Afghanistan (49 page)

MG Mark Milley described coalition SOF as “critical to our overall effort of full-spectrum counter-insurgency operations. Special operations target leaders of the insurgency and target networks, whose cellular structure otherwise makes them hard to locate and defeat. Their use must complement conventional forces. Conventional force operations set the conditions for special operations. . . . Interdicting the enemy on the ratlines is fundamental to what we do.”
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He stated that the existence of a separate chain of command for SOF did not undercut their coordination: “Every special operation in Regional Command-East must be coordinated and approved. We do not command the forces, but RC-E owns the battlespace.” With SOCOM functioning as a supporting commander in Afghanistan, special operations must be coordinated with CENTCOM, and, through it, the regional commands in Afghanistan and their tactical units. CENTCOM also controls its own special operations forces, and these must be coordinated in a similar way.

Special operations have been an important part of coalition intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) efforts, gathering intelligence through contact with Afghans in areas away from conventional forces or with covert observation posts. MG Mark Milley described coalition ISR as having greatly improved since 2008. “ISR incorporates patrols, human intelligence, space-based platforms, UAVs, signals intelligence, and full-motion video. We see improvements every 90 days. The intelligence community is on a steep upwards slope of improvement.”

Others, however, had a less optimistic view; one Afghan official said: “The coalition is good at seeing, less good at understanding.” Despite improved technology such as the use of UAVs, providing the close integration of intelligence and operational commands that is vital in counter-insurgency conflicts has often proven difficult to achieve by US and coalition forces. Counter-insurgency warfare puts the emphasis on providing operational intelligence to the small unit level, and this continued to be lacking in many cases. Battalions often do not have their own UAV capability. In April 2008, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, expressing a concern that the US services were not moving fast enough to provide needed ISR capabilities, formed an ISR task force to assess requirements and meet operational needs. CENTCOM formed its own ISR Task Force.

Indeed, understanding has often been far behind collection capability, but efforts have been made to provide military leaders with more in-depth knowledge on the Afghan and human dimension of the situation, for example, by the US investment in deployed human terrain teams (HTTs) able to bring expertise about the local population and their customs and behavior to support forces in the field, who otherwise would lack specialist insights to assist their task of knowing and “understanding.”

ISR is currently in the hands of the coalition. Coalition HUMINT, vital in other counter-insurgency situations, has been more limited, reflecting language and cultural barriers and their deployment in forward operating bases rather than right in the villages.
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Afghan defense minister Rahim Wardak greatly regrets the Afghan National Army’s (ANA’s) lack of an independent ISR capability.
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The Afghan National Police (ANP) still lacks an intelligence capability that can build on its contacts within the population and thus make this information available to their coalition allies where it is needed the most.
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However, Afghanistan’s intelligence service, the “Amaniyat,” the National Directorate of Security (NDS), is generally considered a success by coalition and Afghan observers alike. Its director, Amrullah Saleh, has a reputation for competence and rectitude and is considered (along with Atmar, the interior minister and Mohammed Asif Rahimi, the agriculture minister) to be one of the brightest and sharpest
of a new generation of Afghan leaders. Pakistani observers have claimed that this organization is heavily influenced by India and that it has carried out political warfare and terrorism inside Pakistan, but this dissenting view should not undercut their importance.
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However, the Pakistani perceptions of the NDS as an adversary reportedly led to the assassination of the deputy director of the NDS, Dr. Abdullah Laghmani, in September 2009; he had reportedly been targeted by ISI for a decade, and his death has been a loss to security efforts in Afghanistan.
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The NDS is a large service, runs multiple networks of informers, and has had success infiltrating terrorist and insurgent groups as well as narcotics traffickers, making the continued coalition support and engagement with this Afghan agency important for any future successes.
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Potential for a Broader Insurgency

