Author: babatim

Monday marked the 100 year anniversary of Afghanistan independence. August 19, 1919 marked the end of the third Anglo-Afghan war and joins Al-Faath day(a Muslim military victory) and Mujahedin Victory Day (the victory over the Soviets) as a public holiday celebrating Afghan martial virtue. This holiday was heavily anticipated and the road up to Dar-ur Aman  palace strung with lights and vendor stalls to mark the celebration. My good friend JD wrote an excellent man on the street piece for dpa International that can be found here. It is worth reading.

JD had published an article just yesterday in dpa International that was seething in undisguised rage at yet another bombing targeting civilian Afghans. A bomb went off in the vicinity of Dar-ul Aman road targeting a wedding party  killing 63 people. Hundreds more were injured. What JD could not say (because he is a reporter) was what we both (and everybody watching Afghanistan) knew and that was this was the work of Daesh-K (ISIS). We knew this because the area along Dar-ul Aman road is predominantly Hazara, who are Shia, and thus enemies to the Sunni ISIS movement.

This comes as the United States prepares to significantly draw down its military commitment, just like we did in Vietnam, but this time we cannot pin this on a hostile  congress. Well that is not technically true, we can blame congress for failing to use the war powers act. They could have tied funding to an achievable end-state allowing the military to tell them the forces needed to achieve that end-state. That is how the system is supposed to work, but it never seems to work that way. I think that’s because politicians are much more comfortable making decisions about foreign commitments after they’ve started. Stands on principal are not how congress people get to congress, that they failed to use their own laws to bring some order to the chaos is not a bug in our electoral system, It’s a feature.

As Afghanistan recovers from yet another senseless attack on the people the Taliban leadership received a dose of Kummerspeck inspiring bad news.  This came in the form of a report from Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency detailing their lavish life styles and investments.

It turns out that Taliban politicians are every bit a venal and corrupt as the non Taliban type. But the leaders of the Taliban are not savvy to the ways of media or that bright when it comes to Pakistan because they reacted to this report with undisguised fury. They do not know what they do not know, and one of the knows is that the Streisand Effect is real.

Why the Pakistan Federal Investigation Agency released this report is an interesting topic to speculate about. I doubt the press will do much speculating because most paths are going to lead to the recent statements by President Trump concerning the need for both Pakistan and India to do more about the terrorist in their midsts.

Remember Daesh-K started out as Pakistani Taliban who fled across the border into Nangarhar province to escape from Pakistans military operations Khyber I and II. And calling out India…I don’t think I’ve seen that before and that too is interesting. Maybe there is diplomacy occurring that is actually producing results. Pakistan called out the Taliban leadership and face smashed them. Afghans are excellent volleyball players and they know exactly what face smash is and what it means.

I am running out of things to say about the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan. It breaks my heart because I love the people of Afghanistan. When I arrived in that country I had no knowledge of the place. I learned fast because I was never on a FOB and lived in the ville with the locals for most of my time there. They taught me how to navigate the social systems, they taught what was real risk and what was not. They protected me, feed me and gave my children the experience of a lifetime. I  like to think I returned their investment in spades but who knows? That is not for me to judge.

I’m going to start writing Afghanistan stories about things like having my children there with me, meeting interesting people and visiting interesting places. In the end, the families of the dead, those that served there in the military, and the contractors who served with the military and outside the wire  are always going to ask was it worth it. I say that too is not for us to judge.

We have no idea  how the thousands of acts of kindness towards average Afghans will germinate over the years. Just as we have no idea how the innocents – the collateral which I railed about when I was there – it’s why I started the blog – we have no idea how that will germinate.

I know some of the Afghans caught in crossfire knew we did not do that intentionally. I’ve talked to plenty of them, I too got shot at for getting to close an army convoy, I understand Afghan frustration about that well.

But I bet in 20 years if you are American in Afghanistan you will treated like an American in Vietnam. Which means very well.

Time for the first Afghan sea story.

In the photo above I am with senior Islamic Cleric, but I cannot remember his name. I’m wearing recycled contractor clothes, where there once a name-tag I had a South Park cartoon character saying “You sent me to Iraq You Bastards”.  I thought that was funny because I just came from Iraq. I was to learn that Afghans were not amused by American curse words. But having a stupid shirt on is not why I remember this meeting with embarrassment. That Cleric was one of the most charismatic, wise, men I have ever met. In an effort to impress I remember telling him how quickly we would re-build the country, get the hydro generators working, build the roads and schools, etc…

I remember him looking at me and smiling and shaking his head. He said something like this; “the buildings and the roads and the electricity are not important. It is the people who have been damaged by decades of war that are important and it is the spirit of the people that must be restored. America cannot do this for Afghanistan, we must do this ourselves”.

What do you say to a profound statement like that? I don’t remember what I said, but I never forgot that conversation. It was humbling and a harbinger for the failure our efforts in Afghanistan were destined to have.

July 4th is the perfect day to launch a campaign aimed at uniting Americans behind a national hero of whom we can all be proud. In prior posts I have nominated the RQ-4N BAMS-D (Broad Area Maritime Surveillance-Demonstrator) drone that arrived in the Persian Gulf on the 15th June and was shot down by Iran five days latter.

The day after we lost our drone the United States launched a retaliatory strike on Iran, but called it off at the last minute. Concurrent with the feint (or aborted) attack, a real cyber attack hit the Iranian Missile Control Systems and devastated them.

There is an obvious connection between an old surplus drone being sent to the Gulf and then promptly shot down, and the subsequent cyber attack. Cyberattacks on closed systems (like missile control systems) have a limited number of entry routes. Either a human agent or a targeted platform introduced the virus. Given the Central Intelligence Agency’s  record regarding human intelligence the chances they had someone on the inside are beyond remote.

