Friday, November 13, 2009
The AP recently published an article calling on two recent studies from the U.S. Army Medical Department's Mental Health Advisory team. These reports polled soldiers in combat and non-combat units in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and found that unit morale is dropping in Afghanistan and holding steady in Iraq.
As President Obama continues to mull his response to General McChrystal's request for more troops, and in the wake of the cowardly killings of 13 Soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, the media is asking lots of questions about the mental health of America's military. And these reports seem to be more fuel for the theory that our men and women serving overseas are being stretched to the breaking point.
I read both reports. Some of the statistics in them fall neatly into the, "Well, Duh!" category. Soldiers on their third or fourth overseas deployments are more likely to have marital problems, and are more likely to be planning to get out of the military than those on their first or second deployment. Okay, that's a no-brainer.
But other findings had me scratching my head. The morale of individual soldiers seemed to be holding steady, but reported "unit morale" (the term wasn't defined) was dropping in Afghanistan but fine in Iraq. The AP writer speculates that this has to do with the "record violence" that combat troops are experiencing in the country, and with a sharp drop in combat seen in Iraq.
In my own experience in Afghanistan, I didn't meet a single American who said the war wasn't worth winning. What affected their morale the most was the perception that their government wasn't willing to give them what they needed to win.
My friends currently deployed to Iraq, on the other hand, report being bored out of their skulls and feelings of worthlessness because they all know the real fight is in Afghanistan. And if they have to be away from their families for a year they'd rather be doing something worthwhile rather than guarding concrete barricades on bases in Iraq.
Some other interesting tidbits from the studies: combat troops reported that a little time to "off-gas" by playing video games or surfing the internet provided a significant amount of stress reduction, but too much (more than 2 hours daily) had the opposite effect. I would venture to say the same goes for young men and women back at home.
Also, it was reported that physical conditioning of any kind or duration had a substantial stress-reducing effect on the troops.
Men don't join the military to be political chesspieces moved around the global board. When they begin to feel like they can't make a difference, they get dissatisfied and disillusioned. Those who feel they are making a positive difference tend to want to stay.
Last week I attended the funerals of two special operators who were killed in a helicopter crash recently. While there, I met some of their fellow warriors who had returned from the war zone to pay their respects. These men told me "We came back to hug the families of our fallen brothers, but we made [our leaders] promise to send us back to finish out our tour."
Despite their tragic losses, the morale of these special operations units remains very high - that's because they know they are making a difference.
As usual, the media doesn't get that.
Friday, October 02, 2009
I don't claim to be an expert on the war in Afghanistan. But for the last month or so, I've had the privilege of living with a bunch of people to whom I would give that classification - men and women who are in the war zone, putting their lives on the line every day.
And from my conversations with these experts, I've come to the conclusion that there are three main reasons why winning in Afghanistan is vital to our nation and to all those who claim the Christian faith. (Let me be clear that I don't count those two groups as one and the same, but neither are they mutually exclusive.)
Two of the reasons we need to win are practical, and one is philosophical.
1. The Taliban
If the world body were to abandon Afghanistan tomorrow, the country would revert to Taliban rule in very short order. This isn't because the Afghan people necessarily desire to live under extreme Sharia law. But without anyone to protect them from the Taliban, these brutal extremists will have free reign over much of the country, with the Panjshir valley a notable exception.
The opium trade would flourish, giving the Taliban millions in cash with which to extend their military reign of terror, and America's enemies like Al Qaeda would have won a vital strategic location from which to plot and execute attacks on our interests around the globe.
2. Opium
Ninety percent of the world's illegal opium comes from Afghanistan. Not only does every kilo of heroin produced there materially benefit those who have sworn to destroy us, every kilo actually DOES possibly destroy some small part of Western civilization by ruining lives that might otherwise be productive.
We need to be in Afghanistan for the same reason we need to be in Colombia - and have been for more than two decades. Heroin is an insidious weapon that poisons free societies. We need to be investing heavily in countering this threat around the world - not just in Afghanistan, but especially there.
3. Freedom
For some people in America, saying "we're over there fighting for freedom" has become a worn-out phrase since 9/11. But from a Christian standpoint, consider this: There isn't a single established Christian church in Afghanistan today. About 99 percent of all Afghans are Muslim.
And they should have every right to BE Muslim if that is what they choose, but that's the point - there is no choice in Afghanistan today. If an Afghan wants to be Buddhist, or gnostic, or Christian, or anything other than Muslim, he either hides his beliefs or potentially forfeits his life.
