Registan.net

Michael Phillips has a pretty interesting article on the status of human terrain studies in Kunar:

The trick foir a successful handover from one unit to another, say U.S. officers here, is for the outgoing commanders to pass on an anthropologist’s guide to the local power structure, economy, rivalries, kinship, ambitions and fears…

One of the first officers from the new squadron to arrive at the main base in Naray was Capt. Kevin Sopuch, the intelligence officer. Capt. Sopuch, 35, from Cape May, N.J., says he has been reading up on the country since he learned in April that he’d be spending 12-15 months here. He predicts coming to Naray will be “like moving to a new city… I’ve moved enough times in America that it’s just the same. After three months you know what restaurants not to eat at.”

Call this a conservative guess, but I’d speculate he’s in for a rather rude awakening. Learning northern Kunar isn’t quite like learning where the bad Mexican restaurants are in Indiannapolis. LTC Kolenda, who in other stories datelined in Naray has come off very well in terms of knowledge of locals, seems to get some of the astounding complexity of the ethnic groups there pretty right:

The colonel has also mastered the intricacies of the Nuristani tribe. At least two of its five subtribes, the Kom and the Kata, practice different versions of Islam and don’t get along. During the Soviet war, they backed different mujahideen factions. The Kom have four primary clans, and Lt. Col. Kolenda says they bicker among themselves as well.

The Kom and the Kushtowz, another Nuristani subtribe, have been fighting over water rights for a century, says Lt. Col. Kolenda. The Kushtowz say the Kom use their springs; the Kom say the Kushtowz stole their land and cattle. A decade ago the Kom pushed the Kushtowz out of Kamdesh District. The Kushtowz want to move back, but their rivals seeded the land with mines.

Richard Strand (natch) has produced an overview of these groups. Strand claims Nuristan itself has fifteen distinct ethnic groups who speak five generally incompatible languages, though they form their own subgroup of Indo-Aryan languages. While a bit simplified and too recent (Strand says the Kom v. Kshto/Kata dispute goes back several centuries), it is a generally good take on the conflict there (the most recent flareup of violent hostilities resulted in the razing of the Kshto settlement of Kshtorm in 1998).

I’m curious if he got this information from reading scholars like Strand and Katz, or if it was good on-the-ground investigation. If it is the latter, then his departure will be a serious loss in institutional Army knowledge in the area, because these kinds of things are not simple to unravel. Given the recent glaring inaccuracies over the site of a U.S. base that was recently attacked and overrun in Nuristan (see here and here, for example), it is vitally important that units deployed to these regions build off of their knowledge, rather than having to reinvent it each time a Brigade turns over. It speaks highly of the group there now that Phillips was explaining the variations among the insurgents—several different Taliban groups, al-Qaeda, HiG, and just plain old revenge fighters—and it would be a real shame to lose that… say, by treating the area like some anonymous American city restaurant scene.

I want to thank all of you. Your support for my upcoming trip to Afghanistan has been nothing short of extraordinary. For this, I owe Sean-Paul a tremendous thank you and heartfelt gratitude—without him, none of this would have happened. I also owe Joel Hafvenstein a huge thank you as well, for taking my review of his book in good spirit, and offering to show me around so I could see for myself what he was writing about. Both of them have been beyond kind.

Life, however, has intervened. I found out yesterday that my employer requires me to go on a work-related trip during conflicting dates, and I cannot refuse. Coincidentally, I will still be going to Afghanistan. Just with them, and for them, and not on my own or for me. This might pose issues in terms of what I can write about or photograph, and I must follow their lead. But I will do my best regardless to document and write about what I can.

This also means they’re paying for my transportation and security. Which means I don’t need to raise money right now. So over the next few days—part of what made this group so extraordinary was how many contributed—I will be returning everyone’s donations.

I am truly humbled by your respect and trust. And while I am still planning on going to Afghanistan in the spring to explore things on my own, I will wait until it is closer before I revisit the financial underpinning of such a trip.

Again, I cannot thank any of you enough. Thank you feels inadequate, but it’s all I got.

All the best,
Joshua Foust

“In 2002,” Rory Stewart wants us to know, “I walked safely along the length of the road between Herat and Obey in western Afghanistan. Recently aid workers were carjacked on that road, and it is now considered too dangerous for aid agencies, effectively closing the main access to the central regions of the country.”

