Archive for the 'Marines in Helmand' Category

Corporal William Ash, a squad leader from 1st Platoon, Bravo Company, Battalion Landing Team 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), along with a stray dog lead a patrol through a city in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. When the platoon moved into the area, they found two stray dogs, and each time the Marines head out on patrol the dogs are right at the Marines’ side.

Marine from the 24th MEU in the Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

Marine with dog.

Marines of 3rd platoon 1st squad, Fox Company, 2nd Battalion 7th Marines, conduct a local security patrol in the city of Now Zad, Afghanistan to ensure the safety of the forward operating base on June 08, 2008.

Friend of The Captain’s Journal Major Cliff Gilmore (USMC) is in Afghanistan and sends an anecdotal update on Marines in Now Zad that makes him proud to be a Marine.

I did make a short trip “up north” to a fun little place called Now Zad where a company of Marines have been slogging it out. I don’t like to bring politics into these e-mails, but in general I can comfortably say that those who beat the “support our troops, bring them home now” drum clearly haven’t talked to the warriors I mixed with out there. Several have died. More have lost limbs to improvised explosive devices (IED). All of their corpsmen (medics) have received one or more Purple Heart Medals for injuries sustained in combat and not a one of them talked about wanting to go home. When I arrived at Now Zad I came in with approximately 30 combat replacements. New Marines in to take the place of those already killed or injured. They were all volunteers and left their various units to re-enforce the Marines at Now Zad because, according to one Marine, “…we heard this was where the bad guys are.”

I talked with numerous Marines and hovered in the pre-dawn shadows of the moonscape listening to their chatter for hours and heard only about what they had learned, how they were getting better at this kind of fighting, and how they couldn’t wait to get back outside the wire and “…hunt the scrappy little @&%!ers down.” Point here being, I’m not at all confident the boys in the middle of the fight are thinking in terms of how the folks back Stateside might be able to support them by bringing them home. Mostly they just want more bullets.

I ran into one young Marine who has already been shot twice and blown up by an IED once and came away essentially unscathed both times. The IED resulted in a sprained ankle which he taped up and strapped back into his boot. The two shots came while he was on the radio calling for medevac for a fellow Marine. As the story goes — told the same way by numerous Marines out at Now Zad — he was kneeling beside the wounded Marine, radio in one hand, assisting the corpsmen in treating the wounded Marine with the other. Calm as could be his conversation on the radio went something like “…sir, we have a Marine down and need a medevac immediately. We are located at grid 123456. He looks stable but his injuries are serious. We need you to come and get him now. Oh, and I just got shot too so you’ll have to come get me as well.”

He took two 7.62 AK-47 rounds to the left side under his arm. His armor stopped the bullets, but he didn’t realize that at first. As he described it, the force of the rounds hitting him felt “…pretty much real enough at the time…” As others described it, he didn’t even flinch when the shots came, did not skip a beat on his evac call, and once he had a chance to inspect his bruised ribs simply asked the doc to tape him up and then went back into the fight.

He didn’t ask to go home.

Proud indeed. Thanks to Major Gilmore for this update, and watch your six, friend.

General David Petraeus is apparently going to recommend that a Brigade be redeployed from Iraq to Afghanistan prior to the new administration taking over.

A senior U.S. Defense official who has seen Petraeus’ recommendations to the Joint Chiefs, Defense Secretary Gates and President Bush told FOX News the likely brigade to be shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan is the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division out of Fort Drum, N.Y.

The 3rd Brigade Combat Team is scheduled to deploy in the spring and their training could be shifted to match terrain in Afghanistan instead. The 10th Mountain Division, a light infantry unit, is well suited for such terrain.

Several reports also suggest that Petraeus is also recommending 1,500 Marines also be redirected from service in Iraq and sent to Afghanistan.

The Captain’s Journal has previously weighed in stating that we believe that the campaign will require an additional three Marine Regimental Combat Teams (RCT) and three Army Brigades. We now believe that this counsel was on the low end of the true requirements, and that General Petraeus will be obliged to redeploy much more that he has stated above.

The advisers to President Bush are said to object to the redeployment out of Iraq, and Bush will apparently decide this week. But in the spirit of our previous counsel that we don’t have until next year to bolster forces in Afghanistan, there is a revelation from Operation Enduring Freedom command that convinces us that there won’t likely be a Taliban winter rest this year.

FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALAGUSH, Afghanistan — American troops in Afghanistan will step up offensive operations this winter because insurgents are increasingly staying in the country to prepare for spring attacks, a U.S. commander told The Associated Press.

Maj. Gen. Jeffery J. Schloesser said a 40 percent surge in violence in April and May was fueled in part by militants preparing stores of weapons during the winter, which generally is a slow period for fighting, particularly in snowy Afghan mountainous areas.

“If we don’t do anything over the winter the enemy will more and more try to seek safe haven in Afghanistan rather than going back to Pakistan,” Schloesser said.

U.S. and NATO officials say militants cross into Afghanistan from Pakistan, where they rest, train and resupply in tribal areas along the frontier where the Pakistani government has little sway.

Schloesser estimated 7,000 to 11,000 insurgents operate in the eastern part of Afghanistan that he oversees — a far higher estimate than given by previous U.S. commanders.

He said the U.S. military realized more militants spent last winter in Afghanistan after speaking with elders and villagers who had been pushed out of their homes. The spike in violence in the spring occurred because insurgents were already in position to unleash attacks, though U.S. officials didn’t know it at the time, he said.

“They didn’t have to come over the passes, they were already here,” Schloesser said during an interview while flying in a Black Hawk helicopter Monday to a small U.S. outpost in Nuristan, a province that borders Pakistan.

Kudos to Maj. Gen. Schloesser for this perspective. The Captain’s Journal loves honesty and forthrightness. The Major General understands the need to continue operations, and so does General McKiernan, who doesn’t want to lose the terrain taken in and around Garmser after the Marines of the 24th MEU took it.

Introducing the general to his officers and senior enlisted, company commander Dynan briefs McKiernan on their recent fight against the Taliban, and the improving situation with the villagers.

Weeks later, McKiernan will explain how the problem with Pakistan and the ISI was affecting the local ground war. “There is a continuing issue of the very porous border with Pakistan and it has allowed insurgent militant groups a greater freedom of movement across that border . . . . They have the freedom to move across the border unimpeded and can easily resupply and recruit in Pakistan,” McKiernan told the Associated Press on 9 July. He added that rocket and mortar attacks launched by militants in Pakistan at U.S. and Afghani border outposts had spiked dramatically in May and June.

But today all the Army general wants to do is talk to “his” Marines. The 24th MEU was deployed specifically to Afghanistan in response to Canadian and British calls for additional American troops, and McKiernan uses it as his Quick Response Force, to be thrown into whatever emergency situation arises.

McKiernan asks Captain Dynan for permission to address the Marines of Alpha Company. Surrounded by Leathernecks, the new commanding general speaks quietly to the young men. “You’ve knocked the insurgents, the Taliban, out of the area,” he said. “They had no idea of how Marines can fight. They do now. You’ve given the locals the courage to stand up with us, and that’s what it takes to win down here.”

Pleased by the recognition, the Marines smile and pepper McKiernan with questions, then take turns shaking his hand. As the general and his entourage depart, the men of Alpha Company prepare for their evening patrols, where they will continue to walk through villages, meeting the locals, and letting friend and foe alike know that the Marines have landed.

Marine Corps Commandant Conway predicted that this would happen.

Conway anticipated the Corps’ predicament when the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit and 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, deployed to Afghanistan this spring, to provide a surge of forces there.

“I said, with all due respect … ‘let me predict something: Commanders will fall in love with the Marines because they will do a great job,’ ” Conway said. “There will be a request for an extension. There will be requests to replace them with other Marines.”

The Marines were, in fact, extended. And if new Marines are to fall in behind those slated to depart in November, a decision would have to be made soon.

That could come in a variety of forms. The 26th MEU departed North Carolina in August for an undisclosed location in the Middle East, while the 13th MEU is slated to push out of Southern California in January.

This is the first time The Captain’s Journal has seen in print the possibility that the 26th MEU might be replacements for the 24th MEU. But if this is going to happen, the decision will be made soon. The 24th MEU is scheduled to return stateside in November. Leaving port in January of 2009 and arriving in February of 2009, doesn’t really do justice to the needs of the campaign, although the 13th MEU might also be in the works for Afghanistan if our counsel is followed.

