Mental Sine Waves

Abu Muq and my go-to Pakistan expert F.A. alerted me to this amusing item.  It's an editorial by a former ISI head urging the Pakistani Army to fight the Taliban.  He argues, counterintuitively, both that the Army's limited knowledge of COIN is not a hindrance, and that its training in conventional operations is the essence of COIN.  The funny thing is, I've heard this same contradictory line of argument from American Big Army advocates.  

Every time I learn something new about the Pakistan/Afghanistan situation I take another step down the mental rabbit hole.  For instance, the Pakistan developed the Taliban (I knew that) so that the Pakistani Army could take refuge in Afghanistan in case of an Indian invasion (rabbit hole).  

I oscillate between seeing the Pakistani military/intelligence community as COIN-fumbling buffoons and hard-headed realists.  I suppose the truth is somewhere in between.          

More Questions Than Answers

More questions than answers, that's what you've come to expect from this blog, and that's what I'll continue to deliver. :)

The closure of Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan.  Perhaps this is a naive question, but can't the flow of supplies into Manas be diverted to go directly into Afghanistan?  

Let God Sort 'Em Out

After 26 years of fighting, in May 2009 the insurgency of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka came to an end.  Last year I took a class from terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman, who described the LTTE as one of the most professional terrorist groups in the world.  They operated a (small) navy and air force in addition to capable ground forces.  They had an extraordinarily well developed intelligence system, with infiltrators in every level of the Sri Lankan military, intelligence, and police forces.  They were consummate fund raisers, receiving millions from foreign donors. 

 

Their most unique attribute, however, was their innovation.  They invented dozens of tactics over the decades, chief among them the suicide bombing.  This tactic has since been copied by many other groups, to include Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, etc.

 

As Dr. Hoffman described the capabilities of the LTTE, it occurred to me that the Sri Lankan military should just squash the LTTE.  Sure, the LTTE are expert insurgents.  But Sri Lanka is a tiny place.  If the Sri Lankan military simply moved into the LTTE's safe areas, they would have nowhere to hide.  The LTTE lacked one crucial aspect of a successful insurgency: sanctuary.  They had nowhere to go when push came to shove.

 

And that's exactly what happened. 

 

I have two questions about this:

1. Why did it take so long to get around to this?

2. What are the lessons for the U.S. and counterinsurgency? 

 

I have already seen one op-ed claiming the LTTE defeat as a point for the "kill 'em all" school of counterinsurgency.

Cue Realism

I have been working my way through David Kilcullen's "Accidental Guerrilla."  He describes counterinsurgency success in Kunar Province, by way of standard counterinsurgency doctrine: protect the people, build links between the people and the national government, improve indigenous forces, etc.  One is left with an optimistic feeling.  It appears that Obama, Petraeus, and McChrystal will now be trying to copy the Kunar method in the rest of Afghanistan.

So we are really going to give this old college try: forging a nation-state out of a collection of perpetually warring tribes.  Let's assume that it's possible.  What is the strategic rationale for this effort?  Al Qaeda Central is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.  A completely secure Afghanistan will not materially affect our ability to influence events in Pakistan.  Drone strikes will still be the limit of our power.  Anything will more will still depend on the cooperation of the Pakistani military and intelligence services, and the Pakistani border tribes. 

A secure Afghanistan will create one less place to hide for Al Qaeda.  But I don't see how it will positively affect events in Pakistan.  

Metrics Schmetrics

Much discussion about metrics at the Center for a New American Security's (CNAS) annual conference today.  As I mentioned in a previous post, CNAS' report on Afghanistan put forward Afghan civilian casualties as the primary metric of success.  

Afterwards, a co-worker and I discussed metrics some more, and soon realized our focus on metrics is a little misplaced.  War is more complex and unpredictable than any other human endeavor.  We tried to come up with metrics that would have been appropriate in either of the World Wars, and came up empty-handed.  I'm not sure what metric could have told the story of Operation Iraqi Freedom.  In particular, the turning point, the Sunni Awakening, couldn't have been predicted by any metric. 

So metrics are not a magic bullet.  But metrics do serve two useful purposes.

1. They drive out bad metrics.  Bad metrics are a crutch.  In Vietnam, one of the official responses to failure was to start counting enemy casualties.  If an official metric is established, there's no room to lapse into bad metrics.   

2. They provide a concrete way to transmit commander's intent.  Most commanders will tell their troops to avoid killing civilians.  Such platitudes have more impact when a team's performance is measured in civilians protected, rather than bad guys killed.

Question for tomorrow: if we achieve success in Afghanistan, and create a secure, prosperous, well-governed state, will that make it easier to go after Al Qaeda Central in Pakistan?      

Marine Corps and the Spectrum of Conflict

Five to Ten Years After Landfall

General Cartwright, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, laid out a possible new guideline for the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review.  Since the 1990's, military strategic planning has been based on the capability to fight two high-intensity wars simultaneously.  Instead, Cartwright suggests that planners count on extended, five to ten year conflicts.  This is long overdue.  Unfortunately, the Marine Corps seems to be moving in the other direction.  There is an inherent conflict between a Marine Corps focused on forced landings, and the first 60 days of war, and a Marine Corps focused on sustained conflict.

The Marines have explicitly stated that they are trying to get away from the Iraq/Afghanistan operational model, and go "back to basics."  Cartwright is saying that everyone needs to get used to the Iraq/Afghanistan model, and start planning to do it better, because the future is likely to hold more of the same.