Has Afghanistan Turned Into a War of Attrition?
For President Obama Afghanistan is staring to resemble the BP oil spill. It's looking like a real PR disaster for the Obama administration. Everybody is focusing on the extraordinary bust up between General McChrystal and the Obama White House following leaks of a forthcoming interview that the General gave Rolling Stone magazine. That interview was a real shocker.
If I remember correctly the White House replaced General McKiernan because he was seen as a latter day General McClellan. General McChrystal was seen as more of a gung ho commander. It looks like Obama made a big mistake in going for a wild card like McChrystal. Obama appointed him after sacking McKiernan and now he has to wear him.
But there is more happening on the Afghan front than this Korea like spat between the commander in chief and his theatre commander. For example Richard Holbrooke just visited Marjah, which seems to have been a disaster in itself. It looks as if the Osprey helicopter carrying Holbrooke came under Taliban small arms fire. Recall that Marjah was supposed to have been pacified
...According to ABC News, Taliban gunmen tried to shoot down the Osprey. Several suicide bombings were carried out after his departure, the report said.
Holbrooke was visiting Marjah for a first-hand assessment of US- led NATO efforts to take over a Taliban-controlled region that they had hoped would set an example for tougher battles to follow.
Troops have met with stiff resistance, which has delayed plans to take on the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar province this summer. Holbrooke was also to visit Kandahar...
Much more serious than these political issues is the status of Pakistan army counterinsurgency operations along the border with Afghanistan. According to a RAND Corp study
...PAKISTAN HAS failed to develop an effective counter-insurgency strategy, undermining efforts to tackle militants who roam the Afghan border, according to a new study by security analysts.
A report by the Rand Corporation, a non-profit research group frequently used by the Pentagon, concludes that Pakistan’s army and frontier corps have failed to hold territory regained from insurgents...
The Pakistani army is clearing insurgents from places like the Swat valley and Bajaur agency ,but the Government is finding it tough to hold ground and build alternative political, economic and social structures. This is a bit like Marjah. The strategy adopted is one of “clear, hold and build.” If you can't hold and build then you are waging an attritional strategy of "clear, clear, clear" until the insurgents are bleed white.
Who will crack first? The strategy for Af-Pak was supposed to be a classical counterinsurgency based strategy. It looks as if we have got ourselves into a war of attrition to me.
The Pakistan army is clearing, but according to the RAND report it is not so good at holding and building. You can't blame the Pakistan army for this. The cash strapped Government in Pakistan probably doesn't have the resources to both destroy the border areas and then rebuild them. Don't forget that Team Obama early on took to calling the Afghan theatre as Af-Pak. Strategic planners in Washington surely would be reading the conclusions of this RAND Corp study with deep concern.
Here in Australia I wonder for how long the Government will stomach a war of attrition. I think Canberra bought the McChrystal-Obama counterinsurgency strategy. But if Australia is finding itself in the middle of a war of attrition then maybe this might prompt a strategic rethink in Canberra.
Are We Headed for a Major Escalation of Conflict in the Greater Middle East?
The United States stands poised on a multi-front escalation of conflict, not necessarily wholly a matter of choice, in the greater Middle East that poses serious strategic challenges for policy makers. It also tells us a lot about the Obama administration. Developments in the region need to be considered more holistically than hitherto.
Today has seen the bloodiest day thus far this year in Iraq. This comes as the US is poised to strike against the Taliban in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, and reports suggest that the Pakistan army will do the same in the mountainous region of North Waziristan.
The US might be looking on with concern at these developments. Recent reports have focused on the immense logistical challenge that the US military faces in shifting forces from Iraq to Afghanistan in anticipation of Obama's surge in the Afghan theatre. What are they leaving behind in Iraq?
The two major Shia blocs in Iraq have secured a power sharing arrangement that locks out the largely Sunni supported bloc of the former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. The new coalition government was made possible by including the backers of Moqtada al Sadr, now a significant political force in Iraq. This is important because of the future status of US forces in Iraq. The US doubtless would seek to maintain some form of military presence in Iraq beyond the expiry of the Status of Forces Agreement. In addition the US would like to leave behind an infrastructure that supports an “over the horizon” type strategy, much like in the broader Persian Gulf during Dual Containment.
