zenpundit.com

Over at SWJ Blog.

Cartel v. Cartel: Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency

The government’s strategy, essentially a ‘war of attrition’ is failing. The result of heavy-handed military action is the increasing ‘fractilization’ of the conflict, higher levels of violence, and increasing discontent by the general public and elites. Though the war has largely vanished from the mainstream American press after last summer’s panic over the prospect of Mexico as a ‘failed state,’ the violence continues and risks of cross-border spillover remain.

A good piece.

I am still sticking with my thought experiment on Mexico, which is looking increasingly plausible.

An informative post by Curzon at Coming Anarchy

Yemen: Geography Matters!

….The Saudis are guilty of aggravating and prolonging the conflict. Wary of taking too many losses on the ground and unable to do much by air and sea, they have recruited the Hashed, a local tribe, to fight against the Huthi, the tribe central to the Shia rebels. The Hashed have several incentives to continue fighting for as long as possible-they have a long-standing feud with the Huthi, and make a great deal of money from fighting for the Saudis, and may be coming up with schemes to prolong the conflict. According to a source of Al Jazeera:

If [the Hashed are] given the mission of taking a particular mountain, for example, they’ll call up the Huthi leaders and tell them: ‘We’re getting five million riyals to take the mountain. We’ll split it with you if you withdraw tonight and let us take over’… After the tribesmen take charge, they hand it over to the Saudis… The next day, the Huthi return and defeat the Saudis and retake the mountain… It’s been happening like this for weeks.

Learning to Eat Soup with a Spoon Again……

There has been, for years, an ongoing debate in the defense and national security community over the proper place of COIN doctrine in the repertoire of the United States military and in our national strategy. While a sizable number of serious scholars, strategists, journalists and officers have been deeply involved, the bitter discussion characterized as “COINdinista vs. Big War crowd” debate  is epitomized by the exchanges between two antagonists, both lieutenant colonels with PhD’s, John Nagl, a leading figure behind the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual and now president of the powerhouse think tank CNAS , and Gian Gentile, professor of history at West Point and COIN’s most infamous arch-critic.

In terms of policy and influence, the COINdinistas ultimately carried the day. COIN advocates moved from a marginalized mafia of military intellectuals who in 2004 were just trying to get a hearing from an  indifferent Rumsfeld Pentagon, to policy conquerors as the public’s perceptions of the “Surge” in Iraq (masterminded by General David Petraeus, Dr. Frederick Kagan, General Jack Keane and a small number of collaborators) allowed the evolution of a COIN-centric, operationally oriented, “Kilcullen Doctrine” to emerge across two very different administrations.

Critics like Colonel Gentile and Andrew Bacevich began to warn, along with dovish liberal pundits – and with some exaggeration – that COIN theory was acheiving a “cult” status that was usurping the time, money, talent and attention that the military should be devoting to traditional near peer rival threats. And furthermore, ominously, COIN fixation was threatening to cause the U.S. political class (especially Democrats) to be inclined to embark upon a host of half-baked, interventionist “crusades“in Third world quagmires.

Informed readers who follow defense community issues knew that many COIN expert-advocates such as Nagl, Col. David Kilcullen, Andrew Exum and others had painstakingly framed the future application of COIN by the United States in both minimalist and “population-centric” terms, averse to all but the most restrictive uses of “hard” counterterrorism tactics like the use of predator drones for the “targeted assassinations” of al Qaida figures hiding in Pakistan.

Unfortunately for the COINdinistas, as George Kennan discovered to his dismay, to father a doctrine does not mean that you can control how others interpret and make use of it. As the new Obama administration and its new commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal conducted its internally contentious review of “AfPak” policy in 2009 on what seemed a geological time scale, the administration’s most restless foreign policy bigwig, the Talleyrand of Dayton, proposed using COIN as nation-building on steroids to re-create Hamid Karzai’s Afghanistan as the secure, centralized, state that it has never been.  Public reaction to this trial balloon was poor and the administration ultimately pared down General McChrystal’s troop request to 30,000 men, hedging a COIN based strategy toward policy suggestions made by Vice-President Biden.

So, COIN still reigns supreme, albeit with trimmed sails?

No.

