Free Range International

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click HERE for The Baba Tim Go Fund Me page

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

CMC Interview

General John Allen

Brigadier General David Furness*

Tim Lynch

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

The Inchon Dwyer Group went live today with the All Marine Radio component of the All Warrior Radio Network up and running at allmarineradio.com. Back in 2010 I had a chance to visit the 1st Marines (call sign Inchon) at Camp Dwyer and wrote about my good friend Mike ‘Mac” McNamara and the 1st Marines CO, Col (now BGen)  Dave Furness. Mac is the founder, CEO and driving force behind the Inchon Dwyer Group which has big plans to mobilize the veteran community to effectivly address mental health issues.  At 1100 EDT today (1 June 2016) All Marine Radio will be broadcasting their first interview featuring the Commandant of the Marine Corps General Robert B Neller, USMC. Hit the link above and give it a listen and also take the time to watch Mac’s YouTube video explaining the mission of The Inchon Dwyer Group…you’ll be hearing a lot about them in the future. 

Inchon is the call sign for the 1st Marine Regiment – currently deployed in southern region of the Helmand Province as Regimental Combat Team 1 (RCT 1).  They are  operating out of a large FOB in the middle of the Dasht-e Margo (Deseret of Death) about 50 kilometers from the Provincial capitol of Lashkar Gah, named Camp Dwyer.  Unlike other FOB’s I’ve visited this massive base has lots of room but very few people. The Marines don’t like FOB’s much and having (by design) a lean tooth to tail ratio (trigger pullers to support personnel) this is what one would expect to see.

RCT 1 is commanded by another close friend of mine Colonel Dave Furness, USMC, of Columbus, Ohio. Like my friends featured in previous posts, Colonel Paul Kennedy USMC and Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Kenny USMC, Dave was on the staff of the Marine Corps Infantry Officer course with me back in the early 90’s. The four of us also commanded recruiting stations in the late 90’s (the Marines take recruiting seriously) and as is often the case in the Corps we would bump into each other in places like Okinawa, Korea or Thailand when assigned to Fleet Marine Force infantry units.

When I arrived at the RCT 1 headquarters building I was shown into a large office where Dave was waiting with a warm smile, big bear hug and man was he a sight for sore eyes. We sat down and Dave started reading me in on his view of the operational situation he’s dealing with in the Southern Helmand. I started taking  notes:

“Timmy planting guys in the ground is easy, I don’t even worry about that, leaving it to the Battalion Commanders. You know what I worry about? The time horizon. That’s my problem because it impacts my grunts and I’m the only guy in this lash-up who can effect it. The main problem we face here is that the poppy has a value added chain. A farmer is given the seed, he is given the fertilizer – poppy doesn’t take much water or care while growing – and at harvest time he is given guys who score the flowers and collect the dope. At the end of the season he is given a portion of the harvest to sell or barter. The dope is then moved, processed and smuggled out of the country. Poppy has a well established added value chain which provides employment for lots of people while making life easy for the farmer. It costs him little to grow and doesn’t take much work. We want to sell him seed and fertilizer for a crop which is difficult to grow and much more susceptible to failure due to bad weather, floods and insects. We want him to harvest it and want him to take it to market and sell it. There are no value added processes to employ other people. There is no cold storage, no food processing plants, no grain elevators, no good roads, and no teamsters to truck produce using economies of scale.  What would you do if you were a farmer in southern Helmand?”

Readers who have been following the Afghan campaign over the years must be depressed at hearing this. What Dave identified as the problem is exactly what military and development experts identified as the problem nine years ago.

We talked about why, after so long, we’re still talking about the problem instead of fixing it but I don’t want to get my buddies in hot water for bitching about how difficult it is to do what should be easy so I’ll move on to something I also found interesting – the time horizon. Like every other commander in theater Dave is frustrated to the point of insubordination with how slow we are at funding and executing projects. More from Colonel Furness:

