How to beat the Taliban in Afghanistan / Pakistan (and win the war on terror)

[Peter Dow]

Introduction and summary

In this short 5-minute video, I reject of the idea of peace talks with the Taliban and present an outline of my proposed strategy to beat the Taliban (and win the war on terror).

VIDEO: Peter Dow's "no" to Taliban's surrender terms. Afpak strategy for victory in war on terror. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXMHnu-7ZZk)

Excerpt transcripts from the video -


CBS News. Scott Pelley said -

"Defense Secretary Leon Panetta made news Wednesday when he said the combat role for U.S. troops in Afghanistan could end next year instead of 2014. Today, he took a step back -- insisting that U.S. forces will remain combat ready -- even as they transition into their new role of training Afghan troops.

Another part of the U.S. strategy involves getting the Taliban to hold peace talks with the Afghan government. Clarissa Ward spoke with some Taliban representatives where they live, in Pakistan. "

Clarissa Ward said -

"They call him the "Father of the Taliban," one of Pakistan's most well-known and hard-line Islamists.

We visited Sami ul Haq at his religious school near the Afghan border. Many Afghan Taliban leaders and fighters studied there, earning it the nickname the "University of Jihad." ..



Peter Dow
I said -

"So the Deans of Jihad have dictated terms to the West, the terms they propose of the West's surrender to the Jihadis in the war on terror.

So what should the response of the West be? Should we surrender to the Jihadis, or should we fight to win?

This guy Sami ul Haq should be a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp along with his University of Jihad colleagues, his controllers from the Pakistani ISI and his financial backers from Saudi Arabia.

The US and Western allies ought to name Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as "state sponsors of terrorism".

There ought to be drone strikes on the University of Jihad. (Darul Uloom Haqqania, Akora Khattak, Pakistan)

We ought to seize control of Pakistani and Saudi TV satellites and use them to broadcast propaganda calling for the arrest of all involved in waging terrorist war against the West.

It just seems very poor tactics for our military to be risking life and limb in the minefields of Afghanistan yet at the strategic level our governments and businesses are still "trading with the enemy".

As the Star Trek character Commander Scott might have said -

"It's war, Captain but not as we know it.""


The desire for "peace talks" with the enemy is where poor generals with a failed war strategy end up.

Why would NATO and specifically the US want to encourage "peace talks" with the enemy Taliban? Why not simply crush the enemy? What's the political or military issue here that might mean "peace talks" would be part of an exit strategy for the US and allies?

Key failures have been -


Weak strategic thinking and planning by US and then NATO generals has dragged out the Western intervention in Afghanistan since 2001 and caused far more casualties to our soldiers than was ever necessary.



The military general staff has lacked vision about the enemy and failed to comprehend and react appropriately to intelligence reports that Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other jihadi terror groups are proxies for hostile states, typically managed from Pakistan and funded from Saudi Arabia.

This 2-hour video is of a British TV programme which explains in great detail the role of the Pakistani state via the ISI (Inter-services intelligence) has in supporting the Taliban's war against our forces in Afghanistan.

VIDEO: BBC Documentary - "SECRET PAKISTAN - Double Cross / Backlash" (2 hours) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_SkNUorWhc)



Military strategic essentials have been neglected, such as - when occupying territory, always ensure secure supply routes from one strong point to another. Instead NATO-ISAF forces in Afghanistan have been deployed in isolated bases, deployed more like tethered goats as bait for the enemy than a conquering or liberating army.



Some combination of military incompetence by the generals and a preference for appeasement on the part of the civilian political leadership has perversely left the West bribing our enemies within the Pakistani terrorist-proxy-controlling state and continuing business-as-usual with our enemies in the Saudi jihadi-financing state.




My 4-point plan to beat the Taliban and win the war on terror

It's never too late to learn lessons and adopt an alternative competent and aggressive military strategy. I have already mentioned the outline points of my plan but I will explain those in a little more here and then provide a lot more detail in subsequent posts.

Point 1

* The US and Western allies ought to name Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as "state sponsors of terrorism". We ought to name in addition, the other oil-rich Arab kingdoms who are also financial state sponsors of terrorism. This has implications such as ending bribes and deals with back-stabbing hostile countries and instead waging war against our enemies with the aim of regime change or incapacitating the enemy so that they can do us little more harm. The war could be of varying intensity depending on the enemy concerned and how they respond to our initial attacks, whether they wish to escalate the war or surrender to our reasonable demands.

Point 2

* There ought to be drone strikes on the University of Jihad. (Darul Uloom Haqqania, Akora Khattak, Pakistan) In addition, we ought to employ aerial bombing of all other bases for the Taliban in Pakistan. This may have to be extended to include certain Pakistani state bases which are supporting the Taliban - such as the Pakistani ISI headquarters mentioned a lot in the BBC documentary "SECRET PAKISTAN". If this is not handled very carefully, it could escalate into open war with the Pakistani military. I will explain how to manage Pakistan later.

Point 3

* We ought to seize control of Pakistani and Saudi TV satellites and use them to broadcast propaganda calling for the arrest of all involved in waging terrorist war against the West. These satellites are made, launched and maintained by Western companies and should be easy to take over. Other satellites provided to the enemy by non-Western countries could be jammed or destroyed. Air strikes against the enemy's main terrestrial TV transmitter aerials is another option to silence enemy propaganda.

Point 4

* When occupying territory, always ensure secure supply routes from one strong point to another. I will provide a lot of details about how this can be done militarily.

[Peter Dow]

2. Bomb the enemy in Pakistan

More on point 2 of the plan. Air strikes, bombing raids, missiles, drone attacks etc. on enemy bases in Pakistan.

Bomb Taliban Jihadi indoctrination bases in Pakistan.

I am suggesting that our forces bomb the Taliban Headquarters known as "the University of Jihad" or Darul Uloom Haqqania, Akora Khattak, 50 kilometres (31 miles) east of the provincial capital, Peshawar.

More about the place in this BBC webpage

BBC NEWS | South Asia | The 'university of holy war' (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3155112.stm)

The significance of this place is that it is the main recruitment and command centre for the Taliban which must be known to our military intelligence officers and so it is a mystery why they have not advised our generals to bomb this place before now or if they did advise our generals to bomb it why they didn't actually bomb it?

It makes no sense in a war to give the enemy headquarters a free pass and immunity from being targeted. It just makes their commanders feel untouchable which is not how we want them to feel. We want them arrested or dead or in great fear that soon they will be arrested or dead and bombing their HQ gives them that idea.

Our forces do not have ground forces close enough to use artillery to destroy this target so that leaves NATO to use its aerial power - drones and bomber planes, to bomb the target from the air.

So apart from not wanting to use nuclear weapons on such a weak target which would be over-kill, I think bombing using the very heaviest conventional bombs, MOABs or heavy bombing from B52s or C130s is appropriate.

So a "MOAB" would be one of those.

Ultimate Weapons- Mother of all Bombs (YouTube) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX5h2fjhKyQ)

Which has a blast radius of 450 feet or 137 metres.

Heavy bombing could be used to totally level such targets, or turn the target site into one huge crater field - obliterate it. Give the Jihadis a demonstration that they won't ever forget!

Then if the Taliban and Jihadi leaders relocate to a new recruitment, indoctrination and command base, blast that to pieces as well.

Our forces will have to establish air superiority over the target areas to allow not only unmanned drones but piloted heavy bombers with a much heavier bomb load to over-fly the area reasonably safely.

How to manage Pakistan

If and when Pakistan objects to our plans to aerial bomb these enemy indoctrination bases we should tell them that because our view is that Pakistan does not control the ground there to our satisfaction - because Pakistani police or military have not arrested and handed over the likes of the Darul Uloom Haqqania and other Taliban leaders operating on the ground for removal to Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp and not closed down the University of Jihad and other Taliban bases then the Pakistan military don't deserve control of the air space over that ground which they don't satisfactorily control.

So we can say "Sorry" if the Pakistanis don't like this violation of their sovereignty but the needs of war mean this is something we must do. We wouldn't intend to permanently deprive Pakistan of control over its air space; this would be a temporary measure until the war on terror is won.

Pakistan had their chance to arrest or kill the Taliban leaders in their Pakistan bases but now it is too late so we are going to flatten the Taliban bases in that part of Pakistan from the air and we need total air superiority over the target area in order to protect our pilots.

The Pakistan government and military has complained about drone strikes in parts of Pakistan but Pakistan has not gone to war with us about it, thankfully.

Hopefully, the Pakistanis will not want to contest air superiority with their military but if they do decide to fight to resist our air-superiority where we need it to bomb the Taliban then we must be prepared to take out all nearby Pakistani ground to air missile batteries and any air fighters they send against us to contest air superiority.

If the Pakistanis decide to fight us over control of Pakistan's air space then of course there is a risk this could escalate to all-out war if the Pakistanis really want to make a casus belli out of the sovereignty issue and the matter of us requiring to destroy the Taliban so possibly we should make it clear to the Pakistanis that the US President or the NATO supreme commander have the option to use nuclear weapons against Pakistani military bases anywhere in Pakistan if that was necessary to win an all-out war with Pakistan.

That's not our aim to escalate to an all-out war with Pakistan here but Pakistan should be careful not to escalate the situation from one where we need to go after the Taliban only into one where the official Pakistan military gets dragged into a war with us unnecessarily.

This risk of having to fight and win an all-out war with Pakistan is a lesser risk than failing to defeat the Taliban, withdrawing from Pakistan having achieved little to secure Afghanistan and thereby giving encouragement to Jihadis the world over to commit more acts of terrorism and war elsewhere in the world including in our homelands. So Pakistan should not force us to make that choice of two risky options because their defeat is preferable to our own defeat in our opinion.

Pakistan should avoid war with the West by stepping back and allowing us to destroy the Taliban in Pakistan because it is the Taliban and the Jihadis who are the true enemies of the Pakistani and Afghan people. We are the friends of the people of Pakistan and we will prove that by defeating their and our enemy, the Taliban and associated Jihadis.

Hopefully the Pakistanis will back off and let us bomb the Taliban without threat from Pakistan's air defences. We should tell Pakistan that we are doing them a favour which they will thank us for in the long run though we appreciate the embarrassment for them in the short term.

Targeting the University of Jihad, Akora Khattak

Here are the co-ordinates for Akora Khattak.

Geohack - Akora Khattak (http://toolserver.org/~geohack/geohack.php?pagename=Akora_Khattak&params=34_0_2.17_N_72_7_18.06_E_)

34° 0′ 2.17″ N, 72° 7′ 18.06″ E
34.000603,72.121683

and if you look on Google Maps the co-ordinates for Akora Khattak (https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=34.000603,72.121683&spn=0.01,0.01&t=m&q=34.000603,72.121683) seems to be centred right on the Darul Uloom Haqqania / University of Jihad.

That location is in a built-up area (of course the cowards would use civilian human shields) so using the MOAB is bound to do a fair amount of collateral damage to surrounding buidings and people. So the word should go out now - evacuate Akora Khattak and don't live within 5 miles of any such jihadi university otherwise you could be seriously inconvenienced.

The target area of the campus of University of Jihad looks to be about 100 metres x 100 metres. Hard to guess from the satellite photo. (https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=34.000603,72.121683&spn=0.01,0.01&t=m&q=34.000603,72.121683)

Here is the Jihadis' own website for the base International Islamic University: Darul Uloom Haqqania (http://www.jamiahaqqania.edu.pk) which has a number of photographs and is helpfully in English.

Anyway a MOAB on that lot is certainly going to spoil their day and their terror-war plans.

[Peter Dow]

4. Secure supply routes for Afghanistan. Overview from 'Warlord Inc.'

There's a lot of information here so I will start with a post presenting an overview of the issues and problems starting with this CBS news story which identifies a critical weakness in our military configuration - poorly defended supply lines whose vulnerability the enemy exploits to gain funds for its insurgency in Afghanistan.

"U.S. funds our enemy Taliban's Afghan war" (YouTube) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbqAampl5pA)


CBS News: U.S. Tax Dollars Fueling Afghan Insurgency (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/21/eveningnews/main6604606.shtml)
House Investigation: Private Contractors Paying Warlords, Criminals to Get Supplies to U.S. and NATO Bases
Lara Logan reports for CBS Evening News

(CBS) Billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are fuelling corruption in Afghanistan and funding the insurgency, according to a six-month investigation by the House subcommittee on National Security and Foreign affairs.

The committee's chairman, Rep. John F. Tierney, D-Mass., told CBS News: "the business is war and the war is business and you've got 'Warlord Inc.' going on over there."

Committee investigators found that private contractors in Afghanistan have been paying local warlords, criminals, government officials and a list of others for security on Afghanistan's roads, to get much needed supplies to U.S and NATO bases. But even worse, anecdotal evidence indicates that U.S. tax dollars are also going into the hands of the Taliban, who own many of the roads and areas through which the trucking convoys have to pass, reports CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan.

http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/1641/warlordinc.jpg

Download Warlord, Inc. Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan - Right-click, Save Target As ... (http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/documents/warlords.pdf)


Hillary Clinton.

"We have to do a better job in the international side to coordinate our aid, to get more accountability for what we spend in Afghanistan. But much of the corruption is fueled by money that has poured into that country over the last eight years. And it is corruption at every step along the way, not just in Kabul.

You know, when we are so dependent upon long supply lines, as in Afghanistan, where everything has to be imported, it’s much more difficult than it was in Iraq, where we had Kuwait as a staging ground to go into Iraq. You offload a ship in Karachi and by the time whatever it is – you know, muffins for our soldiers’ breakfasts or anti-IED equipment – gets to where we’re headed, it goes through a lot of hands. And one of the major sources of funding for the Taliban is the protection money."
– Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
December 3, 2009

[Peter Dow]

Supplying along a land route (road and/or railway) through friendly territory is easy enough. Supplying through a war-zone, or bandit country requires a military approach, something like this.

Secure supply route border defences plan diagram

My plan is to establish a secure wide border either side of the supply route to keep enemy mortar and rocket launcher teams out of range of the supply line.

Apparently, the Taliban are being supplied indirect fire weapons from Iran so defenders need to be prepared to expect attacks using weapons such as 120 mm heavy mortars, with a range of 6200 metres and 107 mm rocket launchers with a range of 8500 metres.


The Telegraph: Iranian weapons getting through to Taliban (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/5477283/Iranian-weapons-getting-through-to-Taliban.html)

Heavy weapons are continuing to stream across the Afghan border from Iran despite Barack Obama's attempts to enlist Tehran's help in fighting the insurgency, officials have said.

So regretfully there is no avoiding the requirement for compulsory purchase of land and eviction of occupiers along a 19 kilometre or 12 mile wide corridor, the whole length of the supply route.

