Archive for the 'Counterinsurgency' Category

Following closely on the heels of British negotiations with mid-level Taliban, the governorship of Musa Qala has been handed over to a Taliban commander.

A Taliban commander who defected hours before British and Afghan forces retook the Taliban stronghold of Musa Qala has been rewarded with the governorship of the town.

Mullah Abdul Salaam switched sides after months of delicate secret negotiations with the Afghan government, as part of a programme of reconciliation backed by British commanders in Helmand.

In a move clearly intended to send a message to other potential Taliban defectors, the Afghan government has announced that he had become the new district governor with the backing of local tribes.

An Afghan government spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, said that the move was consistent with the policy of President Hamid Karzai’s government.

“The president has said before that all those former Taliban who come and accept the constitution and who want to participate in the political process through non-violent means … they are welcome.”

He added that Mullah Salaam had provided crucial intelligence to the Afghan government.

Mullah Salaam is a leader of one of the three sub-tribes of the Alizai, the dominant tribal group in Musa Qala.

As The Daily Telegraph reported in November, Mullah Salaam opened channels of communication with the government after a violent rift emerged in the Taliban around Musa Qala, during which he survived an assassination attempt.

Mullah Salaam told The Daily Telegraph: “There are two groups of Taliban fighters in Musa Qala and I have the backing of the major one. The Taliban who are against peace and prosperity in Afghanistan – I will fight them.”

Local people confirmed that he enjoyed the backing of a large swathe of the inhabitants of the town.

The issue of Taliban defections remains a highly sensitive one, following the expulsion of a British and an Irish diplomat from Kabul last month on charges of having “inappropriate contacts” with militants.

Afghan government officials accused the two men of holding meetings with Taliban leaders in Helmand without authorisation.

The British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has ruled out direct talks with the Taliban leadership, but it is well known in Kabul that both the British and Afghan intelligence agencies are devoting considerable resources to trying to “turn” Taliban-aligned tribal leaders.

As we have discussed before, this is the British version of the Anbar awakening combined with payment for concerned citizens who protect the people and fight al Qaeda.  But the problem with this analogy is that it is no analogy at all.  It has nothing at all in common with a true awakening such as occurred in Anbar.  It is true that the last decade of rule by Saddam saw the birth of a small element of youth who were motivated by religious radicalism.

By the late 1980s it had become clear that secular pan-Arabism fused with socialist ideas was no longer a source of inspiration for some Ba’th Party activists. Many young Sunni Arabs adopted an alternative ideology, namely, fundamentalist Islam based essentially on the thought of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. A minority even moved toward the more extreme Salafi, and even Wahhabi, interpretation of Islam. The regime was reluctant to repress such trends violently, even when it came to Wahhabis, for the simple reason that these Iraqi Wahhabis were anti-Saudi: much like the ultraradical Islamist opposition in Saudi Arabia, they, too, saw the Saudi regime as deviating from its original Wahhabi convictions by succumbing to Western cultural influences and aligning itself with the Christian imperialist United States. This anti-Saudi trend served the Iraqi regime’s political purposes.

But this proves the bifurcation that was inherent in the Anbaris which led to the awakening.  These radical youth were an insignificant fraction of the population and were not ever fair game in the strategy to win hearts and minds.  They were the enemy, and there was never a time when they weren’t the enemy.  They quickly aligned with al Qaeda, and the less radical citizens were really the ones in play in the overall strategy.  Al Qaeda and those with whom they were aligned have been essentially defeated in Anbar and are losing in Diyala.  Peace was sought with those from the indigenous insurgency who saw themselves as something other than jihadis.  In Afghanistan, the Taliban are by very definition religiously defined.  Even the casual reader might consider Afghanistan seven years ago (Taliban in charge) and compare it to the Afghanistan of today (with the Taliban in charge if the British strategy plays out) and recall that the only real change is that Hamid Karzai is at the helm, a tenuous charge and precarious perch to be sure.

While the MI6 agents who were negotiating with the Taliban have been ejected from the country, the strategy of acquiescence to the Taliban continues to be implemented by British military command.  After their failed military campaign in and pullout from Basra, the British are actively negotiating the turnover of the Afghanistan government to the very enemy defeated upon the initial invasion of Afghanistan in order to end the campaign.  This strategy has at least the tacit approval of Hamid Karzai, as U.S. troop presence and strategy is not sufficient to allow him to object.  U.S. and NATO lack of force projection gives him no other choice.

Prior:

Musa Qala: The Argument for Force Projection

Clarifying Expectations in Afghanistan

Review and Analysis of Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Campaign

Gates Sets Pretext for Review of Afghanistan Campaign

British in Negotiations with Taliban

Fates of Afghanistan and Pakistan Inextricably Tied

The British-American War Continues: MI-6 Agents Expelled from Afghanistan

Commitment to Iraq and Recommitment to Afghanistan

I have previously discussed the intense disagreement between the British and the American defense departments over the strategy in Iraq and the British retreat from Basra, this disagreement spilling over to the campaign in Afghanistan.  The British desire to negotiate with mid-level Taliban officers to attempt to split the organization away from the most senior leaders, an effort aided by Hamid Karzai that has as its price a place in the new Afghan government for the Taliban.  But the U.S. is of course deeply opposed to this strategy, and this disagreement has reached an important milestone.

The Christian Science Monitor is reporting that two senior diplomats were expelled from Afghanistan and the U.N. wants them back in the country.  The Brits see this all as very disturbing and some in the British government praise the attempt to talk to the Taliban, but these two individuals were no diplomats.  They were MI6 agents whose job it was to negotiate with the Taliban.

The Australian is reporting on the agents and their discussions.

KABUL: A UN official and an EU diplomat ordered out of Afghanistan on allegations of posing a national security threat left the country yesterday.

It was the first time the Government of President Hamid Karzai had expelled senior Western officials and is a sign of growing frustrations at the lack of progress in the country.

The UN employee, British national Mervyn Patterson, left on a UN flight. The EU official was identified as Irish national Michael Semple, the organisation’s second most senior representative in Afghanistan.

The Afghan Government on Tuesday gave the men 48 hours to leave, saying they had posed a security threat.

Officials said on condition of anonymity that the men had been in contact with the Taliban.

The UN says the affair was a misunderstanding that arose after the diplomats visited the southern town of Musa Qala, which was in Taliban control for 10 months until a military operation about two weeks ago. They had visited in co-ordination with the Afghan Government to assess “stabilisation” efforts after the military offensive.

The men left the country as reports claimed the British secret service had engaged in peace talks with senior Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, despite Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s pledge that Britain would not negotiate with terrorists.

Reports claimed MI6 agents held a number of discussions, known as jirgas, with members of the hardline Islamist group over the northern summer.

