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Admiral Mike Mullen flew into Afghanistan for talks on President Barack Obama’s sweeping new war strategy seeking to turn around the eight-year Taliban insurgency, deny Al-Qaeda a safe haven and train Afghan forces. ‘The key part of that strategy was the decision to surge an additional 30,000 United States troops in Afghanistan,’ Mullen told reporters. ‘Marines from Camp Lejeune will arrive this very week,’ he added, referring to the largest US Marine Corps base on the US east coast.

A 1,500-strong Marine contingent is expected to arrive this week in southern Helmand, one of the worst battlefields, as part of a vanguard set to prepare the logistics for thousands more due in the coming months.”

Nonaligned India was perceived by most analysts to be largely in the Soviet camp during the Cold War. But the demise of the Soviet Union prompted India to recalibrate its relationship with the world’s only remaining superpower: the United States.

Another major factor assisting in this realignment was India’s embrace since the early 1990’s of free market reforms, trade liberalization and privatization measures. These changes opened up the vast Indian market to U.S. exporters and foreign investors. While millions of Indians are still desperately poor, around 300 million Indians have joined the middle class. Thus a new and expanding Indian market is opening up for a wide variety of U.S. exports, and U.S. investment in Indian industry and infrastructure has risen appreciably in the last few decades.

As a rising regional power, India is anxious to be recognized as a major player not only in South Asia but on the international stage. The importance of India to the U.S. was highlighted by the choice of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the first foreign dignitary to be accorded the honor of a state visit.

A major impediment retarding India’s quest towards great power status is its perennial dispute with neighboring Pakistan over Kashmir. The two oldest conflicts on the agenda of the UN Security Council from the late 1940’s are the Arab-Israeli and Kashmir conflicts.

Despite a number of diplomatic meetings spread over five decades, India and Pakistan have yet to overcome the hurdle of Kashmir, over which they have fought three wars. For Pakistan, Kashmir remains the unfinished agenda of the 1947 Partition. For secular multicultural India, Kashmir is a symbol of its heterogeneity.

President Obama has publicly stated that the U.S. would help India and Pakistan to normalize their relations, including the dispute over Kashmir. The U.S. can help both countries. If the U.S. can persuade India to withdraw some of its forces on its border with Pakistan, this gesture would enable the latter to commit more of its troops now facing India to its lawless tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

While the Pakistan army has achieved encouraging gains against the Pakistani Taliban in Swat and South Waziristan, its counterinsurgency efforts need to achieve more success. Once the tribal areas are pacified, they will no longer afford a sanctuary to the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda elements that cross the mountainous and porous Pakistan-Afghanistan border at will, to attack U.S. and NATO troops fighting the Taliban insurgents.

So it is patently in the U.S. interest to invest more diplomatic capital in New Delhi and Islamabad. India and Pakistan have both suffered from violent extremism. They continue to be plagued by domestic insurgencies. Whether they admit it or not, they have a shared interest in combating the ravages of terrorism in their territories.

As the U.S. footprint in both Pakistan and India assumes greater depth, hopefully the U.S. will nudge both countries to consistently focus on a resolution of the Kashmir imbroglio. A mutually acceptable settlement of this issue should be placed on the same pedestal as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in U.S. calculations.

- S. Azmat Hassan
The dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir has been ongoing since the 1940’s and impacts security throughout the region. Worldfocus contributing blogger S.Azmat Hassan argues that settling the conflict there should be as urgent a foreign policy goal for the United States as working towards peace in the Middle East.
http://worldfocus.org/files/2009/12/th_india_kashmirsoldier.jpg”

Quote:

He said, in 4,579 words what probably could have been said in 500 or so. The 40 minutes were mostly used to justify to the left his decision to send 30,000 additional troops to A’stan.

On the plus side, he made a decision. It took much longer than it should have, and, as I’ll cover further on, it isn’t a great decision by any means, but he did finally decide to do something.

Using the cadets at West Point as a backdrop (they seemed as enthusiastic about the plan as I am) he told the military that the reason this decision had taken so long is he owed them a clear mission before he sent them into battle. Yet reading through his speech, I’m still not clear as to what the military’s mission is.

