War Is Boring

Sam’s Southeast Asia Round-Up

David Axe — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:22:28 +0000

USNS Mercy. Navy photo.

by SAM ABRAMS

Indonesia
The U.S. Navy hospital ship the USNS Mercy docked in Ambon on Monday. The ship will provide free medical services as part of the Sail Banda festival in Maluku. “The Sail Banda event is aimed at promoting marine tourism and at the same time convincing the international community that Maluku is safe beyond doubt,” said President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is scheduled to visit the ship. Despite an official peace agreement, concerns exist that communal violence, which broke out in 1999, could reignite. Australia, Malaysia and New Zealand are also sending medical ships to the event.

Indonesia has also formed the National Anti-Terror Agency, which will bring the country’s various counter-terror agencies under one roof. Among other activities, it will focus on community-based preventative initiatives.

Thailand
On Sunday a bomb exploded in Bangkok shortly after polls closed in a parliamentary election in which an imprisoned red shirt protest leader faced a government candidate. The bomb wounded 10 people and killed one. The government’s candidate, Panich Vikitsreth, a vice minister for foreign affairs, won about 54 percent of the vote to defeat Kokaew Pikulthong, the imprisoned Red Shirt leader. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has said emergency decrees, in place since the spring’s Red Shirt protests, will remain.

Cambodia
Kaing Guek Eav, also known as “Duch,” was sentenced to 35 years in prison for his tenure at Tuol Sleng prison chief under the Khmer Rouge. “The accused trained his interrogators to use physical and psychological violence,” the head of the war crimes tribunal said. “Individuals detained at [the prison] were destined for execution.” Many victims were angry that Duch did not receive the 40 sentence prosecutors requested. Four other former Khmer Rouge officials are waiting to go on trial.

Vietnam
At the ASEAN Regional Forum, the United States offered to help settle long standing territorial disputes between China and smaller nations in the South China Sea, which is rich in natural resources. “The United States has a national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia’s maritime commons and respect for international law in the South China Sea,” Secretary of State Clinton said. China has said that all of the islands belong to it and that China should settle all disputes.

The War Is Boring Dutch-in-Afghanistan Primer

David Axe — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:46:29 +0000

by DAVID AXE

After five years, $2 billion in direct costs and the loss of 24 soldiers, the Dutch military is leaving Afghanistan. The Netherlands’ 2,000-strong task force officially departs the southern province of Uruzgan on August 1. U.S. troops ze already filling in.

The Dutch occupation coincided with steadily increasing violence, including a major pitched battle in 2007 that left 100 people dead. Nevertheless, Dutch General Peter van Uhm hailed the mission’s “tangible results that the Netherlands can be proud of.” “We offer the majority of the population relatively safe living conditions and advancements in health care, education and trade,” van Uhm said.

In its 10th year, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force is becoming less international by the day. Besides the Dutch, the Canadians are leaving next year and the British might do the same. The Americans say their July 2011 deadlines hinges on improving security.

Are the Dutch a bellwether for ISAF’s unraveling? Here’s a sampling of relevant stories:

Axeghanistan
WIB spent a week on the ground with Dutch troops during the bloody Battle of Chora in the summer of 2007.

Dutch Troopers Accuse Officer of “Excessively Authoritarian Behavior”
In 2008, one reckless, abusive Dutch officer provoked his troopers into a near-mutiny.

Dutch Government Mulls Departure from Afghan War
The Dutch leadership began debating their troops’ withdrawal as early as 2007. It took two years to make a final decision.

Interview with Dutch Major General Mart de Kruif, Former Commander, Regional Command South — Part One
Last year, the departing head of NATO’s southern contingent defended the war effort. “I know that as soon as they [Afghans] believe ISAF are winning, they will support the Afghan government more,” de Kruif said. Continued in part two.

Marco Kroon: Knighted Commando, Part One
Dutch commando actions in Uruzgan produced at least one bona-fide war hero. Continued in part two.

U.S. Helicopter Raid Kills 27 Afghan Civilians
As U.S. troops began filling in for the Dutch, a botched assault by American choppers massacred a bus full of civilians.

Wikileaks Reveals Taliban Maneuvers
Swedish watchdog group Wikileaks dropped 90,000 classified NATO reports, some of which detail Taliban maneuvers in Uruzgan during the Chora battle.

The Diplomat: U.S. Starting Asia Space Race?

David Axe — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:07:10 +0000

X-37B. NASA photo.

by DAVID AXE

It was a space launch to change the world. On January 11, 2007, a solid-fuelled rocket lifted off from Xichang Space Center in central China, a non-explosive “kill vehicle” fitted to its tip. Five hundred miles above the earth, the now-separated kill vehicle struck an 8-year-old Chinese weather satellite, pulverizing it and leaving behind a cloud of some 1,000 large pieces of debris.

The unannounced Chinese launch was the first full-scale test of an anti-satellite system since the U.S. Air Force’s 1985 demonstration of a satellite-killing missile launched by an F-15 fighter. And the global response to China’s move was swift and vociferous, with Australia, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States condemning the intercept.

