The Afghan-Pak Logistics Challenge in 2012

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01/25/2012
Dr. Richard Weitz (Credit: The Hudson Institute)

By Dr. Richard Weitz

01/25/2011 – The success of U.S.-NATO operations in Afghanistan depends on logistics capabilities and security. It is crucial to have secure and effective lines of communication through which supplies can reach the foreign contingents assigned to the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.

Since Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) began in October 7, 2001, the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has consistently increased until reaching a plateau in mid-2011. In December 2009, the United States had 33,000 troops in Afghanistan as part of OEF as well as an additional 34,800 U.S. troops as part of the NATO-led ISAF, which has a total strength of 68,765 soldiers, mostly from NATO countries. In his December 1, 2009, speech, President Obama announced that an additional 30,000 U.S. troops would deploy to Afghanistan in early 2010.  The administration announced a similar surge the following year. This influx of foreign military personnel has increased the need for more supplies to be transported into Afghanistan to support such a large foreign military contingent.

The Logistical Challenges in Afghanistan are Daunting and Costly. (Credit image: Bigstock)The Logistical Challenges in Afghanistan are Daunting and Costly. (Credit image: Bigstock)

Most NATO non-lethal supplies bound for Afghanistan are routed through Karachi, which as Pakistan’s largest port allows for the best unloading of NATO cargo. Coalition governments hire private contractors to arrange the delivery of these goods—which include food, fuel, clothing, spare parts, vehicles, and other non-combat supplies and equipment–on trucks and other vehicles.

Shortages in transport planes and the high expense of air shipments preclude a major expansion of this airlift, which is the main mechanism for delivering weapons and ammunition to the NATO forces in Afghanistan. Although globally only some 10 percent of all U.S. military supplies are moved by air, the shipment of goods to Afghanistan by military or civilian cargo planes is approximately 30 percent. It also costs about $3 per pound to ship goods by air to Afghanistan, compared with 30 cents for surface delivery.

For this reason, only the most important items are sent by air to Afghanistan, such as weapons, ammunition, critical equipment, and U.S. soldiers, who enter and leave Afghanistan via the Manas Transit Center in Kyrgyzstan. Although not formally part of the NDN, almost all NATO forces in Afghanistan transit through this air base. The base also provides aerial refueling, emergency evacuation, and other essential services. The U.S. Transportation Command also tries to keep costs down by shipping as many of those supplies as possible to Persian Gulf seaports, where they are then loaded on planes flying to Afghanistan.

The United States and NATO opened the so-called Northern Distribution Network (NDN) in 2009 to supplement and reduce U.S. and NATO forces reliance on the Pakistani supply route. The advent of the NDN both reflected and contributed to improved relations between the United States and some of the former Soviet republics such as Russia and Uzbekistan,

The NDN, which is used for non-lethal supplies and equipment, connects Baltic and Caspian ports with Afghanistan via Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. This 5,000 kilometer transportation network (a distance five times longer than the 1,000-kilometer journey from Karachi to Kabul) involves the delivery of supplies to European ports, where they are loaded onto railway carriages or airplanes and sent through Russia to Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan. From there, the cargo is placed on trucks or trains for shipment into Afghanistan.

The NDN comprises three main land routes. The two belonging to NDN North both originate at  Latvia’s port of Riga and pass through the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan. The largest volume of supplies then passes through the city of Termez on Uzbekistan’s border with Afghanistan at the Hairaton Gate, while the lower-capacity variant enters Afghanistan via Tajikistan.

In contrast, NDN South runs from Georgia’s Black Sea port of Poti to Azerbaijan’s capital Baku. From there, NATO’s goods are transshipped across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan and then transported by truck into Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. About 70 percent of the goods using the NDN enter Afghanistan via the Hairaton Gate.

The NDN has decreased the volume of food, fuel, and equipment shipped through Pakistan, but these northern routes cost more, are less efficient, and present other challenges. Logistic bottlenecks prevent a rapid expansion of these alternative routes, while many of the NDN transit countries exclude the transportation of weapons, ammunition, or other combat supplies through their territory.

As a result, almost half of the supplies to the 140,000 members of the ISAF still pass through Pakistan.

Each country is responsible for supplying its own forces in Afghanistan. The United States, which still has almost 100,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, ships more than 30 percent of its non-lethal supplies through Pakistan. Some other coalition members send a much higher percentage through that route.

Although critics might argue that all the West has done was increase the number of vulnerable supply routes NATO must rely on, the net effect has been to reduce NATO’s overall vulnerability to supply cutoffs. Having a portfolio of roots means that, if one communications line is interrupted, the allies still have others to count on.

The value of this expanded portfolio became evident in late 2011, when Pakistan suspended delivery of NATO supplies through its territory after U.S. forces killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on November 26.

The decision came when more than 100, 000 NATO forces remaining in Afghanistan depended on vital supplies from outside the country. At the time of this incident, 48 percent of NATO cargo went through Pakistan. Meanwhile, the NDN accounted for 60 percent of fuel and 52 percent of non-lethal NATO deliveries through Russia, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia.  The U.S. vulnerability to the Pakistan blockade was lower.

According to U.S. Transportation Command, trucks were conveying an estimated 29 percent of the Pentagon’s supplies for Afghanistan through Pakistani territory. Meanwhile, 40 percent of U.S. military cargo for Afghanistan was transiting the NDN. The Pentagon was shipping the remaining 31 percent of its Afghan-bound supplies by air transport.

The suspension of NATO supply deliveries through Pakistani territory came after U.S.-Pakistani relations hit a low point following the November 26 cross-border incident, the U.S. Special Forces raid that killed Osama Bin Laden deep inside Pakistan in May 2011, and other sources of strain in 2011. Conflicting priorities over the war in Afghanistan have fueled tensions between the two countries. Islamabad now feels more comfortable pursuing a harsh anti-U.S. line, in part because the withdrawal of coalition forces may conclude with the emergence of a Taliban-controlled government in Kabul. Pakistani military and intelligence services want to sustain ties with the Afghan Taliban as a hedge should coalition forces fail to bring the war to a successful conclusion before they depart.

In light of the current deterioration in U.S.-Pakistani relations and instability along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the U.S.-NATO forces rely more than ever on the NDN.

Even before the November 26 incident, the Obama administration has been seeking permission for the reverse flow of transit along the NDN, which would allow the United States and NATO to withdraw their military forces through the former Soviet republics rather than through Pakistan, where they would be more vulnerable to retaliation by the Taliban and its Pakistani allies.

In 2012, U.S. officials should seek to expand use of the NDN. The next goals should be for the United States and other NATO countries to seek permission to transport lethal supplies along the NDN. In addition, they should try to secure the right of two-way transit, being able to move goods from as well as to Afghanistan. It is also necessary to reduce the costs of using the NDN. It currently costs NATO about $10,000 more to transport a twenty-foot container to via the NDN instead of through Pakistan. Finally, NATO should try to make greater use of NDN South, which suffers from fewer political risks than the Central Asian route.

While shorter than NDN North, the NDN South supply route entails shipping goods through Georgia’s Black Sea port of Poti via Azerbaijan’s capital city of Baku. The goods are then transshipped across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan. They are then conveyed by truck into Uzbekistan for onward shipment to Afghanistan. This constant on-and-off loading from trucks to ferries and back onto trucks is expensive

Another challenge that faces U.S.-NATO efforts to expand NDN South route is Azerbaijan’s desire not to antagonize Russia. Traditional deference to Moscow’s regional security interests has been reinforced by alarm over Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia. Azerbaijan has resisted recent U.S. proposals to host a U.S. military facility for fear of antagonizing Moscow.

The tensions surrounding a potential Turkish-Armenian rapprochement and the absence of a U.S. ambassador to Baku were cited as reasons for the April 2011 postponement of the joint U.S-Azerbaijan military exercise “Regional Response-2011.”  Observers have warned that defense ties between Washington and Baku are “stagnating.”

