The Elections are Coming

The pending Afghanistan election is heating up. The main challenger Abdullah Abdullah has suffered three attacks in three days on different offices around the country and one of his senior aides claimed that if Karzai won they would take up their rifles and fight in the streets of Kabul.   The other serious challenger, Ashraf Ghani   (a Columbia graduate and   a dual citizen of  Afghanistan and America) has hired on the Little Dog James Carvelle (he whines too much to be a big dog and no Afghan  understands a word he says due to speed, pitch, volume and ludicrous content)  over here working for him.   The Raging Cajun has been babbling something about change, or it’s the economy, or whatever the locals have no idea what he is trying to say so the TV anchors smile politely and say the foreigner said interesting things and he helped elect Bill Clinton.   Afghans are mesmerized by Bill Clinton they cannot believe he got on international TV and cried over something as trivial as forcing a subordinate to perform a sex act on him.   The public crying thing is what they cannot get over but then he remained in office acting as if the whole thing had never happened.that is a very Afghan thing to do.   The MSM was dead wrong to call him our first Black President he was our first Afghan president and the fire sale of presidential pardons he had at the end of his term (aided and abetted by our current Attorney General) proves it.

ISAF is focused on election security which is what the mini surge brigades have also been tasked to facilitate.   The UN and many of the local NGO’s are also focused on the election and are spring loaded to immediately displace to Dubai at the first sign of instability or general unrest.   Wild rumors swirl around the clusters of outside the wire expats about potential problems, advancing Taliban, the cutting off of the booze supply (we’re good at the Taj) riots at the polls etc.. and they are very nervous.   The Afghans are not, in fact they are more concerned with the coming summertime Ramadan.   Ramadan is something in which the boys take great pride in enduring but they get surly and bitchy about it.   I think it is going cold turkey with the cigarettes that gets to them the most but the length of the day and heat it’s going to suck and the smart expat goes home for a month if he can.

I have never claimed to be smart so I am sticking it out to the bitter end like a man.   Good thing too because it is turning out to be an interesting summer.   This week the press reported that the Taliban have released their very own rules of engagement which when you read them appear quite sensible.   Thirteen chapters, containing 67 articles with pearls of wisdom like; “Every Muslim can invite anyone working for the slave government in Kabul to leave their job, and cut their relationship with this corrupt administration. If the person accepts, then with the permission of the provincial and district leadership, a guarantee of safety can be given.”   If Mullah Omar and his Shura actually controlled the various groups of armed combatants who operate under the Taliban flag I would be worried.   But he doesn’t and the new Taliban ROE is just another demonstration that the Taliban can do Information Warfare much better than ISAF can.

There are also press reports from the new Commanding Generals soon to be released assessment of what needs to be done to win in Afghanistan.   Here are the money quotes.

The biggest change urged in McChrystal’s report is a “cultural shift” in how U.S. and foreign troops operate — ranging from how they live and travel among the Afghan population to where and how they fight, a senior military official in Kabul said Friday.

Using intelligence less to hunt insurgents and more to understand local, tribal and social power structures in the areas where they operate. McChrystal is considering concentrating troops around populated areas rather than going after sparsely populated mountain areas where Taliban hide.

Getting troops more active in fighting corruption. U.S. forces will need to take care in their dealings with local Afghan leaders to ensure that they are not perceived by the Afghan population to be empowering corrupt officials.

This sounds familiar and people like me who have been saying this for years would be heartened were it not for the fact that it is complete nonsense.   Based on years of “effects based” observations (actions speak louder than words)   the priorities of the US Armed Forces in Afghanistan are as follows;

1. Force Protection
2. Health, comfort and welfare of the troops
3. Protecting the careers and reputations of senior officers
4. Getting ahead of the curve in submitting documentation for awards and medals
5. Accounting for all the extra money and equipment every unit receives to accomplish their mission here.

There is no way one General officer can conduct a cultural shift in the American military. Especially when it comes to how they live and travel amongst the Afghan population.   And Gen McChrystal has admitted as much check out the quote from him I found on the Abu Muqawama blog;

Q.  Is the lonely fire base in the mountains fighting Taliban a thing of the past? Are you pulling out to get . . .

McChrystal:  In some cases it might be — in some cases. Some it might not be. If the population is in the valley, sometimes putting the small fire base in the mountains accomplished the ability to accomplish security for the population. What I don’t think you will see as much of is big unit sweeps or operations where you sweep them, then come out. Historically it doesn’t work, but almost every counterinsurgency tries it and relearns the lesson.

I suspect that after rigorous analysis and thousands of PowerPoint slides it will turnout that in all cases the fire base on the hill, isolated from the population, will be the way we accomplish security for the population. the price for separating our forces from the people is that we must deal through the Afghan political leaders, all of whom are Karzai appointees, which means we are perceived by the Afghan population to be empowering corrupt officials because we are empowering corrupt officials. I don’t even want to think about the “fighting corruption” comment.   Given the way our current administration is running if we wanted to “fight corruption” the place to begin would be back in Washington DC (using the ballot box as our constitution mandates.)

