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Background & Report

In Competing Strategies in Afghanistan we documented the push by Hamid Karzai, Secretary Miliband and Secretary Des Browne to negotiate with the Taliban.  The Canadian liberal Senators have now put their weight behind the same plan, with the Tory Senators waffling over the idea.

The wide-ranging report also calls for the military to extend tour lengths to between nine and 12 months from the current six-month rotation, something that is being actively considered by Canada’s war planners.

“We’re aware this is a very contentious issue related to families,” Kenny said. “But it will have significant advantages in terms of creating a better relationship in Afghanistan.”

The Senators said it would also cut down on the number of soldiers who have to deploy several times to the country, and presumably ease the emotional burden on their families.

But the most contentious recommendation of the report, and the one least likely to be accepted by the Tories, is that Canadian soldiers and government officials try to make contact with the Taliban insurgency. The government has repeatedly rejected this course of action even though other NATO countries have made it a common practice.

“We’ve been very careful about it,” Kenny said, noting that Tory Senators objected to the recommendation. “We believe that these communications should take place only in circumstances where we think that some specific progress can be made.”

TheStar.com even showed a nice picture of what reconciliation looks like with a picture of Taliban surrendering their weapons.

But a different picture has been painted of the Taliban intentions.

“In the daytime we are farmers; at night we are Taliban,” he said, smiling.

Recent news reports published across the world would suggest the insurgency in Afghanistan is close to being defeated. In particular, they have focused on the southern province of Helmand, where a surge in US troops has allowed Nato-led forces to take new ground.

But when The National interviewed two Taliban commanders this month, it heard, and saw, a radically different story.

In the spring of 2007, Ghafar and his colleague, Zahir Jan, travelled to Kandahar from their homes in Helmand, where they claimed innocent women and children had been buried under the rubble of buildings destroyed by air strikes. At the time, both said they were fighting to defend their religion, their country and their families.

Since then, the violence has continued unabated. The Taliban and foreign soldiers – most notably the British – have suffered heavy casualties. Thousands upon thousands of Afghan civilians have been forced to flee the fighting.

Given the intensity of the combat, two men who live through it on a daily basis could be forgiven for feeling at least a little weary. Yet, if anything, Ghafar and Zahir Jan appeared more relaxed and determined than they were a year ago.

Speaking on the condition that the location of the interview would not be revealed, they came across as happy and eager to fight. For them, each death – no matter whose side it is on – means they are a step closer to bringing the conflict to an end.

“You know, the Taliban and the Americans are as different as fire and water. Maybe the water will kill the fire or the fire will kill the water, but one of these things has to happen,” Zahir Jan said …

Offhandedly, they said the United States deserves to be attacked on its own soil and suggested the Taliban could eventually send suicide bombers to the United States. They said they were “thousands times more confident” of victory in Afghanistan than they had been before, thanks largely to growing support from the population and improved weaponry.

“We have very advanced rockets. You can split them into three parts and carry them on donkeys. Then you just walk along and when you see a convoy of troops you can fix them together and fire them very quickly,” Zahir Jan said.

“If the foreigners did not have their planes, then within five days I guarantee we would be in the streets of Kabul.”

Analysis & Commentary

It has been said that the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan now includes a mixture of drug runners, criminals, warlords, and Taliban.  True, as we have noted in The Disaggregation of the Taliban.  But as we have also noted, wheat is replacing poppy throughout Afghanistan as the money crop, and nothing stops the Taliban from extortion of farmers over the safe transport of wheat.  In fact, nothing has stopped the Taliban from extortion of wireless phone companies in Afghanistan.  The problem is not wheat, wireless phone companies or poppy.  The problem is the Taliban.

Although widely known for corruption and helping only a little in the campaign against the Taliban, the Karzai government is not why NATO and U.S. forces are in Afghanistan.  There are many corrupt governments in the world, but only a few of them have Taliban.  Criminality, drugs, corruption, lack of infrastructure, and a host of other things have managed to divert attention off of the real problem in Afghanistan.

When reconciliation with the Sunni insurgency began in Anbar, Shiekh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha and his tribe had already begun to fight al Qaeda.  Over the course of the next two years the Sunni insurgency would lay down arms, put on police uniforms, and maintain security for the population while working alongside Americans.  In Fallujah in 2007, the Iraqi Police worked hard to emulate and impress the Marines, whom they almost worshiped.  The most recent reconciliation involves more than 500 such fighters in Sunni enclaves within mostly Shi’a Balad, Iraq, these fighters also agreeing to be tried in court for any crimes.

What’s the difference?  The Sunni fighters in Iraq didn’t fight for religious reasons.  The compelling reasons were political and financial.  Any reconciliation with rogue elements in Afghanistan must target warlords, criminals and other non-religiously motivated people.  Rather than these elements, NATO is choosing the only group which will not ever reconcile due to their belief system – the Taliban.

Just like Baitullah Mehsud of the Tehrik-i-Taliban who has recently said that he wants to “fight against Americans,” the Afghan Taliban commanders see that the West and their world view are unable to be reconciled, and they want attacks on American soil again.

Unlike the Pakistani Taliban who are overt with their views, the Afghan Taliban are playing NATO for fools.  “In the daytime we are farmers; at night we are Taliban.”  Even if violence had essentially disappeared from the scene in Afghanistan, leading to the redeployment of NATO forces home, the problem will not have gone away.  The radical ideology remains, and not just in the countryside.  Secret Taliban cells are spreading lessons of jihad in Kabul University.

There exists a once in a generation opportunity to defeat one of the most dangerous, violent and insidious forces on the planet, but for the sake of temporary peace it seems that some are willing to stand down from the fight, pretending that the intentions of the Taliban are sincere.  While this game is futile and pointless, the real problem is that it is affecting strategy and wasting valuable and irreplaceable time in the campaign.  Thus, we play the game at our own peril.

The lobbying and the public relations campaign has been essentially completed, and the stage is set for a major shift in strategy in Afghanistan.  The teammates are Hamid Karzai – who has said that the West has bungled the war on the Taliban– and the British.  But the shift in strategy will not look anything like the surge or security plan for Iraq.  Rather, the British and Karzai are pushing for negotiations with the Taliban, and the British plans have been approved by the Cabinet.

