How Bin Laden Escaped in 2001: The Lessons of Tora Bora by Yaniv Barzilai, The Daily Beast.
Exactly twelve years ago, during the cold Winter days between December 10-16, in the jagged mountains of Tora Bora that separate Afghanistan from Pakistan, Osama bin Laden walked unencumbered into Pakistan and disappeared for nine and a half years.
Just before, however, bin Laden had made an egregious error. After spending a couple seconds too long on his radio, the CIA pinpointed bin Laden’s location to within ten meters. One hour later, forty of America’s most elite special operations forces raced to kill the most infamous man alive.
It was the only day for nearly a decade in which the United States knew exactly where Osama bin Laden was. And, it was the last time that the majority of al Qaeda’s leadership would ever be in the same place…
Comments
Outlaw 09:
Your comment also illustrates to a certain degree what I have been talking about "AQ is using Turkey as an entry point and a pull back point when pressured by Assad...". They went there because the Turkish Army would protect them. Now granted it appears this hasn't been so critical in the case of Syria, but in other places and in Afghanistan it is vital.
I think we have no influence in Syria because we didn't back a force of our liking strongly. We wrung our hands and hoped for the best. It didn't come.
Carl---here is another example of what Robert is talking about when the discussion gets to sanctuaries.
While we have done nothing in Syria for the last three years slowly AQ is winning with their new strategy as expounded in Sept 2013 a near fight victory using UW and it goes to the heart of why the Saudi's no longer trust us in the ME and is openly calling for the Sunni countries to defend themselves in the ME from Iran.
AQ is using Turkey as an entry point and a pull back point when pressured by Assad but overall they are fighting from village to village, town to town and city to city using the liberated villages/towns/cities as sanctuaries.
And what do we have as influence in the area if AQ pulls this off-none, zero, zip, nada. But what does AQ have---clear example to the rest of the Muslim Sunni world they are on the righteous path to victory. And the messaging will be that they did it on their own without outside assistance kind of like in the fashion of the Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War.
From 19 Dec 2013
BEIRUT — The leader of one the most feared and effective Syrian rebel groups told Al Jazeera news service Thursday that the nearly 3-year-old conflict was close to an end and that his forces – considered to be among the most radical – held the upper hand over both the Syrian regime and secular rebel groups.
Speaking as the chief of the Nusra Front, Abu Mohammed al Joulani, designated as al Qaida’s top representative in Syria, said in his first media interview that the group rejected peace talks scheduled for late January and warned Sunni Arab states of betrayal by the West as America and Iran begin discussions to end their 30-year feud.
“The battle is almost over, we have covered about 70 percent of it, and what’s left is small. We will achieve victory soon. We pray to God to culminate these efforts with victory. It’s only a matter of days,” he told an interviewer, his face and the interview location hidden for security reasons.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/12/19/212220/leader-of-al-qaida-linked-…
I don't think a lack of physical sanctuary in a neighboring nation necessarily means "stay in place and surrender or die". The traditional sanctuary of the insurgent has been to disperse and blend. It has worked, rather well, in many places.
External sanctuary and foreign support are useful to an insurgency, but not necessary. What's necessary is a population or substantial part thereof that hates and fears its government.
Whether or not large scale external support is a real advantage for a government facing insurgency is debatable. A government that depends on foreign support has a hard time gaining the respect of its own people, and is easily dismissed as a puppet. Insurgents have learned that foreign support for a counterinsurgent is not unlimited in duration, and if they endure long enough the foreign government will eventually get tired and bored and go home. leaving a weak dependency with nothing left to lean on, ripe for the picking. While supporting a counterinsurgent may not be inherently wrong, allowing a situation where the counterinsurgent government is totally dependent on us seems a fairly shaky idea.
I don't know that Pakistan really is essential for AQ. AQAP, AQIM, Al Shabaab and the growing Iraq/Syria nexus seem much more a focus of their movement. Certainly it's important to the Taliban, but the Taliban are only our problem because we chose to stay in Afghanistan. Once we scale back in Afghanistan we will no longer be dependent on Pakistan to sustain and supply forces, and will be free to decouple more from Pakistan, leaving the problem for India to deal with. It is, after all, more their problem than ours.
Since you speak of "not knowing how to win", I'd be curious about what outcome you would consider "winning".
Outlaw 09:
AQI was pretty thoroughly suppressed for a time. The had those local areas they could dominate but when we put forth the effort, in the right way, to go after those areas, they had no place to go, no true sanctuary. They couldn't run into Iran or Kuwait or Turkey. They had to stay in place and surrender or die. If they had had a sanctuary on the order of the one Taliban & Co have courtesy of the Pak Army/ISI, they would have used it and not been so thoroughly beat up. I think anyway.
