Five Machineguns
The other day The Bot and I were talking about Greg Mortenson (author of Three Cups of Tea). Mortenson has been court ordered to fork over a million bucks for managing donor money like a GSA mandarin. He is also guilty of fabricating tales of derring-do in his mission to build schools using the transformative method of drinking tea with village elders. I never believed a word of it so I never read the book but am surprised to learn that Mortenson was paid to lecture senior military officers who should have been able to recognize this fraud a mile away. If the military wants to talk to experts on getting schools built, staffed, and funded they should be talking to the La Jolla Rotary Club. Those folks have been building schools in Nangarhar Province for years under the San Diego Sister City program. Years of success in a difficult, front line province with not much press, very little fanfare and no taxpayer money; that’s an effort to be proud of and now they’re battling polio.
Early on in the Afghan adventure living outside the wire was the norm even for the military. Westerners could drive anywhere knowing their arrival in remote districts would be welcomed if not eagerly anticipated by local villagers. In Jalalabad City there were two different compounds for SF teams, another compound full of psyops or civil affairs or some other outfit like that, the ANP mentors lived out in the town as did the local EOD mentor. The other expats living in Jbad at the time (including the Rotary Club folks) regularly socialized with them at the Taj tiki bar and at the weekly dinner parties hosted by NGO’s or the UN. That changed when the American military issued a massive life support contract called LOGCAP that ended up driving life support costs to a million dollars per soldier per year. The units who had been embedded in Jbad city (and lots of other places around the country) were forced to move into the Big Box FOB’s for force protection and financial reasons. Those units were gathering tons of useful information; they would have picked up a lot from their pattern of life alone; most of them were in the information gathering business anyway and I know they were successful. But performance wasn’t the issue, getting all hands behind the wire was and that was a mistake.
The Bot and I were talking about the old days and how damn cool everything was when I mentioned Mortenson and he looks over and said “mate, you know what it took to build the TK runway? Five Machineguns. His story is interesting mostly because there is no way any international could do what he did today in Afghanistan. There is no faster way to end up in jail (or paying a hefty bribe to avoid it) then to drive around illegally armed. In many of the areas where we once roamed free the Taliban now control the turf. The local folks are no longer happy to see foreigners in their midsts, the Afghan security forces are, in some places, openly hostile and will extort those who don’t know the language or aren’t smart enough to hire a good fixer.
The Afghan people are stressed to the max and who can blame them? The latest attack in Kabul scared them – not the attack itself, it was mostly viewed as a nuisance, what scared them was how people in Washington, London, Paris, Tokyo, Berlin, Rome etc… would react. Afghanistan cannot function without billions in donor support. That support will not come through unless the World Bank and the IMF are able to remain in country and, at some point in the very near future, gain confidence that the central government can manage Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund. If the security situation deterorates to the point where the World Bank can’t stay or the central government proves incapable of managing the ARTF the internationals will go, the money will stop, the international support under the Afghani will drop, and overnight you will see Zimbabwe type inflation.
The local folks understand this and know that in less then two years they could lose everything. Again. And that is some seriously depressing shit which is why The Bot and I were boring ourselves with stories from days gone by. Here is a quick trip down memory lane to illustrate how things have changed in Afghanistan.
- Back in 2006 The Bot had just arrived in country and was working as a Project Manager for the Aussie construction company who was building a runway in Tarin Kot. They hit a massive piece of rock which was pushing them behind schedule and they were also taking constant harassing fire from a line of villages almost a kilometer to the southwest. He figured five machinguns would give him the range and firepower needed to keep the villains at bay so his construction crews could work
The Bot jumped in an SUV and, by himself mind you, drove about 150 kilometers to the outskirts of Kabul where he purchased 5 Machineguns and as many rounds as he could find from a village elder. We didn't know each other back then but at the same time he was heading up to Kabul my mobile security team and I were heading from Kabul to Kandahar to deploy K9 teams. By late 2007 this was no longer possible - insurgent attacks were too frequent. We had to stop outside the hamlet of Shah Joy to get a flat fixed and we're not to happy to be static in this area which was controlled by the Taliban even back then. A few days after I took this picture The Bot was ambushed near here but able to hole up and keep his attackers at bay until an American patrol came by.
