Recent Reports, Papers and Pubs on Afghanistan

DoD, Report on Enhancing Security and Stability in Afghanistan, June 2015. The '1225 report' is replacing the '1230 report'. This bi-annual report covers December 1, 2014 to May 31, 2015. The report has a description of the strategy of the U.S. in regards to Afghanistan, current and anticipated threat assessment, as well as specific information about the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces. Info includes a description and assessment of the size, structure, strategy, budget, and financing of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces.
www.defense.gov/pubs/June_1225_Report_Final.pdf

Paper on Governance in Kandahar. Ashley Jackson has penned a paper entitled Politics and Governance in Afghanistan: The case of Kandahar, Working Paper 34, Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU), July 2015.

Why the ANDSF Will Not Hold. M. Chris Mason has penned a paper entitled The Strategic Lessons Unlearned from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan: Why the Afghan National Security Forces Will Not Hold, and the Implications for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, 25 June 2015. Posted on the PKSOI website by the Strategic Studies Institute and the U.S. Army War College Press. (236 pages, PDF). This paper (really a book) is a must read if you are a current or future advisor in Afghanistan!

CSIS Paper on Afghan Combat Trends. Anthony H. Cordsman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) has a paper out entitled Key Combat Trends in Afghanistan: Violence vs. Population, May 18, 2015.

Spring Edition of Parameters. The U.S. Army War College quarterly Parameters has been published. Not too much about Afghanistan except for a review of the book by LTG Daniel Bolger - Why We Lost.

Special Edition of SOLLIMS Sampler. The July 2015 periodical has a number of Afghan-relevant articles in its Cross-Cutting Guidelines for Stability Operations issue. (PKSOI, Jul 2015).

U.S. National Military Strategy pub released. The DoD blueprint for how the military will use its forces to protect and advance U.S. national and security interests was released in early July 2015.
www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Publications/2015_National_Military_Strategy.pdf

SIGAR Audit on RoL in Afghanistan. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has published a 58-page audit on RoL entitled Rule of Law in Afghanistan: U.S. Agencies Lack a Strategy and Cannot Fully Determine the Effectiveness of Programs Costing More Than $1 Billion, SIGAR 15-68 Audit Report, July 2015.

www.sigar.mil/pdf/audits/SIGAR-15-68-AR.pdf

Paper - Helicopter Options for Partner Nations

RAND Corporation has published a report that could be useful to air advisors of TAAC Air who are training, advising, and assisting the Afghan Air Force. The paper, entitled "Cost-Effective Helicopter Options for Partner Nations" was published in April 2015. It is an Adobe Acrobat PDF, 67 pages long, and 4 MBs big. The authors conducted an analysis on several helicopters - both utility and attack. The Mi-17 transport helicopter currently in use by the Afghan Air Force is compared with several other helicopters of a similar class. Some of the research questions that the paper attempts to answer include:

1. What types of missions does the US want partner nations to accomplish?
2. What are the capabilities of various helicopters to execute these missions?
3. What are the most cost-effective helicopters for accomplishing these missions?

www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR141z1.html

Paper - "Body Count"

The Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) has published an extensive study of the deaths caused by the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. The short name of the paper is "Body Count"; the long name is "Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 years of the War on Terror". For those that can remember (yes, I do) the term 'body count' gained much attention during the Vietnam War. One of the methods the military command in Vietnam measured progress on the battlefield in Vietnam was using a body count metric - how many of the enemy were killed during a certain operation or period. It became a focus of the military during the 'Five O'clock Follies" - the public affairs office briefings to the press that occurred in Saigon every day at 5:00 pm. The military, in an effort to show progress, would trot out charts depicting the latest body count information. Unfortunately, this public affairs practice turned into a negative. As a result, the US has learned to not release enemy casualty figures; and when they do, they are not tallied from day to day. So it is not surprising that the PSR 'borrows' the term for the title of their paper; as the negative association of the term fits their political agenda and resonates with many of their readership and will likely influence others beyond their usual audience. The paper by PSR attempts to fill the information gap of the casualties not tracked by the U.S. in Afghanistan (and Iraq and Pakistan as well). The paper is dated March 2015, is an Adobe Acrobat PDF, and is over 100 pages of graphs, charts, maps, pictures, figures, etc. In regards to Afghanistan, the paper provides estimates of the number of war deaths from October 7, 2001 to December 31, 2011. It examines the casualty figures of civilians, Afghan security forces, ISAF and OEF Soldiers, private security contractors, civilian employees of the US government, journalists, and insurgents.

