Hacker News Reader

One of the major problems that occupying forces have had in Afghanistan is that modern military strategy fundamentally isn't designed for taking and holding ground. Outside of the bases in Afghanistan, there is not one square meter of ground that is "owned" by the coalition.

That is almost 100% false. For example, read the on-the-ground account in Junger's book War (and the related documentary Resprepo).

The whole aim of the Restrepo outpost was to control entry to the Korengal Valley, and take and hold control of the ground.

It kind of worked for a short period of time, but ultimately failed.

Nevertheless, the strategy was to gain control of the ground, then hand control over to local Afghan forces. There were some fairly significant failures in implementing that strategy though - not least that the government put in place to replace the Taliban was notably worse in many respects for the local population.

"It kind of worked for a short period of time, but ultimately failed."

So it's almost 100% false, but actually correct?

They had a strategy that was designed to hold ground (the OP said the strategy wasn't deigned to hold ground).

The strategy failed. That doesn't mean it didn't exist.

I see what you're saying, but I'd argue that it wasn't a strategy for near on a decade until the top brass had to start facing the hard reality of the complete bankruptcy and failure of the original strategy. Perhaps the pendulum is swinging the other way?

2001-2002: Invasion and mostly conventional warfare against the Taliban. Successful.

2002-2005: Reduction in troop numbers. Total disaster.

2006-2010: Increase in troop numbers. "Control the ground" strategy implemented. Some initial successes, but many failures.

2011-present: Troop draw-down. This is pretty much code for "hand control back to the Taliban".

Destroying things is what armies are good at. They pretty effectively destroyed the Taliban early on. But, then, I think, it came home to roost that you can't just destroy something and then leave and expect everything to be fine if there was never anything to take the place of the thing you destroyed. We've been trying to solve that puzzle ever since.

1% false 99% of the time

There is no way how you can "take and hold ground" with tens of thousands of troops in a place populated with tens of millions.

Proper occupation can be and has been done many times in history, but it takes a force at least somewhat proportional to the population; which the west doesn't really want to afford.

I agree, which is why perhaps military policy should be more like the first Iraq War. Go in, kick ass, withdraw, claim victory. Don't forget that there was incredible resistance to increasing the ground troop numbers across NATO nations.

Long protracted ground wars seem like something the West should give much more thought to going forward.

Proper occupation can be and has been done many times in history, but it takes a force at least somewhat proportional to the population; which the west doesn't really want to afford.

Controlling a territory has been done many times with a very small force. The key is set up a hierarchy and have locals do the door-to-door ground work. Flying in the imperial marines to patrol every village street in backcountry Afghanistan is completely insane.

Historically, the way to control a territory is as follows: you go to each region and you find the local strongman with the best combination of reliability and strength available. You say: "We will support your control of this region, if you provide security and support our imperial policies [those policies could be anything, depending on the desires of the imperialist. It could be providing natural resources, converting people to a certain religion or even spreading woman's rights]. If you support our policies, you will otherwise have freedom to rule according to local custom. We will provide you money and resources. If you fail to support our policies, we will violently remove you."

Under such a policy, you do not need hundreds of thousands of imperial soldiers patrolling the lands, you just need enough soldiers to remove any local warlords that get out of line.

This raises the question: why hasn't the U.S. done the above? My theory is that the U.S. leadership are actually True Believers in democracy. The above method of rule makes it impossible to spread democracy, because the occupying power must choose the strongman - the locals cannot choose the leader via elections. Since the U.S. wishes to spread democracy, it cannot use this method of rule. Furthermore, such overt imperialism contradicts the U.S.'s founding myth as being born out of resistance to imperialism. Few states can overtly contradict their founding myths. So instead, the U.S. has chosen to maintain security with its own forces, so that the locals can have elections and choose local leaders, as part of a transition to democracy.

True Believers == ideologues. Even then, if they truly believed, they'd have no trouble describing the democratic paradise they think they are installing.

I can't recall ever hearing such pronouncements.

