Free Range International

The ever alert FRI regular commentators picked up on this tragedy in near real time. Last Tuesday morning an Army patrol opened fire on a bus on the main road between Kandahar and the large ISAF base just outside the city. They killed four Afghans which sparked protests inside Kandahar City. The NATO statement is pasted below:

NATO said the bus approached a slow-moving military patrol from the rear at a high speed. Troops opened fire after the driver ignored flares and other warnings including flashlights and hand signals  to slow down, NATO said in a statement. It confirmed four people were killed, adding the alliance “deeply regrets the tragic loss of life.”

I have a problem with the “flares and other warnings including flashlights and hand signals.” If a fast moving bus is approaching a slow moving convoy, how much time does the turret gunner have to make a shoot/no shoot decision?  Subtract the time it takes to bring the machine gun to bear on target and fire, which is 3 to 5  seconds, and I have a hard time seeing how he armed and fired a flare, then used his flashlight, then used hand signals (which would not have been visible in the pre-dawn gloom) in the 20 or so seconds it took for the bus to close with the convoy. When you read the news accounts, the statements by witnesses from the bus sound much more credible. They said they were just driving along when the Americans opened fire without warning.

I have been shot at three times, once by the Brits (American Embassy project vehicle put out of commission – downtown Kabul, spring of 2005), once by the American army (warning shots into the hillside while in a Japanese Embassy vehicle with diplomatic plates and a very senior passenger – downtown Kabul winter 2006), and once by the ANA (last Monday when they shot at a car right next to me that had nicked their fender in a gigantic traffic jam).  The common denominator of those shootings was the lack of warning.  The turret gunners suddenly got behind their weapons and I thought, “Holy shit, they are going to shoot,” and they did.

One of those shootings produced the best quote I have to date from my years here. My Japanese client, the Chief of Party for JICA, shook his head and said, “Tim san, I do no understand how your army beat us in World War II.”   I launched into a spirited defense of the Fleet Marine Force, but he cut me off to make a phone call.  I was very fond of Mr. N and he knew better than to try and ride out a Tim san rant. 

Last week the Taliban culminated a series of ineffective IED and rocket attacks on the population of Jalalabad with a bicycle bomb detonated in a swarm of children – a  weapon supposedly directed against the Americans, one which could never even dent an MRAP, but could slice through unprotected children.  This week our guys pulled a bonehead move – one of which I have blogged about many times before – the shooting of civilians by convoy turret gunners.  With the dynamics on the ground, our stupid moves are costing more then the Taliban’s stupid moves. The good people of Jalalabad were pissed off about the bike bomb, but not enough to stage a protest and shout “death to the Taliban.”

That is the critical dynamic with which to judge how the people feel about us and the assorted groupings of bad guys who cause them much more grief and hardship, in their reaction to loss of life through stupidity.  When people react with spontaneous outrage to Taliban killings, then we will know the tipping point is well behind us. Until then the best thing we could do is to limit the number of military vehicles we put on the road by stopping the “commute to work” mentality found on Big Army FOB’s and by removing turret gunners.   As I have pointed out about 100 times or so, the tactic of shooting at VBIED’s to stop them before they hit a convoy has never worked.   ISAF gunners have killed hundreds of civilians and never stopped a single suicide bomber.

This summer the big push for ISAF will be Kandahar City. The urban terrain there looks just like the picture above of downtown Jalalabad.  Although you would not know it from this week’s tragic shooting, the American military has considerable experience in urban counterinsurgency fighting. That was what the Iraq surge was all about – taking back the cities to halt ethnic cleansing while simultaneously peeling Al Qaeda away from the Sunni population. The big message from General Petraeus at that time was to stop commuting to the fight and establish fortified positions from which to control neighborhoods.

