War Games 2010

Flag-Raising in Marjah

By now, just about anyone who is tuned into current events in Afghanistan has been thoroughly disabused of the notion that the well-publicized campaign to wrest the “city” of Marjah from the clutches of the Taliban was anything more than a military PR stunt – and a not especially well-conceived one, at that.

As Gareth Porter reported:

“It turns out, however, that the picture of Marjah presented by military officials and obediently reported by major news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the conflict.”

“Marjah is not a city or even a real town, but either a few clusters of farmers’ homes or a large agricultural area covering much of the southern Helmand River Valley”.

“’It’s not urban at all,’ an official of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), who asked not to be identified, admitted to IPS Sunday. He called Marjah a ‘rural community.’ It’s a collection of village farms, with typical family compounds,’ said the official, adding that the homes are reasonably prosperous by Afghan standards.”

Far, far from a bustling urban center of 80,000 and “the biggest town under Taliban control” or the “linchpin of the militants’ logistical and opium-smuggling network,” as breathlessly reported by AP quoting “Marine commanders.”

Even after the operation began, military spokesmen were perpetuating the myth reporting that Marines were “in the majority of the city at this point” and clearing “neighborhoods”. There were no photographs, of course, of the “urban fight” for Marjah, because as Gertrude Stein would have said ‘there was no “there” there.’ An anonymous ISAF official said the only population numbering tens of thousands associated with Marjah is spread across many villages and almost 200 square kilometers, or about 125 square miles.

Marjah is so sparsely populated that it has never even been incorporated . . .

Downtown Marjah

Got A New Attitude

For those who aren’t up to date on 21^st century military strategy, evidently the hyperbole surrounding Marjah is de rigueur in the world of “counterinsurgency” or COIN, as it’s sometimes dubbed. Counterinsurgency is all about “psy ops” which some might call “psychological warfare” but others would describe as “influencing hearts and minds.”

According to the COIN manual, one of the foremost tasks of a COIN campaign is to “create the narrative,” asserting that news media “directly influence the attitude of key audiences toward counterinsurgents, their operations and the opposing insurgency.” As Gen. McChrystal, going by the book, said at the outset of the Marjah offensive: “This is all a war of perceptions.”

Be that as it may, it looks like garden-variety lies, to me, and pretty damn amateurish lies at that. Now I understand that McChrystal is an early-adopter of this COIN idea and probably a few kinks still remain but, for Pete’s sake, any fifth-grader with Google Earth can turn this Marjah baloney into a laughable embarrassment. I’m no military strategist but I suspect that sort of bumbling image doesn’t do our military a whole lot of good at home or abroad, so why do it?

It can’t be to win over Afghanis, they live there. They know that Marjah is not bigger than Pittsburgh, Cleveland or Washington DC. They know that it’s no Taliban stronghold or a “linchpin” in Taliban logistics. I’m sure that if they get wind of how the US military characterized their farms it would confirm their belief that we’re all just foreign idiots and strengthen their resolve to get us out of there before more Afghans die for this nonsense.

Could it be to win back flagging American support for another ten years in Afghanistan? I doubt it, the American public knows, by now, that this enemy is a moving target and the last thing anyone wants is the 400 or 500 ISAF casualties per month predicted for this summer’s push into Kandahar.

And, of course, it’s possible that there’s a darker objective. There has been a lot of reportage coming out of the Marjah campaign about the frustration of our troops in waging a war that promises to keep civilian casualties low. If there’s one thing that will beef up support for more traditional murder and mayhem, in theater, it’s the notion that our troops are in greater danger because of counterinsurgency “caution.”

Regardless, it’s interesting to me that this big push in Helmand Province was shaping up mere weeks after Marine Maj. Gen. Richard Mills declared “Mission Accomplished” in Helmand Province (a la Fallujah):

“U.S. forces have driven the Taliban from most towns and villages in the strategic Helmand province of Afghanistan, leaving incoming troops with the mission of holding key areas and rebuilding the economy, Marine commanders say.”

“They’ve taken on the Taliban, the insurgency, right in the heartland and they’ve defeated them. I see us moving away from the clear phase and moving into the hold and build phase.”

The fun and games don’t stop at the Marjah pre-battle disinformation campaign, though. Notwithstanding Maj. Gen. Mills assessment of a done deal, it is now time, once again, to secure and occupy Marjah and turn it into a model Hooterville. As promised, Gen. McChrystal drops in from the sky and delivers the long-awaited “government-in-a-box.” Complete with one Haji Abdul Zahir, the newly appointed district governor of Marjah, the man handpicked by General McChrystal and Governor Mangal.

So far, Zahir has been working with a small crew of Western “advisors” and one Afghan assistant in a government compound described as having only rudimentary infrastructure. Odd, isn’t it, that in the bustling city of Marjah no better digs could be found for the new governor?

