Category: Long War

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Big Army Tribal Engagement

Last month Chief Ajmal Khan Zazai returned to the Zazi valley. As I wrote about here his first attempt to return home had to be postponed after the local American army commander declared him an AOG (Armed Opposition Group) leader. The reason for this label is that Ajmal and his tribal police ran off the representatives of the Kabul government, sent to the valley a few years back, after those representatives tried to steal tribal lands and in one case, raped a male child.

Chief Ajmal Khan Azizi, with Shah Mohammad and his Tribal Police chief Amir Mohammad moments after he landed in Gardez last month.
From right to left Chief Ajmal Khan Zazai, Shah Mohammad and his Tribal Police chief Amir Mohammad moments after they landed in Gardez last month.

The mission of ISAF includes the following:”supporting the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan”. That sounds great on paper but is not always a good idea in practice. The representatives of the Kabul government have a spotty record. Some are good men who want to help establish a functioning state.  Others are interested exclusively in lining their pockets and the pockets of their family with as much money as they can get; whether it be through bribes, pay for play schemes or outright theft. The initial political appointees to the Zazai Valley were sent packing back to Kabul shortly after they arrived. So now, in the eyes of the FOB bound American military, the Zazai Valley tribal police and their leadership are considered AOG  (just like the Taliban they are constantly fighting).  Check out this correspondence between The Boss and the young commander of the closest Combat Outpost (COP) to the valley:

Sir,

Thank you for your message. Any development project in Jaji would be  great, but I would like to ensure that it ties into the district  development list/tribal development list, in order to ensure that the  district leadership is not undermined.

Unfortunately, Ahjmal Khan Jaji is not a tribal leader at all. I do  not want you to come into this environment thinking that to be a fact.  Additionally, the security force of Amir Muhammad is an illegal force  that is not endorsed by MOI.

The facts are that Azad Khan, the Jaji Sub Governor, has a great  relationship with the tribes a focus for his district. The ANSF in  this area (ANP and ABP) are a professional/legitimate force that does  a tremendous job in keeping the best security for the people.

I’ve CC’d my higher HQ, as well as representation to Department of  State and the PRT, to ensure that they are tied in to your work.  Again, I would love to see development here, but I want you to have  the facts and go through the proper channels before beginning work.  Thank you for your time.

VR, XXXX

The Zazai Valley is in the southeastern corner of the Tora Bora Mountains; it was known as “The Gateway to Afghanistan” during the Soviet-Afghan war. The valley is key terrain which is currently under friendly control thanks to the efforts of Ajmal and his tribal police force. Steven Pressfield has an 11 part interview with Ajmal which you can find here. It’s interesting reading. Ajmal is a Canadian citizen, a fluent English speake who can describe the enemy situation in his tribal area in clear, concise terms. He clearly is on our side in this conflict and wants some American grunts to move into his area to lend a hand.

ALIM2036
The Tribal Police from Zazai Valley in dismounted to clear a known ambush site on  foot before allowing the convoy through. They are funded by Ajmal who provides weapons, uniforms, and vehicles. They have no belt fed machineguns, RPG’s or mortars. The Taliban have plenty of each.

The Boss sent a Ghost Team operative named Crazy Horse with the Chief to do the advance work for a USAID funded cash for work programs targeting the Zazi Valley.  The Horse is a South African giant (6’5″ 230lbs) who serves in the British Army reserve and is now a resident of Scotland. Like many British soldiers he goes to great lengths to protect his identity. Crazy Horse (his call sign from back in the day) asked that I not ID him by name so from now on he’s The Horse.

As the convoy ferrying Ajmal and company into the Zazi Valley left the Gardez area the Chief met with local delegations at every small village along the route. Not all of them were thrilled to see a 6'5" Scotsman tagging along
As the convoy ferrying Ajmal and company into the Zazi Valley left the Gardez area the Chief met with local delegations at every small village along the route. Not all of them were thrilled to see a 6’5″ Scotsman tagging along.   These elders had high hopes nine years ago when we ejected the Taliban.   Now they face significant danger from those same dirt bags and have been fighting them without any help or assistance from ISAF or Kabul.   How long would it take you if you face similar circumstances to start wondering if you are backing the wrong side in this fight?   5 years, 10, 20? Leaving these guys out in the cold to fend for themselves as they guard critical terrain is nothing short of a national disgrace in my humble opinion.

Prior to his arrival we had asked for a meeting with the US Army battle space owner at the big base in Gardez – that request was denied. But the army figured out that something unique was happening when they noticed large crowds gathering along the route into the Zazi Valley with their UAV surveillance platforms.  Once Ajmal arrived at his family compound he stayed up most of the night with the senior members of the 11 tribe shura. The next three days were identical from dawn until well past dusk. He held multiple meetings with 30 to 40 elders from each tribal grouping which lasted around 50 minutes each. Ajmal displayed more stamina, leadership and drive than any one human should be expected to posses. These meetings are not something which you can just head fake your way through – they are deadly serious business concerning the future of the entire border region; and many of his followers are not impressed by the American military or Kabul government. Nobody in the border region of Paktia Province is mistaking ISAF for the strongest tribe.

For three days all day this was the scene at Ajmals family compound. There were thousands of people camped outside waiting for their turn to meet or waiting for their elders to finish and so they could head home. The American military noted this assembely when they saw it with their UAV's and, as is most often the case, had no idea what was happening just a few miles from their closest outpost.
For three days all day this was the scene at Ajmals family compound. There were thousands of people camped outside waiting for their turn to meet or waiting for their elders to finish so they could head home. The American military noted this assembly when they saw it with their UAV’s and, as is most often the case, had no idea what was happening just a few miles from their closest outpost.

The visit concluded with an election of a new Chief for the Zazi tribal counsel. The tribal counsel includes Commander Aziz Ola’ from Jaji Midan, the Chamkani tribal elders, the Dinda Paton Tribal elders and the District sub governor who is from the area and not an appointee from Kabul. They elected a retired Sharia Judge from the Taliban days by the name of Kazi.

The new
The new chief of the Zazi Valley tribal counsel Judge Kazi – the headdress is his badge of office

The border area of Loya Paktia which includes Paktia, Khost and Paktikia Provinces is a region where the tribes have relevance.  It is also one of the places where a platoon of American troops could make a huge impact on the flow of Taliban fighters and material into Afghanistan. There are 35 Haqqani affiliated fighters and four known Pakistani ISI affiliated organizers in the Zaizi lands which the Tribal Police would be more than happy to run off of if they received a little help. This could be a text book economy of force operation but it would take sending in a platoon (or an A team, or some other similar outfit) and leaving them there with the Afghans to provide actual security as opposed to leaving them locked inside a COP isolated from and of little use to the local tribes.

Ajmal stopped in for a late dinner after driving to Jalalabad from his valley - a dangerous 14 hour trip - he may not look it but he was exhausted
Ajmal stopped in for a late dinner after driving to Jalalabad from his valley, a dangerous 14 hour trip. He may not look it but he was exhausted

Yesterday I talked with a Washington attorney who had taken a leave of absence from his law firm to spend seven months in the Helmand Province as part of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade. He had been an infantry officer while on active duty years ago but functioned as a civil affairs officer during his latest deployment. He told me that in 7 months he had spent a total of maybe 10 hours inside a vehicle and wore out two pairs of boots walking all day every day to the villages around Naw Zad. By the end of his deployment he and his Marines knew every village elder, every family, every child, and most of the goats and sheep who lived in the area. They knew them on sight, interacted with them daily and when a military aged male showed up in his area who was not a resident they rounded him up immediately to determine who he was, why he was there, who could vouch for him as a legitimate visitor, where was coming from and who he had been with. That is counterinsurgency 101  and you cannot do it any other way then to be out with the people all day and all night and operating on foot. You cannot do COIN by patrolling in MRAP convoys a few hours a day before heading back to the FOB for ice cream, pecan pie and a mandatory head count by the First Sergeant.

The battalion at the Gardez FOB called The Horse to ask if he knew why thousands of people had migrated towards “some compound in the Zazai Valley.” When he told them what was up they asked to meet with him and Ajmal when they headed back to Kabul. The meeting turned out to be a joke. A visibly upset major demanded to know why, if the Zazai Valley tribal police were on their side, had they not reported to the Americans the location of IED’s? Ajmal, by this time exhausted and barely able to talk, explained that they are not in the “sell IED’s to the Americans” business. Reporting an IED for the cash reward is a common money scam in those parts and increases the number of IED’s being made. The only IED’s the tribal police have seen were aimed at them and all those had gone off. He added that if they do gain knowledge of an IED cell on their lands they will bring both the IED’s and the heads of the IED makers to Gardez.

The Americans remain skeptical, Ajmal remains frustrated, Crazy Horse who, like myself, has spent his adult life as an infantry officer is heart sick and I am so fucking pissed off I can’t see straight. It is impossible to be optimistic about the future of Afghanistan unless the military USAID, State Department and all the other organizations with unlimited funding and influence get out of the FOB’s and to live with the people.

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The Jalalabad Fab Fi Network Continues to Grow With a Little Help from Their Friends

Editors Note:   In this post Keith Berkoben and Amy Sun from the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT report   on the Fab Fi network in Jalalabad. These are cross posted on the Jalalabad Fab Lab blog. Keith is first up with great news on the continued growth of the fab fi mesh around Jalalabad City. Twenty five nodes up and running simultaneously – pretty impressive. Amy Sun follows with a solid demonstration of using keen insight, humor and classic leadership skills while working through language and cultural difficulties to do a little problem solving.

