Many know that the U.S. is involved in wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Yemen. However, how many know that four more are being added to the list?

U.S. troops are now involved in the fight against a group called the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The LRA is an insurgent terrorist organization and its leader Joseph Kony is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

LRA has shown the ability to collect insurgents and militant leaders to carry out atrocities in Central Africa and is thought to be more a criminal/terrorist gang seeking plunder, violence and mayhem rather that the stated overthrow of a government.

It has been reported that many of the U.S. troops are stationed in Uganda while others are based in Obo, Central African Republic; Dungu, Congo; and in Nzara, South Sudan. Each of these locations has established bases where troops from partner countries have been involved.

Is this bad? Probably not but the American people, and particularly Congress, needs to keep an eye on the extent of U. S. involvement in additional foreign wars where American lives and treasure are again being employed.

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During the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War the basic doctrine was one of securing the people and “winning the hearts and minds of the people.” After the U.S. left Vietnam a conventional war with North Vietnam, with no U.S. support to the South Vietnamese, was lost by South Vietnam.

Even today there are many political pundits, uneducated news journalist and opportunistic politicians who claim we lost the Vietnam War and counterinsurgency (COIN) will not work anywhere.

It is not a question of a doctrine and philosophy of COIN working or not working but it is a question of how you apply COIN.

For some time the U.S. Army deliberately refused to recognize irregular warfare and COIN because they fell into the trap of thinking we lost in Vietnam and their COIN doctrine was flawed. To make matters worse the Army led an effort to cleanse the U.S. thinking and quantify COIN and they undertook rewriting history with the Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency.

Unfortunately, the academics who wrote the manual, both in uniform and from academia, misunderstood the foundation of classic COIN doctrine and thus distorted the realistic view of COIN and limited the U.S. ability to defeat the insurgencies in Afghanistan and somewhat in Iraq. The main authors of the Field Manual 3-24 took a select set of historical anti-colonial COIN engagements and said their doctrine would work in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It has not and will not.

There is a unique issue in Afghanistan and Iraq and that is religion which has greatly distorted what can be learned of what has motivated religious fanatics and how to bring on and end state. Field Manual 3-24 case studies is very weak on religiously motivated struggles with an aim of a worldwide Islamic movement and which have no relationship to the earlier ideas of anti-colonialism, nationalism, and self-determination.

A single all encompassing doctrine of COIN is not possible in the Islamic world. We were facing a completely new kind of environment with a fundamentalist religious paradigm in Afghanistan and a secular dictatorship in Iraq. One model did not fit all.

Traditional data indicates that to win an insurgency it takes 12 to 15 years to defeat the insurgents. Most insurgencies can win in 5 to 7 years if their strategy and tactics are right.

Counterinsurgency is about breaking the normative system that prevailed in a given area and replacing it with something better. Democracy is not the answer in Afghanistan or Iraq but something that mirrors their traditional religious, political and economic systems acceptable by the people.

The U.S. must accept that what they are trying to do in the Middle East and Southwest Asia is not comparable to the post-colonial period and adjust to meet the new paradigm.

We are not there yet.

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Whenever you see the name of an Al Qaeda operative that ends in al Libi, such as:  Abu Yahya al Libi, Abu Faraj al Libi, or Abu Laith al Libi, they are all tribes from Libya.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has recently sided with the popular uprising in Libya, and had threatened the West if it intervenes. Whatever decisions the tribal chiefs in Libya took will be followed by his tribesmen. Several powerful tribes have shown support for the rebellion. There are about 140 tribes in Libya.

The rebellion is all but over and the forces loyal to Qaddafi seem to have won.

Qaddafi always proclaimed that he was a bedouin and came for the tribes – not the urban centers.

Will be interesting to see what happens with the tribes after the revolt is crushed. Libya will never be the same and neither will Qaddafi and the Libyan tribes.

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A rebel group in India’s northeast said Saturday it will begin “unconditional” peace talks with New Delhi this week in a bid to end a violent 31-year insurgency.

It has been reported by a Rand study that the average lifespan of an insurgency is 10 years.

The United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), one of the biggest rebel armies in the tea and oil-rich region of Assam, India, has been fighting for an independent homeland for ethnic Assamese since 1979.

At least 10,000 people, mostly civilians, have died in Assam in fighting between government forces and the various rebel groups.

Rand reports that insurgencies are suited to hierarchical organizations and rural terrain, and a sanctuary are vital to insurgents.

Anyone think of Afghanistan?

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The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force has no doubt made some progress militarily in Afghanistan, but the Taliban are still strong in the sanctuaries in Pakistan. The war will not turn with U.S. intermittent attacks on militants in Pakistan.

There is a need to be examining how the Taliban view the American-led counterinsurgency-focused strategy and how they are working in Pakistan.

First and foremost is the announcement that the U.S. will start withdrawal in July 2011. The Afghan Taliban must view the U.S. as an interloper who has proven time and time again they will never be in a fight for the long haul.

It started with Vietnam where the U.S. abandoned a long time ally and left over 50, 000 U.S. dead with nothing to show for it.

Then there is Lebanon, Somalia and the 1^st Gulf War.

Yes, the 1^st Gulf War where we left Saddam Hussein in power to rape, murder and pillage Shi’ite villages after the U.S. had encouraged them to revolt. And, many in the U.S. wonder why the Shi’ites do not see the U.S. as liberators. The only guarantor of Shi’ite independence and freedom is Iran.