Now they are back. Why? Nothing we are doing in my view. We aren't there to do anything. The Iraqis kicked up out, quite prematurely it seems. I figure it like this. The Iraqi gov stopped taking the anti-biotic, us, before the infection, AQI, had been well and truly killed. When you are on an anti-biotic regimen you continue taking them long after the symptoms disappear or you don't get all the bugs. They didn't.
Agree wholeheartedly with your analogy. But we never learn it seems. We continue to do the same thing with night raids in Afghanistan.
I have a question about there being no addresses in Iraq. Why weren't addresses just imposed arbitrarily? Galula said that was one of the first steps. He didn't have any genius insight, that's just common sense. Hey come to think of it, didn't they actually do that up in Mosul? I sort of remember reading about that.
carl---not wanting to appear to be supporting a lot of what Robert is saying but in all our conversations we seem to forget but Robert has not---really what Mao meant when wrote the guerrilla is like a fish in the ocean and the ocean is the population who supports him.
We even had sanctuaries inside Iraq ie say the Diyala river valley that had palm grooves thicker than some jungle I experienced in VN and AQI/IAI/ALS/Revolution 1920 used them for R&R from our sweeps and for training areas.
BUT most of the time the Sunni insurgents and AQI survived nicely in the villages, towns and cities of Iraq---this is the angle that now Dr. Kilcullen is coming from.
Ever try to brief a raid team on a location in an Iraq village or city?---where there are no road names or house numbers or maps---we hit many times simply the wrong house---great if you are an insurgent-- poor if you are the counter insurgent as that mistake hits then the local population who gets really mad at you and you the counter insurgent wonder why---following the motto hey I am trying to stop the insurgents and now you dislike me--why?
Example---if you were an American on Super Bowl day with all of your friends and wifes, tons of food on the tables, a super large HD TV playing the game, everyone cheering AND then BOOM the front door is destroyed, you are thrown on the floor, hooded, flex cuffed and then dragged out of your home and thrown down on the street in front of your house and the neighbors who are now watching all of this and accused of being a terrorist in front of them and then taken away (JUST how would you be feeling in this moment?), thrown in say a make shift prison for say 6 months and then released and said sorry wrong house, with no payment for the damaged house and the imprisonment----JUST how does the person respond after that?---this by the way goes to the heated debate on the Rhodesian article. Did we just win the hearts and minds or did the insurgency just get a major supporter who really now does not like us. Did we just confirm that the insurgent propaganda about detainee abuse, atrocities is accurate as seen from the population viewpoint?
It is all about perception.
I taught this examples X number of times to infantry CPTs coming through the NTC who had a number of tours in Iraq---they would be startled and would often say "I do understand that concept"---then the next comment was "no one ever said this to us before why were we never explained this before"?
What is missing is a true understanding of the AQ strategy and only after a true understanding can one formulate a UW response-not all UW is violent in nature. Even after 12 years of war AQ is more vibrant and alive and well than say 10 years ago---why? Something we are doing must be wrong so why not change direction and rethink?
Strategy---it is all about strategy---tactics and this again is focused at the Rhodesian article tactics anyone can do---does not take a COIN genius.
Robert C. Jones:
Yes, AQ could be plotting their next big op across the street. But that kind of statement equates the absolute of what is within the realm of possibility, with that which is most probable. Yes, AQ could be conniving in the kitchen across the way but the likelihood of that is very low. That comment is tendentious and seeks to put the likely on the same plane as the very remote possibility. AQ plotting in the house across the way or near Quetta, which one are you going to bet on? There ain't no FBI in Quetta, just an ISI protecting them.
You may say that it is a well established historical fact that no piece of dirt is vital to the insurgent, but that is not so. Pakistan is vitally important to Taliban & Co especially of the leadership. If that country were denied to them, where would they go? Afghanistan? Nope they wouldn't last long there. So what's left? India? Iran? Argentina? There is nowhere they could go. There is no other place in the world where they would have a very large and capable army protecting them. Same thing with most any insurgency you want to pick. There has been some discussion of the bush war in Rhodesia here of late. The Z forces could not have prevailed if they had not had available to them big expanses of dirt that the Rhodesian forces could not go into. Indeed certain pieces of dirt are vitally important to insurgent forces for often they cannot survive without them.
