Archive for the 'Counterinsurgency' Category

The Small Wars Journal blog post COIN Toss is better reading for the comments than the TNR article it links.  Gian Gentile questions the assertion that we didn’t learn counterinsurgency in Iraq until 2004 (2005, 2006 or whenever)?  Questioning conventional wisdom again, he is.

Gulliver treats us to his customary exercise in asininity by questioning how much reading Gian has done, but Gian presses the question – and he is correct to do this.  Of David Ucko’s book, Gian states:

Briefly repeating what I said in Do we need a less aggressive force posture in Afghanistan:

To be sure, the importance of the “awakening” in Anbar must be one of the elements of understanding that campaign, but the popular myth has grown up around Western Iraq that makes it all about drinking chai, siding with the tribes, going softer in our approach, and finally listening to them as they communicated to us.  And the leader of this revolution in counterinsurgency warfare was none other than General Petraeus.  We were losing until he appeared on the scene, and when he did things turned around.

We Americans love our generals, but this explanation has taken on mythical proportions, and is itself full of myths, gross exaggerations and outright falsehoods.  While Captain Travis Patriquin was courting Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, elements of the U.S. forces were targeting his smuggling lines and killing his tribal members to shut down his sources of income.  The tribal awakening had a context, and that was the use of force.  As the pundits talk about the tribes, the Marines talk about kinetics.

Furthermore, the tribal awakening was specific to Ramadi.  The beginnings of cooperation between U.S. forces and local elements came in al Qaim between Marines and a strong man police chief named Abu Ahmed.  In Haditha it necessitated sand berms around the city to isolate it from insurgents coming across the border from Syria, along with a strong man police chief named Colonel Faruq.

In Fallujah in 2007 it required heavy kinetics, followed on by census taking, gated communities, biometrics and heavy policing.  Even late in 2007 Ramadi was described by Marine Lieutenant Colonel Mike Silverman as like Stalingrad.  Examples abound, and as late as 2008, artillery elements fired as many as 11,000 155 mm (M105) rounds in Baquba, Iraq in response to insurgent mortar activity.

Whatever else General Petraeus did for Operation Iraqi Freedom, the U.S. Marine campaign for Anbar was underway, prosecuted before the advent of Petraeus, and continued the same way it was begun.  The Marines lost more than 1000 men in combat, and this heavy toll was a necessary investment regardless of drinking chai with the locals.

Regular readers know that I am not part of the COIN bandwagon.  We didn’t learn counterinsurgency TTPs in Iraq from FM 3-24 or the advent of the right generals.  The campaign in Anbar conducted by the U.S. Marines started, was conducted, and ended like it started and was conducted.  There was no turning to the right or to the left.  It was relentless, full-orbed targeting of the insurgency and policing of the population at its root.  It had phases because counterinsurgency has them, not because of a new general.

It may be that we in fact did learn strategically in greater Iraq, but not in the way the COIN proponents claim.  When the Baghdad Museum was under assault for its wares and possessions and the public saw this, most heads of household likely thought, “Uh huh, check the box, I get it.  It’s clear now.  They either don’t have what it takes or refuse to protect my belongings.  My entire net worth will be spent on that AK-47 after all.”  And young Omar saw exactly what paid well.

Overthrowing a government while our Soldiers and Marines had to follow on in post-Saddam Iraq with rules that resemble the SCOTUS decision in Tennessee v. Garner was a mistake of mammoth proportions, and lead to countless deaths of both U.S. forces and Iraqi civilians.  Paradoxically, our aim and desire for civility lead in part to the pain they and we experienced.  Leaving Sadr alive (who was in the actual possession of the 3/2 Marines) because the British and Sistani wanted us to was a mistake.  Withdrawing from Fallujah during the first assault (al Fajr) was a mistake, and so on the process goes.

But these are strategic failures – failures of command, and failures that if anything else too closely followed COIN / nation building dogma.  No, drinking chai with the locals didn’t win Iraq.  We were successful when we allowed our fighting men to do what was necessary to win the peace.

From Stars and Stripes:

Coalition troops will have to accept more risk as commanders push for a major turnaround in the Afghan war over the next 18 months, according to the commander of day-to-day operations across Afghanistan.

In an interview with Stars and Stripes, Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez said a renewed emphasis on developing a rapport with the Afghan people will mean an increase in the kind of “chai ops” — casual interactions with local leaders and residents, often over tea — that have been common in Iraq for the past year and a half.

This includes an emphasis on taking a less aggressive posture, removing helmets and body armor when appropriate, and living alongside Afghan security forces, Rodriguez said.

With insurgent infiltration still rife within the Afghan security forces, that’s a prospect that has some soldiers uneasy, but one Rodriguez said is necessary.

“It is certainly a risk, but the benefits are worth the risk,” he said.

That risk was underscored Tuesday, when an Afghan soldier killed a U.S. servicemember and wounded two Italian soldiers in Badghis province.

Rodriguez said that local commanders will decide what kind of posture to take and allowed that some situations still call for a stronger show of force, but he made clear that the ideal is to get as close to the people as possible.

“When you roll up into a village with one machine gunner on top of an MRAP, it’s not … too easy to interact with the people,” he said.

Analysis & Commentary

The transcript of the conversation with General Rodriguez doesn’t reveal use of the phrase “chai ops.”  That’s a function of the reporting.  But in a manner the actual transcript reveals even more troubling information about what Rodriguez thinks about counterinsurgency.

To be sure, the importance of the “awakening” in Anbar must be one of the elements of understanding that campaign, but the popular myth has grown up around Western Iraq that makes it all about drinking chai, siding with the tribes, going softer in our approach, and finally listening to them as they communicated to us.  And the leader of this revolution in counterinsurgency warfare was none other than General Petraeus.  We were losing until he appeared on the scene, and when he did things turned around.

We Americans love our generals, but this explanation has taken on mythical proportions, and is itself full of myths, gross exaggerations and outright falsehoods.  While Captain Travis Patriquin was courting Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, elements of the U.S. forces were targeting his smuggling lines and killing his tribal members to shut down his sources of income.  The tribal awakening had a context, and that was the use of force.  As the pundits talk about the tribes, the Marines talk about kinetics.

Furthermore, the tribal awakening was specific to Ramadi.  The beginnings of cooperation between U.S. forces and local elements came in al Qaim between Marines and a strong man police chief named Abu Ahmed.  In Haditha it necessitated sand berms around the city to isolate it from insurgents coming across the border from Syria, along with a strong man police chief named Colonel Faruq.

In Fallujah in 2007 it required heavy kinetics, followed on by census taking, gated communities, biometrics and heavy policing.  Even late in 2007 Ramadi was described by Marine Lieutenant Colonel Mike Silverman as like Stalingrad.  Examples abound, and as late as 2008, artillery elements fired as many as 11,000 155 mm (M105) rounds in Baquba, Iraq in response to insurgent mortar activity.

