Paktika, my new home. The backwater of Afghanistan. The least developed province in the country. Eastern Paktika is where mountain ranges go to die, home to the tail end of numerous ranges running north to south, including the mighty Hindu Kush. Western Paktika rolls into a harsh high desert plain, mostly arid and flat with a few confused mountain ranges shooting across east to west. This rugged landscape is home to 800,000 Pashtuns, most of which live outside of urban population centers, hardened by the unforgiving rural conditions.
Not everything about my new home is rough. The sunsets here at FOB Sharana are magical – the desert plain presents the oranges, purples, and yellows as an oil painting, framed by the distant mountain ranges to the west. This Afghan sun enjoys rest more than most, accelerating to a run as it approaches the jagged horizon, swelling to twice its size with enthusiasm for the night to come. And when the sky quickly turns dark, I understand the enthusiasm; there are so many stars, and they are the brightest I’ve ever seen. This is how the sky is supposed to look, here in Afghanistan, 7,000 feet up. Yet somehow, the brilliance of the stars does not reach the ground, leaving it veiled in darkness.
I do a lot of walking at night here – in the utter darkness. Where I currently stay on this base, there is no light. The brigade headquarters is about a mile from the main post of Sharana. The two are very different, the main post reminding me of a vibrant Afghan village – mud walls, shoddy structures, and people out and about enjoying life. They have the PX, the chow hall, the god given Green Bean Coffee, the pirated movie shop, the Indian-manufactured-Afghan-clothing shop, the barber – it’s vibrant! And while the brigade area where I live has some of this – a px and a chowhall – the energy is not there. It’s sleepy, spread out…subdued. It’s not that the PX or the chowhall is not as good as the one on main post – they’re actually better in variety. No, I blame the staff nerds. The brigade area is filled with aging staff officers frustrated with their jobs and the mission, sitting too many hours in front of a computer screen analyzing numbers and symbols that are likely representative of something, the essence of which may be very exciting! But they’re not excited. And why does the main post, just a mile away from me, seem to enjoy life? Well, my hunch is that it’s filled with young enlisted folks, who, while also overworked, spend their days working with substance rather than form , with reality rather than representation. Basically, they use less Powerpoint.
Next week I will depart this place, for this is Brigade headquarters and my job is not with the staffers – at least not the important part. Where I’m going, I’m still unsure. I’m working with the staff to pick a location and develop a research design, with one chief consideration in mind: wherever I go, whatever I do, it must be something important! And you would not believe (former or current military personnel excluded) how many staffers want to send me somewhere unimportant (at least in my mind).
So my mission for the next few days is to cut through all the nonsense – the symbols, the numbers, the representation – and get at the substance of what is really going on here in Paktika. Where is this strategy leading us? What pieces of terrain are truly vital? And of these, which do we have the resources, the time, and the will to make a lasting impact?
This, of course, is one of the reasons I am here – a desire to make a difference; to do something important that will last. To enter the vortex and try to understand it; to bring meaninful change and return home. Some think I am naïve – I’ve met a number of people who have labeled me as such – and with them I wholeheartedly agree. I am naïve, and I value that part of my being as much as my ginger hair, my oversized heart, and my love of writing cheeseball blogposts.
What I am not naïve of is the danger that is present here in Paktika, and I will do everything in my power to allow myself to return. As I make my rounds with each staff section, I pay special attention and additional time speaking with the S-2 Intelligence, for this is the man on the staff with the greatest understanding of the threat. Tonight, I asked him question after question, grilling him and trying to understand the threat. Where are the IEDs most prevalent? Where are they most lethal? What types are used where? How are complex attacks conducted? What systems of secondary devices are used? What lessons have we learned? He feels challenged, I feel more prepared.
I intend to return in one piece and will do everything I can to accomplish my mission with this in the front of my mind.
I love the people in my life. I feel so lucky to have you all and I miss you hugely. Happy late Thanksgiving! Talk to you soon.
