The "Los Pepes" I refer to was the shadowy vigilante group that in the early 1990s methodically reduced Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar from a Latin American emperor to a cornered animal. As described in Mark Bowden's brilliant Killing Pablo, Los Pepes, obviously enjoying access to the full intelligence file on Escobar's vast organization, systematically murdered or chased into exile the concentric rings of Escobar's supporting infrastructure. When he was finally gunned down, the former drug emperor was on the run in a Medellin slum with one bodyguard and two pistols. It is not an exaggeration to say that the murderous Los Pepes saved Colombia, where the police, army, and courts -- all thoroughly suborned by Escobar -- could not.

Will a new generation of Los Pepes be Mexico's salvation? Some Mexicans, including one city mayor, seem to think so, as described in this recent Wall Street Journal article:

The mayor of the nearby municipality of San Pedro Garza Garcí­a, Mauricio Fernández, a scion of a wealthy and prominent family, said this week that he created a special group to "clean up" criminal elements in the municipality -- even if it had to act outside the law.

His comments came a day after four men who allegedly ran a kidnapping ring in San Pedro were found dead in Mexico City on Saturday. The men, led by Héctor "The Black" Saldaí±a, were believed responsible for multiple kidnappings in San Pedro and neighboring Monterrey, according to police in Monterrey and San Pedro. The four are believed to be tied to a drug cartel, police said.

[...]

"We're tired of sitting around on our hands and waiting for daddy or mommy [President] Calderón to come to fix our fights. We in San Pedro took the decision to grab the bull by the horns," Mr. Fernández said in a radio interview. "Even acting outside the limits of my role as mayor, I will end the kidnappings, extortions and drug trafficking. We are going to do this by whatever means, fair or foul."

Asked if his new squad would operate outside the law, Mr. Fernández said: "In some ways, that's right. What the criminals want is that they can break every law, but that we have to respect every law. Well, I don't get that."

Separately, Silvia Raquenel Villanueva, a Mexican criminal defense attorney who specialized in defending indicted drug cartel members, was gunned down in a Monterrey shopping mall. The guidance for this murder could be found in chapter one of Los Pepes' playbook.

After Escobar's death, Los Pepes disappeared, apparently satisfied that its work was complete. In the years since, Colombia's government has reestablished its authority. Drug exports from Colombia obviously continue, but the cartels and insurgent groups such as FARC no longer are a challenge to state authority.

With this happy example in mind, some of Mexico's authorities may be tempted to tacitly permit their own Los Pepes to do the work they are unable to do themselves. They will hope that, as happened in Colombia, the vigilantes will disappear after that work is done. There is obviously a lot more that can go wrong with such a plan than can go right. It seems as if Mayor Ferní ndez believes Mexico no longer has a choice.

By Sean Maroney, Voice of America

Kabul

09 November 2009

As U.S. President Barack Obama debates with his advisers on whether to increase the number of American troops in Afghanistan, Afghans have their own opinions.

This year has been the deadliest for foreign troops in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban government eight years ago.

For several weeks in Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama has been hearing counsel from his advisers about the best course to take with the war-torn country. But half-a-world away, ordinary Afghans have their own advice for the U.S. president.

"Sending the troops to Afghanistan will not solve the problem. If the United States or Afghanistan start talks with the Taliban, it will be better," said Akhter Tutakhil, a medical student from Khost, a city in eastern Afghanistan.

Zainudin Wehadet is unemployed, living in the Afghan capital of Kabul. He says history has shown that no force can occupy Afghanistan. He says that no matter how many troops are sent, it will not end the fighting. He believes his government should start talks with the Taliban.

Ahmed Wali Mohmand is a student from Paktika province, next to the border with Pakistan. He says foreign governments should use their resources for something other than troops. "They should help with all our people and make universities and schools and other things which our people and society need," he said.

