Blog Posts

State Department Creating Mini-army in Iraq - Associated Press via The Washington Times.

The State Department is quietly forming a small army to protect diplomatic personnel in Iraq after U.S. military forces leave the country at the end of 2011, taking its firepower with them. Department officials are asking the Pentagon to provide heavy military gear, including Black Hawk helicopters, and say they also will need substantial support from private contractors.

The shopping list demonstrates the department's reluctance to count on Iraq's army and police forces for security, despite the billions of dollars the U.S. invested to equip and train them. And it shows that President Obama is having a hard time keeping his pledge to reduce U.S. reliance on contractors, a practice that flourished under the Bush administration. In an early April request to the Pentagon, Patrick Kennedy, the State Department's undersecretary for management, is seeking 24 Black Hawks, 50 bomb-resistant vehicles, heavy cargo trucks, fuel trailers, and high-tech surveillance systems. Mr. Kennedy asks that the equipment, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, be transferred at "no cost" from military stocks...

More at The Washington Times.

Muslim States Seek U.N. Action on West's "Islamophobia" - Reuters via The New York Times.

Muslim states said Wednesday that what they call "islamophobia" is sweeping the West and its media and demanded that the United Nations take tougher action against it. Delegates from Islamic countries, including Pakistan and Egypt, told the United Nations Human Rights Council that treatment of Muslims in Western countries amounted to racism and discrimination and must be fought.

"People of Arab origin face new forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance and experience discrimination and marginalisation," an Egyptian delegate said, according to a U.N. summary. And Pakistan, speaking for the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), said the council's special investigator into religious freedom should look into such racism "especially in Western societies." ...

Diplomats say the resolution, which also tells the investigator to make recommendations to the Human Rights Council on how its strictures might be implemented, is bound to pass given the majority the OIC and its allies have in the body. The countries of the majority group, which also include India and Brazil, ensure that its members and their friends outside the council - such as Sri Lanka and Iran - are shielded from any serious criticism of their rights record. The group ensures that council fire is largely aimed at Israel over its occupation of Palestinian territories and treatment of people living there as well as on the Israeli blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza...

More at The New York Times.

Bolded emphasis added by SWJ.

Los Angeles Times special online feature entitled Mexico Under Siege: The Drug War at Our Doorstep. And in this morning's Washington Times - Calderon Makes Appeal as Drug Violence Soars in Mexico by Michal Elseth.

In the face of an increasingly bloody and desperate battle with illegal-drug traffickers, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has launched a full-scale defense of his government's policies and called on his countrymen to step up their own efforts to defeat the powerful cartels.

In a lengthy essay and a nationally televised address this week, Mr. Calderon called for a full-scale assault on the cartels, denying that his administration's own tough policies had provoked the violence to unprecedented levels.

"This is a battle that is worth fighting because our future is at stake," he said in the 10-minute national address. "It's a battle that, with all Mexicans united, we will win." ...

More at The Washington Times.

And in The Christian Science Monitor - Mexico Drug War: Has Felipe Calderón Lost Control? By Sara Miller Llana.

... Since then death tolls have mounted -- with nearly 23,000 killed since he became president -- and the incessant headlines, including of the past week, appear to be causing a certain defense mechanism to rise in government quarters. On Monday, President Calderón published a two-page editorial in newspapers across the country defending his strategy, arguing that he had no choice and that Mexicans must remain stoic. But many Mexicans have lost faith.

"[Calderón] has lost the reins of the country, not partially but totally," writes journalist and columnist Lydia Cacho in a column that appeared 14 pages before the president's missive in the daily El Universal...

But Calderón is also hinting of a change in strategy. The president said he would hire a public relations firm to improve Mexico's image, according to the Associated Press. He also said he would clamp down on dollar cash transactions, in an apparent bid to stem money laundering. It remains to be seen what lies ahead, but there is no doubt that the president, and his flaks, face a tough road ahead -- even judging from the past two days alone...

More at The Christian Science Monitor.

Top Officer Sees Military Caution as Backfiring - Jim Michaels, USA Today.

Commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan have been reluctant to launch more secret operations because of an excess of caution about violating military rules and international law, a top Army officer says. The tentative approach to "deception operations" has cost the U.S. military opportunities to weaken the enemy without firing a shot, said Army Lt. Gen. Michael Oates, commander of the Pentagon's task force to counter improvised explosive devices.

The anti-IED task force has advocated dismantling insurgent networks as an effective way to combat improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Earlier this year, Marines in Afghanistan's Helmand province read announcements over a loudspeaker to trick insurgents into thinking their specially modified roadside bombs couldn't be found by U.S. minesweepers.

As a result, the insurgents didn't bother hiding them well and Marines were able to easily find the bombs, said Marine Maj. Don Caporale, an information operations officer. "We started finding all kinds of mines with this (modification), which, of course, was a complete hoax," Caporale said. Still, Oates said in an interview, "there's a Gordian knot of law, regulation, procedure and risk aversion. We have got to do some due diligence on this problem." ...

More at USA Today.

Many thanks to Ilene Frank for maintaining MARAS: Gangs in Central America. A Bibliography.

50+ pages of resources for those interested in the topic.

The U.S. Air Force's professional journal Air & Space Power Journal has published "Colombia can teach Afghanistan (and the United States) how to win," a revised version of an essay I originally wrote for the American Enterprise Institute's The American (here is the SWJ link from January 11, 2010).

I show what the U.S. and Afghan governments can learn by studying how Colombia reformed its army and greatly improved its security situation.

An excerpt:

Ten years ago, Colombia faced a security crisis in many ways worse than the one Afghanistan currently faces. But over the past decade, Colombia has sharply reduced its murder and kidnapping rates, crushed the array of insurgent groups fighting against the government, demobilized the paramilitary groups that arose during the power vacuum of the 1990s, and significantly restored the rule of law and presence of government throughout the country.

Over the past decade, with the assistance of a team of US advisers, Colombia rebuilt its army. In contrast to the current plan for Afghanistan, Colombia focused on quality, not quantity. Its army and other security forces have achieved impressive success against an insurgency in many ways similar to Afghanistan's. Meanwhile, despite the assistance of nearly 100,000 NATO soldiers and many billions of dollars spent on security assistance, the situation in Afghanistan seems to be deteriorating.

Afghan and US officials struggling to build an effective Afghan army can learn from Colombia's success. This article explores the similarities and differences between the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Colombia, examines how Colombia reformed its security forces, and discusses how to apply Colombia's success to Afghanistan.

I discuss the similarities and differences between the security challenges in Afghanistan and Colombia. I then argue that Colombia's relatively small but elite professional army, its emphasis on helicopter mobility, and its local home-guard program provide a model for reforming Afghanistan's security forces.

Click here to read the essay at ASPJ.

A Call to Action: Command Philosophy

A few years ago, during a different surge, I visited a small Reconnaissance Squadron in the Diyala Province of Iraq. In their operations center was a sign that said, "What would you do differently today if you could not leave until the war was won?" Recently, the Secretary of the Army signed the approval for a Presidential Unit Citation for the combat action and valor of this unit. It is this mindset, this culture, that compelled them to decisive action. They were committed to not just leave their area of operations better than they found it, but to leave the area in the capable hands of a host nation force. It is this spirit, this commitment, and this urgency that will make us successful in our current endeavor. And so I ask you, "What would you do differently today if you had to stay until your responsibilities were transitioned to a capable Afghan counterpart that you trained?"

This is not to say that a professional Afghanistan National Security Force (ANSF) can be built overnight. However, dedication to the mission and a desire to achieve tangible results each day -- to produce a product, an outcome, should drive each and every one of us every day. We cannot be satisfied with merely getting "first downs" and moving the ball down the field. We are here to win! Winning in this context means getting an Afghan partner to stand on their own -- underpinned by the sustainable systems for an enduring security institution.

With that in mind, I'd like to share with you a memorandum I recently sent to all NATO Training Mission - Afghanistan / Combined Security Transition Command - Afghanistan staff, trainers, and instructors entitled A Call to Action: Command Philosophy.

William B. Caldwell, IV

Lieutenant General, US Army

"Shohna Ba Shohna"

Continue on for the video recordings of the 10 June Center for a New American Security annual conference...

U.S. Discovers Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan - Jame Risen, New York Times.

