Archive for the 'Afghanistan' Category

From The Guardian comes what I see as a very important story, one that goes well beyond anecdotal stories about children, schools, the treatment and women, and the brutality of the Taliban – although those elements stand out as well.

This week’s Guardian article about an alleged poisoning incident at a girls’ school in Kabul reminded me of a similar incident during the Soviet occupation. I was at primary school and remember watching girls being carried over to an adjacent hospital.

The rumour that later spread at school explained the incident as follows: one of the pupils, from a family of mujahideen sympathisers, had poisoned the school’s well in protest against the communist-inspired syllabus. The story sounded plausible at the time, in the absence of free media, reliable investigation or international witnesses offering a different, perhaps more objective, take on it.

The parents’ reaction was pragmatic. The following day, pupils returned to school, carrying plastic flasks filled with water from home. But this response did not mean parents supported the government. It was true that the syllabus was inspired by communist ideology. But there was a way around that, too. Children simply learned to differentiate between useful scientific knowledge and political propaganda. To receive an education, Afghans – then as now – had no choice but take the risk of exposing children to state propaganda and its spin-off, insurgent violence.

The two incidents – with the water and the “poison gas” – are separated by decades but their similarity makes it tempting to repeat the old cliche that nothing changes in Afghanistan. But in some ways they are strikingly different, revealing profound changes in three decades of conflict and the way it is perceived.

The key difference is that in the old story the conflict was neat, involving two clearly opposite sides: a communist regime of non-believers versus an Islamist resistance of believers.

In the new story, all parties involved in the perceived incident are believers, including the Islamic Republic that is responsible for the school, the pupils who attend it and the perpetrators who allegedly carried out the attack.

Another striking difference between the two stories relates to the gender issues. The old story had a female protagonist who was a school insider. In the current story, by contrast, girls appear only as victims and the perpetrator is perceived to be an outsider. We can assume that the girls of my school were still able to sympathise with the mujahideen, since they had never lived under their command. But the current generation of schoolgirls knows better and there has been no suspicion of an insider act carried out by a girl. These differences are subtle but reveal shifts in the emotional landscape of the people, and the way they relate to the present conflict.

Judging by the parents’ reaction to the current story, ordinary Afghans expect the Taliban to break all sorts of traditional religious taboos, including the ban on violence during the month of Ramadan. The parents’ reasoning is plausible. After all, a serious taboo such as suicide has been reinterpreted and reintroduced as an act of piety without apparently raising a single eyebrow in Kabul or beyond. Judging by such precedents, Ramadan, too, could have been reinterpreted without notice and declared a month in which jihad by violent means carried on.

Be that as it may, what we see is theological chaos and various conflicting interpretations of Islam vying for power and influence in Afghanistan. The result is an Islamic Republic in charge of a Muslim people, which is under attack by an Islamist insurgency.

Little wonder, then, that parents of Totia school girls have been left wondering who is representing Islam, and who defaming it. But this type of chaos is an expected outcome when Muslim states lose control over religion. Faced with the Taliban, the old mujahideen who are in power now are getting a taste of their own medicine. After all, they too had once used Islam to legitimise violence against civilians, schoolchildren included.

Another striking difference between the two stories is content related. In the old story, the poison incident was explained as an act of protest against the school’s syllabus but not girls’ education per se. Could it be that the old mujahideen leaders were less rigid by comparison to their contemporary reincarnation, the Taliban? Unfortunately, we cannot verify this assumption because the old jihad was highly dispersed, lacking in a coherent, clearly defined political vision, providing answers to the question of gender and public education.

The current counterinsurgency campaign relies on the classical understanding of the Maoist insurgency, with all of the attendant talks about reintegration, negotiations, a “place at the table,” culling off the ten dollar Taliban from the insurgency (Taliban with a little t), and so forth.  To be sure, there may be some ten dollar Taliban, but the negotiations are happening at the highest levels of the Taliban leadership.

I have argued endlessly that exposure to globalist elements of the transnational insurgency in the AfPak region has caused much of the Taliban to morph into something that it wasn’t, something that is more in line with hard core Islamicist teaching and globalist focus that its predecessor.  The current manifestation of Taliban ideology also seems to be more in line with a group that would be even more accepting of Wahhabist teaching and Arabic influence that even its predecessor.  The assessment above is another disturbing data point that may bear out my thesis.

Hamid Karzai has ordered the disbanding of military contractors in Afghanistan.  I had written and asked Tim Lynch for his reaction, and he gives it to us here.

As the fighting season continues the good guys are losing more land and population to the various insurgent groups operating in the country.  Teams of doctors are being murdered in the remote provinces, attacks are launch inside the ANP “Ring of Steel” anytime the Taliban feels like it, and so where is the focus of the Afghan government?  On private security companies of course… yes why not?  Now is exactly the right time to make all PSC’s illegal and let the ANP and ministry of the interior (MOI) provide security to convoy’s military bases, and all the mobile security for internationals working in the reconstruction sector.  Ignoring that there are not enough Afghan security forces to go around as it is and also that their proficiency in preforming these tasks is suspect (to put it politely) what about the money?  We already pay for the ANP and ANA – if they are going to provide mobile and static security then I guess the millions of dollars being paid to private companies will no longer be needed right?  Right.  The problem is one can predict with 100% certainty what will happen if President Karzai goes through with this crazy scheme.  The logistics pipeline will start to rapidly dry up , internationals will be unable to move without their (mandated by contract) expat security teams and their projects will ground to a halt.  Military operations will have to be suspended because there will not be enough Afghan Security Forces to both fight and provide theater wide static and mobile security support. And of course there are yet more millions of dollars to add another chapter in the long saga of wasted OPM (other peoples money) by our respective governments.

I cannot for the life of me imagine how this law is going to work out.  There are (in my opinion) more international PSD teams then needed – why do EuPol police officers need PSD teams to drive them around Kabul?  They have guns and armored vehicles already and should be capable of taking care of themselves.  Why do the contract police trainers needs a whole section of dedicated PSD specialists? It is a crazy waste of money to have armed international PSD teams guarding armed ISAF personnel but it is also currently a contractual requirement.  For companies working outside the wire in the reconstruction sector the absence of international PSD teams will also have a huge impact on the ability to get insurance for their internationals at reasonable rates.  At exactly the time that internationals operating outside the wire need to be armed the laws are changing to make it illegal for internationals who are not ISAF military members to be armed.  How are we supposed to operate now?

