Afstan: US Gen. (ret'd) Jones vs Adm. Mullen? Various operations

The start of a post yesterday:

From the president's national security adviser:

Key in Afghanistan: Economy, Not Military

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan -- National security adviser James L. Jones told U.S. military commanders here last week that the Obama administration wants to hold troop levels here flat for now, and focus instead on carrying out the previously approved strategy of increased economic development, improved governance and participation by the Afghan military and civilians in the conflict [more here].

The message seems designed to cap expectations that more troops might be coming, though the administration has not ruled out additional deployments in the future...

Now today:

No Limit in Place for Pending Request on Troops in Afghanistan


The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff discusses troop levels and a new counterinsurgency strategy.

The nation's top military officer said yesterday that no limits have been placed on the number or types of troops the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan can request as he seeks to carry out a counterinsurgency strategy there.

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal is conducting a 60-day assessment of the Afghanistan campaign and has been advised to tell Mullen, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and President Obama, "Here's what I need."

"There are no preconditions associated with that," Mullen said. "He's . . . been told, 'In this assessment, you come back and ask for what you need.' There are certainly no intended limits with respect to that kind of request."

McChrystal's predecessor, Gen. David D. McKiernan, had an unmet request for an additional 10,000 U.S. troops to deploy next year. But McChrystal is not bound by that or any prior assessment, Mullen said. "General McChrystal gets to take a fresh view and a fresh look, and he will do that."

Mullen made the remarks on the same day The Washington Post reported that national security adviser James L. Jones had recently told U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan that the Obama administration seeks to hold troop levels steady and shift the focus to the country's economic development and governance. Mullen was not asked directly about the article, but his statements suggest that the military seeks to defend McChrystal's latitude to make the case for more troops if he sees the need. Mullen voiced a high level of confidence in the ability of McChrystal, who until recently worked for Mullen as the director of the Pentagon's Joint Staff, to carry out the new strategy.

Mullen said that he, Gates and McChrystal think that military force alone cannot win the war in Afghanistan and that if the foreign troop contingent in the country grows too big, it could create the impression that it is an occupation force. However, Mullen emphasized that he does not know where that threshold lies and that the level of forces in Afghanistan has long been too low to secure the population -- the main thrust of the counterinsurgency campaign.

"We have been under-resourced in Afghanistan almost from the beginning, certainly for the last several years," Mullen said. There are currently 57,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and 34,000 non-U.S. allied troops. An increase of 21,000 U.S. troops ordered by President Obama is underway and will raise the overall total of American troops there to 68,000 this year...

The shortage of troops has been particularly acute in southern Afghanistan [emphasis added], where thousands of Marines launched a major operation today in the restive province of Helmand.

"I expect it to be a pretty tough fight in Helmand this year. . . . We haven't had significant numbers of forces there in the past, but on the upside of that, we have enough forces now to hold, not just to win, the fight," Mullen said. Taliban insurgents had effectively created a stalemate with U.S., other NATO and Afghan forces in Helmand and other parts of the south, commanders have said in recent months.

Mullen said he is "extremely concerned" about the paucity of Afghan National Army and Afghan police forces in the south and elsewhere and about the long-standing deficit in the number of foreign military trainers needed to expand their ranks [emphasis added--the US itself will soon have three brigades dedicated to training].

The US Marine operation:

Marines Deploy on Major Mission
Thousands Fan Out in Afghanistan's South in Crucial Test for Revised U.S. Strategy

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan, July 2 -- Thousands of U.S. Marines descended upon the volatile Helmand River valley in helicopters and armored convoys early Thursday, mounting an operation that represents the first large-scale test of the U.S. military's new counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan [photo gallery here].

The operation will involve about 4,000 troops from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which was dispatched to Afghanistan this year by President Obama to combat a growing Taliban insurgency in Helmand and other southern provinces. The Marines, along with an Army brigade that is scheduled to arrive later this summer [at Kandahar, see Predate here], plan to push into pockets of the country where NATO forces have not had a presence. In many of those areas, the Taliban has evicted local police and government officials and taken power.