We are forgetting something important about the ascendancy of COIN. It was not accepted by a reluctant Pentagon and the Bush administration because COIN is a very effective operational tool in the right strategic context – although that is certainly true. Nor was it because the advocates of COIN were brilliant policy architects and advocates – though most of them are. COIN became the order of the day for three reasons:

1) The  “Big Army, fire the artillery, fly B-52’s and Search & Destroy=counterinsurgency” approach proved to be tactically and strategically bankrupt in Iraq. It failed in Mesopotamia as it failed in the Mekong Delta under Westmoreland – except worse and faster. Period.

2) The loudest other alternative to COIN at the time, the antiwar demand, mostly from Leftwing extremists, of immediately bugging-out of Iraq, damn the consequences, was not politically palatable even for moderately liberal Democrats, to say nothing of Republicans.

3) The 2006 election results were a political earthquake that forced the Bush administration to change policy in Iraq for its’ own sheer political survival. COIN was accepted only because it represented a life preserver for the Bush administration.

We have just had another such political earthquake. The administration is now but one more electoral debacle away from having the president be chased in Benny Hill fashion all over the White House lawn by enraged Democratic officeholders scared out of their wits of losing their seats next November.

Republican Scott Brown, the winner in a stunning upset in Massachusett’s special election for Senator, certainly had no intention of undermining President Obama’s commitment to Afghanistan. To the contrary, he is for it in a far more muscular manner than was his hapless Democratic opponent. But that’s irrelevant. What matters is that in all the recent elections, Democrats have been clobbered by a “Revolt of the Moderates” – socially liberal, fiscally conservative, independent voters who came out in 2008 for Obama and are now shifting radically away from him. For the next year, politicians of both parties will be  competing hard for this bloc which means “deficit hawks” will soar higher than defense hawks.

America’s nine year drunken sailor spending spree is officially over.

Defense experts have long known that the post-9/11, record DoD budget expenditures were not going to be politically sustainable forever and that either a drawdown of combat operations or cancellation of very big, very complicated and supremely expensive weapons platforms or some combination of both would eventually be needed. That eventuality is here and will increase in intensity over the next five years, barring an unexpected economic boom. Spending $60 billion annually on Afghanistan, a nation with a GDP of roughly $ 20 billion, for the next 7 years, is not going to be in the cards. Not at a time of 10 % unemployment, when the Congress will be forced to cut Medicare, education, veteran’s benefits, eliminate COLA’s on Social Security or raise the retirement age and income taxes. Who is going to want to “own” an ambitious “nation-building” program at election time?

There is a silver lining here. Really.

COIN is an excellent operational tool, brought back by John Nagl & co. from the dark oblivion that Big Army partisans consigned it to cover up their own strategic failures in Vietnam. As good as COIN is though, it is not something akin to magic with which to work policy miracles or to substitute for America not having a cohesive and realistic grand strategy. Remaking Afghanistan into France or Japan on the Hindu Kush is beyond the scope of what COIN can accomplish. Or any policy. Or any president. Never mind Obama, Superman, Winston Churchill and Abe Lincoln rolled into one could not make that happen.

Association with grandiosely maximalist goals would only serve to politically discredit COIN when the benchmarks to paradise ultimately proved unreachable. Austerity will scale them back to the bounds of reality and perhaps a more modest, decentralized, emphasis. COIN will then become a normal component of military capabilities and training instead of alternating between pariah and rock star status inside the DoD.

Austerity may also force – finally – the USG to get serious about thinking in terms of comprehensive and coherent DIME-integrated national strategy (Ok – this is more of a hope on my part). Instead of having every agency and service going off in its own direction with strategic nuclear arms reductions being proposed out of context from our conventional military obligations and urgent security threats we might stop and look at how the two fit together. And how these should be in sync with our fiscal and monetary policies and our need to deeply invest in and improve our unsteady economic position in a very competitive, globalized world. The latter is of much greater strategic importance to national security than Afghanistan or whether or not Israel and Hezbollah fight another mini-war.

We are all COINdinistas now. Instead of being controversial, COIN having a secure place in our operational arsenal of ideas has become the new “conventional” wisdom; it is past time to look at some of the other serious challenges America has ahead.

