Feral Jundi

Friday, September 12, 2008

News: US Commander Calls for Operations in Pakistan Tribal Regions

Filed under: Afghanistan,News,Pakistan — Tags: , , , , , , — Matt @ 11:31 PM

     This is interesting, because this is the same pattern of action that was taken with Iraq.  The Joint Chiefs, with the leadership of General Pace, went to town about a new strategy for Iraq.

 

      The product from these Afghan/Pakistan strategy meetings should be interesting, and will probably revolve around the same kind of themes as the Iraq strategy.  The plan will probably focus on bringing in more troops to hold what property they have taken over there.  

 

     Of course Pakistan will be a huge deal.  But most importantly, they must find a way to win over the Pashtun and find a moral legitimacy within the people.  That Hamid’s Afghanistan needs to be the people’s Afghanistan, and not looked at as NATO’s Afghanistan.  No army has ever been able to succeed there, without winning over the Pashtun.  The Taliban know this, they know the dynamics of the villages and warlords, and they know how to play the angles.  

 

     We need to beat the Taliban at their own game, and learn from our experiences there to make that happen.  Our war machine must be a learning organization* if it wants to succeed in Afghanistan.  That is the lesson from Iraq, and that is the lesson of a prior war called Vietnam.  We ‘ll see how this turns out, and  I look forward to the results of the commision.  –Head Jundi

 

*referencing John Nagl and his COIN book Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife.

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U.S. COMMANDER CALLS FOR OPERATIONS IN PAKISTANI TRIBAL REGIONS

 

9/12/08

By Abubakar Siddique, Ron Synovitz

A EurasiaNet Partner Post from RFE/RL

 

The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Admiral Michael Mullen, has announced that he is commissioning a new military strategy that will cover both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border.

 

Mullen’s statement came on the eve of the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and said plans include the tribal regions of Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders are thought to be hiding.

 

Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Congressional committee in Washington on September 10 that the new strategy will allow American forces to fight militants in Pakistan’s tribal regions as well as in Afghanistan.

 

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Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Building Snowmobiles: Incident Command System for Military Companies and Enhancing COIN

   This is a subject close to my heart, and I think it deserves some attention.  I respect Peter Singer’s work and I have read Corporate Warriors, and it was an interesting book about the history of security contracting. I have also read his article about the harm military contractors are doing to the current counterinsurgency(COIN) operations and it has troubled me to some degree.  The article makes the case as if there is no place in today’s wars for the private industry and that we are not worth the effort.  I guess my argument is that we do have a place in today’s wars, and we are performing crucial services for the US Government.   But I do agree that we could be doing some harm to the overall COIN strategy and that we need to find some solutions on how to work together more efficiently.  

 

     Now my focus will be more about the operational relationship out in the field between the military companies and the military.  I cannot even begin to talk about contracts or money or all of that other stuff.  But what I can talk about is the operational relationship of the two, and some possible solutions to get us all on the same sheet of music so we can only enhance the war effort, and not hinder it. 

 

     As for my background, I have worked for the US Government in one capacity or another for most of my adult life. But the most relevant job to this discussion I held was as a smokejumper and forest fighter in the US wild land fire services.  I fought forest fires with the Bureau of Land Management and with the Forest Service, and I witnessed the use of thousands of private industry service providers doing an amazing job providing support to these incidents.  From cooking food, to cleaning clothes, to providing shelter, all the way up to fighting fires from the land and air–the private fire fighting industry does it all.  I also think today’s military companies and military can learn a lot from this relationship. 

 

     What was most unique with this relationship is the fact that the services of these fire contractors could be called up at a moments notice through a dispatch center, and released at a moments notice through what is called a ‘call when needed contract’.  And this call up was all based on the Incident Commander’s decision(the manager of the fire).  If this commander of the fire did not need those services anymore, he would just tell them that they were no longer needed and inform the Dispatch Center that they have been released from incident.  There is something remarkably simplistic about this system of command that the military companies and military can learn a lot from.  

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