We have advocated a more robust presence in Afghanistan, in addition to seeing Afghanistan as the key to Pakistan, rather than vice versa.  Musa Qala fell to the Taliban due to inadequate force projection, and seven purple hearts had to be awarded to U.S. soldiers because of the battle to retake control of this area as a result of previous “negotiations.”  Rather than a single city, the British and U.S. strategists are locked in combat over the way to approach the counterinsurgency campaign for an entire country.  Afghanistan hangs in the balance.

With some time having elapsed since Bhutto’s assassination where we can consider the implications of Pakistani politics, it is good to rehearse where the U.S. stands in the global war on extremist militants.  Regarding Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, I commented:

I have said before that ”counterinsurgency in Pakistan begins in Afghanistan and along the Pakistan / Afghanistan border. Unless and until we devote the troops and effect the force projection to let the people in these AOs know that we are serious about the campaign, there will be no success.”  I have advocated more troops in the Afghanistan campaign for the simple reason that not only must we win in Afghanistan, we have an unmitigated opportunity to kill Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan where we are not dealing with issues of sovereignty of Pakistan.  In other words, we have the best of all possible worlds in the current campaign in Afghanistan (similar to the campaign in Iraq, although this is waning somewhat due to Iraqi sovereignty).  We can fight international jihadists with the full approval of the administration and for the most part without the overhead of issues of national sovereignty.

This campaign, once shown to be successful, can then be expanded into Pakistan with the tacit approval of the Pakistani government (i.e., small incursions and concealed operations, expanded to larger operations if the need and approval were forthcoming).  Here is where the administration of Pakistan is important.  Musharraf is likely an American ally only to the extent that he believed Richard Armitage when it was said to him that the U.S. would enjoy his cooperation or Pakistan would be “bombed back to the stone age” (the words as reported by Musharraf himself).  Bhutto, on the other hand, would have been a willing participant in the global war on religious militancy, and is said to have desired international assistance in the Pakistan counterinsurgency campaign: “If Bhutto returns to power this week, Gauhar predicts the U.S. will finally get what Musharraf has refused it: “She will allow NATO boots on the ground in our tribal areas and a chance to neuter our nuclear weapons.”

In the days following the assassination, many have weighed in on Bhutto’s financial indiscretions and other examples of malfeasance as Prime Minister.  One of the most significant critiques has come from the always interesting Ralph Peters at the New York Post.  He is even more frank and forthcoming on his feelings in a recent commentary for The Australian.

For the next several days you’re going to read and hear a great deal of pious nonsense in the wake of the assassination of Pakistan’s former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Her country is better off without her. She may serve Pakistan better after her death than she did in life.

We don’t need to have sympathy with her Islamist assassin and the extremists behind him to recognise that Bhutto was corrupt, divisive, dishonest and utterly devoid of genuine concern for her country.

She was a splendid con, persuading otherwise cynical Western politicians and hard-headed journalists that she was not only a brave woman crusading in the Islamic wilderness but also a thoroughbred democrat.

In fact, Bhutto was a frivolously wealthy feudal landlord amid bleak poverty. The scion of a thieving political dynasty, she was always more concerned with power than with the wellbeing of the average Pakistani.

Her program remained one of old-school patronage, not increased productivity or social decency.

Educated in expensive Western schools, she permitted Pakistan’s feeble education system to rot, opening the door to Islamists and their religious schools.

During her years as prime minister, Pakistan went backwards, not forwards. Her husband looted shamelessly and ended up fleeing the country, pursued by the courts. The Islamist threat, which she artfully played both ways, spread like cancer.

Peters ends his scathing rebuke of Bhutto and those who lament her passing by observing that “A creature of insatiable ambition, Bhutto will become a martyr. In death, she may pay back some of the enormous debt she owes her country.”

Perhaps.  But a careful reading of my analysis proves that it is entirely pragmatic.  I have long said regarding the parliamentary system in Iraq that one serious flaw in the preliminary stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom was the naive belief in the healing powers of democracy.  Democracy is itself produced by a society, and produces nothing.  It is a deliverance of people and their value system, not vice versa.  Said in another way, it cannot effect change.  It is itself an affect or product.  Given Iraqi history and culture, there might have been no good options, but democracy does not seem to have helped.

This same belief in the powers of democracy has caused the U.S. administration to support Bhutto, and Ralph Peters is correct in his diagnosis of her abilities to conjure up an image of peace and stability in Pakistan with the American elite.  However, involvement in the politics of Pakistan should not cloud the analysis, and has not entered into mine.  From the perspective of an American commentator and analyst, the primary concern should be the strategic interests of America, both short term and long term.  Democracy should be supported in Pakistan only to the extent that it is a catalyst of peace and stability and thus in the strategic interests of the U.S.  As to its benefits to long term stability, I have my doubts, but there is no short term advantage.

For my previous analysis, democracy in Pakistan and malfeasance of previous administrations didn’t fit into the equation.  Bhutto, it seems, would have allowed incursions of U.S. troops into Pakistan, and even further – NATO boots on the ground, formally and officially.  It seems difficult to fake this, as it was a major plank in her platform.  The situation in Pakistan is difficult and tenuous, and may devolve into chaos.  But assuming the restoration of stability at some point, the U.S. administration should see this as a gracious and providential warning shot over the bow.

The campaign in Afghanistan remains the first front of the counterinsurgency campaign in Pakistan.  Karachi, with a population of over 14 million people, and Lahore, with a population of over 10 million people, are larger than Fallujah by a factor 20 to 30.  Counterinsurgency in these cities would cost the U.S. armed forces on the order of tens of thousands of dead and more than one hundred thousand wounded – prohibitive to say the least.  But given that Pakistan is a nuclear state with assets that could fall into jihadist hands, the salient question is how to proceed short of such an awful campaign.

Again, the answer is in Afghanistan, where the campaign there is inextricably tied to counterinsurgency in Pakistan.

President Bush held an emergency meeting of his top foreign policy aides yesterday to discuss the deepening crisis in Pakistan, as administration officials and others explored whether Thursday’s assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto marks the beginning of a new Islamic extremist offensive that could spread beyond Pakistan and undermine the U.S. war effort in neighboring Afghanistan.

U.S. officials fear that a renewed campaign by Islamic militants aimed at the Pakistani government, and based along the border with Afghanistan, would complicate U.S. policy in the region by effectively merging the six-year-old war in Afghanistan with Pakistan’s growing turbulence.

“The fates of Afghanistan and Pakistan are inextricably tied,” said J. Alexander Thier, a former United Nations official in Afghanistan who is now at the U.S. Institute for Peace.

U.S. military officers and other defense experts do not anticipate an immediate impact on U.S. operations in Afghanistan. But they are concerned that continued instability eventually will spill over and intensify the fighting in Afghanistan, which has spiked in recent months as the Taliban has strengthened and expanded its operations.

Unrest in Pakistan and increasing fuel prices have already boosted the cost of food in Afghanistan, making it more likely that hungry Afghans will be lured by payments from the Taliban to participate in attacks, a U.S. Army officer in Afghanistan said.

