Michael Yon has left Afghanistan (probably best for all concerned) and is currently in Bangkok covering the troubles there...if you're on Facebook, it is well worth subscribing to his page where he has been delivering a steady commentary - a dozen + feeds each day - on the situation there...he offers an interesting counterpoint to the more sensationalist news media 'reporting' and depicts the human side of this drama very well...it is great to see that Michael has returned to the type of 'boots on the ground' that he is so very good at...

The rules murdering their troops...

A top article from the NY Post on the COIN Center blog - most definitely stimulating for the grey matter and really makes you wonder what's it all about. The day of 911, I was working with a guy who had just come back from a US college and I clearly remember him saying that this was like Pearl Harbor all over and from this point on, America would consider itself at war. The implications of this were that the gloves would come off and any pretence of being a team player would vanish if it got in the way of the main effort...

Somewhere along the way, the 'war' seems to have been lost out of the whole war amongst the people model - the key part is that, unlike peace support and reconstruction and peacekeeping and all the nice safe sounding words (like offshore and deployment and operations...) is that war is war and there not very much nice about it - certainly it is not about trying to be nicer to the bad guys or potential bad guys than to your own troops, or hobbling them with rules to prevent anything bad happening (apparently except to them)...this is a war. Bad things happen in wars. Sometimes people get caught in the middle and get hurt. That's war but we accept these risks because there are bigger things at stake...Any non-combatant death is bad but the key is whether there was an intent to kill, either directly or passively by failing to apply a reasonable duty of care (key word: REASONABLE!!)...war is and always has been (possibly always will be so long as people are involved) messy, untidy, dangerous and indiscriminate...we should not be kidding ourselves that we can write a book and toss in some technology and all of a sudden make it squeaky clean and politically palatable.

However, this article and FM 3-24 both skirt around or possibly even overlook the key point which is that the keys to successful COIN are probably endurance and habit forming - the foe that can stick it out the longest AND ensure that the habits it desires are embedded over a couple of generation (Note: speed is not a characteristic of COIN!!) will most likely be declared the winner...while the Malaysian Emergency make have been declared over (won?) in 1960, the last CT did not surrender til 1988; similarly, and they are probably halfway there, it will still be another ten or so years before anyone can confidently state that the troubles in Ireland are truly over. You want to be out of Afghanistan in ten years? You're dreaming - you might as well pull the pin and bail out right now...

Wars are wars and you can not fight (definitely not win) them with a sterile big arrows, little maps approach...forget the non-lessons of DESERT STORM and get down and dirty...

First thing

...that I need to do is address my my bad from last night and post the link to Josh's Interbella brief from the other night....and here be the original Interbella paper published in Colloquium in June 09...

In the UK papers last year, there was a new spin on the UK MP Troughgate scandal as it has now been linked to the UK Government's unwillingness to invest in decent kit for its soldiers in Afghanistan - even more embarassing when it comes out that soldiers have been moonlighting as security guards in the very office responsible for censoring the files on MPs' accounts and it was apparently their comments over smoko that led to the original leak. This topic takes up the first five pages in one of the papers and is in stark contrast to the big front page write up in the DomPoston all the new personal soldier equipment our Government has just invested in...

While YOU were sleeping...

Amir stirred at his post and sat up…he always hated this last stint before Salatu-l-Fajr…with the Americans, bad things always seemed to happen when it was dark. All the faith in the kingdom couldn’t overcome their cursed technology.

A faint rumbling filtered through the mist. Probably the brothers in the next valley getting a bounding from NATO aircraft again - he hated the German Tornados with their time-expired MW-1s that scattered a deadly rain over the fields for a kilometre or more. A intermittent groaning rose through the rumbling - it sounded nearer. That, whatever that was, wasn’t in another valley, it was here!

He should wake the others but what would he say? What if it were only the wind - they would laugh at him and make him do more sentries, like the time he had mistaken chickens for soldiers crawling towards their position. He squinted thought he could make out a dim shape, or was it just a shadow? There, again!

A squat shape emerged from the mist, carrying the distinctive H antenna of the New Zealanders. Had they deployed a new secret weapon? Over the sandy camouflage, he could barely make out a word stencilled on the hull: What in Allah’s name was Interbella? A head that could have come off a Roman coin 2000 years ago emerged from a hatch. The devil El Josh! He had heard whispers of this wily foe from the elders but it looked like that day had come….