Expanded NATO use of NDN South could directly benefit Azerbaijan and Georgia economically through such positive externalities as additional transit revenue, local jobs and procurement, and improvements in their transportation infrastructure (possibly with NATO financial or other technical assistance).

On a regional level, an expanded NDN South could further economic integration among the Caucasus and Central Asian states by promoting the use of consistent trade rules and standards, improving transportation infrastructure, and reducing other barriers to regional trade.

In terms of security, an expanded NDN South would boost the U.S. military presence in the South Caucasus, deepen their security ties with NATO, and increase their prospects of attaining NATO membership should they wish.

Expanding NDN South would also reduce Moscow’s leverage on NATO decision-making as well as their own decision making. Yet, Russia’s support for the NATO-led ISAF mission would make this means of U.S. engagement with these countries less controversial than many other ways.

One drawback about using NDN South is that such involvement increases the risk of NATO becoming entangled in the Russia-Georgia and Armenia-Azerbaijan conflicts. But NDN North and the Afghan-Pakistan routes also entangle NATO supply deliveries in regional conflicts, so this problem is unavoidable and requires skillful management in any case.

An Iran-Centric Crisis?

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01/24/2012

By Dr. Harald Malmgren

01/23/2012 – Iran is threatening to close the Straits of Hormuz.  Newly tightening financial sanctions on Iran’s banks and its central bank are suffocating credit for Iran’s fuel imports and oil exports.  Inside Iran there are widespread frantic efforts by businesses and people in the streets to convert Rials to US dollars.  Long lines are developing for gasoline and diesel.  Repeated requests to Iran’s government to slow or halt its nuclear enrichment projects are being rejected.  Iran seems to be stepping up the pace of nuclear weapons development.  Israel is being warned by the US Government to avoid direct conflict with Iran now and instead wait for the newly tightening financial sanctions to work effects through Iran’s power structure.

(Credit: http://americanandproud.net/2011/12/iran-is-sabre-rattling-again/strait-of-hormuz-map/)(Credit: http://americanandproud.net/2011/12/iran-is-sabre-rattling-again/strait-of-hormuz-map/)

The world economy is slowing.  Under ordinary circumstances, oil prices would be falling as demand weakens.  However, oil markets are instead being levitated by fears of possible military conflict and interruption of supplies through the Straits.  As the saber rattling increases, so does the cost of oil.  At the first sign of armed conflict oil could run up to $150/barrel; and if armed actions were to be sustained $200/barrel would be conceivable.  US consumer spending would be immediately affected as gasoline prices would escalate to $5/gallon or more, and distribution costs in the US economy would escalate along with the price of diesel fuel.

There would also be secondary effects:  Shipping companies would respond to higher diesel costs by slowing speed of their ocean-going tankers to conserve fuel.  The pace of global flow of oil would slow.  Insurance costs would escalate at the first sign of risk to tankers.  Given the high value of cargoes, insurance premiums would escalate.  Aircraft fuel costs would also escalate worldwide, disrupting transportation of high value-added cargoes which tend to move by air rather than by sea.  Consequent disruption or surges in costs of international industrial supply chains would have negative impact on world manufacturing.

An oil spike might not by itself bring the US economy to a standstill but, functioning like a huge tax increase, would cut consumption dramatically.  Europe agreed to ban imports of Iranian oil in principle, although phasing in of a ban will take place only gradually.  In conjunction with the current slide into recession in most of Europe, the Euro is also weakening against the dollar.  This will raise costs of oil and refined products even more as oil is paid in dollars.  The impact on Europe of oil spiking by 50% would be disproportionately greater, tilting Europe into even deeper recession.

Further European distress would be negative for the US outlook.  In response, the Federal Reserve would likely respond with increased monetary stimulus, flooding the world with US dollars in an effort to shore up the global banking system and stem the dollar’s appreciation as worldwide capital flight occurred.  The Administration would likely feel politically compelled to pump oil freely into the market from its strategic reserves in a frantic effort to keep gasoline prices down before elections.  The Administration would also feel political need to respond with threats of overwhelming force, in hopes that such threats would deter Iran from any actions that exceeded rhetorical taunts.

In Iran, a higher price of oil might theoretically be beneficial to Iranian revenues, but Iran itself would be severely damaged by interruption of transportation through the Straits, as Iran would suffer interruption of its own shipments of oil and cessation of its imports of refined gasoline, aircraft fuel, and diesel.  Increasing severity of fuel shortages in Iran would encourage greater social unrest, generating much discomfort for the present complex power structure of religious theocracy and Revolutionary Guards officers.

It is possible that a limited confrontation in and around the Straits would be brief, with both sides backing off from extreme action that might involve sinking a US Naval ship or an Iranian submarine.  Nonetheless, markets might continue apprehensive for weeks or perhaps months, levitating oil prices well beyond the peak of a confrontation.  On the other hand, an Iranian attempt to close the Straits would bring about a sustained US military action to suppress Iran’s capabilities.  US military forces would ultimately succeed, but this would likely include a number of air sorties to take out Iran’s land-based missile capabilities, and efforts to destroy or frighten away a number of its ships and submarines over a period of weeks.

In response to full deployment of American sea and air power, Iran would likely back away from direct military confrontation and its devastating, humiliating consequences.

However, a military backdown would likely be accompanied by a change in Iran’s tactics to alter the overall balance of negotiating leverage in Iran’s favor.   Iran would likely shift its pressure on the US and its European allies through stepped up terrorism in the region, including disruption of pipelines and encouragement of insurrections in locations like Bahrain and some of the other Sunni kingdoms.  It would not be surprising if large numbers of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRG) were to be sent into Iraq, on the pretext of assisting the Shia government to protect itself from Sunni violence, but with intention of placing IRG forces next to the Saudi oil fields.

For historic reasons, many analysts tend to focus on a potential Israel-Iran conflict, but an entirely different process of Iran-led Shia conflict with all Sunni leaders is a potential next phase in the never-ending Middle East turmoil.  Religious and tribal rivalries between Sunni and Shia were suppressed for much of the last century by Europeans, and more recently by the US. With US withdrawal from Iraq and soon from Afghanistan, a field of opportunity has been opened for Iranian-Shia expansionism.  While most market analysts remain focused on potential Israeli action against Iran, a more likely process of turmoil in the Middle East will take the form of renewed Sunni-Shia conflict, with Iran seeking political-military dominance throughout the oil-producing region and beyond to surrounding enclaves of Shia populations.

It is this concern that most worries the Saudis, UAE, and other Sunni-led entities.  They fear a nuclear Iran because they fear that an Iran with a backstop of nuclear weapons would be an existential challenge to them.  If a nuclear weapon were to be used, they worry that Iran would not direct its application or threat of application to Tel Aviv or New York, but rather to Riyadh.

The ongoing uncertainties in the Middle East, particularly driven by Sunni-Shia rivalries and Iranian ambitions for preeminence, will leave oil supplies and prices subject to frequent moments of anxiety or apprehension in markets well into the future.  A single point of confrontation between Iran and the US in the Straits is likely to be transformed into a multiplicity of smaller points of conflict throughout the Gulf and into the Levant, making it increasingly difficult to craft appropriate responses and disincentives to restrain Iran.

Credit Featured Image: Bigstock

Off Probation and Into the USMC Inventory: F-35Bs at Eglin

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01/22/2012

01/21/2012: F-35B Turns a Page

BF-6, BF-7 and BF-8 are now at Eglin AFB and are USMC owned aircraft.

As Col. Tomassetti, Deputy 33rd Wing Commander has underscored:

Now we can stop talking about what we can do and start showing what we can do.  We move out of the planning phase and in to the execution phase.  We get to demonstrate that we have taken full advantage of the time we have had to prepare by safely and efficiently getting ourselves to the a Ready for Training declaration.

