Jun
24
2010
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Written by JD Johannes
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Thursday, 24 June 2010 |
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General McChrystal being replaced by his chain of command superior, General Petraeus, may not change much here in Afghanistan because Afghanistan simply does not change. The only way things will change here is if Petraeus and his subordinates turn Afghanistan's resistance to change to their advantage.
Last week I rode up to Bamiyan province on a road trip using a guide book from 1962 that proved remarkably accurate.
The old books on Afghanistan by Louis Dupree and Olaf Caroe despite being 30-years-old are still spot on. Even Mountstuart Elphinstone's 'History of the Kingdom of Cabul' written in 1814 is holds up more accurately than current works on Afghanistan. The current books are too coloured by the politics of our time to be of any use.
For millenia, dynasties have come and gone. Foreign empires have invaded, been bloodied and quickly passed from the scene. The Khyber and Salong passes being a rite of passage for every empire but the Roman.
Afghanistan does not change.
Whatever we have been doing in Afghanistan for the past 8.5 years has not been working that well. The Soviets proved that a modern army cannot kill its way to victory and that a puppet Afghan National Army will quickly crumble.
The error of the US Military effort in Afghanistan is that the very bright US Army officers, when confronted with a complicated problem, come up with an even more complicated solution. Most infantry officers have a keen grasp of the complexities of counter insurgency, but not the step-by-step techniques that have been proven to quash an insurgency. The US Military is hindered by its own sophistication when it just needs to get back to basics.
The problem set on the ground is that a certain subset of people in Afghanistan want to run the country again--the Taliban. There aren't that many true Taliban, but they pay well and the work is appealing to unemployed young men.
The solution is get rid of the Taliban and their hired help or dissuade the hired help. Simple. But the US Military/ISAF/NATO do know who we need to get rid of.
The problem is nothing new. Insurgency is as old as the first empire. The solution is not new either. In fact it is so old fashioned, boring and dull that most military officers over look it. But it works and every time I have a seen a census data-base built by an infantry battalion, the war promptly ends in their area.
The Talibs and their day-laborers can hide in plain sight because US and ISAF forces do not know who everyone is. (This concept shocks some Afghans who think the American surely have some gizmo that tell them who everyone is in a town.) The local Afghans know who everyone is and use that as leverage on the Americans. Relying on local intel is necessary, but you should not rely on the locals to be your phone book.
The best census is very old fashioned and does not use the HIDE system--the HIDE sytem may be used along with a mundane access or even excell spreadsheet, but is just a supplement, not a replacement for a real database. (A good iPhone App could probably do it all with the integration of the photos.)
Soldiers and Marines need hit the streets constantly knocking on every door getting the names of everyone who lives in a house. The GPS grid of the house is noted and used as a street address. A picture of the house is taken with a digital camera. Pictures of the adult males are taken with a digital camera. The file number of the picture is tagged along with the names of the residents and the GPS grid. All of this is added into an Access database. The pictures are on corresponding power-point slides.
Bingo. You now have a clue as to who is supposed to live at that house. When you go on patrol again, you can check and see who is supposed to be in the house and confirm the data. It will take an entire deployment to get a significant database, but once a unit gets enough names, the enemy will have a hard time hiding and move on.
Other info can also be gathered like age, occupation, vehicle license plate numbers, etc.
This old, slow, boring, dull approach to fighting an insurgency works every time. But I rarely see it employed in Afghanistan. Why? It is a lot of work. It is a lot boring, dull, work and a lot of commanders are too smart and sophisticated to understand how such a boring, straight-forward tactic can work. It also looks very un-sexy on a powerpoint slide. (These operations were used more often in Iraq than I have ever seen in Afghanistan.)
Using a census takes advantage of how little Afghanistan changes. Most Afghans live their whole life within a 30 mile area. Most of the extended families have been rooted in an area for centuries.
It does not take long to start putting together what families go together, what clans go together and sub-tribes. The social networks are not complicated.
Outsiders can be identified and isolated. People coming into the area who do not live there begin to stand out. In Iraq's Anbar province, the Marines and the Son's of Iraq would deny entry or passage to people who did not live in a village. (The Sons of Iraq sometimes went a little beyond denial of entry.)
The movement of the Taliban is then limited, the flow of money, drugs, materiel, weapons, etc. stops. Local rent-a- fighters cannot be paid and the insurgency is slowly strangled all by a pen, paper, clip board, digital camera and cheap database.
