Category: Long War

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Want A “Digital” Silk Road in Afghanistan? Let Them Build It

Editors Note:   One of the topics frequently mentioned by ISAF, NATO, and US AID is the need to get Internet and computers into educational facilities, schools, and ultimately homes in Afghanistan.   There is a NATO Virtual Silk Road program which is the closest to actually installing hardware and internet – they have been planning for years now, spent millions, but have yet to install anything (judging from the google search I just did.)   In the post below Amy Sun describes exactly how to get a virtual Silk Road up and running using what is the most efficient model I have ever heard of and one which should be recognized, funded, and expanded not just in Afghanistan but also in Iraq.

The Fab Folk may be academics but as you’ll see below they (like all good academics should) have proven their concepts in the field – specifically in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.   Read the post below – understand how absolutely incredible it is that Afghan kids are designing, building and installing high speed internet hotspots all around the city and then send this post to your congressmen (or the appropriate equivalent for those who live outside the US.)

An additional point – this internet is fast.   It is, in fact, much faster than the systems our military is using – the only way to get a fatter pipe in Afghanistan is to spend 15k a month for your own satellite feed.   Another point   – these people come here on their own dime.   Not one penny of tax payer money has been spent to accomplish in 7 months something which our governments have been unable to do in seven years. Somebody needs to fund the Fab Folk effort in Afghanistan – it is ridiculous that a group of PhD candidates are spending their life savings to come here and do a task they feel to be vital when that exact task in one all the coalition countries agree is a priority.   Also note the frequent use of a key word by the author; “leadership.”   We sure could use more of that around here.

FabFi now has  five fully operating  nodes with two more  coming online in days – they’ve already got the config all down but haven’t done the final strapping down.   That’s  seven, SEVEN, high speed comms “hot spots”  for Afghan use delivered  and working in  about 5 months serving an estimated 500-1,000 users.     Of  those seven,  only the first four were installed with international FabFolk help.   The remainder were  built, configured, and installed, end-to-end, by and for “ordinary people”.

dsc00867

Because the end points are made for and by the users, access is completely based on individual will and merit.   Meaning, you can have it if you do the work.   So while the “usual suspects” continue to propose connecting hospitals, universities, and government buildings, with FabFi, regular people are connecting those places AND a small orphanage, an NGO, and a public school in a small village.   And  they’re doing it now.

dsc00863

I can’t emphasize enough –  the key to FabFi isn’t the technology, it’s the implementation where everything is developed specifically to allow  regular people  the ability  to solve problems.    If  you don’t already know the  tech term “viral“, look it up.     This is the way these projects need to be done,  you have to  involve and employ absolutely everyone you can, especially the very population that you’re targeting. If it’s important to them, they’ll do it.

dsc01274

No caveats. Want to go to the moon? There’s only one way to get there and it’s not handouts or coddling from Vulcans.     Otherwise you’re just a tourist along for the ride, and you still won’t be able to get there on your own. We’re there to guide and make available the collective knowledge and lessons learned of the developed world.   Mentor, not suppress.   Lead, not micromanage.

dsc01277

There does have to be leadership and focus.   Open source projects fail if they are literally open loop frenzied parties of undirected work.   FabFi is not a new idea within the Fabuniverse but you need someone to pull together resources, funding, and a timeline – and hold even volunteers to their word.       To be effective, that  leadership needs “street cred”  –   out there slugging through the heat and mosquitoes, or ice and  snow,  or late night geeking sessions with everyone else.     I said leadership, not finance manager.

Because good leadership and mentoring begets good leadership and mentoring.   South End Boston Fab Lab has a tremendously successful “Learn to Teach / Teach to Learn” program where grad students teach undergrads who teach high schoolers who teach middle schoolers.     They don’t just teach rote skills or what to think, they are teaching young teens how to think.   That program started with a handful of kids and has grown to hundreds, nearly a thousand confident young adults that any parent would be proud of.

And you know what’s just as  wild?   These labs  lead and support each other.   We’re just begininng to foster the relationships in Afghanistan – these kids are shy! – but the Pabal, India (7 years old)  and Soshanguve, South Africa (3.5 years old) labs are reaching out to Afghanistan to share their projects and design files for the things they’ve developed over the past several years.

Their most valuable contributions to each other aren’t the machines or product – those change over time as needs and people change.   It’s the collective mentoring in how to think, how to approach problems.   It’s a slow process because it’s a journey for the user, not an answer to memorize.

dsc_1834

Here’s what’s next: it’s called the thinner client. Basically about $10 in parts, it’s the bare minimum of what you need to connect to the internet for things like email and access to Wikipedia and the like. Two way information stations with crazy low power consumption. A group of Pretoria, South African Fab Folk are heading up the implementation and distribution of these in South Africa, and both projects will trade around August with the South Africans learning and implementing FabFi and the Afghanis learning and implementing Thinner Client, with help from each other.   And the whole rest of the world watching.

dsc_1839

To keep the semantics simple, I’ll describe with the Jbad-appropriate words. Pashto native character map, plugs in to PAL or NTSC TV or any other display device you can find (just load in different software).   Requires 3.3 VDC – 5VDC in pretty much any way you can get it to it (including through the comms, keyboard, etc.).   In Jbad we’ll intentionally promote the text-only or vector-line-drawing-only versions so the units are acceptable for non-chaperone use (no effective net-nanny in Afghanistan!).

They connect to each other, they connect to FabFi. The connect wired or wireless, over RF, IR, and even acoustically. It’s all just different drop in electronic  bits and different software modules, but it’s totally cut-and-paste. Don’t think they can do it? Watch young Valentina of the Ghana Fab Lab make and show you her circuit “Efe”, which means “it’s beautiful!” in Fanti.

She started by making something that was already designed, then she modified it, both the hardware and software. That’s the way “real engineers” learn stuff, start with something that works, understand it, modify it. And that’s basically the  Fab Lab secret power.

Watch for this  to explode – the combination of device and network is like, well, cell phones but without having to wait for the  provider  company to invest millions in the initial infrastructure.   The learning curve is steep – it doesn’t help that the router kernel is in English – but once these things get translated in to local languages and processes, it’s going to go wild.   The interest and requests are already overwhelming.   People are bewildered when they ask who to ask to get an antenna to find that there is not an authority, they simply  “must to do”.   The biggest hurdle at the moment is people actually believing that is true!

It’s not just Afghanistan.   The rate at which  FabFi has spread  is phenomenal.   We released the FabFi 1.0 distribution in mid-March, essentially we got our act together and finally zipped all the files together with a little documentation and threw it up on our website.    Not even a month later,   I’ve heard from folks all over –  from Soshanguve, South Africa  to South Bronx, New  York.    The Heads On Fire Fab Lab in San Diego has  endeavored to  make antenna pairs to connect San Diego with Tijuanna, and I’ve even heard from the GATR folks who just want to connect to their work net from home.

Let me summarize: provide mission  orders and appropriate funding.   Trust  the folks who know  both the tech and understand how  to engage the target population.   Stand out of the way.   Taking credit is optional.

Posted on

Want A "Digital" Silk Road in Afghanistan? Let Them Build It

Editors Note:   One of the topics frequently mentioned by ISAF, NATO, and US AID is the need to get Internet and computers into educational facilities, schools, and ultimately homes in Afghanistan.   There is a NATO Virtual Silk Road program which is the closest to actually installing hardware and internet – they have been planning for years now, spent millions, but have yet to install anything (judging from the google search I just did.)   In the post below Amy Sun describes exactly how to get a virtual Silk Road up and running using what is the most efficient model I have ever heard of and one which should be recognized, funded, and expanded not just in Afghanistan but also in Iraq.

The Fab Folk may be academics but as you’ll see below they (like all good academics should) have proven their concepts in the field – specifically in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.   Read the post below – understand how absolutely incredible it is that Afghan kids are designing, building and installing high speed internet hotspots all around the city and then send this post to your congressmen (or the appropriate equivalent for those who live outside the US.)

An additional point – this internet is fast.   It is, in fact, much faster than the systems our military is using – the only way to get a fatter pipe in Afghanistan is to spend 15k a month for your own satellite feed.   Another point   – these people come here on their own dime.   Not one penny of tax payer money has been spent to accomplish in 7 months something which our governments have been unable to do in seven years. Somebody needs to fund the Fab Folk effort in Afghanistan – it is ridiculous that a group of PhD candidates are spending their life savings to come here and do a task they feel to be vital when that exact task in one all the coalition countries agree is a priority.   Also note the frequent use of a key word by the author; “leadership.”   We sure could use more of that around here.

FabFi now has  five fully operating  nodes with two more  coming online in days – they’ve already got the config all down but haven’t done the final strapping down.   That’s  seven, SEVEN, high speed comms “hot spots”  for Afghan use delivered  and working in  about 5 months serving an estimated 500-1,000 users.     Of  those seven,  only the first four were installed with international FabFolk help.   The remainder were  built, configured, and installed, end-to-end, by and for “ordinary people”.

dsc00867

Because the end points are made for and by the users, access is completely based on individual will and merit.   Meaning, you can have it if you do the work.   So while the “usual suspects” continue to propose connecting hospitals, universities, and government buildings, with FabFi, regular people are connecting those places AND a small orphanage, an NGO, and a public school in a small village.   And  they’re doing it now.

dsc00863

I can’t emphasize enough –  the key to FabFi isn’t the technology, it’s the implementation where everything is developed specifically to allow  regular people  the ability  to solve problems.    If  you don’t already know the  tech term “viral“, look it up.     This is the way these projects need to be done,  you have to  involve and employ absolutely everyone you can, especially the very population that you’re targeting. If it’s important to them, they’ll do it.

dsc01274

No caveats. Want to go to the moon? There’s only one way to get there and it’s not handouts or coddling from Vulcans.     Otherwise you’re just a tourist along for the ride, and you still won’t be able to get there on your own. We’re there to guide and make available the collective knowledge and lessons learned of the developed world.   Mentor, not suppress.   Lead, not micromanage.

dsc01277

There does have to be leadership and focus.   Open source projects fail if they are literally open loop frenzied parties of undirected work.   FabFi is not a new idea within the Fabuniverse but you need someone to pull together resources, funding, and a timeline – and hold even volunteers to their word.       To be effective, that  leadership needs “street cred”  –   out there slugging through the heat and mosquitoes, or ice and  snow,  or late night geeking sessions with everyone else.     I said leadership, not finance manager.

