ARmy Rumour SErvice

Sad old sod that I am, I sat and watched the latter part of this on BBC4 2 nights ago. (Watch it again HERE)

I was sufficently annoyed by some of it, to look today at the online transcript. The section below deals with the question of UK resourcing in AFG. Not ehow the chair cuts off the line of inquiry (coloured text)

Minutes of evidence taken before the Defence Committee: Operations in Afghanistan Tuesday 26 October 2010 (uncorrected transcript)

Q6Mrs Moon: General Messenger, when you were commanding the forces in Afghanistan, did you identify key areas where change was needed? If so, why were the changes needed, what were they and were they actually implemented?

Major General Messenger: I came back in April ’09, so we’re about 18 months since then. At the time, insufficient resources were being allocated to the challenge in southern Afghanistan. I commanded a brigade, alongside an Afghan brigade commander, that was stretched and not able to go to certain key areas where we knew we would ultimately have to go to secure the population. What has happened since has been an enormous inflow, principally American but also from other NATO nations, and a huge upsurge in the number of Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police who are in the line providing that security.

We have a situation now-forgive me for concentrating on Helmand, but it is something that is reflected more widely-in which the key areas of population in Helmand are now secured. They are at varying levels of security depending on how long that security has been in place, but there is sufficient force density allocated to the key areas of population, and we are seeing things improving in a way in which we would have assumed they would 18 months ago.

You asked about the things that I highlighted. In no way was I the only one to highlight this. There are two key areas in the preparation of our people. The first is the degree to which we culturally attune our people, and the second is the degree to which we concentrate on judgmental training of our individuals rather than focusing simply on their ability to fight. I would not suggest for a second that it was the reports from me that generated a change, but what we have seen over the past 18 months is a real emphasis on improving the cultural awareness of our people before they go, and building, down to the very lowest level, an ability to understand the importance of the lethal force that such people have at their disposal, and to understand the dangers of miscalculation of the lethal force. That is something that is inculcated at a much deeper and lower level than perhaps it was in my time.

Q7 Chair: You said that 18 months ago we were under-resourced. Do you remember telling us that?

Major General Messenger: Iwouldn’t view this as a national issue. I think there was under-resourcing more broadly in the south at that stage. This was pre US surge. The fact that NATO commanders identified the need for a surge and focused that surge in the south, and that a large proportion of the uplift in Afghan national security forces has also been directed to the south is an indication of a realisation that the scale of the challenge was not matched at that time by the resources allocated to it.

Chair: I’ll tell you the problem that I am trying to get to, which is that you are an immensely reassuring man. You are being very reassuring today, and we are getting things right now, but it would be more reassuring if you had told us 18 months ago that we were getting things wrong, and I cannot remember your doing so.

Major General Messenger: I don’t remember when I last appeared in front of the Committee. I don’t recall being asked that question. If you are talking about my post-tour report including the fact that the resourcing of the campaign in the south did not match the challenge that was faced-

Chair: Actually, it is not really about you. It is about what we always have from you immensely reassuring military chaps.

Major General Messenger: Okay, let me try to put it in a slightly different way. I think it is absolutely the business of military commanders on the ground to look at the resources that they are allocated, prioritise those resources and deliver the most important elements of the campaign. That may mean that there are parts of the approach that we may understand need to be done at some point, but we choose not to do because we do not have the resources to do them. A good example would be the area of Marjah, about which you have heard a lot. We have known for some time that Marjah in Helmand was a bad area. If we were going to go into that area, we would need to do so with sufficient resource to clear it out, but critically with enough resource to remain in place afterwards. That did not exist, and, therefore, we did not go into Marjah. What I did in my time in Marjah was deal with Marjah in a different way by trying to contain the enemy in that area so that they did not feel inclined to export violence into the key areas of Lashkar Gah, Gereshk and elsewhere. Does that mean that I was under-resourced for the totality of the challenge that was faced? Yes. Did that mean that I was overstretched and putting my people in unnecessarily stretched and dangerous positions? I am not sure I was.