Tim is accurate and smart in his assessment as always, but he is just being nice to Karzai.  Hamid Karzai is a stooge, and there is no possible way that this will work.  Logistics and force protection will break down.  We don’t have enough troops as it is, and that goes for contractors too.  Standing down even a portion of either category will spell death to the campaign.  In fact, there are approximately as many contractors as there are troops in Afghanistan, doing everything from intelligence to cooking, from force protection to FOB construction, from fire fighting to translation.  Whether KBR, Xe, Triple Canopy, Dyncorp, or smaller companies like Free Range International, contractors are needed, and needed badly.  Karzai’s plan will be stopped  before being implemented.

But that doesn’t mean that military contractors won’t be bilked by the U.S. government.  I am no defender of any particular company, and I have no dog in any particular fight.  I owe no one anything, and so Erik Prince can solve his own problems.  Xe (Blackwater) has never given me anything, and they don’t know me.  But the folks at the State Department do, and I get regular visits from their network domain.  “Show me the money” is the latest topic of interest.

That’s right.  The State Department has reached an agreement with Blackwater.

Blackwater, the private security firm founded by Holland native Erik Prince, reportedly has reached a $42 million settlement with the State Department over what is described as “hundreds of violations of United States export control violations.”

According to the New York Times:

The violations included illegal weapons exports to Afghanistan, making unauthorized proposals to train troops in south Sudan and providing sniper training for Taiwanese police officers, according to company and government officials familiar with the deal.The deal would relieve Blackwater, now called Xe Services, from the possibility of facing criminal charges. Paying the fines will allow the firm to continue doing government contract work.

It does not, however, excuse Blackwater/Xe from the other legal issues currently pending, among them the indictment of former executives on weapons and obstruction charges and allegations the firm bribed Iraqi officials to win favor following the infamous 2007 slaying of 17 civilians.

The BBC provided more details on the more than 300 alleged violations:

• The investigation covered Blackwater’s business practices from 2005-2009 and found the company guilty of violating provisions of firearms licenses, violating terms of authorizations involving military or security training, unauthorized export of technical data and defense articles and record-keeping violations, among other things.

• A 2007 violation had national-security implications. Specifically, the company intentionally failed to disclose biographical information on Taiwanese nationals being trained as snipers. Similar instances appeared throughout the list of violations.

• In 2008, more than 100 weapons were missing or unaccounted for in Iraq. Elsewhere, weapons intended for U.S. military use were diverted to Blackwater employees.

Oooo.  Weapons charges.  Sort of like, you know, they had automatic weapons in a war zone, or something?  I’m sure that the State Department will want them to relinquish all automatic weapons.  But wait … maybe not.  You know, there is that little thing of U.S. troops being withdrawn from Iraq, and the State Department needing force protection.  From 6000 to 7000 more contractors in Iraq.  That’s how many.  The $42 million might go a long way towards funding this expense.

When private citizens do it it’s called extortion.  When the government does it it’s called arbitration.

U.S. Marine Corps Commandant Conway has directly faulted President Obama’s withdrawal deadline for giving aid and comfort to the enemy in Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama’s July 2011 date to start withdrawing troops from Afghanistan has given a morale boost to Taliban insurgents, who believe they can wait out NATO forces, the top U.S. Marine said Tuesday.

But General James Conway, who is retiring this fall as commandant of the Marine Corps, said he believed Marines would not be in a position to withdraw from the fight in southern Afghanistan for years.

Conway’s unusually blunt assessment is likely to fan criticism by opposition Republicans of Obama’s war strategy as public opinion of the nine-year-old war sours further.

“In some ways, we think right now it is probably giving our enemy sustenance,” Conway said of the July 2011 deadline.

But is this mere speculation or opinion?  Conway continued, “In fact we’ve intercepted communications that say, ‘Hey, you know, we only need to hold out for so long.'”  This degree of public challenge and direct truth-telling within the highest ranks of the military is fairly unique, and might be a function of not only his beliefs and the supporting evidence, but also of the fact that he is a short-timer.  General James F. Amos is currently before the U.S. Senate for confirmation as the next Marine Corps Commandant.  Conway might be thinking, “What are they going to do – force me to retire?”

The truth is refreshing, and it leaves little doubt as to the fact that the perception of withdrawal is giving aid and comfort to the enemy.  Conway attempts to address this perception in his interview, but the only one who can really accomplish that is the very one who forced the withdrawal deadline on the troops to begin with.

Dr. Steven Metz recently said of the Malayan insurgency (concerning Obama’s withdrawal strategy), “I do find it ironic that Malaya is often held up as a model for how to do counterinsurgency, yet one of the things that made that campaign successful was that the British announced their intention to withdraw.”  Based on what I know, I think that it is unproven speculation that “an announcement of withdrawal” aided the campaign, but in this case speculation isn’t needed.

There is no irony, and there is no need to hold a PhD in order to understand the exigencies defining the situation.  We needn’t obfuscate the facts with pedantic theory in order to be wise.  The enemy wants to believe that the U.S. presence will vanish sooner rather than later, and our CiC is giving them that assurance.

I maintain that other than the names of Afghans cooperating with the coalition (a dangerous public revelation), the Wikileaks publication of the so-called Afghanistan War Diary revealed nothing of substance that astute observers didn’t already know.  This includes the issue of Pakistani aid and assistance to the Taliban.  Almost two years ago I published Games of Duplicity and the End of Tribe in Pakistan where I discussed this very subject.

But just occasionally, international ne’er-do-wells can’t help but preen and posture and thereby reveal their identity, or at least put their exploits in the face of the American public.  This is sometimes a very big mistake, but it remains to be seen whether enough Americans care to make a difference in this instance.  This instance has to do with the recent Pakistani bragging over their relationship with the Taliban.

When American and Pakistani agents captured Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s operational commander, in the chaotic port city of Karachi last January, both countries hailed the arrest as a breakthrough in their often difficult partnership in fighting terrorism.

But the arrest of Mr. Baradar, the second-ranking Taliban leader after Mullah Muhammad Omar, came with a beguiling twist: both American and Pakistani officials claimed that Mr. Baradar’s capture had been a lucky break. It was only days later, the officials said, that they finally figured out who they had.

Now, seven months later, Pakistani officials are telling a very different story. They say they set out to capture Mr. Baradar, and used the C.I.A. to help them do it, because they wanted to shut down secret peace talks that Mr. Baradar had been conducting with the Afghan government that excluded Pakistan, the Taliban’s longtime backer.

In the weeks after Mr. Baradar’s capture, Pakistani security officials detained as many as 23 Taliban leaders, many of whom had been enjoying the protection of the Pakistani government for years. The talks came to an end.

