Journal

The Use of Fusion Cells to Establish Unity of Effort Between SOF (Yin) and Conventional Forces (Yang)

by Captain Paul Lushenko

Download the full article: "Partnership 'Till it Hurts"

America's Special Operations Forces (SOF) have historically shared an adversarial, but necessary, relationship with conventional counterparts due primarily to intra-service rivalry, personality conflicts, and mission secrecy. Yet, the SOF-conventional operating paradigm mirrors a yin-yang dynamic in which both forces are seemingly disjunct but nevertheless complementary when synchronized: "...there is contradiction as well as harmony, and...unity in multiplicity." While yin-yang fluctuate in time and space, inherent opportunity costs ultimately compel balance. As the world's de facto leader against extremism, America has necessarily expanded SOF's global presence to undermine savvy militants and shadowy networks outside the mission and capabilities scope of more mechanical conventional forces. Consequently, the "wall of secrecy" once maintained by SOF has been lowered to synchronize all facets of the military within the contemporary operating environment (COE) in which SOF and conventional forces more deliberately cooperate.

As the Intelligence Officer of a Joint Special Operations Task Force (JSOTF) re-deployed from eastern Afghanistan in the fall of 2009, my experiences reinforced the gravity of establishing unity of effort between SOF (yin) and conventional forces (yang) to exploit intelligence, capabilities, and mission opportunity costs. The development of a Brigade-level fusion cell in eastern Afghanistan fostered operational harmony, resulting in heightened, non-doctrinal partnership; deliberate intelligence sharing; joint planning and operations; and innovative leadership to more effectively conduct irregular warfare including counter-insurgency (COIN). By streamlining the opportunity costs of SOF and conventional forces through the fusion cell, our JSOTF empowered the conventional Brigade's more important Lines of Effort (LOE), undermined the Haqqani Network's (HQN) strategic objectives, precipitated the reconciliation of mid-senior level HQN leaders, and promoted legitimacy of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) through an aggressive Information Operations (IO) campaign.

Download the full article: "Partnership 'Till it Hurts"

Captain Paul Lushenko is currently assigned as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar at The Australian National University's (ANU) Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment in Fort Benning, Georgia as an Intelligence Officer. His deployments include multiple tours to Iraq and a recent deployment to Afghanistan where he served as the J2 for a Joint Special Operations Task Force. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 2005 (B.S., International Relations) and is studying for dual masters in diplomacy and international relations.

The Jones Insurgency Model

A Tool for the Prevention and

Resolution of Insurgency

by Colonel Robert C. Jones

Download the full article:

The

The Jones Insurgency Model

Offered here is the simple proposition that insurgency happens when

governance fails. Similarly, foreign terrorism happens when one supports these

same failed systems.

countries like Somalia; which is probably more accurately described as a

rejection of forced western, Westphalian constructs of governance for forms

more acceptable to their culture and society.

countries like Bangladesh; where the lack of effective government services

and widespread poverty are largely seen as "normal" by the affected

populace.

countries like Liberia; where auspices of statehood are perverted to

criminal purposes.

No, the failures that lead to insurgency are far more fundamental, and often

so insidious that they are not even recognized or acknowledged by their equally

failing leaders; even when pointed out to them, often quite violently, by their

own populaces. What makes countering such insurgent causation even more

complicated is that these failures do not even have to be real; all that is

required is that some key segment of the populace reasonably believes them to be

true.  The irony is not that this happens in countries like those described

above, but that it also afflicts the most developed, upright, and law abiding

countries as well. This is the paradox. This is why counterinsurgency is so

difficult: it can happen anywhere, its causation is rooted in perceptions of

governmental failure; and its resolution is rooted in governmental recognition

and resolution of those same perceptions.

Download the full article:

The

The Jones Insurgency Model

Colonel Robert C. Jones, U.S. Army Reserve, is a Special Forces officer

currently assigned as the Chief, Strategic Studies for U.S. Special Operations

Command; with duty in Kandahar, Afghanistan as the Chief, Special Operations

Planning and Liaison Element to Regional Command-South.  The opinions he

expresses here are his own and represent no NATO, U.S. Government or Department

of Defense positions.

See also this article as published here in the ISAF Counterinsurgency Blog.

by Captain Don Moss

Download the full article: The Hidden Engagement: Interpreters

Author's Note: This article represents the second in a series of papers (see Engaging Afghans: KLE Keys to Success) addressed to units and individuals involved in direct engagement with the people of Afghanistan. The intent is to provide advice and "lessons learned" based on first-hand experience in order to deepen the Afghan-ISAF partnership through relationships.

In Afghanistan, there is a growing focus on the importance of partnering with Afghan institutions and building their capacity through broad, meaningful engagement. However, your unit's efforts to positively engage with local tribes, religious, military and government figures, you may be overlooking a critical engagement much closer to home: your own interpreters.

With the arrival of thousands of additional troops in Afghanistan this year, the need for interpreters or Host Nation Linguists (HNLs) will also skyrocket. Even now, there are upwards of 5,000 men and women working for the primary HNL employer, Mission Essential Personnel, alone. Highly intelligent (often speaking 3-4 languages), hard-working and cultural experts, HNLs represent a valuable asset and learning conduit. Often, the HNLs your unit inherits have years of experience dealing in the local area and with personalities your team will encounter. This enables them to provide valuable insight long after your predecessors depart, usually after far too little turnover. That said, this article contains some suggestions for engaging with your HNLs and making it a productive, long-term relationship that will pave the way for all others.

Download the full article: The Hidden Engagement: Interpreters

Captain Don Moss was the Chief of Intelligence Operations for Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) Paktya in Eastern Afghanistan, 2008-2009. He is a 19-year veteran of the United States Air Force and the intelligence profession. A graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School and Defense Language Institute, he has led or participated in over 40 Key Leader Engagements and compiled summaries of over 400 more with Provincial Governmental/religious/tribal and village leaders.

Suggested Readings:

Afghanistan: Maladies of Interpreters by Joshua Foust

Unfit Interpreters by Joshua Foust

A Key Tool in Population-Centric Counterinsurgency

by Dr. Paul Kamolnick

Download the full article: Leveraging Legitimacy

Permanently separating insurgents from the population, facilitating effective self-defense of a sovereign host nation government, and removing ultimate causes, are necessary conditions for defeating an insurgency. Success results, if possible, as counterinsurgents systematically develop trusted networks, out-compete insurgents for population allegiance, and destroy insurgent forces.

Utility and legitimacy are two bases counterinsurgents can use to secure a population's compliance. The quest for physical and psychological security predominates as human motives generally - let alone during the uncertainties and brutality of war. Delivering essential services, providing security, and satisfying elementary human needs, despite counterinsurgent coercion, produces population compliance. This Hobbesian predicament well-describes why counterinsurgents are treated to distant stares, surreptitious overtures, studied neglect, or outright hostility by an insurgency-contested population. The Counterinsurgency (COIN) Manual maintains a realist approach to these facts of the human condition.

Moreover, if survival depends on tribal social structures, COIN practitioners must carefully leverage those networks and dynamics without which households, kin, clan, and sub-tribes confront a hostile environment and enemy others.

Utility-centered compliance can be ignored only at one's peril. A second means, legitimate domination, is also key. The present COIN Manual repeatedly notes that establishing legitimacy is a key COIN objective yet mistakenly conceives legitimacy as an attribute exclusive to national governance.

Legitimate governance is necessary to COIN victory. However; equating the concept 'legitimacy' with legitimate governance, and legitimate governance with western liberal democratic constitutionalism narrows the sociological scope of this key concept. It also obscures its strategic relevance.

This article seeks to remedy these two deficiencies by reintroducing the classical conceptualization of 'legitimate domination; briefly define its subtypes; and identify key points of potential relevance—tactical, strategic, and operational--to current COIN operations.

Download the full article: Leveraging Legitimacy

Dr. Paul Kamolnick is a civilian social scientist with expertise in classical sociological theory, and an ongoing professional interest in analyzing the ideological foundations of global jihadism and also, the theory and practice of counterinsurgency. He teaches three courses at East Tennessee State University of particular relevance: Sociology of Religious Fundamentalism, Sociology of Global Terrorism, and Counterinsurgency Warfare.

by Major Charlie Burbridge

Download the full article: Trust: Central to Success in Partnered Operations

Partnering is a trust-based relationship between equals which will seek to capitalise on the strengths of each partner and mitigate for weaknesses. As part of Commander International Security Assistance Force's (COMISAF) dual mission principle, it is a tool for developing the ANSF whilst concurrently countering the insurgency by protecting the population. The central requirement of trust requires further examination. ISAF troops require a homogenous and consistent understanding of how trust can be developed and maintained between partners.

The aim of this short paper is to examine why the importance of trust is at the heart of partnering, define the concept of trust within the context of Partnering in Afghanistan and recommend methods for generating and maintaining it over successive iterations of Op HERRICK.

COMISAF directed that the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) will be partnered to form a combined force, which will serve a dual mission of developing ANSF capability and defeating the insurgency.

ISAF forces will be required to continue to conduct high intensity counter insurgency operations but will do so in partnership with a force with which it has not trained, does not necessarily understand, and with whom there is a language barrier. Furthermore, ISAF forces will roll in and out of theatre; in the UK case, every six months, whilst the ANSF will remain in location permanently. The requirement for trust to be established swiftly and to endure through successive deployments of ISAF units is central to the success of Partnering. A breach of trust may have serious implications for the cohesion of the force.

