As Ken has noted below, he and I are in Afghanistan at the moment courtesy of the Prism Cell of HQ Regional Command-South (essentially a think tank for the commander of RC-S). We’ve been here for a couple of weeks travelling around a bit and generally trying to make sense of the strategic communications aspect of this campaign, a main interest for both of us. I’ll hold fire on my conclusions on stratcomms: I’m just finishing up the paper which I will publish and brag about and share here when it’s done soon. In the meantime, I thought I might share a few other impressions I have formed along the way here, in no particular order.
1. ‘Contact high’–I totally agree with David Ignatius writing in the Washinton Post on this ”[The] contrast between commanders’ high hopes for Afghanistan and stubborn realities on the ground is the strongest impression during a visit here. Traveling with the military, there’s always something of a contact high — with senior officers assuring visitors that the mission can be achieved.’ I find I cannot help walking away from meetings with some people here who are so clever and committed that I think ‘Man, this could really work.’ But after a few hours my suspension of disbelief dissipates and unhappy verities begin to prick my bubble, see next point.
2. When building anything get the big heavy bits settled firmly at the base and then work your way up with smaller stuff. For 9 years now we’ve gone at it the other way around. There’s a lot of good work being done here but it feels like trying to shore up a wall of big blocks with a foundation of pebbles. The big blocks:
- The Afghan government is not able to (or seemingly very interested in) govern the country in a manner which is congenial to the resolution of the conflict. They are, basically, it seems to me, making hay while the sun shines–and some of them are making an absolute fortune out of the status quo. Why change?
- The Taliban thrives on ISAF’s own supply chain, see Warlord, Inc.
- The government security forces in the south of the country by their own admission would not last 24 hours without the support of the coalition–this is not likely to change outside the 2014-18 time frame. Political expectations, on the other hand, are that ‘positive trends’ will be demonstrated in November 2010.
- Attitudes in the home populations of European coalition partners are increasingly hostile to the continuance of the campaign not least as the belief grows that the net contribution of the campaign to preventing terrorism on their own streets is negative. Meanwhile, for Americans, $300 million dollars a month is what USAID is pumping into the country at present. One can only imagine that a few Americans will be asking ‘for what?’ as their own public finances collapse. From where I sit I cannot see a good answer to that.
Finally, I still do not understand what the political strategy is. Moreover, what are the positive trends which can be demonstrated in November 2010? I suspect that the best case to be made is that we now, at long last, have the pieces in place to succeed, in time. But surely that merely begs the question ‘what have you been doing for 9 years then?’ David Petraeus is an electrifying speaker, a great communicator, if anyone can do it he can. That said, it’s going to have to be one hell of a speech.
3. The Canadians, now being Canadian-British I am biased, but…well, respect. Looking at Kandahar, its political and strategic importance, its plain centrality to this campaign, it’s amazing that they held it as well as they did with pointy sticks. Ok, maybe not pointy sticks but ‘chronically and woefully under-resourced’ are words that spring to mind which again begs the question, why? If it’s so obvious now that this is the ‘centre of gravity’ then why weren’t we acting as though it were all along?
4. Sitting here in Kandahar airfield looking out at the horizon (a twenty-foot high dirt berm topped by razor wire which is never far away) and breathing in the aroma of the ‘Poo Pond’ (a locall attraction, no shit) I am musing about what archaeologists of the future will gather from the physical evidence of Afghanistan’s history. Surely they will gather that it is a place which many conquerors have passed through in their time, leaving their marks on the landscape, fortresses, towers, caravansarais, giant Buddhas, mosques and steles, and airports and roads. Alexander the Great, the Mongols, the British even, and a shortlived thing called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but the most mysterious of all the HESCO Empire of the early 21st century which came and left leaving behind inscrutable formations of wire and canvas dirtboxes surrounding gigantic internal moats of human excrement and mounds of broken computer hard drives. Why did they come? Where did they go? Only the sands can tell… Seriously, I know that one message we wish to send the Afghans is that we are not conquerors, we’re not here to stay. But I fear that our current body language also does not reassure. Here’s the way I imagine the conversation:
Afghans: ‘Are you here to stay for the long haul?
ISAF: ‘Of course, that is why everything on this base is designed to be thrown away or fits in the belly of a C17. Get it?’
Afghans: ‘Ummm… no.’