Certainly at the level of Commander in Chief, you speak in much broader terms when describing a mission, than would a platoon leader getting ready to attack an insurgent stronghold. But there’s a point where ‘broad’ is sort of meaningless. The three broad missions I heard enunciated that I assume comprise the Obama strategy are:

1. Deny al Qaeda safe haven.

2. Reverse the momentum of the Taliban

3. Safeguard the Afghan people

The first is counter-terrorism. Joe Biden’s ninja and drone strategy. It is, I assume, the reason Obama decided to commit fewer troops than Gen. McChrystal asked for. The second and third are elements of counter-insurgency.

For numbers 2 and 3, we remain – even with the 30,000 new troops – woefully undermanned. Gen. McChrystal will attempt to make the best of his assets, but attempting to reverse the momentum the taliban and safeguard the Afghans are two labor intensive (boots on the ground) roles. Also included in the 3rd mission is the training of a competent Afghan security force.

Obama says these troops will deploy by fastest means possible. Additonally he said:

Let me be clear: there has never been an option before me that called for troop deployments before 2010, so there has been no delay or denial of resources necessary for the conduct of the war.

Well let me be clear – deploying troops to a theater of war takes a long lead time. Preparation and training are key. While it is probably true that there were no calls for deployments before 2010, a 3 month delay means 3 months in which the alerted units are shorted vital training time. And now the deployment cycle is going to be speeded up because he’s trying to cover his tail? Guess who suffers to make him look better?

To this point, I’ve laid out a plausible but complex military mission. But it moves from ‘plausible and complex’ to impossible with this line:

After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.

Even getting the deployment cycle initiated as quickly as possible, the troops (most likely 3 BCTs, a Marine MEU, 4,000 trainers and a command and control element of 7,000) will take 12 to 18 months to complete their deployment. So how is this a surge if as the last unit arrives in country as the first leaves?

In fact, that line alone initiates all sorts of questions.

What if the Afghan forces aren’t ready? What if the government isn’t yet prepared to fulfill its role. What if the Taliban still have ‘momentum’? He promised a civilian surge as well – concentrating on agriculture. Who will protect them or are they leaving as well?

Afghan Security Forces (ASF) are not going to be ready in 18 months. Certainly we can train the grunts in that period of time to some level of competence. But it is the leadership that is key. You don’t develop an NCO corps or an officer corps in that period of time. And it appeared the key to this strategy is standing up a competent ASF capable of defending itself and the country against the Taliban.

Obama claims we’ll embed with the Afghan units and fight along side them. But, given that we’ve announced that we’re leaving in 18 months, what if the Taliban decide to sit it out and not engage in battle? They’ve been fighting since the ’80s – what’s 18 months to them? Why not wait until we withdraw and then take on a green ASF with its seasoned fighters?

Obama does leave himself a fall-back position later in the speech when he says:

Taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011. Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground.

If I’m a Taliban commander, I take this as a gift from God. He has not only announced the US’s strategy for the next 18 months, he’s determined mine. The Taliban knows, just as we should, that 18 months is not enough time to train up the ASF into a competent fighting force. The Taliban knows that any COIN strategy is just marking time given this announcement. The people of Afghanistan now know that we will not be there to protect them in 18 months so there is absolutely no incentive to cooperate with us (or the Kabul government) and a huge incentive not too. They certainly know who will be there after our withdrawal and they’ll do their level best to reach accommodation with them.

This isn’t a plan for success. This is a plan for withdrawal and a strong signal to our enemy that if they play the game for 18 months, they can have Afghanistan.

Ironically, while taking on his detractors Obama claims he’s not doing precisely what his plan is doing:

[T]here are those who acknowledge that we cannot leave Afghanistan in its current state, but suggest that we go forward with the troops that we have. But this would simply maintain a status quo in which we muddle through, and permit a slow deterioration of conditions there. It would ultimately prove more costly and prolong our stay in Afghanistan, because we would never be able to generate the conditions needed to train Afghan Security Forces and give them the space to take over.