Furthermore Moqtada al Sadr has been very critical of the role played by western investors in the auctioning of oil and gas contracts during the period when Nuri al Maliki served as Prime Minister. The new political arrangements might see other interests, such as Iranian and Chinese energy corporations, playing a greater role in the Iraqi energy sector than hitherto.
Washington must be looking upon these very real possibilities with concern, given that the privatisation of the energy sector was a major war aim. If Moqtada al Sadr secures his policy preferences then the US would have effectively largely failed to cement its war objectives in Iraq.
Reports suggest that the “awakening movement” that played a key role in the counterinsurgency strategy drawn up by General Petraeus is becoming increasingly embittered by the continuing disenfranchisement of the Sunni population, threatening a return to insurgent activities. Moreover, the movement also is coming under increasing pressure from al Qaeda in Iraq.
Prior to the planned Kandahar operation, the main focus of the Obama surge, the US launched an offensive against the Taliban in Marjah. It has been revealed by reports in The Washington Post that the Marjah offensive was, partly, launched in order to prop up flagging public support in the West for the Afghan war. At the time of the offensive reports suggested that Marjah was a sizeable urban centre. In fact Marjah was a small rural settlement.
This is significant because the clear, hold and build counterinsurgency implanted to Afghanistan from Iraq appears, thus far, not to have been successful even in so small a place as Marjah. Although military forces were able to clear Marjah of an overt Taliban presence, hold and build thus far has proven difficult. The strategy relies on more than just clear.
A key problem seems to revolve around what we might call the fundamental axiom of counterinsurgency doctrine, that goes way back to the 1950s. This axiom supposes that insurgents are in some sense alien to the population that they seek to oversee. Under the axiom it is not possible to imagine that insurgents might have some organic connection to the population that they appear within. You can see that that axiom lies behind the doctrine of clear, hold and build and the notion that the Afghan population constitutes the centre of gravity in this conflict.
The axiom makes sense when you are thinking about al Qaeda in Iraq. The incredible brutality of al Qaeda obviated the development of any organic links with Iraqi communities for what was a truly alien group. But the Taliban has deeper roots in Afghanistan than what al Qaeda had in Iraq.
It would seem that this has been a major problem in Marjah.
Very recently, in anticipation of the planned US offensive, Hamid Karzai held a Sura in Kandahar with regional tribal leaders. The planned offensive was soundly rejected by those present. This is highly significant when we seek to draw an ethical evaluation of the Obama surge.
Recall that Kandahar province is its centrepiece.
The Kandahar Sura demonstrates that the offensive is opposed by the population of Kandahar province. It is immoral for an outside military force to then engage in an offensive regardless. Even on pragmatic grounds the Sura is problematical. Under the fundamental axiom the local population is the centre of gravity, yet the population opposes the offensive even before it has begun.
Kandahar is of course the home turf of Karzai's brother. The most important part of the much discussed counterinsurgency doctrine is “build”. But this is impossible if by “build” we mean building up a government that has very little legitimacy. All that would remain is clear and hold, but that is essentially what has been happening in Afghanistan hitherto. If at the end of the surge offensive all that remains is clear and hold the underlying strategic stalemate in Afghanistan will continue. That is why “build” is the key part, for only “build” breaks the stalemate.
Recent developments on the Pakistani front might prove significant. Reports increasingly stress that the would be Times Square bomber had links to the Pakistani Taliban, the Tehriki-i-Taliban Pakistan. Whatever may have been the boasts of the TTP in the past, if these reports are true then it is clear that the TTP has now also adopted “the far enemy” strategy of al Qaeda.
If so this would represent an escalation in the war on terror. The drone strikes and the not often discussed special operations forces raids within Pakistan, not to mention the major Pakistan army offensives, have been meet by a “far enemy” escalation. The US threatens to esclate its military activities in Pakistan in response to this “far enemy” approach. How will all this end?
