Bush says he'd go to Afghanistan if he were younger

By Cernig

A Reuters correspondent got to sit in on a videoconference between the White House and US military and civilain leaders in Afghanistan. At the WH big table were Bush, Cheney, Gates Negroponte and others. Like the Decider he is, Dubya hogged the remote.

And told the folks in Aghanistan this:

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

Ah, George, you're not too old. And a greatful nation would pass the hat around for your one-way airfare.

But what a great example to set to the Fighting Keyboardists. Bush is 62 this year - how many are younger than that? They should put their asses where Dubya's mouth is and set off for Helmsland Province immediately.

Oh Look, Another Blethering Gobshite

By Cernig

Kenneth Thiesen of the Berkeley Daily Planet has an op-ed today entitled "Commentary: Why I Don't Support the Troops". He gets the same answer that shock-jock Joel Stein got when he tried exactly the same op-ed (only better written) back in January of 2006.

He's a blethering gobshite.

Of course, the Right loves it - "look! they really don't support the troops after all!"

And I'm personally sick of all the latte-sipping idiots of both Left and Right who want to tell working class people that they can't support other working class people without supporting an awful mission or the awful individuals who commit atrocities while carrying out that mission.

I'm going to be very rude and quote myself from January 2006.

just for the idiots I will lay it out as simply as I can.

We all have the right:

To agree or disagree with our nation's wars, even while they are being fought.

To disagree with the way the war is being fought if we think different leaders, strategies or tactics would fight it better.

To call for a halt to the war, or a portion of it, if we think the incompetence of national and military leaders means we aren't winning or suffering unacceptable/unneccessary losses.

To support each soldiers individual decision on whether their orders are lawful or not. Only the individual soldier can make that decision for him or herself.

To support the poor bloody infantry by wanting them to have the best of equipment, the best of leaders, the best of tactics and the luck or acumen to not have themselves killed or too many bystanders or enemies killed. We are all, first and foremost, human and every death is a tragedy to some extent.

I can support the troops, both British and American, while not supporting the war in Iraq and anyone who says otherwise is a blethering gobshite.

And Jason, I wasn't ignoring it - I was just busy with other things and got to it as soon as I could. Must I repeat myself every time just because you wish me too?

When Matt Outed Harry

By Cernig

Being a Brit, I suppose I should write a few words about the cross-pond scandal of Matt Drudge outing Prince Harry's deployment to Afghanistan.

I'm a wee tad conflicted on the Harry end - I'm no great fan of the concept of having royals in general and would rather think of Harry Windsor as just another second lieutenant from a privileged background who will either turn out to be one of the good guys or one of the banes of the squaddies lives, depending on whether he has sh*t for brains or not. He gets no slack from me just for being a Windsor - but that said, kudos for going within a million miles of the shooting when he could've used his birthrate to stay safe in the UK. His uncle Andrew got the same kudos in the Falklands.

Still, I understand why he has now been withdrawn. As the BBC's Jon Williams explains, and 2nd Lt. Windor's nickname "Bullet Magnet" suggests, it's not just about him.

this was never just about Prince Harry's safety, it was also about the security of the soldiers serving with him. No editor wants to be responsible for increasing the risk they already face from the Taleban. Nor do I think our audiences would have thanked us for doing so.

On Matt Drudge, I'm not in the least conflicted. What a low, unprincipled, headline-chasing slimeball.

Try a thought experiment. Replace "Harry Windsor" with, say "James McCain" and imagine his dad is president. Now imagine Drudge had leaked the location and unit of said presidential son on deployment in Iraq. Can you imagine the outrage? Drudge would be finished, if not in jail.

Sound Of Wind And Blowing Tumbleweed

By Cernig

Via John Cole comes this CNN headline - Army general: 'No reason to doubt' Obama's story.

Army chief of staff Gen. George Casey, testifying on troop strain before the Senate Armed Forces Committee Tuesday, said there is "no reason to doubt" Sen. Barack Obama's military shortage story during CNN's debate in Austin, Texas, last week.

..."We acknowledged and we all worked together to correct the deficiencies with equipment that we saw during that period, not only Afghanistan but in Iraq," he said in response to the question posed by Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham, a longtime supporter of GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain.

And ABC adds:

Casey said the Army has purposefully not tried to seek out the captain individually. But he did contact the platoon's brigade commander, which belonged to the 10th Mountain Division, and reviewed the division's readiness reports.

