Why are we still leading missions, instead of supporting Afghans conduct them?

[carl]

Besides, sometimes the insurgent is right and the government is wrong; when we force a victory by the wrong side we may serve our interests in the near term, but the long term costs of such forced solutions selected, shaped, and executed by outsiders are coming at a growing cost in the current info tech environment.

Is this one of those times where the insurgent is right and the government wrong?

[Bob's World]

Is this one of those times where the insurgent is right and the government wrong?

Carl,

We can agree that neither of us want to live in a Taliban-governed Afghanistan; but if I were a Pashtun I sure as hell would not want to live in a Northern Alliance-governed Afghanistan either.

We have, by our very presence and nature of our engagement, enabled Karzai and the Northern Alliance guys to be much more self-serving than if we had let them sort it out for themselves. There is no way they could have produced the current constitution with it's codified exclusion of anyone seen as contrary by Karzai is a deathknell for there ever being any kind of stability, as half of the populace not represented by the Northern Alliance has absolutely no alternative but to conduct illegal challenges to the current regime or live in powerless poverty.

Karzai has made his bed though, and once we jump out of it to run home I suspect he will find it hard to get a good night's sleep in it. My concern is not for Karzai and his cronies though, it is for those much lower who we have convinced to put their faith in us. The big guys will take the money and run, but the little guys will suffer hard.

Unless.

The big unless is unless we stop backing one side to the exclusion of the other and instead take a more neutral role to oversee a negotiated settlement that leads to shared governance under a new constitution. What happens after that? Who knows, but at least we will have give those who trusted us at the local level a fighting chance to avoid a vengeful backlash.

Sadly, collaborators rarely fare well from any history of any conflict I have ever read.

[Bob's World]

Historical parallel:

Following WWI the US/Wilson went to Paris and fought for 14 points. The Brits and French thought all 14 were silly idealistic drivel. But they were not above using our naive idealism to their advantage.

Point 5. "A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined."

As the vultures loomed over the spoils of the destroyed Ottoman Empire, the Brits in particular argued that as big fans of Self-Determination it was essential for European powers to establish control over the Ottoman Empire in order to help them prepare for self-governance. They saw it as a guilt-free way to turn the region into colonies. Our well intended ideals were twisted and used for the selfish gains of our partners. We were suckers, and though offered our shared, declined as we did not want to commit to a large military presence in the region.

In Afghanistan we made a big deal about war lords and the decentralized nature of the government that we saw as the root of the problem. Karzai jumped on that, and in the name of "centralized government" he got a constitution produced that made him a de facto King; and got us to commit to building an Army and Police under his direct control and dedicated to the suppression of that segment of the populace excluded by his plan. Evil genius knows few bounds. Apparently nether does our ability to fall again and again for having our ideals twisted by our partners into tools of oppression.

[Dayuhan]

The big unless is unless we stop backing one side to the exclusion of the other and instead take a more neutral role to oversee a negotiated settlement that leads to shared governance under a new constitution.

Will they negotiate a settlement and share governance, or will they fight until someone wins, with the winner taking complete control and stomping the loser?

Given recent history and the prevailing political culture, which is more likely?

[Bob's World]

Will they negotiate a settlement and share governance, or will they fight until someone wins, with the winner taking complete control and stomping the loser?

Given recent history and the prevailing political culture, which is more likely?

I don't know. I just know what will happen if we only support one side enough to create an unsustainable "decent interval" and then leave.

Better to try what might not work but creates a chance at an enduring stability than to try what we know is unlikely to create an enduring stability but that might create a narrow window of "success" that we can withdraw through.

[jcustis]

They can do it their way, and their way will probably be better than ours.

In my humble opinion, their way may have its own unique effect, but it is not better, when framed against our impatience, the context of national policy timelines, and our overall work ethic.

To second a little bit on what I think Ken is saying, along the careerism vein, getting the ANSF out there in the lead requires substantial investments in utilizing the right leadership to get the job done. Sacrificing a rock star(s) to leave a command to do the job forces a commander to run the risk of his own command not performing as well during the deployment.

You could attribute that to a commander simply wanting to complete the mission and do it well, but we are not even effectively accomplishing any mission over there right now, IMO. We are simply holding the various threads together until the next team can come in and take hold...and they then do the same until their rotation comes to a close. The metrics for success shift, morph, and change between unit rotations not so much from a calculated process of analyzing the problem set and establishing good measures of effectiveness and performance, but too often from pet peeves, parochialism, and our own cultural hang-ups. The larger problem anyway is that we have not established MOE/MOP for ANSF that make any sense, in the context of the policies of GIRoA or the MOD. Put another way, even if we are screwed up for not structuring our fight properly, it doesn't matter because the attention should not be on us, as has been brought up here.