In a secure videoconference yesterday linking officials in Washington, Islamabad and Crawford, Tex., Bush received briefings from CIA Director Michael V. Hayden and U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W. Patterson, said National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe. Bush then discussed Bhutto’s assassination and U.S. efforts to stabilize Pakistan with his top foreign policy advisers, including Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, as well as Adm. William J. Fallon of Central Command and Marine Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

U.S. intelligence and Defense Department sources said there is increasing evidence that the assassination of Bhutto, a former Pakistani prime minister, was carried out by al-Qaeda or its allies inside Pakistan. The intelligence officials said that in recent weeks their colleagues had passed along warnings to the Pakistani government that al-Qaeda-related groups were planning suicide attacks on Pakistani politicians.

The U.S. and Pakistani governments are focusing on Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Taliban Movement of Pakistan, as a possible suspect. A senior U.S. official said that the Bush administration is paying attention to a list provided by Pakistan’s interior ministry indicating that Mehsud’s targets include former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, former interior minister Aftab Khan Sherpao, and several other cabinet officials and moderate Islamist leaders. “I wouldn’t exactly call it a hit list, but we take it very seriously,” the official said. “All moderates [in Pakistan] are now under threat from this terrorism.”

Mehsud told the BBC earlier this month that the Pakistani government’s actions forced him to react with a “defensive jihad.”

After signing a condolence book for Bhutto at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, Rice said the United States is in contact with “all” of the parties in Pakistan and stressed that the Jan. 8 elections should not be postponed. “Obviously, it’s just very important that the democratic process go forward,” she told reporters.

The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan warned U.S. citizens Thursday to keep a low profile and avoid public gatherings. A Pentagon official said plans to evacuate Americans from the country are being reviewed.

“We’ve really got a new situation here in western Pakistan,” said Army Col. Thomas F. Lynch III, who has served in Afghanistan and with Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for Pakistan and the Middle East. He said the assassination marks a “critical new phase” in jihadist operations in Pakistan and predicted that the coming months would bring concentrated attacks on other prominent Pakistanis.

“The Taliban . . . are indeed a growing element of the domestic political stew” in Pakistan, said John Blackton, who served as a U.S. official in Afghanistan in the 1970s and again 20 years later. He noted that Pakistani military intelligence created the Taliban in Afghanistan.

How the United States responds will hinge largely on the actions of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, in whom U.S. officials have mixed confidence. If there is indeed a new challenge by Islamic militants emerging in Pakistan, then the United States will have to do whatever it can to support Musharraf, the U.S. Army officer in Afghanistan said.

“Pakistan must take drastic action against the Taliban in its midst or we will face the prospect of a nuclear weapon falling into the hands of al-Qaeda — a threat far more dangerous and real than Hussein’s arsenal ever was,” he said, referring to the deposed Saddam Hussein.

U.S. officials are concerned about the affect of Pakistan on the campaign in Afghanistan, but seeing things clearly requires looking in the opposite direction.  Settling scores with al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan is much easier than it will be in Pakistan.  The stakes are huge, and the notion of incorporating the Taliban into the government in Afghanistan (as the British advocate in order to create ‘peace’) seems so far removed from realistic regional needs that it is incredible that the idea was ever proffered.  The British want to make peace with the jihadists, but when reality strikes an ugly chord with the assassination of an opponent of jihad in Pakistan, we are reminded of the specter of nuclear weapons in major American cities, and the smoke clears and the room of mirrors is broken – along with our illusions of peace with the jihadists.

In Review and Analysis of Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Campaign, we noted that the first quarter of 2008 should see the results of a department-wide review of the Afghanistan COIN campaign strategy, and previously we have strongly suggested the needs for more troops.  Secretary of Defense Robert Gates sets the pretext for this review and essentially tells us what he expects to see as a result of the review.

Gates said a small number of additional troops are needed in Afghanistan, but ruled out a broad surge of American forces. Commanders in Afghanistan are asking for smaller numbers of combat troops and support personnel who could train Afghan forces, but do not see the need for an Iraq-style troop buildup.

“You’re talking about probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,500 troops. So it’s not like moving 100,000 troops from one place to the other or something like that,” Gates said. “But there is clearly, in the view even of the commander in the field, no requirement for a substantial plus-up of forces in Afghanistan to accomplish his mission.”

Those additional 7,500 troops could be drawn from American forces. Gates had been pressing the NATO allies for more troops. Though U.S. officials do want to maintain pressure on allied nations to send more troops, Gates noted there is little reason to press countries with a weak minority government for whom it is politically impossible to send more troops.

“Continuing to publicly go after our allies for things — to do things that politically are just impossible for them is probably not very productive,” he said.

Gates said the challenge of the year ahead in Afghanistan is to build on military progress, maintain control of newly recaptured areas and start to push ahead on some economic progress.

“There is no doubt … that there has been an increase in violence over the past year,” Gates said. “But in part it has been due to much more aggressive actions on the part of the NATO alliance and the U.S. forces that are there. The spring offensive we expected from the Taliban became NATO’s spring offensive.”

This seems overly optimistic to me, and 7500 additional troops still doesn’t provide either the ability to conduct operations in a country the size of Afghanistan or to supply border security.

“Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy.  Next best is to disrupt his alliances.  The next best is to attack his army.”  Sun Tzu, The Art of War, III.4 – III.6

The role of Syria – at least tacitly – in the suicide bombings in Iraq and other foreign terrorist activities is well known.  Yet only recently is the United States diplomatic corps said to have lost patience with Syria.  Despite reports to the contrary, Iran continues to fund, arm, train and supply terrorists in Iraq in an effort to destabilize the country.  The foreign origins of the violence in Iraq could have been (and could be) better addressed than it has been.  The EFP (explosively formed projectile) factories in Iran should have been enemy targets as much as insurgent domiciles, and the Syrian Imams who recruited and supplied suicide bombers into Iraq should have been considered enemy fighters as much as those holding a weapon in Fallujah or Baghdad.  While the U.S. has conducted robust kinetic operations against the foreign fighters in Iraq with huge success, the strategy could still have been completed with so-called black operations against rogue elements in Syria and more visible operations against EFP factories in Iran (or at least diplomatic pressure against Iran, something the State Department seems loath to do).

However, in the area of the indigenous insurgents, the U.S. strategy has been more lucid.  The goal in counterinsurgency is to disrupt the allegiance of the people to the insurgents and then to ameliorate the conditions that led to the insurgency.  Kinetic operations against foreign fighters were necessary because they fight mainly due to religious motivation.  However, for the indigenous fighters, for months we have advocated both settling with the erstwhile insurgents and payment to the concerned citizens as both effective and anthropologically sound.  It has become in vogue, especially among the political left, to level very specific criticisms at this approach.  Kevin Drum gives us the template for this strategy bashing.

