Afghanistan

Doug Grindle, October 14, 2008 Pech Valley, northeast Afghanistan

This is a fairly wild region thats just now coming under better control - and slowly at that.

Afghanistan is Improving Slowly. As much as the news from Afghanistan tends to be bad these days, some bright spots are already faintly discernable on the horizon.As I have mentioned, things in Afghanistan are no piece of cake. Attacks are up about 30 percent this year.

For the first time the generals have said the situation in Pakistan will need to be solved before the war in Afghanistan can be won. And the war is getting deadlier. More than 130 US soldiers dead so far this year. Roadside bombs, used to such deadly effect in Iraq, are now well and truly part of the Afghan scene. The Afghan defense minister said the other day bomb makers, sophisticated enough to know how to blow apart coalition vehicles, are forsaking Iraq as a lost cause and flocking here instead.And the drug trade continues, often under the protection and sponsorship of the Taliban. Corruption is rife in the government and security forces.Whew! How bad can it get over here? It's pretty bad.And yet.. and yet.Some of those hopeful signs are starting to emerge, and they are going to get bigger as the time goes on.

Development is the keynote of the strategy to win here. Here in the Pech Valley, I am typing this on a small base by a river on the valley floor. The Pech used to be terrible from one end to the other. About 2 years ago the government (paid for by the US) ran a paved road along the bottom. Now the Pech Valley is pretty quiet on the bottom, and the insurgents spent most of their time in the hills above the valley, dropping in mortars and rockets on bases like this one. The moral: development works. Too bad it will take another year before roads go into the side valleys, where the same peace-making can be expected to take place. Some places will never be peaceful (the Korengal, a side valley of the Pech, is one example). But overall,
development works. - In the northeast the US military is now moving to arm the
local tribes to fight the insurgents. This is the same strategy that General David
Petraeus (now commander of US Central Command) used in Iraq to win the support of the Sunnis. Which won the war there. Essentially, you pay the tribes to act as
militiamen. For a wage they fight the insurgents. It is the earliest of days yet
to see if this will work here (about 2 weeks in). But we know unemployment causes
instability. 10 percent of the population is poor enough to want to fight for
their supper. This strategy ought to work here as it worked in Iraq.- Corruption
is plenty lousy. But the government is finally beginning to fire people who have
their hand in the till. Five provincial governors are 'reformist' governors whose
backgrounds are working for NGOs. They are the antithesis of warlords, who are
universally corrupt.

A body called the Independent Directorate for Local Governance has been set up to appoint provincial government officials, who are generally not corrupt. Still, all too often corrupt officials are let off. Or they are 'fired' and promoted. But there are Afghans out there who will resist bribery on a large scale. The earliest steps have been taken.- The economy is getting better, slowly. People are desperately poor still. Prices are rising. But the number of cars in Kabul has risen approximately four-fold since 2001. There is money in the markets of provincial capitals. As roads are built trade invariably increases. The process is just beginning- Afghanistan can expect a mini-surge of US troops. Some analysts, such as the British ambassador to Afghanistan, believe foreign troops are the problem not the solution. Not so. A surge of troops into the northeast, which can insulate Pakistan’s restive tribal area across the border, will bring much of the stability needed to build more roads! This is a
good thing, even though many other provinces will not be covered. And even though
the money for roads too limited, even here near Pakistan.

The Afghan National Army (ANA) is supposed to double to about 125,000 men within 5 years. At last. The ANA is good, and this should have happened years ago.- The Pakistanis are arming their own tribal militias across the border. It could well be possible to foster a split within the Taliban, which is becoming a criminal conspiracy at heart, if the right pressure is exerted long enough.So in all, the news from Afghanistan is grim. It is terrible. But for the first time in months, it looks like the news from Afghanistan could be much improved by the middle of next year.

WCCA member, long time supporter and friend Doug Grindle sends us his latest "News Note" .

