ISAF continues to reposition forces closer to the civilian population centers as part of their “population centric” strategy. They’ve set off a flurry of activity putting up blast walls, T barriers, concertina wire and Hesco counter mobility obstacles. Only none of this frantic building of security barriers is happening anywhere near Afghan population centers – it is all happening on the Big Box Fob’s. General McChrystal is leading by example – at the ISAF HQ in Kabul last week I noted that the finishing touches are going into a custom built, specially designed, multi-million dollar blast wall which is located inside the new giant T barrier wall, which was built inside the outer T barrier wall after the last VBIED attack on ISAF HQ. The original multi-million dollar T barrier wall was built inside the Hesco wall which itself is backed by a locally made rock and concrete wall shortly after a rocket landed near the ISAF HQ in 2006. It is hard to square the frantic pace of installing three to four layers of blast walls on Big Box FOB’s with all the talk of securing the population centers.
As I am writing this post I am concurrently trying to reroute a client around the almost daily fire fight on the vital Kabul to Jalalabad road. Last night we had a mortar round impact in Jalalabad City which has seen more IED’s and indirect fire attacks in the past 5 weeks then in the previous five years. In Kabul rumors are flying around the city about the relative safety of internationals, both on the road and in their compounds. The Taliban and other bad actors are not the concern – it is the Afghan Security Forces which are currently making life most uncomfortable for the international community. Last week, the Afghan Vice and Virtue police raided almost every western restaurant in Kabul. They also raided a gigantic private secured living compound called Green Village because it (like every other secure compound in Kabul) had a bar. That these places were all licensed, legal and have been operating for years is a given, and apparently irrelevant. The eastern European waitresses from one of the nicer restaurants were arrested and taken for medical examination “to ascertain whom they might have been sleeping with, police officials said.” Yeah right, CSI Kabul – I bet they have the ability to “ascertain whom they might have been sleeping with.” Adding insult to injury, the French owner of L’Atmosphère, who has been in business since 2004 and once paid more in Afghan taxes than any other entity in the country, is reported to be in jail after protesting too much during the raid on his fine establishment.
It is the Kabul ANP who stand accused of murdering the American security operative, Louis Maxwell, after he saved 17 of his UN colleagues during an attack on their guesthouse on 28 October 2009. He had a Heckler and Koch G36K assault rifle, which is worth a fortune here. He was shot repeatedly (he was already badly wounded defending his charges) at point blank range by an ANP soldier who wanted the gun. Apparently, CSI Kabul lacks the requisite skills to determine if an American contractor, armed and sanctioned by the UN and acting in accordance to his contractual duties, was killed at point blank range by one of their officers.
Paladinsix, at the Knights of Afghanistan blog, has an excellent post from inside Kabul on the effects of endemic corruption. What he is describing (and I can attest that everything he is saying is 100% on target) is a concerted effort by the Kabul authorities to drive westerners out. Which is exactly what the Taliban is attempting to do with multiple attacks on USAID implementation partners in Kandahar and Lashkar Gah. To date, the only Americans to be killed in both these efforts is Louis Maxwell – the Taliban only killed Afghan security guards and local bystanders. Does that give you some perspective on the current threat level for internationals living in Kabul?
Our fundamental problem in Afghanistan is that we are fighting on behalf of a central government which is not considered legitimate by a vast majority of the population. When we squeeze this government it tends to squeeze back, which is exactly why all of a sudden the vice and virtue police considered western restaurants to be “centers of immorality.” Just as a side, the consumption of adult beverages is a very popular pastime with the adult males in Afghanistan. The liberal canard that the use of alcohol is offensive to Islamic societies, like all liberal canards, is based on willful ignorance by our elites and their lap dog main stream media. Alcohol is not illegal for westerners and has always been part of the male Afghan social scene since before Alexander the Great invaded. Yet unlike Alexander, we have a lot of carrots to dole out to the Afghan government in support of our objectives, but do not have one stick – not one we can use to encourage good behavior. As a result men and women I have known for years and who have operated here effectively are for the first time ever planning to go home and stay. There is only so much risk a person can stomach, and the risk for the thousands of outside the wire contractors working in Afghanistan is not only increasing exponentially, it is coming from Afghans on both sides of the conflict.
