Archive for the 'Afghanistan' Category

From Military.com:

Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top allied military commander in Afghanistan, sat gazing at maps of Marjah as a Marine battalion commander asked him for more time to oust Taliban fighters from a longtime stronghold in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

“You’ve got to be patient,” Lt. Col. Brian Christmas told McChrystal. “We’ve only been here 90 days.”

“How many days do you think we have before we run out of support by the international community?” McChrystal replied.

A charged silence settled in the stuffy, crowded chapel tent at the Marine base in the Marjah district.

“I can’t tell you, sir,” the tall, towheaded, Fort Bragg, N.C., native finally answered.

“I’m telling you,” McChrystal said. “We don’t have as many days as we’d like.”

The operation in Marjah is supposed to be the first blow in a decisive campaign to oust the Taliban from their spiritual homeland in adjacent Kandahar province, one that McChrystal had hoped would bring security and stability to Marjah and begin to convey an “irreversible sense of momentum” in the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan.

Instead, a tour last week of Marjah and the nearby Nad Ali district, during which McClatchy Newspapers had rare access to meetings between McChrystal and top Western strategists, drove home the hard fact that President Obama’s plan to begin pulling American troops out of Afghanistan in July 2011 is colliding with the realities of the war.

There aren’t enough U.S. and Afghan forces to provide the security that’s needed to win the loyalty of wary locals. The Taliban have beheaded Afghans who cooperate with foreigners in a creeping intimidation campaign. The Afghan government hasn’t dispatched enough local administrators or trained police to establish credible governance, and now the Taliban have begun their anticipated spring offensive.

“This is a bleeding ulcer right now,” McChrystal told a group of Afghan officials, international commanders in southern Afghanistan and civilian strategists who are leading the effort to oust the Taliban fighters from Helmand.

“You don’t feel it here,” he said during a 10-hour front-line strategy review, “but I’ll tell you, it’s a bleeding ulcer outside.”

Throughout the day, McChrystal expressed impatience with the pace of operations, echoing the mounting pressure he’s under from his civilian bosses in Washington and Europe to start showing progress.

Is this a bad joke or a sorry episode of The Twilight Zone?  It’s a serious question.  Names are supplied, so the author apparently doesn’t mind us fact-checking him.  Is this report for real?  Did McChrystal really say those things and interact with another officer in this manner?  Seriously?  This is an important milestone in the campaign.  Apparently, we now know the real expectations for the campaign.  No one can seriously continue to claim that the withdrawal date is a mere ruse for the American public.  They really believe it.  They really intend for it to obtain.

Did General McChrystal not cover the basics of classical counterinsurgency doctrine with his civilian bosses?  Did he or any of his reports mislead the administration into believing that Marjah or any other town in Afghanistan would be pacified in 90 days?  Did he or his reports – or anyone in the administration – really believe that this government ex machina we brought to Marjah would work?

Forgetting classical counterinsurgency doctrine which normally presumes that COIN will take ten or even more years, for anyone who has been listening and watching for the past several years, the most successful part of the campaign in Iraq, i.e., the Anbar Province, took about three and a half years from the inception of Operation Al Fajr until late 2007 when Fallujah was finally stable at the conclusion of Operation Alljah.

Security in Ramadi preceded Fallujah slightly, Haditha preceded Ramadi by a little and Al Qaim was secure before Haditha.  But the whole of the Anbar Province took over three years and the efforts of the best fighting force on earth, the U.S. Marine Corps, in which more than 1000 Marines perished and many more were wounded or maimed.  No one in his right mind would claim that the U.S. Marine Corps did not understand or implement a successful strategy in the Anbar Province, where the Marines had to fight their way through an indigenous insurgency (finally co-opting their services) to get to the 80-100 foreign fighters per month flowing across the Syrian border.  Iraq is still not entirely stable, and its security will be a direct function of the extent to which we confront Iran in its quest for regional hegemony.

This report is so bizarre, so jaw dropping, and so disturbing, that it naturally leads to many other very important questions.  Does McChrystal believe that the COIN operations will be successfully concluded within a year or even a year plus a few months?  Did he communicate that to the administration?  If so, does the administration believe it?  Was time frame ever brought up?  Did the administration simply lay down expectations without reference to historical precedent for successful COIN campaigns and without asking General McChrystal?

The notion that Marjah is a bleeding ulcer is preposterous when compared to Ramadi in 2006 or Fallujah in 2007.  Someone or some group is not thinking clearly, and this lack of clarity may be the doom of the campaign when it finally becomes apparent to everyone else that we are in the “long war.”  It will not be finished for a long time to come, even if America stands down.  The enemy gets the final vote.

From The New York Times:

MIAN POSHTEH, Afghanistan — The young Taliban prisoner was led blindfolded to a sweltering military tent, seated among 17 village elders and then, eyes uncovered, faced a chief accuser brandishing a document with the elders’ signatures or thumbprints.

