I’d like to thank Captain Thomas Daly for writing this guest post. He lived the experiences that so many of us have read about.

Captain Daly joined the Marine Corps in 2004. During his

Lieutenant Thomas Daly outside COP Rage in Juwayba, Iraq. Photo courtesy of the author.

military career, he has held a multitude of billets ranging from Forward Observer to Intelligence Cell Leader. His unique perception of the battlefield has been shaped while operating with units of the United States Army, Navy SEALs, ANGLICO (Air, Naval Gunfire Liaison Company), Iraqi Army and Police Units, and anti-Al Qaeda guerrillas. In July of 2008, Captain Daly transitioned from the Marine Corps to the Inactive Ready Reserves. He currently works for ITT Industries as a project manager. He is also the author of the forthcoming book Rage Company (Wiley, Spring 2010).

On the night of January 26, 2007, I laid in a dark, muddy irrigation canal on the eastern outskirts of Anbar’s capital: Ramadi. Next to me was a former Saddam General, who was also a leader within the tribal movement that later would become known as the “Anbar Awakening.” Together, we watched a squad of Marines storm into a house that the general and his fellow tribesmen insisted was a legal court of the Islamic State of Iraq. Once the Marines gained entry, the tribesmen and I followed. As I approached the rectangular, one-level home and adjoining car port, the general muttered behind me, “Ali Siyagah’s car!” Siyagah, a mid-level al Qaeda cleric and former direct-action cell leader, was the target. His car was parked in the driveway.

I ran up the front stairs and through the main doorway. I was greeted

Lieutenants Thomas Daly (standing) and James Thomas with the leadership of the Juwayba tribal scouts after their first mission together. Photo courtesy of the author.

by the standard Iraqi living room—no furniture, just blankets strewn about, and a television in a far corner—and the calm and defiant faces of the eight military-aged males sitting on the floor. Within seconds, horror overcame the men, as the general and his men entered the room.

The ski-mask-clad tribesmen with us spouted off the names of the men seated on the floor. Ali Siyagah was not present, but his personal driver, two bodyguards and an al Qaeda propagandist were in the group. To me, the group appeared to be normal civilians. The tribesmen quickly explained that the remaining four were exactly that—locals forced into the insurgents’ service. We separated the innocent in a different room while we detained the others, then we prepared to move to the next target. The alliance between Sunni nationalists and America was about to dismantle al Qaeda. In four months the kinetic fight that had plagued Ramadi for three years would be over.

The impact of the uprising of Sunni tribes against al Qaeda was the catalyst that ended insurgent violence not only within Ramadi, but also much of Iraq. However, this fact was not a coincidence. It was the end result of a series of actions and events, which can shed light on the actions required for America to succeed in Afghanistan.

May of 2006, the fully operational 1^st Brigade, 1^st Armored Division (1/1 AD), took over responsibility for the city of Ramadi. This is important because they replaced a collection of Pennsylvania National Guard units that were responsible for the southern and western sectors of the city. The Guardsmen had not exerted control over these sectors, in turn affording the insurgents safe havens to assault the adjacent units of the 1-506^th and 3^rd Battalion, 8^th Marines. The soldiers of 1/1 AD quickly reversed this by moving into the safe havens and establishing a string of Combat Outposts that put their tanks in the heart of Ramadi. Fighting throughout the summer was intense, and over a dozen Bradley Fighting Vehicles and M1 tanks were catastrophically destroyed.

Lieutenant Thomas Daly minutes before the clearing of a VBIED factory in Qatana, downtown Ramadi. Photo courtesy of the author.

As the insurgents fought 1/1 AD, they also faced internal battles. December 30, 2005, a couple of months before 1/1 AD arrived, representatives of Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s and the nationalist 1920s Revolutionary Brigade’s, met at a downtown mosque in Ramadi. Zarqawi wanted all of the different insurgent groups to fall under his proposed Mujahadeen Shura Council, which he envisioned would govern the Islamic State of Iraq. Not everyone in 1920s agreed with Zarqawi’s heavy-handed tactics against Shia Iraqis.

Like a lot of events in Iraq at the time, the meeting ended in a firefight as some elements of 1920s held out. The conflict between the two opposing camps continued through the summer, around the time 1/1 AD arrived. The weaker hold outs turned to America for assistance. We obliged, helping them establish a couple of tribal police stations between the Marine garrison at Hurricane Point and the Government Center.

