Archive for the 'Afghanistan' Category

There are two examples of what I consider to be odd behavior for our forces in Afghanistan.  The first comes from C. J. Chivers, who gives us a mixed report on the Afghan National Army.

… the Pentagon must overcome a persistent problem in the Afghan security forces: attrition. Official estimates put attrition across the force at roughly 3 percent each month. Attrition is a powerful drain that makes growth difficult. Police officers and soldiers simply disappear, even as replacements flow in.

For this reason, for the army to grow by 36,000 more soldiers, the government must recruit and train 83,000 Afghans, according to projections released by NATO. Similarly, for the police to reach the hoped-for increase of 14,000, the government must train 50,000 more officers. This drives up costs to Westerners paying the bill.

The training mission in Afghanistan also labors under a legacy of unfulfilled past promises, inadequate training even in basic skills like marksmanship and driving military vehicles, and a pattern of overstating how ready or skilled the forces are.

Early this year, the Pentagon and senior Afghan and American officers in Kabul insisted that the complex operation to re-establish a government presence in Marja, a Taliban stronghold, was “Afghan led.”

It was not. And many Afghan units, by the accounts of many Americans present, performed poorly. Some units openly shirked combat duty — refusing to patrol, or sending a bare minimum of soldiers on American patrols, sometimes only a pair of soldiers to accompany an American platoon. The remaining Afghans stayed behind, lounging in the relative safety of outposts the Americans secured.

In the operations under way in Kandahar, reports continue to indicate that American forces are almost always in the lead.

This is backwards from the way I would have implemented the garrisoning and training of the ANA.  Catching the ANA willingly refuse the go on patrol, get high on hashish, or sit in the safety of a FOB while one of their own goes outside the wire is reason for dismissal.  It’s a good thing.  Furthermore, the vetting and recruiting of ANA should be stricter and more involved.  We should be striving for a smaller force, not a larger one.  A smaller force where the Soldiers are well trained, more reliable and more mature should be the goal, not large numbers to put down on paper.

The second example comes directly from Cali Bagby who is with the Marines in Marjah.  This will be fairly lengthy to get the full picture.

MARJAH, Afghanistan – As the Marines run across a main road, there are no men on mopeds or children hanging out in crowds.

“There is no one is outside today,” says Sgt. Michael Brattole, squad leader, several times as he passes through wadis and fields.

“Is that good or bad?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

The Taliban rarely fire when the streets are busy with people. After three months in Marjah and three casualties in their company, the Marines from Echo Company are all too familiar with the nature of warfare.

The mission is to confirm the location of Akhmed Shah’s home. Shah, an elder, could be the key player in securing the area called the Qasaab Block, located outside of Echo Company’s base.

The section of land the Marines are maneuvering is populated predominately by the Alokzi tribe. Shah’s father stood as the leader for the tribe, but war and the Taliban has created a people without a leader.

Shah’s oldest brother is the rightful tribal leader of the Alokzi, but he chooses to live in Lashker Gah, located about 10 miles away. The Marines would like to help Shah stand as a leader – but first they have to find his house.

This task seems simple enough, but simple tasks in Afghanistan can be deceiving.

The Marines start their search with the first elder they come across on their patrol. His beard is white with shades of blackened gray. In the shadows in one of the dark rooms inside his compound, he holds a mound of cotton and speaks with the Marines.

Outside,  security is provided from the 3rd Squad, 2nd Platoon. Inside, one Marine who wishes to remain anonymous, asks the questions.

“We do support Akhmed Shah, he is my nephew. Why not help him?” Haji Torjan says. “Everyone supports Akhmed Shah.”

When the Marines asks if Torjan will send one of his boys with the squad to point out Shah’s home, the elder refuses.

“There are no men, just women and children, in our culture it will be bad,” says Torjan.

There are several more exchanges between the Marine and the Afghan. The Marines try to get the elder to point to the house on a map, or just walk outside ahead of the Marines or at least describe the surrounding area, but the man is of no help.

“If you find it by yourself that’s fine, but I can’t help you,” says Torjan.

“We need your help, to help you,” says Brattole, stepping in for a moment to warn the Marine that the more time they stay in one spot the more time the Taliban has to set up an ambush.

The Marines try a few more tactics with the elder, explaining that if he doesn’t show them they will have to go around asking for Shah’s home, alerting the whole block they are working together.

“You can detain me, take me anywhere you want, but I won’t show you where he lives,” says Torjan.

The Marines are forced to head back out into the other compounds and see if they can get more information from other Afghans. They stay off the road, where they are most likely to get shot at by Taliban.

In order to take the back roads, they must climb over a series of tall and crumbling walls with heavy guns and packs.