Casey said the brigade was manned at 100 percent during its entire deployment, but that it is possible a particular platoon within the brigade was not manned at the desired level.

"There may have been some spot shortages in spare parts and ammunition," he said. "But the commander said that there were never a shortage of ammunition that impacted the units ability to accomplish its mission."

So Obama's story checks out - but even so, the military are maintaining it 'didn't impact the mission"? If so, then that's a testimony to the adaptability and resilience of soldiers who weren't properly supported by the Bush administration, surely.

And the retractions of allegations that Obama was flat-out lying from wingnuttery so far? Nada. Just the sound of (blowhard) wind and blowing tumbleweed.

Bin Laden, Mullah Omar Sheltering In Pakistan, Says US

By Cernig

Yesterday, a "senior US official" told a whole group of reporters - including journalists from the BBC, AP and Reuters by the looks of it - that both Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar were finding safe haven inside Pakistan. The BBC reports:

The US official, speaking on condition of anonymity in Washington, told reporters:

"There is no question that the iconic leaders of al-Qaeda - (Ayman al-)Zawahiri, Bin Laden... are in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

"We believe that the Taleban's shura (consultation) council leaders led by Mullah Omar reside in Quetta in Pakistan," he said.

The Pakistani government was quick to deny the allegations, saying that if the official was right "he would claim the bounty money, not speak to the media."

However, this isn't the first time that such allegations have been made. The BBC notes that:

Last month, captured Taleban spokesman Muhammad Hanif made similar claims about Mullah Omar's whereabouts, which were rejected by Pakistan.

Mr Hanif said Mullah Omar was protected by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai made similar allegations last year.

So, indeed, have the Indian intelligence services, NATO commanders in Afghanistan and British MI6. The latter were even reported to have provided the address of the ISI safe house where Mullah Omar was staying in Quetta...and his cell-phone number. The Pakistani government has also made a disturbing habit of releasing captured Taliban bigwigs and of doing peace-deals with Taliban commanders in the regions bordering Afghanistan.

Despite all this, the US official - an obviously publicly-known figure who has managed to speak to a gathering of reporters without any of them leaking who he was - also said that the US continues to back Musharraf. According to Reuters:

"There are multiple sources of pressure and instability on Musharraf and the sense here has been what he really needs is a dependable partner to see him through this period and that's been sort of the strategic logic of supporting Musharraf," the U.S. official said.

Musharraf over time has "given us evidence that he is worth that kind of commitment both in terms of the degree to which his forces have taken on al Qaeda in particular, and the extent to which we think he's doing quite well, given the hand he was dealt."

The Bush administration had also been very impressed with Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani and considered him a "promising partner," the official said.

Kayani was previously commander of the self-same ISI intelligence agency that has been accused of sheltering Mullah Omar and which was instrumental in setting up the Taliban back in the early '90's.

This may be astonishing naivete, it may be deliberate disregard for the objectives of the Bush administration's War on (Some) Terror - but it's far more likely to be a message to the Pakistani leadership that they must clean their ISI house or ultimately lose US support. The burning question if that is the case, however, will be "why did it take so long for the Bush administration to wake up and smell the coffee?"

15 Brigades in Iraq

Earlier this week Cernig asked about the impact of President Bush's punting plans to keep at least fifteen combat brigades in Iraq. The short story is that assuming nothing else in the world blows up, this is a (barely) sustainable force level especially if one projects that 2009 will be a repeast of OIF-3 as the year of the National Guard in Iraq.

Right now the active duty Army has forty two modular combat brigades, and the Marines have another eight infantry regiments. The Army will also be adding another six brigades over the next three years to the active duty roster. The projected requirements for these fifty brigades are one permanent brigade in South Korea, two brigades in Afghanistan (although recently reinforced by a weak brigade equivilant of Marines) and then fifteen brigades in Iraq plus whatever contigencies elsewhere, including the Sinaii, the former Yugoslavia and anything else.

If you remove the one South Korea based brigade from consideration, forty nine active duty brigades are needed to cover at least seventeen brigade deployment slots. That is slightly less than three brigades per slot. That is not the ideal two years to rest, refit and reset per year in combat, but it is better than the fifteen months in combat and twelve months to reset which is the current pace. Once you consider transportation and acclimation time, and assuming a twelve month tour of duty, the typical brigade will have roughly eighteen to twenty months at the home station exclusive of transit/acclimation between combat deployments.