Everything I've written above comes from the counter insurgency field manual written by Petraeus. In the Summer of 2007 I watched a lot of very basic, boring counter insurgency operations which resulted in a sudden halt to the extreme violence in Iraq.
Afghanistan doesn't change much. The change in commanders at the top will not change things unless Brigade and Battalion Commanders exploit the fact that Afghanistan does not change. Here's hoping Petraeus has read the old books and will demand his subordinates follow his field manual.
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Apr
19
2010
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Written by JD Johannes
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Monday, 19 April 2010 |
[Preface: This article is going to get me in trouble with people who do not read it and slowly and digest it.
Gunmen, fighters, insurgents--whatever you want to call them--are not complicated people to understand. Understanding them will go a long way to determining success or failure in Afghanistan and other war torn regions.
I have bumped into several insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan over the years and understand their motives.
I understand them because in a few ways I am like them.]
"It is the best life on earth!"
Omar Hammami, Somali Insurgent
It was an exhileration I dare not try to match. I was driving down the interstate way too fast, the music playing way too loud as I headed toward home. The thrill was not from being back in the United States, but the realization I had just survived the most improbable adventure.
Less than 24 hours earlier I had been in Kabul, Afghanistan. In the previous weeks I went from trudging around the mountains with US Army Infantrymen to staying in a five-star hotel.
I lived the life described by Omar Hammami to his sister and published in the New York Times magazine .
"Sometimes I live in the bush with camels, sometimes I live the five-star life. Sometimes I walk for miles in the terrible heat with no water, sometimes I ride in extremely slick cars. Sometimes I’m chased by the enemy, sometimes I chase him!”
“I have hatred, I have love,” he [Hammami] went on. “It’s the best life on earth!”
Hammami was raised in Alabama and joined the Somali muslim insurgents where he found his identity and embraced the lifestyle of the gunman, the fighter, the insurgent.
War has a powerful effect on the psyche. The Hebrew military theorist Martin van Crevald writes of the effect, "By compelling the senses to focus themselves on the here and now [war] can cause a man to take his leave of them."
It is an exhilerating nothingness that is addictive to some.
"Just as it makes no sense to ask 'why people eat' or 'what they sleep for', so fighting in many ways is not a means but an end," van Crevald writes in his book 'The Transformation of War.'
"For every person who has expressed his horror of war there is another who found in it the most marvelous of all the experiences that are vouchsafed to man, even to the point that he later spent lifetime boring his descendants by recounting his exploits."
A fighter like Hammami finds a narcotic reality to war that cannot be found in any other form.
I have felt that powerful narcotic as well in the dusty villages of Al Anbar, streets of Baghdad and valleys of Afghanistan.
Asking an insurgent who is hooked on it to quit is like telling an addict to 'just say no.'
For many insurgents, the fight is a step-up in the world from subsitence farming or urban poverty. It also brings with it the most powerful force in human nature, the top of Maslows Heirarchy--self actualized identity.
“Out there I’m a useless guy, unemployed and cursed by my family,” one militant said. “Here I’m a commander. My words have weight.”
Pakistani counterterrorism officials say memebers of the Taliban describe the fight as "an addiction, a habit that made them feel powerful in a world that ignored them."
A young man from Peshwar, or Khandahar or Jalalabad with few prospects finds not only employment as a fighter, but purpose and status.
This is what van Crevald is referring to as as fighting as an end in and of itself.
This is also where my similarities with the insurgent end. I have experienced the dark elixer of combat and all-in adventures. When they are placed in front of me it is impossible for me to say 'no.' But for me being in harms way is not an end to itself.
I have a life and an identity in the United States aside from the war. I do not wholly define myself by my overseas adventures. They are a part of my identity, but they are not my sole identity.
The insurgent cadre define their identity by being a fighter. To them, there is no better life or option and if they become addicted to the exhilerating nothingness, very little of civil life will hold much appeal to them.
Many of the low-level fighters can be peeled off with simple options like a job. In Iraq, being paid by the coalition to staff a check point was a better option than being an insurgent.
The upper level commanders and leadership are more difficult if not impossible to mollify, but the mid-level leaders are the key.
The mid-level leaders will not go back to the farm or the urban poverty of Khandahar or be satisfied with standing around at a check point. But they may trade positions , like former members of the Lords Army in central Africa who have joined with the Ugandan military.
