What Are You Currently Reading? 2013

[jcustis]

Carl,

Re: night raids is an interesting question. As a tactic, I think we developed a fetish for them in Iraq, but I was always on the ground with the unit that had to deal with the mess left in their wake. Yes, the resources and brainpower dedicated to them sucked a lot of energy away from making other tactical/operational investments.

We got our share of bad guys, which is necessary in COIN, but the sh#t stirred up in the wake of dry holes did more harm than good. There is a lot I can't discuss that would really make you shake your head.

It didn't even have to be night raids though. I finally got around to watching Nat Geo's "Battleground Afghanistan", and while I'm not trying to second guess the planning of the young captain that led his men to disrupt and disturb so many Afghan families as they patrolled in the wee hours, I would have employed a totally different approach. It would have required more resources that may not have been made available though.

On the note of the district police problems, we experienced similar issues with a corrupt DCOP. The problems were exacerbated, in my opinion, by issues at the Provincial level with the PCOP, some security advisor named Shazzy (IIRC), and the PG himself. Individual actions by those characters, framed against the overall structural problems we faced in everything ANSF, made advances in ANSF development very hard to come by.

When you have to navigate the issues of a DCOP extorting protection money from the ducant owners in the bazaar, while also trying to keep the police patrolmen engage and just doing their job, it takes away from training, intel work, targeting, etc.

The one blessing to the removal of our DCOP was his replacement. He kicked ass and was a 8+ on a scale of 10. We were just lucky, however.

You just brought back a flood of frustration that I'd repressed and didn't know I was sorta still holding down. I imagine there are a ton of us who have bottled up a lot of that conflict because it was so frustrating and hollow to spend 7-8 months there and leave with things essentially the same as when you arrived. We increased the raw metric of the number of ANSF on the ground, but I doubt it is translating into more security. I need to read up on VSO and see how that is doing.