If anything this analysis is a bit limited as it is excluding National Guard formations from consideration. We know seven National Guard combat brigades are being alerted for Fall 08 and Winter 09 deployments and four National Guard brigades have either recently deployed to Iraq or are currently in transit/acclimation to Iraq. This is a significant amount of breathing room built into the rotation schedule.

Grim Reports On Afghanistan

By Cernig

Is there anyone left who doubts that, by taking their eyes of the ball and instead pursuing an aggressive invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has drastically undermined its own "war on terror" where it counts - the central front in Afghanistan. If so, some new reports should be sobering reading for the Bush cheerleading faction.

The three reports have appeared two years after a road map for international assistance was agreed in London.

Oxfam said a "major change of direction... to avert a humanitarian disaster" in Afghanistan was needed.

In an open letter, Oxfam predicts a "humanitarian disaster" in the country, pointing out that millions of dollars of development aid is being wasted.

The charity says that the international approach towards Afghanistan is lacking in direction and is "incoherent and uncoordinated".

"There are very many factors to explain the increasing insurgency, and of course criminality and the role of warlords and drugs traffickers is very important," said Matt Waldman, policy advisor on Afghanistan for Oxfam International.

"But we also have to understand that recruitment is much easier when people are living in desperate circumstances," he said.

Bushie kneejerk response: Oxfam? It's a British-based charity...probably just woolie Brit liberals trying o undermine the war.

OK, how about the Atlantic Council of the United States, headed by General James L. Jones (former Supreme Allied Commander Europe and former Commandant of the Marine Corps) and Frederick Kempe (former WSJ editor) - not to mention being the day-job for conservative blogger James Joyner? No hotbed of librul defeatists there, surely.

The US Atlantic Council began its report with the words: "Nato is not winning in Afghanistan" and talks of a stalemate.

"Without urgent changes Afghanistan could become a failed or failing state," it said.

"If Afghanistan fails, the possible strategic consequences will worsen regional instability, do great harm to the fight against Jihadist and religious extremism, and put in grave jeopardy Nato's future as a credible, cohesive and relevant military alliance."

The American Afghanistan Study Group [sponsored by the Atlantic Council and headed by Gen. Jones - C] reached a similarly grim conclusion in a report released on Wednesday.

It said that "resurgent violence, weakening international resolve, too few military forces and insufficient economic aid" were all contributing to the country's woes.

Canada's conservative government has said it will pull its troops from Afghanistan if help isn't forthcoming. American rightwingers can rail at Europe all they want - but at the end of the day NATO is in Afghanistan because America asked for assistance. All the other NATO nations combined don't spend a fraction of the almost $500 billion the US does on its military annually - even Russia only spends $40 billion a year. If assistance is to come, it should come from the U.S.

But the Bush administration has tapped out reserves of ground troops on the Iraqi misadventure. (Even if you think the Surge was a success - that cannot excuse the profligate waste of the previous four years?) The Bush administration's policy has been a massive and harmful failure, a blight on the national interest, but all the Republican candidates only back more of the same.

Karzai Blamies Britain, US, For Taliban Resurgence

By Cernig

Afghan president Hamid Karzai has said he made a mistake in listening to US and British officials who said they had things under control and that their mistakes directly led to the resurgence of the Taliban in Helmland province.

"There was one part of the country where we suffered after the arrival of the British forces," Karzai said. "Before that we were fully in charge of Helmand. When our governor was there, we were fully in charge.

"They came and said, 'Your governor is no good'. I said 'All right, do we have a replacement for this governor; do you have enough forces?'. Both the American and the British forces guaranteed to me they knew what they were doing and I made the mistake of listening to them.

"And when they came in, the Taliban came."

This is big news in Canada and the UK - where the British government has scurried to parse Karzai's statement in a way that lets them deny it without denying the facts - yet it's hardly even on the radar in primary-obsessed America. Even if the primary race was about policy rather than mud, stories like this might get an airing (after Britney's latest meltdown, of course) but right now the US electorate regards its primaries as if they're American Idol, not selecting someone who is meant to be able to get a handle on s**t like Afghanistan. No wonder you end up with idiots like Dubya in charge.

Petraeus For NATO?

By Cernig

There's a New York Times report this morning that Saint-General Petraeus is being considered for the job of Supreme Allied Commander at NATO.

A senior Pentagon official said that it was weighing “a next assignment for Petraeus” and that the NATO post was a possibility. “He deserves one and that has also always been a highly prestigious position,” the official said. “So he is a candidate for that job, but there have been no final decisions and nothing on the timing.”

