Category Afghanistan

Deployed Troop Counts

Well, turns out we have a little more deployed troops in Afghanistan than is previously reported. Previously it has been reported to be 8,400. Turns out we have 11,000. This does not include the 3,900 that have been recently authorized to go there.

We also have officially 5,262 in Iraq and 503 in Syria. These figures are low with a couple of thousand more troops in both countries (not sure if that is supposed to a couple of thousand more in each of these two countries).

So potentially we are looking at around 15,000 troops in Afghanistan and may have around 8,000 troops in Iraq and Syria.

Reuters article: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-afghanistan-military-idUSKCN1BA2IF

 

 

Mattis on Afghanistan

Latest testimony to congress: https://www.yahoo.com/news/defense-chief-mattis-not-winning-afghanistan-185831863.html

Points that get my attention:

  1. “we are not winning in Afghanistan”
  2. Promised a new strategy in mid-July
  3. Victory would likely mean a long-term U.S. troop presence (this should really be no surprise to anyone).
  4. Currently has 8,400 U.S forces there and 7,000 from our NATO allies.
  5. Will probably have to add thousands of additional troops.
  6. Overall, around 2,400 Americans have died in Afghanistan and more than 20,000 have been wounded.

 

Sending More Troops to Afghanistan

Well, the head of the U.S. Central Command General Joseph Votel says that we need more troops in Afghanistan: Afghanistan-require-more-troops

This is not a particularly surprising statement. We currently have 8,400 there. This does not include U.S. contractors, U.S. police trainers and such, which still have a reduced presence there. I wonder what the proposed level will be. Last month the U.S. Afghanistan commander General John Nicholson said several thousand more troops were needed.

Anyhow, this is not a surprising conclusion. See America’s Modern Wars, in particular the chapter on Afghanistan; although the focus of our analysis was the number of troops required to fight an insurgency, vice the number of foreign trainers needed to support the indigenous troops fighting an insurgency.

I am guessing as both Nicholson and Votel have said it that it is now administration policy.

1979 to present

We try to stay away from politics in this blog, which is hard to do when discussing national security policy. Still, there are enough political and opinion piece websites and blogs out there, that we do not wish to add to the noise! This article by Major Danny Sjursen borders on the edge of being overtly political but I found it very interesting regardless: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/165261

I have not read his book Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge but I did invest parts of two chapters in my book, America’s Modern Wars, discussing the surge in Iraq and its later adaptation to Afghanistan. His book will also be added to my growing reading list (right now I am struggling with getting the final edits to War by Numbers completed on time…and should not be blogging at all).

Anyhow, I do like his theme that U.S. involvement and policies in the Middle East fundamentally started shifted with the events on 1979. I think it is a useful timeline.

 

Troop Increase in Afghanistan?

Nicely prepared article that just reinforces my last post on the subject: Trump Mulls US Troop Surge in Afghanistan

  1. 8,400 U.S. troops and 4,900 from 38 other NATO countries.
  2. 57.2% of the countries 407 districts are under Afghan government control (and it used to be better).
  3. In 2010, the US/NATO peak strength was 130,000

We await a decision, but expect that it will be to increase U.S. troops levels (and keep on keeping on).

Stalemate in Afghanistan

By the way, there is a still a war going on in Afghanistan, by most accounts, it is not going that well; and we probably need to increase our troop levels. On Thursday General John Nicholson, commanding general of NATO forces in Afghanistan, told congress “I believe we are in a stalemate.”: nato-shortfall-troops-afghanistan-us-general

Also: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/u-general-calls-more-troops-003147055.html

And: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/02/09/top-us-general-says-afghanistan-war-at-stalemate-more-troops-needed.html

I have no reason to quibble with that assessment. Victory is certainly not just around the corner.

Some data from these articles:

  1. NATO has 13,300 troops in Afghanstan, about half of them American (8,400)
  2. Afghan losses in the first ten months of 2016 were 6,785 killed, an increase of a third over 2015.
  3. There were 11,500 civilians killed or injured in 2016, the most since the UN began keeping records in 2009 (nearly 3,500 killed and nearly 8,000 wounded).
  4. Afghan government forces control no more than two-thirds of national territory (60% according to another article).
  5. “We have roughly a two-to-one ratio of contractors to soldiers,” said Nicholson.
    1. So, this works out to be 17,000 contractors, 8,400 American troops and 4,900 other NATO troops.
  6. Cost of the 16 year war so far: around 2,000 American lives and $117 billion.

Needless to say, General Johnson has recommended that we increase troop levels there. He has asked for several thousand more. We did have around 100,000 troops there in 2011, now we have less than 10,000.

Mattis’ Reading List (2007)

Here is a 2007 copy of James Mattis reading list, courtesy of the Small War Journal: ltgen-james-mattis-reading-list

Nothing really earthshaking here, except I have not read most of the books on this list. Hard for me to evaluate it.

