Using Local Power structures

I am reading an excellent paper written by a foreign service officer about how to be a good adviser in the Islamic world. It is available here.

There was one story in particular that illustrated one of our key mistakes that we have only now reversed in Afghanistan.

“An American Commander in Afghanistan made an unannounced visit to a remote district of Heart Province. They traveled in a large convoy of more than 20 vehicles filled with well-armed American and Afghan soldiers, about 100 in all as a display meant to cow the district officials. The district administrator was summoned to appear before the colonel and subjected to a long public speech by the American about the necessity of collecting all the weapons held by the district residents. The Afghan administrator waited until the colonel was finished, and then said simply: “There are more than 200 villages in this district, and every house has a weapon. We have almost no police enforcement here. If you promise me that every time a village family has a problem you will come immediately from the capital to solve it, I will happily collect all the weapons. But Colonel, come unarmed and not with all these soldiers. You shouldn’t tell us to get rid of all our weapons unless you are brave enough to come alone and unarmed to talk about it.”

The most evident lesson from this story is the importance of providing local security to the population. It is clear the district officials did not trust the central government and the Americans to provide him with security and so their policy was doomed.

However, the more important question this raises is whether or not to work with local power structures or supplant them. By taking away weapons from the people, the Americans were trying to strengthen the hand of the central government and increase it's ability to rule its people. Central government as a power structure has never really existed in Afghanistan in a constructive way. Instead, power tends to be held at the local level.

I think that rather than trying to supplant these local power structures, we should try and coopt them to our cause. It is naive to think we can turn into Afghanistan into a country like the US. Victory there means reducing violence to culturally acceptable levels and it will probably never have a very effective central government. So, rather than exclusively building the central government, forming local militias to help fight the Taliban is the best method. We have only just started to do so. Progress will be slow and there are some downsides, but the strategy represents the best hope for Afghanistan.

Fighting Terror and Looking Good

This is beyond trivial, but seeing photos of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs ADM Mullen in the news forces me to ask, how many uniforms does the Navy have? There's the blues, and the whites of course, but there's also long sleeved mandarin collar whites, a dressed down tan, a utility uniform, and (the uniform that prompted this post) a more formal tan. I will refrain from Navy jokes, but seriously, is all this really necessary? Let's expend some brain power to get to the bottom of this most important question.

How to do Company Level COIN

Here is another excellent account of COIN done right on a low level. Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here. An account written by one of the Platoon leaders can also be found on pages 12-22 of the PLs in OIF handbook from platoonleader.army.mil.

This unit did almost everything right. They faced a tough enemy and were able to "win." One thing that jumped out at me was the sense of accomplishment and purpose that the soldiers clearly felt. In any counter-insurgency, if you fight the enemy using mostly search and destroy than its not easy to see the purpose of what you are doing. You are killing the bad guys but what are you really accomplishing. In this account, his company had a sector that it owned and the CO delegated a lot of the key tasks as far down as he could. The contrast is also evident in the Village, where the Marines had a hamlet they owned and were responsible for. The leadership climate was much better as a result. The soldiers put peer pressure on one another to get the job done and functioned more as a team.

Another thing I got from the PLs account was a better of understanding of what David Killculen meant when he wrote "Fight the enemy’s strategy, not his forces" in his 28 fundamentals of Counter-insurgency. Here is one application of that:

"On one occasion, when the rift between AQI and locals was greatest, my Platoon Sergeant’s patrol was engaged with insurgents despite heavy civilian presence. A round had struck a child, and instead of returning fire, risking further local casualties and delaying her treatment time, my Platoon Sergeant grabbed her and evacuated her to the hospital in the green zone. An informant later reported the incident as a large turning point towards winning the people of our neighborhood."

Thus, Al-Qaeda's strategy was to diminish civilian support by getting to Americans to accidentally shoot civilians. By treating the girl rather than killing the enemy, the Americans attacked their strategy.

Recent Lessons of History, Anyone?

In response to the recent violence in India, most likely perpetrated by Pakistani terrorist, Robert Kagan argues that an international force should invade the Kashmir/Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) to halt the terrorist problems in the region. But this argument reflects a deliberate avoidance of the lessons of the last seven years, specifically the lessons of Afghanistan, but also those from across the international relations scene.

