by Michael Yon
Download the full article: Arghandab and the Battle for Kandahar
People are confused about the war. The situation is difficult to resolve even for those who are here. For most of us, the conflict remains out of focus, lacking reference of almost any sort. Vertigo leaves us seeking orientation from places like Vietnam—where most of us never have been. So sad are our motley pundits-cum-navigators that those who have never have been to Afghanistan or Vietnam shamelessly use one to reference the other. We saw this in Iraq.
The most we can do is pay attention, study hard, and try to bring something into focus that is always rolling, yawing, and seemingly changing course randomly, in more dimensions than even astronauts must consider. All while gauging dozens of factors, such as Afghan Opinion, Coalition Will, Enemy Will and Capacity, Resources, Regional Actors (and, of course, the Thoroughly Unexpected). Nobody will ever understand all these dynamic factors and track them at once and through time. That's the bad news.
The good news is that a tiger doesn't need to completely understand the jungle to survive, navigate, and then dominate. It is not necessary to know every anthropological and historical nuance of the people here. If that were the case, our Coalition of over forty nations would not exist. More important is to realize that they are humans like us. They get hungry, happy, sad, and angry; they make friends and enemies (to the Nth degree); they are neither supermen nor vermin. They're just people.
But it always helps to know as much as you can. This will take much time, many dispatches, and hard, dangerous work.
Download the full article: Arghandab and the Battle for Kandahar
Michael Yon is a former Green Beret who has been reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2004. No other reporter has spent as much time with combat troops in these two wars. Michael's dispatches from the frontlines have earned him the reputation as the premier independent combat journalist of his generation.
About the Author(s)
Michael Yon is a former Green Beret, native of Winter Haven, Fl. who has been reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2004. No other reporter has spent as much time with combat troops in these two wars. Michael’s dispatches from the frontlines have earned him the reputation as the premier independent combat journalist of his generation. His work has been featured on “Good Morning America,” The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, ABC, FOX, as well as hundreds of other major media outlets all around the world.
Comments
American in Arghandab,
Acknowledged on the economy of force - even Brigadier General Vance, our former TFK Comd, stated that much of our efforts were such due to the numbers of ISAF soldier in Kandahar Province. However, my comment still stands - direct experience of our soldiers in both 2006 and 2008 saw CF "economy of force" efforts in the area being pulled out to Zhari/Panjwayi.
I have no doubt that the Arghandab is busy due to the number of ISAF soldiers in the area and what their patrols are bumping into. My comment wasn't intended as a slight against the soldiers operating their. It was, rather, in line with Pol-Mil FSO's exception to the implied criticism of Michael Yon on Canada's efforts to operate in the Arghandab River Valley - we've been in it, all over it (in different areas at different times), and fought and died in it for almost 4 straight years without a break.
Stay Safe,
Canadian in Afghanistan
From the perspective of an American civilian who spent a year working with the Canadian military in Kandahar, I'd like to offer the following comments:
Arghandab District was an economy of force operation in 2007-2008 by both Canadian and American forces; the Canadian were using an armored cavalry company based out of Spin Boldak District (on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border) that was also patrolling Shah Wali Kot District while the U.S. was covering the Arghandab with one ODA and one PMT, both of which had responsibility for additional districts. Amidst limited resources, the Arghandab was not a high priority given that it was largely populated by a pro-government tribe (Alokozai) that appeared to have control of the district. The Taliban attempt to "invade" Arghandab District in June 2008 was decisively repulsed by ISAF, thanks to the leadership of Task Force Kandahar Commander Brigadier General Dennis Thompson who established a forward CP at the Arghandab District Center within hours of the initial reports of the Taliban incursion.
In retrospect, the Alokozai control of Arghandab District was never as firm as it initially appeared to us. I now believe that one of the key events in the unraveling of the Arghandab was the February 2008 assassination of Abdul Hakim Jan, the commander of the auxiliary Afghan National Police and other unofficial Alokozai militia forces. We did not fully recognize his importance at the time given that he did not have an official government position and because the auxiliary ANP was considered to be a failure as a security force. While I am not completely sure about the cause and effect, Alokozai willingness and ability to resist Taliban incursions seemed to decline greatly after his death.
Where we failed in 2008 - and I share in the blame - was in not recognizing that Karimullah ( the Alokozai tribal leader following the death of his father Mullah Naquib) needed a Western political advisor to help shore up his position vis-a-vis ISAF and the Afghan Government. This would have been an unorthodox move that may have not been accepted by the bureaucracy but I now think it was the most important measure that should have been taken to try to counter Taliban intimidation of the Alokozai. In dealing with the Alokozai and the Arghandab, I believe that political issues have always been as important, if not more, than kinetic operations.
