrawing U.S. troops, according to U.S. and European officials.

Even as it announces the “transition” process, which will not immediately include troop withdrawals, NATO will also state its intention to keep combat troops in Afghanistan until 2014, a date originally set by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The seemingly contradictory messages, in communiques and agreements to be released at NATO’s upcoming summit in Lisbon, are intended to reassure U.S. and European audiences that the process of ending the war has begun.

At the same time, the coalition wants to signal to the Taliban – along with Afghans and regional partners who fear a coalition withdrawal, and Republicans in Congress who oppose it – that they are not leaving anytime soon.

“We have to assemble a coherent narrative . . . that everyone buys into,” said a senior administration official, one of several who discussed ongoing alliance negotiations on the condition of anonymity.

You can read the balance of the report yourself.  Even as a Milblogger, I have grown weary of the strategic narrative(s) coming from Washington.  I focus now on a full court press for more troops, more resources, more support, and patience.  I also focus on the bravery of our men under fire.  I focus mainly now on the tactical level rather than the strategic.  There is nothing to cover on strategy.

Isn’t it sad to see the convolution of words, the twisting of stories, and the belief that if all they do is get the narrative right, everything else will follow?  If you’re looking for leadership in this administration, you won’t find it.  Instead, they are working hard to “assemble a coherent narrative.”

From NPR:

The first time U.S. Marines went on patrol from this base in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban were ready. The militants shot and killed a 21-year-old lance corporal just 150 feet from the perimeter.

The Marines patrolling through the green fields and tall mud compounds of Helmand province’s Sangin district say they are literally in a race for their lives. They are trying to adjust their tactics to outwit Taliban fighters, who have killed more coalition troops here than in any other Afghan district this year.

“As a new unit coming in, you are at a distinct disadvantage because the Taliban have been fighting here for years, have established fighting positions and have laid the ground with a ton of IEDs,” said Lt. Col. Jason Morris, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. “You have to evolve quickly because you have no other choice.”

[ … ]

“We kind of snuck our nose in the south to see what the south was about and we found out real quick that you don’t go south unless you have a lot of dudes,” said Sgt. Adam Keliipaakaua, who was leading the patrol.

[ … ]

The Marines now have a better idea of where they will be ambushed around their base and have doubled the size of their patrols to increase the amount of firepower they can direct toward the Taliban. On Thursday, the Marines killed 15 militants in an hourlong firefight, according to NATO.

Those who patrol through the main bazaar in the district center now know to look to the skies. They said the Taliban often fly white kites over the local mosque to signal the presence of the Marines.

The Taliban like to attack using so-called “murder holes” — small holes carved into strong mud walls that allow the insurgents to shoot without exposing themselves …

To avoid walking into a firefight, the Marines look to see whether kids are around. Their absence could mean an impending attack, but the Taliban also use children as spotters, so the tactic isn’t foolproof.

“A little kid will run around the corner and run back, and a minute later you are being shot at,” said Keliipaakaua.

But the threat of an ambush pales in comparison to the biggest danger lurking in Sangin and much of Afghanistan: the scores of IEDs buried in roads, trails, compounds and even canals. Many are largely constructed out of wood or plastic, making them very difficult to detect.

Three days after Ceniceros was killed, another member of 3rd Platoon, Cpl. David Noblit, stepped on an IED in a compound located in dense vegetation across the street from Patrol Base Fulod. Noblit survived the explosion but lost both his legs (for a discussion of Ceniceros, see portions of the article edited for length).

The battalion has been hit with about 40 IED attacks and has found more than 100 other bombs before they exploded.

“You want to vary up your routes to go where the enemy doesn’t expect you to travel,” said Esrey, 33, of Havelock, North Carolina. “I can walk through water ankle-high, but the bad guys probably know that’s where I want to go, so I want to go somewhere the water is chest-high.”

But the Taliban are always watching and adapting as well. One of the last Marines from the battalion who was killed stepped on an IED buried underwater in a canal.

“The tactics keep changing because they’re smart and they watch us,” said Esrey. “They don’t have TV here. We’re their TV.”

