Blog Posts

Ceremony Formally Marks End of Coalition Effort in Iraq - Liz Sly, Los Angeles Times.

December was the first month since the Iraq war began in which there were no American combat deaths, a milestone hailed by military officials Friday as they inaugurated a new name for the U.S. force at the start of the year that will see the war wind down in earnest. Henceforth, the Multinational Force-Iraq will officially be called the United States Force-Iraq, in belated recognition of the fact that for some time there have been no other nations serving alongside U.S. troops in the nearly 7-year-old conflict. British, Australian and Romanian soldiers pulled out in July, leaving Americans as the last surviving members of what President George W. Bush once called "the coalition of the willing." A small number of foreigners are serving with a NATO training mission, but they were not part of the multinational force.

At its peak, the coalition included 32 nations, but the term often drew snickers because many of the members, such as Estonia and Tonga, were among America's smallest allies and contributed fewer than 100 troops. And now the U.S. is preparing to pull out too, adding an end-of-era feel to the renaming ceremony held at one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces on the sprawling Camp Victory complex outside Baghdad. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, told the troops and diplomats assembled in the palace's marble foyer that the new name signaled a new phase for the military as it prepares to halt all combat operations and scale back from the current 110,000 troops to fewer than 50,000 by August. The remaining troops, who will provide support and training,are scheduled to leave by the end of 2011...

More at The Los Angeles Times.

The highly successful Taliban attack on the CIA compound at FOB Chapman is a reminder that the recruitment of agents to infiltrate adversary organizations is very much a two-way street. The past few months have revealed that various adversary groups -- through their persistence, observation, and learning -- have discovered vulnerabilities in U.S. security. Those on the U.S. side responsible for security - which increasingly means everyone, not just counterintelligence personnel -- need to recalibrate their assumptions about who might be dangerous.

The CIA officers at FOB Chapman were very likely in the business of making contact with Afghan and Pakistani citizens in the area with the goal of recruiting agents who could nominate targets for either missile strikes or direct action raids. It is wholly appropriate that the CIA was there for this purpose -- it is a core function of the Clandestine Service to recruit and manage such agent networks.

Naturally, the very fact that CIA officers were out making contact with the locals made them vulnerable to counter-infiltration. The origins of this dilemma date back thousands of years so we must assume that the CIA was well aware of the risks and had procedures in place to mitigate those risks. According to a story in today's Washington Post, the Taliban claimed that the suicide bomber who infiltrated the inner CIA compound was an officer in the Afghan army. Although unconfirmed, this claim seems realistic. The Taliban handler of the infiltrator could have spent many months or even years building up a trusting relationship with the Americans. If the infiltrator was an Afghan army officer, this attack is likely to create additional difficult strains between Afghan and U.S. forces.

Might misguided American assumptions about class and social-economic status now be a security vulnerability? The CIA may never declassify its internal investigation of the FOB Chapman attack, so for now I can only speculate on what actually happened. It is easy to see how the Americans could remain suspicious of a common Afghan soldier, no matter how long they had known him. But an Afghan army officer, perhaps one who had travelled to the West, maybe gone to school there, would more easily find a place inside the CIA's small circle of camaraderie.

Might a similar misguided American assumption about class and social-economic status at least partly explain how Major Hasan -- an officer, medical school graduate and mass-murderer at Fort Hood -- escaped scrutiny? We can assume that the State Department's Consular bureau would resist issuing a multi-entry visa to a common Nigerian military-aged male from a Lagos slum. But the State Department did issue such a visa to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who nearly succeeded in downing an airliner on Christmas Day. Abdulmutallab came from a wealthy Nigerian family, lived in a multi-million dollar flat in London, and was an honors graduate from University College London. For a U.S. consular officer with perhaps a similar pedigree, someone like Abdulmutallab might not seem like a risk.

While the U.S. escalates its military operations in the dusty hinterlands of Afghanistan and Yemen, adversaries might be focusing their terror recruiting efforts at British universities. Which makes one wonder which side is better at learning and adapting, and exploiting his enemy's blind spots and cultural weaknesses.

