The American soldier dubbed the 'Lawrence of Iraq'

How Travis Patriquin shaped the Iraq War

Afghan Bombs Grow, Forcing Troops to Adapt

The key to the chart above is how many NATO troops are alerted to IED locations by local Afghans. Unfortunately, that number is still very low. The US can spend billions more on armor for vehicles, but it will not do any good; roads that can handle gargantuan, indestructible troop transports are not available... unless Robert Moses rises from the dead this Easter to build a road network to traverse the rough terrain of Afghanistan. Remember, the Soviet Army was an armor heavy force and they were still defeated. NATO needs to gain the trust of the local tribes, but I'm sure all of the ivory tower counterinsurgency "expert" bloggers have said this already.

Is Counterinsurgency Entirely Too Popular?

Umm... yes.

However, as I've said before, the top-heavy staffs and careerist colonels that refuse to grant fires authority (artillery and drone strikes) to company level officers engaging the enemy with positive identification and real-time actionable intelligence is crippling the war effort. If it takes one hour to get approval for fires clearance (artillery rounds on target, drone strike), the engagement is probably over or the insurgents got away. CNAS is led by maneuver officers who don't understand the concept of fires accuracy because the only artillery they have had any hands-on experience with are inaccurate mortars... Drone strikes and artillery can help end our underfunded, undermanned, expeditions, I mean "counterinsurgencies," as soon as possible. No matter what we do, our detractors will claim we are responsible for civilian deaths, but they are not likely due to accuracy. Besides, we are at war, aren't we? When did civilian deaths stop being a part of the cruelty, suffering, and idiocy of war?

New Afghanistan Commander Will Review Troop Placement

In recent months, U.S. commanders have debated whether to increase the American force in the Korengal Valley in an effort to rout the insurgents, or simply leave the isolated area. A third option is to hold force levels in the area steady.

Is COIN losing its academic focus?

Crossposted to Attackerman:

I have maintained for quite some time that COIN, now that we know at least what it is and attempt to put its principles into action, is yesterday’s war. See Into the Fifth Generation…

If academia has her hands on the topic, it already is old news on the war front. For the most part, many academics are not fighting in today’s wars (for comments on the academia-military divide in America see Why We Should Get Rid of West Point and ROTC and the Ivies). Academics read accounts that are old, come up with ideas to counteract old problems, and are not as focused on the future as they should be… especially since our enemies are always adapting. In my view, the Ph.D.s in the ivory tower should be attempting to figure out what the next move our adaptable enemies are going to make. I am willing to bet 5GW will be a war on our technology… as I stated in October 2008, “perhaps we should be focusing on the emerging threat of cyber war or other possible forms of war as we leap into the Fifth Generation?”

Finally, I leave you with a link to a post I wrote in June 2008 about cyber war and how vulnerable we are -
Cyberspace Wars: Militarization of Virtual Front.

Soon to be GEN McChrystal

Abu M beat me to the punch here. Here are his thoughts on LTG McChrystal: McKiernan Out, McChrystal In

As I have stated earlier, LTG McChrystal is more than qualified for combat command. I also stated that implementing a counterinsurgency strategy fell to GEN McKiernan, not GEN Petraeus, and questioned how he and the Obama administration could save Afghanistan. Thankfully, the Obama administration acted swiftly and replaced GEN McKiernan quickly. They fired a general that wasn't getting the job done - holy $h!7!!! Bravo, Obama administration! Bravo, Secretary Gates (pbuh)!

No place to Hide

Excellent article by the author of Abu Muqawama, Andrew Exum. In particular, his comments on safe havens proved to be enlightening. Here is an excerpt:

The White House strategy, though, betrays an obsession with physical space at the expense of virtual space. This fixation very much reflects a generational divide among the scholars and policy-makers who focus on terrorism. Younger scholars such as Will McCants (now at the Department of Defense) and Thomas Hegghammer--in addition to being much more likely to actually be able to speak and read the relevant languages (Arabic and Urdu)--are "digital natives" rather than "digital immigrants" (to use the labels preferred by the counter-insurgency scholar Thomas Rid): They do not need to have the explosive potential of the internet explained to them, and McCants and Hegghammer especially have individually spent hundreds of hours on the more popular jihadi chatrooms to gather data about the debates and spread of information that is taking place in the virtual world.