The civilian reconstruction sector is not the only portion of the international effort being adversely affected by the failure to develop a functional Afghan government – the rot is spreading from the top down with the dangerous contagion of plummeting morale. Herschel Smith at the Captain’s Journal linked to a depressing report from Afghanistan by journalist Ben Shaw, which showed up in the comments section of his latest post. The first paragraph:
As a journalist (and combat veteran) currently embedded with US forces in Afghanistan, I have found that roughly 95% of the troops on the ground in no way believe in their mission, have no confidence that their efforts will bring about lasting change to Afghan security, stability, governance, or a decreased influence of radicalism. In truth, they fight simply to stay alive and want nothing more than to go home.
Napoleon said that in war “the moral is to the physical as three is to one.” This is the consequence of fronting a government which abuses the population and international guests alike. If the ISAF soldiers were methodically clearing areas of Taliban and then assisting in the establishment of law and order, governance and services which serve the people, and that the people appreciate, we would be achieving moral ascendancy. But that is impossible because the vast majority of troops are based on FOB’s and never leave them, and there is no legitimate government with which to entrust areas we have cleared. So now that we are unable to do what is important, the unimportant has become important and the mark of military virtue is the enforcement of petty policies like the mandatory wearing of eye protection at all times while outdoors.
We have pulled out of the Korengal Valley of Kunar Province as part of the new strategy to focus on population centers. Yet all the new building and all the new surge forces are being shoehorned onto Big Box FOB’s, where they are forming fusion cells to fuse the information generated by the 3 or 4 existing fusion cells in each brigade TOC in an attempt to make sense out of the avalanche of “story boards” and “white papers” being generated by thousands of officers and former officer contractors who are locked into FOB’s, but still feel compelled to work 14 hours a day. The surge in building activity is confined exclusively to ISAF bases and there are no indications, not one, that the military is going to shift into a “population centric” posture by putting troops out within the population 24/7 to provide security. This is deja vu all over again, it is exactly the same dilemma we faced in Iraq before the surge there. As usual, there is one segment of the population which is not fooled by story boards and white papers authored by their seniors – the troops. And so morale is apparently now a problem. While the Taliban make videos as they swarm over our latest abandoned base our troops are facing this;
As a recent example, I filmed approximately 75 minutes of combat footage, knowingly exposed myself to concentrated enemy fire, and learned two days ago that if I post this footage, the Soldiers on film will be charged and/or relieved for uniform violations, improper wear of personal protective equipment (ballistic glasses, fire-retardant gloves, etc), and that low-level commanders have already begun this process. In an attempt to preserve the careers of the Soldiers I am trying to advocate, I am unable to tell (or show) the US public what they’re experiencing and what they think of it. The military only wants good news to flow from embedded journalists not facts.
There are huge costs hidden behind this kind of pass the buck, risk averse, stupidity. Risk aversion is expensive, not for the bureaucrat, but for the taxpayer and it leads to fiscal insanity. For example, was it cost effective or even necessary to shut down Europe to all air travel because of the recent volcano eruption in Iceland? Richard Fernandez at the Belmont Club posted this yesterday:
As volcanoes go Eyjafjallajökull was accounted by Icelandic volcanologists as a weary old man. It’s recent eruption was unremarkable.
Ash from the volcano’s plume has reached an altitude of only about 10 kilometers (six miles), not high enough to reach the stratosphere images taken by the Eumetsat satellite concluded that Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull has spewed 2,000 tons of sulphur dioxide into the air. Pinatubo spouted 10,000 times that amount.