The Kiwis had deployed their Think Tank…

In a war of ideas and ideologies you have to come to the party armed. There is also no monopoly on good ideas and the US Army in particular has realised this. As a result it was a Kiwi conducting an online presentation to a COIN Center audience at 0300 this morning...the topic? An alternative method of considering issues and influences in the complex environment we now live in...

It's name? Interbella...

District 9.

15 minutes into it, I'm going "Uh-oh, another Quarantine". Carmen, meantime, only a seat away and watching the same movie is saying "Another Quarantine - Excellent!" But the end of the movie, we both arrived at "That rocked!!" It's an interesting movie: the trailer gives absolutely nothing away and the first hour or so is like up-market Blair Witch Project - sorta kinda interesting but once you've seen it...y'know? The second hour takes it all some place way above that. Taken at face value, it's a scifi non-hero yarn that you can take or leave; dig a little deep within the pain of the South African context and it has apowerful message about doing the right thing, making the right decisions, being the one voice that in the end says "Enough!" And that it doesn't take a hero...

I've listed this under the Thursday-Friday War because time and again, values emerge as a key enabler in complex conflict. When the heat is on, we will act as who we are inside, follow the heart...

More than meets the eye...

...reading through the programme for the Chief of Army's Conference in September, I wondered if this whole transformation thing is nothing more than just more buzzword bingo like the great (NOT!) RMA from the 90s - I think it is and, in fact, one of the presentation's covered exactly that issue and came to a similar conclusion...but move away from the lingo and the underlying theme is the clear need, not so much for change, but ongoing evolution to match the environment of today and tomorrow...no more Maginot Lines or Malemes...

It has been a long day, departed the hacienda at 5 and got back around 9 tonight but so very worth it: I have screeds of notes to digest before I forgot what my scribbles meant; caught up with some people I haven't seen for years and made a couple of new contacts on the lessons front. Exceptionally well-catered which is good as a general principle but must have been appreciated by the participants who had travelled from all over the country and good food during smoko and lunch breaks always fosters better discussion...

I was disappointed not to have been able to catch up with Michael Evans who I have corresponded with off and on but never actually met - he has said he will be back over this way a couple more times this year so we will see - his presentation on Krulak's (bastard) step-children was my favourite of the day - I don't think I should really get into good, better, best comparisons because I thought they were all rather good - certainly I got a nugget or two from each...A really good turn-out: Minister of Defence (in the PM), the Army obviously (not all of them but enough for challenging discussion), Air Force and Navy, as well as reps from Police, MFAT and Customs and a good mix of civilian staff and academia (would a loony academic be an academia nut?)

Old brass for new

An interesting starter on The Strategist ...

"If there is ONE enduring lesson, it is that none of this is new - bits and pieces may fade in and out of favour but the basic themes endure...IMHO the writings of Clausewitz, Jomini, Napoleon (interpreted perhaps through the Maxims), etc are as topical today as they ever were...what we are constantly seeing, just as the leadership 'manuals' discussed the other week, is old (but still good) brass being polished up and presented as new...

Principles and rules are not necessarily things that relate to right/wrong or good/bad in a moral sense but are examples of distilled wisdom (Sun Tsu being an example of watered-down viffle-vaffle) and guidance that one is not bound to follow but which should be disregarded with care and caution...

So far as MBA v leader officers, maybe there should be an accompanying correlation between states of war/peace at the time that each type had precedence - I would argue (as I did on the CAC COIN blog last week if anyone is interested) that when the rubber hits the road and actual war breaks out, metrics-focussed leaders are a rare breed indeed. They may have a number-crunching staff but that is management and neither leadership nor command...

...of course, you need real war to prove that..."

I really feel quite strongly on this one as I connect it with the ongoing thrust towards metrics where such things do not exist and can not be accurately or honestly invented. If we invest resources in training the military to develop and then apply their professional judgement based upon their training and experience, then why do we persist in trying to second-guess them through a consultants and analysts lacking that very experience and judgement?

Maybe this resource would be better applied to metricising the Reserve Bank or other agents of the Government who seem equally dependent on chicken entrails or training and experience to predict the future and develop policy and courses of action.

What we really need is less number-crunchers and more command and leadership...a drive towards developing an ethos and culture based upon leadership and comand in those agencies still focussed (very Third Wave-like) on management and metrics...