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Thread: Future COIN in Afghanistan

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    Default Future COIN in Afghanistan

    Future Coin in Afghanistan

    Some of you won’t like this but I will say it anyway. Is this where we are headed with the next Coin/Surge narrative for Afghanistan? This entry by the SWJ editors certainly suggests such undertones. Will we start to see opeds by AEI neo-cons arguing that in 2007 American troops had basically quit the country and hunkered down on Fobs like they did according to the Iraq narrative in 2006? You sit back and say nobody is saying that but I heard from the mouth of a senior officer who was on a senior commander’s staff in Iraq this past year characterize American troops in Iraq in 2006 as “Fob Rats.” And this officer said this so matter-of-factly that it seemed clear to me that that was the garden variety view of things in the halls of the palaces in the GZ and VBC. I thought to myself well if I and my men were “Fob Rats” in 2006 then how in the hell did some soldiers under my command “just get dead?” So why not, let’s just build the same story for Afghanistan. But perhaps this time instead of saying the Americans screwed up we can go easy on ourselves and blame NATO for not “getting it right.” And again the lean toward hagiography in this entry is striking but still without the temporal insights of history to inform.

    Why do we have such a positivist view of American military power and its ability to control and shape ANY environment? Clearly, at least to me, that is what underpins the Iraq narrative and is the start of a new narrative for Afghanistan.

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    Default COIN in Afghanistan

    Quote Originally Posted by Gian P Gentile View Post
    Future Coin in Afghanistan

    Some of you won’t like this but I will say it anyway. Is this where we are headed with the next Coin/Surge narrative for Afghanistan? This entry by the SWJ editors certainly suggests such undertones. Will we start to see opeds by AEI neo-cons arguing that in 2007 American troops had basically quit the country and hunkered down on Fobs like they did according to the Iraq narrative in 2006? You sit back and say nobody is saying that but I heard from the mouth of a senior officer who was on a senior commander’s staff in Iraq this past year characterize American troops in Iraq in 2006 as “Fob Rats.” And this officer said this so matter-of-factly that it seemed clear to me that that was the garden variety view of things in the halls of the palaces in the GZ and VBC. I thought to myself well if I and my men were “Fob Rats” in 2006 then how in the hell did some soldiers under my command “just get dead?” So why not, let’s just build the same story for Afghanistan. But perhaps this time instead of saying the Americans screwed up we can go easy on ourselves and blame NATO for not “getting it right.” And again the lean toward hagiography in this entry is striking but still without the temporal insights of history to inform.

    Why do we have such a positivist view of American military power and its ability to control and shape ANY environment? Clearly, at least to me, that is what underpins the Iraq narrative and is the start of a new narrative for Afghanistan.
    Gian,

    Undertones are in the eye of the beholder and I take exception to you taking quite a bit of liberty in interpreting what I “suggested” in the Afghanistan COIN posting. To be quite honest, and I am, the idea of AEI-like use of arguments and false analogies about Iraq FOB-rats had nothing to with my posting.

    That said, my bottom line is this – we are facing an increasing insurgent threat in Afghanistan and we have a sound COIN doctrine – you have said the later yourself on several occasions – shouldn’t we constantly re-evaluate our OEF COIN efforts to ensure we are optimizing our strategy based on that doctrine?

    If not, what alternatives do you suggest?

    Dave

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    A small RFI.

    I've heard again and again about national caveats on the use of forces contributed to ISAF. SWJ brings it up again by saying there are as many as 50 separate caveats.

    Has -anybody- ever sat down in public and said which countries are placing what caveats?

    I think it'd be really, really good to know.

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    Default ISAF caveats

    Quote Originally Posted by Penta View Post
    I think it'd be really, really good to know.
    However, I think it would be really bad for the bad guys to know...

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    Post Considering the way life works

    Quote Originally Posted by Rex Brynen View Post
    However, I think it would be really bad for the bad guys to know...
    in that part of the world it's probably pretty safe to assume they already have a good idea and utilize that information to their advantage.

    Otherwise why would it be necessary to make a big fuss about it publicly in order to bring pressure on those nations to wise up.