So the economy loses about 4 Billion to the over reaction of bureaucrats in England who honestly believe they must drive down risk to near zero no matter what the cost. Do you remember all the airliners that were damaged by flying Pacific routes after the eruption of Mt Pinatubo? Yeah me neither – there were none and there would have been none if we had ignored the British “experts.” British “experts” are not confining their depredations to the global economy, this observation by Max Hastings is fair warning about where our military is heading:
We are in danger of emasculating the armed forces we claim to love so much, by extending Health and Safety protection to the battlefield. I have no doubt that the coroners who preside at inquests on soldiers killed in Afghanistan are compassionate men. But senior officers regard them as a menace to the Services’ real interests.
Could we expect otherwise? You want demoralization- watch AFN commercials for a while.
The modern middle class all volunteer careerist military isn’t up to large scale long term operations. It can do short spurts of activity very well but it’s own internal organizational requirements- family, promotions, gongs, civilian education, retention, recruiting, fighting with the other services for budgets- mitigate against putting lean dedicated forces into the field.
The result is a force, that pre “surge” put ~ 20,000 people on each of Bagram, Bastion/Leatherneck and Kandahar, sold as “under resourced”. It has less good infantry than it needed but it certainly wasn’t under resourced.
At $1 million plus per soldier per year- probably $ 5 million per infantryman and about $ 40 million per dead Taliban there can be nothing that could be remotely described as victory. We don’t need a surge- we need a thorough culling of the big bases and a move to CT from COIN. Then we can afford to stay the generation this may take at an affordable cost and put our Afghan allies feet to the fire to sort themselves out.
Great post and great comment about AFN and what it tells us about the force.
“Without vision the people perish.”
This General Mattis seems like the man that is needed: excerpt from DoD Buzz…
These wars will be fought among the people we’re going to have to deal on human levels with human beings and not think that technology or tactics by targetry will solve war. The likelihood that most wars will be of the irregular variety (I’ve noticed Mattis tends to avoid using the descriptive term counterinsurgency when discussing current and future wars) will demand troops with cultural savvy who know when to shift gears from one form of war to another. War is a human endeavor and so defense planning must focus on the human factors, he said.”
Your “April Fools” entry got me started on what has been an awareness for far too long a time: Years ago, when the game got started in that rotten land of walls, I told my young sons we played it wrong from the get-go! Told them to watch how we dealt with the farmers and their big cash crop, opium!
Your words suggest defeat; in that my hunch being–most soldiers on the ground have now created “short-timer” calendars as they erect secure walls, build new structures, air fields, etc.
You want a Commander in Chief who is a warrior: Sorry, you got a guy who instead went to a law school.
He hides behind words and when he can, throws words out to injure and control others. I know, in court there are always bailiffs to protect these tender people from real danger.
My hunch is that besides MikeBinMike, others like the former General Wesley Clark, have special, little hidden rooms where pics of Obama-Mao are hung on a wall (next to a small mirror) above a little table whereupon candles and other magical items/totems, etc. rest to which they go–now on a daily basis, to recite mantras of hope and steadfastness in belief. (author Eric Hoffer is again in vogue!)
Bush and his people also faltered way back when (terribly, I might add…oh that Bremer with his button down shirt and rep tie…so smart a fellow!).
This problem goes way deeper than our military leadership. I wouldn’t now want to be the third and last SEAL who is standing for Court Martial in Iraq.
Obama is our metrosexual man-child following dreams.
I’m for bringing the troops home now! We don’t have a leader (nor a Congress) who wants to win, who seeks victory over those who wish to destroy us. Our treasury is empty!
What’s to happen to all those great walls we’re now building in Afghanistan, not to mention what we have built and store that rests inside?
All for a people who dress via the 9th century; who wipe their ass with the left hand while eating with the right as they watch the national crop of opium produce pretty little deadly flowers, year after year after year creating addicts and thieves worldwide!
We’re to implement a “community organizing” game with these people (known as COIN for some)?
MikeBinMike, snap to and give Obama–your CIC, a sharp salute!
It’s April fools…dummy…and we’re it!
This is truly disheartening to hear. Thank you Mr Lynch for your candor.
