The Strategist

A new way of visualizing Afghan war casualties

Ever tried visualizing casualties in Afghanistan? At the Guardian's Data Blog, David McCandless comes up with an interesting series of graphs and commentary, including this one on civilian casualties...

"Suicide bombs and IEDs account for the majority of deaths caused by anti-government forces. Night time air strikes account for many deaths caused by coalition forces.

Coalition-caused civilian deaths are much lower this year. This may be because the US has introduced new rules of engagement. Or perhaps they have reduced night time air strikes? It's not clear."

No half-measures for Afghanistan

Here's David Kilcullen talking about Afghanistan, and US President Obama's delay in deciding on a strategy...

"As an analogy, you have a building on fire, and it's got a bunch of firemen inside. There are not enough firemen to put it out. You have to send in more or you have to leave. It is not appropriate to stand outside pontificating about not taking lightly the responsibility of sending firemen into harm's way.

Either put in enough firemen to put the fire out or get out of the house. That is my analogy of where we are. Either of those approaches could potentially work."

Once again, Kilcullen has hit the nail on the head.

But as I've argued before, there is another approach which is not the sort of half-measure which Kilcullen, rightly, deplores. It's what I call a pest control strategy.

Forget grandiose COIN and national-building schemes - or the idea of protecting population centres, which sounds like another half-measure. Instead, establish one or two heavily fortified fire bases in strategic locations. From there contain the terrorist threat by carrying out precision strikes against al-Qaeda leaders and facilities using special forces, UAV attack drones, and local mercenaries.

Photo: Andrya Hill

Angles of war

Here's an excellent photo collection - Sean Power's photographs of British soldiers in Helmand, Afghanistan.

Power works unusual angles to good effect: looking up at subjects from a crouching or prone position, or looking down into scenes. He's unobtrusive, getting close to the soldiers without getting in their faces.

The first shot, of a small group of soldiers resting at the end of an operation, is striking. Not just because of the photo's composition, colours and texture. But also because the picture tells you something about these men and their esprit de corps. Even when they are resting, they stick together, in a circle, facing each other. They are a tight-knit team.

A simple question - WTF?

Memo to Afghanistan watchers: read this article about a British army bomb disposal expert who was blown up in Helmand. If you're anything like me, you'll have yet another of those "what the f--- are we doing here?" moments.

If this was Northern Ireland or the Mexican border - some place, in other words, where Britain and America have direct security interests - you could rationalize the extreme risks encountered by infantrymen, engineers and bomb disposal technicians.

But this is Afghanistan. And despite the myriad articles, editorials, op-eds, blog posts, policy papers, presentations, speeches and debates that spew forth on the subject, I've yet to see anyone put up a convincing case for exposing men and women like Olaf Schmid to such dangers. And for committing hundreds of thousands of troops to a counterinsurgency in one of the most hostile, isolated and strategically irrelevant parts of the world.

Obama ducks and dives on troops for Afghanistan

I'm not sure what to make of this statement...

"President Obama is more concerned at 'whether there’s an Afghan partner' worth defending, than with the politically fraught question of how many more troops to send, said Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama’s chief of staff..."

...but I'm pretty sure we can't take it at face value.

My guess is that it's a ploy, with at least two possible motives.

Number one: Obama doesn't want to decide right now to deploy more troops, and is playing for time by conjuring up a convenient excuse. His enemies will say he is dithering - unsure which way to go, afraid of making the wrong decision. His supporters will claim that he is giving himself room to manoeuvre and time to weigh up the options.

Number two: the US is trying to pressure Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai into agreeing to a second voting round in the presidential election, or to share power with opponent Dr Abdullah Abdullah.

Why? Because Obama will need the fig leaf of a fair election or a government of unity to sell an escalation strategy to Americans. Conversely, not having these things provides Obama with a handy excuse to reject calls to send more troops to Vietnam, oops, sorry, Afghanistan. 

Whatever the explanation, this statement by Emanuel doesn't stack up: "It would be reckless to make a decision on US troop levels if you haven’t done a thorough analysis of whether there’s an Afghan partner ready to fill the space that US troops would create."

Why doesn't it stack up? Because we're talking about Afghanistan, not Sweden. There's never going to be a "credible Afghan partner", in the sense of a government that is stable, holds sway over the entire country, and tries to put itself above tribal and factional politics.

History moves in cycles - FOB Keating and the Siege of Malakand

Forward Operating Base Keating, March 2007 (photo: Sgt Amber Robinson).

Tom Ricks has posted a first hand account of the FOB Keating fight in Nuristan (h/t Armchair Generalist). On 3 October, eight American and two Afghan soldiers were killed when a Taliban force launched a surprise attack against the isolated post.

As you can see in the photo (and in these pictures), the post was situated at the bottom of a ravine. It was overlooked on three sides by cliffs. As a result the post was exposed to frequent hostile fire and was vulnerable to a surprise assault.

This incident reminded me of the Malakand siege, on the Northwest Frontier in 1897. A British garrison held the Malakand pass, which is a key route between the Punjab and the Swat Valley (at that time the Northwest Frontier was part of the British Raj; now it is in Pakistan). From 26 July to 2 August the garrison was besieged by a large force of Pashtun tribesmen, but held out until a relief force reached it. During the siege 173 British and Indian officers and soldiers were killed or wounded.

Winston Churchill wrote an account of the Malakand siege, and the subsequent punitive expedition into the Swat and Bajaur - The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898). Churchill, who served on the expedition, described the situation of the Malakand garrison like this...

"The Malakand is like a great cup, of which the rim is broken into numerous clefts and jagged points. At the bottom of this cup was the 'crater' camp...

...the Malakand South Camp was an impossible place to put troops in. It was easy of access. It was cramped and commanded by neighbouring heights....

...the second encampment was close under the north outer edge of the cup....As a military position it, also, was radically bad. It was everywhere commanded, and surrounded by ravines and nullahs, which made it easy for an enemy to get in, and difficult for troops to get out."

Sound familiar?

There's no "moral of the story" here. But once again I'm struck how history moves in cycles. Over a century on from Malakand, another western imperial power finds itself in the Hindu Kush, fighting a frontier war against the same people and encountering similar problems.