The events surrounding Mr. Baradar’s arrest have been the subject of debate inside military and intelligence circles for months. Some details are still murky — and others vigorously denied by some American intelligence officials in Washington. But the account offered in Islamabad highlights Pakistan’s policy in Afghanistan: retaining decisive influence over the Taliban, thwarting archenemy India, and putting Pakistan in a position to shape Afghanistan’s postwar political order.

“We picked up Baradar and the others because they were trying to make a deal without us,” said a Pakistani security official, who, like numerous people interviewed about the operation, spoke anonymously because of the delicacy of relations between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States. “We protect the Taliban. They are dependent on us. We are not going to allow them to make a deal with Karzai and the Indians.”

Some American officials still insist that Pakistan-American cooperation is improving, and deny a central Pakistani role in Mr. Baradar’s arrest. They say the Pakistanis may now be trying to rewrite history to make themselves appear more influential. It was American intellgence that led to Mr. Baradar’s capture, an American official said.

“These are self-serving fairy tales,” the official said. “The people involved in the operation on the ground didn’t know exactly who would be there when they themselves arrived. But it certainly became clear, to Pakistanis and Americans alike, who we’d gotten.”

Other American officials suspect the C.I.A. may have been unwittingly used by the Pakistanis for the larger aims of slowing the pace of any peace talks.

At a minimum, the arrest of Mr. Baradar offers a glimpse of the multilayered challenges the United States faces as it tries to prevail in Afghanistan. It is battling a resilient insurgency, supporting a weak central government and trying to manage Pakistan’s leaders, who simultaneously support the Taliban and accept billions in American aid.

A senior NATO officer in Kabul said that in arresting Mr. Baradar and the other Taliban leaders, the Pakistanis may have been trying to buy time to see if President Obama’s strategy begins to prevail. If it does, the Pakistanis may eventually decide to let the Taliban make a deal. But if the Americans fail — and if they begin to pull out — then the Pakistanis may decide to retain the Taliban as their allies.

“We have been played before,” a senior NATO official said. “That the Pakistanis picked up Baradar to control the tempo of the negotiations is absolutely plausible.”

As for Mr. Baradar, he is now living comfortably in a safe house of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the Pakistani official said. “He’s relaxing,” the official said.

Many of the other Taliban leaders, after receiving lectures against freelancing peace deals, have been released to fight again.

There are two (or more) ways to take this.  Robert Haddick at the Small Wars Journal Blog hints that he takes the position that Pakistan’s interference in peace talks with the Taliban is harmful to coalition efforts.  Indeed, General Petraeus has even said that he believes that there will be no success in Afghanistan without talks with the Taliban.

As regular readers might suspect, I demur.  Talks with local leaders and elders may ensue with some success, perhaps holding in abatement or even stopping the flow of local insurgents to the cause of the main stream Taliban (the big-T Taliban) when these talks are coupled with force.  But the notion of negotiations with an avowed enemy who had previously given safe haven to globalist elements is preposterous, and all the more so since the Taliban have now been exposed to these globalist elements for around two decades and have adopted some of their globalist world view.  In this particular instance, stopping negotiations with senior Taliban isn’t problematic, since it isn’t likely that it would have yielded effective, long term fruit.

What is more problematic, however, is that Pakistan’s ISI knows where senior Taliban are located and continues to provide them safe haven and protection.  The Obama administration must now face the knowledge that the billions we are giving Pakistan is helping to wage war against our own troops in Afghanistan.  But a voice of reason and sanity seems to have appeared from nowhere concerning our relationship with Pakistan.  Afghanistan’s national security adviser points the way better than does our own.

There is ongoing domestic and international confusion in identifying Afghanistan’s friends and foes. The Afghan people are wholeheartedly grateful to the international community for its sacrifices in blood and treasure. Unfortunately, the military-intelligence establishment of one of our neighbors still regards Afghanistan as its sphere of influence. While faced with a growing domestic terrorist threat, Pakistan continues to provide sanctuary and support to the Quetta Shura, the Haqqani network, the Hekmatyar group and al-Qaeda. And while the documents recently disclosed by WikiLeaks contained information that was neither new nor surprising, they did make public further evidence of the close relations among the Taliban, al-Qaeda and Pakistani intelligence.

The international community is present in Afghanistan to dismantle these international terrorist networks. Yet the focus on this fundamental task has progressively eroded and has been compounded by another strategic failure: the mistaken embrace of “strategic partners” who have, in fact, been nurturing terrorism.

Much has been said about the political will of the Afghan government, governance in our country and corruption. These are mainly domestic variables. It is true that an exhausted and desperate political elite in Afghanistan, faced with predatory and opportunistic individuals in and outside the power structures, allowed the mafia to penetrate into politics. State institutions were undermined and the rule of law weakened. Undoubtedly the absence of transparency in contracts and the presence of private security companies clearly connected to certain officials — contributing ultimately to the privatization of security and thus insecurity in our country — are matters of grave concern. But the international terrorist presence in the region is not entrenched solely because of Afghan corruption. Britain, Spain, Turkey, China, Germany and India have all been victims not of Afghan corruption but of international terrorism — emanating from the region.

It is my firm conviction that securing our people, districts and towns from terrorists; institutionalizing the rule of law; and fighting corruption are necessary steps toward building a strong and responsive state. But that is not enough. No domestic measure will fully address the threat of international terrorism, its global totalitarian ideology or its regional support networks. Dismantling the terrorist infrastructure is a central component of our anti-terror strategy, and this requires confronting the state that still sees terrorism as a strategic asset and foreign policy tool.

To be clear, Afghanistan opposes the expansion of conflicts into other countries and opposes unwarranted military interventions in the internal affairs of sovereign nations. But global efforts to counter terrorism will not succeed until and unless there is clarity on who our friends and foes are.

The conflict we are engaged in is becoming a long and expensive war for us and our international partners. The Afghan people are rightly frustrated and exhausted by a war in which the line between friends and foes is blurred. Global opinion has also turned against us. Yet surely it is understandable that we have failed to mobilize people for a cause where the fighting is in one place and the enemy is in another. How can we persuade Afghans, or the parents of young soldiers from coalition countries, to support a war where our “partners” are involved in killing their sons and daughters? While we are losing dozens of men and women to terrorist attacks every day, the terrorists’ main mentor continues to receive billions of dollars in aid and assistance. How is this fundamental contradiction justified?

This is extremely important.  Don’t miss the nuanced detail in his argument.  The “partners” involved in killing their sons and daughters doesn’t refer to collateral damage from combat, that unintentional and unfortunate side effect of war.  No, it refers to us, the U.S., as their partners, turning the other way when Pakistan behaves the way they do, and continuing the flow of largesse in spite of and not because of their help in battling the transnational insurgency which has its main home in Pakistan.