Download the full article: Trust: Central to Success in Partnered Operations

Charlie Burbridge is a serving British Army Major. He has served in Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Oman, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan in a variety of staff and command appointments. Most recently he commanded his squadron during Operation Panther's Claw in Helmand. He currently works on the staff of the British Counter Insurgency Centre.

by Colonel Gary Anderson

Download the full article: Building Professional and Personal Relationships in Counterinsurgency Environments

A recent Washington Post article describes a meeting between a U.S. Army Captain and an Afghan village elder in Afghanistan that failed badly. The meeting could have been in Iraq, Lebanon, or Somalia. The result was largely predetermined before the first words were spoken. The Afghan elder asks the Captain why he is coming to speak at that time having not attended any of the local Shura (elders' meetings) in months. The captain replies that the meetings are useless, and that they only talk about goats. Not surprisingly, the meeting goes badly from there. This experience is depressingly familiar to many who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq. After nearly a decade of war in traditional Muslim societies, many of our soldiers, diplomats, and aid workers simply cannot develop the long term professional relationships of mutual confidence .In these societies all professional relationships are also personal as well, and that does require building an atmosphere of mutual confidence.

I use the tem mutual confidence, because trust is too strong a word to use in defining many of these relationships. Mutual confidence calls for mutual respect and a two way expectation of promises kept. Real trust is a much more special thing, and most often takes longer to build than the usual seven to twelve month in-country tour. Too many Americans take the byzantine patterns of relationships in traditional Muslim societies personally. We are not in these counterinsurgency situations to gratify our personal egos.

Every culture and region is slightly different; Iraq is not Afghanistan and Lebanon is different than both. After a quarter of a century dealing off and on with Muslim societies built on largely tribal cultures, I've probably made every mistake in the book, but I've found some things that I think hold true across the board.

Download the full article: Building Professional and Personal Relationships in Counterinsurgency Environments

The author, a retired Marine Corps colonel, recently finished a tour with the State Department as the Senior Governance Advisor with an embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team in Iraq.

by Brigadier General Huba Wass de Czege

Download the full article: The Logic and Method of Collaborative Design

The logic and method of design outlined in this paper is first and foremost a collective research methodology for considering the best available information to make sense of what is known in order to construct an explicit and shared hypothesis of the very unique, dynamic and complex power and influence networks that pertain to the mission and how to act through them to take best advantage of the inherent situational potential for change. It is also a collective methodology for continually refining the command's understanding of them, and for facilitating collective adaptation accordingly.

In a fundamental way, "design" is deciding what, in this particular mission case, is the "right" thing to do. In other words, it is imposing a logical structure over a very messy and hard to understand situation. When that logical structure is not self-evident it must be imposed on the situation by a conscious command decision, one that needs to be made before any deliberate, coherent or purposeful action can be taken, one that settles on an explicit formulation of the way the mission world is assumed to function and of how to exploit the potential for positive change within it. But modern military operational design is also a greater continuous collective and cyclical thought process for testing and transforming any and all previous "designs" as the mission context evolves over the span of a campaign.

It is increasingly difficult to write doctrine for the variety of mission situations that we can encounter today. Historical experience provides us examples that are often more different than similar to the mission contexts we face. For instance, an uncritical and formulaic imposition of the doctrinally prescribed aims and lines of operations drawn from the recently published COIN manual would be imposing a foreign logic upon a unique situation. We need a way to test the applicability of accumulated wisdom in all of its forms, and transform what we think we know into newer more applicable wisdom tailored to the mission at hand. A critical and collaborative design inquiry by the unit's command team does that.

Download the full article: The Logic and Method of Collaborative Design

Huba Wass de Czege is a retired U.S. Army brigadier general. During his career as an infantry officer, he served two tours in Vietnam and gained staff experience at all levels up to assistant division commander. General Wass De Czege was a principal designer of the operational concept known as AirLand Battle. He also was the founder and first director of the Army's School for Advanced Military Studies where he also taught applied military strategy. After retiring in 1993, General Wass De Czege became heavily involved in the Army After Next Project and served on several Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency v advisory panels. He is a 1964 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and holds an MPA from Harvard University.

Canadian Lessons from Afghanistan

by Dr. Peter Dobias

Download the full article: Mission Assessment in Complex Operations

The assessment of mission effectiveness has been called the "Achilles' heel" of the effects based approach to operations. This is especially true in the multi-agency, multi-stakeholder environment of present-day counterinsurgency. This paper addresses some of the pitfalls of assessment and suggests possible solutions to enable effective mission assessment in a complex environment. It is based to a large degree on the author's experience with the whole-of-government environment gained while supporting the mission assessment for the Canadian mission in Afghanistan both in Canada and while deployed with Task Force Kandahar. The key point of the paper is that great care has to be taken when using lower-level assessments to obtain higher-level situational picture for the state of insurgency and/or economic and governance development. Otherwise, a potentially skewed picture can arise, or the assessment becomes too laborious and ineffective.

Download the full article: Mission Assessment in Complex Operations

Dr. Peter Dobias received his MSc degree in theoretical physics from the Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia and his PhD in physics from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He works for Defence Research and Development Canada Centre for Operational Research and Analysis. His focus is complex systems, combat modeling and wargaming, as well as effects-based operations and assessment. Recently he returned from Afghanistan where he worked as an Operational Analyst in Support of Task Force Kandahar, and supported the planning and assessment efforts of J5 Division.

by Michael Yon

Download the full article: An Afghan Story

Published 9 May 2010

If normal life were a river, most days would likely be a slow-moving, meandering passage. But when a life squeezes into the gorge of war, there can be a deafening whitewater, falls and yet bigger falls, slams against stones, falls again and underwater no air and over the falls again and time stretches and compresses and seems to defy normal experience and over the falls again and you drown or don't. Some people come out the other side exhilarated and want to do it again and again, while others are terrified, and yet others will just do what needs to be done. The persistence of the memories wrought would seem to leave clocks drooped over limbs or floating away.

From wars grow countless wild stories, many of which are true. Even a single witness will hear thousands over the years. Back at home, the retellings can seem vague, distant, and as soulful as a sole-less boot. But when you are in a war zone with civilians or combat troops, some stories might start like, "Be careful here. This is where Jimmy got blown up," and there is still a crater and all the branches are blown off a nearby tree. Later in the day, "Be careful here, bullets sometimes come through that window," and there are pocks on the walls inside the room. The retellings are not secondhand, not ancient, but immediate and pressing. In the wars, stories are road signs to the here and now, and so you seek out stories not for entertainment. They are not entertaining anyway. Few people likely would be entertained by the story of their own death. "This is where the suicide bomber hit," and you are standing there, knowing lightning makes habits.

Captain Max Hanlin of Charlie Company 1-17th Infantry was living with his soldiers at the Shah Wali Kot District Center in northern Kandahar Province, and he said to me from across the tent that the District Governor for Shah Wali Kot district had some interesting stories that should be told. We walked out to the perimeter under the watchful eye of a machine gunner in his guard-post, and around the corner to see the District Governor so that something useful could get out.

Download the full article: An Afghan Story

Michael Yon is a former Green Beret who has been reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2004. No other reporter has spent as much time with combat troops in these two wars. Michael's dispatches from the frontlines have earned him the reputation as the premier independent combat journalist of his generation. His work is published at Michael Yon Online and has been featured on Good Morning America, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, ABC, FOX, as well as hundreds of other major media outlets all around the world.

Design and the Prospects of a US Military Renaissance

by Colonel Christopher R. Paparone

Download the full article: Design and the Prospects of a US Military Renaissance

To the US Army's and Marine Corps' credit, their doctrinaires have been busy at work trying to incorporate aspects of design into field manuals (design was institutionalized in FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5, Counterinsurgency). Framed around how to deal with highly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (high "VUCA") situations, design is becoming attractive as a complementary or perhaps an alternative for a military staff culture that is deeply rooted in the analytic-planning paradigm. While design-as-praxis is a relative newcomer to military professionals, it has conceptual ties to ancient Greek philosophical debates and a decades-long history in the areas of architecture, urban studies, public policy, and more recently, business management. The purpose here is to offer some additional perspective on design -- its philosophical underpinnings, its eclectic nature, and its potential significance toward a renaissance (cultural rebirth) of military profession practice.

Download the full article: Design and the Prospects of a US Military Renaissance

Christopher R. Paparone, Colonel, U.S. Army, Retired, is an associate professor in the Army Command and General Staff College's Department of Logistics and Resource Operations at Fort Lee, Virginia. He holds a B.A. from the University of South Florida; master's degrees from the Florida Institute of Technology, the U.S. Naval War College, and the Army War College; and a Ph.D. in public administration from Pennsylvania State University. On active duty he served in various command and staff positions in the continental United States, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Bosnia.

Mass Hostage Taking in Russia and Mumbai

by Luke Allison

Download the full article: The Future of Terrorism

Terrorism has a future; terrorism always has a future. The question is: can the application of terror morph into something inherently capable of distorting strategic countermeasures? The answer is probably yes, because a states' fundamental responsibility is to maintain sovereignty by protecting its population. The problem with this responsibility in relation to terrorism is that it is debilitating in terms of being predictable. Predictability is not a strategy; it is the absence of strategy.

The future of terrorism is to isolate instances where the state is compelled to act predictably. The best example of this type of terrorism is an approach that involves mass hostage taking in conjunction with the use of barricades. This is quite remarkable, because " . . . the idea of taking hostages and placing the responsibility for their fate into the hands of the opposing government was a highly effective tool . . . " For the purposes of this article, a mass hostage taking incident occurs when between one hundred and two thousand people are held involuntarily under the threat of serious physical injury. Examples of mass hostage taking incidents will be restricted to those occurring in public buildings such as: schools, theaters, hospitals, and hotels. Similar incidents taking place on air planes, busses, or other modes of transportation will be considered outside the scope of inquiry.

Download the full article: The Future of Terrorism

Luke Allison holds an MA in International Security from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. He holds a BA in Communications Studies from Loyola University New Orleans. Mr. Allison has presented original research on counterinsurgency and terrorism at conferences around the United States.

by William S. McCallister

Download the full article: Some Considerations for Planning and Executing a Military-Political Engagement in Afghanistan

This paper supplements the Tribal Engagement Workshop (TEW) Summary Report. The intent is to provide an alternative mental model for planning and a sample template for executing military-political engagements in Afghanistan.

