Lessons learned for soldiers

It is always interesting get an insight into how soldiers prepare for war and so the launch of Afghan Lessons Learned for Soldiers is to be welcomed. Created by four American veterans of the conflict in Afghanistan (three senior NCOs and a major), the site is designed to help share knowledge. “We were filled full of bullshit by those who trained us and so we are trying to help tell it like it really is,” they remark.

The first ‘chapter’ on the site deals with ‘Gear’. An interesting subject. Readers may remember the disdain with which US soldiers regarded their British counterparts at the beginning of the conflict in Afghanistan. They often referred to them as ‘Flintstones’ or The Borrowers, friendly jibes based on the poor quality equipment the British Tommies had to make do with.

Now we can understand why the US soldier is so well equipped. He clearly buys much of it himself. There is a list of 69 items that are recommended for those deploying to Afghanistan. For example, weapons lubrication that doesn’t attract sand seems to be a good idea, as do extra bootlaces, a stainless steel mug, lock de-icer and disposable hand and feet warmers.

And I can understand the need for a pair of comfortable desert boots. “All they will give you is a regular summer set and a set of Goretex lined for waterproof needs. Desert is a cold place at these altitudes in the winter time”, says the site.

The same point is made about the standard US Army issue tac vest – for holding magazines and other small pieces of gear. “Dump the IBA tac vest you get issued. Get a Tactical Tailor MAV chest rig (does not matter if you get 1 or 2 piece one as you want to keep the front open for laying in the prone. You don’t want mags pushing into your chest making it hard to breathe).”

Then there’s the computer gear - laptop, screen wipes, canned air to blow dust out of equipment, a DVD ripping program, personal GPS, webcam and headset, skype account, external 120gb USB hard drive, digital camera, MP3 player, LED lights and batteries for 30 days.

Not to mention the soap, toilet paper, baby wipes (30 days supply) foot and body paper, desert tan spray paint, hand sanitizer, Fabreeze fabric softener, a stack of clothing, towels, pillow, pillow cases and sheets.

Eighteen M4 ammunition magazines and nine 9mm mags seems reasonable, as does a LULA mag loader/unloader and a reasonable assault pack.

Not quite so sure about the weightlifting supplies or shower shoes, but I wouldn’t begrudge them.

I think you get my point. War has changed. Today’s soldier expects to be regularly in touch with family and friends half a world away and to be clean and comfortable when not actually out in the field. Even if he has to pay for the equipment himself - (I presume this list is only for male soldiers as there is no concession to women soldiers).

I’m not sure how much all these items would cost the average soldier, but it cannot be much short of $3,000.00.

While the ALL site is good on gear, its understanding of history and Afghan culture is not so good. This is what it says: “Afghanistan has been like the cartoon character who is run over by a car, struggles to his feet and has scarcely dusted himself off when he is run over again. And again. And again, ad nauseum.” Er, I don’t think so. In Afghanistan, the wheels usually fall off the car before it gets a chance to run over anyone.

“If you think of Afghanistan as an individual, this would be a person who has suffered repeated blows to the head and suffers from TBI and PTSD.” I think you will find that PTSD is far more prevalent amongst Allied troops returning from Afghanistan than amongst Afghans themselves, who have known nothing but war for the last two generations.

“In your research you will find that the Persians, Alexander the Great, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, and more recently the British Empire and the Russians have all swept through Afghanistan. For some, this paints a picture of the indomitable Afghan. I tend to disagree, as the Afghans have indeed been conquered on numerous occasions.” Actually, the British, the Soviets and most other people who tried to hold territory in Afghanistan have come to grief. That is indisputable.

I can’t blame soldiers for wanting to talk up their own prospects and for talking down their enemies. However, let’s face it, the US and its Allies have now been fighting in Afghanistan for twice as long as they fought in the Second World War and for longer than they fought in Vietnam. There is presently no end in prospect and certainly no sign yet of a military defeat of the Taliban.

It never does any good to underestimate your enemy. The reality is that the Afghan fighter is unequalled as a guerrilla. He will march for 30 miles a day at altitude, carrying everything he needs and living on little more than pressed mulberries and dry bread. He is willing to die gladly for his beliefs but will seldom give his life cheaply. There’s no shame in admitting any of this. It is simply a fact. Forget it and you will lose before you even step outside your FOB.

