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Abu Muqawama retains its autonomy and the views and beliefs expressed within the blog do not reflect those of CNAS. Abu Muqawama retains the right to delete comments that include words that incite violence; are predatory, hateful, or intended to intimidate or harass; or degrade people on the basis of gender, race, class, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability. In summary, don't be a jerk.

  • Ethnic Cleansing: Lessons from the Balkans
    December 3, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 1:34pm | 1 Comments
    Last week, Abu Muqawama had a lengthy post on the difficulties U.S. commanders in Iraq will face when internally displaced persons return to their homes in Baghdad and try to move back in to their homes ... only to discover someone new already living there. That post prompted the following vignette from one of the blog's readers, a Canadian officer who has served in both Bosnia and Afghanistan. Abu Muqawama posts the story here with his permission. This vignette really drives home the difficulty of re-integration:

    Your post re the de facto ethnic cleansing of Baghdad reminded me of a situation I faced as a platoon commander in Bosnia in 2001. I was in a Croatian region working out of the town of Tomislavgrad. Someone had determined that wherever people had moved during the war (generally from mixed regions to ethnically homogeneous Serb, Croatian and Bosniak regions), they had to move back to their original homes. Staying where they were would simply legitimize the ethnic cleansing of the war. This in spite of the fact that people had found new jobs, new homes (yeah - they'd belonged to someone else, but when needs must . . .), their kids were in school, and life was starting to go on. Also, thanks to communism, there weren't a lot of title deeds, making it difficult to prove you used to live in a certain house. Anyway, moving the story along, people had to vacate houses and move back to where they came from - think IDP situation in reverse. And lucky us - the Stabilization Force had to enforce this. So, in my particular region, there was an awesome representative of the Methodist Missionaries (he was an Aussie contractor - not a missionary) assigning money to fix houses. He came to us to tell us that a house he'd been working on for a Serb family due to return shortly had been badly vandalised. We checked it out, took pics of all the 'death to Serbs' graffiti, left behind a layback patrol in the attic, and picked them up the next day. Turns out the village mayor and chief of police were the ones doing the vandalism. I spent quite a while cursing and swearing whoever was trying to force this reintegration and the boneheadedness of humanity in general, and then we told the mayor that unless this kind of intimidation stopped, his town would lose reconstruction funding. It sort of worked, but you can only use that threat so many times.
    Iraq, The Balkans

  • Paddy Ashdown to Afghanistan?
    December 3, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 11:44am | 1 Comments
    The Financial Times is reporting that Paddy Ashdown is being considered for the role of UN-NATO special envoy to Afghanistan in the hopes that he'll bring some much-needed focus to the international efforts there. This item completely escaped the notice of this blog for a good 24 hours until one of our readers had mercy upon us, so apologies if this is old news to you Afghanistan-watchers out there.

    In other Afghanistan news, afghanistanica popped some humble pie into the microwave and served it up with mushy peas and gravy upon learning that -- contrary to his earlier reports -- the last pig did not leave Afghanistan with the Soviets. In fact, there are several pigs at the Kabul Zoo, where they live happy, contented lives ... save for when Afghans throw rocks at them.
    Afghanistan

  • COIN Academy Reading List
    December 3, 2007 | Posted by Charlie - 7:08am | 2 Comments

    Small Wars Journal and your blogging team here at Abu Muqawama recently commented on the formation of the new U.S. Army Counterinsurgency (COIN) Academy in Afghanistan. We were particularly interested in the Academy’s pursuit of building a first-class COIN library.

    So… SWJ and AM have decided to aid in building the library with a little help from our friends. We e-mailed the COIN Academy requesting their reading list. They responded with titles of books and movies that once in hand would go a long way in establishing a world-class COIN library.

    To streamline our effort we have set up the Afghanistan COIN Library on Amazon.

    The books and movies you purchase there and send on to Afghanistan will seed the COIN Academy’s library with a few titles that will allow the staff to better appreciate history, culture, and insurgency in Afghanistan. Eventually the titles will make their way to the library of the Afghan Defense University of which the COIN Academy will become a part. The shipping address (while hidden at Amazon) is direct to the Academy and we will track to ensure your book or movie makes it way to Afghanistan.

    A tip of the hat to Small Wars Council member Carl (currently a private sector pilot in Iraq and blogger at Because We're Here Boy, No One Else; But Us) who started the ball rolling by e-mailing us an offer to send multiple copies of FM 3-24 to the Academy.

    Thanks much for helping us out on this project. What do we get out of this? A pretty darn good COIN reading list!

    Afghanistan, Books, COIN

  • The Army Makes a Fool of Itself ... Monday Edition
    December 3, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 4:30am | 0 Comments
    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.

    Afghanistan, U.S. Army

  • John Kifner, back in Lebanon
    December 2, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 6:46pm | 1 Comments
    Say what you want about the New York Times, but back in the dark old days of the Lebanese Civil War, John Kifner, their correspondent there, was a legend. Sure, he didn't go on to make lots of money and speak in unintelligible metaphors like their other journalist in Beirut at the time, but he was great nonetheless. Abu Muqawama always looks forward to the occasions when the NYT persuades him to return, if only for a few days. Hopefully this story means he'll be filing more...
    Lebanon

  • COIN Book Club, No. 5
    December 2, 2007 | Posted by Charlie - 2:35pm | 0 Comments
    This week's edition of the COIN Book Club is another work of fiction: The Quiet American, by Graham Greene. Charlie will admit to this being one of her favorite books of all time. (To complete her commentary on the the duality of man, her other favorite is TH White's, The Once and Future King). But unlike The Centurions, our only previously reviewed novel, this is not a story of soldiers. At times, it barely feels like it's about an insurgency at all. That is, until one of Greene's famous scenes settles around you like a thick fog. Ultimately, his story is one of foreign policy, intrigue, and the perils of good intentions.

