Center for a New American Security

We bitch a lot around here. And when you're on your way to losing two wars, some serious soul-searching is called for. But we'd be remiss if we didn't note those occasions when it really does look like we're on the right track in the COIN world. Today is one of those days.

First, let the Marines from the Infantry Officer Course warm your heart with their experience revamping their COIN curriculum. Charlie had a chance to sit in on a COIN brief with them earlier this fall and was amazed at the detailed and nuanced questions these Boot Lieuts were asking. AM's alter-ego briefed the teaching staff earlier this month and was similarly impressed. It's amazing what a dedicated learning organization can do. Semper Fi, boys.

Next, Congressional Quarterly is reporting that new Army thinking (read: COIN and SASO) may actually result in a change in budget priorities.

For the Army, the new doctrine means a seismic culture shift. It will still have guns and tanks, but it will also need more people skilled in languages, public affairs, economic development, even anthropology. Instead of grudgingly accepting the task of nation building, as it did in the Balkans and in Iraq at first, the new Army for the most part will have to embrace the role....

Though it is too early to tell precisely what the ramifications might be in general defense policy and the budget, most experts think the Army will not get a big budget increase, but will have to reorder its priorities, shifting money from, say, high-tech hardware to personnel.

[snip]

The Army, for example, would probably invest less in technologies such as sophisticated sensors to gather data about electronic intercepts or heat signatures, and more money on spies. It would probably scale back its plans for a lightweight new class of vehicles and other high-tech gadgetry in the $200 billion Future Combat Systems in the interest of diverting some of that money to personnel accounts and battlefield supplies needed now. There would be additional procurement costs associated with maintaining war stocks of materiel not only for U.S. forces but for the foreign militaries and militias the United States would equip as partners. An Army set for small wars would spend less of its money on tanks and artillery and more on infantry units.

But the best news of the day arrives via Inside the Army:

The Army next month will make a key doctrine shift by changing its emphasis from conventional operations to a "full spectrum" that places post-conflict stability operations on par with offensive and defensive engagement, a shift that is already influencing high-level deliberations about weapon system investments in the service's new six-year spending plan.

[snip]

The chief of staff, who commanded U.S.-led operations in Iraq from July 2004 to February 2007, said 21st-century conflicts are likely to be complex and require that the military be much more flexible both in its ability to deploy and to intellectually master the new battlefield.

"I see a conflict that's a mix -- a hybrid of irregular warfare, conventional warfare. I see it being fought primarily in a lot of urban areas," he said. "It's going to be fought with more non-state actors and individual groups than it will with state actors." Casey said such an environment will demand flexibility on the part of the military. "We are not very agile as an institution," he acknowledged. "But we are working to transform our Army."

Instead of fighting around a city's population, he said, the Army will be fighting among civilians. As a result, the ability to gather accurate intelligence and to apply lethal effects precisely will be crucial skills for the future Army.

[snip]

Further, the Army will be more reliant on other government institutions, as well as on indigenous forces, for success in irregular conflicts. "No great power has ever won a counterinsurgency without indigenous forces,"Casey said. "So we have to develop our skills to work with other forces and to influence these other forces."

If CSA Casey means even half of what he says, we're in for some big changes. And changes for the better at that. (Btw, is he suggesting that there's life for Nagl's Advisor Corps?) Charlie will be watching the budget requests carefully. There are major muscle movements afoot. Stay tuned.

Once upon a time, the Air Force belonged to the Army. Those were the days. Kidding! (Well, mostly.) The accord that sorted out the many overlapping missions of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps air elements* is popularly known as the Key West Agreement. It resulted in the creation of the USAF and the prohibition on fixed wing aircraft in the Army.

Might we be on the verge of a similar re-envisioning of roles and missions? Defense Daily says yes (but they say it behind a subscription firewall):

After the president signs the defense authorization bill into law, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) is prepared to send a letter urging the Defense Secretary to redraw the roles and missions of the Pentagon in a way not done since 1948.

[...]

Truman brought the leaders of the services together in Key West in 1948 and created what has become the U.S. Air Force, Skelton said.

Now that the Defense Department presides over so many missions and technologies not available in 1948--or the 1950s, when the agreement was slightly amended--it is time for DoD to start the review. According to Skelton the review will be a "major undertaking, underlined."