This is not to say that physical safe havens do not matter. They do--a lot. But they are not the "be all, end all" of an effective counter-terror strategy. The policy-makers who crafted the White House strategy largely belong to the generation that cut its teeth in the Clinton White House, when physical havens were in fact the only havens that mattered. But as Europe's experience has shown us, this thinking is outdated; we shouldn't wait until we are attacked by homegrown or internet-coordinated terrorists to adopt an appropriately far-reaching strategy. Share

No Good Choices? Some Choices Are Still Better than Others

The link above is from WinTheGWOT.org and describes another sad story and another frustrated leader making bad decisions.

In Counterinsurgency, Army Makes 'Civil Control' a Priority

I would be interested in the details on the targeting aspects of the manual... perhaps the U.S. Army has made some strides in this important aspect of counterinsurgency. Here is an excerpt from the article:

The 300-page manual, reviewed last week by The Washington Post, describes in detail what U.S. commanders at the battalion and company levels should do in counterinsurgencies such as the one in Afghanistan. The manual says establishing civil control requires plans to "secure the populations and areas that remain loyal; reclaim the populations and areas that support the insurgency; and eliminate the insurgency, politically, militarily and philosophically."

The other six tasks detailed in the manual, referred to as "lines of effort," include "support host nation forces, support governance, restore essential services, support economic and infrastructure development and conduct information engagement."

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Barack the Great?

Citing an increase in attacks and outlining many of the problems in Afghanistan, Michael Gordon of the New York Times states that:

Military experts agree that more troops are required to carry out an effective counterinsurgency campaign, but they also caution that the reinforcements are unlikely to lead to the sort of rapid turnaround that the so-called troop surge in Iraq produced after its start in 2007.

After seven years of war, Afghanistan presents a unique set of problems: a rural-based insurgency, an enemy sanctuary in neighboring Pakistan, the chronic weakness of the Afghan government, a thriving narcotics trade, poorly developed infrastructure, and forbidding terrain.

So what now, President-elect Obama? It appears that more troops will be on their way to Afghanistan, but with the additional troops will come some more problems. The troops must be used in the correct fashion and, undoubtedly, many of them have never been to Afghanistan (e.g. the Marines). There will be a learning curve and with it, unfortunately, more casualties. Can an Obama administration withstand criticism from his own party for such an increase in casualties? Can an Obama administration withstand the long war? We will soon see... For all of his faults, President Bush never budged when it came to casualty count criticism.

Although some of the counterinsurgency lessons learned in Iraq can be applied to Afghanistan, it is a very different war zone. Iraq is semi-urban, Afghanistan is rural. Iraq was once a relatively powerful Second World nation, Afghanistan has never been more than a loose confederation of agrarian/nomadic tribes not conquered since Alexander the Great around 300 B.C. Iraq's borders are porous, but not as porous as the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. Remember in Eastern Iraq (Western Iraq is a different story...), despite interference from Shiite Iran, there is a mountain range between Iraq and Iran and that mountain range divides Arabs from Persians, which in my mind is one of the key factors undermining Iranian influence in Iraq; there are Shiite Arabs in Iraq, but not many Shiite Persians in Iraq. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, Muslims are Sunni without much to differentiate themselves other than tribal affiliation.

As stated on numerous occasions, I feel the key to Afghanistan is the opium trade that props up the Afghan narcostate. Links between President Hamid Karzai's brother and the opium trade have been speculated for quite some time. In sum, the key to Afghanistan is the tribe and the key to the tribe is making tribes prosperous without the opium trade. President-elect Obama must quickly sound the call to serve and beef up PRTs with agricultural experts and not rely on the military as much as the Bush administration has done.

The Counterinsurgent

I have not read this book, but below is an excerpt from a New York Times book review of Linda Robinson's Tell Me How This Ends:

Robinson makes it clear that this simply isn’t so. She describes in exacting detail the tactics used by field officers in some of the most terrifying battlegrounds of Iraq. When the First Battalion, Fifth Cavalry Regiment of the First Cavalry Division was assigned in late 2006 to Ameriya, in western Baghdad, the commander, Lt. Col. Dale Kuehl, moved his headquarters out of the base camp and into a local police station. He and his staff officers had read up on “battalion-led counterinsurgency,” and were eager to put its precepts into effect. Kuehl began building contacts with local sheiks, and spreading money around by paying for trash pickup and road repair. Then he began “clearing” operations against insurgents. The cost was high: 14 deaths in May alone.