Your Camp 1 and Camp 2 are duly slain strawmen. Set 'em up and knock 'em down. Actually we have not done anything to deprive Taliban & Co of their vital sanctuary, except give the Pak Army/ISI money they use to kill Americans and Afghans with. I will admit that hasn't been working out so good. So I would say that attempting to deal with an insurgency while leaving intact, indeed making no attempt at all to deprive them of, a sanctuary has been a terrible failure.
It would be a good thing if there was a competing Muslim ideology as dynamic as the Jihadist/takfiri one. I hope there is but I'm not aware of it. Alas though, there is nothing we can do to develop one. That is for the Muslims to develop. Come on Muslims, let's get going.
Hey I have a question. The plight of Christians in many of the Muslim nations is getting pretty bad, as in dead bodies littering the area bad. That isn't often spoken of here in the West. It should be. The takfiri's are only going to get worse in this respect to the extent that truly terrible, Rwanda type terrible things may happen. What do you think of that situation?
Carl,
I didn't say physical sanctuary is not important, I said it is the least important aspect of sanctuary. AQ could be plotting their next big operation in the house across the street from yours. What I said is that it is a well established historical fact that no piece of dirt is vitally important to any insurgent. There is always more dirt someplace else. Physical sanctuary is indeed tactical, it is situational, and it is globally abundant. To spend Trillions of dollars, thousands of lives, and unmeasurable amounts of national influence in the pursuit of attempting to deny one particular place, and doing so in a manner that alienates a whole new population to be more fervently anti-American is foolish. Doubly foolish when it also serves to validate the ideology of one's primary opponent.
But to be fair, we have been following a strategy very much in line with how you see the world. How is that working for you? For us? For the world? Most who buy into the current strategy but that also concede that it is not working as well as it should fall into two camps:
Camp 1: It isn't working because we are not committed enough to making it work. We need to do what we've been doing be we need to do it more aggressive and in more places. Double down on Iraq and Afghanistan until we "win."
Camp 2: It isn't working because we have been soft on ideology. This is all about ideology and we need to get serious about attacking directly the extremist Jihadist ideology that is causing all of this to happen.
Personally I reject both of those camps as illogical and not supported by the current facts or by the historical record of similar conflicts over time and around the globe. But there are big crowds in both of those campgrounds. I'm sure they have room for one more.
Bob
Robert C. Jones:
You are right. I am a simple fellow, naturally enough since I have not taken that hard and complex journey. My aching feet sort of limit my range. But I do know one thing, when somebody starts talking about a "higher order", I check my wallet. Hang on...yea it's still there.
No, I think I do have your position mostly right and it is worthwhile talking about the definition I am using. I am not talking about some touchy feeling 'do they like me' definition or some hazy legal definition of something or other worthy of a French deconstructionist. No, I am talking about physical sanctuary, the 'I can't physically get at you to hit you on the head with a hammer.' kind. And you don't think that is very important as indicated by your minimizing use of the word "tactical".
You are wrong. Physical sanctuary is desperately important to the prospering and even survival of an insurgency. The takfiri killers can do an op and plan an op on occasion just about anywhere; especially against sleepy police forces as was the case before 9-11. They can't do that so easily now because the police forces are awake and watching for them. When they see them they go and hit them on the head with that hammer because they can get at them.
So much for the takfiri killer foot soldiers in many parts of the world. But how about the bigger fish? Mullah Omar say. Where is he? Why he is in Pakistan and has been since 2001 along with Hekmatyar and the Haqqanis. We can't get at them. I think that if we could physically get at them and hit them on the head with a hammer, it would have a strategic effect, a profound one. They seem to think so too since they don't go into Afghanistan. We may be "squeezing the balloon" (How many times have we killed the AQ number 3 man) as you say in FATA but that has no effect at all on the status of Pakistan as a vital physical sanctuary. We can't go in there on the ground because the Pak Army protects them there, so the physical sanctuary remains. We can't or won't finish the fight because we won't do anything real about that physical sanctuary.
That gets me back to the point of my original comment, we don't know how to finish a fight. We won't win. Your dismissal of the importance of physical sanctuary in favor of a hazy idea of higher order sanctuary gives me a bit of a clue why. If our betters that be inside the beltway and wearing multiple stars get themselves all tied up in too clever by half arguments, no wonder we can't finish the fight.
This statement of yours "Once someone is outside the law they are no longer constrained by law." is a circular argument. They wouldn't be outside the law in the first place if they were constrained by the law. Anyway, good hoods, whose lives revolve around being lawless, are still constrained in certain ways by the law. They make darn sure all the lights in their cars work and they use their blinkers so they won't get stopped. After all, they have no physical sanctuary, that cop can get at them.
