It’s good for your health, especially in Afghanistan:
About seven or eight months ago my good friend Scott Kesterson who was and still is in Afghanistan told me “things are changing here, they are going back to a Vietnam way of patrolling”. I was not sure what he was talking about or implying so I asked him. He told me that the troops were getting out of he vehicles and walking every where they go. Vehicles were limited to the roads for the most part and the enemy had them channeled and could focus the IEDs and EFPs on the roads. Soldiers were finding (along with GEN McChrystal’s direction) that if they went dismounted they were safer because the enemy could not IED wide open space.
In order to have freedom of movement and to increase the chance of survival, soldiers were going “cross-country” by dismounted patrols. Since that time I have read reports and stories where entire platoons and sometimes companies never even see vehicles. They spend their whole year walking everywhere. Not to mention that this is the most effective way to engage the local populace and truly exercise COIN. You cannot get to know the local people by speeding through the bazaars behind 3″ of glass and armor. So by going dismounted the troops are accomplishing several things both tactically, and for force-protection.
Of course I am speaking mostly of US Forces as local Afghan forces like to ride.
Of course they do.
Update: That whole “Embedded Training Team” concept?
It’s got a ways to go.
Is that representative of all units? Or is that the exception?
I’m here in AFGHN and ahve seen various levels of troops. Some are good and others are likely as bad as these ones.
The location this video takes place at is up in the mountains at a remote location. The more isolated they are, the tougher it becomes…I’m in Kandahar and the ANA troops who come through here look a sight better than the clowns in this video….it is tough as most of the men here are not highly motivatedas they have not had the up bringing you and I have. No on mentored them since childhood to be a go-getter….no excuse but it is tribal here and very medival….
The allied forces here are making inroads but when we leave it will be another story as there will be no back up for the ANA and the SH-THEAD Jihadists from all other countries who are waiting in the hills of Pakistan are ready to pounce…
Steven Pressfield, call your office…
At 3:22 “You need to get that sense of nationalism” – OMG, please, please protect this Marine and grant him even the most elementary-I-hope-not-only-to-get-out-of-this-alive-but-also-actually-be-effective-here sense of the history and ideology necessary for him to do his job. Afghanistan is not a nation, like most of the other trashcanistans in the region, and trying to motivate Afghan soldiers through nationalist mobilization is programmed failure.
Please read something like Milovan Djilas’ Land Without Justice about Montenegro 150 years ago to get a sense of the kind of cultural distance these people have to travel – of course time means nothing to people who probably rarely see and likely as not have never known a watch or a timetable.
David, I don’t know that I would call it a “programmed failure,” but I had a similar reaction; who briefed those guys? Most Afghans are still intensely tribal. Places like Strategypage.com have been highlighting this issue for years. Another problem is the southwest Asia culture of corruption. For them it’s an ancient tradition; for us it’s embarrassing.
Many Iraqis, at least, have developed a basic sense of nationalism, even if they still see corruption as a legitimate source of extra income.
Casey,
And the problem is that they don’t even think of it as “corruption” – the fact that certain perks come with office is just what much of the world takes for granted. (And in such a situation it is also understood that power brokers are going to ensure that the military is under the control of the “right people” not necessarily the most efficient – and isn’t that what a good deal of the concern expressed on this space of late over the impression of PC/diversity promotion is also about – perhaps we are devolving as well?)
Anyway, it is us, broadly defined as Euro-Americans and those who have more or less assimilated our cultural norms (Japan for sure, hopefully India and a very limited list of etceteras) with our sense that there is such a thing as the public sphere that should be distinct from private interest that is the anomaly.
Now I am not so sure Pressfield is entirely right with his view that the tribes are the be-all and end-all of Afghanistan. I’ve read some who have argued that the Soviets quasi-genocidal war, the flocking of the Muj to Afghanistan and the work of Pakistan to build up the Taliban all have produced pressures that have created new cultural and political dynamics as well – as one of the Marines himself acknowledged when talking about how the Taliban, Al Qaeda and others whom we are fighting do promote by merit. So there are new cultural dynamics, which likely as not is one of the things making our task even more complicated – this is a society that is not simply frozen in amber, even if the old and new values are producing a real mess, especially for us – since “our side” doesn’t necessarily have to adapt while the Taliban, their Pashto allies, etc. have to get closer to our level if they hope to survive.