Wrong war, wrong enemy: time for Obama to call it quits

I sense that some bad shit is about to go down...

"President Obama is prepared to accept some Taleban involvement in Afghanistan’s political future and is unlikely to favour a large influx of new American troops being demanded by his ground commander..."

Brace yourselves for howls of "traitor", "communist" and "Islamo-facist lover" from the rabid American far-right.

Such bile shouldn't hide the fact that this approach makes perfect sense. Why?

First up, it was crazy for the West to pick a fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan. It's crazy to keep fighting them. General McChrystal's plan - more troops to fight a protracted counterinsurgency against, yep, the guys the West didn't need to fight - is like building a bloody expensive road to nowhere. Sort of like Iraq, really.

And it clears the way for the West to concentrate on the real enemy, al-Qaeda, with a new strategy which is practical, achievable, affordable and proportionate to the threat. UAV strikes seem to be having a big impact on al-Qaeda's ability to operate. It makes sense to press home the advantage, rather than keep fighting the wrong war against the wrong enemy.

"Pull ya head in" - arguing the Afghan strategy

I haven't closely followed the Afghanistan strategy debate in Washington DC. So I'm not sure of the debate's internal dynamic. But check out the interview with US National Security Advisor General James Jones (h/t Global Dashboard). Am I right in assuming that Jones told General Stanley McChrystal, the American commander in Afghanistan, to pull his head in?

"We have a strategy. What General McChrystal has done is presented his opinion, is presenting his opinion, of what he thinks his role within that strategy is."

And...

"this is what we going to tear apart and look at and consider General McChrystal's input. The President should be presented with options, not just one fait accompli."

Top politicians, officials and commanders used to debate war strategy behind closed doors. The Jones interview is interesting in that it highlights how strategy is now being debated more openly. We, the public, are not privy to the detailed discussion, but we can get a sense of the main points of argument, and where the debate is heading.

   

A pest control strategy for dealing with al-Qaida

Eight years after 9/11, al-Qaida is on the run. This according to Jason Burke, who writes that affiliated groups in Algeria and Mauritania are strong, but "al-Qaida central", situated in Pakistan's tribal agencies, is in disarray. Why? Partly because of deadly UAV drone strikes against middle and top leaders…

"The European volunteers speak of the almost neurotic concern about invisible 'chips' supposedly planted by spies to guide in missile attacks. Fear of interception meant no use of mobile phones, only radio and notes carried by hand…"

Burke concludes this insightful article by saying that for terrorists, "simply surviving represents a victory". Well, that may be so, but it's a pretty poor sort of victory if you're hiding out in isolated huts, constantly scurrying from one hiding place to another, always fearing that each minute may be your last, and unable to advance your aims because you can't communicate effectively with the outside world.

This suggests that while the west may never eradicate terrorist groups like al-Qaida, skillful use of advanced technology and highly trained specialists can keep a group's leadership pinned down, significantly disrupt its organization, and curtail its ability to inspire and direct.

You couldn't call this a decisive victory, but it may represent a state of affairs - a stalemate, better yet a situation where you have the upper hand - that the west could live with. The analogy is with pest control. You'll never stop mice from raiding your house, but with sustained pressure and appropriate countermeasures - a hungry cat, cunningly placed traps - you can contain the problem.

Photo: lafrancevi - Heron UAV, Kandahar airfield.

Caught my eye - Taliban fighters and Colombian drug money

• In the mountains of south-east Afghanistan, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad spends time with Taliban fighters loyal to Jalaluddin Haqqani. Abdul-Ahad was worried about US drone attacks; the Taliban seemed unfazed.

• More on Afghanistan - Seth Jones's op-ed in the WSJ (h/t Zenpundit), on how the US can win the war by "going local", generates a critique at Ghosts of Alexander and a lively debate at Registan between Froust and readers, including "Njarl" who has just come back from 15 months in Afghanistan.

• Amazing story of some Colombian soldiers who found US $150 million of drug money stashed in the jungle. They turned it over to the authorities, right? Well, not exactly...

• Not that long ago the IEA rubbished the idea of peak oil. Now it's sounding the alarm about the end of global oil supplies.

• I knew there was a good reason for having a cuppa (Earl Grey or English Breakfast) before work - drinking tea helps deal with crises.

Caught my eye ... Nigerian scammers and "dastardly operations"

Here are some posts, articles and press releases that caught my eye this week...

• The Guardian profiles woman cops gunning for drug traffickers in Rio's favelas. Inspector De Mello: "I enjoy operations. When we don't have them I feel unmotivated. Today I feel professionally satisfied."

• Dean at Travels with Shiloh rips into Steven Pressfield's vids on tribes in Afghanistan. I don't know if Pressfield's spent time in Afghanistan, but Dean has. When he says that Pressfield's videos are "rife with over simplifications and generalities", I sit up and take note.

• Press release from the Columbia FBI on the latest Nigerian scam (h/t Bruce Schneier). What's interesting about this scam is how the tactics of the Nigerians are changing and evolving.

• Whoever claimed that the only benefit of organic food is that it's "healthier"? I eat organic food because it hasn't been drenched in herbicides and pesticides.

• Meanwhile in Pyongyang, Rodong Simnun, aka the "Newspaper of the Workers", denounces the imperialists and their puppets for "intensifying the dastardly operations for ideological and cultural poisoning".

First we take Peshawar...

David Kilcullen on the next big fight (via The Daily Dish):

"For Britons and Americans watching the hard-fought progress of our Coalition troops in Helmand, the harsh reality is that Nato could do everything right in Afghanistan and still lose the broader regional campaign against terrorism if Pakistan fails to contain its internal militants.

This makes the fight in Pakistan, and finding means to help Pakistanis help themselves, the most important battle in the world."

Hmmmm. The US and Britain have no clear idea about objectives, strategy and resources for the Afghan War. Is Kilcullen suggesting that as well the West gets embroiled in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province and the tribal agencies? What comes after that? Balochistan, Kashmir?

The title of Kilcullen's piece suggests that he seeks inspiration from George Curzon's experience as Viceroy of India (1899-1905). If there are lessons to be drawn from British imperial experience on the Raj's frontier in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it's these: know your limits, don't overextend, leave tribal peoples to govern themselves, and if you must enter their territory, don't stick around long.