Ryan
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Kuwait Reflections...
I am in what must feel more like purgatory than any other place on earth: Kuwait.
I've spent the morning awake, in a distinctly clear haze. This is a type of haze that can only be understood by someone who has been to Kuwait or undergone America's version of non-torture torture...err, interrogation (the one that no longer includes water boarding). After 48 hours of non-stop airplane and waiting, with only short spurts of sleep to break the reading and thinking, you arrive in Kuwait, spend a few hours waiting in various lines and carrying hundreds of pounds of baggage, finding yourself in a tent with others in the same sort of haze – the middle of the night, not awake but definitely not asleep – a tent with a light that does not turn off – a base with a sun that does not turn off, provided by a mix of spotlights and florescent lights, a steady noise of generators and loudspeaker announcements and airplanes – a haze that only someone who's been to Kuwait or undergone the soft touch of American torture can understand.
Here I am, a smile on my face. Strangely, for the first time, why I am here seems refreshingly clear. But it makes no sense to start with that – at least in this haze; allow me to start with why AMERICA is here (and by "here" I mean Afghanistan, not Kuwait).
I'll start by saying I really have no idea. But the following is my best guess. 'Merica came to Afghanistan because this is the land where Bin Laden and his associates planned the 9/11 attacks, followed by the refusal of the Taliban to give up Bin Laden and his associates.
For the following seven years, we did very little other than hunt down and kill Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We did a fine job of it – by the end of Bush's presidency there were very few Al Qaeda left in Afghanistan. Unfortunately for the new guys in the White House, most of them had simply moved next door to the loosely governed regions of Pakistan. In addition to this, a largely undisturbed insurgency in the form of the Taliban had metastasized and spread it's roots.
Around February 2008, a new bunch took power in Washington and decided that, while things appeared to be on the up and up in Iraq, Afghanistan had seen little progress; in fact, things appeared to be going down hill. Following a few months of assessment, the new bunch came to understand that things were not going down hill, but were falling off a cliff. Afghanistan was going to the Islamic hell in a hand basket.
What were our options? Why do we care? Why does this place matter?
Well, I think Afghanistan matters because if the current government falls, the new government to take over – some form of the Taliban or the Haqqani network or some sick hybrid – would possibly welcome back in the international terrorist movement and we'd be back in there before we knew it.
But they currently operate freely in the tribal areas, why does it matter what happens in Afghanistan? Well, if we ever make any headway with the Pakistanis, which is a necessary piece of this puzzle, then we'll need to be sure that the terrorists can't simply move back into Afghanistan. You may think that this seems silly – how can we hope to build and nurture an Afghan government that has the will and capability to keep terrorists off it's soil if we can not even achieve this with Pakistan? I'm not sure about this question...
So what's the deal here? Counterinsurgency? Is that what we're doing? Not exactly. Counterinsurgency requires huge numbers of troops protecting the population from the insurgency and would likely cost the US unimaginable numbers of dollars over a long period of time. This is something that we are in no position to do after ten years of floundering.
Ok, how about counterterrorism? Well, this isn't exactly what's going on either. The traditional idea of counterterrorism involves pin pointed strikes to take out potential terrorists while minimizing the amount of resources spent in other areas. This is generally imagined as a job conducted by special operations forces and the CIA. If this was the case, why did we have such a large troop surge in Afghan? This isn't it.
Hmm... maybe it's a combination of the two. This would make sense, given that counterterrorism is only really effective when you have the on the ground intelligence necessary to pinpoint targets, intelligence that can most effectively be achieved by boots on the ground interacting with the populace (counterinsurgency). Still, this would require huge a huge commitment of troops on the ground, and while we have increased our troops numbers, we're nowhere near the level of 40-60 per Afghan called for by most counterinsurgency theorists. To reach this, we'd be talking about hundreds of thousands rather than tens of thousands.
