Epic Taliban FAIL

These are the people that have been resisting invaders since Alexander the Great? I've seen better coordination and tactical prowess from ROTC cadets.

Something tells me that they might want to get a job in something other than insurgency.

H/T Matt Gallagher. (PS--buy his book)

Addendum: Nick Dubaz informs me that this clip is from "Frontline: Behind Taliban Lines", a great PBS special.

For those keeping score

Foreign Policy Online has a great roundup of the most recent deaths and arrests among Taliban and Haqqani operatives.

(H/T CourtneyMe109. Photo courtesy of the Telegraph)

The trail heats up?

I haven't seen much reaction to this article from the Times Online in the blogosphere (H/T SWJ). It appears that the Pakistani Army captured a series of over 150 caves near the Afghan-Pakistani border, believed to have harbored al-Qaeda. The story gets even better: according to the article, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's number two operative--some say the real brains of al-Qaeda--may have been in the cave complex just shortly before the raid.


Pakistani forces have taken control of a warren of caves that served until recently as the nerve centre of the Taleban and al-Qaeda and sheltered Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command to Osama bin Laden.

“It was the main hub of militancy where al-Qaeda operatives had moved freely,” Major-General Tariq Khan, the Pakistan regional commander, said as he gave journalists a tour of Damadola yesterday.

The village, nestling among snow-capped peaks in the Bajaur region along the Afghan border, has been fought over for 16 months. It is the first time that the Pakistani Army has set foot in the village, which had long been dominated by the insurgents operating on the both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

“Al-Qaeda was there. They had occupied the ridges. There were 156 caves designed as a defensive complex,” said General Khan, head of the Frontier Corps responsible for Pakistan’s counter-insurgency campaign in the region. He said that his forces had killed 75 foreign and local militants and cleared a zone up to the Afghan border, and that the campaign against the insurgents was in its final stage...

...Journalists were shown caves strewn with blankets and pillows, left in haste as the army approached in January. The village has been largely destroyed by the fighting...

...According to officials he and some other al-Qaeda operatives had been attending a dinner but left just before the attack. The ruins of the house hit by the missiles were still present...



This comes hot on the heels of Pakistan's capture of nearly half the Quetta Shura--the inner circle of Taliban leaders--just last week.

Baradar's Arrest: More Questions Than Answers...

Update: In addition to the arrest of Mullah Baradar, we've also witnessed the death of the brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the Haqqani Network, in a drone strike in Pakistan. Drones gone wild, indeed.

It's really difficult to discern the implications of Mullah Baradar's arrest in Pakistan. Attempting to read too much into the Taliban based on scattered news articles and rumor is a lot like listening to the ancient auguries predict the future based on animal entrails, so I'm hesitant to listen to the pundits on this one. Nevertheless, I've got a few questions which are downright baffling to me.

• Until recently, the Pakistani government has outright denied the existence of what we term the Quetta Shura--essentially a high council of leaders from the remnants of the ousted Taliban, believed to have been hiding in the Pashtun-dominated city of Quetta, in Baluchistan province of Pakistan. Now we see Mullah Baradar's arrest in the city of Karachi, a port city, and one of the largest cities in Pakistan. Was Mullah Baradar captured in the city? Are Taliban leaders currently hiding in one of the largest cities in Pakistan? Would al Qaeda leaders be moving with Taliban leaders, or do they remain in the border regions?

• Mullah Baradar had advocated a less brutal approach than Mullah Omar and many other Taliban leaders, and had also seemed to be spearheading an effort to reach some sort of settlement with the Afghan government. Are we witnessing an ideological shift and, maybe, a split away from the Taliban as a result of its tactics? Certainly, it wouldn't be without precedent. Al Qaeda in Iraq saw its ranks thin after their campaign of brutality--largely directed at their fellow Muslims--tarnished their image and led to the Awakening movements. Al Qaeda central is also finding it difficult to recruit. Could it be that the Taliban are also finding it difficult to hang on to their supporters as well?

I haven't had the time to follow the war in Afghanistan as closely as I would have liked to recently. Does anyone have any experience of insight to share?

The Fortress of Baradar--Reflections

(Ha! And you thought I just made Star Wars references!)

The arrest of the Taliban's chief of operations, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is certainly a welcome development in the war in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, it's difficult to put the arrest in context. What does Baradar's arrest mean for the ISAF effort in Afghanistan?

The effect on the Taliban:

Some, such as CIA veteran Bruce Reidel, have claimed that Baradar's arrest could "cripple" the Taliban, at least temporarily. While this will certainly cause some disorientation, particularly while NATO is on the offensive in Helmand Province, I'm not quite so optimistic that it will be that devastating. As Joshua Foust notes, the Taliban have suffered the loss of other top-level commanders before, with little setbacks. Similar insurgent groups, such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, have also suffered the loss of one or two top leaders and kept on fighting. Nevertheless, the NYT reports that six members of the 19-man inner Taliban circle have been killed or captured in the last three years. However, others inevitably stepped up to fill their slots.

What it means for Pakistan:

After years of Pakistani agencies--particularly the ISI and Frontier Corps--blatantly supporting the Afghan Taliban, we suddenly see the arrest of a major Taliban official.

The Wall Street Journal offers the view that General Stanley McChrystal convinced the Pakistanis that cracking down on the Afghan Taliban--seen as a proxy for Pakistan--meant dealing a blow to the Pakistani Taliban, which has proven to be a thorn in Pakistan's side recently, staging a number of daring raids within 100 miles of Islamabad.

Others, however, echo the belief that Pakistan's actions are less than altruistic, and often come with ulterior motives.

What now?

