Western troops have killed far fewer Afghan civilians since the top US general imposed strict new rules of engagement aimed at addressing one of the most contentious issues of the conflict, according to newly declassified US military figures.

However, the data cover a relatively short period of eight weeks, and make it clear that civilians are still dying in large numbers, a pattern blamed in part on the Taliban's campaign of violence surrounding last week's national elections. The toll on civilians has angered Afghanistan's government and poisoned public opinion against the presence of American and allied troops. The Obama administration has made reducing such deaths a top priority for the US military.

The period since the new rules took effect have also coincided with some of the heaviest losses of the war for Western forces. But military spokesmen deny any link, saying record fatalities were caused by the summer's troop buildup and an accompanying push into areas controlled by the Taliban, rather than any greater hazard to troops posed by the new rules...

More at The Los Angeles Times.

The US military in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere regularly assesses the content and tone of the work of individual reporters to prepare for trips and interviews by those reporters, according to defense and military officials.

But the officials denied that the analysis has been used to exclude journalists from embedding with US military units in combat zones or to bar them from interviewing military personnel.

A controversy has arisen in recent days over media work performed for the US military command in Afghanistan by the Rendon Group, a contractor that classifies the content of stories by reporters as positive, negative or neutral in relation to military objectives...

More at The Washington Post.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has written a searing critique of government efforts at "strategic communication" with the Muslim world, saying that no amount of public relations will establish credibility if American behavior overseas is perceived as arrogant, uncaring or insulting.

The critique by the chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, comes as the United States is widely believed to be losing ground in the war of ideas against extremist Islamist ideology. The issue is particularly relevant as the Obama administration orders fresh efforts to counter militant propaganda, part of its broader strategy to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate," Admiral Mullen wrote in the critique, an essay to be published Friday by Joint Force Quarterly, an official military journal...

More at The New York Times.

By Bernard Finel

(1) From a competitive strategic perspective, population-centric COIN is extremely inefficient. In Afghanistan, the United States plans to spend over $60 billion per year and deploy a force of over 100,000 Western soldiers supporting Afghan security forces of at least 150,000 men. Most estimates peg the size of Taliban and other significant insurgent groups at fewer than 10,000 fighters operating on a budget of well under $400 million. The United States can probably afford to sustain a conflict with this sort of expenditure ratio, but it strikes me as problematic and a potential vulnerability that enemies might seek to exploit.

(2) Population centric COIN's focus on partnering with local allies makes a future disengagement more difficult to achieve. When units "live, eat, train, plan, operate" together, it clearly builds capacity and trust, but it also builds personal bonds and commitment. The consequences for the morale of U.S. forces of a withdrawal that occurs before the job is perceived done could be significant. The consequence is that our operational concept in Afghanistan may be inadvertently deepening our stake in the conflict by virtue of developing increased personal and institutional ties. This development may have positive or negative long-term consequences, but we should explore the issue in more depth.

(3) The "build" portion of our current approach may generate increased legitimacy for the government of Afghanistan, but it will also likely raise expectations and commit the government of Afghanistan to significant expenditures in the future to maintain and upgrade infrastructure and services. If these projects promote a virtuous cycle that dramatically increases Afghanistan's economic wealth, then these increased commitments are sustainable. Unfortunately, the history of development projects -- politically motivated or otherwise -- is not a happy one. It is likely that a institutionalizing a successful COIN campaign in Afghanistan will require a near-permanent commitment of American financial assistance in the annual range of several billion dollars.

(4) The American approach toward Afghanistan contains an unresolved tension between local autonomy and centralized control. This is not just a tactical or operational concern. The long-term implications of success or failure will depend significantly on the details of the political settlement we seek to promote or are successful in attaining. For instance, the implication of buying off the loyalty of the Pashtun communities to the central government may be quite different from the consequences of allowing a quasi-autonomous Pashtun region to develop. Responsiveness to local concerns -- in short -- may defuse support for the insurgency, but the specific nature of local concerns may have broader strategic consequences than we realize. In other words, how we defeat the insurgency may be as significant as whether we defeat it.

(5) It is almost certain that the institutionalization of COIN as a key element of American military power will reduce American willingness to use force. If the corollary of using force is the necessity of a multi-year occupation/COIN campaign to shape the future environment, it is likely that American political elites will be reticent to make this sort of commitment. This may be a positive or a negative development, but is a likely consequence.

