Operation Moshtarak

pardus said:
I've read a couple of posts here now about how we should be focusing on killing to win in COIN warfare.
Fighting is important but it is not the most important thing and should not be the focus of any COIN operation.

The fighting is done to stabilize in order to buy timeto conduct the main effort which is winning the hearts and minds of the populace of the country you are trying to secure.

You can kill all day and achieve nothing but strengthen the enemy, by resolve if not by manpower.

Don't get me wrong, we must kill but more than that we need to get the locals on our side.
Click to expand...


I agree but by fighting and killing you establish security. Security has to come before hearts and minds. Civic action and political efforts mean nothing if the locals are still afraid of insurgent retribution. And once you've established security--by killing efficiently enough to make the insurgents terrified of stepping foot into your AO--you can begin winning the locals over...while maintaining aggressive action to keep the pressure on the enemy. Just my :2c: I think we are on the same page maybe different paragraphs. It's also important to accept the reality that no American and no Briton--unless T.E. Lawrence rises from the grave-- is going to win anybody's heart or mind. Only the indigs can win the H&M of their countrymen and they've got to do it right..

As far as telegraphing intentions, announcing plans for your offensive in advance, if I were a Taliban, I'd be thinking hey, it took me a long long time to grow this beard...these guys are insulting my manliness by telling me they are going to attack my city and expect me to leave and hand it over to them. Allah Akbar...I'm going to use these two weeks they are generously giving me to arrange a reception by planting IEDs, preparing ambush sites, fallback positions and exfil routes. I am also going to take maximum advantage of the Marine's "classified" ROE...which, of course, has been classified so I can't take advantage of it but which of course I can because you can't keep classified something this restrictive that every swinging dick 0311 and 0331 has been bitching about openly and vehemently for the past 6 months.
 
It's also become abundantly clear as this operation progresses that it doesn't matter how many civilians are accidentally killed--200, 20 or 2--we are still going to get hammered for it by the media. Yesterday's Tampa Tribune, (a newspaper delivered daily to CENTCOM/SOCOM), pretty much went apeshit with every article focused on collateral casualties and MacChrystal apologizing. And a whole feature story on a 7-year old boy shot in the chest. It doesn't matter who shot him, it's our fault. You're fucked if you do and you're fucked if you don't.
 
7point62 said:
I agree but by fighting and killing you establish security. Security has to come before hearts and minds. Civic action and political efforts mean nothing if the locals are still afraid of insurgent retribution. And once you've established security--by killing efficiently enough to make the insurgents terrified of stepping foot into your AO--you can begin winning the locals over...while maintaining aggressive action to keep the pressure on the enemy. Just my :2c: I think we are on the same page maybe different paragraphs. It's also important to accept the reality that no American and no Briton--unless T.E. Lawrence rises from the grave-- is going to win anybody's heart or mind. Only the indigs can win the H&M of their countrymen and they've got to do it right..
Click to expand...

You have missed the point of my post and I believe COIN warfare with this post.

The locals are often the insurgents or related to the insurgents.
By killing them you do nothing but turn the locals against you.

e.g. you kill habib the insurgent, good he's gone, problem solved... right? Wrong, Habib happens to be the son of the village chief and married to the village Iman's daughter and has an extended family of over 50 people in the valley that he was born.
You not only didn't establish security by killing Habib but you just turned over 50 people who were sitting on the fence when it came to loyalty to either the insurgency or the govt into confirmed insurgents.
You turned a valley that was teetering on the edge of loyalty into a safe haven for not only the Taliban but Al Qaida as well.

A valley that will now undoubtably kill American and Allied troops when they try to secure it after you have gone.
A valley that will remain hostile for decades if not longer.

Your plan will only work when used against the Al Qaida insurgents, it could be a disaster if used against the Taliban.

That doesn't mean we stop fighting the Taliban, it means we get a whole lot smarter about it.
 
Actually, I did and didn't miss your point. Because I've posted much the same thing on other threads. But I look at it a little differently than you do. A lot of these villagers can be pretty pragmatic about about warfare, especially if they've become used to it, as in Vietnam or Afghanistan. Cousin Habib--as much as we love him--he was also a rash young man who is at least partially responsible for digging his own hole when he decided to leave our village and seek excitement with the Taliban. So, we are not going to be all that surprised if we find out that cousin Habib got zapped. I don't agree that killing cousin Habib is automatically going to turn his extended family against you. I do believe, however, that if you kill or mistreat or degrade or maliciously injure innocent villagers, you will turn that village against you.
 
