Sanctuary or Ungoverned Spaces:identification, symptoms and responses

[Ken White]

The Republicans and Democrats have co-existed and cooperated under a democratic constitution for over a century. The taliban are not the democrats (or the Republicans). You need to stop seeing at Afghanistan as some kind of 51st state.Omar Ali addressed that most excellent and accurate suggestion to Bob's World but it should be heeded by many others as well...

That is the gem from another altogether excellent post by Omar Ali.

[Dayuhan]

You may be right, but I highly doubt it. Of course the "Taliban want to take the country back." The question is why, and how are their reasonable goals balanced with those who are currently in power. The Republicans can't simply run the Democrats off to Canada and write a new constitution that excludes them for further participation in government; and neither can Karzai. At least, not without being met by a growing insurgency since he pulled that stunt with our support and blessing.

We're not dealing with Democrats and Republicans here. The Northern Alliance/Karzai Government are treating the Taliban exactly as the Taliban treated them, and exactly as the Taliban will treat them again if they get the chance. The Northern Alliance doesn't want to give them that chance, for obvious reasons.

The Democrats and Republicans don't have to run each other out of town and suppress each other with armed force because they have agreed to accept a certain political arrangement based on a shared political culture and a shared consensus about the general pattern of governance. They trust each other to follow that arrangement, so it works. The arrangement works because of the consensus and the trust, not because of the documents: the documents merely codify the consensus, they don't create it.

In Afghanistan no such consensus exists. Niether party would relinquish power if they lost an election, and both parties know it. Either will use state power to suppress the other if they get the chance, and both sides know it. If there's no consensus and no trust behind a Constitution, or if the Constitution is imposed by an outside power, it means nothing.


"poor governance" as I employ it in my work is rooted in human nature. The facts, cultures, beliefs, etc of every community are unique and shape what triggers such human nature responses; but in the end, people are people. So no, poor governance is not just Afghan governance. The Afghans are fully capable of being just and equitable. They are fully capable of designing and employing methods of selecting government officials that are perceived as legitimate by the populace; and they are fully capable of drafting a constitution that guards against abuses of governmental power and that protects individual rights deemed essential to these people.

Rooted perhaps in certain assumptions about human nature.

Yes, the Afghans are in the abstract capable of all the things you say. They are also quite capable of reverting to tribal identity, placing their trust in familiar interests and individuals instead of imported documents, and staging a civil war to determine who gets to stomp who. Given the existing political culture, which do you think is more likely?

An observation, having lived most of my life in poorly governed places: many people who have never known what you call "good governance" do not aspire to that "good governance", and in fact have little concept of it. They often define "good governance" as "bad governance that benefits me", because the alternative is presumed to be "bad governance that benefits the other guy". That state can of course change, and it does. Those changes take time, they often involve violence and conflict, and they cannot be initiated, managed, or advanced by an outside power playing deus ex machina to advance its own interests.

What I find intensely and repetitively frustrating about this conversation is the glaring contradiction between points that you make. You've often told us that we need to step back and relinquish control over foreign political processes. Here, though, you suggest that we initiate a process of political change, and that we should declare ab initio that the outcome will be shared power, legitimate governance, and "a constitution that guards against abuses of governmental power and that protects individual rights" If we don't control the process, how can we state that this will be the outcome? If we don't control the process, how can we assure the non-Pashtun minorities that they aren't going under the bus? How can we assure the Taliban that the existing government will accept restraint on their power? How can we assure any of the parties that the outcome will not be a breakdown in negotiations followed by a right royal schutzenfest, with the winner stomping the losers and the losers becoming insurgents?

On the other hand, if we do control the process, isn't the outcome meaningless?

The process that you suggest would require wholesale changes in the existing political culture, and it would require a level of trust and consensus that does not exist. I'm not convinced that we should be trying to re-structure Afghan political culture, or that it's a goal we have the capacity to accomplish.


But you dodge the main point. We have built a bubble around the Karzai government and protect it, while at the same time refusing to engage directly the aspects of it that fuel this insurgency. We agonize over why the Pakistan government protects that Taliban, yet never seem to wonder why we similarly protect the Karzai government.

Of course we've put a bubble around the government. That's implicit in regime change, and a necessary part of regime change. It's completely unrealistic to expect that we can install a government by force and that it will be able to survive on its own without an extended period in an externally constructed bubble. It's also unrealistic to expect such an installed government to reflect our ideas of good governance and our political culture, rather than those of the society in question.

These are very good reasons to refrain from regime change, reasons that, unfortunately, we ignored. That's why we're in this mess.


Until we remove the self-imposed sanctuary we have created around the Karzai government, we are merely working our tails off to manage the symptoms of the problems that are caused by the nature and policies of that very government.

Here I think you're dodging the main point: aren't the nature and policies of that government a reflection of an existing political culture? Can we change that political culture simply by asking the players involved to re-write the Constitution?


And obviously I mean defend the "new constitution" that is step 2 of the reconciliation and constitutional loya jirga that I see as vital to making true headway on bringing stability to these people and this region.

So we are to defend a document that does not yet exist. Again, though... if we relinquish control over the process, why should we expect the process to produce a document that we are willing to defend... why should we expect the process to produce any kind of agreement at all? If a Constitution requires an outside party to defend it, how does it mean anything?

I just don't see how we can reasonably expect that a Constitutional democracy is going to appear in Afghanistan simply because we want it. If that's our goal, we are likely setting ourselves up for failure, because it's not a goal we have the capacity to accomplish.

[Global Scout]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41770667/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/


KABUL, Afghanistan — After years of fighting for control of a prominent valley in the rugged mountains of eastern Afghanistan, the United States military has begun to pull back most of its forces from ground it once insisted was central to the campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

The withdrawal from the Pech Valley, a remote region in Kunar Province, formally began on Feb. 15. The military projects that it will last about two months, part of a shift of Western forces to the province’s more populated areas. Afghan units will remain in the valley, a test of their military readiness.

Are we going back to the days of take the hill, then give it back to the enemy so we can take it again? This region has been and remains a key safe haven for those actually affilitated with Al Qaeda and LeT and a lot of other groups that are truely transnational bad actors. Not just local insurgents fighting the occupiers. Maybe this is the right thing to do, but I have my doubts. How do you feel about this?

[Bob's World]

Robert,

The Republicans and Democrats have co-existed and cooperated under a democratic constitution for over a century. The taliban are not the democrats (or the Republicans). You need to stop seeing at Afghanistan as some kind of 51st state.
The US can:
1. With enough determination and finesse (NOT an infinite amount of money or manpower, but definitely more determination and FINESSE than they may be capable of) stabilize this current ruling coalition, including deals with reconcilable Taliban and pressing Pakistan to cooperate with such deals. While it is not clear if that is a job the US should have taken on in the first place, it is a job they promised to do. Still, realpolitik (no oil in Afghanistan, not worth it, etc) and determined opposition from GHQ may dictate that this aim be dropped.
2. Stabilize and help to defend a new regime with less ambitious aims, but one that guarantees protections for those parties that stuck their neck out and worked with the US against the Taliban. This would mean a rupture with Pakistan and renewed civil war, but with the anti-taliban regime having an upper hand in large chunks of the country. It would get very ugly though. I personally think Pakistan would suffer most in this scenario, but the Pakistani army has to do what the army has to do. But from an American point of view, its very much doable and the cost is relatively low.
3. Pull out with Pakistani help and let Pakistan negotiate some deal between the parties in Afghanistan. This is the least expensive option. It will be followed by a renewed civil war and a bigger regional mess (because the deal will not stick), but that will be China's heacache (and India's and Iran's and so on). I assume this is what you might pick as the least bad of the three scenarios I listed? (i obviously did not list your 51st state scenario, but that one does not look plausible to me).
I should add that I dont expect any of these scenarios to come to pass soon. I expect more of the current picture for several years and then some unexpected disaster in Pakistan may change the situation. It doesnt look like there is any way out of the current impasse with current assumptions.

Here is a link. In fact, it allows one to read and compare all 6 Constitutions that Afghanistan has had since 1923.

http://www.afghan-web.com/politics/

But, please, do not insult me to tell me that I see Afghanistan as some 51st state. Below is a simple cartoon to depict the difference between governance under the Afghan Contstitution and governance under the US Constitution:



Now, we set out to help Afghanistan create a strong central government to deal more effectively with the problems of warlordism to help Afghanistan become a modern Democracy; but this is infact what we enabled Karzai to create.

Note the little American. He bestows his legitimacy up directly to shape several distinct levels of governance. He picks his National leaders, who in turn responsible for national level governance and security forces. He picks his state leaders, County leaders and local leaders. Each in turn responsible for governance and security at their level and each in turn drawing their legitimacy directly from the people they serve.

Now look at the little Afghan. That little box he is standing in is where 95% of the Coalition COIN effort is focused. We are going to "Clear-Hold-Build" enough of those little boxes, or do Village Stability operations in enough of those little boxes so that stability will occur.

But that little guy has only one shaky, highly suspect line of legitimacy upwards, and that is to the President. There is quite possibly no one on the face of the planet who believes that line from the people to the president is completely corrupted. How could it not be? Look who all draws their postion and patronage from that same President? If the President falls, everything below him falls as well, except for the little box that every afghan lives in, largely unaffected by, and unable to legally influence all that happens in that larger box. He has no District government that draws legitmacy from the people in the district, or that is secured by people of the district, or that owes patronage to the people of the district. He has no Provincial government that draws legitimacy from the people of the Province, or that is secured by people of the province, or that owe patronage to the people of the province.

This is what we enabled, and this is what we dedicate ourselves to protect. I have never implied that the Taliban and Northern Alliance are like Democrats and Republicans (but if the Republicans had had to flee to exile in Canada and Mexico as the Democrats rode to office on the back of Chinese military power, I suspect we would see that the differences may not be quite so great as many seem to presume).

Will a new constitution "fix" Afghanistan? Who knows, and I never said it would. What I said, and stand by, is that the current Constitution is the primary source of causation of the upper tier revolutionary insurgency between the Taliban in exile in Pakistan and the Northern Alliance. This constitution guarantees that they have no legal, effective or trusted means to participate in the governance of this country short of subjugating themselves to the current ruling party. Hell, we won't even let a local fighter "reintegrate" without swearing to support this constitution that legalizes the functional slavery of half the populace of this country.

At the root of this debate is the question of who causes insurgency. Governments blame the insurgent, or perhaps ideology, or perhaps some foreign country. Governments are not good at taking responsibilty for their actions, and besides, by any measure, the government is the legal actor and the insurgent is the illegal actor. This is the majority position, and it is the position taken by colonial powers bent on defeating any challenge to the colonial governments they put in power; and it is the position captured in our current COIN doctrine of FM 3-24. I think it is wrong.

I argue that causation radiates out from the government. Insurgency is a reaction by segments of a governed populace that typically believes its position to be unbearable, and that also believes that they have no legal recourse. The Taliban are in exile, the Pashtun south is subjugted to the Northern Alliance, and under the current constitution they have no legal recourse.

If our goal is a stable Afghanistan, we must first achieve a sustainable model of governance. No amount of "Clear-Hold-Build" can overcome the current governance defined by the current constitution. Afghanistan does not need an American Constitution, but they do not need a Northern Alliance Constitution either. They need an Afghanistan Constitution, and we are currently dedicated to denying that from happening.

[Ken White]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41770667/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/ Are we going back to the days of take the hill, then give it back to the enemy so we can take it again? ... Maybe this is the right thing to do, but I have my doubts. How do you feel about this?Not there so cannot reply with any tactical knowledge. However, I can say that IMO generally, the idea of small FOBs is not tactically sound.

What is fact is that we do not have enough Troops to stay on the Hill (metaphorically speaking -- and actually...) and we therefor should adopt TTP that do not entail such occupation or defense. In fact, given US Troop strength, I believe any attempt at conventional counterinsurgent efforts it pretty badly misguided. That applies not only to Afghanistan today but to the world before 2001 and after Afghanistan. It can be done but only in some limited circumstances and provided we assess our capabilities honestly and accurately (not a US Armed Forces strong point...). :mad:

Stasis kills and should be avoided...

It also has a huge support cost for generally little benefit.

The article you linked has this: ""And it is an emotional issue for American troops, who fear that their service and sacrifices could be squandered. At least 103 American soldiers have died in or near the valley’s maze of steep gullies and soaring peaks, according to a count by The New York Times, and many times more have been wounded, often severely "" (emphasis added /kw).

Yep. Unfortunately, warfare calls for quite strong suppression of emotion...

The WaPo article differs a bit (LINK) (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/24/AR2011022407756.html)""U.S. military officials are planning a significant repositioning of troops that would reduce the number of bases in one of Afghanistan's most dangerous valleys and free up American forces to conduct shorter-duration strike missions into enemy havens."" (emphasis added / kw).

That IMO is a far better approach and what we should be doing / have been doing all along (I include Globally, worldwide strategic type, in that "should be". That would include both Afghanistan and Iraq post mid 2003..). I can only hope that the state of training and risk avoidance depletion factors allow it to be done effectively. It will work very well provided it is done even half right. :cool:

That article also had this: ""Only about .2 percent of the population in the east is in that valley," said Maj. Gen. John Campbell, the commander of U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan. "We have to realign our forces to better protect the Afghan people."

U.S. commanders are hoping to complete the shift over the next several months but are still working to win the support of senior Afghan officials. "We are not in total agreement in all of these areas," Campbell said.""

I agree with the basic premise in that first paragraph, though I think that the last clause in it is a platitude of little merit. :wry:

The second paragraph quoted shows the fun of coalition warfare - and why the policies change so often... :rolleyes:

[carl]

But, please, do not insult me to tell me that I see Afghanistan as some 51st state.

I don't think Omar was insulting you. I think he just turned a pithy and memorable phrase that neatly encapsulated what he thinks is wrong with your position, that what is written on the paper doesn't really matter. I agree with him. If there was anything wrong with his statement it is only that I didn't think of it first.

I took a look at the current Afghan constitution and article 22 contains this statement:

"The citizens of Afghanistan – whether man or woman – have equal rights and duties before the law".

Given the record of the Kandahari Taliban, and given that the current gov made the constitution that advocates the principle articulated above, and not given but I assume a new constitution will be a compromise document-how do you compromise on article twenty two? There doesn't seem to be any room for compromise there.

The same goes for article 43, which states:

"Education is the right of all citizens of Afghanistan, which shall be provided up to the level of the B.A. (lisâns), free of charge by the state."