Last night there was another series of attacks in Kandahar City, two car bombs, both of which were targeting the international community.   A VBIED apparently penetrated into a compound shared by the Louis Berger Group and Chemonics – a large USAID implementing partner.   Reportedly, three internationals and three Afghans were killed in the blast which was huge – this was a well designed, powerful VBIED which are rare in Afghanistan.  Another small IED detonated last night in Jalalabad very close to the site of last week’s bicycle bomb; it caused no damage or casualties because it was an act of intimidation.  I should say another failed attempt of intimidation because the local people really could give a damn about these nuisance attacks which, for all we know, could be (as E2 observed in the comment section) directed at Governor Sherzai.

What is happening in Jalalabad and Kandahar are two completely different events.  Jalalabad is experiencing a rash of small scale incidents designed to minimize casualties (with the notable exception of last week’s bike bomb), which are having zero impact on the attitudes of the local population.   In Kandahar there is clearly a well organized campaign designed to preempt the impending ISAF operation focused on Kandahar.

Last night’s attack in Kandahar was the third attack on an aid organization operating in the south in the last month. Two of these attacks targeted large compounds with multiple layers of security, the attempted attack on IRD in Lashkar Gah last month failed. The attack last night on Louis Berger did not.   By successfully targeting international aid workers, the bad guys are able to slow down and in some cases stop the “build” part of the “clear, hold, and build” tactic which is now the focus of ISAF.   By driving up the level of violence in Kandahar they can force ISAF and ANSF units to deploy into the city center without doing the methodical job of clearing street by street, erecting mobility obstacles to funnel all traffic into joint check points, conducting a census to establish who belongs where and who’s controlling the city. Thrusting units deep inside a hostile unstable city will dramatically increase the probability of another shooting event which ISAF can clearly not afford.

In the east things are not looking great either. The districts of Sherzad and Khogyani,  less than 20 miles away from the Taj, are under complete Taliban control. Our local nationals who are from villages in these district can no longer travel to their homes. Yesterday there was another small arms attack on the Jalalabad to Kabul road.  The attackers struck along the boundary which separates areas of responsibility between the French Army (Kabul Province) and American Army (Laghman Province), which resulted in only Afghan police responding to the attack while units of the Afghan Army were on holiday routine not 2 miles further down the road.   Make of that what you will, but enemy units that know how to work unit boundaries are demonstrating tactical competence.   As bad as things look in the south, all of it could change if we clear and hold Kandahar City and the major village complexes around the city while continuing to hold what the Marines have cleared in the Helmand Province. Driving out the forces sponsored by the Quetta Shura from their home provinces and keeping them out would be a devastating psychological blow to all the other bad actors   in the east and south east as well as a huge victory for Afghan people.

But here is the thing…..politics.   The linked article covers it pretty well.   What ISAF hopes to do is use international forces operating in conjunction with the Afghan Army to chase the Taliban out of the second largest city in the country. Simultaneously they want to replace the current racketeering-infected government with one which is recognized by Afghans as being more inclusive and less corrupt.  The first step in accomplishing that mission would seem to be removing Karzai’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai (AWK), from the scene which, apparently, is not going to happen. Instead, the military is going to attempt to work around and “contain” him. This is not because of his rumored association with the CIA, but because the military realizes it has no real knowledge of Kandahar’s mafia-influenced political scene and thus no ability to predict the ramifications of removing the guy perched at the very top.

ISAF wants to clear the city in a slow, deliberate, methodical fashion, spending lots of time in hopes of avoiding casualties. The Taliban appear to be trying to draw them into the city ahead of schedule and then bleed them.   If they are successful at inflicting casualties (and not even heavy casualties, just a few a day, a number which would have been irrelevant in past wars) then they will completely derail ISAF.   If that happens, RC South will want to throw the Marines into the fray and we’ll lose everything they have gained over the past 18 months in a bid to win Kandahar.   So we shall see. The way things look to me at the moment, the entire Afghanistan operation now depends on being successful at both eliminating the Taliban and the corrupt government from Kandahar. That is a difficult mission the military cannot accomplish alone.

I want to thank Amy Sun, the Fab Folk, and my kids Megan, Kalie and Logan for drumming up so much support for FRI’s run at this years Milbloggies award.   I also need to thank America’s First Sergeant at Castra Praetoria and Kanani Fong at The Kitchen Dispatch for their support for FRI’s first attempt at winning a milblog award.   For my readers who have not voted yet I’m about 20   down and can use some help (look for me in the “Veteran” category).   Vote early vote often – that is the Chicago Way.

