The value of American troops in Afghanistan

Kevin Drum refers to two excellent discussions (How to Save Afghanistan by Rory Stewart and Behind the Indian Embassy Bombing by Robert Kaplan.) on how to deal with the problems in Afghanistan. The two discussions reach the same conclusion, which Kevin summarizes as

Afghanistan is not primarily a military problem. We can't and shouldn't abandon Afghanistan as we did in the early 90s, but our presence should be targeted, tightly constrained, and mostly economic and diplomatic. There's a place for counterinsurgency there, but not for tens of thousands more troops trying vainly to control hundreds of thousands of square miles of unfriendly territory.

Afghanistan is one location causing problem in a Middle East that is roiled with the problems of the continued conflict between (the nuclear armed) Pakistan and India, compounded by the aggressiveness of Iran, all of with has been made worse by the misguided American invasion and the subsequent collapse of the state of Iraq. It doesn't help that Pakistan itself is close to being a failed state with large areas inside its borders where the government does not control what happens.

The ISI of Pakistan - in many ways an uncontrolled state-within-the-state of Pakistan - is fixated on its war with India and sees Afghanistan as a theater of that war. So they are actively encouraging the Taliban (again) to hide out in the Pakistani borderlands and attack both Karsai government and the NATO troops in Afghanistan. None of this has been helped by the efforts of the Karsai government to develop closer relations with the government and military of India, but with the ISI of Pakistan actively trying to remove the karsai government, that is one of Karsai's best options. In the absence of a strong central government of Pakistan that could reign in the ISI and the fact that the U.S. has no remaining troops to send and no capability to conduct effective diplomatic assistance, Karsai has little alternative. (It would be interesting to know if funds from Islamic extremists in Saudi Arabia were funding the ISI in its efforts to support the Taliban push to reconquer Afghanistan as they were two decades ago.)

The discussion above should not be construed to say that the ISI is the source of all the problems in Afghanistan. A brief timeline of ISI operations connected to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, the Soviet Union and others clearly shows that Pakistan faces numerous threats to its existence. That list shows an indication of just how unstable the entire Middle East - South Asia area is and has been since at least WW II. (By the way, a major reason given for the American invasion of Iraq was to create a free market democracy that would be a model for the rest of the region to try to calm the turmoil. Such an ignorant, naive and simplistic effort never had a chance, of course. It merely added to the problems by removing the relatively stable government of Iraq and giving the Shiite portions of Iraq over to Iran.)

So what are more American troops to do in Afghanistan? Without putting American troops along the Afghanistan border almost shoulder to shoulder and more troops on every crossroads and intersection within Afghanistan, there really is very little that conventional troops can do in Afghanistan.

All of which is completely irrelevant to American policy in a Presidential election year when American voters are afraid and are looking for a Presidential strong-man who will protect America from the radical terrorists being created by all that Islamic/Hindu conflict. Especially since the conflict is more about population pressures, modernization and the western exploitation of oil producing nations for their oil wealth, combined with the absence of strong nation states in the region. Religion is more of a reaction to the other problems than it is the cause of them.

Even if more troops were the solution, the U.S. is totally tied down now in Iraq. There is only one place to get more American troops, so Obama is promising to break loose three brigades and send them to Afghanistan. McCain is making similar tough-man noises. What those troops would do once they reached the superb guerrilla territory of Afghanistan is not mentioned from either camp. Exactly like the occupation of the conquered Iraq has been since weeks after the initial invasion, Afghanistan is becoming a theater of shadow puppets designed to distract the American voters and make the Presidential candidates each look tougher. What is happening in Afghanistan is unimportant except for how it causes American voters to vote to choose the next President. The result is that the media presents nothing but shadows and uninformed images manipulated by American political actors and designed to influence votes instead of policies.

Want to look tough on terrorism? Promise to send more troops to Afghanistan. Until recently it was a cheap promise, although the apparent shifting of Islamic fighters from Iraq appears to have caused an increase in America casualties in Afghanistan as experience guerrillas have redeployed their experience with IEDs from Iraq to Afghanistan.

How much better argument against a country-by-country strategy of deploying military do you want? It's whack-a-mole, and the military by itself is a poor mole-whacking hammer as the Soviets proved on the same battle ground in the 80's. And they had a lot more troops to send than we do.

We can't just leave Afghanistan as Bush 41 did two decades ago, but the problems there will not be solved by sending more troops and blowing more stuff up; And it damned sure won't be solved by frightened voters casting a vote for the presidential candidate who talks toughest. Kaplan makes a very important point when he says "we are in danger of conceiving of war in narrow military terms alone, and thus getting the politics wrong." Kevin is right. "...our presence should be targeted, tightly constrained, and mostly economic and diplomatic."

