Boots on "Being There"

The Washington Post on October 27 carried a front-page article describing the career of American Matthew Hoh – a construction engineer by training, a Marine with two tours in Iraq, and until the end of October 2009 a respected civilian working with Foreign Service Officers in Afghanistan.
What brought Hoh to the attention of the media was his decision to resign from his affiliation with the State Department and the Pentagon because he could not find a logical rationale for U.S. troops and civilians (along with troops and civilians from NATO and other countries) to be Afghanistan.

His position, as reported by the Post, has nothing to do with killing or capturing Afghan Taliban fighters trying to eject foreign forces that invaded their country in 2001. Hoh cannot find any “vital U.S. national interest” that must be safeguarded using (or threatening to use) military power.

Moreover, Hoh believes that the current Afghan strategy along with the “latest” rendition under review at the White House will not produce the results anticipated by the Pentagon, the Obama administration, and the coalition allies – let along meet the desires of most Afghanis for security and stability in their villages and towns.

Hoh spent ten months in Afghanistan working with the coalition provincial reconstruction team, the province’s governor and other local officials, and the State Department officers in Kabul. Despite the success of the reconstruction project he oversaw, Hoh finally realized that the U.S. approach was incomplete because time after time, project after project, the one category that none of the power players – Washington, London, Paris, Rome, the UN, Osama bin-Laden and al-Qaeda, Mullah Omar and the Taliban – consult is the people of Afghanistan.

Hoh did not just stumble on a hidden weakness in the structure and application of governance in Afghanistan, or a defect in the program of action put together by the Taliban to regain power. Afghanistan may have special twists in the never-ending struggle for power, but these twists are Afghani responses to what are Afghani problems. (September 11, 2001 was not a problem for the ruling Taliban faction until George Bush threw down the gauntlet October 7, 2001.) This is precisely what one should anticipate as rulers wrestle with their challenges. Unfortunately, U.S. presidents seem to believe that every world crisis demands an American response.

And because a military response is inevitable or at least “all options are on the table,” the form of crisis after crisis is repeated endlessly. Administration after administration finds itself constrained even before it occupies the executive branch by the initial assumptions that underpinned the U.S. international affairs position in the Cold War – particularly that the next war would be a protracted nuclear holocaust from which no one escapes but nonetheless has to be fought for “principles” and ideology before all else.

What Matthew Hoh “discovered” in Afghanistan were the simple ABCs of how people interact with other people every day – neighbors, relatives, foreigners, corrupt officials, and invading armies. For most of humanity, simply getting by is an accomplishment, and for this security they will fight against anyone attempting to alter their customs and culture. Yet such arrangements are easily forged and dissolved. The 80-to-20 silhouette of rural-to-urban demographics could have projected who would gain the most in Afghanistan’s September 2009 presidential balloting. The scale of irregularities discovered was so massive as to question whether a “fair” contest could ever be held.

Afghanistan will provide an answer to this question November 7. And as always – especially in countries with un- or under-education populations – the answer will be one that only they can devise.

War Fustrations

Last week (October 13), television’s Public Broadcasting System aired an examination of the war in Afghanistan on its weekly investigative program “Frontline.” The core of the program, titled “Obama’s War,” focused on a three-week photo journal record of a U.S. Marine Corps company’s operations as a lead unit of the 4,000 strong U.S. force deployed into southern Afghanistan.

This was not a “good news” or upbeat story. The reporter and his cameraman linked up with the Marines shortly after the unit arrived at its objective, a small town in Helmand province. This area is home turf for the Taliban movement; no U.S. unit – not to mention any Afghan army or police force representing the central government in Kabul – has been in the area for the past three years.

But the battle was not for control of the geographic terrain or to hunt down and capture or kill Taliban fighters. This was to be a long, sustained battle for control of the psychological terrain in which the U.S. soldiers, the Taliban fighters, and the ordinary Afghan noncombatants engage in a two-level game of chess. Each armed party maneuvers to block the other while simultaneously aiming to capture the neutral third queen and her pawns that have little interest in what the fight is all about. Put another way, as declaimed by the Pentagon’s civilian leadership, the Marines’ mission is to win the hearts and minds of the local residents.

