Archive for the 'Taliban' Category

In a little known and poorly publicized report on the Danish part of the NATO effort in Afghanistan, they have begun to negotiate with the Taliban on their own.

Danish soldiers in Afghanistan have begun negotiating with the Taliban to try to break the deadlock there, a newspaper reported Monday, as a poll suggested most Danes considered the war unwinnable.

Troops had been holding talks with the Taliban as wiping out the insurgency was proving so difficult, a Danish officer told the Jyllands-Posten daily.

“We have already held several meetings with local chiefs where the Taliban were represented,” Lieutenant Colonel Bjarne Hoejgaard told the paper after a six-month mission in Afghanistan.

“We cannot get around it. We must intensify the dialogue and the negotiations with the Taliban if we want to have peace in Afghanistan, because we cannot eliminate the enemy,” he said.

This report was also picked up by the Globe and Mail.  Oh, and Hamid Karzai saw it as well.  The report apparently got his panties in a wad, because he responded that only the “government” in Kabul would be allowed to surrender to, um, negotiate with the Taliban.

Talks with Taliban insurgents must only take place through Afghan government channels, President Hamid Karzai’s office warned Tuesday after reports surfaced of dialogue led by Danish soldiers.

Presidential spokesman Homayun Hamidzada told reporters he was unaware of a report in a newspaper, which cited a Danish officer saying that Taliban were represented at soldiers’ talks with local chiefs.

“We must intensify the dialogue and the negotiations with the Taliban if we want to have peace in Afghanistan, because we cannot eliminate the enemy,” the lieutenant colonel was quoted as saying on Monday after a six-month mission.

Asked about the report, Hamidzada said he had not seen it.

“But the policy of the Afghanistan government is, any talks or dialogue should take place through government, not by the friendly countries who have a presence in Afghanistan,” he said.

Remember, Karzai is the one who said directly to Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar ‘My brother, my dear, come back to your homeland. Come back and work for peace, for the good of the Afghan people. Stop this business of brothers killing brothers’.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has recently said that the NATO effort must be expanded in Afghanistan, and that this effort must not be seen as an “American” war.  But with such attitudes among the NATO “warriors” who serve there, it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which it won’t become America’s campaign, good or bad.

Prior: Petraeus on Pursuing the Enemy

Edward Joseph writing for the Washington Post gives us a glimpse into how some of the former anti-Soviet Mujahideen feel about the U.S. presence in Afghanistan.

I recently visited the exhibit during a seven-week mission to evaluate a U.S. program assisting local governments in Afghanistan. On our way out of the museum, we bumped into a prominent mujahed fighter and his entourage. When an American in our group told him that the United States would never forget the Afghan fighters’ struggle against the Soviets, he smiled and nodded proudly. “And we also can never forget your fight against the Taliban now,” the American added. With that, the mujahed’s smile vanished — and so did he, with all his people, after an awkward goodbye.

A full sixty percent of the Afghan population see the Taliban as the biggest threat to Afghanistan.  This Mujahideen can be counted as one of the irreconcilables, and Petraeus has noted that we must pursue and kill them.  But the author goes on to discuss what turns out to be an important underlying problem in Afghanistan: corruption.

Everywhere I went, people complained about corruption. “The government is corrupt from A to Z,” said a road contractor working in one of the most dangerous provinces. The pressure, he explained, begins with “suggestions” that he hire officials’ relatives and friends and rent vehicles only from certain providers; it ends with the officials telling him exactly how big a cut of his profits they’ll take to let the project continue.

This theme is so ubiquitous that it isn’t difficult to find reports of corruption.  It applies to everything in life.

When it comes to governing this violent, fractious land, everything, it seems, has its price.

Want to be a provincial police chief? It will cost you $100,000.

Want to drive a convoy of trucks loaded with fuel across the country? Be prepared to pay $6,000 per truck, so the police will not tip off the Taliban.

Need to settle a lawsuit over the ownership of your house? About $25,000, depending on the judge.

“It is very shameful, but probably I will pay the bribe,” Mohammed Naim, a young English teacher, said as he stood in front of the Secondary Courthouse in Kabul. His brother had been arrested a week before, and the police were demanding $4,000 for his release. “Everything is possible in this country now. Everything.”

Kept afloat by billions of dollars in American and other foreign aid, the government of Afghanistan is shot through with corruption and graft. From the lowliest traffic policeman to the family of President Hamid Karzai himself, the state built on the ruins of the Taliban government seven years ago now often seems to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it.

Ubiquitous corruption is now causing a major problem in the counterinsurgency campaign.  Some of the population is beginning to contrast the massive, systemic corruption of the current regime with Taliban rule.

Some in Kabul have become nostalgic for Taliban times. “At least, with the Taliban, we had security,” one mechanic told me after we haggled over the cost of my motorcycle repair. “No one would steal my tools. Now life is dangerous, the cost of food and gas are expensive, and the government does nothing for us. They work only for themselves, because they know this won’t last” …

[Some] seem nostalgic about the Taliban government’s honesty and integrity, despite the harsh rules. One recent cartoon in The Kabul Times showed a $100 bill on a human body, pointing to an Afghan government ministry and saying, “If you need help, don’t go in there without me!”

According to one report, NGOs now dedicate an average of 7 to 8 percent of their budget to paying bribes—sometimes called “facilitation fees” or “marketing fees” on paper—many directly to government official coffers. USAID and military organizations seem able to avoid much of the corruption, but ordinary Afghans face it regularly. There are at least four phrases in Dari specifically for persons who demand bribes, my favorite being chor sat o bist, “420,” the code for corruption.

“It’s not that the system is corrupt,” the U.S. State Department’s new anti-corruption director told me in September, inside a heavily guarded compound in Wazir Akbar Khan. “It’s that corruption is the system.”

