Maritime and National Security Blog

The Afghan Army - Take 2

There seem to be few professionals with the stature and respect to generate an opinion many others will heed. General Barry McCaffrey, USA (Ret) has spent a lot of time in the Middle East and recently returned from a trip to Afghanistan. He reported on that trip to the Faculty at West Point where he is an Adjunct Professor. His 05 December 2009 Memo is informative and fact filled.  He also states that, “We are unlikely to achieve our political and military goals in 18 months.”  Eighteen months is the President’s deadline. (see earlier post on the Afghan Army)  General McCaffrey believes it will be a multi-year effort, he did not comment specifically on domestic support for such an extension, but did note that over 60% of the U. S. population is unsupportive of the effort at some level.

 

He does note both the problems and the success of stabilizing this dreadfully poor country.  Surprisingly his opinion of Hamid Karzai does not square with the vast majority of media portrayals, perhaps there is hope – though even President Karzai’s brother is seen as corrupt.

 

The reason this effort will take so long is the gaining strength of the Taliban, which seems tied directly to the support of drug money, al Qaeda and very likely other sponsorship.  There is too much progress in their attack strategies and resources to believe they are developing this capability on their own.  There is state power behind the Taliban effort. 

 

Because the military, both NATO and Afghan are deeply involved in fighting, because the country is so unstable, non-governmental agencies have very little presence and so the development of civil society is slow.  In addition, the people allegedly do not support the Taliban, but are hedging their bets by dealing with both sides.  This is certainly in their personal interest, the Taliban are a violent group.  It does slow national stability.

 

The one thing that seems so important to Afghanistan that the General did not mention is a sense of national identity – and from there will flow better unity among the varied tribal factions.  The Afghan people need this sense of nationalism.  The Taliban are very willing to provide an identity, if we allow it to happen. It is this important bit of psychology that the diplomatic, political and NATO forces must encourage at every level.

 

General Barry McCaffrey Memo on Afghanistan

http://www.cffc.navy.mil/091206_AAR_-_November_2009.pdf

 

General McCaffrey Biography

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_McCaffrey

The Politics of Terror

It is important to understand that they will never stop the attacks that are so detrimental to the nation’s security effort. If there is a single issue upon which all individuals across the varied political landscape should cooperate it must be the fight against groups that use terror tactics.  Regrettably, the politicians have redefined the lower limit of the partisan envelope. This plays into the hands of those who would do even greater harm.

When President Bush did not react quickly enough to the shoe bomber Richard Reid, Democrats – including Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, who now is defending the same behavior in his boss, roundly criticized him.  The criticism of policies, procedures, and behavior bounce across the net in a game of political tennis, served up by the political party not in power.  Rather than seek cooperation, rather than setting aside partisanship for bipartisan solutions these elected political leaders and the pundits on both sides fan the flames of dissent.  There is a cornucopia of issues for the amusement of the partisan political leaders in Washington.  Pick another topic to satisfy your partisan urges and remove the aisle from the discussion on dealing with those who use terror.

Islamic radicals will persist in testing our nation’s security efforts as well as our will to outlast them.  We cannot even begin to compete with the comparative solidarity of any group that uses terror as a means to achieve a goal, unless we get it right in Washington.

The Afghan Army

Political commentary usually suffers from the emphasis on politics over analysis and bias over impartiality.  Concentration on these qualities, whether on a speech, policy or document, avoids the deeper aspects of a problem and obscures for others the truth of the matter.  Such is the problem yet again with the commentary after President Obama’s speech at West Point. It seems the proper time to comment after all the punditry is complete and the topic is no longer a prime news topic, yet still a very important issue.

The pundits concentrated on the President’s delivery, the character and behavior of the audience, why the decision took so long, how Congress would pay for the new deployments, the timetable, why the President is not supplying all the requested troops and other issues that bear little on the problem.  There was little or no substantive analysis of the true challenges to operations in Afghanistan. There was little discussion about a realistic end game for this war torn nation.

No matter the bias of the media establishment, all of them seem to see a resurgent Afghanistan as the goal for all the U. S. effort in the region. However, the very basic question is whether the United States and its allies can establish a stable government supported by the majority of Afghans that would have the will and ability to control the Taliban threat and by extension al Qaida before July 2011.  The answer is certainly no.

However, it is a NO, with a caveat.  One of the aforementioned requirements could compensate for a lack of progress in the others…control through the Afghan Army. This security force has been nearly eight years in the making and still does not come close to providing the security required by a government held hostage in Kabul and other larger cities.  It is an important element to long-term security, yet received small mention in the President’s speech.

The hazard in building a reliable security organization (Army, Police) is the creation of a force that would not only overcome insurgent elements, but also provide more reliable governance than the current civilian government.  There is no history of democracy or civilian control of the military in Afghanistan. The hazard in not building a competent security force is the potential to lose to the Taliban.

The training of the Afghan Army and Security Forces must increase in intensity and direction.  Combat skills, of course, but also training to overcome cultural and tribal problems that will fracture the Army with pressure from outside as well as inside.  The Afghan Army must be able to withstand the Taliban, drug lords, tribal factions and a corrupt government. The current pace of training will not achieve the goal of between 150,000 and 200,000 troops by the President’s deadline. The long term problem is how to sustain such a force in a nation with less than GDP of Delaware.

