Category: U.S. Military

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The Sorry Story of the Delaram DAC

The FRI Guide to Dangerous Places: Delaram District, Afghanistan

During the summer of 2011 a unique opportunity presented itself to Abdul Karim Brahui, the governor of Afghanistan’s Nimroz Province, during a meeting with the new Marine Corps RCT commander in Delaram II, Colonel Eric Smith, USMC. Colonel Smith had replaced my good friend Paul Kennedy and although I knew Eric, Paul had given me a warning (in infantry officer code) about dropping in on him saying “he still irons his skivvies Timmy, don’t waste your time with him”.

Colonel Smith had come to Zaranj to complain to the provincial governor about the Khash Rod district governor who was an ineffective crook. Governor Brahui had nothing to do with the appointment of district governors, Karzai’s government appointed them but recognizing opportunity Governor Brahui turned to one of his trusted aids, Engineer Khodaidad and told him to accompany the Colonel back to Delaram and then move to assume the duties of the district governor. Col Smith, being new to the game, didn’t think twice about accepting the governors kind offer. He forgot or didn’t know those appointments were made in Kabul. The Colonels apparent complicity in this unusual arrangement stayed Karzai’s hand thus preventing Khodaidad’s immediate removal by the heavy handed Kabul Government.

Coming in for a morning meeting in Zaranj

My provincial manager in Nimroz was an Afghan national from Kabul named Bashir. Well educated Kabuli’s able to speak and write English fluently are normally connected to powerful people in the government making their utility in remote, sparsely populated areas of Afghanistan about zero. The tribes on the fringes of the Dasht-e Margo (desert of death) were more likely to shoot Kabul elites than cooperate with them. Bashir was well educated, a fluent English speaker who was from Kabul but not connected to anyone in the Kabul government. He was, without question the most honest, competent Afghan I knew, and I knew more than a few good men in Afghanistan. He and Governor Brahui became good friends over the years Bashir and his family lived in Zaranj.

 When Governor Brahui told Engineer Khodaidad to go to Delaram, Bashir turned to his assistant provincial manager, Boris, and told him to accompany Engineer Khodaidad to Delaram II. Engineer Khodaidad left with Col Smith with just the clothes on his back but Boris, a Russian Jew who was raised in New York City and a former Army Signal Intelligence operator, had the presence of mind to get his overnight bag and a change of clothes before departing for Delaram II. Boris had learned about working the Nimroz Province from the FRI blog and had contacted me asking if he could work out of Zaranj. He had an intense interest in Central Asian history and was all about supervising projects among the ruins of the Ghurid Sultanate. He turned out to be a hard worker, fluent Dari speaker, and the best field supervisor I ever had.

Bashir is to my left amd Governor Brahui to my right in this picture from on of our project openings

Engineer Khodaidad spoke fluent Russian having received his engineer training in a Russian school in Mazar-i-Sharif in the 1960’s. Like Governor Brahui he was a respected former Nimroz Front Mujahidin leader who had fought out of the Kang District during the Soviet War. Boris and Engineer Khodaidad became instant friends which was fortunate because Boris had to go to the Delaram II base exchange to by Engineer Khodaidad the various sundries and the bedding he would need to live out of the DAC. That would have normally caused embarrassed resentment from an Afghan leader who had limited dealing with Americans, but Boris and the Engineer has remarkably similar opinions about politicians and senior military officers, so it was no problem.

Boris got Engineer Khodaidad a ride to the DAC and helped him move in and I sent him some mini split air conditioners from our stash in Lashkar Gah to make the office and living spaces tolerable. I then called to the country manager in Jalalabad to see if he could shake loose some additional funding to start repairing the streets and drainage ditches in Delaram which turned out to be easy because USAID had developed a sudden interest in seeing projects started there. We turned up a couple million started to pave the streets of Delaram while also rehabilitating the bazar in the old Taliban designated district administrative center of Ghurghuri which was not too far from Delaram.

Boris sporting an M3A1 grease gun in one of the abandoned walled forts

There was a small Marine Corps Civil Affairs attachment co-located with Engineer Khodaidad at the District Administrative Center and they took over getting him established in his new home. I don’t remember who owned those Marines by they were living like the grunts down south with no fresh food, no showers, and no A/C (until we hooked them up).  At least one of them ( the team Gunny) had already been shot once while patrolling the area but that didn’t stop them from continuing to patrol. The DAC detachment also had a Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel from the Afghan Hands program assigned to it, but he had little to do except tease me because I couldn’t speak Pashto. He was a good man in a hard spot, but his assignment said all you needed to know about the Afghan Hands Program (it was a loser track for officers) which sucked because I saw serious talent in the Hands program every time I ran into one. There was also an American SF team located in Ghurghuri but I never saw them and have no idea what they were up to or why they were there.

That sets the table for an interesting tale because when Boris and Engineer Khodaidad showed up the security situation in Delaram wasn’t good but not that bad in the big scheme of things. But not a week after they showed up the Karzai administration struck by appointing a new district police chief named Asif, a Pashtun of the Helalzai subtribe of the Nurzai tribe. The Helalzai fought on the Soviet side of the war and Asif’s father, acting as the Soviet district security chief back then had executed 28 civilians in the Delaram Bazar for supporting the Nimroz Front Mujaheddin.

Commander Asif and Engineer Khodaidad were mortal enemies and he, the  local tribal leaders, and the Afghan Hands LtCol told anybody who would listen that Asif’s appointment was a terrible idea, but that didn’t matter because there was nothing any American could do about it. When Asif showed up a significant proportion of the local police force immediately quit, partially motivated by his appointment and partially by the fact that they had not received their pay in months. Asif immediately brought several of his own trusted men onto the Delaram police payroll.

This was the interesting dynamic from the Afghan perspective because when Col Smith returned from his meeting in Zaranj with Engineer Khodaidad and installed him as the new district governor it was assumed he was under the protection of the Colonel who would support him both morally and materially as he consolidated his position. They expected Col Smith would derail the appointment of Commander Asif after they explained who he was and why his appointment would degrade the district’s security.

But Eric Smith had no intention of doing that, his focus was on the Northern Helmand Province where his maneuver battalions were still having major problems in Sangin, Musa Qala, and the Kajaki Dam. He didn’t give a damn about Delaram, neither did Paul Kennedy when he was there, nor would have I had I been in their shoes. But Paul knew how provincial and district governors were appointed and wouldn’t have short circuited that process – that was an unforced error. The appointment of Commander Asif was uncontested by the Colonel Smith because he had no say in the matter. Even worse Smith was forced to ignore the obvious reason for the decline in district security while acting like the new district police chief was a legit player in the regional security hierarchy.

The shit hit the fan days after Asif took over when a small convoy of Afghan security contractors were ambushed by the Taliban approximately 40 km west of Delaram. These were fuel tanker escorts as I recall, and they tended to roll with lots of guns and  a ton of ready ammunition. In the ensuing 90-minute firefight, the contractors drove the Taliban from the field and captured a vehicle containing 12 IEDs. The contractors then called the Afghan Highway Police, the Afghan National Police, the Afghan National Army, and the Marines looking for somebody who would take custody of the Taliban IED’s. Nobody came out to help them and nobody wanted the IED’s except for the Taliban who returned in force to recapture their vehicle and IED’s.  The contractors retreated to Delaram DAC with three of the IED’s and reported to the incident to Engineer Khodaidad.

These are the three large IED’s with pressure plates captured by the contractors

Within days carloads of armed men started to show up at our project sites to threaten our workers which was not unusual and Boris, who had the advantage of being tall, fit, disagreeable and a Dari speaker, had no problem running them off. Then IEDs began to detonate in the town several times a week, at first they targeted Asif’s Afghan National Police (ANP) checkpoints, then a few targeted our project site. The escalation continued with two of our Delaram project day laborers were kidnapped and decapitated by the local Taliban when they went to their home village (Tut) for the weekend.

The IED fiasco and sudden eruption of IED blasts brought the RCT-8 commander to the DAC with an entourage including his Sergeant Major, for a security shura. Boris blended in with the Afghans at the meeting and was able to observe from the back of the room. He said the District Governor was not mollified by being patronized by Col Smith with a pat on the back, and the promise “you and I will go out there with pistols and shoot the Taliban”.

Boris thought Engineer Khodaidad had seen a fair number of Americans in uniform making extravagant promises and talking tough, then failing to deliver before they redeployed back home. The Governor walked out of the security shura frustrated at the inability of the participants to agree on any concrete plan of action for security incidents like the IED capture. He later told Boris: “why should I even be here, if none of you listen to me?”. It was time to face a decision I never wanted to make and that was to cancel a project without finishing it, something none of my colleagues and I had done over the years of working contested districts, so I flew into Delaram to talk with the district governor.