In the meantime Washington remains determined to pursue a further round of sanctions against Iran. This might well see a further escalation in the Iranian nuclear crisis. If Iran does actually develop a nuclear weapon it will probably do so by tit-for-tatting its way to a bomb, like North Korea. If the cycle of escalation follows the North Korean model, a major military action against Iran is a very real possibility. Given all the noise simple acceptance of an Iranian bomb is difficult to conceive of on political grounds.
Much commentary has appeared recently about the relationship between Israel and the United States. Reports suggest that senior US military planners are concerned about the impact that Israeli activities in the occupied territories are having on US military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is a little bit misleading. It is not Israeli actions per se that is the issue. It is US support and facilitation of them that matters. At any rate the conflict between Tel Aviv and Washington is more apparent than real. Some are even suggesting that a third intifada, perhaps more like the first one, might erupt in the occupied territories.
Iraq is slipping out of control, a major offensive in Afghanistan and another in North Waziristan, an escalation against Iran and perhaps a third intifada in Palestine could all well prove to be an explosive mix.
The greater Middle East might spiral more out of control under Obama than under George W Bush.
That would be a major achievement. This is not something that people imagined after the heady days of Obama's election. But the prospect is now very real.
What would make this even worse is that Bush at least didn't spend too much time with grand speeches like Obama's much vaunted oration in Cairo. A region in flames under the watch of Obama would dent US standing in the region much more than the invasion of Iraq because of the hopes that the Cairo speech, irrationally in my view, raised in the region, and elsewhere we might add.
We need to look at all these developments in a more integrated way.
Al Qaeda’s Strategy and the IRA’s Green Book
After the 2009 passing of September 11 Osama bin Laden released a taped message. In this message he claimed that al Qaeda is waging a war of attrition against the United States. That is, bin Laden claimed that attrition warfare is al Qaeda's strategic construct. According to a report in The Guardian at the time, bin Laden had stated that
..."If you end the war, so be it. But if it is otherwise, all we will do is continue the war of attrition against you on all possible axes"...
He also stated,
..."Ask yourselves to determine your position: is your security, your blood, your children, your money, your jobs, your homes, your economy, and your reputation dearer to you than the security of the Israelis, their children and their economy?
"If you choose your security and cessation of war, and this is what the polls have shown, this requires you to work to punish those on your side who play with our security. We are ready to respond to this choice on aforementioned sound and just bases"...
The student of terrorism, which I am not but in the course of my work on nuclear terrorism have studied closely, would note the similarity with the Irish Republican Army's Green Book. The Green Book was distributed to IRA volunteers during The Troubles.
At page 7-8 of this online copy the IRA outlines its strategic construct
...Many figures of speech have been used to describe Guerrilla Warfare, one of the most apt being 'The War of the Flea' which conjured up the image of a flea harrying a creature of by comparison elephantine size into fleeing (forgive the pun). Thus it is with a Guerrilla Army such as the I.R.A. which employs hit and run tactics against the Brits while at the same time striking at the soft economic underbelly of the enemy, not with the hope of physically driving them into the sea but nevertheless expecting to effect their withdrawal by an effective campaign of continuing harassment contained in a fivefold guerrilla strategy.
The strategy is:
1. A War of attrition against enemy personnel which is aimed at causing as many casualties and deaths as possible so as to create a demand from their people at home for their withdrawal.
2. A bombing campaign aimed at making the enemy's financial interest in our country unprofitable while at the same time curbing long term financial investment in our country...
The IRA's strategic construct was one very much based on attrition warfare.
The similarities between bin Laden's claim and the Green Book should be pretty clear. Even the stress on finance; bin Laden, in tapes I have seen, makes much of the financial costs that the 9/11 attacks inflicted upon the United States.
Former Nuclear Power Plant Contractor Suspected Of Having Al Qaida Links
...Before he was rounded up in a sweep of suspected al-Qaida terrorists in Yemen, Sharif Mobley was a laborer at five nuclear plant complexes in Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Authorities are investigating whether he might have had any access to sensitive information that would have been useful to terrorists...
We should stress that the suspect worked as a labourer, and that there would appear to be no reason to suspect that he got up to nefarious activities at any of the plants where he worked.
