Back to David Kilcullen's essay on what works in counterinsurgency, what doesn't, and how to tell the difference.

But first, a couple of points in response to yesterday's rasher of comments. First, to my knowledge, the paper hasn't been published anywhere -- but I'll skate as close to the copyright laws as I can and give you a good overview. Second, Kilcullen isn't out to attack all metrics, just bad metrics. Which leads us to the point of today's post. Yesterday, he told you why he dismisses certain metrics as unhelpful. Today, he discusses how to tell what effect your operations are  having on the people:

• "Voluntary reporting." How many tips are you getting from the population? And how many of them are unsolicited? He warns that this metric must be assessed in the context of how many tips pan out. The more accurate the tips, the more confidence the population has in your and your allies in the host government.
• "IEDs reported versus IEDs found." This one took me a moment to get my mind around. "Accurate reporting indicates that the population is willing to act voluntarily to protect the security forces." Variations in this rate may be a good indicator of local support for security forces and the government, he says.

Read on

Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Samuel Rhodes is the subject of a good article about how two tours in Iraq stripped him of his marriage and peace of mind, and nearly his life by his own hand. At one point in Iraq he tied himself to his own bunk.

He has gone public to help other soldiers. "It's not about me. ... Every one of us can tell our own story. Start telling it. Change the culture of silence." He emphasizes how important a few kind words can be at the right time. Keep that in mind, little grasshoppers.

By Cmdr. Herb Carmen
Best Defense piracy czar

Are some ship masters rolling the dice as they pass through pirate infested waters to save operating costs? Are ship masters intentionally taking the path of least resistance and ignoring Best Management Practices to Deter Piracy in the Gulf of Aden and off the Coast of Somalia? It's something we've been looking at when combing through data of successful pirate attacks. So, too, have the folks at Strategy Page.

In a recent post, Strategy Page points out that about a quarter of the ships passing through these waters are gambling with the safety and well-being of their ships and crews to save time and what can amount to tens of thousands of dollars in operating costs. In doing so, they increase the pirates' chances of successfully hijacking their ship from 1 in 500 to 1 in 200. At a press conference on February 2nd, Rear Admiral Peter Hudson, Commander of EU NAVFOR Somalia, highlighted the fact that many of the ships hijacked were not registered with the Maritime Security Centre (Horn of Africa), were not reporting to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) office in Dubai, and were not following best management practices. 

Read on

When David Kilcullen is at his best, he is unexcelled at discussing how to wage a counterinsurgency campaign. And I think the Australian infantry officer turned political anthropologist/COIN guru is at his best when he gathers field observations, boils them down to distilled principles, and then describes those rules in a clear, practical manner. 

So I want to take some time to go through a paper he wrote recently in Afghanistan. (I didn't get it from him, by the way.) While it ostensibly is about metrics in COIN campaigning, it amounts to a thorough discussion of what works in such warfare, what doesn't, and -- especially -- how to tell the difference. It is written about the current campaign in Afghanistan, but clearly has broader applications. ...

After some initial throat-clearing (one of my rules when I was an editor was to see if I could cut the first three pages of any long article), Kilcullen's first major section is about metrics to be avoided. These are:

• "Body count." As he says, when you have 100 enemy and kill 20 of them, you may wind up with 120 live enemies, because you just created 40 more. It's more algebra than arithmetic. ‘Nuff said? Sure, but as Sean Naylor's excellent reporting in Army Times lately has shown, there are still some Army commanders who disagree with this basic point.
• "Military accessibility." Yes! One of my many peeves in Iraq was when a battalion or brigade commander would say that a route was "green" because his up-armored Humvees generally could use it without getting blown up. That may have been true, but it also was irrelevant to the security experience of the average Iraqi on the street. When I asked about that, he just didn't seem to know, or care. So I was pleased to see this high up on Kilcullen's list of don'ts. His point is a bit different from that here. It is just because you don't get hit on a road doesn't mean it is under your control. Rather, it may just mean that the enemy doesn't care to engage you there. This may be because it lacks support there, or conversely because it doesn't want to fight in an area where it is popular. Why risk blowing up your own peeps? 
• "SIGACTs, especially those involving violence against the coalition." This is a related point. Be wary of SIGACTs trends. Violence may be low in an area simply because it is in the uncontested control of the enemy.
• "Dialog with the enemy." An interesting point, because there has been so much talk lately about various parties talking to the Taliban. In our tradition, we stop talking to the enemy when the fighting starts. Not so the Afghans, Kilcullen notes. Also, he adds, "the mere fact that our local partners are in dialog with the enemy is not an indicator, in and of itself, of disloyalty to the government."
• "Any input metric." Megadittoes. This was another thing that used to drive me nuts in Iraq, listening to Americans boast about money spent, projects initiated, patrols conducted, and such. "These indicators tell us what we are doing, but not the effect we are having." Rather, he advocates, look at outcomes, and especially the effect on the population. How to measure those will be the subject of our next installment on this insightful essay.