21st Century Counterinsurgency Intelligence - Seth Milstein, AFCEA Intelligence - Intelligence Essay Contest Winner.

Insurgency and counterinsurgency are radically different sides of the same coin - a truly asymmetric conflict. The intelligence demands for both sides are equally dissimilar. Effective intelligence for counterinsurgency has historically been a great challenge for those schooled in traditional military intelligence with its emphasis on fighting peer enemies in a symmetric conflict. Even with the modern gamut of collection and analytic capabilities, successful intelligence against insurgents remains difficult. History has good examples of effective counterinsurgency intelligence, notably the British experience in Malaya and more recently in Northern Ireland. British success owes more to effective organization and information management than to technology. Integrating their proven methods with contemporary technology offers the possibility of an intelligence system possessing far greater speed and flexibility, and requiring relatively low investment in equipment and training. Employing such a system is expected to drastically skew the battlefield in favor of the counterinsurgency effort, offering faster conflict resolution.

21st Century Counterinsurgency Intelligence.

Army History Finds Early Missteps in Afghanistan - James Dao, New York Times.

In the fall of 2003, the new commander of American forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, decided on a new strategy. Known as counterinsurgency, the approach required coalition forces to work closely with Afghan leaders to stabilize entire regions, rather than simply attacking insurgent cells. But there was a major drawback, a new unpublished Army history of the war concludes. Because the Pentagon insisted on maintaining a "small footprint" in Afghanistan and because Iraq was drawing away resources, General Barno commanded fewer than 20,000 troops.

As a result, battalions with 800 soldiers were trying to secure provinces the size of Vermont. "Coalition forces remained thinly spread across Afghanistan," the historians write. "Much of the country remained vulnerable to enemy forces increasingly —to reassert their power." That early and undermanned effort to use counterinsurgency is one of several examples of how American forces, hamstrung by inadequate resources, missed opportunities to stabilize Afghanistan during the early years of the war, according to the history, "A Different Kind of War." ...

More at The New York Times.

US Army/USMC COIN Center Webcast - A Study of Pashtun "Tribes" in Afghanistan

The US Army/USMC Counterinsurgency Center is pleased to host Dr. Michael Weltsch from the Human Terrain System Reachback Center for a COIN Center Webcast from 10:00 CST, (1100 EST), (16:00 ZULU) on Fri, 29 Jan 2010.

Dr Weltsch's Briefing is entitled 'My Cousin's Enemy is My Friend: A Study of Pashtun "Tribes" in Afghanistan', It challenges our preconceived notions of the role that tribal affiliation plays in Afghanistan and questions the wisdom of trying to win the insurgency through the tribal structure.

Those interested in attending may view the meeting on-line at https://connect.dco.dod.mil/coinweb and participate via Defense Connect Online (DCO) as a guest. Remote attendees will be able to ask questions and view the slides through the software.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

60 Minutes: Out Of The Shadows - Ex-CIA operative Henry Crumpton describes using local might to oust al Qaeda and their Taliban hosts in 2001, a strategy he says is needed in Pakistan, where terrorist are hiding.

Ex-CIA Operative Comes Out of the Shadows - CBS News.

You don't hear from people like Henry Crumpton very often. That's because "Hank," as he's known, spent most of his adult life as a spy for the CIA. Now he has stepped out of the shadows to tell how just after 9/11, at age 44, he masterminded the downfall of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

He did it with just a handful of CIA officers, military special operations teams and an army of Afghan tribal warriors. Crumpton probably knows more about the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban than almost anyone else.

And now that he is out of the CIA, he makes no secret anymore about what he did to defeat them in 2001...

More at CBS News.

A Year of War, and Progress - Michael O'Hanlon, Los Angeles Times opinion.

The United States spent 2009 at war again - with its own troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and as a major, indirect supporter of Pakistan in its internal counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism campaign as well. On balance, I would judge it a moderately successful year in all three places to varying degrees. But that is admittedly a subjective judgment and also obviously requires a great deal more discussion.

