Archive for the 'Afghanistan' Category

The U.S. has recently conducted air operations just across the Pakistani border.

NATO helicopters conducted a rare cross-border operation into Pakistan Saturday, killing dozens of militants, according to the alliance.

NATO in Afghanistan said the first cross-border strike came a day after rebels attacked an Afghan border outpost in eastern Khost province. In a second strike, two helicopters returned to the border area and came under fire before killing several more insurgents.

Dawn gives us a little more detail.

US military sources say that all 30 – killed during a hot pursuit on Friday – were Haqqani Network fighters.

The militants, the sources said, had attacked Combat Outpost Narizah, an Afghan base eight miles from the Pakistani border in Tani district of Khost.

US forces repelled the attack and pursued the militants to their post just across the border in North Waziristan.

“An air weapons team in the area observed the enemy fire, and following Inter-national Security Assistance Force rules of engagement, crossed into the area of enemy fire,” the International Security Assistance Force stated in a press release.

It’s a positive development that rather than confining our combat operations to protecting the population we’re chasing the insurgents as I have observed needed to be done so many times before.  But in another development, Pakistan is not happy with the cross-border operations.

Pakistan reacted angrily today after Nato said US helicopters had crossed into its territory from Afghanistan to attack militants, claiming to have killed more than 50 Taliban fighters.

The admission that two incursions had taken place over the weekend by helicopters from the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), and possibly a further cross-border raid today, came after recent reports of a covert CIA military force in Afghanistan that crosses into Pakistan to kill Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry condemned the incursions as a “clear violation and breach of the UN mandate under which Isaf operates”, saying it had made a formal protest to Nato. “In the absence of immediate corrective measures, Pakistan will be constrained to consider response options,” said Abdul Basit, the foreign ministry spokesman.

So Pakistan is doing a little saber-rattling of their own, still wanting to play both sides against the middle and protect it’s asset – the Taliban – in its neurotic, make-believe future war with India.

This will be a good test of our resolve to be successful in Afghanistan.  Either we offer up obsequious explanations, excuses and discussions about how this was within the rules of engagement, or we tell the Pakistanis that we did it, we’re proud of the results, and it’s going to happen again … and again … and again … until they get their own shop under control.  Stay tuned.

Canadians are running into cultural issues in Kandahar.

The Pashtun people of southern Afghanistan have a saying: “He is not a Pathan who does not give a blow for a pinch.”

“Nang” and “badal” — honour and revenge, respectively — trump even the holy book of the Qur’an for many Pashtuns, and so it is with caution that Canada sends its troops to live among them as part of its widening counter-insurgency strategy in Kandahar province.

It’s widely understood that, as the proverb suggests, a Pashtun (or Pathan) man will respond aggressively to even the most minor slight, extracting revenge to defend the honour of himself and his family. Those considered friends and guests are protected and respected with the same zeal.

“Respect and honour is very important to them,” said Capt. Paul Stokes, a member of the Royal Canadian Regiment battle group currently in Kandahar.

Canadian soldiers bound for Afghanistan are taught about the different tribal and family affiliations that have affected the tides of war in the region for generations. They’re warned of the sometimes primitive living conditions and taught a few words of Pashto. Some even carry well-thumbed phrasebooks.

But nothing can entirely prepare them for the experience of living among the locals, Stokes said. “You can teach it in class, but you don’t appreciate it until you see the differences and experience it.”

Canadian soldiers currently live and work among Afghan police and soldiers and live in or near small villages, venturing out every day to try to forge trust within the local population.

They attend elaborate community meetings, known as shuras, where the pace is plodding and the casual drift of time can prove a challenge for military-minded westerners like Stokes.

“The western culture is a very fast-paced culture, with emails and TV. We want to get to a meetings and get right to the heart of the matter. That’s not the way it is (in Afghanistan),” he said.

“You go there, you have tea, you have coffee, you have food, you may have an entire meal and talk about your families and friends, and then — whether it be 15 minutes later or an hour later — you get to the heart of the discussion.”

Capt. Ashley Collette has travelled to Third World countries before, so the living conditions she and her platoon found in the village of Nakhonay were less of a shock to her than to some of her colleagues.

Life in the village in Panjwaii, southwest of Kandahar city, has more benefits than drawbacks, but it has not been without its challenges, she said.

“The experience itself of living right alongside the locals is one that I’d argue you can’t really prepare yourself for. It’s a unique experience in itself,” Collette said.

Being unable to speak the language is also a problem.

Of course being unable to speak the language is a problem, just as are poor translators.  And true enough, little contributions to the population are a good thing.  In Fallujah 2007 there was a problem with feral dogs (packs of dogs would literally attack Marine patrols as well as the population).  In addition to what the Marines did to the population (e.g., heavy policing, kicking doors in, etc.), one thing they did for the population was to perform patrols with the sole purpose of getting the feral dog population under control.  They accomplished this in short order.  The people of Fallujah appreciated this.

But one thing that the Marines didn’t do was change their behavior.  In spite of the Iraqi cultural revulsion at dogs, the Marines had theirs – both bomb sniffing and adopted dogs – the adopted dogs helping in locating and warning indications of feral dogs packs.  The Marines projected forces regardless of cultural morays, and the tea-drinking came later when the population decided that the Marines would win.

The Marines are taking turnover of Sangin from the British, and there is mixed reaction.

… tribal elder Muhammad Khan says British troops were mindful of local culture, and treated people well.

”The former infidels [British] were better than these new ones [Americans],” said Mr Khan.

“Britons were respectful of our culture and traditions. They wouldn’t search someone on a motorcycle with his wife in the back seat.

”But American troops don’t care. They stop us and search both man and his woman. This is what we know of Americans.”

A number of residents have reservations about the arrival of US forces.

Gul Muhammad, from Sangin town, said: ”I liked the way British soldiers conducted operations.

“After they were attacked, they would go to the exact house and target the very attacker without harming others.”

Another resident expressed his concerns about civilian casualties.

”Americans behave differently,” said Aazar Gulalai. “They attack indiscriminately and target everybody in the vicinity after they are targeted by the Taliban, or suffer casualties in a mine explosion.

”All of them shoot at us. They all target us. We and the Taliban become the same for them after they are attacked.

”We are civilians. We don’t have any animosity with the Taliban, or government.”

Sangin is one of the most heavily populated districts in Helmand, with a population of around 150,000.

But a number of people left the town of Sangin in recent years as a result of fighting. One of them, Abdul Wali, hopes that he will be able to return home soon.