Whatever else General Petraeus did for Operation Iraqi Freedom, the U.S. Marine campaign for Anbar was underway, prosecuted before the advent of Petraeus, and continued the same way it was begun.  The Marines lost more than 1000 men in combat, and this heavy toll was a necessary investment regardless of drinking chai with the locals.

What is so troubling about Rodriguez’s remarks is that historical revisionism has make its way into strategic planning for Afghanistan.

You’ve always got, no-matter where you are and everything, you’ve got somebody to check you.  That’s what we have higher-headquarters for, no matter where you are; but a, there asked to make judgments, and again, there are supervisors and chain of command always checks everything, but this is part of the thing where you have to trust people to do the right thing sometimes because you can’t be there everywhere and there asked to make thousands of decisions but unfortunately one might not work out right but for the most part it’s gone pretty good and those leaders and supervisors are making good decisions and we think that’s the way to do it in the long run.

It’s kind of like making friends.  Whether in Afghanistan, tea is important, whether it is the 3 cups of tea, like Mortenson says or anybody else but it’s just building those relationships …

Again, when you are with them, you make sure they are not doing anything wrong; serving themselves before they are serving the people.

Try to make it easy, it’s like a war crime, you don’t stand by and allow that to happen, so we don’t stand by and allow their governance to take advantage of the people; a lot of that is relationships, it’s about leadership, and just making sure they’re doing the right thing to serve their people …

Earlier on he mentions removal of body armor.  The fact that he believes that the campaign for Afghanistan is anywhere close even to considering not wearing proper personal protective equipment is worse than preposterous – it is scary, because the lives of so many men depend upon decisions like this one.

In the transcript he does discuss pressing decision-making downward in the chain of command and allowing decisions like this to be made at the local level, but he doesn’t believe it.  He reverts to the notion of every decision being checked by someone, and even seems to lament the fact that he (or others high in the chain of command) cannot be everywhere all of the time – as if his decisions would be the right ones even if his spirit he could be ubiquitous.

As we have discussion before, this micromanagement of the campaign is modeled on Western corporate conglomerate business practices, and relies on the mistaken notion that the higher up one goes in the chain of command, the better he is able to know, see, discern, ascertain, and divine all decisions made by all people concerning every event or decision under his charge.  It assumes that promotion makes supermen, and this idea will become even more deadly on the fields of Afghanistan.

So the command situation is worse than simply mythologizing the importance of tea.  We are now admitting to micromanaging the campaign from the highest levels of command (and lamenting that we cannot do it even more), and stupidly equating the failure to hold sovereign leaders accountable to our standards with war crimes.  With leadership like this, the job of the Taliban is made even easier.

Prior concerning micromanagement of the military:

Micromanaging the Campaign in Afghanistan II

Micromanaging the Campaign in Afghanistan

Prior concerning intelligence and analysis failures of General Rodriguez’s staff:

Systemic Defense Intelligence Failures

U.S. Intelligence Failures: Dual Taliban Campaigns

Analysts and pundits were quick to dismiss Mr. Obama’s intention for beginning troop level drawdown in Afghanistan in 2011 as mere pressure on Hamid Karzai and the balance of the corrupt Afghan administration.  But Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson has no illusions about the task ahead.

“I can’t tell you where we’re going to be in July of 2011, but I can tell you that we understand what the commander-in-chief has said, and that’s when he wants to draw down, and we are sprinting,” Nicholson says. “The message to our Marines every day is that the clock is running and the world is watching.”

In the coming assault on the town of Marja in the Helmand Province – current stronghold of the Taliban – the U.S. Marines want the ANA (Afghan National Army) to take the lead.

Nicholson said Afghan security forces would hopefully head the Marja operation, with extensive training planned for the next few months.

“We’re going to come in together. We’re going to take Marja back,” Nicholson said, adding that a district governor had already been selected for the town.

“We’re building a team around him of Afghans and US and UK representatives to go in and … try to take care of people quickly.”

A centrepiece of Obama’s Afghanistan strategy is the training of Afghan security forces to a point where Nato forces can withdraw. Obama has said that a US troop withdrawal would begin in 18 months, raising alarm bells among some in the Afghan political and military leadership, who fear being abandoned.

But can the ANA perform this function as quickly as we might like?  Recall that I have observed that:

We have watched the ANA engage in drug abuse, smoke hashish before patrols, collude with Taliban fighters to kill U.S. troops, themselves claim that they cannot hold Helmand without Marines and fear being killed if they even go out into the streets, be relatively ineffective against Taliban fighters, sleep on their watch, and claim to be on vacation in the Helmand Province.

Now, via Bruce Rolston, here is a report on the current state of the ANA that is of immeasurable value.

Creating an Army isn’t about teaching them to shoot straight.  It’s about having the cultural, religious, familial and historical underpinnings that will support the personal sacrifice for something greater than oneself.  This cannot possibly be created in two years.

Counterinsurgency at a sprint sounds nice, but sooner or later we must face reality.  If we are going to rely on the ANA to do the heavy lifting for us, it’s going to be a very long time before they will be ready.

Postscript: For proponents of population-centric counterinsurgency, it should be pointed out that there is an alternative.

In Why we must chase the Taliban and Refusing the Chase we covered how the ROE was preventing U.S. troops from engaging the insurgency when it was possible that noncombatants could be involved, and that this tactical approach had caused the need to chase the insurgents when they took cover in civilian areas and then later escaped.  We must chase the Taliban and kill every last one of them, we are told by some Afghanis.

But we don’t have the troops, helicopters or logistics to continue the chase into the valleys, mountains and fields of Afghanistan.  From Lt. Col. Scott Cunningham, commander of the 1st Squadron, 221st Cavalry, of the Nevada National Guard, we have another indication of insurgent tactics that brings up the issue of chasing the enemy.

The enemy in Afghanistan is elusive. They will rarely attack unless they have absolute superiority. Because of that, we usually maneuver with enough soldiers and firepower to defeat any potential threat we may encounter. Getting cut off by a superior force is a recipe for disaster. A TIC, or “Troops in Contact” is unlikely in any given patrol, but essentially inevitable over the course of an entire deployment. It can be either an IED, long-distance harassing fire or a close-up ambush. Depending on the enemy tactic, the maneuver unit will immediately attempt to pin the enemy down, and then use artillery, helicopters, or aircraft weapons on him, or flank them with maneuver forces.

The enemy has the tendency to attack from long range and then run away, often into villages, where our rules of engagement prevent us from effectively engaging him, or into the mountains where the weight of our gear prevents rapid pursuit.

One more important account comes to us from a Marine who was embedded with the Afghan National Army in the Kunar Province.

