There are moments that define a war. Just such a one occurred on June 21, when Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry helicoptered into Marjah for a photo op with the locals. It was to be a capstone event, the fruit of a four-month counterinsurgency offensive by Marines, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies, and the newly minted Afghan National Army (ANA) to drive the Taliban out of the area and bring in good government.
As the chopper swung around to land, the Taliban opened fire, sending journalists scrambling for cover and Marines into full combat mode. According to Matthew Green of the Financial Times, "The crackle of gunfire lasted about 20 minutes and continued in the background as a state department official gave a presentation to Mr. Holbrooke about U.S. and U.K. [United Kingdom] efforts to boost local government and promote agriculture in the town."
The U.S. officials were then bundled into armored cars and whisked back to the helicopter. As the chopper took off, an enormous explosion shook the town's bazaar.
When it was launched in March, the Marjah operation was billed as a "turning point" in the Afghan War, an acid test for the doctrine of counterinsurgency, or "COIN," a carefully designed strategy to wrest a strategic area from insurgent forces, in this case the Taliban, and win the "hearts and minds" of the local people. In a sense Marjah has indeed defined COIN, just not quite in the way its advocates had hoped for...
More at Foreign Policy in Focus.
Comments
Mike:
It is an obscure bit of history... but worth noting that in many cases the conflicts we're in started long before we arrived on the scene... (true of Sunni/Shia in Iraq, Pashtun/Others in Afghanistan, etc). We're inclined to look to our own policies for causation, but when we're stepping into centuries-old conflicts that's futile.
For people interested in the Philippine situation, the odd historical quirk of the Spanish and the Moor is a real key to understanding what's happening today. The unbridled loathing that the Spanish had for the Mohammedans, an outcome of extended conflict in their homeland, goes far beyond the normal colonial war antipathies. These attitudes were passed on to the Christianized Filipinos, largely through the Catholic influence, and still form a major obstacle to resolution.
As far as the really important stuff goes, I would personally add the okra late, as I think overcooked okra is nasty. Others disagree, some passionately enough to take up arms and resort to insurgency. Rosemary, ideally fresh, is always a friend to lamb...
And more pressing,
"So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter."
COL Gentile,
George Washington said it much better than I could ever try in his farewell address.
"Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it - It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it ? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue ? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?
In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim."
Mike, you said,
"Ultimately, there is no victory in small wars. A key variable to ending any conflict is mending the heart and soul of the causal factors that sparked the resistance. This mending takes TIME."
So why do them if victory is not possible? May hard is impossible in Afghanistan with the strategic implication that the war there as we are fighting it now is simply not worth it.
You rightly mention the American centuries-long struggle with slavery and race. But that was an internal problem for us that we had to solve, or at least continue to try to solve. How would it have worked, playing with me for a bit with a wild hypothetical, if the major European powers of the day in the 1850s got together and said we need to send a military/political expedition to the United States and help them solve their problem with race and slavery? Could such a force have fixed America's problems in 18 months or even 18 years at the barrel of a gun?
The Trick of the Counterinsurgency Era along with its propoents has been to make some folks accept the operational statement that Coin takes a long time as a basic statement of strategy and policy. Which is why we really have no strategy or even policy in Afghanistan. Just the same old bromides of perserveracne, patience, and learning and adapting.
gian
Actually the Philippine conflict has been going on a lot longer than a century. Started back when the Spanish came along, planted the flag, and found the Muslim tribes in the south less than eager to submit. Must have been a bit of a shock to the conquistadors, seeing as they'd only just finished driving the Moors out of Spain...
IMO, this bears repeating over and over again until we get it,
"Be cautious as to declaring "victory" too quickly in any insurgency, as the relationship between a populace and its governance is an ongoing one that ebbs and flows like the tide.
Many historic COIN "victories" were no more (and no less) than knocking an insurgency down a phase or two on Mao's scale. Even if knocked all the way back into phase 0 "pre-insurgency" it is a matter of "when" not "if" it climbs back up into insurgency again. The key to truly breaking this cycle is to address the conditions of governance that keep feeding it.
