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Oman 1965-1976
From Certain Defeat to Decisive Victory
by Jim White, Small Wars Journal

Oman 1965-1976 (Full PDF Article)

An often-overlooked counterinsurgency campaign of the mid-20th century was the one that raged from 1965-1976 in the Sultanate of Oman. Overshadowed by the larger conflicts that engulfed Southeast Asia, by 1970 a communist-led insurgency in the Southern Omani province of Dhofar (Dhufar) came very close to achieving victory over the British-backed government of the Sultan. However, in a remarkable turnabout grounded in time-tested counterinsurgency ‘best practices,’ by 1976 the communist insurgency had been defeated and government control restored to this strategically located nation. This paper will describe the causes of the insurgency, the actions of the insurgents and counterinsurgents, and finally, the factors that led to the success of the government and the defeat of the insurgency.

Oman 1965-1976 (Full PDF Article)

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Who said Army doctrine writers don't have a sense of humor? Well - okay - but this brought a smile to our small mugs. Kudos CADD and a hat tip to LTC Shawn Stroud for sending this along.

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Coalition in Afghanistan Completes Investigation Into Aug. 22 Engagement - American Forces Press Service

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, Sept. 2, 2008 – Intense enemy fire justified actions taken by Afghan and U.S. forces during an Aug. 22 engagement in which several civilians and more than 30 Taliban fighters were killed in western Afghanistan, a coalition investigation has concluded.

The investigation found that Afghan and U.S. forces began taking fire from Taliban militants as the combined force approached its objective in Azizabad, Herat province, during a planned offensive operation in the pre-dawn hours.

The intensity of the enemy fire justified use of well-aimed small-arms fire and close-air support to defend the combined force, investigators concluded, adding that the type and application of fires were used in accordance with existing rules of engagement.

The investigation found that 30 to 35 Taliban militants were killed, and it revealed evidence suggesting a known Taliban commander, Mullah Sadiq, was among them, officials said. Five to seven civilians were killed, the investigation determined. Two civilians were injured and were treated by coalition forces, and five Taliban were detained.

Officials said investigators determined the range in the casualty numbers by observation of the enemy movements during the engagement as well as on-site observations immediately following the engagement.

In addition, investigators discovered firm evidence that the militants planned to attack a nearby coalition base, officials said. Other evidence collected included weapons, explosives, intelligence materials, and an access badge to a nearby base, as well as photographs from inside and outside of the base.

The engagement disrupted any planned attack, officials said.

The investigating officer took statements from more than 30 Afghan and U.S. participants. The investigating officer also reviewed reports made by ground and air personnel during the engagement; video taken during the engagement; topographic photo comparisons of the area before and after the event, including analysis of burial sites; reports from local medical clinics and hospitals; intelligence reports; and physical data and photographs collected on the site, coalition officials said.

Local government officials and Afghan coalition forces were denied entry into the village the day following the event. No other evidence that may have been collected by other organizations was provided to the U.S. investigating officer and therefore could not be considered in the findings, Combined Joint Task Force 101 officials reported.

The results of the investigation were provided to Army Gen. David McKiernan, commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, for his use as part of a joint inquiry into the incident.

Coalition officials said the investigating officer conducted the investigation using methods prescribed by U.S. Army Regulation 15-6, Procedures for Investigating Officers and Boards of Officers.

(From a Combined Joint Task Force 101 news release.)

US Rejects Claims of Afghan Deaths - Candace Rondeaux and Javed Hamdard, Washington Post

US military officials on Tuesday flatly rejected claims by the United Nations and the Afghan government that a US airstrike in western Afghanistan two weeks ago killed at least 90 Afghan civilians, saying that a complete investigation into the incident found that only five civilians were killed.

A review of video footage and photos, and an analysis of burial sites after the strike in Azizabad village in Herat province in the early morning of Aug. 22, found that 30 to 35 Taliban insurgents and five civilian relatives of a Taliban commander died in the attack, according to a summary of the findings released Tuesday. Two other civilians were injured, it said.

Interviews with 30 American and Afghan participants in the military operation further reinforced the conclusion that the incident's toll was considerably lower than those suggested by eyewitnesses, the summary said.

More at the Washington Post, New York Times and Washington Times.

Related Sites:

Combined Joint Task Force 101
NATO International Security Assistance Force

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This commentary piece, by COL Gian Gentile, posted in yesterday's SWJ Roundup, has generated several comments (here and here) is reposted here as a stand-alone item.

Is the US Army Ready for Conventional War? - Gian Gentile, Christian Science Monitor opinion

Images of Georgian infantry moving under fire and Russian tanks on the attack show that the days of like armies fighting one another on battlefields are far from over.

What does this mean for the US Army? As it considers its role after Iraq, should it be restructured for war and conflict along the lines of counterinsurgency and nation-building, or toward conventional fighting as represented by the Georgian war?

Armies trained to fight conventional warfare can quickly and effectively shift to counterinsurgency and nation-building. Contrary to popular belief, the US Army proved this in Iraq.

Its lightning advance up to Baghdad in the spring of 2003 happened because it was a conventionally minded army, trained for fighting large battles.

If the Army had focused the majority of its time and resources prior to the Iraq war on counterinsurgency and nation-building, the march to Baghdad would have been much more costly in American lives and treasure.

Critics argue that because the Army did not prepare for counterinsurgency prior to the Iraq war, it fumbled for the first four years of the war until rescued by the surge in February 2007.

Not true, according to "On Point II," a Army history of the Iraq war by Donald Wright and Timothy Reece. In fact, according to this book, the US Army very quickly transitioned from the conventional fighting mode. By the end of 2003, the Army – which spent much of the 1980s and 1990s training to fight large battles – moved into the successful conduct of "full-spectrum" counterinsurgency and nation-building operations.

More at The Christian Science Monitor.

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Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search For a Way Out of Iraq

After a series of disastrous missteps in its conduct of the war, the White House in 2006 appointed General David Petraeus as the Commanding General of the coalition forces. Tell Me How This Ends is an inside account of his attempt to turn around a failing war.

Wednesday, 10 September

Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at SAIS

Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search For a Way Out of Iraq

4:30 p.m. - Kenney Auditorium, Nitze Building

Linda Robinson, author-in-residence at the Merrill Center, will discuss Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search For a Way Out of Iraq, her new book about General David Petraeus, the surge and the future of Iraq policy. John Nagl, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a retired Army officer who served in Iraq; Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and senior author of the Iraq Index; and Thomas Keaney (moderator), acting director of the Merrill Center; will provide commentary. A reception and booking signing will follow the discussion. For more information and to RSVP, contact ckunkel4@jhu.edu or 202.663.5772.

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The September – October 2008 issue of Military Review is now online. Lineup below.

Multi-National Force-Iraq Commander’s Counterinsurgency Guidance - General David H. Petraeus, U.S. Army

General Petraeus outlines the essential tasks necessary for successful counterinsurgency operations in Iraq.

The Baby and the Bathwater: Changing Times or Changing Principles? - Colonel John Mark Mattox, U.S. Army

Principles of war have not changed, even if tactics, techniques, and procedures have.

Discipline, Punishment, and Counterinsurgency- Scott Andrew Ewing

Vague regulations encourages NCOs to disguise arbitrary punishments as extra training may be contributing to abuse of civilians during operations.

Institutionalizing Adaptation: It’s Time for an Army Advisor Command - Dr. John A. Nagl, LTC, U.S. Army, Retired

Institutionalizing and professionalizing the manning and training of combat advisors is an American strategic necessity.

Integrating the Advisory Effort in the Army: A Full Spectrum Solution - Major Michael D. Jason, U.S. Army

The author proposes creating a new U.S. Army “Advisor Command” at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, under control of Forces Command in collaboration with Training and Doctrine Command.

From Tactical Planning to Operational Design - Major Ketti Davison, U.S. Army

“Effects-based operations” may be banished from the joint lexicon, but a coherent operational design remains necessary for effectively understanding the emergent qualities of complex environments.

An Innovative Approach to Blast Injury Recovery - Colonel Karl D. Reed, U.S. Army

Caring for mild traumatic brain injury is challenging for the military and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Sports medicine’s “best practices” can revolutionize treatment of such injuries for Soldiers.

In Uncle Sam’s Backyard: China’s Military Influence in Latin America - Loro Horta

Beijing’s rising economic and political influence in Latin America may pave the way for major Chinese arms sales and expansion of China’s military influence.

Waging Counterinsurgency in Algeria: A French Point of View - Lieutenant Colonel Philippe Francois, French Marine Infantry

The history of the French-Algerian War contains illuminating lessons that can help shape COIN operations today.

Operation BOA: A Counterfactual History of the Battle for Shah-I-Kot - Colonel Robert D. Hyde, USAF; and Colonel Mark D. Kelly, USAF; Colonel William F. Andrews, USA

The authors present a counterfactual version of what might have happened in Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan.

Leadership Success Strategies of U.S. Army Women General Officers - Lieutenant Colonel Yvonne Doll, U.S. Army, Retired

Women general officers reflect on what it took to succeed.

Amnesty, Reintegration, and Reconciliation in Rwanda - Major Jeffrey H. Powell, U.S. Army

Failure to grant amnesty has mired the reconciliation process in Rwanda after the genocide there in 1994.

Winning Battles but Losing Wars: Three Ways Successes in Combat Promote Failures in Peace - Christopher E. Housenick, Ph.D.

The American way of war may be an obstacle to the best outcomes in a workable peace.

A National Security Strategy for the Next Administration - Amitai Etzioni

Professor Etzioni analyzes a recent proposal for post-Bush foreign policy and America’s future strategic posture.

Finding the Flow: Shadow Economies, Ethnic Networks, and Counterinsurgency - Captain Robert M. Chamberlain, U.S. Army

Does reuniting Iraq’s religious communities represent the best hope for the fledgling democracy, or is it a hopeless quest to turn back the clock?

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Counterinsurgency and Military Culture: State Regulars versus Non-State Irregulars by Robert M. Cassidy in the 2008 edition of the Baltic Security and Defence Review, the annual publication of the Baltic Defence College.

“Any good soldier can handle guerrillas.”
Krepinevich, 1986:37

“Our enemies understand that irregular warfare
is the bane of regular military traditions.”
Cassidy, 2007:44

The first quote is attributed to the U.S. Army Chief of Staff during 1961 when the U.S. Army was on the verge of escalating its commitment to help fight insurgents in the jungles of Vietnam. The officer to whom the first quote is attributed was steeped in the conventions of regular Army forces’ organization, training, and education. The second quote is an inference about the difficulties that obtain when big power militaries attempt to fight against irregular adversaries without adapting their methods to meet the exigencies of irregular warfare. U.S military operations in Somalia from 1992 to 1994 under the aegis of the UN saw the operation evolve from peace enforcement into what was essentially irregular warfare in and around Mogadishu. By June 1993, U.S. Soldiers and Marines were fighting a counter-guerrilla war against Mohammed Farah Aideed’s irregulars. The October 3rd – 4th, 1993, battle in Mogadishu was the culminating battle which saw U.S. regular and elite infantry battalions, along with special operators, fighting out of the city against swarming irregulars. In fact, the battle in Mogadishu that night represented the most intense light infantry battle experienced by the U.S. Army since Vietnam at that time. Rangers, special operators, and the infantrymen of the 10th Mountain Division acquitted themselves with courage and élan in the most difficult of circumstances. However, the ultimate outcome of Somalia, where the U.S. pulled its military forces out, would seem to refute the veracity of the first quote above and attest to the merit of the second one. In Somalia, American forces possessed a technological advantage and an ostensible numerical advantage in regular military formations. Yet in this first experiment with irregular warfare after the end of the Cold War, the big conventional war military cultural orientation of the American military was manifest, as it had for many years almost exclusively focused on regular or, conventional war. The regular military forces of the U.S. faced Somali indigenous forces which employed the irregular methods of the insurgent…

More at Baltic Security and Defence Review.

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Iran: Assessing US Strategic Options - James N. Miller, Christine Parthemore, Kurt M. Campbell, Center for a New American Security

Dealing with Iran and its nuclear program will be an urgent priority for the next president. In order to evaluate US policy options, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) convened a bipartisan group of experts on foreign policy and national security, retired military personnel, former diplomats and other government officials, and specialists on Iran and the region. Ambassador Dennis Ross presented a paper on diplomatic strategies for dealing with Iran, and Dr. Suzanne Maloney wrote on potential Iranian responses. Dr. Ashton Carter evaluated various US military options, and Dr. Vali Nasr described likely Iranian reactions and other potential impacts. Ambassador Richard Haass considered the challenges of living with a nuclear Iran. Each of these papers represents an important contribution to a much-needed national discussion on US policy toward Iran. Based on these papers and expert group discussion, as well as additional research and analysis, three CNAS authors (Dr. James Miller, Christine Parthemore, and Dr. Kurt Campbell) proposed that the next administration pursue “game-changing diplomacy” with Iran. While both Iran and the international community would be better off if Iran plays ball, game-changing diplomacy is designed to improve prospects for the United States and the international community irrespective of how Iran responds.

More at CNAS.

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Received via e-mail and posted to SWJ - The August 2008 Consortium for Complex Operations (CCO) Newsletter.

The latest on the CCO. This edition of the newsletter includes information on a number of initiatives, including a workshop co-sponsored with the U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) on education and training, a task force to recommend options for a lessons learned process, an interview with Dr. Steven Metz on his latest scholarship on high value targeting in counterinsurgency, upcoming events in the complex operations community and more.