Baradar had reportedly fallen out of favor with Mullah Mohammed Omar for a few reasons. The first was bureaucratic--Baradar had selected commanders without the the approval of Mullah Omar. (So much for those who think the Taliban operates without micromanagement) The second involves Baradar's alleged "negotiations" with the Afghan government and potentially even the US and Pakistan. According to Josh Foust, Baradar is seen as a less extreme Taliban commander--even writing the Taliban's insurgency field manual as a way to balance some of the Taliban's more heavy-handed approach.

Wait, is this the Taliban's Petraeus?

This, as Foust continues, means that Baradar's successor might be more heavy-handed. Nevertheless, peeling away some of the softer elements of the Taliban can certainly be a welcome development. In fact, some feel strongly that not only will he talk, but that he will be able to negotiate while in prison.

The bit about negotiation while in captivity kind of baffles me--apparently I heard that this was used in the case of the Northern Irish, but I'm not certain how much negotiating one can do in captivity. Can the Kings of War help me on this one? Is someone who has, apparently, been written off by the "mainline" Taliban be in any position to strike a bargain?

Bonus: Foreign Policy's Af-Pak Channel has a decent roundup, and does a good job of describing Baradar's importance in the organization.

D'oh!

Karma is a bitch, according to this article from today's Wall Street Journal.

A quarter-century ago, [Defense Secretary Robert Gates] was a top Central Intelligence Agency officer aiding the anti-Soviet rebels in Afghanistan, and he remembered how a 1985 decision by the Soviet Union to widen that earlier war had failed to turn the tide...

...Few American officials know the Soviets' bitter Afghan predicament better than Mr. Gates. In the 1980s, he was the deputy director of the CIA, overseeing a massive U.S. effort to fund, train and equip the Islamic insurgents, called mujahedeen, who fought the Soviet army to a standstill.

Now some of the most prominent of these insurgents, such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, are allied against America with the Taliban and al Qaeda. Almost daily their men are killing Western troops, who often operate from former Soviet bases and use Soviet-drawn military maps with faint Cyrillic markings.

"It's an eerie sense of deja vu," said Bruce Riedel, a Brookings Institution scholar who headed the Obama administration's Afghan policy review in the spring and who in the 1980s worked under Mr. Gates as a CIA officer in the region. "America," he said, "is in the rare position of fighting the same war twice in one generation, from opposite sides. And it's easier to be the insurgents."

Fortunately, I am quite experienced in this. I occasionally play Command and Conquer: Generals from the point of view of the Global Liberation Army instead of the US, so this should be relatively simple, right?

Fortunately, not everything is quite as bleak as the Soviet experience:

There are major differences between the two conflicts. For one, unlike the isolated Soviet Union, America operates in Afghanistan under a United Nations mandate, part of a coalition of 42 allies. Allied dead, currently 1,528, are barely one-ninth the Soviet toll. Afghan civilian deaths are a small fraction of the estimated one million killed in the 1980s.

Afghans who compare the two campaigns acknowledge the differences, yet argue that these aren't always in America's favor. An examination of this debate over the Soviet experience offers an insight into what American troops are up against -- and the issues President Obama must weigh as he decides the course of an unpopular and costly war he didn't start.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev also faced a troop-increase request during his first year, for a war he had inherited. Soviet generals in 1985 asked for tens of thousands more soldiers to bolster their 100,000-strong contingent, roughly the same size as the current Western force in Afghanistan.

Mr. Gates, discussing that period in his 1996 memoir "From the Shadows," wrote: "The Soviets had to either reinforce or lose. Because they clearly were not winning." Gen. McChrystal used similar language in his recent warning about possible American "failure" in Afghanistan unless adequate resources are committed. Mr. Gorbachev ended up authorizing a small troop surge; 18 months later, he announced plans for a withdrawal.

The U.S. Army, in a 1989 secret "lessons learned" study of the Soviets' campaign, said they simply didn't have enough boots on the ground. "Insufficient forces were available to expand appreciably the area of physical control, or to identify and attack many insurgent targets at the same time," said the study, now partially declassified. "When major operations were conducted in one part of the country, forces had to be drawn from other areas."

Mr. Gates's knowledge of how the Soviet occupation and its brutalities inflamed local anger contributed to his initial skepticism about a U.S. surge. "I worry a great deal about the size of the foreign military footprint in Afghanistan," he told a Senate hearing in April. "Soviets were in there with 110,000 troops, didn't care about civilian casualties and couldn't win."

Gen. McChrystal, at his meeting with Mr. Gates in Belgium, managed to persuade the defense chief that the U.S., unlike the Soviets, is still welcomed by most Afghans. The general argued that certain tactics such as using Afghan rather than American soldiers for house searches could further blunt perceptions of the U.S. as an occupier and put the momentum in America's favor.

"I take seriously Gen. McChrystal's point that the size of the footprint is [less important than] the nature of the footprint and the behavior of those troops and their attitudes and their interactions with the Afghans," Mr. Gates said in September after talks with military leaders.

Gen. McChrystal has explicitly addressed concerns about falling into Moscow's pitfalls. In his August assessment of the war, he quoted Abdul Rahim Wardak, President Hamid Karzai's defense minister, as telling the U.S.: "Unlike the Russians, who imposed a government with alien ideology, you enabled us to write a democratic constitution and choose our own government. Unlike the Russians, who destroyed our country, you came to rebuild."

