FPIF- "Why the Afghan Surge Will Fail"

[ray245]

Before the Obama administration buys into General Stanley McChrystal's escalation strategy, it might spend some time examining the August 12 battle of Dananeh, a scruffy little town of 2,000 perched at the entrance to the Naw Zad Valley in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province.

Dananeh is a textbook example of why counterinsurgency won't work in that country, as well as a case study in military thinking straight out of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.
Strategic Towns

According to the United States, the purpose of the attack was to seize a "strategic" town, cut "Taliban supply lines," and secure the area for the presidential elections. Taking Dananeh would also "outflank the insurgents," "isolating" them in the surrounding mountains and forests.

What is wrong with this scenario?

One, the concept of a "strategic" town of 2,000 people in a vast country filled with tens of thousands of villages like Dananeh is bizarre.

Two, the Taliban don't have "flanks." They are a fluid, irregular force, not an infantry company dug into a set position. "Flanking" an enemy is what you did to the Wehrmacht in World War II.

Three, "Taliban supply lines" are not highways and rail intersections. They're goat trails.

Four, "isolate" the Taliban in the surrounding mountains and forests? Obviously, no one in the Pentagon has ever read the story of Brer Rabbit, who taunted his adversary with the famous words, "Please don't throw me in the briar patch, Brer Fox." Mountains and forests are where the Taliban move freely.

The Taliban were also not the slightest bit surprised when the United States showed up. When the Marines helicoptered in at night, all was quiet. At dawn — the Taliban have no night-fighting equipment — the insurgents opened up with rockets, mortars, and machine guns. "I am pretty sure they knew of it [the attack] in advance," Golf Company commander Captain Zachary Martin told the Associated Press.

Pinned down, the Marines brought in air power and artillery and, after four days of fierce fighting, took the town. But the Taliban had decamped on the third night. The outcome? A chewed-up town and 12 dead insurgents — that is, if you don't see a difference between an "insurgent" and a villager who didn't get out in time, so that all the dead are automatically members of the Taliban.

"I'd say we've gained a foothold for now, and it's a substantial one that we're not going to let go," says Martin. "I think this has the potential to be a watershed."

Only if hallucinations become the order of the day.
Irregular Warfare

The battle of Dananeh was a classic example of irregular warfare. The locals tip off the guerrillas that the army is coming. The Taliban set up an ambush, fight until the heavy firepower comes in, then slip away.

"Taliban fighters and their commanders have escaped the Marines' big offensive into Afghanistan's Helmand province and moved into areas to the west and north, prompting fears that the U.S. effort has just moved the Taliban problem elsewhere," writes Nancy Youssef of the McClatchy newspapers.

When the Taliban went north they attacked German and Italian troops.

In short, the insurgency is adjusting. "To many of the Americans, it appeared as if the insurgents had attended something akin to the U.S. Army's Ranger school, which teaches soldiers how to fight in small groups in austere environments," writes Karen DeYoung in The Washington Post.

Actually, the Afghans have been doing that for some time, as Greeks, Mongols, British, and Russians discovered.

One Pentagon officer told the Post that the Taliban has been using the Korengal Valley that borders Pakistan as a training ground. It's "a perfect lab to vet fighters and study U.S. tactics," he said, and to learn how to gauge the response time for U.S. artillery, air strikes, and helicopter assaults. "They know exactly how long it takes before...they have to break contact and pull back."

Just like they did at Dananeh.
McChrystal's Plan

General McChrystal has asked for 40,000 new troops in order to hold the "major" cities and secure the population from the Taliban. But even by its own standards, the plan is deeply flawed. The military's Counterinsurgency Field Manual recommends a ratio of 20 soldiers for every 1,000 residents. Since Afghanistan has a population of slightly over 32 million, that would require a force of 660,000 soldiers.

The United States will shortly have 68,000 troops in Afghanistan, plus a stealth surge of 13,000 support troops. If the Pentagon sends 40,000 additional troops, U.S. forces will rise to 121,000. Added to that are 35,000 NATO troops, though most alliance members are under increasing domestic pressure to withdraw their soldiers. McChrystal wants to expand the Afghan army to 240,000, and there is talk of trying to reach 340,000.