No Trevor Dupuy books, but Ali Jalali is on the list. He used to be a consultant to Trevor Dupuy’s old company HERO (Historical Evaluation and Research Organization). He was doing Sovietology work for us in the early 1980s along with John Sloan and others. He later became the Interior Minister of Afghanistan: Ali_Ahmad_Jalali

All we need is generals who know how to win?

There was an article just published in the blog War is Boring by Andrew Bacevich called “American Generals Have Forgotten How to Win Wars”: american-generals-have-forgotten-how-to-win-wars

It is a long article with three completely different sections. The first section is that somehow or the other, all we have in Iraq and Afghanistan is generals who don’t know how to win. Really? Was that the problem in Korea when General MacArthur was in command and got driven out back from the Yalu and out of North Korea by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA)? His replacement was Matthew Ridgeway, who in World War II was commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps. He did not win in Korea either. Same for the next commander in Korea: Mark Wayne Clark.

Was that the problem with Vietnam, where a succession of generals, Harkins, Westmoreland, Abrams and finally Weyand, commanded? Was Abrams, who relieved Bastogne in World War II and had a tank named after him, one of these generals that did not know how to win? We did win the Gulf War in 1991, we were able to conquer Afghanistan in 2002 with few forces, and we were able to conquer Iraq in 2003. So, since World War II, we have been able to win under the right situation. I don’t think the issue is a “winning” versus a “non-winning” general. Bacevich gives a listing of the 17 commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan since they started. Of the 17 commanders listed, not a single one is a “winning general”? What are the odds of that being the case?

The second part of the article, starting with “Draining which swamp?”, actually makes a lot more sense and it would have been a better article without the first part. It is the nature of the war that is the problem. Napoleon, probably the winning-est general in history (over 60 battles fought), could never figure out how to solve the Spanish ulcer. That ulcer generated a new word: guerilla. It is the nature of guerilla wars and insurgencies that they generate a lack of clear wins.

The British seem to have a reputation as being counterinsurgency experts. They won in Malaya and Kenya in the 1950s. Yet, when it came to Northern Ireland, the conflict went on for over 30 years and was resolved by a settlement that included the political arm of the provisional IRA as a legitimate political party. Would we consider an arrangement in Afghanistan that included the Taliban as part of the government as a victory? Would we consider including ISIL or Al-Qaeda in a future Iraqi or Syrian government? It is kind of the same thing.

Anyhow, a clear win is sometimes elusive in guerilla wars, even for the British. Not only did they fight for over 30 years in Northern Ireland, but their victory in Malaya included giving the country independence. Seven years after they defeated the Mau Mau in Kenya, they also gave that country independence.  Their results in Palestine in the late 1940s, Cyprus in the 1950s and Aden in the 1960s were even less successful. In the case of Cyprus, the guerilla force leader also became the head of a Cypriot political party. So, the British appear to have a winning problem also.

In our original work on insurgencies, part of what the Center for Army Analysis (CAA) wanted us to do was analyze different tactics and approaches and see what worked and what did not. This become difficult to do analytically, for eventually in almost every single extended guerilla war, most of the counterinsurgents ended up developing over the course of years of fighting many of the same answers, whether they were British, American, French, Portuguese, Soviets, Rhodesians, etc. We could not connect the tactics to the outcomes. The end result we ended up looking at the bigger issue questions, like grand strategies and size of forces involved. This was where we could get an analytical result (marketing alert: See my book America Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam).

Bacevich picks up some of these questions in the second part of his article, where he states “The truth is that some wars aren’t winnable and no one should fight them in the first place.” He then concludes “In sum, a Trump administration seems unlikely to reexamine the conviction that the problems roiling the Greater Middle East will someday, somehow yield to a U.S.-imposed military solution.”

Not sure I agree with that conclusion, but I would strongly argue that understanding and defeating an insurgency is much more complicated than just changing a general. We have certainly changed enough generals in Iraq and Afghanistan that by happenstance one should have won, if it was possible. Some argue that Patreaus did win in Iraq (but he clearly did not in Afghanistan). Did Patreaus forget how to win when he went from one war to the next?

Anyhow, to win these wars requires a combination of proper professional approaches, proper resources, and proper engagement times. Our continued attempts to win these wars on the cheap, or shorten the commitment to them, or to find some magic trick (like a surge) that will win it…..have not really worked out. It is time to get serious.

What will be our plans for Afghanistan?

I gather it is still somewhat unknown what we will doing in Afghanistan after 20 January 2017. This concern, among many others, was flagged in my post of 9 November: Questions

It is also discussed in depth in this article: Afghanistan is All Ready to be Donald Trump’s First Foreign Policy Disaster

This article is worth reading. Major points:

  1. Afghanistan is failing.
  2. “More troops? more money? withdrawal?”

Anyhow, we do have a new category in the blog called “National Security Policy”…..as I am very curious as to what we are actually going to do.