The Afghans willing to talk to the Marines have similar answers. Either they have never heard of Shah, or they know who he is and where he lives but refuse to point out the house.

Instead they say, it’s very far away. A few young men suggest the Marines head up farther on the road and surely someone will point out the house.

“If you won’t show me, why would anyone else show me?” asks the Marine. The Afghans smile and nod their heads, as if to say they can’t help him any further.

When children trail the patrol, a Marine pulls aside one of children and asks him about the block’s elder and where he lives. The small boy laughs, chewing on a plastic yellow toy, and shakes his head.

As the Marines push forward, they encounter more locals along the way – and ask the same questions, again.

“We’re just farmers, we don’t know anything,” says a local man. “We have to go back to work.”

Minutes later the same man is across the field bathing in a pump from a nearby well.

Some of the locals give descriptions of Shah’s home: it’s by a canal, near a mosque with speakers over the two-story building, and it’s very far away. The Marines follow the breadcrumbs of information climbing over more walls, questioning more men and children.

After three hours outside the wire, Marines receive a tip that the Taliban is setting up an ambush in the very direction the patrol is headed. Brattole and a few other Marines head farther up the road to inspect the news as the rest of the squad hangs back listening for the sound of gunfire.

After 30 minutes, it’s getting late in the day and the Marines decide to return to the base – without locating Shah’s home. Climbing over the same walls and fields, another long day is over. Sweat covers the brow of the men, and they walk with few words.

After passing a compound, shots are fired from the north. The Marines turn and run towards the gunfire, over the wall, alongside a wadi and towards the main road. By the time they make their way back to their last position, the gunfire has ended. The Marines question four young Afghan men who matched the identities of those firing weapons during the firefight.

The young men want to know what the Marines want with them.

“You were just running away from a firefight,” says the Marine. “”How do I know you weren’t the ones firing?”

“Ask the owner of this compound, when the firefight started we were with them,” says one of the young Afghan men.

Without further evidence the Marines can’t hold the men.

The firefight has ended, the sun is setting deeper into the landscape and the patrol returns to the base.

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.

We needn’t do things backwards.  It only lengthens the campaign and makes it costlier.

Lance Cpl. Wesley Samuels, of Winter Haven, Fla., with the 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines’ Echo Company, fires at Taliban insurgents during as gunbattle in Marjah, Afghanistan.

AP reporter Todd Pitman and I have exchanged e-mail before during his embeds in Ramadi.  He felt at the time that a comment he left here at TCJ might have gotten him into trouble with AP for potentially representing formal AP position.  Hopefully this was an earlier time and a different atmosphere, before AP learned the value of interacting with the new media.  Or have they?  Does AP still cling to its policy of disallowing any copying of text into posts?  In either case, while AP might have poor policies, Todd Pitman is a very good reporter and his most recent article provides anecdotal accounts and some analysis of the situation the Marines face in Marjah.

MARJAH, Afghanistan — The young Marine had a simple question for the farmer with the white beard: Have you seen any Taliban today?

The answer came within seconds — from insurgents hiding nearby who ended the conversation with bursts of automatic rifle fire that sent deadly rounds cracking overhead.

It was a telling coincidence — and the start of yet another gunbattle in Marjah, the southern poppy-producing hub which U.S. forces wrested from Taliban control in February to restore government rule.

Eight months on, the Taliban are still here in force, waging a full-blown guerrilla insurgency that rages daily across a bomb-riddled landscape of agricultural fields and irrigation trenches.

As U.S. involvement in the war enters its 10th year, the failure to pacify this town raises questions about the effectiveness of America’s overall strategy. Similarly crucial operations are now under way in neighboring Kandahar province, the Taliban’s birthplace.

There are signs the situation in Marjah is beginning to improve, but “it’s still a very tough fight,” said Capt. Chuck Anklam, whose Marine company has lost three men since arriving in July. “We’re in firefights all over, every day.”

“There’s no area that’s void of enemy. But there’s no area void of Marines and (Afghan forces) either,” said Anklam, 34, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “It’s a constant presence both sides are trying to exert.”

That day, militants in his zone of operations alone had attacked Marines in four separate locations by mid-afternoon.

[ … ]

… the end of Taliban control in Marjah has sown the seeds of an entrenched guerrilla war that has tied down at least two U.S. Marine battalions and hordes of Afghan police and army troops.

The result, so far at least: Residents say the town is more insecure than ever.

[ … ]

Coalition forces are also trying to win over the population by organizing the delivery of solar panels to businessmen, and refurbishing shops, wells and mosques, Anklam said. But residents are weary: One Marine simply trying to give away a lollipop to children at a checkpoint tried three times before finding one who would take it.

