Category: Afghanistan

The American military was welcomed by a vast majority of the Afghan population when it entered the country in 2001. We helped rid the country of an unpopular, dysfunctional government and seemed to have set the conditions for sustained peace in a country that has known war for a generation.

We should have finished our mission to Afghanistan in December, 2001 when we had Osama bin Laden (OBL) trapped but instead we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Frantic requests from the special operators in Tora Bora for American troops to seal the escape routes into Pakistan were ignored by CENTCOM.  Reportedly because the generals feared a “meat grinder” or “another Mogadishu” or “offending our Afghan allies”. When OBL slipped away into a dark Pakistani night our mission to Afghanistan started to expand and extend. Sixteen years later there is no end in sight.

Potential losses in risky operations should be evaluated against the mission. Confusing the importance of killing bin Laden with a mission involving the arrests of  Somali warlords is a failure (in my humble opinion) at the highest levels of command. But when CENTCOM went to the White House seeking guidance from on high killing bin Laden took a back seat when former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld handed them back their Iraq war plan and said he wanted a new one in five days. Unbelievable.

When bin Laden escaped we decided to stay and despite near universal acceptance by the Afghan people at the start of our effort we have, to date, failed. The warm welcome both aid workers and the military patrols received from 2002 through 2006 in rural Afghanistan is long gone. Kabul is now a dangerous place for internationals because the Afghans are frustrated, bitter, and angry at what some see as incompetence and others see as deliberate sabotage of Afghanistan and her people.

A good example of our bad start would be America’s initial efforts in Helmand province.  In late 2002 a U.S. Special Forces A Team arrived in the capitol, Laskar Gah and immediately offered bounties for “former members of the Taliban”. Mike Martin describes what happened next in  An Intimate War: An Oral History of the Helmand Conflict, (p. 125)

Early in January 2003, for example, Abdul Kadus, a seventeen-year-old orphan from Nad-e Ali, was arrested by Mir Wali’s forces in what appears, from the Guantanamo documents, to be a ‘sting’ in order to gain the bounty offered. In an almost exact copy of this modus operandi, Mohammad Ismail, a sixteen-year-old, was arrested, also in Gereshk. They share consecutive Guantanamo inmate numbers, although the records are unclear about their exact date of arrest.

Those two orphans were in Cuba because we failed to understand how offering a bounty would cause Afghans to denounce those they were feuding with or even innocents to collect the cash.

Were I on active duty and sent with a team of commandos to Lashkar Gah in  2003 I would have done the same thing; I knew nothing about Afghanistan back then. The SF team in Lashkar Gah did what they were told to do and pointing out the flaw in their plan isn’t to illustrate malfeasance because there was none. In 2017 this story is important only in how the Afghans saw and interpreted those events and our subsequent actions.

My belief is that the Afghans saw us as both seriously dangerous and naively stupid. Their elites played us for years to settle scores, steal land or to collect a kings ransom by turning over illiterate orphans to SF teams. The average Afghan, was (in my experience) baffled by our incompetence but willing to participate with us in the reconstruction effort.

Contributing to both poor program management and alienation from the Afghans (we were supposed to be helping) were unnecessarily restrictive security rules. B6 level armored SUV’s, armed, high end western mobile security teams, hardened compounds and lavish life support was mandated for westerners working USAID or State Department contracts. That crippled our reconstruction efforts from the start and in the ensuing years we not only accomplished little but lost track of 70 Billion dollars.

By 2009 USAID was experimenting with alternative implementation profiles to include using former soldiers in direct implementation projects thus eliminating the need for armored vehicles, security escorts, specialized compounds etc…  That was how Ghost Team got it’s start and despite delivering massive projects on time and on budget, Ghost Team turned out to be too little and too late.

Here is another cultural dynamic where we are tone deaf (due to political correctness) and need to wise up; our fascination with female empowerment. Here’s why: if your tribe lives in a society of scarce resources and makes an equal investment in educating and training both boys and girls your tribe is going to starve.

In rural Afghanistan women spend most of their adult lives producing and raising children regardless of their level of education. Efficient allocation of scarce resources would dictate investing those resources in family members who will use them for the benefit of the family.  Most Afghans I met have no issue with sending their daughters to school when they are young but investing the resources to train a daughter to become a lawyer would be as foolish as training a son to be midwife. In rural Afghanistan a female lawyer will spend her life inside the compound of her husband’s family just like her illiterate neighbors. Every penny spent educating her would have been wasted and rural Afghans don’t have the disposable income to waste.

The Afghans may see more benefit in allowing all their children access to higher education in time but probably not before they have electricity, running water, paved roads, plumbing inside their homes and security.

America and the 41 other countries contributing to Resolute Support are staying on in Afghanistan with the intention of seeing things through to an acceptable end-state. That is going to take time and it is going to generate more casualties; the loss of talented, experienced combat soldiers is going to continue. The countries losing those soldiers are not going to want to continue. America has already made it clear we’re not interested in continuing now and we have much more to endure before anything gets remotely better.