I believe the attack was effective because Richard Fernandez, writing at the Belmont Club, said they were. Mr. Fernandez is a proven source of consistently good geopolitical analysis. He could be wrong, I have no way of knowing, which raises the question of who and what can you believe in this day and age?

In an era when the press and politicians use devise rhetoric to separate and categorize us along racial or ethnic lines it is hard to know what to believe, or who to trust.  I believe in and trust the American people.  At this moment in our history  the American people need a hero and what better hero than a unarmed drone with a story  that inspires and educates?

A hero needs a name that has meaning and on July 4th what could have more meaning than a name that acknowledges the genius and wit of the British peoples?

When Britain’s Natural Environment Research Council decided to allow the British people to name their new 300 million-dollar Arctic research ship the people, recognizing a boondoggle, insisted it be name Boaty McBoatface. The ship is now named the RRS Sir David Attenborough, public opinion be damned, but to me and millions of Brits it will always be Boaty McBoatface.

Thus I propose we name our hero drone Droney McDroneface.

The 4th of July is the perfect day to recognize Droney with a tip of the hat to the British people. But his accomplishment is only important because we are now energy independent. The story our energy independence starts on July 4th, 1845. On that day the Texas legislature held an emergency meeting to accept an offer from the United States to become the 28th state.  For ten years Texans had been pleading with the United States for entry into the Union and for ten years they had been held at arms length due to international treaty obligations with Mexico and the issue of slavery.

The Texans had capable leaders and they had started to flirt with Britain, France and Mexico at exactly the time that the United States realized it need to own the land all the way to the Pacific as a strategic necessity. Texas drove a hard bargain and part of that bargain was the the Federal Government could not claim or own any land in Texas.

As an aside the only member of the Texas constitution committee who had been born in Texas was José Navarro of San Antonio. We’ve been a multicultural country from the start, a point seldom heard in national discourse these days.

The United States is currently the worlds leading oil producer. The modern fracking boom started in Texas specifically because the federal government owned no lands and could not impeded development here. We are the worlds leading energy producer despite, not because of our federal government.

In the words of the immortal historian T.R. Fehrenbach, the founders of Texas thought they had joined a “country so great that even fools could not completely destroy it“.

There are millions of Americans who believe that President Trump is a fool will destroy the country. I felt the same about President Obama. The country survived eight years of Obama, it will survive four or eight years of Trump.

The greatness of America has more to do with the land and the people then specific programs or forms of government. We are in a strategically dominated position because we found a way to extract petrochemicals efficiently using new technology. The people, not the government made us energy independent.

Iran now has no missile defense capability because Americans engineered a way to attack and disable it without shedding a drop of blood. The people, not the government developed that technology.

All peoples remember great events of their past by telling stories that organize the action into a coherent narrative. The narrative behind Droney is easy to map out without triggering any special interest. Droney was unarmed, an outcast scheduled for the bone yard, Droney was bi-partisan, nobody used drones more than the Obama administration. Droney is gender fluid, I refer to him as ‘him’ not to offend any other gender, but  because I too am a him. But Droney could be a ‘her’ or an ‘it’ or a ‘post op transsexual’ drone; it doesn’t matter. Droney can be all things to all peoples.

Droney McDroneface  wasn’t like the other drones, he didn’t fly at 60,000 feet or have weapon pylons or the ability to loiter for hours on end and then rain death and destruction down from on high. He had no crew, he had no mission, he was headed to the desert to be mothballed.

Then one day contractors came and started performing preventative maintenance, they refurbished every system and outfitted him with a special payload. Droney got the mission brief; he was destined to be shot down by the unhinged mullahs in Iran.  But before they got him he was to feed a special packet into the systems that interrogated him. His sacrifice would ensure the flow of oil to Africa, Asia and the Pacific Rim. Granted it would be great for America if the price of oil started to climb but the world economy is bigger than the American energy market so Droney had to go.

Drowney flew to the Al Dhafra Airbase squawking that he was an MQ 4C Triton which he is not. There he sat, in a secluded hanger, as the same techs from Pax River worked him over again but there were now dozens of military officers watching them, taking pictures of his insides, talking in low, hushed tones about something important.

Droney received a new paint job, he was now orange, which was weird. He had new nose art added (a big, sweet , innocent, smile)  and the letters MAGA where US Navy had once been.  There was a large human fist drawn on his fuselage with the middle finger standing straight up. Droney didn’t know what that was all about but the Air Force guys who painted it were laughing the entire time they were there.

Just days after he arrived he rolled out into the evening twilight, rested, focused and fit for the last flight he would ever make. Without a moments hesitation or a drop of remorse he launched into the night sky and into the pantheon of American hero.’s. as the first cyber warrior to deliver a knock out punch without spilling one drop of blood.

That is story of American grit and ingenuity of which we can all be proud. If I can generate enough interest in Droney McDroneface then a merchandising campaign will ensue. I have to come up with some cash for the Rio Grande Valley Marine Corps League Color Guard. Somehow I got put in charge of that detail and I told the guys I’d take care of getting the flag poles and harnesses and stuff because I had no idea how much that would cost. Now I’m stuck, but I think Droney might get me out of a bind and the American people behind a true hero all at the same time.

Happy 4th of July and let me leave you with a smile:

In my last post I speculated that the drone, shot down by the Iranians, was an intentional baited ambush by the United States Navy. My theory is based on the pattern of events and the reported outcomes in current Iranian situation and, as I said in the last post, we may have have arrived here by accident, but we are here.

