Category: Tim

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A Little Positive News

Michael Yon was kind enough to give the blog a plug in his latest post on the National Reviews blog the corner. The problems currently being experienced by the expat community renewing visa’s our obtaining work permits are irksome and expensive but in the big scheme of things minor. The government in Kabul is not working which is not news. My confidence in the ability of all the Afghans, ISAF and the UN to get a runoff election planned and executed in two weeks remains low; but it could happen.

It is hard to see what difference the result of this election will make on the continued problems afflicting central government control exercised from on high in Kabul. Michael posted another interesting piece the other day about adopting the Afghan Army. In that piece was a link to this Dexter Filkins article on General Stanley McChrystal which made for good reading.   The biggest problem with General Stanley McChrystal is that he’s an American. There is no Afghan equivalent of which I am aware and a warrior leader in the McChrystal mold is exactly the kind of man who stands a chance of exercising effective control from Kabul. Unfortunately there is not anyone of that stature or competence in the Afghan Security Forces. It is difficult to see what difference a runoff election will make in the big scheme of things but that is no reason for excessive pessimism.

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For most Afghan families hauling fresh drinking water takes up a considerable amount of their daily routine.  

Towards the end of the Filkins article General McChrystal hears something interesting when he asks the local governor what he could be doing better.

Abdullah Jan said “You need to live in buildings not tents.”

Sounds like a comment one would find on the FRI blog which I find personally gratifying. There is no question that the American military has a handle on the more immediate problems confronting them in Afghanistan and an idea how to fix it. The question is do they have moral courage to do what needs to be done?   Physical courage is easy to find in humans but moral courage in a trait much more rare in the species. It will take a lot of moral courage from on high to get the American military off the FOB’s, out of those stupid MRAP’s, out of the body armor and helmets which make them easier to hit when they are working in the 110 degree heat or climbing steep mountain passes. It was interesting to read that the first thing Gen McChrystal did when he arrived in Garmser was to take off the body armor and helmet.

The leading edge of an Afghan population boom is rapidly coming of age. Their current prospects for meaningful employment are grim. The consequences of a large pool of unemployed young men hanging about are easily predictable
The leading edge of an Afghan population boom is rapidly coming of age. Their current prospects for meaningful employment are grim. The consequences of a large pool of unemployed young men hanging about are easily predictable

Thomas Ricks has an interesting post in the Foreign Policy blog which illustrates the need for radical change in military performance. The post contains extracts from a blunt report Canadian intelligence officer along with his commentary such as the gems below:

  • In one remote village, strong Afghan commanders worked hard to deny the area to the Taliban, and also gained a remarkable amount of intelligence. But then the outpost “was closed just after the end of our tour due to its sustainment difficulties, in all likelihood dooming many of the locals who had collaborated with us there.” This is the opposite of protecting the population — it is endangering them.
  • He also takes a small whack at the Americans, saying that the safest police stations in southern Afghanistan were those where Canadian mentors lived and slept. “The American PMT approach, which involved teams driving out in the morning to visit, regrettably was far less effective in this regard.”
  • After years of training and advising, “we were still very much at year zero. And that’s a big problem because the whole definition of victory in a counter-insurgency, as defined in FM 3-24 and elsewhere, is getting the battle to the point where indigenous forces can take over, and you can leave. … All [the enemy] has to do is deny you that indigenous force development, by making things so kinetic that you can’t focus on mentoring.”
  • Under the way we currently operate, he says, most allied units think that dealing with Afghans is someone else’s job. “Mentors in effect become the excuse for Western soldiers to avoid contact with Afghan soldiers.”
  • That last issue, the failure of mentoring, leads to his strong endorsement of Gen. McChrystal’s recommendations for a radical new approach to the war. The most significant aspect of the general’s plan, he says, is to have Americans and other foreign troops co-located with Afghan forces, living, eating and sleeping alongside them. He advocates giving up mentoring and going instead to this flat-out partnering.
Children from a refugee camp outside of Jalalabad heading out to scavage for animal forage
Children from a refugee camp outside of Jalalabad heading out to scavenge for animal forage

Getting off the FOB’s and stopping the “commute to the job” mentality is something I have been railing about since day one. It is good to see us heading in this direction but I have to tell you it is not that easy as it sounds. It is physically easy to set up safe houses in Afghan towns and embed with the locals (where invited to do so) but it requires a complete change in the perceptions of risk by the military bureaucracy. I drive around Jalalabad by myself in an unarmored vehicle with nothing more than a concealed pistol for protection as a matter of routine as do many other internationals. When working in contested areas we wear local clothes, often have rifles and extra local guys with us but we still stay out of the armored vehicles because they draw too much attention allowing for easier targeting by the bad guys. Many of the American military mentors I know would love to do the same thing because it would allow them more freedom of movement and make them more effective. But getting buy-in to deploy your military forces in such a manner from on high? Not a chance. If you have not lived like we do or had the experiences that our military mentor teams have had living with the people then chances are you think the risks we take daily are insane. They are not but it is not easy to convince people who have had multiple FOB tours here of that fact.

girls

As we muddle through a new approach to the Afghan Campaign there is one fact of ground truth which remains very positive. In most places of this country what the local people want is for us to move in and stay. America and her allies are viewed very positively by a majority of the population. As I have written in the past the most potent weapon the foreigners arsenal is a big smile and the ability to say a local greeting. Afghans are a very friendly and polite people – they love it when they meet friendly, polite foreigners.   Inshallah soon we will see civ/mil teams moving into the local districts and living on the economy like we do. That is the only way you can rapidly spread not only security but projects like this. That is how you start to reach the key demographic in Afghanistan which is the young people who are rapidly coming of age. The link above about a computer lab in Gardez is more good news – but you could do more faster with Fab Labs and it would costs pennies on the dollar when compared to the way we currently field similar projects.

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Pay to Play

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 a few time each month on the main road between Jalalabad and Kabul. The level of activity seems seems artificaly low. If a small armed group really wanted to cause problems on this vital road they could do so without too much difficulty
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.