The military has given the government of Sri Lanka a golden opportunity to address its shortcomings with the segment of the populace represented by this insurgency. Victory will be determined over time by what they do with that opportunity."
Ultimately, there is no victory in small wars. A key variable to ending any conflict is mending the heart and soul of the causal factors that sparked the resistance. This mending takes TIME.
The United States has a 350 year struggle with race and equality that still rears its ugly head every once in a while. The Phillipines Conflict is now past the century mark and continues to morph from socio-economic strife to banditry to relgion. Guatemala's fifty year Civil War, while no longer as violent, still resounds with class conflict.
There are few things in life worth saying if they are not completely truthful. It came to me as a harsh reality when in the past few days I came to grips with this truth and that our combined efforts to force Congress to pay attention to the strategy/non-strategy in Afghanistan was off the mark. We have been fighting for a simple review of COIN and to question whether or not it is viable in this kind of environment and relaying specific evidence of the effect of it's ROE on our Warriors. The problem is that the ROE is affecting every Warrior on the plains of Afghanistan and is specifically responsible for EVERY U.S. AND NATO DEATH there.
Every Army assembled for combat must do several things if it is going to win:
1. Take the Commander's Intent statement and assemble a Strategy and Force component to complete a mission consistent with that Intent
2. Define the Battle Space
3. Control the Battle Space
4. Determine and Exploit the weaknesses of the enemy
5. Continue to pressure the enemy
6. Deftly employ every means and capability it possesses to Locate, Close with and Destroy the Enemy.
7. Be relentless and unforgiving in it's determination to force the enemy to do it's will
As of June of 2009, at the latest, CentCom and ISAF made a deliberate decision, under the leadership of this sitting President, to not win. It even went as far as to redefine the war effort and to expunge words like 'win', 'success', 'terrorism' and 'Islamic Extremists' from the lexicon. It further determined that the new 'goal' was to protect Afghan civilians at all cost. It included a vigorous plan to 're-build' Afghanistan as a nation from the very foundations of its government. It instituted a theater-wide, controversial doctrine known as Counter Insurgency which has a historical record of failure in all except one engagement and fielded an ROE (rules of engagement) that all but eliminate the use of Air Support and Field Artillery Support for US and NATO forces except in the 'safest' possible applications (no civilians around...problematic when you consider the Taliban are civilians).
It has been said there has been a 'resurgence' on the field of battle by the Taliban; that they essentially re-constituted/regrouped and have re-emerged refreshed and emboldened in the past year. That is a deception. This suggests that, all other things remaining constant, this group of murderous thugs conjured new found courage and purpose. This is patently untrue! The reality is that the Taliban are the same as they were. What changed was our desire to prosecute this war as though we intended to win. What changed was our focus. The original Commander's Intent was to go into Afghanistan and destroy/scatter/remove Al Qaida from Afghanistan and to hold those who aided them accountable for their actions, ie the Taliban. That mission took a dramatic turn in 2009 when we chose to seek the good graces of the Afghan people instead of seeking justice for the assault on our land by Islamic Hordes.
POINTS:
1. By refusing to doggedly follow the steps outlined above, we effectively turned over control of the battle space to the Taliban. Because of this they are free to set more IED's than they would have been and free to establish yet more ambush sites thus placing our Warriors in a far more dangerous environment (See Step 3).
2. Intentionally publishing the ROE and our intent to no longer kill but protect, we have allowed the Taliban to reassert themselves and given them the opportunity to exploit our well-published weaknesses (See Step 4).
3. By diverting attention from Pursuit of the Enemy to Security Patrols in hamlets, towns and villages, we have opened lanes of effort for the Taliban to pursue us and given them freedom to set even more IED's and to pressure the locals into participating (See Step 5).
4. By removing our most valuable supporting fires from the equation, in the most desperate of situations, we have allowed more Taliban to survive engagements (See Step 6).