www.psr.org/assets/pdfs/body-count.pdf

Paper - "IO and Human Domain"

The Center for Irregular Warfare and Armed Groups of the United States Naval War College in Newport, Rhodes Island has published a new paper on "Influence Operations and the Human Domain" by Thomas M. Scanzillo and Edward M. Lopaceinski. The authors use the example of the Joint Special Operations Task Force - Philippines (JSOTF-P) as a way of showing how Influence Operations can be used in an irregular warfare situation.

Influence Operations and the Human Domain

Paper - "Building Partner Capacity"

Harry R. Yarger of the Joint Special Operations University has wrote a paper entitled "Building Partner Capacity", JSOU Report 15-1, February 2015. This 125-page long paper explores the sources of instability that pose security concerns to the United States and the various ways of mitigating those security concerns. It says that, in addition to humanitarian assistance and security assistance, building partner capacity is one of the best ways to diminish instability and should be a major part of the nation's grand strategy. The author provides us with the multiple ways of viewing the role of building partner capacity as part of a U.S. grand or defense strategy and the place of special operations forces in these strategies.

Building Partner Capacity (posted on JSOU website).

Paper - Economics in COIN

It is estimated that the Department of Defense (DoD), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Department of State (DoS) combined spent over $100 billion in reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. The Commission on Wartime Contracting estimates that much of this money was lost due to fraud, waste and abuse. Employing economics in a stability situation such as Afghanistan always presents challenges. However, many problems in this field were the result of the lack of an overall unified strategy for economic reconstruction. This paper compares previously deployed economic development plans (WWII and Vietnam) to efforts undertaken in Iraq and Afghanistan. Read "Economics in Counterinsurgency Operations", by Hayes J. Weidman, IAS-004, March 2015. The paper is a special study published by the Simons Center for Interagency Cooperation.

http://thesimonscenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/IAS-004-March15.pdf

Paper - Russia, COIN, and Lessons (Not) Learned

A paper recently published (Dec 2014) entitled "Russian Organizational Learning in the Context of Afghanistan and Chechnya Counterinsurgencies" provides us with an examination of the Soviet Unions approach to counterinsurgency in Afghanistan (violently offensive mindset that alienated the populace they needed to succeed). The paper compares this approach in Afghanistan to the Russian counterinsurgency approach in Chechnya (essentially the same). The 47 page long paper seeks to understand why the lessons learned (or perhaps not learned) in the Afghan COIN environment were not implemented in the later counterinsurgency situation found in Chechnya. In addition, the author notes that the United States did not learn its counterinsurgency lessons in Vietnam and when presented with the counterinsurgent struggle in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. had to relearn those lessons. The author of this paper, MAJ Anthony M. Roh, wrote the paper as a student in the School of Advanced Military Studies at the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The paper can be read online or downloaded at the link below on the Homeland Security Digital Library (HSDL).

https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=763327

Paper - "Resolute Support Light" by AAN

A paper just published examines NATO's new mission - Resolute Support - and provides some concerns and recommendations. The paper suggests that the RS mission and organization assumes that the primary problem with the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) is of a "technical" nature - the inability to provide fires, air support, intelligence, and logistics support to the ANP and ANA at the zone and corps levels and below. The author suggests that the primary problem with the ANSF is not "technical" but rather the existence of corruption, factional divides, and a "rent seeking" culture. Read the report entitled Resolute Support Light: NATO's New Mission versus the Political Economy of the Afghan National Security Forces, by Philipp Munch of Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN), January 12, 2015.