But it might be a bit arrogant to claim success where the great powers such as Alexander, the British (twice), and the Russians (twice) have had their share of failure. Fortunately, aside from the argument in favor of stabilizing a largely failed state, there is one other national objective. John Oliver and Jon Stewart explain:

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The old lessons still apply

In the old US Army Field Manual FM 7-8, "Infantry Rifle Platoon and Squad", there's a section which covers the basics of patrolling. In this section, the infantry patrol is told that it should be fully alert and at 100% defensive posture no later than 30 minutes prior to dawn, a process known as "stand-to". The book's reasoning is that this is the time when the Soviet Army is most likely to attack.

The great book, The Defense of Jisr al-Doreaa, notes that the same thing is done in Iraq. The authors tell a story which features American troops on a combat outpost waking just before dawn to man the defensive positions. What's interesting is that the young platoon leader gets this advice from one of his sergeants, who notes that this tactic comes not from the conventional battlefield, but from the campaigns against the Native Americans on the plains of the American West during the 19th Century.

Some things really never change. Indeed, the Taliban also appear to use this tactic, judging from this video from the Battle at Wanat, shot from the Taliban's perspective.

I suspect this was an awkward meeting....

Much has been written about the CIA's use of Predator strikes in the FATA region of Pakistan. Imagine my surprise when I found out that the program is actually highly classified, and is largely disavowed by many government officials, despite the fact that it seems to appear in the news every other day.

Anyway, a few Pakistani students repeatedly asked Secretary of State Clinton about these strikes during a recent Q&A session (from the NY Times, in an article regarding Pakistan's reluctant support in the AF/PAK region):

White House officials have said comparatively little about the Pakistan side of the administration’s evolving war strategy, in part because they have so few options. They cannot place forces inside Pakistan, and they cannot talk publicly about the Central Intelligence Agency’s Predator drone strikes in the country, though they are so much of an open secret that Mrs. Clinton was asked about them repeatedly in meetings she held late last month with Pakistani students and citizens. (She refused to acknowledge the program’s existence.)

If I were Secretary Clinton, I'd say, "Well, while we're on the topic of open secrets, let's discuss the Pakistani ISI and Frontier Corps providing fire support for the Taliban". (Tom Ricks article, In the Graveyard of Empires excerpt, India Defence, you get the picture)

Around the Blogosphere...

Today's foreign policy and military analysis, brought to you by some of the usual suspects.

I received a link yesterday from CourtneyME109 regarding an interesting article in Foreign Policy Online entitled "No Good Choices", referring to President Obama's four proposed courses of action in Afghanistan.

I need to begin with the following caveat. I will always be suspicious of computer models regarding insurgent environments, and it stems from my experience fighting the 21st Century Maginot Line in the Aviation Captains Career Course on the JANUS system*. There are far too many variables to be modeled accurately. Decades worth of formulas and wargames didn't help Helmuth van Moltke (the Younger) in August of 1914--and that was a mere 2GW battlefield, not the modern 4GW one.

Nevertheless, they shouldn't be completely discounted, either.

In the article at FP Online, two defense analysts partook in a series of wargames concerning Afghanistan. I'd be highly curious to see the raw data, and the methodology behind the wargames, but it brings up a number of issues which I think I'd suspected all along. Not the least of which is that the counterinsurgency landscape in Afghanistan is significantly more complex than the French experience in Algeria and the British experience in Malaya (around which much of our current counterinsurgency doctrine is based).

Says the article:

What explains the inability of any additional deployment to reduce the likelihood of insurgency in Afghanistan? Our analysis suggests that the U.S. counterinsurgency swims against two very strong currents.

First, the combustible mix of Afghanistan's relatively immutable social and political characteristics -- its ethnic and religious divisions, low level of economic development, and large population -- almost guarantees continued insurgency. The country's poverty and large population encourage competition for scarce resources, and that competition gins up violence. Democracy itself seems to further destabilize the country: Our analysis shows that when foreign countries institute democracy in countries with deep ethnic and religious divisions (and Afghanistan is a tribal-based society), insurgency results.

A second factor suggesting that additional U.S. troops won't do much to quell political violence is the length of the war in Afghanistan. Insurgency develops momentum and is more difficult to eliminate the longer it persists. A force that might nip a fledgling insurgency in the bud is unlikely to do so once it is embedded -- and the rebels in Afghanistan have been around for nearly a decade.

While the continued high probability of insurgency in Afghanistan is bad news by itself, its implications for the survival of democracy in Afghanistan are even more sobering. Indeed, the same ethnic and religious divisions, poverty, and large population that make Afghanistan ripe for the Taliban also undermine the viability of the democratic government -- and additional foreign soldiers do little to ameliorate those underlying conditions.

If the United States keeps the current force in place, our analysis predicts a nearly 20 percent chance that democracy will fail in Afghanistan within three years, 40 percent in five years, and 62 percent in 10 years. The most aggressive force expansion, adding 60,000 troops, actually increasesthe risk of democratic failure, to 22 percent in a three-year time frame and 73 percent in 10 years. Our analysis indicates that larger force deployments increase the risk of democratic failure because they stimulate discontent within the civilian populace -- even if they increase security -- making the durability of the elected government more tenuous.

On the flip side, however...

We also explored the consequences that continued insurgency in Afghanistan might have for its regional neighbors. Our research shows that the successful development of democracy in Afghanistan would promote regional democratization and peace, creating a powerful example for the wider region to follow and encouraging democracy in Pakistan and Iran. But democratic failure in Kabul would carry severe negative effects. In particular, the failure of democracy in Afghanistan raises the risk of civil conflict in Pakistan by a non-negligible 4.2 percent. Not only would the failure of the fledgling Afghan democracy undermine regional hopes for democracy, but the instability would no doubt spill over the country's borders.