Because good leadership and mentoring begets good leadership and mentoring.   South End Boston Fab Lab has a tremendously successful “Learn to Teach / Teach to Learn” program where grad students teach undergrads who teach high schoolers who teach middle schoolers.     They don’t just teach rote skills or what to think, they are teaching young teens how to think.   That program started with a handful of kids and has grown to hundreds, nearly a thousand confident young adults that any parent would be proud of.

And you know what’s just as  wild?   These labs  lead and support each other.   We’re just begininng to foster the relationships in Afghanistan – these kids are shy! – but the Pabal, India (7 years old)  and Soshanguve, South Africa (3.5 years old) labs are reaching out to Afghanistan to share their projects and design files for the things they’ve developed over the past several years.

Their most valuable contributions to each other aren’t the machines or product – those change over time as needs and people change.   It’s the collective mentoring in how to think, how to approach problems.   It’s a slow process because it’s a journey for the user, not an answer to memorize.

dsc_1834

Here’s what’s next: it’s called the thinner client. Basically about $10 in parts, it’s the bare minimum of what you need to connect to the internet for things like email and access to Wikipedia and the like. Two way information stations with crazy low power consumption. A group of Pretoria, South African Fab Folk are heading up the implementation and distribution of these in South Africa, and both projects will trade around August with the South Africans learning and implementing FabFi and the Afghanis learning and implementing Thinner Client, with help from each other.   And the whole rest of the world watching.

dsc_1839

To keep the semantics simple, I’ll describe with the Jbad-appropriate words. Pashto native character map, plugs in to PAL or NTSC TV or any other display device you can find (just load in different software).   Requires 3.3 VDC – 5VDC in pretty much any way you can get it to it (including through the comms, keyboard, etc.).   In Jbad we’ll intentionally promote the text-only or vector-line-drawing-only versions so the units are acceptable for non-chaperone use (no effective net-nanny in Afghanistan!).

They connect to each other, they connect to FabFi. The connect wired or wireless, over RF, IR, and even acoustically. It’s all just different drop in electronic  bits and different software modules, but it’s totally cut-and-paste. Don’t think they can do it? Watch young Valentina of the Ghana Fab Lab make and show you her circuit “Efe”, which means “it’s beautiful!” in Fanti.

She started by making something that was already designed, then she modified it, both the hardware and software. That’s the way “real engineers” learn stuff, start with something that works, understand it, modify it. And that’s basically the  Fab Lab secret power.

Watch for this  to explode – the combination of device and network is like, well, cell phones but without having to wait for the  provider  company to invest millions in the initial infrastructure.   The learning curve is steep – it doesn’t help that the router kernel is in English – but once these things get translated in to local languages and processes, it’s going to go wild.   The interest and requests are already overwhelming.   People are bewildered when they ask who to ask to get an antenna to find that there is not an authority, they simply  “must to do”.   The biggest hurdle at the moment is people actually believing that is true!

It’s not just Afghanistan.   The rate at which  FabFi has spread  is phenomenal.   We released the FabFi 1.0 distribution in mid-March, essentially we got our act together and finally zipped all the files together with a little documentation and threw it up on our website.    Not even a month later,   I’ve heard from folks all over –  from Soshanguve, South Africa  to South Bronx, New  York.    The Heads On Fire Fab Lab in San Diego has  endeavored to  make antenna pairs to connect San Diego with Tijuanna, and I’ve even heard from the GATR folks who just want to connect to their work net from home.

Let me summarize: provide mission  orders and appropriate funding.   Trust  the folks who know  both the tech and understand how  to engage the target population.   Stand out of the way.   Taking credit is optional.

Posted on

Technology Development Stemming from 9/11 and the Wars In Afghanistan and Iraq

The title above will be the basis for a series of articles I will write over the coming weeks outlining some cutting-edge technologies that are just being placed in the field, or will soon debut in the next few years. The events surrounding  September 11th 2001 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been the catalyst for major defense research, as well as the development of some interesting and unique technologies. This series will primarily focus on technologies that will assist the soldier or tactical operator on the ground.
The majority of these new technologies are designed to reduce the fog of war by giving better situational awareness, improving the ability to track, designate or hand-off targets to other weapons systems, along with the key benefit of saving soldiers’ lives. The advantages of this research and the new technologies developed from these two wars will permeate into the civilian world at some future date.
Being a former Tactical Police Officer from 1990 through 2002, I’ve personally seen the transfer of military technology into the unit that helped us better carry out our missions to save lives. Off the top of my head, these are examples of some of those technologies introduced over that period: Thermal Imagers, Night Vision Scopes for Sniper and Assault Rifles, Gen II and Gen III Night Vision Goggles, and Digital Radios with encryption.
My first topic in this article focuses on a transformational technology that will penetrate the military, law enforcement and civilian world in a profound way. The most important aspect of this technology is that it is designed to save lives.
Blackhawk's Integrated Tourniquet System

Blackhawk’s Integrated Tourniquet System
THE INTEGRATED TOURNIQUET SYSTEM (ITS)
The ITS system was the brainchild of a Texan surgeon by the name of Dr. Keith Rose. In 2006, Dr. Rose was in Afghanistan conducting a humanitarian medical mission in the field, doing surgery to repair children’s cleft pallets. Upon returning to Kabul from the field, he encountered a US military up-armoured Humvee that had been hit by an RPG round. The vehicle’s damage caused the doors to jam and to trap a soldier inside with a femoral artery bleed. The soldier was finally freed from the vehicle a few minutes later, but died because they weren’t able to reach him or free him in time to save his life. Dr. Rose was very affected by this tragic incident and felt it a senseless loss of life. It sparked an idea that eventually lead to the Integrated Tourniquet System (ITS). To develop the product, he teamed up with Blackhawk, a US based manufacturer of tactical equipment and clothing. Dr. Rose’s invention essentially pre-locates tourniquets within garments to stop blood loss if an extremity suffers from severe bleeding.
With the core of the body and head protected by body armor and a helmet, battlefield injuries to the extremities (arms and legs) have increased significantly. Reports indicate that vascular injuries accounted for 50-70% of all injuries treated during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and that extremity wounds were the leading cause of preventable death on the battlefield. This new technology will go a long way to reduce the incidents of preventable death from basically bleeding Each garment includes a total of four (4) tourniquets, with two (2) for each limb.
With an arterial bleed, time is of the essence. Someone could die in less than four (4) minutes if the bleeding is not stopped. The beauty of the system is that tourniquets are pre-located in the correct medical positions. There is no need to waste time looking for a tourniquet in the first aid kit. The system can be self-administered or, if the victim is unconscious, his/her teammate automatically knows the location of the tourniquets and simply activates them immediately.
This technology has already been adopted by the US Navy Seals, and I suspect other SF teams around the world will want to have access to this technology in their uniforms as well. Although the SF community is an early-adapter of this technology, my prediction is Defense Forces around the world will incorporate the system into their uniforms within the next 3-5 years. Law Enforcement will also adopt this technology, especially within the world’s Tactical Units. To the Australian and New Zealand Defense Forces, talk to me and I can steer you in the right direction regarding this technology I have a line straight to the top!
It’s a simple design invention repackaged into a functional system addressing a specific need on the battlefield. This technology will save lives…. period. This is not only a technology for military and law enforcement tactical teams, but also for the civilian market including extreme sports like hunting, mountain climbing, surfing, skiing, snowboarding and diving. Watch this space.
Blackhawk has a YouTube video demonstrating the technology, which I’ve linked here.  Blackhawk also released their “Warrior Wear” line of clothing. which incorporates the ITS technology. Check out their website for more details.
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Counterinsurgency 101

I do not think we have the will to really “win” a counterinsurgency fight in Afghanistan. Winning means destroying the Taliban’s ability to excerpt control over the population. There are two ways to do that; by Annihilation of the fighting leadership (and most the rank and file) thus destroying their ability to resist or by Exhaustion which requires the patience to keep fighting until the Taliban tires of war. Exhaustion favors the strength of the Taliban and will not work which leaves the annihilation strategy.

Western armies are not capable of fighting battles of annihilation despite the proven effectiveness of the strategy. Sri Lanka used it to defeat the competent, aggressive and professional insurgents from the Tamil Tigers. We would not consider it because the politically correct military formations of western nations will not take the heat for killing on an industrial scale.  They will be  forced to consider the tactic when international Jihadist attack with a radiation bomb or a bio weapon. The west will not get serious about our war with radical Islam until they inflict another horrific mass casualty event.

Taliban demolition smugglers or low level black market types?

Taliban demolition smugglers or low level black market types?So we are stuck with a battle of exhaustion. We have been at it for eight years and we are the only ones getting exhausted. Nothing about the new “surge” plans seems to indicate a change in how we have been fighting this conflict to date. The Taliban are a movement born of from the Pashtun people and it is, to some extent, embedded inside the Pashtun culture. A simplistic “hearts and minds” approach ignores some basic realities about the Pashtun people best expressed in an excellent paper by Australian General Justin Kelly which I found from a link on a Belmont Club post.

“A hearts-and-minds approach is predicated on the proposition that we foreign, Western, culturally Christian, invaders can persuade a sizable proportion of the Pashtun population to cut themselves off from their cultural roots; subject themselves to an equally foreign and incomprehensible form of government resting largely on the customs of the tribes of pre-Roman Germany; and abandon their cultural birthright of unrivaled hegemony over “Pashtunistan”. To do this we offer some new buildings, some cash and more reliable electricity none of which have been important to them so far in their history. Attendant on these “inducements” of course is the removal of their ability to generate cash by farming poppies and the destruction of cultural mores the subjection of women and the application of traditional law for example that define them as a cultural group.