The Taliban was rather opposed to women's education in the past.


Hell, we won't even let a local fighter "reintegrate" without swearing to support this constitution that legalizes the functional slavery of half the populace of this country.

Don't you think "functional slavery" may be a bit over the top?

I rather like a large part of your analysis but you didn't mention the machinations of the Pak Army/ISI. No matter how sophisticated the governance system set up, nothing much will change unless GHQ can be made to butt out.

[Bob's World]

Carl,

Why does Pakistan working to promote its national interests in Afghanistan; a place where the US, a country with much smaller interests at stake there, does so much more to manipulate things to our ends, bother you so much?

This is like cursing the sun for rising, or the rain for falling simply because you are either too hot or too cold. Pakistan will continue to play in this game regardless of what we want them to do.

As to the current constitution of Afghanistan, it DOES matter. It is what enables the form of governance that is driving the insurgency in Afghanistan. Take that thorn out of the paw of the Afghan people and it will be much harder for Pakistan to manipulate the situation to suit their ends. It will also make it much easier for the US to manipulate things to our ends. I would think that would be a bus you might buy a ticket on.

As I said though, this comes down to what one believes is the root cause of insurgency. I contend that causation radiates out from government, creating conditions that are then exploited, such as the Taliban and Pakistan and AQ are doing in Afghanistan. Should I target and seek to defeat those who emerge to exploit such conditions while I protect the source of causation? Seems foolish to me. The exploitable conditions will become worse by my very presence and efforts, and for every exploiter I help to put down, another will step up. Better to go to the source. And the defining, enabling authority for the source is the current constitution of Afghanistan. It is literally a license to steal. (and to oppress, and to exploit, etc)

You can't just cherry pick some sexy phrase and pull it out of the effective context of the larger document and hold it up and say "see? This is good!"

Pakistan isn't going away, and no amount of wishing will make that happen (Unless our AFPAK policy creates so much instability there that they are attacked and defeated by India, that is). We need to accept their manipulations as a given, as it is in there best interests to do so. Don't give their government a sanctuary by blaming it on the military and the intel any more than you should give the Afghan government a sanctuary. Both tendencies hinder our efforts to promote our own interests in this region.

If you find slavery to be a hard word, you should. When after the next elections everyone in your family is evicted from their homes so that friends of the incoming officials can have them; and your business loses all of its contracts so that family of the newly appointed governor can have them; and when that governor is someone you have never heard of and who can't even speak your language, you might begin to empathize a bit with the modern Afghan not alligned with the Northern Alliance. Maybe it will take the presence of foreign military forces building bases all over your neighborhood, patrolling your streets, and killing without consequence to make you feel like a "slave." Or maybe you will still find that word to be too strong.

[Dayuhan]

Why does Pakistan working to promote its national interests in Afghanistan; a place where the US, a country with much smaller interests at stake there, does so much more to manipulate things to our ends, bother you so much?

Possibly because Pakistan is promoting its perceived interests by protecting and promoting a group that has in the past offered aid and shelter to people who attacked us. The issue isn't Pakistan's pursuit of its perceived interests, it's the vehicle chosen for that support.

Of course the US decision to maintain large forces in Pakistan for an extended period makes our objections largely irrelevant: we can't apply meaningful pressure on Pakistan while we require access to Pakistani territory to support our presence in Afghanistan. One more reason to add to the long list of reasons why extended occupation of Afghanistan was a lousy idea.



What I said, and stand by, is that the current Constitution is the primary source of causation of the upper tier revolutionary insurgency between the Taliban in exile in Pakistan and the Northern Alliance. This constitution guarantees that they have no legal, effective or trusted means to participate in the governance of this country short of subjugating themselves to the current ruling party.

Is the Constitution the source of causation, or is it the underlying political culture? It looks to me like we're dealing with a winner-take-all political culture, in which the winner will dominate and oppress the losers no matter what the Constitution says. If the Constitution is incompatible with the prevailing political culture, it will simply be ignored. If there is no clear winner on the national level, the same culture will prevail at the local level, producing what we call warlords... winners taking all on a smaller scale.

The idea of "legal" means to "participate" in governance simply has no connection to reality in this kind of environment. The effective and trusted means to achieve power is armed force. If you win it's legal, and the other guy's armed force is illegal. If you lose it's the other way around.

Realistically, these guys are not going to share power, except in a transient and highly unstable state that is seen only as a vehicle toward gaining control. What the Constitution says has no impact at all on that equation.

We went into Afghanistan without recognizing the limitations of our power. We had the power to install a government, but once installed, they governed like Afghans. They won't govern any other way, and we can't make them govern any other way. We can continue to support them, and they will continue to govern like Afghans, or we can withdraw support and let them fall, to be replaced by others who will also govern like Afghans, at the national level if they can gain national power, at the local level if they cannot. They will not govern differently simply because they have a different Constitution. They will not balance power and share it just because we want them to.


If our goal is a stable Afghanistan, we must first achieve a sustainable model of governance.

The prevalence of "we" and "our" in that sentence sums up the problem here. Our goal may be a stable Afghanistan, but if the goal of both the Karzai Alliance and the Taliban is "we win and we rule", our goals don't mean much... and like it or not, it's high time we recognized that "we" cannot and never could achieve a sustainable model of governance for Afghanistan.

[Bob's World]

Dayuhan,

I agree that "we" and "our" are problems. It would be great if Karzai would do this of his own volition. Perhaps if we stopped protecting him and began to draw down next year as the President originally established he would. Our problem is that we have inflated fears of inflated problems of what might happen if he does not.

I also agree that this is a winner take all culture. We work with the old Soviet team. So it goes in this country, one side prevails and establishes control of the government and all of the money making key terrain (border crossing sites, irrigated farmland, trade routes, etc) and the other team is pushed aside.

How does one overcome self-destructive culture? How does one create trust and proper behavior in a culture where there is neither? By bringing all the parties together, the winners AND the losers, and crafting a constitution that creates guarantees and obstacles to the abuses that naturally occur. Where we screwed up is that we put too much faith in Karzai and allowed him and his team to craft a constitution that actually codified the historic system of abuse and exclusion and made it worse.

I think we need to tear down the sanctuary we have created around GIRoA and force the issue of bringing the parties together, scrapping the current abomination of a constitution, and starting over. Pakistan will see an opportunity in this to reestablish an acceptable degree of influence, so they should go along. The Pashtuns will see an opportunity to regain what they see as their rightful role in this society (and the Taliban will likely someday be little more than a political party once legal politics become effective and illegal politics are no longer the only option for change).

Our challenge will be to establish and maintain the right degree of invasiveness. Always tricky, and not something Americans have shown much flare for. We lack the patience and are far too sure of the rightness of how we see things (yes, I am an American). We need to just create the environment that brings them together, the force to make them come together, and the broad guidelines of what a constitution is supposed to do; and then allow them to self-determine what that all then produces.

Or go home. Pick one, but to stay and attempt to prop up an unsustainable model is not smart, and is not apt to produce any kind of good or enduring result.

Cheers,

Bob

[carl]

Carl,

Why does Pakistan working to promote its national interests in Afghanistan; a place where the US, a country with much smaller interests at stake there, does so much more to manipulate things to our ends, bother you so much?

This is why the Pak Army/ISI working its machinations in Afghanistan bothers me so much.

Insert photo of dead American soldier, killed in Afghanistan.
Insert photo of the Twin Towers burning and Americans leaping to their deaths to avoid being burned.
Insert photo of Aghan street just after a suicide bombing with smoke, dazed people and body parts scattered about.
Insert photo of 12 year old girl in Naw Zad who is teaching the younger children and whose life will get really stinko if the Taliban comes back.

That is why I dislike those stone hearted, stone headed perfidians (I made that word up) at GHQ messing around in Afghanistan. It is contrary to our interests and gets a lot of people killed.


This is like cursing the sun for rising, or the rain for falling simply because you are either too hot or too cold. Pakistan will continue to play in this game regardless of what we want them to do.

Those bone heads may continue to play their game but why do we have to pay for it, why do we have to pretend it doesn't hurt us and why can't we oppose their destructiveness? If a rat is eating the seed corn, you don't just throw up your hands and say "rats will be rats", you kill the rat.


As to the current constitution of Afghanistan, it DOES matter. It is what enables the form of governance that is driving the insurgency in Afghanistan. Take that thorn out of the paw of the Afghan people and it will be much harder for Pakistan to manipulate the situation to suit their ends. It will also make it much easier for the US to manipulate things to our ends. I would think that would be a bus you might buy a ticket on.

I would buy a ticket on that bus if I thought it was going anywhere and if the ticket seller wasn't going to steal the money. But I don't. You do.


As I said though, this comes down to what one believes is the root cause of insurgency. I contend that causation radiates out from government, creating conditions that are then exploited, such as the Taliban and Pakistan and AQ are doing in Afghanistan. Should I target and seek to defeat those who emerge to exploit such conditions while I protect the source of causation? Seems foolish to me. The exploitable conditions will become worse by my very presence and efforts, and for every exploiter I help to put down, another will step up. Better to go to the source. And the defining, enabling authority for the source is the current constitution of Afghanistan. It is literally a license to steal. (and to oppress, and to exploit, etc)

You're right, it does come down to one believes the root cause of the insurgency is. I believe it is a primarily a proxy war by the Pak Army/ISI to achieve their cloud cuckoo land fantasy of "strategic depth". They use Taliban & company to further that aim and Taliban & company use them to further their aim of taking back what they had before 2001. Remove the Pak Army/ISI from the equation and Taliban & company very well could wither on the vine or talk serious.


You can't just cherry pick some sexy phrase and pull it out of the effective context of the larger document and hold it up and say "see? This is good!"

I assume you are talking about article 22. If so, it is a fundamental statement about the status of men and women before the law. And it is something Taliban & company have demonstrated they don't believe in. I don't call that cherry picking. I call that pointing out something on which it seems there is no compromise. Besides, isn't it good?


Pakistan isn't going away, and no amount of wishing will make that happen (Unless our AFPAK policy creates so much instability there that they are attacked and defeated by India, that is). We need to accept their manipulations as a given, as it is in there best interests to do so. Don't give their government a sanctuary by blaming it on the military and the intel any more than you should give the Afghan government a sanctuary. Both tendencies hinder our efforts to promote our own interests in this region.

You're right about wishing not making the Pak Army/ISI butt out. We actually have to do something. One thing might be to stop seeing ourselves as the puppet masters who control all and realize if the Pak Army/ISI fatally provokes India, it is the fault of the Pak Army/ISI. Another thing might be to take the money away from GHQ. (IF the Pak Army was defeated by India it might be a very good thing for us and Pakistan as it would ruin the credibility of the good General sahibs.)


If you find slavery to be a hard word, you should. When after the next elections everyone in your family is evicted from their homes so that friends of the incoming officials can have them; and your business loses all of its contracts so that family of the newly appointed governor can have them; and when that governor is someone you have never heard of and who can't even speak your language, you might begin to empathize a bit with the modern Afghan not alligned with the Northern Alliance. Maybe it will take the presence of foreign military forces building bases all over your neighborhood, patrolling your streets, and killing without consequence to make you feel like a "slave." Or maybe you will still find that word to be too strong.

What you are talking about is bad government. The solution to the problem of bad government is good government, not its substitution with a different kind of bad government under a different set of bad governors.

Yep, still find the word too strong, since slave means being owned by another and the other being able to pass on ownership and then ship them off somewhere.

Another point. You like to say the Northern Alliance was lined up with the Soviets as a rhetorical tool to discredit them. Not quite true that. Ismail Khan wasn't nor was Massoud. Dostum, yes. Let us be precise here.

[Bob's World]

Carl,

I offer what I think will work. What you offer can't work IMO. It's really that simple.

But when you want to paint the PAK Army and the ISI (and for some bizarre reason hold the government of Pakistan harmless) to task for deaths in Afghanistan, you don't want to forget the farmers smoked by a hellfire missile fired by some Kiowa pilot who swore it was Taliban planting IEDs; or that bus of civilians lit up with a Ma Deuce by a nervous E-4 because he was the gunner on the trail vehicle and felt it was following too close, etc, etc.

It is a matter of historical fact that the Northern Alliance was working with Russian support and that the Russians helped facilitate our relationship to conduct UW with them against the Taliban. It is also a historical fact that many of the Northern Alliance were affiliated with the Soviets during their invasion. This is not rhetoric, I only point it out because it is true, and because it highlights the facts that it is our interests that our enduring, not who we work through to address them.

But I'm not here to argue, merely to present an informed opinion. I don't expect everyone to agree.

We've let ourselves get detached from our true interests in the region, and subsequently attached to a particular party that has their own interests and that is taking us down a path away from what is important in the long run to the U.S. We need to stay focused. To leave or to facilitate a reconciliation is not to abandon Mr. Karzai; rather it is to recognize that he has abandoned us. Once we make it clear that we will not write a blank check and offer blind loyalty, I suspect he will adjust his position. If not, I also suspect that we will find that we have not given up much in terms of our national security by not being there.

[carl]

Robert C. Jones:

Farmers killed by Hellfires, civilians killed by nervous troops-nightmarish disasters caused by poor discipline, bad leadership, lousy training and horrible luck; not to mention our tendency in the past to blow Karzai off when he complained about these things. The Pak Army/ISI contributions to the dystopia are the result of conscious policy decisions that have been followed for years and years. A bit of a moral distinction there don't you think, a matter of mens rea Councilor.

When the civilian leader of Pakistan can pick up the phone and dismiss the head of GHQ or the head of the ISI and make it stick, then I will stop seeing the Pak Army/ISI as the actual government of Pakistan.

When you use the phrase "the old Soviet team" it is a rhetorical tool used to discredit. When you provide a more detailed lineup of the players and their histories, it is not. Just trying to be precise.

You think our bugging out won't result in much. Fair enough. I think it will be bad beyond our imagining. Just imagine what the takfiris would do after that victory. And, I keep thinking of that 12 year old girl in Naw Zad.

[Bob's World]

(Ok, I hope you can laugh at the irony of accusing me of using rhetoric to discredit a particular position, followed by your calling a decision by the US. to withdraw from the current situation as "bugging out.") :)

But this is indeed an emotional issue down on the ground. This is a country that has endured more than its share of human tragedy over the past 30 years alone, and the U.S. has had a hand in a lot of that. There's no crying in baseball, and there is no crying in superpower geo-politics either. Hard calculations of national interests, relative cost/benefit analysis, and pragmatic assessments of cause and effect must shape decisions.