    In relation to COIN, Afghanistan, and FOBs If we take the region for what it is and remember what they have been through over the last many years, it would seem to be a wiser choice to follow a path that has shown itself to be effective (with local adjustments of course). And in direct relation to FOB's and their utility I sincerely doubt they are truly seen on high as being a place of cowardice as would seem to be the impression by some but merely need to be seen for what they are in the larger picture (as a Forward Base of Operations) Operations which overwhelming take place outside of said FOB's.

    I would hope noone would be percieved to be discounting the lives lost by soldiers no matter where or how they were working as in the end they were doing their job.

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    Default Caveats

    Having been a planner/liaison in ISAF recently, I can attest to how dysfunctional the entire NATO set up is in Afghanistan. NATO planners - some of the sharpest officers I met in my career, by the way - kept a chart that listed by nation what their caveats were. It had to be cross-indexed, color coded, and linked in a constantly updated website so that the order writers knew that Country A could not deploy outside of their allotted region without their MOD's approval, or that Country B would only accept TACON to Country C, or that Country D's helicopters could not be used for reconnaissance. The US was just as guilty as other members of NATO; though we denied having any caveats, we in fact had several that hampered planning and cooperation.

    What is worse was the fact that each major NATO player runs its own war. The US played whack-a-mole, the British tried to apply the tactics of 1919, the Canadians manfully fought pitched battles requiring artillery, CAS, engineer support, and tanks, while the Dutch plied the open-hand, soft cap approach. All of this in neighboring provinces! ISAF, at least while I was there, tried to bring coherence at the operational level, but it had no levers to force compliance. Again, the US was just as guilty as any other party in refusing to support a common NATO approach to counterinsurgency, even after we came under ISAF 'command'.

    Finally, the force levels are just too low. ISAF's minimum military requirement - the forces needed to successfully conduct operations even under the present limited mandate - has never been met. At one point during my last tour, the US had as many generals as they had infantry companies in Afghanistan. Anybody who has gone through the NATO Force Generation process comes away disillusioned that neither the US nor our fellow NATO partners are willing to ante up the troops needed. On the other hand, there are more than enough troops to engender resentment and resistance.

    So, frustration in Afghanistan will continue for three classic reasons:

    1. The counterinsurgents do not have sufficient combat power to hold what they clear. Nor can they concentrate what combat power they do have due to NATO's system of national fiefdoms, national caveats, and the scattering of PRTs helter-skelter across the countryside.
    2. The insurgents have a reliable source of funding and manpower to allow them to take the field pretty much when and where they choose.
    3. The insurgents have a secure sanctuary across the border.

    This is COIN 101, and no strategy is going to work that doesn't address all three questions.

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    Default Caveats and combined ops

    Well said, Eden. Of course this is not new. All multi-national, combined, coalition warfare is that way. Nation states are sovereign and always put one caveat or another on their participation. The US always (well, sort of and nearly so) refuses to put its troops under the command of any other nation. In NATO (at times) we have honored that in the breach often through the fiction that SACEUR is always an American. But I have never seen a combined op there a national contingent was more than TACON to another nation's commander. I suppose that in a multinational brigade it may be otherwise but I haven't seen it. What is aggravating is when we choose to violate our own doctrine as we did in Somalia by making command relationships so cumbersome that they affected out carrying out our mission.

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    Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
    Well said, Eden. Of course this is not new. All multi-national, combined, coalition warfare is that way. Nation states are sovereign and always put one caveat or another on their participation. The US always (well, sort of and nearly so) refuses to put its troops under the command of any other nation. In NATO (at times) we have honored that in the breach often through the fiction that SACEUR is always an American. But I have never seen a combined op there a national contingent was more than TACON to another nation's commander. I suppose that in a multinational brigade it may be otherwise but I haven't seen it. What is aggravating is when we choose to violate our own doctrine as we did in Somalia by making command relationships so cumbersome that they affected out carrying out our mission.
    We are talking about a problem that is ancient. Wellington dealt with this issue in the Peninsula and even more so at Waterloo. Marlborough had to figure it out too. Someone already mentioned Eisenhower in WWII. The French and Brits had the same problem in WWI; so did the Germans and Austro-Hungarians, by the way. It was a good thing both sides were so screwed up in their C & C relationships or someone might actually have won the war outright before the US ever got involved.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Eden View Post
    Having been a planner/liaison in ISAF recently, I can attest to how dysfunctional the entire NATO set up is in Afghanistan. NATO planners - some of the sharpest officers I met in my career, by the way - kept a chart that listed by nation what their caveats were. It had to be cross-indexed, color coded, and linked in a constantly updated website so that the order writers knew that Country A could not deploy outside of their allotted region without their MOD's approval, or that Country B would only accept TACON to Country C, or that Country D's helicopters could not be used for reconnaissance. The US was just as guilty as other members of NATO; though we denied having any caveats, we in fact had several that hampered planning and cooperation.