”We left Sangin because of continual attacks and fighting,” says Abdul Wali. “I hope Americans will bring security with them and schools will be opened.”

Over the past few months, Americans have already taken on security responsibility for many other districts in Helmand, including Nawa, Garmsir, Marjah, Khanshin and Nawzad.

A number of people in these districts claim that British forces failed to bring security there because they did not want to risk fighting the Taliban.

”Americans are serious,” says Muhabbat Khan, a resident of Nawa district. “Security is much better now here. The British were only concerned about their on security.

”British troops couldn’t handle casualties. They used to retreat all the time and this would further embolden the Taliban.”

A few residents of Sangin expressed hope that Americans would bring not only security to their district, but much needed development and jobs for the people.

Several observations are in order.  First, the British can certainly take casualties, and their bravery is not in question.  What the example of Musa Qala showed us is that the British approach to counterinsurgency is different because of their officer corps.  Two years ago the British enacted their plans to deescalate the violence against the Taliban.  The rest, they say, is history.

But more to the point, the counterinsurgency reactionary would study this report and decide that it’s time for cultural re-education.  Send the Marines to more PowerPoint presentations, and make sure that they have all of their cultural I’s dotted and T’s crossed.  To the Marines in Anbar this was irrelevant, and it should be irrelevant to the Marines in Helmand.

Returning to the first report about the high sounding Pashtun traditions of honor, it wouldn’t appear that their honor isn’t so great that they would forbid the Taliban from ruling them with a heavy hand and purvey death to the insurgents.  Indeed, the population in Sangin wants it all too.  They want security and then jobs, but they have no animosity towards anyone.

Regardless of their lack of animosity, they will be forced to choose sides, and they will contribute to their own security or they will have none, from either the Marines or the Taliban.  They can drink tea later.  There is work to do first for everyone involved.

In The Five Hundred Meter War I linked a report at Global Post by James Foley, who also blogs at A World of Troubles.  Please spend the time to read my analysis as context for my criticism of another article below, and also visit Jim’s web site.  His prose is current, salient, well-informed and well written.

Citing the same report at Global Post by Jim, Pia de Solenni writing at National Review Online’s Corner weighs in quite differently from my analysis.

Two years ago today, my brother Bruno was killed while serving in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. Before going to Afghanistan, he’d done two other tours, including Iraq. I think just about every family member of a deployed soldier surveys the news with trepidation, worrying that it could be their loved one who’s the latest casualty or, worse, fatality.

There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of my brother and, naturally, there’s a poignancy around certain dates like holidays, birthdays, and today. But last Friday, as I was watching the PBS NewsHour, I was completely unprepared for the footage of soldiers in Afghanistan. Viewers were warned that the segment would contain graphic images and graphic language. That warning didn’t begin to describe the content.

Footage included a soldier getting shot in the head; fortunately his helmet slowed down the bullet. Another soldier lost part of his arm. It was as if this were just a segment from an action film or a so-called reality show. But this is real life. The wounds are not special effects. They won’t go away when the cameras are turned off. The families of these soldiers could see them in danger and being wounded. And somehow, it’s all right to expose audiences, including families, to this very real brutality being done to U.S. soldiers; but the same audiences are too fragile to hear the f-bombs that, in such circumstances, are very understandable. Real life amputations and wounds, but no profanities.

Most soldiers are far more comfortable with people hearing them use profanity than they are with having their families caused any additional worry about their safety.

The journalists who prepared the segment would argue that they’re just reporting the facts. Ah, but these are selective facts. Did they show footage asking the soldiers whether they have any positive interactions with the Afghans? Did they ask the soldiers what they think of their mission? No, and they didn’t even allow them the expression of an f-bomb. So much for hearing the soldiers in their own voices. Instead, they were exploited by the graphic images of their activities. As the saying goes, if it bleeds, it leads. But if an audience is too fragile to hear certain words, surely it’s too fragile to see real life casualties.

Segments like this convey nothing but fear and futility. They give no context to the situation. To me it seems that they undermine the concerns of our soldiers insofar as they create greater fear and anxiety for families, precisely what the soldiers don’t want, all in the name of journalism so slanted that it looks more like propaganda aiding the enemy.

Yes, I am emotionally vested. But I’ve seen very little news coverage that represents the experiences of the soldiers I’ve known, including my brother. (Our hometown newspaper was one of the few exceptions I’ve seen. They even published a letter from Bruno, written just a few days before he died, explaining why he was serving in the Army.) I have an aunt who has organized an impressive local network of volunteers to send care packages to numerous troops. Frequently, she forwards their e-mails with their stories, which are so very different from most of what the media presents.*

Regardless of what one thinks of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, most people agree that those who serve in the military deserve our support. They’re already risking, even giving up, their lives for our country. If certain commentators and media outlets don’t agree with this, they only have that right because we have a long tradition of military men and women who have fought and died to protect that right for them. All I’m asking is that the soldiers themselves not be exploited, whether in the broadcasting of their injuries or by causing additional anxiety and suffering to their families.

Thanks to Pia de Solenni for the heavy sacrifice of a loved one.  Having deployed a son to Operation Iraqi Freedom in Fallujah at the very height of the violence in 2007, I know first hand what a heavy burden it is to bear up under the ubiquitous darkness of knowing that your flesh and blood  is under fire.  Friend and fellow Marine father Michael Ledeen signed his book The Iranian Time Bomb to me with these words: “To a fellow suffering father.”

I have suffered through having a son under fire, but not losing him in battle.  Losing a family member qualifies one, my my opinion, to have almost any view of the particular war, and seldom do I weigh in on the griefs or even views of others who have lost loved ones, even when they disagree with my own.  Andrew Bacevich is a good example.  Michael Ledeen and I have discussed Andrew, and while I am certain that he seldom writes anything with which I am in complete agreement, Andrew is qualified to speak his mind.  He lost a Marine son in the Anbar Province.

But Pia de Solenni’s opinion rings differently that mere commentary on a particular engagement or the overall campaign.  The commentary seems to be tilting towards self censorship of certain types of coverage and commentary of the war.  If something is too gruesome, too graphic, without enough prose or pictures of Soldiers and Marines walking hand in hand with indigenous peoples, then the coverage and commentary is without context.

Jim Foley is an embedded reporter who has been in theater since March.  According to his most recent communication to me, he is currently in Kandahar continuing to try to get a sense of things in that AO.  A quick survey of his blogroll and a longer survey of his prose shows him to be a well rounded reporter and analyst who is reporting with passion but also with balance.

