MQ-1 Predator. Air Force photo.

India Buys AH-64s
India, now among the world’s largest and most lucrative defense markets, has ordered 22 new AH-64D Apaches, among the most technologically advanced helicopters in the world. The sale, one of several high profile U.S.-India aircraft deals, is one more indication of closer military/security cooperation as India updates its military. India has turned down several prospective deals involving U.S. technology, having not forgotten the military embargo imposed by the U.S. after India’s nuclear tests. Of particular note are the Pakistani and Chinese responses to the sale, which have thus far consisted largely of silence. Two U.S. companies are among others bidding on a highly lucrative deal for 126 advanced fighter aircraft.

Politics is Everything
A factor worth hammering home over and over again is that buying aircraft from international manufacturers rarely depends on actual technical and cost-effectiveness merits; Wikileaked cables show strong U.S. government support for Boeing’s commercial aircraft deals, including overtly trading aircraft for state favors. Though exact details are generally kept quiet, the same marketing occurs in the chaotic defense market. More nefarious acts are often alleged, but rarely proven.

Iran Downs Drones?
Iran claims to have downed two Western reconnaissance drones. The U.S. denies losing any drones. Truth: unknown.

Pakistan Doesn’t
The CIA’s drone war in Pakistan is going full-strength.

RAF photo via Flightglobal.

Afghanistan is an Air War
Airborne weapons are back in fashion amongst ISAF troops in Afghanistan. In a trend followed closely by Wired’s Danger Room, the number of air attack missions has gone up substantially to levels not seen since the 2001 invasion. Though former commander General Stanley McChrystal greatly restricted the use of air strikes in Afghanistan, ISAF under General David Petraeus is now reporting an average of 28 bombings a day. Air strikes were previously restricted in an attempt to gain popular support from the Afghan populace, which generally sees air strikes as misguided and dangerous; previous air strikes have killed large numbers of civilians. The dramatic uptick in air strikes is symptomatic of ISAF’s more aggressive approach as troops move into Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan and of Taliban inroads into previously-safe parts of the north.

Flightglobal‘s World Air Forces Directory 2010
Flightglobal has released the updated World Air Forces Directory. It’s a handy reference tool, though it paves over certain subtleties and variations to make quantification easier. Also note that the equipment listed often does not tell the whole story. Of particular interest is the continued dominance of the U.S. in number and quality of aircraft, and of American aircraft industry.

Goodbye, Harrier
The Directory is released as the United Kingdom retires the iconic Harrier jump jet, long a mainstay of British military operations. The British-designed Harrier will continue to be operated around the world, and there is as yet no indication what will happen to the newly-retired jets. Flightglobal has some cool pictures.  European nations have generally been cutting back on their military spending in response to the financial crisis, and the U.K. is the most emblematic. A recent government decision to cut both the aging, expensive Harrier and ancient, expensive Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft (and to axe upgrades that would keep the Nimrods flying) means a significantly decreased capability for the island nation. While plans are to buy a significant number of cutting-edge F-35s to equip a new aircraft carrier, European military strength is a shadow of what it was only a decade ago.

Falcon 9 Begins a New Era in Space
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 successfully launched, orbited and recovered a test cargo (note: a wheel of cheese), heralding the era of private spacecraft. NASA’s retirement of the Space Shuttle means that many future U.S. government payloads will be launched by private companies in privately-designed capsules. This new opening of space to corporations relieves pressure on the government to design and maintain spacecraft, and signifies that space is no longer the exclusive domain of governments.

F/A-18. Air Force photo.

USMC Unmanned Rotary Contract Divided
The U.S. Navy announced on Thursday that a large contract for unmanned rotary airlift services would be split between the two main competitors. Kaman will receive nearly $46 million to provide unmanned airlift to the Marine Corps in Afghanistan, while Boeing gets roughly $29 million. Kaman will provide an unmanned version of the venerable K-Max, an aging design originally designed for piloted heavy lifting.  Boeing will send their new A160 Hummingbird, a new multipurpose design. Both manufacturers will send two aircraft and three ground stations to Afghanistan, where they will be tested operationally. The challenge of deployment is intended to verify the unmanned concept as much as the systems themselves; the U.S. military, which has long operated unmanned aircraft for reconnaissance and airstrikes, is slowly exploring new capabilities for unmanned aircraft. The U.S. Navy has previously used the manned K-Max for ship-to-ship transfers, whereas the A160 has been quietly in development for use by Special Forces, but this represents the first public deployment of either aircraft to a war zone. The success or failure of these new systems is virtually certain to be a prelude to more extensive roles for unmanned aircraft.