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.The previously unknown deposits - including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium - are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the "Saudi Arabia of lithium," a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and Blackberries. The vast scale of Afghanistan's mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said...

More at The New York Times.

Pakistan's ISI Military Intelligence Accused of Directly Funding Taleban - Jeremy Page, The Times.

Pakistan's military intelligence agency directly funds and trains the Afghan Taleban and is officially represented on its leadership council, according to a report by a British academic. The study, published by the London School of Economics, also alleges that Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani President, met Taleban leaders imprisoned in Pakistan and promised them early release and future support.

Pakistan dismissed the report by Matt Waldman, a Harvard fellow who interviewed current and former members of the Taleban, as "baseless" and "naive". A spokesman for the Pakistani Army said that the state's commitment to opposing the Taleban was demonstrated by the number of soldiers killed fighting on the Afghan border. Western officials and analysts have often accused elements within Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency of supporting the Afghan Taleban, even as its army combats the Pakistani Taleban on the northwestern frontier.

However, Mr Waldman's report goes further, arguing that support for the Afghan Taleban is "official ISI policy" and is backed at the highest levels of Pakistan's civilian administration. "Pakistan appears to be playing a double game of astonishing magnitude," the report says. "There is thus a strong case that the ISI orchestrates, sustains and shapes the overall insurgent campaign," it said. "Without a change in Pakistani behaviour it will be difficult if not impossible for international forces and the Afghan Government to make progress against the insurgency." ...

More at The Times.

A Rainbow in the Dark: The Stability and Security Center of Excellence - Major Michael M. Pecina (U.S. Army), U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 2010.

The 21st Century has been dubbed an era of persistent conflict by U.S. military leaders. As a result, United States' defense forces will have to operate in environments requiring a variety of full spectrum operations|| for the near future. Stability operations are now considered as having equal importance to major combat operations and this thesis will explore an institutional approach to prepare U.S. military forces to conduct these types of operations. This thesis will analyze four themes: U.S. views on future stability and security operations, the United States' conventional force role in future stability and security operations, current efforts to institutionalize stability and security operations, and past U.S. institutional changes in response to threats in the strategic environment. Unfortunately, there is little unity of effort and ownership to institutionalize stability operations in the U.S. Army. This thesis recommends a new institution to educate and develop leaders to maximize unity of effort, flexibility and responsiveness for stability operations: the Stability and Security Center of Excellence.

A Rainbow in the Dark: The Stability and Security Center of Excellence.

The Origins of Marshal Lyautey's Pacification Doctrine in Morocco from 1912 to 1925 - Major (P) Grégoire Potiron de Boisfleury (French Army), U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 2010.

The work achieved by Marshal Louis Hubert Gonzalve Lyautey (1854-1934) in Morocco between 1912 and 1925, while he served as the résident général, occupies a special place in French military history. Lyautey's work still applies today, and is seen as a model in the difficult domain of counter-insurgency operations. Far from conquering with raw strength alone, Lyautey acted as a statesman and pacified the country while strengthening the authority of the Sultan. Based on the principles of peaceful penetration and the "oil drop" theory, his actions allowed the simultaneous development of infrastructure and economy, while facilitating the reform of Moroccan institutions, decisively contributing to the birth of modern Morocco. Simple but effective because of its flexibility Lyautey's doctrine is the joint fruit of his experience and of the progressive maturation of colonial thought, which he knew how to apply and promote better than anyone else. From the numerous documents written by Lyautey himself, his detractors, his critics and modern historians, this thesis examines the doctrine which guided Lyautey's actions in Morocco. The primary aim is to determine the value and relevance of what Lyautey accomplished in Morocco, by examining the origins of Lyautey's doctrine and design.

The Origins of Marshal Lyautey's Pacification Doctrine in Morocco from 1912 to 1925.

Saudis Act Aggressively to Denounce Terrorism - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion.

When terrorists in the Middle East attack innocent civilians, observers in the West often ask a pained question: Where's the outrage in the Muslim world? Why don't Islamic religious authorities speak out more forcefully against the terrorists and their wealthy financiers?