The US gets a bum rap for leaving when the going gets tough. Typically that follows our being far too lenient with the government we had signed up to support to begin with, and allowing them to then drag us into positions we would have never taken on our own, and that are clearly counter to our interests. Diem and his successors did that to us in Nam; Mubarak, the Saudi family, Ben Ali, Ali Abdullah Saleh, etc are doing it to us across the Middle East; and Karzai is doing it to us in Afghanistan. We did not, and are not abandoning these "allies." These are men who grew drunk and corrupt with power and wealth behind the security of the United States, men who created growing discontent and conditions of insurgency across their populaces as they became emboldened by that blind support and acted with ever growing impunity.

No, we do not abandon these allies. We allowed them free will, they exercised that free will, and they have abandoned us. There should be consequences for such behavior, and we have been training these guys that they can get away with far too much once in league with the United States. It's time to turn that around before it drags us down. That is not "bugging out," that is simply taking care of the cold hard business of the United States of America and getting straight with our own values and principles in the process.

[Cole]

Bill

The "experts" are just as loud today, though the metrics coming back from the surge efforts are making them nervous. The "Biden Plan" is beginning to take on new life. If I was gambling man, and asked what the most likely friendly COA currently is, my money would be on "Create a 'decent interval' with the surge, then shift to the Biden Plan and withdraw."
Where would we base our Biden Plan assets? Just Kandahar and Bagram? Would Pakistan, now in the cat bird seat, continue to allow drone flights? Cede the rest of the country to premature ANA control, the resulting chaos, and SOF QRF raid responses?


If I were asked if I thought that was a viable plan, I would have to say "No." It may well save our bacon, but it only delays a likely replay that could look a lot like the final days of South Vietnam, or more accurately, the final days of Afghan communists following the Soviet withdrawal.Because neither the South Vietnamese then or the ANA now are ready. Plus the last time the Taliban took over they did it with "45,000 Pakistani, Taliban and al Qaeda soldiers fighting against forces of Massoud, only 14,000 of which were Afghan (Taliban)."


There is no need to run out on our friends to make true change, in fact, we actually put our friends in a much better spot by making true change now, rather than by forcing them to stay on the current ride to its inevitable finale.Which are our true friends, the Tajik part of the Northern Alliance which has no history of human/women rights abuses and their partner Uzbeks (Dostum & company excluded), Hazaras, Aimaks, and Turkmen...or the Taliban?


The Northern Alliance and the minority populaces they represent will be far better served by a negotiated settlement with the Taliban and the Pashtuns that leads to a new constitution and more balanced and equitable governance than the current model, than they are by leaving them to their own devices and years of violence. The violence will likely increase and potentially end in the Northern Alliance fleeing for their lives. The US and our influence and reputation is far better served by designing and overseeing the former rather than the latter as well.Huh, since when is 58% the minority and 42% is the majority? And that does not even include those Pashtuns tired of the Taliban B.S.

[Cole]

Carl,

But when you want to paint the PAK Army and the ISI (and for some bizarre reason hold the government of Pakistan harmless) to task for deaths in Afghanistan, you don't want to forget the farmers smoked by a hellfire missile fired by some Kiowa pilot who swore it was Taliban planting IEDs; or that bus of civilians lit up with a Ma Deuce by a nervous E-4 because he was the gunner on the trail vehicle and felt it was following too close, etc, etc.And this is solved by flying drones out of National Guard bases in the U.S. with no ground troops to coordinate with? IIRC, it was OH-58D Hellfires together with USAF Predators and SOF supervision that followed 3 vans for hours, swore they were Taliban, then engaged women and children...even though they were traveling from a Hazara province north of Oruzgon not known for Taliban activity.


It is a matter of historical fact that the Northern Alliance was working with Russian support and that the Russians helped facilitate our relationship to conduct UW with them against the Taliban.Perhaps because they were protecting their spheres of influence consisting of "stan" countries north of Afghanistan...and did not like all the heroine ending up in Russia.


It is also a historical fact that many of the Northern Alliance were affiliated with the Soviets during their invasion. This is not rhetoric, I only point it out because it is true, and because it highlights the facts that it is our interests that our enduring, not who we work through to address them.Massoud was killed two days before 9/11 and his funeral in an obscure location was attended by hundreds of thousands. Massoud and Abdullah Abdullah stood for democratic institutions and women's rights. Do those sound like Soviet or Pashtun tenets? Was Ismail Khan buddy buddy with the Soviets when he took on the Afghan communist government in Herat, killed Soviet advisors, and then incurred the wrath or Soviet bombers that killed 24,000 in less than a week and precipitated the Soviet invasion?


We've let ourselves get detached from our true interests in the region, and subsequently attached to a particular party that has their own interests and that is taking us down a path away from what is important in the long run to the U.S. We need to stay focused. To leave or to facilitate a reconciliation is not to abandon Mr. Karzai; rather it is to recognize that he has abandoned us. Once we make it clear that we will not write a blank check and offer blind loyalty, I suspect he will adjust his position. If not, I also suspect that we will find that we have not given up much in terms of our national security by not being there.Perhaps we agree about Karzai being a marginal partner. What about the parliament? Can we work with them to get better results? Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and other opportunists will not go away just because we leave. Last time we left, Kabul got leveled with help from Pakistan and the ISI providing rockets and support to Hekmatyar and the Taliban. What changes when we leave prematurely again this time?

[Bob's World]

Cole, you miss my point. This is not about who is on what team today or yesterday; this is about interests and the various parties who have conflicting interests that all converge in Afghanistan. Russia, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Pakistan all conduct UW even now to work to shape situations to there benefit. As we should expect them to, as they all have far greater interests here than the US does.

There are no clean hands. The US has as much blood on our hands as anyone as we work to shape things to what we see as being best for our interests. It is my position that the intel guys and the ideologues have mischaracterized the situation in a manner that has us working toward a goal that actually puts our vital interests at greater rather than lesser risk.

As to the events in Uruzgan, that was indeed a tragedy that I am intimately familiar with. Mistakes were made. There are not many who can appreciate the position of the ODA commander, deep in Taliban sanctuary with a small team and a handful of contract security and ANSF, conducting an operation in an unfriendly village far from any fire support. Yes, the occupants turned out to be Hazara, but the area they were in was in no way a Hazara area. This was an experienced ODA on their second tour in this same area, and they knew full well how fast insurgent fighters can gather and mass once the word goes out. The reports the team leader had translated to him painted a picture of a force building that far exceeded the size of his own and a decision window to act and prevent being surrounded was closing fast when he made his fateful decision. The reports from the Pred and the pilots who had eyes on the convoy looked damming in cold calm analysis long after the fact by senior leaders sitting safely in their FOBs; but we'll never know what exactly was communicated to the one leader who actually had command on the ground.

Afghanistan will always be at the confluence of powerful forces with divergent interests. Adding our own inflated and I believe misguided perspective of our interests there is not helping.

[Cole]

Cole, you miss my point. This is not about who is on what team today or yesterday; this is about interests and the various parties who have conflicting interests that all converge in Afghanistan. Russia, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Pakistan all conduct UW even now to work to shape situations to there benefit. As we should expect them to, as they all have far greater interests here than the US does.

There are no clean hands. The US has as much blood on our hands as anyone as we work to shape things to what we see as being best for our interests. It is my position that the intel guys and the ideologues have mischaracterized the situation in a manner that has us working toward a goal that actually puts our vital interests at greater rather than lesser risk.

As to the events in Uruzgan, that was indeed a tragedy that I am intimately familiar with. Mistakes were made. There are not many who can appreciate the position of the ODA commander, deep in Taliban sanctuary with a small team and a handful of contract security and ANSF, conducting an operation in an unfriendly village far from any fire support. Yes, the occupants turned out to be Hazara, but the area they were in was in no way a Hazara area. This was an experienced ODA on their second tour in this same area, and they knew full well how fast insurgent fighters can gather and mass once the word goes out. The reports the team leader had translated to him painted a picture of a force building that far exceeded the size of his own and a decision window to act and prevent being surrounded was closing fast when he made his fateful decision. The reports from the Pred and the pilots who had eyes on the convoy looked damming in cold calm analysis long after the fact by senior leaders sitting safely in their FOBs; but we'll never know what exactly was communicated to the one leader who actually had command on the ground.

Afghanistan will always be at the confluence of powerful forces with divergent interests. Adding our own inflated and I believe misguided perspective of our interests there is not helping.

Guess my point is from news reports, even this informed civilian who has never been to Afghanistan, knew back when this happened that if the vehicles were coming out of Daikundi province (4th paragraph from end of article), they were probably Hazaras.

Oruzgan/Urozgan troops on the ground like the Dutch previously, and Marines now would know that as well. Shorter term SOF and those not semi- permanently occupying that ground would be less likely to know that. A Predator pilot separated from ground tactical MI and stateside DCGS would be less likely to know that, as well, particularly if he is National Guard. The assumption that a stateside NG officer Predator pilot is superior to an Army enlisted Gray Eagle operator who is actually in theater next to local tactical MI and operations staff/leaders, is possibly flawed.

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/03/army_mcchrystal_030910w/

With an Army ground control station in theater near the SOF command post, the unit would not have needed to rely exclusively on the absent or short-numbered ROVER system and missing JTAC.

In that context, the ideas behind the Biden Plan and Secretary Gates recent West Point speech that downplays the need for future ground troops in theater, does not look overly valid. In addition as I was pointing out, SOF forces as tough as their mission is and as good as they are...appear to have high incidences of collateral damage on their resumes. Just my opinion, humbled by those like you actually on the ground repeatedly in dangerous places.

[Dayuhan]

Those bone heads may continue to play their game but why do we have to pay for it, why do we have to pretend it doesn't hurt us and why can't we oppose their destructiveness?

Because we can't supply our forces in Afghanistan without crossing Pakistani territory. The size of our presence in Afghanistan cripples us in negotiation with Pakistan: we need their ports and their roads, and they know it. If we weren't in Afghanistan we'd have a lot more leverage: we could threaten to withdraw aid, and there'd be a lot less they could do about it.


Remove the Pak Army/ISI from the equation and Taliban & company very well could wither on the vine or talk serious.

True, but we have no way to remove them from the equation. We can't even seriously threaten them as long as our supply line is in their hands.


What you are talking about is bad government. The solution to the problem of bad government is good government, not its substitution with a different kind of bad government under a different set of bad governors.

Also true, but we don't have the capacity to provide Afghanistan, or Pakistan, with good government.


The US gets a bum rap for leaving when the going gets tough. Typically that follows our being far too lenient with the government we had signed up to support to begin with, and allowing them to then drag us into positions we would have never taken on our own, and that are clearly counter to our interests.

We didn't sign up to support the Karzai government. We signed up to remove the Taliban. Then we created the Karzai government, and now we're all upset that he's governing like an Afghan. What did we expect him to do?

If failure is inability to achieve one's goals, the surest road to failure is to pursue goals you haven't the capacity to achieve. Bringing good governance to Afghanistan is a goal we haven't the capacity to achieve. We cannot govern Afghanistan, and any Afghan government we install will govern like Afghans, which will produce insurgency and which will be unsatisfactory to us.


It would be great if Karzai would do this of his own volition. Perhaps if we stopped protecting him and began to draw down next year as the President originally established he would.

Maybe if we left Karzai would try to build the Taliban into an inclusive government with constitutional protections. Or maybe he'd use patronage, bribe who he could, hand out lucrative territories and businesses to trusted allies, try to co-opt who he could and suppress who he couldn't, and cling to power as hard as he could. Which of these do you think is more likely? And even in the unlikely event that he opted for inclusion, do you think the Taliban would simply settle for that? Or would they try to drive him out and seize power themselves? Based on the way business is typically conducted in that part of the world, what would you reasonably expect?


How does one overcome self-destructive culture? How does one create trust and proper behavior in a culture where there is neither? By bringing all the parties together, the winners AND the losers, and crafting a constitution that creates guarantees and obstacles to the abuses that naturally occur.

Cart before horse. Constitutions don't create trust and consensus, they codify existing trust and consensus. If there's no trust and no consensus, there's nothing to codify and a Constitution will be ignored. Why do you think Constitutions come and go so easily in these places?

The question is not "how does one overcome self-destructive culture?" The question is "how does one overcome somebody else's self-destructive culture? The answer is that one doesn't. One acknowledges what is, and deals with it. We cannot change Afghan culture.


Where we screwed up is that we put too much faith in Karzai and allowed him and his team to craft a constitution that actually codified the historic system of abuse and exclusion and made it worse.

Where we screwed up is in thinking Karzai - or anybody else we could have installed - was not going to govern Afghanistan as an Afghan and in a manner consistent with Afghan political culture. Afghans will be Afghans, no matter what Constitution we give them. Their political culture will evolve, over time and in its own way, but we can't evolve it at our bidding.


I think we need to tear down the sanctuary we have created around GIRoA and force the issue of bringing the parties together, scrapping the current abomination of a constitution, and starting over.

And we are going to do this... how? By decree? We simply declare the Constitution scrapped, and tell the Afghans we say they have to start over and this time they have to do it the way we think it should be done? In what capacity, exactly, are we acting here?


Pakistan will see an opportunity in this to reestablish an acceptable degree of influence, so they should go along. The Pashtuns will see an opportunity to regain what they see as their rightful role in this society (and the Taliban will likely someday be little more than a political party once legal politics become effective and illegal politics are no longer the only option for change).

Given existing political culture and tradition, and the history of violence among the contending parties, what's the basis for these predictions? What if "an acceptable degree of influence" for Pakistan is control? What if what the Pashtuns see as "their rightful role in this society" is on top, with their boot on the other guy's throat and their hand in his pocket? And really, what basis have we to assume that a mere Constitution would make "legal politics" more "effective' than the traditional politics of force?


Our challenge will be to establish and maintain the right degree of invasiveness. Always tricky, and not something Americans have shown much flare for.

If we're going to start by unilaterally removing the existing Constitution and initiating a process that we declare will result in balanced equitable sharing of power, there's no longer any basis to speak of "the right degree of invasiveness". At that point we have already declared ourselves absolute rulers with final veto power over the decisions of any Afghan government. There is no higher degree of invasiveness


We lack the patience and are far too sure of the rightness of how we see things (yes, I am an American).

Agreed, on all counts. QED, possibly :D


We need to just create the environment that brings them together, the force to make them come together, and the broad guidelines of what a constitution is supposed to do; and then allow them to self-determine what that all then produces.