What I think we have been doing is an approach that gives us the opportunity to succeed, but doesn't commit our nation in a way that we committed to Vietnam. In other terms, we've committed to a limited war (limited resources) for limited objectives. So what are our objectives? I would describe it very simply: get in the Taliban's face as much as possibly, disrupt their operations, kill their mid level leaders, and generally sideline them for as long as possible. This will give the opportunity for the Afghan security forces to train up and become an effective force, allowing them to step in and provide the security that we're attempted to provide. From there, the Afghan security forces will ideally be able to conduct their own counterinsurgency over a greater period of time at a far reduced cost.
Will this work? Probably not very well. One of the main elements I've excluded from my analysis is the Afghan government, which can be accurately described as the most corrupt government on earth. No matter what we or the Afghan security forces do, if the government of Afghanistan (read Karzai) does not change it's approach (read replace Karzai), then we will get nowhere. When is the next election?
There are of course other factors. Our actions in Pakistan are extremely effective given the low amount of resources we've given them. We kill Taliban and Al Qaeda virtually daily through the use of drone strikes and on the ground intelligence gathering (go CIA). This is saving Afghan and US lives by hampering the Taliban's operations (Taliban used as an umbrella term to include groups that are related to but are by no means the Taliban). But it's not enough; our ability to do this is largely based on our schizophrenic relationship with Pakistan's government and military, and pending actual troops penetrating into the tribal areas and killing the high level leadership, this is disruption, not destruction.
So, I've gone into a little bit about what I think we're doing. I've failed to really address why it's important. Soon I'll also get into what I am doing and why it's important to me. I'm starting off slow.
Here's something. Why am I here? Because it sounds like a hell of an adventure. More to follow on that! Stay tuned. I gotta get this adventure rolling. Off I go to the flight line with 4 bags, each 50 pounds plus. Do me a favor and cross your fingers – I'm really hoping this plane has room.
Please forgive misspellings and grammatical errors. I'm usually a stickler for those, but no time ... no time. Sleeeeeeeeeeeep.
I've spent the morning awake, in a distinctly clear haze. This is a type of haze that can only be understood by someone who has been to Kuwait or undergone America's version of non-torture torture...err, interrogation (the one that no longer includes water boarding). After 48 hours of non-stop airplane and waiting, with only short spurts of sleep to break the reading and thinking, you arrive in Kuwait, spend a few hours waiting in various lines and carrying hundreds of pounds of baggage, finding yourself in a tent with others in the same sort of haze – the middle of the night, not awake but definitely not asleep – a tent with a light that does not turn off – a base with a sun that does not turn off, provided by a mix of spotlights and florescent lights, a steady noise of generators and loudspeaker announcements and airplanes – a haze that only someone who's been to Kuwait or undergone the soft touch of American torture can understand.
Here I am, a smile on my face. Strangely, for the first time, why I am here seems refreshingly clear. But it makes no sense to start with that – at least in this haze; allow me to start with why AMERICA is here (and by "here" I mean Afghanistan, not Kuwait).
I'll start by saying I really have no idea. But the following is my best guess. 'Merica came to Afghanistan because this is the land where Bin Laden and his associates planned the 9/11 attacks, followed by the refusal of the Taliban to give up Bin Laden and his associates.
For the following seven years, we did very little other than hunt down and kill Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We did a fine job of it – by the end of Bush's presidency there were very few Al Qaeda left in Afghanistan. Unfortunately for the new guys in the White House, most of them had simply moved next door to the loosely governed regions of Pakistan. In addition to this, a largely undisturbed insurgency in the form of the Taliban had metastasized and spread it's roots.
Around February 2008, a new bunch took power in Washington and decided that, while things appeared to be on the up and up in Iraq, Afghanistan had seen little progress; in fact, things appeared to be going down hill. Following a few months of assessment, the new bunch came to understand that things were not going down hill, but were falling off a cliff. Afghanistan was going to the Islamic hell in a hand basket.
