Green on Blue: causes and responses (merged thread)

[ganulv]

You might be interested in reading this one.

[carl]

Curmudgeon:

Here is an item and some replies from the blog about this subject.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/nat...fficers-killed

And here is a link to a study of green on blue murders and why they occur.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/09/2...-cultural.html

The conclusion of the paper is that the murders are almost all the result of individuals getting angry and getting some back, as you suggest.

I think it is too late to do much about this, especially if Taliban & Co. decide to exploit in a big way what is already a worsening pattern of behavior. I seek others opinion on this. Do you think that if Taliban & Co try hard they can exacerbate this so much that we will get chased out of there much more quickly than we have planned? And, since we plan after 2014 to keep a small force in the country to keep doing the night raid stuff, which the Afghans really really hate, will that be possible if green on blue murders continue and/or get worse?

[TheCurmudgeon]

Carl:

... here is a link to a study of green on blue murders and why they occur.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/09/2...-cultural.html

The conclusion of the paper is that the murders are almost all the result of individuals getting angry and getting some back, as you suggest.

I think it is too late to do much about this ...

Good report. I thought one was out there but could not find it.

Was not encouraged by the recommendations. A couple of things stand out, like GPF should not be partnering/training ASFs. Seems like they don't have the training to deal with the vast cultural differences. You are correct that it is probably too late to fix this but it is a bit of a self correcting problem if they are out by 2014.

The continuing problem will be the people that remain after 2014. If we do not find a way to defuse these problems as they occur they will fester.

[Ray]

The whole issue hinges on the culture and mindset!

[Bob's World]

You might be interested in reading this one.

One 'small thing' that sets them off was our overthrow of one system of govenrance and power to replace it with those who did not have the wherewithal to rise to power on their own.

Another 'small thing' was our occupation that increased in both size and violence as we increased our efforts from about 2005 forward to attempt to put down the revolution that kicked into high gear once we solidified that power change with the monopoly preserving constitution we helped the Northern Alliance push through. Our efforts against the revolution then sparked the growth of the resistance among the more apolitical elements of Afghan society that simply want to be left alone and for us to go home.

Certainly there are personal reasons that produce Green on Blue events; but those pale compared to the larger strategic ones.

[carl]

One 'small thing' that sets them off was our overthrow of one system of govenrance and power to replace it with those who did not have the wherewithal to rise to power on their own.

Another 'small thing' was our occupation that increased in both size and violence as we increased our efforts from about 2005 forward to attempt to put down the revolution that kicked into high gear once we solidified that power change with the monopoly preserving constitution we helped the Northern Alliance push through. Our efforts against the revolution then sparked the growth of the resistance among the more apolitical elements of Afghan society that simply want to be left alone and for us to go home.

Certainly there are personal reasons that produce Green on Blue events; but those pale compared to the larger strategic ones.

Great speech, but, not true. At least according to the study referenced, and according to common sense.

The reason you cited is political, Taliban noble resistance and all of that. These are murders. Murders are personal. You were a DA. You know that. People have things that they resent and those build up until they decide they have been dissed enough then they murder. There may be some merging there, resentment at the latest air strike gone awry or last night's raid that killed the wrong people (again) but those are still things that get to the murderer on a personal level. Not many commit a deeply personal act like murder because they don't like the way the constitution is written.

But all that doesn't really matter too much. The murders are happening. Do you think Taliban & Co can use this pattern or exacerbate it and direct it?

[Bob's World]

Great speech, but, not true. At least according to the study referenced, and according to common sense.

The reason you cited is political, Taliban noble resistance and all of that. These are murders. Murders are personal. You were a DA. You know that. People have things that they resent and those build up until they decide they have been dissed enough then they murder. There may be some merging there, resentment at the latest air strike gone awry or last night's raid that killed the wrong people (again) but those are still things that get to the murderer on a personal level. Not many commit a deeply personal act like murder because they don't like the way the constitution is written.

But all that doesn't really matter too much. The murders are happening. Do you think Taliban & Co can use this pattern or exacerbate it and direct it?

What is "murder" in an insurgency?