The mid-level cadre will want similar positions to satisfy their ego and maintain their identity. They will want to maintain their status and occasionally get the exhileration of the nothingness of combat.
Those who are truly devoted to the cause of Islam will never be peeled off, but most fighters, even those who are devout muslims, can be flipped. The die-hards, those committed to the cause or whose identities are fully invested in the cause, can only be slowly hunted down an eliminated.
Understanding the insurgent is not difficult. They are human and respond to the same motivations as every other human.
Flipping insurgents is just one line of effort among many and to flip an insurgent you must understand his motives for being an insurgent.
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Nov
19
2009
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Written by JD Johannes
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Thursday, 19 November 2009 |
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In the lexicon of Iraq, few words carry
as much meaning as Samarra.
This city on the Tigris river north of
Baghdad was the source of the sectarian slaughter of 2006 and 2007 and
the scene of some the most violent fire fights of the same era.
Even as late as 2008, it was city to
be by-passed when traveling north or south on Highway 1.
The city is peaceful enough now, but
still struggling with an identity crisis. It is a Sunni city but
home of a holy Shia shrine that draws millions of pilgrims a year.
It was once the leading city of Sala ad Dihn province, but during Saddam's
regime, the seat of government was moved to Tikrit. The Sunni
tribes fought with the coalition to rid the city of Al Qaeda, but the
Shia security services from Baghdad dominate the old quarter near the
Golden Mosque.
And it was the second bombing of the
Golden Mosque in 2006 that was the catalyst of the sectarian upheavals
and rampant murders of 2006 and 2007.
The Golden Mosque is being rebuilt, the
city is very safe by Iraq standards and the pilgrims are returning in
force.
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Read more...
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Jul
02
2009
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Written by JD Johannes
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Friday, 03 July 2009 |
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After this piece by Robert Kaplan in the Atlantic , I got a few emails saying, "see, the take gloves off approach does work."
Yes, it works in the specific case of Sri Lanka if you are willing to do what the government did to subdue the Tigers.
But Iraq and Afghanistan are not Sri Lanka and lets face it, a plurality of voters in the US will not go along with the tactics used by the government of Sri Lanka.
Lets start with the geographic differences first. Sri Lanka is a self contained island nation. Afghanistan is land locked with pourous borders and Iraq is nearly land locked with those same pourous borders.
Those pourous borders allow new fighters to enter the fray.
Compounding the borders problem is that at various times the Islamic components of Iraq and Afghanistan had a huge recruiting base--the Tamil Tigers never had such a large base.
An attrition war, attempting to kill every would be Islamic Freedom Fighter is impossible. In my years running around Iraq I have seen entire HVT lists killed or incarcerated without causing a hiccup in insurgent operations.
Killing and incarcerating the enemy is required and killing them is always a good thing, but it is not the be all end all solution.
But the major difference between Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Iraq is that, despite its brutality, the government of Sri Lanka was still the "home team." The harsh tactics of the government were approved by a plurality of the voters year in and year out in their dysfunctional democracy.
The US and the coalition are the "visitors", the outsiders, the invaders and the occupiers. In the case of Iraq it was a three way with two home teams.
Anything done by the visitors to the local nationals causes them to unify against the visitors.
The goal of the visiting team is to gain the passive support of the local population. There is no precedent in which killing on the level of Sri Lanka worked for the visitors--just ask the Soviets.
The successful counter insurgencies by a visiting force focus on doing things the insurgents cannot--commerce, medical care, security, stability. They rely on census and ID card programs, controlling the movement of the population, building an intelligence net and denying the insugents the ability to hide in plain sight.
The classic example is the Briggs Plan the British used Malaya as detailed in Richard Clutterbuck's classic, "The Long, Long War."
In societies with a strong revenge culture like Iraq and Afghanistan, for every innocent civilian you kill, you create another batch of insugents. They are not in it for the cause, but because the blood debt demands it.
The passive support of the population then flows to the insurgents who can hide in plain sight and attack at time, place and manner of their choosing as the intel dries up.
Much of Iraq was tamed using the basics that have worked for visiting armies time and again. As noted by former Army Cav. Squadron Commander LTC Jim Crider what worked was census data collection, building an intel and jump starting commerce.
(I was with Crider's soldiers when they first started to use the proven techniques in 2007.)