Is there any indication that they want to come together? If they don't, what's the chance that forcing them together is going to produce what you want it to produce?

The only way the outcome is going to even vaguely resemble what you suggest is if we control the outcome. If we allow the parties to self-determine the outcome, it's not likely to be anything but a big fight, with the winners stomping the losers into the ground.

This is the fundamental dissonance here: if we control the outcome, it's irrelevant by definition. If we don't control the outcome, it's not going to be the outcome we want.


Or go home.

Should have done that when we were on top, and people were still afraid of us.

We already tried to bring "good governance" to Afghanistan. We didn't fail just because we did it wrong, and we won't succeed if we do it better next time. We failed because it's something we don't have the ability to do, no matter how many times we try. They may someday find their own model of "good governance", but we are not going to do it for them.

[Bob's World]

constitutions come and go because they are typically either written by the winner to solidify their gains; or because they are shaped by some external/colonial power to solidify their interests.

I am suggesting neither. I don't know if this will work either, but of all the things we are throwing ourselves at that have little to no chance to work; I find it odd that the one thing that has the best chance we pointedly ignore. If I was a conspiracy theorist....

[Entropy]

Guess my point is from news reports, even this informed civilian who has never been to Afghanistan, knew back when this happened that if the vehicles were coming out of Daikundi province (4th paragraph from end of article), they were probably Hazaras.

Oruzgan/Urozgan troops on the ground like the Dutch previously, and Marines now would know that as well. Shorter term SOF and those not semi- permanently occupying that ground would be less likely to know that. A Predator pilot separated from ground tactical MI and stateside DCGS would be less likely to know that, as well, particularly if he is National Guard. The assumption that a stateside NG officer Predator pilot is superior to an Army enlisted Gray Eagle operator who is actually in theater next to local tactical MI and operations staff/leaders, is possibly flawed.

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/03/army_mcchrystal_030910w/

With an Army ground control station in theater near the SOF command post, the unit would not have needed to rely exclusively on the absent or short-numbered ROVER system and missing JTAC.


I guess I should comment since I'm one of those NG guys working with Predator.

The problem with that incident wasn't that the personnel involved were National Guard - rather it demonstrates a problem with how the DCGS system works. DCGS is a distributed system, meaning that the people flying the plane are in one location, the analysts exploiting the video feed are in another location, and the aircraft and supported unit are in a third location. This distributed system brings a lot of advantages, but some downsides as well. One of the biggest downsides is that communication becomes critical in order to ensure there are no screwups since the various players are not co-located. In this particular case, the guys flying the plane had comms with the guys on the ground, but the imagery analysts at the DGS did not. The imagery analysts correctly identified women and children in the vehicles, but the crew failed to pass that information along.

This incident prompted several changes in within the DCGS community.

Secondly, most of the NG people who do this mission are very experienced. At my unit (which is on the exploitation side of the system) most of the people working these missions have been doing it for the last 2-3 years nonstop on title 10 orders.

Third, DGS analysts aren't supposed to be local area experts - in fact, they can't be given the reality that we have to support missions anywhere in Iraq and Afghanistan. We literally could be supporting a mission in Afghanistan for a few hours and then support a mission in Iraq immediately afterward. Therefore, what the analysts do is pretty much limited to interpreting what is happening on the video feed and providing any products the supported unit requires. Most people working at a DGS are imagery analysts and would not be expected to be area experts regardless. The units we support on the ground do not expect us to be experts on their AO and they realize that we can't be such experts though we do endeavor to provide any information we can as well as coordinate cross-cuing of other intelligence assets. Mainly we are a reconnaissance asset and are treated as such, though we do have the capability to do higher-level and longer-term analysis if required.

[carl]

Because we can't supply our forces in Afghanistan without crossing Pakistani territory. The size of our presence in Afghanistan cripples us in negotiation with Pakistan: we need their ports and their roads, and they know it. If we weren't in Afghanistan we'd have a lot more leverage: we could threaten to withdraw aid, and there'd be a lot less they could do about it.

If we were to reduce our force size to that which could be supplied via the northern route and air (and maybe even quietly quietly through Iran), wouldn't we have even more leverage because we would still be there and could actually stop the money flow to the General sahibs and their buddies? It might be a radical step to give up the Karachi supply route and live on what comes through other routes given our history, but the current arrangement ain't working. We gotta do something else.

Entropy: Do you think the way the Army runs their Pred ops (Warriors), with everybody in theatre at I think the same place, is better, worse or six of one and six of the other?

Thanks for the explanation. Those details make a of difference and it is good to know some of them.

[Bob's World]

Guess my point is from news reports, even this informed civilian who has never been to Afghanistan, knew back when this happened that if the vehicles were coming out of Daikundi province (4th paragraph from end of article), they were probably Hazaras.

Oruzgan/Urozgan troops on the ground like the Dutch previously, and Marines now would know that as well. Shorter term SOF and those not semi- permanently occupying that ground would be less likely to know that. A Predator pilot separated from ground tactical MI and stateside DCGS would be less likely to know that, as well, particularly if he is National Guard. The assumption that a stateside NG officer Predator pilot is superior to an Army enlisted Gray Eagle operator who is actually in theater next to local tactical MI and operations staff/leaders, is possibly flawed.

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/03/army_mcchrystal_030910w/

With an Army ground control station in theater near the SOF command post, the unit would not have needed to rely exclusively on the absent or short-numbered ROVER system and missing JTAC.

In that context, the ideas behind the Biden Plan and Secretary Gates recent West Point speech that downplays the need for future ground troops in theater, does not look overly valid. In addition as I was pointing out, SOF forces as tough as their mission is and as good as they are...appear to have high incidences of collateral damage on their resumes. Just my opinion, humbled by those like you actually on the ground repeatedly in dangerous places.

Carl,

With all due respect, you are smoking some hardcore crack here.

Conventional ground forces had CIVCAS incidents almost daily while I was in Afghanistan. Typically some lower enlisted guy pulling security on a convoy or at some outpost faced with an urgent decision about what to do when a guy on a motorcycle races toward his position without responding to hand signals or flashing lights; or what to do when similarly a vehicle closed too close to the convoy. Default answer was to use their assigned weapon and stop the person. Next on the list was attack helicopters, who typically were held blameless for their actions. The conventional forces compressed their battle space to the ring road, the hwy to Quetta, and a few relative small bulges around major population centers. The remainder (and vast majority) of RC South was abandoned to a a handful of SF and SEAL and Coalition SOF outposts as permanent presence, and sporadic raiding by other SOF.

SOF events were and are rare, but they are sometimes dramatic when they do occur.

All too often, pilots with eyes on the target would call the nearest ground commander (some SOF commander in a post isolated from any external support deep in Indian country) and describe a major threat and ask for permission to engage. When later it turned out that the target was a group of kids or women the lion's share of the blame would fall upon that SOF commander.

Yes, after the fact, in the incident you describe it was determined that the vehicles contained a Hazara group traveling south from Dai Kundai down to Kandahar. To a ground commander listening to Taliban forces coordinating an attack on his small team in an isolated village far from his own base or any conventional support they were described to him as three vehicles full of armed men, accompanied by a large number of dismounts. He obviously could not see the target, he could only incorporate what he was being told into the totality of his circumstances there on the ground. The two pilots who came on station had no such concerns or hindrances. They knew that they faced little threat of effective air defense fire (unless coming within PKM and RPG range); and had eyes on with high tech optics and flew around the target vehicles several times before receiving the ground force commander's authorization to engage. They never told the ground the commander that this was not a Taliban force, they never closed to confirm their doubts, they just lit it up and flew back to base. Like I said, it was a tragedy, and those who dished out punishments or wrote condemning articles did so with full access to dozens of written statements, video and audios available for their review. The commander had none of that.

Regardless, your stated assumption that the Dutch (who largely stayed in the narrow confines of their base and equally narrow surrounding battle space) conventional forces or the Marines (didn't realize Marines had been sent up to Uruzgan, so I question that) somehow have better situational awayness over this region than the US and coalition SOF (USSF, Aussie and Dutch SOF) who have been out and among the people (friendly and unfriendly) out in the rural areas since 2001 is just flat wrong.

But key to remember is that they are all civilians. Be one a hardcore Taliban fighter or a small girl. The whole term "CIVCAS" is a bit ridiculous as it drives decisions based on ones age or gender rather than upon their action or associations. If those vehicles had contained 15 fighters and 12 women and children would that be "CIVCAS"? Under our current rules, yes. Yet are all are equally liable either directly or as accomplices. Our operational laws we employ are broken in my opinion; as are our procedures for clearing fires and assessing blame. But that does not make a good story, SOF guys killing civilians does, so that is what makes the news.

One sure way to reduce the number of civilians killed by the US in Afghanistan is to stop promoting the success of current government and to take a more neutral role. Victory should not be measured in the survival of the Karzai regime, but rather in attaining a relatively stable situation. The real problem is that our Means and our Ways do not match our Ends:

MEANS: ISAF

WAYS: In support of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, ISAF conducts operations in Afghanistan to reduce the capability and will of the insurgency, support the growth in capacity and capability of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), and facilitate improvements in governance and socio-economic development in order to provide a secure environment for sustainable stability that is observable to the population. ISAF Mission Statement

ENDS: “to disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al Qaeda and to prevent their return to either Afghanistan or Pakistan.”
President Barack Obama, 2010

We either need to change the Ends, or adjust the Ways and Means. Probably a good bit of all three.

Then we could evolve past arguing over "who shot john," and focus on helping John attain a government designed, and manned by those with the intention, to serve the entire populace

[omarali50]

Carl, as you know, I wrote a piece about the Davis imbroglio yesterday (http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2011/02/lovers-tiff-impending-divorce-or-trial-separation-by-omar-ali.html#more) and have heard from friends since then; the consensus among middle class Pakistanis (these are not official sources, just ordinary middle class Paksitanis) seems to be that we are past the hump. Not only can the US do nothing to Pakistan while Pakistan controls supplies, thanks to 200 nukes, there is nothing the US can do even if they leave Afghanistan. The US has provided bridge financing for 9 years and now the crisis is past. China and Saudi Arabia will take care of the future and 200 nukes will ensure compliance from the world bank and others. US aid is no longer critical. And the reconquest of Afghanistan is a matter of when, not if. And India is already running to see what they can do to avoid a new round of Jihadi warfare. They too will pay and pay on time. We are, in short, past the hump in every respect.
I am not convinced myself, but I am reporting what I hear from friends (most of whom do not consider themselves Taliban supporters).

[carl]

Omar:

That sounds a lot like a middleweight who has been successful in his weight class and has decided to move up to heavyweight. The confidence may be unjustified.

If you have a chance, ask those guys what they think will happen when, not if, the next Mumbai occurs and if, maybe even when, a successful attack with a Pakistan link occurs in the United States. I would be interested in their answer.

That was a nice piece in 3quarks, almost a reference work on how the deep state thinks.

[Surferbeetle]

Omar,

Wow!

LOVERS TIFF, IMPENDING DIVORCE OR TRIAL SEPARATION? (http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2011/02/lovers-tiff-impending-divorce-or-trial-separation-by-omar-ali.html#more)


Meanwhile, when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything is a nail. So I expect the state department to pass out more money to GHQ, I expect the CIA to fund some new insane lunatic fringe to counter their last lunatic fringe, I expect the Pentagon to ask for more money for weapons and a good hard "shock and awe campaign", I expect professors in San Francisco to blame colonialism, and I expect Islamists to blow themselves up with even greater devotion. May Allah protect us from anything worse.

Indeed :wry:

Steve

[Ken White]

SOF events were and are rare, but they are sometimes dramatic when they do occur.At the risk of starting another definition conflict, my conversations with folks having multiple SF tours over the past nine years indicate that may not be not totally correct with respect to rairity (or making the news...). It may for your tour but for the whole period 2002-2011, it's quite doubtful.

That said, arguing its viability is probably pointless and unprovable in this forum and other than for parochial benefit, it's probably irrelevant in any event.

From the same sources and even more GPF folks who have gotten out of camps and well off the roads, this, though, seems correct:
Next on the list was attack helicopters, who typically were held blameless for their actions.That has long been true and needs to corrected.
All too often...When later it turned out that the target was a group of kids or women the lion's share of the blame would fall upon that SOF commander.As he should if he gave 'permission' without accurate knowledge. Though as you said, holding Aircrew blameless is long overdue for change.
Regardless, your stated assumption ... somehow have better situational awayness over this region than the US and coalition SOF (USSF, Aussie and Dutch SOF) who have been out and among the people (friendly and unfriendly) out in the rural areas since 2001 is just flat wrong.Perhaps, perhaps not. Neither all SOF or all GPF are created equal. Good people and units have good SA, poor ones do not. That's a situational variable that IMO can never rate a "flat wrong" especially on a purely parochial, unit-type basis. YMMV obviously and that's okay even if it is wrong... :D.
...But that does not make a good story, SOF guys killing civilians does, so that is what makes the news.Proving that some things never change... :wry:

[Bob's World]

Ken,,

No clean hands. This is the great challenge of going to a foreign land and taking a side in such an internal dispute. Both the government and the insurgent emerge from the populace to compete for dominance, and it is the populace that bears the brunt of such competitions.

All the more reason to first ask if the populace has trusted, certain and legal means available to them to challenge the current government short of such illegal violence. Too often the answer is no. Certainly that is the answer in Afghanistan. This is why it frustrates me when so many say "you have to crush the insurgent first, then look at addressing the issues of governance." I just don't buy it. Only if one is hard set that the current form of governance must prevail. The current constitution is a train wreck of insurgent causation. We really need to stop ignoring that hard fact and give these good people some legal options to address their grievances.

Uruzgan province is unique; and the Dutch government fell during my tenure in country over the controversy of their role there. I was fortunate to have conversations with local strongmen such as Matiullah Khan and senior leaders such as the CG of the Dutch forces and also to spend time with all brands of SOF forces that worked that region. I was also on duty when the tragic event described by Carl went down, know the parties involved and spent time with the investigators as well. Its complicated, but SF guys know this province as well as any. One team took 50% casualties on a prior rotation. They have a right to be a little quick to call for assistance when hours or days away from any type of ground support. Most of these teams were almost always in a complex mix of direct and indirect fire and IEDS from the minute they left the gate to the minute they returned, yet they go out every day and keep working to hold the edges of the frontier back so that the conventional forces can have some breathing space as they work the main battle area. But it was in the main battle area that "warning shots" killed civilians virtually every day. Poor communication between cultures, justifiably fear and duty to protect ones position, a lack of non-lethal options all combine to keep that count far too high.