Daily meetings with the governing elders of tribes, clans, and villages in the company’s “area of responsibility” are meant to encourage mutual trust by both sides: the Marines seek information on Taliban plans, movements, and the operation of local “shadow government” structures that are more responsive to the needs of the people than is Kabul. For their part, the elders object to the presence of the foreign soldiers and the death and destruction they bring with their military power and to which the Taliban respond.

If the Marines and the villagers are like the proverbial two ships that pass each other at night but never make sustained, substantive contact, the same relationship pertains between the Taliban fighters and the civilian population – but with the insurgents more willing to impose their interpretation of culture and governance. The difference in the relationship is quite clearly captured in the “Frontline” program. Frame after frame of the video camera tell of the frustrations that the foreign soldiers encounter at every meeting with the tribal elders – and transmit in their body language as well as their words to the civilian side. The Americans do not understand the Afghan language any better than the Afghanis understand English – or have any incentive to learn. Even indigenous translators who have studied American English are frequently unable to transmit the idiom and idiosyncratic connotations that are so important to conveying the exact “meaning” of words.

This disconnect is not confined to the American experience with foreign populations. There exists a divide between the civilians who are charged with maintaining military readiness and many senior uniformed personnel who see their role as completing missions they are given to implement.

What is missing is a redefinition of the armed forces role in U.S. “national defense” coupled with a recognition that the U.S. cannot unilaterally dictate the conditions that other nations must follow. The assumption in the late 20th Century was that Washington had a moral duty to prevent war because it had the power to intervene in armed conflicts between other countries. This is neither sound diplomacy nor useful in justification the dispatch of Marines and other U.S. officials, uniformed and civilian, to “solve” disputes with minimal collateral damage.

What the White House and now Congress finally seem to recognize is that the U.S. citizenry is not as keen about sending the troops to foreign lands as are elected officials. The Afghan population clearly is not waiting for the foreign soldiers to arrive, but they could be helped if the Afghan government could provide security and protect their way of life, their customs, and culture.

For their part, the foreign troops need only to provide the context in which the public will find a way to achieve self-governance on their terms – terms that exclude the Taliban insurgency.

Personnel Statistics Minus One

The Pentagon declared yesterday unconditional success in a 36 year long low-intensity campaign to win hearts and minds to its vision of the future.

For the first time since the inception of the all-volunteer military in 1973, the Pentagon succeeded in surpassing the numerical goals it set for the recruiting commands in each of the services. This year’s unexpected run-away winner was the active Army, which recruited more than 3,000 civilians above the goal of 65,000 needed to fill the ranks.

The main influence on the decision to sign-up in 2009 is quite apparent: economics. From corporations to small business and “independent contractors,” the number of people losing their jobs and seeking employment rose dramatically each week. By the end of September, 9.8 percent of the U.S. population was unemployed and looking for a job. And waiting for many of these job-seekers was the Pentagon.

For many years, military recruiters had encountered resistance from parents of potential recruits to any attempt to contact the prospective enlistee. The implosion of the U.S. economy changed that calculus even though a significant contributing cause for the faltering economy was the billions of dollars being spent to fight two wars – in Iraq and in Afghanistan-Pakistan.

To mine what professional recruiters regard as a golden opportunity to boost numbers willing to sign on the dotted line, during FY2009 the services put more recruiters on the street to participate in job fairs at high schools and even in junior colleges, to open and staff recruiting offices in small towns with high unemployment, and to push post-service options such as special training that can be used in civilian occupations or pay for college tuition.

Not too long ago, the military had to pay not only re-enlistment bonuses to retain experienced soldiers (e.g., Special Forces) but also bribe prospective recruits with signing bonuses that often totaled $20,000 or more. Signing “bonuses” for 40 percent of high school graduates who enlisted in FY2009 averaged $14,000, up $2,000 more than in FY2008.

Quality in terms of the percentage of recruits with high school diplomas exceeded the Pentagon’s benchmark as did the new recruits who scored above the minimum level for the Armed Forces Qualification Test. Not everything was rosy, however. Obesity has become a significant barrier to aspiring recruits.