1. “Riding this one out until someone pulls the plug.”
2. That’s been my fear.
3. Been there, done that.
4. Looking forward to some fresh faces in the club: “Veterans of Campaigns in Third World Hellholes that We Threw Under the Bus.”
5. Survival in the Vietnamese reeducation camps was a matter of dealing with indifferent feeding schedules and lack of medical care.
6. In A-stan, those that were bullied into it or bought into our vision through idealism or cupidity will be dealt with more directly.
7. The Afghans, Vietnamese (and Iraqis) have one debilitating deficiency: they don’t vote in US elections.
8. So you have geezers like me nattering about crap that went down forty years ago and wheels turning and stuff.
9. You folks will get to shuffle around in my shoes when the next nabob gets a case of the ass and a bright idea.
V/R JWest
A link to your Free Range International post will go onto the L.A. Times Pressmen’s blog later today.
Thanks for explaining the whole situation. You delivered a punch, but did so first by detailing the entire situation and kept the focus on the story. I appreciate your responsible delivery of some very bad news. I don’t think the public minds bad news, awful news, but obviously it has to be presented with examples and documentation of what has happened, and with an eye to “What if?” The article was well crafted, examples well inserted, all leading up to your conclusion.
At best one could call President Obama’s approach to Aghanistan lukewarm. But in my recollection, from his (short) time as a freshman senator questioning General Petraeus, his distaste for conflict was palpable. That he seems to make a decision faster about GM than strategies in the Afghanistan sharply marks his comfort zone. None of this brings me any comfort, especially with an all out drug war and annihilation just south of the border in Mexico. We are stretched too thin, and our politicians too tepid or politically correct to do something about a situation that has shot over into the border states.
Keep the posts coming as you can. May the Taj remain safe. As the fighting season starts again, and as the danger grows, we all have one thing in mind: be safe.
Perceptive. Well written. As usual.
This puppy is unwinnable.
Just a little comment about what could be an ROE/directive/whatever command on sunglasses–or protective eyewear, being worn, via that picture where an American, walking hand in hand with a native (doing “community organizing” or is it COIN):
Back here, in the land of the free, home of the brave…have you noticed, how over the years, our local police department personnel, those cops out on the beat…community protectors, all…seem to have similar sunglass style eyewear?
My joke has been while at the police academy, just prior to graduation, a guy comes into a room with a suitcase filled with sunglasses. He represents a company known as “Cops are Pricks Eye Wear, International.”
Recall the movie which made so much money for the now broken state of California’s governator, Arnold…”The Terminator.” So personal, so seductive…look into my eyes!
Yea, dark, foreboding sunglasses do make the man! On with our COIN, err…community organizing efforts.
Winning the hearts and minds, offering pens to schoolchildren, stopping the bombing of villages, building walls, roads, wells…gotta get those poppy seeds raised for those Americans and their bros, as one famous warrior or was that another who went to law school?…used to say: “Sooner, rather than later!”
Can’t wait till I see our returning vets hoist up their flag of “lest we forget” relating to their sacrifices!
“I feel your pain” works for me, how about you?
I just gotta add to my above posting:
Have you seen the new pictures in Juarez, Mexico where cops got ambushed and 7 killed? Look at them closely.
See the vehicles…look American, state of the art, great cop colors with the latest overhead light systems.
Note the cops standing around with weapons: Look para-miliatry to me, black uniforms with facial SWAT masks and semi-auto weapons at the ready. How about their sunglasses?
See the two female cops embracing each other, loaded up with tears and sensitive feelings for those still laying dead on the pavement.
Did America provide all those vehicles, arms, clothing…and methods to employ while going after narco…terrorists…or drug dealers…or simple businessmen in a “have and have” not society?
COIN in operation just south of our border? Community organizing at play here?
Arizona Governor signs bill, but before she does, our Dear Leader, Obama-Mao, trained sophist/lawyer of the “professional-warrior political class” badmouths the bill from the safety of Washington, D.C.
Racial profiling they shout is on the way!