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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 excitied.
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 Akbra 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 probelm 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
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 Sachria Bridge and have already awarded the work - this is a great sign of progress and one of the only examples I know of where the local PRT reacted with speed to a serious problem. Most PRT's are just not that useful and the people trapped inside them should be let free and sent home because we cannot afford to keep hundreds of fobbits confined on PRT bases where they earn yet another college degree - we need people who are off the FOB's doing work...not on the FOB's talking about doing work
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
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.

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Reading Tea Leaves

I have been in Dubai on a business trip for the past week. The boss is spoiling his talented group of Canadians and I in preparation for expanding out efforts into the most contested districts in the country. He didn’t have to spend the money as my colleagues and I are motivated by the challenge – although staying at the Raffles Hotel in Dubai was pretty damn cool.

Saturday evening my inbox started filling with news of a serious fight in Nuristan.   I checked the wires and found nothing.   I checked again Sunday morning and nishta – I even emailed my Buddy Michael Yon and he too was hearing something was up but but did not know what was happening.   The wires started humming about the attack on two isolated outposts in Nuristan Province about 24 hours after I had first heard about it.   The New York Slimes has an OK roundup of what happened here.   If my information is correct this story contains a “untruth” told by a Colonel – and that is the kind of thing which really gets me worried.   I get worried because I know what happened to our military post Vietnam and would be crushed to see them held in such low esteem and outright contempt by the American public again in my lifetime.   Let me insert an excellent point from a more than excellent post by one of the all time most excellent bloggers “…lying, while advantageous in the short run, is like a drug, temporary in its effects; requiring higher and higher doses to maintain the same effect and is finally self-destructive.” That is from this mornings post on the Belmont Club by Richard Fernandez; a blogger I admire greatly….and I’m stopping with all the “excellents.”

Saturdays attack on two outposts started in similar fashion to the attack last year in Wanat.   The fighters; described as “local militia” by ISAF boiled up out of a mosque and laid siege to the American soldiers and their Afghan counterparts located inside a small forward operating base called ‘FOB Keating” and a nearby smaller Afghan police post.   The fighting was so intense that none of the wounded could be evacuated for the first 16 hours which explains the number of alarming emails I was getting last Saturday evening.   As is always the case when dealing with American infantry be they Marine or Army the wounded who could still fight did fight and refused to be evacuated.   This report from ABC news covered that angle with the amazement one always sees in graduates from elitist American journalism schools when they encounter the selflessness of first rate infantrymen in contact.

Pedros are the direct descendants of the Jolly Green Giants from Vietnam. These cats get to combine the rush of paramedic work with the even bigger rush of getting in short sharp gunfights.
Pedros are the direct descendants of the Jolly Green Giants from Vietnam. These cats get to combine the rush of paramedic work with the even bigger rush of getting in short sharp gunfights.

At the end of this engagement Pedros flew in and extracted all the Americans and Afghans from Keating which had been completely destroyed in the fighting.   But an Army Colonel quoted in the NYT article said “American forces still controlled the compound, which they share with Afghan security forces.”   This is a perfect example of the attrition warfare mindset which is ingrained in most of our military officers.   Owning the field of battle post fight is a measurement of success in conventional military operations. It is irrelevant in the context of a counterinsurgency.   The only relative measurement of success is how much of the population is on your side.   In the battle for FOB Keating the population was never on our side – they were apparently the ones who attacked us – so why were we even there in the first place? I don’t know the answer but will bet a months pay that we are soon out of Nuristan Province.   As I have said many times before the instability in Nuristan is financed by gem smuggling syndicates which is an Afghan problem.   We have no solutions to offer the Nuristani people except to leave them alone which is all they want anyway.

No idea what the helmet is for but this looks really cool and looking good is half the battle - another Pedro shot from Michael Yon
No idea what the helmet is for but this looks really cool and looking good is half the battle - another Pedro shot from Michael Yon

But there is something else which needs to be said about my view on how to win the Afghan fight using small civ/mil teams embedded into Afghan districts and here it is.   If this war was fought the way I recommend you would have more incidents similar to the attack on Keating.   There is no way to be as aggressive as I recommend (and operate) without getting a team attacked at some point.   When that happens you are going to lose some …dying is part of living and even though every loss is a tragedy to the family bearing that loss on high you have expect and accept the fact that in war you are going to lose people.   Lots of missions = lots of risks; no missions = no risk and for a vast majority of the military units deployed here the later seems to be the rule.   Those who do not want to get off the FOB’s and fight should redeploy back to home station.

This is the typical use of small NATO forces from the Baltic countries. These guys sit on the runway at Kandahar all day, every day to keep an eye on traffic coming out of the commercial side of the Kandahar Airport. It was around 125 degrees when this picture was taken last summer. This is all this unit will do for the duration of their time in Afghanistan although I think this country has resposnibility for some of the entry control points too. We need people off the FOB's...do you know how expensive it is to keep military units deployed here to do this kind of make work? Under what circumstances can you imagine that the men and or woman in this vehcile would actually start shooting with that machinegun? They are facing an internatioanl air terminal for chrst sakes...what a waste of money, time and manpower.
This is the typical use of small NATO forces from the Baltic countries. These guys sit on the runway at Kandahar all day, every day to keep an eye on traffic coming out of the commercial side of the Kandahar Airport. It was around 125 degrees when this picture was taken last summer. This is all this unit will do for the duration of their time in Afghanistan although I think this country has resposnibility for some of the entry control points too. We need people off the FOB's...do you know how expensive it is to keep military units deployed here to do this kind of make work? Under what circumstances can you imagine that the men and or woman in this vehcile would actually start shooting with that machinegun? They are facing an internatioanl air terminal for chrst sakes...what a waste of money, time and manpower.