Is it murder when we shoot a kid off his motorcycle for failing to slow down when we flash a light at him?

Is it murder when a head of household rushes to see who is invading his home with an old Russian single-shot shotgun in hand, only to be cut in half by the lead man of a team looking for some HVT?

Is it murder when an IED blows up non-combatants of any ilk?

Comfortable civilian peacetime constructs of law and justice do not readily apply. To write off even most of these Green on Blue events as murders of individual and personal purpose and intent is, IMO, naive at best, and intentionally disingenuous at worst.

They should be considered as yet another powerful metric of the inappropriate nature of our actions and the unlikelihood that current approaches and polices can produce the results we hope for.

[carl]

Bob:

Nice stump speechifying. You know what we are all talking about even if you don't approve and want to steer things in another direction.

[carl]

Fuchs:

I have another question. Some of the displaced persons that my Mom knew and worked with here in the US in the 10 years or so after WWII said German troops were much better behaved than American troops. (This is not counting reprisals and thing like that.) They said that in the normal course of events they preferred having German troops in the area. I think I read that elsewhere also but can't remember where.

Do you know if that is true? If it is, did specific training cover that or was it just a part of the overall system of discipline and training?

[Fuchs]

Fuchs:

I have another question. Some of the displaced persons that my Mom knew and worked with here in the US in the 10 years or so after WWII said German troops were much better behaved than American troops. (This is not counting reprisals and thing like that.) They said that in the normal course of events they preferred having German troops in the area. I think I read that elsewhere also but can't remember where.

Do you know if that is true? If it is, did specific training cover that or was it just a part of the overall system of discipline and training?

The Wehrmacht grew to about nine million men, plus Waffen-SS half a million or more. Both were large enough to be bound to have both good and bad apples among their ranks.

Moreover, the quality of a military unit is largely being determined by its commander. There's no reason to believe that an overall poorly-reputed army hasn't some nice units and no reason to believe that an overall well-reputed army hasn't some really stinking bad apple units.

So an entirely well-mannered unit was probably the consequence of fine and well-intentioned leadership of that unit. The same applies to an entirely bad unit.


Military organisations are highly authoritarian, and lots of psychological experiments (edit: example) have shown that many humans are incredibly obedient even to fake authority. Add in the power of enforcement of orders that a military bureaucracy has and it's easily visible how a commander can shape a unit to either evil or well-mannered. It's even possible within few weeks if the unit is a reservist unit or had previously been rather neutral on the good/evil scale.


Last but not least, Nazi ideology (which was increasingly fed to troops beginning in 1942 because of the harshness of warfare in the East and possibly because the Wehrmacht had to compete with the expanding Waffen-SS for political favour) did not treat all foreign nationalities the same. The Dutch, English, Danish and Norwegians were considered almost equals, while even the allied Hungarians were looked down at (by ideologues) as supposed descendants of the Huns.


That being said, the most likely candidate for well-reputed German units were probably Luftwaffe troops, for they did not act so much as enforcers of occupation as they did act as spenders. The typical problems involving Luftwaffe troops were probably about girls or booze.

[davidbfpo]

Fuchs asked:

What's the share of Muslims in the Indian army?

After sometime researching via Google it appears that:
1) no official figures for today exist
2) in 1947 Muslims accounted for 30-35% of the army
3) 13% of Indians are Muslim
4) reported in 2011-2012 3% of the army were Muslim, approx. 29k

I find that a rather low number, especially since I've seen reports on locally recruited Kashmiri infantry units.

As they say I know someone who should know, so will ask.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Fuchs:

I have another question. Some of the displaced persons that my Mom knew and worked with here in the US in the 10 years or so after WWII said German troops were much better behaved than American troops. (This is not counting reprisals and thing like that.) They said that in the normal course of events they preferred having German troops in the area. I think I read that elsewhere also but can't remember where.

Curious if the level of discipline is a factor. Again, I am oversimplifying, but assuming the German Troops were more disciplined and therefore less likely to mouth off or curse at the population, could that be a factor.

Along a similar line it is worth noting that the Marines were seen as less offensive.

