Gunfire rippled across the morning calm of Jalalabad today. From what we have learned there were up to four gunmen who attacked the Nangarhar Hotel. Two were detected when they walking into the Hotel armed with AK 47’s and pistols. There was a Provincial Directors workshop in progress which was probably the intended target. As they walked up to the hotel they were identified and challenged by one of the 20 or so ANP soldiers who mill about the area and the lead gunmen opened fire. He hit the closest policemen who in turn shot the first bad guy dead and the second bad guy retreated up to the second floor and barricaded himself in his room. The Provincial Directors bailed out of the second story windows with at least one being directed to exit the building by the surviving gunman. So maybe they weren’t the target??? The police start to hammer away at the room and wounded the guy has holed up in and after 20 minutes he surrendered and is now in custody. Reportedly there may have been two more accomplices who got away.
Initial reports in the press reported this to be an assassination attempt on the Governor of Nangarhar Province, Gul Agha Shirzai, but he was not anywhere near the action. It is not clear to what this mornings dust up was all about. To show you how things work in Afghanistan the local ANSO guy reported that it was unclear what this attack was about or who the target was. In Kabul that report morphed into an attempt on the Governor, who was supposedly driving to the hotel, by two suicide bombers on the Afghan evening news. Now all sorts of Kabul based PSC’s are reporting similar nonsense in their country threat intel reports. The sole exception is Tundra Security because the Bot went to the scene to get the story first hand. One thing is clear – the gunmen were (as if often the case) as amateur as a guys with a guns can be. There were no suicide vest or explosives on either them.
Battle damage to the second deck of the Nangarhar Hotel where the cover man retreated to after he was engaged by the ANP. Photo by Shem Bot
Incidents like this gun fight cause those of us who work outside the wire to reassess our security environment – is Jalalabad a permissive, semi- permissive, or non permissive environment? These terms were once used by the United States Marines when we planned operations ashore. When my old unit 1st Battalion 8th Marines sent a rifle company to assist with the Kobe earthquake in 1995 they went without weapons or body armor – it was a permissive environment plus the Japanese made it clear that armed Americans were not needed nor welcomed. When that same battalion went into Albania in 1997 it was a semi permissive environment so they took the weapons and body armor but did not fire a shot at all the drunken locals who were milling about armed with looted AK-47’s. You don’t shoot people because they are armed, inebriated and unruly. The rules of engagement in semi permissive environments are very rigid.
The international aid community treats Jalalabad as a permissive environment – the US Military conducts all outside the wire missions in Jalalabad as if they are in a hostile environment. At the Nangarhar Provincial Police HQ in Jalalabad when members of the military (or their contractors) cross the street from the DynCorp side they have Nepalese guards stop all traffic – stand at the ready in the street with rifles while the soldiers hustle across the street in full armor. The soldiers I know who work there occasionally are embarrassed by this procedure understanding well what kind of message they are sending to their Afghan hosts. How long does it take to turn a permissive environment into a non permissive environment by treating it from the start as non permissive? Will we not create a self fulfilling prophecy if we do not at some point change he way we interact with the Afghan people?
The bad news of the day is about the American losses in the west due to an aviation accident involving three different helicopters which have killed 14 American servicemen. Aviation accidents routinely produce huge casualties and they are always bad news to all involved. One of the things to remember as the debate about Afghanistan continues is that the Taliban cannot, on their best day and when they throw all they have, inflict the level of casualties on our forces associated with aviation accidents (which most often occur in training.) They have tried twice to inflict heavy casualties by attacking undermanned joint U.S. Army/Afghan outposts in Nuristan over the past 15 months. First a well armed and equipped force tried to turn Wanat into the Alamo and most recently the same thing happened at FOB Keating. Each time the bad guys have suffered heavy casualties while inflicting single digit losses on the American defenders.
All losses be they from enemy action our aviation accident are painful. It is the price of war but what is important as we continue our efforts in Afghanistan is to remember just how ineffective our enemies are. They are getting better with the explosives which is concerning – especially the more advanced IED firing switches we are now seeing originating in Iran. But by and large they remain inept and ineffective. The Taliban cannot beat our military but our military can beat itself by remaining FOB bound while and focused on kinetic operations.
This is pro circuit work – 10 firing switches were recovered in Herat Province last summer and reportedly were of Iranian origin. Amateurs are not going to invest in screw terminals and the boards are from a mass production run. This is a high end commercial firing circuit which has been modified by somebody who knows what he’s doing.
The reason it is important to focus on the Taliban’s complete lack of ability to conduct meaningful military operations is that eventually they are going to get better and when they do what is our response? If we were serious about our efforts here the clear way forward would be to embed troops into Afghan formations and truly mentor them. Anything short of that is a fools errand planed and implemented not to win here but to kick the can down the road until America elects some adults to take charge of the levers of power.
As the cool weather finally moves into Afghanistan I have to tell you that from my perspective not much is happening. I am not talking about security incidents – they almost doubled last week from a near all time high the week before. There is lots of villianary going on – the weather is perfect for it – but nothing seems to be really changing. One gets the impression that the players from all sides want to maintain the current status quo because all the sides are benefiting.
The bad guys continue to pick off lone fuel tankers on the main road between Jalalabad and Kabul. The level of activity seems seems artificially low. If a small armed group really wanted to cause problems on this vital road they could do so without too much difficulty
Last week yet another story about one of the ISAF countries paying the Taliban to keep things on the down low came out. This story implied the French losses in last August action around the Uzbin Valley were directly tied to them failing to maintain the financial arrangements of their predecessors from Italy. There are hundreds of stories about how the Taliban and their various allies are benefiting from the current war as are various government officials and a rouges gallery of warlords. NATO has issued a strong denial that any of its members are paying off potential trouble makers.
This is the closest ANA post to the truck attack pictured above. The six men manning this position have no transport and seem to stay on post for weeks at a time. They really do not have the ability nor inclination to interdict bad guys attacking the road below them.
I don’t believe the NATO spokesman nor do I believe there is a direct correlation between payments to local centers of influence by the Italians and the attack on the French patrol in the Uzbin. If the French had known about such an arrangement and refused to honor it one suspects they would have been better prepared when they ran into their first ambush. However there is no question that “centers of influence” on every side of this conflict are making a lot of money by allowing or protecting or stealing from the unbelievable amount of supplies moving into Afghanistan. This is a fact which is not in dispute – many people including myself believe the various Taliban units make much more cash in the protection racket than they make in the poppy trade.
Most of the money being paid for protection is coming from the reconstruction effort and as with most things in life is not as straight forward as paying cash to the head bad guy to be left alone. The cash comes from establishing local monopolies such as vehicle and heavy equipment rentals. If people had any idea how much money there is in waste removal trucks servicing the many different FOB’s and COP’s which dot the countryside we would have a Gold Rush of poop removal prospectors combing Central Asia for honey dipper trucks. Having a monopoly on poop trucks, or fuel tankers, or rock crushers, could make a man millions quickly in Afghanistan. The other way money is extracted from the effort is by providing security or a construction services. Much has been written about the efforts in Kabul to regulate the security industry but once outside the capitol every local power broker has both his own security and construction company and failing to utilize these services invites attack.