Either way, Operation Enduring Freedom is in dire need of troops, and the security situation is degrading. Security for the population is a hinge upon which much of counterinsurgency turns, and without adequate force projection, we cannot hope to win the campaign. As we have pointed out, at the height, Soviet General Gromov had up to 104,000 troops, while General Petraeus currently has only 32,500.

U.S. News & World Report recently had a very important update on the 24th MEU in the Garmser area of operations. The entire report is well worth reading, but several paragraphs will be given below as very much related to things we have discussed in our coverage.

Many of the men here are not new to combat. The 24th MEU fought during the toughest years of the insurgency in Iraq, where urban street battles in cities like Fallujah and Ramadi “were like getting into a fistfight in a phone booth,” recalls 1st Lt. Tom Lefebvre, a Weapons Company platoon leader. During its 2004 deployment to Fallujah and then in Ramadi from September 2006 to May 2007, the battalion weathered brutal attacks on a daily basis. Soon after the unit’s tour was extended to nine months from six as part of the surge, the marines began to see progress. “It wasn’t a matter of if you thought you were making a difference,” says Cpl. Scott Oaks of Stewartville, Ala. “You could see a difference.”

Here, they are not so sure. They have watched British colleagues fight to retake from the Taliban some of the same hills where old British forts from colonial-era campaigns in the 1800s still stand. Since 2006, control of this town has changed hands three times. Marines say that they are willing to do the hard fighting to clear out the area again. But, they occasionally wonder, to what end—and at what cost? “I’ve got no problem going after the Taliban,” says Weapons Company 1st Sgt. Lee Wunder. “But we’d all like to see, for all our effort and hard work, when we leave that there is someone to backfill for us” …

Because they thought it would be a quick operation, Alpha Company marines traveled light, carrying only bare essentials on their backs. They each filled CamelBaks with the equivalent of 54 water bottles each for the first three days. Many left even sleeping bags behind. With food and ammunition, gear for each gi weighed an average of 125 pounds, minus the body armor …

In May, Weapons Company was ambushed by Taliban forces and pinned down in the 90-minute firefight. “We didn’t think they’d pour it on like that,” says Abbott. “It was one of those things where they just keep turning the volume up, and it was getting louder and louder. There were 30 minutes when we were full-bore reloading,” he says. “The next morning, we were like, ‘How the hell did we survive that?’ ” …

Troops here debate what is worse—repelling groups of Taliban fighters with good command and control in Helmand or the asymmetrical guerrilla hit-and-run attacks they weathered in Ramadi. “In Iraq, it was just a guy and a couple of his buddies. These guys are better,” says one marine. “We saw more RPGs here in the first two days then we’d ever dreamed of in Iraq.” They also miss air conditioning on foot patrols in Iraq. “We’d stop in a house and get to watch Spaceballs in Arabic,” adds Cpl. Richard Fowler wistfully.

Here, too, the mud brick walls that surround homes—and that Taliban fighters use for protection—have proved disconcertingly resistant to U.S. artillery. Alpha Company has also discovered textbook trenches and fortified bunkers—some booby-trapped—in and around the compound that it took over after a recent battle with local Taliban. Marines are relieved, though, that they are able to more freely use air support in this rural area and that they haven’t come across the sheer volume of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, that they encountered in Iraq. But they also fear that the use of roadside bombs is on the rise …

… since their arrival, they have been struck not only by the ferocity of the fighting but by the immense poverty they have encountered. In Fallujah and Ramadi, families had tables and china cabinets and televisions, the marines note. “You look at these areas, and there is just nothing,” says Oaks. The literacy rate in many villages is in the single digits. “Education here is just way too low, and even if you’re just talking about bringing in electricity, it’s going to take years and years and years.”

This report should be studied by every counterinsurgency practitioner and authority in the country. There are so many nuggets of gold that we cannot possibly hope to flesh out all of the lessons. But there are a few recurring themes here at The Captain’s Journal.

First, note that the Marines are asking for the same thing we have asked for here at TCJ. If we are going to commit troops and sustain casualties, then the bloody ground become sacred. It runs against honor for fallen Marines to allow terrain – physical and human – to be retaken by the enemy. The Marines want someone to fill in for them upon their departure, and not troops who wish to negotiate with the Taliban, run to the nearest FOB, and be inhibited by their ROE when faced with fire fights. The Marines want replacements who can hold the terrain.