    The Quiet American is set in Vietnam before Dien Bien Phu while the French are still fighting the Vietminh, long before the Americans arrive to fight the Viet Cong. And the story is told through the eyes of Thomas Fowler, a British reporter largely modeled after Greene himself: a cynical ex-pat who understands the locals in a nuanced but imperial sort of way. He's juxtaposed with the titular quiet American, Alden Pyle: a Boston native who arrives in Vietnam with his dog-eared copy of York Harding's treatise on democracy in Asia to work in the Economic Legation. They argue over both Fowler's mistress and the future of Vietnam.

    Neither fight is really fair. Pyle is, for the most part, a caricature of an American, with his broad face and crew cut. Two scenes provide the backdrop for their most intense arguments; those same two scenes are also why this book is on the reading list. The first takes place when Fowler goes north and essentially embeds with a French unit after an attack by the Vietminh.
    So much of war is sitting around and doing nothing, waiting for somebody else....Doing what they had done so often before, the sentries moved out. Anything that stirred ahead of us now was the enemy. The lieutenant marked his map and reported our position over the radio. A noonday hush fell: even the mortars were quiet and the air was empty of planes. One man doodled with a twig in the dirt of the farmyard. After a while it was as if we had been forgotten by war....

    Two shots were fired to our front, and I though, "This is it. Now it comes." It was all the warning I wanted. I awaited, with a sense of exhilaration, the permanent thing.

    But nothing happened....I caught the phrase, "Deux civils."
    The civilians were mistakenly shot by the French patrol, which is then recalled in preparation for the evening's air raids. Amidst all this, Pyle tracks down Folwer in Phat Diem and asks declares his love for Fowler's mistress Phoung. Pyle's clumsy but genuine pursuit of Phoung becomes Greene's allegory for American intentions in Vietnam more broadly.

    But not all of the argument is so subtle. As this is a Graham Greene novel, there is more than enough intrigue to go around (Charlie promises not to ruin it here). The next time Fowler and Pyle are stranded together outside the wire is both more tense and more dangerous. Having run out of gas on their way back to Saigon, they are forced to take refuge in one of the many watch towers that line the road. But while the French control the roads, the Vietminh control the night. "Their" watch tower is secured by two young Vietnamese soldiers. Pyle asks,
    "Don't you trust them?"

    "No French officer," I said, "would care to spend the night alone with two scared guards in one of these towers. Why even an platoon have been known to hand over their officers. Sometimes the Viets have better success with a megaphone than with a bazooka. I don't blame them....You and you like are just trying to make a war with the help of people who just aren't interested."

    "The don't want Communism."

    "They want enough rice," I said. They don't want to be shot at. They want one day to be much the same as another. They don't want our white skins around telling them what to do."

    "If Indo-China goes..."

    "I know the record. Siam goes. Malaya goes. Indonesia goes. What does "go" mean? If I believed in your God and another life, I'd bet my future harp against your golden crown than in five hundred years there may be no New York or London, but they'll be growing paddy in these fields...."
    The argument continues until the Vietminh patrol arrives, upon which Fowler and Pyle flee leaving the Vietnamese guards to die in the ambush. The intrigue grows after their return to Saigon as Fowler learns that Pyle has more than an academic interest in promoting a "third way" (communism and colonialism being the other two) for Vietnam.

    What's telling about the novel is that Pyle is not evil. He's not corrupt. He's not power hungry. And, as seen by Fowler, he's still incredibly dangerous. Perhaps all the more so, given his good intentions. (It was this aspect of the book that often made Charlie think that it should be required reading for all of her undergraduate students who wanted to save the world.) Again, Pyle is a caricature. And Fowler's insistent detachment is both disingenuous and, at times, equally indefensible. But, to Charlie's mind, it is this ongoing debate between imperfect cynicism and deluded but genuine idealism that animates the novel, and makes it required reading for those who find themselves frequently torn between the two.
    Book Club, Books, COIN

  • A New Kind of Tribal Warfare in Afghanistan
    December 2, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 12:35pm | 0 Comments
    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.

    Afghanistan, COIN, U.S. Army

  • The Army Makes a Fool of Itself ... Again
    December 2, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 10:17am | 6 Comments
    No, Abu Muqawama isn't talking about the fact that West Point got beat 38-3 by the Naval Academy. (Aside from the officers who attended the Military Academy, there aren't too many soldiers in the U.S. Army who care about that.)

    Rather, Dana Priest and Anne Hull -- who must surely win a Pulitzer Prize for their series on Walter Reed Medical Center -- have yet another article in today's Washington Post detailing the U.S. Army's ongoing efforts to make itself look as incompetent as possible, stateside, just when it's starting to show a bit of intelligence in Iraq.

    In a nondescript conference room at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 1st Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside listened last week as an Army prosecutor outlined the criminal case against her in a preliminary hearing. The charges: attempting suicide and endangering the life of another soldier while serving in Iraq.

    Her hands trembled as Maj. Stefan Wolfe, the prosecutor, argued that Whiteside, now a psychiatric outpatient at Walter Reed, should be court-martialed. After seven years of exemplary service, the 25-year-old Army reservist faces the possibility of life in prison if she is tried and convicted.