107mm Rocket dug out of a vegetable field near the Jalalabad Airport last week. These weapons are only effective when fired in large numbers which is why the one or two a week being shot at the Jbad airport is not getting the local folks or the soldiers too excited.
There are persistent rumors that the local Army FOB at the Jalalabad Airport is being targeted with rockets by local “land owners” because they are not paying enough rent. My Army friends have heard this too and have not a clue about what it is all about because they don’t pay rent. It is possible that some locals are not happy with the current unit. The CO banned the weekly bazaar in which dozens of local vendors would participate. This was an economic loss to local businessmen but given the amount of aircraft, drones and munitions on the base a reasonable precaution. It is hard to believe that somehow somebody important is no longer getting their cut and is letting lose with 107mm rockets as a result. But they are shooting one or two every week or so. The skipper hired well diggers to go out into the fields next to the base to dig up the dud rockers (they function about 50% of the time) but the army remains convinced they aren’t being shot at.
I’ll tell you this … when us outside the wire contractors fall behind of paying local subcontractors our personal security goes right out of the window. Many a firm has had important local national staff kidnapped and in some cases international staff attacked over money issues. As I have observed in the past experienced mafia leaders would feel very at home operating businesses in Afghanistan.
ISAF and the US Department of State have closed all roads leading away from the International Airport with the exception of this one which runs through Wazar Akbar Khan. Every year Afghan politicians try to pass legislation forcing the military and others who feel they have to live behind blast walls out of the city. Every year ISAF and DS just ignore the problem – which to them isn’t really a problem at all because they don’t move much from behind their blast walls and when they do they can use the three other roads they have cut to civilian traffic. Unless they are taking the senior folks out for a 3 martini lunch in which case they clog up the road moving the VIP’s to Boccacio
One of these days the local shooter is going to get lucky with his 107 rockets and hit the fuel pit or ammo dump which will get every-one’s attention for about four or five days. I doubt he is aiming at those sites or even wants to hit them which is why it seems that everything is just moving along the same way it always does. We lose a fuel tanker here, a few men in a MRAP there, the drones continue to kill with scary precision, the military talks COIN but when you observe them operating in and around Kabul you see a attrition warfare oriented army of occupation completely removed and divorced from the locals they are supposed to be protecting.
The Nangarhar PRT got right on the Saracha Bridge and have already awarded the work – this is a great sign of progress. Most PRT’s are just not that useful and the people trapped inside them should be free ranging about the countryside doing similar major projects like repairs the 30 or so bridges which are still down in most of the eastern provinces.
My prediction for the future is that nothing will change. The President has made it clear he intends to continue vote present. Now he is waiting for the election results in order to determine the best way forward to pursue our goals (whatever the hell they may be) in Afghanistan. John Kerry, who was a CAB Chaser before there were CAB’s, has weighed into the debate helping out President Obama by declaring that targeted strikes combined with Special Forces missions will not be enough to “win” in Afghanistan. It always helps to have a senior senator like Kerry coming out in direct opposition to your Vice President’s new strategary when you are running the clock.
John Kerry was for CAB Chasing before he was against it. This badge was designed to reward non infantry soldiers who have fought in combat but like all silly devices and patches and most medals it is now meaningless. There are hundreds of Junior John Kerry’s out here who will go outside the FOB until they earn a CAB and then it takes a block of C4 under the butts to ever get them off again. Upon embarking on a career as a Marine infantry officer my Dad gave this one bit of advice; “watch what the Army does son and do the exact opposite.” He could not have been more correct and the Army’s extravagant use of badges, tabs, and other shiny reflective objects placed about the uniform has rendered all of them meaningless because everyone has them. Looks goofy too but that is just my opinion.
Several trial balloons being floated out of the White House. The Pakistan First idea which is favored by VP Biden and maybe three other people; the we are “prepared to accept some Taliban involvement in Afghanistan’s political future” idea – the quote is from a White House press briefing. The third option (which I believe will be the one Obama goes with) is to declare status quo as victory and start to wind things down real slow like. The only problem with that last option is that the bad guys get a vote on your plan too and once they see the money train is leaving the station it is hard to predict just how poorly they will react. It is safe to say that regardless of the direction our current administration takes Afghanistan is going to continue to get more unstable and more violent. The Afghans I know don’t want this but they also understand just how little they can influence current events. Life is hard; harder when you are stupid and there seems to be an inordinate amount of stupid people on all sides trying to “manage” the fight in Afghanistan.
There are no easy answers for Afghanistan. Take the recent elections; are there palatable options to fixing that mess? You can accept the results which are unpalatable, you can hold a run off which would probably be an even bigger farce; you could hold an emergency Loya Jirga and start over (could you imagine that?) There are a few more options available I suppose but none of them very attractive. President Obama appears to be “voting present” for the time being but there is General McChrystal’s leaked confidential report in Washington to get the chattering classes focused on everything except what’s happening on the ground in Afghanistan.
The military is asking for more troops but to do what? Unless they move off the FOB’s and out into the local population they do little more than create and targets go opportunity for the various armed opposition groups (AOG’s) who plague the countryside. The only way to secure the people is to live with the people It’s just that simple.
A joint Afghan/American Army visit to a village on the Jalalabad/Kabul road on the second day of EID. This is a step in the right direction but in and of itself too little too late. The local American training team should be stopping in villages and chatting up folks every day all day. In the 26 months I have been living in Jalalabad this is the first time I have seen American soldiers off their vehicles and talking to local people. This is EID – these guys should bring boxes of dolls and water guns, a sheep, and some soda; take off the helmets and body armor and spend a few hours having water fights with the kids while the adults cook up the sheep. That is how you gain traction in a local area – there are no shortcuts, no gee whiz technology which allows the grunt work to be accomplished back at the fob by desk bond fobbits.
Unless the present FOB bound kinetic ops orientation is completely eliminated we will leave here in worse shape than we are now and right now which is not great. We are spending billions of dollars we do not have and gaining not one damn thing for it. When we started this fight President Bush said “we will not falter, we will not tire, we will not fail.” In Afghanistan the military is tired; worn out by back to back to back deployments. We are clearly failing by any unit of measurement and it now appears we are faltering too.
Building roads in downtown Jalalabad the old fashion way
To validate my claim I have to rely on my personal experience. My colleagues and I are finishing up a six month cash for work program focused on Kandahar, Jalalabad, Gardez and Lahska Gar. Not easy places to work (except Jalalabad which is a great place to work) and Tim the Canadian had over 5,000 people working in Kandahar, Ranger Will over 2,000 in Lashka Gar – I had 4,002 working in Jalalabad and over 2,000 in Gardez. Compare those numbers to the performance of the massive PRT’s located in those towns – it is not even close. I think the Canadians in Kandahar reported a total of 136 cash for work recipients for 2009. We get results because we live and work in the community and operate in close coordination with the municipal authorities who we see almost daily. Plus we control the cash.