“Here” is the destruction of the Iranian missile control systems by a cyber attack launched during an aborted air raid. Missile control systems are closed kimono, they are never connected to the internet, all inputs into the system come from filtered targeted data or humans. The system went down one of two ways; through the return from a targeted platform, or through the actions of a human asset.

Given the historical record of the Central Intelligence Agency with human intelligence assets the chances they had an agent anywhere near Iran’s missile defense systems are remote. But it is possible and will cause the Iranians to launch a long, bloody, mole hunt. Mole hunts are an awesome tool to use against adversaries because a mole hunt will always turn up guilty people to be disappeared even when there are not guilty.

The United States had a gigantic Mole hunt in 2001 when weaponized anthrax spores showed up in the congressional mail room. Robert Muller and James Comey oversaw the ensuing investigation hounding one man to suicide while bankrupting another. Neither of the suspects had anything to do with the Anthrax attacks and the one who survived won a 5.82 million dollar settlement  after he was exonerated. That’s how mole hunts work; they find “guilty” people regardless of actual guilt, and right now Iran is in the middle of a big one. What could be better than that?

The simplest explanation for why a demonstrator drone, past its service life and headed for a junk heap, was sent over to the gulf and promptly shot down is the drone was serving a specific purpose that no other platform could serve. That service was (possibly) introducing a virus into the targeting systems. When we sent in a feint raid (pulling the planes back at the last minute) the virus the drone introduced was activated. The resulting damage was catastrophic for Iranian defense forces.

This morning in Kabul, Afghanistan there was yet another horrific bombing. This one targeted the Ministry of Defense offices responsible for administration and logistics. A truck bomb started the attack which was followed up by multiple gunmen who had no intention of surviving the assault. It is a typical Taliban attack in an area with no less than five schools as well as the Ministry of Public Works (across the Kabul River).

At least 50 children were wounded, 43 people killed in the attack and it caused an unknown amount of damage to the Ministry of Defense computer center.

The Taliban, if they were aiming at the computer center, were attacking a legitimate target. One of the most critical vulnerabilities of the Afghan Defense Force is corruption, without addressing it there will be no more money from donor nations. The computer systems that the Taliban attacked are critical to the ability of the Afghan National Army to track and account for donor funds. The funds scheduled to flow into Afghanistan are tied to anti corruption benchmarks, fail to meet them and there will be no more donor dollars.

The Taliban do not have  sophisticated drones that can attack computers, so they used suicide attackers and accepted the killing and maiming dozens of young school girls as necessary for mission success. Yet with all that death and destruction it is inconceivable they did as much damage to the Afghans computer networks as we did to the Iranians missile control systems.

The face of war is changing, incrementally, but significantly. Military leaders have long known that if you want a new idea, read an old book and it looks like somebody was reading up on the Trojan War when they came up with the idea to slip a bug into the Iranian missile systems.

It is important to note that I am observing the situation for afar and have no insider knowlege. I could be wrong about the drone, there could be other explanations for why it was in theater, the drone may have had nothing to do with the cyber attack. But, from my observation post here in McAllen Texas, I don’t see any other explanations for this series of events.

McAllen Texas is in the news these days due to the surge of illegal immigrants flooding across the border. Do you know what I see on the streets of McAllen every day? Nothing, not one sign of migrants because they do not stay here. Once released by the Border Patrol they are dropped of at one of the Catholic Relief Charities where they are fed, allowed to rest and clean up and then given a bus ticket for some point in the interior where they may or may not know somebody. They are out of the valley in under 24 hours.

McAllen is the center of the Rio Grand Valley which is about 95% hispanic and solid blue, the one thing the locals will not tolerate are migrants driving down wages or draining social services. Buses leave McAllen, get through the Border Patrol inspection station in Falfurries before reaching their first stop, San Antonio. Do you know that San Antonio is number 3 in the nation (behind Seattle and San Francisco) for property crimes? See the connection?

If you did see a direct connection it was because I primed your with two facts (migrants are bused out of the valley and the first stop is San Antonio) and a third, unconnected fact, about property crime rates. It may be that property crime rates in San Antonio are sky rocketing because young, unaccompanied, migrants are bailing off the buses there and going to ground. That explanation is probable, but I don’t know it to be true.

I point this out to emphasize a bias in the coverage of the current confrontation with Iran. Most of the reporting I see primes the reader in a negative way regarding the decisions and consequences behind a drone being shot down and an air raid being cancelled at the last minute. We may have witnessed a epochal moment in military history with the attack by Drone on a critical asset but we can’t see it because an acute case of “Orange Man Bad” syndrome in the press.

The more I contemplate the decent of our media into a partisan echo chamber the more determined I am do something about it. It is now time for a national Name Our Hero’s campaign to focus Americans on a positive aspect of being American. The first hero we should name is our selfless kamikaze drone. A hero drone is exactly what we need at the moment because it has no gender or race or political affiliation. Drones came into their own under the Obama administration so I assume they are a bipartisan weapon.

To honor the stunningly successful performance of our first cyber warrior, and in a tip of the hat to the innate common sense of the British peoples, I am naming the drone Droney McDroneface.

The name is in honor of the United Kingdom’s first Arctic Research Vessel Boaty McBoatface and if you don’t know that story hit the link, it’s hysterically funny.

With my next post I’m going to take the Name of Hero’s movement national, but I need some help. I need a meme ninja to take the picture below and make it into Droney McDroneface.  I’m thinking a big cartoon smile and cheerful paint job would do but don’t know how to do it.  DM me if you are able to come up with something good.

