It was the spring of 2003, and Capt. Jim Gant and his Special Forces team had just fought their way out of an insurgent ambush in Afghanistan's Konar province when they heard there was trouble in the nearby village of Mangwel. There, Gant had a conversation with a tribal chief - a chance encounter that would redefine his mission in Afghanistan and that, more than six years later, could help salvage the faltering U.S. war effort...
... In recent months, Gant, now a major, has won praise at the highest levels for his effort to radically deepen the U.S. military's involvement with Afghan tribes -- and is being sent back to Afghanistan to do just that. His 45-page paper, "One Tribe at a Time," published online last fall and circulating widely within the U.S. military, the Pentagon and Congress, lays out a strategy focused on empowering Afghanistan's ancient tribal system. Gant believes that with the central government still weak and corrupt, the tribes are the only enduring source of local authority and security in the country.
"We will be totally unable to protect the 'civilians' in the rural areas of Afghanistan until we partner with the tribes for the long haul," Gant wrote. A decorated war veteran and Pashto speaker with multiple tours in Afghanistan, Gant had been assigned by the Army to deploy to Iraq in November. But with senior military and civilian leaders - including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan; and Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command - expressing support for Gant's views, he was ordered instead to return to Afghanistan later this year to work on tribal issues...
More at The Washington Post.
Comments
Anonymous:
Thanks for the compliment---I joined SF right out of basic trng in 66 and had absolutely no knowledge of UW. When I finshed training at Bragg I was assigned to Det A Berlin where my real UW training started with some of the founding fathers of the 77th with names ending in "ski" or they had been in the White Star program.
Up to today that UW training knowledge has never aged in fact it is more revelant than ever. In my dreams I knew every ambush technique known in history, how to recognize them before being hit and to counter them so as a young Sp4 when I heard the first bullet fired at me in anger it was as if I had been doing this for years.
I had the honor of leading BNs as a Sp4/SGT and never went to officer training, had Cambodians die in my arms, put fellow dead/dying SF on medivacs and never questioned SF or my training.
SF needs to get back to UW in a hurry as that is their true bread and butter in the 21st Century.
Now if we can only get the MI world to understand UW!
Outlaw7,
Thanks for sharing that experience and it should be reminder to the propagandists at Ft. Bragg who like to claim that Special Forces is better than ever that Special Forces actually did some things better during Vietnam than they do now, and they were just as well (if not better) trained. Our guys are doing great work today, and few of our NCOs or WO's that understand our history would make such a chest beating claim, it is simply some of the senior leadership that make these out rageous claims. MAJ Gant is finally taking us back to our roots, at least we hope. A toast to the brave men of yesterday and today. A flip of the business finger to the propagandists.
I have posted this on the Tribal Engagment article but it fits here as well.
Outlaw 7:
MAJ Springer:
What MAJ Gant is proposing has hands and feet in the history of SF operations dating back to VN where the SF led and advised CIDG program had approx. 50-60K CIDG fighters at any given time.
This did not include the Mobile Strike
Forces Command with another 3-5K which ran their own ops and were also QRF for the CIDG A Teams as well as QRF for big Army especially the 1st Cav.
He is leading the way back too being a true advisor and the associated risks of being in a small team in a hostile environment where your back is being covered by someone other than an American and sometimes wearing helmuts and body armor is totally optional.
I was on a A Team that took over 800 rounds a day from the NVA and never wore a helmut or armor-we never had any. I have as a SGT led a Cambodian CIDG BN against a full strength NVA Regt to distract them from a 1st Cav BN in War Zone C in order for them to escape a major ambush costing me over 100 KIA-I asked them as an advisor to attack and they did and why because I ate, slept, fought with them, drank with them at their celebrations, learnt their language and played with their children--but when I needed Cobras from "Gerry Owens" I got everything I ever needed.
MAJ Gant is in fact totally correct in his assessment of the tribes--trust your own instincts as I think you really do get it.
I also posted this in the "tribal engagement -- a silver bullet?" thread. I felt is was appropriate here as well.
All of warfare is a political, ideological, economic and violence market-based economy. You do not force the environment to conform to your capabilities and preferences like we have tried to do so far in OIF and OEF. You adapt your organization, education/training, expectations, tactics and strategy to the environment or you spend years and years for naught - like we have been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. You must adapt to the market -- which is to say that you must understand the market dynamics -- actors and relations between them. In Afghanistan, the market's primary actors are tribes and non-state actor forces. Creating a Kabul government merely added one more self-interested economic actor to the puzzle.
In order to win at this game, it is not nercessary (and impossible) to gain the support of all actors -- only the ones which provide reinforcing and balancing influences which cumulatively result in favorable conditions and self-imposed systemic restrictions on violence. That is why a central government is illegitimate in Afghanistan: there is not a single actor outside of Kabul, Washington DC, and Islamabad who wants a strong central government in Kabul. So that idea will fail.
So, what the Gant Paper is proposing is advantaging the actors who can wield those reinforcing and balancing influences to limit the violence and bring about the popular preference of common (albeit uneven) economic gain over oppressive ideology/greed. The preferred marginalized actors must be advantaged over the powerful destabilizing actors sufficiently to only require tweaks in the future to maintain the balance against ideological oppression(via the well-known aspects of national power).
