Archive for the 'Counterinsurgency' Category

In Are the Taliban Really on the Brink of Defeat? the contradictory claims of progress and resurgent violence in Afghanistan were examined within the context of the NATO organizational structure.  On the other hand, no coverage of the Marine operations in the Helmand Province has been as extensive as at The Captain’s Journal with our category Marines in Helmand.  The Marines are having great success, of course.  But we weighed in on the first subject by stating that the British had exaggerated the imminent defeat of the Taliban.  Counterinsurgency takes force projection, and that, for a protracted period.

But are these two claims contradictory?  Since Glenn Reynolds linked the first post at Instapundit there was some interest in the subject.  Roger Fraley linked this post and caught on to the potential contradiction, and Noah Shachtman with Danger Room published his similarly themed article Who’s Up in Afghanistan? (several hours after The Captain’s Journal, by the way).  Noah points out:

Of course, this doesn’t have to be a binary choice. The Taliban could be causing more mischief, and the Marines may be kicking their asses.

Well yes, but more to the point, we should be seeing this as the difference between the micro- and macro-counterinsurgency level.  The Marines are not, after all, deployed all over Afghanistan.  They are in a troublesome province, to be sure, but they are only in Helmand, and then only in and around Garmser.  There is an MEU of around 3200 (the 24th MEU), not all of which is deployed in Garmser (some are engaged in training the Afghan forces and other things).

If we want to consider things on a macro-counterinsurgency level, the McClatchy bloggers link a source called Nightwatch, and opine on Afghanistan as follows:

But now listen to John McCreary, a former senior intelligence analyst for the Joint Chiefs of Staff who compiles NightWatch, an insightful analysis by a veteran professional of daily international developments drawn from open, unclassified sources. His take today on Afghanistan paints a far different – and gloomier – picture.

According to McCreary, May saw more violence than any other month since the 2001 U.S. intervention that toppled the Taliban and forced Osama bin Laden and his followers to flee into Pakistan. He says there were 214 violent incidents in more than 100 of the country’s 398 districts last month. That was up from April’s count of 199 violent incidents in 86 districts.

Writes McCreary: “Despite official efforts to spotlight improvement, the spring offensive this year is far worse than last year’s spring offensive. The security situation has deteriorated again. At no prior time has the Taliban managed to stage attacks in over 100 of the 398 districts.”

“If Taliban fighters are heading to Pakistan, they are going back to base to rest and to get more ammunition and supplies,” he concludes.

In other words, even though there are now more U.S. and ISAF troops than ever before – about 50,000, including 33,000 Americans – Afghanistan may be on track to seeing its bloodiest year yet since the U.S. intervention.

Now, McClatchy is horrible, horrible, horrible, and always biased and colored in the way they see and present the so-called news they publish.  The picture they present is worse than the conditions on the ground, because the Marines really are having outstanding success in Helmand.  After all, they are Marines.

There are two things that we just hate here at The Captain’s Journal.  First, we hate presentations of the situation that are rosier than the conditions on the ground, made that way for the purpose of justifying the campaign.  In our opinion, the campaigns (in Iraq and Afghanistan) need no justification, and we don’t waste time by debating six year old decisions.  Next, we hate presentations of the situation that are more bleak than the situation on the ground is, made that way for the purpose of undermining the very campaign we should be attempting to win.

The Captain’s Journal loves the truth, and presents critical analysis for the purpose of examination of strategy, tactics and logistics.  We do not engage in political ‘hackery’, and we don’t shill for politicians or political parties.  The campaign in Afghanistan is suffering from lack of force projection.  The campaign in Afghanistan must be won.  The Marines are showing us how to win it.  These are not contradictory points, and our articles on this have made perfect sense.

An Afghan boy collects resin from poppies in an opium poppy field in Arghandab district of Kandahar province, south of Kabul, Afghanistan on May 23, 2008. Afghanistan will ask international donors next month for over US$4 billion to revive its farming sector as it struggles with wheat shortages and skyrocketing food prices.  (AP Photo)

Seven months ago and before the Marines deployed to Afghanistan, The Captain’s Journal laid waste to the argument that the Marines should be in the business of destroying poppy crops.  Dumb idea, said we, and it runs counter to one of the main ideas behind counterinsurgency.

The Marines have flatly stated that they aren’t after poppy.  They’re after Taliban.  Rock on.  Whether the Marines are just smart or they listened to The Captain’s Journal – which is smart – doesn’t matter.  They have performed well in Helmand without destroying the living of the farmers.  The war on terror has no business being confused with the war on drugs.

But General McNeill sees things differently and has some of his troops engaged in doing exactly that.

NATO troops in Afghanistan have made significant progress eradicating the country’s poppy fields, an officer for the military alliance said Monday.

Speaking from his headquarters in Kabul, U.S. Army Gen. Dan K. McNeill said opium poppy cultivation remains a major threat to Afghanistan, the U.S. Defense Department said in a news release.

“In some portions of the country right now, mostly in the south, the cultivation of poppy is a far greater threat to the Afghan government — to the security and stability here — than the insurgency,” McNeill said.

The Afghan government must head up the elimination of opium poppy cultivation as the country’s economic base, McNeill said, estimating that the Taliban and al-Qaida receive between 20 percent and 40 percent of their money from the drug trade.

