Peter Dow Posted August 8, 2012 Share Posted August 8, 2012 Introduction and summary In this short video, I reject of the idea of peace talks with the Taliban and present an outline of my proposed strategy to beat the Taliban (and win the war on terror). Transcript from the video - CBS News: Divisions within Taliban make peace elusive Defense Secretary Leon Panetta made news Wednesday when he said the combat role for U.S. troops in Afghanistan could end next year instead of 2014. On Thursday' date=' he took a step back -- insisting U.S. forces will remain combat ready -- even as they transition into their new role of training Afghan troops. Another part of the U.S. strategy involves getting the Taliban to hold peace talks with the Afghan government. CBS News correspondent Clarissa Ward spoke with some top Taliban representatives where they live in Pakistan. They call Sami ul Haq the "Father of the Taliban," one of Pakistan's most well-known and hard-line Islamists. Ward visited ul Haq at his religious school near the Afghan border. Many Afghan Taliban leaders and fighters studied there, earning it the nickname the "University of Jihad." ... [/quote'] So the Deans of Jihad have dictated terms to the West' date=' the terms they propose of the West's surrender to the Jihadis in the war on terror. So what should the response of the West be? Should we surrender to the Jihadis, or should we fight to win? This guy Sami ul Haq should be a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp along with his University of Jihad colleagues, his controllers from the Pakistani ISI and his financial backers from Saudi Arabia. [list'] [*]The US and Western allies ought to name Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as "state sponsors of terrorism". [*]There ought to be drone strikes on the University of Jihad. (Darul Uloom Haqqania, Akora Khattak, Pakistan) [*]We ought to seize control of Pakistani and Saudi TV satellites and use them to broadcast propaganda calling for the arrest of all involved in waging terrorist war against the West. It just seems very poor tactics for our military to be risking life and limb in the minefields of Afghanistan yet at the strategic level our governments and businesses are still "trading with the enemy". As the Star Trek character Commander Scott might have said - "It's war, Captain but not as we know it." The desire for "peace talks" with the enemy is where poor generals with a failed war strategy end up Why would NATO and specifically the US want to encourage "peace talks" with the enemy Taliban? Why not simply crush the enemy? What's the political or military issue here that might mean "peace talks" would be part of an exit strategy for the US and allies? Key failures have been - Weak strategic thinking and planning by US and then NATO generals has dragged out the Western intervention in Afghanistan since 2001 and caused far more casualties to our soldiers than was ever necessary. The military general staff has lacked vision about the enemy and failed to comprehend and react appropriately to intelligence reports that Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other jihadi terror groups are proxies for hostile states, typically managed from Pakistan and funded from Saudi Arabia. This 2-hour video is of a British TV programme which explains in great detail the role of the Pakistani state via the ISI (Inter-services intelligence) has in supporting the Taliban's war against our forces in Afghanistan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_SkNUorWhc BBC Documentary - "SECRET PAKISTAN - Double Cross / Backlash" (2 hours) Military strategic essentials have been neglected, such as - when occupying territory, always ensure secure supply routes from one strong point to another. Instead NATO-ISAF forces in Afghanistan have been deployed in isolated bases, deployed more like tethered goats as bait for the enemy than a conquering or liberating army. Some combination of military incompetence by the generals and a preference for appeasement on the part of the civilian political leadership has perversely left the West bribing our enemies within the Pakistani terrorist-proxy-controlling state and continuing business-as-usual with our enemies in the Saudi jihadi-financing state. How to beat the Taliban and win the war on terror It’s never too late to learn lessons and adopt an alternative competent and aggressive military strategy. I have already mentioned the outline points of my plan but I will explain those in a little more here and then provide a lot more detail in subsequent posts. The US and Western allies ought to name Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as "state sponsors of terrorism". We ought to name in addition, the other oil-rich Arab kingdoms who are also financial state sponsors of terrorism. This has implications such as ending bribes and deals with back-stabbing hostile countries and instead waging war against our enemies with the aim of regime change or incapacitating the enemy so that they can do us little more harm. The war could be of varying intensity depending on the enemy concerned and how they respond to our initial attacks, whether they wish to escalate the war or surrender to our reasonable demands. There ought to be drone strikes on the University of Jihad. (Darul Uloom Haqqania, Akora Khattak, Pakistan) In addition, we ought to employ aerial bombing of all other bases for the Taliban in Pakistan. This may have to be extended to include certain Pakistani state bases which are supporting the Taliban - such as the Pakistani ISI headquarters mentioned a lot in the BBC documentary "SECRET PAKISTAN". If this is not handled very carefully, it could escalate into open war with the Pakistani military. I will explain how to manage Pakistan later. We ought to seize control of Pakistani and Saudi TV satellites and use them to broadcast propaganda calling for the arrest of all involved in waging terrorist war against the West. These satellites are made, launched and maintained by Western companies and should be easy to take over. Other satellites provided to the enemy by non-Western countries could be jammed or destroyed. Air strikes against the enemy's main terrestrial TV transmitter aerials is another option to silence enemy propaganda. When occupying territory, always ensure secure supply routes from one strong point to another. I will provide a lot of details about how this can be done militarily. 2. Bomb the enemy in Pakistan More on point 2 of the plan. Air strikes, bombing raids, missiles, drone attacks on enemy bases in Pakistan. Bomb Taliban Jihadi indoctrination bases in Pakistan. I am suggesting that our forces bomb the Taliban Headquarters known as "the University of Jihad" or Darul Uloom Haqqania, Akora Khattak, 50 kilometres (31 miles) east of the provincial capital, Peshawar. More about the place in this BBC webpage BBC NEWS | South Asia | The 'university of holy war' The significance of this place is that it is the main recruitment and command centre for the Taliban which must be known to our military intelligence officers and so it is a mystery why they have not advised our generals to bomb this place before now or if they did advise our generals to bomb it why they didn't actually bomb it? It makes no sense in a war to give the enemy headquarters a free pass and immunity from being targeted. It just makes their commanders feel untouchable which is not how we want them to feel. We want them arrested or dead or in great fear that soon they will be arrested or dead and bombing their HQ gives them that idea. Our forces do not have ground forces close enough to use artillery to destroy this target so that leaves NATO to use its aerial power - drones and bomber planes, to bomb the target from the air. So apart from not wanting to use nuclear weapons on such a weak target which would be over-kill, I think bombing using the very heaviest conventional bombs, MOABs or heavy bombing from B52s or C130s is appropriate. So a "MOAB" would be one of those. Which has a blast radius of 450 feet or 137 metres. Heavy bombing could be used to totally level such targets, or turn the target site into one huge crater field - obliterate it. Give the Jihadis a demonstration that they won't ever forget! Then if the Taliban and Jihadi leaders relocate to a new recruitment, indoctrination and command base, blast that to pieces as well. Our forces will have to establish air superiority over the target areas to allow not only unmanned drones but piloted heavy bombers with a much heavier bomb load to over-fly the area reasonably safely. How to manage Pakistan If and when Pakistan objects to our plans to aerial bomb these enemy indoctrination bases we should tell them that because our view is that Pakistan does not control the ground there to our satisfaction - because Pakistani police or military have not arrested and handed over the likes of the Darul Uloom Haqqania and other Taliban leaders operating on the ground for removal to Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp and not closed down the University of Jihad and other Taliban bases then the Pakistan military don't deserve control of the air space over that ground which they don't satisfactorily control. So we can say "Sorry" if the Pakistanis don't like this violation of their sovereignty but the needs of war mean this is something we must do. We wouldn't intend to permanently deprive Pakistan of control over its air space; this would be a temporary measure until the war on terror is won. Pakistan had their chance to arrest or kill the Taliban leaders in their Pakistan bases but now it is too late so we are going to flatten the Taliban bases in that part of Pakistan from the air and we need total air superiority over the target area in order to protect our pilots. The Pakistan government and military has complained about drone strikes in parts of Pakistan but Pakistan has not gone to war with us about it, thankfully. Hopefully, the Pakistanis will not want to contest air superiority with their military but if they do decide to fight to resist our air-superiority where we need it to bomb the Taliban then we must be prepared to take out all nearby Pakistani ground to air missile batteries and any air fighters they send against us to contest air superiority. If the Pakistanis decide to fight us over control of Pakistan's air space then of course there is a risk this could escalate to all-out war if the Pakistanis really want to make a casus belli out of the sovereignty issue and the matter of us requiring to destroy the Taliban so possibly we should make it clear to the Pakistanis that the US President or the NATO supreme commander have the option to use nuclear weapons against Pakistani military bases anywhere in Pakistan if that was necessary to win an all-out war with Pakistan. That's not our aim to escalate to an all-out war with Pakistan here but Pakistan should be careful not to escalate the situation from one where we need to go after the Taliban only into one where the official Pakistan military gets dragged into a war with us unnecessarily. This risk of having to fight and win an all-out war with Pakistan is a lesser risk than failing to defeat the Taliban, withdrawing from Pakistan having achieved little to secure Afghanistan and thereby giving encouragement to Jihadis the world over to commit more acts of terrorism and war elsewhere in the world including in our homelands. So Pakistan should not force us to make that choice of two risky options because their defeat is preferable to our own defeat in our opinion. Pakistan should avoid war with the West by stepping back and allowing us to destroy the Taliban in Pakistan because it is the Taliban and the Jihadis who are the true enemies of the Pakistani and Afghan people. We are the friends of the people of Pakistan and we will prove that by defeating their and our enemy, the Taliban and associated Jihadis. Hopefully the Pakistanis will back off and let us bomb the Taliban without threat from Pakistan's air defences. We should tell Pakistan that we are doing them a favour which they will thank us for in the long run though we appreciate the embarrassment for them in the short term. Targeting the University of Jihad, Akora Khattak Here are the co-ordinates for Akora Khattak. Geohack - Akora Khattak 34° 0′ 2.17″ N, 72° 7′ 18.06″ E 34.000603,72.121683 and if you look on Google Maps the co-ordinates for Akora Khattak seems to be centred right on the Darul Uloom Haqqania / University of Jihad. That location is in a built-up area (of course the cowards would use civilian human shields) so using the MOAB is bound to do a fair amount of collateral damage to surrounding buidings and people. So the word should go out now - evacuate Akora Khattak and don't live within 5 miles of any such jihadi university otherwise you could be seriously inconvenienced. The target area of the campus of University of Jihad looks to be about 100 metres x 100 metres. Hard to guess from the satellite photo. Here is the Jihadis' own website for the base International Islamic University: Darul Uloom Haqqania which has a number of photographs and is helpfully in English. Anyway a MOAB on that lot is certainly going to spoil their day and their terror-war plans. 