KEITH BERKOBEN

When we first brought FabFi to Afghanistan we brought our own idea of the best solution. It looked something like the photo below. With a little training, our afghan friends figured out how to copy reflectors like the one in the photo and make links. That’s super cool and all, but you can’t always get nice plywood and wire mesh and acrylic and Shop Bot time when you want to make a link. Maybe it’s the middle of the night and the lab is closed. Maybe you spent all your money on a router and all you have left for a reflector is the junk in your back yard. That, dear world, is when you IMPROVISE:

Original FabFi solution for Jalalabad designed and built by the Fab Folks at MIT
Original FabFi solution for Jalalabad designed and built by the Fab Folks at MIT

 

Pictured below is a makeshift reflector constructed from pieces of board, wire, a plastic tub and, ironically enough, a couple of USAID vegetable oil cans that was made today by Hameed, Rahmat and their friend “Mr. Willy”. It is TOTALLY AWESOME, and EXACTLY what Fab is all about.

The boys at the Jalalabad Fab Lab came up with their own design to meet the growing demand created by the International Fab surge last September. As usual all surge participants who came from the US, South Africa, Iceland and Englad paid their own way. Somebody needs to sponsor these people.
The boys at the Jalalabad Fab Lab came up with their own design to meet the growing demand created by the International Fab surge last September. As usual all surge participants who came from the US, South Africa, Iceland and Englad paid their own way. Somebody needs to sponsor these people.

For those of you who are suckers for numbers, the reflector links up just shy of -71dBm at about 1km, giving it a gain of somewhere between 5 and 6dBi. With a little tweaking and a true parabolic shape, it could easily be as powerful as the small FabFi pictured above (which is roughly 8-10dBi depending on materials)

25 simultaneous live nodes in Jalalabad. That's a new high. The map can't even keep up!
25 simultaneous live nodes in Jalalabad. That’s a new high. The map can’t even keep up!

For me, the irony of the graphic above is particularly acute when one considers that an 18-month World Bank funded infrastructure project to bring internet connectivity to Afghanistan began more than SEVEN YEARS ago and only made its first international link this June. That project, despite hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, is still far from being complete while FabLabbers are building useful infrastructure for pennies on the dollar out of their garbage.

Keith working on the first install on the water tower September 2009
Keith working on the first install on the water tower September 2009

AMY SUN

I haven’t been in Afghanistan since September, missing my January window of opportunity this year. Fortunately, our Afghans have discovered Skype and the FabFi-GATR-internet has been sufficiently stable that I haven’t missed much.

Having Afghans with high speed internet and skype is pretty much like having TV (something else we don’t have by choice, like heat).   The intrepid FabFi team in Afghanistan (now exclusively Afghans) have been expanding at a quick pace and everyone wants to gab.   As long as the connection is up it seems at least one is online and wants to chat. Some of it is utterly content-less and we patiently plod through with the idea that it’s good English practice. Keith is fantastic at half-rolling out of bed in the morning for a couple hours of conversing – I’m just not socially presentable until there’s at least a couple cups of coffee in me.

Cool pic of the day from Jbad 4 Feb 10. Local Kuchi women in a IDP camp making cow paddies. They sell the dried paddies by the sack load and it is normally used to cook nan (bread) because it burns hot and adds flavor. Sounds gross but hot out of the oven nan is delicious
Cool pic of the day from Jbad 4 Feb 2010. Local Kuchi women in a IDP camp making cow paddies. They sell the dried paddies by the sack load and it is normally used to cook nan (bread) because it burns hot and adds flavor. Sounds gross but hot out of the oven nan is delicious.

Previously on That Afghan Show,

One night around 2300 Afghan time, our friends Hameed and Rahmat wanted to video skype with us but the city power isn’t on then. So in the darkness they went to the hospital water tower and climbed the 5 stories to the tippy top and chatted with us from the windy roof of Jalalabad in the middle of the night. We couldn’t see them so well since they were only lit by the light of their own laptop but they could see and hear us which made them silly happy. I hope that gives readers a decent impression of the security situation – it’s not a war zone everywhere.  In some places, it’s like any other city with people that just wanna reach out and chat with their friends.

Logistically the FabFi mesh network is hampered by difficulties in obtaining routers in country. This is completely my fault though I thought that I had verified that you could get these routers on my first trip. But progress is occurring even though sometimes it’s hard to see.   We’ve discovered that the Afghan fab folk can get joint personal bank accounts at the Jbad branch of Kabul Bank which is backed by some German bank. We’re able to wire transfer funds to and from each other.   Now, Afghans can wire us money to purchase routers which we ship to them. In theory, anyway, next week we’re going to try to transfer a small sum to see how it goes. It’s a sore point in our project because it takes local shopkeepers out of the loop and creates a large reliance on order it from America.

Amy Sun working out with the pig snout M4 last fall. With a little funding Amy and crew could make huge contributions helping Afghans coonect to the modern world.
Amy Sun working out with the pig snout M4 last fall. With a little funding Amy and crew could make huge contributions helping Afghans connect to the modern world.

The drama these days is a brewing conflict over the key to the water tower at the public health hospital (PHH). Edited to fit your screen and time limits:

HAMEED:   Problem: Someone broke the old lock and installed another lock. We (Rahmat and Hameed) have no key to the water tower now. We are about to start working on another connection and may need to get to the tower. Please tell Talwar or someone at the Fablab to give us a key to it. I can get to the top of the tower from another way without opening the lock. But it’d be handy for Rahmat.

RAHMAT: yes that is what we want. there are many people asking us for net connection. but we say them that you need routers and they just find it hard to find routers in Afghanistan or Pakistan

TALWAR (to Amy): Dear Amy sun I did not broken the lock Mr Dr. Shakoor change the lock he toled me Mr Talwar every one in every time going up to the tower we dont know these poeple if some one do something wrong in the tower are you resposible of that i toled him no i am resposible of myself therefor he changed the lock

AMY: I am not your mother (all of you), do not come crying to me when you can’t get along. Afghanistan has many difficulties in her future and you must become brothers and work together to build a working city and country you are proud of. This starts with communicating with each other especially for something so simple as a shared key to a shared resource. I can think of many possible solutions to the who has a key problem, can you? Talwar, Hameed, Rahmat – you are all intelligent grown men capable of figuring out what is the right thing to do. Do it.

TALWAR: Thanks Miss Amy sun form your direction that you gave to Mr Rahmat and Hameed your right your not our mother to solve our all problem we should tray to solve our problem by ourslefe and work friendly. bu i dont know why mr Hameed asked you for the Key he didnot asked me yet for the key, he did not asked in the hospital for the key. is the key is with you they are asking you for the key?

M: Just talked with Talwar and he told me he would leave the key with Dr. Shakoor, head doc, at hospital.

HAMEED: Regarding Talwar, we’ll try to work something out with him.

RAHMAT (to Amy): Yes you said very good things and I agree with.

RAHMAT (to Keith): but we have a small problem that is the key of water tower to which we have no access. the one we have put here has been broken by someone

KEITH: I understand that Talwar has a key.  Has Hameed gone to ask him for it?

RAHMAT: Not yet nowadays Hameed is busy with his exams and we will going to activate another new connection these days. We are not fighting we just want the fablab to be extended in Jalalabad

KEITH: Talwar is probably worried that he is losing control of something by giving you access. You must make him see how all of you will be better off by working together.

B: I called Dr. S. He is not budging on having a gate on the tower. He says the key is with him and not with Talwar. I told him that he has to make sure that Hameed can have access to this key when ever he needs it. If there is ever a problem he should call Dr. S. If that doesnt work, he should call me and I will call Dr. S. This is far from an optimal solution, but as Dr. S is unwilling to make copies of keys this seems to be the only option.

I explicitly told Dr.S that Talwar cannot be part of the key handout process. He agreed to this and said that anytime H or R call him he will give it to them directly.

RAHMAT: I , Hameed and one of fabfi users went to Dr.S directly and asked him to give us the key he told us that there are many security reasons that they don’t want to give the key to everyone and also told us that only Talwar will fix everything and also he was telling us that instead of internet the water tower and its water is very important.

TALWAR: i am not the director of hospital to be responsible of the hole hospital that every one coming to me and say give me the key of water tower. dear, hospital has there own director the key is with him every one can get from him not from me than why every make me blame.

We’re now entering the third week of this plot arc. It’s funny, but it’s not. This set of guys are our friends and some of the best hope we’ve seen. They’re intelligent, dedicated, trustworthy, and diligent. They know each other and have worked together to make and assemble reflectors and grow the project, and yet they’re stumbling here where there needs compromise and communication. <sigh> But of course, when and how would they have had opportunity to see this behavior in action?

Baba Tim: Anyone who has spent time working with Afghans has a story similar to Amy’s tale above.   The take away point to these two posts is that there is nothing hard about doing COIN. You just have to get out and do it…..it is that easy. Once again I feel compelled to point out that all the good work being done by the Fab Folk is self funded.   They have reached the end of their resources and could use a little help. Please take the time to stop by Amy Sun’s blog to donate what you can in support of   the Jalalabad Fab Lab. The smoking fast internet we have all enjoyed for the past two years is about to go away forcing Team MIT to come up with a replacement. Without some sort of funding their two years of work will go down the memory hole taking all the hope, dreams, and potential of the local children with it.

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Lara Does the Special Forces

My morning email contained a heads up from Mullah John who is home on R&R. 60 Minutes had broadcast a show on the American Special Forces last night and the segment was “disheartening” to quote the good Mullah. After watching it I was left speechless – it was worse then “disheartening,” it was awful. It is hard to know what to say when you see stuff like this but not knowing what to say has never stopped me before so here it goes….

The segment was called “The Quiet Professionals” which of course is a great name for an organization that invites 60 Minutes for a two month embed. Hit the link above to see the piece, because I doubt anyone reading this blog caught it when it aired last night on CBS. It appears to be a 13 minutes of Lara flirting with SF dudes or as a commenter on the CBS website noted about Lara’s narration “It’s like listening to a child explain black holes.”