The last time I checked, our Declaration of Independence still reads,
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...
I see nothing in this assertion that excludes men who don't happen to be Americans. I'm not saying this war is some kind of religious crusade to spread Christendom to the uttermost parts of the earth - but I'm saying America was founded on the belief that every man deserves the right to control his own destiny. And that's not a right enjoyed by most Afghans today.
Why does this matter to our national security? America has always stood as a beacon of hope for the opressed around the world. It is this fact that has made our nation great - we stand for liberty. Many countries enjoy bountiful natural resources. Many cultures embody a strong work ethic. These traits don't set the United States apart - liberty does.
Once that light begins to fade - so too will America.
Friday, September 25, 2009
It is no secret by now that the war in Afghanistan isn't going well. Casualties are up, the recent presidential elections by all accounts are a miserable failure, government offices more corrupt than those in Chicago, and the Taliban influence is spreading over the country like a plague.
But who is to blame for these failures? Many are quick to pin it on the United States' "distraction" in Iraq, and that may well have had something to do with it, but from my recent experience in the country, I believe the failure has less to do with the war in Iraq than with who we left in charge of the war in Afghanistan in the meantime.
From shortly after the United States succeeded in overthrowing the Taliban with a handful of Special Forces troops and the help of the Afghan Northern Alliance, there has been a big push to put a global face on the war effort in Afghanistan. In the waning days of 2001, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was created and given charge over the war effort. This NATO-run organization - not the United States Military - has been responsible for the progress, or lack thereof, in this war torn country over the succeeding eight years.
Let's take a look at some of the issues that have led to the state we see today in Afghanistan - a development effort teetering on the edge of collapse.
The Leaky Sieve
The United Nations and ISAF have spent nearly 200 billion dollars on "development" in Afghanistan since 2001. Unfortunately, lofty promises made in the opening stages of this effort have not come to fruition. At the start, the UN boldly pronounced that it would build 1000 schools a year to educate Afghan children. Eight years and billions of dollars later, the world body can point to a grand total of three. Three schools, all in Kabul.
Not impressive.
Part of the problem is bureaucratic friction. Administrative costs consume sometimes as much as 50 percent of every dollar spent by "world body" organizations like the UN, NATO and the World Bank. This in heinous contrast to other humanitarian aid organizations like CBN's Operation Blessing, whose admin costs hover somewhere around one-half a percent of income. The picture this paints of the UN-NATO is one of an organization that feeds off disaster and human misery for it's own self-perpetuation.
One obvious outlet for this money is security costs. ISAF and NATO must divert billions to physical protection in the form of barriers, guards, armored vehicles and the like just to operate in Kabul - and much of that money goes to foreign contractors, which means that money is siphoned out of Afghanistan and will never benefit the local economy. One local contractor I spoke to pointed out the ISAF base at Kabul International airport - gleaming new permanent structures sprawling along one side of the tarmac that are being built by foreign contractors and are still under construction five years after building began.
But aside from waste and bureaucratic friction , there is an even more insidious problem with where these funds are going - virtually all of the contractors who receive UN money allocated to infrastructure - from roads to cell phone towers - are forced to pay "protection" to the Taliban to ensure their projects won't get bombed and their workers killed. This means that at least some percentage of the 200 billion we've poured into rebuilding Afghanistan is actually funding the enemy - a sure recipe for perpetual war.
Brain Drain
Here's another problem - any Afghan who is reasonably well educated and speaks English is desperately needed within the Afghan government, health care and educational system. But with much higher salaries and perks being offered by ISAF and humanitarian organizations, a huge "brain drain" has taken place over the last eight years that has left Afghanistan's critical intellectual infrastructure in worse shape than it's road system. And that's saying something.
Too many decision-makers, not enough risk takers
ISAF is a loose conglomeration of high-ranking officers from more than forty countries, all of whom answer to their own governments, and many of whom are more concerned with covering their political backsides than defeating the enemy. In fact, of the 42 nations with troops in Afghanistan, only eleven will allow their forces to directly engage in combat. This begs the question, if they're not there to fight, aren't they just in the way?
Every additional command inserts another layer of bureaucratic friction - and it is leading to the deaths of our troops on the ground. One story from my recent trip to Helmand province told of a young Marine who took six hours to die while his comrades desperately called for a medevac but were repeatedly turned down by several of our "allies" who were not allowed to send their helicopters into the combat zone. Often, US and British helicopters are the only ones willing to go into hot landing zones to rescue the wounded.
