Quotes of the Day:
“Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.”
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are”
- Anonymous
“We live in different realities but when you deny what this person is going through, you are denying their reality. We are as different as we are on the inside as on the outside, and we have the right to be so.
People, don’t deny differences… accept them, recognize them and cherish them”
- Jane Elliot
1. The Afghan Fiasco Will Stick to Biden
2. Noncombatant Evacuation Operation - Afghanistan
3. Milley: Afghan forces ‘not designed appropriately’ to secure nation in ‘lessons learned’ following withdrawal
4. Pakistan’s Support to the Taliban is One of the Greatest Feats of Covert Intelligence
5. Suicide attack targets soldiers in Pakistani city of Quetta
6. The Navy SEAL Who Went Rogue
7. US Special Operations Command has given up on its 'Iron Man suit,' but it's still looking for other high-tech upgrades for its operators
8. Flexing the Quad
9. Why the West must stay engaged in Afghanistan
10. Beijing revs up South China Sea domination strategy
11. US, China dueling for power on the Mekong
12. Taliban special forces bring abrupt end to women’s protest
13. The Afghanistan Papers review: superb exposé of a war built on lies (book review)
14. How Taliban's Win Might Influence Radical Muslims in Southeast Asia
15. Forget Asia-Pacific, it’s Indo-Pacific now. Where is that?
1. The Afghan Fiasco Will Stick to Biden
I do not intend this as a partisan criticism but Peggy Noonan should be a strategist - and of course strategy should always be based on common sense and this is probably one of the most common sense assessments of the entire fiasco. She may have gotten a few things wrong (NEO in the winter would be a helluva challenge and Bagram would also have provided some logistical issues (but multiple options would have been better than a single one). A question: Did anyone make this case to anyone in the White House? I do not intend this as a partisan criticism but Peggy Noonan should be a strategist - and of course strategy should always be based on common sense and this is probably one of the most common sense assessments of the entire fiasco. She may have gotten a few things wrong (NEO in the winter would be a helluva challenge and Bagram would also have provided some logistical issues (but multiple options would have been better than a single one). A question: Did anyone make this case to anyone in the White House? Did DOD make alternate contingency plans even though their recommendations for priroties for withdrawal and sequencing of actions (e.g,, civilians first, use multiple evacuation air bases, etc - recognizing there would have to be a NEO at some point whether sooner or later).
Excerpt:
We don’t make up withdrawal dates that will have symbolism for photo-ops with the flinty, determined president looking flinty and determined on the 20th anniversary of 9/11; we don’t time epic strategic decisions around showbiz exigencies. We wait for the summer fighting season to pass; we withdraw in the winter when Taliban warriors are shivering in their caves. We don’t leave our major air base in the middle of the night—in the middle of the night—without even telling the Afghan military. We don’t leave our weapons behind so 20-year-old enemies can don them for military playacting and drive up and down with the guns and helmets. We don’t fail to tell our allies exactly what we’re doing and how we’re doing it—they followed us there and paid a price for it. We don’t see signs of an overwhelming enemy advance and treat it merely as a perception problem, as opposed to a reality problem. You don’t get the U.S. military out before the U.S. citizens and our friends. Who will protect them if you do that?
But it all comes down to the single erroneous assumption made: that the Afghan government and military would continue to function and secure the country.
The Afghan Fiasco Will Stick to Biden
It hit at his reputational core. He no longer comes across as empathetic, much less serious.
By Peggy Noonan
Sept. 2, 2021 6:23 pm ET
President Biden answer questions in Washington after remarks on the U.S. service members killed in the Afghanistan withdrawal, Aug. 26.
PHOTO: DEMETRIUS FREEMAN/THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES
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August changed things; it wasn’t just a bad month. It left a lingering, still head-shaking sense of “This isn’t how we do things.”