No regular reader of my own posts over the last four years could possibly charge me with any sort of failure to provide context or lack of support for the troops.  But I have been critical when I felt that command or strategy deserved criticism, and for this I have been dropped from blogrolls, lost traffic, and received very tersely worded letters from various readers, including some military readers (usually in the NCO ranks, and usually among those who have yet to come to terms with blogs knowing anything about the detailed goings-on within the military).

If I comment on overall strategy, that should be left to the generals in the Pentagon.  If I link and comment on the rules of engagement, I am endangering the troops, regardless of the fact that they have previously been released on other web sites.  If I convey original reporting because of some contact I have within the military, I am cast into the same category as the military-hating main stream media if the reporting doesn’t have that jingoistic bent to it.

But war is violence, and so that I don’t rehearse the exploits of my son, I will refer to comments made by an Army officer 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.

There are many experiences, many examples, and a huge amount of context to deal with in any analysis.  It isn’t possible to address all of it all of the time.  On the other hand, I have repeatedly addressed the lack of force projection in the Provinces of Nuristan and Kunar, the failures at Wanat and Kamdesh, and the hard work of the men who fought in the Korengal Valley, while still calling out the bravery of the men who did our fighting in Eastern Afghanistan and covering my Marines in Helmand.  Soldiers who have written me have felt the love, as well as agreed with me on many occasions as I argued for more force projection, more distributed operations, and enemy-centric tactics such as chasing the insurgents rather than just focusing on population centers.

In the case in point, I have observed that it makes little sense to send troops on patrols to be shot at, blown up, and dismembered, while the insurgents roam the hills unmolested.  The insurgents aren’t being killed and the population isn’t being protected.  More troops are required, and then a different set of tactics.  This observation doesn’t detract from the bravery of the Soldiers who went on this particular patrol.  In fact, this observation does indeed set the correct context.

Honesty and advocacy for their needs is the best context that can be given to the story.  Sometimes this involves glowing reports about giving cows to widows of the war so that their sons don’t turn to the insurgency.  At other times this involves saying that some tactic, strategy or doctrine doesn’t suit the need of the moment.  The former is routinely accepted by those who lean right of center.  The same right of center folk must learn to accept the later without calling it out as disloyalty or lack of full context.  It’s what honest reporters and good military bloggers do.

In Korengal, the fighting often happened at several hundred meters.  In fact, Staff Sergeant Jeffrey Wall states that “we know that 52% of the fights in Afghanistan begin at 500 meters and go out from there.”  He laments the poor state of long distance rifleman skills and training, and recommends a return to that very basic training that creates riflemen.  The Marines are in better shape regarding this concern, every Marine having to qualify at 500 yards.

Yet there is something unstated here – an assumed precondition that sets the framework for this problem.  It is assumed that it will remain a 500 meter war, that we must increase rifleman skills (which we must), and that the only solution to this problem is to perform long distance shooting of the enemy.

But this presupposition only points us to a deeper problem.  We are not manned to close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver.  We are engaging in long distance fire fights until then are completed by calling in air strikes or artillery, rather than engaging in small unit (fire team, squad, platoon, company) maneuver warfare.

Squad rushes, distributed operations, development of enfilade fire and so forth are being done in some circumstances, but unless we chase the enemy they will go unmolested to kill and maim again.  This 500 meter war also becomes problematic for IEDs and ambushes.  The Taliban wouldn’t be able to plant IEDs if they were continuously under fire and surveillance, but of course, this requires more troops.

Eastern Afghanistan (Kunar, Nuristan, etc.) is still an important cornerstone in the campaign in Afghanistan, regardless of the population-centric approach being employed by current command (with which I strongly disagree).  An important report on a recent ambush in the Kunar Province demands our attention.

The ambush I recorded on video for GlobalPost Aug. 26 was not particularly unique.  Unfortunately, it’s an all too common occurrence for the soldiers patrolling here. Soldiers from Monti have been ambushed from the nearby steep mountainsides at least three times. The Taliban are known for being creatures of habit, using the same ambush spot if it proves effective.  The difference is that this time the first truck was hit with a “lucky shot” which disabled it and the driver.  I don’t want to go into more detail per Army operation security rules for embedded reporters.

When Pvt. Justin Greer got hit in the helmet, at first it didn’t seem real. I’ve noticed this immediate reaction in myself before. The mind, for several seconds, acts like it’s watching a movie.  If this lasts for more than several seconds, one could freeze and really put themselves in danger.  I’ve never seen an infantry soldier freeze. They’ve been trained to react to contact and in Kunar, their buddies’ lives depend on it.

Greer also appeared amazed with how close the bullet came to killing him. He showed me the bullet hole and the round he found in his helmet, before tucking it in his pocket as keepsake.  Most likely it was an indirect shot, those Kevlar helmets rarely can stop a direct AK-47 7.62 round.  A reporter told me that the layers of Kevlar in the U.S. helmet are actually designed to split and channel bullets, like Greer’s seemed to do.

Since this position was a suspected ambush site by the Taliban, wouldn’t it have been nice to have brought enough troops to chase the insurgents, or perhaps pre-deployed snipers, or both?  Isn’t it a shame that they were left alive?  The ambush cost us a lost arm, a concussion, a head wound, and a destroyed vehicle.  Isn’t it worth it to deploy enough troops to do the job?  In the end, from the perspective of a cost-benefit analysis, wouldn’t it have been cheaper to have anticipated this and brought enough firepower to chase and kill the enemy instead of sustaining the losses?

Prior: Taking Back the Infantry Half-Kilometer

In my younger years I trained quarter horses.  Naturally, I was both surprised and excited to see an article about taking rodeos from Texas to Afghanistan.  I expected stories about how the Afghans learned of the utility of the quintessential horse – the quarter horse – in barrel racing, roping, ring riding, and just about everything else.  Lord, I love the quarter horse.  I do.  I was very disappointed and saddened to read the report.

What I wasn’t expecting to see was such a stark and honest appraisal of the degrading security situation in Afghanistan.  Remember, too, it was during this time that we killed and captured so many high value targets with the ultra-secretive night raids by SOF troopers.  Surely at risk of repeating myself for the millionth time, I guess that strategy isn’t working, huh?