Ultimately, our forecasts paint a bleak picture for Afghanistan, regardless of the strategy Obama chooses. Our analysis clearly shows that the time for the stabilization of Afghanistan, if such time existed at all, has passed. The deployment of additional troops to Afghanistan shows little chance of either ending the insurgency or sustaining Afghan democracy. At the same time, the collapse of democracy in Afghanistan raises the specter of something even more worrying: instability in a nuclear-armed Pakistan. As such, our analysis suggests that the resources proposed for the continuation of a losing bet in Afghanistan would be better applied to supporting Pakistan and maintaining its stability.

I'm somewhat skeptical of the claims that instability in Afghanistan will automatically lead to instability in Pakistan (andits arsenal of nuclear weapons). Note that Afghanistan had been stable throughout the 1990s, with seemingly minimal risk to Pakistan's stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Moving along, the next link comes from SWJ's Council and it regards the real threat in the region, al-Qaeda. The guys at SWJ link to another article in FP Online ("Destroying al Qaeda is Not an Option Yet") which discusses the current state of al-Qaeda: one that has been significantly wounded not only by Predator strikes--with a good portion of its top leadership dead--but also appearing increasingly illegitimate in the eyes of many Muslims.

Good news for us.

However, the author brings up a puzzling argument. He believes that the concentration of anti-Western Wahhabists in al Qaeda gives NATO a center of gravity to act upon. Should al Qaeda be destroyed, Wahhabists might flock to a number of other groups, with the dispersion making them that much harder to target and kill.

Oh, you mean like al Qaeda in Mesopotamia (Iraq), al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (Yemen), Lashkar e-Taiba, and any one of a number of other groups? Thanks, it already happened.

The last link isn't about foreign policy--it's about the families of Soldiers. In an article in the Washington Post, the wife of a battalion commander in Iraq notes a number of issues within the family readiness groups Army-wide. One of her top complaints is one which I agree with:

Finally, the Army should directly fund its mandated Family Readiness Groups. Currently, Army regulations require that fundraising be done within units -- so we bake cupcakes and sell them to our own husbands in the motor pool, effectively taking from the people we are trying to support. We shouldn't have to fundraise to treat families to pizza and bowling while their soldiers are deployed.

Yes, the FRG fundraiser. I would be all for nixing these in favor of direct funding to family readiness groups, although for a different reason than the author puts forward...my issue is with the time spent on fundraisers. I'd rather simply pay $50 out of my own pocket than give up a weekend selling cupcakes or sodas, and I'm certain many soldiers and families feel the same way as well. Many fundraisers take away precious time away from families on weekends and weekdays. Not to mention, in this era, many spouses work--when are they going to find the time to participate in a bake sale?

And that's the blogosphere for today. Oh, with one more note for the guys at al-Sahwa.

*--Good luck in your career course. To beat the game, just put tanks all over the battlefield and the Soviet Army will be destroyed. Don't leave a gap in your line like one student did, or the Soviets will break through. Seriously, we have students that fight like the French Army in 1940. God help us all...

Links of the Day

Today's Link of the Day roundup:

• From Gizmodo: Liveblogging Couple May Have Been Captured By Somalian Pirates. (Somalian pirates, we!)
• What could be more eagerly anticipated than the revised DOD policy regarding social media? How about a revised policy regarding USB drives? Seriously, I hate burning CD-ROMs five to ten times a day. What is this, 1999? (H/T Karaka Pend)
• Congratulations to Pat O, an ROTC cadet in his last year of college at Georgetown University, who just discovered that he was branched infantry, which was his first choice. Pat, you are far braver than I!
• The Onion exclusive: US Continues Quagmire-Building Mission in Afghanistan. Pure genius (H/T Abu Muqawama)
• Spencer Ackerman reports that Nuristan province is almost completely under the control of the Taliban. Worse news, Taliban 2.0 has much stronger ties to al Qaeda than Taliban 1.0, which is one reason I oppose complete abandonment of Afghanistan.
• Finally, you may remember a quick article I wrote while I was hung over on R and R leave in Australia about the BigDog, a walker-like robot suited for the terrain in Afghanistan. (The article got picked up by the Early Bird--the Pentagon's official news wire. God, their standards must be low). Well, look out BigDog, here comes a two-legged walker variant called "Petman". While the technology probably isn't workable for an actual battle droid just yet, I think that in the next thirty or forty years, we might see robotics technology like this really take off. (I eagerly await my Cylon Model Six).

Know your enemy: the Taliban

Know your enemy and know yourself, and in a thousand battles, you will have a thousand victories.

--Sun Tzu

Small Wars Journal provided a link to an article in The New Yorker which, among other things, shed some light on a new Taliban training manual for guerrillas. (Related question for the audience--how many in the Taliban are illiterate?). From the New Yorker:

Over the summer, the Afghan Taliban’s military committee distributed “A Book of Rules,” in Pashto, to its fighters. The book’s eleven chapters seem to draw from the population-centric principles of F.M. 3-24, the U.S. Army’s much publicized counter-insurgency field manual, released in 2006. Henceforth, the Taliban guide declares, suicide bombers must take “the utmost steps . . . to avoid civilian human loss.” Commanders should generally insure the “safety and security of the civilian’s life and property.” Also, lest anxious Afghan parents get the wrong idea, Taliban guerrillas should avoid hanging around with beardless young boys and should particularly refrain from “keeping them in camps.”

I took the opportunity to thumb through the Taliban manual. While I agree that the manual for insurgents places considerable emphasis on the support of the population, this has been a hallmark of guerrilla movements since the earliest days. Indeed, it's a little arrogant to claim that the Taliban are reverse-engineering our Counterinsurgency Field Manual...many of these points are lifted from Mao Tse-Tung's "On Guerrilla War", and a number of them refer to the administrative structure and notes of the organization. (I half expect them to discuss the reflector belt policy).