Its frustrating. I also think it is largely avoidable. Bringing us back to the basis of this thread of dealing with sanctuaries. I still contend the most deadly sanctuary of all is the one we have created around GIRoA. Once we tear that down we can get at the heart of the problem.

[Ken White]

And as soon as I get back from taking my Wife and Daughter to dinner and if I can find my thinking cap, I'll try to be thoughtful... ;)

[Dayuhan]

If we were to reduce our force size to that which could be supplied via the northern route and air (and maybe even quietly quietly through Iran), wouldn't we have even more leverage because we would still be there and could actually stop the money flow to the General sahibs and their buddies? It might be a radical step to give up the Karachi supply route and live on what comes through other routes given our history, but the current arrangement ain't working. We gotta do something else.

Certainly true, but we have to recognize that the northern route is controlled by regimes whose capriciousness is exceeded only and occasionally by their avarice, and that any arrangement with Iran would be impossible to keep quiet and would come with a very large quid pro quo. Doesn't take much more than a glance at Afghanistan's list of neighbors to recognize that dependence on any of them is going to carry a pretty hefty price tag and some less than pleasant bedfellows.


constitutions come and go because they are typically either written by the winner to solidify their gains; or because they are shaped by some external/colonial power to solidify their interests.

Seems to me that what you're proposing falls squarely into the latter category.


I don't know if this will work either, but of all the things we are throwing ourselves at that have little to no chance to work; I find it odd that the one thing that has the best chance we pointedly ignore. If I was a conspiracy theorist....

People ignore it because they know we can't do it. It's certainly true that there would be a lot less insurgency, upheaval, and misery if everybody had good governance and democracy. There would also be a lot less poverty if everyone had lots of money. These observations are true but they don't get us anywhere, because we can't bring them about.

Someday we will get this through our collective skulls: good governance and democracy cannot be installed, like a light bulb or spare tire. They are not gifts that we can present. We cannot force them on anyone. Not saying the Afghans (or any others) can't achieve them, but they have to do it by their own road and in their own time; we can't simply hand it to them or shove it down their throats because the inevitable messiness that accompanies the evolutionary process is not in our interest.

It's a great solution and a great goal, but we can't achieve it. Pursuing goals we can't achieve has caused us problems in the past, and it will continue to cause problems until we stop doing it.

[Cole]

Carl,

With all due respect, you are smoking some hardcore crack here.Not likely since I don't even drink. I'm perfectly capable of being irrational while sober.:)

Conventional ground forces had CIVCAS incidents almost daily while I was in Afghanistan. Typically some lower enlisted guy pulling security on a convoy or at some outpost faced with an urgent decision about what to do when a guy on a motorcycle races toward his position without responding to hand signals or flashing lights; or what to do when similarly a vehicle closed too close to the convoy.And I watched a TV special where a SF guy claiming he was parking cars in Memphis a year prior shot an approaching truck in Afghanistan and hit a 13 year old in the truck bed in the chest. When taken as a percentage of total troops on hand, SF/SOF CIVCAS are higher at least in the headlines for major incidents. Why else would Karzai be decrying the night raids?




Default answer was to use their assigned weapon and stop the person.Warning shots? Escalation of force. Isn't self-protection legal? Don't they have signs on vehicles saying to stay back? They tried to field sonic weapons and folks cried foul.


Next on the list was attack helicopters, who typically were held blameless for their actions. The conventional forces compressed their battle space to the ring road, the hwy to Quetta, and a few relative small bulges around major population centers. The remainder (and vast majority) of RC South was abandoned to a a handful of SF and SEAL and Coalition SOF outposts as permanent presence, and sporadic raiding by other SOF.Sir, in a later post you mention how helpless you guys are out there and that you need the air support. Would respectfully submit you are trying to have it both ways. The Biden plan submits we can get by with outnumbered SOF/SF who can take care of themselves and hold just as much terrain as general purpose forces, influence as many in the population, train/mentor just as many ANA, and do so without calling in AC-130 (Marine incident south of Herat) or attack helicopters, or other aircraft engaging tankers in Kunduz (OK a German incident).


SOF events were and are rare, but they are sometimes dramatic when they do occur.MARSOC rings a bell in two incidents (one showing off for Ollie North), night raids that killed a police chiefs sons, other night raids that killed a bunch of teens in the northeast?


All too often, pilots with eyes on the target would call the nearest ground commander (some SOF commander in a post isolated from any external support deep in Indian country) and describe a major threat and ask for permission to engage. When later it turned out that the target was a group of kids or women the lion's share of the blame would fall upon that SOF commander.Sometimes there is some collateral damage but legitimate targets are also struck. Guntape and UAS footage should support one way or the other as they did here:

http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2011/02/isaf_spokesman_denies_reports.php

And UAS footage confirmed that mortarmen were involved in the pre-Wanat incident of July 4, 2008. In the incident you mentioned, the tape turned out missing. Kind of hints at a situation where the cover up was worse than the crime.


Yes, after the fact, in the incident you describe it was determined that the vehicles contained a Hazara group traveling south from Dai Kundai down to Kandahar. To a ground commander listening to Taliban forces coordinating an attack on his small team in an isolated village far from his own base or any conventional support they were described to him as three vehicles full of armed men, accompanied by a large number of dismounts. He obviously could not see the target, he could only incorporate what he was being told into the totality of his circumstances there on the ground. The two pilots who came on station had no such concerns or hindrances. They knew that they faced little threat of effective air defense fire (unless coming within PKM and RPG range); and had eyes on with high tech optics and flew around the target vehicles several times before receiving the ground force commander's authorization to engage. They never told the ground the commander that this was not a Taliban force, they never closed to confirm their doubts, they just lit it up and flew back to base. Like I said, it was a tragedy, and those who dished out punishments or wrote condemning articles did so with full access to dozens of written statements, video and audios available for their review. The commander had none of that.I hear you. Hindsight is easy, but the Predator guys followed the vehicles for hours...not the minutes that the OH-58Ds were on station.


Regardless, your stated assumption that the Dutch (who largely stayed in the narrow confines of their base and equally narrow surrounding battle space) conventional forces or the Marines (didn't realize Marines had been sent up to Uruzgan, so I question that) somehow have better situational awayness over this region than the US and coalition SOF (USSF, Aussie and Dutch SOF) who have been out and among the people (friendly and unfriendly) out in the rural areas since 2001 is just flat wrong.My bad. I knew Sangin's location and mistakenly thought it was in Uruzgan and as you know it is close but in northeast Helmand.


But key to remember is that they are all civilians. Be one a hardcore Taliban fighter or a small girl. The whole term "CIVCAS" is a bit ridiculous as it drives decisions based on ones age or gender rather than upon their action or associations. If those vehicles had contained 15 fighters and 12 women and children would that be "CIVCAS"? Under our current rules, yes. Yet are all are equally liable either directly or as accomplices. Our operational laws we employ are broken in my opinion; as are our procedures for clearing fires and assessing blame. But that does not make a good story, SOF guys killing civilians does, so that is what makes the news. Are you saying there are confirmed cases of women and young children pulling triggers? I've heard about kids throwing grenades over walls.

Just my opinion, and deepest respect for all warfighters in the air and on the ground. Just don't believe that single pilot fast movers at altitude even with Sniper XR, DCGS and RPA operators stateside who do great work but provide no habitual support and can't have the same tactical information, or SOF/SF on shorter tours and in fewer numbers can cover all the terrain and key populations or have the same intell as many more guys on the ground for a year.

[Entropy]

Cole,

The mistakes that led to that tragedy happened before the helicopters came on station. The critical error was not with SOF or the Army or the helicopters, but with the predator crew which failed to inform the SOF folks that women and children were in the vehicles. This was information they should have passed since it was the imagery analysts at the DGS that made the identification and the call that women and children were present. The helicopters were not brought in to ID a potentially hostile target - they were brought in to attack a target that was already determined to be a threat.

[Ken White]

No clean hands.Clean hand are not relevant IMO. It is rightly or wrongly a shooting war and doo doo occurs. Most folks do their best to avoid doing dumb stuff but much is inevitable. I totally agree with your comment that we need to stop with the "who shot John" routine. I merely suggest that couching things as SOF / Big Army did this or that is a BS effort aiming precisely at blaming Joe for shooting John -- whoever the devil Joe is -- or John is. That stuff is counterproductive and not helpful -- and, as I've said before, it can obscure otherwise important points.
This is the great challenge of going to a foreign land and taking a side in such an internal dispute. Both the government and the insurgent emerge from the populace to compete for dominance, and it is the populace that bears the brunt of such competitions.It's not a challenge, it's a foregone conclusion that bad stuff will occur. It's a war.
...This is why it frustrates me when so many say "you have to crush the insurgent first, then look at addressing the issues of governance." I just don't buy it...We noticed. However, many of us do buy that. Some based on experience rather than theory.
...Only if one is hard set that the current form of governance must prevail...I think that will vary, probably greatly, from situation to situation. There is no one size fits all.
Its complicated, but SF guys know this province as well as any. One team took 50% casualties on a prior rotation.Been there, done that. More than once. It happens. Try 36 KIA and 118 WIA in less than eight hours out of 302 committed or 2 KIA, 8 WIA out of an A Team in two days. Don't like those, I have more. War's war...

I'm neither bragging or complaining and that's not a hooray for me -- many have been through worse -- it is simply an attempt to add perspective to that rhetorical flourish. As Wilf would say, "war is war." It is, that's a fact and trying to modify what it is will iklely fail as have all previous attempts to do that. Ina war, bad things happen and one just keeps going.

That leads to this:
They have a right to be a little quick to call for assistance when hours or days away from any type of ground support.is disingenuous at best. Yes, they have a right to call -- so? Others not in SOF /SF have that right. All do it. All have an obligation -- a statutory and regulatory duty, in fact, to cal and to be quick -- but not to screw up in the process...
Most of these teams were almost always in a complex mix of direct and indirect fire and IEDS from the minute they left the gate to the minute they returned, yet they go out every day and keep working to hold the edges of the frontier back so that the conventional forces can have some breathing space as they work the main battle area. But it was in the main battle area that "warning shots" killed civilians virtually every day.Sorry, my conversation with Beany wearing CIF and other guys, with dumb Grunts -- mostly 82d types but an occasional Cav or Mech guy -- and a few others from MI to CA does not corroborate your rather mellifluous version. It does not totally discount it, just says it's not nearly that that simple and as Cole wrote above, the night raids guys can and do get carried away and we both know that. As he also correctly mentioned, the short tours and often returning to different AOs does not help in the great SOF vs. the Army "Who knows the country best" war within a war.

Back to your original comment, not "No clean hands" -- just a lot of hands in a war from all over the Army, some more competent than others in all elements, conventional and otherwise (as always...). The bulk of the errors and failure you cite and which are often posted on this board by others are training shortfalls and / or a flawed personnel system. the two are self reinforcing and are in a constant battle to see which does the least damage (that says they mean well but the system is too flawed for good efforts to pull it out). The third factor is parochial turf protection. There are others, for sure -- but those failures of the US Army are a large causative factor in many of the others.

In any event, parochiality does not help anyone.
Its frustrating. I also think it is largely avoidable.Of course it's avoidable -- Fix those things I mentioned, they're really more important than trying to chart a new foreign policy which will always be subject to US domestic politics -- and you are not going to fix that.

Also, do not go into adventures of a new and different kind and do the same things that failed to work in older adventures elsewhere. If you do you'll have the same sorts of problems of language, culture, tortuous ROE, untouchable high altitude errors, excessive control / micromanagement, risk avoidance, minor and great examples of incompetence, political interference, general malfeasance -- and parochial foolishness.

Do things with a broken system and you'll get broken results. Do them in a broken nation and you have discovered double trouble. :mad:

I'm just surprised and happy that things are going as well as they are. The Kids, as always, are doing their best... :wry:

[anonamatic]

I've only got a few things to add, mainly because I'm reading more to learn here than I am to opine for sure.

1. Why is it that US reactions to combat that's supported from Pakistan are treated as violations of Pakistan's sovereignty in the narrative, but AQ & the Taliban hiding out there & using sanctuary areas to take over parts of Pakistan, much less as a base for attacks in Afghanistan, is not spoken of in the same terms? What they're doing is clearly a greater violation, yet we don't counter with that truth in the narrative using the same language.

2. In terms of tightening the borders, well some of these mountain passes could rather easily be made impassable if we created some cliffs where they don't exist now. The US has all sorts of expertise in mining & moving huge quantities of rock around, why not use it? The effects won't be permanent, but in order for them to be countered sufficient peace must be present afterwards to bring the resources to bear to undo the engineering. Thus, peace becomes a determinant and provides motivation to achieve the goal of changing the terrain. Also, done right it's cheaper than a hell of a lot of the other alternatives.

[carl]

Certainly true, but we have to recognize that the northern route is controlled by regimes whose capriciousness is exceeded only and occasionally by their avarice, and that any arrangement with Iran would be impossible to keep quiet and would come with a very large quid pro quo. Doesn't take much more than a glance at Afghanistan's list of neighbors to recognize that dependence on any of them is going to carry a pretty hefty price tag and some less than pleasant bedfellows.

True enough. I put out Iran as a trail balloon so maybe that isn't a good idea. The other countries aren't any great shakes either but I wonder if they aren't the best of a bad lot. At least they won't be using our money to kill our people and aren't actively supporting Taliban & company nor do they entertain any grand ideas of being the center of a new Muslim universe. The price tag may be high but the price tag of our present course is, I think, probably defeat. I just don't see how we can prevail unless the Pak Army/ISI is removed or mostly removed from the equation.

[Dayuhan]

I just don't see how we can prevail unless the Pak Army/ISI is removed or mostly removed from the equation.

Define "prevail", in this context? Given tradition and proximity I doubt that they can be "removed from the equation". If we weren't there they would still meddle... if just wouldn't be our problem, at least not to the same extent.

[carl]

I knew you were going to ask that. Prevail means Taliban & company doesn't take the place over again, or we are able to establish a condition whereby we are successful enough to stay in the place and not bug out. That would mean enough progress against Taliban & company to keep the Americans from getting discouraged. Defeat means the Taliban & company take the place over again or we bug out and it descends into a never ending battle in which the scale of violence would dwarf anything happening now.