First, the situation in Pakistan is very similar that that faced in Afghanistan. Both are marked by extremely remote, rugged areas, ruled by local tribal lords where the government is able to exert very little influence and terrorist organizations are able to operate almost unhindered. These are the same ails that the international coalition is struggling to diagnose and treat in Afghanistan. What makes Kagan suppose that the same actors would have any more success with what is essentially the same problem, one state to the east?

Second, Kagan foresees that this international force will help the Pakistani government save face. Yes, the Pakistani government's inability to halt the international terrorist organizations operating within their borders and the almost autonomous Afghan border region de-legitimizes President Zandari's control over the state. But, an internationalized response with boots on the ground, welcome or not, would severely undermine Zandari, far worse that the status quo. The presence of foreign forces in these regions would be perceived as an confession of inability to govern. Such an admittance would be far worse than the questions about the current span and power of the government. Increases in the perception that the government is weak and unable to govern effectively would only fuel terrorist and other non-state actors as they believe the government powerless against them.

Finally, it is highly unlikely that the international community would support such a venture, especially if it was spear-headed by the United States. Kagan himself admits that China and Russia, two kingpins on the United Nation's security council, would be unlikely to vote for such an venture. The U.S. sacrificed a significant amount of soft power with it's almost unilateral invasion of Iraq and it's multilateral, but less than successful, operations in Afghanistan. The international community is going to be unwilling, in the foreseeable future, to join the U.S. in the invasion of sovereign nations.

In the last seven years, the United State has learned many hard lessons about national building and the complications therein. We would be wise to study the recent lessons of history before embarking on, or even recommending, another similar venture.

Warrior Forge Changes

US Army Cadet Command has recently unveiled some very interesting changes to Warrior Forge (the culminating training/evaluation exercise for ROTC cadets). From an administrative standpoint, the exercise will be shortened by two days, from 33 to 31, and the cadet regiments will be double-stacked to allow for more cadets to be trained and evaluated in a shorter period of time. This should make life a little easier on the ROTC cadre, keeping them away from their families for a shorter period of time.

The changes to training are much more interesting. The amount of time spent in the field will increase from 11 nights to 14 nights. The increased emphasis on field training appears to be a good thing, but upon closer examinations, the changes appear more nuanced. Under the new plan, the number of nights spent in a patrol base will decrease from nine to two. Six of the seven nights formerly spent in a patrol base will now be spent in what Cadet Command is calling a tactical training base (read FOB). The balance of the nights in the field will be spent in assembly areas.

I'm not sure how much of a gain this is. One of the lessons we have learned in Iraq is "don't commute to work." In other words, living on a huge, highly fortified FOB and conducting patrols during the day is not a good way to provide population security. We also discovered the importance of combat outposts, which are really just urban patrol bases. So it puzzles me that Cadet Command is moving towards more "FOB" time and less "COP" time.

Spending more nights in assembly areas also does not seem to be much of a training advantage. As I recall, the assembly areas were simply non-tactical bivouac sites. No real gain in training there (except maybe making cadets tougher, "like they were when WE were cadets").

The evaluations and such remain largely the same, with the exception being that evaluating a casualty and performing first aid will now be evaluated. Presumably this will be a go/no go evaluation.

In short, I think the move towards more field training is a good one. Tactical operations is the foundation of what the Army does and is clearly the Army's most critical function. Preparing future officers to be successful in that environment ought to be a Cadet Command priority. However, the way in which they are increasing the amount of field training does not seem to offer many tangible benefits.

People are Key Terrain - How to Treat them as Such?

In reading Mao, Galula and the like, it is easy to become well versed in COIN theory and lose sight of the practical applications on the ground. In addition to this off-kilter perspective, it can be very difficult to determine just what the practical applications should be.

This article, written by CPT Coppock, who deployed as rifle PL, outlines a variety of TTP's for proactively addressing an insurgency at the SQ and PL level. His in-depth advice regarding the use of interpreters, familiarization with Arabic street names and important details that should be gathered about the AO and the people within serve to simplify what is a daunting task.