Trend watch: insurgent attacks in Afghanistan

From The Economist...

Change of strategy needed in Afghanistan

If Jeff is right about Iraq - "the US has defeated the insurgency there" - then it's a pyrrhic victory. Where are the great benefits that offset the terrible costs of the invasion and insurgency?

This is my basic problem with the counterinsurgency/nation-building approach, advocated by Kilcullen, Nagl and other dreamers, which is being rolled out in Afghanistan. It's ruinously expensive and it's a grossly disproportionate response to fairly straightforward problems.

Take Afghanistan. We want to prevent al-Qaeda using Afghanistan as a base, right? So why try to secure this country - a remote and harsh landscape of deserts, mountains, fiercely independent tribes, and a weak and corrupt government - through protracted counterinsurgency? And why battle against the tough and fanatical Taliban, a movement that the west didn't need to pick a fight with in the first place?

How about ignoring the Taliban, and grandiose plans of nation-building, and concentrating on al-Qaeda? Set up one or two fortified fire bases in strategic locations. From there carry out precision strikes against terrorist leaders and infrastructure using special forces, UAV attack drones, and local mercenaries. More ambitiously, run a divide and rule strategy from the base areas, sowing discord between terrorists and their tribal allies.

This approach would play to Western war fighting strengths, like air power and high technology. It would minimize friendly casualties - no more soldiers getting blown up by roadside IEDs while patrolling the countryside. And if the Taliban were stupid enough to attack the fire bases, they'd be annihilated by concentrated firepower. Defence remains the stronger form of war, after all.

Photo: Cherie A Thurlby, CH-47 Chinook helicopter, Afghanistan, www.army.mil

Afghanistan: on the horns of a dilemma

Putting your enemy on the horns of a dilemma is one of the hallmarks of great strategy, according to British military thinker Basil Liddell Hart.

This is one way of interpreting the situation in Afghanistan. The Coalition is on the horns of a dilemma. To withdraw from Afghanistan now would throw away all the efforts of the last eight years and leave the weak Kabul government to fall to the resurgent Taliban. To stay in Afghanistan means committing to a protracted and costly counterinsurgency and nation-building campaign where the odds of success are at best uncertain.

When you're on the horns of a dilemma, paralysis, or ineffectual half-measures, often result. Either way, defeat comes, sooner or later. This is why the west should pull out of Afghanistan as soon as possible. Or get in there boots and all. If Afghanistan really is the "important and strategic country" that many western politicians make it out to be, then the west needs to dramatically boost its military and civil commitment.

But are there viable "have your cake and eat it too" options? Such as running a divide and rule policy from a nearby friendly country (perhaps India) - like the Raj and its 19th century strategy of playing off one frontier tribe against another. Or securing several enclaves in Afghanistan and from there striking the camps, training grounds and supply routes of takfiri terrorists and drug smugglers - like a mirror image of guerrilla sanctuaries or Maoist base areas.

"Is Afghanistan an important and strategic country?" Part 2

This is probably the clearest expression of western strategic aims in Afghanistan that I've read:

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown:

"...three quarters of the most serious plots against the UK have links into these mountains. So our purpose is clear: to prevent terrorism coming to the streets of Britain.

If, in Afghanistan, extremists return to power and once again provide a safe haven for Al Qaeda, then the same threat of global terrorism arises.

So this is a fight to clear terrorist networks from Afghanistan and Pakistan, to support the elected governments in both countries against the Taleban, to tackle the heroin trade which funds terrorism and the insurgency, and to build longer term stability."

Brown's statement goes a long way towards answering a question that I asked a while ago, about why Afghanistan should be regarded as "an important and strategic country for the west".

But it doesn't address the concern that the west's counterinsurgency campaign and nation-building effort is not sustainable. Or whether the Coalition is actually winning the fight against the Taliban, as Brown claims.

"We lead from the front..."

Chris Keeble, on the deaths of Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, CO of 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, and Trooper Joshua Hammond, in Helmand, Afghanistan:

“We lead from the front. The death of a commanding officer is no less and no more of a tragedy than the death of a private soldier.”

Keeble was second-in-command of 2 Para during the Falklands War in 1982. He took immediate control of the battalion when its CO, Lt Col "H" Jones VC was killed attacking an Argentinian machine gun at Goose Green.

Sunday reflection: on "The Accidental Guerrilla"

The navigator

I've got a rotten cold, so last night I went to bed early with a copy of David Kilcullen's The Accidental Guerrilla. Several hours later I finally went to sleep, after finishing off the evening with some light reading - a skip through Frederick Forsyth's classic thriller The Odessa File.

Kilcullen's book is a study of modern guerrilla (or 'hybrid') warfare, and how to deal with it. It draws on Kilcullen's extensive practical and theoretical experience as an Australian army officer, counterinsurgency advisor to the US government, and conflict ethnographer (his doctorate from the University of New South Wales looked at the impact of guerrilla warfare on non-state political systems in traditional societies).

I'll fully review this book when I've finished it (see Zenpundit for another take on Kilcullen). But for now you may be interested in Kilcullen's reflection on the Iraq War. "The war," Kilcullen writes, "in grand-strategic terms, was a deeply misguided and counterproductive undertaking, an extremely severe strategic error, and a model of exactly how not to do business." He considers that the "Surge" of 2007, which focused on securing and splitting the Iraqi population from the insurgents, was a way of saving "ourselves from some of the more egregious consequences of a bad decision to invade Iraq in 2003".

This is one of the things I like about Kilcullen, and one of the things that's valuable about this book. Kilcullen is his own man, not afraid to call a spade a spade and make life uncomfortable for the elites.

By the way, the picture (another lunchtime shot) shows the Kupe group statue at Taranaki St Wharf, Wellington. The three figures are Kupe, the legendary Polynesian navigator, who's said to have discovered New Zealand, his wife Te Aparangi, and the tohunga (priest) Pekahourangi.

Staying low the most sensible approach

Here's another excellent video clip from Guardian correspondent John D McHugh in Kunar, Afghanistan. It looks at the fighting in Kunar largely from the perspectives of local village leaders.