They became more successful in the Doura area of Baghdad when they "put the gloves back on." (And the gloves on/off analogy is always wrong, you can hit a person harder with boxing [or even hockey] gloves on causing much more trauma to the skull without breaking your own hand. Which is why MMA is actually safer, the lighter gloves prevent repeated punching with full power.)
The "gloves on" approach to counter insurgency allows the visitors to land harder hits to the insurgents ability to operate.
Afghanistan and Iraq are not Sri Lanka. The US is the visiting team and should use the tactics that have proven successful in the past for visiting armies.
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Jun
22
2009
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Written by JD Johannes
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Monday, 22 June 2009 |
"New US Battle Rule: No Fighting Near Afghan Homes."
At first blush it may sound like the rule is to retreat. I'll save final judgement until I see the full order from the General McChrystal. I'm wagering that it will have plenty of wiggle room for commander discretion.
But the key point of the change in the use of force is to move away from killing to suffocation.
As Marine General Mark Gurganus told me, "you can't kill your way out of an insurgency."
But you can suffocate an insurgency by denying its ability to operate. You suffocate the insurgent by conducting detailed census data collection missions, ID card programs, gated communities and check points.
Not very sexy stuff, but very effective. And being effective is the goal.
Afghanistan, like Iraq, the culture has a strong revenge component. The Afghan Pashtoonwali, or Way of the Pathans, is even stronger than the Arab Blood Debt.
When American forces engage the Taliban, who may be members of the local clan or tribe, and kill the Talibs along with a few civilians, the clan will seek revenge.
The cycle then never ends.
The response to contact must then be weighed--short term vs. long term.
A patrol could lay down a base of fire in 45 or 90 degrees toward the incoming contact, blasting and killing anything in the way, or it could move slower, be more manuever oriented, close in on the gunmen and be precise in return fire.
The burden for Platoon and Company Commanders will be immense as they have to weigh and balance their decisions.
It will be important for the command to educate Commanders, NCOs and Soldiers as to why precise engagement or even disegagement may be better than traditionally accepted actions.
The decision rule for officers will like that of a doctor--first do no harm to civilians. And then weigh the short term--killing bad dudes, keeping soldiers alive--against the long term--not creating more Talibs looking to settle a blood debt.
Of course none of this will remove the basic rule of engagement that you always have to defend yourself and civilians from a threat and that often it involves killing a bad guy.
But the larger strategy, moving away from killing to suffocation worked in Iraq and throughout history in dealing with insurgencies.
I've seen a lot of combat and a lot of gunfights . When I read the full order I'll be able to give an informed opinion on whether it is idiotic or enlightened.
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Jun
11
2009
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Written by JD Johannes
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Friday, 12 June 2009 |
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LTC Jim Crider has published a report on his experience as a battalion commander in 2007-08 in Baghdad.
I was with Crider's 1/4 Cav. in early May 2007.
When I was with them they were just begining to understand counter insurgency and from what I saw in the fall of 2009, Crider and the follow-on unit got it right.
Download the full report here . I'll be reading it on the plane tomorrow.
For a little visual flavor of what Crider is talking about, watch this.
For a more detailed look, my documentary Baghdad Surge shows the tactics, techniques and procedures in vivid color and sound following a Company Commander who operated a few blocks from Crider's 1/4 Cav.
Crider was thrown in a tough environment, adapted and succeeded. He took me for a tour down 60th street as my own personal PSD when it was just dogs and snipers. Crider was never afraid to get down on the street and do the work.
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May
20
2009
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Written by JD Johannes
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Wednesday, 20 May 2009 |
The Taliban cannot dislodge US or NATO forces from any outpost or valley. They can make movement in the country dangerous, but not halt it.
The Taliban's best hope for victory--the US leaving Afghanistan--is not on ground, but in the media battlespace.
President Obama is perhaps the first war-time Commander in Chief able to engage in the media battlespace since World War II.
In modern guerrilla/insurgent warfare against an industrial Western opponent, the goal of the insurgent is not to follow the traditional three phases as espoused by Mao, Che and Ho and defeat the Western power on the field of battle.
The goal is to get the Western opponent to leave.
Retired Marine Colonel T.X. Hammes makes the case in his book 'The Sling and the Stone' that the goal of the modern insurgent is to influence the voters and politicians of the Western country. The goal being to sway public opinion to the point that the voters feel the war cannot be won or, even if it could be won, is not worth it.