Al Qaeda quickly responded by focusing deadly attacks on the group, but they also made a critical mistake. They kidnapped and murdered the sheik of the tribe and hid his body, preventing a proper burial. The event became a major tool for the nationalists to exploit via propaganda. One sheik, Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, even recorded television commercials blasting al Qaeda for their actions.

By Fall of 2006, the fight for Ramadi’s hearts and minds climaxed. Sheik Sattar declared an “Awakening” of Anbar’s tribes against al Qaeda in September. At the time, Sheik Sattar was not very powerful. The call to awaken went mostly on deaf ears.

October 18, the Mujahadeen Shura Council responded by declaring Ramadi the capital of the Islamic State of Iraq, and held a parade 800 meters from Anbar’s actual seat of government. Yet, the pressure began to pile on the extremists.

1/1 AD continued it’s offensive: new Combat Outposts were seized, an influx of 2,200 Marines from the 15^th Marine Expeditionary Unit flooded into Anbar; including my company, which arrived in Ramadi in early November. Sheik Sattar formed separate military and political organizations to first combat al Qaeda and also reach out to the other tribes of the Euphrates River Valley as well as the Iraqi Government.

The balance of power left al Qaeda’s hands in late November. Until then, Sheik Sattar only was capable of rallying the western side of Ramadi against the extremists, while American troops, myself included, contested the city’s center. Al Qaeda continued to control the urban east and rural areas beyond (Mila’ab, Sofia, Juwayba). However, this dynamic changed when an al Qaeda mortar team trying to use the usual farmland in northeastern Sofia to fire at Americans was turned back by a group of armed locals. The leader of this very small tribe (Shiek Jassim of the Albu Soda) was tired of our artillery counter-fire destroying his fields because of the mortar team. His tribesmen didn’t kill the insurgents, they simply said, “go away; use a different field.”

Again, al Qaeda made a serious mistake, completely disregarding the locals’ concerns. They launched an all-out assault against the Albu Soda tribe, forcing Jassim to call the United States for help. We responded in the midst of the attack, supplying Jassim with arms and ammunition that allowed him to repulse the enemy. Apache gunships followed up the action by destroying insurgent vehicles as they fled.

The attack on Jassim unified the small tribes of Sofia east to the Sijariah crossing, cutting off al Qaeda’s urban headquarters in the Mila’ab from its historic command and control network in Juwayba. At the end of January, the final push for control of Ramadi began. Coalition troops simultaneously attacked the Mila’ab and Juwayba. Days after the push into Juwayba, twenty-five Iraqi tribesmen offered assistance to the Marines. The first two paragraphs of this article describe part of the first mission we executed together. A month later, Juwayba would literally revolt against the extremists after the brutal murder of another innocent Iraqi.

So how does this apply to Afghanistan? How does Iraq’s tribal movement relate to Afghanistan? Is such an awakening even possible in Afghanistan?

The Pashtun tribes in Afghanistan are much more fractured and loosely aligned than the tribes in Iraq. Their territory traverses rugged, sometimes impassable terrain, unlike Iraq’s flat desert. Another difference? The Taliban is not al Qaeda. For almost a decade the Taliban provided for Afghanistan as a functioning government. It is a home-grown movement, led, in most part, by Afghans. The Taliban’s weaknesses and strengths are different than al Qaeda’s in Iraq. In fact, the Taliban’s knowledge of the local districts’ socio-political landscape makes it a more potent adversary. However, warfare is an art, not a science. There is always opportunity to change reality on the ground.

This begins with more combat boots, because step one is showing up. The awakening in Iraq spread in large part because it coincided with the “Surge.” As the support of Sunni tribes grew so did the reach of American troops. This combination of the coalition’s conventional tactics, supported by a Sunni nationalist guerrilla campaign, accomplished what the United States could not do by itself: defeat al Qaeda.

Step two is to truly understand the Taliban. As historic Taliban safe havens get a new combat outpost manned by Afghan and American troops, commanders on the ground must realize who they are facing. A concerted effort to encourage moderate Taliban commanders to our side has to take place. Not everyone in the Taliban agrees with suicide bombings, and as combat outposts move into villages, so will IEDs, mortar attacks, and devastating firefights. By living amongst the populace, local citizens will see the nature of the Taliban’s tactics. Some will probably experience them first hand. Such a burden will force the differences between Taliban leadership to come to a breaking point.

