Headquarters

International Security Assistance Force

Kabul Afghanistan

APO AE 09356

Commander's Initial Guidance As of: 13 June 09

To the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Civilians of ISAF,

The situation in Afghanistan is serious. The outcome is important--and not yet decided. Our actions this year will be critical. We must, and will, succeed.

Success will be defined by the Afghan people's freedom to choose their future--freedom from coercion, extremists, malign foreign influence, or abusive government actions.

The outcome will be determined by our ability to understand and act with precision, the values we display, our unity of purpose, and our resolve.

The challenges to Afghanistan are complex and interrelated. Solutions will not be simple. The ongoing insurgency must be met with a counterinsurgency campaign adapted to the unique conditions in each area

that:

- Protects the Afghan people--allowing them to choose a future they can be proud of

- Provides a secure environment allowing good government and economic development to undercut the causes and advocates of insurgency

This effort will be long and difficult--there is no single secret for success. As imperatives we must:

1. Protect and Partner with the People. We are fighting for the Afghan people--not against them. Our focus on their welfare will build the trust and support necessary for success.

2. Conduct a comprehensive Counterinsurgency Campaign. Insurgencies fail when root causes disappear. Security is essential; but I believe our ultimate success lies in partnering with the Afghan Government, partner nations, NGO's, and other to build the foundations of good government and economic development.

3. Understand the Environment. We must understand in detail the situation, however complex, and be able to explain it to others. Our ability to act effectively demands a real appreciation for the positive and negative impact of everything we do--or fail to do. Understanding is a prerequisite for success.

4. Ensure Values Underpin our Effort. We must demonstrate thru our words and actions our commitment to fair play, our respect and sensitivity for the cultures and traditions of others, and an understanding that rule of law and humanity don't end when fighting starts. Both our goals and conduct must be admired.

5. Listen Closely--Speak Clearly. We must listen to understand--and speak clearly to be understood. Communicating our intentions and accurately reflecting our actions to all audiences is a critical responsibility--and necessity.

6. Act as One Team. We are an alliance of nations with different histories, cultures, and national objectives--united in our support for Afghanistan.

We must be unified in purpose, forthright in communication, and committed to each other.

7. Constantly Adapt. This war is unique, and our ability to respond to even subtle changes in conditions will be decisive. I ask you to challenge conventional wisdom and abandon practices that are ingrained into many military cultures. And I ask you to push me to do the same.

8. Act with Courage and Resolve. Hard fighting, difficult decisions, and inevitable losses will mark the days ahead. Each of us, from our most junior personnel to our senior leaders, must display physical, mental, and moral courage. Our partners must trust our commitment; enemies must not question our resolve.

You have my thanks for all that you have done, and will do. I promise to be the best partner I am able to be.

//Original Signed//

STANLEY A. McCHRYSTAL

General, U.S. Army

Commander,

U.S. Forces-Afghanistan /

International Security Assistance

Force, Afghanistan

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

Caveats: NONE

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

Caveats: NONE

You would think that with all the legitimate and expensive claims on the government pocketbook - including two wars, an economic crisis and desperately needed health care reform - Congress would be extra judicious about how it spends the taxpayers' money. But no, at least not when it comes to the House Armed Services Committee and lucrative defense contracts.

The panel has proved again how the insatiable drive to keep fancy weapons systems alive can trump all good sense. With Representative Rob Bishop of Utah and other Republicans leading the charge, and with the support of six Democrats, the committee this week narrowly voted to keep producing the Air Force's F-22 stealth fighter jet.

We adamantly opposed Defense Secretary Robert Gates's proposal to buy four more F-22s in next year's budget. But at least he wanted to cap the fleet at 187 planes. The House committee has voted to approve a $369 million down payment on 12 more. If all of those are bought, the total price tag would be about $2.8 billion...

More at The New York Times.

The new American commander in Afghanistan has ordered a 60-day review of the entire military mission to identify better ways to separate the population from insurgents, an assessment that is expected to lead to new economic and military steps to carve fighters off from the Taliban.

Over the next week, the commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, is scheduled to crisscross Afghanistan to meet provincial leaders, villagers and American and allied officials, while counterinsurgency experts from inside and outside the government assist in the top-to-bottom review.

Although the review is in its preliminary stages, General McChrystal is already pledging to expand the fight beyond the purely military campaign to defeat the insurgents...

More at The New York Times.

Topics include:

1) Is counterinsurgency a woman's job?

2) Mexico is struggling with more than just drug cartels.

I welcome your feedback in the comments and at Small Wars Council.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei Backs Disputed Election Result - The Times. Iran's Supreme Leader has appealed for calm and attacked enemies" questioning the result of the presidential vote that has sparked the biggest street protests in the Islamic Republic's history. Today the Iranian nation needs calm," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in his first address to the nation since the upheaval began. He said Iran's enemies were targeting the legitimacy of the Islamic establishment by disputing the outcome of the election. Tens of thousands of Iranians had gathered in and around Tehran University to hear the Friday prayer sermon.