The modern insurgent understands that the public views the war through the prism of the news media and therefore establishes his strategy around earning maximum Gross Rating Points showing chaos, mayhem and that the war cannot be won or even if it could, is not worth the cost.
The key measurements for the insurgent can be found in a January 2009 poll by the Pew Center for People and the Press.
Q49 Do you think the U.S. made the right decision or the wrong decision in using military force in Afghanistan?
Jan09 Feb08 Dec06 Jan06
Right 64 65 61 69
Wrong 25 24 29 20
Q50 How well is the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan going?
Jan09 Feb08
Very well 7 10
Fairly well 38 38
Not too well 34 31
Not at all well 11 10
Q51 Over the next year, do you think the number of troops in Afghanistan should be increased, decreased, or kept the same as it is now?
Increased 33
Decreased 39
Kept same 20
Q53 Regardless of what you think about the original decision to use military force in Afghanistan, do you now believe that the United States will definitely succeed, probably succeed, probably fail, or definitely fail in achieving its goals in Afghanistan?
Definitely succeed 13
Probably succeed 49
Probably fail 23
Definitely fail 6
Right now, those numbers are not very good for the Taliban. But at one time, the war in Iraq had similar numbers.
The goal of the insurgent is to sway Western and US voters from the "succeed" to "fail" columns and break the tie on "well" vs. "not so well."
They will do this through the news media.
On two occasions I tabulated the Gross Rating Points on the Iraq war, the most recent was in 2007 .
From June 2006 to June 2007, there were 12,624 pessimistic ratings points and 6,798 optimistic ratings points about the Iraq war.
Even after the success of the Surge was becoming obvious in late 2007, it took until September 2008 for enough points to be earned for the voters to catch up with the reality on the ground.
The Taliban's only hope is to leverage media to their advantage and earn more pessimistic ratings points. They will do this through spectacular attacks that may or may not have any tactical effect on the ground. A dismal failure of an assault on a US or NATO installation still generates the Taliban's preferred headlines.
To the Taliban, the desired strategic effect is through the media battlespace--not on the ground.
President Obama's relationship with the media will allow him to do what his predecessor could not--engage in the media battlespace.
Many would think that the best way to stave off pessimistic ratings points would be to lock the media out of Afghanistan. But, all that does is make the Taliban the primary content generator as they will record and distribute video of their attacks.
The media battlespace would then become a competition between the Taliban's graphic video and a military spokesman at a podium. The graphic video will win every time.
The first step for the Obama administration would be a policy of maximum embedding, preferrably long-term embeds where a reporter lives with one unit not just for days, but for weeks. This is current doctrine, spelled out the Counter Insurgency Manual FM 3-24 written by General David Petraeus, but is rarely put into action.
The more third party eyes and ears on the ground, the less the impact of the Taliban's spectacular attacks on the media battlespace.
The goal is maximum gross ratings points therefore diluting the content generated by the Taliban.
The second step is out reach to small and medium sized media outlets.
At any given time there are dozens of Reserve and National Guard units in Afghanistan, but covering them is complicated and expensive for smaller market newspapers and TV and Radio stations.
To reduce the cost, the DoD could move the embark point from Kuwait or Qatar to a stateside installation, provide body armor and rapid embedding to the Guard and Reserve units to be covered. (The embark point for all US based media could be moved stateside as well.)
The medium and small market outlets should also be given better access to the DIVIDS system to allow for exclusive, real-time reports to be transmitted back to the home market.
Slots for each media market could be awarded by lottery or Nielson ratings or bid--whoever guarantees the most ratings points gets first dibs.
In that same line of thought, rules for long-form or documentary productions could be relaxed allowing more production on speculation and festival circuit directors to embed without backing from a studio.
Media outlets should also be allowed more flexibility to "cross deck" moving from embedded to traveling with private security or a local fixer. This would reduce the cost of maintaining a secure facility as a bureau. The media sets up bureau offices in the White House, Pentagon and most State Capitols. Media organizations should be allowed to build a shack or rent a container to house their bureau on major bases like Victory Baghdad or Bagram.
The current media embed system is major leap forward from the micro-management of Desert Storm, but I do not think it has ever been reviewed in terms of how it can be re-tooled to maximize access and rating points.