But one can hope and for me that hope rests with the United States Marines.   I am writing once again from Camp Leatherneck, and at the risk of irritating a few of my loyal readers, feel compelled to make a few observations.   The first of which is that there were two brigades sent here as part of the “mini surge” the Marine Brigade and a Stryker Brigade from Fort Lewis Washington.   The 5th Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division is trained and ready according to what I can find on the net…just one question?   Where the hell are they?

Here is something which most of you probably do not know.   Last December there was no 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade.   Gen Nicholson and Eric Mellinger found out they were going to form the 2nd Brigade around the 15th of December 2008.   The Marine Corps is not big enough to have standing brigades instead they train and fight as task organized units.   The Marines will change up their task organization while deployed and in contact as the situation dictates which is something we have been practicing in live fire exercises in 29 Palms California for the past 40 or so years.   General Nicholson and Eric had to build their MEB and that involved some serious cherry picking from around the Corps (Eric did a tour as the ground monitor so as a member of the Manpower Mafia he has great insight as to who he could steal and how to get them reassigned.)   The maneuver battalions assigned to the MEB come from both the east and west coast and are organic to both the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions which is typical of task organized combat formations – all the senior officers and enlisted SNCO’s know each other anyway – fighting for an East Coast or West Coast MEB makes little difference to them.

We had a mini surge scheduled to help out during the 2009 fighting season and to also help out with security during the Afghan presidential elections.   The Marines – who did not even have units assigned to this task until about 8 months ago have stood up, trained, certified, and deployed a 10,000 man brigade.   That brigade has arrived in Afghanistan, sorted itself out, and launched into the field a month ago where they took the Helmand River Valley away from the Taliban and where they have stated they intend to stay. The Army contingent who is supposed to be around Spin Boldak is, as far as I can determine, still in the United States.     They are a real Brigade which was formed years ago yet have still not made it to the fight – how the hell does that happen?

I do not know how the Marines are setting up in these forward areas they have taken nor how they are interacting with the local population.   I suspect that when I do get a chance to see for myself what I will find is not isolated combat outposts (COP’s) from which the troops fight but seldom venture.   The reason I say that is because fighting that way is stupid it costs men, material, and lots of money for which nothing is gained.

But that has been how ISAF has been operating.   This article covers a recent report from the British   House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee about Afghanistan and here is their money quote:

“We conclude that the international effort in Afghanistan since 2001 has delivered much less than it promised and that its impact has been significantly diluted by the absence of a unified vision and strategy grounded in the realities of Afghanistan’s history, culture and politics,”

Writing pithy commentary about where we are going wrong in Afghanistan is the easy part.   The hard part is understanding that you have to fundamentally change the way your troops deploy, live and fight.   Gen McChrystal has gotten to that point already but the hardest of the hard part is to actually put those pithy words into action. This the Brits are not doing – they are on isolated COP’s from which they patrol regularly and during these patrols they often fight.   They are not having any meaningful interaction with the locals, they are not bringing security to the people, and they are not winning the fight.   This excellent post by Mike Yon who has been the Brits for the past month describes with great writing and even better pictures that exact phenomenon.

Last week I was in the 2nd MEB operations center waiting to give Mike and Eric a lift to the air head.   A squad was in contact down to the south, they had suffered a IED strike, had no casualties, and were aggressively maneuvering to catch the dumb asses who had tried to ambush them.   The watch officer told this to Mike who said “let me know if they need anything” and went onto other business.   The company commander was running the fight and the platoon commander was en route with reinforcements.   I did not hear anyone else from outside the rifle company on the net with the exception of a brief call by (I think) the battalion commander asking if they needed any help.   The answer was no – the company could handle this on their own.

This is not the way the Army fights – stories   of units being micro managed from on high are legion. Here is my favoriate example from Vampire Six who writes the blog Afghanistan Shrugged.   If the US Military and her allies really want to start to fight in the manner Gen McChrystal says he wants to fight then the first step is to immediately stop all micro management of units in contact.   What the 2nd MEB is doing when it allows a company to fight its own fight with no interference from on high is developing trust and confidence of all the Marines in that unit for their chain of command.   You cannot successfully deploy little detachments of infantry in a large geographical space and expect them to fight and behave within the frame work of their commanders intent   unless they know their commander trusts them to do the job.   The commander can tell them he trusts them all he wants but actions speak louder than words.   If he insists on micro managing units when they are in contact the message he is sending is “I do not trust you and do not think you will make the right calls in combat.”   The first step towards being able to fight a proper counterinsurgency is to deploy units in the field whom you trust and do not micromanage.   There is no other way and I do not care how many Colonels in Bagram there are who will tell you differently using all sorts of anecdodal stories to illustrate why they are compelled to control fights from on high. In the counterinsurgency fight   junior leaders have got to be left alone to do what junior leaders are supposed to do – fight when they have to and figure out how help the local population when they are not fighting.

Patrolling out of a COP where you get contact with the enenmy within   minutes after leaving the wire is not counterinsurgency warfare it is attrition warfare.   A war of attrition is a war we can never win Central Asia, we do not have the manpower, money or time for that.     The Marines are poised to be the game changers but they are going to take casualties doing this thing and let us hope that the body count does not allow our political leaders to force them back into the “force protection” mode.   If the mission in Afghanistan remains “force protection” than everyone who has made the ultimate sacrifice here have done so in vain and the Afghans have much more to worry about than a summertime Ramadan.