    What is worse was the fact that each major NATO player runs its own war. The US played whack-a-mole, the British tried to apply the tactics of 1919, the Canadians manfully fought pitched battles requiring artillery, CAS, engineer support, and tanks, while the Dutch plied the open-hand, soft cap approach. All of this in neighboring provinces! ISAF, at least while I was there, tried to bring coherence at the operational level, but it had no levers to force compliance. Again, the US was just as guilty as any other party in refusing to support a common NATO approach to counterinsurgency, even after we came under ISAF 'command'.

    Finally, the force levels are just too low. ISAF's minimum military requirement - the forces needed to successfully conduct operations even under the present limited mandate - has never been met. At one point during my last tour, the US had as many generals as they had infantry companies in Afghanistan. Anybody who has gone through the NATO Force Generation process comes away disillusioned that neither the US nor our fellow NATO partners are willing to ante up the troops needed. On the other hand, there are more than enough troops to engender resentment and resistance.

    So, frustration in Afghanistan will continue for three classic reasons:

    1. The counterinsurgents do not have sufficient combat power to hold what they clear. Nor can they concentrate what combat power they do have due to NATO's system of national fiefdoms, national caveats, and the scattering of PRTs helter-skelter across the countryside.
    2. The insurgents have a reliable source of funding and manpower to allow them to take the field pretty much when and where they choose.
    3. The insurgents have a secure sanctuary across the border.

    This is COIN 101, and no strategy is going to work that doesn't address all three questions.
    Thank you. As part of my job I do an OEF update once or twice a year; this issue of NATO as a COIN force always plays large. I never served in Germany in the "Cold War" but I did serve in Turkey (but not in a Holiday Inn Express ). I remember how very painful and painstaking were the efforts to arrive a NATO-standard solutions. I try and emphasize to my O/Cs that if we the US Army had such a time relearning COIN, we should not be surprised that for NATO/ISAF, it is an even greater challenge. The issue on caveats and national command channels sounds much like a UN peacekeeping mission where Force "commanders" really do not command anything.

    Post more

    Best

    Tom

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    Quote Originally Posted by Eden View Post
    What is worse was the fact that each major NATO player runs its own war. The US played whack-a-mole, the British tried to apply the tactics of 1919, the Canadians manfully fought pitched battles requiring artillery, CAS, engineer support, and tanks, while the Dutch plied the open-hand, soft cap approach. All of this in neighboring provinces! ISAF, at least while I was there, tried to bring coherence at the operational level, but it had no levers to force compliance. Again, the US was just as guilty as any other party in refusing to support a common NATO approach to counterinsurgency, even after we came under ISAF 'command'.
    I would love it if you could expand on this--what you see as the pluses and minuses of each approach (and whether each of the major ISAF combat contributors has appropriate TTPs and equipment for the mission). (OK, I'm particularly interested in a frank assessment of Canadian performance, since I've recently heard some rather negatives ones.)

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    Default Politics, Politics, Politics. . .

    Eden, great and very informative post. I concur with LTC Odom; please post more, sir.

