Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
My point is that the commander doesn't know what he doesn't know. The job of the staff is not to merely validate and inform what the commander cares about, particularly when those types of operations aren't being particularly effective.
That's certainly true and I admit my comments were a tad simplistic (for the sake of brevity). Ideally, a Commander and J2 will work together and the J2 will help the Commander explore options, identify intelligence gaps, etc. Unfortunately, that kind of collaboration is too often absent.

And one can try to make an intellectual separation (many do) between "COIN" and "CT"; but that is kind of like the difference between rifles and bullets; or farts and bad smells.
While there is certainly a lot of commonality I think there are substantial differences in relative priority with CT more at the kinetic end. From an intel perspective that means comparatively more resources will be allocated to targeting, HVI's, etc. Allocation of resources can make all the difference.

Most men who we slap the "terrorist" brand on are waging an insurgency in their home country. When they take those acts of terrorism to attack the populace or government of a totally separate country, one has to do the causal analysis to ask the question "why."
You'll notice I don't use that term with Afghanistan and I do realize that a lot of intel people (especially the junior ones) do and call anyone who opposes us "terrorists"
which makes me cringe. Of course, one gets that from Commanders and others as well and it's a difficult notion to disabuse once set.

I realize the answer to the question "why" has been packaged up and handed to us up front by a bunch of politicians; but (to link this to other threads on Operational Design) when you are given a mission you have a duty to analyze the problem handed to you as well as the specific solution set you are asked to employ. And sometimes the answer is you go back to the boss and tell him he has it wrong, he's asked you to do the wrong thing, and here is why. Maybe he tells you "interesting, but just do what I told you in the first place," but at least you will have done your duty.
Agreed. Part of the problem here though is that ignorance on things Afghanistan is not confined to intelligence. When MG Flynn talked about the difficulty in scraping together basic demographic, economic and other information for a single province, it did not surprise me at all there was so little information available. The call to obtain that kind of information is nothing new - in fact it's mentioned in almost any report on the subject going back several years.

But identifying a need for information and obtaining the information are different animals. The problem of actually acquiring that kind of local information is extremely difficult since it requires people on the ground for extended periods of time that have the trust of local elites. That's not easy in Afghanistan where locals have an inherent distrust of outsiders (especially foreigners) and the local relations are very complex and in constant flux. It's not enough to understand one village or valley, you have to understand the adjacent villages and valleys not only to figure out the local interactions, but to ensure you aren't being played to settle a local conflict. We are still feeling the repercussions of the latter in places like Konar and Afghans have a long history of using outsiders to settle local disputes in their favor. So to fulfill this information requirement requires a lot of people on the ground for an extended period of time or a few academics working over decades - which not easy in a war zone. The intel function has few resources at its disposal to do that kind of extensive on-the-ground collection and those resources are concentrated elsewhere because of those PIR's I keep talking about. This is one reason the HTT's were created and it's kind of odd they aren't even mentioned in MG Flynn's report.

Prior to 1979 we had academics who went to Afghanistan and studied the populations. Louis Dupree is perhaps the best known American, but there are others. Of course, once the anti-Soviet Jihad began everything changed and that historic work has not been replicated except in a very few cases. Still, it represents some of the best - and only - information on locals we have.

So anyway, the question is how can we get this information? MG Flynn's report seems to suggest we'll use US troops for that which is fine as long as one understands the limitations.

Sometimes you have to tell people what they don't want to hear.
Well, sir, then this might be one of those times!

Your characterization of Loya Jirga's is not accurate. They are not "democratic" because they are composed of elites and, most often, headed by whoever is in power. Since they are composed of elites, it would be impossible to put it beyond Karzai's manipulation, especially considering Loya Jirga's have historically be used as tools to legitimize the decisions of those at the head of government. In fact, that's exactly what Karzai plans to do - he announced after "winning" the election that he'll hold a Loya Jirga before this summer's parliamentary elections, though he didn't say if it would be a Constitutional Loya Jirga or something else.

A Loya Jirga also will not put Haqqani or Omar in government or any of their leaders beyond the sympathizers that currently exist in small numbers in the parliament. Haqqani, Omar and the other opposition leaders have clearly stated they will not negotiate or participate in any kind of negotiation or communal decisionmaking apparatus until all foreign forces are off of Afghan soil. That is a position they are unlikely to change except in extraordinary circumstances.

A Loya Jirga could be useful to fulfill its traditional purpose - which is legitimizing constitutional changes. The biggest flaw in the current government, in my opinion, is that it is over-centralized and gives the President too much power over the provinces by controlling the governorships as well as the flow resources through the ministries. A more federalized, distributed system based more on local governance would be preferable, though that also carries some significant downsides because one man's legitimate local leader is another man's tribal warlord.

Anyway, for more on Loya Jirga's read this and the source documents, particularly the Hanifi piece, which is informative but also entertaining for it's serious Gramsci slant.

Finally, I'll relate one intel community failure I find particularly galling:

The guy who wrote the post I linked to above runs a very useful site called Afghanistan Analyst. The first thing you'll find there is an Afghanistan bibliography which is very extensive and continually updated. To my knowledge, no one in our government has bothered to acquire all the publications on that bibliography, much less make them accessible over NIPR, SIPR and JWICS for analysts. Getting that done would be a minimal effort compared to the billions we are spending. It would require a few months, one or two people who know their way around a library, some TDY money to acquire some documents hidden in archives around the world, and someone to digitize the publications. It ain't rocket science and it should have been done eight years ago. That bibliography should have been created and maintained by someone in government (CIA or State probably) and not as a side project for a grad student who's dissertation and research isn't even on Afghanistan.

So, sir, since I have your ear and since you've got eagles and are in Kabul, maybe that is something you could make happen? It's a small start and much of the information is likely historic, but it would provide a good foundation and a base of understanding.