Category Insurgency & Counterinsurgency

So What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan? – part 8

Afghan police in training, 20 July 2010 (photo by William A. Lawrence II).

Continuing the discussion on Afghanistan drawn from fragments of text from pages 264-266 of America’s Modern Wars. 

 

LESSONS AND OBSERVATIONS

There are five final lessons or observations that we wish to make about this war [Afghanistan]…

Second, we question the wisdom of concentrating and giving priority to developing the Afghan police forces ahead of the Afghan army. Some of this appears to have been inspired by the British example of counterinsurgencies, which leaned heavily on using police as part of its counterinsurgent forces. This worked in part because they also had sufficient ground troops (usually 25-to-1 or greater ratios) and were facing very small insurgencies. When we did our analysis of insurgencies, including the logit regression model, we did not count police forces in the counterinsurgent forces in the data or the model. We felt that most police were not dedicated to the task of counterinsurgency most of the time and had many other duties and tasks to perform. As such, we did not count the traffic cops in Saigon as part of the war effort against the Viet Cong. Now, if there were portions of the police force clearly set aside with a primarily counterinsurgency mission, we did count those, but in most of our cases, we did not include them in our data and our calculations.

As such, we did not include them in our analysis of Afghanistan, and we still believe that this is the best representation. But, the U.S. by focusing on building up the Afghan police, and there were more Afghan police than army from 2004 through 2006, probably did not provide the government with the tools it needed to secure the country side. Isolated police stations simply do not establish government control. As such, we believe that the U.S. learned the wrong lessons from its review of UK counterinsurgency doctrine because they did not properly and fully understand the context in which they were conducted: which was with the UK having overwhelming military force. We therefore tried to substitute police for army. We also did the same thing early in Iraq also.

….

(to be continued) 

Afghan police in training, 20 July 2010 (photo by William A. Lawrence II).

So What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan? – part 7

Incoming Students, 30 July 2010 (photo by William A. Lawrence II)

Continuing the discussion on Afghanistan drawn from fragments of text from pages 264-266 of America’s Modern Wars (2015). “Part 6” of this discussion was my blog post “Dueling Surges.”

 

LESSONS AND OBSERVATIONS

There are five final lessons or observations that we wish to make about this war [Afghanistan].

First, it is clear that the new government did not establish control of the country-side in 2002 through 2004.  The Northern Alliance and other armed groups totaled only around 60,000 people, at best. U.S. and international commitment remained at lower levels, below 30,000 troops. The Afghan National Army was slowly developing, also reporting only 8,000 operational troops in December 2004 and the Afghan police forces had less than 30,000 police in 2004, almost all of them raised that year. Both the Afghan Army and Afghan police were newly raised and poorly trained. Part of the reason the reported level of violence against these forces were low up through 2004 was that there was not a whole lot of forces in the countryside to commit violence against. As the Secretary General of the United Nations noted in August 2005: “From 2002 to 2004, powerful commanders and their militias, dominated the security environment. Narcotics trade and related criminal activities also expanded rapidly. More recent, there have been troubling indications that remnants of the Taliban and other extremist groups are organizing.”

In 2005 the Afghan police expanded to over 50,000, and their losses went from 9 in 2003, to 92 to 2004 to 138 in 2005. In 2006 the Afghan police continued to develop and expand and their losses grew to 412 in that year. We see the losses ore than doubled in 2007 (925 killed) and have continued at even higher levels since then. It is clear that police force presence led to increased police force losses, indicating that significant parts of the country were never under control of the central government.

….