Potentially he may have learnt about the layout and general security procedures at any or all of the nuclear plants where he was contracted to work.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission according to the report asserts otherwise
...The NRC says a laborer typically would not have access to security-related or sensitive information...
Notice the emphasis on "typically" and on "labourer". Our suspect was a labourer but one could imagine a contract engineer working at a nuclear power plant. Also what is taken to be sensitive security information really depends upon the perspective of a plant's potential attackers and their tactical objectives. Any information, no matter how trivial we outside observers deem it to be, would help a small group when planning an assault on a nuclear power plant.
There is another issue here, however, that is not really explored.
We are talking here about nuclear power plants.
But quite a few contracting firms work at plants that are a part of the US nuclear weapons complex. This is an increasing trend. One reason behind the push to fund Complex Transformation and the Reliable Replacement Warhead is to provide a Keynesian stimulus for such activities (at least I tend to think so).
What if the al-Qaida linked suspect had worked as a labourer for a firm that has a nuclear weapons complex related contract? There have been some pretty sloppy security breaches within the US weapons complex in recent times. Is there any sensitive information that a contractor, no reason why it couldn't be a contract engineer, could pass along to a group determined to attack a weapons complex affiliated facility?
If this suspect worked as a contractor for a weapons linked plant then I reckon this would have been front page news.
According to the AP report the various background checks employed to screen employees did not raise red flags in the case before us
...Officials also say he passed screenings before he could work at the plants. The NRC says the screenings include criminal history checks, drug testing, psychological assessments and identity verification. Thebackground checks are to be performed by either the nuclear plant operators or their contracting companies.The plants also run behavior observation programs in which employees are taught to recognize and report suspicious activities...
Are the background checks for weapons complex contractor employees any more effective?
Towards the Nuclear Posture Review: Negligence and the Deterrence of Nuclear Terrorism
Recent reports on declaratory policy and warhead "refurbishment" in the context of the Obama administration's Nuclear Posture Review have attracted attention. Rather than blog on them I figured, given that the NPR has been delayed (pushing it closer to the NPT Rev Con), that it would be better to begin a new little series.
I call it "Towards the Nuclear Posture Review." I have decided that it would be better to write short reflective pieces as the NPR approaches culmination. As such I'll put together now and then some short essays on nuclear weapons policy.
The New York Times has reported that the NPR will place countering nuclear terrorism right at the core of US nuclear policy. Given that one of the purposes of the NPR is to review the policies that the current administration has inherited, it would be apt to consider the Bush approach to the deterrence of nuclear terrorism.
The question that we need to get a handle on here is; how expansive was the Bush approach to the deterrence of nuclear terrorism?
In May 2007, The New York Times reported that a high level meeting, most likely of the National Security Council, in the previous year debated how to refashion deterrence in the context of nuclear terrorism. It was reported that nuclear terrorism was at the ‘center of a vigorous, but carefully cloaked, debate within the Bush administration.’ This debate ‘focuses on how to refashion the American approach to nuclear deterrence in an attempt to counter the threat posed by terrorists who could obtain bomb-grade uranium or plutonium to make and deliver a weapon.’ Furthermore, ‘a previously undisclosed meeting last year of President Bush’s most senior national security advisers was the highest level discussion about how to rewrite the Cold War rules.’
The New York Times reported that this meeting was inconclusive and that North Korea’s October 2006 test prompted a subsequent explicit threat meant to deter North Korea passing along nuclear know how and material to terrorists, citing a senior administration official as stating, ‘a senior American official involved in the decision, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing private national security deliberations, said, ‘”Given the fact that they were trying to cross red lines, that they were launching missiles and that they conducted the nuclear test, we finally decided it was time”.’ The article clearly demonstrates that Russia, Pakistan and North Korea were the main states discussed during the course of this debate.