Todd includes this nugget of gold.

Anklam has spread the Marines of Echo company as much as possible. The squads are now based at 13 small outposts — twice as many as in July. As a result, Marines say that although firefights occur daily, violence has decreased overall.

Several observations are in order.  First, to say that the insurgency has “tied down” ANA and ANP probably embellishes what they have accomplished, which has been problematic at best (as we have discussed many times in the ANA and ANP categories).  It is the Marines who are being tied down.  The ANA is at the very best being mentored by the Marines, at the worst are high on opium or hashish.

Second, as if we needed any more indication that the British notion of the government in a box doesn’t work, Todd’s article should be about the last nail in the coffin of that debacle of a strategy (and make no mistake about it, we brought this “government in a box” to Marjah at the behest of the British, in a tip of the hat to their approach to COIN).

Finally, notice what the Marines are doing.  A single company is spread out at 13 outposts.  A single infantry company.  This is remarkable.  It’s a tribute to the tactics employed by the U.S. Marines, and should be an embarrassment to the folks who spend all of their time at FOBs, including the SOF boys with ZZ Top beards wearing backwards ball caps and T-shirts who ride to the fight in helicopters and bed down back at the base after a hot meal and shower.  They are adding  nothing to the campaign.

It isn’t the work of the U.S. Marines that is in question.  Given time, they will win.  The questions are: (1) do they have it, (2) will we give them the resources, and (3) will we get out of the way and let them do what they have to do?

In what will not be read closely or widely enough, the Montgomery Advertiser gives us a view to the magnitude of the logistical problem that is campaign for Afghanistan.

Clouds of dust rise to meet a descending Blackhawk at Kan­dahar Airfield. Before the heli­copter’s wheels settle, the crew chief and gunner climb through windows just behind the pilots and begin urging soldiers to hustle on board.

Carrying heavy trunks and duffels, these men are destined for forward operating bases and combat outposts in the most ac­tive area of Afghanistan, Re­gional Command-South, which this summer recorded the high­est death toll since the war be­gan in 2002.

With an escort Blackhawk hovering nearby, the crew mem­bers urge the soldiers to strap in — ideally, the helicopters won’t be on the ground for more than a couple of minutes before they offload, onload and take off. When they do, the same red dust cloud chases the helicopter as it ascends, headed for the moun­tain range in the distance, then to parts unknown.

For each man on that Black­hawk, as well as any Chinook or cargo plane routing soldiers to their battle areas, one man is re­sponsible for the supplies that will support them in Afghanis­tan — Brig. Gen. Reynold Hoo­ver of the Alabama National Guard.

Hoover, commander of the joint sustainment command in Afghanistan and commander of the 135th sustainment com­mand (expeditionary), is in charge of supplies from food that fuels the troops’ nutritional needs to fuel that runs the mine-resistant MRAP vehicles that protect them from the constant threat of IEDs.

When the 135th took charge of the Joint Sustainment Com­mand on Dec. 28, 2009, it became the first one-star general com­mand from the Alabama Nation­al Guard since World War II. The task is daunting — deliver­ing supplies throughout a coun­try the size of Texas and thwart­ing Taliban attempts to destroy supply lines.

Hoover, who earned his mas­ter’s degree in public and pri­vate management from Bir­mingham-Southern College in 1992, has long held ties to Alaba­ma.

Since 1988, he has returned to Alabama for his once monthly Guard obligation. Since the 135th took command, it has de­livered more than 27.5 million pounds of mail, delivered 88 mil­lion meals and used enough fuel to drive a Honda Civic to the sun and back 68 times.

The 135th sustains approxi­mately 70,000 soldiers in Afgha­nistan and can deliver 504,000 bottles of water each week and more than 210,000 meals each day.

[ … ]

“Movement is a challenge here. We’re in a landlocked country where we don’t control the road. But we’re determined for every trooper to have a hot meal and a canteen.”

Add to that the number of aircraft, both rotary and fixed wing, required to move troops and supplies, and what emerges is an incredible supply and de­mand — all controlled by the Alabama National Guard.

As regular readers know, infantry rules the battle space, while logistics rules everything else, including capability to support and sustain the infantry and air power, financial burden to deploy troops, the ability to conduct distributed operations, the geographical reach of the campaign, and the timeliness of battle space decisions and actions.

Besides the issues surrounding international logistical lines, there are the more immediate and localized logistical issues with which we must deal.  I continue to assert that IEDs are a problem (they are responsible for the majority of U.S. casualties) mainly because we haven’t deployed the troops necessary to find, chase and kill those responsible for building and planting them.