Daud Sultanzoi is a member of Afghanistan's parliament. He says he believes more foreign troops are needed and that the U.S. and Afghan governments have not done a good job of communicating the real reason for troops being sent to Afghanistan. "How can you build schools if you don't have security? How can you build schools if you cannot go to the districts to build them? You cannot build schools in a barrack and then transport it somewhere. You have to go to each district and secure those districts," he said.

Shenkai Karkhail also is a member of the Afghan parliament. She says she does not understand why weeks of meetings are needed in order for the U.S. government to make a decision. "They should be very much clear what they should do. Definitely they should send more troops here because the national army of Afghanistan is not in a position to really defend [from] this insurgency in this country," she said.

The United States has nearly 68,000 troops in Afghanistan and there are about 40,000 from NATO and other allied countries.

The top NATO and American commander in the country, General Stanley McChrystal, has warned the coalition could lose the conflict if additional military forces are not deployed.

As the Obama administration ponders the way forward in Afghanistan, the AfPak Channel reached out to experts who have lived in Afghanistan or researched and reported from the region for extended periods of time to ask, in about what a senior National Security Council staffer might have time to say to him in one of the meetings that is now going on in the White House, what they would tell Obama as he considers his options. These are their answers.

More Talking, Not More Troops - Graeme Smith

Prioritize in Afghanistan - J Alexander Thier

Nearly Anywhere Terrorists Operate - Michael Innes

It's Not About the Number of Troops - Gretchen Peters

An Articulate Plan for Security - Asma Nemati

Time for the Heavy Lifting - Peter Bergen

President Barack Obama is nearing a decision to send more than 30,000 additional US troops to Afghanistan next year, but he may not announce it until after he consults with key allies and completes a trip to Asia later this month, administration and military officials have told McClatchy. As it now stands, the administration's plan calls for sending three Army brigades from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky. and the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, NY and a Marine brigade, for a total of as many as 23,000 additional combat and support troops. Another 7,000 troops would man and support a new division headquarters for the international force's Regional Command (RC) South in Kandahar, the Taliban birthplace where the US is due to take command in 2010. Some 4,000 additional US trainers are likely to be sent as well, the officials said.

The first additional combat brigade probably would arrive in Afghanistan next March, the officials said, with the other three following at roughly three-month intervals, meaning that all the additional US troops probably wouldn't be deployed until the end of next year. Army brigades number 3,500 to 5,000 soldiers; a Marine brigade has about 8,000 troops. The plan would fall well short of the 80,000 troops that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top US military commander in Afghanistan, suggested as a "low-risk option" that would offer the best chance to contain the Taliban-led insurgency and stabilize Afghanistan...

More at McClatchy.

At their core, insurgencies are about political power struggles, usually between a central government and those who reject its authority, where the objective of the conflict is the population itself and the political right to lead it.

Thus, the center of gravity in this type of warfare is not the enemy's forces per se, but the population. The centrality of politics to this type of warfare means that counterinsurgent forces must craft a political strategy that is sensitive to the needs of the population, seeks to secure its loyalty to the government, mobilizes the community to identify, expel or fight the insurgent, and extends the authority and reach of the central government. To achieve these goals, a government must have a political strategy that separates the insurgents from popular support so they can be killed or imprisoned. If a political plan is implemented poorly, or not at all, insurgent forces will capitalize on the grievances and frustrated hopes of the community to entice it away from the government. The community may then assist the insurgent with a safe haven to rest, re-arm, re-equip, recuperate and redeploy to fight another day.

In the long run, because this conflict is not about how many casualties counterinsurgent forces impose on the insurgents but about the will to stay in the fight, foreign counterinsurgents tend to grow weary of the amount of blood and treasure they must expend. The insurgent could lose every military engagement, but still win the war if the government does not win the population over to its program, policies and plans...

More at Armed Forces Journal.

War isn't just transforming - it's ushering in a whole new language to describe conflict, and this language is used in a way that pays little attention to logic or military history. Thus the forces we used to call guerrillas are now "hybrid threats." Insurgencies are now "complex" and require "complex and adaptive" solutions. Jungles and cities are now "complex terrain." Put simply, the discussion about future conflict is being conducted using buzzwords and bumper stickers.