The evidence from Afghanistan today is that the bargain being offered is being rejected. Peace and prosperity are growing in those areas populated by ethnic minorities for whom the Afghan state provides a shield against Pashtun dominance but is being rejected in those areas in which Pashtuns are predominant. On this basis, “hearts and minds” is bad strategy because the willing acceptance by the Pashtuns, who are the soul of the insurgency, of the governance of a truly foreign state, parliamentary Afghanistan, is unattainable. Apart from it being highly unlikely to work it is also, however, bad strategy because it exposes rather than shields our critical vulnerabilities.”

The first step of any counterinsurgency campaign is to bring security to the population so that infrastructure can be developed. We have not been able to do this in the south, southeast, and eastern regions of Afghanistan. In the remainder of the country we conduct all operations (security and reconstruction) as if we were operating in a war zone. That costs us the respect of local peoples and a ton of money to pay western security contractors. There is no reason to purchase to end armored SUV’s and western security contractors to provide “security” in areas which we know to be secure.

Adding to that problem is our continued backing of a central government which is more a problem than a solution. That too costs us credibility in the eyes of the local people. That is why in my last post I advocated focusing on regional governing capacity, executing the current provincial reconstruction plans and going while leaving behind a robust military training and advising cadre.

American soldiers has been tipped off about a shipment of explosives coming across the Torkham Border crossing and were ready for it
American soldiers has been tipped off about a shipment of explosives coming across the Torkham Border crossing and were ready for it

Here is an example of a serious shortfall in our current approach to counterinsurgency fighting. The vehicle pictured above was stopped by the American army and Afghan border police at the Torkham border crossing. The army had been tipped off about a number of trucks bringing explosives across the border and this was one of them. The truck contained hundreds of pounds of Emulite, a commercial grade (5700m/sec burn rate) bulk emulsion explosive, nonelectric blasting caps, time-fuse and detonation cord. I can tell you with near certainty the explosives were headed to a black market dealer servicing road building or mining contractors.

That is a lot of Emulite which is a powerful commercial explosive - but it is worth much more on the construction black market than it would be if sold to a bomb making syndicate
That is a lot of Emulite which is a powerful commercial explosive – but it is worth much more on the construction black market than it would be if sold to a bomb making syndicate

Good industrial demolition material is impossible to buy and almost impossible to import into Afghanistan. Construction companies who didn’t do the math correctly when they ordered their demolitions will pay a king’s ransom for commercial explosives before taking the time and effort to import more. Requesting emergency authorization to import explosives brings the inevitable risk of daily performance penalties because the Afghan Government then knows you’re not blasting rock. I suspect the family in that Jingle Truck were from a marginalized smuggling tribe trying to break into the black market for construction grade demolition. Those are the kind of people who get dimmed out in Afghanistan. It’s always business – never personal.

But here is the point; Emulite is not the only explosive coming across the Torkham border; there are plenty of these coming across too.

ISAF armored vehicles do not stand up well to mines designed to take out a 60 ton main battle tank.   Note the date stamp – this was found yesterday on the main (still dirt) road to the Ghosta District Administrative Center – a route frequently traveled by American and Afghan military convoys.

The MK 7 anti tank mine is designed to kill tanks; our armored vehicles do not stand up to them well and it seems to me allowing even one across the border is unacceptable. We should have both drug and bomb detection dog teams on the border every day all day. That would take contractors because it would take a lot of dogs but you can set them up in a UN MOSS compliant compound for pennies on the dollar of what we spend on FOB bound units (both civilian and military.) But we don’t and it is impossible to believe that our inability to be proactive on that critical border crossing is not costing us in damaged vehicles and damaged personnel.

The MK 7 mine above was rigged to be command detonated but only with 100 meters of det cord so the trigger man would have had to be very close in to activate it. As I wrote here the best technique for detecting these types of mechanical ambushes is using local scouts on motorcycles. They are not heavy enough to detonate pressure plate triggers on anti tank mines and are able to poke around any areas which appear to offer cover or concealment to trigger men. Using local guys provides a certain amount of protection in insurgent plagued areas because they know the ground and the people.

We need to start thinking through in Afghanistan if we are to have any chance of leaving with our heads held high.

 

Posted on

Is Obama’s plan a Surge or the same thing done better approach?

When a large bureaucracy like the Pentagon is faced with making a major decision regarding an issue as complex as Afghanistan experienced observers know they will see one of two approaches. The first (and by far rarest) option is a radical departure from current operational methods representing a new way forward. The way soldiers from the SBS and Delta handled the fight in Tora Bora during the opening month of the war on terror sorry I guess it is now “overseas contingency operations” is a good example. Faced with a complex battlefield containing armed factions of dubious loyalty and motivation they improvised using small units to maneuver firepower in place of the manpower they did not have.

Their solutions or “lessons learned” according to the unit commander, Dalton Fury, were not recorded in the Army after action system and they have been forgotten probably because taking a truly decentralized approach when deploying American fighting forces is completely alien to senior Colonels and General Officers. The second and by far most common approach from the Pentagon is to do “more of the same but do it faster and better.” That is what the generals tried to sell President Bush back when he sold the surge idea to them. And it appears that is what the generals or most probably the national security team have sold President Obama. It will fail. Dismally.

There has been only one document I have seen in the last three months which shows a clear coherent understanding of the situation in Afghanistan. It was written by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher and can be found here. Congressman Rohrabacher is “speaking truth to power” when he writes;

“America then put its emphasis on establishing a central government based in Kabul as the dominant authority in Afghanistan, something no one – foreign or Afghan – has been able to do for centuries.

…A genuine commitment to decentralizing power and authority in Afghanistan is only part of the solution, but a critical one. This is difficult for military leaders, schooled in chains of command and top-down structure, to comprehend.”

The performance of our General Officer Corps in both Iraq and Afghanistan seems to back the good Congressman. They were not comfortable with and had to be forced into the decentralized operations which worked so well during the Iraq surge. They have been unwilling to operate in a decentralized manner in Afghanistan with the notable exception of the U. S. Marine Corps Special Purpose Task Force Afghanistan. That unit has repeatedly fought two to three hundred man Taliban formations with reinforced rifle platoons and beat them like a drum. They are now enjoying unrestricted freedom of movement and bringing security to the remote areas of Farah and Helmand Provinces. But there are only so many Marines the US Army, which continues to favor large isolated bases from which they can commute to the war, is clearly not inclined to operate in a similar fashion and our other allies do not have the ability (even those who have the will) to conduct full spectrum combined arms counterinsurgency warfare.

There are many reasons why this is so but until our allies get comfortable with the idea of very junior lieutenants and sergeants making the battlefield calls, committing their forces when and how they feel while controlling all air and ground delivered ordinance they will not be able to duplicate Marine success. And it takes years of dedicated specialized training to produce a military organization which has a bias for action and the ability to train junior officers and non commissioned officers well enough to be true battle leaders. Battlefield geometry, keeping your cool when things go wrong (as they always do) maneuvering men while controlling air delivered ordinance danger close that is not an easy day and it takes the right men who have the right training to pull off with any degree a flare or élan. More importantly it takes senior leaders with the moral courage and intestinal fortitude to step back and let the men of the ground fight. We do not have many senior leaders like that. Not many at all.

Defensive tactics which do not conform to counterinsurgency doctrine, are stupid, unsafe, and cause needles casualties. Here are three car loads of American soldiers in uniform driving like lunatics down the Jalalabad road in Kabul. They would be much safer if they spread out, mixed with civilian traffic and drove in a reasonable manner like us normal people do. But it is too much fun for these young men to speed around blocking traffic, forcing slow moving cars off the road, and being a general pain in the ass to the public at large. Not smart, not safe, not reasonable.
Defensive tactics which do not conform to counterinsurgency doctrine, are stupid, unsafe, and cause needles casualties. Here are three car loads of American soldiers in uniform driving like lunatics down the Jalalabad road in Kabul. They would be much safer if they spread out, mixed with civilian traffic and drove in a reasonable manner like us normal people do. But it is too much fun for these young men to speed around blocking traffic, forcing slow moving cars off the road, and being a general pain in the ass to the public at large. Not smart, not safe, not reasonable.

Large military formations are not only a hindrance to progress they are completely unnecessary. They seem to be part of a new strategy, hinted at but not so far reviled, of controlling the population centers and the main roads while attempting to bring redevelopment aid to the rural population. That my friends was the Soviet plan a plan that worked good enough for them to bring in about 80 times the redevelopment aid in their first eight years when compared to our bloated, inefficient, risk adverse efforts. I hear this from Afghans all the time by the way and I mean all the time – “why can’t the most powerful country on earth do a little better than the godless Soviets?” What can one say? I don’t know but I do know that there are hundreds thousands of unemployed young men in this country and each of them has only one goal in life and that is to get together enough money to get married. This is a powerful motivator in societies which strictly ban contact between men and woman unless they are direct family or married. These guys will go where the money is and right now the various Armed Opposition Groups (AOG) around the country are paying much better wages to those who will plant an IED or take a few shots at the infidels.

Now here is something interesting reportedly Joe Biden and “Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg, who argued in closed-door meetings for a minimal strategy of stabilizing Afghanistan that one source described as a “lowest common denominator” approach.” According to the linked article (from Bill Gertz who is a complete and total stud in my book for the excellent books he has authored) “The Holbrooke-Petraeus-Clinton faction, according to the sources, prevailed. The result is expected to be a major, long-term military and civilian program to reinvent Afghanistan from one of the most backward, least developed nations to a relatively prosperous democratic state.”