We don’t make up withdrawal dates that will have symbolism for photo-ops with the flinty, determined president looking flinty and determined on the 20th anniversary of 9/11; we don’t time epic strategic decisions around showbiz exigencies. We wait for the summer fighting season to pass; we withdraw in the winter when Taliban warriors are shivering in their caves. We don’t leave our major air base in the middle of the night—in the middle of the night—without even telling the Afghan military. We don’t leave our weapons behind so 20-year-old enemies can don them for military playacting and drive up and down with the guns and helmets. We don’t fail to tell our allies exactly what we’re doing and how we’re doing it—they followed us there and paid a price for it. We don’t see signs of an overwhelming enemy advance and treat it merely as a perception problem, as opposed to a reality problem. You don’t get the U.S. military out before the U.S. citizens and our friends. Who will protect them if you do that?
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The president’s people think this will all just go away and are understandably trying to change the subject. But the essence of the story will linger. Its reverberations will play out for years. There are Americans and American friends behind Taliban lines. The stories will roll out in infuriating, sometimes heartbreaking ways. The damage to the president is different and deeper than his people think, because it hit at his reputational core, at how people understand him. His supporters have long seen him as soft-natured, moderate—a sentimental man famous for feeling and showing empathy. But nothing about this fiasco suggested kindliness or an interest in the feelings of others. It feels less like a blunder than the exposure of a seamy side. Does he listen to anyone? Does he have any people of independent weight and stature around him, or are they merely staffers who approach him with gratitude and deference?
What happened with U.S. military leadership? There’s been a stature shift there, too. Did they warn the president not to leave Bagram Air Base? Did they warn that the whole exit strategy was flawed, unrealistic? If the president was warned and rejected the advice why didn’t a general care enough to step down—either in advance to stop the debacle, or afterward to protest it?
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Did they just go with the flow? Did they think the president’s mind couldn’t be changed so what the heck, implement the plan on schedule and hope for the best? President Biden’s relations with the Pentagon have been cool at best for a long time; maybe some generals were thinking: I can improve future relations by giving the president more than he asks for. He wants out by 9/11, I’ll give him out by the Fourth of July. It is important to find out what dynamics were in play. Because it’s pretty obvious something went wrong there.
The enlisted men and women of the U.S. military are the most respected professionals in America. They can break your heart with their greatness, as they did at Hamid Karzai International Airport when 13 of them gave their lives to help desperate people escape. But the top brass? Something’s wrong there, something that August revealed. They are all so media-savvy, so smooth and sound-bitey after a generation at war, and in some new way they too seem obsessed with perceptions and how things play, as opposed to reality and how things are.
There has been a lot of talk about Mr. Biden and what drove his single-minded insistence on leaving on his timetable. Axios recently mentioned the 2010 Rolling Stone article in which Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his staff made brutal fun of Biden. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in his 2014 memoir that President Obama told him, “Joe is over the top about this.” Mr. Obama himself, in his presidential memoir, wrote of Mr. Biden warning him the military was trying to “jam” him, “trying to box in a new president.”
READ MORE DECLARATIONS
People have been rereading George Packer’s great 2019 book on the diplomat Richard Holbrooke, “Our Man” (great not only as history but as literature). Holbrooke met with Vice President Biden one day during the first Obama term and they argued about Afghanistan. Mr. Biden dismissed Holbrooke’s arguments for protecting Afghan women’s rights as “bull—.” Their discussion was, according to Holbrooke’s diary, “quite extraordinary.” Mr. Biden said Holbrooke didn’t understand politics, that the Democrats could lose the presidency in 2012 in part because of Afghanistan, that we have to get out as we did from Vietnam.
There was politics in President Biden’s decision, and frustration. Mr. Biden had spent years in Afghanistan meetings, in the Senate during the Bush years, and later in the White House as vice president. He would have seen up close more than his share of military spin—contradictory information, no one with a sustainable strategic plan, and plenty of that old military tradition, CYA.
Afghanistan was emotional for him, for personal reasons. This would be connected to his son’s service in Iraq, and the worry a parent feels and the questions a parent asks. And maybe the things Beau Biden told him about his tour.