Which brings us the reading tea leaves.   It appears that our Commander in Chief has made up his mind what to do in Afghanistan.   He is voting present.   We will not be sending more troops nor will we be pulling any out.   His new commanding general is on record as saying this is not acceptable and for his troubles the good general got to fly to England to get his ass chewed by the President who was coming or going from his failed attempt to win an Olympics bid for the crime plagued, politically corrupt, scandal ridden shit hole known to us Americans as “Chicago.” General McChrystal apparently does not understand the genius of voting “present” (being a man of action and all) and said “waiting does not prolong a favorable outcome.   This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support.”

For speaking a little truth to power the General got his ass chewed and this review from a Bruce Ackerman a purported expert on constitutional law at Yale University, who said in the Washington Post: “As commanding general, McChrystal has no business making such public pronouncements.”

Hey Bruce – nobody cares what our academic “betters” thinks about what a general should and should not do…they know more about political infighting than your entire faculty lounge ….. how do you think you get to be a four star general anyway you dumbass.

Sorry I’m ranting again – but although we are not gettig more troops … we are getting a civilian surge known in State Department speak as “the uplift” which will flood our FOB’s with more civilian experts.   I know some of the men coming out in the uplift and can say without reservation they are smarter than I am about the Stan, more capable than I am at running reconstruction projects and if let lose could make a huge difference. But they won’t be let off the FOB.   Lots of missions = big risks and nobody is into taking risks to achieve a mission which has yet to be clearly defined, properly resourced, or supported by the one man who’s support is crtical – The President of the United States.

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The Internal Focus of ISAF

Earlier in the week I had one of those trips from hell which make being in Afghanistan such a drag.   The drive between Jalalabad and Kabul takes less than 2 hours on a good day.   Last Sunday the drive took over 12 hours – 9 of them spent sitting in a traffic jam just outside the the Poli Charki pass.   The reason I was stuck with thousands and thousands of Afghans is that the French army had closed the road between Kabul and Jalalabad.   They had (again second time in a week about the 50th time this year) rolled one of their armored vehicles and insisting that no traffic pass the accident scene until it had been recovered.   The vehicle went over the side of the road into a ravine so the recovery required an industrial size crane which did not even arrive on scene until around five hours after the accident.   That is five hours worth of traffic which should have been flowing freely but ISAF does not think that way.   Whatever impact their actions have on the Afghans seems to be irrelevant to ISAF commanders – a mindset which is 180 degrees out from our recently upgraded, improved counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine.

The French were having a very bad day.   They lost a legionnaire in this single vehicle traffic accident, had lost another 12 hours earlier to a lightening strike and two more who were drowned in a flash flood.   A violent storm had scoured the eastern region at around 0530 Sunday morning causing a series of dangerous flash floods.   The French were reportedly out and about at that hour in   “an operation designed to strike at a network of bomb-setters.”

Typical French convoy moving from the FOB in Kabul. A year ago the French took a bit of an ass whopping outside of Surobi and to their credit they have not backed down. Not backing down is good - but it has nothing to do with counterinsurgency and being able to drive around Kabul Province in old crappy armored personnel carriers does nothing to win the COIN fight and a lot to alienate the population
Typical French convoy moving from the FOB in Kabul. A year ago the French took a bit of an ass whopping outside of Surobi and to their credit they have not backed down. Not backing down is good - but it has nothing to do with counterinsurgency and being able to drive around Kabul Province in old crappy armored personnel carriers does nothing to win the COIN fight and a lot to alienate the population

Striking a “network of bomb-setters” normally requires extensive human intelligence,   reconnaissance to verify the intelligence followed by a visit by the direct action door kickers.   Unless the “bomb – setters” are operating off an ISAF FOB or are stupid enough to give up their location and intention over cell phones there is no way the French or anyone else will be able to accurately target them because the recon guys, the human intelligence collectors and the door kickers are all confined to FOB’s and when they venture out they do so in gigantic armored personnel carriers (which tend to roll over on the narrow, mountainous roads of Afghanistan) and are completely isolated from the Afghan people they are supposedly here to protect.   But the French were out and about; off the FOB in the bush doing some sort of operation which is more than can be said for the majority of military units operating in Afghanistan.

I am a proud former member of the Bethesda Chevy Chase Rescue Squad and have some experience at dealing with motor vehicle accidents involving fatalities
I am a proud former member of the Bethesda Chevy Chase Rescue Squad and have some experience at dealing with motor vehicle accidents involving fatalities

The problem is that the focus of the French (and every other unit here except the US Marines) is completely internal.   Closing the most important route in Afghanistan for an entire day is too stupid for words.   When that happens all the traffic jams up every bit of lane and shoulder on either side of the accident scene.   The Afghans trapped in this scrum cannot get food or water or turn around and leave.   The woman cannot get out of their vehicles and enjoy a bit of fresh air – they are stuck packed (and I mean packed) into small cars or vans where they must sit and bake in the sun unless a male relative happens to be there and agrees to walk them off to a side ditch somewhere to go to the bathroom.

Life is hard on woman in Afghanistan due to cultural mores. This is not an easy point to grasp when your time here is spent on a FOB. When you are able to develoo the situational awarness required for successful COIN operations then you can lose the inward focus of a attrition warfare army and figure out things such as closing the only main east-west road in the entire country for 12 hours is mind numbingly stupid
Life is hard on woman in Afghanistan due to cultural mores. This is not an easy point to grasp when your time here is spent on a FOB. When you are able to develoo the situational awarness required for successful COIN operations then you can lose the inward focus of a attrition warfare army and figure out things such as closing the only main east-west road in the entire country for 12 hours is mind numbingly stupid

The reason it seems reasonable to the French Army to close the most important road in Afghanistan is the same reason the US Army continues to roll through downtown Jalalabad instead of using the brand new high speed truck by pass which is faster and safer for them.   Their focus in exclusively internal.   They plan all operations, movements, and interactions with the Afghans (when they manage to get off a FOB) based on what is easiest and safest for them with no consideration of the Afghan people.   This is an “effects based” opinion based on what I see daily.

