Archive for the 'Afghanistan' Category

There is something strange about the uproar over the apparently accidental burning of Korans at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

This article from the Associated Press is headlined for Newt Gingrich’s criticism of President Obama’s apologies to Hamid Karzai over the Koran burnings.   Whether you agree or disagree with Gingrich’s points, the defense offered up by White House is thought-provoking:

Even before Gingrich’s comments, White House spokesman Jay Carney sought to counter any criticism of the president’s apology.

“It is wholly appropriate, given the sensitivities to this issue, the understandable sensitivities,” Carney told reporters traveling to Miami with the president on Air Force One. “His primary concern as commander in chief is the safety of the American men and women in Afghanistan, of our military and civilian personnel there. And it was absolutely the right thing to do.”

There are at least two, underlying assumptions in the White House messaging on this.

Muslim Sensitivities

First, Obama’s apology to Karzai was “wholly appropriate” due to “the understandable sensitivities” of the Afghanis.   Presumably Carney is really referring to the Afghani’s muslim sensitivities.   In Obama’s view, then, Islamic “sensitivities” are to be given such respect that any offense– even an indisputably unintentional and accidental one– demands contrition and a grave apology from a United States President.

What is this sensitivity that requires an American President to bend the knee and humbly seek forgiveness?  It is the apparent veneration of a book by muslims that forbids any act of disrespect or dishonor.   This is medieval thinking and, while we can comprehend that Afghanis inhabit a culture and religion that is largely mired in the 7th Century, it is not incumbent on Americans or America’s President to cater to or endorse such magical thinking.

We feel no need, for instance, to apologize to muslims for the dogs that American soldiers often use for bomb detection or even companionship on bases in Afghanistan despite the fact that dogs offend many muslims’ “sensitivities.”    Admittedly, there is no need to go out of our way to unnecessarily offend, but it would seem that we give validity to magical thinking when we apologize for inadvertent offenses to that thinking to which we, ourselves do not subscribe and even hold, privately, in contempt.

Note, too, the contrast in the way Obama treats Islamic beliefs about a book and his treatment of the Roman Catholic beliefs about contraception.  He is frankly not concerned about the Catholic sensitivities when it conflicts with his agenda and, most disturbing, is willing to ride roughshod over important First Amendment rights in the process.

Rewarding Violence

The second rationale provided by the White House is that the apology emanated from the need to protect our military forces in Afghanistan (and probably elsewhere in the Middle East).  The underlying assumption is that muslims will resort to random and not-so-random violence against Americans if they are not placated and appeased.

Comparing the treatment accorded the Afghan government and the Roman Catholic Church, the lesson here seems to be that if you are a religious group that respects the law and addresses its grievances through debate and political action, then your sensitivities– even ones protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution— can be abused and violated by Obama and his myrmidons on the Left.   But if you happen to belong to a religious group that will readily and predictably resort to violence at any unintentional or even accidental slight to your sensitivities, then you are pursued like a wounded child, begged for forgiveness and placated.

This incident should be yet another clear marker for all of us that the West, so far, is on the losing side of the war with Militant Islam as we are willing cede our own cultural beliefs to them simply because they readily resort to violence.    This is like parents who defer and pander to their 17 year-old because they fear his violent temper and unpredictable tendency to violence.   Such a scenario never ends well.

It will not end well for America, either, if we persist in these behaviors.

UPDATE: An interesting contrast to the U.S. position on the accidental burning of the Koran and the intentional burning of the Bible by U.S. forces in 2009.   I do not subscribe to the notion that the Bible– as a collection of paper and ink bound with a cover of some sort is invested with mystical qualities that render the book itself as inviolate.   To do so would be to engage in the same sort of magical thinking that muslims have toward the Koran.   At the same time, the article makes good points about the perception of Afghans who see Americans falling over themselves to seek forgiveness for a few, mistakenly burned Korans while holding their own sacred book, the Bible, in apparent contempt.

In the Armed Forces Journal, Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis drops a bombshell on the community.

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.

Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress.

Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level.

My arrival in country in late 2010 marked the start of my fourth combat deployment, and my second in Afghanistan. A Regular Army officer in the Armor Branch, I served in Operation Desert Storm, in Afghanistan in 2005-06 and in Iraq in 2008-09. In the middle of my career, I spent eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve and held a number of civilian jobs — among them, legislative correspondent for defense and foreign affairs for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

As a representative for the Rapid Equipping Force, I set out to talk to our troops about their needs and their circumstances. Along the way, I conducted mounted and dismounted combat patrols, spending time with conventional and Special Forces troops. I interviewed or had conversations with more than 250 soldiers in the field, from the lowest-ranking 19-year-old private to division commanders and staff members at every echelon. I spoke at length with Afghan security officials, Afghan civilians and a few village elders.

I saw the incredible difficulties any military force would have to pacify even a single area of any of those provinces; I heard many stories of how insurgents controlled virtually every piece of land beyond eyeshot of a U.S. or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base.

I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.

From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency.

Much of what I saw during my deployment, let alone read or wrote in official reports, I can’t talk about; the information remains classified. But I can say that such reports — mine and others’ — serve to illuminate the gulf between conditions on the ground and official statements of progress.

And I can relate a few representative experiences, of the kind that I observed all over the country.