Even with the larger Afghan army, the counterinsurgency plan is 150,000 soldiers short.
An Afghan Army?

And can you really count on the Afghan army? It doesn't have the officers and sergeants to command 340,000 troops. And the counterinsurgency formula calls for "trained" troops, not just armed boots on the ground. According to a recent review, up to 25% of recruits quit each year, and the number of trained units has actually declined over the past six months.

On top of this, Afghanistan doesn't really have a national army. If Pashtun soldiers are deployed in the Tajik-speaking north, they will be seen as occupiers, and vice-versa for Tajiks in Pashtun areas. If both groups are deployed in their home territories, the pressures of kinship will almost certainly overwhelm any allegiance to a national government, particularly one as corrupt and unpopular as the current Karzai regime.

And by defending the cities, exactly whom will U.S. troops be protecting? When it comes to Afghanistan, "major" population centers are almost a contradiction in terms. There are essentially five cities in the country, Kabul (2.5 million), Kandahar (331,000), Mazar-e-Sharif (200,000), Herat (272,000), and Jalalabad (20,000). Those five cities make up a little more than 10% of the population, over half of which is centered in Kabul. The rest of the population is rural, living in towns of 1,500 or fewer, smaller even than Dananeh.

But spreading the troops into small firebases makes them extremely vulnerable, as the United States found out in early September, when eight soldiers were killed in an attack on a small unit in the Kamdesh district of Nuristan province. The base was abandoned a week later and, according to the Asia Times, is now controlled by the Taliban.
MRAP Attack

While McChrystal says he wants to get the troops out of "armored vehicles" and into the streets with the people, the United States will have to use patrols to maintain a presence outside of the cities. On occasion, that can get almost comedic. Take the convoy of Stryker light tanks that set out on October 12 from "Forward Operating Base Spin Boldak" in Khandar province for what was described as a "high-risk mission into uncharted territory."

The convoy was led by the new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles designed to resist the insurgent's weapon-of-choice in Afghanistan, roadside bombs. But the MRAP was designed for Iraq, which has lots of good roads. Since Afghanistan has virtually no roads, the MRAPs broke down. Without the MRAPs the Strykers could not move. The "high-risk" mission ended up hunkering down in the desert for the night and slogging home in the morning. They never saw an insurgent.

Afterwards, Sergeant John Belajac remarked, "I can't imagine what it is going to be like when it starts raining."

If you are looking for an Afghanistan War metaphor, the Spin Boldak convoy may be it.
Dangerous Illusions

McChrystal argues that the current situation is "critical," and that an escalation "will be decisive." But as former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst A.J. Rossmiller says, the war is a stalemate. "The insurgency does not have the capability to defeat U.S. forces or depose Afghanistan's central government, and…U.S. forces do not the ability to vanquish the insurgency." While the purported goal of the war is denying al-Qaeda a sanctuary, according to U.S. intelligence the organization has fewer than 100 fighters in the country. And further, the Taliban's leader, Mullah Omar, pledges that his organization will not interfere with Afghanistan's neighbors or the West, which suggests that the insurgents have been learning about diplomacy as well.

The Afghanistan War can only be solved by sitting all the parties down and working out a political settlement. Since the Taliban have already made a seven-point peace proposal, that hardly seems an insurmountable task.

Anything else is a dangerous illusion.

Conn Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus.

FPIF

[Ryan Thunder]

Obviously the problem will only be solved by nuking the entire country into a glass parking lot. If civilization can't have it, well, we can make bloody well sure the Taliban won't, either.

[K. A. Pital]

Why not centralize Afghanistan's economy, centrally build factories and start building an industrial economy in Afghanistan instead of allowing it to be a narco-state under America's patronage?

Here's why:
1) too costly. Lax control over a narco-state is financially more viable, even if more people die, than a forced industrialization programme.
2) it's un-American.

[ray245]

Why not centralize Afghanistan's economy, centrally build factories and start building an industrial economy in Afghanistan instead of allowing it to be a narco-state under America's patronage?