What were our options? Why do we care? Why does this place matter?
Well, I think Afghanistan matters because if the current government falls, the new government to take over – some form of the Taliban or the Haqqani network or some sick hybrid – would possibly welcome back in the international terrorist movement and we'd be back in there before we knew it.
But they currently operate freely in the tribal areas, why does it matter what happens in Afghanistan? Well, if we ever make any headway with the Pakistanis, which is a necessary piece of this puzzle, then we'll need to be sure that the terrorists can't simply move back into Afghanistan. You may think that this seems silly – how can we hope to build and nurture an Afghan government that has the will and capability to keep terrorists off it's soil if we can not even achieve this with Pakistan? I'm not sure about this question...
So what's the deal here? Counterinsurgency? Is that what we're doing? Not exactly. Counterinsurgency requires huge numbers of troops protecting the population from the insurgency and would likely cost the US unimaginable numbers of dollars over a long period of time. This is something that we are in no position to do after ten years of floundering.
Ok, how about counterterrorism? Well, this isn't exactly what's going on either. The traditional idea of counterterrorism involves pin pointed strikes to take out potential terrorists while minimizing the amount of resources spent in other areas. This is generally imagined as a job conducted by special operations forces and the CIA. If this was the case, why did we have such a large troop surge in Afghan? This isn't it.
Hmm... maybe it's a combination of the two. This would make sense, given that counterterrorism is only really effective when you have the on the ground intelligence necessary to pinpoint targets, intelligence that can most effectively be achieved by boots on the ground interacting with the populace (counterinsurgency). Still, this would require huge a huge commitment of troops on the ground, and while we have increased our troops numbers, we're nowhere near the level of 40-60 per Afghan called for by most counterinsurgency theorists. To reach this, we'd be talking about hundreds of thousands rather than tens of thousands.
What I think we have been doing is an approach that gives us the opportunity to succeed, but doesn't commit our nation in a way that we committed to Vietnam. In other terms, we've committed to a limited war (limited resources) for limited objectives. So what are our objectives? I would describe it very simply: get in the Taliban's face as much as possibly, disrupt their operations, kill their mid level leaders, and generally sideline them for as long as possible. This will give the opportunity for the Afghan security forces to train up and become an effective force, allowing them to step in and provide the security that we're attempted to provide. From there, the Afghan security forces will ideally be able to conduct their own counterinsurgency over a greater period of time at a far reduced cost.
Will this work? Probably not very well. One of the main elements I've excluded from my analysis is the Afghan government, which can be accurately described as the most corrupt government on earth. No matter what we or the Afghan security forces do, if the government of Afghanistan (read Karzai) does not change it's approach (read replace Karzai), then we will get nowhere. When is the next election?
There are of course other factors. Our actions in Pakistan are extremely effective given the low amount of resources we've given them. We kill Taliban and Al Qaeda virtually daily through the use of drone strikes and on the ground intelligence gathering (go CIA). This is saving Afghan and US lives by hampering the Taliban's operations (Taliban used as an umbrella term to include groups that are related to but are by no means the Taliban). But it's not enough; our ability to do this is largely based on our schizophrenic relationship with Pakistan's government and military, and pending actual troops penetrating into the tribal areas and killing the high level leadership, this is disruption, not destruction.
So, I've gone into a little bit about what I think we're doing. I've failed to really address why it's important. Soon I'll also get into what I am doing and why it's important to me. I'm starting off slow.
Here's something. Why am I here? Because it sounds like a hell of an adventure. More to follow on that! Stay tuned. I gotta get this adventure rolling. Off I go to the flight line with 4 bags, each 50 pounds plus. Do me a favor and cross your fingers – I'm really hoping this plane has room.
Please forgive misspellings and grammatical errors. I'm usually a stickler for those, but no time ... no time. Sleeeeeeeeeeeep.
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