You have never heard such pronouncements? Pretty much every foreign policy speech by an American president involves talk of spreading freedom and democracy. Here for example is President Bush in 2005: 'Bush, putting Mubarak on the spot, delineated what he would consider acceptable conditions for elections in Egypt: "freedom of assembly, multiple candidates, free access by those candidates to the media and the right to form political parties."' http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16510-2005Mar...

Here are some Obama quotes from recent State of the Union speeches: "We will reward good governance, work to reduce corruption, and support the rights of all Afghans -- men and women alike." (2010) "In the Middle East, we will stand with citizens as they demand their universal rights, and support stable transitions to democracy." (2013)

This theory is fine, but isn't the Taliban the strongman in this case?

Sure, but the U.S. could not decide to install the Taliban as their preferred strongman. The proximate cause to invading in the first place was to break up the Taliban who had hosted and provided the breeding ground for Al Qaeda operations against the U.S.

Given that the idea is to stamp out terrorism against the U.S. they can hardly decide to have the terrorist-friendly strongmen back in charge.

> My theory is that the U.S. leadership are actually True Believers in democracy. The above method of rule makes it impossible to spread democracy, because the occupying power must choose the strongman - the locals cannot choose the leader via elections. Since the U.S. wishes to spread democracy, it cannot use this method of rule.

Actually the U.S. has done this many times before. We know this because the U.S. has been reviled by people around the world for installing preferred puppet dictators (the "strongman") in other countries.

So I believe an additional constraint to your theory is that the U.S. leadership may have felt compelled to actually go on a path towards a democracy this time to avoid having that complaint levied against them.

The US hasn't "done the above" because they tried and failed. The Afghan Army were supposed to be the US's local stooges.

Why the US failed was because US troops were true believers in massacring innocent Afghan civilians. Their relatives sought revenge by joining the Afghan Army then turning their guns on their "team mates" - US troops - even if it meant their own deaths.

You will find that cynical Machiavellian policies of the sort you mentioned above depend to a great degree on deterrence, which doesn't work when your enemy no longer has anything to live for and decides to go kamikaze.

Most of the mid-to-high level leaders I met who were in positions to influence policy (CIA, some civilian advisors to military, some military) were true believers in both western-style democracy and, more strikingly, Christianity. There was a distressingly high level of some combination of "white man's burden" and "bring them the light of the lord" going on. Decisions and plans were presented using other language, but when you actually talked to them about their real motivations and what they thought should happen, Jesus came up more than anything else. Kind of terrifying IMO.

There are many historical examples where a smaller force has taken over large populations. You need some sort of military advantage to do that. Britain, Spain or going further back the Romans.

These involve components though that are unacceptable in modern warfare. e.g. the threat and execution of collective punishment against large populations. The smaller force doesn't need to subdue the entire population at once, just a chunk at a time.

For less extreme measures you would effectively need to put in place martial law and martial rule that governs every aspect of the populations' lives. In this case you need enough force on the ground all the time to enforce it and those forces are going to take losses in a guerilla warfare situation (e.g. the Russians in Afghanistan). Especially if someone is supporting the opposing side...

In Afghanistan it's a mix of issues:

1. The occupying force has low tolerance for casualties and is in defensive mode.

2. The population has a long history of overthrowing occupation and therefore assumes the same will happen here.

3. Everyone can see the lack of commitment for the occupying force. This is not a "win at all costs" situation.

4. The Taliban is supported by external entities fighting a proxy war.

5. The Taliban is, at least in theory, in a "win at all costs" mode.

"These involve components though that are unacceptable in modern warfare. e.g. the threat and execution of collective punishment against large populations. The smaller force doesn't need to subdue the entire population at once, just a chunk at a time."

In other words, be the Taliban.

Not by far. The Romans would kill a large portion of a rebellious city/village (or all) and the rest would be shipped away as slaves. You wouldn't want to mess with them.

The Taliban is part of the local population. They will definitely intimidate, kill, terrorize but it's not the same.

