Two Paths

[Infanteer]

Fascinating article; interesting to note how this relationship will come into play as CSOR develops a SF capability for the CF.  I've highlighted sections that stood out to me - a question to be asked is can these two capabilities be pushed down to lower levels, or are we going to see the same "cultural" problems as CANSOFCOM grows (to learn more about this history, look for Col Bernd Horns articles on SOF):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401900.html

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In a Volatile Region of Iraq, U.S. Military Takes Two Paths

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 15, 2006; A01


AL-FURAT, Iraq -- With a biker's bandanna tied under his helmet, the Special Forces team sergeant gunned a Humvee down a desert road in Iraq's volatile Anbar province. Skirting the restive town of Hit, the team of a dozen soldiers crossed the Euphrates River into an oasis of relative calm: the rural heartland of the powerful Albu Nimr tribe.

Green Berets skilled in working closely with indigenous forces have enlisted one of the largest and most influential tribes in Iraq to launch a regional police force -- a rarity in this Sunni insurgent stronghold. Working deals and favors over endless cups of spiced tea, they built up their wasta -- or pull -- with the ancient tribe, which boasts more than 300,000 members. They then began empowering the tribe to safeguard its territory and help interdict desert routes for insurgents and weapons. The goal, they say, is to spread security outward to envelop urban trouble spots such as Hit.

But the initial progress has been tempered by friction between the team of elite troops and the U.S. Army's battalion that oversees the region. At one point this year, the battalion's commander, uncomfortable with his lack of control over a team he saw as dangerously undisciplined, sought to expel it from his turf, officers on both sides acknowledged.

The conflict in the Anbar camp, while extreme, is not an isolated phenomenon in Iraq, U.S. officers say. It highlights two clashing approaches to the war: the heavy focus of many regular U.S. military units on sweeping combat operations; and the more fine-grained, patient work Special Forces teams put into building rapport with local leaders, security forces and the people -- work that experts consider vital in a counterinsurgency.

"This war was fought with a conventional mind-set. The conventional units are bogged down in cities doing the same old thing," said the Special Forces team's 44-year-old sergeant, who like all the Green Berets interviewed was not allowed to be quoted by name for security reasons.  "It's not about bulldozing Hit, driving through with a tank, with all the kids running away. . . . These insurgencies are defeated by personal relationships."  The real battles, he said, are unfolding "in a sheik's house, squatting in the desert eating with my right hand and smoking Turkish cigarettes and trying to influence tribes to rise up against an insurgency."

Cutting Deals

Under the glittering chandeliers of his newly remodeled salon, Sheik Jubair adjusted his fine, white cotton dishdasha , or traditional robe, and lit a cigarette.

As if on cue, the American team sergeant leaned over and handed him an ashtray.

The 63-year-old sheik is the de facto ruler of the Albu Nimr, a wealthy tribe whose influence stretches from Anbar's violent capital of Ramadi up the Euphrates to Haditha. Jubair knows the U.S. military needs his tribe as much as it needs the military. Shunned in the 1990s for plotting against Saddam Hussein, the tribe backed the U.S.-led overthrow of Hussein in 2003. But Jubair now faces threats from Anbar's entrenched Sunni Arab insurgency, which he said put a $5 million bounty on his head.

Week after week, the team has spent long hours cultivating Jubair -- funding his projects, buying his son a PlayStation, even holding his hand during treatment at a U.S. military hospital for an infected toe. In return, Jubair has supplied hundreds of police and army recruits, as well as intelligence targeting insurgents in the region.

During a recent visit at his home in al-Furat, Jubair pressed the team sergeant for a hospital, a gas station, a school, payment for a damaged car and a mosque. "We don't do mosques," the sergeant replied.

One minute the tough and temperamental Jubair was unbuttoning his shirt to show off a wound acquired in the Iran-Iraq war. The next, he was pouting because the American team dared visit his nephew and rival, Sheik Hatem, a.k.a. the "boy king," who officially heads the tribe and lives in the same compound.

"He's young and doesn't know anything," Jubair scolded the team sergeant. "If you give him projects, I will close the city council and come here!"

For the Americans, such engagement is as vital as it can be maddening. "Sometimes I feel like I'm dealing with teenagers," the sergeant said. "They even do the 'mom' and 'dad' thing with me" and the team captain.

It's also work that involves keen judgment and knowing when to cut deals. After the team arrived in January, it captured a former police colonel accused of stealing cars and $60,000 in pay and killing another police officer. But when the colonel was detained and sent to Abu Ghraib prison, sheiks Jubair and Hatem pleaded for his release. "They said you will increase your wasta and all that," the team sergeant said, "so we secured his release, a controlled release."

The compromise helped win the tribe's backing for a local police force. But it also heightened frictions with the U.S. Army battalion, whose convoy transporting the detainee had hit a roadside bomb.

