Feral Jundi

   “It was simple and direct. He [the terrorist] had the option of being handed over to the police, after which he would be prosecuted for … offenses related to terrorism. If found guilty he would be hanged. He could, however, change sides and work with the security forces against his former comrades. After a short period of intensive contemplation, the capture elected to change sides. He was immediately given back his weapon, but unknown to him, its firing pin had been removed. The fact that he had been given a weapon astonished … him. [I]t was a shrewdly calculated move designed to sow the seeds of trust. A pseudo group always had to make a hard decision … quickly. Could they trust the ex-insurgent or not? The answer to that question…demanded a considerable amount of moral courage on the part of the team. It meant … placing their lives in the hands of a former enemy whom, having turned once, might very well turn again, and kill and betray them.” -Retired Lt. Col. Ron Reid-Daly, a former commander of the Selous Scouts and author of “Pamwe Chete: The Legend of the Selous Scouts,” on capturing and turning the enemy.

   This is totally building snowmobiles, because this activity totally goes against our current mindset in the war.  I found these two stories, because they both complement each other, regardless of the fact that they were written for two different aspects of the war.  The first story is from Strategy Page, and actually talks about turning Taleban who no longer want to fight for the other side.  Except the turning strategy is not going far enough in my opinion.  We could go further, but it would require some guts and some strong leaders to manage the process.  But he who dares, wins… right?

   The second story is about the Selous Scouts method for turning enemy combatants, and using them in the war they were fighting.  The author was trying to apply the ideas to Iraq in the early days, but to me, it has equal application to what we are doing in Afghanistan.  The quote up top is classic.  Let me know what you guys think and Pamwe Chete! –Matt

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Foreigners Fighting Foreigners

June 19, 2009

Strategy Page

While the Taliban have been successful with their human shield tactics, they have done so at great cost to the popularity of the Islamic radical group. The Taliban were never noted for their desire to be popular. These guys are on a mission from God, and earthly trifles do not concern them. While the frequent use of human shields has spared the Taliban some casualties, and sometimes made it easier to escape death or capture (mainly because the propaganda value of dead civilians has caused the rules of engagement for foreign troops to become more restrictive), the practice has increased Afghan hostility to the Taliban. This means that the Taliban increasingly find themselves operating in a hostile environment as they move through Afghanistan. This is made worse by the fact that many Taliban units are often half, or more, composed of foreigners. Many of these are Pakistanis, who at least look like Afghans (and only betray themselves when they speak, and reveal a foreign accent). But a growing number of foreigners are Arabs, who are generally disliked throughout Pakistan. This is because many Arabs look down on Afghans, and often do not try to hide this disdain.

 Moreover, Arabs are more eager to carry out suicide bomb attacks that kill lots of civilians. Afghans see these Arabs as bringing the terror tactics that failed in Iraq, to Afghanistan. These tactics kill lots more civilians than foreign or Afghan soldiers, and most Afghans want no part of it.  Afghans have also noticed that a lot of the violence in their country consists of foreigners fighting foreigners, and killing any Afghans who happen to be nearby.

Taking advantage of the declining popularity of the Taliban, the U.S. has implemented a rehabilitation program for captured Taliban. First, the hard core (beyond rehab) Taliban are separated out and isolated. Those deemed capable of rehabilitation are given religious instruction by mainstream clerics, and job training. The religious instruction is the most important aspect of all this, as most of the Taliban are uneducated country boys who got sold an attractive, but false, religious doctrine by Taliban recruiters. Many of the captured Taliban were only in it for the money, but some did buy into the “Mission From God” angle. The U.S. first developed this segregate and rehabilitate program during World War II, when they found fanatic Nazi German POWs were intimidating and organizing less dedicated (to the Nazi cause) POWs into violent acts and misbehavior in general.

The Taliban have been calling for foreign Islamic radicals to come to Afghanistan and help out. These men will fight for free, and the Taliban does not have enough cash to hire as many gunmen as it would like to have. Meanwhile, some al Qaeda operatives are leaving, mainly because of the growing civilian hostility to Islamic terrorism, and the increasing activity of Afghan and foreign troops.

June 18, 2009:  Afghan troops arrested Taliban leader (Mullah Shah Mohammad) in Farah province (next to Taliban heartland Helmand province). Also captured was documents, opium and a large cache of weapons.

June 15, 2009: Interrogations of captured Taliban indicate that the terrorist group is under orders to generate maximum violence this Summer, and try to make a mess of the presidential elections (with its 40 candidates). While there has been an increase in violence, most of the victims have been Taliban. For example, in the last week, over 250 died (48 civilians, 30 policemen and 176 Taliban, plus about a dozen Afghan and foreign soldiers), and the pattern of deaths was pretty much the same as it’s always been. The Taliban go out of their way to anger local civilians. For example, this year they are more intent on trying to impose lifestyle rules. Thus when the Taliban come across a wedding, they will beat up the musicians (in one case they left them tied to trees overnight), and otherwise spoil a good time. Under the Taliban view of Islam, music and movies are not allowed, and Taliban will search homes and destroy any tapes, CDs or DVDs they find. Parents who send their daughters to school will be beaten, and the schools burned down, and teachers murdered.

June 14, 2009: Police arrested two al Jazeera producers who had filmed an interview with a Taliban leader, which was recently broadcast worldwide. The two men were later released, with a warning to stop making propaganda for the Taliban.

