Just to start, no I wasn’t there. I wasn’t even in DC on 30 December 2009 when Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi blew himself up taking the reported 7 Americans and 1 Jordanian and 1 Afghan with him.

I was in San Diego for the holidays, visiting family. I remember getting up and coming downstairs to make coffee for myself. Then I must have checked my phone and saw the news.

My mind raced, as I’m sure anyone whose life has been directly tied to the last 10 plus years of war does anytime news like this comes out. Who do I know OCONUS? Who can I call or text? Where can I get the most recent info? Can I get back to Langley to help in any way?

I have known of fellow agents getting injured or killed on duty. The hard part for me was this was a different kind of experience at that time. I never served in the military, so I missed that terrible experience of being just that close to something you can’t directly help or affect change upon.

I felt, and quite literally was, useless at that time. I can’t begin to imagine what those on the ground, in country and back at Langley actually felt. A few hours after I first read the news I was able to get a cryptic SMS back from a colleague who let me know that no one close had been injured or killed in the attack.

A lot has been written, mostly by fellow former Intelligence Officers who likely have years of experience on me, and as equally should know better, about what led to Balawi’s successful suicide attack that day in Khost. You can search online to see the various run downs of who was or was not following tradecraft, or who should or should not have been Chief of Station. My goal is not to try and armchair quarterback anything. Swept up in the craziness that must have been a surging tide of “what if” the Officers on the ground and back at Headquarters pushed to make that meeting happen. Sometimes you push too hard, and chances are those are the times some crazy person will try to blow you up. The term “perfect storm” comes to mind.

This being the 3rd anniversary of this terrible event, I just wanted to share what I took away from everything.

I only knew one Officer killed at Khost, very peripherally. Elizabeth Hanson was a Targeting Officer (officially titled Specialized Skills Officer – Targeting). Very simply, her job was to look for leads to piece together detailed information related to HUMINT targets of interest. I always thought of it as looking for that one piece of thread to pull, that when pulled it unraveled the whole sweater. Balawi was that piece of thread; at least that was the idea.

I went through recruitment at the Agency at a time of flux for Headquarters based officers (HBOs). In fact, I was hired as a Targeting Officer (SSO-­T), but by the time I entered on duty and drove to the back reaches of the Purple lot, I was a Headquarters Based Trainee (HBT).

Like most things in a huge bureaucracy, titles matter. Networking is hugely important in an Agency career and although it seems counter intuitive, its even more important as a headquarters based officer. I found that conversations with new acquaintances usually began with a short bio. What did you do before coming to the Agency? Where are you from? Then always ended up with: What are you? Meaning, what sort of Officer are you. Imagine the fun that could be had by knuckle-­dragging Paramilitary Officers when they ask that last question and were given the response of, “I’m an HBT”…which was followed by a quick deafened response of “HVT!” (high value target). Laughter ensued.

By now quite a few former Agency Officers have detailed recruitment and training, and have even spoken of the rotations that new officers do within headquarters. For the HBT’s, soon to be HBO’s, we did similar rotations, with a certification course related to our final job selection coming right before being home-based in an office.

As part of networking and building a so called “Hall File”, or reputation, the National Clandestine Service’s HR department (HRS) advised us to attend sponsored “brown bag” lunches. These were usually informal (if your idea of informal is crowding into a conference room, in a bad suit eating your Subway sandwich purchased at the Agency Subway counter all the while sitting next to a Group Chief who is talking about how great their office is) events that were used to introduce prospective home-­basing officers to an office, as well as share general information about an office or operation that was being talked about at length.

HRS also pushed the idea of more seasoned HBO’s creating individual mentoring groups for the Staff Operations Officers, Targeting Officers and Collection Management Officers. These were a rotating peer mentoring group that had the goal of helping new HBO’s find their way through the bureaucracy. Sometimes they helped calm nerves, or make introductions to offices of interest, or just shared stories about their jobs. From my memory, I met Elizabeth Hanson at one of these peer meetings for Targeting Officers. I only put it together after meeting one of her former certification instructors during my SOO certification. For whatever reason the Targeting Officers had the more active peer-­?mentoring group at Langley.

Elizabeth Hanson kept a small plaque with a meaningful quote on it at her desk. I know this because I had the same head instructor as her during my certification phase as a SOO. At graduation this instructor related Elizabeth’s story to us, and then tearfully gave us all the same small desk plaque with quote. She asked us to think on the quote and what it meant to us, and to live our lives and careers the way Elizabeth did hers. Its funny, the quote itself is less meaningful than the gesture through someone’s grief at losing a friend.

When onboarding with the Agency, going through initial orientation, class instructors like to try and demystify the Agency for new employees. It would seem obvious that most of us, even when approaching the job with open eyes, have bought into at least some of the romanticism and mystique that surrounds life at the CIA, especially life working under some sort of cover. Maybe it’s for that reason, romanticism, that I’ve held onto my memory of that day at graduation. I find meaning in remembering our fallen colleagues, who right or wrong, gave of their lives in pursuit of something bigger than themselves.

I’ve taken to trying to honor those fallen in some meaningful way. At this point in my Federal career, there isn’t much I can do directly. Instead I choose to think about other fallen colleagues, even those I never worked with directly. I also try and get out and do something meaningful to me. Today I’ll be out honoring the fallen nine by pushing myself through the Crossfit Hero WOD “The Seven”. I do it every year, and the plaque still sits on my desk at work. Always there to remind me what I would attempt if I had no fear of failure. Egging me on to push through the fear.

• Jennifer Lynne Matthews CIA officer, chief of base (Age 45)
• Harold Brown Jr CIA officer (Age 37)
• Elizabeth Hanson CIA officer (Age 30)
• Darren LaBonte CIA officer (Age 35)
• Scott Michael Roberson CIA officer (Age 39)
• Dane Clark Paresi Blackwater Worldwide (Xe) (Age 46)
• Jeremy Wise Blackwater Worldwide (Xe) (Age 35)
• Al Shareef Ali bin Zeid Jordanian intelligence official (Age Undisclosed)
• Arghawan Security director at the base (Age Undisclosed)

I volunteered for the CJCS directed Afghanistan-Pakistan Hands (AFPAK Hands) program for several reasons, but primarily it’s because I want to go to Afghanistan on my terms. Experience suggests that volunteering is the easiest way to get what you want or at least to get what you’ve asked for. I did a stint as a Combat Aviation Advisor with AFSOC’s 6th Special Operations Squadron and it was an experience that fundamentally changed my outlook on conflict. To be sure, there is a need for kinetics in conflict, but there is also a need for building both the capability and capacity of other countries. After all, if they can mitigate, suppress or defeat internal problems on their own I say all the better. Advisory work is about what’s over the horizon and that’s what I’ve become interested in, winning or better yet averting the next war. It’s the ultimate long game.