During the dark days ahead it is important to understand how our misguided efforts contributed to this mess and the impact that has had on a civilian population that just wants to left alone in peace. This is an important story that may not matter to you much now but it will soon which is why I feel it an imperative to cover.

I cannot make this trip without your support so please visit the Baba Tim Go Fund Me Page to donate. The men and women currently serving in harms way in Afghanistan deserve to have their story told and I intend to do just that.

 

 

There was another Green on Blue attack in Afghanistan over the weekend which is obviously bad news. But, as is often the case these days, when you start reading through the various press reports there is nothing but confusion about who was involved and where the incident occurred.

The story broke early Monday morning when this article appeared on Yahoo news stating that three American soldiers had been shot at Camp Antonik which they reported to be in the “Washer” district of Helmand province. Washer is wrong – the district is Washir and Washir district has been under Taliban control ever since the Taliban returned. If there were American soldiers in Washir district last Sunday they were Special Forces….it is inconceivable that these guys belonged to the 100-man Task Force Forge who are based out of Lashkar Gah. But the story had also talked about the upcoming deployment of Task Force Southwest which implied the soldiers who were wounded were from the unit the Marines are scheduled to replace.

In a series of email between friends of mine with Afghanistan experience I immediately asserted these could not be soldiers from the train and assist mission for the reasons outlined above. A short time later one of them sent this story from Bill Roggio (consistently the best informed writer on Afghanistan for the past 17 years) which adds to the confusion. Bill had found these additional details on the incident in Tolo News:

The assault was carried out by an Afghan National Army officer from the 215 Maiwand Army Corps “during a military training exercise,” TOLONews reported. US troops reportedly killed the Afghan soldier. The 215 Maiwand Army Corps is based in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, which is heavily contested by the Taliban.

If the three soldiers reportedly shot the day before had been at a live fire training exercise in Laskar Gah then they would most certainly be members of Task Force Forge.

Then this mornings inbox had a press release announcing the death of Sgt. 1st Class Robert R. Boniface, 34, of San Luis Obispo, California, a Special Forces operator from the 7th Group. The announcement said he was injured on March 19, in Logar Province, Afghanistan, in a “non-combat” related incident. The date and description correlate to the insider attack last Sunday. Or not; SFC Boniface could have been involved in a training or motor vehicle accident for that was unrelated to the green on blue shootings for all we know.

Were I one of the 8000 plus families with loved ones in Afghanistan I’d be getting a little worried, as this story continues to morph, about getting a knock on the front door by men wearing dress uniforms. This amount of confusion about casualties from a high risk combat deployment to a country we have been fighting in for sixteen years is unacceptable. And why I feel it imperative to go back and cover our continued involvement in Afghanistan in detail.

UPDATE: The New York Times just printed an article about a VBIED (Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device) that also sums up what is known about the shooting on 19 March as well as other bad news from Afghanistan.  This is their report on the shooting:

The soldier who mistakenly shot was loyal and brave and has fought successfully against the enemy,” said Shakil Ahmad, a spokesman for the Afghan corps.

He said that the commando, from the northern province of Balkh, had been guarding the tower when he fired accidentally and that there had been no dispute before the episode. He was wounded when American soldiers returned fire and died at a hospital.

If this report is true then we can attribute this unfortunate accidental shooting to the fog of war. I don’t know what happened last Sunday but do know we remain engaged. Secretary of Defense Mattis had much to say during his confirmation hearings regarding the deployment of military forces without a rational  plan, measurable goals and a clear end-state.

I’m guessing he hasn’t worked down his list of crisis’s left him by Obama to get to Afghanistan.  When he does I sure hope we see an indication that this time we are fighting the right guys for the right reasons. That would be a welcomed change from business as usual for America in Afghanistan.

I cannot make this trip without your support so please visit the Baba Tim Go Fund Me Page to donate. The men and women currently serving in harms way in Afghanistan deserve to have their story told and I intend to do just that.

Since launching my campaign to embed in Afghanistan I’ve received a lot of push back from my American friends who spent time outside the wire in Jalalabad with me. They are concerned that I’m placing myself in grave danger to cover a story that will end in dismal failure. They have little confidence in the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GoIRA) or the American military when it comes to solving the true problems driving the fighting country-wide. They also believe the military is incapable of telling the truth about the effectiveness of their efforts nor able to develop the tactical models required to deal with what is now a general insurgency.

One of them shared this observation in a group email a few days ago:

I remember something Sitting Bull said to Jim when Jim spoke of coming back and marrying into the tribe.  His response, “you’re not Muslim”.. So if ANYONE had a level of rapport with any Afghan who lives in the countryside, Jim did.  And for his counterpart to make that distinction after all they had been through, THAT means something.