(to be continued) 

Dueling Surges

Suicide bomber in Baghlan Jadid, April 2009. The bomber was walking down the road trying to set of an explosive device as the photographer passed by in a truck. The bomb failed to explode. The bomber was found later by the local Afghan police still wearing the harness, but with no explosives. They released him (photo by William A. Lawrence II)

This is effectively “So What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan? – part 6. It is continuing the discussion on Afghanistan drawn from fragments of text from pages 262-264 of America’s Modern Wars:

DUELING SURGES

Afghanistan shows that a surge and good tactics alone do not win insurgencies. It is claimed by some that this is what turned around Iraq, but in fact, what was most important to correcting Iraq was buying off of the insurgents and forming the Iraq Sunni Awakening Councils. Without a successful buy off in Afghanistan, the surge and good U.S. tactics have not turned the situation around and by itself, will not. In the end, you still need to have sufficient troops on the ground to control the terrain, protect the population, and contain the insurgents. There are few shortcuts that allow you to avoid the basics.

….[skipped several paragraphs describing how the surges worked in Iraq and Afghanistan]…

…So, 36 months into the start of the strength increase done by President Obama [in Afghanistan], there is no drop in the level of violence. Only in 2012, after it was clear that the U.S. and coalition forces were withdrawing, does the level of violence drop. In contrast the surge in Iraq achieved a measurable result in nine months.

The difference between the two is striking and clearly makes the point that the whole strategic situation needs to be fully addressed and these problems cannot be solved by simply applying a technique from one war to the next. The surge in Afghanistan is simply larger, more sustained and has achieved less dramatic results when compared to the rather limited and brief surge in Iraq.

(to be continued) 

So What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan? – part 5

Unexploded Ordinance from the police station in the city of Baghlan, 30 miles south of Kunduz (photo by William A. Lawrence II, 1 April 2009)

Continuing the discussion on Afghanistan drawn from fragments of text from pages 260-262 of America’s Modern Wars:

The 2013 figure of 20,093 incidents a year does argue for a significant insurgency force. If we use a conservative figure of 333 incidents per thousand insurgents, then we are looking at more than 60,000 full-time and part-time insurgents. The number of security incidences has declined slightly since 2011. This would indicate that either we are slowly bringing the insurgency under control or that they are simply waiting until the U.S. leaves before they get more serious. Still, the level of violence is higher than it was in 2009, before the surge started, and the level of violence in 2013 is not significantly less than it was in 2011…. It certainly appears we are a long way from getting the situation under control, and leaves open the question as to what will happen once the United States completes its withdrawal.

We still do not know for sure if Afghanistan is a regional or factional insurgency or whether it is broadly based. But if it is a regional or factional insurgency, then according to our regression model, we should be winning. Yet we only appear to be winning during the surge…

…[skipped several paragraphs]

With the insurgency able to threaten and kill more civilians, the government riddled with corruption and bribery, opium poppy cultivation expanding in the areas currently being fought over, and large numbers of people displaced and continuing to be displaced, this all paints a picture of an insurgency that is not only not under control, but is actually expanding its influence.

If this is a broadly based insurgency then at the current force levels our chances of winning still appear to be low. To push the ratios up to a level where we have a good chance of winning it would require another 100,000 or more troops (almost certainly from the U.S.)  plus the commitment of time and losses for several more years while it is turned around. In effect, we would have to go back to the force levels we have in 2010.

…[skipped several paragraphs]

If our model is correct and the insurgency is indeed broadly based, then it is going to take more than time to defeat it. It is going to take more force than we currently have. Theoretically this can come from the Afghan Army, but they do need to be raised, trained, motivated, and made effective. 

…

If this insurgency is broadly based, then the surge we did up to 100,000 U.S. troops in 2010 and the building up of the Afghan army was probably good enough to turn the tide. The fact that incidents appear to have declined in 2012 indicates that this may have been working, but incidents are back up for 2013. The problem is if the insurgency is broadly based, then those surge forces needed to stay in place for the next ten years, with the expected continued losses and expenses. [bolding added for this post]

….