Joshua Foust recently excoriated the Afghanistan Study Group Report.  I’ve pretty much ignored the report, it being yet another dumb small footprint, attack of the drones, CT v. COIN, send in the “special boys” SOF to kill all of the HVTs, etc., etc., ad nauseum, document.  Josh does a good job of exploring all of its inconsistencies.  Logical contradictions are death to an argument, and this report is chock full of them.  Consistency is not the hobgoblin of small minds.  It is the stuff of life.  Logical inconsistencies are to me a complete turnoff.  I close my mind quickly to someone who can’t maintain logical attention to detail.

Josh and I agree on many (and most) things, except for one important thing I will mention.  He argues that Afghanistan’s problems are not, per se, due to Afghanistan, but other things, including the messy way in which we have waged this campaign.  Josh and I agree on the messiness of the campaign, but I will continue to hold that Afghanistan’s problems are due to a multitude of things, not all of which but not the least of which is Afghanistan.  With my more enemy-centric view of counterinsurgency, I see a limit to the extent to which we are going to be able to convert their governance, ensure domestic tranquility, and bring them into the 21st century.  I believe that Josh sees more cultural engagement as necessary for Afghanistan than I believe we have the time or resources for.  That said, Josh is a smart Afghanistan analyst and his assessment of the report should be your next reading assignment.

Shortly after weighing in on the report, Josh catalogs various folk calling him a dumb ass.  Well, it happens, and I’ve had my fair share of folk calling me a dumb ass.  It rarely changes my mind on the facts of the matter, but sometimes amuses me.  On a related note, one particularly amusing comment to Josh’s post comes from Bernard Finel, with whom I rarely agree on anything.  He says:

I suspect that we have different definitions of “anything substantial.” We cannot wage a COIN campaign with 30k troops. But NO ONE claims we can.

As for the drones issue. Yes, I agree. The problem with an off-shore drone campaign is the intelligence challenge. I have never argued otherwise, but the report does not suggest striking individuals. It suggests striking essentially pre-9/11 style AQ facilities which we DID have good intel on despite having little ground presence.

So again, you are making a false argument. 30k is not enough to do what YOU want to do in Afghanistan. It is likely sufficient to do what the study authors believe is necessary for US national interests.

Strange comment.  He must mean 30k additional troops, not 30k troops.  And yes, Petraeus et. al., do indeed claim that we can wage a COIN campaign with what we currently have in Afghanistan.  As for the supposed intelligence pre-9/11, he must be joking.  I cannot seriously comment on this because it isn’t a serious point.  Moving on to his solution, most readers know what I think about the SOF high value target campaign, but just in case anyone has missed it, let me be clearer.

It doesn’t work.  Period.  Neither does the drone campaign.  I am not opposed to killing Taliban.  That’s what I want to have done anyway – from the bottom up, thereby marginalizing Taliban “leaders” because they cannot recruit fighters.  I am not compassionate over either the Taliban or those who harbor them.  But searching out HVTs didn’t work in Iraq, isn’t working in Afghanistan, and won’t ever work in any serious insurgency (to be clear, other things caused us to succeed in Iraq).  If the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan – and here I am including leaving a small SOF footprint of several thousand troops, perhaps 10k to 20k, even though we don’t have than many to give – here is the list of things that would happen.

Within several months the Afghan National Police would dissociate, leaving nothing but an empty shell for local security.  The ANP who weren’t high on opium would have scattered.  The ANA would last a little longer, maybe half a year, but many of them would be high on opium or would scatter.  That corrupt bastard Ahmed Wali Karzai would have his carcass thrown out into the road, and Kandahar would fall to the Taliban within months.  The ANA would soon desert and run for home.  The Northern Alliance would crank up again in earnest, but wouldn’t be able to stop the surge of Taliban control.  Kabul would fall within a year.  It would take a SOF campaign just to save the SOF troops who had stayed in Afghanistan.  Except they would all be in Afghanistan, so someone else would have to do it.

All who had cooperated with the U.S. would be drug into the streets and shot.  Intelligence would be non-existent.  Most contractors who had provided logistics to U.S. troops would be shot within several months, and the rest would scatter.  The only logistics would be via air, and the only bases which would continue to be open would have to engage in force protection around the clock.  There would be no SOF raids because they wouldn’t know whom to target.  The drone campaign would cease and desist because any intelligence asset within Pakistan would quickly figure out that the U.S. had cut and run, and that the Taliban were clear winners.  Intelligence in Pakistan would  evaporate overnight, as if it had never existed.  Only the ghosts would be left to talk to us.

Now.  It isn’t true that I simply want more troops and more of the same while we try harder this time around, a potential charge and one that Col. Gian Gentile makes of Josh.  I have advocated against population-centric COIN and in favor of chasing the insurgents where they live.  I have advocated distributed operations and small unit maneuver warfare, less restrictive ROE, getting off of the FOBs, and around the clock contact with both the population and the insurgency.  The Marines are doing this in Helmand, and part of the Army is doing this in Kunar and Nuristan.  But we’re not doing this everywhere, and we should be.

Finally, others know solutions that are not being implemented.  SFC Jeromy Henning comments:

The smaller footprint argument is simply ridiculous. A true surge is needed on this side in order to support the Pakistani initiatives. Every time they had conducted a major action on their side (into the territories along the border) the porous border and minimally-manned US Zones became safe-havens for the bad guys. We need plenty more troops in Afghanistan to secure the border districts/provinces in order to destroy insurgents as they seek safety from Pakistani efforts. Afghanistan needs the same footprint achieved in Iraq to accomplish this.

One of the places we are continuing to ignore is the support of the Afghan Border Police (ABP). Of all ANSF, they maintain more kinetic contacts than anybody else, yet they are mostly ignored and barely mentored by a token US presence at the Zoon(BDE) level and higher. They could use better training and mentorship as they live and serve on the border. As long as they feel that they are of no importance to the overall cause against the insurgents and remain under supplied, under-equipped, undermanned, and poorly led, they will be vulnerable to corruption resulting in a continuance of poor border security.

So there are several things you won’t hear from either Joshua Foust or me.  You won’t hear advocacy for the small footprint, you won’t hear advocacy for SOF raids, and you won’t hear stupid advocacy for negotiations and reconciliation with the Taliban (big T).  What you will hear is advocacy for doing things smarter, for better language training, and for more troops.  One area where Josh and I disagree has to do with distributed operations versus population centers.  But at this point we are gilding the lily.  We need more troops and more force projection before that issue becomes relevant.

From Strategy Page:

Between April and July of this year, U.S. and allied (including Afghan) special operations forces killed nearly 400 Taliban leaders, and arrested another 1,400 Taliban. All this was mostly done via night operations by commandos (mainly U.S. Special Forces and SEALs) and missile attacks by American UAVs. This is part of a trend.