Our maintainers, both the Lockheed maintainers who are with us in the beginning and the Marine maintainers who will learn from them as we go, basically get to start this morning step one of a long list of things to get through, but they get to start step one because the airplanes are here now, and that gives them purpose. That gives them direction. That gives them motivation. You name all the buzz words you want, but now they get to show why they were selected to come here and what they can do now that they have their opportunity.

https://www.sldinfo.com/the-f-35-moves-forward/

Reintegrating Taliban Fighters

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01/20/2012
Dr. Richard Weitz (Credit: The Hudson Institute)

By Dr. Richard Weitz

01/20/2012  There is widespread international support for reintegrating lower-level Taliban foot soldiers who may have joined the insurgency for money or other non-ideological reasons.

Inducing many of these “accidental guerrillas” to leave the insurgency is a reasonable goal since neither the Afghan government nor its foreign backers expect to kill or capture them all in battle. The hope is that they might be induced to desert in return for suitable compensation as well as under the pressure from their relatives and community.

The Afghan government has recently been running TV commercials claiming that some 800 former Taliban fighters have recently defected and returned to peaceful civilian occupations. According to Admiral Jim Stavridis, head of European Command and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, the Afghan Peace and Reintegration Program has processed almost 3,000 Taliban guerrillas who have renounced violence and reintegrated back into Afghanistan’s civilian society.  But even if these figures are accurate, then at most one-tenth of the Taliban’s order of battle have defected, less than hoped for by either the Afghan government or its foreign backers given all the time and resources allocated to the reintegration programs.

Can the Afghan state evolve to integrate a broader segment of the population? (Image Credit: Bigstock)
Can the Afghan state evolve to integrate a broader segment of the population? (Image Credit: Bigstock)

Despite some popular misunderstandings, reintegration involves more than simply giving Taliban members money to cease fighting, which would be a terrific recruiting tool for the insurgents since almost everyone would join their ranks to be in a position to then get paid to defect. Rather, the reintegration process involves providing jobs, vocational training, housing, and other benefits that would allow rank-and-file Taliban insurgents to make a better living than they do now as hired fighters.

Several problems have impeded the effectiveness of the reintegration effort, but the main hindrance is the limited capacity of Afghan government institutions.

The Afghan National Army is not strong enough to pressure many Taliban soldiers to defect or guarantee their safety if they do. In addition, the government’s civilian institutions are unable to generate adequate legitimate employment or curb some of the social abuses, such as corruption, that lead people to take up arms in protest.

At the July 2010 Kabul Conference, the international community formally authorized the Afghan            government to lead the Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Program (APRP) and draw on the funds provided to the Peace and Reconciliation Trust Fund, with the UN Development Program Afghanistan providing operational support and channeling the financial resources to national APRP programs led by different Afghan government ministries. Yet it was not until September 2010 that the Japanese government’s made the first donor contribution to the UNDP Window of the APRP Trust Fund.

The Afghan government’s initial reintegration plan for lower-level Taliban deserters is to place these ex-fighters first in demobilization centers, where they are “de-radicalized” through special classes modeled after those employed in Saudi Arabia and other procedures. They also receive occupational training in preparation for employment in such fields as construction, farming, tailoring, electrical repairs, and other jobs requiring minimal training and education. For example, the former fighters can build highways, irrigation networks, and other major public infrastructure projects. The government also pays these ex-guerrillas to help respond to natural disasters, such as floods. The High Peace Council, the Afghan body authorized to decide policy toward Taliban members, oversees this reintegration process.

Some of the former fighters have been allowed to enroll in the Afghan National Army, Army National Police, and even community-based militias. The risk is that these fighters might rejoin the Taliban again after receiving government-funded training and weapons. Alternately, the militias could reinforce local warlords by placing these experienced fighters under the command of regional elites who rely on force to exploit their local communities. Former Taliban defectors are supposed to receive a biometric identification card, with the data shared with the Afghan authorities to discourage ex-fighters from rejoining the insurgency or attempting to reintegrate multiple times to receive additional benefits.

The U.S. military had started its own reintegration initiative months earlier by closing some detention centers in Afghanistan—including the feared and overcrowded facility at Bagram Air Base, where the malign conditions were further radicalizing inmates—and transforming others by offering basic education, religious instruction by moderate teachers, and training in various occupational technical skills to detainees in preparation to their possible reintegration. The program’s presumption is that an effort should be made to reintegrate all but the most hardened fighters into their communities. Those individuals who seem ready to cease fighting are then released to their communities, where at public ceremonies they pledge to relatives and village elders that they will cease fighting.  The Pentagon transferred the detainee release program to the control of the Afghan government, which is creating tribal councils and review boards that would work with local communities on reintegration efforts.

Reintegration requires overcoming several major hurdles that have undermined past efforts to remove and keep Taliban fighters off the battlefield. The Afghan authorities must be able to protect ex-fighters from reprisals from either their former government adversaries or their previous Taliban partners, find them suitable alternative employment, and guard against rewarding defectors so greatly that those who remained loyal become angered that their fidelity was not rewarded.

The problem is that, in Afghanistan, government institutions have frequently proved unable to accomplish these goals of protecting Taliban defectors from reprisals, finding suitable alternative employment for the former fighters, and avoiding the alienation of loyal supporters in the process.

Years of fighting have left Afghan public institutions so weak that they will find it a challenge to either entice many Taliban fighters to defect or to keep them sufficiently satisfied afterwards that they do not rejoin the insurgency.

Neither the Afghan National Army nor the Afghan National Police has been capable of defending Taliban defectors from attacks from their former guerrilla colleagues seeking revenge or from Taliban haters who still consider the ex-fighters their enemy despite their having switched sides. They have also proved unable to prevent Taliban fighters from marrying locally and embedding themselves within local business and other institutions.

In addition, Afghan civilian institutions, at the local as well as the federal level, have proven inefficient at converting foreign funding into jobs, housing, and the other enticements to provide the incentives and address the grievances that would keep some ex-guerrillas from returning to their previous occupation. Afghan civilian institutions, whether in Kabul or the provinces, lack the resources and other capabilities to ensure the delivery of essential public services, including justice as well as jobs.

Furthermore, according to Kai Eide, the previous UN Special Representative to Afghanistan, one reason the Taliban insurgency had rebounded throughout Afghanistan is that military priorities have determined international development efforts. Foreign aid flows primarily to the violent southern provinces, breeding resentment elsewhere among communities that have stayed loyal to the government, rather than being more evenly distributed across the country.  Although the Afghan government has had little responsibility for most foreign aid going to opposition rather than pro-government regions, it has suffered from the resulting alienation among previous loyal communities.

Unfortunately, the more immediate problem is that foreign aid to Afghanistan is declining.

In November 2011, the State Department announced that U.S. development assistance would decline in parallel with the decrease in the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan. U.S. civilian aid has already been in decline, falling from $4.1 billion in 2010 to $2.5 billion in 2011.

Western-supported reintegration projects, many of which will be funded by U.S. military commanders in their localities, will need to encourage Taliban resettlement, employment, and other opportunities throughout Afghanistan. Relocating Taliban defectors to localities where they were not involved in fighting could also decrease their vulnerability to retribution by their former comrades-in-arms. But some areas would not work. For example, putting ethnic Pashtuns among ethnic Tajiks in the northern part of the country would be asking for trouble since they are some of the Taliban’s strongest opponents and have been the most uncomfortable about agreeing to a peace agreement with the Taliban.

Pervasive public corruption has contributed to this resource paucity by diluting the impact of international financial assistance. In addition, the corruption discourages some foreign governments from rendering generous aid, while leading other to funnel whatever assistance they do provide directly to local structures, such as tribal bodies and non-governmental organizations. Bypassing the Afghan national government in this way does not contribute, and often adversely affects, the goal of building Afghan state capacity.

Furthermore, these independent groups suffer from their own capacity and corruption problems. Karzai has come under pressure by war-weary foreign governments to make progress, through domestic reforms and capacity-building programs, in strengthening his government’s effectiveness, both against the insurgents and at delivering the essential public services needed to sustain popular backing.