More aggressively NATO might like to consider long-range missile attacks against Iranian weapons productions facilities in Iran to dissuade the Iranians from supplying the Taliban.

Secure border for a supply route - 19 kilometres or 12 miles wide

http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/5218/secureborder760.jpg

Secure supply route border defences plan diagram (large - 960 x 1374 pixels) (http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/4343/secureborder.jpg)

As can be seen in the diagram, the border perimeter defences are much the same whether you are securing a railway or a road.

Diagram features. Explained for secure Afghanistan supply routes.

Dangerous ground Enemy forces such as the Taliban, Afghan warlords or Iranian proxies may be attacking the supply route from here
Vehicle barrier - deep trench / giant boulders / steep slope - so that truck bombs cannot be driven onto the route
STOP - Police check-point - police check civilians are unarmed and those in police or military uniform are genuine. Needs to be very robust so as to survive an enemy truck bomb.
Barbed wire - enough to keep out people and larger animals - so more than a horse can jump or cattle can trample over
No Pedestrians! Cleared ground Target zone for the machine gunners. A hostile intent should be assumed if an intruder is seen here and the intruder should be shot. The ground needs to be cleared of cover so that intruders can be easily spotted and cannot sneak their way past the machine gunners.
GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes 3 man crew. Armour should be able to withstand an RPG hit and contains one machine gun with an effective range to 1000 metres, such as PKM or better. One every 1000 metres on both borders should be manned 24/7. Binoculars, automatic rifles such as AK47 and night vision for 3. Two or more other gun positions per 1000 m on each border are normally unmanned and don't need the expense of real guns sitting there all the time. Such extra positions confuse attackers and serve as firing positions for mobile reaction teams to occupy in emergencies and who can bring additional weapons with them.
For the on-duty-shift manned pillboxes, I suppose the better (longer effective range, heavier the bullet) a machine gun the better. At a minimum the plan needs a machine gun with a 1000 metre effective range to keep Taliban RPG out of range of the pillbox.
Ideally I suppose a heavy machine gun (say 12.7 mm ammo, 1800 metres effective range) with its longer range would be best for stopping an advance of the enemy and would give enemy snipers and heavy machine guns at long ranges something to worry about though I think the plan would work well with a medium machine gun (say 7.6 mm ammo, 1500 metres effective range).
The disadvantage about the heavy machine gun is it is a more difficult 2-man carry when the team decide to move it to another pillbox to confuse the enemy but the extra range and fire-power of a heavy machine gun may well be worth the carry.
I suggest armoured sights which allow the machine-gunner to fire accurately despite incoming sniper or machine gun fire intended to suppress the pillbox.
If a tank-crew machine-gunner can fire from inside his tank by virtue of armoured sights, without being suppressed, so should a well designed pillbox, in my opinion.
Squad automatic weapons or light machine guns (say, 5.56 mm ammo, 900 metres effective range) would be better stored in the APC to be quickly carried into the empty pillboxes to defend an emergency attack and such lighter machine guns are also useful in the APC for responding to an attack anywhere in the secure corridor.
Access road Where authorised traffic and people can access or leave the supply route.
Mortar teams' ground Defender mortar teams arriving from mobile response depots should set up somewhere here to fire at the enemy in the dangerous ground. The mortar teams' ground should have features to help to win mortar duels with the enemy such as observation points on higher ground or tall structures to serve as observation towers.
Safe building ground Somewhere relatively safe to build a heliport, runway, supply store or other facility or base.
Supply route The road and / or railway we are defending
Crossing Where the access road crosses a supply route railway
Station - Railway station to load and unload supplies and people onto and off the supply trains.
Cross-roads - A four-way junction where the access road crosses the supply road.
Mobile reaction depot - contains single armoured fighting vehicle. This is also where the off-duty mess is so that soldiers are available to react to sustained attacks anywhere along the supply route. One every 2km. Contains additional infantry weapons and ammunition such as additional machine guns, automatic rifles, rocket propelled grenade launchers, mortars and the rest.
Armoured personnel carrier Such as an up-armoured humvee. Most mobile reaction depots have one of those. To transport soldiers to the proximity of the enemy attack where soldiers dismount to fight.
Infantry fighting vehicle or armoured combat vehicle. With stronger armour and able to fire on the enemy from enhanced weapons mounted to the vehicle, as well as able to perform the soldier transport role of the APC. Ideally the defenders would prefer the more powerful IFVs to the battle taxi APCs but fewer mobile reaction depots house IFVs because IFVs cost more and so fewer are available to the defenders than the lower performing APCs.

[Peter Dow]

Secure supply route protection force organisation

I am proposing a dedicated force of mostly Afghan soldiers (though this could and perhaps should in the light of recent increasing green-on-blue attacks initially be set up as a force which is auxiliary to NATO-ISAF, with NATO commanders, rather than part of the Afghan National Army) to secure NATO's main supply routes through Afghanistan.

Organisation.

Ranks in increasing order of seniority -

Gunner
Master Gunner
Team Leader
Shift Officer
Depot Commander
Reaction Captain
There will be higher officer ranks yet to be specified.

Duties of the ranks.

1. Gunner - infantry soldier, serves as a member of a 3-man team which serves on one GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes position normally for an 8-hour shift.

A Gunner performs other routine duties for an hour or two each day in addition to his 8-hour shift at the gun position at the nearest Mobile reaction depot under the supervision of his Team Leader, Shift Officer and Depot Commander at which location he has quarters in the depot mess.

A Gunner can also be called to emergency duty when required.

Gunners must be able to
see well
operate the machine gun
fire accurately
reload the machine gun,
change the barrel on the machine gun
use the guns' optical sights and night sights
use the binoculars and night-vision equipment
be comfortable in a GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes position,
point out where the No Pedestrians! Cleared ground is and where it ends and where allowed ground behind the gun positions is,
understand that he is forbidden to enter onto the No Pedestrians! Cleared ground on or off duty, even if ordered to do so by anyone in his team because he may be shot if he does so,
understand that he is ordered on and off his duty shift at the GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes position only by his own Shift Officer and own Depot Commander and he cannot be relieved of duty by his Team Leader nor by a more senior ranking Master Gunner, nor by any other Shift Officer nor Depot Commander nor by any more senior officer whom he does not know.
understand that while on duty he is not to surrender his personal assault rifle (such as an AK47) to any person, even to someone in his own team. Therefore his Team Leader cannot relieve him of duty nor demand that any Gunner surrender his personal weapon,
understand that it is the Gunner's job when on duty, his job, to shoot on sight anyone on the No Pedestrians! Cleared ground coming or going, even someone dressed in Afghan army uniform, of whatever rank who could be an intruder dressed in disguise or even be a colleague who is deserting in that direction. If he is not manning the machine gun at the time he is to use his personal assault rifle to shoot the person on the No Pedestrians! Cleared ground if they are in range, but he is not to follow in hot pursuit anyone onto the No Pedestrians! Cleared ground because again he may be shot.
understand pillbox defensive tactics as follows.
Sadly, the Taliban are not so obliging as to try to rush a machine gun position since one machine gun could probably take them all out if they were all to charge it clambering through barbed wire over open ground.
The pillbox machine guns would not be used for suppressing the enemy and therefore blasting away at where you thought an enemy was to keep his head down is just a waste of ammunition and overheats the guns to no good purpose.
The tactics to be employed for the pillboxes are different from a fight on a random battlefield where both sides are evenly vulnerable to fire and so suppressive fire make some sense.
Suppressive fire is of use on a random battlefield to keep the enemy's head down while other comrades move to get a better attacking position. Well the defenders won't be changing position. They will keep their positions in the pillbox so suppressive fire make less sense here.
Our machine gunners should have armoured telescopic sights and therefore only bother actually firing if you have the enemy clearly in your sights and then the first shot is the one that counts.
Some machine guns have a single-shot fire mode with telescopic sights and those are the machine guns we need. Single-shot will most likely be the mode used most often when you spot someone trying to sneak their way past the guns or if you can see a sniper or heavy machine gunner at an effective range, say 1800 metres or less for a heavy machine gun with telescopic sights, less for a lighter machine gun.
I seriously doubt that the enemy would ever do a mass charge across open barbed wire ground which would necessitate firing on full-auto and changing barrels but if they do then fine it is their funeral.
So yes, the gunners would need to know how to change a barrel but if they ever do, I will be questioning their tactics.
If an enemy is blasting away from a machine gun at extreme ineffective range - 2000 metres or more at the pillbox and only the occasional round is even hitting the pillbox then even though it is tempting to return fire blasting back at the position I would not even bother returning fire because that simply gives away your position and may not hit him at extreme range anyway.
Such distant firing is probably to lure the defender to return fire and identify which pillbox is manned, so as to know which pillbox to target with RPGs, recoilless rifles or guided missiles or distant fire could be to distract your attention and rather than fire back, grab your binoculars or night vision and see who is trying to sneak up on the position or past the guns. When you spot them and have an easy kill - then open fire, but in single-shot mode because that is all you will need.
The tactics change if you have a well-armoured position that cannot be suppressed.
I repeat the pillbox machine-gun is not to suppress the enemy. We want the enemy to stick their heads up and get closer to shoot at the pillbox, so the defenders can carefully target them and kill them on single-shot mode. We want the enemy to think they can sneak past the guns so we wait until they are an easy kill and only then take them out.
perform other duties as supervised by the higher ranks.
2. Master Gunner - skills-based promoted ranks for Gunners with additional specialist skills such as
weapons maintenance,
binocular and night-vision maintenance,
vehicle driving and basic maintenance - checking and maintaining tyre pressure, fuel and oil levels, etc.
infantry fighting vehicle specialist
mortar team skills,
first aid,
communications - operating telephone (landline and mobile / cell ) and radio.
Master Gunners get an appropriately and differently designed skills badge and salary increment for each specialist skill learned. So typically that would be a badge with a machine-gun icon for weapons' maintenance, a badge with an APC-icon for vehicle driving and basic maintenance and so on. A Master Gunner with more badges and skills outranks a Master Gunner with fewer badges and skills.

3. Team leader A promoted post. The most experienced and able Gunner in each team of 3 on a GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes position.

Team leaders should have multiple specialist skills and in particular the communications specialist skills is one of the required skills to be eligible to become a Team Leader. Team leaders are always the senior ranking members in every 3-man team irrespective of badges and skills. So a Master Gunner with, say, 5 skill badges does not outrank a Team Leader with, say, only 4 skills badges.

4. Shift officer - normally on duty back at the Mobile reaction depot and in command and in radio, mobile (cell) or land-line telephone contact with 4 teams, which is 12 men, on duty for an 8-hour shift. The shift officer acts as a deputy commander for the shift for 4 GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes and for the Mobile Reaction Depot.

The Shift Officer is also in radio, mobile (cell) or land-line telephone contact with Shift Officers in neighbouring Mobile reaction depots. The Shift Officer decides whether or not to consult the Depot commander in response to a request for assistance from any of the 4 teams under his command or to a request for assistance from a Shift Officer in a neighbouring Mobile Reaction Depot.

5. Depot commander - in command of one Mobile reaction depot , the vehicle, weapons and everything therein. Commands the 3 Shift officers and 12 teams which totals 39 men under his command. He can declare a depot emergency, and call the off-duty shifts in the mess back on emergency duty.

The Depot Commander can order the depot's vehicle and men to attend and to defend the GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes under attack or order mortar teams into action from the Mortar teams' ground.

In an emergency, the Depot Commander notifies his immediate superior officers, the Reaction Captains who are the reaction director and deputy reaction director assigned command responsibility for his Mobile Reaction Depot.

[Peter Dow]

6. Reaction Captain
has some command responsibility for the reactions of 8 neighbouring Mobile Reaction Depots
is the reaction director for the central 4 depots of these 8 neighbouring depots
is the deputy reaction director for the peripheral 4 depots of these 8 neighbouring depots.
http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/3508/reactioncommandersscale.jpg

Reaction Captains direct Mobile Reaction Depots (http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/3508/reactioncommandersscale.jpg)

The diagram illustrates how the command responsibility of neighbouring Reaction Captains is organised.

Mobile Reaction Depots 1 & 2
- the reaction director is Reaction Captain C
- the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain A

Mobile Reaction Depots 3 & 4
- the reaction director is Reaction Captain A
- the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain C

Mobile Reaction Depots 5 & 6
- the reaction director is Reaction Captain A
- the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain D

Mobile Reaction Depots 7 & 8
- the reaction director is Reaction Captain D
- the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain A

Mobile Reaction Depots 9 & 10
- the reaction director is Reaction Captain D
- the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain B

Mobile Reaction Depots 11 & 12
- the reaction director is Reaction Captain B
- the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain D

Mobile Reaction Depots 13 & 14
- the reaction director is Reaction Captain B
- the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain E

Mobile Reaction Depots 15 & 16
- the reaction director is Reaction Captain E
- the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain B

This overlapping organisation ensures that emergencies which are declared at any Mobile Reaction Depot can be supported if needs be by Reaction Captains with responsibility for the depot under attack ordering neighbouring depots on either side to react to the emergency.

A vehicle is assigned to each Reaction Captain who routinely drives to visit the 8 Mobile Reaction Depots for which he has command responsibility for daily meetings with the Depot Commanders and with the other 2 Reaction Captains he shares depot command responsibility with.

The Reaction Captains can arrange to receive a salute at attention from each off-duty shift twice a week with an opportunity for the Reaction Captains to boost morale by reminding the Gunners that every Reaction Captain has 8 Mobile Reaction Depots and 320 soldiers under his command and that the 2 Reaction Captains with command responsibility for a particular depot have between them 480 soldiers under their command.

So in emergencies the Secure Supply Route Protection Force is well organised to defeat any attack the enemy dares to try against any part of the supply route. They shall not pass! (No passeran!)

The Reaction Captain has a captain's office and quarters adjacent to one of the 4 Mobile Reaction Depots for which he is the reaction director and the Depot Commander of that particular Mobile Reaction Depot also serves as the Reaction Captain's secretary to take telephone calls to the Reaction Captain's Office if he is out of his office and quarters at the time.

Being so mobile in his daily routine, the Reaction Captain must be contactable via radio or mobile (cell) telephone when he is out of his office.

In the event of a major attack, the Reaction Captain will set up a tactical command headquarters at his office to direct the battle and call for further reinforcements from neighbouring Reaction Captain's offices if required.

Staff numbers

Reaction captain's office
1 office every 4 depots

161 men
four depots of forty men (4 x 40 = 160)
plus the Reaction Captain (160 + 1 = 161)

Mobile reaction depot
1 depot every 2 kilometres (1.25 miles)

40 men
three eight-hour shifts of thirteen men, (3 x 13 = 39)
plus the Depot Commander (39 + 1 = 40)
40 men per 2 kilometres = 20 men per kilometre = 32 men per mile

Depot shift
3 shifts per depot

13 men
four three-man gun teams, ( 4 x 3 = 12)
plus the Shift Officer (12 + 1 = 13)

Reserves
Approximate numbers of infantry required including reserves.