You can't help but appreciate their predicament. The villagers want to get on with daily life, which is struggle enough, but are caught in a war, not of their making, between two sets of intruders: the US and the Kabul government on the one side and the Taliban on the other. For the villagers the most sensible approach is not allying with one or other side but, as best they can, trying to stay low and out of the way.

US Air Force scores own goal (again)

Here's what US Army Field Manuel No. 3-14 Counterinsurgency says about the use of air strikes:

"E-5.  An air strike can cause collateral damage that turns people against the host-nation government and provides insurgents with a major propaganda victory.

Even when justified under the law of war, bombings that result in civilian casualties can bring media coverage that works to the insurgents’ benefit."

Looks like someone forgot to send a copy to the US Air Force ... "US air strikes kill dozens of Afghan civilians".

The Gun of Doom

When I was a kid, I voraciously read war comics - fictional tales of derring-do, usually set in the Second World War, with fearless Allied soldiers fighting fanatical Nazis or Japanese and prevailing against great odds. The titles were evocative and stirring - "The Fighting Few", "Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!" and "The Haunted Jungle". The motifs were timeless and recurring - honour, courage, grit, self-sacrifice, redemption and so on. The plots were simple, the dialogue cheesy, and exclamation marks flew thick and fast...

"It's darned tough, sir! Once those Huns get across the river they'll be all over us like a swarm of hornets!"*

Now, almost straight from the Commando comic annals, comes this story from the Afghan War, with the blood-curdling headline "British two-ton 'Dragon gun' terrifies Taliban" (h/t Armchair Generalist). According to the Times, plucky British gunners, guarded by stalwart Gurkhas, haul a 105mm light gun up a mountain in Helmand province. When the gun opens fire it terrifies the Taliban, so much that they name it 'the Dragon', "because of the flame that belches out of its barrel when fired". 

Ye gods!

The obvious question is why the Brits didn't fly the gun of doom to the top of the rock outcrop? The article suggests that surprise was a key factor in the decision to do things the old fashioned way. But surprise would only last until the gun fired, then everyone would know its position.

The Times article is a straight cut and paste from this British Ministry of Defence release, and a good example of lazy churnalism. It's worth reading the MoD release, because it explains why the Brits sited the gun on top of the rock outcrop, e.g., being able to fire directly at the enemy in a straight line, rather than indirectly. The MoD release also undermines the element of surprise line that the Times article ran. According to the MoD, helicopters were used to ferry the gun to the foot of the cliffs, and the gunners spent the previous four days building a solid firing platform on top of the outcrop. So much for secrecy.

The epic story of the hauling of the gun of doom smells like a PR stunt. But am I being too cynical? Perhaps it's more likely that British officers on the ground wanted to give the poor gunners something to do, and some enterprising MoD PR hack saw this as a golden opportunity to spin a positive story about Brits in Afghanistan.

* 'Sergeant Dave Green', in "Fight Back to Dunkirk" (War Picture Library).

Training the Afghan National Army

One of the key objectives in Obama's Afghanistan/Pakistan strategy concerns the Afghan national security forces (army and police):

"Developing increasingly self-reliant Afghan security forces that can lead the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism fight with reduced US assistance."

The White Paper proposes that the size and capability of the security forces must be "substantially increased", and that "salaries must become more competitive with those paid by the insurgents". 

You can get a sense of just how tough this task will be by watching two videos, especially this one. Guardian photo-journalist John McHugh shot the videos at a combat outpost in mountainous Kunar province, where US Marine trainers were working with a Afghan National Army unit. It's clear that the Afghan troops are not up for much, and that their opponents, the Taliban, are far better trained, paid, equipped, and motivated. As one of the Americans put it:

"when you look at the enemy, they have performance-based promotions where, if they do a good job, they get promoted [instead of] who they're related to, and you have to respect that..."

The American trainers seemed like a sharp bunch of guys - disciplined, intelligent, and having a good rapport with the Afghan soldiers. Quite different from this loudmouth in Iraq. But the trainers' inability to speak with the Afghan soldiers in their own language must be a huge obstacle to progress. If the US is to dispatch more military trainers to Afghanistan, giving those soldiers a working knowledge of Dari or Pashto should be a prerequisite. 

Obama announces new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan

US President Barack Obama has announced a new integrated strategy for fighting terrorists and insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The strategy is set out in a six page white paper. Here are the key goals:

• "Disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and its safe havens in Pakistan, and...prevent their return to Pakistan or Afghanistan".

• Promote effective and self-reliant government in Afghanistan and Pakistan, at all levels, with a significant jump in civilian assistance.

• Build up the strength and capacity of Afghan and Pakistani security forces to fight insurgents and provide security to local populations.

• Work with other countries and the United Nations to carry out these objectives.

Here are my observations about this strategy.

• The strategy sets clear objectives. Whether those objectives can realistically be achieved is another question, e.g., stabilizing two very unstable regions, and reversing a longstanding tradition of weak and corrupt central government, are big asks. Some objectives may undermine others, e.g., attacking the narcotics trade will alienate farmers from the Afghan authorities.

• Escalation is inherent in this strategy. By attacking al-Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan, the US is significantly widening the theatre of war and the number of troops and equipment needed. It risks creating more "accidental guerrillas" - locals who end up fighting with the terrorists because their valleys are invaded by foreign troops.

• The strategy includes some sound ideas, such as a comprehensive counterinsurgency plan (which prioritizes population security, economic development, and building effective local governance), and reconciling with moderate elements of the Taliban (something which I've long argued for - here, for instance). 

But the big question is whether the US and its allies can stay the course. This strategy is big, multi-faceted and ambitious, and needs substantial long-term commitment. Can the US sustain this commitment in the midst of a deepening global slump, and with a more immediate crisis - Mexico's collapse as a functioning state and its drug war - to deal with?

David Kilcullen on "accidental guerrillas"

I recommend this Danger Room interview with counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen. In the interview, Kilcullen outlines his idea of the "accidental guerrilla"...

Interviewer: When did the concept of the "accidental guerrilla syndrome" really start to click?