ADDENDUM I:

First, I wanted to thank everyone for their lively responses, both comments as well as email. The critiques are very helpful, as are the large number of PDFs and links to related material. I am trying to catch up on my replies but first, I wanted to feature a link to Andrew Exum ‘s related but inside baseball article up at Boston Review:

The Conflict in Central Asia will likely mark the end of the current era of Counterinsurgency 

 ….Whether or not the United States and its allies are successful in Afghanistan, the conflict in Central Asia will likely mark the end of the Third Counterinsurgency Era. Counterinsurgency warfare has its roots in the colonial experiences of France and the United Kingdom as well as the pseudo-colonial experiences of the United States in the Philippines and Latin America. In the First Counterinsurgency Era, nineteenth-century French colonial military commanders such as Hubert Lyautey, Thomas-Robert Bugeaud, and Joseph Gallieni devised rudimentary “hearts and minds” campaigns that were—though often just as brutal as the conventional warfare of the time—at odds with then-contemporary thought on the employment of military force. 

….Michael Semple —with two decades experience working in Afghanistan and Pakistan—believes that it is, and that the Taliban and its allies cannot win. The balance of power, he argues, has shifted toward the Taliban’s natural enemies, and the Taliban hides this reality by dressing their civil war in the clothes of an insurgency being fought against Western powers. If this assessment is right, there may yet be hope for U.S. and allied efforts in Afghanistan. Because President Obama has pledged to begin a withdrawal from Afghanistan in eighteen months, time may be too short to execute a comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign. But there may be sufficient time to build up key Afghan institutions and allow Afghans to fight a civil war that will no doubt continue after the United States and its allies begin to withdraw.

ADDENDUM II – LINKS To This Post:

Most of these bloggers have extended the discussion into new dimensions or aspects. I will put a short, explanatory tag next to each where warranted.

RBO (Pundita) – The cavalry has arrived: Mark Safranski takes on COIN; Pundita takes on Pakistan  Extensive examination of Pakistan

In Harmonium (Dr. Marc Tyrell) – Is the post-COIN era here?  The conceptual-perceptual-cognitive implications of this debate

Shlok Vaidya – Zen is right  Constraints and innovation….and a great post title!

Newshoggers (Dave Anderson) – COIN’s coins; political constraints on COIN  COIN = Clausewitzian disconnect

Wings Over Iraq – Link of the morning is here…  And the bonus Nagl/Gentile mash-up graphic!

SWJ Blog – The Post-COIN Era is Here  Comments on link excerpt have begun……

Those of you who also regularly read Steven Pressfield’s site, It’s the Tribes, Stupid have come across his interview series with Ajmal Khan Zazai, elected paramount tribal chief of his home district in the Zazi valley of Paktia province in Afghanistan ( near Tora Bora and bordering Pakistani Waziristan). Chief Zazai fought in the Soviet War and at one time, was imprisoned by Pakistan’s ISI. On March 15, 2000, the Taliban assassinated Chief Zazai’s father, Chief Raiss Afzal Khan Zazai in his family house in Peshawar, Pakistan.

As paramount chief, Chief Zazai raised a Tribal Police Force that is presently working with the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division to secure the Zazi valley. Chief Zazai’s force has come under attack, as insurgents have fought to stop his efforts.  His commander, Amir Muhammad, has personally survived several assassination attempts in the last several months. On two occasions in 2008, warlord-financed hit men attempted to assassinate Chief Zazai. One attack nearly succeeded, leaving several wounded and one man dead

Steve cordially arranged for me to ask Chief Zazai a few questions via email regarding his perspective on the historical background of the war against the Taliban and the current situation in Afghanistan. My questions are in bold type and Chief Zazai’s answers are in normal text:

FIVE QUESTIONS: AN INTERVIEW WITH CHIEF AJMAL KHAN ZAZAI:

1.  Some American academics have argued that the day of “the tribe” is long past in Afghanistan, having been battered by governmental intrusion and war since at least 1978, and that a better understanding of Afghan identity for Americans is to look at the “Qaum” and other very local loyalties. How accurate is that description?:

“Qaum” means “Tribe” in Pashtu and also in the Dari Language. 