With these facts in mind, maybe the first step toward victory in Afghanistan is putting development money on hold until the killing is done - when the Taliban have been routed, then we can focus on rebuilding. Step two would be thanking the UN and ISAF for its "contributions" to the war effort, and sending them on their way so that Americans can set about - unfettered - doing what it takes to win.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
KABUL, Afghanistan - While the Pentagon and Congress dicker over the need for increased troop levels in Afghanistan, another army has been quietly increasing its numbers here - an army of private contractors.
Halliburton, Triple Canopy, Dyncorp, Blackwater (now XE) and many more - names that have been pilloried in the press in recent years because of their involvement in war zones and because of the enormous government contracts they are given. But there are literally thousands of these companies, large and small, which contribute to the war effort in one way or another.
On Monday I rode along on a mission to raid several Taliban drug processing facilities north of Jalabad, and of the fifty or so men who carried guns on the mission, only eight were actually members of the armed forces - and those were NATO troops, not Americans. The helicopters that flew us to the objective were rented Russian MI-17's flown by American civilian contractors, as well as the intelligence people, the interpreters, and a few DEA Agents and consultants. There were also a good many Afghan Narcotics police on hand as well.
Despite the somewhat tarnished reputation these private firms have in the media, we can't win this war without them. And just like our troops deployed to the war zone, many of these "civilian" employees put their lives on the line every day. Congress and the white house should stop using them as a political punching bag and recognize the valuable role they play in the Global War on Terror.
Today, there are nearly 120,000 privately employed contractors here - nearly twice the number of U.S. troops on the ground and twice the number who were here a year ago. They do everything from cooking and cleaning porta-potties to implementing aid and development projects and guarding convoys. Many of them do jobs one would assume would be reserved only for military - pilots and door gunners on helicopters flying combat missions, medics, intelligence, training and the like. In Afghanistan, just because you see a western guy walk by in full battle dress carrying a military assault rifle, you can't make the assumption that he's in the military.
At first glance it might seem these civilian contractors would be more costly to the US government than military personnel doing the same job, since the contractors regularly receive pay several times what our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are getting. But when you factor in the cost of lifetime military pensions, medical care and the like, outsourcing makes a lot of sense in the long run.
Several recent court cases against high-profile contractors have made it fashionable for politicians and the media to bad mouth these essential elements in prosecuting the war on terror. President Obama has repeatedly signaled his disdain for contractors since taking office in January, calling for increased government oversight and control. But the bottom line is that a slimmed-down military simply can't sustain itself without them, and going forward it may be easier politically to accomplish our objectives in this war-torn region by hiring more contractors, not less.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Well before dawn on September 11 this year, dozens of highly-trained special operators gathered in the darkness to commemorate the attacks that took place eight years ago. After taking a moment of remembrance, they boarded unmarked helicopters and prepared for a little payback.
The news has been reporting a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan that is threatening the war effort almost as much as waning public support at home. The special DEA task force I'm traveling with here in Kandahar is called a Foreign Advisory Support Team, or FAST for short. They're like a swat team for the Drug Enforcement Administration, collecting intelligence and enabling the U.S. military to act on it.
With the first morning twilight, the helicopters lift off and race across the arid landscape south, deeper into Kandahar province. The objective is a Taliban kingpin who is known to be heavily involved in drug trafficking - a major source of funding for the Taliban. The helicopters swoop in and deposit the task force, which quickly surrounds the compound as support helicopters bristling with weapons circle overhead. The men move slowly, methodically, cognizant that the owner of this compound is a known IED facilitator. A similar compound hit days earlier was booby-trapped with explosives, one of which horribly wounded one of the special operators. Everyone is careful about where they put their feet.
Within moments, we enter the compound and find a few old men and several groups of women and children. The men are flex-cuffed and separated from each other for interrogation while the women and children are gently herded into a secure part of the compound and given food and water.
A search of the compound turns up several kilos of opium, some heroin and a large bag of homemade explosives. there is also a large bag of marbles. While these could be mistaken for a benign children's pastime, they are being found more and more in improvised explosives because they cannot be found by metal detectors - a grim reminder that the Taliban learn and adapt their tactics to try and defeat our countermeasures.