Some progress has been made on the military front. NATO has been engaged in the extensive training of the Afghan Nation Army. But further work is needed to teach the Afghans such skills as infantry fighting, communications, gunnery, engineering, weapons maintenance, and logistics. The Afghan National Police needs even more extensive help before it can fulfill its important mission of preventing the Taliban from returning to areas conquered by the Afghan Army. It does not help if the Army clears the Taliban from a locality but the police cannot hold it. The police is also supposed to provide intelligence on Taliban activity in their locality.

The December 2011 Bonn conference was designed to help improve the Afghan government’s institutions as NATO military forces continue to transition and withdrawal. An important focus was to strengthen Afghan public administration, the rule of law, and anti-corruption measures.  But Pakistan’s decision to boycott the conference in retaliation for the NATO air strike on its soldiers on November 26 detracted from much of its value.

Feature Image Credit: Bigstock

Defense Reform Revisited: The Case of Amphibious Ships

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01/17/2012

01/17/2011 by Vince Martinez

Defense reform is both possible and necessary as the force is restructured.  Indeed, NOT doing so will lead to a hollow force.

Now that the cards have been played relative to the defense budget cuts and service level downsizing, it is time for government and industry alike to repackage their investment strategies and their overall programmatic approach in order to remain relevant and effective in the years to come.

In the past, tremendous emphasis was always placed on the benefits and attributes of a System of Systems, but most of the time, was only articulated and defended on a platform-level scale.  That will no longer work.

With a warfighter that is still expected to meet operational obligations and maintain overall martial advantage, now is the time for new and innovative solutions for assessing programs across a service and Joint-level scale.

Amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) prepares to launch a UH-1N Huey and two CH-53E Sea Stallion helicopters assigned to Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron (HMM) 261. (Credit: USN Visual Service, 11/3/07)Amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) prepares to launch a Navy H-60 and two CH-53E Sea Stallion helicopters assigned to Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron (HMM) 261. (Credit: USN Visual Service, 11/3/07)

Two of the most difficult types of programs to change over time are aircraft and ships.  They are also the largest Department of Defense (DoD) programs when it comes to fiscal investment. Because of the scale and complexity of these programs, they are also laden with cost drivers associated with design, operational and production limitations, as well as sustainment and lifecycle challenges.

It is often these programs, however, that are quickly criticized for performance issues that are often due to unavoidable requirements creep over their long lifecycles.  Ship or aircraft lifecycles span decades, and it is not difficult for subsystems or Joint capabilities to easily outpace the ability of these platforms to affordably and reliably keep up.

To add insult to injury, it also seems that the bull’s-eye is often placed on these larger programs in times of constraint.  Decision makers often lean toward these programs to recapture dollars, because one can often solve some very large budget shortfalls in one fail swoop.

What the warfighters know, however, is that the obvious and easy choice for budget cuts in the D.C. corridor are often programmatic linchpins that are operational necessities in order to ensure martial advantage.

Interestingly enough, most programs already apply a vast amount of resources into assessing and defending individual programs.  Unfortunately, like the warfighters also know, individual platforms are not what define operational impact and success across the entire martial force.

It is the balance of programs, personnel, training and posture that provide the warfighter what he needs in order to carry the day.

If they take a hit in any of those categories—and we will see that happen in the next decade—you will experience a reduction in overall effectiveness and martial capability.

The U.S. military, through multiple wars, has grown adept at working in Joint environments with a multitude of partners, a diffuse set of circumstances and myriad of operational challenges.  Operational commanders have worked countless hours identifying, avoiding and resolving issues that could potentially inhibit operational success.  It seems that with this innate characteristic for cross-functional problem solving, the military is optimally postured to apply that same mindset to defining, budgeting, acquiring and sustaining programs across a multi-faceted force.

A perfect example of this is conundrum is the acquisition of amphibious ships.  While the typical acquisitions strategy focuses on the ship itself, Program Managers for Ships (PMS) are challenged with developing and defining robust acquisition strategies across all phases of design, production, testing and sustainment. The PMS, however, must also account for those amphibious forces that reside and operate on those platforms.

The Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF), in the case of the U.S. Naval Service, also brings a family of systems that cross all the functional areas of the U.S. Marine Corps, and have their own design, operational and interoperability challenges.  While the ship has to ensure it remains operationally capable, survivable and sustainable in and of itself, it also has to ensure it satisfies the operational requirements necessary to support embarked forces–both while on-board and engaged ashore.

In times of fiscal constraint, and in a amphibious shipping world that has historically been refined and sustained through physical interface, it seems the time is right for a new and innovative approach for ensuring investment, programmatic posture and operational readiness remain intact for the amphibious force as a whole—both now, and well into the future.

In other quarters, like the construction industry, innovative approaches have been implemented with great success that not only enhance virtual design, but also considers all the variables associated with cost, schedule and lifecycle management.

The senior Navy advocates for amphibious shipping have also started an initiative that follows this transformational methodology—an effort that spans requirements generation, acquisition and budget—in the form of the Navy/Marine Air Ground Task Force (N/MSIC) initiative under the CNO/N-85 Expeditionary Warfare Directorate.

While Modeling and Simulation (M&S) efforts have most often been incorporated on a platform-level scale, it appears that the times are calling for a new way to look across the entire spectrum of amphibious capabilities.

This is necessary in order to ensure an operationally relevant future that not only considers the ship, but those forces and platforms that must operate effectively while embarked.

Will M&S answer every operational question and address every programmatic dynamic?  No.

There are many aspects of a deployed and interoperable force that cannot be adequately captured or articulated in a simulated environment.

What can happen, however, is through detailed a M&S effort across a myriad of programs like those of the amphibious force, decision makers will be far better postured to make those tough, programmatic decisions earlier in the process.

Simultaneously, M&S can also assist greatly with interoperability, operational impact and programmatic decision making adjustments for legacy platforms both in the near and far term.

For pennies on the dollar, investment into Modeling and Simulation across a spectrum of amphibious capabilities will allow service-level advocates to not only see the operational impact of their decision making, but also help ensure that decision makers have situational awareness and better informed perspectives that will bolster their ability to ensure that their forces retain strategic, operational and tactical advantage.

It is time for a new way of thinking given the budget forecast over the next decade.

By taking off the parochial lenses associated with defining and defending individual programs like we have in years past, and through incorporation of cross-functional Modeling and Simulation into our service-level initiatives, decision makers will be far better informed when it comes to making those unavoidable, looming and difficult decisions that are the byproduct of mandatory fiscal constraint.

Editor’s Note: The Bold Alligator 2012 Exercise is taking a broad approach to understand how the pieces fit together in an innovative whole. Please see https://www.sldinfo.com/bold-alligator-2012-the-usn-usmc-team-shapes-the-future/ and https://www.sldinfo.com/bold-alligator-2012-charting-the-future/.

Peace in Afghanistan: The Foreigners’ Dilemma

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01/16/2012
Dr. Richard Weitz (Credit: The Hudson Institute)

By Dr. Richard Weitz

01/16/2011 – Limited international backing contributed to the failure of the past Afghan-led reintegration and reconciliation initiatives. Until recently, these processes encountered strong opposition in many Western countries. Meanwhile, reconciliation confronted the issue of previous Taliban misrule and the organization’s ties to the al-Qaeda perpetrators of 9/11.

Since 2010, Karzai’s foreign backers have become more supportive of Afghan-led efforts to reintegrate deserting guerrillas and, more reluctantly and with constraints, reconcile with defecting Taliban leaders. By then, it had become obvious that the Afghan government and the international forces fighting on its behalf lacked the resources and stamina to win a decisive military victory that would see the defeat or surrender of all Taliban commanders and fighters.

One of the main objectives of the January 2010 London conference on Afghanistan was to secure financial and other concrete international support from for Afghan-led reintegration initiatives. With varying degrees of enthusiasm, foreign governments pledged more than one hundred million dollars to a new Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund designed to finance the demobilization and de-radicalization of lower- and mid-level fighters and their reincorporation into civilian communities.