Hello All:
I hope alls well.
Sorry - this is only a week after the last NewsNote!
Oh well never mind.
The roadside bomb situation is getting worse here, getting to be more like Iraq used
to be.
The more things change...
If this is all too much just send an unsubscribe
all the best
Doug

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Khost, Afghanistan - With the US Army's strategy in Afghanistan, victory at best is
going to be a long time coming. At worst it isn’t going to come at all.
The US strategy is based on a broad-based plan that assumes the insurgency
cannot be stopped by killing terrorists alone. Instead of killing the
insurgents, the villages which harbor the insurgents must be brought over to the
side of the government.
As I've mentioned before, this strategy is the Marie Antoinette 'let them eat
cake' philosophy turned on its head - if the peasants are starving and unhappy,
provide them wells, electricity, schools and a government that cares and they
will decide to support the government. Add in security, whereby the locals have
a reasonable chance of surviving if they resist the insurgents, because the
Afghan army and police patrol the villages consistently, and victory will come.
This strategy of course takes literally years to implement. It takes two to
four years to build the main roads, years more to build the infrastructure
inside the villages at the ends of the roads. But it should work.
This is of course the rosy scenario (though it is reasonably likely to work).
But there are some flies in the ointment that could wreck the plan. And there
isn't much time left to experiment because after seven years of war, time here
is running out.
The flies are:
* Tribal rivalries and divisions. Many tribes hate each other and uniting them
is difficult. More importantly, tribes stick together. Getting each village to
sign on with the government often requires the entire tribe to sign on. But
building a well in one village won’t persuade a whole tribe to back the government.
Especially when half the tribe lives across the border in Pakistan and those members
are paid regularly by insurgents to kill Americans. Hydro projects on this side of
the border don’t influence anyone across the border in Pakistan. And there had be
plenty of those projects on this side of the border.
* Corruption is eating the system. Corruption isn’t just petty thievery and
graft. It isn’t just pilfering fuel supplies meant for army and police vehicles.
It isn't even giving your incompetent cousin the army commander’s job that should
have gone to someone who actually is able to do the job properly. Corruption is a
breakdown in the rule of law. It means rapists of children are not brought to
justice. Murderers and terrorists get out of jail for a bribe. Families are
dishonored and the government is seen as the problem, not the solution.
Americans describe corruption as an Afghan problem which the Afghans must solve
themselves. Phooey. America pays for and props up the government. Exerting
leverage to demand mass firings of incompetent army officers, government
officials who steal from their constituents, and jailers and judges and police
who refuse to arrest criminals or let them out of prison, is badly needed.
America has the leverage to impose it. In time the country will grow out of
corruption, as the economy revs up and as bad people are slowly eased out. But
for now some government sectors - namely the army and the criminal justice
system - should be held to a high enough standard that firings for corruption
are commonplace and not the exception. These sectors should not be a mockery of
what the government is supposed to stand for, because that alienates the very
people now sitting on the fence. It wouldn't matter if America had a different
strategy, but it does matter when the US strategy hinges on popular good will
toward the government.
* The last fly is unfortunately the US effort itself. Many US military officers
and civilian officials make too many excuses for basic failings.
Problem - USAID and State Department are not pulling their weight. How can the
Afghan government be stood up with a handful of civil advisors in each province?
It cannot. The excuse - no one wants to serve in the provinces which are
'unsafe'.
Problem - the police training is years behind where it shoudl be because police
training was not taken seriously until 2006. The excuse - the international
community failed its mission in previous years.
Problem - there are too few US soldiers and US Marines training Afghan police
and army units, and it's going to get worse as the security forces expand. (For
instance, most Afghan Army battalions have half the US advisors the US Army plan
says they need.) Problem - major infrastructure projects take literally years
longer than they should. (For instance, the Khost-Gardez road, repaving 62
kilometers, will take 5 years to complete. But the roadwork itself is expected
to only take about 7 months). Problem - there are too few helicopters.
Problem - the US intelligence services (civil and military) are providing
rudimentary service to the war effort at best, in the prime task of finding and
killing insurgent plotters throughout Afghanistan.
The excuses are generally that Afghanistan is a sideshow compared to Iraq and we
are doing the best we can with limited resources. But that is an excuse, not a
reason for such widespread problems.
Almost two years ago General Petraeus altered the way of doing things in Iraq,
with smaller bases, more troops and better coordination with locals (especially
Sunnis). The result was a win (a fragile win but a win nonetheless). In
Afghanistan, more forthright talking, more creative solutions and less excuses
are needed.
Otherwise it’s going to be a long war, and possibly one without end. The
American people are patient, but a 20-year-war here is untenable, and you can
bet al Qaeda and the Taliban know it too.

