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S2 · 26 May 10,, 17:56

1980s Reply

"I think it is very interesting, and very significant that a Pakistani Taliban commander would essentially 'invade' Afghanistan... What's more interesting is that this Maulana Fazlullah was the Taliban commander from Swat, and does not belong Afghanistan or even the FATA. I wonder why his forces have chosen to try and establish themselves in Nuristan..."

1980s,

This actually isn't surprising at all. Faizullah has long been rumored to be under the protection of Qari Zia Rahman who operates between Bajaur in Pakistan and Konar in Afghanistan. In fact, for some time Rahman has been supposedly encamped on the Konar side of the border where he's been enjoying the hospitality created by our slow withdrawal from much of the area while avoiding ongoing P.A. operations in Bajaur.

That Faizullah would find men available to accompany him north into Nuristan isn't surprising either. Hakimullah Mehsud is supposedly now abandoning N. Waziristan at the behest of Hafez Gul Bahadar who is under pressure from the P.A. to honor existing agreements which evidently include not harboring the TTP. Supposedly TTP cadre and troops who'd found temporary refuge and sanctuary in Miram Shah and Mir Ali areas of N. Waziristan are now returning to South Waziristan's Shaktoi area.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of these men haven't instead found their way north over time and into the Bajaur-Konar reaches. If so, they may have aligned with Faizullah. With Rahman's blessing, perhaps they've headed into Nuristan.

**astralis** · 26 May 10,, 18:18

i just love the "whack a mole" deal going on over there. ultimately our ops just buy time to build up the afghan forces...so they can do the mole-whacking instead.

**1980s** · 26 May 10,, 18:52

Originally posted by S-2 View Post

1980s,

This actually isn't surprising at all. Faizullah has long been rumored to be under the protection of Qari Zia Rahman who operates between Bajaur in Pakistan and Konar in Afghanistan. In fact, for some time Rahman has been supposedly encamped on the Konar side of the border where he's been enjoying the hospitality created by our slow withdrawal from much of the area while avoiding ongoing P.A. operations in Bajaur.

That Faizullah would find men available to accompany him north into Nuristan isn't surprising either. Hakimullah Mehsud is supposedly now abandoning N. Waziristan at the behest of Hafez Gul Bahadar who is under pressure from the P.A. to honor existing agreements which evidently include not harboring the TTP. Supposedly TTP cadre and troops who'd found temporary refuge and sanctuary in Miram Shah and Mir Ali areas of N. Waziristan are now returning to South Waziristan's Shaktoi area.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of these men haven't instead found their way north over time and into the Bajaur-Konar reaches. If so, they may have aligned with Faizullah. With Rahman's blessing, perhaps they've headed into Nuristan.

I see. Perhaps not so extraordinary then. Altho i seem to recall reading that Qari Rahman was killed earlier this year, or perhaps that was another insurgent leader of the same name. Its noteworthy that the BBC report mentioned that locals in Nuristan had joined the police in trying to repel the attack. While locals in Nuristan may have been hostile to the Americans, i suspect that they will largely hold the same hostility towards TTP invaders. Nuristan in not a Pashtun region afterall and the locals do not speak Pashto. The tribes there are said to prefer their seclusion, even from other Afghans. Perhaps there is not too much to be alarmed about in that case. We'll see how this develops.

S2 · 27 May 10,, 07:23

Qari Zia Rahman

Supposedly, Qari Zia Rahman is suggesting otherwise based on this report from THE NEWS-

Taliban Commander Denies Death Reports-Mushtaq Yusufzai April 13, 2010 THE NEWS
And from LONG WAR JOURNAL-

Qari Zia Rahman Denies Reports Of His Death-April 14, 2010

"Its noteworthy that the BBC report mentioned that locals in Nuristan had joined the police in trying to repel the attack. While locals in Nuristan may have been hostile to the Americans, i suspect that they will largely hold the same hostility towards TTP invaders. Nuristan in not a Pashtun region afterall and the locals do not speak Pashto. The tribes there are said to prefer their seclusion, even from other Afghans."