The United Nations estimates the terrorist groups receive closer to 60 percent from drugs.

“We are in there fighting insurgents who are as much narco-dealers as they are insurgents,” McNeill said. “In some cases, we are fired upon by people doing narco-business.”

So what?  The Captain’s Journal doesn’t get the connection.  What if the farmers were growing gizmos that sold for good money down the road in Iran or Turkey or wherever.  Suppose that the Taliban forcibly took a cut of the profits.  What’s the difference between doing it with gizmos and doing it with poppy?  General McNeill could very well have been in the position of saying “We are in there fighting insurgents who are as much gizmo profiteers as they are insurgents.”  So?  The problem is still with the insurgents, not the gizmos … or the poppy.

We still believe that the best solution to all of this is to capture or kill the insurgents and then let market forces deal with poppy.  What’s that we hear?  It’s already happening?

In one of the most important developments since the war in Afghanistan began in late 2001, opium production has declined in the country. Over 20 of the country’s 34 provinces will be opium-free this year according to a report by the United Nations that has now been corroborated by Afghanistan’s counter-narcotics minister, General Khodaidad.

Among the provinces with remaining opium cultivation, the Taliban-dominated Helmand province ranks high, but even here it is being seen that the humble wheat crop has replaced poppy. Some newspapers that sent reporters to Helmand province, over the course of April and May this year, have independently verified this assertion. A European television program on the subject was among the most-forwarded news items on the Internet last week.

Interestingly, it is not the efforts of the Afghan government alone that have caused the reduction in opium production but something much more mundane, namely the increased price of wheat, that has pushed up production of the grain in many parts of the country. Therein lies a tale of so-called market manipulation that actually goes back to one of the central points about rural poverty alleviation in the region, namely the strength of economics.

The Captain’s Journal is out front again, and we don’t even charge the Department of Defense for this analysis.  But our Marine boys will probably keep listening to us.

The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit patrolled the southern Afghanistan village of Hazarjoft on May 21. The unit is planning to move on in the next few weeks. (Tyler Hicks/The New York Times)

Report

For two years British troops staked out a presence in this small district center in southern Afghanistan and fended off attacks from the Taliban. The constant firefights left it a ghost town, its bazaar broken and empty but for one baker, its houses and orchards reduced to rubble and weeds.

But it took the U.S. Marines, specifically the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, about 96 hours to clear out the Taliban in a fierce battle in the past month and push them back 10 kilometers, or six miles …

The marines’ drive against the Taliban in this large farming region is certainly not finished, and the Taliban have often been pushed out of areas in Afghanistan only to return in force. But for the British forces and for Afghan residents, the result of the recent operation has been palpable …

Major Neil Den-McKay, the officer commanding a company of the Royal Regiment of Scotland based here, said of the U.S. Marine’s assault: “They have disrupted the Taliban’s freedom of movement and pushed them south, and that has created the grounds for us to develop the hospital and set the conditions for the government to come back.” People have started coming back to villages north of the town, he added, saying, “There has been huge optimism from the people.”

For the marines, it was a chance to hit the enemy with the full panoply of their firepower in places where they were confident there were few civilians. The Taliban put up a tenacious fight, rushing in reinforcements in cars and vans from the south and returning again and again to the attack. But they were beaten back in four days by three companies of marines, two of which were dropped in by helicopter to the south east …

Marines from Charlie Company said the reaction from the returning population, mostly farmers, has been favorable. “Everyone says they don’t like the Taliban,” said Captain John Moder, 34, commander of Charlie Company. People had complained that the Taliban stole food, clothes and vehicles from them, he said …

The U.S. commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Dan McNeill, had a checklist of tasks around the country for the 3,200 marines when they arrived in March. But the majority of them have spent a month in Garmser after changing their original plan to secure a single road here, when they realized how important the area was to the Taliban as an infiltration and supply route to fighters in northern Helmand Province.

“This is an artery and we did not realize that when we squeezed that artery, it would have such an effect,” said First Lieutenant Mark Matzke, the executive officer of Charlie Company.

The whole area was unexpectedly welcoming to the U.S. forces, and eager for security and development, Moder of Charlie Company said.

“Us pushing the Taliban out allows the Afghan National Army to come in,” he said. “This is a real bread basket here. There’s a lot of potential here.”

This southern part of Helmand Province, along the Helmand River valley, is prime agricultural land and still benefits from the grand irrigation plan started by U.S. government assistance in the 1950s and 1960s. It has traditionally been the main producer of wheat and other crops for the country, but in 30 years of war has given way to poppies, providing a large percentage of the crop that has made Afghanistan the producer of 98 percent of the world’s opium.

The region has long been an infiltration route for insurgents coming across the southern border with Pakistan, crossing the border from Baluchistan via an Afghan refugee camp, known as Girdi Jungle, notorious for its drug smuggling and gun running.

The Taliban, and the drug runners, then race across a region known ominously as the desert of death until they reach the river valley, which provides ideal cover of villages and greenery.

With such a large area under their control, they were able to gather in numbers, stockpile weapons and provide a logistics route to send fighters and weapons into northern Helmand and the provinces of Kandahar and Uruzgan beyond.