Please feel free to forward this newsletter to colleagues who may not have heard of the CCO and who might be interested in their activities.

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Prioritizing the Reconstruction of Critical Infrastructure within a Stability Operation Environment
A New Methodology
by Major Travis (TJ) Lindberg and Dr. David A. Anderson, Small Wars Journal

Prioritizing the Reconstruction of Critical Infrastructure (Full PDF Article)

As of 31 March 2008, total funding for Iraq reconstruction stood at $112.52 billion, with the United States footing $46.3 billion of that amount in appropriated funds. Unfortunately, as decision-makers are well aware, there is no assurance that massive expenditures on critical infrastructure projects within a stability operations environment can ensure long-term stability in an affected country. Thomas Friedman, in his bestseller, The World is Flat, states repeatedly that the best way to ensure long-term stability is through economic integration with the modern world. However, the stability operations and counterinsurgency literature clearly states that before the desirable conditions of economic development and integration into the world economic system can sustain themselves, the host nation (HN) must be able to govern itself effectively and maintain a monopoly on the use of force within its own borders – neither of which is possible until the most fundamental “Maslow” needs of an affected population, such as physical security and essential services, are met.

Prioritizing the Reconstruction of Critical Infrastructure (Full PDF Article)

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Managing Foreign Policy and National Security Challenges in Presidential Transitions by Kurt M. Campbell and James B. Steinberg, The Washington Quarterly

The process of transferring power from a sitting U.S. president to a president-elect is one of the most distinctive and perilous features of the American constitutional system - a time of great hope and optimism, but also one of great risk. From the earliest days of the Cold War, how the old and new leaders have navigated this strait has literally been a matter of survival for the United States and for the stability and prosperity of the entire world.

The end of the Cold War has changed the nature of the dangers, but in many ways the two-and-a-half-month transition that will take place at the end of this year poses even greater challenges than in the past. These 72 days are fraught with suspense, tension, promise, and risk as a new team of foreign policy players confronts the arduous challenges of managing the interregnum.

The experience of transitions over the past 60 years is full of poignant examples of self-inflicted wounds and near misses, as well as of skillful takings of the reins. Although each transition is unique, the next president and his team need to understand the lessons of the past if he is to take advantage of the great opportunities for new U.S. leadership and avoid the landmines that lie ahead.

More at The Washington Quarterly.

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The Defense Inheritance: Challenges and Choices for the Next Pentagon Team by Michèle A. Flournoy and Shawn Brimley, The Washington Quarterly

The next U.S. commander in chief will face the most daunting defense inheritance in generations when he takes the oath of office in January. Not since the Johnson-Nixon handoff 40 years ago has the country faced such a challenging wartime transition. Ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will force the new president to make early and consequential decisions regarding the U.S. approach toward both conflicts as well as the search for al Qaeda's top leadership in the lawless frontier lands along the Afghan-Pakistani border. President John McCain or Barack Obama will inherit a military that, although still the best in the world, is experiencing profound strains after nearly seven years of constant warfare. A young person entering the combat branches of the Army or Marine Corps in the months following the September 11 terrorist attacks has almost certainly deployed numerous times to Afghanistan and/or Iraq. An entire generation of young military personnel has endured years of difficult and heroic service and sacrifice. Their morale is high, but they and their families are tired.

The next secretary of defense will inherit a department that also is under enormous pressure. The constant imperative to support forward-deployed forces engaged in current operations has strained the ability of the military services and their civilian leaders to adequately plan for a complex and uncertain future. The high financial costs of two wars, rapidly increasing personnel obligations, and huge cost overruns in most major procurement programs have caused Pentagon spending to skyrocket. With the U.S. economy sliding toward recession and the national deficit and foreign debt rising to unprecedented levels, the next president and secretary of defense will need to avoid strategic overstretch and make difficult decisions about where to place emphasis and how to prudently balance risk.

The next Pentagon team will thus be faced with the dual challenge of presenting the new commander in chief with the best possible advice on key current wartime decisions while providing the support and leadership necessary to prepare U.S. armed forces for a future far different from the one for which they were optimized. This challenging endeavor will require forming a comprehensive and strategic view in order to chart a way forward.

More at The Washington Quarterly.

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Dangerous Thresholds: Managing Escalation in the 21st Century - Forrest E. Morgan, Karl P. Mueller, Evan S. Medeiros, Kevin L. Pollpeter and Roger Cliff, Rand Corporation

Escalation is a natural tendency in any form of human competition. When such competition entails military confrontation or war, the pressure to escalate can become intense due to the potential cost of losing conflicts of deadly force. Cold War–era thinking about escalation focused on the dynamics of bipolar, superpower confrontation and strategies to control it. Today's security environment, however, demands that the United States be prepared for a host of escalatory threats involving not only long-standing nuclear powers, but also new, lesser nuclear powers and irregular adversaries, such as insurgent groups and terrorists. This examination of escalation dynamics and approaches to escalation management draws on historical examples from World War I through Somalia in the early 1990s. It reveals that, to manage the risks of escalatory chain reactions in future conflicts, military and political leaders will need to understand and dampen the mechanisms of deliberate, accidental, and inadvertent escalation. Informing the analysis are the results of two modified Delphi exercises, which focused on a potential conflict between China and the United States over Taiwan and a potential conflict between states and nonstate actors in the event of a collapse of Pakistan's government.

More at Rand.

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The Manoeuvre Warfare Fraud
by William F. Owen, Small Wars Journal

The Manoeuvre Warfare Fraud (Full PDF Article)

The concept of Manoeuvre Warfare (MW) in its modern form was first advocated in the early 1980s as part of the US military conventional response to perceived Warsaw Pact superiority. It has since become widely accepted as a style of warfare and generic concept of operation. This paper will argue that the community it was intended to serve based its wide acceptance largely on ignorance and a lack of intellectual rigor.

The Manoeuvre Warfare Fraud (Full PDF Article)

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More Troops Needed in Afghanistan, General Says
By Gerry J. Gilmore
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Sept. 5, 2008 – Though U.S., coalition and Afghan troops are making steady progress against increasingly active insurgent forces in Afghanistan, it’s time to turn up the heat, a senior U.S. military officer said today.

“I believe that more forces are required. And I think that over the next several months we can put them, certainly, to good use,” Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser, commander of Combined Joint Task Force 101 and 101st Airborne Division, told Pentagon reporters during a satellite-carried news conference.

Insurgent attacks in Afghanistan have increased 20 to 30 percent from 2007 to now, said Schloesser, who arrived in Afghanistan in April and also heads counterinsurgency operations for NATO’s Regional Command East.

Discussions about increasing the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan are ongoing among senior leaders in Washington, Schloesser acknowledged...

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Musa Qala
Adapting to the Realities of Modern Counterinsurgency
by Thomas Donnelly and Gary J. Schmitt, Small Wars Journal

Musa Qala (Full PDF Article)

This SWJ article is an excerpt from a forthcoming American Enterprise Institute study on the war in Afghanistan and NATO’s future.

The town of Musa Qala is, in many ways, a typical Afghan market town. “I saw no obvious concessions to modern living,” reported James Holland of his spring 2008 visit to Musa Qala.

The town sits on the Musa Qala River, an often-dry tributary of the Helmand River, the geographic feature – along with the Highway 1 ring road that ties Afghanistan together and connects the capital, Kabul, to the rest of the country – which defines Helmand province. It also links the ring road and lowland Helmand to the mountains of central Afghanistan. It is the last stop before the town of Baghran, in the northernmost tip of Helmand and near the border with the rugged Oruzgan and Daikundi provinces, which has been a Taliban redoubt since the initial U.S. invasion.

The town also gives its name to Musa Qala District, but two other factors contribute to it real importance: it is the hometown of the Alizai tribe, Helmand’s largest Pashtun group – though the tribal politics are devilishly complex: the Alizai are comprised of six major clans, but are a sub-tribe of the Noorzai, which is one of the five major tribes that make up the Durrani Pashtuns, one of the two main Pashtun grouping in the Afghan-Pakistan border regions; altogether there may be as many as 400 clans among the Pashtun peoples. Musa Qala is also a crossroads in the opium trade. And these two factors – tribal politics and the drug trade – are linked.

Musa Qala (Full PDF Article)

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Right at the Edge - Dexter Filkins, New York Times

Late in the afternoon of June 10, during a firefight with Taliban militants along the Afghan-Pakistani border, American soldiers called in airstrikes to beat back the attack. The firefight was taking place right on the border itself, known in military jargon as the “zero line.” Afghanistan was on one side, and the remote Pakistani region known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA, was on the other. The stretch of border was guarded by three Pakistani military posts.

The American bombers did the job, and then some. By the time the fighting ended, the Taliban militants had slipped away, the American unit was safe and 11 Pakistani border guards lay dead. The airstrikes on the Pakistani positions sparked a diplomatic row between the two allies: Pakistan called the incident “unprovoked and cowardly”; American officials regretted what they called a tragic mistake. But even after a joint inquiry by the United States, Pakistan and Afghanistan, it remained unclear why American soldiers had reached the point of calling in airstrikes on soldiers from Pakistan, a critical ally in the war in Afghanistan and the campaign against terrorism.

The mystery, at least part of it, was solved in July by four residents of Suran Dara, a Pakistani village a few hundred yards from the site of the fight. According to two of these villagers, whom I interviewed together with a local reporter, the Americans started calling in airstrikes on the Pakistanis after the latter started shooting at the Americans.

“When the Americans started bombing the Taliban, the Frontier Corps started shooting at the Americans,” we were told by one of Suran Dara’s villagers, who, like the others, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being persecuted or killed by the Pakistani government or the Taliban. “They were trying to help the Taliban. And then the American planes bombed the Pakistani post.”

Much more at The New York Times.

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Phil Carter has been on leave from one of our favorite blogs - Intel Dump - and we've missed his posts on foreign policy and national security issues. Phil will be returning - ETA November 08 - but in the meantime Intel Dump has assembled a first-class lineup to fill the void. Here it is:

Robert Bateman, Army Infantry Officer and author of Digital War: A View from the Front Lines and No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident

Shawn Brimley, a Fellow at the Center for a New American Security

Roger Carstens, retired Army Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel and Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security

Janine Davidson, former Air Force pilot and Assistant Professor at George Mason University's School of Public Policy

Clint Douglas, former Army Special Forces Sergeant and contributor to Operation Homecoming

Colin Kahl, Assistant Professor in the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University

John Nagl, retired US Army Officer and Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security

Erin Simpson, who writes on Counterinsurgency strategy and terrorism

Enjoy...

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Sons of Iraq
A Study in Irregular Warfare
by William S. McCallister, Small Wars Journal

Sons of Iraq (Full PDF Article)

Iraq’s mainly Shia central government appears intent on limiting the power of the U.S. military backed Sons of Iraq (SOI) and its approximately 100,000 armed security volunteers. The SOI has been credited by the Coalition Forces for helping turn the tide against al-Qaeda in Iraq and are as of this writing remains on the U.S. military pay roll in return for providing security in local neighborhoods throughout the country. The Maliki government initially consented to Coalition Forces recommendation to integrate approximately 20% of these fighters, many of which are former insurgents, into the state’s security forces and to assist in providing vocational training for the remainder. But the Maliki government has begun to hedge on its promise. The Shia led government views these Sunni fighters as a threat in being and the U.S. sponsored neighborhood watch program itself simply a means for opponents to bide their time and worse, to infiltrate Iraq’s fledgling security forces. Fear of lost opportunities and resumption of sectarian violence has been cause for some to call for making U.S. military assistance conditional on the Maliki government keeping its word to the members of the SOI. The premise of this article is not to argue the merits of leveraging Iraq’s dependency on U.S. air power, logistic support, intelligence or training to gain concessions. A reengineered U.S. strategy may well be in order in light of the evolving security and political landscape. The intent rather is to provide further cultural and historical depth to the conversation and hopefully a more detailed appreciation of the operational environment to assist in reengineering existing U.S. strategy if required. The rationale of the Maliki government to limit the power of the Sunni auxiliary forces is much more complex and nuanced than causal reasoning would lead us to believe and expresses a unique blend of Iraq’s unique culture and historical experience.

This paper will address the types of behavior and political relationships shaping the current political and security landscape in Iraq. Included is an introduction to the uniquely Arab institution of neighborhood watch and tribal security. The remainder of the paper discusses the relationship between these organizations and the central government as an expression of irregular warfare. It concludes with some thoughts on the limits of U.S. strategy in shaping and influencing the behavior of Iraq’s social networks and tribal politics.

Sons of Iraq (Full PDF Article)

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The War Within - Washington Post series adapted from The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008 by Bob Woodward.

Part 1 - Doubt, Distrust, Delay.

During the summer of 2006, from her office adjacent to the White House, deputy national security adviser Meghan O'Sullivan sent President Bush a daily top secret report cataloging the escalating bloodshed and chaos in Iraq. "Violence has acquired a momentum of its own and is now self-sustaining," she wrote July 20, quoting from an intelligence assessment.

Her dire evaluation contradicted the upbeat assurances that President Bush was hearing from Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the US commander in Iraq. Casey and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld were pushing to draw down American forces and speed the transfer of responsibility to the Iraqis. Despite months of skyrocketing violence, Casey insisted that within a year, Iraq would be mostly stable, with the bulk of American combat troops headed home.

Publicly, the president claimed the United States was winning the war, and he expressed unwavering faith in Casey, saying, "It's his judgment that I rely upon." Privately, he was losing confidence in the drawdown strategy. He questioned O'Sullivan that summer with increasing urgency: "What are you hearing from people in Baghdad? What are people's daily lives like?"