There follows much hot air from the NYT about Saint Pet being too needed in Iraq to be sent elsewhere, indicative of just how much the Very Serious person set has built Bush's favorite up as God's Own Answer to all that ails that nation. It's bullsh*t of course. The VSP's never mention Petraeus' abyssmal performance as overseer of training and equipping the Iraqi security forces, during which billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of weapons went missing leaving several senior officers indicted for corruption and even one of Petraeus' own aides under investigation.

Still, I'm inclined to agree with James Joyner - who works for the Atlantic Council - that Petraeus to NATO as a pure publicity move would signal that the U.S. wants NATO to repurpose itself away from the fight for the Fulda Gap and put public pressure on the other members to accelerate that process. It would also help to thrust Afghanistan back into the American public consciousness - something that really needs to be done before defeat is snatched from the jaws of victory there. That's a good move in itself, I feel, and stands aside from any actual consideration of whether Petraeus would be any good at the job.

As to the next commander in Iraq, Gate's senior aide Chiarelli would seem to be the obvious choice right now if the Pentagon is serious about it's newfound counterinsurgency paradigm, but I would suggest Colonel H.R. McMaster. He pioneered many of the Surge tactics Saint Pet has gotten credit for at Tal Afar in 2005 and knows more about effective COIN at the sharp end than Petraeus ever will. But because of his view that senior officers have a constitutional duty to speak out when the civilian leadership f**ks up, he's been passed over for promotion to Brig. General twice. He's the best commander MNF-I will never have.

Drugs and weak states

B.J. at Northman's Fury is riffing off the same article as Libby in the expansion of opium production to central and southern Iraq. He makes a very good counter-insurgency point and the weakness of the state:

This will likely have some significant impact on the overall situation in Iraq, because that shiny counterinsurgency manual the Americans are so impressed with tends to get tossed out the window when the drug warriors get involved.

More to the point, whatever success the "surge" has had, it is more a measure of the Americans giving local warlords and militias control over their fiefdoms.....

So the US now gets to decide whether or not they wish to hold onto the fragile security gains the empowerment of these militias have given them while watching Iraqi opium production bloom forth....

The deals that the US has cut with the Sadrist ceasefire and the Sunni Arab tribal leadership and levies that have led to a decrease in violence have been at the expense of the concept of a strong, unified central Iraqi government. The Sunni Arab tribes have re-asserted their authority on local economic arrangements and their integration with the gray and black markets of the region and the world.

One of the central themes of both John Robb and Thomas Barnett is illicit and black market networks thrive in areas of weak to no state control. Hard, naturally derived, drugs are some of the most common markers of weak state control, as we know that Columbia has a minimal writ of legitimacy in the cocaine regimes, and Afghanistan has been beset by weak governments for my entire life and then some, and the former French Indochina opium triangle had minimal state influence for multiple generations. Are there any significant cocaine/opium producing regions that exist with reasonably strong governments?

Gates Walks Back NATO Criticism

By Cernig

Turkana at The Left Coaster has a good post today on what has been a problemmatic few days for US relations with NATO allies. It all began when Bob Gates told the LA Times that NATO forces in Afghanistan, where Britain, Canada and the Netherlands have been doing the bulk of the heavy lifting, didn't know "how to do counter-insurgency operations." That led to angry words from NATO members and even NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer diplomatically told reporters that Gates was talking out of his ass.

The British, certainly, would have good cause to be miffed if Gates' criticism was aimed at them. What were the decades-long deployement in Northern Ireland and British operations in Southern Iraq if not extensive real-world counter-insurgency experience? Indeed, the US Surge has more in common with British COIN tactics than it does with the US military's until-then preference for Israeli-style methods.

The Pentagon wasn't quite quick enough to forestall some ill feeling over Gates' words, but is now saying they were taken out of context.

In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman said Gates was concerned his remarks were being interpreted as targeting individual countries, stressing that he had said that NATO structures as a whole were not designed to tackle insurgencies.

"The secretary of defense has read the article and is disturbed by what he read," he said. "The totality of the piece leaves the impression that the secretary is disturbed with the performance of individual countries in Afghanistan. He is not."

He said Gates repeated concerns in the January 7 interview over the alliance's capabilities that he had expressed to NATO allies at a meeting in Scotland in December.

And Gates himself told reporters today:

This does not reflect reality or, I believe, the views of our governments," Gates said at a Pentagon news briefing.