Skelton has kick-started the process with the authorization bill, which directs the Pentagon to start a roles and missions review every four years--the first one starting this year. Last year, Skelton also created a roles and missions panel that is due to publish a study in about three months, panel member Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) said at the National Defense Industry Association's Precision Strike Association meeting yesterday.

As part of that study, Sestak has been advocating joint staff control of funding for command, control, computers, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

Why this isn't part of the QDR process is beyond Charlie. Then again, that review is so fubar that a separate track isn't necessarily a bad idea. Either way, keep your eyes open, Rep. Skelton is a big player in the COIN world.

*This reminds Charlie of one of her favorite jokes/questions: A foreign officer says to a Marine: "I see that you have an air force. And I understand that your navy has an army. But why does your navy's army have an air force?" Charlie says: because no one else will fly CAS...

The percentage of new recruits entering the Army with a high school diploma dropped to a new low in 2007, according to a study released yesterday, and Army officials confirmed that they have lowered their standards to meet high recruiting goals in the middle of two ongoing wars.

While back in the United States -- where everything is half as expensive as in London -- Abu Muqawama took his special lady to see a few movies, among them the excellent No Country for Old Men and the equally-excellent There Will Be Blood. (Both movies were nominated for Best Picture during yesterday's Oscar nominations. ) Walking home from There Will Be Blood a few nights ago, we tried to figure out what, if anything, the two movies have in common, and Abu Muqawama mused that both films speak to an America, five years into its war in Iraq, that doesn't feel very good about itself right now.

In No Country for Old Men -- the book of which Abu Muqawama read while home in Tennessee before seeing the movie -- the main character wonders whether things have always been this bad or whether the violence and decline of life on the Texas border just keeps getting worse. He seems to conclude the latter, but there is an important scene in both the film and the novel (the former is a faithful adaptation of the latter) in which he visits his aging uncle who more or less tells him that this country -- southwest Texas -- has always been hard on people. Having been left to pick up the pieces of a drug trade-fueled bloodbath, the aging sheriff is reminded his great uncle, also a sheriff, was once gunned down on the front porch of his house by Apaches. At the end, though, we're left wondering whether or not things have indeed always been this bad or whether we're in the midst of a sharp decline into chaos. (The fact that the movie takes place around 1980 makes us wonder further how far we have slipped since then.)

There Will Be Blood, meanwhile, takes on two pillars of American civilization -- charismatic Christianity and unrestricted capitalism -- and proceeds to demolish them both with TNT. This was not a movie meant to make Americans feel good about themselves, and it doesn't. But like No Country for Old Men, one of the reasons the movie works is because Americans are so ready to hear its message. Americans are depressed about themselves these days, so much so that our friends at the Economist felt the need to tell us to cheer up over Christmas.

Today, on the heels of this new report saying the number of high schools graduates in the U.S. Army has reached a new low and news that the economy is on its way to collapse, it seems appropriate to partner with that column in the Economist and remind our American readers and everyone else of the message found in an equally important but slightly less lauded classic of American cinema:

“DUMB and Dumber”, one of the modern classics of American comedy, tells the story of an affable idiot, Lloyd Christmas, who falls in love with a classy beauty, Mary Swanson. In one scene he asks her the chances of “a guy like you and a girl like me” ending up together. The answer is “Not good”. “Not good like one out of a hundred?” asks Lloyd. “More like one out of a million,” Mary replies. Lloyd pauses for a moment, then shoots back, “So you're telling me there's a chance?”

That is the American spirit.

So cheer up, kids! It's not all bad.

Then again, Dumb and Dumber may be appropriate for another reason. It seems to be a pretty good description for some of the Army's recruits these days.

Abu Muqawama was in the airport yesterday and ran into ace defense correspondent Tom Ricks, who was on his way to do some reporting from Iraq. Abu Muqawama tried not to be condescending, but Iraq? Is it even dangerous there anymore? If Ricks really wanted some danger and excitement, he should have followed Abu Muqawama back to his charming neighborhood in East London, which is like Baghdad in many ways but has more violent Islamists. And better Pakistani food.