It began with the British experiment with Musa Qala, and even though it went very badly, there has been no change in the long range plans.  Upon his recent visit to the U.S., Karzai made a stop at the New York Times to make sure that he communicated that he wanted the U.S. to stop arresting the Taliban and their sympathizers.  He has repeated this narrative within the last few days, and again made it clear what the real problem is with the campaign.  Western forces are to blame for rising violence in Afghanistan.

Karzai said in an interview on Indian television that the West risks losing peoples’ goodwill and that its forces should have done more to crack down on Taliban and al-Qaeda bases outside the country.

In the interview with CNBC TV 18 aired Monday, he didn’t directly mention bases in Pakistan, but his government has singled out that country in the past.

Karzai’s criticism — including his insistence that civilian casualties must stop — is important in light of his stated plan to stand for re-election next year. The president is often criticized in Afghanistan for being too close to the United States and Britain.

The president said Western forces did not focus on “sanctuaries of terrorists” despite his government’s warnings over the past five years.

“It was a serious neglect of that, in spite of our warning,” he said, adding that other former members of the Taliban who had given up arms were unfairly hunted down within Afghan borders.

“Some of the Taliban who have laid down their arms, who are living in the Afghan villages peacefully, who have accepted Afghanistan’s new order, they were chased, they were hunted for no reason, and they were forced to flee the country,” he said, according to Reuters.

The narrative is nonsensical, since the sanctuaries to which Karzai refers are the very places to which the Afghan Taliban flee for safe haven.  Karzai wants them targeted in Pakistan, but not in Afghanistan.  Nonetheless, the narrative is given additional weight by the British.  Once eager to get back into the “good war” in Afghanistan after the Basra disaster, the British are weary and reeling from the defections of high level generals to the civilian world.  Miliband turned up the rhetoric on the campaign, reiterating the tripe that there is no military solution to the problem, and the same notions were pushed by Des Browne, who not only endorsed talks with the Afghan Taliban, but also the negotiations with the Tehrik-i-Taliban in Pakistan.

The final act in this sorry play involves British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

As the deadliest year in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion in 2001 comes to a close, Gordon Brown is ready to talk to the Taliban in a major shift in strategy that is likely to cause consternation among hardliners in the White House.

Six years after British troops were first deployed to oust the Taliban regime, the prime minister believes the time has come to open a dialogue in the hope of moving from military action to consensus-building among the tribal leaders. Since January 1, more than 6,200 people have been killed in violence related to the insurgency, including 40 British soldiers. In total, 86 British troops have died. The latest casualty was Sergeant Lee Johnson, whose vehicle hit a mine before the fall of Taliban-held town of Musa Qala.

The Cabinet on Friday approved a three-pronged plan that Mr Brown will outline for security to be provided by Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) and the Afghan national army, followed by economic and political development in Afghanistan.

Pakistan defends its participation in the negotiations with the Pakistani Taliban, saying that they aren’t engaged in talks with terrorist, but rather, “peace-loving” people.  Karzai sees the Afghan Taliban as peace-loving too and unrelated to the violence, and has struck deals with some of the hard core commanders.  The Afghanis believes it’s Pakistan’s fault, and the Pakistanis believe it’s all Afghanistan’s fault.

The British are tired and want to”negotiate,” the Norwegians are engaged solely in force protection, and the Germans are paying $30,000 per month to warlords for protection.  Gates has not had yet seen fit to pull the rug from under NATO command and retake authority over the campaign, and before Petraeus even becomes fully engaged in CENTCOM, the plans to capitulate are in full swing with him lacking the organizational authority to do anything about it.

The U.S. Marines who won the Anbar Province have had significant initial success in the Helmand Province in turning back Taliban control.  But whether because of lack of forces or simple unwillingness, NATO is recalcitrant and won’t learn from the example.  The NATO strategy being pushed is not one that will simply coexist alongside the U.S. strategy, any more than this approach succeeded in Basra.  It is literally in competition with the U.S. approach, and will work against the goals of the campaign.  Operation Enduring Freedom is becoming a testimony to a squandered opportunity, and the campaign is in very bad trouble.  If the West has indeed squandered an opportunity to kill the Taliban, negotiating with them is not the answer.

In spite of the success the U.S. Marines have had in the Helmand Province (and the example that this has provided to NATO), the balance of NATO forces in Afghanistan are focused primarily on force protection, and in order to procure that protection, some shady deals have been struck.  Spiegel recently interviewed Hamid Karzai, and while the entire piece is worth studying, one exchange stands out as descriptive of the campaign thus far.  NATO forces are buying protection from criminals and warlords.

SPIEGEL: Dirty deals are still necessary for the stability of Afghanistan?

Karzai: Absolutely necessary, because we lack the power to solve these problems in other ways. What do you want? War? Let me give you an example. We wanted to arrest a really terrible warlord, but we couldn’t do it because he is being protected by a particular country. We found out that he was being paid $30,000 a month to stay on his good side. They even used his soldiers as guards …

SPIEGEL: That sounds like the story of Commander Nasir Mohammed in Badakhshan, a province where German soldiers are based.

Karzai: I don’t want to name the country because it will hurt a close friend and ally. But there are also many other countries who contract the Afghan militias and their leaders. So I can only work where I can act, and I must always calculate what will happen before doing anything.

Karzai has just described an incredibly weak government, along with an incredibly weak campaign if the Germans are paying criminals $30,000 per month for protection.  In this case, the Germans don’t have the force (or rules of engagement) necessary to accomplish force protection, and thus they are buying it.

Another extreme example comes from the Norwegians.

The Norwegian base at Meymaneh is less secure than similar bases belonging to other ISAF forces. “The officers are angry, and I can see why,” says Vice Admiral Jan Reksten, in charge of the Norwegian contingent in Afghanistan.

Faryab province in northwestern Afghanistan has become increasingly restless in recent years. Taliban strength has been growing and there has been fighting in Meymaneh both last fall and in May this year.

Both the military and political heads of the armed forces accept that the base needs strengthening. When the Norwegian force was asked what it needed to defend itself, it asked for 120 troops and long-range weapons. A mobile reaction force was also ordered, so that the allied garrisons in the area could assist each other if any of them came under heavy attack.

Initially they were offered 100 men and long-range weapons. This was pared down to what was termed an absolute minimum of 76, still including mortars.