Out of TIME?

Readers may remember my article about TIME magazine a couple of months ago. I expressed surprise that TIME's reporter could have interviewed the Uzbek warlord, General Dostum, in Afghanistan for a major feature published in February this year. General Dostum, I remarked, had been living in Turkey since December last year.
What's more, much of the article by their Afghanistan correspondent appeared to be cannibalised from an earlier article she wrote in December last year. Some of the text was simply cut and pasted from one article into the other.
After I contacted the magazine, their PR person was directed to release a statement to me. It was brief and to the point: "Aryn Baker, who reported and wrote the article about Afghan warlords in the current issue of TIME, stands by her reporting that, according to General Dostum, Dostum’s men and government officials, Dostum is not in exile in Turkey but is there only to receive treatment for an unspecified condition before returning shortly to Afghanistan."
Quite how Ms Baker could stand by an article that was inaccurate and did not mention that Dostum was not in the country is beyond me. However, I published my piece and waited. And waited.
Last week I wrote to TIME again and asked if they still stood by their report, bearing in mind that the General is still in Turkey and shows no sign of coming home. (According to several sources, Dostum has been told he is not welcome to return to Afghanistan and is unlikely to do so in the near future. He has known this for some time and complained bitterly to anyone who will listen that he was tricked into leaving the country.)
So far I have received no response from TIME.

Wars, damned wars and statistics

While we are on the subject of civilian casualties (see my posting below this one), I have just noticed that the Taliban has issued detailed statistics for its operations in Afghanistan during the month of April. I have written about the Taliban’s statistics before, noting the organisation’s inability to count (See ‘Can the Taliban count?, 17 Nov 2008) and so I did not expect accuracy.

Nonetheless, the figures they produce make interesting reading. According to these highly suspect figures 53 civilians and 12 Taliban fighters were ‘martyred’ during the month. Interestingly, the civilians were killed in Helmand, Kandahar, Wardak, Logar and Kunar provinces. The Taliban lists no other civilian deaths for any other province. The Taliban deaths were even more geographically concentrated, with nine deaths in Kunar, one on Kandahar, one in Logar and two in Faryab (Yes, I know the total does not equal 12, but this is their maths, not mine).

Thus for the vast majority of provinces there are neither civilian nor Taliban casualties. Even if we include Taliban woundings, there are still nine provinces without any civilian or Taliban statistics.

Then we come to the most creative part of the statistics. Compared to the dozen or so Taliban deaths in the month, they claim to have destroyed 338 military vehicles, including tanks, in April and to have shot down three helicopters and one aircraft. They say they killed 992 Afghan National Army soldiers and 533 ‘invader’ soldiers. The table they have produced shows military actions took place in every province In the country, but mostly in Kandahar, Helmand, Ghazni, Khost,Wardak, Kunar, Paktika, Paktia and Kunduz – provinces that it most cases share a border with Pakistan.

Clearly the Taliban is continuing its policy of paying little heed to traditional forms of arithmetic. It continues to announce large-scale casualties that have no basis in fact. According to the official records for Operation Enduring Freedom, 14 Coalition soldiers –six Americans, two Romanians, two Canadians, one Dutch, one British and one Norwegian – died in April in Afghanistan.

Of course, the battle over statistics is very much part of the military conflict. In the last week there has been another dispute over figures, this time over deaths of civilians. According to President Karzai, around 140 civilians - including more than 90 children - were killed in an airstrike by US warplanes in Faryab province on 4 May. It later emerged that around a dozen of the wounded appeared to have been hit by white phosphorus, a deadly chemical that causes terrible burns and which it is illegal to use as a munition – although the USA has never signed a treaty forbidding its use.

As soon as the claims of civilian deaths and use of white phosphorus (known as wp) became public, the US military denied them, saying the deaths had been exaggerated and that in fact it was the Taliban that had been using wp. The US said militants used wp in improvised explosive attacks at least seven times since the spring of 2007, sometimes in civilian areas. Declassified documents showed 12 attacks where militants used wp in mortars or rockets, the majority of which came in the last two years.

The most recent militant attack occurred last week when a NATO outpost in Logar, manned by US troops, was hit with two rounds of indirect wp fire, the document said.