Kilcullen: It was field observation over ten years or so, but the name came to me one afternoon near the Khyber Pass... My local escort commander pointed out to me that he and his guys were the real foreigners on the Frontier, whereas the al-Qaeda guys had been embedded there for a generation. He said no outsider could tell the locals apart from the terrorists except by accident. And when outsiders intervene to deal with the global terrorists hiding out in areas like the FATA, it turns out people get upset, and the local community coalesces around rejecting outside interference, and closes ranks to support the terrorists....

This has happened in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa, Thailand, Indonesia, Europe - basically everywhere I've worked since 9/11, I have observed some variation on this pattern. I call the local fighters "accidental guerrillas," because they end up fighting on behalf of extremists, not because they hate the west but because we just turned up in their valley with a Brigade, looking for AQ. And I calculate 90 to 95 percent of the people we've been fighting since 9/11 are accidentals, not radicals."

What does this tell us about the 'War on Terror'? That the war, and its campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, are mostly a sham. That the west has wasted a great deal of time, effort, lives and public money fighting people who mostly were not its enemies, at least not to begin with.    

It would be interesting to see if Kilcullen's "accidental guerrilla" concept also applies to the "War on Drugs". If American planes and agents spray or burn coca crops in remote Latin American valleys, does that simply drive local farmers into the arms of the drug lords?

Friday linkfest

• Things fall apart: Jeff Vail predicts the imminent collapse of Mexico (and "Pakistan perhaps, then Iraq, then Russia, then Italy, then China, then Indonesia etc").

• Gideon Rachman on the army food in Afghanistan. Think I'd prefer the Italian "gnocchi, washed down with an excellent Chianti" to the American fried chicken and six flavours of ice cream.

• Travels with Shiloh links to this Guardian article about "gold farmers" - poor Chinese kids who scratch a living by playing the shit parts of online games. As Dean puts it, "if you have players who’d prefer to pay people to play for them rather than play themselves it’s probably not a very good game".

Friday link-fest

• Rethinking Security on anarchists fighting cops with lasers.

• Armchair Generalist on one of my favourite questions - what the hell to do in Afghanistan?

• Global Guerrillas on why greedy bankers should be worried...really worried.

• The Capitol Tribune on Obama's speech to Congress, and the Republicans' lame response.

• Jamais Cascio's slideshow on imagining the future, with lots of cool photos (h/t YT).

If the Afghan war was a business, it would be broke

What's the cost of British military operations in Afghanistan this financial year? Nearly £2.6 billion (USD3.7bn), an annual increase of more than 50%. And what has the British government got to show for this "investment"? Bugger all.

If the Afghan operation was a business venture, it would be broke. Lot of investment but no profit, even after seven years in business.

I know it's difficult to compare private sector and government spending. Pay-offs for public spending - in health, education, public infrastructure and so on - take years, sometimes decades to show. For example, if you educate kids in IT skills the pay-off may not come until 20 years time, when they set up software companies that employ people and sell goods to other countries.

But what's scary about the British (and American) military spend in Afghanistan is that money is being spent even though the allies have had no realistic objectives, no strategy for achieving these, and no indicators for measuring progress. It's not surprising that one of the first questions President Obama asked his military chiefs was "what's the endgame?".

A new strategy for the Afghan war?

Canadian outpost, Ma'Sum Ghar, Afghanistan (photo: lafrancevi).

If you want to get a sense of the likely new counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, read this article by Nathaniel Fick and John Nagl and this interview with US General David Petraeus.

Petraeus is the head of the US Central Command. His beat includes Afghanistan. He wrote the "US Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual", and is credited with turning around the security situation in Iraq in 2007/08. Fick and Nagl are former US military officers, and counterinsurgency specialists who are closely associated with Petraeus and another noted expert, Australian David Kilcullen.

The articles suggest that coalition forces will seek to defeat the Taliban insurgency through these key elements:

• Provide security to the Afghan population, by having small troop and police detachments live among the people.

• Work with and through local governance structures, e.g., village councils.

• Develop rural infrastructure - roads, schools, electricity, clean water and so on.

• Strengthen the capacity and authority of the Afghan government, and its army, police and courts.

• Use minimum force, and limit air strikes (which have killed large numbers of civilians and have alienated the population).

• Negotiate and reconcile with elements of the Taliban.

The US is planning to "surge" an extra 30,000 troops to Afghanistan this year, while the British may send up to 3500 more soldiers. If the strategy outlined above is followed, many of these reinforcements will be deployed throughout countryside, in rural towns and villages, to provide security to the Afghan people, government administrators and development projects.

The bullshit files: John Hutton and the Nazi card

Playing the Nazi card is the weakest line of argument in university debating or online discussions. People who invoke Nazis or Hitler in arguments usually do so because:

• their argument is weak, and they're trying to disguise this; or

• they're losing the argument, badly; or

• they are trying to shut down debate; or

• they are incompetent and have no idea what they are doing.

In John Hutton's case, all four may apply. The British defence secretary claims that the Afghan war "is a struggle against fanatics that may not challenge our borders but challenges our way of life in the same way the Nazis did.”

There is simply no comparison between the threat posed to western democracy by Nazi Germany and its allies, and the terrorist activities of the Taleban and al-Qaeda. It's surprising that Hutton doesn't realize this, given that he is an Oxford graduate and a keen student of history.

In 1940/41, there was a real possibility that Nazi Germany would overrun Britain. If the Battle of Britain had been lost in 1940, or if Hitler had not invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, European democracy would have ended.

By contrast, today Al-Qaeda may be able to carry out sporadic terrorist attacks, or inspire others to do so, but the western way of life continues without significant disruption. In the 21st century, global recession, resource depletion, and climate change pose the real threats to "our way of life".

Chalk up another one for the bullshit files.

Sunday reflection

 

The Sunday flower: pelargoniums - also known as geraniums - are among my favourite flowering plants. They're easy to grow, flower in big clumps, and come in lots of varieties.

Last week I especially enjoyed the discussion about the way the US treats its staunchest ally in the Afghan war, Britain. This was blogging at its best - intelligent people debating interesting ideas in a civilized fashion.

I'm going to have another post up shortly about "Global Trends 2025" - definitely before Christmas day. I've gotta say that this report is heavy going - I'm reading chapter 5 and it's like wading through sludge.