(to be continued) 

 

So What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan? – part 4

New police recruits, 28 June 2008 (photo and legend by William A. Lawrence II)

Continuing the discussion on Afghanistan drawn from fragments of text from pages 258-260 of America’s Modern Wars:

We received no substantive response to our briefing and meanwhile the war in Afghanistan continued. Finally in early 2009, we wrote an unpublished op-ed piece that said in part:

Right now, in Afghanistan we have very roughly 30,000 U.S. troops, 30,000 other international troops, 60,000 operational Afghani Army troops and maybe 60,000 active Afghani Police. The effectiveness of the Afghani army and police are open to debate, but the police have been losing almost 1,000 people a year…

This argues, regardless of everything else currently going on, that U.S. needs to to add between 30,000 and 60,000 troops Afghanistan. Anything less is too little to give us the best chance of a favorable outcome. At 60,000 more, this pushes the force ratio back to a more comfortable 3.75-to-1 ratio even if there is 32,000 insurgents and one does not count the Afghani army or police.

This is assuming that we fully understand the nature of the Afghan insurgency. If this insurgency is much more broadly based (i.e. based upon nationalism), then we are looking at even higher force levels required….

Therefore, we recommend pushing U.S. force levels up another 60,000 more for this next year while continuing to aggressively search for a political solution and while continuing to develop the Afghani National Army and the Afghani Police. If this increase and a potential political solution noticeably changes the conditions on the ground, then this has worked. If not, then in the long run we will want to back out of any major ground commitment in Afghanistan sooner rather than later.

….

In the interim, the Obama administration came up with its own response to the developing Afghan crisis, which was its own surge. Under this plan, announced in December 2009, another 30,000 or so troops were added as part of a surge, having reached the peak of the surge in the later half of 2010. They then set a withdrawal date of the middle of 2011, which they were unable to achieve.

So, more than five years after we wrote the February 2009 unpublished op-ed piece, does it still stand up? In the Report of Secretary-General of the United Nations for March 2014, they record that as of mid-January 2014 there were 145,199 Afghan National Police and 193,427 Afghan National Army soldiers. The “surge targets” were 152,000 and 195,000 respectively. So, this is between 193,427 to 338,626 counterinsurgent (depending on how you count police). This is certainly enough strength to counteract a force of 20,000 insurgents.

The U.S. force is drawing down and is disengaged from any active combat role as of 2015. The force peaked from about 100,000 in 2010 [meaning we added 70,000 U.S. troops] down to 66,000 as of start of 2013. Over the course of 2013, 34,000 of thee troops were to be withdrawn, with the U.S. involvement to end sometime in 2015. The coalition forces have already mostly left. As such, this Afghan force of over 300,000 troops and police is the primary counterinsurgent force for the future. It is certainly a much more impressive force than the 114,066 that we tried to prosecute the war with back in 2006.

On the other hand, the level of violence continued to rise during the buildup of the Afghan Army. This can be show with the reporting of the U.N. Department of Safety and Security (UNDAS) of security incidences in Afghanistan:

                                      Security               Incidences

Period                           Incidences          Per Month

2008                                8,893                     741

2009                              11,524                     960

2010                              19,403                  1,617

2011                              22,903                  1,909

Jan-July 2012              10,109                  1,431

16 Aug – 15 Nov 2012    4,639                  1,546

16 Nov – 15 Feb 2013    3,783                  1,261

2013                             20,093                  1,674

 

(to be continued) 

So What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan? – part 3

The old and the new, Soviet tank park next to the Dyncorp compound near Kunduz, 4 May 2008 (photo by William A. Lawrence II).

Picking the discussion up from fragments of text from pages 256 – 258 of America’s Modern Wars:


…if we use the figure of 250 incidents [per thousand], then we are looking at an estimated insurgent strength as high as 26,384 [in December 2008]. This is still based upon a performance that may have been better than what the insurgents were doing in Iraq! We are probably looking at an insurgent force strength that is greater than 20,000 and had been that way for the three years of 2006 to 2008.  

…Looking once again at our logit regression model, if the insurgency is regional or factional, then the counterinsurgency has a 93.1 to 96.8 percent chance of winning. If the insurgency is broadly based (national) then the counterinsurgency has a 28.9 to 48.1 percent chance of winning.