Part 2 - Outmaneuvered And Outranked, Military Chiefs Became Outsiders

At the Joint Chiefs of Staff in late November 2006, Gen. Peter Pace was facing every chairman's nightmare: a potential revolt of the other chiefs. Two months earlier, the JCS had convened a special team of colonels to recommend options for reversing the deteriorating situation in Iraq. Now, it appeared that the chiefs' and colonels' advice was being marginalized, if not ignored, by the White House.

During a JCS meeting with the colonels Nov. 20, Chairman Pace dropped a bomb: The White House was considering a "surge" of additional troops to quell the violence in Iraq. "Would it be a good idea?" Pace asked the group. "If so, what would you do with five more brigades?" That amounted to 20,000 to 30,000 more troops, depending on the number of support personnel.

Part 3 - 'You're Not Accountable, Jack'

Retired Army Gen. Jack Keane came to the White House on Thursday, Sept. 13, 2007, to deliver a strong and sober message. The military chain of command, he told Vice President Cheney, wasn't on the same page as the current US commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus. The tension threatened to undermine Petraeus's chances of continued success, Keane said.

Keane, a former vice chief of the Army, was 63, 6-foot-3 and 240 pounds, with a boxer's face framed by tightly cropped hair. As far as Cheney was concerned, Keane was outstanding -- an experienced soldier who had maintained great Pentagon contacts, had no ax to grind and had been a mentor to Petraeus. Keane was all meat and potatoes; he didn't inflate expectations or waste Cheney's time.

By the late summer of 2007, Keane had established an unusual back-channel relationship with the president and vice president, a kind of shadow general advising them on the Iraq war. This September visit was the fifth back-channel briefing that Keane had given the vice president that year.

Part 4 - A Portrait of a Man Defined by His Wars

Five days before Christmas 2001, a little more than three months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that redefined his presidency, George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office for the first of what would become a series of six interviews about how he had chosen to exercise his most consequential power -- that of commander in chief.

At 55, he was a young president, filled with certainty. The war in Afghanistan appeared to be going well. The US military had overthrown the Taliban regime and was hammering al-Qaeda sanctuaries. He kept photos of al-Qaeda leaders in his desk and showed how he had crossed through the pictures with a large "X" as each suspected terrorist was killed or captured. He explained: "One time early on, I said: 'I'm a baseball fan. I want a scorecard.' "

He confidently laid out grand goals. "We're going to root out terror wherever it may exist," he said. He talked of achieving "world peace" and of creating unity at home. "The job of the president," he said, "is to unite the nation."

More at The Washington Post.

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Bio

Steve Coll is President & CEO of New America Foundation, and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. Previously he spent 20 years as a foreign correspondent and senior editor at The Washington Post, serving as the paper's managing editor from 1998 to 2004. He is author six books, including The Deal of the Century: The Break Up of AT&T (1986); The Taking of Getty Oil (1987); Eagle on the Street, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the SEC's battle with Wall Street (with David A. Vise, 1991); On the Grand Trunk Road: A Journey into South Asia (1994), Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004); and The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (2008).

Mr. Coll's professional awards include two Pulitzer Prizes. He won the first of these, for explanatory journalism, in 1990, for his series, with David A. Vise, about the SEC. His second was awarded in 2005, for his book, Ghost Wars, which also won the Council on Foreign Relations' Arthur Ross award; the Overseas Press Club award and the Lionel Gelber Prize for the best book published on international affairs during 2004. Other awards include the 1992 Livingston Award for outstanding foreign reporting; the 2000 Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award for his coverage of the civil war in Sierra Leone; and a second Overseas Press Club Award for international magazine writing.

Selected Books

The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

Latest at The New Yorker

The General's Dilemma

Early in 2007, when David Petraeus became Commanding General of United States and international forces in Iraq, he had in mind a strategy to manage the political pressures he would face because of the unpopularity of the war, then four years old, and of its author, George W. Bush. He pledged to be responsive to “both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue”—to his Commander-in-Chief in the White House, of course, but also to antiwar Democrats on Capitol Hill. Petraeus earned a doctoral degree at Princeton University in 1987; the title of his dissertation was “The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam.” In thinking about how to cope with political divisions in the United States over Iraq, he was influenced, he told me recently, by Samuel Huntington’s 1957 book “The Soldier and the State,” which argues that civilian control over the military can best be achieved when uniformed officers regard themselves as impartial professionals. Petraeus is registered to vote as a Republican in New Hampshire—he once described himself to a friend as a northeastern Republican, in the tradition of Nelson Rockefeller—but he said that around 2002, after he became a two-star general, he stopped voting. As he departed for Baghdad, to oversee a “surge” deployment of additional American troops to Iraq, he sought, as he recalled it, “to try to avoid being pulled in one direction or another, to be in a sense used by one side or the other.” He added, “That’s very hard to do, because you become at some point sort of the face of the surge. So be it. You just have to deal with that.”

Much more at The New Yorker.

Think Tank - Steve Coll's blog at The New Yorker

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The Petraeus Doctrine by Andrew J. Bacevich, The Atlantic, October 2008 issue.

Iraq-style counterinsurgency is fast becoming the US Army’s organizing principle. Is our military preparing to fight the next war, or the last one?

For a military accustomed to quick, easy victories, the trials and tribulations of the Iraq War have come as a rude awakening. To its credit, the officer corps has responded not with excuses but with introspection. One result, especially evident within the US Army, has been the beginning of a Great Debate of sorts.

Anyone who cares about the Army’s health should take considerable encouragement from this intellectual ferment. Yet anyone who cares about future US national-security strategy should view the debate with considerable concern: it threatens to encroach upon matters that civilian policy makers, not soldiers, should decide.

What makes this debate noteworthy is not only its substance, but its character—the who and the how.

The military remains a hierarchical organization in which orders come from the top down. Yet as the officer corps grapples with its experience in Iraq, fresh ideas are coming from the bottom up. In today’s Army, the most-creative thinkers are not generals but mid-career officers—lieutenant colonels and colonels.

Like any bureaucracy, today’s military prefers to project a united front when dealing with the outside world, keeping internal dissent under wraps. Nonetheless, the Great Debate is unfolding in plain view in publications outside the Pentagon’s purview, among them print magazines such as Armed Forces Journal, the Web-based Small Wars Journal, and the counterinsurgency blog Abu Muqawama.

The chief participants in this debate - all Iraq War veterans - fixate on two large questions. First, why, after its promising start, did Operation Iraqi Freedom go so badly wrong? Second, how should the hard-earned lessons of Iraq inform future policy? Hovering in the background of this Iraq-centered debate is another war that none of the debaters experienced personally - namely, Vietnam.

The protagonists fall into two camps: Crusaders and Conservatives...

Much more at The Atlantic.

Discuss at Small Wars Council.

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9/11: One Story of Many

by Tina Beller

Sept. 11, 2001, was a horrific day for Americans. The sights of innocent men and women losing their lives are forever seared in the mind’s eyes of our Nation, including the memory of a young Brooklynite named Monique Page.

Born to two hard-working, Italian-American parents, Page was raised in the hallways of the family business – a women’s clothing manufacturer. Years of training and grooming to assume a key leadership role in the family business was certainly the Page family’s goal for their daughter’s future. Growing up, life was relatively easy for Page.

“I was 33-years old and single when 9-11 happened,” said Page, now a U.S. Army sergeant and a noncommissioned officer assigned to the U.S. Army Recruiting Station – City Hall. “I was a retail sales manager for an upscale women’s sportswear store in Manhattan, and I was easily recruited for the next better deal. I had gone as far as I could within the family business without taking over, and I just wasn’t ready for that. For a short time, I had even attended college studying business management … again … preparing me to take over my parent’s family business. I look back now and realize I didn’t really know what my future held.”

When the news reached her at work of two planes crashing into the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan’s financial district, she watched in horror as television stations broadcasted unbelievable images of planes crashing into the famous New York skyscrapers and then later collapsing in furious mushroom-like clouds of smoke and debris. The toll – over 3,000 innocent dead – nationality immaterial.

Page’s normally energetic and glowing personality became unusually morose in the weeks that followed. Weeks became months as broadcast and print news agencies carried storylines of memorial ceremonies, investigations and the spouses, mothers, fathers and children alike, who continued to search desperately for their loved ones that never came home that unforgettable September day...

Continue reading "Lives Lost, Lives Changed" »

Militias, Tribes and Insurgents: The Challenge of Political Reintegration in Iraq - David Ucko, Conflict, Security and Development Journal

Fine analysis by longtime SWJ friend Dr. David Ucko, a Program Coordinator and Research Fellow at the Department of War Studies, King's College London. He administers and contributes to the Conflict, Security and Development Research Group and is the co-editor of a volume examining political reintegration in various contexts, to be published by Routledge in 2009.

Here's the abstract:

Following its overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the United States was confronted with one of the most complex state-building enterprises of recent history. A central component of state building, emphasised in the literature yet given scant attention at the time of the invasion, is the process of political reintegration: the transformation of armed groups into political actors willing to participate peacefully in the political future of the country. In Iraq, political reintegration was a particularly important challenge, relating both to the armed forces of the disposed regime and to the Kurdish and Shia militias eager to play a role in the new political system. This article examines the different approaches employed by the United States toward the political reintegration of irregular armed groups, from the policy vacuum of 2003 to the informal reintegration seen during the course of the so-called “surge” in 2007 and 2008. The case study has significant implications for the importance of getting political reintegration right - and the long-term costs of getting it badly wrong.

More at Routledge.

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The Center for Strategic and International Studies has posted a number of short pieces written by CSIS scholars on the Russia-Georgia conflict and its broader implications. Additionally, CSIS recorded several podcast interviews to compliment the index. It’s a very good resource for anyone looking for a level of insight beyond the mainstream media and the papers are a bit more disciplined than much of the other material currently floating around the 'Net.

Continue reading "CSIS on the Russia-Georgia Conflict" »

Marc Lynch, Brian Katulis, and Peter Juul have co-authored a new report entitled "Iraq's Political Transition After The Surge," exploring some of the political issues which continue to block national reconciliation in Iraq.

Here's a blog post explaining the report, and the full report in pdf form.

Thanks to Matt at the Center for American Progress for the tip on the report. Matt writes "Small Wars Journal is essential reading for a lot of us here!" Glad to hear that. We thought everyone there was pretty smart. :)

Continue reading "Iraq's Political Transition After The Surge" »

LTC Jim Crider commanded 1-4 Cavalry in Dora from February 2007 through March 2008; his soldiers conducted classic population control counterinsurgency and completely turned the security situation around in one of Baghdad’s most important neighborhoods. Time Magazine summed up the results of his efforts:

The unit has come to know the neighborhood in a way that would have been unthinkable just after the war, or even into 2004 and 2005. In fact, the US military has never secured Iraq or controlled it so completely as it has today, and never before has their wealth of intelligence and ability to analyze it been better.

--Daniel Pepper
Rebuilding a Baghdad Neighborhood
Time Magazine
January 13, 2008

When Colonel James R. Crider's 1-4 cavalry squadron got to Baghdad last May, their first 30 days were pockmarked with roadside bombs, shootings and grenade attacks. But the war stories out of Crider's outfit nowadays don't have much to do with war anymore. For the past three months there hasn't been a significant incident.

--Daniel Pepper
When the War Stories Have Nothing to Do With War
Time Magazine
January 15, 2008

Continue reading "Soundtrack of Dora: A Neighborhood Reborn" »

The Endgame in Iraq - Jack Keane, Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan, Weekly Standard

On September 16, General Raymond Odierno will succeed General David Petraeus as commander of US and coalition forces in Iraq. The surge strategy Petraeus and Odierno developed and executed in 2007 achieved its objectives: reducing violence in Iraq enough to allow political processes to restart, economic development to move forward, and reconciliation to begin. Violence has remained at historic lows even after the withdrawal of all surge forces and the handover of many areas to Iraqi control. Accordingly, President Bush has approved the withdrawal of 8,000 additional troops by February 2009.

With Barack Obama's recent declaration that the surge in Iraq has succeeded, it should now be possible to move beyond that debate and squarely address the current situation in Iraq and the future. Reductions in violence permitting political change were the goal of the surge, but they are not the sole measure of success in Iraq.

The United States seeks a free, stable, independent Iraq, with a legitimately elected representative government that can govern and defend its territory, is at peace with its neighbors, and is an ally of the United States in the war on terror. The Iraqi leadership has made important strides toward developing a new and inclusive political system that addresses the concerns of all Iraq's ethnic and sectarian groups. But it has also taken steps in the wrong direction. An understandable desire to seize on the reduction in violence to justify overly hasty force reductions and premature transfer of authority to Iraqis puts the hard-won gains of 2007 and 2008 at risk. Thus, the president's announcement of new troop withdrawals has come before we even know when Iraq's provincial elections will occur.

More at The Weekly Standard.

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This Time, Things Are Looking Up by Dr. John Nagl, 14 September edition of The Washington Post

When I retired from the Army in June, my comrades in arms laughed at my summer vacation plans: another August in Iraq.

But I had unfinished business...

Everyone I talked to, Iraqis and Americans alike, stressed that the security gains are fragile and reversible; there were two car bombs and a suicide vest attack in Mosul three days after our visit. But the improvements in Baghdad and Basra are striking, with increasingly competent Iraqi security forces on every street corner -- although they will continue to need our advice and assistance for some years to come.