He’s talking about Jim Gant who I consider the most remarkable soldier of our generation and a man I admire greatly. Jim was cursed by being successful where all others failed miserably and got the shaft for it but that’s another story for another post.

What’s ironic about that comment is (unknown by my friends) I’ve been asked to convert, marry into a tribe and stay in Afghanistan on four different occasions. Unlike Jim I was not talking with a tribal leader who loved me like a son; these men hardly knew me. They were trying to get another connected, educated, competent guy to join the tribe for the obvious benefits that would bring to the community. It is a typically Afghan thing to do in rural districts and I spent months at a time in remote districts accompanied by only an interpreter (Zaki or JD) and a driver. None of my friends (with the notable exception of Jim Gant and fellow Ghost Team members) have remotely similar experiences.

My colleagues from Ghost Team and I (along with a handful of westerners sprinkled throughout the country by marriage or business) are the only westerners who embedded inside local communities and directly supervised large projects that were completed on time and on budget. Consistent performance at that level required detailed knowledge of how local communities functioned. Projects had to be vetted correctly the first time, every time, to avoid the perception of favoritism of one tribe over another.

I knew the tribes where we worked trusting them to protect our little team on nothing more than a hand shake. Free Ranging requires a high tolerance for risk, unshakable confidence in your ability to get through any situation along with the application of reason and logic to local atmospherics. Reason and logic allowed us to be comfortable operating in areas where everyone else was uncomfortable.  Reason and logic is why I’m comfortable going back. What is uncomfortable is being lectured by friends who don’t really know what I know. Which provides a perfect opportunity to discuss the realities of Free Ranging in contested lands.

Rule #1 is you will not be able to talk your way through every checkpoint. I was detained in Afghanistan, Dubai and the Northwest frontier of Pakistan during the years I spent Free Ranging. When pinched in Pakistan I was being driven through the town of Landi Kotal and was about 5 miles from the border. I was taken back to Peshawar (a policeman jumped in my cab to escort me and I had to pay for the ride back) where a magistrate released me on my own recognizance minus my cash, passport, and expensive (recently purchased) wristwatch. But I had my cell phone and called my friend (and manager of the Taj)  Mehrab who arrived (in the middle of the night) with enough cash to pay for a permit and escort to  get me through the Khyber Pass. I spent the intervening hours keeping a low profile in a crappy tea house and let me assure you I was terrified. Anyone who says they can handle that much risk and not be scared to death is delusional. But I kept my cool, remained calm and waited patiently.

If you ever found yourself alone, broke, tired and hungry in Peshawar, Pakistan, in the middle of the night, you might be a Free Ranger.

Mehrab like many Afghans who worked with the international community was killed outside his house by Taliban gunmen in 2012. He was a good man who believed that the international community would bring peace and prosperity to Afghanistan. He also was a typical Afghan who would do anything to include transiting the Khyber Pass at night in the middle of the 2009 Khyber Pass offensive to help a friend in need. Meharb and the many Afghans I met who are just like him are the reason I want to go back.

The Free Range threat matrix, developed over a decade ago, is interesting reading for those unfamiliar with the realities on the ground in Afghanistan. It’s been updated for the embed this summer.

Free Range International Threat Matrix 2007

1. Afghan Security Forces
2. Motor Vehicle Accident
3. Running into American or British army convoys while driving (high probability of getting shot even in Kabul and even in brand new up-armored SUV with diplomatic plates)
4. Taliban ambush
5. Serious disease or sudden illness

Free Range International Threat Matrix 2017

1. Afghan Security Forces
2. Motor Vehicle Accident
3. Taliban ambush
4. Serious disease or sudden illness

See the difference? Only the threat presented by ISAF road movements has been eliminated. Afghanistan is a scary place because the country is falling apart as a direct result of repeated failures by the international community to develop strategies that actually help the Afghan people.

Sixteen years down the road the Marines are going back because America has decided that we will, for the first time in my lifetime, actually see one of the debacles we created in a foreign land through to some sort of acceptable end state.

This story needs to be told honestly by a reporter who understands the Marines, the environment they are operating in and the degree of difficulty they will encounter as they balance force protection against mission effectiveness. Please take the  time to donate on my Go Fund Me page to enable honest, professional reporting on a story that will have a significant impact on your children’s future. Your kids may not be interested in war but war is interested in them. And if we cannot develop effective strategies to combat radical Islam war is going to find them.

The most difficult thing to explain about the upcoming deployment of Marines back into the Helmand province is the threat they are facing. The traditional counterinsurgency narrative that has driven past deployments is best explained as follows:

…a legitimate Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA), which is recognized and supported by the international community, is violently opposed by a movement of insurgents, called the Taliban, who have sanctuary in Quetta, Pakistan. Thus, the Taliban are religiously inspired insurgents who are opposed to the democratic and women’s rights that the GIRoA embodies and promotes.

