Afghanistan

I haven’t written much about Afghanistan lately because I didn’t think I had much to add to the conversation.  My experiences there are becoming less and less relevant but I occasionally see something that sparks a memory or thought.

This article (from late June) talks about a rocket attack at Bagram Airbase that killed two soldiers.  When I was there we came under rocket attack a few times and I was always under the impression that either the rockets that were fired against us were virtually useless as a weapon when jury-rigged to fire as they were (we never had one come close to any living/working areas in spite of the base housing around 10,000 soldiers and all sorts of equipment) or that the people firing them were more interested in sending a message than in actually hitting anything.  When I first got in country I believed the former but by the end of my tour began to strongly suspect the latter.  An occasional rocket over the perimeter could be an effective tool in convincing the military leadership that we still needed local warlords to maintain control and order in the countryside and guarantee the flow of money and materiel.

In fact, I was so non-plussed by the threat of rockets that I refused to get out of bed during one attack until I heard the second one whistle over my tent and then didn’t think much of casually sauntering to the latrine before making my way to my assigned station (a shoddily constructed plywood building that would have collapsed into a pile of matchsticks had it been hit).  I’d like to think I was just incredibly brave (and believe me that’s how I’ll play it up if anyone is buying the drinks) but really it just didn’t seem like a real threat.

I think back to my time outside the wire in the area around Bagram in 2003-2004 and I have to say it’s surprising to hear that things have deteriorated so much since then.  It’s a long way from riding in unarmored SUVs with poor communication equipment, 4 or 5 other soldiers armed only with individual weapons and not being particularly concerned and the way the country is described today.

As a related aside, I highly recommend reading the dispatches of Graeme Wood.  He’s currently in Helmand with the Marines and has some great observations.

Gangs and insurgencies – the final chapter

I figured I had said all there was to about this subject and then David Kilcullen had to go and appear on The Colbert Report.  Check it out (sorry, I can’t seem to embed it).

Here’s the relevant exchange (forgive any errors in the transcription but this is really close if not exact):

Colbert:  …[You say] people in poor communities turn to gangs for protection, for services when the government can’t do it for them…

Kilcullen:  Exactly right…There’s actually a huge amount of similarity between basic police work and the sort of stuff that happens with gangs and so on and what happens in this [insurgency] environment.

So, first, it’s nice to know that David obviously reads this blog but he really should credit me for these ideas [I'm just kidding Mr. Kilcullen.  Call me! ]

More seriously, I’d make a slight tweak to his observation.  There is a huge similarity to the challenges in police work and insurgencies but I’d argue that most American police departments have been trying to approach those problems from a mindset that more closely hews to traditional military thinking that counterinsurgency doctrine.

Current anti-crime measures are almost exclusively reactive and suppression based.  You wait for a crime to occur, you find the suspect and you arrest him/her.  There’s no identification or addressing of underlying factors.

This video really struck a cord with me since I had virtually the same conversation with my command which I was in Afghanistan in 2003.  My command could not get their heads around the idea of insurgency and could only conceive of conventional military threats.  Hence, I was tasked to do an Intelligence Preperation of the Battlefield so that they could plan what to do if the Taliban attempted to overrun Bagram airfield.  Now, Bagram had over 10,000 soldiers at the time, in addition to a sizable number of attack helicopters and aircraft and yet, the only threat scenario these guys could come up with was a Taliban motorized rifle division coming over the Koh-i-Safi mountains.  IEDs?  Rocket attacks?  Nah…”This isn’t Iraq” I was told or “C’mon…who does that?”

As a side note, my repeated attempts to convince them that such a scenario was highly unlikely and that other threats should have a higher priority went unheeded, setting off an unfortunate string of increasingly dysfunctional exchanges which ended with me telling the S-3 that he was full of bulls*it at a very full shift change brief.  (Not a particularly wise move for a mid-level NCO although, miraculously, I avoided any repercussions).

We had a number of soldiers with civilian law enforcement experience and I recommended dragooning them, on a part time basis, to assist in intelligence gathering and developing a decent view of our new operating environment.  Command couldn’t figure out why we couldn’t get all the information we needed from the internet.  Needless to say, that didn’t happen and 2003-2004 in Afghanistan (at least in the Bagram area) can best be thought of as a year of lethargy.