Much intellectual energy has been expended on whether to label our outreach efforts in Afghanistan as tribal or community engagements. This paper therefore does not attempt to settle the issue as to the primacy of tribal- and/or community- or interest-based identities. Suffice it to say tribal identities exist in Afghanistan but community and/or interest groups may not necessarily organize themselves based on these tribal identities. What matters most is that we engage the locals within their own cultural frame of reference.

This paper highlights a number of planning consideration in the development of a military-political campaign in which tribal engagements and/or community outreach initiatives represent tactical actions. It introduces the planner and operator to a different mental model for analyzing and assessing tribal and/or community engagements and their role and function in support of a military-political campaign. This paper introduces planners and operators to three frontier tenets, four basic strategies, five tactics and a sample template for preparing and participating in a military-political engagement/campaign.

Download the full article: Some Considerations for Planning and Executing a Military-Political Engagement in Afghanistan

William S. "Mac" McCallister is a retired military officer. He has worked extensively in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. While on active duty, McCallister served in numerous infantry and special operations assignments specializing in civil-military, psychological and information operations.

by Michael Yon

Download the full article: Dispatch: Big Guns

The intention was to write a detailed dispatch on the 3-17th Field Artillery. Unfortunately, I won't be embedded with 5/2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team until they leave Afghanistan, so the research on this dispatch was not completed. However, there are some nice nighttime photos and so this dispatch is more about Canons than cannons.

The cannons are ultra-accurate. The commanders are careful with their fire because the guns are also very powerful. When a "fire mission" comes in, the soldiers use the computer to calculate the shot. When you watch the soldiers in action, you can see that they must have practiced this a thousand times. Or more. They just can't afford to be wrong, and the people who depend on the cannons sometimes cannot wait - so the soldiers must fast and accurate.

Download the full article: Dispatch: Big Guns

Michael Yon is a former Green Beret who has been reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2004. No other reporter has spent as much time with combat troops in these two wars. Michael's dispatches from the frontlines have earned him the reputation as the premier independent combat journalist of his generation. His work is published at Michael Yon Online and has been featured on Good Morning America, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, ABC, FOX, as well as hundreds of other major media outlets all around the world.

by Colonel Gary Anderson

Download the full article: In Marja: Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way

It never ceases to amaze me how quick we are to lecture our Iraqi and Afghan allies on the importance of good governance and interagency operations while blatantly violating many of those principles ourselves. The latest incident of interagency fratricide played out in the Washington Post in an April 13th article by Rajiv Chandrasekaren regarding attempts by U.S. Marines to use innovative methods to reduce the poppy crop in Marja, Afghanistan. In their attempt to reduce a major source of funding for the Taliban in that region, the Marines fell afoul of "anonymous sources" at the Headquarters of the Helmand Province Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT).

It seems that the Marines have been paying local farmers to plow under their land rather than harvest the lucrative poppy crop. The Marines have also been blocking roads to keep out migrant laborers who are brought in to harvest the crop. The farmers seem relatively happy with this arrangement because many of the migrants are reluctant to enter the Marja area anyway because it is still an active combat zone.

Some PRT members chose to become part of the problem rather than part of the solution by taking their gripes to Chandrasekaran rather than by offering constructive alternatives to the poppy problem which they have been unable to come to grips with on their own for years. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. Members of the traditional civilian development community have failed consistently to grasp the basic principles of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan for years by adhering to ideas more suited to development work in Togo or Chile than in war zones such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

Download the full article: In Marja: Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way

Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corps officer. He recently left the State Department after a year-long tour in Iraq as a Senior Governance Advisor with a Provincial Reconstruction Team.

by Andrew Exum and Jason Fritz

Download the full article: Tribal Engagement at the Tactical Level

This short paper is intended to supplement the Tribal Engagement Workshop (TEW) Summary Report by addressing those findings at the tactical level. The information provided here was drawn from the experiences of the members of the tactical working group at the TEW to create a planning framework for community engagement at the tactical level -- specifically at the team or company/platoon level -- in Afghanistan.

At the tactical level, tribal engagement would best be leveraged as community engagement for reasons outlined in the TEW Summary Report. Community engagement at the tactical level is something that can be done by both special operations forces and general purpose forces -- but it depends on what you define as community engagement and where you attempt to do it.

Significant time and effort must be devoted to determining which areas and communities are ripe for engagement (and when) while also determining how engaging those communities would benefit the overarching regional or theater campaign plan. Some communities do not readily lend themselves to engagement, and other communities do not lend themselves to engagement at all times -- as any kind of engagement depends first and foremost on buy-in from local authorities.

Download the full article: Tribal Engagement at the Tactical Level

Andrew Exum is a fellow with the Center for a New American Security and served on active duty in the U.S. Army from 2000 until 2004. He led a platoon of light infantry in Afghanistan in 2002 and a platoon of Army Rangers in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004, respectively. Most recently, he served as an advisor on the CENTCOM Assessment Team and as a civilian advisor to Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan.

Jason Fritz is a three tour Iraq veteran and 2002 West Point graduate. He served as a tank and scout platoon leader, troop executive officer, and squadron adjutant in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom I and III. He was then assigned as the brigade planner for the 2d Brigade Combat Team of the 3d Infantry Division in preparation for and during Operation Iraqi Freedom V. He is currently a senior analyst with Noetic.

They served as a facilitator and senior analyst, respectively, at the Tactical Engagement Workshop.

Measuring Defense Reform

by Ronald Mangum and Bill Craven

Download the full article:

Measuring Defense Reform

The many plans for withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan recognize that a draw

down of forces must be condition based.  A critical condition must be that the

respective governments are capable of functioning without excessive outside

(U.S. and NATO) support, which means that effective government institutions,

especially a national defense establishment, must be built in each country.

BG (Ret) Ronald S. Mangum and COL (Ret.) Bill Craven have spent several years

working in Former Communist States in defense reform/transformation.  Based

on their experience, they argue in the attached manuscript for development of a

holistic Defense Management Template against which to measure progress and

against which to determine when 'reform/transformation' is done.

Download the full article:

Measuring Defense Reform

Brigadier General Ronald S. Mangum, United States Army (Retired), is a

defense advisor employed by Cubic Defense Applications, Inc., Defense

Modernization Division, headquartered in Alexandria, VA.  He is currently the

Program Manager for a Cubic advisor team working under the U.S. Department of

Defense Georgia Defense Reform Program in the county of Georgia.  General Mangum

is also a Professor of National Security Studies at American Military

University, Charles Town, WVA, and a Visiting Scholar at the Georgia Foundation

for Security and International Studies in Tbilisi, Georgia. His articles have

appeared in Parameters, Joint Force Quarterly, Military Review and many other

publications

Colonel William J. Craven, United States Army (Retired), is also a defense

advisor employed by Cubic Defense Applications, and is currently the Deputy

Program Manager for the Defense Georgia Defense Reform Program in the county of

Georgia.

by Michael Yon

Download the full article: Dispatch: The Battle for Kandahar

The counteroffensive has begun. More accurately, it might be called a counter-counteroffensive. Close to a decade ago, we beat the Taliban and al Qaeda here. The Taliban re-grew and waged an increasingly successful counteroffensive. And so our ninth year at war is the year of our counter-counteroffensive.

The most remarkable feature of our counter-counteroffensive likely will be the Battle for Kandahar, or BfK. Kandahar was the birthplace of the Taliban and Kandahar City is the provincial capital. The Taliban is successfully wresting Kandahar back into their control. The BfK is likely our last effort to halt and reverse Taliban influence from spreading. The winner in the BfK will be set to eventually take most or all of the chips off the table, and so BfK is crucial to the outcome of the war.

Much of the BfK will take place not in Kandahar, or even Afghanistan, but in the media-sphere, and likely will affect U.S. elections this year. The implications are vast.

This is a political war on nearly every level. Though this will almost certainly be our most deadly year so far, violence is often a minor aspect of the struggle, while in some places combat is—by far—the most prevalent feature. Insofar as combat, our plans do not include serious fighting within Kandahar City, though soon after publication of this dispatch fighting will erupt in nearby areas. BfK is more of a process for both sides than a set battle. The Taliban are succeeding in their process to take Kandahar, and we wish to reverse that process.

Download the full article: Dispatch: The Battle for Kandahar

Michael Yon is a former Green Beret who has been reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2004. No other reporter has spent as much time with combat troops in these two wars. Michael's dispatches from the frontlines have earned him the reputation as the premier independent combat journalist of his generation. His work is published at Michael Yon Online and has been featured on Good Morning America, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, ABC, FOX, as well as hundreds of other major media outlets all around the world.

Why is it Important?

A Quick Response to Robert Haddick

by Colonel David S. Maxwell

Download the full article: Why Does Special Forces Train and Educate for Unconventional Warfare?

There is tremendous emotion, misunderstanding and just plain baggage surrounding Unconventional Warfare (UW). Most discussions revolve around the definition itself with little understanding of the breadth and scope of what UW entails. However, since most who discuss UW are only concerned with the words in the definition and do not delve into the intellectual foundation of UW, this short paper will seek to explain and interpret the words in the definition and answer the questions in the title. The USSOCOM approved definition for UW is:

Since this will be a discussion of a doctrinal definition it may be instructive to recall the words of LTG (RET) John H. Cushman writing in his 1993 pamphlet "Thoughts for Joint Commanders" in which he recalls some historical admonitions on doctrine:

"Doctrine is basically a truth, a fact, or a theory that can be defended by reason."

"Doctrine cannot replace clear thinking...under the circumstances prevailing."

This is wise counsel for anyone who wants to narrowly interpret doctrine. Doctrinal "purism" is unhelpful particularly when faced with the complex, ever evolving characteristics of war in the 21st Century. Doctrine can be used to train, prepare, and guide but it is effective strategy with campaign plans for implementation that are required to achieve objectives in the national interest.

Download the full article: Why Does Special Forces Train and Educate for Unconventional Warfare?