Over the next few months you’ll see a mix of things on the Kabul Cable as I go through language school and complete my pre-deployment training. Much of it will be issues that I am reading and thinking about as I get ready for my deployment. Later this fall I’ll head downrange and the blog will shift at that point and take a new course, one that I haven’t been able to completely sort out yet. The goal will be for the Kabul Cable to serve as a portal into the current events affecting Afghanistan and as a resource for scholars, students, researchers, diplomats and practitioners of war. The blog will focus on the US led effort to transition both the responsibility and authority for control of the country back to Afghans with a focus on the issues that I am working on. As an embedded advisor I’ll have unique insights into the evolving situation in Afghanistan and I want to share it with you.

I intend on writing as frequently as possible downrange and will have updated analysis, daily observations and think pieces from my experience in Afghanistan, inputs from academics, other bloggers and practitioners in the field as well. I’ve got a number of contributors lined up and as the summer moves along you’ll start to see a few pieces from other AFPAK Hands show up. I hope you’ll add The Kabul Cable to your favorites tab, sign up for email notifications and follow me on Twitter at @tyrellmayfield. I look forward to you joining the conversation and the year ahead.

Dr. Steven Metz is Chairman of the Regional Strategy Department, Co-Director of the Future of American Strategy Project, and research professor at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute.

Dr. Metz is the author of more than a hundred publications on future war, the emerging security environment, military strategy, defense policy, international relations and world politics. You can follow him on Twitter @steven_metz.

John Little: In Rethinking Insurgency you stated that America has to recognize three distinct insurgency settings:

• - A functioning government with at least some degree of legitimacy can be rescued by Foreign Internal Defense.
• - There is no functioning and legitimate government but a broad international and regional consensus supports the creation of a neo-trusteeship until systemic reengineering is completed. In such instances, the United States should provide military, economic, and political support as part of a multinational force operating under the authority of the UN.
• - There is no functioning and legitimate government and no international or regional consensus for the formation of a neo-trusteeship. In these cases, the United States should pursue containment of the conflict by support to regional states and, in conjunction with partners, help create humanitarian “safe zones” within the conflictive state.

Where would you place Afghanistan in this model? Is our current battlefield and political strategy (especially our relationship with regional players) in sync with this reality?

Dr. Steven Metz: The problem with the American conceptualization of insurgency and counterinsurgency is that it ignores the distinction between state strengthening and state or even nation building. Americans are pretty good at state strengthening, as demonstrated in El Salvador during the 1980s and 1990s. State building, though, is much harder.

Americans learned counterinsurgency largely from the French and British. But when those nations undertook state building, they did so as colonial powers. This gave them the ability and the motivation to pursue state or nation building even though it almost always takes decades of sustained effort.

Because the United States is not a colonial power and because the attention span of the American public and Congress is fairly limited, it has sought ways to speed up the state or nation building process. As Afghanistan shows today, this seldom works. I simply can’t conceive of the Afghan state, as currently configured, functioning and providing security without massive outside assistance for a very long time. And whether the United States and other Western nations will provide such assistance, particularly given the endemic corruption of the Afghan state and Pakistan’s unwillingness or inability to shut down the Taliban’s external sanctuary , is questionable. There’s also no chance of an effective multinational trusteeship for Afghanistan. That’s why I believe the only sustainable U.S. strategy is a low footprint one designed specifically to prevent an outright Taliban victory (which I think is very unlikely anyway) and to launch spoiling attacks should al Qaeda develop a power projection capability from within Afghanistan (which is also unlikely).

One other factor is important: while the United States and its allies seek the outright defeat of the Taliban and a democratic Afghanistan at peace, the vested interest of the Pakistani and Afghan governments is a sustained insurgency which is strong enough to keep outside aid flowing but not strong enough to overthrow them. Karzai and the Pakistani military and political elites must surely know that if the Taliban and al Qaeda were eradicated, the foreign aid flowing to them would diminish dramatically. This is a common dynamic in contemporary insurgencies: the state and the insurgents develop a sort of symbiotic relationship in which both benefit from the conflict.

Ultimately, then, ISAF is undertaking some very skilled operations in pursuit of a flawed national strategy. Early in the Iraq conflict General Petraeus was famously quoted as asking, “Tell me how this ends.” I think it is even more pressing to ask that for Afghanistan. Looking at all the factors, including economic and demographic ones, I simply cannot imagine a situation where the Karzai government defeats the Taliban, imposes stability over all of Afghanistan, and builds an economy capable of sustaining Afghanistan’s population growth (which is one of the highest on earth) and supporting a massive security force (or finding other employment for the hundreds of thousands of members of the police and army).

John Little: It feels like we’re bailing water in Afghanistan while ignoring the source of the leak – Pakistan. Is it really that difficult to recalibrate our relationship with Pakistan? Could we create a framework where Pakistan is held responsible for the taking the lead on ensuring something like stability in Afghanistan while tying US aid (and the size of our footprint in the region) to their performance? If that is deemed impossible, and we declare that Pakistan is an unfit partner in regional security efforts, wouldn’t that point to the futility of COIN in Afghanistan anyway?

Dr. Steven Metz: The Pakistani government and security forces have become absolute masters at manipulating the United States. I can’t blame them for it–statecraft is a rough and tumble game. But I blame Americans for allowing themselves to be manipulated.

This demonstrates one of the key dilemmas of American involvement in counterinsurgency support. This has two dimensions. First, the more committed Washington is to a partner or ally, the less leverage it has. Second, American policymakers have to play up the stakes in a conflict in order to gain and sustain support from the public and Congress, and that makes it politically difficult to extricate the United States from the conflict.