Second, notice the battle space weight, something we have discussed in painful detail in our coverage of body armor. As we have argued before, the solution is not to give up protection, but to spend the necessary dollars to design lighter weight SAPI plates (as well as lighter weight field equipment).

Third, notice that just as we observed in the kinetic engagement in Wanat in which nine U.S. soldiers perished, the Taliban have not only become accustomed to the use of standoff weapons such as roadside bombs, but have taken to direct military confrontations via fire and maneuver. They are well trained and are becoming bolder. So much for the notion (proffered early in the year by Army intelligence – and which we disputed) that there wouldn’t be a spring offensive.  The Pentagon should listen to TCJ rather than their own intelligence.

Fourth, note the increased use of air power because of the lack of urban terrain, one of the positive things about being out of cities.

Fifth and finally, note the intensive nation-building that the Western world will have to sustain in Afghanistan before it is even up to par with Iraq. This is indeed a long term commitment.

Scenes of Marines (24th Marine Expeditionary Unit) from Garmser, Afghanistan, courtesy of DVIDS.

In U.S. Marine Style Counterinsurgency we discussed the Marines’ complaint shop after kinetic operations in and around Garmser.  The Marines pay for broken windows, dead farm animals, busted doors, and so forth.  This is the right thing to do, as well as being productive policy.  The surest way to lose the cooperation and respect of the population is to destroy their property and ignore their consequent needs from the battles.  Much money was promised, but at the end of the article it came to light that so far, the money was promised but not forthcoming.

There’s one flaw in the Marines’ campaign. While they freely issue compensation vouchers, they don’t have any actual money to give out yet. The cash, the Marines tell the villagers, will be here on July 1. The date has already slipped once, from mid-June, and some people doubt they’ll ever see the money. “If we don’t pay them on the first,” Sgt. Blake said, “it’s going to be bad.”

The Captain’s Journal responded, “the money had better be there because it affects the reputation of the U.S. Marines and the COIN effort underway in Afghanistan.  Time for the DoD to “belly up to the bar.”

True to the consistent reputation of the Marines, the money is shown below displayed nicely, just prior to be handed out to locals.

Photo courtesy of DVIDS.

Marines do seven month tours.  Changing this is a big deal.  A big deal has occurred, and the 24th MEU has had their tour of Afghanistan extended by one month.

In a decision reflecting the shortage of available combat troops, more than 2,000 Marines fighting the Taliban will be kept in Afghanistan 30 days beyond their original seven-month tour, the Marine Corps said yesterday.

The decision by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to extend the Marines’ tour was confirmed a day after Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that more troops are needed in Afghanistan but that he didn’t have more troops to send.

Gates had said several times in recent months that he had “no plans” to extend the Marines’ tour. But U.S. officials, including Mullen, have said recently that the situation in Afghanistan is worsening and that the Taliban-led insurgency is gaining ground and influence.

At present there are 32,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, of which 14,000 are assigned to work under the International Security Assistance Force, the 40-nation coalition led by U.S. Army Gen. David McKiernan.

The other 18,000 U.S. troops are fighting directly under U.S. command, mostly in eastern Afghanistan along the border with Pakistan, where violent attacks by insurgents have risen 40 percent from a year ago, according to a U.S. commander there.

In addition to U.S. forces, about 29,000 troops from 40 countries are serving in Afghanistan, although some are restricted by their home commands from combat.

Maj. David Nevers, a Marine Corps spokesman, confirmed that Gates had authorized an extension for up to 30 days for the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, an air-ground task force that deployed to Afghanistan in February and March.

The unit’s air squadron of jet fighters and attack helicopters, and its reinforced infantry battalion, the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, have been fighting Taliban and other extremists around the southern Helmand province town of Garmser, a major poppy-growing region and insurgent stronghold, since late March.

Nevers said the Marines are needed “to continue full-spectrum operations as they have been doing” in southern Afghanistan.

The Captain’s Journal has noted too many times to cite that Operation Enduring Freedom needs forces and force projection.  The more acceptable way to say it this.

The nation’s top military officer said yesterday that more U.S. troops are needed in Afghanistan to tamp down an increasingly violent insurgency, but that the Pentagon does not have sufficient forces to send because they are committed to the war in Iraq.

Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said insurgent Taliban and extremist forces in Afghanistan have become “a very complex problem,” one that is tied to the extensive drug trade, a faltering economy and the porous border with Pakistan. Violence in Afghanistan has increased markedly over recent weeks, with June the deadliest month for U.S. troops since the war began in 2001.

“I don’t have troops I can reach for, brigades I can reach, to send into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq,” Mullen told reporters at the Pentagon. “Afghanistan has been and remains an economy-of-force campaign, which by definition means we need more forces there.”

This sounds so much nicer than the way we have described it.  “Economy of force.”  But then Mullen, who cares about both the troops and the campaigns, felt that he needed to say it bluntly like The Captain’s Journal does … “which by definition means we need more forces there.”

While The Captain’s Journal has many tears invested in Iraq (specifically, Anbar), there is a half life to insurgencies – and conversely, counterinsurgencies.  They can only go on so long.  Columbia hates the FARC, and their doom is sure to come.  Marines have handed over control of Anbar to Iraq, and while we have noted our objections to the failure of the Maliki administration to reconcile with the Sunni awakening movement, the Marines have completed their work in Anbar.  There will be no further Marine engagement in that province.  It isn’t a matter of wishes or needs.  It’s a matter of the nature of the campaign.  It’s finished in Anbar.

The Marines must move on, and while the Commandant wants an MEU focus (and we understand this desire), Afghanistan needs the troops.  A month won’t do it.  One month might close out the summer fighting where the Taliban won’t come back in during 2008 and kill those in the Helmand province who cooperated with the Marines.  Maybe.  But we’re talking about slicing the salami pretty thin here.  Economy of force indeed.  It’s time for Gates and Mullen to recognize that the Marines’ mission in Iraq is essentially completed, and to turn them loose in Afghanistan.  The world will understand.

Jcustis of the Small Wars Council recently started a SWC discussion thread that should have gotten more attention than it did.  He linked a previously unknown (to the SWC) Wikipedia entry on suicide bombings in Iraq since 2003.  Right behind this entry, Schmedlap made the following observation:

One thing that I would point out, that is illustrated well by the article if you look for it – note the suicide attacks in the summer of 2007, particularly July and August. Contrary to the narrative that the dip in violence after August was due to a Sadr militia “ceasefire,” the dip was actually due to a significant drop in the number and effectiveness of AQI mass casualty attacks. In particular, note that hundreds of those victims were in northern Iraq (Kirkuk, Tal Afar, predominantly Sunni Arab areas of Diyala, etc), not in Sadrist strongholds. Violence from Sadr’s militia dropped two months prior to him calling the “ceasefire.” The only thing that kept the death toll high in the interim between June/July 07 and the “ceasefire” in late August was the rate of murders by AQI. Take out the AQI murders and you have a steady drop in civilan deaths beginning in June/July, not late August. The credit for this reduction goes to MNF-I and the ISF, not Sadr.

This is an interesting and important point, one that bears detailing a bit more.  The EXCEL graph below shows the suicide bombings per month based on the Wikipedia entry (click to enlarge).

One possible defeater argument for the hypothesis would be that the discussion so far only deals with suicide bombings and not overall security incidents.  Care of the Mudville Gazette, an EXCEL graph of the weekly security incidents is found in the June 2008 Multinational Force Report to Congress.

The look of the trends is basically the same.  In 2006 and into 2007, the tribal revolt against al Qaeda was in full swing, with AQ losing badly in the Western part of Anbar, most importantly in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar.  AQ was pushed Eastward towards Fallujah, and had made this area (and into Baghdad) their final stand in Anbar.  Operation Alljah (which began in April of 2007 and ended in the late summer of 2007) essentially ended the AQ presence in Fallujah, at which point they were on the run Northward into the Diyala Province and towards Mosul.

Along with this evolution, the Baghdad security plan was implemented early in 2007, pressuring AQ in and around the capital city.  This continual pressure on AQ caused a precipitous decrease in not only suicide bomgings, but overall security incidents (the basic trends mirroring each other).  The point is that while good body armor is desirable against snipers, it can only accomplish so much.  While MRAPs are desirable to ameliorate the affect of IEDs, they are only so good – dismounted patrols have to be conducted as well.

In the end, one of the most important lessons of Operation Iraqi Freedom is that presence with the population, intelligence-driven raids, and pressure on the enemy are the best tools against IEDs and bombings.  Military pressure is proactive, while all other tools are defensive and reactive.