In all, though, a good read--be sure to get inside the enemy's OODA loop and read it at least twice.

The middle ground?

If it weren't Saturday night, I'd be posting all about the new plan for Afghanistan (basically a hybrid counter-insurgency/counter-terror plan). I need to see the specifics, but it doesn't sound half bad at a precursory glance. Something to mill about when I sober up tomorrow morning....

What's in a Name?

In the 1967 James Bond parody movie, Casino Royale, a number of the British agents decide to re-name themselves "James Bond" in an attempt to confuse the enemy. To that end, we have David Niven, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen and even Ursula Andress all playing characters who have changed their names to "James Bond". It sounds like a ridiculous plot point--after all, who would be confused simply by giving a whole bunch of agents similar names?

Most of you should be raising your hand right now.

(H/T SWJ's daily roundup) Today's New York Times ran an interesting article regarding the confusion even within the major policy think-tanks regarding the vast number of groups in Afghanistan who refer to themselves as the "Taliban". (As the author notes, "Taliban" is not so much a proper noun as it is a word for "students" in Arabic). Note that the points the author makes about the all-encompassing term "Taliban" can also be applied to the all-encompassing term "al Qaeda" (e.g., al Qaeda, al Qaeda in Iraq, etc). Take a look:

[A]s it devises a new Afghanistan policy, the Obama administration confronts a complex geopolitical puzzle: two embattled governments, in Afghanistan and Pakistan; numerous militias aligned with overlapping Islamist factions; and hidden in the factions’ midst, the foe that brought the United States to the region eight years ago, Al Qaeda.

But at the core of the tangle are the two Taliban movements, Afghan and Pakistani. They share an ideology and a dominant Pashtun ethnicity, but they have such different histories, structures and goals that the common name may be more misleading than illuminating, some regional specialists say.

“The fact that they have the same name causes all kinds of confusion,” said Gilles Dorronsoro, a French scholar of South Asia currently at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

This week, Mr. Dorronsoro said, as the Pakistani Armybegan a major offensive against the Pakistani Taliban, many Americans thought incorrectly that the assault was against the Afghan Taliban, the force that is causing Washington to consider sending more troops to Afghanistan...

...“To be honest, the Taliban commanders and groups on the ground in Afghanistan couldn’t care less what’s happening to their Pakistani brothers across the border,” said Mr. Strick van Linschoten, who has interviewed many current and former members of the Afghan Taliban.

In fact, the recent attacks of the Pakistani Taliban against Pakistan’s government, military and police, in anticipation of the army’s current campaign into the Pakistani Taliban’s base in South Waziristan, may have strained relations with the Afghan Taliban, saidRichard Barrett, a former British intelligence officer who tracks Al Qaeda and the Taliban for the United Nations.

The Afghan Taliban have always had a close relationship with Pakistani intelligence agencies, Mr. Barrett said recently. “They don’t like the way that the Pakistan Taliban has been fighting the Pakistan government and causing a whole load of problems there,” he said...

...Before 9/11, the Afghan Taliban hosted Osama bin Laden and the other leaders of Al Qaeda, but the groups are now separated geographically, their leaders under pressure from intensive manhunts. On jihadist Web sites, analysts have detected recent tensions between Al Qaeda, whose proclaimed goals are global, and the Afghan Taliban, which have recently claimed that their interests lie solely in Afghanistan.

Mr. Dorronsoro, the French scholar, said the Afghan Taliban were a “genuine national movement” incorporating not only a broad network of fighters, but also a shadow government-in-waiting in many provinces.

By comparison, he said, the Pakistani Taliban were a far looser coalition, united mainly by their enmity toward the Pakistani government. They emerged formally only in 2007 as a separate force led by Baitullah Mehsud under the name Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or Students’ Movement of Pakistan....

...Polls show that Americans, frustrated by the United States’ supposed allies and confused by the conflict, are losing their fervor for the fight. “The complexity of all this is hard enough for experts to understand,” said Paul R. Pillar, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst now at Georgetown University. “It’s not surprising if it baffles a lot of ordinary people.”

I've made this analogy before, although I stole it from my Middle Eastern history professor some ten years ago, but it's worth making again: the vast number of groups with similar-sounding names but vastly different agendas bears a striking similarity to the various Palestinian liberation groups in Monty Python and the Life of Bryan (all COINdinistas should probably find that link amusing).

As David Kilcullen points out in The Accidental Guerrilla, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are hybrid wars--fights against multiple insurgent groups, numerous terror networks, various competing sectarian and tribal groups, criminal syndicates, and so forth. This is common among many "small wars". Indeed, during the Hejaz War of 1916, Lawrence could not convince many of the Arab groups to join together to fight the Turks. Rather, he was able to get one tribe to lay an explosive device on the railway on one day of the week, then another tribe to mount a small attack somewhere on another day of the week, and so forth. It drove the Turks mad, as they were unable to discern any larger pattern to the operation. As Lawrence quipped, "maximum disorder was our equilibrium".

Small Wars are increasingly frustrating for the populations of Western countries. In addition to the factors frequently cited--namely, the length of time needed to conduct a successful counterinsurgency--the complexity of these operations is sometimes too much for the public to comprehend. In conventional wars, we find it easy to follow the success or failure of our forces. In many ways, it resembles a game of football--we watch our forces move increasingly closer to the "goal line", we face lines of battle which are generally similar to our own, and there's clearly defined "good guys" and "bad guys". Insurgencies and hybrid wars, on the other hand, are difficult to relate to--there are often many enemies, their numbers can grow or dwindle at will, they remain hidden and seek battle on their own terms, and success is difficult, if not impossible, to measure.