First, the basics: The year was one of gradual drawdown in Iraq together with intensification of operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yet it was still Iraq that occupied the most American troops and cost the most for the year. The American uniformed presence there started the year at about 142,000 troops and will end it at around 115,000, with total budgetary costs of more than $100 billion in 2009. But Afghanistan became the clearly deadlier war; more than 300 Americans died there in the year, compared with 150 in Iraq. And of the three countries, it was Pakistan that probably constituted the greatest potential long-term threat to the United States, with its nuclear weapons arsenal the ultimate desired prize for Al Qaeda and other extremists in the region. Accordingly, U.S. expenditures there rose a good deal, to $3.3 billion or so in the form of economic and security aid - though this is obviously a far cry from the 12-figure costs of Iraq and the expected 12-figure costs of Afghanistan in 2010 as U.S. troop totals there rise to nearly 100,000.

What about life in each of these places for the local citizens? Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, civilian fatalities attributable to war violence were roughly comparable in each place...

More at The Los Angeles Times.

Afghanistan Strategy Should Also Focus on Improving Quality of Life - Stanley A. Weiss, Los Angeles Times opinion.

The Obama administration has outlined a three-pronged strategy in Afghanistan, focusing on security, governance and economic development. But the implementation of those elements has been woefully lopsided. Since 2002, 93% of the $170 billion the United States has committed to Afghanistan has gone to military operations. As the country prepares to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, we also need to focus on providing a surge in the quality of life for the Afghan people. U.S. Agency for International Development workers are tremendously dedicated, but there are not nearly enough of them, which means the agency is heavily dependent on private contractors. There have been some commendable achievements, such as helping reduce Afghanistan's infant mortality rate and rehabilitating nearly 1,000 miles of roads. Still, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton lamented in March, the lack of results for the Afghan people is "heartbreaking."

The Obama administration has pledged a new, improved approach to development aid. Yet USAID has been without an administrator for 10 months, and the president's nominee, Rajiv Shah, has yet to be confirmed. It's now time, with the president's commitment in his West Point speech to "focus our assistance in areas, such as agriculture, that can make an immediate impact in the lives of the Afghan people," to heed the experience of successful social entrepreneurs who, with far fewer resources at their disposal, have achieved impressive progress on the ground...

More at The Los Angeles Times.

Book Review: 'The Fourth Star' by David Cloud and Greg Jaffe - John Whiteclay Chambers II, Washington Post.

Four Generals and The Epic Struggle For the Future of The United States Army

What makes an effective wartime general? Hardly an academic question when the United States is ramping up its military efforts in Afghanistan. In The Fourth Star, David Cloud, former Pentagon correspondent for the New York Times, and Greg Jaffe, who covers the Pentagon for The Washington Post, probe this question through the eyes and careers of four distinguished officers who joined the army as second lieutenants after Vietnam and rose to the highest rank - four-star general - during the Iraq insurgency.

This insider's view of officership and the operation of the U.S. Army is based primarily upon interviews with the four generals - John Abizaid, George Casey, Jr., Peter Chiarelli and David Petraeus - and their families, subordinates and others. Cloud and Jaffe are gifted writers, who use their access to these senior commanders to good effect. They provide a lively, personalized account of the successes and setbacks of the four highly able and ambitious servicemen as they climb the military career ladder...

More at The Washington Post.

The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army - Amazon.com

Pentagon Reviewing Strategic Information Operations - Walter Pincus, Washington Post.

Trying to counter information-savvy enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has rapidly spent nearly $1 billion in the past three years on strategic communications. Paid-for news articles, billboards, radio and television programs, and even polls and focus groups have been sponsored by the U.S. Central Command, which has raised its spending for information operations programs from $40 million in 2008 to $110 million in 2009 to a requested $244 million in 2010.

But when Congress asked this year what the Defense Department across the services and commands proposed spending for strategic communications -- or information operations as it is often called -- in the fiscal 2010 budget, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates found that no one could say because there was no central coordination. The first answer came back at $1 billion, but that was later changed to $626 million. As a result, Gates has multiple studies underway to get a firmer grip over the individual military services' plans for strategic communications next year, according to Pentagon officials...

More at The Washington Post.

The Quiet Wisdom of Apolitical Adm. Mike Mullen - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion.