A Clash of Cultures

Every night like clockwork at the U.S. military camp -- known as a forward operating base, or FOB -- outside Hit, a loudspeaker atop the Special Forces team house blasts an alert that the Army battalion is about to shoot off flares.

"Attention on the FOB! Attention on the FOB!" a male voice boomed one recent night. "There will be an illumination mission in 10 minutes. Go Cowboys!"

"I've tried to figure out a way to cut that wire," the team sergeant muttered as he stood on the roof, bemoaning the battalion's predictable tactics.

The clash of military cultures was apparent from the start in late January, when the Special Forces team captain, scruffy after days in the desert, arrived at the Hit camp and introduced his team's mission to Lt. Col. Thomas Graves, commander of the 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry Regiment. Graves, a close-shaven West Point graduate from Texas, said nothing and walked away, according to team members.

"We grow our hair a little longer," the team sergeant said. "We wear mustaches, and the conventional Army doesn't want to deal with you because they look at you as undisciplined. We're the most disciplined force in the Army!"

To Graves, the problem boiled down to communication and his battalion's limited, or "tactical," control over the Special Forces. "It's not that they have long hair. I don't care if they're frickin' from Mars," said Graves in the camp's chow hall. "They have a responsibility to tell us what they were doing, but they refuse to do it."

Graves said the Green Berets and their Iraqi army scout platoon once shot at his tanks; he said he never investigated the incident but declined to explain why. Concern over his troops' safety led him to initiate steps to remove the team, he said, adding, "I don't care if you're frickin' naked, just don't shoot at my tanks!"

Training Iraqi Forces

At a desert firing range outside Hit, a squad of Iraqi army scouts attacked a line of silhouetted targets, emptying their AK-47 assault rifles and then switching effortlessly to pistols. Next, they practiced sweeping a room, pivoting through the doorway and shouting bursts of Arabic.

Training foreign military forces is a core Special Forces mission -- and the top priority of the U.S. command in Iraq. The Iraqi scout platoon, recruited from the Albu Nimr tribe and coached by the team in Hit, displayed an agility and confidence unusual among Iraqi soldiers. And the Americans fostered loyalty in the platoon.

"We've been to their homes, we've treated their children. They are our partners," said the team captain, an energetic officer from Los Angeles.

"We walk with them as brothers," said Mokles Ali Muklif, the Iraqi platoon leader.

But last spring, when the scouts spotted a roadside bomb during a solo mission and warned U.S. forces about it, they were detained by Graves's battalion, blindfolded and forced to sit in bitter cold for seven hours before the team could secure their release. "I was livid," the team sergeant said.

Later, when the Special Forces team offered to give advanced training to the entire Iraqi army battalion, Graves rejected the idea. Morale continued to drop in the Iraqi battalion, its manpower down to 60 percent after hundreds of soldiers quit over lack of pay, poor food and duty far from home. "We could have had the battalion conducting unilateral ops, and 1-36 could be sitting back at the firm base," the team captain said.

Instead, the team threw all its energy into mobilizing the Albu Nimr tribe behind a police force -- first in its territory of al-Furat, then in the broader region including the contested town of Hit.

A Recruiting Drive

Col. Falah Salah Shimra, 41, a portly tribesman with an imposing demeanor, examined the charred shell of a police station destroyed by a bomb planted on the roof.

Chief of al-Furat's growing tribal police contingent of several hundred men, Shimra minimized the attack on his fledgling force. "Basically, within our area we have no threat at all," he said. "The threat is from outside."

Nearby, tribal police manned a checkpoint, wearing blue shirts as uniforms. None had body armor. Most used their own rifles and ammunition and patrolled in their own vehicles. Many had gone for months without wages until the Special Forces team helped cut through red tape and graft to secure their full pay in July.

Once they get more equipment, Shimra said, he plans "to extend our security all around Hit and get rid of the insurgents."

Indeed in July, backing from tribal leaders led to Hit's first successful police recruiting drive.

"We knew there would be no people in Hit, so to facilitate success we put out word in al-Furat," the team sergeant said.

But a dispute emerged when Graves decided to "lock down" Hit with tanks and hold the recruiting drive at a frequently mortared U.S. combat outpost inside the town rather than in a safer tribal area across the Euphrates. "It's the most dialed-in place!" said the team sergeant, whose men narrowly missed being struck by a mortar shell during the drive.

In the end, only three Hit residents volunteered. But about 150 tribesmen crossed the river to sign up. Graves said he considered the police recruitment to be one of the U.S. military's biggest achievements in his area, and he acknowledged the Special Forces team's help in enlisting the tribesmen. "They deserve credit for that," he said of the team, whose tour ended last month.