“I’m not doing much clearing; the 7th Marines (who rotated home a few weeks ago) did all the clearing. Paul (who commands RCT 2 in Delaram) is fighting like a lion up north right now but we’re pretty much policing up small cells of die-hards which isn’t that hard. Marjah is still active but as we expand out of the district center we’re getting that under control. I’m still losing guys, I still take KIA’s and I have had several Marines lose limbs. I hate that, hate seeing my guys get hit but we’re dishing out more than the bad guys can take so the kinetics will die down. What I want for my Marines is a reasonable time horizon for reconstruction projects so they can see the fruits of their sacrifice.  I can do the paperwork for 40 or 50 projects which I know will create the value chain needed to beat the poppy and there is no chance that me or my Marines will see any of it done, or even started, even if they get approved and “fast tracked.” My guys are patrolling three times a day, eating Mr. E’s or local chow, they sleep on the deck in the dirt and I want them to see why they are doing this. We like the Afghans; every one of them we talk to asks for two things: all weather roads and schools for their kids. They know they are doomed to a lifetime of hard labor with no chance at upward mobility because they are illiterate, so they want a better life for their children. My Marines who are out there living in the dirt and heat and filth with them want the same thing. But I can’t build schools with my CERP funds, nor can I hire teachers with my CERP funds and working through the regional contracting command to program money for those things is like pulling a diamond out of a goat’s ass. It is just doesn’t happen.”

I wanted to talk war but the warrior wanted to talk value added chains and time horizons. “We’ll talk about that later in detail with the staff, I have a treat for you, lets go see Mac.” I had not seen Mac since 1994 and had no idea he was deployed here with Dave.

Major Mike McNamara USMCR, left active duty in the late 90’s, moving his family to North Dakota where he has a regular job, coaches the high school baseball team (his Dad managed the Boston Red Socks) serves on the city council and has his own radio show. Mactalk has got to be among the most entertaining radio shows in the nation. Mac is one of the smartest, funniest people I have ever met. That’s saying something too – Jeff Kenny is so funny that The Bot couldn’t eat chow around him. Jeff would come up with totally bizarre observations that were so funny Shem would have soda coming out of his nose or start choking on his food he was laughing so hard. Mike doesn’t drill with the reserves and only puts on the uniform when his friends ask him to come run their Combat Operations Center (COC) when they go to war. This is the third time he has been called and it is also the third time a general officer has had to tell the manpower weenies at HQMC to shut up, activate McNamara and send him overseas without delay. Mike will never be promoted past the rank of Major and couldn’t care less – when his buddies call he drops what he’s doing and comes overseas for a year at a time.  Every time.

Mike was set up in the COC like a grand pasha with several computer screens and a few log books arrayed in a semi circle in front of him. He was in the process of planting some guys into the ground who had been foolish enough to start sniping at a Marine patrol. We watched the feed from a Reaper who was loitering about 2o,ooo feet above the doomed Taliban – it was invisible, inaudible, and alert.  The Reaper was hanging Hellfires on its weapon pylons and as we watched it sent one screaming towards four villains when they huddled together next to a wall out of sight of the Marines they had just attacked.

The Hellfire is a supersonic missile but when it makes its final course correction just prior to hitting target it slows to subsonic speed. The sonic boom gets ahead of it so that the targets hear it about 1.5 seconds before it strikes.  Sure enough three of the four look straight up at the sound while the fourth immediately started running like an Olympic sprinter. A bright flash and the three Lookie Lous’ disappear – the sprinter starts to stagger clearly wounded. Within the hour he would be joining us at Camp Dwyer where he received  state of the art medical care and will be kept in the base hospital until well enough to be turned over to the Afghan Army.

The Hellfire is pinpoint accurate with a limited ECR (effective casualty radius).  Designed to kill enemy armor the military has discovered it is the perfect weapon to shoot at human targets because they can take out guys leaning against a wall without any damage to the wall or people standing just a few feet away.

The morning news feed contained this story: yet another front line dispatch about restrictive rules of engagement. Which was most timely because I asked Mac about that yesterday and I give him the last word.

“This is “smart guy” war dummies get people killed here just like they did in al Anbar Province (Iraq).  The current ROE emphasizes the preservation of civilian life except in extreme cases which is fundamental to winning the civilian population and also fundamental to “winning the peace.”  Anybody who doesn’t understand this is either stupid or inexperienced in this business.   When our Marines are in contact near structures or civilians and ask us for supporting fires we ask   “are you unable to maneuver?”  Answer: “…wait one… then you get “…we’re good, we can still maneuver…”

Even though it’s harder you restrain your firepower allowing the ground force to work the problem while we get attack helicopters, or jets or drones into a position to use precision weapons is how you keep the pressure on miscreants until you can whack them.  This is smart guy war from squad to RCT (Regimental Combat Team) level.

We also use our air assets to do “show of force” runs in order to suppress accurate small arms fire and that works too.   There are creative non-kinetic things you can do before you have to drop the hammer. Our Marines are great at exercising restraint; it’s amazing to me to see them work each day.