    Military psychiatrists at Walter Reed who examined Whiteside after she recovered from her self-inflicted gunshot wound diagnosed her with a severe mental disorder, possibly triggered by the stresses of a war zone. But Whiteside's superiors considered her mental illness "an excuse" for criminal conduct, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

    At the hearing, Wolfe, who had already warned Whiteside's lawyer of the risk of using a "psychobabble" defense, pressed a senior psychiatrist at Walter Reed to justify his diagnosis.

    "I'm not here to play legal games," Col. George Brandt responded angrily, according to a recording of the hearing. "I am here out of the genuine concern for a human being that's breaking and that is broken. She has a severe and significant illness. Let's treat her as a human being, for Christ's sake!"

    Read the whole, sordid tale here. There are going to be those who will say Priest and Hull have it out for the Army and are trying to make the institution look bad. Don't believe them. Because Priest and Hull aren't doing anything more than what Tom Ricks did with Fiasco,which is to break down this unhealthy myth that the U.S. military can do no wrong. As anyone who has actually served in the military can tell you -- and there are fewer and fewer of us, as a percentage of the population, everyday now -- the military screws up plenty. And when they do it on the large scale like in Iraq and at Walter Reed, civilians and their elected representatives have to do something about it.
    U.S. Army

  • Chaos!
    December 2, 2007 | Posted by Charlie - 1:25am | 6 Comments
    This time not in Iraq/Afghanistan/Lebanon/Pakistan/etc., but right here in the US of A! The college football BCS rankings are about to implode: both favorites lost tonight, with West Virginia falling to Pitt and Oklahoma curb stomping Mizzou. Now, Charlie is not much of a college football fan, and usually just roots for sheer chaos in the BCS standings. It looks like Christmas has come early! Just as she was checking final scores, Charlie had this exchange with her favorite sports partner-in-crime:
    him: college football has turned into a total mess. And sadly now the national title game will likely be between two big tradtional powers even though no one deserves it. But the names of the teams in the championship will quell protests against the system. BOOOOOO

    me: hahaah
    you're such a revolutionary

    him: I just want a playoff
    something RATIONAL
    you know
    where the several best teams play

    me: usually i root for total chaos in the polls
    which it appears i'm going to get

    him: right. . but sadly it is chaos that benefits the traditional powers. . it would have been better for long-term chaos, probably, if WVU and Missouri played each other in the title game

    me: maybe
    so who's gonna get it? osu?

    him: OSU is in
    and maybe LSU

    me: they have 2 losses!
    f*ck them

    him: but EVERYONE else does
    except KU
    who has beaten zero top 25 teams

    me: look
    i just work here

    him: OSU's schedule was just as bad

    me: (our sked was designed for six wins. SIX)

    him: but they have rep
    it sucks. it isn't fair to Kansas

    me: i mean, look, we've moved on to bball
    you're going to have to like make an announcement at allen field house in january to remind us about the bowl game
    but still
    But don't take Charlie's word for it, Carl from ATHF is happy to share his thoughts on the subject. (Careful not to spit coffee all over your keyboard.)
    football

  • Anti-War Shenanigans and the Lebanese Presidential Crisis
    December 1, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 1:51pm | 12 Comments
    As you may know, Abu Muqawama attended his first-ever anti-war conference and demonstration today. The editor of a Hizbollah newspaper was speaking, and Abu Muqawama went to hear what he had to say. Arriving early because he had not pre-registered, Abu Muqawama waited for a good two hours for the event to begin, which it did, 30 minutes late. (Timeliness and general we've-got-our-shit-togetherness may be two of the reasons the military industrial complex seems to out-perform the anti-war crowd nine times out of ten.)

    Abu Muqawama sat next to a very nice Swiss woman who came all the way from Zurich for the event, and he politely introduced himself as "Mr. Maceo Parker, from the People's Coalition to Free James Brown." She asked where he was from, and Abu Muqawama said the American South, and that was pretty much it until Ibrahim Mousawi, editor of the Hizbollah newspaper al-Intiqad, got up to speak. When Mousawi greeted the audience with as-salam alaykum, Abu Muqawama responded back with a wa alaykum salam, and this drew an appreciative nod from his Swiss neighbor, who turned her head and smiled. Who knew Tennesseans could master such complex Islamic rituals!

    Ibrahim Mousawi was very good. He certainly knew his audience. He spoke in English, clearly and forcefully, and drew more applause than any of the other speakers in the plenary session, George Galloway aside. (More on him later.) Mousawi drew a parallel between Hizbollah's resistance against Israel and the resistance of the anti-war protesters against the forces of imperialism, and this drew much applause. So too, somewhat oddly, did the line that "the future of the region is political Islam, like it or leave it." This surprised Abu Muqawama considering the entrenched secularism of the British Left. But, hey, anything's preferable to American hegemony. Right, comrades?

    Anyway, it was interesting, for this blogger, to watch Mousawi interact with an almost entirely western audience. He gets full marks for being eloquent and firing up the crowd without saying anything inflammatory that's going to make the newspapers tomorrow. What was more interesting, though, was watching Mousawi re-act (and not re-act) to Galloway's speech.

    "If there was a democracy in Lebanon," Galloway began by thundering, "Hassan Nasrallah would be president!"

    This line spurred great applause from the audience as Abu Muqawama thought whether or not this would actually be the case.

    "But you have to be Christian to be president!"