Upon getting into the village, we did the usual – looked around at the terrain and figured out how we were going to set up security with our sparse forces (2 Marines and perhaps a dozen ANA), before looking around for the village elder to talk to. We eventually got ourselves set up and found an elder, who invited me, my terp, and the ANA leader inside “The White House” for tea, nuts, and candies. No matter how poor, down and out an Afghan is, they’ll always have some small provisions for guests. It was a pretty gloomy, rainy day and the old fella seemed kind of down, though it’s never easy to really read people when you can’t understand a word they are saying. Eventually, his nephews, young men in their 20’s, came out and proceeded to show us pictures of their father, who apparently had been the head man in the village, but had been killed by the insurgents just a few months before. At that point, the older gentlemen teared up and had to leave the room. The story was that the Taliban killed him because he had been a powerful figure in the local area, and wasn’t showing enough support to them. It’s those moments where you really realize how alone those people are. They may have had each other, living in a huge house built of stones fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle, but once we left the area that day they were really on their own. Our base may have been less than a mile away, but we didn’t really know what went on in that village at night. “Protecting the people” in Afghanistan is a tough thing to do.

Especially in a land where the people will not combat the insurgents themselves, it becomes necessary to take additional measures to target the insurgents.  In this case it might come down to distributed operations.  Additional troops will be needed, and Scout Sniper, Force Recon and DMs (Designated Marksman) will be used extensively along with the rest of infantry.  But we must lie in wait, perform reconnaissance, find them before they find us (or the people), chase them into the valleys and hills, and be prepared to work in smaller units where force protection may not be the most important of the doctrines.

Of course, the embedded Marine in Kunar hasn’t the resources necessary to do these things.  At least in part, that’s the point.  The new population-centric counterinsurgency strategy will heavily target the population centers such as Kandahar.  But I fear that we don’t even have enough troops to secure Kandahar.  Population centric counterinsurgency is a romantic idea, but in lieu of unflagging support from the American people, perfect logistics, never-ending good will among the U.S. military and no problem with repeated deployments for a campaign that seems to  never end, another strategy must be employed.

We must consider more robust ROE and chasing the enemy into his domain.  I fear that absent such a radical shift in strategy we will lose.  We simply don’t have the resources necessary to perform the magic outlined in FM 3-24.  This is what Lt. Col. Allen West is saying, I think.

From Reuters:

KABUL, Nov 22 (Reuters) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai could invite militants to attend a “Loya Jirga”, or grand council meeting, aiming to seek peace and reconciliation with the Taliban, a spokesman said on Sunday.

The plans signal a more public effort to engage with militants during Karzai’s second term as leader, measures that Washington has encouraged in its counter-insurgency strategy.

Afghanistan’s constitution recognises the Loya Jirga — Pashtu for grand assembly — as “the highest manifestation of the will of the people of Afghanistan”.

Karzai announced plans for a Loya Jirga in his inauguration speech last week, describing it as a measure to promote peace but giving few details.

Under the Afghan constitution, a Loya Jirga made up of parliamentarians and chiefs of district and provincial councils can amend the constitution, impeach the president and “decide on issues related to independence, national sovereignty, territorial integrity as well as supreme national interests”.

The rare, colourful mass gatherings of elders have played crucial roles over the course of Afghan history.

Two have been held since the fall of the Taliban in 2001: one that named Karzai interim leader and a second that adopted the constitution. A third gathering of tribal chiefs from both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan frontier, was held in Kabul in 2007 to smooth over relations between the two countries.

The giant marquee tent where those assemblies were held is still standing in a Kabul field.

Hamid Elmi, a spokesman for Karzai, said the assembly envisioned by the president would not be the “Constitutional Loya Jirga” described formally under Afghan law but a “Traditional Loya Jirga”, which could have a different make-up of notables.

“The meaning of the traditional Loya Jirga is how to bring about peace and how to invite the Taliban and opposition in Afghanistan,” he said. “They are not coming to talk about the cabinet and the administration. They are coming to bring security and peace.”

Security and peace.  The Taliban who uses children in combat roles– Karzai is asking them for security and peace.  While the temperament of the people is important, much too much can be made of will of the population in the doctrines of population-centric counterinsurgency.  The U.S. Marine Corps campaign in Anbar encountered a people (i.e., the Sunnis) who had been disenfranchised because of the regime change in Iraq.  The will of the people was the very last thing the Marines had in their corner.

The so-called Sons of Iraq (or concerned citizens) were eager to side with the Marines in the security of Fallujah in 2007 because, quite simply, they were weary of fighting the Marines.  Karzai is attempting to settle with the Taliban not because they are weary of fighting us, but because we are weary of fighting them.  Or at least, weary of not being allowed to fight them.  That’s the difference in the campaigns – or at least, one big one.

This video documentary, courtesy of the Unrestricted Warfare Analysis Center, is remarkable for its summary of various themes that can be found at The Captain’s Journal over the past three or four years, from control over roads to logistics, from the need for troops and force projection to the ineptitude of much or the ANA, from the difficulty of raising a coherent and cohesive Army in a culture that is inhospitable to such a concept to allowing the enemy control over the high terrain.  Each and every one of these ideas has been rehearsed and documented ad infinitum at TCJ.

You might remember Staff Sergeant O’Brien, USMC, from an earlier video documentary showing the problems associated with startup on the ANA.  It would appear that progress is halted and the problem quite protracted in nature.

Steven Pressfield has probably led the charge to engage the tribes as a solution in Afghanistan.  But there is a growing chorus of voices saying the same thing.  The New York Times published an OpEd by Deepa Narayan on going from the bottom up as our strategy.

Myth No. 2: It is a weak state that is the problem. A central tenet in the current debate is that centralism is good and fragmentation is bad. The entire focus has been on presidential politics and on how to create a strong central state.

Our study shows, however, that in Afghanistan, with its rugged terrain, strong tribal affinities and extreme poverty, it is localism that will defeat poverty and corruption and knit a nation together.

More than 19 million people have participated in a community planning and budgeting process to decide how to best use government grants of around $30,000 per village. In a community in Kabul Province that was layered with 12,000 land mines, without a single standing building in 2002, the men decided to invest funds in reviving irrigation canals, and the women in electricity generators. Men in the village told us that animosities between the Tajiks and the Pashtuns had eroded as a result of the collective budgeting negotiations.

This assessment seems confused in that Narayan first hitches her wagon to the notion of strong tribal affinities, and then turns the argument on animosities between tribes being eroded by circumstances.  But if this assessment is confused, Tim Lynch has a better set of arguments for engaging the tribes.

But a seemingly definitive anthropological study on Afghanistan seems to debunk the idea that we can rely heavily on tribes.  It is entitled My Cousin’s Enemy is My Friend: A Study of Pashtun “Tribes” in Afghanistan, by the U.S. Army Human Terrain System.  This study doesn’t merely throw cold water on the idea of relying on strong tribal affinities.  It calls into question the very idea of reliance on local control at all.  The fractured nature of Afghan society, the treachery that underlies the familial structure (if there is any structure at all), and the constant internecine fighting, casts a dark shadow over plans to foment anything like what we saw in the Anbar Province in 2006 and 2007.  A few seed quotes follow.

“No clear evidence exists of tribes actually coalescing into large-scale corporate bodies for joint action, even defensively, even for defense of territory.”

“The tribal system is weak in most parts of Afghanistan and cannot provide alternatives to the Taliban or U.S. control. The Pashtuns generally have a tribal identity. Tribal identity is a rather flexible and open notion and should not be confused with tribal institutions, which are what establish enforceable obligations on members of a tribe.”