Lara Logan CBS news chief foreign correspondant
Lara Logan CBS news chief foreign affairs correspondent

Of course the segment has all the annoying crap one associates with Special Forces – only use first names, wearing sunglasses to “protect their identity” and digitized faces for all the Americans not wearing sunglasses. Does anyone believe that the Taliban is going come to America and hunt these guys down some day? Of course not but the Taliban routinely hunt down ANA Commandos in their home villages but none of them have their faces digitized or identities hidden. Why?

The 60 Minutes crew caught three shootings on film which are all in the segment. The first victim was one of the SF team leaders who was shot during a raid by one of the Afghan soldiers they are training. The second shooting was an Afghan Commando who shot himself in the foot during another raid. The final shooting was committed by a member of the SF team who shot two children who were sitting in the back of a vehicle that was approaching a village where the rest of the team was “catching an important Taliban commander.” He was shooting at an approaching vehicle with a suppressed weapon to warn it to stop… great thinking, but we’ll get to that and a recent shooting of an imam in Kabul last week later.

Everything the “Quiet Professionals” did in this story was (to me) suspect, from shooting at targets down range while Afghans are standing right next to the targets, to screaming obscenities at them, calling them “fucktards” and inflicting group punishment because they couldn’t master the “load, unload” drill, which I know from experience your average 11 year old can master in little under an hour of professional instruction.

Want to know something our ‘elite’ SF guys don’t seem to know? Afghans don’t cuss. To call an Afghan a motherfucker (a word used frequently in every conversation in the American military) is a grave insult that would, in the local context, need to be atoned by blood. I cannot stress this point enough and if, during my frequent forays into the tribal bad lands, I used that word even in jest I would have been killed long ago. One of the secrets that I and my fellow outside the wire expats use in the contested areas is respect for local culture coupled with big confident smiles;  that’s why we are able to do what every USG expert contends cannot be done.

I could go through this piece point by point, harping on quotes like wearing beards is “a mark of respect among the locals”  which nonsense but why bother? The piece speaks for itself so let’s get back to this shooting business.

Let me set this up; one of the SF team along with an ANA soldier is pulling security on the road leading into a village where the rest of the team is looking for a ‘high value target’ (HVT in mil speak). When an old truck rumbles down the road towards him the SF guy fires ‘warning shots’ from his rifle which has a suppressor on it. When he runs up to the truck he discovers there were two young boys in the back and he had shot them both.

What should the guy have done when a truck load of males is approaching at “high speed” on the rutted bumpy dirt road leading into the village? He should have done what we do – walk out to the road with a big friendly smile, hold up your hand, have them stop and then tell them to sit tight until the Americans are done. It is that simple – the biggest weapon us Americans have in Afghanistan is a warm smile and the ability to at least say “Tsenga Ye?” (“How are you?” in Pashto). I have been in this exact situation about 100 times over the years and so viewed this incident with no small amount of disgust.

What if the truck is full of Taliban? That’s what binoculars are for. A truck full of bad guys is a target easily defeated by two riflemen who are weapons free and waiting for them within hand grenade range. They are in a truck and can’t use their weapons effectively until they are out of the truck. In other words they would be sitting ducks. That is not true if they stop at some distance away and deploy from the truck which is the Taliban MO. But the truck in this instance didn’t do that – it just drove down the dirt road as fast as the dirt road allowed until the kids in the back started screaming and a crazy American popped out of a treeline and started running towards them. The driver is not going to hear shots fired from a suppressed weapon so until he sees something to make him stop the firing suppressed warning shots tactic is pointless.

There is one more aspect to this story which I find deeply disturbing as a military professional. The SF guy whacks a 14 year old kid dead center in the chest with his main battle rifle from less than 50 yards away and when he runs up to the vehicle the kid pops up and starts giving him shit about it? What the hell kind of main battle rifle are we using these days? Don’t get me wrong; I was pleased to see the child survived, as was the guy who shot him, and everyone else involved. But when you shoot someone in the chest with a military grade rifle then that someone is supposed to go down and stay down. Whatever cartridge, barrel length, and suppressor combination that team is using is obviously less than adequate. They should be carrying 7.62×51 mm rifles. If they can all press twice their body weight then they can handle a few extra pounds of proper battle rifle and ammo. They also can probably handle the strain of carrying binoculars too – killing children is bad on morale especially when you could avoid shooting them using standard infantry techniques like making friend or foe determinations with binoculars.

Better yet they may want to consider slowing down enough to issue a proper raid order with brief backs and inspections. You have to be a 10th degree ninja master to pull a two man covering element job by standing in the middle of the road day dreaming about Lara Logan which is how this unfortunate incident started.

ninjas
Developing unconventional military tactical skills takes years of dedicated training coupled with mission focused outside the box thinking.

Which brings us to the latest bad news from Kabul; the shooting of an important imam who was in his car with a bunch of his children when a convoy driving down Jalalabad road shot him dead. He reportedly failed to slow down when approaching the convoy which is the standard story you hear from ISAF every time they shoot up a car load of civilians. I think the body count is well over 600 at this point and not one of these unfortunates did anything unusual by Afghan driving standards. You can read about that here.

Here is the thing – I can’t think of any incidence in which a suicide bomber blew himself up in Afghanistan with passengers in the vehicle. I also can’t think of a single incident in Afghanistan in which a military gunner successfully stopped a suicide bomber from driving into his convoy. This escalation of force was senseless. I can recall examples when gunners have been killed leaning out of their cupolas exposed while trying to engage suicide VBIED drivers while the rest of their crew survived the explosion. They would not have been killed had they ducked down inside their armored vehicle.

I am as fond of brave fighting men as the next guy and admire the courage those kids showed trying to protect their fellow soldiers. But the escalation of force tactics currently being used are stupid and should be changed immediately. What happened in Kabul is murder – you can not justify shooting a driver who has a car load of children under any circumstance. We have too much history here and should know what a VBIED looks like – this shooting is just as stupid as the shootings involving Italians in Herat last summer, or the Blackwater guys in Kabul last spring.

When you live behind walls everything on the other side of those walls is a threat. When you isolate your forces from the population you are supposed to “protect,” then your forces have no ability to distinguish friend from foe; threat from normal routine or the good from the bad. Gen McChrystal can gob on all he wants about the importance of “COIN” and, “getting to know the people” blah blah blah…. it doesn’t matter because he sets the operational rules here and under his rules no conventional American troops can leave a FOB unless they have at least four MRAPS and 16 riflemen. How are you supposed to, “protect the people” if you can only roll around in large road-bound convoys? How can you, “protect the people” if every night all your people have to be back on the big box FOB’s eating ice cream and pecan pie?

These SF guys are supposed to be the ones who know how to operate outside the big bases with the local population but did you notice where they are living? On a big box FOB; isolated and removed from their Afghan charges – which was obvious because none of them spoke a word of Dari or Pashto. My children can get through formal greetings in both Pashto and Dari and they were here for just a few months – it’s just not that hard to learn these things when you live in the local environment. Those SF teams should be out here free ranging with guys like The Bot, Mullah John, Panjiwai Tim and myself. They are good troops being poorly served by commanders who keep them isolated and removed from the people they are supposed to be protecting. They will never be able to gain the situational awareness required to do real COIN if they remain confined to the Big Box FOBs. That is the real story, and as usual CBS missed it.

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Amateur Hour

The attack on Kabul yesterday was yet another demonstration of how inept the Taliban are at the planning and execution of a simple raid.   The attack has been described in the press as “audacious” and “brazen” which is true.   All their attacks in downtown Kabul are conceptually bold military moves; but they accomplish nothing.   A better description of their performance would be incompetent. Seven heavily armed attackers – one in a bomb-rigged ambulance killed three policemen and two civilians, one of them a child.   They failed to make it onto their objective retreating instead into the most popular market in downtown Kabul which they then destroyed.   That is a dismal performance by a raid force which had gained complete surprise when they unmasked themselves in Pashtunistan Square.   Dismal isn’t even strong enough to describe how poorly the Taliban executed the raid – how about “more stupid, incompetent and wasteful of personal time then a Nancy Pelosi press conference?”   That doesn’t really roll of the tongue but you get the idea inshallah.

Chim Chim sent this photo of the attack taken from the Presidential compound. There was zero chance of the seven attackers getting anywhere near this copound yesterday
Chim Chim sent this photo of the attack, taken from the Presidential compound. There was zero chance of the seven attackers getting anywhere near this compound yesterday.

The best chronology of yesterday’s attack was filed by Dexter Filkins of the New York Times.   As an aside, he filed an excellent outside-the-wire style piece on his efforts to help the schoolgirls who were attacked by men on motorcycles throwing acid in their faces last year.   It is a long story with an ending so typical for Afghanistan, that it is iconic in my book.   I have mentioned Mr. Filkins once in a previous post where I took the piss out of him for reporting from inside the US Military security bubble.   After reading A School Bus for Shamsia, I take it all back.   He is developing a sense for this conflict which few dedicated reporters have developed.   He could develop into the main stream media’s Michael Yon if he invested the time required to develop his own situational awareness.

View from inside the Presidential Compound. The mobile security team from the compound had joined the fight in the opening moments.
View from inside the Presidential Compound. The mobile security team from the compound had joined the fight in the opening moments.

In military tactical terms, yesterday’s attack is classified as a raid.   Raids are designed to attack soft targets which are not prepared for and do not expect direct attack.   Getting onto the objective without being discovered is the easy part of most raids.   The hard part is withdrawing your force back to friendly lines – a problem which was not relevant to the Taliban attackers who had no plan or intent to escape once they committed to the attack.    The execution of a successful raid  requires meticulous planning and preparation, including multiple, detailed rehearsals in order to condition men in contact to function with speed and purpose and ultimately, achieve the difficult task of  getting back across friendly lines.