For a 25% reserve of 5 reserves per kilometre, 8 reserves per mile
Force including reserves is 25 infantry per kilometre, 40 infantry per mile

For a 50% reserve of 10 reserves per kilometre, 16 reserves per mile
Force including reserves is 30 infantry per kilometre, 48 infantry per mile

Support staff
Infantry deployed in the field or on guard somewhere can require numbers of support staff (such as delivery and rubbish collection, engineers of all kinds, trainers, medical, administration, military policing etc.) which I am told can be multiples of the numbers of deployed infantry they support, depending on the support facilities offered, the quality and efficiency of the support organisation.

I believe the support staff requirements for a static guard force are somewhat different to mobile infantry advancing (or retreating) in a conventional war because the guard force's requirements for fuel and ammunition deliveries are less but a guard force may expect more in terms of base facilities - running water, electricity and so on.

I am not recommending figures for support staff because such numbers are more dependent on the infrastructure of the army and nation concerned and are independent of the details of how the infantry are deployed which is my concern here only. Numbers of support staff are to be filled in by NATO-ISAF and the Afghan government and army themselves later.

[Peter Dow]

How my plan solves the issues raised in 'Warlord Inc.'


WARLORD, INC.

"In Afghanistan, the U.S. military faces one of the most complicated and difficult supply chains in the history of warfare. The task of feeding, fueling, and arming American troops at over 200 forward operating bases and combat outposts sprinkled across a difficult and hostile terrain with only minimal road infrastructure is nothing short of herculean. In order to accomplish this mission, the Department of Defense employs a hitherto unprecedented logistics model: responsibility for the supply chain is almost entirely outsourced to local truckers and Afghan private security providers.
...
Transporting valuable and sensitive supplies in highly remote and insecure locations requires extraordinary levels of security.
...
RECOMMENDATION 3

Consider the Role of Afghan National Security Forces in Highway Security.

In the future, Afghan security forces will have a role to play in road security. Proposals to reform the convoy security scheme ought to take a medium- to long-term view of the role of Afghan security forces, while developing credible security alternatives that address the immediate U.S. military logistics needs.

RECOMMENDATION 6

Oversee Contracts to Ensure Contract Transparency and Performance.

The Department of Defense needs to provide the personnel and resources required to manage and oversee its trucking and security contracts in Afghanistan. Contracts of this magnitude and of this consequence require travel ‘outside the wire.’ For convoys, that means having the force protection resources necessary for mobility of military logistics personnel to conduct periodic unannounced inspections and ride-alongs."

My plan can achieve the "Warlord, Inc." recommendations 3 and 6, not merely to stop extortion and corruption along the supply chain but to gain a further significant advance to NATO-ISAF mission goals.

I propose secure supply route border defences and a dedicated Afghan protection force to man those defences which would achieve all along the main supply routes a level of security which is similar to the security inside a military base or fort.

"Warlord, Inc." uses the NATO-ISAF parlance of "inside the wire" to refer to the security achieved within their own NATO-ISAF bases but to virtually nowhere else in Afghanistan.

It is about time NATO-ISAF and the Afghan government and military were extending that true security "inside the wire" to more of Afghanistan. My secure supply route plan would bring more of Afghanistan "inside the wire" so to speak.

http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/5463/newinsidethewire.jpg

The secure supply route border defences require only authorised persons living inside the secure defences.

The general population sadly may harbour enemy agents and so must be required to live outside the border defences.

Where isolated houses and small villages can be relocated to use a suitable existing supply road then that should be done with compensation for the relocated residents and landowners.

Where the settlements along the old supply route are too big to move then new roads should be built for a new supply route, by-passing those bigger settlements by at least 6 miles.

[Peter Dow]

WARLORD, INC.
"II. BACKGROUND

Supplying the Troops

Afghanistan … is a landlocked country whose neighbors range from uneasy U.S. allies, such as Pakistan and Uzbekistan, to outright adversaries, such as Iran.
...
The fastest route to Afghanistan is by air. However, the lack of airport infrastructure places significant constraints on the military’s ability to rely on air transport to supply the troops. Afghanistan has only 16 airports with paved runways, and of those, only four are accessible to non-military aircraft (including contractor-operated cargo planes). Air transport is also the most costly shipping option. Thus, while air transport is available, it is limited to personnel and high-priority cargo. Only about 20 percent of cargo reaches Afghanistan by air."

Then let NATO-ISAF supply fully 100 percent of its cargo by air by increasing by 5-fold the airport infrastructure and capacity of Afghanistan, building perhaps one or two more big hub airports around the country or a few more long runways and additional cargo handling facilities at existing airports like Bagram or Kandahar - to accept the incoming international flights, such as Hercules C-130s, then from those large hub airports transfer the cargo into smaller planes to fly from new short runways at those few hub airports on to dozens of new smaller airports all around Afghanistan.

To pay for this, money can be reallocated to airport construction by rationalising some of the 200 most expensive and remote forward operating bases and combat outposts. Close those which cost more than they are worth.

Retreat to the really important bases, build airfields for them and build secure supply route defences to and from them and that's a very strong defensive position from which to launch offensive operations against the enemy.

No longer will the legitimate military and civilian traffic require the permission of warlords to travel along Afghanistan's highways.

Securing an air base. Example - Camp Bastion / Camp Leatherneck

http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/4303/bastionafghanistan.jpg

Bastion Airport (NATO Channel on YouTube) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1MZ5g6rkQY)

http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/2526/afghanistanbastion.jpg


Wikipedia.
"Camp Bastion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Bastion) is the main British military base in Afghanistan. It is situated northwest of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province.

It is the largest British overseas military camp built since World War II.

Built in early 2006, the camp is situated in a remote desert area, far from population centres. Four miles long by two miles wide, it has an airstrip and a field hospital and full accommodation for the 2000 men and women stationed there. The base is divided into 2 main parts, Bastion 1 and Bastion 2. Bastion 2 includes two tenant camps, Camp Barber (US) and Camp Viking (DK). Bastion also adjoins Camp Leatherneck (US) and the Afghan National Army (ANA) Camp Shorabak. Bastion's airstrip can handle C-17s; C-130 transport aircraft; Apache and Chinook helicopters are forward-deployed at the Heliport."


Ministry of Defence News
"Camp Bastion doubles in size (http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/EstateAndEnvironment/CampBastionDoublesInSize.htm)

Camp Bastion, the lynchpin of British, and increasingly American, operations in Helmand, is a desert metropolis, complete with airport, that is expanding at a remarkable pace. Report by Sharon Kean.

Bastion exists for one reason: to be the logistics hub for operations in Helmand. Supply convoys and armoured patrols regularly leave its heavily-defended gates. They support the military forward operating bases, patrol bases and checkpoints spread across Helmand province."

Well here's another reason for Bastion to exist - to become a logistics hub for operations across Afghanistan, well beyond Helmand province.


Colonel Mathie
The biggest project is the airfield, a new runway and air traffic control tower. When it's finished we'll be able to put our TriStar airliners straight in here instead of going to Kandahar, allowing us to get strategic air traffic into Bastion. That will be a big development for us.

More ... (http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/EstateAndEnvironment/RoyalEngineersAreBusyBuildingBastion.htm)

With strategic airlift capacity, think strategically. A few more runways like the new longer runway at Bastion and Afghanistan's airfield infrastructure would be sufficient for all of NATO-ISAF force supplies to reach Afghanistan by air - removing dependence and vulnerability on Pakistan's land routes and eliminating the extortion and corruption along the Afghanistan ground supply chain, as detailed in Warlord, Inc..

After supplies are landed at the few huge hub airports - Bagram, Kandahar and Bastion - cargo could be transferred into smaller airplanes using adjacent smaller runways for connecting flights out to smaller airfields associated with NATO-ISAF forward operating bases.

Whether by luck or by design Bastion is well chosen in being far from a population centre which makes it politically feasible to impose a rigorous security exclusion zone on the ground for many miles around the airport.

Controlling the ground far around a military airport is very necessary to defend the incoming aircraft against missile attack by ensuring no enemy can get close enough to launch a missile anywhere near below where the planes descend to land.

Landing at night is not a sufficient defence. Aircraft engines and their exhaust jets are very hot and infra-red shines just as brightly at night for missiles to lock on to.

We cannot assume that the Taliban will be unable to source the most advanced ground-to-air missiles. We should assume they will source such missiles and take the necessary security precautions.

So at Bastion NATO-ISAF must control the ground in a vast security perimeter out to the horizon and beyond which means closing the nearby road to Afghan traffic and providing an alternative circuitous route for civilian traffic.

I need hardly mention the military, economic and political disaster of allowing the enemy to bring down one of our big aircraft. So this must not be allowed to happen. Therefore a very wide secure ground exclusion zone around Bastion should be imposed.

In addition, I need hardly remind people of Al Qaeda's willingness to use aircraft themselves as weapons and therefore airport air defences need to be operational and alert at all times, not just when scheduled aircraft are landing.

The progress at Bastion is very promising for the whole Afghanistan mission. It shows the way ahead.

We can contemplate one day removing the constraints limiting NATO-ISAF supplies reaching Afghanistan by air. From a limit of about 20 percent now, I foresee a 100 percent supply-into-Afghanistan-by-air strategy as both feasible and desirable.

[Peter Dow]

Securing the land around Camp Bastion



UK Forces Afghanistan Blog

RAF protecting Camp Bastion (http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/MilitaryOperations/RafProtectingCampBastion.htm), June 27, 2012

Personnel from Number 5 RAF Force Protection Wing, based at RAF Lossiemouth, have now been deployed at Camp Bastion for two months where they have responsibility for providing security at the main British base in Helmand province.

http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/D9184BB0-538B-472F-8050-FE5152032EAC/0/5fpw1.jpg
51 Squadron RAF Regiment personnel on patrol.

Number 5 RAF Force Protection Wing, comprising members of the Wing Headquarters, 51 Squadron RAF Regiment and 2622 (Highland) Squadron Royal Auxiliary Air Force Regiment, left RAF Lossiemouth on 16 April 2012 and the personnel are now two months into their deployment to Afghanistan.

They are serving with members of No 2 (Tactical) Police Squadron from RAF Henlow in Bedfordshire, soldiers from the Tonga Defence Services and elements of 16th Regiment Royal Artillery, which together form the Bastion Force Protection Wing.

Since their arrival they have taken responsibility for the security of the Camp Bastion complex, one of the busiest airfields in the world with over 28,000 people working on-site. They are also responsible for patrolling the surrounding area, covering over 600 square kilometres, to prevent insurgent attacks against the airfield and its personnel.

So it matters that Camp Bastion is well defended and I want to make sure we are using the correct tactics to secure the land around any airfield camp we are defending.

So I have some new comments to make which occurred to me after seeing that photograph of our soldiers patrolling through poppy fields. I am wondering if there are poppy fields in that 600 square kilometres around Camp Bastion?

Anyway, we don't want or need any high vegetation around the air field which would allow insurgents cover to sneak close to the base, either to launch missile attacks or to plant anti-personnel mines, I.E.D.s or anything else.

Much better if the land is cleared of all tall vegetation so that it is much easier to keep clear of threats. Short grass is good.

That may mean buying out farmers who are growing crops, buying their land around the camp, compensating them but only if they are growing worthwhile crops.

If they are growing poppy fields then they don't deserve compensation in my book.

Either way there is a big job for our engineers to clear the land all around the camp of all cover useful to an enemy. So that's clearing all the 600 square kilometres which was mentioned as being patrolled by our forces.

It is a big job to keep such a large area of land free of cover and yes it is OK to hire local Afghan labour to help with keeping the vegetation down. After all, we will have put some local farmers out of living so they'll be looking for employment.

It might be an idea to have grazing animals on the land to keep the vegetation down but I would not be surprised if the Taliban shoot grazing animals if they can but if they do that's a reminder to us that the Taliban are still out there if a reminder is ever needed.

I assume in a dry land like Afghanistan that burning vegetation is easily done and that'll be the easiest way to clear the land I suspect. So I approve a "scorched earth" policy.

At night when it is not so easy to distinguish between a farmer tending his grazing animals and an insurgent pretending to be that, I suggest that the 600 square kilometres should be an exclusion zone for everyone except Camp Bastion personnel. So all local Afghan workers who clear vegetation during the day need to go back to homes outside the 600 square kilometres every night.

This is the attitude NATO - ISAF and our base security forces need to take. We need to take ownership of all the 600 square kilometres of land which we are patrolling around Camp Bastion and optimise it for security.

It would be the same outrage if the Afghan government dares to suggest that we don't take ownership of the surrounding land, don't clear the land, and should instead allow existing cover for insurgents in land surrounding Camp Bastion as it would be if the Afghan government dared to suggest that we open the doors of the airbase itself to the Taliban

[Peter Dow]

The Afghan National Army, the "green" force is rotten, if not to its core then to much of the periphery. Some of the green is more like gangrene (gan-green, get it! ;) )

The problem I see is in the disconnect between the political control (Karzai) and the funding (mostly from the USA but anyway internationally funded).


Wikipedia: Afghan National Army (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_National_Army#Current_status)
The new Afghan National Army was founded with the issue of a decree by President Hamid Karzai on December 1, 2002

Karzai as the "duly" (ahem) elected president of Afghanistan is perfectly entitled to run an Afghan national army but Afghans should pay for that themselves.

Afghanistan is a poor nation and could not afford that much of an army but if they paid for it themselves, at least the Afghan national army would likely be honest, accountable to Afghans and take on limited tasks - secure the presidential palace, military headquarters and might be up to defending the capital Kabul and surrounding land, maybe.

Now the issue is this - to secure all of Afghanistan, even to secure our supply routes, we need lots of troops and it makes sense to have some kind of Afghan force to help us - but we need a bigger and better green force than the Afghans can afford to pay for. (Also why would a national Afghan force want to prioritise defending our supply routes? They wouldn't want to.)

So the West, NATO needs to pay for some green Afghan forces - that's a good idea, if, if, if, if and only if, those green forces we are paying for are auxiliary to NATO-ISAF - run by NATO-ISAF - under the control of a NATO general, maybe an American general if you could find a good one to do it.

That way we would only recruit capable Afghans into the green force we pay for and interact with daily. We'd be sure our green troops were loyal - wouldn't shoot our blue troops.

No way would we have any incentive to spend our own money on disloyal incapable Afghans in green uniform so we would not do it, if we had political and military control over our green forces, which we would have if they were called "The NATO-ISAF Afghan auxiliary force" - with no pretence of them being an Afghan national force under Karzai.