Here's why:
1) too costly. Lax control over a narco-state is financially more viable, even if more people die, than a forced industrialization programme.
2) it's un-American.

Isn't that what the USSR tried to do?

[Sarevok]

Afganistans literacy rate is around 36 percent. It is difficult to industrialize a place as backward as Afganistan.

[K. A. Pital]

Afganistans literacy rate is around 36 percent

Universal schooling is the only solution that would yield results in a relatively short term, and has had a practice of giving such results. Yeah, it will be costly for the USA to educate all the millions of Afghanis. Yes, it will take 10 years or more. And it would probably have to be coupled with technical-professional schooling starting at age 14-16 to be able to move industrialization faster.

Probably would take heavy approach to law and disallow playing any games in "narco democracy". But them's the cards.

[Sarevok]

In other words you are looking at a generation long commitment. I don't think any politician in USA would support that. They never had a plan to industrilize Afganistan. The war in Afganistan satisfied the initial thirst for revenge following 911. Now regardless of whether Nato pulls out or eradicates more Taliban Afganistan is going to stay as a violent, war torn third world country. Nation building is a huge task. The americans never had a sincere desire to do that.

[The Grim Squeaker]

In other words you are looking at a generation long commitment. I don't think any politician in USA would support that. They never had a plan to industrilize Afganistan. The war in Afganistan satisfied the initial thirst for revenge following 911. Now regardless of whether Nato pulls out or eradicates more Taliban Afganistan is going to stay as a violent, war torn third world country. Nation building is a huge task. The americans never had a sincere desire to do that.

Germany, Japan, decades spent in Vietnam (although that failed, but they spent decades investing there and trying to establish a state).
If you just meant Afghanistan, then yeah.

[K. A. Pital]

Nation building is a huge task. The americans never had a sincere desire to do that

Yeah, not post-WWII settings, anyway.

...decades spent in Vietnam (although that failed, but they spent decades investing there and trying to establish a state).

Supporting the ARVN was not the same as nation-building in Vietnam. In fact, in Vietnam the USA poorly did on nation-building. How many factories did they build, or allocate money (but monitor it's spending)? Giving aid is not the same as industrializing. I'm sure the USA gives hefty billions to the narco-mafiosi that run Kabul now, too.

South Korea is a much better example. The USA basically moved so much aid into there that a war-ravaged nation once again had enough capital to industrialize. Well, that and the chaebols.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Um, Stas, there have been huge investments in Afghan education, with the occupying forces building dozens of schools, universities, etc. Last I heard, there was also a lot of development in infrastructure in the forms of roads and cell phone towers and junk, but since all that would be a prerequisite to heavy industry anyway, it's not particularly fair to blame America here.

[KlavoHunter]

Nation building is a huge task. The americans never had a sincere desire to do that

Yeah, not post-WWII settings, anyway.

It helps that both Germany and Japan were already fully modern countries and just needed some fixing up, as opposed to having to build that nation from scratch.

[fgalkin]

I am hardly an expert in these things, but it seems to me that this article is full of shit.

Before the Obama administration buys into General Stanley McChrystal's escalation strategy, it might spend some time examining the August 12 battle of Dananeh, a scruffy little town of 2,000 perched at the entrance to the Naw Zad Valley in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province.

Dananeh is a textbook example of why counterinsurgency won't work in that country, as well as a case study in military thinking straight out of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.
Strategic Towns

According to the United States, the purpose of the attack was to seize a "strategic" town, cut "Taliban supply lines," and secure the area for the presidential elections. Taking Dananeh would also "outflank the insurgents," "isolating" them in the surrounding mountains and forests.

What is wrong with this scenario?

One, the concept of a "strategic" town of 2,000 people in a vast country filled with tens of thousands of villages like Dananeh is bizarre.