The break-out for new accessions by service components for FY2009 is:

Active Duty:

Army: 108 percent (70,045 actual vs. 65,000 goal)
Navy: 100 percent (35,527 actual vs. 35,500 goal)
Marine Corps: 100 percent (31,413 actual vs. 31,400 goal)
Air Force: 100 percent (31,983 actual vs. 31,980 goal)

Reserves:

Army National Guard: 100 percent (56,071 actual vs. 56, 000 goal)
Army Reserve: 105 percent (36,189 actual vs. 34,598 goal)
Navy Reserve: 101 percent (7,793 actual vs. 7,743 goal)
Marine Corps Reserve: 122 percent (8,805 actual vs. 7,194 goal)
Air National Guard: 106 percent (10,075 actual vs. 9,500 goal)
Air Force Reserve: 109 percent (8,604 actual vs. 7,863 goal)

Average expenditure per recruit who signed with the military was $10,000.

For FY 2010, the military recruitment commands will reduce their $5 billion budget by 11 percent.

What would be an interesting future comparative statistic is how many of the new recruits die in Iraq and Afghanistan. That statistic was not mentioned at all.

Nobel Peace Prize

Some weeks nothing goes as expected.

For example: President Barack Obama flew from Washington to Copenhagen last week to push Chicago’s chance to be the host for the 2016 Olympics. However, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided on Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as the 2016 host. Detractors of the U.S. President called the Rio choice by the IOC “a stinging repudiation” of the president and an ill-advised interference in a non-national security issue.

And then there is the week when, even though still stress-filled, contains a completely unanticipated event that bestows a sense of achievement or success that usually happens only in fairy tales – complete with fairy godmother wielding a magic wand and throwing fairy dust at your opponents.

Yesterday was one of those rare weeks. On Friday the U.S. awoke to the news from Oslo, Norway that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 had been awarded to Barack Obama. Many observers were taken aback, especially since the president had been in office a mere 10 months and his familiarity with the intricacies of national policy on global issues did not emerge before his run for the U.S. elections in 2008.

The process for selecting the prize winner is a closely-held activity. Five eminent Norwegians are elected by the Norwegian parliament to constitute the committee charged with reviewing the accomplishments of the individuals nominated for the award and to choose the person, persons, or institutions to be honored.

The winner receives a monetary award – this year amounting to $1.4 million. (The money will be given to charity.) The honoree chosen by the Nobel Committee may have devoted extraordinary effort over decades promoting human dignity, civil rights, and human rights. Some winners had endured frequent and severe detention or long periods in prison. Others had spent months and years working to overcome sectarian and ethnic hatred even in the times when much of the world had accepted that the status quo could not be changed.

Similarly, those selected for this recognition come from a wide spectrum of “occupations.” Some are ordinary housewives who refuse to cower before the bullies in society. Others start as leaders of nonviolent opposition movements seeking to gain (or regain) the liberties that have been denied them by “the authorities” – normally the petty dictators who say they are serving the people’s interest. Still others have spent a lifetime in their own country or in foreign lands working to provide humanitarian aid to the most needy – caring for the poor, the ill, the hungry. The prize has even been awarded to United Nations peacekeepers, to the International Red Cross, and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) because of their efforts to promote peace, not war.

In all, since 1901, 21 Americans have been honored. (Conversely, no award was made for 20 years, with most omissions occurring during World War I (four), World War II (four), and the U.S.-Vietnam War (two).

Politicians sometimes are honored. In the case of the U.S., the frequency of such selections can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Two men honored while occupying the Oval Office were Theodore Roosevelt (1906) for mediating the end of the 1905 Russian-Japanese war, and Woodrow Wilson for his leadership in creating the League of Nations and his introduction into international discourse his famous “Fourteen Points” as part of the treaty ending World War I. In 2002, 21 years after his tenure as president, Jimmy Carter was honored in recognition of his global effort to improve the quality of life and the rule of law for people everywhere. Vice-President Al Gore shared the 2007 prize for his work on dealing with climate change and global warming. Many secretaries of state were selected for their peace initiatives. Few U.S. private persons have been chosen. One was Dr. Martin Luther King, selected in 1964 for his nonviolent campaign to end racial discrimination in the United States. Another was Jody Williams (1997) who was instrumental in the global treaty banning the use of landmines in war.