The only military unit I have been able to personally observe while planning future operations was the US Marine Corps 2nd MEB.   The Marines were asking the Boss and I about cutting military roads so they could avoid adversely impacting the local people in the Helmand Green Zone.   Their focus was exclusively external on what was convenient for the Afghans not what was easiest for them.   This may explain why they have taken such a large chunk of the Helmand River Valley and dominated it with little to no post assault fighting while the British army is unable to walk 100 meters off their combat outposts in the same river valley without getting blown up or in a fire fight.

The truck by-pass around Jalalabad City. This terminates right outside the large Army FOB at the Jalalabad airport but the US Army never uses it. I asked a convoy leader once why and he did not know it was there and then added it was not in the SOP and therefore an unauthorized route. The Army fob is less than a mile away from this point of the by-pass route
The truck by-pass around Jalalabad City. This terminates right outside the large Army FOB at the Jalalabad airport but the US Army never uses it. I asked a convoy leader once why and he did not know it was there and then added it was not in the SOP and therefore an unauthorized route. The Army fob is less than a mile away from this point of the by-pass route

As the security situation in Afghanistan continues to degrade it is most frustrating to see that our military is completely unable to break away from its risk adverse, zero defects, careerist mentality.   I never thought it would be easy for our attrition warfare oriented military to learn the decentralized and risky business of fighting a proper counterinsurgency but I did think we would figure it out given enough time and money.   But we are not even close.   General McChrystal knows what needs to be done – our very own counterinsurgency doctrine also spells out how to fight in the COIN environment but our military is hobbled by Colonels and Sergeants Major who are motivated exclusively by what is good for their careers and reputations.   Careerist sycophants will never think outside the box or try something new least they fail.   Failure is not possible when you do exactly what the man before you did regardless of what is happening outside the wire with the Afghan people.   No way to measure that so it cannot count against you on your combat command officer fitness evaluation right?   The US Marines seem to be breaking this mold but they are not here in enough strength to make much of an impact and thus are irrelevant in the big picture.

Motor vehicle accidents are frequent and bad in Afghanistan. This one was worse than most - a van full of woman and children was t-boned by a white corolla which tried to enter the by-pass without giving way. Many of the woman and children were still alive and being manhandled out of the wreakage by local people. This accident occured about 600 meters away from a major US FOB. A Brigade commander who was oriented on the people of Afghanistan could have the few high speed roads in the area coverd with little flying colums of mixed gendered troops. We stopped to lend a hand but were by the police (correctly) that it would be a bad idea for a male foriegner to tend to the criticaly injured woman - the children were already in cabs and heading to the Nanagarhar Teaching Hospital some 3 miles away.
Motor vehicle accidents are frequent and bad in Afghanistan. This one was worse than most - a van full of woman and children was t-boned by a white corolla which tried to enter the by-pass without giving way. Many of the woman and children were still alive and being manhandled out of the wreakage by local people. This accident occured about 600 meters away from a major US FOB. A Brigade commander who was oriented on the people of Afghanistan could have the few high speed roads in the area coverd with little flying colums of mixed gendered troops. We stopped to lend a hand but were by the police (correctly) that it would be a bad idea for a male foriegner to tend to the criticaly injured woman - the children were already in cabs and heading to the Nanagarhar Teaching Hospital some 3 miles away.

ISAF is here to bring security to the people of Afghanistan so they can re-build their economy and infrastructure.   But ISAF can’t protect the people of Afghanistan – they cannot even protect themselves.   The reality is that we have this backwards – it is the people of Afghanistan who are able to provide the protection and security us foreigners need to operate outside the wire.   All we need do is demonstrate commitment to the people thus providing a reason for them to believe in us and support our mission.

That is why my son and I can travel around as freely as we do – the people protect us – they warn us if danger is about – they look after us when we walk around the bazaars. The reason the people protect us is because everyone in Jalalabad knows who we are and what we are doing and they appreciate it. In Gardez the Taliban came to several of our projects and asked what was going on.   The local people told them in no uncertain terms that the rehabilitation of their karez’s and canals was the first good thing which has happened to them since the Americans came and that if the Taliban interfered the people would fight them.   The Taliban did not interfere and I suspect many of them were working on our projects – 6 bucks a day is good pay for unskilled laborers in Afghanistan.

Our FOB’s are full of men and woman who would love to have the freedom to operate like we do so they too could make a difference.   I recieve emails from them daily.   But our military system will not let them off the FOB’s, out of the body armor, or out of the large stupid, dangerous MRAP’s.   Instead we continue to bring “security” to the local people at the point of a gun.   How stupid is that?

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What To Do? Part Two

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. kandahar

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.
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
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
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
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?
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
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
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
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.

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What To Do? Part One

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
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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You buy the Ticket You Get the Full Ride

A few days back I was reminiscing with my good friend LtCol Jeff Kenny, USMC who is leading the Embedded Training Team (ETT) efforts here in the eastern region.   We were talking about Gunny Donvito who developed the close combat training that has ultimately become the Marine Corps Combative program.   The Gunny – who retired as a Master Sergeant years ago – was a very big, stout individual who was serious about the need to train Marines to kill people correctly. His work at Paris Island, where he started LINE training and the pugil stick octagon, had earned him a billet at the Basic School where he could formalize his program using the doctrine writers at Quantico while simultaneously training newly commissioned Marine Officers on the finer points of hand to hand combat.   Jeff and I were Infantry Officer Course instructors back then and a few of us plus the boss and Gunny Donvito were in West Point talking to a then obscure Army   Lieutenant Colonel named David Grossman who would become the top police trainer in the world and is the developer of Killology – check the website it is awesome and I have blogged about Killology in the past here.

We were heading out to a local eatery/bar and asked the Gunny to join us.   The Gunny didn’t drink which we knew and we were really trying to get him to be the driver but he said no.   “Why?” we asked and he said, “Sir, there are stupid drunk people in bars and often they think it is funny to pick on guys my size; but if you buy a ticket from me you get the full ride. Then I”ll have a murder rap and the cops will put me in jail where I won’t be able to sleep with my wife or play with my son and I can’t take that chance.”   We loved Gunny Donvito despite his propensity for beating us up in “Room of Pain” training sessions – he was a classic.