But this is the future of warfare--it's increasingly confusing, complex and muddled. And that's why we need to train leaders capable of dealing with these environments.

(Additional Reading: See "On the Psychology of Military Incompetence", which has some great passages dedicated to military leaders' aversion to ambiguous situations)

Regarding Fortresses (Redux)

One of the replies I got to yesterday's post regarding the battles at COP Keating and at Wanat comes from Paul, a Vietnam veteran. I thought I'd discuss it here, as he brings up a lot of great points.

Now, I'd love to show everyone a 3D Google map of the area like Fareed Zakaria on CNN's GPS, but alas, I can't quite find COP Keating, so I leave you all mapless. Not to fear, as Paul does a great job at summing up much of the difficulties at Keating.

I knew nothing about COP Keating until after the battle. When I saw some of the photos, I said to myself “oh sh*t, I can see why these guys got pounded.” Anytime the opposition can direct fire down on you, you’ve got a big helping of hurt on your hands. On the other hand, it didn’t look like there was much in the way of flat ground, or even a reasonable slope, on which to set up a base in the hills. And locating it too far up the hill would have meant that resupply could probably only be done by helicopter. I gather that that’s not a real solid link at times during the year.

I had some questions, though. Did these guys have listening posts out? Did they do nighttime patrols in the village and in the hills around their base? How was their intel capability within the village? If something out of the ordinary was going on, would they have known about it? How were they keeping an eye on the mosque (which was an obvious rallying point)? Did they set ambushes every night? The impression I’ve gotten is that the answers to these questions might be kinda negative. It strikes me that if they were doing these things properly, it would have been fairly difficult to assemble over 100 fighters without our troops knowing about it.

If you have a base on bad ground, you absolutely cannot sit around and wait for the other guy to come to you. You have to project your eyes and ears outward so you have advance warning. You also have to make the enemy cautious about approaching you. That’s the purpose of foot patrols and ambushes.

In the kind of guerrilla warfare that we’re facing now, the enemy is always going to go for the lowest hanging fruit on the tree. The T’ban undoubtedly spent a fair amount of time observing this base, absorbing what their routine was and then figuring out how they could use the terrain (including the buildings in the village) to their advantage. Had their observation been adequately disrupted, they may well have said “hey, these guys are on their toes — let’s go somewhere else.”

The change to a counterinsurgency force (at least in some circles) has been positive in many aspects, but it's caused some skills to atrophy. Nearly a decade of war has allowed the US military to build increasingly massive garrisons in the middle of nowhere in Iraq and Afghanistan. Before the US military really had an enemy, we focused on "joint forcible entry"--parachuting in to an area and setting up an air head or beach head for follow-on operations. US forces were trained to enter a country, secure an area, occupy it, and defend it.

Years after the initial invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, the concepts of "secure, occupy and defend" are not in the lexicon of most troops. We simply move to massive garrisons which have already been built for us--the guard towers, the fortifications, the defenses are all in place. The "priorities of work" that are often found in infantry manuals (and at the conclusion of the first segment of The Defense of Jisr al-Doreaa) are an anathema to most troops. Upon hopping off the plane, troops can easily go to their sleeping quarters, the mini-mall, the post exchange, the Starbucks, etc. instead of securing and defending their positions. Indeed, "improving the foxhole" on these bases meant building more luxurious conditions, not making the area more tenable.

And there's little defending to do, particularly in Iraq, especially on the larger bases. These bases are located in the middle of the desert, where no insurgent group can realistically mount a credible sustained assault upon it. Most troops play little role in external base defense--a small cadre performs that duty, while troops are free to do their everyday tasks such as fixing aircraft, mission planning, operating a blog, you name it. The massive Forward Operating Bases are static and immobile, not just in the physical sense, but also in the sense that it stagnated one's thinking.

Only a few troops have had the task of setting up defensible areas in the past few years, most notably those who established many of the combat outposts during the troop surge of 2007 (with an urban siege on a combat outpost in Baghdad described in detail in Tom Ricks' The Gamble) .

I wonder if, based on experience in Iraq, we've lost the ability to accurately analyze terrain. Numerous people looked at the locations of these bases and instantly smacked their heads upon realizing they were located on the low ground. A number of the Vietnam veterans correctly noted comparisons to the Battle at Dien Bien Phu, where the French were pummeled by Vietnamese forces, after taking up positions in the low ground.

The battles at COP Keating and Wanat also bring up another interesting tidbit--the lack of unmanned aerial sensors, which are the modern-day equivalent of the listening post. (The official AR 15-6 investigation specifically suggests adding more air-ground sensors in its conclusion) One of the key observations many made about both battles was the Taliban's propensity to attack during periods of poor weather, presumably to take advantage of degraded NATO air support (which affects not only the ability detect the enemy, but also to target and destroy attacking forces).

Focus: Soldiers got quite a bit of good combat experience conducting counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, but some skills have atrophied. What other skills have you noticed?

Afghanistan: Door number one, two or three?

A few links today which, once again, explore the various policy options in Afghanistan. What's interesting to note is that it seems that most of these options are actually expressed in far greater detail than they had been before. Anyway, a quick summary of a few of the points.

The big debate is whether or not to focus on a counter-terror campaign or a counter-insurgency campaign...both of which involve their own respective Gordian knots of unknowns, variables, black swans, and potential outcomes. Nevertheless, much of the debate has focused on concentrating on one of these two camps--either you're for counterinsurgency or for counter-terror.