I am no cheerleader for the war in Iraq. We've made horrible mistakes that cost the lives of too many of my friends, American and Iraqi. It took us too long to learn from our errors and adopt an effective counterinsurgency strategy, and even now the war is far from won...

So they are -- as long as we continue to back them with air support, intelligence and US combat units, whose numbers are steadily diminishing. Iraq will need American advisers for years to come. For starters, it takes five years to produce a competent fighter pilot or tank company commander. Moreover, Iraq faces significant external security threats, as well as the remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Shiite militias and Sunni insurgent groups. But US forces will increasingly be able to turn combat over to the Iraqis, allowing the United States to scale back its involvement significantly...

Much more at The Washington Post.

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British Operations in Helmand Afghanistan
by Dr. Daniel Marston, Small Wars Journal

British Operations in Helmand Afghanistan (PDF Article)

I’m going to try to provide an overview of British operations, called HERRICK, in Helmand (HLD) province, Afghanistan, over the last couple of years. The situation in southern Afghanistan (RC South) is widely considered to be worsening, with the Taliban controlling entire districts and launching major attacks. The British, along with the rest of our allies, have faced heavy criticism for their prosecution of the war in the south. I will look at how the British have adapted to changing conditions, and their understanding and application of COIN principles. My assessment is not official in any way, and any errors of fact or interpretation are purely mine. This assessment is drawn from the many conversations which I have been privileged to have with commanders from brigadier down to platoon level on all British operations, as well as from field reports and visits with units.

British Operations in Helmand Afghanistan (PDF Article)

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Grim at Blackfive has posted an excellent roundup (with transcripts) of roundtables conducted with officers in Iraq. Grim also offers up a nice summary. Very good stuff.

BLUF: Progress in Iraq is outstanding in the regions south of Baghdad, but is running much slower in the regions to the north. In the west, Anbar -- though behind the southern regions by some measures -- has enjoyed an extraordinary turnaround from being the center of the Sunni insurgency to a region under Iraqi control. Overall, even in the slow regions, post-Surge Iraq is on the right glidepath. However, we as a nation do need to take the time to finish the mission responsibly in order to ensure that the victory is a firm and lasting one.

Much more at Blackfive.

Continue reading "OIF Roundtable Roundup at Blackfive" »

A big supporter and great friend of SWJ has some news - his wife has written a novel - Tethered by Amy MacKinnon - that is receiving great reviews. Check it out at Jules Crittenden's Forward Movement.

Congrats to Amy and Jules!

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Linda Robinson, author of Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search For a Way Out of Iraq, in today's Washington Post.

He Came, He Cut Deals, He (May) Conquer

Iraq still divides Democrats and Republicans like no other issue, as the campaign rhetoric of both parties makes abundantly clear. Liberals and conservatives can now more or less agree that Iraq is a much, much safer country than it was 18 months ago. But each side is peddling its own story about Iraq's extraordinary turnaround -- and both are wrong.

Many conservatives believe that the 2007 "surge" in US troop levels directly produced the decline in Iraqi violence. Meanwhile, liberals argue that Iraq's warring Shiites and Sunnis spontaneously decided -- for their own internal reasons, unrelated to the surge -- to stop fighting. As is so often true of Washington debates, these arguments bear little relation to the reality of how Iraq actually pulled out of its death spiral, which is far more interesting than either partisan yarn. There was no single silver bullet, but rather a multifaceted strategy crafted and carried out by those in Baghdad -- not, despite recent claims, in Washington.

I came to this conclusion after reporting in Iraq for a total of 10 months since 2003 and after extensive interviews with Iraqi and US leaders, as well as with troops in the most violent neighborhoods of greater Baghdad, the epicenter of the conflict. My biggest question was my simplest: How did Gen. David H. Petraeus do it?

My answer? Bottom line, for the first time since the war began, a US leader decided to address the political motivations of the Iraqi combatants. Petraeus convened a study group that shrewdly analyzed the raging sectarian conflict, then came up with what he called "the Anaconda strategy" to address the underlying dynamic.

More at The Washington Post.

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Can Counterinsurgency Win? - Daniel Pipes, Washington Times opinion

When it comes to a state fighting a nonstate enemy, there is a widespread impression the state is doomed to fail.

In 1968, Robert F. Kennedy concluded that victory in Vietnam was "probably beyond our grasp," and called for a peaceful settlement. In 1983, the analyst Shahram Chubin wrote that the Soviets in Afghanistan were embroiled in an "unwinnable war." In 1992, US officials shied away from involvement in Bosnia, fearing entanglement in a centuries-old conflict. In 2002, retired US Gen. Wesley Clark portrayed the American effort in Afghanistan as unwinnable. In 2004, President George W. Bush said of the war on terror, "I don't think you can win it." In 2007, the Winograd Commission deemed Israel's war against Hezbollah unwinnable.

More than any other recent war, the allied forces' effort in Iraq was seen as a certain defeat, especially in the 2004-06 period. Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, former British minister Tony Benn, and former US special envoy James Dobbins all called it unwinnable. The Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group Report echoed this view. Military analyst David Hackworth, among others, explicitly compared Iraq to Vietnam: "As with Vietnam, the Iraqi tar pit was oh-so-easy to sink into, but appears to be just as tough to exit."

The list of "unwinnable wars" goes on and includes, for example, the counterinsurgencies in Sri Lanka and Nepal. "Underlying all these analyses," notes Yaakov Amidror, a retired Israeli major general, is the assumption "that counterinsurgency campaigns necessarily turn into protracted conflicts that will inevitably lose political support."

Gen. Amidror, however, disagrees with this assessment. In a recent study published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, "Winning Counterinsurgency War: The Israeli Experience," he convincingly argues that states can beat nonstate actors.

Continue reading "Can Counterinsurgency Win?" »

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Sometimes I just have to shake my head and wonder out loud (in this case blog) what the hell are they thinking? In this case the “they” is the readership of Phil Carter’s Intel Dump over at The Washington Post.

Intel Dump has always offered up first-rate discussion and analysis on foreign policy and national security issues – even when you disagree with a particular point of view expressed by Phil or a guest blogger you come away smarter for having read the postings.

Phil is on sabbatical (working on the Obama campaign) but he did manage to reel in an all star lineup of guest bloggers to fill the void – and that’s just what they have been doing – in spades – great posts on Iraq and Afghanistan (where we are, how we got there and what we need to do), Bacevich's The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, seapower and power projection, supporting our deployed civilians as well as the military and more. Posts that make you think.

What has me wondering out loud this Sunday morning is these 16 posts garnered a total of 157 comments from Intel Dump readership - and not all of those are exactly on-topic. A 17th posting by Bob Bateman concerning Chuck Norris’ appearance on Larry King Live has racked up 189 comments (at 1045).

Have we descended that far into partisan politics and celebrity infatuation? Is public discussion on serious and important issues in these times of dynamic political, foreign policy and national security flux impossible? Judging by these comments maybe it is.

Nothing follows.

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SWJ was very fortunate to have worked with Colonel Steve Boylan, officially and off-line, during his tour as the chief spokesman for General Dave Petraeus at Multi-National Force – Iraq. Short and sweet – Steve is the consummate professional and it has been our pleasure, both professionally and personally. Paul Bedard has a short piece up at US News and World Report’s Washington Whispers blog on what’s next for COL Boylan:

Colonel Steven Boylan, who has been the chief spokesman for Army General David Petraeus since 2006, has declined to travel with the four-star general when he moves from Baghdad to Tampa, Fla., in October to take over the helm of the US Central Command. "The family had a vote, and they voted to stay in Kansas," Boylan tells Whispers. He'll return to Fort Leavenworth, where he first hooked up with Petraeus when the general ran the US Army Combined Arms Center and wrote the new doctrine for defeating an insurgency. Boylan traveled with Petraeus to Baghdad, leaving the family in Kansas.

From SWJ – thanks Steve and wishing you and yours the best in your next assignment as well as fair winds and following seas wherever your travels may take you.

Nothing follows.

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Petraeus Moves to Even More Complex Challenge - Al Pessin, Voice of America

The top US commander in Iraq will leave his post Tuesday after a momentous year-and-a-half, during which he is widely credited with reversing a spiral of violence that seemed destined to plunge the country into civil war.

In February of last year, when General Petraeus arrived in Iraq, 81 US troops were killed here. The number rose to a high of 126 last May, as more troops poured in, and the general ordered them out into Iraqi villages and neighborhoods to engage a variety of insurgent groups. These days, the US monthly casualty toll here averages about 20. And there has been a parallel reduction in Iraqi deaths, along with an 85 percent drop in overall violence.

"He took a war that was clearly being lost and turned it around," said retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl. "If I were writing a book on General Petraeus' service over the last 18 months, I would call it "Turnaround."

Nagl, who served in Iraq earlier in the war, and is now an analyst at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.

"His own role, his own vision, his own drive, his own understanding of counterinsurgency led him to implement a new strategy," Nagl added. "He understood that the key to success in any counterinsurgency campaign is protecting the population. That comes first."

It was General Petraeus' first two tours of duty in Iraq that led him to believe a new strategy was needed. In 2006, while running the Army's main analytical unit, he ordered the writing of a new counterinsurgency doctrine. In early 2007, with violence in Iraq seemingly spinning out of control, President Bush ordered General Petraeus to take his new doctrine and put it to work...

Continue reading "Petraeus Moves to Even More Complex Challenge" »

See William Owen, "The Manoeuvre Warfare Fraud," in Small Wars Journal. Also published in August 2008, Vol 153, Vol 4. Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Journal.

As a very minor contributor to a couple of the Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication “White Books” outlining Maneuver Warfare and having once been a professor teaching Maneuver Warfare for American Military University, my attention was caught by William F. Owen’s piece, “The Manoeuvre Warfare Fraud," if nothing else than for its catchy title. One might expect it to get a fair amount of visibility due to its controversial thesis. Owen is rightly frustrated with the maneuver warfare concept, especially since he appears to rely on the U.S. Marine Corps publications FMFM-1 and its successor, MCDP-1 Warfighting as the best contemporary articulation. But to characterize the concept as a fraud? A perversion of the truth perpetrated on the U.S. military in order to deceive it? There are indeed difficulties with the maneuver warfare concept, but to label it a fraud seems a bit much. Owen argues that the “the community it was intended to serve” embraced maneuver warfare uncritically. So who is to blame—the advocates who maliciously perpetrated the concept or the U.S. Marine Corps that accepted it so naively and so readily? ...

Continue reading "Fraud or Fuzziness? Dissecting William Owen’s Critique of Maneuver Warfare" »

The Good War?

By TX Hammes

In the last month, both presidential candidates have stated they wish to send more troops to Afghanistan. Unfortunately, neither candidate has stated what he sees as the United States’ strategic interests in Afghanistan. Even more dangerous, neither candidate has expressed a strategic framework for the region. Despite increased violence in Pakistan, Musharraf’s recent resignation and the collapse of the coalition government, neither candidate has even commented on how our actions may be feeding Pakistan’s instability. Their determination to send more troops seems to be based on the idea that Afghanistan is the “good war” than on any thoughtful evaluation of the situation.

This sudden willingness to increase our support for Afghanistan is particularly peculiar since it has largely been our forgotten war. Despite almost seven years of fighting, the administration has still not clearly articulated a strategy and has starved the effort of resources.

In October of 2001, with 9/11 burned into the nation’s consciousness, the Bush Administration committed the United States to rooting Al Qaeda out of Afghanistan. The nation clearly supported that goal and focused intensely on Afghanistan during the fall and early winter of 2001. However, our attention quickly waned as the active fighting seemed to end. Without ever expressing a change in our strategic goals, the effort in Afghanistan slipped from destroying Al Qaeda to establishing a unified Afghan state. The administration asked the United Nations to help establish a government. Yet, even as that government was being established, the Bush Administration shifted its focus to Iraq. Afghanistan became an under funded, forgotten backwater. Given our much larger investment in Iraq, it is natural the nation’s attention remained focused on Iraq from 2003 until today. Despite a near collapse of our position in Afghanistan during late 2003, and its subsequent rebuilding by the team of Ambassador Khalizaid and Lieutenant General Barno, Americans paid little or no attention to events in Afghanistan. In fact, after their departure, most Americans didn’t notice a slow but steady degradation of the security situation in Afghanistan...

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Progress in Afghanistan Gets Rockier - James Kitfield, National Journal

Lt. Col. Kent Hayes knows all about the blood, sweat, and excruciating effort needed to lay the initial security piece of the counterinsurgency puzzle. The rangy executive officer for the 24th MEU explains that the Marines' original plan to act as a roaming strike force in Helmand had to be torn up after the first battle with the Taliban. The enemy unexpectedly stayed and fought fiercely for more than a week rather than relinquish Garmsir. An estimated 400 insurgents died. Marine commanders immediately realized that the town was a critical resupply and logistics hub for insurgent operations throughout the province.

"Our original mission was to act as a quick-reaction force for the ISAF commander in Kabul so he could throw us at any escalating crisis in this area," Hayes says. But Gen. David McKiernan, the commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, understood the strategic importance of Garmsir and instead ordered the Marines to stay in the town and implement a classic counterinsurgency operation of "clear, hold, and build." Hayes says that his troops are "not normally in the business of owning ground, but I guess you could say we've rented Garmsir for a while."

After clearing the town of insurgents, the marines held it by establishing routine neighborhood patrols to keep the Taliban at bay. The MEU's civil-affairs unit reached out to the district governor, tribal sheiks, and local imams in Garmsir and the surrounding region, organizing the first shura -- or traditional governance council -- that the area had seen in three years. Local leaders were empowered to pick and prioritize development projects.