The 1978 coup was not the first bloody revolution Afghanistan saw, as I have said on many occasions, Afghanistan has gone through many turmoils and turbulences throughout its history and has survived as a nation and country. For one to get convinced that after the 1978 Red revolution that the tribal structure was gone for good, then one would also have to argue how this tribal structure survived till 1978 when Ghengis Khan burned almost half of Afghanistan?  What about Hulagu Khan, Tamerlane, the Persian empire, the Mughals and prior to all that Alexander the Great? [The tribes ] having seen all these bloody empires and survive untill 1978 is amazing, isn’t it?

To justify the argument simply by referring to the 1978 bloody Red revolution and claim the tribal structure was gone, is dead and has vanished in Afghanistan, would simply be ignorance and a lack of understanding of the rich Afghan culture and Afghan way of life.

The Bonn Agreement appointed Hamid Karzai for 6 months as an interim President of Afghanistan back in 2002. When 6 months passed, did the UN or US call for election? No, of course not. Who then who appointed Mr. Karzai as a President for 2nd time to be the President of the transitional government? It was the “Loya Jirga” and not through the election process. A Loya Jirga is a pure Afghan Tribal process and procedure of making things happen!

Let’s take a look at how the current Afghan Constitution was approved  and came into an effect:

The constitution of Afghanistan was not approved by the Afghan Parliament and Senate as the Parliament and Senate did not exist at the time. In fact the constitution was approved by the “Loya Jirga”; although there was a large presence of the Warlords and criminals in both those Loya Jirgas, nevertheless they served their purpose.

Now, why would one argue that the tribal structure does not exist in Afghanistan or it’s a thing of the past? Closing our eyes from the truth does not mean the truth would vanish. We have a phrase in Pashto which means “One can not hide the sun with just two fingers”.

If one believes they need to find local loyalties in Afghanistan, the locals are the tribes. Why would some go around in [semantic] circles and confuse themselves? 

2.  In your interviews with Steve Pressfield, you discussed the presence of warlords in the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai, men with very bad records.  There have also been reports in the media, from time to time, of Ex-Khalqi Communists serving the regime. Are these men a similar problem to the warlords in your view?

When the Russians withdrew their forces in 1989 and left behind the Communist regime of Dr Najibullah, many thought that the regime would collapse in just days or in weeks, but Najibullah’s government survived for five long years despite the daily rains of rocket attacks on Kabul and only collapsed in 1992. Then the so-called Mujahideen took charge of Kabul and Afghanistan, but soon we saw that these power hungry men started fighting each other over the Throne of Kabul. Their bloody civil war of lasted from 1992 untill 1996 and turned Afghanistan into a pile of rubble.

 Many Afghans were turned against these so-called Mujahideen because these leaders and their commanders became involved in killing innocent men, women and children, looted people’s livelihoods and literally turned all of Afghanistan into a war zone. We witnessed that in just five years these “Mujahideen” warlords destroyed Kabul and all other major cities in Afghanistan. People started to hate them more than they hated the old Communists, so in a way, the crimes which were initially committed by the Communists were covered up when the Afghan people witnessed the subsequent brutality of these so-called Mujahideen leaders and commanders.

I strongly believe the Afghan civil war was also orchestrated by the  KGB/FSB in order to engage these Freedom fighters in Afghanistan and prevent them from crossing over to infiltrate the [formerly Soviet] Central Asian States, and also to cover the atrocities committed by the Red Army against the Afghans in Afghanistan. The KGB/FSB calculated shrewdly that if these “Mujahideen” leaders accomplished a united Islamic government in Afghanistan, it would spill over into the entire Central Asian countries. Although many believed in the West at the time that Russia was almost finished and gone, that was a mistake Westerners made in trying to understand the Russian mind set. 

I strongly believe that the Afghan Communists are responsible for the destruction of Afghanistan. They still have the Marxist-Leninist theory in their heads and we recently have witnessed that many of these Afghan ex-Communists are keeping close ties to Moscow. I believe these Khalqis and Parchamis are now part of the problem as they are now receiving support from Russia.   

3.  Afghanis, especially Pushtuns, have a well-deserved historical reputation as fierce fighters.  Yet there is more to life than war, even in a warrior society. What does a young Afghan man in his late teens or twenties hope for?  What would he see as “progress” or better times?