This is the Fab Fi internet installed mostly by local kids who fabricate their links at the Fab Lab. The August Fab Folk surge tuned the system up and added more large links at a frantic pace during their shot time here. Total cost to the Americanb taxpayer? Zero. The Grad students who do this work pay their own way. Look at the diagram above and contemplate that there are servel large multi million
Look at the diagram above and contemplate the fact that there are several large multi-million dollar contracts out to bring internet connectivity to Afghanistan, but the contractors have yet to figure out how to engineer the job. While they spend a fortune planning the Fab Folks surged here last month from both Cambridge England, and Cambridge Massachusetts, (and Iceland) to move the FabLab to a better location downtown and install more internet links to local schools and NGO’s. They are able to so much because they are outside the artificial security bubble that disrupts aid efforts in Afghanistan. J.D. Johannes did an excellent job of describing the Afghan security bubble in this post.
Keith Berkoben from MIT installing Fab Fi links on the largest water tower in Jalalabad
The Fab Folk believe the center of gravity in Afghanistan is the children. Lots of people think the center of gravity for any society are the children. But the Fab Folks put their skin in the game to teach the Afghans not just how to use a computer but how to build a network. They feel the more exposure children have to other children via the FabLab video conference software the better.
This equipment has been up since January 2009 and still works despite the beating it is getting from the elements. Why is it the that only successful effort to get computers and internet to school children is unfunded and driving the internationals who make it happen into poverty? Why can’t the military of State Department figure out how to do the same given their unlimited resources?
Contractors have a bad name in this current campaign for several reasons not the least of which is some of them have earned a bad name. But I’ll tell you this – find me a contract where the men are out of control and I’ll show you a contract where the contracting officer has completely abdicated his contractual and legal obligations. Jake Allen has an excellent podcast on contracting over at the Private Military Herald which can be found here. He hits the nail on the head in an interview with Danielle Brian from POGO concerning the American Embassy Guard Contract. As I observed in my post on the topic it would be impossible to execute the contract as tendered and still make a profit. But the private security industry is not full of competent cutthroats it’s full of stupid greedy cutthroats.
The PMC market is run by retired military officers have no experience with profit and loss statements – we deal exclusively in loss statements during our professional lives. That is the nature of government service. The nature of private security contracting is to cut bids back to the slimmest of margins in order to win the contracts which always go to the lowest bidder. My estimate is that over 50% of the security contracts currently active in Afghanistan are losing money. Few of the Afghan PMC’s have the expertise to determine the exact profit point on a dynamic contract with unfunded hard requirements.
Just throwing out more contracts to attract contractors will not work for Afghanistan. It is clear the contracting system is completely dysfunctional and repeatedly produces the worst possible outcomes (look at how are vitally important interpreter corps is being treated.) The only way for this to work is to have battle space commanders not only write the release the contract but insist that the program management and most of the people on that contract are people he knows. Officers or NCO’s he has served with and trusts. I would further argue that the teams going out to districts to replicate what we did in the most contested cites of the country be CivMil – both civilian contractor and military personnel who live where they work. The military part of the team could focus on the most important mission we have and that is to mentor Afghan Security Forces and in some cases help them fight.
The main park in Jalalabad on the first day of EID. The adults woudl be thrilled to see the local Brigade Commander and staff walking around (without body armor, helmets, weapons etc..) and the local kids would be exstatic to see a platoon of paratroopers with boxes of super soaker water guns to have sqirt gun fights – that kind of gesture would generate stories which would go far and wide and remain in circulation for a generation. That is counterinsurgency warfare
Here is why the contracting piece could work if done correctly. Again I use my personal experience to illustrate. I know every infantry Regimental Commander in the Marine Corps. Some are good friends the rest good acquaintances. If I am in charge of a contract let by them where I report to them what are my motivations to do a superior job? It is not money it is my allegiance to peers whom I have known all my adult life and whom I greatly admire and respect. My reputation for getting the mission done is at stake – this is the level of trust and respect needed to get civ/mil teams into the districts. Cost plus contract with clearly stated profit margins which can be easily understood by all – in a dynamic environment simple is smart. When a commander can look at his contractor and say “Timmy I want you to do to this DAC, set up a good safe house, and complete the following tasks….” When the commanders knows that is all the guidance he need provide to get important tasks to operate with speed and vision.
Logan the Nuristani humping a large Fab Fi up the water tower. Logan is 18 years old, had been here two months and has picked up a considerable amount of Pashto and Dari
For those of you who do not think my idea is crazy enough I take it one step further. The military should start a program for junior officers and enlisted to participate in these projects as civilians on the contractor side. They would get a three year $1,000 a day contracts and owe three years of service when they complete the contract. Many of the problems which accompany long duration deployments disappear when you get to the $1,000 a day pay scale. And paying these contractors $1000 a day is pennies on the dollar to what we spend to keep an individual service member deployed in country. Most importantly the worth of an officer (or NCO) who has spent three years living in the same province in Afghanistan has to be about 40 times that of an officer (or NCO) who has completed a master degree program.
Want to see Afghan men get emotional? Introduce them to your son who you have brought over becuase you think the country and its people are so impressive you wanted him to experience it too. My son Logan has been here for two months and loves it. One of his goals is to have the first Afgahn ultimate frisbee game in Central Asia
There are no easy answers but if we want to get the work done which is required to reach an acceptable end state our options are severely constrained. You just have to get off the FOB’s, off our collective fat asses and do it. But it will take a completely different approach to writing and awarding contracts to accomplish the mission.
The sun is setting over the Hindu Kush and tonight we finally end Ramadan and start the four day “Big” Eid holidays. The kids behind the Taj didn’t have any fire crackers so they dug up their Dad’s AK and shot off a magazine. By the time the guards and I got there in response their father was tanning the boys hides with vigor. Ammo is expensive here and the boys had just cranked off about 20 bucks worth; scaring the hell out of me and pissing their old man off to no end. It is dark now and the local people are throwing firecrackers or cranking off automatic weapons at a sustained pace. Eid sucks for us because if there was a good time to attack a safe house full of internationals now would be that time. But at least Ramadan is over and the boys will step up their day game while stopping all the pissing and moaning about how thirsty they are or how they have no energy blah blah blah. It was refraining from smoking cigarettes that was really kicking their asses but they sucked it up well.
Afghanistan is getting considerable attention in the press lately. Should we stay or go? Is this another Vietnam? Do we need more troops? I found this quote today here from the President which clears things up (I guess.)
Each historical moment is different, Mr Obama said in an interview published yesterday. You never step into the same river twice, and so Afghanistan is not Vietnam.
I grew up on the Severn River in Maryland and went to the exact same spot on the river almost daily because my buddy Chris McConnel had a dock and a ski boat there. Who knew you were not supposed to go into the same river twice back then? Better yet what the hell is the President talking about?
September 9th was Masood Day and here is a shot of one of parades in downtown Kabul
President Obama is on record as saying that Afghanistan is critical in order to prevent the return of the Taliban who will provide haven, support and bases to al Qaeda. The problem is that al Qaeda has all the support and bases it needs in Pakistan. I am on record as saying that Afghanistan would never allow al Qaeda back inside its borders no matter who was ruling and the truth is al Qaeda has spent eight years reconstituting in the Northwest Frontier and doesn’t need Afghanistan – they are fine where they are. In fact the ties with their hosts are stronger and their overall security much better than it was when they operated out of Eastern Afghanistan.
When the President throws down a marker that big it makes it very hard to set conditions under which we can leave. The Taliban are not going anywhere – they live here. Al Qaeda isn’t going anywhere either – they could not be more firmly entrenched in any other place on the globe.