Corruption undermines legitimacy of the government, especially for the poor and lower middle class.  This has been and is being exploited by the Taliban, whether in Afghanistan or Pakistan.  The PakTribune has a remarkable anecdotal account of this kind of exploitation.  It is a lengthy account, but necessary if we wish fully to understand one of the tools that the Taliban have used to come back to power.

It was during a visit to Peshawar that I met a senior police officer. He narrated a story which was brow-raising. He told of a person from Bannu who lent Rs 40,000/ to a man he knew, who promised that he would return it within a specified time. He told the borrower that he had saved up the said amount to help pay for his children`s education. When the agreed time lapsed, he asked him to return the amount. The borrower started making excuses and after a few months he flatly refused and challenged the lender to do what ever he could. There is a Pukhtun word for it “Laas Da Azaad De”.

The man went from pillar to post to seek justice but with no result. The police proved incapable as the borrower was a powerful man with strong connections. When he tried to knock on the door of the court for justice he was dismayed to hear that it would take months for the case to come to a hearing and years to reach a final judgment. After all that, the chances were that the verdict would go against him as he was up against powerful people. To top it off, he was told he had to pay Rs. 1000/ upfront every time he wanted to put his case forward for a hearing. This amount did not include the amount he was going to pay the lawyers. When he calculated it, the approximate amount turned out to be more than the actual amount he was going to seek justice for.

At the end of every day, he would go back home heart broken; cursing his luck to be living in a country where there was no justice for the middle or poor classes. He tried to persuade the borrower by pleading with him, explaining how desperately he needed the money for his children’s education. He even offered a discount or to split the amount into installments, but all in vain. It was like hitting a brick wall. He felt dejected, helpless and powerless to see his children suffering just because he came from strata of a society pushed against the wall.

One evening, he heard a knock on the door. He opened it and saw two strangers with bushy beards standing outside. Thinking they were there to collect ‘Chanda’, he asked with irritation what they wanted. They told him that they saw him crying in the mosque and on enquiry they were told that someone was refusing to pay his money back. With a surprised look on his face, he asked them who they were.

“We are local Taliban” Then they asked if he would let them have his side of story. He saw a ray of hope and ushered them in. After listening to his story, the Taliban told him that the borrower had committed an un-Islamic act, and if he wanted they could persuade him to return the said money. “We want your permission”. His heart jumped with flickering optimism and immense joy and without any hesitation, he gave them his consent. Before they left the premises they asked for 72 hours.

According to the police officer, the Taliban went to the influential man and told him it was un-Islamic not to pay the amount he had borrowed from the man. They threatened that if he did not pay the debt back within 48 hours; he would bear the consequences. They also told him how Taliban had previously dealt with people like him. Shivers went through the spine of the ‘powerful’ man as he knew what their threat meant. With a dry mouth, frightened face and shaking body he nodded his head in agreement, promising he would pay back the amount. The next day, he went to the house of the lender and paid back the full amount he had refused up until then. He apologised for the delay and requested him to tell the Taliban not to harm him or his family and to let them know that he had returned the money. The Taliban never went back to ask whether he got the money back, but they must had been watching the development. From that day on, according to the police officer, that man became a strong supporter of Taliban. Could anyone blame him?

When Taliban justice is seen as free of corruption, the people can overlook its harshness – at least, some of them.  As long as corruption is the way of life in Afghanistan and the Taliban are seen as the anti-corruption faction, the campaign will be very hard to prosecute, and in fact no lasting good is likely to come of it.

The application of soft power is necessary in Afghanistan, and this power doesn’t necessarily mean more largesse.  But it does mean that we must be clever and crafty regarding the politics, governance, mentoring and instruction of the Afghan government, and the accountability we demand of the current (and future) regime.  We must not be as politically stolid as we were in Iraq.  We might just win the military campaign and lose the country because we back a corrupt regime.

A confluence of events and articles is focusing attention on the question(s) “Why are we in Afghanistan?” and “Is it worth it?”  A main stream media reporter recently sent The Captain’s Journal a note questioning what would happen if the U.S. and Britain completely pulled out of Afghanistan?  This reporter isn’t alone.  The likes of Dr. John Nagl, Michael Yon, Bill Roggio and Dr. David Kilcullen have recently weighed in on a number of both directly and tangentially related issues concerning whether we stay in Afghanistan and what the campaign should look like if we do.  Since this also relates to our own advocacy of a particular strategy for Afghanistan, we’ll take a sweeping trek across this terrain.

David Kilcullen weighs in at The Small Wars Journal Blog with Crunch Time in Afghanistan-Pakistan (an edited version of his statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Afghanistan, 5th February 2009).  We’ll return to what Kilcullen says shortly, but first, there is a particular comment that runs in the same vein as the many of the objections to the campaign.  Excerpts are provided below.

… is it not better to cut the losses and leave now?  What is the downside of an immediate departure?  Loss of prestige? We have none to lose with any the groups we’re attempting to defeat.  Loss of deterrence? As Israel will discover, misapplied force encourages rather than discourages resistance. (Didn’t some guy named Galula say that about 50 years ago?)  The Taliban take over? Let them. As with Hamas, the only avenue to a positive outcome for us is to let them attempt to govern. If they succeed and create development and stability, we win. If they fail and destroy their popular support, we win … That al Qaeda will flourish? It’s more an identity than an entity, and we can’t defeat ideas with firepower. External events will determine al Qaeda’s viability.  The instability in Afghanistan spills over into Pakistan? Too late. We pretty much assured that when we underwrote the original mujahedeen back in the 80’s and then walked away after the Red Army bolted …  That heroin will flood the world? Legalize drugs and kill their funding source. (And that of the cartels.) (And we can shift the DEA budget to development work.)  That it will become a training ground (again) for terrorists? As long as there is a sea of disaffected people for them to swim in, terrorists will exist and their camps will be somewhere. True counterterrorism is social work – police, intel, development. The solution is social justice, not combat … Aid workers are a lot cheaper than warfighters, and the rising expectation of Pashtuns, driven by the awareness of their neighbors’ prosperity, will become an existential threat to the Taliban.