And I suspect there was plenty of ego in it, of sheer vanity. A longtime friend of his once told me Mr. Biden’s weakness is that he always thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room. I asked if the rooms are usually small, and the friend didn’t bristle, he laughed. I suspect Mr. Biden was thinking he was going to be the guy who finally cut through, who stopped the nonsense, admitted reality, who wasn’t like the others driven by fear of looking weak or incompetent. He was going to look with eyes made cool by experience and do what needed doing—cut this cord, end this thing, not another American dead.
History would see what he’d done. It would be his legacy. And for once he’d get his due—he’s not some ice-cream-eating mediocrity, not a mere palate-cleanser after the heavy meal of Trump, not a placeholder while America got its act together. He would finally be seen as what he is—a serious man. Un homme sérieux, as diplomats used to say.
And then, when it turned so bad so quick, his pride and anger shifted in, and the defiant, defensive, self-referential speeches. Do they not see my wisdom?
When you want it bad you get it bad.
This won’t happen, but it would be better for his White House not to scramble away from the subject—Let’s go to the hurricane!—but to inhabit it fully. Concentrate on the new reality of the new Afghanistan, the immediate and larger diplomatic demands, the security needs. Get the Americans out, our friends out, figure out—plan—what you would do and say if, say, next November there is a terror event on U.S. soil, and a group calling itself al Qaeda 2.0 claims responsibility, and within a few days it turns out they launched their adventure from a haven in Afghanistan.
Don’t fix on “perception.” Focus on that ignored thing, reality.
2. Noncombatant Evacuation Operation - Afghanistan
Current information as of 5 September. Note the reference to UN humanitarian airlift services.
Noncombatant Evacuation Operation - Afghanistan
The Biden administration was caught by surprise with the speed of the Taliban offensive across the country and how rapidly the insurgents occupied Kabul. It had to quickly put together a non-combatant evacuation operation (NEO) to rescue its Kabul embassy personnel, American citizens, foreign diplomats, Afghan interpreters, and other Afghans associated with the U.S. effort in Afghanistan. Other nations quickly joined the effort to evacuate their citizens and Afghan workers.
Current Situation
Hundreds of AMCITs and LPRs Left in Afghanistan. Veteran-led rescue groups say the Biden administration's estimate that no more than 200 U.S. citizens were left behind in Afghanistan is too low and also overlooks hundreds of other people they consider to be equally important: permanent legal residents with green cards. The State Department said that those AMCITs and LPRs left behind have been contacted and told to expect further details about routes out once those have been arranged. See "Rescue groups: US tally misses hundreds left in Afghanistan", AP News, September 3, 2021.
Sunday, September 5, 2021
UN Humanitarian Flights. Social media is picking up on the news that the UN may soon conduct humanitarian flights. Bringing in needed supplies for humanitarian organizations and flying out people who are manifested by humanitarian groups. The United Nations Humanitarian Air Service operated by the World Food Programme (WFP) will be operating flights in and out of Mazar-e-Sharif and Kandahar to Islamabad. Flight bookins are open for all UNHAS Afghanistan registered user organizations. Humanitarian organizations registered with the UNHAS can register passengers utilizing the United Nations Booking Hub.
Charter Planes in MeS. There are several planes at the MeS airport in northern Afghanistan that were flown in by private sector organizations. For a variety of reasons they have not been granted permission to leave the airport. Fingers are pointed at the Taliban, State Department, as well as other factors. A wide range of groups are attempting to get the DoS to do a little coordination but many suspect that State is part of the problem.
Domestic Flights. Ariana Afghan Airlines has resumed some flights in Afghanistan between Kabul and three major provincial cities. A Qatar technical team has assisted in reopening the kabul airport for aid and domestic services. You can check the current flight status at the link provided above. Kam Air is reported to have resumed domestic flights. Qatar is reported to have resumed international flights between Qatar and Kabul.
The U.S. and Humanitarian Parole. Tens of thousands of Afghans who supported American efforts in Afghanistan are stranded and in fear for their lives. President Biden has left the SIV (approved or pending) and those with P-1 and P-2 status behind with no clear path to safety. The U.S. should make it easier to apply for humanitarian parole - allowing Afghans to stay safely in the U.S. while their SIV visas or P-1 or P-2 designation is being processed. Read more in "Humanitarian Parole Can Save Afghan Allies. The U.S. Should Let Them Use It", Forbes, September 1, 2021.