The attackers had no supporting arms to coordinate, no aircraft, no inter-squad communication, no higher headquarters communication, and apparently, no real plan.   One of them gets shot trying to bum rush the guards outside the Central Bank and detonates himself; a cluster of 3 to 5 invade the Faroshga Market, tell the locals to leave and barricade themselves on the upper floors where they are eventually killed; and then an ambulance, which has slipped through the security cordon, detonates in Malik Asghar Square inflicting the only KIA’s during the entire event.   So the big raid ends up destroying the new market downtown, which the people of Kabul are proud of because it is resembles modern shopping stores like they see on TV.   The seven man Taliban raid force could have done dozens of walk through rehearsals on the very objective they were going to attack to tighten their assault plan time-line down to the second.   But they didn’t because when it comes to military tactical proficiency they suck which indicates that they do not have organizational strength expected from a third rate High School football program.   I’m talking about American football here folks – football which requires players to use their   opposing digits – and a third rate High School team would be expected to learn something about the game after 8 years of playing it.   The frigging Taliban are as stupid as the day is long.

The days attacks started in Jalalabad not Kabul with a single rocket launch towards the Jalalabad Airport. I hit tree branches just after launch detonating next to a local famers house.
The day's attacks started in Jalalabad, not Kabul, with a single rocket launch towards the Jalalabad Airport. It hit tree branches just after launch, detonating next to a local farmer's house. This is the fuse and motor nozzle.
Damage caused by the air burst which occured due to gunner error - hitting trees - morons I swear...
Damage caused by the air burst, which was due to gunner error - hitting trees with a 107mm rocket - morons I swear...
The usual victims - a small farming family just trying to get by. The Taliban ineptitude with modern weapons increases the risk for normal Afghans who normally would not be tartgeted or affected by the war.
The usual victims - a small farming family just trying to get by. The Taliban's ineptitude with modern weapons increases the risk for normal Afghans who normally would not be targeted or affected by the war.

Continuing with the day’s theme of “stupid Taliban attacks” we headed east to an ambush site near the Torkham border.   If this were in fact an insurgent attack it would be very bad news for us reconstruction types.   There are places known for Taliban attacks and places where we expect no Taliban activity due to the number of tribal inhabitants who will not allow fighting Taliban into their areas of influence.   We had several Reports that a fuel tanker had been hit in an ambush in an area where we expect zero Taliban activity so we needed to go talk with the locals around the ambush site to figure out what was up?

This truck was hit by an RPG but only after it was drained of fuel.
This truck was hit by an RPG, but only after it was drained of fuel.
The RPG went straight through the empty tanker the warhead did not arm because the shooter was too close. You can see the fuse imprint clearly where the rocket punched out of the tank
The RPG went straight through the empty tanker. The warhead did not arm because the shooter was too close. You can see the fuse imprint clearly where the rocket punched out of the tank.

Turns out one quick look at the truck and we did not need to talk to anybody.   As is the case in over 60% of fuel tanker attacks in Afghanistan this was a case of fuel theft.   We ran into some Pakistani’s who work for the trucking company and were also investigating the reported ambush.   They said they had not heard one word from or about their driver and his assistant.   Fuel thieves – they are as stupid as the Taliban completely unable to come up with a good plan and execute it.

The raid in Kabul yesterday was meaningless.   It will have minimal impact on the Kabul government and the internationals who work with them in the various ministries.   It was just one of the many security incidents which are a normal part of the daily landscape in the contested portions of the country.

The day which started with a poor rocket shot, followed by a key stone cops style raid, and a blatant fuel theft ended with the report of a large bomb located on private property just outside of Jalalabad:

More stupidity - a homemade bomb which failed to function
More stupidity - a homemade bomb which failed to function

It was HME (home made explosive) which was mixed so poorly it could not be detonated.   The blasting cap blew, but the bomb was a dud. ISAF tried to blow the bomb in place – but it still did not go – just a low order “poof.”   Amateurs.     It appeared to be directed at local people and no doubt, the latest shot in an ongoing land dispute.

The Taliban have been fighting us for over eight years and yesterday’s raid was the best they could do, given their vast combat experience?   That raid was a fiasco, which indicates to me we have time… a lot of time to get this thing right.   All we need is the will.

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White Information

Friday started with a disturbing report – a fuel tanker attack on the Jalalabad side of the Duranta Dam tunnel.   Ambush teams operating less than a mile from the Taj!   Not good news, so after the incident scene cleared out we went for a look-see.

This turned out to be a traffic accident resulting in a large fire which is a routine event on Afghan roads.
This turned out to be a traffic accident, resulting in a large fire, which is a routine event on Afghan roads.

A trucker had hit an old leaky fuel truck and the resulting spill caught fire.   The various civilian security services had got the story right by late afternoon after issuing an alert for an armed attack inside the Jalalabad movement box just hours before.   The local military folks did not know  what had happened  until we gave them a heads up while clearing the scene.

The cause of the accident
The cause of the accident

If this had been an ambush of tankers with RPG’s, as initially reported, it would have had an immediate effect on the international reconstruction programs throughout Nangarhar Province.   It would not have impacted American or Afghan military convoys on the road, nor slowed the flow of commercial traffic, but it would have showed an alarming  amount of cooperation  between insurgents and local people.   That kind of cooperation, were it ever to occur, would lead to an exodus of most of the 50 or so  internationals that operate in and around Jalalabad.   The few who remained would have to harden – which costs money, lots of money.   That reported attack represented critical white information concerning local atmospherics in a  very key portion of the human terrain environment.

Here comes the local route clearence package. Maybe they had no idea about a prior reported attack and spotted this to be a typical traffic accident - who knows? but they were obvioulsy not curious about the burnref tanker or crowds of by standers.
Here comes a US MIL convoy. Maybe they had no idea about a prior reported attack and thought this was a typical traffic accident - who knows? They were obviously not curious about the burned tanker or crowds of by-standers. And I'll bet a month's pay they did not note or report on what should have been an urgent white information CCIR (Commanders Critical Information Requirement).
Fuel recovery
Fuel recovery - it takes a village to do anything in this country.

Today’s little drama illustrates in real time how our military is ignoring the effort to maintain situational awareness via the active collection of white information because of their focus on “red intelligence.”     Tracking and targeting active combatants is what the military is designed and trained to do.     It is also what they have been doing for the past 8 years.   Generals McChrystal and Flynn can write all the papers they want explaining why this approach is missing the point and counterproductive.   Historically, radical military change comes in the face of or after defeat.   That will not happen here – the Taliban could not in a thousand years engage in a set piece combined arms battle with any ISAF military.   They could not stand up to the Afghan Army either, with their tanks, artillery, gun ships, experienced leaders, and international mentors.

Focusing on the population – that takes getting out and living with the population.   There is no other way.   This is supposed to be what we are now doing with our military operations.

And there they go no doubt through the city instead of the truck by-pass but you get that from the Army in Jbad.
And there they go, no doubt straight through the city instead of on the truck by-pass, but what are you going to do? SOP's are SOP's.

You can see decentralized, white information-focused operations at work in the chaotic areas bordering the large military installations in the south.   All trucks entering any ISAF base have to sit in lots, known as “cool down” yards,  way off post for at least 24 hours.   The trucks bring with them butchers, bakers, tea houses, mechanics, and assorted other small shop keepers.   ISAF keeps a close eye on these areas where multiple base agencies have some jurisdiction.   The Marines have security, the Brits are the local law enforcement.   There is a constant stream of trucks, military convoys and civilian vehicles.   The Marines are from a dismounted tank company who left their big beasts back home to come out as part of the Brigade Support Unit (BSU.)   The BSU is built around an artillery battalion because the Marines do not really have Brigade Support Units, except for on paper, and when one mobilizes it is better to build it out of an existing battalion.

Brit MP's out in the shanty town which has sprung up outside a main base they appeared to be looking for somebody
Brit MP's in the shanty town which has sprung up outside a main base; they appeared to be looking for somebody.
The Marines out organing the local merchants for an impending move. They have learned quickly how to get these things accomp[lished by getting Provincial government buy in and support for their base expansion efforts
The Marines out organizing the local merchants for an impending move. They have learned quickly how to get these things accomplished by getting Provincial government buy-in and support for their base expansion efforts.

The Marines who keep an eye on this lot have a remarkably deep understanding of who the regular shop keepers are, where they came from, and in some cases, what they were doing before.   That is because they are bored being assigned to a base defense role and spend a lot of time out there because they can.   This will pay big dividends in a few months when all these people will be forced to move across the highway when the base expands.

The Brit MP's were on the trail of something moving rapidly through the local shanty town of butchers, bakers, PCO shops and tea tents
The Brit MP's were on the trail of something moving rapidly through the butchers, bakers, PCO shops and tea tents.
Strykers heading out to the highway
Strykers heading out to the highway
105 cannon mounted on a Stryker - that is a pretty cool looking piece of gear.
105 cannon mounted on a Stryker - that is a pretty cool looking piece of gear.
On the hunt - the Brits are off to another part of boarder area to continue their mission
On the hunt - the Brits are off to another part of border area to continue their mission.

If a young sergeant and a squad of dismounted tankers can master the civil terrain nuances of this sprawling, unregulated township outside one of their bases, do you think they could accomplish the same in a village cluster a little further to the south?   When we are able to deploy like that, we will be able to obtain the white information  needed to conduct a counterinsurgency. At that point we will have started down the track to winning in Afghanistan.   Until then, we our wasting time, money and people.

The local butcher, propane, tire repair store
The local butcher, propane, tire repair store.

There is a fad in the first world called “low impact environmental living.”   Afghans are masters at real low impact environmental living: no refrigerators, no electricity, no cardboard packages or fast food bags, and if you’re lucky, a trucker will have a large bag of   dried buffalo dung for sale to cook your food over.   If somebody could just get these people access to the internet they could make a fortune selling carbon credits to Algore and friends.

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Adapt, Decentralize, and Harden.