Boeing Wins Another Intelligence Contract
Boeing announced yet another contract for intelligence aircraft, King Airs configured to intercept signals for the U.S. Army. These aircraft augment the RC- and MC-12 aircraft, based on the same airframe, already used for such purposes.  The King Air, in widespread civilian and military use worldwide, has recently carved out a niche as an intelligence platform. Bagram Air Base, the pattern major military airfield in eastern Afghanistan, is constantly filled with the the aircraft’s variants. The 30 new aircraft under the contract will likely be very similar to the MC-12s, with sensitive tactical signals interception equipment and a bulbous camera underneath.

U.S. Actively Selling F-18s
In diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks, diplomats fret about the potential loss of a major fighter aircraft contract in Brazil. Though the cables claim the F-18, manufactured by Boeing in St. Louis, is recognized in Brazil as a superior aircraft, political and military analysts speculate that the Dassault Rafale,  built in France, is most likely to win for political reasons. In the cables, American diplomats recognize the situation but urge greater backing by the U.S. government. The U.S. government commonly supports high-grade military sales efforts to other nations. Wikileaks also released documents suggesting that Norway’s choice of fighter aircraft would impact U.S.-Norway relations; the Norwegians chose the U.S. aircraft (H/T Ares)

British Harriers Launch for Final Time
The GR9 Harrier, the iconic VTOL attack aircraft, has taken off from it’s intended platform for the final time. HMS Ark Royal launched Harriers for the last time on November 24th. The Harrier is leaving British service, but variants will continue on in shipboard roles in the U.S., Italy and India.

Russian Rocket Fails
A Proton rocket carrying three Glasnoss navigation satellites failed to reach orbit, likely burning up in the atmosphere near Hawaii after either a second-stage motor malfunction or initial trajectory malfunction upon takeoff, depending on the news source. The Glasnoss system is Russia’s answer to the American GPS and European Galileo navigation systems, intended for worldwide satellite navigation coverage. The Proton was launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

The riot. Getty Images.

by ZACH ROSENBERG

A blackened scorch now marks the spot where a U.S. embassy vehicle, one of two torched by rioters yesterday, came to rest. The vehicle, one of the ubiquitous SUVs that ferry foreigners all over the Kabul area, ran a civilian car off the road and into the median, killing four Afghan civilians. It is not uncommon to see NGO workers, contractors and even uniformed military personnel using the armored vehicles; the four DynCorp employees in the car fled under the protection of the Afghan National Police (ANP). Almost instantly after the accident an angry mob formed, composed, according to press reports, of hundreds furious Afghans.

The incident took place on a major thoroughfare, within sight of the New Kabul Compound, an American base across the street from the U.S. embassy. The ANP successfully cordoned the mob, but passersby and journalists reported hostility and stone-throwing. The mob appeared localized, spontaneous and at least partially composed of looters taking advantage of the situation, but they were reported to shout anti-foreigner and anti-Karzai slogans.

By nighttime the area was clear of rioters and burned vehicles, though several ANP stood around the area; most international organizations lifted the movement restrictions that had been imposed earlier that day. But the accident clearly hit a sore nerve with Kabulis, many of whom lack basic services and are deeply skeptical of the presence of foreigners. The incident has uncomfortable parallels to a similar 2006 incident when a U.S. military vehicle killed several civilians, sparking widespread rioting.

Informally and off the record, Afghans and foreigners with significant experience report rising anti-Americanism: though partial guarantors of very tenuous Afghan governmental stability, Americans are increasingly seen as occupiers, responsible for installing and supporting a government that inspires skepticism and loathing amongst its principals. Kabuli drivers slow down to stay well away from U.S. columns of Humvees — perhaps the only damper on what is could be described as a flagrantly enthusiastic driving culture. During a recent filming of Afghan Star, in which singers compete for fame and fortune, supporters of a losing candidate accused the winner of being backed by foreigners. Little boys pretend to shoot down the U.S. helicopters that pass over, an action seen worldwide that carries a somewhat sinister tinge here.

Much of Afghanistan’s small educated elite has fled, or have plans to flee, or have contingency plans, just in case. The recent Wikileaks trove contained the names and identifying details of what appears to be a large number of cooperators, confidants and informants — already few and far between, with their details exposed they are at significant risk of harm, virtually ensuring that U.S. troops will receive less cooperation in the future.

Crowd at a Kabul market on June 11, 2007. David Axe photo.

Kabul has perhaps the world’s worst tasting, but best guarded KFC rip-off, the notorious Afghan Fried Chicken. To eat this poor excuse for food and sip warm soda, one must pass by two AK-toting Afghan guards and step through a metal detector, possibly followed by a hand search. But AFC is among the more inclusive foreign-oriented restaurants — at least they allow Afghans to eat there. It is worth noting that some of the most expensive cities in the world for expatriates are in the developing world. Much of this expense is undoubtedly due to the massive costs required to separate the expats from, well, the developing city around them.

