Free Range International

I am wrapping up my time in Kabul and getting ready to press embed with the Marines down south in early March. I am currently working on something I cannot blog about and it is boring. Inshallah I’ll have a story to tell soon in the meantime I have been catching up on some reading (when the net works here) during my downtime. I recently came across a Men’s Journal article written by Robert Young Pelton (RYP) on his brief embed with a Human Terrain Team. Mr. Pelton’s article was neither positive nor accurate and completely lacked the ring of authenticity. Old Blue over at Bill and Bob’s Excellent Afghanistan Adventure was the first off the mark questioning the factual content of Pelton’s article and he took it apart with his usual humor and sharp insight.

Amazingly RYP responded to Old Blue on his blog and other blogs and then engaged Old Blue in a direct email exchange where he threatened Blue with retribution from on high. That is called playing a weak hand where I come from normally a stunt pulled by a weak man. Blue was kind enough to forward me the correspondence and ask for my humble opinion on the matter. I spent the better part of a day reading various blog postings and related articles and I got a strong sense of déjà-vu. Then it hit me; Pelton was trying to come up with a Vietnam tale. This was his first installment of the Afghanistan version of Dispatches.

My Dad and three of my four uncles were career Marines like me infantry officers and there was seldom a time during the Vietnam conflict when one or more of them was not deployed in harm’s way. I have read everything I could about Vietnam since childhood and remember when Michael Herr’s Dispatches was published in the late 70’s. Dispatches is a travel log of sorts where the reader gets to hear the personal stories of the forgotten men at the front. The stories were typical of that period the generals were liars and clueless, the troops just wandered around the jungle not knowing where they were going or why they were there, they hated their officer’s and senior NCO’s, they committed atrocities and one of the front line grunts in the book carried a bag of severed ears with him. All the “cool kids” (fellow journalists) got together for dope smoking sessions and talked with authority about what was really going on because they were out and about covering the action and knew the real score. The military brass hung out in Saigon doing nothing constructive except for concocting lies to tell the press at the infamous five O’clock follies (the nightly press briefing in Saigon.) Some of the material in Dispatches was used in films like Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, and Platoon. Michael Herr and his fellow journalist defined the Vietnam generation in our collective consciousness and stuck them with a reputation that they did not earn and did not rate.

I liked Dispatches when it came out because I thought it was an authentic account of “real war.” I was also 18 at the time and not the brightest 18 year old you have ever seen either. I have since spent 22 years in the military as both commissioned officer and an enlisted man and now recognize Herr’s book for what it is. Fiction. Philip Caputo a soldier/author who served in Vietnam (Army infantry I think) is on record with this quote “Herr has told me, and he’s told other people, ‘I’ve made a lot of that shit up.’ But out of real stuff.”

Let me ask you dear reader, a question. How many Army general officers do you think ride around Afghanistan in “skull adorned black painted hot-rodded Blackhawks?” YeahI’m betting on zero too. Where does such imagery come from? It comes from movies about Vietnam. I say that knowing full well that Old Blue has posted an apology to RYP on his blog acknowledging that he was sent a picture by RYP of a Blackhawk helicopter with a faded grim reaper type illustration on the rear of the right engine nacelle. Big deal that is a long way from hot-rodded black rotary birds with skulls painted on them. Blue was keeping his word as a real man does by posting that mea culpa but we all know what he saw in the picture and what Pelton describes in his story are two different things. But good on you Blue for being a man of your word (as if guys like him would have it any other way.)

There was nothing remotely “authentic” about the classic Vietnam movies (with the exception of the Marine Boot Camp portion of Full Metal Jacket) and many now know they did a disservice to the men who had fought and died in that conflict. I know their depictions of haunted veterans who were unable to cope were absolute nonsense my Dad, all my friends Dad’s, as well as all the Dad’s of my High School classmates had served multiple tours in Vietnam. They had none of the typical symptoms of PTSD, they were not substance abusers, they were not haunted gilt ridden losers. They were and continue to be highly functioning reputable members of their communities. The book Stolen Valor is one of the best on this topic ever written and documents exactly where the common perception of Vietnam Vet as dehumanized, barely functioning, drug addled loser came from. It came from Hollywood and writers like Michael Herr. This is the legacy Pelton is reaching for in his hatchet job on the Bagram Human Terrain Team.