Looking at these achievements and the multitude of problems created by armed conflict today, the challenge facing President Obama is one of “walking the walk” for freedom and the end of warfare throughout the globe.

Eight Years On

“An occupying army cannot expect to find friends but [it must] give the uninvolved population every opportunity to have some kind of a quality of life.” MGEN Yair Naven (ret.), Israeli Defense Forces

October 7/8 will mark the eighth anniversary of the opening salvo on the “Taliban” faction of the ruling Afghanistan government, institutions, and people. At that point, there will be only 123 days – almost exactly one third of a year – before the White House, the Pentagon, and the American public find that the nation’s escalating involvement in Afghanistan has surpassed the length of another U.S. conflict – the American Revolutionary War.

It is worth noting, up front, that this milestone leaves only the Vietnam War as the nation’s longest. That dubious distinction may fall as well – that is if the U.S. and NATO commander of coalition forces, General Stanley McChrystal, finds the White House amenable to adding as many as 40,000 more U.S. troops to the 68,000 who are due “in-country” by the end of the year.

President Obama has stated that he remains undecided about the “surge” in troop numbers requested by McChrystal. The president is said to be making another strategy review, one which comes hard on the heels of “leaks” from the general’s “formal” update (presumably sent through Central Command Commander, General David Petraeus, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates). The leading alternatives are counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, a mix of the two, or another approach that expands the range of available options.

What is at stake is the answer to two interrelated yet simple questions. Is the vital interest of the United States – its continued existence as a nation-state – at risk from the actions of any other nation-state? Do the actions undertaken by the United States in or to other nation-states threaten their interests and continuity?

The answers can be found in the intellectual fervor at work in the decades before the formation of the United States. Many of the new ideas had been championed by English thinkers such as Adam Smith and John Locke (reason, natural law, government and social contract, economics), and French theorists such as Baron de Montesquieu (division of political power and the role of law) and Jean Jacque Rousseau (individual freedom, civil liberty). For these men the principal standard by which a person’s actions were to be judged rested not on the dictates of religion or royal privilege but on the patient and thoughtful use of reason to examine relevant circumstances that influence personal choices (and limitations on choices) by individuals and by the agreement of society as a whole. These were the tenets for which the “Founding Fathers” fought a war (albeit one supported, opposed, and ignored by approximately one third of the colonial population).

Thus the Revolutionary War was first and foremost a dispute over controlling the prevailing economic model in North America from the Atlantic shore to the discontinuous elevations that pass for a “mountain range” in the continental east. It was also a dispute over the emergence of national policy as settlers moved westward.

By the early 19th century, the ruling elites in Europe had succeeded in creating a multi-polar international system designed to dampen the frequency and intensity of wars. But the rise of unbridled nationalism undermined this promising trend, as it did the existence of equal and reciprocal obligations, responsibilities, and rights to be enjoyed by every individual in every country.

By the mid 20th century, disputes had become so intense that many predicted a permanent state of war in a bifurcated globe. Those who held a wide concept of the national interest also held that sustaining this interest required an unlimited readiness to apply military power to “resolve” all “zero-sum” disputes (those in which one side – us – wins everything while our adversary loses everything) in favor of the United States. Moreover, the freedoms and liberties inherited by the people became submerged to the rise of a new governing Leviathan, the “national security state.”

What the 43 year “Cold War” displaced in our history is the memory of how a people, for all the mistakes in their often assertive self-declared international pragmatism, managed to retain actively the intellectual foundations of their revolution for others to absorb. Historically, this struggle began April 3, 1775 when the “shot heard ‘round the world” was fired at Lexington and Concord, and was technically terminated at the signing of the Treaty of Paris on September 3, 1783. That shot continues to be heard around the world to this day – not to announce the integration of western freedom with the culture and traditions of others but to assume that U.S. national interest must and will be sustained – even if the last throw of the dice – through military power.

It is time to end the Pentagon’s addiction to the paradigm of annihilation – what some have labeled as “industrialized warfare” – that has become the last justification of the traditional American approach to war. Such wars may be “safer,” more palatable, and even more popular than wars of attrition. But they surely are no more “right” simply because fewer fatalities result with reduced exposure to danger by foreign forces.