That is not an accurate assessment of what’s driving the instability in Helmand province. The video pasted below (about 3 minutes) is an interview with Dr. Mike Martin, author of An Intimate War, and he provides a good explanation of what is driving the current fighting in the province.

As noted in my first post on the topic Dr. Martin is part of the a team of British experts on the Helmand province who have been working with the Marines of Task Force Southwest (TF Southwest).  How are the Marines (and the U.S. Department of State) going to use their detailed knowledge of the factors driving province-wide instability given the limitations of the train, assist and advise mission?

That is the million dollar question which can only be answered by embedding with and recording the Marines effort. This mission is the first of many to follow and the lessons learned will be used in other countries where we face the identical problem of bringing security to populations traumatized by war and naturally suspicious of and hostile to military formations from Western countries. Please take the time to visit my Go Fund Me page and donate to help fund this important story. It’s important and needs to be told to the people who sent the TF Southwest Marines on such a high-risk mission.

The next video is a difficult conversation between Mike Martin and a Danish veteran named Jimmy Krig. It is an important conversation on how a veteran of the fighting there can square what he or she did with the knowledge of what really drove the levels of violence in the province. It is a reminder of what we are asking the Marines (and the soldiers of Task Force Forge who they are replacing) to do when they venture into harms way to try and help drive the violence down. I need to stress that for veterans and those who love them this may be a difficult video to watch…but it’s an important one to understand.

There are two ways out of Afghanistan for America and her allies manning the NATO-led Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan. They can establish enough security in the provinces to allow for a graceful exit or they can declare victory and leave. If they take the second option getting all their people and equipment out of the country will be problematic and odds are that they will lose troops in that effort. If they take the first option they will (eventually) be forced to fight with the Afghan Security Forces (there is no other way to mentor effectively) which will result in casualties. The war in Afghanistan is not over and is about to enter a second phase that may prove the basis of a model for re-establishing security in the many countries currently afflicted by the contagion of war.

The security situation in Afghanistan has never been worse. Earlier in the week ISIS (Afghans use the Arabic name Daesh) attacked a 400 bed military hospital in Kabul reportedly killing at least 30 people. That hospital is in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood about 350 meters from the United States embassy. The Daesh are not the Taliban; they’ve been fighting the Taliban in Nangarhar Province for the past several years. How the Daesh is able to inject fighters inside the “Ring of Steel” is a mystery with few palatable explanations.  The end appears to be near and we are still there.

We were supposed to declare victory and leave Afghanistan; Obama once promised to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan within 16 months of taking office for his second term. But he had to slow and then stop the withdraw as the security situation deteriorated to the extent that we could not disengage without it being seen as cutting and running on a country we promised to help.

Now we are returning with the intent of staying to see this thing through to the bitter end. Most Americans will have no idea about our growing commitment in Afghanistan unless the Marines start to take casualties. If they do we can anticipate a lot of media attention that focuses on the casualties but produces little understanding of why the Marines are there or what they are accomplishing.

The Marines from Task Force Southwest who I spoke with last month were mostly veterans of prior Afghanistan deployments. They have worked with the Afghans before and are confident they will have a positive impact on them when they return. That is their mission and where they focus; not one man or woman among them is the least bit hesitant to return.

I’m not the least bit hesitant either. When I started my go fund me effort to embed in Afghanistan one of my best friends posted an article on Rhino Den that was not exactly an endorsement. This trip will require loitering in Kabul for a few days before I embed to obtain the proper credentials. Every journalist entering Afghanistan has to do that which is why there will not be many there.  Kabul is not the safe, hospitable city it once was but despite this experienced internationals move around the capitol every day. Going back to Afghanistan to embed with the Marines is not going to be hard or risky for the brief amount of time I’ll be outside the wire.

The deplorable state security in Afghanistan is the direct result of our failure to bring security and good governance to the citizens of that proud country. The Afghans have contributed to that failure as have other countries like Pakistan and Iran. We could have pulled out in 2016 and blamed the resulting chaos on politicians in DC but the military, the ones who still have their skin in the game and will pay a price for staying, said that leaving the country in chaos would be not only a strategic but a moral failure.

The Marines are returning to the fray just 300 strong without fear, without doubts, and without questions about the importance or risk of this unique deployment. They deserve to have their story told by a reporter who understands them and the people of Afghanistan. Please contribute to my go fund me effort to bring this story home to the people who sent the Marines on this difficult and dangerous mission.

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Editors Note: This is the first in a series of posts covering the return of the Marines to the Helmand province in Afghanistan. My goal is to return with them and post once again from the Helmand province. I need to raise $8,000 to make this trip and there are two ways to contribute. You can donate via my go fund me page or  through pay pal on my blog.

Last January the United States Marine Corps announced it was returning to the Helmand province. The media reacted to the news with articles like I Deployed Twice To The Helmand And Cannot Believe The Marines Are Going Back. I too was mystified that somebody thought it was a good idea to send (reportedly) just 300 Marines into the most unstable province in Afghanistan.