Historically, U.S. has had leverage over a partner or ally only when the threat to disengage was credible. In a de facto “good cop/bad cop? way, the Reagan administration was able to express its commitment to El Salvador while making sure the Salvadoran elite and military understood that if it did not rein in the right wing death squads, undertake democracy, and improve its military, the U.S. Congress was likely to cut off aid. This message got through and the Salvadorans undertook the necessary reform.

At the present time , it appears that the Pakistani elite simply does not believe that the U.S. will disengage, at least not for some time. Therefore it is able to play both sides of the game by taking action against extremists that threaten it directly but casting a blind eye or, perhaps, even offering support to extremists who only target Americans or the Karzai government.

Every insurgency that succeeded over the past hundred years faced either an incompetent government (Cuba, China) or had external sanctuary. External sanctuary does not determine success on the part of insurgents, but it is a vital component of success. It is a necessary but not sufficient element of insurgent victory. Given this, I personally favor a much harder line toward Pakistan. The United States should ask the Pakistanis to explain their strategy for eradicating the extremist strongholds, including the time line and the amount of American support necessary. If this seems feasible, Washington should make clear that failure to execute the strategy will result in a diminution or cut off of assistance. The United States has to be willing to write off Pakistan.

Now, I realize that the Pakistani elite and public would scream about this. Their goal is assistance without conditions. Again, I can’t blame them for that, but I can blame America for playing along. The best that can be done is to keep the conditions quiet. And I know that the Pakistanis would claim that without U.S. support, extremists will take over their nation and gain control of its nuclear weapons. That is a tremendous risk but I don’t think that it justifies unconditional and escalating assistance. We simply must have ways to gain control of or neutralize the nuclear weapons should Pakistan descend into chaos.

The problem then becomes sustaining support for such a strategy from the American public and Congress. A policymaker who expressed unqualified support for Pakistan and then later withdrew the support would be excoriated by his or her political opponents. Yet the only alternative seems to be pouring endless money into Pakistan with little influence over how it is spent.

Clearly the United States and its allies would have a difficult time sustaining the current counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan without transit through Pakistan. So if America felt that it had no other option than to end support for Pakistan, it would have to revamp the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. But, I believe, it would still be possible to prevent an outright Taliban victory with a much smaller U.S. footprint in Afghanistan.

John Little: Is all the effort poured into COIN Afghanistan in vain if the Pakistan problem isn’t solved or if, as many observers feel, gets even worse? The security, military, and political challenges generated by a disintegrating Pakistan would seem to dwarf any threat posed by Afghanistan.

Dr. Steven Metz: I think the effort and resources poured into both Afghanistan and Pakistan are out of proportion to the strategic benefits–the added security–gained by it. The whole strategy is intended to counter al Qaeda. But there is no evidence that al Qaeda needs formal sanctuary in Afghanistan or Pakistan. If it needs sanctuary at all, that can be almost anywhere in the Islamic world. So even if the current strategy in Afghanistan succeeds, the costs will greatly outweigh the strategic benefits.

The question, then, is why is the United States expending so much effort, money, and blood to gain so little additional security? I think that during the Cold War and post-Cold War period, the U.S. was so dominant in military and economic terms, that it lost sight of the fact that strategy must consider efficiency as well as effectiveness. It was like a shopping spree with a rich sports figure or entertainer who based their purchases strictly on whether they wanted something with no regard for price. The U.S. wanted to weaken Islamic extremism so it pursued strategies designed to do that without considering whether the additional security gained was in proportion to the strategic costs. I’m afraid that mentality is about to crash on the rocks of Iraq and Afghanistan.

But on the issue of a disintegrating Pakistan. There is no question that would be a immense disaster in many ways. Yet Pakistan has been teetering on the precipice of disintegration for its entire history but has somehow held together. I really believe that it is more resilient than Americans give it credit for. A more likely problem is the emergence of an Islamist government in Pakistan, possibly through the democratic process. While that would certainly be damaging to U.S. policy, I don’t think it would automatically be disastrous. I find the assertion that any Islamist regime will provide nuclear weapons to terrorists absurd. The United States should have a stated policy that if terrorists use nuclear weapons and the source of them can be identified (which is likely), it will be treated exactly the same as a direct nuclear strike from the source country.

Of course an Islamist government would be more hospitable to a Taliban or al Qaeda presence. But I’m not sure that would be markedly different than the current state of affairs. The emergence of an Islamist government, though, could increase pressure on Karzai to bring the Taliban into his government. We don’t know whether a coalition government that included the Taliban would provide sanctuary for al Qaeda. I suspect not. I think the Taliban’s relationship with al Qaeda pre-September 11 was based on ignorance. It was simply not aware of the immense costs of harboring al Qaeda. Now it is. Hence I don’t think it would make that mistake again. The Taliban’s leaders are not stupid.

Another Pakistan scenario, though, might be “semi-disintegration” where Islamabad loses even the pretense of control over some regions. That would not be much different than today where the central government has little or no influence in the tribal areas and even parts of Karachi. So long as the government controls Punjab, though, Pakistan can teeter along.

John Little: There’s no real indication that our political class is going to step up and deliver bold leadership and no sign that US military wants to do anything but charge full speed ahead with COIN. So where do you think this takes us in the next three to five years and what will be the impact on the US military?

Dr. Steven Metz: I don’t think that it’s accurate to say that the military is convinced that counterinsurgency will be its primary mission in coming years. The Navy and Air Force certainly don’t, and even with the Army there is debate and discussion. As a new Chief of Staff takes over the Army, I suspect there will be a re-evaluation of the notions of “the long war.”

I also believe that the American public and its elected leaders will revisit the notion of making counterinsurgency the central element of U.S. strategy. Certainly counterterrorism will remain important. But the important point is that counterinsurgency in unstable regions may be an effective method of counterterrorism, it is the most inefficient means conceivable. Given the U.S.’ lingering economic crisis and budget deficits, this is going to become a pressing concern.

There is no doubt that the United States, including the military, will remain involved in strengthening states facing internal conflict–what the military calls Foreign Internal Defense. The U.S. is actually pretty good at it, and it doesn’t require a massive American military presence.