In January 2011, I made my first trip into the mountains of Kunar province near the Pakistan border to visit the troops of 1st Squadron, 32nd Cavalry. On a patrol to the northernmost U.S. position in eastern Afghanistan, we arrived at an Afghan National Police (ANP) station that had reported being attacked by the Taliban 2½ hours earlier.

Through the interpreter, I asked the police captain where the attack had originated, and he pointed to the side of a nearby mountain.

“What are your normal procedures in situations like these?” I asked. “Do you form up a squad and go after them? Do you periodically send out harassing patrols? What do you do?”

As the interpreter conveyed my questions, the captain’s head wheeled around, looking first at the interpreter and turning to me with an incredulous expression. Then he laughed.

“No! We don’t go after them,” he said. “That would be dangerous!”

According to the cavalry troopers, the Afghan policemen rarely leave the cover of the checkpoints. In that part of the province, the Taliban literally run free.

In June, I was in the Zharay district of Kandahar province, returning to a base from a dismounted patrol. Gunshots were audible as the Taliban attacked a U.S. checkpoint about one mile away.

As I entered the unit’s command post, the commander and his staff were watching a live video feed of the battle. Two ANP vehicles were blocking the main road leading to the site of the attack. The fire was coming from behind a haystack. We watched as two Afghan men emerged, mounted a motorcycle and began moving toward the Afghan policemen in their vehicles.

The U.S. commander turned around and told the Afghan radio operator to make sure the policemen halted the men. The radio operator shouted into the radio repeatedly, but got no answer.

On the screen, we watched as the two men slowly motored past the ANP vehicles. The policemen neither got out to stop the two men nor answered the radio — until the motorcycle was out of sight.

To a man, the U.S. officers in that unit told me they had nothing but contempt for the Afghan troops in their area — and that was before the above incident occurred.

The bombshell isn’t that things aren’t going well in Afghanistan.  The bombshell is that this specific Lt. Col. went on record saying so.

But the reader would have already known many of these things by reading my categories on the horrible Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police.  I repeatedly called for chasing the insurgents, just like Lt. Col. Davis expected would happen, but General McChrystal withdrew troops to the population centers just like the Russians.  I said that al Qaeda and the Haqqani fighters would come back to the Pech River Valley, and they did.

Michael Yon and I have both called for withdrawal (me, because we have not and aren’t taking the campaign seriously).  But it’s significant that staff officers have begun to break ranks.  The campaign is not as advertised.  Regular readers already knew that.  Now staff officers are saying it.

Now comes a good and well-informed article in the same spirit as our own articles on the Taliban, from Asian Correspondent.  Concerning the primarily Pashtun areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ahsan Butt observes:

Isn’t it instructive that scholars who actually know the area, such as Ijaz Khan (University of Peshawar) or the oft-cited Farhat Taj, completely and unequivocally reject the Imran Khan thesis? This idea that the Taliban are somehow representative of the Pashtun nation, and are fighting and dying for them, is just silly.

Within the study of civil war in political science, non-state movements are generally divided between ethnically focused and ideologically focused. Obviously this is often a too-rigid categorization, but it’s useful because the two types of mobilizations often have different goals.

Those movements that are ethnically motivated are generally what we call nationalist movements. These tend to be focused heavily on a particular piece of territory, since group identity and territory have a very strong relationship. So if all xs are concentrated in region X, then it’s unlikely that the xs will launch a movement, violent or otherwise, in regions other than X. This is because (a) they don’t care about regions other than X; in fact, their mobilizations are often motivated by demanding increasing separation from X and non-X areas, and (b) there’s not enough xs in the non-X region for them to congeal in a movement worth worrying about. Examples include the Tamils in northern Sri Lanka or the Bengalis in former East Pakistan.

Those that are ideologically motivated tend to be focused on control of the state or political unit at large. They are not interested in controlling a sliver of territory, they are interested in re-orienting the state. The important thing to note is that granting a piece of territory to the agents of the movement is unlikely to satisfy them, since their movement is not based on the control of territory in the first place. Examples include the Communist Party of China or the various right-wing militias operating in Latin America during the Cold War.

This distinction matters because it gets at the heart of the debate on the war in Pakistan and whether it is worth fighting. If you believe that the Taliban and their local affiliates are nationalists, then it makes sense to give them control of various districts or maybe even a whole province, in the hope that that’s what they want, and will therefore cause them to stop mounting violent challenges to the state.

If you believe that the Taliban and their local affiliates are ideologues, then it doesn’t make sense to give them control of various districts because they will only use that control to consolidate their material capabilities to launch yet further assaults on the state and its citizens.

I wish we lived in a world where the Taliban were indeed nationalists because it would mean that there is fairly self-evident solution to the violence. Unfortunately we do not and there is not. Imran Khan, however, continues to believe that they are and that there is. Reasonable people can disagree on the extent to which force should be used, what type of force (air power vs shock troops vs full-blown incisions) is to be used, how negotiations should be constructed, which actors should be invited to the negotiations, and so on. But no reasonable person can believe that the “war can be ended in 90 days” or that the Taliban are likely to go quietly into the sunset if you hand over a bunch of territory to them.

Just so.  And it’s a mistake that has been made from the beginning, i.e., believing that this is some sort of classical insurgency/counterinsurgency campaign.  To be sure, there are still the so-called “ten dollar taliban,” but more and more we are finding that they fight for ideological reasons, not for a parcel of land to control.