As Standoff Deepens, Iran's Leader Urges Return to Faith - Nazila Fathi and Michael Slackman, New York Times. As another day of defiance and uncertainty loomed in Iran's capital, many Iranians looked to an appearance by the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who led the national prayer service from Tehran University on Friday. Political analysts said they hoped that the leader would reveal his ultimate intent, indicating a willingness to either appease the opposition or demand an end to protests that followed presidential elections a week ago. He blamed media belonging to Zionists, evil media" for seeking to show divisions between those who supported the Iranian state and those who did not.

Opposition March Mourns Iranians Killed in Protests - Thomas Erdbrink, Washington Post. A huge throng of opposition supporters, many clad in black, took to the streets of Tehran on Thursday to mourn protesters killed by a pro-government militia and back a challenge to the proclaimed reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In response to a call by the leading opposition candidate in the presidential election last Friday, Mir Hossein Mousavi, the massive procession streamed toward Imam Khomeini Square largely in silence, then broke into chants against Ahmadinejad and alleged electoral fraud, witnesses said.

Shadowy Iranian Vigilantes Vow Bolder Action - Neil McFarquhar, New York Times. The daytime protests across the Islamic republic have been largely peaceful. But Iranians shudder at the violence unleashed in their cities at night, with the shadowy vigilantes known as Basijis beating, looting and sometimes gunning down protesters they tracked during the day. The vigilantes plan to take their fight into the daylight on Friday, with the public relations department of Ansar Hezbollah, the most public face of the Basij, announcing that they planned a public demonstration to expose the seditious conspiracy" being carried out by agitating hooligans."

Several Scenarios, Not All Bright, Could Result From Iran's Tumult - Gerald F. Seib, Wall Street Journal. It's nothing if not exhilarating to watch young people in Tehran's streets trying to change the nature of the Iranian regime, and to imagine that they are forcing deep and positive changes in the nation that has been America's most implacable foe for a generation. Yet it also would be a mistake to ignore this darker reality: In the short run, the turmoil there could just as easily make Iran more dangerous and harder for the West to deal with. The fact that it's possible to envision such starkly different outcomes illustrates just how remarkable the story unfolding in Iran really is, and how much it is pulling the country and the watching world off into uncharted territory.

Can Iran's Top Clerics Defuse the Crisis? - Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor. Iran's top clerical leadership is taking steps to defuse six days of crisis and violence, as Iranians challenging the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took to the streets again on Thursday. Iran's supreme religious leader Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei is due to lead Friday prayers in Tehran - at which conservative factions have vowed a large turnout - and he is expected to deliver a message of unity. The powerful Guardian Council is to meet on Saturday with all three defeated candidates. The council is examining 646 opposition complaints, and has said it will consider a partial recount. But the 12 clerics on the Council have all but ruled out a full recount, never mind a re-run of the election, as demanded by defeated top contender Mir Hossein Mousavi- and the hundreds of thousands of Iranians who have rallied for him on the streets this week.

Iranian Leaders to Meet With Challengers - Farnaz Fassihi and Roshanak Taghavi, Wall Street Journal. One of Iran's top oversight bodies said Thursday it will invite the country's three unsuccessful presidential challengers to a meeting to discuss the contested elections, while as many as hundreds of thousands of protesters marched mostly peacefully through the capital's streets. Many protesters wore black and carried candles in mourning for people killed in recent clashes. The move by the Guardian Council was the latest in a series of unprecedented concessions to the losers in disputed June 12 elections that, Iran state media has said, were won in a landslide by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mir Hossein Mousavi and two other presidential challengers have alleged vote rigging, a charge Mr. Ahmadinejad has denied.

Iran Leader's Top Aide Warns US on Meddling - Thomas Erdbrink, Washington Post. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's top political aide said Thursday that the United States will regret its "interference" in Iran's disputed election. The aide, Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, said in an interview that President Obama's comments this week about street demonstrations in Tehran and other Iranian cities will "make things harder" if the Obama administration attempts to engage Iran in talks over nuclear and other issues.

'The Fear Is Gone' - Voices from Iran, Wall Street Journal opinion. Editor's note: The following are firsthand accounts that were solicited by Journal assistant editorial features editor Bari Weiss. Some were translated from Farsi. Surnames have been omitted to protect the writers.

This Is for Real - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion. What's happening on the streets of Tehran is a lesson in what makes history: It isn't guns or secret police, in the end, but the willingness of hundreds of thousands of people to risk their lives to protest injustice. That is what overthrew the shah of Iran in 1979, and it is now shaking the mullahs. This is politics in the raw -- unarmed people defying soldiers with guns -- and it is the stuff of which revolutions are made. Whether it will succeed in Iran is impossible to predict, but already this movement has put an overconfident regime on the ropes.