This is what high grade home made explosive (HME) looks like

Delaram had grown considerably since my first visit as had the staffs of the Regimental Combat Teams. The RCT 8 CO now had a State Department Contractor assigned to him who was in some way responsible for aid in Nimroz Province. The State guy was a retired Army Colonel who seemed nice enough, but I was unable to figure out his role in the “hold and build” phase of the Marine Corps Southwestern campaign. He didn’t have any funds to spend, he was not part of the approval process for my projects, and he couldn’t leave the Delaram base, so it was hard to see what role he played in the big scheme of things.  He picked me up when I flew in making it a point to ask that I not go directly to the Marine CO with information that should have gone through him. I told him that would not be problem without explaining why and asked if I could use his vehicle to drive out to the DAC.

The vehicle in question, a beat-up old Toyota SUV with bad brakes and no working A/C, did not belong to him. He and a few other contractors rented it (for $1000 a month!) to get around the base and it wasn’t allowed off base according to the rental contract. You could have gone down the ring road to Herat and purchased a vehicle in similar shape for less than a thousand U.S. dollars, but I don’t remember mentioning that to him.

The IED’s still had the blasting cap inside attached which amazed me – imagine bouncing around the pitted dirt roads of Afghanistan with 5 gallons of HME with a blasting cap embedded in it.

I met Boris on the Delaram FOB where the State Department liaison had found some racks for us in transient berthing area. The next morning, we walked to the gate where they screened local workers entering the base, exchanging our ball caps and sunglasses for shalwar kameez tunic’s and pakols and walked off the base to the district administrative center. The gate guards were contractors, not Marines and they were not sure we were allowed to just walk off base. I told them to check with my good friend Colonel Smith if they didn’t believe we could leave. Thankfully that did the trick because I think Eric might have really detained me for being armed, or the bogus Synergy Strike Force CAC card identifying me as DB Cooper CAC card (it even scanned in the DFACS!) , or using an expired SWAMP pass to bullshit my way off base, the number of infractions he could have gotten shitty with me about were alarming when I think about it.

Laying out the main drag of the Delaram Bazaar

The walk was about three miles as I remember, and we witnessed a group of boys cut and then steal an electrical transmission cable that connected an ANP checkpoint with an ANA base across the road. The kids were quick too, laughing hysterically from the back of motorcycles as the ANP troops boiled out of their checkpoint in hot pursuit. Being an ANP officer in Delaram while commander Asif was in charge sucked. When we arrived at the DAC Engineer Khodaidad was meeting with a local farmer discussing a vexing problem in Dari because the Engineer wouldn’t speak Pashto.

We had arrived hot and sweating profusely because it was a good 110 outside but were being ignored so Boris started interpreting for me.

 “He’s asking the Engineer to send the Marines to run off the Taliban near his farm because they are raping his livestock at night. Engineer K just told him the big Foriengee (foreigner) understands Dari so maybe they should discuss this another time”

The farmer then turned to us and asked could we tell the Marines the Taliban are at his farm every night molesting his sheep and they can come and kill them no problem and he’d give them a sheep for their trouble too. Boris translated that for me before saying simply “No”.

There are hundreds of these old walled forts scattered throughout the desert in Nimroz province

Boris then asked Engineer Khodaidad for guidance in Russian and I said to the farmer “Ma dorost dari yad nadaraom” (I can’t speak dari well) but I said it perfectly which made him look at me with narrowing eyes before asking why there were Russians in the DAC. He then launched into a long story about how everything has gone to hell since the Marines showed up and built a forward operating base because Marines attract  livestock raping Taliban and now there is an old Baloch Muj commander running the district but he doesn’t have his Muj army with him just two Russians and a handful of Marines which wasn’t enough fighters … the farmer had the pacing and timing of a stand-up comedian and in no time we were laughing so hard it was silly . After the farmer left Engineer Khodaidad told us he wanted the projects to continue but would understand if we pulled out. We stayed and finished the projects without additional losses.

Most of the old forts are eroding back into the desert, the amount of interesting archeological history being lost to history is a crime.

Engineer Khodaidad and Commander Asif did not survive their appointments to the Kashrud district government. Asif was smoke checked after a few months in command which immediately brought the incident rates down and allowed us to finish our projects. Engineer Khodaidad was killed in a targeted assassination outside his home village a year after his appointment to district governor. The Engineer was a brave man who personally found and ran off a two man hit team sent to kill Boris, but he didn’t tell us about it, he told Governor Brahui who then called Bashir and told him to bring Boris back to Zaranj immediately.

I decided to go get Boris with our Baluch interpreter Zabi and drive him back to Zaranj because he had bitching about not being able to free range the province with me. We took all day to make the drive to Zaranj stopping to examine some of the old walled cities in the desert that were being used by the Taliban to move in and out of the Helmand. We found melon rinds, goat scat and fire pits in them which we assumed came from the Taliban because the Desert of Death in no place to herd goats.

Boris and Zabi during our walled city day trip

Boris the Russian Jew is now Boris the Israeli Kibbutz farmer He and his growing family live the spartan life in the Negav Desert. Zabi and Bashir are now both American citizens and doing well. Governor Brahui returned to his home in Char Burjak district which had experienced an economic revival after we repaired the irrigation system. I have no idea how he is getting along with the Taliban government but suspect he’s reached accommodations with them because what else can he do?

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The FRI Guide to Dangerous Places – Route 1 The Torkham Border to Jalalabad Highway

Early in the 2010 fighting season the vital Torkham – Jalalabad road corridor was suddenly beset with frequent rioting that closed it for days at a time. The Provincial government blamed insurgent attacks for the instability which seemed dubious as insurgent attacks don’t generate large scale rioting. JSOC night raids could cause a few days of agitated rock throwing but there had been none reported astride Route 1 between Jalalabad and Torkham. There was enough confusion about what was happening on the ground that one of our guests at the Taj thought we should go explore the situation. She convinced my Afghan buddy JD and I to escort her down Route 1 to the village of Amanullah Khan to witness a peace shura between the Provincial government and the rioting villagers.

This is a 2010 photograph of the land title storage room in the Nangarhar Provincial Agriculture Department. Some of these papers date back hundreds of years and fall apart if you touch them. They are not cataloged or organized.

The road between the Torkham border and Jalalabad is flat farmland dotted with a series of villages and towns. Attacks along that road were rare and confined to random IED strikes targeting ISAF vehicles around Jalalabad. Insurgent operations were not possible without the tacit support of local civic leaders and those living along Route 1 were interested in commerce. The only useful service the Taliban provided back then was fair and impartial land deed adjudication. That was shrewd on their part because land was always the source of friction between the people and provincial authorities.

This is township of Amanullah Khan in Rodat district – the smoke is from the homes that have been set on fire by the Afghan National Police (ANP). The ANP vehicles in the valley have just arrived in response to intermittent rifle fire from the hills to the left.

The riots along Route 1 erupted after Gul Agha Sherzai, the Nangarhar Provincial Governor, dispatched a construction company to build a village to be named in his honor astride route 1 in Rodat district. The Governor liked to build things named in his honor and had a special “reconstruction tax” levied at the Torkham border to fund those projects. Before the governor could start building his village he had to eject the current residents who he claimed were squatting on government land. The rioting froze hundreds of trucks in place causing a big kink in ISAF logistics so a shura was called to settle the matter.

A member of the Provincial Council and ANP escort work the crowd to try and prevent rioting. As this picture was taken heavy firing broke out in the valley below
The crowd turned hostile as the shooting started to pick up in volume and intensity resulting in the local councilman and his escort beating a hasty retreat
Hard to tell from this photo but there was a bunch of firing going on – most of it coming from the ANP shooting towards the hills to the left.
Rioting here can get out of hand quickly and the crowd at the gas station shura went high order fast.

This incident was an illustration of why our efforts in Afghanistan were doomed from the start. Conventional wisdom at the time was the US State Department was actively supporting the central government, while the US military and American intelligence services were actively supporting local warlords who supplanted central government influence. President Karzai and the UN bitched about this dynamic constantly. But it was President Karzai who put warlords like Sherzai in positions of influence. In Sherzai’s case he was given the lucrative province of Nangarhar governor specifically to remove him as a competitor to Karzai’s empire of graft and thievery in Kandahar.

