Experiences Vary

Afghanistan: Caution Experiences Will Vary.

Afghanistan, as the common saying goes particularly on KAF is that, experiences vary. From Tim Horton’s coffee house to bombed out mud huts. Your experience reflects the mission you are assigned. The fact is that at least 80% of the coalition forces here are support and that is just a rough swag. I’m not even including the legions of contractors. But then this is how we do it. A counterinsurgency requires a higher percentage of development, engineering, construction and intelligence troops than a classical war along the style of WWII.

The Russians lost in Afghanistan for many reasons but one of them stands out. The Limited Contingency force came in with 70 to 80 percent ‘warfighters’ and only 20 to 30 percent support. This forced upon them a particular way of fighting. They fought as a conventional force. They were not set up for counter-insurgency. They approached COIN as a sledgehammer. We on the other hand are approaching this fight in a different way. This gives us great advantages in the COIN realm. Some may call this a new form of war, a hybrid, or a revolution in how war is fought. It is not. It is just an appropriate application of the warfighting functions to the conduct of a counterinsurgency. In this case you have to come in support heavy.

It is also why experiences vary so greatly. The vast majority of personnel are involved in support roles. They live on the main FOBs, they never leave them. They can spend six months or a year in Afghanistan and never see anything but their workspace, MOD housing room, boardwalk, Burger King, or Supreme/KBR Chow hall. They have access to the internet, cellphones, and satellite TV. That doesn’t diminish their sacrifice or commitment to the fight. In the end they are every bit as important as the troops on the front line. Though they should never compare the dangers they face from the infrequent spasmodic rocket attack with that of the trooper in the remote outpost or embedded in with an Afghan Army unit. It is not a fair comparison.

I have had the privilege of spending time in both worlds, though to be truthful most of my time was spent in the safe confines of KAF. I got out enough to appreciate the difference, to ensure I did not lose the grip on the reality of what the grunt was facing. As a planner this is crucial. Never plan without having recon’d the ground with the men and women who must travel it. A plan based solely on a map, or unmanned aircraft feed is bound to be skewed in the wrong direction. You have to know the weight of the armor, the heat of the day, the feel of the ground and the atmosphere of the people to truly assist the true warfighters. I like to think that I was able to do that in my short tour here.

These last six months have been a challenge; a pleasure and an honor. My experience as a staff officer has been unique; it has helped me to understand the inner workings of the various higher headquarters. It has opened my eyes to the vast machine that is the logistic lifeblood of western warcraft. My grandfather, a former Luftwaffee Officer, once said with hyperbole as we drove on I-95 past the Philadelphia Navy Yard when he saw the reserve fleet stationed there ‘had old Adolf seen this with his own eyes he would never had started that terrible war.’ It is worth thinking about, the western powers strength lies in logistics, and organization, we can be the first with the most just about anywhere and we can sustain it. It is truly amazing to behold.
That isn’t to say we are perfect, we are far from it. We still have our Col Blimps, in fact our communications and ability to travel far and wide by air only encourage this. We get the occasional tactical command from on high to a troop in the field of such remote regions as Gollestan. It is easy enough to do, anyone can fall prey to the desire to exercise the power of command via the electronic spectrum. But we have to hold back and trust our men and women on the ground.

How are we doing, that is the question most folks from home ask me. I have to think about that one, what metrics would we use to evaluate how this war is going. Territory under our control? Well we do control more than we did, BUT that is deceiving. Our ability to move about freely? I like this one, if I need to have an armored column of gun totting Marines with me to leave the FOB then I do not have free movement. This varies from region to region, district to district and town to town. There are vast areas where I could walk about freely if I chose. There are also a lot of places where that would be a death sentence. Do we rate our performance on the level of governance, elections, corruption, criminality, number of schools or wells built, soldiers and police we train? It is a combination of all these things, but we have to draw the line somewhere. I believe it is security. We can make the security good enough for the Afghans to handle the mission on their own. That would be success. That is also a way off in the future. Though, I do see the capacity to achieve this milestone as viable. It will take more time and hard work, but we can in partnership with the Afghans achieve ‘good enough’ security. With a level of security achieved governance, education all can be attained.

Unity of effort is an ancient military maxim, of course it used to be unity of command but in COIN these days we hardly ever see unity of command. There are too many individual egos and entities from individual power brokers to donor nations for this to be achieved. But unity of effort, is happening, miraculously almost incongruously the world body and the local nationals are finding enough common ground to actually achieve unity of effort. It is more serendipitous than planned but it still works. The problem is for every ‘unified’ effort that comes about near accidently we waste a hundred others. Perhaps that is the cost of doing business.

From Kabul to Kandahar to the remotest village Afghanistan is a varied place. There are numerous languages, ethnicities, religions they are not all compatible. This is not the melting pot of the United States, this country is a mishmash of tribes, cultures and histories. In the same day you can pass ruins of forts built by Alexander and Plotnikov. It has extremes in mountains and deserts. Make no doubt that it is a dangerous place but it is also beautiful and it has great potential. Provided of course it finds some very Afghan version of peace. No two people have similar experiences here, experiences vary.