Rangin Dadfar Spanta concludes with this thought: “The aggressor understands only one language: that of force and determination.”  Just so.  One might also posit the idea that talks with the very people who have been killing their sons and daughters is the moral equivalent of funding their helpers in Pakistan.  The national security adviser is telling us that the very strategy we have chosen is sure to alienate the population, and of course, this is the opposite of what was intended.  A little more attention to the national security adviser from Afghanistan and a little less attention to our own might go a long way towards pressing forward with the right strategy in Asia.

Dan Morrison with KVAL.com reports from an embed with the Marines in Helmand:

HELMAND PROVINCE, Afghanistan – 1st Platoon, off to our west, made contact with the Taliban before we did.

4th Squad, 2nd Platoon, had already been slogging through wadis and cotton fields for a couple of hours when we heard the firefight in the distance.

4th Squad pushed on, with Cali Bagby traveling in the middle of LCpl Brennan’s fireteam and me traveling with LCpl Singleton’s fireteam. Leading both fireteams was Cpl Woodbine, Squad Leader.

This was only my second patrol, but it was turning out to be much like the first. Crossing open fields where opium poppies had been harvested in the spring, pushing our way through tall cornfields where the Marine in front of me would completely disappear if I slowed enough to let him get more than a few meters ahead of me.

We slid down wadis and waded across, hoping the water was not deeper than a couple of feet. Some came up to our thighs, and I talked to a Marine a couple of days ago who came off a patrol during which he had stepped into an eight-foot hole in the middle of a wadi.

“Man, all I could think of was I wanted to keep my weapon out of the water and dry, and I didn’t want to drown. That would be a hell of a way to die in Afghanistan,” he said.

The two fireteams were a couple hundred meters apart; Brennan’s fireteam would advance and then set up security for Singleton’s fireteam.

Crossing yet another open field is nerve–wracking because if the Taliban ambush comes – no, when the Taliban ambush comes – more than likely it will occur when you are exposed in an open field.

Overhead we could hear helicopter gunships circling, providing support.

“Those things, the gunships and even the Quick Reaction Force MRAPs, are a mixed blessing,” Singleton told me as we walked. “They keep us safe and alive, but the Taliban won’t fire on us with those guys overhead.”

It is an odd feeling to travel with men who not only know they are walking into an ambush, but who actually want it to happen. Unless the Taliban fire on the Marines, the Marines can’t close in on them and engage in a firefight.

And they very much want to engage with the enemy.

As one senior enlisted man told me, “You gotta love the ones that need lovin’, and kill the ones that need killin’.”

As we crossed a field of cotton we began to take small arms fire, AK-47s. “Go, go, go!” Singleton yelled at me as we dashed for the relative safety of a small wadi. Hunkering down in the irrigation ditch, I watched as Naval Corpsman Daniel Lowderman, from Seattle, Washington, and Singleton scan the area with their rifle scopes.

“I’ve got movement on the roof of a building,” Singleton relayed to Woodbine through his radio. “I can see the muzzle of a gun sticking out a window.”

Singleton was carrying the Mark XII, the designated marksman rifle. He requested permission from Woodbine to shoot at the target. Woodbine asked if he had positive ID, and Singleton informed him he could see the rifle muzzle. Permission was given to shoot.

“I can put one through the [expletive] hole,” Singleton said. “I don’t know now well it’s going to do, what it’s going to do, but I can try.”

Singleton stretched out in the wadi behind his weapon, his breathing became regular, and after what seemed to me like an eternity, he squeezed the trigger. Despite being ready for the shot, the sound startled me.

“Impact,” Singleton reported calmly. “Definite on the chimney. Woodbine, be advised, the first round was a solid impact, do you want me to take a second shot?”

“If you see the muzzle again take another shot,” Woodbine answered.

Platoon Sergeant SSgt Zamora, who was traveling with Brennan’s fireteam, came on the radio. “Singleton. As soon as you take the second shot we are going to move on the building.”

“Roger, that’s solid. I’m going to take two well-aimed shots just to make sure.”

Another eternity seemed to pass, then the crack of Singleton’s weapon again startled me.

“Alright team,” Zamora’s voice said on the radio, “we’re going in.”

“Hey. Yo, yo yo!” said Singleton. “Tell ‘em, tell ‘em. Hey, be advised. Stop, stop, stop.”

Singleton could see the Taliban waving a flag, but was not sure if the man was trying to surrender or was signaling other Taliban. The flag disappeared and then Singleton could see the Taliban crawling on the roof of the building.

Singleton asked for permission to shoot a third time. Although he could clearly see the Taliban, he could not see a weapon, and therefore the request for permission was denied. Unless a weapon is clearly visible, the Marines are forbidden to shoot.

The Taliban escaped.

We moved on.

Read all of Dan’s report.  A lot of water has fallen over the dam since the issue of rules of engagement first started to show itself for the campaign in Afghanistan.  My category has many such reports, but in lieu of rehearsing all of them again, it is enough simply to say what this example demonstrates for us again.  The ROE in Iraq was different than it is in Afghanistan, period.  Do you care to take issue with this characterization?

Recall our conversations on The Anbar Narrative, including a report still profiled on the Department of Defense web site, no less.

Costa described Ramadi, a city in Iraq’s Anbar province — then one of the country’s most contentious regions — as a society that had collapsed under the weight of an endemic insurgency. With an infrastructure dilapidated by years of infighting and neglect, Costa said, most of Ramadi was in ruin when he arrived.

“I had never seen anything like that before, and that was my second deployment to Iraq,” said the staff sergeant, whose first deployment was from January to August 2005 in Kharma, a city east of Fallujah in Anbar province.

“From my experience in my first deployment, the Iraqis will live, work, play — they’ll continue their normal lives — while this war is going on around them,” he said. “They’ll stay in their neighborhoods, and they won’t move.

“But in Ramadi,” he said, “they were moving.”

Costa had heard from members of the unit he was replacing that Ramadi’s citizens were moving out in droves — in “mass exodus” fashion, as he put it. When he arrived in August 2006 in Ramadi, which in 2003 boasted a population nearly the size of Sacramento, Calif., the number of residents living in the city along the Euphrates River was reduced to a mere trickle, more akin to that of a small town, he recalled.

“There were multiple buildings that are like five-, six-, seven-, eight-story apartment buildings — huge, and totally empty,” he said. “You’d walk into a house and everything’s there: There’s food in the fridge; there’s clothes in the dresser. The people just moved.”