Robert, here's the question I have and I am genuinely confused.
Somehow, studying the issue of Zimbabwe/Rhodesian COIN helped me to finally see some points about the emotional wells of "sanctuary."
But the mechanics of some of our original Taliban removal still confuse me.
From my reading, there was a huge argument in the Bush administration (I don't know if this is correct) about whether the Taliban should be completely destroyed and pushed out of Kabul and the Northern Alliance was held back while someone to lead a Pashtun camp for our side too could be found? This was the advice from Musharraf and others in the Bush administration, apparently.
Okay, to have a stable order, you can't have a northern alliance monopoly and I understand your point about a larger and inclusive constitution.
But do you decide that while you are in the middle of a battle? You don't half destroy something do you?
Wouldn't it have been better (I know, the retrospectoscope makes us all smarter) to let the battle take place, capture the Taliban leaders, and then hold the constitutional conference that you suggested?
But we were afraid of reprisal killings and excessive violence?
Yes, the world is all shades of gray. My question really is more of a military question because I don't have that expertise. When and how to you stop to assess the flow of a campaign?
I know, huge question. But do you get why I am confused?
Carl,
You appear to be very comfortable operating in a world where every issue is black or white, and where one need only respond decisively to the first order action before them to win. The higher order motivations and reasons behind that action, and equally the higher order effects of one's own actions be damned. "Do I have that right"?
There is a big difference between "simple" and "simplistic." I strive to work my way to simple understandings of very complex issues. That is hard, and the closer one gets to those simple understandings the more likely those who have not taken that same journey are to challenge your findings. After all, how could something so complex be stated so simply? Simplistic, on the other hand, is more raw, more emotional, more off the cuff. Frankly, though we look at the same facts, I find your positions often to be agonizingly simplistic. I know you are no fan of my positions either. We just think about these things differently.
As to your summary of my statement above, not only do you not "have it right," I am curious if you even read, or thought about what you read at all, because no, you do not have that right. Not even close.
You focused on the concept of "sanctuary" so let's spend a couple minutes and discuss sanctuary. The nuts and bolts planning and preparation for the 9/11 attacks took place in California and Florida, as well as Afghanistan where the senior leaders sat and waited for the news, and where trainees did PT on the Monkeybars at Mullah Omars pad down in Kandahar. No one suggested bombing and regime change in the US or any European states involved to some degree, or even Pakistan for that matter as they are a nuclear power so get a pass from these types of US operations. So the first point is one of US policy: we will come off the top rope on you if 1. you don't have nuclear weapons with which to respond to our aggressive actions; 2, if you are not part of the US; or 3; if you are a government with who we have a solid relationship.
So we don't treat equally culpable parties equally. This bias in US foreign policy is one of the primary drivers of the perceptions among foreign populations that creates this "occupation by policy" effect that helps form the many "parades" that AQ targets for their UW operations, and that nationalist insurgents emerge from and leverage for their more localized agendas.
What does this have to do with sanctuary? Because the most vital aspect of sanctuary for any illegal organization; be it for profit or for politics, be it national or international; is the support of some segment of the population who prioritize supporting the illegal actor over supporting the legal actor. Often there is a degree of coercion involved in creating that support, but coercion only takes one so far toward earning a population's support (sanctuary) - a fact that is equally true for a government working to separate an illegal actor from his supporting population. Inappropriate approaches will make this form of sanctuary stronger
The fact is that their are pockets of populations around the globe who are wiling to support some aspect of AQ's operations. To deny a single place/population merely "squeezes the balloon." The way we have been squeezing the balloon in the FATA has been, IMO, horribly misguided. We are so focused on Intel, "the threat", legality and capabilities that we have become completely tactical in our thinking and actions. Pure scalp-hunting, but done in a manner that terrorizes the entire population of the region. There were probably not enough Pakistani Pashto who would volunteer to support AQ operations overseas on 9/11 to play a pickup game of basketball. That is no longer the case today. We have created a hotbed of sanctuary and make it stronger every day through the inappropriate nature of policies and actions. This is what happens when one only measures success with objective, tactical metrics - it causes one to rationalize away far more important negative effects of one's actions.