    I think the key to the whole thing really is domestic politics. Doctrine and theory always talks about unity of strategy, purpose, and command, and the major discrepancies between domestic politics just between, say, the US and Britain (let alone between the US and Germany) make that unity impossible. Popular opinion in Europe has not been very supportive of the Afghanistan commitment, and the governments are leery of falling out of favor with the public because of the war. The dynamics in the US that allow President Bush to continue to prosecute an unpopular war in Iraq despite widespread discontent are not present in European countries with Afghanistan. The governments may say the right things, but to them, the conflict is not worth what it is to the US. And the result is caveats on force employment, severe casualty-aversion (and a subsequent FOB-mentality) on the part of the politicians and high command. The command fissure is a result of that discrepancy in purpose and motivation, as is the variance in strategy, at least in my (wayward) view.

    Matt
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    Default Afghanistan Narrative

    Col. Gentile,

    I will presume to speak only for the two links for which I am responsible (my posts on the Afghanistan campaign). I see the men serving in Afghanistan as anything but "FOB rats." To have seven men in the 82nd airborne division awarded the purple heart as a result of the assault on Musa Qala is not trivial.

    A close reading of my posts shows the advocacy to be one of forces and force projection. I don't argue per se that any strategy ought to be changed. I do not know enough about the strategy in this campaign to know if it needs to be changed. That might come later as I learn more. I might advocate one way, or I might advocate another.

    But my posts are simple. They don't have enough troops. I am in agreement with the Australians on this one, not the thinkers at the Pentagon who strategized the transition teams for the small footprint.

    It has been put another way in another discussion thread here at the SWJ Council (I do not recall which thread now). Someone opined (with indignation) about those people who think that the Afghanistan campaign is as simple as 'chasing insurgents," or 'going after insurgents.' As a matter of fact, this idea shouldn't be ridiculed. Yes, if we had the forces to 'chase insurgents' we would be better off.

    Anyone who reads my blog knows that I do indeed advocate soft power (e.g., I have begged for faster, more robust payment of concerned citizens, arguing that we are morally obligated to give work to heads of households -saying that it is the "right thing to do" - and not only that, it is anthropologically sound doctrine). But again, soft power is founded on the pretext of hard power, and I see absolutely NOTHING wise or smart or intelligent in ridiculing chasing insurgents. It is pedantic, to me. It is form over substance.

    Do I want to see soft power employed? Yes. Do I also want to chase insurgents? Yes.

    None of this has anything to do with the current strategy, per se. It has to do with the forces necessary to pull this off in theater. I suppose the argument could be made that by saying this I am advocating a change in strategy since the Brits want to co-opt the Taliban. But the fact is that the U.S. doesn't want to do this, but cannot mount a strong challenge to the British strategy at the moment because we don't have the forces necessary in theater. It all comes back to troops. Men carrying rifles and walking on the ground.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Eden View Post
    Having been a planner/liaison in ISAF recently, I can attest to how dysfunctional the entire NATO set up is in Afghanistan. NATO planners - some of the sharpest officers I met in my career, by the way - kept a chart that listed by nation what their caveats were. []


    What is worse was the fact that each major NATO player runs its own war. The US played whack-a-mole, the British tried to apply the tactics of 1919, the Canadians manfully fought pitched battles requiring artillery, CAS, engineer support, and tanks, while the Dutch plied the open-hand, soft cap approach. All of this in neighboring provinces! ISAF, at least while I was there, tried to bring coherence at the operational level, but it had no levers to force compliance. []

    Finally, the force levels are just too low. ISAF's minimum military requirement - the forces needed to successfully conduct operations even under the present limited mandate - has never been met. At one point during my last tour, the US had as many generals as they had infantry companies in Afghanistan. Anybody who has gone through the NATO Force Generation process comes away disillusioned that neither the US nor our fellow NATO partners are willing to ante up the troops needed. On the other hand, there are more than enough troops to engender resentment and resistance.

    So, frustration in Afghanistan will continue for three classic reasons:

    1. The counterinsurgents do not have sufficient combat power to hold what they clear. Nor can they concentrate what combat power they do have due to NATO's system of national fiefdoms, national caveats, and the scattering of PRTs helter-skelter across the countryside.
    2. The insurgents have a reliable source of funding and manpower to allow them to take the field pretty much when and where they choose.
    3. The insurgents have a secure sanctuary across the border.