I hate to say this but I am on Joe Biden’s side of the debate. The way forward is using small teams comprised of civilians and military living in fortified compounds an working with Afghan officials at the district, province and shura level. Using the classic inkblot approach we could set up multiple teams in districts where the shura’s have invited them to come and help. Pashtunwali cuts both ways and we could use that code to our advantage by getting the invite in and holding leaders accountable when bad things happen in their respective villages. Bad things will happen by the way and it is important that we demonstrate resolve and commitment when they do. The ability to operate, even in hostile areas, with small groups is something I have blogged about in the past here, here and here. We did it before in 2001 and need to do it again because it is effective and very cheap. Last time I checked the United States was pretty much broke so the cost thing should be important. But more importantly there is am imperative documented in our doctrine yet ignored by our senior military leaders and that is YOU CANNOT COMMUTE TO A COUNTERINSURGENCY.

That tactic exposes your forces to the IED threat costing you in men and material while you gain nothing, win nothing, bring nothing to the people we are supposed to be helping, in short you spend American blood for not tangible good reason at all and that my friends is a crime. Passive risk adverse tactics cost more blood than going aggressive just look at the Marines down south for validation but we are building more FOB’s and sending more “presence patrols” out to be ambushed and shot up by enemies they cannot see or understand because they are isolated from the people and don’t know a damn thing about anything outside their respective FOB’s.

The kind of approach I advocate could produce an acceptable endstate by its very design. Go into the districts, finish the irrigation, road and school work which has already been identified in Provincial plans, and go home. Continue with the effort to train the Afghan military and use the embedded trainers and their units as your localized react force and you have a plan which conforms to current counterinsurgency doctrine. Low footprint, effective, pennies on the dollar to what we currently spend to support all the people we have deployed here the vast majority of whom never leave the bases to which they are assigned.

But we are not doing that. We are bringing in more forces and placing them on FOB’s. There is an expected “surge” of civilian experts but civilians operating under Department of State or US Military security rules are isolated from the population and of little use they tend to hit the DFAC early and horde the pecan pie too which is completely unsat. I was shut out seven days in a row in Kabul on the pecan pie front and am bitter I don’t get to eat at DFAC’s much which is why I get a little carried away on this whole pie thing. It seems from reporting that we are bringing in experts to help the central government build its capacity to administer this fractious land. That’s a great goal but it is also more of the same. Supporting a central government which is clearly every bit as much of a problem for the average citizen of Afghanistan as the warlords/Taliban are is not going to work well for anyone except the companies who win the lucrative contracts to bring civilian “experts” over here. This “Civilian Surge” is supposed to include a ton of lawyers and judges. What the hell do American lawyers and judges know about Afghan legal practices?   From the perspective of an American patriot I can state unequivocally that:

– The lawyers and judges will have zero impact on the Afghan legal system.

– There will never be enough Taliban car bombs, IED’s or direct fire attacks around Kabul to weed out these damn lawyers while they are in a combat zone and vulnerable. (I know lawyer jokes are easy but they are also hard to resist sometimes.)

So if they will make exactly the same contribution their peers have made in the last 8 years (that would no contribution at all) and there is no chance of enough of the lawyers getting killed over here to reduce their numbers and parasitic impact on the American people why send them at all?

Here is a Turkish Army convoy heading into a FOB behind a convoy of French paratroopers. The Turks never drive fast, mix in with the local traffic and do not man turret guns in the capitol. The Afghan civilians like the Turks a lot and go out of their way to point out the difference between how the Turks operate when compared to American, British, and French forces. A head of this group were two truck loads of Norwegian Special Forces who travel like I do in unarmored local vehicles. If I had gotten a picture of them and posted it I suspect I'd be inundated by requests from young women to come intern with Free Range International. The guys looked like young Vikings and they should be out with us doing good deeds daily rather than forced to sortie for a large FOB
Here is a Turkish Army convoy heading into a FOB behind a convoy of French paratroopers. The Turks never drive fast, mix in with the local traffic and do not man turret guns in the capitol. The Afghan civilians like the Turks a lot and go out of their way to point out the difference between how the Turks operate when compared to American, British, and French forces. A head of this group were two truck loads of Norwegian Special Forces who travel like I do in unarmored local vehicles. If I had gotten a picture of them and posted it I suspect I’d be inundated by requests from young women to come intern with Free Range International. The guys looked like young Vikings and they should be out with us doing good deeds daily with us rather than forced to sortie out of a large FOB

Here is an original idea. Not that original actually I got the idea from Old Blue. We have many other nations joining us here under the flag of the International Security Forces Afghanistan (ISAF) flag. These allies include military formations from Muslim countries such as Turkey and the UAE. Why not break them down into Provincial level so that our Muslim allies can provide legal and governance guidance? Forget using American lawyers, or judges, or correctional officers who do not know a thing about this country or its people. Let some of our Muslim allies step up the plate and do some heavy lifting. But the Department of State already has programs to provide police, legal, and correctional training with mentorship to foreign nations. They do not required any original thinking or customization and can be implemented with little effort and supervision by our overworked State Department bureaucrats. That these programs have not produced one iota of positive change since they started several years ago is irrelevant (apparently) to our government.

Another important point these civ mil teams should have females attached. The reason for this is that women in Afghanistan wield significant power inside the family compound walls. They may not be able to go to the bazaar without a male relative but inside their home it is a different story. They will rat out the men folk in a heartbeat if they think they (the men) are doing stupid things. Now imagine this you’re a man sitting in your home and you tell your wife “Mohammad and I are going to go out tonight and set in some IED’s for cash.” How many of you men out there could say that and just screw off with your mates for the night? Think things are different here? Think again guys wives are wives and your average Afghan will pull this kind of stuff at his own peril. Because the wives will exact their revenge not directly mind you but indirectly. Last summer when Amy Sun and her MIT crew were here was the first time I realized how powerful women are in Afghan society. Now the San Diego Sister Cites program had brought over another young woman who has never been in a post conflict zone and you can find her blog here. I do not know her well and have no idea what she will do and experience during her visit but I know Afghanistan and she is in for a treat follow her blog she writes well and see for yourself. And remember she is demonstrating how freedom of action and the ability to interact with the local population in an unrestricted manner can bring rapid improvement and understanding with that population. We have doctrine which stresses this point but do not have commanders willing or able to execute that doctrine.

The newest Milblogger in Jalalabad
The newest Milblogger in Jalalabad

Here is an extract from this recent report about our new strategy in Afghanistan:

Most of the American reinforcements are being deployed to the south of the country, a Taliban stronghold that is one of the largest opium-producing regions in the world. U.S. and NATO officials believe that the drug trade provides the Taliban with billions of dollars each year.

The Obama administration hopes to undercut the Taliban by launching a new counter-narcotics offensive in the Helmand River Valley and other parts of southern Afghanistan. The mission will be the primary focus of the U.S. reinforcements.

Under one facet of the plan, U.S. or Afghan troops will first offer Afghan farmers free wheat seed to replace their crops that produce opium. If the farmers refuse, U.S. or Afghan personnel will burn their fields, and then again offer them free replacement seeds. A senior U.S. military official described the approach as a “carrot, stick, carrot” effort.

I assume this bit a strategic wisdom has been blessed by the new ambassador our first active duty general to become an ambassador who was here as the guy in charge years ago. Back when General Eikenberry assumed command in Afghanistan we could drive down to Kandahar with no problem. By the time he left that was a guaranteed fire fight unless you were embedded in a military convoy and many of them were getting attacked too. It is impossible to generate “change you can believe in” using the same people who have yet to demonstrate any original thinking on this complex problem. Carrot, stick, carrot my ass. That is stick, stick and more stick at the end of which the poor farmer sells his 9 y/o daughter for 500 bucks to give the rest of your family a chance to make it through the winter. Wheat seed who thinks up this kind of madness?

Here is another tip for the military that is going to have to implement this new “mo better” plan. An Afghan farmer with a poppy crop in the ground has gone into considerable debt to get that crop started. Destroying his fields will leave him with nothing. He will be forced to sell his children to get out from under his debt to the drug lords. The fields belonging to the rich and powerful have never been touched to date by the poppy eradication teams and they won’t under this new strategy because the Afghan government will not allow them to be touched. I know that the media says drugs are fueling the insurgency and they are certainly contributing but the real winners in the drug trade are the landowners who rent the lots, seed and fertilizer to share croppers.   Those land owners can be found in Kabul and Dubai as well as   Quetta and Peshawar.   Our government knows this heck even the main stream media is getting around to figuring this out too. The large majority of Taliban make their money on the transport and security portions of the pipeline which is chump change compared to the big bucks being made by the land owners.

So as the new surge rolls out the mandarins of Kabul are most pleased they will make millions providing (or leaning on the providers) secure isolated giant FOB’s. They will be able to skim millions from the completely ridiculous and ineffective police and legal “mentoring programs” which has already deployed thousands of European and American police officers to Kabul where they toil daily in a secure purpose built facility churning out paperwork and having absolutely no impact at all on the ability of the Afghan police to do their jobs. They will make tons of money knowing full well the programs they are skimming millions from will not produce anything for the average Afghan which will allow them to retain power. Change you can believe in? Right.

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Combat Operator Podcast and the Civilian Surge for Afghanistan

I had a great interview with Jake Allen from the Combat Operator Ezine. He is just as talented on the radio as he is with the pen and it turns out we had met each other several years ago when his former rifle company commander Dave Furness and I dropped by his home in Salt Lake City. In the small world department I should be seeing the good Colonel tomorrow night when he swings through Kabul. Colonel Furness is irritating over two decades of infantry service, multiple combat tours, and he remains in perfect shape and looks like he’s about 37 years old. Smart as a whip, writes way better than I do, no bad back or trick knee or even good scars but a great friend and I could not be prouder seeing him doing so well. There was that kidney stone incident which (unfortunately for Dave) was witnessed by then Captain now Colonel Eric Mellinger acknowledged as one of the best comedic talent amongst our generation of infantry officers. That is a great story involving surprise, suspense, danger (Dave was driving when the stone hit) lots of bad language and a surprise ending. But you won’t get it from me if there is a Marine lurking out there looking for Mess Night material the FRI blog respects the USMC bashido code so you’ll have to look elsewhere. But it is a damn funny story and one which the good Colonel is most reluctant to tell.