Capt. Scott A. Cuomo, a United States Marine commander who was acting as the prosecutor, told the prisoner: “This letter right here is a sworn pledge from all of your elders that they’re vouching for you and that you will never support the Taliban or fight for the Taliban ever again.”

After a half-hour “trial,” the captain rendered the group’s judgment on the silent prisoner, Juma Khan, 23, whom the Marines had seized after finding a bomb trigger device, ammunition and opium buried in his yard. Mr. Khan’s father and grandfather, who was one of the elders, were among the group. “So on behalf of peace, your family, your grandfather,” Captain Cuomo solemnly said, “we’re going to let you go.”

Thus was justice dispensed on a recent Saturday evening, deep in the Taliban heartland of the Helmand River Valley, where the theory behind the American effort to “reintegrate” the enemy meets the ambiguous reality of a nearly decade-old war.

Captain Cuomo, a 32-year-old Annapolis graduate from Long Island who is not related to the New York political family, acknowledged the hazards of the trial and others like it unfolding in Afghanistan. “Do I know that Juma Khan is not going to turn back around and be the Taliban?” he said. “No.” Nonetheless the effort is proceeding.

Even as Washington and Kabul debate their plans to reconcile with senior members of the Taliban, military commanders on the ground in Afghanistan are reintegrating insurgent foot soldiers on their own. The reason is simple, Captain Cuomo said: While Marines are “trained to fight, and we don’t mind fighting, the problem with fighting is that it doesn’t bring stability to your home.”

Six days after Mr. Khan’s May 1 release, another Marine commander, Capt. Jason C. Brezler, got pledges from 25 former insurgents to sign up as police recruits in the northern Helmand village of Soorkano. A week later in Marja, where clashes between the Marines and the Taliban continue in the wake of an American offensive there in February, Lt. Col. Brian Christmas released two young men who admitted to fighting for the Taliban, after the pair and two elders signed pledges promising the men would not fight again.

Acting under military guidelines aimed at persuading low-level fighters to lay down their arms, commanders repeat the mantra that the United States will never kill its way to victory in Afghanistan. They say that in a counterinsurgency war intended to win over the population, reintegration is crucial because the Taliban are woven so deeply into the social fabric of the country.

Ridiculous mantra, this idea that we cannot kill our way to victory.  Now, it may be more complicated than that, where at least some cooperation from the population is necessary in order to identify the insurgents, but people cooperate for all sorts of reasons.  I reject the idea that poverty or disenfranchisement in and of itself creates insurgents.  There are countless poverty-stricken countries in the world where large scale insurgencies do not exist, Bangladesh being one of them.

Our experience in the Anbar Province demonstrates that the most effective order of things is for the insurgents themselves to decide to put down arms because it becomes too dangerous for them.  When it is certain death to continue the fight, the end is near.  In this case the end is nowhere to be found because the proper force projection has not been in effect.

If Juma Khan had decided on his own to reintegrate and had approached the U.S. Marines about doing so, then it would be more persuasive than this display, sincere though it is (on the part of the Marines).  Where has this ever happened?  It happened in the Anbar Province many times.  During Operation Alljah in Fallujah in 2007, the Marine brought such force to Fallujah that the foreign fighters died (or fled North to Mosul), while the indigenous insurgents gave up and returned home, many of them to al Qaim where local elders vouched for their future lawful conduct.

Both accounts involve local elders vouching and making promises, but it is only one instance of these two examples where the insurgents themselves approached the government or U.S. Marines.  We want to take the milestones in successful COIN and move them up in date to meet our own wishes without adequate commitment and forces.  It simply won’t work.

Greg Jaffe at The Washington Post penned an article on the buildup to the disaster at COP Keating that got little attention.  The entire history is worth study, but several quotes are lifted out (and certainly out of context) in order to make important observations that aren’t dissimilar to those I have made for four years.

Just before 6 a.m., more than 300 insurgents launched a massive attack on Bundermann’s remote outpost in the Kamdesh district of northeastern Afghanistan. By 6:30 three of Bundermann’s soldiers were dead, and the Apache attack helicopters he desperately wanted weren’t going to arrive for another half hour …

The outpost, surrounded by soaring mountains on all sides, was isolated and hard to defend. “It felt like we were living in the bottom of a Dixie cup,” one of Brown’s soldiers said …

Attacks on U.S. forces had increased every year since Keating was established in 2006, and by summer 2009 Brown concluded that the presence of U.S. troops was feeding the insurgency.  His study of the local rebel factions had led him to believe that a U.S. withdrawal from the area would split the insurgency …

Brown also asked for Sadiq’s “wisdom.” “We need assistance from leaders like you that are able to reach out and encourage the people of Kamdesh to cease the violence and oust the Taliban,” he wrote. He offered to meet with Sadiq whenever it was convenient and promised him protection …

The next morning, Afghan villagers approached Keating’s main gate and asked for permission to collect their dead from the base and a nearby village. Brown gave the Afghans some body bags and told them to stay off the high ground where the U.S. forces were still dropping bombs to take out snipers.