…So again we are back to the same two questions that we face[d] in Iraq, what is the size of the insurgency and is it a regional or factional insurgency.

In a December 2008 briefing [at NIC] I posed that question after presenting this data. I then asked the room full of analysts whether the insurgency in Afghanistan [was] regional or factional, or was it broadly based. I was concerned that it might be broadly based because:

  1. The insurgents came from the majority tribe in Afghanistan, the Pashtun…
  2. It appears that the open source estimate of insurgent strength was again low.
  3. It appears that things were getting worse.

At the time of that briefing, we had 110,790 troops there. The Dupuy Institute estimated insurgent strength between 15,000 and 25,000, with us leaning towards the higher figure. So if the insurgency was a regional or factional insurgency, then even at a force ratio of 4.43 to 1 (assuming 25,000 insurgents), we had an 84 percent chance of winning. Yet, it did not appear that we were winning. [bolding added for this post]

So, the question went around the table, and two or three people there strongly opined that it was clearly a regional or factional insurgency. There was certitude in the voices. I was not sure, but was not ready to argue it at the time.

The danger is that if the insurgency is broadly based, and there were indeed something like 25,000 insurgents, then at a 4.43 to 1 force ratio, then according to our logit regression model, the chance of the blue side winning was only 14 percent. To push the odds up to a more reasonable level of 80 percent would mean that we needed a force ratio of more like 15.5 to 1, meaning an additional 276,710 troops, and most likely the majority of them would have to come from America! Needless to say, as the U.S. was hesitant to build up to 160,000 troops in Iraq, then such a number for Afghanistan was going to be difficult to sell.

We received no substantive response to our briefing and meanwhile the war in Afghanistan continued…

(to be continued) 

So What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan? – part 2

Soviet Hind helicopter carcass used as a monument near Kunduz, 4 May 2008 (photo by William A. Lawrence II).

So the opening paragraph of my chapter (see page 253 of America’s Modern Wars) on Afghanistan says (after the infamous George W. Bush quote):

Afghanistan is an unusual case, as the central government (controlled by the Taliban) was overthrown in 2001 by the U.S. and their Afghan allies, with the U.S. allied with and helping the anti-Taliban insurgents! This U.S. then installed a new government and a new insurgency developed against this U.S. supported government. Still, the insurgency appeared to lie fallow until 2005, when the incidents and violence began cycling upwards and finally exploding into a full scale insurgency in 2009 that now appears to be difficult to control.

I then describe the process in some depth, concluding on page 255:

This left the U.S. and allies in 2006 with 114,066 counterinsurgents facing allegedly only 2,000 to 5,000 insurgents and suffering 65 U.S. killed in action (as opposed to killed from all causes, 65 coalition killed in action, 63 Afghan Army and a rather significant 412 [Afghan] police. Were the counterinsurgents loosing control of the war at that point, only securing those spots they most cared about, and handing over control of the rest ot the country to the insurgents? That appears to be the case.

From there, the war tipped rapidly out of control, with 2007 seeing 83 U.S. killed in action, 99 coalition troops killed in action, 385 Afghan Army and a stunning figure of 925 police killed. The following year was no better, with 133 U.S. killed in action, 125 coalition killed in action, 226 Afghan Army and 880 police killed. The years of 2009 and 2010 have only been worse.

So, what happened and how did the U.S. loose control of the situation? Unfortunately, The Dupuy Institute was not doing any work on the subject at the time. But, we do note to start with that the estimates of insurgent strength again appear low, as was the case with Iraq. In 2006 it was estimated that the insurgents had between 2,000 and 5,000 troops. The U.S. and coalition forces also claimed to have killed 600 insurgents and captured 1,200 more. This is pretty significant casualties if the insurgency only had 2,000 fighters. One wonders how so few guerillas managed to keep the insurgency going with such losses.

By 1 January 2008 the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had upped its estimate to between 7,000 and 20,000 guerillas, which is much better, but when one considers that the guerillas had been doing over 6,000 incidents a year since 2006, it appears that the public estimates were still catching up with the reality on the ground.