4. Secure supply routes for Afghanistan. Overview from 'Warlord Inc.' I have a lot of information to post about this here so I will start with a post presenting an overview of the issues and problems starting with this CBS news story which identifies a critical weakness in our military configuration - poorly defended supply lines whose vulnerability the enemy exploits to gain funds for its insurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan. U.S. Tax Dollars Fueling Afghan InsurgencyHouse Investigation: Private Contractors Paying Warlords, Criminals to Get Supplies to U.S. and NATO Bases Lara Logan reports for CBS Evening News U.S. Tax Dollars Fueling Afghan Insurgency - CBS News (CBS) Billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are fuelling corruption in Afghanistan and funding the insurgency, according to a six-month investigation by the House subcommittee on National Security and Foreign affairs. The committee's chairman, Rep. John F. Tierney, D-Mass., told CBS News: "the business is war and the war is business and you've got 'Warlord Inc.' going on over there." Committee investigators found that private contractors in Afghanistan have been paying local warlords, criminals, government officials and a list of others for security on Afghanistan's roads, to get much needed supplies to U.S and NATO bases. But even worse, anecdotal evidence indicates that U.S. tax dollars are also going into the hands of the Taliban, who own many of the roads and areas through which the trucking convoys have to pass, reports CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan. That would mean that the U.S. is literally funding the enemy, as violence escalates daily in Afghanistan and more U.S soldiers and Marines are dying than ever before in this war. "This is the tip of the iceberg," Tierney said in an interview with CBS News. "There are other contracts over there, whether they are cell phone contracts or base security, and if you're paying the wrong people to do that and fuelling corruption, then it's not really going to speak well for the reason we sent our men and women there and the reason they're sacrificing their lives". It also means that while the U.S. has been publicly pointing fingers at the Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai for not cleaning up corruption in his government, in fact the U.S. is a huge part of the corruption problem - and until now, has done nothing about it or even acknowledged that fact. "We can't be putting that kind of money into a situation where it's going to be corruptive ... we have to get rules in place, implement them, oversee them, get it done right, and then we can demand with much more authority and credibility that the Afghan government do the same," Tierney said. The committee investigators focused on one contract - the Host Nation Trucking contract or HNT - that is worth $2.16 billion U.S. dollars and divided between just eight companies - three of them American, three from the Middle East and two from Afghanistan. Over six months, they conducted dozens of formal interviews, dozens more informal interviews and ploughed through more than 20,000 documents. They discovered damning evidence of the complete lack of oversight from the U.S. military and other agencies at the sub-contractor level of those contracts - and anecdotal evidence from the eight contracting companies that payoffs were being made to the Taliban to keep the convoys on the roads. "What shocked me is the constant call of the contractors to bring it to the attention of the Department of Defense," Tierney said. The response from the U.S.: turn a blind eye, as long as the goods get where they need to go. But the reality of Afghanistan is that the Department of Defense has been following a policy endorsed by the U.S. government from the very beginning of this war: to use various warlords, criminals, corrupt powerbrokers etc where the U.S. deems it necessary. From 2001, when the CIA carried in suitcases of cash to pay off tribal leaders, the U.S. strategy has included relying on "bad guys - as long as they are 'our' bad guys." This is part of what made U.S. allegations of corruption in Afghanistan appear so hollow to many Afghan people. It is widely known and accepted amongst Afghans that Western aid money flooding into the country has created an alternative, more lucrative economy where it's rarely the "nice guys" who are coming out on top. It's also widely known and accepted in many areas, that to carry out any reconstruction projects or U.S. funded counter-insurgency efforts requires large payoffs to the Taliban. Download Warlord, Inc. Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan - Right-click, Save Target As ... I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY We have to do a better job in the international side to coordinate our aid' date=' to get more accountability for what we spend in Afghanistan. But much of the corruption is fueled by money that has poured into that country over the last eight years. And it is corruption at every step along the way, not just in Kabul. You know, when we are so dependent upon long supply lines, as in Afghanistan, where everything has to be imported, it’s much more difficult than it was in Iraq, where we had Kuwait as a staging ground to go into Iraq. You offload a ship in Karachi and by the time whatever it is – you know, muffins for our soldiers’ breakfasts or anti-IED equipment – gets to where we’re headed, it goes through a lot of hands. And one of the major sources of funding for the Taliban is the protection money. – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee December 3, 2009[/quote'] In Afghanistan, the U.S. military faces one of the most complicated and difficult supply chains in the history of warfare. The task of feeding, fueling, and arming American troops at over 200 forward operating bases and combat outposts sprinkled across a difficult and hostile terrain with only minimal road infrastructure is nothing short of herculean. In order to accomplish this mission, the Department of Defense employs a hitherto unprecedented logistics model: responsibility for the supply chain is almost entirely outsourced to local truckers and Afghan private security providers. The principal contract supporting the U.S. supply chain in Afghanistan is called Host Nation Trucking, a $2.16 billion contract split among eight Afghan, American, and Middle Eastern companies. Although there are other supply chain contracts, the HNT contract provides trucking for over 70 percent of the total goods and materiel distributed to U.S. troops in the field, roughly 6,000 to 8,000 truck missions per month. The trucks carry food, supplies, fuel, ammunition, and even Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPs). The crucial component of the HNT contract is that the prime contractors are responsible for the security of the cargo that they carry. Most of the prime contractors and their trucking subcontractors hire local Afghan security providers for armed protection of the trucking convoys. Transporting valuable and sensitive supplies in highly remote and insecure locations requires extraordinary levels of security. A typical convoy of 300 supply trucks going from Kabul to Kandahar, for example, will travel with 400 to 500 guards in dozens of trucks armed with heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). The private security companies that protect the convoys are frequently involved in armed conflict with alleged insurgents, rival security providers, and other criminal elements. The security providers report having lost hundreds of men over the course of the last year alone, though the veracity of these reports is difficult to judge. Many of the firefights purportedly last for hours and involve significant firepower and frequent civilian casualties. Indeed, in an interview with the Subcommittee staff, the leading convoy security commander in Afghanistan said that he spent $1.5 million on ammunition per month. From one perspective, the HNT contract works quite well: the HNT providers supply almost all U.S. forward operating bases and combat outposts across a difficult and hostile terrain while only rarely needing the assistance of U.S. troops. Nearly all of the risk on the supply chain is borne by contractors, their local Afghan truck drivers, and the private security companies that defend them. During the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan (1979-1989), by contrast, its army devoted a substantial portion of its total force structure to defending its supply chain. The HNT contract allows the United States to dedicate a greater proportion of its troops to other counterinsurgency priorities instead of logistics. But outsourcing the supply chain in Afghanistan to contractors has also had significant unintended consequences. The HNT contract fuels warlordism, extortion, and corruption, and it may be a significant source of funding for insurgents. In other words, the logistics contract has an outsized strategic impact on U.S. objectives in Afghanistan. The Department of Defense has been largely blind to the potential strategic consequences of its supply chain contingency contracting. U.S. military logisticians have little visibility into what happens to their trucks on the road and virtually no understanding of how security is actually provided. When HNT contractors self-reported to the military that they were being extorted by warlords for protection payments for safe passage and that these payments were “funding the insurgency,” they were largely met with indifference and inaction. Specifically, the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs Majority staff makes the following findings: FINDINGS Security for the U.S. Supply Chain Is Principally Provided by Warlords. The principal private security subcontractors on the HNT contract are warlords, strongmen, commanders, and militia leaders who compete with the Afghan central government for power and authority. Providing “protection” services for the U.S. supply chain empowers these warlords with money, legitimacy, and a raison d’etre for their private armies. Although many of these warlords nominally operate under private security companies licensed by the Afghan Ministry of Interior, they thrive in a vacuum of government authority and their interests are in fundamental conflict with U.S. aims to build a strong Afghan government. The Highway Warlords Run a Protection Racket. The HNT contractors and their trucking subcontractors in Afghanistan pay tens of millions of dollars annually to local warlords across Afghanistan in exchange for “protection” for HNT supply convoys to support U.S. troops. Although the warlords do provide guards and coordinate security, the contractors have little choice but to use them in what amounts to a vast protection racket. The consequences are clear: trucking companies that pay the highway warlords for security are provided protection; trucking companies that do not pay believe they are more likely to find themselves under attack. As a result, almost everyone pays. In interviews and documents, the HNT contractors frequently referred to such payments as “extortion,” “bribes,” “special security,” and/or “protection payments.” Protection Payments for Safe Passage Are a Significant Potential Source of Funding for the Taliban. Within the HNT contractor community, many believe that the highway warlords who provide security in turn make protection payments to insurgents to coordinate safe passage. This belief is evidenced in numerous documents, incident reports, and e-mails that refer to attempts at Taliban extortion along the road. The Subcommittee staff has not uncovered any direct evidence of such payments and a number of witnesses, including Ahmed Wali Karzai, all adamantly deny that any convoy security commanders pay insurgents. According to experts and public reporting, however, the Taliban regularly extort rents from a variety of licit and illicit industries, and it is plausible that the Taliban would try to extort protection payments from the coalition supply chain that runs through territory in which they freely operate. Unaccountable Supply Chain Security Contractors Fuel Corruption. HNT contractors and their private security providers report widespread corruption by Afghan officials and frequent government extortion along the road. The largest private security provider for HNT trucks complained that it had to pay $1,000 to $10,000 in monthly bribes to nearly every Afghan governor, police chief, and local military unit whose territory the company passed. HNT contractors themselves reported similar corruption at a smaller scale, including significant numbers of Afghan National Police checkpoints. U.S. military officials confirmed that they were aware of these problems. Unaccountable Supply Chain Security Contractors Undermine U.S. Counterinsurgency Strategy. While outsourcing principal responsibility for the supply chain in Afghanistan to local truckers and unknown security commanders has allowed the Department of Defense to devote a greater percentage of its force structure to priority operations, these logistics arrangements have significant unintended consequences for the overall counterinsurgency strategy. By fueling government corruption and funding parallel power structures, these logistics arrangements undercut efforts to establish popular confidence in a credible and sustainable Afghan government. The Department of Defense Lacks Effective Oversight of Its Supply Chain and Private Security Contractors in Afghanistan. The Department of Defense has little to no visibility into what happens to the trucks carrying U.S. supplies between the time they leave the gate to the time they arrive at their destination. Despite serious concerns regarding operations, no military managers have ever observed truck operations on the road or met with key security providers. The Department of Defense’s regulations, promulgated in response to direction by Congress, require oversight of all private security companies working as contractors or subcontractors for the U.S government. These requirements include ensuring that all private security company personnel comply with U.S. government and local country firearm laws, that all private security company equipment be tracked, and that all incidents of death, injury, or property damage be fully investigated. The Department of Defense is grossly out of compliance with applicable regulations and has no visibility into the operations of the private security companies that are subcontractors on the HNT contract. HNT Contractors Warned the Department of Defense About Protection Payments for Safe Passage to No Avail. In meetings, interviews, e-mails, white papers, and PowerPoint presentations, many HNT prime contractors self-reported to military officials and criminal investigators that they were being forced to make “protection payments for safe passage” on the road. While military officials acknowledged receiving the warnings, these concerns were never appropriately addressed. There are numerous constructive changes that could be made to the U.S. military trucking effort in Afghanistan that would improve contracting integrity while mitigating corrupting influences. As the Department of Defense absorbs the findings in this report and considers its course of action, the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs Majority staff makes the following recommendations: RECOMMENDATIONS Assume Direct Contractual Responsibility for Supply Chain Security Providers. If the United States is going to use small armies of private security contractors to defend its massive supply chain in a war zone, the Department of Defense must take direct responsibility for those contractors to ensure robust oversight. Trucking companies are wholly incapable of overseeing this scale of security operations. The U.S. government needs to have a direct line of authority and accountability over the private security companies that guard the supply chain. Review Counterinsurgency Consequences of the HNT Contract. The Department of Defense needs to conduct a top-to-bottom evaluation of the secondary effects of the HNT contract that includes an analysis of corruption, Afghan politics and power dynamics, military utility, and economic effects. Consider the Role of Afghan National Security Forces in Highway Security. In the future, Afghan security forces will have a role to play in road security. Proposals to reform the convoy security scheme ought to take a medium- to long-term view of the role of Afghan security forces, while developing credible security alternatives that address the immediate U.S. military logistics needs. Inventory Actual Trucking Capacity Available to the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense should conduct a survey of the available trucking capacity in Afghanistan under the HNT contract to ensure that its needs will be met with the additional forces under orders to deploy to Afghanistan. Draft Contracts to Ensure Transparency of Subcontractors. Contracts between the Department of Defense and its trucking and/or security prime contractors need to include provisions that ensure a line of sight, and accountability, between the Department and the relevant subcontractors. Where Department of Defense regulations already require such provisions. Oversee Contracts to Ensure Contract Transparency and Performance. The Department of Defense needs to provide the personnel and resources required to manage and oversee its trucking and security contracts in Afghanistan. Contracts of this magnitude and of this consequence require travel ‘outside the wire.’ For convoys, that means having the force protection resources necessary for mobility of military logistics personnel to conduct periodic unannounced inspections and ride-alongs. Analyze Effect of Coalition Contracting on Afghan Corruption. The national security components of the U.S. government, including the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Department of Justice, and the intelligence community, need to systematically track and analyze the effects of U.S., NATO, and other international contracting on corruption in Afghanistan. II. BACKGROUND Supplying the Troops Afghanistan … is a landlocked country whose neighbors range from uneasy U.S. allies, such as Pakistan and Uzbekistan, to outright adversaries, such as Iran. Thirty years of war have devastated what little infrastructure the country had. In the south, scattered population centers are separated by deserts; in the east, they’re divided by mountains. Winter brings storms and snow; spring brings floods. The U.S. operation in Afghanistan has presented the U.S. military with the most complex logistical operation it has ever undertaken. By September 2010, under President Barack Obama’s plan to increase troop strength, the United States will have 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, with an additional 38,000 allied forces under NATO command. Military logistics officers are responsible for providing the troops with the food, water, shelter, weapons, ammunition, and fuel they need to perform their duties. To put the scope of the logistics operation into perspective, U.S. and NATO forces required 1.1 million gallons of fuel per day in 2009. That year, as troop levels grew from 31,800 to 68,000, U.S. military and contractor planes delivered 187,394 tons of cargo. Given that the backbone of the military’s distribution network is overland, the cargo transported by trucks is nearly ten times that amount. Eighty percent of goods and materiel reach Afghanistan by land. Getting cargo to Afghanistan is a tricky endeavor. Unlike Iraq, which has access to the Persian Gulf and is bordered by several U.S. allies, Afghanistan is landlocked between countries with unstable security, impenetrable geographic barriers, and governments hostile to the United States. The most direct route to redeploy goods and materiel from Iraq to Afghanistan runs through Iran and is therefore unusable. To the north, the government in Turkmenistan has refused to allow U.S. supply routes to pass through the country. There are two main land routes into Afghanistan, one from the south through Pakistan and the other from the north through Central Asia. The southern route is the most used and the most dangerous. Cargo is processed in the port of Karachi and then sent north, where it must pass through “the Pashtun tribal lands, where insurgents unfriendly to both Kabul and Islamabad have strong support.” These insurgents include the Quetta Shura, led by the top leaders of the deposed Afghan Taliban. On June 8, 2010, for example, militants in Pakistan attacked a convoy of contractor supply trucks carrying U.S. goods as it stopped at a depot just outside of Islamabad, burning 30 trucks and killing six. Map inserted by Peter Dow The northern route through Central Asia is safer, but also longer and significantly more expensive, adding 10-20 days of transport time and two to three times the cost. The northern route also passes through several countries, necessitating significant diplomatic support to ensure that border crossings run smoothly. Central Asia is also plagued by pockets of political instability. In Kyrgyzstan, for example, the sitting president was deposed in April. The country’s southern region, which includes important rail networks used for U.S. supplies, has erupted in an ethnic pogrom. The fastest route to Afghanistan is by air. However, the lack of airport infrastructure places significant constraints on the military’s ability to rely on air transport to supply the troops. Afghanistan has only 16 airports with paved runways, and of those, only four are accessible to non-military aircraft (including contractor-operated cargo planes). Air transport is also the most costly shipping option. Thus, while air transport is available, it is limited to personnel and high-priority cargo. Only about 20 percent of cargo reaches Afghanistan by air. Distribution within Afghanistan Once cargo reaches Afghanistan, it is taken to one of a handful of distribution hubs, the largest of which are Bagram Airfield in the north and Kandahar Airfield in the south. From there, the supplies must be distributed throughout the country to over 200 U.S. forward operating bases and combat outposts, many of which are located in remote and dangerous areas. While helicopters can be used for some transport, harsh flying conditions, weight limits, frequent maintenance downtimes, high costs, and the sheer size of the country place significant limits on how much helicopters can be utilized. Thus, the vast majority of in-country transport is accomplished by truck. Afghanistan presents a uniquely challenging environment for ground transport. The terrain is unforgiving: deserts that kick up sandstorms in the summer become flooded and muddy in the spring, and treacherous mountain roads leave no room for error. Summer heat regularly reaches 120 degrees. Mountain weather can change in an instant, bringing snow and freezing rain. In the winter, the single tunnel that connects Kabul to northern Afghanistan is frequently cut off by avalanches. A break-down in the mountains can close a route for days, until the vehicle can be disassembled and airlifted out. The lack of infrastructure – including a dearth of paved roads – leaves drivers to face the elements unassisted. If terrain and weather were not challenging enough, man-made hazards pose an even bigger threat to trucks in Afghanistan. Explosives can be easily planted and concealed along transport routes, and insurgents regularly attack. General Duncan McNabb, commander of U.S. Transportation Command, told Congress last year, (i)f you ask me what I worry about at night' date=' it is the fact that our supply chain is always under attack.[/quote'] Supplemented by Subcommittee staff In Iraq' date=' logistics was on cruise control. In Afghanistan, it’s graduate-level logistics to make it happen.[/quote'] Finally, limited processing capacity at the distribution hubs can delay distribution. For example, Kandahar Airfield has had significant problems handling the volume of cargo it receives, leading to backlogs of trucks waiting to take goods for distribution. A 24-hour truck yard for trucks contracted to carry military supplies has alleviated the problem to some degree, but delays persist. Contractors report that in some instances their drivers have waited outside Kandahar Airfield for several weeks until they were permitted to unload cargo. Taken together, these elements pose considerable challenges for the logistics officers in charge of making sure supplies reach the troops. The experience of the U.S. military in Iraq – a country with decent infrastructure and manageable terrain – is not comparable. As a senior military official who has spent time in both Iraq and Afghanistan noted, “(i)n Iraq, logistics was on cruise control. In Afghanistan, it’s graduate-level logistics to make it happen.” Another official described Afghanistan as “the harshest logistics environment on earth.” Despite the best efforts of military logisticians, the supply chain does not always work, delaying critical life support to the troops. A military official who served in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008 noted that at times “we had guys out there at the outposts in my area of operations starving because we couldn’t get resupply in to them.” Afghan Trucking The U.S. military relies on local Afghan trucking companies for almost all of its ground transport needs. The trucking industry is a key part of the Afghan economy, providing employment opportunities for a large segment of the population who otherwise would have trouble finding work due to the high rate of illiteracy. U.S. trucking contracts provide a relatively lucrative source of income in this very poor country. The owner of one of the trucking companies supporting the U.S. supply chain reported that between the drivers, assistant drivers, drivers, managers, and mechanics, his company single-handedly feeds 20,000 people. 4. Secure supply routes for Afghanistan. Land routes. Supplying along a land route (road and/or railway) through friendly territory is easy enough. Supplying through a war-zone, or bandit country requires a military approach, something like this. Secure supply route border defences plan diagram My plan is to establish a secure wide border either side of the supply route to keep enemy mortar and rocket launcher teams out of range of the supply line. Apparently, the Taliban are being supplied indirect fire weapons from Iran so defenders need to be prepared to expect attacks using weapons such as 120 mm heavy mortars, with a range of 6200 metres and 107 mm rocket launchers with a range of 8500 metres. Iranian weapons getting through to Taliban Heavy weapons are continuing to stream across the Afghan border from Iran despite Barack Obama's attempts to enlist Tehran's help in fighting the insurgency, officials have said. So regretfully there is no avoiding the requirement for compulsory purchase of land and eviction of occupiers along a 19 kilometre or 12 mile wide corridor, the whole length of the supply route. More aggressively NATO might like to consider long-range missile attacks against Iranian weapons productions facilities in Iran to dissuade the Iranians from supplying the Taliban. Secure border for a supply route - 19 kilometres or 12 miles wide Secure supply route border defences plan diagram (large - 960 x 1374 pixels) As can be seen in the diagram, the border perimeter defences are much the same whether you are securing a railway or a road. Diagram features. Explained for secure Afghanistan supply routes. Dangerous ground Enemy forces such as the Taliban, Afghan warlords or Iranian proxies may be attacking the supply route from here Vehicle barrier - deep trench / giant boulders / steep slope - so that truck bombs cannot be driven onto the route STOP - Police check-point - police check civilians are unarmed and those in police or military uniform are genuine. Needs to be very robust so as to survive an enemy truck bomb. Barbed wire - enough to keep out people and larger animals - so more than a horse can jump or cattle can trample over No Pedestrians! Cleared ground Target zone for the machine gunners. A hostile intent should be assumed if an intruder is seen here and the intruder should be shot. The ground needs to be cleared of cover so that intruders can be easily spotted and cannot sneak their way past the machine gunners. GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes 3 man crew. Armour should be able to withstand an RPG hit and contains one machine gun with an effective range to 1000 metres, such as PKM or better. One every 1000 metres on both borders should be manned 24/7. Binoculars, automatic rifles such as AK47 and night vision for 3. Two or more other gun positions per 1000 m on each border are normally unmanned and don't need the expense of real guns sitting there all the time. Such extra positions confuse attackers and serve as firing positions for mobile reaction teams to occupy in emergencies and who can bring additional weapons with them.For the on-duty-shift manned pillboxes' date=' I suppose the better (longer effective range, heavier the bullet) a machine gun the better. At a minimum the plan needs a machine gun with a 1000 metre effective range to keep Taliban RPG out of range of the pillbox. Ideally I suppose a heavy machine gun (say 12.7 mm ammo, 1800 metres effective range) with its longer range would be best for stopping an advance of the enemy and would give enemy snipers and heavy machine guns at long ranges something to worry about though I think the plan would work well with a medium machine gun (say 7.6 mm ammo, 1500 metres effective range). The disadvantage about the heavy machine gun is it is a more difficult 2-man carry when the team decide to move it to another pillbox to confuse the enemy but the extra range and fire-power of a heavy machine gun may well be worth the carry. I am very keen to suggest armoured sights which allow the machine-gunner to fire accurately despite incoming sniper or machine gun fire intended to suppress the pillbox. If a tank-crew machine-gunner can fire from inside his tank by virtue of armoured sights, without being suppressed, so should a well designed pillbox, in my opinion. Squad automatic weapons or light machine guns (say, 5.56 mm ammo, 900 metres effective range) would be better stored in the APC to be quickly carried into the empty pillboxes to defend an emergency attack and such lighter machine guns are also useful in the APC for responding to an attack anywhere in the secure corridor.[/quote'] Access road Where authorised traffic and people can access or leave the supply route. Mortar teams' ground Defender mortar teams arriving from mobile response depots should set up somewhere here to fire at the enemy in the dangerous ground. The mortar teams' ground should have features to help to win mortar duels with the enemy such as observation points on higher ground or tall structures to serve as observation towers. Safe building ground Somewhere relatively safe to build a heliport, runway, supply store or other facility or base. Supply route The road and / or railway we are defending Crossing Where the access road crosses a supply route railway Station - Railway station to load and unload supplies and people onto and off the supply trains. Cross-roads - A four-way junction where the access road crosses the supply road. Mobile reaction depot - contains single armoured fighting vehicle. This is also where the off-duty mess is so that soldiers are available to react to sustained attacks anywhere along the supply route. One every 2km. Contains additional infantry weapons and ammunition such as additional machine guns, automatic rifles, rocket propelled grenade launchers, mortars and the rest. Armoured personnel carrier Such as an up-armoured humvee. Most mobile reaction depots have one of those. To transport soldiers to the proximity of the enemy attack where soldiers dismount to fight. Infantry fighting vehicle or armoured combat vehicle. With stronger armour and able to fire on the enemy from enhanced weapons mounted to the vehicle, as well as able to perform the soldier transport role of the APC. Ideally the defenders would prefer the more powerful IFVs to the battle taxi APCs but fewer mobile reaction depots house IFVs because IFVs cost more and so fewer are available to the defenders than the lower performing APCs. Secure supply route protection force organisation I am proposing a dedicated force within the Afghan army to secure main supply routes through Afghanistan. Organisation. Ranks in increasing order of seniority - Gunner Master Gunner Team Leader Shift Officer Depot Commander Reaction Captain There will be higher officer ranks yet to be specified. Duties of the ranks. 