Paper - The Future of the Afghan Security Forces

The Center for a New American Security, an independent, nonpartisan and nonprofit organization, has released a recently published (January 8, 2015) paper entitled Defend, Defect, or Desert?: The Future of the Afghan Security Forces. The author, Mr. Tyler Jost, is a former U.S. Army Company Commander who served two tours in Afghanistan and is currently a PhD Candidate in International Relations at Harvard University. Jost lays out how the United States can most effectively support the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). He argues that in the coming months, Afghanistan will depend on increasingly independent Afghan security forces to fight a tough insurgency; an insurgency that is as strong today as it was four years ago during the height of the Coalition surge in Afghanistan. The paper starts off with a good historical review of the previous Afghan military organizations and then proceeds to examine the current state of the ANSF and what needs to be done for the future in order to sustain the ANSF. At the end of the paper Jost provides a conclusion and some recommendations.

www.cnas.org/future-of-aghan-security-forces

Paper - JIIM Approach to IW

An extensive paper has been posted on the Small Wars Journal entitled "Countering 21st Center Threats: The Need for an Increased Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental and Multinational (JIIM) Approach to Irregular Warfare." The three authors are a diverse group: a commander in the ROK Navy, a major in the Danish Army, and a major in the U.S. Army. It is a long paper full of information to include a bibliography as well as 53 footnotes. The paper makes several recommendations worth considering.

Read or download the paper off the SWJ website.

Paper - Taliban Movement

A new paper by Michael Semple on the Taliban has been published. Semple is a peace practitioner and scholar who focuses on Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is currently a visiting professor at the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice at Queen's University Belfast. He previously worked as a political officer for the UN mission and the European Union for Afghanistan. In addition, he was a fellow at Harvard with the Kennedy School's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

His report offers insights into the Taliban movement's doctrine, organization, and rhetoric and is intended to inform efforts to end the Taliban violence. This report examines the evolution of the Taliban case for armed struggle and the adjustments the Taliban rhetoricians made to cope with the impending political change in Afghanistan in 2014. It considers how the Taliban might make a case for peace, should they take the political decision to engage in negotiations.

Read "Rhetoric, Ideology, and Organizational Structure of the Taliban Movement", United States Institute of Peace (USIP), January 5, 2015.

Paper - "Risky Business"

Afghanistan has a long history of the use of locally-based militias to keep areas secure and loyal to the Afghan central government. The period of post-2001 is no exception. At the very beginning of the period following the fall of the Taliban regime Special Forces teams recruited, trained and led local militias called Afghan Militia Force (AMF). A few years after the Afghan National Army was established the AMF units were disbanded (well, almost all of them). In addition to the AMF there were a number of local defense force initiatives attempted by the United States Special Forces (and others) in Afghanistan (ANAP, AP3, LDI, CDI, CBSS, ISCI, and CIP). The latest and most successful has been the Afghan Local Police or ALP. The Center for Naval Analysis has published a paper about community-based security solutions utilizing pro-government civil defense forces in an attempt to achieve U.S. counter-terrorism and stability objectives. In the near future the United States will be working with a reduced defense budget and a public reluctance to engage in large-scale, population-centric counterinsurgency operations. Civil defense forces - used alongside air strikes, drones, special operations forces, and intelligence operatives - could provide a low-cost, small-footprint strategy to combat terrorist, insurgent, or transnational groups. Read more in the paper, entitled "Risky Business: The Future of Civil Defense Forces and Counterterrorism in an Era of Persistent Conflict", October 2014 available at the link below:

www.cna.org/sites/default/files/research/CRM-2014-U-008881.pdf

Guide to U.S. Military Casualties

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) has published a CRS report entitled "A Guide to U.S. Military Casualty Statistics" dated November 20, 2014. It covers the conflicts of Inherent Resolve, Operation New Dawn, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation Enduring Freedom. The report includes statistics on PTSD, TBI, amputations, evacuations, and the demographics of casualties. Read more in "Document: Guide to U.S. Military Casualty Statistics", USNI News, December 1, 2014.

Paper - Lessons Learned on Advising

Lt. Col. Remi Hajjar of the U.S. Army has published an article entitled "What Lessons Did We Learn (or Re-Learn) about Military Advising After 9/11?", Military Review, November-December 2014, pages 63-75. Hajjar is an academy professor at the U.S. Military Academy (West Point). His paper takes a look at the history of the U.S. military advising mission, recounts relevant lessons from the Korean and Vietnam Wars to the present, provides several major advisory lessons learned or re-learned since 9/11, lists conditions that characterize the U.S. military advising mission, defining military advisory success, and he provides a conclusion and recommendations for future advisory missions.

http://www.afghanwarnews.info/documents/LL-MilAdvisingMilRev20141231.pdf

Paper - Women and Leadership in Afghanistan

Aarya Nijat of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) has published a report (policy note) about women and leadership in Afghanistan. The paper analyses the dilemma of women in a quest to provide answers to questions about the future of women as well as provide policy recommendations. The paper is entitled The Dilemma of Women and Leadership in Afghanistan: Lessons and Recommendations, AREU, November 2014.