Colonel David S. Maxwell, U.S. Army, is a Special Forces officer with command and staff assignments in Korea, Japan, Germany, the Philippines, and CONUS, and is a graduate of the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth and the National War College, National Defense University. The opinions he expresses in this paper are his own and represent no U.S. Government or Department of Defense positions.

Download Volume 6, No. 3 - April, 2010

Small Wars Journal Volume 6, No. 3 is now available.  The issue focuses

on

Prugh  (also

here)

Preserving Noncombatant Immunity, by Dr. Rebecca J. Johnson

in the Green Zone, by Major Andrew Dahl

Daly, released April 19, 2010 and now available

from Amazon and other retailers.  Reprinted courtesy of John Wiley

& Sons, Inc.

Tribal Engagement Workshop

2010

(also

here)

Download Volume 6, No. 3 - April, 2010

by Captain Jonathan Pan

Download the full article: The Kandahar Offensive: Avoid the Snake Oil

Sometimes doing nothing or doing less is better than doing anything in a counterinsurgency. However, the preference of action over inaction is deeply embedded within the United States military if not within the American culture as a whole. Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell and Capt. Mark R. Hagerott, of the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan, recently offered a new metaphor for describing Afghanistan: "think of the country as an ailing patient -- in many ways analogous to a weakened person under attack by an aggressive infection." To cure this infection, they've suggested that the body, mind, and spirit of the nation must be addressed. In my opinion, to prevent a stalemate or worse in the upcoming Kandahar operations, senior decision makers should avoid snake oil in an attempt at curing this infection.

Download the full article: The Kandahar Offensive: Avoid the Snake Oil

Captain Jonathan Pan is serving in Afghanistan. The views in this article are solely of the author and not those of the Department of Defense.

by Allison Brown

Download the full article: Will Bad Information Lead to Bad Decisions?

As a scientist I worry that too much of the discussion of poppy and opium in Afghanistan is based on bad biology, bad economics, and bad horticulture. Can we make good decisions based on wrong information?

Case in point. The other night CNN reported from Helmand on the usual "oh look at all that poppy" stuff that is part of the spring season. It is bad enough that the fields that CNN shows "blooming" are uniform green with not a flower in sight (was it really poppy?), but then the reporter, Chris Lawrence, says, "Every few days or so the Taliban will come by and pick off some bulbs," and the Marine being filmed adds that he and his colleagues have seen the bad guys "hack a few plants that are ready to go and put it on a donkey and just head north." Chris goes on to say that the Marines are not allowed to "slash and burn" the poppy fields.

Poppies don't have bulbs they have seed pods. A single poppy pod or even a whole poppy plant is not particularly valuable, and mown green poppy plants have no value for drugs.

Download the full article: Will Bad Information Lead to Bad Decisions?

Allison Brown has over twenty-five years professional experience providing business development services to urban and rural development projects in developing economies. She is also a technical specialist on the use of agriculture and economic interventions in Counter Narcotics programs.

by Major Seth Wheeler

Download the full article: Pseudo-Operations to Neutralize Extremist Networks, Insurgents, and Terrorists

Terrorism is a threat to the stability and national security of many countries, and has undermined countless governments. However, technological improvements within the last century have allowed greater, more spectacular attacks and broadened the means by which terrorists may broadcast their message. Although previous terrorist attacks against United States citizens have drawn a measure of global attention, the world became acutely aware of the effects of terrorism on 11 September 2001 during the World Trade Center attack orchestrated by Osama Bin Laden and his terror group al Qaeda. The psychological impact of such a devastating attack—conducted so efficiently at such little cost to the attacker—jumpstarted a global level of effort to defeat terrorism and extremism. Indeed, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates identified terrorism as a Global National Defense priority in his 2008 National Defense Strategy, and discussed terrorism on 15 occasions throughout his 23-page report. Degrading terrorism requires full-spectrum deterrence and counter strategies: the incorporation of effective foreign policy measures against state-sponsors of terrorism; international security forces assistance programs to ensure competent counter-terror skill-sets within our allies' ranks; military or police action to kinetically defeat armed resistance or restore sovereignty; and other internal defense and development programs to deny terrorists sanctuary or resources and political advantage.

That stated, terrorists' geographic or political sanctuaries that the United States cannot directly or indirectly influence through foreign policy initiatives will remain in certain pockets of the world, such as the remaining insurgent-terror organization FARC controlled areas of Colombia or Somalia. Assuming that some terrorists will remain irreconcilable for a variety of reasons not discussed here, and that comprehensive deterrence strategies or counter-terror efforts may prove ineffective, then how does the United States influence or neutralize irreconcilable terrorists protected by a foreign population? What tools can be implemented to eradicate, deflect, isolate, or neutralize typically suicidal extremists employing terror as a weapon? One consideration is pseudo-operations. Penetration of terrorist and insurgent groups by foreign services is inherently difficult, due to the existing mistrust within the organization and extensive vetting required for membership. Pseudo-operations may overcome these challenges and create conditions congruent with the interests of the United States, as several case studies will demonstrate in a later section. However, an overview of what pseudo-operations are and what they can do is first necessary.

Download the full article: Pseudo-Operations to Neutralize Extremist Networks, Insurgents, and Terrorists

Major Seth Wheeler, U.S. Army, graduated with a M.S. in Defense Analysis - Irregular Warfare from the Naval Postgraduate School in December, 2009. He is currently attending CGSC ILE at Fort Belvoir, VA, and will join the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) in June, 2010.
The views expressed above are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

by Colonel Gian P. Gentile

Download the full article: The Death of the Armor Corps

The Armor Corps in the American Army is gone, it is no more.

The Army has become decidedly infantry centric. This wouldn't be so bad if it was a fighting kind of infantry centered army. But instead it is an infantry centric Army grounded in the principles of population centric counterinsurgency and Rupert Smith's view of war in the future as "wars amongst the people."

To be sure the American Army will be told to do lots of things from winning hearts and minds in the Hindu Kush, to passing out humanitarian relief in the troubled spots around the world, to nation building in Iraq. But first and foremost it must be an Army grounded in combined arms competencies. This must come first, and not second or third after fuzzy concepts as "whole of government approach" and building emotional relationships with local populations. The latter may of course be important, depending on the mission, but those kinds of competencies must be premised on combined arms and not the other way around.

Download the full article: The Death of the Armor Corps

The author is a serving Army Colonel. The views in this article are his own and not those of the Department of Defense.

by Bing West

Download the full article: Korengal Valley Observations

In 2007, Alissa Rubin of The New York Times described a "new counterinsurgency doctrine" that consisted of small outposts in the Korengal and elsewhere, in order to patrol among the people. Four years later, the Korengal was abandoned to pursue yet another new counterinsurgency strategy -- small outposts in more heavily populated areas.

The scale of the fighting was not the reason for withdrawing. One American soldier was killed in the Korengal in the last ten months, a loss rate less than in an average rifle company. The strongest technical rationale for the withdrawal was economy of force. The troop-to-population ratio and the logistics for air support were too onerous, regardless of the level of fighting.

More problematic was the strategic rationale. "We're not living in their homes, but we're living in their valley," General McChrystal said, explaining that American soldiers were "an irritant to the people...There was probably much more fighting than there would have been (if US troops had never come.)"

This was true beginning in 2006, leaving a gap of four years in our strategic thinking. Our military strategy made no sense, if US troops were the reason for the fighting in the first place. Hence a political thesis emerged: the xenophobic Korengalis were ungovernable by anyone - except the Taliban. Even that was disputed by the commander of the US battalion responsible for the Korengal. "I don't believe there are any hard-core Taliban in the valley," LtCol Brian Pearl said.

Download the full article: Korengal Valley Observations

Bing West, a former assistant secretary of defense and combat marine, has made two dozen extended trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. The author of The Village and The Strongest Tribe, he is currently writing a book about the war in Afghanistan.

by Major David S. Clukey

Download the full article: A District Approach in Afghanistan?

As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' one-year timeline to make progress in Afghanistan approaches, the U.S. and the International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) still struggle to accomplish President Obama's goals in the region. I suggest that the current top down approach employed by U.S. and ISAF forces requires a corresponding and simultaneous application of a bottom-up approach to maximize operational effects.

Operational experience gained from four deployments and three combat tours to Afghanistan with the U.S. Army Special Forces (SF) (2004-2008) and thesis research conducted on Afghanistan at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) inspired my hypothesis that the district level is the center of gravity for counterinsurgency (COIN) in Afghanistan. My recent attendance and participation in the Small Wars Foundation's Tribal Engagement Workshop (TEW) served to reinforce this hypothesis.

Download the full article: A District Approach in Afghanistan?

Major David S. Clukey, U.S. Army Special Forces, has been on four deployments and three combat tours to Afghanistan with the U.S. Army Special Forces (SF) (2004-2008). His experience in theater and thesis research conducted on Afghanistan at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) inspired his hypothesis that the district level is the center of gravity for counterinsurgency (COIN) in Afghanistan.

Human Terrain Mapping in Kapisa Province

by Dr. Matthew Arnold

Download the full article: Human Terrain Mapping in Kapisa Province

Central to the Coalition Forces' (CF) counterinsurgency (COIN) efforts in Afghanistan is the positive engagement of the Afghan people. This is particularly true for the 'point of contact': the connection between CF field units and local Afghans. Hence, it is critical that field units dedicate sufficient time and resources to the collection of information about the driving socio-political factors of their operational environment (OE). Under the context of counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine, detailed socio-political information should allow field units to better understand and hence successfully engage the local population such that they can be detached from supporting or enabling the insurgency. This necessity of garnering a deep understanding of local populations is common to commander's guidance and military doctrine.