This plan is all about the maintenance of the status quo while attempting to give the appearance of decisive action. It is certainly not about that. We can argue until the cows come home about the numbers necessary to conduct successful COIN in Afghanistan, but I can assure you no expert would tell you 30,000 are enough. We can give all the lip service we want to saying we’re going to train up the ASF to a level they can take over their own defense, but no expert is going to agree that 18 months is enough. Gen. McChrystal can smile and claim he’s very pleased with the resources he’s been given, but anyone who does an analysis of the missions outlined in the speech know he’s been badly short-changed. If we could beam in the 30,000 troops tomorrow along with 10,000 more NATO troops, it still wouldn’t be enough to do more than ‘maintain the status quo’ – at least for 18 months.

On the other hand, if I’m the Taliban I’m absolutely exultant about what I’ve heard. And I’m immediately into planning a disinformation campaign that will paint the rosiest possible picture in 18 months time. Meanwhile, my forces are basically on R&R for duration (or concentrating in Pakistan) while I sit back and wait out the withdrawal. And when that last C-17 is wheels up out of Bagram, I’m headed into Afghanistan in force. Given that speech last night, they must finally believe that Allah truly is on their side now.

US Tries New Tack Against Taliban – Anand Gopal, Wall Street Journal.

The US-led coalition and the Afghan government are launching an initiative to persuade Taliban insurgents to lay down their weapons, offering jobs and protection to the militants who choose to abandon their fight. While President Hamid Karzai’s government has been trying to woo these insurgents for years, the new program marks the first time that the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces are systematically reaching out to Taliban fighters. The tactic comes as the US prepares to announce Tuesday how many additional troops it will send to Afghanistan as part of a new strategy aimed at bringing the eight-year war to a successful end. US officials also hope America’s European allies will raise their troop contributions as part of the new push.

The Afghan government has had a reconciliation program in place since 2004, and claims to have turned more than 8,000 insurgents. That program, however, is widely derided as corrupt and ineffective. Insurgents were enticed with offers of jobs but rarely received the promised assistance, leading many to rejoin the fight. Western officials behind the new reconciliation program say they believe the majority of insurgents are fighting for money – the Taliban often pay their members – or personal grievances. Luring such men from the battlefield is a central component of America’s new counterinsurgency strategy crafted by US Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top allied commander here…

The U.S. government has spent $153B in 2008 dollars on contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and their neighborhoods since fiscal year (FY) 2001, according to the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS). In June 2009, 194,000 contractors were working for the U.S. government in Iraq and Afghanistan, compared to 190,000 U.S. troops. At least 1,200 contractors have been killed in the two wars.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, NTC transformed dramatically to train deploying warfighters for the fight against terrorists and insurgent groups in Iraq, and to a lesser degree, Afghanistan. The Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, La., conducts most Afghanistan-based mission rehearsal exercises.

Today, as the military begins drawing down in Iraq, the NTC cadre is looking ahead to what they believe will be this sweeping training center’s future role. Instead of preparing troops for either conventional or irregular warfare, they expect to train them to face “hybrid threats” that include both ends of the spectrum and everything in between.

That will require another major transformation at NTC, a post larger than Rhode Island deep within the Mojave Desert.

NTC long ago shed its Cold War focus, with a permanent opposing force that used Warsaw Pact tactics, dressed in Soviet-type uniforms and navigated the training grounds in Vietnam-era M-551 Sheridan tanks modified to look like the T-72 and BMP tanks.

The focus turned to counterinsurgency operations required in Iraq and Afghanistan. Troops deploying to the combat theater were trained in mounted and dismounted patrols, cordon-and-search missions, searches for weapons and high-value targets, bilateral talks with Iraqi officials and infrastructure missions. They also learned how to detect the enemy’s weapon of choice: improvised explosive devices.

As Iraqi security forces increasingly took the lead in security operations, the NTC cadre began training the new “advise and assist” brigades deploying to support them.

Army Col. Ted Martin, chief of NTC’s operations group, said looking ahead to the next fight – one for which the Army’s Combined Center and Training and Doctrine Command are now developing doctrine – will require a new level of flexibility at NTC.