Technology and gizmos are slick and always demand the lion’s share of the defense dollars.  What we need are more Marines, more snipers, more door kicking, more census-taking and more biometrics.  We need to be in their face, in their homes, in their streets, in their markets, isolating the insurgents and destroying them – not putting them into the rotating “catch-and-release” prisons only to see them kill more U.S. servicemen.

And what would all of this gain us?  It’s an oddity to see a General make the following claim in public:     ” … we don’t control the road.”  Indeed.  Control the roads and we will begin to see the end of the insurgency.  No, not check points, not isolated patches of road, but control the roads.  All of them.  Beginning to end, front to back, top to bottom.  From the very beginning the Taliban strategy has been to target logistics, just as I said it would be.  Go after the perpetrators, not the IEDs.

James Jones is out as National Security Adviser:

President Obama will announce Friday that retired Gen. James L. Jones is resigning as national security advisor, to be replaced by deputy national security advisor Tom Donilon, an administration official confirmed.

Jones’ departure comes amid a larger turnover of staffers in the Obama White House this fall. Just a week ago, Obama announced in the East Room that Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was leaving.

Several other changes in personnel are forthcoming, the result of what White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called the “natural life expectancy” in the administration’s pressure-cooker jobs.

Pressure cooker jobs.  That’s the spin.  Michelle Malkin notes that Jones was critical of the administration lackeys who surrounded Obama.  In Woodward’s recent book Jones is quoted as privately referring to Obama’s political aides as “the water bugs,” the “Politburo,” the “Mafia,” or the “campaign set.”

But let’s recall just a bit about Jones and his involvement in the troop deployment decision-making process.  During a briefing with General Nicholson (then in Helmand, Afghanistan with his Marines), the following exchange took place.

… Jones recalled how Obama had initially decided to deploy additional forces this year. “At a table much like this,” Jones said, referring to the polished wood table in the White House Situation Room, “the president’s principals met and agreed to recommend 17,000 more troops for Afghanistan.” The principals — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; Gates; Mullen; and the director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair — made this recommendation in February during the first full month of the Obama administration. The president approved the deployments, which included Nicholson’s Marines.

Soon after that, Jones said, the principals told the president, “oops,” we need an additional 4,000 to help train the Afghan army.

“They then said, ‘If you do all that, we think we can turn this around,’ ” Jones said, reminding the Marines here that the president had quickly approved and publicly announced the additional 4,000.

Now suppose you’re the president, Jones told them, and the requests come into the White House for yet more force. How do you think Obama might look at this? Jones asked, casting his eyes around the colonels. How do you think he might feel?

Jones let the question hang in the air-conditioned, fluorescent-lighted room. Nicholson and the colonels said nothing.

Well, Jones went on, after all those additional troops, 17,000 plus 4,000 more, if there were new requests for force now, the president would quite likely have “a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment.” Everyone in the room caught the phonetic reference to WTF — which in the military and elsewhere means “What the [expletive]?”

Nicholson and his colonels — all or nearly all veterans of Iraq — seemed to blanch at the unambiguous message that this might be all the troops they were going to get.

Jones looked at his brothers in arms, currently under fire, and who had no input to the decision whatsoever, and told them that they would get no more resources than they were told that they would need by men who sat in the safety of their plush offices – and then ridiculed the idea that they would demur.

WTF? indeed.  Jones was part of that Politburo which set into motion the current situation in Afghanistan.  It may be a little too hard to rehabilitate that image now that the campaign is not faring so well and Obama is not the savior of the world any more.  I called for him to resign more than one year ago.  It’s a shame that it took him this long.  As for his replacement, Michelle also notes his crony ties with Obama’s past (and looking at his credentials and previous involvement with Obama’s decisions on Afghanistan, it’s hard to envision that he is actually qualified for the job).

Very well.  One down, another to go.  Reload, aim …

Prior:

Afghanistan: The WTF? War

Calling on NSA James L. Jones to Resign

This is your National Security Adviser

From ABC News:

A scathing Senate report says US contractors in Afghanistan have hired warlords, “thugs,” Taliban commanders and even Iranian spies to provide security at vulnerable US military outposts in Afghanistan. The report, published by the Senate Armed Services Committee, says lax oversight and “systemic failures” have led to “grave risks’ to US forces, including instances where contractors have employed Afghan subcontractors who were “linked to murder, kidnapping and bribery, as well as Taliban and anti-coalition activities.” The chairman of the committee, Sen. Carl Levin, D.-Michigan, said the report was evidence that the US needs to reduce its reliance on contractors. “We need to shut off the spigot of US dollars flowing into the pockets of warlords and power brokers who act contrary to our interests,” said Sen. Levin. The committee reviewed roughly 125 unclassified Department of Defense security contracts between 2007 and 2009, and found that there are some 26,000 private security contractors operating in Afghanistan, the majority of whom are Afghan nationals. The review found “systemic failures” of the military oversight for contracts, including the hiring of what Levin called “many too many” security contractors who had been improperly vetted, improperly trained or were not provided weapons.