It is generally supposed that President Bush’s message of deterrence to North Korea put not only Pyongyang but any other state on notice that state assistance for acts of nuclear terror might lead to a nuclear response. However, we know that this chronology of the evolution of the administration’s deterrence policy is almost certainly wrong. In September 2006 the White House released the National Strategy to Combat Terrorism and it stated, ‘We have an aggressive, global approach to deny our enemies access to WMD-related materials (with a particular focus on weapons-usable fissile materials), fabrication expertise, methods of transport, sources of funds, and other capabilities that facilitate the execution of a WMD attack.’ Furthermore, it explicitly states of the deterrence of nuclear terrorism that;
A new deterrence calculus combines the need to deter terrorists and supporters from contemplating a WMD attack and, failing that, to dissuade them from actually conducting an attack. Traditional threats may not work because terrorists show a wanton disregard for the lives of innocents and in some cases for their own lives. We require a range of deterrence strategies that are tailored to the situation and the adversary. We will make clear that terrorists and those who aid or sponsor a WMD attack would face the prospect of an overwhelming response to any use of such weapons. We will seek to dissuade attacks by improving our ability to mitigate the effects of a terrorist attack involving WMD – to limit or prevent large-scale casualties, economic disruption, or panic. Finally, we will ensure that our capacity to determine the source of any attack is well-known, and that our determination to respond overwhelmingly to any attack is never in doubt.
Our understanding has things in reverse. It was not President Bush’s declaration to North Korea that lead to a new deterrence posture but rather that in October the specific declaration with reference to North Korea followed a new generic policy adopted prior to the North Korean test. We should also note that deterrence also encompasses terrorism involving ‘weapons of mass destruction’, not just nuclear weapons.
The phrase ‘overwhelming response’ does not in itself suggest that we are speaking here of the nuclear deterrence of nuclear terrorism, although it strongly implies it. However, there are good grounds to infer that this was indeed the case. After the September 11 terrorist attacks the Bush administration released its strategy to combat weapons of mass destruction, the classified version of which became encoded in National Security Presidential Directive 17 (NSPD-17). The declassified version stated that, ‘The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force -- including through resort to all of our options -- to the use of WMD against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies.’ The Washington Times reported that NSPD-17 stated, ‘The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force — including potentially nuclear weapons — to the use of [weapons of mass destruction] against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies.’ It is critical to note that the de-classified version of NSPD-17 does not openly link nuclear deterrence with the deterrence of nuclear terror, but the September 2006 National Security Strategy to Combat Terrorism certainly does.
That is to say, the Bush administration’s policy on the deterrence of nuclear terrorism slowly evolved, an evolution toward greater permissiveness, and this evolution has not been well understood by outside analysts.
So, it was interesting that the President’s National Security Advisor (Stephen Hadley) in February 2008 stated in a speech at Stanford University, the essentials of which were repeated in an address in May, that, ‘as part of this strategy to combat nuclear terrorism, the President has approved a new declaratory policy to help deter terrorists from using weapons of mass destruction against the United States, our friends, and allies. Some people argue that the terrorists are undeterrable. But deterrence can still play a role if deterrence doctrine and policy is reframed in the context of the actual nuclear threat we face today.’ This suggests that the President had signed new presidential guidance on the deterrence of nuclear terrorism. Hadley stated of the new policy that:
As many of you know, the United States has made clear for many years that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force to the use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States, our people, our forces and our friends and allies. Additionally, the United States will hold any state, terrorist group, or other non-state actor fully accountable for supporting or enabling terrorist efforts to obtain or use weapons of mass destruction, whether by facilitating, financing, or providing expertise or safe haven for such efforts.
This seems unremarkable from the standard viewpoint on the evolution of strategy in response to the threat of nuclear terrorism. This is because the new policy could be interpreted as providing codification of the sentiments incorporated in the President’s response to the North Korean test, but we know that this chronology is inaccurate for the codification preceded the North Korean announcement. So, the new guidance appears somewhat puzzling. The Bush administration had already released declaratory policy on the deterrence of nuclear terrorism, which even incorporates the phrase ‘overwhelming response.’
Given this, why the further evolution in policy?