Once the local officials fled the scene the shooters in the crowd turned their attention to us and started to pepper the hill with small arms fire causing us to scramble for our truck and bolt. To my right is Engineer Sun from MIT (her Afghan name) who had a knack for sniffing out dangerous trips and then conning me or JD or Baba Ken into to taking her on them.

Gul Agha Sherzai was a major Kandahri warlord who was the Governor of Kandahar Province before the Taliban took over and he was the first warlord to return (with an American Army Special Forces team) to Kandahar in 2001. President Karzai gave Sherzai the governorship of Nangarhar province knowing full well he would usurp land, initiate illegal taxation, and amass a personal fortune from American reconstruction funds because that was exactly what his brother was doing in Kandahar.

On our way home the locals massing behind the police lines insisted on telling us about getting screwed over by their governor.

The appointment of Sherzai to governor sidelined the Arsala Family and other provincial powerbrokers but Sherzai was generous enough to ensure the old families were financially rewarded. The Arsalas had governed Nangarhar Province last two decades with Haji Qader Arsalas , in the position of governor before the Taliban regime, and his elder brother Haji Din Mohammad, appointed governor under the Karzai government, a position he held until 2004. Haji Din Mohammad is the only survivor of the once powerful clan. His younger brother Abdul Haq was killed fighting the Taliban in 2001 and his other younger brother Haji Abdul Qader was murdered in Kabul by a gunmen in 2002, while serving as a minister in the interim government.

Governor Sharzai’s attempt to expel the villagers of Amanullah Khan during the summer of 2010 failed. In 2013 he approved the sale of more than 1000 jeribs (around 500 acres) of pasture land in Rodat district long used by local Mohmand tribesmen to Logar Province ‘businessman’ Ghulam Mohammad Charkhi. That pissed the locals off but the straw that broke the camels back for Governor Sherzai were the shenanigans of the Arsalas clan.

Governor Sherzai and I talking business back in the early days when he was adapt at ‘trimming the tree’ with local powerbrokers and popular with the voters.

Zahir Qadeer, a Member of Parliament and the son of Haji Abdul Qader, sold hundreds of acres of government land in Sorkhrud district to various families who were enraged to find out they had been bilked into buying government land they could never develop. He told the investors they would receive land plots in a residential project he was developing near Jalalabad called Zaher Qader Township. A move that seem to make the situation worse. The ensuing 2013 riots cut every route into Jalalabad City and by October of that year Gul Agha Sherzai was forced out of office.

Now that the Taliban are back in charge Route 1 is no longer dangerous. Land grabs require money and the Tsunami of money that flooded into Afghanistan for the past 20 years has dried up. Land adjudication is done in Taliban courts according to Sharia law, a harsh code that tolerates zero arguments once a decision has been made. The people may not be happy under the Taliban but at least their main highways are safe, something we could never accomplished in a thousand years.

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The FRI Guide to Dangerous Places – The Salang Pass

In May of 2012 my team of Afghan cut throats and I were dispatched to investigate persistent rumors concerning ISAF vehicle convoys transiting the Salang Pass. The complaint was that ISAF units would close the pass causing Afghans to wait up to 24 hours in the freezing cold before they could get through. The international community was up in arms about that and wanted a boots on the ground report which meant me, or my boss (call sign Bot) would have to go, and I was up. This would be my 10th and final trip through the Salang and I was not happy about going, the pass scared me.

The Salang Pass tunnel entrance in 2005

The dangers from being trapped inside the Salang Tunnel were obvious. The lights inside the tunnel didn’t work, nor did the closed-circuit TV cameras that were installed to warn of problems. The tunnel roof leaked massive amounts of water turning the pot-holed roadbed into a mixture of icy mud, broken concrete, and pieces of asphalt.  Ventilator fans in most of the tunnel were broken resulting in such high levels of carbon monoxide that the Afghan government was reportedly exploring ways to pump oxygen into the tunnel. 

History is always a good guide to potential problems and the history of the Salang Tunnel had some grim milestones. On the 3rd of November 1982 two Soviet military convoys collided inside the Salang tunnel causing a massive traffic jam. A fuel tanker in one of the convoys exploded inside the tunnel, unleashing a chain reaction of fiery explosions and death. The cause of the explosion remains in doubt, the Russians claim it was an accident, and the Mujahedeen claimed it resulted from a successful attack. Drivers of cars, trucks and buses evidently continued to enter the tunnel after the explosion. Soviet troops, fearing that the explosion might have been a rebel attack, then closed off both ends with tanks, trapping many inside. Some burned to death; others were killed by smoke or by carbon monoxide poisoning. Although records from the era are suspect up to 700 Soviet troops and 2,000 Afghan soldiers and civilians may have died in the 1983 tunnel fire.

The Salang Tunnel entrance in 2012

What we found in 2012 was ISAF had indeed started to use the Salang Pass for logistic convoys. We did not find any Afghan worker who remembered ISAF closing the tunnel to civilian traffic and suspected that reporting in local media was rumor mongering. We did determine that ISAF convoys routinely hit civilian traffic in the tunnel and did not stop or acknowledge the accidents. The tunnel was only 16 feet high (at the centerline) with a sloping, concave roof over a two lane roadbed and it was routine for overburdened trucks, MRAP’s, and fuel tankers to get pinned to the tunnel wall when trying to pass each other.

Typical minor traffic jam in the tunnel

It was also routine for tankers to tip over inside the tunnel due to the poor roadbed condition. When this happened a giant Soviet Era bulldozer was sent in to drag the truck out.

Dragging a fuel tanker full of fuel was an obvious fire hazard

During the trip we interviewed The Director of Maintenance and Protection of Salang Pass, Lt. Gen. Mohammad Rajab, who claimed that overloaded trucks were destroying the tunnel adding that less than 5% of those trucks were civilians – the rest belong to ISAF. Judging from the traffic we observed in the tunnel that statement was questionable, nobody overloads Jingo Trucks better than Afghans.

The Salang tunnel is one of the few places in Afghanistan where the American Army cannot force all traffic away from their convoys. The open air ventilation to the right is blocked by avalanche rubble for 10 months of the year.

Attempts to interview or even talk to any of the American soldiers transiting the pass were unsuccessful. As usual we found the soldiers to be agitated and aggressive, and completely freaked out when a fellow American in civilian attire walked up to chat with them. The refusal to interact with American citizens in Afghanistan was something new for me, when I was on active duty we did the exact opposite no matter where we were in the world.

This was the preferred method for traversing the tunnel – hauling ass on an empty road but by 2006 finding the tunnel empty like this was not going to happen.

The Salang Pass was a dangerous transit for well maintained vehicles which was a problem in a country famous for its inability to maintain vehicles. Mechanical failures were routine inside the tunnel which cause long delays stranding motorists in subzero temperatures for hours at a time. In response the Salang Pass Department of Maintenance and Protection of the Salang Pass Route constructed a purpose built shelter that provided assistance to 6,700 people during the 2011 -2012 winter. When Gen Rajab told me that it surprised me, Afghans can be incredibly altruistic at the individual level, especially with us foreigners, but at the government level we were conditioned to look for a catch and we detected none.

The Salang Pass Department of Maintenance and Protection of the Salang Pass Route (its official title) had taken the initiative to provide life saving aid for thousands of Afghans because it was the right thing to do. The few locals we talked with confirmed that graft in the pass was a thing of the past. That pithy explanation was met with laughter by the diplomats who funded the trip which was gratifying. It’s not easy to be pithy when working for foreigners.

I’ve done many reckless things in my life but eating Salang Pass crabs is not one of them.
I was partial to the fresh trout served al fresco and I got a discount by providing the frag grenade used to harvest the fish.

In 2019 the Russian film Battle for Afghanistan was released and is now available on Amazon Prime. The movie is reportedly based on true events surrounding the withdrawal of the Soviet Army through the one chokepoint they could not force – the Salang Pass. It’s a good film that captures the craziness of Afghanistan and well worth a watch. You can’t help but notice how Soviet troops frequented local bazaars and Afghan restaurants while off duty. That never happened with ISAF units who were restricted to their FOB’s (forward operating bases). Only a small percentage of the troops deployed to Afghanistan ever got outside the wire, for most perceptions of the land and its people were distorted through the prism of electronic warfare collection, boredom induced gossip, and questionable media reporting.