In some cases, companies were awarded contracts though they had no ability to provide the services needed. In those cases, companies then quickly hired local nationals without proper vetting or security checks. The chaotic system left US facilities and personnel vulnerable to attack. The report found that some Afghan security guards simply walked off their posts at remote forward operating bases.

In Operation Iraqi Freedom, the notion of hiring locals to perform force protection for the Marines would have been met with laughter and scoffing.  To be sure, the Marines embedded with the IPs, and hired Iraqis as interpreters.  They also hired the so-called Sons of Iraq to perform neighborhood watch and guard duty for gated communities.  But as for force protection proper, the Marines used Marines.

The Senator can pontificate all he wants about the need to stop the flow of dollars into the pockets of untrustworthy Afghans.  The troubled and troubling Hamid Karzai has already made illegal the hiring of non-Afghan contractors for anything except embassy force protection.  The puppet, as the Taliban call him, doesn’t very much like answering to the puppet master.  It’s almost as if he knows that the puppet master is looking for an exit.

You know there aren’t enough troops when you hire foreign spies to perform your force protection.  We should end all discussion of military doctrine surrounding force protection in our military schools.  It’s meaningless.  And no, just because I’m discussing force protection doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in force projection.  One doesn’t exclude the other, and the exercise of a little more force projection and killing the enemy while off of huge FOBs would mean the need for less force protection of U.S. troops by foreign spies.

In other words, if we were off of FOBs and if we didn’t have such a bloated support to infantry ratio, do you think this discussion would be happening right now?

Michael Yon has a must read on a great many subjects with several interesting themes, so drop by and pay him a visit – and then hit the tip jar for his good work.  One particularly interesting paragraph reads thusly:

Recently a mission was launched to Nimroz Province.  American Marines hovered in on two Osprey aircraft, secured the airfield (or at least brought a lot of guns), and later a British general landed in another Osprey and the meetings began.  The bottom line of the meetings was that we are not going to do much to help Nimroz Province.  It’s out of sight and out of mind.  The American way of doing things, along with British moral support, is to give money to people who are blowing you up and to ignore those who are neutral or helping you.  The meeting was as impressive as it was meaningless.  Swoop in on the loud Opsreys, set up machine gun positions, make a show of how nice it is to take off your body armor, talk a lot with nice words, and leave in the loud Ospreys.  Waste of time.  And if you dare try to calculate the hard and soft costs of that mission, it had to have cost well over a million dollars.

Well, Michael’s article is informative and compelling as always, but this part is depressing.  I have long feared – and written – that the Marines are losing the perspective and experience base they gained in the Anbar Province.  All I can say is that this sounds very much indeed like a worthless exercise.  And it also sounds like the British have affected the Marine perspective way too much.

Taking body armor off is irrelevant.  I know, General Petraeus asks the boys to show respect and take off their wrap arounds to talk to the elders, and so be it.  But I don’t really care that deeply about that issue either.  The same thing applied to Iraq, and the Marines regularly did what they wanted to do in Anbar.

Michael says that the American way of doing things is to give money to those who are blowing you up.  Well, maybe so, at least right now, and in Afghanistan.  It wasn’t so in Iraq, and it certainly wasn’t so with the Marines in the Anbar Province.  Remember Recon by Fire?  And I won’t recount the experiences of a certain Marine I know.  And just to give a little Army take on their action in Iraq:

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. Here is some truth:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; – Ecclesiastes 3:1-3 (KJV)

It’s time to kill.

True enough, there is the tea drinking, the sit-downs, the meetings, and the making nice with the locals.  My son did a lot of that in Anbar as well.  He also killed a lot of people.  It’s important which aspect comes first.  It means everything to the campaign.

Take off your wrap-arounds, remove your body armor, or shoot insurgents in the face?

Just saying.

We have been stupid and allowed Hamid Karzai to do what he threatened to do in the interest of trying to create the perception of a viable government in Kabul.

The Afghan government said yesterday it has started dissolving private security businesses in the country by taking steps to end the operations of eight companies, including the one formerly known as Blackwater and three other international contractors.

“We have very good news for the Afghan people today,’’ presidential spokesman Waheed Omar told reporters in the capital. “The disbanding of eight private security firms has started.’’

Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced in August that private security contractors would have to cease operations by the end of the year — wiping out an industry with tens of thousands of guards who protect military convoys, government officials, and businesspeople.

Some security contractors have been criticized for operating more like private militias, and the government said it could not have armed groups that were independent of the police or military forces.

The eight companies include Xe Services, the North Carolina-based contractor formerly called Blackwater, and NCL Holdings LLC of Virginia, Four Horsemen International of New Mexico, and Compass International of London, Omar said.

Two large Afghan companies, White Eagle Security Services and Abdul Khaliq Achakzai, are on the list. The remaining two companies are small operations with fewer than 100 employees, so he declined to name them.

Omar said many of the companies had turned in weapons, some voluntarily. He did not say why the eight had been chosen as the first to be closed down, and if any international companies had actually left the country. A statement issued by the president’s office was more strongly worded, saying that the process of closing down the eight companies was “almost complete.’’

An owner of White Eagle, Sayed Maqsud, said his company had handed over weapons for a contract that was completed but was still employing guards under another contract.

“We are not shut down. Only we gave up 340 weapons,’’ Maqsud said, explaining that the company’s contract to guard fuel convoys for American troops in southern Helmand province had ended. He said he fired 530 guards who had been working under that program when the contract finished and handed over the guns to the government.

However, he said they have another 1,200 guards protecting cellphone towers for South Africa-based mobile phone company MTN, with plans to continue that unless the government says they have to close down.

Karzai’s original decree on private security companies gave an exemption to companies that guard the compounds of international embassies or organizations. It was unclear what this means for companies on the list that also have contracts to guard US government installations or other diplomatic missions.

Omar said the government was focused on security companies that are providing protection for highways or convoys, not those training Afghan forces or guarding embassies. He said the national security forces are not yet able to protect embassies and international organizations.

The US Embassy in Kabul said it was looking into what the decision would mean for US government contracts.

The Afghan government has estimated that 30,000 to 40,000 armed security guards are working in the country. The Interior Ministry has 52 security companies licensed, but some older contracts are still being completed by unlicensed operations. About half of the companies are Afghan-owned.

I’m sure that this will end well.  I’m sure that this is “very good news for the Afghan people.”  I’m sure that the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police will be able to fill the gap.  And you know all about the Taliban having infiltrated the ANA and ANP, right?  And you know all about the inability of NGOs to perform their function due to the increase in security incidents, right?

I’m sure that this will end well for the campaign.

An important and recent account of combat action from a friend and patriot currently in Afghanistan.

How can you not love and admire the American fighting man. Men who are sent perform pointless, thankless tasks in the service of their nation. Poorly lead, poorly supported; they still manage to perform with patience and valor. It is unfortunate that there are no words to describe the thoughts and actions of such men. I try to explain to the privileged 99% of American citizens who do not serve, just what this means. And fail miserably. They just look at me, disbelief on their faces and I’m sure, disgust on mine.

So the platoon is vehicle mounted, MRAPS and Hmmwv’s with ANA in Ford Rangers. The platoon negotiates a defile with high ground all around and the ambush is sprung when the lead and then trail vehicles are disabled with IED and RPG fire. Its a good size linear ambush; PKM’s and RPG’s. The platoon takes causalities immediately and all vehicular maneuver is initially destroyed under intense fire. The soldiers dismount to fight for their lives. Even the gunners are forced off their turrets.The Taliban forces have RPG 9’s and are trying to take the vehicles apart even as the PKM fire is pinning the dismounts and killing and wounding. C2 is a mess and the some of the ANA forces are trying to run away.

One soldier, armed with an old iron sighted M14 he found in a Conex container in a small outpost, targets three PKM gunners who have the main element pinned down. The Taliban forces intend to reduce this force to the point that they can conduct a ground assault across the ambush site and secure equipment and prisoners. Platoon leadership is massing fires and calling for Medivac and CAS, but it’s not going too well.

The RPG men are at 200-350 meters, close to their max range. They are popping up and down over various rocky berms that define the surrounding high ground above the kill zone. They know their business; target the vehicles and masses of men, hold them in place so that the machinegun fire and ground assault forces can finish the job. As they pop up and down they make lousy targets for the ambushed forces pinned down below. The RPG’s are fast and loud and leave an evil, snaking, brown smoke trail in their wake.

Its the PKM fire that is the real issue. Cleverly and with sound tactical acumen, they are positioned within their max range on a berm above and behind the RPG gunners. It is very difficult for the U.S. Forces on the valley floor to see them and fix them with their own fires. Here the M4 is not really in its element. Firing up slope from exposed positions at machine gunners with cover and concealment, the little 5.56mm round is no match for the  7.62mm rounds delivered at a high rate of fire. The soldiers are off their trucks, away from their own machine guns and heavy weapons which again are very limited due to the steeply sloping terrain. They are difficult to elevate to the point that effective fire can be delivered. The Taliban RPG and PKM gunners suffer no limitations.