In the past two years, SOCOM has been shifting forces from Iraq (where it had 5,500 personnel two years ago) to Afghanistan (where it had 3,000 troops two years ago). The ratio is now largely reversed. Most American allies have moved all their commando forces from Iraq to Afghanistan, where they not only do what they were trained for, but also train Afghans for special operations tasks. This has already been done in Iraq, where it worked quite well. As a result, there are now nearly 10,000 special operations troops in Afghanistan. The SOCOM troops in Iraq and Afghanistan account for about 80 percent of American special operations forces overseas. The rest are in places like Colombia, the Philippines and Djibouti (adjacent to Somalia).

Special operations troops not only participate in most of the attacks on the Taliban leadership (and key technical people building and placing roadside bombs), but also conduct a lot of the surveillance missions that locate safe houses where Taliban leaders operate from, as well as those used for bomb making workshops. Many Special Forces troops speak the local languages, and can negotiate with village and tribal leaders for information and assistance.

This “decapitation” campaign was successful in Iraq, and earlier, in Israel (where it was developed to deal with the Palestinian terror campaign that began in 2000.) Actually, the Americans have used siimilar tactics many times in the past (in World War II, 1960s Vietnam, the Philippines over a century ago and in 18th century colonial America.) But the Israelis developed decapitation tactics customized for use against Islamic terrorists.

In some cases, the Special Forces efforts have been so successful that the Taliban has been unable to get anyone to take the place of dead leaders. In some cases, the Taliban have called on friend and kin in the Afghan government, to try and get the Americans to stop. This puts these Afghan officials in a tight spot. While they are officially on board with this campaign against the Taliban, they also have members of their tribe, or even close relatives, who are in the Taliban. That’s not unusual in Afghanistan, where even the most pro-Taliban tribes have members who are not only pro-government, but actually work (most of the time) for the government. That’s how politics works in Afghanistan.

Ooooo.  Wow.  I’m sure this will end the insurgency in Afghanistan just like killing Zarqawi brought an abrupt end to the insurgency in Iraq.  Uh … er … nevermind, maybe not.  Maybe it’s not really killing several hundred “leaders” of what is already a disaggregated and decentralized insurgency that ends it.  Maybe, like Iraq, it’s operations against the insurgents themselves, thereby rendering the “leaders” embarrassed, irrelevant and powerless when they can’t get fighters to join their cause because they are seen as the losing side.

I continue to advocate reassignment of SOF to be matrixed directly to infantry (their skills could be put to good use), and I continue to advocate the ideas that the HVT campaign did not work in Iraq, is not working in Afghanistan, and will not work anywhere. You may disagree, but you must give me data that shows the effectiveness of this strategy.  I have yet to see any such evidence.  And as for the use of the term “strategy” to define this approach, it’s exactly in line with the facts.  Our strategy in Afghanistan at the present seems to be use of the GPF for force protection for logistics, medical personnel and air power, while the SOF boys take out leaders.  Pitiful strategy, this is.  If we cannot do any better than that we need to come home.

So how is Afghanistan now that we have killed or captured (and then released) all of those leaders?  Well, this doesn’t speak so well of things.

Even as more American troops flow into the country, Afghanistan  is more dangerous than it has ever been during this war, with security deteriorating in recent months, according to international organizations and humanitarian groups.

Large parts of the country that were once completely safe, like most of the northern provinces, now have a substantial Taliban presence — even in areas where there are few Pashtuns, who previously were the Taliban’s only supporters. As NATO forces poured in and shifted to the south to battle the Taliban in their stronghold, the Taliban responded with a surge of their own, greatly increasing their activities in the north and parts of the east.

Unarmed government employees can no longer travel safely in 30 percent of the country’s 368 districts, according to published United Nations estimates, and there are districts deemed too dangerous to visit in all but one of the country’s 34 provinces.

The number of insurgent attacks has increased significantly; in August 2009, insurgents carried out 630 attacks. This August, they initiated at least 1,353, according to the Afghan N.G.O. Safety Office, an independent organization financed by Western governments and agencies to monitor safety for aid workers.

An attack on a Western medical team in northern Afghanistan in early August, which killed 10 people, was the largest massacre in years of aid workers in Afghanistan.

“The humanitarian space is shrinking day by day,” said a CARE Afghanistan official, Abdul Kebar.

And likewise, neither does this.  Maybe we just aren’t killing the right high value targets, or something?  Or maybe we just need to focus on chasing and killing insurgents where they live by troops in contact with them every day.  You know, distributed operations and small unit maneuver warfare.  Some troops are doing that.  All of them should be.

Tim Lynch hasn’t seen much progress in Afghanistan this year.  We’ll let him speak on the issue.

As the summer started I was optimistic regarding the chances that we would see some indications that we are gaining ground in Afghanistan but that has not happened.  Incident rates are skyrocketing which in and of itself is not a negative thing if it is our side who are instigating the incidents but that is not the case.  While ISAF is conducting more raids and presence patrols they do not seem to have learned anything when it comes to pulling these operations off while managing the perceptions and attitudes of the population we are supposed to be protecting.  By projecting force off of FOB’s we create a vacuum after every operation.  Nature hates a vacuum so at the moment we see politicians filling that void.  Let me provide an example:

Earlier in the week a joint Afghan/American SF team raided a madrasa in Sarracha village which is next to the massive airfield/military base in Jalalabad.

Uh oh.  A SF team performs a raid and didn’t stay around to explain to the population what they did and why.  Stay tuned and keep reading.

They hit the madrasa at night and arrested five men described as mullahs or madrasa students (depends on who you ask).  The next morning a large crowd closed the main highway between Jalalabad and the border and threatened to start burning cars and throwing stones at the police and in general getting out of hand.  The police responded in great numbers but when they arrived a local candidate for Parliament was on hand calming the crowd down and swearing  ”he will not rest” (where did he get that line) until he has talked with the Governor and ISAF and the police to get the people detained released.  As it was approaching 100 degrees and this is Ramadan the crowd said OK and dispersed.  By the time I got there the police were gone and only a few men remained who were clearing the road of rocks.  My terp JD and I asked what had happened and were told the American SF had raided the Madras and taken five students and then they tore up the Koran.  I burst out laughing at that one as did JD the Terp saying that and said flat was BS and JD asked the guy how he could say something that stupid.  The man started laughing too – everyone in this country knows that neither US or Afghan troops are going to touch let alone destroy a Koran.