“… As a matter of fact in most cases tribes do not have observable organizations which could enable them to perform collective actions as a tribe.”

[ … ]

One reason why the “family tree” model of tribes doesn’t apply to Pashtuns in Afghanistan and Pakistan is because of the unique relationship between male father’s-side first cousins. It is so unique to Pashtuns in Afghanistan and Pakistan that one anthropologist goes so far as to say that first-cousin hostility is a defining feature of the Pashtun ethnicity.

The word in Pashto for “male father’s-side first cousin” is tarbur, which is, at the same time, also one way of saying “enemy” in Pashto.

Why would first cousins in a tribal society be enemies with each other? The standard model of a Middle Eastern “tribal society” says that close male relatives should be a source of support against more distant “relatives” in other tribes, not enemies.   For Pashtuns, it comes down to competition over the inheritance of land from common ancestors—especially from one’s grandfather on the father’s side.

[ … ]

“As an example, two […] cousins had neighboring plots. The cousin whose field was more distant from the village walked to his field on an ancient pathway which verged on the plot of his tarbur . There was a simmering dispute over the right to this narrow path which ended in a gunfight and the death of one of the man’s sons.”

[ … ]

The result of this special kind of intra-family relationship is that, during times when conflicts aggravate first-cousin hostility, the sides don’t necessarily break down along “closest male relative” lines. Whereas in a classical Middle East tribal situation, all the participants in a conflict pick sides based on which side represents their closest male relative, Pashtuns establish temporary factional groupings that are unpredictable and not necessarily based on familial relationships.

The entire document is worthy study for the thinking man or woman on Afghanistan.

My Cousin’s Enemy is My Friend: A Study of Pashtun “Tribes”

But even if there is a case to be made for stronger engagement of the locals in Afghanistan, we aren’t anywhere near the tipping point for such a strategy in Afghanistan.  In the Anbar Province in 2006 and 2007 the U.S. Marines were relentless and forceful enough that the idea of joining the insurgency was a distant third or fourth place in priority to joining the coalition.  In Fallujah in 2007 enough al Qaeda and indigenous insurgents had been killed and enough aggressive patrols had been conducted that the remaining locals respected the Marines to the point that every action and reaction by the IPs and Sons of Iraq were taken not only to suppress the insurgency but also to impress the U.S. Marines who were mentoring them.

We are currently on the defensive in Afghanistan and badly in need of more troops.  The advocate of tribal engagement has been bequeathed a high bar with this Leavenworth study, and even if there is a case to be made for such a strategy, it would appear many months and even years into the future, and indeed many Marines and Soldiers, from being a viable strategy.

From David Adams and Ann Marlowe, via the WSJ.

From the beginning of 2007 to March 2008, the 82nd Airborne Division’s strategy in Khost proved that 250 paratroopers could secure a province of a million people in the Pashtun belt. The key to success in Khost—which shares a 184 kilometer-long border with Pakistan’s lawless Federally Administered Tribal Areas—was working within the Afghan system. By partnering with closely supervised Afghan National Security Forces and a competent governor and subgovernors, U.S. forces were able to win the support of Khost’s 13 tribes.

Today, 2,400 U.S. soldiers are stationed in Khost. But the province is more dangerous.

Mohammed Aiaz, a 32-year-old Khosti advising the Khost Provincial Reconstruction Team, puts it plainly: “The answer is not more troops, which will put Afghans in more danger.” If troops don’t understand Afghan culture and fail to work within the tribal system, they will only fuel the insurgency. When we get the tribes on our side, that will change. When a tribe says no, it means no. IEDs will be reported and no insurgent fighters will be allowed to operate in or across their area.

Khost once had security forces with tribal links. Between 1988 and 1991, the Soviet client government in Kabul was able to secure much of eastern and southern Afghanistan by paying the tribal militias. Khost was secured by the 25th Division of the Afghan National Army (ANA), which incorporated militias with more than 400 fighters from five of Khost’s 13 major tribes. The mujahedeen were not able to take Khost until internal rifts among Pashtuns in then-President Mohammed Najibullah’s government resulted in a loss of support for the militias in Khost and, eventually, the defection of the 25th Division in April 1991.

The mistake the Najibullah government made was not integrating advisers to train the tribal militias and transform them into a permanent part of the government security forces. During the Taliban period between 1996-2001 the 25th Division dispersed amongst the tribes. Many fled to Pakistan.

When the U.S. invaded in 2001, the 25th Division, reformed under the command of Gen. Kilbaz Sherzai, immediately secured Khost. But the division was disbanded by the new Afghan government for fear of warlordism.

Today, some elements of the 25th still work for the Americans as contract security forces. However, the ANA now stationed in Khost is mainly composed of northern, non-Pashtun Dari speakers, and it is regarded as a foreign body. Without local influence and tribal support, the ANA tends to stay on its bases.

Part of this is our fault. We built the ANA in our own Army’s image. Its soldiers live on nice bases and see themselves as the protectors of Afghanistan from conventional attacks by Pakistan. But to be effective, the ANA must be structured more like a National Guard, responsible for creating civil authority and training the police.

We saw how this could work in the Tani district of Khost starting in 2007. By assisting an ANA company—with a platoon of American paratroopers, a civil affairs team from the U.S.-led Provincial Reconstruction Team, the local Afghan National Police, and a determined Afghan subgovernor named Badi Zaman Sabari—we secured the district despite its long border with Pakistan.

Raids by the paratroopers under the leadership of Lt. Col. Scott Custer were extremely rare because the team had such good relations with the tribes that they would generally turn over any suspect. These good tribal relations were strengthened further by meeting the communities’ demands for a new paved road, five schools, and a spring water system that supplies 12,000 villagers.

Yet security has deteriorated in Khost, despite increases of U.S. troops in mid-2008. American strategy began to focus more on chasing the insurgents in the mountains instead of securing the towns and villages where most Khostis live.

Analysis & Commentary

Make friends with the right people, empower their men, and ride unicorns over rainbows.  Presto!  Counterinsurgency made simple.  Note that at least one strategic argument all along is that Afghanistan isn’t like Iraq and the tribal awakening may not in fact apply, so it will be harder in Afghanistan than it was in the Anbar Province.  Now Adams and Marlowe turn that argument on its head.  Not only is the tribal awakening possible, but it should be easier in Afghanistan than in Iraq, and more troops are certainly not necessary.

Grim at Blackfive has a roundup of views that complement Marlowe’s plan, but on a more sophisticated level.  But as with Marlowe’s view, Grim’s discussion relies on tribal engagement.  Regular readers know that I reject the narrative (of now mythical and magical proportions) that the campaign for Anbar was all about the tribes.  It was much more complicated than that.