The primary, urgent struggle now is to understand the South Asian political market economy. For this you need the smartest and most non-military-like military you can find.
Jim, I hear you about the giving bones to the central government fromty the hinterland, but it I feel it will only last as long as there is something the central government can give that the tribes want. If they broker their own security and trade environment, then they won't want much more unless it's free money.
Anonymous:
An you are sure that Afghan tribes are supporting the Islamists because of past friendships?
Read the out of print book by Stuart A Herrington "Silence Was A Weapon -The VN War In The Villages" and you will see a similiarity to why many Afghan villagers remain silent even when big Army has a COP next to the village.
"political power flows from the barrel of a gun"
Outlaw7, there is a clear reason the Afghanis supported the Islamists, and it goes back to the Soviet invasion and the subsequent mobilization of the global Muslim umma to conduct jihad to liberate Afghanistan.
Pakistan suffered radicalization during this period also due to the inject of money from Saudi and other Middle Eastern countries, much of which supported the rapid spread of madras's that preached Jihad.
We keep wanting to look back at ancient history, when the social perversion we're dealing with was relatively recent. Afghans reportedly don't forget their friends, thus the relationship. It will be hard (not impossible) to undo the years of radicalization.
Jim Gant, thanks for reinforcing that the goal of the tribal approach is to "ultimately" tie the tribes into the central government. That wasn't clear initially. Best of luck on a very challenging endeavor.
<em>I believe the right men (very few for that matter) could have great "influence without authority" over much of the south and east region in less than two years. And this effort would have long-term sustainablility potential. Our other option, it would seem to me, is to put all our chips in with the central gov't and the ANA, and leave the tribes out. This will end in failure - and I wonder how many of us americans would vote for that option if it were our kid's lives we were betting on...
If I get a vote, I'll bet on the tribes, thanks.</em>
Sir,
ISAF/USFOR-A is in love with the ANA and ANP because they wear matching outfits, have stripes or flowers on their shoulders, and we can call them things like "Captain" or "Sergeant."
What kinds of cultural changes in the military do you think would be required to enable it to carry out this type of mission?
Outlaw 7,
Hope all is well. Steve Pressfield, Chief Zazai (the tribal chief from Paktia featured on Steve's web-site) and I will be finished talking with folks next week. I am planning on writing a piece and posting it on Steven Pressfields web-site on tribalsim www.stevenpressfield.com sometime next week. Of course, it will only have general information, but I have learned a great deal so far this week.
I'll let you know and take care.
STRENGTH AND HONOR
Jim
Just a thought:
Abstract:
Islamist militancy in Pakistan has long stood atop the international security agenda, yet there is almost no systematic evidence about why individual Pakistanis support Islamist militant organizations. An analysis of data from a nationally representative survey of urban Pakistanis refutes four influential conventional wisdoms about why Pakistanis support Islamic militancy. First, there is no clear relationship between poverty and support for militancy. If anything, support for militant organizations is increasing in terms of both subjective economic well-being and community economic performance. Second, personal religiosity and support for sharia law are poor predictors of support for Islamist militant organizations. Third, support for political goals espoused by legal Islamist parties is a weak indicator of support for militant organizations. Fourth, those who support core democratic principles or have faith in Pakistan's democratic process are not less supportive of militancy. Taken together, these results suggest that commonly prescribed solutions to Islamist militancy--economic development, democratization, and the like--may be irrelevant at best and might even be counterproductive.
So just maybe there is the fifth way-one tribe at a time?
To any interested party,
Making the rounds this week, talking with a lot of smart folks in the DC area and without getting into any detail at all at this time (and I talk about this in the paper) the goal of tribal engagement is to clear and then secure large portions of the south and east ((and the south will be different and more difficult than the east)) of Taliban and AQ. Once the tribes are "secure" (and they will do that very quickly with very limited support), we can then move on and do ALL of the things we are currently trying to do...whatever that is, good governance, infrastructure development, education enhancement, CA projects, work for pay, etc...and all the while this is going on, the TET will be putting PILLARS in place to support the tribe, so that when/if (big if) the central gov't can ever provide anything for the tribe, "systems" will be in place to accept them. At the same time, as a TET team leader, I will be looking for opportunities to set the central gov't up for success and report those up the chain of command. The goal of tribal engagement from an Afghan central gov't perspective is to give them (and the ANA/ANP as well as the every day Afghan) TIME AND SPACE from the violence and coercion of the Taliban/AQ.
The goal of tribal engagement on a very large scale is not to supplant the central gov't, but make the central gov't reach out to the tribes. If that does not happen, whatever we do in Afghanistan - will fail.
A large scale tribal engagment strategy, if done by the right people, with the right support, and the right "top cover" is a "game changer" and would happen much quicker than anyone can imagine right now. It is NOT without pitfalls and difficulties, I know this. If the ANA/ANP was "good enough" would the Taliban/AQ have such easy access to the population? Do we think we are going to be able to build that capacity in the next ten years? Do we have ten years?
I believe the right men (very few for that matter) could have great "influence without authority" over much of the south and east region in less than two years. And this effort would have long-term sustainablility potential. Our other option, it would seem to me, is to put all our chips in with the central gov't and the ANA, and leave the tribes out. This will end in failure - and I wonder how many of us americans would vote for that option if it were our kid's lives we were betting on...