The Special Forces soldiers realize there are drawbacks to relying on the tribe, which is focused on protecting its own territory and interests and which imposes tribal law that can undercut civil authority. Every decision, from firing a policeman to averting revenge killings, requires the sanction of tribal leaders such as Jubair. But the reality in Anbar, the team captain said, is either to "engage the tribes . . . or leave them to the will of the insurgency."

 

[tomahawk6]

Typical interaction between SF and some commanders [mainly West Pointers]. Reading that article made me flash back to articles I read from Vietnam and even in DS. Stormin Norman really didnt trust SF but had to use them if he was going to knock a hole in the Iraqi air defense system. Its cultural I suppose between conventional officers and the SF types.

We used to man SF by making it a specialty like aviation. Officers would alternate between SF and their branch. Didnt work out too well, because once an officer was branded as SF his future in his branch was pretty much over. Now we have made SF a branch and an officer can spend his career in SF units and staff positions. Unfortunately the prejudice remains. I would say its not as bad as it was during Nam, it has gotten better.

 

[rmacqueen]

Hard to believe the conflict between regular and SF still exists after all these years.  Sounds like something out of a movie (Dirty Dozen) but it is this sort of local involvement that will make the difference in the long run

 

[a_majoor]

More on this clash of cultures can be read about in "Imperial Grunts", the SF and SOF are at loggerheads with the "Heavy Metal Army" because the SF and SOF culture is flexible, networked and amorphous while the "Heavy Metal Army" is still very directive, top down and hierarchical (although most other armies in the world would consider it to be loose and out of control.....)

The advantages of the "Heavy Metal Army" lie not so much in combat power, but rather that it is a process driven organization capable of performing astounding feats of logistics; it doesn't matter what the relative merits of an M-1 tank are unless you can actually deliver it, the crew, mechanics, fuel and ammunition from Ft Hood, Texas to the Sunni Triangle. Of course one tank isn't going to cut it, (even we can send a light battlegroup halfway around the world), the true genius of the Americans is they can do this with entire brigades and divisions. Without the ability to flex this logistics tail, even the SF and SOF would have a great deal of difficulty operating far from home.

IF there is an answer to the American dilemma, it may lie in the Indian wars of the 1870's, the SF and SOF can be considered the "scouts" while the conventional forces need to be more like the US Cavalry, capable of long presence patrols and shock action when needed, but mostly to show the flag and establish a presence in the AOR. Coming out looking for a fight isn't the way to go unless there is very good int or you are advancing into fire.

 

[Old Sweat]

IF there is an answer to the American dilemma, it may lie in the Indian wars of the 1870's, the SF and SOF can be considered the "scouts" while the conventional forces need to be more like the US Cavalry, capable of long presence patrols and shock action when needed, but mostly to show the flag and establish a presence in the AOR. Coming out looking for a fight isn't the way to go unless there is very good int or you are advancing into fire.

Good analogy, Art. Years and years ago an American officer remarked to me about Vietnam that they had spent twenty years preparing to fight Buck Rogers [a character in a popular science fiction series about the 25th century] and ended up fighting Geronimo. There is a place for both types of forces, the challenge is combining them, especially when very healthy egos are involved.

 

[Kirkhill]

It comes back to that question of what IS an army. Is it just to fight battles or is it to impose the government's will?

As noted previously the Americans have never been too comfortable with the latter concept, either at home or abroad.  Thus they kept the army to a minimum between the wars.  Your Indian Wars of the 1870s were essentially police actions equivalent in intent to the deployment of the RCMP in the same period, to the deployment of the British Army on the Indian Northwest Frontier in the 1890s, or to the use of Dragoons against borderers, covenanters and highlanders in the long campaign to pacify Scotland (1603 to 1746).  The tactics varied but the basic tool was the same and the basic intent was the same:  mobile individuals and small units ensuring that the locals knew who was in charge and running the local protection racket.

Military force on occasion was necessary to achieve ascendancy.  Trust was necessary to maintain ascendancy.  One of my all time favourite tales of this type of "warfare" was of a NWMP constable being tasked with arresting some horse thieves in a hostile Indian camp, entering alone, being confronted, decking the challenger and being allowed to walk out of the camp with the suspects in tow.  That can only happen with supreme confidence, moral ascendancy and trust.  (Need to look up that reference again).

Conversely the US Army as a respected institution finally hit its stride in World War 2 as a combat force.  The US is willing to tolerate an army that defeats its enemies.  They remain fearful of an army that might end up acting like the Thai Army seems to be acting today.

A Combat Army has resulted in prestige for the force, promotion for the officers, jobs for the troops and a massive budget that helps to keep the economy going.  A lot of people have a lot invested in the Combat Army.  By contrast the Policing Army has very few adherents either within the establishment or in the population at large.  Vietnam is taken as proof by all sides that that is not an avenue they wish to explore.  Success in Iraq and Afghanistan would contradict that view.