The holding phase Operation Moshtarak in the Taliban infested area around Marjah has proven to be much more difficult than previous Marine operations in the Helmand Province. The clearing phase was successful despite problems with the new rules regarding artillery and air delivered ordnance. It is the holding phase  that is proving to be a problem. The Taliban still control most of the village hamlets and are exacting a heavy toll on local people who cooperate with the Marines or Afghan Government. The New York Times has a pretty good article on the problem here. The Marines have a limited number of options with which to deal with entrenched guerrillas. They did a good job of driving the Taliban underground. Their campaign against known Taliban leaders and fixers, which was conducted by the varsity SF guys was also very effective netting every named target on the Joint Prioritized Effects List (J-PEL) except one, who made it back to Pakistan despite being wounded. His code name is now Dr. Brydon.

Phase One of Operation Moshtarak went well. Now phase two is going to cost the Marines time, which is one of the three (time, ammunition, or manpower) most important combat commodities available to combat commanders. It seems to me that the only effective option would be to put “pseudo-operators” into the field just as the Selous Scouts did back in the 1970’s. False Flag Operations with Afghan fighters led by American Marines who look and operate like squads of Taliban roaming the countryside at night appeals to me. It would work too, but would take years to develop the American participants even if such a radical idea were every attempted.

As you read the NYT article on Marjah you note how important it is to get economic aid and cash money into the local economy. The lack of ability to successfully implement projects has been one of the biggest problems with the international community’s operations in Afghanistan. Nathan Hodge at the Danger Room blog wrote on this topic last February and described a possible solution.

Our success is driven by our M&E (monitoring and evaluation teams)  who conduct detailed planning followed by brief backs and inspections before going into the field. Our M&E teams operate independently of project management and their operational reports treated like classified information. They must have a cover story for use at Taliban checkpoints and that needs to be rehearsed and they need to be inspected to ensure they have nothing on their cell phones, cameras (cheap locally procured ones) in their wallets or pockets or bags which would in any way tie them to internationals. This is done to reinforce trade-craft plus it demonstrates to your Afghan team their safety is your priority.

There is another way of doing M&E that would required USG agencies to share satellite imagery and to access civilian programs like Goggle Earth from their SIPRnet accounts. After years of effort it appears that counter-bureaucrats inside the USG machine have successfully figured out how to make their products relevant in the challenging world of counterinsurgency stability operations.

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 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 but defining “official users” is always a complicated endeavor for any  Government agency. Yet the NGA management has started to chip away at the licensing agreement because they are paying a king’s ransom for the data and know they should be able to distribute it as they see 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 which are pushing 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 (China too for that matter given the amount of our debt they are holding.) The products NGA provides may not be timely enough to solve all M&E requirements but it can clearly provide a lot of help in remote or contested areas.

I have been waiting for this; At Afghan outpost, Marines gone rogue or leading the fight against counterinsurgency.   It was a matter of time before the losers in Washington DC and Kabul took their bureaucratic infighting   public by leaking to the press.  You send in the Marines, ask them to do a job nobody else has been successful doing, and what do they get?  A shank in the back.  My contempt for FOB-bound bureaucrats knows no limit, but at least the reporter presented a fair, easily understood accounting of the debate.   Not so for my boy Dexter “call it in” Filkins of the New York Times, which I will get to in a minute.     Check out this quote from the WaPo article on the Marines:

“We have better operational coherence with virtually all of our NATO allies than we have with the U.S. Marine Corps,” said a senior Obama administration official involved in Afghanistan policy.

Some senior officials at the White House, at the Pentagon and in McChrystal’s headquarters would rather have many of the 20,000 Marines who will be in Afghanistan by summer deploy around Kandahar, the country’s second-largest city, to assist in a U.S. campaign to wrest the area from Taliban control instead of concentrating in neighboring Helmand province and points west. According to an analysis conducted by the National Security Council, fewer than 1 percent of the country’s population lives in the Marine area of operations.”