My take on those who bitch is that they haven’t studied the ROE close enough to learn the “in’s and out’s”. We run rotatory and fixed wing CAS (close air support) multiple times every day. We understand killing civilians sets the effort back in a huge way… especially when we are beginning to see so many positive signs in the AO. BUT, we know we can protect our Marines and we do. Smart guy war is harder, it demands more from both the Marines in contact and my guys who are just itching to unload ordnance on the bad guys.

I’ll tell you what’s tough and that’s the days after we have had our own killed or badly wounded. Those days are the most challenging in terms of restraint. When we’re evaluating targets on those days you can feel the vibe in the room is different. That’s when the adults have to show up and keep things solid. It’s not easy and it’s not fun but that’s what we’re paid to do; be the adults.”

Facebook sent me a reminder about a post that went up 5 years ago and asked it I wanted to re-post it. I did then went to read and realized it was probably one of the better more prescient posts I ever wrote so here it is….back on the front page of FRI exactly 5 years after first being published.  It even has click bait if the form of two of must attractive and gutsy Free Ranges in the land. But the video at the end is disturbing …… those kids are fighting age now.

I ended my last post with an observation about the importance of how wars end. I was assuming we started bombing Libya with the intention of using the military to achieve an appropriate political endstate (because that’s how this is supposed to work).  But that isn’t what we are doing in Libya….I’m not sure what we are doing but it has nothing to do with an acceptable political endstate. It appears we’re bombing Libya because Obama feels we need to bomb Libya which brings up the question of where the are the Joint Chiefs? I know where they are….their where their predecessors were as documented in the excellent book Dereliction of Duty. Obsequious is not a word that should be applied (ever) to senior general officers but there it is.

I’m all for killing Col Gadhafi because he killed Americans; a lot of them in Berlin and over the skies of Lockerbie Scotland. I don’t expect Obama to come up with a rational plan but for some strange reason assumed the NSC and Pentagon had a plan that made sense in the context of our national strategy. The NSC is now headed by a political appointee with no previous military or national security experience named Tom Donilon. There is the near universal confusion about what the American military’s mission in Libya is. Who is calling the shots on deploying military assets? What is the end game? Meanwhile the Pentagon is focusing on the things that really matter: force feeding acceptance of openly gay service members and retro fitting submarines to accommodate female sailors.

Mark Styen has done the heavy lifting on this issue with an excellent assessment that ends:

But lost along the way is hard-headed, strategic calculation of the national interest. “They won’t come back till it’s over/Over there!” sang George M. Cohan as the doughboys marched off in 1917. It was all over 20 minutes later, and then they came back. Now it’s never over over there not in Korea, not in Kuwait, not in Kosovo, not in Kandahar. Next stop Kufra? America has swapped The Art Of War for the Hotel California: We psychologically check out, but we never leave.

I must add this gem which, as the Bot is my witness, is an almost exact replica of conversations I had over and over during the summer of 2008 with liberal USAID contractors at the Tiki Bar.  Obama has turned out to be worse than my worst summer 2008 nightmare. It is no longer funny (but the clip below is).

The ongoing revolts in Syria, Libya, Bahrain and Yeman are important to American interests but you need to know something about the region to understand that. That type of specialist knowledge is hard to come by in Saul Alinsky seminars, Reverend Wrights church sermons or the Harvard Law School.

While on holiday I saw this article on an airstrike targeting a Taliban commander that ended up killing civilians.  The article also helpfully points out that nine kids were killed in the Pech Valley earlier in the month which prompted harsh condemnation  from President Karzai.

I’m not so sure about what the deal was with the Pech Valley airstrike except to point out that I know a few of the attack helicopter pilots based out of Jalalabad and they know every stinking inch of the Pech Valley. I doubt the veracity of the report and will address that in a minute because this story linked above about Naw Zad has my attention. There is no way this bombing went down as reported. Here is why I can say that with near total certainty without knowing a thing about what went on with this strike.

The unit that was on the ground in Naw Zad  (1st Battalion 8th Marines or 1/8 in Marine speak)  has rotated home and the battalion now working the battle space has been on deck maybe two weeks. Battalions who have just arrived in theater are not given a long enough leash to do whatever the hell they want; it is inconceivable that they came up with a “these two cars have a Taliban commander in them” plan and were then able to talk the Regimental Combat Team they work for (and I know its commander well) into letting them vehicles containing persons unknown with attack helicopters. The Naw Zad Valley is a flat, treeless expanse of high desert. If the battalion thought they had a Taliban commander driving up or down it why not just stop the cars and grab him?