Q8 Mr Hancock: But General, that’s not really fair to us, because we’ve been told by successive Secretaries of State that when the commanders asked for it, they got what they wanted, whether that was equipment or manpower. If what you are saying is true, I can’t understand why it took us so long to realise that we were so badly off, personnel-wise and that the only way we were going to deal with it was by having an enormous surge from the Americans. Why was it that Secretaries of State could come to Parliament and say, "Commanders have got everything they’ve asked for" and yet you are telling us that that wasn’t the case?

Major General Messenger: I am viewing this as a NATO commander on the ground with a NATO command chain above me. It was the decision and the assessment of NATO commanders that the area in southern Afghanistan required more resource and that is what has been forthcoming subsequently.

Q9 Mr Hancock: But it took a long time for that realisation to sink in. You were there 18 months ago and generals before you were saying virtually the same thing. Why did it take so long for the NATO chain of command to realise that we were not going to get anywhere in Helmand with the force levels that we had?

Major General Messenger: I don’t think I’m well placed to answer that. We have to place those decisions in the context of the Iraq commitment, which was still large at that time, and the ability of every nation to generate forces in order to commit to Afghanistan. It is not for me to second-guess the decision making that went on in Brussels or Washington, but I do know that the subsequent surge was a result of an acknowledgment of the need for more forces in the south if we were to go and secure the key areas of population.

Q10 Mr Hancock: That is what we were sent in for in the first place. When the Secretary of State came here to tell us that we were going to Helmand, the idea was that we were going there for that sole purpose.

Major General Messenger: To secure key areas of population. Absolutely.

Mr Hancock: Yes, and it was hopelessly under-resourced and that was on day one. Can I ask you-

Chair: Before you do, Julian Brazier has a question.

Q11 Mr Brazier: I wondered whether Colonel Langton had a comment on this.

Colonel Langton: This is an observation, rather than any direct experience of what General Messenger is talking about. At the time General Messenger was there and until quite recently, the NATO command structure-or NATO-led ISAF command structure-across Afghanistan was structured in such a way that reinforcements within Afghanistan could not be moved from one portion of the territory to the other due to home-grown political limitations back in Europe, principally. With the Iraq operations still going on, it was virtually impossible at the time, from my academic point of view, to reinforce British forces in the way that perhaps you are indicating should have happened.

Q12 Mr Hancock: Not even by the Americans?

Colonel Langton: The Americans had their own operations. They were still heavily involved in Iraq. Politically it would have been quite difficult for them to say, "Right. We need to send more people to help the Brits," in an area where the Americans would have been the only presence before the Brits got there.

Q13 Mr Hancock: So you could say that this is three years’ lost opportunity.

Colonel Langton: Yes.

Chair: The purpose of my asking these questions is to work out the extent to which we need to discount perfectly proper military determination and optimism in the evidence that we get. Now, let us move on to strategic communications.

IN FULL

Members present:
Mr James Arbuthnot (Chair)
Mr Julian Brazier
John Glen
Mr Mike Hancock
Mrs Madeleine Moon
Bob Stewart

I came in at the point where the discussion shifted to strategic comms: I was disappointed by the discussion, because it sounded to me as though MoD UK found itself re-inventing the strat comms wheel for AFG from scratch, having failed to maintain currency in an area whose complexity and importance became painfully visible in Bosnia over a decade and a half ago.

Limits on post length preventing me including this in the above:

Notes:
1. I haven't looked up the political affiliations of the members present.

2. You may be intrigued to learn that the committee has several vacant seats, their former occupants having been elevated to Front Bench jobs.

3. The Daily Mirror somehow managed to identify Maj Gen Messenger as a US officer . . . US General says Brit forces insufficient in Afghanistan - mirror.co.uk

Yahoo
Nov 5

NATO 2010 toll in Afghanistan surpasses last year by 101

KABUL (AFP) – The number of soldiers killed this year fighting Afghanistan's brutal insurgency Friday surpassed the 2009 toll by 101, the alliance announced Friday, as a suicide bomber killed nine civilians there.

Six foreign troops had been killed in Taliban bombs or fighting the rebels in the past two days, NATO said.

That took the number of international soldiers killed this year to 622 as the rebellion intensifies. Last year's toll was 521.