This objection to the campaign as it is currently constituted is the classic counterterrorism schema in which kinetic operations are reserved for high value targets and the population is changed from policing actions and social justice.  Seth G. Jones with RAND is a proponent of this model, i.e., that policing and intelligence are the answer to the problem rather than military action.

Aid workers would suffer the same fate as the Polish engineer who was recently executed by the Taliban.

When aid workers have no security they cannot perform the functions of an aid worker.  The Taliban will hardly create a stable regime, and Afghanistan would indeed become a haven again for AQ.  Furthermore, the mission of the Taliban (both Afghan Taliban and Tehrik-i-Taliban) is harmonizing into one of support for regional control and then confrontation of the West.  Baitullah Mehsud has made it clear that the goals of the TTP have evolved to one of global aspirations: “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.”

If the Taliban ever were just local rogues and thugs who wanted control over money and women, they aren’t now only that.  There has been a dovetailing not only of ideology but of forces as well.  The Tehrik-i-Taliban shout to passersby in Khyber “We are Taliban! We are mujahedin! “We are al-Qaida!” There is no distinction.  Bill Roggio has recently written about al Qaeda’s shadow army, operating in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda has reorganized its notorious paramilitary formations that were devastated during the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002. Al Qaeda has reestablished the predominantly Arab and Asian paramilitary formation that was formerly known as Brigade 055 into a larger, more effective fighting unit known as the Lashkar al Zil, or Shadow Army, a senior US intelligence official told The Long War Journal.

The Shadow Army is active primarily in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the Northwest Frontier Province, and in eastern and southern Afghanistan, several US military and intelligence officials told The Long War Journal on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject.

The paramilitary force is well trained and equipped, and has successfully defeated the Pakistani Army in multiple engagements. Inside Pakistan, the Shadow Army has been active in successful Taliban campaigns in North and South Waziristan, Bajaur, Peshawar, Khyber, and Swat.

In Afghanistan, the Shadow Army has conducted operations against Coalition and Afghan forces in Kunar, Nuristan, Nangahar, Kabul, Logar, Wardak, Khost, Paktika, Paktia, Zabul, Ghazni, and Kandahar provinces.

“The Shadow Army has been instrumental in the Taliban’s consolidation of power in Pakistan’s tribal areas and in the Northwest Frontier Province,” a senior intelligence official said. “They are also behind the Taliban’s successes in eastern and southern Afghanistan. They are helping to pinch Kabul.”

Afghan and Pakistan-based Taliban forces have integrated elements of their forces into the Shadow Army, “especially the Tehrik-e-Taliban and Haqqani Network,” a senior US military intelligence official said. “It is considered a status symbol” for groups to be a part of the Shadow Army.

There are no “reconcilables” in this group or the TTP.  The time delay in conducting legitimate counterinsurgency in Afghanistan has ensured that the Taliban have become radicalized.

Michael Yon has penned a sober (and sobering) analysis of the situation in Afghanistan.

The Iraq war, even during the worst times, never seemed like such a bog.  Yet there is something about our commitment in Afghanistan that feels wrong, as if a bear trap is hidden under the sand … We must also understand that Afghanistan is what it is. The military is acutely aware that Afghanistan is not Iraq.  The success we are seeing in Iraq is unlikely to suddenly occur in Afghanistan.  If we are to deal with moderate elements of the AOGs (armed opposition groups) we must do so from a position of strength, and this means killing a lot of them this year, to encourage the surviving “reconcilables” to be more reconcilable.

In fact, Dr. John Nagl waxes even darker in his forecast.

Col Nagl, an Iraq veteran who helped devise the successful strategy there under the aegis of Gen David Petraeus, told The Daily Telegraph that the gains made by the Taliban over the past two years need to be reversed by the end of the traditional fighting season in Afghanistan, around late September or early October, or else the Taliban will establish a durable base that would make a sustained Western military presence futile.

The forecast given by The Captain’s Journal to the querry from the MSM journalist was fundamentally that without U.S. and British troops in Afghanistan, the Taliban would be inside of Kabul within two weeks and the Karzai regime would collapse within one month to six weeks.  The Afghan police would be slaughtered, and the Army would last just a little longer than the police.  The Northern Alliance (which has been relegated to the sidelines by the U.S., and supported to some extent by India) would then be at civil war again with the Taliban.  Al Qaeda and a radicalized Taliban (such as the TTP) along with other international jihadist elements would have safe haven from which to train and launch attacks against Pakistan initially, and the West eventually.

To return to what Kilcullen advocates, he advises against the notion of a scaled-back effort performing counterterrorism operations against al Qaeda.  Whether we like it or not, we must provide security for the population and rebuild government legitimacy.  He also contrasts “chasing the Taliban around” with providing security, a dichotomy The Captain’s Journal rejects.  Having enough troops to chase and kill the Taliban should be part of an effective counterinsurgency strategy.  Petraeus has said so himself.

But Kilcullen is fundamentally right.  Counterinsurgency is the only viable option, short of pulling out of Afghanistan come what may.  Counterterrorism-policing operations against high value targets has failed us for six years in Afghanistan, and engaging only the soft side of COIN (i.e., sending more aid workers to rebuild the nation as the military bolted from the country) is a bizarre strategy to say the least.  As for Pakistan?  Again, listen to one Taliban who, when interviewed, gave away valuable intelligence concerning their perspective.  “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.”