Story Here

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Scouts to the Rescue

DefenseWatch

This article is provided courtesy of DefenseWatch, the official magazine for Soldiers For The Truth (SFTT), a grass-roots educational organization started by a small group of concerned veterans and citizens to inform the public, the Congress, and the media on the decline in readiness of our armed forces. Inspired by the outspoken idealism of retired Colonel David Hackworth, SFTT aims to give our service people, veterans, and retirees a clear voice with the media, Congress, the public and their services.

September 17, 2003

By Jim Simpson

The Bush administration deserves credit for recognizing early on the necessity of completely eliminating the Ba’athist infrastructure in Iraq. This has become more urgent as Ba’athist holdouts and outside supporters have stepped up their terror attacks on Iraqi citizens, Coalition forces and U.N. personnel.

As I first noted last February, only by completely destroying the Ba’ath party would a peaceful, stable Iraq emerge. Despite their best efforts, the coalition has not yet found an effective way to deal with them.

I have an answer: bring back the Selous Scouts.

Of the many special forces units formed throughout history, the Scouts are perhaps one of the least known but most effective ever fielded. Named after famed Rhodesian hunter and bushman, Frederick C. Selous, the Scouts were a mixed-race unit formed by the Rhodesian government in 1973 in response to the civil war being waged by communist insurgents.

The Rhodesians ultimately failed but not due to the efforts of the Scouts. They were responsible for over 68 percent of all insurgents killed within Rhodesia during the civil war and thousands more hiding out in border states. The Scouts themselves lost under 40 men. Their very name struck terror and respect into the hearts of the enemy.

It must be acknowledged that most modern guerilla tactics, Muslim or otherwise, take their inspiration from Soviet or Chinese communist insurgency doctrine. This means a rigorous attention to internal security, with highly compartmentalized, autonomous cell structures, extensive use of codes and signals, and barbaric recruitment and enforcement mechanisms.

As a result, terrorist groups are extremely difficult to crack. No one cell knows what another is doing or even who its members are and only a few or even one member have any contact with any higher authority. Within an area, the terrorists can quickly identify and eliminate potential adversaries while subduing that part of the local population not sympathetic with terror and threats of terror.

The only way to learn anything about these cells – their structure, their members, their support network, their activities and plans – is to get inside them. Only an active member can supply such information and only he will know the elaborate identification signals with which they communicate and identify each other.

The Scouts utilized an innovative formula to break the secrecy of these cells. They perfected the “pseudo team” counter-insurgency concept, originally developed by the British in 1951 in response to the Malayan communist insurgency. Like the fabled Trojan Horse, groups of fake or “pseudo” terrorists would enter an area and attempt to gain acceptance within the actual insurgent network.

Having made contact and identified the guerilla group, the infiltrators would then call in a strike force of the highly mobile and deadly Rhodesian Light Infantry to finish them off. The Scouts would carefully arrange to be elsewhere when the attack came. In later meetings with insurgents, they might detail their harrowing escape. To avoid exposure, the Scouts would do no shooting themselves unless it was absolutely necessary. Properly conducted, the pseudo team could remain uncompromised and continue operations in the same area until the threat was completely removed.

This was an extremely risky business as it usually involved direct, unarmed contact with the enemy, followed by extensive identification rituals that included use of passwords and signals that changed on a regular basis.

The key to the Scouts’ success was the extensive reliance on turned, or “tame” insurgents. A constant inflow of these insurgent recruits kept the intelligence on guerilla security procedures up-to-date. At its zenith, turned insurgents comprised over 50 percent of the Scouts’ fighting force. The rest were the best soldiers, black and white, from various components of the Rhodesian military.

How did they recruit from this pool of seemingly fanatic, dedicated guerillas? Retired Lt. Col. Ron Reid-Daly, a former commander of the Selous Scouts and author of “Pamwe Chete: The Legend of the Selous Scouts,” put it this way:

  “It was simple and direct. He [the terrorist] had the option of being handed over to the police, after which he would be prosecuted for … offenses related to terrorism. If found guilty he would be hanged. He could, however, change sides and work with the security forces against his former comrades. After a short period of intensive contemplation, the capture elected to change sides. He was immediately given back his weapon, but unknown to him, its firing pin had been removed. The fact that he had been given a weapon astonished … him. [I]t was a shrewdly calculated move designed to sow the seeds of trust. A pseudo group always had to make a hard decision … quickly. Could they trust the ex-insurgent or not? The answer to that question…demanded a considerable amount of moral courage on the part of the team. It meant … placing their lives in the hands of a former enemy whom, having turned once, might very well turn again, and kill and betray them.”

According to Col. Reid-Daly, despite their vaunted fanaticism, insurgents were relatively easy to turn. They generally lived a tough, hand-to-mouth existence and were acutely aware that while they were putting their lives on the line every day, their leaders were often living in lush accommodations, far removed from any danger, traveling in high diplomatic circles and pilfering the money and supplies intended for them.

Many of the turned insurgents went on to become some of the Scouts’ most loyal and decorated soldiers. That the Scouts’ formula is an effective counter-insurgency technique is beyond question. Their successes speak for themselves.

Similar conditions exist in Iraq today, where many of Saddam’s loyalists fight on only for lack of other options. The “pseudo team” concept, employed so successfully by the Selous Scouts, should be considered a viable option for countering the guerilla campaign currently hobbling the introduction of democracy in Iraq.

Story Here