ANP checkpoint in Jalalabad which is similar to those found all over Afghanistan. This was on election day and the police were being attentive. During Ramadan they seldon stop anyone and they never fool with traffic at night. Think some real mentorship could make these guys more effective? You have to get off the FOB and live with these cats to do that and we are not anywhere close to doing that.
We had a chance to finish Bin Laden and blew it at Tora Bora. In hindsight it would seem we should have thrown everything we had into the fight to finish him off but we didn’t. The first hand account provided by Dalton Fury indicates that Colonels back in Bagram Airbase put the breaks on the American Special Forces troops who could have flooded the mountain in an all out effort to Kill Bin Laden. According to this account the Colonel in charge was a Mogadishu vet and did not want to see his men chewed up because they lacked proper fire support. I would like to think that were I in that Colonels place I would have fragged as many birds as I could, rounded up as many troops as I could and flew into Tora Bora to make an all out assault on Bin Laden. Nothing was more important than killing that shitbird and if it cost a lot of American lives so be it. As long as I was there sharing the risk and hardships that is – you can’t be frantically flinging troops into a meat grinder while in remaining in the rear – that is a huge Bushido Code violation.
But I wasn’t there and have the clarity of 8 years hindsight so perhaps my criticism of this lapse are unfounded but that action meant the mission failed and it was the most important mission of my generation. I know two things; good losers lose and the day Bin Laden got away was the day we lost the war in Afghanistan.
Western Armies are not good at counterinsurgency warfare. They do not have the people or formations who can embed in the local community. Western Armies can no longer deploy formations overseas for years at a time. They are not willing to use the tactics required to win which involve not only high risk but lots of killing. Sri Lanka just won an unbelievably long and bitter counterinsurgency. Do you think if the Taliban leadership surrounded themselves with tens of thousands of non combatants we would kill all of of them to get that leadership? That is what Sri Lanka did . There are some who believe the military is under performing on purpose. Stephen Henthorne who is a Senior Adviser on the Joint Interagency – Multinational Stability Operations ISAF staff recently sent a memo to the National Security Adviser General Jones where he all but accused the Army of insubordination; check this out:
“Please trust me when I tell you that General McChrystal’s two man Civil-Military Campaign Planning team in the Pentagon, if they are in fact working for General McChrystal, will never be able to give the President an effective Civil-Military Campaign Plan for Afghanistan. There is a growing belief, that a Civil-Military Plan for Afghanistan is being designed to fail. This seems to be so much the case that the War Fighter Insurgency, that has been written about since 2004, might well be more accurately termed today a War Fighter Mutiny.
See the link for more on the “War Fighter Mutiny” but I do not think it is a mutiny at all. The military has pulled its weight the best it can but that is clearly not good enough.
The price for failing to mentor – secure zones in key cities like Kabul can only be secure if we make them secure. The Afghan Security Forces are clearly not up to the task. This is a Reuters phot from yesterdays attack on an Italian convoy travelinig down the main road to the Kabul International Airport
The military is not conducting a “warfighters mutiny” it is performing as best it can but our military was designed in the past with the technology of the past to face problems from the past. It is good at fighting peer level threats. It is not good at fighting counterinsurgencies. While our senior military leaders were spending years in school on topics such a ethics in combat and the law of land warfare the Afghans who we are now mentoring were killing people, lots of them. Look at this report from last week:
Large numbers of members of the Mangal and Moqdil tribes have clashed over timber rights. Reports of 25-60 fatalities have been received. The Governor of Khost has gone to the area to try to stop the fighting and disarm the tribes.
This is how scores are settled here – toe to toe with automatic weapons. This is why when ISAF tried to apologize for whacking all the civilians who were demanding their cut of fuel from the Taliban up in Kunduz the local people asked them to start killing more so that the Taliban would head back south. We need a surge of Tony Soprano’s to work with the Afghans because mafia guys have more experience solving Afghan style problems.
There are those who dismiss the effectiveness of solving problems by killing people but it is one method that has proven effective over the years…just ask the Carthaginians or the Aztecs or the poor Beothuk Indians who once occupied Newfoundland. People of the west no longer consider such tactics appropriate and I concur as I know there are other ways to get what needs to be done done. My point is that our diplomats and officer corps are in no way prepared to deal with people who resort to indiscriminate killing as easily and naturally as a fish learns to swim.
EID is here and all the Afghan boys get a new set of clothes and a plastic weapon. These boy are just outside the main ISAF enterance and are a new crew – the old kids one always saw out there either perished or are recovering from the VBIED which detonated in this street last month.
Our collective military systems place a premium on education, obtaining advanced degrees, being polished, poised and articulate in all situations, being fit, wise and just but most important is being a consensus building team player with zero….and I mean zero defects in character and military reputation. In America this system produces senior officers and enlisted men and woman who are most impressive. Our professional military education system produces great results if you are solving hugely complex symmetrical problems. It does not produce competent warfighters. Martin van Creveld wrote a book on this topic back in 1990 called The Training Of Officers; From Military Professionalism to Irrelevance where he was emphatic that we were warehousing officers in our schools letting them do nothing productive in the military context.
I actually met van Creveld when he came and hung out in Quantico back in 92. After seeing him pop up at several of our field problems with his son in tow I asked him if he now thought better of his thesis now that he had spent time with the warrior monks of IOC. He looked at me squinting saying “I have never more certain of anything else in my life Captain Lynch.”
If the military is housing its officers in do nothing schools than they won’t know how to do something when they have to leave the US and perform modern problem solving on modern problems. It appears Gen McChrystal has recognized this to be a problem and is attacking it head on. Check out this quote from a piece which just came across the wire:
The key weakness of ISAF, he says, is that it is not aggressively defending the Afghan population. “Pre-occupied with protection of our own forces, we have operated in a manner that distances us — physically and psychologically — from the people we seek to protect. . . . The insurgents cannot defeat us militarily; but we can defeat ourselves.”
General McChrystal’s report covers the widespread corruption which characterizes the Afghan government. He takes head on the problem of the Quetta Shura, revitalized Al Qaeda, and the pointlessness of staying on FOB’s. Man that is good stuff but how did it end up in the Washington Post before the Commander in Chief saw it? Most of the long term observers in Afghanistan would agree with the report. None of us expect the report to change how ISAF operates or change the trajectory of the Afghan Campaign. We lost the day Bin Laden walked away and we have been inflicting the death of a thousand cuts upon ourselves since 2001. Part two of this post will address a way forward. But here is the thing – you cannot think “outside the box” when your first priority is to put all your troops inside boxes for their own protection. There are no school book solutions for Afghanistan there can only be short term stabilization and long term (modest) outside the box innovative solutions. Most of the problems currently plaguing Afghanistan can only be solved by Afghans.
There was a time when the boys of Kabul would wave, smile and ask for sanjook (chewing gum) but not now. These kids are the future and we should be paying much more attention to managing their perceptions then trying to get the adults to play by our rules.
The place I’ve been calling Mudville, vaguely in the eastern part of Jalalabad, is known as Base Eckmunblahblah. It means “military logistics area” and is owned by the Department of Defense. I’ve forgotten the word exactly – today’s new vocabulary includes reshwat (bribe), tofa (gift), bakshish (tip, alms, gift-for-something-you-did-or-’cause-you’re-poor) – but just like the name implies, the residential population are considered squatters and not welcome to rebuild.
