AfPak: Two continuing themes/Update: special forces

NY Times stories:

1) Civilian casualties

U.S. Halted Some Afghan Raids Over Concern on Civilian Deaths

The commander of a secretive branch of America’s Special Operations forces last month ordered a halt to most commando missions in Afghanistan, reflecting a growing concern that civilian deaths caused by American firepower are jeopardizing broader goals there.

The halt, which lasted about two weeks, came after a series of nighttime raids by Special Operations troops in recent months killed women and children, and after months of mounting outrage in Afghanistan about civilians killed in air and ground strikes. The order covered all commando missions except those against the highest-ranking leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, military officials said.

American commanders in Afghanistan rely on the commando units to carry out some of the most delicate operations against militant leaders, and the missions of the Army’s Delta Force and classified Navy Seals units are never publicly acknowledged. But the units sometimes carry out dozens of operations each week, so any decision to halt their missions is a sign of just how worried military officials are that the fallout from civilian casualties is putting in peril the overall American mission in Afghanistan, including an effort to drain the Taliban of popular support.

A United Nations report released last month specifically blamed clandestine missions by commando units for contributing to a surge in civilian deaths in Afghanistan in 2008. The report concluded that the number of civilian casualties rose nearly 40 percent compared with 2007, although it found that suicide bombings and other Taliban attacks were the primary cause.

Military officials said the halt was ordered in part to allow American commanders time to impose new safeguards intended to reduce the risk of civilian deaths. They said it was also intended to help the military release information about civilian casualties more quickly, to pre-empt what some said have been exaggerated accounts by Afghan officials...

2) Insurgents in Pakistan:

Pakistan Regains Control of Remote Area, for Now
INAYAT KALAY, Pakistan — After a six-month campaign, the Pakistani military is claiming victory over the Taliban in Bajaur, a northern sliver of the tribal areas, saying the militants have suffered heavy losses and have been pushed over the border into Afghanistan.



As evidence, the military this month showed off the once-busy, mile-long marketplace here, captured from the militants and pulverized to bits of concrete and mounds of dust. A tank was still parked in the remains of a shop.

“The resistance has been broken down. We control the roads,” said Maj. Gen. Tariq Khan, the inspector general of the Frontier Corps, the paramilitary force responsible for security in the tribal regions. “They have lost.”

Already, Pakistani officials are hailing Bajaur as a landmark turn in the battle against Islamic militants and are trying to persuade the 300,000 people displaced by the fighting here to return, aided by a $19 million program financed by the United States.

But beyond the bounds of a tightly guarded tour of Bajaur for reporters, the larger battle against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, whose fighters are deeply entrenched across northwestern Pakistan, seems unsettled.

Residents and Western military experts, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the political situation, said it was likely that rather than being finally uprooted from this slice of Bajaur and a nearby stronghold in Loe Sam, the bulk of the Taliban forces had retreated to mountain enclaves, waiting to return, as they have so often, when the military eases off.

At the same time, a recent truce between the Pakistani government and Taliban forces who have seized the Swat Valley, an area just east of here, has called into question the military’s ability and the government’s willingness to take on the militants with finality...

Update: A former CIA officers highights the value of the "small footprint" special forces can offer:

In Afghanistan, Less Can Be More

AS President Obama moves to ramp up the United States’ presence in Afghanistan, he might benefit from the lessons learned by one of the C.I.A.’s legends of covert operations, Bill Lair. Mr. Lair ran the C.I.A.’s covert action in the 1960s in Laos, which at its height included 30,000 Hmong tribesmen battling Communist insurgents.

I met Bill Lair when he came to the C.I.A.’s training center in Virginia in 2000 to speak at the graduation ceremony for my class of trainees. His agency career had started in the 1950s in Thailand, where he trained an elite force called the Police Aerial Reinforcement Unit. By the early ’60s, Mr. Lair was in neighboring Laos, trying to build an anti-Communist resistance. Corruption was endemic, poppy cultivation was widespread and the poorly educated Hmong tribesmen of northern Laos were barely out of the Stone Age. Yet Mr. Lair and his unit quickly taught the Hmong to resist the Communist tide using guerrilla tactics suited to their terrain and temperament.

By 1966, his C.I.A. bosses looked to tap into this momentum and started throwing more men and money at Mr. Lair — personnel and funds he felt only bloated the operation...

Flash forward 40 years. United States forces scramble to train Afghan Army and police units to take on the Taliban forces crossing the border from Pakistan. Many of these raw Afghan recruits come from poorly educated Pashtun tribes. Corruption is endemic. Drug trafficking is flourishing. Complaints that indiscriminate use of American airpower is killing civilians are routine.

As they say, déjà vu all over again.

The counterinsurgency lessons that Bill Lair tried to impart to us young spies are relevant today: Keep your footprint small. Don’t use trainers who don’t know the language or culture. Don’t let the locals become dependant on American airpower. Train them in tactics suited to their circumstances. Don’t ever let the locals think mighty America will fight their battles or solve all their problems for them; focus on getting them ready to fix their own problems. Keep the folks in Washington out of the way of the people doing the work in the field.

This is why President Obama’s plans to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan should be seen as a mixed blessing. In fact, it may be equally significant that the Pentagon has announced it is sending 900 new special operations people to Afghanistan over the spring and summer [emphasis added], including Green Berets, Navy Seals and Marine special operations forces. Ideally, these troops will be well trained in Afghan languages and culture, and prepared to fight in the dry, mountainous terrain the Taliban occupy.

The goal, one hopes, is that these forces will work alongside and train the fledgling Afghan Army commando battalions. Since early 2007, some 3,600 Afghan Army troops have been put through Army Ranger-type training at a former Taliban base six miles south of Kabul. With American help, they have proved adept at such tasks as capturing Taliban leaders, rescuing hostages and destroying drug-smuggling rings.

This is not a war we can win ourselves; the Afghans are going to have to win it by fighting to retake their own country from both Taliban thugs and corrupt government officials. While additional American troops may be an unavoidable necessity to provide security in the short and medium term, we should never forget that doing too much for a weak ally can be just as bad as doing too little.

Arthur Keller is a former C.I.A. case officer in Pakistan.

The training mentioned above is under Combined Joint Task Force Phoenix (no website that I can find), part of the US-led Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan (not part of ISAF). CSTC-A now says this about CJTF Phoenix:

...Under CSTC-A’s operational control is Task Force Phoenix, with military strength of more than 6,000, responsible for training, mentoring and advising the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police.

About a year ago, when CJTF Phoenix had its own website, it said this (see Update here):

...
CJTF Phoenix mentors ANA and ANP to conduct sustained, independent Counter Insurgency operations in Afghanistan to assist the ANA to defeat terrorism within its borders.

The CF participates in CSTC-A--more from the CEFCOM website [links in original]:

Operation ARCHER

Since July 2005, Canada’s participation in Operation ENDURING FREEDOM in Afghanistan has been conducted under Operation ARCHER.

The primary activity under Operation ARCHER is the deployment of about 12 senior CF members in Kabul with the Combined Security Transition Command – Afghanistan (CSTC-A), a U.S.-led multinational organization that provides mentors and trainers to help Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Interior organize, train, equip, employ and support the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police.

The military nature and coalition structure of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM makes it adaptable to a wide range of multinational projects, such as the CSTC-A, designed to help the Afghan authorities build the components of a new security infrastructure: operational forces and their sustaining institutions, and the general staff and ministries to direct these organizations. These projects are part of the long-term international effort to rebuild Afghanistan’s infrastructure, government and national institutions, including the army and police, that began with the fall of the Taliban in December 2001.