    This line set in motion furious shaking of heads from most people in the hall, and Abu Muqawama turned to look at Mousawi. This cannot have been too comfortable for him, but he wasn't showing it. Lebanon's politicians -- Hizbollah included -- are currently trying to find a suitable Maronite president while the country remains on a knife edge, and this jackass Scotsman standing on the stage is stirring things up, calling for an end to the entire confessional system. This blogger expected to see Mousawi start squirming in his seat any moment. But Galloway wasn't done showing off his knowledge of the Lebanese political system:

    "The prime minister has to be a Sunni. And the Shia ... well, they get the speaker of parliament."

    Galloway then tried to convince the audience that the Lebanese speaker of parliament is a nothing post, akin to the Speaker of the British House of Commons. The name of that office-holder, Michael Martin, drew laughs from the assembled masses. But you know who would not have been laughing had he been there? Nabih Berri. The Lebanese speaker of parliament, an important Hizbollah ally who has put together a massive patronage system over the past 30 years, would have been shocked to have discovered he occupies a joke position with no real power.

    Abu Muqawama then began to feel genuinely sorry for Mousawi, because Galloway moved on to an even more uncomfortable subject ... Iran:

    "I've never been to Iran, have never met an Iranian leader, and don't particularly like the government."

    Abu Muqawama had his eyes on Mousawi the entire time, and now he was looking really uncomfortable. It's all well and good to slag off the Iranian regime, George, unless you happen to acknowledge the Supreme Leader of that country as your supreme leader. Which Hizbollah and its followers -- including, presumably, Mousawi -- do.

    "You don't have to like the government of Iran," Galloway assured everyone in the room except for the one guy who, actually, kinda does have to like the government of Iran.

    But it was all okay, because Galloway then went on to describe the evils of America, and once he started talking about the occupation of Iraq, it was safe for Mousawi to clap again.

    Abu Muqawama, meanwhile, left after the plenary session and took advantage of the fact that his gym was a 10-minute walk away. He was going to stay for more, but honestly, there is a limit to the extent to which this blogger will go for the sake of his readers and the greater academic truths. Squat cleans and dead lifts sounded a lot more appetizing.

    A few observations:

    1. Galloway went on about the inconsistencies of the West -- we want democracy in the Middle East but not Hamas; we can have nuclear weapons but the Iranians cannot -- but one of the things that struck this blogger was how difficult it must be to keep all of those leftists, with all all their individual causes, from contradicting one another. Tony Benn started off the conference by dismissing some environmental conference at Bali as being relatively unimportant, and then a Green Party MEP took the podium and talked about how important the upcoming Bali conference was going to be. George Galloway led the cheers for Iran's nuclear program, which precipitated an awkward silence when Hans van Sponeck called for a WMD-free Middle East and defended the NPT. Talk about a big tent! On one side of the auditorium there was a Free Palestine! desk and on the other end was a crew demanding the immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan. What do those two causes have in relation to one another aside from a common enemy to be found in the U.S. of A.?

    2. It's interesting how two different narratives have built up as to how the 2006 Lebanon War started. The established, fact-based narrative says the war began on 12 July 2006 when Hizbollah attacked across the Blue Line and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. Pretty much 98% of the world's population is cool with this fact -- even those who aren't big fans of Israel. But Hizbollah and the radical Left talk about "the Israeli war on Lebanon" as if nothing happened on 12 July. Abu Muqawama has intelligent, otherwise-reasonable friends who dispute the established narrative, saying Israel broke certain "unwritten rules" when they responded to the kidnapping. Okay, Abu Muqawama says, the response was certainly over the top and strategically foolish, but what are these unwritten rules that govern the Blue Line and say Israel can't respond militarily to a kidnapping? Does UNIFIL know about them? Does Israel? Abu Muqawama then gets patronizing rolling of eyes and shaking of heads as if to say, You stupid American, you're so locked into the hegemonic discourse that you can't open your eyes to see the truth. Maybe Abu Muqawama is a stupid American, but he's traveled up and down the Blue Line on both sides of the border and has yet to hear of any "unwritten rules" that Israel broke when they responded on 12 July. That's not a value judgment -- that's just the way it is. But Abu Muqawama doesn't think there were many people at the conference who would have disputed the Hizbollah narrative.

    3. The entire session -- even when he had to listen carefully to the Iraqi delegate, who was speaking in Arabic -- Abu Muqawama could not for the life of him get the Outkast song Two Dope Boys (In a Cadillac) out of his head. Seriously. It's been in his head all day.

    It goes chromes to the Fleetwoods, Coupes to the Villes...
    Hizbollah, Iran, Lebanon

  • CMC: Enough with the MRAPs already
    December 1, 2007 | Posted by Charlie - 12:16pm | 5 Comments
    Charlie has not followed the MRAP debate in the Marine Corps all that closely, but this story definitely caught her eye:

    The Corps says it doesn’t want to order any more bomb-proof vehicles for Marines, and is slashing by one-third the number of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles it once expected to buy, Marine sources said.

    The decision is a sharp reversal in stance for the service — which once envisioned every Marine in Iraq traveling outside the wire in the vehicles — and comes as its top officer openly complains they are weighing the Corps down. The service originally planned to buy as many as 3,700 of the vehicles, a number that will drop by more than 1,000, sources said.

    There are a number of defensible reasons not to go ahead with the original order: IED casualties are down in Iraq, IEDs and road travel are both less common in Afghanistan, etc. (And even these strike Charlie as rather short sighted...it's not like we've had great success in generating just-in-time MRAP production.)