1. Gunner - infantry soldier, serves as a member of a 3-man team which serves on one GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes position normally for an 8-hour shift. A Gunner performs other routine duties for an hour or two each day in addition to his 8-hour shift at the gun position at the nearest Mobile reaction depot under the supervision of his Team Leader, Shift Officer and Depot Commander at which location he has quarters in the depot mess. A Gunner can also be called to emergency duty when required. Gunners must be able to see well operate the machine gun fire accurately reload the machine gun, change the barrel on the machine gun use the guns' optical sights and night sights use the binoculars and night-vision equipment be comfortable in a GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes position, point out where the No Pedestrians! Cleared ground is and where it ends and where allowed ground behind the gun positions is, understand that he is forbidden to enter onto the No Pedestrians! Cleared ground on or off duty, even if ordered to do so by anyone in his team because he may be shot if he does so, understand that he is ordered on and off his duty shift at the GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes position only by his own Shift Officer and own Depot Commander and he cannot be relieved of duty by his Team Leader nor by a more senior ranking Master Gunner, nor by any other Shift Officer nor Depot Commander nor by any more senior officer whom he does not know. understand that while on duty he is not to surrender his personal assault rifle (such as an AK47) to any person, even to someone in his own team. Therefore his Team Leader cannot relieve him of duty nor demand that any Gunner surrender his personal weapon, understand that it is the Gunner's job when on duty, his job, to shoot on sight anyone on the No Pedestrians! Cleared ground coming or going, even someone dressed in Afghan army uniform, of whatever rank who could be an intruder dressed in disguise or even be a colleague who is deserting in that direction. If he is not manning the machine gun at the time he is to use his personal assault rifle to shoot the person on the No Pedestrians! Cleared ground if they are in range, but he is not to follow in hot pursuit anyone onto the No Pedestrians! Cleared ground because again he may be shot. understand pillbox defensive tactics as follows.Sadly' date=' the Taliban are not so obliging as to try to rush a machine gun position since one machine gun could probably take them all out if they were all to charge it clambering through barbed wire over open ground. The pillbox machine guns would not be used for suppressing the enemy and therefore blasting away at where you thought an enemy was to keep his head down is just a waste of ammunition and overheats the guns to no good purpose. The tactics to be employed for the pillboxes are different from a fight on a random battlefield where both sides are evenly vulnerable to fire and so suppressive fire make some sense. Suppressive fire is of use on a random battlefield to keep the enemy's head down while other comrades move to get a better attacking position. Well the defenders won't be changing position. They will keep their positions in the pillbox so suppressive fire make less sense here. Our machine gunners should have armoured telescopic sights and therefore only bother actually firing if you have the enemy clearly in your sights and then the first shot is the one that counts. Some machine guns have a single-shot fire mode with telescopic sights and those are the machine guns we need. Single-shot will most likely be the mode used most often when you spot someone trying to sneak their way past the guns or if you can see a sniper or heavy machine gunner at an effective range, say 1800 metres or less for a heavy machine gun with telescopic sights, less for a lighter machine gun. I seriously doubt that the enemy would ever do a mass charge across open barbed wire ground which would necessitate firing on full-auto and changing barrels but if they do then fine it is their funeral. So yes, the gunners would need to know how to change a barrel but if they ever do, I will be questioning their tactics. If an enemy is blasting away from a machine gun at extreme ineffective range - 2000 metres or more at the pillbox and only the occasional round is even hitting the pillbox then even though it is tempting to return fire blasting back at the position I would not even bother returning fire because that simply gives away your position and may not hit him at extreme range anyway. Such distant firing is probably to lure the defender to return fire and identify which pillbox is manned, so as to know which pillbox to target with RPGs, recoilless rifles or guided missiles or distant fire could be to distract your attention and rather than fire back, grab your binoculars or night vision and see who is trying to sneak up on the position or past the guns. When you spot them and have an easy kill - then open fire, but in single-shot mode because that is all you will need. The tactics change if you have a well-armoured position that cannot be suppressed. I repeat the pillbox machine-gun is not to suppress the enemy. We [b']want[/b] the enemy to stick their heads up and get closer to shoot at the pillbox, so the defenders can carefully target them and kill them on single-shot mode. We want the enemy to think they can sneak past the guns so we wait until they are an easy kill and only then take them out. perform other duties as supervised by the higher ranks. 2. Master Gunner - skills-based promoted ranks for Gunners with additional specialist skills such as weapons maintenance, binocular and night-vision maintenance, vehicle driving and basic maintenance - checking and maintaining tyre pressure, fuel and oil levels, etc. infantry fighting vehicle specialist mortar team skills, first aid, communications - operating telephone (landline and mobile / cell ) and radio. Master Gunners get an appropriately and differently designed skills badge and salary increment for each specialist skill learned. So typically that would be a badge with a machine-gun icon for weapons' maintenance, a badge with an APC-icon for vehicle driving and basic maintenance and so on. A Master Gunner with more badges and skills outranks a Master Gunner with fewer badges and skills. 3. Team leader A promoted post. The most experienced and able Gunner in each team of 3 on a GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes position. Team leaders should have multiple specialist skills and in particular the communications specialist skills is one of the required skills to be eligible to become a Team Leader. Team leaders are always the senior ranking members in every 3-man team irrespective of badges and skills. So a Master Gunner with, say, 5 skill badges does not outrank a Team Leader with, say, only 4 skills badges. 4. Shift officer - normally on duty back at the Mobile reaction depot and in command and in radio, mobile (cell) or land-line telephone contact with 4 teams, which is 12 men, on duty for an 8-hour shift. The shift officer acts as a deputy commander for the shift for 4 GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes and for the Mobile Reaction Depot. The Shift Officer is also in radio, mobile (cell) or land-line telephone contact with Shift Officers in neighbouring Mobile reaction depots. The Shift Officer decides whether or not to consult the Depot commander in response to a request for assistance from any of the 4 teams under his command or to a request for assistance from a Shift Officer in a neighbouring Mobile Reaction Depot. 5. Depot commander - in command of one Mobile reaction depot , the vehicle, weapons and everything therein. Commands the 3 Shift officers and 12 teams which totals 39 men under his command. He can declare a depot emergency, and call the off-duty shifts in the mess back on emergency duty. The Depot Commander can order the depot's vehicle and men to attend and to defend the GUN - Fortified machine gun nests / pillboxes under attack or order mortar teams into action from the Mortar teams' ground. In an emergency, the Depot Commander notifies his immediate superior officers, the Reaction Captains who are the reaction director and deputy reaction director assigned command responsibility for his Mobile Reaction Depot. 6. Reaction Captain has some command responsibility for the reactions of 8 neighbouring Mobile Reaction Depots is the reaction director for the central 4 depots of these 8 neighbouring depots is the deputy reaction director for the peripheral 4 depots of these 8 neighbouring depots. Reaction Captains direct Mobile Reaction Depots The diagram illustrates how the command responsibility of neighbouring Reaction Captains is organised. Mobile Reaction Depots 1 & 2 - the reaction director is Reaction Captain C - the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain A Mobile Reaction Depots 3 & 4 - the reaction director is Reaction Captain A - the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain C Mobile Reaction Depots 5 & 6 - the reaction director is Reaction Captain A - the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain D Mobile Reaction Depots 7 & 8 - the reaction director is Reaction Captain D - the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain A Mobile Reaction Depots 9 & 10 - the reaction director is Reaction Captain D - the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain B Mobile Reaction Depots 11 & 12 - the reaction director is Reaction Captain B - the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain D Mobile Reaction Depots 13 & 14 - the reaction director is Reaction Captain B - the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain E Mobile Reaction Depots 15 & 16 - the reaction director is Reaction Captain E - the deputy reaction director is Reaction Captain B This overlapping organisation ensures that emergencies which are declared at any Mobile Reaction Depot can be supported if needs be by Reaction Captains with responsibility for the depot under attack ordering neighbouring depots on either side to react to the emergency. A vehicle is assigned to each Reaction Captain who routinely drives to visit the 8 Mobile Reaction Depots for which he has command responsibility for daily meetings with the Depot Commanders and with the other 2 Reaction Captains he shares depot command responsibility with. The Reaction Captains can arrange to receive a salute at attention from each off-duty shift twice a week with an opportunity for the Reaction Captains to boost morale by reminding the Gunners that every Reaction Captain has 8 Mobile Reaction Depots and 320 soldiers under his command and that the 2 Reaction Captains with command responsibility for a particular depot have between them 480 soldiers under their command. So in emergencies the Secure Supply Route Protection Force is well organised to defeat any attack the enemy dares to try against any part of the supply route. They shall not pass! (No passeran!) The Reaction Captain has a captain's office and quarters adjacent to one of the 4 Mobile Reaction Depots for which he is the reaction director and the Depot Commander of that particular Mobile Reaction Depot also serves as the Reaction Captain's secretary to take telephone calls to the Reaction Captain's Office if he is out of his office and quarters at the time. Being so mobile in his daily routine, the Reaction Captain must be contactable via radio or mobile (cell) telephone when he is out of his office. In the event of a major attack, the Reaction Captain will set up a tactical command headquarters at his office to direct the battle and call for further reinforcements from neighbouring Reaction Captain's offices if required. Staff numbers Reaction captain's office 1 office every 4 depots 161 men four depots of forty men (4 x 40 = 160) plus the Reaction Captain (160 + 1 = 161) Mobile reaction depot 1 depot every 2 kilometres (1.25 miles) 40 men three eight-hour shifts of thirteen men, (3 x 13 = 39) plus the Depot Commander (39 + 1 = 40) 40 men per 2 kilometres = 20 men per kilometre = 32 men per mile Depot shift 3 shifts per depot 13 men four three-man gun teams, ( 4 x 3 = 12) plus the Shift Officer (12 + 1 = 13) Reserves Approximate numbers of infantry required including reserves. For a 25% reserve of 5 reserves per kilometre, 8 reserves per mile Force including reserves is 25 infantry per kilometre, 40 infantry per mile For a 50% reserve of 10 reserves per kilometre, 16 reserves per mile Force including reserves is 30 infantry per kilometre, 48 infantry per mile Support staff Infantry deployed in the field or on guard somewhere can require numbers of support staff (such as delivery and rubbish collection, engineers of all kinds, trainers, medical, administration, military policing etc.) which I am told can be multiples of the numbers of deployed infantry they support, depending on the support facilities offered, the quality and efficiency of the support organisation. I believe the support staff requirements for a static guard force are somewhat different to mobile infantry advancing (or retreating) in a conventional war because the guard force's requirements for fuel and ammunition deliveries are less but a guard force may expect more in terms of base facilities - running water, electricity and so on. I am not recommending figures for support staff because such numbers are more dependent on the infrastructure of the army and nation concerned and are independent of the details of how the infantry are deployed which is my concern here only. Numbers of support staff are to be filled in by NATO-ISAF and the Afghan government and army themselves later. How my plan solves the issues raised in 'Warlord Inc.' In Afghanistan, the U.S. military faces one of the most complicated and difficult supply chains in the history of warfare. The task of feeding, fueling, and arming American troops at over 200 forward operating bases and combat outposts sprinkled across a difficult and hostile terrain with only minimal road infrastructure is nothing short of herculean. In order to accomplish this mission, the Department of Defense employs a hitherto unprecedented logistics model: responsibility for the supply chain is almost entirely outsourced to local truckers and Afghan private security providers. ... Transporting valuable and sensitive supplies in highly remote and insecure locations requires extraordinary levels of security. ... RECOMMENDATION 3 Consider the Role of Afghan National Security Forces in Highway Security. In the future, Afghan security forces will have a role to play in road security. Proposals to reform the convoy security scheme ought to take a medium- to long-term view of the role of Afghan security forces, while developing credible security alternatives that address the immediate U.S. military logistics needs. RECOMMENDATION 6 Oversee Contracts to Ensure Contract Transparency and Performance. The Department of Defense needs to provide the personnel and resources required to manage and oversee its trucking and security contracts in Afghanistan. Contracts of this magnitude and of this consequence require travel ‘outside the wire.’ For convoys, that means having the force protection resources necessary for mobility of military logistics personnel to conduct periodic unannounced inspections and ride-alongs. My plan can achieve the "Warlord, Inc." recommendations 3 and 6, not merely to stop extortion and corruption along the supply chain but to gain a further significant advance to NATO-ISAF mission goals. I propose secure supply route border defences and a dedicated Afghan protection force to man those defences which would achieve all along the main supply routes a level of security which is similar to the security inside a military base or fort. "Warlord, Inc." uses the NATO-ISAF parlance of "inside the wire" to refer to the security achieved within their own NATO-ISAF bases but to virtually nowhere else in Afghanistan. It is about time NATO-ISAF and the Afghan government and military were extending that true security "inside the wire" to more of Afghanistan. My secure supply route plan would bring more of Afghanistan "inside the wire" so to speak. The secure supply route border defences require only authorised persons living inside the secure defences. The general population sadly may harbour enemy agents and so must be required to live outside the border defences. Where isolated houses and small villages can be relocated to use a suitable existing supply road then that should be done with compensation for the relocated residents and landowners. Where the settlements along the old supply route are too big to move then new roads should be built for a new supply route, by-passing those bigger settlements by at least 6 miles. 