I agree with all you've said...if true based on the District Police Chief's report. He has reasons to suggest tribal sympathies to HIS cause if not the GoA's. OTOH, if what you write is true WRT to seclusion, that would also include the tribes' preferences that the GoA stay out of their way. These same tendencies are also commonplace further south in Konar. However, in the Korengal as example, the tribes found they couldn't compete with the taliban's firepower nor could they draw upon the assistance of neighboring tribes both because of geographic isolation as well as inter-tribal feuding.

It remains to be seen just how "TTP" these fighters are. Faizullah certainly carried that identity at one time. So too perhaps the fighters whom he's mustered...but that's not certain nor is affiliation a rule etched in granite.

There seems to be misconceptions about the presence of U.S. forces. My understanding is that while we've abandoned some combat outposts in the Korengal and Wanat area of the Waigal Valley, we still retain combat elements of three battalions in both Nuristan and Konar. Institute For The Study Of War reports that 3-61 Cav remains in Nuristan while 2-12 Inf and 2-503 (Airborne) Inf are operating in Pech and southern Konar respectively-

Afghanistan ORBAT-Institute For The Study Of War May 2010

Finally, a nice backdrop by David Tate. His first chapter provides a great deal of detail to the historic underpinnings of Nuristani and pashtu enmity as well as relations with other permanent and temporary regional players-

Battle Of Wanat Historical Analysis: Rough Draft-David Tate A BATTLEFIELD TOURIST

S2 · 27 May 10,, 09:59

I See Dead People

Commenting on dead guys, here's an interesting report via Reuters coming out of Nuristan-

Maulvi Fazlullah Killed-Reuters May 27, 2010

Well...if true, no more Mullah FM on the radio. Live by the sword. Die by the sword.

We'll see if this story holds water.

**1980s** · 29 May 10,, 18:40

Originally posted by S-2 View Post

I agree with all you've said...if true based on the District Police Chief's report. He has reasons to suggest tribal sympathies to HIS cause if not the GoA's. OTOH, if what you write is true WRT to seclusion, that would also include the tribes' preferences that the GoA stay out of their way. These same tendencies are also commonplace further south in Konar. However, in the Korengal as example, the tribes found they couldn't compete with the taliban's firepower nor could they draw upon the assistance of neighboring tribes both because of geographic isolation as well as inter-tribal feuding.

Thanks for the links. You've practically prophesized here what was to take place (and now has) in Barg-e Matal. Seems that lack of firepower and isolation have led to the fall of the district.

Taliban Push Afghan Police Out of Valley
By DEXTER FILKINS
Published: May 29, 2010

KABUL, Afghanistan � Taliban fighters took control of a remote district near the Pakistani border on Saturday, scattering the forces of the Afghan government, who said they had run out of ammunition.

A force of Taliban attackers entered the district of Barg-e-Matal at about 8 a.m. Saturday, after the local police retreated, Colonel Sherzad, the deputy police chief, said in an interview.

�Our forces retreated because they did not have enough ammunition,� he said, echoing other officials in the area. Only 24 hours before, Afghan officials had claimed that they had driven the Taliban from the district into neighboring Pakistan.

The fall of Barg-e-Matal, while embarrassing to the Afghan government, is not necessarily strategically significant. The district sits on an isolated valley in Nuristan Province, one of the most inaccessible places in the country.

The Americans, who provided limited air support over the past few days in clashes with the Taliban, provided none on Saturday. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the American commander here, has emphasized protecting population centers, even at the expense of writing off smaller inaccessible areas.

Barg-e-Matal would seem to qualify. Last year, a group of American soldiers spent two months in the valley to help the Afghan government clear and hold the area and pulled out in September.

Last month, the Americans closed their outposts in the nearby Korengal Valley, an equally remote place, after four years of trying to pacify local Afghans. Local Taliban quickly moved in.

Afghan officials said the Taliban fighters in Barg-e-Matal were Pakistanis and other foreigners. Afghan officials have said that some of the Pakistani Taliban, under pressure from the Pakistani Army, had fled into Afghanistan in search of a haven.

Afghan officials said the Taliban force outnumbered their own, which they put at 450. Gen. Zaman Mamozai, the head of the Border Police in eastern Afghanistan, tried to put the best face on the flight of the police.

�We made a tactical retreat, but, God willing, we will soon take over of the district center again,� he said.