    But this policy shift occurs in the wake of the Commandant's comments at CNAS earlier this fall where he expressed fears that the Corps was getting too heavy and moving away from its expeditionary traditions.
    I would tell you that I’m a little bit concerned about us keeping our expeditionary flavor. Quite frankly, if you compared what the battalion table of equipment set is today and what we put into battalions when we first went into Iraq, it‘s vastly different. We are much heavier than ever before. We‘re talking about a potential buy of 3,700 MRAPs. Those vehicles weigh 40,000 pounds each in the larger category. Frankly, you can‘t put them in a helicopter, and you can‘t even put them aboard an amphibious ship. So, we‘ve simply gotten heavier.

    We‘ve become, in some ways, a second land army — and it‘s okay for now. I mean, there‘s no second guessing whether or not MRAP was the right thing to do — I still see it as a moral imperative to protect those great troops that we were talking about earlier. But can I give a satisfactory answer to what we‘re going to be doing with those things in five or 10 years? Probably not. Wrap them in shrink wrap and put them on asphalt somewhere is about the best thing that we can describe at this point — and as expensive as they are, that is probably not a good use of the taxpayers money.
    Well, apparently the Commandant did find a way to second guess the MRAPs, so he's got that going for him. And can he really not think of a use for those vehicles in 10 years time (much less a year from now in Anbar if things turn ugly again)? Maybe that's not surprising given his views of COIN and irregular warfare:
    So that‘s how we‘re shaping the force at this point. In dialogue with those folks, the point came out that you can have a major contingency operation kind of capability and still do the ―"lesser included things" to include counterinsurgency. The reverse of that statement is probably not true. So we need to either make sure that we get that balance right — whatever that balance may in time need to be.
    Sorry, General, but I'm pretty sure that the last several years qualify as "all evidence to the contrary" on this front. It's pretty clear that our general purpose forces (not to mention significant elements of their leadership) found COIN challenging to say the least. There are clearly strategic perils to be had in letting our significant conventional advantage atrophy; Charlie has no interest in turning the Marines into a constabulary force. But we're not anywhere close to over-correcting toward COIN for the military at large. And so long as the Commandant thinks they're "lesser included things," I think we're probably all safe from that fate.

    Besides, worring about the heaviness and and expeditionary flavor of the Marine Corps as we're struggling through two wars is straight out of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (as they stand on a cliff overlooking a raging river):
    Butch Cassidy: Then you jump first.
    Sundance Kid: No, I said.
    Butch Cassidy: What's the matter with you?
    Sundance Kid: I can't swim.
    Butch Cassidy: Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill you.
    Being light won't matter a damn bit if we fail in Iraq and Afghanistan. We can figure out what to do with the MRAPs after we win. That's a problem Charlie would love to have. Because if we lose, they're so going to be the least of our problems.
    COIN, Marines

  • Ad-hockery in Afghanistan
    November 30, 2007 | Posted by Charlie - 7:53pm | 6 Comments
    The Wall Street Jounal has a long and excellent article about the COIN Academy in Afghanistan. Establishing tactical schools in-country is a well known COIN best practice (the Jungle Warfare School in Malaya is perhaps the best known amongst COIN scholars). And, as part of our steep learning curve in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have put together such schools in both countries.

    In fact, the TTP and lessons learned being taught in Kabul are certainly cause for celebration by Galula-lovers everywhere:

    Academy instructors teach that counterinsurgents must "clear, hold and build" to insulate the public from insurgent tactics while demonstrating that the government has something better to offer. In the "clear" stage, Afghan and coalition troops physically force insurgents from villages and towns, separating them from the civilian populace. The military then fills the void with quick-impact aid such as emergency clinics, food distribution or free blankets and farm implements.

    In the next phase, the government and its allies must maintain a constant presence to hold the villages, to reassure the public that the insurgents won't come back to punish those who collaborate with the authorities. They also should sweeten the pot by providing more substantial projects to demonstrate Kabul's competence, such as rebuilding a mosque or repairing irrigation ditches. "You lose credibility with the people if you don't hold," Marine First Lt. Jack Isaac, a 24-year-old instructor from Dallas, Pa., warned his class.

    Instructors told students how in the Chalekor Valley in Zabur Province, an American-led force cleared five villages in May 2006 and inflicted terrible casualties on Taliban fighters who tried to overrun a joint U.S.-Afghan base. The allied forces provided medical services and other goodwill projects. But ultimately they didn't have enough troops to maintain a presence in the valley. When they pulled out, the Taliban returned.

    The "build" phase requires long-term economic development so that "the enemy is no longer welcome and support for the government is strong," according to the academy's student handbook. That means bigger projects, such as paved roads linking isolated villages to market towns. Results ultimately will be apparent not in the number of dead Taliban, instructors say -- but in indicators such as school attendance, election turnouts, business growth and increasing tips about impending attacks.

    [snip]

    Capt. Helmer says counterinsurgents face a paradox: "The more you protect the force, the less safe you are." When coalition troops hole up in big bases, surrounded by barbed wire and sand barriers, they risk turning the locals toward the insurgents. Small, vulnerable outposts set among the villages, such as ones the Army has erected along the Pech River Valley near Pakistan, bring troops and people closer together. When the insurgents attack the troops, they are attacking the people, too. But such exposed positions also increase the near-term risk of allied casualties.

    But the Academy itself is a reflection of broader trends in our effort in Afghanistan: good, often great, innovation by leaders on the ground coupled with a sideshow budget and also-ran cast.