The AFP tally is based on that kept by the icasualties.org website, which collates announcements from NATO and the US military.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said three soldiers were killed on Friday and three on Thursday, in insurgent attacks and byroadside bombs -- the Taliban's deadliest weapon.

The nationalities of the soldiers were not revealed, according to policy.

Two of the deaths Friday were the result of attacks in the south, where the insurgency is concentrated, said ISAF. An improvised explosive device (IED) killed the other soldier Friday in eastern Afghanistan.

NATO 2010 toll in Afghanistan surpasses last year by 101 - Yahoo! News

Gulf Times (Qatar)
6/11/2010

The military playing down vital Afghan battle
By Emma Graham-Harrison


The battle for Kandahar, its importance played down even before it began, has been eclipsed in the media and in Washington by a focus on corruption and peace talks, but its outcome is crucial to the wider Afghan war.

Operation Dragon Strike is the first major attempt since 2001 to regain control of a city that is the Taliban’s spiritual home. This autumn may be the last time that the Nato-led alliance has sufficient boots on the ground to try the push.

Victory would give Nato and the Afghan government more leverage in potential peace negotiations, as acceptance grows in Kabul and abroad that a political solution may be the most likely end to a war now in its tenth year.

If winter arrives and insurgents are still capable of mounting major attacks and intimidating the local population, it could further chill Western governments’ already diminishing appetite for a long-term presence in Afghanistan.

“To strike at the heart of the insurgency, strike at the historical and spiritual home of the Taliban movement sends a very clear message - with the resources we have, we are on the offensive,” said Dakota Wood, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
“If we end up having to pull back, or are not successful, there will have to be a serious review of Western aims and resources in Afghanistan.”

The last of US President Barack Obama’s 30,000-strong troop surge arrived in late summer but he has pledged to start drawing down numbers from next July, without saying how fast.

For all its importance, Nato and the US military have tried to keep the operation low-profile and expectations modest.
It was formally unveiled only after it had kicked off, and last week the region’s top commander said it would not be possible to judge the results until next June.

The military has been stung by criticism of a much-publicised spring effort to take control of Marjah, a trade hub in neighbouring Helmand province. There, foreign forces promised a quick takeover followed by roll-out of a “government in a box”.

Instead, troops have struggled to consolidate early gains and has been bogged down against hit-and-run guerrillas for months.

Western commanders have learned strategic and public-relations lessons from Marjah, and in Kandahar tried to defuse similar potential problems - governance flaws and the perception of failure - with a two-pronged approach.

Operation “Hamkari”, or co-operation, involved a massive intelligence and outreach drive before the shooting started to win over Kandahar’s residents and help direct the fighting.

Fighting also began in targeted areas like Arghandab district long before the operation formally began.

Casualty figures in a main Kandahar hospital over the summer were testament to the violence. Almost twice as many patients with war injuries were treated in August and September - some 1,000 - compared with the same period in 2009.

Dragon Strike was launched at the end of September.
But an emphasis on bringing governance and services does not always translate into reality, particularly when faced with a persistent enemy and a huge gulf in cultural understanding.

“This is the third battle of Panjwai, how is it going to be different from the first two?” said Norine MacDonald, head of the International Council on Security and Development think tank.
“People should have a lot of questions about what they are doing in Kandahar. They are not military issues, these are all questions around hearts and minds, aid and political relations.”
Troops often struggle to identify key community leaders and separate real information from efforts to use development cash and weapons to spread patronage or avenge personal feuds.

“Since the Americans came to this country, we haven’t seen a single day of peace,” Marjah farmer Khan Jan, 30, told Reuters.
“The Taliban are back, there is no security, government troops are only in the centre, but the villages and surroundings are controlled by Taliban,” he said months after the offensive.

In overwhelmingly rural Afghanistan, major population centres like Kandahar - the country’s third largest and home to hundreds of thousands of people - have a huge strategic value.
Yet Kandahar had been virtually ignored by Nato for years, garrisoned by Canadian forces with little counter-insurgency experience and far too few to hold major swathes of territory.

“One of the things that scared us when we first started looking at Kandahar last year was how little we knew about it,” said Andrew Exum from the Centre for a New America Security, who fought in Afghanistan and worked as an adviser to former top US and Nato commander in Afghanistan Stanley McChrystal.
“Last year we didn’t know if we were losing, winning or had already lost Kandahar.”