The force protection mentality of ISAF was made possible by their (American taxpayer funded) unlimited budgets which they used to completely isolate their troops from the local population. In a country famous for its melons every bit of fruit consumed by ISAF soldiers was flown in at enormous expense. Something the Soviets and every other nation on the earth would be unable and unwilling to do. The only reason the pass was being used in 2012 was the number of American units operating north of the Salang Pass after the Obama surge. That forced ISAF into running a lot of logistical convoys over the pass for a couple of years. I don’t think the logisticians in Kabul liked the pass any more than I did but I wonder what the soldiers who made those runs thought about the experience.

Old Soviet combat outpost on the plains north of the Salang Pass
In the early days of our Afghan adventure there were still many abandoned Soviet bases north of the Salang Pass. with all sorts of interesting Soviet army messaging directed at both their soldiers and the Afghan Army. These propoganda paintings were long gone by 2007.

In the early days of the Afghanistan conflict it was easy to see that the money pouring into the country was being used to start business’s like restaurants or to buy used vehicles to be used as taxi’s for another income stream. But Afghanistan is a wild place with wild rivers that often overflow their banks and when they destroy a new business there is no insurance money to collect thus the common refrain Inshallah (if God wills it).

This new restaurant was a great place to stop in 2005.
By 2007 the restaurant was destroyed by raging flood waters.
This gas station lasted about two years before the BTR’s became unstable and it started to wash away. Now the Afghans have HUMVEE’s, MRAP’s and M1 tanks to use as river weirs, maybe they’ll work better.

The biggest surprise I found in Afghanistan over the years was their high regard for Russians. If you could speak Russian you could talk with most Afghans in any part of the country. If you asked about the difference between the Soviet military and ISAF you got the same answer in every part of the country. The Soviets were brave and supported the local people but the ISAF soldiers are cowards who hide on their bases and never interact with local people when off duty. The Afghans never understood that and it infuriated me to hear it because I knew cowards among American infantry were astonishingly rare. I’m a retired grunt myself and know. our infantry well.

The number of American soldiers who could speak Dari or Pashto numbered less than 100 for most of the war. The number of American soldiers who spent enough time to learn the country, its people, and the limitations of its central government cannot be counted because there were none. Check that, there was one – Commander Baba D turned special contractor Baba D who worked directly for the ISAF commanders for several years in RC East .

And there he is Baba D photo bombing me during an interview with ABC news. Ms. Raddatz taped an hour or so of Baba Tim explaining in detail why we were losing the war and never aired a second of it.

It is impossible to gauge the consequences of our humiliating retreat from Kabul. The military/political leadership responsible for that fiasco remains in charge of our depleted military to this day. The only military leader held to account over the Kabul evacuation fiasco was a Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel who was thrown out for pointing out the disgraceful lack of accountability of our flag officers (generals and admirals) responsible for the mess.

The northern side of the Salang Pass and yes that herd of goats was heading up and over the pass but I’m not sure how because they weren’t allowed on the roadway inside the tunnel.

After spending 20 years floundering about in Afghanistan what is the senior leadership of the uniformed military concerned with now? Fixing the force? You wish . . . the real emergency our country faces is climate change according to the Army War College.

Watching a great power implode is unpleasant because there are bills that will come due. There is a price to pay for rampaging around the world sending “carefully calibrated messages” with killer drones just as there will be a leveling for the folly of introducing women into the combat arms. The military/government duopoly used brute digital force to try and alter reality in Afghanistan to construct a reasonable narrative. Here’s what that looked like:

It’s important to note that I supported our approach throughout most of my time in Afghanistan. I once battled the media contention that Marjha was a bleeding ulcer by driving to Marjah and blogging about it. I was not an impartial observer but a retired Marine and my friends were the running the show in the Helmand Province allowing me to embed with their units and write really cool blog posts.

In time the average Afghan correctly deduced that the Kabul government was installed and maintained at the point of infidel bayonets. And that was all most Afghans ever knew or needed to know. They hadn’t heard of 9/11, they had no idea why we showed up and spanked the Taliban in 2001. The Afghans supported us at first because we appeared to be the strong horse but any chance of maintaining that perception ended with the invasion of Iraq.

Get some Army! This is how you fix recruiting woes

What I learned in Afghanistan (besides don’t drive over the Salang Pass if you can avoid it) was our senior military and government leadership have lost sight of the stewardship function integral to their posts. That was reflected by their inability to define a coherent military mission or articulate a reasonable end state. They were incapable of vigorously defending the interests of the United States because those interests were never adequately defined. When unable to determine or accomplish what is important the unimportant becomes important. A lesson the smartest kids in the room never learned while supervising a war we could not lose . . . or win.

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The Wolves of Helmand

As our two-decade involvement in Afghanistan winds down to an inevitable withdraw there are an increasing number of memories’ being published by participants. I have been looking forward to this as it is the first large conflict in which there was no draft. The military participants were all volunteers, actually all professional recruited (there is a huge difference), and I’ve been interested in seeing their perception of war compared to the men who fought in earlier times against a different enemy. What I experienced when I read Gus Biggio’s book The Wolves of Helmand was déjà vu.

Frank “Gus” Biggio competed for and won a commission in the United States Marine Corps gaining a coveted slot in the infantry back in the 1990’s when the Corps was fat with cash, and overseas deployments both enjoyable and interesting. Unless you pulled a unit rotation to Okinawa in which case you were screwed. Sitting on an island where you could not train while the yen/dollar exchange rate was around 70 (meaning the dollar was damn near worthless) was misery unless you got nominated to be on the Oki Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) in which case you got aboard naval shipping and enjoyed yourself like the rest of the Corps.

I don’t know if Gus pulled a MEU float or a unit deployment rotation to Okinawa, but he enjoyed his tour as an infantry officer and after completing his five-year obligation he moved on, as most Marine officers do. Gus completed a law degree, got married to a physician, started a family and was safely ensconced in Washington DC when the military went to war. Gus held out for years before succumbing to a virus, planted in all Marine infantry, that makes life intolerable unless we see the elephant.

The six blind men touching an elephant parable is an ancient Indian fable that has come to demonstrate moral relativism and religious tolerance. That’s not the fable Gus and the rest of us are talking about; we don’t do moral relativism and assume religious tolerance to be a God given right. When we talk about touching the elephant, we are referring to a Civil War era euphemism for experiencing combat.

Gus was in DC, working a good job, and although he’s not a name dropper he mentions that after his morning runs  he would occasionally chat with his neighbor Michelle until she moved into the White House with her husband Barrack. So, Gus was doing well on the outside, but he had a problem on the inside. His best friends were in the fight, some of them coming home on, not with, their shields. He is a highly competent adult who has sublimated a serious competitive streak towards the development of an impressive law career and a stable, thriving family. But he doesn’t yet know what his nature demands that he know, information that he’ll only know if he gets to touch the elephant. His closest friends had touched the elephant repeatedly so his volunteering to go back in? He had no choice; I did the same thing for exactly the same reason.

Gus is exactly the kind of guy you want as your lawyer if, for no other reason, than he talked his wife into letting him deploy. Obviously, he married a perceptive woman who probably understood he had to go, but she’s a physician and they’re normally rule followers, so this was by any measure an impressive feat. He then signs on with the 1st Battalion 5th Marines (1/5) and heads to God’s country (Camp Pendelton, California) to start training.

From there he deploys, with his small team, directly into the Nawa district administrative center weeks ahead of the Marine offensive that will secure that portion of the Helmand province. No air conditioning, no working toilets, no hot chow, no roof or windows, and no ability to patrol 100 meters beyond the roofless district center because the Taliban had laid siege to small British garrison who arrived the year prior. Surrounded by Taliban, with the nearest help fifty miles distant, living in the dirt, patrolling constantly, fighting often – the entire time exposed to the elements 24/7; does that sound like fun to you? Of course not, and Gus tries to convince the reader that it wasn’t that much fun for him either. But you can tell by how hard he tries to make his experience seem like no big deal, that it was a big deal through which he earned an intangible that only those who touch the elephant can understand.

The Nawa district administration center in 2009

Gus is a throwback in a sense in that he is a citizen soldier, not a professional Marine. As such he joins the pantheon of Americans who wore the uniform to defend the country, not as a profession. Like all Marine reservists he was exceptionally well trained and had years of small unit leadership to develop his military skills. Yet still he left his young family, an obviously lucrative career in the most powerful city in the world to get dropped into a primitive hell hole. Does that sound like normal guy behavior to you? Me either but Gus is lawyer and musters his arguments well about the reasons behind volunteering to be dropped into the middle of Indian country.