Reality is - IMHO - any government needs both.  A policing army or soldier-ambassadors and a combat army able to deliver overmatching effects against any obstacles and resistance.  It'll be interesting to see if both can live in one institution.  The record almost everywhere and everywhen suggests only with difficulty.

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

I don't read too much into the article.  When you have two forces in the same area with apparently different chains of command you will get friction.  This friction makes a good story.  While I have not been to Iraq, I've seen SF working quite conventional when faced with areas lacking a friendly tribe to work with. 

 

[a_majoor]

I think there is a lot of institutional bias towards the Heavy Metal Army, mostly due to the prestige gained during WW II, and recently burnished in the Persian Gulf War and OIF. From an institutional point of view, the Heavy Metal Army has lots more avenues for promotons, perques and getting a slice of the budget pie, so the membership list is pretty impressive and well dug in. However it is an inflexible instrument when confronted with small and ill defined challenges like Viet Nam, the second phase of the Korean War and today's insurgency. For much of the time, it is the only tool available to deal with these out of arc conflicts.

Kirkhill, I think you might be understating one factor in why the Americans and British before them had very small military establishments: trust.

In the case of the British, the Army fell under Parliament to prevent the excesses of the late Stuart regime which led to the English Civil War and Cromwell's "Protectorate". The Navy and Air Force are not only in charge of protecting the realm, but are also not suitable to impose a dictatorial regime on the UK; hence they can belong to the monarch (a Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, but not a Royal Army). 

In America, the Founding Fathers remembered the use of British troops to impose Royal regulations and taxes, so the early Republic shunned military expenditures to limit the ability of government to gain power, and rapidly disbanded large standing forces once the perceived need had passed. Although this is speculation, had there been no USSR or communist threat after WWII, the American military machine would have demobilized in 1946 and stayed demobilized. For good or ill, it did not, and now has developed a life of its own, to sustain the vast military bureaucracy.

The two chains of command and the friction that generates can almost be taken as a "war fighting" force (the SF and SOF) who are out there to take names and kick ***, while the larger Heavy Metal Army is there to justify it's existence. We know this isn't the case, of course, but there are some elements of truth to that picture.

 

[Kirkhill]

Nail on the head Arthur.

It would be interesting to hear from our Law Enforcement establishment types how the SWAT/ERT types get along with the more "conventional" policing types - although I understand in Canada there is a significant amount of overlap there, especially in smaller communities.

Here's another question though.  Are we looking at another aspect of "Every Marine a rifleman"?  Or "Equipping the man vs manning the equipment?"

The RN and the RAF not only distinguish themselves because they are only applicable to exporting force (or at least keeping force at bay) but because their operational environments result in necessitate specialized equipment which in turn generates forces of technicians that serve their platforms.  These technicians are generally seen as too valuable to "waste" (horrible choice of words I know but it will serve) on crowd control and domestic duties.

The Americans appear to me to have taken this logic, consciously or otherwise, one step further and applied to land combat.  By creating an army or landships (Churchills original suggestion for the Tank) then they have created an Army of technicians, suitable to fight foreign wars but not just too valuable to employ on mundane domestic tasks but, through specialization, poorly equipped for the role.    And that frankly, I believe is just fine with a nation that relies on the citizen-soldier/neighbour/militiaman of the National Guard for domestic operations.  The National Guard is your neighbour and seen as a helpful force in a crisis - but it can always be over-ridden by the power of the other states and the federal government as happened during the civil rights era.

So the USN, US Air Force and US Army are specialists capable of defeating foreign threats but having limited domestic utility.

The National Guard is the domestic force.

The US Marines on the other hand, have inherited the mantle of the Dragoons that chased those borderers, covenanters and highlanders out of Britain and ended up writing the Declaration of Independence.  They are the only military police force that the US has.  And it is a small force that came into its own "policing" America's regional empire in the early 1900's.  It offers no threat to the US domestically because of its size.

If we accept that policing is a face-to-face activity that demands boots on the ground to control people, both individually and in crowds, and control as opposed to eliminate, then the Marine concept of gunners, tankers and loggies being riflemen first and foremost comes into a different light.

A mob can't be handled by firing 155s into it and driving tanks through it.  Tiananmen Square, Hama, Prague and Amritsar 1919 notwithstanding, it is neither an acceptable solution for "civilized" peoples nor is it an effective strategy for long term results. 

The most "humane" method of dealing with a mob is to match it with another mob.  A disciplined, organized and resolute mob that meets the rabble eye to eye and asserts moral ascendancy with minimum force by virtue of numbers and the THREAT of greater violence. The application of violence has to be handled with circumspection because when panic, fear and anger set in then control is lost.  Peterloo of 1819 and Kent State of 1968(?) are both examples of that.  The US Marine "rifleman" - whether infanteer, gunner or trucker, are all available to stand in the line as part of that disciplined mob and exert that moral authority.  They are not necessarily infanteers but they are Marines, they are disciplined and they can hold the line.