The staff sergeant soon realized why residents had abandoned their homes. Insurgents in Ramadi, a majority Sunni Muslim city, were violently attacking local citizens. In the midst of intense fighting, they extorted shop owners’ profits. They hiked prices at gas stations and skimmed sales revenues.

“The insurgents definitely made it a bad place to live for the civilians there,” the staff sergeant, a 10-year Marine veteran, said.

For Costa, who decided as a boy to join the U.S. military to help the “greater good,” the bleak situation in besieged Ramadi presented an opportunity to uphold the principles of selfless duty.

Costa said roughly 90 percent of the missions he and his men carried out involved protecting roads, called main supply routes, travelled by coalition convoys. Primarily, the unit prevented insurgents from emplacing improvised explosive devices along the roadside or thwarted attempts by enemy fighters to ambush passing vehicles.

But Costa also dedicated a portion of his time to cracking the insurgents’ methods of communication.

“Generally there was a guy putting up gang signs, which could either send a rocket-propelled grenade through your window or some other attack your way,” said Costa, who began to realize the significance of unarmed people on Ramadi’s streets providing information via visual cues.

“You’re watching something on the street like that happening, and you’re like, ‘What the hell is that guy doing?’” he recalled. “And then the next thing you know, insurgents start coming out of the woodwork.”

“Signalers” — the eyes and ears of insurgent leaders — informed the insurgent strategists who commanded armed fighters by using hand and arm gestures. “You could see the signaler commanding troops,” Costa recalled. “He just doesn’t have a weapon.”

To curb insurgents’ ability to communicate, Costa decided on a revolutionary move: He and his unit would dismantle the enemy’s communication lines by neutralizing the threat from signalers. Sparing no time, he set a tone in Ramadi that signalers would be dealt with no differently from their weapon-wielding insurgent comrades.

“We called it in that we heard guys were signaling, and the battalion would advise from there,” he said, recalling the first day of the new strategy. “We locked that road down pretty well that day.”

In ensuing weeks, coalition forces coordinated efforts to dismember the insurgent signal patterns entrenched in Ramadi. This helped tamp down violence and create political breathing room, which in turn allowed the forging of key alliances between local tribal sheiks and coalition operators. The subsequent progress was later dubbed the “Anbar Awakening,” a societal purging of extremism by Anbaris that ushered in a level of stability unprecedented since U.S. operations in Iraq began.

“In the end, it turned out that Ramadi did a complete 180,” Costa said. “I got pictures in September from the unit that had relieved us, and I just couldn’t believe it. I didn’t think I was looking at the same city.”

But the generals know better than that now, and the Marines can’t be trusted to make good decisions under pressure.  So there are different rules of engagement in Afghanistan than there were in Iraq.  The officers micromanage the campaign.

Understand?

More: Recon by Fire

Recall from several months ago that operations were launched into Marjah, and the “government in a box” that General McChrystal thought would be so successful was a flop.  He then called Marjah a bleeding ulcer after only a few months of counterinsurgency, like some impatient child waiting for candy.  It became apparent that Marjah would be long term counterinsurgency work (is there any other kind?), but that didn’t stop General Rodriguez from postulating that it was the slowness of governmental services that caused the delays in turning Marjah into Shangri-La.  It certainly couldn’t be the model, so it must be the execution of the plan.  Or so Rodriguez concluded.

This reminds me of a story.  A man walks into the emergency room at a hospital claiming that he is dead.  The doctors argue with him until they figure out a way to prove to him that he is not.  They ask him, “Do dead men bleed?”  “No”, said he.  “Of course not!  Don’t be stupid!”  They proceed to place a small cut on his arm to show him that he bleeds, and upon seeing his blood he exclaimed “Well I was wrong.  I guess dead men do bleed!”  Presuppositions rule, no?

And true to this non-Biblical parable, the current planning for Kandahar assumes that Marjah just wasn’t done right.  How to do it this time?  Well, recall that the Marines went into Marjah softer than their experience in Anbar dictated, more along the lines of how the British advocate counterinsurgency and how they did it in Basra.  This was a requirement of senior leadership in Afghanistan.  Also note that we have recently discussed the lessons learned from this, but the takeaway for Kandahar is much different than I would have advocated.

Kandahar is a city built mostly of mud, clay and straw — the available building materials in this harsh climate. The city’s wide avenues and narrow warrens seem to be perpetually suspended in a haze of dust from the desert that is not far in any direction.

Although razor sharp mountain peaks pierce the horizon in almost every direction, their steep, rocky flanks sweep down into an awe-inspiring scene: valleys and flatlands, green and lush with wheat, as well as grape fields and pomegranate orchards, all fed by the Arghandab river. It flows from the north through Arghandab district, down through Zhari and Panjaway.

All three of those districts, and Kandahar City, are now the focus of operation “Hamkari,” the military’s much-touted counterinsurgency strategy that has brought an influx of thousands more U.S. troops.

Brig. Gen. Frederick “Ben” Hodges is one of the architects of the operation. “Hamkari,” he said in an interview, is a Pashto and Dari word for “cooperation.”

Officers chose the word, he said, because Afghans have a negative association with the word “operation,” which brings to mind the bloody assault on the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in neighboring Helmand province in February.

“They said if you use the word, ‘operation,’ the average Afghan will take that to mean Blackhawks, artillery … inevitable civilian casualties,” he said.

But the word “Hamkari” also denotes a change in strategy. The Marjah offensive earlier this year aimed to deliver Afghan security forces and government institutions as soon as the military operation ended. But more than six months later, both objectives are proving more difficult than military planners expected.  [Editorial comment: The military planners haven’t been reading The Captain’s Journal]

Recognizing this, military strategists in Kandahar are focusing more on building Afghan government and security institutions in tandem with military operations. They say both aspects of the operation are necessary in order to secure the population from Taliban control.

Hodges likened Hamkari to a “rising tide of security.”

The so-called “military planners” should be fired for incompetence.  So the plan is to bring a “super-superlative government in a box on steroids” since the regular old “government in a box” didn’t work.  Look for the plan to fail.

In The Evolving Jihadist Scene in Pakistan we discussed the al Qaeda strategy of co-opting other insurgents in Pakistan, such as the LeT, to a broader war against the West with more globalist designs and intentions than mere questions over Kashmir.  The AP recently added another contribution to our knowledge with a recent report on cross border operations.

As the spotlight of the Afghan war focuses on the south, insurgent activity is increasing in parts of the east, with Arab and other foreign fighters linked to al-Qaida infiltrating across the rugged mountains with the help of Pakistani militants, Afghan and U.S. officials say …

Gen. Mohammed Zaman Mahmoodzai, head of Afghanistan’s border security force, told The Associated Press that infiltration by al-Qaida-linked militants has been increasing in his area since March.