Have a good week,

Kotare

We're Americans, we don't do tact and forbearance

Britain is the only reliable ally that America has in the Afghan war. So recent US criticism of the British army's fighting performance in Afghanistan seems, at best, misjudged, at worst, pretty stupid. I've had a hard day at work, so I'm going to settle for "pretty stupid".

When you're the leading nation in a coalition of allies, a certain amount of tact and forbearance goes with the territory. In the Second World War the British had coalition management down to a fine art. As well as keeping querulous Commonwealth governments (New Zealand, Australia, Canada, South Africa) onside, they had to manage delicate relations with powerful allies, the United States and Russia, plus a host of smaller allies, such as the Free French and the Polish.

Is it too much to suggest that Washington could take a similar tack in Afghanistan? Yeah, probably - Americans don't do tact and forbearance that well. And hey, maybe they want to go it alone in this aimless, endless and unpopular war?

The bullshit files: alms to the Taliban

A while back I wrote that the west is "fighting the Afghan war aimlessly and endlessly, without realistic objectives". If that isn't bad enough, it looks like the west is also paying protection money to Taliban commanders to make sure that supply convoys get safely from Pakistan into Afghanistan.

Here's how it works...

"Contracts to supply British bases and those of other Western forces with fuel, supplies and equipment are held by multinational companies.

However, the business of moving supplies from the Pakistani port of Karachi to British, US and other military contingents in the country is largely subcontracted to local trucking companies. These must run the gauntlet of the increasingly dangerous roads south of Kabul in convoys protected by hired gunmen from Afghan security companies.

The Times has learnt that it is in the outsourcing of convoys that payoffs amounting to millions of pounds, including money from British taxpayers, are given to the Taleban."

So, the west is seeking to destroy the Taliban. The west is also propping up the Taliban. Yep, definitely one for the bullshit files.

Kilcullen - what's going wrong in Afghanistan

This is a great read (h/t Glamdring). Counterinsurgency guru David Kilcullen writes about the west's strategy in Afghanistan - what's right, what's wrong. Actually, mostly about what's wrong. Here's a snippet:

"Police are another main issue. We have built the Afghan police into a less well-armed, less well-trained version of the Army and launched them into operations against the insurgents. Meanwhile, nobody is doing the job of actual policing—rule of law, keeping the population safe from all comers (including friendly fire and coalition operations), providing justice and dispute resolution, and civil and criminal law enforcement.

As a consequence, the Taliban have stepped into this gap; they currently run thirteen law courts across the south, and ninety-five per cent of the work of these courts is civil law, property disputes, criminal matters, water and grazing disputes, inheritances etc.—basic governance things that the police and judiciary ought to be doing, but instead they’re out in the countryside chasing bad guys."

This seems to be part of a wider pattern: in counterinsurgencies, police forces get turned into paramilitary outfits. Is this because, as Kilcullen suggests, people confuse security with engaging the enemy in combat? Or is it a hangover from the British empire, where paramilitary policing was a key way of securing unstable frontier regions (Pakistan's Frontier Corps and India's Assam Rifles are modern day examples of this tradition).

Digging in for the long haul

Unless you're a member of Pakistan's ISI, this insight into the Taleban order of battle in Pakistan's Bajaur tribal agency may be of interest...

"The map tells a war story of its own. Sketched by a Taleban commander, it is of a stretch of territory fought over in Bajaur between the Pakistani Army and the insurgents. The ground has been neatly divided into specific areas of responsibility for different Taleban units.

Weapons caches, assembly areas and rendezvous points have been carefully marked and coded. This is not the work of a renegade gunman resistant to central authority; it is the assessment of a skilled and experienced fighter, and begins to explain how more than 400 Pakistani soldiers have been killed or wounded since August in Bajaur....

Discovered along with the map in a series of recently captured tunnel complexes are other documents - radio frequency lists, guerrilla warfare manuals, students' notes, jihadist propaganda and bombmaking instructions - that provide further evidence of the Taleban's organisation and training." 

For me, "tunnel complexes" are a red flashing light, a warning signal that the west, in its Afghan adventure, which threatens to spill into Pakistan's tribal agencies, is engaging a determined enemy who is psychologically preparing for the long haul.

Pakistan army does heavy lifting

You often hear this. The US, Britain and Nato allies take on the Taleban in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Pakistan stands by idly, allowing the insurgents safe haven in the tribal agencies, or worse, aiding and abetting them.

This Times article, by Anthony Lloyd, tells a different story - Pakistan army and Frontier Corps units engaged in bloody ground fighting against a well-armed and determined enemy in the Bajaur tribal agency:

"Initially given the job of pushing up from Khar and recapturing Loesam, they immediately found themselves in pitched combat against a well-armed enemy equipped with mortars, rockets, heavy machine guns and satellite communications systems. Extensive tunnel complexes, piled with rations and munitions, linked a series of defensive positions....

The Army's push was slow and bloody as the insurgents kept melting away and reappearing to ambush and harry the advance." 

Is Afghanistan an "important and strategic country"?

In this article on the state of affairs in Afghanistan, Alastair Leithead describes Afghanistan as "an important and strategic country wedged between Iran and an increasingly chaotic Pakistan".

I don't want to pick holes in what is otherwise a useful piece of analysis. But this line - Afghanistan is "an important and strategic country" - is often bandied about, without a shred of compelling argument to back it up. I don't think I'm being flip to suggest that Alexander and his Macedonian generals and Britain's Viceroys probably made similar claims.

The west is fighting the Afghan war aimlessly and endlessly, without realistic objectives. And just because Afghanistan is sandwiched between Iran and Pakistan doesn't ipso facto make it a strategic location. But perhaps I'm missing something here. I'd be very interested to hear what readers think about this question. Is Afghanistan an important and strategic country for the west? If yes, how?

Nato's lifeline runs through bandit country

While reading this article in Foreign Affairs, I came across an astonishing figure: 84 per cent of the material for US forces operating in Afghanistan goes through Pakistan.

Let me repeat that. 84 per cent of supplies for US forces fighting the Taliban transits a fractured country which is gripped by an Islamic fundamentalist insurrection, and where the power-brokers - the army and military intelligence - are trying to play off the US and its allies against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

No wonder, then, that the Taliban are trying hard to cut Nato's main supply line lifeline.

