Enemy Capabilities
As the Taliban gears up for an extended guerrilla war, and indications emerge suggesting they have their act together tactically in ways the Iraqi insurgents didn’t, here’s Captain’s Journal explaining how he, Michael Yon, Glenn Reynolds and I are complicit in telling the Taliban what they already know. CJ’s Herschel Smith links to this NYT report:
NAWA, Afghanistan — In three combat tours in Anbar Province, Marine Sgt. Jacob Tambunga fought the deadliest insurgents in Iraq.
But he says he never encountered an enemy as tenacious as what he saw immediately after arriving at this outpost in Helmand Province in Afghanistan. In his first days here in late June, he fought through three ambushes, each lasting as long as the most sustained fight he saw in Anbar.
Like other Anbar veterans here, Sergeant Tambunga was surprised to discover guerrillas who, if not as lethal, were bolder than those he fought in Iraq.
“They are two totally different worlds,” said Sergeant Tambunga, a squad leader in Company C, First Battalion, Fifth Marines.
“In Iraq, they’d hit you and run,” he said. “But these guys stick around and maneuver on you.”
They also have a keen sense of when to fight and when the odds against them are too great.
And Smith himself, noting he has taken flak for discussing that issue in some detail, comments:
So why weren’t we better prepared for Taliban tactics? I have detailed at least half a dozen instances of massing of troops against smaller-sized U.S. units, while their hit and run, guerrilla-style warfare is well known. It is a smart enemy that counts the cost of whatever tactic they employ at the time. But the real context for the question of preparedness goes deeper.
About five months ago, this generation’s Ernie Pyle, Michael Yon, posted a very important PowerPoint presentation is a post entitled The Eagle Went Over the Mountain. This post got plenty of readership, as it was linked by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.
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So I, Michael Yon, Glenn Reynolds and Jules Crittenden are all in it together when the feds come for us. Or maybe this perspective is all wrong. After all, Taliban fighters already know how to maneuver to develop enfilade fire. No Taliban is going to sit in Southern Helmand (let’s say, Garmsir where there is no electricity), and read my web site to find out how to fight the U.S. Marines. But what discussion of this presentation can do is assist military planners and trainers to do their jobs.
Do we really need to perform this function? Well, why are the Marines currently in Southern Helmand surprised at the tactical ability of the Taliban fighters? Apparently the U.S. military across the board is not very good at sharing lessons learned … As it turns out, it would have been better had this presentation gotten an even wider distribution than it did. The right people still didn’t see it.
When it comes to guerrilla warfare, the Afghans weren’t exactly born yesterday. When it comes to asymmetrical fights against modern armies, they may not have written the book but they dictated several chapters and got plagiarized in others, and are heavily mentioned in acknowledgements. Smith is a little defensive. I thought the cat got out of the Internet’s open-source bag a long time ago. But if what Smith says is true, and military planners are not availing themselves of lessons learned internally, let alone via places like Yon, Captain’s Journal and Small Wars Journal, then that means we’re doomed to keep fighting the last war. Meanwhile, if the Taliban are coming to this site for tactical intel, then things are looking up and I should probably start opffering them some.* Speaking of SWJ, BTW, that’s where I encountered this very interesting, not-for-official0use-only Newsweek piece about evolving Taliban strategy and tactics, viewed through the lens of a profile of the Taliban’s top leadership. Meet Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar:
Soon after 4,000 U.S. marines flooded into Afghanistan’s Helmand River Valley on July 2, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar called top Taliban regional commanders together for an urgent briefing. The meeting took place in southwestern Pakistan—not far from the Afghan border but safely out of the Americans’ reach. Baradar told the commanders he wanted just one thing: to keep the Taliban’s losses to a minimum while maximizing the cost to the enemy. Don’t try to hold territory against the Americans’ superior firepower by fighting them head-on, he ordered. Rely on guerrilla tactics whenever possible. Plant “flowers”—improvised explosive devices—on trails and dirt roads. Concentrate on small-unit ambushes, with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. He gave his listeners a special warning: he would hold each of them responsible for the lives of their men. “Keep your weapons on your backs and be on your motorcycles,” Baradar exhorted them. “America has greater military strength, but we have greater faith and commitment.”
In all likelihood, you’ve never heard of Mullah Baradar. The only Taliban leader most people know is Mullah Mohammed Omar, the unworldly, one-eyed village preacher who held the grand title amir-ul-momineen—”leader of the faithful”—when he ruled Afghanistan in the late 1990s. Omar remains a high-value target, with a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head. But he hasn’t been seen in at least three years, even by his most loyal followers, and rarely issues direct orders anymore. In his place, the adversary that American forces are squaring off against in Afghanistan—the man ultimately responsible for the spike in casualties that has made July the deadliest month for Coalition soldiers since the war began in 2001—is Baradar. A cunning, little-known figure, he may be more dangerous than Omar ever was.
In more than two dozen interviews for this profile, past and present members of the Afghan insurgency portrayed Baradar as no mere stand-in for the reclusive Omar. They say Baradar appoints and fires the Taliban’s commanders and governors; presides over its top military council and central ruling Shura in Quetta, the city in southwestern Pakistan where most of the group’s senior leaders are based; and issues the group’s most important policy statements in his own name. It is key that he controls the Taliban’s treasury—hundreds of millions of dollars in -narcotics protection money, ransom payments, highway tolls, and “charitable donations,” largely from the Gulf. “He commands all military, political, religious, and financial power,” says Mullah Shah Wali Akhund, a guerrilla subcommander from Helmand province who met Baradar this March in Quetta for the fourth time. “Baradar has the makings of a brilliant commander,” says Prof. Thomas Johnson, a longtime expert on Afghanistan and an adviser to Coalition forces. “He’s able, charismatic, and knows the land and the people so much better than we can hope to do. He could prove a formidable foe.”
Whole thing. Regular readers of this site will be interested in the account of Baradar’s fractious relations with the dead Taliban pop star Mullah Dadullah and hinted-at complicity in the demise of same. Hard to tell with this piece where the legend-building guerrilla chic ends and the hard fact about influence and capabilities begin, but these representations plus evidence on the ground suggest that if Baradar is running the show, he may know what he is doing. The Newsweek article suggests he may need to be negotiated with seriously. Either that or whacked, I’d add. You’d think all that money we’re shoveling at the Paks could buy us a few targeted hits in Quetta.
SWJ also links to this LA Times Q&A with McChrystal.
* If you are active duty U.S. military about to be deployed to Afghanistan or are planning operations there, please do not come to this site, Jules Crittenden’s Forward Movement, for tactical advice. Bad idea. You may be well served by following the advice at some of the linked sites, but that’s between you and them. The only influence this site hopes to have on the U.S. military is to let them know there are people out there who want them to win, and are trying to understand how that works. Also, that there are people out there paying attention to what the back-stabbing, cowardly, opportunistic pols are up to.
Topics: Afghanistan, military
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:58 am Comments (0) on Tuesday, July 28, 2009
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