These two kids had a compressor and a stack of tires next to the road - that's the local way of advertising tire repair. They were as fast and serious as a NASCAR pit crew.
They didn't have the tools of a NASCAR pit crew just the sense of urgency and that probably was due to the fact that we were well inside Indian country and needed to get going before the local insurgents decided to get us going.
The Bot made it to Kabul and back without incident and scored five PKM's along with enough ammo to run them awhile. Back in the day we had not figured out the low profile approach to outside the wire work. We would learn through bitter experience to never ride around looking like this again. Any international caught with 5 belt fed machineguns today would be in the Poli Charki prison for a long long time. It is so against the law now, but back in 06 it wasn't too big a deal.
Having scored the guns the next step was to plan out the defense with the local ANP chief and his tribal auxiliaries
And there it is - pile up some dirt to elevate the guns who then provide overwatch and the rest of the men get busy trying to chip through the rock. When the machinegunners dueled, it was at a very slow sustained rate because even back then ammo was outrageously expensive.
Under a million dollars to complete - one international supervisor to handle all the problems that come up on projects like this and in record time you have an improved (sealed mind you mate) dirt runway that handled C-130's and the old Sov transports found all over Central Asia with no problems. When LOGCAP rolled into TK they fenced this all in, tore up the runway, paved it and put lights in and spent a fortune improving the base, but did that lavish infrastructure translate into improved mission performance? I'm pretty sure the answer is no.
I remember back in 06 and 07 when the human terrain started to shift a little. What I didn’t know then was the tide of unease flowing through the population was (in part) triggered by the arrival of the British army in Helmand. Apparently the SAS and their American counterparts had conducted a comprehensive study of the Helmand in 2005 and had come up with a really good deployment plan. They recommended to the army that it fortify the two largest towns, engage in reconstruction in those towns, leave the current governor in place even though he was a Narco Khan, and most importantly, stay out of the rest of the province. Her Majesties government instead insisted that Karzai remove the governor, focused on poppy eradication and, based on intel that there were only 420 Taliban in the province, decided they could ruck up to densely populated areas and kill them while ignoring all the other pricks milling around as if they were gliding through the fucking matrix. (hat tip to Charles Booker for the matrix quote).
I knew the British Army had stumbled badly in the Helmand but I didn’t know how or why nor did I appreciate the adverse impact the Helmand fighting had on the other provinces. I found the gory details of the Helmand fiasco in the new book Losing Small Wars by Frank Ledwidge. The hyperlink is to a not too friendly review of the book in The Telegraph. The only point the reviewer can find to quibble over is the authors contention that most of the British forces sent to Helmand never left the safety of their Big Box FOBs. The review is a little emotional and I suspect the reporter lost friends in this conflict but that kind of reaction clouds rational discorse about sensitive topics. To wit:
One senior officer in General Richards HQ had done the sums. He told the general that ‘on a good day and with a following wind after a good deal of planning, once the HQ and communications staff have been taken into account, and if the guard roster was doubled’ (meaning the assigned manpower cut in half) ‘we can find 168 combat troops to conduct operations from the entire brigade’.
How do you justify that ? Prior to the establishment of big box FOB’s there were detachments of troops spread out around the countryside and for every 20 men assigned to a safe house you had 20 men ready for combat. Then come the FOB’s and with them the rotating battle staffs and before you know it the reality on the ground is so bad that the military creates its own alternative reality based on I am still not sure what. Big Box FOBs are a problem created from the unlimited funding of discretionary spending by both the Pentagon and congress to make our soldiers safer and more comfortable. Who could be against that? But does this lavish support translate into improved tactical performance or significantly contribute to mission accomplishment? Most importantly is it better for our troops on a big box FOB or deployed on shoe string budgets like they were in the early days? What came first the Big Box FOB or Taliban human wave attacks? In my memory they seemed to have arrived back to back.
Here is an interesting article written by the recent American commander back in TK answering my question of how well lavish base support facilities contribute to his ability to accomplish his assigned mission.