    This is COIN 101, and no strategy is going to work that doesn't address all three questions.
    Given the prevailing conditions in Afghanistan, attempting to apply much of what has worked, to an extent at least, in Iraq is perhaps not a good idea, and in many cases is simply impossible. What is going on in southern and eastern Afghanistan requires rather heavier forces and firepower than what is often used in some areas of Iraq. So much of the heaviest fighting in southern Afghanistan is taking place in and around villages located in open country, and it is suicidal to attack without Artillery bombardment, Tanks, APCs, and having CAS on hand, even against opposition that has little in the way of heavy weapons.

    The Canadians got Tanks after a platoon of 1 RCR was amubshed (and a Section badly mauled - amongst other things, which I won't go into) in a village by the Taleban, and their LAV-IIIs (Strykers with turret-mounted 25 mm cannon) couldn't get through to them because of intense RPG fire. The Strykers are also being progressively displaced off-road, even replaced, by the M-113 because the LAVs get stuck too easily - and if they can't get them unstuck, they blow them up before nightfall comes, so they (any guard parties) are not sitting ducks for the Taleban. The LAVs hulls are cracking too; their suspensions are not up to extensive cross-country operations.

    The Brits also came in light, with no armour at all, just Land Rovers, and the Paras (I think it was 3Para) got one of their Companies in a bit of a fix, and Canadian Armour (I think it was LAVs in this case, might have been Leopards, I don't remember now) was required to get them out. The Danes, perhaps wiser than the rest, sent Leopard IIs and M-113s before everyone else. Very smart (I am not condoning the M-113 here, just so everyone understands that - as far as I'm concerned both the M-113 and the LAV are trash).

    As for the Dutch and how they're doing things, I just don't know what to make of their approach.

    I have to agree with Eden on all points. There is no Unity of Command worthy of the name, and the forces in the south and east are little more than mobile fire-brigades. The troops needed for Afghanistan are in Iraq, and necessarily, the vast majority of troops fighting the war in Afghanistan would have to be from the US. Europe is in no way willing to send substantial forces to fight anywhere, and everyone knows it. But some of them are finding it hard to maintain committments in the Balkans, and conditions there are deteriorating over Kosovo.

    No-one should expect more than a few battalions from Europe - and that's including the Brits. A battalion each from Australia and Canada is doable, but politics-dependent. If the Afghan War is to proceed to anything approaching what Ken terms "an acceptable outcome", then the US is going to have to put the better part of a pair of Divisions into Afghanistan. And right now and for the foreseeable future, that just isn't going to happen.

    It seems almost inconceivable that the Taleban can be reduced to a least a "manageable" problem so long as it has its sanctuaries in Pakistan and its funding (and popular support) from opium-growers/traders.
    Last edited by Norfolk; 12-18-2007 at 11:00 PM.

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    Default Securing Gains

    The centerpiece of any counterinsurgency at the operational level is the ability to deny insurgent access to population centers--from hamlets to cities. This momentus task should drive the COIN strategy in Afghanistan. In light of the Afghan national military and police as well as ISAF/US military finite forces, not every population center can be secured. Hence, the insurgent and criminal actors will operate in these vacuums. The creation of local police forces is a basic requirement the coaltion ignored, banking on the national security institutions creating trickle down security. The rub is that this takes years to develop and insurgent don't wait. I recall CFC-A in 2006 used auxiliary police forces to fill the vacuum, but problems of mixed loyalties, inability to vet candidates properly, inadequate training, and most importantly, the weak commitment of the auxilary police to the communties they were supposed to defend, did not create the intended security environment in the south.
    I'm an advocate of using cadres to raise local police forces and perhaps militias in high threat areas to push insurgents away from population centers. I believe SOF are ideally suited as cadres to organize, train, equip and pay the local police forces. They also provide discipline and values, mitigating the tendency of such forces becoming death squads or criminal gangs in uniform. With population centers secured or at least contested, the military can conduct sweeps in the outlying areas for the purpose of further pushing insurgents away...the slow squeeze. Eventually, insurgents are pushed to the border regions, which permits the military and police forces to focus on interdiction rather than continually rooting out insurgents from population centers. So the goal should be to assist the local communities defend themselves rather than putting the onus on the coaltion and Afghan national security forces.
    I recognize that the sheer number of hamlets, villages, towns, and city neighborhoods makes this a daunting task, so the COIN leadership has to seek ways to accomplish this rather than saying it is jsut too hard. In more secure areas, like RC North and RC West, select conventional forces and policemen (like the EU's 5,000 police contingent and DYNCORP policemen) can provide cadres. Naturally, before cadres can be inserted, military forces should sweep through the population centers to push out guerrilla forces.
    With self-defense assured, the process of construction and development can proceed.
    Gotta go...meeting.