Robinson lingers on the heroic self-­discipline of officers who denied their men the catharsis of revenge, knowing that they were fighting for the sympathies of civilians. And finally, that discipline paid off. In late May, a local sheik called Kuehl to say that his tribesmen would be going after an Al Qaeda cell. When the sheik called back in a panic to ask for help, Kuehl joined the fight. His men weren’t sure which Iraqis to shoot at, but the battle went well, and later Kuehl reached an understanding with the commander of the tribal force: he promised to pay the Sunnis, many of them former insurgents, if they submitted to fingerprinting and agreed to work with the Iraqi Army. When Petraeus learned of the deal, his only advice was, “Do not let our Army stop you,” and “Do not let the Iraqi government stop you.”

Counterinsurgency theory holds that military action can only be a precondition for political success. And Robinson readily concedes that President Maliki and other Iraqi national leaders have so far refused to pursue compromise. Indeed, journalists and policy analysts have been reporting that Maliki has reneged on promises to induct Awakening members into the Iraqi Army and police, threatening a return to the Hobbesian violence of 2006. Robinson holds out hope that coming elections will produce a more legitimate government. She supports Petraeus’s preference for a gradual draw-down of forces as the Iraqi Army assumes control of ground-level operations. And she argues that a swifter withdrawal would jeopardize the fragile gains of the last year.

Is the Insurgency Our Own Creation?

During my two tours in Iraq I witnessed two different approaches to counter-insurgency, aggressive versus passive, and took note on how the infantry's culture naturally accepts the aggressive style. I am not arguing for passivity, clearly we need aggressive soldiers, but in a counterinsurgency, where the people are the key terrain, we need to tread lightly. My basic question is: How much are we contributing to the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan while trying to prevent it?
Unfortunately, I do not offer any answers, but only present my experiences to serve as an analogy to the infantry's disincentives to conduct a good counterinsurgency.

During my first tour from 2003 to 2004, I was an Infantry Platoon Leader in the 101st Airborne, near Mosul, tasked with stopping the looting of a university and to impose peace on the local neighborhoods. I was in Alpha Company where we would rotate once a month with Charlie Company using the university as our headquarters. As we did the hand-over, Charlie Company would tell us about the unruliness of the town, and that they were constantly fired upon. Because of this they recommended many patrols and nightly cordon and searches because there were a lot of “bad guys.” Once we took responsibility of the patrols we were hardly shot at and rarely mortared, as compared to the nightly experience of Charlie Company. It took us a little while to figure out why this was happening--of course the Charlie Company Commander never figured it out. Basically, the Charlie Company Commander had an offensive, conventional approach, which angered a lot of the locals. He treated the towns-people as subordinates by issuing orders as if they were his children. To stop the locals from shooting at his troops the Charlie Company commander increasing the patrols, and conduct more nightly raids, only to infuriate the locals more so. From the American point of view, the Charlie Company Commander was seen as more productive than Alpha Company because he was conducting more patrols and capturing more “bad guys.” Quantitatively, Charlie Company appeared more productive than Alpha Company who appeared to be lazy. After a while the locals could tell when Charlie Company was in charge because their commander had twice the amount of guards on the roof and twice the amount of patrols, because there was twice as much activity. So the locals knowing that Charlie Company was in charge would attack them more often. Then when Alpha Company was in charge, we essentially did half the work because there were half the attacks. Of course doing half the work is counter-culture to the hyperactive infantry, nor does it report well that we are in a combat zone doing nothing. When the relieving unit took over, they let their hyperactivity get the best of them and annoyed all of the locals, who in turn shot at the soldiers--or supported those that did.

During my second tour in Kirkuk, 2005-2006, I noticed the same disincentive of passivity, where those units that conducted the most raids and produced the higher numbers in killing or capturing the “enemy” received more accolades, more medals, and more bragging rights. They got to play with the bigger toys—had air support and all the newer gadgets—because they needed them more. Those who were interested in “keeping the peace” and talking to leaders and exercising patience were seen as less productive than the aggressive unit. This low productivity level was highlighted when the companies put their weekly accomplishments side-by-side on a PowerPoint slide in front of their peers, superiors, and subordinates at the weekly battalion meetings. It seemed that the higher commanders would question the existence of a low producing company commander—what were they doing in Iraq?

In the infantry there is an incentive to be aggressive. These aggressive feelings further mount when people are trying to kill you. Then when you cannot find the enemy, the entire population is seen as the enemy. This is where the difficulty rests: in counterinsurgency, an aggressive unit is actually counter-productive. In sum, I wonder how much of our troubles in Iraq and Afghanistan are brought on by ourselves?