In Haditha it required sand berms to prevent the influx of foreign fighters into the city, combined with a local police chief strong man named Colonel Faruq to bring the town to heel.  In al Qaim it required heavy kinetic operations by the U.S. Marines, combined with a local police chief strong man named Abu Ahmed to keep out foreign fighters and bring local insurgents under control.  In Fallujah in 2007 it required heavy kinetic operations by the U.S. Marines followed on by gated communities, biometrics, and block captains (or Muktars) and strong men police all over the city.

Whereas Captain Travis Patriquin’s outline for counterinsurgency in Anbar seems to have carried the day when it comes to narrative, even in Ramadi (where the tribal awakening supposedly got its start), Colonel MacFarland’s observations are telling concerning the tribes upon his arrival to Anbar.

… the sheiks were sitting on the fence.

They were not sympathetic to al-Qaeda, but they tolerated its members, MacFarland says.

The sheiks’ outlook had been shaped by watching an earlier clash between Iraqi nationalists — primarily former members of Saddam Hussein’s ruling Baath Party — and hard-core al-Qaeda operatives who were a mix of foreign fighters and Iraqis. Al-Qaeda beat the nationalists. That rattled the sheiks.

“Al-Qaeda just mopped up the floor with those guys,” he says.

While Captain Patriquin wanted to talk to Sheik Risha, U.S. forces were engaged in heavy combat to shut down his smuggling lines, even at the expense of killing his tribal and family members.  The U.S. Marine Corps operations in Iraq are best described by diplomacy with a gun (and this is consistent with the literally countless interviews of Marines that I have conducted).  When it was all finished, more than one thousand Marines had perished in Anbar, and tens of thousands of both indigenous insurgents and foreign fighters had died.  There were no unicorns or rainbows in Anbar, popular myths to the contrary.

In spite of the sophistication of the Anbari tribes compared to the Afghan tribes, even they couldn’t hold off al Qaeda without heavy kinetics by the Marines.  The Pashtun tribes in Afghanistan and Pakistan were also said to have a strong sense of unity and organization, that is, until Baitullah Mehsud had some 600 tribal elders assassinated.  The Pashtun tribal structure is said to have been decimated by the Pakistan Taliban.

Upon the initial liberation of Garmsir by the U.S. Marines in 2008, the tribal elders pleaded with the Marines to join with them to fight the Taliban.  The 24th MEU did, at least until their deployment ended.  The British weren’t able to hold Garmsir, and no U.S. Marines followed up the 24th MEU into the Garmsir (in a tip of the hat to the “economy of force” campaign).  Thus did Operation Khanjar have to be launched in 2009 to do some of the same things that the Marines did in 2008.  Even now with U.S. Marines present in the Helmand Province, fear of retribution for cooperating with the Marines against the Taliban is pervasive.

There are certain elements of Marlowe’s analysis that are salient.  You cannot find more criticism of the ANA and ANP than I have lodged, and I objected to the use of ANA soldiers from Tajik areas to control Pashtun tribes before Marlowe did.  But for those naive analysts who believe that reorganization of the ANA is the answer to our problems in Afghanistan, you only need to know that the U.S. Marines are still trying to talk the ANA troops aligned with them to go on night time patrols.

There may also be some virtue to the notion of better engagement of the tribes.  Steven Pressfield has a continuing stream of conversation and analysis at his blog on this very topic (to be fair, I should also mention that Joshua Foust has another view on this, and both positions are well worth studying).  But after the tribes are engaged and the ANA has been reorganized, the tribes cannot stop the Taliban and allied foreign fighters alone, and the ANA is far from ready to take on defense of their country from internal threats.

What Davis and Marlowe are missing is the general evolution of the campaign and the warp and woof of the Afghan countryside now as compared to the utopia they describe.  The Taliban have grown stronger, and it will take heavy kinetics, patrolling, policing and engagement of the population by other-than-ANA forces to dislodge them.

There aren’t any easy solutions, but the general reluctance to send additional troops being demonstrated by this administration cannot possibly be a doctrinal or strategic basis for denying the necessary resources to complete the campaign.  U.S. troops are the currency upon which the campaign will succeed or fail.

Following up Smith’s commentaty Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis on Going Deep Rather Than Long in Afghanistan, Davis posts the following rejoinder.

I recently received a very kind invitation from Herschel Smith to reply to a posting he recently made of a report on strategy analysis and recommendations i wrote earlier this month.  He wrote, “I’m sure that you don’t appreciate one bit my excoriation of your views. I expect a full throated response, and will approve whatever comment you make.”  I must say that his willingness to actively invite me to write a “full throated” response to his posting is one of the reasons I hold this web site in such high esteem and only wish other venues for the forging of ideas were held to such equally high standards. 
 
In my view, one of the biggest weaknesses of our country’s intellectual elite today is an arrogance that holds there is only one answer to any question: mine!  Once a writer or opinion-maker stakes out his or her view, all dissenters are painted as fools or idiots because no alteration of their stated views could possibly be right!  Rather, I hold that there are many smart people in this country, irrespective of their race, political persuasion, gender, age, or social position, most of whom are genuinely and passionately love America.  But not one of them has the corner on all the best ideas.
 
Regarding the report i wrote on Afghanistan, I obviously believe that I have some darn good ideas or I wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of publishing them, particularly when i know they are contrary to some other pretty high ranking and well known people.  But my expectation is that other smart people could undoubtedly add to my good ideas and in other cases help illumine why something isn’t so good as i thought once a new piece of heretofore unknown piece of information is provided.  That’s why I really admire this web site.
 
So many of the readers of this blog have tremendous combat experience as well as institutional knowledge which in many cases far outstrips some of our national civilian and uniformed leaders.  Your views and opinions carry a lot of weight.  Conversely, however, while some of us have a lot of tactical experience we don’t have the broad knowledge and experience on higher levels that some of the less experienced leaders do have.  If we could get the higher up folks to have an open mind about the on-the-ground experience of the tactical group, and the latter group to be willing to consider the larger, associated strategic views of the former group, the end result could be something damn good!
 
So in that light, I do offer some comments to Mr. Smith’s “excoriation” of my views, but also just as eagerly request some of you to reply to this exchange to pass along information which could either bolster an idea – or new info which could shoot it down.  The bottom line in this mess that is Afghanistan, there is no “good” solution; it’s just a matter of which one carries the least number and degree of negative consequences.
 
One of the biggest complaints of Mr. Smith’s posting was the apparent contradiction my paper showed.   First, he notes:
 
“On the other hand, he feels that is is necessary to address the objection that a return to Taliban control would mean a return to safe haven for al Qaeda.  But if it’s true that his plan would prevent a return to Taliban control, and also if it’s true that occupying forces give the Taliban their currency (and without us they wouldn’t have a raison d’être), then it shouldn’t be necessary to predict what would happen if the Taliban returned to power.”
 