When aviation assets attack moving cars which reportedly contain high level Taliban it is a safe bet that the hit is driven by intelligence. Normally that is supplied by the CIA and the hit has to be given a green light by someone from on high. I would bet money that a “walk-in” targeted this car and the NDS vetted him for their CIA colleagues. That is how we  killed 27 woman and children attending a wedding in Nangarhar Province back in July 2008. Or when we  killed over 2 dozen children at a wedding party in Kandahar in November 2008, or….I could go on and on.

The common denominator with these botched attacks was human intel fed into the system by “walk-in” informants of dubious background and character or fed to our FOB bound intel people by the un-FOB bound Afghanistan intel people who have scores to settle. How many innocents have to die before we learn we cannot put all our eggs in the electronic warfare basket and start to develop our own human intelligence capability?

It’s not that hard to get off the FOB and stay off the FOB, my children did it. Grad students from MIT do it…which reminds me the Synergy Strike Force girls are back in Nangarhar staying at the Taj and doing some super cool medical and social networking stuff.  Jenn’s blog is here and Rachel’s blog is here – Rachel brought her husband Juan Rodriguez along and he’s a pro shooter (photography type) with a good eye and great glass on his camera – you should spend some time on both blogs. As you can see in the picture below hot chicks can stay off the FOB and roam around with no worries ….why can’t our HumInt teams do the same?

The Pech Valley

Earlier in the month ISAF was accused of shooting up 9 teenagers in the mountains of the Pech River Valley. The Army attack helicopter pilots who work that part of the country have memorized (it isn’t a big valley) every attack point in the Pech Mountains where it is not unusual to see Taliban fighters in their teens. They tell me that when they here where in the valley they are being called to fight they will know exactly where the Taliban are because they run up there to get in firefights almost daily. Mountains limit your options for effective ambush sites – our pilots know where they will be and have excellent situational awareness regarding the normal pattern of life of Hill Pashtuns. Army attack pilots don’t light up people in the mountains for no good reason so there is no doubt in my mind that if they smoked 9 teens it was because they were carrying weapons and firing at Americans.

What President Karzai should be upset about is the video pasted below. This video horrified (and I mean horrified) my Afghan staff.  I didn’t intend to show it to them but one of the cooks heard the music from the video and walked into my office to see why I was playing Jihadi music. Within minutes the whole staff was watching in mute horror before wondering off in stunned silence tears running down some of their cheeks. This video is what should be concern the Afghan elites but it’s not…why?? I suspect the elites can’t extort cash out of the Taliban over videos like this so why bother them.  The Americans – they pay and pay and pay.  And look what we have wrought.

Free Range International (FRI) was invited by our favorite Hollywood insider, the lovely Kanani Fong, to review the film A War and as reward she put me in touch for an interview with the producer Tobis Lindholm . I set up on the Baba Deck started the film, and when it was over found myself just sitting in stunned silence trying to figure out why this film had upset me. I emailed Kanani who emailed the producer who emailed me the info to watch it again (it’s a one time password) and again I watched it, slowly and began to understand what it was all about. This film should be required viewing for every idiot political in the Western world who thinks it’s a great idea to nation build.

The cinematography, tight battle shots, clean story line and understated tone reminded me of another military classic, Breaker Morant. Breaker Morant exploded in popularity around the world and garnered too many awards to list here. I hope A War will have a similar reception.

A War follows a Danish infantry company commander as he is prosecuted by his own government over collateral damage he may or many not have inflicted (this is never really established) and the toll it takes on him and his family. That the civilians sitting in judgment of him have no idea of the pressures or realities facing their fellow countrymen on the field of battle is an obvious plot line that is handled with tact. Directed by the talented Tobias Lindholm and staring Pilou Aesbeck (Game of Thrones) with a supporting cast of unreasonably attractive Danish folks, the film sucks you in and never lets go.

The movie is based, in part, on the prosecution of a Danish company commander charged with the illegal killing of 4 men he contends were planting IED’s near a Danish base in the Helmand Province on the night of October 23, 2011. The Staff Judge Advocate ended up dropping the charges when Task Force Helmand (the Brits) were unable to produce the evidence as promised. I think the issue was the credibility of the source or lack of a clean chain of custody from source to prosecutor. Regardless the case never went to trial but one can imagine the toll paid by the company commander in question.