Ricks has an article in today's Washington Post, though, on the speculation surrounding where David Petraeus is headed next after his tour in Iraq is complete. Abu Muqawama asked Ricks about the story as reported in the Times yesterday -- because Abu Muqawama makes it a regular habit to accost people in airports who have better things to do with their time than talk to some smartass blogger -- and he stressed the very thing with which he ended his article:

...early speculation over such top-level shifts often proves inaccurate. In the months before Petraeus was sent to Iraq, the rumor was that he would be put in charge at Central Command. Instead, that job went to Fallon. Also, not long before stepping down as defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld appeared close to sending Petraeus to Afghanistan, according to a person familiar with the deliberations.

So, you know, everybody stay cool.

Update: Well, if AM thinks Charlie is jumping the gun, he's gonna find Intrepid Spencer f*cking certifiable. Read his brilliant (if unfounded) speculation on a possible 2012 Petraeus for President campaign. (Machiavellian Democrats, take note.)

Retired U.S. Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, was paid $100,000 to endorse a veterans charity that watchdog groups say is ripping off donors and wounded veterans by using only a small portion of the money raised for veterans services, according to testimony in Congress today.

Gen. Franks' involvement was revealed as members of Congress questioned Roger Chapin, who operates Help Hospitalized Veterans and the Coalition to Salute America's Heroes Foundation, charities that congressional investigators say spend only 25 percent of the money they raise on projects for wounded veterans.

The charities were graded "F" by the American Institute of Philanthropy because so little of the money is used for actual charity projects or services.

More here...

(Sorry, update VI just seemed absurd.)

Indulge Charlie in one more Nagl story for the day; she's pretty sure you won't regret it. Spend some time with his review of Brian Turner's book of war poetry, "Here Bullet." It is, by far, the best thing he's ever written (and the only piece ever to bring her to tears).

It is Hallowe’en as I write this, and I am
being visited by ghosts, friendly little
ghosts who go away when I give them a
piece of candy.

It is Hallowe’en as I read this, and
I am being visited by ghosts, some
friendly, some not, whom I have kept
away, locked inside me for years, but
Brian Turner, Ghost One-Three Alpha,
that son of a bitch, he is calling them
back.

I have put them away, kept them
inside, the ghosts of the lieutenants and
the Captain and the First Sergeant, their
bodies torn by shrapnel or a sniper’s
bullet or gone, just gone, into hundreds
of shreds of flesh the size of my stillliving
hand, but Ghost One-Three Alpha
speaks to ghosts, he calls to his ghosts,
and they bring mine along for company,
and now they will not go away.

(more)

After that, there's really not much more for this blogger to say.

Update: Spencer, however, can still manage witty repartee.

Readers of this blog will surely be interested in Tom Ricks' article this morning on LTC Nagl's pending retirement.

One of the Army's most prominent younger officers, whose writings have influenced the conduct of the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq, said he has decided to leave the service to study strategic issues full time at a new Washington think tank.

[snip]

Nagl said in a brief telephone interview yesterday that he has filed his papers requesting retirement. "I love the Army very much," he said, but he added that he decided to leave after discussing his future with his family. "It's not the strain of repeated deployments," he said, but "a belief that I can contribute perhaps on a different level -- and my family wants me to leave."

He said he plans to become a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a centrist think tank recently founded by Kurt Campbell and Michele Flournoy, Clinton-era Pentagon officials. Nagl said he looks forward to working with them. "I hope to focus on national security for the remainder of my days," he said. "Obviously you don't have to do that in uniform."

Nagl's departure is a serious loss for the Army, said retired Marine Col. T.X. Hammes. "He's a serious student of warfare, he's smart, he's articulate, he's successfully led troops in combat, and he's worked at the highest levels of the Pentagon," said Hammes, himself the author of a book on contemporary war. "The Army just doesn't have that many officers with his set of qualifications."

More commentary from both of your faithful bloggers later in the day.