Afghanistan is as good a place to begin the regional counterinsurgency campaign as anywhere.

In The British Approach to Counterinsurgency we weighed in on the British Kajaki dam project (for readers unfamiliar with this project visit the links provided).  While brave and effective operations were necessary to deliver large turbines to the dam for electricity generation, we observed that this front in counterinsurgency was merely one, an important one also being that of focus on the enemy.

The point is that in order for infrastructure to work, the enemies of that infrastructure must be targeted. The dam won’t long operate if its operators are all killed, or if other replacement parts have to undergo such intensive operations in order to be deployed at the plant. Infrastructure is good, as is good governance. But for these softer tactics in counterinsurgency to be successful, the Taliban must be engaged and killed.

Soon after this “defense analysts” also weighed in with similar concerns.

… electricity supplies are likely to face disruption from Taliban attacks unless the region is cleared of militants, analysts said.

The area is not densely populated, so the power lines must cover many miles of hostile land to reach the remote villages that are due to be linked up to the dam. British troops in Helmand control an area of only a few miles radius beyond the Kajaki dam, so pylons and substations will have to cross what is now a stronghold for militants operating in the region.

“The power lines coming out of Kajaki are going to be extremely vulnerable to attack,” said Matthew Clements, Eurasia analyst at Jane’s Defence. “The arrival of the extra turbine is a major blow to the Taliban, so they are going to be keen to make sure the project fails.”

“In Iraq we’ve seen that overhead power lines are extremely difficult to protect, and there’s no point generating electricity if you can’t distribute it,” said Paul Smyth, head of operational studies at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies.

The point about electricity is also similar to our observations on the grid in Iraq as well as irrigation and water supply systems.  So whatever happened to the dam?  Were our warnings prescient or merely an overreaction?  More on the dam shortly.

Thematically similar operations are being waged in Afghanistan by the Texas National Guard.

Fifty-two Texas National Guard men and women are planning an attack on a Taliban stronghold near here that other Army units estimate would take thousands of U.S. and Afghan soldiers to capture.

The Texans plan to win the battle of Khajanoor Farms without firing a shot …

A Texas National Guard Agribusiness Development Team plans to defeat the Taliban’s hold on the big wheat-seed farm at Khajanoor by building a larger, quality seed farm in the high mountain plains of Ghazni province.

If approved – and if the climate at 10,000 feet can be mastered – the Nawur Farm could free Ghazni’s wheat farmers from Taliban-approved suppliers and lousy products imported from Pakistan.

“It could also save lives,” said Col. Stan Poe of Houston, commander of the Texas agribusiness team …

“For seven years, we’ve been chasing the Taliban. They literally just come back,” said Illinois National Guard Col. David Matakas. “We can go in and kill a lot of people and do no good. It’s more important that we push forward with training the Afghan forces and focus on turning a district, a tribe or a village away from the Taliban, one at a time” …

Khajanoor Farms is in the code-red Andar District. A large force of Taliban fighters controls the 2,500 acres of wheat fields and subsistence plots from caves in mountains overlooking the farm.

Khajanoor was built in 1975 as a government farm to supply wheat seeds to five provinces. There are 96 farm buildings on the site, two wells and a crude irrigation system. The farm’s flour mill is a shambles.

Satellite photos show sharecropper farmers are still cultivating wheat for seeds, but much of the farm is broken down.

U.S. forces say the seed produced at Khajanoor is sold under Taliban control to farmers loyal to the Taliban cause.

The Texans had visited wheat farms in the far north Nawur district, an area populated by descendants of Genghis Khan known as Hazaris. Some of the Hazari farms were at elevations of 10,000 feet. Trees were growing at elevations 1,500 feet higher than you’d find in North America or Europe.

The Ghazni provincial government owns vast tracts of land in Nawur.

There’s plenty of water stored in a vast snowmelt playa called Daste Nawur.

Martin and James thought this offered a way to defeat the Taliban at Khajanoor Farms. They designed a giant, 20,000-acre wheat seed farm north of Daste Nawur that could provide seeds for most of Afghanistan’s wheat farmers.

The Hazaris were eager to help the Texans and willing to learn how to run a large farm …

Lt. Col. Al Perez of San Antonio is the agribusiness team’s market specialist. He’s been in the military for 23 years, both in the regular Army and the Texas National Guard.

“This is way much better than pulling the trigger,” he said. “Way, way better.”

So the plan is to compete with the inefficient Taliban-sponsored operation and send the local population on its way to independence from the thugs.

It’s a nice idea, and along with better language training, The Captain’s Journal supports such tactics.  We have applauded similar efforts by the Department of Agriculture.  So the proof of our support for the nonkinetic part of counterinsurgency is on the books.

But there is a subtle although important problem with this account.  Notice that kinetic operations and population-centric operations are placed in juxtaposition for purposes of contrast rather than complement.  This is a far better way, says Lt. Col. Perez.  Indeed it is, if it works without any focus on finding and killing the Taliban.

But the Taliban have proved resilient and adaptive.  To assume that they can be beaten by developing better seed assumes that they won’t take over “protection” of the new production operation.  Not so, for Taliban operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Taliban have made a significant amount of money in operations ranging from taxation of various local businesses, to “protection” for larger industrial operations, to kidnapping and extortion of cell phone providers.  With the Taliban unmolested in this region there is no assurance that they won’t strong-arm the operations for cash.  Mere operation of businesses has not proven to be enough incentive yet for the population to revert to armed resistance against the Taliban.

As for the status of the Kajaki dam?

Afghan workers have kept the power station running throughout the past 30 years of war and upheaval, and even now have negotiated with the Taliban so they can travel to work from their villages …

The Taliban hold sway in the countryside around the dam and even charge people for electricity, so they can be persuaded to let the workers keep the power plant running, the workers said.