However, while COIN is ostensibly all about 'the people,' it is staggering how little consistent effort the Coalition puts into systematically understanding local communities in locales that are most critical to ultimate success or failure. Afghanistan is a valley by valley war and the Coalition needs to understand the many peoples of the country in sufficient detail to approach it as such. This article provides a summary of the work being currently undertaken by the Human Terrain Team (HTT) of TF La Fayette (TFL), the French Brigade, to better systematically understand local populations in Kapisa Province. Specifically, TFL's efforts mean undertaking Human Terrain Mapping (HTM), which in the context of Coalition efforts in Afghanistan can be understood as the collection, collation, and presentation of the socio-political information necessary for a field unit to decisively influence a local population. Concurrently, this paper also articulates the role that HTM could play in the day-to-day campaigning of other Coalition units trying to better understand local populations. Overall, the author hopes the paper will highlight for other units in the field some practical possibilities for consideration based on TFL's initial efforts.

Download the full article: Human Terrain Mapping in Kapisa Province

Dr. Matthew Arnold is a Social Scientist on the Human Terrain Team at TF LaFayette, the French Brigade in Kapisa Province, Afghanistan.

by David Prugh

Download the full article: Uncut: Lessons Learned From Six and a Half Years in Afghanistan

Friends in the Coalition,

As I depart, I would like to thank the thousands of fellow members of the Coalition with whom I've had the pleasure to serve these past 6 ½ years. I'd also like to pass on a few things for you to consider... for what it's worth. If you like the observations, make them your own.

This is definitely a stream-of-consciousness effort. I expect, though, that each of you will be able to readily grasp what I'm talking about because each of you has at least partially "seen the elephant". (More on that elephant later).

You may agree with some points / observations and disagree with others. That's fine, of course. My main purpose for writing this is to give you something to chew on.

Download the full article: Uncut: Lessons Learned From Six and a Half Years in Afghanistan

Dave Prugh is a Texan, a former US Army Infantry Colonel, and a 1985 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. He has served as a soldier and a contractor in combat zone leadership positions for over 75 cumulative months, most of it at the senior or directorial level. In his over 6 years in Afghanistan, Dave has worked closely with every echelon of the Afghan National Army from the battalion through the ministry, including several echelons above corps. He is scheduled to leave Afghanistan in mid-April 2010 after 6 ½ years of combined Active Duty and contracting service in Afghanistan.

by Colonel Gary Anderson

Download the full article: A Third Way in Afghanistan

When Ralph Peters of the New York Post and the editor of the New York Times actually agree on something, it is both an unusual occasion and a cause for reflection. In the case of Hamid Karzai, the leader of Afghanistan, we have one of those rare confluences of agreement. Both concur that Karzai has become more of a liability than an asset. His poorly thought out threat to throw in his lot with Taliban in response to Western disapproval, combined with his inept handling of the war, has lost him critical support in Washington and in Europe. Some Afghans think he may have lost his grip on reality; whatever the cause, he has made few friends in recent weeks among those he needs if he hopes to retain power. None of this bodes well for American strategy in Afghanistan. It is one thing to have an unstable ally in a war; we have dealt with shaky allies in the past. However, an ungrateful and unstable ally may well be too much to ask the American people to bear. It may be time to explore a third option between abandoning Afghanistan and enduring Karzai's ungrateful and demonstrably corrupt regime.

Download the full article: A Third Way in Afghanistan

Colonel Gary Anderson has peacekeeping experience in Lebanon and Gaza. He has also served in combat in Somalia and advised as a civilian in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is currently lecturing on Alternative Analysis at the Elliot School of George Washington University.

by Lieutenant General Michael A. Vane

Download the full article: The US Army's Shift to Irregular Warfare

Part of today's challenges within the US Army are the ongoing debates of whether future conflict will require us to continue to develop more robust COIN and irregular warfare capabilities or to maintain our edge in conventional warfare expertise. To settle these debates we must examine the nature of today's wars. Unlike the bi-polar world of our recent past we are now facing many smaller conflicts...conflicts that are not necessarily defined by war, but, rather run the gamut from engagements to confrontations to combat. And while new conflicts aren't necessarily growing at an alarming rate, the old ones are not going away. This presents us an era of conflict, of persistent conflict, where our combined capacity to engage will be greatly challenged. Our solution is to focus on developing our officer and NCO leadership.

The Army needs agile and adaptive leaders capable of handling the challenges of full spectrum operations in this era of persistent conflict. These leaders must be creative and critical thinkers; they must be confident and competent communicators; and they must be capable of operating with a comprehensive approach to meet these emerging challenges. Leaders will be required to contend with offensive, defensive, and stability operations simultaneously as well as integrate combined arms and host nation forces.

This article asserts that successful counterinsurgency relies on an equally developed irregular warfare mindset. Fueling this mindset is change...lots of it...and in various forms and venues. Using the framework of DOTMLPF (Doctrine, Organizations, Training, Materiel, Leadership, Personnel, and Facilities) and combining it with a resource- informed, integration-focused, and outcomes oriented approach, a formal holistic effort can be made to confront today's and tomorrow's hybrid threats. Let's examine what the Army has done in the last few years to prepare adaptive leaders for the complexities of irregular warfare and full spectrum operations.

Download the full article: The US Army's Shift to Irregular Warfare

Lieutenant General Michael A. Vane is the Deputy Commanding General, Futures and Director, Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC) of the Training and Doctrine Command, Fort Monroe, Virginia. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the US Military Academy and a Master's degree in Joint Command, Control, and Communications from the Naval Postgraduate School. LTG Vane is a graduate of the US Army Command and General Staff College and the US Army War College. He Commanded the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, 32d Army Air and Missile Defense Command, and the US Army Air Defense Artillery Center and Fort Bliss, Texas.

Examining a Lost Cost Military Capability

by William F. Owen

Download the full article: The Toyota Horde

The subject of this article is a broad technical and operational examination of how almost any country on earth can currently gain a viable level of military power by building on the enduring elements of combined arms warfare. These elements are enduring and appeared in the first twenty years of the twentieth century. It is further suggested that skillfully applied this type of capability may enable its user to confront and possibly defeat NATO type expeditionary forces.

A number of popular opinions about the future nature of warfare have created a substantially misleading impression that the skills and equipment required for formation level combined arms capability, such as that possessed by NATO during the cold war is no longer needed, because few potential enemies possess similar peer capability. Thus the object of the article is to show just how simply a peer or near-peer capability can be acquired, and maintained.

Contrary to popular belief, there are many examples of where military action by irregular forces has inflicted battlefield defeats on regular forces. The most famous are the Boer defeats of the British Army during "Black Week" in December 1899 and the Hussite Wars of the 15th Century, where irregular forces, using improvised barricades made of ox wagons (wagenburgs) were able to stand against and defeat the armoured knights of the Holy Roman Empire. In both cases each irregular force was able to generate conventional military force from fairly meager resources. There is nothing novel, new or even complex, in this approach. It is common, enduring and proven.

Download the full article: The Toyota Horde

William F Owen is British and was born in Singapore in 1963. Privately educated, he joined the Army in 1981, and served in both regular and territorial units until resigning in 1993 to work on defense and advisory projects in Kuwait, Taiwan, Algeria, the Philippines, and Sierra Leone. An accomplished glider, fixed wing and helicopter pilot, he works as a writer, broadcaster and defence analyst.

by Lieutenant Colonel Ehsan Mehmood Khan

Download the full article: Information Sharing for Irregular Warfare

A sturdy string of irregular warfare is the planet holding tight today. From Palestine to the Philippines, Columbia to Cambodia, and N. Ireland to India, the non-state irregular militant groups (IMGs) are waging resilient irregular war in face of a Technowar in James Gibson's terms. These groups are fighting under three main banners: Islamic groups engaged in Palestine, Somalia, Yemen, Chechnya, Dagestan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Thailand and the Philippines; communist groups in Peru, Columbia, India, Nepal, Thailand and the Philippines; and local centrifugal groups such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the UK, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) in the Basque region of Spain, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka, and various national and sub-national groups in Africa (in République Démocratique du Congo e.g.).

Irregular war is fought in the population battlefield and hence involves abundant non-kinetic tools alongside the kinetic ones. Kinetic means are used in brawls between state armies and the IMGs, while non-kinetic means are used not only to strike the opponents but also to engage the people in order to align them with IMGs and alienate them from opponents. The irregular warfare phenomenon is turning so complex with each click-of-the-clock that strategists and theorists of our age are aptly terming it as a "New War". While it has not lost the weight and value of military ascendancy, and thus the utility of force in conventional terms, the currency of confrontation is now information, not ball ammunition, as advocated by General Sir Rupert Smith.

As time elapses, irregular war turns into a war of ideas fought in physical, moral, psychological and information battlespaces. Numerous ideas and notions start occupying the information landscape further complicating an already complex environment. When nation states attempt to spread their side of the truth in order to keep the population on a path to normalcy, the IMGs insert new facts within the existing facts in order to win the contest of legitimacy in keeping with their mass line strategy. The information environment is further compounded if foreign forces are also involved militarily in a state or region (ISAF in Afghanistan e.g.). At any rate, the importance of ascendancy in the information space is times more than kinetic superiority as the bullet once fired cannot come back but the words continue to echo in the information space for generations to come.

Download the full article: Information Sharing for Irregular Warfare

Lieutenant Colonel Ehsan Mehmood Khan hails from Pakistan and is pursuing a Masters in Strategic Security Studies at National Defense University, Washington D.C. His research papers and op-eds frequently appear in prestigious military magazines and national newspapers. He writes on current affairs, security issues and military strategy.

by Michael Yon

Download the full article: Dispatch: Village Boys

Easter Sunday, 2010

Anywhere, Afghanistan

Back in December, C-Co 1-17th Infantry battalion had been in about the worst place in Afghanistan. There is stiff competition for the position of actual worst place, and I am sure there are many contenders that remain unknown, but the Arghandab was one of them. The battalion had lost more than twenty soldiers, and C-co alone had lost 12 with more wounded. In December 2009, C-Co was moved north into Shah Wali Kot and has been running missions here for more than three months. I've only been at Shaw Wali Kot for a week.