I was looking through Doonesbury's Sandbox the other day and saw this interesting post from an Air Force wife, married to "AFG," about her life while he is deployed.

I'm often just putting one foot in front of the other. A big part of my day is trying to appear "normal". Whatever is going on inside my head or wherever my husband is deployed to, I have to take the kids to Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts, Gymnastics, Swimming, and Boxing lessons. And I've got to figure out how to group everything around the times AFG might possibly call (because I will not miss those).

I've gotten really good at squashing down inner turmoil to get through the day. It's a defense mechanism and we all develop it eventually. It seems that there is always a crisis, and if we holed up in the house for each and every one we'd never leave. And the nice thing about putting one foot in front of the other is that eventually you end up somewhere and find yourself enjoying things.

In any case, I'm on auto-pilot a lot. I'm multi-tasking parenting issues, planning a menu, grading schoolwork, getting laundry done, writing, planning for holidays, getting birthday parties planned, and making sure the dog gets to the vet when necessary, among other things. Meanwhile a large part of my brain is wondering what my husband is doing. Is he cold? Is he hot? Does he have enough clean t-shirts? What is he thinking about? Is he okay? I'm distracted, yes. And I'm sorry. I don't mean to forget things, be late, or in general act like "Hurricane Airforcewife." Trust me, it could be a lot worse. Most of the time everything goes as planned, but when that kink hits my schedule . . .

In the new issue of the Marine Corps Gazette, there is a response to the article that misspelled the names of two Army generals, including that of David Petraeus. In the new article, the first name of Adm. Hyman Rickover is spelled "Himan." Another joint for blowness.

When I labored at the Wall Street Journal we used to refer to some front page stories on the economy or industrial production trends as "DBIs," which stood for "Dull But Important." I thought of that when reading a piece by Army Col. Chris Kolenda in the new issue of Joint Forces Quarterly.

Kolenda, who played a major role in the recent review of Afghanistan/Pakistan strategy, lays out a clear, coherent statement of what our current strategy is, and how it aims to achieve progress. The whole article is kind of smart but dull. That's fine with me. Sometimes important is dull.

There isn't a lot to quote in the article. Looking it over, this is the best I can do:

Bad governance -- the abuse of power for personal interest -- is a greater problem [than armed militants] in the eyes of Afghans. Nearly every conversation I have had with rural Afghans aligns with myriad surveys and analyses -- corruption and abuse of power are at or near the top of themes cited as major drivers of instability.

Tom again: This is in fact the biggest question I have about American policy in the war. I know what McChrystal intends to do with the Taliban. But I don't understand how the U.S. government intends to improve the behavior of the Karzai government. It is a puzzlement. Anyone care to enlighten me?

By Rebecca Frankel
Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

"Rags took a kind of bow and licked his chops again." -The NY Times, November 4, 1930

Last week, in our inaugural post in the Wardog series, we visited a brave bomb-sniffing dog who patrols the roads in Afghanistan. This week I thought we'd take a step back in time to one of the first, and most beloved, wardogs.

On March 22, 1936 a lengthy obituary ran in the New York Times: "Rags, Dog Veteran of War, Is Dead at 20; Terrier That Lost Eye in Service is Honored." The article goes on for 16 paragraphs recounting the heroic escapades and brushes with death this wardog faced during his stint of service:

The dog was adopted by the men of the First, played with them and fought -- in the only way he could -- beside them. He underwent heavy fire in the Meuse-Argonne campaign. He sped messages through shell-studded, gas-hung sectors. He became a personality in the division, a symbol of courage and of good luck. Apocryphal stories sprang up about him, but there was generally a generous basis of fact for the yarns."

It was not the first time the little Scotch-Irish terrier called Rags would get mentioned in the prominent paper, nor would it be his last -- subsequent articles about Rags's final resting place were published in the days following his death.

Read on