Not so.  As I point out in the paper, it is very much necessary to point out the potential negative consequences.  Too often people suggest their plan is better than others out there by detailing the negative consequences that would befall us if we followed the flawed plan, but then present their views as though there are no negative possibilities; that “if we only followed my plan, all would be good!”  Rather, I feel it is responsible and necessary to discuss the pros and cons of my ideas.  Given that I am recommending that 18 months after implementing my plan we redeploy the bulk of our combat troops, I want to address what would happen if a ‘worst-case-scenario’ happened and the Kabul government fell and Taliban returned to power (more on that in a moment).  So it is no contradiction, but is instead a responsible requirement to point out potential negatives.
 
Second he writes, “On the one hand the corrupt ANA and ANP are one of the biggest problems (and to be fair, our own coverage of ANA and ANP has been unforgiving, but still truthful).  On the other hand, reliance on them along with some HVT strikes by SOF is the cornerstone of his plan.” Indeed I do suggest we rely on them.  But the given that they are weak and corrupt is why later in my report i recommend that we keep the number of ANSF at currently approved numbers and aggressively train them to be able to more capable rather than jacking their numbers up to 400,000 which would certainly result in higher numbers of equally incapable ‘partners.’
 
Next Mr. Smith posts, “On the one hand, Davis observes that we don’t have enough troops to secure Afghanistan, noting the large scale engagements such as the battle of Wanat (see our own article on battles in Nuristan and Wanat in the context of massing of enemy troops).  On the other hand, a smaller ANA and fewer U.S. troops are somehow superior to what we now have and would be able to hold the terrain.”  Nowhere in my report do I say or suggest that with fewer troops we’d be able to “hold terrain.”  Rather, I wrote:
 
“One of the unquestioned assumptions is that if we send 40,000 more combat troops we will gain the upper hand against the insurgent forces.  I contend it is not the iron-clad truth most believe.  By sending in large numbers of “foreign” troops, we unwittingly play directly into the historic fears of the Afghan people and appear to validate the Taliban’s IO campaign.  Evidence suggests many of the insurgent fighters gain their reason for living from our presence and from fighting us.  They possess the ability to view themselves in heroic, patriotic ways in this existential struggle, much as did the Partisan movements in France, Yugoslavia, and White Russia during World War II.  The underground fighters of World War II were willing to endure any hardship, pay any price, and sacrifice their lives to gain their freedom.  We must deny the Taliban this huge psychological advantage.”
 
Shorn of large numbers of American troops in isolated bases throughout the country, the Taliban lose targets to engage and the motivation to influence others to join their cause.  If there is no “occupation” to resist, where is the reason to keep fighting?  The initial reaction many would have to that is, “Good grief!  Without our forces there, they’d just take over!”  But would they?  The reason many fight for the Taliban today is to fight against the United States, and most of the Taliban support comes from regular citizens.  Again, absent the motivation to fight against the US, their motivation to fight for the Taliban goes way down.  Remember, there was no love for the way the Taliban ruled with an iron hand prior to October 2001 – and the regular people of Afghanistan certainly do remember that today.  So i posit that it is a risk, but one we can live with for reason discussed below.
 
Next I’ll summarize a few of the criticisms Mr. Smith posed, replying to them generally.  He raises a number of very valid comments on the difficulty of logistics and transport.  These are very vexing issues which will exist no matter which course of action the President approves.  Under a Go Big there will be more troops to provide security – but also significantly more targets the Taliban can attack.  Under Go Deep the reverse is true.  The redeployment of the bulk of US conventional forces doesn’t mean all forces leave.  Further, that makes our effort to train the ANSF to acceptable levels rises in importance.  But the bottom line is that there will be risk to any course of action. 
 
We often fail to adequately consider the role played here by the enemy.  The deciding factors aren’t just whether or how many US Troops remain in Afghanistan or what they do.  Regardless of what we want to do the enemy will seek to do all they can to mess it up.  They want to kill us and they want to drive us out and whether it’s Go Big, Go Deep or something else, as long as we are there they will aggressively try to defeat our plans.  So again, the issue for us is which risk is the most manageable and which ‘worst case scenarios’ are we able to live with.  In my view, the worst of a Go Deep is manageable while the worst of Go Big could be disastrous.
 
Finally, Mr. Smith says, “The reality of the situation is that going deep is not an option, but rather, a daydream.  “Going deep” is a nicely packaged strategy for failure.  There is going big or going home.”  This is purely a personal opinion.  I contend that the facts as laid out throughout my report refute Mr. Smith’s charge, but he is certainly welcome to his personal opinion.
 
I would like to end by addressing one of the central issues of this entire debate regarding the number of troops recommended for Go Big and what they could accomplish.  As a hook, I’ll address an article from today’s (22 October 2009) Washington Post.
 
On today’s front page, above the fold Washington Post (In Helmand, a model for success?), there is a story by Rajiv Chandrasekaran about a possible template for success in Afghanistan that could portend success if McChrystal’s strategy is followed.  This article illuminates some of the most crucial parts of my report and helps convey why i believe Go Big, aside from what we would all wish to happen, would be very unlikely to succeed. 
 
In today’s article Rajiv wrote:
 
“But even if Nawa remains peaceful, replicating what has occurred here may not be possible. Achieving the same troop-to-population ratio in other insurgent strongholds across southern and eastern Afghanistan would require at least 100,000 more U.S. or NATO troops — more than double the 40,000 being sought by McChrystal — as well as many thousands of additional Afghan security forces…  Then, three months ago, the 1st Battalion of the 5th Marine Regiment arrived. To U.S. commanders, the change in Nawa is the result of overwhelming force and overhauled battlefield strategy. The combined strength of U.S. and Afghan security forces in the district is now about 1,500 for a population of about 75,000 — exactly the 1-to-50 ratio prescribed by U.S. military counterinsurgency doctrine.”
 
But note what’s not described: any forces for training.  Rajiv notes that we would need over 100,000 troops just to perform the security mission.  Now look back to the section in my report where the same figure of 100,000 was mentioned, but note the function of those troops:
 
“To most, 40,000 additional troops seem like a large number, particularly when compared to the 20,000 of the Iraq surge, but according to high ranking officers who have previously commanded combat troops in Afghanistan, 40,000 is not enough.  Marine Colonel Dale Alford said at a September counterinsurgency conference in Washington that it would require somewhere on the order of 10 brigades just to train the Afghan National Police (ANP) and another eight to work with the Afghan National Army (ANA) – on top of what we have today (p.8).”
 
In Rajiv’s correct accounting, it would take approximately 100,000 fighting troops to do the security mission to the same level of effectiveness as described in Nawa, plus the 10 brigades to train the ANP and eight brigades to train the ANA.  And for how many years would you need so many people?  How long will Nawa survive in its current stable state without the presence of those 1,100 Marines?  One of the biggest condemnations of the long term viability of this strategy is seen in this passage:
 
“The insurgents who left Nawa in July now operate from in and around the town of Marja, 10 miles away, amid a series of north-south canals carved into the sandy desert by the U.S. government in the 1950s and ’60s as a way to counter Soviet influence in Afghanistan.  The canals helped turn the Helmand River valley into Afghanistan’s breadbasket. But wheat fields have been replaced by the highest concentration of opium-producing poppies in Helmand, and the canals now serve as defensive moats that U.S. combat vehicles cannot cross, protecting the drug smugglers and insurgents who have taken shelter there. “Nawa is only going to get so far as long as their next-door neighbor is Marja,” said Brig. Gen. Lawrence Nicholson, the top Marine commander in Helmand.  But clearing out Marja would require more troops than the Marines currently have in Afghanistan.”
 