Analysis & Commentary

First, spotters and signalers are a common problem with the Taliban, as they were in Ramadi, Iraq.  They have not been dealt with as harshly as I have recommended.  A spotter or signaler is no different than a combatant, and they were treated as combatants by Marines in Iraq whether they held a weapon or not.  Then again, dealing with the spotters as I have recommended (and the Marines actually did in Iraq) would require a change to the rules of engagement.  Our generals are smarter than those successful Marines in the Anbar Province, and so we don’t do things like that anymore.

Second, having a “lot of dudes” is the equivalent of my recommendations in previous coverage of Marine combat action in Sangin.  There are many locations in Afghanistan that need attention and additional troops, from the Paktika province to Kunar and Nuristan, and indeed, the whole Pech River Valley area.  The border needs more mentored ANP, and even the North is coming under increasing Taliban attention.

I have made no secret of my full court press for more troops.  But in this case, the U.S. Marines have the Helmand Province, and it makes no sense to have Marines on MEUs pretending that they are going to conduct a major, full scale, water-borne amphibious assault against some unknown (or non-existent) near-peer enemy while their brothers lose their legs in Afghanistan.  In fact, I would suggest that it is immoral to send Marines into harm’s way without the requisite support and manpower.  The support and manpower exists.  It’s currently located at Camps Lejeune and Pendleton preparing to board amphibious assault docks and waste millions of dollars floating around the seas and stopping at every port so that Marines can get drunk.  We can do better than that for the Marines under fire in Afghanistan.

Finally, it makes sense to fight the Taliban where they are.  If we don’t they will simply relocate to the areas we are trying to secure (such as Kandahar) and fights us there.  It is conducive to minimum noncombatant casualties to conduct combat operations in Sangin rather than in Kandahar if possible.

From NPR:

In an operation called Dragon Strike launched more than two months ago, the U.S. military has been hunting the Taliban in the fields and vineyards outside Kandahar, birthplace of the Taliban.

The operation, now winding down, has included artillery barrages, strafing runs and helicopter assaults in the dead of night.

“The last couple of months after we started our clearance ops, it’s completely emptied out. And we haven’t seen any activity,” says Capt. Brant Auge, a company commander with the 101st Airborne Division operating just west of the city of Kandahar.

But there have been unintended consequences. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of refugees are fleeing into the city. Taliban fighters are streaming there, too, and now are stepping up a terrorism campaign.

A group of men standing in central Kandahar are among the displaced from Arghandab and Zhari districts outside the city. They refuse to share their names, but they tell stories of the war ruining their farmland and prompting them to flee.

One man says the Taliban filled the orchards and roads with land mines and booby traps. When an American convoy would hit one of the massive bombs, U.S. helicopters and jets would rocket the area. Explosions destroyed his vineyard and his water pump, he says. After he lost a son and nephew, the man packed up his family for the city.

Now, he says he takes work as a laborer when he can get it and is paid about $4 a day.

Others tell similar stories. They seem to fear the Americans and the Taliban equally. Reconstruction aid is going only to the cronies of the government, they say.

But these poor men looking for day work are not the only newcomers on Kandahar’s streets.

Taliban fighters are here, too.

The Taliban has found plenty of support in Kandahar, which allows its operatives to slip in amid the civilian population. Young men have been encouraged to wage jihad against foreign forces in Afghanistan by preachers in the mosques and via popular cell phone videos.

The sound of motorcycles has become more frightening with a wave of assassins on motorbikes. Abdulrizak Palwal, a Kandahari writer, says no one feels safe. “The writers do not express themselves quite openly because they are afraid. Even the religious people, they are shot in the mosques — inside — if they say anything against the Taliban,” he says.

[ … ]

Now that the military operation outside the city is nearing an end, the U.S. military plans to spend the winter building up local governments and providing jobs and services to the people as a way to blunt the insurgency.

Analysis & Commentary

This is an interesting report on several levels.  First of all, it isn’t clear why the U.S. Army would be performing clearing operations anywhere – including outside the city – when the insurgency merely relocates to another place (in this case, down town Kandahar).  The tools we have learned via such hard and costly efforts in Iraq appear to have been learned to no avail.  In order to have made this push successful, heavy, around-the-clock, and ubiquitous patrolling, gated communities, census and biometrics should have been implemented.  The U.S. Army needs to know who everyone is in and around Kandahar.  The insurgency isn’t some amorphous, faceless entity.  It consists of people.  We need to know who they are.  A Battalion of Marines accomplished this in Fallujah in 2007.  Kandahar is larger than Fallujah – and the U.S. Army presence in Kandahar is much larger than a Battalion.  There is no reason that this approach cannot work.  None.

