Inside an Afghan battle gone wrong (II): Did we tip our hand to the enemy?

Thu, 01/29/2009 - 3:19pm

There are many potential lessons learned from the deadly battle last summer in the remote Afghan village of Wanat that claimed nine American lives but has yet to be fully investigated and understood by the U.S. military command. One major question I have, based on extensive review of the official record and conversations with multiple sources, is this: Were the U.S. forces correctly mounting a counterinsurgency operation, or not, when they got drawn into the Wanat battle?

American officers had been talking to village elders for months about establishing an outpost in the village of Wanat. But that approach gave the enemy more than ample time to prepare what was effectively a giant ambush. This isn't a thought original to me: The company commander worried about it at the time. "By negotiating with local people about the location and trying to gain support it allowed the locals to plan with the enemy to attack the base," he told the investigating colonel.

The Army maintains that the commanders were observing counterinsurgency doctrine of meeting with local leaders. "Providing legitimacy to and improving partnership with the district government was determined to be a key component of the on-going counterinsurgency fight," it stated in a response to an inquiry from the office of Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii).

But others tell me that Army forces in eastern Afghanistan really weren't conducting a full-scale counterinsurgency campaign, which would mean not only meeting with local leaders and establishing outposts, but also finding and arming some local allies, and building roads and other projects, and, above all, protecting the population from being intimidated by the enemy. It would appear that the U.S. military didn't have enough troops and presence in eastern Afghanistan to do that. Rather, they were in a tough fight and conducting a lot of airstrikes. In other words, it was more Fallujah 2004 than Ramadi 2007.

Likely lesson, I think: Counterinsurgency can't be conducted piecemeal. You are either doing the full-court press -- or you are not doing counterinsurgency. Just dropping troops into a hostile neighborhood is not COIN. The company commander seems to have similar thoughts, saying in his statement that he thinks more of a "gradual push" approach should have been used-that is, an "ink blot" strategy. Instead, the battalion commander appears to have tried to leapfrog into the valley.

But my thoughts are tentative, and I'd like to hear from others on this.

U.S. Army Photo

Thomas E. Ricks | Permalink | | Comments? Login or register
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Thoughts

by Tintin on Thu, 01/29/2009 - 4:58pm

1. I'm curious whether the nature of operations in N2KL has changed a lot since July, particularly recently - the paucity of troops for solid COIN that you mention has been somewhat alleviated by the arrival of 1-32 IN somewhere in Kunar, I believe.

2. I've only been to the peaceful 2008 edition of Ramadi, but having spent a lot of time interviewing guys who fought there during the real battle, I think anyone who served under 1-1 AD or 1-3 ID during the first four months of 2007 would say that that was a "tough fight" - almost as tough as Falluja 2004 or Kunar 2007 - that included a lot of airstrikes.

3. Come on, you should be able to find a better picture than that! That dude isn't even wearing ACUs!

counterinsurgency campaign ? by whom?

by Don Bacon on Thu, 01/29/2009 - 5:10pm

The basic problem is that in Afghanistan, as in other places, the US military forces aren't counterinsurgents, they are insurgents. They have overthrown the existing government, which is the definition of an insurgency, and they are now trying unsuccessfully to keep the Taliban from regaining power. So here come the latest incarnations of the White Man's Burden to "provide legitimacy" to the locals, who after all are legitimate and the insurgents are not.

Invading/occupying troops who pretend that they are the real authority in a foreign place can't be expected to succeed. They didn't in Vietnam or Iraq, and they won't in Afghanistan either. Nagl is now saying that 600,000 troops will be required to pacify the place, which is 72% Taliban-controlled, and the new Afghan Army which according to Gates is the US exit ticket is hopelessly ineffective.

other side of the COIN

by Walking Wounded on Fri, 01/30/2009 - 3:10pm

This discussion seems to divide into mission and tactics.

Re tactics, the alert posture of our guys raises a question in my mind about what was known or intuited, as they were preparing a predawn patrol. Forward patrolling is doctrine. But imagine what almost happened, with the perimeter weakened and a patrol exposed?

Re mission, if we were not able at that time to deliver a long-term security program, what was it that was being asking of Wanat residents? Are we asking for loyalty to us, in their country. Past loyalty to foreign causes may not have worked out well in that part of the Kush.

I once visited a castle in France that had been torn down by petition from the town residents. For a hundred years, every damn army passing near would detour in and loot the town, whether defending or attacking the fortress. I guess the headmen tired of it.