After the support of some population (popular sanctuary), the next most important aspect of sanctuary is the law (legal sanctuary). Too often we create legal status that provides a form of sanctuary. Placing organizations and individuals on a formal "terrorist" list does this. These lists certainly facilitate tactical operations; but they lead to strategic disasters in many ways. We find it hard to employ diplomacy with anyone we have placed on such a list. We find it hard to change bad policies that we ourselves know to be bad when someone on such a list is demanding that we change said policy. Once someone is outside the law they are no longer constrained by law. Borders also create legal sanctuaries. North Vietnam was the massive legal sanctuary created by West halfway through the Vietnamese revolution for independence from Western powers. I realize US history on Vietnam does not spend much time talking about the entire revolution, rather only the small part that we were a central player to. The state on state aspect of that conflict was a fiction created by Western policy makers and only seen as relevant by Western policy makers. In the end that sanctuary, created by us, was the gift that allowed unification of Vietnam to ultimately occur.
Lastly, and only important on a tactical level, is the physical nature of sanctuary (physical sanctuary). Large, loosely governed cities will undoubtedly be the major sanctuaries of tomorrow for those who act illegally for politics, just as they have been for those who act illegally for profit. This does not mean (as Dr. Kilcullen and others are recently promoting) that we will need to go into these cities and conduct massive man-hunting operations as we are currently in the backcountry of Pakistan, Yemen, Mali, etc; - it means that getting to a new strategic understanding of the nature of these types of illegal actors and the nature of sanctuary will become even more important.
We can deny rural AFPAK to AQ and others, and they will simply go elsewhere. All they need is a supportive population, some supportive legal status, and some type of physical cover that allow them to run or hide effectively when pushed at the tactical level.
Robert C. Jones:
So your point is, more succinctly, it wouldn't have made any difference so don't sweat it. Well, that's one way of looking at it.
You said this: "...when one of the most widely accepted aspects of insurgency is that controlling specific terrain is largely irrelevant and unnecessary for the conduct of successful insurgency."
So I take it that possession of sanctuary by insurgents and the keeping of insurgents from having sanctuary by the countering forces isn't important. Do I have that right?
It is hardly worth debating counterfactuals, but truly, how different would our current position be today if we had successfully blocked this group of AQ and Taliban at Tora Bora? Perhaps we would have not invaded Iraq. That is a huge consideration. But we had already bought into the quagmire of taking the Taliban government of Afghanistan out of power and replacing it with a government composed of the Northern Alliance and other opportunists who rushed in to take advantage of this latest flip of Afghan patronage power enabled by a foreign invader.
The reality is that while Afghanistan was certainly convenient to the Taliban as a base of operations for their nascent regional UW campaign plan, it was certainly never essential for the execution of that larger vision, then, now, or in the future. That has been a false narrative of our own making that has kept us fighting over control of specific patches of dirt when one of the most widely accepted aspects of insurgency is that controlling specific terrain is largely irrelevant and unnecessary for the conduct of successful insurgency.
The value of capturing/killing bin Laden is high, but not because of the impact of his loss of leadership on AQ, but rather for the emotional closure it helped provide to an American populace who in practical terms really only wanted two things post 9/11: 1. Revenge on those who attacked us (and neither the Taliban nor Saddam were part of that attack); and 2., to feel as safe in the daily conduct of our lives as we had felt on 9/10.
To feel avenged, to feel safe. These are subjective perceptions that should have shaped our operations from the beginning. But because we never identified logical ends for the type of conflict we found ourselves in at the beginning, we instead sought more objective measures of victory more suitable for conventional campaigns that have morphed and expanded year by year as the pursuit of these ends, like the end of a rainbow, is never reached. We didn't know what we were doing, and when one doesn't know what to do, but action is demanded, one does what one knows. So we toppled and rebuilt governments, we wrestled with the resultant revolutionary insurgencies against the governments we created and the resultant resistance insurgencies against our presence and actions in general. And to this we kept up a heavy dose of CT in the belief that killing individual leaders would somehow kill the movement they led...
Mao once said. "I saw a parade and leapt in front." Bin Laden too saw a parade. He did not create the parade with his ideology, his ideology was merely the marching band music to get the parade to follow him. But those "parades", in disenfranchised and oppressed populations across the greater Middle East were all well-formed and growing long before 9/11.
It is unfortunate we missed this opportunity at Tora Bora. But it is tragic that we still miss the opportunity before us to reframe our understanding of why AQ and other such groups continue to expand their influence in spite of our mighty efforts. This has always been much more about politics than ideology. On 9/11 the US "occupied by policy" much of the greater Middle East, and there was and is widespread perception that that "occupation" is inappropriate and that it enables leaders to avoid listening to the reasonable grievances of their own people when they are secure in the protection of the US Government and our desire to sustain the status quo for as long as possible.