Fragile at the Core - David Brooks, New York Times opinion. Most of the time, foreign relations are kind of boring - negotiations, communiqués, soporific speeches. But then there are moments of radical discontinuity - 1789, 1917, 1989 - when the very logic of history flips. At these moments - like the one in Iran right now - change is not generated incrementally from the top. Instead, power is radically dispersed. The real action is out on the streets. The future course of events is maximally uncertain.

How Mir Hossein Mousavi Trapped the Supreme Leader - Shahram Kholdi, The Times opinion. What is clear is that the protests are showing no signs of dying out - and that they have spread beyond Tehran and the middle classes to working-class neighbourhoods that were thought to be unequivocally pro-Ahmadinejad. My elderly grandparents' nurse told me of clashes in her working-class town of Pakdasht, a suburb of Karaj. The dispute over the presidential election has pitted neighbours against each other. So how should we understand what is happening? First, Mir Hossein Mousavi and his supporters are not seeking regime change, but reform of the Islamic Republic. Second, the protests are also not just about the future of Iran, but a battle over the legacy of the 1979 revolution. And third, is that the protesters are not just drawn from a metropolitan elite.

'No Comment' Is Not an Option - Paul Wolfowitz, Washington Post opinion. President Obama's first response to the protests in Iran was silence, followed by a cautious, almost neutral stance designed to avoid "meddling" in Iranian affairs. I am reminded of Ronald Reagan's initially neutral response to the crisis following the Philippine election of 1986, and of George H.W. Bush's initially neutral response to the attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. Both Reagan and Bush were able to abandon their mistaken neutrality in time to make a difference. It's not too late for Obama to do the same.

.. Members of his (President Obama) national security team have concluded that the country requires not just more money and personnel for reconstruction but also a fundamental overhaul of the US approach to development. They want to implement broad-based initiatives aimed at improving the lives of as many Afghans as possible, shifting away from an approach employed during the Bush presidency that focused on generating discrete "success stories" and creating long-term economic sustainability through free-market reform.

Bush administration officials contend that their method was necessary to win financial support from Congress, and to build a degree of self-sufficiency that the country desperately needs, but Obama's advisers maintain it resulted in few tangible improvements for most Afghans, leading many of them to shift allegiance to the Taliban.

The consequences of the Bush approach have been most evident in US efforts to help resuscitate Afghanistan's agricultural economy, which has been severely degraded by years of war, according to internal government documents and interviews with dozens of officials involved in the country's reconstruction. Instead of emphasizing programs to help meet domestic food needs by increasing farm yields, US aid officials focused much of their resources on countering the growth of opium-producing poppies through projects that encouraged other ways to make a living in rural areas. The projects often had little to do with agriculture and did not address the root causes of why farmers became part of the drug trade...

More at The Washington Post.

In Afghanistan, Halting Civilian Deaths in Strikes is a Tough Mission - David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times.

The mounting death toll of Afghan civilians from US airstrikes has unleashed a tide of resentment and fury that threatens to undermine the American counterinsurgency effort. From President Obama to the new US commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, American officials have made the reduction of civilian deaths a top priority as they revamp their strategy.

McChrystal, who took command this week, told Congress that the measure of success in Afghanistan should be the number of civilians protected, not the number of insurgents killed. Reducing civilian casualties is "essential to our credibility," he said.

The US military employs a lengthy set of precautions, including written rules of engagement and multiple levels of approval before bombs can be dropped or missiles launched.

To gauge each mission's risk to civilians, a collateral damage estimate, or CDE, is prepared.

Yet civilian deaths continue to mount. US commanders have not specified how they intend to reduce them, except to continue rigorously reviewing and enforcing existing restrictions. But the nature of the war almost guarantees more accidental deaths.

More at The Los Angeles Times.

The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One by Dr. David Kilcullen.

I'd like to share with the Small Wars Journal community my review of Dr. David Kilcullen's The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One - recently published in the RUSI Journal.

This author has previously argued that David Kilcullen has done greater wartime service to the United States than any foreign adviser since Polish Colonel Thaddeus Kosciusko helped the fledgling Colonial Army defeat an occupying power that shall remain nameless here. As a friend of Kilcullen and president of the centre where he is a senior fellow, my objectivity on this matter may fairly be called suspect. Nevertheless, that caveat made clear, The Accidental Guerrilla offers incredibly valuable insights on the small wars that scar the face of the planet today and present such difficult challenges to the foreign policy and military establishments of the Western world. If it is read as widely as it deserves to be, this book may be the most important service Kilcullen has yet rendered to his adopted country, and to the world.

The full review can be found here.