Ten years of war

Today marks the ten-year anniversary of the first U.S. military strikes in Afghanistan.

Perhaps to commemorate the event, insurgents struck four American combat outposts along the Pakistani border with coordinated 107mm rocket attacks. Considering their proximity to the frontier, the attacks are thought to have been staged in Pakistan.

C.J. Chivers reports on the actions taken by combined, multinational forces in response:

[The attack] also highlighted the relative weakness of Afghan soldiers and police officers living and working on the American-built bases. As the attacks escalated in the morning, only the United States military possessed the firepower, communications and skills to fight back in what developed into a long-range, artillery-and-rocket duel.

While the American soldiers organized and coordinated their part of the battle on the outpost here, the Afghan soldiers did not participate. Some simply sat and watched.

The U.S. presence in Afghanistan will gradually draw down in the coming months and years. We are told this drawdown will proceed at a pace that is sensitive to the timeline on which that country's security forces grow more capable of dealing with the insurgency independently.

According to the commander of the combined U.S./NATO organization responsible for training, equipping, and advising those Afghan security forces, there are currently two (of around 180 total) Afghan National Army battalions capable of independent operations. Even those formations cannot function without what the U.S. military calls "enablers" -- logistics, maintenance, and sustainment support -- which don't exist in the ANA. The "independent" Afghan battalions still must largely be transported, tuned up, and treated by coalition assets and personnel.

Osama bin Laden is dead. al-Qaeda is presumed not to exist in numbers larger than the dozens on Afghan territory. The Taliban government that coddled and sustained them has been gone for a decade, and shows little sign of again taking up such manifestly unhealthy behavior if given the opportunity to do so.

When President Bush announced the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom, he spoke for a time directly to American military personnel:

To all the men and women in our military, every sailor, every soldier, every airman, every Coast Guardsman, every Marine, I say this: Your mission is defined. The objectives are clear. Your goal is just.

Today, ten years later, American soldiers had rockets fired at them by men who had nothing to do with 9/11, men who slipped into Afghanistan from a neighboring country with which we are not at war, and who returned there after the attacks.

The tactical task those U.S. soldiers performed today -- returning fire in an effort to destroy the enemy -- was only one half of a mission, which consists of a task and a purpose.

At the strategic level, U.S. forces' mission in Afghanistan is no longer defined: the purpose of OEF is obscure and its component tasks lay beyond the reach of the American armed forces. The objectives may be clear, but they are largely inaccessible to our ways and means. The goal may be just, but such judgments are strategically irrelevant.

How many more must die or be ruined for the indefinable "success" of this insensate mission?

The Logic of Violence in Civil War: Libya edition

Tonight a friend asked me "if everyone hates Qaddafi so badly, why isn't there more rebel activity in the west? Why isn't there more sabotage and insurgency and all that?" My first thought was something like, hell, you've got me. What the hell do I know about Libya? And that's true enough: I don't know much of anything about the specifics of the civil war, of ethnic cleavages or tribal rivalry, or really even about the geographic patterns of violence there beyond what's been widely reported in the media. But I do know a very little bit about the general subject of insurgency and irregular war, and the literature has something to say about this.

For one thing, popular interpretations of civil war and rebellion tend to overstate the power of ideology as a motivating factor for combatants. In the present example, this manifests as the belief that widespread loathing of an authoritarian leader should logically translate into broad-based, geographically indifferent rebellion. A melange of motivations is evident in anecdotal reporting from the front (none better than what runs under the byline of prolific multi-platform star C.J. Chivers), though we'd be well-served to keep in mind that people aren't always fighting for the reasons they say they are. These accounts don't really answer our question, in any event: if the rebels of Brega and Benghazi are fighting for democracy, the Qu'ran, or anything but Qaddafi, then surely some in the west of the country would take up arms in the service of one of those ends, right? Here's Stathis Kalyvas (p. 46) on the subject:

An extensive body of research shows that combatants are usually motivated to fight not by ideology or hate or fear but by peer pressure and processes involving regard for their comrades, respect for their leaders, concern for their own reputation with both, and an urge to contribute to the success of the group -- in short, what is known as "primary group cohesion."*

Chivers' account of one rebel straggler, too, puts paid to ideological explanations; Sgt. Abdullah Insaiti, a 13-year veteran of Qaddafi's army, defected to the opposition with his entire unit in February.

His unit, he said, had been scattered under fire in the fighting in recent weeks. He said he believed that eight of his friends had died, but offered that the number was probably much higher than that. Some, he said, had been blown apart in the shelling they had been subjected to out in the desert, where the forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi have been pounding the rebels with all manner of fire. 