Kabul is swarming with foreigners from seemingly every nation in the world, working for NGOs, the U.N. and other international organizations, various military forces and governments and foreign contractors. Kabul is relatively peaceful and relatively safe, but it is still a war zone, and many of these organizations take war-zone precautions.

“The Kabubble,” as it’s known, is Kabul’s version of the virtual, and often literal, expatriate wall. Kabul is dusty and dirty; open sewers run the length of even the most prestigious streets. Street kids aggressively push chewing gum or burn herbs said to protect from the evil eye. Foreigners, women especially, are subject to unwanted attention that can unnerve and disturb.

But dotted in clusters around Kabul are certain oases. Standing out front of such an establishment, one is greeted by a constant stream of armored Land Cruisers and discreet private taxis. Generally they are guarded by at least one bored-looking armed guard, and from there are different levels of security. Once inside the gate, many places have a second gate with at least one more guard. The most secure have hallways and walls lined with sandbags. Inside the gates one enters what seems a virtual paradise — English-speaking waiters weave through rosebushes to serve alcohol and food at prices that rival any major Western city. Other foreigners abound, and in Kabul’s small-town expat community, a visitor is bound to see someone they know. Afghans are not allowed in many such places, but exceptions are routine for Kabul’s local elite. Less fortunate Kabulis are often puzzled and offended. At times, it can seem downright imperialistic.

The reality, of course, is that while undeniably decadent, these establishments are often a foreigner’s only place of sanctuary from a stressful city with few forms of recreation. Kabul demands much of its foreign residents. After 30 years of constant warfare, many Kabulis have developed a “take what you can, when you can” mentality with little consideration of the future. To a much greater extent than in Western cities, which have stable institutions that engender a certain amount of interpersonal trust, work in Afghanistan is often characterized by culture clash, mistrust, misunderstanding, deception and fear. Foreigners who have spent long periods of time in Kabul can often be distinguished by a certain physical otherworldliness, or else speak with an unmistakable weariness.

Combined with security precautions necessary or perceived, the result for many Westerners is a physical and social wall. Even after months or years in Kabul, a surprisingly small number of Westerners speak Dari, the local language; it is not necessary for their purposes. A number of foreigners with long experience in Kabul have remarked that the bubble is getting harder and harder to puncture as Afghanistan’s security worsens and movement restrictions are imposed. The Kabul Conference, set to begin on Tuesday, has put much of the expat community on “white city,” the term for a complete lockdown. The streets are eerily quiet for a workday. Many expat-staffed offices have shut down for the duration of the Conference. Hind attack helicopters circle the city, and already there has been one bomb in the upscale Macroyan neighborhood.

by ZACH ROSENBERG

First, it’s worth noting just where Afghanistan stands, and the Failed States Index is a good place to start. Note Afghanistan’s overall position as the sixth-most failed state in the world. The relevant measurement of corruption is “Delegitimization of the State,” in which category Afghanistan gets a score of 10 out of 10, the same score as Somalia, and just ahead of Chad and Sudan.

At first I thought a 10 was a little unfair. Are the rigged elections and blatantly corrupt politics really that much worse than Niger, victim of a recent coup? Is the corruption really worse than Equatorial Guinea, whose leadership is alleged to be tightly intertwined with large-scale drug smuggling? Maybe, maybe not; “massive and endemic corruption,” as the category is defined, is a certainty here, as is the ruling elite’s resistance to accountability, their links (and likely control over) to criminal networks and the distinct lack of support from everyone, from the Afghan population — all of it, as far as I can tell — to their greatest world-stage ally and current occupying force, the U.S. government.

The Afghan Analyst Network’s Kate Clark writes a blog post about just how you get a high-ranking government position. It’s an anecdotal but fascinating portrayal of grand corruption — and a partial explanation for why Afghanistan rates so low. Of particular interest is just how open and unworried the involved figures are portrayed. In some political systems corruption is handled subtly, through intricate channels and using vague language. In Afghanistan, an interested minister simply calls the target and makes an offer. The money flows out by the boxful; much of it goes to Dubai, the region’s financial (and money-laundering) hub, where many high Afghan government officials own property.

There are reports that corruption investigations are being actively blocked, surprising nobody. For detailed information on corruption in Afghanistan, the Afghan Evaluation and Research Unit has an excellent report about state-level and local corruption, including a good primer and context. Integrity Watch Afghanistan’s new corruption survey puts some good numbers on the perception of corruption among the population. It’s high, in case you’re wondering. The perception of corruption goes a long way toward encouraging support for the Taliban, and recognition of this has led to some drastic action.