Update: Abu Muqawama here, weighing in on this issue between sessions of a conference he's attending. On the one hand, it's easy to see Nagl's retirement as yet another scrap of evidence pointing toward both an Army going down the drain and the best and brightest packing up and leaving the service. On the other hand, though, a guy like John Nagl -- friend and mentor to both of your humble bloggers -- has been swamped with great opportunities outside the Army for some time now. He's more of a rock star in DC policy circles -- and among Daily Show viewers -- than he is in the active duty military. So is it a loss for the Army? Yes. T.X. is correct. But might John Nagl better serve the country in a position outside the military? Abu Muqawama certainly thinks so. So this isn't a "bad news" story. The U.S. Army could have better used and supported John Nagl, sure, but if he winds up as an Assistant Secretary of Defense in a few years, he'll be in a better position to affect policy and "fight" the good fight there than he would on some J staff in the Pentagon. Now if we can only rope Nagl into a guest spot on abumuqawama.com...

Update II: Charlie is in violent agreement with AM here. The announcement today, however, does beg two questions:

1. Is LTC Nagl a canary in the coal mine?
2. Should the Army have done more to try and keep him?

Charlie's answer to the first question is "no," which may surprise a few readers. As AM and TX Hammes mentioned, Nagl is a unique officer. Few share his soldier-scholar career path, and few share his zeal for the politics of the Long War. It also bears mentioning that Nagl was not passed over for promotion; to the best of Charlie's knowledge he was not "in zone" this year and did not sit for the 0-6 board. His 20 is up this year, his battalion command ends this fall, and there was a natural opportunity for him and his family to move on.

That said, while it breaks this blogger's heart to see him go, it's even more disheartening (infuriating?) that the Army probably doesn't mind. Instead of celebrating his energy, effort, and endless faith in the system, the Army was eternally irritated by the good colonel. Charlie doesn't think Nagl was ever punished or persecuted by his command, but he was certainly never rewarded for the sheer force of will he tried to leverage in winning these wars. We often mock him for it, but he would talk to anyone, anytime. (And has there been a bigger recruiting coup for the Army in the last 5 years than John's appearance on the Daily Show?) More of that is needed. So are more Nagl's. The Army should have bent over backwards to convince him to stay, instead they're hoping the door doesn't hit him in the ass on the way out. Duty first.

Update III: More at Intel Dump, SWJ Blog.

Update IV: There's a picture of Nagl in the Post today with his hands in his bleeping pockets. Did Abu Muqawama miss something? Is Nagl retiring from the Air Force?!

Abu Muqawama returned home to Tennessee for the holidays yesterday and apologizes for not blogging yesterday. Today, though, he's been watching Reading Rainbow with his niece and reading Andrew Tilghman's article in the Washington Monthly on the exodus of the brightest young officers from the ranks of the U.S. Army. Man, what a fantastic article. All Americans who care about national security in the least should read this article. Abu Muqawama is often asked for the reason why he left the Army, and he responds that trying to reduce the reasons why he left the Army down to one thing is like trying to reduce the reasons we went to war in Iraq to one thing. It was a lot of things, most of which Tilghman mentions in this article. (Abu Muqawama also has a few screws holding his knee together, which he suspects is not something all Army captains experience.)

Tilghman notes two things driving the most talented Army officers out of the Army that aren't usually noted. (Once again, people often try to reduce the reasons for the exodus of talented junior officers down to the high op-tempo in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's a big reason, but it's not the only one.) One is geographical.

A military career has always involved a rural lifestyle, since sparsely populated places provide more room to test artillery and simulate warfare. These locations appealed to baby boomers, who came of age when many American urban centers were in decay, and Army garrison towns like Fayetteville, North Carolina, evoked the feeling of the small towns in which many officers had grown up. Today, numerous coastal American cities have been revitalized, and they attract the most educated and ambitious young men and women, many of whom grew up in suburbs. Meanwhile, Army towns like Killeen, Texas, or Watertown, New York, have devolved into impoverished, isolated outposts economically dependent on their military installations and notable mostly for a seedy proliferation of chain restaurants, pawnshops, and strip clubs.

When Abu Muqawama graduated from his fancy-pants Ivy League university, the majority of his classmates went off to live in the big urban centers -- Boston, New York, Washington, San Francisco -- that attract young and talented professionals. Abu Muqawama moved to ... Watertown. Let him tell you, he spent a lot of time reading and going for long bike rides -- not to mention visiting friends in New York and Boston. Guns and pick-up trucks are fine and all (He who is from East Tennessee shall not cast stones), but for a single young officer, these outposts can be pretty lonely. And if you're married? Well...