By the end of the mission, it turns out that the man we were seeking has fled and the men we detained are not among the wanted. They are released to care for the women while the special operators set explosives on the opium and homemade explosives, then pull back to the landing zone. Moments later thunder splits the air as the explosives detonate, a direct hit to the Taliban's ability to kill Americans in Afghanistan.
One operator is heard to say, "that's my tribute to 9/11."
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Someone asked me yesterday if Christians in Afghanistan are experiencing persecution by the Taliban. The question took me by surprise. In the months that I've spent in this war-torn country, I've never come across any Afghan citizen who isn't Muslim.
There is no doubt that anyone who doesn't hold the exact worldview of the Taliban is vulnerable to brutality at their hands. The Taliban kills wantonly - no matter what religion is held by their victims. But Christians specifically? I don't think that is much of an issue here, simply because they don't exist.
In Iraq, Christians make up about 2% of the population. A tiny minority, to be sure, but it is possible to find Christian churches in some places there. But as far as I can ascertain, there isn't one single organized Christian church in Afghanistan. There was one in Kabul, but it was bombed back in 2002 by the Taliban. Here, the total number of Christians from all denominations make up less than .02% of the population - almost too low to measure. In doing some research, I found that there is only one Jew in the entire country, a man named
Zablon Simintov, who lives on the street where i purchased some gifts for my kids when I was in Kabul last year.
I know of a few Christian missionaries working "undercover" in this country, one of which leads a "house church" that has no pastor, but is really more of a women's bible study. Most of those who attend, however, are still Muslim.
It's gut-wrenching to think about - as I travel with U.S. forces to remote areas of Afghanistan, I realize that most of the people I see have never met a Christian. Which means I and some of the soldiers and Marines I travel with are most likely the only Christians they will ever see - and we can't speak their language.
The need is great for brave, adventurous souls who will dedicate their lives to bringing the gospel to these people. As desperately impoverished as they are physically, they are even poorer spiritually. Please pray that God will call missionaries here, and that the brutality of the Taliban will serve to turn people toward the God of love.
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Kabul, Afghanistan - Protection racketeering might be the most ironic way the Taliban gets their funding, since some of the money the terror organization uses to pay for explosives that kill American soldiers comes indirectly from U.S. taxpayers. The U.S. Government is pouring billions into infrastructure like cell towers and bridges in Afghanistan, but without a strong central government that can provide a secure environment in which to build, the construction contractors must either pay protection to the enemy or see their projects destroyed. So it’s clearly too soon to begin a ton of development unless we want to merely fund both sides of the conflict - forever.
But that’s not the only way the Taliban makes money. A much larger chunk of revenue comes from the heroin trade. Afghanistan produces nearly 90% of all the world’s opium, a fact that translates to hundreds of millions a year in the Taliban’s coffers.
A UN report released on Wednesday described a 22 percent decrease in the number of hectares of poppies cultivated here last year. Farmers were able to increase their yields per acre, however, and so the total drop in production was just over 10%. The decline is attributed to an oversupply of opium on the world market – some say stockpiles in Afghanistan are currently enough to supply the entire planet’s consumption for two full years.
One thing the report didn’t mention, however, was the ramp up of drug interdiction efforts in Afghanistan. Since 2005, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration has had teams on the ground here building a network of informants and other intelligence assets, and have recently begun targeting drug kingpins within Afghanistan. The objective is simple, to hit the Taliban where it hurts the most – in the wallet. By disrupting the opium distribution network, the DEA teams are costing the enemy millions of dollars a month – millions that can no longer be used to sustain the war against the U.S. military.
I’m spending the next few weeks traveling around Afghanistan with the DEA. In the last several days we’ve observed some of the training they provide to a special unit of the Afghan police, and have been out in the teeming streets of Kabul to observe these incredibly brave agents as they make contact with their web of confidential informants.
In the days ahead I’ll be describing some of the unclassified aspects of the work being done here. Keep reading – you’re sure to learn things that you won’t see in the mainstream media.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
As roadside bombs, or IED's continue to indiscriminately kill and maim civilians and military alike every day here in southern Afghanistan, hard questions are being asked in Washington D.C., London, and Kabul about what can be done about it.
Obviously, securing the roads by killing the bomb-emplacers has always been high on the list of strategies to counteract this threat. And coalition forces here are doing that, at a frenetic pace. But we can't be everywhere; there just aren't enough soldiers or helicopters or unmanned aerial vehicles in this country to keep eyes on every vital stretch of road. It's reminiscent of the problem we have on the U.S. border with Mexico, and we haven't figured out how to be omnipresent down there, either.