Peace talks in the midst of withdrawal with an uncertain future for the Afghan government is an explosive mix. (Credit image: Bigstock)
Peace talks in the midst of withdrawal with an uncertain future for the Afghan government is an explosive mix. (Credit image: Bigstock)

Nonetheless, the Afghan government and its international partners have been struggling over Karzai’s concern about excessive foreign interference in the peace process. He and other Afghans fear the NATO countries will negotiate a separate peace with Pakistan and the Taliban. The international community has repeatedly stated that any peace effort should be an “Afghan-led process of reconciliation and reintegration.” But they do not really want Karzai to have a veto on such an important issue, especially when he has incentives to keep NATO forces in his country indefinitely while Western leaders are eager to reduce their commitments as soon as possible.

After almost a decade of fighting, Western leaders are eager to reduce their military, financial, and other costly support for the Kabul government. Relations between Obama and Karzai remain strained despite the fact that the new U.S. civilian-military team, headed by U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Marine Lt. Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of Western troops in Afghanistan, has adopted a more conciliatory tone toward the Afghan leader in public.

These strains were evident when Karzai’s government recalled its ambassador to Doha, Khaled Ahmad Zakaria, after learning that diplomats from Qatar, the United States and Germany had conducted clandestine discussions with the Taliban to open an office in Qatar’s capital of Doha. Afghan government representatives complained that they had not been fully informed of these talks and that Qatar should not have offered to establish a Taliban liaison office without first securing the Afghan government’s approval for such an initiative.

Afghan officials also resisted proposals that the United States transfer a small number of Afghan prisoners from Guantanamo Bay military prison to Doha as a prelude to any talks. They want any Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo to be transferred to Afghan government custody first before any possible release.  The basic problem was that Karzai wants to control all “channels” of communication with the Taliban himself.

According to recent media reports, Taliban representatives have been holding secret meetings with German and American officials in Europe and Qatar for a year to engage in “talks about talks.” The discussions reportedly began in earnest when the administration relaxed its previous prerequisites for any dialogue at the beginning of last year. U.S. officials now accepted that the Taliban could end its ties with al-Qaeda, renounce violence, and accept Afghanistan’s constitution only at the end of the negotiations in any formal peace agreement rather than as a requirement to begin any talks.

These preliminary discussions aimed to determine how more formal negotiations might proceed. The Taliban participants in the secret talks reportedly included its former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Shahabuddin Dilawar, former deputy foreign minister Sher Mohammad Stanekzai, and Tayeb Agha, a top aide to Mullah Omar, the reclusive leader of the self-styled Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

By November 2011, U.S. and Taliban representatives had agreed on some general agenda items for the provisions of a possible peace deal. These agenda items include the possible U.S. transfer of the high-level Afghan Taliban prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay. In return, the Taliban would issue a public renunciation of international terrorism, a statement expressing support for Afghanistan’s constitutional democracy, and agree to commence formal peace talks with the Afghan government.

The participants also agreed in principle to the Taliban’s establishing an office in Qatar for the exclusive purpose of negotiating peace and not for conducting propaganda, recruitment, of for establishing an alternative government. The intent was to announce the framework agreement at the December 5 Bonn conference. But then the Karzai administration, learning how far these talks had progress and the content of the agreement, objected forced a suspension of the planned announcement of the framework deal.

It was only in early January that a Taliban representative confirmed the movement’s willingness in principle to open a liaison office in Qatar to begin formal negotiations. “Right now, having a strong presence in Afghanistan, we still want to have a political office for negotiations,” Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in an email message to the news media. “In this regard, we have started preliminary talks and we have reached a preliminary understanding with relevant sides, including the government of Qatar, to have a political office for negotiations with the international community.”

The release of any high-ranking Taliban prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility is likely to prove controversial within Afghanistan, the United States, and elsewhere. The figures under discussion reportedly include former Taliban interior minister Mullah Khair Khowa, former Taliban governors Noorullah Noori and Khairullah Khairkhwa, former Deputy Defense Minister Mohammed Fazl, former army commander Mullah Fazl Akhund, former senior intelligence official Abdul Haq Wasiq, and Taliban leader Mohammed Nabi. Noori and Fazl are accused of having killed thousands of Afghan Shiites between 1998 and 2001.

Many in the United States would insist that the Taliban release their own American captive—25-year old sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, captured in June 2009—as part of any exchange, though the Obama administration will need to make clear that securing his release is not the main aim of any Taliban releases. Any exchange should be seen not as an unbalanced, Israeli-style prisoner swap, but as a U.S. gambit to release a few Taliban leaders from detention in order to save more U.S. and Afghan lives through a peace agreement. In this regard, the timing of any prisoner deal, opening of the Taliban office, and other elements of the package deal will need to be well-timed and synchronized.

U.S. officials have told the press that they hope to see the Qatar office open in a few weeks and negotiations commence by the time of the NATO summit in Chicago this May.  Several Taliban leaders have already begun moving to Qatar in anticipation of their soon leading the office.  The fact they are bringing their families with them suggests they believe the negotiating process could last a while.

Following U.S. pressure, Karzai relented and accepted the principle that the Taliban could establish an office in “any Islamic country,” thereby de facto consenting to the Doha office. Afghanistan’s High Peace Council then issued a note to foreign missions defining the ground rules for their involvement in the peace process: ”The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is in agreement regarding the opening of an office for the armed opposition, but only to move forward the peace process and conduct negotiations…The government would prefer such an office in either Saudi Arabia or Turkey, both of which it is close to, but was not averse to Doha as long as the authority of the Afghan state was not eroded and the office was only established for talks.”  The Taliban consider Qatar’s government more independent of the Karzai and his Western backers than Turkey or Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, Karzai offered a sardonic endorsement of the Taliban-U.S. talks in Qatar as helping to “eliminate the foreigner’s excuses for and actions to continue war and bloodshed in Afghanistan.”

The new challenge could be that the Afghan want any peace talks in Qatar to be between Afghans alone, whereas the Taliban want to talk with the United States and other foreign governments. The Taliban announcement specifically said that they are prepared to open a political office in Qatar to conduct peace negotiations “with the international community.” One source reports Mujahid being even more explicit in stating that the Taliban would establish the Qatar office to negotiate with the “United States of America and their foreign allies.”  Nuland tried to downplay any distinction between an Afghan-led peace process and a U.S. lead role in Qatar. “If this is part of an Afghan-led, Afghan-supported process, and the Afghan government itself believes it can play a constructive role . . . then we will play a role in that, as well.”

Such direct dialogue with Western governments would enhance their legitimacy and weaken Karzai’s perceived authority. In public, both Afghan and U.S. officials insist that the Afghan government must have the lead role in any formal talks (as opposed to the informal dialogues that have been occurring in Europe and Qatar until now. In private, reports from the region indicate that Afghan officials recognize that the United States will likely have the dominant role, which is the reason why the Taliban and Washington pushed for Qatar as the site of the talks rather than inside Afghanistan itself, which is what the Afghan government initially preferred, though it would be difficult to ensure the safety and security of any Taliban negotiating team that resided on Afghan territory.

But the Afghan government would rightly insist on having a decisive say in any power-sharing agreement with the Taliban.

These arrangements could range from a comprehensive coalition government to a more limited sharing of authority in certain geographic and functional areas (such as the Taliban’s having a larger role in Pashtun-dominated areas but limited say over Afghanistan’s foreign policy). Afghan officials would naturally bulk at any deal that looked like an international attempt to yield a “decent interval” between the withdrawal of all foreign troops and the collapse of the internally recognized Kabul government. Even pro-U.S. Afghan leaders fear a sell-out: “This is being planned based on the politics of the United States,” warned Afghan parliament member Fauzia Kofi. “History is repeating itself. This may result in bringing the Taliban back to power. None of our achievements have been systematic, and they can all collapse at any time.”