Misreading ROEs

ROE III


As the first decade of the 2st century has amply demonstrated, war remains an encountered in which those who command are often confronted with conflicted information -- or even any information – on which to act.

Clearly, on the night of September 4, the 12-24 Taliban fighters had completely misread the tractability of the ground at the fording site on the Kunduz River. On finding that the site was so muddy as to be unusable for heavy vehicles – in this case two fully filled fuel tankers – some of the armed insurgents reportedly forced many residents from two villages near the river site to try to pull the second tanker free of the mud. When this effort failed, in a last attempt to salvage some of their prize, the insurgents invited the villagers to take fuel at no cost, thereby reducing the weight enough to free the mired tanker. Apparently, none of the insurgents considered the likelihood that NATO was watching their activity at the river – and deciding what to do.

Four miles away, the German commander, Colonel Georg Klein, decided that the Taliban would have two highly flammable truck bombs to use against his men or against Afghani security forces. He requested the F-15 warplanes strike the ford with satellite guided bombs. Thirty minutes later, at about 2:00 in the morning, the river site exploded in what surviving observers termed as two mushroom fireballs.

Few of the estimated 100 moving “blips” – each representing a human being – that the German surveillance radar operators were monitoring before the strike were still moving after the two satellite-guided 500 pound bombs exploded. The Germans, fearing the anger of the local residents caused by the high fatalities, deferred going to the bomb site until well into late afternoon. One of the recently created NATO inspection teams charged by General McChrystal to investigate incidents that kill civilian fatalities did not arrive for another 24 hours. President Karzai called for another joint NATO-Afghani investigation, but by then, many of the dead were already buried.

As expected, the outcome of this investigation mirrored every earlier finding. No one associated with the coalition “caused” the civilian deaths; no one can be held responsible – particularly the Germans who deferred as long as they could before going to the bomb site and nearby villages. But the provincial authorities brought a different perspective; they blamed both the Taliban fighters and the villagers that had swarmed to the site to siphon the fuel for their own use (the fuel was destined for NATO troops). The governor of Kunduz seemed more offended by the villagers’ attempt to steal a few liters of fuel than by the devastation of the ford and the high number of noncombatants killed by the coalition in this pre-dawn strike. The actual number killed – insurgents and residents – may never be known, but will probably be set at about 70 – one half the 140 Afghanis killed during another air attack in August.

What I see as emerging from the interplay of the institutional players – Afghan noncombatants, Afghan officials, the German commander, the NATO inspector team, the U.S. pilots, and the Taliban insurgents – is a failure in the normal development and integration of broad cultural mores that ordinarily would be acceptable by the majority of Afghanis – and to “outsiders” as far back as Alexander the Great – with a stake in the game.

At the end, the Afghan people have to identify the stress on the system and institutions of governance and devise ways to bridge the tribal and clan divisions that were rekindled when the Soviets and the U.S. simply walked away in 1989. This suggests some form of power sharing by the different factions, on an ethnic blueprint similar to the sectarian blueprint that evolved in Iraq over the last five years (but which might fracture again between Arabs and Kurds). What is obviously a major challenge to any effort to re-allocate power in Afghanistan is the massive corruption practiced by the “rulers” at all levels.

Few observers of Afghanistan question the skill, courage, and loyalty of individual Afghan fighters to their tribal identity and clan elders. Yet it is precisely at this point that adherence to tribal instinct and its defense cannot generate the unifying will necessary to create and maintain both inter- and intra-national institutions capable of directing the evolution of a workable political and civil society.

Rules of Engagement II

If you were to ask most soldiers whether they believed their “side” would be capable of exercising restraint in war, the answer would probably be “yes” more often than not and regardless of evidence to the contrary. International law , specifically the “institutional” guidelines such as the Hague and Geneva Conventions, dictate the general restraints on violence that all participants in armed conflicts are obliged to observe. This requirement pertains when government forces, regardless of attempts to use claims of “self defense” or “military necessity,” try to justify attacks on noncombatants. It also pertains when insurgents come into villages to demand “protection money,” require “donated” labor by individuals without any pay, or require villagers to participate in military or quasi-military operations or be killed – the situation that bedevils Afghanistan today.