One of the reasons I am so happy to see Jeff is that he has fully recovered from bing badly wounded in Iraq. But he got to hang out with Cher which is a bonus to be sure but there are better ways to meet celebrities
One of the reasons I am so happy to see Jeff is that he has fully recovered from bing badly wounded in Iraq. But he got to hang out with Cher which is a bonus to be sure but there are better ways to meet celebrities

Tonight LtCol Kenny is in the Kunar Province taking over for one of   his team leaders who was wounded during an ambush at a small little shit hole called Ganjagal yesterday morning.   Four of his Marines were killed in that fight.   That is grim work for a commander and I feel for my friend Jeff.   There was a reporter (Jonathan Landy) from McClatchy news service embedded for this mission and his story is here.   It seems that indirect and air delivered fires were denied to the men in contact because the Taliban had ambushed them using a village as cover and that would fall outside the newest use of force guidelines.   As is most often the case Herschel Smith at the Captains Journal is out in front of the issue and his reasoned assessment can be found here.

The news reports indicated that the four Marines who were killed in this fight were hit in the opening moments of the ambush and therefore it is not reasonable to assume that the liberal application of artillery or air delivered ordinance could have saved them.   This is the way combat often works – the side on the receiving end takes casualties as the ambush goes off and then both sides enter into a protracted skirmish of fire and maneuver until one side breaks contact or breaks in the face of aggressive maneuver and/or fire.   In this fight it is clear that the Afghan/American team was set up and walked into an ambush.   It is also very clear that their ability to extract themselves from that ambush was hampered by the refusal of higher headquarters to allow indirect fires due to the proximity of local non combatants in the village.   It also seems that the women and children   of the village were busy shuttling ammunition to the entrenched fighters and therefore vulnerable to the effects of said ordinance.

Jeff and I right after he arrived in Jalalabad
Jeff and I right after he arrived in Jalalabad

This is Afghanistan.     The new commander, Gen McChrystal has promulgated orders designed to further limit collateral damage. I applaud his approach and have written repeatedly on topic of inflicting unnecessary civilian deaths.   But here is the thing; when you buy a ticket from us you need to get the full ride.   Every time.   No exceptions.

Look at this quote I pulled from an interview with Air Force Lt Gen Gilmary Hostage:

“The first thing we do is fly over head, and the bad guys know air power is in place and oftentimes that’s enough. That ends the fight, they vamoose,”

Say What?   You really think that the ambushers described in yesterdays fight were going to break and run because they heard an A-10?     This is too stupid for words and I am exercising great restraint by not breaking into a signature rant.   But my God has this senior General read one after action report from the Marines in the Helmand?   You know, the reports which repeatedly say that the Taliban will not run from fire that they need to be hit in order to impressed by our fire power?

Counterinsurgency warfare (COIN) focuses on developing a secure environment for civilian activities which means it focuses our efforts on winning the civilian population. COIN is a set of tactics not an operational strategy and COIN tactics are only appropriate for the areas in Afghanistan where the population wants to be helped which is a majority of this country.   There are many places where the people do not want our help and it is stupid to try to approach these areas using COIN focused tactics or objectives.

The areas where people are not interested in helping us build infrastructure are a problem which can only be solved by Afghans.   The instability in Kunar Province is being financed by timber barons.   In Nuristan Province it is gem merchants who finance anti government activity.   The villages located in the areas controlled by these anti government forces are hostile and there is nothing we can offer these people which will bring them onto our side – seven years of experience tell us that – so why do we continue to try doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result?   We are never going to get enough troops here to do a proper “clear, hold, build” program going countrywide and even if we did the State Department and US AID will never supply the manpower they said they would provide to stand up “District Stabilization Teams.”

We cannot reach out to people who have displayed seven years of belligerence, they are Afghans and their problems can only be solved by Afghans.   When we go into hostile villages like Ganjagal it should be a fully supported advance to contact and if they attack us they need to be crushed – all of them.

With a very modest infusion of cash an implementing company operating like we operate now could fix every irrigation system in Nangarhar Province within 8 months. One American and the rest Afghans on the project and maybe 2 to 3   million and bingo every Karez and every intake of every canal could be refurbished, reinforced with stone masonry and the people of Nangarhar would be set up for success and happy.

But you have to be operating outside the wire to do that and there are not that many of us out here doing that at the moment.     What is more alarmng is that the space in which you can easily operate is shrinking rapidly.   Just this afternoon there was a riot in Ghazni City – here is an eyewitness report:

“The demonstrators moved towards Masoud Chowk area, and the demonstration turned violent. Demonstrators reportedly began throwing stones at ANSF, and ANSF opened fire. The demonstration has apparently dispersed due to the said clash. Casualties have occurred, and initial reports suggest that 4 demonstrators were killed and 8 were wounded.”

Why the riots in Ghazni?   A popular local pro Taliban mullah was abducted and murdered and the local people suspect Gen McChrystal and the Americans may be behind this operation (hat tip to Joshua Foust.)     The allegation of American involvement in this matter is ridiculous – the American Special Forces are no more capable of operating in Ghazni than they are able to operate on Mars.

I learned how to operate in Afghanistan out of desperation.   I had been the country manager for a company that went under and was 3 months in arrears on pay.   I started a company and took great risks to do the personal reconnaissance required for winning bids here.   I was lucky – able to learn through trial and error how to safely move in contested areas.   I can move anywhere in the east as long as the people at my terminal destination provide escort and guarantee that I am invited and a proper guest. I could have easily been operating that way in Ghazni in 2006.   One of the reasons I am able to operate the way I do here is that everyone who deals with my associates and I understands that if they buy a ticket from us they are going to get the full ride.   That understanding keeps everyone honest and polite which is how this culture operates for those who have a clue about getting things done in Afghanistan.