Then there were the Kurds where someone finally noticed that Saddam was using poison gas on the Kurds.

What – a weapon of mass destruction? What WMDs? The New York TIMES and many other U.S. news media said there were no WMD in Iraq even with scenes of gassed men, women and children in the Kurdish region of Iraq.

Finally, there is a need to be looking at how the United States views the Afghan-Pakistani relationship and what they will seek to get out of it in the year ahead.

Does anyone think they are covering their bets?

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The Yemeni government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh has ordered 3,000 new troops, including members of U.S.-trained counterterrorism units, to support offensives against the Al Qaeda affiliate, known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), suspected in last week’s foiled package-bomb plot, according to a Yemeni security official.

The Yemeni military campaign, nearly a year old, has garnered few victories against AQAP. Tribal animosities inflamed by the U.S. backed counterterrorism campaign have pulled much-needed local tribal allies away from the government. This blurring of allegiances is also undermining the already weak hold Mr. Saleh has over his country.

The Wall Street Journal reported on 2 November: “We always told the Americans that it’s hard to gauge loyalty among the tribes,” said an adviser to Mr. Saleh. “In Yemen, the tribe comes first, and once tribal blood starts to spill, the bloodshed is hard to stop.”

This has been the same in Iraq and Afghanistan but was slow, if yet, to be learned by U.S. military and political leaders.

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President Karzai continues to dislike the U.S. corruption investigations, drone strikes and Special Forces operations. He didn’t like our air strikes, artillery or night raids.

His overtures to the Taliban sound like he wants a deal with them. Can you make deals with the enemy? Thought we learned in Vietnam what happens when we agree to enemy terms.

Counterinsurgency doctrine dictates that wars are won and lost by taking away the insurgent base with the people and building credible government. It is not working in Afghanistan.

Karzai seems to care more about his relatives and cronies in Kabul then the people on the villages.

You have to ask is any level of corruption tolerable? Is Karzai proposals with the Taliban against all our efforts? Is U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine possible with Karzai?

It is getting harder to understand if Karzai is working with us or against us. Is he becoming a Taliban ally?

President Karzai (rhymes with “their guy”) is the wrong man, at the wrong time and at the wrong place.

Karzai has to go or the U.S. will surely lose all.

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Wikipedia reports Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (“Movement of Warrior Youth”), more commonly known as al-Shabaab (“The Youth” or “The Lads”) is an Islamist insurgency group in the ongoing war in Somalia. As of summer 2010 the group is said to control most of the southern and central parts of Somalia, including “a large swath” of the capital, Mogadishu, where it is said to have imposed its own “harsh” form of Sharia law. Estimates of al-Shabaab’s strength, as of December 2008, vary between 3,000 to 7,000. Some moderate Somali paramilitary groups, or Sufis such as Ahlu Sunna Waljama’a are opposed to this radical Wahabi movement.

Recently Al Shabaab launched a major assault on Mogadishu but does not appear to have taken any new territory in the city, as their forces were repelled by both the government-allied Islamist militia Ahlu Sunnah Waljamaah (ASWJ), as well as a counterattack by African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) peacekeepers. However, the offensive indicates an increase in the scope of attacks by the jihadist Al Shabaab in the Somali capital.

According to stratfor.com fighting appears to have quieted down as of now, but is likely to resume. While an AMISOM spokesman denied Aug. 24 the reports that reinforcements had begun to arrive, he also vowed that they were still on their way, and that AMISOM would “tell the world” when they got there. Al Shabaab is likely to respond by demonstrating its strength in targeting multiple areas of Mogadishu. It also means that plans to relocate Somali parliamentarians and United Nations offices from Nairobi to Mogadishu will likely be set back.

The struggle for Somalia continues

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The war in Afghanistan is not being fought on the battlefield alone. If Iraq is to emerge as a strong and independent nation (hate the word decomracy) , the campaign for Afghanistan’s economy must stand on equal footing with the counterinsurgency campaign – they are one and the same.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the U. N. John Bolton recently argued that religious fanatics, and their grievances, do not arise from poverty or deprivation. He postulated that many Taliban fighters join the insurgency simply to earn a living.

The war goes on and we are not seeing how the economic campaign is working.

The U.S. can continue its drone attacks on suspected Taliban hideouts and Al Qaeda operatives in the remote regions on the Afghan border, but more and more civilian casualties resulting from these attacks bring on the hatred by ordinary people to the extent that 60 per cent of them see the US as an enemy.

So, the war goes on but what are we doing to help the people earn a living?

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One thing that would do more to end the war than anything else – seal the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Of course this is easier said than done.

Insurgent recruiting is increasing in parts of the east of Afghanistan, with most new recruits coming from the Arabs, Pakistanis, Chechens and Tajiks.

The Pakistan military were battling Pakistani Taliban insurgents, mostly from Pakistan’s Bajaur
and Mohmand tribal areas on the frontier. Unfortunately, the major flooding in central Pakistan has interrupted this campaign.

It has announced by NATO that the Taliban were helping Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) members slip into
Afghanistan through the eastern province of Nangarhar. LeT is infamous for their attack on Mumbai, India.

Until they slow infiltration of new recruits and supplies for the Afghan Taliban, there will be no successful conclusion to the war in Afghanistan.

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