The string of failures starting with the Jihadi attack on Fort Hood by an American Army Major, followed by the fiasco of incompetence demonstrated by multiple agencies in the Christmas Day undie bomber attempt, followed by the CIA FOB Chapman attack were huge strikes.   Three strikes, but nobody is out because that is the nature of bureaucracies.   The only time large bureaucracies hold individuals accountable for major failures is when they can pin the blame squarely on a junior member – that is the way it is.

Major General Michael T. Flynn, USA has followed up his blunt criticism of the intelligence portion of our Afghan operations with a solid paper, co authored by Captain Matt Pottinger, USMC, and Paul Batchelor of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), on making   intelligence relevant in Afghanistan.   These men are at the forefront of the counterbureaucracy battle fighting against the tide of mediocrity that has defined our military efforts to date.   I am compelled to point out that the picture on the cover of an Army general officer who is engaging some key elders while wearing body armor, helmet, SUNGLASSES, and with a rifle strapped to his chest is illustrative of exactly how not to conduct COIN.   I don’t know if that was done  on purpose or not, but the last thing a general officer should be doing is showing up in his Ivanhoe armor and a rifle strapped to his chest to talk with local leaders.   No body armor, no helmet, no  rifle, and certainly no sunglasses is how a senior leader demonstrates calm, trust in his men, and physical courage in this environment.   My kids who have spent months at a time here could tell you that.

Adapt. Riding around in large armored SUV's is not adapting. People who dwell behind the wire think bullet proof vehicles are safer but in a country where the villians plant IED's large enought to flip an LAV and open ambushed with a volley of RPG's these vehicles are nothing but targets and vulnerable ones at that. Adapting means low profile so that you blend in with the ground clutter making it difficult to be recognized or targeted.
Adapt: Riding around in large armored SUV's is not adapting. Bullet proof vehicles seem safer, but in a country where the villains plant IED's large enough to flip a LAV or open ambushes with RPG's these vehicles are targets. Adapting means low profile so that you blend in with the ground clutter making it difficult to be recognized or targeted.

The Flynn paper defines the problems plaguing our efforts with insight and clarity.   The authors describe the efforts of several battalions who have gotten it right.   They focus on the 1st Battalion 5th Marines, who after clearing   Nawa of Taliban focused on identifying local centers of gravity which they could influence to improve the security situation on the ground for the local Afghans.   This is an important distinction – they focused on making the environment safe for the people, not for them, which in the context of Afghanistan military operations is not the norm.   ISAF forces focus their effort on “red” incidents not “white” information.   Red incidents mean IED strikes, which is to say the entire effort of most units is to find and kill IED syndicates, so they can drive around in their MRAPS without losing people.   White information is all about the human terrain on the ground, i.e. who is in charge of what, what are the major concerns of the people, what factors are degrading security for the average Afghan etc…     White information can only be gained by sustained contact with the local population which is exactly what 1/5 did when they settled into Nawa after clearing out the Taliban.

Decentralize - Afghans operate commericaly that way nation wide. In secure areas where there is a sustained ISAF prescence the markets thrive. This is not a point which is lost on many Afghans.
Decentralize - Afghans operate commercially that way nation wide. In secure areas where there is a sustained ISAF presence the markets thrive. This is not a point which is lost on many Afghans.

Faced with rifle companies spread thinly on the ground and without access to buildings, computers, internet, or even reliable electricity, the Marines adapted by spreading their intelligence thinly and tasking the rifle companies to provide the atmospherics needed to gain an understanding of exactly what was impacting the local population so they could deliver security customized to the needs of the Afghan villagers.   In a summer which saw a dramatic increase in casualties from IED’s countrywide, the Marines of 1/5 drove down the IED incident rate to zero.   The local people actually chased off Taliban IED teams themselves.   That is nothing less than astounding.   There were similar successes posted by American Army battalions which are highlighted in the paper too.   But I have to add that kind of success cannot last forever in an active insurgency – there were loses in Nawa this week to IED’s.

Harden. Living outside the wire in the south forces one to adapt to the situation as it is. Adding three feet to the exterior walls and topping them with concertina is not pratical for outfits like ours because it costs money we do not have and draws too much attention which we do not need need nor want. So we harden and this is just phase one - when we are done anyone coming over the walls will face a nightmare of razor wire, tangle foot and aggresive dogs. Then they will face us and we know how to fight. Repelling borders is in the DNA of the Brits, Canadians and Americans working out of this compound which is deep inside the Indian Country of Helmand Province.
Harden: Living outside the wire in the south forces one to adapt to the situation as it is. Adding three feet to the exterior walls and topping them with concertina is not practical for outfits like ours because it costs money we do not have and draws too much attention. So we harden and this is just phase one - when we are done anyone coming over the walls will face a nightmare of razor wire, tangle foot and aggressive dogs.

This white paper is full of good things but all good things must come to an end and at the end of this paper there are no good things which I can detect.   As the new Obama surge comes into the theater it  will bring with it massive new headquarters – a MEF forward for the Marines and an airborne divisional headquarters for the Army.   Of the 30,000 additional troops thrown into this fight, at least 5,000 of them will be found in these two headquarters units alone.   Adding layers of additional bureaucracy to the already bloated, essentially useless staffs here now will render the immanently reasonable suggestions contained in Gen Flynn’s paper moot.   Which brings us back to the consistent pattern of failure which defines the Central Intelligence Agency, The Department of Homeland Security, and the National Security Council.   Eric Raymond at the Armed and Dangerous blog defines the problem succinctly:

“When I look at the pattern of failures, I am reminded of something I learned from software engineering: planning fails when the complexity of the problem exceeds the capacity of the planners to reason about it. And the complexity of real-world planning problems almost never rises linearly; it tends to go up at least quadratically in the number of independent variables or problem elements.

I think the complexifying financial and political environment of the last few decades has simply outstripped the capacity of our educated classes, our cognitive elite, to cope with it. The wizards in our financial system couldn’t reason effectively about derivatives risk and oversimplified their way into meltdown; regulators failed to foresee the consequences of requiring a quota of mortgage loans to insolvent minority customers; and politico-military strategists weaned on the relative simplicity of confronting nation-state adversaries thrashed pitifully when required to game against fuzzy coalitions of state and non-state actors.”

There are few things in the world more complex than the  web of Islamic extremist organizations currently at war with the governments and peoples of the west.   One of those things  that is more complex is the situation we now face in Afghanistan.   We are supporting Afghan government officials who may or may not be more of a problem then the Taliban, we are trying to engage the population based on tribal affiliations which are not always clear or relevant, and we are identifying, targeting and killing “commanders” who have proven to be easily replaced.   William McCallister, in an interview by Stephen Pressfield does the best job of defining the complexities of the Afghan human terrain:

“Tribal identities exist in Afghanistan, but local communities and interest groups may not necessarily organize themselves based on these identities. Individuals tend to define themselves in terms of a group identity. A qawm, or solidarity group, is a collection of people that act as a single unit, which  is organized on the basis of some shared identity, system of values, beliefs and or interests. It can describe a family group or reflect a geographical area. It can specify a group of people united by a common political or military goal under one jang salar or martial leader. Members of a village; the inhabitants of a valley; a warlord and his retainers; a strongman and his followers; a bandit and his forty thieves, or the local chapter of the Taliban are all aqwam (plural).”

Lash the protector dog; fast, smart, mean as a snake and like most Afghan dogs friendly only to us foriegners. He is pretty big now but still less then a year old and already the king of the compound.
More Harden : Lash the protector dog: fast, smart, mean as a snake, and like most Afghan dogs, friendly only to foreigners. He is less then a year old, and already the king of the compound. We have decentralized an important part of the compound defense plan - the running fast as a horse and biting the shit out of you part - to Lash

Afghanistan is a complex place where the situation on the ground can range from actively hostile to completely benign depending on the district, valley, town our isolated village.   An intelligence system designed to collect against a peer level threat with its associated defense, intelligence and political structures is not the optimal organization to employ in the counterinsurgency environment.   Add to that system layers and layers of additional bureaucracy and the results are a system designed to fail.   This comment from FRI regular E2 paints a bleak picture for the intelligence specialists assigned to the FOB’s.

“I read MG Flynn’s paper as well, and while he makes some excellent points, he failed to mention that part of the reason our intelligence sucks is that all our collectors are mostly stuck on the FOB.   That’s why we’ve become so hooked on technical intelligence. The kind of relevant intelligence that Flynn yearns for comes from meaningful interaction with the populace, period.   In my experience with Afghans, especially Pashtuns, if you suddenly roll up into their village with your MRAPs, Star Ship Trooper suits, and “foreign” interpreters (even if your terp is from Afghanistan, if he’s not from the neighborhood, he’s “foreign”), they will tell you two things: jack and sh*t.   We are reminded constantly that Afghanistan is a country broken by decades of war; no one trusts one another.   But trust is only obtained by building meaningful relationships with people, and our current force protection policies make the process of building rapport impossible.   As I sit here at my desk, on an unnamed FOB in Regional Command East, I would dearly love to grab a few of my soldiers and head out to the local market to see what’s going on in town today.   Perhaps I could report back to my leadership that local farmers are concerned about a drought next year because of the light snowfall this winter, or that the mullah down the street is preaching anti-coalition/government propaganda.   I’d get this information from shop keepers and kids that I’ve built a relationship with over the past few months.   But I cannot just walk off the FOB because that would be the end of my career. Instead, I’m going to check out BBC.com, call a couple guys I know like Tim, and continue to be disgruntled that I have NO idea what’s going on outside my FOB.”