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Here's the link

Related:
This week on WCCA's "Flipside" Lynne Simonds gave a stunning interview with a military reporter discussing the inhuman brutality and psychological hardship military personnel (soldiers) including military reporters have to deal with in action and upon returning home. You do not want to miss part two of that program.

Peace

Bad News For Afghanistan
by Doug Grindle
August 24, 2008

Kabul, Afghanistan - The war in Afghanistan forges ahead. But a new reality is setting in. Unfortunately, it looks like things are likely to get worse before the situation can get better.
How much worse? Attacks by insurgents are up by 40-percent over a year earlier in many areas.
NATO commanders are calling for more NATO troops. Forces are stretched thin in the farthest reaches of the Pakistan border areas.
Better equipment is needed. More mine-resistant vehicles are being deployed (though that’s not a miracle cure, as the high center of gravity on the vehicles on mountain roads can lead to roll-over problems).
More Afghan troops are needed. The Afghan National Army, with its 70,000 man force, is fighting the Taliban and a half-dozen or so other insurgent groups, including al Qaeda. This year the US has finally agreed to pony up billions more dollars to expand the army by another 50,000 men. By contrast, the police force for New York City is 48,000 officers.
But the biggest and most important change of all is one you won't see mentioned too often: suddenly Pakistan matters.
Up until now, the official line went roughly that the border was unsealable, and the war needed to be won inside Afghanistan instead. The strategy was to win the war by enticing Afghan villagers to reject insurgents after they crossed the porous border and arrived in the villages.
The army's plan is to offer better security, better local Aghan government and a heap of local aid projects (schools, roads and power plants) to persuade the villagers to side with the Kabul government. The war would be won despite the border areas over in Pakistan continuing to host terrorist sanctuaries.
Now Army officers say that strategy is probably not going to be enough.
"I don't think there will be a successful conclusion to the war in Afghanistan until there is a successful conclusion to the issues along the Pakistan frontier," said Brigadier General Mark Milley, the deputy commander of the 101st Airborne Division at Bagram, the unit in charge of many of the border areas.
That assessment bodes especially ill because Pakistan is, frankly, a mess.
Now that Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has resigned, a weak government rules Pakistan.
The Pakistan military consistently loses its battles with terrorist in the tribal areas.
Al Qaeda and other militants are becoming more entrenched in the border regions.
The ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency, helped blow up the Indian embassy in Kabul last month, according to US intelligence. Hardline ISI officers continue to help the terrorists, as long as they focus on destabilizing Afghanistan.
In short, the situation on the Pakistan side of the frontier is bad and likely to get worse.
Change in Afghanistan is slow, but its remorseless.
The US Army's strategy is an awfully slow one, because it takes literally years to build the roads, schools and hydro-electric plants that are the key to the plan.
Opposing the US, Al Qaeda is slowly putting more effort into Afghanistan, even as it scales back in Iraq. Terrorists are slowly but steadily getting better at killing western soldiers, by using roadside bombs and improving their ambush techniques. Casualties among western soldiers are set to be the highest ever this year.
Something needs to be done. Something is being done. But that something is likely to be dependent more than ever on what happens in Pakistan - where the American military is banned from operating.
So the latest news from Afghanistan is not good.

DG