Kevin's approach has the advantage of being something that might work, unlike sending more (but never enough) troops. It also has a second major advantage - it's an approach America might be able to afford considering the hollowed out under-trained and poorly equipped Army and Marine Corps Bush and Cheney have left for us to use.

None of this matters until after November 4th, unless Cheney is allowed to do something utterly stupid between now and January 20th. American policy toward Afghanistan and the Middle East in general is not going to move forward while Bush remains President, and we aren't even going to hear much that makes sense during the Presidential campaigns. That doesn't mean things aren't going to get worse in the Middle East or that the U.S. government won't do something utterly stupid (again.) It just means that there is no room for even discussion of a rational policy until January 20th - and not afterwards if McCain steals wins Bush's third term.

The systemic problem in using Blackwater in a combat zone

As described in my previous post the Blackwater mercenary bodyguards working for the Department of State were caught on tape killing at least eight Iraqis caught in Baghdad traffic. I described there how detrimental the killings were to any effective counterinsurgency effort in Iraq. Here I want to explain why I think they did what they did. It was a natural and normal mistake which is seen in infantry training exercises regularly, and is corrected only by good leadership and a lot of unit-level training.

Operating in a combat zone is a scary situation. You don't have to be paranoid to think everyone you see is out to kill you, because a lot of them really are. You understand that every time a you hear a shot fired anywhere.

So any time a person hears the shooting start they immediately find targets. Frequently they consider any movement or unexpected sound to be a target. In Baghdad, where the major weapon of choice is a car bomb, and moving car is a target. If not restrained the soldier will fire on the selected targets.

This is the natural, normal reaction of any group of armed soldiers who think they have come under fire. But few individuals can tell the difference between those shots fired at them and those fired by their fellow soldiers. A well-trained unit will not return fire until directed and released to do so by a commander they know and trust.

That trust takes a lot of time, experience and training as a unit to develop. A unit cannot go out and hire an experienced individual and make him into a leader his subordinates trust simply by assigning the rank and position. The trust and respect come only from training and experience as a unit. But mercenary units - like Blackwater, USA - have strong incentives NOT to spend time conducting unit level-training.

A mercenary unit is not paid to train. They are paid to perform the final function they were hired for. Training beyond simple entry-level indoctrination is not a cost their masters will want to pay for, and someone will offer their services without those costs built in, so the contracting process guarantees minimally trained units will be hired. Besides, effective extensive training cuts very heavily into the bottom-line of the owner of the mercenary organization. The result is that experienced well-trained units of government troops will almost always perform better than mercenaries will.

Roman troops were highly trained using effective organizational tactics, so that unless they were ambushed or very much outnumbered, then usually defeated their opponents. During the Thirty years war, government troops usually defeated mercenaries. War, or a counterinsurgency like Malaya, Vietnam and Iraq, is not fought by individuals as much as by organizations.

It is my opinion that the Blackwater troops in Baghdad suffered from a failure of leadership. Even in a convoy of only four SUV's, someone should have been in charge. The troops should not have fired until released, and if they did start shooting on their one, the leaders should have stopped the shooting before eight civilians were killed. The very system of using overpaid private contractors instead of trained government troops means that such control will be unlikely.

Blackwater will rightfully be blamed, but this is also another cost of trying to deal with the counterinsurgency that resulted from the ill-advised occupation of Iraq with too few forces. That blame goes directly back through Rumsfeld and Cheney to George W. Bush.

Blackwater mercenaries unjustified shootings were caught on tape.

Blackwater USA has proven what Europe knew at the end of the Thirty-Years War. Mercenary armies are over-priced and lack the professionalism, training and control necessary to achieve effective results in a combat situation, even assuming they can be convinced to fight.

While Blackwater may be keeping American diplomats alive, their murderous cowboy antics lose the battle for the hearts and minds of the local population in the Iraqi counterinsurgency. They proved it again when they shot up a bunch of civilians because a car did not get out of their way fast enough in Baghdad traffic. The New York Times provides the report based on the investigation conducted by the Iraqi government.

BAGHDAD, Sept. 21 — Iraq’s Ministry of Interior has concluded that employees of a private American security firm fired an unprovoked barrage in the shooting last Sunday in which at least eight Iraqis were killed [Snip]

In the first comprehensive account of the day’s events, the Iraqi Ministry of Interior said that security guards for Blackwater fired on Iraqis in their cars in midday traffic.