Kabul NEO and the 21st TSC. The U.S. Army has been supporting the Afghanistan noncombatant evacuation operation across several sites in Europe. One organization assisting is the 21st Theater Sustainment Command - working with the Air Force, Red Cross, USAID, and the Department of State.The 21st TSC helped to facilitate temporary lodging and onward movement of Afghanistan evacuees. Read more in "21st TSC assist Afghan Evacuees", DVIDS, September 4, 2021.
NOLB Request For Assistance Form. The non-profit organization No One Left Behind (NOlB) has a "NOLB Request for Assistance Form" that allows Afghans to input information into the NOLB data base. The form is for any SIV,SIV in process, or SIV eligible person and their familiy that needs to be evacuated from Afghanistan.
Team America Relief - Refugee Data Form. If you are still trying to flee Afghanistan, or you are in another country waiting to be naturalized into the United States, and you would like Team America to advocate on your behal or just store your digital documents for later access, then complete the Refugee Data Form.
Poland and Evacuees. Over 100 Afghan evacuees have arrived in Poznan, Poland. The country will host up to 500 Afghans who worked for NATO until they are resettled to permanent homes in other countries. Poland has agreed to accept at least 50 Afghans permanently.
Tent City at Ramstein Air Base
Ramstein Air Base and Evacuees. A humanitarian city has emerged on the Ramstein flight line house 15K evacuees. The U.S. military and other organizations are providing 25K meals and 50K bottles of water a day. In addition, 500 tents, toilet facilities, and medical care is provided.
A Near Miss. An RAF pilot missed smashing his aircraft into a bus carrying evacuees at Kabul airport by about 10 feet after a vehicle steered onto the runway as he was taking off. Sky News, September 4, 2021.
KSK and 160th Team Up for Rescue Missions. "Night Stalker Little Bird Helicopters Flew German Commandos On Kabul Misson", The War Zone, August 25. Germany's KSK and the 160th SOAR joined forces to evacuate foreigners deep in Taliban-controlled Kabul. The Germans had a pair of SOF-modified Airbus H145M helicopters on HKIA-N to support their mission - but it is unknown if they were used.
CIA and Its Spies. The agency has a long history of extracting people from danger zones. Read how the Central Intelligence Agency evacuated most of its spies from Afghanistan. (Foreign Policy, Sep 3, 2021). (subscription)
Refugee Camp. Some Afghans are finding their way across the border and are now in makeshift camps on the Pakistani side. Hopefully humanitarian assistance is on the way.
The Fight Continues? Remnants of the Afghan security forces are continuing their defense of the Panjshir Valley. The Taliban have moved thousands of their fighters to the area in an attempt to dislodge the resistance. Numerous messages by the Taliban state they have achieved victory but apparently . . . not quite yet. With the departure of President Ashraf Ghani the current vice president, Amrullah Saleh, has become Acting President under Afghan law.
Milley on Possible Afghan Civil War and Terrorist Threat. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that maintaining U.S. security and intelligence in the region around Afghanistan will be a more difficult task. He states that a civil war in the country is likely and it could lead to the reconstitution of al Qaeda. A broader civil war could provide the conditions to terrorist groups to thrive. He said that the U.S. will need to reestablish some human intelligence networks - and maintain the capability to conduct strike operations. (Fox News, Sep 4, 2021).
U.S. Army Soldier from 18th Military Police Brigade provides a helping hand in support
of Operation Allies Refuge September 02, 2021 at Ramstein Air Base, Germany.