Jake and I had wide ranging interview which touched on contractors and reconstruction a topic which is leading current news cycles. You can listen to the interview here. For those who are interested in the private security market you should bookmark Jake’s ezine he is an excellent writer and has a very astute read on the industry. Private security contracting is a growth industry and Jake covers the industry better than any other writer I know.

Afghanistan could use some civilian fire/rescue mentors with modern trucks and equipment. Especially if they could call in medevac birds and use the excellent military trauma centers for serious auto accident victims. That is the kind of operation which would generate nothing but goodwill from your average Afghan
Afghanistan could use some civilian fire/rescue mentors with modern trucks and equipment. Especially if they could call in medevac birds and use the excellent military trauma centers for serious auto accident victims. That is the kind of operation which would generate nothing but goodwill from your average Afghan

 

The “civilian surge” has been a topic getting much press as of late. There is little question that Afghanistan could benefit from a surge of civilian reconstruction types with the money and the ability to fund and supervise redevelopment projects. The question is will this “civilian surge” contain people who can do that. Judging from the feeding frenzy I am seeing in the private security market my guess is the answer is no. There are several large US AID prime contractors operating here and they all share similar traits. They have large corporate headquarters in Washington DC. They protect their field teams with expatriate security operatives and live in heavily fortified compounds which is consistent with the contracts they have been awarded. They have lots of corporate overhead to pay for. When they deploy teams into the Provinces it takes a ton of money. Because these are large corporations who are performing a very large contracts the management of money is very strict which I appreciate as a taxpayer but it slows everything down, especially on large complex projects.

I want to be clear about the fact that these companies are running good programs and are executing their assigned projects professionally. There is no question the people on the ground working for these companies are doing great work no question. The point is a ton of money for these projects goes into the front end and most of it is siphoned off before any comes out the receiving end. That fact which is a common complaint aired by Afghan politicians in the local press and thus a point not lost on the Afghan population is compounded with the lack of urgency and commitment with which aid is being delivered.

Work for cash programs can briefly employ massive amounts of manpower. But it takes internationals in the districts to allow these programs to make a significant impact
Work for cash programs can briefly employ massive amounts of manpower. But it takes internationals in the districts to allow these programs to make a significant impact

 

As I have said many times before you can still travel throughout the majority of Afghanistan without elaborate security measures. Internationals can set up very secure living compounds using the United Nations Minimum Operational Security Standards (UN MOSS) for about half the cost of building a compound to meet the standards on US AID contracts. We need a surge of civilians but it should be a surge of armed contractors who are able to live in the communities with local security. I blogged about exactly that kind of program here and it is this type of cost effective reconstruction that will be effective because it allows capacity building in Afghan firms while keeping the majority of the reconstruction dollars in the Afghan economy.

I would take that concept one step further by saying we should also consider attaching teams of armed contractors directly to maneuver military units. They could represent one of several current US AID programs which are designed to fund and mentor small to medium Afghan businesses. That would instantly magnify the already considerable positive economic impact of the current Commanders Emergency Funds Program (CERP) by allowing a commander to turn to his civvie contractor team and say “I want to get the machinery in here to open this green marble quarry find a program that can fund it.” That would take one phone call right to the ops guy in Kabul for ASMED or one of the many other US AID programs set up to create Afghan enterprises and you’re funded. Working with US AID money is a pain due to the required accounting and reporting procedures but with a small staff embedded into the military you can manage the paperwork delivering aid and starting capitol with precision. And it is dirt cheap compared to how we are doing it now and better yet it would directly support the efforts of maneuver commanders who are on the ground and know much more about what is needed than their US AID or State counterparts in Kabul.

The French are getting better at moving through the constricted Mahipar Pass. They are much more relaxed too as they have gotten very used to running this road which leads to Surobi
The French are getting better at moving through the constricted Mahipar Pass. They are much more relaxed too as they have gotten very used to running this road which leads to Surobi

 

Also mentioned in the podcast was a current shortage of weapons in the Kabul area. I was trying to find a good pistol for a friend and discovered that all the old sources are not selling any weapons at the moment. There are a hundred theories floating about concerning why this is the case I have my suspicions but don’t really know. What I can say with authority that it is not a positive sign. And then this pops up today in the media. Ten policemen and a district chief ambushed way up north in Jawzjan Province. There were some dusts ups in that province last summer between the police and armed fighters representing who knows but they didn’t amount to much with the ANP easily driving off their antagonists. The provincial chief of police says the Taliban were responsible and that he has also arrested four of the attackers. That is hard to believe so I put a call into the Bot but he’s in Mazar-e-Sharif which is completely locked down due to today’s New Years visit by the foreign ministers from Iran and Tajikistan. He’s not too sure Taliban would be poking around up there but is alarmed with the proficiency of the bad guys who did this one. Ten killed, four more wounded – that was an ambush conducted with a good degree of skillful planning and execution. We would hate to see that kind of stuff happening with any degree of regularity.

As I said the Bot is on lockdown but I’m not sure what that means. Here is more or less the end of our conversation.

Bot        “On lock down mate going to go on the piss with the boys”

Me        “how are you going to go on the piss if you’re locked down?”

Bot        “I’m not that locked down mate for God sakes man”

Me        “Oh then what does lockdown mean?”

Bot        “It means I’m going on the piss mate what’s the problem”

Me        “You know what I mean where is my Blog post?”

Bot        “Now you done it mate XXXXXX and further more mate here is another fact XXXXXXXXXX etc”

I can’t print the rest because then this post won’t get through my Dad’s net nanny which would precipitate a harsh email from him with foul language which somehow escapes his net nanny via the outlook program. Who knows how that works? For the hundreds who have asked the Shem Bot is fine and will post again once he has recovered from being “locked down.”

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Afghanistan as Vietnam

I am wrapping up my time in Kabul and getting ready to press embed with the Marines down south in early March. I am currently working on something I cannot blog about and it is boring. Inshallah I’ll have a story to tell soon in the meantime I have been catching up on some reading (when the net works here) during my downtime. I recently came across a Men’s Journal article written by Robert Young Pelton (RYP) on his brief embed with a Human Terrain Team. Mr. Pelton’s article was neither positive nor accurate and completely lacked the ring of authenticity. Old Blue over at Bill and Bob’s Excellent Afghanistan Adventure was the first off the mark questioning the factual content of Pelton’s article and he took it apart with his usual humor and sharp insight.

Amazingly RYP responded to Old Blue on his blog and other blogs and then engaged Old Blue in a direct email exchange where he threatened Blue with retribution from on high. That is called playing a weak hand where I come from normally a stunt pulled by a weak man. Blue was kind enough to forward me the correspondence and ask for my humble opinion on the matter. I spent the better part of a day reading various blog postings and related articles and I got a strong sense of deja vu. Then it hit me; Pelton was trying to come up with a Vietnam tale. This was his first installment of the Afghanistan version of Dispatches.

My Dad and three of my four uncles were career Marines like me infantry officers and there was seldom a time during the Vietnam conflict when one or more of them was not deployed in harm’s way. I have read everything I could about Vietnam since childhood and remember when Michael Herr’s Dispatches was published in the late 70’s. Dispatches is a travel log of sorts where the reader gets to hear the personal stories of the forgotten men at the front. The stories were typical of that period the generals were liars and clueless, the troops just wandered around the jungle not knowing where they were going or why they were there, they hated their officer’s and senior NCO’s, they committed atrocities and one of the front line grunts in the book carried a bag of severed ears with him. All the “cool kids” (fellow journalists) got together for dope smoking sessions and talked with authority about what was really going on because they were out and about covering the action and knew the real score. The military brass hung out in Saigon doing nothing constructive except for concocting lies to tell the press at the infamous five O’clock follies (the nightly press briefing in Saigon.) Some of the material in Dispatches was used in films like Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, and Platoon. Michael Herr and his fellow journalist defined the Vietnam generation in our collective consciousness and stuck them with a reputation that they did not earn and did not rate.

Major J.D. Lynch Jr Ops O for 2/26 at LZ Margo September 1968

I liked Dispatches when it came out because I thought it was an authentic account of “real war.” I was also 18 at the time and not the brightest 18 year old you either. I have since spent 22 years in the military as both commissioned officer and an enlisted man and now recognize Herr’s book for what it is. Fiction. Philip Caputo a soldier/author who served in Vietnam (Army infantry I think) is on record with this quote “Herr has told me, and he’s told other people, ‘I’ve made a lot of that shit up.’ But out of real stuff.”

Let me ask you dear reader, a question. How many Army general officers do you think ride around Afghanistan in “skull adorned black painted hot-rodded Blackhawks?” Yeah I’m betting on zero too. Where does such imagery come from? It comes from movies about Vietnam. I say that knowing full well that Old Blue has posted an apology to RYP on his blog acknowledging that he was sent a picture by RYP of a Blackhawk helicopter with a faded grim reaper type illustration on the rear of the right engine nacelle. Big deal that is a long way from hot-rodded black rotary birds with skulls painted on them. Blue was keeping his word as a real man does by posting that mea culpa but we all know what he saw in the picture and what Pelton describes in his story are two different things. But good on you Blue for being a man of your word.

There was nothing remotely “authentic” about the classic Vietnam movies (with the exception of the Marine Boot Camp portion of Full Metal Jacket) and many now know they did a disservice to the men who had fought and died in that conflict. I know their depictions of haunted veterans who were unable to cope were absolute nonsense, my Dad, all my friends Dad’s, as well as all the Dad’s of my High School classmates had served multiple tours in Vietnam. They had none of the typical symptoms of PTSD, they were not substance abusers, they were not haunted gilt ridden losers. They were and continue to be highly functioning reputable members of their communities. The book Stolen Valor is one of the best on this topic ever written and documents exactly where the common perception of Vietnam Vet as dehumanized, barely functioning, drug addled loser came from. It came from Hollywood and writers like Michael Herr. This is the legacy Pelton is reaching for in his hatchet job on the Bagram Human Terrain Team.