RYP is trying to sell a tired old Vietnam era song about Americans at war and he is wrong. I enlisted the military in 1979 the same year our president said he was thinking of enlisting because the military was such a proud organization full of quality people. Back in 1979 that was not the case which is why I know (at least on this topic) that President Obama was passing on contemporary democrat talking points. Another word for that is “telling a bald face lie” but who cares? President Obama’s fibbing on this subject pales in comparison with Hilary’s bizarre war stories or Biden’s blatant plagiarism of a British politician’s life story. Sorry the “stimulus Bill” saga has fouled my mood and I digress.

In 1979 the military was recovering from the debacle of Vietnam and had serious race, drug, and morale issues. I joined in 1979 because I had run out of viable options and needed to get out of the house. It turned out to be a brilliant move but at the time it was demoralizing at least in my case it was. The military did not start to recover and then transform itself into the organization we know and love today until the early 80’s and that transformation started with a zero tolerance drug policy. It was also aided by a gigantic pay raise and a new mandate for professionalism made by Ronald Regan. Under President Regan the military completed its stunning transformation into the most professional Armed Forces the world has ever seen.

I am a rather harsh critic of our efforts in Afghanistan. I have written repeatedly on the topic of risk aversion and how that drives our tactics costing us momentum. I remain convinced that we will take more casualties by trying to avoid them then if we followed our own counterinsurgency doctrine and got off the big FOB’s. But I have seen no indication on the bases I have visited (and I have been on a lot of them) that today’s military is in any way similar to the force I joined back in 1979. General officers are not frivolous people who fly around the battle space dropping in on combat outposts for a five minute grip and grin. Lieutenants assigned to Human Terrain Teams are trying to adapt scientific theory into action in the midst of the most complicated environment any military has ever operated in before. Lt Jones, it seems to me, demonstrates initiative and enthusiasm for his difficult task well above the norm. The officers and troops living outside the main FOB’s are not clueless draftees counting down the days until they fly home on the “freedom bird.” They are mission focused and when they bitch the topic is normally about being able to do their jobs better by being allowed greater freedom of action and movement.

I do not agree with current “force protection” policies and what appears to me to be an addiction to high technology solutions for tactical problems. But I understand where this mind set comes from. The military does not like losing its men or woman in combat. They are also terrified of inadvertently offending local sensibilities by allowing the American military outside of the bases and into the local bazaars with the people. When you see the number of blond and red headed children in Jalalabad (a Soviet Army R&R base was located there back in the day) you can understand why senior commanders are worried.

The American media is not going follow RYP’s lead and try to play “got ya” with the Pentagon in the near future. They have invested too much getting Barrack Obama elected to try to shoe horn Afghanistan into their Vietnam template. The main stream media also has an access problem in Afghanistan. It is possible to travel throughout most of this country without elaborate security measures but I do not know of any media organization who has figured out how to do it. Quite a few reporters were kidnapped in Afghanistan last year while trying to get out on their own to develop their stories. Afghanistan is a dangerous place where you really need to know what you are doing if you’re going to move outside the main cities. But it can be done and there are thousands of internationals in this country who live and work outside the wire with the Afghans daily to prove that point. The press has not broken the code on that and until they do their ability to deliver independent analysis will be minimal.

But there are guys like Pelton out there who are chasing little specks of Pulitzer dust and they know exactly the tone and tenor of the stories they need to write in order to achieve their goal. They are not going to be successful due to our military men and woman who are now able to enter the debate via the World Wide Web. Read Old Blue’s blog it is there you will find honest, pointed, at times even harsh criticism of how this war is being prosecuted. He is one voice in a sea of thousands of active duty mil bloggers who are not going to back down because some “jurno” threatens them. They also know more, explain more, and are funnier than RYP.