The Taliban, who kicked out villagers and took over their farmhouses, sometimes even bringing their families from Pakistan to join them, were joined by Arabs and Pakistanis, Den-McKay said.

“The majority of elements in this area are Arab and Pakistani, and the locals detest them,” he said. Some of the Arabs were specialist trainers and some young jihadists from different countries. The commanders were Iranians, which shares a border with Afghanistan to the southwest, as well as Saudis and Pakistanis, he asserted …

The local people complained that the Taliban taxed them heavily on the opium harvest. They demanded up to 13 kilos of opium from every farmer, which was more than the entire harvest of some, so they were forced to go and buy opium to meet the demand, said one farmer Abdul Taher, 45.

“We had a lot of trouble these last two years,” said Sher Ahmad, 32.

His father, Abdul Nabi, the elder of a small hamlet in the village of Hazarjoft, a few miles south of Garmser, said: “We are very grateful for the security. We don’t need your help, just security.”

Villagers were refusing foreign aid because the Taliban were already infiltrating back and threatening anyone who took it, said Matzke, the first lieutenant of Charlie Company …

But the bigger test will come in the next few weeks as the marines move on, the Afghans take over, supported by the British, and the Taliban try to blend in with the returning population and orchestrate attacks, as everyone here expects them to do.

Analysis & Commentary

Take particular note of the words of town elder Abdul Nabi: “We are grateful for the security.  We don’t need your help, just security.”  Similar words were spoken at a meeting in Ghazni with the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan: ““We don’t want food, we don’t want schools, we want security!” said one woman council member.”

Again, similar words were spoken upon the initial liberation of Garmser by the U.S. Marines: “The next day, at a meeting of Marines and Afghan elders, the bearded, turban-wearing men told Marine Capt. Charles O’Neill that the two sides could “join together” to fight the Taliban. “When you protect us, we will be able to protect you,” the leader of the elders said.”

The narrative emerging is not one of largesse, roads, education, crop rotation, irrigation and all of the other elements of the soft side of counterinsurgency.  To be sure, these elements are necessary and good, but sequentially they come after security.

But the Marines are leaving to pursue the wish list of accomplishments while in Afghanistan.  Garmser, it is already known, will see the Taliban again.  Why the British believe that without the Marines they can hold the terrain is not clear.  Without the continuation of force projection there is no difference between the campaign now and two months ago.  Effecting the conditions for security doesn’t happen instantaneously.

Whack-a-mole counterinsurgency was fought in Iraq prior to the surge, and much of it unsucessfully.  Will the same mistake be repeated in Afghanistan?

The Guardian recently carried an important story of a tribal meeting in Afghanistan, and while the tribal elders were not in communication with Fort Leavenworth, it was nonetheless a laboratory for counterinsurgency.

Shura is the Pashto word for a meeting. Every week the local elders gather at the Bermel district centre for a shura, where they discuss their problems, grievances and anything else that comes up. I was at one last November, on Thanksgiving, and I wanted to go along and see what progress had been made.

At the outset the leader of the Bermel Shura thanked the Americans for their help with development in the area. “Security is improving,” he told the room, full to capacity, and “the Taliban do not like what you are doing”.

Regardless of his opening statement about security, he highlighted the ever-present fear of the Taliban, and of reprisals.

“Maybe what I say will be reported to the Taliban after two hours. There are a lot of Taliban in the mountains,” he said.

“It is my request that the coalition forces put pressure on the Pakistan government, because without the support of the Pakistan government, the Taliban cannot cross the border.”

I felt like I was listening to a broken record. Here, again, Pakistan was being blamed for the troubles of Afghanistan. He went on to say that he felt the Taliban were weak, too weak to attack properly this year, but they “have power to shoot rockets at us, to replace the IEDs.”

 An Afghan National Army commander addresses the elders of Bermel district, Paktika province at their weekly Shura. Photograph: John D McHugh Then an Afghan National Army commander stood up to speak. He told his countrymen that his goal was for security and peace.

“When somebody is doing bad things in your village, you should correct him,” he told the men, and “if that is no good, you must report him to coalition forces.”

He spoke at length, as seems to be required at a shura. He reminded the villagers that they must be active in the fight against insurgents.

“We have suffered for 30 years. When some foreigners come, you should stop them. If I go to your village, all the people will know I am not from your tribe. When I am talking to you guys you will recognise immediately that I am not from the Waziri tribe. Why don’t you follow the Taliban day and night?”

He insisted that the people must support the Afghan army in their battle against the Taliban.

Next it was the turn of Captain Rivaux of the civil affairs team. He started by expressing his disappointment with the week. He spoke of problems with contracts, elders encouraging their villagers to disrupt work on roads and flood protection. “I hear a lot that the security is improving, but it’s really not,” he said.

Captain Rivaux should be congratulated and advised to continue his good work.  To use an expression by Michael Yon, The Captain’s Journal has been on PAO “happy tours,” and we don’t like happy tours.  He isn’t a PAO, yet he is in contact with someone other than his military counterparts (as a civil affairs officer).  He is willing to engage in truth-telling, and then to point to disappointing behavior.  The Captain’s Journal likes field grade officers who tell the truth.  Continuing:

“You are all part of the plan for security,” he pointed out. “When you let the enemy move through your village, you might as well pick up a gun and go with him, because you are helping them.”