Editors Note: The title of this post was changed at the suggestion of a long time fan of FRI, LtCol Robert Brown, the  publisher of  Soldier of Fortune magazine. 

Intentionally or not, in the current contest of wills with Iran, the United States is now in a dominant geo -political and military position. Intentionally or not, the United States now has the most accurate, comprehensive, intelligence on Iran’s order of battle that any adversary has ever harvested from its opponent in history. We may not have arrived at this point due to a clever plan but we are here just the same, so let me describe where “here” is.

Iran was caught seeding mines into the strait of Hormuz in, what many believe, was an attempt to stage a heroic rescue of international sailors who were victims of the instability caused by the reckless actions of the President of the United States. That plan did not survive contact when the freighters did not sink and the USS Bainbridge arrived on scene to stop the Iranians from pushing one the disabled freighters into Iranian waters.

Days later the Iranians shot down a U.S. Global Hawk drone. This was no ordinary Global Hawk, it was a RQ-4N BAMS-D (Broad Area Maritime Surveillance-Demonstrator) flown into the area of operations just days prior. It had been the  proof of concept demonstrator for the new navy RQ-4C Triton maritime surveillance drone, but that program was finished and the demonstrators headed to the bone yard. At the last minute that changed and one was sent to the UAE. Why? It did not bring any new capabilities, it wasn’t needed, there are no units set up to crew the beast, what good could it have done?

I’m not sure, but here is a theory. That platform was sent to be sacrificed in an effort to fine tune our intelligence of Iranian anti air order of battle. The drone was headed for demobilization anyway; what is the downside to using it for a baited ambush?

The Iranians shot down a drone for which the United States had no further use. The Iranians contend that we flew the drone into their airspace; we say we didn’t. I say what would you do with the most sophisticated, disposable drone in history? One that is designed to run well below the normal Global Hawk mission profile I might add. One that is so damn big it looks like a jet on radar. What would you do with an asset like that?

I’d run that asset right into the teeth of the Iranian air defense system and record exactly what they do,  how long it takes for them to scramble, and how quickly they acquire and shoot me down.  Let me explain how valuable that intelligence is. Suppose you had very high confidence in your ability to launch a cyber-attack another countries missile control system and take them all out. Very high confidence would be what? 80 -90%? How could you get your confidence level up to almost 100%? Run a drone at the air defense system to watch how it responds.

We then stage a raid saying we will not tolerate any state shooting down our drones. At the last second the President decides to turn the planes around, he doesn’t want to spill blood over a drone. He says any further provocations will be dealt with harshly and is immediately criticized for his indecision. How much intelligence did that feint of a raid generate?

Concurrent with the feint raid was a real cyber attack that knocked out Iranian missile control systems. As Richard Fernandez observers in this  Belmont Club post:

A sucessful cyberattack inflicts considerable financial damage on the target, rendering vital equipment inoperable. It costs money to diagnose the damage, patch it and test the fix. Before the system can be restored it would be necessary to ensure there was no residual malware. Although Iran has denied any damage to its missiles the unbridled fury of their public response indirectly confirms they are hurt.

It looks to me like the President used a large, serious, diversion to cover his actual attack. That is Sun-Tzu level planning and execution, actually winning a battle without firing a shot, something I have never seen at the national command level. There is  another unique aspect to a cyber attack;  it produces no pictures.

Pictures cause problems, and right now President Trump has no problems. Had he gone with traditional strike package he would have big problems from the pictures of dead kids caught in collateral damage. If we had not caused the collateral damage casualties the Iranians would have done so themselves.  That is how the Iranians play the game and we have known that for decades.

The narrative would have been ‘Bad Orange Man strikes because he is unstable. Innocent Persians suffer because Americans need their oil’. The narrative never changes and is impervious to facts. The facts are  we do not need oil from the middle east and we don’t need bombers to deliver a crippling blow to a state in our crosshairs.

Following the script of the traditional Middle East North Africa (MENA)  Kubuki Theater play book President Trump launched a retaliatory strike with air and rocket assets. Congress and the media immediately played their assigned roles by preemptively declaring that congress must authorize any military conflictwith Iran. The bi-partisan duo of Matt Gaetz (R Fl.) and Ro Khanna (D Ca) are correct on this point. BUT, we have been dropping bombs and droning people non-stop over there for 18 years, and now they care?

Congress has removed itself from the oversight of our military by refusing to do the work required, by law, to get proper authorizations for the use of military force. How many times did former SecDef Mattis and the CJCOS General Dunford say, during congressional testimony, that they would welcome and, in fact need congress to do its job with respect to the War Powers Act ? The question answers itself while amplifying, to the American public, serial congressional incompetance at a vital function they assigned themselves with the War Powers Act over forty years ago.

President Trump has used the current crisis to point out inconvenient truths. He has asked why we are protecting shipping lanes we do not need ( without compensation) for too long. Trump has asked why we are shouldering the burden of keeping the straits open to benefit China when the Chinese are stealing us blind and working against our interests.

I understand that keeping the world’s shipping lanes running smoothly and safely is in the best interests of the largest economy in the world. Instability in world markets cause prices to rise and that hurts everybody, who in the world wants to see the price of oil rise?

We do. Oil is selling around $65 a barrel, get that price around $100 and the Permian Basin and the Eagle Ford Shale plays (these fields are in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico) will explode.  The one country in the world that would benefit from a significant rise in the price of oil is the United States. The one country no credible person would accuse of manipulating world oil prices is the United States. The position of being the hegemon, who does not put his thumb on the scale, is one Americans shoulder willingly. But we have been taken advantage of by too many for too long and the American people are sick of it.