The first half of A War introduces the Danish company commander Claus Pederson (played by Pilou Aesbeck) and shows why he has been charged with the deaths of civilians. We are introduced to the concept of PID (positive identification) during the exceptionally realistic combat scenes. We see the Danes paying scrupulous attention to their rules of engagement. We watch them allow clearly armed Taliban to move through their area unmolested. When an armed Taliban stops his motorcycle to plant an IED; they plant him, from 500 meters out, with two rounds into the 10-ring. These lads were good infantrymen, patient, talented and professional to a fault.

During one of the ensuing patrols all hell breaks loose when the Danes are sucked into a village that turns out to be a complex ambush. In order to get a medevac flight in to take his wounded out the CO (Pederson) calls in tac-air on one of the adjacent compounds from which he was taking fire. Week’s later Staff Judge Advocate officers show up with some photos, allegedly from the targeted compound, of dead woman and children. The company commander is immediately sent home to face trial for the deaths of these civilians.

At this point the fact that the Taliban fire died off after the compound in question was hit is irrelevant – the issue becomes did he know exactly who was in that compound when he smoked it and that, of course, is a question that would be impossible for any human in his position to answer.

As the trial progresses you want to hate the prosecutor and heap scorn or contempt on the three-judge panel but that’s impossible. The officers of the court come off as intelligent, reasonable people doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. They wear sensible earth toned natural fibers, ask reasonable questions, they are the kind of folks you’d like to hang out with in a fine restaurant talking about art or culture for an evening.

What makes this movie work is the character of Claus Pederson. He is sending an important message about, and aimed directly at veterans from both Iraq and Afghanistan. This was the intent of the producer who told me the idea for the film came after he read an article quoting a Danish infantry officer who was heading to Afghanistan for his third deployment. The officer was not afraid of dying at the hands of the Taliban but terrified, given the stringent rules of engagement (ROE) of being prosecuted by the government when he returned.

As we watch Pederson dealing with his court martial it is impossible to miss that he is demonstrating the only useful strategies available to combat veterans when returning home. You recognize that Pederson has the same dignified silence over the weight he is carrying that we saw in our WW II Veterans. Pederson is teaching important lessons the first of which is simple to say but tough to understand. When you get home from the wars you’re alone and you have to deal with that. Even when surrounded by friends and family you’re alone and that won’t change until enough time has passed for the memories to fade.

This is revealed in a subtle way which is why it comes across so powerfully. There are many times when Pederson is there but not there; when he slips out at night to stare at the stars and smoke a cigarette, when he tracks a helicopter flying through night skies. The moments are fleeting, the camera doesn’t linger, but you know what he’s thinking and for those of us who were there we know we did the same thing when we first came home.

Then we witness another important truth unmasked by Pederson and that is that nobody really cares or understands what happened to you. We see this in the reaction of Pederson’s wife when she learns of the dead children, the way the officers of the court remain unmoved by the detailed description of the desperate situation in which Pederson had to make instant decisions. They clearly don’t understand what he’s trying to tell them nor do they give a damn. Their concern remains only the concept of PID not the reality that PID could never be established given the situation on the ground.

For the OIF/OEF combat vet a majority of the people in your life will never understand, nor do they really care about what you did during your rotation. Many are uncomfortable around you because you saw the elephant. They believe that seeing the elephant results in life long psychological problems because that’s what Hollywood tells them. It’s not true but so often in America today perception becomes reality when it is reinforced by our media and Hollywood.

The third, and by far most important lesson Pederson reveals is that every problem you are now facing was caused by decisions you made. Period. Nobody else is responsible, nobody else is to blame and nobody else can fix whatever negative situation you are in. It was your decisions that got you where you are today and the only way out is on you.

Pederson is calm and collected while under enemy fire in Afghanistan and friendly fire in Copenhagen. He makes no apologies and holds no grudges even when his XO testifies in a way that was honest, yet damning. It is clear the he is conflicted by his experience and feel’s responsible for the deaths of civilians but not the woman and children he is being prosecuted for but rather a family that had sought protection inside his Combat Outpost;  something he could never allow.

This is a scene played out many times during our years of fighting in Afghanistan. I talked with a Marine who had been at a Combat Outpost (COP) that took in a teenage girl who had been beaten and was going to be killed by her brothers for talking to another boy on the phone without their permission. The Marines took the girl in and reported this up the chain. It went to the embassy for a decision and their decision was to to kick her out of the COP. The girl was released and we can assume (but don’t know for sure) suffered a hideous death. The men who took her in and then were forced to kicked her out have to live with that. I know the ambassador and his staff were no more thrilled about making this decision than I would have been but let’s be honest; in the grand scheme of things it was the right call. I’d rather we stick to principal but taking that girl in that could have (I believe would have) resulted in a province wide revolt. War forces men (and women) to make decisions that are right for both tactical and strategic reasons but wrong for the sole.