My guess is the hill folks in Wanat are hoping to stay alive in another impossible situation, between intermittent US firepower, and semi-indiginous forces that seem to be able to come and go at will. The villagers fears and sympathies are as much a target for moslem insurgents as us infidels.

A full strength airborne platoon in defense proved insufficient to deter an overwhelming attack on itself. Instead, the threat of upgrading Wanat to a full time outpost appears to have drawn in two companies of attackers that could have easily wiped out a police/militia force twice the size Wanat could suppport.

The classic insurgent play is to goad the stronger party into larger and more cautious groupings, ceding land, exposing supply, communications,and whatever local allies are outside our zone of control. And to keep us from the years of 'soup with a knife' work it will take (us, NATO, Kabul?) to build relations with locals and factions, exploit enemy mistakes.

Speaking of factions and locals, what was the tribal/cultural picture of the Afghan Army unit vs Wanat? I presume the ANA's and their USMC trainers came in with the airborne? The reason I ask is because Nuristan is very remote, even by Afghan standards. I read that tribes may speak different languages on opposite sides of a mountain pass. Wahabi-sunni beliefs may have taken root. Crusaders bringing a Shite-persian platoon, taking up residence in a Wahabi village might be as welcome as a Kurdish Pesh 'liberators' in a Turkmen city like Talafar.

Don Bacon has an intriguing

by J Thomas on Thu, 01/29/2009 - 7:08pm

Don Bacon has an intriguing idea despite the negative tone.

Suppose that we were to have a COIN approach that involve finding somebody who's popular who already has a lot of loyal followers, that we can stomach.

So we offer to train his troops, and give them some arms and supplies, and we train them in the sort of fighting they already do -- lightly armed, slow transportation, the sort of thing they can maintain for themselves. We train their officers in tactics and their men in marksmanship etc. With the advantages we can give our already-popular friend -- money, weapons, supplies, training -- he takes over while becoming more popular. If he fails it means we backed the wrong guy. We use the opportunity to preach democrcacy to the leader. Maybe he'll want to set up some democracy or at least a caucus system. There are advantages to himself from that. Among other advantages there is the possibility he might die in bed....

So here are all these warlords, and they have votes roughly in proportion to the number of loyal fighters who back them, and they make deals and vote on things. If one of them wants to take over everything, he can look at his odds. Him and the warlords who support him against the rest. He needs a big advantage or his supporters will come out of it mangled even if they win. Or he can call for a vote, and if he gets 51% he wins temporarily. Will the 49% fight or will they wait for a chance to get 51% themselves? If he doesn't push too far they won't fight. This is already more democracy than england had with the Magna Carta, and the tendency is to reduce the violence.

Or maybe the guy we back decides he'd rather just oppress everybody. We can back out and stop supporting him, and when he's cut down to a more reasonable size we can support somebody else.

It never takes a lot of US troops, and essentially no US troops in combat. If the plans call for US troops in combat that's proof that we're backing the wrong guy.

We say Taliban is unpopular. But they have little in the way of arms and supplies and training from foreign nations, nothing like what we supply. They have no helicopters. They are strong anyway, far stronger than the afghan government. How can that be?

Well, they are fanatics. That means they are motivated. The afghan army is not particularly motivated. Without strongly-motivated US troops the afghan army will not beat the Taliban and it appears they will not even survive as a fighting force. Whoever it is Taliban is unpopular with, they don't appear to be much motivated to oppose them.

If we have to do the combat ourselves it means we're doing conquest, not COIN. The afghans we're trying to assist aren't motivated to help themselves.

Summary: Basicly, the idea is to start with somebody that people are motivated to follow, that we can work with. And support him with the things we are good at but third-world nations tend not to be good at. Use the opportunity to preach democracy to him. If he doesn't like it but he's clearly popular, support him anyway. Once he's got things settled down, reduce the military support but maybe do some economic projects if they look like they'll pay off. If you need combat troops for things other than defending your trainers from special sneak attacks, it means you picked the wrong guy. If he can't get the upper hand with his own followers plus US support functions, then that's also proof that you picked the wrong guy. Back out and maybe try again later.

Useful autocrats

by percnon on Fri, 01/30/2009 - 2:10am

J Thomas, don't you realise that this king-making was the policy by the US and earlier the Brits for most of the 20th Century?

Both the Taliban and Saddam Hussein were the least bad option at one time and thus received US backing.