I have to take exception to Yon's implied criticisms of Canadian Forces, which I presume are due to his relative lack of familiarity with Kandahar compared to Helmand. In his report Yon says the following about the British in Helmand: "they are fighting well and courageously but are under-resourced." He could easily say the same thing about the Canadians in Kandahar if he had spent any time with them. In my opinion it is incorrect and even insulting to say: "Some people believe that the Canadians have been militarily defeated in their battlespace." The scheduled Canadian withdrawal in 2011 is not the result of a defeat on the battlefield, rather, it stems from a political failure to make the case to the Canadian people for continued military engagement in Afghanistan.
As Bruce Rolston has noted in his blog http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/ there is a much more comprehensive report on the military situation in Kandahar titled "The Taliban's Campaign for Kandahar. This report by Carl Forsberg for the Canada-based Institute For the Study of War can be downloaded at the following link: http://www.understandingwar.org/report/talibans-campaign-kandahar
Canadian In Afghanistan,
You are correct, the Canadians did have a "presence" in the ARV. However, it was on the periphery.
You comment "Arghandab and SWK districts have been quiet" is further from the truth. They have been quiet because the CAN Army has not maintained a sustaied presence in either of those areas. Thus, contact was not made and sustained with the insurgents. They have always had mentors in these areas but the operations that were conducted were one or two day ops that never resulted in a sustained CAN presence in the ARV. I have read the AARs on TACNET and they back up my statement.
Interesting look, but Mr Yon's analysis does not go deep enough - it looks in the wrong direction.
His analysis that the "Canadians took a stab at Arghandab" is off the mark. Since 2006 Canada has had a sustained presence in the Arghandab River Valley, even in Arghandab district where he is writing from. Arghandab and Shah Wali Kot districts (north of KC) have traditionally been quiet. Mr Yon should turn his attention to the west of KC to Zhari and Panjwayi districts, where the real battles are and have taken place.
It is nice to hear such hidden facts from people on background. As an Afghan Nationality, I can tell you something more shacking and surprising about the nature and capacity of their waring solace. The war from Taliban is not having only one side factors and stimulation but it is the combination of many interlinked factors which pushes the strong tendencies towards an un-ending war. Taliban are having a strong faith in religion and Jehad which give them an ever-reserved power of waring and resistence. They are also equiped with a substantial tenceis of nation and nationalism. I storngly condamn any kind of naked waring policy against Taliban isurgency in Afghanistan... Lets review our on going Policy of war and confrontation against Taliban and other waring group.
Attached are two opposing views on how to win in Afghanistan:
1. An Air Force general's view from the Top Down (attached beneath my comment)
2. Army Special Forces Major Jim Gant's "One Trip at a Time," view from the bottom up -- see attached pdf file
Judge for yourself who is more plugged into what is happening.
My comment: While I think Major Gant's view is closter to reality than the general's view, I argue that our military and civilian culture does not have a clue how to go about executing Gant's strategy, if they chose to do so -- and they won't. But that might not matter, because, paradoxically, I think Major Gant's excellent appreciation of the Afghan conundrum illustrates indirectly why we need to get out of Afghanistan ASAP.
There are at least two reasons why this is so:
First, despite all the talk of COIN, the publishing of COIN doctrine, the beginning of COIN education in military courses, the military culture has little promise on how to execute the kind of strategy advocated by Major Gant.
First, it is structured, organized and its personnel are managed as an Industrial Age organization. This leads to careerism, top down centralization and heavy fire power centric solutions-with exceptions. That is why General McChrystal asked for a large increase in conventional troops. The surge just approved by the President shows
(a) that the military is completely wedded to an approach that uses a large US footprint, centralized command and control, and a reliance on heavy firepower, like the AF general's predilection for bombing; and
(b) the politicians are wedded to the concept that strengthening an already corrupt centralized Afghan gov't and Afghan national army and national police forces will "win the hearts and minds" of the rural population.
Note that the weakest parts of Major Gant's excellent analysis occur when he tries to reconcile support of the Afghan central government and Afghan national army with his decentralized tribal strategy -- they can not be reconciled except through tribal mediation processes that start a village level jirgas and slowly work upwards to "national" level loya jirga. But that traditional approach would result in a repudiation of the central gov't as it is now constituted.