At what point do you think we “men” will tell our women to shut up, sit down and be quiet? After which this problem with bad behavior by other men will be “directly addressed” via those who truly seek peace?
Was Sirhan Sirhan not a Palestinian when he shot Bobby Kennedy 40 plus years ago?
Let’s spend some more time debating what the meaning of “is” is…remember that gambit?
Not enough blood yet spilled; or from the wrong family is it?
Real men doing real work, yea that’s what this is all about!
I’m in RC-EAST. I’m not seeing a hardening of any of the fobs/cobs/op’s etc up here. JAF certainly hasn’t started building anything new, except a few b-huts and hard stands. Additionally, our guys up in the valley leave the wire daily to interact with the villagers in surrounding, and remote areas.
The Korengal situation is a circus, my peers and I are irritated with the decision to pull those guys out without a follow-on plan. I’m sure the guys that were in that valley are elated, however, the enemy that was confined to that valley is now spreading their fight a little further every day. Attacks across the AO have increased, many of them originating from the Korengal.
I can’t comment on the uniform issues, each commander will implement it liberally or to the extreme, as he sees fit. There is a sense of CYA around here, though. Engagements, and accidents are all scrutinized, IMO looking for someone to blame.
On the bright side, I have seen some progress by the ground forces in the valley. Valleys that used to be extremely hostile have simmered down to low or non-existent enemy activity levels. The enemy skulks, hides in caves, and launches inaccurate hit and run attacks on static locations, rarely meeting our forces in open combat. The enemy has resorted to intimidation, kidnapping, and other terror tactics in the valleys as well, further alienating themselves from the villagers.
Obama has been POTUS for 15 months . He has sent more troops, something that Bush refused to do for fear of hurting the election chances of McCain. Obama isn;t micro-managing this war, he knows better than to try, he listens to his battle field commanders. Afghans have never liked foreign armies in their country, with or without sunglasses. The ROE that people so complain about have resulted in far too many civilian casualties and the Afghans aren’t likely to forgive us for them or our attitude. The American military never fully comprehended the Puktanwali code and culture. Probably too late now to do anything, but not because of the last 15 months. We spent 20 grand (500 billion) on each and every Afghan and got diddly squat to show for it. If we had just given out 100 grand in debit cards to each Afghan family they would have loved us, and probably would have elected a Republican instead of Karzai.
In 15 months Afghanistan has gone from mildly uncomfortable and extremely difficult to bad to worse to completely unsaveable.
More troops was never the answer. George W Bush did not refuse to send more troops in order help McCain’s election chances during 2003-08 because John McCain was not campaigning for president during those years (he campaigned in 2000 and 2008).
President Obama is indeed micro-managing this war (although clearly not as micro or as armchair general as a Lyndon Johnson). Gen. David D. McKiernan requested more troops and was refused for good reasons. General McKiernan was then fired, by the Obama administration (in the person of Robert Gates), and replaced by Gen Stan McChrystal, who then promptly requested and got more troops. So much for listening to the battlefield commanders.
But again “more troops” was never the answer for Afghanistan, nor are “more troops” logistically sustainable in Afghanistan for the duration required of proper COIN strategies. General McKiernan, a career armor officer, can be forgiven somewhat for perhaps not understanding that. General McChrystal has no such excuse.
The Pashtu Afghans don’t seem to have had any such issues with the Arab terrorists and Pakistani Army being in their country circa 1990-2001, nor do they seem to have any real issues with the Arab and Pakistani terrorists that currently co-occupy much of their country along with the Coalition.
Who is complaining about the Talib/al-Q’s own rules of engagement? Who is complaining when the Talib/al-Q intentionally and repeatedly target mass numbers of civilians?
The American military never fully comprehended the American South’s culture, nor the culture of nazi Germany, nor that of Imperial Japan, nor that of the Communist world, nor that of dozens of smaller “cultures” over the last 250 odd years. Quite frankly I do not comprehend the culture or code of a seventh century Charles Manson or Abu Abbas, nor do I have any wish or need to do so. If their culture demands or openly calls for my death then the feeling is quite mutual.