Still, it is encouraging to hear that the military was inspired in part by the academic/research work done in law enforcement and people who understood the issue made it to the top.   Hopefully the military can return the favor to the law enforcement community.

An Afghan mystery

I found this story interesting both because it took place in Parwan province (just down the road from Bagram AirField where I was) and the strange nature of the story:

Doctors are investigating whether dozens of girls were poisoned at a high school in northern Afghanistan on Monday after 61 girls went to the hospital because of sudden illness, officials said.

Dr. Khalil Farhagga said the 61 students and one teacher from a school in Parwan — one province north of Kabul — complained of irritability, tearing and confusion. Several girls also passed out.

The mass hospitalization comes about two weeks after a similar incident in Parwan, where dozens of girls were hospitalized in late April after being sickened by what Afghan officials said were strong fumes or a possible poison gas cloud.

Two incidents in the same province within a couple of weeks certainly sounds a bit suspicious but reporting in Afghanistan can be unreliable and sourced in rumors.  Still, if these acts were nefarious, it could be (as far as I know) the first use of what I assume to be a chemical agent to cause mass casualties in Afghanistan.  The fact it’s very close to the biggest American military base in the country should be further cause for concern.

It should also be noted that Kabul is only about an hours drive away.

Could this be an attack directed at girls going to school?  A dry run for a more political/military significant target?  Or perhaps just a non-sinister event?  It’s worth keeping an eye on in any case.  Especially given this story which talks of the Taliban using white phosphorous.

The U.S. military declassified documents Monday showing at least 38 instances where militants had used white phosphorus in attacks or where weapons had been found in eastern Afghanistan, where the U.S. primarily operates. The NATO-led force supplied information on six other instances in the country.

As the Armchair Generalist will tell you, white phosphorus is not considered a chemical weapon but its use is likely to heighten fear and generate some additional headlines.

Assuming the events in Parwan are intentional attacks (a big assumption at this point) it’s not clear if these two stories reflect some sort of tactical shift on the part of the Taliban to broaden their arsenal.  I couldn’t find any Taliban statements threatening anything different from regular tactics so it remains a mystery.

Ah yes…Afghanistan

It’s been awhile since I last wrote about Afghanistan.  (Un)fortunately, not much has changed:

The Air Force is still trying to prove they can win a counterinsurgency campaign from 25,000 feet.

For about the hundredth time, claims are being made that Pakistan is going to seriously fight the Taliban (this time they even crossed their hearts!)

The Kabul zoo is even less interesting to visit.

Oh…and evangelicals continue to infiltrate the Army (my poor secular Army) with superstitious nonsense in their desire to spread mega-churches and anonymous gay sex to the four corners of the globe.

Ok, that last sentence wasn’t entirely fair.  I know a lot of some evangelicals that I respect deeply, trust implicitly and they don’t have a proselytizing bone in their body.  I just get really peeved when I read this crap.

“The special forces guys — they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down,” he says.

“Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the kingdom. That’s what we do, that’s our business.”

Look this counterinsurgency thing is hard.  Can we at least agree to not screw up the easy stuff like feeding fears that we’re some sort of crusader army planning on converting everyone?

On the brighter side…I am really enjoying the Ministry of State Failure Blog more and more.  I do wish he’d get off blogger since it seems every government computer out there blocks those sites (thank goodness WordPress has escaped their clutches thus far).

Suggestions for Afghanistan

I took advantage of my eight hours hurtling across the continent in a small aluminum tube yesterday to start reducing my ‘to read’ pile.