It’s the kind of story that just makes you sigh because what else can you do? Long long ago the land was government owned military use land, then during the time of the war – during the mujahadeen times, the folks that seized power gave the land to people who promptly built houses. The recipients were already wealthy people and continue to be even wealthier now. These recipients don’t have the cleanest hands but no one will talk about that stuff outright. But now you get why I was learning the subtle differences among gifts, bribes, and tips.
After the legitimate government was restored, there is a stalemate because the military / government can’t or won’t bulldoze these large, expensive houses and the residents have no reason or desire to move. They didn’t pay for the land and don’t have deeds for land rights, so they also can’t sell their biggest asset. But as far as they are concerned, they were given the land and have every right to be there.
We see a cross section of people in the lab and I ask them about the flooding and damage. No one seems too broken up about “those people with the ruined houses” because they refer to them as “They are rich people. They have big SUVs. “. There are complaints about them exploiting the situation – “Even if they have 1 or 10 million dollars they will stand there on the street and say to the UN or USAID, ‘I am a poor person and I have no house. You must help me.'”
But what about the people I see who’ve hung up sheets and mats and who’ve thrown their soaked bedding on to the street?, I ask. And I show them pictures. More shrugging. Those are only the kids. I’m aware that the pictures tell the story and I’m just not seeing. The windows alone in those houses cost over $100 and some of the debris is super ornate mirrored tile. There are beds and mattresses, not simple carpet and floor cushions. They are rich people, they can fend for themselves. One groped for the right words, then said a fat chicken will not lay eggs, that is they are so wealthy they need for everything to be given to them, they will not rebuild on their own.
The municipality sent out 500 workers again today to help remove the mud and debris. “Since the elections there is no government”, one of the residents told me when I asked him what he would do, “there is no organization, no plan. No one can make a decision.” People have sent their families to live in other houses or with relatives while they wait for foreign donations and help. Waiting is a past time here. “You people must help us, you must give to me.”
It’s now two days after the storm and the water level has dropped amazingly. I don’t know where it all went, Pakistan, I’d guess. The brick and concrete structures still standing have marks from the high water level – dried mud and flotsam on the walls about waist high. Now the unpaved side roads are that special clay-mud-mush which is super slippery and which it is difficult to extricate anything that gets stuck in it (like your shoe).
The residents – some men but mostly young adults – pulled me to the places that had been their homes. The Afghans are fanatics about walls and there wasn’t a structure with four intact walls. A lot of the walls were simply gone – presumably washed away “down there somewhere” – whereas we were standing on the mucky remnants of others. Several buildings had big gaps and cracks because the ground on which they were built had shifted down the street too. All the rocks you see in the pictures were once part of walls.
Afghan homes (here in the rural/suburbs) are often built with enclosed rooms along the outside edge of the property so that there is an enclosed courtyard on the inside behind those tall walls. A compound may have only one enclosed structure with one or more rooms and then a series of porticos for cooking and lounging. When you are invited “into” an Afghan home in the suburbs, depending on the weather, you will probably be received in the courtyard or under the shade of a large tree or corrugated roof portico. There is usually a gate or door in the wall that opens in to the courtyard, and sometimes a door directly in to a room from the street.
I described all this for you so you can study the pictures and see if you can figure out what was what … and where it was once. The yellow cabinet on that white and blue wall is a clue – it should be on the “inside” of a room.
I think I’ve been here too long – my initial response was to avert my eyes from that cabinet in the wall. You’re not meant to be looking in to someone’s house (or courtyard) and seeing the details of their private lives and the innards of their homes without their invitation.
This is two days after the storm and the residents have already removed their belongings, more or less. The ruined textiles and such are in heaps on the side of the paved road.
There are hazards everywhere, from downed electrical cables to huge cracks in the walls that stay standing. The drainage culverts are full of mud and rocks so even a small rain before they are cleared will damage things further.
The affected areas were pretty wide spread. Alley after alley was the same story; a short drive away we saw high brick walls of large compounds… missing.
These were not refugee-camp-style poor people’s housing and people have lived in these neighborhoods for 7-12 years, so they tell me. But “they” say that these people are all illegally squatting on military land and so the government is not rushing to help – they want the people to move anyway. Ah, TIA.
I’m cross-posting this here at FRI because there seem to be more interest in the Saracha Bridge collapse than my little server at MIT can handle. You can find the original post at amy.fablab.af. Update: Download an extended set of photos from the collapsed Saracha Bridge (49 photos, 13.4MB).
Early in the morning of 8/31 a giant thunderstorm rolled in and dumped a stunning amount of water on us. High winds blew open my window which woke me up briefly enough to see the absolute solid wall of water as if Shem’s house had been moved under a waterfall. Lightning lit up the sky with such frequency it was nearly daylight.
The next morning Logan asked if it had rained the previous night. The concrete houses are sound insulated enough that on the first floor I would have slept through the storm too had my window not blown open. The front yard didn’t look too different but once the front gates were opened we could see that Jalalabad had been flooded.
All over Jalalabad culverts overflowed, low areas became rushing rivers, mud walls melted, and houses were damaged or destroyed. The biggest casualty was Saracha Bridge, about 1 km east of FOB Fenty towards Torkham. Tim and I went out to see the bridge a day later and found two and three story tall bridge footings washed down river and most of the bridge completely gone. The river looks innocent and small, only the near opaque turbidity gives away upstream mischief. Brick archways and stone footings are stranded on dry rock in what now looks like a dry river bed.
The initial ANSO report implied some damage that would be fixed within a day, which in Afghanistan usually might mean a week or so. I couldn’t remember a significant bridge to the east of the customs house because the road bed is wide and the approach to the bridge is long and gentle. We were unprepared for what we saw and initially I didn’t even realize that the enormous expanse had a bridge suitable for heavy truck traffic spanning it only a day before.
There were trucks everywhere, pulled on to the side of the road on both sides of the bridge. Some tried to use smaller roads to the north or south as bypasses but upstream and downstream bridges were questionable themselves. The bypasses were not necessarily a great choice because the heavy trucks made big muddy ruts in the small dirt roads. So most cars and trucks opted to try their luck simply driving across the river after the water level went down.
Several bulldozers had arrived and were making ramps down and up the banks to make it easier for the vehicles to get down to the stream bed. While we watched, about 2 in 3 cars or trucks made it through ok, sometimes with a little help from the masses of Afghans who had collected to watch and see if anything exciting might happen. A handful of jingle trucks seemed to be pretty stuck.
There is no shortage of news flowing out of Afghanistan concerning election mischief and general mayhem. Just tonight we received a report about a BBIED who walked into the Pakistani Khasadar (Tribal) Guard mess and detonated his rig killing 22 and wounding another 15. That was probably revenge for the recent killing of Baitullah Meshud by drone strike. We have been spending an inordinate amount of time investigating the increased number of Anti Government Element (AGE) incidents on the main roads and in Jalalabad City to get a handle on what is criminal and what is Taliban activity.
