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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/hallinan11182009.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/hallinan11182009.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">November 18,
2009<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>Why General
McChrystal's Plan Will Fail <br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
Strategic Towns
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By CONN
HALLINAN <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">B</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>efore the Obama Administration buys in to
General Stanley McChrystal’s escalation strategy, it might spend some
time examining the Aug. 12 battle of Dananeh, a scruffy little town of
2,000 perched at the entrance to the Naw Zad Valley in Afghanistan’s
southern Helmand province. <br><br>
Dananeh is a textbook example of why counterinsurgency won’t work in that
country, as well as a study in military thinking straight out of Lewis
Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass.” <br><br>
According to the U.S., the purpose of the attack was to seize a
“strategic” town, cut “Taliban supply lines,” and secure the area for the
presidential elections. Taking Dananeh would also “outflank the
insurgents,” “isolating” them in the surrounding mountains and forests.
<br><br>
What is wrong with this scenario? <br><br>
One, the entire concept of a “strategic” town of 2,000 people in a vast
country filled with tens of thousands of villages like Dananeh is
bizarre. <br><br>
Two, the Taliban don’t have “flanks.” They are a fluid, irregular force,
not an infantry company dug into a set position. “Flanking” an enemy is
what you did to the Wehrmacht in World War II. <br><br>
Three, “Taliban supply lines” are not highways and rail intersections,
they’re goat trails. <br><br>
Four, “isolate” the Taliban in the surrounding mountains and forests?
Anyone in the Pentagon ever read the story of Brer Rabbit? “Please
don’t throw me in the briar patch, Brer Fox”? Mountains and forests
are where the Taliban move freely. <br>
It also appears that the Taliban were not the slightest bit surprised
when the U.S. showed up. When the Marines helicoptered in at night, all
was quiet. At dawnthe Taliban have no night fighting equipmentthe
insurgents opened up with rockets, mortars, and machine guns. “I am
pretty sure they knew of it [the attack] in advance,” Golf Company
commander Captain Zachary Martin told the <i>Associated Press</i>.
<br><br>
Pinned down, the Marines brought in air power and artillery and, after
four days of fierce fighting, took the town. But the Taliban had decamped
on the third night. The outcome? A chewed up town and 12 dead insurgents,
if you accept that there is no difference between an “insurgent” and a
villager who didn’t get out in time, so that all the dead are
automatically members of the Taliban.<br><br>
“I’d say we’ve gained a foothold for now, and it’s a substantial one that
we’re not going to let go,” says Martin. “I think this has the potential
to be a watershed.” <br><br>
Only if hallucinations become the order of the day. <br><br>
The battle of Dananeh was a classic example of irregular warfare. The
locals tip off the guerrillas that the army is coming. The Taliban set up
an ambush, fight until the heavy firepower comes in, then slip away.
<br><br>
“Taliban fighters and their commanders have escaped the Marines’ big
offensive into Afghanistan’s Helmand province and moved into areas to the
west and north, prompting fears that the U.S. effort has just moved the
Taliban problem elsewhere,” writes Nancy Youssef of the McClatchy
newspapers. <br><br>
When the Taliban went north they attacked German and Italian troops.<br>
In short, the insurgency is adjusting. “To many of the Americans, it
appeared as if the insurgents had attended something akin to the U.S.
Army’s Ranger school, which teaches soldiers how to fight in small groups
in austere environments,” writes Karen DeYoung of the <i>Washington
Post</i>. <br><br>
Actually, the Afghans have been doing that for some time, as Greeks,
Mongols, British, and Russians discovered. <br><br>
One Pentagon officer told the <i>Post</i> that the Taliban has been using
fighting in the Korengal Valley that borders Pakistan as a training
ground. It’s “a perfect lab to vet fighters and study U.S. tactics,” he
said, and to learn how to gauge the response time for U.S. artillery, air
strikes, and helicopter assaults. “They know exactly how long it takes
before…they have to break contact and pull back.” <br><br>
Just like they did at Dananeh. <br><br>
General McChrystal has asked for 40,000 new troops in order to hold the
“major” cities and secure the population from the Taliban. But even by
its own standards, the plan is deeply flawed. According to the military’s
“Counterinsurgency Field Manuel, one needs a ratio of 20 soldiers for
every 1,000 residents. Since Afghanistan is slightly over 32 million,
that would require a force of 660,000 soldiers. <br><br>
The U.S. will shortly have 68,000 troops in Afghanistan, plus a stealth
surge of 13,000 support troops. If 40,000 additional troops are sent,
that will bring U.S. forces to 121,000. Added to that are 35,000 NATO
troops, though most alliance members are under increasing domestic
pressure to withdraw their soldiers. McChrystal wants to expand the
Afghan army to 240,000, and there is talk of trying to reach 340,000.