    But as the academy students discovered, putting the theory into practice can feel like building a sand castle as the tide is coming in. There's only so much aid money to go around. There are only so many soldiers to clear and hold. There are local blood feuds to resolve. There are local power structures to decipher. There are civilians to charm. And there are insurgents trying to disrupt the whole venture.

    One common complaint in Afghanistan is that the coalition makes big promises, but fails to deliver. "Afghans don't understand how, if the world's only superpower is involved in a fight, it can't get them a goddamn road after promising to do so in 2002," says Capt. Helmer.

    This no knock on Capt. Dan Helmer--the 26 year old Army captain and Rhode Scholar tasked with setting up the Academy. (Your faithful bloggers have benefitted from many email exchanges with him, and they all share a common mentor in fellow West Point Rhodie, LTC John Nagl.)

    But, as he'll tell you, he's a freaking Army captain. Charlie is quite certain that Capt. Helmer is among the best and the brightest, but he's not among those who can get @^*% done in the Army (or Afghanistan). If we were serious about such things, we might assign someone with a bit more institutional clout. Someone who could get paper copies of FM 3-24 for the Academy (it's cool, the Army posts them online. The students just wait 47 hours to download them over what passes for an internet connection in Kabul). Someone who could actually institutionalize the Academy within the Army instead of it being a Frankenstein science project dreamed up by folks who've read ATOM one too many times.

    We can't win the war without places like the COIN Academy and officers like Capt. Helmer. But we also can't do it with them alone. If we're serious about COIN, about advising, about winning, we'll find a way to do this right. And to keep doing it, lest some new 26 year-old captain teach herself this all over again in 2027.
    advising, Afghanistan, COIN

  • Random Bits
    November 30, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 5:32pm | 9 Comments
    First off, to all my fellow Scots out there, Happy St. Andrew's Day. St. Andrew's Day is a lot like St. Patrick's Day, only with more men in skirts and a lot less fun. Just replace all the Guinness and merriment and such with haggis and admonishments from your mother to go back upstairs and finish your Latin homework -- rrright this minute, young man -- and you've pretty much got it.

    Second, Abu Muqawama will not be posting much tomorrow. He's off to a Stop the War rally in central London. Really. Abu Muqawama's flatmate wondered if this wasn't a bit like the local butcher attending a vegans' rally, but there is some academic research involved in all of this: the editor of Hizbollah's party newspaper is speaking, and Abu Muqawama is anxious to hear what he has to say. So he'll be spending the day with a bunch of granola-munching Independent-readers. Hell, he might bring along a sign that says Start the War! just to see if anyone notices. He would joke, but seriously, these anti-war folk can be pretty violent (ironically enough) and might kill him.

    Third -- hats off, please -- Evel Knievel, RIP.
    Scotland

  • Counterinsurgency Quote of the Week
    November 30, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 7:52am | 5 Comments
    Non, décidément, on ne tue pas les mouches à coups de marteau (We definitely don't kill flies with hammers).

    -- Marcel Bigeard    ; found in Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil Wars

    Kalyvas pairs this quote with an old favorite of Abu Muqawama and Charlie:

    This is a political war and it calls for discrimination in killing. The best weapon for killing would be a knife, but I'm afraid we can't do it that way. The worst is an airplane. The next worst is artillery. Barring a knife, the best is a rifle -- you know who you're killing.

    -- John Paul Vann
    COIN

  • Reporting Iraq
    November 30, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 7:49am | 9 Comments
    Abu Muqawama saw this article in the London Review of Books thanks to Theo Farrell, whose own analysis is worth reading.

    Since the surge of resistance in Falluja in 2004 and the wholesale retribution, much of Iraq is no easier to access or decode than the Green Zone. The situation was summed up – overplayed according to some of her colleagues – by Farnaz Fassihi, an American reporter for the Wall Street Journal, whose desperate round-robin email to family and friends in 2004 slipped into the public domain as a web circular: ‘Can’t eat in restaurants . . . can’t look for stories, can’t travel in anything but a full armoured car . . . can’t be stuck in traffic, can’t speak English outside . . . can’t say I’m an American, can’t linger at checkpoints, can’t be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can’t and can’t.’

    Update: Meanwhile, Bob Bateman is letting fly at ... well, pretty everyone involved in the Bilal Hussein case.
    Iraq

  • And now, for the most politically incorrect question of the day
    November 30, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 4:02am | 12 Comments
    The New York Times has a front-page article today on the lack of anything resembling a plan for all the Iraqi refugees who are now trying to return to their homes in the newly safer-than-Abu-Muqawama's-East-London-neighborhood Baghdad.

    Here's the catch: over the past year, Baghdad has been, for all intensive purposes, ethnically cleansed. (Without many of the massacres that we feared would take place. People were basically just intimidated out of their homes, with enough murdered to send a message to everyone else.) Check out these striking graphics, courtesy of the Times. I mean, holy %$#@, seriously, check these out.

    The trick is now to somehow resettle refugees whose houses have been taken over. You guys think that's going to be easy?

    “All these guys coming back are probably going to find somebody else living in their house,” said Col. William Rapp, a senior aide to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, speaking at a two-day military briefing on measuring military trends for a small group of American reporters in Baghdad.

    “We have been asking, pleading with the government of Iraq, to come up with a policy so that it is not put upon our battalion commanders and the I.S.F. battalion commanders to figure it out on the ground,” he added, referring to the American and Iraqi security force commanders.