The Bot conducting a field interview at an ANP checkpoint which had been attacked the previous evening
Late last week we had a fairly large firefight in downtown Jalalabad (most unusual) but upon investigation looked to be a Badal (pashto for vengeance) act – the third targeting a small ANP post in as many weeks. This was a new tactic though – one or possibly two gunmen firing at the post from across the street while a third assailant, described as small and swift, bum rushed the main gate with a satchel bag full of hand grenades. One ANP officer and the grenadier were killed and another five ANP officers were wounded by grenade shrapnel. Rushing into a building behind a shower of hand grenades is an effective technique when properly executed by a squad or so of infantry but this looks to be a poorly planned and executed attempt to kill someone – not a deliberate attack to seize a government facility.
The “small swift” assailant took about 30 to the chest before he could get all of his stores deployed – these are 2 Chinese stick grenades, 3 Russian F1 hand grenades and 2 Pakistani handgrenades models P1 and MK 1. Typical collection of hand grenades available on the black market in Afghanistan
There is no reason to anticipate the election results for some time. Allegations of fraud continue to pour in and this report from Ben Arnoldy of the Christian Science Monitor (who I have seen several times outside the wire getting his own stories) sums the situation up succinctly.
I have been reading the new U.S. Government Integrated Civilian- Military Campaign Plan for Support to Afghanistan as well as the Commander of ISAF COIN Guidance and all I can say about them is actions speak louder than words. There is a world of disconnect between what has been written in these documents and what is happening on the ground. Joshua Foust posted his thoughts on the topic yesterday pointing out that there is no detectable change from what the previous COMISAF guidance. I agree and wanted to exam a couple of recent incidents to explain why we (the United States and our allies) suck at fighting the counterinsurgency battle.
Earlier in the month this story about a Bagram PRT was published in Wired’s Danger Room and it is a classic example of attrition warfare mindset being applied to a COIN problem. The article covers what is termed a “KLE” (key leader engagement) and “HA” (humanitarian assistance) mission to a small village just outside Bagram Air Base from which the military suspects rockets were fired toward Pogadishu (Bagram Airbase – hat tip to Old Blue for the new name.) Although the reporter is not savvy enough to recognize what he is witnessing – this mission is a perfect example of what not to do when engaging an Afghan village.
This is part of the route clearance package from the local FOB. They are bringing in a broken truck and had traffic halted for about 20 minutes before this picture was taken. Instead of using the brand new truck by-pass to get to the FOB they rolled through the city center which clogged traffic up for a good hour. This is a minor example but how hard is it to just use the brand new extra wide not that busy truck by pass which dumps you out at your front gate and spare the city folks the drama of a large convoy limping through the narrow streets?
The problems start when a large force rolls into the town in MRAP’s with full battle kit, a bunch of “HA” aid bags full of tea packets, soccer balls, school supplies, two terps, some medical staff, and no plan. For those of you who have never been to Afghanistan let me clue you into a fact – the last thing in the world these people need is tea.They have plenty and they hate Lipton tea bags because they suck – that is like rolling into a Mexican border town and giving the locals packets of cocaine and boxes of 5.56 ammo – they have enough of that shit … although the thought counts for something I guess.
The “KLE” meeting doesn’t go well. The locals bum rush the supplies, the medics have no female terp and are also getting overwhelmed to the point of panic by people who no doubt have a ton of problems such as infected sores, intestinal parasites, malaria etc.. which the Americans could easily treat if they had the time, patience and a clue. They see a young man snapping pictures with a cell phone – something Afghans do all the time – and interpret this as possibly hostile activity so they scan him with the BATS (Biometric Automated Tool Set) and erase his cell phone. Of what possible relevance these cell phone pics could be remains a mystery to me. Young Afghans taking cell phone pictures is what one expects to see and is therefore not a “rule of opposites” scenario.
An old man smacks one of the little village girls and an American officer steps in to intervene with a “stern warning.” What kind of stern warning? What the hell is the Captain going to do? What did the terp tell the old man? I bet the Captain in this story has no idea and I also bet it was not what the young Captain told him to say. Little girls in this country have much more pressing concerns than getting cuffed upside the head by their granddad. That is no reason to draw a line in the sand which may alarm some readers but is the way it is here and the Terp knows that. And throughout the mission the company First Sergeant is “getting very agitated” because “They’re going to put soldiers lives at risk.” I hate hearing “they”….who the hell is “they?” What exactly about “they” is putting soldiers lives at risk? A company first sergeant is supposed to be an island of calm in the sea of chaos which is the Big Army. One that gets flustered at being around Afghan woman and children is putting troops at more risk than a “they.”
Juma Khan Hamdard, Governor of Paktia Province – important meetings should be treated exactly the same in Afghanistan as they are in America. How would it look to a state Governor if a military commander arrived with 16 gunmen, embarked upon four Armored Prairie Schooners and encased in body armor like Ivanho?
What is putting the soldiers at risk is the institutional stupidity. Let me explain why. In order to do “KLE” you need to engage the “key leaders” in a manner consistent with your objectives. If your objective is to provide aid and make new friends how should the company commander present himself? I vote for he drives in with his terp in an unarmored SUV; sits down with the local elders and asks permission to come in with his company and also for their help distributing some supplies. You ask them to provide male and female interpreters as well as supervisors to assist with the distribution of aid and you agree to the rate for these folks. You both agree exactly how the MEDCAP will go and pay for supervisors – both male and female to run that too. Leave the security outside the village and walk in without all the body armor – side arms or slung rifles are no big deal and soldiers should never allow theirs to leave their bodies anyway so wear them. The visit is supposed to be about trust and you can only show trust with actions …. not words. If the elders do not hold up their end of the bargain you leave. It is that simple – Pashtunwali cuts both ways and if they won’t play ball they should get the stick … or just be ignored. Both responses are appropriate depending on location, tribal composition, and the overall Provincial security picture.
This is how we get large projects done in the most volatile regions of the south and east and is nothing more than good manners and common sense. What do you think is going to happen when you bring in a large convoy of fully armored troops who have not a clue what they are doing into a village? I run paydays where we distribute very large sums of money to hundreds of poor illiterate workers and these pay calls go like clockwork. The reason they are so smooth is that the Afghans organize them – I can only imagine what a Charlie Foxtrot it would be if the Bagram PRT did pay calls for me ….those guys seem clueless.
Payday in Gardez which runs like a Parris Island training evolution and is completely organized and administered by Afghan staff.
As I mentioned above the Bot and I have been spending a lot of time trying to get a handle on the nature and seriousness of the many incidents being reported daily. This means going out to the various posts and talking with the Afghan police or army guys who man them. The physical condition of these posts are very poor as is the most of the equipment the troops are issued, but what is most appalling is the complete lack of adult supervision, military planning, and meaningful mission.