I'd always hoped that there was something in between these two camps, and I heard it from Tom Ricks just today, during an interview on Fareed Zakaria's GPS (although it's also brought up in CNAS' June publication called "Triage: The Next Twelve Months in Afghanistan", available on Kindle). The CNAS gang proposed using the "oil spot strategy"--standard Galula-based counterinsurgency--which would begin by securing the urban areas of Afghanistan and slowly expanding their reach from these areas. Meanwhile, the counter-terror campaign would be conducted on the peripherals of the ever-expanding oil spots in Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, the down side to many of these "middle ground" solutions, though, is that they seem distressingly similar to what we've been trying to do for the last eight years or so (with an urban elite government in Kabul which seems to barely exist outside of the city limits). Nevertheless, it seems far more attractive than a full-blown counterinsurgency campaign (which, by its very nature, will be messy and slow), coupled with a civilian surge (not going to happen).

The counter-terror crowd, on the other hand, has been sparse on details--they've mainly been "anti-full-blown-COIN" than anything else. That is, until today, when Austin Long at the AfPak channel decided to fill us in (it sounds eerily similar to something posted by Ralph Peters. No no, the counter-terror part, not the killing of American POWs part). Basically, it would consist of a few NATO air bases in Afghanistan, which would also house a few battalions of infantry forces and special operations forces, which would focus on killing or capturing key Taliban and al Qaeda leaders. This minimalist approach would still consist of several thousand troops (and contractors).

The problem I see with this approach, however, is that it will still be very difficult to get the human intelligence necessary to acquire these targets. Without a significant presence from NATO and (especially) Afghan troops, we risk having more incidents like those in Kunduz last month.

Focus: There's no easy way to cut this one. Not to mention, we still don't know the true nature of our enemies in Afghanistan: the Taliban, the taliban (little "T"), and al Qaeda.

The relationship between al Qaeda and the Taliban: Friends with benefits?

A few days ago, karaka pend asked me whether or not it was worth the $35 to purchase War 2.0: Irregular Warfare in the Information Age. I thought it was a great book, don't get me wrong, but I hate spending $35 for e-books, so I recommended not buying it. Another reader disagreed with me, stating that the book was well worth the money--but caveatted their response with the fact that some of the material in the book might already be common knowledge to some people.

Now, I'll agree that much of the book reiterated information that I felt that I was already familiar with. Yes, I'm well aware that there are bloggers in the military. I know that Soldiers use Facebook to connect with the outside world, share life experiences, post pictures of cats who desire "cheezburgers", etc. I also know quite well that there's this site called Small Wars Journal where people discuss counterinsurgency....and while it's not The Best Page in the Universe, it's still good enough to make the Rolling Stone Hot List.

That being said, War 2.0 (along with another book I've been into recently, In the Graveyard of Empires) does tackle a very important issue which has, until recently, been overlooked in the debate on Afghanistan: the relationship between the Taliban and al Qaeda. Fortunately, a number of pundits have been able to examine this issue recently, most notably Perter Bergen, who penned an article which appeared in The New Republic recently (h/t Afpak Channel on Twitter).

Bergen--one of the few Western journalists who has actually been able to interview Osama bin Laden--begins his article by summing up the arguments of those who support the "offshore balancing" strategy, which he opposes:

And yet, as President Obama weighs whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, the connection between the region and Al Qaeda has suddenly become a matter of hot dispute in Washington. We are told that September 11 was as much a product of plotting in Hamburg as in Afghanistan; that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are quite distinct groups, and that we can therefore defeat the former while tolerating the latter; that flushing jihadists out of one failing state will merely cause them to pop up in another anarchic corner of the globe; that, in the age of the Internet, denying terrorists a physical safe haven isn't all it's cracked up to be.

These arguments point toward one conclusion: The effort to secure Afghanistan is not a matter of vital U.S. interest. But those who make this case could not be more mistaken. Afghanistan and the areas of Pakistan that border it have always been the epicenter of the war on jihadist terrorism-and, at least for the foreseeable future, they will continue to be. Though it may be tempting to think otherwise, we cannot defeat Al Qaeda without securing Afghanistan.

Mr. Bergen is one of the first people to actually take on many of the valid points of the "offshore balancing" camp--after that camp has run circles around the "comprehensive COIN" camp for the last few weeks. (Read the article--why is General McChrystal not using Bergen's speaking points?)

Bergen brings up an important point which was mentoned in both War 2.0 and Graveyard regarding the Taliban--they've evolved since their ousting in 2002, and they've done so with the help of al Qaeda. The relationship between these two organizations has been a strained one since the 1990s--al Qaeda leadership looked down on the Afghan movement, according to both sources. Nevertheless, in recent years, they have been able to train the Taliban in a number of insurgent tactics--namely, the construction of improvised explosive devices, suicide bombings, and most importantly, the value of information operations. (As War 2.0 notes very astutely, the Taliban--which had originally banned almost all forms of media--soon came to realize the value of such forms of communication and propaganda).

Now, some of the claims Bergen makes seem a little far-fetched. For example, the fact that one Taliban-allied terrorist attempted a bomb plot in the West is used as an example that the Taliban actually have global aspirations. Nevertheless, it hardly sounds like Taliban policy. Bergen is also one of the few who tackles some of the key issues regarding the Af/Pak safe haven (can al Qaeda move to Somalia, Yemen or the Sudan effectively?), as well as the "internet safe haven" argument (I'd argue that there is, in fact, some value in using these forums).