The goal in counter-insurgency is always to divide the insurgents’ voice. Their weakness lies in their inability to agree. Look at Afghanistan after the Soviets left; no one wielded control. The same is true of today’s Taliban. Who is it that leads them? Mullah Omar? Bin Laden? Or was it Baitullah Mehsud, who was reported killed in a Predator UAV strike last week? As we experienced in Iraq, different insurgents will give you different answers. Our goal must be to exploit this weakness and there is evidence it exists.

Take Baitullah Mehsud for example. A day after reports about his death started circulating, sources began stating that his two probable successors (Hakimullah and Wailur Rehman) were at each others throats over control of the Mehsud clan, and that one or possibly both were killed in an ensuing gun battle. Signs of internal struggles within the Taliban were apparent earlier this summer, when Baitullah Mehsud’s agents killed Qari Zainuddin, one of Mehsud’s chief rivals.

This is the sort of situation we need to exacerbate and it must be done at the local level: the company commander level. The biggest signal of America’s failure in this regard is the fact that a standard infantry company in the U.S. Army and Marine Corps continues to operate without a dedicated intelligence cell. This is unacceptable on a battlefield where an infantry company is often times responsible for an entire community. How can we claim that intelligence is truly driving operations?

We also must intensify our highly effective UAV Predator Drone attacks; especially in areas such as Baluchistan, where Taliban fighters can openly flee the Marines currently executing Operation Khanjari due to a non-existent Pakistani troop presence. In essence, the pressure cannot relent. As we experienced in Ramadi, the more we applied, the worse al Qaeda’s decisions became over time. This isn’t to say that al Qaeda wasn’t always so brutal, it’s just that we never followed step one.

Prior to the summer of 2006, after significant events in Ramadi took place, coalition troops would return to their large bases outside the city, allowing al Qaeda’s network of propagandists to shape events for the locals. By living across the street or two blocks over, we will mitigate their lies. When the Taliban take over a local’s house to fire at a combat outpost, the people will ask the Taliban why this happened. They will wonder why they are supporting a brutal militia instead of the Karzai government and foreigners who offer medical care, new schools, cash for damaged property and a future more than opium, a burqa or a beard. Like Iraq, the majority of Pashtun Afghans don’t want an extremist version of Islam to govern their lives.

If we hope to recreate the tribal movement of Iraq in Afghanistan, we cannot expect the extremist views of the Taliban to create a division we can support, such as the division between al Qaeda insurgents and nationalist insurgents in Ramadi. We must look for opportunities ourselves. And, this will only be accomplished if we truly begin to understand the enemy at the local level.

Our infantrymen at the tip of the spear cannot simply hunt for Taliban fighters, they must also develop an understanding of the enemy’s beliefs, personality and, more fundamentally, why they are fighting us. Once we begin to attain this knowledge and develop a relationship with the Afghan tribes, which lasts longer than one mission, we may very well find that the Pashtun tribes are not as committed to the Taliban as we think.

My dear friend Printer Bowler is a former army captain who served with psychological operations units in Viet Nam (1966-67). He was attached to the Third Marine Amphibious force, I Corps near the DMZ. He’s a perennial history student, now teaching, writing and pumping out radical troop-support propaganda from his home in Montana. It’s a pleasure to post this missive from God’s country:

Da Nang, 1967: Capt. Bowler offers a Camel to a buffalo

The bone yard is full of our delusions

What a concept! Respect your adversary, know who’s boss, see what you have in common and make a deal. Everybody does it on a daily basis—from personal relationships to corporate takeovers.  Everybody, that is, except the Pentagon and DOD. So ironic that it’s been left to Steven Pressfield, one our most respected historians and my favorite literary rock star, to remind our leadership of this perennially ignored reality. 

Since WWII, military strategists and clueless politicians have been addicted to high-tech shock-and-awe strategies, the delusion that remote-control warfare does the job. Of course, initially it can tenderize battlefields . . . but then what? “Mission accomplished!” someone announced from an aircraft carrier. Not even close. That was the beginning of the Iraqi/Afghan quagmire, not the end, which is still searching for itself in a distant fog.   

