The multi-dimensional geography of transnational terrorism: Yemen, Detroit, Iraq etc.

There is now bound to be some serious dot-connecting and some investigation into what happened back during Christmas, when the Nigerian "underpants bomber" struck.

I finally came across a source that did not shy away from mentioning what the "mysterious" second man at the airport in Amsterdam looked like (if he was there, as eye witnesses say). Excerpt:

"In an extraordinary twist, which will increase concerns over security failures, an American lawyer claimed he had watched at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport as Abdulmutallab was assisted by a "second man" as he tried to board without a passport.
Kurt Haskell, who was standing in line with his wife Lori on Christmas morning, said the Nigerian was with a man aged about 50 of Indian appearance in an expensive suit, talking to the ticket agent.
Haskell said the second man claimed Abdulmutallab was from Sudan and had no passport.
The ticket agent referred the men to her manager down the hall, and Haskell did not see Abdulmutallab again until after the failed bombing."

Amsterdam is no unguarded gateway to international aviation. Even the U.S. Customs and Border Protection is present there. So it will be interesting to see what is reported about this later on, and it is understandable that Obama and the rest of the White House are angry.

Meanwhile, a friend asked during the day why there was a six-year silent period as far as AQ in Yemen is concerned. Look at this chronology of Yemen-related major incidents to understand what we are talking about. There is a gap between 2002 and 2008.

Well, my tentative answer would be Iraq. Many now fighting in Yemen were there trying to fight U.S. troops in those years. (And of course the whole AQI phenomenon was boosted significantly, in several ways, by AQ-central, as it looked to react to its radically changed strategic environment with the U.S. in Afghanistan.)

China in Afghanistan

Michael Vines at the New York Times weighs in on the (Western) debate over the rights and wrongs of China's natural resources-related investments abroad. From his predictably incoherent account of the "dragon" with that "voracious" apetite, one may learn that the Chinese are these supersmart, superstrategic calculators when it comes to investments and that their buying into the Aynak copper mine might have been foolish greed. Or that NATO may have unfortunately "conducted an unacknowledged preparatory phase for the Chinese economic penetration of Afghanistan" while benefitting from the fact that someone had the courage to invest there eventually, and that this may allow the Afghan government to cover more of the costs of the Afghan security forces instead of the West...

The article comes as the Aynak investment is the subject of an anti-corruption investigation - reflecting on this Thomas Ruttig rightly observed the other day that it strongly smells "as if at least a part of the anti-corruption fight is for US business dominance." This is amazing, in a negative sense, as the Aynak investment is something that indicates a Chinese readiness to more constructively engage the challenges in Afghanistan (and Pakistan). Viewing Chinese foreign policy as the single-issue policy of a voracious dragon with an insatiable apetite is just the perfect justification to have only a single-issue policy about it, I guess.

Memo - Yemen and counterterrorism strategy

Stephen Walt tried the other day to list the ten greatest gifts (from states) in the history of foreign policy. His somewhat weird mention of "martyrs in the cause of peace and justice," including "soldiers who have fought for just causes" brought up interesting associations in me, of course.

And it also makes me mention two further, rather provocative examples of such gifts focusing not on the world of interstate relations, but in general on strategy-making actors and strategic thinkers aligned with one or another of those.

It is a paradox, when you are devising strategy, that you have to first try and defeat yourself, playing your enemy in a virtual role game, in order to understand what vulnerabilities you have to look out for, on your side. Now, where this gets especially interesting, more than just an intellectual paradox slightly disturbing your calm as you sit back in your armschair, is when you put out all that stuff in the open source.

I have just read the first, highly thought-stimulating chapter of David Kilcullen's book, with its template for al-Qaida conquest in a four-phase model, including the key processes of "infection" and "rejection:" establishing a foothold, pulling in an external intervention, then accelerating a rejection of the external intervention by the local social context (as by antibodies in a human system). Brilliant, except of course that you need to use many caveats regarding where it can work, as it is really not only, or even dominantly, a tribal terrain out there that al-Qaida and the likes are trying to work on.

Now I have also, in the past, read of Baghram-escapee Abu Yahya al-Libi's advice to the West regarding how one ought to defeat a movement like the one coordinated by al-Qaida. And it was equally interesting reading. Highly thought-stimulating and all that. Recommendations regarding how one ought to do the counter-ideological struggle. What tools to use. Etc.

And parts of both plans are of course being put to use. Which makes this quite interesting. Not that the actors involved in putting them to use may not have had these ideas occur to them without external help. But even so it is interesting to see how the two sides exchange strategic advice so generously with each other. I am not saying this should not happen (see the point above about both sides thinking for themselves, on their own, quite a lot anyway), or that this is a new thing between strategic adversaries. I am just remarking that this flow of strategic concepts is one of those aspects to the relation between strategic adversaries that Walt could have remarked, especially as the "realist in an idological world" that he portrays himself to be.

An added question of interest then is how one should operationalise either Kilcullen's and Abu Yahya's ideas regarding the recently oft-suggested intensification of U.S. involvement in the conflict in Yemen. (Of course you might want to read about these ideas before looking at what I am putting down below.)