This was another year of the vanishing center in America. Despite the election of a president who promised to govern across party and racial lines, partisan division seemed to engulf nearly every important institution and topic - with one notable exception, and that was the U.S. military. So at year's end, I want to examine the person who came to symbolize the military's apolitical unity, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A year from now, I'd love to be able to say there are more Mullens in our national life and fewer Rush Limbaughs.

Mullen managed the military's transition from George W. Bush to Barack Obama, from surging in Iraq to withdrawing U.S. troops. He worked with the new president while Obama painstakingly made the decision to escalate in Afghanistan. Through it all, Mullen managed to remain out of the limelight most of the time, which is where a military leader ought to be. Mullen isn't a flashy operator. He botches his syntax, and he doesn't always finish his sentences. A friend of Mullen's likens him to the actor Walter Matthau - a big man with a meaty face; fit, but slightly rumpled; at once wry and grandfatherly...

More at The Washington Post.

Civilian, Military Planners Have Different Views on New Approach to Afghanistan - Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post.

Two days before announcing the deployment of additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, President Obama informed Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal that he was not granting McChrystal's request to double the size of the Afghan army and police. Cost was a factor, as were questions about whether the capacity exists to train 400,000 personnel. The president told McChrystal, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, to focus for now on fielding a little more than half that number by next October. Ten days after Obama's speech, the U.S. command responsible for training the Afghans circulated a chart detailing the combined personnel targets for the army and police. McChrystal's goal of 400,000 remained unchanged. "It's an open issue," a senior Pentagon official said last week.

Nearly a month after Obama unveiled his revised Afghanistan strategy, military and civilian leaders have come away with differing views of several fundamental aspects of the president's new approach, according to more than a dozen senior administration and military officials involved in Afghanistan policy, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Members of Obama's war cabinet disagree over the meaning of his pledge to begin drawing down forces in July 2011 and whether the mission has been narrowed from a proposal advanced by McChrystal in his August assessment of the war. The disagreements have opened a fault line between a desire for an early exit among several senior officials at the White House and a conviction among military commanders that victory is still achievable on their terms...

Much more at The Washington Post.

Holiday best wishes to the SWJ community of interest along with a NTM-A/CSTC-A update via e-mail from LTG William B. Caldwell, IV (Frontier 6); Commander, NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan and CG, CSTC-A. Here is an excerpt concerning the European Gendarmerie Force:

... On 24 December 2009, NTM-A/CSTC-A hosted a European Gendarmerie Force (EGF) Reflagging Ceremony to officially mark the activation and participation of the EGF mission within Afghanistan. Honored guests and speakers were: Afghan Minister of Interior Haneef Atmar, the Chief of the French Gendarmerie Force, General Roland Gilles, and the EGF Commander Colonel Jorge Esteves. The ceremony also included 24 members representing all of the EGF members in Afghanistan were reflagged by changing their national headdress for the EGF blue beret and under the NTM-A umbrella, expected to exceed 330 personnel in 2010.

General Gilles led the ceremony stating that the EGF is ready now and he expects more contributions from the EGF participating countries. The main priority is ANCOP training and mentoring of the Afghan Uniformed Police. Minister Atmar followed emphasizing the importance of using trained Afghan Gendarmerie type forces (ANCOP) in high threat areas, and that the EGF under NTM-A will play a critical role in training these ANCOP personnel. We then described the importance of this ceremony to be on par with the activation of NTM-A last month, and emphasized the importance of NATO, the EU and Coalition forces working as a team with the Afghan MoD and MoI to create transparent and trustworthy institutions for the Afghan people. Over 200 personnel witnessed this memorable event.

... the EGF is a rapidly deployable, multinational police force with military status. This organization was established by five European Union Member States - France, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. On 17 December 2008, the Romanian Gendarmerie joined EGF as a full member. The Polish Military Gendarmerie and Lithuanian Public Security Service are contributing partners while the Turkish Jandarma has an observer status.