I know they will always meddle to some extent which is why I said mostly (gotta cover my bases), but it would be good if they gave up the proxy war bit. I think the loss of the money associated with that supply line would be a motivator whose power would be much greater than we may think. Also the Pak Army/ISI would have to make clear choice about whose side they are on instead of having it both ways. The prospect of doing that would tend to concentrate their minds. It would also tend to clear our minds.

[carl]

(Ok, I hope you can laugh at the irony of accusing me of using rhetoric to discredit a particular position, followed by your calling a decision by the US. to withdraw from the current situation as "bugging out.") :)

I would laugh at the irony if there was one, but I don't think there is. Irony in this case would imply a like and a like. The phrase "the old Soviet team" is a rhetorical device, but it is also sophistry in that you know that it is not true but it makes a powerful initial impact. The phrase "bug out" is a rhetorical device, rhetorical flourish if you will, used to make an impact but I would submit that it is absolutely true. When you tell a group that you will stand by them and then don't and they get killed in their hundreds of thousands or maybe millions; that is bugging out.

I use that term for a reason. It has an emotional impact. It is important that that action means more to people than some academic argument concerning evolving national interests or sniffing that they really deserve what they get because they didn't turn into good Jeffersonian democrats soon enough to suit us. It means that innocents, lots of innocents, who didn't have anything to do with government policies or decisions are going to die when we leave. "Bugging out" helps convey that. If we judge that that is what we must do, so be it. But we should have the integrity to say we are bugging out because we feel we must, so tough luck for you guys. That is being much more honest with ourselves about what we are going to do and what it is going to mean to the people we leave behind.

We have bugged out on a lot of peoples in my lifetime, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Hmong, Kurds, Iraqii Shiites, Aghans once already and I wouldn't like to see it again. But if that is what will happen we should call it what it is, a bug out, instead of creating imaginative rationalizations to blame the people we abandon and make ourselves feel better.


But this is indeed an emotional issue down on the ground. This is a country that has endured more than its share of human tragedy over the past 30 years alone, and the U.S. has had a hand in a lot of that. There's no crying in baseball, and there is no crying in superpower geo-politics either. Hard calculations of national interests, relative cost/benefit analysis, and pragmatic assessments of cause and effect must shape decisions.

The US gets a bum rap for leaving when the going gets tough. Typically that follows our being far too lenient with the government we had signed up to support to begin with, and allowing them to then drag us into positions we would have never taken on our own, and that are clearly counter to our interests. Diem and his successors did that to us in Nam; Mubarak, the Saudi family, Ben Ali, Ali Abdullah Saleh, etc are doing it to us across the Middle East; and Karzai is doing it to us in Afghanistan. We did not, and are not abandoning these "allies." These are men who grew drunk and corrupt with power and wealth behind the security of the United States, men who created growing discontent and conditions of insurgency across their populaces as they became emboldened by that blind support and acted with ever growing impunity.

No, we do not abandon these allies. We allowed them free will, they exercised that free will, and they have abandoned us. There should be consequences for such behavior, and we have been training these guys that they can get away with far too much once in league with the United States. It's time to turn that around before it drags us down. That is not "bugging out," that is simply taking care of the cold hard business of the United States of America and getting straight with our own values and principles in the process.

That is all a grand argument for the international relations class and it makes us feel much better about ourselves. If Taliban & company return to Naw Zad though, I am not sure it will provide much comfort to that 12 year old girl teacher I mentioned and her father, and others like them, as they are having done to them what Taliban & company will do.

[Bob's World]

Night Raids. That is a totally different animal and is primarily Rangers, not SF.

Rangers are firemen, SF are cops. SF walk the beat day and night among the people in bad neighborhoods. Rangers sit at the station waiting for the bell to ring, then mount up and run into the flames to do their business, mount back up and return to the station. You gotta have both, but the term "SOF" blurs important distinctions. Rangers are 90% techint driven; SF is 90% humint driven. Rangers are 99% DA, SF are 90% FID.

The night raids are a touchy topic for a variety of reasons. One reason is because they are effective at finding and getting the guys they look for (how effective that in turn is to the overall success of the operation is a matter of a large, and very different debate). Another is because everybody has an idiot cousin or son-in-law or two in their family. Karzai and his appointed governors and their network of friends are not exempt from this. When one of these guys is running dope or guns or affiliated more directly with Taliban operations and gets rolled up in the night, phones start ringing. Mr. local big shot may well have Karzai on speed dial, or at least the governor, and in this culture such calls are common, answered, and responded to. Our senior leaders spend a great deal of their face time with senior GIRoA officials discussing these matters rather than important issues such as governance, security, economic development, etc. Another is that Rangers tend to break things. Their goal is to get in, get their guy and get out and stay alive in the process. Things like doors get broken. Lastly is that in any culture a man's home is his castle. In this culture multiply how you might feel by 10. Pashtunwali places a duty on the head of household to secure those within his compound. Worst case, the head of household rushes forward to do his duty, dusty AK or old Russian single shot shotgun, or even older British rifle in hand, and is shot for his troubles. Even best case, when no one is inadvertently killed or taken by mistake for questioning, this same head of household is left emasculated and powerless in his own eyes and those of his friends and family. I don't think we can fully appreciate the emotional effect of that or ever be able to assess how many Taliban are produced for every Taliban removed in such operations.

The Rangers are very good at what they do. As to the overall Cost/Benefit? No one will ever know. Personally, my assessment is that it is counterproductive, but reasonable minds can differ. It provides a very objective measure of performance in a conflict where few things are objective, so those numbers get used a lot to show "progress" for that reason alone. This is a problem in the military in general. Things that can be counted and put on PowerPoint slides take on an inflated importance over other things that cannot.

Ken. I hear you. Today's conflicts (I refuse to call them wars) are remarkably bloodless for our forces. Your own experience shows that. For those that forget, a bad month in Vietnam was about equal to a bad year in Afghanistan. These numbers are just for KIAs:
1964 - 206
1965 - 1,863
1966 - 6,144
1967 - 11,153
1968 - 16,589
1969 - 11,614
1970 - 6,083
1971 - 2,357
1972 - 640

Its hard for us to imagine Infantry units turning over 100-200% casualties in just a few months, yet that was pretty standard in WWII. But that was indeed war, where there was an enemy that had to be closed with and defeated. National survival was at stake.
This is an insurgency, and it is not even our insurgency, and the insurgency is not even our mission. Our mission is to prevent AQ from operating effectively from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Our Ends, Ways and Means have drifted into their separate corners in ways that happened slowly over time, but as one looks at the current state of things it really just can't be rationally justified.

When I say that our COIN doctrine is actually a Colonial Intervention Doctrine, that is not getting "ideological" (as you accused me yesterday, btw), it is getting real. That is the historical fact. That is not a judgment of history, it just is what it is. I don't think anyone would argue that the US has colonial designs or interests in Afghanistan. Similarly, we should not then be applying colonial TTPs. Back in the Philippine Insurrection days we did not yet have the benefit of Colonial Intervention Doctrine to apply, so we used what we had, which was the lessons learned from our own Indian Wars. This is why the Army herded hundreds of men, women and children into an extinct volcanic bowl on Jolo and proceeded to gun them down in mass. Leaders go with what they know and all doctrine is obsolete before it is ever written down.

FM 3-24 was also obsolete 100 years before it was written. We don't need to create and sustain some government at all costs in Afghanistan to support our interests there. The very effort to do so puts our true interests in the region at risk. It also puts the people of Afghanistan caught in the middle of the contest at risk and our own soldiers as well. Calling it a "war" perpetuates that, IMO.

A bit of a late night ramble.

[Dayuhan]

I knew you were going to ask that. Prevail means Taliban & company doesn't take the place over again, or we are able to establish a condition whereby we are successful enough to stay in the place and not bug out.

I'm getting predictable in my old age, I guess...

Do we really want to "stay in the place"? Barring HIV or rabies, I can imagine few things I'd want less.

I'm not sure it's reasonable, long term, to set a "no Taliban" condition for prevalence. That would depend on the survivability of the non-Taliban government, which may not be very high. No AQ and no attacks on us or our allies would be quite adequate, as far as I can see.

[carl]

Dayuhan:

You are predictable only in that you ask about what I should have included.

"Staying in the place" would presuppose the level on violence being much lower, Taliban & company being less and less able to mount attacks and having less and less influence in fewer and fewer places. I don't think that can happen unless the General sahibs give up their hobby.

Taliban & company won't disappear but they can be ground down to a point where they won't matter so much nor be a threat to the entire country if... Unless that happens, I don't think no AQ and no attacks on us and ours is possible.

[Ken White]

Night Raids. That is a totally different animal and is primarily Rangers, not SF.I used the phrase as shorthand for the gamut of similar ops.
As to the overall Cost/Benefit? No one will ever know. Personally, my assessment is that it is counterproductive, but reasonable minds can differ.Well, I may be unreasonable -- but I do agree with you. In my experience, unless an action type has proven positive benefit, effort should not be wasted upon it.
It provides a very objective measure of performance in a conflict where few things are objective, so those numbers get used a lot to show "progress" for that reason alone. This is a problem in the military in general. Things that can be counted and put on PowerPoint slides take on an inflated importance over other things that cannot.Yes. Yes!
This is an insurgency, and it is not even our insurgency, and the insurgency is not even our mission. Our mission is to prevent AQ from operating effectively from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Our Ends, Ways and Means have drifted into their separate corners in ways that happened slowly over time, but as one looks at the current state of things it really just can't be rationally justified.Agreed.
When I say that our COIN doctrine is actually a Colonial Intervention Doctrine, that is not getting "ideological" (as you accused me yesterday, btw)Perhaps that is one of those areas where reasonable minds can differ? :D

Really.
... it is getting real. That is the historical fact...Leaders go with what they know and all doctrine is obsolete before it is ever written down.Agreed, though I suggest that while our 'doctrine' in this case is partly a legacy from empires past, we have applied a good many US peculiar twists to it. Regardless, we agree it is flawed.
FM 3-24 was also obsolete 100 years before it was written.I've told you 10,000,000 times not to exaggerate... :D
We don't need to create and sustain some government at all costs in Afghanistan to support our interests there. The very effort to do so puts our true interests in the region at risk. It also puts the people of Afghanistan caught in the middle of the contest at risk and our own soldiers as well. Calling it a "war" perpetuates that, IMO.I agree but we erred by deciding to stay -- or to get involved there in the 70s...

Legacies are such a bore... :wry:

[Bob's World]

Hey now, I thought I was being generously conservative in my 100 year assessment! After all, by the time we dove into the colonial business, initially armed with Indian fighting doctrine, the wheels were already starting to come off for the Europeans. In fact, I imagine it was the wheels coming off of Spain's empire that dropped a big chunk of it into our lap.

But these things take time, so we expanded our efforts and adopted TTPs from the Brits over the next 40 years that were captured in the Small Wars Manual. Then WWII came along and really drove the final nail into colonialism. Everything since then has been desperate efforts to cling to colonial and US Brand "colonial-Lite" control measures in the face of popular uprising encouraged by a wide range of state (and most recently non-state) actors conducting UW or FID/COIN for their own purposes.

By the time FM 3-24 hit the street, with its heavy dose of OIF, the horse was indeed a good 100 years out of the barn. For the US in general in terms of foreign policy, and for the US military in terms of types of conflicts, we too often overlook that just because something is new to us it is not by definition then something that we invented. The Brits could have benefited by FM 3-24 150 years ago, but even then the writing was already on the wall. The fat lady hadn't sang yet, but you could hear her warming up in the back room.

The real question for the US is one of how we best wield influence and protect interests without overly injecting ourselves into any particular problem, or overly committing ourselves to any particular government, state or other significant party. There are terrific lessons to be learned from the Brits in this regard so long as we add a good dose of American principles to shape our own actions by and a dash of empowered populaces to ensure we don't miss that (not new, but improved) impact player on the scene.

[omarali50]

http://www.brownpundits.com/2011/03/01/never-fight-a-land-war-in-asia/

[Dayuhan]

"Staying in the place" would presuppose the level on violence being much lower, Taliban & company being less and less able to mount attacks and having less and less influence in fewer and fewer places. I don't think that can happen unless the General sahibs give up their hobby.

Unfortunately we can't force them to give up that pastime white we still have a functional presence in Afghanistan that we can't supply without their cooperation. Awkward, that.


Taliban & company won't disappear but they can be ground down to a point where they won't matter so much nor be a threat to the entire country if... Unless that happens, I don't think no AQ and no attacks on us and ours is possible.

I'm not sure it has ever been possible for us to govern Afghanistan, to dictate who would or would not govern Afghanistan, to dictate how Afghanistan will be governed, or to prevent neighborly meddling. It might have been possible, if we'd kept our eye on the ball from the start, to persuade whoever governs that messing with us would be a bad idea. Unfortunately the window for such persuasion is largely closed.

The key to a successful punitive raid is to leave early, while you still have the initiative, while you're on top and the enemy is broken and on the run, while people still fear you. Leave at that point and you communicate two things: you never wanted to control the place, but if provoked again you'll be back even angrier. Wait around, go static, stop clearing and start holding, try to do what you cannot do (like "installing" a government) and the enemy rebuilds and reorganizes, begins harassing you, takes the initiative. Leave at that point and it's seen as running away, and the threat of future action becomes way less credible. You portray yourself as a meddling imperialist and as a weakling who hasn't the stones to do imperial meddling effectively. Hard to imagine a worse combination.

Of course we weren't trying to do a punitive raid. If anyone knows what we were trying to do, please tell me, because I can't figure it for the life of me. What we ended up doing was painting ourselves into a really ugly corner, but it's hard to imagine that as a deliberate act.

[carl]

You are right, we can't sustain the current level of effort without the Karachi supply line. But why do we have to maintain the current level and type of effort? Why can't we reduce it to what can be sustained from the north and the air? When I was in my corner of the imperial frontier we had Campbell's Soup in the chow hall. The big stink with GEN Crawford was caused by some IO types who didn't have anything useful to do. Do we really need that soup and those guys? Do we need multiple fixed wing jets other than A-10s based in Afghanistan? Fixed wing jets automatically raise your logistical needs way up there.

If we were to give up that supply line, there would be no more reason to give the Pak Army/ISI any kind of aid at all. There would be no reason to give Pakistan any kind of aid. I read today they want to buy more F-16s. If we can give up that supply line they can give up those airplanes along with spare parts and tech support for what they have. They would have to give up the money that comes from the supply line itself. We have a lot of leverage if we could find the cojones to use it.

We can't do anything but lose if we don't show some determination and some imagination. Following our present course shows neither. If this is the best we can do, then the best we can do is be up front with the Afghans and tell them to make other arrangements as quick as they can, then have the decency not hector them about the choices they make as we head for the sea.