"Rejection" should definitely be more of a concern than it currently is, regarding any increase of U.S. involvement there. "Endorsing" truly "local initiatives" regarding the fight against a local insurgency, as part of "disaggregation," at the same time "addressing legitimate grievances" about sub-optimal governance, these are also important benchmarks to keep in mind - ones that current U.S. policy already seems to fall far from. You really can't expect perfect results when you go up to a government telling them "Hey Mr. Yemen, you have terrists out there in that Hadramw... Hadar... whatever region, so please go attack them for your own good, here is our SIGINT and our air power that you can use." But sometimes it may be better to live with imperfect results. Also, "provocation" (such as an attempted plane-bombing) may not be the best guidance for policy: it is meant by ill-willing people to be your guidance for a policy. Yes, 9-11 was a provocation but one to which it made strategic sense to give a response, even if that response was partly a botched attempt at a response, in many aspects of it. As to a widening of the war on al-Qaida in Yemen (which is already on, given how the U.S. does already give assistance to government forces), it does not figure on Abu Yahya's list of things to do. So consider adding that item at your responsibility.

Should it be added, I think there would be a legitimate chance of some mission creep occurring. Like, let us fight the Yemeni narcotics industry also, we cannot ignore khat etc... Wise talking heads could warn you of how interrelated the issue of water use, khat, corruption, the insurgency and al-Qaida terrorism is, and we would most likely build an ugly quagmire that would leave room in the end for... having empty discussions about how every agent of our influence is just hopelessly corrupt and in the end not really our agent of influence. Only, since the money is running out, this could happen sooner than in Afghanistan. (But it would also hasten the process parallel to this in Afghanistan.)

And I now realise that I haven't mentioned the al-Houthi insurgency yet. Take that for complexity.

Yemen

Just a quick unloading of two links to Yemen-related reading. Not much in-depth to offer from me here (rather, interesting stuff is there from the authors of the two referenced pieces).

Here is the story of Sayid Imam al-Sharif. He worked as a doctor in Yemen for a while, before he was arrested there and extradited to Egypt, with already quite an interesting story behind him, which was to take more of a turn in Egypt.

And then here is the story of Anwar al-Awlaki, American-born Salafi preacher in Yemen, the guy to whom the Fort Hood attacker had links - also worth a read.

Just a glimpse into the complexity and the diversity that there is, in a place that some now, apparently, want to do something about.

Now, reacting to that Huffington Post piece I just linked to, if escalating and de-escalating would happen in the way the title of the article suggests...

Should one deescalate whenever somebody does something somewhere outside one's current area of escalation?

And can "escalate" entail only the introduction of U.S. ground troops somewhere? Or will the already happening air strikes and proxy involvement do in Yemen?

And would "re-escalate" (if that is thought of as an option) entail first throwing away Afghanistan (again) and then going back there to do state-building with someone again if somebody again, say, happens to "pick up explosives there?"

And...

Etc.

Update: do stop by to read the story of "Khalid the jihadi" @ Rolling Stones, too.

Related (much) more to the current events, read Gregory D. Johnsen and Brian O'Neill's blog - and also, as especially interesting, this post by Johnsen from before this month' air strikes were carried out by the U.S., and from before the subsequent attack of the Nigerian wannabe plane-bomber. Johnsen's argument there was that we were seeing a repeat of the 2001-2002 cycle of U.S. involvement which turned out to be quite successful back then, but may hardly prove successful now, with AQAP's (al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula's) much deeper entrenchment there. Its prediction was spot on, and now there is also deviation from the original pattern given that the coming air strikes were more destructive, that there were civilian casualties and much more of an outcry in Yemen, plus, as you will all know, that there was an attempt by AQAP at retaliating within the U.S. homeland.

Teh sorta nu plan

I am not sure if all of you are familiar with the HISHE (how it should have ended) series available via the Tube. But the part about "How to survive an alien attack" is just the perfect taster to get you started in case this is uncharted terrain for you. And yes, there is an Afghanistan-related reason for bringing this up. Quite unfortunately.

Now, let me quote "Dutch," the character played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie "Predator." This is what he says in the short clip above about his plan for killing aliens - see below this captured portray of his:

"I always cover myself in mud and set an elaborate booby trap with rocks and sharp sticks and all of these tingz until they hurt so bad that they will self-destruct..."
Highlighting by me, of course.
Now here is Robert Gates' plan for Afghanistan. Don't get me wrong. I think Gates is quite a smart person. But his strategic anti-vision shows how Afghanistan's nuances are just hopeless information overload for a busy mind like his, and this is the sort of daring attempt at escaping Gordian knots of complexity that we can normally expect:

"You have to be realistic about the fact that developments of the kind we want to see take time," Gates replied. "If we can re-empower the traditional local centers of authority, the tribal shuras and elders and things like that and put an overlay of human rights on that, isn't that a step in the right direction?"

Highlighting by me again. Too bad, we've already seen that sort of escape attempt, about a brazzillion times (or rather all the time) since 2001. The problem is, if it would have been done consistently, it may have brought better results as the generally bad plan it is. But it was done inconsistently, even, in all the wrong ways.

Rory Stewart calling

I like this piece by Rory Stewart so much that I will excerpt it extensively here, quoting remarks on the necessary Afghanistan strategy. This is an experience I personally appreciate very much, because I remember times from the past years when some of what he said did not make this much sense to me. Which I felt sorry about, given how much I liked his book about his largely lone walk through Afghanistan when I read it in 2007.

The excerpts:

"Obama should not have requested more troops because doing so intensifies opposition to the war in the US and Europe and accelerates the pace of withdrawal demanded by political pressures at home."

(...)

