Graveyard of Emprires? Not So Much

Afghanistan has the nickname "Graveyard of Empires" because of some silly notion that no conquering state can seem to control the place. However, if you actually look closely at history other than the British getting trounced a couple of times and the Soviet Union collapsing a few short years after leaving the country, Afghanistan has actually been the "highway of conquest" for many civilizations who were quite capable of conquering and controlling the region now known as Afghanistan, at least until 1842 or so.

Darius I and his Persians controlled the region until the upstart Alexander showed up and took it. Alexander's successors then held Afghanistan for 200 years. There was some back and forth control for awhile between various Indo-Greek nations until the Sassanids/Persians claimed the territory. Those pesky Mongols eventually showed up and had very little to no trouble until Tamerlane arrived. The Timur Empire would eventually move its capital from Samarkand to Herat. Doesn't exactly appear that Afghanistan is the graveyard for any empire.

But what about those Brits? They never actually wanted to absorb Afghanistan into the Empire. Afghanistan was a buffer state between British India and Imperial Russia. London only sent troops into Afghanistan in order to ensure the king in Kabul remained "pro-England" and did not become "pro-Russia". Yeah, I'm simplifying things a bit.

The Soviet Union? They were probably winning against the Mujahideen in Afghanistan up until 1984 or so when the US decided to arm the insurgents with Stinger missiles. Did Russia try and fail in Afghanistan? Yes, of course. But there were numerous factors at play.

Which brings me to now. I just completed reading Ahmed Rashid's Taliban (add that to the long list of books I should have read a long time ago) which describes the Taliban's rise and impact in Afghanistan. It's pretty obvious that the West, and specifically the US, bungled Afghanistan after the Soviets left, mostly because the West chose to ignore Afghanistan and let Pakistan handle things. It continued to be ignored even after 9/11 and the US invasion, mostly because the US focused its attention on Iraq. The challenges ISAF is facing here in Afghanistan can be traced back to the complete lack of security forces and troops from 2002 until about 2008/2009 which allowed for the Taliban to regroup and re-arm. Keeping our head in the sand about Pakistan didn't help either. Don't even get me started on Pakistan.

All of this got me thinking last night, which in itself is always dangerous and makes my head hurt. One question popped into my brain that I will attempt to tackle in my next post and kind of goes against my entire thought process above...

Is Afghanistan the graveyard of NATO?

Damnit Special Forces, Help A Brother Out

This should be easy, apparently it is not

The past week or so has been full of ups and downs. Here's a general run down of how things are going from the perspective of my little corner of the universe:

- LA Kings win. Yaaaaaah!

- I get sick. Booooo (It's either malaria or a bad head cold, I can't tell...)

- I got promoted! Double yaaaaaaaaah!

- Special Forces won't action (kill) the target I want them to. Booo

- Special Forces will action my target because I got someone to ask nice like. Yeeaaahh!!!

- Kings win their playoff series! HEAD EXPLODE YEEAAAAAAAH!!!

- Special Forces giving excuses for not actioning target. WTF boo.

Without going into too much detail, ISAF Joint Command does not have an action arm. We're a headquarters, not a battle space owner. The assets we have are tasked down to other organizations. The organization we typically use to action an operational level target is the special forces guys. It's not usually a problem.

For some reason we're getting a weird push back from the SF guys for a particular target we are trying to eliminate. 3 weeks ago they were all about giving this target a hellfire present but all of a sudden they are saying IJC should use it's own action arm to target the guy. Umm, what?

It's a real odd feeling for me to be pushing this much to try to get someone killed. I feel like my karma is going to be all fucked up for it. Ugh, enough of this frustration; here's a picture of a kitten to make me feel better:

This little guy would kill my target for me...kill him with cuteness!

Iraq The Unraveling

Is Iraq nearing some kind of collapse? My professional crush Emma Sky seems to thinks so.

Bodyguards of ministers being arrested; large and widespread protests by Sunnis; military moves around disputed Kirkuk; and media organizations, including Al Jazeera, being banned. This isn't your standard crap going on in Iraq. It's a series of events likely caused by a escalating problem.

My favorite quote: "We may be witnessing the breakdown of the post-WWI settlement and the nation-states established under the Sykes-Picot agreement."

That seems unlikely, but Ms Sky is far more intelligent than I am and understands the region much better than I. So two questions from me:

1. What does Iraq look like in 5 years? Shia dictatorship, autonomous regions, or something else?

2. Will the US do anything to try to keep Iraq stable and united or will we just sit back and watch it all unravel? This situation is essentially due to our little "intervention" afterall.

Fighting Season, Woot!

The Taliban has finally bothered to announce the beginning of 2013's Fighting Season/Spring Offensive. About time guys, I was getting worried; and as I mentioned, many a staff officer at ISAF Joint Command were getting all stressed about it.

Fighting Season officially begins tomorrow (Sunday) on April 28th, which corresponds to Afghanistan's "Mujahideen Victory Day" which is also observed on Sunday.

In other amusing Afghanistan news, today at lunch one of my colleagues was discussing how he doesn't want Afghanistan to change its culture, "Afghanistan is fine for Afghans. We shouldn't be trying to change anything. That's like walking into someone's house and stating, 'you should really change the color of those walls.'"