15 months of stupidity is all it took to undo eight years of hard work in a hard place. This thing was still winnable until 15 months ago. Now the troops morale is shot, much of the civilian support has dried up or gone underground, and nobody but nobody wants to be in the last rifle company to evacuate the last big box fortress.
If we had given each and every Afghan a 100 grand debit card the Talib/al-Q would have confiscated each and every one of those cards and used them to buy weapons, to use on us.
===
Pop-centric my eye. Build big box bases around the handful of C-5 sized airstrips to protect the evacuation points. Because the helicopters of Saigon don’t have enough range this time.
CYCLES,
R
Tim awesome post Lot’s of meat in it as well.
Something pops up for me.Mcchrystal has “stated” he would like to see less foreign contractors there why.? Meanwhile a commenter on Michael yon’s face book stated that contractors was harming are efforts there,Dyncorp,FLUOR,USAID,KBR and others needed to go.?(a subtle hint).? And yet spring break 2010 has a item about work for pay that’s seems to work.Tim did a post about this I think.So why “blow this off” a form of this plan was used in Haiti to good effect.So why not there,? to simple for PowerPoint?. Now we have a power play in the making for karzai.Shut down restaurant,next contractors. More money for the Afghans I’m sure it’s for the people. Plus pushing Mcchrystal to keep down civilian deaths, night raids,maybe Mcchrystal is “fortifying” himself from karzai.
The reason there are too many contractors and too many soldiers is that many are a logistic and force protection burden who harm rather than help the NATO mission.
The problem with the campaign isn’t so much casualties but rather paying for an hugely expensive force with cash borrowed from China. Every person we send here mires us deeper in the quagmire.
NATO should be sending every soldier and civilian home whose commander can’t explain in detail why they are needed. There is too much make work on FOBs for staff officers and NCOs and too many people punching tickets.
The worst case scenario is that come this summer when the “surge” is complete and NATO log needs at their greatest that the Taliban will close the ground lines of communication and so limit the supply of fuel that the NATO force is stuck in it’s FOBs. Every unnecessary person increases the possibility that an attempt to cut the supply lines could work.
Even if its supplies are not destroyed or stolen the increase in log efforts will work against NATO as the Taliban will get increased funding from theft and extortion from the convoys.
Well be as it may, the contractor are becoming targets.There easy game.
Don’t let the sunglasses give you a bad impression of the officer pictured. I know him personally, and that company commander has had one of the most difficult years imaginable – daily dismounted patrols (his AO has no navigable roads, so his soldiers have walked to every OP, COP, and village) through some of the most unfriendly territory in Afghanistan, trying to sell something to the locals that they have absolutely no interest in buying. After a year of getting shot at daily, I think he’s earned the right not to have to squint while pretending to play nice with the locals (locals probably responsible for the death of his men, btw) for a photo op that was set up by his highers.
Babatim, you’re awesome simply because you know who Max Hastings it. I’ve grown up reading his dispatches and they’re all superb.
Bob Shepherd has been saying that Contractors could soon become fair game because a reaction in the west to a contractor dying is far smaller than that of an actual soldier. For example, there was great anger over the British soldiers gunned down by a disgruntled Afghan Police Officer but I doubt that there would have been a similar level of reaction if the Brits had been contractors.
Talking about sending folks home. How about banning Power Point bullet points. This would probably allow at least several hundred junior officers and almost all colonels to go home on day one.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?ref=todayspaper
Germany’s Stern magazine has posted the video of the Maxwell shooting.
Yeah! and I hear you have a AC130,and fast movers overhead. set out a IR stobe. (just to be safe).
Murph, saw the video, wish it was better 🙁 someone got him.
Ben Shaw has posted a major retraction regarding his comments.
http://byshaw1.blogspot.com/
Wow man, this is extremely helpful information, appreciated.
thanks for posting, this is gold.