“We do not have a problem with anyone,” Mr. Rasoul said. “We tell them we are working and producing electricity for everyone in the villages and towns.”

In the case of the dam, it hasn’t exactly been a nail in the coffin of the insurgency.  In fact, they are making money off of it.  It’s advisable to see soft operations such as this agricultural expedition as part of a whole rather than an alternative to targeting the enemy.  This was our argument in Center of Gravity Versus Lines of Effort in COIN.

The Texas National Guard deserves credit for innovative tactics in the counterinsurgency campaign.  It is apparently a long term program and it will be self-evident if successful.  But the program should not be seen as a replacement for other lines of effort, including targeting the enemy so that he doesn’t use his criminal enterprise to flip yet another soft counterinsurgency program to his favor.

Prior:

Financing the Taliban

Kidnapping: The Taliban’s New Source of Income

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Does COIN

The British Approach to Counterinsurgency

Defense Analysts Echo The Captain’s Journal Concerning Kajaki Dam

The Role of Electricity in State Stabilization

Targeting the Insurgency Versus Protecting the Infrastructure

In January of 2008 The Captain’s Journal predicted that the so-called spring offensive by the Taliban would be more asymmetric than conventional and kinetic.  True, there have been stark reminders that the Taliban, in this case the Tehrik-i-Taliban, were capable of highly conventional and kinetic engagements, such as with the battle of Wanat.  But there have also been reminders of just how badly the Taliban lose when they choose to go head-to-head in kinetic engagements with U.S. forces, such as with recent Marine Corps operations with a kill ratio of 50:0.  True to our prediction, the Taliban has gone asymmetric.

Taliban fighters increasingly are deploying precision marksmen to fire on U.S. troops at greater distances throughout southern Afghanistan, military officials say.

It marks the latest Taliban shift to asymmetrical warfare and away from confronting U.S. troops in conventional fights, according to the top two commanders for the southern region.

Instead of gathering in company-sized units to take on foreign troops, Taliban forces also are resorting increasingly to explosives attacks and bombings, which require fewer people and pose less risk to themselves, the commanders said.

Explosives attacks rose by 33 percent last year, as did deaths of coalition troops, according to the International Security Assistance Force, which leads the coalition forces stationed here.

“They are reverting to tactics that tell us they are suffering heavy losses,” said U.S. Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, the deputy commander for the southern regional command.

The expanded use of precision marksmen comes as the fighting shifts from eastern Afghanistan to the south, where the Taliban are trying to protect opium production, which is reputed to be their economic base. The number of coalition troops killed in southern Afghanistan has increased sharply in the past two months.

So far, shooters have made use of long-barrel rifles, not specialized sniper weapons, and Nicholson said there was no indication that Taliban forces had trained snipers. Instead, they take advantage of the rough terrain to shoot at troops safely from afar, he said.

If the Taliban develop a corps of snipers, it would mark a major shift for U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan. When snipers began appearing in Iraq’s once-restive Anbar province in 2005, U.S. troops had a difficult time protecting themselves from attacks and began wearing more armor.

At one point, Iraqi insurgent groups began filming their sniper attacks, and the images of Marines falling to them became a rallying point for the insurgency.

Thus has the highly touted focus on high value targets and small footprint in Afghanistan come to ruin.  Satellite patrols don’t help in open terrain like they would in urban environs.  Body armor relies mainly on the SAPI plates for high power rounds, and the coverage area of the plates is fixed.

Combating snipers requires counterinsurgency practices, a larger footprint, and a true commitment to winning both the human and physical terrain.  The Taliban has learned from their conventional experiences, and while it is a sign of U.S. superiority that the Taliban has turned to sniping, it’s also a sign of Operation Enduring Freedom passing from one phase to another.  Counterinsurgency is necessary, and troops are required.

The International Council on Security and Development (formerly the Senlis Council) has issued an important update to their outstanding coverage and analysis of the security situation in Afghanistan, entitled Struggle for Kabul: The Taliban Advance.

The full report is required reading for military and anyone interested in Afghanistan, but selected citations from the situation update are provided below.

… as seven years of missed opportunity have rolled by, the Taliban has rooted itself across increasing swathes of Afghan territory. According to research undertaken by ICOS throughout 2008, the Taliban now has a permanent presence in 72% of the country. Moreover, it is now seen as the de facto governing power in a number of southern towns and villages. This figure is up from 54% in November 2007, as outlined in the ICOS report Stumbling into Chaos: Afghanistan on the Brink. The increase in their geographic spread illustrates that the Taliban’s political, military and economic strategies are now more successful than the West’s in Afghanistan. Confident in their expansion beyond the rural south, the Taliban are at the gates of the capital and infiltrating the city at will.

Of the four doors leading out of Kabul, three are now compromised by Taliban activity. The roads to the west, towards the Afghan National Ring Road through Wardak to Kandahar become unsafe for Afghan or international travel by the time travellers reach the entrance to Wardak province, which is about thirty minutes from the city limits. The road south to Logar is no longer safe for Afghan or international travel. The road east to Jalalabad is not safe for Afghan or international travel once travellers reach the Sarobi Junction which is about an hour outside of the city. Of the two roads leaving the city to the north only one – the road towards the Panjshir valley, Salang tunnel and Mazar – is considered safe for Afghan and international travel. The second road towards the north which leads to the Bagram Air Base is frequently used by foreign and military convoys and subject to insurgent attacks.

