TopHatter

Major, actually.

Would you care to elaborate?

We have a Military Professional program here on the board that we're always looking to add qualified members to, though even without that, it would certainly improve your credibility if people knew that you were more than a "REMF".

Stan187

So you don't see population-centric approach as the answer to COIN? I'm confused.

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Shek

Mudshark,

I'd be curious to hear your opinion of the campaigns waged by Colonels McMaster and MacFarland in Tall Afar and Ramadi, respectively. An Armored Cavalry Regiment and Armored Brigade, both operating in urban terrain. Thanks.

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"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

mudshark

Sorry,but the things I wrote are not fallacies,and the only thing that makes them"attractive" is the truth. The thread is about Strykers and the supposed losses they carry.I do believe they are an "armored" vehicle,and in an urban environment, well, scuse me for not being able to see firsthand what is happening. I thank you for your information. I rely a lot on news sources,and more than a few. The "facts" that I deduct from this info is what I go by. I have no promotional drive for me to accept things with an eye or an ear closed.
Thanks again.

TopHatter

Do you always slap away a person's outstretched hand?

Officer of Engineers

W T F?

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Chimo

Shek

You're trying to play both sides of the fence. You now claim that you're writing about Strykers, when you just said you were talking about strategy, even though your original post addressed Strykers. You should make up your mind.

The Strykers are a medium armored vehicle. They do not exist for armored mobile warfare as you originally claimed.

You do not deduct facts. You use facts to conduct deductive reasoning.

Are you now attempting to create a strawman through inference, using yourself as a foil to forward the idea that I have something to gain by taking a particular position. If so, bring it out into the open.

Lastly, once you're done responding to my questions about the success of armored units in Tall Afar and Ramadi, I'd like you to cover down on Mosul and why Michael Yon stated this back in January and ask you to name the type of unit that was operating in Mosul that tamped down the violence to the point that it was ineffectual. I'll give you a hint: it starts with "Stryk" and ends with "er." Now, don't read this as stating that it was because they were a Stryker unit. I simply offer it up because this is where the SBCTs had been operating until just a few months ago, and Mosul has been a success, even if it has been up and down (with the downs being a result of troop #s and not vehicle platforms).

mudshark

Thanks Shek,
First, I need to apologise for some of those remarks I truly got carried away. Its probably because I can't really see what is happening. All I ever get are reports about our troops getting killed ,and some tortured before getting killed. It burns me to the core that this enemy has no respect for anything civil,and we as American people can't see any results against them.
So to everyone on this forum "I publicly apologise".
I do look forward to what you have to say in the future.
For some info on some operations in Iraq. I could not find anything on Tall Afar,but did find some stuff on Ramadi. Below is an interview by USA Today with Col Mcfarland sometime NOV-Dec 2006.
My opinion is that he found out that losing armor in the urban environment was getting him nowhere. Instead the Col teamed up with "certain" tribal rulers with qeustionable backrounds...I'm not sure that the area is secure,can you tell me? Another western paper says it isn't.

Excellent interview in USATODAY with COL Sean McFarland of the 1st BCT, 1st AD who led the turnaround fight in Ramadi for the past year.


Quote:
When U.S. strategy in Iraq called for pulling American forces back to large, heavily protected bases last year, Army Col. Sean MacFarland was moving in the opposite direction. He built small, more vulnerable combat outposts in Ramadi's most dangerous neighborhoods — places where al-Qaeda had taken root.

"I was going the wrong way down a one-way street," MacFarland says.

...

Mains acknowledges that in the current Army, "not every brigade or battalion commander has gotten that." He says MacFarland, whose brigade returned to its home base here in Germany in February, "really understood this is an argument between us and the insurgents."

...

In Ramadi, MacFarland embraced the freedom and accepted risk.

"I had a lot of flexibility, so I ran with it," he says.

He lacked the number of troops required for a large offensive. The combat outposts allowed him to secure Ramadi "a chunk at a time," he says, adding that he pursued the sheiks because of their "leverage" over the population.

The brigade, which commanded about 5,500 soldiers and Marines, immediately began building combat outposts in Ramadi.

"We did it where al-Qaeda was strongest," MacFarland says. The outposts housed U.S. troops, Iraqi security forces and civil affairs teams.

It was a risky strategy that put U.S. soldiers in daily battles with insurgents.