Now here is the thing – as poor an effort as we seem to be making there are more then a few places where district level governance is developing into an effective effort.   I am almost certain that back in late 1986 the Soviets had won the Afghan War.   They were already committed to pulling out by then and nobody was really assessing the situation on the ground with an eye towards staying.   But as often happens in a counterinsurgency war, they had won, but did not know it.   I mention that only because it is impossible to say with certainty just how good or how bad we are doing in Helmand or Kunar or Paktia.   The only meaningful measurements are found at the district level which means sustained engagement.   If we can get off the FOB’s and do that….who knows?   I bet that when the tipping point comes we will not see it.   If ISAF can adapt by decentralizing their forces off the FOB’s and hardening in every district center it will change the trajectory of this war.

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Counter-Bureaucracy

I’m back after a month off to find things have changed very little on the Afghan street. Everyone I talk to thinks the international military effort is entering its final stage. I have been on the road for over a week and have talked with all sorts of folks from the military, USAID, and local Afghans. The lack of optimism regarding our effort was the common denominator in every conversation. We are not being beaten by the Taliban; we are beating ourselves.

There are military missions underway to be more proactive in making contact with and helping isolated tribal people. One such program is apparently classified but open sources point to series of “fly-away” teams, mostly military, who go into the deep hinterlands and stay in a village complex for weeks if not months at a time. Clearly that type of sustained contact is exactly what our COIN doctrine mandates and can do nothing but good. On the security front I saw a news report on TV about a flying column of Afghan and American Special Forces types who drop in on Blackhawks to stop and search traffic moving across the desert from Pakistan. Done correctly this type of security operation will be popular with the law abiding Afghan. But the ability to sustain any meaningful contact with the Afghan people still appears to be missing.

Traffic on the Jalalabad - Kabul road. Traffic has always flowed freely on this vital route despite periodic low level attacks aimed mainly at fuel tankers.
Traffic on the Jalalabad – Kabul road Christmas 2009. Traffic has always flowed freely on this vital route despite periodic low level attacks aimed mainly at fuel tankers.

What is important to note about the efforts described above is that both involve Special Forces. Those missions could easily be accomplished with line infantry (augmented with the same specialists the SF teams are using). But the SF guys have an advantage and that is they are experts in the next revolutionary doctrine in military affairs: counterbureaucracy.   A recent Belmont Club post tells the story best. Here is the money quote:

In other words, they wanted to give the troops a chance against the bureaucracy. In that fight, the troop’s main weapon was the habitual relationship, a word which apparently signifies the informal networks that soldiers actually use to get around the bureaucracy. If done by the book most everything might actually be impossible. Only by performing continuous expedients is anything accomplished at all.

As you read through the article you’ll note that even the SF teams operating off of main FOB’s cannot always navigate the bureaucracy fast enough to move on important Taliban leaders when they surface and are vulnerable. It appears somebody in the SF chain of command figured out how to launch open-ended continuous operations as one mission allowing some of the teams in the south to make meaningful contributions to the overall security picture.

ANA checkpoint just west of Surobi. The Afghan security forces are clearly more active and operating in a consistently professional manner in and around Kabul.
ANA checkpoint just west of Surobi, Christmas Day, 2009, Afghan security forces are getting more active  in and around Kabul.

As both of these programs are based in the South one has to conclude that SF teams in the east and north are still struggling to get off base. The SF team in Jalalabad with their Afghan Commando counterparts were dispatched in force into the Kunar Province mountains after the ambush at Gangigal last summer. They should still be out there living in different villages and protecting the frontier with aggressive patrolling. If they were allowed to operate in that manner that is exactly where they would be.   The troops I talk with at the pointed end of the spear know what needs to be done and want the freedom of action to go get on it but the bureaucracy above them will not accept the associated risks.

COIN is not that hard to do despite this recent article about a battalion commander operating in Logar Province who is being lauded for thinking “outside the box.” I am going to paste in comments from Mullah John who is smarter than most on things like this:

“COIN is the graduate level of war: complete nonsense. COIN is police work, a touch of CT with decent municipal services. To say that handing out welfare in Logar requires even the same level of military expertise as conducting Overlord or the Six Day War is utter rubbish.

It’s hubris designed to make Petreaus et al seem to be considerably more clever than they actually are and also serves to justify the continued existence of the US Army at its current size and holds out the hope however unlikely, that Zen Masters like the object of the article have the magical answer to Pashtoon objections to foreign armies being in their country: Poetry! Of course why didn’t we all see it and VON KRIEGE in the original German ! and Sun Tzu and captains being allowed to spend money EUREKA!

BTW thinking outside the box normally describes thought at odds with received wisdom and certainly with the entire chain of command.”

Neither Mullah John nor I are taking anything away from LtCol Thomas Gukeisen who is the subject of the article. He sounds like a sound tactician and we could unquestionably use more like him. Unit leaders like LtCOl Gukeisen operate in the COIN environment using what is known as “recognition primed” decision making which requires a solid understanding of current military capabilities, the history of warfare, and a bias for action. Operations such as Overlord (the World War II Allied invasion of Europe) require “concurrent option analysis” decision making by gigantic staffs which have to be fused together and synchronized by three or four star generals. Saying that the ability of a battalion commander to do basic COIN techniques is graduate level work is like saying the ability of a family doctor to diagnose a case of step throat by smell alone requires more skill than a surgeon performing intracranial neurosurgery…it is not only wrong it is weird.

A sign of commitment; bringing your kids over for a few months to enjoy the sights, sounds and people which make Afghanistan such a cool place to work in. My son Logan and daughter Kalie outside Little Barabad, Nangarhar Province, October 2009
A sign of commitment; bringing your kids over for a few months to enjoy the sights, sounds and people that make Afghanistan such a cool country to work in. My son Logan and daughter Kalie outside Little Barabad, Nangarhar Province, October 2009.   

The Army has started changing up their operations by embedding the Afghan Army inside there combat brigades. They take care of the logistics. commodities and personal administration but the price is that all patrols are joint and done under US force protection rules. The effective administration of things like pay and leave may help reduce ANA attrition. But if you mandate that every squad which goes out has with it a four MRAP, 16 man American equivalent and that the patrol only go where the MRAP’s can go and that the patrol be cleared with multiple correctly formatted PowerPoint briefs then your tempo of operations plummets. It has to when you work inside the bureaucracy – that is the nature of bureaucracy.

The thing about talking “COIN” is that you are talking tactics not strategy. Tactics devoid of strategy are ultimately meaningless because they accomplish nothing of value. We have been very successful at killing Taliban commanders for eight years and have caused (relatively) little collateral damage. Yet killing guys doesn’t matter because there are dozens more ready and wiling to replace them. But you also can’t not kill them – you can’t let guys who attack your forces walk. The Taliban have tried several times to over-run and American position but have failed to inflict double digit KIA’s in any attempt while being shot to pieces as they try to withdraw behind the Pakistan border.

We seem to be going down the same road as the Soviets did by restricting ourselves to the main roads and cities while clearing out the “Green Zone” of southern Afghanistan. We are rapidly building up troop strength and focusing almost all of our effort on the “Pashtun Belt” along the Afghan/Pakistan border. Our efforts are predicated on the getting the Afghan government capable of functioning independently. But that is not going to happen and everyone knows it. We do things under the  “COIN” brand like building modern roads into the Kunar valley which, believe it or not, have produced a positive effect on the local population. There are now extensive rice paddies in the Kuz Kunar district of Nangarhar province which, thanks to the hard work of a four-man JICA team, produce enough rice per hectare to provide a better return in investment than poppy. The only reason the water is flowing and the rice growing is the modern paved road which the US Army paid to have built going into and through Kunar Province. The Kuz Kunar district can now be classified as self sustaining and therefore passified. Well, if we had a strategy with associated metrics it could be called passified….what it is called now remains unknown to those of us outside the military.

Kuz Kunar Province on the Jalalabad - Assadabad raod
Kuz Kunar district of Nangarhar Province   on the Jalalabad – Assadabad road

Building roads as “the mission” isn’t “COIN” despite our efforts positive impact on some formally unstable districts is not enough if your goal is to leave Afghanistan a secure, functional country. That would be a strategic goal but like the Russians before us we do not have a strategy, just tactics.   Afghanistan will not be functional country anytime soon because the source of legitimacy for Afghan rulers has never been through an elected government. GoIRA as the military calls the Kabul government is and will always be perceived as illegitimate by a majority of the population. In that respect we face a similar situation to both the Russians and our checkered past in Vietnam. Check out this quote comparing Afghanistan and Vietnam from a recent article in Military Review:

Both insurgencies were and are rurally based.   In both cases, 80 percent of the population was and is rural, with national literacy hovering around 10 percent.   Both insurgencies were and are ethnically cohesive and exclusive.   In both cases, insurgents enjoyed safe sanctuary behind a long, rugged and uncloseable border, which conventional U.S. forces could not and cannot cross, where the enemy had and has uncontested political power.

The article can be found embedded in this post at the American Thinker blog. The Vietnam analogy is one I have resisted in the past but I am rapidly becoming convinced that it is becoming a valid comparison. Look at this recent article about the Army Stryker Brigade operating down south in Kandahar Province. The Army Brigade Commander sounds exactly like one of his Vietnam era counterparts – check out this quote from him:

…He outlined how he intended his approach to work. [W]hen it comes to the enemy, you have leadership, supply chains and formations. And you’ve really got to tackle all three of those, Tunnell said. I was wounded as a battalion commander and they had a perfectly capable battalion commander in to replace me very quickly; our supply lines were interdicted with ambushes and they never stopped us from getting any resources, but when you degrade a formation substantially, that will stop operations. And then if you degrade formations, supply chains and leadership near simultaneously, you’ll cause the enemy in the area to collapse, and that is what we’re trying to do here.

Hate to point out the obvious but that quote is bullshit. General McChrystal can talk about counterinsurgency all he wants but it seems that commanders at the Brigade level pretty much do what they want based on what they know and what they know is how to kill people.   COIN is a tactic – we need a strategy but have none because the National Command Authority continues to vote present. Without a strategy it is impossible to tell how well we are doing or predict when we will be done.