By blocking the doors to the city in this way, the Taliban insurgents are closing a noose around the city and establishing bases close to the city from which to launch attacks inside it. Using these bases, the Taliban and insurgent attacks in Kabul have increased dramatically – including kidnapping of Afghans and foreigners, various bomb attacks and assassinations. This dynamic has created a fertile environment for criminal activity, and the links between the Taliban and criminals are increasing and the lines between the various violent actors becoming blurred. All of these Taliban successes are forcing the Afghan government and the West to the negotiating table.

There are themes throughout the report consistent with those at The Captain’s Journal, such as the conduct of counter-terrorism rather than counterinsurgency (page 19 of the report, see The Captain’s Journal, Concerning Turning Over Afghanistan to Special Operations Forces and The Cult of Special Forces).

Furthermore, the concern over Kabul happens to coincide exactly with Twenty Minutes from Kabul, which we published just one day prior to ICOS study.  The security situation in and around Kabul is degrading, as the visual below shows.

Finally, as if to put the exclamation point on the concern over Kabul, it has been announced that the upcoming additional troop deployments to Afghanistan will go to the Kabul area of operations.

Most of the additional American troops arriving in Afghanistan early next year will be deployed near the capital, Kabul, American military commanders here say, in a measure of how precarious the war effort has become.

It will be the first time that American or coalition forces have been deployed in large numbers on the southern flank of the city, a decision that reflects the rising concerns among military officers, diplomats and government officials about the increasing vulnerability of the capital and the surrounding area.

It also underscores the difficult choices confronting American military commanders as they try to apportion a limited number of forces not only within Afghanistan, but also between Afghanistan and Iraq …

The new Army brigade, the Third Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division from Fort Drum, N.Y., is scheduled to arrive in Afghanistan in January and will consist of 3,500 to 4,000 soldiers. The “vast majority” of them will be sent to Logar and Wardak Provinces, adjacent to Kabul, said Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green, a spokeswoman for the American units in eastern Afghanistan. A battalion of at least several hundred soldiers from that brigade will go to the border region in the east, where American forces have been locked in some of the fiercest fighting this year.

It doesn’t bode well for the campaign when the seat of government – such as it is – is in danger of collapse, and it is yet another sign of the need for additional troops in Afghanistan, as well as transition from the high value target counter-terrorism campaign to one of full-orbed counterinsurgency.

The Asia Times has an important article on the security situation near Kabul, Afghanistan.

If there is an exact location marking the West’s failures in Afghanistan, it is the modest police checkpoint that sits on the main highway 20 minutes south of Kabul. The post signals the edge of the capital, a city of spectacular tension, blast walls, and standstill traffic. Beyond this point, Kabul’s gritty, low-slung buildings and narrow streets give way to a vast plain of serene farmland hemmed in by sandy mountains. In this valley in Logar province, the American-backed government of Afghanistan no longer exists.

Instead of government officials, men in muddied black turbans with assault rifles slung over their shoulders patrol the highway, checking for thieves and “spies”. The charred carcass of a tanker, meant to deliver fuel to international forces further south, sits belly up on the roadside.

The police say they don’t dare enter these districts, especially at night when the guerrillas rule the roads. In some parts of the country’s south and east, these insurgents have even set up their own government, which they call the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (the name of the former Taliban government). They mete out justice in makeshift sharia courts. They settle land disputes between villagers. They dictate the curricula in schools.

Just three years ago, the central government still controlled the provinces near Kabul. But years of mismanagement, rampant criminality, and mounting civilian casualties have led to a spectacular resurgence of the Taliban and other related groups. Today, the Islamic Emirate enjoys de facto control in large parts of the country’s south and east. According to ACBAR, an umbrella organization representing more than 100 aid agencies, insurgent attacks have increased by 50% over the past year. Foreign soldiers are now dying at a higher rate here than in Iraq.

The burgeoning disaster is prompting the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai and international players to speak openly of negotiations with sections of the insurgency.

Who exactly are the Afghan insurgents? Every suicide attack and kidnapping is usually attributed to “the Taliban”. In reality, however, the insurgency is far from monolithic. There are the shadowy, kohl-eyed mullahs and head-bobbing religious students, of course, but there are also erudite university students, poor, illiterate farmers, and veteran anti-Soviet commanders. The movement is a melange of nationalists, Islamists, and bandits that fall uneasily into three or four main factions. The factions themselves are made up of competing commanders with differing ideologies and strategies, who nonetheless agree on one essential goal: kicking out the foreigners.

Analysis

It isn’t surprising that this hodgepodge of rogues would only have one thing that holds them together. After all, NATO forces – and in particular – U.S. troops, are the main barrier between them and their other goals, whether it be wealth, control, power or Islamic rule.  The indigenous Sunni insurgency and al Qaeda initially had the goal of ousting U.S. forces too, and the Sunni tribes eventually turned on al Qaeda.

The assessment that the “Taliban” is not a monolithic group is also tired and rather passe. It is neither new information nor valuable analysis. Coverage and commentary at The Captain’s Journal has focused over the past months on the cloistering of NATO forces onto FOBs and in urban centers (except for some U.S. and British forces), as well as the focus on the high value target initiative rather than the application of counterinsurgency tactics.

The countryside has been left to the Taliban because, quite simply, there aren’t enough troops to conduct counterinsurgency. This had thus far led to the logistical problems we have faced with supplies to NATO forces, but more important than this is the situational milieu for which the lack of security had been a catalyst. The mistakes are not new, and we have had the benefit of learned wisdom if not the wisdom to hear the learned words.

Mr. Kabulov, 54, is no ordinary ambassador, having served as a K.G.B. agent in Kabul — and eventually as the K.G.B. resident, Moscow’s top spy — in the 1980s and 1990s, during and after the nine-year Soviet military occupation. He also worked as an adviser to the United Nations’ peacekeeping envoy during the turbulent period in the mid-1990s that led to the Taliban’s seizing power.