However, some idiot has come up with the idea of paying Afghans to have an army funded by us but controlled by Karzai so there is no accountability. The people in charge, deciding who to recruit, can recruit bad soldiers because they get paid more by the US for soldiers, whether they be bad soldiers or not.

Why wouldn't Karzai and this guy

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/Sher_Mohammad_Karimi_in_2010.jpg/250px-Sher_Mohammad_Karimi_in_2010.jpg
Lt. Gen. Sher Mohammad Karim, Commander of the Afghan National Army

recruit junkies, thieves, murderers and agents for the Taliban into the Afghan National Army?

Why wouldn't they recruit anybody they can find into the Afghan national army if, for every soldier they can name, they get paid more US dollars?

Where's the incentive for Karzai and Karim to recruit only good soldiers? There isn't any incentive at all.

Again the US ends up funding corruption.

If a green soldier kills a blue then who gets held responsible in the chain of command?

Nobody gets held responsible.

Who should get held responsible? The US and NATO should. We should blame ourselves for paying anything for an army which we do not have any political control over.

What on earth does Panetta (and what did Gates before him) think he is (was) doing trusting this guy Karzai and his general Karim with billions of US tax-payer dollars to pay for a green army?

Why are NATO defence ministers happy with the poor leadership from NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis? Shouldn't the NATO leaders have spotted this fatal flaw in green troop organisation and tried to re-organise green forces as I suggest here, if they know what they are doing (which they don't)?

The competent answer to green on blue attacks is to split up the Afghan army into two distinct forces -

a national Afghan army which Afghans pay for and is commanded by the Afghan president and whichever general he/she wants to appoint. (dark green)


a NATO-ISAF auxiliary force of Afghans, funded by the US and other NATO counties and international donors. This would be commanded by our generals. (light green)

So there should be two green armies - each of a different shade of green, so to speak. Karzai's dark green he would use to defend himself and his capital. Our light green we would use to defend our supply routes and to support our operations in Afghanistan generally.

Only when the Afghan economy had grown to the point that they could afford to pay for a big enough army to defend the whole country would we transfer our light green army over to Afghan national control and then we could leave Afghanistan in the hands of Afghans.

So long as we are paying for an Afghan force we must retain political control over it otherwise it fuels corruption and does little or nothing to help to fight the enemy we are trying to defeat and the green-on-blue attacks simply undermine political support for the whole Afghanistan / Pakistan mission.

[SteveMetz]

A wise strategy is one where the expected benefits--increased security--justify the expected strategic costs (blood, money, lost opportunities). This does not meet that standard.

[Peter Dow]

Malala Yousafzai - getting better every day - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlWprzgSwqA)

The first part of the video is a Sky News report detailing the scheduled reconstructive surgery planned to be carried out on Malala Yousafzai at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, England.

A titanium plate is to be fitted to Malala's skull and a cochlear implant to help her recover hearing in her left ear.

The second part of the video is news footage of Malala set to the music "It's getting better" sung by Cass Elliot.

The video concludes with the following end message from me Peter Dow for my AfPakMission channel video as follows.


We love Malala.
We hate the Taliban.
We are the good people.
The Taliban are evil.

The good people of Pakistan and all the world wish Malala
to get better every day.
Our military should kill every Taliban and help the world
to get better every day.

First the victory prize by wiping out the Taliban.

Then there will be peace
and time for peace prizes.
We have a war to win first.

Malala spoke to the camera before her surgery and the following video was released after her surgery.

Malala Yousafzai Announces Malala Fund to Support Girls' Access to Education (YouTube) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGLKqd89BaA)

Support the Malala Fund | Vital Voices (http://MalalaFund.org)

http://vitalvoices.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/masthead_image_full/masthead_images/Hero_Malala_QUOTE.jpg

Then after her surgery ...

Malala Yousafzai speaking after surgery in England (YouTube) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndab8hPmC8U)

Malala Yousafzai speaking to her consultant after surgery to reconstruct her skull and to implant a hearing device.

Broadcast on BBC News on February 4, 2013

Transcript

Malala says

"I'm feeling alright and I am happy that the operations, both the operations are successful and you know, it was that kind of successful that now they have removed everything from me and I can also walk a little bit, I can talk and I'm feeling better and it doesn't seem that I had a very big operation, it seems that just a little bit anaesthetic injection just for five hours and then I wake up."

Consultant says

"Yes, but it was five hours, it was not a small procedure but you look remarkably good for it"

Malala says

"But it was very nice because there is no drainage system and I think everything is fine, it's better."

Consultant -
"Good"

Malala

"Yeh"

Consultant -

"and what are you looking forward to next?"

Malala
"I think that I will just get better very soon and there will be no problem, I would hear after one month, in this ear, I hope and the thing is that my mission is the same, to help people and I will do that."

Consultant -

"Yes and what do you think of your treatment so far then, can you remember that?"

Malala -

"If I try to speak about my whole treatment, it started in Pakistan and they did a very successful and a very good operation of me and God gave me a new life because of the prayers of people and because of the talent of doctors.

Here in Birmingham in Queen Elizabeth Hospital, here they did the operation of my nerves so after four or five months my left hand side of the face would work, Insha' Allah.

They took care, a lot of care of me, intensive care and I think I'm inspired from the doctors and nurses - they are like my mother and father because for ten days my mother and father were not with me but I had a lot of doctors and nurses who took care of me as if they were my parents."

:)

http://imageshack.us/a/img248/8095/afpakmissionchannel.jpg (http://www.youtube.com/user/AfpakMission)

Peter Dow of AfPak Mission channel says -


Please subscribe to the AfPak Mission channel on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/AfpakMission) offering videos and links to inform the West's mission to help free the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan and the rest of the world from the terrorism of the Taliban and other jihadi Islamo-fascist terrorist enemies by achieving a final, total victory over the enemy by the adoption and execution of a competent military strategy to crush the enemy utterly and thereby to win the war on terror, and not ever to contemplate peace negotiations with the enemy Taliban nor with any of their state-sponsors.

If you would like to beat the enemy Taliban then this AfPak Mission channel is the channel for you.

Please watch the videos in the featured Playlists, especially the uploaded videos (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=UUuLscQId5QvAgESOO1CgPjg) and the two videos in the Secret Pakistan playlist (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_E2ipMg11yaXIBAGDeksJqsMug-BBdOP).

Visit the channel links
to Twitter, where you can follow AfPak Mission (http://twitter.com/AfPakMission)

and to the AfPak military strategy blog posts (http://peterdow.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/afghanistan-pakistan-afpak-military-strategy-and-the-war-on-terror-15-2/).


A new image for the For Freedom Forums gallary avatars (http://scot.tk/forum/show_avatars.php?avatarcategory=3.World) -

http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/1743/malalasworld.jpg

[Peter Dow]

The requirement to defend military supply lines in war, to expect the enemy to attack and to attempt to cut any long supply lines is a basic part of classical military strategy.

If there was ever to be a sustained resistance to our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan then any competent military strategist could have predicted that the enemy would wish to attack our supply lines in Iraq and Afghanistan and if we didn't do the correct thing according to classical military strategy and defend those supply lines then it was inevitable that the enemy would mine and ambush our undefended, or poorly defended, supply lines.

Now the US does indeed have academic military experts who do indeed know the importance of this requirement in war and have published relevant articles on the internet, such as this fine example -


Army Logistician
http://www.almc.army.mil/alog/issues/NovDec08/masthead_images/masthead_760.gif
Supply Line Warfare by Dr. Cliff Welborn (http://www.almc.army.mil/alog/issues/NovDec08/spplyline_war.html) :wry:

The U.S. military has also disrupted the enemy’s supply chain to weaken its fighting capabilities. When we think of a military supply line, we often think of the logistics considerations necessary to keep our own supply chain flowing. However, just as important to military success are tactics for disrupting the enemy supply line. A defensive strategy is to protect our own supply chain; an offensive strategy is to inhibit the supply chain of our enemy. The United States has used both offensive and defensive strategies in many wars, including the Revolutionary War in the 1770s and 1780s, the Civil War in the 1860s, the Plains Indian Wars in the late 19th century, World War II in the 1940s, and the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s.

but that ancient yet essential military knowledge, that ought to be taught to every officer at every military academy, doesn't seem to be in the brains of the US, British or other NATO generals, who seem to think "patrolling" or "ever bigger MRAPs" is a better plan to try to keep our soldiers safe on otherwise undefended supply routes.

Actually, the better plan is simply establishing a secure perimeter around your supply route which is watched 24/7 from static guard posts all along the route, either side of the route, and a mobile reaction force to reinforce wherever and whenever the enemy concentrates to attack the supply route.

I've suggested in this thread a detailed plan to defend supply routes in Afghanistan but no doubt there are many variations on that theme.

Don't get me wrong, big MRAPs have their uses as a back-up if and when the enemy makes it through the defended perimeter of a supply line but there does clearly need to be a secure perimeter established in the first place otherwise your supply routes remain effectively uncleared territory and anything on the route not protected by tons of armour is simply easy meat for the enemy.

Certain items in my plan, about seizing satellites and what to bomb in Pakistan is new, specific intelligence for the war on terror and is maybe a bit much to expect on day one from our military.

But for military leaders not to know the requirement to defend supply routes, and therefore foolishly to lead our soldiers to die from enemy road side bombs and ambushes - this is unforgivable ignorance on the part of our generals, defense secretaries and Pentagon, NATO and UK MOD civilian support military "experts".

Those in charge don't seem to know the military basics. It's like the donkey-generals who led brave lion-soldiers to their deaths advancing on foot against machine gun nests as in world war 1 - all over again.

It's another famous military disaster and it is no way to win a war (even though we will likely win this war on terror eventually but at a very high cost in blood and treasure.)

:(

[bourbon]

Peter, I think you'll find that troop numbers is what it comes down to – and that is a wicked problem.

[Peter Dow]

Well that's 2 replies I have now had here and whilst I would welcome a serious criticism of my proposed strategy or further questions and a debate, the throw-away comments I have received so far do not hold out much hope of that.



A wise strategy is one where the expected benefits--increased security--justify the expected strategic costs (blood, money, lost opportunities). This does not meet that standard.
Steve hasn't said anything about my strategy. The only single word he used to refer to my plan was "this".

"This"?

If Steve has nothing specific about my plan to say in criticism then OK but let's not pretend that Steve has made a serious contribution what all Steve has said is "this".

Steve's opinion is no more substantial and relevant than when Steve says "this is a good movie", or "this is a good meal". Steve is entitled to hold and express Steve's unfounded opinion but Steve's opinion doesn't amount to a significant criticism.

Steve doesn't say what strategic costs he expects from plan, nor why he thinks, if he does think that, the costs of my strategy would be more?

The costs of my plan wouldn't be more, they would be less. If Steve could say why he thinks they would be more I could reply and say why I think he is wrong.

But Steve doesn't say anything specific about my plan. All he says is "this" and he could have said "this" even if he had not read my plan and for all we know, Steve didn't read it.

So I initially declined to reply to Steve's vacant vague opinion but now there is another comment to reply to so I might as well kill two birds with one stone.


Peter, I think you'll find that troop numbers is what it comes down to – and that is a wicked problem.

What about "troop numbers"? Doesn't anyone here actually ever explain what they mean?

For the dedicated NATO auxiliary supply route protection force of mostly Afghans but possibly supplemented by troops from neighbouring countries if necessary to get reliable troops of the appropriate quality, the funding would come from a re-allocation of the funds the US and others pay for the Afghan National Army.

My plan is to cease international especially US & other NATO countries funding of the ANA.

There's something like, last I heard, 200,000 troops on the (corrupt) books of the ANA which we are paying for.

Are those 200,000 troops, not achieving a whole lot on their own, "a wicked problem" according to bourbon? Only bourbon knows but bourbon isn't telling anyone what he means.

My plan is to quit paying for the ANA under Karzai and his generals. Instead, reallocate the money saved to pay for the NATO auxiliary supply route protection force I have described.

Now as for the numbers of troops required for this force, I proposed, including a 25% reserve -


Force including reserves is 25 infantry per kilometre, 40 infantry per mile

So the total number of troops required depends on what length of supply route you require to defend.

So supposing the routes to be defended were something like this -

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/9358/afghanistanrailplans500.jpg

That's about 1500 miles or 2400 km of supply route which at 25 / km or 40 / mile = 60,000 infantry plus support troops.

If you only need to defend a shorter length of supply route, then it's fewer infantry whereas if you need to defend a longer length then it's more infantry required.

So instead of spending whatever it is on 200,000 ANA the plan is NATO countries reallocate that money, our own money, and spend it on the supply route protection force.

There's nothing more "wicked" about my troop numbers than the troop numbers we are already paying for.

Most of the measures in my plan require no more money nor more resources than is already being spent.

Clearly, if it was necessary to invade Saudi Arabia to stop the Saudis funding terrorism that invasion would cost more to do but on the other hand we could seize Saudi oil to pay for our costs. Most everything else I have proposed could be done on the same budget as is already being spent.

Further savings could be made by stopping funding state sponsor of terrorism countries such as Pakistan and Egypt who both get about $2 billion from the US every year.

So that's $4 bn / yr saved at the stroke of pen before the rest of my plan goes into operation.

If you are looking for an efficient victory, you have come to the right plan.

Thank you! :D

[bourbon]

So if I understand you correctly, you want to substitute the corrupt Afghan National Army for a "NATO auxiliary supply route protection force" composed of.....former members of the corrupt Afghan National Army, and bodies rented-out by tribal warlords?

[Peter Dow]

So if I understand you correctly,
First of all, let me thank you for asking for clarification because there is even more to this than first meets the eye.


you want to substitute the corrupt Afghan National Army for a "NATO auxiliary supply route protection force" composed of.....former members of the corrupt Afghan National Army,
The ANA is institutionally corrupt because of the lack of accountability over how the money is spent.

That doesn't mean that all the individual Afghan soldiers are junkies, thieves, rapists, absconders, lazy, clueless, illiterate, phantom-names-existing-on-paper-only, Taliban-agents, green-on-blue-trigger-happy etc - just that Karzai gets paid more for more bums-in-uniform irrespective of the actual job they do and he who pays the piper doesn't call the tune here because as a national president we don't get to fire the Afghan president if we think he is corruptly misusing our money. Our sole method to account for how our money is used is to stop paying it over to Karzai to waste in the first place.

Now I have heard various stories from various sources as to the percentage of acceptable soldiers in the ANA and therefore I can't be specific as to what percentage would shape up for a real soldiering job. My purpose here is just to explain how we make up the numbers if there is a shortfall and there may not be.