In December 2008 we flagged this concern about guerilla force size in a briefing we gave. We noted that the incidents in Afghanistan were on the rise.  

(to be continued)

 

So What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan?

Tank park of Soviet tanks near Kunduz, 4 May 2008. These were left over ordnance from the previous war. (photo by William A. Lawrence II).

Now that America has lost another war, what does my book say about Afghanistan?

In 2015 my book, America’s Modern Wars, was published. It took a while to line up a publisher. I ended up having to give it a complete re-working. I do have a chapter on Afghanistan. This book came about as a result of work we were doing in 2004-2005 on providing a duration and casualty estimate for Iraq. This happened to unfortunately, be correct. See: Forecasting the Iraqi Insurgency | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

Then we were contracted to expand our databases and conducted analysis on insurgencies in general. This produced some 16 reports. See I-3 through 14, MISS-1 through 5 and OSD-1 and OTI-1: TDI – The Dupuy Institute Publications

As people outside of DOD heard of our work, we were asked to provide briefings to the U.S. Intelligence community. We ended up with a contract with them (this is OTI-1). At no point in the process we were specifically tasked to look at Afghanistan, although it was one of the 109 cases in our database. Finally, we were asked by the National Intelligence Council to brief on Afghanistan, which we had never done any in-depth analysis of. The briefing was called “Iraq, Data, Hypotheses and Afghanistan (5 December 2008)” This briefing kind of mutated into Chapter 21 of my book “Relating a Force Ratio Model to Afghanistan.” I also will be presenting this briefing “as is” at a conference next September (more on that in January).

All of our work on insurgencies ended in 2009. Apparently, the DOD felt they had a grasp of the issue and did not need our support anymore. So we ceased doing any work on insurgencies after 2009. My book was written 2013-2014 and I did take a moment to update and re-examine a few issues; but, the book is primarily a snap-shot of our analysis and thinking up through 2009. The databases we were using have not been updated since 2008. I have tried to get contracts just to update the databases, but again no interest from DOD. What I would really like to do is update the databases, add in a few more cases, and then update our analysis. Again, not something I am going to do without budget.

So, anyhow, what did my book say about Afghanistan?

First I started the chapter with a quote (see page 253), which is probably a good place to end this particular post:

People often ask me, “How long will this last?” It may happen tomorrow, it may happen a month from now, it may take a year or two, but we will prevail.

–President George W. Bush, 2001, in response to questions in his first news conference 96 hours after the war in Afghanistan had begun.

 

Some Statistics on Afghanistan (March 2021)

I have not blogged much recently about Afghanistan, although we seem to be reaching a decision point as to what to do with the peace deal negotiated with the Taliban by the previous president that called for the removal of all U.S. troops from there by 1 May.

The country has been in open warfare much of the time since 1979. The latest quarterly report on Afghanistan from the United Nations Secretary General is now available. These are always worth looking at as they appear to have less “spin” then many other reports:

https://unama.unmissions.org/secretary-general-reports

The report was posted 18 March. It is dated 12 March.

