Last week the auntie of a local girl came from London to assist in her arranged wedding. The bride had little interest in the cousin to whom she had been engaged for the last 15 years but lots of interest in the boy next door so the English Auntie provided the age old remedy for situations like this; poison. It didn’t work but the Auntie made a clean getaway before her involvement was revealed and the young bride has gone missing as has the neighbor kid. The groom is reportedly recovering in Peshawar where the physicians have much experience treating this sort of problem. The crime of passion game is a dangerous one to play in Afghanistan. This kind of thing gets my local guys asking many many questions about us western folk. Tainted love is a bad deal everywhere but here the boys get the poisoning part but the concept of romantic love? That is confusing for them.
If you can’t think in real time you are worthless. That is a quote from a friend of mine who runs his own security company in Kabul. Thinking in real time is becoming a little difficult as we see instability and armed criminality rapidly spreading to parts of the country which were incident free for years. There was an attack last week on and ANA convoy driving the Kabul to Mazar-e-Sharif road. The last time there was an attack up there the the Afghan Army was fighting Soviets. The security situation in all the provinces is trending down; there are many more incidents occurring daily than are being reported. Staying on top of the local state of play has never been harder and to that we can add the upcoming elections which have the people’s attention. There was a helicopter shot down earlier this week in the south and the US Air Force lost an F-15E somewhere in the east of Afghanistan (probably means Kunar Province) and it appears that the crew was lost with the plane… bad news.
There is not much good to report from Afghanistan at the moment. With armed criminality reaching epidemic proportions there is a flood of stories about the dismal state of the Afghan National Police (ANP). The Afghan police are not just ineffective they are despised by rural people who will take the hard tyranny of the Taliban over being preyed upon by the police. This article puts the blame for Afghanistan’s dysfunctional police force on the Germans but that is BS. The Department of State has spent over 10 BILLION on their cookie cutter law enforcement training program which I have written about before. There is only one way to get the police to perform and that is to live with them, mentor them daily, and make them perform. Mentor teams who live on FOB’s and commute to the job become targets because their routine is fixed and predictable. The civilian contractors who work out of the gigantic regional training centers are inflicting death by PowerPoint on their students on subjects Afghan police will never use. What can they teach an Afghan cop about being an Afghan cop? Afghanistan cops are functioning as a paramilitary organization and are trained, armed and deployed as such. But some, perhaps a great many have retained the thuggish ways of warlord sponsored foot soldiers and that is obviously not too good.
The Marines continue to hold all the area they claimed in their massive operation and they too are finding the Afghan security forces to be their biggest problem. But the Marines are serious about staying and are putting out a continuous series of RFP’s (request for proposals) to jump start the build portion of their operation. I was just chatting with Michael Yon about the Marines on Skype last night. He is in Kabul and had been chin wagging with some European journalists who had just returned from a Marine embed. They could not say enough about how much they loved the Marines and how good they were to them and went out of their way to make things easier or more comfortable (very relative concept for Marines in the field). I occasionally pick up journalists at the Kabul airport and drop them off at Bagram Airbase for embeds with the Army. They all absolutely hate embedding with the Army because it is such a pain in the ass and they don’t get the attentive treatment the Marines are so good at providing. The Army should wise up on how they handle journalists – they have a story to tell too and the people back home would like to hear it. In fact here is a cool article about an Army patrol into no mans land and they should and could have more of this type of coverage if they would get a clue.
We had a road trip to Gardez last Thursday and was able to bring the Bot along. We were moving the payroll so bringing all my friends with guns seemed like a good idea. My counterpart from Kandahar Tim of Panjwayi also came along for the same reason and we flew into the airport at around 1300. Gardez is not a happy place these days. The police average 3 to 4 IED finds a day. They don’t report them but instead detonate them with rifle fire. There are frequent attacks on the airport which are also not reported. The pilots seemed to know because we flew over the airport at about 20,000 feet; they pointed the left wing at the runway and spiraled down in about three evolution’s coming over the runway still turning righting the plane and slamming down like we were landing on an aircraft carrier. We felt G- force pushing us into the seats and the three of us were giggling like school kids. Our Afghan manager Hamid wasn’t too happy about the landing and got a little sick which bugged the hell out of him. Being a little slow I failed to have the camera ready. Taking off was pretty cool too we skimmed at rooftop level over the city and then through a notch in the mountains before climbing like a fighter up above 20,000 feet.