Then he went on to tell them a story. “The people in Bandar, the Taliban came to their village, and they picked up rocks, and they said, you have your guns, but we will protect our country with stones. And the Taliban were outnumbered by the people with rocks. And they left. No one was injured.”

Just as the last time I was here, the Afghans did not look impressed. They listened, but there didn’t seem to be much enthusiasm for attacking the Taliban with rocks.

After the meeting, I stayed behind to talk with some of the elders. They spoke freely to me, but still the Taliban fear was present. One of them asked me not to show his face in my photographs, or use his name. They told me of their hopes for Afghanistan. They are tired of fighting they said.

I asked about their feeling towards the American troops, whether they really thought that they were helping, or if they were contributing to the problems. They told me that they were “very, very thankful” for the support of the US troops. One of them said: “If the Americans leave Afghanistan, we will be left with a lot of suffering.”

It seems to me that there is plenty of suffering in Afghanistan already, so I hate to imagine what he thinks would happen to make things worse.

But if Captain Rivaux is disappointed, the problems in Afghanistan are in a way the same as they were in the Anbar Province, and in a very important way different.  The Sunni tribes in Anbar were heavily armed and very stubborn.  The U.S. Marines had their hands full for many months, and al Qaeda never had a chance when they embarked upon their campaign of brutality.  But when Shiekh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha finally began his fight with al Qaeda he had the protection of U.S. forces day and night (such as an M1A1 tank parked in his front yard).  Force projection (and population protection) was and still is a precondition for the population standing on their own.  Captain Rivaux’s disappointment is real and energetic, but misplaced.  Afghanistan needs U.S. troops.

Another related report comes to us from Reuters.

The Taliban in Afghanistan are getting weaker, the U.S. ambassador tells local councillors in the eastern city of Ghazni, but he is met by a wall of shaking heads and tutting noises; ‘no, no’, some reply.

While Afghan government and international forces point to some success in restricting Taliban guerrilla attacks across the south and east, suicide bombs — 140 last year — roadside bombs, kidnappings and threats have created an atmosphere of fear.

“We don’t want food, we don’t want schools, we want security!” said one woman council member.

“Ok, let me ask you,” replied U.S. ambassador William Wood. “Are the Taliban weaker now?”

“No,” the councillors said, shaking their heads.

“But are these Taliban or criminals?” Wood asked.

“Taliban,” they replied.

This is a stupid conversation.  Just stupid.  We should be asking the population whether security is better rather than telling them it is so.  The conversation heads even further down hill when the word ‘but’ is used, and frankly, it makes no difference to the people whether the troublemakers are criminals or Taliban (or both), because winning hearts and minds doesn’t apply to the troublemakers whether their motivation is religion or wealth.  They’re either jihadists or members of organized crime.  They must be killed.

Force projection is the precondition for the population being able to stand on their own.  They cannot fight the Taliban right now.  They must see safety come to their towns and villages, and they must be armed, trained, and convinced that the U.S. won’t desert them.  Oh, and by the way, did you take note of what they say that they need?  Food?  Schools?  No.  Security.  We have a long way to go.

Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan is at a state of development where the construction of roads is a significant player in counterinsurgency due to the creation of avenues of movement, interdiction and access to the population.  David Kilcullen recently wrote about this at the Small Wars Journal Blog.  It is a detailed look into this aspect of counterinsurgency and well worth the time to study it, but only a small portion is reproduced below.

On the face of it, road-building appears to be a generally-recognized form of force projection and governance extension, hence the extreme frequency of its historical use by governments, colonial administrations, occupying powers, and counterinsurgency forces through history. It is also worth recognizing that there is little that is specifically American (or Afghan) about the engineering aspects of the approach described above.

But the effects accrue not just from the road itself, but rather from a conscious and well-developed strategy that uses the road as a tool, and seizes the opportunity created by its construction to generate security, economic, governance and political benefits. This is exactly what is happening in Kunar: the road is one component, albeit a key one, in a broader strategy that uses the road as an organizing framework around which to synchronize and coordinate a series of political-military effects. This is a conscious, developed strategy that was first put in place in 2005-6 and has been consistently executed since. Thus, the mere building of a road is not enough: it generates some, but not all of these effects, and may even be used to oppress or harm the population rather than benefit it. Road construction in many parts of the world has had negative security and political effects, especially when executed unthinkingly or in an un-coordinated fashion. What we are seeing here, in contrast, is a coordinated civil-military activity based on a political strategy of separating the insurgent from the people and connecting the people to the government. In short, this is a political maneuver with the road as a means to a political end.

The Captain’s Journal left the following short comment to this article.

Very interesting, and thanks for your thoughts. I especially like the idea of using roads for force projection (easier and quicker transit for forces, easier presence with the population, visibility, etc.), and in this way, roads seem to have become a force multiplier.

Of course, VBIEDs are an issue involved with roads that would not otherwise be if the roads weren’t there (which is certainly not an argument for not having the roads). I would like to know your thoughts on dealing with the problems such as VBIEDs that are unique only to roads. Also, in spite of the difficulty of emplacing roadside IEDs, they still do as reports indicate.