U.S. Marines were viewed as having better attitudes and being more respectful and respected

The same was said about ETT members and females, so it is difficult to say that it was a discipline issue alone. Could have been a training difference. Of course, the other assumption that could be made is that ETT members would probably be older and more experienced.

[Bob's World]

Bob:

Nice stump speechifying. You know what we are all talking about even if you don't approve and want to steer things in another direction.

Carl,

I am not "stumping," rather I am stumped at how you think the current rash of killings are not related to the very similar factors driving the larger insurgency.

There is both Revolution and Resistance in Afghanistan, and what we wage against most internal to Afghanistan is the resistance. This resistance is not ideological and it is largely apolitical. It is a natural human response to perceptions that some foreign presence is unnatural, inappropriate, and must go.

We have pressed our units into their lands and populaces and waged COIN against insurgents with little regard for how those tactical efforts strategically affect the larger insurgency. In recent years we have forced greater integration between Afghan soldiers and Western members of the Coalition. We tell our men that they will keep coming back until the Afghans are prepared to take over. No pressure.

Do personal conflicts occur? Of course. But resistance insurgency is personal. It matters little if the trigger event is an attack helicopter shooting up your little brother while he was repairing a culvert, or if the trigger event is some E4 frustrated with your inability or lack of motivation to do something in a particular manner or degree of priority he thinks you should have leveling some grievous insult upon you. Respect is a major causal factor in resistance, just as revenge is.

Even if our guys were a bunch of cultural geniuses these events would still be going on because it is also the latest tactic from the Revolutionary aspect of the insurgency. Join the security forces, get close, attack the foreigners. Target the trust necessary for this coalition to work effectively.

To attempt to rationalize these events off in personal or ideological terms is a dangerous bit of self-delusion.

[carl]

Carl,

I am not "stumping," rather I am stumped at how you think the current rash of killings are not related to the very similar factors driving the larger insurgency.

There is both Revolution and Resistance in Afghanistan, and what we wage against most internal to Afghanistan is the resistance. This resistance is not ideological and it is largely apolitical. It is a natural human response to perceptions that some foreign presence is unnatural, inappropriate, and must go.

We have pressed our units into their lands and populaces and waged COIN against insurgents with little regard for how those tactical efforts strategically affect the larger insurgency. In recent years we have forced greater integration between Afghan soldiers and Western members of the Coalition. We tell our men that they will keep coming back until the Afghans are prepared to take over. No pressure.

Do personal conflicts occur? Of course. But resistance insurgency is personal. It matters little if the trigger event is an attack helicopter shooting up your little brother while he was repairing a culvert, or if the trigger event is some E4 frustrated with your inability or lack of motivation to do something in a particular manner or degree of priority he thinks you should have leveling some grievous insult upon you. Respect is a major causal factor in resistance, just as revenge is.

Even if our guys were a bunch of cultural geniuses these events would still be going on because it is also the latest tactic from the Revolutionary aspect of the insurgency. Join the security forces, get close, attack the foreigners. Target the trust necessary for this coalition to work effectively.

To attempt to rationalize these events off in personal or ideological terms is a dangerous bit of self-delusion.

Like I said before, murder is personal no matter how much you want it to be related to broader (very broad) political considerations. You were a DA. You know that. The report Curmudgeon and I referenced makes this pretty clear. Did you read it?

I don't believe I am rationalizing anything, nor are the people who have studied this phenomenon. I think you are trying to relate every single thing that happens to your ideas about the hows and whys of the broader war. The old communist commissars used to do that. Every single thing was related to the struggle of the proletariat, even if it wasn't.

And just to top things off, your idea of an apolitical "resistance" to foreign troops is silly no matter how many times you say it. MO has a political agenda, as do the Haqqanis, as does Gulbuddin, as does AQ, as does the Pak Army/ISI, as does the IMU. And I also notice that Taliban & Co are mostly Pashtun. Last time I checked the Hazaras weren't flocking to the Taliban banner, nor were the Uzbeks, nor the Tajiks, nor the Kuchis etc. And I also noticed that a whole lot of Pashtuns on both sides of the border who opposed Taliban & Co have had their throats cut. I will admit that the idea of a national and apolitical "resistance" relieves the mind of the duty of heavy thinking and can give one the warm and fuzzies when contemplating the nobility of the resistance.