The third step is the one that could only be instituted under President Obama, and that is to recognize that modern wars are also fought in the media battlespace and that the DoD needs to aggressively fight in that battlespace.
This is not an endorsement of government generated propaganda, but a policy that the DoD will actively engage the enemy in the media battlespace.
In the past the media howled when the idea was even broached, but President Obama's relationship with the media will allow him to show the neccessity of this policy.
If anyone thinks the DoD or Administration is generating propaganda, they can take a trip to the combat theaters. Some will say that they just get drive by tours of Potemkin Villages, but it is impossible to sustain a fraud for months or weeks with embeds in every Brigade or Regimental Combat Team.
The DoD will need to engage the media battlespace in theatre as well. This means newspapers, magazines, web, radio, TV, DVDs, satellite and even entertainment television. Yes, many often forget that the ratings points from entertainment programming are just as powerful as points in the news media.
In 2006 the media howled at the Coalition's efforts to take an the media battlespace through paid editorials in Iraqi newspapers. But just as Clauswitz described war a politics through other means, operations in the media battlespace is warfare through other means. President Obama's relationship with the Western 4th Estate could blunt criticism of effective tactics and strategies that will win the battlespace.
The Iraq war was nearly lost in the media battlespace. The Taliban will refine their strategy and wage the battle of ratings points smarter and harder in the coming year.
If President Obama is serious about winning in Afghanistan, and I believe he is, then he must not only fight the battle on the ground but employ his strongest assets and engage the Taliban in the media battlespace.
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May
17
2009
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Written by JD Johannes
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Monday, 18 May 2009 |
"We can't kill our way out of this," Brigadier General Mark Gurganus told me in the early summer of 2007.
Gurganus, a larger than life character was the embodiment of the warrior general. At the time he commanded the Ground Combat Element of Coalition Forces in western Iraq. I first met him 2005 when he was Colonel on a dusty patch of asphalt north of Fallujah after his humvee was blown up by an IED.
His orders were pretty straight forward that morning--find those SOBs and kill them. A few hours later the IED team caught in the act and a team of snipers dispatched them.
Gurganus' statements in 2005 and 2007 may seem contradictory in isolation, but in 2005 he saw clearly that the solution to the IED threat was not more technology but the elimination of the insurgency.
Later in 2005 his Regiment conducted one of the first and largest census data collection operations of the war. The only technology needed was a digital camera, GPS unit, clip board, pen and an access database. When Marines know who is who and who is supposed to live in a house or village, it is very hard to hide in plain sight.
By late 2007 nearly the entire Euphrates river valley had been photgraphed and listed in a database. There was no where to hide from the Marines and the Son's of Anbar didn't even need the database--they knew if you didn't belong in an area on sight.
You didn't need to spend a lot of time doing targetted raids or tracking and chasing high value targets if you had a really good list--the targets couldn't move and were quickly trapped in the net.
In today's New York Times , David Kicullen and Andrew McDonald Exum make a similar point about the use of drones to carry out precision strikes in Pakistan.
"The drone campaign is in fact part of a larger strategic error — our insistence on personalizing this conflict with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Devoting time and resources toward killing or capturing “high-value” targets — not to mention the bounties placed on their heads — distracts us from larger problems, while turning figures like Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban umbrella group, into Robin Hoods. Our experience in Iraq suggests that the capture or killing of high-value targets — Saddam Hussein or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — has only a slight and fleeting effect on levels of violence. Killing Mr. Zarqawi bought only 18 days of quiet before Al Qaeda returned to operations under new leadership.
"This is not to suggest that killing terrorists is a bad thing — on the contrary. But it’s not the only thing that matters, and over-emphasizing it wastes resources. The operation that killed Mr. Zarqawi, for example, was not a one-day event. Thousands of hours of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance were devoted to the elimination of one man, when units on the ground could have used this time to protect the people from the insurgency that was tearing Iraq apart."
During my trips to Iraq I saw entire High Value Target lists captured or killed only to replaced by more vile targets. This does not mean that High Value Targets should not be pursued and dealt with, but that in warfare resources are scarce and have alternative uses. Resources should be used for what yields the maximum gain and that is eliminating the insurgent's ability to operate rather than trying to eliminate insurgents one or a few at a time.
The strategies and tactics that led to the reduction of the IED threat were the ones that restricted the ability of the IED team to operate, not technologies that countered individual IEDs.