Pardus, I need to explain my last post...I had to run out to pick up my son and didn't expand enough...please bear with me for a bit.

The scenario you describe is textbook COIN. There's a big difference between textbook COIN and reality COIN. In reality COIN, we have a village based on agriculture. Farming is the business of the village. If you decide to leave the village and go join a bunch of Pakistanis in the Taliban, or a gang of bandits--or even the Afghan National Army, for that matter--you are deviating from the age-old business of the village, and choosing, of your own free will, a lifestyle of great risk and of no real practical or immediate value to the village. Most peasant farmers are not political animals. They don't care who's running things, they just want the guys with guns to leave them alone. They want to make a living, put food on the table for their family and enjoy their downtime. As a general rule, they are not happy when guerrilla fighters come into the village at night demanding food; and they are equally unhappy when government troops come into the village during the day to demand information about the guerrillas. If I am a peasant farmer and my neighbor's son decides to go off and fight--for anybody, it doesn't matter who--I may really like the kid, but I'm not going to avenge his death. His cause is not my cause. My cause is farming. If your neighbor's son decides to rob a bank at gunpoint and dies in a shootout with police, you may have loved the kid, but you're not going to fuck up your own life and shoot the next cop you see. This is the point. It's one thing to kill a warrior. It's another to kill a non-combatant.

And as far as winning hearts and minds go--and I swear I will hijack this thread no longer-- if you really want to help a primitive people, give them a doctor. Nothing wins people over faster than curing their kids, relieving their aches and pains, treating their afflictions, fixing their teeth...You take good care of a woman's sick baby and you will have won a friend.
 
7point62 said:
Pardus, I need to explain my last post...I had to run out to pick up my son and didn't expand enough...please bear with me for a bit.

The scenario you describe is textbook COIN. There's a big difference between textbook COIN and reality COIN. In reality COIN, we have a village based on agriculture. Farming is the business of the village. If you decide to leave the village and go join a bunch of Pakistanis in the Taliban, or a gang of bandits--or even the Afghan National Army, for that matter--you are deviating from the age-old business of the village, and choosing, of your own free will, a lifestyle of great risk and of no real practical or immediate value to the village. Most peasant farmers are not political animals. They don't care who's running things, they just want the guys with guns to leave them alone. They want to make a living, put food on the table for their family and enjoy their downtime. As a general rule, they are not happy when guerrilla fighters come into the village at night demanding food; and they are equally unhappy when government troops come into the village during the day to demand information about the guerrillas. If I am a peasant farmer and my neighbor's son decides to go off and fight--for anybody, it doesn't matter who--I may really like the kid, but I'm not going to avenge his death. His cause is not my cause. My cause is farming. If your neighbor's son decides to rob a bank at gunpoint and dies in a shootout with police, you may have loved the kid, but you're not going to fuck up your own life and shoot the next cop you see. This is the point. It's one thing to kill a warrior. It's another to kill a non-combatant.

And as far as winning hearts and minds go--and I swear I will hijack this thread no longer-- if you really want to help a primitive people, give them a doctor. Nothing wins people over faster than curing their kids, relieving their aches and pains, treating their afflictions, fixing their teeth...You take good care of a woman's sick baby and you will have won a friend.
Click to expand...

You are not talking about the Pashtun people of Afghanistan...

Read this...

http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/09/24/the-dirtiest-war/print/

“If I kill someone with this gun,” says Abdul Qadeer Khan, a 47-year-old militiaman and father of two young boys, “then his family will seek revenge against my family. Then my family will have to seek revenge against his, and so on."
Click to expand...

Army officials admit this is part of their strategy, to divide the Taliban and then eliminate groups one by one with the help of the militias. But there is an underlying flaw in this approach: much of the Taliban ranks are drawn from local communities. Kill a Taliban and you are also killing a member of a clan.
Click to expand...

The Pashtun virtue of Badal demands revenge for the death of family/etc...

Your last paragraph goes along with what I was saying.
 
Goddammit, you are right. I overstepped my bounds. I tried to apply COIN from SE Asia and S. America to Afghanistan and all I did was embarrass myself. I'm a wanker. I hate myself. Please delete my posts. I've made a fool of myself and I want to die. I am an asshole. A know-it-all fucking asshole. Please, pardon my pedantic posts. Shoot me. Just fucking kill me.
 
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Like I said...I don't think it's ever a good idea to announce your intentions to your enemy...because they never do what you want them to do.
 

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