NASPROFOR

For the "Nato Auxiliary Supply-route PROtection FORce" ("NASPROFOR" :D ) we'd pick the cream or at least the adequate soldiers from the ANA and if that is not as many as we need for the whole length of supply route we intend to defend then we certainly don't scrape the barrel and make do with poor or worse Afghan soldiers but recruit competent mercenaries perhaps from the surrounding countries which, just to list them, are India, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and perhaps from countries further afield too.

Other factors come into play, for example, we know NATO relations with Iran are particularly tense at the moment so Iran may be the last country to ask to contribute mercenary troops for this new force because they may execute any Iranian mercenary who served NATO loyally or pretend to go along with NATO's plan but send undercover members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to act as double agents, seeming to serve NASPROFOR but secretly allowing Iranian weapons to pass along or across the supply line to Iranian-backed terrorists to attack our supply lines, bases or indeed anything in Afghanistan they wanted to burn to the ground which may be a lot of it which has come under Western influence recently.

Consider hiring mercenaries whom we can get for the price of Afghan soldiers but who can actually do the job competently and loyally and we can get in the numbers we need to form cohesive infantry units, meaning soldiers and their officers need to be able to communicate with each other easily, at least in the lower enlisted ranks and junior officers up to rank of "Reaction Captain".

So for example, one could imagine an Uzbek-staffed NASPROFOR component manning a stretch of supply route near where the supply route approaches the Uzbek border.


and bodies rented-out by tribal warlords?"Bodies" are no good if they can't follow orders loyally and perform adequately in all the roles I have set out for the job. That's the test.

[Peter Dow]

Bombs Kill 3 NATO Troops, 9 Afghans (http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/roadside-bombs-kill-afghanistan-19072724#.UYA67W_A-bw)

By AMIR SHAH Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan April 30, 2013 (AP)

Roadside bomb attacks in Afghanistan killed three NATO service members and nine Afghans on Tuesday, officials said, clear evidence that the insurgents' annual spring offensive is underway.

The service members died in southern Afghanistan, the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan said in a brief statement that provided no other information.

In another attack in the south of the country, a roadside bomb in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar province killed three civilians and wounded five, said Jawed Faisal, a spokesman for the provincial governor.

The Taliban and other insurgent groups make heavy use of roadside bombs. They are among the deadliest weapons in the Afghan war for civilians.

In the north, in Archi district in the province of Kunduz, a roadside bomb killed two people, including a local police commander who had been credited with reducing the number of insurgent attacks in his area, said Abdul Nazar, a local council member.

Commander Miran and his driver were killed and two other police officers were wounded when the car they were driving toward Kunduz City was destroyed by a bomb hidden on the road, said Nazar. Like many Afghans, Miran only used one name.

On Tuesday evening, a roadside bomb exploded in Uruzgan province in central Afghanistan, killing four civilians in a car and wounding two, said police spokesman Fareed Ayal.
Road-side bombs again guys and it's an attack that works for the Taliban just because we haven't secured the few main highways we must use by building a secure perimeter around the road - barbed wire, guard posts, minefields - and thereby keeping the enemy far away from the road at all times.

Instead, our generals have for years stuck with the same old bad patrolling plan and so the enemy just watches the road and after one patrol has passed and before the next patrol arrives, the enemy times it correctly to sneak up to the road and lay their road-side bombs.

The enemy can sneak up to the road so easily because they don't have to cross a minefield, they don't have to penetrate barbed wire and there isn't guard posts with guards with machine guns watching over the land either side of the road 24/7, defending the approaches to the road the whole length of the road.

Then the next patrol or some other vehicle later on comes along the road and gets blown up by the road-side bomb we failed to stop the enemy planting in the first place.

Here's what my solution to create a secure perimeter for the supply roads might look like.

Secure supply route border defences plan diagram (described in full in posts #4, #5 & #6) (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?p=139820#post139820)

http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/5463/newinsidethewire.jpg

http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/4343/secureborder.jpg

Can you see how that brings the road "inside the wire"? That's a plan that could work to keep the main highways safe to use.

Mine is not a plan for the small side-roads far away from the highways. We don't have to use these side-roads to supply our main bases. We should only have our main bases next to the main supply roads. We should not have isolated bases which are difficult to supply. We need to abandon those isolated bases in bandit territory and fight the enemy there using air-power, aerial bombing, drones, attack helicopters, airborne raids and so on. There's no need to drive to those out-of-the-way hideouts the enemy has.

[Peter Dow]

Where is Obama's drawdown leading to for Afghanistan?

Could a feeling of strategic despair pervading the White House mean President Obama's drawdown plan could turn into an unseemly rout of US and other NATO-ISAF forces?


New York Times: U.S. Considers Faster Pullout in Afghanistan (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/world/asia/frustrated-obama-considers-full-troop-withdrawal-from-afghanistan.html?ref=world)

President Obama, frustrated in his dealings with President Karzai, is considering speeding up troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and even leaving no American troops after 2014

WASHINGTON —

Mr. Obama is committed to ending America’s military involvement in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, and Obama administration officials have been negotiating with Afghan officials about leaving a small “residual force” behind. But his relationship with Mr. Karzai has been slowly unraveling, and reached a new low after an effort last month by the United States to begin peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar.

Mr. Karzai promptly repudiated the talks and ended negotiations with the United States over the long-term security deal that is needed to keep American forces in Afghanistan after 2014.

A videoconference between Mr. Obama and Mr. Karzai designed to defuse the tensions ended badly, according to both American and Afghan officials with knowledge of it. Mr. Karzai, according to those sources, accused the United States of trying to negotiate a separate peace with both the Taliban and their backers in Pakistan, leaving Afghanistan’s fragile government exposed to its enemies.

It looks to me like President Obama is getting some "Dark Counsel" as regards pulling out from Afghanistan.

First to explain the phrase "Dark Counsel". Have you seen Lord of the Rings? Remember King Theoden and his adviser, Grima Wormtongue, who told him he was weak, could not fight and hope to win, turned out Grima was secretly an agent for Saruman?

http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/4343/m5p5.jpg

OK remember now? That's "dark counsel".

So who is giving Obama, "dark counsel", who is his Grima Wormtongue?

Well maybe a lady called Robin Raphel, a former agent for Pakistan, a Washington Lobbyist in the pay of the Pakisan state. Obama has taken her on into her team, in charge of non-military aid to Pakistan, that's billions of dollars worth.

http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/4791/yt1h.jpg


Wikipedia: Robin Raphel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Raphel)
Robin Lynn Raphel (born 1947) is a career diplomat who is currently the coordinator for non-military assistance to Pakistan with the rank of ambassador.

She was appointed by President Clinton as first Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, a newly created position, where her tenure was highly controversial. Regularly throughout her career, Raphel was described as being "warm" to totalitarian and military regimes, such as the the military governments in Pakistan, and conversely "cool" towards human rights considerations.

Her tenure as Assistant Secretary for Near East and South Asian Affairs was marked by perceived hostility towards India and Afghanistan, and "warmth" towards Pakistan and the Taliban, as was extensively documented by the media.

Famously, Raphel was hostile towards the Northern Alliance including its leader Ahmed Shah Massoud who she personally pressured to yield to the Taliban.

Raphel openly promoted the complete Taliban takeover of all of Afghanistan, until the events of 9/11. Some scholars believe that her perceived "favoritism" towards Pakistan and the Taliban indirectly, if peripherally, contributed to causing 9/11.

One commonly-cited factor was her aggressive promotion of Unocal's proposal for the Afghanistan Oil Pipeline, which would have required the defeat of the Northern Alliance.

As to U.S. relations with India, the largest and most prosperous state in the region, her tenure was marked as the the "darkest chapter since the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971".

Upon her dismissal from the Assistant Secretary position by President Clinton and her transfer to the backwater post of Ambassador to Tunisia, U.S. relations with India were reported to have "improved overnight".

She also served as a member of the Iraq Reconstruction Team during the Bush administration. She retired from the state department in 2005 after 30 years of service.

She soon became a lobbyist for Pakistan at Cassidy & Associates, a Washington lobbying form that was employed by the Government of Pakistan at an annual retainer of $1.2 million.

Raphel has been the senior Vice President at the National Defense University in Washington.

The Obama Administration appointed Robin Raphel as a member of the team of the late Richard Holbrooke, the Special Representative to the Af-Pak region.

Raphel is the enemy within. I would not let this woman within a mile of the White House, but there again, I'm not King Theoden, I mean, President Obama.

YouTube: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) - Gandalf Releases Theoden (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY9eRkdIeuk)

[omarali50]

The best outcome for America would be to sucker the Chinese into running the show AND paying for it.
The best outcome for the Chinese would be to have America pay for it, Pakistan to supply warm bodies and China to get whatever it is that people imagine they can get out of that region.
The likeliest outcome is that America pays for it and nobody benefits except a few people who manage to stash cash in Dubai and time their exit correctly..

As an American, I think Obama may be right. Avoid the sunk costs fallacy. Cut your losses and leave. Let Allah sort them out.

As a Pakistani, I think the aftermath will be long and bloody. I wish the CIA had actually succeeded in whatever nefarious conspiracy they were up to. Their failure will embarrass them ,but it will terminate a lot of poor people in Afghanistan and Pakistan (and probably India...bakrey kee maan kab tak khair manaey gi...how long will the goat's mother stay lucky in all this?). With maximum prejudice.
Of course I hope I am wrong. I hope some brilliant new plan from Washington will actually work. One can always hope.

[Peter Dow]

I wish the CIA had actually succeeded in whatever nefarious conspiracy they were up to. Their failure will embarrass them
Well unlike


in Pakistan where the Pakistani military intelligence agency, the ISI, doesn't answer to the civilian government but is a part of the independent Pakistani military, which maintains a political role and often imposes a military dictatorship upon Pakistanis and whose ISI is a tool of the military's imperial ambitions, in this context sponsoring an irregular, auxiliary or paramilitary force, the Taliban, to regain Afghanistan as a vassal state of the Pakistani military empire

the CIA does answer to the elected president, it follows the orders of the government, under the law and the constitution of the USA.

As an American you ought to know that. As a Pakistani, you may not know truth from fiction so often have you been lied to by the Pakistani state.

So whilst conspiracy nuts like you may imply that the CIA is an independent unaccountable power with its own political agenda, it is not.


The invasion of Afghanistan was as it was declared to be according to the Bush Doctrine, to go after those who did 9/11 - both the terrorists and their state sponsors.

What we are seeing is an American (and British and NATO) political failure to go to 2nd base with the Bush Doctrine, to follow the trail of intelligence evidence identifying the 9/11 culprits and the Taliban enemy as sponsored by the Pakistani ISI and therefore showing the Pakistani state to be a state sponsor of Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorism.

Here again is the BBC Panorama documentary, "Secret Pakistan" which presents the evidence of Pakistani state sponsoring of terrorism, this time in 2 x 1 hour videos.

SECRET PAKISTAN - Part 1 - Double Cross (YouTube) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSinK-dVrig)

SECRET PAKISTAN - Part 2 - Backlash (YouTube) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5-lSSC9dSE)


So there's a political failure to hold Pakistan accountable for 9/11 and the deaths of our forces in Afghanistan.

So the US and NATO government trend is towards doing less than the Bush Doctrine would imply and simply going home, the job half done. That's not a "conspiracy", it is losing focus, abandoning the mission, letting the Pakistani state which hosted Al Qaeda and the Taliban, killed thousands of our people, off the hook.


Now I don't agree with abandoning the mission - I want the Afghan mission converted into an openly Afghanistan-Pakistan mission. That's my politics but I am not part of a CIA or state conspiracy because I am just this guy, you know?

[jmm99]

what is meant by your usage of "to hold Pakistan accountable" ? Are you suggesting that the US use armed force (pursuant to the 2001 AUMF) against Pakistan ? If so, from where and by what means ?

Regards

Mike

[Peter Dow]

Peter,

what is meant by your usage of "to hold Pakistan accountable" ?

Thanks for your questions Mike.

I mean our governments ought to face up to the evidence that the Pakistani state has secretly been waging war against us by secretly employing Al Qaeda terrorists and the Taliban to wage Pakistan's secret war against us.

I mean our governments ought to respond to the revelation of Pakistan's acts of war against us by declaring that a state of war now exists between us and Pakistan and accordingly command our forces to confront the aggressor, Pakistan, with retaliatory acts of war of our own against Pakistan, in our own self-defence, with a view to bringing Pakistan's secret war to an end and to compel Pakistan to agree and to deliver peace terms which would satisfy our need for security into the future.

I mean it is war with Pakistan, Mike. There's no point in sugar-coating what needs to be done.



Are you suggesting that the US use armed force (pursuant to the 2001 AUMF) against Pakistan ?
Yes.


If so, from where and by what means ?

Regards

Mike
That's a very good question Mike. I am glad you asked that. It's really very important that we find the best answers to those sorts of questions.

I have been attempting to provide some answers to those difficult but critical questions in this topic thread.

I would ask you to review my 4-point plan in my OP (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=16388) and my suggested approach to managing Pakistan in post #2 (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showpost.php?p=139817&postcount=2).

I don't however believe that a large-scale ground invasion of Pakistan would be a good option to pick in order to prosecute this war to a speedy and successful conclusion any time soon.

So attack Pakistan, sure but "invade Pakistan", I don't think so.

PS. We have many non-military methods as well we can use to apply pressure to Pakistan to bring them to terms - financial sanctions, for example.

[jmm99]

You deserve the same candor from me.

My worldview is very different from yours; but also very different from that of the Bush II and Obama admins (one might as well also include the Bush I and Clinton admins). I don't believe in the New World Order or in US global hegemony; and I would limit US force projection out to our Atlantic and Pacific far littorals, except in exigent circumstances.

UBL was an "exigent circumstance", whose death (and those of his subordinates who happened to be caught in the net) were justified for reasons of retribution, reprobation and specific deterrence. No doubt, one can go far beyond UBL and his immediate associates to argue that a number of groups and nations are "worthy" of inclusion within the scope of the 2001 AUMF because of their support of AQ and associated groups (e.g., the Taliban).

I believe that the US has achieved militarily what it can achieve in the Muslim World. So, I'd leave Eurasia and Africa to those who live there. Hence, no point exists for you and me to argue about operational and tactical military details - as to which I have no particular expertise anyway.

Regards

Mike

[omarali50]

Peter, i was being facetious.
I am not sanguine about the prospects of "our" victory in Afghanistan http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2011/10/what-if-we-win.html

[Peter Dow]

You deserve the same candor from me.