When the rest of 1/5 arrived in Nawa they did so in a pre-dawn combat assault that overwhelmed the Taliban and drove them from the district in a matter of days. That never stopped the little T Taliban (local teens and young adults with little to do) from trying their luck with random small arms fire attacks or improvised explosive devices (IED’s) but the days of the Taliban traveling openly or intimidating the locals passed, for the most part, in most of the Helmand province.

During the year Gus spent in the Helmand province the Marine Corps actually did by the book COIN operations using a completely unsustainable deployment cycle that, while it was being sustained, was the most impressive damn thing you have ever seen. In 2010 when I moved into Lashkar Gah as the regional manager for a USIAD sponsored Civil Development Program, I drove the roads from Lash to Nawa, to Khanashin and to Marjha wearing local clothes in a local beater with a modest security detail and had no issues. The people seemed happy, business was thriving, the poppy harvests returning serious cash into the local economy.

Jagran (Major in Dari) Gus and his six Marine (and 1 corpsman) Civil Affairs Team were combat enablers for the 1st Battalion 5th Marines counterinsurgency battle. The weapon they employed was cash money, they were the carrot that offered to help the Afghan people. The Marines in the line companies were the stick and they were everywhere, deployed in little squad size patrol bases in every corner of the district. Gus and his team did as much patrolling as the grunts which  they needed to do in order to deploy the money weapon. There are few times and few places in Marine Corps history where a major gets to be a gunfighter but that is what the civil affairs team in the Helmand had to do. He was a lucky man to get such a hard corps gig, he could have been deployed to a firm base support role and never left the wire, a fate worse than death for an infantryman.

Jagran Gus tells some great stories about everyday life in rural Afghanistan. I spent much time there myself and appreciate his depiction of normal Afghans going about their business. Sometimes that business involves shooting at Marines for cash and there is an interesting story about catching some teenagers in the act and letting them go to the custody of their elders after the district governor chewed them out.

Marines medevacing a local Afghan in Nawa district Afghanistan

It’s the little things that are telling; the Marines loved to be the stick, few things are more gratifying than a stiff firefight where you suffer no loses and that is how the vast majority of firefights in Afghanistan went. The Marines were also perfectly cool with safe’ing their weapons, yoking up the dudes that were just shooting at them, treating their wounds and releasing them to the district governor. It didn’t matter to them how a fight ends as long as they end it. This type of humane treatment of wounded enemies is expected of American servicemen, it isn’t even worthy of comment in the book. I’m not saying we are the only military that does this, but a vast majority of militaries don’t, and most people are amazed when we do.

My experience with Afghans in the Helmand, like that of Jargan Gus was mostly positive. That part of the world is so primitive that it’s like a time machine where resilient people carve out an existence with primitive farming methods and zero infrastructure. The Afghans are from old school Caucasian stock which is why the Germans spent so much time and money there in the 1930’s after Hitler came to power. They’re white people who do not have any concept of fragility and who cultivate a fierce pride in their Pashtun tribal roots. Living and working with them was an experience that is hard to capture but Jargan Gus has done that well.

Gus goes on to discuss the futility of his efforts, Nawa fell to the Taliban shortly after the Marines left in 2014. But there is no bitterness when he covers that as there is none concerning the always turbulent re-entry into normalcy when he returned home for good. Touching the elephant always changes a man, but Jargan Gus is a bright guy who explains the unease he felt as he tried to ease back into normal life in a reasonable manner. He is a perceptive writer and his book will (I bet) be useful to future historians writing about the Afghan war. It is a great story about normal Americans thrust into exceptional circumstances and thriving. We need more stories like that.

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Peace in Afghanistan Inshallah

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo landed in Qatar’s capital city, Doha today for the signing of a peace deal with the Taliban. In a rare demonstration of presenting both sides of a contentious deal the Washington Post opinion section featured dueling pieces that capture this unique moment in time. The peace deal is a clear win for both the Trump administration and the Afghan people. As usual the devil is in the details but it appears we are on the way out of Afghanistan.

Barnett Rubin who is a senior fellow and associate director of the Center on International Cooperation of New York University and non-resident senior fellow at the Quincy Institute, outlines the agreement in his WaPo OpEd.

The agreement provides a timetable for troop withdrawal, counterterrorism guarantees, a path to a cease-fire and a process for political settlement. Implementation would also require dismantling Taliban infrastructure in neighboring Pakistan and assurances by external powers that none will use Afghanistan against others.

Mr. Rubin has considerable time on the ground in the region and his take on the peace deal (which is it is a good deal)  is identical to mine.

Max Boot, who is a Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, took the opposite view. In his WaPo OpEd he outlines three different scenarios for the near future in Afghanistan. He then goes onto to predict the worst case scenario (the Taliban rolling into Kabul and taking over the country) as the most likely. I can tell you unequivocally that is the least likely scenario.

Many of our foreign policy experts and more than a few of my friends caution that the Taliban is not a cohesive monolithic organization, and that negotiators are only speaking for the Quetta, Peshawar, and Miranshaw Shura’s. This is a fact that is true, but means nothing now. The Taliban were able to enforce the peace during last years Eid celebration across the country and I believe they can do so again. Regardless of what I and my friends believe the only thing that counts is how the Afghans feel about the deal.

Taliban fighters taking selfies with Afghan army troops during the Eid ceasefire last year.

The Senior Vice President-elect of Afghanistan, Amrullah Saleh, published his opinion on the Time website. I Fought the Taliban. Now I’m Ready to Meet Them at the Ballot Box is the title of his piece and that’s a strong endorsement of the process. Amrullah Saleh is the former head of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), a former Interior Minister and he survived a serious assault on his election headquarters last July. That assault started with a car bomb and was continued by suicide vest equipped assault teams. Amrullah Saleh survived by jumping off the roof of his four story headquarters onto the roof of a neighboring building.

It is reasonable to assume Mr. Saleh had engaged in a running gun battle before escaping to safety, he is that kind of guy.

In another fascinating development the Military Times published an article today with the headline ISIS taking a beating in Afghanistan setting  the stage for a potential a U.S. troop withdrawal.  Buried deep in the article is this:

The recent campaign in Nangarhar is one example. Effective operations by US/Coalition & Afghan security forces, as well as the Taliban, led to ISIS-K losing territory & fighters. Hundreds surrendered. ISIS-K hasn’t been eliminated but this is real progress,” Khalilzad tweeted Tuesday

Remember a few posts back I highlighted this article in the Washington Post about the defeat of ISIS because it failed to mention the Taliban’s direct role? It seem like the first draft of history is up for grabs regarding the defeat of ISIS-K in Eastern Afghanistan.  There is little to gain but much to lose in suppression of the truth. I doubt an experienced reporter would have not known about the Taliban’s role in fighting ISIS-K so it is hard to figure out why the WaPo would print such obviously fake news.

Regardless, ISIS is now gone in Eastern Afghanistan and the remaining pockets in the north now the problem of the Taliban. Who seem to be very efficient at rooting them out.

What I cannot determine is how many troops will stay and what those troops will be doing. If the plan is to leave the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force – Afghanistan (CJSOTF-A) in place to hunt down ISIS and al Qaida that is not going to work. ISIS doesn’t need to be serviced by us any longer and separating al Qaida trainers from Taliban students is impossible.

If Amrullah Saleh is willing to give the Taliban a chance, and they reach an agreement, men like Sirajuddin Haqqani, who have been at the top of the JPEL for years, will be allowed to go in peace. The JPEL is the Joint Prioritized Effects List which is essentially a lethal version of the FBI’s most wanted. Allowing the men on that list to walk free, get passports and travel  is going to be a bitter blow to the people who have been hunting them. But that may be the price of peace.

I have to add that CJSOTF-A is not going to be able to operate behind the back of the Senior VP. Mr. Saleh has decades of experience working with the CIA and CJSTOF and he will have a say on what the Americans can and cannot do if they leave CJSTOF-A in Afghanistan.

This deal with the Taliban is how it ends. It is the only way it can end. The only question in Afghanistan was when, not if, we were leaving. The Taliban cannot beat the Kabul government in battle. The Kabul government cannot beat the Taliban in battle. The continued presence of American SF teams, tactical aircraft and trainers brought the Taliban to the negotiating table which is the best they could do.  It is up to the Afghans to decide what happens next. It is also time for us to leave.

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Brookings Institute Fires a Broadside at Haqqani and Misses

General John Allen, USMC (ret) who is the president of the Brookings Institute, lashed out at the New York Times for publishing an  Op-Ed  Sirajuddin Haqqani. His article, Sirajuddin Haqqani, Terrorist was an unfortunate response that reinforces a growing narrative regarding incompetence in the elite, ruling class.