I think it would also be useful if the United States had a “whole of government” surge capacity for stabilization. This would allow pre-empting insurgencies rather than allowing them to metastasize, then surging. Insurgency is like cancer–the earlier the treatment, the greater the chances of success and the less damage to the system. Imagine if the U.S. had been able to make the effort that it made in Iraq in 2007–to include both military and non-military actions–in the summer of 2003. There is a pretty good chance the insurgency there would have been stillborn.

The challenge, though, is that having the ability to rapidly surge stabilization efforts means that there has to be a lot of capacity sitting around unused when there is no crisis underway. That’s why I think such a whole of government stabilization surge capacity should also be multinational. It should be fully in place, supplied, trained and educated–ready to go in a matter of weeks. Creating this would be an immense challenge but, I think, the options are either protracted disasters like Iraq and Afghanistan, or simply avoiding involvement and allowing conflicts to burn themselves out at great human and strategic cost.

So what will the next three to five years bring for the U.S. military? Assuming that the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan diminishes significantly, I expect a shift away from a counterinsurgency-centric force and strategy back to a more balanced one. This is likely to entail returning the land forces to 2003 levels. Critics contend that would leave the United States unprepared for another Iraq and Afghanistan. Given that American involvement in both of those places began with massive strategic blunders, that might not be a bad thing.

John Little: There doesn’t appear to be much appetite, or bandwidth, for traditional multinational COIN efforts now or on the horizon. Aren’t future conflicts more likely to look like Yemen or Somalia than Iraq or Afghanistan? Models that reduce or eliminate our visible footprint, allow maximum flexibility, and facilitate third party humanitarian efforts would appear to be attainable and more efficient going forward.

Dr. Steve Metz: The model most often discussed for the United States is the Philippines: quiet, low footprint assistance to help a state improve its capabilities. Of course, this goes back to my point about the difference between state support and state assistance. This model works very well, but only when there a relatively effective state in existence. And even then it bumps against the problem that states may not desire the outright defeat of the insurgents, but rather keeping them at a controllable or tolerable level.

The notion of humanitarian assistance is different and vexing. One of the most depressing phenomena in recent conflict is that parties to them–insurgents or militias of various types–recognize that the civilized world is repulsed by humanitarian disasters and use that to extort resources. Food becomes a weapon.

Humanitarian intervention can work. While there is this image of the U.N. and American involvement in Somalia in the 1990s as a massive failure, the fact is that tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Somalis were saved from famine. The dilemma is that humanitarian assistance is much easier than rectifying the things that caused a humanitarian crisis in the first place. I suspect that the United States, Europe, and other nations will remain prepared for short term intervention in the face of genocide or humanitarian disaster, but it will be more of a “stem the crisis and leave” sort of thing, hoping that NGOs can deal with the deeper causes. The problem with that, of course, is that the ability of NGOs to resolve deep problems is limited in the face of violence.

Perhaps a new model to replace the current, Cold War conceptualization of counterinsurgency with its emphasis on the national government is for multinational military forces to simply provide security for NGOs, and NGOs to concentrate on local economies and governance rather than the national level ones.

Joshua Foust is a fellow at the American Security Project, a columnist for PBS Need to Know, a contributing editor to Current Intelligence, and he blogs about Central Asia at Registan.net. He’s the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. You can follow him on Twitter @JoshuaFoust.

John Little: Let’s talk about The Unforgivable Horror of Village Razing. In that post, which details the destruction of a booby-trapped Afghan village with 49,200 lbs. of ordnance and what you feel is the unsympathetic response to the resulting suffering, you drop some pretty heavy ordnance of your own:

Look, war is hell. I have no illusions about that. But what is happening right now in Southern Afghanistan is inexcusable. There were rumors of this policy of collective punishment in the Arghandab before (see this overwrought Daily Mail story that stops right before the village actually was destroyed for an idea of what is going on), and I’m really struggling to see how such behavior does not violate Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention—that is, how this behavior is not a war crime, especially given the explicit admission that such behavior is merely for the convenience of the soldier and not any grander strategy or purpose.

This sort of abhorrent behavior is not limited to the Arghandab, either. Broadwell explicitly states that it has the Petraeus stamp of approval, and Pahjwok has reported U.S. Marines in Helmand province explicitly warning local villagers of collective punishment if insurgents hide out in their settlements. It is probably a safe assumption to say that this is a widespread phenomenon.

A lot of people would say “Look, this may have been clumsy, inefficient, and lazy on our part but a Taliban outpost was cleared, civilian and friendly causalities were avoided, and we’re going to help the civilian owners rebuild. Relax Mr. Foust. This is war, not a war crime.”

So, with a few days to reflect, do you still think this event might point to an illegal policy of collective punishment? Can you see any merit at all in arguments of those who support the military’s casualty minimization strategy?

Joshua Foust: With some further reflection, I think I was right to struggle with whether destroying villages like this is a war crime. Some friends helped me wrap my head around what actually constitutes a violation of the Fourth Convention, and I don’t think this qualifies as such. However, the reason I feel comfortable with that struggle is this is the sort of thing we should question.

In that link to the Daily Mail story about another village facing this same fate, the soldiers seem to be threatening the villagers with the destruction of their homes if the villagers don’t turn in more IEDs. There are two ways to interpret that story (and the one here, about the Arghandab). Either the soldiers are punitively destroying entire settlements in punishment for not resisting the Taliban, or they’re communicating—incompletely—that if they can’t remove the Taliban from these areas, they have no way of removing the bombs and IEDs left over except by detonation.

From everything I’ve read about these incidents, and from speaking with people close to one of them, it’s probably bad communication being compounded by a false sense of urgency and action bias. These are not large villages—maybe a few dozen houses at the most. There’s no compelling, strategic reason for the U.S. military to literally burn a hole through them once the Taliban have run off. If the Taliban are gone, then we can ponder defusing and decontamination at a deliberate pace (the village razing incident is written in a way that suggests the decision to burn the village was made quickly, for the sake of battle momentum). There’s no need to rush in with B-1s dropping tons of explosives on them.