If I get a vote, I'll bet on the tribes, thanks.
But, then again, I am no expert. Just one guy, who has seen what ten guys and one tribe can do.
STRENGTH AND HONOR
Jim Gant
yadernye and Outlaw7, good comments all, and while I understand the theory, I suspect connecting the dots between the tribes to create something that looks like stability without a central power is going to require more skill than we bring to the people, so obviously the answer is to let the Afghan people figure it out.
Agreed that the current strategy is expensive, perhaps too expensive to sustain, so another approach is required, but again what does winning look like now? Do we really care about the Taliban? Will giving the tribes the ability to defend themselves prevent them from supporting their Muslim brothers in AQ if they decide to return? Still not sure where the end game is.
Food for thought:
Luttwak's article, "What would Byzantium do?" is short and straight forward. It builds off of the core tenet of Byzantine military strategy:
[Byzantine military strategy] centered on a single, paradoxical principle: do everything possible to raise, equip and train the best possible army and navy; then do everything possible to use them as little as possible.
As hinted at earlier, his recommended solution for Afghanistan is to use proxies to spoil an enemy victory (in short the same strategy that defeated the USSR years before). Unfortunately, the article ends there. If he had gone on to write a more complex application of Byzantine strategy to the US situation he would have probably concluded:
ââ¬Â¢Move from mass to elite forces. The US military is built for overwhelming an enemy by the application of superior resources. That's a path to failure merely given the inability of the US to finance it. Mass is in contradiction with the major trend of the 21st Century: technological super empowerment.
ââ¬Â¢Avoid COIN, the use of military forces to build functional nations, like the plague. This type of effort is extraordinary expensive (in money and manpower and time) and therefore can't scale to meet the needs of a rapidly evolving threat environment.
ââ¬Â¢The ability to conduct complex diplomacy and effectively manage/incentivize a plethora of small proxies (open source defense) is critical to survival.
A friend passed this onto me concerning the MAJ Gant article:
"IZ was a place where big army and small army worked towards the same goal/vision.
AF is a different problem, big army is about ISAF, PRTs, NGOs, NATO, nation building and FP - no coherent vision. Small army on the other hand is taking the grass roots approach of building on one village at a time. As long as there are competing, objectives, priorities, and ROE the good book says...
"Without vision the people perish" Proverbs 29:18.
Little army has now a vision-it is time to try it ---the big army vision thing is not working.
>how the heck does engaging the tribes equate to victory?
Ill take a crack at answering that. It should be crystal clear at this point that the center of gravity of the Taliban insurgency is at the tribal, or more accurately, the qawm level in Pashtun-majority provinces. The Taliban are waging their insurgency by attacking, co-opting or neutralizing the qawms one at a time.
GIRoA and ISAF do not have, nor are likely to ever have, the resources to defend each individual qawm. Even worse, much of the ANA and ANP, as well as many district and provincial leaders, have demonstrated themselves to be atavistic, corrupt and predatory, undermining attempts to establish their legitimacy in the eyes of the qawm leaders.
The net effect is that the Taliban can overwhelm or intimidate individual qawms, many of whom logically conclude that cooperating with the Taliban is much more in their interest than supporting a central government that offers them no protection at all from either violence or exploitation.
MAJ Gant has proposed an operational concept for waging a counterinsurgency at the qawm level, which GIRoA and ISAF currently cannot or will not do. The most important aspect of the tribal engagement approach would be to leverage local Afghan manpower to provide the resources to defend individual qawms throughout the countryside. Rather than waiting years (if ever) for the creation of sufficient numbers of effective ANA/ANP forces, local tribes/qawms could be armed and trained relatively quickly for self-defense against Taliban coercion. The addition of tens of thousands of local Afghan tribal/qawm defense forces could easily provide a decisive shift in the balance of power between GIRoA/ISAF and the Taliban.
More importantly, it would also offers a means for rebuilding the traditional tribal structure in Pashtun areas, the breakdown of which, as Thomas Johnson at the Naval Postgraduate School has argued, is one of the key drivers of the insurgency in the first place. Protection from external violence and coercion is the first step toward restoring the traditional egalitarian, decentralized self-rule the characterizes Pashtunwali. Working through local leaders and jirgas offers a much more effective way of generating legitimacy for a central government than attempting to impose centralized, top-down control from Kabul. The ultimate goal would be to link the local qawms into district polities, then into regions, then into a nation.
Mick, what is the so what of your comment? I don't disagree that the "current" central government is corrupt and illegitimate, but how the heck does engaging the tribes equate to victory? This is a bankrupt strategy that leads to no where. If this is the strategy we resort to, then how do we maintain it? When we leave the tribes will never be able to stand up to a state sponsored Taliban threat (just like before), the freaking Taliban will do the same thing we're doing play the tribes against one another. A central government (corrupt or not) has a chance to control the cities as long we continue to support it. No good solutions, but the tribal focus is a non-starter and I bet money we're going to look stupid a couple of years from now if we pursue this tact. The tribal strategy was cool in 2001 and 2002, it is no longer an option now.
The Pathan people
Outsiders try to impose their systems and rule on a people who will listen, take their money and then do as they wish.