Now he is back as Moscow’s top man, suave and engaging, happy to talk of a time when the old Soviet Embassy compound was the command center for an invasion that ended in disaster and speeded the collapse of the great power that undertook it …

“They’ve already repeated all of our mistakes,” he said, speaking of what the United States has done — and failed to do — since the Taliban were toppled from power in November 2001 and American troops began moving into old Soviet bases like the one at Bagram, north of Kabul.

“Now, they’re making mistakes of their own, ones for which we do not own the copyright.”

The list of American failures comes quickly. Like the Soviets, Mr. Kabulov said, the Americans “underestimated the resistance,” thinking that because they swept into Kabul easily, the occupation would be untroubled. “Because we deployed very easily into the major cities, we didn’t give much thought to what was happening in the countryside,” where the stirrings of opposition that grew into a full-fledged insurgency began, he said.

Mr. Kabulov goes on to say that the real problem is the irritant that is a foreign occupation, and that the solution is to leave as quickly as possible. Not all of his counsel is sensible, and the absence of U.S. troops would mean the fall of Kabul to the Taliban within a week.

However much Western sensibilities might feel revulsion at the treatment of women under radical Islam, or disgust at the corruption of the government, the goal of the campaign cannot and should not be the implementation of democracy or perfect governance. Further, the population is only a key to the extent that the are the interstitial tissue upon which the cancer of the insurgency feeds.

The goal should not be ending Islamic rule, for this would surely fail. The goal is to isolate and kill the globalist elements among them, those elements which gave safe haven to al Qaeda and which would no doubt be allied with the Tehrik-i-Taliban in the future. Every tactic should be oriented towards this end as one of many lines of effort.

There is robust debate in professional military community as to how we must implement a surge, with the admonition common to these debates that Afghanistan is not Iraq and the precise strategy used in the Middle East will not necessarily work in the far East. Those who give this admonition are wasting words by repeating the obvious.

But it is a non sequitur to claim that the necessary difference in strategy means that more troops are neither needed nor appropriate. No strategy can be implemented without troops, and the notion that the countryside can be left to the Taliban but Afghanistan converted into a location that doesn’t give safe haven to globalists is preposterous, no matter how many experienced and wise souls declare it to be true.

There is no magic, no special incantation to utter, and no learned discourse to speak. Troops are needed no matter what strategy is implemented, for in order to effect an end, there has to be an effect.  Proper Counterinsurgency is “Plan A.”  There is no “Plan B.”

Prior:

Logistical Difficulties in Afghanistan

Taliban Control of Supply Routes to Kabul

Degrading Security in Afghanistan Causes Supply and Contractor Problems

Baitullah Mehsud, the most powerful man in the Tehrik-i-Taliban and the one who has created a literal terror state in the North West Frontier Province, and whose organization was outlawed approximately three months ago, was declared a patriot by the Pakistan Army.

All main militant groups fighting in Fata, from South Waziristan to Bajaur and from Mohmand to the Khyber Agency, have contacted the government through different sources after the Mumbai bombings and have offered a ceasefire if the Pakistan Army also stops its operations.

And as a positive sign that this ceasefire offer may be accepted, the Pakistan Army has, as a first step, declared before the media some notorious militant commanders, including Baitullah Mehsud and Maulvi Fazlullah, as “patriotic” Pakistanis.

These two militant commanders are fighting the Army for the last four years and have invariably been accused of terrorism against Pakistan but the aftermath of the Mumbai carnage has suddenly turned terrorists into patriots.

A top security official told a group of senior journalists on Saturday: “We have no big issues with the militants in Fata. We have only some misunderstandings with Baitullah Mehsud and Fazlullah. These misunderstandings could be removed through dialogue.”

The Indian allegations against Pakistan have suddenly forced the military establishment in Pakistan to finally accept that they are not fighting an American war inside the Pakistani territory.

On another level, the parliamentary leader of the 12 Fata members in the National Assembly, Munir Orakzai, has expressed optimism in this regard, saying: “I see a bright ray of peace in the tribal areas and if we come out of the American pressure, I can guarantee that there will be peace in the tribal areas in a few days and we will be ready to fight against India on the eastern border along with the Pakistan Army.”

The change in the attitude of the Pakistani military establishment is remarkable. Thanks to India, the security officials, who used to criticise the Pakistani media, are now praising its role in the recent days, saying: “You have proven that you are patriotic Pakistanis.”

Last year, the same officials were part of a decision to impose a ban on many Pakistani TV channels because of their alleged anti-state behaviour. Meanwhile, Army Chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has made it clear to President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani that if India escalates tensions, then Pakistan has to move its troops from the tribal areas to the eastern borders and it would not be possible to continue the war against terrorism.

While the new Pakistan administration sees the need for the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda, the Pakistan Army mostly doesn’t and wishes not to be fighting their own people. The Army also has an almost pathological preoccupation with India, and the rumblings in India over the Mumbai attacks have given both the Pakistan Army and the Tehrik-i-Taliban the perfect cover to end their cooperation with the U.S. and NATO over the Taliban safe haven in the Pakistan FATA and NWFP.

This is a troubling development for Operation Enduring Freedom, but it doesn’t end the danger for Pakistan. The Taliban still see the current administration in Pakistan as an infidel regime which governs a nation that is entirely too Western and secular. Sharia law is the goal for Pakistan, and the Taliban will stop at nothing to effect this end.

In 2003 Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda second in command and head of field operations, began arguing that the primary goal of jihad should be the toppling of impious regimes. To the North in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai has demanded a time table for NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, a move which can only be interpreted as a sign of the continual diminution of his senses. Without NATO forces the Taliban would be inside Kabul within one week and Karzai would be fleeing the country to save his own life. And regarding Zawahiri’s view of the negotiations with the Taliban demanded by Karzai, he sees this as a sign of weakness, a view similar to our own.