It is an interesting tactical problem to figure out how we could have executed a more effective blocking action at Tora Bora. But it is strategically fascinating to ponder how we can convert an overly controlling foreign policy into one based more on influence; on how we can move beyond justifying actions regardless of how outrageous simply because they are "legal" and instead learn to prioritize designing and executing operations that are perceived as appropriate by the populations those operations affect.
The world had changed by 9/11 and it continues to change. The relative balance of power between people and governments continues to shift in the favor of the people. We need to think long and hard about what that means about the design and implementation of our foreign policies and how we pursue our vital interests. The strategic lessons not learned of the past 12 years are enormous. Yet they largely go undiscussed.
Outlaw,
No compliment can hold a value greater than the source that delivers it, so thank you very much indeed. The experience, intellect and thoughtfulness behind what you post rings through clear and true - and it is I who continues my own journey on this topic when I read your posts.
Sometimes I see the well trampled path heading off in one or two well-traveled directions, and even though my own compass and all of my instincts tell me that is not the direction to take, it is nice to get the occasional "you might be onto something" from a source one respects to find the energy to keep breaking trail and see what is beyond that next ridgeline.
I think that for the most part everyone has gotten so caught up in doing things right, that they don't stop and ponder much as to if they are doing the right thing. And when one does something very, very well, it is easy to fall into the trap of believing that it must be doing good also. A family of metrics tailored over the past twelve years to reward tactical performance over strategic effectiveness only serves to enable this situation.
You ever get down to the Tampa Bay area drop me a line. I have some cold beer and good whiskey set aside for just such an occasion. DOL, Bob
Robert---always learning when you write.
Your comment on AQ as more of an UW organization is a point well taken. If one takes the time to really read through the Zawahiri released General Guidance to the Jihad from Sept 2013 it reads like one who both understands UW and sees UW as the way forward.
Noticed no one seems to be worried that he has shifted gears from the far fight to the near fight---that is where his concept of UW will kick in.
Refighting the Tora Bora fight is a waste of time and I am amazed that the articles still roll on the topic---regardless of what was or was not done he still got over the border---and this goes to what Bill M said---he knew the border and had people around him who could have taken anyone through in the dead of night and never stumble.
A story from Iraq---part of my job was using HUMINT to detect the illegal prisons (both Sunni and Shia) and then raiding and releasing abused/tortured prisoners.
Was at a IA Divison Hq based near the Iranian border/near Mandaly where I knew they were holding 100 prisoners they had not declared to us they were holding ----they had a NG MiTT tm working with them---when I arrived being from regular army with a PSD team the MiTT tm realized maybe I had a tad more power behind me and arranged a meeting with the Division commanders (in those days 2005 they had three-Shia, Sunni, Kurd) and their G2.
We did small talk awaiting their G2 who really was taking his time (let us steam for 30 minutes) as he did not like me being their---then he came in and sat down and listened to me asking about prisoners and abuse---both of which he denied they had and were doing.
What he did not understand was I recognized his Iraq SF insignias and awards on his uniform and then started asking him questions about his prior service, what prior Iraqi numbered SF units he had been in, whether he had been in the Iranian/Iraq war, and lastly where had he been in Kuwait---he was totally taken back when I mentioned--- was not your SF unit one of the first into Kuwait and the last out of Kuwait and did you not raid the national bank and where/when were you wounded in Kuwait?
The MiTT tm personnel ie their COL almost fell out of his chair but the G2 got really quiet.
Then he took me to the prison he had initially stated did not exist and allowed me to talk to everyone one of prisoners the youngest being 13. He wanted to be in the questioning and I allowed it if he sat in the back and asked no questions nor made comments.
A massive amount of insurgency info flowed and all admitted the abuse with him listening---he made immediate detainee changes--- he did clean their act up.
Later that evening the G2 asked me to train his interrogators ---although in front of the Div Commanders he kept making the statement your American techniques will not work here.
Yes if one works the relationships ---one gets far more achieved than most think possible.
Thanks for that response. I don't know what it was about that Zimbabwe/Rhodesia COIN thread that made me reassess what you have long been saying but it did cause me to rethink.
I know I'm not always fair around here, this stuff is hard. That's my biggest lesson from all of this.
It's easy to talk, hard to do, especially when you are in the middle of the maelstorm. There are good people in the system and who am I to talk? Didn't I get it wrong as a citizen on Iraq and believing we should go to war? So, why I am so hard on others? Don't know.
It's just that I think a lot of the American (British, world really) public feels so burned by the way in which Iraq was presented that I think the level of suspicion of even good people is so high. It will take time for this to improve and I hope it improves.