This and similar anecdotes form Stewart’s case for why Afghanistan is such a dangerous and deteriorating place. Perhaps we could summarize his argument as: “Once I walked by myself through a really dangerous country during a lull in the fighting, but now highly visible armed convoys get attacked so we might as well stop trying.”

This isn’t a joke. Stewart very strongly argues for withdrawing more troops, cutting aid spending, and withdrawing aid and security efforts to the “safe” provinces that have been relatively successful. He argues this because, “only the Afghan government has the legitimacy, the knowledge and the power to build a nation.”

It sounds pretty, unless you realize that Hamid Karzai has practically no legitimacy—and this forms the basis of arguments meant to convince us he is still worth propping up (Seth Jones seems to fall for the trap that just because one leader is easy to deal with he is automatically worth supporting… which warrants its own discussion). Furthermore, Stewart insists that we should focus on counterterrorism, not counterinsurgency. How one is achieved without the other in an environment where the insurgency employs terrorism in conjunction with terrorist groups… well, that’s probably better left unsaid. He thinks the military should not to hold territory or pursue the Taliban, but rather “steer Afghanistan away from civil war.”

Does anyone know what that means? Because I really don’t. Has Stewart really come up with nothing better than empty platitudes in the year and a half since he last argued for us doing less?

The U.S. Army has decided to shutter the base in Want, Nuristan, that repelled a large scale assault by Taliban and (allegedly) al-Qaeda militants. In the process, the town of Want has been occupied by insurgents as the police officers left behind fled in terror.

This is not necessarily disaster. Southern Nuristan, especially along the Waygal and Korengal valleys, has a long history of antagonism with the central government according to David Edwards (see also this compelling lecture by both Richard Strand and David Katz for some fascinating information on the area). There wasn’t even a PRT in the area until 2006, and from the start of the invasion in 2001 it was a known infiltration haven. Salafi preachers have effectively “colonized” the area for years, and they are not only politically organized but their presence is at least tacitly allowed by the locals.

So in a sense, this looks bad, but might not be. The region is incredibly difficult to understand and influence without (I would assume, based on my limited an amateur research) dedicated Muslims to form a cultural bridge. That isn’t to say that non-Muslim Americans cannot build trust relationships with local elders, merely that most Americans who deploy to the area simply do not have the opportunity to do so—most deployments, at the longest, are 12 months or so, and even when deployed, it is rare for a unit to remain in any single area for very long. Even when they do so, the influence of the religious clerics cannot be ignored, which presents major complications.

A pair of anonymous “Middle Eastern security officials” tell CBS News that the Taliban and Al Qaeda affiliates are recruiting young boys in Central Asia. (Patrick Frost says these are US officials saying this. I’m far from convinced.)

“The effort to recruit young boys for the cause has been extended to central Asia. We have reports that this effort may now be up to two years old,” said one senior Middle Eastern security official who spoke to CBS News on condition of anonymity.

The official says that there have been “maybe a few hundred such cases” of recruitment in Central Asia, particularly in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The reason for recruiting in Central Asia, the sources say, is because the US and international forces are putting “too much pressure” on militants in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border regions. That final bit should set off alarms if nothing else did, especially since this week’s events suggest that militants are moving around just fine. It would also be interesting to know where those recruits have gone. Apparently not to hook up with the IMU in Pakistan, where, as Bruno de Cordier notes in a great article on the IMU and IJU, there are probably only about 500 IMU members total.

Any guesses on who these “Middle Eastern security officials” are? It almost seems like they are suggesting greater US involvement in Central Asian security.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed—no matter the amount, it is greatly appreciated, and I have been humbled by the response of all you. As Sean-Paul gleefully notes, I have gotten to where I’m going to start buying my plane tickets! I’m still a little over $600 short of what I need for security, travel permits, and in-country transportation, so keep ‘em comin’! 60 people contributing $10 is all it takes—I know you have it within you!

But everyone—I have been shocked and humbled in the best possible way by this. I hope I can live up to the trust you’re placing in me.

One of the most frustrating things to read in the shallower punditry and scholarship on the conflict in Afghanistan is the assertion that the Taliban insurgent groups are being driven by tribal loyalties—that, because Mullah Mohammed Omar is a Ghilzai Hotak and Hamid Karzai a Popalzai Durrani, that they are somehow magically compelled toward war since their tribes have historically struggled for control of the country.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the Taliban are so dangerous because they break traditional tribal loyalties.

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