The evidence that the threats of the 21st century are going to be that much different from the threats of the 20th is lacking. Likewise, there is no evidence that a "new way of war" is evolving or that we somehow had a previously flawed understanding. In fact, the use of the new words strongly indicates that those using them do not wish to be encumbered by a generally useful and coherent set of terms that military history had previously used. As war and warfare are not changing in ways that demand new words, it is odd that people keep inventing them.

Hybrid threats have always existed, but previously we called them "irregulars" or "guerrillas"; both words, in this context, are more than 180 years old. The definition of hybrid threats as "a combination of traditional warfare mixed with terrorism and insurgency" accurately describes irregulars and guerrillas, both of which can be part of either an insurgency or a wider conflict. Yes, guerrillas have changed over time. So have regular forces. Armies of 1825 looked very different from those of 1925 or 1975, yet all were regular forces. Do we need a new word for regular or "conventional" forces? "Hermaphrodite" perhaps?

The most common attempt to redefine the activities of irregular forces and guerrillas has been the using the word "asymmetric," predicated on trying to describe a dissimilar employment of ways and means that was apparently new. Yet history does not support this thesis, nor does it usefully inform thinking about the future...

More at Armed Forces Journal.

The Bad - Michael Moss at The New York Times

The Ugly - Andrew Bast at Newsweek

And the Hero - Rich Shapiro at The New York Daily News

We really, really, try to avoid inter-service rivalries but will make an exception in this one case -- because it is for a really good and noble cause, we were asked to help out Team Navy and we like underdogs. Via e-mail from Project Valour-IT shipmate Maggie:

... Every year, just before Veteran's Day, the Milblog world breaks up into service related teams to raise funds. The funds we raise purchase assistive technology for wounded service members. It started with voice activated laptops and has expanded to include WII units (which help with physical therapy) and GPS (which helps brain injured patients stay on track). Because the parent charity -- Soldiers' Angels, covers overhead, 100% of donations to Project Valour-IT go directly into purchasing technology.

This is our 5th year and Navy normally makes a very good showing. This year, inexplicably, we are getting creamed. So I write for two reasons -- one, this is pretty much our one big event and we need to do well in order to meet the needs of the wounded Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines. There is a waiting list as I write.

Secondly (and much less important), Navy is getting creamed and it's killing Mary and I!

Here is some additonal information, how to help out Team Navy and contribute to a very important cause:

Project Valour-IT Main Page

Contribute to Team Navy's Efforts

The History of Project Valour-It

Editors' Note: Forgive us Chesty for we have sinned.

Beneath Washington's political squabbling over a new war strategy for Afghanistan is a deeper concern, this one among the Pentagon's war planners: not enough troops to go around. It's easy to overlook in Washington, but the Army still has almost 100,000 soldiers deployed in Iraq, and it's becoming less clear when they're coming home. With the growing demands of the Afghanistan war and other global commitments, the Army currently has more soldiers deployed overseas than it had at the height of the Iraq "surge'' in 2007.

At that time, it was widely predicted that the strain on soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen and their families was so severe that the military would simply "shatter.'' That was nonsense, of course. The troops, wives, mothers, kids, simply sucked it up and kept on driving. Why? The grunts I've lived with in Afghanistan and Iraq love what they're doing (you gotta ignore the usual and constant griping), they know they're good at it, and their families honor that service. But there has been a cost, and they are paying it.

Here's what worries the planners: The Army has 44 brigade combat teams (BCTs), its basic deploying unit of between 3,500 and 4,500 soldiers. Of those, 19 brigade combat teams are already committed, including 11 in Iraq and five in Afghanistan. One BCT is stationed in Korea, one trains deploying soldiers at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., and one BCT is on strategic alert for potential crises...

More at Politics Daily.