Are you kidding me?   Better operational coherence with NATO allies than our own Marine Corps?   ISAF would rather have the Marines redeploy to assist in the upcoming campaign for Kandahar?  Senior Obama Administration official airing out our dirty laundry to the press?   Stand by for a rant:

The 36 or so NATO countries operating in Afghanistan have in combination some 83 “caveats” which allow them to say “no” to any request from ISAF they do not feel like complying with.   Most of these “caveats” involve active combat and they read something like, “If you ask us to go outside the FOB and fight Taliban (especially at night) we will say no.”   This is why you have a NATO-staffed air base in Kandahar with over 20,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen, yet still not enough “boots on the ground” to deal with a growing insurgent threat.   The idea that the Marines have to move into the Kandahar area “because that is where the population is” makes as much sense as the Vietnam era debate about forcing the Marines into the Da Nang “rocket belt”.  It was a stupid idea then, and it is a stupid idea now.   Kandahar is the second largest city in Afghanistan and if there is to be a fight for the city, it is best done with Afghan forces in the lead, not the Marines.   The Afghan Security Forces launched a huge operation over the winter of 2008 to bring the rule of law into Kandahar, which seemed to calm the place down for a bit.   All they need to do now is replay that operation and stay on the ground when the operation is over.

The Marines have demonstrated that it is possible to do COIN in Afghanistan and they have a huge advantage.  They own all the aircraft, armor, and combat service support they need to operate.  When they work in areas where tanks or AAV’s are not effective, they dismount the Marines from those units and use them as infantry.  The Marines were forced to operate as independent battalions working for the Army back in 2004/2005 in the Kunar Province.  That story is told in the excellent book Victory Point by Ed Darack.  I encourage you to read it.  Pay particular attention to the loss of the SEAL team during operation Red Wings.  Had the SEALs let the Marines handle the mission they had planned, or executed the mission the way the Marines planned it, they would have avoided losing almost  an entire team (the surviving team member wrote the book Lone Survivor).    The men from SEAL Team 10 were compromised on insert that day – clearly lady luck turned her head on these guys.  But when you read how and why  that mission came about you will learn why the Marines will not allow themselves to be parcelled out and left to the tender mercies of other services.  So, they are executing their assigned missions like Marines do, and it is making the other services look bad.  To which I say too bad.

I need to add this; the Marines are not alone in the Helmand.  They have plenty of American Army, Air Force, Navy, Brits, Canadians, and a French infantry officer who snuck over with the 2nd Marines (he is apparently an exceptional talent and the de facto S3 alpha for RCT 2) working with them.  Col Kennedy told me he has a couple of Army SF A teams in his AO and both of them are absolutely first rate, constantly outside the wire, constantly working with the locals, and frequently involved in big fights where they are always outnumbered and out-gunned yet they never lose.  He loves his SF teams and, therefore, I love them too.   I am sorry Lara Logan did not spend 3 months with them, because  her story on 60 minutes would not have been so damn embarrassing for the SF community, and I would not have gotten so much hate mail for blogging it.

The Marines are in the Helmand because that is where the Army leadership who runs the war sent them.   The Marines are sitting in Marjah because that is the key terrain for the drug trade, which fuels a good portion of the conflict.   They are sitting on the goose which lays the golden poppy eggs and “anonymous sources” now want them to move into the Kandahar area because the 20,000 troops they have there cannot manage to get off their asses and outside the wire?   Nothing brings out the long knives like success… here is another example.

