Air Force Major Matthew Brown served in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, as part of the Afghanistan-Pakistan (AFPAK) Hands …
Counter-Insurgency
Playing Checkers in Kabul
It’s becoming increasingly clear that Afghanistan is like a giant checkerboard, and U.S. and NATO troops are the checkers, limited to the black squares.
After more than a decade of war combined with a hearts-and-minds …
Buying Peace
Winning a war can be tricky business, especially if you’re a U.S. soldier outfitted with the U.S. military’s formal guide for reintegrating the Taliban into a peaceful Afghan society. This is is different from the money the …
Goldilocking the “Insider Threat”
Make no mistake about it: when Afghan “insiders” turn their weapons on their U.S. and coalition allies and kill them, most either escape or are killed in the act. So gleaning intelligence about motivation can be tough. Forty …
Better Late Than Never
Interesting Pentagon contract buried deep in the long list it announced Friday. The Army awarded nearly $15 million to Jorge Scientific of Arlington, Va., to “provide for the modification of an existing contract to research and develop a methodology for counter insurgency operations. Work will be performed in Arlington and Afghanistan…”
What U.S. Troops Are Doing to Curb Insider Attacks
On Tuesday, Pentagon leaders said they’d prefer to call the rash of “green on blue attacks” – where members of the Afghan security forces kill their U.S. and allied partners – “insider attacks” instead. They …
Afghan-Green-On-U.S.-Blue Attacks Spiking Again
The Pentagon tends to cite small arms fire, insurgent attacks, and IEDs as the causes of death when U.S. military personnel are killed in Afghanistan. But, once again, the specter of so-called “green-on-blue” – Afghans …
Why the Taliban Are Winning
Navy SEAL Reed Kitchen concludes that after 10 months in eastern Afghanistan last year, the U.S. military is using the wrong yardsticks to measure progress:
Let’s rewrite our metrics of success to reflect our effect on the
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War (Business) Is Hell
Nifty contract solicitation posted Friday by the U.S. Special Operations Command. You know, the guys who got Osama bin Laden. They need local Afghan security guards to protect their “(firebases, village stability platforms, etc.)” as the U.S. special forces go about their business. You may recall that Afghan President Hamid Karzai …
Sticks and Stones: Words of War
What better way to spend some time off than sharing a fascinating read from Small Wars Journal with Battleland readers (who are doing just fine, thank you very much, under Army vet and Time writer Nate Rawlings’ steady hand). Over at SWJ, Mehar Omar Khan of Pakistan writes of the way words are bandied about in the military profession, …
Winning Hearts and Minds, One Eyeball Scan at a Time
Killed at Their Desks: The Growth of the (Human) IED Threat — and Mutual Mistrust — in Afghanistan
Saturday’s killing of two U.S. military officers inside the highly-protected Afghan Interior Ministry in Kabul by a Taliban-allied shooter is an apt microcosm of the decade-long conflict. The Pentagon was quick to label the …
How America Painted Itself Into A Corner on North Korean Succession
Great Washington Post piece on China’s intense desire for stability on Korean peninsula, thus the clear backing of the “Great Successor” Kim Jong Eun. Wrap-up paragraph says it all:
The notion of a democratized Korean Peninsula
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