The Gardez project is going well. The city is now cleaned up and we are about to kick off a massive phase II which will clean and rehabilitate all the fresh water canals and Karez systems. I have only around 300 workers doing the side canals and picking up garbage but apparently men came from 12 different districts and rented rooms to get on the project for 52 days of pay. Many of the men are ill-numerate and had to get friends to verify their pay as they have never had so much money in their hands at one time. My project is making a positive impact in a critically important area but without follow up it will amount to very little. If you sent in guys like us and our Afghan teams we could start massive cash for work projects ahead of a military operation and tie up thousands of local men with better pay than the Taliban can give them for much less work and risk. But we are not even close to that kind of thought process yet and it might not work anyway – we’d have to recon the area first to determine the feasibility. Worth a shot though and we’d take it if asked.
This is a good deal for the city, its people and the program participants but it is not a long term solution.
We have to come up with a new strategy – better yet and exit strategy for Afghanistan. We are spending billions yet achieving very little. We need to set reasonable goals – meet them and go. The Afghan police problem is a problem which the Afghans must solve – adding more anti corruption PowerPoint classes taught by western contractors who never leave their little FOB’s is producing poor results and it’s expensive. I would bet all the security incidents which are not getting reported are the result of a Kabul initiative to improve reporting because the European mentors there use written reporting as an important benchmark of success. I might be wrong but I bet I’m not.
There is still time to salvage this effort but we have to get off the FOB’s out of the body armor and start working directly with and in the cities and towns we were sent here to protect. It is cheaper and safer to embed directly into the communities than it is to commute to the job. We need to pick the districts and provinces we want to improve – get in them and do the projects and go home. There is no good reason to stay unless the Afghan government starts supporting our efforts and works with us like a partner instead of a client state.
Another great post, BabaTim. Just wish that there were more who would read and act upon your observations and recommendations. We might actually see some progress. Just my 2 cents which is exactly what it’s worth.
Y’all take care out there!
Another great, enlightening post babatim. Hopefully, our leadership can get it figured out.
Thanks again.
Agree on the previous 2 commentors.
Just curious, what exactly does the Marine Corps do differenty regarding embeds?
Regarding the poisoning. Hmmm, if I were the English aunt, I’d have just absconded with the bride-to-be before the wedding. I have had co-workers (from India) who have successful arranged marriages. How they explained how their parents’ arranged things — I kind of liked it. Good matches and bad matches can’t be any worse than what we American’s do on our own, especially since we have a divorce rate over 50%.
Awesome post tim, especially recounting the cork screw landing into gardez… We can only hope someone in power has the wisdom to read the FRI blog, and get a clue about a program that works. bZ
In Pakistan it is not uncommon for childrens eyes to be smeared with a paste made up of hazelnut powder and oils called surma to protect the eyes from the smoke used in fires to heat the home. This cools and cleans the eyes and wards off “nazar” or the evil eye. I would not be surprised if this custom is also seen in areas of Afghanistan.
So I ask the same questions as you imply. What is the end point? How many road improvements are made and water canals dug before its enough? I understand our presence there; the result of extracting these terrorist training grounds. But considering your summation of the Afgan government; the corruption, bribery, ingrained in these peoples way of living, can we seriously expect any sort of “awakening”?
Couldn’t we simply establish some sort of military base there, performing military maneuvers to inform those thugs that the least bit of a scent of terrorist plotting results in fire up someones ass. In conjunction with that provide a secure means whereby the Afgan people are allowed to come to us. Place the onus on them to help provide safe passage and stability to recieve our help. Certainly where these conditions aren’t met, we are prepared to inflict whatever means to assure assistance. But it is THERE initiative. It seems to me that there are many areas of Afganistan, particularly the remote ones that simply wish to live out there lives as they have always done. To attmept any other way simply drives them into the fold of the Taliban. More importantly, straight into Pakistan.