“China’s development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area,” said Gordon Johndroe from the U.S. National Security Council at the time.

A year later, the launch reverberated in the most important U.S. election in a generation, when presidential candidate Barack Obama made opposition to such weaponry part of his platform. “Obama opposes the stationing of weapons in space and the development of anti-satellite weapons,” his campaign asserted. “He believes the United States must show leadership by engaging other nations in discussions of how best to stop the slow slide towards a new battlefield.”

Yet just two years into the Obama presidency and it’s clear that these noble sentiments aren’t being matched by U.S. deeds.

On April 22, the US.. Air Force launched into orbit the world’s most sophisticated robotic spacecraft, one whose design counters China’s anti-satellite capability — and goes a step further. The X-37B, built by Boeing, could also be used to spy on and even disable other nations’ satellites, all without them necessarily knowing that it’s even happening. With the X-37, the U.S. raised the stakes in the phase of the space race that China began three years ago.

Read the whole story at The Diplomat.

The Huffington Post: The Lingering Images of War in Comics?

David Axe — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:30:12 +0000

Art by Matt Bors.

by DAVID AXE

For going on six years I’ve been a freelance war correspondent. I wrote a comic book about the experience and conned a very talented artist named Matt Bors into drawing it. It’s called War is Boring, and it comes out next week from New American Library.

War correspondence — that makes sense, people tell me. By why comics? they ask.

Because words seem to want to connect like plumbing: one piece at a time in a perfect line, no gap between them. But images are like dreams. They’re wispy. They linger. And as they fade, they mix with the images that preceded them and follow. Comics combine words and images. You get the solid, logical effect of words plus the images’ gauzy wrapper. That lets you do all sorts of interesting things with story. You can say one thing with your text while implying another with the art. You can describe hints of untold back-stories with a few strokes of ink even as the narration leaves no doubt about your main point. “Look here,” the words declare. “Imagine this,” the art whispers.

Read the rest at The Huffington Post.

Matt Bors: “Not Another ‘Nam”

David Axe — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:57:05 +0000

By Matt Bors.

World Politics Review: Uganda at Security Crossroads in War on Extremists

David Axe — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:45:44 +0000

Army patrol in Kampala. Via World News.

by DAVID AXE

Fifteen days after twin suicide bombings killed 76 people in Kampala, Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni used an African Union summit in the capital city to declare war on the Somali group responsible for the July 11 bombing — as well as on foreign fighters aiding the group. “The terrorists should be wiped out of Africa,” Museveni said on Monday. “Let us act and sweep them out of Africa and to where they came from in Asia and the Middle East.”

But to secure its borders, cities and regional interests, Uganda must do more than target terrorists. Roving rebel groups, many of them homegrown, also threaten this rapidly developing country of 32 million people. Terrorists from the east and rebels from the west raise the prospect of a two-front war for Kampala. American assistance factors heavily on both fronts. And both also represent potential security quagmires.

Al-Shabab, the most dominant of Somalia’s many Islamic insurgent groups, claimed responsibility for the July bombings, which were timed to strike a rugby field and a restaurant, both packed with World Cup spectators. An Al-Shabab spokesman said the attacks were meant as retaliation for Uganda’s contributions to a 6,000-strong A.U. peacekeeping force in Mogadishu that Sheikh Muktar Abu Zubayr said has “massacred” Somali civilians. “We will keep revenging what your soldiers remorselessly did to our people,” Abu Zubayr said. “Your tanks destroyed the remains of our buildings in Mogadishu, and we will also revenge that.”

The heavily armed Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers fight alongside the U.S.-backed Somali Transitional Federal Government against Al-Shabab and other Islamic groups, who are aided by “freelance” foreign fighters that stream into Somalia from neighboring countries, Yemen, Central Asia and even the United States. Every year, hundreds of civilians die in the crossfire. In addition to deploying peacekeepers to Somalia, Uganda — which does not share a border with that chaotic country — hosts tens of thousands of Somali refugees who cross into Uganda by air or by land through Kenya.

Read the rest at World Politics Review.

Time Out New York on War is Boring

David Axe — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:11:45 +0000

Matt Bors art.

by DAVID AXE

“Working as a freelance war correspondent, David Axe has visited a fearsome number of the world’s most volatile hot spots, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia and Chad,” Time Out New York says of my new graphic novel War is Boring:

Between hitting deadlines for The Washington Times, C-SPAN and the BBC (or anyone else who offered license to travel and a minimum of editorial meddling), Axe chronicled the more personal side of his exploits via the Web comic “War Is Boring,” illustrated by cartoonist Matt Bors.

Now, Axe’s eponymous graphic novel offers a unique glimpse of the dicey intervals between the bylines and the broadcasts: long stretches of tedium punctuated with random outbursts of violence and danger. The memoir’s structure serves the premise well. Slow to start, it picks up steam when Axe reaches Afghanistan, and detonates in Mogadishu, where he and his girlfriend encounter mortal peril.