There has begun to be a steady flow of horrific reports of bombs, IEDs and Marines who have perished or become wounded in Afghanistan.  Four Marines deployed out of Twentynine Palms died from a roadside bomb.  Marine Sgt. Justin Clenard – badly wounded – was on foot patrol with his platoon when they were hit by a mortar round or a land mine. Clenard lost his right leg from the knee down and his lower left leg as well.  Lance Corporal Justin Rokohl entered his ninth hour of surgery in a military hospital in Germany on Monday night, being wounded from a roadside bomb.   Navy Corpsman Dustin Burnett died from a roadside bomb in Afghanistan.  And Lance Cpl. Andrew Francis Whitacre has died in Afghanistan.  He had one last wish.

“I want to take a second and thank all of you who support us in what we do,” Andrew wrote two months before his death. “I know many of you do not believe in the wars we are fighting in. Just remember that all the men and women who are here are here because at one point they took an oath to protect and serve YOU. The support of the citizens of the country we fight and die for is all that we ask.”

There are more than mentioned above.  The support of our warriors means the proper resourcing of the campaign.  Germany is deploying more troops to Afghanistan, but their rules of engagement are not changing and they will not be allowed to participate in combat except in self defense, and they will not be deployed to the most violent parts of Afghanistan.

This isn’t enough.  There will continue to be a dreadful flow of reports from the Afghanistan theater until force projection is applied.  Common sense suggests it, and the data proves it.  This means more troops, and more robust force presence with the population and the enemy, including the ROE to get the job done.  This is the last wish of one Marine and his parents who have given everything.

The Captain’s Journal doesn’t like to be negative, but it is necessary to engage in truth-telling.  For more than half a year The Captain’s Journal has been in a state of near despair over the failure of NATO to deploy forces to Afghanistan, employ a realistic set of rules of engagement, and implement a coherent, consistent counterinsurgency strategy.  There are seasons in counterinsurgency, and the campaign will soon suffer under the weight of U.S. and NATO being viewed as occupiers rather than liberators.  Timeliness is everything in COIN.

The Pentagon is months behind us, but it appears that the sentiment is now mutual.

American officials are in a state of near despair about the failure of Britain’s European allies to do more to beef up Nato combat power in Afghanistan.

A Pentagon adviser told The Telegraph that US commanders wish they had never agreed to Nato taking charge of major combat operations against the Taliban in the lawless south of the country.

They believe that different military rules of engagement and different approaches to reconstruction have made it impossible to devise a unified strategy for fighting and nation building, leaving the way open for the resurgence of the Taliban.

So what do rules of engagement have to do with the campaign in Afghanistan?  The Germans know full well what a restrictive set of ROE can do to efforts to militarily defeat the enemy.  Not long ago they had to allow a Taliban commander to escape because he wasn’t brandishing a weapon while escaping.  Troops can act in self defense, but many cannot conduct offensive operations.  Continuing with the Telegraph report:

The Pentagon consultant pointed to the different national rules which mean that troops from several Nato allies like Germany are banned from conducting offensive military operations, or conducting patrols at night.

The adviser said: “There’s frustration, there’s irritation. The mood veers between acceptance and despair that nothing is changing. We ask for more troops and they’re not forthcoming in the numbers we need.

“The mistake was handing it over to Nato in the first place. For many countries being in Afghanistan seems to be about keeping up appearances, rather than actually fighting a war that needs to be won.

“Was that necessary diplomatically? Probably. Is it desirable militarily? I don’t think so and nor do most others who are involved with Afghanistan,” he said.

The consultant, who advises the Pentagon on security coordination with the Afghan military, said American ire is not directed at the British, who are “doing what they can”.

Ali Jalali, the Afghan interior minister between 2003 and 2005 endorsed that view that the Taliban can only be defeated and marginalised from Afghan life if there is a new strategy and a unified military command.

In an interview with The Telegraph he said: “In the absence of an overall counterinsurgency strategy, what the international community and the Afghan government are doing is not designed to win the war, rather not to lose.

“That is a major problem. There’s no campaign plan. We need a unified command of all forces that can do three things: fighting, stabilising and peacekeeping. Unless you speak with one voice it is not going to work. We need more troops to stabilise the country.”