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Animal House: The Real Story (Updated)

You have to admit that the current guard force at the U.S. Embassy Kabul know how to get attention.   The rash of stories which broke last Wednesday were amusing to say the least.   The story broke with a news release from a group called “Project on Government Oversight” (POGO) who had received pictures and written complaints from a group of contractors at the embassy and given the nature of the pictures it went viral.

A few selected news story headlines from aroound the world
A few selected news story headlines from around the world

I was the project manager for the first group of civilian contractors who relieved the Marines (weapons company 2/6) at that embassy in 2005.   At the time the contract called for 146 expatriates, 245 third country nationals and around 75 local Afghans.   There are things I know which I can not discuss in an open form but let me tell you this; there are serious, serious problems with that contract which have little to do with the behavior highlighted in the tsunami of international coverage.

Managing contracts of this size in Iraq or Afghanistan is an impossible job and there is a very small pool of talent who have the ability and energy to do it well.   I came to Kabul from the American Embassy in Baghdad where I first joined the circuit with a British firm.   I received a call around Midnight on a Sunday from the company recruiter who I could barely understand and he said in a very loud voice “mate do you have your kit?” I replied in the affirmative and he says “I need a fill in Baghdad mate can you leave in two days?”   I again said yes and he yelled “great mate see you in 24 hours.”   The next morning I had a ticket to London and I left the following day.   It was a weird thing to do but I hated being retired and was a really crappy civilian.   I was lucky, the project manager in Baghdad, who would come back to fill me in Kabul two years later was one of the best I have ever seen.   He was from Zimbabwe, had extensive combat experience, and was of the quiet confident type who paid keen attention to what his expats did both on and off duty.

Camp Happy housed over 300 Expats and TCN's and it sucked. The upside to being in a real shit sandwich like this was that everyone had to respect the need for off shift personnel to sleep so everyone was excessivly considerate
Camp Happy housed over 300 Expats and TCN's and it sucked. The upside to being in a real shit sandwich like this was that everyone had to respect the need for off shift personnel to sleep so everyone was excessivly considerate

The main reason why managing these contracts is so difficult is that it is impossible to stay ahead of the stupidity curve your men will generate.   There is no way to anticipate it because some of these guys do the most unbelievably stupid things sober; add alcohol and the potential for Darwin Award level stupidity goes up exponentially. In the military I knew my Marines well because we spent so much time together – often in prolonged field exercises.   Your average young enlisted Marine has the ability   to do stupid things too but they fall into an easily anticipated set of behaviors which savvy leadership can recognize and at times circumvent.   Not true with contractors – some of stories I have heard are amazing.

I hated working at the American Embassy in Kabul for a number of reasons.   My personal antipathy unquestionably clouds my judgment on the ability, competence, and usefulness of the arrogant snobbish bureaucrats who work there. I showed up on the 7th of March, most of the expats arrived on a charter flight the next day and that ride in was so bad that one of them immediately resigned.   We were housed in a hastily built camp which had not been completed – the roof was not even on the barracks.   Our Nepalese arrived in April but we had to assume the contract on 17 March.   We had been set up to fail because the department in charge of our contract, the Regional Security Officer’s (RSO’s) clearly did not want the Marines to go – I knew some of the Marines and they were feeding me the inside scoop.

The Bridge contract had a bar which prevents excessive drinking or rowdeness due to peer level monitoring. Our big nights were pub quiz night with MC Steve (behind the bar) and our designated hosts Lord Nelson and Sponge Bob. Due to the cut throat nature of pub quiz they were not allowed to drink until after the match was decided. We did have to explain to the 3rd Para vets that anything involving nakedness and other mens rear ends was considered homsexual behavior by definition and therefore prohibited.
The Bridge contract had a bar which prevents excessive drinking or rowdeness due to peer level monitoring. Our big nights were pub quiz night with MC Steve (behind the bar) and our designated hosts Lord Nelson and Sponge Bob. Due to the cut throat nature of pub quiz they were not allowed to drink until after the match was decided. We did have to explain to the 3rd Para vets that anything involving nakedness and other mens rear ends was considered homsexual behavior by definition and therefore prohibited.

Most of the expats who arrived for the contract had worked for the same company during the first Afghan election and they were predominantly from the UK.   They were also an older crowed with the talents one expects to find in retired military men, so organizing and starting the contract was much easier than the industry norm.   Our cookhouse was a nightmare but we had a PA from Scotland who got it sorted out, but not before we lost men to the hospital, to all manner of food borne parasites.   The RSO’s would not give us the weapons called for in the contract so we had them send out raiding parties of guys who had worked the election and had weapons stashed or knew where to find them.   It was a nightmare and I never got along with the RSO shop but I don’t want to start telling old sea stories or start in on State Department RSO’s.   They have plenty of talent in that program and one of them, Tim Sullivan, for whom the current guard camp is named, was one of the best all around operators I have ever met.

The problem with the current guard force is that they are on a shit contract.   Ignore the money value published in the papers – that number is for five years executed at full value which is impossible to do .   Armor Group North America is losing big money on   that job and they are about to lose a lot more.   I was asked by a few companies to consult on their bids for it back in 2006 and my answer was always the same – don’t bid because if you win you’ll lose money. There were requirements in the contract that could not be filled.   The number of security clearance holding   Americans was excessive and unnecessary (they have been modified.)     The skill set required in the contract was out of all proportion to the tasks actually executed by the guards (these too have since been modified) and the training requirements were completely unrealistic given the amount of time the State Department would allow for the guard force to train prior to assuming the contract.