Following up on this concern, from a Reuters report, it makes a difference how the road is constructed.

Spend 30 minutes talking to a U.S. military officer in Afghanistan and chances are he or she will mention one factor as crucial to the stability of the country: roads.

Geographically challenging, with vast desert plains to the south and soaring mountains in the Hindu Kush to the north and east, Afghanistan is remarkably devoid of proper roads given its size and a population approaching 30 million.

There are just 34,000 km (21,000 miles) of useable roadway in the country, of which less than a quarter is paved, according to the CIA World Factbook. By comparison, there are about 10 million km of paved roads in the United States.

Better roads are essential not only for the economy — so that farmers and merchants can get produce to markets more easily and importers can bring vital foodstuffs into the landlocked country — but also for security, since police and the army can get more quickly to remote, unstable areas.

Paved roads also make it much harder for the Taliban to plant improvised explosive devices (IEDs) — nearly 750 of which detonated across Afghanistan last year, causing hundreds of deaths. Planting them on pot-holed, dirt tracks is easy.

“I can’t tell you how important roads are,” said Colonel Pete Johnson, the commander of U.S. forces in southeast Afghanistan, where development lags central and northern areas and paved roads are minimal.

“If we pave roads, there’s almost an automatic shift of IEDs to other areas because it makes it so much more difficult for the enemy to emplace them … Roads here mean security,” he told Reuters in an interview last week.

The Reuters report concludes with an assessment of the inefficiency of the process used to contract and build the roads, as well as lack of international funding.  But the report on roads by Col. Johnson tells us that for the time being, dirt roads mean IEDs while paved roads mean a shift of tactics or forces elsewhere due to the difficulty of emplacing IEDs into pavement.

In the future we might expect the insurgents in Afghanistan to become more efficient at roadsidebombs like their counterparts in Iraq, but for now, UAVs, patrols, and other tactics will be used to find those who emplace the IEDs, which after all, is the root of the problem.  The chase must continue.

The Daily Sentinel in Iowa has an outstanding article on the U.S. Department of Agriculture conducting counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.

Kingsley native Jeff Knowles looked down at the protective flak jacket, then turned to the soldier next to him.

“Am I supposed to put this on now?”

The soldier grinned, “If you don’t I will.”

Body armor is not in Knowles’ typical wardrobe as an employee of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

But then again, working with farmers in Afghanistan to help rebuild their agricultural system isn’t his typical work either.

Knowles, who now lives in Hawaii, spent six months in the war-scarred nation talking with farmers about what they grow and what their needs are.

He was honored last week by USDA secretary Ed Schafer for his service in Afghanistan in 2005-06.

Hearts, minds and apricots

Knowles’ travels were part of a partnership between the USDA and the U.S. Department of Defense in their campaign to “win hearts and minds” of the Afghan people.

“I think it’s one of the best things we’re doing in the country,” Knowles said via a phone interview from his USDA office in Hawaii. “If we can help improve quality of life for farmers — and 95 percent of the Afghan people are farmers — we’re doing something real.”

Living conditions are rough. And most farmers are subsistence farmers, growing crops like wheat, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, apricots, apples and almonds.

But getting enough water for crops is a major issue …

It was in Hawaii that Knowles decided to volunteer for a six-month stint in Afghanistan.

“It was really intriguing to me — they were facing problems with erosion, heavy and widespread, and a lot of their irrigation system was destroyed,” he said. “It seemed that my entire career was pointing to this. The things I’d been working with for close to 30 years were the things they needed in Afghanistan.”

The USDA is still sending people to Afghanistan as well as Iraq to help people stabilize their farming economies.

“I’d still like to go back, maybe to an area where we haven’t been yet — like the unstable part along the Pakistan border,” Knowles said. “I feel like I have unfinished business.”

The entire article is worth the read.  The DoD and USDA are to be commended for this innovative use of soft power to win hearts and minds.  If kinetic operations have been languishing (and are helped by the presence of the Marines in Helmand), at least one element of soft power has been implemented.  The State Department should watch and learn, and then follow the lead of the USDA.  This has given us a good example of what soft power can accomplish in counterinsurgency.

Jeff Knowles, far right, a native of Kingsley, interviews a farmer in southern Ghazni province of Afghanistan. Knowles, an employee of the USDA, spent six months in Afghanistan working to help stabilize the farming economy. This month, the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture honored Knowles for his service there.

Fred Kaplan at Slate, whom we always enjoy reading even when we disagree, has an interesting article about Paul Yingling who took on higher command and their handling of the campaign in Iraq (in the broader context of leadership and the associated responsibilities).  As it turns out, Yingling has an interesting new duty – that of applying counterinsurgency inside of the prisons of Iraq.  More specifically, these prisons are where those who have been arrested during U.S. kinetic operations are being held, somewhat outside of the Iraqi judicial system.

These prisons are becoming breeding grounds for jihadists, and COIN techniques are seen as being very important in dealing with the prison problem, lest we eject 20,000 jihadists back into Iraqi culture.  Note, however, that we had noted the prison issue in The Nexus of Religion and Prisons in Counterinsurgency, five months ago.  The Captain’s Journal saw the importance of this.

Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, commanding general of detainee operations in Iraq, is fighting what he has called “the battlefield of the mind.” He has instituted extensive screening of incoming prisoners and has made available about 30 training and education courses, including religion and civics, to the 25,188 prisoners under his control …

One result already seen, he said, is that moderates in the prisons are identifying extremists, thus facilitating their segregation from the rest of the population. At Camp Bucca, about 1,000 extremists were identified and pulled from among the 21,000 prisoners, and “that made a big difference,” he said.

It looks like Major General Stone who implemented this program, has a good commander in his corner.  We wish them success in this endeavor and expect good things.

More: Small Wars Journal Blog

Enemy activity appears to be increasing in Afghanistan according to ISAF medical personnel.

U.S. commanders have been braced for a “spring offensive”, a pick-up in violence tied to the season, when warmer weather allows the Taliban to work their way over the mountains from hideouts in north-western Pakistan and into Afghanistan.

In the first few weeks of this spring, there was little change in the level of violence compared with last year, officers say. But in recent days, at least in one key region along the border, that picture has shifted, even if it may be still too early to say that a renewed Taliban offensive has started.

“A lot of things are starting to happen in the area,” Lieutenant-Colonel Kathy Ponder, the chief nurse at the combat support hospital, which put out the call for more blood to treat the wounded from a roadside bomb, told Reuters on Thursday.

“The Taliban seem to be picking up on the IED (improvised explosive device) blasts and we’re getting a lot of gunshot wounds. The intel we’re getting is that they are targeting our area, so we’re ready. We’re making sure we’re overstocked on what we need.”

Wednesday afternoon’s attack, just north of the city of Khost, near the Pakistan border, targeted a U.S. military patrol. Two U.S. soldiers and one U.S. civilian were killed, and two U.S. soldiers were wounded. The wounded pair lost both of their legs, hence the call for large amounts of blood.

But according to U.S. personnel, its all just a myth.

“There is no such thing as a spring offensive,” Colonel Pete Johnson, the commander of a taskforce from the 101st Airborne Division that is responsible for security in six Afghan provinces along the border with Pakistan, told Reuters.

“I think this year this myth is finally going to be debunked. Last year was the same thing — it never materialised. This year it has not materialised and it won’t materialise.”

“Will there be increases in fighting and insurgent activity. Absolutely. But it’s a weather-based construct, a seasonal construct, not a deliberate execution of an offensive. Increased activity is not a coordinated offensive.”

But what difference does this make?  This argument has become rather passé.  The Taliban know that any “fire and maneuver” engagement of U.S. forces brings a disadvantageous kill ratio.  They tried it again in Garmser with the Marines, and lost.  This is why The Captain’s Journal had previously clarified the issue of a “spring offensive” in the context of distributed operations and what it does or doesn’t mean.  “When NATO speaks of a spring offensive, they are talking tactical maneuvers and larger scale kinetic fights.  When we speak of a spring offensive, we are talking about guerrilla tactics – small teams, fire and melt away, etc.”

There has been a disaggreagation of the Taliban into smaller groups of tribal and commander affiliation, fighting for different causes (with the only common goal being the overthrow of the Karzai government), sometimes competing with each other.  This makes the notion of a Taliban command and control quaint, but fairly useless (During questioning of the Presidential candidates Bill O’Reilly flatly stated that Taliban command and control was Quetta, and while this might have been true a year ago, it is doubtful that a literal command and control exists for Taliban).

So the supposed spring offensive to which U.S. commanders have so sardonically referred is not applicable to the current scene.  We have suggested that the tactics will rely on fire and melt away rather than fire and maneuver, IEDs, suicide tactics, guerrilla tactics and intimidation of the population.  In this way, the disaggregation of the enemy along with his focus on terror tactics make Afghanistan look somewhat more like the Anbar Province than it did a year ago.

In Pakistan, Baitullah Mehsud is playing the Pakistani officials for fools as he repeatedly enjoins negotiations, then withdraws from the same, and then hints at them again.  Mehsud’s forces, rather than fight the Pakistan Army in fire and maneuver, simply set up a series of checkpoints and road blocks in South Waziristan.  The Pakistani Army responded with one of their own.  The population tires of this, the Pakistani Army tires of this and agrees to withdraw troops from South Waziristan, and Tehrik-e-Taliban gains their objective.

While Quetta cannot be said to be a literal command and control, as we observed earlier, there are dual Taliban campaigns, one in Pakistan (focused in Waziristan against the Pakistani government, led by Baitullah Mehsud) and the other focused on Afghanistan (focused on Southern Afghanistan where Quetta serves as a rallying point for fighters crossing the border).

Mapping the route the cross-border militants take, Mr Walsh said the insurgents crossed from Balochistan, whose capital Quetta was considered to be the Taliban headquarters by Nato commanders.

“They muster in remote refugee camps west of Quetta — Girdi Jungle is most frequently mentioned — before slipping across the border in four-wheel drive convoys that split up to avoid detection. Sometimes sympathetic border guards help them on their way.