However, if you get to really know them, they are your best friends or worst enemies. Institutions
In my experience, which is a bit dated, Afghans do not think of themselves as Afghans; rather as a tribal member (e.g. Afridi) who is a Pathan.
State borders are an outsiders idea, just a line on a map.
The central government is a corrupt distant entity of little use and occasional annoyance.
Just my thoughts
Jim---this comment shows just how close you are to the SF VN experience:
To the point of the question, ideally the tribal area
would be turned into a Joint Special Operations Area
(JSOA) or what I think they now are calling an "Operations
Box," where everyone and anyone who wanted
to pass through the area, with either land or air
forces, would have to get approval from the TET on
the ground. This may seem extreme, but think about
a main-force U.S. unit conducting a raid on a tribal
elder based on bad intelligence (it DOES happen).
Comment--you are so right---personally lost 21 Cambodians to the 11ACR in June 1969 via an uncleared Red Team attack by two Cobras who had not checked through our Team before the attack.
Jim---thanks for your comments.
Take your article---tie it to the thinking of John Robb's theory of "open source warfare" and then tie both to the current far eastern battle tactics seen in Afghanistan and you have the ultimate in true UW COIN.
As my Iraqi interpreter often told me in Diyala
"stay safe my friend".
<i>I do believe we can build a viable ANA - in 25 years. I believe we can build a very large "loose confederation" of tribes in two years.</i>
That gave me chills. Well done on getting your ideas into the limelight and forcing the powers-that-be to seriously consider them. It helps me feel a little vindication that my teammates and I were pushing for an approach like this, rather than absolute bitterness for being constantly blown off and belittled.
Outlaw 7,
My deepest appreciation and gratitude for your post. Ask any men I have ever fought with in battle and they will tell you that I have a deep sense of gratitude and respect for those "who paved the way..."
It was YOUR sacrifices that made those of my team - mean something.
I will never dishonor you or any of those who came before me.
Thank you again.
STRENGTH AND HONOR
Jim
Jim---you build on SF ODA experiences gained in the CIDG program and countless UW training exercises carried out by ODAs from Bad Toelz to Berlin in the 60s and early 70s.
Your experience of living and working next to the troops you advise is the correct way forward--just not sure there will be enough time to implement when one looks at 2011 AND I am not really sure big Army wants to hear it.
A salute from a former SF CIDG advisor who served a long 18 months doing what you suggest long ago in an equally difficult war.
Bill,
Thank you very much for writing. Thank you and your brother for serving at a time and in a war that was "difficult" to say the least.
Please know that I can only tell you how I feel about the "Green Beret" and what it means to me.
I was given a gift when I was assigned to the unconventional warfare (UW) portion of Special Forces commonly referred to as "Robin Sage." I learned a great deal about unconventional warfare and worked with some incredible NCOs on my lane who worked tirelessly and professionally to give our students a challenging environment to learn. Our lane was very challenging and everyone did not make it. The NCOs and I had several common themes, above and beyond the UW principles that we taught. I had three "over-arching themes" that I would hammer home at every opportunity that I had. I taught "cross-cultural competency" in the large group environment with somewhere between 140 to 180 students, not just to my 12 or 14 guys. After the class I would take the opportunity to stress three things, that I thought that the students had to understand. One of those was this,"Never, ever forget those men who have come before you. Never forget that other men have fought and some of them died to make that "Green Beret" that some of you will soon be wearing - mean something." I would then read them SFC Fred Zabitosky Medal of Honor citation.
You will have to ask them if they got "it". But I know this. For me, it is the ultimate symbol of a WARRIOR. I feel a great obligation to uphold the standard that has been put in front of me by many other "Green Berets" who came before me. I will not only die, but kill to uphold what being a "Green Beret" means to me. I have always imparted that to the men I have fought with and the men I have trained. Someone will need to ask them how they feel about it.
In 1962, President Kennedy called the green beret "a symbol of excellance, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom."
I still believe that and those words have deep meaning to me.
I am a Special Forces soldier. I am not the tab. I am a "Green Beret." I am not the beret. But, I am very proud to answer to either. I will never wear a "patrol cap" in garrison. I wear my "Green Beret" because it stands for EVERYTHING I believe in.
I hope I did not come off here as anything but honest to you. I am sure there are many other SF soldiers who will tell you something completely different.
I can only speak for myself.
Thanks again for writing. Thank you and your brother again, for your service.
STRENGTH AND HONOR
Jim Gant
I honestly don't have the background to understand all of the material given; but I get the gist, and I give my highest compliments to Major Jim Gant for using the "outside the box" thinking that has made Army Special Forces a shining example of what a thinking warrior can and must be to succeed in environments like Afghanistan. I was a "brown water PBR" Sailor in the Mekong and had nothing like the training the Special Forces teams we assisted, but I can say with certitude that they were, along with our Navy SEALS, the most impressive men I have ever met. I would have, at any time, allowed any of those men to make the decisions that might decide whether I lived or died, and not been worried about the outcome. My brother Richard (two years older than I) was in Special Forces up in the Northern Highlands at the same time, and he is still my hero. But there is one thing that bothers me here. Richard would barely tolerate being called a "Green Beret" when he came back home. He would patiently explain to the ignorant that the green beret was a funny hat, one that had to be earned, and that hat was worn by the men of Army Special Forces. Has something changed? It's like my problem with the Medal of Honor being called the Congressional Medal of Honor, since, as far as I know, Congress has no part in awarding the Medal.