Madhu,
If this were easy we'd be doing much better than we are. The original planners and operators (many of whom I know and talk to often about the atmosphere and the thinking at that time, critical events and strong personalities that swayed things in various directions, etc. These were smart, well-intended professionals and they acted reasonably given how they understood the problem at the time, the nature of the background, experience and training, and the heavy political pressure for decisive action NOW.
The question is what have we learned from this experience? Based on what we have learned are there better ways to think of "terrorists" and "terrorism" than how we have to date? Are we placing the right value on, and understanding the real role of ideology in populace-based conflicts? Can we now be more pragmatic and open-minded about the state of US foreign policy as it existed in 2001 - the inertia of Cold War agendas, decades old alliances, strong economic factors, and powerful lobbies pushing all things Israel, KSA or big oil in general?
Or are we just letting that part ride while we rehash specific operations and how we could have attained a better tactical effect if we knew then what we know now. You can't get the battles back, but one can get their strategy straight so that we become much more efficient and successful in the pursuit of our interests.
One ringing claxon is that Bush I didn't leave the mission "half done" with Saddam. He got it right. If one is going to teach some brute a lesson, leave him in power to continue to operate with that lesson firmly boot printed on his mind. Punitive expeditions have fallen out of favor, but I believe they have a real place in modern policy. Likewise with UW.
The classic UW operation takes the existing government all the way out and replaces it with a government of the UW actor's choosing. This is what we did in Afghanistan. But UW is also an operation that can be done to a much less decisive degree to place coercive pressure on a government to get them to be more cooperative at the diplomatic table. Somewhere between Sanctions and Regime Change lies coercive UW. Again, I believe that this will become an important tool in the emerging strategic environment. The old standard of achieving "control" over the outcome will rarely be worth the immediate and long-term costs associated with such operations. "Influence" is far less expensive to both gain and sustain over time. But influence means we need to become much more pragmatic in terms of who we work with. We need to work with everybody to some degree, and we will not always like who that is or how they govern. We need to stop thinking that we have some mission from God to make everyone think like/govern like we do. We don't, but our post Cold War National Security Strategy has become infested with this line of logic. We'll see what the new version brings as it should be out soon. I hope it backs off from the highly ideological brink that the current NSS runs us up to.
Also in regards to UW, there are many of us who work in this mission space who believe that AQ is much more a "UW organization" than a "terrorist organization." Converting out current CT campaign to a counter-UW campaign would completely refocus and reprioritize our actions. For SOF, such a change would make JSOC a supporting effort and those actions overseen by the TSOCs would become the main effort. Deployments would be much less about either doing CT or building partner capacity to do CT, and more about simply have the right type of people in the right places to establish and sustain a system of understanding, influence and relationships. CT missions would be discrete as well as discreet. We would also get out of the business of killing the nationalist insurgents of our partners and allies but bundling them as "AQAA" for ease of targeting.
Bottom line is that we are at a transition point. To make effective transitions, however, demands that we come to a new understanding of the nature of the problems we face and a new understanding of ourselves and what we must do to be ourselves as well. Currently we are much more a caricature of ourselves, and it isn't a very pretty one.
This reminds me, if I'm still in the mood, after the holidays I should start my promised Small Wars Council topic on American South Asian analysis and varying narratives. You all have your areas of expertise, this is my layperson's attempt at "expertise." I have been keeping track of the nature of South Asian analysis by American experts and what I think they miss for my whole commenting tenure here....
The Indian and Pakistani papers have some very funny satirical articles on the American administration at the time and Musharraf. Very funny, if painful.
There was fear of what might happen to Pakistan if it lost its Taliban proxies and that fear was both internal, I'm guessing based on the quality of understanding of the region and some comments made, and certainly pressed onto American officials from Musharraf or others.
Americans worried about a Northern Alliance victory and that worry was probably conveyed to the US very strongly by various outside parties for their own reasons.
A lot of people gave a lot of advice and post Abbottabad there is a lot of scrubbing going on by politicians and intellectual advisors, I am guessing.
That the larger American people didn't catch on or the papers in the US didn't really follow this angle must come as a relief to some.
OTOH, maybe the American people did get it as they seem to be suspicious of DC foreign policy narratives. Abbottabad is interesting in what it did to the AMERICAN mind. Missed analytical opportunity.
I'd be very careful with this stuff. I am suspicious, I know, but I would be very careful with what is going on....
I've always wondered about the Saudis and calls to the administration around this time?
There is a funny tribal connection between the Cafe Milano Foreign Policy class of American politicos and apparatchiks and their "Davos" friends. I am not sure they are always aware of it on any level, intellectual, emotional, etc.