When I took command of a NATO task force in Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan in July 2010, one of my first patrols in the province included a stop at the construction site for an unfinished U.S.-funded police headquarters. Inside, we found loose 82mm mortar rounds and cell phone components: clearly the tools of an IED-maker.
Finishing this well-intentioned project that had become a shelter for terrorists became one of my top priorities. The project had stalled due to a cumbersome bureaucracy, poor contracting procedures, high leadership turn-over, and a lack of proper supervision,
When I relinquished command and left Afghanistan about a year later, the project was back on track but still incomplete, despite three years of frustrating effort.
I know he doesn’t say a word about facilities in the article but you can’t tell me that if he was living out in the villle in his own compound with his own motley crew and a bunch of Afghan auxiliaries that it would have taken him three damn years to almost build a crappy little ANP post. Besides our ability to perform isn’t the issue; there are many successful reconstruction models to emulate in Afghanistan. The La Jolla Rotary Club would probably be more than happy to explain the reconstruction game to anyone who wants to hear it. What we should be focusing on is the balance between base support for deployed troops and their ability to accomplish the mission. It seems to me the troops were much happier and more effective when allowed to live off the economy and operate independently. It also cost billions less to deploy them in that manner while reducing the ISAF footprint by at least half if not more. That would save a considerable amount of blood and treasure, but who cares? The past is the past and now we face the brave new future. The awkward close of our Afghan adventure is upon us and nobody is in the position to make an educated guess on how this is all going to end. That sad fact is why being here now is like stepping into a pressure cooker.
Comments | 
>I never believed a word of it so I never read the book but am surprised to learn that Mortenson was paid to lecture senior military officers who should have been able to recognize this fraud a mile away.
You’re surprised? As Upton Sinclair put it, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” In the officer world, strategy is made by consensus, and Three Cups of Bullshit is the perfect theory around which to build a consensus. If there are no criteria for victory aside from chai to urine conversion rates then everyone who deployed is a winner (unless some kind of major league bad thing accidentally happened on your watch.)
Therefore, as the Telegraph reviewer put it, “It is too soon to say whether the war in Afghanistan has been won or lost, especially as winning was never the desired outcome.” Your honor, my client was somewhere else at the time of the killing, and he never fired any shots, and he only shot the victim in self defense out of insanity. For an organization that toots its horn so much about responsibility and accountability, it is amazing how hard the military’s leadership avoids both. The idea that giving tribal elders old fashioned’s is the path to victory is a very adaptive one in this environment, since it’s completely unfalsifiable and a great responsibility deflection mechanism. If you drank chai until your bladder burst and things only got worse, it must have happened because you or someone down the block didn’t drink enough chai.
Great post Tim about getting things done, now and then.
Hey, I would be curious if you guys have heard anything about the performance, or lack there of, of the APPF. I have been getting reports that they were pretty pathetic during this latest attack in Kabul and elsewhere, and I was wondering if you guys heard anything?
I have heard the same things you have heard Matt – and nothing I have heard is positive
Thanks for the link to “Losing Small Wars”. I’ll buy a copy as soon as it’s out. Looks like 30 Jun is the shelf date. I concur whole heartedly with COL Creighton’s comments. Why, for instance, should it take three years to contract a new bath house for the Kandak? Or more to the point, why should it take six months to contract a dozen B-huts for the ANA troops, while in the meantime, they are living in some rather shoddy tents? Any of the stuff I built in Farah in ‘06 could have been designed, contracted, and built back home in a month or less, assuming, of course, that it was built for a non-governmental client. Adding multiple layers of regulations just gums up the works, which is probably why the economy is doing so well right now. But I do think one of the problems we have in Afghanistan is lack of continuity. Our folks were there for one year and then gone. The next guy in line may, or may not, get a brief up of what’s in the queue for contracting. You barely have time, in just one year, to develop relationships with the local assets, or to get to know the going rate for labor and materials. And I understand now that the tours for Army folks has been cut to 9 months except for SF, who only hang around for six. The speed at which the Navy and Air Force personnel rotate thru is breathtaking, rather like the rate at which generals were hired and relieved in the Union Army during the Civil War. I would not be surprised if the Alphabet Soup folks from the various govt agencies spend less time in theater than I spend shopping for a new gun.