(6) Every successful strategy ultimately spawns effective counter-measures. American conventional military power has encourages potential adversaries to pursue various asymmetric responses, ranging from insurgency to the pursuit of catastrophic or disruptive technologies. If population-centric COIN is as successful as its advocates hope, the pattern will repeat itself. Just as the success of American conventional military power shifted conflict into a new, relatively more difficult arena, the success of COIN would also have unintended consequences.

(7) There is some compelling evidence that "fighting them there" does reduce the risks of "fighting them here." Resources expended by "jihadist" groups in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are resources that cannot be used to target the United States or American interests elsewhere. As a consequence, it is possible that an American "victory" in Afghanistan -- unless it critically undermines the "jihadist" cause -- might encourage greater efforts to strike at the American homeland.

Dr. Bernard I. Finel is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Project where he directs research on counter-terrorism and defense policy He is the lead author of ASP's annual report, "Are We Winning? Measuring Progress in the Struggle against Violent Jihadism."

The new Capstone Concept, McMaster said, examines how the Army operates under conditions of complexity and uncertainty in an era of persistent conflict. The concept's purpose is to put into operational terms Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey's vision of balancing the Army to win today's wars while describing how the future Army will fight the wars of tomorrow.

[...]

The primary purpose of the capstone concept is to lead force development and employment by establishing a common framework to think about future Army operations; place modernization decisions in a broader context of future armed conflict; establish a conceptual foundation for subordinate concepts; guide experimentation in Army operations and capabilities; and guide capability development.

"We looked at how the Army intends to operate and face the challenges in the future operating environment against what we're calling hybrid threats," said McMaster. "By looking at the current operating environment and the hybrid threats we face and could face in the future, this helps the Army make a grounded projection into the near future and understand what challenges our Army will face as part of a Joint, interdepartmental and multinational force, and then develop the capability our Army will need to fight the future battle."

BG McMaster is leading a team that will complete work on the Capstone Concept by the end of this year. The new Capstone Concept is then supposed to guide the development of subordinate Army doctrine. The Capstone Concept effort thus represents important guidance for Army training, leader development, and combat unit organization.

During his presentation last week, BG McMaster emphasized the differences between the doctrine his team is completing and the doctrine the Army operated under a decade ago. Small Wars Journal hopes to provide further discussion of the Army Capstone Concept as it nears completion. For now, I recommend reading the article linked to above.

"In the President's Office in Colombo officials talk about the 'Rajapaksa Model' (of fighting terror). "Broadly, win back the LTTE held areas, eliminate the top LTTE leadership and give the Tamils a political solution." Sunimal Fernando, one of Rajapaksa's advisors, says that the President demonstrated a basic resolve: "given the political will, the military can crush terrorism." This is not as simple as it sounds. Like most poll promises he did not have plans to fulfill his promise to militarily defeat the LTTE. Eelam I to III were miserable failures. So the 'Rajapaksa Model' evolved, it was not pre-planned."

The article lists the principles as:

• Unwavering political will

• Disregard for international opinion distracting from the goal

• No negotiations with the forces of terror

• Unidirectional floor of conflict information

• Absence of political intervention to pull away from complete defeat of the LTTE

• Complete operational freedom for the security forces -Let the best men do the task

• Accent on young commanders

• Keep your neighbors in the loop

Most western readers will find the lack of concern for civilian casualties in this strategy disconcerting. The article highlights the broad condemnation Sri Lanka received for its approach.

COL Gian Gentile and Ralph Peters have both criticized FM 3-24's unwillingness to consider alternate, more violent, and less population centric conceptualizations of counterinsurgency. Is the Sri Lanka model a valid option for western forces, if it ultimately solves the problem faster and potentially with less cost and casualties? After examining the subject the past few years, ruthless COIN approaches seem to work in a number of cases. The Sri Lankan approach resembles Russian efforts in Chechnya, which were similarly ruthless yet generally effective at suppressing the rebels. A similarly ruthless approach defeated and forced the submission of the US Native American tribes in the 19th century. However, an easy counterpoint to the "ruthless" method's effectiveness is its failure during the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan, which assisted in the creation of many of today's problems faced by ISAF.