RNW photo.

by ZACH ROSENBERG

In May, a group of irate villagers in Gizab, Daikundi Province, an area largely left alone by NATO forces, banded together to take on the local Taliban head first — and won. This is the local turnaround we’ve all been looking for: a spontaneous locally-inspired, -organized and -led revolt against the heavy hand of the Taliban. And people said Iraq’s Anbar Awakening couldn’t work in Afghanistan, the fools! Foreign government and military personnel greeted the news with unabashed optimism:

U.S. diplomats and military officials view the rebellion as a milestone in the nearly nine-year-long war. For the first time in this phase of the conflict, ordinary Afghans in the violence-racked south have risen on their own to reclaim territory under insurgent control.

It is a turnabout that U.S. and Afghan officials were not certain would ever occur. One U.S. commander called it “perhaps the most important thing that has happened in southern Afghanistan this year.

The important takeaway questions are, one, is this important, two, can this be replicated? The answer to both is “doubtful.”

For starters, Daikundi is an isolated, relatively unpopulated province, so unimportant to NATO even before population-centric counter-insurgency strategy took hold that it was essentially ignored (except by Special Forces, which is everywhere). Its main function for the Taliban, The Washington Post‘s Rajiv Chandrasekaran notes, is a transit and transfer point to bigger and better places. It’s a place where the Taliban doesn’t exert much force, but still more than the Afghan government or NATO.

This is not exactly a decisive overthrow either; despite an astounding temporary success, little guarantees the new “neighborhood watch” will be able to maintain a coherent, functional, well-armed institution should either the Taliban or Afghan government decide to assert dominance. And of course, events here are never as straightforward as they seem. Martine van Bijlert of the inestimable Afghanistan Analysts Network, whose post on the issue is really worth reading in full, fills in some context on what happened after the battle:

The appointments [of the revolters, to official power] represent a return to power by local khan families of two of the local Achekzai subtribes. This is not necessarily problematic, but the potential informality of the set-up (locals in local government, heading local forces) provides ample opportunity for another round of factionalism and exclusion. In April it was the Taliban that was kicked out by the population, but several years earlier the population rose up against a district governor that had crossed the line in terms of exploitative and intolerable behaviour. The fact that the Special Forces have decided that Lalay and his men are the “good guys,” just because they asked for their help, does not mean they will necessarily help win hearts and minds.

People from Gizab have complained for years about the neglect of their predicament. The message over the years has always been the same: It will be easy to get rid of the Taliban, there are not that many and the people will join in — but what happens after is what is important: who gets appointed, how will they behave and will the government pay attention to the needs of the people. That questions still looms over Gizab.

So, these are not necessarily good guys — maybe not the Taliban, but not necessarily friendly or cooperative, say nothing of desirable or accountable power brokers. The U.S. has an ongoing history of notoriously short sight in deciding who should have power, a situation that by some interpretations led more or less directly to the current one. Note that U.S. support for vicious and viciously corrupt warlords in Afghanistan continues to the present day, on the national as well as local levels. While supporting Lalay’s uprising for uprising’s sake seems to be a good idea from afar, some analysis must be carried out to answer questions, including: what effect might this new armed force have on area Pashtun clan relations? How might the local Hazara react? Just what role will this force have in official governance and security, and how can NATO ensure they don’t defect to a friendlier Taliban?

Leaving aside the issue of whether this should be replicated, can it be replicated? Daikundi is known as a province that has a relatively high level of appreciation for NATO troops and relatively low level of violence. Much of the population is Hazara, who remember their brutal treatment under the Taliban. Also note the lack of Afghan government presence in Gizab, which certainly played a role in the uprising — I can only speculate on how or to what extent, but it is a factor worth examining. Official Afghan government outposts tend to bring with them outright extortion, terrible corruption, and Taliban attacks — as Registan’s Christian Bleuer notes, basically the same as the Taliban, but without the school burning (you can bet that if the Taliban built a madrassa, the Afghan government would burn it). Should Gizab locals have reacted the same way to the same stimuli by Afghan government, which is not an unlikely scenario, they would have risked being labeled Taliban, in which case those heroic U.S. and Aussie Special Forces would kick in their doors and maybe shoot a few, definitively losing area hearts and minds.

As to replicating, the ever-snarky Bleuer breaks down the process:

1. Get Taliban to be jerks to locals.
2. Get Taliban to kill some locals.
3. Get Taliban to try to extort $24K from locals.
4. Get Taliban to kidnap some angry dude’s family.
5. Special Forces with ZZ Top beards.
6. Get locals to go crazy on Taliban.
7. EXECUTE EVERYBODY!!!
8. Australians.
9. ?????
10. Profit.