Equally significant are the unvarnished insights Axe provides into his own deeply conflicted psyche. It takes nothing away from his achievements as a journalist — mostly unmentioned here — to suggest that the most urgent struggles Axe details are his own ambivalence toward his motivations, his near-narcissistic need for action and his growing inability to cope with domestic normalcy.

Bors’s clean, simple style suits Axe’s perspective; faces look much the same from one failing state to the next. That slightly whimsical neutrality turns out to be one of the book’s greatest strengths. In the aftermath of one especially gruesome car-bomb ambush, the playful smiles its innocent victims wore moments before linger and haunt.

Wikileaks: Documentation of an Afghanistan Ambush

David Axe — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 05:58:30 +0000

Wikileaks, the Swedish nonprofit that released the damning video depicting U.S. Army helicopter pilots gunning down Iraqi reporters, has dropped another bomb: tens of thousands of classified U.S. and NATO reports on the fighting in Afghanistan between 2004 and 2009. I’ll be sifting through the reports for added context on my own reporting over the years.

by DAVID AXE

It started with a threat. At a checkpoint in Baraki Barak district on October 21, 2009, Afghan security guards protecting the American combat outpost stopped a driver. When they insisted on searching the car, the driver rankled. “Fine,” he said, “you won’t be here in two days, anyways.”

At the outpost, soldiers from the 3rd Battalion of the 71st Cavalry speculated. Maybe the driver meant he would try to get the Afghan guards fired. Maybe he was hinting at a planned attack on the outpost. Maybe something else, something more dangerous for the roughly 100 Americans in Baraki Barak.

Two days later, Able Troop’s 3rd Platoon rolled into a district village to check up on some mosque refurbishment projects. As 1st Lieutenant Kevin Ellerbrock chatted up the village mullahs, a worried-looking man approached the soldiers guarding the platoon’s vehicles, idling on the main road through the village. The man spoke only a little English and the soldiers spoke no Dari; the platoon’s interpreter was with Ellerbrock.

The man said he was a doctor. He gestured to the trucks. He spoke urgently. The soldiers decided the doctor was trying to say one of two wildly divergent things: 1) There was a bomb in the road, or 2) He had an appendicitis patient in his car, and the Americans were blocking the way. Just to be safe, the soldiers relayed the bomb threat to the rest of the platoon. But no one took it too seriously.

Night fell around six. The platoon climbed into its trucks and trundled down a dirt road back towards the outpost. In a flash, the second truck in the convoy exploded. The front axle sailed into the air; the vehicle sank into a crater. From a tree-line on the right, AK-47s chattered, RPGs streaked out.

The convoy halted around its disabled truck, the vehicle’s occupants dazed but unhurt. They lowered their ramp to make their escape. They could feel rounds cutting through the air. They raised the ramp and sat tight as, all around them, their comrades aimed their weapons at the tree-line and opened fire.

Later, platoon sergeant Donald Coleman laid the blame squarely on his own shoulders — and on the lack of interpreters. “All the signs were there,” he said. “We chose to ignore them.”

* * * * *

The October ambush was a defining moment in my coverage of the Afghanistan war last year. Now, thanks to Wikileaks, I have the Army’s documentation describing the incident. Army data courtesy of Wikileaks in bold below. I’ve spelled out some abbreviations and tweaked the punctuation for clarity.

* * * * *

“No injuries at this time, 3rd Platoon, Able Troop receiving heavy small-arms fire/RPG. A31 truck is completely disabled at this time,” the battalion command post reported at 1316 Zulu time, just minutes after the ambush began.

I was in the first truck in line. The Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicle, built in 2008 by International Trucks, was fitted with a three-ton mine-roller attached to the front bumper. The roller was only good against pressure mines. The bomb that destroyed the number-two truck was triggered by a command wire trailing back to the tree-line.

I was squeezed between our .50-caliber gunner, Private First Class Judas Sanchez, and our two dismounts, Sergeant Jason Ide and Private Matt Hoats, pictured, the medic. Within seconds of the blast, Sanchez charged his gun and opened fire. Tracers lanced into the trees, answering the winking AK-47s. Behind us, we could hear our attached Afghan soldiers firing their own AKs and rockets. The surviving American trucks added their .50-calibers to the clatter. Ide and Hoats poked their heads out the “bitch hatch” — a small opening in the MRAP’s roof — and popped off rifle-mounted grenades. Hoats swore: his grenades had fallen short of the trees. Ide would make fun of him all night for that.

“Ammo! I need ammo!” Sanchez cried. Ide passed up a box. Between bursts, Sanchez peered through an infrared sight mounted next to his gun. Ten minutes into the ambush, the Taliban were still fighting. That was unusually brave of them.

At 1323 Zulu, the convoy realized it was in over its head and the command post called for help from helicopters, as well as from a patrol idling at a nearby observation post codenamed “Rocketman” and from an Army Counter-IED team. “C-IED 14 is spinning up at this time in search of 3/A,” battalion reported.