"Now he needs to regain leverage over the Taliban by showing them that he is not about to abandon Afghanistan and that their best option is to negotiate. In short, he needs to follow his argument for a call strategy to its conclusion. The date of withdrawal should be recast as a time for reduction to a lighter, more sustainable, and more permanent presence. This is what the administration began to do in the days following the speech. As National Security Adviser General James Jones said, "That date is a 'ramp' rather than a cliff." And as Hillary Clinton said in her congressional testimony on December 3, their real aim should be to "develop a long-term sustainable relationship with Afghanistan and Pakistan so that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past, primarily our abandonment of that region." A more realistic, affordable, and therefore sustainable presence would not make Afghanistan stable or predictable. It would be merely a small if necessary part of an Afghan political strategy. The US and its allies would only moderate, influence, and fund a strategy shaped and led by Afghans themselves."

(...)

"I began by saying that "calling" in poker was childish and that grownups raise or fold. But there is another category of people who raise or fold: those who are anxious to leave the table. They go all in to exit, hoping to get lucky but if not then at least to finish. They do not do this on the basis of their cards or the pot. They do it because they lack the patience, the interest, the focus, or the confidence to pace themselves carefully through the long and exhausting hours. They no longer care enough about the game. Obama is a famously keen poker player. He should never be in a hurry to leave the table."

To be clear, I am not supportive of what he is saying merely because he wants continued, long-term involvement in, and commitment to, Afghanistan. I am supportive because the Max Leverage plan really doesn't make sense if it means the beginning of an "exit" after 18 months. Or even after 18+, given how cumbersome logistics make keeping to Obama's schedule hard at best.

Alright, so just in case, this was Rory Stewart's book, which I mentioned at the beginning of this post:

"The Tora Bora critique"

This here is an interesting article, and I want to briefly mention it. Peter Feaver, refuting the criticism that a non-light-footprint approach ought to have been employed in Afghanistan from the start in order not to have Osama bin Laden escape from his besieged shelter in the Tora Bora mountain range in 2001.

I wouldn't argue with this. Feaver is very right to remind readers that a more conventional approach to the invasion (of those feet with the footprint) would have demanded a robust build-up taking much more time, allowing for a start of operations only as late as 2002, possibly. (Although I have to say I think it would deserve more creative contemplation to judge what results that could have brought.)

But the sentence in the article's last paragraph, that "It may even be the case that redeploying the U.S. Rangers that were on the ground in a different fashion might have produced a different result," is rather important.

Feaver is not setting up a strawman with his counter-criticism. But there were/are critics who did not argue more than that intra-theatre redeployments might have allowed for better results at Tora Bora. I don't have Ahmed Rashid's failure-of-nation-building book here in front of me, but to my memory, he was also arguing only this.

And the light footprint was not bad because of Osama bin Laden's escape. But because it dictated a very different approach to dealing with Afghan politics, reconstruction and institution-building. (That is what Rashid's book was also about.) So it's not like those "Monday morning quarterbacks" would be debating just "one pass."

Update: Turns out Peter Bergen just recently wrote a comprehensive account of the Tora Bora battle, which can be very useful reading to anyone unaware of the details.

Key quote from the third page of the article:

"The additional forces that Crumpton and Berntsen were requesting were certainly available. There were around 2,000 U.S. troops in or near the Afghan theater at the time. At the U.S. airbase known as K2 in Uzbekistan were stationed some 1,000 soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division, whose specialty is fighting in harsh terrain."

And Bergen continues to touch upon other remarkable aspects of what happened, including the refocusing of attention towards Iraq which was already underway then.

Cost mania

Linda Bilmes is selling some conceptual nonsense to Xinhua, about the costs of the war in Afghanistan.

It is interesting nonsense, for sure. Quote:

'In World War II, for example, the peak year for paying out disability benefits came in the 1990s, as medical care becomes more expensive when veterans become older.
"And for Vietnam we are nowhere near the peak year for paying out disability," she said.'

Statements like these are intellectual stimulation to the curious mind, and I would not deny that they have practical relevance.

But pretending that as a supersmart economist one can count the costs of a policy (without mentioning a huge number of necessary caveats) is just a non-starter as far as I am concerned.

Why doesn't Linda Bilmes count the costs of maintaing the United States of America with its institutions? Clearly, it is a prerequisite to having a U.S. policy towards Afghanistan.

Don't tell me I am taking this beyond some reasonable limit just to portray as absurd that what she is saying. She is doing this herself. Her arguments include that the next Bill Gates (you heard it right) may not be born as a result of sacrifices in Afghanistan, and she is critical of "Pentagon accountants" because of this...

And how can an economist assume that all the money spent partly fuelling the U.S. economy through contracts of all sorts (including in defence procurement), giving opportunities to U.S. (and other Western) companies, is money that is all lost?

Are there only costs, or will Linda Bilmes care to count benefits as well...? I mean, if we shouldn't take this as a statement that she doesn't see any benefits. And what about alternative costs...? And so on...

Finally, to get out of the box which I wouldn't allow Linda Bilmes to impose on me, as to "the peak year for paying out disability:" why not regard these years right now as years of paying out disability in Afghanistan (to Afghans), given all the fruits of U.S. policy since July 3, 1979 (when, let me remind you again, U.S. President Carter decided to give the green light to providing support to Islamist insurgents there, starting U.S. war involvement in Afghanistan).

Having said that, I am all for her advice on the need to increase development spending. But even there one would need to see that it is not something that can come instead of spending on military operations.