And sorry all that I lecture – I know I should keep it shorter and punchier. But there is scholarship that would be useful and even could save lives, and it looks like our guys don’t have access to it. They need to realize for example that for people who really do at the deepest, darkest places of their soul believe their fate is fixed, time ultimately does not have meaning (so they will drink chai till 8:29 even if they’ve been told that an 8:30 attack is coming) – the gear and weapons of “individuals” are not trusts received from “their people,” etc. and it is not because they are simply stoopid – in their society it is our notions that are irrational. We do have to figure out what motivates them – the Marine had that dead on – but it will look very different from our sense of country and individual honor/service.
David, “lecture” all you want.
Good points. I had forgotten about Insha’Allah.
As for motivation, I thought Afghans were a warrior culture. They certainly gave the British a lot of trouble back in the day. Maybe those guys really were the village rejects?
How do you motivate a bunch of Muslim slackers?
“Trashcanistans.” That is a wonderful term for so much of the Ummah. I’ll have to steal that one.
Not original – Stephen Kotkin coined it http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/03/kotkin_explains_russia.asp
I’m still gonna steal it
Fair enough – it is always good to know from whom you’ve really stolen though…
Afghanistan may not be a nation, but are they so far from what we once were? It wasn’t all that long ago that we proudly called ourselves Virginians and Pennsylvanians and Texans first, rather than Americans. To some extent we still do, chiefly when making fun of Californians. And it wasn’t that long ago when we were an agrarian society with no timepieces beyond the sun and no set schedule beyond Sunday services. I expect many of the complaints heard of the Afghans were heard 200 years ago in the Army of the Potomac, and certainly when militia took the field as recently as 150 years ago.
One doesn’t build a nation, a nation builds itself. It takes a few generations for these social changes to take hold.
– Max
Max,
I think yes – even 150 years ago, those people who thought of Pennsylvania or Virginia as their country had a sense of ownership and participation in the development of their local and national government (and a sense of social discipline that should govern themselves) that is way beyond what our soldiers are dealing with in Afghanistan. Virginians, Pennsylvanians, etc. did have a sense of country and of belonging to something bigger than their clan – yet not a sense of draw to “Christendom” in the way that tribe/locality and the Dar-al-Islam define Afghanistan’s society.
Never in the field of human conflict has so much been done by so many for so few.
It’s not unlike police officers here getting out of the squad cars and walking the beat, interacting with and getting to know the general public around them.
Somethings remain constant…after all the billions invested in armoured this and armoured that (which still do save lives and are necessary in specific environments), a soldier’s primary requirement is still a decent pair of boots…
Possibly the worst trend in the last devade has been the rise of all these think tanks, institutes, and ‘experts’ seeking to make a buck off conflict by touting it as something new; in reality we actually knew most of this stuff all along…
Think tanks maybe aren’t a lot of help here, but with all due respect, there is little sign in the video that the military has known all along how to put together anything like an Afghan army. And 100,000 American soldiers and Marines walking around a country the size of Texas (which shares a border with a much larger and more populous Pakistan where lots of locals sympathize with our enemies) without a better understanding of local conditions could make for a lot of wasted effort and lives.
But there is an issue here that is much older than the US military.
It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Much as I hate Sun Tzu quotes, you are spot on…not much point preparing for the wars we would like to fight when our adversaries are going elsewhere…
‘Afghan Army’ could be as oxymoronic as ‘Afghan Government’…it is simply not how things are done there and it seems that many field-grade operators knew this all along but no one higher, uniformed or otherwise, was paying attention.
Training an Army from scratch is something that America has done many times in many environments ranging from the post-Pearl Harbor uber-surge, through various Cold War initiatives like Korea and Vietnam and many SF FID activities.