Success or failure, the buck stops at management

Troops, while you’re out there getting sniped at, roadside bombed and ambushed, our leaders have been glued to their video war games and computerized spread sheets. They still think they can blast their way into foreign neighborhoods and suddenly be top dog. Only recently have they looked up and noticed that drones and smart bombs alone often create far more “enemies” than they neutralize. Like it or not, almost every bomb dropped in Iraq and Afghanistan spawned a hundred new al-Qaeda and Taliban recruits, killed and alienated dozens/hundreds of formerly neutral civilians. Stupid plan, stupid results.

Until we wise up and join forces with their key (tribal) leaders, as Alexander and others discovered, we’ll keep losing lives, confidence, respect and Treasury bills. Experience, our poor ignored teacher, is getting very frustrated with us Americans!

Déjà-vu minus 40 years:  Didn’t hear you, say again?

I’m a Viet Nam vet and I still cringe at the disaster our British Redcoat toy soldier mentality made of that poor little country. Our strategy there was shock-and-awe by whatever name: B-52 carpet bombing, relentless tactical air strikes on suspected VC/Viet Minh positions (often hamlets full of innocent people). Plus, massive aerial applications of Agent Orange in a preposterous attempt to destroy every non-rice plant in the country so there’d be no place to hide. Seriously! This was Defense Sec’y McNamara’s number-cruncher game plan taken to an extreme level of absurdity. Meanwhile, our infantry units were grinding through one booby-trapped jungle nightmare after another, getting hammered and going nowhere.

The result?  With our brain-fart assistance, Ho Chi Minh and the black pajama people—with their little bags of rice, SAMS and AK-47s—brought the mightiest military power in the world to its knees.  Just like the Afghans did to the Russians less than two decades later. (It’s crazy, but think about this: What if we had made a deal with Ho Chi Minh’s tribe instead of those incorrigible French colonial losers and their South Vietnamese collaborators?) 

Time to wheel and deal our way out

Think also about this: what if we made a deal with the Taliban, like Reagan did in the ’80s? And how about a new deal with the Iranians, like we could have done countless times instead of overthrowing their democratically elected leader (Mossadegh, 1952) and mounting our oil-lackey Shah in his place.  All the radical Imams we’re fighting now came to life as rebels against the Shah and us, his sponsors.  They finally overthrew his regime and have been the big roosters ever since. Hating us ever since.  Face it—we, and our British predecessors, essentially gave birth to present-day radical Islam in Iran. We have done nothing to earn their trust or respect, and done much to terrorize and isolate them. Don’t want to believe it? Lose Fox News and read your history. It always has been and still is about oil. In Iran. In Iraq. In Afghanistan. In America.

In the Islamic mind, the past lives in the present. Muslims remember the events of their entire history, good and bad, as if it all happened last week. It’s a tribal thing. We Americans seem to forget everything that happened before last week. We should know by now that even our super hi-tech military arsenal can’t save us from such an oblivious approach. We have to wake up and start making smart, mutually profitable deals with the main players—especially those we call “enemies.” Come back, Sun Tzu, we need you bad!  

Very important people are MFA (missing from action)

Where are the children of Congresspeople and Pentagon/DOD people?  Fort Lauderdale? They need to be in uniform, camped out with our troops, getting up every day and facing the shrapnel and snipers right in the thick of it. Until the talking heads running this war have a personal stake in it, it will remain a CYA paper game in far away Washington. Until the microcosmic “Tale of Two Captains” becomes national policy, and not just isolated acts of resourcefulness and goodwill, our troops have to carry the DOD’s job on top of their own. Hey, who said world peace was going to be easy?

God bless all you troops, and keep a heads-up out there.   • 

Thank you for your Weekend Mashup suggestions.

A few of the blogs I’ve been introduced to this week include Global Guerrillas, Ink Spots, Sosh-P and Building Peace. When I saw T.X. Hammes mentioned in Building Peace’s July 13 post, I was sold. All four are great blogs. Suggest you visit if they are new to you.

Over at Small Wars Journal (SWJ), the announcement of an $8,000 Writing Competition was just posted:

“Winning entries and select others will be published in future special volumes of Small Wars Journal. For each of the two topics, a $3,000 Grand Prize and two $500 Honorable Mentions will be awarded. Hence $8,000 total purse.”