EDIT: Just to be clear... I'm not proposing the US behave like the Romans used to. If anything, given the limitations it should have been more careful in the way it applies force.

Another fine example were the Mongols. They achieved a lot with very few soldiers. They also left mountains of skulls (literally) and cities where they murdered everything (including animals) in their wake.

Suffice to say, after a while nobody wanted to fight the Mongols. The subjugated did what they were told, because anything was better than the alternative: they might keep your prettiest daughters as sex slaves (if the daughters were lucky), kill you and all other members of your family, kill your dogs, kill your cows, kill the chickens, and then burn down the entire city for kicks. Maybe they even killed the rats.

Then they'd send back a scouting party a couple days later to execute any survivors who someone escaped the first massacre.

The problem with being the good guys is that it's hard to win against guerilla warfare on foreign soil without being evil.

Here are some questions I have about it:

Why didn't the Allied occupation of Europe in WWI and WWII suffer from guerilla warfare? Were we more willing to accept casualties? Were we more ruthless about collective punishment? Is the culture of Europe such that Europeans don't do guerilla war? If that's the case, why did the colonists fight a guerilla war in the American Revolution, since they were culturally European?

I'm assuming the occupation of Japan went well because of the shock of being nuked and the surrender of the Emporer, if neither of those things had happened, the aftermath would have likely not turned out as smoothly for the occupiers...

The problem with being the good guys is that it's hard to win against guerilla warfare on foreign soil without being evil.

The Malay insurgence seemed to be beaten fairly well.

Why didn't the Allied occupation of Europe in WWI and WWII suffer from guerilla warfare?

Which Allied occupation of Europe would that have been? In WW2, everyone wanted the Nazi's out, plus there was the immediate threat of Russian invasion in most areas.

In WW1 the allies didn't deploy major forces in Axis countries for any significant period of time.

Additionally there were pretty significant numbers of fighting-age men killed prior to the end of WW1 & WW2. That left less potential guerilla fighters.

Is the culture of Europe such that Europeans don't do guerilla war?

One of the first large scale examples of semi-organised guerilla war was the Peninsular War, where Spain and Portugal (and later the British) forced Napoleon's French forces out of the Iberian Peninsula.

The name "guerilla war" comes from the Spainish use of it during that war.

Also, see guerilla resistance movements in France, Poland and the Balkans during WW2.

I'm assuming the occupation of Japan went well because of the shock of being nuked and the surrender of the Emporer

That, and the lack of potential fighters, and the fact the Allies pretty much kept the Japanese power structures as they were during the war (they were too worried about the Russians to change anything). The Japanese didn't have anything to rebel against.

The USSR occupation of Eastern Europe / Warsaw pact countries after WW2 did suffer from guerilla warfare, with some squads lasting until 1960'ies. And that was even with the full "good practice" of lots of boots on the ground, resettled bureaucrats, total control of whole economy with cushy positions for local collaborators, and no fear of using collective punishment.

For example, if some village peasants feed the guerilla troops (willingly or not), and you shoot or deport anyone suspected of that, not bothering about possible false positives while rewarding snitches/collaborators; and using mass media to make sure that everyone knows the consequences - then in a bunch of years that will reduce support for insurgents. But western troops under media coverage can't really do that effectively.

Also, using Afghan army to make peace in Afghanistan seems ineffective - there are well known benefits to classical approach used by USSR, earlier imperial Russia, Ottoman empire and Roman empire; you conscript troops from the occupied areas and send them to pacify other occupied areas with different and preferably alien/hostile culture. Conscripting Afghan soldiers to pacify Iraq, and conscripting Iraqi soldiers to pacify Afghanistan would reduce the risk of corruption, fraternizing, and defection. Again, USA probably isn't willing to do that.

I don't have an answer, but the Japanese bit at the end is fascinating. I read a book (may have been a history of the Kokoda Trail) which discussed the Japanese soldiers reaction to being captured. The expectation was to be executed or tortured. Once it became clear this wasn't going to happen, full cooperation usually occurred as the culture and loss signified the defeat by a superior leader and force, and allegiances shifted. I have likely jumbled this a bit, but the gist of it was that the Japanese soldiers reaction to loss was quite different to the European soldiers.