Charlie Company headed on a mission to visit villages that had seen no formal western guests for at least the past five years, according Company Commander Max Hanlin. The soldiers drove to an area maybe two kilometers from the first village, parked, and walked in. The surrounding desert was so dry that only the hardy and small plants survived—often with thorns, and probably foul-tasting (and poisonous). How else can a plant expect to survive when the favorite Afghan meat is mutton, and foraging isn't easy for the lambs? There was the occasional brown lizard or grasshopper, but on the whole it's simply rocky desert. The place is barren but not entirely lifeless.

Charlie Company was heading into the Baghtu Valley. The general area is said to be among the most religiously conservative in Afghanistan, meaning soldiers were unlikely to stumble across any undiscovered steeples, stupas or synagogues.

Some Charlie Company soldiers are multi-tour combat veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq. Captain Max Hanlin, the Charlie Company Commander, is on his sixth combat tour. Captain Hanlin explained how Dutch convoys had been hit near the Baghtu Valley and how fights had raged. Captain Hanlin said the four villages we were to visit are a black hole. We know where they are, their names, and little more.

We knew nothing, really, about the villages ahead. We didn't know whether they are friendly, enemy or neutral. In fact, the villages could be in another category: beyond neutral. Just out of it, living in a knowledge vacuum, maybe hoping not to be dragged into a fight. That would describe much of Afghanistan.

Download the full article: Dispatch: Village Boys

Michael Yon is a former Green Beret who has been reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2004. No other reporter has spent as much time with combat troops in these two wars. Michael's dispatches from the frontlines have earned him the reputation as the premier independent combat journalist of his generation. His work is published at Michael Yon Online and has been featured on Good Morning America, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, ABC, FOX, as well as hundreds of other major media outlets all around the world.

In the Desert of Death

by Michael Yon

Download the full article: Dispatch: Red Horse

For centuries, Afghans have dug underground irrigation tunnels called karez. The lines of craters in the photo above are shafts into a karez system. The shafts, which can be hundreds of feet deep, are used to lift out soil and stone while digging a karez. Karez can take years to build and are sometimes miles long. They are described as intricate constructions, often built by teams for hire, using father-to-son knowledge passed down through the centuries.

Thousands of handmade underground irrigation systems range from China, through Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, down to Africa, up to Europe and around to the Americas.

In Afghanistan, during many wars, such as with Alexander the Great, the British, the Soviets, and today, karez have been used to hide villagers, fighters and weapons, or to move without detection.

Download the full article: Dispatch: Red Horse

Michael Yon is a former Green Beret who has been reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2004. No other reporter has spent as much time with combat troops in these two wars. Michael's dispatches from the frontlines have earned him the reputation as the premier independent combat journalist of his generation. His work is published at Michael Yon Online and has been featured on Good Morning America, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, ABC, FOX, as well as hundreds of other major media outlets all around the world.

by Matthew Collins

Download the full article: Fixing Intelligence... Again

Winter was a cruel season for the US Intelligence Community. The Christmas bomb plot and suicide bombing of a CIA base in Afghanistan were high profile failures for our security services. What followed in the press was much accusation, counteraccusation, and ill informed conjecture. Cold war analysts used to say of old Soviet Union propaganda, those who speak do not know and those who know do not speak. The sentiment also applies to intelligence, whose dealings are understandably cloaked in a veil of secrecy. But when that veil is torn by failure, it is time for more public scrutiny of these activities.

The Christmas bombing was an analytic failure of the highest order. Familiar arguments about inter-agency cooperation and information sharing have been rehashed. Of course, analysts already have to sift through a voluminous mass of reporting already, so removing whatever stovepipes we have left will do little to solve this problem. The reality is that this was, first and foremost, a cognitive failure as were most strategic surprises, be they Pearl Harbor or Sept 11th. The president was correct in admitting as much, publicly. He should expect better and, indeed, deserves better.

Download the full article: Fixing Intelligence... Again

Matthew Collins spent eleven years as a Marine Intelligence Officer. He served with the British Army in Sierra Leone, Marine Corps Central Command during Operation Iraqi Freedom and served in the Defense Intelligence Agency's Iraq office from 2005-2007. He is a graduate of the US Naval Academy and recently completed a Master's of Strategic Intelligence from American Military University (with Honors). Opinions expressed are his own.

A Descriptive Study of Selected Works

by Jai Singh and John David Perry

Download the full article: Ayman Al-Zawahiri's Citations of the Qur'an

Merriam-Webster defines the term ideology, from the secondary perspective, as "a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture," "a manner or the content of thinking characteristics of an individual, group, or culture" and "the integrated assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program." All three definitions, delimiting the broad precept of the concept of ideology, are of relevance and import in the critical, analytical and objective study of globally oriented social, religious and political sub-national and clandestine movements that agitate for a reordering of the extant order through the use, on a mechanistic basis, of premeditated violence that targets both combatant and non-combatant actors. In this context, temporally delimited within the recent historical perspective, groups espousing an ideology predicated upon the global promulgation of a strict or fundamental interpretation of Sunni Islam are of particular interest. Stated in perhaps simpler parlance, "why do they fight" represents a general area of inquiry that underpins the subject study. Care, of course, must be made in order to avoid, during the course and scope of moving from the general to the specific, the equating of unrelated ideologies and movements. The crystallization of distinctive ideological platforms must be evaluated in their own specificity rather than via allusion to 20th Century Western ideologies such as fascism and communism.

In this regard, ideology (along with strategy and tactics) represents a portion of the confluence of broad categorical factors that must be understood with sufficient clarity for both short term counterterrorism (CT) and counterinsurgency (CI) goals and longer term mitigation goals. It is through the study of both the propounded ideology and the enaction of the same, oft-times in a manner showing substantive dissimilitude, that one may ascertain the rationale behind the existence of such organizations, the framework under which they operate and their short and long term goals and strategies. Brachman, in defining the groups in question as global jihadists and their ideologies as global jihadism, introduced the latter from the perspective of a set of shared characteristics. This view was based upon the concept of underlying social, political and/or religious grievances giving rise to ideological movements that reduce such complex problems into a dualistic Manichaean model. This is turn is followed by the presentation of a method or set of methods, alternative to those provided by societal norms, for addressing such grievances and finally by articulating a call to action. This framework is particularly useful and apt in evaluating the ideology of global jihadist movements such as Qaida al Jihad.

Download the full article: Ayman Al-Zawahiri's Citations of the Qur'an

Jai Singh is currently a graduate student at the American Public University working towards a Master of Arts degree in Intelligence Studies with a focus on Terrorism Studies. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Southern California. He has also taken graduate level courses in statistics through the Colorado State University. He is currently employed as a consultant with areas of expertise in the fields of motor vehicle accident reconstruction and trauma biomechanics.

John-David Perry received his BA in government from Harvard University, and his MS from Carnegie Mellon in Public Policy and Management. He has served as a Harvard University Fellow for Public affairs, and is currently working for Booz Allen Hamilton. The majority of John-David's current work highlights his interest in designing military capability assessments and studying irregular warfare theory and practice.

Operating on the Afghan Border (or Not)

by Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Kelley and Lieutenant Colonel Scott Sweetser

Download the full article: The Spaces in Between

--G.A. Henty, For Name and Fame (1900), p. 248

Henty's formulation, captured here from the Boys' Own Adventure genre of fiction popular among empires past, may be cliché and contradictory; but clichés and contradictions can be found in abundance around the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak. Along a jagged, ominous spine of rock in the center of town, a centuries-old fortress looms above the modern blue-roofed, pre-fabricated structures which house private contractors hired to train the border police manning the crumbling fortifications. Narrow, dust-blown alleys and acres of scrap-metal shops are punctuated by walled compounds stuffed to overflowing with gleaming, modern vehicles shipped duty free across the border from Pakistan, before ultimately returning -- again duty free -- to Pakistani markets in a kind of massive, international game of three-card Monte. The local commander of the Afghan Border Police is at once a demonstrably staunch ally against Taliban insurgents, and the subject of countless accusations of corruption, narcotics smuggling and arms dealing.

Nothing is quite what it seems -- not even the border itself. A few kilometres from Spin Boldak, there is clearly a point where the color and style of the uniforms changes, as does the language on official documents. But beyond that, things become much less clear. Is this point the Durand Line, the international border, or merely a convenient location to shift from using Rupees to Afghanis? The truth literally depends upon whom you ask.

It is precisely this indeterminacy which drives the title of this article. As Regional Command-South, we have been tasked to undertake a variety of operations at this particular place. These initiatives do not fall squarely within the responsibilities of the operations division, the support division, or the plans division, but rather within some space in between. They require competencies exclusive to neither the military nor civilians, but rather to some space in between. Authority to address these issues within the Government of Afghanistan does not belong entirely to the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Transportation, the Ministry of Finance or any of a half-dozen others. The requisite authority does not even belong entirely to the Government of Afghanistan, nor to the Government of Pakistan (and a similarly numerous menagerie of ministries and bureaus on that side). It lies within some space in between. A space which may be a colonial map line, reproduced by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency; it may be a more-or-less random point on the ground; it may even actually be the border (or not).

The specific circumstances we encountered in the vicinity of Spin Boldak from Fall 2009 to Spring 2010 may be unique -- indeed one of our fundamental premises is that border related problem sets are inherently idiosyncratic -- but many of the thematic issues, and our approach to addressing these, may well have broader relevance. In a global security environment marked by failing or fragile states, problems of sovereignty -- of which borders are a paramount example -- will routinely emerge. And in the face of hybrid threats, a hybrid response -- which ours most assuredly has been -- may acquire growing utility.

Download the full article: The Spaces in Between

Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Kelley is a South Asia Foreign Area Officer. Immediately prior to his most recent tour in Afghanistan as the Chief of Border Operations and Plans at HQ Regional Command-South, he served as the Chief of Defence Cooperation in Kathmandu, Nepal. Earlier FAO service included a tour as the senior strategic analyst at HQ Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan in 2005. He holds a MA in South Asian Studies from the University of Michigan, and authored the book Imperial Secrets: Remapping the Mind of Empire, published by the National Defence Intelligence College.