Perhaps the most powerful new element affecting officers' willingness to stay in the Army is the shifting dynamic of marriage and the roles of men and women in the family. Even in the rather traditional realm of Army culture, fathers now expect to be more actively involved in raising their children, and women tend to be less deferential to their husband's career. Among baby boomers, officers' wives were usually homemakers. Today, however, many officers' wives are doctors or lawyers or have degrees in international affairs, and there are few opportunities for them in places like Kentucky or West Texas.

Yeah, good luck meeting a nice girl who went to Stanford or Williams and has dreams of her own and then trying to convince her to follow you around the world to places where there is no way in hell she is ever getting a job more intellectually challenging than being the manager of the local Borders. Abu Muqawama's ex-girlfriend loved visiting him when he was stationed in Savannah (what a great town that is), but she's an international photojournalist. How the hell was she ever going to move there?

Finally, here's something that didn't affect Abu Muqawama's own decision but might have had he stayed in the Army long enough to see this take place from the inside:

Like many young officers I met, Kapinos and Morin were particularly disturbed by the experience of a colonel named H. R. McMaster. McMaster earned a Sliver Star in Operation Desert Storm. In 2005, he commanded a brigade of several thousand men in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar. He was lauded as the first upper-level commander to introduce progressive counterinsurgency strategies, rather than the traditional security-based mission that most other commanders were pursuing. He sought support from the entire population of Tal Afar. When his men released detainees, they asked them how they felt they had been treated (this was dubbed the "Ask the Customer Program"). The results were impressive. As the rest of Iraq deteriorated in 2006, Tal Afar was relatively calm, and President Bush touted it as a success. Despite these achievements, McMaster has been passed over twice for promotion to brigadier general. Kapinos concluded, "The junior officers see a guy who they worship—he's smart and successful—and they see him get the short end of the stick. If he doesn't make one star, if he doesn't go on to great things, if the cream stops rising at some point—then the good guys are going to say, 'What's the point?'"

Indeed. There is so much that is absolutely %$#@ed in the way the U.S. Army is handling its young officers that it might take decades to fix this. On the bright side, Reading Rainbow is still the greatest show on television, even after all these years.

Update: Instapundit has some extended commentary from readers--two emails from Army retirees and one from an active duty major. Great perpsective.

Update II: Nir wrote in from Iraq to say that out of 18 first lieutenants of the unit in which he is embedded, 17 do not plan on re-enlisting. Iraq deployments are cited as the major factor.

Abu Muqawama hates when stories like this make the news over here on the other side of the pond. He wants someone in Washington to just wave a magic wand and make them go away: "What's that? You have an irregularity with your immigration paperwork yet have served bravely while fighting for your country? No problem, here's your pardon. Don't screw up again."

Something like that. Is that too much to ask?

A highly decorated Arab-American sergeant in the US army, who is currently serving as a paratrooper in Afghanistan, faces deportation on his return to the United States because of an irregularity in his immigration papers.

Sgt Hicham Benkabbou has been served with an order to stand trial for deportation as soon as he arrives home, despite the fact that he has been on active service in Afghanistan for almost two years with the 508th parachute infantry regiment, known as the Red Devils.

One of Abu Muqawama's readers sent along this Wall Street Journal article on the U.S. in Afghanistan. Ten bucks says this Capt. John Gibson is the same guy with whom Abu Muqawama went to the Infantry Officer Basic Course and Ranger School. That guy -- on field exercises, mind you -- used to do the Ambiguously Gay Duo routine with your humble blogger at IOBC. "Ace and Gary!" he would shout. "Unite!" And he would then do a %$#@ing cart-wheel right there in the woods of Fort Benning into Abu Muqawama's arms (we were supposed to be re-acting to an ambush or something) while our squad mates broke down in laughter and the TACs looked on in horror. He then sneaked fake teeth into Ranger School -- %$#@ing Ranger School! -- and put them in when we got our dental and medical briefing at the beginning of the course to ask a question of the medics. You're not supposed to have anything that's not on the packing list, but the RI's were laughing so hard they let him keep the teeth with him the whole course. What. A. %$#@ing. Clown. No kidding, he was the only officer Abu Muqawama has ever met who could out-do this blogger in terms of Grade A Jackassery. (And this is meant as the highest compliment.) Abu Muqawama still has a picture of the two of us at the IOBC dining-in, in our dress blues and drunk as Irish sailors, acting like idiots in an impromptu dance contest. (You better believe we won. Oh yes.) Ah, good times...

