Green on Blue: causes and responses (merged thread)

[JMA]

That is a very good idea. Select individuals could sort of embed into a unit and stay with them throughout their deployment. When I was in Africa our drivers fulfilled the same kind of role. You listened to the drivers if you knew what was good for you and we would have been completely lost without them.

Saw some footage on Afghan training by the Brits the other night on TV news (in the wake of the latest killings).

After all these years in training people from other countries/cultures/races they have forgotten the simple method... and that is to train the trainers.

Watching some young Brit NCO trying to teach Afghans to shoot through sign language was at the same time hilarious and pathetic. Could not adopt the prone position properly, were not holding the weapon properly in the aim and could see shots striking the ground in front of the target at 25m.

Can't teach the shooting fundamentals of holding, aiming, breathing, squeezing by sign language. Who is kidding who.

Anyone listening out there? Train the - Afghan - trainers first.

Then... been on about this before. Brit troops (and probably the yanks too) should have in theatre 'battle camp' training before deploying operationally. This allows for acclimatisation and should cover 'know your enemy', local culture, locally developed and theatre specific minor tactics, advanced medical training for all, locally specific fieldcraft exercises and the like. Yes by now - ten years on - they should have identified and trained up suitable Afghans to assist with this preparation process and later mentoring on deployment. It is a damning indictment that they have not.

Clearly very little to be gained by sending a battalion to Kenya to prepare for an Afghan tour under battalion officers and NCOs (who know less about the Afghan situation). If they can be away from home for a month in Kenya then they can rather add that extra month on the front end of their Afghan tour?

Sadly although the Brits aimed at redeeming themselves in Afghanistan after the Basra debacle all they have really achieved is to slide deeper into the hole. Very sad.

[Bob's World]

There two very different, but very powerful forces of insurgency at work in Afghanistan. The first force is the revolutionary energy between the two broad camps of those who associate with "the Taliban" and those who associate with the "Northern Alliance." All we did was tip the balance of power, not resolve the "all in or all out" nature of Afghan patronage that goes along with being on the team in power. Bonn in 2002 was a well-intended disaster. The Constitution of 2003 likewise. Same with the Election of 2004. At that point it was game on for the revolutionary insurgency to grow as all legal options to compete had been effectively denied by well-intended Western Diplomats and Politicians who could not fully appreciate that the very processes and tools that we see as platforms of democracy in the West, where controlled by the populace, become platforms of oppression when controlled by a small group of men dedicated to sustaining a monopoly of power and influence.

The second source our insurgent power in Afghanistan is that of Resistance. It is human nature to resist when one feels that some inappropriate ("illegitimate") influence is shaping ones life though the shaping of the governance over them. Legitimate government can grow illegitimate over time as a populace evolves and a government grows static (consider the US experience and the growth of discontent with British governance), or this can happen all at once following an invasion when the invader stays and begins to shape government to what it sees as appropriate. Sending in more and more security forces (and development forces, etc, etc) can kill/buy ones way to a temporary suppression of the problem at great cost, but drives the roots of the problem deeper into the soil of the affected society at the same time.

As the strength of the political revolution grew following our manipulations of Afghan governance, our response was to send in ever increasing effort to stem the same; thereby feeding an expanding resistance across the largely apolitical populaces of Afghanistan forced into contact with ISAF and Northern Alliance security forces.

Who knows how many of the ANSF have deep-seated grievances, of family members and friends killed by ISAF, homes destroyed, fortunes and influence lost through shifts of patronage caused by our actions, or just patriotic deep-felt resentment over having such a massive, overt external presence dominating their country for so long??

Revolution and Resistance. Its that simple and that complex all at once. We dedicate ourselves to control an outcome that is not ours to control, and throughout the history of mankind this is the inevitable result. Good intentions may ease the conscience on the home front, but does little to mitigate the effect on the other end among the populaces affected by this situation.

[carl]

Who knows how many of the ANSF have deep-seated grievances, of family members and friends killed by ISAF, homes destroyed, fortunes and influence lost through shifts of patronage caused by our actions, or just patriotic deep-felt resentment over having such a massive, overt external presence dominating their country for so long??

