[b]Further to my post #6
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But rather than advancing for reconnaissance or to attack, the Dutch soldiers pulled back to a safer village. “We’re not here to fight the Taliban,” said the Dutch commander, Col. Hans van Griensven, at a recent staff meeting. “We’re here to make the Taliban irrelevant.”
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How can you possibly make an enemy irrelevant by "pulling back" to a safe area everytime they show thier face?
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But here in Uruzgan Province, where the Taliban operate openly, a Dutch-led task force has mostly shunned combat. Its counterinsurgency tactics emphasize efforts to improve Afghan living conditions and self-governance, rather than hunting the Taliban’s fighters
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How can you empower the local Afghans to take control themselves, by retreating and leaving them alone everytime the Taleban fighters appear, how will they get the local people to shed thier fear of the Taleban?
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To date, the Dutch, aided by American soldiers and contractors who train Afghan police officers and soldiers, have helped Afghan units to coordinate security and build police posts. Simultaneously, they have sent teams of specialists and Australian engineers to choose development projects and plan them with village leaders. They have built or repaired schools, mosques, police garrisons, courtrooms and a hospital inside the more secure areas. A bridge and a police training center are under construction or in design. They also have opened a trade school that teaches Afghan laborers basic job skills, including carpentry and generator repair.
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And without destroying the Taleban resistance, again the Taleban will use these new structers and skills to thier own end.
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Such counterinsurgency tactics are not new; they are only back in vogue, with a new generation of officers drawing lessons from past military operations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Borneo, Vietnam and elsewhere
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Without research hard to comment, any idea how succesfull these tactics were in these other conflicts, and at what stage of the conflicts were they carried out? Afghanistan is no where near under control yet.
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But the Dutch have embraced the theory more fully than most, to the point that most Dutch units now take extraordinary steps to avoid military escalation and risks of damage to property or harm to civilians. (When armored vehicles damaged a grove of mulberry trees, a captain came by the next day to negotiate a compensation payment for the farmers.)
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And how soon after negotiating the compensation, did the Taleban reappear and take the money?
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Dutch commanders say they also draw from their army’s experiences in southern Iraq from 2003 through 2005, where similar tactics were used. They say their units had better relations with Iraqis, and faced less fighting, than did American units. Civilian deaths and property damage caused by American tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan, they said, have hardened villagers’ attitudes, which helps the insurgents with recruiting, intelligence and protection.
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Alas a sad fact of war, it helps to show that restucturing cannot be attemted untill the war is won IMO.
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He added that he could deploy his units on sweeps, searches and raids, and chase the Taliban away. But each time after his infantry left an area, he said, the Taliban would simply move back in.
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So they make it easier for them to do this.
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One Afghan interpreter who works with the Dutch said their approach was passive
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Says it all.
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Uruzgan is also clearly not as safe as casualty statistics suggest. Neither the United Nations nor any foreign aid organizations work here, because they judge the province too dangerous
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Again another sad comment
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The Dutch must move slowly on dirt roads, searching for mines. And a Dutch patrol base in Poentjak, near the Baluchi Valley, is a lonely fortress, often coming under rocket and mortar fire
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The Taleban are not going to change.
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One platoon commander, First Lt. Rick, who according to Dutch rules for junior soldiers could be identified only by his rank and first name, noted that anger at foreign troops persisted even in the secure areas. In Tarin Kowt, a city of about 100,000 people, the population in most neighborhoods tolerates Dutch patrols. But on the city’s western side, he said, people throw stones or stare icily, slowly running their fingers across their throats
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has to be a nightmare for the guys on the ground.
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For soldiers trained to fight, the soft approach is at times uncomfortable. A noncommissioned officer, Cpl. Niels, recalled the terrorist attacks in America in 2001. “We are soldiers,” he said. “We saw the planes coming in and we wanted to go to Afghanistan and fight. But other people don’t see if that way
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Sounds like the guys on the ground do not agree with the approach, maybe an unfair statement to make by myself from one quote, but I think I would feel the same way.
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Colonel van Griensven said he understood the arguments over where the balance should lie between fighting and seeking friends. “There is no right answer,” he said
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A true statement , which takes me back to how can you restructer when still fighting a war?[b]