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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.

  • 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

  • The Democrats and Gen. Sanchez
    November 27, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 12:34pm | 5 Comments
    "Why he has chosen all of a sudden to attempt to return to public attention, and why he would do it in an overtly partisan way, frankly baffles me," said Bacevich, whose son was killed in Iraq. "And why the Democratic leadership would say, 'Yes, this is the guy who is going to deliver our message' is just baffling. He is a largely discredited figure."

    Has any issue recently confused Abu Muqawama's bi-partisan readership more than the decision of the Democratic Party to choose the walking, talking face of military incompetence to be its point man on Iraq? This is exactly the kind of stuff that gives the Democratic Party a bad name on national security issues. The party sees stars and goes all weak in the knees...

    Update: Charlie, here. She's pretty sure that AM is just posting these links now as part of an effort to get her to recreate her profane Thanksgiving Day rant. It's one thing to be all star-struck for generals, but why do they have to have such bad taste? You want to fawn over flag officers? Fine. Pick one of these. They'll look good on camera AND none of them are responsible for the biggest $&#* up of the entire war. Charlie is really wishing that one of the Dem presidential candidates speaks out against Sanchez and his obscene rewriting of history. (Obama advisors, are you listening?)
    Iraq

  • Feltman on Lebanon
    November 27, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 11:40am | 10 Comments
    Yes, we define Hizbullah as a terror organization. At the same time, I work in Lebanon. I cannot deny Hizbullah's effectiveness as a social organization. It has a well-oiled social and political machine. It has genuine support from a Shia population that felt marginalized and victimized for years. Hizbullah's popular support is real. We need to take this into our calculations....

    If you're interested in what's going on in Lebanon, be sure to read Amb. Feltman's revealing interview with Newsweek. It's already making headlines in the Beirut newspapers. Feltman is in many ways a bogeyman for Lebanese opposed to the March 14th ruling coalition, but he is much-admired in Washington. Love him or hate him, he has served as an effective ambassador, representing American interests well. Abu Muqawama has only met him once, but he went away from the 30-minute meeting highly impressed.

    It was understood, though, that Feltman was supposed to have left Lebanon last summer. Perhaps Foggy Bottom left him in Beirut because he's the only guy who knows the political situation so well.
    Lebanon

  • A Question for the Class...
    November 27, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 7:26am | 14 Comments
    Is this a low-level insurgency? Or just rioting? Where do we draw the line between the two? Note the interesting headline from Le Monde.

    Update: Charlie, here. In Charlie's world, insurgencies are violent political campaigns for the purpose of establishing governance of some (portion of) territory, typically characterized by indirect confrontation with government troops and a parallel political organization. Said differently, you would need to answer yes to each of the following questions:
    • Are the actors organized?
    • Is that organization interested in eventual governance?
    • Does that organization have a non-violent, political element?
    • Is the violence characterized by guerrilla tactics and avoidance of direct confrontation?
    For her money, Paris is experiencing riots (no organization, no interest in governance). There's little chance they could develop into insurgency. It might possible, however, for the rioters to somehow come together over time and engage in something like resistance warfare, which is mostly interested in punishment and disruption instead of actual governance. In a more or less functioning democracy like France it would be difficult for such a group to operate in the open for long, meaning that over time it would probably morph into a clandestine "terrorist" group. Again, not likely, but not outside the realm of possibility.

    Update II: Jaysus! And it's controversial to call the rioters criminal? They're shooting at the police with shotguns! And check the block on Charlie's fourth characteristic...
    COIN

  • Intelligence in Counterinsurgency
    November 27, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 6:59am | 6 Comments
    Counterinsurgencies are not won by more soldiers, cutting edge technology, or more lethal weapon systems. Rather insurgents are defeated when the pacifying force fully understands the local citizenry, when the people identify with the pacifying force, and when there is an abundance of timely information which allows the pacifying force to apply their intelligence to operations that result in overturning and disrupting insurgent activity.

    The old maxim is that intelligence drives offensive operations, and it's certainly the case that intelligence -- tactical, strategic, cultural -- drives effective counterinsurgency operations. Abu Muqawama finally got around to reading this post on Small Wars Journal, written by a junior officer serving in Iraq. There are some interesting ideas about information sharing in this post, so you should read it if you are at all interested in the subject. How do we break down the walls that separate knowledge within the U.S. government, and how do we then re-organize that knowledge so a variety of different customers can access what they need?
    COIN

  • Calling All Islamic Law Scholars
    November 27, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 5:58am | 5 Comments
    Okay, this has nothing to do with counterinsurgency, but Abu Muqawama was reading this story about a cafe in Cairo where only Muslim women are allowed and had a question for any smart folks on Islamic Law out there. (Hussein, if you're reading this, email me.) Abu Muqawama understands veiled Muslim women would want a place where they can relax, take off the veil, and enjoy the company of other women. He understands that. But since when was it illegal for a Muslim woman to take off the veil in front of non-Muslim women? Is this is a new thing? Because this is the first he has read anything about this. (And there are some pretty hilarious Q&A sessions out there on the internet. Click here or here.)