The most recent tally has fallen to 46 soldiers, with no long-range arms. These will instead be put into storage in Mazar-e-Sharif. This is the sequence of events which has caused tempers to fray.

The base at Meymaneh is a so-called Provincial Reconstruction Team base that provides security and helps with reconstruction in their local area. There are 30 such bases in Afghanistan. The United States alone has 12.

According to defense chief Sverre Diesen and army chief Robert Mood, Meymaneh will in fact be strengthened by the arrival of the arrival of more than 40 troops. The base will house a total of 200 Norwegians, of which 60 are deployed with the helicopter ambulance team currently stationed there. A few Latvian soldiers are also on the base.

“The Swedes, Germans and everyone else have robust rapid response forces. Mortars and armoured assault vehicles are almost always included,” says Col. Ivar Halset, who takes over as commander in Meymaneh in July.

“If we come under the sort of attack we experienced in May, we would no longer have weapons superiority over the Taliban,” adds Halset.

“The nearest reinforcements are an eight hour drive from Meymaneh and a further four to five hours from the areas where trouble is most likely occur,” he concludes.

“When the Norwegian force was asked what it needed to defend itself …” says it all.  The Norwegians are preoccupied with force protection, and as well they should be.  They lack even the basic weapons necessary to do the job, and are so far away from reinforcements (eight hours) and high trouble locations (four hours) that consideration of a combat outpost or counterinsurgency operations is out of the question.

The Australians also admit that more forces are needed.

Defence boss Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston has predicted foreign forces will be in Afghanistan for more than 10 years and thousands more troops are needed there.

He told a Senate Committee yesterday the Australian troops in Oruzgan province had Taliban insurgents on the back foot.

But he admitted they were unable to “hold the ground”.

“We can prevail in small areas but not across the whole province,” he said.

“Large tracts of the province are controlled by the Taliban.

“The ability to hold territory and influence what is happening – that’s the issue. There is a long, long way to go.”

Air Chief Marshal Houston’s sober assessment was backed by Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon.

And then he just as quickly states that not another Australian troop will be committed to the campaign.  Upon his recent retirement, General McNeill made some important observations.

General McNeill’s Isaf control began in February last year. At that time, the force was comprised of 33,000 NATO troops. Since then, 20,000 more have been added, but still more are needed, he said.

“This is an under-resourced war and it needs more manoeuvre units, it needs more flying machines, it needs more intelligence, surveillance and recognisance apparatus”, the general stated.

“I’m not just focused on the US sector, I’m talking about across the country.”

But the example has been given to us.  Ask the Marines in the Helmand Province if they wish to give $30,000 a month to organized crime as protection money.  On second thought, we know the answer to that question before we ask, and hence, we know what needs to be done to win the campaign.  It’s just a matter of doing it.

While purveying propaganda, al Qaeda and Taliban spokesmen often unintentionally relinquish information that points to vulnerabilities and infighting within their organization.  An interview with a jihadist is used below, along with a question and answer session by Ayman al-Zawahiri, to supply the broad outlines of two specific vulnerabilities.

Background & Report

In spite of the U.S. objections to negotiations with the Tehrik-i-Taliban, there has been enough British and Canadian support, as well as internal support within Pakistan, that the authorities were persuaded to continue the process.  They want more time.

This week the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, U.S. General Dan McNeil said any deal must include stopping fighters from crossing the two countries’ shared border.

“We have gone back and looked at the data we have over a long period of time when there have been other peace deals,” he said.  “And the fact is each time the talks resulted in a peace deal we have an increased level of activity.”

Pakistani officials insist that unlike previous agreements the new peace talks involve elected government representatives – not the military – and those representatives have more credibility with tribal leaders …

Pakistan’s former spy agency chief Asad Durrani says people living near the disputed border known as the Durand line who are sympathetic to the Taliban will not immediately change their behavior because of a peace agreement. 

“If we expect that these people will completely prevent the crossings of the Durand line – that cannot be done, simply impossible,” he said.  “If we think that we can prevent those people who feel motivated to go on the other side and help the Afghan resistance – that again is mission impossible.”

Despite U.S. criticism of the deal and pessimism even among Pakistanis about finding a lasting peace agreement, negotiator Arshad Abdullah says that after more than six years of failed policies, critics should give the new approach time.

“With these agreements hopefully Afghanistan will be better off.  It is a trial.  Basically we want the world community to give us a chance and see how successful we are,” he said.  “It is a matter of three or four months and within six months hopefully we will have an even better situation.”

But is more time going to matter?  Understanding the enemy is crucial in the struggle against the global insurgency.  An Asia Times journalist gives us a glimpse into the nature of the enemy in a recent article, and it behooves us to listen as he describes a conversation with a jihadi.

Seven months ago I visited Bajaur and Mohmandagencies. As my taxi driver headed from Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, he was played some Pashtu music on the car’s CD. Quickly, though, he changed it for jihadi songs.

“The militants have not only brought guns to the tribal areas, they have also brought a culture which has transformed tribal society,” commented a passenger traveling with me.

Syed Saleem Shahzad (with Asia Times) then goes on to describe a more recent meeting with a jihadi in the context of thinking about this “culture which has transformed” society.  He talks with a fighter who converses with him under the psuedonym “S.”

S is the son of a Pakistani military officer and left his home after completing school at the age of 17. Ever since, he has been an active jihadi, and in eight years he has only seen his family once.

He joined al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan before September 11, 2001 – even serving for bin Laden – but soon after that event he went to the South Waziristan tribal area in Pakistan with Arab-Afghans such as Sheikh Ahmad Saeed Khadr and Sheikh Essa.

S said his association with Arab-Afghan militants turned him from an ordinary jihadi into an astute trainer. “In my early 20s, I was training big names of this region, including young Arabs and Uzbeks who were many years older than me,” said S.

S could have earned a monthly stipend to devote himself to being a jihad, but he chose to work as a trader in Pakistani cities to earn extra money. He then returned to the mountain vastness of Afghanistan to join the Taliban’s fight against NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) in Afghanistan.

A turning point in S’s life came when, returning from Khost province in Afghanistan where he ran a training camp, he was arrested by Pakistani Frontier Corps.