I started with the International Crisis Group paper No 89 titled “Afghanistan:  New U.S. Administration, New Directions“.  As Jari says, this is worth the read for summerizing the current situation and examining the range of ’solutions’ that have recently been proposed.  The five ‘no-nos’ that they warn against:

1. Don’t negotiate with jihadi groups, especially from a position of weakness.
2. Don’t try to solve all of Central/Southwest Asia’s problems with one solution that’s got too many moving parts.  Bilateral negotiations now and a more comprehensive stabilization/peace process later.
3. Withdraw.  Pulling out would be bad.  Very bad.  Don’t think you can bomb your way to a solution from 35,000 feet
4. Install a better strongman.  The lure of putting someone in power who can make the trains (or, in the case of Afghanistan, the train) run on time may be great but will ultimately be counter-productive.  Work on the rule of law and democratic institutions.
5. Arming villagers.  There are enough weapons in Afghanistan.  The last thing the country needs is us handing out a bunch of AK-47s in the hopes that villagers will use them the way we want them to.

Other nuggets that I thought were particularly well put (and which have highlighted anecdotally here):

Following the 2001 intervention, justice was deemed a “luxury” for a devastated country.  Powerful international actors, including the U.S., viewed action against predetory powerbrokers as too destabilisin, which fuelled criminality.

And…

[T]acit acceptance of opium trafficking by foreign military forces as a way to extract intelligence information and occasional military support in operations against the Taliban and Al Qaeda undermines stabilization efforts.

And…

“…by one estimate international contractors are responsible for almost three quarters of U.S. development assistance in Afghanistan.  Layers upon layers of subcontracting appear to Afghans as a case of many hands legally taking a cut before funds reach the target program.  Similarities between this structure and the Afghan patronage networks that the international community criticises so stridently are not lost on them.”

Indeed.

Marching towards Hell

I watched Michael Scheuer on UChannel last night.  He’s an interesting speaker and challenges a lot of beliefs that are tightly held by many Americans.  I find myself agreeing with many of his assumptions but disagreeing with his conclusions.  He advocates a foreign policy of hyper-realism that submits every question to one criteria:  Is it in the national interest?  If not, there’s no reason to waste a bit of blood or treasure on it.  Here are some of the ideas he mentions that struck me as noteworthy:

1. We shouldn’t get involved in religious wars.  The Israeli/Arab conflict is one such war where we are supporting both sides, ensuring that regardless of who wins, we lose.
2. Bin Laden and the Islamists are very clear about why they are in conflict with us and it’s not because of our freedoms but rather our policy
3. Democracy does not automatically translate to pro-U.S./pro-Israel, especially in the Middle East
4. Iran, our bogeyman dujour, is probably the most representative nation in the Arab world
5. The U.S. congress, by replacing declarations of war with ‘authorizations for military force’, is trying to have its cake and eat it too.  Taking credit for successes and free to criticize during failures.

There’s nothing particularly new in Scheuer’s speech and if you’ve read ‘Imperial Hubris’ you’ll recognize many of the same arguments although perhaps argued more forcefully.

I have to think that Scheuer is arguing that our only hope if to relinquish the very things that make us American.  One of America’s deepest characteristics is a messianic streak to improve the world and remake it in our image.  While that has led to some serious problems in our past it’s also the one that fuels huge amounts of charitable giving, volunteerism and ingenuity.

The answer, I would argue, is not a retreat into a walled fortress America, only venturing out to conduct business deals and keep the sea lanes open but to make our goals explicit, encourage debate about what sort of foreign policy we should have (almost 20 years after the Cold War and we still haven’t had that discussion yet) and come to an answer about how we should interact with the world in the 21st century.

There’s just something deep down that rebels at the thought of seeing vast levels of suffering like the genocides of the 20th century and saying “Yeah…too bad.”

If I wanted to live in a country like that I’d move to China.

The real value in this speech is the fact that Scheuer is able to say things that would normally have him written off as a crank or tin foil hatted nutcase.   But…he has apparently accumulated enough cache through his career and the university environment he’s surrounded by that the audience is compelled to consider his arguments even though you get the impression that in another venue they’d dismiss similar arguements out of hand.  It is very entertaining to see the cognitive dissonance playing out on the faces of the audience members as they formulate their questions.

If you haven’t seen/heard Scheuer watch this.  If you have seen him before, you can probably skip it.

Distopian Linkfest

Just when you begin to think that South Africa really is a civilized nation they seem to go out of their way to convince you that’s not, in fact the case.