The most glaring mistake in General Allen’s  attack on the New York Times was repeating the thoroughly debunked “very fine people on both sides” hoax. That hoax was spread by the legacy media despite the fact that President Trump was talking about people protesting the removal of Confederate battle monuments.  He specifically condemned the white supremest’s if you listen to the whole quote.  General Allen is the direct descendant  of a Confederate Cavalry officer (I forget his name but remember he fought at Culpepper), for which is he justifiably proud and I suspect he , too was not happy about the removal of confederate battle monuments.  I know General Allen, he was my boss at the Marine Corps Infantry Officer Course, I respect and admire him greatly so it is disturbing  to see him trafficking in hoaxes.

Worse was his endorsement of Forever War by implying we should renege on our Peace Agreement with the Taliban. This is his discussion of the Haqqani group:

This organization was and continues to be a central component of the Taliban, a major connecting file into al-Qaida, and a darling of Pakistan’s ISI. The Haqqanis, the Taliban, and al-Qaida endorse a radical interpretation of sharia that deprives women of any meaningful rights, to include the right to an education, and the freedom to pursue their own wants and interests, such as, for example, the legal profession. Countless lives were lost – and many, many more were wounded and otherwise terrorized – at the hands of this group and its peer terrorist entities, and had they not been formally designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism, we would have had little means to diminish their influence and stop their violent activities. And at the very center of this violence was Sirajuddin Haqqani, operational commander of the Haqqani network as well as the #2 of the Taliban.

All of that is true and every bit of it irrelevant if we intend to sign a peace deal with the Taliban. It is none of our business if the Afghans decide to reconcile withTaliban leaders including Sirajuddin Haqqani. Haqqani is a bad man, so is Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, who reconciled years ago, and ran in the recent Presidential election. The notorious warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who has been a member of the Kabul government when he wasn’t in exile dodging human rights tribunals, is a bad man. He was nominally on our side, so he’s a good, bad man, but to the Afghans he’s little better than Haqqani.

What the Afghans do to reconcile the rift in their civil society is their business. If they want to reconcile with and guarantee the freedom of warlords like Haqqani it is their right to do so. There are reasons to doubt Taliban commitment to a more inclusive civil process, but again, it is no longer our concern.

It is important to acknowledge the reality on the ground and that reality is the Taliban cannot win militarily and the same holds true for the Central Government. Given that context I believe it is time to let the Afghans work this out for themselves.

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Light at the End of the Tunnel in Afghanistan

Last week news broke of a possible peace deal in Afghanistan leading to a firestorm of speculation in the media about what’s really going on. The reporting was not consistent but the consensus is the peace deal would call for negotiations between Afghans on both sides of the conflict to start next month, an eventual countrywide cease-fire and a commitment from the Taliban not to harbor terrorist groups like al Qaida, while setting a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

A famous quote incorrectly attributed to Winston Churchill dictates “Jaw Jaw is better than War War” (actually he said “Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war” which makes more sense ) reinforces this is (potentially)  good news. The devil is in the details and we do not know what “reduction of violence”means to the United States  or “withdrawal of U.S. troops” means to the Taliban.

TheTaliban are not a monolithic organization but several competing factions. We have been dealing with the Quetta Shura who is representing, but cannot speak for, the other players like the Miranshah Shura (primarily the Haqqani Network) or the Peshawar Shura. That being said the Taliban did deliver on an Eid ceasefire agreement last year and that ceasefire held.

Taliban fighters taking selfies with Afghan army troops during Eid ceasefire last year.

We can get a reliable read on what the Taliban considers a reduction of violence in this detailed report from the always reliable Afghan Analysts Network. From the linked report:

Another Pakistani newspaper, quoting an un-named Taleban official, reported that the movement had agreed not to carry out attacks in major cities including Kabul and would not use car bombs and that the Taleban had also offered not to attack US bases and US soldiers, and that they wanted the US to cease air strikes in return. The newspaper said it had learnt “that Khalilzad had urged” the Taleban to agree to more measures, including a halt to IED attacks, but that they did not agree “as they have planted IEDs in many areas and it is difficult for them to remove all [of them].” Furthermore, the paper reported, the US also wanted a pause in Taleban attacks on Afghan government forces’ check posts, “which was also a concern of the Afghan government.”

Senior U.S. military officials (speaking off the recored)  in Afghanistan stressed that U.S. counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan against the Islamic State group and al-Qaida will continue, separate from the truce agreement. This is problematic for several reasons, not the least of which is that ISIS-K in Nangarhar Province has been defeated.

Their fighters have mostly surrendered to the government or gone to ground. There are ISIS-K cells in the north of the country but they are not large or powerful and are in the sights of the same fighters who rid Nangarhar Province of ISIS and those fighters are Taliban.

The counterterrorism mission in the eastern part of Afghanistan has been focused on ISIS-K (Daesh to the locals) for years. Now that ISIS-K is gone the Special Forces teams are flying around the province conducting ‘Key Leadership  Engagements’ like the one I wrote about last week. That occurred in the Sherzad district which is very close to Jalalabad and full of former HiG fighters who have cooperated with the Taliban  on and off over the years. They cooperate mostly because Taliban shadow courts settle land disputes quickly and, they feel, fairly.

The land deed office for Nangarhar Province – some of these documents are hundreds of years old

The time for our SF troops and the Afghans varsity Commandos to be running around district centers meeting with key elders seems long past. The local elders know all about the dysfunctional government in Kabul and are not going to be convinced it has their interests at heart until the government  demonstrates it.

With ISIS-K on the ropes trying to separate Taliban connected fighters from al Qaida will be problematic. The remaining senior al Qaida leaders have successfully gone to ground inside the tribal areas of Pakistan and have no need to move anywhere. al Qaida has a presence at Taliban training camps and may even run a few but I have no doubt the Taliban understand the consequences of allowing them to use their territory  for international Jihad.

If there no independent al-Qaida formations so if you go after them you are still going after the Taliban.

The incident rate in Afghanistan has plummeted this year. Some of this is due to the pounding the Taliban have taken from American air attacks which increased dramatically in 2019. Some of this can also be attributed to the Taliban winding down operations as the peace talks continued. The stats below come from The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

This is from The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) – note the sudden steep drop in incident rates as we move into 2020

Time will tell but it seems that the end to American involvement in Afghanistan is near. But if you pull all the training support mission out and leave a Special Forces task force to continue hunting “al-Qaida and ISIS” it will test, if not break, the fragile peace. We need to pull everyone out and let the Afghans settle things themselves. Continuing night raids and killing bad guys in Afghanistan does not reduce any threats to our homeland. It’s time to admit that and act accordingly.

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The Taliban has Destroyed ISIS-K in Nangarhar Province: Now They Plan to Focus on US

I have no idea why the destruction of ISIS-K by the Taliban in Nangarhar Province has remained virtually uncovered in the legacy media. That has changed with an excellent interview of the Taliban leadership in Nangarhar Province by The Washington Post. The Taliban were celebrating their recent crushing of ISIS-K (or the F’ing Daesh in local lingo). They gave an interview in Khogyani district, which is close to Jalalabad and was once solidly under government control.

This picture is from the back of a UN road building contractors armored vehicle in the Khogyani district center back in 2008.

The Taliban were direct and to the point regarding continued military operations. Check out this quote from one of the Taliban commanders:

Mullah Nik Muhammad Rahbar, 28, a Taliban commander responsible for Kabul province, pointed to the resources freed up by the conclusion of the fight against the Islamic State in Nangahar, saying the Taliban would be able to shift back to conducting more high-profile attacks in Kabul and elsewhere.

“Thank God you saw what we achieved against Bagram today,” he said. “We launch attacks in Kabul because there are many foreigners there, many targets for us.”

The Taliban went on to claim that they are not targeting Afghan civilians (the UN attributes 922 civilians killed and 2,901 wounded just this year by the Taliban) and that they will now shift their attention to the Government and ‘foreigners.’

Taliban fighters showing their weapons to the press in Khogyani. Photo by Lorenzo Tugnoli for the Washington Post

This is not good news because there are bunch of ‘foreigners’ stationed at the Jalalabad Airfield and with ISIS-K gone they have little to do except support the Afghanistan National Army trainers at the nearby whatever the former Camp Gamberi is now called.  Khogyani is not far from J-bad and back in the day the Muj would pick off Soviet Hinds on the approach to the J-bad airfield on an alarmingly regular basis (when they had the Stingers).