On another forum, a respected colleague argued that the more violent approach to COIN might ultimately be more humanitarian. He suggested population centric COIN, while humanistic, takes longer, with uncertain probabilities of success, and often in the end creates more casualties among the population through inept execution than a ruthless enemy focused campaign.

This utilitarian view of force is tempting to those looking for a quick and alternate solution to the complex campaigns that trouble the US and its allies. Ultimately, neither the US or its allies are —to accept the high collateral damage cost and potential resulting excesses (war crimes) adopting such an approach would engender. Nor do I think we would do well to our standing as a society or nation to accept the ruthless targeting of the populations that support insurgents. Therefore, I believe that the operational strategy of population centric COIN continues to represent the only viable approach for the US military and its allies to wage counterinsurgent warfare.

Disagree? Sound off in the comments or at the Council.

UPDATE: Corrected name of individual who contributed the Indian Defence Review Article. - Niel

Intellipedia, the intelligence community's version of Wikipedia, hummed in the aftermath of the Iranian presidential election in June, with personnel at myriad government agencies updating a page dedicated to tracking the disputed results.

Similarly, a page established in November immediately after the terrorist attack in Mumbai provided intelligence analysts with a better understandinsg of the scope of the incident, as well as a forum to speculate on possible perpetrators. "There were a number of things posted that were ahead of what was being reported in the press," said Sean Dennehy, a CIA officer who helped establish the site.

Intellipedia is a collaborative online intelligence repository, and it runs counter to traditional reluctance in the intelligence community to the sharing of classified information. Indeed, it still meets with formidable resistance from many quarters of the 16 agencies that have access to the system. But the site, which is available only to users with proper government clearance, has grown markedly since its formal launch in 2006 and now averages more than 15,000 edits per day. It's home to 900,000 pages and 100,000 user accounts...

More at The Washington Post.

- "The Philippines' Continued Success Against Extremists"

By Peter Chalk

- "The Evolving Role of Uzbek-led Fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan"

By Jeremy Binnie and Joanna Wright

- "Tribal Dynamics of the Afghanistan and Pakistan Insurgencies"

By Hayder Mili and Jacob Townsend

- "A Review of Reconciliation Efforts in Afghanistan"

By Joanna Nathan

- "The Absence of Shi`a Suicide Attacks in Iraq"

By Babak Rahimi

- "Factors Affecting Stability in Northern Iraq"

By Ramzy Mardini

- "Training for Terror: The 'Homegrown' Case of Jami`at al-Islam al-Sahih"

By Jeffrey B. Cozzens and William Rosenau

- Recent Highlights in Terrorist Activity

ElBaradei will leave the IAEA on November 30th. Between now and then, he will get a last chance to restore his legacy as the world's nuclear proliferation enforcer. ElBaradei's refusal to energetically confront Iran over its violations of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty has resulted in self-inflicted damage to his reputation. Should he leave it to his successor, Yukiya Amano, to open the Iran file to the public, we will be left wondering how ElBaradei viewed his mission at the IAEA. Was it to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation? Or was it to assist the developing world in containing Western power?

This week, advocates of the death penalty for murder received the greatest possible boost to their argument when Scotland's justice minister released Abdel Basset al-Megrahi from prison. Similarly, ElBaradei's tenure at the IAEA has provided no comfort for those who attempt to defend the usefulness of international institutions and international treaty law. Advocates of treaties such as the NPT, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, the Missile Technology Control Regime, and others have a responsibility to support the toughest possible enforcers of these agreements. ElBaradei's refusal to be a tough enforcer has damaged the case for international treaty law as a means of conflict prevention. Yukiya Amano will come to work in December finding much damage to repair.

Australian special forces have killed a senior Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Karim, an officially sanctioned assassination designed to rid Oruzgan province of hardcore militants. The operation took place on Monday August 10 but was only announced today by Chief of Joint Operations, Lieutenant-General Mark Evans.

Karim's death brings the number of senior insurgent leaders killed in top secret operations targeting Taliban militants responsible for attacks on coalition soldiers to more than half a dozen. "Mullah Karim was killed during an operation directed against the insurgent network of improvised explosive device operators in Oruzgan province," General Evans said.

In keeping with past targeted killings, few details were released although it's understood from defence sources that personnel from the elite Special Operations Task Group (SOTG), which includes members of the Special Air Service Regiment, were responsible...

More at The Australian.