It remains a potent issue: Terrorism has damaged the Islamic world far more than the West, and too many Muslims have been cowed and silent. But a powerful and so far largely unreported denunciation of terrorism emerged last month from Saudi Arabia's top religious leadership, known as the Council of Senior Ulema.

The Saudi fatwa is a tough condemnation of terror and of the underground network that finances it. It has impressed senior U.S. military commanders and intelligence officers, who were surprised when it came out. One sent me a translation of the fatwa, and Saudi officials provided some helpful background...

More at The Washington Post.

Defence Chief to be Axed - Michael Smith and Jonathan Oliver, The Times.

Britain's most senior military officer is to be axed as the new government seeks to draw a line under past failures in Afghanistan. Liam Fox, the defence secretary, told The Sunday Times the chief of the defence staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, would resign in the autumn before the end of his term.

Sir Bill Jeffrey, the top civil servant at the Ministry of Defence (MoD), will go at the same time. The clean sweep at the top is intended to improve the military's performance on the Afghan front line, as well as cutting Whitehall waste. In an interview Fox indicated that Stirrup and Jeffrey, both close to the old Labour regime, would be replaced at the conclusion of a strategic defence review (SDR).

Fox said he wanted "the best people to be in the appropriate posts" once the review was over. "We have to be able to maintain full stability and the full confidence of the people who work for us, not least because we're in a very dangerous armed conflict," he said.

Stirrup has been criticised for not doing enough to support frontline troops. The decision to replace them coincides with one of the worst weeks for Nato forces since the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001. Thirty-two Nato troops, including three Britons, have been killed since last Sunday. The latest Briton to die was a soldier in the 1st Battalion, the Mercian Regiment, who was killed in an explosion in Helmand province yesterday...

More at The Times.

Troops Could be Cut as Fox Sharpens his Axe - Michael Smith and Jonathan Oliver, The Times.

The number of Britain's soldiers, sailors and airmen could be cut as part of the government's new security review. In an interview with The Sunday Times, Liam Fox, the defence secretary, said nothing had been been ruled out — even cuts to the numbers of uniformed personnel.

"Every single bit of the operation must come under scrutiny. Every single thing must be justified," Fox said. Until now the coalition government has insisted that savings would come principally from cuts in the bloated bureaucracy and over-budget equipment programmes of the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

Fox conceded last week that there might not be as much "fat in the system" as he had previously thought. While the overall defence budget would be protected, dramatic savings would still have to be made, he said.

More at The Times.

Our favorites via SWJ's Amazon Associates Program. Buy a great book here and we get some pocket change to help keep the lights on. Your favorite not here? Give us the title in the comments section below and we'll get the code and add 'em on. Help us build the SWJ book list from hell. Also see our movie list here. Continue on for the book list...

The International Security Assistance Force - Afghanistan (ISAF) has a relatively new (18 April) Facebook page devoted to counterinsurgency training and education.

While some of the material may seem like "basic stuff" to SWJ old-timers, the page is intended to do just that - provide COIN basics (+) to new ISAF joins and other interested parties. The page contains links to relevant COIN articles and news items as well as videos related to COIN best practices. Also check out ISAF's COIN page on YouTube. Hat tip to Claudia-Tatjana Strebel for the heads up on this resource.

General McChrystal on 8 COIN Imperatives

Here is the latest edition of my column at Foreign Policy:

Topics include:

1) The crack along the U.S.-Mexican border widens,

2) Gates and China practice finger-pointing.

The crack along the U.S.-Mexican border widens

On June 7, during a scuffle with some rock-throwing Mexican teenagers in a concrete drainage canal near El Paso, Texas, a U.S. Border Patrol officer shot Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca, 15, in the head, killing him. Mexican security forces brandishing their weapons, assisted by Mexican bystanders throwing rocks and firecrackers, later chased off FBI agents investigating the shooting. Mexican authorities say Hernandez was shot on the Mexican side of the border and claim to have recovered a .40-caliber shell casing as proof. A U.S. official asserted the action occurred on the U.S. side -- and displayed a Border Patrol videotape that allegedly showed four Mexican officers crossing to the U.S. side and possibly repositioning the shell casing to the Mexican side.