Thank you Jim for participating here. From all I can discover you are a credit to the United States and the US Army. We need more men like you. God bless you.
Casey Yourk,
I have so much to say about the whole "Eikenberry cables" issue that it would take a month to say it all here. As I said in the paper, any strategy that has the goal of a strong central government as its "center-piece" will in the long run - fail. I do however know this...There is nothing in the world I care more about than those ODAs on the ground right now, who are doing everything they can to make AP3, CDI/LDI work. I know this for certain - those guys will do everything within their power to accomplish their mission, with or without the proper resources to do so. If anyone can do it - it is them. I just want to get over there and help them succeed at a critical and extremely difficult mission. They are the ones laying it on the line. My respect for them is complete. My loyalty to them and what they are trying to do is without question and I will do whatever I can to help the ODAs out there doing it - to be successful.
SF is the best in the world at what we do - and if anyone can do it - it is us.
STRENGTH AND HONOR
Jim
GBNT, I completely agree with you. The motley crew of nations does tribal engagement/involvement/influence based on their cultural norms, and relationships with the locals are affected differently. We see Afghanistan through the eyes of America and the endstate we would like to achieve. Other countries may share our endstate, as they are there in support of the US, but have unique means of attainment. The strategy used in Iraq will not work for Afghanistan for several reasons. Infrastructure, land mass and all that they entail. I view the issues in Afghanistan as a reactive approach to the root cause; A lot of assets and attention were diverted to Iraq during the invasion and Afghanistan fell to the wayside. Now it's catch up time and our military and civilian leaders are in hurry to do something because the President has said July 2011 will begin troop withdrawal. But troop withdrawal can mean anything. I believe his point was to force Karzai to be Presidential but it's obvious he lacks all the attributes to do so. As for Major Gant's paper, I agree that it has sparked remarkable conversation and has forced everyone to think outside the box. I found a lot of humor in Dave Maxwell saying there's been too much talk about tribal engagement as it has caused a threat to Karzai's legitimacy. Karzai is his own worst enemy and Eikenberry has clearly pointed that out. Rest assured Major Gant, you and your tribal engagement "public debate" are not the reason AP3, CDI and LDI have come to a screeching halt.
"...the increased risk will make every commander at every echelon very nervous."
I suspect this comment in particular says the most about our lack of progress and overall unwillingness to seriously look at any new idea about how achieve a win in A'stan
Not sure when the decision was made that mandated that every commander is expected to bring home alive every single soldier in his command lest he lose his career or possibly his freedom (a long trip to the USDB). But that seems to be impression one gets from many a commanding officer when suggesting an idea that increases the likelihood of their soldiers scrapping with the enemy.
Hopefully, clearly heads will prevail regarding the "Gant Plan".
For the thread: The problem with implementing this is two-fold. First, you have to change the orgnaizational cultures of every unit in theater to get them out of the wire and earn the trust of the tribes. Except for the SF ODAs, the increased risk will make every commander at every echelon very nervous. All the terrible habits we learned in Iraq will make implementing the Gant Plan all the more difficult. Second, Afghanistan has no business having a strong central government -- it is totally inappropriate. At most it should be a confederation made strongly interdependent via economic ties. There is not one iota of trust between any province and Kabul. It is not natural and if we force it, it will be hollow and will ultimately fail. Trying to create an Afghan democracy as anything close to our image is wrong and will undo the greatest strategy and set of operations possible. I fear we may be at this point.
Personal for Jim G: job well-done. The entire reason anyone in the military tries to write is exactly what you have achieved: to spark intelligent, informed discourse toward improving the way we do business. You've been able to do it at the strategic level. 'Tis only the beginning, brother. Keep your head about you, for there will be many who lose theirs and will blame it on you. I'd frock you to O-6 to keep the 'tards at bay. Too bad we don't seem to do battlefield promos anymore. De Oppresso Liber.
I agree in general with the concept of tribal engagement. I believe it is an application of the correct doctrinal SF mission in FID/COIN: remote area operations.
"Remote Area Operations. Remote area operations are operations undertaken in insurgent-controlled or contested areas to establish islands of popular support for the HN government and deny support to the insurgents. They differ from consolidation operations in that they are not designed to establish permanent HN government control over the area. Remote areas may be populated by ethnic, religious, or other isolated minority groups. They may be in the interior of the HN or near border areas where major infiltration routes exist. Remote area operations normally involve the use of specially trained paramilitary or irregular forces. SF teams support remote area operations to interdict insurgent activity, destroy insurgent base areas in the remote area, and demonstrate that the HN government has not conceded control to the insurgents. They also collect and report information concerning insurgent intentions in more populated areas. In this case, SF teams advise and assist irregular HN forces operating in a manner similar to the insurgents themselves, but with access to superior CS and CSS resources. (From FM 3-05.202 Foreign Internal Defense 2007.)"