Likewise, the British Army, in addition to being infantry heavy and maintaining a high proportion of light infantry units that can stand in for National Guard type duties,  also uses its gunners and tankers on Internal Security operations. And I think if you go back to the 40s and 50s you will find instances of Service Corps drivers being deployed to quiet crowds in faraway places with entrenching tool handles.  They are all soldiers first.  They may have specialist skills (Para, Driver, Gunner etc) but their first job is to be able to stand in line and face the mob.

When the opposing mob gets organized and starts bringing out the heavy weapons then it is time to revert to specialist roles and man the equipment necessary to demolish the threat, the tanks, guns and aircraft, so that you can go back to standing in line and facing the mob.

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

If we are going to look at history, remember that both the US and UK were protected by oceans.  They were (and really are) maritime powers which relied on their navies during peace and war.  Big armies were only needed for big wars, for which you had some time due to your control of the sea.  Being rather stable democracies they did not need big armies ready to quel riots and uprisings.

The British Army had the Indian/UK army split, with the army in India having somewhat different roles, equipment and methods.  The British army during times of peace on the continent was really an imperial police force.

Mobs aren't our problem right now, and if they are then "conventional" infantry can do just fine.  Armed enemies are.  Being "policemen" isn't going to cut it, although adopting a sense of the British "imperial police force" might be of assistance.

A note on the Indian wars in the West.  I think it was the settlers in unstoppable numbers who finally crushed resistance .

 

[Kirkhill]

Being "policemen" isn't going to cut it, although adopting a sense of the British "imperial police force" might be of assistance.

So was Maiwand 1880 a conventional action or an Imperial Policing action?  http://www.britishempire.co.uk/forces/armycampaigns/indiancampaigns/campafghan1878maiwand.htm

It isn't one thing or the other.  It is both.  The army needs to be able to police (in both permissive and hostile environments) and defeat enemies opposed to them. It needs to be able to operate all the way along that spectrum of conflict.  Whether this is done by creating one force that can slide from one extreme of operations to the other or whether two or more forces ( high intensity - low intensity ) can/should be created and can co-exist is the point I am wondering about.

By the way - what caliber Martini-Henrys were you picking up on the field over there: .450, .402 or .303?  They were using .450s at Maiwand.

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

It was certainly not police work.  It was a more or less conventional battle, much like what goes on today. 

Forces fighting in Afghanistan and similar theatres need the capability to move great distances and fight in relatively dispersed/de-centralized fashion.  Companies and platoons need to be able to operate independently when required.  Once they get into a fight they need to be able to bring considerable combat power to play.  While this may not be exactly like WW II and Germany days in terms of troop density, it is still pretty much conventional fighting when that fighting happens.

Call them Cavalry (I'm thinking US Army style circa late 1800s), call them Dragoons, call them Imperial Stormtroopers I don't care.  Just give them their LAVs and artillery and other supporting arms and don't call them police.

(modified to correct at least one terrible grammar mistake :-[)

 

[Kirkhill]

Nobody's suggesting taking away the LAVs etc.  At least, it sure as heck isn't me.  Happy to see you getting the tanks as well.

My point is that conflict starts with the micro, the individual, and proceeds to the macro, the empire, and all the way along that spectrum violence can occur.  That violence can be an abusive stare or a slap or it can be a nuclear bomb.  The work of countering that violence is the same whether you want to call it soldiering or policing or whatever.  The only things that differ are the tools involved and the numbers involved. 

Just like it makes no sense to take a knife to a gun fight, likewise it makes no sense to take an ICBM to a domestic dispute.  In imposing order, policing, you may indeed find yourself, as you did, fighting the second battle of Maiwand and needing all the numbers and tools you can get ahold of.  However, you were still working as agents of the government (The Afghan government on secondment from the Canadian government) to impose order.  If that necessitated killing a bunch of people opposed to that order then so be it.

But the other part of the job is maintaining order when the response isn't as dire - domestic disputes, thievery and bread riots - and that too has to be done for the Government without taking the route of General Dyer in Amritsar 1919 who turned his Gurkhas on a crowd of Sikhs.

You were fighting battles right enough.  Hard battles obviously.  But if war is an interstate contest - unless you want to define the Taliban as a foreign state - then the operations were by definition OOTW - operations other than war.

It is possible to fight battles and not be at war.  Batoche comes to mind.

Policing and warfighting are both tasks that soldiers may have to undertake depending on the nature of the enemy.  Where you have a range of people with a range of attitudes facing you then surely you have to be able to deal with the full spectrum of attitudes?