In its detail, the Taliban takeover appeared grisly. Sardar Muhammad, a member of the National Assembly from Nuristan, spoke by telephone to a member of the Afghan border police just as his post was being overrun.

�Before cutting his throat, the cruel Talib took a knife and ordered the soldier to �talk to your friends,� � Mr. Muhammad said in an interview. �The soldier was crying and yelling.�

�We heard his voice as his throat was cut,� Mr. Muhammad said, �and they killed him.�

Im indecisive about where my opinion stands on the presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan. It is incidents like this that make me feel as tho the Americans and others must stay in Afghanistan and that a "surge" there was necessary. However, in the overall picture of Afghanistan and given its local dynamics, i just dont think the country is cohesive and integrated enough to achieve stability and progress, and therefore, the American efforts are futile and any achievement there will soon unravel once the US and ISAF departs. I suspect the same question has been playing on the minds of many senior decision-makers for a couple of years now at least too.

As for Fazlullah and other Taliban leaders, guess we never really know. There's even a controversy over whether the Pakistanis really did arrest as many Taliban leaders as was reported a few months ago according to the Asia Times correspondent for that country.

S2 · 29 May 10,, 19:11

1980s Reply

1980s,

If you've followed my postings, you'll note two seemingly dichotomous view-I'm a strong supporter of my nation's military forces and a strong opponent to this war as prosecuted now.

My government, by virtue of its present structure as well as a process of advise and consent, lacks the means to engage effectively in nation-building at this level. I can think of few nations (there are a few) that present the challenges of Afghanistan. Certainly Iraq doesn't and you can easily see the issues we've faced there.

The ROI for successfully mastering those challenges such that a semi-modernized nationstate arises are marginal. In short, we can never fully master local conditions to the extent voiced by our politicos and the gains would exceedingly modest and temporal. It is a hopeless task and that's been my view since approximately 2007.

It might have been otherwise in the immediate aftermath of our early victories but neither America nor the rest of the world articulated and executed a coherant and resource-driven policy that might have delivered our now-articulated objectives. That window of opportunity had decisively passed between 2002-2006 and cannot now be re-opened in my view.

We will leave and there will be civil war. We will supply an afghan army who will, in turn, supply a taliban army along its path to conquest. Any fool can see that for all effusive praise of the Pakistani government and military, they've NEVER made a concerted efforted to attack those elements residing in Pakistan but bent on war in Afghanistan. Maulvi Nazir, Hafez Gul Bahadur and Sirajuddin Haqqani were, are, and shall remain protected assets. So too Omar's minions further south around Quetta.

They will return with Pakistan's blessing. My hope is that other nations will again combat such including India, Iran, the PRC, and Russia through their CAR surrogates. All have an interest and none have their interests assured.

America must retain the ability and determination to selectively attack targets that represent a clear and present threat to our security. It remains the baseline objective driving all other policy considerations and is achievable without the attendant encumbrance of nation-building.

I look forward to our departure. Ultimately this is an afghan failing but the outcome either way is not, by itself, critical to our nat'l security concerns.

**Mihais** · 29 May 10,, 20:16

Sir,at least everyone will show their cards when you'll go home.Then the war will start for real and hopefully we'll have the winner mindset next round http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye9J4nQrz5s

Peace is for grandchildren.

S2 · 29 May 10,, 21:19

Mihais Reply

"Then the war will start for real and hopefully we'll have the winner mindset next round"

Mihais,

We are not a soft people but we are forgetful and too forgiving.

America must bleed a real cost that's greater than experienced by one trauma on 9/11 and the subsequent incremental pain. Our losses in troops have been very, very few given the hundreds of thousands of men and women and the elapsed years. The change required to alter our nat'l consciousness, therefore, has not been achieved.

It will be some time yet before our nation realizes that this will evolve into a war for our survival. Until then we'll fight as though it's not...

**astralis** · 29 May 10,, 22:13

S-2,

Mihais,

We are not a soft people but we are forgetful and too forgiving.

America must bleed a real cost that's greater than experienced by one trauma on 9/11 and the subsequent incremental pain. Our losses in troops have been very, very few given the hundreds of thousands of men and women and the elapsed years. The change required to alter our nat'l consciousness, therefore, has not been achieved.