Camp Sully just before it opened. It looks like a big roomy place which it was compared to Camp Happy but looks are deceiving. The expat rooms had attached bathrooms which is good but the bathroom were almost as large as the sleeping area and wasted valuable space. The TCN barracks towards the rear of the picture did not have attached bathrooms and were therefore a little biggerthan the expat rooms. The project leadership lives in the closet building and those rooms - which had shared bathrooms - were pretty nice...but there are only 8 of them.
Camp Sully just before it opened. It looks like a big roomy place which it was compared to Camp Happy but looks are deceiving. The expat rooms had attached bathrooms which is good but the bathroom were almost as large as the sleeping area and wasted valuable space. The TCN barracks towards the rear of the picture did not have attached bathrooms and were therefore a little biggerthan the expat rooms. The project leadership lives in the closet building and those rooms - which had shared bathrooms - were pretty nice...but there are only 8 of them.

The several hundred page request for proposal (RFP) was full of legalize contract language which was there for the same reason congressional bills are several thousands pages of incomprehensible gibberish – to hide things.   In the case of the embassy contract it was penalties for failing to meet certain stipulations. The only companies who could have actually met the requirements at the time were Blackwater and Triple Canopy but they could never submit a bid low enough to win because they have to run the training infrastructure back in the States required by the contract and thus were forced to bid realistic numbers.   They were never in the running.   All of the contracts being let for security and everything else go to the lowest bidder.

When we started the bridge contract back in 2005 I told the men there that although our billets suck and we look like clowns, (we had no uniforms and looked like a motorcycle gang on post with civvie clothing and old AK 47’s with chest rigs,   I thought it looked kind of cool, but it wasn’t good for morale) recent history tells us that we will be on the job for years, not the six months of the contract and that the pay is good, risk is low, and thus by definition life is good.   I was proved correct – the bridge contract lasted two years before a company successfully took over.   The first company to win the contract was MVM and their genius plan was to bring in South African passport holding Vamba tribal fighters from Namibia to work as the senior guards and “english speaking ” junior guards from Peru.   The South African plan met the terms of the contract but turned out to be a disaster.   When the Peruvians arrived not one of them could speak a word of English.   I was there for that too and am thus unable to go into the details.

When Armor Group won they were heading down the same path as MVM but at the last minute the CEO came in, immediately   fired his management team and entered into negotiations with the existing project manager for him and his crew to come aboard.   I am hesitant to go into detail due to an acute congenital fear of lawyers. Runs in my family according to my Father. The pay for new joins was low and the scheme did not favor Americans due to our tax laws. The original guard force lasted a little less than a year before the PM left which caused the immediate exodus of all the old guards.The new guards got much lower rates of pay.   You get what you pay for in this industry and Armor Group was not paying much.

Anyone who has visited the US Embassy recently may be startled to see this picture but this was how we started the contract - an armed guard and one unarmed terp out front on Masooud Road with a knee high concreate barrier. This entire street is now closed off and full of T Walls. We did have a drop arm and armed men directly behing the intiaial screening crew but this was nerve racking duty and the boys did not like it much.
Anyone who has visited the US Embassy recently may be startled to see this picture but this was how we started the contract - an armed guard and one unarmed terp out front on Masooud Road with a knee high concreate barrier. This entire street is now closed off and full of T Walls. We did have a drop arm and armed men directly behing the intiaial screening crew but this was nerve racking duty and the boys did not like it much.

The pay thing is a problem which can be worked through with good on the ground leadership and incentives for people who are on their second, third or fourth year of the contract; the real problem is with the living conditions and job requirements of the guard force.   The average living space per man in Camp Sullivan is less than   the square footage required for inmates in federal penitentiaries.   I put that in writing in a memo to the RSO when the camp was being built which may help explain the stained relationship I had with him.   The recreation facilities are inadequate and the gym full of third rate Turkish equipment.   There is no space on the camp for the men to do anything outside of their crammed barracks and they have little ability to get off camp.   When you are designing camps to house hundreds of guards for years at a time you have to pay attention to their morale recreation and welfare needs which is something the military excels at.   If you do not think through what they are going to do off duty as thoroughly as their on duty tasks than you are set up to fail.

What can you say about this kind of nonsense?
I feel compelled to point out that these are "consenting adults" which I thought made this kind of behavior exempt from the condemnation of normal people who find it offensive - wasn't that what the Sec of State said about her husband? Times change and these morons are now toast on the circuit

Now that the furor of last week has died down it appears that our Secretary of State has the situation in hand.   Surprisingly enough she found the behavior completely inappropriate and a threat to good order and discipline.   I don’t understand that – what business is it of hers what consenting adults do?   Is that not the lesson of the Lewinsky affair?   Maybe it was because the guards were having these stupid parties on a facility rented by the State Department which drew her condemnation – but the oval office is even more important a government place than Camp Sullivan isn’t it?   Or maybe she was upset because management was encouraging this nonsense which means there is a disparity in power between the individuals involved which makes even their consent suspect….you know like the disparity of power between the President of the United States and an intern?   No wait that can’t be it…anyway the boss has taken a stand against serial sexual predators (first time for everything) and fired the whole crew.

But that contract will still have a ton of problems and the men working there will continue to be even more miserable than the FOB bound military who at least have good gyms, pizza hut, lots of girls on their bases, green beans coffee houses etc.

There is only one way to fix the Embassy contract and that is to cut the number of guards in half, make them all Americans and pull them into the embassy where they can work and live alongside the other Americans.   The security guards are not now and never have been able to use the gyms or bars or tennis courts or swimming pool which are all reserved for embassy staff.   That should change.   The security guard contract should also be combined with the Ambassadors PSD contract (currently Blackwater and before them DynCorp) so that guards joining the contract can work their way up onto the Ambassador’s detail – that way when a new guy joins that team he has a clue about Afghanistan.   Knowing how to “evasive drive” or shoot is useless here – knowing the people, how they drive and what is normal behavior is critical and you can’t learn that in security “operator”   school.   What are the chances that the State Department is aware enough to recognize the problems they created on this contract and then really fix them?   Absolutely zero.   Like I said I hated working that contract because the people you are serving are just plain rude,   arrogant and worse yet, completely clueless about what is happening outside the walls of their plush digs.