President Obama’s Speech at West Point – 01 December 2009

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-address-nation-way-forward-afghanistan-and-pakistan

Politics and IEDs

The weapons of an insurgency are usually technologically inferior to those of the opposing force.  In the case of Afghanistan, the Taliban have basic conventional weapons, AK-47s, RPG and the like, but they are also using whatever they can manipulate into something lethal and difficult to counter.  They took a page from the Iraqi insurgent handbook-IEDs and because Afghanistan lacks the abundance of munitions found in Iraq, the explosive of choice is the fertilizer-based bomb.

No matter the explosive, it is the deadly nature and inability to counter these devices every time that is the problem.  The Department of Defense created the Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) to integrate all service efforts to counter these devices.  According to the Director of JIEDDO, the IED replaced direct fire as the enemy’s weapons of choice.  The majority of Allied casualties are a result of IEDs.  Obviously, this is an effort with a clear goal and plenty of focus.

A clear goal-yes, a clear focus-perhaps.  Secretary of Defense Gates recently appointed a group to look into the anti IED effort.  JIEDDO does not appear to be a smooth operating joint organization.  At the beginning of the counter-IED effort, the United States Navy had the expertise in Electronic Warfare (EW) and the Army called upon them to aid their effort to defeat IEDs electronically.  This not only helped the Army who lacked this expertise, but also helped the Navy gain some needed credibility in supporting the war effort on the ground.  In a joint environment, that Navy would retain and expand the EW effort to support the Army and Marine Corps.  Not so, the Army is expending resources to develop EW training, fielding counters is not keeping up with the pace of change on the ground. 

Overall, the Army is working very hard leading this effort; however, there are still some problems. Counter IED development and acquisition efforts are plagued by more dithering than decisions.  There should be a greater effort to integrate information from the field, specifically the efforts by other nations.  In addition, post disarming or explosion forensics are analyzed and integrated at a slow pace.  There are rumors of political maneuvering and infighting between the services.  This project should be the epitome of jointness.  It will be interesting to review the findings of the group Secretary Gate’ appoints and to see if the services can put rivalry aside to more fully focus on taking IEDs out of the insurgents arsenal.

References

JIEDDO Web Site

https://www.jieddo.dod.mil/about.aspx

Washington Post JIEDDO Article

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/14/AR2009111402437.html

Equal Recognition

This has nothing to do with Maritime or National Security.  In a recent interview with The Hill, the reporter asked Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus the following question.

The Hill:  What are some of your major priorities for next year and beyond.

SecNav:  The main thing I am always going to focus on is taking care of sailors and Marines and their families.

Why was Sailor lowercase and not capitalized?  The short answer is the Associated Press (AP) Style Guide does not allow it and the AP Style Guide (currently called the StyleBook) is the major reference for print media.  The Military Times Newspapers, publishers of Navy Times even uses lower case.

Why does the Navy capitalize Sailor?  In 1996 after the death of Admiral Arleigh Burke, the CNO sent NAVADMIN 96-02 that stated henceforth the word Sailor would be capitalized in all U. S. Navy correspondence in his honor.  Arleigh Burke-Sailor.

In 2006, the editor of the AP Style Guide, Norm Goldstein, refused to entertain the idea that Sailor should be capitalized. Even when presented with a recommendation that narrowed the scope to capitalize the word only in reference to a member of the United States Navy, he refused to consider it.

It is time for a change.

Net-Centric vs. Info-Centric Warfare

The Navy is moving from a Network-Centric warfare philosophy to an Information-Centric one. “It (Information Warfare) acknowledges that information itself, not its technology architecture or the Navy’s command and control structure, is the key to enabling effective maritime superiority (Signal Magazine, December 2009)”.  The infrastructure is still important – don’t dump one for the other.

Military Commanders will always want more information for decision-making, not less and information that is closer to real time. The increasing urbanization of conflict means battle closer to population centers and the chance for involving non-combatants.  There is a very real reluctance to engage when collateral damage is a possibility, a reluctance felt mainly by the United States and other allied nations. (A distinct, but necessary disadvantage that requires mitigation)  Information that is timely, relevant and actionable will aid decision-making and allow commanders to take appropriate action, while there is an opportunity for greater success and less risk.

“The Navy must be more focused on how information is derived, developed and moved to the right customer at the right time in the right way, states Admiral Gary Roughead. This is the key to providing the Navy with an information dominance advantage that will be extraordinarily important in the future (Signal Magazine, December 2009)”.

Certainly information is important – vitally important and a distinct advantage over an adversary. However, the types of information needed for informed decision making often contain large amounts of data, a high series of high-resolution still photographs will utilize on level of transmission, and streaming video from a submarine periscope will require another.  This means more bandwidth then currently available or better data compression technology (or both) – all infrastructure concerns that should keep the net-centric philosophy current.  Admiral Roughead also has other concerns.  

“Antennas may hold the key, Adm. Roughead offers, we in the Navy can talk about a bandwidth problem, but I don’t believe we cannot say it is not an antenna problem. Issues such as bandwidth usage may be explored, but antenna solutions also can be helpful—and that is the path the Navy will be taking, he says.”

The Navy is hopefully on the right path – they cannot afford to shelve the net-centric philosophy, but should expand it to recognize the importance of what travels over the network – and why.  One philosophy is no more important than the other. A network is useless without information, likewise efficiently collected information is no good if unused because of an inefficient network.