Update: Here is another funny example of how self-confident economists can get lost in the woods. The story of a UK guy who thinks he is not spending any money and that thereby he is "self-sufficient." Cycling around... on roads that were built and maintained by whom, huh? In the general safety of working law and order maintained by whom? Not to mention the terrible alternative cost if we assume that he could as well be the next Bill Gates, instead of just wasting time out there in the wilderness (which is otherwise perfectly fine with me).

Google presents to you the discourse about Afghanistan

Chapati Mystery's year-ending post is unbeatable. It includes a screenshot of Google's search suggestions related to the keywords "Pakistan + is," captured recently.

It shows how popular it is to discuss within the discourse about failed states whether Pakistan is or "still isn't" a failed state (whatever a failed state is). It also shows how India-bashing (and a parallel tendency to measure oneself according to what India is capable of) is hilariously popular in certain circles. And it shows many other things, too. So, in effect, it is an extremely useful way of analysing discourse.

Therefore I couldn't resist the temptation to use this test regarding the discourse about Afghanistan, and, no surprise there, the results are just as telling. Here they are, as captured today, on December 23:

Some instant analysis:

- Look at how a Google-fight seems to definitively settle the question of whether Afghanistan is the new Vietnam. It is... NOT!!!

- Also, a surprisingly large number of hits have something to do with a belief that the Afghanistan war is really only about a pipeline. I know some people still pushing this idea around, but it is surprising that their ideas are apparently this popular.

- If you look at how many conclude that Afghanistan is a failed state, or at least discuss the possibility that it might be a failed state (like I said, whatever a "failed state" actually is), it may be interesting that the aspect of Afghanistan being the major source of opium gives you an unexpectedly low number of hits, comparatively speaking. May it be that opium is not such a big concern for the wider public as many of those involved in the subject seem to believe it is?

- The second greatest number of hits is associated with the proposition that Afghanistan is "now Obama's war." Sorry, Taliban, sorry, Hamed Karzai, sorry, any of you Afghans. The internetz sayz it iz Obama'z war. Don't even try to take it from him!

MoStFab's end-of-the-year overview of the strategic situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Let us start with U.S.-Pakistani relations, after all that is one of the crucial aspects of the story we are trying to tell.

In a post in the past I conceptualised Pakistan's security sector as fragmented, to explain for oft-seen "sinking boat (= 'inevitably and fatally sabotaged') operations," perverse outcomes, and stabs in the heart, even in the midst of what sometimes looks like brinksmanship that is more or less managed for now. I described invisible factions within this abstract notion of a security sector as Faction A (pro-change, genuinely playing along with U.S. and Western demands, out of the conviction that this might be the common good, thus seen as mistaken or even traitors by many), Faction B (Realpolitikers, believing in their own capacity to calculate what Pakistan's "real" interests supposedly are), and Faction C (Islamists, loyal not necessarily to the Pakistani state, thus seen as saboteurs by Faction B at times, and seen as common enemy for the West and Pakistan by Faction A).

One of my conclusions was that if this view has any validity, then Faction A may not be very strong in fact, and ultimately it would always be Faction B that would be the strongest in Pakistan. After all the dominant position of a Realpolitiker faction is what normally characterises the security sector in any country.

To illustrate how useful it can be to consider the interplay between these factions (otherwise abstract notions): in the wake of the Swat valley and South Waziristani operations many seemed to implicitly voice the belief that Faction A (or its hand) has strengthened as the extremists alienated many in Pakistan, including many presumably within Faction B, too, and that even Faction B's attitudes may have been partly transformed as a result. Especially given how the U.S. was ready to aggressively go after the Pakistani Taliban of Baitullah Mehsud from summer 2009, for which some Pakistani good will was hoped in return. Then came U.S. complaints that the Afghan Taliban, as well as FATA forces ready to wage cross-border warfare into Afghanistan, are still left alone, and that north Waziristan and especially Baluchistan remain safe havens (the latter especially, as it is off-limits to even the otherwise informally tolerated U.S. drone strikes). A conclusion implicit in this was that neither the balance of power between the factions, nor the attitudes of Faction B may have changed that much. The game in Pakistan could still be about keeping the Afghan Taliban in play. A rationale for this might be found by some in Pakistan in the following premises: Al-Qaida may be finally weakening in the region as a result of "hammers" applied against it from two directions in the borderland (such a perception is lingering around since a while now); the Pakistani Taliban could be put out of play if it is very necessary, at the cost of going crazy hard on the Pakistani state's own population, again, if need be; the "cross-border" groups can be managed (that is partly what makes them cross the border); and that the strategically reformed Taliban could work very differently in Afghanistan the next time.

Facilitating this game, if there is such a game, are the perverse dynamics in the way Pakistani public perceptions are shaping up (h/t for the link to Paula Broadwell @ KoW), with people, including civil servants and others, believing, since a long time now, that the U.S. (and Indian meddling) is exclusively to blame for everything anyway - which gives a useful blank cheque to those willing to use it.