I’ve mentioned a few times before that our “bottoms up” strategy of supporting Sunni tribes in the provinces surrounding Baghdad carries a number of risks. The biggest risk, I suppose, is that once the tribes finally feel safe from the threat of al-Qaeda in Iraq, they’ll relaunch their insurgency and start shooting at American soldiers again. The second biggest risk is that the Shiite central government understands perfectly well that “competing armed interest groups” in the provinces are — well, competing armed interest groups.

That phrase comes from Australian Lt. Col. David Kilcullen (here), and a week ago I linked to a quote from a U.S. Army officer who was fairly candid about the effect that arming the tribes is likely to have on the balance of power in Iraq. “The grass-roots level will force change at the top,” he suggested, “because if they do not act on it, they will get overrun.”

Quite so. And does the Maliki government understand this threat? Via Cernig, AP reporter Diaa Hadid makes it clear that they do indeed:

Iraq’s Shiite-led government declared Saturday that after restive areas are calmed it will disband Sunni groups battling Islamic extremists because it does not want them to become a separate military force.

….The statement from Defense Minister Abdul-Qadir al-Obaidi was the government’s most explicit declaration yet of its intent to eventually dismantle the groups backed and funded by the United States as a vital tool for reducing violence.

“We completely, absolutely reject the [Sunni] Awakening becoming a third military organization,” al-Obaidi said at a news conference.

He added that the groups would also not be allowed to have any infrastructure, such as a headquarters building, that would give them long-term legitimacy. “We absolutely reject that,” al-Obaidi said.

The Maliki government has made similar noises in the past, but this is by far the most unequivocal they’ve ever been about it. And needless to say, the Sunni leaders are having none of it. There’s exactly zero chance that they will ever voluntarily disband their “Concerned Local Citizens” groups.

Who knows? Maybe this is posturing more than anything else. Maybe Petraeus and Crocker can work some magic that will defuse all this. But a year from now, if the Iraqi civil war is raging once again, this is where it will have started.

UPDATE: In the New York Times, Alissa Rubin and Damien Cave have a long overview piece on the current status of the Awakening. Money quote: “The Americans are haunted by the possibility that Iraq could go the way of Afghanistan, where Americans initially bought the loyalty of tribal leaders only to have some of them gravitate back to the Taliban when the money stopped.” The whole thing is worth a read.

Surely, with the Sunni leaders warning against sidelining the auxiliary police and concerned citizens, the Maliki administration should listen carefully.  Furthermore, Major General Rick Lynch has been clear on U.S. expectations for the administration.

A top U.S. commander warned that Sunnis who fight al-Qaida in Iraq must be rewarded and recognized as legitimate members of Iraqi society – or else the hard-fought security gains of the past six months could be lost.

Lynch has credited these groups for much of the improvement in security in the region he commands, an area that stretches to the Iranian and Saudi Arabian borders …

The people say security is good now, but we need jobs. It’s all about jobs and we have to create them,» he told The Associated Press as he flew into patrol base Salie, just south of Baghdad – where U.S. troops fund about 150 members of the tribal groups.  We are in a tenuous situation. We need to give jobs to the citizens (groups) or they will go back to fighting.

Lynch, who leads the 3rd Infantry Division, said he had 26,000 members of the groups in the area he controls and that they have given U.S. and Iraqi forces a key advantage in seeking to clear extremist-held pockets. They number about 70,000 countrywide, and are expected to grow by another 45,000 in coming months …

The U.S. military now funds the groups, known as Awakening Councils, Concerned Citizens and other names. But these Sunni groups expect to be rewarded for their efforts with jobs, either in the Iraqi security forces or elsewhere.

Having been militarily defeated by U.S. forces, we consider it to be unlikely that the Sunnis would take up the fight once again with the U.S.  More likely, however, is an escalation in the low intensity civil war that was ongoing for much of the previous two years.  This all makes it critical that political progress take root in the wake of the military successes.  But Kevin Drum’s concluding comment is absurd: ” … a year from now, if the Iraqi civil war is raging once again, this is where it will have started.”

Rather than an observation of the necessity for political progress, this statement follows the template of criticism set out by the left, and it has been followed with religious fervor.  Note carefully what Drum charges.  Rather than the seeds of violence being one thousand years of religious bigotry between Shi’a and Sunni, or recent history under Saddam’s rule, or the temptations of oil revenue in a land that has not ever seen the largesse of its natural resources due to corruption, the cause is said to be the “concerned local citizens” groups, i.e., U.S. strategy.

This outlandish claim betrays the presuppositions behind it – specifically, that it would be somehow better to continue the fighting than to, as they charge, buy peace with money.  But for the hundreds of thousands of disaffected Sunni workers who have no means to support their families, this criticism is impotent and offers no alternative to working for the insurgency to feed their children.  It ignores basic daily needs, and thus is a barren and unworkable view when considering the human condition.

The strategy all along has been one of ground-up counterinsurgency.  The statements by military leadership in Iraq, far from hiding the fact that political progress must follow on the heels of military progress, show not only a knowledge of this fact, but demonstrate that it is this way by design.  The intent from the beginning has been one of providing the window of opportunity for political reconciliation, at least insofar as the provision of basic human needs is concerned.  In this way, command in Iraq has attacked the enemy’s strategy, and has done so with remarkable success.

To the chattering class, success of the preparatory stages (the counterinsurgency proper), doesn’t provide a reason to hail the successes of the campaign.  Rather, it provides a reason to level the a priori charge that we caused a civil war, if in fact one ensues.  To the more sensible thinker, it should remind us of the fact that we are not finished, and more work needs to be done to complete the campaign.

Colonel Daniel Roper from the Counterinsurgency Center at Fort Leavenworth was recently interviewed on the counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq and how tactics have evolved to address the insurgency.

Largely lost in the surge that sent more troops to Iraq this year and that lengthened the deployments already there was that the U.S. military began to change how it fights.

New doctrine drawn from mistakes made in this war and in battling previous insurgencies has called for less shooting, more talking, fewer bombs and more building (Editorial note: This description by the journalist is apt for the later stages of the campaign, but certainly not the first two and a half years of the Anbar campaign when Marines were involved in heavy combat, regardless of what the journalist or Colonel Roper might claim).

That has been widely credited for helping ease violence in Iraq this year and shaping new alliances made in Iraqi communities to root out al-Qaida and other terror operations.

Army Col. Daniel Roper is just back from three months in Iraq to take over as director of the Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center at Fort Leavenworth. Part of his job is to tweak the doctrine. Part is also to sell its principles to the military and to the American public.

The colonel spoke with The Kansas City Star. The interview has been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.

Q: Has the relative success in Iraq, a less dangerous but still violent and volatile place, come from the new approach to counterinsurgency, or because of the surge?

A: It’s both. To do counterinsurgency successfully requires resources. It means having boots on the ground. But then when you’re there, you need to do things the right way. Make connections. Build relationships. Earn trust with the population.