    Fat chance, boys. The Iraqi government couldn't plan a two-car funeral. So here's the question: is it worth it? We talk about internally displaced persons, but does anyone really think it's realistic to return these people until/if there is some political reconciliation? I mean, the first example of a similar situation that strikes Abu Muqawama is the flight of Christians from the Chouf Mountains in Lebanon after Harb al-Jabal. No Christians returned to their homes until after the war and the Taif Accords, years later. (Any Lebanon-watchers, feel free to correct this blogger's memory. And yes, he knows there were numerous instances of other sects being kicked out of areas. It's just that the Chouf is the first example that sticks in his mind.)

    The ethnic cleansing of Baghdad has really been a remarkably quick phenomenon, leading one military officer to tell a journalist friend of Abu Muqawama several months back, "Look, we all just have to get used to the reality that Baghdad is now and will forever be a Shia city."

    Do we? Should we? Or should we listen to this man, who studies Iraq very closely and has been arguing that the "cleansing" of Baghdad is a more dynamic process than we give it credit for being. (And thus, could presumably be affected by policy changes on the ground.)

    Basically, what should the policy be? In the end, Abu Muqawama would bet that we're not going to have a policy at all and that this will be, much to the fear of Gen. Petraeus, dumped in the laps of hapless battalion commanders on the ground in Baghdad who will be forced to take sides.

    %$#@. This country really is a mess.

    Col. Cheryl L. Smart, who tracks the data on displaced Iraqis for General Petraeus’s command, said that the American military had been “very vocal” with the Iraqi government about the need to establish a system to adjudicate claims about property rights and to avoid using Iraqi troops to carry out “forced evictions.”

    Colonel Rapp voiced the hope that confrontations might be avoided by building new homes for returning Iraqis instead of forcing all of the squatters to leave. “It is probably going to be resolved with new housing construction as opposed to wholesale evictions and resettlement,” he said.

    “Whether they will remix is probably a multiyear, decade kind of issue,” he added, referring to the possibility of sectarian reintegration.

    “The immediate return of I.D.P.’s will create tensions in that system, and we are concerned about it,” he said, referring to the internally displaced people in Iraq.

    Good luck, boys. Creating new housing, Abu Muqawama agrees, probably makes more sense than trying to give people back what has been stolen from them. Where that all leads as far as long-term reconciliation, though, is anyone's guess.
    Iraq

  • Public Diplomacy and the SecDef
    November 30, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 3:53am | 1 Comments
    Hey, everybody, please direct your attention over to the Small Wars Journal blog where Matt Armstrong, a friend of Abu Muqawama who runs the excellent MountainRunner blog, has a piece on public diplomacy. Matt is really one of the bright young minds on public diplomacy, having studied and thought about it perhaps more than anyone else. (He's about to be the second person in history to have a master's degree in public diplomacy.) Abu Muqawama didn't even know what the Smith-Mundt Act was before reading Matt's post, and now he's ready to take up pitch forks and torches and lead a march on Washington, demanding it be amended. Matt writes:

    Smith-Mundt has shaped the content and methods of communications from State and Defense through institutionalized firewalls created along artificial lines, fostering a bureaucratic culture of discrimination that hampers America’s ability to participate in the modern struggle over ideas and managing perceptions.

    Read it all here.

    Update: And while we're at it, we should mention MountainRunner has taken a page out of the Abu Muqawama Playbook and come up with the first in a series of educational readings on public diplomacy. Good on him.
    Public Diplomacy

  • And then we'll hold Pashtu language classes in Waziristan
    November 29, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 8:42am | 8 Comments
    Abu Muqawama saw this press release via Small Wars Journal, but what really caught his eye was the dateline:

    ZARQA, Jordan (Army News Service, Nov. 28, 2007) - Arabic cultural-awareness training from Third U.S. Army/U.S. Army Central and the Jordanian Armed Forces is now available to all American service-members.

    More than 600 service-members will be able to attend the annual training at the Peace Operation Training Center in Jordan Feb. 17 to Mar. 27 in support of the Central Command Theater Support Cooperation Program, at little or no cost to their units. The training is an integral part of the U.S. Army Forces Command training strategy for Soldiers deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan, officials said.

    Oh, the irony! This man must be spinning in his grave that U.S. Army soldiers are being taught how to be better counterinsurgents in his home-freaking-town!
    COIN, U.S. Army

  • McCain vs. Romney on Torture
    November 29, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 8:16am | 3 Comments
    Gail Collins writes this morning in the New York Times that John McCain "absolutely dismembered [Mitt] Romney on the question of torture" during last night's GOP debate. He did. Watch it here:



    On the lighter side of things, Mitt Romney articulated the position of this blog on a matter of slightly less moral importance:



    Update: Former flatmate Theo points out, though, that Romney can't count.

    Update II: afghanistanica, though, wants to know why the Red Sox get airtime and not the war we've been fighting since 2001.
    Red Sox, Torture

  • COIN Education
    November 29, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 6:24am | 0 Comments
    And now, a short administrative announcement from the folks who bring you this blog:

    This blog was first started to be a resource for all those out there looking to learn more about insurgency and counterinsurgency. Charlie is a long-time student of COIN who now teaches it to the U.S. military, and Abu Muqawama is a one-time practitioner of COIN who now studies it formally. The real mission of this blog is to pass along some of what we've studied and learned in the hopes that the readership might find some interest in it all. Accordingly, the two of us keep the Counterinsurgency Reading List updated and have now added a new section for the Counterinsurgency Book Club to the right.

    Have fun hitting the books, and feel free to post something in the comments if we need to cover something you feel we've been ignoring. The goal is, always, to provide a service to the readership.