Why? All villages are created equal? Population size is the only thing to go by? Things like location don't matter at all? Hell, he even says its "perched at the entrance to the Naw Zad Valley in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province" Besides, according to this guy's own description,

And by defending the cities, exactly whom will U.S. troops be protecting? When it comes to Afghanistan, "major" population centers are almost a contradiction in terms. There are essentially five cities in the country, Kabul (2.5 million), Kandahar (331,000), Mazar-e-Sharif (200,000), Herat (272,000), and Jalalabad (20,000). Those five cities make up a little more than 10% of the population, over half of which is centered in Kabul. the rest of the population is rural, living in towns of 1,500 or fewer, smaller even than Dananeh.

So, Dananeh is actually LARGER than most towns.

Two, the Taliban don't have "flanks." They are a fluid, irregular force, not an infantry company dug into a set position. "Flanking" an enemy is what you did to the Wehrmacht in World War II.

And irregular forces don't have flanks? Do they magically teleport in and out of wherever they want to go?

Three, "Taliban supply lines" are not highways and rail intersections. They're goat trails.

And goat trails can climb up sheer cliffs? The article says the town is sitting at the mouth of a valley. Anything that goes in and out of it must pass by it. It doesn't matter if it's a truck or a donkey.

Four, "isolate" the Taliban in the surrounding mountains and forests? Obviously, no one in the Pentagon has ever read the story of Brer Rabbit, who taunted his adversary with the famous words, "Please don't throw me in the briar patch, Brer Fox." Mountains and forests are where the Taliban move freely.

What will they eat in the mountains? Grass? Rocks? Lichen? I don't think he quite realizes that people are not goats and generally don't live on mountains, but rather in valleys where they can grow things.

The Taliban were also not the slightest bit surprised when the United States showed up. When the Marines helicoptered in at night, all was quiet. At dawn — the Taliban have no night-fighting equipment — the insurgents opened up with rockets, mortars, and machine guns. "I am pretty sure they knew of it [the attack] in advance," Golf Company commander Captain Zachary Martin told the Associated Press.

Good for them

Pinned down, the Marines brought in air power and artillery and, after four days of fierce fighting, took the town. But the Taliban had decamped on the third night. The outcome? A chewed-up town and 12 dead insurgents — that is, if you don't see a difference between an "insurgent" and a villager who didn't get out in time, so that all the dead are automatically members of the Taliban.

"I'd say we've gained a foothold for now, and it's a substantial one that we're not going to let go," says Martin. "I think this has the potential to be a watershed."

Only if hallucinations become the order of the day.
Irregular Warfare

The battle of Dananeh was a classic example of irregular warfare. The locals tip off the guerrillas that the army is coming. The Taliban set up an ambush, fight until the heavy firepower comes in, then slip away.

By giving up the town?

"Taliban fighters and their commanders have escaped the Marines' big offensive into Afghanistan's Helmand province and moved into areas to the west and north, prompting fears that the U.S. effort has just moved the Taliban problem elsewhere," writes Nancy Youssef of the McClatchy newspapers.

Who is this Nancy Youssef and why should I care what she writes?

When the Taliban went north they attacked German and Italian troops.

How well did they do?

In short, the insurgency is adjusting. "To many of the Americans, it appeared as if the insurgents had attended something akin to the U.S. Army's Ranger school, which teaches soldiers how to fight in small groups in austere environments," writes Karen DeYoung in The Washington Post.

Some of the older generation of insurgents DID.

Actually, the Afghans have been doing that for some time, as Greeks, Mongols, British, and Russians discovered.

One Pentagon officer told the Post that the Taliban has been using the Korengal Valley that borders Pakistan as a training ground. It's "a perfect lab to vet fighters and study U.S. tactics," he said, and to learn how to gauge the response time for U.S. artillery, air strikes, and helicopter assaults. "They know exactly how long it takes before...they have to break contact and pull back."

Just like they did at Dananeh.

What exactly are they accomplishing by pulling back? Wasting Coalition ammo and maybe kill a few soldiers? I'm pretty sure the US troops are better supplied than the Taliban, so I'm not sure what they're accomplishing.

But spreading the troops into small firebases makes them extremely vulnerable, as the United States found out in early September, when eight soldiers were killed in an attack on a small unit in the Kamdesh district of Nuristan province. The base was abandoned a week later and, according to the Asia Times, is now controlled by the Taliban.
MRAP Attack

So, he's trying to argue that it's pointless for the US to take and hold strategic points...by using an example of the Taliban taking and holding a strategic point....