My worldview is very different from yours; but also very different from that of the Bush II and Obama admins (one might as well also include the Bush I and Clinton admins). I don't believe in the New World Order or in US global hegemony; and I would limit US force projection out to our Atlantic and Pacific far littorals, except in exigent circumstances.
From sea to shining sea and leave empires like the British, Japanese, German, Russian to fight for global domination, huh?

That's a very different worldview from FDR too.

It's not a good plan Mike because the empire that finally achieves hegemony over the rest of the world would eventually come for the USA and then you'd be on your own.


UBL was an "exigent circumstance", whose death (and those of his subordinates who happened to be caught in the net) were justified for reasons of retribution, reprobation and specific deterrence. No doubt, one can go far beyond UBL and his immediate associates to argue that a number of groups and nations are "worthy" of inclusion within the scope of the 2001 AUMF because of their support of AQ and associated groups (e.g., the Taliban).
One can and one should. Otherwise there's no "specific deterrence" to those groups etc.

On the contrary there is specific payment to such groups in the order of $18 billion in US aid paid to Pakistan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_aid_to_Pakistan#United_States) after groups there supported the 9/11 attacks and another $1.6 billion promised (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/21/growing-debt-us-resumes-16b-in-aid-to-pakistan/).

It's not like the generous US Marshall plan to invest in the recovery of Germany and Europe after world war 2. There, the Nazis could not claim credit for the Marshall plan since the top Nazi leaders had been executed and others jailed.

With Pakistan, the generals who supported 9/11 and Taliban attacks on the US can still claim their part in extorting or blackmailing the aid from the US and other countries they've threatened with their state sponsored terrorism.

So it looks to the Pakistani people like the US is weak, can be bullied, blackmailed, extorted. So there's no deterrent. There's an open invitation - who else wants a piece of the USA's wealth and is prepared to kill Americans to get it?


I believe that the US has achieved militarily what it can achieve in the Muslim World. So, I'd leave Eurasia and Africa to those who live there. Hence, no point exists for you and me to argue about operational and tactical military details - as to which I have no particular expertise anyway.

Regards

Mike
It doesn't take a particular expertise to understand that the USA and its global allies constitute the dominant military power in the world and can beat anyone else if we go about the business of war in a militarily efficient way, instead of like fools. :D

[jmm99]

From sea to shining sea and leave empires like the British, Japanese, German, Russian to fight for global domination, huh?

That's a very different worldview from FDR too.

It's not a good plan because the empire that finally achieves hegemony over the rest of the world would eventually come for the USA in due course and then you'd be on our own.

As to the third point, there's a lot of ifs both ways. As I said, we've very different worldviews.

Regards

Mike

[Peter Dow]

Peter, i was being facetious.
I am not sanguine about the prospects of "our" victory in Afghanistan http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2011/10/what-if-we-win.html
No but you do make an entirely inappropriate distinction between "the imperialist powers or Pakistan".

Whereas in fact it is imperial Pakistan that wants Afghanistan back as its vassal Taliban state, Kashmir from India, Bangladesh back as East Pakistan and perhaps another bits and pieces of Asia which the global jihad can grab for Pakistan.

Though I do note that it is somewhat of a cowardly imperialism that prefers to grab territory via proxy irregular forces and terrorist groups such as the Taliban, controlled by the ISI, no doubt because the generals can't persuade the regular army nor the people of Pakistan to serve in such imperialist wars of expansion.

Oh no, the USA and NATO allies are not "imperialists". We are simply defending our homeland by removing terrorism which threatens us at source.

[Peter Dow]

Condi Rice to India: Pakistan a "state sponsor of terror"


State sponsors of terror have to clean up their act, says Condoleezza (http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/hindustantimesleadershipsummit2013/state-sponsors-of-terror-have-to-clean-up-their-act-condoleezza-rice/article1-1160050.aspx)

The leadership of countries that practice “embedded terrorism” – state sponsored terrorism – have to be told they must “clean up”, said former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit. The US policy towards state sponsors of terrorism, she said, which includes Pakistan, has been to say “you don’t have an option” about dealing with this terrorism.

http://s25.postimg.org/4meyaqtn3/Condi_Hindustantimes.jpg
Former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice speaks during the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit 2013 in New Delhi.

Rice, who delivered the keynote address at the summit’s second day, said one has to be nuanced in responding to state-sponsored terror. Pakistan is a country that turns a blind eye to groups within its borders who practice terrorism, Rice noted. But their system can be mobilised to take action against terrorists with the right pressure and persuasion.

“I came here after the Mumbai attacks and then told (former) Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari: what has happened here is clearly unacceptable and Pakistan is responsible,” said Rice. She admitted this does not work quickly. “This is a long-term problem, it can’t be turned around quickly but over decades.”

Rice, one of the authors of the Indo-US nuclear deal, said that the Indo-US relationship “was without limits” because the two countries shared both common interests and values.

She listed some of the interests she saw shared by India and the US: a world safe from terrorism, stability in South and Central Asia, energy security, preserving an international system based on rule of law.
For the full story visit the Hindustan Times website via this link (http://tinyurl.com/CondiToIndia)
http://tinyurl.com/CondiToIndia

Video recalling the visit of Condoleezza Rice to India after the Mumbai terrorist attack. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbs-hZ8xl_0)

Condoleezza Rice is like a provost of the whole world! Condi handed over the provost job at Stanford University to one of her helpers long ago, though she still works as a professor at Stanford.

I do wish Condi would not be so patient with Pakistan though. I don't think the world can afford to wait decades for Pakistan to put its own house in order. I don't think the Pakistani politicians are strong enough when faced with an obstinate Pakistani state which sees some purpose in sponsoring terrorism.

I would like in future to hear of Condi recommending that the world take a much tougher approach with Pakistan, an "iron fist" approach, so to speak, led by the US and its NATO allies, and hopefully with India's support, to force Pakistan more quickly to confront the state sponsors of terrorism - generals and former generals of the Pakistani military who dictate military policy behind the scenes in Pakistan.

This could involve suspending aid to Pakistan, international arrest warrants for those state-sponsors of terror Pakistani generals and former generals, raids like the raid to get Bin Laden but against those in the Pakistani state who were sheltering Bin Laden, assassination missions against those terror generals and former generals, more drone attacks, targeted missile or bombing air raids, seizing control over Pakistan's satellite broadcasting to call for the arrest of all involved in sponsoring terror and so on.

I would not heed any complaints from the Pakistani state which is not putting its own house in order. I would not be impressed by any threats Pakistan made about blocking supplies into Afghanistan. We would like the honest people in the Pakistan military to take action against those in the Pakistani military, such as the ISI, who have long been dishonest sponsors of terrorism.

The world needs to pressure Pakistan to make the reality that for the honest Pakistani military it will be an easier course of action to confront their dishonest comrades than daring to confront the rest of the world about any actions we take to raise the pressure on Pakistan.

I would even be prepared to raise military tensions to a level that was last seen in the Cuban missile crisis with US forces on high military alert.

No I would not like to see a nuclear war which would hurt many Pakistani civilians. We love the people of Pakistan but it is in their interests for someone to take a tough stance against the state sponsors of terrorism in Pakistan because that terrorism is, as often as not, turned against the people of Pakistan with their own politicians and leaders being targeted.

The exact measures to be taken are not really my point. Those are up for discussion and modification as required.

My real point is the pressure on Pakistan needs to be stepped up 100 fold by the West led by the US and NATO and with the support of India. No more softly, softly.

This would be my advice to our dearly beloved Condoleezza Rice. No-one inspires me more than she. No-one is better placed to decide on what is good advice and what is not. I trust her judgement but I want her to hear my advice.

AfPak Mission links

http://s25.postimg.org/ihd8t7o27/afpakmissionart.jpg
AfPak Mission logo - the AfPak Mission is inspired by the leadership of Condoleezza Rice

AfPak Mission channel http://www.youtube.com/user/AfpakMission

AfPak Mission twitter http://twitter.com/AfPakMission

AfPak Mission forum http://scot.tk/forum/viewforum.php?f=26

AfPak Mission flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/afpakmission/

AfPak Mission blog http://peterdow.wordpress.com/category/afghanistan/

[jmm99]

An Americas-centric map;

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c5/Au%C3%9Fengebiete_der_Vereinigten_Staaten.png/640px-Au%C3%9Fengebiete_der_Vereinigten_Staaten.png

also showing the US pivot to the Pacific which is more than a century old (shown more clearly in the larger version (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Au%C3%9Fengebiete_der_Vereinigten_Staaten.png)); and showing Astan, Pstan and India to the edge of the radar screen.

An Eurasia-centric map:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Heartland.png

based on Mackinder's 1904 Heartland and Geographical Pivot of History (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geographical_Pivot_of_History), who left us this 1919 ditty:


Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;
who rules the World-Island controls the world.
(Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality, p. 106)

I believe it fair to assert that Mackinder's worldview has been accepted (in variants) by Huntington, Kissenger, Brzezinski and Rice; as well as by most of the American political elite.

Mackinder's basic concept is very well-accepted in Eurasia, though in particular versions in state geopolitics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geopolitics) (British, French, German, Russian, etc.).

In fact, there is even a Pakistani version by Brig. Nadir Mir, Pakistan and Geopolitics (http://wwwpakistangeopolitics.blogspot.com/) and User:Nadir Mir (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nadir_Mir), which appears to me an attempt to make the case for a larger Pakistani regional presence (hegemony ?). It may be of more interest to others here than to me.

Regards

Mike

[Peter Dow]

Live Mint: There are no good Taliban and bad Taliban: Condoleezza Rice (http://www.livemint.com/Politics/PyQLitoj42JCo3pfuhhY4I/There-are-no-good-Taliban-and-bad-Taliban-Condoleezza-Rice.html)
by Elizabeth Roche

There are no good Taliban and bad Taliban: Condoleezza Rice

Pakistan is complicated, Iran is still a problem internationally, opines former US secretary of state

http://www.livemint.com/rf/Image-621x414/LiveMint/Period1/2013/12/14/Photos/condoleezza_rice--621x414.jpg

Former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice has voiced doubts about the readiness of Taliban to join a reconciliation process.
Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint

As the US and the international community prepare to scale down their military involvement in Afghanistan in 2014 and the Obama administration seeks talks with the Taliban to stabilize the war-torn country, former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice has voiced doubts about the readiness of the group to join a reconciliation process. In an interview, Rice said she was "sceptical whether the Taliban can be brought into a peace process". Rice, currently a professor of political science at Stanford University, was in New Delhi last week for the 11th Hindustan Times Leadership Summit. Edited excerpts:

This is a critical time for the US in Afghanistan in the context of the transition in 2014. How do you see US-Afghanistan and US-Pakistan relations against the backdrop of this?

The US-Afghan relations is difficult because it is a difficult set of circumstances. It's a relationship of partnership first of all. We have had to do a whole lot of hard things in Afghanistan. We had an apology from our military for innocent civilian deaths in Afghanistan. It's not like the American military would have it that way, but unfortunately it happens. We have pressed the Afghans on the drug trade, we have pressed them on corruption, sometimes the relationship can be difficult, but I think it's a long-term relationship and we will remain engaged there. I hope we will keep a military presence there. I think that would help. But we are in this relationship for the long term. We are not going to leave like we did after the Soviet Union was defeated there (in 1989), leaving then the kind of chaos that led to the Taliban and ultimately the Al Qaeda setting up home base there. With Pakistan again, it's not easy. It takes patience on our part just as it takes patience on the part of India.

If you were secretary of state, would you have thought of opening a line of communication with the Taliban given what happened on 9/11?

I guess you have to think about it and I am not on the inside, and I am always careful because I know that you don't always know all of the factors (involved). I think you have to be extremely careful. I don't think there are good Taliban and bad Taliban. I don't think there are Taliban who are in favour of the stability of Afghanistan. And so I am sceptical whether the Taliban can be brought into a peace process. Eventually there will have to be reconciliation of the Afghan people and I don't doubt there are some who were Afghan people who fought on the wrong side. Everybody has to have reconciliation at some point. But people have to be ready for reconciliation and I don't know the degree to which the Taliban is ready for reconciliation.

There was this recent agreement between the international community and Iran on its controversial nuclear programme. What are the opportunities that this deal throws up for the US in Afghanistan for example?

Well I don't know if it would open up opportunities in the geo-strategic issues. It seems sometimes to me that the Iranian government is in two minds - it wants to have a nuclear deal and it wants to have better relations with the United States, and it wants to reshape the Middle East in ways that are antithetical to our interests and I don't see that changing, frankly, in the short term. Now it may be on Afghanistan because to a certain extent terrorism in Afghanistan is a problem for the Iranians; there would be some small opening there. But I would not generalize from what happens in the nuclear deal to a stronger, better relationship with the Iranians. I think that takes work on other kinds of issues like Iran's interference in the Persian Gulf.

So Pakistan will still have primacy in any Afghan calculations?

Pakistan has to be part of the calculations. Instability in Pakistan is a problem for Afghanistan and instability in Afghanistan is a problem for Pakistan. So those two are forever linked in that way. And I do hope that the Pakistanis will recognize that the Taliban in Pakistan is a real problem for Pakistan, not just for Afghanistan. As long as you have extremism in Pakistan, Pakistan will be a large part of the equation. You will have to pay a lot of attention to it.

Read more in Rice for President Yahoo Group, message 2278 (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rice-for-president/message/2278)

Thank you Condi once again for trying to save those who will listen from the hell on earth, the sacrifice of our cherished values, the dishonour to all that we hold dear, that would be surrendered in any peace deal with the Taliban.

The AfPak Mission

The AfPak Mission (YouTube) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eH8eJAuhVw)

The AfPak Mission on the internet is about war on terror military and security strategy for NATO and allied countries with ground forces in action in Afghanistan and air and airborne forces including drones and special force raids in action over Pakistan.

The AfPak Mission helps implementation of the Bush Doctrine versus state sponsors of terror and is inspired by the leadership of Condoleezza Rice.

The AfPak Mission approach to the Taliban is uncompromising.
There should be no peace with the Taliban.
The only "good" Taliban is a dead Taliban.
Arrest all Taliban political leaders and media spokesmen.
Capture or kill all Taliban fighters.
The AfPak Mission identifies useful content across multiple websites.

On YouTube, the AfPak Mission channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/AfpakMission) presents playlists of useful videos.

The AfPak Mission forum (http://scot.tk/forum/viewforum.php?f=26) offers structured on-line written discussion facilities and the forum is the rallying and reference centre of the AfPak Mission, linking to all other AfPak Mission content on the internet.

The AfPak Mission has a Twitter (http://twitter.com/AfPakMission), a Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/afpakmission/) and a wordpress Blog (http://peterdow.wordpress.com/category/afghanistan/) too.
You are invited to subscribe to the channel, register with the forum and follow on twitter, flickr and the blog.

[Peter Dow]

A couple of new videos in my AfPak Mission channel.