Zahir is getting lots of conspicuous help from Marjah’s liberators, being delivered here and there for meetings by Blackhawk “air-taxi” so that he projects the right image of authority from the get-go. This, of course, makes short-term sense but, as Joshua Foust astutely points out on Registan.net, Zahir is undoubtedly in for a rocky ride:

“Whenever you bring in an outsider, swaddle him with money and weapons, then he’s going to command power—he’d have to, there’d be no other way for the village/area to operate. But this brings back the problem of Abdul Rahman Jan, the former police chief: he’s pissed he’s not in charge. Brutal or no, the man has local influence, ties to the local community, and commands a lot of manpower. What we’ve done by installing Haji Zahir is create a power struggle in the area when there wasn’t one before—surely a less-than-optimal solution for restoring ‘those peaceful days’ of Zahir’s youth.”

“So the pattern here is one where the Taliban have brought relative stability and order (again, however brutal) to this place, and we’ve destroyed that in an effort to build something new. Breaking that pattern is of vital importance, but to do that you need to have a proper plan—simply nominating some expat pet Afghan to roll in and throw benjamins isn’t exactly a solid plan, nor is the current strategy of drawing dots on a map. This doesn’t look especially good.”

I have to agree that planting Zahir is not the best counterinsurgency idea ever; and that’s before even taking a glance at the man’s resume which, to put it diplomatically, is colorful. Zahir has two wives and thirteen children and twenty years ago he decided to take them all on a self-imposed exile to Germany. According to Zahir he was being harassed by the Taliban (in the 1980’s). During his 15 years in “exile,” Zahir worked variously as: a driver, a hotel worker and a laundry worker.

Zahir would probably still be anonymously working away in a German laundry today except that he ran afoul of German authorities and was convicted and imprisoned for four years for attempted murder. His victim: his stepson who had made the mistake of criticizing Zahir for beating his mother. After his release in 2000, Zahir (now persona non grata in Germany) returned to Afghanistan. Not appreciative of the finer distinctions between German law and tribal law, Zahir continues to protest that he did nothing untoward and should never have been imprisoned.

Basically what Zahir has to commend him for this job is that he’s a member of the right tribe.

If You Build It, They Will Come

Come Home to Marjah

You have to love American optimism (and total disregard for foreign cultures) – the day after Victory in Marjah was declared, this little scene played out:

“On Friday, the Marines sought to convene a meeting of residents at the mosque next to the Loy Chreh bazaar, a crowded, ramshackle place that once teemed with opium merchants who bought poppy paste from local farmers and resold the contraband to drug processors. Now it is abandoned.”

“The meeting was scheduled for 8 a.m. At 7:45, Lt. Col. Cal Worth pulled on his body armour in preparation for the 50-yard walk to the mosque. ‘Inshallah’ – God willing – there will actually be people out there,’ he said, peering down the street toward the mosque from his battalion’s headquarters. But nobody was there.”

“Fifteen minutes later, he looked again. Again, nobody. He repeated the routine a few more times before deciding at 9:15 to set off. On his way, he encountered two middle-aged men heading for the Marine base. They wanted to know when they could return to their stalls in the market to salvage a few goods. “

“He told them the market would be reopened soon and encouraged them to come back to work. The men were noncommittal.”

“’The Taliban are still here,’ one of the men said.”

And, indeed, the Taliban are still there, and will continue to be there – they live there, as have their families for hundreds if not thousands of years. But evidently, that is now Zahir’s problem.

According to an entertaining report on Sunday

“On Sunday, Afghan and American military leaders prodded Zahir with requests to exert more control and persuade reluctant Marjah leaders pushed out by the Taliban that they needed to return.” [A daunting prospect since the whole place is covered with improvised landmines.]

“Zahir spent most of the three-hour meeting listening to the concerns, posing questions and asking the U.S. Marines to pump more money into Marjah to get projects off the ground.”

“During Sunday’s meeting, the U.S. Army adviser working with Afghan forces told Zahir that the security forces were being constrained because there was no judicial system in place to jail suspected Taliban insurgents turned in by local residents.”

“’We need to sit down and have a very strong discussion about how we’re going to deal with Afghan justice for these men we know are hurting people,’ said Matt, who’s advising Afghan police in one section of Marjah. They look at me and smile because they know they’re going to be released within 24 to 48 hours. The people of southern Marjah are not going to be confident in our ability to bring security until we can permanently take those men off the battlefield,’ he said. ‘That’s where we earn the population’s trust.’”

Now see, I would have fully expected that any respectable “government-in-a-box” would have contained a fully operational judicial system – at the very least.

Marjah’s “G in B” had nothing in it but but an ex-con, a month of free passes for helicopter rides, a handful of advisors at $200K a pop, and bags of “petty cash.” Good luck, Marjah, we’ll be watching your democracy build-out progress on Google Earth. Oh, and Governor Zahir, watch your back; Abdul Rahman Jan is currently unemployed and your son-in-law is rumored to be coming out of exile . . .

[tags]Marjah, Helmand, Haji Abdul Zahir, Abdul Rahman Jan, Gen. McChrystal, Maj. Gen. Richard Mills[/tags]