Martin’s team is instrumental in developing the NTC training scenarios, and its observer-controllers monitor the training and provide after-action reviews.

“No one has experienced the hybrid threat or knows exactly what it looks like, so we have to begin by training ourselves,” he said.

Martin described what he believes the hybrid threat will look like. “It is not the Russian Army coming across the East German-West German border. That is gone,” he said.

It could look more like the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War or the 2008 Russia-Georgia conflict. “You are going to be confronted by an irregular force, criminals, terrorists and some conventional capability,” Martin predicted.

The 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, NTC’s permanent opposing force, had the conventional fight down pat back in the days when it regularly engaged in tank-on-tank conflict simulating a major Cold War confrontation.

“Back then, the scenario was a heavy armor-oriented training scenario that focused on combined-arms maneuver warfare against a near-peer competitor,” recalled Army Lt. Col. Scott Coulson, the “Black Horse” Regiment’s deputy commander.

Repetitive training iterations, along with a home court advantage, made the regiment a formidable opponent. “Very infrequently did they lose,” Coulson said. “There were a number of times when the rotational training unit did well enough to be told that they ‘won,’ but it could be counted on basically one hand over 15 or so years.”

The regiment has had similar successes preparing units to deploy into combat for the counterinsurgency fight. But in doing so, Coulson expressed concern that the 11th ACR – and the Army as a whole — has lost some of its conventional fighting edge.

“We recognize that our long-term focus on counterinsurgency operations has allowed our heavy combat skills to atrophy somewhat,” he said. “As an example, there aren’t out in the Army right now a lot of staff sergeants, sergeants first class and captains who understand how to conduct a mounted breach at the battalion and brigade level.”

He called restoring that capability essential to the Army’s future, particularly in light of emerging hybrid threats.

“We don’t want to allow the skills we have honed over 30 years of getting ready to fight hard to just vanish and go away,” he said. “Combined with that, there are some legitimate reasons to believe that future wars might include some of that threat.”

So the NTC leadership is looking ahead, trying to determine the best way to incorporate the full spectrum of threats — conventional as well as asymmetric — into the training.

Coulson offered one concept of what a future NTC rotation might look like, when the rotational training unit doesn’t deploy immediately afterward to the combat theater.

“On any given day, you might face an opposed-entry scenario, where some sort of conventional force will oppose you, maybe with armored vehicles and some organized dismounted infantryman,” he said.

“It might then devolve into an irregular warfare fight, where you are up against an insurgency and trying to interact with local townspeople in an area you have seized,” he said. “You might then be faced with making an offensive move into an area that is defended by something that looks a lot like Hezbollah, that fought the Israelis in 2006 — irregular warfare, but at a higher level than the current insurgencies we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Stability operations like those being conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan also are likely to be incorporated into the play, he said.

“So the idea would be that we develop the capability to replicate this entire spectrum, from throwing Warsaw Pact-style tanks, artillery and air attacks … at a unit, to lots of dismounted guys with anti-tank missiles and [improvised explosive devices] … to kidnapping and crime,” Coulson said.

Squeezing all that into a single rotation will take some juggling, he conceded. If rotational units conducted the situational training exercises at their home stations before arriving at NTC, it could free up more time for full-spectrum, hybrid threat operations, he said.

As the Army’s hybrid threat doctrine gets hammered out, NTC’s immediate attention remains on warfighters deploying to the combat theater. “It might seem like we’re ramping down in Iraq, but we have a lot of brigades in line to come here and do their training, and that’s not to mention Afghanistan,” Martin said.

But during each NTC rotation, about 200 11th ACR troops break away from the scenario to ensure that when they’re called on to begin hybrid threat training, they’re ready.

“We are calling it hybrid threat training, but basically it means taking our OPFOR surrogate vehicles, our fake Soviet vehicles, out into the maneuver training area and practicing maneuver warfare,” Coulson said.

As they rehearse platoon- and company-level attacks and defenses in a remote corner of the center, the regiment is starting to rebuild skills Coulson said made them “historically lethal and effective.”