The United States cannot afford to throw a bunch of soldiers inside an Airbase without some kind of active patrolling to keep the Jihadis from getting too comfortable squatting within mortar or man packed anti-air missile range. Patrolling like that takes boots on the ground which are in short supply.

Anybody who thinks the Taliban will fail to take a shot at inflicting serious casualties on an American military formation doesn’t understand Afghans. This is what they do and they will pay a steep price if they think they can generate some serious casualties and destroy some aircraft in the process.

The United States Military is not agile enough to withdraw resources from the eastern provinces while maintaining the relentless air campaign that has dropped more air-delivered ordinance this year than any prior year in the Afghan War.  Throwing around 1000 pounders will result in collateral damage and we now know that the generals running this war know that collateral damage incurred while blasting Taliban creates more Taliban and is a losing strategy.

But it is all they have for now; the Generals and senior government Mandarins have no problem stringing this out for years to come. The President isn’t happy with the status quo, I’m not sure what the Democrats position is on Afghanistan as they seem to have lost their minds with the sham impeachment they inflicted on us. I have said before, and will say again, this is not going to end well.

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FRI Reviews Trust-Based Leadership

I opened a large package that arrived in the mail last week and out fell an encyclopedia sized book on leadership. There on the cover, larger than life, was Mike Ettore, who I served with in the Marines 20 years ago. He was staring off in the distance with a sense of purpose and the moral rectitude that one associates with famous men like Vince Lombardi. I was elated; my friend Mike Ettore must have become a famous football coach because who the hell is going to read 549 pages on trust-based leadership if there was no insight into how to approach a third and long with just seconds to go in some kind of game? I stopped watching the NFL over a decade ago, long before it was cool, so he could have been dominating there for all I knew.

I held it up to my wife and said, “hey I know this guy he must have gotten into football coaching or something and become famous”.

My wife held out her hand, she has a Ph.D. in organizational leadership and is an educator, so she knows the industry. She starts scanning the chapters and looks at me;

“You know Mike Ettore”?

“Of course, he sent me the book, but I didn’t know he was a pro football coach”.

“He’s not, he runs executive leadership training and I’ve heard of his Fidelis Group; …. they’re out of Tampa”, she adds just in case I thought she was joking me.

I never saw the book again, off it went to her office and a week or so later I’m sitting at my computer doing writer stuff and up pops this notification from LinkedIn, a platform I rarely visit,  it’s a note from Mike Ettore asking if I got the book. I had to move a yellow sticky on my screen that said “send Ettore a thank you for the book” to read the notification.

I wrote to Mike immediately explaining the book had been highjacked (as if that meant anything) and then apologized for being a scumbag. I added I’d write a review on Amazon and retrieved my copy, but realized the book needed a blog post. Mike took the time to write what I consider the definitive book on leadership and it’s entertaining. I want to be entertaining back with the review.

Mike wrote this book as a text to be used for developing leaders in every human endeavor where there is a hierarchy. His biggest, dare I say controversial, contention is that leaders are made, not born. Coming from Mike Ettore that is hard to believe, at first, as is the idea that Marine Crops leadership doctrine can be injected, in any meaningful way, into a civilian business environment. I could easily see Mike as a successful, innovative, football coach because Mike was an exceptionally gifted infantry leader. But coaching executives on the importance of eating last? That seemed to be a bridge too far.

Mike Ettore, at age 20, after just two year in the Marine Corps, was a drill instructor at Parris Island. First term enlisted drill instructors are as rare as finding a diamond in a goat’s butt. Ettore left the Marines after his first enlistment to complete college and returned as an infantry officer. As a rifle platoon commander, he saw action in Grenada and Beirut making him one of the rare combat vets back in the 80’s and 90’s when we served together. As a company commander he won the Leftwich Trophy, an annual award presented to the best infantry company commander in the Fleet Marine Forces. An award that means little to most people but everything to an infantry officer.

When I met Mike, he was heading up the tactics department at The Basic School (TBS) which is a six-month course every newly commissioned officer of Marines must attend after their commissioning. TBS is designed to train new lieutenants in the art of leading Marines by training them how to be infantry platoon commanders. The Marine Corps takes the “every man a rifleman” thing seriously so every Marine, regardless of gender or military occupational specialty (MOS) is trained to fight as dismounted infantry.

I was an instructor at the Infantry Officer Course (IOC) and for reasons that need not be explained here there was friction between the tactics department and IOC. That ended soon after Mike’s arrival, he understood the difference between entry and advanced level fire and maneuver. He also understood our need to start at the squad level in an aggressive 10-week course that had over twenty, increasingly difficult, live fire events.

Drill Instructor at 20, rare combat leadership experience as a Lieutenant, winner of the Leftwich as a Captain; one would think Ettore is one of those hard asses who insists on blind obedience to regulations and strict attention to orders. He’s not and that his the first of many family jewels in the Marine Corps leadership doctrine revealed to readers who did not enjoy the opportunity to experience them firsthand. Despite what you have seen in movies or read in books a successful Marine infantry leader can only be successful if his troops respect and love him.

Not every man who passes through the Marine Corps leadership training pipeline masters the nuances of infantry leadership. There are both bad leaders and bad units in the Marine Corps as there are in every large organization. I’ve always thought bad leaders were missing an ingredient the successful leader obviously enjoyed. In other words, I thought good leaders were born to the task.

Readers who are not familiar with the military in general or the Marine Corps specifically will be overwhelmed by the exacting standards of Marine Corps Leadership. You will be dubious at the contention that the Marine Corps instills these traits and principals in young men and women who have just completed High School.

I have a short cut to understanding the dynamic, but it’s a little long. Listen to this 4-hour 15 minute Jocko Willink podcast about an incident that played out in less than 10 seconds; 15 years ago, involving a young Marine Corporal named Jason Dunham. Jocko is joined by four Marines who were with Jason that day. They explain who Jason was, how he became a squad leader at such a young age, his training for Iraq and the events leading up to the day he was mortally wounded. All four of the Marines and Jocko lose their composure several times during the discussion. It is fascinating listening;  a truly inspiring tale about an iconic Marine Corps small unit leader.

USS Jason Dunham DDG 109

Executives in the civilian business world do not lead men in mortal combat so what does the leadership system designed to do just that have to do with running a for profit enterprise? Everything. The Marine Corps trains to fight but combat is not where any Marine spends a majority of his career. Unlike Mike I am not a combat veteran, but I have seen infantry battalions fold in the field after 96 hours of cold, wet, wind driven rain in the normally sunny Southern California winter.

Good units with solid leadership thrive in nasty weather, they consider it a challenge, and answer it with solid sleep and foot hygiene and active, aggressive tactical measures (patrolling, digging, fire support planning etc..) while ignoring the cold wet. Good units with solid leadership cannot be beaten by terrain or weather. Units without it fold every time they are exposed to a good dose of adverse weather.

Every leader faces diversity and it is through navigating that diversity that effective leadership is demonstrated. This seems to be a self-evident truth that is often absent in today’s business and social environment. I suspect that is because leadership training is confused with leadership techniques and procedures. Good leaders work by developing and implementing effective techniques and procedures, poor leaders mimic the techniques but never achieve the same results. Tactics and techniques cannot be substituted for leadership if you are in a dynamic environment where rote routine and detailed instructions are counterproductive.

I take that back; Amazon fulfillment centers have got to run on rote routine, I would think, and if the management of those centers adopted Mike’s approach to the tasks at hand I doubt the media would be full of stories about dismal employee morale.

If you are in the military and aspire to a leadership role at any level, buy this book, read it, highlight it, and then read it again, and again, and you will accelerate through the ranks at a blistering pace. If you are a Marine Corps Officer or SNCO and have not ordered this book yet you’re wrong, so fix that quickly. For everyone else I am telling you that this book will make you a more productive leader and better human being if you accept the challenge Mike has laid out for you.

When you read and understand this textbook you will know exactly how to develop and manage human capitol.  Mike Ettore has distilled 244 years of Marine Corps Leadership guidance and doctrine into one book designed to be used throughout a career of ever-increasing responsibilities. If you desire to excel in any leadership role this book will grow your talent stack exponentially. If you put the work in to master the material and make the effort to mentor and develop your subordinates.

As I said in the beginning not everybody who is exposed to Marine Corps Leadership doctrine gets it. Those that do become legends, everybody likes being associated with a good solid leader. Now there is a book to tell you how to become one. If you have the drive and the desire to work at it. Nothing worth having comes easy in life.

