Getting our act together in Afghanistan

Here is a guest report from my friend Maj. Daniel Morgan, who is not the Revolutionary War general, but who is nearing the end of a tour of duty with 101^st Airborne in Afghanistan (and also has a couple of Iraq tours under his belt).

I was especially struck by his point about cross-border communications between units below high-level headquarters. It is the type of answer that doesn’t occur to anybody in a national capital — but can make a major difference to someone spending a year-long combat tour in a remote corner of eastern Afghanistan: 

As I wind up here and think through things, I want to address what I think is the main focus here for success from a BCT [brigade combat team] perspective.  . . . .  [M]y belief is that for Afghanistan, the following three principles apply:

1.  Partnership.  There are two, if not three, partnership efforts here with Afghan Security Forces, consisting of the Afghan Army, Police and if on the border, the Border Police. Units must sacrifice to support the partnership method at the US battalion and BCT levels. It is only here that ANSF forces will take the lead. . .

2. Road Infrastructure. This is simple. Afghanistan is not Iraq. The tribes are not tribes here. They are communal villages or communities for two reasons. First, the rugged, foreboding terrain separates them by sheer physical presence. So, they have different needs and interests. Second, the infrastructure does not connect them to basic services or government. You have to build roads–this brings security, health clinics, markets/bazaars, etc. However, that is not enough. It is here where our example of the infamous Khost-Gardez Road success demonstrates how a BCT must fight this fight; whereas two Russian Divisions were slaughtered by the mujahideen. We have influenced mullas and tribal elders; hired a percentage of local nationals and bartered for their pay until we agreed; we built radio towers and issued radios to the population and embarked on an information campaign; we put the Afghan Police on the road to interact; we put the Afghan Army in the villages on patrol and in key observation posts in the high ground; we flew the Afghan Governor to the key population densities to maintain support and get the population to be the guarantor of security; and we conducted dozens of AASLTs and killed and destroyed the enemy and their logistics through aerial and ground signal intel and use of aerial observation. This technique applies to counternarcotics as well. You cannot eradicate unless there is security present in the area and some form of governance and alternative for the population.

3. Afghan Border and Military Diplomacy. The border requires a decentralized approached to controlling the FATA [the Pakistani border area] and other border regions to stop the back-and-forth movement of the enemy. US, Afghan, and Pakistan BDE [brigade] Commanders must be ordered and held accountable for this effort. Lessons from our poor border effort with Mexico are a prime example. Our DoS [Department of State] and DoD [Department of Defense] leadership must gain support between Afghan and Pakistan officials to build a common communication architecture at the tactical level, defined as platoon to battalion level in order to coordinate operations – not at the CJTF and General Headquarters in Islamabad. Right now, everything is at the top and the BCTs and below make modest gains now. We need to go ahead and purchase commercial off-the-shelf communications for the tactical level and someone must develop manage it between the two countries. If you do not isolate the enemy from the freedom of movement across the border, this will never end — because all the enemy needs to do is use the terrain that separates the tribes and lack of road infrastructure that prevents connection to government and security to maintain their influence and numbers in countless safe havens.

Lastly, this remains a military operation. Until we figure out how to coordinate and streamline the interagency to report and remain within the military Commander’s intent, we will continue to waste resources in a "whack-a-mole" process vice [instead of] within the correct population densities overlaid on terrain and other key factors.