Years ago a bought an out of print book about Marines in WWI called Make the Keiser Dance. Look around for it and if it is something you really want to read, but can not find let me know and we might be able to arrange something.Originally Posted by jmm99
hey gute,
At Amazon.
Thank you for the ref.
Regards
Mike
I just finished War Comes to Garmser by Carter Malkasian.
http://www.amazon.com/War-Comes-Garm...mes+to+garmser
Everybody who hasn't actually been to Afghanistan, and I don't mean a big base somewhere, must stop reading whatever they are reading and read this book. Right now. For its conflict, this is as good as The Village. The author aspired to emulate War Comes to Long An. It has been a long time since I read that book but I remember how impressed I was with it and how it seem to shine a light on what had been dark. This book strikes me as the same.
The great thing about this book is it is about the Afghans. There stories and their names constitute most of the story. At the same time the British and the Americans are part of the story, a big part, but always as a influence on what is happening amongst the Afghans, not as the main show.
The author says three things give the Taliban an opening in Garmser, political infighting amongst the leaders of the dominant tribes, the sanctuary provided by Pakistan and the social disruption caused by the canal project. Taliaban's main support comes from mullahs who were elevated politically by them and poor immigrants who had no firm title to the land they stayed on. The story of how this all came to be is related in a way that is understandable. By the end of the book keeping track of mullah Naim vs Abdullah Jan (now he was something, a Magsaysay type) vs Omar Jan is a natural thing, as it probably should be when viewing this conflict.
One of the main points made in the book that I found surprising was that one of the very great strengths of the Taliban was not that they were furthering the interests of the Pushtuns, the conflict in Garmser was basically Pushtun vs Pushtun. The advantage over the Afghan gov was that Taliban was a hierarchical, disciplined organization with clear chains of command. There was one boss who decided and was responsible for an area. That was not the case with the Afghan gov (and not with us from what I've read) and it made a huge difference.
Another thing that struck me was something similar I read in Owen West's The Snake Eaters. In both books, on the eve of something important and good happening, the spec ops types did a night raid and 'effed everything up, to the extent people died who should not have died. The Afghans did not like night raids and repeatedly stated that to the author.
An additional point Malkasian makes is that things were not written over there and some of the bad things that happened happened because of things we did and decisions we made. A case in point is the woefully slow growth of the Afghan Army. In the 5 years between 2001 and 2006 only 36,000 troops were raised so there was nothing much to oppose the Taliban offensive of 2006.
I could go on and on but this is a great book and people should read it.
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
It will be interesting to see how his books reads. I was in Rig District, just south of Garmsir, during my '10 deploy. I've seen Carter in action during a security summit that brought in district governors and the NDS and police chiefs from their locales.
Carter gets COIN, and he put it in practice in a backwater district far from Camp Leatherneck or FOB Dwyer. He'd been in country for who knows how long before I got to see him speaking Pashto among the men gathered at the district center. He wasn't burned out yet, and I admire the work he put into being a stability advisor. Our STABAD paled in comparison.
He was a brilliant point of light in an otherwise very dim constellation of failed initiatives, corruption, and security half-measures. People like Carter should have been running the PRT, rather than serving downstream and working against the inertia of that worthless organization.
I don't even have to read the book to recommend it, based solely on what i know first-hand of the guy.
His story is very much the same story of my district and district governor, Ahmed Jan Massood, who was another young turk of sorts and good friend on the Garmsir DG.
jcustis:
The USMC comes out magnificently in the book. Mr. Malkasian said their efforts were something like a masterpiece of tactical application of COIN (or something like that, I just took the book back to the library). But I figure you already knew that.
A point he made that was a surprise is that sometimes anti-corruption efforts backfired, specifically regarding the police. They resulted in a very effective but hard edged commander being replaced by a series on non-entities. Omar Jan was the guy he referred to. I figure you are familiar with him. That was part of another and broader point in the book, we have to accept some rough types who will fight in order to effectively prosecute the war.
I have a question. Do you think that overall, all the spec ops things specifically the night raids were worth it? I don't. I figure the opportunity costs far outweighed the benefits in addition to all the Afghans hating them. And I don't mean just the physical opportunity costs, the men and machines, I mean the brainpower that could have been applied more effectively if it hadn't been busy with nocturnal swooping. If that course of action had not been available, possibly all those smart people would have come up with something better. But I am very interested in what a guy who was there thinks.
Last edited by carl; 07-25-2013 at 03:54 AM.
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
Carl,
Re: night raids is an interesting question. As a tactic, I think we developed a fetish for them in Iraq, but I was always on the ground with the unit that had to deal with the mess left in their wake. Yes, the resources and brainpower dedicated to them sucked a lot of energy away from making other tactical/operational investments.
We got our share of bad guys, which is necessary in COIN, but the sh#t stirred up in the wake of dry holes did more harm than good. There is a lot I can't discuss that would really make you shake your head.
It didn't even have to be night raids though. I finally got around to watching Nat Geo's "Battleground Afghanistan", and while I'm not trying to second guess the planning of the young captain that led his men to disrupt and disturb so many Afghan families as they patrolled in the wee hours, I would have employed a totally different approach. It would have required more resources that may not have been made available though.
On the note of the district police problems, we experienced similar issues with a corrupt DCOP. The problems were exacerbated, in my opinion, by issues at the Provincial level with the PCOP, some security advisor named Shazzy (IIRC), and the PG himself. Individual actions by those characters, framed against the overall structural problems we faced in everything ANSF, made advances in ANSF development very hard to come by.
When you have to navigate the issues of a DCOP extorting protection money from the ducant owners in the bazaar, while also trying to keep the police patrolmen engage and just doing their job, it takes away from training, intel work, targeting, etc.
The one blessing to the removal of our DCOP was his replacement. He kicked ass and was a 8+ on a scale of 10. We were just lucky, however.
You just brought back a flood of frustration that I'd repressed and didn't know I was sorta still holding down. I imagine there are a ton of us who have bottled up a lot of that conflict because it was so frustrating and hollow to spend 7-8 months there and leave with things essentially the same as when you arrived. We increased the raw metric of the number of ANSF on the ground, but I doubt it is translating into more security. I need to read up on VSO and see how that is doing.
Last edited by jcustis; 07-25-2013 at 03:16 PM.
Berry has two other books out as well dealing with Marines in World War II and Korea. Both are excellent.
"On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War
(Not) The Art of Intelligence
Hank Crumpton's explanation of espionage and covert action. Crumpton was a long-time member of the Former Directorate of Operations at CIA. Thinking about working the book into one of my intel courses.
His tactical descriptions of HUMINT ops is pretty graphic. I'm a little surprised they got cleared.
His description of the initial deployment into Afgh is also very interesting. I recommend coupling it w/Gary Schroen's First In, Gary Berntsen's Jawbreaker rant and Bob Woodward's Bush at War. Maybe by comparing multiple sources you might get a clearer picture of the action. I'm still looking for a good military book on the same op.
To my way of thinking, there are some loose ends that never quite get tied up, but the book still deserves critical reading.
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