Currently, 190 Dutch Royal Marechaussee members, French Gendarmes, Italian Carabinieri and Spanish civil guards are deployed in Afghanistan under the EGF flag. Additionally, over 80 members are supporting the Afghan National Police training at Adraskan and Mazar e Sharif, and one of its major contributions will be its committal of nine Police Operational Mentorship Liaison Teams (POMLTs) to bolster the ANP mission...

SWJ note: On 8 December 2009, EGF officially started its operational commintment within the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan. The mission in Afghanistan is a new operational commitment for EGF assets, already engaged in the EUFOR integrated Police Unit within the framework of the EU Operation Althea in Bosnia Herzegovina. The EGF mission in Afghanistan inlcudes:

- Delivering experts to the NTM-A HQ/CTAG-P command structure;

- Delivering mentors and training advisers to the Afghan National Civil Order Police;

- Providing Police Operational Mentoring Liaison Teams (POMLTs);

- Contributing to the develpment of pre-deployment training requirements and standards for the POMLTs.

NTM-A/CSTC-A - Official Website

European Gendarmerie Force - Official Website

Afghanistan in 2009: A Survey of the Afghan People - The Asia Foundation.

On October 27, 2009, The Asia Foundation released findings from its fifth public opinion poll in Afghanistan, Afghanistan in 2009: A Survey of the Afghan People, which covers all 34 provinces in the country. The Asia Foundation has conducted five surveys, dating back to 2004, which collectively establish an accurate, long-term barometer of public opinion across the country to help assess the direction in which Afghanistan is moving in the post-Taliban era. The 2009 survey captures the Afghan public's perceptions of reconstruction, security, governance, and attitudes towards government and informal institutions, as well as the 2009 national elections, the status of women, the role of Islam, and the impact of media. The fieldwork for the survey was conducted prior to the August 20 elections, from June 17 -- July 6, 2009, when 648 Afghan men and women conducted in-person interviews with a multi-stage random sample of 6,406 Afghan citizens 18 years of age and older from different social, economic, and ethnic communities in rural and urban across all provinces in Afghanistan.

Read our press release about the survey or download the full report, Afghanistan in 2009: A Survey of the Afghan People. Key findings, FAQ, and Dari and Pashto translations of the key findings and press release are also available.

All four previous surveys, conducted in 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2008, in Afghanistan are available on our website.

Read the full report at The Asia Foundation.

Obama, Pakistan and Mullah Omar - Wall Street Journal editorial.

... If Pakistan truly has given up on its old double game of claiming to back America while allowing a Taliban sanctuary within its borders, now would be a good time to show it's serious. If not, the U.S. has leverage with Islamabad through foreign aid, as well as various military options. U.S. drone strikes can be expanded, including for the first time to Baluchistan, and special forces might be deployed across the porous border.

Both carry diplomatic risks. Though drone strikes have killed about two dozen civilians according to one Pakistani government estimate, the country's press loves to exaggerate the toll to embarrass the government and stoke anti-Americanism. The presence of U.S. troops in Pakistan, if publicized, could also undermine a Zardari government that's taken brave risks to help Washington.

This is where Mr. Obama's decision to announce a July 2011 deadline for beginning to withdraw from Afghanistan has been damaging. Various Administration officials have tried to walk back that deadline, but it has played inside Pakistan as further evidence that the Americans will eventually bug out of the region. Pakistan's military and intelligence services have long hedged their bets by supporting Mullah Omar and the Afghan Taliban in case the U.S. leaves and for fear that India will try to fill any power vacuum in Kabul. Now they have another excuse not to change...

More at The Wall Street Journal.

Gates Proposes $2 Billion in Funds to Aid Unstable Countries - Mary Beth Sheridan and Greg Jaffe, Washington Post.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has proposed a major overhaul of the way the Pentagon and State Department do nation-building, seeking to end friction between the bureaucracies by putting them jointly in charge of three huge new funds aimed at stabilizing strife-ridden countries. The proposal is aimed at addressing problems that have dogged the U.S. effort in Iraq and Afghanistan - particularly, disputes over whether civilians or the better-funded military should be in charge of stabilization.