Once Marine units arrive in their designated towns and villages, they have been instructed to build and live in small outposts among the local population. The brigade's commander, Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, said his Marines will focus their efforts on protecting civilians from the Taliban and on restoring Afghan government services, instead of mounting a series of hunt-and-kill missions against the insurgents [emphasis added].

"We're doing this very differently," Nicholson said to his senior officers a few hours before the mission began. "We're going to be with the people. We're not going to drive to work. We're going to walk to work."

Similar approaches have been tried in the eastern part of the country [see below], but none has had the scope of the mission in Helmand, a vast province that is largely an arid moonscape save for a band of fertile land that lines the Helmand River. Poppies grown in that territory produce half the world's supply of opium and provide the Taliban with a valuable source of income...

...The British army, which had been responsible for all of Helmand since 2005 under NATO's Afghan stabilization effort, lacked the resources to maintain a permanent presence in most parts of the province.

"A key to establishing security is getting the local population to understand that we're going to be staying here to help them -- that we're not driving in and driving out," said Col. Eric Mellenger, the brigade's operations officer [Canadians are trying to do something similar, though on a more limited scale].

With the arrival of the Marines, British forces have redeployed around the capital of Helmand, Lashkar Gah [as the CF are now focussing on the populated areas around Kandahar, see here and here], where they are conducting a large anti-Taliban operation designed to complement the Marine mission [see end of this post]. Two British soldiers were reported killed in fighting in the province Wednesday.

The Marines have also been vexed by a lack of Afghan security forces and a near-total absence of additional U.S. civilian reconstruction personnel. Nicholson had hoped that his brigade, which has about 11,000 Marines and sailors, would be able to conduct operations with a similar number of Afghan soldiers. But thus far, the Marines have been allotted only about 500 Afghan soldiers, which he deems "a critical vulnerability [emphasis added]."

"They see things intuitively that we don't see," he said. "It's their country, and they know it better than we do."

Despite commitments from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development that they would send additional personnel to help the new forces in southern Afghanistan with reconstruction and governance development, State has added only two officers in Helmand since the Marines arrived. State has promised to have a dozen more diplomats and reconstruction experts working with the Marines, but only by the end of the summer [see 2) here for the US "civilian surge"].

To compensate in the interim, the Marines are deploying what officers here say is the largest-ever military civilian-affairs contingent attached to a combat brigade -- about 50 Marines, mostly reservists, with experience in local government, business management and law enforcement. Instead of flooding the area of operations with cash, as some units did in Iraq, the Marine civil affairs commander, Lt. Col. Curtis Lee, said he intends to focus his resources on improving local government...

This is what we're doing, from the end of a March post:

...the Canadian government has an unprecedented military/civilian joint deployment, with civilians now integrated with much of military headquarters, as well as with the Canadian PRT (more here and here). There will soon be over 100 Canadian government civilians in the country...

As for US forces in RC East:

On the Afghanistan frontier, change may be at hand
A U.S. troop buildup and Pakistan's military offensive are beginning to put a squeeze on Taliban insurgents.

Forward Operating Base Salerno, Afghanistan -- In the enveloping darkness of a starless summer night, the sizzle-thump of incoming Taliban rockets is swiftly answered by the percussive boom of outgoing U.S. artillery. But the American troops manning this base in eastern Afghanistan know that their elusive nighttime foe can slip away to sanctuary in Pakistan, just 20 miles away.

The militants firing rockets at this installation, informally known as Camp Salerno, in all likelihood traveled here from Pakistan's tribal areas, home turf of several major Taliban commanders and their militias. The flow of fighters and arms into Afghanistan from Pakistan -- and the tribal belt's use as a fighter haven -- has long been a key concern of U.S. and other Western officials.

[Maps:

]

During a visit to the region last week, U.S. national security advisor James L. Jones Jr. urged Pakistan to press ahead with a long-delayed army offensive against Taliban fighters who had become entrenched in the country's northwest.