“Inside Afghanistan the fighters thunder across the Dasht-i-Margo — a harsh expanse of ancient smuggling trails which means “desert of death” — before reaching the River Helmand. Here, the sand turns to lush fields of poppy and wheat, and they reach Garmser, home to the most southerly British base in Helmand.”

British officers told Mr Walsh that they had ample evidence that many of the enemy were Pakistani. While remaining coy about their sources of intelligence, they spoke of hearing Punjabi accents and of finding Pakistani papers and telephone contacts on dead fighters.

Four months ago, Den-McKay said, British Gurkhas shot dead a Taliban militant near a small outpost known as Hamburger Hill. Searching the fighter’s body, they discovered a Pakistani identity card and handwritten notes in Punjabi.

There are dual fronts in the campaign, one in Afghanistan and the other in Pakistan.  These two fronts are part of the same insurgency / counterinsurgency campaign.  The expensive UAVs that fly overhead are merely further testimony to the necessity for force projection on the gound when reports arrive of more young sons of America who have had their legs blown off from IEDs.

Since Afghanistan may more closely resemble Anbar in terms of its reliance on terror tactics, the pretext for success in Anbar becomes all the more important.  Al Qaeda terror would have won the day without extreme force projection by the U.S.  The Taliban will not engage in fire and maneuver, and arguments about whether a “spring offensive” will materialize are childish, wasteful and irrelevant.  The Taliban will engage in fire and melt away, and the chase must ensue to hunt them down and kill them with the utmost violence.

Context

A New York Times article published recently upon the occasion of Hamid Karzai’s visit to the U.S. went largely unnoticed, but the importance of this article can hardly be overestimated.

President Hamid Karzai strongly criticized the British and American conduct of the war here on Friday, insisting in an interview that his government be given the lead in policy decisions.

Mr. Karzai said that he wanted American forces to stop arresting suspected Taliban and their sympathizers, and that the continued threat of arrest and past mistreatment were discouraging Taliban from coming forward to lay down their arms.

He criticized the American-led coalition as prosecuting the war on terrorism in Afghan villages, saying the real terrorist threat lay in sanctuaries of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

The president said that civilian casualties, which have dropped substantially since last year, needed to cease completely. For nearly two years the American-led coalition has refused to recognize the need to create a trained police force, he said, leading to a critical lack of law and order.

The comments came as Mr. Karzai is starting to point toward re-election next year, after six years in office, and may be part of a political calculus to appear more assertive in his dealings with foreign powers as opponents line up to challenge him.

But they also follow a serious dip in his relations with some of the countries contributing to the NATO-led security force and the reconstruction of Afghanistan, and indicate that as the insurgency has escalated, so, too, has the chafing among allies.

Complaints have been rising for months among diplomats and visiting foreign officials about what is seen as Mr. Karzai’s weak leadership, in particular his inability to curb narcotics trafficking and to remove ineffective or corrupt officials. Some diplomats have even expressed dismay that, for lack of an alternative, the country and its donors may face another five years of poor management by Mr. Karzai.

Analysis and Commentary

The tendency for Afghanistan to blame Pakistan and Pakistan to blame Afghanistan is becoming so commonplace that it appears reflexive.  There is enough blame to go around, but Karzai’s recent rebuke of the U.S. carries the import of panic.  This is a critical development in the state of the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan.  Just when the recently deployed U.S. Marines are showing signs of rapid success in their area of operation, along with which General Dan McNeill has said that this infusion of Marines signifies a step change in the nature and pace of operations, the President of Afghanistan has signified his reluctance to continue cooperation in kinetic operations against the Taliban.

This is a revelation of gargantuan proportions.  It must be remembered that the Taliban are in many ways the ideological precursors of al Qaeda.  For Hamid Karzai to inform the U.S. that he no longer supports the arresting of Taliban would be analogous to Prime Minister Maliki telling the Multinational Force that we must win the hearts and minds of al Qaeda, and thus, arrests of their members in Iraq will no longer be tolerated because it might dissuade them from coming forward to surrender.

It ignores a fundamental point that is critical to the understanding of the campaigns in which we are now engaged.  Winning hearts and minds must occur from a position of strength rather that weakness, just as it did in the Anbar Province with the U.S. Marines.  Negotiating from a position of weakness means surrender, and the Taliban know that.  Although much of the population is amenable to nonkinetic operations to rebuild and reconstruct, there are certain elements whose hearts and minds will never be won, and unfortunately for those who see easy routes to victory, those elements must be killed.

Karzai is a weak leader, but given the situation, he can hardly be blamed for the vacillation.  Colonel Thomas F. Lynch gives us an important assessment of the situation that is stunning in its honesty and wonderful in its brevity.

… the U.S. “miscalculated” when it gave NATO control of the counter-insurgency mission in southern Afghanistan in 2006, thinking that peacekeeping and stability work would follow.

Instead, the Taliban insurgency flared up, forcing Canada and other NATO members into a combat role they were not expecting. That in turn, prompted the bickering over troop commitments that now plagues the alliance.

Lynch says NATO’s troop commitments are not what ails the mission.

“The mission in Afghanistan is not in jeopardy mainly because NATO members refuse to provide sufficient troops,” he says. “The real issue is the transitory and uncertain U.S. military posture in Afghanistan.”