The Bot and I are looking at a ridge line some 600 meters away which is the attack point for Taliban gunmen who fire on this post regularly. There are four ANA soldiers and four ANP policemen manning this position and they have a Hummer mounted M60 machinegun, and RPK machinegun and their rifles for defense. Apparently the bad guys tend to attack in the evening when the ANP re-supply truck arrives with chow and they have wounded at least two ANP policemen this month.
glassing the ridge from ANP fighting position on Rte 1 – the AGE firing points are outside the range of rifles
What is frustrating to guys like Bot and I is the fact that we could easily sort out this threat with a good machinegun squad and a mortar – manned by proper infantry. An American squad with a sharp squad leader would be perfect for a job like this. The reason why American infantry is so effective is that their machineguns come with tripods and T&E’s which are traversing and elevation mechanisms. Machineguns are deadly in the defense because you can dial them in using a map, range finders, a little math and test firing. There are five different firing spots on the ridge across from this position and each of them should be dialed in on range cards so that the leader calls out a target designation off the card when he wants to shift fire. The machinegunner than dials that target in on his T&E and he can rock and roll. A mortar which has been placed in properly can do exactly the same thing – register the targets allowing for first round hits which saves ammo and pumps up the troops.
This machingun should be dug in on a tripod with T&E attached and registered to hit the 5 different firing points used by AGE gunmen. Shooting it off of a pintle mount (which is how it is attached to the vehicle) only works well in Hollywood movies; on planet earth it is a waste of ammo
The generals can write all the pithy COIN sounding directives they want but words mean little outside the wire. Only actions count and it seems that our seniors are forgetting the age old dictum “you cannot fool the troops” and that applies to all troops including Afghans. We used to know how to do counterinsurgency back in the early parts of the last century. We would actually embed our troops in with the local formations to live, train, fight and die with them. We do not embed troops now – we say we do but we don’t. Embedded training teams live on mini FOB’s inside Afghan FOB’s and the Afghans they are supposed to mentor cannot enter the little American FOB’s without an escort and a body search. The Americans do not go out and stay out with the troops they mentor and when they do go out the Americans are in MRAP’s with full body armor while their trainees are in unarmored pickups without body armor. That is not leading be example – in fact it is not leading at all. Embedded trainers need to train Afghans exactly as they would Americans which means they really embed, eating what they eat, sleeping like they sleep and fighting with them wearing the same kit they wear. That is what my friends who work that mission tell me they should be doing but they can’t and they are frustrated.
I have mentioned this before and want to stress it again – I joined the military in 1978 back when morale was in the toilet and discipline in the ranks almost nonexistent. The American military we know and love today was created in the 1980’s during the presidency of Ronald Reagan by a cadre of officers who were able to erase the stain of Vietnam with the generous help and support of the greatest President we have ever had. The current occupant of the White House knows nothing about the military and could not in a million years have the impact on that organization that President Reagan did. The current senior military leadership apparently knows nothing about Vietnam or they might understand the consequences of putting layers of ass kissing, careerist motivated, humorless and petty Colonels in stupid do nothing staff jobs to micromanage the troops in the field. Leaders who create larger and larger staffs do so to insulate them from having to take responsibility for everything happening under them in the chain in command. That is why you only see the Navy relieving O-6 level officers as a matter of routine – you can’t create more and more staff jobs on a ship so a Navy CO actually has to live up to the responsibility for everything which happens or fails to happen in his command ….just like a junior officer in the Army does. We need Generals who come to Afghanistan and command in the manner of a U.S. Grant or Patton or Razor Ray Davis. Men who will dump the staffs, ignore PowerPoint briefs, get off the FOB’s and out with the men in the field.
It is hot, humid and sunny this morning in Jalalabad with a pleasant light wind blowing out of the Northeast. The traffic is light, people calm and as we sit here on the Baba deck monitoring the election we are receiving a report about every 10 minutes of mischief and mayhem. I bet less than 50% of them are true. For example, there is a report out of Kunar that the Taliban is shooting “an RPG” off near a polling station “every hour.” We are getting a steady stream of SMS messages out of Kabul where most of the international community is currently located due to potential instability and they say there are several gunfights and a few bombs in the capitol. As most of the security companies are on complete lock-down it is impossible to verify the reporting. Good security companies and good operatives report as fact only those things they have verified themselves – everything else is suspect. So when we hear there is a “gun fight between political parties in Zone 9 of Kabul” we don’t necessarily believe it.
I still believe the Taliban do not view the election as a significant event although it is clear some actors do. Around the city of Kunduz there were 24 election stations burned down on Tuesday night which indicates Hekmatyar’s group HiG is sending a message about the election. HiG reportedly conducted their own version of a RIP (relief in place) by replacing all the commanders in Kunduz last winter and ordering them to fight. They have been battling with the Germans all summer up in the previously very quiet and safe north and it will be interesting to see if the German’s step up their game and rediscover the art of small unit infantry warfare like the French have done outside of Kabul.
The French now move in small fast formations or “serials” in milspeak allowing them to move their company sized convoys quickly and with the ability to mutually support. Classic infantry tactics and a new look for the French who have gotten better and better at the COIN fight since their embarrassing defeat a year ago in the Uzbin valley outside of Surobi.
We will be out and about later in the day to get some food and ice – the staff is off today and we are forced to fend for ourselves. The extra tight ring of steel securitynever showed in Jalalabad and folded in Gardez the troops folded up their checkpoints at around 2000 local which does not bode well. There is also a ban on reporting of security incidents put on the media from on high according to this article from McClatchy. At the Taj we are tracking the incident levels in real time with software, programming and super tech geek support from Ken and Mullah Todd. The press has picked up on our low budget highly efficient efforts – here is the BBC’s report. Here is the link to Alive Afghanistan and Mullah Todd’s tracking map….it is smoking right now with live reporting from Afghan’s across the country via SMS text messaging.
The end of a quiet day in Jalalabad as viewed from the Baba Deck of the Taj. The mound in the foreground is a Buddhist Burial Mound dating back to 300 BC
Although quiet in the city the election day produced some 80+ security incidents in the Eastern Region. Most of them appear to be minor – only two civilian deaths were reported – in Paktia Province and they were civilians caught in a cross fire between the ANP and villains of unknown affiliation. It is clear that in many places in both the south, southeast and east the vote did not go well. The entire Province of Nimroz did not participate according to reporting on the Afghan Alive election tracker. In most of the north the vote went as planned.
This is downtown Jalalabad at 1300 this afternoon. The town was deserted and there were a few more ANP troops on the streets than normal. We did not see many kids out and about today either.
It is hard to predict how today’s vote will turn out. We received a report around 1500 today that females and children were moving in mass from the Panjshir section of Kabul but that is unconfirmed. If true it would be a troubling signal but a dumb move by the Northern Alliance party. They are still well positioned to get a seat at the table and I would doubt they are serious about clearing the decks for action in Kabul.
There was not much evidence of increased security in Jalalabad on election day although the regular ANP checkpoints were checking all traffic which they rarely do
In Gardez the ANP detected a suicide bomber on a motorcycle and opened fire on him. He withdrew about 500 meters away from the checkpoint and detonated his vest. It would appear that at the price of 2 civilians and open hapless suicide bomber the collective entities operating under the Taliban flag did a sufficient job of disrupting things today. Accomplishing this without a high body count is pretty impressive and probably proves me wrong on my prediction above that the various Taliban Shura’s did not view the election as a significant event. I’m not adding the three idiot bank robbers in Kabul yesterday to the Taliban ledger – seizing a bank which is empty of money is too stupid even for them. The countrywide death toll for today is in at 26 which is pretty low yesterday we saw 101 dead and 563 wounded in a Baghdad bombing and it seems to me that Iraq is more important to us strategically than Afghanistan.