Second. I am not sure there will ever be enough time to make his strategy work on a war-winning scale. As Major Gant makes clear, we are struggling to deal with a culture that is based on profoundly important concepts of honor and revenge. Planners in Washington and Kabul are trying to shape the cultural DNA of a rural tribal society that is the product of a 3000 years of cultural evolution. This culture may seem primitive to strategists in Washington trying to export the our way of life (not Major Gant, who clearly understands that strategy must be shaped by the mores of the Afghan culture), but this tribal culture is in fact a highly evolved in a complex relationship to its environment. The problem as I see it is that too much water has gone over the dam since we foolishly began trying to cynically manipulate the value systems of this tribal culture by inflating the Islamic crazies in late 1970s (with goal of making it more likely that Soviets would invade and enmesh the Soviets in their Vietnam-like quagmire).
Afghans, especially Pashtuns, understand how this happened, and they have long memories, as Major Gant makes clear. To expect that we could induce the majority of Afghans to forget the past and support our alien presence, even if we executed with a well thought out tribal strategy, like that expressed by Major Gant, is unrealistically optimistic. Moreover, finding and building up a large number of teams with leaders of the intellectual and moral qualities of Major Gant is simply not going to happen in today's self-referencing, careerist military.
My basic point: Major Gant may well have synthesized a strategy that would have worked, if we implemented it from the get go in late 70s. But since then, we have poured too much gasoline on the fire, and now we are facing a raging inferno. As a practical matter, I simply don't see how our leadership admits the strategic errors of the past and shifts strategies now, and then evolve a domestic political consensus to stay long enough in Afghanistan for the local Pashtun forget the insults, humiliations, and wanton killing we have been responsible for. Their memories are simply too long: Never forget, the Pashtuns are still proud of the fact that they forced Alexander the Great to pay protection money so he could safely exit Afghanistan thru the Khyber Pass -- and General McChrystal has admitted we have lost the initiative, we are already paying protection money to insurgents to secure the movement of our supply convoys the same pass, and the AF general bombs away.
-----------------------------The Generals View----------------------
Danger Room (Wired.com)
December 10, 2009
General: Blame Taliban, Media For Afghan Civilian Deaths
By Noah Shachtman
Top commander in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal has issued strict new guidelines on air strikes, to keep civilians from getting killed. "It is literally how we lose the war or in many ways how we win it," he recently said.
But many in the Air Force see the civilian casualty problem may be more a product of media hype and Taliban human shielding than of errant U.S. bombs. "There appears to be an almost complete lack of indication to support the conventional wisdom... that air attacks have been provoking deep hostility toward the U.S. and the Kabul government," writes Lieutenant General David Deptula, the Air Forces Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance.
Deptula e-mailed me last night, in response to my story on the American air war. Heres what he wrote...
First, the number one cause of civilian casualties in Afghanistan is the Taliban -- not air power. Human Rights Watch has verified that the Taliban kills three to four times more civilians than ISAF [NATO's International Security Assistance Force] air and ground forces combined. More often than not, these deaths are deliberate. Because the Taliban cannot directly affect Allied force application from the air, they try to accomplish the same effects by purposely mingling with non-combatants and civilians in an attempt to draw attacks on those positions. This is done to create the conditions where Allied commanders put restrictions on themselves to limit the most effective instrument of power that causes the Taliban their greatest concern.
The reason that there is so much public focus on air power and casualties is that every air-delivered weapon is filmed. We know where every weapon was aimed, and where it hit. That is not the case with the Taliban, or surface-to-surface fires. Air power is the most accurate means of large-scale force application compared to other means such as mortar and artillery fire. Over 95% of the weapons we have delivered from Predators hit exactly where they were aimed, for instance.
There are some folks at Georgetowns Security Studies Program who are doing work on this subject. Looking at the available polling data, they have some surprising results in the Afghan reactions to civilian casualties. Basically, there appears to be an almost complete lack of indication to support the conventional wisdom, popularized in the media, that air attacks have been provoking deep hostility toward the U.S. and the Kabul government. Air power is not threatening to pull the rug out from under OEF-A [Operation Enduring Freedom - Afghanistan]. Instead, when Afghan people were polled about the reasons for their growing disillusionment with Kabul, insecurity and corruption overwhelmingly dominated their complaints; "too many innocent people being killed" barely registered. Intuitively, that makes sense in a country of a thousand villages separated by thousand of mountains and valleys, where tribal institutions are the paramount determinant of communication -- not the International Herald Tribune or the New York Times, or CNN or Twitter...