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We Are Being Oppressed

I was finishing up a post for the Freq about riot control and migrants when I suddenly discovered I was being oppressed, endnote just a little, but on all four recognized levels of oppression. This insight jumped out at me when I went looking for information on a topic I know something about. When I first saw it I didn’t think much of it but after spending hours on additional research and days thinking it through I decided it was time to write a post, an important one, free of F bombs (to show I’m serious)  in hopes of restoring a sense of calm. Calm is good when dealing with “isms”.

Let me set this up; the discussion was about the requirement to use overwhelming force to remove leaders, agitators and natural fighters from a rioting mob. I was writing about the Marine Corps experience with Haitian and Cuban asylum seekers in the early 90’s. The post on that topic can be found here on The Freq website that I contribute to weekly.

As I was describing how the SNCO’s managed their snatch teams I mentioned the “rule of opposites”, a term first coined by Gavin Debecker, in his world famous (should be mandatory reading) book The Gift of Fear.

The rule of oppisates is mentioned frequently in law enforcement and shooting publications, I searched FRI for that term and four articles with that phrase pop up.  I went to goggle to get a hyper link and guess what I found?

What are the chances there are more people looking for Native American counseling paradigms then the definition of the most common heuristic used in the law enforcement and firearms training industry? They are zero, the results from that phrase are being manipulated to present material considered, by the companies running the search engines,  more acceptable.

That has little impact on news consumers like myself who know what they are looking for. But what is the impact, over time, of this kind of deliberate manipulation of search engine results?

Keep in mind references to the “rule of opposites” in law enforcement journals appear just after the examples in the screen shot above. I’m not trafficking in conspiracy theories,  just pointing out an inconvenient fact when it comes to search engines.

I can promise you one thing about search engine manipulation; it will not work as planned and the unintended consequences could be significant. They always are when you launch a cleaver plan inside a complex system in the belief everything will work out exactly as you  think they will.

As I was milling this over while procrastinating (i.e. looking at facebook) I saw a post about Global Warming by my FB buddy and fellow IMOA Frank Gallagher; look what was inserted below it:

I challenge anyone to go through that cimatefeedback.org rebuttal and find one citation that backs the claims they are making in their report. It is difficult to decipher their academic speak, but I can sum up their point. It is an argument from authority and the authorities say that climate change is real therefore skepticism is wrong.

The author of Manhattan Contrarian, Francis Menton, is a partner in the Litigation Department and Co-Chair of the Business Litigation Practice Group of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP in New York.  Mr. Menton specializes in complex and technical commercial litigation, and has a nationwide trial practice. Mr. Menton is not a climate scientist, he is a demonstrably competent man with a passion for analytics coupled with a refusal to be bullied by “experts”. That is a very American trait which is interesting because what is, or is not, an “American trait” is now a point of bitter partisan debate.

I don’t care what you believe about climate change. I find the argument from authority approach suspect after living through global cooling, the population bomb, the “running out of food” scare,  the  “you can’t drill your way out of energy dependence” fraud, AIDs, bird flu, acid rain, alar on apples, etc… All of these emerging global emergencies proved to be wrong; and not a little wrong; completely wrong.

This is why I self identify as a “public defense intellectual” during my weekly gig on All Marine Radio with my fellow expert Jeff Kenney. It’s an ironic dig at the pretensions of self identification validated through ‘lived experiences’. Mac, Jeff, and I aren’t experts on American foreign policy, we are victims of it, which is why our weekly podcast is so popular.

In a perfect trifecta of outrage I then stumbled upon the new trailer for Top Gun II. I even wrote an intemperate comment a friends FB page about the trailer I was so pissed, but it took me hours to figure out why. And it is not just this:

It’s the premise of the movie that I found so offensive. Cruise is a 30-year Maverick who refused promotion like the other corporate shills and stayed in the cockpit. He routinely flies along the southwestern desert mere feet off the deck and keeps his cat like reflexes sharp with some sort of vertical ascent high speed, low drag move used to inverted over a Mig. The admirals admonish him saying he should be in command like them, not bumming around navy fighter squadrons for 30 years, but Cruise knows better, he’s a singleton with his own creed. In the end he’ll show them all that he, the anti social, non-conformist, was right all along and is the true hero.

We have long known that China dictates to Hollywood what is and is not acceptable for new releases and Hollywood always complies. It does not work the other way around. The newest Chinese hit, Wolf Warrior II, pits elite Chinese Special Operators in Africa battling former US Marines turned corporate mercenaries for some international evil corporation that I assume is not Goggle.

Top Gun II is not a movie about naval aviators or naval aviation, it’s not about the American military – non conformists don’t last there and “mavericks” fly desks, not aircraft in the American armed forces. It’s not about traditional American military virtue or an accurate reflection of the military culture. It seems the Top Gun movie is about Tom Cruise and making big bucks off nostalgia for another re-boot.

The character in the Tom Cruise movie is an anti-American he is used to show that our traditional values, mores, and systems are corrupt. Read this description of Wolf Warrior 2 from the National Review article linked above:

“In Wolf II, China is the only powerful, responsible, and benevolent world power. Chinese workers help Africans build their economy. Chinese doctors work to discover a cure for a deadly endemic. And the film unabashedly takes several swipes at the U.S. When African and Chinese civilians inside a factory are under attack by rebels and mercenaries, the only good American in the movie, Rachel Smith, a Chinese-American volunteer, fanatically tries to contact the U.S. embassy for help. Leng asks her, “Why are you calling the Americans? Where are they? It is a waste of time.” After she tells him that she tried to reach American government by Twitter, Leng responds that “the Americans are good for nothing.”

Why do I care that Hollywood movies bash America just like Chinese movies?

Consider the following propositions:

  • There is no truth, only competing agendas.
  • All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.
  • There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.
  • The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.
  • Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.
  • The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)
  • For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But “oppressed” people are allowed to use violence anyway, they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.
  • When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.

That was a list of objectives from Department V of the old Soviet KGB as distilled by the blogger esr on the Armed and Dangerous  blog. He goes on to note:

As I previously observed, if you trace any of these back far enough, you’ll find a Stalinist intellectual at the bottom. (The last two items on the list, for example, came to us courtesy of Frantz Fanon. The fourth item is the Baran-Wallerstein “world system” thesis.) Most were staples of Soviet propaganda at the same time they were being promoted by “progressives” (read: Marxists and the dupes of Marxists) within the Western intelligentsia

esr and the (actual) intellectuals he references in his writings may be spot on or they may be wrong. It does not matter how that list of propositions got here; it has been here, for decades.

What I know is that 50 years ago, on this very day, when I stayed up all day and night with my family to watch Apollo 11 land on the moon; the ideas listed above would have seemed alien, absurd, and repulsive to most people — at best, the beliefs of a nutty left-wing fringe, and at worst instruments of deliberate subversion intended to destroy the American way of life.

Joel Kotkin, in his post Age of Amniessia at Quillette, describes the consequences of progressive policies as they are manifesting today:

Liberals like Cass Sunstein suggest that students raised in an atmosphere of homogeneity “are less likely to get a good education, and faculty members are likely to learn less from one another, if there is a prevailing political orthodoxy.” Yet too few university administrators counter these trends. One college President in Canada, for example, justified efforts to tamp down on “free speech” by arguing that doing so created “better speech.” At many schools, professors are now asked to sign “diversity” pledges that eerily reprise the kind of “loyalty” pledges common during the darkest days of the Cold War. This passion for thought control extends even to comments such as “America is the land of  opportunity” or professing to believe in a colorblind society, views which can now be categorized as punishable “microagressions.”

This ideological rigidity has shaped a generation of progressive activists who also now represent the best educated, whitest,and most politically intolerant portion of the American polity. A common tendency among progressives is to designate certain conversations as “hate speech,” an approach to free speech recently endorsed by the California Democratic Party.

That doesn’t sound like trends that bode well for a free peoples. My considered opinion on the topic , and I am a self identified defense intellectual, is that the progressive experiment is creating an enormous backlash that will sweep it into the dust bin of history.

It will not happen soon, there are potential large setbacks that could derail progress against progressives. I am confident that a major political change is at least six years away but Trump could lose in 2020. If he does the promises being made by the current field of democrat candidates will spell doom for their party if attempted. My post at the Freq talks about the last time they did that (Clinton’s first inauguration) and the consequences that followed. Consequences the press did not report on extensively and that are hard to find in search engines today. But the consequences were real and we now have an internet full of reliable sources who are not connected with the media or government. The next time around burying the story will not work.

Change is coming because the one thing you can take to the bank is our political system is functioning on borrowed time in its current configuration. Reality is going to introduce this change, let us hope the lesson it inflicts is not too painful.