The next two days were spent packing up equipment and rigging the outpost’s remaining buildings with explosives. After nightfall on Oct. 6, a half dozen Chinook helicopters flew into Keating and hauled away the troops. Brown climbed on the last bird. As he was leaving, engineers triggered the delayed fuses on the explosives. Forty minutes later Keating was in flames. A B-1 bomber finished the job the next day.

Brown typed up an e-mail cataloguing mistakes he made in failing to build up the outpost’s defenses in the months before the planned withdrawal. He sent it to his boss, his fellow battalion commanders and the two-star general assigned to conduct an investigation of the attack. The letter of reprimand the general wrote to Brown closely tracked the e-mail.

Alone in his office a few weeks after the attack Brown re-read the letter he had sent to Sadiq in September. It made him cringe.

“I was playing to his ego. But reading it over, it sounds like I was kissing his ass from a position of weakness,” Brown said months later. He paused and exhaled. “We certainly weren’t operating from a position of strength.”

The importance of terrain has been an ongoing theme in our coverage of Kamdesh and Wanat, but in spite of the experiences at VPB Kahler at Wanat, the COP Keating Soldiers were left to tough it out in terrain that almost ensured their demise.  We are not a learning organization.  Moreover, the first close air support was at least one hour from the battle, and there was no artillery.  This shows once again that the campaign is underresourced.

The  notion that coalition presence was feeding the insurgency was the horrible and cowardly excuse proffered by the British commanders when they left Basra (the follow-on activity as you will recall was of the U.S. and ISF engaging in heavy battle to defeat the Shi’a militias while the British watched from their bases).  If Col. Brown had studied the history of Iraq as he had claimed, he would have more quickly dismissed the notion of the counterinsurgents being the fuel for the insurgency as mere fodder for withdrawal and defeat.

Finally, “ass kissing” is the about the best explanation possible for this pusillanimous letter to a loser like Sadiq.  The lesson of the Anbar Province is one winning from the position of strength (see also Col. MacFarland’s comments on Ramadi).  Force Projection, the importance of terrain, the importance of close air support and artillery, and the importance of the position of strength in counterinsurgency – these things are not only common themes here at The Captain’s Journal, they are the foundations of success.

Prior:

Taliban Massing of Forces

Wanat Category

Kamdesh Category

The Anbar Narrative

On his Facebook page, Michael Yon is reporting that “An American soldier emailed from Afghanistan saying that his unit has been ordered to patrol with no round in the chamber.”  There is no further confirmation than this, and I have not done my own independent confirmation.  But let’s assume for a moment the accuracy of this report.

W. Thomas Smith, Jr., calls ordering this practice criminally negligent.  I disagree.  There is nothing negligent about it.  If this order has been given, it is criminal.  Negligent means that there was no intent to endanger, and that is clearly not the case.  Whomever ordered this intends for the troops to be at increased risk.  It is an intentional act, a dispositive action.  The commanding officer is disposing of the issue of troop risk by increasing it, and he knows it.

But what’s so stunning about this is how far we have evolved from the things we learned in Iraq where we were successful.  Note again how different this is from the very things that succeeded in the hardest parts of the counterinsurgency.  I talked to a certain Marine who said something like the following concerning his time in Fallujah in 2007.

“First of all, we employed aggressive ROE, which is why we dominated Fallujah so completely and quickly from the deadly chaos that it was under a different unit early in 2007.  This aggressive ROE saved lives – ours and theirs.  But as to the issue of weapon status, here it is.  When we went on patrol, we had:

1. Bolt forward
2. Round in chamber
3. Magazine inserted
4. Weapon on safe

Obviously, since the SAW is an open-bolt weapon, the exact same rules could not apply (bolt forward), but a round was always chambered.  He further said that “Marines got hazed if they were found without a round in the chamber,” and that this stupid rule would get troops killed.

Enough said.

UPDATE: I just received the following communication from LTC Tadd Sholtis.

“Herschel,

Headquarters ISAF, the ISAF Joint Command and the Regional Commands have not issued guidance to units instructing them to conduct patrols without rounds chambered.  Force protection levels are dictated by the local threats and determined by commanders at the lowest possible tactical level, so without knowing the specific unit from which this report came I can’t verify with absolute certainty that verbal or written guidance has not been issued locally.  But the intent to subordinate commanders should be clear.  At no time do we remove our troops’ inherent rights of self-defense, and we are confident that their training and discipline allows them to use force discriminately within the rules of engagement.  We’d welcome information from anyone who has a problem with the way guidance is being implemented that they haven’t been able to address with their immediate chain of command.”

A report on Mazar-i-Sharif from The New York Times.

In a country still gripped by war, the families picnicking around the azure-domed shrine in the central square here are perhaps the clearest sign that this northern provincial city has distinguished itself as one of the most secure places in the country. An estimated one million people visited Mazar-i-Sharif for Afghan New Year celebrations in March and in the weeks after without incident.