It will be some time yet before our nation realizes that this will evolve into a war for our survival. Until then we'll fight as though it's not...

that's the "we had to destroy the town to save it" attitude, though.

i -like- the fact that we've had relatively few losses in troops and not another 9-11. given the reason WHY we went into Afghanistan in the first place, i do believe that's called...success.

and even if things go south after we leave, well, if the taliban want to succeed they need to mass. once they mass, the USAF can get down to work. they're fools if they forget what they tasted in late 2001.

S2 · 29 May 10,, 22:27

Astralis Reply

"that's the 'we had to destroy the town to save it' attitude, though."

Wrong.

This is a destroyed town-

That's real, tangibly-embedded permanence to a nat'l psyche.

"i -like- the fact that we've had relatively few losses in troops and not another 9-11. given the reason WHY we went into Afghanistan in the first place, i do believe that's called...success."

Your idea of success is my idea of unnecessary failure. Success was achieved on the backs of some ponies and SF operators working with the U.S.A.F. and done within a couple of weeks. Since then we've squandered vast billions of dollars and thousands of maimed, wounded, and killed soldiers to achieve nothing that couldn't have been achieved, as you say...

"once they mass, the USAF can get down to work. they're fools if they forget what they tasted in late 2001..."

What's different between your envisioned future and late 2001 but for wandering in the wilderness at great but needless human and material cost?

**~~ASparr~~** · 29 May 10,, 23:57

Any 'success' that was had with the SF operators and NA allies was destined to be short lived. As we saw later on, the Taliban were perfectly capable of re-establishing themselves when not under US pressure. Our only choice was to build a force capable of denying them the ability to operate in Afghanistan. Perhaps taking that mission and making it a mission for democracy with a strong central government was a mistake, but we couldn't just "hit it and quit it" as it were.

And, astralis and S-2, am I misunderstanding or are you advocating the "small footprint" approach where we keep a small troop presence and conduct air strikes against enemy targets?

S2 · 30 May 10,, 01:03

ASparr Reply

"Any 'success' that was had with the SF operators and NA allies was destined to be short lived."

No. There was no predestination had we seized the opportunity in the proper fashion. The litany of policy mistakes compounded by material neglect eventually consigned Afghanistan to what we have today. "eventually", however, is key. Despite those grievous errors, it STILL took the taliban effectively four years (all of 2002 through 2005) and external sanctuary before reconstituting sufficient to challenge the prevailing regime in any serious and sustained fashion beginning in the spring of 2006.

Our preoccupation with the looming Iraq war complicit with our engagement in a self-serving feel-good policy of an ineffectual UN-mandated non-effort to assist the completely still-born and inept Afghan regime raised forth from the dust was ludicrous.

They hadn't done a thing to deserve self-governance and, collectively, we'd done nothing to prove good stewards towards the task before us. Afghanistan was near primordial BEFORE twenty plus years of continuous war ravaged it. What's followed through this decade is a milder continuation of that legacy but no improvement whatsoever.

The human material with which to work is near absent and was never particularly inspiring in any case. Foreign sanctuary that to this day remains a fact completes the demise. Having experienced the effect of external sanctuary in Vietnam and promoted the same during the Afghan-Soviet war we should have fully recognized and rejected its presence.

Just another of the many mistakes made by the ill-considered half measures we employed to nobody's benefit.

"...are you advocating the "small footprint" approach where we keep a small troop presence and conduct air strikes against enemy targets?"

I am.

**~~ASparr~~** · 30 May 10,, 01:43

S-2,

What exactly do you mean by "the proper fashion"?

It took 4 years even with a coalition presence, how long would that have been if we had left after a few months? And what do you mean by "deserve self-governance"?

How, exactly, would leaving help the situation? AQ would re-establish a safe haven and the Afghan government would collapse after a bloody civil war. American airstrikes, without good human intelligence, would inevitably prove clumsy and ineffective.

Striking against massed Taliban forces would help keep the Afghan government in power, but only for so long. But even if Kabul did remain in friendly hands, the Taliban would quickly re-establish control over the S and SE; providing AQ with another safe haven.

As to that strategy, I point you to the following article by Thomas Hegghammer,

The big impact of small footprints | The AfPak Channel

Announcement

Pakistan Taliban 'attack eastern Afghan district'

Pakistan Taliban 'attack eastern Afghan district'

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