“One out of three are Arabs,” he said, coming mostly from Pakistan’s Bajaur and Mohmand tribal areas where the Pakistan military is battling Pakistani Taliban insurgents …

A NATO official said he thought Mahmooodzai’s estimate of Arab infiltration was high but acknowledged that activity by foreign fighters was running “a little more than average” in the east. He said most of them were believed to be Pakistanis, Chechens and Tajiks although it was difficult to determine their origins.

In some cases, militants enter the country through legal crossing points such as Torkham, 35 miles east of Jalalabad. Mahmoodzai said the infiltrators carry fake passports and visas provided by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based group that India blames for the 2008 attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai that left 166 people dead.

“We know it is Lashkar-e-Taiba because we have sources inside the Afghan Taliban,” Mahmoodzai said. “They said the Arabs are coming here through Lashkar-e-Taiba.”

Last month, the NATO-led command announced the capture of two Taliban commanders it said were helping Lashkar-e-Taiba (LASH-kar-e-TOY-bah) members slip into Afghanistan. In reporting the second arrest, a NATO statement referred to a “recent influx” of Lashkar-e-Taiba members into the eastern province of Nangarhar.

The mixture of insurgent groups adds to the complexity of the war in the east, often fought in terrain much more rugged and challenging than in the north or south.

The Haqqani group was believed to have played a major role in the Dec. 30 suicide bombing at a CIA base in the eastern province of Khost that killed seven agency employees.A NATO official said that if al-Qaida is in Afghanistan, it’s probably in Kunar, the eastern Afghan province along the Pakistani border where Osama bin Laden maintained bases in the 1990s. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not supposed to release the information to the media.

“The government is there by day, but by night it is the Taliban who are in control,” said Malik Naseer, who is running for parliament in next month’s election from a district of Nangarhar. “Residents say there are some foreigners among them.”The Pakistani agency helped organize Lashkar-e-Taiba, or Army of the Pure, two decades ago to launch attacks in Indian-controlled Kashmir, the disputed mountain region that lies at the heart of the rivalry between the two nuclear-armed nations.

Lashkar-e-Taiba, which the U.S. military refers to as LeT, is believed to have played a role in the Feb. 26, 2010 car bombing and suicide attack on two guesthouses in Kabul frequented by Indians, and in the October 2008 car bombing at the gates of the Indian Embassy that killed more than 60 people …

“I’ve watched them since 2008 … move to the West, become more active in other countries and more active throughout the region and more engaged with other terrorist groups,” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, told Pakistani reporters in Islamabad last month. “So there is an increased level of concern with respect to where LeT is and where it appears to be headed.”

Christine Fair, assistant professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Peace and Security Studies, says Lashkar-e-Taiba has been attacking coalition soldiers in Afghanistan since 2004. Fair said she has tracked Lashkar-e-Taiba operations in several eastern Afghan provinces, including Kunar, Baghlan, Nangarhar, Logar and Nuristan.

The NATO official speculated that Lashkar-e-Taiba is using Afghanistan to “get up their jihadi street credentials” among the militants’ support base.

We are watching the continuing evolution of the LeT from a home grown insurgency focused on Kashmir to one with internationalist intentions.  In the battle to make international insurgents more locally oriented when they show up, versus making home grown insurgents more internationally oriented, the globalists are winning.  Was there ever really any chance that it would have been any other way?  Was there ever any doubt?

From The New York Times:

An ambitious military operation that Afghan officials had expected to be a sign of their growing military capacity instead turned into an embarrassment, with Taliban forces battering an Afghan battalion in a remote northeast area for the last week.

The fighting has been so intense that the Red Cross has been unable to reach the battlefield to remove dead and wounded.

The operation, east of Kabul, was not initially coordinated with NATO forces, but the Afghans called for help after 10 of their soldiers were killed and perhaps twice as many captured at the opening of their operation nine days ago, and American and French NATO forces poured in to the area.

“There are a lot of lessons to be learned here,” said a senior American military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity about the debacle. “How they started that and why they started that.” He said there had been no public statements on the battle because of the need for confidentiality during a rescue mission.

The Afghan National Army now numbers 134,000 men, and only Wednesday, the new American commander, General David H. Petraeus, complimented the Afghans on reaching that target three months ahead of schedule.

Still, the Afghan National Army runs relatively few operations on its own, particularly large-scale operations. They take a little more than half as many casualties as coalition military forces here, who now have roughly the same number of troops in the country. (In 2009, according to NATO figures, 282 Afghan soldiers were killed, compared to 521 coalition soldiers.)

The operation began when the Afghan Army sent a battalion of about 300 men from the 1st Brigade, 201st Army Corps, into a village called Bad Pakh, in Laghman Province, which is adjacent to the troubled border province of Kunar. Their operation, which began on the night of Aug. 3, was to flush out Taliban in a rugged area where they had long held sway. First, using the Afghan Army’s own helicopters, a detachment was inserted by air behind Taliban lines, while the main part of the battalion attacked frontally.

But, according to a high-ranking official of the Afghan Ministry of Defense, the plan was betrayed; Taliban forces were waiting with an ambush against the main body. Then the airborne detachment was cut off when bad weather grounded its helicopters, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

In the confusion, the 201st Army Corps commanders lost contact with the battalion. The battalion’s 3rd Company — 100 men — took particularly heavy casualties, the official said, although he did not have a number. He said many of the company were killed, captured or missing, and as of Wednesday at least, the situation of the rest of the battalion remained unclear.

However, the senior American military official said the battalion had not been lost. “We know exactly where that battalion is, although there are several soldiers unaccounted for and several killed.” He estimated that “about 10” soldiers had been killed, and no more than a platoon-sized number were missing, meaning up to 20. An official of the Red Crescent in the area said casualties were very heavy on the government side and that the Taliban had destroyed 35 Ford Ranger trucks, the standard Afghan Army. transport vehicle, which typically carry six or more soldiers each.

Analysis & Commentary

There is no indication whether the Taliban massed forces as is their practice when encountering larger concentrations of U.S. troops.  But it’s probable that they did, and that gives us a good basis for comparison of the performance of U.S. forces and the Afghan National Army (ANA).  I have detailed the drug abuse, refusal to go on night patrols, lack of discipline and refusal to obey orders, sleeping on post, poor marksmanship and other catalog of problems with the ANA.  But even granting the assumption that these problems didn’t effect their performance in this engagement with the Taliban, this example speaks poorly of the capabilities of the ANA.