By 2008–09, insurgent groups in Afghanistan were made up of only a minority of one of Afghanistan’s ethnolinguistic groups, the Pushtuns. But tensions between the current government in Kabul, with its Pushtun leaders but significant non-Pushtun power, and Afghans of other ethnolinguistic groups have caused instability to spread beyond the Pushtun districts that have been the hotbed of the insurgency. The widespread dissatisfaction of non-Pushtuns with the Karzai government became too virulent to be ignored on 29 May 2006, when a road accident with a coalition convoy in Kabul led to large-scale rioting, started by Panjsheris, which soon spread to other groups as the government’s weakness and inability to deal with the situation made resentment toward foreigners a magnet for broader disaffection.
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In the north of Afghanistan, the security threat is from Pushtun insurgents, mainly from the population that has lived in these majority Dari and Turkic-speaking provinces since King Abdur Rahman resettled them in the nineteenth century. These provinces also have suffered from the local culture of corruption and criminal activity, neither limited to Pushtuns. In 2008–10, it was apparent that weapons from the more secure northern and western areas of Afghanistan were ending up in the hands of the insurgents in the south and east. These weapons originated in areas where opium production has been cut back, which included almost
all of the non-Pushtun areas of Afghanistan, and therefore illicit trading in other valued commodities had the opportunity to thrive. The weapons were sold to traders and resold to the insurgents, largely in Pakistan’s border bazaars such as Wana and Parachinar.

By 2008–10, criminality in northern Afghanistan was increasing, although it was not as severe as in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
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Some criminals in otherwise secure areas have made common cause with those in authority with whom they share ethnolinguistic or other links, often by being former comrades in arms from previous conflicts. Criminals in the south and east are often effectively protected by insurgents who prevent government action against them. Many of these criminals claim to be Afghan Taliban, but really it is the actual Afghan Taliban to whom they owe protection for the very ability to function. This practice has led the Afghan Taliban to create an “ombudsman” function to resolve complaints against them by grassroots Afghans.

By 2008, the German forces stationed in the north reported a sizable increase in violence by other non-Pushtun ethnolinguistic groups, reflecting increased resentment toward the Kabul regime and its coalition allies. The security situation in the north deteriorated soon thereafter. The Afghan Taliban had made a deliberate effort to increase their activities in the north in response to pre-election counter-insurgent offensives by coalition forces in the south during 2008–09. Kunduz, a Pushtun city in a largely Tajik province, became the flashpoint for the increasing insurgency in the north.
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Kunduz has been the focus of the German military commitment for a number of years. The Germans’ restrictive national caveats and rules of engagement (RoE) have been seen as contributing to increased insurgent control, especially in the districts around Kunduz city and northward to the border with Tajikistan. Insurgency has also increased in Badghis province, where the Spanish coalition forces stationed there are similarly restricted by their national command authorities.
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The potential exists for “insurgency creep,” reflecting political dissatisfaction, cultural opposition, and lack of economic opportunity even in areas where there has not been insurgent action in the past. There is widespread disaffection in the north and west over the preponderance of
aid flowing to the Pushtun south and east, which are also the two regions where violence is the worst. Mark Ward, a UNAMA official working on aid issues, said: “If you look at the security map, it does not stay the same. The bad guys are going where we are not. We cannot afford another front.”
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The challenge is to allocate enough resources to create a stable enough civil infrastructure throughout all Afghanistan so that the “bad guys” are not able to move into areas where they had not previously operated and undo the progress that the coalition and Afghans have worked to achieve.

The Afghan Security Forces

By 2002, the Taliban and Al Qaeda fighting forces had fled across the border to Pakistan, and the future of Afghanistan’s armed forces became an issue. The Northern Alliance initially envisioned their forces, the nominal army of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, transforming into the actual army of the new post-Bonn Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. But when all the armed forces of the anti-Taliban Afghan forces were added together—designated the Afghan Military Forces (AMF)—they proved too large, too unwieldy, and totally unreformed. They retained their basic characteristics of either retaining loyalty to one of the three major groups of the Northern Alliance—Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras—and their limited number of pre-2001 ethnic Pusthnun allies, or were anti-Taliban Pushtun militias that had been improvised in the south and east. In addition, the defense ministry, then under the former Northern Alliance battlefield commander Mohammed Qassam Fahim, along with the interior ministry, had only nominal control over a number of provincial and district level militia and police forces. In Pushtun areas, this control was even more minimal. As part of the AMF, these forces were meant to be designated as military units and their commanders commissioned as formal officers. The fighting men were to receive military salaries, small as they were. These men were mainly recruited by local warlords or strongmen to whom they remained loyal. In addition, separate from these, there were other Afghan militia forces, organized and led by coalition troops in many cases.
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Using the Northern Alliance as the cadre for the new Afghan army proved unacceptable to other Afghan groups,
especially among Kabulis and returning exiles, all of whom lacked comparable forces and were concerned that this would give the Northern Alliance’s strength of arms effective sway over the national government, regardless of the results of the constitutional and electoral processes.