    And to gossip about the Red Sox, of course, and bring you the news about the latest East Tennessee alien sightings.
    Book Club, Books

  • True Crime
    November 29, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 5:15am | 4 Comments
    Here are the latest highlights from the police blotter of Abu Muqawama's hometown newspaper:

    Thieves got through four padlocks at the old Broadway Farm and Garden Supply on South Broad Street.

    They also cut a chain at the rear entrance gate before taking a large amount of copper from inside.

    The store was seized by federal authorities after the arrest and conviction of former owner Joe Swafford on charges of supplying ingredients to meth dealers.

    * * *

    Marquieta Swanson of E. 28th Street said a light brown Ford Taurus pulled up in front of her residence and two females got out. She said one was wearing a black hoodie and the other a red one.

    She said the girls threw bricks through two of her front windows.

    Ms. Swanson said she saw her ex-boyfriend driving the car.

    Police said the former boyfriend had an alibi, and there was not enough evidence to arrest him.

    * * *

    Police responded to Pembroke Lane to handle a water fight between a husband and wife.

    Mrs. Henry Roberts said they argued, then she poured a glass of water on her husband as he lay on the couch.

    Mr. Roberts retaliated by pouring water on her.

    * * *

    On North Holly Street, a woman told officers she is sure she knows who took her car stereo. She said a vehicle passed by with the radio on "and it sounded just like mine."

    The officer's note was "441 holds true." 441 is police code for mentally off.

    * * *

    A man on Shallowford Road told Officer David Cowan he looked out his window and saw a hairy eyeball attached to an alien.

    Officer Cowan did a search, "but did not locate the hairy-eyeballed alien."
    Tennessee

  • John Boyd and the Neo-Taliban
    November 28, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 5:29pm | 0 Comments
    Abu Muqawama attended a book launch tonight honoring this man's latest work. Some of you Afghanistan-watchers may recognize Antonio Giustozzi's name from earlier books and journalism, but his latest book -- Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan-- looks particularly promising.

    Giustozzi was, on the whole, pessimistic toward the possibility that Afghanistan's central government might get their act together, saying it might take an ultimatum from NATO before they move on key reforms. But Abu Muqawama was, as always, more interested in what he had to say about the battlefield behavior of the Taliban insurgents. On the one hand, they have a strong motivating ideology that binds them together. On the other hand, though, they are comfortable in decentralized operations and push decision-making authority down to small unit leaders, encouraging initiative and independence on the battlefield. In short, they behave more like the U.S. Marine Corps than the traditional state armies of the Middle East and Central Asia.

    This ties into some of the research Abu Muqawama is doing at the moment, studying the way in which decentralized operations reduce the length of the insurgent small unit leader's OODA Loop on the battlefield -- thus allowing him to make rapid decisions in the same manner that small unit leaders in advanced western militaries make tactical decisions. Specifically, Abu Muqawama is trying to figure out how this makes Hizbollah more effective opponent against the IDF than, say, the PLO or the Egyptian Army.

    Now you know what Abu Muqawama thinks about all day in the library (aside from the Red Sox).
    Afghanistan, Books

  • Gap Years for Soldiers?
    November 28, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 1:54am | 16 Comments
    We all know that fighting insurgencies is exhausting work. Almost five years into the Iraq War, more and more soldiers are "burning out" and leaving the Army. (58% of the West Point Class of 2002 elected to leave active duty after completing their minimum service requirement.*) What to do? Retired British Army Colonel Tim Collins has an idea: encourage soldiers to take a year off.

    Abu Muqawama cannot say this is a bad idea, though it would wreak havoc on personnel systems. U.S. Army officers, though, should be able to do this anyway. They should be able to leave the service, take 12 to 24 months off (go to graduate school, work for a congressman, smoke pot on a beach in the Sinai, whatever) and then re-enter the military. Junior officers could do this just prior to the advanced course, and it wouldn't even hurt their career time lines too much, would it? They would just jump into a different year group upon their return to active duty, right?

    Hugh Shelton, actually, did this. He had a break in service after Vietnam. And it sure didn't hurt his career.

    *In an earlier version of this post, Abu Muqawama quoted the attrition rate among YG 2002 USMA graduates as 48%. He was wrong, and had remembered incorrectly -- and too optimistically. The correct percentage is a galling 58%. By way of comparison, the attrition rates in YG 2001 and YG 2000 were 46% and 35%, respectively.
    COIN, General Military

  • afghanistanica Has Some Announcements
    November 27, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 4:55pm | 5 Comments
    Fourthly, to the person who owns this computer: I’m sorry about the websites in the browser history and in the cache. Reading about Afghanistan online can take you to some weird places. But I promise you that http://abumuqawama.blogspot.com is not a terrorist website even though the url probably seems like one to the average American. Abu Muqawama is not a terrorist and his collaborator Charlie is probably not Viet Cong. And they write about Afghanistan more than once in a while.
    Afghanistan, Humor

  • NYT 100 Notable Books
    November 27, 2007 | Posted by Charlie - 2:54pm | 9 Comments
    Just in case you a) already own all the books on our reading list, or b) can't read about COIN all the time, the NYT has published its list of 100 Notable Books.

    Catching Charlie's eye: new Murakami, In the Country of Men, The Indian Clerk, biographies of Alice Roosevelt, Denys Finch Hatton, and Picasso, The Day of Battle, American Creation, and Soldier's Heart.

    What other books should she add to her holiday list?
    Books

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