Back to the review:

At no time does Pederson bring up the fact that he was given a mission (the protection of local civilians from the Taliban) he could never accomplish. Virtually every Afghan in the Helmand Province thought the foreigners were propping up an illegitimate government in Kabul. Nobody in that Province knew what 9/11 was, who al Qaeda was or why the foreigners were in their country. What they did know was the government in Kabul was corrupt and the foreigners were responsible for standing that government up.

If you’re a vet or a friend or family member of an OIF or OEF vet you need to watch A War. Claus Pederson will show you what it was like to fight in Afghanistan. More importantly, for vets and their families he will show you the way forward when you return.

 

This is a post from March 2010 re-posted now as a reminder of how unstable most of Afghanistan has become in the past five years. There was a Taliban attack outside of the Kandahar Airport that killed over 50 people (Cartman says 61 in his reporting) two days ago. For those of us who spent time at Kandahar it is hard to imagine a two- day siege going down just outside the wire. There are Americans still stationed at that airfield today and one has to wonder just how secure they can be given their reduced numbers. There was a time when internationals who knew what they were doing could operate safely even in kinetic places like Kandahar and this is a story from that time…it didn’t have to end this way.

I’m still on the road trying to make my way back to Jalalabad from a big implementation working group meeting in Lashkar Gah. Step one of the journey back was to hitch a ride to Kandahar where Panjawaii Tim promised to pick me up and take me out to his compound for the night. It is a large, comfortable place which has something I have been looking forward to… cold beers. The plane was late which was annoying – driving around Kandahar at night is risky. But there’s cold beer and piss up at stake so this trip was obviously mission essential.

We were delayed getting across the Tarnak River bridge by an American convoy – the bridge was blown up a few days back and the convoy was trying to maneuver around it in the river bed. Michael Yon has the story about the loss of that vital bridge here.  It turns out the delay was a good thing because as we cleared the bridge area and headed towards the city the sky in front of us lit up like a flashbulb. “That’s not good,” said Tim as his cell started to ring. The boys back in the safe house reported a large explosion in the vicinity of the Karazi compound about 300 meters west of our destination. Then we saw what looked like a smaller (yet still pretty impressive blast) followed by another very large boom. Then Tim’s cell phone went dead, which was completely uncool. The the night sky just lit up with a few more big bangs and we both shut up – I reached into the back seat for a long gun; the shit I’ll go through for cold beer….I’m retarded.

We were entering the city by then and could see an American QRF force racing towards the area where most of the international compounds, Afghan government offices, the Sarposa prison and our safe house are located.  The roads were being cut by Afghan Security Forces (ANSF) and during times like this trying to talk your way through security checkpoints is a bad idea so we switched to plan B. Panjawaii Tim knows Kandahar like I know Jalalabad; he started working his way through side streets that were full of people milling about looking towards the blast clouds. There were lots of broken store windows the closer we got to home; in fact all of them were broken as we worked our way parallel to the main road closer to the area targeted in the attacks. We had to clear only one ANSF checkpoint  – it is always funny to see the police react when Tim and I drive up in local garb with our ISAF (contractor) ID’s and tell them we’re with ISAF and need to get through. They get confused when we start talking Pashto and look at us like we’re ghosts, or Jinn, or just plain crazy.

Here is Panjawaii Tim’s report on the incident:

“The first bomb was at the Al Jadeed market: 10-20 killed, unknown number injured; second was a large bomb at the Sarpoza prison.   20 -30 killed and 100 injured allegedly; third was the bomb near PHQ, unknown number injured/killed; fourth was bomb near Mandigak mosque, unknown number injured killed. First bombs lured the ANP response out of PHQ and then they were hit. US and CDN units seen responding with ANSF assets. No reports of a prison break at this time. We heard Taliban propaganda broadcast over a megaphone in our neighborhood within half hour of attacks. Many ambulances and other vehicles seen transporting casualties to Mirwais (Chinese) Hospital.”

You know what all this means?  It means no sitting on the roof and drinking cold beers with my buddies. It also means that I have to get up in the middle of the night to pull sentry duty. Fucking Taliban; killing civilians for no damn reason, damaging people’s stores and homes for no damn reason, and spoiling what looked to be a good piss up.   I hate them.