Mission success, put another way, is just so arbitrary that it's hard to lay a bulk of blame on careerism. I think the larger culprit is our collective impatience. I don't think it's wrong to be impatient, and although the MOEs/MOPs tend to be shewed and not reflect any sensible way forward, we as Americans expect to see results...something...anything. The ANSF move at a decidedly different pace that even drove me up the wall at times

This sort of impatient rears its ugly head when you sit back and take a look at the cycle of new programs and initiatives that are paraded out by the RCs. It can be dizzying at times to try to keep up with it, and lays bare the fact that unless there is a cohesive plan at the highest levels, small unit commanders who own the battlespace and do the row hoeing waste a ton of time trying to grasp what the next greatest idea is to come down the chute (and one that often doesn't reflect their tactical reality).

Internal to the ANSF, nepotism, graft, and corruption are rampant, at least according to the context that I viewed it. Some may say, well, that is THEIR way, and I agree that it is important to be able to step back and look at it all with bit of patience, cultural understanding, etc., but when you have a private in a platoon of Afghan Border Police who (by virtue of his family connections) effectively runs the platoon over the sergeant who is already there (because the officer is not there, BTW) and directs the post-standing rotation to where his tribe mates rarely leave the COP while other soldiers spend all the time down at the TCP, there's a problem. It's their way, but that way grinds and tears at any fabric of military efficiency that is to be had. Add in a dose of angst over lack of pay, or the graft that comes along with it when the commander takes his cut of the food stipend, and we get the understandable desertion rates and ghost solider problems that we face. Someone still has to get outside the wire tomorrow and patrol, and our boys are there anyway, so they saddle up and get 'er done.

We haven't been at this for all that long, in terms of ANSF development. Granted, we have been mentoring and employing militias for a long time, wearing shemaghs and long beards, and have worked our SOF elements into the mix with a variety efforts, but we have not been at the business of establishing cohesive armed formations, capable of employing C2, that can be integrated into the large coalition effort, as long as we had by the time the OIF surge took hold. The ISF had a military tradition and framework that was light years ahead of Afghanistan, so I only put the Iraqis out there because I think it is too easy to measure our success there and get easily frustrated when it doesn't work in OEF.

[Demon Fox]

I'm currently working as an S2 mentor for an ANA Commando battalion. I see this problem starkly with the SpecOps unit currently assigned as their FID partners. Their OPSEC measures are so restrictive, that the Commando leadership has very little input on operations and planning - much less know where they're going when they get on the helo. Dislosure is limited to the ground tactical plan. They get to see imagery of the target village, but are never told where the village is located or the HVT names.

I understand their concerns due to the rash of FID partners turning on their trainers. They even had an incident of their own recently, but they must take that leap of faith and allow them to plan and run their own missions and be given the information and resources to do it.

The problem extends into equipment employment as well. For example, the Commandos have a slew of Etrex GPSs sitting in their arms room as part of their Tashkil (MTOE). As far as I've been able to assess, the Commandos have received no training on this equipment (as well as simple map and compass) and their US FID partners do not allow it for fear they will plot their coordinates on the objective and discover their location. This is not how to do FID, folks.

My team did it plenty in Iraq and we never had OPSEC issues. Our FID partners were thankful to us that they were finally given a measure of trust to be equal participants in operations.

I found it interesting the day after the news broke about us killing bin Laden, several of the Commandos stated "the next you invade Pakistan, we want to go with you!" They were serious. They KNOW who the real enemy is here.

v/r

DF

[TDB]

I too was unable to watch the documentary, might have to find an illicit way of downloading it. I did however read an article linked on the SWJ main site, as someone has posted above, the rejection of local/human intel is quite alarming. Not to mention that human geography seems to be almost ignored, not exactly big news as everything I seem to be reading is pointing to the U.S trying to apply a fairly rigid COIN strategy throughout the country with little consideration for the situation on the ground. Evens in Nuristan (Pech valley) and Kunar (Korengal) have shown this, I wonder if people have been aware that the populations in these area (or anywhere across this part of the border with Pakistan) have rejected any form of central government for centuries if they'd even have bothered. Not that i'm saying that trying to conduct state building in these areas in a fulorn hope, i'm saying that going about the way the U.S/ISAF have hasn't worked and only result in a withdrawal (from the areas noted above, or at least as far as I'm aware).