Iran just got a good taste of the Tump Doctrine and what has that cost them? Untold millions of dollars and man-hours to replace and repair their missile control systems, which means? They are now Open Kimono. They know we know their air defense system inside and out and that their missile control systems are down hard. If we struck now there is not one damn thing they could do about it. They know it, we know it, and now you know it.

As an aside, the term Open Kimono vis a via Iran was introduced by Jeff Kenney of the world famous All Marine Radio weekly Lynch & Kenny show. We have been on this topic for the past two weeks, those podcasts can be found here and here.

Afghanistan has recently surrendered the cherished institution of official corruption called “The Checkpoint”. As I pointed out in my last post this is a potential game changer. Why, after 18 years of resistance, did Afghanistan choose to do away with the checkpoints? Who knows, maybe it is just coincidence, but I smell the makings of a deal because Afghanistan had to give Trump something to make him stay. The only “something” he has asked for is movement on corruption.

It could be a coincidence that the one thing Trump has asked for is actually happening in Afghanistan. It could be a coincidence that in the only confrontation with a foreign power, with shots already fired, he won without firing a kinetic shot. It could be a coincidence that the one drone Iran shot down was past its service life and heading for the junk yard.

This could be a coincidence, or it could be a response to pressure on the China’s energy supply, they import 90%  of their oil through the straits of Hormuz.

SEOUL (Reuters) – Chinese President Xi Jinping said in an op-ed in North Korean state newspaper Rodong Sinmun on Wednesday that China supports North Korea’s “correct direction” in politically resolving issues on the Korean Peninsula.

The front-page op-ed is an honor rarely granted to foreign leaders and comes a day before Xi is set to visit Pyongyang on Thursday and Friday at the invitation of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, making him the first Chinese leader to visit in 14 years.

Today President Trump became the first American President to set foot in North Korea. That too may be a coincidence. But the coincidences are piling up and all of them favor President Trump.

Intentionally or not, Donald Trump is transforming, in front of our eyes, into one the greatest presidents in American history.

Michelle Harven, from the new Stars and Stripes Force for Hire podcast interviewed me for this weeks edition. They compressed a lot of material into a tight half hour and although I got to mention both of my current gigs, the weekly column at The Freq and the weekly appearance with Jeff Kenny on All Marine Radio, only AMR made the final cut.

I got a good plug in for Mike “Mac” s’ McNamara’s Post Truamatic Winning program but got emotional doing so, which made for a memorable finish but I still get annoyed at myself when that happens.

I cross-posted some of my latest Weekly Afghanistan Updates from The Freq so newcomers to the blog get a sense of how I write about a topic that has grown obscure for the average citizen. If you are a first time visiter I would invite you to, using the side bar, navigate back to October 2011 for the more iconic, well received posts.

You will find the Force for Hire podcast here.

Editors Note: This is cross-posted from The Freq media where I currently write a weekly Afghanistan Update. 

Last month the commanding general of Task Force Southwest, Brig. Gen. Dale Alford, USMC, spent an hour talking with Macon All Marine Radio explaining his mission, his impression on the improved security in the Helmand province, and his take on the current peace talks. Dale has the unique distinction of serving in a combat zone at every rank from second lieutenant to brigadier general. If there is another Marine officer who can claim that distinction, I’ve never heard of him. It is rare to hear a task force commander, in a combat zone, spend an hour going over his assessment of the conflict with an interviewer who is a personal friend and also an experienced combat infantry officer. I’ve never heard of an interview like this, which is why I’m such a fan of the long form podcast interview model.

Since the arrival of TF Southwest, the Afghan Security Forces have expanded their control of the province from just Lashkar Gah (the provincial capitol) to 70% of the province — including most of the green zone and the Ring Road. Gen. Alford stressed that when the ANA 215 Corps goes on operations they are accompanied by drones that feed his control teams data in real time. Those teams (he has two) are co-located at the brigade level where they provide supporting fires and intelligence. That seems to be working and the small foot print combined with limited cost (in Washington dollars) would allow the United States to support similar task forces indefinitely.

TF Southwest is the Pentagon-preferred template for future American military operations and may prove an effective use of American military power in an areas of durable disorder. Deploying trainers who do not leave firm bases to fight with the men they train is an approach that some critics (me for one) question as a viable strategy. But it has the advantage of keeping American casualties low, and taking casualties at this stage of the Afghan War is our center of gravity. The American public will not tolerate significant loss of American life in combat operations in Afghanistan.

Gen. Alford also discussed the poppy problem at length, suggesting that the opium crop could be replaced with soy beans — much as tobacco was replaced by government subsidized soy beans in the American south. Unfortunately, in the farmlands of Helmand Province (Kandahar too), by 1975 over-irrigation and poor drainage had led to waterlogging and salination, damaging much of the farm lands (unless you are growing poppy). Efforts to mitigatethat damage stopped with the Soviet Invasion back in the 1970’s and they would have to be completed before any serious thoughts of growing soy beans could be entertained.

A better replacement crop would be industrial hemp, something the Afghans know how to grow already. Industrial hemp has huge potential in the textile markets but the money is in converting the hemp into industrial fiber products. That takes infrastructure or a stable logistical link to factories in China and neither of those will be available in Afghanistan anytime soon.

What was not discussed on the podcast was the recent Taliban attack on Camp Shorabak (where TF Southwest is currently housed). Long form podcasters like Mac tend to avoid “gotcha” journalism which is a good thing. What is more interesting or useful; an hour long talk with a general officer commanding in combat or the ambush of a CG by a media shill trying to maximize clicks by generating controversy?  When you listen to the podcast you are hearing a conversation between two experienced infantry officers who know each other well and are operating on a degree of trust. It’s an honest exchange of information without spin or hedging which makes it interesting.