But Gates' proposal goes beyond those conflicts to address what the military increasingly sees as the greatest threat to the United States - failing states such as Yemen and Somalia that could provide a haven for terrorist groups. The proposal would concentrate existing and new money in three long-term funds totaling as much as $2 billion. They would be dedicated to training security forces, preventing conflicts and stabilizing violence-torn societies around the world. The funds would exist separately from the war budgets, and allow for quicker and better-coordinated response to looming or actual conflicts, officials said. In a memo to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Gates noted that the huge increase in Pentagon funding for stabilization efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan has prompted complaints about the militarization of U.S. foreign policy...

More at The Washington Post.

America's Most-Decorated Soldier Dies In Waco - KWTX

Retired Army Col. Robert L. Howard, 70, who died Wednesday in Waco, was a Medal of Honor winner who at the time of his death was believed to be the most-decorated living American soldier. Howard will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery...

Howard, who grew up in Opelika, Ala., enlisted in the Army in 1956 at the age of 17 and retired as a full colonel in 1992.

In Vietnam, he served in the U.S. Army Special Forces and spent most of his five tours in the secret Military Assistance Command, Vietnam-Studies and Observation Group, or MACV-SOG, which was an unconventional force whose members were assigned to deep-penetration reconnaissance and interdiction missions. He was nominated three times for the Medal of Honor, which he was awarded in 1971 for the rescue of a seriously wounded platoon leader who was under enemy fire...

COL Robert L. Howard - Tribute Website

COL Robert L. Howard - Wikipedia

COL Robert Howard's Medal Of Honor Citation - KWTX

Medal of Honor Series Video: COL Robert Howard - Pritzker Military Library

Obituary and Online Guest Book - OakCrest Funeral Home, Waco, Texas

Can U.S. Troops Run McChrystal's 'Soft Power' Playbook? - Noah Shachtman, Danger Room.

... For commanders fighting in some of Afghanistan's most hotly-contested areas, the struggle has been even more intense. How much restraint do you show, before you jeopardize your troops? How do you protect the population, if the Taliban have the freedom to roam and attack at will? When is it time to go "kinetic," and drop the softer approach? There are no easy answers, as I saw this summer with Echo company of the 2/8 Marines. Captain Eric Meador, the company's commander, wanted to spend more time holding shuras and swaying village elders to his cause. But there were too many Taliban in the vicinity, he felt, to allow those peaceful talks to take place. So instead, he sent the majority of his marines out on patrols that were almost certain to turn into firefights. "I call it the eye gouge," Meador told me. "To keep the good areas here relatively calm, you have to go to the enemy and punch him in the chest, punch him in the face."

The conundrum has become even more perplexing in Afghanistan's Arghandab river valley. One battalion of the 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division has been locked in a vicious struggle there that's not only killed 21 U.S. soldiers and more than 50 insurgents in just a few months, Army Times' Sean Naylor reports. "It's led to a popular company commander's controversial replacement and... caused the soldiers at the tip of the spear... to accuse their battalion and brigade commanders of not following the guidance of senior coalition commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal to adopt a 'population-centric' counterinsurgency approach." ...

More at Danger Room.

Lieutenant Colonel JJ Malevich, the Canadian Exchange Officer and Director of COIN at the U.S. Army / USMC Counterinsurgency Center, raises the BS flag in his COIN Center blog post Winning the War Through PowerPoint: Dilbert Leads the COIN Fight?

In 2001, I sat in a conf room at NATO HQ in Sarajevo. My boss was trying to convince the Serbs of the joys and benefits of joining the Bosnian Army. His tool was a power point presentation. This presentation was a work of art. It had motion, colors, arrows, timelines, phases. The logic was flawless and it was delivered with passion. The senior Serbian officer in the room let my boss rant, then in a bored voice said, "Colonel, you have made a nice presentation here. The colors are very pretty. But, we will never do this." My boss was struck dumb. He could not believe this. His logic and power point went over like a lead balloon. What he had failed to realize is that war is a complex human activity that by it's vary nature defies normal logic. The Serbs would not work with Croats and Muslims because they hated them. That was the only logic that mattered.

A few weeks ago, I was sent a power point presentation on the "Dynamic Planning for COIN in Afghanistan". I looked at it briefly, but thought that it was some kind of joke; so, I flushed it immediately. However, I received it from another source. So, it appears the joke is on me...