“I was passed on from one security agency to another, and each time the interrogation methods changed. My pre-9/11 association with bin Laden and Zawahiri and occasional meetings with Zawahiri after 9/11 boosted me as an ‘al-Qaeda associate’ in the eyes of my Pakistani examiners. For one-and-half years I did not see a single ray of sunlight. After thorough interrogations, they concluded that I was just a fighter and a trainer against NATO troops who happened to be a ‘renegade’ son of an army officer,” said S.

“They contacted my father and despite that he had abandoned me a long time ago, when he heard about my situation all his fatherly affection returned and he agreed to become my guarantor that I would not take part in any jihadi activities.

“So I was released in front of Peshawar railway station, blindfolded, and when my blinds were removed there was my old father in front of me. I was standing with my hands and feet chained, and when my guards removed these my father hugged me and wept profusely.

“That was the only brief interaction between me and my family as I once again went into my own world of jihad. It was me and my gun, and I never looked back to see if there was any family, a father or a mother, waiting for me … though I miss them a lot,” S related in a sad, soft voice.

Syed Saleem Shahzad goes on to discuss the location of Bin Laden and other things, but a meaningful exchange occurs late in the interview.

S said he is against the use of suicide attacks. “I do not know the exact status of such attacks in Islamic law, but certainly in my manuals of war it is prohibited. I have argued with all the top commanders that any target can be hit without the use of suicide attacks,” S said.

On strategic matters, S is clear that attacks on Pakistani security forces in the tribal areas can only add up to problems. “I always argued with top ideologues like Sheikh Essa that the more success we get in Afghanistan, the more we will gain support from Pakistan. If NATO remains strong in Afghanistan, it will put pressure on Pakistan. If NATO remains weaker in Afghanistan, it will dare [encourage] Pakistan to support the Taliban, its only real allies in the region,” S said.

Analysis & Commentary

Two very remarkable vulnerabilities have been accidentally divulged in this last exchange.  It is obvious that S is religiously motivated.  Not only does he say so, but the hold and sway this has over him is enough to break with a weeping father to go back to his commanders.  Its power is complete with this jihadist.

This same religious commitment is also causing a problem within the movement.  Note what S says about the tactics of suicide attacks.  “I do not know the exact status of such attacks in Islamic law, but certainly in my manuals of war it is prohibited. I have argued with all the top commanders that any target can be hit without the use of suicide attacks.”

There may be a couple of reasons for the difficulty, one of which is the certain death of the jihadist.  But the most significant objection doubtless has to do with death of noncombatant Muslims due to these attacks.  They would like to believe that the suicide bomb is the Taliban equivalent of the JDAM targeted with GPS.  Innocents are spared, or so the claim goes.  Baitullah Mehsud recently had his own press conference in which he says that suicide attacks are “our most destructive weapon … out atom bomb,” but better than the enemy’s atom bomb because our bomb targets only the enemy while the enemy’s kills innocents.

But this isn’t true, and there is work ongoing within their ranks to backfit a justification for their tactics.  The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has an interesting analysis of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s recent Q&A session, and suicide tactics play a prominent role, having been brought up in the questions posed to Zawahiri.  The problem is also summarized in the most recent issue of the CTC Sentinel.

In the course of defending al-Qa`ida against charges of unjustly killing innocent Muslims during his April 2, 2008 “open interview,” Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri reintroduced Hukm al-Tatarrus (the law on using human shields) into the debate.1 A relatively unfamiliar term to non-Muslims and Muslims alike, al-Tatarrus refers to God’s sanctioning of Muslim armies that are forced to kill other Muslims who are being used as human shields by an enemy during a time of war.2 Al-Tatarrus is a religiously legitimate, albeit obscure, Islamic concept that al-Qa`ida ideologues have been increasingly using in order to exculpate themselves from charges of apostasy. The method in which al-Qa`ida is promoting al-Tatarrus, however, seeks to facilitate the sacrifice of Muslim lives in contravention of 14 centuries of religious teachings.

Al Qaeda has turned to Abu Yahya for scholarly analysis, but his scholarship is nothing short of revolutionary, and he turns out not to be much of a scholar after all.

While the Qur’anic and hadith restrictions on killing innocent Muslims were appropriate during the early days of Islam, he suggests, they should have no bearing on warfare today because modern warfare is qualitatively different. Whereas early Islamic thinkers had to consider the implications of using a catapult against an enemy fortress in which Muslims were residing, or conducting night raids against an enemy household in which Muslims were likely present, the nature of contemporary warfare is one where the enemy uses “raids, clashes and ambushes, and they hardly ever stop chasing the mujahidin everywhere and all the time, imprisoning them, their families and their supporters.” What it means to be “directly engaged in combat,” Abu Yahyaargues, has changed. By positing that Islam is in a state of constant and universal warfare, he implicitly lowers the threshold for proving that one’s killing of innocent Muslims is just.

In short, the nature of today’s all-encompassing warfare means that the jihadist movement must find a “new perception of different ways of modern shielding which were probably not provided for by the scholars of Islam who knew only of the weapons used during their era.” In these few sentences, Abu Yahya attempts to wipe the slate clean of the most sacred and defining texts with regard to the issue of killing human shields.

They are obviously struggling with the justification for what Baitullah Mehsud calls his “most destructive weapon.”  The brutality of al Qaeda in the Anbar province helped to turn the population against them.  A well aimed information campaign outlining the noncombatant casualties and suffering resulting from suicide attacks is appropriate and would possibly be effective in weakening the enemy’s tactical position.  In Anbar the U.S. had to prove themselves to be the stronger horse (to use a phrase made popular by Bin Laden).  There is no magic, and the necessary context for a rejection of jihad is its battlespace defeat.  But the battlespace defeat might be assisted by a good information campaign targeting this vulnerability.

The second important thing we learn from the interview of S is that the campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan is, in the words of The Captain’s Journal, inextricably tied.  “If NATO remains strong in Afghanistan, it will put pressure on Pakistan. If NATO remains weaker in Afghanistan, it will dare [encourage] Pakistan to support the Taliban, its only real allies in the region,” S said.

The corollary to the the tribal region of Pakistan being a safe haven for the Taliban is that strong action in Afghanistan will affect Pakistan.  It is one campaign, a fight against a transnational insurgency, and seeing the campaign through the lens of borders and nation-states is wrongheaded.  The surest way to put pressure on the tribal region within Pakistan is to continue the chase in Afghanistan.  There is no replacement for kinetic operations to kill or capture the enemy.  We know this not only because it is common sense, but also because the enemy has told us so.