Much is been said about the Afghans, Pashtuns in the media and honestly I disagree with much of it because no nation, no tribe no people wish for a war as war only brings devastation, destruction and miseries.

Yes, the Afghans are great fighters, but that does not mean they wish for a war all their life. We needed to fight against the Russian invasion and I still strongly believe we have done the right thing defending our country and nation against Communism; as I said earlier, things went wrong when these so-called Mujahideen or Freedom fighters leaders started fighting one another. I believe every Afghan wishes for peace and stability in Afghanistan. Yes there are some who will continue fighting, but we all know they are small in numbers and are not significant. The reason many young men are part of the Taliban and other insurgents is the lack of employment , lack of better life conditions and of course lack of any positive attention from their government in Kabul. At this moment if you ask me, why are these young men are turning to Taliban and are fighting the US, NATO and the Afghan government? You will hear a simple answer from me and that is lack of employment opportunity for these youth who are mostly uneducated.

I will tell you my own experience: I was only 16 when I used to go to Afghanistan from Pakistan from time to time to fight against the Russians. I knew the consequences of being killed, but I was not going to Afghanistan in order to be killed, I was going to Afghanistan to fight the Russians. Now things are opposite, many young men are brainwashed by evil men and these young men wish to die, that’s why there are many suicide attacks now. I remember very well in my days when we were busy fighting the Russians, that we never had suicide bombers. This is very new to us and it has been brought form outside Afghanistan.

I believe the Afghan government and the US/NATO should provide training programmes to all those young Afghan men at around age of 16 and above who have lost the chance to go to school and get education. By learning skilled trades, I believe they will be in a position to earn a loaf of bread for themselves and their family and in this way we will prevent many young men from falling in the trap of believing being a suicide bomber means a life in the hereafter with the 72 virgins which will await them at the corridor of heaven.

4.  You have spoken at length with Steve Pressfield about the 10^th Mountain Division and your positive relationship with them.  How successful have American and NATO units been in making connections elsewhere with Afghan tribal leaders compared to the 10^th Mountain Division?

I do not have any information to the regard that if the US Army has any close contacts with other Tribal leaders. In my case, I have pushed hard for this partnership, regardless of any obstacles that were created for us to even have a decent understanding, but now it seems to be working. In the entire Afghanistan, I am the first Tribal Leader who denounced the Taliban and Al Qaeda openly and more practically, by forming TPF (Tribal Police Force) from my Tribesmen to fight these evil men without any financial assistance from the US Army, US Government, NATO or the Afghan Government. My TPF programme is by the people and for the people – I think it is on the same lines of your democracy “By the people and for the people”!

5). A friend of mine, the strategist Thomas PM Barnett, has been advocating a much greater international presence in Afghanistan, including not just NATO but China, Russia and India, with direct business investment as well as providing military and civilian aid workers. Would this development be a welcome one?

I believe this is a positive step in bringing a broader coalition and the entire International community to help and be involved in Afghanistan; but although this approach might be purely for business purposes, it could pose a future problem as most of these nations are not very sure of the US and NATO policy in the long term and present intentions. Afghanistan has always maintained very good and close relations with India, and throughout this friendship, India had no political ambitions and that what made India look good until the 90’s when India supported the Northern alliance. [As a result] I believe India has lost that status of being a neutral friend of Afghanistan. Also, the growing presence of Indians in Afghanistan is sending some disturbing alarms to our immediate neighbor (Pakistan).

Things needs to be balanced and Afghanistan needs a better understanding [of FDI] and not just bringing in anyone which could only lead to disruption and anxiety in long term. As an example, the large copper mines in Logar Province were won in a biding by a Chinese company – later it was revealed that the Chinese paid large kick backs to the minister of mines. In my opinion, involving more Chinese and Russian corporations would mean more corruption in Afghanistan.

Russian firms are already involved in Afghanistan. Most of them are involved in espionage and there are Chinese corporations and I believe they are doing the same. It would be more fruitful [for Afghans] for your friend to encourage Western corporations and companies to invest in Afghanistan.

Thank you, Chief Zazai.