5. The PortaLoo. If you want to gauge the mood of an army I think a great way to do it is to read the graffiti on the walls of the crapper. Given the, ahem, digestive troubles, which tend to afflict travellers to this part of the world where the microbes are more exotic and robust, I have read a lot. I swear there’s a PhD topic there. I think it would make a uniquely interesting and relevant subject for someone in literature, for instance.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
On point 3 on the Canadians, if I recall correctly, more wasn’t pumped into the area because other countries were unwilling to:
1) send (or shift) troops to work the area, or
2) loosen caveats enough to let those troops already in country help out more.
Please stay safe on your “tour” and don’t drink any more of the local water!
As for your observation:
“Meanwhile, for Americans, $300 million dollars a month is what USAID is pumping into the country at present. One can only imagine that a few Americans will be asking ‘for what?’ as their own public finances collapse. From where I sit I cannot see a good answer to that.”
I can but say that in the “economy” of Washington under our present masters, $300Mpm is hardly worth worrying over. We have now “transformed” sufficiently so that only hundreds of billions of dollars are an adequate sum to get anyone’s attention and even then such attention only seems in passing as one moves on the the next “big thing.”
JDP 3-40, Security and Stabilisation: the Military Contribution and the US COIN Field manual have only been published years into the campaign…
Surely the state of Afghanistan, the political tensions within the Nato partners, lack of adequate resourcing of military forces and, above all else, direction, must all stem from the complete lack of any discernible foreign policy objective? There is no point in engaging in a military operation if we have no idea of what it is exactly that we want to achieve and how we want to go about it… I am only a very junior officer, but even I can see that, and was talking about just this to Stu Gordon back in 2007! Foreign policy led, resource informed, perhaps…
But yet again we find ourselves relying on one man to be the Mr Fixit for a campaign that largely went wrong from the top down; in the words of Maj. Gen Rutherford-Jones, all the British army need to know about terrorism and COIN comes from the N.I experience. In 2001/2002, the USMC CG wrote a personal letter to CGRM saying how wonderful the Royal Marines were, and how the USMC needed to learn from them, or else have to rely upon their cousins to bail them out as 45Cdo did during Op Jacana. How things turn full circle in less than a decade!
So what are we trying to achieve? As you say, conquerors come and more often go in Afghanistan’s history, leaving a legacy of archaeology that tells us rather clearly that most, if not all foreign encroachment, is transient. What did previous invaders hope to achieve, and were they able to maintain a ‘light’ footprint as we are attempting to do so whilst attaining the objective?
At least there may be no more comments reference ‘dropping a Gordon [Brown]‘ on the heads’ door!
On Point 3: Canadians
I wouldn’t say we were “chronically and woefully under-resourced”. We took armoured fighting vehicles (LAVIII) and artillery (M777) from the start, which was a big help in the conventional fighting that broke out in 2006. Within months of that, we had tanks. I often chuckle at writing coming from the U.S. on how Afghanistan is (for them) the death of the Armored Corps/Artillery. For us, it was a first chance to utilize this stuff since Korea. This equipment, and the ability to employ a modern mechanized force, undoubtably played a role in “holding” Kandahar in the sense that the insurgents could not mass after Operation MEDUSA.
“Chronically and woefully under-manned” is probably a better fit. We all puttered down to the Pashtun belt with small forces to assist PRTs when ISAF expanded in 2005. When the Brits realized what a hornet’s nest had been kicked, they upped their manning big time (a Battle Group to a Brigade). We added a few hundred people when we could; overall our numbers crept up to probably twice what we originally sent (most in specialist units like advisors/PRT/C-IED), but we never approached the “surging” done by our British and American allies.
Dave,
A question about the PortaLoo (perhaps this can fit it with the potential PhD thesis). You may be familiar with Slavoj Zizek’s work in this general area. For instance, Zizek notes the following:
“In a traditional German toilet, the hole into which shit disappears after we flush is right at the front, so that shit is first laid out for us to sniff and inspect for traces of illness. In the typical French toilet, on the contrary, the hole is at the back, i.e. shit is supposed to disappear as quickly as possible. Finally, the American (Anglo-Saxon) toilet presents a synthesis, a mediation between these opposites: the toilet basin is full of water, so that the shit floats in it, visible, but not to be inspected. No wonder that in the famous discussion of European toilets at the beginning of her half-forgotten Fear of Flying, Erica Jong mockingly claims that ‘German toilets are really the key to the horrors of the Third Reich. People who can build toilets like this are capable of anything.’ It is clear that none of these versions can be accounted for in purely utilitarian terms: each involves a certain ideological perception of how the subject should relate to excrement.