In Command Structure Changes for Afghanistan we discussed the possibility that Secretary of Defense Gates would demand changes in the strategic alignment of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.  Promotion of General Petraeus to Commander of CENTCOM without a realignment of U.S. troops to his direct command (they currently report to NATO command) removes the possibility for any strategic changes needed to make the campaign successful.

There are further developments in the potential realignment of forces, and General McNeill has made his position known.

The top NATO commander in Afghanistan said on Wednesday he favored talks to end the rotating command among allied forces in the violent south of the country, where the United States has added more troops.

U.S. Army Gen. Dan McNeill also said he still needed more troops and aircraft for his 50,000-strong force, declaring he was a “fairly frugal dude” and only asked for what he needed.

“I am in favor of a dialogue by the policymakers and the politicians about the consideration of one country leading a multinational headquarters in the south,” McNeill told reporters in Washington by videolink from Kabul.

But as soon as McNeill said these words, politics seemed to spell the end of the potential realignment.

NATO will continue to rotate command of its troops in the violent South of Afghanistan despite U.S. generals’ concerns that the arrangement disrupts operations, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

To minimize problems caused by the changeovers, each nation with major troop contingents in the South will take command for one year rather than the current nine months, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters.

The announcement appeared to end a debate within NATO that some diplomats saw as an attempt by the United States to take charge of southern Afghanistan, the scene of the heaviest fighting between allied troops and Taliban insurgents.

The new arrangement does mean the United States will command NATO forces in the South — but not until late 2010. The Netherlands and Britain will each have a year in charge first after Canada’s command ends this November.

So the debate has ended with politics as the winner, and the U.S. will take over in the South where the Marines were recently deployed, but not until 2010.  Next in the tortured story, the Marines may be looking at a realignment of forces to focus on Afghanistan.

The Marine Corps may begin shifting its major combat forces out of Iraq to focus on Afghanistan in 2009 if greater security in Iraq allows a reduction of Marines there, top Pentagon officials said yesterday.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the proposal by the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. James Conway, to focus his force on Afghanistan — which they rejected late last year — could be reconsidered.

“Should we be in a position to move forces into Afghanistan, I think that certainly would come back into consideration,” Mullen said at a Pentagon briefing. He said that he understands it is challenging for the Marines to have “a foot in both countries” and that Conway seeks to “optimize the forces that he has,” but stressed that any shift is likely to occur “down the road.”

Gates said he agrees that the Marine Corps shift is “a possibility” for next year. He explained that when he earlier said the change “wouldn’t happen on my watch,” that was not an unchangeable policy decision — he meant it would not unfold until 2009, when he plans to step down.

But by then the Afghan troops are supposed to take over operations.  “Afghanistan’s national army will have the manpower to take the lead in fighting the Taliban by early 2009, helping NATO forces move toward a support role, the general in charge of Afghan troop training said.”

So NATO stays in charge, while more U.S. Marines are deployed to Afghanistan – under NATO control without a coherent strategy – and the U.S. takes over operations in the South in 2010, but this is irrelevant because by this time the Afghan troops will have taken charge.

Got it?  Actually, with this plan, The Captain’s Journal has a different prediction in mind.  The Taliban win because of our inept vacillations and political games.

This is the sixth in a series following the U.S. Marines through the Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

U.S. Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit try to take shelter from a sand storm at forward operating base Dwyer in the Helmand province of southern Afghanistan Wednesday, May 7, 2008. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

Report

The Marines are continuing their success in the Garmser area of the Helmand Province in Afghanistan.

Rosie DiManno
Columnist

KABUL–American jarheads are either prudently pacifying a swath of Helmand province or kicking out the doors and ratcheting up the insurgency.

Depends on whom you ask.

From the distance of the capital, it’s impossible to confirm anything firsthand. But the commander of the 24th U.S. Marine Expeditionary Unit came all the way to Kabul yesterday, both to proclaim initial combat success and to quash reports of extensive hardship visited upon a fleeing populace.

According to Lt.-Col. Kent Hayes, the known scorecard reads thusly: Marine casualties: 0. Civilian casualties: 0. Displaced persons: “Very, very few.”

Those citizens, Hayes adds, were already on the move when Marines set out to clear key transit routes – for arms and fighters crossing over the border from Pakistan, just to the south – in Garmser district. “I can’t even speculate as to the reason why, or where they went. I can tell you that they have not been leaving from any area that we have control over.”

While Hayes wouldn’t give out Taliban body counts from the past fortnight, the provincial governor puts the figure at 150, most of them allegedly foreign fighters.

Hayes merely agrees not to quibble with that.

“As practice, the Marines don’t use that as our way of determining success. We judge our success by what our mission was. The bottom line is, we fight them, we defeat them.”

British troops, who have charge of Helmand under the International Security Assistance Force – Canadians next door in Kandahar – had not been able to secure that area.

The U.S. Marines, 2,400 strong and many of them battle-hardened from combat in Iraq, were recently parachuted in at the urging of NATO, desperate for fighting-capable reinforcement.

… the Taliban are shoving back hard, which is a rarity since the insurgents avoid conventional confrontations, unable to counter heavy weapons and supporting air strikes.

“They are consistently engaging us in small numbers. It’s just continual, constant contact. And we’re defeating them. What we have set out to do, we have accomplished.”

No Afghan troops have been involved in this mission.

Hayes insists the effectiveness of the aggressive American approach is already evident on the ground. “We have seen that they are starting to have trouble reinforcing and getting arms.”

Intelligence gathered, some of it from Afghan military authorities, indicates the Taliban are pulling in their own reinforcements from other districts, perhaps other volatile southern provinces, maybe inadvertently easing the threat in places such as Kandahar, though this remains to be seen.

“Because we’ve seen fighters coming in from other areas, the rest of Helmand, rather than from just around Garmser, that is telling us about the success we’re having, that we are affecting and disrupting them,” said Hayes. “We are defeating the enemy when they oppose us and, when they reinforce, we’re defeating them as well.”