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    Default Oil Spots

    Some points to remember in judging the efficacy of COIN in Afghanistan, especially as practiced by NATO.

    First, NATO did not get serious about operations in Afghanistan until early 2006, when the British assumed command of ISAF IX. It was not until about July 2006 that the entire country came under NATO control; before that the Americans handled the south and NATO handled Kabul and the north. So, it has been just over a year since ISAF had the opportunity to craft a countrywide, coherent approach to...well, I don't know if its counterinsurgency or nation-building or what, but in the end, Afghanistan looks something like Pakistan. Anyway, it is still early days since NATO became 'serious'.

    Second, the effort is not only fractured along national military lines but also along national civil lines, with the Italians responsible for the justice system, Germany for the police, UK for counter-narcotics...I know, it sounds like a bad ethnic joke...and so forth.

    Third, ISAF planned to implement a classic oil spot strategy as mentioned in some earlier posts. The heavy lifters (US, UK, Canada, along with the admirable bantamweights like Denmark and Portugal) would work the outer fringes while ANA and our less enthusiastic Western partners secured ever-expanding centers of security. It was a good plan, but also a prime example of why there is no such thing as COIN doctrine at the operational level. Applying the oil spot theory meant abandoning parts of Afghanistan. The Afghans, naturally enough, objected to this, as did nations running PRTs in some of the most remote areas. The local US commander also objected; he had spent the whole of his tour kicking ass in places outside the proposed secure zones and wasn't happy at the prospect of leaving them. He also - and this view has a great deal of merit - said the strategy would be seen as a retreat and would only encourage our enemies within and just outside of Afghanistan. Anyway, I left before the plan could be implemented and I believe it has been quietly shelved.

    Finally, don't be fooled about the north and west. ISAF used the military's favorite green-amber-red color scheme to rate the 'security' of various provinces in Afghanistan. I'm sure you've seen it - blazing red along the border with Pakistan cooling to amber, with nice green areas in the north and around Herat. Anyway, the ratings were derived by counting the number of attacks against coalition forces in a particular area. It had very little to do with degree of government control or freedom of movement for allied forces. Uruzgan province, for instance, was rated green when I arrived, mostly because nobody but half-crazed SF teams would go into what was commonly known to be Taliban Central. Yet this was the slice of Indian country that the Netherlands chose as a nice, safe place to put its contribution. The north is green because their are few attacks, and their are few attacks because the central government and the NATO forces there are completely ineffectual.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Norfolk View Post
    It seems almost inconceivable that the Taleban can be reduced to a least a "manageable" problem so long as it has its sanctuaries in Pakistan and its funding (and popular support) from opium-growers/traders.
    Norfolk's last sentence in this post is well spoken. I will draw a more generalized, implicit point that there are limits--real limits--to what a military force regardless of how capable it is and how good of a doctrine it has can accomplish in an environment like Afghanistan.

    Then there is this well written post by Mr Raymond Millen where he provides a classic argument for applying Coin doctrine with a capable military force in Afghanistan. Its premise is that there really are no limits, in implicit contradicition to Norfolk, to what can be accomplished in Afghanistan if we get the doctrine, leadership, and strategy in place. If I asked why we think this can work in Afghanistan i bet the answer would be because we have finally gotten it right in Iraq so lets do the same thing in Afghanistan; hence we have become dogmatic. According to Mr Millen:

    The centerpiece of any counterinsurgency at the operational level is the ability to deny insurgent access to population centers--from hamlets to cities. This momentus task should drive the COIN strategy in Afghanistan. In light of the Afghan national military and police as well as ISAF/US military finite forces, not every population center can be secured. Hence, the insurgent and criminal actors will operate in these vacuums. The creation of local police forces is a basic requirement the coaltion ignored, banking on the national security institutions creating trickle down security. The rub is that this takes years to develop and insurgent don't wait. I recall CFC-A in 2006 used auxiliary police forces to fill the vacuum, but problems of mixed loyalties, inability to vet candidates properly, inadequate training, and most importantly, the weak commitment of the auxilary police to the communties they were supposed to defend, did not create the intended security environment in the south.
    I'm an advocate of using cadres to raise local police forces and perhaps militias in high threat areas to push insurgents away from population centers. I believe SOF are ideally suited as cadres to organize, train, equip and pay the local police forces. They also provide discipline and values, mitigating the tendency of such forces becoming death squads or criminal gangs in uniform. With population centers secured or at least contested, the military can conduct sweeps in the outlying areas for the purpose of further pushing insurgents away...the slow squeeze. Eventually, insurgents are pushed to the border regions, which permits the military and police forces to focus on interdiction rather than continually rooting out insurgents from population centers. So the goal should be to assist the local communities defend themselves rather than putting the onus on the coaltion and Afghan national security forces.
    I recognize that the sheer number of hamlets, villages, towns, and city neighborhoods makes this a daunting task, so the COIN leadership has to seek ways to accomplish this rather than saying it is jsut too hard. In more secure areas, like RC North and RC West, select conventional forces and policemen (like the EU's 5,000 police contingent and DYNCORP policemen) can provide cadres. Naturally, before cadres can be inserted, military forces should sweep through the population centers to push out guerrilla forces.
    With self-defense assured, the process of construction and development can proceed.
    Lastly in response to this statement from Danny:

    I will presume to speak only for the two links for which I am responsible (my posts on the Afghanistan campaign). I see the men serving in Afghanistan as anything but "FOB rats." To have seven men in the 82nd airborne division awarded the purple heart as a result of the assault on Musa Qala is not trivial.
    Of course it is not trivial and I thank you and these brave men for your service (do take care). My point on the "Fob Rats" issue was that this was a term that a senior officer who had served on the staff of a senior commander in Iraq this past year used to characterize the American Army's effort in Iraq in 2006. I naturally took offense to this statement which is why I quipped in the lead comment to this thread that if I and my men were "Fob Rats" in 2006 then how did soldiers under my command "just get dead?" Sadly this is the narrative that has been built to highlight the perceived success of the Surge by pointing out the perceived flaws and mistakes in 2006. I can tell you that in West Baghdad in 2006 I was not hunkered down on a Fob eating ice cream while the Iraq Civil War raged around me, nor were any of the other combat outfits that i new. We were in effect, doing correct Coin operations.

    gian

  17. #17
    Council Member MattC86's Avatar
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    Default Question about the Opium/Narcotrafficking Issue:

    Is it confirmed that the Taliban specifically are getting support from opium trafficking?

    I only ask because as convenient as it would be for them, the Taliban were violently anti-poppy as rulers of the country; in fact, so much so they were the only effective counternarcotics policymakers before or since. And while it would be advantageous for them to use narcotrafficking funds to support themselves, they do view it as counter to Islam, and on the religious score, they tend to adhere to ideology. . .

    Matt
    "Give a good leader very little and he will succeed. Give a mediocrity a great deal and he will fail." - General George C. Marshall

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    Default free enterprise at work...

    Quote Originally Posted by MattC86 View Post
    Is it confirmed that the Taliban specifically are getting support from opium trafficking?

    I only ask because as convenient as it would be for them, the Taliban were violently anti-poppy as rulers of the country; in fact, so much so they were the only effective counternarcotics policymakers before or since. And while it would be advantageous for them to use narcotrafficking funds to support themselves, they do view it as counter to Islam, and on the religious score, they tend to adhere to ideology. . .

    Matt
    Drug money goes to whoever controls transport routes and can protect crops. It therefore goes variously to local warlords, the Taliban, the Afghan police, etc. depending on location (and usually all of the above).