A group of supporters for Karzai heading out of Jalalabad at full throttle. This was just about the only traffic we saw downtown today.
My buddy Gaz sends the following from Kandahar; “at 1915 we have counted 37 explosions in the city.” That is a lot of rocket fire and one has to wonder how that happens given the counter battery radar, aircraft and other sensors ringing the city. Here are some pics from some of the closer strikes:
Kandahar City as viewed from Gaz’s roofMore from GazIt is impossible to have a proper barbi when shrap like this is flying around the poop deck
I’m glad I live in Jalalabad – this level of excitement is bad on the digestion.
As the elections approach there has been much in the news on Afghanistan and most of it is not terribly accurate. Yesterday’s VBIED in Kabul is a good example. Most news outlets are connecting this attack to a countrywide effort by Taliban groups to interfere with the Presidential election scheduled for Thursday. I’m not buying that and I don’t think the Taliban view this upcoming election as a significant event. Some groups have publicly stated they will not interfere, other groups say they will disrupt the process, but we are not seeing any real attempts to do that.
Initial reporting indicated that the VBIED had targeted 2 ISAF Humvees but that turned out to be false. It appears that the driver just detonated his bomb about 50 meters shy of the first American Embassy checkpoint. If this is the vehicle then I take back what I said in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor – this was another poorly made VBIED and with a trigger man who missed his objective and killed a bunch of civilians like the poor bastard in the foregrounds who riding by on his bike. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time is a problem in Afghanistan
This Washington Post story is typical of the MSM reporting on the Kabul blast with the title of “Pre Vote Blast in Kabul Signal Taliban Intent.” That is bullshit – what the blast signals is that somebody was able to bribe their way past the ANP check-posts and get right up to the U.S. Embassy checkpoint without being detected. This is the first successful Taliban attack in Kabul since last winter and although the execution was better than average the Taliban once again managed to kill or wound innocent Afghan civilians most of whom were undoubtedly children. I was interviewed for my take on the bombing by the Christian Science Monitor and remarked that it seemed this attack was executed better than the average Taliban lash up but after seeing the picture above I take it back. Poor bomb making with typically poor execution – there would be nothing left of the vehicle or that poor bike rider had this been a Baghdad VBIED.
Street children hang outside all ISAF bases becasue ISAF soldiers are quick to fork over a spare dollar or some pocket change.
This blast in Kabul needs to be investigated with both forensics and interviews with every guard at every post around ISAF being grilled by counter intelligence specialists in an effort to determine how that little as vehicle with all the explosives on board made it to the front of ISAF Headquarters. But that is not going to happen. Take a moment to read this article from CSM and to see why. The ANP general in charge of conducting criminal investigations is denied access to the scene and run off by ISAF HQ troops who would not know an Afghan general from the Easter Bunny. What kind of an investigation do you think we will have now? The Afghans have done a good job at securing Kabul and this was a serious breach but we (ISAF we) will never know how it happened because we do not embed with the police – we have meetings and PowerPoint briefs and drink a little tea with them and call that “mentoring.”
Gen. Sayed Abdul Ghafar Sayed Zada is not going to be inclined to help us when he is treated so poorly during a routine bombing investigation and who can blame him? But it gets worse. In Jalalabad the city is emptying of civilian internationals who are being forced to spend the week in Kabul or out of the country as election day nears. The Army Brigade in Jalalabad has nightly meetings to go over and over and over the plans for placing Afghan security forces in concentric rings to screen all the traffic coming into the city. An officer I chatted with today was very proud telling me how they have the Afghans in on the planning and everything is going just perfectly. But there is one problem; there are no security checkpoints going up around Jalalabad. The officer was stunned when I told him that I have seen only one extra checkpoint and that was up for 3 hours several night ago. No I was told “they are up all night and have been for weeks.” I swear you cannot make this stuff up…they are no extra check posts up and I drive frequently from the Taj to the Shem Bot’s house at night and know exactly which check posts are working, how many men are manning them and who the men are. This is what happens when you live on a FOB and your daily reality is defined by PowerPoint briefs and classified(read closed loop) reporting. Just because a bunch of guys sitting in a conference room say something is happening doesn’t mean it is happening – whatever happened to the old troop leading steps?
These American Army troops are moving low profile in a 2 vehicle covoy which is stuck in downtown Kabul traffic – this is the way to move with vehicles through urban areas.
Military officers are not the only ones with a warped perception about how things are going in Afghanistan big time foreign policy wonks are capable of making fools of themselves too. This article in Foreign Policy by Anna Husarska is full of the kind of lunacy which can only come from classified reports and briefing with senior officers. In the article Anna states that ANSO – the Afghanistan NGO security office has stated NGO’s “were generally attacked for being perceived as intrinsic to the military and political objectives.” ANSO has said no such thing. NGO’s are targeted by criminals because they are easy targets and the Taliban because they are foreigners or work for foreigners. Ms Husaraska goes on to bitch about ISAF using white SUV’s saying that NGO’s use white SUV’s and the military shouldn’t so that the bad guys don’t get confused about which SUV’s to attack. Pick your own cuss word for a response – the NGO’s in Afghanistan do not all have white SUV’s (very few do) and the military is not about to change the color of the white trucks they have finally gotten around to procuring …why should they? The final interesting tidbit in this article is the description of her ride from the Jalalabad Airport to downtown Jbad. That is a drive I do almost daily and I promise tell you she is not describing Jalalabad in her article. Maybe the military flew her into Ghor Province and told her she was in Jalalabad…who knows?
107 Chinesse rocket fused with a jury rigged Russian fuze – the bad guys still are not remotely proficient with artillery rockets
There was also this article from USA Today concerning the counter IED program in Nangarhar Province. It covers a call made to the local Army FOB concerning an IED and the soldiers response with a 4 MRAP flying squad. The mission unquestionably went down as described but there is a problem with the whole story line and that is 95% of the ordinance recovered and 99% of the calls for EOD support go to a single American contractor who lives outside the wire and has a team of Afghan EOD techs in training. The reason he gets all the calls and most of the recoveries is that he responds within 5 minutes of notification 24 hours a day 7 days a week. The FOB bound Army cannot run to their vehicles and respond – they take at least 3 hours to get organized, make a patrol plan, file and brief the plan before even drawing their weapons. A retired Navy Chief who travels in unarmored low profile vehicles – exactly as most of us do can often be on scene, disarm and secure the device, and be back home in bed before the ISAF team can even clear the base. That is the price of fighting a counterinsurgency off of big box FOB’s. The lone American also has the time and ability to rent a backhoe and dig out reported missile hits from farmers fields – just like the one above which impacted right outside the Army base in Jalalabad. It is important to know why missiles fail to function which is the whole point in having highly trained EOD techs in country. The Army guys locked down on their FOB in Jbad can do this work too but they have to be given the freedom of movement to allow them to work like their lone out side the wire contractor does.
It is always easier and cheaper to defeat new battlefield technologies than it is to designe and field them
It would be safer for an EOD flying squad to be in armored SUV’s like the cats in Kabul pictured earlier in the post. The belief that MRAP’s will protect you from the bad guys is just not true. They have saved many lives so far in Afghanistan but that will not last. It is always, in all times and in all places, easier and cheaper to defeat a new technology than it is to field it.