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Running the Table

The bad guys hit a home run today by whacking the number the deputy commander of the Nangarhar NDS. The NDS is the National Directorate of Security and they are the best of what is currently available in the Afghan Security Forces. The number 2, Dr. Abdullah is an old Jihadi Commander from Laghman Province who fought the Soviets as Masooud’s chief of security before continuing the fight against the Taliban. He was reportedly at the central Mosque for Mitharlam City (the capitol of Lagham Province) to fork over a ton of family dough to finance a major addition to that mosque.   Seems damn un-Islamic to me to whack a guy who is donating that much cash to a Mosque in that Mosque.

Note the date time stamp - this is seconds after the BBIED went off and was taken by a friend who was in the city to remove and destroy old ordinance
Note the date time stamp – this is seconds after the BBIED went off  and killed Dr. Abdullah. It was taken by The Skipper who was in the city to remove and destroy old ordinance

Killed along with Dr. Abdullah was a Mr. Imadudin, Head of the Laghman Provincial Council along with 22 other people (54 more were wounded.) The press is reporting that this was caused by a vehicle borne IED but that is not correct. The bomber was wearing a suicide vest and forced his way through the crowd to detonate his rig after Dr Abdullah had entered his vehicle but before the guards closed the door. That is a damn near perfect strike which is not the norm for suicide bombers in Afghanistan. My sources tell me that there was a lot of small arms fire after the incident and at this point we suspect it was the Afghan security forces firing in the air as a method of crowd control.

Here is the best information we have on how this attack went down: Dr. Abdullah had stopped outside his SUV to disperse cash to some disabled people who had approached him asking for help. After handing out some cash he entered his vehicle and the bomber, wearing a burka, approached with a letter for him. He was in the car with the door open when the bomber handed him the letter and detonated himself. This is a   plausible explanation but anyone close enough to see this happen is probably dead so it could be bazaar rumor or the police coming up with a story that puts their security in a better light. There is little doubt that the BBIED (body borne IED) wore a disguise to help get him close to Abdullah and either a burka or a NDS uniform would be about the only ones I can think of which would work.

Dr. Abdullah was a very high value target so he had a large number of armed troops acting as a personal security detail (PSD) and they were the majority of the fatal casualties.

Here is what happens when a BBIED gets to you before the door on your armored SUV is shut - Dr. Abdullah may have had a chance if the armored truck was locked up.
Here is what happens when a BBIED gets to you before the door on your armored SUV is shut – Dr. Abdullah may have had a chance if the armored truck was locked up.

Dr. Abdullah and Mr. Imadudin join the Jani Khel district of Paktya Chief of Police and a senior CT (counter terrorism) commander in Khost as well as many more minor security officials in being “martyred” within the last six days. In the counterinsurgency (COIN) fight the insurgents look to strip away the government security apparatus when they feel confident in their ability to take the initiative and hold ground formally controlled by the officials they are knocking off. These kind of operations also allow the Taliban to portray themselves as brave warriors who strike with precision and minimize collateral damage. Ouch! Good thing they are as bad at IO as they are at shooting rifles or we’d have a world of problems sustaining our efforts here.

Here is the latest IO campaign from the eastern region Taliban – a professionally printed night letter which is so stupid school children giggle when they read it.

This Night Letter was posted around Jalalabad last week
This Night Letter was posted around Jalalabad last week

Here is the English translation:

We are kindly requesting and begging all the Muslims to immediately stop sending female members of their families to Shirzai Stadium on Wednesday days any more, Because we are all Muslims and such activities are prohibited in Islam whatever is happening inside the stadium. We are requesting you that you have already forgotten the Pashtunwali and courage but don’t forget Islam.

You don’t know what is going on inside but we are monitoring the activities closely, we are Muslims that’s why we are writing you this letter that we are ready be martyred because we don’t want disorder in the country. We are doing this just for Islam because we are Muslims and prior warning is important.

After this announcement you have few days if any one obey this will be good for him and if not he will be responsible for his own death, we swear to Allah that those who will not obey this will face severe consequences,

Note:

Each Muslim will swear to Allah that he will distribute this message to others as well.

We think this is referring to a Ministry of Woman’s Affairs training class which is teaching local teenage girls how to use computers. Jalalabad is the capitol of Nangarhar Province and the people here pride themselves on being educated. Nobody wants to live under the yoke of a bunch of illiterate, viscous, stupid puritans but there is a growing segment of the Pashtun population which will tolerate the Taliban because the central government has completely and totally failed them. Add to this all the problems with the election – remembering that I wrote 3 months ago that Afghanistan is no more capable of holding honest, open elections than the state of Illinois – and what we have now is the makings of another perfect storm.

The force behind the gathering storm clouds is the most fickle force in the world….American public opinion. It is getting harder and harder to explain what exactly it is we are hoping to accomplish by staying here just as it is getting harder and harder for the military to explain exactly how putting tens of thousands of troops behind the wire on large FOB’s is a plan which will accomplish anything productive. Here is what I think –von Clausewitz had it wrong about war – it should be politics by other means but it is not because there is too much emotional, cultural, historical, and psychological baggage tied up in it. George Will published an article today advocating an immediate withdraw from Afghanistan. He was immediately censored in the press but he is making an argument which is hard to refute.

There are no easy answers in Afghanistan. Gen McChrystal is coming out with an assessment that says he doesn’t need a lot of troops but he does need troops who can live off the FOB’s, eat kabob’s and rice and live with the Afghans. Modern western armies are not trained or organized to provide that kind of support. We once could and did in places as diverse as Haiti, El Salvador and China but that was when we deployed by ship and it took months to get on station and we were not capable of flying people all over the world. If McChrystal really wants on the ground embedded mentoring he needs to hire guys like us.

 

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Actions Speak Louder That Words

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
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
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 brining 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 examaple 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?
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 Govenor if a military commander arrived with 16 gunmen, embarked upon four Armored Praire Schooners and encased in body armor like Ivanho?
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 completly organized and administered by Afghan staff.
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
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
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.

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