Just four minutes later, the battle escalated as battalion called for “immediate suppression from 120-[millimeter mortars].” The enemy fighters were 400 meters from the convoy, battalion reported. “3/A is still receiving heavy small-arms fire/RPG at this time.”

At 1332 Zulu, the company outpost’s mortar opened fire and lobbed 10 rounds into the battle zone.

A second observation post atop a nearby mountain spur also turned its weapons and sensors in our direction. A TOW anti-tank missile from the OP burst in the tree-line. Hoats, monitoring the missile shoot with his radio headset, chuckled.

“3/A still receiving small-arms fire at this time,” battalion noted at 1339 Zulu, some 23 minutes into the fight. “A7 and A31 vehicles are damaged, extent of damage unknown at this time.” A wrecker crew was “working” to get mobilized and recover the convoy’s disabled trucks.

Two minutes later, Apache gunships appeared overhead and began “engaging targets.” “Small-arms fire has ceased,” battalion noted. After three minutes, OP Spur could see a “hot spot” in a treeline near the ambush zone. The Apaches opened fire.

Later, sources would indicate at least four, maybe five, Taliban died in the onslaught. It’s hard to tell, because the Taliban always drag away their dead.

Rockets missed us and exploded in the field on our left side, setting the grass and weeds on fire. A cow died in the crossfire. On the radio, someone noted that the dead cow, more than the gunfire, would really piss off the local residents.

I tried to capture the fighting with my video camera, but I was hemmed in by soldiers and gear crammed into our MRAP. Unable to peer outside, I turned my camera towards Ide and Hoats. I heard singing and realized my iPod — the new model with the external speaker — was still playing. I’d been listening to it at the moment the Taliban triggered the bomb.

I recognized the singer. I realized, in horror, that it was Avril Lavigne — just about the least appropriate accompaniment for a firefight. In my defense, the Avril Lavigne song came with my Scrubs Season 3 soundtrack. It’s not like I’m a huge Avril fan or anything. I fumbled with my iPod and switched it off. Sanchez opened up again on the Taliban one last time as, around us, the shooting subsided.

“They were expecting us,” Ide breathed as he settled into his seat.

* * * * *

The bomb that destroyed the number-two truck was probably a couple hundred pounds in weight. It was command-wire-detonated and buried in the soft earth in the middle of the road. Sometimes the Taliban buries secondary bombs to kill any soldiers climbing out of damaged trucks. This time, they did not.

In the hours following the attack, 3rd Platoon became the focus for the entire troop. A Counter Improvised Explosive Device investigative team arrived with a bomb-sniffing dog. A wrecker crew mobilized at the combat outpost and headed our way, only to turn back with a malfunctioning truck. It took more than five hours for the wrecker crew to get its gear working and reach the kill zone. By then, the crew of the damaged truck had taken refuge in a nearby house with a gaggle of frightened Afghans. Ide and Hoats climbed out of my truck to help recover weapons and secret technology from the damaged vehicle. They crammed it into sacks and tossed it on my lap.

At 1420 Zulu, a 12-man team from our convoy searched a building and “discovered a secret compartment with bundles of wire and computer that appeared to be smashed and used for IED parts.”

For some reason, all the fighting had made me hungry. I reached for Hoats’ bag of snacks and shamelessly wolfed down two packets of crackers and some candy-coated peanuts. I had to pee, so I found an empty bottle and improvised. A cold, cold wind blew in from the gunner’s hatch. Sanchez did not complain. I did.

It was time to leave. But we had to turn the convoy around to avoid the fresh crater. Our driver, Private First Class Mike Meersman, eased our MRAP off the narrow road to make a u-turn. The 15-ton vehicle with the three-ton mine-plow sank like a stone into the irrigated field. The combined efforts of two towing MRAPs — and of several shivering soldiers chopping down a tree that stood in our way — couldn’t get us back onto the road. The wrecker, already hauling the ruined number-two truck, had to loop around to rescue us, too.

In addition to killing a cow, we destroyed a field, a culvert and a tree in the kill zone, and damaged a bridge on our way home. Our State Department rep back at the outpost, Ron Barkley, assured me the local farmers would take plenty of pictures of the damage and file claims.

It was past three in the morning when we got back to base. The battle had lasted 20 minutes. The recovery took some eight hours. By the end, I was cramped, cold, hungry, thirsty and bored. I can only imagine how 3rd Platoon felt.

Climbing out of our MRAP, I muttered something appreciative to Ide and Hoats then shuffled to my tent. I peeled off my armor and boots, dumped my cameras on my little wooden desk, guzzled a bottle of water and fell into bed with my cell phone. In my head I listed all the people I should call, to tell them I love them.

Wikileaks Reveals Taliban Maneuvers

David Axe — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 06:01:54 +0000

Wikileaks, the Swedish nonprofit that released the damning video depicting U.S. Army helicopter pilots gunning down Iraqi reporters, has dropped another bomb: tens of thousands of classified U.S. and NATO reports on the fighting in Afghanistan between 2004 and 2009. I’ll be sifting through the reports for added context on my own reporting over the years.