What we have done in the past year is to allow the enemy the opportunity to re-consider it's capability, given them maneuver space, garner support from foreign sources and increase their potential with more advanced weapons (see stories about Taliban sniper capability in British held areas of Khandahar). In addition; the number of aircraft now harassed by Taliban fire has increased making even medivacs difficult. Add to that, the Red Cross's insistence on aiding the enemy and NATO field medical facilities being forced to include Taliban in Triage decisions and even the staunchest supporter of anti-american sentiment in this country has to question the sanity of the plan.
Given all of the above, it is clear that all US and NATO deaths in Afghanistan are directly and indirectly due to the institution of the current ROE and our having intentionally given control of the battle space to the Taliban. And it is intentional because there is no way a clear thinking military mind could not fully understand the ramifications of not continuing to pressure the enemy, keeping him off balance, with every weapon in his arsenal.
The hard truth is that America's Sons and Daughters will continue to pay the ultimate price for high-minded thinkers, politicians and inept leadership until the true 'King' of the country, the Citizens decide they have had enough. And that is unlikely to happen until Islam is once again successful in attacking our homeland.
Far too many Americans have far too short a memory. God protect our Warriors.
Semper Fidelis;
John Bernard
Robert C. Jones:
100% yes to all you said, Sri Lanka has a great opportunity to repair and govern justly. The Rajapaske government and LTG Fonseka pressed forward to defeat the LTTE, and I couched my remarks in that context. There maybe another Tamil "struggle" group arise, but the LTTE will likely not return.
IMHO... That ugly little war should have been over by 1986...
Sri Lankan political truth: there will always be a historical tension between the Singhalese and the Tamils. The tension may continue by design unfortunately. There are even some factions that do not want it to end.
Political violence as demonstrated during the recent general elections, is sadly the norm. The head of state election between Rajapakse vs. LTG Fonseka, the two seemingly allied in a righteous cause, turned into a very bitter contest.
Again, in response to the Hallinan article and to restate the "team room'ism", the Sri Lankan efforts provides us a rucksack full of lessons to study.
Bob,
I didn't intend for my comments to be a kick under the table!! And I think we are not in disagreement except that I would not term every challenge in every nation in terms of insurgencies. Insurgencies are critically important to study and understand but not every security challenge is an insurgency. I agree that it is the human element that makes this complex, but the human element is in all aspects of war which makes all war complex despite those who misinterpret Clausewitz and think that there is something as simple as only state on state warfare. Anyone who studies war and warfare knows how complex both are and that is because of the human element. I still wish we would stop trying so hard to pin labels on things and call things IW or COIN or SFA or full spectrum operations or whatever. We need to think in terms of grand and military strategy and devise the holistic campaign plans to achieve our objectives set forth by our leaders and stop trying to say we need a COIN or CT or maneuver campaign. We will likely need elements of all of the above, there being no cookie cutter or single solution that fits all. We need to describe the problems (assuming we understand them) in plain language and then use plain language to describe the ends, ways, and means without using words such as COIN and CT, etc.
Just my 2 cents for this afternoon but no kick under the table intended.
Dave
LPierson,
Be cautious as to declaring "victory" too quickly in any insurgency, as the relationship between a populace and its governance is an ongoing one that ebbs and flows like the tide.
Many historic COIN "victories" were no more (and no less) than knocking an insurgency down a phase or two on Mao's scale. Even if knocked all the way back into phase 0 "pre-insurgency" it is a matter of "when" not "if" it climbs back up into insurgency again. The key to truly breaking this cycle is to address the conditions of governance that keep feeding it.
The military has given the government of Sri Lanka a golden opportunity to address its shortcomings with the segment of the populace represented by this insurgency. Victory will be determined over time by what they do with that opportunity.
Hallinan lost me when the references to death squads and prisons being languished in became too abundant. As well as the nuanced drum beat call for pulling pitch.
However, the references made to Sri Lanka are instructive for a rucksack full of reasons. (I believe there are earlier SWJ threads regarding Sri Lanka's 2008/2009 offensive.)