New York Times ace reporter  Dexter Filkins assisted by one Mark Mazzetti came out with a piece titled “Contractors tied to effort to track and kill militants“. The story is about two of the biggest anti-military   jackasses produced by the war on terror – Canadian “journalist” Robert Pelton and former CNN executive Eason Jordon.  They apparently lost a DoD contract due to total lack of performance.   I took the piss out of Pelton last year while reinforcing Old Blue at Afghan Quest because of the completely uncalled for ridicule Pelton dumped on a Lieutenant who did not measure up to Pelton’s “man of action” paradigm.   Now that whining shitbird is complaining that, We were providing information so they could better understand the situation in Afghanistan, and it was being used to kill people.   Bullshit – that is complete nonsense.   Why would anyone in their right mind give Pelton millions of dollars to set up a web site?  If he did set up a website (I don’t think that he did – that part is unclear) how would he know who was doing what with the crap information he put on it?  And if he somehow did come up with anything of worth, why did his contract get cancelled?   But the story gets better,  Filkins did not rely exclusively on Pelton – he got lots of collaboration from the CIA station chief in Kabul who apparently is feeling serious heat from some sort of “contractor” run program.   My favorite action/thriller author Brad Thor took apart this bogus story today on the Big Journalism site – read it here – sour grapes of wrath indeed.

Dexter and his NYT chums need to start doing real reporting and stop phoning in bullshit from malcontents like Pelton and some loser CIA station chief.   Here is an example; On Afghan Road Scenes of Beauty and Death, which Dexter wrote last month.   I let this one pass when it was published, but now I am pissed so let me perform a 30 second critique.   I have driven that road maybe 500 times in the last five years.   I drove it before it was even paved and feel I am in the position to correct some of the crap phoned in from by our celebrity reporter… ready?  Well hold on a second, you have to read the article linked above so my hasty critique makes sense.   OK.   Ready?

1. The “Kabul Gorge” is west of Sarobi, centered on the Mahpar Pass; what you labeled as the gorge is in reality the Tangi valley.   Tangi is Dari for “dam” and every valley downstream of a dam is called the “Tangi Valley” which is why there are about 30 of them around the country.
2. When the British Army withdrew from Kabul in 1842 they went through the Latabad Pass, which is about 7 miles west of the Mahipar Pass.   The current Jbad to Kabul road did not exist back in the 1800’s.
3. It is impossible for vehicles to reach high rates of speed required to “sail through the air”  when driving through the town of Sarobi.   It is too crowded, with too many turns, and the ANP would not tolerate that kind of recklessness anyway.   I have seen plenty of bad accidents on the Jbad to Kabul road, but never seen or heard of one inside the village limits of Sarobi.

Do you see how easy it is to recognize BS when you are not confined to FOB’s or luxury hotels Dexter?   The reason I am so upset about the reckless CIA article is it describes operators with backgrounds and experience similar to the several thousand of us internationals who work and live outside the wire.   Everyone of us now has a big bulls-eye on our backs.   Guess what happened yesterday?   An international NGO compound in Lashkar Gah was attacked by two gunmen who had a slew of hand grenades, AK 47’s and one well-designed and constructed suicide vest.   The NGO in this compound ran a popular agriculture project and were not involved in poppy eradication or road building – two activities which normally run afoul of the Taliban.   Let me make this perfectly clear: it is highly probable that one or more innocent internationals who works outside the wire is going to be targeted and killed because Dexter is carrying water for dumb-as-dirt CIA man and a Canadian shitbird.   If I sound like I am pissed off, I am – we now have to dedicate scarce resources which should be going to Afghan reconstruction for counter-surveillance, we need to switch up cars, we now need to vary our movement patterns, and we need to avoid the FOB’s.   No more workouts, no more pecan pie and ice cream and a lot more risk because some New York slimy dirtbag is phoning in horseshit in his quest for Pulitzer dust.

Now for an interesting outside the wire story.   On 24 February Panjawaii Tim was called to the Kandahar PRT to see if he could help mitigate the damage caused by flooding to the irrigation system of northern Kandahar Province.   Knowing why he was going, he called the USAID official in Kabul who adminsters the cash for work program Tim and company are implementing to see if he could free up some cash for a massive emergency project.   The AID official immediately gave him permission – to the credit of USAID they do work with incredible speed when they have a vehicle in place which is proving successful.   Tim arrived at the PRT and was asked how soon he could get workers to clear 36 canals of an estimated 600,00 cubic meters of silt and debris.   The conversation went  something like this:

PRT SgtMaj (Canadian Army):  “When can you get started, eh?”