However per the Tyson article the leadership appears to embrace forms of tribal engagement. And this has evolved over time from Jim's experiences way back in 2003-2004 through the development and disbanding of militias trained by SF, through the Afghan Public Protection Program (AP3), though the Community Defense Initiative (CDI) through the now Local Defense Initiative (LDI). However, now that there is apparent acceptance by the US leadership it is critical that there be Afghan support because according to my "COIN 101" our approach should not be conducting COIN directly and unilaterally but enabling the host nation forces to conduct security operations as well as work to change the conditions that cause the insurgency (e.g., separate the population from the insurgents). But it has to be the local population and government security forces (whether they be national level or better the province, district and local paramilitary and police forces) that does this and not a foreign outside force (no matter how native some think they can go). A foreign outside force can either be an occupier or an enabler but cannot unilaterally counter an insurgency. If a unilateral attempt is made then it becomes a pacification operation by an occupying power. But enough COIN 101.
Assuming that there is acceptance among the senior US military leadership, perhaps there no longer needs to be a public debate. Jim has influenced the situation positively based on his experiences in 2003-2004 with his paper. But as everyone has jumped on the bandwagon and these ideas get more and more traction and some people (including some in Congress ) believing that this is the Silver Bullet (and of course Jim rightly points out that there is no silver bullet), is this public discussion productive or counter-productive? I ask this because my original point and question was whether the Ambassador and President Karzai calling for a delay of the Local Defense Initiative because of the public notoriety of tribal engagement and he felt that it was a threat perhaps to the perception of his legitimacy.
Now that GEN McChrystal and GEN Petreaus and ADM Olson all believe in this, perhaps the influence operation is complete and now we need to allow the guys on the ground to execute and let the leaders do the political groundwork with President Karzai to one) support and advocate for the programs, and two) provide Afghan Security Forces to conduct the program with USSF support.
I do not know what is causing the Ambassador and President Karzai to want to delay the program which I believe can and will be an important part of the campaign plan but I think it is worth thinking about.
Schmedlap,
Thank you for posting. Without getting into a long dissertation about the enitre subject, here is what I think about your specific question in a nutshell. As well all know, there is no "silver bullet" for the incredible task that we are currenly facing in Afghanistan. I even believe that we could argue for a long time about what the desired endstate is depending on who you ask. This causes many probelms. If you just take a few of the things that we have to improve in order to have "success" in Afghanistan the list (this not an exhaustive list by any means) would include: good governance, infrastructure development, improved security forces, better education system, better judicial system, more economic opportunities, etc, etc...now one of those I believe that is critical is tribal engagement. Not including the tribes, in a major way, will not allow any of the above to occur, over the long-term. Except in places like Kabul and Kandahar, which I have said is a million miles away from the "rural insurgency" that is being fought throughout the south and the east. This is just my opinion "GANT COIN 101" (so take it for what it is worth) it is the counterinsurgent's mission to give the populace TIME amd SPACE from the every day violence of the insurgency. In my opinion, and I can have one since I fought there, that is what we did in Iraq. What happened there was truly amazing. If Iraq plummets back into a civil war - it will be a lot of things - but it will not be the fault of the US military. What we accomplished there was almost a miracle.
I do not like comparing wars. Especially when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan and especially when you start to talk of the differences between how tribes in the two countries are different. However, as you know, Afghanistan has had the hell beat out of it for decades now. We need to bring some normalcy back to the everyday Afghan.
So how to do that - right now? Through the tribes. They are set. They are in place. They have borders and boundaries and systems in place to punish wrongs, systems in place to decide issues, systems in place to come to agreements on who and how to fight, systems in place to secure themselves and even "go after" the "Neo" Taliban in some areas...IF WE GIVE THEM AN OPPORTUNITY TO.
Is it risky? Yes. Is it anymore risky than putting all of our eggs in one basket with the ANA? I don't think so.
I think we should get input from some of the lower ranking transition team members who are currently fighting alongside the ANA and ask them what their assessment is. I do believe we can build a viable ANA - in 25 years. I believe we can build a very large "loose confederation" of tribes in two years.
The tribes are ready - today. If we get the right people, at the right place, for the right amount of time we can have "influence without authority" over large portions of the country with very little manpower or resources being used.
One last point here. If I were a tribal engagement team leader, one of my jobs would be to put "pillars" into place to accept central governement assistance if and when it came.
Will there be problems? Yes. Would unresrticted, unchecked "warlordism" be one of them?
No.
Once again, just my thoughts...
Thanks again for the post.