Lieutenant Colonel Scott Sweetser is a Eurasia Foreign Area Officer. Prior to serving as Director of the Border Coordination Center at Spin Boldak, Afghanistan, he served as the Security Cooperation Branch Chief for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. His earlier FAO experience includes tours with Headquarters, United States European Command and with the Defense Intelligence Agency. He holds an MA in Diplomacy and International Commerce from the University of Kentucky.

by Colonel Gary Anderson

Download the full article: Iraq: As Good as it Gets

I was not surprised that Ayad Allawi got a lot of votes in the recent Iraqi election. What surprised me is how many of his votes got counted. Allawi is a secular Shiia who ran on a nationalist platform. He ran squarely against the ultra religious segment of the Shiia elites in Iraq who have cuddled up to Iran in recent years, and he also opposed the radical Islamic nationalists in Iraq's fractious Shiite majority. In this, he gained the overwhelming support of the nation's minority Sunni community. Of nearly 200 Iraqis I polled in the months leading up to the election, virtually no-one I talked to said that he or she would vote for the ruling Maliki block. I wasn't asking who they would vote for, only if they would vote. However, about thirty percent of those interviewed volunteered their preference anyway. With one exception, Shiia and Sunni, they were for Allawi's team. The lone Maliki leaning exception was the Deputy Governor of the Abu Ghraib district (Qada'a), and he was running on Maliki's ticket.

Despite their enthusiasm for Allawi, most of my Iraqi acquaintances did not believe that their votes would count. They believed that Maliki and Ahmed Chalabi had conspired with the Iranians to rig the election. Jamail, my farmer buddy, was the contrarian in the group. He declared confidently; "this government is so incompetent that they couldn't rig a goat auction much less an election." At the time I thought him to be a cynic. I now think he was a prophet. The election results surprised both the American leadership and the Iraqi elites who reside primarily in the protected luxury of Green Zone. They talk to each other and not to the farmer Jamails. The fact that the residents of the Green Zone call it the "International Zone", while everyone else in Iraq still calls it the Green Zone is telling.

Some of the Green Zone dwellers think the post-election jockeying between the various political factions will be American style "horse trading" as we saw in the health care debate; they have sold this line to the Washington Post and New York Times. This is bunk. Iraqi politics is a full contact sport, and blood will be shed. Nor will the battle be primarily sectarian. It will be a Shiia-on- Shiia affair. If it doesn't end up in a civil war, it will look like a Chicago gang war before it is over.

Download the full article: Iraq: As Good as it Gets

Colonel Gary Anderson, USMC Ret., recently left the State Department after a one year tour as a Senior Governance Advisor with an embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team in the Abu Ghraib District (Qada'a) of Iraq's Baghdad Province.

by Captain Tyler J. Sweatt

Download the full article: The "Tactical" Leaders of Tomorrow

The Army must relook how it trains junior leaders for tactical decision making in combat by first redefining what tactical decision making entails. No longer are junior leaders solely responsible for executing battle drills and maneuvering squads and fire teams. We must stop training them to this limited scope. Junior leaders must not only understand, but also display competency at fusing traditional tactical decision making, troop leading procedures, American foreign policy, and the culture of the region in their area of operations. This is no small task and as such requires a significant amount of attention in the training and development programs currently in place today. This must start at the commissioning source and continue throughout the career path of today's Army officer.

Download the full article: The "Tactical" Leaders of Tomorrow

Captain Tyler J Sweatt is currently assigned as the BN Operations Officer (S3) of 554th Engineer Battalion at Fort Leonard Wood, MO. He has served as Civil Military Operations Officer, Plans Officer, Executive Officer, Platoon Leader, and Battle Captain with the 3rd Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team 10th Mountain Division (LI) during two deployments to eastern Afghanistan.

Lessons From a Military Humanitarian in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

by Major Kelly L. Webster

Download the full article: Lessons From a Military Humanitarian in Port-au-Prince

On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake devastated the island nation of Haiti, resulting in a disaster of epic proportions. The catastrophe resulted in an estimated 212,000 deaths, with millions more affected. As the Army's contribution to the Global Response Force, the 2nd Brigade Combat Team (BCT) of the 82nd Airborne Division deployed within hours to support humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) operations. While Operation UNIFIED RESPONSE is still on-going, below are some unfiltered lessons we've learned from the BCT's participation to date.

Download the full article: Lessons From a Military Humanitarian in Port-au-Prince

Major Kelly L. Webster worked as the Chief of Plans and the Regimental Executive Officer for 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division during Operation Unified Response. He holds a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and a Masters in National Security and Strategic Studies from College of Naval Command and Staff in Newport, Rhode Island. He is a Field Artillery Officer who has served in light, heavy, and special operations units throughout his military career.

by Michael Yon

Download the full article: Dispatch: Battle for Kandahar (Part I)

FOB Frontenac, Afghanistan

28 March 2010

The Battle for Kandahar has begun. The face of this battle is not one of sudden fury but a process, a complex struggle for legitimacy between local Taliban governance and Kabul rule.

A scent of weakness is in the air. The Taliban remain deadly and capable -- yet they seem to be losing the initiative. "Shaping Operations" are underway. Special Operations Forces are picking off and collecting key Taliban leaders. With our increase in troops, the Taliban must spend more time on self-defense, deducting from their capacity for offensive operations.

Download the full article: Dispatch: Battle for Kandahar (Part I)

Michael Yon is a former Green Beret who has been reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2004. No other reporter has spent as much time with combat troops in these two wars. Michael's dispatches from the frontlines have earned him the reputation as the premier independent combat journalist of his generation. His work is published at Michael Yon Online and has been featured on Good Morning America, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, ABC, FOX, as well as hundreds of other major media outlets all around the world.

What the 34-day War Has to Teach the US Army

by Major Irvin Oliver

Download the full article: What the 34-day War Has to Teach the US Army

As the United States fights wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and continues its counterterrorism efforts, the US Army is in the midst of transformation. This transformation is affecting nearly all aspects of the institution, to include organization, doctrine, and training. While many of the changes are logical based on the current operational needs to win the ongoing wars, the Army has based other changes on a future threat assessment that remains subject to debate. Technology and the availability of other resources have also shaped these changes.

The current transformation draws the wrong conclusion from the current US wars and does not pay adequate attention to the Israel-Hezbollah war of 2006, and that the current transformation does not prepare the Army to conduct hybrid warfare. Instead, the Army should adopt an organizational structure and training design capable of winning decisively against hybrid and conventional threats in the future.

Download the full article: What the 34-day War Has to Teach the US Army

Major Irvin Oliver, US Army, is currently an instructor of international relations at the US Military Academy. Previously he commanded D/-1-67 AR, 4ID and was the brigade plans officer for 2/4ID.

by Michael Yon

Download the full article: Dispatch: Scent of Weakness

Kandahar Province, Afghanistan

25 March 2010

Dogs have been trained to carry bombs to attack enemies for decades. The Soviets and others have used dogs as low-tech smart bombs. Yet canine platoons likely would rebel if they caught scent they were being duped to die.

Today, more sophisticated people employ men (mostly) to deliver bombs in Afghanistan. Gullible souls are selected, conditioned, trained and deployed. Malleable minds are identified then loaded with psychic software that uses their minds to create a vision. Evil persons of superior intellect identify the raw material—that raw material might be an engineer from a stable family—and trains them to fetch myths.

Suicide attackers have murdered countless thousands of people around the world. They go by various names, such as Kamikaze, Black Tiger, and Martyr.

Download the full article: Dispatch: Scent of Weakness

Join Michael Yon for updates and other content at Facebook and Twitter.

Michael Yon is a former Green Beret who has been reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2004. No other reporter has spent as much time with combat troops in these two wars. Michael's dispatches from the frontlines have earned him the reputation as the premier independent combat journalist of his generation. His work is published at Michael Yon Online and has been featured on Good Morning America, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, ABC, FOX, as well as hundreds of other major media outlets all around the world.

by Michael Yon

Download the full article: Warthog

Kandahar, Afghanistan

23 March 2010

The mission required crossing a bridge that had been blown up a couple hours earlier by a suicide car bomber. The attacker hit a convoy from the 82nd Airborne, killing American soldier Ian Gelig. Now with a hole in the bridge and recovery operations underway, our mission was cancelled. So I called the Air Force to see if they were busy. Yes, it turns out, the Air Force is busy every day, but Captain Kristen Duncan took me down to the ramp where the A-10 "Warthogs" are parked.

Download the full article: Warthog

Join Michael Yon for updates and other content at Facebook and Twitter.

Michael Yon is a former Green Beret who has been reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2004. No other reporter has spent as much time with combat troops in these two wars. Michael's dispatches from the frontlines have earned him the reputation as the premier independent combat journalist of his generation. His work is published at Michael Yon Online and has been featured on Good Morning America, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, ABC, FOX, as well as hundreds of other major media outlets all around the world.

A Concept for the Fight in Afghanistan

by Major Joseph A. Jackson

Download the full article: Moving Artillery Forward

The United States Army is no stranger to mountainous and high-altitude war fighting. American history contains many instances of successfully executed mountain conflicts. Central to this success was the movement and use of artillery in direct support of those campaigns. The first notable American instance of moving artillery across mountainous terrain occurred when Colonel Henry Knox's Continental Army soldiers wheeled, sledged, and levered the guns from Fort Ticonderoga across the Berkshire Mountains in the winter of 1776. These fifty-nine assorted cannon became the deciding factor in General George Washington's siege of Boston. Other notable campaigns include the U.S. Army operations in the Italian Alps during WWII, the Taebaek Range of Korea, and the Annamite Range in Vietnam. Each of these locations and conditions provides ample instruction on artillery use in mountain warfare; yet this time fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan is proving to be a greater challenge than anticipated.