Dutch howitzer firing on Tarin Kowt. David Axe photo.

by DAVID AXE

In June 2007, a force of several hundred Taliban fighters assaulted Afghan militia positions in the town of Chora, near Tarin Kowt, the capital of Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan. Nearby Dutch and Australian forces were drawn into the fight. Several days of fierce fighting killed more than 100 Dutch, Afghan and Taliban combatants and civilians. Many of the civilians died in errant strikes by Dutch artillery, helicopters and F-16s.

The documents leaked to Wikileaks shed light on the fighting, describing a Taliban force capable of persistent, distributed operations coordinating small arms, rockets and mortars. The reports also highlight NATO’s reliance on heavy firepower to disrupt Taliban movements. Excerpts organized by date, below:

June 17:
“At 0330Z [Task Force] Uruzgan reported an unknown number of enemy forces engaging with small arms fire and RPGs 13 kilometers north of Tarin Kowt. A dismounted patrol moved towards a suspicious compound. Mounted party in over-watch to support dismounted party.”

“At 0709Z TF Uruzgan reported unknown number of insurgents engaging friendly forces with small-arms fire 33 kilometers [from] Tarin Kowt District Center. [Friendly forces] moved to the west. This event reopened at 1255Z when three enemy engaged them with small arms and RPGs … Fixed-wing assets engaged with strafe.”

“At 1058Z TF Uruzgan reported a offensive engagement 38 kilometers northwest of Tarin Kowt [district center]. Ten insurgents were positively identified at known qalats to be owned by insurgents, TFU dropped four GBU-12s on the insurgents positions; two on mortar positions; two on qalats. All four were direct hits on target, all positions were destroyed.”

“At 1235Z TF Uruzgan reported insurgents on a hilltop observing friendly forces 18 kilometers north of Tarin Kowt, handing over equipment to include small arms. TF Uruzgan fired harassing fire 155-millimeter [artillery] at the insurgents and they fled.”

“At 1730Z TF Uruzgan reports that insurgents are engaging with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades … Afghanistan National Police checkpoint returned fire.”

June 18:
“At 0315Z TF Uruzgan reported unknown number of insurgents engaging with small-arms fire and RPGs 11 kilometers northeast of Tarin Kowt DC … ANP returned fire. No casualties were reported.”

“At 0748Z TF Uruzgan reported two vehicles and 10 insurgents engaged with small-arms fire 14 kilometers north of Tarin Kowt district center. Friendly forces are engaging insurgents with direct fire and 81-millimeter [mortars] from PB Poentjak.”

June 19:
“At 0722Z TF Uruzgan reported nine insurgents engaged with small-arms fire, RPGs and a heavy machine gun. Two insurgents were KIA and friendly forces returned direct fire.” [A total of five insurgents was eventually reported killed.]

June 20:
“At 0225Z TF Uruzgan reports that insurgents engaged friendly forces with small arms fire … Friendly forces are returning fire at this time.” [One insurgent was reported killed.]

Send Matt Bors to Afghanistan!

David Axe — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 03:17:40 +0000

The Duality of Obama. Matt Bors art.

by DAVID AXE

Official War Is Boring cartoonist Matt Bors is headed to Afghanistan with columnist Ted Rall starting next month. Ted covered his own expenses using fundraising Website Kickstarter – the same mechanism I’m using to raise cash for my work in Congo in September. Matt is counting on donations and art sales to cover some of his costs. Consider buying a print — I recommend “The Duality of Obama,” above.

The Handbook of 5GW Excerpt, Part Two

David Axe — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 17:14:48 +0000

Daniel Abbott edited a book of essays on fifth-generation warfare in the 21st century. The Handbook of 5GW is now available for Kindle. I wrote the chapter on “Piracy, Human Security and 5GW in Somalia,” excerpted below.

Pirates. Navy photo.

by DAVID AXE

Damned if You Do
Somali piracy wasn’t inevitable. It’s the result of a tragic chain of events playing out over 20 hard years for the East African nation. U.S. intervention represents several key links in that chain. It’s not a stretch to say that piracy is partially America’s fault. This hijacking of U.S. designs is characteristically 5G.

There was a time, the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, when it was possible for Americans to believe that as sprawling and deep a crisis as Somalia’s could be easily fixed or, barring that, safely ignored. The deceptive allure of both these contradictory extremes — massive action and total inaction — was an open invitate to 5G hijacking. Confusion is one of the 5G fighter’s favorite conditions, for it chips away at the perception that the current world order actually works.

When civil war toppled dictator Siad Barre’s regime in 1991, clans began fighting for dominance in Somalia. The fighting disrupted food distribution and threatened millions with starvation. It was this dark prospect that prompted the first major U.S. military-humanitarian intervention of the post-Cold War era. In 1992, U.S. Marines stormed ashore near Mogadishu, launching a three-year peacekeeping operation, coordinated with the U.N., that grew to include 40,000 troops from 25 countries.