4. Secure supply routes for Afghanistan. By air lift. II. BACKGROUND Supplying the Troops Afghanistan … is a landlocked country whose neighbors range from uneasy U.S. allies, such as Pakistan and Uzbekistan, to outright adversaries, such as Iran. ... The fastest route to Afghanistan is by air. However, the lack of airport infrastructure places significant constraints on the military’s ability to rely on air transport to supply the troops. Afghanistan has only 16 airports with paved runways, and of those, only four are accessible to non-military aircraft (including contractor-operated cargo planes). Air transport is also the most costly shipping option. Thus, while air transport is available, it is limited to personnel and high-priority cargo. Only about 20 percent of cargo reaches Afghanistan by air. Then let NATO-ISAF supply fully 100 percent of its cargo by air by increasing by 5-fold the airport infrastructure and capacity of Afghanistan, building perhaps one or two more big hub airports around the country or a few more long runways and additional cargo handling facilities at existing airports like Bagram or Kandahar - to accept the incoming international flights, such as Hercules C-130s, then from those large hub airports transfer the cargo into smaller planes to fly from new short runways at those few hub airports on to dozens of new smaller airports all around Afghanistan. To pay for this, money can be reallocated to airport construction by rationalising some of the 200 most expensive and remote forward operating bases and combat outposts. Close those which cost more than they are worth. Retreat to the really important bases, build airfields for them and build secure supply route defences to and from them and that's a very strong defensive position from which to launch offensive operations against the enemy. No longer will the legitimate military and civilian traffic require the permission of warlords to travel along Afghanistan's highways. Securing an air base. Example - Camp Bastion / Camp Leatherneck Camp Bastion is the main British military base in Afghanistan. It is situated northwest of Lashkar Gah' date=' the capital of Helmand Province. It is the largest British overseas military camp built since World War II. Built in early 2006, the camp is situated in a remote desert area, far from population centres. Four miles long by two miles wide, it has an airstrip and a field hospital and full accommodation for the 2000 men and women stationed there. The base is divided into 2 main parts, Bastion 1 and Bastion 2. Bastion 2 includes two tenant camps, Camp Barber (US) and Camp Viking (DK). Bastion also adjoins Camp Leatherneck (US) and the Afghan National Army (ANA) Camp Shorabak. Bastion's airstrip can handle C-17s; C-130 transport aircraft; Apache and Chinook helicopters are forward-deployed at the Heliport.[/quote'] Camp Bastion doubles in size Camp Bastion' date=' the lynchpin of British, and increasingly American, operations in Helmand, is a desert metropolis, complete with airport, that is expanding at a remarkable pace. [i']Report by Sharon Kean[/i]. Bastion exists for one reason: to be the logistics hub for operations in Helmand. Supply convoys and armoured patrols regularly leave its heavily-defended gates. They support the military forward operating bases, patrol bases and checkpoints spread across Helmand province. Well here's another reason for Bastion to exist - to become a logistics hub for operations across Afghanistan, well beyond Helmand province. The biggest project is the airfield' date=' a new runway and air traffic control tower. When it's finished we'll be able to put our TriStar airliners straight in here instead of going to Kandahar, allowing us to get strategic air traffic into Bastion. That will be a big development for us. More ... With strategic airlift capacity, think strategically. A few more runways like the new longer runway at Bastion and Afghanistan's airfield infrastructure would be sufficient for all of NATO-ISAF force supplies to reach Afghanistan by air - removing dependence and vulnerability on Pakistan's land routes and eliminating the extortion and corruption along the Afghanistan ground supply chain, as detailed in Warlord, Inc.. After supplies are landed at the few huge hub airports - Bagram, Kandahar and Bastion - cargo could be transferred into smaller airplanes using adjacent smaller runways for connecting flights out to smaller airfields associated with NATO-ISAF forward operating bases. Whether by luck or by design Bastion is well chosen in being far from a population centre which makes it politically feasible to impose a rigorous security exclusion zone on the ground for many miles around the airport. Controlling the ground far around a military airport is very necessary to defend the incoming aircraft against missile attack by ensuring no enemy can get close enough to launch a missile anywhere near below where the planes descend to land. Landing at night is not a sufficient defence. Aircraft engines and their exhaust jets are very hot and infra-red shines just as brightly at night for missiles to lock on to. We cannot assume that the Taliban will be unable to source the most advanced ground-to-air missiles. We should assume they will source such missiles and take the necessary security precautions. So at Bastion NATO-ISAF must control the ground in a vast security perimeter out to the horizon and beyond which means closing the nearby road to Afghan traffic and providing an alternative circuitous route for civilian traffic. I need hardly mention the military, economic and political disaster of allowing the enemy to bring down one of our big aircraft. So this must not be allowed to happen. Therefore a very wide secure ground exclusion zone around Bastion should be imposed. In addition, I need hardly remind people of Al Qaeda's willingness to use aircraft themselves as weapons and therefore airport air defences need to be operational and alert at all times, not just when scheduled aircraft are landing. The progress at Bastion is very promising for the whole Afghanistan mission. It shows the way ahead. We can contemplate one day removing the constraints limiting NATO-ISAF supplies reaching Afghanistan by air. From a limit of about 20 percent now, I foresee a 100 percent supply-into-Afghanistan-by-air strategy as both feasible and desirable. Securing the land around Camp Bastion RAF protecting Camp Bastion' date=' June 27, 2012[/b'] Personnel from Number 5 RAF Force Protection Wing, based at RAF Lossiemouth, have now been deployed at Camp Bastion for two months where they have responsibility for providing security at the main British base in Helmand province. 51 Squadron RAF Regiment personnel on patrol. Number 5 RAF Force Protection Wing, comprising members of the Wing Headquarters, 51 Squadron RAF Regiment and 2622 (Highland) Squadron Royal Auxiliary Air Force Regiment, left RAF Lossiemouth on 16 April 2012 and the personnel are now two months into their deployment to Afghanistan. They are serving with members of No 2 (Tactical) Police Squadron from RAF Henlow in Bedfordshire, soldiers from the Tonga Defence Services and elements of 16th Regiment Royal Artillery, which together form the Bastion Force Protection Wing. Since their arrival they have taken responsibility for the security of the Camp Bastion complex, one of the busiest airfields in the world with over 28,000 people working on-site. They are also responsible for patrolling the surrounding area, covering over 600 square kilometres, to prevent insurgent attacks against the airfield and its personnel. So it matters that Camp Bastion is well defended and I want to make sure we are using the correct tactics to secure the land around any airfield camp we are defending. So I have some new comments to make which occurred to me after seeing that photograph of our soldiers patrolling through poppy fields. I am wondering if there are poppy fields in that 600 square kilometres around Camp Bastion? Anyway, we don't want or need any high vegetation around the air field which would allow insurgents cover to sneak close to the base, either to launch missile attacks or to plant anti-personnel mines, I.E.D.s or anything else. Much better if the land is cleared of all tall vegetation so that it is much easier to keep clear of threats. Short grass is good. That may mean buying out farmers who are growing crops, buying their land around the camp, compensating them but only if they are growing worthwhile crops. If they are growing poppy fields then they don't deserve compensation in my book. Either way there is a big job for our engineers to clear the land all around the camp of all cover useful to an enemy. So that's clearing all the 600 square kilometres which was mentioned as being patrolled by our forces. It is a big job to keep such a large area of land free of cover and yes it is OK to hire local Afghan labour to help with keeping the vegetation down. After all, we will have put some local farmers out of living so they'll be looking for employment. It might be an idea to have grazing animals on the land to keep the vegetation down but I would not be surprised if the Taliban shoot grazing animals if they can but if they do that's a reminder to us that the Taliban are still out there if a reminder is ever needed. I assume in a dry land like Afghanistan that burning vegetation is easily done and that'll be the easiest way to clear the land I suspect. So I approve a "scorched earth" policy. At night when it is not so easy to distinguish between a farmer tending his grazing animals and an insurgent pretending to be that, I suggest that the 600 square kilometres should be an exclusion zone for everyone except Camp Bastion personnel. So all local Afghan workers who clear vegetation during the day need to go back to homes outside the 600 square kilometres every night. This is the attitude NATO - ISAF and our base security forces need to take. We need to take ownership of all the 600 square kilometres of land which we are patrolling around Camp Bastion and optimise it for security. It would be the same outrage if the Afghan government dares to suggest that we don't take ownership of the surrounding land, don't clear the land, and should instead allow existing cover for insurgents in land surrounding Camp Bastion as it would be if the Afghan government dared to suggest that we open the doors of the airbase itself to the Taliban. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ecoli Posted August 8, 2012 Share Posted August 8, 2012 ! Moderator Note copy & pasting, particularly without proper attribution is against forum rules. Thread closed. Do it again and you'll get [at least] a warning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ecoli Posted August 10, 2012 Share Posted August 10, 2012 ! Moderator Note copy & pasting, particularly without proper attribution is against forum rules. Thread closed. Do it again and you'll get [at least] a warning. thread reopened after mod review Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Dow Posted August 10, 2012 Author Share Posted August 10, 2012 (edited) I didn't embed this video properly in the opening post. This 2-hour video is of a British TV programme which explains in great detail the role of the Pakistani state via the ISI (Inter-services intelligence) has in supporting the Taliban's war against our forces in Afghanistan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_SkNUorWhc BBC Documentary - "SECRET PAKISTAN - Double Cross / Backlash" (2 hours) and this video So a "MOAB" would be one of those. Ultimate Weapons- Mother of all Bombs (YouTube) Edited August 10, 2012 by Peter Dow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iota Posted August 10, 2012 Share Posted August 10, 2012 (edited) The Taliban is more of an idea, than a group. You can take out some of the top Taliban leaders, e.g. Bin Laden, but new ones will emerge. To "beat" the Taliban, better security and education needs to be built into the Pakistani, Afghani and so on... infrastructures. Even the most amazing military strategies can't achieve 'victory' against Taliban. I'm not saying sit back and do nothing. Invest more in developing a stronger rapport and understanding between our cultures. Eventually the Taliban will be so rejected within their own countries they will automatically fail to exist on large scales. The biggest cure for these extremists who misinterpret their own religions and take them so literally, is to bring them better education. Bring them rationality. It's like the present West is neighbours with its own 500 year old self. It's difficult for us to see eye to eye; where religion is the foremost important part of their culture. I haven't looked into your research above. I'll try to read it within the next few weeks. Looks complex. Edited August 10, 2012 by Iota 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moontanman Posted August 10, 2012 Share Posted August 10, 2012 While I agree that War, if fought at all, should be fought to be won I have to agree with Iota on this, fighting a religion, especially when the people in charge pretty much insure that everyone involved has no point of view but their point of view is probably a fools errand. Ideas are hard to kill and these people have been culturally isolated for so long we have very little in common, what we call freedom has a completely different meaning to them and until they want change from within i think our efforts there are always going to be a holding action. Education, trust, and understanding will probably win far more than MOABs but attaining it will be difficult, as IOTA stated we are fighting ourselves from hundreds of years ago, the harder we try to win the more effort they will put into us not winning, i can't see continuing this war on the basis of killing every one we disagree with... Religion is a powerful force, it took us a long time to come to grips with the idea of freedom of religion, until quite recently freedom of religion pretty much meant freedom to obey my religion for us as well, i can't see us changing this over night any more than it changed for us over night... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phi for All Posted August 10, 2012 Share Posted August 10, 2012 While I agree that War, if fought at all, should be fought to be won I have to agree with Iota on this, fighting a religion, especially when the people in charge pretty much insure that everyone involved has no point of view but their point of view is probably a fools errand. QFT. If you make it about fighting religion, you create martyrs that cause ten to spring up for every one you destroy. Even if you could destroy everyone in an entire region, someone on the other side of the globe will see it as an injustice and rally yet more followers. Their is no way to end the war on terror by military means. It's an ideological war that needs to be won with better ideas. The only way to win is to educate them. Every parent wants their child to have a better chance than they did, so I'd start with the children. Infant mortality rates in these areas is horrible. Start small, teach mothers about hygiene and how to keep water and wounds clean. When that works for them, they'll be more amenable to further learning. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iota Posted August 10, 2012 Share Posted August 10, 2012 Indeed. The next generation must be reached out to. I've seen BBC documentaries, where Afghani children have sworn vengeance against "The West" because their father, or mother, or their whole families have been killed by foreign forces. At the same time there are people in these countries who are thankful that foreign forces are there to help. It depends on their first hand experience with the people we're sending out there to their homes. The military missions need to be much more cautious if they don't want to generate more extremists, whom could potentially be friendly. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Cuthber Posted August 10, 2012 Share Posted August 10, 2012 I rather suspect that dropping food on Afghanistan will do a better job of defeating the Taliban than dropping bombs ever will. Incidentally, when someone wins this "war on terror" , who signs the armistice? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Dow Posted August 12, 2012 Author Share Posted August 12, 2012 (edited) Thank you to all who have replied to this topic so far. I intend to answer all your points when I have time but giving a considered reply is quite time-consuming, much more so than copying and pasting my opening post which I authored over a number of years. So please be patient and I will get to your points but feel free to add more replies to give me a never-ending task if you wish. The Taliban is more of an idea, than a group. Wikipedia: The Taliban (Pashto: طالبان), alternative spelling Taleban,[5] (ṭālibān, meaning "students" in Pashto) is an Islamist militant movement of Pashtun tribesmen. The Taliban is still an organised group of people even though it is inspired by jihadi ideas taught at that "University of Jihad" which features in the first video I posted. A group with ideas is still a group. You can take out some of the top Taliban leaders, e.g. Bin Laden, but new ones will emerge. Bin Laden was a Saudi, not a Pashtun, so he should not be thought of as an archetypal Taliban. Bin Laden led Al Qaeda which is an international jihadi group which has training bases in Pashtun lands. Bin Laden was finally found and killed in a safe house near the Pakistani military academy which suggests he was under the protection of the Pakistani military. We have not taken out the leader of the Taliban in the field, Mullah Omar because like Bin Laden he is a difficult target because he is rarely seen in public and his whereabouts are unknown to our forces. We have not taken out the Father of the Taliban, Sami ul Haq, the "Dean" / "Chancellor" / "whatever" of the University of Jihad at Akora Khattak. His whereabouts are often known - he does appear in public but he is given political status by the Pakistani state and until now the West has foolishly respected that political status and tried to engage the Father of the Taliban in peace talks. It is likely we could demand the arrest of the Father of the Taliban and if Pakistan fails to arrest him then we could quite easily take him out but to get to that policy it looks like we will need to make a change in Western leadership so our leaders give orders to our forces to go after all the Taliban leaders, be they University of Jihad managers or teachers, Pakistani military intelligence controllers, or Saudi financiers. So when our politicians and generals are not even trying to take out those who run the Taliban then we have a critical failure in managing this war. To win the war it is simply necessary to take out new leaders faster than they emerge which would leave the Taliban disorganised and its foot soldiers ready to surrender. To "beat" the Taliban, better security and education needs to be built into the Pakistani, Afghani and so on... infrastructures. The point to note is that the Pakistani military, for now, thinks it enhances their own security to have the University of Jihad and like institutions "educating" (indoctrinating) Pashtuns to support and join the Taliban. The way to change that malign thinking on the part of the Pakistani military is to demonstrate to them that the Taliban is weakening the Pakistani military's security immensely because the West's best war strategy is to order our air forces to bomb the Taliban bases in Pakistan. Even the most amazing military strategies can't achieve 'victory' against Taliban. Incorrect. The West hasn't really employed a "military strategy" per se that would pass even an elementary scrutiny by a qualified military strategist. All we have really seen in Afghanistan is platoon tactics writ large. In computer games terms, the war against the Taliban is being run as a first person shooter game. There seem to be no officers who are able, qualified and experienced enough to operate at the level of Army Captain or above in the field right now. Or if they are qualified someone is telling them to shut up and obey the incompetent superior officers who have been promoted above the able people but who are clueless about strategy. In computer games terms, there's no-one running the war even at a Company of Heroes level of competence. Elementary strategic matters such as securing supply routes have been neglected. I am not expecting or asking for "amazing". I just think we are entitled to expect a basic level of competence from our military officers and we need political leaders who won't accept poor leadership by the general staff, who will appoint Defence Secretaries and ministers who will insist on able generals who understand enough about strategy to make winning as straight-forward a matter as it should be. I'm not saying sit back and do nothing. Invest more in developing a stronger rapport and understanding between our cultures. This is not a cultural matter. The Taliban is a not a cultural organisation. It is a political and military organisation. Understanding the Pashto language so our military intelligence officers can eavesdrop on their military communications is a good idea so that we can anticipate Taliban military plans and move to counter them on the battlefield. Understanding the indigenous language and culture is useful so we can beat the enemy but the enemy is not the culture per se. Eventually the Taliban will be so rejected within their own countries they will automatically fail to exist on large scales. The Taliban are not easy for the host communities to reject because if they dare they get shot, or beheaded. We need to weaken the Taliban sufficiently so that they are easy to reject without fatal consequences for those who do reject them. The biggest cure for these extremists who misinterpret their own religions and take them so literally, is to bring them better education. Bring them rationality. We need to stop the jihadis indoctrinating the people first, by closing the University of Jihad (and any similar indoctrination bases), by bombing it (them) if that's all that is left to us since the Pakistani state seem unwilling to close it (them) themselves. It does need to be safe enough for responsible educators to stand up and educate and it won't be in North-West Pakistan so long as the Taliban would kill any teacher attempting to teach moderation. It's like the present West is neighbours with its own 500 year old self. It's difficult for us to see eye to eye; where religion is the foremost important part of their culture. The Pakistani state and the rich Arab states who also fund jihadi universities, colleges and schools, do 21st century business with the West and use the profits they make from us to buy our satellites to brainwash the population with 14th century ideas and then arm the armies of jihadi terrorists they raise with our 21st century weapons. In addition the Pakistani state has received billions of dollars from the US for its so-called "help" with arresting some low-level Al Qaeda terrorists. They use that money to fund the indoctrination and training of more terrorists (and to fund other pet military projects such as adding to the Pakistani nuclear arsenal). So in a very real sense, we are fighting ourselves, but we are fighting our 21st century selves. We pay good money to help fund the enemy in many ways and until we have leaders who get a grip over that and order our states to stop supporting the enemy and start fighting it strategically then we will struggle to make progress against the Taliban. Education is important but first I have to educate my fellow scientists about where the West is going so dreadfully wrong in this war so that at least scientists know how to turn this war around. I haven't looked into your research above. I'll try to read it within the next few weeks. Looks complex. Thank you. There's a lot of detail. You might enjoy starting with the BBC documentary "SECRET PAKISTAN" which is quite easy watching and very informative. Edited August 12, 2012 by Peter Dow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Dow Posted August 13, 2012 Author Share Posted August 13, 2012 (edited) While I agree that War, if fought at all, should be fought to be won "Should be" or "must be"? Isn't fighting to win a necessity for you? Is it acceptable to you if our lame politicians and generals fight so incompetently as to risk a draw or a loss in a war? Is it ever acceptable that our soldiers' lives are sacrificed on the battlefield to little strategic purpose? Isn't that an outrage, for you? Sacrificing lives in vain never seems to be an outrage for our incompetent politicians and generals who'd rather stay in charge, keep calling the shots than suffer the perceived loss of face which seems to be involved in handing the job of leadership of the war over to someone more capable. So there is much to consider under the general heading of "the politics of military leadership". I have to agree with Iota on this, fighting a religion, Well the war on terror is not a fight against a religion, it's a fight against terrorism. QFT. If you make it about fighting religion, We don't. Those of us fighting a war on terror don't make it about fighting religion. However, the enemy does spread their propaganda to attempt to portray our fight as against a religion, so as to assist with recruitment of new volunteers from that faith. But please don't be fooled by an enemy lie. Those who agree that "it is a fight against a religion" are those who agree to accept without question the enemy lie that "It's a war on Islam!" No it isn't. It's a war on terror. Terror is spelled "T-E-R-R-O-R". Terror is not spelled "I-S-L-A-M". So yes, there is indeed a need for education involved. Scientists of every speciality do need to get a basic education in political and military science, perhaps from specialist scientists with an interest, experience and dare I say some expertise in the war on terror, like me I suggest. Scientists need to learn that this war on terror is not, and has never been, a "war on Islam". I have heard true Islamic scholars on TV explaining that the very word "Islam" means "peace". Those fighting the war on terror have no issue or problem with those who peacefully observe their religion. These jihadis we face in the war on terror are following a militant perversion of the Islamic faith, that is all. especially when the people in charge pretty much insure that everyone involved has no point of view but their point of view That is easily disproved when we bomb their jihadi university and colleges which after all are actually paramilitary indoctrination bases, whose sole purpose is to recruit people to war against us and it is also disproved when we confiscate their satellites and bomb their TV transmitter aerials. It is very easy to demonstrate that there is another point of view - but the poor generals we employ have so far refused to adopt such methods to wreck the enemy's propaganda and recruitment efforts. We need better generals. is probably a fools errand. No when fighting a war, it should only be acceptable to fight it with wise, competent, able generals. Foolish generals should not be accepted and neither should you accept politicians who accept foolish generals. Ideas are hard to kill On the contrary, it is often the case when a war is being won that the enemy's ideas lose potency, soldiers begin to lose confidence and morale in their leaders and their ideas, and they desert, defect, lose heart or go home. Ideas are easy to kill if you are fighting well and winning the war. and these people have been culturally isolated for so long we have very little in common, The people we are fighting are doing so as proxies for the Pakistani military and the Saudi royal family and allied elites. Pakistani generals and Saudi royals have been welcomed to the White House by the US President and are seen on US TV. Many have been part-educated in the West, studied courses at our universities or at our military academies. When Jon Stewart interviewed the Pakistani ex-general and ex-dictator Pervez Musharraf on the Daily Show watched by millions of Americans he was very much part of US culture, not in the least isolated. The Taliban are proxies for men like Musharraf. He knows our culture better than we know his. He played President Bush like a fiddle. You really must watch the video "SECRET PAKISTAN", embedded here. It is 2 hours well spent. This 2-hour video is of a British TV programme which explains in great detail the role of the Pakistani state via the ISI (Inter-services intelligence) has in supporting the Taliban's war against our forces in Afghanistan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_SkNUorWhc BBC Documentary - "SECRET PAKISTAN - Double Cross / Backlash" (2 hours) what we call freedom has a completely different meaning to them The Pakistani generals want to be free to send terrorists to kill our soldiers and citizens whenever they like. We want our civilians to be free to live in peace, free from the terrorism of jihadi terrorist attack. So yes there is a difference. Only one of those freedoms can stand. If we win the war our civilians will be free. If we don't they'll be terrorised. and until they want change from within i think our efforts there are always going to be a holding action. Wars are never won by waiting for the enemy to change. They are won by forcing defeat and change upon the enemy. Education, trust, and understanding will probably win far more than MOABs but attaining it will be difficult, A MOAB on a jihadi university will change the bad education coming out of that place. Likewise seizing a satellite and changing the broadcasts can change the educational message to one which wins us peace and freedom. It's not difficult if you fight it to win with a good strategy. It is difficult if you keep leaving the prosecution of the war to politicians and generals who don't have a clue about strategy. as IOTA stated we are fighting ourselves from hundreds of years ago, No, we are fighting ourselves from this year, 2012. This year we are paying the enemy, funding the enemy costs of war. The US pays the enemy Pakistani state billions of dollars, for low-ranking Al Qaeda terrorists they capture, for protection money to get our supplies through to Afghanistan. All this money we pay we earned this year in 2012. We are paying both sides' costs in this war because of the strategic folly our generals have gotten themselves into. the harder we try to win the more effort they will put into us not winning, If we keep paying the enemy more and more, sure. So don't. Use the stick, not the carrot. It's not about "trying harder" it is about "fighting strategically". i can't see continuing this war on the basis of killing every one we disagree with... Wars are not about killing those who disagree but those who are part of the enemy army. Religion is a powerful force, it took us a long time to come to grips with the idea of freedom of religion, until quite recently freedom of religion pretty much meant freedom to obey my religion for us as well, i can't see us changing this over night any more than it changed for us over night... You get to grips with the enemy's bad ideas by winning the war. When those with the militant version of the religion get defeated then the genuine peaceful version of the religion will be all that is left standing. Then there will be peace because we have won the war. It is not about religion. It is about fighting the war to win. Scientists above all must understand how to win the war on terror. Edited August 13, 2012 by Peter Dow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragonstar57 Posted August 15, 2012 Share Posted August 15, 2012 (edited) 1. i think your plan would be more effective with snipers 2. I think what you are calling for is Insane 3. you propose we turn supply routes into massive fortress while many people want out? all that would cost SO MUCH MONEY!!! and the people would hate it. (and consequently us) this sounds like a really REALLY bad idea. Edited August 15, 2012 by dragonstar57 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