The GOSL was able to prosecute their 2008/2009 efforts because timing allowed them to do so. If they had tried to do something similar in 2000/2001 the GOSL would have become the next Indonesia, defined as an international human rights pariah etc. Jason's comments regarding his witnessing assassinations is an example on a small scale, of what international observers where prepared to use as the friction point to prod the GOSL into a political solution brokered by non-SL leadership. The GOSL saw no benefit to continue what was perceived as an externally imposed "status quo." The "peace" processes applied between 1998 through the GOSL'S final efforts were continually marred by meddlesome forces (usually from outside the country) that sought to favor a separate and ill-defined Tamil "homeland." There was no way the GOSL was going to politically settle with the LTTE. As long as the LTTE existed there would have been no end to that tension.
The cold reality of COIN is that COIN is not always going to be pretty or well controlled politically. All too often those who espouse perceived neutrality as a COA for conflict resolution do not remain neutral. The continual and substantive support given to the LTTE by Scandanavia was not helpful, and was seen as anything but neutral by the GOSL.
The GOSL defeated and destroyed the LTTE not because they were tasked organized for interagency success, they weren't. In fact joint-interagency cooperation is non-existent within the Sri Lankan government infrastructure. They were successful because of sheer will, patience and because they knew that with the world focused on the USA'S efforts Iraq, they could get it finished without scrutiny. In words similar to Rhett Butler, the GOSL didn't give a damn what the rest of the world thought.
The Sri Lankan COA is not likely the COA most selected, but it was successful none the less.
Ouch...did Dave just kick me under the table? :-)
Insurgency is simple. (Like Einstein showed us the universe is simple). I don't think we've gotten past the overwhelming complexity of the facts of every insurgency past and present to find that simple, but it is there all the same. People, on the otherhand, are complex, and their relationships with each other and their governance (in whatever form it takes) messier still. Insurgency is about the friction in such relationships; and countersinsurgency is about reducing the friction.
Not all disagreement or discontent is bad, and not all friction is insurgency. Once we begin to simplify the problem the better we will become at preventative COIN. The best COIN, afterall, is done everyday in healthy communities long before anyone even dreams of the types of troubles that exist in places like Marjah.
Until then, Dave's quote is apt. Once we can see insurgency as a game of checkers, we will be able to focus on what is truly important and not worry about all of the many things that are not.
Outside of his own excellent analogy, Col Maxwell offered two other quotes yesterday for consideration,
"Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology." ââ¬Â¨Rebecca West
"Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded." ââ¬Â¨-- Plato, Phaedrus
For the practitioners who grew up fighting these wars, we've gone from practice to theory. Many of us are field grades or senior NCO's now. In our own private communications, as we bounce ideas and experience back and forth, we try to remind each other that as defining as our experiences our in our own lives, they are but a whisper in the historical record of war. We try to encourage each other to take the proper time and distance to step back from the problem and eventually re-engage with a broader perspective.
For the academics and researchers, they face the daunting task of trying to conduct polling, census gathering,and data mining to extrapolate quantifiable lessons. I think that Joshua Foust is correct in stating that this research is mostly void when done under the barrel of a gun. Moreover, I would extend his thoughts to suggest that information is mostly elusive to the host nation and counter-insurgent. The guerrilla maintains that information advantage. It is how he survives (McCormick, NPS, 2008). Even the best researchers must be reminded that better or best is not necessarily accurate.
We're all students of war. War and warfare are much bigger than any one man to define.
Mike
Jason: You are in good company as we are all students coming there to exchange ideas and develop professionally and intellectually (well... most of us are... less those who come to rant and tout their pet ideas and agendas!!) Anyone who self proclaims to be an expert is most assuredly not one!!
And regarding your comments on complexity in Afghanistan, this is why I think we have to think about war in the 21st Century this : (and I am talking about the full spectrum of war and not just irregular war , though IW has come to exemplify this helped to recognize it):
We should characterize 21st Century conflicts as playing monopoly on a 3 dimensional chess board with one side playing rugby with the other using soccer rules.