Susan Rice loves US Forces in Afghanistan! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCPMO_viz7k)

Global War On Terror - Final Duel (Video allegory) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaRIcJtLGww)

Soon ... :cool:

[Peter Dow]

Return of the Taliban - gunmen take part in joint patrols with Afghanistan forces ahead of 2015 withdrawal (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/return-taliban---gunmen-take-2948018)
Daily Mirror, Dec 21, 2013. By Chris Hughes

The revelations from Sangin make a mockery of David Cameron’s overblown claim this week that it is “mission accomplished” in Afghanistan

http://i3.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article2946896.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/I131220_143926_326842oTextCS_53483230-2946896.jpg
Not over yet: Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers and Taliban jointly patrol areas in the Sangin district of southern Helmand province

Swaggering Taliban gunmen have been taking part in joint patrols with Afghan government forces in Helmand’s deadliest town.

The revelations from Sangin make a mockery of David Cameron’s overblown claim this week that it is “mission accomplished” in Afghanistan.

And it raised fears the Taliban will take over the country again as international troops prepare to withdraw by 2015.

Last night an Afghan Taliban source in Pakistan confirmed to the Daily Mirror: “Already it is true that our mujahideen have retaken some security posts in Afghanistan and this will continue to happen.”

Agreements between the Afghan National Army and the Taliban are a huge betrayal of brave British soldiers who trained local security forces to secure Afghanistan by themselves.

British troops handed over the policing of Sangin – once dubbed “bomb alley” – to US forces in 2010 after fighting daily battles from 2006 to drive the insurgents out of the town notorious for its opium trade. It was handed over to Afghan security control earlier this year.

A senior military source told the Daily Mirror last night: “Such a public display of co-operation between the Taliban and the ANA is a disgace to the memory of brave British troops who have fought to vanquish the Taliban from communities they treated with brutalism for so many years. There is very little doubt that the Taliban are already making a comeback in various locations throughout Afghanistan, and it is a huge worrry.”

Two members of the town’s community council told local media they had seen Afghan National Army soldiers and Taliban carrying out joint patrols. Taliban men toting weapons and radios were seen parading through a Sangin market place. And tribal elder Ali Shah Khan said: “I saw an ANA car following a Taliban vehicle.”

Former commander of British forces in Afghanistan Colonel Richard Kemp said: “If these reports are true, this is a foretaste of what will happen when Nato forces fully withdraw. The Taliban will seize control of huge swathes of the countryside and many towns such as Sangin.

“Government forces and the Taliban will come to accommodations based on money, power or political convenience.”

But he insisted the 446 British troops killed in Afghanistan have not died in vain. He said: “They killed many extremists who would have threatened our country.”

Colonel Kemp said Afghan forces will still need help after the withdrawal of troops, adding: “I would expect US Special Forces and air power to continue to hit terrorist networks.”

Fears of a resurgence emerged in October when senior Taliban commander Qari Nasrullah told the Daily Mirror his #insurgents will make a comeback. Most British troops in Afghanistan have withdrawn to Camp Bastion in Helmand.

With our enemy the Taliban now patrolling with the Afghan National Army which the NATO countries have funded with billions of pounds (mostly US dollars actually), anyone who is not in denial can plainly see the fatal flaw of funding an Afghan army over which we have no political control.

Also, we've been funding the Taliban's masters - Pakistan with more billions in aid and Saudi Arabia with even more billions in oil purchases. So the Taliban have been well funded, if indirectly, by us too.

So the Taliban have not been short of money to spend on training up new recruits to replace their fighters we've killed on the battlefields of Afghanistan.

It is a military fundamental that you don't win a war by funding your enemy but rather you win a war by bankrupting your enemy, cutting off the resources the enemy needs to sustain its army.

So we've made the war in Afghanistan much more difficult to win because of the incompetent management of the war by our governments which we've seen over the years. The mission can now be seen to be failing and it will take thorough remedial measures to bring the mission back on course.

Part of the solution would to be re-organise the Afghan forces as I have already described to counter green-on-blue attacks by Afghans on our own soldiers.

We should establish a new auxiliary NATO force of Afghans recruited from the Afghan National Army but which would be commanded by our NATO generals and be under our political control.

We should stop funding the ANA.

[AmericanPride]

Afghanistan already has a structural problem with too many internal factions vying for power; that's what prompted the success of the Taliban, the first unified government for the country in 20 years, in the early 1990s. The Afghan government's credibility already suffers from overt political support from the West among the rural population (which accounts for ~75% of the population); how would formalizing a NATO-controlled Afghan paramilitary organization address of any of those problems?

[Peter Dow]

Afghanistan already has a structural problem with too many internal factions vying for power;
Firstly, thank you for joining this thread.

The warlords, yes; they are a problem. Perhaps though those warlords should not be described as entirely "internal" in that they have external sponsors, such as the international governments which fund the nominally "Afghan" state?

From the beginning of our involvement in Afghanistan, in 2001, the warlords were brought together as the Northern Alliance because in agreeing to cooperate under US oversight they received funding and air power support from the US forces which helped them take power from the Taliban.

So from day one of the West's intervention in Afghanistan, the warlords have not been a purely internal Afghan power, not solely deriving their power from the people of Afghanistan.

With the establishment of what we described as the "Afghan president" Karzai, he has maintained a similar sharing of power among the warlords by carving up the "Afghan" state power with the warlords, giving the warlords positions of power within the structures of state institutions such as the "Afghan National" Army and the "Afghan" police.

As the "Afghan" state has been, as its Northern Alliance predecessor was, sponsored with billions of dollars by the US and other allied governments then the "Afghan" state is not a purely internal-to-Afghanistan state; it has an external dimension to it too and the nature of this state is shaped by the wealth and power it derives from its external sponsors.

Thus the warlord factions of that externally funded "Afghan" state today are not purely "internal" to Afghanistan.


that's what prompted the success of the Taliban, the first unified government for the country in 20 years, in the early 1990s.
Back then of course the warlords we know today were probably more genuinely "internal" because they didn't have the external funding and support they have now.

The warlords then were at a disadvantage compared to the Taliban which was sponsored by the Pakistani military and that's why Pakistan's Taliban were able to conquer most of the country, but "unify" no because the warlords would have been forced to flee the country because the Taliban would not tolerate them under their rule.

The fact that the Taliban didn't unify the warlords meant that they were living lurking outside Afghanistan presumably just waiting for their opportunity to be empowered with a more powerful external sponsor, the US, in comparison to the Taliban's external sponsor, Pakistan.



The Afghan government's credibility already suffers from overt political support from the West among the rural population (which accounts for ~75% of the population);
The reason is obvious. The so-called "Afghan" state derives most of its power and wealth from its external sponsors so answers to them (or to "us" as the UK government is also funding the "Afghan" state I understand) or rather the "Afghan" state fiddles from us the maximum amount of funding it can since the strings of our control are weak or non-existent and will be no doubt be financing rules such as - "well if the Afghan state recruits X number of troops into the ANA we will give you X times Y dollars to spend on the ANA."

Therefore this is how we have created and guaranteed a corrupt "Afghan" state which looks primarily to maximise its revenue by fiddling our financing rules and with that money rigs elections and can rule irrespective of whether or not the "Afghan" state has the genuine support of the Afghan people and frankly many commentators doubt that and believe that the nominally unified "Afghan" state under Karzai would not hold together long without our support because its power is derived from our wealth, not from the political authority of Afghans.



how would formalizing a NATO-controlled Afghan paramilitary organization address of any of those problems?
Quite simply. In terms of funding forces with Afghans, we would fund only our auxiliary force and the accountability and political control would be to us in an open and honest way.

We would cease any direct funding of the Afghan state and any Afghan state which was able to stand alone would have to rely much more on the genuine political support and the taxes raised from the Afghan people because we wouldn't be propping it up with our money, that's for sure.

If and when the Afghan state truly speaks for Afghans because it can stand alone then we know when that truly representative Afghan state asks for practical help, not money, either from our auxiliary force which we fund or from our regular forces in country we'd be sure and the Afghan people would have more confidence that the help we were asked for was the help that the Afghan people genuinely wanted not what corrupted politicians and warlords wanted.

Now, the danger with that plan for an accountable and honest Afghan state is that other foreign powers - the either hostile or backstabbing states of Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, or perhaps even our very good friends India - might be tempted to do as we had been doing - directly fund the Afghan state and corrupt it in accordance with their financing rules or even with their direct orders.

We'd have to be suspicious of requests from a stand-alone Afghan state which did not seem to accord with the wishes and interests of Afghans but seemed more to be in the interests of foreign governments. Not that in the case of our very good friends India, any Indian-sponsored Afghan government would be expected to be hostile to our interests but nevertheless it would not serve the Afghans to have their state bought by India any more than it serves their interests to have their state bought by us.

That danger noted, it is a better scheme because for every penny or cent we spend on Afghanistan we are institutionally able to make our own judgements and decisions about whether the power we were asked by the Afghan state to use was being used according to the wishes and in the interests of the people of Afghanistan.

Additional

In addition, the needs of our forces in Afghanistan, even if we have an agreement with the Afghan state to remain, and I'd be content with reverting to an occupation, with no formal permission signed by an Afghan president, no "Bilateral Security Agreement" (BSA) nor "Status Of Forces Agreement" (SOFA) signed, even with a formal agreement to remain in Afghanistan, our forces' needs are different and our priorities different from those of any Afghan state.

For example, our forces in Afghanistan have an interest in confronting Pakistan over its sponsoring of the Taliban. The Afghan state may wish to be less confrontational in its approach to the Taliban and Pakistan, leaving us to fight them both ourselves.

For example, we may need to use our auxiliary Afghan force to help to defend our bases and supply lines to and between our bases. That's never going to be a priority for the Afghan state.

Misunderstanding

It is possible to misunderstand that in the absence of a BSA or SOFA signed that might be taken to imply that this would allow somehow the officers of the Afghan state to arrest our forces and subject them to Afghan national justice.

No, that's a misunderstanding which shows only how subservient the international political class has become firstly to Maliki in Iraq and now Karzai in Afghanistan.

If the Afghan national forces come to arrest our troops, we don't submit. We arrest them; if needs be we point our guns at them; if needs be we shoot them; if needs be we declare war on the Afghan state. It's an occupation so we don't need a damn BSA or SOFA. Understand yet?

Well even if you understand you can be sure that US Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel have simply no comprehension of what it means not to have their BSA signed. They are out of their depth and should be replaced by the president.

[Peter Dow]

BBC: Pakistan jets bomb Taliban positions in North Waziristan (YouTube) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_OIf7Ckx5o)


Washington Post:
Deadly Pakistani airstrikes target militants believed responsible for recent attacks (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/deadly-pakistani-airstrikes-target-militants-believed-responsible-for-recent-attacks/2014/01/21/391ff04c-829e-11e3-a273-6ffd9cf9f4ba_story.html)
By Haq Nawaz Khan and Tim Craig, Published: January 21

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s military launched airstrikes in its restive tribal areas on Tuesday, killing 40 suspected militants, in an attempt to combat terrorist attacks that are escalating across the country.

Tribal elders, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they feared reprisal from militants, said the strikes appeared more accurate than previous such efforts.

The local elders said that the home of Adnan Rashid, a senior Taliban commander, was hit and his family members were injured, but that he escaped unhurt. Another strike, on al-Noor Mosque in the village of Essorhi, killed 15 people — all reportedly militants, according to the elders.

“So this time the army gunships and jet fighters are accurately targeting the militants,” one elder from the town of Mir Ali said in a phone interview.

The strikes, among the heaviest bombardments of the tribal areas in several years, were conducted in the aftermath of a suicide bombing Sunday that killed 20 Pakistani soldiers. On Monday, 13 people were killed in a blast at a market near army headquarters in Rawalpindi. And Tuesday, three people administering polio vaccinations were fatally shot in Karachi, and at least 20 Shiite pilgrims were killed when an explosion tore through their bus in the country’s southwest.

The military airstrikes began late Monday over a troubled area of North Waziristan, a hotbed for Pakistani and foreign militants near the Afghan border. According to local officials and the Reuters news service, it was the first time the military had carried out airstrikes in North Waziristan since a cease-fire deal with local Taliban leaders in 2007.

Military officials said those killed in the strikes included militants suspected of carrying out a bombing in September that killed 85 people at a church in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

Although some of the elders interviewed said that many of those killed were Taliban militants, area residents said there also were numerous civilian casualties. They said they and their families were fleeing the area because they feared for their safety.

“Can you hear the noise of the gunships? They are just over our heads,” Haji Jamaluddin, a resident, told Reuters by phone. “Everyone in the village is running around with children and women, looking for a safe place to hide.”

The strikes, which followed smaller military operations in tribal areas in recent weeks, could be a sign that Pakistan’s new army chief, Gen. Raheel Sharif, plans to take a harder line against militants. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif appointed him in late November to head the country’s nuclear-armed, 550,000-member military. The two men share a last name but are not related.

The prime minister has been pushing to hold peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban, which has waged a decade-long insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives. But those talks have yet to materialize. In the meantime, former military officials say, the country’s top generals — faced with rising violence — have been pushing for more decisive action.

NATO tribute to Pakistan Air Force: "Don't Stop Me Now!" (YouTube) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq1cZEFZYLY)


A friend of NATO, the AfPak Mission presents a tribute to the Pakistan Air Force in recognition of air strikes against the Taliban, enemy of mankind, from January 2014 - "Don't stop me now!"

No peace with the Taliban.
The only "good" Taliban is a dead Taliban.

Way to go Pakistan! :D

[Peter Dow]

Wall Street Journal: U.S. Military Proposal Seeks Shorter Afghan Stay (http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303802904579335060090145356?mg=ren o64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB1000 1424052702303802904579335060090145356.html&fpid=2,7,121,122,201,401,641,1009)

U.S. military leaders have presented the White House with a plan that would keep 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan after 2014

WASHINGTON—U.S. military leaders have presented the White House with a plan that would keep 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan after 2014, but then start drawing the force down to nearly zero by the end of President Barack Obama's term, according to senior officials.

The request reflects a far shorter time frame for a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan than commanders had previously envisaged after the current international mission ends this year. The new approach is intended to buy the U.S. military time to advise and train the Afghan army but still allow Mr. Obama to leave office saying he ended America's longest war, the officials said.

Military leaders told Mr. Obama that if he rejects the 10,000-troop option, then it would be best to withdraw nearly all military personnel at the end of this year because a smaller troop presence wouldn't offer adequate protection to U.S. personnel, said officials involved in the discussions.

The Pentagon's approach, discussed in White House National Security Council meetings last week, encountered pointed questions from some NSC officials who asked what difference 10,000 U.S. troops would make on such a temporary basis, U.S. officials said.

