COIN

A new RAND monograph from Ben Connable suggests that all those metrics may not be as metric as they seem.  Please note you can download the eBook for free at the RAND page.

Campaign assessments help decisionmakers in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), Congress, and the executive branch shape what tend to be difficult and lengthy counterinsurgency (COIN) campaigns. Assessment informs critical decisions, including the allocation of resources and major shifts in strategy. The complex and chaotic environment of the typical COIN campaign presents vexing challenges to assessment, and efforts to overcome these challenges are mired in an overreliance on aggregated quantitative data that are often inaccurate and misleading. This comprehensive examination of COIN assessment as practiced through early 2011, as described in the literature and doctrine, and as applied in two primary case studies (Vietnam and Afghanistan), reveals weaknesses and gaps in this centralized, quantitative approach. The author proposes an alternative process — contextual assessment — that accounts for the realities of the COIN environment and the needs of both policymakers and commanders. Since this manuscript was completed in mid-2011, various elements of DoD have published new doctrine on assessment, some of which addresses criticisms raised in this report. The International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan has also revamped its assessment process.

The New York Times asks if the recent list of troubling cases from Afghanistan stem from a fundamental breakdown in discipline.  Worth your time to read and consider.

Officers and analysts express concerns that some of these isolated units are falling prey to diminished standards of behavior and revert to what one combat veteran described as “Lord of the Flies” syndrome, after the William Golding novel portraying a band of cultured British schoolboys reverting to tribal violence when severed from society.

“Some of these incidents certainly seem to be the fault of a breakdown in leadership at the small-unit level,” said Andrew Exum, a defense policy analyst at the Center for a New American Security who teaches a course on irregular warfare at Columbia University.

The Atlantic reports that American military bandsmen are supporting an effort to create Afghan military bands.  Seriously.  

The 10th Mountain Division has sent soldiers to play at dining facilities and ceremonies and to tour remote outposts, entertaining troops with Avalanche, its six-piece rock band; Task Force Dixie, a New Orleans jazz-and-blues band; and Bunker Brass, a quintet. They’re a talented crew: U.S. soldiers must audition to be Army musicians. Those who make it include some promising high-school graduates, but a good number have studied music in college. After learning in basic training to shoot rifles and throw grenades, they have 10 weeks of band practice and advanced music theory.

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And with money from a special U.S. fund for outfitting Afghan security forces, Wallace bought the band new instruments. He skipped woodwinds, American favorites that would likely be ruined by Kandahar’s dry, searing heat, and instead added a French horn and a tuba, though no one knows how to play them.

And yet Wallace, like other military mentors across Afghanistan, is learning that many of the stubbornest deficiencies here are not material, but institutional. A vivid illustration of the problem comes midway through practice, when Nejrabi tells me he doesn’t hold high aspirations for his band.

“They don’t really like to be musicians,” he says, nodding toward his men, who sit a few feet away, listening. “It’s an easy job, and they’re not going out on missions. They come out here to pass the time, make some money, and be safe.”