Lynch says the key to success lies in the politics of Pakistan, which has long viewed Afghanistan as a source of strategic depth against India: fear of India in the east, and fear of losing control of Afghanistan on its western frontier, have been a driving force in Pakistan since independence. That is why Pakistan helped create the Taliban as a puppet government in Kabul – and why elements of the Pakistan government still support them.

Lynch says only by convincing Pakistan – and the majority of Afghans – of its will to guarantee the security and stability of Afghanistan for decades to come, can the U.S. and its allies put an end to Taliban support, both from inside Pakistan, and from ordinary Afghans.

Consider that the U.S. has abandoned each country to their fates once before, withdrawing from the region soon after the Soviets retreated from Afghanistan.

Today, “our uncertain commitment to Afghanistan has the effect of bolstering Taliban propaganda (while providing) incentives for Pakistan to hedge its bets.”

NATO can claim military supremacy over the Taliban, says Lynch, but so what?

“Our focus on tactical military facts obscures the Taliban’s overall political success. Sanctuary in Pakistan has enabled the Taliban to evade decisive military engagement in order to rearm, regroup and train to fight another day,” he says.

Meanwhile, the Taliban spreads the message: “‘America will leave Afghanistan prematurely, as it has abandoned Afghanistan in the past; and when America leaves, we Taliban shall return to power and kill all Afghans who have collaborated with unbelievers.’

The commitment to the campaign in Afghanistan must be long term by the U.S., and it must be seen that way, in order for there to be success.  Karzai is only a reflection of the fear that grips Afghanistan.  He is a mirror of their feelings rather than a source of inspiration to his people.  The national feeling is that negotiations with the Taliban must proceed in order to bring them into the fold, and that failure to do so will only be the cause of untold violence and brutality when the Americans leave, as they surely will.

The failure to show commitment and resolve in the Afghanistan campaign up until recently has, it has been surmised, only led to a resurgence of the Taliban and al Qaeda, along with the creation of safe have in the tribal areas of Pakistan.  In reality, the situation is far worse.  We have lost the heart of the senior-most leader of Afghanistan.  Quick and decisive action by both the State Department and the DoD must set the context for future operations in Afghanistan.  Commitment must be forthcoming in terms of troops levels and strategy, but it is also apparent that the State Department has failed us once again when Karzai has to inform America by telling the New York Times that he is not happy with the us.

In Command Structure Changes for Afghanistan, using a Voice of America report, we discussed the talks going on within the Pentagon and even openly by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates indicating that there may be command structure changes coming for Operation Enduring Freedom.  These hints come right after the announcement that General Petraeus will take over CENTCOM in the coming months, and the intention seems to be fairly clear that the U.S. wants a more independent role in the Afghanistan campaign.

Rumsfeld left us with [at least] three artifacts of his command over OEF.  First, a small footprint model for COIN.  Second, a rapid drawdown of forces, and third, turnover of the campaign to NATO.  All three decisions have proven to be wrong with consequences bordering on disastrous.  Gates is attempting to reverse the final remaining impediment to success of the effort in Afghanistan – NATO.

Another alternative is discussed by Kip at Abu Muqawama, NATO’s Counterinsurgency Doctrine could stand some overhaul.

Doctrine, as Colin Gray once wrote, is the skeleton upon which the sinew and flesh of armies are built. Perhaps then, with no NATO doctrine for the conduct of a war among the people, it should be no surprise that the NATO-led ISAF in Afghanistan has often appeared spineless.

NATO has recognized this problem and has commissioned the Dutch who have been operating in Uruzgan province alongside the Australians to write NATO’s counterinsurgency doctrine.

This past month, a smattering of counterinsurgency thinkers to include the Counterinsurgency Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth met with the doctrine’s lead writers to provide inputs. That said, the “A-team” for developing US counterinsurgency doctrine has not been called out to facilitate and assist. Kip hopes this is not indicative of the amount of emphasis that NATO is placing on the doctrine itself.

Kip goes on to describe several changes that need to occur to the COIN doctrine in OEF, all of which are good.  Kip is wasting time and brain power on a hopeless cause.  If the Dutch are in charge it doesn’t bode well since they have no counterinsurgency experience.  They also recently deployed troops to the campaign who were surprised that the Taliban were engaged in armed resistance to NATO forces.  The British want to pull back on the violence, reminiscent of their irrelevant recollections of Northern Ireland.

Quite simply, the U.S. doesn’t have the time to teach counterinsurgency to nations which have never engaged in such.  But the problem runs deeper than COIN.  The various international armies represented in Afghanistan have different perceptions at home along with varying levels of support for their engagement.  This fact causes the retreat to FOBs in spite of and regardless of COIN doctrine.  This, combined with troublesome and arrogant resistance among senior leadership in Afghanistan causes bureaucratic red tape to continue to undermine the efforts.

Gates knows that the promotion of Petraeus to command CENTCOM might be an irrelevant move unless U.S. forces are free to conduct counterinsurgency as they need to.  Further attempts to rehabilitate NATO will only waste more time – time that is not available in the campaign.  Rather than rehabilitate something that is incorrigible by nature, Gates is trying to recast the problem as counterinsurgency rather than NATO intransigence.