And there are guys like me and The Bot who are from the military, understand the military, understand Afghanistan, its people, culture and language, who are way outside the wire. We have the backs of our milblogging brothers and sisters in arms. I am absolutely disgusted at how Pelton depicted Lt. Jones in his article. It is the kind of yellow journalism which makes the blood boil. Gratuitous insults while depicting a young officer working a difficult, poorly defined billet is beneath contempt. It added nothing to the overall story line serving only to make Pelton look like a grade A number 1 asshole.

Pelton – if you want to be this war’s Michael Herr you need to get out like we do to get an understanding of this complex, dangerous, confusing situation the international military and aid agencies face here daily. Until you put in the time and effort that Old Blue or bloggers like I have you’ll have no voice and no real impact. Stop taking the easy way out you jerk.

I mentioned The Bot above because that knucklehead is two blog posts in arrears. He promised to cover me during my current gig and I’m now resorting to calling him out on the FRI blog. The Bot has been conducting a survey of all the Northern Provinces with just his driver as escort. I saw him briefly 10 days ago in Kabul and was disgusted to observe his Dari is almost fluent again. My Pashto is still pretty basic and I forgot most of my Dari but the Bot seems to pick this stuff up with little effort at all. Frigging annoying if you ask me. A little help in the comments section to motivate The Bot would be appreciated. He has fascinating tales to tell from the North which is becoming more dangerous and volatile. He doesn’t have too much good news but he does have fair and accurate news which is getting harder and harder to come by these days.

Private security contractors have been in news lately mostly due to the ongoing Blackwater saga from Iraq.  I cannot comment on Blackwater’s operations in Iraq but do know a few of their contractors working Afghanistan. They seem to be above average in the quality department and better yet (the ones I know) are on interesting contracts. The Blackwater country director is a former FBI agent who has been in Afghanistan a couple of years longer than I have. He is unquestionably one of the most knowledgeable Americans on Afghanistan and the current administration should spend time talking with him.   Given the time he has spent in -country combined with the breadth of projects he has supervised there are few Americans who have is insight.

The problem contractors in this country come in two flavors, local companies that are unable to perform and companies spawned by former Department of State officials or closely tied to US prime contractors.   USPI, a Texas based company with all its corporate officers now under federal indictment is one example. The defunct, transparently corrupt World Services International (WSI) headed by Henry Wilkins is another.

I have only seen a group of wild international contractors, rifles pointed out all windows, screaming through downtown traffic once and that was over two years ago. The international firms operating here are staffed with expats who, as a rule, have extensive in-country experience. They tend to move, some in hardened vehicles and some not, blended in with local traffic and obeying local traffic laws. That last remark is a joke there are no real traffic laws in Afghanistan just a number of unwritten rules revolving around perceived position vis a vis the bumper or quarter panel area of adjacent vehicles.

The good companies would sack international consultants immediately for conducting convoy operations which were out of sync with the local traffic. The US Army now has armored SUV’s which they drive aggressively by blocking traffic, hitting vehicles which do not get out of the way fast enough, and being a general pain in the ass. For the life of me I cannot figure out why it is that they continue to operate in Kabul as if they were on Route Irish back in 2005.

Kabul had changed dramatically since I moved to Jalalabad 14 months ago. The tension in the city is palatable. Old Afghan friends who were brimming with optimism back in 2005 no longer smile much or joke about when they too will visit Disney World in America. Mil blogger David Tate has a great post on being back in Kabul after a four year absence and he also has several posts detailing the misery of trying to move around the country as a reporter embedded with the military. I do not know David but find his observations spot on.

I awake every morning to the sound of multiple sirens peeling through the pre dawn chill. That is the newest technique of the American Army loud sirens to help alert traffic ahead to move out of the way. I hear those sirens all day long because both international and American military traffic has increased at least 10 fold in the past year. Convoy after convoy after convoy line the Jalalabad and airport roads all of them pointing guns at every vehicle or person who comes to close, all of them forcing traffic off the road in front of them, all of them looking every bit as stupid here as they would driving through Washington DC in a similar manner. Except now they have an abundance of SUV’s to add in the mix.