Garmser has long been used as a planning, staging and logistics hub by the neo-Taliban. Choking off Garmser is the Marines’ mission, though some diplomatic – even military – observers have questioned the long-term impact of a muscular offensive that alienates the local population …

There is no indication how long this Marine-led operation will last or how far south the Taliban will be chased.

“This is the start,” said Hayes. “We started in Garmser. As far as ending it, I will tell you that it’s not time-driven. We will leave Garmser at the time and place of our choosing.”

Analysis & Commentary

As a brief comment on the method of transport of the Marines to the theater and then to Helmand, they did not parachute in.  The unit is not airborne (except for MARSOC).

As we previously noted, the caterwauling about the aggressiveness of the Marine operations is expected and will subside when the success of the mission becomes apparent.  Regarding the history of success, it is too easy to forget who pacified the Anbar Province.

It is a very positve sign that the Taliban are deploying forces to Garmser to assist in their defenses, and it casts light on the propaganda recently spewed by the Taliban concerning this operation, proving it to be lies.

The Taliban have suffered their first major loss in this year’s offensive, but they are putting on a brave face, even spinning the setback as a triumph in their broader battle against foreign forces in Afghanistan …

The Taliban … claim the loss of one base is not critical, and anyway, for NATO to hold on to its gain it will have to commit thousands of troops to the outpost, which is located in the inhospitable desert, if it is to effectively guard the lawless and porous border through which the Taliban funnel men, arms and supplies.

It doesn’t help the Taliban if the Marines are generally confined to this area of operations if they too are so confined because they have decided that Garmser really does play an important role in their plan.  In other words, the Taliban are as tied down as the Marines, and in this case they are losing.

The report of Taliban moving fighters into this area is confirmed by other accounts.

Maj. Tom Clinton Jr. said the Marines would be in Garmser for several more weeks. It means the Marines might not take part in an operation that was planned in another southern province this month.

“The number of fighters that stood and fought is kind of surprising to me, but obviously they’re fighting for something,” Clinton said, alluding to poppies. “They’re flowing in, guys are going south and picking up arms. We have an opportunity to really clear them out, cripple them, so I think we’re exploiting the success we’re finding.”

U.S. Gen. Dan McNeill, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, has said he needs three more brigades — two for combat and one to train Afghan soldiers, roughly 7,500 to 10,000 additional soldiers.

When the Marines eventually leave Garmser, any gains the 24th has made could be quickly erased unless other forces from NATO or the Afghan government move in.

“We can’t be a permanent 24/7 presence. We don’t have enough men to stay here,” said Staff Sgt. Darrell Penyak, 29, of Grove City, Ohio. “We would need the ANA (Afghan army) to move in, and right now the way we’re fighting, there’s no way the ANA can come in. They couldn’t handle it.”

Afghanistan’s army and police forces are steadily growing, but are still not big — or skilled — enough to protect much of the country. Spokesmen for both forces said they were not aware of plans to send forces to Garmser.

Col. Nick Borton, commander of British forces in the southern part of Helmand, recently visited U.S. positions in Garmser, where he told the Americans he’d be happy if they stayed on.

“If they’re here for only a short time, we can’t build very much off that,” he said. “Their presence for a few days doesn’t really help us.”

A representative of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. government aid arm, told Marine battalion commander Lt. Col. Anthony Henderson that “people lose faith if you pull out.”

The next day, at a meeting of Marines and Afghan elders, the bearded, turban-wearing men told Marine Capt. Charles O’Neill that the two sides could “join together” to fight the Taliban. “When you protect us, we will be able to protect you,” the leader of the elders said.

This last paragraph is stunning.  Note well how closely what the Afghan elders said matches professional counterinsurgency doctrine.  “When you protect us, we will be able to protect you.”  This statement comes from the elders very soon after operations by the Marines, and it is indicative of pregnant possibilities.

Yet the Marines must leave, presumably to conduct other kinetic operations elsewhere in Afghanistan.  The force size is not large enough, and it seems doubtful that the British will be able to hold the terrain once the Marines leave.

This most recent account of the Marines in Helmand breathes life into a languishing campaign with rapid and remarkable success, but it also shows the need for force projection and properly resourcing the campaign.  Taking the terrain will help little if we cannot hold it, and leaving will possibly hurt counterinsurgency efforts when the Taliban re-enter the town and kill those who have cooperated with the Marines.  Taking the terrain next time may not be so easy.

Prior:

Marines Mired in Red Tape in Afghanistan

Marines Engage Taliban in Helmand Province

Operation Azada Wosa – “Stay Free”

Following the Marines Through Helmand

Following the Marines Through Helmand II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In The Disaggregation of the Taliban we noted that the analysis by David Ignatius concerning the diminution of al Qaeda and the Taliban was likely overly optimistic.  The Taliban insurgency has strengthened.  But if The Captain’s Journal is quick to point out overly optimistic assessments, we are equally quick to claim the successes when they exist.  Take careful note of the assessment offered by Ignatius concerning al Qaeda.

The most interesting discovery during a visit to this city where Osama bin Laden planted his flag in 1996 is that al-Qaeda seems to have all but disappeared. The group is on the run, too, in Iraq, and that raises some interesting questions about how to pursue this terrorist enemy.

“Al-Qaeda is not a topic of conversation here,” says Col. Mark Johnstone, the deputy commander of Task Force Bayonet, which oversees four provinces surrounding Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. Lt. Col. Pete Benchoff agrees: “We’re not seeing a lot of al-Qaeda fighters. They’ve shifted here to facilitation and support.”

You hear the same story farther north from the officers who oversee the provinces along the Pakistan border. A survey conducted last November and December in Nuristan, once an al-Qaeda stronghold, found that the group barely registered as a security concern among the population.

Al Qaeda is defeated in Anbar, and is taking a beating in Tarmiyah, Mosul, and throughout the balance of Northern Iraq.  But if the assessment Ignatius gives us is correct, the power of al Qaeda is waning in the tribal areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan as well.

The Asia Times must be read with caution due to the exaggeration in which this source sometimes engages, and so we sat on this report for several days while waiting for confirmatory analysis.  The assessment by David Ignatius serves as this confirmation.  Some (Asia Times) reports attempt to give excuses for al Qaeda and Taliban failures while they accidentally divulge important truths about the same.  There was recently such a report, humorously entitled Al Qaeda adds muscle to the Taliban fight.