"Allied forces from the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia and Denmark and other nations have stepped up to the plate and are paying a significant and powerful role in Afghanistan," he said.

So was it all just a storm in a teacup over words misunderstood? Not exactly. Gates has indeed previously spoken about the need to repurpose NATO away from simply being aimed at preventing a possible Soviet invasion of Western Europe - a threat that no arguably longer exists despite Putin's policies creating a resurgent Russian military - towards a more braod-based organisation capable of fighting the War on (Some) Terror. However, he has also been critical of NATO nations who haven't provided more troops for Afghanistan despite the bulk of America's ground forces being bogged down in Iraq. The most recent example being Tuesday on an NPR radio interview.

The first is fair enough - NATO needs to be more flexible, more relevant to the needs of all it's members and all future military threats, not just the needs of the US and its current obssession with Islamist terror. But on the second, Gates would do well to remember that, as Turkana writes:

the facts remain: NATO is there because we were attacked, and they are providing troops because ours are off fighting a war that never should have been started. Our allies are too diplomatic to put it in such stark terms. The Bush Administration is not even diplomatic enough to simply thank them for trying to do the job the Bush Administration failed to do.

No Evidence Marines Attacked During Afghan 10-Mile Massacre

By Cernig

Does anyone recall the most under-reported alleged atrocity of the War on Terror to date, the case of a Marine unit in Afghanistan which the Afghani government and human right's groups in the country accuse of going on a ten mile rampage, massacring civilians? It happened in March last year but there's only now a Court of Inquiry to see if courts martial should be in the offing.

Authorities found no evidence that a Marine unit was responding to an ambush last year when troops allegedly opened fire indiscriminately on Afghan civilians, killing as many as 19, a Navy investigator testified Monday.

But, Navy authorities did not arrive on the scene until two months later and had only an hour to look at the site of the shooting, Marine Chief Warrant Officer Robert O'Dwyer cautioned.

"From a law enforcement standpoint, that's ludicrous," O'Dwyer said. He said that while one investigation later determined two civilians died and 23 were wounded, another concluded 19 died and 50 were wounded.

O'Dwyer's testimony opened the second week of a Court of Inquiry, a rarely used administrative fact-finding proceeding investigating the actions of two officers involved in the shootings: Company commander Maj. Fred C. Galvin, 38, of the Kansas City area, and Capt. Vincent J. Noble, 29, of Philadelphia, a platoon leader.

The court will recommend whether any charges should filed against the officers, and whether any training should be changed.

O'Dwyer said Navy Criminal Investigative Service agents interviewed Afghan police and civilians, and members of an Army military police unit that arrived on the scene less than an hour after the shooting. He said none confirmed the Marine unit's story that there was a coordinated ambush.

...Citing witness accounts, Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission concluded last year that the Marines fired indiscriminately at pedestrians and people in cars, buses and taxis in six different locations along a 10-mile (16-kilometer) stretch of roadway.

A Marine riding in the convoy testified last week that the convoy was shot at twice and Marines fired back over a span of roadway about 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) long. Navy investigators said the firing occurred over about six miles (10 kilometers), O'Dwyer said.

Six miles is still a heck of a long way, and 19 to 23 dead easily puts this incident in the realms of the Blackwater incident in Iraq which has garnered so much press coverage.

Of course, it might be easier to tell what exactly happened if the on-scene Marine commander hadn't confiscated and destroyed photos and video taken by freelance journalists working for AP at the time, who captured much of what occured.

The justification used back then?

..."Investigative integrity is one circumstance when civil and military authorities will reluctantly exercise the right to control what a journalist is permitted to document," Col. Victor Petrenko, chief of staff to the top U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan, said in a letter Friday.

He added that photographs or video taken by "untrained people" might "capture visual details that are not as they originally were."

Or, indeed, capture visual details at all.

The current article notes that the Marine unit in question was sent out of Afghanistan after the incident. What it doesn't say is that it was sent to Iraq. Although the Army has apologised for civilain deaths during the incident on the Marine Corp's behalf, the Corps insists that the apology was "premature".

Taliban Leader Bribes Himself Free For Third Time

By Cernig

Just...wow.

A Taleban commander in Afghanistan responsible for leading attacks on British troops says he has been freed from prison after paying a bribe.

Mullah Sorkh Naqaibullah told the BBC he paid $15,000 (£7,500) to the Afghan authorities to win his freedom.