Is an Afghan version of the Tet Offensive in the works?  CNN seems to be implying it may be.  Excuse me for stating the obvious but that would be very, very bad.  Of course, if you are the Taliban leadership this is probably a good time to try a bold move.  Spring has arrived, the 17,000 troops haven’t (yet), Washington still hasn’t completed their strategic review, nobody is quite sure what the Europeans are going to do, a new narrative which is decidedly gloomy about our prospects there and national policy makers are distracted with the economic crisis.  A significant strike which makes the Afghan/coalition forces look weak or over-reactive might convince enough people that the whole thing isn’t worth it and encourage us to get the hell out.

Via Kotare, (who linked here which makes this the stereotypical snake eating its own tail) Jeff Vail predicts the imminent dissolution of the Mexican state.  I can’t comment on his hypothesis that this is signaling the beginning of the end of the nation state (although I’m putting his paper on my reading list since my weak laptop won’t allow me to do what I’d prefer to spend my time on) but I think something has been missed in all this talk about the problems going on south of the border.

The civil wars in Central America during the 1980s resulted in an  strange cyclical flow of criminals and insurgents between the U.S. and countries south of our borders.  As times got tough or conflicts ended, a number of people came north with few skills other than serving in the military or being an insurgent.  Unable to merge into the legitimate economy, they found their skills could be put to use in criminal activities and contributed to the rise in the Hispanic gang population.  Then…

Since the mid-1990s, U.S. immigration policy has dramatically boosted the proliferation of gangs throughout Latin America and Asia by deporting tens of thousands of immigrants with criminal records back to their home countries each year, including a growing number of gang members. In 1996, around 38,000 immigrants were deported after committing a crime; by 2003, the number had jumped to almost 80,000. Often, gang members have spent nearly their entire lives in the United States. But once they run afoul of the law, their immigrant status leaves them vulnerable to deportation.

The countries that receive the flood of deportees are usually ill-equipped to deal with so many returning gang members.

It’s not as though many gang members wish to remain in the countries of their birth. With little or no connection to their new homes, deported gang members typically face a simple choice: either find a way to return to the United States or seek protection from local gang members. In the case of MS-13, the U.S. government has deported hundreds of members, many of whom continue to illegally migrate back and forth, often carrying goods or people with them. Those that remain in their home countries are almost sure to connect with other deported gang members, and authorities in these countries say they are responsible for a large upswing in crime and violence. In a sense, U.S. immigration policy has amounted to unintentional state-sponsored gang migration. Rather than solving the gang problem, the United States may have only spread it.

(Check out the whole source article here)

So, even if Mexico doesn’t collapse will we see a repeat (perhaps on a larger scale) of this behavior?  A further spread of Mexican gangs fueled by the criminal groups seeking to establish/consolidate their position in the illicit commodities trade and also by the revolving door of criminals being deported to Mexico and sneaking back into the U.S., usually to stay with friends/family in a sort of unintentional colonization.

[W]hen people move, they take their culture with them. For example, Trey, a member of Chicago’s massive Gangster Disciples, moved to a small town in Arkansas where his brother, who is not a gang member, had found a job. Although Trey tried to “go legit,” he soon found that his status as a Gangster Disciple from the housing projects of Chicago gave him a formidable reputation in small-town Arkansas. Within nine months, he started a new Gangster Disciples “chapter” with 15 members.

And to top it all off, Germany is now selling ‘Obama-fingers‘.  I’m not sure if something has been lost in translation or German marketers have decided to target the cannibal/zombie demographic directly.  Either way, nothing good can come of this.

Yep…time to get your ‘Go bags’ ready ladies and gentlemen.  I think I’ll re-watch Mad Max this weekend (this time as an instructional video).

Islamists continue to miss the boat

If this article is true (courtesy of Péter) what is being marketed as particularly concerning for the Brits reflects (in my humble opinion) a piece of evidence that the ‘global jihadist network’ isn’t quite all that it’s cracked up to be.

MI5 has estimated that up to 4,000 British Muslims had travelled to Pakistan and, before the fall of the Taliban, to Afghanistan for military training…Now there are signs that they are mounting missions against British and Western targets abroad. “We are now involved in a kind of surreal mini-British civil war a few thousand miles away,” said one Army officer.