Here’s the thing – why is an Afghan political candidate managing the perceptions of a raid we conducted on a village less than a mile from one of our regional bases?  Pashtunwali works both ways and if these people are harboring villains then who is accountable for that?  I’m not advocating rounding people up and sweating them I’m saying the elders should be called into the mosque for a shura with the district governor and both Afghan and ISAF military representation and forced to explain why they can’t keep their house in order.  If that seems a bit confrontational then both sides can explain their positions and everyone can talk for hours to reach some sort of understanding.  Allowing insurgents into a village puts the village at risk because ISAF and the Afghan Army seek insurgents out and hit them aggressively.  That is why they exist and nobody can claim that seeking out those who are against a stable and peaceful Afghanistan is an illegitimate task.  The potential for collateral damage is significant and the responsibility for that damage has to rest on those who allow targets into their midsts.  We are using all carrots or all sticks depending on geographic location.   In Kunar Province ISAF fights daily while delivering aid programs while in Nangarhar Province we swoop down in the middle of the night and take away suspected insurgents and leave allowing various actors with their own agendas to fill the vacuum we create with whatever message benefits them. Kunar gets the carrots while Nangarhar gets the stick and I’m not sure why that is.  Until ISAF wises up and starts calibrating their operations to gain the maximum effect from every offensive action we are going to continue to get played by Afghan elites.

In Good Counterinsurgency, Bad Counterinsurgency and Tribes, we already discussed this problem.  I said:

I just don’t know how else to say it.  There are some in Afghanistan who are doing COIN.  The boys in the Korengal Valley did (they are gone now, unfortunately).  The Marines in Helmand are.  But confinement to FOBs is death to the campaign.  And that means the “special” SOF boys who ride helicopters to direct action kinetics for the night, and then back to the FOB for a warm meal and a bed for the night.  They aren’t contributing to the campaign.  They are a drain and drag on the national treasury. Period.  The Marines in Fallujah in 2007 spent weeks at a time in distributed operations, in units as small as a fire team, embedded with IPs at local Police Precincts, killing insurgents, taking note of the human terrain, and ensuring that their AO was locked down.  The SOF needs to figure out a way to contribute like this.

And recall the good counterinsurgency I cited?  It went something like this.

American troops in Afghanistan’s Paktika Province called in a helicopter strike against Taliban fighters who ambushed them here Tuesday night, killing several. The missile strike narrowly avoided doing serious damage to a mosque where some of the fighters were hiding, underlining both the risks and the potential benefits of using air power to support ground troops.

Under rules of engagement strictly enforced by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal that have provoked resentment among troops, American forces are required to exercise extreme caution when calling in airstrikes, and generally avoid mosques entirely. But in this case, American commanders defended the action, saying that they believed no civilians had been killed and that there was no way of knowing the building was a mosque.

If Afghanistan is getting a reputation as a war in which the “soft” side of counterinsurgency is driving out the use of force — and that is certainly the perception among some soldiers in the south — this is an instance of the “hard” side being brought to bear in the way familiar to any officer who fought in Iraq during the surge.

The American patrol set out from a base in Yahya Khel district center at 6 p.m. Tuesday, planning to provoke a fight with a team of Taliban sharpshooters suspected to be operating around the village of Palau. The troops, from Angel Company, 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, dropped off a team at a small Afghan army outpost and then moved by foot toward the village.

Just before dusk, the patrol was ambushed, not by the expected long-range marksmen, but by a team of gunmen who attacked with rifles and grenades from as close as 50 feet away. Two American soldiers were wounded. Half an hour later, at the outpost, Angel Company’s commander, Capt. Joshua Powers, received permission over the radio from Col. David Fivecoat, the battalion commander, to call in fire from attack helicopters. The pilots had watched a group of fighters move from the area of the gun battle to a courtyard in a small village north of Palau. They told Captain Powers that they could make out a machine gun and several rifles. At 8:38 p.m., one of the helicopters fired a Hellfire missile into the cluster, then shot another man who was on the roof of the building abutting the courtyard. Over the next half hour the helicopters attacked two more groups of suspected fighters in the area with cannon fire.

In the dark, Angel Company walked north from the outpost to assess the damage. In the courtyard, the corpses of two men were illuminated by burning weapons and motorcycles. While his medic tended to a third man, severely wounded and clad in camouflage, Captain Powers radioed his battalion with bad news: The building by the courtyard was a mosque. The pilots had not known, since no loudspeakers were visible and identifying writing was visible only from the ground. There was shrapnel damage to the walls, and the roof had a hole in it from cannon rounds.

The patrol, along with a group of Afghan soldiers and their commander, Lt. Col. Mir Wais, stayed the night outside the mosque. The Taliban would undoubtedly claim that civilians had been killed, Captain Powers explained, and he wanted to be there when the villagers woke up to show them the weapons and combat gear. “If we hold this ground, we can show them the evidence right away,” he said. “The first story is usually the one that sticks.”

The pilots thought they had killed half a dozen fighters at a second site the helicopters had attacked, but the bodies were already gone when the patrol arrived. Captain Powers acknowledged that this meant there was no way to know for sure whether civilians had been killed, but thought it unlikely: the site was secluded, and among charred motorcycles there were rocket-propelled grenades and camouflage vests with rifle magazines. At the first site, all four bodies — the two in the courtyard, the one on the roof, and the wounded man, who later died — wore camouflage fatigues and similar vests, containing grenades, ammunition, makeshift handcuffs and a manual on making homemade explosives.

Around 5 a.m., the men of the village started to congregate by the mosque. Captain Powers and Colonel Mir Wais addressed them, telling their story of what had happened. The men complained that the strike had frightened their wives and children and damaged the mosque, and that they were trapped between the pressures of the Americans and the Taliban. But they did not suggest that any residents of the village had been wounded or killed, and did not claim the bodies. Later in the morning, the district subgovernor, Ali Muhammad, described the night’s events to citizens gathered in the Yahya Khel bazaar. He also signed, along with Captain Powers, a letter about the attack  that would be distributed in the area after dark: a counterpoint to the Taliban’s infamous “night letters.”

The same people who ordered the strike were there to explain it in the morning, just as I suggested should happen.  The same people who fight by night are there for the locals to look at in the morning.  And look into their eyes.