I am not too interested in what we should have done a decade ago. Now is the problem. We may or may not be able to affect much who runs Afghanistan, but I think we sure as heck can determine who won't. But we can't do that unless we seriously try. We aren't serious about trying unless we are serious about cutting out the Pak Army/ISI. And they won't take our threat seriously unless we are serious about giving up that supply line. If we can't find the imagination and determination to do that, we are in for some very hard times because a country without those two qualities is going to be had over and over.

[Dayuhan]

If we can't find the imagination and determination to do that, we are in for some very hard times because a country without those two qualities is going to be had over and over.

Probably true, but the imagination and determination we bring to any issue is usually proportional to its immediate impact on us. As Ken has been known to observe, we don't tend to get efficient until we feel really threatened.

We could probab;y reduce our presence to a point that would allow supply from the north, though I'm not sure I'd want to be at the field end of a supply line that required the cooperation of the Karimov family. Would a presence of that size actually accomplish anything? If we're going to cut down to that extent, why not just leave?

If we weren't there, we could cut aid to Pakistan. They'd likely meddle anyway, and the Taliban would probably come to control all or part of Afghanistan. What we could or would do about that I don't know.

[carl]

I guess it's just me and you out here. Everybody else must be asleep.


We could probab;y reduce our presence to a point that would allow supply from the north, though I'm not sure I'd want to be at the field end of a supply line that required the cooperation of the Karimov family. Would a presence of that size actually accomplish anything? If we're going to cut down to that extent, why not just leave?

That is where the imagination and determination part come in. Bing West (I think) and others think we can get along with less. Our current force size may simply be the result of our doing things the way we have always done it, just bigger. "Ok. Green Beans? Check. F-16s and associated multiple 10,000 foot runways? Check. Get most of the food from the local economy (thereby developing the local economy)? No we can't do that. We'll ship in shiny cheese, yellow and white." Just asking the question about whether a reduced size force could do anything betrays an acceptance that the way we are doing it is the only way available. (That is not a knock on you. It is the 1st question most would ask.) I don't think it is a matter of doing the thing that we are doing now that isn't working or bugging out.


If we weren't there, we could cut aid to Pakistan. They'd likely meddle anyway, and the Taliban would probably come to control all or part of Afghanistan. What we could or would do about that I don't know.

There is that, we wouldn't have to buy the bullets the General sahibs shoot at us anymore. But I think we could be there and stop buying their bullets. If we weren't there, we wouldn't do a damn thing. I didn't like thinking about Cambodia in 1976 and I don't want to do that to a people again.

[Dayuhan]

Mid afternoon in my time zone, I'm just trying not to work. Awesome procrastination device, this one...


That is where the imagination and determination part come in. Bing West (I think) and others think we can get along with less. Our current force size may simply be the result of our doing things the way we have always done it, just bigger. "Ok. Green Beans? Check. F-16s and associated multiple 10,000 foot runways? Check. Get most of the food from the local economy (thereby developing the local economy)? No we can't do that. We'll ship in shiny cheese, yellow and white." Just asking the question about whether a reduced size force could do anything betrays an acceptance that the way we are doing it is the only way available. (That is not a knock on you. It is the 1st question most would ask.) I don't think it is a matter of doing the thing that we are doing now that isn't working or bugging out.

A force small enough to require no land supply line would be a very large reduction. I'm not really asking whether a force that size could "do anything", rather whether it could do what we're trying to do there.

All I pointed out was that our ability to influence Pakistan is terminally compromised by our need to supply our forces through Pakistan. If we can accomplish the mission with a force small enough to need no land supply, that would obviously be desirable. Since I don't know what the mission actually is (if anyone does, please tell me), I don't know what force level is needed to accomplish it, and I don't know how large a force we could supply without use of Pakistani land routes, I can't say whether that's a viable step or not. Maybe someone who knows more could give more useful suggestions. I do know, or rather I'm fairly confident, that if the government of Uzbekistan wakes up one day and realizes that our ability to supply our forces depends entirely on them, they will take all possible advantage.

If we can't accomplish the mission without exercising influence over Pakistan and we can't influence Pakistan without reducing our force below the level needed to accomplish the mission, we've painted ourselves into a rather tight corner, from which there may be no really satisfactory exit.

[carl]

Dayuhan: What does Dayuhan mean anyway?

Late last year I think about 40% of supplies were coming via the northern route and the air. We wouldn't be giving up land supply, just a whole lot of it. We would have to rethink what we are doing and how we are doing it in order to get along on that but that would be a good thing. We need some hard thought because what we are doing now ain't working.

We flat out can't do anything with the current arrangement. Nothing. That corner can't be gotten out of. By giving up that supply line we are busting through the wall. The General sahibs don't think we'll do it and if we did it would stir the pot mightily in Pindi.

Uzbekistan probably would wake up. But when they did, at least they wouldn't be using the money to kill us. It is in their interest anyway. I doubt they want to MO running Afghanistan again.

[Dayuhan]

Dayuhan: What does Dayuhan mean anyway?

"Foreigner", in Tagalog. Kind of an identity thing.


Late last year I think about 40% of supplies were coming via the northern route and the air. We wouldn't be giving up land supply, just a whole lot of it. We would have to rethink what we are doing and how we are doing it in order to get along on that but that would be a good thing. We need some hard thought because what we are doing now ain't working.

We flat out can't do anything with the current arrangement. Nothing. That corner can't be gotten out of. By giving up that supply line we are busting through the wall. The General sahibs don't think we'll do it and if we did it would stir the pot mightily in Pindi.

Agree that dropping the land route across Pakistan would be a good thing, in the sense that it would allow us to cut aid to Pakistan... way past time for certain people there to stop taking our support for granted. Might also be a good thing for Karzai to see the US scaling down.

Whether it's feasible or not I'm not in a position to say. I would expect to be held up by those in control of the bases to the north, for a start.

[Bob's World]

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/03/20113178411386630.html

Drone Strikes continue. Measures of performance are clearly high; measures of effectiveness are another matter entirely. Depends on our ends; and if the ends are what the President has told us, then drone strikes in Pakistan should be limited to AQ proper and foreign fighters. Perhaps it is just sloppy reporting that labels these targets as simply "Taliban." My fear is that it is sloppy intel, analysis and targeting.

As the article points out, the official position of Pakistan is to protest these strikes. That is fair, sure they occur with their knowledge and consent, but they have their own audience to play to, and the mis-match between US interests and Pakistani interests regarding the Taliban will always generate such a mixed position for Pakistan.

It did raise a red flag in my mind though as they added that the Pak Intel is assisting with some of the targeting. The question we should ask is, who is it that the Pak intel wants the US to kill for them?? Remembering that sometimes the intel guys don't necessarily take all their commands from the President, and that even the civilian government's position on the Taliban is probably about 180 out from our own.

This is one more reason to limit the targets of these strikes to AQ proper (Arab members of bin Laden's core group) and foreign fighters who come to fight with AQ. I suspect that there is a closer alignment of interests in regards to those targets. Better effects toward the ends the US President gave us, and better intel and support with less conflict of interest for Pakistan.

Far better if we only kill 5-6 guys a year if they are the right guys toward the right effects; than putting up big numbers of kills that may well be taking us in the opposite direction of where we need to be.

[carl]

Ryan Crocker does not mince any words when discussing the current situation in Afghanistan in this story.

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2012/09/18/crocker-taliban-infiltration-worse-than-reckoned.html

Lastly and most interesting to me Amb Crocker said it is possible that another 9-11 could be launched from a Taliban II controlled Afghanistan and he said this about promises.


Crocker also warned of a possible bloodbath if the U.S. pulls out before ANSF is ready to take over. "Who gets it in the neck? It's all those people we made all those promises to, starting with the women" of Afghanistan who have struggled for civil rights and education in the male-dominated society, Crocker said.

This was a very interesting story.

[carl]

Here is a link to the video of Amb Crocker's remarks to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

http://carnegieendowment.org/2012/09/17/ambassador-ryan-crocker-on-afghanistan/drea

I haven't watched it yet. I only read the story quoted in the post above.

[carl]

That is what Amb Crocker said in the presentation I linked to. He said the links between the two are still strong and if a 9-11 were to occur here again, it would most likely originate from a Taliban controlled Afghanistan.

You all MUST listen to this presentation. He does not mince words. It is the best thing I've heard on this in a long long time.

[Dayuhan]

I also have to wonder about the basis for the opinion that another major terrorist attack would likely be planned in the Af'/Pak region, rather than in, say, Yemen or Somalia or Egypt or Western Europe. It may indeed be so, but it would be interesting to know the reasoning or evidence behind that opinion.

I do think that an American withdrawal from Afghanistan would increase the likelihood of major terrorist action, mainly because AQ desperately needs to have the US out there attacking and ideally occupying Muslim nations. If we deprive them of that they will try to provoke us again. I don't see that as a reason to stay in Afghanistan, just as a reason to expect what's coming, try to prevent it and prepare responses that do not involve feeding AQ with the means they require to thrive.

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Carl


That is what Amb Crocker said in the presentation I linked to. He said the links between the two are still strong and if a 9-11 were to occur here again, it would most likely originate from a Taliban controlled Afghanistan.

You all MUST listen to this presentation. He does not mince words. It is the best thing I've heard on this in a long long time.

I think the comment about another 9/11 coming out of a Taliban controlled Afghanistan is the only comment he made that I didn't concur with. Maybe or maybe not, but they don't need this type of safehaven to facilitate that type of attack. I suspect the Americans for the most part are prepared to stay the course by providing funding to sustain the Afghan security forces after we withdraw most of our combat power. It is cheap insurance.

Excellent presentation.

[JMA]

I think the comment about another 9/11 coming out of a Taliban controlled Afghanistan is the only comment he made that I didn't concur with. Maybe or maybe not, but they don't need this type of safehaven to facilitate that type of attack. I suspect the Americans for the most part are prepared to stay the course by providing funding to sustain the Afghan security forces after we withdraw most of our combat power. It is cheap insurance.

I thought the most important historical tidbit he pointed out was that the USSR installed government and security forces didn't fail until the Afghan government couldn't/wouldn't pay their soldiers, which was the beginning of the end. I suspect that was due to the USSR pulling the rug out from under their feet. A mistake we don't want to make.

Excellent presentation.

Bill, with respect. Think Vietnam.

Is it only Americans who think that this will be anything other than a rerun of that debacle?

[carl]

People often say that attacks on the scale of 9-11 can be done from somewhere else, Yemen, Somalia, Western Europe etc. I have never bought that. Amb Crocker explained why it can't be done from Yemen. Western Europe is crawling with proficient police forces and intel services who are paying attention and whose individual officers and agents dream of being able to nab an AQ guy. If AQ wanted to use the area that used to be Somalia, they would have to get the Somaliland gov to go for it, which it probably won't, or the Puntland gov to go for it which probably won't and if they went to Mog the Ugandans would kill them and if they went south the Kenyans would kill them (both with copious help from us) and that would leave them with only thorny scrubland presided over by who knows who with access to nowhere.

They are in the best and probably only place for them in the world now, Pakistan mostly, because the Pak Army/ISI doesn't mind them too much. If Taliban took back Afghanistan there would be an even better place for them. This isn't before 9-11 anymore. Everybody is paying attention. They haven't gone anywhere else because they can't. The advantage of having a place where the authorities not only won't come after you but actually support you can't be done without.

[Bill Moore]

Attacks that did not require a safe haven in Afghanistan
1995 Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway
1995 Oklahoma City Bombing
2002 Bali Bombins
2004 Madrid Train Bombings
2004 Beslan school hostage crisis
2005 London bombings
2006 Mumbai train bombings
Thousands of terrorist attacks in Iraq, now Syria.
Contrary to the Ambassador's claims, Al Qaeda in Yemen have been developing some cutting edge tactics and techniques for conducting terrorist attacks against airlines.

Future attacks will not require a safe haven since Al Qaeda is now largely decentralized and its core becoming less relevant. Terrorists historically have often found safe haven in major western cities by practicing good operational tradecraft and operations security measures. Safe haven for an insurgency and terrorists are two different animals. An intelligent mass murderer could develop a 9/11 like plot in his home and with funding facilitate the development of a cell to conduct the attack. Many will fail, just like the 9/11 should have in hindsight, but due to human error and dumb luck some will succeed. Training for the attacks could have taken place in U.S., much like the actual 9/11 hijackers did with flight school, martial arts training, etc. (flight simulators, recon airport secuirty, etc.). No doubt having Afghanistan was nice, but it isn't necessary to facilitate a major terrorist attack, and now operating from Afghanistan if more likely to result in compromise than success. We would be foolish to assume that any one piece of dirt is critical, and excessive focus on that piece of dirt will blind us to threats emerging from other parts of the world. We created a narrative that we can't escape from.
Future so called safe havens will definitely include parts of the many of the new Arab Spring countries, Yemen, Iraq, Mali, Indonesia, Philippines, Mexico, Somalia, etc. They will include the world of cyber which result in radicalized individuals in our own cities.

The Ambassador has a wealth of experience on point in a lot of rough areas, but like all he is subject to personal biases and clings to the narrative that he was part and parcel in creating.

[carl]

Bill:

Nope, Amb Crocker is right. AQ hasn't changed its ideology, nor has Taliban nor has Pak Army/ISI. If Taliban & Co were to reacquire Afghanistan, I see no reason at all why they would not resume doing what they had done before.

This is a semantic point but I'll bring it up. Amb Crocker referred to another 9-11. I referred to another 9-11. None of the attacks you mentioned were on the scale of 9-11 nor were any of them intended to be on the scale of 9-11. Now to your list.

I think you may be casting your net a little bit wide when you throw in Beslan, and Oklahoma City. Yes obviously attacks can be planned and carried out by other people in other places than Pak Army/ISIland and Afghanstan but the context of the discussion is AQ or AQ affiliated or sympathetic organizations. If you are going to include Beslan, OKC and Tokyo why not throw in the attack on Mecca or the Red Army Brigades in Italy or killing of the guy in Sarajevo that started WWI? And if you are going to include Iraq and Syria why not include Vietnam, Algeria, Cyprus and all the terror associated with the war in central Africa in the 90s and 2000s?