The platoon leadership struggles to maintain their fires and a fighting force. Despite all the chaos they begin to get vehicles moving and their remaining heavy weapons on target. The Taliban is tightening the noose on this ambush. The balance of the U.S. forces are still dismounted, returning fire and treating casualties. The Taliban now has 360 degree fire on this tiny force. U.S. Forces are surrounded and need to get the heck out of there.

The M14 gunner has watched fire from 3 specific PKM’s who have the front, back and sides of the ambushed forces pinned down. With some assistance spotting fire, he is able to silence or slow them down. He then takes the initiative and with a fire team in tow; maneuvers on a ridge line and kills the assault commander, his body guard and other PKM gunners. This breaks the back of the assault force and the platoon is now able to take charge of their Alamo Vally and recover their tactical loses from the ambush. CAS is now on site but no one cares. It’s F15’s and they rarely drop anything for fear of civilian collateral damage. Besides, the Platoon FAC is mired in ROE as opposed to mission, concerns. He is removed from the platoon COP within 24 hours of this fight.

The ambush is defeated but the remains of the platoon have very little time to recover and remove their own dead and wounded and to police the Taliban dead. The remains of the Taliban force are quickly scrutinized. The U.S Forces need to get the heck out of this ambush site before they are counter attacked by a larger Taliban force.

The Taliban assault force commander is well dressed and equipped. His pockets are rifled to reveal papers identifying him as a Pakistani Intelligence official. Its difficult to match his identification papers to his person because he was shot in the face and not much remains. He is also caring a small black book that has identifying and contact information for all the ANA and ANP officials in this area. The platoon interpreter is on site and he suggests that the information in this black book demonstrates the complicity of all local Afghan officials.

The Platoon consolidates vehicles and equipment for evacuation. Dustoff arrives for the wounded and though full of complaints, hauls the combat dead as well. Some equipment is destroyed on site with Thermite and direct fire and the Platoon returns to their COP to debrief, refit and turn-in their hard earned combat intelligence. Its really just another day in Afghanistan.

There are many themes from previous discussions, from Pakistani duplicity in this campaign, to micromanagement of the enlisted men, to ANA cowardice and lack of discipline, to the need for additional training in marksmanship and the need to arm members of fire teams and squads with various weapons that enable them to engage in more long range fire and maneuver tactics (in Marine Corps terms, this would mean relying heavily on the DM, or Designated Marksman, or Scout Sniper for long range targeting).  It also means arming squads with M14s or some equivalent weapon.  There are tens of thousands of M14s still in armories in the U.S. waiting to be utilized.

But without rehearsing too much detail on the main themes of heroism, megalomaniacal staff level officers, weapons training and selection, and poor performance of our allies, this account takes its place among the great ones in this campaign.  God bless the U.S. warrior.

From The New York Times:

Armed militants attacked and set fire to at least 20 parked tanker trucks carrying fuel for NATO and American troops in Afghanistan on Monday, the police said. It was the third such strike in Pakistan  since Friday.

The attack, not far from the capital, Islamabad, took place on a supply line that has been stalled because of a temporary border closing imposed by the Pakistani authorities to protest a NATO helicopter attack that killed three Pakistani soldiers last week.

The border closing has exacerbated tensions between the United States and Pakistan but has been welcomed by Islamist groups opposed to Pakistan’s support of the American-led war in Afghanistan.

Umer Hayat, a police officer, said three people were killed in the latest burning of fuel trucks, for which he blamed terrorists.

The attackers opened fire on trucks parked at a poorly guarded terminal before setting them afire, he and other officers said.

The trucks were waiting to travel to the Torkham border crossing along the Khyber Pass, used to transport fuel, military vehicles, spare parts, clothing and other nonlethal supplies for foreign troops in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s other main route into landlocked Afghanistan, in Chaman in the southwest, has remained open.

While NATO and the United States have alternative supply routes into Afghanistan, the Pakistani ones are the cheapest and most convenient. Most of the nonlethal supplies headed to the American-led war effort are transported over Pakistani soil from the port of Karachi in the south.

On Friday, a day after the closing of the Khyber Pass route to NATO and American traffic, there were two attacks on oil tankers headed to Afghanistan. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for at least one of them and vowed to attack again.

It seems to me on deep reflection that I recommended that we engage the Caucasus region 1.5 years ago for purposes of logistics as well as other reasons.  Yes, I think I did.

