Topics include:
1) Bargaining in Afghanistan will open up new fissures,
2) Killer drones: our friends today, our worst fear tomorrow.
Bargaining in Afghanistan will open up new fissures
The New York Times reported on March 22 that Afghan President Hamid Karzai met with a delegation representing Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of one of the three main insurgent groups fighting against the government and international military forces in the country. According to the Washington Post, Hekmatyar's opening bid was a 15-point plan calling for the withdrawal of foreign military forces over the course of six months beginning in July, the appointment of an interim council to govern the country, a new constitution, and new national and local elections.
Before the arrival of Hekmatyar's delegation, Karzai scheduled a peace conference for late April, which he hopes a broader range of insurgent groups, factions in parliament, and civil society organizations will attend.
One should not make too much of these developments. Gen. Stanley McChrystal's August 2009 assessment of Afghanistan rated Hekmatyar's force as the weakest of the three groups he is fighting. McChrystal also concluded that Hekmatyar has no geographical objectives and is just hoping to bargain for a role in a future Taliban government.
However, some bargaining process, even if notional, has likely begun. The various actors onstage in Afghanistan -- Karzai and his allies, the various insurgent factions, elements of Pakistan's government, and the U.S. government -- will each make their own assessment of what could constitute an acceptable deal and whether continued fighting will get them closer or further away from their goals.
The U.S. "surge" of reinforcements is designed to increase the coalition's bargaining leverage. Neither Karzai nor U.S. President Barack Obama's team will see much reason to scale back their current objectives until this autumn when the results of the summer fighting season are in. Coalition leaders are hoping that continued attrition of Taliban leaders, both from ground combat and from drone strikes, might compel some of those leaders to seek a truce. From the Taliban's perspective, each summer's escalation of combat brings a new opportunity to apply political pain on electorates in Europe and North America. The Taliban's dominant factions -- the Quetta Shura led by Mullah Mohammed Omar and the Haqqani network -- will likely also wait to see whether this summer's combat might drive some less-committed coalition members out of the fight.
Although battlefield results should influence bargaining strategies, such logic might not apply in this case. For Afghan players like Karzai and the Taliban, there may be no incentive to settle no matter how much pressure they might come under. They understand that truces are likely to be broken; here the calculation switches to who can gain an advantage rearming during any lull in the fighting.
Of course, U.S. policymakers will not see it that way. As in Vietnam in 1973, the United States will see a truce as an opportunity to declare victory. The weak South Vietnamese government saw the need to keep fighting no matter how badly its position deteriorated. It correctly judged any truce to be neither credible nor enforceable.
For now, Karzai and the Americans fight the Taliban. But as the bargaining process develops, the next struggle will be between Karzai and the Obama team.
Killer drones: our friends today, our worst fear tomorrow
On March 21, the Washington Post ran a profile of Leon Panetta, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The article began with an anecdote that revealed an unexpected ruthlessness in the former congressman from Monterey, Calif.: A CIA Predator drone flying over Pakistan spotted terrorist suspect Baitullah Mehsud on the roof of a house, accompanied by his wife. Panetta ordered a missile strike that killed them both.
According to the article, since the beginning of 2009, CIA drones over Pakistan have killed 666 suspected terrorists and as many as 177 noncombatants (the CIA claims a lower figure). This drone killing rate is a marked acceleration from the George W. Bush years. This acceleration is partially explained by both the greater number of drones available for hunting and increased cooperation from Pakistan in identifying targets. But the stepped-up drone campaign also required the willingness of Obama and Panetta to employ the tactic. That will has obviously not been lacking.
The Obama administration's unforgiving employment of hunter-killer robots over Pakistan is a conspicuous change from the ambivalence Panetta observed during his tour as President Bill Clinton's chief of staff. In his book Ghost Wars, Steve Coll describes how the Clinton White House agonized over what actions were permissible for dealing with Osama bin Laden. That vacillation came to haunt Clinton's legacy. Perhaps Panetta now wants to make sure that no one gets away again.
Are there any legal or geographic limits on the CIA's authority to observe and strike? The CIA claims that the program is legal but does not elaborate. Kenneth Anderson, a law professor at American University and a supporter of drones as a counterterrorism tool, warns that the U.S. government needs to explain its legal reasoning before lawsuits or even international arrest warrants threaten the government's authority. Specifically, if it is legal for the CIA to employ Predator drones in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, what about remote reaches of Asia, Africa, Latin America, or the high seas? Can the United States shoot at any sorts of criminal suspects and not just al Qaeda suspects or their allies? What if the target is a U.S. citizen? Why is it legal for drones with missiles to do what an overseas FBI agent with a pistol cannot? Does any suspect deemed "too difficult to apprehend" become legally eligible for a Hellfire missile instead?