What could the Gen. Alford say about the Taliban attack on Shorabak anyway (aside from the fact that it was pretty well organized)? The Taliban attacked the same base in 2012 when the Marines and Brits ran it and managed to destroy an entire squadron of Marine Harrier jump jets. The Taliban killed over a hundred ANA soldiers in an attack on an ANA firm base outside Mazar-i Sharif just last year. The Taliban has been infiltrating big bases for years and they will continue to do so because there are always gaps in a static defense or firm base perimeter, always. Even if you put your best troops in the static defense roll how many weeks or months of staring out into empty desert for 12 hours a day does it take to degrade alertness?

Soldiers are humans and humans are predictable, they establish routines, they get lazy and complacent, they make mistakes. In an eighteen-year-long war there are going to be setbacks because the enemy is competent and motivated, or he wouldn’t still be in the fight. Tactical setbacks do not prove or disprove that the Marines of TF Southwest are making a difference, only time will tell if these task forces were effective.

Gen. Alford listed a number of facts that support his contention that the Task Force is an effective way to buy time and develop the capacity of Afghan Security Forces while the peace process continues. He said, and virtually everyone involved with the Afghan process agrees, that these is no way to militarily “win” for the Afghan government. The exact same holds true for the Taliban. The TF Southwest model may prove to be effective which would an interesting development for future U.S. operations in durable pockets of disorder.

Also not discussed was the effort made last year to target the labs that process wet opium. In November of 2017, United States Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A… I’m going to start using this acronym more because it sounds cool) commenced a targeting campaign against drug labs to deny the Taliban the funds gained. In August of 2018, USFOR-A announcedthey had destroyed over 200 labs and denied the Taliban over 200 million in drug sales proceeds.

The problem with the USFOR-A claims were they did not withstand close scrutiny by journalist Richard Brittan of Alcis. Brittan identified 29 of the compounds hit in the Helmand province and, using satellite imagery databases, his team was able to see the history of those compounds over time. He sent field evaluators to survey the residents and found the results of the campaign were minimal because the costs of re-establishing the labs were minimal. His article can be found here, and is worth reading.

The drug lab campaign was quietly ended a year after it started because it didn’t offer any return on investment. A good reason Gen. Alford and Mac didn’t talk about it is that Task Force Southwest had nothing to do with the campaign, that’s DEA and spook work, and I bet you money Gen. Alford could have predicted the outcome of that program anyway — I know him; he’s sharp and has a lot of time in the Helmand province.

Opium production in Afghanistan has, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, increased dramatically in recent years. Reading the linked report is depressing, but it did answer the question of what happened in Nimroz province after we fixed the irrigation systems, check out the map below that I pulled from the linked article:

Despite being the number one elicit opium producer in the world, Afghan heroin has little to do with the current opioid crisis in America. Those drugs come from Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala. But regardless of origin, there is only one way to battle the opioid problem in America — just as there is only one way to deprive the Taliban of the millions they are making on the poppy — and that is to legalize drugs.

According to Johaan Hari, author of the recent bestseller Chasing the Scream, everything you know about addiction is wrong. When you read about the Swiss program of providing addicts their daily dose for free at government clinics, it is hard to believe that is an effective treatment option. When you read on about similar programs in Portugal or Vancouver, it is hard not to see the utility of the approach.

A comprehensive program based on the Swiss model could stop the opioid crisis dead in its tracks. If the United States did that, most of the the world would follow. In fact, most of the world was forced to opt into our war on drugs back in 50’s. That effort was lead by the first commissioner of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry J. Anslinger — as virulent a racist who has ever served on the national stage.

Type Harry J. Anslinger quotes in Google and standby… you won’t believe your eyes. Here, I’ll give you a tame one: “The primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races.” The War on Drugs started because Anslinger (who was ignorant, but neither stupid or lazy) needed to grow a bureau created out of the old Revenue office after prohibition was repealed, just before his appointment. Regardless of its origins, there is no question that the war on drugs has been a dismal failure — and an incredibly expensive one, at that. Here is a historical note that renders the current opioid crisis narrative of the “chemical hook” model of addiction suspect. In 1971 35% of the servicemen in Vietnam had tried heroin and 20% were addicted. James Clear picks up the story in this article from Behavioral Psychology, How Vietnam War Veterans Broke Their Heroin Addictions:

“The discovery led to a flurry of activity in Washington, including the creation of the Special Action Office of Drug Abuse Prevention under President Nixon, to promote prevention and rehabilitation and to track addicted service members when they returned home.“

Lee Robins was one of the researchers from that special action office. In a finding that completely upended the accepted beliefs about addiction, Robins found that when soldiers who had been heroin users returned home, only 5 percent of them became re-addicted within a year, and just 12 percent relapsed within three years. In other words, approximately nine out of ten soldiers who used heroin in Vietnam eliminated their addiction nearly overnight”.

Johaan Hari musters a good argument about the utility of currently banned drugs and the folly of the War on Drugs. So did Michael Pollan in last year’s NYT bestseller How to Change Your Mind. A quote from this New York Times article about the book explains Pollan’s understanding of the neural physiology behind psychedelic experiences:

“Where Pollan truly shines is in his exploration of the mysticism and spirituality of psychedelic experiences. Many LSD or psilocybin trips — even good trips — begin with an ordeal that can feel scarily similar to dissolving, or even dying. What appears to be happening, in a neurological sense, is that the part of the brain that governs the ego and most values coherence — the default mode network, it’s called — drops away. An older, more primitive part of the brain emerges, one that’s analogous to a child’s mind, in which feelings of individuality are fuzzier and a capacity for awe and wonder is stronger.”