So let's look at motivation: who places these bombs and why? Is there some way to get into that decision loop and pull it apart? Word on the street is that the Taliban is paying $750 to anyone who successfully emplaces an IED that detonates under a military target, more if the destruction is caught on video.
The vast majority of these bombs are made from materials that are, in this part of the world, common household items - Nitrate fertilizer and diesel fuel. That means for many young men in this region, ten minutes of hard digging could earn them as much as six months of tending sheep in the hot sun.
So where does the Taliban get the money to hire them? This is where the story gets interesting - in a sick sort of way. The Taliban here is the Afghan equivalent of the mob. Much of their funding comes from criminal activity, specifically "protection" payments extracted from local businesses and - get this - contractors who are here building infrastructure to try and drag this war-torn country out of the middle ages.
Unfortunately, these mostly-foreign firms who are here building roads, bridges, and cell towers know that buying off the bad guys is simply the cost of doing business here in the shadow of the Hindu Kush. And if one follows that money trail back one more step, it becomes apparent that at least some of the money being used to develop this infrastructure is coming directly from Western governments, including billions of dollars annually from the United States.
There is a time to build, and there is a time to fight. It may be that unless we want to fund a self-perpetuating war in Afghanistan, we may need to focus more on taking out the trash before we spend a whole lot sprucing up the place.
Stay tuned - there's more to come on how one group of special-operations warriors is doing just that.
Chuck Holton http://www.livefire.us
Monday, August 31, 2009
I'm sitting in the dimly-lit belly of a giant Air Force C-17 Starlifter cargo plane headed from Kuwait to Kandahar, Afghanistan. The hold is packed tightly with supplies headed to the war, including two hulking mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles called MRAPs. These may be the most desperately needed items on the manifest, which is probably why they are being shipped in this hideously-expensive fashion. (See pictures below.)
The war in Afghanistan is not going well. The last two months set grisly records for the number of American casualties - the most since the war began. On Monday, commander of U.S. forces in the region, Gen. Stanley McChrystal reported that the situation is "serious," but that success is still a possibility. While he did not specifically request additional troops at this time, it is fairly obvious more will be needed, once the military obtains the material and logistical support it needs for the troops already on the ground.
Next to me on the C-17 sits a young warrant officer from West Virginia. Zachary Dickinson is a 24-year-old guardsman and student at Concord University. He is also a helicopter pilot. Along with a handful of other pilots from his Parkersburg, W. Va.-based guard unit, Dickinson was selected for a top-secret program for which he was cross-trained to fly twin-engine King Air airplanes in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
He can't tell me much a out his mission here, but it is obvious that Dickinson's unit is a part of a greater effort that reflects Gen. McChrystal's desire to seek actively unique and out-of-the-box solutions to the task of turning Afghanistan around. The Modified MRAPs swaying against their restraints in the cargo hold are evidence the military has learned the lessons of Iraq well. There the switch to MRAPs caused casualty figures to plunge in the latter half of 2007 and helped the dramatic turnaround seen there after the surge.
But Afghanistan presents it's own unique challenges, and it remains to be seen if the United States is willing to invest the troops and treasure necessary to defeat the Taliban in two years or ten.
And while Cw2 Dickinson is looking forward to the contributions he will make to the war effort, he looks forward to getting home next March to his family in Mineral Wells, W.Va.
"West Virginia has been amazing to me," he said. "They sent me to flight school at nineteen - who else would do that? I definitely love my state."
Monday, August 24, 2009
The Obama administration is continuing it's pledge to send more troops into Afghanistan - only this time it isn't friendly troops.
On August 24, Mohammed Jawad became a free man after more than seven years as a detainee at Guantanamo bay. Back in 2002, young Jawad threw a grenade at a U.S. patrol - wounding two U.S. soldiers and their interpreter. Now, after years of rubbing shoulders with even more hardened terrorists than he, the Obama administration sent him back to Afghanistan, where presumably he will work in a bakery or a flower shop - or perhaps bomb another convoy.
As U.S. politicians bluster their disgust about the Lockerbie Bomber's release from prison so that he can go home and die in his native Libya, one might wonder why there isn't any hand-wringing (so far) about the U.S. government sending a young terrorist home completely healthy - where he is likely to rejoin the Jihad at a crucial moment in the war in Afghanistan.
Somehow I don't think these are the kind of reinforcements our over-stretched troops there were hoping for.