Finally, Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution reminds us that the U.S. monopoly on lethal drones might end very soon. According to Singer, the technology is surprisingly cheap and accessible. Defending against drone attacks might soon become an overwhelming concern, not only for deployed U.S. military forces, but for military forces in garrison bases, which may be even more vulnerable than troops in the field. Then there is the problem of protecting U.S. political leaders from assassination by drone. One more worry to keep the Secret Service awake at night.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB200014240527487040941045751442134613844…
One of the most striking young officers I ever met in Vietnam was Hubba Wass de Czege, from a long line of Hungarian military thinkers renown even amongst those of us who saw them as ancestral enemy (but he was born in my country, he told me, so that makes him one of us genetically). But of course, in America, we all became from many one, struggling to hold back the monstrous giant that, in our native squabbling smallness we never could hold back. Vietnam was where our generation got our chance to stop him. Reading numerous memoirs, one sees field soldiers not speaking of their micro-tactical Vietnam experiences (eg. Powell) but of their macro-strategic gripes about how the war was costing at one end (A Shau Valley) because of failure at the other (bombing Ho Chi Minh Trail). For example, LBJ called in the JCS to tell them that he knew what they were trying to do-- get him tied down into a war with China-- but that he would not allow it, he would Hanoi's
march South in the South instead. In contrast, Nixon focused on stopping the Russian supply route from Vladivostok to Haiphong. Visiting Hanoi at the time was most impressive as one saw American jets screeching overhead but you knew you were as safe as can be on the Haiphong-Hanoi- Mu Gia Pass rail line because it was strictly off-limits for bombing. The go zone began only later in Laos, as it passed under triple canopy jungle, making it all a statistical game bombing blind. It was left to old Westy to, finally in 1967, achieve the "crossover point" where he was killing more Northern regulars and destroying more of their supplies than they could replace via the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
At that time more mature SFs were working with montagnares tribes trying to fix the re-supply streams so they could be bombed before they reached staging areas. But Hanoi's regulars owned most of Eastern Laos and Cambodia. Vang Pao's and his brave Hmong guerrillas and other resistance forces we supported were getting hammered most severely by the Viet invaders. Our only response was blind statistical strikes via B-52 carpet bombing. This went fine until Hanoi widened the front, thinning out ours and ARVN's forces deep into Cambodia, eventually forcing us into a catastrophic Lam Son 719 campaign for which we were not prepared.
Now one cannot imagine the Taliban EVER constituting an army as able and as well commanded as Hanoi's which, under Soviet leadership, brought tank warfare to the jungle. The McChrystal notion may well be the "one tribe at a time" notion that has merits at the micro level but is dubious at the macro. So if we were to field a couple of regiments in the Hindu Kush, we'd be facing a whole new kind of war for which the COIN manual is useless. Nor would Maj. Gant's approach be possible. The idea instead is to develop such reliable and firm ties with each village as if it is the only social brick with which we can build a Pashtun barrier to alQaeda which we could then reinforce so that wherever the enemy goes, we're there. But what I didn't see discussed and would love to see Maj. Gant discuss, is whether, "one tribe at a time," sums up, in effect, to one police station at a time linked to any assets it may need to call on to bring the "bad guys" to
justice. If so, would soldiers be the wrong guys for the job because, as they become increasingly familiar and integrated with the locals, they find themselves responding to the local situation rather than some central HQ not taking the particulars of each village into consideration? Gen. McChrystal would morph into Police Chief McChrystal, having to investigate incidents and adapt both preventively and punitively from cop to judge. Of course, just as you don't shit where you eat, you don't bomb where you are entrusted to "KEEP the peace" so, like Maj. Gant, doing your dirty business would have to be out of sight of the village, not right on top of it from the air as so often has been the case.
The last point is a critical notion for it means that, yes, you have a lot of big boom, boom toys on hand, but you are enforcing the law mostly through judicial compliance with it; and that compliance can only come from the belief that you represent only the constitutional order you enforce, not some "kill the bad guys" body count scale of value. A legal order under which all are equal for it is blind until proven guilty.