  1. “The United States reduced it forces in Afghanistan to 2,500 as of the mid-January 2021.” That said, there are also these reports that say we actually have 3,500 there:
    1. U.S. Has 1,000 More Troops in Afghanistan Than it Disclosed
    2. Our troop strength there was around 13,000 a year ago.
    3. There are also around 7,000 NATO and other allied troops in Afghanistan.
  2. “The security situation worsened in 2020, during with the United Nations recorded 25,180 security-related incidents, a 10 percent increase from the 22,832 incidents recorded in 2019.” 
    1. See chart below.
    2. “…the number of armed clashes increased…from 13,155 in 2019 to 15,581 in 2020.”
    3. “…the number of detonations caused by improved explosive devices [IEDs] rose…from 1,949 in 2019 to 2,572 in 2020.”
    4. “…assassinations…from 782 in 2019 to 993 in 2020″. 
    5. “The United Nations recorded 7,138 security-related incidents between 13 November and 11 February, a 46.7 per cent increase compared wit the same period in 2020 and contrasting with traditionally lower numbers during the winter season.
      1. “…armed classes accounted for 63.6 per cent of all incidents.
      2. “Anti-government elements initiated 85.7 per cent of all security-related incidents, including 92.1 per cent of armed clashes.”
  3. “…the number of airstrikes declined…in 2020…from 1,663 in 2019 to 938 in 2020. 
  4. “UNAMA documented 8,820 civilian casualties (3,035 killed, including 390 women and 760 children; and 5,785 injured, including 756 women and 1,859 children) in 2020.” 
    1. This represents a 15 percent decrease compared with 2019, mainly because of fewer civilian casualties from suicide [bombings], from complex attacks carried out by anti-government elements and from air strikes by international military forces.”
    2. “However, UNAMA documented increases in civilian casualties from targeted killings by anti-government elements, Taliban pressure-plate improvised explosive devices, and Afghan Air Force air strikes.”
    3. “In the last quarter of 2020, UNAMA documented a 45 perc ent increase in civilian casualties compared with the same period in 2019.”
    4. “In 2020, the majority of civilian casualties were caused by anti-government elements (62 percent), mainly by the Taliban (45 per cent), ISIL-K (8 per cent) and undetermined anti-government elements (9 percent).”
    5. “A quarter of all civilian casualties were attributed to pro-government forces, mostly caused by Afghan national security forces (22 per cent), followed by international military forces, pro-government armed groups, and undetermined or multiple pro-government forces.”
    6. “Ground engagements were the leading incident type causing the most civilian casualties (36 percent), followed by suicide and non-suicide improvised explosive devices (34 per cent), targeted killings (14 per cent) and air strikes (8 per cent).

 

              Security           Incidences      Civilian

Year      Incidences       Per Month       Deaths

2008        8,893                  741

2009      11,524                  960

2010      19,403               1,617

2011      22,903               1,909

2012      18,441?             1,537?                             *

2013      20,093               1,674               2,959

2014      22,051               1,838               3,699

2015      22,634               1,886               3,545

2016      23,712               1,976               3,498

2017      23,744               1,979               3,438

2018      22,478               1,873               3,804

2019      22,832               1,903               3,403

2020      25,180               2,098               3,035

 

Now, on 29 February 2020 in Doha the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement to reduce the number of U.S. forces from 13,000 to 8,600 troops in 135 days with a proportional reduction in the number of coalition forces. It is to be followed by the drawdown of all international forces within another nine and half months. The U.S. is now down to 2,500-3,500 troops. This is subject to the Taliban fulfilling their commitments under the agreement. There is still no agreement between the current government of Afghanistan and the Taliban.

Situation Currently in Afghanistan

I have not blogged about Afghanistan in a while, since:

Some Statistics on Afghanistan (April 2020) | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

Will probably be a addressing it more in the near future. There was New York Times article today that I thought was worthwhile. It is here: The Taliban Close In on Afghan Cities, Pushing the Country to the Brink

One of the odd things when we were doing the insurgency work on Iraq and our later more theoretical insurgency work, we never were asked by our various contracting agencies to look at Afghanistan in particular. This is odd, as we kind of nailed the prediction on Iraq (see Chapter One of America’s Modern Wars). In the end I do have a chapter on Afghanistan in that book and were asked to brief the military advisor to the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in late 2005 and again in late 2008. This also lead to a briefing with the Chairman of NIC.

I still think there is value in having us do an independent analysis of the situation in light of our correct predictions for Iraq and Bosnia (see Appendix II of America’s Modern Wars). I also have a very brief chapter in my book on “Withdrawal and War Termination.” Needless to say, this was a subject I proposed to several agencies that we do more work on, and there was absolutely no interest. So instead I write books. Now, I don’t control the budget over at DOD and other agencies. Sometimes their priorities mystify me.