In 2002–03 there were already extensive problems with the AMF. Fahim had established 40 divisions that were concentrated in—but by no means limited to—the south, even though many had only a few hundred fighting men. There were so many “ghost” soldiers, kept on the rolls so their commanders could pocket their pay, that no one knew the size of the AMF. Many of the AMF unit commanders in the south were Pushtuns who had turned against the Taliban in 2001. However, they were still often identified with repression under pre-Taliban regimes or else shared the Taliban’s loss of legitimacy. Conflicts involving local AMF units resulted when factions of nominally pro-Kabul Pushtuns clashed in Kandahar, Paktia, Khost, and Nangarhar provinces in 2002–04. In addition to the tension caused by the coalition supporting AMF commanders who effectively were local Pushtun warlords, many Pushtuns resented the Kabul-based control of the AMF by non-Pushtuns, especially Panjsheris.

Since 2003, the US had decided not to invest resources in reforming the AMF and those militia forces that were under US or coalition control. Instead, they focused on demobilizing them and instead forming two new organizations, the ANA and ANP. The ANA was first created in 2002, with the goal of giving the Kabul government a politically reliable force as a counterweight to the AMF with its links to the Northern Alliance. But these old forces were disbanded before the ANA and ANP were ready to take their place, giving the insurgency a chance to re-emerge. This was especially notable in areas such as Khost, where the local 25th Division of the AMF and militias together had worked with the provincial governor and the local population. When they were disbanded, the insurgent activity in the Khost area increased rapidly. Fahim was replaced as minister of defense in December 2004 by Rahim Wardak, a US-trained professional solider and returning exile who had served as military chairman of one of the Peshawar parties in the anti-Soviet conflict and as chief of staff of the ISA’s army in 1992. The Northern Alliance leaders saw this
as a move to deny them participation in the post-Taliban government. This marked the transition to the emphasis on the new ANA rather than continuing the forces that had fought the Taliban in 2001. Because the aid donors were providing the resources, they directed the process and set priorities. This included setting age limits for enlistment that kept many veterans of the anti-Soviet war out of the ANA enlisted ranks, making them available for service with the insurgents or narcotics traffickers.

The disbandment of the AMF meant that Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) of its forces became a coalition priority. Former interior minister Ali Jalali stressed the importance of disarming and demobilizing both the AMF and local armed groups and relying on the uniformed forces of the ANA and ANP to keep the peace: “In DDR, we had to demobilize militias to create a safe environment. To fill the vacuum, we had to create the ANA.”
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The Japanese-funded UNAMA Disarmament, Demobilization and Rehabilitation (DDR) program started with good intentions, but ended up being perceived by non-Pushtuns as a way of disarming them while building up the forces of a new Pushtun-dominated government in Kabul. To these Afghans, the DDR program was seen as being intent on preventing any future self-defense against foreign invasion while leaving the Pakistan-based insurgency, where most of the conflict originated, unaffected. Historically, especially against the British and Soviets in past centuries, the defense of Afghanistan against foreign invaders has relied on the local people of Afghanistan in arms rather than the uniformed Afghan military. Saleh Registani, member of parliament from Panjshir province, said that the re-emergence of the Taliban was encouraged by “Disarmament of the United Front/Northern Alliance and the mujahideen in general, the only groups that were capable of fighting the Taliban and the groups that would never accept the Taliban’s ideology.”
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The desire, especially by the coalition and the Kabul government, to see Afghanistan rely on the ANA and ANP, which they controlled, for defense against the insurgents has had to be compromised with the reality that effective counter-insurgency warfare includes armed villagers acting in self-defense. Yet the potential for armed groups of Afghans fighting their own private conflicts was very real. Reconciling these two
requirements in a country where there are lots of weapons and a tradition of individuals being armed even in peacetime has been a challenge that the formation of the ANA and ANP has not yet resolved.