America has shown its might. We can continue a real threat of retaliation if needed. Again, what is the ultimate goal here…what is the end point??
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 07/20/2009 News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.
Oh my! Poisoning the betrothed!! I guess she would be known as the wicked aunt if she were a character in The Arabian Nights. Amazing that this still happens.
Vacrna, I think to have a static military base there for the sole purpose of maneuvers would be boring for the world’s armed forces. Replacing essential infrastructure not only makes the Afghans’ lives better, but hopefully they see the good in having us over there. Roads, medical care, schools, electrical plants, water aqueducts, newspaper plants, agricultural assistance, alternate revenue sources –all things we are capable of assisting with that benefit the rebuilding of their societ, and are good for the morale of those serving. Believe me, the soldiers want to be viewed as persons who can make things better. After all, we’re trying to give them the option. But as Tim says, without the funding and implementation or the overall big picture to fund projects like the one he describes –is going to just prolong everything.
I also very much like what Sarah Chayes with Arghand.org, as well as what Greg Mortenson have been doing. You might want to check them out too. Private efforts really do work, because they work very hard on relationships.
Great, great posts. Great insights. Hope you can keep it going but not any longer than you can do it safely.
The heart-breaking reality is that the Administration has already written off A-stan. It was written off before January 20, actually, but elections demand posturing and the posturing demanded that Obama appear tough against terror so he made alot of noise about winning the fight in A-stan. But it was all smoke. And the surest measure of that is the pitiful amount of combat forces committed to A-stan by the Admin: a total of 68,000. Period. Can the Marines get it done in their AO? You bet. But what about the rest of A-stan? And without the kind of follow up strategy that Tim talks about, any gains will be short-lived. Which gets us back to the lack of any real commitment to win by the Admin. There won’t be any follow on improvements. Instead, there will be exit strategies and not much of that as it goes. Watch for the Admin-orchestrated media campaign to cover for our wholesale pull-out from A-stan disguised as “Afghanizing” the war, turning it over to them etc…
Better to leave today and not waste another U.S. soldier’s life than to have this charade that is not intent on victory.
The “police problem” is related, more broadly, to the entire problem of corrupt justice systems in Muslim lands. In each Muslim-dominated country where European colonizers left behind functioning justice systems (or the newly independent states had them in their constitutions) they were undermined by purposeful neglect and the formation of separate law-enforcement arms under executive control.
This process, however, can also work in reverse. What is needed is separation (or competition) of national level crimes and authority from local ones, as the circuit courts and sheriffs of English kings were separate from manorial courts of the lords. In the U.S. today, our separate federal and state courts, prisons, and law enforcement systems serve much the same functions, and corruption is checked.
I know I’m explaining it badly – lawyers more skilled in the history of Western justice can explain it better. But perhaps Afghanistan could usefully take a page or two from the same book…
I know I’ve said this before but it really freaks me out that you’re the only voice screaming about embedding with local populations.
When the war started I thought “This is simple, send a small team in a couple of LAVs (Strykers) to a town to get the security under control and establish a perimeter. Use some hunter/killer forces to weed out the guys hiding in the hills. Once security settles down, send in a medical team. Then, bring in ANA and ANP officers to embed/prop up the military teams. After the Afghans get a handle on the situation, bring in western civilians contractors to hire and train Afghan civilians in the various necessities such as construction, sewage, irrigation etc.
Once the basics are established, next comes a local doctor. Set up a school. Try to set up small CO-OP organization that puts the profits back into the towns and the people. Get the money into the hands of the Afghans so they can spend it at the local market, which makes more money for more locals!!! Slowly phase out the western contractors, then the military. Rinse, then repeat…”
Anyway, maybe it’s just my ego, but I like hearing you talk about the ideas that I thought were going to work. I honestly couldn’t understand why we were “losing” this war until I found this blog and you explained the REAL operational situation. Why the HELL would you commute from an large FOB out to the boonies, let KBR build a school, declare peace in the land and then leave. WHO THOUGHT THAT WAS GOING TO WORK?
Keep screaming Tim, someone will hear you sooner or later. Or at the very least, you can always say, “I told you so!”
Cheers,
Russ