A clue was provided by former Bush administration official and RAND Corporation analyst, Elbridge Colby. In an article for The Weekly Standard Colby stated of the new policy that,
Instead of merely threatening that states that support terror attacks will be held responsible--already a staple of U.S. policy--Hadley goes further, threatening non-state actors who "enabl[e]" terrorists to strike with WMD. This careful choice of words would seem to expand our retaliatory standard to encompass complicity and perhaps even negligence. Not only states, but groups and individuals as well, should now be on notice that they will be held accountable for participation in, support for, complicity in, or even negligence in the face of WMD strikes against the United States or its allies.
It could very well be the case that the administration had adopted an expansive conception on the strategic deterrence of nuclear terrorism to encompass negligence, thereby embracing the ‘negligence doctrine’ as a further step in a steady evolution in policy. This hypothesis matches the observed evolution in policy.
If so, the doctrine appears to have bi-partisan support. Then Senator Joseph Biden had written that, ‘We must make clear in advance that we will hold accountable any country that contributes to a terrorist nuclear attack, whether by directly aiding would-be nuclear terrorists or wilfully neglecting its responsibility to secure the nuclear weapons or weapons-usable nuclear material within its borders. Deterrence cannot rest on words alone. It must be backed up by capabilities.’
In early 2009 Congress seemed to skirt with a negligence doctrine. Language in the Nuclear Forensics and Attribution Act does allude to it for
A robust and well-known capability to identify the source of nuclear or radiological material intended for or used in an act of terror could also deter prospective proliferators. Furthermore, the threat of effective attribution could compel improved security at material storage facilities, preventing the unwitting transfer of nuclear or radiological materials.
In October 2008 the current Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, who is largely over-looking the Obama administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, delivered an important address to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on nuclear deterrence. The address was widely seen as an attempt to dissuade a future administration from drastically changing nuclear deterrence policy. In his remarks Gates stated that
A robust and well-known capability to identify the source of nuclear or radiological material intended for or used in an act of terror could also deter prospective proliferators. Furthermore, the threat of effective attribution could compel improved security at material storage facilities, preventing the unwitting transfer of nuclear or radiological materials.
Presumably Secretary Gates has carried over such views into the Obama administration. This would appear to be the case with respect to the Reliable Replacement Warhead.
It seems that the deterrence of nuclear terrorism has been incorporated in US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), the Combatant Command (COCOM) that oversees the strategic nuclear triad, planning. A month following Hadley’s address at Stanford the Commander in Chief of USSTRATCOM, General Kevin Chilton, stated at a press conference on the deterrence of nuclear terrorism that, ‘our team’s looking at that and thinking about those types of problems.’37 Furthermore USSTRATCOM spokesman Colonel Les Kodlick revealed that the Command has developed a classified study on the deterrence of nuclear terrorism and that they are developing a ‘deliberate plan’ to address the threat of nuclear terrorism.38 In US strategic nuclear war planning a ‘deliberate plan’ contrasts with an ‘adaptive plan’, which is more developed as contingencies themselves evolve in real time. A deliberate plan is synonymous with the Major and Limited Attack Options of the older Single Integrated Operational Plan, and would therefore be most likely directed at states.
Furthermore, in Senate testimony on ‘loose nuclear weapons scenarios’ the head of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, James Tegnelia, stated, ‘there is now a seamless working relationship between the COCOM responsible for the nuclear deterrent and the integration and synchronization of the CWMD mission and the defense agency with technical and operational expertise in both of these missions.’ It is precisely STRATCOM that is charged with developing the counter weapons of mass destruction mission. If STRATCOM envisaged a role for conventional strikes in the context of planning for nuclear terrorism, then most likely such missions would have been a part of Contingency Plan (CONPLAN)-8022. But, as pointed out by Hans Kristensen, CONPLAN-8022 has never been implemented and the nuclear strike mission is all that remains of STRATCOM strategic planning. Prompt Global Strike remains aspirational.
It is thereby reasonable to surmise that the US had adopted new mission sets for nuclear weapons, including the deterrence of nuclear terrorism, that may go so far as to incorporate expansive conceptions of deterrence such as a ‘negligence doctrine.’
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Marko is also interested in philosophy, especially the theory of knowledge, and science, especially physics, and considers himself to work within the naturalist and enlightenment tradition. He is writing a book on nuclear terrorism.