too-open-minded Posted August 19, 2012 Share Posted August 19, 2012 "Hey guys lets fight terrorists with terror." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moontanman Posted August 19, 2012 Share Posted August 19, 2012 "Hey guys lets fight terrorists with terror." yeah! let's nuke em... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jebus Posted August 19, 2012 Share Posted August 19, 2012 Your mile long fortress is ridiculous. Ahmad Shah Massoud told us this would soon be our problem, unfortunately we (the west) didn't listen and he is dead now. He said that if we can get Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to stop funding and help us in this fight, it would have been over in a year. Afghanistan is going to take a very long time, it lacks the infrastructure needed to succeed on their own. Most afghans do not want the Taliban to return, but the Taliban atleast make due with their promises. We have not. Progress has been made, but it has not been enough. There was a point in 2011 when huge progress was being made, but with the pullout of troops, this progress is decreasing. Green on blue attacks are becoming more and more common. The ROE that is in place is not sufficient for our troops. The ANA and ANP are getting much better and are taking the lead on several operations. This is a good sign. I hope the next elections will bring in an actual leader capable of uniting afghans and ending the corruption. This war we are fighting is not against a religion, but a civilization. An old and backwards civilization. Our is not perfect, but it is the best we have, and worth fighting for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
too-open-minded Posted August 19, 2012 Share Posted August 19, 2012 We have invested trillions of dollars in the war on terror. What if we spent that money on school and clean energy for them instead of war machines? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moontanman Posted August 19, 2012 Share Posted August 19, 2012 "Should be" or "must be"? Isn't fighting to win a necessity for you? Is it acceptable to you if our lame politicians and generals fight so incompetently as to risk a draw or a loss in a war? Is it ever acceptable that our soldiers' lives are sacrificed on the battlefield to little strategic purpose? Isn't that an outrage, for you? Sacrificing lives in vain never seems to be an outrage for our incompetent politicians and generals who'd rather stay in charge, keep calling the shots than suffer the perceived loss of face which seems to be involved in handing the job of leadership of the war over to someone more capable. So there is much to consider under the general heading of "the politics of military leadership". Well the war on terror is not a fight against a religion, it's a fight against terrorism. We don't. Those of us fighting a war on terror don't make it about fighting religion. However, the enemy does spread their propaganda to attempt to portray our fight as against a religion, so as to assist with recruitment of new volunteers from that faith. But please don't be fooled by an enemy lie. Those who agree that "it is a fight against a religion" are those who agree to accept without question the enemy lie that "It's a war on Islam!" No it isn't. It's a war on terror. Terror is spelled "T-E-R-R-O-R". Terror is not spelled "I-S-L-A-M". So yes, there is indeed a need for education involved. Scientists of every speciality do need to get a basic education in political and military science, perhaps from specialist scientists with an interest, experience and dare I say some expertise in the war on terror, like me I suggest. Scientists need to learn that this war on terror is not, and has never been, a "war on Islam". I have heard true Islamic scholars on TV explaining that the very word "Islam" means "peace". Those fighting the war on terror have no issue or problem with those who peacefully observe their religion. These jihadis we face in the war on terror are following a militant perversion of the Islamic faith, that is all. That is easily disproved when we bomb their jihadi university and colleges which after all are actually paramilitary indoctrination bases, whose sole purpose is to recruit people to war against us and it is also disproved when we confiscate their satellites and bomb their TV transmitter aerials. It is very easy to demonstrate that there is another point of view - but the poor generals we employ have so far refused to adopt such methods to wreck the enemy's propaganda and recruitment efforts. We need better generals. No when fighting a war, it should only be acceptable to fight it with wise, competent, able generals. Foolish generals should not be accepted and neither should you accept politicians who accept foolish generals. On the contrary, it is often the case when a war is being won that the enemy's ideas lose potency, soldiers begin to lose confidence and morale in their leaders and their ideas, and they desert, defect, lose heart or go home. Ideas are easy to kill if you are fighting well and winning the war. The people we are fighting are doing so as proxies for the Pakistani military and the Saudi royal family and allied elites. Pakistani generals and Saudi royals have been welcomed to the White House by the US President and are seen on US TV. Many have been part-educated in the West, studied courses at our universities or at our military academies. When Jon Stewart interviewed the Pakistani ex-general and ex-dictator Pervez Musharraf on the Daily Show watched by millions of Americans he was very much part of US culture, not in the least isolated. The Taliban are proxies for men like Musharraf. He knows our culture better than we know his. He played President Bush like a fiddle. You really must watch the video "SECRET PAKISTAN", embedded here. It is 2 hours well spent. This 2-hour video is of a British TV programme which explains in great detail the role of the Pakistani state via the ISI (Inter-services intelligence) has in supporting the Taliban's war against our forces in Afghanistan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_SkNUorWhc BBC Documentary - "SECRET PAKISTAN - Double Cross / Backlash" (2 hours) The Pakistani generals want to be free to send terrorists to kill our soldiers and citizens whenever they like. We want our civilians to be free to live in peace, free from the terrorism of jihadi terrorist attack. So yes there is a difference. Only one of those freedoms can stand. If we win the war our civilians will be free. If we don't they'll be terrorised. Wars are never won by waiting for the enemy to change. They are won by forcing defeat and change upon the enemy. A MOAB on a jihadi university will change the bad education coming out of that place. Likewise seizing a satellite and changing the broadcasts can change the educational message to one which wins us peace and freedom. It's not difficult if you fight it to win with a good strategy. It is difficult if you keep leaving the prosecution of the war to politicians and generals who don't have a clue about strategy. No, we are fighting ourselves from this year, 2012. This year we are paying the enemy, funding the enemy costs of war. The US pays the enemy Pakistani state billions of dollars, for low-ranking Al Qaeda terrorists they capture, for protection money to get our supplies through to Afghanistan. All this money we pay we earned this year in 2012. We are paying both sides' costs in this war because of the strategic folly our generals have gotten themselves into. If we keep paying the enemy more and more, sure. So don't. Use the stick, not the carrot. It's not about "trying harder" it is about "fighting strategically". Wars are not about killing those who disagree but those who are part of the enemy army. You get to grips with the enemy's bad ideas by winning the war. When those with the militant version of the religion get defeated then the genuine peaceful version of the religion will be all that is left standing. Then there will be peace because we have won the war. It is not about religion. It is about fighting the war to win. Scientists above all must understand how to win the war on terror. You are so antagonistic you make it very difficult to support your point of view. I do not appreciate having words put into my mouth, when i said we should fight to win if we fight at all I was agreeing with you. Wars should be fought to win but guerilla fighters that melt back into the population are difficult to fight, the Soviets found this out in Afghanistan as we did in Vietnam. We are not fighting a population that yearns to be free and welcomes us with open arms. We would be better off to simply pull out and destroy any military bases that show up from a distance, the people who attacked us were only able to do so because we weren't expecting it. To make these people surrender we would have to kill most of them and the ones that surrendered would always have to be watched closely. It is truly a loosing proposition. Unless you are willing to kill virtually everyone there winning is not going to happen... Every time you kill a man his sons and other family members become fighters, how do you fight that? This is not NAZI Germany waging a war between governments there is hardly a government there to start with and if you think it's not about religion you are naive, the Taliban is all about religion, religious zealots is all they really are and threat of hell fire is a pretty good motivator to a culture that steeped in religion... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Dow Posted August 20, 2012 Author Share Posted August 20, 2012 (edited) Indeed. The next generation must be reached out to. The next generation of Pashtuns are being reached out to by the Taliban and being recruited into being suicide bombers and will keep doing so until and unless we smash the Taliban in a strategic manner similar to the 4-point plan I have described. If you were to be so foolish as to reach out to a Taliban-taught 14-year old suicide bomber driving a truck bomb you could get killed and so could anyone travelling with you on your reaching-out to the next generation mission. So get yourself killed reaching out if you insist but please have the decency not to take or send anyone else to die pointlessly attempting the task you suggest. I've seen BBC documentaries, Good. You watch BBC documentaries. So would you please watch this one I posted here? This 2-hour video is of a British TV programme which explains in great detail the role of the Pakistani state via the ISI (Inter-services intelligence) has in supporting the Taliban's war against our forces in Afghanistan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_SkNUorWhc BBC Documentary - "SECRET PAKISTAN - Double Cross / Backlash" (2 hours) You absolutely need to watch that to understand what we are facing here. What I want to know from you and from everyone else who posts here - did you watch "SECRET PAKISTAN"? I rather suspect that dropping food on Afghanistan will do a better job of defeating the Taliban than dropping bombs ever will. Afghanistan is a big country and dropping anything on it at random without purposefully targeting the drop somewhere will likely make no difference. A lump of rock cares not if it gets food or a bomb dropped on it. Either way, the food or the bomb is wasted. We can target our forces and friends with food drops if we need to. We can target our enemies with bomb drops. Targeting is all. If you think in terms of the geography rather than people and how they factor with respect to the military balance of forces then you won't understand war and you won't be able to make any meaningful comment. Incidentally, when someone wins this "war on terror" , who signs the armistice? Well hang on, if the war on terror is won, we all win, not just "someone" but everyone would have won the war on terror. who signs the armistice? The war is against state sponsors of terrorism. So a victory would arise when no states of the world were sponsoring terrorism. I think Condi put it quite well. On the other hand the thing about states like today's Pakistan is that they sponsor terrorism without admitting to it, so you could never trust what they said if they signed something pledging that they would not sponsor terrorism and would "outlaw acts of international terrorism" as Condi put it. So it would be a more credible peace process to have some kind of certification process rather then accepting states at their word. Possibly the United Nations or NATO or similar war-on-terror prosecuting political and military organisations would certify that certain countries were no longer sponsoring terrorism and give them a certificate and a round of applause at a ceremony maybe. Dunno exactly really. Do the details matter? Actually the converse situation is the real problem in prosecuting the war on terror. I still doubt that Pakistan's name appears on the USA's official list of state sponsors of terrorism and neither does Saudi Arabia's name - both are prolific state sponsors of terrorism yet still states which the US wants to have dealings with and so has been slow to officially name them as the Taliban state of Afghanistan was named. Hence it is an important point in my strategy that we officially name "Pakistan" and "Saudi Arabia" as state sponsors of terrorism so that we can bring our full military power to bear on the enemy if needs be. Edited August 20, 2012 by Peter Dow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iota Posted August 20, 2012 Share Posted August 20, 2012 Good. You watch BBC documentaries. So would you please watch this one I posted here? I think you're confused. I said "I've watched BBC documentaries" before you posted your BBC documentary. Therefore, when I made the comment, your comment with the video didn't exist yet. Why are you responding as if I somehow pre-emptively ignored your future comment? That would require time travel. I'll get round to watching it tomorrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Dow Posted August 20, 2012 Author Share Posted August 20, 2012 (edited) 1. i think your plan would be more effective with snipers Snipers are good and it might be an idea to have a sniper speciality for master gunners to train for so as to have that extra ability for the supply route protection force. However, with a mounted machine gun with a telescopic sight, firing in single shot mode, great accuracy can be achieved and a machine gun has the ability for rapid fire in case of a massed infantry attack so I strongly recommend the machine gun with telescopic (and armoured) sights for a pill box position to defend the perimeter of a secure supply route. 