 

[Infanteer]

Mobile Infantry?  

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

Does war have to be defined as inter-state? 

Tough, disciplined combat troops can perform "crowd control" when required.  Crowd control specialists shouldn't go around battles.

 

 

[Kirkhill]

Does war have to be defined as inter-state? 

 

Good question - only if we stick with Clausewitz, Westfalia and the United Nations.
On the other hand there is tribal warfare, clan warfare and even gang warfare.

Tough, disciplined combat troops can perform "crowd control" when required.  Crowd control specialists shouldn't go around battles. 

Agreed entirely.

More to the point is, perhaps: can all tough, disciplined combat troops handle the types of SF activities, the policing activities, that were referred to in the article that opened this discussion?  Do they want to?  Are they disposed to do it? Are they suitable for it?

Or is it better to find a sub-set of tough, disciplined combat troops that specialize in that end of the spectrum?

Cheers, 

 

[Edward Campbell]

I think part of the army ≈ constabulary and constabulary armies are better at counter-insurgency myths spring from European, especially British, colonial experience.

Those myths are grounded in reality: colonial forces did perform many constabulary functions; in some areas their duties, for decades, were essentially constabulary.  Long service overseas, in colonial/constabulary roles gave some officers and NCOs a thorough knowledge of some of the places and the people and the issues.  This knowledge went beyond operational intelligence – some officers and NCOs with long colonial service understood the social/cultural, religious/tribal and economic issues of the places in which they had served – they were able to penetrate beyond the gross oversimplifications such as those which LGen Leslie has tried to correct when he explains the broad spectrum of the Taliban and the fact that some/many (most?) of the people we are fighting and killing in Afghanistan are not Taliban at all.

I think this accounts for some of the Templar’s template debate.  Malaya appears almost too easy fifty years after the fact.  It was not, I think, easy at all.  I think it was a tough campaign waged with considerable skill, great imagination and some brutality by an iron-willed commander.  I think we cannot, must not hope to replicate Templar because, inter alia: we are not going to have a military/civil ’el supremo’ such as Sir Gerald Templar was in the ‘50s, we cannot hope to have the long service colonial and indigenous intelligence/police apparatus with which Templar was blessed and we cannot hope to ever have the sort of privacy and a compliant media which acted, in the ‘50s, as part of Templar’s operation: explaining steady progress in a winnable war to the Brits (and Aussies, etc) at home, to foreign onlookers in Washington and New York and to the increasingly kicked about locals.

The second and third items, intelligence/police and propaganda, were of immense value in Malaya, I think.  Clutterbuck ( http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0014%2FCLBK ) has written at length about the value of the tight linkage between the (well paid and well protected) local, native police sergeants, the national intelligence apparatus, the special forces and the British Commonwealth ’conventional’ military forces.

We must not try to slavishly follow a 50 year old model from a vastly different place but we should, I think, be trying hard to strengthen the Afhan police and helping them to see us – Afghan and foreign armies – as friends, protectors and real, trusted allies.  This will be very hard because we have no ‘roots’ in the place and they have little reason to trust us, I think we – and our ideas and values – are very alien.

We also need propaganda – it’s not a dirty word, despite Goebbels and the best efforts of a couple of generations of ill informed Western school teachers.  ’We’ need to inform and persuade our own population and interested international observers/critics about the essentially positive nature of the mission: socially worthwhile, politically positive and militarily achievable.  We also need to propagandize inside Afghanistan (or wherever next) about the friendly and useful nature of our forces and our efforts – this involves local folks (Afghans in 2006) talking to locals using the most appropriate media – which may not be the one(s) most favoured here in Canada.  (I don’t know enough about the place to offer anything like a useful idea other than not listening to those of us who don’t know.) 

 

[Old Guy]

Long service overseas, in colonial/constabulary roles gave some officers and NCOs a thorough knowledge of some of the places and the people and the issues.

This hits upon an important factor in fighting guerilla wars.  The quality of officers and non-coms, especially at the small unit level is very important.  In the early days of American involvement in Vietnam, SF teams were comprised of highly qualified and committed individuals.  In those days a surprising number of SF types were from Eastern Europe.  They had seen communism's excesses close-up and had no illusions about their enemy.  These small teams integrated with local forces and learned the languages and customs.  Most communication in South Vietnam could be handled in Vietnamese, French or one of the local hill tribe languages. 

The upper levels of MACV were inhabited by officers whose experience included only set-piece warfare as conducted in WW2 and Korea.  They had no use for SF in general and were mostly interested in their careers.  This mindset crippled our Vietnam effort right through to the end.