All in all, Bergen produces an interesting argument, and one of the first well-written arguments I've heard from the "continue the war" camp. Although I still remain somewhat skeptical on some points, the fact of the matter remains that the relationship between al Qaeda and the Taliban (or "little t" taliban) might be significantly more complex than originally thought. I think it's naive to claim that there is no connection at this point, and that it's equally unrealistic to claim that they are one and the same. For the time being, they have many agenda points which, for the moment, seem to be mutually beneficial. In a way, we might call these organizations friends, with benefits conferred upon the alliance. (Hehehe, I said "friends with benefits")

Edit: I'm not the only one who is confused as to the actual relationship between the Taliban and al Qaeda, based on this article from the Los Angeles Times this morning:

Ten years later, could Al Qaeda return to Afghanistan and use it again as a launching pad for terrorist strikes?

The question has taken on heightened urgency as the Obama administration searches for a new war strategy, and Pakistan carries out its first major military offensive in the tribal region that Al Qaeda has called home since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

The issue is also a source of surprising disagreement within the counter-terrorism community.

Some are skeptical that Al Qaeda would return to Afghanistan, even in the event of a substantial U.S. military drawdown. Doing so would mean leaving a sanctuary in Pakistan that has afforded significant protection for eight years, despite a barrage of U.S. Predator drone strikes.

Others argue that Al Qaeda is under mounting pressure in Pakistan, and that a return to Afghanistan is all but inevitable if President Obama endorses anything other than a full-scale, counterinsurgency campaign there.

There is broad agreement among U.S. intelligence officials that Al Qaeda has a minimal presence in Afghanistan and would probably like to return there if it had the chance....

...One senior U.S. counter-terrorism official said the number of Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan is in the "dozens," and that most function as low-level fighters with no significant leadership presence.

"Al Qaeda brings very little to the fight in Afghanistan," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. Militarily, he said, "if you removed Al Qaeda from the equation in Afghanistan, it wouldn't matter."

That may be by design. Over the last eight years, Al Qaeda has burrowed deep into Pakistan's tribal belt, and fostered a closer relationship with local Taliban elements that are focused on carrying out attacks against the Pakistani government.

The Afghan Taliban, by contrast, has sought to distance itself from Al Qaeda, and to portray its insurgent campaign as a local fight.

A statement last month attributed to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar urged the West "not to be deceived" by Obama's assertions that the Afghanistan war is necessary because of the Al Qaeda threat. "The West does not have to wage this war," Omar said....

...U.S. intelligence officials said there is little sign of an active relationship at the top of the organizations, and probably no contact whatsoever between Bin Laden and Omar...

...

Still, they point to ongoing coordination at lower levels. And in his recent military assessment, U.S. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal said Al Qaeda aids the insurgency with "ideological motivation, training and financial support."

There are reasons that Al Qaeda might be reluctant to relocate. The protective, rugged terrain of Pakistan's Waziristan region and the group's ties with the tribes there offer advantages the terrorist network would struggle to replicate in other places such as Somalia or Yemen.

Pakistan has served as such an effective haven that after eight years, the trail for Bin Laden "is not just cold, it's frozen over," Riedel said.

Moving across the border would expose Al Qaeda operatives to risks of detection by satellites, CIA drones or spies on the ground. And even if the U.S. was to withdraw forces from Afghanistan, America is likely to have a substantial military presence there -- and freedom to operate, unlike in Pakistan -- for years to come.

Edit #2 (Courtesy of Pat O): Seems that Nathan Hodge at Wired's Danger Room has also noticed an ideological shift in the Taliban, based on contact with al Qaeda. Well worth the read.

Focus: This is the crux of the whole Afghanistan debate--What is the relationship between these two organizations?

Don't tell me we've stooped to the "Domino Theory"

I try to avoid making Vietnam comparisons in the Afghan debate, but sometimes it's unavoidable.

Take today's post by Londonstani in Andrew Exum's "Abu Muqawama", in which Londonstani and British General Sir David Richards invoke the old "Domino theory" argument from the Vietnam era. Says Gen. Richards in the Telegraph:

He said: "If al-Qaeda and the Taliban believe they have defeated us – what next? Would they stop at Afghanistan? Pakistan is clearly a tempting target not least because of the fact that it is a nuclear-weaponed state and that is a terrifying prospect. Even if only a few of those (nuclear) weapons fell into their hands, believe me they would use them. The recent airlines plot has reminded us that there are people out there who would happily blow all of us up."

Cute, but hardly accurate. Keep in mind that the Taliban ruled Afghanistan throughout the 1990s and seemed largely uninterested in Pakistan.

But wait, there's more to the Taliban's dastardly plans:

He said: "Failure would have a catalytic effect on militant Islam around the world and in the region because the message would be that al-Qaeda and the Taliban have defeated the US and the British and Nato, the most powerful alliance in the world. So why wouldn't that have an intoxicating effect on militants everywhere? The geo-strategic implications would be immense."

All right, so the monolithic Takfiri Jihadists in the world will then band together and continue taking over every country at will if we abandon Afghanistan? I have my doubts. The last time we invoked the Domino argument was Vietnam, and it was an utterly false assumption: after the US withdrawal from Vietnam, there were more wars among the Communist countries of Southeast Asia than anything else: Communism completely failed to take hold over the rest of Southeast Asia. Just as there was no monolithic Communism, there certainly is no monolithic Muslim jihadism (in case you didn't notice from all the sectarian violence going on).

One of the worst strategic blunders on the part of al Qaeda (and similar takfiri groups) is their propensity to cause mass civilian casualties among the Muslim community--significantly reducing their appeal. They also appear to have little interest in actual nation-building and governance. (T.E. Lawrence said it best--insurgents rarely make effective civil leaders). Especially in light of the elections in Iran, which showed considerable disinterest in the leadership of the ayatollahs and the like, I have my doubts that the Muslim world is going to rush to accept militant jihadism as a form of governance in the wake of an American withdrawal.