Even the success wrought by over a thousand Marines can only scatter the enemy a mere 10 miles away.  That’s the distance between the Pentagon and the I495/I395 mixing bowl in DC!  In order to clear all the enemy out of the area of Nawa and neighboring Marja, however, we’d need more Marines than we have in all of Afghanistan!  The obvious next question: if it took so many troops to clear and hold that one small piece of the country, how will you secure the rest of the country?  If the insurgent enemy remains safe a scant 10 miles from an entire Marine combat battalion, how much of a success would we gain even if we did consolidate all the Marines in Afghanistan to clear and hold those two areas?
 
The facts on the ground here emphatically support the thesis of my report: it would take more troops than the US has in its active duty force to properly clear and hold – and concurrently train the ANSF – the country (while also meeting other world-wide requirements).  If we send the 40,000 troops and embark on a COIN strategy, we will see the Nawa pattern repeated in islands throughout the country.  Where you send in such overwhelming force and conduct such aggressive patrolling schedules (as mentioned in Rajiv’s story), you’ll be able to clear and hold it from the enemy.  But around those islands the Taliban will simply scoot out 10 to 20 miles and set up shop again, and continue to use hit and run tactics on those additional troops, and concurrently live with virtual impunity in the thousands of other villages and towns where no NATO troops will live.
 
But again I ask the question: what would those insurgent fighters do if all our combat troops redeployed from Afghanistan?  The most common answer – like that given by NATO Commander Rasmussen yesterday – is that “if the Taliban take power tomorrow, terrorism can prosper and one day or another will strike all western democracies.”  But I think the history of Afghan tribal politics following the British withdrawal in 1842 and the Soviets in 1988 shows that the unity they now enjoy as a result of their focus on attacking and driving out the American invader will evaporate with the removal of the foreign troop presence. 
 
Also it is key to point out that today the insurgents exist as a shadowy, elusive force that we cannot effectively destroy because we cannot effectively find them.  The day they take power and exist in the open – and in large, concentrated locations – they become lucrative targets for Western military might and again become enormously vulnerable to our greatest technological strengths (precision weapons).  On that day we have meaningful leverage over them that would mitigate against their giving safe haven to a resurgent AQ: why would they fight 10 years to get back in power only to again take the very same action that resulted in their destruction the first time, knowing that they would still be utterly powerless to stop our precision attacks? 
 
It doesn’t matter if we think it’s a grand idea to “defeat” the Taliban or not.  Given the stark realities of the limited number of active duty troops the United States possesses, how many of them it would take to “defeat” the insurgency, and for how many years they be garrisoned there; not to mention the geography of the country, the resilience of the enemy fighters – and the absence of any geostrategic importance such a barren country has for us (outside of our interest in attacking any and all terrorist threats against our country which applies everywhere in the world such a threat might metastasize) – we can’t accomplish that tactical task within given resources.
 
What we must do, then, is to accomplish the driving strategic imperative – to identify, track, and destroy all terrorist organizations and individuals who seek to harm the US or its interests – in a way that can succeed with the resources we have and under conditions presented.  My “Go Deep” plan offers one viable possibility.  There are obviously others.  But I ask this final question in closing:
 
What is the likely outcome, given all the foregoing information, if we cling stubbornly to our desire to destroy the Taliban and “win” in Afghanistan by deploying those 40,000 troops?  I believe the most likely outcome would be the expenditure of enormous amounts of money, an increase in the rate of degradation of our Armed Forces, an increase in the strength and effectiveness of the insurgent forces, a continual stream of American blood draining into the Afghan dirt as casualties mount, and ultimately, after the loss of public support in Western nations – most notably ours – we withdrawal in humiliation that even our best marketing experts won’t be able to disguise. 
 
That’s my view anyway!  Would love to hear yours…
 
–davis

Gareth Porter writing for the Asia Times discusses an unpublished paper written by Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis currently making its way around Washington.  Rather than focus on what Porter says Davis says, we’ll briefly spend some time on the alternative Davis offers.

His paper is entitled Go Big or Go Deep: An Analysis of Strategy Options on Afghanistan.  Davis’ first problem is that U.S. troops (and ISAF) are seen as “invaders” or “occupation forces.”  Our troops have been there for eight years and are likely to be there many more under this plan, and this potential downfall of the campaign has not been given its due in the deliberations to date.

His second problem with the go big option is that the requested troop levels (on the order of 40,000) is not nearly enough.  He continues cataloging his objections including (but not limited to) the fact that logistics will be difficult for more troops, the government is corrupt, and the startup of ANA forces has been more difficult than has been expected (and likely will not be sustainable by the Afghan economy).

Davis then begins his “go deep” alternative.

“Go Deep” is a comprehensive and pervasive strategy that incorporates critical components of the intelligence community, special operations forces, conventional military forces, military Advise and Assist units, governmental assistance and development, provides economic advisors, features educational development, and other elements of national power that are synthesized to form a unified, two-track objective: to 1) conduct an aggressive counterterrorist effort associated with 2) robust, focused support to indigenous governmental and military forces. Far from representing a “retreat” from Afghanistan, it “goes deep” into numerous elements of the region.

In its most basic form, Go Deep seeks to simultaneously build and strengthen the Afghan government, help develop its economy, place an increased emphasis on drastically increasing literacy rates through targeted education programs, and invest in the development of its armed forces while simultaneously conducting an aggressive regional counterterrorist campaign. This plan completely agrees with the majority of opinion-leaders that we cannot abandon Afghanistan. Where it differs, however, is in which levers of national power we should use to give us the best chance of achieving national policy objectives.

For reasons outlined throughout this paper, I believe that Go Big uses the wrong instruments and could unintentionally make our situation worse, while Go Deep uses a more nuanced approach – but one that is aggressive in its intent to attack and destroy America’s enemies while being equally aggressive in its support of America’s friends.

He continues with his vision for the campaign.

Far too often the advocates of Go Big deride anything as a minimalist approach which “relies on drones and missile attacks from off shore.” In fact, Go Deep – while exploiting all the capabilities resident in both the striking and ISR (intelligence, security, and reconnaissance) features of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) – relies on a full range of capabilities resident in the United States Department of Defense and Central Command.

We will use covert agents, in conjunction and association with locals to develop (and expand) human intelligence resources that help to identify the Taliban and other insurgent leaders from the non-insurgent people – no easy task. We will indeed make extensive use of unmanned aerial vehicles for intelligence and reconnaissance as well as Predator missile attacks once the enemy is positively identified. We will continue to exploit all technical means of tracking them, to include cell phone intercepts, satellite imagery, and other tools of the intelligence world.

Davis then makes several observations concerning detractors of his strategy.

