by DAVID AXE
Before General David Petraeus’ “surge” strategy spread U.S. forces in Iraq into the communities they were supposed to be protecting, American troops had a bad habit of concentrating in “super” Forward Operating Bases. This isolated them from the local population — a big no-no in accepted counter-insurgency thinking.
The Brits in southern Iraq never did break that “bunker” mentality, and paid for it by losing control of Basra, Iraq’s second city.
Is the U.S. Army in Afghanistan repeating that error? One blogger thinks so. Babatim at Free Range International is a contractor with years of experience in Afghanistan. “We have hamstrung our efforts by placing our maneuver forces in ‘big box’ FOBs,” he writes. “Afghanistan as viewed from behind the wire of a big box is not the Afghanistan I know and see daily. It can’t be — that is nature of an isolated, high security FOB — it completely removes you from meaningful interaction with the local people.”
Case in point, Babatime recounts a recent example of a “big-box FOB,” pictured, gone horribly wrong:
In order to accommodate the expected surge in troop levels, the U.S. Army needed to expand its base in Zabul Province. An Army captain who leads the local embedded training team working with the Afghan army (and who belongs to a separate task force with a completely different chain of command), warned the base CO that the expansion would cut off a vital karez (water) access to the locals, a fact certain to cause problems. He was ignored until the Army realized that cutting off the karez access tunnel was in fact causing real problems with the locals. At that point they engaged the local shura but it was too late.
The Afghans reacted with indignation and cold fury at the thought that the Army would cut off their karez. The reaction was expected by old Afghan hands. Either the villagers were rightfully outraged or they were posturing because they knew that such behavior would get them bigger compensation payments (your tax dollars at work one more time). But as the story moves on, we find that the Taliban had beaten the Army to the punch. The elder from the one village that agreed to cooperate, was paid a visit by the local Talibs and lost an ear. Things of this nature cannot ever be allowed to happen in a counterinsurgency fight.
(Photo: David Axe)
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The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 05/27/2009 News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.