There has been a serious strategic malaise in Afghanistan since the inception of NATO presence.  So in addition to advocating more troops, we have advocated a division of command, with the U.S. taking over at least the Southern region (or permanent command of the campaign).  But the same countries who know that there is strategic malaise continue to encourage it by refusing to adopt any other strategy or ROE, or even consider a reorganization of forces.

It gets worse.  Even among the staunchest of allies there is a reluctance to face the real causes of failure.

“The problem,” says one officer, “is that we are focusing on protective mobility. We are definitely going down the road the Russians went in the Eighties, with over-reliance on massive armoured vehicles.”

The debate is starting on the ground because soldiers are frustrated that they can march their hearts out all day to track the enemy, only to be blown up by a mine. They query how a lumbering convoy of 100 armoured vehicles can ever surprise an enemy who knows every rock and cave in his own back yard. The time has come, suggest some, to fight the way the enemy fights – but smarter.

In the Rhodesian insurgency, tiny units called fire forces, working in groups of four or eight, would drop into enemy territory by parachute or helicopter, unheard and unseen.

With the aid of local trackers, they remained concealed for days, watching the enemy’s movements and waiting patiently for the optimum time to strike. Again and again the guerrillas were horrified as their safety cordon unravelled, with colleagues falling dead around them.

By contrast, our strategy is static, based on bases in fixed locations. Troops leave them to go on patrol in full view of the enemy – which had fatal consequences this month. “It’s bloody hard to deceive the enemy with a column of ground movement that can be picked up 500 metres beyond the base,” says one veteran. “The effect of four helicopters disgorging 100 soldiers from an unexpected direction would have a huge impact, and would lead to a reduction in the opportunities to blow us up with mines.”

So the British are advocating distributed operations now.  Then, they point the finger of blame at the lack of air transport.

The reason why the US Marines were so successful in southern Helmand this spring was because they were able to land 600 troops in one lift in one night. In the two weeks I was with them, the Paras could only muster one air assault of two helicopters that had to go in three lifts, hugely increasing the risk of the enemy assembling an anti-aircraft team to attack them.

Landing so many Marines had nothing whatsoever to do with their success in Helmand.  The Marines stayed around to conduct continued counterinsurgency operations, as we discussed in U.S. Marine Style Counterinsurgency.  If the Marines had all marched on foot to Garmser – not, by the way, a ridiculous notion – it wouldn’t have mattered.  They could have sent word to the Taliban by courier that they were coming.  The Taliban were dug in and waiting for the fight.  Helicopters simply made it easier on the infantry.

The British are pointing to distributed operations, air power, discrete mobility, and all manner of tricks and toys that they believe will enhance the campaign.  To be sure, we also believe that materiel availability should be increased, and we have been a proponent of distributed operations in the past, along with the robust projection of air power.

But it should be remembered that upon the initial engagement of the Marines in Garmser, the British complained about the hard tactics by the Corps.  More helicopters can be supplied to the theater, but without force projection and an increase in troops, the materiel won’t matter.  Ali Jalali is right.  NATO is in the theater to keep from losing.  This very strategy will ensure loss.

We have covered the hard core, robust kinetic engagement of the U.S. Marines in the Helmand Province in and around the city of Garmser, Afghanistan.  The British drove them to the fight, everyone else watched and the Taliban died.  But is this all there is to U.S. Marine style counterinsurgency?  Not even nearly.  Michael M. Phillips of the Wall Street Journal has given us a thinking man’s discussion of counterinsurgency in After Battle in Afghanistan Villages, Marines Open Complaint Shop.

During a month of house-to-house combat, First Lt. Steven Bechtel’s men fired about 500 mortar rounds at Taliban insurgents.

Now, he’s paying the price.

Just two days after the main Taliban force was routed, Lt. Bechtel put aside his weapons and opened what amounts to a wartime complaints desk in a mud-brick hut. The lieutenant and his men spend their time cataloging the destruction and issuing vouchers to compensate villagers for their losses, whether caused by U.S. missiles or Taliban grenades.

“We’re very sorry for the damage to your doors, but we had to make sure the Taliban didn’t leave any bombs or weapons inside,” Lt. Bechtel last week told Abdul Majid, a 70-year-old with a weathered face, a dense white beard and a cane made from a tree limb.

“It’s no problem,” Mr. Majid responded. “You’re paying for it.”