Q: Do the vastly larger troop numbers in Iraq explain why the situation there has improved while security has deteriorated in Afghanistan?

A: It’s the same principles. In Afghanistan it’s a lot about building roads, because that’s what they need so badly there. But there’s no secret that we’re looking to get additional help from other countries there.

Editorial observation: It is not apparent whether Colonel Roper is saying that road construction can be a means to defeat the insurgency, but if so, I must disagree.  Roads were not in place prior to the time at which the Taliban forcibly took authority over the government, and while we should support the construction of roads and other building projects as a means to bring trade and commerce and thereby undercut one motivator for recruitment for the insurgency, this should be seen as a means of amelioration and prevention, and certainly not a replacement for military tactics.  Finally, the existence of roads doesn’t necessarily mean that they can be used for commerce.  In Musa Qala: The Argument for Force Projection, we discussed a main road, Afghanistan’s Highway 1, that is dangerous enough that it is a deterrent to commerce.

The ruined Afghan police truck smoldered on the highway in the village bazaar, flames rising from its cargo bed. The village was silent. Its residents had hidden themselves ahead of a U.S. patrol.

The remains of a second truck, a tanker, sat on its wheel rims 100 yards to the north. To the south, another patrol was removing two other freshly burned tankers from the highway, clearing the lanes so traffic might pass.

The Americans examined the police truck. Holes marked where bullets had passed through. The front passenger door was gone; a rocket-propelled grenade had struck and exploded there.

This vehicle graveyard on Highway 1, roughly 50 miles south of Kabul, the Afghan capital, symbolizes both the ambitions and frustrations in Afghanistan six years after the Taliban were chased from power.

Highway 1 is the country’s main road, the route between Kabul and Kandahar, the country’s second largest city. It lies atop an ancient trade route that, in theory, could connect Central Asia and Afghanistan with ports in Pakistan, restoring Afghanistan’s place as a transit hub for something besides heroin.

The highway, which has been rebuilt with $250 million from the United States and other nations, accommodates a daily flow of automobiles, buses and ornately decorated cargo carriers, which the soldiers call “jingle trucks.”

The Afghan and U.S. governments say the road’s restored condition is a tangible step toward a self-sufficient Afghanistan.

But Highway 1 remains bedeviled by danger, extortion and treachery. Police corruption and insurgent attacks sow fear and make traveling many sections of the road a lottery. The risks limit its contribution to the economy and underscore the government’s weakness beyond Kabul.

Roads help, but they cannot defeat an insurgency.  Continuing with the interview:

Q: Might that suggest that our troop shortage, and the move we’re seeing now to begin to roll back from the surge, could mean a loss of the gains that have been made?

A: It’s patience. And that’s very hard. Do we want to sign up for something that’s going to last 10 years? Do we have a choice?

There’s a risk that we lose some of our gains when brigades pull out. But in talking with commanders in Iraq no one suggested that they were unduly concerned that all would be lost.

Q: How does mounting resentment toward the U.S. occupation in Iraq — four and a half years now — make it more difficult to win over ordinary Iraqis?

A: In some cases it would be a problem.

But we’re getting out with the people and getting away from being an occupying force. Just the right presence with just the right tactics, that’s how you actually win this fight.

Unless you plan to colonize a place and stay forever, you cannot kill your way to success.

The key is to isolate the insurgents from the population — both physically and psychologically.

Q: Lt. Col. John Nagl, a key contributor to the new counterinsurgency doctrine, said recently that the military is not going far enough or fast enough to adapt to the threat of insurgencies. Does he have a point?

A: You can make that case. We would all like it to move faster. There is a challenge for the guys on the ground. They have to adapt. This is not about how many people you can kill. It’s about how many connections you can make.

The hardest part is organizational. There are limited resources in competition with the need to be able to fight a major conventional conflict.

Q: In fact, some people suggest we might need two armies — one ready to take on the Koreans or the Chinese if the need arises, and one equipped for nuanced counterinsurgency. Is that right?

We’ll pause here for another editorial comment.  The interviewer is referring to what Thomas PM Barnett terms as the leviathan versus sysadmin forces,  the former being the forces that wage war, the later being the forces that builds nations and provides constabulary operations.  I am not convinced that the divisions are as clean and succinct as Barnett makes them out to be, but I will not weigh in on this issue at the moment beyond making this observation.  Concluding the interview:

A: Again, it’s a question of resources. That’s a decision for the Pentagon and a decision for the American people. What do you want the military to do? If being involved internationally means that you’re going to be dealing with insurgencies, then you make those choices.

This answer by Colonel Roper seems to presume that if there is going to be an imperial function in U.S. armed forces, this function necessitates that there be a leviathan/sysadmin bifurcation.  Whatever else one might think about this division, it is unrelated to the need for imperial troops, if such a function is deemed to be needful (The Marines have functioned in part as imperial troops in the more than 300 engagements since their birth on 10 November 1775.  It should be pointed out that whatever one thinks of interventionism and nation building, there are unintended consequences to isolationism too, and these consequences are seldom thought about by isolationists.  The assumption is usually made that proactive interventionism has only negative consequences, an obviously and demonstrably false assumption).

In Musa Qala: The Argument for Force Projection, and Clarifying Expectations in Afghanistan, we discussed ongoing counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan in light of the battle for Musa Qala, Afghanistan’s “battle of Fallujah” that never occurred.  We discussed the heavy bombing approach, the evacuation of families from the city, the lack of adequate force projection to take and hold Musa Qala, the British desire to negotiate with the Taliban, and disparate doctrines held by Australia (more forces are necessary) and the U.S. (advocating the small footprint COIN approach).

Continuing with this theme, we noted that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was prepared to talk tough to NATO in order to get more troops dedicated to the campaign in Afghanistan.  While various main stream media reports and blog entries are hailing Musa Qala as a great victory, Gates has directly admitted that the campaign needs to undergo a transition.  “Gates called for overhauling the alliance’s Afghan strategy over the next three to five years, shifting NATO’s focus from primarily one of rebuilding to one of waging “a classic counterinsurgency” against a resurgent Taliban and growing influx of al-Qaida fighters.”

So how did this summit of NATO leaders turn out?  The British still want to pay enough money to split the Taliban, but intend to send no more troops into theater.  The Australians, along with every other NATO member who has troops in theater, will draft a ‘plan’ to make the Afghanistan campaign more successful, but intend to send no more troops.  Gates was reduced to platitudes like: ” … while the United States also ha[s] no plans to send more troops in the short-term, [we will be] trying more creative ways to encourage other NATO members to increase their presence in Afghanistan.”

While the Taliban would most surely like to have held Musa Qala, they determined that withdrawal and reversion to more clandestine tactics were strategically superior.  “As Afghanistan has headed into its bitterly cold winter, the Taliban have retreated from direct combat operations and have resorted to roadside bombs to target coalition forces, says Major Michael Bassingthwaighte, a commander in Australia’s Reconstruction Task Force based in Tarin Kowt …  With the coming of winter, many Taliban fighters had fled across the unpatrolled border into Pakistan or to distant homes for the Islamic holiday period of Eid.  He expects the tempo of Taliban combat operations to increase after the poppy harvesting season finishes in April, a period when the Taliban find it hard to recruit fighters.”