If no involvement in the political system is sufficient solution to the immediate crisis, then that complicates matters indeed.  If they are somehow – gasp – ideologically aligned with the radical elements in al Qaeda, Haqqani, the various Kashmir groups, etc., then inviting them to the negotiating table is a ridiculous ruse trying to hide abject surrender and failure on our part.  And if this surrender obtains, then we will be worse off for our loss in Afghanistan.  But perhaps we’ve already discussed that.

A note from an active duty Soldier and very loyal reader of TCJ.  I am withholding his name.

Herschel,

Pretty compelling stuff on your site of late. The Army is working the hell out of me lately and I don’t have the emotional energy to comment coherently on your site. But to you I’d like to suggest two things; Its not as easy as withdrawing and the regional  threats will all strengthen when we exit. We can “win” this Afghan thing if we, as a country chose to. We appear to have chosen not to win. Lots of the comment on your site is such un/ill informed crap; it drives me up a tree. After all this time can people still be so clueless?

Afghanistan has been 10 (going on 11) one year wars. Each year is tied to the other only in the vast funds expended and the incoherence of the strategy and execution of our warfighting and state department actions. Each year is a ridiculous, blind stab at something, anything to “win” the war without of course, actually war fighting at a scale that will in fact, win the war. Talk and more talk, money and more money, blood and more blood and nothing to show for it. The reality of this circumstance weakens me more than any tour of combat I’ve yet experienced.

I’ve no issue with your admonition that it is time to leave. I’ve believed that since 2006. But what I believe more is that our military, political and civil authorities must proclaim not simply that we cannot win, but that we refuse to win. And that knowing the outcome of walking away; are willing to ransome a future generation to warfighting at a bloddy scale that will make our 10 year efforts appear like so much playground proctoring. Anyway, Herschel, keep it up. I don’t know how you do it, but I’m mighty glad that you do!

Sometimes I wonder why I bother to write, but occasionally I receive letters like this one, and then I understand.  But the authorities admitting what we all know to be true won’t happen.  Furthermore, the highlighted sentence tells us – yet again – what I have tried to point out ever since I have been writing.

What the population-centric COIN advocates have not gotten, and will never get, with their claptrap about killing one insurgent and creating ten more, or killing one family member, even by accident, and create 100 insurgents (you take your pick of the cliche du jour), is that nothing can compare in its debilitating affects on the troops  – and thus the campaign – like what we’ve done, e.g., hand them immoral rules of engagement, talk about talking to the Taliban, talk to the Taliban, send billions of dollars into black holes, wander aimlessly in a strategic malaise with our head up our ass, set dates for withdrawal, declare that it will all be okay anyway, and so on and so forth the sad parade goes.

What does it take to lose a war?  Destroy morale with awful leadership.

Michael Yon has written a short note entitled Time To Leave Afghanistan.  I concur, but for somewhat different reasons, or at least, I will state my reasons somewhat differently.  I had been pondering going public with my counsel to withdraw from Afghanistan, and then I read possibly the most depressing entry on Afghanistan I have ever seen, from Tim Lynch.  Some of it is repeated below.

Ten years ago, Afghans were thrilled to see us and thought that finally they could live in peace and develop their country …

Five years ago they watched us flounder – we stayed on FOBs and shoveled cash by the billions into the hands of a corrupt central government that we insisted, despite clear evidence to the contrary, was a legitimate government – one that had to be supported at all costs. We raided their homes at night and shot up civilians who got too close to our convoys, we paid for roads that did not exist and, because of the “force protection” mentality, most Afghans thought our soldiers were cowards because they never came to the bazaar off duty and unarmored to buy stuff like the Russians did. In fact, every bite of food our soldiers consumed was flown into country at great expense, so in a land famous for its melons and grapes our troops ate crappy melon and tasteless grapes flown in by contractors from God knows where.

Now, they want to shoot us in the face. Except for the klepocratic elite who want us to give them billions more and then shoot us in the face.

There it is; Afghanistan is toast, and what the last 10 years has taught us is we cannot afford to deploy American ground forces.  Two billion dollars a week (that’s billion with a B) has bought what?  Every year we stay to “bring security to the people,” the security situation for the people gets worse and worse, deteriorating by orders of magnitude.  Now the boy genius has announced a “new strategy”.  A strategy that is identical to the “strategy” that resulted in a hollow ground force getting its ass kicked by North Korea in 1950; a mere five years after we had ascended to the most dominant military the world had ever known.

Tim goes on to say things about Iraq and national defense policy with which I don’t entirely agree.  My views on Iraq are complicated, as my readers know, and I will recapitulate (and summarize) them soon.  But if anyone would know that Afghanistan is toast, Tim Lynch would.

Listen well.  This is no anti-war cry.  I have argued virtually non-stop for increasing troop levels, staying the course, and increased (and different) lines of logistics for support of our troops.  But I have watched with dismay and even panic over the course of the last six years as we haven’t taken the campaign seriously, and good men have suffered and perished because of it.

I have watched as different members of NATO carried different strategies into the campaign without being united at the top level.  I have argued for recognizing the resurgence of the Taliban, while General Rodriguez argued against even the possibility of a spring offensive in 2008.  I watched as that same general micromanaged the Marines as they surged into the Helmand Province, issuing an order requiring that his operations center clear any airstrike that was on a housing compound in the area but not sought in self-defense.

We have seen General McChrystal issue awful and debilitating rules of engagement, along with personal stipulations that modified them to be even more restrictive.  “If you are in a situation where you are under fire from the enemy… if there is any chance of creating civilian casualties or if you don’t know whether you will create civilian casualties, if you can withdraw from that situation without firing, then you must do so,” said McChrystal.

Those disastrous rules and McChrystal’s disastrous management played a critical role in the shameful and immoral deaths of three Marines, a Navy Corpsman and a Soldier at Ganjgal, the firefight where Dakota Meyer earned his MoH.  Read the comments of the families of those warriors who perished at Ganjgal, and let the sentiments wash over you.

Study again my writing on Now Zad.  I was the only writer or blogger anywhere who was following the Marines at Now Zad – how they brought more trauma doctors with them than usual due to the massive loss of limbs and life that Marine command knew they would sustain, how they lived in so-called Hobbit holes in Now Zad, two or three Marines to a hole in distributed operations, hunting for Taliban fighters who had taken R&R in Now Zad because we didn’t have enough troops to prevent them from doing so.

While I was arguing for more Marines in Now Zad, I watched as a Battalion of infantrymen at Camp Lejeune (the class entering after my own son returned from his combat deployment in Iraq) entered the Marines expecting to go to Afghanistan or Iraq.  At that time we were heading for the exits in the Anbar Province of Iraq, and instead of focusing on Marines losing their legs and screaming for help in Now Zad, Afghanistan, that Battalion went on a wasteful MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit).  No MEU has ever been used by a President for anything in the history of doing MEUs except for humanitarian missions.

So that Battalion didn’t deploy to Iraq, went on a MEU, and then weren’t on rotation for Afghanistan.  Instead of helping their brothers in Now Zad, the Marine Corps Commandant had them playing Iwo Jima, as if we’re ever going to launch a major, sea-based forcible entry again.  A full Battalion of infantry Marines with two wars going on – and no deployment to Iraq, and no deployment to Afghanistan in a four year enlistment.

I argued against night raids by the so-called “snake eaters,” with them flying back to the FOBs that night, totally absent from the locals to explain what happened and why.  In addition to pointing out the wrong way to do it, I pointed out the right way to do it in lieu of night time raids by snake eaters.  I have argued for following and killing every single Taliban fighter into the hinterlands of Afghanistan, while the strategists under General McChrystal withdrew to the population centers just like the Russians did.

I pointed out that withdrawal from the Pech River Valley would invite the return of of al qaeda, Haqqani and allied fighters, and that’s exactly what happened.  I have been in the thick of this with my advocacy for the campaign, but again and again, it has become clear that we aren’t going to take this campaign seriously.  I have advocated against nation building, and by now I think it has become clear that population-centric counterinsurgency and nation building won’t ever work in Afghanistan.  Staying long enough with enough troops to find and kill the enemy has its problems, of course, including the fact that we may have to go back in eight or ten years later and do it all over again.

But that’s the Marine way.  Do now what has to be done, do it quickly and violently, achieve the mission, and leave.  At least I have been consistent, while always acknowledging that we cannot possibly achieve anything permanent, and will probably have to return at some point.  As it is, it isn’t clear that we’ve achieved anything at all.

The Wise family from Arkansas has lost their second son in Afghanistan.  For all those warriors who have given their all, and those families still suffering today because of that, America isn’t worthy of their sacrifices.  To be sure, if we continue the campaign there will still be magnificent warriors who answer the call.  But it’s our duty to take seriously the war to which we’re calling them if we let them go.  We’re heading for the exits, releasing insurgents from prisons in Afghanistan, and instead of trying to develop better lines of logistics, we’re trying to figure out how to get all of our equipment out of Afghanistan.

Regardless of who calls for what, the President will ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff what can be done to withdraw.  They will ask the flag and staff officers, and the staff officers will ask the logistics officers.  Logistics will decide how and when we can withdraw from Afghanistan.  No one else.

But within that framework, I am calling for the full, immediate and comprehensive withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan, and that we focus exclusively on force protection until that can be accomplished.  It’s time to come home.

UPDATE: Many thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the attention.

UPDATE #2: Thanks to Michael Yon for the attention.

From the BBC:

What happens when US forces pull out of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan? The BBC’s Bilal Sarwary, the first journalist to visit one of the areas the US left in Kunar province, uncovers a disturbing situation.

Kunar has always been a crucible of conflict. Tucked away in the north-eastern corner of Afghanistan, it borders Pakistan’s tribal badlands. It is one of the first ports of call for war-minded militants crossing the mountain passes.

But after the US-led invasion, troops began to assert their hold over the province. It is now littered with US and Nato bases and despite bloody battles there, the US invested heavily. Roads were asphalted, buildings renovated and a sense of security slowly developed. Villagers went about their business while infrastructure was put in place.

The US pulled out of parts of Kunar last year, beginning the withdrawal process. What has happened in the province since then makes for grim reading.

The new roads are now pock-marked with craters left by militants who plant bombs targeting Western and Afghan forces.

[ … ]

When I visited the picturesque Pech valley in the west of the province, a cloud of gloom hung over it.