Asked if he knew where his unit was now, Mr. Insaiti gave a perplexed shrug.

I'd be curious to see how many of this man's unit return to combat versus blending back into the considerably less dangerous routines of civilian life, but the tale is an instructive one either way: surely an entire platoon doesn't defect over ideology.

But regime security forces are a bit of a special case, to be fair -- this still doesn't really speak to the question of the west's relative quiet. But Kalyvas does, at least in a general sense. To boil a 400-page book down into a few sentences, let's put it like this: The Logic of Violence in Civil War argues that combatants are most likely to employ selective violence in areas where they are approaching, but have not secured, hegemony. To put it even more simply: the warring parties are most likely to kill people not in those places that either they or the opposing faction firmly control, but rather in those places where killing people might have a meaningful impact on defections and the supply of information. Here it is in the original Social-Science-ese (p. 13):

The theory bridges the meso- and microlevels and predicts the likelihood of violence as a function of control. On the one hand, political actors do not need to use violence where they already enjoy high levels of control and cannot use selective violence where they have no control whatsoever; having no access to information, they may use indiscriminate violence, but it will be counterproductive. Instead, they want to use selective violence in contested areas, where they have incomplete control. On the other hand, individuals want to denounce only where it is safe for them to do so; this is the case where their victims have no access to the rival political actor and, therefore, lack the option of counterdenunciation. In turn, this option is related to control: the higher the level of control for one actor, the lower the presence of the rival one, and, hence, of the option of counterdenunciation. The prediction is that violence is most likely to occur where one actor is near hegemonic, not where this actor is in full control or is being contested. Violence, in other words, is most likely where the organizational demand for information meets its individual supply. 

Now, if you're still awake: what does this mean for Libya? Well, Kalyvas doesn't directly address the question of sabotage and guerilla activity, but rather selective violence against neutral or undecided populations. We can, however, draw logical conclusions from his work, and the most meaningful of these -- widely known to students of insurgency but perhaps counterintuitive -- is that collaboration follows control. Conceptually inseparable from the belief that ideology drives rebellion is the commonly-held view that regime strength corresponds geographically (and demographically) with regime popularity; in point of fact, civilians are most likely to peaceably accede to the wishes of the government in areas where the regime's military power and physical control are at their peak.

All of which is just a long way of expressing a pretty simple hypothesis: it's entirely possible that few Libyans are rising up outside of the east and a few small pockets of rebel control simply because government control of the rest of the country just seems incontestable or insurmountable. (Kalyvas, p. 93: "The absence of alternatives often produces collaboration irrespective of the level of popular satisfaction or lack thereof," which come to think of it could've pretty much been the whole post all by itself.) As I mentioned to my friend, there may be other valid explanations related to ethnic or tribal politics, geographic history, and so on, and these would certainly be more effectively articulated by an area expert. But I'm not that guy, so this is what I've got.

*Why this should be so is a complicated question that's largely beyond the scope of what we're talking about here, but Kalyvas alludes to a number of biases that impact scholarly work on the subject. Notably: "There is a clear epistemic bias, at least in the sociological and historical traditions, in favor of the assumption that all (or most) participants in conflicts are motivated by ideological concerns. Because 'urban' scholars tend to be primarily motivated by ideology themselves, the often assign unambiguous ideological motives to participants, even if this is not the case" (p. 44).

History repeats itself: AK-47-hawking car dealer edition

I'm just getting going on The Gun, a comprehensive history of the automatic Kalashnikov by blog favorite and New York Times war correspondent C.J. Chivers. The book traces the history of automatic weapons and tries to separate fact from fiction in the story of the development and proliferation of the world's most recognizable small arm.

On a what at the time seemed like a completely separate note: there was some buzz last week on Twitter about a Florida car dealer who is offering a $400 voucher toward the purchase of an AK-47 as part of a truck-sales promotion (advertising: "Free AK-47! See dealer for details"), ostensibly in honor of Veterans Day. One can fairly question -- and many have -- how American veterans are honored by the subsidized purchase of a weapon that has killed or wounded tens of thousands of U.S. servicemen, but more on that in a second.

