By Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent
Rebecca Frankel

As President Obama made his announcement this week about the troop drawdown this week, allied forces in Afghanistan are on the topic table again. European allies responded positively to the president's announcement. U.K. prime minister David Cameron, who announced his own plan for British troop withdrawals in May, was quick to applaud Obama, adding: 

We will keep UK force levels in Afghanistan under constant review. I have already said there will be no UK troops in combat roles in Afghanistan by 2015 and, where conditions on the ground allow, it is right that we bring troops home sooner."

Britain has approximately 10,000 troops on the ground in Afghanistan -- the second highest number after the United States. Working alongside Cornish soldiers on the frontlines out of Camp Bastion -- Britain's largest military base in the country -- are a troop of 70 military dogs. So what's life like for a British military dog in Afghanistan? Actually, not too shabby.

Read on

By Rebecca Frankel
Best Defense chief canine correspondent

Last weekend a Royal Air force team and their dogs took a sponsored-stroll to raise funds for charity. Starting at half past midnight on Saturday morning the determined group walked a whopping 37 miles following a predetermined route in order to raise "more than £14,000 for Help for Heroes and Children's Hospice South West." The press release posted by the RAF made it clear that: "All of the dogs are very friendly and can be approached by the public on route."

The incredible canines who made the journey were:

Campbell, a Springer Spaniel, is a Vehicle Search Dog who can search any type of vehicle [who did tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan]; Kontessa, a Shepherd, is a police dog and carries out very similar duties as civilian police dogs; Zeus, a Shepherd, is a Patrol Dog who patrols and guards RAF Lyneham and the Service Families Accommodation; Jack, a black Labrador, is a Drug Detection Dog.

A 37-mile walk over two days is no stroll in the park, and the officers -- both four-legged and the two-legged alike -- had to be physically up to the challenge in order to participate.

A British Forces News reporter caught up with the walkers along the way and spoke to Cpl. Chris Archard who called the walk as a bit of a "roller coaster." For while the first leg relatively easy, as the group moved into a more open area, the temperature dropped. Soon after the walkers encountered a series of hills that, as Archard described, appeared "to [grow] incredibly as we were walking them." The team, which carried on straight through the night, made it to their destination in one piece albeit tired and sweaty. This wasn't the first time the do-gooding dogs and their handlers had marched to raise money for a cause. After that first, long walk in 2009 Archard recalls, "we said never again, [but after] a year ... we thought, let's do it again."

And in news a little closer to home, here's a PSA for the DC area. America's VetDogs -- a nonprofit organization that matches up disabled Vets with specially trained dogs -- is sponsoring its first annual 5K Run/Walk in Annapolis, MD on Sunday, April 3. The group's goal is to generate the funds necessary to cover the cost of one of these remarkable canines -- $50,000. To register or for more information, you can visit their site or on facebook. "Every participant will receive a free shirt, a free raffle ticket, and free food and drinks after the race! The top three finishers in each age division will receive a beautiful medal." And I've been told there will be plenty of dogs on site...

That's what he said. Funny that just seven years after the invasion, the British and American governments both basically feel this way -- but I bet the Iraqi government doesn't. But who expected in 2003 that in 2010, the president of the United States would have "Hussein" in his name but the president of Iraq wouldn't?

Meanwhile, here is the hot-off-the-press testimony on the Iraq invasion of former British intelligence bigwig the Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller. Basically she megadittoes: "we regarded the threat, the direct threat from Iraq as low." As for al Qaeda and Iraq, she said, "there was no credible intelligence to suggest that connection and that was the judgment, I might say, of the CIA. It was not a judgment that found favour with some parts of the American machine, as you have also heard evidence on, which is why Donald Rumsfeld started an intelligence unit in the Pentagon to seek an alternative judgment."

The BE M-B added that some unnamed parties made much too much of "tiny scraps" indicating some contact between Saddam Hussein and AQ.

Lady M-B also mentioned that she went to see Paul Wolfowitz once to tell him that disbanding the Iraqi army and banning Baathists from public life was a mistake:

"SIR RODERIC LYNE: But you didn't convert him?

BARONESS MANNINGHAM-BULLER: Not a hope."

One of the themes of the British testimony has been the pernicious influence of "special advisors"-people who stepped in and mixed the policy and intelligence roles. I think there probably is a good PhD dissertation to be done on this, looking at the situations in both the British and American governments. If I had time I would do it, but I already am deep into my work on my next book.

(HT to David Betz)

I've been reading an examination by British Col. I.A. Rigden of the British record in counterinsurgency campaigns. Here's the post-1945 scorecard, by his accounting:

• Wins: 7
  Losses: 5
  Ties: 1
  Incompletes: 2 (Iraq and Afghanistan)

Well, it's a tough league.