It was in the wake of this mess that the Pentagon announced the replacement of the top US and NATO general in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan. Replacing McKiernan will be Lt Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who has had the top administrative job at the Joint Chiefs of Staff for less than a year. Was there a connection between the two events? No-one is saying, although Pentagon officials struggled to explain exactly why McKiernan was being replaced.

Pakistan civilian casualties now higher than Afghanistan

As the Pakistani Army offensive gets underway in the Swat Valley in the north of the country it is probably worth putting a few facts into context. First, there can be little doubt that Pakistan is presently in the grip of an insurrection. This is hardly an exaggeration. Just compare the figures for civilian deaths connected to militant or army activity with those in neighbouring Afghanistan.
According to the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA), 2,118 civilians were killed as aresult of armed conflict in Afghanistan in 2008. This represents a 40 per cent increase on UNAMA’s figure for 2007. Even according to the highest estimate, from Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM), the total for 2008 was 3,917.
Yet if we look at the Pakistan figures provided by the Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS) (and aggregated by me) we can see that the total number of civilian deaths in the six months from October 2008 – March 2009 was 1,765. If military and insurgent deaths are added, the total is 4,266. If the civilian death figures for Pakistan were extrapolated from six months to one year, the projected total would amount to 3,530 – much higher than the UN figure for Afghanistan and almost as high as the highest estimate.
The PIPS figures show that on average more than 200 terrorist incidents are taking place every month. In the six-month period mentioned, 2,152 militants were killed by the Army and paramilitary forces.
The most significant figure provided by PIPS is that showing the number of Pakistan Army casualties. In the six months in question, the total is just 39. Both the Frontier Corps and the police have had more deaths in a single month. Clearly the Army has, until now, had a policy of only limited engagement with the Taliban and its allies, while the other non-military forces have taken the brunt of the Taliban offensive.
Second, the Taliban in Pakistan is not the same as the Taliban in Afghanistan. The former is a coalition of various groups which, although they are united in wanting to establish an Islamic caliphate, have very clear political and religious differences. The chances of long-term stability of leadership are slim. There are few figures who are universally acknowledged as being pre-eminent. Several of the factions have been in open conflict with each other in the recent past.
It is worth emphasising also that the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) in Pakistan is not even solely a Pashtun organisation. As far back as the anti-Soviet jihad, it was true that many of the Taliban leaders based in Pakistan were in fact Punjabis – many of them seconded from the Pakistan Army. As the TTP has grown in influence over the last two years, it has also attracted attention from organisations such as Kashmiri-based Lashkar-e-Toiba which are known to have close connections to ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service.
Evidence of the growing influence of Punjabis on the Taliban comes from recent reports showing that the TTP is now operating within the Punjab itself. Eight police officers were killed on 6 February in an attack in Mianwali, a poor wheat-farming district on the border between Punjab and the North West Frontier Province.
Traders in the Punjabi city of Multan recently received leaflets warning that unveiled or unaccompanied women visiting the market would get acid thrown in their faces. The local medical school received threats telling it to cease educating women. The men involved In the March attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team while visiting Lahore (which is the capital of the Punjab) and a military police training academy are thought to be local, but trained in the tribal areas.
In April the TTP issued its first video in Punjabi. The video shows men preparing to attack NATO supply terminals on the outskirts of Peshawar
Speaking in Karachi last week, the well-known Pakistan writer Ahmed Rashid summed up the situation. He said "I no longer say that there's a creeping Talibanization in Pakistan; it's a galloping Talibanization."
He went on to say:
"The leadership of the Taliban is now in Pakistan, and they have stated their intention of overthrowing the government here. The Taliban are linking up with groups in Pakistan, and the Pakistani Taliban movement is turning into a multiethnic movement. Groups cultivated [by the Pakistani Army] to fight in Kashmir have joined up with the Pakistani Taliban, and include Punjabis, with organizations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkatul Mujahideen. Now, some 40 groups in Pakistan are loosely affiliated.... For that reason, Pakistan faces a more dangerous situation than Afghanistan, where Tajik and Uzbek fighters were not permitted to join the Afghan Taliban movement."
The real issue now for Pakistan is whether or not the Army can be persuaded to change its policy in relation to the jihadi groups. It has fostered and protected these organisations in order to pursue its policy of regaining control of Kashmir from India. Without a deal on Kashmir, the logic runs, there will be no deal to end the conflict in Afghanistan.
Now this policy has been revealed to be double-edged. As the TTP and its allies have grown in strength, they are intent on taking over control of the country. Pakistanis are slowly waking up to this fact and there is widespread support for the military action now taking place – not least from the millions of Pashtuns who have been forced to leave the tribal territories by the TTP and al-Qaeda and who live in poor conditions in Karachi and the Gulf.