Just wait until you read the book Ron – It’s unbelievable. I have always feared that I was going to become “the turd in the punchbowl” because so often I come off as sounding negative, pessimistic, and maybe like some sort of know it all. After reading Losing Small Wars (just now finishing in fact) I’m not worrying about sounding so harsh anymore. I think things are much worse then even I suspected regarding the Pentagon’s ability to create achievable objectives and then source forces tailored to meet those objectives, which, I believe, is their fundamental task in life. But hey, don’t worry – the Pentagon is spending millions to put female crew members on submarines and the CMC just sent out a message about the urgent need to open more MOS’s to women so, I apologize for sounding like a dick when I point out the leadership of todays armed forces seems to value sycophancy over strategic vision or thought in senior officers. And that’s the point of Losing Small Wars but it takes the piss out of the Brits, which they sorely deserve, if for no other reason than they wouldn’t let me use their gym at the PRT in Lash last year.
1. We all know how it’s going to end.
2. Said it in the comments section three-odd years ago.
3. Saw it myself, elsewhere and the wheel turns yet again.
4. Feel for my brothers in arms who have a psychic stake in the venture. Know your pain.
5. Really feel for the big losers in all of this: the Afghan people.
6. Repeat what I said back then: Boy do I hope I’m wrong.
7. The Helmand thing with the Brits sounds
like what was described with those folks around and about Basra late in the last decade.
8. Shades of GEN Eisenhower bitching at Montgomery and Brooke to commit to meeting engagements against the Germans. The latter more concerned with avoiding massive casualties than achieving decisive victory.Probably on order from even higher up.
9. Will learn more when the imperial war archives with seventy-five year seals are opened. Can wait.
V/R JWest
When you read the book I mentioned J you’ll see the author dissects the Basra fiasco in great detail and I am still stunned at what I am reading as I finish it up. The author is also, I think, more than a little kind in his depiction of American General Officers. I believe a similar book cold easily be written by a US officer but it would have to a be a senior one to report first hand from a similar perspective. I don’t think General Officers break ranks much so we may have to wait a while for that book to come out.
I think I know how this will turn out too – going to be damn interesting to watch.
Hi, my name is Steve and I am a a quiet reader and love it big time. Great Infos, nice people an lot to know about todays important topics. Thanks a lot for sharing!
The British effort in Helmand is driven by the fiasco in Iraq. Tales of how they were the COIN experts wore thin in Basra as the militias ran the city and the British Army hid out in a few big FOBs. Helmand was their chance to prove that Basra was an anomaly. Years in Ulster and their granddad’s memories of Malaya and Kenya had given them an institutional capacity for COIN that the Americans just didn’t have. The Yanks might have all the kit, cash and numbers but British pluck and knowledge of how to deal with the tribes would prove the UK was still a “great power” and the most important US ally. This turned out to be “bollocks”.
At least 400 British soldiers have died in Helmand trying to make up for their armies loss of prestige in Iraq. Hundreds of US Marines have died trying to save the Brits from themselves (while conveniently providing the Marines their own regional command).
Now the chickens have come home to roost. The British Army is losing 1/3 of it’s infantry units in coming cuts and the chances of it’s engaging in another optional medium sized war are fading fast. In Brit speak the army has been found to be “not fit for purpose”.
Afghanistan may not really be the graveyard of empires but it is the morgue for ideas about using it as a justification for armies.
Tim:
What I gather from your latest post is that the whole military industrial complex in Afganland could and should be replaced by the La Jolla Rotary Club……….
It could be replaced by ANY organization with a clear-cut decision-making hierarchy which is not accountable to CNN and Fox News, and do much better.
Personally, I’d like a US version of the East India Company, for the optimal synergistic combination of governance and profit.
JWest is the ultimate internet warrior.
so, we now have more firepower than ever before and less actual control of the country. The big box bases have become nice revenue streams for KBR and Halliburton, we have become more isolated and remote to the populace, and the war has become ever more corporatized and incompetently managed. In other words it is a classic tale of the Peter Principle.
Soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors do their jobs incredibly well except when they are led poorly. The Brits were badly managed into knots with a massive casualty rate with such a low deployment capability.
And yet drug shipments from A’stan have been growing, not shrinking.
The Afghan people are betting on the Tollybons gaining widespread control now.
I have been struggling with the impact of the rule of law as a determining factor. Afghanistan can be a reasonably well off country if it has it’s shit together, and one of the greatest issues beyond personal safety has been the corruption on all sides. Corruption a cultural artifact of many of the leaderships, tribal and otherwise.
Land disputes, usually seizures by the more powerful from the less so have fueled the culture of vendetta for centuries except when there was an appeal to higher authority that was recognized as more honest or at least less corrupt.
How much of the problems we are seeing would go away if there were fewer crooked roadblocks, a more transparent and structured records system (Afghan records are amazingly disorganized), and a legal system that was respected?
This was, after all, the attraction of the Taliban originally. They were less corrupt but harsher until they became too harsh and dogmatic.
I think that if we had been able to build upon the rule of law we might have ended up farther ahead.
I don’t know nothing about no peters, but the problem is not a lack of rule of law. It’s a lack of an actual sovereign authority. It could be a king, a council of sages or the Taliban, but somebody has to be finally and unequivocally in charge. Everything else (corruption, dopium, pseudolegality, poor record keeping) follows from the condition that there is no sovereign power and nobody knows who will be in charge on a given block tomorrow.
Personally, I think that the only realistic and positive outcome will be a Talib government which will be completely in charge of the whole country, and with which it will be possible to do business. Of course if it were an option I would prefer a Western governance-for-profit model, a neocolonialist New East India Company, but since the US is run by Lara Logan and Samantha Powers, that shit will never fly, so I guess the Afghans will just have to make do with those medieval guys with the beards and eyeliner.
I tried to float the New East India Company idea around in DC a few years back. The idea was DOA which was no surprise but counterargument would be “it would work”. Hahahaha – like anyone in DC gave a shit about that.
You can’t win against a Taliban who does not fight for pay and is acknowledged by all involved parties to settle land disputes on merit, and fairness while again, not accepting a penny in bribe money. The Taliban are a local based insurgency, the government security forces are often not local and known to be completely corrupt. Who would you support if you were born into a southern Pashtun tribe? I believe the only way to combat a local insurgency is to deploy into the local environment with the clear mission to put things back they way they were. Ignore the poppy, isolate and then ignore the hill tribes who don’t want international aid, and let the military live and work like we do. There is no way in a million years the villains will ever have the ability to isolate and wipe out a SF safe house in Jalalabad, or Mazar, or Zaranj or even Lashkar Gah. The tier one guys operated out of Lash for years prior to Big Brit Army’s arrival and had no dramas. We should stayed with that deployment strategy, built up the place to pre civil war standards and gone home.
You can’t talk to an Afghan today without getting an earful about how much better a this the Soviets were. I have heard “at least they left us some bridges” hundreds of times in the past few months.
But deploying and fighting that way takes general officers who can define a mission and resource appropriately for that mission. The American military has failed to do either.
As well as a book Babatim, you need to sort out a lecture tour aimed at defence policy types ( CNAS,RUSI etc ) – you need to be heard far and wide.
In ‘06 the British requested ANA reinforcement for Lashkar Gah. We deployed the Kandak’s second company, along with their ETTs and some SF guys. The British commander on site gladly accepted the ANA, but told the US troops “You lot are too aggressive. We don’t need you.” The ANA looked at the situation and told the ETTs, if you aren’t staying, neither are we.” The whole caravan mounted up and headed back to FOB Rescorla. Since when is being aggressive a bad thing in a combat soldier?
One of the standard talking points in most discussions about Afghanistan is how “our brave men and women are doing a great job. etc etc.” This of course is illogical and untrue. As in any organization a few are very good and help, most muddle along and a large minority, that increases with rank, actually harm the mission.