Hegel was among the first to see in the geographical triad of Germany, France and England an expression of three different existential attitudes: reflective thoroughness (German), revolutionary hastiness (French), utilitarian pragmatism (English). In political terms, this triad can be read as German conservatism, French revolutionary radicalism and English liberalism. In terms of the predominance of one sphere of social life, it is German metaphysics and poetry versus French politics and English economics. The point about toilets is that they enable us not only to discern this triad in the most intimate domain, but also to identify its underlying mechanism in the three different attitudes towards excremental excess: an ambiguous contemplative fascination; a wish to get rid of it as fast as possible; a pragmatic decision to treat it as ordinary and dispose of it in an appropriate way. It is easy for an academic at a round table to claim that we live in a post-ideological universe, but the moment he visits the lavatory after the heated discussion, he is again knee-deep in ideology.”
Can you confirm which of the above toilet types the PortaLoo in Kandahar is based on, and perhaps offer some further reflections?
Fantastic Jeff. Thanks for this! This explains so much. We don’t do ‘quote of the week’ here à la Small Wars Journal, but if we did, my vote would be for: ‘German toilets are really the key to the horrors of the Third Reich. People who can build toilets like this are capable of anything.’ — perhaps because in Berlin, one becomes so intimately familiar with this particular model…
Jeff
Last time I looked, the hole was in the middle, to allow your poo to drop straight down and join the others in the pool of disinfectant at the bottom. Inspection requires a headtorch and a preferably a headcold.
Other than masochism, is there a philosophy or national stereotype associated with:
“it disappears straight away, but can be inspected, along with everyone else’s, if you have a mind to”
Jeff. Oh. My. God. Get help, man.
Jeff M., if you are the Jeff M. that I think you are next time we meet I am going to laugh and laugh. If you fill me with, oh 6 pints ought to do it, maybe a tequila chaser, I think I may elaborate upon the question you have posed. Unfortunately this base is dry and sobriety keeps me from expounding further. If you are not the Jeff M. that I think you are: what FB said.
Jeff, in its Afghan variant, you can make out that it’s pretty shitty in there, but it’s too far away to do much about, and the stench doesn’t really reach you.
So much for scatalogical humour.
And yes David, you are in for a laugh.
Andrew Young touches on the whole business of what strategy means to us now and its relationship with policy. We have seen senior members of the Defence establishment reflect on its inability to ‘do strategy’. No doubt easy strategy has been complicated by difficulties with policy and the preoccupation with global concepts based on values that seem to have no boundaries. Boundaries that previously focused our ends, ways and means (See Porter in RUSI). The Soviet has given way to the hybrid, ie. the enemy might appear in all sorts of forms and the IGB to fragile states that present wicked problems yet demand intervention or at least a statement of intent with the ultimate fix: state building, contested or benign, and all that means. So this presents a worse case: it is difficult to know the enemy, equally difficult to understand what sort of fight we are in or willing to join and finally (and therefore makes foreign policy difficult) to know one’s self. What exactly is UK plc, what’s the brand, the vision, and therefore what might be its foreign policy and military policy, and any other policy; economic et al? And indeed what about a homeland/internal security policy. Ideally a national security policy that can really drive strategy.
There is talk of having to sacrifice global influence and prestige. What exactly is this and can it be bounded and given a military value both in hard cash and reputation? Then we can have strategy (that is with policy that can be clearly translated into strategy).
There are some really big questions to address first. If the UK is in some sort of transition from one type of state to perhaps a less powerful one then where is it on the Kubler-Ross bereavement model curve? Shock, denial, self-doubt, apathy, acceptance, reflection or towards new goals? Or try Bridges’ model and look at the ‘neutral zone’.
“Gabions!” I say to this article!
It always used to amuse me how I was surrounded, in a compound, by objects that owe there lineage to the early days of powder and ball!
Im sure I once saw an aerial photograph of an operating position in Iraq which was completely constructed of gabi – I mean HESCO containers in the shape of a star fort. Christopher Duffy would be pleased!!!!
Keep safe in KAF.
P.S. Regarding the Poo Pond – the portaloo’s smell better.
Sad news that the designer of the HESCO system died very recently!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/sep/27/segway-boss-jimi-heselden-dies-cliff-fall