I am still very interested in your opinion about what if anything can be done about these murders, or what could have been done in the past about this. Also I am interested if you have any data or opinion about whether non-western troops provoke the same kind of thing. However, if the response is going to be another stump speech about the "big picture", please don't.

[davidbfpo]

Carl raises a good point on the details of ISAF deaths; are the non-Western ISAF contributors, like Turkey (1300 men currently, there since 2003) and the very separate, now gone, Indian contingent suffering too?

Wiki shows fourteen Turkish deaths, none from "green on blue", in fact none from hostilities:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaliti...in_Afghanistan and http://icasualties.org/OEF/Index.aspx

Neither show "green on blue" deaths separately alas.

It appears the para-military Indian contingent had two deaths - when guarding the Kabul Embassy and none from the two deployed companies:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Tibetan_Border_Police

[davidbfpo]

Carl,

You asked:

Do you think that if Taliban & Co try hard they can exacerbate this so much that we will get chased out of there much more quickly than we have planned? And, since we plan after 2014 to keep a small force in the country to keep doing the night raid stuff, which the Afghans really really hate, will that be possible if green on blue murders continue and/or get worse?

I have long thought these killings real impact is "back home" and not in-country. It is very easy for a newspaper or other outlet to ask "Why are we bothering? Even the ANSF kill us". Note the French decision to end a combat role a year early after an incident. One cannot help but wonder if other national contingents stay in "Fobistan" to reduce casualties from the Taliban and the ANSF.

Perhaps the US public will tolerate "green on blue" after 2014? What opinions do American members hold on that?

[TheCurmudgeon]

Perhaps the US public will tolerate "green on blue" after 2014? What opinions do American members hold on that?

Personally, I don't think it will matter. It probably won't even make the news unless it is a slow news day.

In the US, the military has almost reached the level of the French Foreign Legion.

[carl]

Curmudgeon:

Very interesting comment ref the French Foreign Legion. I don't know if I would go that far. I think the American public has always been far more casualty tolerant that the elites are (if things are perceived as intelligently prosecuted) so I would attribute it maybe more to that, but a very interesting comment. I'll have to think on that.

David:

The US public will tolerate a lot, far more than the elites will. The question is what the elites will tolerate. In these cases maybe the elites are quite willing to tolerate them because it isn't their children being murdered. The victims are the Imperial Legionaires, like Curmudgeon talked about (I've been thinking fast). Also to expand upon my comment about the American public being casualty tolerant, another thing that may be happening is the public has just given up on anything being done to change things. I believe a lot of people on the Council don't much bother with Afghanistan anymore because nothing changes-ever. It and we just keep proceeding the same way. I think there is a possibility that the American public feels the same, nothing will ever change. Why bother thinking about it?

I don't know about this so much, the guys who are actually there will know. How will this affect the actions of the guys in the field, not the officially promulgated policies, but what people actually do?

[carl]

One cannot help but wonder if other national contingents stay in "Fobistan" to reduce casualties from the Taliban and the ANSF.

I wonder about that too. I wonder if this may be something that will help to bring about a situation whereby after 2014, we are just holed up in fortified camps almost under siege and occasionally making nocturnal sallies via our rotary winged sally ports-sallies that would do nothing but enrage the locals, tighten the siege and enhance the careers of 4 stars and spec ops types.

That would be something wouldn't it, the ultimate culmination of career-centric coin.

[TheCurmudgeon]

I wonder about that too. I wonder if this may be something that will help to bring about a situation whereby after 2014, we are just holed up in fortified camps almost under siege and occasionally making nocturnal sallies via our rotary winged sally ports-sallies that would do nothing but enrage the locals, tighten the siege and enhance the careers of 4 stars and spec ops types.

That would be something wouldn't it, the ultimate culmination of career-centric coin.

That I could see ... although, to be honest, I think that we have been involved in a career-centric fight for some time..