Operation Restore Hope helped end the starvation crisis, but this success was overshadowed by the deaths of 18 U.S. troops in a raid targeting a Mogadishu warlord accused of hijacking food shipments. The American deaths led to a rapid and ignominious end to the U.S. and U.N. intervention, despite the absence of a widely recognized Somali government and the high probability of another famine.

What followed was a decade during which Somalia was almost entirely on its own, ungoverned, hungry and ignored. “The great ship of international good will has sailed,” wrote Mark Bowden in his seminal book Blackhawk Down. Somalis had “effectively written themselves off the map.”

It was during this decade of isolation and neglect that Somalis got into the piracy business in a big way. As McKnight said, the first pirates were Somali fishermen demanding unofficial fees from foreign trawlers illegally operating in Somali waters. From there, piracy quickly evolved into Mafia-style organized crime. And it could only have happened in the absence of a widely accepted Somali government, an effective international peacekeeping force or, more broadly, substantial economic assistance to desperate fishermen.

Somalia’s isolation and neglect also proved a perfect breeding ground for militant Islamists. Promising peace, rallying desperate thousands around the banner of anti-Westernism, Somali Islamists emerged in the early 2000s and quickly organized across clan lines. The Islamists’ rapid spread began to pull together Somalia’s fractured landscape of warlord enclaves. While good for Somalis, the prospect of an Islamified Somalia terrified Washington, even more than pirates did, at first.

Damned if You Don’t
Somalia would make a dramatic reappearance on the “map” 10 years after the Marines stormed Mogadishu’s white beaches. The terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, organized from Afghanistan, awoke the United States to the dangers posed by militant Islamists — especially those Islamists based in ungoverned or under-governed spaces. Suddenly Washington thought it could no longer ignore Somalia. The anarchic country seemed to perfectly match Afghanistan’s profile.

So in October 2002, a force of 800 U.S. Marines landed in Djibouti, north of Somalia, aiming to “coerce others to get rid of their terrorist problem,” in the cryptic words of Army General Tommy Franks. The resulting “Joint Task Force Horn of Africa” grew to 2,000 people. Gunships and drones flying from the task force’s base launched several air raids on suspected Al-Qaeda enclaves inside Somalia.

But the air strikes didn’t stem the “Islamification” of Somalia or the spread of piracy. In fact, American attacks may very well have accelerated both processes, by fueling Somali suspicion of the Christian West and its allies, and thereby boosting popular support for the Islamists and for pirates, many of whom had branded themselves as do-it-yourself Somali “coast guards.”

In 2006, an alliance of Islamists calling itself the Islamic Courts Union defeated Somalia’s entrenched warlords and gained control of Mogadishu. They imposed a moderate form of Sharia law, suppressed banditry and opened up Somalia to foreign investment. The BBC called the Courts’ meteoric ascent a “popular uprising.” In Mogadishu, residents bristled under the harsher aspects of Sharia, such as the prohibition of cinemas, but the same resident welcomed the law and order the Courts enforced. Piracy waned during the Courts’ rule.

But the U.S. State Department had branded the Courts’ armed wing, Al Shabab, a terrorist organization owing to its purported Al-Qaeda ties, so Washington never accepted the Courts as Somalia’s legitimate government, even if most Somalis did. Washington, the U.N., the African Union and Ethiopia all backed the unpopular, clan-based “Transitional Federal Government,” formed in Kenya and headquartered in Baidoa, a small town outside Mogadishu.

In 2006, at the peak of the Courts’ rise, Ethiopia — a landlocked Christian nation and a longtime rival of Somalia with its exquisite deepwater ports — reflexively launched a 3GW, Blitzkrieg-style invasion of Somalia, with Washington providing key support in the form of aircraft and Special Forces operating out of Djibouti. In a matter of weeks, the Courts had been routed. Al Shabab melted into the countryside and into Mogadishu’s teeming slums.

Soon, Al Shabab would re-emerge to challenge the roughly 50,000 occupying Ethiopian troops, turning the Somalia conflict into an Iraq-style insurgency. What followed was two years of urban bloodshed, punctuated by periodic U.S. air strikes on suspected terrorists in the countryside. By 2007, Mogadishu residents seethed at the mere mention of America. “You Americans. You’ll destroy an entire city to get three people,” scolded one professor in Mogadishu. Not coincidentally, it was the period of Ethiopian occupation in 2007 and 2008 that saw piracy escalate, from a regional nuisance to a global economic threat.

With tens of thousands dead on all sides, by 2009 the Ethiopians had had enough. And with Somalia now threatening world trade, the U.S. State Department had had enough, too. Where before, Washington had preferred anarchy to Islamic government for Somalia, now the State Department just wanted order — any order. “If you want help ensure regional stability and prevent the criminality that has taken place around Somalia for the last decade and a half, you must have a state capable of securing its borders,” a State Department source said. “That’s our over-riding perspective.”

Even if that meant the Islamists return? Yes, the source said. “It’s not up to us to decide who has the most legitimacy among the Somali people.”