We can hope that time and a proper investigation will resolve the dispute over this tragedy. Meanwhile, border tensions seem unlikely to abate. According to the New York Times, rock-throwing incidents against Border Patrol officers along the Mexican border average about two per day. For its part, the Mexican government claims that U.S. immigration officers have killed 17 Mexican migrants so far this year.

Although government authorities on both sides have incentives to cooperate on border problems, popular passions on both sides might increasingly make such cooperation more difficult to sustain. The daily rock-throwing incidents are most likely the acts of bored teenagers, but also probably reflect underlying Mexican hostility. On the U.S. side, the recent Arizona immigration statute is the result of grassroots anxiety. Whatever the merits of this law, Mexican President Felipe Calderón's repeated condemnations of it have not aided the cause of cross-border cooperation. The law remains popular with a large slice of the U.S. population and Calderon's criticism only intensifies this group's suspicions and anxiety.

The White House staff apparently understands the acrimonious public mood regarding the border. According to the New York Times, Obama administration officials have suppressed the release of a report on methamphetamine production in Mexico, earlier versions of which were routinely released to the public.

Click through to read more ...

Johnny Cash Live at FOB San Quentin

West Point Faculty Member Worries it is Failing to Prepare Tomorrow's Officers - Major Fernando Lujan via Tom Ricks at Best Defense.

I graduated from West Point in 1998, served several combat tours, then received a master's degree from the Harvard Kennedy School so that I could instruct the cadets in politics, policy, and strategy. I have worked on the West Point faculty for two years, and this summer I'll return to the operational Army in Afghanistan. From my own limited perspective, I can say that the Academy is falling heartbreakingly short of its potential to prepare young officers...

... First, cadets have very little experience adapting to unfamiliar environments. After all, what happens when the regulations don't describe what's going on around you? Second, cadets devote zero attention to activities that "don't count." If it's not on the syllabus, and it's not for a grade, the cadets aren't learning it. Ask a cadet to spend a few minutes writing up a list of the skills, traits, and knowledge that he wishes he'd have when he finally takes over his first platoon in combat. Then compare this to his four-year curriculum and summer training plans. There will be surprisingly little overlap between the two lists, and the cadet has neither the time nor the incentive to learn what's missing. In the end, we graduate far too many cadets that are more bureaucrat than professional, lacking the expert knowledge of their trade and the flexibility to be effective in the complex environments they'll soon encounter.

Unfortunately, wars -- particularly the types of wars we're currently involved in -- are very unforgiving of bureaucrats. In Iraq, I commonly ran across young officers who were convinced that if they answered their reports on time, followed the unit operating procedures to the letter, and strove to make their casualty numbers look ever better, that they would "win" the war. These bureaucrats might keep the proverbial machine running, but it took mentally agile professionals with expert knowledge to realize that the rulebooks needed to be thrown out, that the old routine wasn't working...

Much more at Best Defense.

All Silent on the Lefty Front - Michael Cohen, The New Republic.

Earlier this month, the Pentagon released a 152-page report outlining the increasingly grim situation in Afghanistan. The paper highlighted the Afghan government (and its security services) lack of capability; the enduring challenge of endemic corruption and poor governance; and the Taliban insurgency's ability to maintain influence—often via intimidation—across broad swaths of the country. These challenges have already undermined U.S. military operations in Marjah, and could threaten the upcoming summer offensive planned for Kandahar, the heart of the Taliban insurgency.

The entire U.S. mission in Afghanistan, which is predicated on extending the legitimacy of a flawed Afghan government, bringing good governance to the country's most insecure regions, and degrading the Taliban insurgency militarily to smooth the path for political negotiations is becoming eerily reminiscent of the flawed American strategy in Vietnam four decades ago.

While no one can be sure how escalation in Afghanistan will turn out, the warning signs are blinking red. Yet the reaction from many of the president's liberal and left-of-center supporters has been acquiescence and even silence. The Pentagon report—like much of the recent bad news out of Afghanistan—caused barely a ripple on the left. It's a familiar pattern. The American Prospect, along with Salon, has devoted enormous and laudable energy to covering civil liberties issues related to the U.S. war on terror, but has run only one major article on Afghanistan since Obama's December speech at West Point...

More at The New Republic.

Via e-mail from the Human Security Report Project (HSRP):

HSRP has launched its new website. It can be accessed at www.hsrgroup.org.