Releasing any Guantanamo Bay detainees would prove politically controversial in the United States, where members of Congress have sought to bar such returns. The Taliban prisoners under discussion include Mullah Khair Khowa, a former interior minister, Noorullah Noori, a former governor in northern Afghanistan, and former army commander Mullah Fazl Akhund.  Some of these were involved in atrocities under the earlier Taliban government, which ruled most of the country between 1998 and 2001. Taliban representatives also want the United States to work to remove their names from international terrorist black lists.

Despite Afghan complaints that the Pakistani intelligence service renders aid to the Taliban and other militants, and that Pakistanis were involved in the September 20 assassination of President Rabbani, the Karzai government wants Pakistan involved in any peace talks. In particular, Afghan officials acknowledge that Pakistani government support is needed to induce the Afghan Taliban to end its insurgency since the Afghan Taliban use Pakistani territory as their main base of operations.

The head of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, Lt Gen Shuja Pasha, visited Qatar last week for unannounced discussions with U.S. officials on the Afghan peace process, suggesting that the Pakistanis were aware of the Taliban’s plans to establish a political office there. Pakistani sources indicate that one factor that might move Pakistan to reopen the NATO supply line through its territory is the desire to be fully involved in any Afghan peace talks. Such intervention has not always had a positive effect. In the past, the Pakistani authorities have arrested Afghan Taliban members who seemed inclined to negotiate with the Kabul government independently rather than through Pakistani-approved channels.

The endless disputes and games between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and between NATO and both countries, have naturally complicated the peace process.

Another reason for the slow peace progress besides the issue of third-party foreign involvement is that Western governments have not pressed Karzai to engage in genuine peace negotiations with Taliban leaders until coalition forces have had the opportunity to reverse the deteriorating situation on the battlefield. U.S. policy makers in particular wanted to take advantage of the surge in NATO combat forces in Afghanistan—which reached 150,000 in August 2011, of which some two thirds were American—to shake Taliban commanders’ conviction that they were winning the war.

But it would be a mistake to disconnect the situation on the battlefield from the reconciliation and reintegration processes.

If they work sufficiently well, they might weaken the insurgency enough that the Afghan military — newly enlarged and trained with considerable foreign assistance – could prove adequate to overcoming the remaining hard-liners, even after foreign troops reverse their current surge and scale down their presence during the next few years.

In any case, 2012 will likely see increased fighting as the parties try to improve their negotiating positions and the opponents of any accord try to wreck it through assassinations, mass killings, and other violence.

Credit Featured Image: Bigstock

Afghanistan 2012: The Peace Problem

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01/15/2012
Dr. Richard Weitz (Credit: The Hudson Institute)

01/15/2011 – by Richard Weitz

Editor’s Note: In the first of four parts, Richard Weitz looks at the prospects and challenges for an Afghan peace process in 2012 and the reality of the 2014 target goal of withdrawal.  If it is not real now, what will 2014 magic bring that can not be seen in 2012?

One issue that is certainly on the President Barack Obama’s national security agenda this year will be how to end or substantially reduce the fighting in Afghanistan. The frustratingly protracted Afghan War has led influential people in Europe, the United States, and Afghanistan itself to ponder the prospects of negotiating a political settlement. Popular support for the war is falling in the United States, with mainstream defense analysts eager to reset a U.S. military preoccupied for more than a decade with counterinsurgency and counterterrorist operations.

The United States and its NATO allies are planning to withdraw almost all their military forces from Afghanistan by 2014 at the latest. The United States, by far the largest troop contributor to the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF), withdrew 10,000 troops in 2011 and aims to redeploy 23,000 this year.  NATO forces are already transferring the leading combat role in various provinces from NATO to the Afghan National Security Forces as they continue to withdraw some of the forces they added during last year’s troop surge. In light of this impending withdrawal, NATO leaders and their Afghan allies have redoubled their efforts to negotiate a peace deal with the Taliban while they can still muster considerable punch on the battlefield.

What will be the fate of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2012? (Credit Image of Taliban Flag: Bigstock)
What will be the fate of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2012? (Credit Image of Taliban Flag: Bigstock)

Senior U.S. officials have been cited in media outlets as saying that they hope to begin official talks with representatives of the Afghan Taliban soon. In an Newsweek interview last month, Vice President Joe Biden said that the United States would not consider the Afghan Taliban a threat if it broke with the more militant and globally oriented al-Qaida terrorist movement. On December 31, Afghan President Hamid Karzai declared that, “I am very happy that the American government has announced that the Taliban are not their enemies,” adding that, “We hope that this message will help the Afghans reach peace and stability.” A few days earlier, Karzai said his government would accept the Taliban establishing a liaison office in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and if necessary Qatar for the purpose of holding peace talks.

 

Most recently, on January 3, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid issued a statement affirming that his movement would consent in principle to establish a political office in Qatar if the United Nations recognized the Taliban as a legitimate opposition party and the United States released some Taliban members imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba. Vali Nasr, who served on the Obama administration’s Afghan-Pak team until his recent appointment as a professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, described the Taliban offer to establish a political office as “akin to the Taliban forming a Sinn Fein—a political wing to conduct negotiations.”

State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland welcomed the Taliban proposal to open a political liaison office in Qatar and said that it confirmed with the administration’s “fight, talk, build” strategy, laid out last fall by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her Senate testimony. “We’ve seen in many other conflict situations that you have to have a political address if you’re going to begin a political conversation,” Nuland added. “The Afghans themselves have said they are frustrated that the Taliban do not have a political address.” Nuland correctly stressed the need for the Taliban to accept Afghanistan’s post-Taliban constitution. The sincerity of the Taliban offer, the extent to which Taliban leaders support Mujahid’s statement consenting to engage in a peace process, and the degree to which those working at any formal office are empowered to negotiate on the Taliban’s behalf remain to be tested.

The prerequisites for starting negotiations are in flux. Until recently the main issue was how to move the unofficial talks occurring between Taliban and NATO representatives to a more formal channel. The parties only agreed in November that the Taliban could establish an office for its negotiating team in Qatar. Such an office is needed so that the Taliban’s interlocutors know they are talking to authorized representatives of the Taliban rather than self-declared but fake emissaries.  In the past, such false representatives have extorted large sums of money from the United States before being exposed.  Another false Taliban emissary, who may have been associated with a dissident Taliban faction, assassinated the head of the Afghan Peace Council, Burhanuddin Rabbani. After that, Karzai himself insisted that, ”We can’t continue talking to suicide bombers… we have stopped talking about talking to the Taliban until we have an address for the Taliban, until we have a telephone for the Taliban.”

Even after a Taliban political office is established, the Taliban representatives will need guarantees for their safety if they participate in direct physical negotiations with the Kabul government and its foreign allies. The Taliban cited safety concerns as the reason they had to establish a political office in Qatar rather than in Kabul or elsewhere in Afghanistan itself. Conversely, safeguards are needed to prevent the Taliban office from serving as a propaganda font or mobilization center for the Taliban. Recognizing the office will in any case enhance the movement’s legitimacy, though this might be an acceptable concession if it accelerates actual negotiations and does not lead to endless talks in Doha while the Taliban waits out the withdrawal of most NATO troops from Afghanistan in 2014.

In the Afghan context, the process of ending the fighting through persuading the insurgents to stop fighting is typically divided into two components—reconciliation and reintegration. Reconciliation entails negotiating peace deals with senior Taliban leaders who, for diverse reasons, might accept a compromise settlement. Reintegration refers to efforts to induce lower-level Taliban fighters, who might have joined the insurgency to earn money or for other non-ideological reasons, to lay down arms and rejoin the peaceful political process.

For several years now, Karzai has offered to negotiate with “moderate” Taliban leaders, renegade warlords, and other groups and commanders fighting his government providing they agreed to end their insurgency and accept the legitimacy of his government and the basic tenets of the Afghan constitution adopted following the Taliban’s defeat in late 2001. The Afghan government has also offered various forms of amnesty and other inducements to guerrilla fighters who pledge to cease fighting.