If the Marines are going back into Helmand light on fire power they have to have a deep understanding of the inter-tribal conflicts that drive the cycle of violence in the province. I’m asking for a month-long embed with the detachment handling the Afghan National Police training in Lashkar Gah to see what they can do/ if they’re up to the task.

I had a 45 minute meeting with the BGen Turner who, after spending time catching up, laid a few of the rules of the road out for me. The most interesting was that I not reveal any of the “enhanced capabilities” they are taking on this rotation because he wants them to be a surprise when they are placed in service. That was an easy request for me because I have no idea what he’s talking about. What was interesting about the request was the change in his demeanor; we were both leaning forward looking at each other and after he made that request he sat back and smiled. Not in manner that conveyed warmth but rather in the manner Patton must have smiled when his troops were rolling up the Wehrmacht. I thought it the smile of a battle commander who has options not available before. I liked that smile; it conveyed confidence.

During our meeting Roger told me that both Cater Malkasian and Mike Martin have been working with the Task Force to help them sharpen their understanding of the human terrain and inter-tribal conflicts in the Helmand. This was the best news I’ve heard in a long while.

If you’re interested on gaining a thorough understanding of the inter-tribal dynamics that drive the cycle of violence in the Helmand Province there are just two books you need to read. The first is War Comes To Garmser written by Carter Malkasian, an American and the second is An Intimate War by Mike Martin who is British. Both men spent years on the ground in the Helmand and both are fluent Pashto speakers. Their histories are comprehensive but can be tough going for readers unfamiliar with Afghan names and places. I recommend tackling Carter’s book first because it is limited in scope to one critical district; Mike’s book takes in the entire Province; it’s comprehensive and it is brutally honest about how our limited understanding of inter-tribal dynamics sabotaged our early efforts.

BGen Turner stressed they are looking for Afghan solutions to Afghan problems and that the Afghanistan National Army (ANA) Corps he is working with (the 215th) was assigned a new Commanding General who fights well, organizes his logistics like a pro and leads from the front. He also pointed out that the ANP trainers will be working with locals who are joining the ANP, not recruits from the north who are not Pashtun and know less about the province than we do.

The ANA 215th Corps experienced some bad press a year ago when an interview with ISAF spokesman BGen Wilson Shoffner revealed the following:

I can tell you that in the 215th Corps, the corps commander has been switched out, two of the brigade commanders in the 215th Corps have been changed out, as have several members, key members, of the staff,” Shoffner said. ….In the 215th Corps, “they had problems with equipment maintenance. They had problems with units that had been attrited. They had problems with poor leadership. What we have found when units have an issue with attrition, it typically is traced back to poor leadership,” Shoffner said. Overall, the ANA was short about 25,000 troops because of desertions, he said.

As depressing as reports like this are (because they occur so frequently) I’ll take BGen Turner at his word – the new Corps Command team has been there a year and it’s been a tough one. This article in SOF News provides a good background on the deployment and includes this reasonable speculation;

There are sure to be additional Marine units rotating into Helmand province in the future in light of commitment to Afghanistan until 2020 made by the European Union and NATO at the Brussels Conference and Warsaw Summit this past year (2016).

And this article in USNI has a good interview with BGen Turner and concludes with this quote:

A lot of us have served there before, we have a lot of blood, sweat and tears invested in Helmand, and so I think a lot of the Marines are really excited about this opportunity to go back and to work again with their Afghan partners and to improve their capabilities and get the situation in a better place.

Task Force South West has the knowledge needed to help drive the cycle of violence down. But the devil will be in the details. Developing the the level of relationship required to have influence with senior Afghans is not easy but it’s also not impossible.

Click HERE for The Baba Tim Go Fund Me page

I’m back in my compound after attending a bunch of ceremonies in Zaranj marking the end of our efforts in Nimroz Province.When we flew in last week the skies were dark and it rained that night. The next morning was clear as a bell making for excellent photography and perfect weather for what turned out to be 15 hours of driving through the Dasht-e Margo (Desert of Death). Our mission that day was the dedication ceremony for the Charborjak Irrigation system which we had built, mostly with shovels, wheelbarrows and lots of man power, over the previous 11 months. We had originally scheduled the ceremony for the 5th of October but changed the date at the last minute. On the 5th there was an ambush waiting for us; when we moved out last Thursday we were a mobile ambush looking for anyone who was looking for us.

The Provincial Governor of Nimroz Province is Al Haji Karim Brahui and those of you who have read this blog know I’m a big fan of his. He’s a graduate of the Kabul Military Academy and served in the Afghan Army as an officer until the Soviets invaded. Governor Barahwi then became a Muj commander who fought the entire war without any help from the United States.  He was working out of Iran and obviously had a little help from them despite the fact that he is not too happy with Iran at the moment. The trip he took us on was remarkable because we did not go the way we have always gone to Cahrborjak; we jumped the Helmand and moved deep into the desert where the Governor wanted to show us something. This story is best told through pictures and I have around 1800 from that one drive alone. So stand by for a story told the Marine way – lots of pictures and no big words.