With improved security, the Red Crescent humanitarian organization moved in with aid for 1,400 displaced families. The marines, using their own money from the Commander's Emergency Response Program, launched small reconstruction projects: digging wells and repairing irrigation canals; delivering medical services; rebuilding damaged homes; even buying a new speaker system for the local mosque.

The Afghan Civilian Assistance Program, which the United Nations and the US Agency for International Development support, started longer-term projects.

Within weeks, an abandoned bazaar reopened and was swarmed with shoppers. By late summer, nearly eight weeks had passed without the 24th MEU having a single contact with Taliban insurgents, whom the locals were increasingly willing to identify for the Marines.

Hayes is unequivocal in naming the key to the 24th MEU's success in Helmand province: "It's a real simple concept -- we learned during this mission that the best way to combat this type of enemy is to mass forces and stay. We actually replaced a small British force that was spread thin trying to cover too much ground with too few troops. Instead, we flooded a town that was strategically important to the enemy with overwhelming forces. That's the way you can win this kind of fight -- with boots on the ground."

Much more at The National Journal.

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The National Strategy Forum Review has been kind enough to permit SWJ to post an excellent essay by Colonel Robert Killebrew, USA Ret, that will appear in their Fall 2008 edition. A New Threat: The Crossover of Urban Gang Warfare and Terrorism examines a new and - as yet - unnamed national security challenge.

On the 22nd of June of this year, residents of a Phoenix, Arizona, neighborhood saw an eight-man Police SWAT team apparently serving a warrant. Team members were equipped as usual -- black boots, black Kevlar vests and helmets, Phoenix Police Department shirts and low-light laser aiming devices. But the “SWAT” team was actually a Mexican hit squad carrying out a targeted, and successful, assassination of a troublesome drug dealer -- in the United States. When the real cops arrived, one part of the hit team attempted a tactically-proficient ambush of pursuing police, who counter-ambushed and captured three. The others escaped, most likely back into the drug-fueled insurgency now underway in Mexico, where targeted assassination of officials and intimidation of public institutions -- for example, hospitals treating wounded officers -- is increasingly widespread. The Mexican drug war -- and much else besides -- is spilling over our borders, part of a growing nexus of criminal gang activity and terrorism sponsored by Islamist radicals.

A growing body of evidence shows that criminal gang activities in the United States are taking on the characteristics of a domestic insurgency similar, in some ways, to the war going on in Mexico against drug gangs. There is also growing circumstantial evidence of mutual support between the more serious international gangs and state-sponsored terrorism that will soon pose a clear danger to American national security -- if it hasn’t already. This isn’t just the local punk “gangstas” that are preoccupying our police, educators and parents across America. Nor is it solely an attack by 9/11-style terrorists, either from outside the U.S. or from sleeper cells inside America. Rather it is a new thing -- a potentially murderous combination that is spreading rapidly northward from South and Central America into densely packed American urban centers into suburbia and rural areas. Unless it is checked, and defeated, the United States will be increasingly vulnerable to civil violence and catastrophic attack from within...

A New Threat: The Crossover of Urban Gang Warfare and Terrorism (Full PDF Article)

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Odierno Succeeds Petraeus in Iraq - Thom Shanker and Stephen Farrell, New York Times

In an ornate palace built by Saddam Hussein, the United States military command in Iraq changed hands on Tuesday from Gen. David H. Petraeus, who created the strategy known as the surge, to Gen. Ray Odierno, who oversaw its day-to-day operations across a country in which violence has dropped significantly.

Attending the hourlong transfer ceremony were Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Lt. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, acting commander of the Central Command; and senior Iraqi government and military officials. Mr. Gates later traveled on to Kabul, Afghanistan.

In his first, brief comments as commander of the multinational forces in Iraq, General Odierno said, “We must realize that these gains are fragile and reversible, and our work here is far from done.”

Formerly the No. 2 commander, he faces the challenge of improving on the hard-earned security gains in Iraq with fewer troops, as the United States begins preparations to withdraw 8,000 troops by early next year. The overall American military presence in Iraq - 15 combat brigades and support and logistics personnel - would then number about 138,000 people.

General Petraeus will soon take over as commander of the American military’s Central Command, responsible for military issues across the strategically important crescent that stretches from Pakistan, across Central Asia and the Middle East, and throughout the Persian Gulf, and includes operations in Iraq and also, most notably, the troubled mission in Afghanistan.

More at the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, Voice of America, American Forces Press Service, BBC News and Associated Press.

20 Months in Baghdad - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion

The night before Gen. David Petraeus turned over command here, a group of senior officers gathered at Camp Victory to say goodbye. It was like a football team's testimonial dinner at the end of a winning season: There were steaks and baked potatoes and a highlight film of the general's 20-month command, scored with rock music, called "Surge of Hope."

The signature line of the video was a statement Petraeus made to Congress when he began what seemed to many people like mission impossible: "Hard is not hopeless." That was his closing comment, too, as he relinquished command in an elaborate ceremony yesterday at the gilded Al Faw Palace. But now, he said, Iraq was "still hard but hopeful."

Petraeus did something astonishing here. It wasn't simply managing the "surge" of U.S. troops, whose precise effects military historians will be debating for years. It was that he restored confidence and purpose for a military that had begun to think, deep down, that this war was unwinnable and unsustainable.

By force of will, Petraeus and his president, George W. Bush, turned that around. They didn't win in Iraq, but they created the possibility of an honorable exit.

More at The Washington Post.

A General for Our Times - The Times editorial

Five years ago a youthful US army general, with a PhD in international relations and a name that seemed plucked from Herodotus, led the 101st Airborne Division into Mosul in northern Iraq. He had taken part in a stunning military victory, but failed conspicuously to celebrate. “This is a race to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people,” he said. “And there are other people in this race. In some cases, they want to kill us.”

General David Petraeus is still not celebrating. But he is leaving Iraq in a state no sober observer would have forecast when he took command of US forces there early last year. He has pacified large parts of a country that had descended into a solar-heated hell of suicide bombings and sectarian carnage. He has salvaged some pride for the US military after Abu Ghraib, and seen himself hailed as America's most trusted and talented commander of the past four decades.

More at The Times.

Update: Multi-National Force - Iraq Counterinsurgency Guidance signed by General Odierno dated 16 September 2008. Contains Introduction and sections "How We Think", "How We Operate" and "Who We Are".

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Sisyphus and Counterinsurgency
by Major Niel Smith, Small Wars Journal

Sisyphus and Counterinsurgency (Full PDF Article)

In Greek legend, Sisyphus was a king condemned by the gods to roll a huge rock up a hill only to have it roll down again for eternity. Students of counterinsurgency often feel like Sisyphus, as the United States Army continually resists institutionalizing counterinsurgency across the force, only to have to re-learn the lessons at a heavy price later before preparing to discard them again.

About a month ago, I was asked to deliver a short presentation to the Canadian Army on tactical counterinsurgency lessons learned over the past years in Iraq. What initially seemed like an easy task quickly became difficult as I synthesized the complex and varied experiences of US Army units into relevant and concise points transferrable to a foreign army. After a long night, I produced ten observations that reflect enduring lessons from Iraq that would resonate with military audiences. They are:

• Learn from the past.
• Learn to ask understanding questions.
• Data is not understanding.
• Mass all of your resources to achieve the objective.
• Security matters.
• Population control is critical for success.
• Build human infrastructure alongside the physical.
• Understand perceptions matter far more than truth.
• Communicate effectively.

None of these are new, nor are they all inclusive, as significant areas are not covered. They do represent a start point for discussion about counterinsurgency operations at the tactical level.

Sisyphus and Counterinsurgency (Full PDF Article)

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3-7 November 2008 - Counterinsurgency Leaders' Workshop (COIN Workshop). Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Sponsored by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center. This event is a five-day program focused on understanding the fundamentals of insurgency and counterinsurgency. This is a version of the same extremely popular workshop offered to hundreds of military and civilian attendees over the past two years. The COIN Center has expanded the number of slots available to compensate for the high demand of previous sessions. The proceedings are UNCLASSIFED and registration is open to all interested US government and allied personnel.

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The audio webcast of today's Conversation with the Country will be live on BlogTalkRadio beginning at 0900. Here is some additional information:

Senior Officers from the US Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard will present the new Maritime Strategy -- "A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower" - 18 September, from 0900 to 1430. You can follow the discussion live on BlogTalk Radio.

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Iraq's Counterinsurgency College - Yochi Dreazen, Wall Street Journal

The US focus in Iraq is fast shifting from fighting a war to preparing for its aftermath.

The cornerstone of the transition is an effort to rehabilitate and release thousands of Iraqi detainees, including many former insurgents. According to the military, there are more than 19,000 Iraqi detainees in American custody, down from 26,000 in November 2007.

The effort, centered in Baghdad and Basra, includes courses in literacy, mathematics and moderate Islamic thought. The military hopes the courses will temper the detainees' religious beliefs and give them the skills to find and hold a steady job.

"The idea is to move from punishment to rehabilitation," said Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, one of the officers leading the push. "It's not enough to simply lock these guys up and hope they somehow turn into productive members of Iraqi society."

Few in the military question the need for the rehabilitation effort, but some wonder whether troops should be leading it. Some officers privately complain the program is turning them into social workers who coddle violent extremists. But few are willing to voice those criticisms because the effort is a favored project of Gen. David Petraeus, the former commander of US forces in Iraq. Gen. Petraeus believes the country's stability will be shaped by how well former insurgents are integrated back into Iraqi society. He sees the rehabilitation push as a powerful weapon in that fight...

More at The Wall Street Journal.

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Book Review: ‘The Strongest Tribe’

By Westhawk - Cross Posted at Westhawk

The Strongest Tribe is Bing West’s third book on the Iraq War. It is a capstone volume, covering the conflict from 2003 until the summer of 2008. The book also covers the war from bottom to top, from foot patrols in Iraq’s slums to meetings with President Bush and his top advisors at the White House. Although rushed into print (there is no index yet plenty of grammatical errors), I predict that a decade from now, The Strongest Tribe will hold up very well as a history of America’s intervention in Iraq.

The Strongest Tribe will hold up well because Bing West may be the single most qualified person on the planet to tell this story. As a young Marine Corps officer in Vietnam, Mr. West personally implemented counterinsurgency doctrine. He later wrote about his experiences at RAND and in his book about Vietnam, The Village. As for the dilemmas faced by the generals and those in the top echelons of the government, Mr. West brings his experience as an Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration.

Although the U.S. looks set to achieve its goals in Iraq, it goes without saying that the campaign was a mismanaged, costly, and ultimately Pyrrhic victory. Mr. West spares almost no one from blame: President Bush for abruptly adopting grandiose goals for Iraq in May 2003, but failing to choose the proper leaders and military strategy to achieve those lofty ambitions; Secretary Rumsfeld for tacitly undermining his President by seeking to get out of Iraq as quickly as possible; General George Casey for failing to admit that the Iraqis were unable to assume significant responsibilities as quickly as he had asserted to his superiors; and Prime Minister al-Maliki and virtually all other senior Iraqi officials for either being sectarian zealots, or for being outright thieves...

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Via e-mail (not yet posted to National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies website) – Strategic Forum Number 234 - Irregular Warfare: New Challenges for Civil-Military Relations by Patrick M. Cronin.

Key Points:

Success in the highly political and ambiguous conflicts likely to dominate the global security environment in the coming decades will require a framework that balances the relationships between civilian and military leaders and makes the most effective use of their different strengths. These challenges are expected to require better integrated, whole-of-government approaches, the cooperation of host governments and allies, and strategic patience.

Irregular warfare introduces new complications to what Eliot Cohen has called an “unequal dialogue” between civilian and military leaders in which civilian leaders hold the true power but must modulate their intervention into “military” affairs as a matter of prudence rather than principle. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated that irregular warfare - which is profoundly political, intensely local, and protracted—breaks from the traditional understanding of how military and civilian leaders should contribute to the overall effort.

One of the key challenges rising from irregular warfare is how to measure progress. While there is disagreement about the feasibility or utility of developing metrics, the political pressure for marking progress is unrelenting. Most data collection efforts focus on the number of different types of kinetic events, major political milestones such as elections, and resource inputs such as personnel, money, and materiel. None of these data points serves easily in discerning what is most needed - namely, outputs or results.

A second major challenge centers on choosing leaders for irregular warfare and stability and reconstruction operations. How to produce civilian leaders capable of asking the right and most difficult questions is not easily addressed. Meanwhile, there has been a general erosion of the traditional Soldier’s Code whereby a military member can express dissent, based on legitimate facts, in private to one’s superiors up to the point that a decision has been made. Many see the need to shore up this longstanding tradition among both the leadership and the ranks.

A third significant challenge is how to forge integrated strategies and approaches. Professional relationships, not organizational fixes, are vital to succeeding in irregular war. In this sense, the push for new doctrine for the military and civilian leadership is a step in the right direction to clarifying the conflated lanes of authority.

Irregular Warfare: New Challenges for Civil-Military Relations (Full PDF Article)

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Commentary: Losing Afghanistan? - Arnaud de Borchgrave, United Press International

Is NATO losing the Afghan war, as the Soviet Union did in the 1980s and the British Empire in the 19th century? Notwithstanding NATO and US denials, the answer is affirmative. And abundant evidence is provided in a detailed 113-page report released by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The author is Anthony Cordesman, CSIS' senior strategic thinker.