He goes on to speculate that we’re clearly about to win the war and become ludicrously rich and even introduce Gizab to thrash-metal, thereby neatly solving all Afghanistan-related problems forever, The End.

Encouraging such local uprisings is an official plank of America’s Afghanistan strategy. Not to say the Afghan government is effective at anything — note the recent Failed States Index, in which Afghanistan’s government ties for legitimacy with Somalia — but backing the rise of local power-brokers has a lot of potential negatives, among them the exact same thing that got us into this mess: backing local power-brokers at the expense of a coherent central government.

Afghanistan. David Axe photo.

by ZACH ROSENBERG

On a calm April night at Combat Outpost Baraki Barak, a survivor is recalling the bomb that nearly killed him a couple of days before. He was in his MRAP when a command-wire IED blew it up; he pulled people out of the burning truck, got them onto litters, and picked up his weapon, ready to kill, but as in many of these attacks there was no clear target to shoot. The seriously wounded were airlifted and the surrounding Afghan population yielded no intelligence; the unit circled their remaining trucks and watched the stricken truck burn. He was sent to the hospital for a nasty cut on his head, only six stitches wide but down to the bone.

At the hospital he looked in on one of the troops he pulled out, a 19 year old on his first deployment. “I’m not gonna lie,” he says self-effacingly, “I acted a bitch and started crying. I meant to go in there and console him but I think I only freaked him out more.” The 19-year old was sent to Walter Reed, and the soldier was kept under observation a few days. When his truck dropped the ramp at COP Baraki Barak, he bolted out and immediately threw up. “That’s PTSD for ya,” he jokes. All he wants now, he says, is to go home safely and take his first legal drink in the U.S. At 21, the soldier has earned a Purple Heart and a Medal of Valor recommendation.

When asked why he is ordered to take such risks, the wounded soldier responds immediately. “To tell you the truth, I don’t fucking know.” He’s understandably rattled by his recent experience, but he is not alone in his sentiments. In no way did I conduct a comprehensive survey at COP Baraki Barak, but anecdotally his questioning is widely shared.

The now infamous Rolling Stone article generated an instant firestorm surrounding the comments of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan. But as Blake Hounshell notes at Foreign Policy, many people miss a notable part of the article: nine years in, the grunts at the bottom are losing faith in their leadership.

At COP Baraki Barak, raising the subject of COIN and the inevitable risk it brings to soldiers brings shrugs and reminders of the deep commitment soldiers have to obeying orders, no matter how stupid — on the record. Off the record, when the soldiers speculate freely on their superiors attributes, many are brutal: they’ve forgotten their
roots, they’ve sold their souls for political expediency, they misinterpret the situation, they aren’t paying attention, their hearing is selective, they are Olympic-level idiots.

Not to say the soldiers would prefer to carpet-bomb and massacre their way through any situation, but they are nervous, heavily armed, and increasingly frustrated at what they see as high-risk, low-payoff missions. They are skeptical that holding fire will reap greater safety in the long run. One soldier tells a story about watching Afghans dig, night after night, on a stretch of road visible from an American observation post. Each night the same thing happens: when soldiers are sent to check it out, the men run; sure enough, the next day an IED blows up in that spot. A few days later, the men are back digging. Instead of shooting them from the safety of their outpost, the soldiers send out MRAPs to intercept them, and again the men run. The cycle repeats.

The choice under COIN, as the next shift at the ECP tells me, is binary. Option 1 is to leave, “like the Russians,” presumably suffering the shame of defeat. Option 2 is to “stay an entire generation, until every fucking person that has this mentality dies.”

Of the officers who spoke on the topic with me, all expressed a clear vision of how to practice COIN in their area of responsibility. Of the enlisted who spoke with me, few demonstrated a clear understanding of COIN — their concerns are different, they don’t have to put much thought into strategy. I once heard someone suggest that the fate of the Afghan war be literally decided by enlisted vote, which would clearly be a terrible idea. But they are the first to receive the feedback of strategic mistakes, and sometimes a worm’s eye view is more accurate than an eagle’s.

ANA. ISAF photo.

by ZACH ROSENBERG

On a combat outpost in Logar Province, a group of young American soldiers sit around on guard duty, bored to tears, swapping stories about the Afghan National Army (ANA). Between drags of his cigarette, one soldier tells a story of his time guarding the COP’s senior medic. One day, it seems, a senior ANA officer came to the clinic complaining of an infection to his penis; after some time and much sheepishness, it emerged that the ANA officer likely contracted the infection when he had sex with a donkey. He was given antibiotics. Around the guard post, the other soldiers nod; they have similar stories.