Vice President Joe Biden has been a leading skeptic within the administration about keeping troops in Afghanistan to train and advise Afghan forces after 2014, officials said.

A senior administration official declined to characterize Mr. Biden's position on the new Pentagon proposal, saying only that he "has asked questions and listened carefully to presentations" about possible troop levels. The official said Mr. Biden will make his recommendation to Mr. Obama "at the appropriate time."

Mr. Biden has advocated deploying special operations forces to Afghanistan for counterterrorism missions, officials said.

Afghan officials in Washington didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on the new Pentagon proposal.

As an important boost to the request, the 10,000-troop proposal has the backing of intelligence agencies and the State Department. They have told the White House that their activities on the ground inside Afghanistan will depend on whether the Pentagon gets the troops it says it needs to secure bases where military advisers, spies and diplomats would do their work.

Senior U.S. officials called it a "binary" proposal, meaning the Pentagon wants one troop level or the other, not a midpoint that they said will be too small to protect deployments and support the goals of the mission.

Defense and intelligence officials who disagree with Mr. Biden's approach said any future special operations force in Afghanistan will be of limited utility without a robust intelligence network to track militants and guide "kill teams" to their targets.

"To have an intelligence network, you have to have a footprint, and to have a footprint, you have to have force protection," said one senior U.S. official involved in the discussions.

Currently, there are about 37,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and another 19,000 international forces. The U.S. is scheduled to draw down to 32,000 forces by the end of February.

Regarding the Pentagon's proposal for a MINIMUM of 10,000 troops in Afghanistan.

One does require more troops to keep an airbridge (that is to say a military base supplied only by air, with airfields, runways etc) open vs all foes.

20,000 French troops proved to be insufficient when in 1954 they were guarding one airbridge military base at Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam when the French base was overrun by the Viet Minh.


Wikipedia: Battle of Dien Bien Phu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dien_Bien_Phu)

If you have only one large base then fewer troops are required. You need to occupy a big area to defend the landing and takeoff fight paths vs enemy ground-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft gun-fire.

The area occupied by the French at Dien Bien Phu proved to be too small at only 2 x 5 miles.

Occupying a base area of at least 20 x 20 miles would be better, more practical to defend.

One does need to defend a large perimeter to keep the enemy guns out of range of the base's runways.

Typically 1000 guards are required to defend one 1 base in routine circumstances to defend the perimeter defences alone.

If the Taliban are surged massively, perhaps supported by regular troops of Pakistan, Iran or even Afghanistan, and the enemy army brings artillery to bear and concentrates a sustained attack on one base, as did the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu then the base would need 10,000 guards to defend the base and win the battle.

Fewer troops are required if engineers build impenetrable wide perimeter defences, meaning vehicle barriers anti-tank minefields, infantry barriers, barbed wire, anti-personnel mine-fields - to a mine field thickness of 2 miles all around the base, and that could be 40 miles or more of a perimeter circumference to build - and the perimeter watched over 24/7 by guards in hardened machine gun positions.

For Afghanistan, if I only had 10,000 troops to deploy then I wouldn't have enough for the proposed 9 bases.

Since each base would require 1000 guards in routine circumstances then 9 bases would require 9 x 1000 = 9000 troops just to guard the 9 bases, which would only leave me 1000 troops for operations outside the bases.

With only 10,000 troops I'd establish no more than 5 bases which would need 5 x 1000 = 5000 troops to guard the bases and leave 5000 troops for operations outside the bases, an average of 2000 troops per base.

In the event of a sustained assault as per Dien Bein Phu, if I could fly in reinforcement troops from reserves outside Afghanistan to the base under attack, I would fly in an additional 8000 troops to each base that came under a sustained attack.

If there were no troops available to fly in to reinforce the attacked bases then I would abandon some of the 5 bases, if necessary all but one, redeploying the troops from abandoned bases so that I had enough troops to defend the fewer remaining bases.

[Peter Dow]

Obama's 3 options for Afghanistan

Fight to win,
Retreat,
Surrender


Obama Weighs All Afghanistan Options in Meeting Generals
Bloomberg Politics
By Gopal Ratnam and David Lerman Feb 4, 2014 7:54 PM GM
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-04/obama-weighs-all-afghanistan-options-in-meeting-generals.html

The Obama administration is considering its options to withdraw some or all U.S. forces from Afghanistan as time runs out for a new security agreement, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said.

“They’re planning for all options,” Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said after a closed-door briefing today with defense officials at the Capitol. “They have to.”


1. Fight to win

See above


The AfPak Mission

AfPak Mission Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/AfpakMission
Forum http://scot.tk/forum/viewforum.php?f=26
Twitter http://twitter.com/AfPakMission
Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/afpakmission/
Blog http://afpakmission.wordpress.com/

2. Retreat
Americans dropping dead to terrorist attacks after 'Drop-Dead Date'


‘Drop-Dead Date’

Several senators today said they’ve concluded that Karzai will never sign the agreement and are looking past him toward a successor. Levin said waiting for the next president would give the U.S. and NATO allies enough time to plan for a limited military presence after this year.

“Really, the drop-dead date is the next president,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican member of the Armed Services Committee.


http://www.1913intel.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/nuke_pic1.jpg
American city nuked after the so-called 'Drop-Dead Date'

What Senator Lindsey Graham doesn't realise is that he and President Obama if they agree with a "drop-dead date" policy may be condemning Americans in American cities to be the ones who are dropping dead after the 'drop-dead date'.

Why should American civilians in cities like New York be the ones to drop dead?

That's not what Senator Graham has in mind. He thinks the ones to drop dead would be Afghans. Not so. It would be Americans.

How could this be?

Well for example, if the Pakistani military give a nuclear weapon to an Al-Qaeda terrorist to set off in an American city then it will be American civilians dropping dead from a nuclear blast.

Plenty of Americans dropped dead on 9/11.

Plenty of Americans would drop dead in a terrorist nuclear attack on an American city.

Now that is the danger that Senator Graham and his "drop-dead date" policy are heading Americans into.

So before anyone thinks that a "drop dead date" policy is clever and a good sound bite then we first need to look at why the danger is to American civilians in American cities dropping dead.

Senator Graham is the Senator from South Carolina and the largest metro in that state is Greenville with a population of more than 800,000.

Now if Greenville is unlucky and Al-Qaeda terrorists choose Greenville to set off a terrorist nuclear bomb in then very many of those 800,000 American citizens of Greenville will be dropping dead.

Now I am sure that Senator Graham does not have in mind the good citizens of Greenville would be the ones to be dropping dead after his "drop-dead date" policy had gone in to operation.

Nevertheless Senator Graham and other Senators really ought to think of that scenario or some other American metro being destroyed by a terrorist nuclear weapon before he goes to the media boasting about his "drop-dead date" policy.

Someone needs to explain to the good Senator that all those in the Oval Office who think a "drop-dead date" is a good policy may be condemning American civilians in American cities to be dropping dead some time after their much flaunted "drop-dead date".

Why?

Because if we pull our forces out of Afghanistan, retreat, after a "drop-dead Date" then the Pakistani military will believe that their terrorists are winning the war on terror, that the US is weak and on the retreat, doesn't have the will to win, will pay billions of dollars to Pakistan and then go home.

The Pakistani military will see that as a green light to intensify terrorist attacks in America with which to make further blackmail and extortion demands on the USA.

The Pakistani military got $10 billion in military aid after 9/11 and if they get away with that, if the USA retreats from Pakistan having done nothing but give money to the USA's enemies in the Pakistani military then the next terrorist attack will be bigger and more damaging with a view to get even more than $10 billion.

I do not know how much the Pakistani military will be looking to get from the USA after their nuclear attack on an American city but I would expect that they would be expecting a great deal more than $10 billion - maybe $100 billion or more. I don't know.

But if the USA is weak and paying up to terrorists then they will terrorise the USA even more to get as much money as they can get.

We need to keep the Afghan bases to wage war on our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan - both the terrorists sponsored by the ISI of the Pakistani military and we need to wage war on the ISI itself and all Pakistani generals and former generals who are dictating policy to sponsor terrorism.

We need to keep the Afghan bases without paying Afghanistan anything or giving any ground whatsoever in the war on terror.

Keep the bases as an act of war against our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

That is the best way to be make sure that our enemies in Pakistan know that we are not retreating, that we are still at war with our enemies in Pakistan and that we will hold them accountable one day for 9/11 and certainly even more so if there are any further big terrorist attacks on the USA like that.

We must teach Pakistan accountability for their terrorists and if we withdraw our forces after a drop dead date then Pakistan will have escaped accountability for 9/11 and our enemies in Pakistan will believe that they can escape accountability for another such massive terrorist attack on America, perhaps next time with nuclear weapons.

So don't use the phrase "drop-dead date" except to explain how stupid and dangerous such a policy is because it will be Americans dropping dead.

Don't abandon our Afghan bases. Keep them even if the next Afghan president doesn't sign the BSA.

That's the way to win the war on terror.

Retreating after a 'drop-dead date' is not the way to win.

3. Surrender
Obama going soft on war on Al Qaeda



WSJ: U.S. to Curb Pakistan Drone Program (http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304450904579365112070806176?mg=ren o64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB1000 1424052702304450904579365112070806176.html&fpid=2,7,121,122,201,401,641,1009)

The CIA has long added new targets to a longer "kill list" on a rolling basis as old targets are hit.

Now, U.S. officials say, the "kill list" is not self-replenishing, a change long sought by Islamabad. "By taking one off, we're not automatically putting one on," a senior U.S. official said. As a result, the number of targets on the list are decreasing as the CIA's drones focus on a more limited number of high-level targets that "will enable us to conclude the program," the official said.


And here are the headlines of the next few years (maybe)

US stops adding al Qaeda leaders to 'kill list' (http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2014/02/us_stops_adding_al_qaeda_leade.php)
US announces peace talks with Al-Qaeda.
US president signs peace treaty with Al-Qaeda.
Pentagon purges military to quell dissent against Al-Qaeda treaty.
Rump US military stages joint exercises with Al-Qaeda.
Obama appointed senior Al-Qaeda commander in America.
US military joins Al-Qaeda renamed as "Al-Qaeda in America".
Al-Qaeda in America occupies Congress and the Supreme court.
US Congress members and Supreme Court judges beheaded.
Al-Qaeda in America defeats National Rifle Association in last stand.
Al-Qaeda declares Sharia Law in America.
Barack Obama gets his 2nd Nobel Peace Prize.

Yes he can?

[Peter Dow]

What Pakistan Knew About Bin Laden (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/magazine/what-pakistan-knew-about-bin-laden.html?_r=0)
By CARLOTTA GALL. MARCH 19, 2014
...

Soon after the Navy SEAL raid on Bin Laden’s house, a Pakistani official told me that the United States had direct evidence that the ISI chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, knew of Bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad.
http://s25.postimg.org/uezdij5vz/Lt_Gen_Ahmed_Shuja_Pasha.png
Pakistani ISI chief "knew of Bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad"
Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, was the Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's main intelligence service, from October 2008 until March 2012.


The information came from a senior United States official, and I guessed that the Americans had intercepted a phone call of Pasha’s or one about him in the days after the raid. “He knew of Osama’s whereabouts, yes,” the Pakistani official told me. The official was surprised to learn this and said the Americans were even more so. Pasha had been an energetic opponent of the Taliban and an open and cooperative counterpart for the Americans at the ISI. “Pasha was always their blue-eyed boy,” the official said. But in the weeks and months after the raid, Pasha and the ISI press office strenuously denied that they had any knowledge of Bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad.

Colleagues at The Times began questioning officials in Washington about which high-ranking officials in Pakistan might also have been aware of Bin Laden’s whereabouts, but everyone suddenly clammed up. It was as if a decision had been made to contain the damage to the relationship between the two governments. “There’s no smoking gun,” officials in the Obama administration began to say.

The haul of handwritten notes, letters, computer files and other information collected from Bin Laden’s house during the raid suggested otherwise, however. It revealed regular correspondence between Bin Laden and a string of militant leaders who must have known he was living in Pakistan, including Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a pro-Kashmiri group that has also been active in Afghanistan, and Mullah Omar of the Taliban. Saeed and Omar are two of the ISI’s most important and loyal militant leaders. Both are protected by the agency. Both cooperate closely with it, restraining their followers from attacking the Pakistani state and coordinating with Pakistan’s greater strategic plans. Any correspondence the two men had with Bin Laden would probably have been known to their ISI handlers.

...

According to one inside source, the ISI actually ran a special desk assigned to handle Bin Laden. It was operated independently, led by an officer who made his own decisions and did not report to a superior. He handled only one person: Bin Laden. I was sitting at an outdoor cafe when I learned this, and I remember gasping, though quietly so as not to draw attention. (Two former senior American officials later told me that the information was consistent with their own conclusions.) This was what Afghans knew, and Taliban fighters had told me, but finally someone on the inside was admitting it. The desk was wholly deniable by virtually everyone at the ISI — such is how supersecret intelligence units operate — but the top military bosses knew about it, I was told.

America’s failure to fully understand and actively confront Pakistan on its support and export of terrorism is one of the primary reasons President Karzai has become so disillusioned with the United States. As American and NATO troops prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of this year, the Pakistani military and its Taliban proxy forces lie in wait, as much a threat as any that existed in 2001.

Carlotta Gall's excellent article is consistent with the findings of the BBC's Panorama documentary "SECRET PAKISTAN" (2011).

The buck stops with the President, Obama. Why is Obama turning a blind eye to the enemy rooted in the Pakistani military?

This is not Obama, the community organizer, representing the interests of the American communities threatened by a Pakistani nuclear bomb which the ISI could give, claiming "theft", to their Al Qaeda terrorists for a devastating attack on the US homeland.

This is Obama, the peace-prize winner, wishing a legacy of "war is over", and welcoming advice to surrender Afghanistan to the Pakistani military from Pakistan's woman inside the White House, Robin Raphel.

This is Obama, the defamation lawyer, denying the incompetence of his Secretaries of Defense - Gates, Panetta & Hagel - and their Pentagon advisers who have founded their failing Afghan strategy on co-operation with the treacherous Pakistani military, depending on Pakistan's roads and air-space for US and NATO logistics purposes but at the price of taking off the table the winning Afghan and war on terror strategy of regime-change of Pakistan via policies of ultimatums, sanctions and war under the Bush Doctrine to root out the generals and former generals comprising the Pakistani military dictatorship which continues to sponsor jihadi terrorism and imperialism behind the scenes of an elected but relatively powerless government of Pakistan.

[davidbfpo]

This thread has been locked whilst a review is conducted. The latest post refers to a NYT report, this is being discussed on the main thread on working with Pakistan.