You would think something as important as logistics in a land-locked country had been addressed and analyzed before.  Yes, I’m sure it has.  I very sure.  I’m very, very sure.  I’m certain it has.  I’m very certain.  I’m VERY, VERY CERTAIN.  It’s just that the idiots at the White House won’t listen to the Milbloggers.

And we discussed this again eight months ago, saying that it still wasn’t too late to do the right thing.  So I am still certain that I have addressed this issue, and I am still waiting for us to do the right thing.

So how is that alternate logistics route through the Caucasus region going?  You know, the one that avoids Pakistan, engages Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, and flips the double barreled middle finger at Russia?

U.S. Army Pfc. Ryan L. Carson of Richmond, Va., a member of the Company Intelligence Support Team with Company A, 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, Task Force Bulldog, and an Afghan National Police officer search the nearby hillside just prior to a more than three-hour firefight at the Shege East ANP checkpoint Sept. 18th.

In the Kunar Province, “An estimated two dozen insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns and small arms at the post in eastern Afghanistan’s Kunar Province. International Security Assistance Forces and ANP responded in kind with small arms, heavy machine gun and mortar fire. Neither ISAF nor ANP personnel were injured during the attack.”

In the Paktya Province:

One Afghan security contractor and five insurgents were killed when a squad-sized element of insurgents attacked three bases near Gardez, Paktya province, Sept. 24. At least two others were injured.

The attack began when insurgents opened fire on the Forward Operating Base Goode (Gardez) entry control point with AK-47 rifles at about noon, said U.S. Army Capt. Scott M. Frederick, the FOB commander of FOB Lightning. One insurgent was killed and a truck belonging to a respected village elder was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and set aflame in this initial attack.

After coalition forces suppressed the first wave of the attack, four insurgents who had been wearing suicide vests removed their explosive vests and began firing on the entry control point with AK-47 rifles. All four were killed. One of the suicide vests “cooked off,” but caused no damage. Coalition forces seized the other three before they detonated.

The small group of surviving insurgents escaped to a nearby wadi, or dry riverbed, where they were fired upon by U.S. troops at FOB Lightning. The insurgents retreated to the tree line and began firing on both FOB Lightning and FOB Thunder, an adjacent Afghan National Army installation.

Suddur, an Afghan National Army soldier in Garrison Kandak, 203rd Thunder Corps was guarding FOB Thunder’s entry control point when the attack was under way, and described the events.

“At first it was just a few people firing, we thought it was [celebratory fire for] a wedding,” he said. “Then, the firing increased dramatically, and we called the quick reaction force.”

The firefight went on uninterrupted for about 20 minutes, and sporadic gunfire continued for at least another hour. Rounds could be heard ricocheting inside the wire of both installations.

In the Khost Province:

U.S. Apache attack helicopters virtually wiped out a platoon-size insurgent force that was assaulting a combat outpost in eastern Afghanistan’s Khost province Sept. 21, according to coalition spokesmen.

But while the AH-64 Apaches were the agents of the insurgents’ destruction, a combination of at least one unmanned aerial vehicle and ground-based surveillance cameras was the key to identifying the insurgents before they were able to launch their attack, according to an account of the battle published online by Task Force Rakkasan, which is built around the 3rd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). The unmanned aerial vehicle was “an organic brigade UAV system,” said TF Rakkasan spokesman Maj. S. Justin Platt.

Coalition forces suffered no casualties during the multi-hour nighttime battle at Combat Outpost Spera, said Platt. Nor were there any reports of civilian casualties.

COP Spera, located about 10 miles from the Pakistan border, is manned by soldiers from TF Rakkasan’s A Troop, 1st Squadron, 33rd Cavalry Regiment, as well as Afghan forces. Platt declined to be more specific about the size of the coalition force at Spera, but according to an April story by the Associated Press, “the outpost is regularly manned by one U.S. platoon of 20-30 troops serving 10-week rotations along with an Afghan National Army company about 100-strong.”

These instances are positive in their engagement of the enemy, and some of the engagement involves patrols.  All of the engagements involve patriotic Soldiers doing their duty, and any time the Taliban masses forces against U.S. troops, they lose badly or at least have a low kill ratio compared to U.S. troops.  Not a single casualty occurred in the three engagements detailed above.  This is very good.  Very good indeed.

But as we proceed through this campaign, we will win or lose based on whether these engagements are within or without the confines of FOBs.  We need to be chasing the enemy and killing them in the hills and tree lines in which they hide.  Recall the boys in the Korengal as reported by C. J. Chivers?

Prior: The Five Hundred Meter War