Along the way back to Zaranj we stopped at the village where Governor Barahwi was born and raised.  It was slightly bigger than this one. We also stopped at the village of the ANP soldier who was killed in the ambush last week. We did not take pictures in either place and we hung out in the village of the ANP soldier for a good hour or so too, paying respects as it were. It was a great day but my camera battery died after I took this picture so it is time for analysis and commentary.

The kerfuffle over the dam being built is an interesting contrast between two styles of doing the “build” part of the current Afghanistan plan.  There are direct implementer’s like us who take USAID money and use it according to the priorities of the Provincial and District governments.  We did not build anything new – we restored a check dam and a major irrigation intake that had been destroyed back in the 80’s. We used the same plans and the same engineers who built those irrigation systems back before the Soviets arrived and depopulated the rural areas of southwestern Afghanistan. The provincial irrigation department coordinated with their national level counterparts in Kabul on every step of this project and sent in regular progress reports. We also employed every man who could handle a shovel in the district for almost a year which is the whole point to cash for work programs.

The dozens of senior, highly credentialed people who reacted with emotion boarding on distress when they found out about this project are the other side of the coin. These are people who have been given a great deal of authority yet have no responsibility for tangible on-the-ground results. They never leave the FOB’s and never see anything of the country except what they can see while flying over it. There is a PhD hydrologist working for the USG and also coordinating with a British subject matter expert to come up with the Helmand Water Shed Master Plan. I am sure they are professionals who take their work seriously. But good intentions are meaningless and the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent to bring people like that to Afghanistan for a year of FOB life might as well be thrown into a rubbish bin.  Do they honestly think that when we leave here their “master plan” will be worth more than a cup of warm of spit?  How can smart people be so stupid?

The Helmand River Valley will never reach its full potential unless every farmers field is dug up, the clay removed, and the fields leveled which we tried to do in the 1960’s but the farmers got their guns out and refused to allow the bulldozers in. That was when Lashkar Gah was called “Little America” and the State Department was trying to salvage the disaster that was the original Hellmand River Valley project run by the engineering firm Morrison Knudsen. Since the completion of that project local farmers have irrigated their fields by flooding them. The NGO I work for tried to introduce drip irrigation to the local farmers years ago but they pulled the hoses out of the ground using them to tether sheep and goats. You cannot force change on Afghan farmers any easier than you can force change in Americas’ two-party political system. Proving that drip irrigation is efficient and works better turned out to be completely irrelevant; the Afghans are going to farm the way they farm and the way they farm wastes water.

Not that using less water is a big deal because, as any Afghan sod buster will tell you, that just means more water for the Iranians. Water is a zero sum game for Helmand Valley farmers; changing that mind set is not going to happen in my life time….or yours.

Last year Michael Yon visited our Nimroz projects and put up an interesting post called Please don’t forget us. He was writing about a massive women’s training program we ran that year because Zaranj has a more Persian culture, woman can drive in Zaranj, work outside the home and attend training courses without any problems. We tried to do an even bigger woman’s training program this year but we’re rejected by USAID. The woman had already been forgotten and this year’s crew in Kabul wanted “capacity building” which is the new buzzword from the geniuses at our State Department.  For 1/10th of the cost of keeping just one hydrologist in this country for a year, and I’m talking the million bucks of life support and security costs, not the salary or cost of mobilization which would easily add another million to the sum, for 1/10th of that we could have trained 300 woman and sent them on their way with the tools they needed (Sewing Machines, beauty salon equipment, wool and weaving boards etc..) to start their own business.

My Project Manager Bashir is now gone having moved on to bigger and better things.  I’m right behind him as my time living in Afghanistan is coming to an end. The people of Zaranj have already been forgotten by our political/media class and are now on their own.

We have no business foisting a “watershed master plan” on the Afghans – it’s their country, their river, and their breadbasket and when allowed to do so they will build things back to the way they were.  It may not be optimal, there may be inefficiencies in the system that a PhD hydrologist could fix (if she had freedom of movement and actually spent time on the river) but who cares? What is going to remain when we leave is an Afghan system, built by and for Afghans and to be honest, I have no idea why we think we should be bringing all these “subject matter experts” over here in the first place.  Who are we to dictate to them how to manage their own natural resources? We should send all the hydrologists back to America to aid in a gigantic shovel ready program I’d like to see started called “Get all our oil from Alaska and the Western States Project”. That’s where we should be spending 2 billion a week and we’d even see a return on our investment.  How strange would that be?