Abu Muqawama re-prints this password-protected article in full as a service to his readers -- and a middle finger aimed in the direction of Rupert Murdoch. All that homo-erotic humor must have prepared John well for tribal life in Afghanistan:

ZEROK, Afghanistan -- The villagers handed out red roses. The elders lined up to welcome guests to their ancient tradition, the shura. And John Gibson, a U.S. Army captain with sunburned cheeks, warmly embraced Haji Taday, a tribal leader with a black Abe Lincoln beard.

But what looked like a reunion with an old friend last month was really a political ambush of a bitter enemy.

"He takes us for fools," Capt. Gibson, smiling slightly, said minutes after hugging Mr. Taday. "We just got enough evidence to move against him."

In Afghanistan's insurgency, politics is warfare by other means. U.S. officers knew that if they wanted to take down Mr. Taday -- both a major figure in the local Taliban and chief of Zerok's council of elders -- they would have to avoid cultural missteps that could hand propaganda victories to their enemies.

So for the next hour, U.S. and Afghan officials used the shura, a traditional Pashtun gathering of respected senior villagers, to discredit Mr. Taday before his peers and engineer his downfall.

They succeeded, but not in the way they expected.

Capt. Gibson's boss, Lt. Col. Michael Fenzel, commander of the 1st Battalion of the 503rd Infantry Regiment, set the snare hours before the elders arrived at the Zerok district center. In a private meeting at the adjacent American combat outpost, the colonel laid out the case against Mr. Taday before a few trusted Afghan officials, including both the chief of intelligence and the head of shura for Paktika Province, where Zerok is located.

Lt. Col. Fenzel had a receptive audience. The Afghans had their own suspicions about Mr. Taday, not least because his nephew is Commander Sangeen, widely known to lead one of the Taliban factions in the area. Mr. Taday has provided safe haven for foreign fighters who cross the Pakistani border, some 20 miles away, and move into Zerok District, according to U.S. and Afghan intelligence reports. Mr. Taday also arranged the theft of a green Ford Ranger pickup truck from the Afghan National Police and delivered it to his nephew to use as a suicide car bomb, according to U.S. intelligence reports.

At the pre-shura meeting, Lt. Col. Fenzel told the Afghan officials he wanted the police to arrest Mr. Taday immediately. But Nawab Waziri, the provincial head elder, argued that such a move on shura day would cause an uproar. The colonel agreed to hold off, and the group headed next door to the shura at the district government office, a single-story building with broken windows, surrounded by a stone wall topped with razor wire.

Mr. Taday was waiting for them in the courtyard, lined up with the other elders. Appearing to be in his 60s, short and rotund, he wore a gray tunic and loose trousers, with a long brown vest and dirty white turban, striped delicately in black.

Despite the friendly embrace, Mr. Taday knew he had been in the captain's sights for months. In July, insurgents ambushed two U.S.-Afghan troop convoys near the Zerok outpost, leaving a pair of Afghan soldiers dead. Afterward, Capt. Gibson summoned the Zerok elders, pulled Mr. Taday into a room and yelled at him for 20 minutes, pausing only so the interpreter could translate the obscenity-laced tirade into Pashto.

"You say you're in charge and that there is security in Zerok, but there's not," Capt. Gibson said at the time. "Either you're lying to me or you're working for them. Which is it?"

At the shura last month, Afghans delivered the message. An Afghan army officer opened with a verse from the Koran, an effort to show that the Taliban, known for their fierce interpretation of Islam, don't have a monopoly on faith. "For 30 years we've been fighting and killing innocent people," said Mr. Waziri, the provincial chief elder. "It's time we stop fighting."

