John Nagl, a counterinsurgency expert who was appointed last week to the defence policy board at the Pentagon, said: “We do not have enough troops to hold what we have cleared in Helmand. The additional American troops are a help, but they are insufficient.
“We have more fighting in Afghanistan in front of us than we have fighting behind us, full stop. This is going to be a harder fight than Iraq. Afghanistan needs [to create its own] national army of 250,000 to enable the allies to depart.”
At present the Afghan national army has about 92,000 troops, while the police force numbers 83,000. More US troops are needed to fill the gap, but first they would have to be diverted from Iraq.
Ok, I know this post is going to tweak a few people out there, because it is just ‘too crazy’ or ridiculous. How could we possibly use PMC’s or PSC’s to ‘hold’ villages?
Well, it’s easy, we first rework what PMC’s can or cannot do in the war (like give them the necessary tools and authorization to defend villages and AO’s) and we open the flood gates of contracts for such a thing. Then we insure the necessary architecture is in place to insure that the company in place is in fact doing good things and following the contract for that village. But none of this is new in the realm of how we set these things up, we just have to do it.
Here is another way to look at this. Take a good look at what the ‘holding’ troops are actually doing in these villages, and logically look at what jobs a company could conceivably perform during that holding operation. Contractors have been used in the defense on US bases, in disaster zones, and for protecting remote civilian camps in places like Iraq, the next progression to me, is using contractors to defend villages. If our goal is to protect people in Afghanistan from the Taliban, and we do not have enough troops to do that, then why not use contractors?
But I would have to suggest that if we are going to enter into the game of protecting villages, we should have the tools necessary to repel the type of assaults the enemy is capable of. This is a good time to post a snippet from Bill Roggio’s Long War Journal about a recent attack on an outpost in Afghanistan.
In the past, the Taliban, al Qaeda, and allied terror groups have conducted numerous attacks of this nature in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Yemen.
The rocket attack is designed to cause the defending troops to take cover. The suicide bomber, or in many cases, bombers, is assigned to create a breach in the outer wall so that a backup suicide bomber or an assault team can follow through to overrun the base. The Taliban have had some success in these attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and used this method to penetrate the outer gate of the US embassy in Sanaa, Yemen.
If contractors were used to protect these villages, ROE’s and RUF’s need to reflect what is required to repel an attack like the one above. If for example, mortar teams are needed, and contractors are not allowed to have such a thing, then write into the contract to have a platoon from the military posted that has that capability. And that brings up an excellent point as well with the possible creative uses of contractors in the war.
On the bases, contractors who are tasked with security there, often work side by side with a military QRF or some platoon with more of an offensive as well as a defensive capability. These are the guys that go outside the wire if need be, they have the big guns and CAS capability. So military is working side by side with contractors in this war, and to have the same arrangement in Afghanistan up in the villages is not that much of a stretch.
Going back to Nagl’s quote in the article, we do not have a lot of good choices. I guess we could initiate a draft to get more bodies into the war, but we need folks now. The Afghanis are constantly being trained up, yet we are still very much deficient in those forces according to Nagl’s numbers too. So to me, the last and only possibility in getting the required amount of forces in there, is to contract it out.
And for any war planners out there that think it is impossible to drum up the kind of forces fast enough to do this, think again. There is a legion of contractors out there who are constantly looking for jobs. There is also a cycle of contractors that I have noticed in this industry as well. Guys who were contracting in the early parts of the war, got out of it to be with family and be home for awhile, and then because of whatever reason decided to get back into the game again. That, and all of the thousands of unemployed veterans in this war that get out of the military, find that the jobs just are not there, and are in dire need of work that is suitable for an infantryman. If anyone has any doubts, just check the numbers (246,000 contractors in the war).
So let’s go back to the main question I asked in the subject line. Could PMC’s be used in the hold phase of this new strategy in Afghanistan? I want to know what you think, because I already know what my answer is. –Matt
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New British and US strategy to break Taliban
From The Sunday Times
July 5, 2009
Michael Smith, Sarah Baxter and Jerome Starkey in Kabul
In the baking heat and dust of Afghanistan last week Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Thorneloe was heading into hostile territory to check on his men engaged in a big operation against the Taliban.
He was riding in the front passenger seat of a Viking BVS10, a tracked vehicle with two cabins, originally designed for Arctic combat. The air-conditioning is poor and the armour not much better. Vikings are protected on the upper side but vulnerable to bombs exploding below.