In a recent piece in The Atlantic, Daniel Byman and Christine Fair write about the stupidity of large parts of the jihadi movement, including sordid anecdotes of sex with animals, pornography, suicide bombers blowing themselves up before their meant to, the sheer idiocy of some of the world’s most notorious terrorists. The reminder is a necessary one. This is a time when negative articles continuously appear, one right after the other, stressing the Taliban’s strength and support.

But neither are America’s allies immune from whatever lure donkeys apparently possess. The terabytes of porn the Taliban look at are doubtless outclassed by any U.S. Army base. For the talk of the hypocrisy of the Taliban’s supposed religious conservatism this conveys, the Taliban have managed to stake out the religious high ground, which is not a very difficult task given the competition from Karzai’s government of flagrant violators and the defiantly secular NATO nations.

In some ways, the West’s failures are more egregious than the Taliban’s. Byman and Fair note the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, one guy with some explosives in his underwear, who slipped effortlessly through security measures that have taken billions of dollars and years of effort to put into place. He failed to blow up his target, thankfully. He wasn’t very smart, but he didn’t have to be: Abdulmutallab made it so far due to failures of intelligence and coordination. The same basic idea is evident in the old U.S. obsession with port security, which despite billions of dollars and days of rhetoric no terrorist is yet known to have attempted to breach. Or nuclear and biological terrorism countermeasures — not to say these were necessarily bad ideas, but if we overestimate our enemy, isn’t that our failure?

Perception, not reality, is the most important factor in determining what side a person will support. Let half the Taliban suicide bombers blow themselves up by accident — they only need one to do it right. NATO’s technology, resources and experiences, light-years ahead what the Taliban has available, makes any minor Taliban success a great failure for NATO. The same cannot be said of NATO’s successes.

As Amil Khan notes on the blog Abu Muqawama, the clear presence of lots of idiots isn’t necessarily a good sign; it means that the jihadi movement is finding lots of people in general. It only takes one idiot to press the right button once, Khan says; meanwhile the smart jihadi are engineering the really complex operations that undermine the Afghan government and NATO.

I would add to this — not exactly news, but still — that the jihadi movement operates with a high degree of autonomy, in which independent groups or individuals can initiate large-impact action. That sort of autonomy allows for a high degree of creativity and operational diversity. Thus far, we’ve been lucky in that the clever operations have been largely confined to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Byman and Fair suggest that the idiocy of many jihadi could be used to discredit them. There is an argument to be made that the U.S. no longer has any credibility among the potential target audience. Imagine, for example, a story in a Pakistani newspaper about some gross Taliban ineptitude — maybe the suicide-bomber embrace where one bomber killed six would-be bombers by accident. Place that story on the page opposite another about the tough times Marines are having outside Kandahar. The takeaway message is that the Taliban may be idiots, but that the U.S. can’t counter them.

Zach Rosenberg photo.

by ZACH ROSENBERG

As the U.S. and Afghan armies gear up for the offensive in Kandahar (or not — in rumor-rich Kabul, various sources have it beginning anytime from tomorrow through the winter) the U.S. is increasingly in a political conundrum. On one hand, there’s no good to come from allowing the Taliban a free hand in Kandahar, and that whatever happens has to work, or else. While few suggest the Taliban can take the city over completely, they currently do enough to keep the population from conclusively siding with the national government. On the other hand, it is increasingly apparent that the U.S. may not possess the necessary political resources to win the population.

Chief among these resources, of course, is an agreeable Afghan government that can demonstrate good governance and political cohesion, which the current national government largely fails to do. The U.S. has not been particularly successful in staying on the same page as the Afghan government. Despite promises to enter Kandahar with arms extended and bring security and good governance, the predecessor offensive on Marja has yet to bring real dividends.

The thing is, Karzai’s priorities are increasingly diverging from the U.S. The resignations of Amrullah Saleh, the head of Afghanistan’s national intelligence agency, and Hanif Atmar, the Minister of Interior, while supposedly connected to security lapses at the recent Peace Jirga in Kabul, hint at deeper problems. Saleh and Atmar were said to share key priorities with the U.S., and were widely acknowledged to be among the most reliable members of the Afghan government. As always, rumors are rife about the true instigation and meaning of their resignations, and one possible consequence is that Karzai gets more direct control over key security services. Karzai, who appointed one of Afghanistan’s most notorious warlords to chair the Peace Jirga, has never seemed especially enthusiastic about either the planned Kandahar offensive or the good governance meant to follow it.

The Kandahar offensive, and subsequent claims of success, appear to be a foregone conclusion. Based on past evidence, a strong Taliban presence and bad governance after the assault seem similarly inevitable. I plan to keep a close eye on Alex Strick’s Twitter feed when the time comes.

M-ATV delivery. David Axe photo.