The Afghanistan campaign suffers most particularly in the South.  The south continues to move steadily in the wrong direction. Instability has spread to a number of previously benign provinces. Some countries, especially European ones that have contributed to NATO’s forces, are unenthusiastic about the shooting war they find themselves involved in. After a summer of repeatedly retaking the same two districts of Kandahar province, the Canadian commander, Brigadier-General Guy Laroche, commented: “Everything we have done in that regard is not a waste of time, but close to it”.

There are signs, too, that as the insurgency meshes itself tightly with the drugs trade, a sizeable proportion of the population may feel it has a vested interest in prolonged insecurity which allows narcotics production to flourish.

The winter is at least a moment to pause and reflect on strategy for next year. At Musa Qala, NATO and Afghan forces easily defeated the Taliban but as diplomats in Kabul, the capital, concede, a far greater challenge is then defending against reinfiltration. Securing territory means getting the support of local people. In Helmand, for example, this requires teams of anthropologists and political officers to deal with a mosaic of tribal interest groups, an approach used by American forces elsewhere in the country. That means a greater emphasis on reconciliation and negotiation with local Taliban leaders, as well as training Afghan forces so they are able to take the lead in military operations.

Politically the challenges are no easier. The Afghan public, particularly in the south, is gloomy about the future. Dismay over corruption and wrangling between different ethnic groups suggest that Afghan leaders, such as President Hamid Karzai, will need substantial support from outsiders for a long time yet. America is backing the idea of sending a “super envoy” to co-ordinate international efforts in Afghanistan. But the government remains unable even to reach out across areas of the south. Where it cannot reach there may need to be more controversial “tribal solutions”, such as village militias to provide local security and efforts to empower tribal elders and local systems of justice.

But it must be remembered that the tribal solution was implemented in Anbar from a position of strength.  Far from being unable to reach areas of Anbar, Marines were deployed all over the province, engaged in kinetic and constabulary operations as well as public relations, reconstruction and engagement of the population in paying labor.  We have also argued at The Captain’s Journal that the solution to the poppy problem is not to spray or use other means to kill the crops.  This might be seen as out-terrorizing the terrorists.  The solution to the insurgency problem is to target the insurgents, and the solution to the drug problem is interdiction and reconstitution of the agricultural industry in Afghanistan.  But this requires force projection.  It also requires largesse, civil affairs, diplomacy, and other arms of “soft power.”  But soft power is founded on the pretext of hard power, not the other way around.

There is currently a policy review underway for the Afghanistan campaign.  “Amid rising concerns about lagging progress in Afghanistan, the top U.S. commander in the region has launched a review of the American mission there with a major focus on counterterrorism efforts, a senior U.S. military official said Sunday.  Adm. William Fallon, the head of U.S. Central Command, has ordered senior staff to conduct a thorough review of the six-year-old war against al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan, the senior official confirmed to CNN.  The review has been under way for several weeks, and Fallon is not considering any new recommendations until its completion, the official said.  The study, first reported by The New York Times, is focused on efforts by U.S. troops along Afghanistan’s rugged border with Pakistan.”

The first quarter of 2008 should reveal the results of this policy review.  Unless the campaign in Afghanistan is taken as seriously as it has been in Iraq, the policy review will not have been successful.  There are troops available for deployment in Afghanistan, but they are currently in Germany and South Korea.  Will the Pentagon have the courage to engage in global strategic thinking, or will the deliverance of this study be more platitudes about being creative?

See also Future COIN in Afghanistan, Small Wars Journal Blog

Ever since the British pulled out of Musa Qala, Afghanistan, in October of 2007, the Taliban have committed atrocities against the population and subjugated them to Taliban rule, and with forces more powerful than the Afghan police in Musa Qala, the agreement between British forces and the tribal leaders to prevent the Taliban from entering Musa Qala was rendered powerless and irrelevant.

Almost immediately after the British pullout from Musa Qala, the Taliban rolled in.  British officials believed the Taliban to be too deeply rooted to be eradicated by military means, and heretofore had intended to court the alleged more “moderate” members of the Taliban to attempt to divide their organization.

But the brutality of the Taliban occupation, along with the direct refusal of the Taliban ever to negotiate with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, apparently convinced NATO that negotiations would have redounded to no positive results.  So NATO planned operations against the Taliban that months ago was billed as Afghanistan’s Fallujah.  A series of air attacks killed various Taliban leaders over the intervening months, but this didn’t weaken the Taliban hold on the area.

The assault on Musa Qala began on December 7, with Afghan forces in the lead.  Heavy arial bombardment  preceded the advance of Afghan forces from the South, while U.S. forces were flown in by helicopter just North of the city.  Approximately seven soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division were wounded after being air assaulted in about 14 kilometers North of Musa Qala and engaging in a five or six hour gun fight with Taliban forces.  Two NATO soldiers perished as a result of the operations against the Taliban.  Several significant Taliban leaders were killed or captured during operations.

British forces have said that they wouldn’t take something they have no plan to hold, and at the moment NATO and Afghan forces, in anticipation of Taliban counterattacks, are digging in and fortifying their positions.  But while U.S. forces battled some of the Taliban as the fled North, most fighters simply melted away into the terrain.  These fighters will live to fight another day, under cover of darkness, in the shadows, planting roadside bombs, and shooting innocent Afghanis.  Afghanistan’s “battle of Fallujah” didn’t occur, as the forces necessary to encircle the Taliban forces and chase them until captured or killed didn’t exist.  While the Taliban lost some fighters and indeed some significant local leaders, they know better than to engage NATO forces in kinetic operations for any protracted period of time.

Australian Army Colonel Don Roach has argued for a larger force size in Afghanistan.

… NATO-backed International Security Assistance Force and its Afghan army allies are stretched too thinly in Oruzgan province, home to the 370-strong Australian Reconstruction Task Force, which is facing a growing threat from resurgent Taliban militants … “One of the fundamental principles of a counter-insurgency is you can always do with more forces,” said Colonel Roach, who is on the headquarters staff of the ISAF, serving as its senior liaison officer with the Afghan army and police in Regional Command South. “You can go into an area and leave and Taliban will come back and chop peoples heads off.”

At The Captain’s Journal, we agree with Colonel Roach’s axiom, but it should be noted that this is not a given in COIN doctrine.  In fact, Military transition teams in Afghanistan are designed with exactly the opposite idea in mind.