From many hundreds, al-Qaeda now has fewer than 75 Arabs involved in the Afghan “war on terror” theater, but the group is more lethal in that it has successfully established a local franchise of warriors who have fully embraced al-Qaeda’s ideology and who are capable of conducting a war of attrition against the coalition in Afghanistan.

In the years following the United States-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, al-Qaeda lost hundreds of members, either killed or arrested or departed to other regions. These included diehard Arab ideologues such as Mustapha Seth Marium (arrested) and commanders Abu Laith al-Libbi (killed) and Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi (arrested) .

And this month, news of the death in January of Abdul Hameed, alias Abu Obaida al-Misri, from Hepatitis B, was released to Western intelligence. He was a most-trusted aide of al-Qaeda deputy Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri and had been appointed by Osama bin Laden as the head of the khuruj (revolt) in Pakistan. He was in his mid-50s.

While al-Qaedawas suffering losses, Pakistan’s tribal areas became increasingly radicalized, which al-Qaedawas able to tap into to reinvigorate the Afghan insurgency. When military operations chopped off its vertical growth, it grew horizontally.

This defied intelligence estimates, polls, analysis and strategic opinions. Former US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld was of the opinion that by 2003, as a result of US military operations in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda had been destroyed as an organization and it was unable to strike against US interests.

However, the US National Intelligence Estimate report in July 2007 said al-Qaeda had regrouped and posed a threat to the US homeland. Recently, US President George W Bush also said al-Qaeda was a serious threat.

The year 2007 was important for al-Qaeda’s development as severalstand-alone Arab groups operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas, including Libyans and Egyptians, either merged into al-Qaeda or made an alliance in which they would be subservient to al-Qaeda’s command.

With al-Qaeda losing key members, a vacuum should have been created, but that did not happen, and another figure has emerged – Maulana Ilyas Kashmiri. He is a veteran fighter of the Kashmir struggle, groomed by Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence’s India cell.

Islamabad’s clampdown on activities in Kashmir and being arrested a few times disheartened Kashmiri, and he moved to the North Waziristan tribal area. He was soon followed by his diehard Punjabi colleagues and they made Afghanistan their new battlefield.

This year, a “crossbreed” of fighters – a combination of Arab command and that of Kashmiri, as well as an alliance with tribal warlord Baitullah Mehsud – is expected to spring some surprises in Afghanistan.

There is no reason to discuss the fact that Arab fighters have almost disappeared from the scene unless intelligence has already seen signs of this.  The public relations arm of al Qaeda jumped into action with the Asia Times, as they have many times before, since it is customary for them to regurgitate what they’re told without much critical analysis.

To  be sure, Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud is a very real threat, and has in fact actually made very real threats.  “Allah willing, Musharraf will suffer great pain, along with all his aides. The Muslims will never forgive Musharraf for the sin he committed.  We want to eradicate Britain and America, and to shatter the arrogance and tyranny of the infidels. We pray that Allah will enable us to destroy the White House, New York, and London.”  Note that Mehsud doesn’t make our destruction contingent upon our presence in Afghanistan or Pakistan.  He threatens to destroy the U.S. because we are “infidels.”  This is not a local insurgency.  It is a transnational insurgency.

The global jihad is not finished, and will be carried forward by the new breed of Taliban that has aspirations beyond the borders of Pakistan.  The Afghanistan campaign will proceed forward against primarily the Taliban (with perhaps also some Kashmiris), indigenous both to Afghanistan and Pakistan.  But despite the attempt by the Asia Times to put a good face on al Qaeda, they are diminishing in both numbers and effectiveness.  Despite their recruitment efforts, they are losing their global jihad to U.S. forces, and their very propaganda efforts tell us so.

After sitting idle mired in NATO bureaucratic red tape for six weeks, the U.S. Marines have finally been deployed into the Helmand Province where they have targeted a Taliban stronghold town called Garmser.

US Marines pushed into a stronghold of extremist Taliban resistance in southernmost Afghanistan Tuesday in their first major operation since deploying to Afghanistan last month …

Garmser in southern Helmand is an area of difficult desert terrain that extends down to the Pakistan border across which Taliban reinforcements and weapons are said to arrive to enter a growing insurgency.

Soldiers with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, based in the neighbouring province of Kandahar, were airlifted into forward bases in the area last week or moved in on convoys, ISAF said.

From there they launched the operation named Azada Wosa, which means Be Free in the Pashtu language of southern and eastern Afghanistan …

Military officials say Helmand is a nest of hardcore Taliban fighters supported by international Islamic “jihadists” and the centre of Afghanistan’s booming opium and heroin trade.

But for reasons recommended by The Captain’s Journal in October of 2007, the Marines aren’t after poppy according to Major Tom Clinton.

The Marines are entering an area lush with opium poppies. The Marines don’t want to antagonize the local population by joining U.S.-backed efforts to destroy the crop. “We’re not coming to eradicate poppy,” Clinton says. “We’re coming to clear the Taliban.”

The town of Garmser has been under the control of Taliban fighters who have been expecting a fight for some time.

The Taliban presence in Garmser has been a running sore for British forces for the past year, but British commanders have not previously had the combat forces available to push the Taliban out.

The Taliban claims to have several hundred fighters in the area, with prepared bunkers and tunnel complexes that have proved resistant to frequent Western aerial bombing raids.

The Telegraph was able to interview two Taliban commanders operating in the Garmserarea last month, who said they expected to resist any assault by Western forces.

“It will be really difficult for the British,” said Mullah Ghafour, not his real name. “We have 20 kilometres depth of defences, with all kinds of mines. They have tried before to push us back. In Garmser it is a face to face fight.”

But the Taliban are facing the U.S. Marines, many of whom are veterans of the Anbar Province.  Being dug in is not helping the Taliban, who lost their command center today.

In one short engagement this morning, the Marines took rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire, and a Marine scout helicopter killed two insurgents with rockets and .50-cal machine gun fire.

The battle for the Taliban command center raged all day today, said Lt. Anthony Henderson, who commands the 1st Battalion 6th Marine Regiment, the core infantry unit of the 24th MEU.

Henderson said the Marines gradually pushed the Taliban back into a corner of the facility and then called in air strikes by Cobra attack helicopters with Hellfire missiles.