It was the third time that the leader, known as the "Red Mullah", had been captured and released, he said.

Mullah Naqaibullah operates in Helmand province, where there is a large concentration of British troops.

He told the BBC he had been released from custody for the third time in three years after paying a bribe to an Afghan National Directorate of Security official.
...An NDS spokesman refused to comment on his allegations, saying he could not confirm whether the reports were right or wrong.

But another NDS source confirmed that Mullah Naqaibullah had been released, and that an investigation had begun to track down those responsible.

A Taleban spokesman said Mullah Naqaibullah had returned to Helmand.

I mean, WTF?

Pakistan has a catch-and-release policy for Taliban bigwigs too. What kind of crappy War on Some Terror is being run here if that's what our ostensible allies are up to? No, don't answer that - a really crappy one.

Pakistan Govt Minister Blames Foreign Nation For Unrest

By Cernig

Here's a new twist on an old story - the Pakistani Finance Minister is blaming a foreign government for inciting unrest after Bhutto's assassination.

Caretaker Finance Minister of Pakistan Dr Salman Shah has accused 'foreign elements' of being involved in the massive violence that followed the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

"It was a well planned conspiracy by a foreign country to cause devastation at such a scale," he said in an interview yesterday, insisting that rioters had been "hired by foreign elements" and refused to accept that the mayhem was a spontaneous reaction to the tragedy.

The finance minister, however, said: "Those who were behind it will be exposed." He said the country's "enemies had implemented their plan to target strategic communications, telecommunication and railway installations which "cannot go unnoticed by the government which has already ordered a thorough inquiry into the incident".

He added: "It was not a small disturbance but was a very calculated intrigue to create such a huge law and order problem in the country", he said.

It will be interesting to see if the Pakistani government tries to give this tale - ludicrous on the face of it - some legs, and if so which foreign government gets balmed. The PR upside of claiming a Scooby Doo Villain excuse - that the Pakistan authorities could have kept order if it wasn't for those pesky agents provocteurs - is pretty obvious. But if the country blamed is India or Afghanistan then it should be seen as an extension of the military's obsession with defining itself and the nation in relation to those two countries. If Iran is named or hinted at, however, it will be a blatant attempt to woo U.S. hawks back to Musharraf's side.

Counter-insurgency and credible security bubbles

I'm getting some pushback on my post this morning on the degree of victory and what should be read into the fact that a multi-brigade US/UK/Afghan army force retook a medium size town from Taliban after the Taliban had controlled it for most of the year. On the tactical level, it is a victory, but on a strategic level, the occupation of the town by the Taliban is a massive counterinsurgency failure. During the summer of 2006, the Taliban initiated a series of raids that were able to seize control of multiple towns that they then later had to withdraw from. At my old blog I wrote the following:

the vast majority of the Taliban force followed the first tactical rule of being guerrillas --- don't fight set piece battles against vastly superior firepower, instead run away and snipe next week....

However this tactical success of reclaiming a town is an operational setback in a counterinsurgency campaign because the counter-insurgent task is a very complex task of seperating the population from the insurgent, and creating credible guarantees of security from any retaliation from the insurgent force.

The insurgent force needs the population for resupply, recruits, intelligence and concealment. Some of these objectives can be gained by an appeal to primary loyalties, but other times, intimidation and violence are used to achieve these ends. The counterinsurgent force has to generate a bubble of security that negates the ability of the insurgent force to target informers, cooperators and neutrals. This bubble must be very strong for if the insurgent force can routinely penetrate the bubble, the promises of reward for cooperation with the counter-insurgent force become meaningless, for cooperation credibly means death.

The news that the Taliban took two towns reduces the credibility of the counter-insurgent promise that it is the only force that can provide protection. [emphasis added on 12/14/07]

This is the logic and thought process I was applying this morning. The long term occupation of a town by Taliban forces is a strong argument against the counterinsurgent forces' credible promises of support, security and succor for local cooperators. Local cooperation is the only way to beat an insurgency, and cooperation will not happen on a consistent basis if there is a very high projected cost to cooperate versus seeing nothing or doing nothing about an insurgent force.

Counterinsurgency 102

Successful counterinsurgencies do not have multiple brigades with theatre level fire support engaging in fixed piece battles against well formed, large scale indigenous insurgent units that have the ability and discipline to break contact under fire and retreat in good order to better defensive/dispersal positions. Successful counterinsurgencies will have prevented the formation of these large units by disrupting the insurgent social and support networks and making the transition stages of unit formation fraught with danger. Small units face a danger period as complexity scales faster between 10 to 25 participants than any resultant gain in efficiency, and then efficiency gains outweigh complexity/management costs until units broach 100 to 150 participants. At that point highly complex formal systems are needed to run cohesive units.