More recently, Karzai’s government has developed a comprehensive peace plan to include working with Pakistan and other potential regional mediators and convening a loya jirga, or council of elders, to promote Afghan reconciliation. In November 2011, for example, a Loya Jirga attended by more than 2,300 lawmakers, government officials, and other influential Afghans met in Kabul and endorsed peace talks with the Taliban.

Nonetheless, past efforts to induce many of the Taliban guerrillas to defect and some Taliban leaders to negotiate peace with the internationally recognized Kabul government led by President Karzai have repeatedly failed.

Thus far, the Taliban leadership has publicly rejected Karzai’s reconciliation overtures and denounced the reintegration process. Taliban leaders have demanded that all NATO troops leave Afghanistan as a prerequisite for starting the negotiations.  They greeted the inauguration of the June 2010 Peace Jirga with rocket attacks and suicide bombers. They later assassinated the head of the Afghan Peace Council and former Afghan president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, using a suicide bomber who pretended to be a Taliban emissary.

Taliban commanders have prevented their fighters from defecting by credibly threatening death to those guerrillas who seek to abandon their units and join the government. In addition, many former fighters who participated in earlier reintegrated schemes subsequently took up arms again because they did not receive adequate financial assistance, employment retraining, or protection.

The issue of whether to offer amnesty to former Taliban leaders and fighters who lay down arms has, as in other civil conflicts marked by widespread violence against civilians, proven controversial given the unease felt by many victims and their sympathizers. A common sentiment is that the perpetrators should pay for the past crimes, but such retributive justice could bring net losses to everybody if the Afghan conflict drags out longer than necessary.

A related fear is that the granting of amnesty will reinforce the sense of impunity felt by Afghan leaders. This concern extends beyond the issue of Taliban atrocities to encompass those crimes committed by various warlords, especially in the 1990s, as well as the pervasive public corruption that undermines good governance.

There ethical problems with accepting impunity, corruption, and an absence of the rule of law in Afghanistan, though these might be mitigated by studying and applying the lessons learned in other cases through the use of truth and reconciliation commissions. But these maladies also create practical problems. In particular, they encourage apathy among the Afghan people regarding the outcome of the war, sapping the support required to win a counterinsurgency war, and can even fuel the grievances that lead people to rebel against government authority in the first place, whether by joining the Taliban, a warlord, or some other armed group.

Both reintegration and reconciliation are at best difficult, partially effective, but essential complements to the intensified NATO military operations in Afghanistan. Despite the surge in troops and other resources entering Afghanistan, NATO forces and their Afghan allies acknowledge that they could not plausibly hope to kill or capture all the Taliban insurgents.

Both approaches present various opportunities and problems, though most concerns focus on the reconciliation element. Seeking to weaken the Taliban insurgents by dividing the movement’s less committed members from its hard-core supporters makes tactical sense, but the initiatives entail serious risks that must be understood and reduced.

Perhaps the most serious problem impeding reintegration and reconciliation thus far is the declining international support for continuing military involvement in the Afghanistan war.

On the one hand, the unwillingness of Western publics to make an enduring military commitment in Afghanistan comparable to that provided by the United States to South Korea and West Germany during the Cold War is driving their governments’ interest in a negotiated settlement. Many European governments have publicly announced sharp reductions in their military commitments in coming years to appease their publics, and the Obama administration is under pressure to do likewise. Perceived progress toward a peaceful settlement could even accelerate this process since it could lead their publics to want to minimize further deaths and casualties in a war that was about to end.

On the other hand, Western war wariness is contributing to the belief of many Taliban leaders that they need simply to keep fighting for a few more years until the Western publics compel their governments to withdraw their forces, which would place the weak Afghan National Army and National Police in a difficult situation.

The risk further exists that appearing overly eager to reach a negotiated settlement could deepen doubts about Western willingness to stay the course in Afghanistan, both among the Afghan people and in neighboring countries, such as Pakistan. The Taliban has long sought to convey the message to Afghans that they should not resist them because, while the Western troops will soon leave, the Taliban movement plans to stay forever. In addition, some members of the divided Pakistani security services argue that they need to maintain good ties with the Taliban since they will eventually return to power.

The best way to break this vicious circle is to turn the tide on the battlefield.

For this reason, NATO governments increased their combat forces in Afghanistan, through a temporary surge, to put more pressure on the Taliban. They have also redoubled their efforts to build a stronger Afghan National Army.

This increased pressure may be inducing more Taliban leaders to negotiate and more Taliban rank-and-file fighters to defect. In addition, the enhanced number of coalition and Afghan ground troops has lowered the number of civilian casualties by reducing the need for air strikes. For example, there are now more forward-based ground controllers nearby who can waive off attacks when many civilians are near the target. Furthermore, the troop increase appears to have provided the improved security needed to promote the social, economic, and other initiatives needed to strengthen the capacity of Afghan institutions.

Unfortunately, the current surge in foreign troops and spending is unsustainable.

NATO forces are already on a downward path in Afghanistan, while their foreign assistance to Afghans is also falling. The Afghan economy has shown signs of improvement, but it has not grown fast enough to sustain the enormous Afghan national security establishment built in recent years with foreign funding and encouragement.

The next two years will therefore see an endurance contest between the tenacity of the insurgents and the durability of the Western military and financial commitment to the Afghan government.


2012: Swans Take Flight

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01/08/2012 by Robbin Laird

As the country prepares for the Presidential and Congressional elections, the world will move on oblivious to the logic of the debate inside the Beltway and the country.  The national debt has become a more important focus than national security.  In fact, for many the two have become synonymous.    The conventional wisdom is looking at significant defense drawdowns, and “staying the course in Afghanistan until 2014” with virtually no focus on defense transformation and re-shaping forces, capabilities and decision making systems to deal with fluidity of the world in flux.

Which Swans will fly in 2012 and challenge US strategy? (Credit Image: Bigstock)
Which Swans will fly in 2012 and challenge US strategy? (Credit Image: Bigstock)

At the heart of what needs to take place is a significant restructuring of US power projection forces, which can be paid for and modernized with the withdrawal from Afghanistan and a ruthless retirement of the old in favor of the new.  The need to reduce budgets in the context of a significant drawdown can be met in significant part by removing the two billion dollar a week cost to operate in Afghanistan.  The logistics costs in Afghanistan alone have diverted money from investment accounts and have frozen US forces into a force in being to manage territory.  Cost savings from withdrawal need to be conjoined with a significant re-configuration of forces as withdrawal unfolds.  Indeed, one could argue that the withdrawal and the re-configuration of Big Army are closely connected.  Indeed if Secretary Panetta can manage it, the withdrawal, downsizing and reconfiguration of Big Army is really at the heart of structural redesign of US forces.

U.S. forces need to become more agile, flexible, and global in order to work with allies and partners to deal with evolving global realities.  Protecting access points, the global conveyer of goods and services, ensuring an ability to work with global partners in having access to commodities, shaping insertion forces which can pursue terrorist elements wherever necessary, and partnering support with global players all require a re-enforced maritime and air capability.  This means a priority for the USCG, USN, USMC and the US Air Force in the re-configuring effort.  Balanced force structure reduction makes no sense because the force structure was re-designed for land wars that the US will not engage in the decade ahead.  The US Army can be recast by the overall effort to shape new power projection capabilities and competencies in the decade ahead.

Retiring older USN, USMC, and USAF systems, which are logistical money hogs and high maintenance, can shape affordability.  Core new systems can be leveraged to shape a pull rather than a push transition strategy. Fortunately, the country is already building these new systems and is in a position to shape an effective transition to a more affordable power projection capability.

The strategic urgency of engaging in the re-shaping of US power projection forces is rooted in the worlds of the gray and black swans.  In the past two years, US forces have deployed to earthquakes, tsunamis, pick up wars, counter-piracy ops and a variety of impact points which could not have been planned in advance.  At the center of every response were agile commands, agile forces and agile capabilities.