The situation in Afghanistan, Cordesman writes, has been deteriorating for the past five years "and is now reaching a crisis level." Both Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen have acknowledged that it is now an Afghan-Pakistani conflict "and one lacking in both military and civilian resources. It is also becoming increasingly more deadly for civilians, aid workers, and US and NATO forces."

Titled "Losing the Afghan-Pakistan War? The Rising Threat," the CSIS report documents "changes in the character of the threat and the rise in Afghan and allied casualties." UN and declassified US intelligence maps detail the steady expansion of threat influence and the regions that are unsafe for aid workers. Other data show how Afghan drug growing has steadily moved south "and become a major source of financing for the Taliban."

The CSIS report shows that the next US president will "face a critical challenge with a war that is probably being lost at the political and strategic level, and is not being won at the tactical level." It is clear why the senior US and NATO commanders in Afghanistan are calling for substantially more troops than Bush decided to deploy this September, and the problems in this briefing are compounded by critical problems in Afghan and Pakistani governance and economic development.

More at United Press International.

Losing The Afghan-Pakistan War? The Rising Threat - Anthony Cordesman, Center for Strategic and International Studies

The situation in Afghanistan has been deteriorating for nearly half a decade, and is now reaching a crisis level. Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen have acknowledged that it is now an Afghan-Pakistan conflict, and one lacking in both military and civilian resources. It is also a war that is becoming increasingly more deadly for civilians, aid workers, and US and NATO forces.

Resurgent Taliban, Haqqani, and HIG forces have turned much of Afghanistan into “no-go” zones for aid workers and civilians. These forces, benefiting from a rise in poppy cultivation and safe havens in the FATA regions of Pakistan, are steadily expanding their capabilities and geographic reach.

This report includes a graphic and map analysis of the fighting in Pakistan, changes in the character of the threat, and the rise in Afghan and allied casualties. UN and declassified US intelligence maps detail the steady expansion of threat influence and the regions that are unsafe for aid workers. Other data show how Afghan drug growing has steadily moved south and become a major source of financing for the Taliban.

It shows that the next President will face a critical challenge in dealing with a war that is probably being lost at the political and strategic level, and is not being won at the tactical level. It is clear why the senior US and NATO/ISAF commanders in Afghanistan are calling for substantially more troops than President Bush decided to deploy this September, and the problems in this briefing are compounded by critical problems in Afghan and Pakistani governance and economic development.

More at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

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Philippines Treaty in Question - United States Institute of Peace interview with Eugene Martin.

In the Philippines, the government of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo recently reached an agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) to end decades of conflict by granting self-determination and self-governance to the Moro minority in Moro dominated parts of the southern island of Mindanao. Non-Moro opponents of the concessions challenged the agreement in the Supreme Court. Violence erupted, as some MILF units rampaged and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) struck back. Negotiations to settle the ethnic conflict have ceased.

From 2003 to 2007, Eugene Martin was executive director of USIP’s Philippine Facilitation Project, which aimed to further the peace process between the government and the MILF. A retired senior Foreign Service officer, Martin served twice in the Philippines, as deputy chief of mission in 1996–99 and as a political military officer in 1987–90. He now is the director of the Washington Office of Johns Hopkins University’s Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies.

Martin’s work on the Philippine reconciliation project was summarized in a USIP Special Report (February 2008) and highlighted in a recent National Journal article about USIP.

USIP interview with Eugene Martin on developments in the Philippines.

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Sean Naylor of Army Times reports that General David Petraeus is planning to form a team of under 100 experts to conduct a top-to-bottom strategic assessment of US Central Command’s area of responsibility.

Petraeus tapped Col. (P) H.R. McMaster to lead the Joint Strategic Assessment Team, or JSAT, according to multiple sources.

McMaster is widely regarded as one of the Army’s most capable officers. He is the author of Dereliction of Duty, an examination of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s performance during the Vietnam War, and he commanded the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Tal Afar in western Iraq, a deployment that came to be seen as a model of how to conduct counterinsurgency at the local level.

The team will include people from government, the military and academia.

Petraeus takes charge at CentCom on Oct. 31 and the JSAT will begin its work immediately thereafter.

Sources said the work would likely be completed in February.

General Petraeus, along with Ambassador Ryan Crocker, utilized a JSAT in 2007 that contributed much to the creation of the classified Joint Campaign Plan for Iraq. Among other recommendations the JSAT provided the framework for a new population-centric counterinsurgency strategy intended to provide a bridge for the Iraqi government and security forces to eventual handover of day to day political and security functions.

Michael Gordon of the New York Times and Ann Scott Tyson of the Washington Post reported on JSAT efforts in US Is Seen in Iraq Until at Least ’09 and New Strategy for War Stresses Iraqi Politics, respectively.

The overarching aim of the plan, which sets goals for the end of this year and the end of 2008, is more political than military: to negotiate settlements between warring factions in Iraq from the national level down to the local level. In essence, it is as much about the political deals needed to defuse a civil war as about the military operations aimed at quelling a complex insurgency, said officials with knowledge of the plan.

The groundwork for the campaign plan was laid out in an assessment formulated by Petraeus's senior counterinsurgency adviser, David J. Kilcullen, with about 20 military officers, State Department officials and other experts in Baghdad known as the Joint Strategic Assessment Team. Their report, finished last month, was approved by Petraeus and Crocker as the basis of a formal campaign plan that will assign specific tasks for military commands and civilian agencies in Iraq.

The plan anticipates keeping US troop levels elevated into next year but also intends to significantly increase the size of the 144,000-strong Iraqi army, considered one of the more reliable institutions in the country and without which a US withdrawal would spell chaos. "You will have to do something about the sucking noise when we leave," said a US officer familiar with the plan.

The plan has three pillars to be carried out simultaneously -- in contrast to the prior sequential strategy of "clear, hold and build." One shifts the immediate emphasis of military operations away from transitioning to Iraqi security forces -- the primary focus under the former top US commander, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. -- toward protecting Iraq's population in trouble areas, a central objective of the troop increase that President Bush announced in January.

"The revised counterinsurgency approach we're taking now really focuses on protecting those people 24/7 . . . and that competent non-sectarian institutions take the baton from us," said Kilcullen, offering an overview of the campaign plan.

With mounting pressure to "get Afghanistan under control" - and many pundits and politicians advocating an Iraq-like "surge" of US and NATO troops into that country - the formation of a Central Command JSAT is very good news. A critical counterinsurgency lesson learned (and at times unlearned) is one size does not fit all and while a new strategy may include a substantial increase in ground combat forces circumstances warrant a comprehensive approach based on factors peculiar to Afghanistan.

Moreover, JSAT recommendations for Afghanistan must be an integral part of a regional strategy that includes Pakistan and India - as Dr. T.X. Hammes rightly argues in his recent Small Wars Journal blog post - The Good War?

Even worse, to date, the candidates are discussing only Afghanistan without mentioning Pakistan or India. Yet both these Southwest Asian nations are much more critical to the United States future than Afghanistan. Neither candidate has questioned the wisdom of bombing, and likely destabilizing Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation of almost 170 million people, in order to help our security efforts in Afghanistan. Nor has there been a discussion whether dedicating more resources to Afghanistan is more effective than dedicating different but equivalent resources to support Pakistan. This is despite the fact that 80% of the supplies for the forces we have in Afghanistan come by road directly through one of the least stable parts of Pakistan. In short, if Pakistan destabilizes we probably lose in Afghanistan – the converse is not true.

Yet, our position in Afghanistan appears to be largely shaping our policy toward Pakistan. And our actions in Pakistan inevitably have a major impact on our relationship with India -- a rising nation destined to be the most important of the three.

We entered Afghanistan to destroy Al Qaeda’s operating forces and eliminate its training bases. We successfully eliminated the bases and hurt Al Qaeda badly. One reason often given for our presence in Afghanistan is that we must stabilize it as a nation so that Al Qaeda can never use it as a terrorist base again. Unfortunately, Al Qaeda has moved its forces and its bases into Pakistan. The subsequent conflict inside Pakistan is contributing to increasing instability in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and has greatly increased the strain on the Pakistani government.

Before we rush more troops into Afghanistan, we must answer basic questions about our strategy for the region and how our efforts in Afghanistan support that strategy. Good tactics and more troops are not a substitute for a strategy – and in fact can significantly raise the cost of a bad strategy.

While not mentioned by T.X., Iran shares a border and long history with Afghanistan and if recent reporting holds true is increasingly taking an active role in supporting the Taliban.

For additional background on the Iraq JSAT and the issues facing decision-makers in 2007 see The New Yorker's The General's Dilemma by Steve Coll, Newsweek Magazine's Brainiac Brigade by Babak Dehghanpisheh and John Barry, and Dave Kilcullen's posts here at Small Wars Journal (scroll down to 2007 entries).

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For those with Army Knowledge Online (AKO) access check out the completed research on the Research and Analysis page of the Urban Warfare Analysis Center (UWAC). A relatively new organization, UWAC prides itself on its “fusion” approach to research and analysis:

The UWAC Analysis Team utilizes a fusion cell approach to foster innovation and collaboration. In contrast to the old “stovepipe” approach in which information and expertise is rarely shared across teams, the fusion cell model brings together people with diverse experiences and skill sets. Thus, the two main ingredients for the creation of innovative ideas – collaboration and multidisciplinary expertise – are both captured.

The UWAC team is comprised of three disciplines – military specialists, technology experts, and social science analysts – to produce research and analysis across multiple functional areas.

UWAC participated in a USJFCOM / USMC project I worked on earlier this year in my “day job” and provided top-notch support. Here is a listing of their current urban operations related products:

• Implications of Iranian Media in Iraq
• Using Ocean Waves to Power Port Cities during Stability Operations
• Islamification of the Chechen Wars
• Virtual Worlds and Terrorist Attack Planning
• How a Boy Becomes a Martyr - The Dangers of Web 2.0 Technology
• Weapons Review: SCAR
• Aquaponic Technology in Urban Operations
• Virtual Worlds and Money Laundering
• Web 2.0 and Enemy Recruitment
• Impact of Off-the-Shelf Global Telecommunications Technology
• Urban Jihad: Militant Exploitation of the Koran
• Lessons Learned From the Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006
• How the Iranian Media Help Build Support for Hezbollah
• Virtual Worlds and their Implications for Urban Warfare
• Hezbollah's Use of Arab Media to Galvanize Support
• Iran’s Evolving Urban Warfare Doctrine
• Cell Phone Use by Insurgents in Iraq
• Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq: Assessment and Outlook
• Sistani’s Future Role in Iraq
• Suicide Bombings in Urban Warfare: Trends in Motives and Targets
• Attacking Urban Insurgents: Choking Off the Money Supply
• Influence Operations in Iraq: Discussion Paper for JUW08 War Game
• Information Operations: Lessons from Private Marketing Companies on Cultural Awareness
• Text Messaging by Insurgents and Terrorists: A Potent Force Multiplier
• Tamil Tigers: Trendsetters of Urban Suicide Bombings Pursuing Airborne Capabilities
• Virtual Worlds and Enemy Attack Planning
• Emerging Nanotechnologies for Urban Warfare: Piezoelectric Devices
• Influence Operations: Print-on-Demand Printing
• Case Study of Urban Warfare: Compilation of Lessons Learned from the Chechen Wars
• Nanotechnology in Urban Operations: Overview of Capabilities and the Way Forward
• Emerging Nanotechnologies for Urban Warfare: Shear Thickening Fluids
• Contract Airborne Surveillance Support to Balkan Urban Operations
• Case Study: U.S. Marines in Beirut (1982-1984)
• Urban Warfare: Learning Best Practices on Biometrics from Casino Operations
• Emerging Technologies for Urban Warfare: Radio Frequency Identification – Tracking the Possibilities
• Emerging Technologies for Urban Warfare: New Carbon Fibers to Produce Stronger, Lighter Body Armor
• Urban IED Threat in Somalia
• Sun Tzu and Modern Urban Warfare
• West Africa: Drug Trade and Communication Schemes
• Colombia's Counterdrug Operations
• Emerging Technologies for Urban Warfare: Nanotechnology and Battlefield Medical Care

Not bad for a young organization.

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Sunday night news update on the Marriott Hotel bombing in Islamabad...

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Fawzia Sheikh, Inside the Navy (subscription required at Inside Defense), reports that US Joint Forces Command is planning on publishing a commander’s handbook and related assessments with the intent to improve US civil-military cooperation in counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. This effort is part of the results garnered from a Limited Objective Experiment (LOE) of JFCOM’s Unified Action ’08 program. The LOE, with US State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS) in the lead, was conducted in June and included seminars and table-top “experimentation”.

… The objective was to assess whether the planning framework was "able to incorporate and account for" civilian and military relationships, roles, responsibilities and authorities, and that the framework can support the execution of the "strategic interagency planning process”…

The LOE replicated a joint staff tasked with developing policy and an operations plan for responding to an insurgency. This included using a country reconstruction stabilization group to conduct interagency planning.

JFCOM also created an integration planning cell that looks at a strategic plan that has been developed or as it's being developed… and "actually deploys down to the combatant-command level to help harmonize the civilian and military plans."

JFCOM concluded that the planning framework used during the LOE provides the necessary guidance but further work has to be done to hammer out the details on how the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff will participate as each has its own unique strategic planning process.

While DOD has its own strategic planning systems, until now it lacked one that spanned across numerous government agencies…

ITN also reported on the three documents JFCOM plans to produce dealing with the issues raised by the LOE.