So I didn’t intend, and I still don’t intend, to accuse anyone of malice. I stand by my charge of laziness, however. Look at the aftermath: this is rural Afghanistan. No one has land deeds or property records. The soldiers are giving the local sub-governor a pot of money and the power to issue now-official land deeds. There is no way in hell people will be compensated appropriately for what they lost (which is required under Article 40 of the Afghan constitution). There will be winners and losers, and the U.S. is funding the picking of winners and losers—a dangerous situation, and one I frankly think is impossible to solve without massive corruption. This is not a hopeful result, in other words. And the callousness with which both the soldiers and that researcher writing about them discuss it—up to sniffing that the Afghans should thank us for rebuilding, as if destroying a family’s possessions is perfectly okay so long as you replace it later—led me to assume the worst. I don’t see how this is a better, more humane option that will create fewer headaches in the long run than attempting to defuse and decontaminate mined villages.

Either way, and whatever more details emerge as these people try to explain themselves, we should be up front in asking hard, probing questions about the deliberate erasure of entire communities. I’m frankly shocked at how many people reacted against that. Our conduct in Afghanistan should never be above question.

John Little: Paula Broadwell, the author of the piece that triggered all of this, has since offered some clarification. There’s nothing earth shattering there though. It is exactly along the lines of what one would expect:

The Taliban had laden the roads, compounds, everywhere with booby traps. In the commander’s assessment, the deserted village was not worth clearing. If you lost several KIA and you might feel the same… SOF had tried to clear the village and had several EKIA but also lost two guys. Afghan commandos had attempted to take the village and got hammered by the IEDs and HEMsas well…

[T]he villagers told all of these visitors {Petraeus, an ABC news crew] that Flynn was their hero and they wanted him to move into the village with them. They express great gratitude for helping them claim security in their river valley and push the Taliban out. Sure they are pissed about the loss of their mud huts (look at the picture again) but that is why the BUILD story is important here.

Your counter-argument, if I can attempt a summary, is that even if we accept the military’s version of the story it still seems to indicate poor execution of our counterinsurgency strategy. You point to a naivete that, if systemic, is quite troubling:

The gullibility of Americans is also something I thought we would have moved beyond in 2011, but it still remains. In civil wars, locals—that is, non-combattants—are always friendly to the guys with guns. In the passage above Paula expresses dismay, and toys with feeling little sympathy for, villagers who accepted money rather than violence to leave their village. That is worse than calloused, and it’s the kind of glib attitude that comes, depressingly commonly enough, from the zombies living in the military’s COIN bubble. I’ve seen elders in Afghanistan smile warmly at me, talk about how much they hate the Taliban, and so on… only to, mere days later, be caught passing information along to a local insurgent commander because they were scared witless by a night letter tacked to their door. Christian Bleuer explored this years ago—in Kapisa, of all places—and it really is a universal phenomenon. Displaced villagers will warmly greet armed groups… especially if those groups are handing out money as well. It means nothing beyond that, however. We should not be this gullible still. But we are, and that’s really sad to see.

Do you think that this is a broader issue? If so, can it be addressed with better training or do you think that inherent flaws in strategy are coming to light in stories like this?

Johsua Foust: I think it’s absolutely is the broader issue. The military still is, by and large, operating in total ignorance of not just local issues, but a basic acceptance of the humanity of Afghans. I shy away from complaining they misunderstand culture—and I say this having made my income for several years through coaching the Army on cultural issues in Afghanistan—because it doesn’t require specialized knowledge to see that poor people have bad housing, and that they are exceedingly vulnerable to displacement during conflict (to keep it confined to this one issue). So in this case, I’m baffled at the complete lack of empathy toward the villagers who were given a choice: resist the Taliban and suffer, or take some cash and flee.

As for addressing it, I lose my way a bit. I’ve seen what counts as “cultural training” within TRADOC, and at CGSC under General Caldwell. It’s a mixed bag, like most training is. You will always have good students and bad students, guys for whom this sort of mindset comes naturally and guys who either struggle with it or reject it outright. I am not knowledgeable enough about the Army’s training system to say how that can be remedied, or if it even can be.

But here’s part of the problem in discussing all of this: none of us were there. Frankly, Paula Broadwell wasn’t there when they burned this village to the ground. So already we’re working on filtered experiences, and that introduces a lot of bias that’s difficult to sift through when trying to figure out what happened. I’ve also never worn the uniform (at least, as a soldier), nor have I led men into combat—so I get really uncomfortable complaining about a bad decision made in defense of soldiers’ lives. And most people are—understandably, and appropriately, I think—hesitant to second-guess the decisions of a commander leading his men in combat.

However, there are some things that are worth questioning, even if it’s painful, and even if it ends up going nowhere. The decision to raze a town should be one of them. You don’t call in almost 50,000 pounds of bombs on a single target without a lot of signatures up the line of command. So this wasn’t a rogue decision, and it wasn’t done in the spur of the moment—this was a deliberate, considered, approved decision. And so far, from all the tiny amounts of data we have on it, it is an appalling decision. So in that sense, I think we really do need to keep pressing on the issue to try to figure out what really happened.

John Little: Based on your experience do you believe that there is willingness, at the command level, to look at events like this and identify opportunities to enhance the approach or is there just overwhelming pressure to execute, to maintain momentum?

Joshua Foust: I’m sure there is willingness somewhere in the chain of command. The problem is, General Petraeus knows this is going on—he hosted an ABC camera crew viewing the rubble—and we have no data to suggest he thinks the approach is flawed or could be improved. I do know there is pressure—implicit pressure, in a lot of ways, but pressure nevertheless—to “execute a counterinsurgency strategy” in the south. And that can easily lead to bizarre or inexplicable behavior getting sold as COIN.

John Little: Given the challenges (many of which originate in powerful neighboring states) do you think it’s possible that the current state of affairs is about as close to success as we’ll get? Is Afghanistan doomed to remain a problem to be managed rather than an emerging modern state that can be nurtured or incubated? Could it even be said that in the end our footprint there is less about Afghanistan and more about countering a long list of troublesome regional forces?

Joshua Foust: I think there can definitely be some improvement to the current state of affairs. I’d love to see us go back to cooperating with Iran in tracking down Taliban figures, as we were in 2001-2 (there are rumors the Iranians coordinate some counter-drug operations with the U.S., but no one wants to talk about that). I really do think that we can lessen the problem emanating from Pakistan by exploring a way to guarantee their interests in a post-America Afghanistan, and that one way we can do that is with beginning political reconciliation with the Taliban.