Spoiling the game, if there is such a game, beyond the disruption caused by any Faction C in any shape or form, is the Pak-Af borderland conglomerate. This is a conceptual and at the same time practical challenge, a strategic one. The U.S. is deploying Max Leverage against it, in the face of its own constraints regarding how much it can do. Going for it, but going for it temporarily only, thereafter half-heartedly hoping for some useful substitution by Afghan forces within Afghanistan. Punching (as big as possible) and leaving, as Patrick Porter put it. No doubt the Taliban will be offering a measured response. This is a twisting of arms, to a degree, but while the U.S. is optimistically hoping to get sufficient leverage out of enhancing an imperfect hammer-and-anvil effect on the Quetta-Shura-Taliban, for the latter the "anvil" might resemble a cushion rather, even if Islamist networks supportive of them did take some beating in Pakistani military offensives in the past. Thus the Taliban may opt to fight for the asymmetrical goal of maintaining just enough leverage on their part. This excellent paper (pdf) highlights how Kandahar is a key pressure point they want to focus on, and that the U.S. could do something about meaningfully fighting back there. But any change in outcome could be only temporary, given the Baluchistani safe haven, which is a part of why "Afghanistan strategy" is something that does not exist, as I stated before.

But things could change in this mix in the end. Outlined above is a short-term scenario, largely a ceteris paribus sort of scenario, which works if its premises are correct. It is envisioned as one of the possible futures of a region where usually there are a huge number of parallel endeavours, both overt and covert, to alter or shape whatever it is that could come ceteris paribus - from northern Afghanistan to Baluchistan, from Iran to China et cetera.

Map of the day

That what I am discussing here is the "map of the day" is no understatement, as this blog is not about maps of the day as such. It is to say I am highlighting here a very interesting map indeed, one that made it as the central subject of this blogpost. So a big h/t to author Mark Graham, for this as well as for the rest of his entire project. I am not embedding any of his maps here, because I don't wish to take Google image search hits away from his blog. Just follow the link to the map I want to highlight, this one, right here.

What you can see is that the share of different regions of the world in geotagged Wikipedia articles nicely confirms one's suspicions about how Afghanistan, Central Asia and Africa are generally off-road places for the mental journey of the average mind. Gosh, Antarctica overtakes them! (With the puzzling exception of Burkina Faso, which is a darker blue patch on Africa's map as a result.)

Let me note, as some small consolation to Afghanistan and other unjustly neglected countries and lands, that Hungarian Wikipedia is an interesting deviation from the general pattern in that there you can find an entry on Gul Agha Shirzai, but no entry on the National Roundtable Talks (which were quite important in Hungary's history, in the so-called "change of system" from state socialism to what we have today). Some places just defy expectations, don't they?

TICs

In the last post I said I would drop my laptop for four days. Well, that takes effect tomorrow. So I am still left with some time to post just one more time. This is an update to an earlier post about the September 4 Kunduz bombing.

In that post which I am updating here I wrote cautiously of accusations levelled at German officers. Critics were alleging that the Germans falsely claimed that they were in "contact" with hostile forces when they requested the bombing of two fuel tankers stolen by the Taliban, on September 4 this year. Reportedly, a German officer answered to a question by an American F-15 pilot, regarding whether they were in contact, that they were in visual contact. This he may have answered because of bad language skills, as a sarcastic view could have it. Or it may have been simply a lie, as some aggressive critics claimed within NATO. Or...

Or it may have been just what goes for normal in Afghanistan, for the coalition. The German officers perceived there to be a potential threat (of the tanker-bombing of the German base in Kunduz) and, sensing danger, they called it a (T)IC. In fact, the latter narrative would leave room for healthy scepticism of all the loud criticism of Germany by the U.S. military, by anonymous NATO officials, and others, especially given how in the German case, by now, people were removed from their positions, or have resigned, over what happened, which can be contrasted to the lack of such changes in the wake of similar incidents.

Noah Shachtman is reporting:

"... “troops in contact,” or “TIC,” has become the most abused phrase in the Afghanistan campaign. What started as a cry for help has now come to mean … well, almost anything. And that’s putting at risk troops who are really in harm’s way. “The most abused thing in this war is declaring a TIC,” says a senior Air Force officer.
Over the past year reporting on the air war, I’ve seen TICs “opened” because of rockets were fired in the general vicinity of a rather large base; the immediate danger to western forces was negligible. Meanwhile, units like Echo Company of the 2/8 Marines have grown so used to gunfights that they sometimes won’t even bother reporting a TIC — even though the Taliban are shooting right at them."

COINterinsurgency basics... and the Pentagon's new map

(You have here two posts in one. It evolved this way as I was writing it. First I planned to post something generally relevant, but altogether quite relaxed. Then I bumped into the leaked schematic plan that is apparently being used by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, forming the basis of the remaining counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan. Mission creep set in: I discussed that document, too.)

Scroll down on this page for some serious fun right till where the Matrix is discussed. The Cracked team describes the bafflingly bad decision making its plot possible:

"We evil machines need a new energy source. All our mechanical lives, we've depended on solar power, but now the sun has been blocked out by our human enemies. Wait. Our human enemies... Enemies... Enemy... Enermy... Energy! That's it! We'll harvest the natural electrical energy of the only things in this world that pose any danger to us! We can just breed them by the billions and keep them docile by forcing them to play the most boring MMORPG in history! It can't possibly fail!"

(MMORPG stands for "massively multiplayer online role-player game" in there.)

Well, the machines certainly made a mistake, right? You can say they did so from a counterinsurgency point of view, let's add. They could have used lots of hamsters spinning hamster wheels to power them and then they would not have had those pesky rebel humans to deal with for the long run.

This is pretty fundamental to counterinsurgency. You don't really want to make others play your game, or play a game with you, at all cost. As the former Communist leader of Hungary, János Kádár, said, faced with the challenge of having to govern Hungary in the wake of the bloody 1956 uprising (and the reprisals that directly followed it): "who is not against us is with us." Kádár took this from a source that was not standard reading for a Communist leader: from Mark's gospel, namely.