One of the biggest fears voiced by many adherents of the Go Big theory is that if the US Military withdraws, the Taliban will overcome the ANSF and take Kabul. But the Go Deep concept does not envision the complete withdrawal of American and NATO military forces. Go Deep recognizes that the training of the ANSF continues to be an important component of an eventual strategy resulting in the complete withdrawal of American military forces from Afghanistan. In the near term, however, the plan would be to set an 18 month time frame during which the bulk of American and NATO combat forces would be withdrawn from the country. Concurrent we would focus on training the ANSF to continue deepening and broadening their abilities. But I recommend that we limit the number of Afghan National Security Forces to the numbers approved by the September 10, 2008, Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board (JCMB): 134,000 members of the ANA and 80,000 members of the ANP …

Meanwhile, the United States and/or NATO would establish a base of Special Operation Forces which would continue working with the ANSF throughout the country to continue developing Human Intelligence sources by which kinetic operations against irreconcilable or unrepentant insurgent and/or terrorist forces would be identified, targeted, and killed or captured.

Davis mentions troop exhaustion as an ongoing and increasing problem, and finally mentions his view of the objection that the counterterrorism approach he advocates might lead to a resurgent Taliban who would again give safe haven to al Qaeda.

Would the Taliban, then, open those same doors in areas they may control in the future? That outcome is anything but certain. In the October 5th Newsweek article previously cited it is instructive how the Afghan Taliban members now refer to Arab al Qaeda. An insurgent named Maulvi Mohammad Haqqani said of al Qaeda: “We gave those camels [a derogatory Afghan term for Arabs] free run of our country, and they brought us face to face with disaster.” While the Taliban certainly have no love for the United States, neither do they feel any sense of obligation to paying for an al-Qaeda launching pad with their blood. They described in excruciating detail the horror they experienced and the slaughter they suffered from American attacks in October 2001 when they ruled the country.

Analysis & Commentary

Davis’ analysis is remarkable for its contradiction and also for his disbelief of his own views.  On the one hand, it’s not likely under his plan that the Taliban would return to power with the slightly smaller but more well trained Afghan National Army along with SOF performing counterterrorist HVT strikes – or so he claims.  On the other hand, he feels that is is necessary to address the objection that a return to Taliban control would mean a return to safe haven for al Qaeda.  But if it’s true that his plan would prevent a return to Taliban control, and also if it’s true that occupying forces give the Taliban their currency (and without us they wouldn’t have a raison d’être), then it shouldn’t be necessary to predict what would happen if the Taliban returned to power.

On the one hand the corrupt ANA and ANP are one of the biggest problems (and to be fair, our own coverage of ANA and ANP has been unforgiving, but still truthful).  On the other hand, reliance on them along with some HVT strikes by SOF is the cornerstone of his plan.

On the one hand logistics is a problem for more troops (and again, see our own coverage of logistics for Afghanistan which has, to our knowledge, been unmatched).  On the other hand, a small footprint with a corrupt ANA and ANP and possible return to Taliban control over the countryside apparently doesn’t impress Davis as leading to intractable logistics problems with the SOF we leave in Afghanistan.

On the one hand, Davis wants SOF performing HVT raids to take out big actors based on robust intelligence.  On the other hand, leaving the countryside to Taliban control doesn’t impress Davis as being a problem for this intelligence after collaborators are beheaded.

On the one hand, Davis observes that we don’t have enough troops to secure Afghanistan, noting the large scale engagements such as the battle of Wanat (see our own article on battles in Nuristan and Wanat in the context of massing of enemy troops).  On the other hand, a smaller ANA and fewer U.S. troops are somehow superior to what we now have and would be able to hold the terrain.

On the one hand, more U.S. troops to secure the population and kill the insurgents would be seen as an occupying force, turning the Afghan population against them.  On the other hand, SOF operators who do not protect the population but who come and kill their family members in the middle of the night are somehow acceptable to the population.

The fact of the matter is that recent Marine Corps operations in Helmand found that they were in the beginning stages of gaining the human intelligence necessary to find and weed out the enemy, but also that  fear of retribution is everywhere.  Security is paramount to the Afghans, even above schools and other assistance.  While the typical counterinsurgency tactics of population engagement and nonkinetic operations have been employed, the locals want us to chase and kill the Taliban.

It’s understandable that an alternative to a long term effort is being sought in Afghanistan.  These are happy thoughts, to be sure.  Pristine intelligence, dedicated truck drivers for logistical supplies, a highly trained and smaller ANA which can do the job of 400,000 – 500,000 combined troops, drones which give reliable information that never leads to killing noncombatants, fuel for the drones, safe SOF operators who can launch raids out of their protected FOBs, CIA operatives throwing around satchels of cash to get tips, a willing Afghan population, and so on the dream goes.

But the reality of the situation is that there are even now foreign fighters in Afghanistan, and the rejection of al Qaeda by Haqqani means nothing to the new head of the TTP, Hakimullah Mehsud, who views al Qaeda with love and affection, or to Mullah Omar who views UBL with admiration, respect and love.

The reality of the situation is that collaborators would be beheaded in short order.  The reality of the situation is that truck drivers who now practice strap hanging to U.S. convoys would all be blown up and killed.  The reality of the situation is that the Taliban would indeed return to power, and that al Qaeda swims in these waters.

The reality of the situation is that going deep is not an option, but rather, a daydream.  “Going deep” is a nicely packaged strategy for failure.  There is going big or going home.  Both of these are viable options.  Davis does raise an important moral dilemma when he discusses the condition of the troops who are repeatedly asked to deploy.  But Davis is ignoring a huge gold mine of resources.  As I have pointed out before, I have not in four years seen the density of Marines aboard Camp Lejeune that I do now.  The Marines are no longer in Anbar.  They are one of three places.  Camp Lejeune, Camp Pendleton, or aboard amphibious assault docks wasting time and money as forces in readiness.  Sure, there are some at other places such as Twenty Nine Palms, Marine Corps Air Station at Cherry Point, and so on.  But the bulk of Marines are located in the states.  While the Commandant has visions of wasteful spending on Expeditionary Fighting Vehicles and catastrophic amphibious assaults against unknown stable-state enemies, the campaign suffers in Afghanistan awaiting forces.  The Marines can and should answer the call.

But if the forces are there to conduct the campaign, Davis’ point remains salient.  Committed leadership is needed, not vacillating questions and demurrals.  And if leadership is committed, the nation can be brought along.  If the nation is brought along, the troops necessary to get the job done can and will be deployed.  This will mean an increase in the size of both the Army and Marines, and out of the several trillion dollars Timothy Geithner has printed over the last nine months, some must be found for the military.

Prior and recently related:

Can an Insurgency (and Counterinsurgency) Remain Static?

The Slow Fall of Kandahar

What Kind of Counterinsurgency for Afghanistan?

Counterinsurgency v. Counterterrorism

Why are we in the Helmand Province?

Discerning the way forward in Afghanistan

Afghanistan: What is the Strategy?

A Return to Offshore Balancing