I’m sitting on my deck drinking coffee as the sun comes up. The sky is softening with all the variations of reddish yellow (I can’t really see them all with my red/green colorblindness but can sense they are there) start creeping up from the dark horizon. A song is stuck in my head and I hear it clearly; String Cheese Incident singing Arleen and not just any version of that song but the one they recorded live with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

The song is annoying me and I try to clear my mind when the music suddenly stops. I’m hyper alert; I remember this feeling and immediately flash back to Afghanistan. The day dream starts again only now I’m thinking about the Afghan version of Baba Tim. What is he looking at when the sun comes up? What is he thinking about? The Afghan version of me would not have a String Cheese Incident song trapped inside his head so what would be stuck there on a beautiful early morning?

The answer flows into my consciousness without effort. As I look at the clouds building above the calm canals of Padre Island I see an ancient fortress. This is not the famous Fighters Fortress of Mazar-e Sharif, or the ancient Ghazni fortress nor is it the one in Alexander the Great built in Farah. The fortress the clouds are forming is the Boost Fortress in Lashkar Gah.

Lashkar Gah is the capitol of Helmand Province and a town I know well having lived there over a year back in 2010. Lashkar (soldier) Gah (fort) is an old military town that has been occupied since the 11^th century. It now houses over a half million refugees who have fled the encroaching Taliban. There is only a brigade of ANA soldiers in Lashkar Gah and they have just been reinforced by 100 American soldiers.  It is on these men the Afghan version of Tim Lynch would focused.

The Americans are trying to create depth to the ANA defense and they are headquartered just down the road from the fort (the old Brit PRT base) on flat open terrain now surrounded by new housing built by the USAID and occupied by Taliban sympathizers. They will not be able to land helicopters at the base when we strike and will need to move to the Boost airport – miles of heavily populated neighborhoods away to get to fixed wing airplanes. It is during this move, which we will negotiate a cease fire to facilitate, that we will kill every American.

The Afghan version of me would be in his late fifties; active and fit, free of arthritis, gout and disease which marks him as a land holder and tribal leader. Farmers don’t reach their fifties with the blessings of good health in the Helmand Province. I carry scars from gunshot wounds and shrapnel which means I’m Taliban (when it is covenant to be so) and the scars combined with my good health mark me as a man who has the one attribute admired by all Afghans – consistent good luck.

My new mission, passed to me by the Quetta Shura when the Americans arrived, is to destroy (to a man) an American unit. At this stage in the war nothing else matters. The puppet government in Kabul is a dead man walking, not legitimate in the eyes of Afghans, more importantly not feared by the people. The central government is no longer a threat to the success of our movement.

I know the Americans having met with senior Marine officers many times; I even have a picture with Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham. When I met them I smiled a lot and thanked them for doing whatever it was they thought they were doing in Marjah. But I thought the two soft, fat, uninformed, passive with the eyes of supplicants; they were not serious men. Politicians are the same regardless of land of origin; they are in their hearts cowards who demand others do the work while they amass personal wealth despite their limited government income. The Marines were a problem but one of limited duration. We knew the day they arrived exactly what day they would be leaving thanks to the African man who is the President of that land. After losing too many Mujahedin to the Marines early on we decided to wait them out with IED’s and long range fires.

I am in my family compound looking at the old Boost Fort as the sun rises and I don’t have Widespread Panic songs locked inside my head. My mind is free of clutter and as clear as my mission.

I have many sons and three wives – my oldest son is a Taliban commander, the next oldest a captain in the Afghan army. Three of the younger boys are in Quetta at the madrasa and my four youngest boys are squatting in the shade next to me watching quietly. Afghan children do not initiate conversations with their elders, they aren’t loud, they don’t fidget, they don’t argue – they obey just as Allah would wish. Once I get confirmation of today’s American deployment the boys will each be given a position where they will spend the day. If they are skillful they will get the Americans to feed them and give them bottled water. If they aren’t they’ll go hungry. As their father I could care less. The smart ones will grow true and strong, the weak or stupid ones will perish young. Allah decides that not me.

My boys will be questioned closely when they return; how are the Americans acting? Are they jittery, unsure of their Afghan partners? Do they have the same confidence those damn Marines had when they were here or do they look more like the British? I know the answers to these questions already but reconnaissance is continuous as any change in the demeanor of the Americans would be significant. At this point they are scared, unsure of their new allies and the civilians who surround them. The smell of fear is strong when near an American position.

Soon my oldest will join me with the specialists we need from Quetta. Combat multipliers are what the Americans would call them but we call them Russians as they are from the former Soviet Union and are expert snipers and demolition men. The Mujahedin from Musa Qala and Sangin are arriving daily and with them the one item I cannot have enough of; 82mm mortar rounds.

Every police checkpoint attacked at night is cover for smuggling mortar rounds into the city. While the puppet government soldiers and police fight off small probing attacks our boats (manned by small boys so the American planes will not attack them) move back and forth across the Helmand River bringing more mortar rounds. Survey teams from Quetta have spent the last fortnight establishing mortar firing positions. With firing tables and their computers, they have even locked in the elevation and deflection readings for the mortar crews. We Afghans can do shock and awe too. When the mortars start opening up from every quadrant in the city the Americans will be shocked. The awe part will come when they realize they cannot use their planes or drones but are going to have to fight like men.