It helps, of course, that Mazar-i-Sharif and the surrounding Balkh Province lie far from the Pakistani border and the heartland of the Taliban insurgency in southern and eastern Afghanistan. But there is something else that sets Mazar-i-Sharif apart, almost everyone here agrees, and that is the leadership of the provincial governor, Atta Muhammad Noor.

Some regard Mr. Noor, 46, a former mujahedeen commander and an ethnic Tajik, as a thinly disguised warlord who still exercises an unhealthy degree of control across much of the north and who has used that influence to grow rich through business deals during his time in power since 2001.

But there is little doubt that Mr. Noor has also managed to do in his corner what President Hamid Karzai has failed to achieve in other parts of Afghanistan: bring development and security, with a good measure of public support, to regions divided by ethnic and political rivalries.

For that, Mr. Noor has slowly gained the attention and support of Western donors and become something of a study in what kind of governing, imperfect as it is, produces results in Afghanistan.

Since 2001, American and other Western officials have tried to buttress the central government under Mr. Karzai as a means of securing Afghanistan by weakening powerful regional warlords and bringing lucrative customs revenues into the state coffers. Mr. Karzai has installed political allies as governors around the country, yet many have failed to provide security or services and have indulged in corruption, alienating Afghans from the government at all levels.

Supporters of Mr. Noor say he has made the transition from bearded guerrilla fighter to business-suited manager. Though many presume he has used his position of power to make money, Mr. Noor speaks out against corruption and has apparently checked it enough to maintain public support. That support has enhanced security, and the security has allowed others to prosper, too, another important reason that he has maintained popular backing.

Such is his support that Mr. Noor is the one governor whom President Karzai has been unable to replace, or has chosen not to, even after Mr. Noor campaigned against him in the presidential election last year.

A skillful politician, Mr. Noor has also gained the upper hand over some formidable political rivals, solidifying his power in the region as they left to take up posts in Kabul, including even Mr. Karzai’s ally, the Uzbek militia leader Abdul Rashid Dostum.

In an interview in his lavish party offices, Mr. Noor denied rumors that he takes a cut of every investment that flows through the region and said he made his money legally — he has interests in oil, wood trading, fertilizer and construction, among other things. “In legal ways, I did do a lot of work,” he said. “I did my own business.”

Instead, he criticized Mr. Karzai’s management of the country and said the president never followed through on plans to regulate revenue collection, policing and relations between the central government and the provinces. He derided Mr. Karzai’s efforts to curb corruption, saying the president should not appoint corrupt people in the first place.

Mr. Karzai had also failed to act as the Taliban insurgency spread into the north in recent years, he said.

“If we don’t have the cooperation of the people, you cannot stop it,” he said of the insurgency. “There has to be a deep contact between the people and the government. If officials are not embezzling or taking bribes, then definitely the people will trust the government.”

It isn’t clear whether Noor’s scolding of Karzai is an instance of the pot calling the kettle black.  This is also very far to the North – in Northern Alliance territory (and the Taliban aren’t likely to be able to take the area, especially with Abdul Rashid Dostum still there).  But there is one thing that is becoming more apparent with the passage of time.  Our alignment with Karzai is more than just an alignment with corruption.  It’s an alignment with incompetent corruption.

Karzai is showing himself more and more as a man who cannot govern, a man who cannot accomplish even the basic things necessary to make a state function, and a man who cannot be taken seriously.  Without U.S. forces present, his government would likely become chaotic and fall within months.  Afghanistan (or parts of it) can be governed, but Hamid Karzai cannot do it.

Regular readers know about my advocacy of the idea of lines of effort versus the idea of a strict, unchanging center of gravity (usually taken to be the population in counterinsurgency).  Recall also the corruption in Afghanistan we have recently discussed in the context of Wali Karzai, Hamid Karzai’s gangster brother in Kandahar.  Someone else is thinking outside the box and questioning religiously-dictated COIN dogma, the impetus being the corruption in Afghanistan.  Spencer Ackerman (h/t SWJ) gives us the observations of an unnamed CIA operative.

Ask a person in Afghanistan, “Who are you?” and they will tell you about their tribe, ethnicity or sect –but not nationality. Deployed to Afghanistan and Pakistan as an operator for a CIA CT codeword program, I remember asking a local about himself whether he considered himself “Afghan.” He laughed and said, “Afghanistan is a line on a map — drawn by the British. There are no Afghan people,” he continued, “except in Kabul but only because it pays so well.”

One contributing factor toward this lack of understanding is how most cultural advisors to high-level US decision makers, as I learned from personal experience at Defense Department Forward Operating Bases, State Department Embassies and CIA Stations, come from a Kabul-centric background. After all, each proved educated and wealthy enough to leave Afghanistan, learn English, acquire a security clearance and secure lucrative western government employment.

Nonetheless, a vast majority of people in Afghanistan do not view as legitimate any national authority from Kabul. Further, Afghanistan lacks the infrastructure of commerce, transport and communication that facilitate the development of national identity. Finally, people throughout Afghanistan do not view Hamid Karzai as a legitimate leader, and that sentiment has hardened in the aftermath of the massive fraud uncovered in connection with the recent election.