"Armies were like plants..."

Syed Saleem Shahzad writes about the Taliban's strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan:

"The real strategy was applied elsewhere in the Afghan province of Nangarhar and the Pakistani tribal area of Khyber, which are part of the transit route for 80% of Nato supplies. In February, Nato convoys were targeted in well-organised attacks, so successful and effective that Nato was compelled to sign a deal with Russia on 4 April on land transit for non-military freight through Russian territory. But such a route risked putting the budget of the western forces under serious strain.

According to an anonymous senior member of the Taliban, 'cutting off Nato’s supply line from Pakistan is an important element in our strategy. If it is correctly implemented in 2008, Nato will have to leave Afghanistan in 2009, although we might need an extra year.'"

This reminds me of what T E Lawrence wrote in Seven Pillars of Wisdom: "Armies were like plants, immobile, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head".

In an era of global air transportation, we forget the extent to which armies still depend on long land and sea lines of communications for essential supplies - food, water, oil, ammunition and so on. These are vulnerable to interdiction by well-organized guerrilla and hybrid forces.

The Taliban are hard, we are soft

The story of British paratrooper Corporal Mark Wright, who died while leading the rescue of a comrade in Afghanistan, is one of great heroism. It also illustrates how defeating the Taliban is mission impossible.

In late 2006, Wright went to the aid of another soldier trapped in a minefield. He was mortally wounded when a rescue helicopter accidentally triggered land mines. Now a British coroner found that serious systemic failures contributed to Wright's death, including a lack of British helicopters in Afghanistan fitted with winches. According to the coroner, the lack of equipment was "simply about money".

What makes the Afghan war unwinnable is not penny-pinching bureaucrats. It is that western forces are obsessed with avoiding casualties, while the Taliban are not. The Taliban are hard, we are soft.

If a western soldier is trapped in a minefield, his comrades go to great lengths to save him. This risks the lives of many other men and women, and costs a lot of money. Our soldiers do so because they come from a society which places great stock on preserving the life of an individual. Death is hard to take, even for professional soldiers.

If the soldier dies, an inquest is conducted, a verdict is handed down, blame is laid, and people are fired. In the process, fresh doubts are raised about the effectiveness of the armed forces, the competence of its leadership, and the validity of the mission in Afghanistan. The demands for withdrawal grow louder and louder.

If a Taliban fighter is trapped in a minefield, his comrades shoot him and move on. There is no cost, no inquest, no blame, and no doubts. The Taliban fighters do this because they come from Pashtun tribal societies where toil, disease, conflict and death are unremarkable, part of everyday life.

It doesn't matter how many reinforcements and rescue helicopters with winches are sent to Afghanistan. In ground combat, the mental hardness and endurance of the Pashtun fighters will ultimately win out.

In Pharaoh's service

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad writes about the army of migrant labourers - from India, Pakistan and Afghanistan - who build Dubai's shining towers, and about how Dubai's elite view these destitute and oppressed men.

"We need slaves," my friend says. 'We need slaves to build monuments. Look who built the pyramids - they were slaves."

What's the bet that the camps where these helots are housed are incubating new recruits for the global jihad?

Photojournalist on the frontline

Embedded with US forces in Afghanistan, John McHugh is one of the best journalists reporting on the Afghan war. Check out this video to see why.

McHugh uses text, photos, film, audio to great effect. In this slideshow, he mixes black and white photos and audio - no voice-over, just the sounds of helicopters, gunfire and men talking - to capture something of the atmosphere during a Taliban attack on a US mountain outpost.

Outflanking the Taliban

The Times: "British and other Nato troops in Afghanistan were given a new mandate today to target and attack heroin drug barons and to destroy opium-processing laboratories....The focus will also be on drug producers with specific links to the Taleban to try and stop the estimated annual $80 million...being channelled from opium sales into the coffers of the insurgents."

Attacking the Taliban's finances is a smart 'indirect' move. As Clausewitz wrote in On War, there are many ways to reach one's object in war; in a counterinsurgency cutting the enemy's funds complements an assault on his fighting force.

There are a couple of problems though. The plan involves yet another mission for overstretched troops. It risks diverting resources from the fight against the Taliban and from rural reconstruction activities.

And while NATO will target drug producers, this will hurt Afghan farmers who grow the opium poppies. The authorities need to hold the allegiance of the rural population if the insurgency is to be contained. An assault against the drug lords should be accompanied by moves to legitimize the poppy crop and license production for painkillers (like morphine and codeine).

This would tie the fortunes of Afghanistan's rural population to those of the Kabul government, not to the Taliban and its drug lord allies.

Has the west been fighting the wrong war?

Times defence editor Michael Evans wonders if US General David Petraeus, the new CENTCOM commander, can win the Afghanistan war by applying his Iraq counterinsurgency experience.

A better question is whether, since October 2001, when the west invaded Afghanistan, we have been fighting the wrong war.

Just after 9/11 it was clear who the enemy was: al-Qaeda. Then things got hazy. The west invaded Afghanistan, and found itself fighting the Taliban. The US invaded Iraq, overthrew a regime which had no real connection with al-Qaeda, and found itself embroiled in a protracted insurgency.

The upshot? Seven years after 9/11, the west has fought two costly wars that it didn't have to, against people that weren't really its enemies.

In the last two years the fighting in Afghanistan has intensified, the security situation has deteriorated, and the conflict shows every sign of spilling into Pakistan's frontier provinces. It's not far-fetched to say that soon we will see the US routinely attacking Taliban inside Pakistan.

Petraeus may be able to contain the conflict, and, as British Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith suggested, reduce it to "to a manageable level of insurgency [that]...can be managed by the Afghan army". This will take several years at least.

But for what purpose? It's hard to see what strategic benefits the west will gain by intensifying the counterinsurgency. The only benefit that I can see is a short term tactical one: gain a temporary military ascendancy, thereby creating a position of relative strength from which to negotiate a political settlement with the Taliban.

Secret dealings with the Taliban

Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, British senior commander in southern Afghanistan, had this to say about negotiating with the Taliban:

“We want to change the nature of the debate from one where disputes are settled through the barrel of the gun to one where it is done through negotiations.