The other day I saw one of these SUV convoy’s (at least 8 vehicles) and in the middle was a large Expedition with an American flag placard in the left windshield and the two star placard of an American Major General in the right of the windshield. Is it me or is that not the most stupid thing you have ever heard? Why make it easier for the Taliban to kill an American General Officer?  

We are supposed to bringing security and infrastructure to the people of Afghanistan. Yet when our military interacts with the people they do so at the point of a gun with full body armor, helmet, ballistic glasses, special purpose fighting gloves (I have a pair myself because they look cool,) ear plugs, etc And do you know what the people of Afghanistan think? They think our military men and woman are cowards. When the Soviets were here their troops would go out on the town after duty hours (unarmed) to patronize local restaurants, stores, tea houses, and bars. The Expats around the country continue to do that to this day. The French restaurant in Kabul is the largest taxpayer in the country and it is packed every night of the week save Sunday.   I’ve seen senior military officers in uniform in the bar occasionally despite the ban on alcohol consumption by American forces.

I am in Kabul filling in for the month for a friend who is home on leave. I’m working for one of the larger security companies as a “shooter” on a PSD team which is looking after business developers from the largest American firm working in Afghanistan. My co-workers (both Afghan and international) are fit, well trained, and very competent. My duties consist of escorting men around three or four offices in Kabul. Most of the people we escort have been here a long time. After working hours they jump in to unarmored beaters like mine to hit the town for a little night life. I have not asked but suspect all of them will tell you that having the lavish security they currently enjoy is overkill in Kabul. But what we think doesn’t matter the fact is that they are operating under contract from the US State Department and must conform to the security regulations in those contracts and the State Department requires their prime contractors to operate this way.

Is it stupid? You bet. Is it necessary? Absolutely not and today’s multiple small arm/suicide bomber attack in Kabul doesn’t change my assessment one bit. Is this your government at work? It sure is (if you are American) and the excessive security driven overhead costs is the symptom of a large government machine which is not really serious about the mission in Afghanistan.

This will be a long post because the topic is important requiring that I be 100% clear concerning my observations, recommendations and opinions. In previous posts I have made my case regarding the speed and efficiency with which we are conducting stability operations in Afghanistan. I believe our reconstruction efforts are flawed; we are wasting time while spending billions of dollars without impacting the majority of the population. We are not conducting meaningful infrastructure projects nor establishing security to the vast majority of the Afghan people which is reflected by the growing percentage of the country falling outside the control of the central government. In these areas the Taliban is “out-governing” the Karzai administration which is the worst thing that could be happening after seven years of effort by America and her ISAF allies. These are facts beyond dispute.

The topic of how we are operating on the ground involves not just facts but observations and opinions too. It also involves talking about the currency used by the military in pursuit of their objectives; and that currency is blood. My contention is that the way we have operated here could ultimately cost us more in blood because our tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP’s) are becoming a self fulfilling prophecy. If you treat every Afghan you come into contact with as a potential assassin, guess what? Every Afghan you come in contact with will, in time, become a potential assassin.

Currently this is not the case in all places nor at all times. Every day ISAF military units move into areas and conduct positive interactions with the local population in many of the Provinces of Afghanistan. After a few hours of work they go back to their large fortified bases. When ISAF military convoys travel on the roads they tend to block all the traffic, which routinely produces multiple vehicle accidents due to the jockeying among drivers in the long traffic jams that stack up behind convoys. You have to experience Afghan driving to appreciate how chaotic traffic jams can be, Afghans reputation for aggressive driving is well deserved. The ISAF force protection posture is enforced by the aggressive use of weapons to force back traffic.