Strategists and commanders who consider employment of artillery in Afghanistan should take a fresh look at history, doctrine, and tactical concepts. Doing so will ensure artillery can employ optimally, and in sufficient strength, and of the correct caliber to create the tactical conditions for success. Without a significant increase in firepower delivered by a correspondingly lightweight and maneuverable field howitzer, the long-range fight in Afghanistan will devolve into an even deadlier and protracted conflict.

Solely relying on technology and precision munitions incrementally applied across the current arsenal will not achieve the conditions to exploit and pursue the insurgent fighters ever higher and farther into the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Operational planners, artillery professionals, congressional staffers, and military acquisition officers should examine these relevant histories, review doctrine, and consider their implications. These sources serve as a guide to develop successful and sustained operational approaches to combat the Afghan insurgency. They also provide a reference for adaptive tactics and procurement requirements for weapons needed in protracted high-altitude mountain warfare.

Download the full article: Moving Artillery Forward

Major Joseph A. Jackson is a U.S. Army Field Artillery officer with deployment and combat experiences in Bosnia, Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He earned a bachelor's degree in history and Russian from Purdue University and master's degrees from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and the School of Advanced Military Studies. Major Jackson is presently serving his second tour in Afghanistan with the NATO Training Mission, (NTM-A).

by Lieutenant Colonel Ehsan Mehmood Khan

Download the full article: A Strategic Perspective on Taliban Warfare

Taliban Warfare has occupied news headlines in the global information expanse for over a decade. It is also a topic of choice for academics and scholars. However, the subject is often viewed and analyzed in a subjective rather than objective manner. It is mostly looked at across the prism of terrorism - atrocities and crimes against humanity committed by a group of non-state, though not stateless, bandits. Seldom has a theorist or practitioner picked up the pen to draw on the military aspects of the war so as to reach correct conclusions as to how could this war come to an acceptable-by-all end. This line of thought and reasoning might hold good for a given category of politicians but the students of military strategy and those involved in kinetic operations in a counterinsurgency campaign remain bewildered on the nature of the war. There is a need to understand Taliban as people, not monster, and as warriors not gangsters. Likewise, Taliban Warfare is required to be understood in correct military perspective rather than a mere act of crime, terrorism or banditry.

Download the full article: A Strategic Perspective on Taliban Warfare

Lieutenant Colonel Ehsan Mehmood Khan hails from Pakistan and is pursuing a Masters in Strategic Security Studies at National Defense University, Washington D.C. He has served in the low intensity conflict zone bordering Afghanistan. His research papers and op-eds frequently appear in prestigious military magazines and national newspapers. He writes on current affairs, security issues and military strategy.

the value of intimate local knowledge or to replicate thorough local cultural understanding.

However, just because we'll never get it perfect doesn't mean you can't get it better. 

Here's how one unit expanded and applied their local knowledge. Consider these techniques

as a force multiplier (+/- quality control?) for your local SMEs.

The Tribal Configuration Matrix

by Jeffrey A. Sinclair, Colonel US Army, Bud P. Cook, Ph.D.,  and Hamad Abdelnour,

BS/EE

Download the full article:

The

Tribal Configuration Matrix

Nearly every military commander in Iraq and Afghanistan developed some form of

process to analyze indigenous populations to determine agendas and motivations in

geographical centers tied to security. In the past five years success in this effort

has been mixed based upon the level of violence in any given area and often the

level of experience and talent among ground forces or the analysts that support

their efforts.

In 2008 I was introduced to a unique tool in the early development phase by my

assigned Human Terrain Team. This data call system known as the Tribal Configuration

Matrix (TCM) established the first documented baseline for effects based operations

in our Brigade's Operational Environment. This tribal network tool resulted in a

reconfiguration of the brigade staff to full time effects groups focused on tribal

networks in lethal and non-lethal targeting, the new Rule of Law, and political

party influences under the recently elected provincial governments. The unique understanding

of the sub-tribal powers and their relationships allowed the brigade to rapidly

shift from COIN to Foreign Internal Defense and cement the gains of the previous

five years through functional relationships with tribal and institutional leaders.

Download the full article:

The

Tribal Configuration Matrix

Col. Jeffrey A. Sinclair is the Commanding Officer of the 172nd Infantry Brigade

headquartered in Grafenwohr Germany.  He has served in Afghanistan and Iraq

as a Task Force and Brigade Combat Team Commander. 

Bud P. Cook, Ph.D. is a former Human Terrain Team Social Scientist assigned

to the 172nd Infantry Brigade at FOB Kalsu Iraq.  He is currently a Senior

Social Scientist with Tech Project Inc. 

Hamad Abdelnour is a Human Terrain Team Research Manager and is currently

OCONUS.

Applying Counterinsurgency to Local Conditions

by Bing West

Download the full article: Applying Counterinsurgency to Local Conditions

The seizure of Marja in Helmand Province was the largest operation in the Afghanistan war, conducted by approximately 2,500 American and 1,500 Afghan troops versus 400-800 insurgents. Chris Chivers of the New York Times moved with Battalion 3-6, Mike Phillips of the Wall Street Journal with 1-6, Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post with 1-6 and with the brigade headquarters. I went up to Now Zad, began the operation with 1-6 and spent most of the month in southern Marja with Task Force Commando, comprised of 40 Marines and Special Forces and 400 askars and police. Marja marked my third embed with Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB) units.

The basic question is whether the seizure of Marja was sui generis, with few techniques of general applicability, or was an example, like Tal Afar in the Iraq war, with wider implications.

Let's look at what happened, why, and what carries forward?

Download the full article: Applying Counterinsurgency to Local Conditions

Bing West, a former assistant secretary of defense and combat Marine, has made two dozen extended trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. The author of The Village and The Strongest Tribe, he is currently writing a book about the war in Afghanistan.

by Colonel Ellen Haring

Download the full article: Mobilizing Identity in the Pashtun Tribal Belt

Today, violent conflict in the Pashtun tribal belt in Afghanistan and Pakistan is increasing and a number of experts are attempting to understand the dynamics driving this conflict. An examination of two key identities of the Pashtun people reveals how religious identity is being mobilized by one group for political purposes and ethnic identity is inadvertently being threatened by another group. The resulting vortex of threat and mobilization are the source of this increased violence. This paper analyzes the ethnic and religious identities of the Pashtun people to illustrate how identities are used to influence conflict and it will then offer ways for the US and the international community to adjust their activities to reduce conflict in the Pashtun tribal belt.

Download the full article: Mobilizing Identity in the Pashtun Tribal Belt

Colonel Ellen Haring is a civil affairs officer assigned to the Joint Enabling Capabilities Command at USJFCOM but currently serving as an assistant professor for the US Army's Command and General Staff College. She teaches a range of topics related to strategic and operational planning for the Department of Joint, Interagency and Multinational Operations. She holds a masters degree in Peace Operations Policy from George Mason University and her graduate studies and personal interests are in conflict analysis and resolution with a regional focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

by Michael Miklaucic

Download the full article: The Tea Fallacy

Shock and awe don't leave much room for empathy. The doctrine, technically known as "rapid dominance" may have devastated the military capability of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq in short order, but America's failure to win the peace in either Iraq or Afghanistan with overwhelming military force has galvanized a profound re-thinking of the concept of war, the process of peace, and the challenges of failing states. This is evident in national strategies, doctrines, policies, manuals and the quadrennial defense review, as well as countless other official and unofficial statements, both military and civilian. Reflection on such a scale on so many levels and across such a broad range of disciplines and agencies is rare and impressive. The output has been dramatic, the implied self-criticism penetrating, and the insights promising, but there is a potentially a profound misunderstanding at the heart of much of this that could result in failure, defeat, and death.

The central epiphany of the new thinking is the recognition that the object of war, at least of the kind of wars that have been prevalent in recent decades, is the people. This message comes through clearly in such documents as the recent military field manuals on counterinsurgency, stabilization operations and unconventional warfare, not to mention General McChrystal's recent strategic analysis of the Afghanistan war. The population dimension has also been re-discovered by diplomats who lament the loss of our previously robust public diplomacy capacity. For the development community the focus and main constituency for their efforts has traditionally been the population, though on occasion that focus has been lost in the halls and offices of ministries throughout the developing world capitals.

Download the full article: The Tea Fallacy

Michael Miklaucic is Director of Research and PRISIM Editor for National Defence University's Center for Complex Operations.

by Michael Yon

Download the full article: Man Dogs

In David Galula's 1964 book, Counterinsurgency Warfare, Theory and Practice, he states:

Mr. Galula described Afghanistan almost perfectly. Instead of jungle-covered mountains are some of the most extreme folds on planet Earth: The "abode of snow," the Himalaya. Afghan elevations dwarf Mount Rainier. By comparison, the great Colorado Rockies are the Pygmy Snow Hills. Meanwhile, down in Kandahar and Helmand Provinces, Galula's "swamps" are the "Green Zones," where most of the current fighting occurs.

Yet the experienced Mr. Galula omitted a crucial factor that describes the Afghan war: A heavily armed, warring amalgam of peoples, whose national sport and pastime is guerrilla warfare. British officer John Masters variously described in Bugles and a Tiger: My life in the Gurkhas that life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness for some tribesmen includes vendettas, guerrilla warfare and lots of guns.

This weekend, on Saturday night, mass murderers struck. Taliban terrorists used bombs and other weapons in Kandahar City to murder about 35 people. They wounded another five dozen, and damaged about forty homes, according to reports. Enthusiasm to commit wholesale murder is one of the enemy's prime weaknesses.

About 12 miles from the suicide attacks on Saturday night, is the runway at Kandahar Airfield, where operations continue every minute of the day.

Download the full article: Man Dogs

Join Michael Yon for updates and other content at Facebook and Twitter.

Michael Yon is a former Green Beret who has been reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2004. No other reporter has spent as much time with combat troops in these two wars. Michael's dispatches from the frontlines have earned him the reputation as the premier independent combat journalist of his generation. His work is published at Michael Yon Online and has been featured on Good Morning America, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, ABC, FOX, as well as hundreds of other major media outlets all around the world.