We can only correct problems to the extent that we actually know that they are problems.  Yet we keep sending SOF guys to raid in the middle of the night while the enemy captures the narrative the next day, and we keep garrisoning our infantry on FOBs while the population contacts the enemy daily and waits for contact from us.

Poor Katrina vanden Heuvel repeats Captain Matthew Hoh’s arguments for a small footprint in Afghanistan.  I briefly answered Hoh’s arguments earlier.

Asking the question whether al Qaeda and the Taliban are in Pakistan or Afghanistan is like asking whether the water is on the right or the left side of a swimming pool.

The conversation on Pakistan versus Afghanistan presupposes that the Durand Line means anything, and that the Taliban and al Qaeda respect an imaginary boundary cut through the middle of the Hindu Kush.  It doesn’t and they don’t.  If our engagement of Pakistan is to mean anything, we must understand that they are taking their cue from us, and that our campaign is pressing the radicals from the Afghanistan side while their campaign is pressing them from the Pakistani side.

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.

Further, I have repeatedly pointed out that the small footprint model, enticing and seductive though it may be, contains its own defeater.  Without adequate troops to ensure contact with and protection of the population against the insurgency – for those who want protection – there would be no lines of logistics to supply this small number of troops, and no intelligence networks.  The model simply won’t work because there will be no known targets, period, much less high value targets.

But continuing with the more current argument against heavy commitment to Afghanistan, it has been stated that al Qaesa represents only a small fraction of the insurgency.  The drone attacks, it is said, have accomplished their purpose.  This position ignores the very real possibility that the Taliban have morphed into something other than what they were ten or more years ago.

In fact, I have claimed just the condition I described above.

… 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.

Add to this yet another data point comes to us from the New York Daily News.

Ever since senior Obama administration advisers such as CIA Director Leon Panetta and Vice President Biden admitted that Al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan  was minimal, with fewer than 100 operatives believed to be on the ground there, war critics have complained the President has little justification for escalating the U.S. commitment there.

But the inside-the-Beltway political debate underscores a fundamental misunderstanding of what Al Qaeda’s role in Afghanistan — which Osama Bin Laden’s minions call “Khorasan” — truly has been, according to Special Operations commanders and troops on the ground.

Today’s Washington Post makes hay of the fact that Al Qaeda is barely mentioned in the 76,000 pages of war files released last month by WikiLeaks. The story overlooks two key facts: (1) The voluminous files are mostly “sigact” – “significant action” – combat reports dispatched as incidents happened; and (2) troops who faced Arabs in battle fighting alongside Afghan “Taliban” rarely knew, even after they had killed them, that they were up against non-Afghan opponents.

Critics also fail to realize that a single Al Qaeda operative’s knowledge and experience in guerrilla and terror tactics is of incalculable value as a force multiplier to the Taliban.

Al Qaeda’s Arab operatives are considered a fearless elite. They have knowledge of Islam that makes them seem like religious scholars to many Pashtun tribesmen, who they have led into battle in the past. After Al Qaeda fled Afghanistan’s cities with their Taliban government allies in 2001-02, they reorganized and reconstituted their ranks in Pakistan. Al Qaeda returned to the fight in 2004, training, equipping and often leading or joining Haqqani fighters in battle along the eastern border.

Their presence was often suggested by the tactics used by Haqqani fighters, the cells’ skill at accurately firing AK-47s and RPGs, and gear such as armor-piercing ammo, body armor and night-vision devices.

Today, as they withstand CIA’s withering drone onslaught in Pakistan’s tribal belt, the Arabs are more low-key in their Afghan ops than they were in the past. The CIA’s targeted killing of Skeik Mustafa Abu al-Yazid after he left Mir Ali may also have impacted their activities on the other side of the AfPak.

Arabs from Al Qaeda still fund and train the Taliban, but no longer lead operations from the front, Army Col. Donald C. Bolduc, who leads the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, told me in his office at Bagram Airfield this month.

“They’re considered much too valuable to risk that,” said another U.S. official in the war zone.

During the winter, Taliban leaders ensconced in Pakistan send in Al Qaeda operatives to train their fighters in bombmaking tradecraft during the lull in fighting, sources said.

“The Pakistani madrassahs are still the big recruiting and training place. The Afghans go to a madrassah in Pakistan, where an Arab is typically like the dean, or headmaster, and learn how to fight,” the official told me. “Then the Afghan goes back home and teaches others to build bombs or fight — and gets paid handsomely for it.”

Again, this is yet another point of confirmation of my previously described hypothesis, i.e., that of a shift in the theological landscape within Afghanistan and a morphing of the Taliban into a more globally focused and religiously motivated entity.  These rogue elements swim in the same waters, and to use the expressions “al Qaeda” or “Taliban,” while certainly precise from the perspective of a close view analysis, misses the point of a morphing of these elements into something new and different.

From Rajiv Chandrasekaran with The Washington Post:

U.S. Marines and British civilian advisers are waging two wars in the hilly northern half of Helmand province: They’re fighting the Taliban, and they’re quarreling with each other.

The disagreements among the supposed allies are almost as frequent as firefights with insurgents. The Americans contend that the British forces they replaced this spring were too complacent in dealing with the Taliban. The British maintain that the Americans are too aggressive and that they are compromising hard-fought security gains by pushing into irrelevant places and overextending themselves.

“They were here for four years,” one field-grade Marine officer huffed about the British military. “What did they do?”

“They’ve been in Musa Qala for four months,” a British civilian in Helmand said of the U.S. Marines. “The situation up there has gotten worse, not better.”

The disputes here, which also extend to the pace of reconstruction projects and the embrace of a former warlord who has become the police chief, illuminate the tensions that are flaring as U.S. forces surge into parts of southern Afghanistan that had once been the almost-exclusive domain of NATO allies. There are now about 20,000 U.S. troops in Helmand; the 10,000 British soldiers who once roamed all over the province are now consolidating their operations in a handful of districts around the provincial capital.

The new U.S. troops in the south are intended to replace departing Dutch soldiers and relieve pressure on under-resourced and overburdened military personnel from Britain and Canada, where public support for the war has fallen even more precipitously than in the United States. But the transition entails significant new risks for U.S. forces, who are now responsible for more dangerous parts of the country.

To the south of Musa Qala, U.S. Marines are in the process of moving into Sangin district, where more than 100 British troops – nearly one-third of that country’s total war dead – were killed over the past four years. Senior Marine officers initially resisted being saddled with the area, which they dubbed “the killing fields,” but they relented after pressure from top U.S. commanders.