The Taliban had them surrounded. It was a clear moonlit night on March 28 in Dangam district, in the Kunar River valley in eastern Afghanistan. The U.S. Army patrol, from Battle Company, Second Battalion, 503rd Infantry, was caught on a narrow road between two mountain peaks teeming with Taliban fighters.

“They hit us from both sides,” First Lieutenant Cris Gasperini, the patrol leader, would recall a few days after the battle. Rocket-propelled grenades (RPG s), weighing five pounds and tipped with high explosives, lanced from the peaks toward the American vehicles. In quick succession, three rounds struck one vehicle, each exploding with a blinding flash and a thunderclap that left ears ringing. The Taliban might have imagined, for a moment, that they had scored a major victory against the Americans. But when the noise and light had faded, the vehicle bore only dents and streaks of soot indicating it had been hit at all.

That March night was an early combat test of the U.S. military’s latest tactical truck, a fifteen-ton, 370-hp, four-wheel, five-seat bruiser built by Oshkosh Defense and known to the troops simply as “the ATV.” The $500,000 Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected, All-Terrain Vehicle, or M-ATV to the Pentagon, was designed for precisely the scenario that Battle Company faced in Dangam: caught in the open on hilly terrain, outnumbered by heavily armed enemy fighters. In those circumstances, the M-ATV stands the best chance of bringing our soldiers home in one piece.

The protection comes at a cost. The M-ATV is heavy, expensive, not at all roomy, and, at this early stage in its career, prone to breakdowns. Soldiers in Afghanistan’s more peaceful districts, which rarely see combat action, tend to hate the top-heavy, temperamental beast. But to combat veterans like those in Battle Company, the M-ATV is a soldier’s best friend. Usually.

In a rare exclusive, Automobile Magazine spent more than a month in the war zone with the M-ATV’s lovers and haters, plus the soldiers who fix the finicky beast and the Air Force logisticians who have the unenviable job of hauling the bulky machines from the United States to land-locked Afghanistan.

What we learned not only sheds light on the pluses and minuses of the Pentagon’s latest battle buggy — it also reveals the high-stakes calculus that factors into military vehicle design. In conceptualizing the M-ATV, officers had to weigh mobility against protection — and purchase and delivery costs against the value of a trooper’s life. The M-ATV embodies the military’s thinking on a wide range of life-or-death issues. It’s a direct reflection of the American way of war.

Plus, it looks mean as hell.

. . .

After months of using mostly RG-31 MRAPs, the battalion got its first M-ATV in early 2010, courtesy of the aerial porters. Despite the military’s best intentions, the truck arrived before any of its spares — and before anyone at the battalion motor pool had received any formal training on the new vehicle.

The mechanics promptly broke the M-ATV during an oil change. Staff Sergeant Daron Collins was on duty that day. “There’s a nut on the inside of the oil pan,” he explained. The nut, welded to the pan, holds a bolt that keeps the pan in place. When Collins and the other mechanics removed the bolt, the nut fell off. “It wasn’t properly welded.” Now there was no way to hold the oil pan in place. Just to replace the pan, the motor pool had to order up an entire replacement power pack and swap it in. A single bad weld cost the Army and the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars and kept an M-ATV sidelined for weeks.

Collins said he doesn’t blame the M-ATV’s design. He likes the M-ATV. “It’s very easy to work on. The parts are fairly big. For a big person like myself with big hands, it’s easy to locate parts on the vehicle.”

“It’s soldier-friendly,” Collins continued. “There’s not much cushion in an MRAP. But there are lots of modifications to this vehicle to make the guys comfortable on eight-hour patrols. And it’s got a lot of power, so you can go wherever you need to go.”

That’s no small thing for units like Battle Company, whose vehicles absorbed Taliban gunfire and rockets during that March 28 ambush. Two days after the attack — enough time for the company’s mechanics to more or less repair their damaged trucks — Cris Gasperini led a mission into Dangam to try to figure out who exactly had tried to kill them that night and failed thanks in part to the M-ATV . . .

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Peace Jirga. RFERL photo.

by ZACH ROSENBERG

Sidiqua, 18 years old, cries gently as she talks about her life. At the age of three, Hezb-i-Islami rocketed her home while assaulting Kabul; the first rocket put a piece of shrapnel in her back that the local hospital had no capacity to remove. The second killed her mother, brothers and aunt. Her father, bearing permanent mental scars, cannot bear the pain of seeing her; though he has a home in Kabul, she is not allowed inside it and he often sleeps in the streets.

Without family, a crucial part of Afghan social life, Sidiqua is adrift. She is unemployed and broke. The government, which gives her 8,000 Afghanis a year — about $160, well below the cost of living — denied her request for land, Sidiqua says, because she is a woman and cannot build a house. To survive, she moves between the houses of her neighbors. “I need my mother,” she weeps, “where is my mother now?”