There are seasons in any campaign, and Hamid Karzai is showing signs of increased desperation over the security situation in Afghanistan just as the Pakistan Army is showing signs of weakness by labeling the head of a terror state – Baitullah Mehsud – a patriot. Time is short for strengthening the force presence in Operation Enduring Freedom.

Via the Small Wars Journal Blog, Paul McLeary’s Talking with the Taliban at Aviation Weekly has an interesting quote.

I recently spoke with Nathaniel Fick, a former Marine officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught at the counterinsurgency school in Kabul, and who is currently a Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, who thinks that negotiating with the Taliban right now is a bad idea. “If we open negotiations with the Taliban right now, we will be doing so from a position of weakness,” he says. “The trick for the next administration is to take the tactical and operational and strategic steps to get us into a position of strength where negotiation is an option.”

Regular readers of The Captain’s Journal will notice a familiar theme. Five months ago we published The Failure of Talking with the Taliban concerning our deal with Mullah Abdul Salaam for the town of Musa Qala. We said:

The history of negotiations with the Taliban has been disastrous, and every time they have been tried, the losers end up being Afghanistan and the ISAF because the “negotiations” are not occurring from a position of strength.

This theme has been periodically repeated ever since. From On Negotiating with the Taliban:

As for the mistaken effort to get the Saudis to collaborate and win the peace, the Taliban clearly aren’t interested. Why should they be, since they are winning? Negotiating in this instance is a sign of weakness.

Hamid Karzai recently continued his boyish, pathetic swoon over Mullah Omar, saying that he would go to “any length” to protect Omar during negotiations. But how does the Taliban reciprocate this unseemly display by Karzai? “Taliban spokesman Qari Yousif told CNN that Karzai’s offer is meaningless because he has to rely on the British and the Americans to provide his own security.” In other words, Karzai is offering to negotiate from a position of weakness rather than strength, says the Taliban – the same thing we said five months ago.

So Nathaniel Fick is right, but of course, so were we.

Glenn Reynolds links the Small Wars Journal on a potential surge in Afghanistan, and Michael Yon weighed in saying that in his opinion the proposed 25-40K troops won’t be enough.  Then Glenn asks a salient and insightful question: How many troops can we support, logistically, in Afghanistan?  Glenn has been carefully examining the reports.

The Captain’s Journal has a right to weigh in on this subject because first of all, we have been advocating a surge for Afghanistan for at least one year, manned partly by an expeditious withdrawal of Marines from the Anbar Province as recommended by Commandant Conway (we are, after all, a Marine blog).  Second, we make very few forecasts,  but when we do, we have good track record of accuracy.  When Army intelligence was claiming that there wouldn’t be a spring offensive in Afghanistan, we said that there would be a two-front Taliban offensive, one by the Tehrik-i-Taliban in Pakistan and the other in Afghanistan by the followers of Mullah Omar.

We also described the strategy of interdiction of NATO supplies into Afghanistan many months before it began to occur.  Afghanistan is land-locked, and transportation of supplies and ordnance to U.S. and NATO troops occurs basically in three ways.  Ten percent comes into Afghanistan via air supply.  The other ninety percent comes in through the port city of Karachi, of which the vast majority goes to the Torkham Crossing (and then to Kabul) via the Khyber pass, with some minor portion going to Kandahar through Chaman.

This interdiction of supply routes by the Taliban is an integral part of their offensive.  The Taliban have been successful in stopping and confiscating some of the supplies, and Pakistan officials have temporarily stopped transit of sealed containers through Khyber.

A Pakistani driver sits beside parked trucks loaded with supplies for American and NATO forces, Sunday, Nov. 16, 2008 in Peshawar, Pakistan. Pakistan has temporarily suspended oil tankers and trucks carrying sealed containers from using a key passage to Afghanistan, an official said Sunday, a move that will likely impact supplies heading to U.S. and NATO troops. (AP Photo/Muhammad Iqbal)

So returning to the question of logistical support of U.S. troops, there has been an impact from insecurity thus far, and assuming a closing of the transit routes by Taliban fighters, no logistics would be sustainable.  But ironically, an increase in force projection in Afghanistan will bring its own logistical rewards and unintended [good] consequences.

We tend to see the struggle through Western eyes, and where we see territorial borders, the Taliban and al Qaeda see nothing.  It is we who see the phantom, not the Taliban.  The enemy is a transnational insurgency and knows no borders, and operations against them in Afghanistan will cause pressure in Pakistan as well.  Fighters from Pakistan have been sent to assist fighters in Afghanistan on a regular basis, and Baitullah Mehsud has made it one of his duties to support the anti-government efforts in Afghanistan.  Logistics and the degree to which supply routes remain operational will be a function of pressure on the Taliban, and the coupling of these two variables is inversely related.

Does this analysis not sound convincing because it is open source and proferred by a non-professional?  Very well.  Listen to a jihadi say it: “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.”

While analysis at The Captain’s Journal relies mainly upon open source information from jihadist web sites, Pakistani, Afghan and other news sources, 95% of which can be Taliban propaganda on any given day, we were right on the danger in Khyber based on these sources, as well as the fact that there would be a two-front spring offensive.  The trick is to know when it’s propaganda and when it’s not.

The U.S. should continue to work on alternative means of supply, as well as pressure the Pakistan Army to continue operations against the Tehrik-i-Taliban in Khyber and in and around Peshawar.  But the surest way to put pressure on the Taliban is to conduct kinetic operations against them in Afghanistan.  Pressure on the Taliban anywhere will redound to open supply routes.

UPDATE: Welcome to Instapundit readers, and thanks to Glenn for the interest.