Soldiers from the 21st Theater Sustainment command have assisted with providing
security; food, shelter, and other basic necessities; and clean-up at the transit
center on RAB - all part of preparing travelers from Afghanistan for onward
movement to their final destination. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Katelyn Myers)
Saturday, September 4, 2021
Hundreds of Americans and thousands of at-risk Afghans are stranded in Afghanistan. Their future is uncertain and many will face death at the hands of the Taliban regime. There is news that the Kabul airport may reopen with assistance from Turkey and Qatar. Apparently domestic flights will resume shortly, followed by international flights. Rumors of a State Department agreement with the Taliban regime are in the news media. Social media also reports that the United Nations could begin evacuation flights. The United Nations Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) has already resumed humanitarian flights delivering relief supplies to over 160 humanitarian organizations - flying from Islamabad into Mazar-i-Sharif in the north and Kandahar in the south. Charter flights in and out of MeS is problematic - the existence of an air control element is questioned. This could provide an avenue of escape for the American citizens and Lawful Legal Residents (LPRs) still trapped there. It remains to be seen if the Taliban will let the Afghans SIV holders leave via the Kabul airport - or continue to hunt them down and execute them. The rise of the Taliban and fighting that brought it to power has caused a humanitarian crisis within Afghanistan.
"The Mysterious White 727" at HKIA-N and Afghan SOF. The tragic story of the Kabul airlift has generated a lot of stories about what happened and what some people think happened. In addition, there are the odd accounts that will peak the interest of many participants and observes. One is about an old 727 that showed up among the military transports at Kabul airport which drew a lot of interest among flight trackers and the open-source intel gurus. BLUF: Hundreds of Afghan SOF that were lodged in a warehouse at HKIA-N were flown out to Tajikistan to await further movement in a tent community. Read "The Story of the Mysterious White 727 That Appeared in Kabul After the Bombing of Abbey Gate", by Tyler Rogoway, The Drive.
The Carabinieri at HKIA-N. The soldier-policemen of this hybrid outfit - the 3nd Mobile Brigade - went outside the wire to bring thousands to safety. They rescued Italian citizens, other foreign nationals, and at-risk Afghans through Abbey Gate. The methods used were unique. The people evacuated were told to dress in a certain way, communicate with the Carabinieri using WhatsApp, and provide their locations via Google Maps. The Carabinieri would then venture into the throngs of Afghans crowding the gate, find them the people they were looking for, and escort them onto HKIA-N. Read about it in "Italy's Carabinieri Were the Perfect Force for the Kabul Evacuation", by Elisabeth Braw, Defense One, September 3, 2021.
A New Government. The world is watching for the announcement by the Taliban about the formation of a new government. There are reports that Baradar will lead the new Afghan government. Naturally, there is attention being given to the 'inclusiveness' of the new Taliban regime. Certainly there is a bit of infighting among the Taliban for key positions in government. There is pressure from the international community to bring in technocrats and non-Pastuns into the new government. This is a key point that will determine international recognition and aid as well as dampening down internal resistance. "Taliban Close to Forming New Government Amid Fighting Over Opposition Holdout", Gandhara, September 3, 2021.
National Resistance Front and the Panjshir Valley. A reincarnation of the Northern Alliance rebel group that fought the Taliban regime in the late 1990s and aligned itself with U.S. Special Forces in the fall of 2001 has resumed its fight against the Taliban. It has reconstituted in the Panjshir Valley and the Taliban are attempting to push them out. The valley is in the Hindu Kush mountain range located about 60 miles north of Kabul. During the occupation of Kabul in August 2021 by the Taliban thousands of refugees and some remnants of the Afghan security forces fled in the Panjshir Valley. The National Resistance Front is led by Ahmad Massoud, age 32, the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud - known at "The Lion of Panjshir". Read more in "Afghan resistance digs in to defend one remaining valley not conquered by Taliban", Yahoo! News, September 3, 2021.
Kazakhstan Says No to U.S. Afghan Refugees. The Kazakh president has said his country will not accept refugees who have worked for U.S. military and governmental organizations in Afghanistan. He stated his country would not be a temporary staging area for the refugees and migrants. More than 200 ethnic Kazakhs were evacuated from Afghanistan to Kazakhstan.
