17 NOV 09
What has surprised me the most about the training I have received is how intellectual both the teachers and my fellow warriors are (warriors is the new “joint” term for soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen). When a few minutes of down time comes our way, the number of IPODs coming out is actually very low. The number of books coming out is astoundingly high. I am not the exception in that I am trying to read as much as possible about Afghanistan as possible. While my training has been with only officers, I will not be surprised at all if the enlisted ranks continue this trend. I have seen one person pull out purely pleasure reading (Dune), but all the other books have been related to the War. Histories of Afghanistan, novels about the people and culture, even books about counter-insurgency in other wars. The culture of learning is fostered by the folks here at Camp Atterbury, where in addition to a crash-course in the languages of our provinces (Pashto in my case), we had nightly lectures from Indiana University on the Taliban, Afghan history, Pakistani involvement, and previous PRT experiences.
Given the mission ahead, maybe a thinking force is what is necessary. This is a battle which is fought in the mountains, in the cities, in the valleys, but it cannot be won there. No matter how valiantly the marines and soldiers fight the Taliban from outposts high above the villages, they cannot be defeated there. They can be killed, but not defeated. The only place that the Taliban can be defeated is in the hearts of every Afghan civilian. Insurgencies die when the populace no longer wills them to live. The IRA was not defeated by the British military or by the justice system. It was not defeated because the money stopped flowing in from Boston. It was stopped by an Irish population no longer willing to support it. Stopped by the fact that insurgents cannot supply themselves like an army. They must be supplied by the locals who want the insurgency to be victorious.
I think it is fitting that the Provincial Reconstruction Teams are commanded by Air Force and Navy officers. This is not an Army job, and therefore it helps to have a fresh set of eyes on the problem. While we have experienced army officers in our teams, most of the leadership have never seen combat. My team is led by a Navy Pilot (who was the CO of Brendan’s Training Squadron in P-cola). The only PRT CO who has a combative MOS is a Navy SEAL Commander, which is extremely fitting, since this is just more special operations. We have already been told that a lot of our tasks have to be approached from an un-army point of view, like taking off your body armor to go visit the local governor. While markedly unsafe, it is important to show that we are not an occupational force, but a force to help. If we take fire from insurgents, responding with 155mm Howitzer fire will cost us dearly in the hearts of the villagers, even though it will definitely kill insurgents.
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Eddie, I'm glad to see that yet another member of the family has entered blogdom. Given enough time and effort, I think we may be able to subject the medium to our will and rule the world solely through Blogger.
ReplyDeleteIt's heartening to hear that reconstruction teams are being given a wide-ranging curriculum in preparation for their duties. A lack of cultural knowledge certainly hindered our early efforts in the GWOT, especially in Iraq. No doubt this will pay great dividends as your mission requires constant interaction with the local populace, with the bulk of trigger-pulling left to others.
But I think it's rather unfair to to imply that the trigger-pullers have been hindered by an 'Army' point of view in their endeavors. Again, this may have been true in the early stages of the war; but as conventional forces in the Army (and, ahem, Marine Corps) proved in Iraq, they became remarkably adept at turning away from conventional thinking and shifting to an asymmetrical mindset. In isolated cases before the surge, and throughout the country as surge forces came into play, bringing a revamped COIN strategy with them, local commanders were able to fight the 'three-block' war with consistent success, rebuilding schools on one street, providing food and medical aid on another, and killing bad guys on the third. General Petraeus, as we know, was very good at this early on in Mosul; the Marines in Anbar province were good as well, turning a region that was considered "lost" into a poster child for successful COIN methodology. Part of these small victories came from gestures precisely like what you mentioned, like removing body armor as a gesture of good faith to local leaders.
I'm not disparaging your training; no doubt it's quality stuff and it's certainly wise, I think, to have dedicated reconstruction teams that can focus of taking care of local concerns while the knuckle-draggers kill the Taliban. Just keep in the back of your mind that none of this stuff is new, and that many of the valuable lessons you're being taught were learned by average grunts in the Army and Marine Corps who successfully worked outside their standard box of locating, closing with and destroying the enemy. Also, approaching things with a fresh set of eyes is well and good, and I agree that winning over the population is vital in any COIN effort; but I'd argue that it's less an 'un-Army' attitude that garners results, and more one big, glaring deficiency that we're only now correcting in Afghanistan: security. You will win no hearts and minds if local villagers are terrified that they'll be slaughtered in the night should they cooperate. They need to know that they and their families will be safe, and that requires lots of trigger-pullers on the ground, doing the Army/Marine thing, which is locating, closing with, and destroying.
Incidentally, I'd also point out that at this stage in the war, no one is responding to sniper fire with counter-battery fire from howitzers. As was made abundantly clear to me at FAC school, should I go in country I will have to scream and beg for permission to drop ordnance, no matter how good a reason I think I have, precisely because our ROE has become so restrictive that we'd rather let the sniper live than risk killing civilians by responding with anything bigger than a bullet.
P.S. With your permission I'd like to add your blog to my list of blogs advertised on my page; I just want to clear it with you since you have some fairly specific information on yourself listed.
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