The First Battalion of the Sixth Marine Regiment was recently deployed to Afghanistan as part of a force, 3,000-strong, helping to turn the tide against a resurgent Taliban. What resulted was a conventional battle that raged through the villages and poppy fields of Garmsir District, a major waypoint for insurgents leaving safe havens in Pakistan, a sign of how far Western gains have slipped recently.

The fighting sent civilians fleeing into the surrounding desert. After the violence ebbed, the villagers returned, in many cases to homes cracked open by artillery, bombs, missiles and rocket-propelled grenades. Soon they were lined up at Lt. Bechtel’s door, testing the Marines’ ability to shift gears on the fly, from combat to the struggle for popular allegiance. Winning over the locals has always been a goal; now, it’s happening in double-quick time.

“It just switched suddenly one day,” says Lt. Bechtel, a soft-spoken 24-year-old from Naples, Fla., who decided in the eighth grade that he wanted to be a Marine. “All of the sudden there were civilians in the area.”

More than 200 villagers have applied for compensation already, and a vendor has set up shop outside the coiled razor-wire barrier selling cigarettes and soda to the petitioners. At the first coils, the villagers, all men or boys, must lift their shirts or robes to show that they aren’t wearing suicide vests. At the guard post, a Marine sentry pats them down before they’re allowed to approach the office.

The walls inside are adorned with posters of sumptuous feasts and the holy city of Medina. They’re property of the compound’s owner. The Marines commandeered the man’s residence during the fighting, and now scores of men from the battalion’s Alpha Company camp in his buildings and sandy yard, for which they pay the equivalent of $60 a month in rent. The troops promise to leave as soon as they have built a base of their own. But the owner comes by almost daily to demand his house back, or at least more rent.

The first time a villager comes to the complaint office, the lieutenant or his No. 2, Sgt. James Blake, a 25-year-old from Merrimack, N.H., jots down the claim on a piece of yellow legal paper. The petitioner takes the note to a Marine patrol in his neighborhood. The Marines verify the damage and send the man back to Lt. Bechtel.

At the second meeting, the Marines tally up the cost, using data on an Excel spreadsheet that the lieutenant, who majored in mechanical-engineering at Virginia Military Institute, compiled using prices gathered from the local market.

The Marines have a penchant for personal responsibility and equipment and ordnance accountability.  Every round is intended to kill the enemy, and yet every round is tracked for its affect.  Tear down a door?  We pay.  Kill a goat?  We pay.  Break a window?  We replace it.  And … we track it all in EXCEL.  The same thing was done in Fallujah during Operation Alljah.

The tired and badly simplistic phrase “winning hearts and minds” should be forever forgotten in favor of what they Marines have done in Anbar, Iraq and Helmand, Afghanistan.  It is about kinetics, security for the population, cultural understanding, family honor, property ownership, boundaries of behavior, and holding the terrain to ensure long term stability and governance.

Today’s warriors not only have to be qualified at warcraft, they must be warrior scholars, capable of cultural assimilation, at least pseudo-qualified in anthropology and psychology, and prepared for stability operations.  And the Marines are not only up to the task, they are the best in the world.

Lastly, the WSJ article leaves this account with a caveat.

On a single day last week , the Marines pledged $12,100 in reparations. “I’d rather be shooting mortars,” says Sgt. Blake. “But I understand why we’re doing this, paying for the damage we caused. And I like helping people out as much as we can.”

Mr. Majid, the elderly petitioner, patted Lt. Bechtel on the shoulder and removed his own blue turban — gestures of gratitude — when offered 36,000 afghanis, or about $720, to repair his house and restore his fields. Afterward, he requested medicine for his headaches and help feeding his family. By the time he left, Mr. Majid had a new radio, a few packaged military meals, Tylenol for his head and antidiarrhea medicine for his grandson.

There’s one flaw in the Marines’ campaign. While they freely issue compensation vouchers, they don’t have any actual money to give out yet. The cash, the Marines tell the villagers, will be here on July 1. The date has already slipped once, from mid-June, and some people doubt they’ll ever see the money. “If we don’t pay them on the first,” Sgt. Blake said, “it’s going to be bad.”

You better believe it.  The money had better be there because it affects the reputation of the U.S. Marines and the COIN effort underway in Afghanistan.  Time for the DoD to “belly up to the bar.”

Prior:

The Warrior Scholar

Marines in Helmand