Two more excellent reports from CPAU

Readers may remember that I recently wrote about a report from the Cooperation for Peace and Unity organisation about the background to conflict in Kunduz. Now the same organisation has published two further reports, one on Wardak and the other on the Jaghori and Malistan districts of Ghazni. In total, CPAU has now released five reports, which can be downloaded here.

The report on Jaghori and Malistan, like all these CPAU reports, makes fascinating reading. These two districts are mainly inhabited by Hazara Shias, which are surrounded by districts in which Pashtuns predominate.

Overall in Ghazni, the Taliban has been resurgent in recent years, not least because central government authority simply does not extend to this area. According to the report, a 2008 survey found that 46 per cent of people in Ghazni had never seen the Afghan National Police and 51 per cent had never seen the Afghan National Army. In Jaghori, the figure was 90 per cent.

CPAU believes that a major factor in the growth of support for the Taliban is the failure of the government and foreign forces to guarantee security. People in the country feel that they have been left behind to fend for themselves. Thus when the Taliban presents itself as a force for stability, many people accept the argument. There are more Taliban than police and desertion rates from the latter are very high.

Despite the deteriorating security, in 2008 around 150 US troops based in the rural Nawa district were pulled out due to sustained Taliban attacks. For the people of Ghazni, this signified that the central government was not in control of the rural areas. According to the report:

“This and similar events seem at worst to have led locals to turn their support to the Taliban as the primary power holders and a source of security in the absence of an alternative, or at best diminished local will and capacity to resist Taliban presence and the establishment of associated shadow government structures”.

The report says the Taliban view Ghazni as a strategic province with proximity and road access to Kabul via the Kabul-Kandahar road. They have also spread propaganda throughout villages across the province, mostly through the distribution of night letters (shabnamah) which highlight the government’s shortcomings and urge villagers to join their movement as the only potential solution to their difficulties.

In much of Ghazni, the Taliban has already established shadow government structures with shadow District Commissioners in many Pashtun-dominated districts, including Andar, Dih Yak, Zana Khan, Gelan and Waghaz. Some areas have shadow police chiefs. According to UNAMA, the Taliban’s parallel administration in Ghazni is run by the Quetta Shura.

Another way in which the Taliban is making inroads into the region is through the migratory Kuchi minority. There is a history of conflict between the Kuchis, who winter with their flocks in the south and then move up to this region during the summer, and the Hazaras. Grazing rights and other issues have led to armed conflict, particularly last summer, when dozens of Hazaras were killed. Reports suggest the Taliban are using their followers within this community to extend their control into Hazara areas.

The report also notes changes in Taliban tactics over the past two years including an increased reliance on suicide and roadside attacks, and the exploitation of existing ethnic and cultural tensions to divide communities. In the Jaghori area, for example, this has led to the killing of key community figures’ family members, kidnappings, and killing Hazara labourers from Jaghori working in nearby Pashtun areas.

The Taliban has also begun to attack soft targets such as schools:

“From January to July 2006, 202 attacks on schools in 27 provinces were reported by the Ministry of Education. In Ghazni and five other south-eastern provinces 208 schools were closed between April and July 2006 for security reasons and due to threats. Girls’ schools and schools built by foreign NGOs or with foreign funding were specifically targeted. By June 2008 the threat of the Taliban had successfully prevented school attendance to the extent that even girls’ schools in Ghazni city were forced to close down.

The CPAU report makes for bleak reading, but unlike almost all the other material coming out of Afghanistan it is based on solid, empirical studies and a genuine understanding of local ethnic, tribal and social conditions. The information contained in all five reports should be standard reading for anyone working in Afghanistan and a standard by which other work should be judged. Sad to say, that is not presently the case.