  19. #19
    Council Member tequila's Avatar
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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by MattC86 View Post
    Is it confirmed that the Taliban specifically are getting support from opium trafficking?

    I only ask because as convenient as it would be for them, the Taliban were violently anti-poppy as rulers of the country; in fact, so much so they were the only effective counternarcotics policymakers before or since. And while it would be advantageous for them to use narcotrafficking funds to support themselves, they do view it as counter to Islam, and on the religious score, they tend to adhere to ideology. . .

    Matt
    The Taliban were not uniformly anti-poppy. Their (successful) poppy suppression campaign was an attempt to secure United Nations recognition of their regime - they notably did not arrest major traffickers or destroy seized opium stocks. When the U.N. failed to come through, the opium trade went on as usual.

    This IWPR report from Helmand details how trafficking flourishes in areas under Taliban control.

    Drug traffickers in the war-torn Helmand province have been winning public support by distributing some of their ill-gotten gains to the poor during the fasting month of Ramadan.

    ...

    The growing Taleban insurgency in Helmand has proved a boon to the drugs trade, since government eradicators cannot get into many areas to monitor or destroy the opium poppy crop. The chaos has kept out aid agencies and prevented any meaningful development from taking place, something that has caused resentment and anger among local people.

    In return for protection, drug traffickers are believed to be providing money and weapons to the Taleban.

    ...

    “I distributed [charity] to the poor in the shape of food and clothing during the holy month of Ramadan,” said the smuggler. “We are Muslims and we are obliged to give alms. I gave most of it to the poor, and a small amount to the Taleban who are fighting for Islam.”

    Helmand is the world centre of poppy cultivation. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, this one province supplies close to half the world’s opium and its major derivative, heroin. Efforts to combat the poppy trade have backfired badly – for the past two years, production has skyrocketed.

    Given the generosity of the drug traffickers, residents do not seem to be complaining.

    Musa-Qala, like Washir, is almost completely under Taleban control. In February, a tenuous peace agreement brokered by tribal elders collapsed, and the fundamentalists swept into the district centre.

    ...

    A narcotics trader from Musa Qala said that while he helped the poor during Ramadan, he did not give donations to the Taleban. Instead, he simply paid them for their services in helping him smuggle drugs.

    “I give out my alms during Ramadan every year and distribute it among the needy,” he said. “Sometimes I help the Taleban when they help me. They provide me with security when I come up against government forces.”

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    Default

    I was in a similiar position in Afghanistan, to Eden, not at ISAF however, in 05 and 06.

    The national caveat - to use an overused phrase- is what it is. You get what you get, and the countries involved are going to do what they are going to do.

    Applying lessons learned and TTP's from Iraq to Afghanistan is, as LTC Gentile stated, dogmatic at best and deadly at worst. Afghanistan is much more fractured than Iraq across tribal, ethnic, economic, cultural and relgious (religion is less of a factor in Afghanistan than Iraq) lines.

    The biggest problem, and NOTHING will get better until this is fixed, has zero do to with military operations. Over 80% of the country is illiterate. There's the crux of the entire Afghanistan problem. Start from there and build.

    Corruption is endemic throughout the country - it's a part of the culture and it can only be controlled, not eradicated.

    Drugs are similar - it's the only major cash producing commodity in the country right now, and Karzai understands that if he allows for widespread eradication programs, it's probably going to end up with greater problems for him, ISAF and US Forces. The classic paradox is in effect here - until we and the Afghans can develop alternate sources of income, Afghanistan is a narco-state. Simple as that. Try and eliminate the drugs, you now have farmers pissed off because they aren't making as much money as before.

    There are also way too few forces in Afghanistan. It's a huge country - lay it over the US, and it stretches from the Chesapeake Bay to New Orleans. Also has a greater population than Iraq and borders that are sieves...or in more than a few cases, they simply don't exist.

    Afghanistan is a 30-50 year reconstruction effort if it started today. That includes security forces, economic reconstructions, infrastructure construction, and most importantly, educational growth. The question must be asked - what is the cost/benefit for staying this long?
    "Speak English! said the Eaglet. "I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and what's more, I don't believe you do either!"

    The Eaglet from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland

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