RYP is trying to sell a tired old Vietnam era song about Americans at war and he is wrong. I enlisted the military in 1979 the same year our president said he was thinking of enlisting because the military was such a proud organization full of quality people. Back in 1979 that was not the case which is why I know (at least on this topic) that President Obama was passing on contemporary democrat talking points. Another word for that is “telling a bald face lie” but who cares? President Obama’s fibbing on this subject pales in comparison with Hilary’s bizarre war stories or Biden’s blatant plagiarism of a British politician’s life story. Sorry the “stimulus Bill” saga has fouled my mood and I digress.

In 1979 the military was recovering from the debacle of Vietnam and had serious race, drug, and morale issues. I joined in 1979 because I had run out of viable options and needed to get out of the house. It turned out to be a brilliant move but at the time it was demoralizing. The military did not start to recover and then transform itself into the organization we know and love today until the early 80’s and that transformation started with a zero tolerance drug policy. It was also aided by a gigantic pay raise and a new mandate for professionalism made by Ronald Regan. Under President Regan the military completed its stunning transformation into the most professional Armed Forces the world has ever seen.

I am a rather harsh critic of our efforts in Afghanistan. I have written repeatedly on the topic of risk aversion and how that drives our tactics costing us momentum. I remain convinced that we will take more casualties by trying to avoid them then if we followed our own counterinsurgency doctrine and got off the big FOB’s. But I have seen no indication on the bases I have visited (and I have been on a lot of them) that today’s military is in any way similar to the force I joined back in 1979. General officers are not frivolous people who fly around the battle space dropping in on combat outposts for a five minute grip and grin. Lieutenants assigned to Human Terrain Teams are trying to adapt scientific theory into action in the midst of the most complicated environment any military has ever operated in before. Lt Jones, it seems to me, demonstrates initiative and enthusiasm for his difficult task well above the norm. The officers and troops living outside the main FOB’s are not clueless draftees counting down the days until they fly home on the “freedom bird.” They are mission focused and when they bitch the topic is normally about being able to do their jobs better by being allowed greater freedom of action and movement.

I do not agree with current “force protection” policies and what appears to me to be an addiction to high technology solutions for tactical problems. But I understand where this mind set comes from. The military does not like losing its men or woman in combat. They are also terrified of inadvertently offending local sensibilities by allowing the American military outside of the bases and into the local bazaars with the people. When you see the number of blond and red headed children in Jalalabad (a Soviet Army R&R base was located there back in the day) you can understand why senior commanders are worried.

The American media is not going follow RYP’s lead and try to play “got ya” with the Pentagon in the near future. They have invested too much getting Barrack Obama elected to try to shoe horn Afghanistan into their Vietnam template. The main stream media also has an access problem in Afghanistan. It is possible to travel throughout most of this country without elaborate security measures but I do not know of any media organization who has figured out how to do it. Quite a few reporters were kidnapped in Afghanistan last year while trying to get out on their own to develop their stories. Afghanistan is a dangerous place where you need to know what you are doing if you’re going to move outside the main cities. But it can be done and there are thousands of internationals in this country who live and work outside the wire with the Afghans daily to prove the point. The press has not broken the code on that and until they do their ability to deliver independent analysis will be minimal.

But there are guys like Pelton out there who are chasing little specks of Pulitzer dust and they know exactly the tone and tenor of the stories they need to write in order to achieve their goal. They are not going to be successful due to our military men and woman who are now able to enter the debate via the World Wide Web. Read Old Blue’s blog it is there you will find honest, pointed, at times even harsh criticism of how this war is being prosecuted. He is one voice in a sea of thousands of active duty mil bloggers who are not going to back down because some “jurno” threatens them. They also know more, explain more, and are funnier than RYP.

And there are guys like me and The Bot who are from the military, understand the military, understand Afghanistan, its people, culture and language, who are way outside the wire. We have the backs of our milblogging brothers and sisters in arms. I am absolutely disgusted at how Pelton depicted Lt. Jones in his article. It is the kind of yellow journalism which makes the blood boil. Gratuitous insults while depicting a young officer working a difficult, poorly defined billet is beneath contempt. It added nothing to the overall story line serving only to make Pelton look like a grade A number 1 asshole.

Pelton – if you want to be this war’s Michael Herr you need to get out like we do to get an understanding of this complex, dangerous, confusing situation the international military and aid agencies face here daily. Until you put in the time and effort that Old Blue or bloggers like I have you’ll have no voice and no real impact. Stop taking the easy way out you jerk.

I mentioned The Bot above because that knucklehead is two blog posts in arrears. He promised to cover me during my current gig and I’m now resorting to calling him out on the FRI blog. The Bot has been conducting a survey of all the Northern Provinces with just his driver as escort. I saw him briefly 10 days ago in Kabul and was disgusted to observe his Dari is almost fluent again. My Pashto is still pretty basic and I forgot most of my Dari but the Bot seems to pick this stuff up with little effort at all. Frigging annoying if you ask me. A little help in the comments section to motivate The Bot would be appreciated. He has fascinating tales to tell from the North which is becoming more dangerous and volatile. He doesn’t have too much good news but he does have fair and accurate news which is getting harder and harder to come by these days.

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Observations on Kabul and the private security market

Private security contractors have been in news lately mostly due to the ongoing Blackwater saga from Iraq.  I cannot comment on Blackwater’s operations in Iraq but do know a few of their contractors working Afghanistan. They seem to be above average in the quality department and better yet (the ones I know) are on interesting contracts. The Blackwater country director is a former FBI agent who has been in Afghanistan a couple of years longer than I have. He is unquestionably one of the most knowledgeable Americans on Afghanistan and the current administration should spend time talking with him.   Given the time he has spent in -country combined with the breadth of projects he has supervised there are few Americans who have is insight.

The problem contractors in this country come in two flavors, local companies that are unable to perform and companies spawned by former Department of State officials or closely tied to US prime contractors.   USPI, a Texas based company with all its corporate officers now under federal indictment is one example. The defunct, transparently corrupt World Services International (WSI) headed by Henry Wilkins is another.

The Afghan Army is trying to drive around like their American mentors
The Afghan Army is trying to drive around like their American mentors but Afghan drivers will not give way knowing the soldiers will not shoot at them

I have only seen a group of wild international contractors, rifles pointed out all windows, screaming through downtown traffic once and that was over two years ago. The international firms operating here are staffed with expats who, as a rule, have extensive in-country experience. They tend to move, some in hardened vehicles and some not, blended in with local traffic and obeying local traffic laws. That last remark is a joke there are no real traffic laws in Afghanistan just a number of unwritten rules revolving around perceived position vis a vis the bumper or quarter panel area of adjacent vehicles.

ISAF troops making an illegal U turn and menacing all Afghans around while
ISAF troops making a U turn in downtown Kabul and menacing all Afghans around them while doing so. We have been in Kabul for 8 years and one would think that maybe we could come up with better techniques

The good companies would sack international consultants immediately for conducting convoy operations which were out of sync with the local traffic. The US Army now has armored SUV’s which they drive aggressively by blocking traffic, hitting vehicles which do not get out of the way fast enough, and being a general pain in the ass. For the life of me I cannot figure out why it is that they continue to operate in Kabul as if they were on Route Irish back in 2005.

Kabul had changed dramatically since I moved to Jalalabad 14 months ago. The tension in the city is palatable. Old Afghan friends who were brimming with optimism back in 2005 no longer smile much or joke about when they too will visit Disney World in America. Mil blogger David Tate has a great post on being back in Kabul after a four year absence and he also has several posts detailing the misery of trying to move around the country as a reporter embedded with the military. I do not know David but find his observations spot on.

I awake every morning to the sound of multiple sirens peeling through the pre dawn chill. That is the newest technique of the American Army loud sirens to help alert traffic ahead to move out of the way. I hear those sirens all day long because both international and American military traffic has increased at least 10 fold in the past year. Convoy after convoy after convoy line the Jalalabad and airport roads all of them pointing guns at every vehicle or person who comes to close, all of them forcing traffic off the road in front of them, all of them looking every bit as stupid here as they would driving through Washington DC in a similar manner. Except now they have an abundance of SUV’s to add in the mix.

The other day I saw one of these SUV convoy’s (at least 8 vehicles) and in the middle was a large Expedition with an American flag placard in the left windshield and the two star placard of an American Major General in the right of the windshield. Is it me or is that not the most stupid thing you have ever heard? Why make it easier for the Taliban to kill an American General Officer?  

This is good to see - new armored SUV's with firing ports. The staff officers
This is good to see – new armored SUV’s with firing ports. The staff officers in Kabul don’t need these – ETT’s do.   Only is the south is the threat capable enough to warrant the use of infantry fighting vehicles

We are supposed to bringing security and infrastructure to the people of Afghanistan. Yet when our military interacts with the people they do so at the point of a gun with full body armor, helmet, ballistic glasses, special purpose fighting gloves (I have a pair myself because they look cool,) ear plugs, etc And do you know what the people of Afghanistan think? They think our military men and woman are cowards. When the Soviets were here their troops would go out on the town after duty hours (unarmed) to patronize local restaurants, stores, tea houses, and bars. The Expats around the country continue to do that to this day. The French restaurant in Kabul is the largest taxpayer in the country and it is packed every night of the week save Sunday.   I’ve seen senior military officers in uniform in the bar occasionally despite the ban on alcohol consumption by American forces.