So far, though, the Pakistani military campaign has been centered on the Swat Valley, far from the border zone, and the tribal areas remain a wellspring of insurgent activity: suicide attacks, roadside explosive devices, vehicle bombs.

The frontier itself remains a magnet for violence; this week, a suicide attacker struck a crossing at Torkham, a major gateway into Afghanistan, killing a policeman, wounding several civilians and setting the checkpoint ablaze.

American commanders, however, believe a greater concentration of U.S. and Afghan troops in the border region is beginning to change the equation. The "battle space" overseen from Camp Salerno -- the Afghan provinces of Khowst, Paktia and Paktika -- now contains more U.S. forces than at any point during the nearly 8-year-old war. A buildup ordered by the Obama administration will bring the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to a record 68,000 by year's end.

The mandate to give chase to the insurgents, at least using Western ground troops, stops at the rugged, mountainous border. Just across from Khowst and Paktika lie two of the most insurgent-plagued of Pakistan's tribal areas, North and South Waziristan.

Pakistani army commanders, after years of looking the other way while militants had free rein in the tribal areas, are in the early stages of what is billed as a major assault on South Waziristan, the redoubt of the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mahsud.

But:

Pakistan’s assault on the country’s biggest Taliban stronghold may end in disappointment for the Obama administration, which has pushed the army to escalate the fight and restore a measure of government control in the region. U.S. officials “worry Pakistan may be biting off too much” by attacking Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud in the mountains of South Waziristan before defeating militants in the less-remote Swat Valley...

Finally, back at Kandahar:

Canadian commander on hand for foiled Taliban ambush

Brig.-Gen. Jonathan Vance spent most of Canada Day visiting Canadian bases in southern Afghanistan, wishing soldiers the best — and helping stop a Taliban ambush in the process.

Returning after visiting Canadian soldiers in Zhari district, the military vehicles carrying Canada’s top soldier in Afghanistan came upon an ambush of a truck convoy being protected by a private security company.

“There was a great number of trucks in there, some carrying military equipment,” Vance said Wednesday. “We heard the ambush start, we moved up to investigate, we saw where the ambush was emanating from, so we tried to stop it.

“And we did.”

No Canadians were hurt. But as is practice for the Canadian Forces, Vance would not give an estimate of enemy casualties, except to confirm that some insurgents died in the skirmish.

Once the danger was eliminated, Vance and his crew, a well-armed and fight-ready unit, simply moved on to the next forward operating base to continue spreading Canadian cheer.

It was a subdued celebration outside the wire. The officials festivities to mark Canada Day in Afghanistan are limited typically to the vast Kandahar Airfield where the Canadians are headquartered and where soldiers marked the occasion with ball hockey and volleyball tournaments, tug-of-war, cake, barbecue and music.

At the more Spartan-forward operating bases, deep in hostile territory, the atmosphere is all business. Still, troops found time to mark Canada Day in the course of the daily round of patrols.

“It’s Canada Day and it’s kind of rough when you are far from home on holidays,” said Calgary native Cpl. Tom Hume, 25, sitting atop a Leopard 2 tank moments before it rumbled out on patrol from one base in southern Afghanistan. “So you have to do something to celebrate.”

Hume and other tank-crew members decorated their huge machines with little touches of Canadiana, proudly taping Canadian flags to the armour.

“It’s Canada Day and we’re proud to be Canadian so we want to prove it to everybody,” said Trooper Luc Ringuette, 21, from Edmundston, N.B., who affixed Canuck flags to his vehicle next to a miniature statue of Jesus. “It reminds us of home.”..

Update: Paks may be helping the Marine op (via CougarDaddy):

...
Pakistan's army said it had moved troops from elsewhere on its side of the Afghan border to the stretch opposite Helmand to try to stop any militants from fleeing the offensive. It gave no more details, but U.S. and Pakistani officials have expressed concern that stepped-up operations in southern Afghanistan could push the insurgents across the border...