You want to talk unconventional or irregular warfare? Start first with the international connections of the various elite....they live in a world of personal and monetary connections. There are no puppet strings guiding the world but there are strings binding one to the other.
I was wondering what some of the smarter people than me on here would say and think of this article. If most of what the author alleges is true then I don't know whether I should be sad, angry or both. I know there's always two sides to the story and I also know sometimes looking back in hindsight things sometimes are much clearer than they were at the moment in time when decisions were made but really? The funny thing is I remember a few smart people way back in 2002/2003 saying that they were 99% sure UBL/OBL was in Pakistan and that our government knew of his whereabouts but were afraid to do anything about it for fear of upsetting the Pakistanis.
Bill M:
The important thing isn't that additional troops could or could not have snagged OBL, the important thing is we didn't try as hard as we could have. Your point about going into Pakistan after him buttresses that point, as does our over a decade dealings with an enemy army, the Pak Army. We could have gone in there and forced them to pick a side but we didn't. We didn't know how or didn't want to finish it. We could have forced the Pak Army/ISI to decide if they wanted to continue to be the enemy at any time since-money talks and if push comes to shove they have one port and we have the biggest navy in the world, but we have never done it. We won't win even if it costs soldiers civilians, thousands of soldiers and civilians, their lives and limbs.
I fear this is deeply entrenched cultural trait of our leadership class. They won't win. They love to crow about beating up Taliban & Co in 2001 but they wouldn't finish the fight. The bragging rights that come from a tactical victory seemed to be enough. Look at 1991. We got all squeamish about the "highway of death" when all the guys driving out had spent the past number of months killing and brutalizing Kuwaitis. Remember when Stormin' Norman was disturbed because the F-111 guys were calling killing tanks 'tank plinking' and enjoying themselves doing it. That is a part of it. I think it goes all the way back to Vietnam when we didn't get around to doing something obvious like blockading Haiphong harbor until the very end.
All the bad guys of the world see this. Not only do they figure they can outlast us, they see that we won't finish them even when we have the chance.
Bill, the article I linked challenges some of that using a historical perspective on manhunts. It says that intelligence has been the key, not manpower, and that the logistics to get troops in didn't exist at the time plus no one could have sealed the border. But I don't know, I lack all experience and don't know which argument is correct. The paper is very interesting. I usually don't agree with the we-abandoned-Afghanistan argument (by that I mean the nation building and related arguments) but on intelligence groundwork perhaps that argument works. Don't know.
I noted at least one mistake in the article, but the jest of it is correct. We had some risk adverse commanders that made decisions they'll have to live with for years to come (we'll all have to live them). On the other hand neither of us were standing in their shoes, and they made decisions based on what they thought they knew at the time, not what the analysts determined months later.
A small foot print can work if your objective is to pursue and destroy. SOF was well on its way to doing that. When we switched gears to large scale stability operations and nation building (which I think was a major mistake, but water under the bridge now) we needed large forces. I think it is a little optimistic to assume 800 Rangers or 1200 Marines could have sealed off the border and prevented UBL's escape. Almost all lines can be penetrated by small elements if they move skillfully, and let's not forget they knew the terrain. My biggest critique isn't that we didn't seal the border, but that we recognized the border and didn't pursue UBL and his clan into Pakistan. I don't buy the argument we couldn't have done it, we would have forced Pakistan to make a decision. Why we gave one State sponsor of terror (Pakistan) billions and sanctioned another (Iran) makes the world wonder if our politicians are clueless.
You might want to look at an article Adam Elkus highlighted at the old Abu M blog that challenged some of the standard complaints about Tora Bora. It broadened my understanding and helped me to look at things in a new way:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Tora+Bora+reconsidered%3A+lessons+from+12…
Tora Bora reconsidered: lessons from 125 years of strategic manhunts. Joint Force Quarterly.
I had meant to ask others what they thought but forgot to link it.
This article illustrates something that I have long thought; for all the massive violence we can and do employ, way deep down inside we have forgotten how to win. Whether this is because of a sort of diffidence or a bizarre form of politeness or a cultural immaturity that equates tactical success with actual victory I don't know, but we don't know how to finish a fight. We won't or can't win. It reminds me of the Japanese Navy in WWII. They were satisfied going home after a battle with having got more warships than they lost but having left the transports intact.
It's like we don't know what winning actually is. We have been doing this for decades. According to this article we could have had OBL in 2001 but we let him go. Maybe we would have missed him but we'll never know because we didn't try. We in effect just sat there. I think we didn't try to win because we don't know how to win or what winning really is anymore.