The first thing one should carefully think of, when one has an insurgency to deal with, is whether there are people one should not necessarily be fighting. Rule number one...

Now, I am writing this while in another window, that I have just opened, I am peering at the gameplan for Afghanistan, from the office of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, but apparently prepared by a London-based consulting firm, PA Consulting (thinking of this, London as a possible location where this scheme comes from, could be explanation regarding why "tribal governance" is paid so much attention).

It is fun-tastic, but I think we would need some maps here, too.

Irony aside. If you carefully go through this, you can realise that the Plan does make sense to a degree. Important variables are indicated, key relationships between them are characterised and highlighted. It is useful to make calculations regarding a number of things. But it is all within a box. Problems include that one can't find captions such as "outside (incl. our) support given to those giving outside support" on this thing, around the part where the insurgency is schematised. Neither can "our support accidentally reaching insurgents" be found there, and many other things that sustain the need to play the counterinsurgency part of the game.

On the other hand, "narcotics" is indicated directly in the vicinity of the insurgency's area, and no arrows go from it to "government capacity" for example. Or to corruption. And "Counter Narcotics/Crime Ops" is there impacting just "criminal trafficking capability" and "illegit agricultural production." Let me illustrate, right from the Plan's visualisation, how carefully this was thought through:

See? Counter-narcotics comes in out-of-the-blue, in blue. It is so much out of context. They stuck it on top of all else, in a map where placing everything according to colour was obviously an ordering principle. It's telling, isn't it? Counter-narcotics is the only item that they couldn't place according to this principle. It is this well integrated into the whole effort, one may be tempted to conclude.

Finally, I am not sure if the sort of democracy that was invented for Afghans at the start of the game, which is the democracy of a weak king (Karzai) and a lot of quarrelling princes, one where it is really astonishing that voting irregularities ended up surprising so many, is the sort of MMORPG (= offline MMRPG here) that we want to make Afghans play; and really just for the long-term fun of it.

(Alright, I will stop here. For four full days, in fact, while I am off for a conference on a non-Afghanistan-related topic.)

Update: via Armchair Generalist, here is the full presentation (pdf) where you can watch people build up this scheme and then use it to disinguish tasks within it important from COIN, governance and development perspectives.

Meet reporter Anup Kaphle (and the Afghan National Police force)

I called attention yesterday to video reporting from Helmand, about the Gurkhas there. I was intrigued by the simple but rather important point about how well the relationship seems to function between the Gurkhas and the Afghans, Bollywood and happily sharing meals and jokes being part of it. This does not necessarily mean that the reporter necessarily said it right when he believed this was likely the culturally closest relationship you get between foreign soldiers and Afghans in Afghanistan right now. Even countries like the United Arab Emirates are involved to a degree in Afghanistan.

Nevertheless I did find the reporting sympathetic, and I looked around for who the reporter was. He is also from Nepal, and I found his blog that you should definitely check out. And also this post of his at The Atlantic. And also this slideshow. And so on. Absolutely do check out this article about the Afghan National Police, in case you missed it. Some numbers to quote here, from the article, given as of September 2009:

"Since the war began in 2001, the Americans have lost about 699 soldiers in Afghanistan; the British about 184, and the Canadians about 125. The Afghan police force has had 1,200 deaths in 2008 alone."

The article gives you a portrait of the human beings and the institution behind the latter figure.

At The Atlantic (here) there is also some great footage, from Anup Kaphle, of an Afghan policeman singing Hindi songs. I will happily embed it here, to give the Afghan police face.

The Gurkhas in Afghanistan

Just found this video, and I will embed it here before I attempt to come up again with something more profound.

So the Afghan war is one in which professional armies of a number of countries need to work and fight together with reservists and contractors of a great number of nationalities, mentored Afghan army units, police, auxiliary police, COIN-proxy militias and some of the traditional arbakai, against various insurgent factions of also quite diverse backgrounds and composition. This bewildering diversity is even compounded by the presence of special units such as the French Foreign Legion (I briefly discussed their presence in Afghanistan here). And the British Gurkhas (I wrote about them, and their kukris, here). Even some members of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, technically a paramilitary force, are deployed there (you guessed, I wrote about them, too: here).

The video below is about the Gurkhas.

The Pak/Af borderland conglomerate

Something I am hearing a lot these days is that the Taliban may be moving away from al-Qaida. This is coinciding with a growing U.S. interest in partly fighting, partly negotiating a way out of Afghanistan with Max Leverage (meet Max Leverage: a plan, not a person).

Of course this is optimistic, and of course this is not so simple. This brief post here is a look at some of the complications one should probably be mindful of, in assessing the validity of the starting assertion.

I. The Taliban and al-Qaida have physically separated to a degree, post-2001. One went mostly to Baluchistan, the other to areas in the FATA and to Pakistan's major cities rather. So, in a sense, they cannot be moving away from one another...

II. Regarding whether they are moving away from one another in a strategic sense, there are various possible objections to consider. The first one is conceptual. Those who talk about a need to focus on the relationship between al-Qaida and the Taliban sometimes seem to ignore that three more distinct sets of actors need to be taken into account (and of course none of these sets represent unitary actors): namely, the Pakistani Taliban and likeminded factions + other Pakistani Pashtun factions in the tribal areas that don't openly challenge the Pakistani state and are generally inclined to wage cross-border jihad + the Kashmiri groups. So there you have five sets of non-state actors instead of two unitary non-state actors. It changes the picture a little, doesn't it?