Instead—and this is vital for policy makers to understand—the very tribal leaders we seek to influence in our efforts against the Taliban are actually threatened by our support of Karzai. Regardless of our intent, they perceive our actions as empowering his tribe and their tribal allies to dominate the other tribes via the Afghanistan National Army (ANA) and National Police (ANP) once the coalition eventually withdrawals its forces.

He recommends a system of tribal engagement similar to Major Jim Gant.  Ralph Peters also believes that Hamid Karzai is doomed – destined to be relegated to the dustbin of history (he would be smart if this happens to flee the country, as it is deadly at the top in Afghanistan).

I am and have been no particular proponent of one strategy versus another, except the hot pursuit of the enemy.  If tribal engagement works to our advantage, then so be it.  I am no admirer of the corruption among the elite and powerful in Afghanistan, or anywhere else for that matter.  It might also be educational to recall the counsel of Lt. Col. Allen West.

You will find many of the elements we have discussed here, including zones of hot pursuit of the enemy, ROE hindering our efforts, and many others.  Population-centric counterinsurgency obviously won’t work in Afghanistan.  Truth be told, our efforts weren’t exclusively population-centric in the Anbar Province of Iraq either.  That’s only a popular myth for the masses.

From NYDailyNews.com.

President Obama and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai praised each other Wednesday and insisted the tenuous relationship between the U.S. and Afghanistan has never been stronger, but they didn’t erase significant differences over how to govern the patchwork nation.

“There are days that we are happy. There are days that we are not happy. It’s a mutual relationship towards a common objective,” Karzai said at a joint East Room press conference. “The bottom line is that we are much more strongly related to each other today than we ever were before in this relationship.”

When the two leaders met more than a month ago in Kabul, Obama was frank and insisted Karzai crack down on corruption in his government, which the U.S. believes has hurt military and diplomatic efforts. Karzai publicly squawked about the tone of that meeting.

There are even bigger differences to be resolved. The U.S. is particularly concerned about peace talks Karzai would like to open with Taliban leaders and regional warlords while U.S. troops are in the midst of a campaign in the Helmand Valley region.

Even though the issue remains prickly for both leaders, they used the occasion to try to cast a more positive image of friendship and solidarity. Though not a full-fledged state visit, Obama even gave Karzai the red carpet treatment.

Of their differences, Obama said, “A lot of them were simply overstated,” adding, “I am very comfortable with the strong efforts that President Karzai has made thus far and I think we both agree that we’re going to have to make more efforts in the future.”

TCJ three days prior concerning Ahmed Wali Karzai, Hamid Karzai’s criminal brother who runs Kandahar like a mobster.

“The plan is to incorporate him, to shape him. Unless you eliminate him, you have to [do this],” said a senior coalition official involved in planning what is viewed as this summer’s make-or-break military operation in Kandahar. “You can’t ignore him,” he added. “He’s the proverbial 800lb gorilla and he’s in the middle of a lot of rooms. He’s the mafia don, the family fixer, the troubleshooter.”

“ISAF faces a number of political challenges as well. A majority of Afghan watchers point to Ahmed Wali Karzai as one of the biggest barriers to smooth operations in the city—he demands a cut of most commerce that takes place in the area, and the DEA alleges he has ties to the illegal narcotics industry. However, because he is the President’s brother, there is no chance of removing him from power. Similarly, Kandahar is, in effect, run by a group of families organized into mafia-style crime rings. They skim profits off almost all reconstruction projects in the city, and have developed a lucrative trade ripping off ISAF initiatives. They sometimes violently clash with each other.”

From the Guardian.

Barack Obama warned today that coalition forces in Afghanistan faced months of hard fighting, but said they had started to “reverse the momentum of the insurgency” by taking the fight to the Taliban.

From the Air Force Times.

The Taliban no longer run and hide when they see a fighter jet overhead, brazenness that airmen attribute to the nearly year-old directive to limit close-air support.

Joint terminal attack controllers, airmen on the ground who call in airstrikes, and fighter pilots report that insurgents are encouraging each other to continue firing because they know the Air Force’s F-16s and A-10s are dropping far fewer bombs now than this time last year.

“Keep fighting; [coalition forces] won’t shoot” is the order that enemy leaders are giving — in Pashtun and Dari, words that the JTACs have heard over their radios.

One is almost persuaded to believe that the White House is spewing forth propaganda.

This report comes from the AP.

GHUNDY GHAR, Afghanistan — As night falls on this small hilltop base in the heart of Taliban country in southern Afghanistan, U.S. Army soldiers break out their knives and flashlights and go hunting for some of the country’s deadliest inhabitants: snakes and scorpions.

Tracking down the “creepy crawlies” that lurk in the nooks and crannies of the countryside is a favorite pastime, providing education, some entertainment — arachnid fight night! — or even a quick meal.