Read the rest at the COIN Center blog.

In Afghan war, officer flourishes outside the box - Denis D. Gray, Associated Press via The Taiwan News.

You may wonder how Thomas Gukeisen made it to lieutenant colonel, and by age 39 at that. He breaks Army rules and operates by his own rendition of counterinsurgency warfare whose arsenal includes Afghan poetry, chaos theory and the thoughts of a 17th-century English philosopher. A towering, rough-and-ready 205-pounder (man weighing 92-kilograms), the officer from Carthage, New York, peppers his sentences with unprintables and reads Karl von Clausewitz's classic on war in the original German. The high-ups seem to like what they see. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who commands U.S. forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq, has visited his sector, as have Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry. Substantial resources have flowed into Gukeisen's hands, including $850,000 in small bills for such jobs as building schools and putting carpets in the mosques of Afghans who turn against the Taliban.

Col. David B. Haight, Gukeisen's superior, calls him one of the brightest officers he has met. Gukeisen wages his war across 620 restive, rugged square miles (1,000 kilometers) of Logar, a strategically important province bordering Kabul where he has implemented what he calls an "extreme makeover." Rather than rigidly applying the current mantra "Clear, Hold, Build" he has held back from trying to clear large, Taliban-influenced swaths of territory, focusing instead on areas he believes are ripe for change, and then injecting aid where it counts most. Combat, he says, is driven by reliable intelligence and limited to eradicating Taliban fighters...

More at The Taiwan News.

An officer and a creative man - Mark Moyar, New York Times opinion.

As President Obama and his advisers planned their new approach to the Afghan war, the quality of Afghanistan's security forces received unprecedented scrutiny, and rightly so. Far less attention, however, has been paid to the quality of American troops there. Of course, American forces don't demand bribes from civilians at gunpoint or go absent for days, as Afghans have often done. But they face serious issues of their own, demanding prompt action. The American corporals and privates who traverse the Afghan countryside today are not at issue. They risk life and limb every day, with little self-pity. Despite the strains of successive combat deployments, they keep re-enlisting at high rates. The problems lie, rather, in the leadership ranks.

Although many Army and Marine officers in Afghanistan are performing well, a significant portion are not demonstrating the vital leadership attributes of creativity, flexibility and initiative. In 2008, to better pinpoint these deficits, I surveyed 131 Army and Marine officers who had served in counterinsurgency operations in Iraq or Afghanistan or both, asking them each 42 questions about leadership in their services. The results were striking. Many respondents said that field commanders relied too much on methods that worked in another place at another time but often did not work well now. Officers at higher levels are stifling the initiative of junior officers through micromanagement and policies to reduce risk...

More at The New York Times.

The race against Obama's deadline in Afghanistan - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the personification of American military power, is walking the streets of this dusty village in Paktika province when the deferential deputy governor, Qadir Gul Zadran, tells him: "We hope you stay here forever." Sorry, responds the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but that's not going to happen. America is sending more troops to help boost security in places such as this Pashtun village south of Kabul, but they will begin leaving in 18 months. Asked later whether he had any worries about the new Afghanistan strategy, Mullen answers: "It's just the clock. Can we move as fast as we need to move?"

That ticking clock was Mullen's consistent companion as he traveled across Afghanistan last week to review implementation of President Obama's decision to send 30,000 more troops. He visited a half-dozen military outposts and at each stop repeated the same message: The new strategy can work, but the challenge is huge and the time is short. Traveling with Mullen, I had a chance to see up close the opportunities and pitfalls of Obama's decision for a short-term escalation. The strongest impression was that the administration's plan to begin transferring responsibility to the Afghan army and police in July 2011 is overly optimistic. If all goes well, the Afghan security forces will be stronger by then, but they will still need a lot of American help...

More at The Washington Post.

Via the Marine Corps University Press - Al-Anbar Awakening Volume I: American Perspectives (U.S. Marine Corps and Counterinsurgency in Iraq) and Al-Anbar Awakening Volume II: Iraqi Perspectives (From Insurgency to Counterinsurgency in Iraq, 2004 - 2009).