Paper - "Human Dimension White Paper"

The United States Army Combined Arms Center (CAC) has recently published The Human Dimension White Paper: A Framework for Optimizing Human Performance, (9 October 2014). The Army has recognized that the nature of warfare has changed dramatically over the past few decades. While the Army must be prepared to fight the large conflicts where large nation-state armies clash on the battlefield and the industrial and technological prowess of a nation comes to bear; it also must be ready for the asymmetric, hybrid, insurgent and political warfare environment as well. The paper sets the stage for the revision and upgrade of Army education and training at the individual, unit, and institutional levels.

"To answer the challenge of this new paradigm, the Army must invest in its most valuable resource, its people. Our challenge is to optimize the performance of every Soldier and civilian through innovation and investment in education, training, professionalism, leader development, holistic health and total fitness, talent acquisition and precision talent management of our human capital".

The intent of the white paper is to operationalize the Army human dimension concepts described in the Army Operating Concept (TRADOC Pam 525-3-1). The paper lists the "ways" to do this a) establish cognitive dominance, b) execute realistic training, and c) drive institutional agility. The "means" are described as a), education, b) training, c) professional and leader development, d) talent acquisition and management, e) holistic health and fitness, and f) research and experimentation.

You can access the paper on the website of the Combined Arms Center at the link below:
The Human Dimension White Paper

Paper - "Blind Leading the Blind"

The United States is not the first nation that has attempted to wage a counterinsurgency campaign, train up a host nation army, and conduct nation-building in Afghanistan for a decade. The Soviet Union attempted this very feat from 1979 to 1989 - and were far from successful. The Soviets were quick to realize that the insurgency would not be defeated through military means alone; and that development and governance needed to improve to provide stability, popular support for the Afghan government, and pull support from the insurgents. The paper provides insight into the lack of training and preparation of Soviet advisor prior to deployment to Afghanistan; to include little cultural training, knowledge of the country's religion, and the aspects of the human terrain. Read The Blind Leading the Blind: Soviet Advisors, Counter-Insurgency and Nation-Building in Afghanistan, by Artemy Kalinovsky, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Working Paper #60, Cold War International History Project, January 2010.
www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/WP60_Web_Final.pdf

OEF Lessons Learned Ignored

The United States spent some 13 years in Afghanistan. Units deployed to and from Afghanistan on one-year rotations. Many personnel in those units served previously on Afghan tours; but some didn't. It is not readily apparent that the lessons learned were sufficiently captured and read by units and personnel during their pre-deployment training. Read more on this topic in "How the Limited Use of Lessons Learned Failed to Form a Cohesive Strategy in Operation Enduring Freedom", Small Wars Journal, by Joel Lawton, November 4, 2014.

Paper - "American Advisors" by Joshua Potter

If you are on your way to Afghanistan (or Iraq . . . or anywhere) to be a military advisor then a paper wrote by LTC Joshua Potter (US Army) will be very useful. American Advisors: Security Force Assistance Model in the Long War, Combat Studies Institute Press, Combined Arms Center, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas (2011) is a good education and should be a must for pre-deployment training for advisors heading overseas. You can view or download the paper at the following link:
http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/AmericanAdvisors.pdf

Paper - How Has COIN Changed?

The Small Wars Journal has posted another paper about counterinsurgency. "How Counterinsurgency Has Changed Across the 20th and Into the 21st Century?" (October 26, 2014) is penned by Wayne Tyrrell - a member of the Irish Defence Forces who has served in Liberia, Lebanon, and Chad. His paper on counterinsurgency is focused on ". . . the modern doctrine crafted in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan, its foundational basis and its adequacy to cope with a new form of globally networked and ideologically based insurgency".