Frontline in Afghanistan

[omarali50]

How about feeding them right at the base gate? especially kids. Though I can foresee that could lead to lot of innocent kids being killed in taliban bombings at the same gates...

[MikeF]

How about feeding them right at the base gate? especially kids. Though I can foresee that could lead to lot of innocent kids being killed in taliban bombings at the same gates...

Here's what we did.

I established curfew after sunset. We conducted night patrols to enforce the curfew. Trust me, it's hard to differentiate from someone emplacing an IED at night and some drunken farmer sneaking out of his house to have a drink (and not let his wife find out).

During the night patrols, we stopped in at houses for several purposes:

1. Establish our presence.
2. Spot-check to make sure our food was going to the families.
3. Provide medical care to kids.
4. Covertly talk to our trusted sources.

As time passed, the women started telling us where the bombs were planted and where the safehouses were.

v/r

Mike

[Entropy]

I just did a quick calculation. The Afghan Central Statistics Office (CSO) has about 32k "settlements" in its database (available here). I selected those settlements from the Pashtun areas and came up with about 14k total. For Helmand province there are 1709 listed.

I think Steve is probably correct that some of these are abandoned and others are going to be too small to worry about. Even so, we'll still be dealing with a huge number. That's a major problem for us and a major difference from Iraq, where the population was a lot more concentrated.

Incidentally, I've been reading some American history on our own insurgency and there is a comparison. America's population was quite diffuse and the British strategy of holding major population centers didn't work well for them as a result. They also tried to control some areas and put garrisons in less populated areas, but they simply didn't have the forces to do this everywhere and inevitably the forces would be withdrawn for one reason or another. This ended up hurting them in the end because once they left it was easy for the rebels to determine who the loyalists were.

After eight years it will be a huge challenge to convince Afghans, who are already fence-sitters, to support the Afghan government and coalition and risk the consequences.

[Steve the Planner]

First, as Omarali50 suggests, is the problem of how to distribute food aid.

Do you feed them from the gate, or post, or do you distribute food rations (triggering Mike's concern of pass through to the Taliban)?

I would suggest that if we are to bolster local, district, national, tribal, village and/or governmental strengths, the distribution process, like in Iraq, must be handled by some form of non-US distribution strategy. Otherwise, particularly, you are directly endangering those recipients.

There is no question that much of the Iraqi PDS distributions were either so rotten as to be only useful as chicken feed, or, if useful, ended up on the black market. But, it was traceable, provided locals with sustenance (even if through dollars raised by black market resale), and, had the effect of centralizing population/data, etc...

Second, the trade-offs, as Mike F suggests between military security/Taliban support and population services/resources.

Without doubt, any resource injected into conflict areas holds the potential for mis-use by an opponent. So, is there a wise choice to be made somewhere, especially if our focus is on a hybrid strategy aimed at improving the population while denying resources to an enemy?

From experience, ours is the only reconstruction effort that has focused on fertilizer denial as a pre-condition for post-conflict agricultural stabilization. Since, an enemy could use it, we must deprive everyone of it. The evidence, thus far, does not suggest that improved crop production results from fertilizer depreviation, or the use of sub-optimal alternatives. Where is that trade-off going? Do we distribute food to make up for crop inefficencies resulting from fertilizer deprivation?

My suggestion would be that a properly organized and Afghan-faced relief process (whether through central gov, NSF, or local govs/village/tribes) for food and medicine provides an organizational principal for improved perceptions of ISAF (helping the people), while creating a checkpoint for a lot of valuable data and strategy resulting from an economic force and organizing principle being applied to an otherwise chaotic geography.

Every agriculturally-based village that engages in trade of any kind is related to some market/grain silo/supply source dictated by some rational geographic hierarchy. Food distribution would either reinforce or reshape that hierarchy, and, secondarily, provide other benefits to either understand or affect the land and people.

Figuring out how and where to do it is a next step after somebody decides how to do it.

Also, I strongly suspect that future phases of our Iraq engagement are going to substantially refocus on urban and informal settlements vs. scattering about the countryside, whether anybody plans it or not. That urban vs. rural shift is a substantial change across the military and civilian sphere.

Steve

[Steve the Planner]

Mike's got it:

During the night patrols, we stopped in at houses for several purposes:

1. Establish our presence.
2. Spot-check to make sure our food was going to the families.
3. Provide medical care to kids.
4. Covertly talk to our trusted sources.

As time passed, the women started telling us where the bombs were planted and where the safehouses were.

But how do we apply the same around an Afghan landscape in the areas that matter.

Entropy, as usual, is johnny-on-the-spot with data. I note that Iraq's PDS system for some 30 million registered people was handled through only two dozen centrally placed facilities (with satellite re-distribution). I assume the diffuse nature of Afghanistan will not lend itself to so central and efficeint a process (at all).

Funny thing about the corrolation of British colonial strategies. The more "far out," the more the pressure to "quarter troops" in people's houses, eat their scarce rations, and generally make yourself an undesirable lot.

And the huge cost of all that inefficiency, first to protect the settlers from Indians and those pesky Frenchies, was unbearable to the Brits at home (during a recession), forcing them to impose those draconian taxes on the colonials to pay for the cost of their highly inefficient defenses, thus, leading to a revolt. Isn't that a reasonable snapshot?

History as a guidepost?

[Entropy]

I'm posting this here - mods if you think this should be in a new thread, feel free to move it.

Frontline came out with a new episode on the "Taliban" (actually they are mostly HiG) which is quite good. An afghan reporter "embeds" with the insurgents in Baglan province and follows and films them on a mission to ambush coalition forces with IED's, RPG's etc. Provides some valuable insight on fighter TTP and motivation. All in all, well worth the time to watch.