"Innocent people get killed when the Taliban attack," said the provincial intelligence chief, Yaseen, who uses only one name. "Every day they fire rockets. They put bombs in the roads. Where are the fighters coming from? You elders are helping them. Don't sell out your country for five rupees."

The Afghan officials urged all of the elders to come forward with information about insurgent movements. "You don't care about your country," Qadar Gul, the subgovernor for Zerok District, chided them. "You don't care about your area. You are Taliban."

As the Afghan officials spoke, Capt. Gibson, his lip full of Copenhagen snuff, took care of side business. He quietly radioed his men to order a symbolic artillery and mortar barrage intended to ward off potential attackers in the ridgelines above the base. He relayed Lt. Col. Fenzel's orders that the guns fire only illumination or smoke rounds, not explosive munitions that might endanger civilians -- and only after the shura ended.

From across the room, the village doctor asked Capt. Gibson when he would receive $1,500 in promised compensation for four cows and four chickens killed in a firefight between Taliban fighters and U.S. soldiers. "It will be next week," Capt. Gibson assured him.

Meantime, the Afghans began to direct their comments more pointedly at Mr. Taday, and his body spoke of his discomfort. He crossed his arms tightly, and, at one point, dropped his beard to his chest and his head to his hands.

"I know you," Mr. Yaseen said.

"OK, you know me, but I'm not an insurgent," Mr. Taday responded.

Mr. Yaseen and other Afghan officials interrupted Mr. Taday on several occasions, a rudeness meant to diminish his stature before his peers. Mr. Yaseen challenged him to provide the names of Taliban fighters to the intelligence service, while Mr. Taday continued to protest his innocence.

"I support the government," he said. "Everyone knows Sangeen is a bad guy, but we can't do anything about it. He lives in Pakistan. There are no insurgents living here in Zerok."

Last to speak was Lt. Col. Fenzel. "We will always conduct ourselves with respect for your culture and your religion, Islam," he promised the elders.

"As your guests, we would ask for your protection," he added. "My pledge to you is that our forces will always conduct themselves as guests. When you know the Taliban are coming, let us know so we can provide security."

The colonel then looked directly at Mr. Taday. "You can't be on both sides," he warned.

Mr. Taday stared glumly at the floor.

The next day, Lt. Col. Fenzel got word that other shura members -- who U.S. officers say had long remained quiet for fear of Commander Sangeen -- now planned to depose him. At the same time, the colonel began working to secure orders from the provincial governor, Akram Khapalwak, to have the police arrest Mr. Taday.

They never got the chance.

Three days later, Mr. Taday, his son and three bodyguards traveled from Zerok to a nearby town where he met with the local head of the Afghan intelligence service, according to a U.S. intelligence report. Another son told a local official later that his father also met with American intelligence agents that day.

On the way home, as the sun went down, Taliban insurgents ambushed Mr. Taday's vehicle, blasting it with rocket-propelled grenades and killing all five men inside.

Insurgents then launched rockets at the Zerok outpost, but missed their target by a couple of hundred yards. U.S. troops counterattacked with a barrage of mortars and artillery, killing 10 Taliban fighters, thought to be the same group that had ambushed Mr. Taday, according to a U.S. intelligence report.

Using live images from an unmanned spy plane, the U.S. soldiers later watched as three trucks carried the corpses of Haji Taday, his son and bodyguards along mountain roads and dried riverbeds back to his home village. When they arrived, the drivers sprinted into the houses to deliver the news, and dozens of men swarmed around the bed of a pickup truck, apparently to glimpse Mr. Taday's body.

Lt. Col. Fenzel was stunned by the turn of events. He didn't think the other shura members would be bold enough to have Mr. Taday killed. So he surmised that Taliban loyal to one of Commander Sangeen's rivals had seen Mr. Taday meet with the government spy boss and assumed that he was betraying them.

One Afghan official with access to intelligence reports said that the killers had left a letter with the bodies, accusing Messrs. Taday and Sangeen of betraying the Taliban cause. Days later, insurgent factions in the area battled each other, leaving two fighters dead, the official said. His report couldn't be verified.

That night, Lt. Col. Fenzel called Gov. Khapalwak and told him of Mr. Taday's fate. The governor said he would inform the local media that the Taliban had murdered one of Zerok's respected village elders.