The term "Ruf/Pufs" was coined by non-COIN militaries. I recall "Blowtorch" Komer-- head of CORDS-- telling me: go and look at villages in the Delta. You'll see there captains and colonels completely frustrated by the absence of ARVN forces, Chinook supply flights and bulldozers (ex Tay Ninh Province mountains) whenever they have to lead Rufs/Pufs against PAVN regulars into the jungle. Indeed paratroopers were out of their "Hamburger Hill" setting backed up by fresh battalions, supported by air strikes and supplied through endless streams of Hueys. However, by 1970 to 72, there was Maj. Gant's spiritual older brother, Maj. Cook, with his Ruf/Pufs holding back the PAVN regulars. With Westy gone, the PROVIN idea popped up like mushrooms with Marines CAP teams in I Corps and Army MAT teams in IV Corps, supporting Ruf/Pufs in holding back Hanoi regulars that now were younger, poorly led and so vicious (as in firing Babushka rockets at village marketplace at
10AM when most full of peasants). I recommend Cook's book THE ADVISOR to Col. Gant as it may well give depth to enthusiasm of his article "One Tribe at a Time."
One also notes that there are a few distinctions between COINING Taliban and the "Good War" that developed in South Vietnam after Tet 1968. Our military is no longer a cross-section across America that takes the brightest and the dumbest, the most cerebral and the most muscular equally and then sorts them out through battlefield realities. The soldiers we have, as Rumsfeld said, is what you have to work with. In sum, do they measure up with the a-bit-of-everything abundance which the draft provided Vietnam? More importantly, would we get more Maj. Cooks or more Lt. Calleys (of My Lai notoriety) in the field?
If there is a bias somewhere in the Calley to Cook continuum that weighs towards Calley, then the stop-loss repeated tours mixed with repeated tours in place, makes for a great future for Taliban where our men are the best recruiters. An "evil" soldier is likely to kill you while an "evil" cop is more likely to harass you. The latter case leaves room for restitution and reconciliation.
Vietnamese are very forward looking people. I recall how they liked to congregate and socialize during the rainy season on Highway 4, at that time the only dry spot anywhere. Trucks at twilight bashed down that road at least at 60mph in order to avoid ambush. One peasant lost his wife and three of his five children. But when he was presented with $5000 compensation his mind focused on how this money could provide for and educate his remaining two children. "The Americans are so nice, even the driver came to me crying as he said he was sorry...they must really have a soul. A Vietcong would not even help be bury the victims." Pashtuns have a more backward looking culture and a family's loss is a call on its male members to avenge in blood. So if our volunteer army exhibits a selective bias more towards the Calleys than the Cooks, then McChrystals alleged new concept is sheer poison.
Back in the 60s at the Pentagon, a lower grade officer would introduce his boss always listing the generals academic credentials rather than his military ones. There was tremendous ambition amongst career military to prove themselves by excelling in academic CRITICAL JUDGEMENT. Things have changed. Gen. Franks correspondence BS in management could be a case in point. I'm not saying that our officer corps is morons, but I do notice a polar magnet change in attitude away from academia and more to Action Jackson. I checked with all my friends who teach vets and they too see an "intellect complex" at work, especially in terms of conceptual adaptability. It was as recently as 2001 that one of the PowerPoint slides for a White House presentation of the anticipated war on Afghanistan read: "Think outside the box, poison all their crops and water." This is tragic, for I think the notion that military tend to cover-up their inadequacies with macho
destructiveness rather than cure them through learning how to deal flexibly with complexity, would invariably lead to a self-defeating tragic reality. One might protest, insisting that a soldier's job is to "wack" the other guy, not to debate him. But imagine a pompous high school grad trying to read get across to a village elder or a mullah with a lifetime of local experience what he should do and why. I have seen it and know that a lot of it is on video. Pictures are indeed worth a MILLION
WORDS! A voice over in English on Russian videos too would show an amazing similarity on the same mission. Requiring the operation of hightech equipment which often the Americans themselves do not understand, a fact well documented by multiple Pentagon reports, "training" often consists of monkey see what monkey does; this does not transmit the full range of beneficial possibilities that equipment offers. Worst still, it is not the most pedagogically gifted that are assigned to training Afghans, per numerous studies.
In conclusions, Americans with poor communicative skills and personal deficiencies may be the bias in the current stock available by voluntary military service provides. If so, it's a rather dangerous notion that McChrystal proposes, fixing a man so he stays on where he starts. Afghans are not prone to complain but will definitely act out their resentment. Theyll bite their tongue until feeling insulted and then, boom, one less adviser.
Bellow are three outstanding articles by retired Gen. Wasss de Czege. I would think that a first step for selecting troops that do the Maj. Gant thing should at least feel comfortable, indeed turned into a fountain of ideas from reading these articles. Such ability means that the hardware will be up to the software of soldier becoming a cop.
http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryRev…
http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryRev…
http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryRev…