Quote Originally Posted by davidbfpo View Post
Like Jon C. I have delved into the Rhodesian War and so from my "armchair" the big difference is the lack of intelligence to identify and fix the farmer, sorry Taliban fighter.
In the early days the police Special Branch (SB) had an effective network of informers across the country. Once the insurgents arrived in the populated areas they immediately started executing anyone suspected of being an SB source. Most of these killings were horrific mutilations and not surprisingly the intel from the field started to dry up.

Facing a desperate situation where usable intel from the local population was drying up the use of pseudo gangs (based on the Kenya experience) was attempted. This proved to wildly successful beyond our wildest dreams. This intel coming now front people with military training was markedly more accurate in all respects than what had been previously received from SB alone. By the end I think we were making contact on 8 out of 10 call outs and had the suspicion that the other two were ruses used by the Selous Scouts to try to authenticate themselves as insurgents to the local people. We lived with this.

So the end result is the receipt of accurate, clear and regular intel we were able to deploy on and get talked onto the target by pseudo team on the ground by then in an Op position.

The Rhodesians had a variety of methods to get their intelligence and I suspect some is still not known. Whatever the criticism of the Rhodesian war effort for not understanding their Africans, they found alternatives - notably informants at the start, later on covert observations and the Selous Scouts in their recce role.
Actually David as a city boy from Cape Town (who had grown up among but separate to non-black brown people from a different genealogy line with different, language, culture, history and religions) I found the Rhodesian understanding of the Africans to be spot on. (This contrary to Roger Marstons book). Of course this understanding was never politically correct hence the criticism from certain quarters but perhaps for another thread)

The key to the intel war was that the cities remained under control of the government until the end.

In Afghanistan we appear to have a mass of information and little intelligence. As Ken W. has posted there are successful operations that have identify and fix, they are the exception IMHO. All too often we appear to know little beyond a few hundred metres (as I have remarked before).
This is the last thing that will be changed it seems as some of these FOB's have found a place in Brit military history.

It is important to note that when the Rhodesians mounted external operations it removed almost all air assets for up to a week and in that time the internal kill rate slumped. Probably not an issue in Afghanistan air assets, where it is an issue is having "boots on the ground" that as RR says are simply not there.
Well as said by John Custis it was only when we concentrated the available resources in what was for Rhodesia a "Jumbo Fire Force" comprising 8-10 choppers, Lynx (Cessna 337) or two and a Dak.

So by concentrating troops at the right place and the right time for certain ops (internal and external) was in good military planning rather than anything negative which really only happened when there was no chopper available for a casevac (for example).

The boots on the ground thing remains interesting in that This Marston character and others say about force levels on the ground. Rhodesia/Zimbabwe is a bout the size of Montana. The claims are that 25,000 forces were on the ground at any time. Nonsense Professor Woods believes that the level of trained infantry soldiers deployed on average were 15 almost always understrength companies. He would say 1,500 but add another 300 if at full strength. That would leave the balance to be made up of police at police stations in Op areas, para-military police units, Armed Internal Affairs guards and Guardforce who guard the protected villages.

The decision was made out of necessity to use the best soldiers to the maximum effect. And for better or for worse that was down by some pretty resourceful senior officers.

Thinking and remembering now. The tactics used in South West Africa, now Namibia, by the Koevoet (a police unit), did not involve air assets, but armoured trucks, tracking and more.
If the Taliban have to move across large expanses of similar to the terrain found in northern Namibia then there is some potential for considering Koevoet tactics which led to the insurgents being run down by vehicle bourne troops using a combination of tracking, intel collected along the way and by leap-frogging tracking teams forward to cut for spore ahead to speed up the process. These guys kills 3,681 insurgents at a cost of 155 at a 1:24 ration.