OEF: a lingering Afghan small war for the West (catch all)

[davidbfpo]

This article is from 'Task & Purpose' and the author has written on SWJ before: General Bolduc, former CO SOCOM Africa. He opens with; his emphasis retained:

When I question and challenge our policy and strategy I acknowledge that our tactical level units have performed admirably, but our policymakers and senior general officers, as well as flag officers, have failed them. 2018 must be the year of change in our policy, strategy, leadership, and approach or we will never get off this road we have been on for the past 17 plus years. The missteps in Afghanistan and other places have been significant. Our senior civilians, policy makers and senior military leaders at the 4, 3, and 2-star level over three Administrations are responsible for the failures in policy, strategy and operational approach. We ignored the results even though numerous studies told us our approach was wrong.

(Later) Despite our senior leader’s efforts to portray the war as an American victory, the United States is not going to defeat the Taliban, other groups, and ISIS anytime soon.

Link:https://taskandpurpose.com/afghanist...countability/?

From this distant armchair I cannot see the US establishment will meet his challenge. Since the UK has recently declared another 400 soldiers deploy to Kabul, we will be there too.

There are 131 comments and quite a civilised exchange too (I rarely read Task & Purpose).

[Bill Moore]

Bill Roggio pens a damning article on GEN Nicholson's grossly excessive rosy assessment on progress in Afghanistan. It isn't hard to believe that a General Officer would offer such a rosy assessment, since its frowned upon to admit failure, but it is from failure that we learn and adjust. As for the psychological aspect, in no way are we convincing the Taliban we're winning by simply stating we're winning. I would recommend readers focus on MG Bolduc's assessment, which is more intellectually honest than GEN Nicholson's recent comments.

We can have an enduring strategy in S. Asia to advance our national interests, but Americans only have so much tolerance for a snake oil sales pitch. I suspect GEN Miller will provide a more sober assessment and valid recommendations based on ground truth.

https://www.longwarjournal.org/archi...-the-facts.php

Analysis: Gen. Nicholson says US strategy in Afghanistan ‘is working,’ despite the facts

A

stonishingly, Nicholson described the Feb. 14 letter as one of two “peace offers,” when it is anything but. The other peace offer was by Afghan president Arshaf Ghani, which the Taliban has flatly ignored.

Nicholson’s reading of the two letters is wrong. In the first letter, the Taliban said the only acceptable outcome in Afghanistan is for the US to quit so it can restore the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the official name of its government. In the second letter, from last week, Mullah Habaitullah again demanded the withdrawal of American forces and criticized religious gatherings for ruling that the conflict is a civil war between Afghans.

Several other correct statements/assessments, then:

Additionally, Nicholson discounted the Taliban’s mastery of rural areas and even wrongly claimed that attacks in these areas “fail.”

Except, the Taliban is able to hold ground, and routinely is successful in its operations in rural areas. The Taliban controls at least 48 of Afghanistan 407 districts and contests another 197, according to a study by FDD’s Long War Journal. Resolute Support claims the Taliban controls around 11 districts, but these numbers are unreliable. Recently, in Ghazni province, The New York Times discovered that the districts centers in five districts under Taliban control were moved to Ghazni City in order to hide the fact that they were indeed Taliban controlled.

When challenged, he corrected his assessment and admitted the Taliban control most of the population.

More spin, or a just a different interpretation?

At the end of July, the Taliban assaulted the Islamic State Khorasan province’s stronghold in the province of Jawzjan. The Taliban completely routed the Islamic State, killing more than 200 fighters and capturing scores more. The remaining Islamic State fighters, more than 250 of them, then surrendered to the Afghan government.

Astonishingly, Nicholson cast this as a victory for the Afghan government.

[davidbfpo]

Bill,

There also a critique of the current US strategy on Politico and the opening sentence is:

The troops waging America's 17-year-old war in Afghanistan are confronting a puzzle: What has become of the enemy who drew them there?

Link:https://www.politico.com/story/2018/...rrorism-777511

The author's Twitter has a long, penetrating expose of SOF operations targeting AQ which IMHO is worth a read. See @wesleysmorgan

[AdamG]

The top U.S. general in Afghanistan somehow escaped unscathed from a bloody "insider attack" in the country Thursday that claimed the lives of three important local leaders and wounded a duo of Americans who had gathered for a high-level meeting at the Kandahar Province governor's mansion.

Officials said Army Gen. Scott Miller, the top U.S. general in the war-torn country, had been at the meeting but was unharmed, U.S. officials said. It was not immediately clear if Miller was in the room when the shooting began, with some local media reporting the general had left only minutes before.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/3-amer...in-afghanistan

[davidbfpo]

An 'exclusive' from The Cipher Brief after a NYT report (which I have not read). It is added here as some unusual insight is given on the operation of CIA-led and financed Afghan para-military forces.

A paragraph "taster":

In my experience, this contrasts with parts of the Afghan police and military. Generally, they are not as well paid, trained, or led, as their Afghan partners in the intelligence units, and may turn to corruption, extortion, or collusion; often merely to survive. In a case mentioned in the article, a CIA-trained unit allegedly killed the senior law enforcement officer in Kandahar in an effort to free a colleague that had been detained on criminal charges. Another perspective on that story may be that the soldier had been kidnapped by the police for extortion. When the CIA-trained unit arrived to negotiate his release, one of the nervous and poorly-trained police officers fired accidentally. In the exchange that followed, several police were killed and the strike force left without a wounded man. To consider that the cause of the soldier’s arrest may have been corruption, and the deaths of the police may have been the result of extremely poor judgement and marksmanship, even after years of training and investment, is a far greater embarrassment for (nearly) all concerned than a tidy narrative of rogue Afghans trained by knuckle-dragging CIA contractors.

Link:https://www.thecipherbrief.com/exclu...in-afghanistan

[davidbfpo]

An article from mid-December 2018 which was circulated on Twitter today by CCW @ Oxford. I have seen a little of the information before, in places it is shocking. Here are a couple of "tasters":

in the 2010 legislative elections, 664 candidates ran for 33 lower house seats in Kabul Province. ... 21 of 33 candidates were elected with less than 1% of vote. Countrywide only 35% of Afghan voters voted for a winning candidate.
The Afghan government is not perceived as legitimate by the people, does a poor job of service delivery, and cannot close its borders and crack down on dissent and revolt through authoritarian repression. How, then, can it succeed?

Link:https://thestrategybridge.org/the-br...in-afghanistan

[davidbfpo]

Two small, recent threads have been merged in today. Both referred to President Trump's view on Afghanistan and a comment by ret'd General McCrystal. They had just under 1800 views.