The expeditions help break the monotony of 10-day rotations the soldiers do once or twice a month at this rugged outpost in Kandahar province. Other than patrolling for a few hours a day, there is little for troops to do except watch movies or lift weights at a makeshift gym.

“Deployments are always 99 percent extreme boredom and one percent sheer terror,” said Spc. Chris Stoughton, a 28-year-old machine gunner with the platoon currently based at Strong Point Ghundy Ghar in Zhari district.

Staff Sgt. Aaron Christensen, a self-described reptile nut who grew up exploring the woods and coastlines of Oregon, leads the charge at night. Unlike most soldiers on their first deployment, he was just as fired up about the wildlife in the Afghan countryside as he was about potentially battling Taliban insurgents.

“I knew we had our job to do, but I was thinking in the back of my mind that I hope to see some of the cool things I have only seen in pictures or at exotic reptile shows,” said Christensen, who has owned cobras, rattlesnakes, lizards and a small alligator as pets. He even has two of his pet snakes tattooed on his left biceps.

The 30-year-old native of Portland, Oregon, has not been disappointed with what he and his fellow soldiers have found around the 200-foot (60- meter) rock and mud hill where their base is located. It is teeming with a wealth of snakes, scorpions, spiders and other wildlife.

This is a good human interest story from the AP reporter (Sabastion Abbot) that raises an issue entirely different from the one he intended.  Why are soldiers bored with little to do except look for reptiles, work out and watch movies?  I don’t want to start another round of internecine rivalry, but the Marines in Helmand aren’t so bored.

“We set out the combat patrol anticipating contact,” said Capt. E.A. Meador from Laurel, Miss., the company commander. “They always try to hit us in that area.”

After moving only about one mile from their combat outpost, the Marines received a heavy volley of enemy gunfire from multiple directions. Without hesitation, the Marines and ANA returned fire to suppress the enemy positions, began to maneuver on the insurgents and call for fire support.

Within minutes, an AH-1W Super Cobra and a UH-1N Huey were on station overhead to help suppress and engage enemy targets. The Cobra fired several five-inch Zuni rockets into one of the compounds from which the patrol was receiving sustained fire.

During the engagement, the squad leaders were encouraging and directing their Marines to ensure they were doing everything they could to stay effective and in the fight. No matter how tired they became as time wore on, the voice of experience could be heard across the battlefield.

“Push forward. Keep your dispersion,” called out Sgt. Jonathon Delgado, a squad leader from Kissimmee, Fla., as his Marines pressed through the corn field to maneuver on one of the compounds hiding the enemy.

The Marines and ANA eventually maneuvered up to and cleared the insurgent positions initially used to launch the ambush. One moment they were fighting in open fields, and the next they were clearing rooms the insurgents had used as fighting positions – two very different and challenging combat techniques. One squad, expecting to encounter some resistance, went to clear the western compound where the patrol had initially taken heavy fire. As they entered the compound, the only thing that was they found were brass casings and links from the enemy’s machine guns.

“It was tense going through the compound,” Daughtry commented. “You never know exactly what is coming around the corner.”

Marines with Company E, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, suppress enemy positions to protect the landing zone for a casualty evacuation helicopter in the middle of a six-hour firefight with Taliban insurgents.

This was a six-hour firefight.  Terry McCarthy has written about a four hour and fifteen minute patrol conducted by the 3/1 Marines.  This isn’t about branches of the military.  The Army in the Kunar and Nuristan Provinces is taking heat from the Taliban, and needs help on their many combat outposts.  It’s an issue of expectations and utilization of resources.  The question is why the Marines in Helmand and the Army is Kunar is suffering while the Army in other parts of the battlespace is bored?

Something is wrong with the management of the campaign.

As I have discussed before, in 2004 in Najaf, the U.S. Marines had Moqtada al Sadr surrounded.  The British leadership in Iraq, who felt that we simply had to learn to work with the fabric of Iraqi society, worked feverishly with Ali al-Sistani (the senior Shi’ite cleric in Iraq) to convince the U.S. political and military leadership to release Sadr.  This Charlie Rose interview with John Burns is instructive for its clarity regarding the event (see approximately 17:20 into the interview).

As later disclosed to me, Sadr wasn’t just surrounded.  The 3/2 Marines had Sadr in their custody.  They had arrested him and had held him for three days prior to being ordered to release him.  Today, six years later, a resurgent Sadr after having received religious training in Iran is doing Iran’s bidding for them.  A Shi’ite coalition is attempting to retain control over the government in the wake of the recent elections and not only exclude Allawi from power, but give ultimate authority over final political decisions to religious cleric Sistani.

A recent conversation I had with Omar Fadhil of ITM (perhaps in a preface to his latest post) might bring slightly more optimism than I bring to the table, where he sees the Maliki-Hakim-Sadr alliance as still very shaky.  Nonetheless, there are many U.S. deaths in Baghdad and Najaf that can be directly attributed to Sadr.  We are hearing from the ghosts of Najaf six years later, haunting voices, telling us that Sadr should not have been released.  They are unmistakable and relentless.  This was a bad and irreversible decision.