In Barkanday village, I found a group of tribal elders brooding over their predicament: where once US forces were a deterrent to the Taliban, the Afghan government is notable only for its absence.

“It is Taliban across the river,” one elder said. “They are lying in wait. At the first opportunity, they will descend on the village to take their revenge,” he said, refusing to give his name for fear of retribution.

[ … ]

“When US forces left, they told us that our security was now the responsibility of the Afghan government,” Mohammad Akbar said. “But the Afghan government exists only in the district headquarters at Mano Gai.”

I did not come across a single soldier or official on my way there or during my four-hour stay. Villagers say development has also suffered.

Worthless Afghan National Army troops and corrupt Afghan National Police.  It seems that someone should have said something about the ANA and ANP – you know, how the ANA were curled up in fetal positions under blankets during the battle of Kamdesh at COP Keating.

It seems that maybe I did say something about the whole population-centric counterinsurgency thing at one point.

[The Pech River Valley is] … strategically irrelevant to the campaign planners who focused their efforts on population-centric counterinsurgency and thus withdrew troops to redeploy in larger population centers.  Not strategically irrelevant to me.  Google the phrase Abandoning the Pech and see where TCJ lies in authority.  I have supplied a surrogate conversation between flag officers when AQ returns to the Pech (which would be  now), and argued that without hitting the Taliban’s recruiting grounds, fund raising and revenue development, training grounds, and logistical supply lines, the campaign cannot be won.  I have pleaded that we not abandon the chase, and that we kill every last Taliban.  Campaign management and I just disagree.

The Marines are pulling out of Afghanistan completely in 2012, and there is a general drawdown of all troops underway.  If you’re deploying at the moment (and I know of some men who are), you have to wonder why, to what end, and whether you’re going to attempt to do anything other than survive the deployment?

Our dependence on the lines of logistics through Chaman and the Khyber Pass, as well as Pakistan’s duplicity towards the U.S., are well-worn issues with regular readers.  The Northern logistics routes are in increased and expanding usage due to the troubles in Pakistan.

Image courtesy of EagleSpeak.  The magnitude of the challenge is well described for us by Vice Adm. Mark Harnitchek, deputy commander of the U.S. military’s Transportation Command.

“This is the logistics challenge of our generation” … “The challenge of my father’s generation was escorting convoys across the north Atlantic when we didn’t know how to do that very well. Convoys in 1943 would lose 16 of their 32 ships. The Army had their challenge supplying Patton in his race across France, keeping him resupplied. Supporting operations in Afghanistan is our generational challenge.”

For the first seven years of the war in Afghanistan, almost all supplies and equipment were shipped by sea to the Pakistani port of Karachi. From there, they were trucked overland to Afghanistan, through parts of Pakistan effectively controlled by the Taliban.

In 2008, according to Harnitchek, the U.S. military lost as much as 15 percent of its supplies in those areas due to ambushes and theft. Establishing another supply route became a top priority.

Near the beginning of 2009 I explained the necessity for the Northern logistics route, and described it in detail.  The routes shown above come close, but still rely on Russia and fail to engage Turkmenistan.  I recommended that we develop a route “through the Caucasus region, specifically, from the Mediterranean Sea through the Bosporus Strait in Turkey, and from there into the Black Sea.  From the Black Sea the supplies would go through Georgia to neighboring Azerbaijan.  From here the supplies would transit across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan, and from there South to Afghanistan.”

I explained the urgency of the situation, and also described in subsequent posts on logistics how reliance on lines of logistics through Russia could affect the outcome of New START as well as endanger Georgia and cause another Russian incursion into the Caucasus (Ossetia and beyond).  Yet we are still lethargic concerning full development of the Northern logistics routes.

The urgency is still present, and we continue to see further examples of Pakistani duplicity.

As targeted killings have risen sharply across Afghanistan, American and Afghan officials believe that many are the work of counterintelligence units of the Haqqani  militant network and Al Qaeda, charged with killing suspected informants and terrorizing the populace on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Military intelligence officials say that the units essentially act as death squads and that one of them, a large group known as the Khurasan that operates primarily in Pakistan’s tribal areas, has been responsible for at least 250 assassinations and public executions.

The Haqqani network is, of course, coddled and enabled by the Pakistani ISI.  For some inexplicable reason the otherwise clear thinking Bing West comments concerning this report that:

The administration has to adopt a tough, transactional negotiating posture with Pakistan.

What is this song of enchantment that Pakistan continues to sing to its disappointed suitors?  Is it nuclear weapons?  There is the need for robust Pentagon war gaming concerning the securing of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, as I have described.  Is it the belief that more negotiations will convince Pakistan not to support the Afghan Taliban?  Is it the belief that Pakistan isn’t really controlled by Islamic fundamentalism, or that the Army isn’t preoccupied with fabricated and delusional notions of danger from India?

Whatever it is, we are years behind schedule in divorcing ourselves from Pakistan, whether concerning logistics or reliance on their internal security over their nuclear arsenal.  The Obama administration is “scrambling to repair” relations with Pakistan, as I would have expected.  But leaving the juvenile and moving to the adult, when even most knowledgeable analysts are suggesting that we need to take a tough negotiating stance and repair relations with Pakistan, we have a problem.