So how did that turn out?....

Percnon, it turned out that

by J Thomas on Fri, 01/30/2009 - 6:49am

Percnon, it turned out that the side we backed actually won.

In south vietnam, though, we backed somebody who got loyalty mostly from a minority faction, and when that didn't work we got a series of increasingly unlikely choices, and finally the guys we were completely unwilling to back took over. The approach is not foolproof.

In korea we put in US combat troops to help a leader who didn't have *enough* support, and the chinese intervened too, and by the time foreign armies had moved their battlefields two or three times over the whole country the population was wasted enough they'd let anybody run things. There was the chance if we didn't intervene that china might have done so anyway.

If you back a winner at least he's likely to win. If you back a loser how much backing will it take to eke out a stalemate?

We can try to promote democracy, but how hard will people fight for an idea of democracy they haven't seen work? In the USA we got a fair number of people who were ready to fight for Washington and other popular leaders, and then when Washington supported democracy it worked out.

We said we wanted democracy in the philippines but then we crushed the guys who were ready to fight for their country and we tried to install our own democracy. Look how well that worked out.

Or consider panama. We say we want democracy for panama, but panama has had repeated dictators that the citizens have not been ready to fight hard enough to get rid of. Did they think those dictators have so much of our support that they couldn't get rid of them? Then shame on us. Were we right to cooperate with dictators rather than try to overthrow them and lose their cooperation until a new government formed? Pretty much.

Nations don't actually get democracy unless a significant number of people are ready to take a stand for it. If they're ready to do whatever it takes, maybe die for it, then they might win. If there aren't many people that strongly in favor of democracy but there are enough people who have some other loyalty, then the others will probably win. "No slave was ever freed, unless he free himself."

Gotta love it

by Don Bacon on Fri, 01/30/2009 - 10:33am

"The approach is not foolproof."

In Vietnam the US installed a government in the country's south and fifteen years later pulled out, after a couple million Vietnamese deaths and over 50,000 US deaths, average age nineteen, leaving a communist government in control of the whole country.

In Iraq the US overthrew the government and tried to install a council-based US-controlled government but was forced into elections which have created an Islamist government closely allied with US enemy Iran, at a cost of trillions of dollars, a million or so Iraqi lives and over 4,000 US lives, with 150,000 troops still required and no end to the occupation in sight and deep political divisions.

In Afghanistan, seven years after the Taliban government was overthrown, the Taliban control 72% of the country and the US "new strategy" is to send more troops which would still be a small fraction of those required for full military control, with political control still unanswered and major logistical problems.

You can say that again -- "The approach is not foolproof."

In Vietnam the US installed a

by J Thomas on Fri, 01/30/2009 - 1:35pm

In Vietnam the US installed a government in the country's south and fifteen years later pulled out, after a couple million Vietnamese deaths and over 50,000 US deaths, average age nineteen, leaving a communist government in control of the whole country.

If we could have persuaded the south vietnamese government to be more representative, they might have gotten more support from their own people. But maybe that wasn't in the cards. It doesn't work for us to micromanage our allies' governments, and if they weren't persuaded what could we do but accept it or pull out?

If we had let the viet cong run in elections, and they won, that would be a sign we should pull out. It would mean they were better at door-to-door canvassing etc than the guys we were backing. Even if they were going door-to-door and threatening to kill people who didn't vote for them, still there it was. The guys we were supporting were out of touch and couldn't compete. Support the ones who're actually in touch with the population, or get out.

If we had reached the point where it looked lost without US combat troops and we decided it was time to quit, we wouldn't have done nearly as much damage to ourselves or to vietnamese civilians etc.

My rule of thumb is that if a government can't survive against its own insurgent population without foreign combat troops, it probably can't survive with foreign combat troops either. I don't say it's always true, but it's the way to bet.

In Iraq the US overthrew the government and tried to install a council-based US-controlled government but was forced into elections which have created an Islamist government closely allied with US enemy Iran, at a cost of trillions of dollars, a million or so Iraqi lives and over 4,000 US lives, with 150,000 troops still required and no end to the occupation in sight and deep political divisions.

Way different situation. We conquered the place and afterward we had to figure out what to do with it. We couldn't decide whether the iraqis were innocent victims that we rescued from Saddam, or whether they were bad guys. It was easy to decide that ba'athists and sadrists, who wanted us to go away, were bad guys and shouldn't be allowed any say in government. And what happens when you tell people they're excluded from the government? They rebelled, and then we definitely thought they were bad guys. It was hard for us to tell good guys from bad guys so it was safest to assume everybody on the street was bad, and that didn't win us any favors from them either.