The new website, which replaces four separate sites, is easy-to-navigate and provides access to all HSRP publications, research and data, as well as the eNewletter archive. The new site delivers improved usability, additional features, and significantly more content than the previous sites.

New Features

The new Security Stats section presents current and historical data on organized violence around the world and the related death tolls. It also provides data on the number of conflict onsets and terminations each year. Data are presented graphically, and in downloadable Microsoft Excel format, and are drawn from the same datasets used in the HSRP's flagship publication, the Human Security Report, and the related Human Security Brief series. Security Stats will be expanded considerably in future.

Access to the HSRP's eNewsletters, Human Security Research and Human Security News, has been greatly improved. In response to requests from subscribers, you can now search content in the News and Research Archive by country, topic, or date. Our new email subscription system should reduce the likelihood of newsletters being caught in email spam filters.

The new website has a page devoted to the debate generated by the release of the HSRP's report on the "Shrinking Costs of War". This page contains an overview of the debate, as well as the HSRP's response to critiques from the International Rescue Committee and Les Roberts.

In the coming weeks, Russian and Japanese translations of the miniAtlas of Human Security will be available and will complement the existing English, French, and Spanish editions of this publication.

Additional HSRP Websites

The Afghanistan Conflict Monitor, Pakistan Conflict Monitor, and Human Security Gateway, which continue to grow in popularity, remain as separate websites.

DoD Media Roundtable with Gen. McChrystal NATO Headquarters in Brussels - 10 June 2010 (full transcript at the link)

McChrystal: 'Governance Is Not Enough' - 10 June 2010 (full Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty interview transcript at the link)

General McChrystal: Kandahar Operation Will Take Longer - Craig Whitlock, Washington Post.

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan is finding himself squeezed between a ticking clock and an enemy that won't go away. On Thursday, during a visit to NATO headquarters here, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal admitted that preparations for perhaps the most critical operation of the war - the campaign to take control of Kandahar, the Taliban's birthplace - weren't going as planned. He said winning support from local leaders, some of whom see the Taliban fighters not as oppressors but as their Muslim brothers, was proving tougher than expected. The military side of the campaign, originally scheduled to surge in June and finish by August, is now likely to extend into the fall.

"I don't intend to hurry it," McChrystal told reporters traveling with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. "It will take a number of months for this to play out. But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. It's more important we get it right than we get it fast." But McChrystal does not have time on his side. The day before he revealed the Kandahar delay, his boss, Gates, said that the U.S.-led coalition has until the end of the year to show progress in the war and prove to the United States and its allies that their forces have broken a stalemate with the Taliban...

More at The Washington Post.

General Forecasts Slower Pace in Afghan War - James Kanter, New York Times.

The top United States and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, acknowledged Thursday that efforts in Kandahar to drive back Taliban insurgents were likely to take significantly longer than planned, raising new questions about what can be achieved in southern Afghanistan before the end of the year. During a visit here to NATO headquarters, General McChrystal used a briefing with reporters to outline what he saw as progress on a number of fronts since last year. But operations in the southern province of Kandahar, the Taliban heartland, "will happen more slowly than we originally anticipated," he said, even while acknowledging the need to show progress before the end of year to maintain political support in Washington.

"But it's my personal assessment that it will be more deliberate than we probably communicated or than we thought earlier and communicated," he said, referring to the Kandahar operation. "And so I think it will take a number of months for this to play out. But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I think it is more important we get it right than we get it fast." The general's remarks seemed to recognize what other American and NATO officials had previously played down: that military operations in Kandahar were getting under way more slowly than previously envisioned...

More at The New York Times.

What Marja Tells Us of Battles Yet to Come - New York Times.

Each day, American foot patrols move through farmers' fields and irrigated villages. And each day some are ambushed or encounter hidden bombs. The patrols turn into gunfights in withering heat, or efforts to dismantle the bombs or treat the wounded. Casualties accumulate with the passing weeks, for Americans and Afghans alike. A few months ago, Marja was the focus of a highly publicized assault to push the Taliban from a stronghold and bring Afghanistan's densest area of opium production under government control. The fighting remains raw. What does it mean?