"The approach seems to be that transient patrols, haphazardly driving around and visiting villages in giant bomb proof robot trucks, is a substitute for thousands of years old strategies of taking, holding and controlling territory."

I suspect it wouldn't be that hard to get the Army to take and hold territory in Afghanistan, because that's the kind of thing that armies naturally do and they're good at. We've been un-training the Army in that respect, because we don't want the territory. We've always had one foot out the door.

It must be plainly obvious if you happen to be there that Afghanistan is not a good piece of real estate to invest in. The impression I get is like of a blighted neighborhood, perhaps like something you might find in the poorest part of the US, say, somewhere in the rust belt or the deep south. The comparison only goes so deep. But my point being that there are areas here at home that we can't save from decaying and becoming havens for criminals. Even if there was some price for which Afghanistan could be saved (gentrified?), it smells to us like a bad business deal and we have no intention of getting too deeply involved, not to the point that we can't get back out.

It's been obvious for a while that the Afghanistan mission hasn't been going well and it's equally obvious that, in spite of all that we have spent and done, we haven't literally exhausted everything we could try if we really, I mean really, wanted to. I've tried to imagine this scenario, where failure is truly not an option -- what might we try, then?

The biggest problem looks to be the economy, which looks like it's based on dead-ends like subsistence farming, and on criminal enterprise, like opium cultivation and trafficking in sex slaves. The most valuable resource Afghanistan has to offer foreigners, at present, is being a lawless no-man's land where crime goes unpunished. Afghanistan seems to hold little to reward investors, or any kind of business. In the failure-is-not-an-option case, the best strategy may be to basically create a welfare state and start sending out checks. A well-run welfare state apparatus would create a lot of good will and loyalty very fast, and start to free people from the survival-level concerns that drive them to ally with the Taliban. The bureaucracy involved would get people interacting with government and start to create a favorable impression of what government is, as well as provide jobs. Welfare checks could allow some people to get away from manual labor long enough to acquire education, and start to lay the groundwork for a self-sustaining economy. A direct infusion of money would provide the incentive to individuals to take our side and abandon the Taliban, which up till now has been missing. Of course, we'd also have to convince people of our intention to stay for the long term, but I have a feeling Afghans would be less inclined to doubt it if we actually started sending out checks.

I'm not saying this would ever happen, or even that I'm advocating for it. In the hypothetical scenario where nothing was off the table, it's my best guess as to what could work.

> The last time a modern military in a major conflict actually took and held ground was probably the Korean War.

Except for ..

Falkland Islands

Grenada

Desert Storm

OIF

I'd definitely strike OIF from that list as it suffered from the same lack of ground control that OEF has and I'm not sure I'd count the Falklands or Grenada as a major military campaigns.

I specifically addressed Desert Storm (as the First Iraq War) as specifically a case where Western forces didn't hold territory. It was a hit, win and withdraw strategy and was over in what 100 hours? There was no ground held in the long term.

> There was no ground held in the long term.

We've had forces in Kuwait ever since Desert Storm ended.

Grenada was a "major conflict"? Only if the entire US military versus a bunch of infighting leftists on a 344 square kilometer island with a population of less than 100,000 counts as a major conflict.

OP said 'take and hold ground'. Which is what Grenada was.

I will allow it was not a major conflict.

The Falklands are British. The British forces did not "take and hold ground", the repelled an invasion force.

Desert Storm: The US did not hold any ground for a long period of time. They defeated the Iraqi forces and withdrew.

Also, the population of the falklands is around 3000 total people. Even if it were an "occupation" (which I agree it is not since most people there identify as British), it would be like occupying a tiny village.

> The British forces did not "take and hold ground", the repelled an invasion force.

Incorrect. The Argentines surprised the small garrison, had the place in a few hours. The Brits then mobilized an amphibious force and had to take the Falklands back.

> did not hold any ground for a long period of time.