In other circumstances, Thorneloe, a senior officer with 1,000 men under his command, would have travelled by helicopter; but it appears none was available (though yesterday the Ministry of Defence declined to confirm or deny this).
“He wanted to get up among his boys at the first possible opportunity,” said an MoD spokesman. “A resupply convoy was going up there and he hitched a lift on that.” The commander, he said, wanted to “get the lie of the land” in the offensive against insurgents.
As the Viking approached a canal crossing, it passed over a hidden IED – improvised explosive device – which destroyed the front cab. Thorneloe and the driver, Trooper Joshua Hammond, died instantly.
Back at base, Major Martyn Miles, one of Thorneloe’s senior officers, heard the news over the radio. “Details began to come over the network and many couldn’t believe it at first,” said Miles, 49, from Boston, Lincolnshire. Thorneloe, 39, was a well-respected officer who led from the front.
“But the headquarters and especially the men on the ground dealt with the situation with the utmost professionalism,” said Miles. “Our first thoughts were to do as much as we could for everyone who was in the vehicle when it struck the IED.”
Six other soldiers in the Viking were wounded by the explosion, two seriously.
“Colonel Rupert felt very strongly that what we were doing here was important, and he instilled that in each and every one of us,” said Miles. “We have a very definite reason for being here and all of us are determined that the loss of four of our family since the start of this tour will not be in vain.”
Prince Charles, who knew Thorneloe, said he was “deeply saddened” by the deaths. Thorneloe’s wife, Sally, said: “Rupert was my very best friend and his death is a devastating blow. Our daughters, Hannah and Sophie, will have to grown up without their beloved Daddy, although I will see a part of him in them every day.”
Yesterday the fiancée of Hammond, who was 18, revealed that his last words to her had been: “I’ll come home safe.” Emma Green, a 19-year-old bank clerk, said: “We were planning to get married next year – that is what we were holding onto to get us through. He was, and still is, my childhood sweetheart.”
There are likely to be more casualties. Last night hundreds of soldiers were sweeping through areas of central Helmand by vehicle and on foot, seizing key canal crossing points and clearing Taliban insurgents from the area.
The third phase of operation Pan-chai Palang – Panther’s Claw – brought another 750 British and Afghan troops, including the Light Dragoons and the 2nd Battalion, The Mercian Regiment, into the fray. “There is a lot of close-quarters fighting at times,” said the MoD spokesman. “The insurgents are just metres away. Our boys are using their full array of weaponry, at times hurling hand-grenades into positions to flush out the enemy.
“The conditions are tough – sweltering heat, difficult terrain riddled with ditches, canals and places for the enemy to hide, and they are springing ambushes, but we have made significant progress.
“We have already secured the crossings along two major waterways to the north of Lashkar Gah, recovered a large number of IEDs, fought back the enemy in several locations and cleared villages along the way.”
About 3,000 British, Danish, Estonian and Afghan soldiers from Task Force Helmand are taking part in the operation north of Lashkar Gah while 4,000 men from the USled Task Force Leatherneck are conducting Operation Khanjar – Strike of the Sword – around the Garmsir and Nawa districts. The arrival of US marines – part of an American surge that will involve pouring 17,000 US troops into southern Afghanistan – has relieved some of the pressure. The British have given up control of the bulk of the province to the Americans and are now responsible mainly for the central area around the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, though some forces are also still in the north.
It’s all part of a strategic change. In future, American and British troops will be expected to hold their ground, providing security for local people while denying the insurgents access to vital supplies, funding and recruits.
“You don’t really need to chase and kill the Taliban,” said General Stanley McChrystal, the former special forces chief and newly appointed US commander of all allied troops in Afghanistan. “What you need to do is take away the one thing they absolutely have to have – and that’s access and the support of the people.”
AMERICAN helicopters swooped into southern Helmand last week – a surge ordered by President Barack Obama. Senior commanders are under orders from Washington to secure Helmand in time for the Afghan presidential elections in August. The Americans want to be able to say they are “winning” by this time next year.
In a spectacular show of force, contrasting strongly with the British lack of equipment, heavily armed marines, backed up by drones and fighter jets, stormed into the south of Afghanistan’s most dangerous province shortly after midnight on Wednesday. It was the biggest operation in Afghanistan since the Soviet occupation, and the largest American assault since the Battle for Fallu-jah in Iraq in 2004.
The marines’ mission is to secure the villages along a stretch of river more than 55 miles long in the heart of poppy-growing territory. They also hope to choke the Taliban supply lines used to ferry guns, drugs and fighters in and out of Pakistan.