This suggests to me that you may not have read the report. It was done in an attempt to understand why ANSF, who are probably inclined at least a little to be anti-Taliban, are murdering ISAF. The finding is that the murders are probably motivated by the personal and not the political. Have you read the report?

[Bob's World]

This suggests to me that you may not have read the report. It was done in an attempt to understand why ANSF, who are probably inclined at least a little to be anti-Taliban, are murdering ISAF. The finding is that the murders are probably motivated by the personal and not the political. Have you read the report?

Did you read my response? Half the causation I listed is "personal."

I find most "reports" are highly biased, and that typically are written by people with little understanding of the fundamental nature of insurgency. I offer you a rationale based in a broad understanding of insurgency and my own personal experience, education and training. The facts of each of these attacks are unique. Some may well have been a deeply personal attack to avenge some real or perceived matter of honor; most appear to be against symbols of ISAF in general.

In reading the report in post #2 above, I find the report to actually be quite consistent with my understanding of the situation and consistent with my posts above as well. A mix of resistance insurgency and personal honor, much as I suspected.

[davidbfpo]

Whilst the this thread's topic is "green on blue" as one observer remarked I do wonder how many ANSF on ANSF deaths or violent incidents there have been?
Given the multi-ethnic composition of the ANSF, surely some of the causation we have all remarked upon applies within too.

I have checked two of my books on the Imperial era on the North-West Frontier, for the experience of the British officered 'Scouts' and found a 1985 review by the late General William Jackson of 'The Frontier Scouts' (my standard text on the Scouts).

Mutual respect and trust...They were all poachers turned gamekeepers: Pathans recruited to keep the peace amongst Pathans....the Pathan's loyalty transcended his tribal affiliations. But loyalty between different races and creeds rests upon the knife edge of suspicion... (there were) so few defections and mutinies occurred in the ruthless atmosphere of the frontier.

[carl]

Bob:

Yes I did read your response. The acknowledgment of personal reasons for the murders was half of a sentence in the fourth paragraph after two long paragraphs and one short one explicating the broad political situation in Afghanistan as you see it, followed by a fifth paragraph continuing the explication of the big picture. So it was hard to tell if you gave the personal reasons much importance.

True enough that reports are biased, but the so are opinions of the reports. i got a different take out of it than you did. These are personal beefs, with the individual behavior or perceived group offenses against cultural norms and against things like errant air strikes. There isn't much politics behind the murders at least in the sense that you seem to mean. ANSF guys get mad because of the way the ISAF and people in the ISAF act, not because the ISAF is there or because they are dissatisfied that Mullah Omar isn't leading a block of representatives in the government. That makes more sense to me in that murders that aren't committed in the course of other crimes are generally done because the killers has been personally offended by something and big picture politics aren't generally one of those somethings, or so I've read.

I guess you did read the report.

[davidbfpo]

A slightly different lethal report:

Three British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan by a local policeman following an argument...The soldiers were serving in an Afghan Police Advisory Team and had been to the check point to conduct a shura (meeting). On leaving, they were engaged by small arms fire by a man wearing an Afghan Police uniform.

What I noted was that the policeman was:

a member of the Afghan Civil Order Police, whose members have a reputation for having better training and greater discipline than the notorious national police.

Now for the fact the politicians will not like, with my emphasis:

the deaths mean that a quarter of all British fatalities this year have been caused by Afghans soldiers with seven murdered at the hands of allies.

Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-argument.html

From the BBC report:

More than 20 foreign personnel have been killed in so-called rogue shootings in Afghanistan this year.

I don't recall this incident, maybe as it shows an ISAF on ANSF incident:

The shooting of 16 Afghans by a US soldier in March has also created resentment.

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18670175

[davidbfpo]

This week in Helmand more 'green on blue':

Three US Marines were killed by an Afghan policeman early on Friday morning after inviting them to a Ramadan breakfast to discuss security. A few hours later, a further three US Marines were later shot dead by an Afghan civilian employee at a Nato base in Garmsir.

There have been 26 “Green on Blue” attacks on foreign troops by members of the Afghan security forces since January in which 34 people have been killed. Last year, there were 21 attacks in which 35 people were killed.

Within an article on other matters:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-in-weeks.html