The loss of operational security is unfortunate and still shows how easy it apparently is to corrupt the individual members of the ANA.  But that’s not the salient point here.  Engagement with the Taliban was bound to happen, and the ANA should have been able to employ enough fires from infantry combined arms (rifle, automatic fire, mortar, etc.) with a force this size to have both defended themselves and inflict severe damage to the Taliban.  In fact, a force this size should have been able to employ maneuver tactics to close with the enemy.

In comparison, while the battles at Wanat and Kamdesh are still fresh in our memories and remain an unfortunate testimony to the need for force projection, the U.S. forces in these battles were approximately platoon-size, lost fewer men than the ANA in this engagement, and faced Taliban massing of forces (300 or more fighters in each case).  In neither case was the U.S. outpost overrun.

The comparison and contrast isn’t perfect, as the U.S. forces had close air support (CAS), although not as soon as they needed.  But this size ANA force is a huge unit to have performed so poorly against Taliban fighters.  We have have fielded 134,000 ANA troops at the present, but it really doesn’t matter.  Numbers are irrelevant.  They would disintegrate in the face of heavy engagements, and this portends a significant problem with the administration plans to begin winding down U.S. troop presence in 2011.

Stars and Stripes gives us a report on COP Michigan after the abandonment of the Korengal Valley.

For years, U.S. forces struggled in vain to win over the Korengal, so insular and violent that its people defeated an entire Russian division.

Finally, on April 14, the 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division packed up their items and pulled the U.S. presence back to COP Michigan.

The 327’s 1st Battalion took over six weeks later.

“When they were back in the Korengal, [U.S. forces] took lots of hits in the Korengal,” said Staff Sgt. Thomas Musgrave, 25, of Columbus, Ohio. “Now, we take hits. It’s really where the buffer is, whether it’s here or in the Korengal.”

Michigan is attacked so frequently now that soldiers at the other three Pech River Valley bases, who all have heavy fights on their hands, grimace when they hear that Michigan is a visitor’s destination.

In most places in Afghanistan, soldiers who stay inside the wire, meaning behind the base walls, are usually considered on safer ground. At Michigan, “sometimes guys feel like they are safer outside the wire,” said Capt. Dakota Steedsman, commander of Company D.

Soldiers spend 80 percent of their time just defending the base or reacting to attacks from the surrounding mountain walls, a far cry from the focus on counterinsurgency and governance in other parts of the country.

Another enlightening report from Stars and Stripes comes to us concerning use of the big guns in the Pech River Valley area.

Each day in this hot summer fighting season, the thundering boom of U.S. artillery reverberates off mountain walls, shaking the Pech River Valley like a giant’s footsteps.

The big guns at Camp Blessing, the 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment’s headquarters in the river valley, fire when any of the four U.S. bases that dot the river road come under attack. They strike when soldiers on patrol are ambushed by insurgents who stalk them from the mountain ridges, or when there are reports of insurgents preparing an assault.

In most of Afghanistan, the counterinsurgency strategy of diplomacy and governance has made these 155 mm howitzer guns almost irrelevant. Most artillery and mortar men are doing infantry jobs, focused on key population centers.

Not so in Pech. This is an artillery fight here, in deeply hostile mountain terrain, and this fighting season is so extreme that there is near constant and imminent threat to soldiers holding the valley floor.

It’s obvious that there are TIC (troops in contact) in the Pech River Valley, and it’s also obvious that there are plenty of insurgents in the area.  Friend Joshua Foust, with whom I seldom disagree, argued for leaving the rural, isolated areas in favor of heavy force projection in the heavily populated areas, a strategy that was and is being employed by the administration in a tip of the hat to population-centric counterinsurgency.

I argued, on the other hand (in the context of Helmand and Kahdahar), that:

It is a strange argument indeed that sends Marines to Kandahar while the insurgents in Now Zad have separated themselves off from civilians and invited a fight.  So send more Marines to Kandahar to control the streets.  The Taliban bullying will stop once a Regimental Combat Team arrives.  This should not be too difficult to pull off.  As I have said before, there are so many Marines at Camp Lejeune that some units are not even in the same barracks, and more barracks are being built.  Not since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom has the Corps been so large with so many Marines garrisoned in the states.  Furthermore, if they aren’t in the states they are on board amphibious assault docks doing nothing.  Entire Battalions of Marine infantry – doing nothing for nine months.

But if the resources to control Kandahar are there, the argument to remove them from Helmand is not.  Whether the sources for the WSJ and Joe Klein’s article are wishing for the narrative to gain traction or there is in reality a sense that Helmand is a sideshow is irrelevant.  The strategists need to sense the reality that Helmand is not a sideshow, and that it is a very real line of effort in the campaign.  Without hitting the insurgents where they live we will follow the Russians out of Afghanistan.

The Helmand Province is the home of the indigenous insurgency, the Afghanistan Taliban, and its capital is Lashkar Gah.  Without hitting the Taliban’s recruiting grounds, fund raising and revenue development, training grounds, and logistical supply lines, the campaign cannot be won.  Focusing on the population centers is a loser strategy, doomed to sure failure.  Controlling the cities as some sort of prison while the roads are all controlled by Taliban is just what the Russians did, only to withdraw in ignominy.  The Marines are in Helmand because just like Anbar, Iraq at the time, it is the worst place on earth.

Josh isn’t convinced, and is engaging in a sort of Socratic dialogue with his readers over this issue again, just at the moment with respect to the Kunar Province rather than Helmand.  But a recent communication to me from Afghanistan reiterated what I already know: “The Taliban doesn’t dig its roots in the cities.”  And again from a commenter to Joshua’s article:

I’m worried that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Afghan insurgency at all levels. It isn’t an urban based insurgency. Dense population centers are not the centers of gravity that they are/were in Iraq or other insurgent movements. Because it is a rural insurgency, counterinsurgents must need be in rural areas with the population, which by extension means that we run the risk of spreading our forces thin. There’s always risk.

If it’s no longer worth the risk to put forces in the decisive points where they need to be in order to defeat the insurgent momentum, then it’s no longer worth the risk to be in the theater of operations at all. I highly disagree with that too.

Just so.  While I slightly to moderately disagree with the controlling concept of CoG for warfare, I certainly strongly disagree with the notion of the singular CoG being the population, even in counterinsurgency.  This isn’t to say that the population isn’t important, or that we mustn’t work with them, or have no need of living with them, contacting them, or protecting them from insurgents.  It is to say, however, that for us to win based on population approval is the same thing as occupation of land, just with a different target.