I don't recall there being a qualification for 'time spent on the ground'. And incorrect because we've had forces in Kuwait ever since.

You're arguing semantics. In the Falklands, the ground was British in the first place, and the Argentinians did not occupy the entire island; they repelled an invasion force, and saying that "held ground" is like saying the US has "held ground" from the British since the Revolution. Similarly, Kuwait was friendly territory; I was referring to Iraq.

> and the Argentinians did not occupy the entire island

One of us needs to review that conflict. And it's not me.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

one of the major points made in the documentary is that the guy making bombs in the afternoon is one of the bad guys, but calling him out one way or the other is a terrible idea for your average village. the reason they aren't pointing out the bad guy is because as you say, that robot truck is going to leave that evening. you don't want the bad guy's friends to find out, and you don't want the robot truck to start firing.

Furthermore, "find the bombmakers" is useless when the population of an entire village has been pressed into service in making bomb components like wooden pressure triggers. Thus the entire village are bombmakers.

That makes it sound like the villagers are unwilling. If they are willingly making bombs it is considerably harder to stop them.

Except Iran was nothing like Afghanistan; it had democratic institutions that Iranians had been fighting to build since 1906.

And nobody "took" territory, Whitey arranged a coup d'etat. Which destroyed the Iranian democratic institutions.Details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

If Whitey hadn't smashed them up, Iran's institutions might have been able to stand up to the religious loonies.

First, you do not have any hard evidence that this happened. Like most people making this claim and linking to Wikipedia, I doubt you even know the name of the primary source in which it was claimed - let alone that you have any way to corroborate the claim. Second, the purported event is separated from the Iranian revolution by several decades (53 to 79). Third, the Iranian revolution actually incorporated cooperation from ideologically diverse parties who were betrayed and liquidated by the subsequent leaders of the revolution. That liquidation was not the doing of the US by any stretch of the imagination - and certainly is not a direct result of anything that happened in 1953, even on your assumptions.

You are repeating a standard, oversimplified revisionist history which makes the US singlehandedly responsible for Iran's entire fate for all time, blatantly ignoring any other historical, regional or Iranian factor.

Are you seriously implying that the 1953 coup wasn't orchestrated by Western powers? I've never heard anyone seriously argue that it wasn't.

the purported event is separated from the Iranian revolution by several decades (53 to 79)

I think the parent was implying that the '53 coup was what the Western powers wanted, but the '79 revolution destroyed that plan.

You are repeating a standard, oversimplified revisionist history which makes the US singlehandedly responsible for Iran's entire fate for all time, blatantly ignoring any other historical, regional or Iranian factor.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think you are misreading what people are saying here (it isn't exactly clear what they are saying, so I might be wrong too).

I think they are saying that the '79 revolution was an Iranian action, which happened in direct opposition to what the Western powers wanted.

In either case, I agree with you about the '79 revolution - that was completely Iranian doing.

you do not have any hard evidence that this happened

Apart from the fact that Madeleine Albright admitted it when she was Secretary of State. You are just being deliberately ignorant now. Oh, and a jackass.

That liquidation was not the doing of the US

There was interference by other powers as well such as the UK, and there is also a lot wrong with Iranian society, NONE of which removes at all the CIA's responsibility for the coup and the subsequent torture of Iranians by SAVAK under CIA direction during the decades you mention from 1953-1979. You think the story stopped in 53?

betrayed and liquidated by the subsequent leaders of the revolution

The people were mad at the two decades of torture and having Iranian oil stolen, and so they hated the pro-US Emperor and they hated the US. They acted on that hatred against the targets and got on the Khomeini bandwagon as a way of overthrowing the Emperor.

There wouldn't have been a revolution if there had been nothing to overthrow. Khomeini made his name opposing the Emperor. If the CIA hadn't launched the coup in 53 the democracy would still have existed instead. Mossadegh was everything. Khomeini was nothing. No one was going to follow Khomeini against the democracy.

Oh yeah, and Iranians would still love the US like they did in 1950.