These relations with Pakistan never really existed.  Pakistan’s ultimate aim has never changed, even though the campaign has evolved.  Pakistan wants its high-powered insurgents (e.g., the Haqqani network) in order to effect change in Afghanistan (on its whim) and convince India that it is a force to be reckoned with, Kashmir or elsewhere.  Pakistan isn’t an ally of the U.S., and never was.  It’s time to stop pretending that they are.  It is always difficult to face the truth, but time is short and the situation is dire.

All monies should cease, lines of logistics should shift completely to the North, and in the future if Pakistan wants to engage the U.S. as an ally, it must start over and prove itself.  We must always negotiate from a position of strength, as we learned from Sun Tzu.

In Taliban Tactics: Massing of Troops, I detailed no less than six instances of Taliban fighters massing forces up to half a Battalion strong.  In More on Taliban Massing of Forces I detailed the seventh and eighth instances of such massing of fighters, and then finally we’ve discussed the ninth instance of this tactic.  The Washington Post has given us another instance, mainly focused in RC East.

Scores of Taliban fighters were killed Tuesday evening as they attempted to storm a small U.S. outpost along the Pakistani border and were driven back by American soldiers, according to U.S. military officials in the province.

The insurgents launched the attack by firing rocket-propelled grenades and rifles from the grounds of two Islamic schools near Combat Outpost Margah, in eastern Afghanistan’s volatile Paktika province. The company of American soldiers stationed there fired back as large groups of fighters moved toward the base from a wadi, or valley, to the west, U.S. military officials said.

The fighting lasted less than two hours, ending by about 8:30 p.m. No U.S. troops were killed. A spokesman for the Paktika governor said that 50 to 60 insurgents were killed.

[ … ]

“If they’re planning a massive attack, they may be able to muster a group of 100 around there,” Maj. Eric Butler, the brigade’s intelligence officer, said in an interview last week. For the Taliban, he said, “usually it ends very, very badly.”

Very badly indeed.  The battles at Wanat and Kamdesh in the Kunar and Nuristan Provinces, respectively, involved tragic and heavy losses compared to most instances of Taliban massing of forces, but even at Wanat the U.S. had a kill ratio of approximately 6:1.

Tim Lynch notes that “Rarely now will somebody shoot at the Marines in southern Helmand, and when they do, it is from so far away that it is hard to notice anybody is even shooting at you.”  The threat now is IEDs, and the Marines are suffering so many casualties that many of them, tragically, have issued standing orders to their Corpsman to let them die if they lose their gonads and are unable to reproduce.

The Taliban don’t fight conventionally – they fight asymmetrically.  In Helmand now after Garmsir in 2008 when the Marines killed more than 400 Taliban fighters, and the hard work of Marines in Now Zad and Sangin, the threat is IEDs.  In RC East it’s interesting that the Taliban see their position as so strong that outnumbering their opponent is still seen as asymmetric warfare, regardless of what the kill ratio actually shows.

After have read Men, Not Machines, Win Wars, I find that my thoughts were not clearly presented, making it not just possible, but probable, that my prose would be misconstrued.  Any misconstrual is my fault.

Tim Lynch doesn’t misconstrue my points, but some of the commenters in his Sanctuary Denied? shows that I need both to clarify my views and address Tim’s (and his commenters).  Anytime Tim speaks it’s worthy of time and consideration, and we are all richer for having his work and thoughts on our campaign in Afghanistan (as well as on military matters generally).  I consider Tim’s friendship to be a blessing and honor.

First of all, to Tim’s response.

Herschel Smith is unimpressed with the reported build up in the east of Afghanistan and I can’t remember a time he’s been wrong about anything. His assessment could prove to be spot on but this is one time I hope it isn’t.

Afghanistan President Karzai has threatened to back Pakistan if the US conducts cross border operations.  Secretary of State Clinton stopped by for a few words with President Karzai who immediately gave a TV interview telling the world he would side with Pakistan.  I guess the SecState failed to get her message across. Big frigging surprise there.

[ … ]

We have known since the very first days of this conflict that the Taliban use the border area for sanctuary after they try to attack our troops and start getting their asses kicked in response.  We have been good about not going across in “hot pursuit” having limited incursions into Pakistan to one that I know of.

We have alternate supply lines, we have stocks of stuff on hand, we still need to move supplies through Pakistan so what to do?  How about this famous quote “Never take counsel in your fears”.  The Pakistani’s have been playing us off since just after we started in October of 2001.  Back then they were all about cooperation, as was every other country in the world except the ones that don’t matter anyway.  The reason they were so cooperative was they knew we were in the blind rage stage of being pissed off.  That is several steps up the pissed off ladder and nobody at that time was sure what we were going to do.  All they knew was that we were capable of doing whatever the hell we wanted to do.  We still are.  In fact given the billions spent on hight tech platforms we could do destroy more, faster, and with greater efficiency than we could a decade ago.

From watching that 60 minutes segment with General Allen I am certain of one thing.  He’s pissed.  And he’s pissed about how Pakistan has been playing us and he is not the kind of man you want pissed at you.  Take it from me because I’ve been there with him and it is not pleasant.  Most of you do not know General Allen or anything about him.  What you need to know is he understands that unlimited sanctuary is no way to fight a war.  And even though he doesn’t have the political capitol of General Petraeus he has his confidence.  As he does with General Mattis – another fighting general who is not too keen on granting anyone sanctuary.  I know calls like going across the border in hot pursuit are the Presidents to make but we all now know (thanks to Ron Suskind) that the White House is dysfunctional and getting the President to make a firm decision about anything almost impossible.  National level leadership of that kind allows for subordinates to make “interpretations of intent”.  A fancy way of saying they can make their own decisions and take the actions they think fit Obama’s intent.