<br><br>
One does not need a calculator to conclude that the counterinsurgency
formulaeven with the larger Afghan armyis 150,000 soldiers short.
<br><br>
And can you really count on the Afghan army? It may indeed reach
340,000although it doesn’t have the officers and sergeants to command
those numbers but the counterinsurgency formula calls for “trained”
troops, not just armed boots on the ground. And according to a recent
review, up to 25 percent of recruits quit each year, and the number of
trained units has actually declined over the past six months. <br>
On top of which, it is not a national army. If Pashtun soldiers are
deployed in the Tajik-speaking north, they will be seen as occupiers, and
vice-versa for Tajiks in Pashtun areas. If both groups are deployed in
their home territories, the pressures of kinship will almost certainly
overwhelm any allegiance to a national government, particularly one as
corrupt and unpopular as the current Karzai regime. <br><br>
And by defending the cities, exactly whom will U.S. troops be protecting?
When it comes to Afghanistan, “major” population centers are almost a
contradiction in terms. There are essentially five cities in the country,
Kabul (2.5 million), Kandahar (331,000), Mazar-e-Sharif (200,000), Herat
(272,000), and Jalalabad (20,000). Those five cities make up a little
more than 10 percent of the population, over half of which is centered in
Kabul. The rest of the population is rural, living in towns of 1500 or
fewer, smaller even than Dananeh.<br><br>
But spreading the troops into small firebases makes them extremely
vulnerable, as the U.S. found out in early September when eight soldiers
were killed in an attack on a small unit in the Kamdesh district of
Nuristan province. The base was abandoned a week later and, according to
the <i>Asia Times,</i> is now controlled by the Taliban. <br><br>
While McChrystal says he wants to get the troops out of “armored
vehicles” and into the streets with the people, the U.S. will have to use
patrols to maintain a presence outside of the cities. On occasion, that
can get almost comedic. Take the convoy of Stryker light tanks that set
out Oct. 12 from “Forward Operating Base Spin Boldak” in Khandar province
for what was described as a “high-risk mission into uncharted territory.”
<br><br>
The convoy was led by the new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP)
vehicles designed to resist the insurgent’s weapon-of-choice in
Afghanistan, roadside bombs. But the MRAP was designed for Iraq, which
has lots of good roads. Since Afghanistan has virtually no roads, the
MRAPs broke down. Without the MRAPs the Strykers could not move. The
“high-risk” mission ending up hunkering down in the desert for the night
and slogging home in the morning. They never saw an insurgent. <br><br>
Afterwards, Sergeant John Belajac remarked, “I can’t imagine what it is
going to be like when it starts raining.” <br><br>
If you are looking for an Afghanistan War metaphor, the Spin Boldak
convoy may be it. <br><br>
McChrystal argues that the current situation is “critical,” and that an
escalation “will be decisive.” But as former Defense Intelligence Agency
analyst A.J. Rossmiller says, the war is a stalemate. “The insurgency
does not have the capability to defeat U.S. forces or depose
Afghanistan’s central government, and…U.S. forces do not the ability to
vanquish the insurgency.” <br><br>
While the purported goal of the war is denying Al-Qaeda a sanctuary,
according to U.S. intelligence the organization has fewer than 100
fighters in the country. And further, the Taliban’s leader, Mullah Omar,
pledges that his organization will not interfere with Afghanistan’s
neighbors or the West, which suggests that the insurgents have been
learning about diplomacy as well. <br><br>
The Afghanistan War can only be solved by sitting all the parties down
and working out a political settlement. Since the Taliban have already
made a seven-point peace proposal, that hardly seems an insurmountable
task. <br><br>
Anything else is a dangerous illusion</font><font size=3>.<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2><b>Conn Hallinan</b> can be reached
at:
<a href="mailto:ringoanne@sbcglobal.net">ringoanne@sbcglobal.net</a><br>
<br>
<br><br>
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