A chorus of voices has recently come out to hail the success of the operation so far, including several Nato generals, Karzai’s brother and defence ministry spokesman Zaher Azimi, who said he hopes the operation will be over “in weeks”.
But the “bubble effect” seen in Marjah, where insurgents fled to neighbouring areas when under pressure but have returned to harass troops, means that it seems early to call it a success.

This is true of Kandahar itself after years of neglect, and even more so of the surrounding villages. “This is a war where the enemy can hide among the people, so what they are trying to do is very difficult,” said Peter Felstead, editor of Jane’s Defence Weekly, who visited southern Afghanistan in May.

Others with bitter experience of defeat cautioned against optimism. “Victory is impossible in Afghanistan. Obama is right to pull the troops out no matter how difficult it will be,” former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev told the BBC this week.
As was learned in Iraq, years of hostility and a yawning cultural gap make effective counter-insurgency by outsiders almost impossible.
“Obama is not looking to decisively beat the Taliban, he’s looking to halt their momentum and buy time and space to build up local forces. I think that is more reasonable,” Exum said. - Reuters

Gulf Times – Qatar’s top-selling English daily newspaper - Opinion

On Nightwatch

Afghanistan: An Afghan national army soldier fired on foreign troops at a military compound in Sangin district, Helmand province, Afghanistan, after which he sought refuge with the Taliban, who took him to a safe location, a Taliban spokesman said 5 November, Afghan Islamic Press reported. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force's (ISAF) press office said it had received information about the incident and had launched an investigation to ascertain its veracity. The ISAF will release further details once the investigation is complete.

Comment: As noted previously, defection to the Taliban is contagious. Once it takes root among the Pashtuns, it will become unstoppable.

Taliban: A Taliban leader named Mullah Aminullah - an authentic associate of Mullah Omar -- gave a televised interview to a Karachi television station in which he restated the longstanding Taliban position on negotiations. He said the Taliban will not engage in any peace talks as long as the Americans are in Afghanistan. The Taliban announced jihad when the infidels came to the country from everywhere, hence the movement will not negotiate. When these foreigners leave the country, the Taliban can speak about peace then.

Comment: Many would-be leaders pretend to speak for the Taliban without the authorization of Mullah Omar. Others pretend to speak for other anti-government groups, who are misinterpreted as the Taliban. Aminullah is in neither group. Taliban are in no hurry.

Russia-CSTO-US-Afghanistan: Russia and six former Soviet republics in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) on Thursday urged NATO-led forces in Afghanistan to end their "ineffective tactics" of pushing militants from combat zones in the south to other areas, especially the once relatively peaceful north.

Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, speaking on behalf of the CSTO, told the UN General Assembly that four of the organization's members - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan - are in the central Asian region bordering Afghanistan and are concerned about the growing instability in the north caused by ineffective NATO tactics.

Churkin said the campaign by international and Afghan forces against Taliban and al-Qaida strongholds is ineffective because it is "squeezing militants from the combat zones, which allows them to maintain their combat power and relocate to other parts of the country including northbound."

Churkin also said Russian troops engaged in anti-drug operations will continue. One Afghan elder in Shinwar District, Nangarhar Province said after last week's NATO-Russian-Afghan drug raid, that if he had known there were Russians, he would have killed them.

Comment: The Afghan presidency has accused the NATO command of agreeing to re-introduce Russian troops without his consent, even though Afghan police participated in the raid. The press accounts indicate somebody forgot to tell the Afghan president that the Russians are back.

Obviously there is more to the story than what is in the press. Nevertheless, any serious student of Afghanistan must know that the Pashtuns hate the Russians more than the Americans. The prospect of killing Russians is a larger recruiting incentive for the Taliban than killing Americans.

Press Association, replaying a Sun exclusive:

Defence chief: No Afghan troops cut

(UKPA) – 6 hours ago

British troops must not "cut and run" from Afghanistan and will stay in the war-torn country for "as long as it takes", the new Chief of the Defence Staff has said.