Probably, large bodies of regular forces were never necessary in Vietnam.  A coordinated effort to expand the SF approach to work in larger ARVN formations would have stopped the 'insurgency', which initially consisted of South Viet stay-behinds (from when the country was partitioned in 1954), stiffened over time by NVA cadre and finally replaced almost completely (except in the Delta, most real VC units were smashed in Tet '68) by NVA regulars. 

The escalation of the war to what in 1973 and 1975 was a conventional conflict, could have been avoided by resolute action in the North.  If in 1966, we had smashed Haiphong harbor, cut Hanoi off from Chinese supplies, and enforced a rigid naval blockade, the materials for a larger war would never have reached Ho and his cohorts.  That approach, coupled with a combination of regular unit advisors and SF work in the hinterlands would have eventually worked to keep South Vietnam from being conquered. 

Oh -- and one other thing.  We should have insisted that the South Vietnamese reform their own government.  Nation building was sneered at in those days, but had the effort been made, and carried off, South Vietnam might be one of the economic powerhouses of Asia -- and a bitter competitor of American manufacturing companies. 

This is all fiction, of course, except for my basic point (yes, I DID have a point).  The quality of personnel is paramount.  In general, I think professionalism and ability is a given for most American, British, Aussie and Canadian forces.  There are exceptions, but I think the combat forces in Afghanistan and Iraq are led by officers and NCOs who are head and shoulders above the average for Vietnam -- especially in the late war, 1969-71.  Political meddling and inter-service, inter-forces rivalry is certainly part of the equation.  Some of that is inescapable.  War is primarily political.  To whine about politics is like complaining about the weather -- it can make you feel better, but you're going to get rained on regardless.


jim

 

[Kirkhill]

Perhaps I should grab an umbrella at this point.

I agree that war, as everything else, is primarily political and as Tip O'Neil famously observed all politics is local. In fact I argue that all politics, and therefore all war, is personal.  That is my point.

When it comes to dealing with a "failed state", or perhaps a pre-state might be a better expression for much of the world, the issue at hand is the ability of the central authority to impose order across the full range of conflicts within its borders.  That range of conflict encompasses the individual, families, clans, tribes and "nations" (as defined by our own "First Nations").  In addition to these "blood feuds" we also have "belief feuds" where religious and political conflict cross the demarcations of the blood feuds.  Finally we have just plain, old fashioned criminality involving gangs in venal feuds.

All these intersecting feuds represent a multitude of fault lines that all governments must struggle against all the time.  Maintaining order, policing, is a never ending task.  Just like taking out the garbage, cleaning house or policing the parade square it is a task that needs to performed repeatedly and regularly.

When it comes to the nature of the police force necessary to conduct those operations then that depends on the nature of the environment in which it operates.  If people, individuals, are trusting or cowed enough to accept the police than you can have the individual red-coated Mountie walk into the mob, slug the miscreant and drag him out without his brother raising a ruckus.  On the other hand if those same people rally to the miscreant, form a political party with its own army, armed with anti-tank missiles and artillery and dig themselves into the country side then it becomes necessary to prepare a conventional military operation to dig out the miscreant.   

The conventional or Heavy Metal Army becomes an Emergency Response Team for the Government in that case. 

The problem of the Pre-State (Proto-State?)/Failed State is, as Jim has said and Edward alludes to a matter of Governance and learning the art of Governance is a time-consuming venture especially when the both the Governor and the Governed are learning their roles as well as the potential benefits and advantages associated with a well governed society.  The Governor has to learn to trust the people enough to permit them freedom while at the same time imposing order enough to give them the security they crave.  At the same time the people have to learn to trust the Governor enough to give up some of their freedom so that order can be imposed and give them the necessary security to carry on their lives.  In the absence of trust then force must be used to buy time to demonstrate trust.

Edward, you rightly point out that the exercise is a civil and military one and that in the colonial era, (by the way I have trouble with that concept for all eras are colonial as all governments strive to exert domain over their empires but be that as it may) the task did not fall to the army alone.  In the Malayan case, although it could equally apply to any part of any empire, success was a result of:

making people secure in protected enclaves where they could continue to live their lives and prosper - the "ink-spots" of their day; 
good policing by the civilian police force which established a government presence and generated the goodwill necessary to gain trust and thus intelligence - the local police force;
good investigative and intelligence gathering - the Special Branch of the police force;
good civil administration - the District Commissioners who were all bureaucrats that took the Civil Service exam, not soldiers.
civil/military cooperation - guaranteed by the "civil/military supremo" himself, Templar.

In that last we have the crux of the matter and the difference between an Imperial Colony and a Nation-State. 

In Afghanistan we do have a "civil/military supremo": President Karzai.  He has all the authority and more that Templar ever wanted.  This is no different than is true in any other State, democratic or tyrannical.  He may not know how best to use that authority, that is true of many of our Prime Ministers.  He may not have a functioning legislature and bureaucracy.  He may have indifferent policing and intelligence facilities.  He may not have a viable army.  He may not even have the necessary budget.  But he has the responsibility and he has been given the authority. 