MiTT training is a major part of the Pentagon’s new approach to counterinsurgency. A MiTT embeds with an Iraqi or Afghan unit. The team itself is small–10-15 soldiers, usually of more advanced rank, from staff sergeant to colonel–but designed to work with almost any size unit from battalion to division. Their goal is to make the local troops self-sustaining: tactically, operationally, and logistically. Aside from providing training and expertise, MiTTs also provide a huge morale boost to their foreign counterparts as they have the power to call in air support and reinforcements otherwise not at the disposal of the local police and military. The MiTT should encourage the locals to go on the offensive and gain the confidence needed to later fight on their own: a necessary component of our we-stand-down-as-they-stand-up exit strategy. Transition teams also leave a small footprint in hostile areas that might be stirred up by a larger U.S. presence. Such small groups remain in the shadows and emphasize the achievement of Iraqi and Afghan forces–something that greatly reduces the political fallout of U.S. operations.

But this may be more pedantic than wise.  The Anbar Province in Iraq has also seen its share of tribal leaders and concerned citizens stepping up to be counted, but in order for this to obtain, a tank had to be parked outside the home of Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, the most powerful figure in Anbar, to protect him from al Qaeda attacks.  There is no replacement for force projection.  The British reaction to the Taliban re-entry into Masu Qala is befuddling given the nature of power in this region.  Agreements come and go, but without the means to enforce the agreements, it seems odd that the British would have relied on this “gentleman’s understanding” with the tribes in the area.

The British want other NATO forces to shoulder more of the burden in Afghanistan, the Canadians are there only because the U.S. says they have to be there (according to a recent poll), and there are roads through Afghanistan that, in a less dangerous situation, might force competition against the poppy trade.  Yet this road is too dangerous because of bombs, shootings and Taliban influence to be relied upon for commerce.

The ruined Afghan police truck smoldered on the highway in the village bazaar, flames rising from its cargo bed. The village was silent. Its residents had hidden themselves ahead of a U.S. patrol.

The remains of a second truck, a tanker, sat on its wheel rims 100 yards to the north. To the south, another patrol was removing two other freshly burned tankers from the highway, clearing the lanes so traffic might pass.

The Americans examined the police truck. Holes marked where bullets had passed through. The front passenger door was gone; a rocket-propelled grenade had struck and exploded there.

This vehicle graveyard on Highway 1, roughly 50 miles south of Kabul, the Afghan capital, symbolizes both the ambitions and frustrations in Afghanistan six years after the Taliban were chased from power.

Highway 1 is the country’s main road, the route between Kabul and Kandahar, the country’s second largest city. It lies atop an ancient trade route that, in theory, could connect Central Asia and Afghanistan with ports in Pakistan, restoring Afghanistan’s place as a transit hub for something besides heroin.

The highway, which has been rebuilt with $250 million from the United States and other nations, accommodates a daily flow of automobiles, buses and ornately decorated cargo carriers, which the soldiers call “jingle trucks.”

The Afghan and U.S. governments say the road’s restored condition is a tangible step toward a self-sufficient Afghanistan.

But Highway 1 remains bedeviled by danger, extortion and treachery. Police corruption and insurgent attacks sow fear and make traveling many sections of the road a lottery. The risks limit its contribution to the economy and underscore the government’s weakness beyond Kabul.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has ordered Marines to stay in the Anbar Province (rather than deploy to Afghanistan) where they will likely be conducting public relations missions and handing out food bags to the Anbaris, but force projection is needed in Afghanistan.  Yet as long as the small footprint counterinsurgency advocates hold sway, the campaign appears to be proceeding apace in Afghanistan.  Doctrine can indeed color the lenses through which we see the world.

Ralph Peters has an interesting analysis in the Armed Forces Journal of the campaign as it is currently being waged in Iraq, entitled Dishonest Doctrine: A Selective Use of History Taints the COIN Manual.

A year after its publication, the Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual remains deeply disturbing, both for the practical dangers it creates and for the dishonest approach employed to craft it.

The most immediate indication of the manual’s limitations has been Army Gen. David Petraeus’ approach to counterinsurgency in Iraq. The manual envisions COIN operations by that Age of Aquarius troubadour, Donovan, wearing his love like heaven as he proceeds to lead terrorists, insurgents and militiamen to a jamboree at Atlantis. Although the finalized document did, ultimately, allow that deadly force might sometimes be required, it preached — beware doctrine that preaches — understanding, engagement and chat. It was a politically correct document for a politically correct age.

Entrusted with the mission of turning Iraq around, Petraeus turned out to be a marvelously focused and methodical killer, able to set aside the dysfunctional aspects of the doctrine he had signed off on. Given the responsibility of command, he recognized that, when all the frills are stripped away, counterinsurgency warfare is about killing those who need killing, helping those who need help — and knowing the difference between the two (we spent our first four years in Iraq striking out on all three counts). Although Petraeus has, indeed, concentrated many assets on helping those who need help, he grasped that, without providing durable security — which requires killing those who need killing — none of the reconstruction or reconciliation was going to stick. On the ground, Petraeus has supplied the missing kinetic half of the manual.

The entire article is worth the study.  Dave Dilegge at the Small Wars Journal has a response to this article by Peters (among other things), which is also well worth the study time.  Dave makes several powerful points, among them the lack of understanding Paul Bremer brought to the political scene in Iraq.  I will not weigh in with detail concerning these articles, but I will provide several thoughts.

First, I am not convinced that this is an “either-or” choice.  Rather, I still see things as a “both-and” relationship.  Heavy kinetic kinetic operations to kill or capture the insurgents was and is still necessary, along with settling with the (presumed and erstwhile) enemy with broad, sweeping programs and negotiations.  I have from the very beginning supported the idea of payment for concerned citizens as my articles show (see Concerning the Tribes, Are we Bribing the Sheikhs?, and Payment to Concerned Citizens: Strategy of Genius or Shame?).

Next thought.  I know that this tactic has been referred to as “renting hearts and minds.”  I am not naive concerning exactly what we are accomplishing with this approach.  We have killed those who would not reconcile with us in Anbar, while giving work and money to those who would.  This situation cannot last forever, and real political and economic progress must be eventually made in Iraq for this temporary solution to bear fruit.

Third thought.  There is a robust belief that the campaign as currently constituted doesn’t bear any relationship whatsoever to the one envisioned by FM 3-24.  This quote I am providing is straight from Iraq from a field grade officer: “Petraeus  is directing a counterinsurgency strategy, which is good, but the “Petraeus” counterinsurgency plan that was rolled out last winter is dead and buried, and that is also good.”

Fourth thought.  I am aware that robust force protection is being practiced as part of the campaign, as well as the fact that hundreds of combat outposts throughout urban and other areas of Iraq presented a logistical nightmare of mammoth proportions.  Combat outposts were merely a means to an end, and to the degree that they are helpful they should be used and to the degree that they are harmful or unnecessary or even impossible given the boundary conditions of force protection, then they should be jettisoned.