None of those developments means militancy will go away or the war will end. And in that sense, I don’t think management means “doom” in the sense of it being a negative thing. A reduced American footprint, combined with increased regional engagement, has the potential to be a net improvement for the country. It could also blow up in our face—which is the challenge with any course of action.

John Little: So is COIN only useful in the sense that it buys time until we negotiate a political solution with Pakistan and other regional players? If and when that agreement comes do you think that it will publicly acknowledge Pakistan as the guarantor of Afghanistan’s stability? Does it require that commitment and acknowledgment to succeed?

Joshua Foust: I don’t get the sense that COIN is a delaying tactic. A lot of people at the top—including General Petraeus and his fan club—genuinely believe COIN is the best thing, ever, for all things in Afghanistan. I obviously don’t share that assumption, but I do think they believe that honestly and aren’t playing a shell game. I also don’t have any indication that the top leadership has any real interest in political solutions with Pakistan and other regional players (which would, by design, have to include Iran, only Iran is excluded from NATO summits on the topic).

Now, I happen to think that we must publicly acknowledge and at least make a good-faith effort to secure Pakistan’s interests in post-America Afghanistan. I also am not aware of any push within the U.S. policy community to do that. Everything remains focused on “breaking” the Taliban, of severing Pakistan’s relationship to it, and so on. I’m not at all hopeful those counterproductive ideas will be reversed by the 2014 “withdrawal” date.

John Little: Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that something resembling a withdrawal occurs in 2014. We’ll also assume (and this is probably the safer assumption of the two) that the current military and diplomatic approaches will continue on their current tracks with little or no change. Where does that leave Afghanistan and where does that leave the region? What does 2015 look like?

Joshua Foust: I don’t see any evidence that we’re actually going to withdraw in 2014. Even Joe Biden, who had been consistently and vocally supporting “drop-dead” withdrawal dates, just told Hamid Karzai that we’ll be sticking around past 2014. So from where I sit, that leaves Afghanistan largely unchanged—there might be some withdrawal, but probably not to the extent that even people like CNAS advocate (which would be down to near-2005 levels, or around 25,000-30,000 troops). There will also be an increasingly shrill wing of the commentariat that will cry bloody murder at the thought of reducing our presence without catastrophic victory, regardless of ground conditions—which is exactly what’s happened with the July, 2011 date.

So, 2015? It will probably look much more like 2008 than anything else. And that ain’t good.

Guest Post: Regional Command South Public Affairs and Sgt. Jerry Wilson, TF Dragoon/CTZ Public Affairs

ZABUL, Afghanistan- Soldiers from the 2ndStryker Cavalry Regiment working alongside their Afghan National Police partners at the Police Training Center in Qalat started the New Year right Monday, Jan 3 by graduating a class of 134 new recruits. Class 1101 had the distinction of not only being the first class of 2011, but also the first class to include volunteers from the Commerce Stability Program and five female recruits.

The CSP is a village-level security program similar to a neighborhood watch. The program hires men from each village and pays them to man observation posts alongside ANP officers. In addition to the CSP, class 1101 also included the first female candidates to be inducted within the Zabul Province.

Five courageous women stepped up and despite fear of retribution toward their families and vowed to support and defend their homes. Due to the predominately male environment at the PTC and the lack of the women instructors, the female recruits were unable to engage in many of the practical exercises with the men. To compensate for this, the female recruits were given a more extensive overview of procedures during their classroom training.

Dragoons conduct a six-week long training course where students were taught techniques and law enforcement skills that will help them in their mission to provide security and stability to the citizens of Zabul Province. The training is separated into classroom and hands on exercises. Instructors teach basic skills like weapons handling, weapons maintenance and first aid. In addition, recruits were also taught room clearing, traffic control point operations and team leading procedures.

“They went through the basic classroom training such as first aid, the constitution, tactics and techniques, checkpoint operations and security operations,” said Capt. Vinh Bui, the Provincial Logistical Advisor for PTC. “They also went to the range and qualified with both rifle and pistol.”

“The intent is for them to have a basic understanding as police officers,” Bui explained, “what they need to know, in order to influence the locals as well as be effective members of the force.”

Graduation Day: A female ANP officer receives her diploma upon completion of the basic
Police training course . (Photo by Sgt. Jerry Wilson)

Bui stated that graduating these women from the program is a great step towards progress in Zabul and they will face many restrictions due to the current cultural standards.

“Because they are female,” Bui said, “there will always be a fear of retribution towards their families so they will always be covered up.” Bui stated that wearing the full traditional burka, female officers will not be as intimidating as their male counterparts wearing their body armor and weapons.

Bui did state they will face many challenges in their careers, these five officers have essentially contributed towards a mile-stone in progress resulting in a more stable secure and diverse Afghanistan.

“They give females a voice within the ANP,” Bui said. “They make it more diverse and well- rounded.”

Guest post and photos by Army Spc. Jennifer Spradlin, 16th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment

MULTI NATIONAL BASE TARIN KOT, Afghanistan – For many Soldiers, the iconic sound of helicopters in flight, a kind of background soundtrack to their lives, is synonymous with being deployed.

During the last nine months at Multi National Base Tarin Kot, Afghanistan, Spc. Jessica Newton has remained a fixture on the flight line as an armament specialist with D Company, Task Force No Mercy. The daily opportunity to work with helicopters has only increased her respect and interest in the aircraft.

“I enjoy mechanics and the way things work. The fact that we can make something out of nothing,” said Newton, an Orange Park, Fla., native. “When I joined the Army, I knew I wanted to work with rotary wing aircraft. I wanted to be a part of aviation.”

The TF No Mercy flight line is a lesson in controlled chaos, involving a continuous cycle of Soldiers, helicopters, missions and repairs. Even when parked and silent, the aerodynamic design of the AH-64D Apache Longbow gives off the impression of motion. The Apache helicopter is the Army’s premier attack helicopter, equipped with Hellfire missiles, 2.75 inch rockets and a 30-mm machine gun. It is the ultimate ally to ground forces.

As an armament technician, Newton is responsible for a variety of maintenance related tasks on the Apache helicopter to include: loading and unloading aircraft ammunitions, aircraft communications, aircraft sighting systems, and aircraft electrical wiring.