For Islamists, State’s change of heart represented a subtle victory. The chaos unleashed first by the Somali civil war in 1991, and anew with the 2006 destruction of the Islamic Courts, had resulted in seemingly intractable economic warfare that seemed to have convinced Washington that maybe Islamists weren’t so bad, after all. That’s model 5GW. The Islamists had only to let the pirates do what pirates do best. The pirates, for their part, probably weren’t even aware that they were helping the Islamists wage a winning war.

The Ethiopians’ withdrawal in January sparked a dramatic sequence of events. The TFG fled to Djibouti, where the unpopular body promptly signed a peace deal with a coalition of moderate Islamic groups then elected the former head of the Islamic Courts as the country’s new president. President Shariff Sheikh Ahmed installed his new government in Mogadishu, restored Sharia and began offering truces to holdout Islamists. Only Al Shabab resisted the olive branch, and the fighting finally subsided. “I’m cautiously optimistic,” one State Department official said. “It’s fragile,” he said of Somalia’s new, more inclusive government, “but all new beginnings are.”

As far as piracy is concerned, the return of Sharia law offers hope of a long-term solution. Sea banditry is incompatible with Islamists’ obsession with lawfulness. If peace holds and Sheikh Ahmed’s government lasts, pirates might finally face real justice in their own enclaves. But the price, for Washington, is the firm establishment of a government led by a man formerly associated with a “terror group.”

Human Security
Somalia’s recent history is marked by cycles of U.S. engagement and withdrawal. A major peacekeeping deployment collapsed, followed by nearly a decade of total neglect, at the end of which events drew America back to Somalia, but in fits and starts marked more by strategic failure than by success. U.S. involvement since 2002 failed to stop the Islamification of Somalia, and had the sad effect of alienating everyday Somalis by prolonging the Courts’ bloody, and inevitable, ascent.

The confusion is, in part, endemic to Africa. But it’s also the result of Washington having two incompatible goals. In Somalia, the United States wants the kind of law and order that trumps piracy. But these days that kind of order is best enforced by Islamic groups with broad popular support — and preventing the rise of such groups is Washington’s other goal. The U.S. can have a stable Somalia, or it can have a Somalia without formal Islamic leadership, but it can’t have both. Trying to have both means having neither. Insurgency, piracy and rising anti-American extremism are the immediate results. The long-term risk is further damage to U.S. interests inflicted by 5G subtle actors hijacking Somalia’s chaos for their own purposes.

In retrospect, one reason for Washington’s failures should be clear. America’s Somalia strategy has been dominated by the military doing traditionally military things. This in a country, on a continent, in an era, where military force is often worse than ineffective. In Africa, in an age of 5GW, the only meaningful secruity is individuals’ security, and that’s a condition that’s rarely improved by the imprecise application of massive firepower.

To prevent 5GW, the U.S. must prevent subtle actors from “socializing their problem,” to borrow Barnett’s phrase. That means preventing the kinds of widespread desperation that makes individuals and populations vulnerable to exploitation by subtle actors. The unconscious collective actions of individuals seeking security — the mass movement of refugees, for instance, or spiraling tensions over food, water and firewood — are potentially more destructive, globally and in the long term, than most imaginable conventional military conflicts between African states. Desperation is the 5G actor’s favorite state, for others.

It’s for those reasons that some military planners have begun to re-conceptualize U.S. national security as a facet of world security, which is itself anchored in human security. “What we’re going to see in the future is that security is not going to be based as much on state-centric models,” said Major Shannon Beebe, the U.S. Army’s top intelligence officer for Africa. “[Security] is not going to be based as much on state-versus-state type of engagement, but the insecurities and the conditions of human beings that create these insecurities across state borders.”

In other words, “security” no longer means detente between superpowers. In the age of instantaneous communications and empowered individuals, security is a person’s freedom from fear, disease and hunger. People who feel secure are peaceful, or so the thinking goes. By that line of reasoning, insecure people pose a threat to secure people, for the insecure might seek to destroy, with gestures big and small, the global systems that they believe have failed them. 5G actors wait in the wings to pick up the pieces, and rebuild the world according to their designs.

Somali piracy, for one, “is a typical case in which failed states and a poor representation of marginalized sectors of the population can become a threat to the security of others around the world,” Gonzalo Peña, a Utah-based consultant with a humanitarian background. The 5G effect of that threat was to help change U.S. policy to embrace the very people Washington had once branded an enemy.

In some circles, that’s called “defeat.”

The Handbook of 5GW Excerpt, Part One

David Axe — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:54:16 +0000

Peacekeepers in Somalia. David Axe photo.

by DAVID AXE

The “fourth-generation” of war entailed irregular combatants fighting for an ideological cause, seeking to remake society according to their ideals. Fifth-generation war, or 5GW, now coalescing, is less clearly ideological but just as sweeping in its goals. 5GW is when a party exploits or encourages an existing or emerging crisis to achieve strategic goals that those most directly involved in the crisis might not even be aware of. 5GW is a form of stealthy proxy war.