The document concludes that the dozens of foreign security companies here should be replaced by Iraqi companies, and that a law that has given the companies immunity for years be scrapped. [Snip]

In the Interior Ministry account — made available to The New York Times on Thursday — Iraqi investigators interviewed many witnesses but relied on the testimony of the people they considered to be the four most credible.

The account says that as soon as the guards took positions in four locations in the square, they began shooting south, killing a driver who had failed to heed a traffic policeman’s call to stop.

“The Blackwater company is considered 100 percent guilty through this investigation,” the report concludes.

The shooting enraged Iraqis, in part because they feel powerless to bring the security companies to account.
[Highlighting mine - Editor, WTF-o.]

Here is the description of the event as described in the report of the Iraqi government investigation:

The report said that Mr. Maliki had “demanded” that the State Department drop Blackwater as a protector, “for the sake of the two nations’ reputation.”

In the Interior Ministry’s version of that day, the events began unfolding when a bomb exploded shortly before noon near the unfinished Rahman Mosque, about a mile north of Nisour Square. Embassy officials have said the convoy was responding to the bomb, but it is still unclear whether it was carrying officials away from the bomb scene, driving toward it to pick someone up or simply providing support.

Whatever their mission, and whoever was inside, the convoy of at least four sport utility vehicles steered onto the square just after noon and took positions that blocked the flow of midday traffic in three directions. But one family’s car, approaching from the south along Yarmouk Street, apparently did not stop quickly enough, and the Blackwater guards opened fire, killing the man who was driving, the ministry account says.

“The woman next to the driver had a baby in her arms,” said an official who shared the report, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to share it. “She started to scream. They shot her,” the official said, adding that the guards then fired what appeared to be grenades or pump guns into the car as it continued to move. The car caught fire.

“The car kept rolling, so they burned it,” the official said.

The account said that the guards entered the square shooting, although Ali Khalaf, a traffic policeman who watched events from a flimsy white traffic booth on the edge of the square and spoke in an interview on Thursday, said a guard got out of the sport utility vehicle and fired.

Mr. Khalaf, who has also been interviewed by American investigators, spoke standing near his traffic booth on Thursday afternoon. He said that he had tried to reach the woman in the seconds after the man she was riding with was shot. But a Blackwater guard killed the woman before he could reach her, Mr. Khalaf said.

What is still unknown is when, or if, Iraqi security forces stationed in at least two compounds adjacent to the square began firing their own weapons.

If the Iraqis began firing early in the episode, investigators could conclude that the Blackwater guards believed they were under attack and were justified in conducting what they might have considered to be a counterattack. Some of the casualties could also have been caused by bullets fired by Iraqis.

Mr. Khalaf, though, said that he never fired a shot. When one of the American investigators asked why he did not fire at the Blackwater convoy, Mr. Khalaf said, his answer was simple.

“I told him I am not authorized to shoot, and my job is to look after the traffic,” Mr. Khalaf said.

CNN reports that the Iraqis have videotapes of the incident raqi official says video shows Blackwater guards firing on civilians.

For what it's worth, I do not blame the individual Blackwater troops for this incident. Any combat zone is an extremely frightening place to be, and professional soldiers have an ethic that instead of running from where the shooting is, like civilians, instead they run to the sound of gunfire. I have no doubt that the Blackwater employees are that kind of professional.

Beyond the eight civilians killed, this incident is as much a loss in the counterinsurgency in Iraq as Abu Ghraib was. It was a failure of leadership of a type much more common to mercenary troops than to trained government troops, and it doesn't help that the contract that Blackwater has is with the Department of State, not with the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense simply does not have the necessary professional expertise required to properly control Blackwater or any other mercenary force operating in a combat zone.

See my next post for the mechanics of the problem.

Stupidity in action again - America in Iraq

Let's see. In Iraq the insurgents are hiring today, and working to get the American occupiers out of their country. In the meantime, the American Republican free marketers don't want to reopen the old state-run Iraqi industries because that runs counter to the grand idea of creating Iraq as a free market economy someday far in the future -- maybe. So the unemployed workers have the choice of not working, or joining the fight to get the Americans out of Iraq. It seems reasonable that if a lot more Iraqis were working, they wouldn't want to join the insurgents, doesn't it?

So when Paul Brinkley, a deputy undersecretary of defense, started to reopen Iraqi state-run industries to hire Iraqis and allow them to earn a living to support their families, the State Department has gone up in arms. Americans should not rehabilitate the Iraqi industries because that opposes the Utopian free market ideology ideas that America should be installing promoting encouraging in Iraq for some future utopia there.

I guess the idea is that we shouldn't offer beans-and-rice to eat today because then the Iraqis won't be encouraged to work for the glorious feast they might prepare next week or so.

[From Think Progress.]