This video is very distubing on many levels. But I think its clear that these fresh faced, well meaning, “Ugly Americans”, demonstrably unschooled/ignorant of the most elemental things Afgan, haven’t a clue of what it takes to successfully motivate these marginal critters to accomplish the mission… they unfortunately also stand a good chance of getting themselves and some hapless Afgan killed in the process…
…as Joe in NC said above in response to the video, ” Is that representative of all units ? Or is that the exception”…good question…anyone know? Best
Two words for ya: ARVN.
OK that’s one word. Two words: We’re screwed… maybe.
Concur with the comments about Afghanistan not having a sense of itself as a nation. When we were briefed in 2001 re. ejection, survival escape and evasion, comment was made there were some valleys in which the folks there had never left that valley, and spoke completely different dialects from the guys over the ridge (similar line in ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’ made me chuckle). They may not have known about 9/11 and its aftermath… and they would likely assume we were Russians if we plopped down amongst them (bad for us). I just resolved to not get shot down. Pakistan, Iran and even Kabul are gauzy, nonspecific concepts for these guys, if at all.
Anyway, regardless the outcome of ANA training and the like, we will only turn the Taliban away when, via the ANA/Afghan government, a combo, or all foriegn troops and development works, can provide a level of stability and peace in enough places to make the population turn the Taliban away. Reference: Iraq. Nobody there particularly cares for us, but eventually what we were offering was better than what the insurgents were putting out.
“ARVN”
Five words: “Deja-vue all over again.”
ARVN actually is two words though.
Is there any way/has anyone considered making the tribal/clan affiliations work for “us?”
Thinking, loosely, of the way the Brits were able to meld Scottish clan/cultural identity into the Highland regiments.
A couple of problems right off the bat..
the English had several hundred years and devoted a lot more resources (relative to their society’s wealth/military power) in dealing with Scotland
the Scots were a lot more like the English ethnically, culturally and religiously and so had more ways to develop a working relationship
for the English this was close to do or die – they could no more afford to have a Scotland free, permanently alienated and on their doorstep than they could afford to have Ireland be all those things…
they could buy off Scottish support by land in Ireland – no pleasant end game like that with us (maybe have the Afghans become our narcotics provider of choice – Lord knows we’ll never get our drug problem under control – could allow those who are determined to fry their brains help us build a strategic alliance perhaps?).
The question is whether the US, and by extension, the rest of the civilized world, can afford the Af equivalent of your alienated and free Scotland; not on the national doorstep, but no more than a few flights away.
And my train of thought was simply that, instead of trying to build something alien, to work with what’s there: ingrained clan/tribal loyalties. The Brits did this by using the appropriate local tartan for a given regiment, and letting those parts of the local culture not immediately linked to killing Sassenachs seep into the Regimental life-style.
You might do that in Afghanistan by sucking up to tribal elders, granting honourary commissions for chiefs/sheiks/whatever, accepting a certain number of idiot cousins as auxiliaries and clerks, placing local leaders on advisory councils, naming units after clans/septs/prominent towns), and generally linking unit effectiveness to local benefits. If nobody (as far as Afghans) cares whether the government in Kabul falls, or even exists, figure out what having a strong company or platoon will do for X valley, and then use that to motivate and draw fighters. To hell, basically, with the Afghan National Army: raise an effective Afghani militia. Let, as has been the pattern in quasi-feudal systems, the national government keep things under control by controlling all the difficult, technical stuff: artillery, armour, aviation, and the higher varieties of medic and logistics tech.
Regardless… those characters in the clip are all oxygen thieves.
Going into the field against the Taliban seems bad enough, without having to worry about entirely accidental, stoned, blue-on-blue, or one’s “allies” melting away at the first sign of contact.
The cynic in me… oh, wait, Me almost wants to run a pool: which one of those hash-smoking losers will take money from the Pashtun insurgency/Taliban first to betray the Marines? Maybe double-down on how much weed it takes?
Let me be clear–not a single one of those guys was worth a single American casualty, or for that matter, a single American dollar.
All we really want is for them not harbor enemies of the US. I can’t help believing they aren’t going about it the right way.
QM, I don’t mean to snark, but is there a right way?