When people do not understand insurgency, they are apt, like this author, to not be able to make a fair and accurate assessment of progress, nor to understand what the reasonable role in the Afghan insurgency is for the coalition forces.
I would refer this author to my insurgency model to help make this point. The goal of our support to the Afghan COIN effort should be not to create perfect peace (which arguably does not exist anywhere), but rather to "merely" move the situation down the slope of the curve, out of "Phase I" insurgency, and down into the upper reaches of "Phase 0" pre-insurgency. Pre-insurgency is still a dangerous, messy place, with much hard work yet to be done by the Afghan government, but it is a condition that is within the capacity of the Afghan government to continue on their own to make conditions better, and is below the societal level for acceptable violence.
To move the situation down the curve requires a combination of addressing local perceptions of poor governance (through efforts designed and implemented to produce maximum effects on the 4 critical causal perceptions), while also managing the violence as well in a manner that is also tuned to its effects on the causal perceptions.
If we define the mission in impossible terms, then the mission is indeed impossible. The Jones Model provides a means to define the Coalition mission in reasonble terms; and that, while hard, is indeed possible to achieve.
This is not our war, this is not our insurgency. Afghanistan must develop a governance capable of meeting the needs of its populace, and that government may not yet be designed, formed, or in power. Our role is no more, and no less, than to help bring such governance into being, and to bring the conditions in critical locations into the upper reaches of Phase 0 pre-insurgency.
I feel comfortable to admit being a student to COIN compared to the giants who contribute to SWJ. However, Mr Hallinan's article is a lolly-scramble of mixed history and he has picked the eyes out of COIN in such a way Im prepared to stick my neck out to respond.
As one of the first Westerners to be allowed into the high security zone and detention camps in Sri Lanka following the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009, COIN was not and never was a strategy of the GOSL. I spent five years working in the civil war area and the GOSL approach was the opposite of COIN. One clever tactic was to split off a section of the Tigers in the East, Batticaloa, and turn them into their own hit squads including kidnapping of 1,000s of Tamil and Sinhalese people. They were called the TMVP. I saw them assassinate eight people by the roadside before they shoved the AK in my face. The TMVP then became a political force and won a hijacked election in the Eastern Province. This was on top of the carpet bombing in the East and North along with the financial strangle put on terrorist organisations international finances following 9/11.
Back to AFG. As all proponents of COIN explain it does not involve only being nice to people. So the SF operations Hallinan refers to are an appropriate part of COIN. In fact the information that enables SF operations to take place may have been the fruits of COIN through intel coming from the population. It is not "when COIN goes bad" as Hallinan infers.
One of the biggest challenges for Gen Petraeus is that most of the Coalition Forces are poor implementers of COIN. Im hopeless at golf but I dont blame the game or my clubs.
The article also trivialises the complexities in Afghanistan. The tribal socio-cultural physiology of Afghanistan along with the propensity of many non-US Battlespace owners to take shallow readings of the tribal and village leadership structure nearly always led to failure in the areas I looked after.
There is also a niave pursuit by Coalition Force political leaders in London and Washington DC to pursue a Kabul-centric approach to Afghanistan. But that is not the fault of COIN or the military.
Afghanistan has not gone well. There is no doubt many implementers of COIN in Afghanistan require far better training and need to be held accountable for the implementation. Any of us who have served or worked in Afghanistan knows the old big FOB mentality has crept back into the Modus Operandi of many non-US Battlepace owners.
If anything what is missing in COIN is the imposition of forward objectives or KPIs on Commanders and USAID as are placed on managers in the corporate sector. It does seem as if there is a status quo approach to operations rather than aggressive and measurable objectives. PRT Commanders should aim to hand the Province to the next Commander in better shape than he found it. All that though is not the fault of COIN.
To say Marjah has defined COIN is a limited arm-chair analysis. Only those who have been involved on the ground can constructively critique what has led to its success or failure. Captain Kendall's paper published earlier this week in SWJ on Ghazni or Captain James Few's case study of Zaganiyah in 2008 are examples of what is needed to properly assess Marjah.