General Sir David Richards ruled out a reduction in Britain's current force of 10,000 before 2012 and claimed Britain would be "shouldering the burden" over the coming year.

He also suggested that up to 1,000 troops could need to stay in Afghanistan in training roles beyond 2015.

Speaking to The Sun newspaper, Sir David, 58, said: "We are in a demanding part of Afghanistan and therefore, inevitably, we're going to be shouldering the burden at least through next year.

"After 2015, we'll be in a supporting role. But we've expended so much time, effort and, yes, lives on this.

"The worst of all things would be to get out before we finish the job properly, for want of 1,000 trainers to keep them going for another couple of years."

IN FULL

Defence Management picks up on the story:

Afghan withdrawal may begin in 2012
Monday, November 08, 2010
[SNIP]The Prime Minister has said that British troops will not take part in combat operations after 2015, following the handover of security to Afghan forces nationwide in 2014.

"We really mean it when we say we will be there for as long as it takes," said Richards. "It's so important that we establish in the minds of the Afghan people and of those in the region that NATO is not going to cut and run in Afghanistan.

"If they thought that for one minute, why would the Afghans continue to fight on their own behalf? Why wouldn't they succumb to Taliban pressure?

"If we're fighting in four years' time like we are today, we've got it wrong - because we can't go on with this forever. But as long as we continue to put faith in [US and ISAF commander] Dave Petraeus and hold our nerve, then I think we can do it. It's definitely winnable."

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that a forthcoming NATO summit in Lisbon would set out the overall ISAF 'roadmap' for withdrawal.

"This is a time perspective which of course must be conditions-based - it can't be calendar-driven, we have to make sure that the Afghans are really capable to take responsibility before we hand over responsibility to Afghan security forces - but I'm quite confident that this timetable is realistic," Rasmussen told the BBC's Politics Show.

Asked whether the cuts made in the recent UK defence review were a matter for concern, Rasmussen said: "Of course it's a matter of concern, but I am convinced that the UK will fully live up to her commitments in our alliance."

Afghan withdrawal may begin in 2012 - Defence Management

For the Torygraph take on the same story:
Chief of the Defence Staff hints Afghanistan withdrawal might not begin in 2011 - Telegraph

the original Sun report:
Defence chief vows troops will stay in Afghanistan ‘as long as it takes’ | The Sun |News|Campaigns|Our Boys

The Australian )borrowing from The Times?)

General David Petraeus draws up timetable for Afghanistan withdrawal
* Michael Evans
* From: Times Online
* November 08, 2010 3:10PM

THE US commander in Afghanistan has drawn up a colour-coded timetable for the handing over of control of its provinces to local security forces.

A handful of areas in Afghanistan have been stamped "green", signalling that they have been earmarked for a handover in the spring.

The plan, which was drawn up by General David Petraeus, is to be presented to Nato leaders at the summit of alliance leaders in Lisbon on November 19.

The colours range from green to grey, the latter being the most problematic, indicating that the handover is more than two years away. Provinces such as Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan in the south, and Kunar in the east, fall into this category.

A monthly security assessment of every part of Afghanistan will continue right up until the summit but it is understood that General Petraeus is sufficiently confident to assign a colour code to each area to demonstrate that significant progress is being made.

The general, who commands about 100,000 American troops and 50,000 other Nato forces including 1550 Australian troops, believes that areas coded green are ready for transition to Afghan security forces within six months.

Alliance diplomatic sources told The Times it was possible that some of the districts coded green could be handed back by February or March next year. The other codes are yellow, indicating transition in 12 months, orange for 18 months, red for 24 months and grey for more than two years.

The sources said that the colour-code chart would not be published because General Petraeus did not want provinces and districts to become a "bull's-eye" target for the Taleban.

IN FULL

Sydney Morning Herald

NATO soldier killed in Afghanistan
November 8, 2010 - 10:09PM
AFP

A NATO soldier was killed in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, the military announced, bringing to 627 the number of foreign troops killed in the war so far this year.

The soldier was killed by a Taliban-style improvised explosive device, said NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which did not reveal the nationality of the soldier or any further details.

It came after NATO reported on Sunday the killing of two other soldiers in attacks in the east.

IN FULL