The difficulty is that every response to a cluster of Gray Swans or Black Swan events  further degrades the remaining capabilities.  Operations drain the remaining capability of deployed assets.  Leaders love to use the tools, but not to pay for their replacements.

Responding to Black Swan events require agility and resiliency. Leveraging several of the new platforms being built now provide a solid foundation for building agile forces. (Credit Image: Bigstock)
Responding to Black Swan events require agility and resiliency. Leveraging several of the new platforms being built now provide a solid foundation for building agile forces. (Credit Image: Bigstock)

It is more likely that Gray Swan or Black Swan events will continue to dominate our future, not 5-year Gosplans and insights from Commissions.  To be ready for Gray and Black Swans you need agility.  Agile commands such as have built around the Tanker Airlift Control Center (TACC), or the Marine Expeditionary Unite (MEU) structure are essential.  More flexible command and control as used by the French or the USMC in the recent Libyan engagement. Agile forces such as the Agile Response Group built around the newly enabled Amphibious Ready Group.  This is the building block for the future, not simply maintaining a legacy fleet with “geriatric” capabilities.  The new force structure built around leveraging new platforms can provide the needed agility.

The author of the Black Swan underscored that key impediment to learning is that we focus excessively on what we do know and that we tend to focus on the precise. We are not ready for the unexpected.   For the author, the rare event equals uncertainty. He argued that the extreme event as the starting point in knowledge not the reverse.

The author in the concluding parts of his second edition advocated redundancy as a core capability necessary for the kind of agile response one needs in a Black Swan or Gray Swan Events.

To clarify, a black swan is a large impact and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations. A Gray Swan is a large impact event but is somewhat predictable but overlooked as major stakeholders in society and globally simply wish to not contemplate the consequences of such events.

The Black Swan: The Second Edition by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Random House).

The key conclusion here is rather simple: we need to rebuilt our forces to be MORE agile, and more flexible expectations of what engagements we are about to engage in.  And shaping plug and play capability with allies and partners becomes SIGNIFICANTLY more important in the period ahead.

And having significantly SCALEABILITY with regard to one’s forces would be a core advantage in responding to Black and Gray Swans.  As an event emerges, the NationalCommand Authority responds with what make sense to them.  But then the situation evolves and the forces sent appear to be inadequate or the wrong ones.  The deployed force can reach up and out to scale a response.  And those forces can depart as new ones come.

One could easily argue that this will not happen the legacy systems which the US fights with have way to many stovepipes for agility, connectivity and coalition operations.

Black Swans are completely unexpected events, but Gray Swans are single events or clusters of events, which shape a dynamic situation in which collapse, resiliency and agility are required.  Shaping forces and decision-making systems, which are rooted in crafting capabilities for the Gray Swan norm, are crucial.  By shaping agility, then shocks for Black Swan events can be coped with. (http://www.sldforum.com/2011/12/preparing-for-crises-crafting-a-resilient-organization/)

For example, in a recent conversation with senior Japanese officials involved in dealing with the recent Tsunami and reactor meltdown crisis, the officials discussed the significant challenge of recovery in the midst of a crisis.  “We were prepared for single instances of crisis, flood relieve, Tsunami recovery, nuclear reactor problems; we were not prepared for simultaneous incidents which created a collapse.  In shaping a response and recovery strategy, a key problem was an attempt to apply single incident plans to the crisis.  We focused initially on defining the crisis as a nuclear meltdown and tried to approach the crisis this way, but that only worsened the situation as the entire population in the core area hit by floods, etc. were panicked by the meltdown, but unable to move and to focus on their ability to have proper help to provide for tactical and strategic mobility.”

According to these officials, it was crucial to be able to apply tools, which would buy the Japanese leadership with time to peel back the elements of the Onion in order to start the recovery process.  “We did not have the proper tools in place to allow us to move people and to restore confidence.”

The US offered various types of aide in the situation, but the initial platform whereby aide came was in the form of carriers and amphibs to provide supplies for relief.  “At first we focused on direct relief, but soon came to realize that the sea bases provided significant alternative hubs to manage the movement of persons and to provide a sense of mobility and support to a population which hitherto felt trapped.  In other words, the sea bases became instruments not simply of relief, but facilitated recovery and reconstruction.  They became much more than supply depots to help the endangered population; they became part of the infrastructure for recovery and reconstruction. Obviously, the aircraft aboard these ships, notably the helicopters, became part of the mobility team able to not supply but move people strained in the situation.  The sea base became a visible reality to the Japanese people of how to overcome the limits of an island nation facing such catastrophe.”

The norm in this fluid part of the century is Gray Swans; and expecting shocks from Black Swans.  Agility is king; MRAPS are not.  To get agility after a period of operating on terrain with no contested air or sea space will be a challenge.  This is one reason why the USN and USMC team are planning the biggest amphibious exercise since the mid-1990s.  Re-gaining agility after shaping a large land operation is a challenge.

Although the list would be long, some Gray Swans hovering in the not too distant future can easily be identified.  What can not is how countries and stakeholders in various crises will react, how they will perceive their interests and how the dynamics of change will unfold in a compressed period of time.

Some of the candidate Gray Swans for 2012-2013 is the following:

  • A nuclear Iran with its attendant consequence on the Middle East and beyond;
  • The Islamic Republic of Libya finds its place in the world;
  • The Euro implosion leads to a significant power vaccum in Europe filled by the Russians and their energy wealth;
  • The Syrian implosion leads to outside intervention in shaping the future of Syria looking like the new Lebanon;
  • With the acquisition of new defense systems from Russia and Europe allows Vietnam to position itself to assert its interests against the PRC and this will mean even significant armed intervention;
  • Pakistan attacks a US UAV operating from Afghanistan;
  • A terrorist mine sinks an oil tanker in the Gulf;
  • A loose Libyan MANPADS is used to shoot down an A380;
  • A presumed nacrco mini sub is seized by the USCG and it is discovered that it is a terrorist armed mini sub;
  • Iranian border incursions into Iraq lead to pressures for dismemberment of the Iraq and pressure to build autonomous regions with significant outside pressure rewriting the Iraqi map.

Such events would challenge the U.S. and its allies to provide for security and defense of their interests.  But with the U.S. engaged in internal debates about budgets rather than strategic re-positioning and Europe enmeshed in reversing the last 20 years of its history, Gray Swans will have even greater consequences.  And with the West enmeshed in its own reflections, the actors shaping the period ahead will be largely non-Western.

In wake of an inability to re-shape US and allied agility and shaping effective forces and decision-making systems, the dominance of the 1990s by the West will be a distant memory in a few years, not decades.

Writing from the perspective of 2021, we might expect a strategic analyst to write:

As we go forward in 2021, it is good to look back on the last ten years to identify key trends that have reshaped our defense futures in Europe.  The last ten years have seen significant change, and with that change a re-configuration of the defense challenges facing Europe.

One significant change has been the continued decline of US power projection capabilities throughout the decade.  The cancellation of the F-22 was the harbinger of US preoccupation with its land wars.  Significant reductions in military space, a slowdown in the bomber program, termination of hypersonics programs, and a 40% reduction of the USAF and of the blue water naval assets accompanied the cancellation of the F-22.  The retirement of the F-16s, F-15s and A10s were accompanied by a slow roll-out of the F-35 program.  And allied defections from the F-35 program accompanied by a 40% cut in US numbers have slowed the program significantly with significant cost increases.

Although there has been much talk of strengthening European integration, European efforts remain tepid.  The joint forces, which would replace US diminished capabilities, have not materialized.  Indeed, in response to the great recession of 2009, Europe cut its defense budgets, invested heavily in the inconsequential Afghan campaign, and the result has seen a 30% reduction in European air and naval forces.

As a result, the West’s overall ability to influence global events through air, space and naval forces has significantly declined.

An earlier version of this piece appeared on AOL Defense

http://defense.aol.com/2012/01/03/whack-old-weapons-rebuild-the-army-or-fade-from-view/