Rigden has an interesting bio -- he commanded a Gurkha battalion in Afghanistan, and spent seven years in company command. That's more troop time than most U.S. Army officers probably get in 20-year careers. Anyone out there who knows how the British Army works that very different approach to officer management? 

I am not advocating that we adopt an imperial stance, or even that everything the British did was right or even moral. But I do think we can learn from them, which is why I am dwelling this week on Roe's fine book on the British experience in Waziristan.

For example, in 1947, the new Pakistani government invited the former British governor of the North-West Frontier, Sir George Cunningham, to come out of retirement and administer the province, because he was seen as an honest broker. That might be the end-game we should aim for in Iraq, where the American officials eventually subordinate themselves to the Baghdad government and even are seconded to work for it.

That's my lesson, not Roe's. Here are some of his. You'll find more on almost every page:

• Be prepared to conduct a "constant mapping of political, economic and social information to gain a temporal insight into the views, motivation, and differences among the tribes and subclans."
• Don't underestimate your enemy. "To take on the tribesman and defeat him in his own hils is a game demanding a lifetime of specialized study."
• Tribesman will study your tactics and punish lapses or even simple repetitions. "This is one read on why an advance is seldom disputed with vigour, whereas the withdrawal is ferociously harrassed."
• Political officers must counter the tendency of military commanders to rely on their "instinct and their own values and standards, which often will be mistaken, unsuitable or inappropriate." (Tom: I saw this tendency a lot in Iraq in 2003-06.)
• "Tolerating ambiguities, shortfalls and inconsistencies must be central to any sustainable policy." (Tom: Hmm, sounds like FM 3-24.)
• Don't fight the tribal structure. "Employing and, where necessary, reinforcing the existing tribal framework and structures offers the best opportunity for success."
• Be prepared to pay off the enemy.
• Local forces should be the heart of your effort, not regular Army troops.

The British learned early on the price of underestimating their foe, who rarely allowed a tactical error to go unpunished, writes Andrew Roe in his very useful book, Waging War in Waziristan.

In one major triumph, in 1901, tribesman took over a British outpost. "The success of this attack," Roe states, "was in part due to a number of tribesmen disguised as shepherds who for a number of weeks prior to the attack observed carefully the habits and weaknesses of the garrison."

Think that IEDs are new somehow? In April 1938, "50 home-made bombs were laid on roads and railway lines," and even on military parade grounds.   

Another interesting fact: Historically, Waziri villages have been located near cave complexes, in part because in winter the caves are warmer than their houses. (Tom: I remember being in a cave in Germany Valley, West Virginia, where American Indian tribes had done the same -- 55 degrees inside with a fire for light and warmth sure beat zero and windy in the mountains outside.) I also didn't know that the area was far more forested in the 19th century, but that a lot of trees were cut down, leading to erosion, loss of topsoil, and a drier climate -- not unlike today's Haiti. 

I was also intrigued by an observation Roe mined about the personality difference between the two major tribes in Waziristan: "The Wazirs had been compared to a leopard, a loner, cunning and dangerous; the Mahsud to a wolf, most to be feared in a pack, with a pack mentality, single-mindedness, and persistence." (One of the benefits of this book is that he quotes memoirs and studies liberally.)

The best way to reach out to the tribes was through medical aid, especially to reach the fencesitters in the middle. When one tribe requested a female doctor, they remarked that she didn't need to bring instruments or drugs, as they still had the ones they had stolen in 1919. 

But generally I found the book more illuminating about the British than about the tribes.

Flying to Utah on Monday I finished reading Waging War in Waziristan: The British Struggle in the Land of Bin Laden, 1849-1947, by Andrew M. Roe, a British infantry officer. 

Here's my bottom line: Anyone trying to understand the war in Afghanistan, and especially anyone involved in waging it, should check this out. The British have faced all the same issues, and had many of the same internal arguments. We could save ourselves a lot of time and grief by looking at them.

Roe's book differs from many other histories of the region I've read in that it focuses not on campaigns or personalities, but on structures and policies. This makes it most useful for seeing parallels to our current situation.

For example, the military establishment they maintained on the frontier was multi-layered. At the top were British regulars and the Army of India, which was an arm of the empire. Next in the pyramid were the frontier scouts and the frontier constabulary. Finally, there were local tribal militias. Of these groups, it is instructive that the British units often had the hardest time, especially units that had just arrived to serve one-year tours. "Due to tactical shortcomings, personnel rotations, and professional overconfidence, British regiments were often easy targets for the tribesman," Roe reports. 

The scouts, by contrast, were locals who had a smattering of British officers -- who in turn were selected by their peers. The scouts were tough and fast-moving, frequently marching 20 or more miles a day through this mountainous desert, without any logistical support, "They were also proficient marksmen of a far higher standard than the regular army soldiers," in part because they had only the ammunition they could carry on their multi-day patrols.