One is a companion "practitioner's guide . . . kind of a how-to book" that will be released in the October or November time frame…

The second document will be a joint force commanders' handbook outlining "their role in the system," he said, adding it will be ready in January or February.

The third document will be a LOE report on the experiment’s findings. The last officially released Unified Action related document by JFCOM was the US Government Draft Planning Framework for Reconstruction, Stabilization, and Conflict Transformation dated December 2005.

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Wired Magazine’s latest issue lists the 15 people their staff believes the next President should listen to. Of particular interest to SWJ is the inclusion of Dr. Montgomery McFate. McFate a cultural anthropologist who works on defense and national security issues and is currently serving as the Senior Social Science Adviser for the US Army’s Human Terrain System Program in her capacity as a Research Staff Member at the Institute for Defense Analysis.

From Use Anthropology in Military Planning by Wired’s Noah Shachtman:

… Traditionally, the military has relied almost solely on so-called hard sciences like nuclear physics and electronics. But as a simple regime-change operation in Iraq descended into a baffling counterinsurgency, it became clear that you can have the most advanced sensors, the toughest armor, the most precise GPS-guided munitions, but without any insight into the civilian population - or at least some sense of how they'll react to your moves - your war effort is sunk.

By 2004, McFate had made her way into the national security establishment as a researcher at Rand. (This despite an unusual background — she grew up on a barge in the San Francisco Bay and had hung out with well-known beat poets.) McFate's ideas (shared by a growing number in the military) caught the attention of the science adviser to the joint chiefs of staff. She then codified them in a pair of landmark articles in Military Review outlining a rationale and strategy for integrating the social sciences into national defense. Today she is the senior social science adviser for the Human Terrain System, a $130 million Army program that embeds political science, anthropology, and economics specialists with combat units in Afghanistan and Iraq. "What you're trying to do is understand the people's interests," she says. "Because whoever is more effective at meeting the interests of the population will be able to influence it."…

More at Wired and at Shachtman's post on Wired's Danger Room blog.

Discuss at Small Wars Council.

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... what Erin said.

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Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West, also called Obsession, is a 2006 documentary movie about Islamist teachings and goals which uses extensive Arab and Iranian television footage.

Obsession compares the threat of radical Islamism with that of Nazism before World War II, and draws parallels between radical Islamists and the Nazi Party during the War, specifically Adolf Hitler's relationship with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem as an inspiration for radical Islamic movements in the Middle East today.

The film features analysis by counter-terrorism figures such as Nonie Darwish (the daughter of a Fedayeen soldier), Alan M. Dershowitz, Steven Emerson, Brigitte Gabriel, Martin Gilbert, Caroline Glick, Alfons Heck, Glen Jenvey, John Loftus, Salim Mansur, Itamar Marcus, Khaleel Mohammed, Daniel Pipes, Tashbih Sayyed, Walid Shoebat, Khaled Abu Toameh, Robert Wistrich and interviews with Israeli officials and a former PLO operative.

Recently (September 2008) the Clarion Fund distributed DVDs of the film by mail, and in newspaper advertising supplements, predominantly in swing states for the upcoming presidential election.

The Huffington Post on the Clarion Fund: A shadowy organization is financing the delivery this month of millions of DVDs of the controversial video Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West. The video, which has been widely criticized as hostile to Muslims, has been inserted in numerous national and major-city newspapers.

Newspapers reported to have carried the DVD included the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Charlotte Observer, Miami Herald, and Raleigh News and Observer

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) calls Obsession “a well-planned con.”

The video above is a 12-minute abridged version. Trailers and clips can be viewed here and the full 77-minute version on DVD can be purchased here.

Sources for the above include Wikipedia, CAIR, and the official Obsession web page. This posting was prompted by various news services citing outrage over recent distribution of Obsession, bringing this 2006 video to our attention, once again.

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On 18 September the Center for a New American Security held an Afghanistan Press briefing featuring Nathaniel Fick and Vikram Singh. Discussion topics ranged from the security situation in Afghanistan to cross border raids into Pakistan to what the US strategy should be. The transcript of the briefing can be found here.

Nathaniel Fick is a Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Prior to joining CNAS, he served as a Marine Corps infantry and reconnaissance officer, including operational assignments in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. In 2007, Fick was a civilian instructor at the Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Academy in Kabul. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller One Bullet Away (Houghton Mifflin, 2005). His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today, among other publications, and he is a frequent contributor to CNN, NPR, and the BBC.

Vikram Singh is a Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. He works on Afghanistan and Pakistan, Asia Initiative ’09, and a range of CNAS defense strategy and planning projects. Prior to joining CNAS Mr. Singh worked in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Security Affairs, where he was responsible for strategic initiatives to improve the US military’s work with partner nations including the policy oversight and management of a joint Department of Defense and Department of State program to train and equip foreign military forces around the world.

Nothing follows.

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Imperial Secrets: Remapping the Mind of Empire by Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Kelly, US Army. National Defense Intelligence College Press featured publication for October 2008.

Background

In this work, Patrick Kelley interprets the intelligence environment of political, military and information empires. His contribution sheds light on the cause of enduring intelligence collection deficits that afflict the center of such empires, and that can coincide with their ebb and flow. Alert intelligence practitioners, present and future, can note here just how useful a fresh interpretation of the intelligence enterprise can be to a coherent understanding of the global stream of worrisome issues. The long-term value of this work will be realized as readers entertain the implications of Churchill’s comment that “The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.”

The manuscript for this book was reviewed by scholars and intelligence practitioners, and was approved for public release by the Department of Defense’s Office of Security Review.

Selected Review Commentary Excerpts

Good intelligence, in both senses of the word, has been notably missing in U.S. foreign policy over the past several years. Skillfully moving from the Roman to the Ottoman to the British empires, adeptly applying ideas from a wide range of Eastern and Western philosophies, Patrick Kelley has produced a remarkable set of lessons-yet-to-be-learned for the United States. Full of trans-historical and cross-cultural insights, this is the perfect supplement and essential sequel to the U.S. Army and Marine Corps Counter-Insurgency Field Manual. Francis Bacon said knowledge is power: Kelley makes it so.

Patrick Kelley is that rare scholar-soldier who has dared to be self-reflexive. His monograph on “Imperial Intelligence” is carefully researched and lucidly written. Considering how crucial the question of intelligence gathering is, an understanding of its history should be of great interest to scholars, to statesmen, to intelligence gathering departments, and to interested non-specialist readers as well.

As Patrick Kelley observes near the close of this book, “all intelligence is fundamentally historicized.” One of the main reasons we study history is to escape the insularity of the present, to overcome the unwarranted exceptionalism that so oft en afflicts our sense of ourselves, to remind us that the problems we face can be found to echo those of our predecessors. Kelley brings an historical perspective brilliantly to bear on contemporary America’s intelligence capabilities and limitations, identifying its “way of knowing” as a distinctively imperial one and demonstrating that it shares much in common with the intelligence challenges of the Roman, the Ottoman, and the British empires.

Imperial Secrets: Remapping the Mind of Empire

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Decency, Toughness... and No Shortcuts by Bing West, The Atlantic

The Iraq war has faded as an item of interest to the national press because the violence has plummeted, while a consensus has formed that the American military learned from experience and now knows what it’s doing. In 2006, we were losing the war; today, the military trajectory is encouraging, and US forces are slowly withdrawing. During my 15th trip to Iraq in August, for the first time I didn’t hear a shot fired. In several cities, I walked into markets with only a few American soldiers, and was immediately surrounded by Iraqis eager to talk about the economy, security, politics, whatever.

Normality? Nowhere close. Concrete barriers (designed to restrict the flesh-ripping radius of suicide bombers) were still in place, enclosing neighborhoods in Baghdad and a dozen other cities. Car bombings and criminal kidnappings persisted, as did battles against disparate al-Qaeda cells and Shiite insurgent gangs incited by Iran. Still, Iraq was not engulfed in civil war. The Sunni resistance had largely collapsed.

A sure sign that the war in Iraq has turned around has been the rush to take credit. Victory has a thousand fathers. This would seem a harmless parlor game, were Afghanistan not looming. Military success in Iraq is sure to lead to lessons to be applied in Afghanistan. Let’s make sure we pick the right lessons.

What did cause the turnaround since 2006? Three competing explanations have popped up. Some have claimed that covert operations, involving the use of top-secret technical devices, are what drove the insurgency’s leaders from Iraq. Others attribute the turnaround to Bush’s decision in January 2007 to add 30,000 more troops. And still others suggest that it is the brilliance of General Petraeus, who took command in Iraq in February of 2007, that we have to thank for the improvements.

Much more at The Atlantic.

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Counterinsurgency and a Comprehensive Approach
Helmand Province, Afghanistan
by Peter Dahl Thruelsen, Small Wars Journal

Counterinsurgency and a Comprehensive Approach (Full PDF Article)

The point of departure of this article will be the situation in Helmand Province as of summer 2008. The article will provide an exclusive focus on comprehensive approach (CA), the complex context of Helmand Province and the international setup there. Fighting an insurgency like the one in Afghanistan is not just a job for the military. Experiences from previous and present insurgencies have shown that a variety of measures including political, economic and developmental play a significant role in gaining progress and success in what can be called state-building. In Afghanistan, the term ‘comprehensive approach’ has been used to underline the need for a more cross-ministerial interagency approach when fighting the insurgency. A recent report to the US Congress views the importance of CA in the following way “success will never be achieved through military means alone, but through a comprehensive approach that involves all elements of power: military, diplomatic, and economic. Above all, it will require a sustained effort to continue to develop the capacity of the Afghans themselves.” In this article the focus will be on local capacity building and the fact that CA by definition involves more than one player, and that one of these is often a military one.

The article will try to go in-depth regarding the current situation in Helmand Province and it will look into the current British approach to the engagement. The article is based on several field researches conducted in Helmand since 2006, with the latest in May 2008 and it is inspired by the earlier contribution to Small Wars Journal by Dr. Daniel Marston on “British Operation in Helmand Afghanistan”. The main argument will be that when implementing a fully integrated civil-military counterinsurgency strategy in the context of Helmand Province extensive resources must be identified and allocated in a fast pace. Together with this the rapid deployment of civilian advisors to theatre will be crucial for success in the complexities of counterinsurgency in Helmand Province. In sum, the article is meant to contribute to the constant ongoing debate on Afghanistan, by providing, to some extent, a detailed picture of the situation as of summer 2008.

Counterinsurgency and a Comprehensive Approach (Full PDF Article)

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The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) cordially invites you to a panel discussion with General Peter W. Chiarelli, Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army; Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl (Ret.), Senior Fellow with CNAS and 1988 West Point graduate; Captain Jason Fritz, three tour Iraq veteran and 2002 West Point graduate; and Bill Murphy Jr., author of In a Time of War: The Proud and Perilous Journey of West Point’s Class of 2002.

Michèle Flournoy, President and Co-Founder of CNAS, will moderate the discussion on the nature of duty, sacrifice, and officership in a time of war, to take place on October 1, 2008, from 4:00pm to 7:00pm, in the Willard's Crystal Room. Join these Iraq war veterans and the author of an important new book on the sacrifices of young American Army officers for a discussion about country, service, and officership in a time of war.

Date/Time:
October 1, 2008
Panel Discussion: 4:00 pm to 5:45 pm
Cocktails and hors d’oeuvres: 5:45 pm to 7:00 pm

Location:
Willard InterContinental Hotel's Crystal Room
1401 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C., 20004

RSVP:
Online Registration, Click Here
Or, RSVP by phone: (202) 457-9427

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) is an independent and nonpartisan research institution that develops strong, pragmatic and principled national security and defense policies that promote and protect American interests and values. CNAS leads efforts to help inform and prepare the national security leaders of today and tomorrow.

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The 2006 Lebanon Campaign and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy by Dr. Stephen D. Biddle and Mr. Jeffrey A. Friedman, US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute.

Many now see future warfare as a matter of nonstate actors employing irregular methods against Western states. This expectation has given rise to a range of sweeping proposals for transforming the US military to meet such threats. In this context, Hezbollah’s 2006 campaign in southern Lebanon has been receiving increasing attention as a prominent recent example of a nonstate actor fighting a Westernized state. In particular, critics of irregular-warfare transformation often cite the 2006 case as evidence that non-state actors can nevertheless wage conventional warfare in state-like ways. This monograph assesses this claim via a detailed analysis of Hezbollah’s military behavior, coupled with deductive inference from observable Hezbollah behavior in the field to findings for their larger strategic intent for the campaign.

The 2006 Lebanon Campaign and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy

(H/T Mark Vinson)

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Green Warriors
Army Environmental Considerations for Contingency Operations from Planning Through Post-Conflict

By David E. Mosher, Beth E. Lachman, Michael D. Greenberg, Tiffany Nichols, Brian Rosen and Henry H. Willis of Rand

Rand says:

Recent experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans have highlighted the importance of environmental considerations. These range from protecting soldier health and disposing of hazardous waste to building water supply systems and other activities that help achieve national goals in the post-conflict phase of contingency operations. The Army has become increasingly involved with environmental issues in every contingency operation and must be better prepared to deal with them. This study assesses whether existing policy, doctrine, and guidance adequately address environmental activities in post-conflict military operations and reconstruction. Findings are based on reviews of top-level policy and doctrine, analysis of operational experience, extensive interviews with diverse Army personnel, and a review of operational documentation and literature. From these sources, a database of 111 case studies was created. The research showed that environmental concerns can have far-reaching and significant impacts on the Army, both direct and indirect, especially in terms of cost, current operations, soldier health, diplomatic relations, reconstruction activities, and the ultimate success of the operation or the broader mission. Some evidence suggests that environmental problems may have even contributed to insurgency in Iraq. Recommendations include updating current policy and doctrine to fully address environmental considerations in contingency operations; ensuring that contractors are carefully selected and managed; and transmitting proactive field environmental practices and lessons throughout the Army.