A few thoughts about Tim’s views here (beyond the fact that with Tim, I hope I am wrong about a great many of the things I have said).  America has always had a love affair with generals.  For me, General George S. Patton is my hero.  But let’s say that I knew at the time of the most intense fighting during World War II that Patton’s drive across Sicily cost the lives of American Soldiers because Patton wanted to best Montgomery.  If my son had perished in Sicily I would have burned with hated for the man.

On the other hand, the hardening of his Army created the ability to attack the Germans with two divisions within 48 hours across 100 miles of frozen tundra to relieve the Americans at Bastonge and end the German offensive.  It was the feat of supermen.  There are sterling successes and dark secrets about all generals, just as there are with each of us.

I don’t know general Allen, but I hold this against general Mattis.  The prosecution of the Haditha Marines occurred under his watch.  My own son went into the Marine Corps and by the time he hit boot camp and SOI, he was trained by Marine veterans of Al-Fajr. Veterans of Al-Fajr trained their Marines a certain way, to do certain things, and to see combat a certain way.  In 2005, room clearing operations meant that whomever was in the room died.  It’s just the way it was.  It was expectation.  It was training.  It was tribal knowledge, passed down from Marine to Marine.  It all occurred so rapidly that identification of the inhabitants of the room was irrelevant and impossible anyway.  Mattis knows this, and still he allowed good men to have their reputations tarnished.  I hold this against him, and I always will.

So the fact that the names of Allen and Mattis are mentioned is not determinative for me.  There must be more.  There must be commitment at the upper echelons of the administration.  Sometimes it’s best to let your readers speak for you, and concerning the notion that I simply didn’t know everything that Petraeus had up his sleeve when went to Pakistan to solicit their support (a sentiment on the comments to my first post), TSAlfabet had this to say.

… there is no such thing as secret anything when it comes to the U.S. government. As Wikileaks, the NYT, The WaPo and LA Times have all demonstrated, there is always an abundance of people with access to “top secrets” who are willing to blab to the media in exchange for anonymity and whatever smug feelings of superiority they get from betraying secrets.

So, for instance, when the U.S. needed to get tough with Pakistan in 2001 in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. knew exactly what to say to the Pakis in order to secure their, ahem, “cooperation.” Yes, there were goodies thrown in and charm pops blah blah, but the bottom line, “secret” message to Musharraf et al was, “You either work with us on rooting out Al Qaeda or we are going to turn your country into a parking lot. Your choice.” Not surprisingly, the Pakis chose to cooperate, albeit with as much fudging, double-crossing and reluctance as they thought they could get away with.

And how do we know that? Because these “secret” conversations were leaked to the press and, eventually I think, by Musharraf himself after he lost power and went on his rock-star media tour. It is a permanent feature of American power that there are no, real secrets. Only suppressed facts. I.e., if the secrets hurt conservatives or help liberals, you can be sure that the leaks will get front page news and be on every Left Wing media channel. If the secrets hurt liberals or embarrass a Democrat, you can be sure that the Leftist Media will ignore, suppress, excuse, counterattack in whatever way possible.

Now, ten years later, what is that Paki attitude? Do you think they are even a little bit scared of any threats coming from the U.S.? The Pakis are shelling U.S. troops according to the recent NYT article that is posted here at TCJ recently. The Pakis, according to our own CIA and Admiral Mullen are openly using the Haqqanis to attack the U.S. in A-stan.

No, the SCREW UPs don’t have anything up their sleeve. If they did, we would see real results. We would see a mysterious drop in cross-border attacks from Pakistan. We would see, with Iran, a decreasing belligerence.

No indeed. What you see is what you get. And we, the U.S. of A, are getting the finger from every tin pot dictator and 3d world thug out there. Obama and his circus show have made us a laughingstock the world over. Anyone who gets elected (short of Ron Paul) would be better than Obama.

As if on cue, the Taliban have gone on record with the BBC saying that Pakistan’s ISI assists them.

Pakistan has repeatedly denied the claims. But the BBC documentary series Secret Pakistan has spoken to a number of middle-ranking – and still active – Taliban commanders who provide detailed evidence of how the Pakistan ISI has rebuilt, trained and supported the Taliban throughout its war on the US in Afghanistan.

“For a fighter there are two important things – supplies and a place to hide,” said one Taliban commander, who fights under the name Mullah Qaseem. “Pakistan plays a significant role. First they support us by providing a place to hide which is really important. Secondly, they provide us with weapons.”

Another commander, Najib, says: “Because Obama put more troops into Afghanistan and increased operations here, so Pakistan’s support for us increased as well.”

He says his militia received a supply truck with “500 landmines with remote controls, 20 rocket-propelled grenade launchers with 2000 to 3000 grenades… AK-47s, machine-guns and rockets”.

See also the Reuters report.  Of course, Pakistan denied the BBC report, but the reader can make up his own mind.  But generals notwithstanding, a more aggressive stand towards Pakistan would require White House approval.

