One of the most peculiar aspects of embedding with coalition forces is how often one find themselves hitch hiking or trying to hop on a helicopter.

Over the years, I developed a technique that helps by embracing my inner highway hitch hiker.

My hitch hiking destination card.

The American hitch hiker carries a sign with a name of a city.  The embedded hitch hiker hangs out at the helicopter landing zone and slowly walks up to the pilot or crew chief and asks if he can jump in.

I started using the sign a few years ago in Iraq.  It works well.

It worked to get me a ride from Mehtar Lam back for FOB Fenty.  In fact the pilot and crew chief got a kick out of the sign.  Especially when I give them the thumb.

Just north of the delta of the Alishang and Alengar river valleys, in the middle of a dozen square miles of green rice paddies, are the home villages of the Katal Kheil sub-tribe.

We drove in MRAPs out of Mehtar Lam on the asphalt highway for a few kilometers, the winding twisty roads of the city giving way to the rural farm villages, then nothing but a ribbon of asphalt cutting through the irrigated fields.  Beyond the rice paddies and irrigated corn fields, the jagged rocky brown of Amber Ghar mountain rose for 2,112 meters at its peak.

The mission was what the military calls a KLE or Key Leader Engagement.  Only military could give such a sterile, functional name to sitting down with the power brokers of a tribe and laying the foundation of a working relationship.

And relationship is the key.

Counter insurgency is not about how many bad guys were killed, it is about how many powerbrokers are on your side--especially the ones who are willing to marginalize if not out right eliminate the bad guys.

The true mission was to find the powerbrokers, the Maliks, talk with them, and begin to build that relationship.  This involves sitting down on the carpet under a tree and drinking tea.

But first you have to hike to the village.

The soldiers and I exited the MRAPs and followed a narrow road too small for even a humvee for three kilometers in the 106 degree heat and humidity from the flooded rice paddies.

Irrigation canals flowed slow, meandering along the road and under the road. 

The boys of Katal show off by doing flips into the irrigation canal.

Deep inside the rice paddies, we reached the heart of the village of Katel.

Kids were everywhere, young men loitered, only a few young girls ventured out, there were no women in sight.

And the dance began.

Sixteen kilometers up the Alishang river valley from Mehtar Lam is the village of Watangatu.

Like all the villages in the Alishang valley, Watangatu is a farming village where the local Ghilzai Pashtuns grow corn and rice in the fertile fields irrigated from the rapid flowing river.

Rice paddies irrigated by the Alishang river.  Taken from the side door of a Blackhawk helicopter

But Watangatu has a distinction that sets it apart from its neighbors in the valley, it is a common ambush site which is why I was there along with the Governor of Lagham province, the Chief of Police and the Commander of the local Afghan National Army Battalion.

One could call it a Shura or a Jirga, but Americans would understand it as a town hall meeting.

Pashtun men from Watangatu react to a quip the Governor of Lagham province

The Afghan government with the support of USAID and the local military Provisional Reconstruction Team is building a paved road up the valley, but the sniping and violence is slowing construction.

Rather than go in with a heavy hand and use an infantry battalion like a sledge hammer to try and swat a few flys, the US Army Battalion in charge of Lagham province and the PRT decided to use the traditional Afghan approach--a Shura.

The exhuast from the four engines of a C-130 cargo plane is hot enough to cook flesh.

As you exit the cargo ramp, the exhaust has cooled down to a 150 degree 70 mile per hour wind.

As I walked out the exhaust blast I discovered the rest of FOB Fenty in Jalalabad felt just as hot.  

Jalalabad is one of the hottest places in Afghanistan in the summer but has a mild winter climate.

It is a sprawling city of concrete, mudbrick and dust at the confluence of the Kunar and Kabul rivers, is the dominant city in Nangarhar province. 

Jalalabad and Kabul river

Alexander the Great's army massed near Jalalabad before his invasion of the Indus valley in modern day Pakistan.

Sounds like the set for a joke, but I was met at the airport by two Afghans who work with a friend of mine in the logistics business.

Kabul International is a busy airport.  Several regional airlines run daily flights around Afghanistan and between international destinations like Dubai and New Delhi.

JD outside the old terminal at Kabul International

The baggage claim system in the new terminal works well and as an airport, it could compare with smaller, regional airports in places like Topeka, KS.

I was met by two local Afghans who took me on a driving tour of Kabul and then on to Bagram.

JD is short for Jawad, he is a Hazar, an ethnic group in the north/central part of Iraq.   

And Haji is Haji because he has made the Haj.  Haji also fought with the Taliban for a few years before going into the logistics business with a few western expats

JD (left) and Haji (right)

We took the scenic route, winding through Kabul from the airport to the Intercontinental Hotel, where we had lunch with a friend of mine from Iraq who is working with NDI running a team of election monitors.

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.