I did read that some of the London train bombers traveled to Pakistan for training. The failed Times Square bomber traveled to Pakistan for training and the guy from Denver who wanted to blow up the subway traveled to Pakistan for training. And the Mumbai attack was planned and run by the ISI from Pakistan. So I think that if you want to run a big op, especially a big complicated one, are AQ or affiliated, there is only one place in the world you can do that from and that is Pak Army/ISIland now, and Afghanistan if Taliban & Co get their bloody mitts on it again.

AQ in Yemen may be able to sneak an explosive cartridge on a cargo plane or make jockey shorts that might go bang but those are not ops on the scale of 9-11. In order to do something like that you need a country that likes you to live in. Cyber planning always sounds good but people still have to train somewhere, practice somewhere and make things somewhere. About the only place they can do that now, in the context of which we are speaking, is Pak Army/ISIland or perhaps Afghanistan again in the future.

We would be foolish to think that any one piece of dirt the only one that is needed to do bad things from. But we would be equally foolish to not to recognize that one particular piece of dirt is critical, and has been critical if you are looking at a particular type of big attack.

Ultimately though, the point isn't that is it possible that something big could be pulled off from somewhere else. Amb Crocker said that if Taliban gets Afghanistan back, AQ will be back with them. The last time that happened, it was not good.

[Dayuhan]

AQ in Yemen may be able to sneak an explosive cartridge on a cargo plane or make jockey shorts that might go bang but those are not ops on the scale of 9-11. In order to do something like that you need a country that likes you to live in.

Ramzi Yousef hatched an ambitious plan to blow up airliners, assassinate the Pope, and fly a commercial jet into Langley from an apartment in downtown Manila. He might have pulled it off if he hadn't gotten sloppy.

[carl]

Ramzi Yousef hatched an ambitious plan to blow up airliners, assassinate the Pope, and fly a commercial jet into Langley from an apartment in downtown Manila. He might have pulled it off if he hadn't gotten sloppy.

He did indeed. He also attended an AQ training camp in Afghanistan I believe. He hid out in Pakistan for a while. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is his uncle. And he finally got picked up in Pakistan. So I would say, his case buttresses my point.

[davidbfpo]

This thread was titled 'Ungoverned spaces & State, Non-State, State Sponsored opportunities vs. our Interests' and features a wide debate on a key issue in Small Wars / irregular warfare / insurgency the use of safe havens or sanctuaries / sanctuary.

In the OEF-Afghanistan forum are two threads that cover the issues: Stand back from doing "something" about sanctuaries? - which covers more than Afghanistan (and the cross-border question into Pakistan) and 'Sanctuary (or perhaps just area) denial operations at the Afghanistan village level' which on inspection appears specifically Afghanistan-related.

There's 'History Lesson: CSI OP#17 Out of Bounds, Transnational Sanctuary in Irregular Warfare', from 2008, which will be merged to here.

'What is a Guerilla's Center of Gravity?' touches upon sanctuaries, but is about a guerilla's COG and has been left alone.

Posts 302-312 have been copied from the 'Green on Blue' thread and then edited for the purposes of this thread - removing Afghan specific lines.

[Dayuhan]

He did indeed. He also attended an AQ training camp in Afghanistan I believe. He hid out in Pakistan for a while. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is his uncle. And he finally got picked up in Pakistan. So I would say, his case buttresses my point.

They go to the places that are available. Take those places away, will they cease to exist or will they simply go somewhere else?

Also worth bearing in mind that if our efforts to deprive AQ of safe haven drags us into extended occupation of Muslim lands, constant friction with Muslims, and a constant static presence in places where out people can be targets, we are probably giving AQ more than we are taking from them. I have little doubt that AQ wants and needs to maintain US occupation of Muslim territory.

[carl]

They go to the places that are available. Take those places away, will they cease to exist or will they simply go somewhere else?

They will try to go somewhere else. The point is that none of the places they may try to go will be as propitious as the place they are in now. Less propitious in their business means dead.


Also worth bearing in mind that if our efforts to deprive AQ of safe haven drags us into extended occupation of Muslim lands, constant friction with Muslims, and a constant static presence in places where out people can be targets, we are probably giving AQ more than we are taking from them. I have little doubt that AQ wants and needs to maintain US occupation of Muslim territory.

And if our efforts to deprive AQ of safe haven don't drag us into extended occupation of Muslim lands but just deprive AQ of safe haven, we, and the world, are quite better off. If by some miracle we can pry them out of Pak Army/ISIstan and Afghanistan doesn't open up for them, there aren't any good places to go.

[slapout9]

'What is a Guerilla's Center of Gravity?'

David is this a report? I can't seeem to find it

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Dayuhan


Also worth bearing in mind that if our efforts to deprive AQ of safe haven drags us into extended occupation of Muslim lands, constant friction with Muslims, and a constant static presence in places where out people can be targets, we are probably giving AQ more than we are taking from them. I have little doubt that AQ wants and needs to maintain US occupation of Muslim territory.

That is exactly right, we're not disrupting in AQ by keeping conventional combat forces in Afghanistan, we're creating more terrorists due to the conflict of cultures and collateral damage that our foes can and do use to generate support for the jihad. A quick review of the history that Carl took liberty with. The Muj formed in response to the Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan, and now it continues in response to the U.S. occupation. We saw the same response in Iraq, and I suspect we will still see blow back from that venture in the future. Afghanistan wasn't a safe haven because we didn't occupy it, it was a safe haven because we didn't attack the terrorists there. We can attack, disrupt, and pursue without occupying and attempting to nation build.

Our overt occupation of Muslim lands is absolutely essential to AQ and related groups' propaganda. Best to transition this war to the shadows, which we are now well prepared to do. We weren't well prepared to do this prior to 9/11. Afghanistan won't become a safe haven that we won't disrupt again.

[Dayuhan]

They will try to go somewhere else. The point is that none of the places they may try to go will be as propitious as the place they are in now. Less propitious in their business means dead.

Or else it means you adapt. Without a safe haven they will not be able to do the jihadi grunt training they used to do in the camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They may still be able to mount terror attacks.


And if our efforts to deprive AQ of safe haven don't drag us into extended occupation of Muslim lands but just deprive AQ of safe haven, we, and the world, are quite better off. If by some miracle we can pry them out of Pak Army/ISIstan and Afghanistan doesn't open up for them, there aren't any good places to go.

Hypothetically that would be wonderful, but that's not how it's worked out. We have been dragged into extended occupation of Muslim lands, and we have not deprived AQ of safe haven. Possibly we have in Afghanistan, but they have other places.

In a sense we have made ourselves safer by giving them what they wanted: once we are committed to extended occupation, the last thing they want to do is boost our resolve, so they've little incentive to mount further major attacks. If we withdraw, that risk returns.

[slapout9]

Our overt occupation of Muslim lands is absolutely essential to AQ and related groups' propaganda. Best to transition this war to the shadows, which we are now well prepared to do. We weren't well prepared to do this prior to 9/11. Afghanistan won't become a safe haven that we won't disrupt again.

That should be tattooed on the inside of our senior leaderships skulls (both elected and non-elected). Highlight was added.

[Madhu]

Originally Posted by Bill Moore:
Our overt occupation of Muslim lands is absolutely essential to AQ and related groups' propaganda. Best to transition this war to the shadows, which we are now well prepared to do. We weren't well prepared to do this prior to 9/11. Afghanistan won't become a safe haven that we won't disrupt again.

To which Slap replied:
That should be tattooed on the inside of our senior leaderships skulls (both elected and non-elected). Highlight was added.

I mentioned this elsewhere, but I seem to be the odd one out in that I agree with carl's diagnosis to some extent but disagree with his cure....

What I mean is that safe havens are not "inert" lumps of soil, simply spaces on a map, and are not necessarily interchangeable. Safe havens have a meaning to the people that use them --emotional and personal and ideological -- and some safe havens have access to militaries, especially retired military well trained in certain activies and arts. These safe havens have well-developed networks that reach back to other parts of the world, whether it be Europe, Africa, or simply back into cyberspace.

I no longer trust assessments on intelligence from, well, pretty much anybody (that is not directed at anyone here : ) ) I mean, who knows, you know?

All that being said, I agree that conventional forces and occupying forces are the wrong way to go, they infuriate the local people (naturally so) and the results do not justify the expenditures in blood and treasure. In short: it don't work.

But on the "one safe haven is the same as the other" stuff, I'm not so cavalier....I look at it as nodes within a network that have a certain prominence to them, which may change over time, but then again, the node may have a meaning outside of our mirroring look at them; seeing what we want to see.

[davidbfpo]

What is a Guerilla's Center of Gravity? David is this a report? I can't seeem to find it

Slap,

Sorry it is a thread:) and is I think:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=783

Oddly the title has gone, probably after my merging threads, apologies as it is a thread you've posted on.

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Madhu


I mentioned this elsewhere, but I seem to be the odd one out in that I agree with carl's diagnosis to some extent but disagree with his cure....

What I mean is that safe havens are not "inert" lumps of soil, simply spaces on a map, and are not necessarily interchangeable. Safe havens have a meaning to the people that use them --emotional and personal and ideological -- and some safe havens have access to militaries, especially retired military well trained in certain activies and arts. These safe havens have well-developed networks that reach back to other parts of the world, whether it be Europe, Africa, or simply back into cyberspace.

I no longer trust assessments on intelligence from, well, pretty much anybody (that is not directed at anyone here : ) ) I mean, who knows, you know?

All that being said, I agree that conventional forces and occupying forces are the wrong way to go, they infuriate the local people (naturally so) and the results do not justify the expenditures in blood and treasure. In short: it don't work.

But on the "one safe haven is the same as the other" stuff, I'm not so cavalier....I look at it as nodes within a network that have a certain prominence to them, which may change over time, but then again, the node may have a meaning outside of our mirroring look at them; seeing what we want to see.

Thoughtful comments, but I think safe haven is an over used term that is too often used to justify throwing a lot of money and troops at an area to "fix it", or more accurately establish something that looks like the West. All too often this simply makes the problem worse. Safe haven in simple terms implies a degree of safety, we can take that away in a number of ways that will create many sleepless nights for our foes without throwing substantial amounts at money at the problem.

Addressing your other points, the trainers and training bases are enabling locations that may or may not be safe havens. The only safety may in fact due to our adversaries' to remain under the radar. There were few places in Iraq that were safe havens, we could reach out and strike anywhere, but needed the intelligence to facilitate the strike. Even without a safe haven terrorists/insurgents were able to train and launch sophisticated attacks.

I would like to hear David's and others opinions on how essential safe havens were for the IRA.

The bottom line is terrorists will adapt, ultimately you have to kill or detain them, and then hope the prison doesn't become a new incubator for the next generation of Jihadists (Egypt, Indonesia, Libya, etc.)

Lots of nuances, but right now my position is we need to disrupt safe havens, not attempt to fix them. We can do that now, we had our awakening on 9/11, we were asleep or denial prior to then. In some places where the host nation is willing to work with us by all means we can and should assist them improve their capacity to more effectively govern their areas, but how we do it is critical, we have to be smart enough to adapt our approach based on each country's uniqueness or risk pushing that government into failure.

[davidbfpo]

Bill asked:
I would like to hear David's and others opinions on how essential safe havens were for the IRA.

I shall limit my remarks to 'The Troubles' 1969-1998, although clearly history, tradition and culture had an impact.

The Republic of Ireland (Eire) was always a potential safe haven and the various Irish Republican groups, primarily the Provisional IRA (PIRA), were careful to stay away from challenging the Irish state. The border was never truly "sealed", although curiously it was during a mainland Foot & Mouth epidemic in 2001 and Irish action was very thorough - with a heavy civil & military presence for part of one year (Eire was very dependent on agriculture then).

PIRA certainly by the 1990's relied on "safe havens" in a few areas, usually lightly populated such as Co. Donegal or where local support (passive & active) and extensive cross-border links existed - opposite 'Bandit Country' (See Toby Harnden's book 'Bandit Country:The IRA & South Armagh', pub. 1999) or Co. Armagh & Co. Fermangh. This enabled either safe training and preparation of IEDs, although not to the extent of being undisturbed. At one time attacks across the border were common, from sniping to IED ambushes, e.g. Warrenpoint in August 1979:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrenpoint_ambush

The Irish state did - after a few years - consider PIRA and other groups as threats to the state, responding with searches, intercepting arms smuggling (notably from Libya), handling informants and arrests. It didn't help that bank raid or cash in transit attacks, IIRC the main source of funds, one day led to an unarmed Gardai officer being shot dead - which IIRC led to a massive adverse public reaction. Eventually suspects were extradited across the border and to the mainland. For example:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_McGlinchey

What is often overlooked is that PIRA activity across Northern Ireland gradually shrank. Londonderry had a long standing, informal ceasefire in the city and rare, if bloody cross-border attacks. West Belfast took far longer to scale down or reduce. Towards the end the focus was in the cross-border 'Bandit Country', notably the elusive and deadly sniping attacks (using imported US Barrett rifles).

Also PIRA's character changed over the years. The number of Ulster born / resident participants in the violent campaign dwindled and were replaced by the more "hard core" Republican communities, many who had lived further & further away from Ulster itself. (See Kevin Toolis book 'Rebel Hearts:Journeys within the IRA's soul', pub.1995)

Essential? Certainly not at the beginning, when the focus was in the urban areas mainly and PIRA had extensive public support. As the struggle evolved use of the Irish Republic became essential, if sometimes dangerous and at the end PIRA's violent campaign depended on using certain "safe havens".

The Irish state and the Irish public after the mid-1980's made it quite clear the Republican struggle was not for them. It took time for this to be reflected in co-operation between the law enforcement bodies - the two police forces became very close (not co-operation with the British military) and in political engagement to achieve cross-community agreement.

[davidbfpo]

Clint Watts rightly notes the reporting of an AQ safe haven or sanctuary is a moving target:
AQIM is the new epicenter of al Qaeda! (Or is it Yemen, Somalia, Syria?) – Media analysis of the situation and Mali and Algeria is absolutely hilarious. I’ve seen several stories discussing how the Sahara is the new top Al Qaeda threat and shows the resilience of the network and the strength of the terror group. Amazingly the same media outlets don’t appear to research any of their own reporting. As has been discussed here, the story of Al Qaeda growth and strength repeats every few months. Four months ago Libya was the center of attention. Six months before that it was Yemen. And three months before that it was Somalia. Today, one hardly hears a peep about Somalia where Shabaab’s alliance with Al Qaeda has crumbled under the pressures of clan disputes. And in Yemen, reporting has died down to merely a trickle. So I am curious to see how long discussion will stay focused on the Sahara.

Link:http://selectedwisdom.com/?p=948