We are asking men and women from over 40 countries to fight so Afghanistan can join the core group of functional nations. Somebody needs to be leading this effort by creating a strategy with which we can define an endstate allowing us to estimate how we are doing and when we can leave. That would be the job of our current Commander in Chief – inshallah someday soon he will figure that out.

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The Cost of Risk Aversion

The Boss has a serious case of wanderlust and our collective success at running cash for work programs in Taliban controlled urban areas motivated him to go to the next level. For months all he talked about was Zarang – the capitol of Nimroz Province which is located on the border with Iran. Zarang attracted him because nobody knows anything about it so he loaded up the plane with himself and Team Canada (Tim from Panjwayi, Mullah John and New Guy Todd who is not really a new guy to Afghanistan but new to the outside the wire ops) and flew down for a reconnaissance in force.

Nimroz Province
Downtown Zarang – clean, quiet, safe, and dirt poor. This was how 99% of Afghanistan was back in 03 -04 ready for a little help and secure enough for outside the wire operations.

Michael Yon posted a white paper from Adam Holloway; a British MP who has made several trips to Afghanistan traveling both inside the official security bubble and outside the wire. Take the time to download and read the paper – it lays out exactly what we need to be doing and I suspect is just shy of 180 degrees out from the pablum we are currently fed by the legacy media. Here are some of the key points;

  • Afghanistan is just one area of confrontation in our wider struggle against political Islam, a struggle which we must win.

  • Afghanistan is no more important to Al Qaeda than a half dozen other countries. But it is strategically useful for AQ in generating propaganda footage of “infidels” fighting Muslims and Muslims fighting back.

  • NATO’s ill-conceived operation in Afghanistan is on the brink of failure. Support for UK and NATO forces is falling: only 45% of polled Afghans support a NATO presence in the south, down from 83% in the previous year.

  • Much of what NATO is doing is aggravation the problem and is making attacks in the UK and other NATO countries more likely, not less.

  • It is vital that Afghan territory is not used as a launch pad for future attacks; and that the Islamist minority cannot claim victory.

  • This can be achieved with a much smaller allied force.   There is always going to be some level of insurgency in Afghanistan.

One can only wish that somewhere in America there is a political leader with this much common sense. I suspect the current masters of Capitol Hill will be articulating some sort of weak ass cut and run strategy which will result in folly. In fact here is another Brit – this one a legacy press guy who wrote and article today saying “Afghanistan withdrawl would be a folly.” He too seems to know a thing or two about what he is talking about and is worth reading.

It is in this context that I want to focus on our efforts to take care of an entire Province using a small Ghost Team detachment.

Team Canada is pretty good at blending in - there is more than one of them in this picture and so far nobody had been ableo to successfully make all of them.
Team Canada is pretty good at blending in – there is more than one of them in this picture and so far nobody has been able to successfully identify who are the expats.

We still actually know precious little about Zaranj. The Mayor is Savar Khan. There are no ISAF forces in the city. We are not sure if they have ever seen NATO troops in this Province. There is a gravel airstrip with no control tower in the north end of the city and it took about 10 minutes of flying around to figure out that it was the municipal airport. The last 5 minutes of the flight included a brisk interrogation/warning from Iran which is less than a mile from the municipal airport.

Zarang is in perpetual drought with the canal intakes to the interior irrigation systems broken there is little water for farming. The Iranian border crossing is a major bridge and has a fraction of the Torkam border traffic in Nangarhar Province. The border is marked on the Iranian side by a massive wall complete with guard towers every 200-400 meters as far as the eye can see. There is one NGO, Education Concepts International, in town focusing on education and women’s programs. There are no UN or other international personnel in the entire Province of Nimroz. Farsi is the language of local government although most people speak Pashtu and some Balochi too.

We have rented a house and will be starting up multiple cash for work projects soon. It is going to cost a ton to get internet set up down there but everything else we need will come from the local economy and will be dirt cheap. The Mayor appreciates all the help but our focus is on the Governor and provincial irrigation situation. We’ll meet him on the next trip.

One international, a half dozen Afghan managers and a TCN finance manager and we will be able to run multiple projects for peanuts compared to what is being spent on aid in the rest of the country. Unlike every other USAID contractor we do not use brand new armored trucks, or have contracted expat security details, no need for the lavish compounds or food flown in from Dubai.

We may not produce fancy PowerPoint’s and professional presentations on our genius plans to get a project going nor do we have a large inside the beltway corporate HQ full of retired USAID and military officers.We have a dozen or so expats who know just one thing -how to get projects going at warp speed and for dirt cheap. We do not talk reconstruction we do reconstruction. Without the risk aversion based security postures that cripple the effectiveness while swelling the overhead of every other USAID project in the country.

The Boss doesn't even try to blend in - with his language skills he gets by just fine. He is looking over a potential project office
The Boss doesn’t even try to blend in – with his language skills he gets by just fine. He is looking over a potential project office.

There was never a need for the elaborate security which was foisted upon the reconstruction efforts by our Department of State when we started the reconstruction programs years ago.  There is now that we created an insurgency by failing to deliver meaningful aid while creating a central government that is the second most corrupt in the world. The Afghans see us riding around in armored vehicles with truck loads of gunmen fore and aft and wonder what the hell it is we think we are doing. I can’t blame them as I wonder the same thing myself.

The key to getting things done in a post conflict environment is to get things done quickly, with minimal footprint and then to get the fuck out. America uses large specialize corporations for USAID projects while relying on State Department Regional Security Officers to set minimum operational security standards. This is why some of these companies take years just to get their team set up in country and that’s not quick or agile. It is proving to be a waste of time, money and lives.

Zarang is a perfect test bed for implimenting an outside the wire reconstuction strategy
Zarang is a perfect test bed for implementing an outside the wire reconstruction strategy

Adam Holloway is right on target with his assessment of the correct way forward. Smaller, agile military formations complemented by small agile teams of reconstruction experts are not only cost effective   – they are the only way to go.

We are going to a Province that has no international military presence and about which little is know and we are going to completely overhaul their irrigation’s systems (in every district) in three years. And we’re going to build schools and do woman empowerment projects too. If we are successful there will never be a need to send one Marine or soldier into that province to fight and die. Because that’s the cost of risk aversion – the forfeiting of brave men’s lives over folly and a lust for profit.

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The Tribes

More interesting news is coming out of Kabul as the drive-by media continues its impressive efforts trying to explain our Commander in Chief’s continuing dithering on what to do about Afghanistan. His obvious attempt at moving President Karzai out of the way has ended in abject failure straining relations with the Kabul government to the point of breaking and driving Karzai right into the hands of the very people we have been trying to get off the Afghan stage. An excellent explanation on how the administration completely screwed themselves, the Afghans and the rest of us can be found in this Power Line post.

But the stupidity of our current administrations efforts are not what got the blood up this morning….what do you expect from a President with no prior executive experience and Hillary Clinton?  This article from the New York Times about tribes resisting the Taliban is why I’m pounding away on the laptop in a Dubai hotel lobby. Authored by Dexter Filkins the article announces a new strategy to called the Community Defense Initiative which is designed to engage and arm the tribes in the east and south. The article talks about our bearded Special Forces helicoptering into Nangarhar Provinces Achin district with flour and some other nonsense to support the tribal chiefs who have run out the Taliban. It talks about other SF soldiers “fanning our across the country” to engage the tribes and support them in defending their lands and way of life from depredations by the Taliban. Dexter Filkins writes a great article and it is worth reading but unfortunately as in most things published by the New York Times it is complete bullshit.

Chief Ajmal Khan Zaizi who has been featured in a series of blog posts by Steven Pressfield  and is a friend of The Boss. The Boss gave Ajmal a very competent Ghost Team member to start some major cash for work programs in his tribal area on the Pakistan border. We had worked out the logistics of going into the Jaji valley which is surrounded by areas under Taliban control and sent out a query to the local US Army COP about using their LZ to fly our guy out when he was finished. Here is the response we received:

Sir,

Thank you for your message. Any development project in Jaji would be great, but I would like to ensure that it ties into the district development list/tribal development list, in order to ensure that the district leadership is not undermined.

Unfortunately, Ahjmal Khan Jaji is not a tribal leader at all. I do not want you to come into this environment thinking that to be a fact.

Additionally, the security force of Amir Muhammad is an illegal force that is not endorsed by MOI.

The facts are that Azad Khan, the Jaji Sub Governor, has a great relationship with the tribes a focus for his district. The ANSF in this area (ANP and ABP) are a professional/legitimate force that does a tremendous job in keeping the best security for the people.

Yes indeed the Jaji Sub Governor has everything under control, the security situation is fine, and the tribes apparently content. That seems to be at odds with everything anybody knows about the portion of Paktia Province which borders Pakistan but there it is. How can the local American Army commander be so stupid you are no doubt asking yourself and the answer is he probably isn’t stupid – he is doing what he has been told to do.

You see the American military is an effective military leviathan which, unlike most other components of American society is focused on one thing – its assigned missions.   Mission accomplishment trumps everything else for the military and they are expected and will forfeit their lives and the lives of their men to accomplish their assigned missions.   The main mission for our military in Afghanistan is to nurture and support GoIRA – the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.  In most places we know and work in the government is more of a problem for the local people than the Taliban. This is a well documented fact which has zero impact on the American military.

Tribal Chiefs like Ajmal Zaizi are focused on their people and must protect them from outsiders who try to take their lands, rape their children, and disrupt the delicate balance of tribal social mores which allow all to live in peace. I have not heard of one reported rape of a child by Taliban but you can find dozens of articles about Afghan Security Forces being accused of that heinous crime with a simple goggle search. So when a tribal chief drives all the unsavory characters preying on his people off his lands who is it that he is driving out?  In Ajmal’s case it was both the Taliban and the GIRoA officials appointed by the Karzai government in Kabul.