STRENGTH AND HONOR
Jim Gant
Jim,
Great work! Some people are just not going to get it. When you talk about conducting Unconventional Warfare a lot of people not only outside the Special Forces community but also some on the inside still dont understand what that is or how to accomplish it. You are always going to get support from those who truly understand the type of war we are fighting. It doesnt occur out in the open as some would suggest. When you conduct UW you play in the grey world and thats hard for some to comprehend. Sometimes you need to look more like the guerrilla to counter the guerrilla. I believe just as you do that working through the tribes is the way to go. I wish you all the luck trying to convince the command that it could work. When I was over there we advocated something similar and obviously that didnt happen. The JSOAs went away and the area that I had worked is now a hotbed. There are certain villages/ tribes that are strategic in nature over there and no one has realized it. Since we left CF has gone in and made a lot of enemies. You need the tribes support. Will it be dangerous- yes, but if we leave Afghanistan even 5 years from now the Warlord mentality will still remain in Afghanistan. We will also never be able to influence the other side of the fence through the Pakistanis or the use of drones. The tribes are the only answer. I will say one thing though. Dont think of how complex it is, because it really isnt. Its human and by listening to and understanding their perspective through the life they lead your team was able to influence a lot of good things. Everyone wants to make everything more complicated than what it has to be. Those people want prosperity, a safe environment for their families and to live in peace, just as we do for our own family and community; its just not going to look like what we think it should look like. There are other ways of taking out the enemy instead of fast roping in with ski masks and they can do it better in some ways than we can. There is no quick fix to what everyone wants to achieve in Afghanistan I dont care how many people you put on the ground. If they had wanted a quick fix they should have waged a war of attrition and brought a culture to their knees. However that wouldnt have been the right thing to do. As some of us already know nothing happens quickly Afghanistan.
Schmedlap,
I, too, believe MAJ Gant is advocating the establishment of local autonomy but I felt, from his paper, that he is advocating that as part of the eventual development of a stronger central authority. Establish local security first, let that security spread, giving ANSF time to get their s**t together, and eventually the two systems (local and ANSF) can complement each other & help set the conditions for eventual national control. That was my take.
Personally, I feel that we ought to focus more on district and regional governance (kinda like Swiss cantons) versus establishing a strong central governmet.......which I have doubts about in a place like A'stan.
For MAJ Gant, regarding the TETs, are these to be made up of SOF types or will conventional types be part of those teams?
Jim,
Good work. Too many people are content to criticize by talking, rather than criticizing by doing better (I'm referring to many snide remarks that I've read elsewhere about what you're advocating - not the comments here).
I guess my only reservation about working through the tribes is that I wonder whether this is relevant to our desired endstate. It seems like a capability that we have underdeveloped and, probably, underexploited. However, does it connect the current situation to our desired outcome? If so, how? My understanding is that we are trying to establish a central government that can govern the entire country (a questionable goal, in my opinion). Efforts that you advocate to work through the tribes seem geared toward establishing local sovereignty, which doesn't seem consistent with our larger objectives. Am I misreading this?
Afghanistan is by far the most complex issue I have ever tried to wrap my brain around. By far. The more I think I "know" and "learn" the further from the answer it feels like I get.
There are so many people with so much more knowledge on so many different subjects and how they relate to another than I have...I know that.
As I have said since day one: This is what I know, this is what my ODA and I did, and this is what we could do again.
Do I truly believe that a large scale tribal engagement strategy (TES) is critical if we are ever going to achieve "success"? Yes, I do. I am more convinced of it now than ever.
None of us can get into the heads of Mr. Eikenberry or Mr. Karzai nor can we get into the heads of all the "advisors" both Amercian and Afghan that each of them is listening to. There are some very vaild criticisms of following a tribal engagement strategy, but there are also just as many valid reasons to peform it on a large scale. There are very valid and real reasons to believe that NATOs ability to ever be able to stand up a functioning ANA will not work as well; but that does not mean we should abondon it. Tribal engagement is a critical part of the overall strategy in Afghanistan. As I have said before,"Engaging the tribes in Afghanistan does not ensure will we "succeed", but not doing so will ensure that we will "fail."
I do know this for certain: The "status qou" will fail. I also know that I would be just as enthusiastic about going to Afghanistan and being a tranisition team leader of an ANA battalion who was out there fighting, as I would be doing tribal engagement.
It is the men and women on the ground with the every day Afghans, be them farmers, shop owners, taxi drivers, tribesman, ANA soldiers, ANP soldiers, or school teachers that will decide the outcome of this war. Now, if those brave people who are with the Afghans every day are under-cut, for whatever reason by lack of funding, lack of resources or whatever - they cannot control that. They just have to do the best they can with what they have. And trust me - they will.
The bottom line is we need our very best people there, in Afghanistan, making the vision and guidance of our leadership a reality.
We need our "best athletes" on the ground, in the game, or we won't succeed, no matter what we do.
I will continue to say what I believe to be true, not for myself or to satisfy my ego, but because I (and my men)have seen firsthand the power that investing time, effort, sweat and blood with the tribes can have.
Its potential is very powerful and it could be a "game changer" on the ground.
STRENGTH AND HONOR
Jim Gant
Regarding the Washington Post article as well as today's by Dexter Filkins:
I just wonder how much the public debate over tribal engagement has caused this? Karzai may perhaps feel this is a potential impact on sovereignty and of course delaying this could be a way to publicly demonstrate an assertion of sovereignty. Perhaps we all ought to take a deep breath and stop all the talk about tribal engagement so the boys on the ground can get on with it (e.g., help the Afghans to execute LDI) and the Afghan political leadership wont feel so threatened by it.
Morgan:
I think this is the article you saw:
"U.S. ambassador puts brakes on plan to utilize Afghan militias against Taliban," By Greg Jaffe and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Friday, January 22, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/21/AR20100…
1) Eikenberry is a smart guy with lots of AFG experience. He is likely responding to sqwaking from Karzai's government and provincial governors who undountedbly perceive any attempt by ISAF to interact directly with the tribes as an infringement on their power. It's also likely that he is hearing pushback on tribal engagement from coalition partners who fear reigniting warlordism in AFG.