Second, it’s remarkable, isn’t it, how we still treat this as a classical insurgency, viz. Algeria and David Galula.  It’s all about providing jobs for the young folk, and given enough largesse and representation in local government, the insurgency will just evaporate.  Presto.

But it isn’t that simple when religious motivation is involved.  It’s also not that simple when a neighboring country harbors the very insurgency we seek to eliminate, all the while calling us friend.  Citing Michael O’Hanlon and others, Michael Hughes observes:

The Pakistan army consists of 500,000 active duty troops and another 500,000 on reserve. If Pakistan truly wanted to capture the Haqqani Network they would be able to drag them out of their caves by their beards within a few days.

Pakistan worries that President Barack Obama’s promise to start reducing U.S. troops in Afghanistan come July will lead to anarchy and civil conflict next door, and it is retaining proxies that it can use to ensure that its top goal in Afghanistan — keeping India out — can be accomplished come what may.

Pakistan would rather have the Taliban and the Haqqanis back in power, especially in the country’s south and east, than any group like the former Northern Alliance, which it views as too close to New Delhi.

It is this strategic calculation, more than constrained Pakistani resources, that constitutes Obama’s main challenge in Afghanistan. And it could cost him the war.

Just to be clear, while I oppose almost every decision Mr. Obama has made since taking office, this isn’t Obama’s war.  This is America’s war.  If we lose it, it will be America’s loss.  We need to do a bit better than throwing jobs at the locals to even begin to make a serious dent in the problem.  Local tactics, techniques and procedures need to reflect what we learned in Iraq, while our regional approach needs to deal much more harshly with Pakistan.  Both of these changes require the will and motivation to win.  I don’t currently see that in this administration.

From the Los Angeles Times:

SANGIN, Afghanistan (AP) — U.S. Marines who recently inherited this lush river valley in southern Helmand province from British forces have tossed aside their predecessor’s playbook in favor of a more aggressive strategy to tame one of the most violent places in Afghanistan.

U.S. commanders say success is critical in Sangin district — where British forces suffered nearly one-third of their deaths in the war — because it is the last remaining sanctuary in Helmand where the Taliban can freely process the opium and heroin that largely fund the insurgency.

The district also serves as a key crossroads to funnel drugs, weapons and fighters throughout Helmand and into neighboring Kandahar province, the spiritual heartland of the Taliban and the most important battleground for coalition forces. The U.S.-led coalition hopes its offensive in the south will kill or capture key Taliban commanders, rout militants from their strongholds and break the insurgency’s back. That will allow the coalition and the Afghans to improve government services, bring new development and a sense of security.

“Sangin has been an area where drug lords, Taliban and people who don’t want the government to come in and legitimize things have holed up,” said Lt. Col. Jason Morris, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. The unit took over responsibility for Sangin in mid-October nearly a month after the British withdrew.

That withdrawal — after more than 100 deaths over four years of combat — has raised concerns among some in Britain about the perception of U.S. Marines finishing a job the British couldn’t handle. Many claimed that happened in the Iraqi city of Basra in 2007.

U.S. commanders denied that’s the case in Sangin and said the withdrawal was just the final step in consolidating British forces in central Helmand and leaving the north and south to the Americans. Sangin is located in the north of the province.

But one of the first things the Marines did when they took over Sangin was close roughly half the 22 patrol bases the British set up throughout the district — a clear rejection of the main pillar of Britain’s strategy, which was based on neighborhood policing tactics used in Northern Ireland.

The bases were meant to improve security in Sangin, but the British ended up allocating a large percentage of their soldiers to protect them from being overrun by the Taliban. That gave the insurgents almost total freedom of movement in the district.

“The fact that a lot of those patrol bases were closed down frees up maneuver forces so that you can go out and take the fight to the enemy,” Morris said during an interview at the battalion’s main base in the district center, Forward Operating Base Jackson.

As Morris spoke, the sound of heavy machine gun fire and mortar explosions echoed in the background for nearly 30 minutes as Marines tried to kill insurgents who were firing at the base from a set of abandoned compounds about 500 feet away.