If the Taliban were prepared to sit on the other side of the table and talk about a political settlement, then that’s precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this. That shouldn’t make people uncomfortable.”

Last Sunday Jason Burke revealed that the Afghan government and Taliban senior leaders have been holding secret peace negotiations. The talks are sponsored by Saudi Arabia and supported by Britain. He suggests why the Taliban leaders may be willing to talk:

"'They've been fighting for nearly seven years, living undercover, moving regularly, unable to go back to Afghanistan without risking a violent death. Despite the bellicose rhetoric and the successes of recent months, they have lost a lot of people and there is a certain degree of fatigue,' said one experienced Pakistan-based observer."

This news will be anathema to the "never negotiate with terrorists" brigade - the armchair warriors who believe that anything less than crushing victory is a "white flag of surrender", and that counterinsurgencies can be won solely through military means.

But really, what choice does the West have but to seek a political settlement? The Taliban can draw on a deep reserve of religious zealots from Afghanistan and Pakistan, and foreign fighters from elsewhere in the Muslim world. Unlike western soldiers, these men have no trouble understanding why they are fighting, and no problem dying for the cause. This war could go on indefinitely.

As I've written before, great generals and statesmen have routinely used negotiation as a way of ending war. Given that the Afghanistan fighting seems to have become stalemated, with both sides copping heavy punishment and fatigue setting in, now seems like a good time to talk.

Smitten Eagle on "How not to win a war"

In my last "Raiders of the Lost Archives" post, I discussed coalition air strikes in counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan.

Smitten Eagle, who served with the US Marines in Afghanistan, had this to say in response:

"I think the use of air strikes and arty [artillery] is more of a function of techno-fetishism. Each year PGMs [precision-guided munitions], guidance technology, and effects-prediction models seem to improve, giving false hope to the futile idea that a pilot has better situational awareness than people on the ground.

We would be better served if we had less faith in the power of technology, especially with regard to the forms of People's War..."

Raiders of the Lost Archives: "How not to win a war"

Each week I ransack the lost archives of The Strategist, to recall what I posted a year ago to the day (or thereabouts).

On 12 July 2007 I wrote about coalition air strikes in Afghanistan which killed a large number of civilians. "In a counterinsurgency," I commented, "the basic idea is to win civilians to your side, not drive them into the enemy's camp by killing their family and friends with air strikes and artillery fire. Why is it that some soldiers find this difficult to grasp?".

A year later, and déjà vu...

"A US air strike killed 47 civilians, including 39 women and children, as they were travelling to a wedding in Afghanistan, an official inquiry found today. The bride was among the dead. Another nine people were wounded in Sunday's attack....The US military initially denied any civilians had been killed."

COIN: Theory vs Practice

In this compelling video, photojournalist John D McHugh juxtaposes the theory of the US Counterinsurgency Field Manual with the way it is practiced by US soldiers fighting in Afghanistan:

"[General] Petraus says America now expects its soldiers to be nation builders as well as warriors. But is too much being asked of them? This is, after all, still a war.

I spent nearly two months with the men of Charlie Company. They are all fine soldiers doing their best. They made me laugh, they protected me in times of danger. But are they natural diplomats or nation builders?"

It's a good point. In The Civil War (I.71), Caesar wrote that "a good commander should be able to gain as much by policy as by the sword". But Roman commanders were first and foremost political leaders. There was little distinction between civil and military spheres - as is customary now - and oratory, diplomacy and negotiating came naturally to someone like Caesar.

Western commanders are first and foremost soldiers who may, during their careers, gain some of the skills of the politician. But this is pretty hit and miss. Is there a place, in counterinsurgency, for much greater use of political officers - civilians with expertise in civil administration, policing, and intercultural negotiation - to advise and represent field commanders in political dealings? Or going further, a role for a new type of civil organization that deals with nation building and frontier diplomacy, freeing the military to fight the enemy?

Weekend Reading: Ghosts of Alexander

I've been reading this fascinating post at Ghosts of Alexander on Russia's use of social scientists to inform war fighting and strategy in Turkestan, during the 19th century, and Chechnya, in the late 1990s.

The post mentions the US Army's Human Terrain System. This programme uses social scientists to advise military commanders about local customs in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Ghosts of Alexander considers that the programme is "a mere shadow" of Russian and British colonial inquiries.

A World Cup of Peace

In the 2006 Football World Cup, Germany, France, Italy and Portugal reached the semi-finals, with Italy narrowly beating France 5-3 in a penalty shoot-out to clinch the cup.

But what if the World Cup was about peace, not football? Then New Zealand and the Scandanavian countries would have semi-final berths, with Iceland pipping Denmark to win. According to the Global Peace Index, the world's most peaceful places in 2008 are:

1. Iceland
2. Denmark
3. Norway
4. New Zealand

No prizes for guessing that Iraq gets the wooden spoon.

Afghanistan Diary - "This seriously pissed us all off"

Remember Cpl Lachlan MacNeil of the British army's Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders?

"We'll give the Taliban a harder time than they'll give us. I'm really positive of that. I don't think they've fought Jocks yet either."

In this article, MacNeil relates his unit's first experience of fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, alongside US Marines. His writing is spare, down-to-earth, and at times funny:

"Moments later, an enemy anti-aircraft gun in the area showed itself. This was an immediate threat to us as aircraft were constantly flying overhead....I instructed our Javelin, a portable anti-tank missile system, to engage that target.

Initially we thought the Javelin's missile had missed or locked on to another source as it headed east behind a tree line. This seriously pissed us all off as there were a lot of coalition helicopters in the area and we didn't want the missile engaging one of ours. However, the message filtered through later on that evening that we had destroyed the Taliban anti-aircraft gun and vehicle, which was great news for us and especially for Lance Corporal Storrie, who was taking a serious hounding when we thought we had missed."

After my earlier post, Fabius and I debated whether MacNeil's Afghanistan diary has the makings of classic war literature (my view), or if it's simply "instant oral history" (Fabius's view). Whatever the answer, this initiative of the Guardian, turning soldier into reporter, gives a gripping ground eye view of the Afghan fighting.