Check out the web site to learn more about the competition and the topics.

The SWJ editors note:

“We greatly respect the works and insights of the usual suspects from the many DoD-centric writing competitions and anticipate some great and hard-to-beat entries from them. We would really like to see some stiff competition from fresh new voices and experience sets not often heard. Please spread the good word about this competition to the far reaches of the empire of important participants in the vastly broad and complex field of small wars. This is a level playing field, and let’s get all the players on it.”

Another article from David Wood this week, titled “Happy Talk About War Doesn’t Fly With Troops on the Ground.” In it, he asks: 

“Should presidents and their administrations be relentless cheerleaders after they send young Americans into combat? Or should they risk losing public support by passing on the bad news from their commanders?”

Later in the article, David quotes Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson:

 “‘What we’ve said is . . . where we go, we stay; and where we stay, we hold; and where we hold, we build . . .’ Nicholson told reporters this week in a video teleconference from Afghanistan.

 

“‘I mean, I’m not going to sugarcoat it,’ the Marine commander added. ‘The fact of the matter is, we don’t have enough Afghan forces and I’d like more. Right now I’ve got 4,000 Marines in Helmand with about 600 . . . 650 Afghan forces. Imagine if I had 4,000 Marines with 4,000 Afghan forces!’”

I prefer the uncoated truth. You?

In his Washington Post article “A Fight for Ordinary Peace,” Rajiv Chandrasekaran also discusses Brig. Gen. Nicholson’s request for more troops:

“He has been promised more troops, but they will not start rolling in until next year. In the interim, he has asked his superiors for permission to arm young men and train them to serve as a local protection force. It is similar to the Sons of Iraq initiative the Marines created in Anbar that resulted in locals turning against foreign fighters in the group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

 

“But senior commanders have shown no sign of approving the request. They feel Helmand has too many overlapping tribal rivalries. Arming groups of young men could exacerbate tensions and lead some factions to turn to the Taliban for protection.”

Back to the tribes. How do we work with them and encourage them to work together?

Foreign Affairs Magazine ran Eliot Cohen’s “What to Read on Fighting Insurgencies.” While you are checking out Foreign Affairs, also read Andrew Krepinevich’s article “The Pentagon’s Wasting Assets.”

On the blog Ghosts of Alexander, the question was asked: 

“During the Soviet-Afghan War, some prominent Afghan families strategically placed one son in the mujahideen and one son in the communist government (and perhaps sent off one son to get a spiffy professional education). Basically, ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’ applied to your children. It says a lot about self-interest versus ideology.

 

“Who wrote about this? It was a rather small mention in a long article or book. I’m in the US without my books or notes and I’m trying to go off of memory. And it’s not working.

 

“Can anybody help on this one? I’m leaning towards someone who’s been writing for a while like Rubin, Dorronsoro or Roy…”

If you know the answer, post to his blog—or post here. I’d like to know the answer, too.

In a post earlier this week, I pulled a quote from the book In the Graveyard of Empires. Newsweek ran a Q&A with the author, titled The War Is Still Wide Open. Check it out.

On a lighter note, Books for Soldiers is another site I was introduced to, and I was reminded of the great series at the Pritzker Military Library. Watch some of their webcasts—or visit the library the next time you are in Chicago. Thank you for the reminder @CFOXTROT. Was also reminded of Thomas P.M. Barnett’s blog.

Over at Twitter . . . Was introduced to a number of fantastic photographers. There are two in particular that I’d like to point out. Please visit their sites and check out their work:

On Matt Brandon’s (@mattsahib) site The Digital Trekker, you can see his photography from around the world. Check out the picture of the young girl in “The Gujjars” section of the site. It reminds me of Steve Curry’s picture of the young girl from Afghanistan, which ran on the cover of National Geographic—but with less fear in the girl’s eyes this time.

David duChemin (@pixelatedimage) features his work on his site, Pixelated Images. Check out his work for World Vision in particular.

That’s it for this week.

Please continue sending your comments for next weeks Mashup.

Hat tips to “Wisner,” Gordon Daugherty, Andrew Lubin, “da kine,” “Kestrelrising,” Dom Santoleri, Morgan Atwood. I will continue checking out all of your suggestions.