The statistics Pollan musters from legitimate medical studies in the 50’s and 60’s regarding the effectiveness of LSD in treating smoking or alcohol addiction were stunning. That is why there are medical trials being conducted today in many countries, including America, on using psychedelics (a.k.a. entheogens) to treat a variety of problems from end-of-life acceptance to alcoholism to PTSD. Our laws regarding drugs are going to change. The sooner they change towards rationally treating addicts with the drugs they need — while guiding towards establishing meaning and purpose in their lives — the better.

I don’t have a dog in this fight. I have no experience with entheogens, although if offered I’d certainly try them. I can’t imagine that happening and it’s not on my bucket list, so I really don’t care. If they prove effective in treating PTSD, then I’m an advocate — but it is too early to make that claim. None of the science discussed in the books linked above is settled. But that’s the nature of science, it’s mostly never settled. Researches must keep an open mind and follow the evidence before any scientific question can be considered “settled”. Right now the evidence researchers are finding is encouraging.

What I know is there is no way to rid Afghanistan of the poppy, except by devaluing the crop. Just as there is no way to beat the Taliban as long as they have safe sanctuary in Pakistan. We are not in a position to effect the cross border problem nor the booming poppy economy. The continued commitment of units like Task Force Southwest may prove to be the only way to buy Afghanistan the time and space it needs to solidify into a viable state. But we will need a lot more time and a lot more money to do this, and I do not see how the United States will find enough of either for too much longer.

Featured image: HELMAND PROVINCE, Afghanistan (May 8, 2009) – An Afghan National Police officer picks up a bag of opium. Afghan National Police officers, along with U.S. Special Operations Soldiers, discovered 600 pounds of opium May 7, 2009, during a cordon and search operation of a known Taliban safe house, collection center and trauma center in Babaji Village, in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. Photo by Cpl. Sean K. Harp, U.S. Army.

Editors Note: This is cross-posted from The Freq media where I currently write a weekly Afghanistan Update. 

Last week Military.com published an Associated Press article under the headline “Islamic State Expands Reach in Afghanistan, Threatens West”. I have read it three times now, and consider it fake news. Here is an example:

“The area comprising the provinces of Nangarhar, Nuristan, Kunar and Laghman was so dangerous that the U.S.-led coalition assigned an acronym to it in the years after the invasion, referring to it as N2KL”.

This is not true, N2KL was named after the provinces assigned to R.C. East back around 2008, or so. When the Army started calling the area N2KL it was so safe that I’d have my kids’ vacation with me in Jalalabad over the summers.

Picking apart news stories written by young journos who don’t know much about the topic they were assigned is not the point. This story is only important in respect to the continued involvement of the United States in Afghanistan. If that involvement is based on the fear that ISIS-K will metastasize into an organization capable of planning and launching attacks against the West, we are on a fool’s errand.  ISIS-K (hereafter referred to as Daesh-K, because that’s what the cool kids call them) in Afghanistan is not capable of sophisticated international operations targeting the Homeland. Daesh-K are not our friends, but they are also not our problem. They are Pakistan, Afghanistan and maybe Uzbekistan’s problem. A quick history of Daesh-K will help explain my contention, and it just so happens I wrote one in this post back in 2017.

In 2010, Pakistani Taliban, mainly from Tehrik-e Taleban Pakistan (TTP), started to settle in Achin, Nazian, Kot, Deh Bala, Rodat and Ghanikhel districts of Nangarhar province. They invoked Melmastia (the hospitality requirement Pashtunwali places on all its tribesmen towards others, whether they are strangers or members of one’s own tribe) from the local communities saying it was their moral obligation to help their Pashtun brothers. They were moving to avoid the Pakistan army’s Operation Khyber I, which was targeting the TTP in the Northwest Frontier.

Fast forward to 2014; the muhajerin(refugees) from Pakistan have continued to trickle into Nangarhar province but when the Pakistani army launches operation Khyber II, the trickle turns into a flood. Mule trains full of weapons and ammo, some of them 50 animals long, arrive daily into the Mamand Valley, in Achin district, along with hundreds of militants. Suddenly, the muhajerin declare they are now ISIS and evict the Taliban from the districts they control, but leave the Afghan security forces alone. The locals are happy because trade is moving, Taliban and government road blocks are down and nobody is shooting at anybody. The government is happy too because Daesh-K is an enemy of the Pakistanis, making them an enemy of an enemy — which in Afghanistan is a good basis for a long friendship.

But the Taliban did not take this threat lightly, and started attacking ISIS in Nazim district. ISIS battled back hard, and took control of five districts by June of 2015. Then the Taliban went all in with their “elite forces from Loya Paktia and Loy Kandahar” who infiltrated the Mamand Valley (in Achin district), and on one night during Ramadan… (The always excellent Afghan Analyst Network picks up the story):

“In early July 2015, Taleban fighters sneaked into Mamand and, during the night of 2 July, talked to their sympathisers about staging a coordinated attack against the ISKP fighters. They managed to secure the help of various tribal elders. One morning during Ramadan, on 3 July 2015, local men (including those not usually sympathetic to the Taleban) and Taleban rose up together against ISKP, with calls by the Taleban via the mosque’s loud-speakers for all men of fighting age to come out and participate, or face seeing their homes burnt down. Taken by surprise, the ISKP fighters retreated from most of Mamand valley by the end of that day”.