The Taliban are learning what General George Patton knew years ago, namely that fixed fortifications are monuments to man’s stupidity.  Inch by inch, room by room, the Marines are prepared to complete the battle, both kinetic operations and reconstruction of the area.

The Marines had prepared on Monday by cleaning weapons and handing out grenades. The leader of one of the three companies involved — Charlie Company commander Capt. John Moder — said his men were ready.

“The feeling in general is optimistic, excited,” said Moder, 34, of North Kingstown, Rhode Island. “They’ve been training for this deployment the last nine months. We’ve got veteran leaders.”

Many of the men in the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit served in 2006 and 2007 in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province in western Iraq. The vast region was once the stronghold of al-Qaida in Iraq before the militants were pushed out in early 2007.

Moder said that experience would affect how his men fight in Afghanistan. “These guys saw a lot of progress in Ramadi, so they understand it’s not just kinetic (fighting) but it’s reconstruction and economic development.”

But on the initial assault, Moder said his men were prepared to face mines and homemade bombs and “anybody that wants to fight us.”

One Marine in Charlie Company, Cpl. Matt Gregorio, 26, from Boston, alluded to the fact the Marines had been in Afghanistan for six weeks without carrying out any missions. He said the mood was “anxious, excited.”

“We’ve been waiting a while to get this going,” he said.

A while indeed.  Six weeks mired in red tape.  But progress has started, and the Taliban in this AO will surrender or die.

**** UPDATE ****

Welcome to Hugh Hewitt readers and thanks to Hugh for the link.  Also welcome to Pajamas Media readers.

In Taliban and al Qaeda Strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan we set out the intended strategy of attacking NATO supply lines through the Khyber pass.  This Al Jazeera video does a fairly good job of laying out the strategy and summarizing the importance of this plan to date.

This strategy is, according to an Asia Times report, in tatters, and according to a Globe and Mail report, meeting resistance.  The Asia Times report is lengthy but gives us a glimpse into the treachery involved  along the Khyner pass from a trader named Namdar, who apparently sold the Taliban out for $150 000 right around the time of the March 20 attack on 40 gasoline tankers.

Unlike in previous Taliban attacks in the area, local paramilitary forces chased the Taliban after this incident. The Taliban retaliated and five soldiers were killed, but then their ammunition ran out and they surrendered the two workers and tried to flee, but they were blocked.

The Taliban called in reinforcements, but so did the paramilitary troops, and a stalemate was reached. Eventually, the Taliban managed to capture a local political agent (representing the central government) and they used him as a hostage to allow their escape.

They retreated to their various safe houses, but to their horror, paramilitary troops were waiting for them and scores were arrested, and their arms caches seized. A number of Taliban did, however, manage to escape once word got out of what was happening.

The only person aware of the safe houses was Namdar, their supposed protector: they had been sold out.

Their worst suspicions were confirmed when Namdarbroke his cover and announced on a local radio station that Taliban commanders, including Ustad Yasir, should surrender or face a “massacre”, as happened when local tribes turned against Uzbek fighters in South Waziristan in January 2007.

Namdar said that he had the full weight of the security forces behind him, and he did not fear any suicide attack.

Al-Qaeda and the Taliban immediately called an emergency shura in North Waziristan to review the situation. Al-Qaeda’s investigations revealed that the CIA and Pakistani intelligence had got to Namdarand paid him $150,000 in local currency.

The immediate result is that Taliban operations in Khyber Agency have been cut off. This in itself is a major setback, as the attacks on supply lines had hit a raw NATO nerve.

In the broader context, Namdar’s betrayal vividly illustrates the dangers of traitors within the ranks of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The fear is that the various peace deals being signed now between the Islamabad government and selected tribal leaders could lead to a whole new batch of betrayals.

Namdar is a pawn, and the real power according to the Globe and Mail report is a tribal leader who owns a local army of fighters.

An Islamist warlord whose fighters are overrunning Pakistan’s famous Khyber Pass area may now be the only force stopping the Taliban from swooping in to cut off this key supply route for NATO in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Mangal Bagh, who leads a group called Lashkar-i-Islam, said in an interview that he has rebuffed an offer from Pakistan’s Taliban to join them. Although he voiced his disdain for the United States, his independence is likely to be significant for NATO troops fighting in Afghanistan.

Khyber agency is a 2,500-square-kilometre district that is part of Pakistan’s tribal belt, and truckloads of food, equipment and fuel for NATO troops wind through it daily to the bustling border at Torkham. Last week, fighting between Mr. Bagh’s men and a pocket of resistance around the town of Jamrut closed the Pak-Afghan highway for several days.

Mr. Bagh’s stronghold, the market town of Bara, is a 30-minute drive from the city-centre of the provincial capital, Peshawar. An escort of his heavily armed followers is needed to reach his fortified compound in the surrounding countryside.

“I’m not the ruler of Khyber, I’m the servant,” said Mr. Bagh, who had an unexpectedly gentle manner, as he relaxed with his Kalashnikov-toting men, drinking tea. “My aim is to finish all social evils.”

There have been repeated entreaties to combine forces from the Pakistani Taliban, who run other parts of the country’s wild northwestern border terrain, known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. A traditional jirga, a meeting of elders, was held between Lashkar-i-Islam and the Taliban about 40 days ago.

“I told them that what I am doing is enough. It is the right direction. There is no need to join you,” he said.

“The Taliban consists of religious scholars. We are fighters for Islam – laypeople. We don’t have any religious figures in our organization.”

However, he said that the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was “wrong” and that U.S. soldiers must leave.

Our assessment is that this is a mixed blessing.  First, Asia Times can give good information, but tends towards exaggeration, and it isn’t likely that the whole strategy of attacking NATO supply lines is in tatters.  Second, before beginning the dances of jubilation over the failure of the Taliban approach, remember that Mangal Bagh is no friend of the U.S.  It is likely that the battles in this area are just beginning.  The Taliban have not typically been inclined to give up after the first battle.

Continued CIA pressure must be brought to bear in this region, in addition to UAV strikes when known Taliban are observed.  This force must be balanced against the need to prevent targeting Mangal’s fighters, even if he is unfriendly to NATO efforts.  For now, at least, he must be considered a friend, even if a tenuous and potentially treacherous one at that.

Prior:

Taliban and al Qaeda Strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan

The Khyber Pass