Volume I - American Perspectives, edited by Chief Warrant Officer-4 Timothy S. McWilliams and Lieutenant Colonel Kurtis P. Wheeler.

Volume II: Iraqi Perspectives, edited by Colonel Gary W. Montgomery and Chief Warrant Officer-4 Timothy S. McWilliams.

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

Topics include:

1) When the counterinsurgent becomes the insurgent,

2) Is it still worth selling weapons to Taiwan?

When the counterinsurgent becomes the insurgent

Last week I wondered whether U.S. and Afghan forces would mount an organized campaign targeting the Taliban's "shadow government" inside Afghanistan. According to a Dec. 16 Los Angeles Times article, the answer is "yes." The article reports that U.S. special operations teams conducted 90 direct action raids in Afghanistan in November compared to 20 raids in May. General Stanley McChrystal is clearly not waiting for 30,000 additional U.S. soldiers to arrive to begin the U.S. counterattack against the Taliban.

Before he was selected to command in Afghanistan, McChrystal spent many years commanding the secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the U.S. military unit that specializes in the most challenging direct action raids. McChrystal personally directed JSOC operations in Iraq. While it remains a subject of debate, many credit McChrystal's teams with a significant portion of the reduction of violence in Iraq.

It appears that McChrystal is directing a similar campaign in Afghanistan, at least while he waits for the reinforcements required to protect some of Afghanistan's cities. According to the Times article, the Taliban's mid-ranking leadership is the target of McChrystal's raiders. The intent is to leave the bottom-rung Taliban foot soldiers leaderless and susceptible to offers of reintegration.

Many analysts have noted the irony of the U.S. government's long involvement in Afghanistan.

Click through to read more ...

Precision Approaches: Leadership Targeting and the Helicopter as a Strategic Strike Asset in Small Wars - Lieutenant Commander Benjamin Armstrong, U.S. Navy.

Our many thanks to Routledge's Taylor and Francis Group for providing free access to our Small Wars Journal community of interest and practice.

Lieutenant Commander Benjamin "BJ" Armstrong, a dear SWJ friend, is a Naval Aviator who has served as an Amphibious Search and Rescue and Special Warfare Pilot and an Advanced Helicopter Flight Instructor. He holds a MA in Military History from Norwich University and has written on air power and naval history. His articles and reviews have appeared in numerous journals including The Journal of Military History, Strategic Insights, Small Wars Journal and Air and Space Power Journal's Chronicles Online.

Here is an excerpt:

Over the past century, the strategic implications of aviation have played an important role in themodernization ofmilitary strategy.Development of strategic air planning has

accelerated with the constant improvement in technology and weapon systems. However, the majority of that development has been in search of the best way to fight the next big war, a conflict between nation-states, each having a certain level of technological capability. As Western militaries continue to search for old and new ways of countering insurgent forces and conducting small war operations, all aspects of the armed forces are being addressed. There has been a great deal of debate in military aviation over the proper role that air power can play in small wars and counter-terrorist operations.These debates have generally centered on the role of high technology, fixedwing aircraft in an attempt to use the bombers and fighters designed to fight the "big war" to help win "small wars".

This focus loses sight of an aircraft type that has served as a central player in the conduct of small wars and counter-insurgency since nearly its first flight -- the helicopter. Using modern technology and adaptive tactics, the helicopter provides a platform able to conduct strategic strike missions on the smaller scale that is required in small wars.After the success of the GulfWar air campaign, the principles of "effectsbased targeting" began to be applied beyond the realm of high-performance bomber and ground attack aircraft. Leadership targeting developed as an outgrowth of these ideas. Such missions required several key elements to be successful. These include: proper intelligence, proper strategic planning and the use of the proper weapon system. The helicopter can fulfill two of the three pillars required for successful engagement of strategic targets from the air by providing organic, real-time intelligence and targeting information and a precision strike capability. All this is achieved with a smaller infrastructure footprint than strategic bombers and reduced chances of collateral damage...

Precision Approaches: Leadership Targeting and the Helicopter as a Strategic Strike Asset in Small Wars.