A friend leant me his shortie upper with the super cool pig snout suppressor
A friend lent me his shortie upper with the super cool pig snout flash suppressor to use on the PSD gig I am currently working.   It is a vortex design which kicks all the gas and most of the noise out in front of the weapon.   A standard bird cage suppressor will give both shooter and driver a vicious headache if you have to shoot from inside a vehicle which is the most common scenario for contractors in Afghanistan

I am in Kabul filling in for the month for a friend who is home on leave. I’m working for one of the larger security companies as a “shooter” on a PSD team which is looking after business developers from the largest American firm working in Afghanistan. My co-workers (both Afghan and international) are fit, well trained, and very competent. My duties consist of escorting men around three or four offices in Kabul. Most of the people we escort have been here a long time. After working hours they jump in to unarmored beaters like mine to hit the town for a little night life. I have not asked but suspect all of them will tell you that having the lavish security they currently enjoy is overkill in Kabul. But what we think doesn’t matter the fact is that they are operating under contract from the US State Department and must conform to the security regulations in those contracts and the State Department requires their prime contractors to operate this way.

Your tax dollars at work - this is just one of many 600 man camps built by American
Your tax dollars at work – this is just one of many 600 man camps built by American contractors and filled with brand new Ford armored trucks. Even the UN is not this lavish in their pursuit of first class health and comfort.   We were supposed to spend billions helping the Afghans but what they got was this – a place where Afghans are not allowed to work or loiter.

Is it stupid? You bet. Is it necessary? Absolutely not and today’s multiple small arm/suicide bomber attack in Kabul doesn’t change my assessment one bit. Is this your government at work? It sure is (if you are American) and the excessive security driven overhead costs is the symptom of a large government machine which is not really serious about the mission in Afghanistan.

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Approaching the Tipping Point

The Fab Folk continue to work like demons to maximize their time on the ground. Yesterday they had successful test shots with their fabricated internet antennas to both a local NGO and the Nangarhar Public Hospital. They work every evening setting up the XO laptops they have sent in and early each morning they meet for a couple of hours to learn Pashto. Their teacher comes from the local school and is a life-long resident of the local village. He tells me that, despite the very mild winter we have had to date, that poverty is driving people to desperate measures. Frequently voices call out to him from the shadows at night “we are Taliban give us your wallet, watch and cell phone.” They are not Taliban but men he has known for years. I asked why this was happening because our understanding of Pashtun culture would prohibit such gross criminality inside one’s own community. “Yes this is true but we are now so poor that the elders do not ask young men where they got this or where they got that they praise them instead for bringing anything of value which will ease their poverty.” This is just a hint at the amount of tension under the surface of a population located in one of the more affluent portions of Afghanistan. Across the river at Little Barabad (official name) or Tutikas (the villagers do not like the official name) the villagers cut down their large shade tree which served as the communal meeting place and picnic site. The wood is not for them – it was sold to a “rich man” to generate cash to buy medicine for several of the children.

We have been running the road to Kabul a lot as of late taking people to and from the Airport in Kabul. A couple of days ago we took Dr. Dave and Dr. Art Mendoza back to Kabul for their flight home and saw the aftermath of a big fight the night before. We were warned prior to leaving by another security firm (we share all intel at all times in the field) that there had been much fighting outside Gamberi and sure enough when we got to the point in the road where the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police (ANP) had set up on the shoulders we saw this:

Looking east from the ANP position

Apparently a group of Armed Opposition Group (AOG) fighters sneaked up the draw between the ANA and ANP positions and shot up the truck above with small arms and RPG’s. They then fired at both the ANP positions to their west and the ANA positions to their east before withdrawing across the Kabul River. The ANA and ANP spent the next hour or so firing at each other. By the time we rolled past the ANA had taken their casualties and withdrawn leaving the poor police to sit in their shallow little holes to suck up all the rain we have been getting of late.

We are convinced that somebody in Laghaman Province is running an RPG gunners school because we see reports of RPG-only attacks on police posts along this portion of the road every 4 to 5 weeks. Normally they volley 10 rounds in rapid succession and withdraw causing little to no damage. But we know there is at least one RPG mechanic out there (most likely in Laghman) who can really put some English on his rockets and make very difficult shots consistently. I bet he has a group of students he is working with and what better way to train them then to take on the softest of soft targets like the silly deployment of ANA and ANP forces five feet off the main road? You could tell just by looking at them they had no fire plans, no fire control measures, and probably no plan at all. What they need is not more PowerPoint lectures from DynCorp contractors they need mentors with them in the field and there are not enough here.

Yesterday I was returning from dropping off James the Marine and because I had no choice had to make the return drive alone. As I rounded the Mahipar Pass I saw a wall of trucks pulled off to the side which indicated some sort of blockage in the tunnel. I drove far enough to get a look before turning around and saw it was a U.S. Army convoy stopped right in the middle of the pass. Once the traffic stops flowing in Afghanistan it is very difficult to start it going again because all the east bound traffic will move into every nook and cranny available to their front and block the road. It takes a good hour to get them out of your way so that a convoy can move again. But I was ready checking my wallet to find 100 Euros there I turned around and headed back to the German PX at the ISAF camp outside Kabul to score some premium German beer (at only 12 euro a case) figuring if I had to drive back in the dark I might as well do so with a truck load of beer.

The American convoy is stopped and the vehicles are stacking up behind it. The same is true to their fron so when they start moving they will have to thread their way through the local traffice which sort of defeats the whole purpose of keeping the traffic away from them at all times. It also makes it easier for the bad guys to target them.

Sure enough when I made it back to the Mahipar Pass it was clear and I was smoothly driving for the next 45 minutes until I got outside Surobi.   Rounding a corner I saw all the trucks parked in the right lane and taking the left lane I moved far enough down to see the same convoy parked in the middle of the road. They sat there for 30 minutes and then took another 30 minutes to get moving before stopping again maybe five miles down the road. I had worked my way up to the front of the line by then and 45 minutes into this stop I approached the convoy tail gunner to ask if they would let me through. He got on the radio and in a few minutes said “no because the road to the front is blocked (by the west bound traffic) and I couldn’t make it through anyway.” I asked him what the problem was and he replied “don’t know” which is exactly the correct answer because he has no business telling me a damn thing just because I’m a lone American with a CAC card. He brushed me off without a moment’s hesitation like a real pro I like seeing that kind of heads up thinking by our troops.

But the longer we sat the more upset the locals behind me became. Soon the sound of a thousand car horns filled the air. Over a hundred men were now standing around my vehicle trying to get the ANA troops to let them pass. As is usually the case there were several fluent English speakers amongst them and they came over to chat me up about what was happening. I was as pissed as they were and being a poltroon by nature freely admitted this. Then out of the crowd came a man with a very sick looking child and I was pressed into service to intervene on his behalf. I walked over to the tail gunner and asked if a vehicle with a medical emergency could get through. He asked how many more vehicles contain people with medical emergencies and I glanced back saw about a thousand vehicles stacked up behind me and said “probably about a thousand” which made the kid laugh. Again correct response from the tail gunner who seems like a great trooper because if you let one vehicle through the rest will follow TIA this is Afghanistan. To make a long story short it took me five hours to get back to the Taj. Several more times the American convoy stopped and each time the fluent English speaker from Leeds England came up to stand near my car. That is a very Pashtun thing to do he was watching out for me to ensure none of the drivers behind took out their frustrations on the lone American in their midst. Not that I thought this would occur but it was a nice gesture.

The struggle of the average Afghan to find enough to eat; the continued lack of performance by the Afghan security forces and the inability of the ISAF military to operate amongst the Afghans without treating every civilian they come in contact with as a crazed jihadist killer are linked. The United States and her allies have spent billions in Afghanistan and have very little to show for it. Afghanistan is currently in a death spiral not because of a lack of aid funds but rather how those funds have been spent and allocated. Every indication we see on the ground is that more money will be thrown into the same failed programs currently being implemented; another demonstration that we have not learned any meaningful lessons.

The reason these programs won’t work is that they are off the shelf solutions designed to make the lives of bureaucrats and contracting officers easy rather than bringing assistance to the Afghans. The Department of State has spent 2.5 BILLION bringing in police trainers, jail guard trainers, and lawyers to train the judges. Now what the hell does anyone at DynCorp or PAE know about Afghan police or Afghan jurisprudence? Nothing of course but that is not why they win these large lucrative contracts it is because they already have large lucrative contracts and therefore know how to work with DS contracting officers to make their lives easier. What is the return on our investment? After the large scale jail break in Kandahar last summer investigators discovered there were over 100 illegal cell phones in the hands of inmates. When we capture important Taliban leaders and send them to the main Afghan jail at Pul-i-Charki they are often back home before the soldiers who delivered them. The Afghan police are unreliable and prone to preying on the population. The current Afghan government is more of a problem than a solution. It is being out-governed by the Taliban in the many districts under Taliban control. Who “built capacity” with these Taliban? How many billions of dollars were spent teaching the Taliban to administer justice and civil control so effectively?

What the State department did was to use off the shelf solutions which had nothing to do with the situation in Afghanistan and everything to do with what was easy for the Department of State. After all when you spend all your time in Afghanistan locked inside a gigantic posh embassy compound how in the world would you know what the Afghans need? You are forced to work through the Afghan government and have any of you ever read one news story about the Afghan government that was not about the appalling amount of corruption found at every level in every ministry? I would say you have not but as an insider I will tell you there is one ministry the ministry of aviation is every bit as honest and effective as its international counterparts. In fact the Afghans working in that ministry are more honest than any politician to be found within 153 miles of Chicagobut I digress.

The State Department is and has been the lead agency in Afghanistan and their performance here is every bit the fiasco as their performance in Iraq. Remember that Paul Brenner was a compromise President Bush made between Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon he gave the boys at state a year to get Iraq back on its feet but Brenner used his 12 months to destroy the country and hamstring our military. He unilaterally made decisions for which we paid in American blood. The price tag for his incompetence paid by the Iraqis is probably beyond measure. Colin Powell, who foisted Brenner upon Iraq had more to do with the fiasco portion of that war than Rumsfeld but you’d have to do some serious archival research to know it because the nitwits in the MSM would not in a million years burden the people of America with good honest reporting which strayed from their preferred narrative.