This was interesting enough on its own, but then last night I came across this passage in the prologue to Chivers' book:

In Missouri in mid-2009, when Mark Muller, the owner of a car dealership, wanted to generate interest and lift flagging sales, he offered a voucher for an AK-47 with the purchase of every pickup truck. The offer was a gimmick. True AK-47s cannot be legally owned by most people in the United States, and the dealership offered a coupon worth only half the price of the semiautomatic version sold in American gun shops. Once again, as is often the case in conversations related to the Kalashnikov, facts did not matter. Nonsense prevailed. Muller's sales promotion generated international attention: a broadcast team from Al Jazeera turned up, as did another from Russian state television news. The coverage triggered old arguments. What does this weapon mean? Is it the sinister product of sinister forms of government, set loose on the world via dark processes that were, and often remain, all but unchecked? Or does its reliability and simplicity make it a symbol of the virtue of our best tools, a companion to the utility of a well-performing pickup truck? Muller was pleased. He appeared before the cameras brandishing a Kalashnikov in its semiautomatic form, enjoying free publicity while spurring business and tweaking the anti-gun crowd at the same time. Like many a man who has used a Kalashnikov, he held up his rifle for the cameras and grinned--the rascal's pose. The Kalashnikov was put to yet another use. (p. 15)

Makes you wonder whether the manager of this Florida dealership is a fast reader, or just unoriginal.

So why choose to promote the Kalashnikov? Why not advertise a free M1911, the .45-caliber handgun developed by Browning and first produced by Colt almost 100 years ago, the U.S.-issue service pistol for three-quarters of a century? For me it seems clear that -- as Chivers suggested about the Missouri promotion -- the choice of an AK-47 is designed to tweak anti-gun folks. The ship has basically sailed on handgun ownership, but the question of the Second Amendment and assault rifles is still a charged and controversial one. By selecting the AK, the car dealer is not only saying "I support gun ownership by private citizens," but is also taking an assertive stand in the more controversial part of the Second Amendment debate.

But then why an AK and not an M-16 or an M-4, U.S.-produced and -fielded assault rifles? For one thing, the ubiquity of the Kalashnikov makes it instantly recognizable. But a combination of myth and fact makes the Eastern bloc's weapon of choice the ultimate in workmanlike reliability in the public mind, and probably makes it a more appropriate match to the truck owner's blue-collar, working-man's self-image than the uniquely military Colt firearms. Basically, it's just as Chivers tells us: the AK-47 and its derivatives have become Everyman's Rifle, for good or ill, around the world.

I know this whole standing-up-a-foreign-security-force thing ain't an overnight deal, but...

...this has got to be just about the funniest bureaucra-speak I've ever come across around the military (and that's saying a lot):

The Marines are moving to boost Afghan training by emphasizing combat leadership among the enlisted ranks and more accurate use of M-16s. The project goes by the acronym TLSR: Transition of Leading Security Responsibility.

"There is plenty of room to improve marksmanship training," said Col. Burke Whitman, the Marines' liaison to the Afghan army and police. "Our biggest focus of training is shooting skill."

Don't get me wrong, I'm not laughing about the necessity for marksmanship training. I just think it's hilarious to imagine shooting lessons as the first step in a rather grandiloquently titled process of Transition of Leading Security Responsibility. "Once they know how to shoot, they'll definitely be ready to take the lead. At least, that's what the general and ISAF PAO told me to say."

What's perhaps even more funny (or at least ironic) is that this clip comes from an article touting improvements in ANSF performance during the Marja offensive.

The Afghan troops who supported the U.S. Marines in the battle to end Taliban control of this town in Helmand province showed marked improvement over last summer's performance in a similar fight but still need much more training, Marine commanders say.

Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, the top Marine here, said that overall the Afghan battalions exceeded his expectations. Nicholson said he would give some Afghan units an A-minus or B-plus but that others, particularly those with soldiers fresh from basic training, would get a C-minus or D.

C.J. Chivers' latest dispatch suggests that the ANSF he's been exposed to trend towards the latter ratings:

The Afghan soldiers who accompanied Company C, [one Marine officer] said, had looted the 84-booth Semitay Bazaar immediately after the Marines swept through and secured it. Then the Afghan soldiers refused to stand post in defensive bunkers, or to fill sandbags as the Americans, sometimes under fire, hardened their joint outpost. Instead, they spent much of their time walking in the bazaar, smoking hashish.

Company K had stories of its own. As its own Marines stumbled wearily across friendly lines, much of the Afghan platoon that worked with them was straggling behind, unable to keep pace.

Step 1 in Transition of Leading Security Responsibility (TLSR): teach ANSF to shoot.
Step 2 in TLSR: teach ANSF to respect human rights, not violate the law, not get high on duty, and to behave as a professional fighting force
Step 3 in TLSR: Transition Leading Security Responsibility!
Step 4 in TLSR: PROFIT!!!

"If that IED had worked like it was supposed to? Bye-bye, sweetheart."

If you haven't read this story from the front page of yesterday's New York Times, do it now. It combines two awesome things: C.J. Chivers and Marines escaping death.

If luck is the battlefield’s final arbiter — the wild card that can trump fitness, training, teamwork, equipment, character and skill — then Lance Cpl. Ryan T. Mathison experienced its purest and most welcome form.