3. you propose we turn supply routes into massive fortress Yes. while many people want out? Pardon? What do you mean? Do you mean people want to withdraw our forces out of Afghanistan by 2014 or perhaps even sooner? Well while we are there we should secure our supply routes. Another 3 troops killed in Afghanistan by a road-side bomb, reported today, or yesterday. all that would cost SO MUCH MONEY!!! I am not proposing that we spend any more money than we are spending already - simply that we spend it wisely. Right now we have many troops stationed in outlying isolated forward bases, maybe 200 bases in total and it is a nightmare to supply them at all because the roads are so insecure and air drops are often the only way to supply them. Now instead of that, we should deploy our troops along critical supply routes - say connecting our main air bases together and perhaps one route all the way to friendly territory as well. Spend what we are already spending on securing that critical supply route and never mind about having outposts along the Afghan - Pakistan border. and the people would hate it. (and consequently us) The Taliban would hate it because they could not kill us with road side bombs and road-side ambushes the way they do now. The Afghans may object to losing control over a main road but we can sooth hurt feelings in time if we run things like a free bus service along our supply route for civilians or build an alternative insecure road for other Afghan traffic. There are ways to deal with such dislocation as could happen if we impose a secure supply route for our own use. this sounds like a really REALLY bad idea. Isn't it the real bad idea to keep allowing our soldiers to get killed on insecure roads in Afghanistan? The bad idea is to keep getting ourselves killed. Becoming safe by securing our supply routes is a good idea. Your mile long fortress "mile"? Was that your typing mistake? Did you mean to type "miles"? The diagram shows the width of the fortress is 12 miles wide. Take a closer look. It is as long as it needs to be - maybe hundreds of miles long. Your mile long fortress is ridiculous. No actually defensive fortifications are an established practice in military engineering - and evidence for that is all around. For example, starting with the Great Wall of China. Next example, I stay in Scotland where Roman commanders built two defensive walls - Hadrian's Wall and Antonine's Wall. Before the 2nd world war, the French built the Maginot Line fortifications and during the war Rommel built the Atlantic Wall. Defensive fortifications are absolutely standard military orthodoxy. Driving along insecure roads through a war zone and getting hundreds or even thousands of soldiers killed is a relatively new trend perhaps started in Iraq and Afghanistan by generals who clearly are not fit to command. Perhaps they copied the Soviets insufficiency of fortifications in Afghanistan? Not wise if our generals were as negligent as Soviet generals considering the Soviets got defeated in Afghanistan. Having any trust whatsoever in the donkey generals who are misleading our lions of soldiers to their deaths is what is really ridiculous. Edited August 20, 2012 by Peter Dow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iota Posted August 20, 2012 Share Posted August 20, 2012 Those extreme examples you used... we no longer have an Empire, we're no longer at world war, we aren't Communist China with millions upon millions of people able to work for nothing at all. Just because walls have been built in the past doesn't mean it's practicable today... it's too expensive for a small war like this. Those walls you listed were built to defend homeland territory defence; they didn't travel across the world to build a huge wall for one military operation. And it's easy to see why. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Dow Posted August 20, 2012 Author Share Posted August 20, 2012 (edited) Ahmad Shah Massoud told us this would soon be our problem, unfortunately we (the west) didn't listen and he is dead now. The people can't listen unless the message is broadcast very widely and they don't want to listen to most messages and will tune out if they are not interested. It takes a lot of skill to get people's attention even to something very important. Consider this thought experiment. Or consider it the plot for a hypothetical movie if you prefer. Massoud was assassinated on 9th September 2001, two days before the 11th September 2001 attacks on the USA we now call 9/11. Now imagine that on the day Mossoud died, you, or the star of the movie, got some kind of psychic foresight as to the terrorist attack Al Qaeda was planning to make a couple of days later. Supposing in some sci-fi way you knew what you know now was about to happen in 2 days time. Then suppose you, or the movie star, gave yourself the task of saving the lives of the thousands who were killed on 9/11. Could you do it? Could you make people listen and do something to prevent the attacks? Suppose you tried but people didn't listen and the 9/11 attacks happened pretty much as before. Suppose then, Groundhog Day style, you reawoke on the 9th September and got another chance to try to get people to listen but failed again and got stuck in a cycle of reliving those two days again and again each time trying in various ways to stop the 9/11 attacks and save the lives of the innocents. How would you make people listen? How would you save the lives? How would the movie end? My point is it is all very well if you know what is going to happen, know what should be done to avoid disaster. It is quite another much more difficult thing to try to get people to listen and to act to avoid a disaster. Edited August 20, 2012 by Peter Dow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragonstar57 Posted August 20, 2012 Share Posted August 20, 2012 I think a good percentage of Americans want an immediate full withdraw from all conflicts we are currently in. I think building a huge fortress on supply lines would be unpopular both here and in Afghanistan. it would strengthen the claims we are attempting to take control of the area for oil. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Dow Posted August 20, 2012 Author Share Posted August 20, 2012 (edited) Ahmad Shah Massoud told us this would soon be our problem, unfortunately we (the west) didn't listen and he is dead now. He said that if we can get Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to stop funding and help us in this fight, it would have been over in a year. Well before Massoud was assassinated, before 9/11, most people would have had little interest in the anti-terrorist fight against Al Qaeda unless they were CIA and law enforcement anti-terrorist specialists no interest in the Taliban, Afghanistan, Pakistan & Saudi Arabia unless maybe they had emigrated from those countries or were salespeople trying to sell products and service to those countries . Before 9/11, essentially, the West did not care one way or another about Afghanistan so Massoud would have been talking to deaf ears if he tried to warn the West about the security dangers arising from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Sadly, there are still powerful people in the West who think selling satellite broadcasting time etc. to the Saudis and Pakistanis is more important as a business opportunity than any danger of those regimes sponsoring terrorism. Afghanistan is going to take a very long time, it lacks the infrastructure needed to succeed on their own. The point is Afghans are not on their own, even if we withdraw, even if they want to be left on their own. Any weak, failing state attracts neighbouring countries like Pakistan to move in and set up proxy regimes like the Taliban. Powerful neighbours are drawn to interfere in a weak country like vultures are drawn to a dying animal. Most afghans do not want the Taliban to return, but the Taliban atleast make due with their promises. What, the 77 virgin-brides waiting in heaven for young male suicide bombers? Are you sure? We have not. Progress has been made, but it has not been enough. There was a point in 2011 when huge progress was being made, but with the pullout of troops, this progress is decreasing. Well progress can be fragile. And there are often important choices to make when you try to make progress. Two out of three little pigs believe they are making "huge progress" with their houses, right up until the wolf blows their house down. Green on blue attacks are becoming more and more common. The ROE that is in place is not sufficient for our troops. The ANA and ANP are getting much better and are taking the lead on several operations. This is a good sign. I hope the next elections will bring in an actual leader capable of uniting afghans and ending the corruption. The green force is rotten, if not to its core then to much of the periphery. Some of the green is more like gangrene (gan-green, get it! ) The problem I see is in the disconnect between the political control (Karzai) and the funding (mostly from the USA but anyway internationally funded). Wikipedia: Afghan National ArmyThe new Afghan National Army was founded with the issue of a decree by President Hamid Karzai on December 1, 2002 Karzai as the "duly" (ahem) elected president of Afghanistan is perfectly entitled to run an Afghan national army but Afghans should pay for that themselves. Afghanistan is a poor nation and could not afford that much of an army but if they paid for it themselves, at least the Afghan national army would likely be honest, accountable to Afghans and take on limited tasks - secure the presidential palace, military headquarters and might be up to defending the capital Kabul and surrounding land, maybe. Now the issue is this - to secure all of Afghanistan, even to secure our supply routes, we need lots of troops and it makes sense to have some kind of Afghan force to help us - but we need a bigger and better green force than the Afghans can afford to pay for. (Also why would a national Afghan force want to prioritise defending our supply routes? They wouldn't want to.) So the West, NATO needs to pay for some green Afghan forces - that's a good idea, if, if, if, if and only if, those green forces we are paying for are auxiliary to NATO-ISAF - run by NATO-ISAF - under the control of a NATO general, maybe an American general if you could find a good one to do it. That way we would only recruit capable Afghans into the green force we pay for and interact with daily. We'd be sure our green troops were loyal - wouldn't shoot our blue troops. No way would we have any incentive to spend our own money on disloyal incapable Afghans in green uniform so we would not do it, if we had political and military control over our green forces, which we would have if they were called "The NATO-ISAF Afghan auxiliary force" - with no pretence of them being an Afghan national force under Karzai. However, some idiot has come up with the idea of paying Afghans to have an army funded by us but controlled by Karzai so there is no accountability. The people in charge, deciding who to recruit, can recruit bad soldiers because they get paid more by the US for soldiers, whether they be bad soldiers or not. Why wouldn't Karzai and this guy Lt. Gen. Sher Mohammad Karim, Commander of the Afghan National Army not recruit junkies, thieves, murderers and agents for the Taliban into the Afghan National Army? Why wouldn't they recruit anybody they can find into the Afghan national army if, for every soldier they can name, they get paid more US dollars? Where's the incentive for Karzai and Karim to recruit only good soldiers? There isn't any incentive at all. Again the US ends up funding corruption. If a green soldier kills a blue then who gets held responsible in the chain of command? Nobody gets held responsible. Who should get held responsible? The US and NATO should. We should blame ourselves for paying anything for an army which we do not have any political control over. What on earth does Panetta (and what did Gates before him) think he is (was) doing trusting this guy Karzai and his general Karim with billions of US tax-payer dollars to pay for a green army? Why are NATO defence ministers happy with the poor leadership from NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis? Shouldn't the NATO leaders have spotted this fatal flaw in green troop organisation and tried to re-organise green forces as I suggest here, if they know what they are doing (which they don't)? The competent answer to green on blue attacks is to split up the Afghan army into two distinct forces - a national Afghan army which Afghans pay for and is commanded by Karzai and whichever general he wants to appoint. (dark green) a NATO-ISAF auxiliary force of Afghans, funded by the US and other NATO counties and international donors. This would be commanded by our generals. (light green) So there should be two green armies - each of a different shade of green. Karzai's dark green he would use to defend himself and his capital. Our light green we would use to defend our supply routes and to support our operations in Afghanistan generally. Only when the Afghan economy had grown to the point that they could afford to pay for a big enough army to defend the whole country would we transfer our light green army over to Afghan national control and then we could leave Afghanistan in the hands of Afghans. So long as we are paying for an Afghan force we must retain political control over it otherwise it fuels corruption and does little or nothing to help to fight the enemy we are trying to defeat and the green-on-blue attacks simply undermine political support for the whole Afghanistan / Pakistan mission. Edited August 20, 2012 by Peter Dow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jebus Posted August 20, 2012 Share Posted August 20, 2012 Those walls u listed as examples failed. There was a point in history where the best defence became a strong offense. I want Afghanistan to succeed but we are not doing what is necessary, if you think your answers will solve it, then go right ahead and tell the generals your idea. Also the Taliban promised security, and they brought it when Afghanistan was broken up into territories controlled by warlords. In my opinion, they were too harsh, especially on the women and their biggest mistake was harbouring Al queda. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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