The influx also has elicited conflicting emotions from coalition partners. British and Canadian officers say they didn’t have the manpower or equipment to confront a mushrooming insurgency by themselves, but they also cringe at the need to be bailed out by the United States.

“There’s a mix of relief and regret,” said a British officer. “We’ve spilled a lot of blood in Sangin and Musa Qala, and we’re quite frankly happy to leave those places, but we don’t want this to look like another Basra,” referring to the southern Iraqi city that U.S. and Iraqi forces had to rescue after it was seized by militias upon a British pullout in 2007.

Analysis & Commentary

But it does indeed look like another Basra.  Let’s take a stroll down memory lane for a moment.

At home, Britons were stunned by the graphic footage of their soldiers being assaulted in a city thought to be “safe,” especially in comparison to the blood-soaked urban areas of the Sunni Triangle which dominate news coverage emanating out of Iraq. The violent imagery was only the latest and most troubling indication of the British military’s failure in Basra and its environs, a disastrous turn of events which seemed unthinkable two years ago, when British troops were welcomed into Basra with relatively open arms.

The root of this failure stems from the very strategy that was once lauded as the antidote for insurgent violence. Known as the “soft approach,” the British strategy in southern Iraq centered on non-aggressive, nearly passive responses to violent flare-ups. Instead of raids and street battles, the British concentrated on building relationships with local leaders and fostering consensus among Iraqi politicos. In Basra, the British were quick to build and expand training programs for a city police force. As a symbol of their faith in stability-by-civility, the British military took to donning the soft beret while on patrol, avoiding the connotations of war supposedly raised by the American-style Kevlar helmets.

In the immediate aftermath of the 2003 invasion, this “soft” approach seemed remarkably successful, especially when juxtaposed with the chaos that had engulfed other parts of Iraq. Basra seemed to adapt relatively well to the new order of things, with little in the way of street battles or casualties. Both the British and American media — ever-ready to point out the comparable failures of American arms — energetically hailed the peaceful and stable atmosphere in Basra as a significant indicator of the virtues of the British approach, upholding it as the tactical antithesis to the brutal and aggressive Yanks. The Dallas Morning News reported in 2003 that military experts from Britain were already boasting that U.S. forces in Iraq could “take a cue from the way their British counterparts have taken control of Basra.” Charles Heyman, editor of the highly-respected defense journal Jane’s, asserted: “The main lesson that the Americans can learn from Basra and apply to Baghdad is to use the ‘softly-softly’ approach.”

The reporting also featured erudite denunciations of the rigid rules of engagement that governed the United States military, while simultaneously championing British outreach. Ian Kemp, a noted British defense expert, suggested in November 2004 that the “major obstacle” in past U.S. occupations and peacekeeping efforts was their inability to connect with locals due to the doctrinal preeminence of force protection. In other words, had Americans possessed the courage to interface with the Iraqi, they might enjoy greater success.

It did not take long before the English press allowed the great straw man of a violent American society to seep into their explanations for the divergent approaches. The Sunday Times of London proclaimed “armies reflect their societies for better or for worse. In Britain, guns are frowned upon — and British troops faced with demonstrations in Northern Ireland must go through five or six stages, including a verbal warning as the situation gets progressively more nasty, before they are allowed to shoot. In America, guns are second nature.” Such flimsy and anecdotal reasoning — borne solely out of classical European elitist arrogance — tinged much of the reporting out of Basra.

AS A RESULT OF THE EFFUSIVE media celebration, even some in the British military began believing their own hype, with soldiers suggesting to reporters in May 2003 that the U.S. military should “look to them for a lesson or two.” As a British sergeant told the Christian Science Monitor: “We are trained for every inevitability and we do this better than the Americans.” According to other unnamed British military officials, America had “a poor record” at keeping the peace while Basra only reinforced the assertion that the British maintain “the best urban peacekeeping force in the world.”

Continuing with the state of affairs in Basra after the application of such a soft approach:

Richard Beeston, diplomatic editor of The Times of London recently returned (in 2007) from a visit to Basra, his first since 2003. He says in 2003, British soldiers were on foot patrol, drove through town in unarmored vehicles and fished in the waters of the Shaat al Arab on their days off. He says the changes he saw four years later are enormous.

“Nowadays all troop movement in and out of the city are conducted at night by helicopter because it’s been deemed too dangerous to go on the road and its dangerous to fly choppers during the day,” he says.

Beeston says during his latest visit, he noticed a map of the city in one of the military briefing rooms. About half of the city was marked as no-go areas.

British headquarters are mortared and rocketed almost everynight.

This is indicative of many parts of southern Iraq, says Wayne White, a former State department middle east intelligence officer. White says the south is riddled with rival Shiite groups vying for power, and roving criminal gangs because there’s nothing to stop them.

“There’s virtually nothing down there in the way of governance that answers to Baghdad in an effective way,” White says. “There are mayors, there are police but in many cases these people have no loyalty to Baghdad, operate along with the militias, have sympathy with them.”

The British efforts were roundly criticized by residents of Basra as well as the ISF, and British forces ultimately had to retreat under the excuse that it was the very presence of the British themselves that was causing the violence (there is no better way to end a war than to withdraw out of the fight, or so the British convinced themselves).

Recall also that the British made that awful deal with Mullah Abdul Salaam in which he was supposed to bring his fighters to Musa Qala to help retake the city from the Taliban (in exchange for governorship of the city).  All Salaam ended up doing was sitting in a house ten miles away screaming like a little girl for Karzai to come and rescue him when the fight started .  The British are as hated in Musa Qala for this fiasco as they were in Basra.

To be sure, the British enlisted men are as faithful, loyal and brave as any troops in the world.  It is their senior leadership, their officer corps and their counterinsurgency doctrine that is causing the problems.  And I am told that to a man, the British officers believe in the government in a box theory of counterinsurgency, even after such a notion failed in Basra, Musa Qala and then finally in Marjah.

Finally, the reason that the U.S. Marines have British advisers in Helmand isn’t clear.  The continued presence of them will only cause continued conflicts.  The U.S. Marines have their own brand of counterinsurgency, and it worked in the Anbar Province of Iraq.  In fact, small wars is a specialty of the Corps, and perhaps the British advisers could take back a thing or two from the Marines to their own command.

In closing, it’s also very disturbing that the British have lost or allowed to get stolen 59 Minimi machine guns.  That’s right.  Read and believe.

A review of transport practices is irrelevant.  A time of prayer, a bit of seriousness and a good house cleaning is in order for the MoD and the British Army.