And apparently for a long while our military followed a top-down doctrine that didn't let anybody act very effectively. There was far too much emphasis on AQI, a tiny and ineffective terrorist group. Remember the splash that the Symbionese Liberation Army had on the USA, when it was never more than about a dozen people? Remember the panic DC had from two snipers? Like that. All AQI needed was one or more garages to make car bombs plus a small inflow of foreign death tourists, and they could make news. And the news in iraq was "Mad dog AQI is killing people at random and the government can't stop them!" This is the kind of insurgency that governments are happy to get.

I claim that Garner and Triangle Research Institute were on the right track at the beginning. They went around telling people about democracy and staging local elections. Get a town council, give them some money to get set up, point out that your funding is unreliable and they ought to collect some taxes themselves from their citizens, encourage them to set up their own police forces responsible to them and maybe give them some weapons and training. Once they're running things you tell them you won't come into their town unless they invite you, except maybe to help monitor elections. That's one town that isn't going to have a lot of violence inside it. Leveraging a bunch of democratic towns and cities into one or more functioning nations is harder, but at least you don't have to garrison them. It wasn't foolproof, but it could have worked. Only Bremer came in and said there weren't going to be any religious people running cities, so whenever a known muslim won an election Bremer cancelled the election and sent in his own appointed mayor etc. That went over predictably, and it all went downhill from there.

We probably could have done it. Garrison the towns and cities with local police, appointed locally and paid locally by popular elected leaders who hope to win regional elections. It might have worked with minimal combat.

Of course they might well have wound up with an islamist government. And the more intrusive we were the friendlier they'd be to iran. As it was, we flew robot death planes over them, bombing absolutely anything we wanted, and their elected Prime Minister couldn't do anything to stop us. They'd take whatever international friends they could get that weren't us. But when the smell of our explosions gets less pungent their relations with iran will get more normal.

In Afghanistan, seven years after the Taliban government was overthrown, the Taliban control 72% of the country and the US "new strategy" is to send more troops

Definitely mistakes are still being made. Maybe we could publish conditions that Taliban could meet that would let us stop fighting them? They probably would do a lot to get us out of their country, or at least get us to stop fighting them. What could Taliban do to make peace with us? Besides die, I mean....

Okay (except for 'Nam)

by Don Bacon on Fri, 01/30/2009 - 4:10pm

Vietnam: "If we had let the viet cong run in elections, and they won, that would be a sign we should pull out."

The reason that the US was in Vietnam was to subvert the 1954 Geneva Accords which included provision for a nationwide vote in 1956 which Ho Chi Minh would have won. People who vote (or might vote) the wrong way, as in Gaza, must not be tolerated, the thinking goes.

Iraq and Afghanistan: I agree with much of what you wrote.

The US promotes disorder in the world in order to enhance and justify the obscene Pentagon budget. This also keeps COIN guys employed under the fictitious "counter-insurgency" fabrication.

The reason that the US was in

by J Thomas on Fri, 01/30/2009 - 5:53pm

The reason that the US was in Vietnam was to subvert the 1954 Geneva Accords which included provision for a nationwide vote in 1956 which Ho Chi Minh would have won. People who vote (or might vote) the wrong way, as in Gaza, must not be tolerated, the thinking goes.

If you let them vote and they lose, then you're better off.

If you let them vote and they win, then at least you know.

If you don't let them vote and they care, then you're going to have to fight them.

I might be wrong, but I feel like if there's a majority against you, you're better off to let them win and start oppressing people, and you support the insurgents who can gain strength as the government makes mistakes.

Better off that way than supporting a minority that's trying to stop the insurgency. Among other reasons this is better is if it just isn't working you can back off on support for an insurgency a lot easier than you can back out of supporting a failing government.

And if the bad guys do a decent job and also allow elections etc, maybe they aren't such bad guys after all.

Wahabi?

by Nygdan on Thu, 02/05/2009 - 9:39am

Walking Wounded said:
"Wahabi-sunni beliefs may have taken root. "

Correct my ignorance, but I thought that there were no Wahabi in Afghanistan, outside of foreign arab fighters? I thought that the hard-liners, like the Taliban, were Deobandi?
Your questions make a lot of sense though, I'd be interested to hear what the 'local' politics of it all were.