The true solution to the IED threat was to get off the roads and out of vehicles, live in the village, know everyone in the village, protect the locals, provide some essential services and kill or capture the insurgents when they popped up--in that order.
Hellfire missiles from a drone are the exact opposite. The Soviets ravaged entire valleys with helicopter gunships but the Mujahadeen multiplied. The Soviets tried killing their way out of an insurgency and proved that it is impossible.
The drone strikes in Pakistan will prove just as futile.
The battle in Afghanistan will be won much in the way the British did in Malaya. Units moved deeper and deeper into the jungles setting up small outposts and gaining the trust of the villagers by protecting them. Then the next step was to provide things the insurgents could not like medical care and commerce.
The remote villages of Afghanistan, like the villages of Malaya decades before, will reject commerce at first. It is change and humans universally dislike change, until they see the personal benefits of it.
The communist insurgency of Malaya was, ironically, beaten by the human desire for profit. The Taliban will be undone by the most basic of human emotions--greed, not hellfire missiles.
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Apr
07
2009
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Written by JD Johannes
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Wednesday, 08 April 2009 |
"I was tired," Firas said when I talked with him last October in Baghdad.
Firas, a former Jaish al Mahdi Special Groups commander, had been on the run from coalition forces since the summer of 2007. By the late summer of 2008, he was ready to throw in the towell and work with the coalition.
Firas was one of many 'good enough' bad guys who have decided, at least for then, to sort of work with the coalition.
Prior to flipping sides, Firas was a wanted man. He never slept in the same place twice and was barely one-step ahead of U.S. Soldiers for months.
Firas opened up communications with the soldiers and they cautiously started to work out an agreement.
Talking with the enemy is nothing new. It is as old as warfare and almost required in counter insurgency.
In the original counter insurgency, Julius Caesar's campaigns to put down rebellions in Gaul, Caesar regularly recieved ambassadors from the rebelling factions.
In the Roman Civil war, Caesar corresponded with Pompey.
Caesar also made a habit of enlisting soldiers of conquered armies into his army.
In Baghdad, during the surge, I saw Lt. Col Patrick Frank call up JAM leaders on their cell phones. Captain Brian Ducote would talk with Sunni and Shia assassins, letting them know that they could turn themselves in, or face his soldiers on the streets of West Rashid.
What these conversations all had in common was the position of strength. Caesar always negotiated from a position of strength. Lt. Col. Frank and Capt. Ducote were speaking from a position of strength. The were dictating the terms. Firas, when he approached the U.S. Army Battalion in Rashid did it from a position of supplication and self preservation.
In President Obama's new AfPak plan, the section "Encouraging Afghan government efforts to integrate reconcilable insurgents", states:
"While Mullah Omar and the Taliban's hard core that have aligned themselves with al Qaeda are not reconcilable and we cannot make a deal that includes them, the war in Afghanistan cannot be won without convincing non-ideologically committed insurgents to lay down their arms, reject al Qaeda, and accept the Afghan Constitution."
This will require talking to the enemy. The key is that the talking cannot be just to talk. It cannot be done from a position of weakness, it must be done the way Ducote and Frank and Caesar it--from a position of power where the choices are clear, quit, join us, or face off against us and suffer the consequences.
In the Victorian era, British officers like Robert Warburton, who managed the Khyber pass for 18 years, held the tribes accountable for miscreants in their midst. Warburton fined the tribes when their members got out of hand and made it clear that the tribal Maliks were responsible for keeping their clans and territory in order.
Warburton and others used the same technique Lt. Col. Steve Russell used in Tikrit--I can come here with the hand of friendship or with a pistol, the choice is yours.
Or, as in the message Marine General Mattis is reputed to have sent to Iraqi tribal leaders: "I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all."
But, you must be willing to use the pistol. You have to back up your position of strength with lethality and effective COIN operations.
The Soldiers and Marines know how to do this, they have done it before. The component required for the President to fulfill is to employ enough combat forces on the ground and to back up the Soldiers and Marines with the same metal they display while outside the wire.
The enemy reads the New York Times, they watch CNN. They will take the President's measure and if it is lacking, if they think he will blink first, if he shows any signs of weakness, then the Soldiers and Marines though operating from local strength, will be in a strategically weak position to offer and enforce the ultimatums needed to flip those Taliban fighters who can be reconciled.
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