If an ISAF convoy has a vehicle break down they stop all traffic, both ways and dismounted soldiers keep all pedestrians away from the vehicles. I was once stuck for an hour in downtown Jalalabad while an American convoy worked to repair a broken truck. The crowd that gathered during this time was enormous, the troops on the ground were very professional and I got the feeling from talking with one that they would rather let the traffic pass. The Sergeant I was chatting up was not the least bit intimidated by the hundreds of Afghans gathering around to watch the hub bub; he knew the local people are not a threat. The American in Jalalabad knew that forcing all traffic to halt bringing the entire city to a bumper to bumper stand still was probably not the best way to handle things but he had his orders.

It is not the inconvenience of being stuck behind a convoy or how they conduct mobile vehicle repair which is the biggest problem, it is the tendency to mark local vehicles as potential vehicle borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED’s) and then fire at them that is the problem. This tactic has never successfully (to the best of our knowledge) stopped a VBIED attack. It has caused hundreds of deaths among Afghans who tend to drive a little irresponsibly (to be charitable). I have been told that we have lost at least one soldier who was leaning over the top of his vehicle engaging a real VBIED when it detonated instead of getting down behind the cover provided by his armored vehicle. It’s almost impossible to distinguish the erratic driving mannerisms of a VBIED driver (erratic behavior is the main pre incidence indicator of VBIED’s) from your typical Afghan driver. Afghans routinely drive so aggressively that they would have caused every soldier and contractor I know to light them up if we were all in Iraq. I have traveled route Irish (the road between the Baghdad Airport and the Green Zone) many times and understand how to do so safely. Safe convoys were convoys which kept all Iraq traffic well away from them or (better yet) ones in armored low visibility vehicles mixed in with the local traffic. But Afghanistan is not Iraq; there are no multi-lane separated highways here. You cannot force all traffic away from you like we routinely did in Iraq. Afghan roads are two-lane, poorly maintained affairs with plenty of blind curves, steep grades, and narrow bridges. Vehicles heading towards you pop up fast with little time or distance with which to make an accurate determination of intent. You can train people to work the OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) loop only so fast.

If the TTP you are using has caused the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians and demonstrated over and over that it will not stop a VBIED and if that TTP has caused the loss of troops who were exposed shooting at a VBIED instead of taking cover when it detonates, if that TTP causes aggravation, traffic accidents, and the alienation of the local population then why are we still using this TTP? I know blending in with the traffic is easy for me to say because I’m always in a low profile vehicle. But it would not cause you to take more VBIED strikes because the way you are trying to keep them away fails every time. If you allowed the civilian traffic to flow around your vehicles every time you did take a VBIED strike it would cause even more collateral damage to the surrounding civilians. We are not the only combatants who do not like to inflict collateral damage among the population. The various Taliban, neo Taliban, sorta Taliban, etc… are not al Qaeda. They are fighting to control the civilian population; they understand that you can inflict only so much misery on them before reaching a tipping point. And when the Afghan population reaches a tipping point history shows that they are not the least bit hesitant to let their antagonist know it. There is an information warfare opportunity in moving with the locals if attacked and again – I don’t think you are inviting more attacks because everyone they launch is either successful or goes off before it hits home due to operator error or design flaws.

One of the things working in our favor is the quality control on Afghan car bomb production. The latest VBIED attack near the Taj in Nangahar Province is a perfect example it was directed at an American Army convoy on the road to Khogyani District (that would be the only paved road in the entire southern triangle of Nangarhar Province.) The suicide attacker was waiting on the shoulder off the road by the UN refugee camp pictured in my earlier post on Gandamak. He saw the Americans crest the hill about ½ mile away and gunned his engine to run into them head on. His initiation device was the typical design we find here and was either pressure release or pressure activated and held in the driver’s hand. This suicide attacker had either ‘Buck fever’ or a case of advanced stupidity forgetting about the large dip in the road between him and the Americans. When he hit it at speed he lost control of his vehicle and the initiation device blowing himself to kingdom come. There are much better ways to rig a VBIED and it is to our distinct benefit that those ways have not found their way to Afghanistan yet. But even in this case had the Americans recognized the threat they would not have been able to engage him until he popped out of the low ground right in front of them which obviously would have been too late.