Such an important decision is in preparations for the Afghanistan campaign.  We are attempting to befriend and work with (even change?) Ahmed Wali Karzai, PM Hamid Karzai’s criminal brother in Kandahar.  To be sure, Wali Karzai doesn’t command an army of fighters the size of Sadr, or even an army at all.  But the similarities exist.  Leaving Sadr unmolested was an error of gargantuan proportions, and working with Wali Karzai may be judged in hindsight to be the single fateful decision that lost the battle for Kandahar.  Karzai’s political and financial fortunes rides on the backs of criminal organizations and drug money, and his friend are bought and paid for.  This is being described as a gamble.

Nato has taken one of the biggest gambles of its mission in Afghanistan by reluctantly deciding to collaborate with Ahmad Wali Karzai, the notorious power-broker of Kandahar — despite allegations that the half-brother of the President is involved in the drugs trade.

The decision comes as Nato planners continue preparations for their next big push against the Taleban in Kandahar and as the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, prepares to depart for Washington, where he is expected to meet President Obama next week.

Senior coalition officers would prefer to see the back of Wali Karzai but they have come to the conclusion that their only option is to work with him. They are trying, in the words of one officer, to “remodel” a man accused of running a private fiefdom in the south.

On Saturday Wali Karzai held a meeting with the US Central Command commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus; the latest in a series of contacts designed to rehabilitate and influence the activities of the chairman of Kandahar’s provincial council.

“The plan is to incorporate him, to shape him. Unless you eliminate him, you have to [do this],” said a senior coalition official involved in planning what is viewed as this summer’s make-or-break military operation in Kandahar. “You can’t ignore him,” he added. “He’s the proverbial 800lb gorilla and he’s in the middle of a lot of rooms. He’s the mafia don, the family fixer, the troubleshooter.”

Joshua Foust is even clearer: “ISAF faces a number of political challenges as well. A majority of Afghan watchers point to Ahmed Wali Karzai as one of the biggest barriers to smooth operations in the city—he demands a cut of most commerce that takes place in the area, and the DEA alleges he has ties to the illegal narcotics industry. However, because he is the President’s brother, there is no chance of removing him from power. Similarly, Kandahar is, in effect, run by a group of families organized into mafia-style crime rings. They skim profits off almost all reconstruction projects in the city, and have developed a lucrative trade ripping off ISAF initiatives. They sometimes violently clash with each other.”

My own counsel just prior to this report was directly contrary to the plan.

In order to win Kandahar, we must not run from fights; we must destroy the drug rings (not the local farmers), and especially destroy the crime families, including killing the heads of the crime families; we must make it so uncomfortable for people to give them cuts of their money that they fear us more than they fear Karzai’s criminal brother; we must make it so dangerous to be associated with crime rings, criminal organizations, and insurgents that no one wants even to be remotely associated with them; and we must marginalize Karzai’s brother …

Anyone associated with drug rings, criminal activity or the insurgency must be a target, from the highest to the lowest levels of the organization, and this without mercy.  Completely without mercy.  There should be no knee-jerk reversion to prisons, because the corrupt judicial system in Afghanistan will only release the worst actors to perpetrate the worst on their opponents.  This robust force projection must be conducted by not only the SOF, but so-called general purpose forces (GPF).  The population needs to see the very same people conducting patrols and talking with locals that they see killing criminals and insurgents.  This is imperative.

Two very different approaches, needless to say.  It remains to be seen who is right in this affair.  There seems to be confusion or at least rapidly changing opinion within the ISAF.  Not two weeks prior to this report about co-opting Karzai, it was reported that we had elected to do just the opposite.  ISAF has concluded that nothing else can be done, and I have concluded that something else must be done in order to justify the loss of American life.

Max Boot weighed in around the time of the Washington Post article saying:

There is little doubt that U.S. and other NATO forces can win a military victory in Kandahar. But do they have a political strategy to match their military might? I am dubious. At the very least a lot more groundwork needs to be laid in the realm of strategic communications to convince the world that the coalition can win a meaningful victory in Kandahar without removing AWK from power.

And this demur was posed assuming that we were merely attempting to sideline Wali Karzai.  Now we want to work with him and mold him.  But “can a leopard change its spots?”  In the future the ghosts of Kandahar, including U.S. servicemen, will call out and answer our question, even haunting the dreams of those who controlled their fates.

Joshua Foust, writing for PBS, gives us an interesting analysis of the upcoming battle for Kandahar.  The entire analysis is highly recommended, but several quotes will be reproduced below.

The current plan to “retake” Kandahar from the Taliban is loosely modeled after this year’s earlier operation in Marjeh, in neighboring Helmand Province. While in Marjeh the campaign began with a massive incursion of military forces, followed by a small cadre of civilian reconstruction specialists, in Kandahar there is a concerted effort to make the push more political and less militarized — General McChrystal calls it a “process” now instead of an “offensive.” Part of the campaign involves warning citizens of Kandahar that they need to report Taliban activity, or, if they can, flee the areas most likely to be mined or bombed, thus sparing innocent casualties.