So when Ace of Spades is haranguing against the perfidious media for not trumpeting the success of a division sized combined arms operation against the Taliban, the need for that operation is a failure of the Afghanistani counter-insurgency/counter-Taliban campaign.

Now you may wonder why a major victory in the, ahem, "Forgotten War" (the first forgotten war Afghanistan, and not Forgotten War II, Iraq) isn't being reported by the media.

It's because they're Patriots, buddy! They don't want to leak out the sensitive intelligence to the Taliban that they just got their asses kicked unholy. They might not know yet, so keep it on the QT, all right?

Much like the division sized combined arms assault on Fallujah in November, 2004 was a strategic failure as it was further confirmation of the Sunni Arab insurgency's resiliency and complexity, the division sized assault on Musa Quala is a tactical success in taking the small city, but an indicator of strategic problems.

Iraq Surge "Success" No Help To Afghanistan

By Cernig

From The AP via the Guardian:

The top Marine general said Wednesday that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has rejected his proposal to shift Marine forces from Iraq to Afghanistan, reflecting in part the Bush administration's concern that recent security gains in Iraq are fragile and reversible.

``After discussion with the secretary and with my colleagues on the Joint Staff, there is a determination that right now the timing is not right to provide additional Marine forces to Afghanistan,'' Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, told reporters at the Pentagon.

The Bush administration's concern? You wouldn't know it from listening to Bush himself, Cheney or their cheerleaders. Cheney today was particularly upbeat. Having finally shifted the goalposts far enough away from their original positions, they've already declared victory. Read that as "Gates and his officers' concern". They obviously aren't as certain that some Iraqi Harry Potter will pop up, wave his wand, yell "reconcilliation!" and it will magically arrive...astride a pony.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan continues to go South, with the Taliban having a controlling presence in half of the country. The original and still main front in the mis-named War on Terror continues to suffer because Bush and Cheney decided upon a war of aggression in search of phantom WMD's. They tried for two years to gain acceptance for another such spurious war in Iran before the recent NIE removed their causus belli. It's well past time to ask Petraeus' question about Iraq, only this time about Afghanistan. "How does it end?"

The whack-a-mole war on some drugs

By Libby

Our US career prohibitionists have touted the success of their poppy eradication schemes in Afghanistan and in certain provinces, poppy production has indeed been all but eliminated. Afghanistan's dependence on the drug industry -- not so much. The impoverished farmers simply replaced poppies with pot.

Cannabis cultivation rose 40 percent in Afghanistan this year, to 173,000 acres from 123,550 in 2006, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimated in its 2007 opium survey. The crop is being grown in at least 18 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, according to the survey released last month. [...]

The U.N. said cannabis yields around twice the quantity of drug per acre as opium poppies and requires less investment. The U.N. drug report estimated farmers growing cannabis could earn the same amount per acre as opium farmers.

An earlier report on this story notes Balkh province "now has one of the most bounteous cannabis crops in the country."

The plant is certainly not hard to find. It lines the main highways leading into Mazar-i-Sharif, the provincial capital, and is visible to passing drivers. The crop's chief byproduct, hashish, is sold openly at many roadside fruit and grocery stands, particularly around Balkh, the ancient citadel town about 24 kilometers, or 15 miles, west of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Afghani authorities concede they don't have a strategy to displace the crop and one assumes it won't be easy to form one considering the historical place the plant has in the local society.

Farmers in this region have cultivated cannabis for more than 70 years and, by the estimates of several Balkh residents, at least half the adult male population smokes hashish. Resinous, pungent and black, the hashish is sold in thin, palm-size sheets that resemble large tire patches and sell for about a dollar each. Hashish from this area - called Shirak-i-Mazar, or Milk of Mazar - was once prized by smokers around the world, though its primacy has since been supplanted by varieties from other countries.

I remember that hash well myself. There was a time in the 60s where it was easier to get than Mexican marijuana. Loved the stuff... But I digress. Unlike the slash and burn mentality of US prohibs, the Aghani officials are taking a more humane position on eradication.

Farmers have begun to harvest their current crop, and officials say they do not want to destroy the farmers' livelihood without giving them time to plant an alternative.