The growth of interactions between noncombatants, who either do not flee a battlefield or leave but then return shortly after the fighting subsides, and the force that won and holds the terrain, introduced the need to develop for the soldier expanded guidelines to direct this interaction – thus the phrase “Rules of Engagement” (ROEs).

The Pentagon’s Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, updated October 7, 2004, defines the phrase as “Directives issued by competent military authority that delineate the circumstances and limitations under which United States forces will initiate and/or continue combat engagement with other forces encountered.” This is the authority for the use of force – that is, the when, where, to what end, and against whom organized large-scale violence is employed.

Army training about ROEs envisions two general circumstances for using weapons: self-defense and to achieve mission completion. Whether ROEs are “permissive” (allowing more use of force) or “restrictive” (limited use of force) depends on the anticipated conditions extant in the mission – e.g., presence or absence of quantities of small arms and light weapons; existing, organized opposition groups, armed and unarmed; competency of local security forces, etc.

“Other forces encountered” is very broad. It encompasses guerrilla, police, para-military, military, and terrorists with or without national designations or insignia. Actions or indications of imminent intent to employ force to stop or impede U.S. forces are enough to consider any gathering as hostile. (Another avenue is for “competent authority” to declare a group as “hostile.”)

Some ROEs are included in unit “standing operational orders” (SOP) and form the basic structure from which adjustments are made to develop operational-specific ROEs issued to forces just prior to the start of an operation

ROEs provide for the use of deadly force to counter deadly force as an absolute right. They do not sanction deadly force to accomplish a mission. The use of force for the latter purpose is conditional on the grounds of necessity (a hostile act is imminent or has occurred) and proportionality (reasonable in intensity, duration, and magnitude). For example, destroying the house and livelihood of relatives of insurgent suicide car bombers is neither necessary nor proportional; it is vindictive.

This is the core disagreement between the Afghanistan central government, the Kunduz provincial leaders, the German commanders decision to request the air strike, and part of General McChrystal’s “rules of engagement" that require two independent sources verify that the proposed targets are Taliban fighters or active supporters.

ROEs must also remain flexible enough to respond to changes in the level of risk posed by operational conditions. ROEs should be drawn so as to discourage “mission creep” mindset that significantly and abruptly alters the rules under which troops operate. In fact, ROEs can serve as a brake on potential escalation in the level and extent of violence.

Consider Haiti in March 2004. With the country in chaos, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is “induced” be Washington to leave. American troops tell reporters the mission is to protect the U.S. embassy from rebel bands. But U.S. commanders in Haiti say their mission is to “stabilize the country” sufficiently for Haitian police to return to their posts, not disarm militants. Meanwhile the Pentagon says Marines would confiscate weapons.

So it sems in specific encounters, trying to disarm civilians actually could create confrontations. In others, prudence might dictate disarming potential belligerents as the best way to avoid the future use of deadly force. Then, with little notice, the mission expands again, moving more toward law enforcement and new ROEs that permit use of deadly force to protect Haitians from violence and – perhaps reflecting criticism from inaction by U.S. forces when Baghdad fell – to preclude rampant looting.

Conversely, “preventive war” doctrine developed by President George Bush could be considered a more permissive ROE national security policy statement than any in the past (e.g., no first use of nuclear weapons). It is also a policy that runs counter to the Charter of the United Nations, which the U.S. has signed, that recognizes only the right of “national self-defense” against an imminent threat of attack, not some possible threat that might or might not materialize in the indeterminate future. In some respects, the Bush doctrine has simply elevated to national policy the Vietnam War practice of declaring “free fire zones.” Yes, there were restrictive ROEs actually printed on cards handed to every soldier that directed:

-no bombing of villages without warning the inhabitants, even if the village was “known” to be communist;

-no attacking of villages without a warning even if U.S. troops had received fire from the village;

-evacuating all civilians before a village could be declared a free fire zone.

But in practice, over time the few restraints fell away; evacuations were incomplete; warnings delivered by leaflet missed their intended audience (or could not be read by the largely uneducated peasantry); ground fire by “Viet Cong” brought immediate and massive retaliation. And it was the perception that U.S. forces did not consider Vietnamese lives as of equal value to U.S. lives that lost Washington the battle for the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese and cost Vietnam another generation of its youth.

That has a 21st century echo in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Next: Rule of Engagement III