The reflexive desire to say nice things about the troops clouds the issue. If the troops are super then their bosses must know what they’re doing. In fact the leaders of ISAF have been guessing from day one and then using their PR staff to cover up. Today’s articles about NATO pretending operations are “Afghan led” is just the latest example.
“If we don’t spend the funds these monies will be returned to the treasury and our performance ratings will decline, hurting our chances in the future to acquire more funds…”
Government employees don’t often get fired, they get demoted or transferred in most cases.
Think back to World War II. Ask yourself how many citizens were in the military and then think about those elected politicians who would go home and know people from his/her community that were never coming home…alive–or were coming back crippled.
In Strasburg, North Dakota there is an iconic Catholic church serving a community of 600 +/- people (former home of Lawrence Welk). In the basement, one will discover the kitchen and tables with the surrounding walls dedicated to those local people who gave all (pictures, etc.). It is a very somber reminder of who did what for what when.
The all volunteer American military…the result of Viet Nam mentalities…you get what you pay for…or don’t you?
If not, why not? The minute I saw Bremer with his “rep tie” I knew our games were in deep sh*t! Tom Daschle, George Mitchell, Harry Reid and all those others…from both parties…did they ever look like people who would come to the fore and fight to the death with their lives to save yours?
It’s just one reason why Hack said “no go” on these wars, wasn’t it?
“Be all you can be!” Yea…hello suckers!
Free Range International » Five Machineguns great ideas for this world!
While your buds play the game “good guys vs. bad guys” back home we are treated to a memo leaked to media (Breitbart) via CIA’s Panetta leadership on the Bin Laden raid where a Navy’s Admiral was in control with limited authority…risk averse Obama slithered to a safe position. Meanwhile, Obama-Mao visits colleges lying his ass off, while Bush 43 cycles with wounded combat Vets in Texas. Even the Israelis are coming to terms with our so called president and his leadership style. My former $12 haircut just cost me $18 yesterday.
News of winning the terror war in Afghanistan? Can’t find it anywhere in the media, but do see lots of stories on killed Marine’s wife, bad soldiers, and evil Republicans.
Baby, you’re dead meat, forgotten…along with your buds by our elected politicians who once…a long time ago, stood up and shouted to all of America that they were going to press on and defeat these nasty evil terrorists!
Whoops, did I just read that someone in our national government said the war on terror has ended?
Seems to me if we had the head of Bin Laden’s number two man, that fine family doctor from Egypt…you recall how Hillary went to bat for those citizens seeking a new democracy…certainly not those nasty muslim brotherhood types where Bin Laden’s number two guy is alleged to have originated…perhaps most Americans would begin to feel we have in fact “cut off the head of the terror snake” in many ways…except what happens to those peace loving Iranians now?
Sanctions…and at what point will we hear how our military might and military personnel are too worn out to fight another big fight? Let the Jews do what they must…
Obama gathers up every American citizen who has a gripe and begs them to vote for him…what a great idea of leadership, as our Space Shuttle flies over New York City wile some soldiers get charged for posing with dead IED bombers…remind me who killed our Space Program and who came up with guns going to Mexico so that little problem of our 2nd amendment might be “adjusted” meanwhile Catholics are being forced to swallow pills from the abortion loving former gov of Kansas.
Just who is our “enemy” here? War on terror…ask Bill Ayers. We’re being eaten alive inside our own borders via a cancer made up of pissed off people who believe they are owed…big time!
Does anybody like getting shot in the back? Fragged?
It’s deja vu for me!
Hello there! I could have sworn I’ve been to this blog before but after browsing through many of the posts I realized it’s new to me. Anyways, I’m certainly pleased I discovered it and I’ll be bookmarking it and checking back often!
t goes for South Central LA goes for Afghanistan as well. Picked this up from Instapundit:
TIM CAVANAUGH: How The L.A. Riots Changed Nothing. The failure of community activism is on vivid display throughout South L.A., where neighborhoods thrive in almost exactly inverse proportion to the attention they get from activists. . . . If the riots have a lesson, it’s that people respond poorly to civil disorder and well to the rule of law. This is a simple lesson that got buried under 20 years of socialist hoodoo and activist baloney. But it’s never too late for a fresh start.