"On War #325: How the Taliban Take a Village (Lind/Sexton)"

[Fuchs]

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/...indsexton.html

...
TALIBAN CAN CONTROL WITH FEW FIGHTERS

The Taliban method requires relatively few of their own personnel. Its strength is in the local subversion of the most basic levels of village organization and life. It is also a decentralized approach.
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[IntelTrooper]

This about sums it up:

US and Afghan forces must also devise and utilize tactics to fight outside and inside the village. This requires true light infantry and real counterinsurgency tactics employed by troops on the ground, not read from a “new” COIN manual by leadership in a support base. The tactics must entail lightly equipped and fast- moving COIN forces that go into villages and know how to properly interact with locals and identify Taliban insurgents. They must have the ability to take their time and stay in areas they have identified at the local level as worth trying to take back. Being moved from place to place and using armored vehicles while hardly reengaging local leadership will not work. Targeting identified high value targets will only result in the “whack-a-mole” syndrome. It’s demoralizing for US and Afghan troops, the American public, and the Afghans who just want to live in peace. A light infantry force conducting specialized reconnaissance in villages, and using proven tactics like trained visual trackers to follow insurgents into and out of villages, proper ambush techniques on foot outside the village, and knowing the local village situation are the key. Infantry tactics should use also vertical envelopment of Taliban fighters by helicopter and parachute to cut off avenues of escape. Troops should foot patrol into villages at night, talk with and document compounds and inhabitants for later analysis, and have a secure patrol base locally from which to operate. Mega bases or FOBS are only for support and units and tactics should be decentralized.

[flagg]

This about sums it up:

That sounds a lot like Fire Force/Selous Scouts redux adjusted to suit the local AO to this part-timer...or not?

[Ken White]

and Kiwis were doing in many units in Wiet Nam. Nothing new, just takes decent training and will...

[jmm99]

I don't think the Taliban have the concept of rotations.

What I found interesting is how the Taliban adapted the three-sided village structure to their own purposes by subversion and infiltration. Use what is locally available before importing goods - so to speak.

Regards

Mike

[slapout9]

and Kiwis were doing in many units in Wiet Nam. Nothing new, just takes decent training and will...

Ken, it is not exactly the same but it seem close to the old Mike Force concept to protect the Strategic Hamlets.....yes,no,maybe?

[Fuchs]

Forced quartering isn't the same as quartering and thereby making the village rich (which after all isn't expensive).
Keep in mind that AQ intermingled with Pashtuns like that; the Arabs weren't much less foreign to them than us.

'Sexual relationships' isn't exactly the same as marriages.

[jcustis]

That sounds a lot like Fire Force/Selous Scouts redux adjusted to suit the local AO to this part-timer...or not?

Concur...

The context sounds remarkably a lot like activity in the Tribal Trust Lands during that war as well.

Food and blankets left outside living quarters or in guest quarters is akin to village women walking outside of the kraal with food and drink, headed to the terrs who holed up nearby as they made transit through the area.

The techniques for impressing a village under the Taliban thumb are also very similar.

Many similarities. Rhodesian security forces, like ISAF, could have won that conflict, had they resorted to unrestricted warfare. They didn't though, and Rhodesia became Zimbabwe. Hmmm, I wonder what we can learn from that aspect.

ETA: i think it is an excellent piece, and although I will need to compare the analysis against analysis from others, this is just the sort of framework that I need to add to training that I am setting up. Good find! I have a thousand more questions for Sexton, and I wish there was a readily available point of contact for him. Anyone have any ideas, besides sending snail mail to Lind?

[Fuchs]

I had sometime around 02-05 an idea. Well, one that's interesting in this context...

I wondered whether any army would be daring and flexible enough to quarter its troops not in forts. Foreign forces could have attempted to exploit hospitality by quartering (correct term) its troops in civilian houses (households without daughters/women at age 10-25) on a volunetary basis.

This hospitality would have required the hosts to contribute to security and their advantage would have been construction efforts (dam, road) and services (school, doctor incl. basic veterinarian function, immunization) for the settlement as well as fertilizer gifts for hosts (more than they need) and the like.
(Sooner or later, the soldiers would have lived in pairs in family house extensions.)


That was of course a VERY daring idea because we employ barely adult 18-20 year olds instead of exclusively men in our armies. This produces troubles even in garrison back at home...


Oh, and before I forget; imagine Western armies not outlawing relationships (marriage) with indigenous people. Unthinkable...soldiers actually creating reliable bonds in the region...unsuitable for a modern army in a foreign country...at the same time an ace for the TB!
(I bet that many macho soldiers would love the role behaviour of Afghan wives...kinda Russian mail order brides.)

[tequila]

Oh, and before I forget; imagine Western armies not outlawing relationships (marriage) with indigenous people. Unthinkable...soldiers actually creating reliable bonds in the region...unsuitable for a modern army in a foreign country...at the same time an ace for the TB!
(I bet that many macho soldiers would love the role behaviour of Afghan wives...kinda Russian mail order brides.)

Hmmm ... in what world do you think American soldiers and Marines would be interested in marrying Afghan women?

As for allowing sexual relations, I think this would be an excellent idea if we wanted to be thrown out of Afghanistan in the quickest and most embarassing way possible.

[slapout9]

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/...indsexton.html

This is basic UW a fast approaching forgotten art thanks to COIN Psycho-Syndrome. This is what we should have been doing, indeed we did do it on a grander scale in 2001.

[IntelTrooper]

This is basic UW a fast approaching forgotten art thanks to COIN Psycho-Syndrome. This is what we should have been doing, indeed we did do it on a grander scale in 2001.

But, Slapout, if we did something like this recommends, soldiers might be in danger! They might get attacked, they might get their supplies cut off, they might have to use locally available food, weapons, and ammunition, and they might not have readily available access to Gatorade!

Surely, all of those things are much more important than creating any viable long-term solutions to instability in rural areas of Afghanistan...