Thus a western educated, populist style leader who has been on the run from the Taliban, who lost his father to the Taliban, who has driven out the Taliban, established good order and discipline in his strategic valley and even reached across the border into Pakistan to strike up alliances with the hard pressed Shia tribes located in the Parrots Beak area (didn’t know there were Shia there did you?  Me either but I know how important that is and also how much those people need friends like us) is now considered by the U.S. Army to be an AOG leader.   AOG means “Armed Opposition Group” which means Ajmal is now lumped in with the Taliban and drug barons.

If a tribe is strong enough to stand up to the Taliban it is also strong enough to stand up to crooked politicians appointed by Kabul and their pedophile policemen. In areas with a strong governor and decent infrastructure like Nangarhar Province the tribes do not have problems with Afghan Security Forces because they will tolerate no misbehavior and the governor would be prone to quickly, decisively and one hopes brutally deal with miscreants who rape and pillage the population they are supposed to be protecting. In isolated portions of the country with little infrastructure and a weak provincial government this is not the case and thus men like Ajmal do what they have to do to secure their people and that means driving predatory government and security forces off their lands.

The FOB bound local American military units have little ability to observe or understand what is happening. They rarely leave their bases and when they do they have such large areas to cover that they can do little more than a “drive by” to show the flag or hand out some food stuffs or meaningless trinkets. The Americans have a mission to support GIRoA. Tribes with the cohesion and combat power to drive parasitic representatives of GIRoA off their lands are by default bad guys even if those same tribes are also keeping the Taliban wolf away from their door.

I know that I make this point over and over but feel compelled to point out yet again that one cannot “do” counterinsurgency by commuting daily from a large FOB. The concept of “bearded Special Forces” fanning out all over the country to help the tribal chiefs is a joke. What needs to happen is to put American troops into these tribal areas to live with, train with, and become allies with those tribes. There is no other way and you don’t need “Special Forces” for that mission – regular infantry can do the job with no additional training. The SF guys should shave off those beards anyway – 8 years of incompetently planned and executed “HVT” missions have given them a bad reputation while accomplishing nothing of strategic significance. What the hell is this helicoptering into Achin district by the “bearded soldiers” to pass out flour all about anyway? They could drive into the damn district in less than an hour, rent a nice safe house, move in and hang out for a year or two thus demonstrating a little commitment to the local tribes while simultaneously actually learning something about the place and its people. If they were really smart they would leave the beards, shed the uniform, rent local vehicles and ditch the stupid MRAP’s – that way the bad guys would not be able to target them with IED’s so easily – but that kind of thinking appears to be a bridge too far for the army these days.

The American military is a world leading institution when it comes to developing and using emerging technology.   Unfortunately that technology now allows our bloated, top heavy staffs to micromanage units in the field to an unprecedented degree. The results were predictable back in the 80’s when my Marine peers and I were first dealing with the impact of satellite position reporting systems, radios which actually worked most of the time and commanders who had video screens in their operations centers. What we predicted back then and are seeing today is the stifling of initiative on the ground combined with the removal of the tactical decision making by the commander on the ground. Our OODA loop has now been slowed down so much by the ability of multiple staffs far removed from the battle to insert themselves into the process that we risk becoming as slow and cumbersome as the old Soviet Army. If we do not step away from the computers, comfortable quarters, lavish DFAC’s and get our collective asses out into the field to really protect the population we are going to end up with another mark is the “lost” column. There is no excuse for that.

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Fear Factor

I have been on the road for the past fortnight sorting things out for a prolonged leave back in the U.S.   In this post our good friend Chim Chim gets a load off his chest about the military and our various intelligence agencies.   Chim Chim knows what he is talking about having embedded with us back in 2006 on several trips into the south.   He too has traveled in every region of the country and is another kindred Free Ranger who walks the walk.

Big ops big problems

Little ops little problems

No ops no problems

— Post it note on some door on some floor in the Central Intelligence Agency Building

Big op big success; Little ops little success (few lives saved); No ops no success (people die).
— Unknown spy

The Problem

In the war on terror, our greatest enemy is our self.   Like the company picnic we have become a community of self licking ice cream cones and have forgotten the mission, or more tragically become so self-absorbed in power point success and vertical movement within dysfunctional organizations that champion mediocrity and the status quo.   This risk adverse culture has paralyzed the intelligence world and is metastasizing to the military and other government organizations to the point of a terminal diagnosis or paralysis through analysis.   Our current senior management (I cannot use the word leadership as that implies the ability to lead and inspire others which if were the case this post would not be necessary)in the military and intelligence services have become a large group of frighten children who put career advancement and self preservation ahead of the mission.   Our congressional management (see above why leadership does not apply) has redefined the carrot-stick philosophy.   Carrots are no longer given to the bold risk takers that complete the mission and succeed.   Instead carrots are given to those who don’t play with sticks due to the possibility of a mishap where the stick may cause injury to someone else or even worse cause personal injury due to the sharp nature of the item.     While little attention is paid to the actual cause of this disease, it can be understood by identifying the underlying core problem, fear.

In order to leave the base, the military must have a minimum of 4 MRAPS. Because the commanders feal that saftey lies in numbers and big giganic vehicles. Fear of not having the right assets and numbers in case something goes wrong drives these decisions.
In order to leave the base, the military must have a minimum of 4 MRAPS. Because the commanders feal that saftey lies in numbers and big giganic vehicles. Fear of not having the right assets and numbers in case something goes wrong drives these decisions.

Fear is our greatest asset or our greatest liability.   This is a national crisis in our military and intelligence services and the current situation in Afghanistan is a text book example of this national cancer called fear.   When our enemies have fear they do not think and act rationally.   Their thought processes become paralyzed and their performance substandard allowing them to be manipulated, cornered, and defeated.   Fear is our asset when we inspire it in our enemies.   Unfortunately fear is our greatest liability when it manifests in our selves.   An evaluation of our current mission in Afghanistan shows fear to the point of paralysis.   We don’t ever voice this however, but veil it in catchy phrases like, risk aversion, political correctness, and cultural awareness.   But the truth is the American military and intelligence community are scared to death.   The irony is that the fear is not inspired by the enemy but from within the community itself.   This fear and focus on self is allowing America to grab defeat from the jaws of victory in Afghanistan.

Rule number one: Bad things happen in war. Technology is not a solution to tactical problems. Fear hides behind the illusion of technology solving your tactical problems. End result, people still die because this is war.
Rule number one: Bad things happen in war. Technology is not a solution to tactical problems. Fear hides behind the illusion of technology solving your tactical problems. End result, people still die because this is war.

We no longer ask the question how do we complete the mission and win, but more importantly how do we keep from making a mistake.     I would have to look back to when we moved the bar of success so low that it became a line in the sidewalk, easily crossed by anyone who was paying limited attention but this kum by ya mentality in the military and intelligence world has opened the flood gates for our enemies who define success as wining and destroying their opponent.   Our current model is so stagnate, outdated, and self limiting that it not only is ineffective but provides a template for our enemies to easily understand, exploit, and defeat us at every turn.   While we have the most highly sophisticated, technical abilities of any country in the world, it amounts to the analogy of a high speed multifunctional computer used only to play solitaire.   The various alphabets in the soup are continuously marking their spot on the nearest congressional tree for fear another four legged man’s best friend might just gain favor with the current elected potentate of the gold chest and their overinflated fecal filled budget will not get them into the current place to be seen where the size of a man’s genitalia is directly proportional to his place at the trough.   While the key words like Unity of Effort sound good on the parchment of the potentate,  they effectively come down to a dysfunctional three-legged race between different branches and agencies desperately trying to reach the finish line of bigger budgets equal more power.   This emperor’s clothes mentality is hamstringing the true believers and GSD (Get #@% done) personnel who are at the epicenter of any successful endeavor.   Outside the box thinking is labeled as cowboy and suspect with the potential for risk or God forbid massive success.   When talented aggressive patriots see the rotting decay of their superiors, the attrition rate makes websites like monster.com their quarterly bonus as the private sector continually draws the best and the brightest away from service to their country like congress to a $1000 a plate fundraiser.   This insanity must stop or all our forefathers fought for will be a distant memory in the ocean of incompetence and insecurity that currently is directing our efforts.

The Solution

Sometimes in order to build the perfect house you have to tear the current one down to its foundation.   Broken pipes, support structures, and shoddy architecture are best deposited in the dumpster of ineffectiveness.   This reconstruction effort starts at the top and defines a new Pavlovian response where the reward is tied to creativity, courage, and no fear of failure.   Success will be defined as success (bold new concept point), and not the mitigation of risk where all widgets were accounted for,   no one got a paper cut, and all off color non politically correct comments and conduct are currently being prosecuted to the maximum level of the law.   Certainly mistakes will be made but they will act as the temporary framework, providing for constructive evaluation to redefine a bold, dynamic structure that is indestructible due to its ability to adapt to its environment and overcome adversity on multiple levels.   In this structure each room will have a common goal of victory and as a group share in the success and learn from the failure.   The storm winds will change direction with each new season but this architectural wonder will continually adapt and overcome adversity.   The good news is that the materials for this structure are readily available; they are dedication, selflessness, integrity, and commitment to the mission.     You will find these materials growing where the soil is not choked out by the weeds of selfishness, insecurity, mediocrity, and self absorption.   Once this structure is built it will crush the rising storms and protect the country from future natural disasters.

Leadership begins with love of country and courage of your convictions. One cannot lead if you have no love for your country and no personal convictions.
Leadership begins with love of country and courage of your convictions. One cannot lead if you have no love for your country and no personal convictions.

Fear can be overcome.   The process will take time and the conviction of true American patriots who will have to stand and put country before self.     We can start here in Afghanistan and begin to rebuild our house.

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