The only reasonable way to handle the VBIED threat is to allow the civilian traffic to mix in with your convoys because they will provide some cover from VBIED cells which do not want to kill large numbers of innocents and it will also let the troops learn what is normal driving behavior in Afghanistan.   The only way to successfully identify VBIED drivers is to know what is normal behavior so you can apply the “rule of opposites” to ID potential VBIED’s with enough time and space to do something about it.

If the moving among the civilians is unacceptably risky then all our convoys should consider moving at night because there is little to no civilian traffic anywhere in Afghanistan after 2100 hours. Being ambushed by the Taliban at night, given our aviation assets, would be a big problem for the Taliban. There is nowhere to run or hide from the thermal sights on our gunships or the NVG’s our troops on the ground use.

The video that was embedded below (it has since been removed) was broadcast on public television; the You Tube comments about it are uniformly supportive. When I first saw this segment I was appalled. The mission being filmed involved going to a local bazaar to purchase a spark plug. To accomplish this mission they shoot at I don’t know how many vehicles forcing them all to stop because ( I am guessing here) no locals can drive past the Canadians while their vehicles are pulled off the road. Their lavish use of ball ammunition causes traffic accidents at least one of which results in injuries to one of the occupants serious enough to warrant the dispatch of an American MEDEVAC helicopter. My firm belief is that The Trailer Park Boys could have figured out an easier way to get a spark plug in Kandahar.

I used to work in Kandahar frequently back during the time this segment was filmed. I know exactly how to obtain a spark plug in Kandahar it’s as simple as this “Hajji go get me a spark plug, please.” The Canadians from Senlis Council were working in Kandahar back then too conducting road missions almost daily with a three man security detail (good friends of mine) augmented with local security contingents. Senlis spent a considerable amount of time on the ground in dodgy places like refugee camps and the mean shanty towns which ring the city; you can find one of their excellent reports from Kandahar here. They were able to operate more or less freely around Kandahar which was my experience too.

I would like to stress that I am not contending the Canadians in this video did anything wrong. It is clear that they are operating according to their established rules of engagement and they are no doubt a crew of brave men and women who are proud of what they were able to accomplish during their operational tour in Kandahar. What I am trying to stress is that these rules of engagement are not consistent with the mission of bringing a secure environment along with much needed infrastructure development to the people of Afghanistan. Here is the ISAF mission statement which I just pulled off their web site:

“ISAF’s role is to assist the Government of Afghanistan and the International Community in maintaining security within its area of operation. ISAF supports the Government of Afghanistan in expanding its authority to the rest of the country, and in providing a safe and secure environment conducive to free and fair elections, the spread of the rule of law, and the reconstruction of the country.”

If the situation in Kandahar was so bad that the PRT cannot move a foot outside the wire without establishing a “no locals zone” around them and their vehicles at all times then I would contend that Kandahar doesn’t need a PRT. There are ways of gaining and controlling ground. In a place like Kandahar that would best be done from a series of safe houses manned by infantry soldiers who could would work on a daily basis with the local security forces and the various elders to maintain or re-establish security. This could have been done in Kandahar a few years ago with small teams spread out over a large geographical area. That is a risky way to conduct operations but our experience in Iraq would argue that it is safer for the grunts than riding around in armored vehicles on high IED and VBIED threat roads to “show the flag.”   I was in a “show the flag” operation back in Beirut Lebanon in 1983 and it did not work out that well for us.   Watching our military flounder about in Afghanistan some 25 years later taking casualties while showing the flag and accomplishing little is depressing.

In 2006 there were plenty of people in Kandahar who welcomed the military presence and were happy to see the Taliban vanquished. There were never as many on our side as you’ll find in the other cities of Afghanistan but they were there. I am not sure what the situation is in Kandahar now. I still have friends working there in the reconstruction battle but their security posture is now the same as it was in Iraq circa 2004. They don’t visit the bazaar nor go about at night on social calls. Somebody is going to have to go in and clean that mess up and I think I know who that somebody is going to be.