In her late twenties, Newton said she tried working civilian jobs prior to joining the Army, but found them monotonous and unfulfilling. Newton knew she wanted to be a part of a team.

“With the Army, you have a drive that you are doing something for the people around you,” said Newton. “I know I am in Afghanistan, but being with my shop and my unit is like a home away from home. When you are down, they’ll drive you. They won’t let you fall back, and that’s awesome.”

Newton’s quiet, Southern drawl belies the fact that she is a determined, hard-worker, but the unit’s leadership notices her constant desire to learn and advance in her career field.

“I’ve worked with Newton for about a year now. She’s one of the quickest learners that we’ve had,” said Staff Sgt. Dean Hess, senior armament maintenance supervisor, D Co., TF No Mercy.
Hess previously deployed to Iraq and is on his second deployment to Afghanistan. He said each Soldier has different qualities and it is the role of a non-commissioned officer to bring out the best in them.

“One of the things I am looking for in a good Soldier is one who pays attention to their job and knows their job. With our job, every repair that we do on an aircraft, the pilots’ lives are at stake. Newton is very dependable,” said Hess, a Clearwater, Fla., native .

Newton said her ultimate goal was to apply for acceptance into the Warrant Officer Course in order to become a helicopter pilot, but until then, she is more than happy working with her hands and making sure everything is done right to make the mission happen.

“If we aren’t doing our job, [pilots] can’t do their job, and if they can’t do their job, they aren’t helping the Soldiers on the ground. That’s why it’s important that we are always striving to get better and learn more,” said Newton.

No surprises here:

President Barack Obama accepted the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal “with considerable regret” and nominated Gen. David Petraeus, the head of the U.S. Central Command. The moves come in the wake of the revelation that Rolling Stone magazine would publish politically explosive remarks made by the general and his aides about key administration officials.

While it’s hard to argue with McChrystal’s reported positions on his civilian leaders it’s also hard to argue that the behavior captured in the Rolling Stone piece is acceptable. This is an unfortunate end to an honorable career.

The White House has asked the Pentagon to make a list of possible replacements for Gen. Stanley McChrystal because President Barack Obama wants to be ready if he decides to fire the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, a senior administration official told CNN Wednesday.

McChrystal is unlikely to survive the fallout from remarks he made about colleagues in a magazine profile to be published Friday, a Pentagon source who has ongoing contacts with the general told CNN earlier.

Few expect him to walk away from this meeting with his job despite a heroic record of service. Eliot A. Cohen wraps it up pretty well in Why McChrystal Has to Go:

Gen. McChrystal’s just-published interview in Rolling Stone magazine is an appalling violation of norms of civilian-military relations. To read it is to wince, repeatedly—at the mockery of the vice president and the president’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, at the sniping directed toward the U.S. ambassador, at a member of his staff who, when asked whom the general was having dinner with in Paris said, “Some French minister. It’s so [expletive deleted] gay.” The quotes from Gen. McChrystal’s underlings bespeak a staff so clueless, swaggering and out of control that a wholesale purge looks to be indicated.

That he and his staff would think and say these things – privately – is not the least bit surprising. However, allowing this behavior to occur over an extended period of time in the presence of a journalist is actually pretty shocking. It’s also a bit surprising that McChrystal expressed no concern or regret to Rolling Stone after his pre-publication review of the piece. Perhaps he saw it coming and was resigned to his fate. It’s impossible to know what the general was thinking (at least until the book comes out) but I think Joe Klein probably has it right:

This is an extraordinary man, with the perfect skill set necessary for the mission in Afghanistan: a thorough knowledge of counterinsurgency and deep experience in special operations. But there is another side to McChrystal: he is so focused on his real job that he hasn’t spent sufficient time learning how to play the public relations game. He speaks his mind; in private conversations, I’ve found, he is incapable of fudging the truth. This leads to a certain myopia, an innocence regarding the not-so-brave new world of the media. He spoke his mind during a question and answer session in London last autumn, expressing his skepticism about Vice President Biden’s preference for a smaller force in Afghanistan, with a heavy emphasis on special operations. And now he has been caught by a Rolling Stone reporter, speaking his mind on a number of subjects.

Of course, there is a significant difference between speaking one’s mind and insubordination and McChrystal and his staff have strayed – well, charged – into the latter. The resulting fallout will have an impact far beyond the personalities involved and may be one of the defining moments of this war.

NY Daily News: NBC News reported that Duncan Boothby quit his role on the general’s public relations team. According to a senior military official, he was “asked to resign.”

Politico: Rolling Stone’s executive editor on Tuesday said that Gen. Stanley McChrystal did not raise any objections to a new article that repeatedly quotes him criticizing the administration.

HP: Afghanistan’s president believes that U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal is the “best commander” of the nearly 9-year-old war and hopes that President Barack Obama doesn’t decide to replace him, the Afghan leader’s spokesman said Tuesday.

First Read: Sen. John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on MSNBC’s Daily Rundown Tuesday that Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s critical comments about the White House were “a mistake” and “poor judgment.”

Thomas P.M. Barnett: I just read the Rolling Stone piece and found the tone of disrespect somewhat stunning.

It isn’t looking good for the general:

The top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has been summoned to the White House to explain biting and unflattering remarks he made to a freelance writer about President Barack Obama and others in the Obama administration.

The face-to-face comes as pundits are already calling for McChrystal to resign for insubordination.

McChrystal has been instructed to fly from Kabul to Washington today to attend Obama’s regular monthly security team meeting tomorrow at the White House

It sounds like McChrystal wasn’t pulling any punches – and let his aides get far too friendly with a visiting reporter:

In the eight-page article, released to reporters on Monday ahead of publication, McChrystal appears to belittle Vice President Joe Biden and accuses Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Kabul, of undermining his war plan within the administration.

Asked by the Rolling Stone reporter about what he now feels of the war strategy advocated by Biden last fall – fewer troops, more drone attacks – the article reports that McChrystal and his aides attempted to come up with a good one-liner to dismiss the question. “Are you asking about Vice President Biden?” McChrystal reportedly jokes. “Who’s that?”

Later in the article, McChrystal turns more serious when asked about cables sent last fall to Washington by Eikenberry. The cables called into question the major troop increase advocated by McChrystal’s team and the U.S.’s backing of Afghan President Hamid Karzai – views that the ambassador had not previously raised with McChrystal or his staff.