What say you?

Discuss at Small Wars Council

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What a Surge Can't Solve in Afghanistan - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion

If there was one foreign policy issue on which Barack Obama and John McCain agreed during Friday night's debate, it was that the United States should send more troops to Afghanistan. The bipartisan enthusiasm for this surge is so strong that there has been relatively little discussion of whether this strategy makes sense.

So here's a skeptical look at the issue, drawn from conversations during a visit to Afghanistan this month with Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Rather than more troops, the real game-changer in Afghanistan may be Gates's plan to spend an extra $1.3 billion on surveillance technology to find and destroy the leadership of the insurgency.

The case for more troops was made forcefully by the new US commander, Gen. David McKiernan. He said in a briefing in Kabul that to cope with rising violence, he needs three more combat brigades, in addition to the extra brigade already promised for early next year. That could add at least 15,000 troops to the current force of about 35,000. Other senior officers made similar pitches in briefings at Bagram and Jalalabad.

But the commanders' description of the enemy that these troops will be fighting was fuzzy. The adversary isn't al-Qaeda; it's not even the Taliban. It's what McKiernan called a "nexus of insurgency" and what other officers described as a "syndicate" of insurgents and criminal groups.

More at The Washington Post.

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The Most Dangerous Job on Earth - Roger Cohen, International Herald Tribune

Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's new president and the widower of Benazir Bhutto, does not mince words in his determination to defeat a growing Taliban insurgency.

"It is my decision that we will go after them, we will free this country," he told me in an interview. "Yes, this is my first priority because I will have no country otherwise. I will be president of what?"

After the massive bomb attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, that's a fair question. Its finances in a free fall, its security crumbling, nuclear-armed Pakistan stands at the brink just as a civilian takes charge after the futile zigzagging of General Pervez Musharraf's U.S.-supported rule.

I asked Zardari, who took office this month, if the assassination of his wife last year motivated him to confront Islamic militancy. "Of course," he said, "It's my revenge. I take it every day."

He continued: "I will fight them because they are a cancer to my society, not because of my wife only, but because they are a cancer, yes, and they did kill the mother of my children, so their way of life is what I want to kill. I will suck the oxygen out of their system so there will be no Talibs."

More at The International Herald Tribune

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‘The War Within’ - Chapter One - Bob Woodward, New York Times

One weekday afternoon in May 2004, General George Casey bounded up the stairs to the third floor of his government-furnished quarters, a beautiful old brick mansion on the Potomac River at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. His wife, Sheila, was packing for a move across the river to Fort Myer, in Virginia, the designated quarters of the Army's vice chief of staff.

"Please, sit down," Casey said.

In 34 years of marriage, he had never made such a request.

President Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Army chief of staff had asked him to become the top U.S. commander in Iraq, he said.

Sheila Casey burst into tears. Like any military spouse, she dreaded the long absences and endless anxieties of separation, the strains of a marriage carried out half a world apart. But she also recognized it was an incredible opportunity for her husband. Casey saw the Iraq War as a pivot point, one of history's hinges, a conflict that would likely define America's future standing in the world, Bush's legacy and his own reputation as a general.

"This is going to be hard," Casey said, but he felt as qualified as anyone else.

Casey's climb to four-star status had been unusual. Instead of graduating from West Point, he had studied international relations at Georgetown University. He'd been there during the Vietnam War and was a member of ROTC, the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. He remembered how some students had spit on him and hurled things when he crossed campus in uniform. In 1970, after his graduation and commissioning as an Army second lieutenant, his father and namesake, a two-star Army general commanding the celebrated 1st Cavalry Division, was killed in Vietnam when his helicopter crashed en route to visit wounded soldiers.

Casey had never intended to make the Army his career. And yet he fell in love with the sense of total responsibility that even a young second lieutenant was given for the well-being of his men. Now, after 34 years in the Army, he was going to be the commander on the ground, as General William Westmoreland had been in Vietnam from 1965 to 1968. Casey had no intention of ending up like Westmoreland, whom history had judged as that era's poster boy for quagmire and failure.

Casey had never been in combat. His most relevant experience was in the Balkans - Bosnia and Kosovo - where irregular warfare had been the order of the day. He had held some of the most visible "thinker" positions in the Pentagon - head of the Joint Staff strategic plans and policy directorate, J-5, and then the prestigious directorship of the Joint Staff, which served the chiefs. But aside from a 1981 stint in Cairo as a United Nations military observer, he had spent little time in the Middle East.

Much more at The New York Times.

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Defending Hamdan: Opening Remarks - Mike Innes, Complex Terrain Laboratory. Opening post of a CTLab symposium on the Hamdan trial.

I first came across Brian Williams - or rather, his work - a few years ago when I was starting to research sanctuary concepts and practices in the war on terror. Plumbing the depths of the International Studies Association's online paper archive, I stumbled across one that was unforgettably titled "Operation Enduring Freedom, 2001-2005. Waging Counter-Jihad in Central Eurasia." It was an anomaly among IR papers, written by an historian, offering a deep contemporary narrative of Al Qaeda - and a page turner, written with great style.

Since then, I've had the great privilege to work with Brian on several occasions, including his work in two books that I've edited, with a third forthcoming. He was one of the first scholars I contacted when I was thinking about putting together CTlab. He is, perhaps, the most generous scholar with whom I've ever dealt. It was thus no great surprise, when I asked him if he'd consider drafting a blog post about his recent field research in Turkey, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, that he instead provided a detailed, 5000 word account of his role in the Hamdan trial...

Much of this has been mired in misunderstanding, hysterics and partisan politics. It made sense to leverage from Brian's generosity a unique opportunity to engage with these problems in an open, informal forum. We also wanted to explore the enabling potential of digital spaces in CTlab's development and offerings. About a month ago we starting polling potential participants, and here we are today.

Our multidisciplinary cohort of invited scholars, including representatives from across the disciplines - history, political science, psychology, sociology, anthropology, law - is truly global, based in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. They've published extensively and widely, and a fair number of them are inveterate bloggers. With that, I'd like to welcome our participants, as I cede the ether to them.

Panel:

John Matthew Barlow (History, Concordia University)
David Betz (War Studies, King's College London)
Christian Bleuer (Political Science, Australian National University)
Craig Hayden (Int'l Communications, American University)
Kevin Jon Heller (Law, University of Auckland/University of Melbourne)
John Horgan (Psychology, Pennsylvania State University)
Thomas Johnson (Cultural Studies, Naval Postgraduate School)
Jason Ralph (Politics & International Studies, University of Leeds)
William Snyder (Law, University of Syracuse/Maxwell School)
Marc Tyrrell (Anthropology, Carleton University)
Tony Waters (Sociology, California State University, Chico)
L.L. Wynn (Anthropology, Macquarie University)

More at CTLab.

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The Kurds and the Future of Iraq

By Captain Timothy Hsia

Iraq today is at a critical juncture which could mark the beginning of further stabilization or increased internecine struggle. The surge of troops has created additional breathing room for the Nouri Al-Maliki government and General Petraeus’ leadership has greatly assisted in ensuring a more peaceful and secure Iraq. For the past two years, Iraq has been the scene of multiple sectarian battles between Sunnis and Shia, and internally within the two sects. The Sunni insurgency has died down as the Sons of Iraq (or Concerned Local Citizens) have turned against foreign jihadists and extremist Sunni groups. Similarly the Shia internal struggle has been won by Maliki and the Government of Iraq over Moktada Al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

The next phase of the Iraq war could become less of a sectarian struggle and more of an ethnic conflict. The inability of Iraq’s parliament to resolve the situation in Kirkuk and the threat of violence in Khanaqin has highlighted the unresolved pressing issue of the Kurdish people and its Kurdish Regional Government (KRG).

The current Iraq war has strengthened the Kurdish people as it has demographically consolidated the Kurdish people in Northern Iraq. Kurdish peoples displaced to Northern Iraq because they were now free to return to their ancestral homes after being evicted previously by Saddam and also because they were seeking refuge from regions besieged by sectarian violence. Simultaneously, the KRG has lured Kurdish people back to the Kurdish heartland in Northern Iraq with promises of land, wages, and security. Estimates today of the total population of Kurdish people living in the Middle East ranges around 30 million people. Based off these numbers, the Kurdish people are often described as the largest ethnic minority without a country. Hitherto, the Kurdish region has been comparatively stabile due to its homogenous demographics. And currently the Kurdish provinces in Northern Iraq enjoy a level of economic prosperity and political autonomy unmatched by any other region within Iraq...

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Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander’s War in Iraq - Peter R. Mansoor, Yale University Press, 2008, 376 pgs, $28.00.

It is hard to objectively evaluate a book that is “blurbed” on the back by the likes of General David Petraeus (now Commander, U.S. Central Command), Dr. Conrad Crane (chief editor of FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency), H.R. McMaster, Tom Ricks and Wick Murray. They have all endorsed the book as a masterful memoir of the post-conflict period in Iraq’s capital from a commander’s viewpoint. What can anyone else find to say that this suite of insightful soldiers and scholars have not?

Even worse, the book includes a brief foreword from Donald and Fred Kagan, about as powerful a father-son pairing as one will ever find among historians and public intellectuals today. The former is a highly respected historian of classics who teaches at Yale, from which the latter also graduated. Fred Kagan, after a decade at West Point, is now a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. They supervise a series for that school’s university press which is intended to “present the keenest analyses of war in its different aspects, the sharpest evaluations of political and military decision making, and descriptive accounts of military activity that illuminate its human elements.”

They certainly scored a home run with Baghdad at Sunrise. It offers a compassionate, candid and comprehensive account of a brigade commander’s tour in Iraq. The author served as the Commander of the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division known as the Ready First Combat Team” during that confusing period after the toppling of the Bathist regime and the all too quick transfer of responsibility to an interim Iraqi governing group. The author provides a keen depiction of events on the ground, and his understanding of the decision making that was guiding his unit’s activities in the grim and grimy streets of Rusafa and Adhamiya in central and northeast Baghdad. This sector is sandwiched between the Tigris and the slums of Sadr City. Mansoor’s “Ready First” struggled to bring order out of chaos, neutralized the national insurgents, and fought the increasing influx of Islamic militants from late May of 2003 until relieved in July 2004. In an area of some 75 square miles that was once home to over 2 million Iraqis, his brigade struggled to overcome the poor planning and lack of follow through that occurred back in Washington’s policy making circles.

Mansoor’s lens is often focused on the human dimension of this conflict, especially his own soldiers. The book is dedicated to his entire brigade, but especially those that made the ultimate sacrifice. The circumstances around the loss of each soldier, including his Command Sergeant Major Eric Cooke, is carefully detailed. These soldiers “made their stand in the cradle of civilization in an effort to ensure that the progress of mankind continues, and that it will be an evolution worthy of the twenty-first century, not the seventh.”

The author is very well equipped and well positioned to evaluate the historical underpinning and decisions about the war. He is one of those unique soldier-scholars, able to apply perceptive insights from history with a rigorously trained and analytical mind, with the skills of a senior combat commander. Colonel Mansoor earned a PhD from Ohio State University in military history, and has taught at the U.S. Military Academy. He is now the Raymond Mason Chair of Military History at Ohio State University. After command in Iraq, he served as the founding director of the U.S. Army and Marine Counterinsurgency Center at Leavenworth, and was detailed to the Chairman, JCS study group of colonels that evaluated U.S. military strategy in Iraq (the dust jacket inaccurately states that this group proposed the surge strategy). From 2007-2008, he was General Petraeus’s executive officer at Multi-National Force-Iraq where he got to see the evolutionary progress he and his brigade has so relentless worked towards. The return to civilization in Mesopotamia is now within grasp, but only if the Iraqis want it.

The author concludes with a chapter titled “Reflections” that alone is worth the price of the book. This chapter synthesizes his year of command and provides battle-hardened lessons learned about insurgency. Underscoring points made by now retired LtCol John Nagl, Mansoor forcefully presents a need for greater adaptation by the U.S. Army. Its culture “must change, or the organization will be unprepared to fight and win the wars of the twenty-first century. While retaining the ability to conduct major combat operations, the Army must change its culture to embrace missions other than conventional land force combat”

Echoing concerns raised by Bing West in his highly regarded The Strongest Tribe, Mansoor worries about the relationship between the American people and its professional army. “American cannot long remain a superpower if we think that our wars can be fought solely by the small sliver of society that populates our professional military forces,” he observes. However, the author provides no recommendations on how we can best attain this closer relationship. This reviewer is of the opinion that the fault does not lie with the American people, but with our senior elected officials.

This is an exceptional memoir that decades from now will still be ranked as an insightful but especially candid history of the war. Mansoor is the rarest of commanders, willing to point out where his own decisions or judgments were flawed. It will appeal to general readers looking for intimate details and honest assessments on a daily basis from a commander’s lens. It is highly recommended for prospective military leaders as part of their preparation for higher command. Simply stated, it is an impressive account that all prospective brigade, regimental and battalion commanders should read.

Frank Hoffman is a retired Marine infantryman who serves as a research fellow at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Phila, PA.

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