So, if I’m king of the jihadis, why in the world would I want to take motivated  followers who are fluent english speakers and citizens of the very nations I have declared enduring hatred for, and throw them into the battle in Afghanistan or Iraq?  I understand many (all?) of these followers both see serving in Moslem lands against infidels as their religious duty and an opportunity to get valuable training (and major street cred) but how likely are the skills one picks up in the wasteland of Afghanistan going to carry over into the streets of London?

Why not use those jihadists to open up a ’second front’ in the U.K.?  They are familiar with the Western culture and have free movement throughout Europe and the U.S.  Finding guys to tote around AK-47s and launch attacks on the Afghan government and coalition don’t seem to be that hard to find.  And it’s not like there isn’t a precedent for attacking the U.K.  We’re coming up on four years since the London attacks which were the last major terrorist attacks in a Western nation.  Shouldn’t they be trying to give it another shot?

Pure speculation on my part here but here are some possible reasons why this might be (in no particular order):

• The case hasn’t been made yet that there is a global insurgency.  Most jihadists don’t see an attack in London as the same thing as an attack in Khandahar.
• Fundraising/recruiting is more important in Western nations than attacking them
• There is no coordinated centralized command structure to direct these Brits and they show up in Pakistan of their own accord to get into the fight
• There have been attempts but they’ve all been foiled
• Global Jihadists are no longer interested in attacking the West and are, instead, focusing on the ‘near enemy’

Now, admittedly, it isn’t possible to tell if this is based on a few anecdotal reports or if, in fact, it is some sort of broad trend and the article does say:

“…the numbers involved in Afghanistan, the intelligence document shows, are relatively few, dozens rather than hundreds”

But it does seem like a ‘waste’ of valuable resources.

Any thoughts?

Should we stay or should we go (Afghan edition)

Foreign Policy magazine recently introduced a host of new blogs on their site and they totally rock (I know, not exactly a recommendation loaded with gravitas but cut me some slack, I’m writing this on a weekend).  One of those blogs, Shadow Government, had a host of recommended readings about Afghanistan that I’m slowly working my way through.

The first two are pro/con set for withdrawl in U.S. News & World Report.  Andrew Bacevich begins with a piece that is a general attack upon the ‘Long War’ and argues that we should leave Afghanistan merely because of its inclusion in that category by the instigators of the Iraq War.  Oddly enough, in an article that is supposed to argue that the “Afghanistan Surge Is Not Worth the Cost in Blood and Treasure”, Andrew hardly mentions Afghanistan until the last two paragraphs and prefers to talk about what a disaster Iraq was/is.  I do not understand, nor does he make the case for, how the failure that has been Iraq necessarily means we need to leave Afghanistan.

I think, ultimately, I just don’t buy the idea that we have to consider these conflicts linked at the hip.  Certainly, I know that was the intent of the Bush administration who wanted people to give the war in Iraq the same level of support they gave Afghanistan but Bacevich’s argument looks a bit too much like he’s trying to do the mirror opposite.  He doesn’t discuss the merits of staying or going but rather just wants to paint every military adventure associated with the events of 2001-2008 with the same broad brush.  Hardly an example of reasoned, careful thinking.

The argument for staying in Afghanistan is provided by John Nagl.  He takes the (now) conventional approach that Afghanistan can’t be won by military force alone while advocating huge increases in American forces deployed there are massive increases in Afghan soldiers and police.  Clear, hold, build is back as is the ‘oil stain’ theory which just served to remind me of something I heard years ago:  Americans love wars of attrition.  We don’t seem to get the concept of strategic initiative and prefer to grind our opponents down (so long as it doesn’t take too long).  Now the arguments I heard in favor of that position were World War II, Korea (hard to try to grind down the resources of a nation with almost a billion people), Vietnam (too long), and Grenada but it seems to apply here as well.  Nagl doesn’t talk about separating the Taliban from their loci of support other than to argue for stationing Afghan military/police forces in every village, town and city that coalition forces clear.