    Abu Muqawama apologizes to his readership if it has been laboring under the false assumption that -- because of his name -- he's some sort of Ghazali, because the reality is that when it comes to Islamic jurisprudence he's just as ignorant as any other Presbyterian.

    Update from Abu Muqawama's ever-steady voice of Muslim common sense, from New Haven by way of Lebanon: "...it has always been lawful for Muslim women to take their veils off in front of non-Muslim women. The formula doesn't have to do with the religion of whomever she is in front of. she can always take her veil in front of infants and other women, and mentally retarded people - regardless of their religion."
    Islam

  • Thanks, David Smith
    November 27, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 5:27am | 9 Comments
    David Smith's embed diary for the Guardian has come to a close, thus ending what would have been a mind-expanding series of reports for Guardianistas. It must have been quite a shock to discover U.S. servicemen in Iraq are overwhelmingly decent human beings. Abu Muqawama wants to thank David Smith for bringing the humanity of America's warriors home to British newspaper-readers. This dispatch, in particular, was great -- and representative of the kind of reporting Smith filed throughout his embed.

    Grudgingly, Abu Muqawama must also admit that the editors of the Guardian might have had something to do with this and thanks them too ... maybe they're not all champagne socialists.
    Iraq

  • The Iraq Kaleidoscope
    November 26, 2007 | Posted by Charlie - 11:19pm | 5 Comments
    George Packer picks up a number of articles your devoted blogging team has also been tracking.

    The Kaleidoscopic War

    A number of important articles on Iraq have appeared in the past few weeks:

    Read them all if you have time. The question of what’s happening in Iraq is always hard to answer, and so is the related question of what the U.S. can and should do. But it’s clear that the war has entered a new phase—as usual, a few steps ahead of our understanding, and unanticipated by almost everyone on the American side of the looking glass. Does anyone know how to take advantage of the changing situation? Do any of the plans out there still make sense? I’ll come back to this later in the week.

    George is asking all the right questions (no surprise there). We'll see if Charlie and Abu Muqawama have any answers.
    Iraq

  • Duck Season, Rabbit Season
    November 26, 2007 | Posted by Charlie - 12:58pm | 9 Comments
    This weekend's radio address by retired LTG Sanchez obviously caused quite a reaction amongst your faithful blogging team (AM was apparently so excited by Charlie's expletive-laced email that he posted the best lines himself). It was a stunningly stupid choice, and reflects the uniform worship that Charlie has seen developing for some time amongst the Dems (more on that later in the week).

    But it does beg the question: who's idea was it? DNC? Reid and Pelosi? One of the presidential candidates? It's common to say that the democrats are against the war. But at this point there are really only two things the Dems are against: GWB and losing in '08. Everything else is on the table. Candidates Clinton, Obama, and Edwards have all said that they would not commit to removing all troops from Iraq by 2012. Clinton, to the surprise of many (though not this blogger) has the most hawkish position of anyone in the party. There is little resembling an Iraq "policy" with the party as a whole.

    More importantly, it's primary season. How many of you have been to Iowa? Spent some quality time in Newton? Marshalltown? The sprawling metropolis of Des Moines? (Charlie's aunt and uncle usually host a caucus. It's baffling.) New Hampshire is just as strange but in a totally different live-free-or-die kind of way. Primary electorates, particularly in these states, aren't quite right. They're political freakshows. They pay attention, lots of attention. On the democratic side, these folks are against the war in a serious way. And you gotta win in either Iowa or NH or you're toast (especially in this year's front loaded calendar).

    So. The Dems are pandering. No surprise. What is surprising is that the front-runners are unwilling to take the most serious panderific step and promise immediate withdrawal. That, in and of itself, is telling. Charlie is holding fire until Summer 2008 to see what the Iraq plans look like the primary dust has settled. They would all do well to follow Abu Muqawama's advice in the meantime. (And if the military gains haven't translated into political gains by then, the Republicans are going to have just as many problems as the Dems.)
    COIN, Iraq

  • At least the journalists are keeping their senses of humor...
    November 26, 2007 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 10:36am | 0 Comments
    Failed state seeks new date. Country of good-looking, beach-going people who killed one another for 15 years ISO strong, presidential type. Let's start with reconciliation and statesmanship, and see what happens. We're not into sectarianism, we swear, but our ideal match must be a Maronite Christian. Eloquent and bold in a Nasrallah kinda way, sans the beard and turban. Sedate and reliable like Saniora, except not a crybaby when the Israelis come calling. All inquiries should be sent directly to the American or French embassies (no ticking or oddly shaped packages, please). Letters postmarked Damascus or Tehran will be returned to sender. Can't wait to hear from you! No, seriously, we can't wait...it's in the constitution.

    (Thanks, Laura)
    Humor, Lebanon

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