Is the violence a predictable summer fight for an area the Taliban and those who profit from the drug economy do not want to lose; in other words, an unsurprising flare-up that can be turned around? Or will Marja remain bloody for a long time, allowing insurgents to inflict sustained losses on American units and win merely by keeping the fight alive? As NATO and Afghan forces flow into neighboring Kandahar Province, where for the next many months the latest high-profile effort to undo the Taliban's hold will unroll, the continuing fighting in Marja can be read as a sign of problems in the American-led surge. It can also be read as something less worrisome: a difficult period in a campaign always expected to be hard...

More at The New York Times.

The "Lone Guerrilla Paradox" and the Failure of COIN Doctrine in Afghanistan - Greg Grant, Defense Tech.

The New York Times runs a story today from reporter Rod Nordland in Kandahar about the shift in strategy there away from a military headlined offensive to more aid and reconstruction efforts, with a gradual increase in coalition constables walking the streets...

These are surprising statements coming from somebody as well versed in counterinsurgency as McChrystal. Insurgents don't typically "raise the flag," except perhaps in the final stages of an insurgency when they've won the political contest. As far as Kandahar is concerned, the fact that Kandahar city is "functioning" doesn't mean the insurgents don't control Kandahar.

One of the many fatal flaws in U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine is the failure to understand the "lone guerrilla paradox," a concept that has vexed counterinsurgents from Algeria to Vietnam to now Afghanistan...

More at Defense Tech.

Shaping the Agenda: American National Security in the 21st Century - The Center for a New American Security will be live webcasting their 4th annual national security conference, 1330 - 1835 (EST), on Thursday, 10 June. 9 papers have been released in conjunction with the conference and can be found at the link above - as can the conference agenda. The conference webcast page can be found here.

American Guerrilla: The Forgotten Heroics of Russell W. Volckmann-The Man Who Escaped from Bataan, Raised a Filipino Army Against the Japanese, and Became the True "Father" of Army Special Forces by Mike Guardia.

A main selection of the Military Book Club and a selection of the History Book Club.

With his parting words "I shall return," General Douglas MacArthur sealed the fate of the last American forces on Bataan. Yet one young Army Captain named Russell Volckmann refused to surrender. He disappeared into the jungles of north Luzon where he raised a Filipino army of over 22,000 men. For the next three years he led a guerrilla war against the Japanese, killing over 50,000 enemy soldiers. At the same time he established radio contact with MacArthur's HQ in Australia and directed Allied forces to key enemy positions. When General Yamashita finally surrendered, he made his initial overtures not to MacArthur, but to Volckmann.

This book establishes how Volckmann's leadership was critical to the outcome of the war in the Philippines. His ability to synthesize the realities and potential of guerrilla warfare led to a campaign that rendered Yamashita's forces incapable of repelling the Allied invasion. Had it not been for Volckmann, the Americans would have gone in "blind" during their counter-invasion, reducing their efforts to a trial-and-error campaign that would undoubtedly have cost more lives, materiel, and potentially stalled the pace of the entire Pacific War.

Second, this book establishes Volckmann as the progenitor of modern counterinsurgency doctrine and the true "Father" of Army Special Forces- a title that history has erroneously awarded to Colonel Aaron Bank of the ETO. In 1950, Volckmann wrote two Army field manuals: Operations Against Guerrilla Forces and Organization and Conduct of Guerrilla Warfare, though today few realize he was their author. Together, they became the Army's first handbooks outlining the precepts for both special warfare and counter-guerrilla operations. Taking his argument directly to the Army Chief of Staff, Volckmann outlined the concept for Army Special Forces. At a time when U.S. military doctrine was conventional in outlook, he marketed the ideas of guerrilla warfare as a critical force multiplier for any future conflict, ultimately securing the establishment of the Army's first special operations unit-the 10th Special Forces Group.

Volckmann himself remains a shadowy figure in modern military history, his name absent from every major biography on MacArthur, and in much of the Special Forces literature. Yet as modest, even secretive, as Volckmann was during his career, it is difficult to imagine a man whose heroic initiative had more impact on World War II. This long overdue book not only chronicles the dramatic military exploits of Russell Volckmann, but analyzes how his leadership paved the way for modern special warfare doctrine.