“I like Karl, I’ve known him for years, but they’d never said anything like that to us before,” McChrystal is quoted as saying. “Here’s one that covers his flank for the history books. Now if we fail, they can say, ‘I told you so.’”

McChrystal issued a statement last night:

He said he has enormous respect for the Obama administration, and the piece fell short of his principles of “personal honor and professional integrity.”

“I extend my sincerest apology for this profile. It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened,” said McChrystal, adding that he remains “committed to ensuring” the successful outcome of the almost nine-year-old Afghan war.

Reaction:

Marc Ambinder
What in the heck was Gen. Stanley McChrystal thinking? I mean, I know what he was thinking: he was tired of being the victim of what he believes is a concerted effort on behalf of Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry and others to undermine everything he was given 18 months to do. He was tired of being perceived in the press as a neoconservative killer, Dick Cheney’s hired assassin, or disloyal to President Obama and his staff. He was angry at being blamed for leaking the draft of his report to the President to Bob Woodward. (He did NOT leak the document). He was miffed that a large number of mid-ranking soldiers and battalion commanders and enlisted guys didn’t support his strategy.

The Moderate Voice
Relations between McChrystal and the White House have never been stellar. So let’s just say that now in the wake of this profile they are less stellar — a lot less stellar — than they’ve been ever before.

Hot Air
Compare and contrast the McChrystal/Eikenberry relationship with that of Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, whom Foreign Policy noted last year never allowed their disagreements to go public. This isn’t the first time McChrystal’s spoken publicly about matters the White House would prefer remained in-house, either. Remember last year when The One freaked out over his speech in London calling for more troops?

The Campaign Spot
Many people I know think highly of McChrystal, and he has earned his accolades. But a general in the American armed forces cannot, on the record, mock or deride thevice president and the U.S. ambassador, much less the president of the United States. You and I can; we’re just some schmoes; we don’t report to him in the chain of command. I’m sure many generals have thought many colorful expressions of criticism toward presidents over the years, but they cannot blab them to reporters.

Outside the Beltway
What happens to McChrystal at this point is up to Obama, but given the General’s public statements it’s hard for me to see how the White House and Pentagon can keep him in place. This is insubordination, and there’s really only one appropriate response.

Two soldiers talk about war injuries and how they beat the odds to serve together again in Afghanistan. SFC Matthew Chlosta brings us the story from Kabul.

“This is not some kind of a production program, or something, where you are going to meet these particular objectives this week and next week,” he said. “This is a process. We think we have the right assets. We have the right strategy. We have the right leadership. And most of our allies and partners share our view that things are heading in the right direction and that we will be able to show clear progress and that we are on the right track by the end of this year.”

Of course everyone, politicians included, knows that wars aren’t fought on strict timelines or project managed down to the hour and that setbacks occur but political motivations, not reality, will continue to heavily influence the narrative anyway.

It was a scary moment but he appears to be fine:

Update at 10:47 a.m. ET: USA TODAY’s Tom Vanden Brook says aides and others in the audience rushed to Petraeus’ side. He regained consciousness and walked from the hearing room under his own power and the hearing was abruptly adjourned.

Vanden Brook quotes Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the committee, as saying the general “appears to be doing very much better.”

Petraeus was eating, Levin says, and may have been dehydrated. Levin says the hearing might resume. Senators remain in the chamber.

Imagine having to listen to politicians drone on like that while you’re already dehydrated and exhausted. I’m surprised that the general is already up and walking.

Take a look at a class training servicemembers how to react to a rollover situation in a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle (MRAP) in Kandahar. Master Sgt. Samuel Ameen has the story from Afghanistan.

A leading U.S. newspaper reports U.S. geologists have discovered nearly one trillion dollars’ worth of untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan.

The New York Times says U.S. officials believe the vast veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold, lithium, and niobium could “fundamentally alter” the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war. U.S. officials told the newspaper Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the “most important mining centers in the world.”

Lithium is a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for cell phones and laptops. Niobium is a soft metal used in producing superconducting steel.

This will be hugely beneficial for someone (someday – when the infrastructure to exploit these resources exists) but I’d bet that Afghanistan is more likely to go the way of Africa where immense resources and poverty tend to run on parallel tracks. One thing is certain though – we aren’t leaving any time soon.

Update:
Similar thoughts at Outside the Beltway:

So, instead of bringing the country together and leading to an era of prosperity unlike anything Afghanistan has ever seen in it’s history, this discovery could serve to tear the country apart even further as factions fight over the wealth buried underneath them. Even if that doesn’t happen, however, the history of natural resources exploitation in the third world does not bode well for the Afghan people.

Melissa Clouthier posts her thoughts over at Right Wing News:

Well, unless America is willing to go colonial and impose civilization on these folks, it will mean more infighting and civil war.

Finally, head over to Naked Capitalism for the most pessimistic take on the whole matter.

The first class of U.S. military servicemembers and civilians in the new AFPAK Hands program arrived here and continued their training this week at the Counterinsurgency Training Academy-Afghanistan. The International Security Assistance Force is trying to build better long term relationships with the Afghan and Pakistan people, government and military using the AFPAK Hands program. Air Force Staff Sgt. Brent Skeen has the story from Kabul.

The Legion Academy conducts training for the 6th Kandak Afghan National Army and the Maiwand Afghan National Police. Task Force Legion Soldiers teach combined combat skills, foster partnering relationships, conduct joint patrols and work to improve security in Maiwand.

For the past 4 years this district of Nad Ali was under the control of the Taliban, then a month ago Afghan and ISAF forces launched a joint operation to push the insurgents out and regain a hold of the area.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and why they’re so valuable to the war on terror.

General Stanley McChrystal, International Security Assistance Force commander, and Ambassador Mark Sedwill, NATO Senior Civilian Representative, spoke with reporters Mar. 8 at ISAF headquarters. Ambassador Sedwill discusses reconciliation and the role of the Afghan government. Gen. McChrystal details the efforts to expand security across the country by building the capacity of the Afghan National Security Forces.

Troops work to build trust with local Afghans. Cpl. Bryan Lett has the story for American Forces Network Afghanistan.