OSINT Assessment of the Afghan War

[davidbfpo]

A good, quick review and sent to others observers - so thanks.

I fear we avoid asking where are the Afghans who fight alongside ISAF? In a UK documentary following a patrol in Helmand, there was a UK platoon and at most twelve ANA soldiers.

davidbfpo

[JRoberts]

You're right, that is something we do not directly address. But the implications of what I think is going on--which we highlight in the conclusions--are relevant to those Afghans as well. Ultimately it is all a question of co-opting, or getting buy-in. Because we see the insurgency as fundamentally a local thing, the Coalition's level of popular support is going to fluctuate from one village to the next. And if that level is the center of gravity--which I certainly think it is--then an Afghan who decides to throw in with the Coalition, in whatever capacity, is going to be very exposed. The militants in his village will know him and his family, and where to find them. You have to make the benefit of cooperation greater than the penalty of that Afghan potentially losing his family. Not an easy thing to do, but not impossible either. And so you want a strategy that is flexible enough to allow our COIN measures to look differently in different parts of the country. That is the main thrust of our argument.

[George L. Singleton]

I scanned, only, your 7,000 plus words paper. Good effort, even if I do have a younger cousin who did a PhD at Oxford.

Our now in their mid-20s three children all did two degrees each, and a Masters is a very practical job finding tool in the current US labor market...our unemployment is heavily in the industrial/blue collar markets, coupled with creeping white collar unemployment in the related consumer labor market. Anyone is pure sales is really hurting here right now, but consume spending has picked up as Spring commences and Easter historically is a good spending season here for clothing, food, and especially "candy." Understand the UK job market is tough now, too.

On Afghanistan, safety, etc. The Taliban terrorists initially retreated in 2001 into Pakistan and the border region mountains for a few years. Then the Taliban started a campaign of coming back into villages and taking up residence/farming/growing poppies (opium), etc. then the Taliban set about murdering their peaceful neighbors just because they had remained in Afghanistan's villages after the fall of the Taliban.

Then the Afghan police, army, and NATO forces came to the rescue and tried with limited forces to reoccupy areas and provinces previously cleared of Taliban, which permanent local security effort now requires even more native Afghan police, army, and NATO forces to do, coupled with much more infrastructure development and finding farmers willing to switch to non-poppy crops, the loss in cash crop revenue to the farmers to be what we in the US refer to as crop payment subsidy so that there is no loss in real income to a farmer willing to plant other than poppy crops.

You simply pay them the cash flow difference they gave up from growing/selling poppies. This is a very small price to pay to cut the ground out from under the Taliban whose major revenue comes now from opium crop sales. *Problem being thus far too many Afghan farmers are greedy and will both take the substitute crop subsidy payments and still grow some poppies, too! Ouch!!!

And for the record, back to the recorded history era of Marco Polo whose trade routes were through Afghanistan opium/poppy crops from there have for hundreds of years been a basic trade and barter item, so it is nothing new or radical, despite what yellow journalists try to alledge and write to the contrary.

Afghanistan is a highly unorganized, decentralized mess and even though I was last there in 1965, a long time ago, it hasn't made much progress, if any, since then. The King ruled better than the Taliban, in my view.

What would your team think of a return to a monarchy for Afghanistan in a couple of years? A few on this SWJ site and I feel that might be the most sustainable long term style of governance, as you cannot successfully "drop" a so called Islamic Republic down into thin air and wide open spaces where life is about as primitive as it gets anywhere in the world.

Again, good job from a fast overview of your paper. Limited to 7,000 words it is reasonable to say your team of 3 chose to focus on what you felt was addressable effectively with a mere 7,000 words.

Many members of this site both learn from university inputs and Q&A as well as wish for you guys and gals to do their "homework" in "tome" form for them, so don't be put off by [wishful] questions for other and more analysis, you are not the CIA nor UK intelligence, nor expected to be such. Unless that becomes your chosen civil service career field or miliary career field if you want a UK miliary commission.

Have a good week. Spring in the US is upon us and here in the South flowers are in bloom, trees are budding, with warm days but still coolish nights.

[jmm99]

from JR
Because we see the insurgency as fundamentally a local thing, the Coalition's level of popular support is going to fluctuate from one village to the next. And if that level is the center of gravity--which I certainly think it is--then an Afghan who decides to throw in with the Coalition, in whatever capacity, is going to be very exposed. The militants in his village will know him and his family, and where to find them. You have to make the benefit of cooperation greater than the penalty of that Afghan potentially losing his family. Not an easy thing to do, but not impossible either.

This problem has been met before - clear, hold the village and secure the villagers. One solution in Vietnam was the Marine CAP program. That amounted to some 15 Marines + some 20-30 PFs (Popular Force militia) in each hamlet - roughly 4-6 hamlets per village in SVN. That program covered some 100 hamlets at its peak (ca. 2000 Marines involved). There were some 12,000-18,000 hamlets in Nam[*] - so, it was at most a pilot program.

Taking just the Pashtun half of Astan, my question is how many hamlets and villages are there ? The answer would give at least a ballpark estimate of the required force structure and personnel requirements.

Anyone ?

----------------------
[*] 12,000 hamlets comes from Kerepinevich's figures; MACV stated 18,000. Roughly, the program employed about 75 Marines and 125 PFs per village (ave. of 5 hamlets per ville).

[milnews.ca]

...as of this posting (10:43am 25 Mar 09) - looking forward to seeing your work.

[davidbfpo]

The original link is now broken, so go via JRoberts home page: http://sites.google.com/site/djonroberts/Home and select Graduate Work, where this paper and others sits. I have already PM JRoberts.

davidbfpo

[JRoberts]

Sorry about that. New link is as follows:

http://sites.google.com/site/djonrob...attredirects=0

Taking just the Pashtun half of Astan, my question is how many hamlets and villages are there ? The answer would give at least a ballpark estimate of the required force structure and personnel requirements.

The unsatisfying answer is that we don't really know. One of my team members proposed simply taking the population of each province, not counting major population centers (Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar, etc. etc.), and dividing that by a rough average of the population of a village...say 750 (NB, this is a complete WAG). Figure that one standard-sized dismounted infantry company can maybe cover two villages at most...and scale that up for the total force level you need.

But the ultimate question that I think JMM is asking is whether we could apply the Strategic Hamlet program to Afghanistan. What made that program work in Malaya was that it did two things: it isolated elements of the population that were most susceptible to CT radicalization, while at the same time giving those elements a long-term stake in the viability of the Malayan state. How do we do that in a country where primary loyalties are to clan and tribe? There is a vague concept of an Afghan national idea, but it's still vague, and I'm willing to bet that concept isn't the same across all the various ethnic groups. Malaya had a history of colonial governance and something approaching central administration that Afghanistan doesn't.

So for that reason, I don't think the Strategic Hamlet concept is really transferrable. You might get a short-term dropoff in violence, if your security forces are competent enough to keep the hamlets secure. But unless that initiative is accompanied by political reform that gives the hamlets' populations some kind of a stake in the success of their government, all you're going to end up doing is creating a political underclass that will have even more reason not to like you.

Basically, I think what it comes down to is that the hamlets are already there. Treat each village as its own hamlet, dispense reconstruction/political aid on that level, and get the ISAF forces out into the villages. These people have lived on the land they're on for a very long time...uprooting them and transplating them somewhere else is not likely to be helpful.