The Marines later called in an AC-130 gunship to launch a Hellfire missile, a 500-pound bomb and a precision-guided artillery round at the compounds, rocking the base with deafening explosions that shook dirt loose from the ceilings of the tents. Tribal elders later said the munitions killed seven Taliban fighters.

The battalion has been in more than 100 firefights since it arrived, and the proximity of many of them to FOB Jackson illustrates just how much freedom of movement the Taliban still have in Sangin.

The Marines have worked to improve security by significantly increasing the number of patrols compared to the British and by pushing into areas north and south of the district center where British forces rarely went. That process started when the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment deployed to Sangin in July and fought beside the British until the current battalion took over.

Even though the battalion has slightly fewer forces than the 1,200-strong British Royal Marines unit that was here previously, commanders say they have been able to step up the number of patrols because they have far fewer Marines stuck guarding bases.

But some analysts have speculated that the coalition would need at least one more battalion in Sangin if it wanted to clear and hold the whole district. Some Marines said privately that more forces would be necessary, especially in the Upper Sangin Valley where coalition troops had not gone in years until recently.

The battalion’s current area of operations is roughly 25 square miles and contains a mix of lush fields around the Helmand River, dense clusters of tall mud compounds and patches of barren desert. It contains some 25,000 people, but many of Sangin’s residents live outside the area in which the Marines operate. The entire district is roughly 200 square miles, and district governor Mohammad Sharif said it houses about 100,000 people.

The battalion has gotten help from a pair of Marine reconnaissance companies operating in the Upper Sangin Valley and a company of Georgian soldiers based on the West side of the Helmand River. There are also several hundred Afghan army and police in Sangin, but they are fairly dependent on the Marines for supplies and logistics.

In addition to conducting more patrols, the Marine battalion has adopted a more aggressive posture than the British, according to Afghan army Lt. Mohammad Anwar, who has been in Sangin for two years.

“When the Taliban attacked, the British would retreat into their base, but the Marines fight back,” said Anwar.

Insurgents fired at members of 1st Platoon, India Company, during a recent patrol near the battalion’s main base, and the Marines responded with a deafening roar of machine gun fire, grenades, and mortars. They also tried to launch a rocket that turned out to be a dud.

“The Taliban like to engage us, and I like to make it an unfair fight,” said India Company’s commander, Capt. Chris Esrey of Havelock, North Carolina. “If you shoot at us with 7.62 (millimeter bullets), I’m going to respond with rockets.”

But Taliban attacks have taken their toll. Thirteen Marines have been killed and 49 wounded since the battalion arrived. Most of those casualties have come from IEDs, or improvised explosive devices, that the insurgents hide in compounds, along trails and in dense fields where they are hard to detect.

Analysis & Commentary

The point of citing this report is not for embarrassment of the British forces, and regular readers know that full well.  But there are a few common themes from this report with my own advocacy over the last several years.

First, take measure of what I have noted concerning the British philosophy of counterinsurgency, namely that its roots and doctrinal basis comes from a locale which had basically the same religious roots, the same general heritage, a shared dedication to Western values, and an institutionalized security apparatus – Northern Ireland.  Of course, this was nothing like Basra, and even less like Afghanistan.  The officer corps of the British Army took this doctrine into Basra, and lost (as my coverage conclusively demonstrates).

They took this doctrine into Sangin (and much of Helmand), and in the main weren’t successful.  It has nothing whatsoever to do with the bravery of the enlisted man, as I have discussed.  It has to do with an officer corps which cannot escape the gravity of its own narrative, taken exclusively from Northern Ireland.  For a much better model to follow, the British could have chosen to follow their work in Malaya (See Karl Hack, “The Malayan Emergency as Counterinsurgency Paradigm,” Journal of Strategic Studies, 2009.  Thanks to Colonel Gian Gentile for pointing out this fine study to me.).  The problem is one of leadership, not the ability to follow or follow up.

Second, note that this approach (i.e., the more aggressive stance by the U.S. Marines) requires force projection, and among other things, this requires troops.  More are needed, and unless U.S. leadership is willing to stand in the gap and advocate the same thing, the strategy is hopelessly mired because of under-resourcing.

Finally, note that the more aggressive stance yields immediate fruit, at least among the indigenous forces.  The ANA naturally takes heart when they see the enemy being dealt a significant blow.  Nothing is better for morale than success.