Afstan: US General McChrystal's command team/Grappling with NATO

It seems the new US commander's people may be mixed up between US Forces - Afghanistan [more here] and ISAF. Note the general beefing up of senior US personnel, military and diplomatic, and the emphasis on communications:

U.S. Commander in Afghanistan Is Given More Leeway

The new American commander in Afghanistan has been given carte blanche to handpick a dream team of subordinates, including many Special Operations veterans, as he moves to carry out an ambitious new strategy that envisions stepped-up attacks on Taliban fighters and narcotics networks.

The extraordinary leeway granted the commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, underscores a view within the administration that the war in Afghanistan has for too long been given low priority and needs to be the focus of a sustained, high-level effort.

General McChrystal is assembling a corps of 400 officers and soldiers who will rotate between the United States and Afghanistan for a minimum of three years [more here, around middle]. That kind of commitment to one theater of combat is unknown in the military today outside Special Operations, but reflects an approach being imported by General McChrystal, who spent five years in charge of secret commando teams in Iraq and Afghanistan [see Update here].

With his promotion approved by the Senate late on Wednesday, General McChrystal and senior members of his command team were scheduled to fly from Washington within hours of the vote, stopping in two European capitals to confer with allies before landing in Kabul, the Afghan capital...

For the first time, the American commander in Afghanistan will have a three-star deputy. Picked for the job of running day-to-day combat operations was Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez [not yet formally with an ISAF hat], who has commanded troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Generals McChrystal and Rodriguez have been colleagues and friends for more than 30 years, beginning when both were Ranger company commanders as young captains.

General McChrystal also has picked the senior intelligence adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, to join him in Kabul as director of intelligence there. In Washington, Brig. Gen. Scott Miller, a longtime Special Operations officer now assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff but who had served previously under General McChrystal, is now organizing a new Pakistan-Afghanistan Coordination Cell [emphasis added]...

Just how this new team will grapple with the increasingly violent Taliban militancy in Afghanistan is unclear, although General McChrystal has said he will focus on classic counterinsurgency techniques, in particular protecting the population [I also wonder how they'll grapple with their ISAF partners--see end of post].

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has asked General McChrystal to report back within 60 days of taking command with an assessment of the mission and plans for carrying out President Obama’s new strategy...

At the Pentagon, under General McChrystal’s direction, a large area of the Defense Department’s underground, round-the-clock emergency operations facility — called the National Military Command Center — has already been shifted to the Afghan war effort [emphasis added].

The makeover in the American military command is not the only major set of personnel changes in Afghanistan.

The Obama administration has surrounded the new United States ambassador to Kabul, Karl W. Eikenberry, a recently retired three-star Army general, with three former ambassadors to bolster diplomatic efforts in the country.

Francis J. Ricciardone Jr., a former ambassador to Egypt and the Philippines, has been tapped as General Eikenberry’s deputy. Earl Anthony Wayne, a former ambassador to Argentina, is heading up economic development initiatives in the embassy. Joseph A. Mussomeli, the former ambassador to Cambodia, will be an assistant ambassador in Kabul.

As director of intelligence on the Joint Staff, General Flynn holds a position, called the J-2, that has often been a springboard to a senior executive position across the alphabet soup of American intelligence agencies. But General Flynn, who was General McChrystal’s intelligence boss at the Joint Special Operations Command, has chosen to return to the combat zone.

In a sign of the importance being given to explaining the new strategy to Afghans, across the region and the world, General McChrystal will also be taking the first flag officer to serve as chief of public affairs and communications for the military in Afghanistan [emphasis added].

Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, who has served as director of communications and spokesman in Iraq during the troop increase under Gen. David H. Petraeus, had been scheduled to retire this summer. But officials said he received a personal request from Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to serve in the same capacity for General McChrystal [in USFOR-A? there's already a Canadian doing the job at ISAF HQ, scheduled to be replaced another CF officer].

In fact the "Coordination Cell" will supply the personnel for Afstan:

The Pentagon is setting up a unit of about 400 officers and senior enlisted personnel devoted to Afghanistan, continuing a broad revamp of how it handles the war there.

The Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell is the creation of Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the Obama administration's nominee to run the Afghan war. Gen. McChrystal says he wants military personnel to accumulate expertise about the war by doing repeated deployments to Afghanistan and continuing to work on the conflict when back in the U.S...

Personnel in the new unit will rotate between the U.S. and repeated Afghan deployments to the American-led headquarters in Kabul [USFOR-A, ISAF, both?], the U.S. regional command in eastern Afghanistan [it's officially ISAF RC East], and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led command in the southern part of the country, according to senior military officials.

The Pentagon is working to restructure the U.S.-led war effort...

The command structure is still rather, er, confusing. As for grappling with partners:

Pentagon chief reassures allies over Afghanistan

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Thursday said he was out to reassure NATO allies over concerns about a possible "Americanization" of the war effort in Afghanistan.

In talks with his alliance counterparts in the Netherlands, Gates stressed that a proposed reorganization of the command in Afghanistan would be carried out in full cooperation with NATO members with prominent leadership posts given to non-US officers.

"I can't tell for sure but I think folks were reassured by this and it addressed some of their concerns about so-called Americanization," he told reporters on his plane en route to Brussels from Maastricht.

"I had the sense that people were quite comfortable with the answers that I gave."

Some European officials had voiced worries that the doubling of the US force to 68,000 troops by the end of the year and a restructuring of the military command in Afghanistan could lead to US dominance and marginalize the role of other members of the NATO-led coalition...

Gates said there now appeared to be agreement among the allies that the new top NATO commander in Afghanistan, US Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal, should be freed up to focus on overall strategy while a separate "intermediate headquarters" would be set up to oversee daily combat operations.

The new arrangement would mean the Afghan command would remain "very much a NATO operation," he said.

"We want allied commanders in various positions in that headquarters and as many allied staff as we can get to help man it," he said.

The existing command structure was problematic as it placed too many burdens on the top commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), he said.

"The problem that we face that we needed to address was that the commander of ISAF under the current arrangement has far too wide an array of responsibilities to be able to guide the tactical battle on a day-to-day basis across the country," he said.

While the new commander, McChrystal, and his British deputy [see ISAF "Who's Who"] would handle "broader strategy," a separate headquarters under them would "have its own commander who would focus really just on the tactical situation, run the day-to-day battle," Gates said.

The secondary "intermediate headquarters" would be led by another US officer, Lieutenant General David Rodriguez [emphasis added], nominated by President Barack Obama to serve as McChrystal's deputy.

The plan was similar to the structure employed in Iraq by US forces, he said [as suggested in my Update thought from early May]...

Update: More on communications:

Afghan infowar: US fights back/YouTube and video

Upperdate note: None of my posts about the Americanization of things in Afstan reflects the typical querulous and resentful Canadian attitude towards the US. The Americans are simply trying to get the job done. Good on them. I'm just trying to figure out what actually is going on with the international military effort--something about which the Canadian media do a poor job in informing our public.