Now, based on this, there are a few possible obstacles in the way of a clean break between the Taliban and al-Qaida, as well as in the way of critical divergence between all of these different actors. I am trying to conceptualise these as clearly as possible.

1. Similar worldview. Without going into an exotic discussion of fine differences in Deobandi and Wahhabi doctrines, without going into an analysis of the latest publications out on the worldwide web, there is a similarity of attitudes towards the West, the idea of the West, and towards those regarded as victims of the West. Or America.

2. Family ties. Once there are intermarriages and other family ties between any of these groups, and you are in one of these groups, I guess you cannot just call it a new day and ignore some of the people who are connected to you and your partners in this way.

3. Covert funding. Al-Qaida is, probably even today, a distributor of resources as well, and that is something that can give them potency. They are useful to those willing to fund likeminded organisations in a covert way, and they are able to retain some support even from pressured partners because of this.

4. Intergroup synergies. Once we claim that all the above groups are autonomous to a degree (which is a premise behind the statement this post is dealing with), they have means/assets at their disposal, and thus, to a degree, they are capable of having quasi-policies, for example towards each other. This gives them, or some of them, room to give covert assistance to each other, or to some of the members of the other groups, even if the whole world tries to pressure (and incentivise) them against this.

I am not trying to exclude the possibility of anything. The world changes all the time. But I am really interested to hear solid answers to these suggestions from those who at times appear as wishful thinkers to me, people who want to believe what they say.

Good news...

... so nobody says this is a doomy-gloomy place where you come for all the bad news. Ironically, I found this piece of good news which I am sharing here in an article otherwise promising much difficulty ahead (but that is inevitable, really). (H/t to Péter Wagner.)

"To grow the force, NATO is creating incentives, including a recent $45 raise for all police. Starting salary for a police officer is now $165 a month."

As I argued recently, if you thought of bribing the Taliban out of play, why wouldn't you think of "bribing" the Afghan police into play? This could help much with the terrible-terrible scourge of corruption.

The numbers war fail

In my last post here, which received an extra amount of attention after Ghost of Alexander had highlighted it, the message I aimed to convey was that claiming success where there is none of it will not lead to achieving success. Pretty basic. As Christian noted at GoA, a Parisian mocking Germans for marching through Paris in a silly manner would be absolument ridicule. Today is another occasion to highlight a particularly unfortunate attempt at dealing with "information warfare," but in this case with more dire consequences, and not by someone spinning news out of private conviction, but by authorities - German authorities, namely.

How the war waged in Afghanistan often seems to consist of air strikes killing exactly 30 Taliban at a time, is something that makes many observers cranky: see the Security Crank and MoA on this. In a September 4 air strike in Kunduz province, however, details and video of which can be found here, there were many more victims. Thus the magical number, 30, could not really be plausibly used, under the circumtances (although the Afghan government did state once that "30 civilians" died by their counting). After much insistence that the overwhelming majority of those killed were Taliban, the discourse seemed to settle down with 142 dead of whom dozens may have been civilians (something that predictably drew the "hey, that's not so bad" reaction from some armschair idiots on various internet fora). Unfortunately, reality tends to be quite insistent as well. And in fact there was no way of telling exactly how many died, and how many out of those were Taliban. Throwing around exact figures could not look good in any case, and the ratio of civilians vs. insurgents killed actually seemed to be "worse."

It is not surprising therefore that alternative numbers, very different ones, keep emerging:

"The defence ministry said it was in contact with a lawyer for victims of the September raid on two fuel trucks near Kunduz, northern Afghanistan, in which up to 142 people were killed, reportedly including dozens of civilians.
"We will begin talks with (German-Afghan attorney Karim Popal) about how the compensation claims will be met," a ministry spokesman told a regular government news conference, adding that Berlin hoped to avoid a court battle.
Popal is demanding payouts from the German military for 78 families of Afghan casualties.
He says there were 179 civilian victims including 137 dead, 20 injured and 22 missing, leaving 91 women as widows and 163 children as orphans."

Nuristan infowar fail, for someone

So @ the Danger Room the view is that this is a Taliban infowar fail. Really? This? Taliban playing with U.S. weapons left behind after the pull-back from Nuristan? And using the open-air gym there, at that base in Kamdesh? Illustration below, from the NEFA Foundation (pdf).

Here is video as well, from al-Jazeera:

Abu Walid al-Masri's dialogue

I don't have time for a profound post, just a chance to point out a few things in relation to the quickly spreading news of Abu Walid al-Masri's dialogue with "the terrorist-fighter beauty,"* Leah Farrall.

Abu Walid al-Masri (al-Masri = Egyptian) is also known as Mustafa Hamid, and there are also indications he has used the alternative nom de guerre Hashim al-Makki in the past, to publish some articles critical of al-Qaida.

One of his sons-in-law, Saif al-Adel, is in al-Qaida currently if Asharq al-Awsat and others have it right.

Abu Walid used to have an Australian wife called Rabiah Hutchinson, with whom you can listen to an extensive, very informative interview out on You Tube, thanks to the Grand Trunk Road.

She thinks much of Osama bin Laden based on her personal experience with bin Laden who in her account built a lot in Afghanistan. Strangely, she praises bin Laden for "building" the Kabul-Kandahar road even.