The Afghanistan War can only be solved by sitting all the parties down and working out a political settlement. Since the Taliban have already made a seven-point peace proposal, that hardly seems an insurmountable task.

And we can trust them to keep their word...how? An alliance of tribal fighters is hardly the most centralized government.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[K. A. Pital]

Um, Stas, there have been huge investments in Afghan education, with the occupying forces building dozens of schools, universities, etc.

Any solid numbers on that? "Dozens" of schools is decidedly not enough to educate even a fucking city. Much less a multimillion nation. Either it's thousands of schools, or it's posturing.

Last I heard, there was also a lot of development in infrastructure in the forms of roads and cell phone towers and junk, but since all that would be a prerequisite to heavy industry anyway, it's not particularly fair to blame America here.

Cell phones are not pre-requisite to heavy industry. Even Somalia has cell phones spreading. That has jack and shit to do with giving the populace a viable heavy industry to work on.

[hongi]

with the occupying forces building dozens of schools, universities, etc.

Even with the building of thousands of schools, which needs to happen (there are over 15 million Afghans between the ages of 0-14, nearly half their population), there needs to be a massive education push from the government (read: money), otherwise all you'll have is a bunch of schools and very little to show for it. Where will the teachers come from?

[Simplicius]

Any solid numbers on that? "Dozens" of schools is decidedly not enough to educate even a fucking city. Much less a multimillion nation. Either it's thousands of schools, or it's posturing.

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction gives a highlight in the October quarterly report:

Number of schools increased to 11,000, including 6,072 primary, 3,062 middle, and 1,866 high schools

61 million textbooks - 38 million for primary and 22.8 million for secondary schools - published and distributed

317,000 Afghans, 36 percent of them women, graduated from literacy programs

And further on:

Approximately 53.5% of Afghan children (6.7 million) attended school in 2009. The Afghan Ministry of Education (MoE) has estimated that 37% of the children attending school are girls. According to USAID, there are still an estimated 5.3 million Afghan children who are not enrolled in any education program.

The provided chart indicates that the vast majority of these children in school are in Grades 1-8, what would be primary education in the US.

Teacher shortages are one of the main challenges to the educational development program identified by the report:

the low education levels of teachers, including limited teaching credentials
.
.
.
Access to female teachers is also a challenge. Of 415 educational districts in the country, approximately 200 have no female teachers. The limited availability of female teachers diminishes the chance that girls can attend school.

Cell phones are not pre-requisite to heavy industry. Even Somalia has cell phones spreading. That has jack and shit to do with giving the populace a viable heavy industry to work on.

Highlights in industrial development:

The total electricity supply has increased from 485 MW in 2007 to 630 MW (including imports) in 2009.

Detailed studies for the construction of several large dams have been completed.

Some 13,000 water supply networks have been established and are providing access to potable water to 2.8 million rural people.

Improvements in small-scale irrigation systems in 1,891 villages have beneifitted 644,777 households.

Agricultural gains include 53,000 metric tonnes of wheat seed and fertilizer delivered to farmers, 770 orchards established, 588 pistachio forests rehabilitated, and 3.2 million saplings planted

Land surveys of a 339-square-km area identified 500 gas fields and 400 mineral deposits

Approximately 2,961 km of regional roads have been constructed. However, the ANDS report observes that there has been no progress in the development of a fiscally sustainable system for road maintenance.

The Afghanistan Ring Road is presently "approximately half" completed/repaired. When complete, "60% of Afghans will live within 50 km of the road." However, statistics about Afghan roads in that report primarily cite their benefit to farmers.

Agriculture and small business are the main industries mentioned in the report. It also states that USAID is focusing on economic policy and trade, financial sector development, and business competitiveness. There is no mention of attempting to create a heavy industry sector of the economy.

So it's a mixed bag. To be honest, given how the US has let its own industrial sector degrade, I can't imagine that it has the know-how, resources, or inclination to build heavy industry sectors in other countries.