Nagl’s option isn’t particularly attractive because he argues for minimizing our mission there to:

“ensuring that terrorists never again have a sanctuary on Afghan territory from which to launch attacks on the United States and our allies, and preventing Afghanistan from further destabilizing its neighbors, especially the fragile, nuclear-armed state of Pakistan.”

Wait…Afghanistan is destabilizing Pakistan?  Uh…if I remember correctly that street has tended to run in the other direction.  Who’s been providing support to the Taliban since 2001?  Who’s been supporting terrorist groups on the subcontinent?

What’s lacking in Nagl’s argument is exactly what’s been lacking in our entire approach to terrorism and the insurgencies since we began.  We seem determined to allow our opponents to frame the conflict how they want and make us fight on their terms.  We, on the other hand, don’t even put up a fight.  Despite his talk of ‘clear, hold, build’ and hat tips to counterinsurgency strategy, his arguement looks an awful lot like advocating ‘Let’s scale back our goals…way back, kill our way to the finish line and get the hell out of there as fast as possible.’

So eight years after 9/11 we still

• have no meaningful public diplomacy strategy
• We continue to ignore narcotics production in Afghanistan (perhaps the most source of funding for the Taliban) except for some half-hearted eradication efforts that just further alienate the population and drive them into the arms of insurgents.
• Place too much emphasis on air strikes in Afghanistan that make getting married in that country only slightly less dangerous than being al-Qaeda’s number three man

Afghanistan is a mess, that much is clear.  It is worth remembering, however, that despite being eight years old, the war in Afghanistan has never had a coherent strategy, adequate resources or the attention of the administration or the senior levels of the Defense Department.  Of course, I’d like to see a real strategy with a clear definition of ’success’.  Surely it won’t be Afghanistan as a shining jewel of western democracy in Central Asian but some sort of good outcome is possible.  There is still significant goodwill towards the coalition by Afghans.  Granted, not as much in the early years but it’s still there.  To claim that it is impossible to achieve some sort of acceptable outcome in Afghanistan at this point is to give up without even trying.

Two much more well thought out and developed cases for staying in Afghanistan and not watering down our goals are this testimony by Marin Strmecki, who gives a great overview of the current situation vis-a-vis Pakistan and makes some solid recommendations, and a speech by John McCain at the AEI.  I might quibble at the edges of some of what they say but for the most part these are the sorts of arguments that need to be presented to the American people.  Hopefully that’ll happen in the near future.

One of the things that struck me as odd from both of those reports was an assertion that the years of 2003-2005 marked as a time when we were doing everything right.  I skimmed over that and just thought it was a bit strange but Jari picked it up and writes about it more detail (which is probably why he’s a journalist and I’m just a schlub).   I would normally think that McCain got the idea from Mr. Strmecki (since McCain is on the committee which Strmecki testified in front of) but given that McCain gave his speech one day before the Strmecki testimony , I have to wonder if there isn’t a bit of collusion in getting the message out.  Now, admittedly, I had a very limited view of our progress from 2003-2004 but I certainly didn’t have the impression that we were making substantial progress.  As I’ve said before, my overwhelming impression at the end of my tour was that we were in a state of inertia with very little significant change.  It’s a bit scary if that’s now the new ‘gold standard’.

The madness! The madness!

And I thought it was outrageous that I had to salute when I was in Bagram:

I’m squeezing between several plywood B Huts on my way to the divine grounds of hot chow. I’m lost when suddenly Bob the MP Fobbit stops me.

“Hey, where’s your road guard belt”? He confronts me in that arrogant, you stupid ass tone, they use.

…

“ What”? I respond in and exasperated manner. I have limited time to get some chow and get back before the time my plane is rumored to leave. This rumor will later morph into a lie on the part of the terminal personnel.

“Your road guard belt, you’re required to wear one during hours of limited visibility regardless of uniform”. He tells me this in a way that leads me to believe he thinks I’m an idiot.

…

“Well, you’re going to have to get a ticket then”. Bob informs me. Evidently, a violation of Supreme Fobbit Directive #1 results in a $35 ticket.

Read the whole story here.