More tomorrow. There is much to be mined here, on everything from the way to organize local forces to the role of airpower in small wars. But you might as well buy it now -- Roe states that he is donating all the profits from the book to Help for Heroes.

He speaks much truth:

It's like they're coming in and saying to you, 'I'm going to drive my car off a cliff. Should I or should I not wear a seatbelt?' And you say, 'I don't think you should drive your car off the cliff.' And they say, No, no, that bit's already been decided -- the question is whether to wear a seatbelt.' And you say, 'Well, you might as well wear a seatbelt.' And then they say, 'We've consulted with policy expert Rory Stewart and he says ...'"

(Hat tip to man-about-town Randall Michelson of greater Los Angeles. How come all my best tips come from California? I suspect it is casued by the great new syrahs and other Rhonish wines coming out of the Central Coast. I think with global warming in a few years we'll be talking about the new Rhones coming out of Cornwall and Sussex.) 

aerogoat/flickr

There is some anger being reported that a British soldier was killed during the raid in northern Afghanistan to rescue Stephen Farrell of the New York Times. I think this is a red herring. Farrell was being held by Taliban, and I am sure the British military doesn't need an excuse to whack Taliban. In military terms, Farrell's nervy decision to go into an very active Taliban area may have made him the equivalent of a tethered goat -- that is, an unwitting probe. 

This is pretty obscure as far as reading lists go, but then this is warm, muggy Wednesday in late July. So, via BBC, here is a list of suggested summer reading from the British Conservative Party's spokesman for foreign affairs:

• The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars by Patrick Hennessey
• A View from the Foothills by Chris Mullin
• Alan Clark: the biography by Ion Trewin (published mid-September)
• Pistols at Dawn: Two Hundred years of Political Rivalry from Pitt and Fox to Blair and Brown by John Campbell
• Electing Our Masters: The Hustings in British Politics from Hogarth to Blair by Jon Lawrence
• Whitehall: The Street that Shaped a Nation by Colin Brown
• Neville Chamberlain by Nick Smart (published August)
• Attlee's Great Contemporaries: The Politics of Character by Frank Field
• Harold Macmillan by Charles Williams
• Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940-1945 by Max Hastings (published September)
• D-Day by Antony Beevor
• Blood Victory: The Sacrifice of the Somme and the Making of the Twentieth Century by William Philpott
• Democracy: 1000 Years in Pursuit of British Liberty by Peter Kellner
• The New British Constitution by Vernon Bogdanor
• The Life and Death of Democracy by John Keane
• Democracy Goes to War: British Military Deployments under International Law by Nigel D White
• Lords of Finance: 1929, The Great Depression - and the Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamad
• Keynes: The Return of the Master by Robert Skidelsky
• The Spectre at the Feast: Capitalist Crisis and the Politics of Recession by Andrew Gamble
• Restoring Financial Stability: How to Repair a Failed System by Viral V. Acharya and Matthew Richardson (eds)
• Europe's Tragedy: A History of the Thirty years War by Peter H. White
• Poland: A History by Adam Zamoyski
• The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China by Jay Taylor
• The Terrorist Hunters by Andy Hayman (currently withdrawn for legal reasons)
• Terrorism: How to Respond by Richard English
• The Defence of the Realm: The Official History of MI5 by Christopher Andrew (published October)
• The Pathans by Sir Olaf Caroe

I hope Tory MPs can expense Caroe's book -- it isn't cheap.

amy_kearns/Flickr

Patrick Little, a former British infantry officer, blasts the British military for not adjusting in recent years as the U.S. Army has. This is a bit ironic, given that one of the most influential American military books in recent years, John Nagl's Eating Soup with a Knife, was built on the notion that the British army of the 1950s was a "learning institution," while the American Army of the 1960s was not.

Writing in the RUSI Journal, Little charges that there are "serious systemic shortcomings" that aren't being addressed, most notably a command climate in which "bad news is routinely camouflaged."

The current climate, with themes of deteriorating communication, intolerance of dissent, tolerance of toxicity, poorly designed processes and perceived tolerance of inadequate senior officer performance, is a real obstacles to learning and adapting."

Where, he wonders, are. Nagls and Yinglings of the British military -- or a General Petraeus willing to listen to them and protect them?

He recommends several major reforms, including:

• Seeking foreign perspectives on British strategy, tactics and doctrine, especially from those who have fought alongside the British military.
• "Re-invigorating" professional writing.
• Creating and using "red teams" to critique concepts and policy.
• Educating officers more in sociology, anthropology and international development, with more emphasis on languages
• Introducing 360-degree appraisals

This all makes sense to me. I think he tends to think the U.S. military has changed more than it has, but he is correct in crediting our military has moved in the right direction.

(HT to JB)

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I had rather that Mohmetanism were permitted amongst us than that one of God's children should be persecuted." --Oliver Cromwell, 1652, in support of religious liberty 

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