It doesn’t really matter if we occupy land or the minds of the population.  In both cases we are dependent on something else to achieve success.  In one case we occupy terrain.  In the other, we occupy anthropological terrain, a much more volatile and much less reliable terrain.  And if we abandon Korengal, they follow us to the mouth of the Pech River.  If we abandon the Pech River Valley, they will follow us to the next location, and next, and next …

While Joshua also seems to disagree with what he called the “Baghdadification” of Kandahar (a tip of the hat to zones, concrete barriers, etc.), at least that focuses on corralling and killing the enemy.  In Fallujah in 2007 heavy kinetic operations were employed to kill the enemy, along with concrete barriers, gated communities, biometrics, and so on to identify the enemy.  If this sounds different from the popular narrative, it’s because it is.  Gated communities and biometrics weren’t employed to protect the population.  They were employed to locate and destroy the enemy.

Nuristan and Kunar are worth it because this is the lifeblood of the insurgency.  But a strong warning goes along with this advocacy.  If we are setting our troops up for the same fate as the men at Wanat or Kamdesh because of lack of CAS, lack of logistics, under-resourcing, lack of artillery and restrictive ROE, then we should withdraw them now.  Counterinsurgency isn’t a game to be played out of anthropological textbooks.  Real lives are at stake, and unless we are willing to commit the resources, it’s easy (and perhaps wise?) to pose the question as Josh does – is it worth it?

From Global Post:

The American soldier standing guard at the main intersection in Marjah looked hot and tired. Sweat and dust covered his face and uniform as he sought shelter from the burning sun under a tree. Even his nametag was obscured by the dirt.

As an Afghan reporter approached, the soldier stiffened visibly. But when shown the journalist’s identification, he relaxed and even smiled a bit.

“We have lost our credibility here,” he said, explaining his initial hostility. “Even small children to whom I offer candy are Taliban spies. We have to be suspicious.”

The soldier would not say any more, or even give his name.

Marjah, the focus of a much-hyped battle just a few short months ago, said to herald “the turning point of the war,” is now a dangerous and volatile place.

As the U.S. Army weighs the pros and cons of conducting a similar effort in Kandahar, a much larger and more difficult target, the Marjah operation provides a cautionary tale for those who think that military offensives can bring stability to the Taliban heartland.

Marjah may never have deserved its exalted status: a small patch of desert containing at most 50,000 inhabitants, it was the target of Operation Moshtarak, which began on Feb. 13. More than 15,000 soldiers from the U.S., British and Afghan armies took part in the offensive against at most 2,000 Taliban. Within weeks the Marines declared victory.

It was not until a few months later that the serious cracks in the arrangement became too apparent to hide. The “government in a box” promised by Gen. Stan McChrystal, the former commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, did not bring the stability and peace it was supposed to.

Instead, district governor Haji Mohammad Zahir could not establish rapport with the local population and was quietly removed in mid-July. The Taliban, far from “melting away” as expected, stood their ground and began to mount terror operations against the local population.

By July, conditions had deteriorated to the point that residents were afraid the district was about to fall once again to the Taliban.

“It is like Doomsday,” said Haji Abdul Samad, a shopkeeper in Marjah. “The bullets drop like rain from the sky. I have not been able to go to my shop for 10 days. Cattle and sheep are dying. There is no humanity here, no kindness.”

The main bazaar in Marjah, Loya Charahi, is almost deserted. Only a handful of the hundreds of shops are open; the intersection looks as it did in the early days of the operation.

“The Taliban has warned us not to open our shops,” said Gul Ahmad, whose store remains shuttered. “There are more and more of them and they are very cruel. If I open my shop, they will beat me to death. Perhaps they are trying to demonstrate their power, or perhaps they just want to show that life is not normal in Marjah.”

[ … ]

Jabir, a police officer in Marjah, who also uses only name, is afraid that Marjah could soon fall again to the Taliban.

“We cannot patrol on our own, but go with the Americans,” he said. “The Taliban are very bold and very brave. They have new weapons and they conduct more than 10 attacks every day in Marjah. It is horrifying.”

The situation is untenable, he insisted. “Everything has changed here,” he said. “We are afraid of every farmer, and see Taliban fighters behind every tree.”

If you can get past Jean MacKenzie calling U.S. forces in Marjah Soldiers instead of Marines, there is some useful perspective in this report.  As if to unnecessarily repeat ourselves or lay the painfully obvious out all over again, this stupid idea of a government in a box that McChrystal and Rodriguez thought would work is a fool’s errand.  I am also told that the British officers to a man believe in the “government in a box” strategy.  In spite of the continued questioning of whether Marjah deserved the effort put into it, if the Taliban are there and can be found and killed, it’s worth it.  But instant government from a military magician yelling ‘presto’ won’t do the job.

Second, recall that the Taliban who eventually found themselves here began in other parts of Helmand, including Now Zad, Gamrsir, and so forth.  They don’t belong here.  That is, they don’t have families in Marjah – or at least, if they do, until now they have been wandering troublemakers.  It’s been a while since they have been in Marjah in force because they haven’t had to be.  Yet they have the population eating out of their hands.  They have been quite successful with their tactics of intimidation, an outcome I forecasted.  They don’t have to be the sons of families in Marjah.  Their intimidation is enough.

Third, the ANA and ANP is nowhere near ready to take over from the U.S., and won’t be in a year.  They can’t even summon the courage to patrol alone.

Fourth, the Marines need to know who is in Marjah and why.  They need to look into the eyes of every inhabitant, be inside every home, take every fingerprint and scan every iris.  Their patrols need to be ubiquitous, day and night, and they don’t need to wait on the ANA or send them into the homes first.  They need to proceed with door kicking in the middle of the night if that’s what it takes, they need to project force, and they need to do it beginning now and carrying on until every last insurgent has been captured or killed.  Killed is better than captured given the poor state of the Afghanistan system of “justice” (i.e., catch and release).

In short, the Marines have lost their way.  The Marines are out of their element, doing things that don’t come natural.  McChrystal had persuaded (or ordered) them to adopt the British way of doing things (and to some degree supported by elements within the U.S. Army), the same strategy that lost Basra.  The Marines need to look into their past, their recent past, and return to the things they were doing in the Anbar Province.  They need no classes to remember.  It’s organic, it’s something inherent to the Corps.  It will appear too brutish to some of the brass who has lost their way, and it will make others deride them as knuckle draggers and mouth breathers.  That’s because they don’t know that the Marines know more than they do and know how to win.  They just need to remember it, and the brass just needs to sit back and watch and learn.  The Marines need to be Marines, and the brass needs to get out of the way and quit trying to micromanage their work.