To this end, there have been a series of low-key Special Forces raids into the city proper, attempting to identify and either capture or kill known Taliban commanders. To supplement this push into the city, hundreds of troops are being arrayed in the vast farming areas around Kandahar in an attempt to “choke off” the Taliban’s supply lines. At the same time, General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of all NATO forces in Afghanistan, has been meeting with local elders and politicians in an attempt to gin up popular support for the coming offensive.

[ … ]

ISAF faces a number of political challenges as well. A majority of Afghan watchers point to Ahmed Wali Karzai as one of the biggest barriers to smooth operations in the city—he demands a cut of most commerce that takes place in the area, and the DEA alleges he has ties to the illegal narcotics industry. However, because he is the President’s brother, there is no chance of removing him from power. Similarly, Kandahar is, in effect, run by a group of families organized into mafia-style crime rings. They skim profits off almost all reconstruction projects in the city, and have developed a lucrative trade ripping off ISAF initiatives. They sometimes violently clash with each other.

Finally, the Taliban: in part because of the miserable performance of the government, and ISAF’s inability to stem the growing insecurity around the city, the Taliban have been steadily building support. It is likely they will enjoy a lot of popularity when the big troops push finally arrives, even if it is grudging — it’s probably a safe bet that Kandaharis don’t especially like the Taliban, they just happen to be a safer, more reliable bet than the Coalition. Judging by the way all the initial meetings about the Battle for Kandahar have shaped up so far, ISAF hasn’t yet figured out how to address the concerns of regular people or present the campaign in a relatable way.

There are reports that the rules of engagement in place in Afghanistan has given the insurgents enough space to operate that they have been seen laying down their weapons, walking to another location (where a weapons cache is located), picking up another weapon, and then firing again.  There are even reports that Taliban fighters have been seen forcing women and children to carry their weapons to the next fighting location, all the while peering at U.S. troops without fear because they know that they cannot be fired upon due to the ROE.  The Strategy Page explains why the ROE has not lead to decreased casualties.

The majority of civilian combat deaths are at the hands of the Taliban or drug gangs, and the local media plays those down (or else). It’s a sweet deal for the bad guys, and a powerful battlefield tool. The civilians appreciate the attention, but the ROE doesn’t reduce overall civilian deaths, because the longer the Taliban have control of civilians in a combat situations, the more they kill. The Taliban often use civilians as human shields, and kill those who refuse, or are suspected of disloyalty.

Our view towards substantiation of the national political authority as part of the COIN effort causes us to work for the legitimization of the local authorities as part of that framework.  But rather than being the solution, it is part of the problem.

In order to win Kandahar, we must not run from fights; we must destroy the drug rings (not the local farmers), and especially destroy the crime families, including killing the heads of the crime families; we must make it so uncomfortable for people to give them cuts of their money that they fear us more than they fear Karzai’s criminal brother; we must make it so dangerous to be associated with crime rings, criminal organizations, and insurgents that no one wants even to be remotely associated with them; and we must marginalize Karzai’s brother.

I am (as a perusal of my posts will show) opposed to the special operations forces driven high value target campaign as being ineffective.  Anyone associated with drug rings, criminal activity or the insurgency must be a target, from the highest to the lowest levels of the organization, and this without mercy.  Completely without mercy.  There should be no knee-jerk reversion to prisons, because the corrupt judicial system in Afghanistan will only release the worst actors to perpetrate the worst on their opponents.  This robust force projection must be conducted by not only the SOF, but so-called general purpose forces (GPF).  The population needs to see the very same people conducting patrols and talking with locals that they see killing criminals and insurgents.  This is imperative.  This is imperative.

We can revert to the softer side of counterinsurgency if all of this seems too barbaric.  We can run from fights with the insurgents, we can continue to pour tens of millions of dollars into a failing and corrupt system, and we can continue to prop up a parasitic government.  But in the end, we must count the costs in lives, lost limbs, lost reputation, and national wealth.

Mark my words, do it clearly, and do it now.  We will go in and stay in as the strong horse, and we will force the conclusion that suits our interest, or we will lose the campaign.  If this is too brutal for some, then withdraw, but don’t send our warriors on a fool’s errand.  The leftist web sites will call me a war mongering, barbaric brute and sociopath who wants our Soldiers to violate the rules of war.  All manner of venom may come my way.  I don’t care.  I really don’t care.

Rarely are things so clear cut and measurable by metrics as this.  Again, count the costs.  Start now, and keep the data.  Count the men who die, the men who lose arms, legs, hearing and brain function due to IEDs, and take measure of the situation in Kandahar in the future (how “legitimate” is the government after our costly efforts in Kandahar?).  I will be proven right or wrong, but the best thing about putting prose down on paper is that it can be judged in the future.