If he is given the tools and the budget to complete his task then he is better placed than Templar was to gain the necessary trust as he is one of "them", not some foreigner.

Which brings us to Canada's role in assisting him in the task at hand.  He needs people to train his people to be legislators, bureaucrats, intelligence officers, policemen and soldiers.  That is the development part of 3D.  He also needs people to both do the tasks for his people in the short term AND as part of the training programme, lead by example. Show that the theories being taught will work in practice and that the teachers are willing to stand by their suggestions by sharing the risks of failure.

So the question becomes how do you supply these governance teachers.  That ultimately is what the "Green Berets" were formed for by Kennedy.  They weren't so much a military force as a version of the "Peace Corps" that was made up of people willing to work in hostile environments. 

The question then becomes do you find these people in the ranks of the military and teach them how to become administrators, bureaucrats, intelligence officers and policemen.  Or do you find them in the ranks of the bureaucracy, CSIS and the RCMP and find people with the soldierly qualities and teach them soldiering skills?  Or both?

Once you have these people and you organize them who do they work for and with?  Are they soldiers or are they civilians?

The US military got their hands on these people and turned them from governance into long range reconnaissance troops focused on gathering intelligence.  The SAS is something of the same.

The US, and the rest of us for that matter, now find ourselves with a big gap in the capabilities we need to supply and the Army is being pushed into filling that gap with CIMIC units of soldiers.

The problem is exacerbated in the west generally because of the cultural divide that has grown up between bureaucrats and soldiers, or more properly civilians and soldiers.  Soldiers go where the bullets fly and most bureaucrats and for that matter most policemen, don't see themselves operating in that environment.  In fact many bureaucrats are convinced that in worlds where bullets fly soldiers are the problem and not the solution.  The notion of a soldierly bureaucrat is completely foreign to them. 

But this end of the spectrum needs to be covered in some way and as many soldiers have pointed out western forces are not short of bureaucrats in uniform.  Perhaps it is fitting that the forces should be the originator of the personnel necessary to fill the ranks of this governance force.

In my opinion, in addition to an expeditionary Army,  we need an expeditionary arm of the RCMP, CSIS and the Civil Service:  permanently constituted and manned by people willing and trained to go into harms way - where the bullets are flying.  That would then free the Army of Nation-Building/CIMIC duties and allow them to focus on combat operations (all levels of combat -from crowd control to destroying armoured divisions).
The issue in Afghanistan, and Iraq for that matter, is how to impose order long enough to both teach the locals how to perform


 

 

[Kirkhill]

If people, individuals, are trusting or cowed enough to accept the police than you can have the individual red-coated Mountie walk into the mob, slug the miscreant and drag him out without his brother raising a ruckus.  On the other hand if those same people rally to the miscreant, form a political party with its own army, armed with anti-tank missiles and artillery and dig themselves into the country side then it becomes necessary to prepare a conventional military operation to dig out the miscreant. 

Further to this notion there is this article from the Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/21/AR2006092101723.html

Top Sadr Aides Seized in Raids, Movement Says
Cleric's Spokesmen Accuse U.S. Of Trying to Force Confrontation

By Amit R. Paley and Saad Sarhan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 22, 2006; Page A14

BAGHDAD, Sept. 21 -- U.S. and Iraqi forces arrested top aides to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in pre-dawn raids Thursday, according to Sadr officials who called the move a provocation designed to trigger a full-blown battle between the groups.

"It is obvious they want to draw the Sadr movement into a military confrontation," said Abdul Razzak al-Nedawi, a leader of the Sadr movement in Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad. "But we are trying our best to avoid such confrontation and find alternative ways to armed confrontation."....

Here you have the conundrum for the other side.  When the "mountie" shows up at the door to arrest your guy do you roll over and hand over your man and thus recognize the authority of the government or else do you fight a battle that you know you can't win.

The message may be starting to penetrate that there is no battle that can be won.  Sadr found that out in Najaf.  The Sunnis found that out in Fallujah.  Hopefully the Taliban found that out in Panjwaii and even Hezbollah found that out in Lebanon.  When they stand and fight, they lose.

Perhaps that knowledge is behind even Ahmadinejad's profound announcements that he doesn't need the nuclear bomb after all.  Reminding people of outside threats is great for internal cohesion.  Not so great if you actually have to stand in place and fight that threat from an inferior position.

With that they are "reduced" to fighting what can be a more effective "hearts and minds" campaign:  the propaganda war.  In that regard the "poor and downtrodden" of the world have many allies - one of them in the Kremlin.  People who have spent a career supporting anybody that opposes the established order so as to destabilize governments, divert resources and create opportunities.