But they should be engaged or jettisoned within the correct context and after being applied the same way they were in Anbar.  Among the hundreds of things that are not generally understood about the Anbar campaign (which is why I began the category The Anbar Narrative), is the issue of combat outposts.  The Marines do seven month deployments rather than twelve or sixteen month deployments, and so the notion of sixteen months at a combat outpost seems ludicrous.  Further, the Marines never stayed at combat outposts for the full deployment.  Combat outposts (in combination with Iraqi Police Precincts later in the campaign) were a duty rotation, along with FOB security, patrols, kinetic operations, etc.  Marines are rotated through combat outposts, and carry all necessary supplies and ordnance with them on the rotation, causing much less logistical problems than the idea of deploying Soldiers for more than a year at a single location with logistics being relied upon to deploy all supplies to location.  Marines were never at a combat outpost for more than a couple of weeks at a time — just the right amount of time to carry all provisions in a backpack.  It is an austere lifestyle, to be sure.

The point is that acceptance or rejection of a tactic should be based on a sound understanding of how that tactic has and has not been employed in the past rather than theoretical  doctrine.  As one final thought for today, sadly, the Afghanistan campaign continues to unravel.  I have just seen an account over Fox News of the desire of the population in Afghanistan to negotiate and bring the Taliban into the ranks of the government in order to stop the violence (the Taliban are checking off military win after gruesome slaughter of innocents after successful intimidation of the locals, and so on, while also asserting that they will never negotiate with Karzai, regardless of what the populations of America and Afghanistan wish to believe).  Secretary of Defense Gates has denied the request of the Marine Commandant to deploy Marines to Afghanistan.

So be it.  He is in charge.  But if I read the signs correctly, even if we have rejected (at least part of) FM 3-24 in Iraq, the campaign in Afghanistan has used the small footprint model to the extreme.  And we are about to lose Afghanistan.  For lack of kinetic operations against the enemy, it will soon turn into a magnificent, remarkable loss that American history will be unable to avoid.  While settling with the Taliban is far different from settling with Anbaris who were fighting for nationalistic reasons rather than religious fanaticism should be obvious, it will be the subject of future articles.  But suffice it to say at the moment that our loss in Afghanistan will be a painful subject for the history books – and a topic in war college classrooms for decades.

The Sunnis in the Anbar Province have taken a rapid ride from enemy of the United States, to tepid ally, to strong ally, and finally to full partner.  In Operations in Northern Iraq we discussed the movement of the last of al Qaeda North to Mosul, Tikrit and outlying areas.  In Last Stand in Mosul we expanded this discussion to include the diehard Ba’athists and Fedayeen Saddam who will not reconcile; they also have retreated to the North.  In light of these developments, it is important that the “awakening” has finally expanded to the North.

HAWIJA, Iraq (AP) – Nearly 6,000 Sunni Arab residents joined a security pact with American forces Wednesday in what U.S. officers described as a critical step in plugging the remaining escape routes for extremists flushed from former strongholds.

The new alliance—called the single largest single volunteer mobilization since the war began—covers the “last gateway” for groups such as al-Qaida in Iraq seeking new havens in northern Iraq, U.S. military officials said.

U.S. commanders have tried to build a ring around insurgents who fled military offensives launched earlier this year in the western Anbar province and later into Baghdad and surrounding areas. In many places, the U.S.-led battles were given key help from tribal militias—mainly Sunnis—that had turned again al-Qaida and other groups.

Extremists have sought new footholds in northern areas once loyal to Saddam Hussein’s Baath party as the U.S.-led gains have mounted across central regions …

The ceremony to pledge the 6,000 new fighters was presided over by dozen sheiks—each draped in black robes trimmed with gold braiding—who signed the contract on behalf of tribesmen at a small U.S. outpost in north-central Iraq.

For about $275 a month—nearly the salary for the typical Iraqi policeman—the tribesmen will man about 200 security checkpoints beginning Dec. 7, supplementing hundreds of Iraqi forces already in the area.

But a cautionary note is in order.  We have strongly advocated and supported the strategy of “concerned citizens” and paid neighborhood watch and auxiliary police, but they must eventually be integrated into the the Iraqi government – either police or Iraqi Security Forces.  Anthony Cordesman states.

A change in US tactics, and the Sunni tribal uprising in Anbar province, have sharply reduced the level of violence in some important parts of Iraq. The violence and numbers of dead are down to the levels of spring 2006, before the escalation of civil violence that tore the country apart. The worst fighting is now concentrated in and around the mixed areas in Diyala. Large parts of Baghdad and many formerly hostile towns in the west are relatively secure. The number of improvised explosive device attacks has also declined. How much of that is due to Iranian restraint, improved US tactics and technology or less active Shia hostility to coalition forces is as unclear as how long the drop will last.

US and Iraqi forces are scoring important, if regional, tactical victories. However, these cover only western and central Iraq and may well be temporary. For all the claims that the “surge” worked, it is clear that it did not work purely on its own. The build-up of US forces and change in tactics from staying in bases to “win and hold” have accomplished a great deal. However, it was only the combination of the tribal uprising in Anbar, the build-up of troops and the change in US tactics that prevented al-Qaeda and its supporters from dispersing to the areas around Baghdad and intensifying the fighting in central Iraq.

The US team in Iraq deserves great credit for reacting to the Sunni tribal uprising in Anbar, supporting and co-opting it and broadening it to other areas. But that effort may be wasted if the Iraqi government continues to equivocate in allowing the Sunnis to join the police and security services, and if Iraq’s factions cannot agree on how to share the nation’s power and wealth. Everything depends on converting a US-led military success into Iraqi political accommodation.

Cordesman’s words echoes the sentiments of the Sunnis.  An eerie warning was recently issued by a top Sunni cleric concerning the fate of the Sunni fighters who sided with the U.S.

A top Iraqi Sunni cleric called on Wednesday for the tens of thousands of Sunni Arab militants allied to US forces in the fight against Al-Qaeda to be integrated into the regular security forces.

Sheikh Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al-Samarraie, head of the Sunni endowment, told AFP that the fate of around 70,000 Sunni Arab men fighting against Al-Qaeda in Iraq militants must be decided by Baghdad soon.

“The fate of these 70,000 men is not defined and it must be decided soon,” said Samarraie, whose organisation oversees the management of all Sunni shrines across Iraq.

“These fighters must be integrated into the police and army,” he said.

It is clear that the Anbaris in particular desire a long term U.S. presence in terms of investment and financing.  It is also clear that they desire the eventual departure of U.S. forces – at least in terms of military authority, even if a force presence is kept for years to ensure the security of Iraq (perhaps with bases in the Kurdish region).  What is not clear is just how long the surge can be maintained or troops can continue to patrol through the streets without being seen as the occupier rather than the ally.

The situation is proceeding apace in Iraq, and the government has an opportunity to integrate the Sunni forces into the nation-state.  Failure to do so may bring catastrophy, but success will bring a stand down of a significant number of U.S. forces in Iraq and their possible redeployment to Afghanistan.