The leadership in Kabul recognizes that people have to eat and their poor farmers are left with no viable alternatives since neither the US, nor the greater international community, has stepped forward to offer assistance in developing markets for licit agricultural products or other legal sources of income.

Steven Taylor sums up the folly perfectly.

This one of those utterly classic stories that makes you wonder if one should laugh because it demonstrates the foibles of our drug war policies as well as the clear economic forces that we are trying to combat, or cry because if one knows that no effective lessons are likely to be learned by the drug warriors from the case.

I'm reduced to what my friend Jules calls mad laughter, myself.

While You Were Watching "The Surge"

By Cernig

While you were watching the Surge, Afghanistan was falling apart at the seams:

The Taliban has a permanent presence in 54% of Afghanistan and the country is in serious danger of falling into the group's hands, according to a report by an independent thinktank with long experience in the area.

Despite the presence of tens of thousands of Nato-led troops and billions of dollars in aid, the insurgents, driven out by the US invasion in 2001, now control "vast swaths of unchallenged territory, including rural areas, some district centres, and important road arteries," the Senlis Council says in a report released today.

On the basis of what it calls exclusive research, it warns that the insurgency is also exercising a "significant amount of psychological control, gaining more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people, who have a long history of shifting alliances and regime change".

It says that the frontline is getting ever closer to Kabul - a warning echoed by the UN, which says more and more of the country is becoming a "no go" area for western aid and development workers.

The council goes as far as to state: "It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when this will happen and in what form.

It's an assessment which is shared by major humanitarian aid group Oxfam ,and, according to the Guardian, privately by senior US and UK military commanders.

Given the current state of play in Pakistan, is there any doubt now that we sceptics were correct all along when we said that Afghanistan was always the real front of the War on Terror and that Iraq was an unneccesary distraction from that front? The real war is being lost, thanks to Bush and his cheerleaders.

The Musharraf Shuffle (Update - Imran Khan Arrested)

By Cernig

The AP headlines its latest story out of Pakistan "Musharraf to Quit Army This Month". By so doing they fall for Musharraf's framing of the current crisis in Pakistan. He's hoping to deflect criticism by PR moves like today's promise to step down as chief of the army this month, or a promise to hold elections in January.

But here's the real lede - the state of emergency will still be in place when the elections are held.

It doesn't matter whether Musharraf is a dictator in uniform or a dictator out of uniform with a hand-picked loyalist in charge of the army. If the state of emergency is still in force there will be no way for opposition parties to campaign, no media coverage, and a carte-blanche for Mushie to rig the result any way he wants.

Meanwhile, the US will continue to talk tough and do exactly nothing about the Musharraf Shuffle. Why? The AP again:

The military is making backup plans in case the unrest in Pakistan begins to affect the flow of supplies to American troops fighting in Afghanistan, the Defense Department said Wednesday.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said the supply lines are ``very real areas of concern'' because about 75 percent of the supplies, including 40 percent of vehicle fuel supplies, either go through or over Pakistan.

``We hope it doesn't come to this,'' Morrell told reporters. ``Right now we've seen no indications that any of our supply lines have been impacted.''

The United States has about 25,000 troops in Afghanistan. Some of their supplies arrive by air from Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan. A former supply line from Uzbekistan was shut down in 2005 when the Uzbek government retaliated against Washington for what it viewed as interference in its internal affairs.

Morrell said the U.S. wanted to ensure there was a backup plan should Pakistan's political turmoil start to affect the supply lines. ``Clearly we do not like the situation we find ourselves in right now,'' he said.

He did not say what potential alternative routes were under consideration and noted that some people have raised questions about safeguarding Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

``I can tell you, at this point, we have no concerns,'' Morrell said. ``We believe that they are under the appropriate control.''

The Pakistani dictator suckered America bigtime on the War On Terror and now he believes he has the U.S. in a cleft stick.

Update The BBC is reporting that former cricket legend and opposition political leader Imran Khan has been arrested.

Pakistani police have charged opposition figure Imran Khan under the anti-terrorism act after his first public appearance under the emergency. Details were not given but one official said Mr Khan had been disturbing the peace by attending a student protest against President Pervez Musharraf.

The city's police chief earlier accused Mr Khan of spreading hatred and inciting civil unrest. The former cricketer was detained after going to Punjab University in Lahore.

Khan was originally detained by Islamist students belonging to the Jamaat-e-Islami party, who then called police.