That is not to say that the US Military has demonstrated the capacity, tactical flexibility, or ability to assess the situation on the ground, learn from past mistakes, and formulate a strategic framework under which all operations in Afghanistan can be conducted. They have not and we are risking another Vietnam and I am not talking about getting beaten by the rag tag assortment of Taliban and neo Taliban on the field of battle. I am talking about having the American peoples will to fight crippled by a media who are able to reveal that the Generals are spinning tales that are as stupid and uninformed as the old “five O’ Clock follies” in Saigon were back in Vietnam. Let me make this point clear I am not critical of the American (or any other ISAF) soldier who is over here doing his duty. Every one of them volunteered to join a military at war and their grit, determination to do what is right and courage are commendable. I am critical of the generals who seem unable to implement the very doctrine they tout as the answer to the counterinsurgency battle. I am not the only one who sees things this way please take the time to read this excellent piece by a retired Army Colonel who is much better writer than I am. He is calling for a massive forced retirement amongst American General Officers which would be a smart move given their lackluster performance and one with serious historical precedent.

The only reason we are not at the point where the American people start to treat their military in the manner it was treated in the early seventies is that our media is even more incompetent than the Department of State or the Pentagon. If we had the same type of reporters as the ones who worked Vietnam year in and year out they would be able to throw the BS flag at every single briefing they are given because the things I hear the big Army saying about the situation here are flat out nonsense. This situation will not last much longer. The drive by media is starting to get a clue as I saw when talking with Martha Raddatz the Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent from ABC news. The only thing stopping her from getting a really comprehensive first hand view of how silly the DS and military approach is to this conflict is her own silly corporate “force protection” rules. But she got an earful from me and spent a few hours roaming about the countryside like the thousands of other internationals who live and work here. Not that you can do that in every district or province in Afghanistan there are many where it would now be suicidal for a westerner to walk around knowing where you are safe and where you are not is the most basic function of military intelligence. Why we cannot figure that out and act accordingly is beyond me.

Here is the connection to my rambling observations. If our billions of dollars went to implement the infrastructure improvements which the Afghans at the district level have been pleading for during the last six to seven years you could instantly start employing massive amounts of idle unemployed men. But you cannot do this with the Department of Sate contracting vehicles nor through large, bloated, international companies like Louis Berger or DynCorp or PAE or KBR or any of the other current “implementers” who are receiving most of the reconstruction monies. You need a company like Louis Berger to build big things like hydro electric dams, posh embassy compounds, or international airports. You do not need Louis Berger to build roads and schools. The Afghans can do that themselves. You also don’t need the nitwits of Foggy Bottom deciding how to implement a reconstruction plan because what you get is what the average Afghan sees now. Lots of police posts, government office building and training bases being built for the very people and organizations who abuse them, steal from them and fail to protect them from other (non uniformed) criminals or the Taliban. The only way forward are civil military teams who are embedded into the community, who stay in the community and who are able to green light and supervise Afghan designed and built irrigation, road, and micro hydro projects. An excellent prototype of exactly this kind of team was working in Afghanistan back in the early days before Big Army came and put all the SF teams back inside the large FOB’s. It will be the topic of my next post.

Let me stress something my friends and that is time is running out for us in Afghanistan. Soon the MSM is going to discover they are missing a great opportunity to play in their favorite game of pin the tail on the Pentagon spokesman. They are still sore at the military for making them collectively look like a bunch of know-nothing amateurs back in 2003 during the massive military embed for the storming of Iraq.

I asked the local headmaster what he was going to do about the highway men who lurk in the shadows around Bagrami but he said it is no longer a problem and would say no more. That means the Taliban have stepped in and are now active right behind my guesthouse. In time we will have to reach some sort of accommodation with them. We are not going to be attacked because the local people would not allow it and the Talibs, if they are here, are local people too. Plus we have excellent fields of fire, Pashin (not Pashtun) tribal fighters for guards and lots of guns and ammo. Local Talibs do not attack hard targets like us for good reason they are trying to feed their families too and will be of little use to them if they get “seriously kilt” by the Free Rangers at FOB Taj.

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Fab Lab Surge and ABC News

The Fab Lab team has arrived and is now hard at work.  They are blogging daily and you can monitor their progress here. They’re doing cool stuff like fabricating antenna’s to share our fatpipe internet with the local schools and NGO’s. They’re  raising money to buy XO Laptops for every 6th grader in the local (Bagrami) school. They’re setting the local kids up with a tee shirt business to fund the Jalalabad FabLab operations and the local kids are beside themselves with opportunity that just landed on their doorstep.

Amy and her roommate Kieth from MIT – the Fab Lab advance party

We have had to run up to Kabul and back several times to get all the Fab Folk to Jalalabad. The Jalalabad to Kabul road is a vitally important supply route to both the military and the government of Afghanistan. There were several attacks on the road this past summer and there continues to be problems on it now despite the winter weather. We saw several interesting things along the route and the first was the number of French Army troops transiting from Kabul to Surobi.

French troops on the road outside of Kabul

Surobi is a large hamlet half way between Kabul and Jalalabad, last August the French suffered a humiliating defeat in the Uzbin valley which is just to the north of Surobi. The town has long been considered to be sympathetic if not supportive of Gulbiddin Hekmatyar and his party Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HiG.) We see sunburned adult males with high-water trousers, tennis shoes, and black turbans every time we pass through Surobi. They could be Sheppard’s or gold miners but it’s a safe bet their Taliban fighters hitting Surobi in for in-country R&R (rest and recreation).

The French have been serious about establishing a presence in Surobi since their first unfortunate encounter with the Taliban. They are keeping units in the field 24/7; have launched several operations which have netted some prominent local commanders (according to UN incident reporting). It’s good to see our ISAF allies taking the initiative, going on the offensive and clearing out such an important area.

But after you clear an area you have to hold it and it will be interesting to see how (or if) they do that. The operations in Surobi are not impacting the repeated attacks on the Kabul/Jalalabad road – with one exception. We’ve heard from reliable sources they tracked down and killed The Mechanic. It appears to be true too because it’s been months since we’ve seen his signature long range pin point RPG shots nailing tankers. The tankers are still getting nailed but only other portions of the road that allow ambush from rifle and machinegun range.

As noted in previous posts these occur in the Tangi valley area east of Surobi and in portions of Laghman Province below the Tangi. Both the ANP and ANA have posted small units along the road to augment the numerous permanent police posts. As you can see from the pictures below the positions they have set up are weak at best and their patrol routine, which appears to be sitting by the side of the road, is not proving very effective.

Typical ANP deployment on the Jbad – Kabul road

ANP machinegun crew – they are not dug in and they don’t move so they are not accomplishing much

Here is an intel report from one of the PSC’s (the private security companies in Afghanistan do a lot of intel sharing with each other.)

Laghman Province, Qarghayi District, Route 1-area of Tangy

AOG Vehicle Checkpoint 05 January 2009, between 1630-1700 hrs

A doctor who works for a NGO was returning to Jalalabad from Kabul alone in his private car, when his vehicle was forced to stop by a group of armed men. The doctor was then questioned about his work and personal behaviour. He was finally allowed to proceed unharmed when, on seeing the cassette player in the vehicle, the armed men instructed the doctor to play a cassette found in the vehicle. The cassette played was a religious tape and satisfied the requirements of those who had stopped the car. Despite reported increased security force deployments, this is the third reported instance of AOG activity on Route 1 in the Tangy area since 31 Dec 08. All three incidents have occurred in daylight hours and two have been attacks on military vehicles. These incidents should demonstrate to all the risk of travel along Route 1 between Kabul-Jalalabad at any time of day. Any international staff using Route 1 should expect further instances such as that outlined in this report and seek alternative means of travel between Jalalabad-Kabul.

Along with the above report, we have made several trips the past few days along the route. A few ANA vehicles have been pulled off the side of the road about half way back to Kabul, and the soldiers were in a defensive posture behind their vehicles, weapons pointed at the high ground. Most likely some pot shots taken at the ANA as they passed thru.

The Kabul to Jalalabad route is one of the most important in Afghanistan. The effort being expended to secure this route is currently being wasted because the troops are being deployed in poorly sited positions and being tasked to do nothing other than sit there. There is an easy fix and that would be to embed and infantry squad into the Qarghayi District ANP headquarters with a mission style order. It should sound something like this; “Sergeant you’ve got six months to work with these guys and stop any and all attempts to attack this vital route, go down there scout it out, come up with a plan and I’ll see you in five days so you can brief me on your plan. ”

Winning the IED battle requires that you kill the IED makers and you can only do that if they are unmasked by the people. To reach the people with the consistency required to gain that level of cooperation requires that you leave the big armored vehicles and spend time (lots of it) among the people. I am pretty sure that if you consult the Pentagon’s counterinsurgency manual you’ll find that it says more less exactly the same thing.

It is always a good sign to see American soldiers getting a handle on the recent attacks

There is hope for those of us who use the Kabul Jbad road frequently and that is the appearance of a small American patrol right in the heart of the Tangy valley visiting the local ANA checkpoint. Inshallah they will be spending some time and effort trying to help the various small unit commanders develop a more aggressive plan to secure the route. We did not encounter any problems on our numerous trips to Kabul and back. What follows is some photo blogging about the Fab Folk we are hosting and some of the things they are up to.

Kieth, Steve and Carl from the Fab Folk team. Carl is from South Africa, Kieth and Steve are Americans. The Taj manager Mehrab is pulling interpreter duty – he is between Steve and Carl

Smari and Andres – Fab Folk from Iceland

Miss Lucy, a former US Navy officer, getting ready to cross the Kabul river from Little Barabad

Steve and Keith getting ready to cross the river to Little Barabad

The Fab Folk took a box of stuffed animals with them to Little Barabad. Here is a great shot of the girls watching them cross the river

We hosted ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz at the Taj yesterday.

Here’s a link to Martha’s first news story from her visit to Jalalabad.

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