Having routed the Daesh-K the non-local Taliban had to leave too, and it took exactly a week for the Daesh-K to return. After driving most of the locals out of the Mamand Valley, Daesh-K then became our problem. They have been a costly problem, turning Nangarhar into the most dangerous province for American servicemen in the country.

The threat from Daesh-K, as outlined in the AP story is as follows:

“Without an aggressive counterterrorism strategy, Afghanistan’s ISIS affiliate will be able to carry out a large-scale attack in the U.S. or Europe within the next year, the U.S. intelligence official said, adding that ISIS fighters captured in Afghanistan have been found to be in contact with fellow militants in other countries.

Authorities have also already made at least eight arrests in the United States linked to the ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan.

Martin Azizi-Yarand, the 18-year-old Texan who plotted a 2018 attack on a suburban mall, said he was inspired by ISIS and was preparing to join the affiliate in Afghanistan. He was sentenced in April to 20 years in jail.

Rakhmat Akilov, the 39-year-old Uzbek who plowed his truck into pedestrians in Stockholm in 2017, also had links with the Afghanistan affiliate, the intelligence official said. “During interrogation he said ‘this is my commander in Afghanistan and he is telling me what to do,'” he said”.

If the Daesh-K, working diligently from their mountain keeps in Achin district, are causing people around the world to up and Jihad, then how about we cut their internet? The Taliban made cell phone companies turn off their towers at night because they knew ISAF could track them through cell phones so why can’t we do the same with the internet? It’s not like there is a booming local internet service provider economy in the area. How likely is it that the Daesh-K have their own satellite with secure uplinks? The question answers itself.

I don’t think Daesh-K in Nangarhar has anything to do with lone wolf Jihadis LARPingon the internet. But just in case they are, here is another modest proposal that will save serious bucks.  Ask the Taliban (at the peace talks) to,  as a sign of good faith,  go into Nangarhar province and eliminated Daesh-K. In an unimpeachable demonstration of how reasonable we (the US) are, we could lend them some FACs’ and run some close air to support them;  maybe even drop another MOAB (which is just a big fuel air explosive). MOAB’s are great for morale as long as you are on the side dropping them.

Using the threat of Daesh-K to justify continued involvement in Afghanistan is folly, because Daesh-K and the Taliban are not a threat to us.  The threats to our interests in the region come from Pakistan, Iran, and China.

The linked article above has a good, detailed, explanation of that fact. Here is a sample:

“Pakistan’s duplicity has continued for over seventeen years. While accepting billions of American dollars in military and economic aid, Pakistan has been slowly bleeding the U.S. to death in Afghanistan through its support of the Taliban, Haqqani Network and other terrorist groups.^12”

China represents a more significant threat, but one that is difficult to explain unless you are listening to reliable experts. Grant Newsham, a regular on All Marine Radio, does the best  job I’ve found explaining China’s vampire-like expansion which targets all sectors of a competitors economy. China already dictates the terms on which Hollywood movies are developed and released. The stakes are explained well by Richard Fernandez in an excellent post titled They Are Coming Through the Wire.

“They [the Chinese] are betting they can put enough harm into the US economy that the 2020 elections go to somebody else. Regions, industries. If you look at the Foxconn factory in Wisconsin, the natural gas agreement in West Virginia, each one of these are means for putting hooks into the local politics into those regions or states then turning around and saying ‘the President is making it very hard to continue making investments’, many of which they never had any actual intention of making. Then they can say ‘it is the President’s fault that your economy is failing.”

Countering the growing influence of China in the region is a good reason to stay in Afghanistan. An independent Afghanistan would be a significant geostrategic win for the West. But is it probable? This I do not know… but what I do know is a way to give our continued presence in Afghanistan a purpose vis-a-vis the threat we are trying to counter.

Here is how you put our advisories on defense, reacting to our moves while fighting a frantic rear action battle for their own legitimacy.

The United States, in the name of free peoples everywhere, and in the context of what is right for peoples who have been wronged, now insists on a homeland for the Pashtun, Baloch and Kurdish peoples.

The current borders were artificially created by the West, specifically to keep these people separate and at each other’s throats. We’re America — and are all about freedom for oppressed peoples victimized by our nasty and brutish (not really in true historical context, but you know where I’m going…) colonial systems.

If we were to suddenly adopt such a radically smart approach to international diplomacy, what would our military in Afghanistan do? I have no idea. Letting the Taliban come over from the Paktia/Khost franchises (they can sneak in behind the Daesh from Pakistan) to battle Daesh-K would be a good start, after that you would have to see how things play out.

The United States is energy independent; we export food, we have two giant oceans separating us from most of the global madness. There is nothing in Central Asia we need or want, except for everyone to calm down and establish some semblance of a legitimate governing apparatus. Our interests are in preventing large disruptions to the global economy from Black Swan attacks, like the one we sustained on 9/11. Those giant hits to the global economy are not sustainable if they become frequent. But saying that Deash-K, or the many and manifest other Jihadi organizations with roots in Uzbekistan or Western China but now resident in Afghanistan, are capable of another 9/11 is to risk developing a “boy who cried wolf” reputation.

There are legitimate threats in the central Asian area, and we should focus on them with effective tools designed for a long game. China is only a peer threat to our military if we are fighting in China, they cannot project combat power around the globe, only the United States can do that in any meaningful numbers.

Our mission in Afghanistan should now be to prevent China and Pakistan from benefitting from our failure. A military presence in Afghanistan helps, forcing our adversaries to react to our moves on the global stage would be better. And what could possibly be better than advocating for a homeland for peoples long oppressed and divided thanks to those devil Europeans and their damn maps?