I responded with, "so we're somebody's annoying mother in law?"

UPDATE 2: My Probably Wrong Boston Marathon Attack Analysis

I've waited over a day to comment on the attack in Boston because I didn't want to jump to any sudden conclusions seeing how I've been so blatantly wrong in the past when it comes to terrorist attacks.

Having said that, my analysis is the attack was most likely domestic terrorism. The analysts here at the IJC that I've discussed the attack with also agree. From my perspective there's nothing for Al Qaida or any other major terrorist group to gain from conducting this attack. Yes, it was high profile, but it wasn't exactly set up to cause a lot of casualties. Al Qaida uses vehicles for their mass casualty attacks and targeting a bunch of marathon runners doesn't strike me as a tactic they would use. The point of Al Qaida's attacks are to either draw the West into a war that bleeds money and resources or causes US allies to abandon the mission. The Boston attack was just too small to be Al Qaida.

Which to me means it was most likely 3 or 4 individuals who are either not affiliated or only loosely affiliated with an organization in the US. They knew what they were doing; multiple bombs, placed in bags near where large crowds would be, and detonated by timers (maybe). I'm going to make another assessment: these guys, or the guy who made the bombs, were likely combat vets from Iraq or Afghanistan.

There is a third option. The perpetrators are not officially linked to Al Qaida or any other international terrorist group, but conducted the attack in their name or were influenced by Al Qaida.

In the meantime, an envelope sent to a Senator from Mississippi tested positive for Ricin. Coincidence?

The Pakistani Taliban (or TTP as we refer to them) has denied responsibility. Probably because they are focused on Pakistan and not the US and who attacks marathon runners anyway?

UPDATE: The ricin guy has been arrested in Mississippi. Apparrently it's not related to Boston. That's some good news I suppose.

UPDATE 2: Ok, how correct or incorrect was I? I claimed domestic terrorists, 3-4 individuals, no affiliation/loose affiliation, combat vets. Turns out it was 2 guys (so far, it would not shock me to learn that others were involved); it was domestic in a sense that it wasn't international terrorism but the brothers were only resident aliens, not full fledged citizens...I'll claim I'm half right on that point; no affiliation to any group so far; not combat vets.

Not great, but I didn't have much to go on. I'll admit I didn't see the Chechnyan angle at all but then I doubt anyone did.

As a side note, the Canadian analyst we have here is thinking that Russia may have been involved with this attack in some way. His reasoning is that the US made a big stink about Russian human rights abuses in their two Chechnyan wars. If Chechnyans attacked the US, then Russia could make the claim that Chechnya is a larger problem than it actually is and Russia is justified in their heavy-handedness. Chew on that for a bit.

UPDATE: Yah! Another Acronym!

Remember back in March when I stated my belief that the Al Nusrah Front in Syria was likely just Al Qaida in Iraq?

Yeeeeaah, about that. It looks like I was correct for a change. Even a broke clock is right twice a day.

Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader/emir of Al Qaida in Iraq just announced that he is merging AQI, aka the Islamic State of Iraq, and the Al Nusrah Front. The new organizational name is al-Dawla al-Islamiyya fi al-’Iraq wa-l-Sham. Say that 10 times fast. Roughly translated it means "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant." ISIL? Works for me.

The good news about this merger? We can blow them up. Al Nusrah/ISIL now falls under the  Authorization to Use Military Force or AUMF that governs military action in the "War On Terror"©; the 2002 Congressional authorization for the Iraq war is also still in place which would allow for targeting Al Nusrah/ISIL; and to add icing to the cake, the State Department added Al Nusrah as a terrorist organization back in December.

Enjoy your hellfires gentlemen.

UPDATE: That didn't last long. Apparently Abu Muhammad al Julani, the leader of the Al Nusrah Front, has rejected this merger and is swearing allegiance directly to Ayman al Zawahiri, the emir of Al Qaida. Infighting amongst Al Qaida leaders? How awful.

Winter Is...Not Coming For Awhile

For those of you who are not aware, Afghanistan has two unofficial seasons: Fighting and Winter. During the Winter months attacks by insurgents decrease significantly as many insurgent leaders leave Afghanistan to go hang out in Pakistan, leaving a few lower level guys to conduct the occasional attack in order to keep ISAF and ANSF on their toes. The reason for this is that snow blocks most of the mountain passes in the region making personnel and equipment movement challenging for everyone, even those with modern equipment. Fighting season begins once the snow melts and the insurgent leaders begin to return.

This year Winter was fairly mild with Kabul only seeing a few snowfalls and the snow accumulating only a few inches. The temperature began to rise in early March leading to a shorter Winter than usual.

So what?

The so what is that I'm now amused by all the leaders and analysts up here at IJC wondering when the Fighting Season will begin. They are sifting through intelligence reports looking for that announcement from insurgent leaders stating they are all returning and Fighting Season has begun.

Seriously?

Based on what I've seen the past couple of weeks, a Taliban assault on a government facility in Farah Province, attempts to take over Warduj District in Badakhshan Province, and the recent suicide attack against US personnel in Zabul Province...just to name a few...are pretty clear indicators that Winter is over and the Fighting Season has begun.

But I guess IJC just needs that Taliban memo. Maybe they announced it on Twitter.