Reader Isaac, points to an excellent analytical overview of Pakistan’s national nervous breakdown at Dawn.com, by Nadeem F. Paracha. It is a lengthy but stupendous post with some 200 + comments:

Little monsters

There is nothing new anymore about the suggestion that over a span of about 30 odd years, the Pakistani military and its establishmentarian allies in the intelligence agencies, the politicised clergy, conservative political parties and the media have, in the name of Islam and patriotism, given birth to a number of unrestrained demons which have now become full-fledged monsters threatening the very core of the state and society in Pakistan.

A widespread consensus across various academic and intellectual circles (both within and outside Pakistan), now states that violent entities such as the Taliban and assorted Islamist organisations involved in scores of anti-state, sectarian and related violence in the country are the pitfalls of policies and propaganda undertaken by the Pakistani state and its various intelligence agencies to supposedly safeguard Pakistan’s ‘strategic interests’ in the region and more superficially, Pakistan’s own ideological interest.

….The 1980s and the so-called anti-Soviet Afghan jihad is colored with deep nostalgic strokes by the Islamists and the military in Pakistan. Forgetting that the Afghans would have remained being nothing more than a defeated group of rag-tag militants without the millions of dollars worth of aid and weapons that the Americans provided, and Zia could not have survived even the first MRD movement in 1981 had it not been due to the unflinching support that he received from America and Saudi Arabia, Pakistani intelligence agencies and its Afghan and Arab militant allies were convinced that it was them alone who toppled the Soviet Union.

The above belief began looking more and more like a grave delusion by the time the Afghan mujahideen factions went to war against one another in the early 1990s and Pakistan was engulfed with serious sectarian and ethnic strife. But the post-1971 narrative that had now started to seep into the press and in many people’s minds, desperately attempted to drown out conflicting points of views about the Afghan war by once again blaming the usual suspects: democracy, secularism and India.

Many years and follies later, and in the midst of unprecedented violence being perpetrated in the name of Islam, Pakistanis today stand more confused and flabbergasted than ever before.

The seeds of the ideological schizophrenia that the 1956 proclamation of Pakistan being an ‘Islamic Republic’ sowed, have now grown into a chaotic and bloody tree that only bares delusions and denials as fruit.

Read the rest here.

There has been an ocean of ink spilled about the Obama administration’s Hamlet-like deliberation over a war strategy for Afghanistan and on the implications of agreeing to 30,000 rather than the 40,000 new troops for the “Afghan Surge”, as Gen. McChrystal had originally requested. The 10,000 difference in boots is not the salient strategic point, though it is the one that excites political partisans on the Right, Left and anti-war Far Left. It also distracts us from debating our fundamental strategic challenge.

The horns of our dilemma is that our long time “ally” whom we have hitched ourselves to in a grand war effort against revolutionary Islamist terrorism is not our ally at all, but a co-belligerent with our enemy. By every policy measure that matters that causes the United States – justifiably in my view – to take a tough stance against North Korea and Iran, applies in spades to Islamabad. Yet none dare call Pakistan a rogue state.

It is the elephant in our strategy room – if the elephant was a rabid and schizophrenic trained mastodon, still willing to perform simple tricks for a neverending stream of treats, even as it eyes its trainer and audience with a murderous kind of hatred. That Pakistan’s deeply corrupt elite can be “rented” to defer their ambitions, or to work at cross-purposes with Pakistan’s perceived  “interests”, is not a game-changing event. Instead, it sustains and ramps up the dysfunctional dynamic we find ourselves swimming against.

We play a bizarre game, our leaders being more concerned about Pakistan’s “stability” than Pakistan’s own generals and politicians who egg on, fund and train the very militant Islamist groups spreading death and chaos inside Pakistan and beyond its borders. Why can we not find Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar ? Because they are high value clients of the ISI which is no more likely to give them up than the KGB was to hand over Kim Philby.  

Until America’s bipartisan foreign policy elite grapple with the fact – and it is an easily verifiable, empirical, fact – that Pakistan’s government is in chronic pursuit of policies that destabilize Central Asia, menace all of Pakistan’s neighbors, generate legions of terrorists and risk nuclear war with India, no solutions will present themselves.

A strategy will only have a chance of success when it is grounded in reality.