2) This is also a likely consequence of the ongoing lack on unity of effort within the U.S. interagency process.
3) The comment by "an adviser to the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan" regarding the lack of intelligence brings to mind MG Flynn's recent missive. Flynn's observation was that there was lots of raw intelligence on local politics being gathered by PRTs, HTTs, battalion and company intel shops, and SOF detachments, but that it was not being analyzed or pushed up through the chain-of-command. It could be that the embassy doesn't know as much as the folks in the field and that is clouding the ambassador's assessment.
4) There could be an element of GPF/SOF parochialism at work too. Eikenberry was a career GPF guy. There is a blind quote by unnamed "U.S. officials" that "local tribal leaders could manipulate U.S. officers who do not understand politics and tribal grievances in a particular area." It seems some "U.S. officials" seem to have pretty low regard for ARSOF capabilities.
A WaPo article (I saw it on Long War Journal) states that Ambassador Eikenberry (sp?) is temporarily halting the implementation of this program pending approval of some sort from the Kabul government.
Isn't this one of the things that MAJ Gant wants to avoid in developing the tribal militias.....Kabul bureaucracy and corruption...?
I suspect more is going on than we in the public are privy to. But WTF? The whole point of this tribal initiative (I thought) was to start from the ground up...at the village level.....and build security from there, connecting to ANSF later on.
Have I missed something or are our "higher ups" not reading the same paper from MAJ Gant that I read?
Jim and I have briefly talked about his paper and experiences in AF. He has the knowledge and insight that has led to not only him writing an excellent paper but also causing many people from all walks of life and countries to THINK. This has created a great buzz among the warrior minded and the intellect alike. We are taking a look at a new (old) approach that can offer up significant support not only to the tribes but also to the Gov't of Afghanistan long term. I have learned a lot from the feedback that everyone has provided through SWJ on this paper. We SOF must live in the villages that belong to the tribes that we are imbedded with. Without giving a history lesson, we have many examples in our modern history that has proven to work. I suggest to all that we take Jim's paper and study it and apply what works to each situation we encounter. There is no cookie cutter solution and no off the shelf plan that will work; we have to take the leap into the gray and mysterious side of war.
A Special Forces team walks the fine line between working by, with, and through the indigenous population, and going "native," every time it deploys into the current theater of operations. In Major Gants recent 45-page paper, an aspect of his ODAs experiences in Afghanistan capture some of this challenge, and highlights my own frustration with the conventional Army adaptation of traditional SOF missions of COIN/FID. As we have learned thus far, the current U.S. main objective in COIN, population support, is not a new concept, and one that both Major Gant and I received formal training on for several months in the US Army Special Forces Qualification Course. Unfortunately, USSF senior leaders seemed to forget that winning the hearts and minds of local tribal leaders requires an intimate and long-term personal investment. In addition, they did not convince their conventional counterparts to tap into a corps of specially selected officers and NCOs who received formal training in insurgency/COIN concepts, cross-cultural communication, language, etc. that gives the USSF officer/NCO a foundation of skills critical for fighting irregular warfare. Because of the expectation of a SF teams intimate work with indigenous forces, part of the training a Special Forces officer receives, unlike that of his conventional counter-part, is to look not only the tactical task and purpose, but how his mission synchronizes with the theater operational and strategic objectives. One purpose of this training ensures that the Special Forces officer, after months of isolated operations, does not lose sight of the desired end state of their operations by identifying with the local cause and going native. However, an irregular warfare expert must walk this razors edge when working with the indigenous population, extremely important to understanding the cultural currents that motivate tribal actions. What effects success in this ambiguous environment, is the conflicted relationship between the parochial conventional command now driving the COIN and FID- train, advise, assist mission in Afghanistan, and the SF units whose personal investment in mission success goes back to the root of their formal training- what they know the conventional forces lack.
Maj Gant's paper is a great piece of contemporary writin which brings a more up to date definition of 'Hearts and Minds'. Whilst I found it intriguing and of great value I do wonder if his suggested approach is tenable in Afghanistan?
Why? Well, we have barely enough of a presence to encourage the Afgan populace that we are a 'force for good' as it is. Even after the surge will we have enough to ensure that once we move on the Taliban won't move in afterwards execute one or tow in order to 'ocus the populace's minds'? Don't get me wrong, I think that this really is the way forward and the most likely way we will achieve strategic success in Afghanistan; whatever that success looks like...
I commend anyone with an interest in Cultural Awareness (Human Terrain Mapping etc) or Contemporary Military Operations to read this paper.
I learned a lot from this op-ed piece, in terms of background on MAJ Gant's paper and how it was received by certain members of DoD leadership. Interesting to say the least.
That said, and MAJ Gant or Ms. Tyson might chime in here, I'm sure he did not pick the title of this essay. Editors have a way of using attention grabbing titles that distract from the message. I cannot imagine anyone in our business to up-front agree that their take, based on previous experiences, is a slam-dunk solution to winning a war that we still have a fuzzy end state on, aren't clear to the commitment in terms of numbers over time and of course there is the Pakistan issue. Tribal boundaries are not exactly etched in stone in accordance with our boundaries.