Tim: “Tomorrow, eh?”

SgtMaj: “No, Tim, I mean when can you really get started, eh?”

Tim: “Tomorrow SgtMaj no shit, eh?”

As promised Team Canada was on the job the next day. Yet they still had to deal with senior guys from other agencies who seemed to be upset by the speed at which they got a massive project off the ground.   Every day Team Canada expats are out in the bad lands performing the time intensive task of monitoring and evaluation.   As usual, they travel in local garb without armored vehicles or armed PSC escorts (PSC gunmen raise your profile, which increases risk for very little gain in security).   They did not have to do this job, they are not paid more cash for taking this additional risk, they could have said no and saved themselves hundreds of man hours of additional work for which (I need to stress this point) they receive not one penny of additional compensation.  Team Canada is comprised of mission-focused former Canadian soldiers who look upon these dangerous tasks as yet another opportunity to perform.  That is what military men are raised to do – accomplish any and all assigned missions to the best of their ability.  You would think for doing this they would receive at least a hearty handshake and an ata boy, not a ration of shit from senior bureaucrats who could not manage to do the same no matter how much time and money is thrown at them.

The Marines have found a way to do COIN while avoiding the increasing threat from IED’s by getting off the FOB’s, out of the MRAP’s and patrolling on foot the areas they have cleared.   A senior DOD official has found a way to provide critical intelligence which our 16 or so national intelligence agencies cannot get from their FOB-bound operatives. Team Canada, ably assisted by USAID managers in Kabul, are able to immediately start work on restoring a critical irrigation system in the dangerous Kandahar Province while putting 5,600 military aged unemployed males to work.   What is the common thread in these stories?   The long knives coming out to stab these able, hard-working, mission-focused guys right in the back.  Mission-focused people and organizations specialize in getting things done with speed and efficiency.  Bureaucrats focus on process, procedures, their individual careers and guarding rice bowls.  Nothing upsets bureaucrats more than success by anti-bureaucrats who work the system to achieve the results they are unable to deliver.

And let me insert a word about “contractors”.  Team Canada, Mullah John, Raybo and their colleagues are the Marines of the current reconstruction effort.  There are a few thousand men and women outside the wire getting the job done, despite the myriad of difficulties which all of us work through everyday.  But to mainstream media and the do-nothing bureaucrats who infest the FOBs and Kabul Embassies, “contractors” are de facto scum bags.  Let me insert this cool paragraph from a column posted by Ed Gillespie today on National Review online which has nothing to do with what  I’m ranting about but is connected to the targets of my scorn:

“Thus, it should come as no surprise that in films and on television, trial lawyers are cast as virtuous crusaders while American soldiers are bloodthirsty villains or hapless victims. University professors are almost always noble and underpaid, corporate CEOs corrupt and overpaid. Wealth is only inherited, never created, and people are poor only because they were born that way, never because of bad decisions or behavior. Conservative politicians are usually unbearable hypocrites, people of faith are for comic relief, and our environment is under constant assault by capitalism’s wantonly wasteful ways.”

The legacy media, just like their elitist fellow travelers in Hollywood have constructed a preferred narrative about contractors based on a few bad examples and their own inherently biased world view.  Their callous disregard for those of us who accept the risk to get important work done is disgusting.  They could give a shit if their agenda-driven screeds lead directly to the deaths of brave men and women who demonstrate more courage and commitment daily than they will in a lifetime.  Do you believe that Pelton or Filkins, or Eason Jordon (what the hell kind of name is Eason anyway?) or that fat ass know-nothing CIA station chief would double their work load and triple their level of risk for no additional compensation?  Would they even consider it?  Of course not…they probably think Team Canada is a bunch of rubes … and in turn I think they are a crew of elitist scumbags who lack courage, commitment, and personal honor.

I remain optimistic about our chances for success in Afghanistan, but as Mullah John remarked after reading my post about the 2nd Marines, “Optimism is a sign that you are not fully aware of the situation.”   He said that in jest (I think) because he likes being clever.  The three stories above lead me to believe John isn’t clever, he is clairvoyant.