To clarify, my original post, which Tim didn’t misunderstand, did not advocate full scale engagement of Pakistani forces.  But this comment goes beyond what I advocate (although I didn’t make that clear).

The odds of General Allen launching a full-on sustained invasion of Pakistan on his own say-so, and being backed by his superiors, while the rest of the federal government stands by, are roughly equal to the probability that he’ll launch his own space program and start to terraform Venus, or send a MEF up the Potomac. I’ll put $100 down saying that no such thing happens, with a side bet of $200 saying that if it does, we’ll pull out in a week like in Lam Son.

Two quick observations on this.  First, I advocate that we conduct ourselves with the same respect for the Durand line that Pakistani forces show it, not that we launch a “full-on sustained invasion of Pakistan.”  I also advocate that we make larger use of or air assets in conjunction with land incursions.  If we find bases, use Arty or send the A-10s after them, no apologies, no regrets.  Kill them all, combatants and any other inhabitants.  Turn their terrain into a parking lot.

Second, the commenter is right anyway.  We wouldn’t even do this without White House approval.  That’s not a knock on the generals.  That’s reality.  And how many readers think that this White House would give approval for this approach?

On October 16th, The New York Times reported an astonishing account of repeated shelling of U.S. and Afghan forces from across the Pakistani border that has been near-continuous since  May, 2011.

FORWARD OPERATING BASE SHARANA, Afghanistan — American and Afghan soldiers near the border with Pakistan have faced a sharply increased volume of rocket fire from Pakistani territory in the past six months, putting them at greater risk even as worries over the disintegrating relationship between the United States and Pakistan constrain how they can strike back.

Ground-to-ground rockets fired within Pakistan have landed on or near American military outposts in one Afghan border province at least 55 times since May, according to interviews with multiple American officers and data released in the past week. Last year, during the same period, there were two such attacks.

May is also when members of a Navy Seals team killed Osama bin Laden in the house where he lived near a Pakistani military academy, plunging American-Pakistani relations to a new low. Since then, the escalation in cross-border barrages has fueled frustration among officers and anger among soldiers at front-line positions who suspect, but cannot prove, a Pakistani government role.

The government’s relations with the United States frayed further after senior American officials publicly accused Pakistan of harboring and helping guerrillas and terrorists. Last month, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, called the insurgents who attacked the American Embassy in the Afghan capital “a veritable arm” of the ISI, Pakistan’s military intelligence service.

Pakistani officials have repeatedly denied aiding fighters for the Taliban and the Haqqani militant network, who operate on both sides of the border. They insist they try to prevent cross-border incursions or violence.

Funny coincidence.   U.S. bases get shelled from Pakistan beginning the same month that U.S. special forces entered Pakistan and killed Osama Bin Laden.   OK, well, I suppose that one could argue that this is a not-altogether-unexpected consequence of sticking a steel-toed boot right up the backside of Pakistan and laughing as we dump Bin Laden into the ocean for fish food.   (All properly according to Islamic hoyle, of course).  So we should not be surprised.

The truly troubling part about this is that there is no apparent Administration response or any, apparent guidance from the chain of command for these units who must sit there and take it.

When taking fire from Afghanistan, they said, they return fire with barrages of high-explosive and white phosphorus artillery rounds. (The burning effects of white phosphorus, they said, can detonate rockets waiting on launchers; for this reason, white phosphorus falls within rules guiding the soldiers’ use of force.)

When receiving fire from Pakistan, they said, they do not return fire with white phosphorus and fire far fewer high-explosive rounds. Attack helicopters and aircraft are also less likely to fire ordnance the closer the firing position is to the border, they said, even if it is on the Afghan side.

Several soldiers complained of what they called the “politics” limiting their choices. “We’re just sitting out here taking fire,” one soldier said. “If they want us to do our jobs, let us do our jobs.”

Senior officers described a tactical and strategic puzzle.

On one hand, soldiers said a principle of any modern military defense is that they patrol to and beyond the range of weapons systems that can menace them, and, in this case, at least to the border of the nation that the United States, in essence, has underwritten. On the other, heavy return fire against the firing positions inside Afghanistan has not prevented the attacks from continuing, so it is not clear that more fire into Pakistan would stop the cross-border firing, either.

And Colonel Bohnemann noted a complicated history. Afghan units have patrolled to the border, he said, and then been fired on by Pakistani military units who claimed they mistook the Afghans for insurgents. That fighting included Pakistani artillery fire.

The risk of having an American patrol face similar fire has been reasonable grounds for caution when planning sweeps near the border, and when returning fire over it, he said.

“Am I frustrated?” he asked. “Yes. Would I like to fire more? Yes. But do I want to be sure not to escalate out of frustration? Absolutely.”

(Emphasis added)

This is simply indefensible.  As I have said on many occasions, our Afghan strategy is really no strategy at all but a charade for political purposes:  the appearance of force and toughness but lacking in the kind of metrics necessary for victory (higher force levels, robust rules of engagement, proper focus on appropriate lines of effort, etc…).   This Administration has played politics with Afghanistan since Day One and one of the obvious results is that we have Americans sitting on the Pak border forced to absorb indirect fire from Pakistan without any, meaningful way of defending themselves.

Disgraceful.