On a Marine foot patrol here through the predawn chill of Friday morning, he stepped on a pressure-plate rigged to roughly 25 pounds of explosives. The device, enough to destroy a pickup truck or tear apart several men, was buried beneath him in the dusty soil.

It did not explode.

Lance Corporal Mathison’s weight triggered the detonation of one of the booby trap’s two blasting caps. But upon giving an audible pop and tossing small stones into the air, the device failed to ignite its fuller charge — a powerful mix of Eastern Bloc mortar rounds and homemade explosives spiked with motorcycle parts, rusty spark plugs and jagged chunks of steel.

Lance Corporal Mathison and several Marines near him were spared. So began a brief journey through the Taliban’s shifting tactics and the vagaries of war, where an experience at the edge of death became instead an affirmation of friendship, and in which a veteran Marine reluctantly assumed for a morning one of the infantry’s most coveted roles: that of the charmed man.

Great stuff.

Pretty much everything you'd ever want to know about the manufacture of M-16s and M-4s

C.J. Chivers tells you all about it, in an update to the series he began late last year. Good pictures, too.

Does the M-16 suck as much as people say it does?

C.J. Chivers, who is awesome (as we have documented in the past), has a two-part post up on the Times "At War" blog (Part 1, Part 2) about the reliability of the M-16 and M-4.

Few issues are more personal to soldiers than the question of whether they can trust their rifles. And few rifles in history have generated more controversy over their reliability than the American M-16 assault rifle and its carbine version, the M-4.

In recent weeks, a fresh round of complaints about weapon malfunctions in Afghanistan, mentioned in an Army historian’s report that documented small-arms jamming during the fierce battle in Wanat last year, has rekindled the discussion. Are the M-16 and M-4 the best rifles available for American troops? Or are they fussy and punchless and less than ideal for war?

Don’t expect a clear answer any time soon. Expect several clear answers at once – many of them contradictory. This is because when talk turns to the M-16 and the M-4, it enters emotionally charged territory. The conversation is burdened by history, cluttered with conflicting anecdotes, and argued over by passionate camps.

This much is indisputable: Since the mid-1960s, when at Gen. William C. Westmoreland’s request an earlier version of the M-16 became the primary American rifle in Vietnam, the reputation of the M-16 family has been checkered.

This isn't new territory for Chivers, who has written on small arms before for the Times and plans to publish a book next Spring called Killing Machine: A Social History of the AK-47, The Rifle of the Revolution from the Cold War to the Jihad. But I'll read pretty much anything this guy writes. Seriously, he could switch to the John & Kate Plus 8 beat and I'd be all over it.

Anyone with experience downrange have opinions on the M-16 controversy?

More great long-form reporting from Chivers in Afghanistan

I've already made known my feelings about C.J. Chivers' badassness, both here and elsewhere. But that's not going to stop me from saying it again: C.J. Chivers is a badass.

Here's his most recent work from Afghanistan. It's excellent. Read it. I'll have more on this later, but for right now I wanted to share a passage from early in the piece as food for thought. It's perhaps the most concise and yet comprehensive explanation of U.S. efforts in OEF that you'll find.

What is the United States military doing in Afghanistan?

The question, when not framed as a pejorative, has many answers. Depending on the soldier and the unit, at any given moment the military is likely doing one of four things.

It is hunting for, and hoping to capture or kill, the top-tier Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders and their coteries.

...

Simultaneously, the United States military is working with foreign governments, nongovernment organizations, and American agencies to build a nation where ten years ago a nation existed principally in name.

...

And as this reordered nation is assuming a shape that remains tentative and wormy with corruption, the United States is pursuing a third primary mission, which is to create foundations for indigenous security. This includes a national police force and an army with enough skilled soldiers to integrate fire support and operate an air corps and stand up to an insurgency in battle anywhere. It also includes an intelligence service that can penetrate and understand myriad groups — local, regional, and transnational — that make up that insurgency, as well as the drug networks that control the shadow economy, which fuels much of the war.

Last, or perhaps first, the United States military is doing what many people imagine it to be doing most: It is fighting that war.

Chivers on Estimirova

C.J. Chivers, who wrote the best thing you'll ever read on Beslan (and has done excellent reporting from the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan, among other places) has a profile in today's New York Times on Natalya Estimirova.

As the blog's purported "Russia guy," I should've brought this story up before now: Estimirova was an activist who worked to expose the atrocities committed by both Russian authorities and anti-government rebels in Chechnya, and she was found murdered on Thursday. She and Chivers were friends.

Read and feel bleak about both Russia and the Caucasus.