The brigade lost 95 soldiers; another 600 suffered wounds over the course of its tour in Iraq.

Taking troops out of heavily fortified bases as MacFarland did often produces results but increases risk, says Hy Rothstein, a retired Special Forces officer who teaches at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.

MacFarland put a battalion under Lt. Col. V.J. Tedesco in the southern part of the city, where al-Qaeda fighters were concentrated.

Before the battalion arrived, that part of the city "was largely off-limits to coalition forces," Tedesco said at a briefing for the Army Lessons Learned team last week.

His battalion lost 25 tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and trucks to roadside bombs as they began patrolling and setting up bases.

"We just absorbed IEDs," Tedesco said, referring to roadside bombs.

MacFarland's brigade didn't wait until a neighborhood was entirely secure before launching construction projects, recruiting police and trying to establish a government. Lt. Col. John Tien, commander of 2nd Battalion, 37th Armor, says the brigade was "aggressive" about pushing ahead on projects as soldiers were establishing security.

By the time the unit returned to Germany, the brigade had built 18 combat outposts in and around Ramadi.

The combat outposts helped reduce violence last summer, but the brigade wasn't close to winning over the population, an essential part of defeating an insurgency.

...

MacFarland says he soon realized the key was to win over the tribal leaders, or sheiks.

"The prize in the counterinsurgency fight is not terrain," he says. "It's the people. When you've secured the people, you have won the war. The sheiks lead the people."

But the sheiks were sitting on the fence.

They were not sympathetic to al-Qaeda, but they tolerated its members, MacFarland says.

The sheiks' outlook had been shaped by watching an earlier clash between Iraqi nationalists — primarily former members of Saddam Hussein's ruling Baath Party — and hard-core al-Qaeda operatives who were a mix of foreign fighters and Iraqis. Al-Qaeda beat the nationalists. That rattled the sheiks.

"Al-Qaeda just mopped up the floor with those guys," he says.

...

The brigade made an offer: If the tribal leaders encouraged their members to join the police, the Army would build police stations in the tribal areas and let the recruits protect their own tribes and families. They wouldn't have to leave their neighborhoods.

"We said, 'How about if we recruit them to join the police and they go right back into their tribal areas?' " MacFarland recalls.

Some tribes agreed.

The number of police recruits in Ramadi jumped from about 30 a month to 100 in June 2006 and about 300 in July. More than 3,000 new recruits had joined the police by the time MacFarland's brigade left in February.

Trying to blunt police recruitment, al-Qaeda fighters simultaneously attacked one of the new Ramadi police stations with a car bomb in August 2006, killing several Iraqi police, and assassinated the leader of the Abu Ali Jassim tribe.

They hid the sheik's body, denying him a proper Muslim burial, and his remains were not found until four days later. Members of the tribe were outraged.

A couple of weeks later, one of the brigade's officers went to visit Sheik Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi, a local tribal leader. The officer was shocked to see a gathering of 20-30 sheiks jammed into al-Rishawi's home. Al-Rishawi was asked what was going on.

"We are forming an alliance against al-Qaeda," the sheik replied, according to MacFarland. "Are you with us?"

MacFarland was. Now he needed to convince his bosses.

Officials at MacFarland's higher headquarters, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force based near Fallujah, were worried. The U.S. military was supposed to be supporting Iraq's government. A tribal alliance could pose a threat to Anbar Gov. Maamoun Sami Rashid al-Awani.

Al-Awani's government wasn't popular and had been thinned by threats and assassinations. Still, U.S. policy was to back Iraqi government institutions.

The tribal leaders didn't like al-Awani and wanted him replaced. MacFarland said the sheiks agreed to back off their demand that al-Awani step down.

There were other concerns. Al-Rishawi and his colleagues were second-tier sheiks. Most of Anbar's senior tribal leaders, some of whom amassed considerable wealth in a variety of businesses, had decamped to Jordan because of the growing violence after the U.S.-led invasion.

The Marine headquarters in Anbar was in contact with the tribal leaders in Jordan and was concerned that an alliance involving the U.S. military and junior leaders — the ones who remained in Ramadi — would jeopardize that relationship.

MacFarland says he saw it differently. The contacts in Jordan had yielded little. "Maybe there is a power struggle between the sheiks in Jordan and the sheiks in Anbar," MacFarland says. "But let's back the sheiks in Anbar. Let's pick a horse and back it."