“The systematic alteration, or replacement of, an existing rule set is your strategic goal,” Thomas Barnett wrote of 5G fighters. “You’re not happy with things the way they are, so you make those around you unhappy enough that they too, are unhappy with the ways things are. Shock them hard enough, and you can trigger their own movement toward new rule sets that move the pile for you.”

Where fourth-gen combatants might blend in with the surrounding populace most of the time, they still periodically emerged to form military-style units. 5G fighters, by contrast, remain “subtle actors.” They may never once wear a uniform or carry a rifle. Their weapon is the desperate population of a society on the brink; their major tactic is unrest; their goal is to undermine the established order in the interest of changing it, or just leaving it in ruins.

No continent poses less of a traditional military threat to the United States than Africa. But in an age of 5GW, where subtle actors can exploit humanitarian, economic and other crises to undermine the power and legitimacy of the industrial state, no continent poses a greater non-traditional threat. An increasingly volatile Africa begs for greater U.S. intervention and risks corrupting that very intervention, turning American strength into weakness.

For America, 5GW in Africa is a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t proposition. There are no easy answers to Africa’s worsening crises, and there is no consensus on how, or whether, the United States should intervene. Doing anything might make the continent’s problems worse. So might doing nothing. And despite its distance and its still-tiny slice of world trade and military power, in the age of 5GW, a suffering Africa is a threat to the United States.

The nearly 20-year-old conflict in Somalia is the perfect example of 5GW in Africa. Persistent political and humanitarian crises, and a disastrous early U.S. intervention, gave rise to seething and spreading anti-Americanism, escalating economic warfare by way of sea piracy and a campaign of secretive U.S. intervention whose benefits, and costs, are unclear. The conditions were ripe for exploitation by a subtle actor aiming to overturn U.S. designs for Somalia.

Washington fought to keep Islamists out of Somalia, in the interest of preventing terrorists from taking root in the country. But the Islamists hijacked muddled U.S. efforts and strengthened their cause. After years of fighting that left hundreds of thousands dead, in February 2009 Islamists took advantage of the escalating chaos, and growing frustration in Washington, to reassert control of the country, essentially inflicting an indirect battlefield defeat on America.

Skulls, Bones, GPS
In 2009, thousands of Somali pirates employed by sophisticated criminal enterprises threaten some two million square miles of ocean, including all of the Gulf of Aden and vast swaths of the Indian Ocean. In 2008 pirates seized more than 40 large vessels headed to and from the Suez Canal, ransoming them for an average price of more than $1 million.

With access to GPS, satellite phones and commercial satellite imagery — not to mention small arms and rockets readily available across Africa — pirates have managed to capture large cargo ships and even supertankers. Pirates’ surprising success has had the effect of driving up insurance rates for shippers and forcing some companies to abandon the Suez Canal route between Europe and Asia, in turn raising consumer prices at a time when most consumers have less to spend.

Around 20 warships from a dozen navies have deployed to combat piracy, but they can only hope to mitigate the threat. “I don’t think we’ll ever stop pirates,” said U.S. Navy Rear Admiral James McKnight. “We will do our best to bring the numbers down.”

That’s because ending piracy requires law and order and a measure of prosperity on land, at the source of the problem. Fundamentally, Somali pirates are aggrieved fishermen whose livelihoods suffered from Somalia’s collapse in 1991, McKnight explained. In the absence of any Somali authority, “for very many years … countries were coming in and fishing in their international waters, stealing their fish. And so what they did is they started pirating some of these fishing vessels and they figured out that, hey, we can go for bigger fish. And so they went for bigger vessels.”

Piracy “is beyond a military solution,” said Roger Middleton, from the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. Pirates’ continued success demonstrates the power of the individual and the impotence of old-fashioned military force in this age of powerful, accessible consumer technology. A few thousand plugged-in pirates have rendered ineffective the combined might of the world’s navies, and undermined the notion that the traditional state can protect its interests with displays of force.

That’s not to say they did it on purpose. “We just want the money,” Sugule Ali, a pirate spokesman, told The New York Times. Indeed, pirates have no clear or stated political aims. Their intent is only to get rich, but their effect is rattle the very foundation of the state. In this way, pirates are a 5G threat. Somalia’s Islamists are the subtle third-party actors benefiting from the havoc pirates wreak.

For Islamists seeking to rewrite the global order, one country at a time, piracy might represent a form of economic warfare that, in World Wars I and II, was executed by submarines targeting merchant ships. Piracy has a similar effect, albeit less severe, and at much lower cost and risk to both the attackers (the pirates) and those hoping to benefit from the attacks (the subtle actor).

Ironically, Islamists and pirates are, ultimately, incompatible. Sharia law comes down hard on bandits on land and sea. An established Islamic order has no place for pirates. But Islamist still in the phase of sowing chaos, from which their new order might eventually emerge, might find pirates a useful, temporary, proxy weapon. “My idea of the aggressive 5GW warrior is that he’s uncommonly cool with that sort of ambiguity,” Barnett wrote. “[That's] a stance that can only be justified by the long-term perspective.”

Continued in part two.