At an NGO-organized “Victim’s Jirga” in a Kabul hotel on Sunday, Afghans from all over the country gathered to share their grief and voice their hopes for the future. After speaking in panels organized by conflict period — the civil war, the Taliban era, and the current era — the victims were split into eight working groups to debate questions about the past and the future.

The Victim’s Jirga comes in advance of the widely-anticipated Peace Jirga, from which many hope a comprehensive reconciliation plan will emerge. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has frequently stated that the only end to the current conflict will come through negotiation, a position supported by U.S. President Barak Obama and other NATO heads of state. Negotiations have already occurred with at least one major figure in the insurgency, Hezb-i-Islami commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Sidiqua, whose family was killed by Hekmatyar’s militia, said she would not forgive Hekmatyar or accept any outcome in which he would be allowed back into Afghanistan. Other Jirga attendees who were tortured or saw their families killed by Hekmatyar and other insurgent leaders hold varying opinions on forgiving the past in exchange for future peace. But many victims face a more immediate problem: Karzai’s wholehearted acceptance of warlords means that many abusers are members of the Afghan government.

One such victim is Abdul Halim Aziz, a laborer from the Rustaq district of Takhar Province. In 1989, he says, a local warlord named Perankol Sie massacred 56 people, nine of whom were members of his family. Aziz took his family and fled until Karzai came into power, when Sie, now a parliamentarian, sent Aziz a note saying that he could return home without fear. Aziz did so. In 2006, Aziz says, Sie kidnapped two of his sons, ages six and eight, from their school, killed them and dumped their bodies in a nearby river.

When Aziz brought more than 100 villagers to Kabul to confront Sie, he was granted an audience with Karzai, who, according to Aziz, told him that he should forget the killings because he was young and could have more children. Though Karzai then issued a proclamation for a parliamentary hearing, Aziz was not allowed into parliament and the issue was left to stagnate.

“I have no expectation from the government of Afghanistan, the parliament or anyone. Whoever is in power, they are always corrupt, they are money hungry, they are power hungry,” says Aziz through a translator. Aziz says his only wishes are to move his family to safety outside of Afghanistan and push the international community to act. He looks tired as he says this; his story is documented and compelling, and he has already been interviewed several times today.

The victims are divided into eight groups of perhaps ten victims each to debate three central questions — how to remember the past, how to achieve peace and the nature of justice. Each group sent a representative up front to explain their answers, written on large sheets of butcher paper.

“By the name of Allah, I am Ahmed Shah. I am a victim of war.” Shah, wearing a traditional salwar kamiz, had written his group’s points out with the hook on his right hand. His left arm has neither a hand nor a hook. A man behind him held the microphone to his mouth. “If the victim’s views are not considered,” Shah says, “we will not have true peace in Afghanistan.”

Though the crowd at the Jirga was self-selecting, their suffering is by no means rare. After 30 years of war and brutal oppression, nearly everyone in Afghanistan has horrific stories. If they have not lost family and friends, been tortured, witnessed horrific violence, killed people — or all three — then they are close to someone who has. In a number of cases, the perpetrators at whose hands they suffered are members of the current government.

So it is not surprising that though the individual working groups differ on the exact role of government in addressing their concerns, all eight groups unanimously demand that the government purge itself of human rights violators. In doing so, the victims are seeking justice for the atrocities committed and insurance that they will never happen again.

Attempts to remove powerful human rights violators from government would, first, remove the leaders of large swaths of government, two, potentially destabilize the government. That the victims seem willing to pay the associated costs might suggest, first, that they are ignorant of the costs, though this is unlikely given their experiences; second, that their desire for justice or hopes for the future cause them to downplay the costs; third, that the current situation is not so unbearable that the costs outweigh the benefits. The desire for justice is likely; as noted earlier, this is a self-selecting group that has suffered heavily, that is willing to trust civil society and tweak the nose of both the Taliban and the government by speaking openly against both parties.

What particularly interests me is the third possibility, that they do not represent particularly extreme views and are willing to pay the costs of greater instability in exchange for greater potential stability down the road. This suggests that they find the current tenuous security situation relatively bearable, and are more concerned with government malfeasance than the Taliban insurgency.

As Reuters notes, Jirga attendees are divided as to whether or not to talk with the Taliban. If victims of violence are accorded a special voice in the upcoming Peace Jirga, it is unclear how their representatives will weigh in on that issue.

Though the Peace Jirga is not tasked to deliver justice, it is a question that will undoubtedly weigh heavily on attendees: if achieving peace comes at the cost of justice, or vice versa, which is the preferred outcome?