An interesting hint (if true) comes in the third part of the interview, where we are told Rabiah divorced her husband after the ouster of the Taliban because he had converted to become Shi'a in Iran. It is also interesting to think of Asharq al-Awsat's claim that Abu Walid al-Masri was under house arrest of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. How he is now a regular contributor to al-Somood (the Taliban's paper, "The Resistance") is a part of the story which I don't understand for now.

* To make it clear, these are al-Masri's words. And he keeps getting back to using the word "beauty," which is a bit strange, isn't it? Is this awkward politeness from him? A rhetorical tool? Whatever the reason, I myself don't think Steve Coll is to blame for this. Though Coll did make a mistake saying people can have a go at Farrall's posts of al-Masri's letters in Arabic (even while that clearly only** implied reading those, and not stealing or re-posting them or posting pirate translations). But he did link to Farrall's blog, at least. Meanwhile, it should be clarified that it was Farrall who contacted Abu Walid, apparently, not the other way around, as it is factually incorrectly believed, for example by Coll.

Update: This comment at Leah Farrall's blog is interesting to read. And I do, genuinely, want to thank the commenter (the author of this other blog) for taking the time to write it!

** (Update.) Well, if Steve Coll now explicitly says (as part of a formal apology) that he assumed "collaborative responses" are what people could have given after Farrall had posted al-Masri's letters, I can't continue to assume he implied only that those letters could be read at Farrall's blog.

The fetishisation of the victims of direct violence as a symptom of structural violence?

I will certainly not link to every piece of endoctrinating material seeking justification for (or comfort in) direct violence circulating out there on the internets that somebody happens to tumble over, to critically address it, but this just really made me want to get in on the scientifically appreciable side of the debate, as it is related to 9/11 and the justification of the Afghan campaign. So, if you look at the caption in the picture you can get to via the link above, what you can read there is that:

"Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of victims."

(This happens to be a quote from environmentalist author Derrick Jensen, actually, and it was taken out of context, to be used together with the image that the link went to, by someone.)

I know this is the kind of debate where arguments will not matter that much. A premise behind the above quoted statement is that we are components of a structure way larger than us. If you accept this, you cannot fight the above statements with arguments, after all you are then supposed to be basically just a structural phenomenon, and a reactionary at that. If you don't accept the above premise, you are even more of a reactionary.

But, come on, does not the fetishization of victims of direct violence occur among perpetrators and proponents of direct violence? Among those claiming to be lower on the hierarchy that is supposedly so "widely accepted" that they are violently not accepting it? Aren't they focused on (using) victims, including named victims, ones given names and faces? Isn't the fetishisation of victims (and a construction of "victims") a strong tool in the service of propaganda for any ideology or political objective, in general? Would I need to hurt the feelings of the followers of a number of religions, to give examples regarding this? Nationalist feelings basically anywhere where they can be found? And so on.

Finally, something that is truly unthinkable to me is that anything good could come from any individual who sees ideological value in a human being's choice to jump from the window of a tall building because his/her situation happens to be so desperate. In fact, while I always considered what happened in this case tragic, I did not pay so much attention to this aspect of the series of events on 9/11, in particular - well, now I do.

This is not to deny that a fetishisation of the victims on 9/11 did take place. Or to deny that it had significance, and that a desire for "vengeance," or "to use a language they understand" (as some put it) was a very basic, primitive (albeit at the same time strategically not necessarily terribly inappropriate) instinct there, affecting the decision to move against the Taliban, in Afghanistan.

Or, the tragic irony that a fetishisation of fallen soldiers and that of tax dollars sacrificed for war spending vs. health care is what is now a major stimulus to get the U.S. out of Afghanistan, while many more (so-called "hopelessly corrupt") Afghan policemen, and also Afghan soldiers, die anonymously and facelessly.

"Max Leverage"

I have been blogging about Afghanistan since more than two and a half years. It seems like all that I have been monitoring has now come down to this.

"Mr. Obama expressed frustration. He held up a chart showing how reinforcements would flow into Afghanistan over 18 months and eventually begin to pull out, a bell curve that meant American forces would be there for years to come.
“I want this pushed to the left,” he told advisers, pointing to the bell curve."

But in fact it is a little more complicated than that. "Max Leverage," as they call it, is a plan, and certain things are not accounted for by it. This being the nature of plans in general.

Corruption, comment is free

Not the first time I am drawing attention to Nushin Arbabzadah's writing here. Here is her latest piece, in the Guardian's Comment is free. Her message is very similar to the one I attempted to convey in this post nost so long ago, after Karzai's inauguration. An appetiser:

"Judging again this complex reality, the current international obsession with Afghan corruption is nothing but a political game. A focus on corruption has served to set the Obama administration apart from the Bush government, which is now being denounced for leniency towards Karzai and his family."

The one thing I would take issue with is that she doesn't really consider police corruption here. That goes beyond taking just a little bribe here and there. Robbing or abusing people is more than that. And from a counterinsurgency point of view that is going to be mighty important to tackle somehow. Its importance cannot be overstated. But that is conceptually different from tackling the systemic, complex, multi-level police corruption related to illicit trade (of narcotics, for example). The problem is, while conceptually there is a difference between these two kinds of corruption, in fact they are very much related in practice, even if they are not in perfect overlap with each other. So judging where one could find the right "intervention point" is not easy. Doing counterinsurgency remains one the best possible indirect intervention points for now. Whether 18+n months of that will be enough? In and of itself certainly not. That is why I will need to come back to this issue.