This evening my boys will be back as will the others I have deployed over the city. My commanders and I will gather their information, adjust our plans, and wait for Allah. When Allah sends a sand storm or a rain storm or any storm that grounds the infidels’ aircraft we will strike and by the time the Americans respond with their planes we will be among the people. Thousands of Mujahedin fighters’ surrounded by tens of thousands of civilians will make us immune from the American air power. We will have 100 American fish in our nets and we will kill them all. Unless there are women with them; they will be spared for use as entertainment for the Mujahedin. Then they will be killed.

If the Americans do not use their attack aircraft out of fear of killing civilians, I win. If they use their air-power to destroy the attacking Mujahedin, they will kill thousands of women and children so again, I win. Win/win – that’s the way of the Pashtun because if you are going to fight you must win or why bother fighting? If we capture an American officer I will have to ask him this before he is beheaded. They have fought here for a decade with no chance of winning and I wonder why they remain.

For now we wait, we watch, we plan and we listen. Allah will give us the cover we need to strike. When all the mortar rounds are here along with the Russians and the Mujahedin from the north I will be one move away from checkmate. The Americans will not realize their peril because they play checkers; we play chess.

I am a 58-year-old Afghan, a 1,000-year-old Muslim but a 6,000-year-old Pashtun. The Pashtun has one and only one way to deal with infidel invaders and that is to isolate them and kill them to a man.  It’s what we do.

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I was doing some research for a writing project and came upon this description of one of the Synergy Strike Force operations buried in a post about the fighting in Marjah. My friends Dave Warner and Baba Ken were a near constant presence at the Taj over the years I was there and for a few after I moved to the Helmand. They did a metric ton of really cool operations and sponsored some of the most interesting folks to ever visit the Taj; Jenn Gold, Rachel Robb, Mullah Todd Huffman and Kate Ludicrum come immediately to mind. I extracted this from the post and am putting it up again because what these folks accomplished (often on their own dime) was remarkable.

Dr. Dave Warner from the Synergy Strike Force, which is loosely affiliated with the San Diego – Jalalabad Sister City Foundation, itself loosely affiliated with the La Jolla Golden Triangle Rotary Club (I am not making this up) has been working the sharing issue with the National Geospacial Agency (NGA) for the past four years. The goal was access for a collation of Stability Operations partners to NGA imagery data. The problem turned out to be not classification but intellectual property rights. The commercial imagery provider had a “next view” licensing agreement with NGA which restricted distribution of the product to official users only.

Defining “official users” is always a very complicated endeavor for any U S Government (USG) agency. Here is the thing about large bureaucracies – they are run by motivated people and motivated people easily recognize impediments to mission accomplishment. The NGA is staffed by professionals who take their jobs seriously, and Dr. Dave’s efforts had illustrated that their procedures were adversely affecting their mission of supporting America’s efforts in Afghanistan. The NGA management started to chip away at the licensing agreement because they had already paid a king’s ransom for the data and knew they should be able to distribute it as they saw fit.

NGA now has a site called DigitalGlobe RDOG Phase II which ISAF coalition implementation partners can access; write to them here to request imagery assistance. These products are provided to qualified agencies free of charge.

This is White Intelligence which has a limited but useful role in Stability Ops. Check out the results of a poorly designed retaining wall/canal intake project on the Kunar River which has caused serious farm land erosion in the Bishud District of Nangarhar Province.

It is good to see success stories from large USG agencies like the National Geospacial Agency who pushed the envelope to provide critical support without spending an extra dime of taxpayer money. That is the kind of mission focused production us taxpayers love to see. The products NGA provides can clearly provide a lot of help in remote or contested areas.

All Marine Radio has been on the air for two weeks now and has some cool content. Mike McNamara does three hours a day with a guest on for an hour at a time. Last week he had both myself and Brigadier General David Furness, USMC on for an hour each and although Dave and Mac strayed into subjects I didn’t want to hear about (like Marine Corps Aviation) I’m glad I listened. More importantly I’m proud of my friends Mike McNamara and David Furness for doing one of the best, most informative hours of radio I have ever heard. That level praise means something so I encourage you to take the time to listen to two of the best professionals you’ll ever hear doing radio the way it is supposed to be done.

 

Mike did a great hour with me too mostly because he’s an excellent host who knows how to guide an interview. The hour he did with General John Allen, USMC (Ret) and the Commandant, General Robert B. Neller, USMC were exceptional radio. Bookmark this link, download these podcasts and when you have some time to spare take a listen; you’ll be glad you did.

CMC Interview

General John Allen

Brigadier General David Furness*

Tim Lynch

*Free Range International selection for best hour of radio in the 2016 ‘shit you didn’t know’ category.