Most of the Taliban melted away as convoys of marines in state-of-the-art “mine resistant” trucks drove further into their heartland. One marine was killed in fighting and at least two others were injured when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle. Cobra attack helicopters were seen firing into tree lines as the marines advanced, though much of the fighting was “sporadic”.
Brigadier-General Larry Nicholson said there was a “hell of a fight going on in the southern quarter of the sector” but described other parts of the province as “too quiet”. He said: “Something is eerie. The enemy has gone to ground; shuras [councils of elders] are being set up.
“In the next few days the enemy will observe us to see what we are doing. Then they will come back with a vengeance.”
Afghans fear the return of the insurgents, but many would prefer to be ruled by the Taliban than to be caught in the crossfire. Foreign forces are still viewed as a source of danger, according to Hajji Taj Muhammed, from the village of Mar-ja, whose house was bombed two months ago. “We Muslims don’t like them,” he said.
Hajji Abdul Ahad Helmandwal, a district council leader from Nad Ali, in Helmand province, said: “People are hostages of the Taliban, but they look at the coalition also as the enemy, because they have not seen anything good from them in seven or eight years.”
Now, however, a new American counterinsurgency doctrine puts protecting civilians above killing Taliban. “We do not want the people of Helmand province to see us as an enemy, we want to protect them from the enemy,” said Captain Bill Pelletier, an American spokesman.
That sentiment is echoed in a tactical directive designed to slash civilian casualties from airstrikes. McChrystal has ordered troops to avoid airstrikes unless they risk being overrun or they are sure there are no civilians nearby. US officials said last night that they had resisted using mortars, artillery or aircraft bombs during the push south.
However, the tactics and doctrine of “clear, hold and build” could expose soldiers to ambushes and roadside bombs of the sort that killed Thorneloe. Nor have the Taliban stopped opportunist attacks elsewhere.
In eastern Afghanistan, away from the main offensive, a US soldier was captured after moving away from his post in Paktika province. He is thought to have been seized by Sirajuddin Haqqani, a powerful Taliban figure based in Pakistan who controls large parts of Afghanistan along the border. Yesterday it was reported that a US soldier and Afghan officer were killed when a suicide car bomber attacked a base in the south of Paktika.
Local people remain suspicious that British and US forces will be unable to stop the Taliban returning. “The British troops they come, they bomb an area and capture it, then they give it back and the Taliban come back,” complained Mohammed Sabir, a 19-year-old student who fled Garmsir to live in Lashkar Gah because the schools in his village were destroyed. “The fighting begins again and in between the civilians die.”
The Americans have promised to change that. Nicholson said: “Where we go we will stay, and where we stay we will hold, build and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces”.
SO FAR, however, the allies’ reconstruction efforts in rural areas have been depressingly limited. “Efforts to win hearts and minds with quick impact projects have been largely futile,” said Matt Waldman, an independent development analyst. According to Ian Kelly, a US state department spokesman, only two US civilians are working in Helmand, with four more to follow in the next few weeks.
Some observers believe that too few US troops have been sent to Afghanistan to secure troubled areas, and that the Afghan military and security forces are nowhere near large enough to take on the job.
John Nagl, a counterinsurgency expert who was appointed last week to the defence policy board at the Pentagon, said: “We do not have enough troops to hold what we have cleared in Helmand. The additional American troops are a help, but they are insufficient.
“We have more fighting in Afghanistan in front of us than we have fighting behind us, full stop. This is going to be a harder fight than Iraq. Afghanistan needs [to create its own] national army of 250,000 to enable the allies to depart.”
At present the Afghan national army has about 92,000 troops, while the police force numbers 83,000. More US troops are needed to fill the gap, but first they would have to be diverted from Iraq.
General Jim Jones, Obama’s national security adviser, who has been criticised for his allegedly lazy nine-to-five handling of the job, is at odds with Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, after appearing to suggest that Obama would not countenance sending further troops. “Admiral Mullen certainly appeared to disagree with the way General Jones’s remarks were interpreted,” said Nagl. With the right number of troops, it is possible that America will be able to leave Afghanistan with “our heads held high”, he added.
Without them, Afghanistan will look less like postsurge Iraq and more like presurge Iraq, when additional troops were constantly requested by commanders on the ground, but opposed by defence chiefs to the point where the war was almost lost.
As Nagl observed of the looming challenges in Afghanistan: “We’ve seen this movie before.”
Story here.