The USMC in Helmand (merged thread)

[SWJED]

Musa Qala
Adapting to the Realities of Modern Counterinsurgency
by Thomas Donnelly and Gary J. Schmitt, Small Wars Journal

Musa Qala (Full PDF Article)

This SWJ article is an excerpt from a forthcoming American Enterprise Institute study on the war in Afghanistan and NATO’s future.

The town of Musa Qala is, in many ways, a typical Afghan market town. “I saw no obvious concessions to modern living,” reported James Holland of his spring 2008 visit to Musa Qala.

In fact, I was reminded of a picture book of ancient Persia I had as a boy. I suspect the scene would not have appeared unfamiliar to Alexander the Great, who passed through here in 329 B.C. My first sight of Musa Qala was of a gray, sprawling mass that far side of a 200-year wadi [or river bed]. It was raining, the skies were leaden and the concrete and mud-built building appeared monochrome and somber.

The town sits on the Musa Qala River, an often-dry tributary of the Helmand River, the geographic feature – along with the Highway 1 ring road that ties Afghanistan together and connects the capital, Kabul, to the rest of the country – which defines Helmand province. It also links the ring road and lowland Helmand to the mountains of central Afghanistan. It is the last stop before the town of Baghran, in the northernmost tip of Helmand and near the border with the rugged Oruzgan and Daikundi provinces, which has been a Taliban redoubt since the initial U.S. invasion.

The town also gives its name to Musa Qala District, but two other factors contribute to it real importance: it is the hometown of the Alizai tribe, Helmand’s largest Pashtun group – though the tribal politics are devilishly complex: the Alizai are comprised of six major clans, but are a sub-tribe of the Noorzai, which is one of the five major tribes that make up the Durrani Pashtuns, one of the two main Pashtun grouping in the Afghan-Pakistan border regions; altogether there may be as many as 400 clans among the Pashtun peoples. Musa Qala is also a crossroads in the opium trade. And these two factors – tribal politics and the drug trade – are linked.

[davidbfpo]

Excellent article and a good find. Whether it will work is a moot point. May return with comments another time. Did the defecting local Taliban leader bring any fighters with him or later? What national / international aid for the locals has arrived since?

Note the role of the Danish and (tiny) Estonian contingents alongside those normally in the foreground.

davidbfpo

[Danny]

At least during the battle for Musa Qala, no fighters materialized. In my post:

http://www.captainsjournal.com/2008/...-abdul-salaam/

I linked this from the Times:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle3174835.ece

Saying:

There was no uprising. When Afghan, British and US units closed in on Musa Qala last month, Mullah Salaam stayed in his compound in Shakahraz, ten miles east, with a small cortège of fighters, where he made increasingly desperate pleas for help.

“He said that he would bring all the tribes with him but they never materialised,” recalled one British officer at the forefront of the operation. “Instead, all that happened was a series of increasingly fraught and frantic calls from him for help to Karzai.”

So there you have it. One of my major problems with this whole deal. It is a pitiful substitute for the awakening, and if you cannot bring fighters with you, then you're nothing more than a shyster.

[davidbfpo]

Just out and not seen yet, a book on the battle for Musa Qala by an embedded journalist with the UK forces and a review piece: http://defenceoftherealm.blogspot.co...snakebite.html

davidbfpo

[davidbfpo]

Missed this UK Channel 4 Dispatches programme, where Stephen Grey is the reporter and includes several interviews with UK Army officers - mainly those at the top: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/d...es-6/episode-4

Hopefully this link to the TV programme will work outside the UK, as Rex and a few others have found links don't: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/catch-up

davidbfpo

[davidbfpo]

With a sub-title:

Three years after he first travelled to Musa Qala, Nick Meo returns to Afghanistan and finds a town fearful that Nato's war is not going well, and dreading what may happen when they leave.

A lengthy article and some key phrases:

Insurgent control begins just a few miles from the town centre...Many of the attacks are thought to be paid for by drugs barons who flourish in the opium-rich region. Their business thrives when it is lawless and they want the foreign soldiers out.

Corporal Vincent Song, who is based next to the governor's compound, was appalled at the semi-secret meetings taking place there, as ex-Taliban fighters drink tea with the governor. "I don't agree with it at all. These are people who are trying to kill me," said Cpl Song, 21, from Washington, who joined up two years ago to fight terrorism. "So many of my brothers have died here. I hate the thought that the governor is meeting the Taliban."

A man identified to The Sunday Telegraph as a Taliban sympathiser, a mullah who attends meetings called shuras to find out what the marines are saying to the Afghans, insisted that the war would get worse before it got better.
"The police arrest the wrong men when bombs go off, and the foreigners kill innocent civilians," he said. "Then their cousins and friends want revenge and join the insurgency. "More clashes create more war, and the Taliban will not do deals to end the war. They want power again in all of Afghanistan. They have tasted its delights before and they want them again."

Says it all IMHO.

Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...war-again.html

[jcustis]

"They have tasted its delights before and they want them again."

...and is important that we take heed as we try to move forward. If the carrot does not produce the results desired, the answer is not always more carrots.