He says the results were immediate when a sheik pledged to support the alliance with the U.S. Army, an agreement some of the sheiks involved would grandly name The Awakening. "Once a tribal leader flips, attacks on American forces in that area stop almost overnight," MacFarland says.

Marine headquarters officers also raised concerns about the backgrounds of some of the tribal leaders involved in The Awakening. Anbar's desolate roads and stretches of empty desert have long been home to smugglers.

"I've read the reports" on al-Rishawi, MacFarland says. "You don't get to be a sheik by being a nice guy. These guys are ruthless characters. … That doesn't mean they can't be reliable partners."
Despite its concerns, the Marine headquarters allowed MacFarland to pursue his work with the tribes and ultimately supported it.

The alliance grew to more than 50 sheiks by the time the brigade left Iraq, spreading throughout the province. Police recruiting continued to increase. The tribes began attacking al-Qaeda leaders who were on U.S. target lists, according to brigade documents.

More than 200 sheiks are now part of the alliance. They plan to form a political party ...

Shek

Mudshark,

Iraq is a complicated mosaic. It is best to think of it as a multi-dimensional chess board, with the different boards being connected and related, although often in ways that we can't see since we can only process 2D and 3D with ease. Furthermore, on the chess boards that we concentrate on, what may look like losing really isn't - it's the price that you pay for setting up your next series of moves, which may quickly turn the tide and cascade into victory. The question then becomes how this board relates to the others - will it have an effect? is it important?

So, the aggregate can at times look depressing, but that's not the best level of analysis. It is often better to disassemble and look at the micro-level, and then build back up to the aggregate. So, take yourself back two years in time to where the Sunni insurgency was Al Anbar, and AQI was entrenched in Al Anbar. It would be hard to fathom that AQI was not only no longer welcome in Al Anbar, but it no longer had any sanctuary worth noting. Yet, that is where we find ourselves today. LTC Alford is a success story. You've probably never heard of him, but that's not a surprise, as if I recall correctly, he's only been reported about in some local newspapers. He turned Al Qaim around, just as COL MacFarland turned Ar Ramadi around, and just as COL McMaster turned around Tall Afar (however, this is still a tough nut because of the deeply rooted sectarian and ethnic divide that you find there).

I cite these as examples of where the counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy that you now see being implemented in Baghdad and the Baghdad belts have worked on the micro-level. Does this guarantee or even imply success? No, because you have a different and much different ethnography in the Baghdad area. However, it is a proven technique that can bear fruit in time. Qaim, Tall Afar, and Ramadi all took months to bear fruit - because of the complicating ethnography, it shouldn't be a surprise that it will take longer in the Baghdad region.

So, enough about the examples for now. If you have trouble finding more links, let me know and I'll dig some up for you.

As far as the question of armored vehicles, you cannot look at the vehicle as being the causation of strategy. For example, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division (COL MacFarland's brigade) didn't just park their tanks one day and say, "jeez, let's go drink pink lemonade with some tribal sheiks." No, they continued to operate their tanks as it gave them protection and precision anti-sniper fire when needed. Simultaneously, they engaged the local leadership and co-opted them based on mutual interests. So, don't equate vehicle platforms with strategy. They will drive tactics (i.e. if you have a HMMWV vs. Stryker vs. Bradley vs. Abrams will dictate how you take out a sniper's nest - you can't ignore it and so you must eliminate it), but the vehicle doesn't drive strategy (after you take out the sniper's nest, you'll need to engage the populace with some information operations, report casualties and the incident so it can't become propaganda fodder, reimburse the owner of the building as necessary and appropriate, etc. - what vehicle you transport troops around in doesn't dictate which of these things you'll do).

Hopefully, the above gives you a flavor of what I've been trying to convey.

lemontree

Go cross country on foot, its the best defense against IEDs.

Roads to be used mainly by adm echlons.

Road opening drills to be performed each morning before any movement is permitted.

Veh patrols on roads

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Cheers!...on the rocks!!

Stan187

Look up Tal Afar, Colonel McMaster, and the 3rd Armored Cavalrya Regiment

Shek

Mudshark,
Here's a link for starters: Letter from Iraq: The Lesson of Tal Afar: The New Yorker.

Shek

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