Tajikistan - Unable to Host Refugees. Thousands of Afghans attempting to flee the Taliban regime are finding neighboring countries are limiting access at border crossings. The interior minister of Tajikistan stated that his country lacks the infrastructure to host Afgahn refugees. He called upon international organizations - like the United Nations - to assist Central Asian states. In July 2021 Tajikistan stated it would accept up to 100,000 refugees - but then backed away from that statement. "Tajik Interior Minister Says His Country Unable to Host Many Afghan Refugees", Gandhara Blog, September 2, 2021.
Border Crossings. Pakistan's interior minister announced on September 2nd that the border crossing into Afghanistan at Friendship Gate in Chaman would be temporarily closed. Some people with proper identity documents are allowed to cross. The border at Spin Boldak opens and closes periodically. The Turkmenistan and Uzbek borders are curently closed. Flights into Uzbekistan are possible but there are strict rules to observe.
Operation Allied Refuge Update. Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby and Air Force General Glen VanHerck of the U.S. Northern Command briefed the press on the DoD effort to support the Department of Homeland Security in the immigration process upon arrival in the United States. Currently there are 8 DoD locations for the Afghan immigrants and refugees. The camps have a current capacity of 36,000 and it is anticipated that the camps will have a total capacity of 50,000. The current Afghan population (as of Sep 3) is about 25,600. DoD is providing transportation, water, food, recreation, and limited medical care. The DHS is the lead organization for the immigration process and helping the Afghans to transition to their new lives. You can watch the press briefing online.
A Re-direction of ANDSF Funds. The Global SOF Foundation is advocating for the $3 billion in money planned for the now non-existent Afghan security forces to be redirected to intelligence assets and operations in the region. (Military Times, Aug 27, 2021).
Friday, September 3, 2021
America's Honor - and Afghanistan. There are two separate issues being discussed about Afghanistan. One is the decision to liquidate America's committment to Afghanistan, the other is the manner in which it was executed and how the U.S. left its SIV applicants in danger. Read "A Dishonorable Exit", by Eliot Cohen, The Atlantic, September 3, 2021.
Charter Flights. What is puzzling is why private charter flights are not being allowed to land or leave from Afghanistan. Read more in an article by Lela Gilbert entitled "Why Is the US Government Blocking Refugee Flights From Afghanistan", Religion Unplugged, September 3, 2021. Some social media posts indicate that there are five or six large aircraft on the tarmac at Mazar-e-Sharif that can fly AMCITs and others to other countries.
Tweet by Rep. Waltz 20210903
What is Next for Private Sector Efforts? Some of the groups formed up will go away not that the push to get people onto HKIA-N is no longer an option. There are other groups that claim the ability to move people through nets / safehouses on the ground to safety - could happen, but that is tough to do. Certainly there are things that can be done to help those that did get to safety in their adjustment to life in American.
The Resistance. Many Americans are paying attention to the Afghans who have now arrived in the United States and the others at transit points who are waiting to arrive here. However, there are some tracking the events taking place in the Panjshir province of Afghanistan. Read more in "Heavy clashes between Taliban and anti-Taliban group in Afghanistan", CNN.com, September 2, 2021.
Son of Afghan SIV Now in U.S. Army - Helping Afghans in Kuwait. In 2015 Spc. Toraj Rozbeh's family immigrated to the United States as a Special Immigrant Visa family. In 2017 he joined the Army National Guard, deployed to Afghanistan in 2020, and is now in Kuwait assisting in Operation Allies Refuge. (DVIDS, Aug 30, 2021).
Afghans in Wisconsin and the KY Air Guard. One of the military installations receiving and housing Afghan evacuees is Fort McCoy, Wisconsin. The Department of Defense is supporting the U.S. State Department in the relocation effort with temporary housing, sustainment, and support for Afghan Special Immigrant VIsa principal applicants, their families, and other individuals at risk. The Kentucky Air Guard played a key role in the Afghan evacuation in the Fort McCoy operation. (DVIDS, Sep 3, 2021).
Operation Soccer Balls. There have been some successes and failures in private sector operations to get Afghans onto HKIA-N. One was an attempt to get members of the Afghan national female soccer team, staff, and others to safety - but one that failed due to the large IED attack that killed 13 Americans and over 100 Afghans at Abbey Gate. Read more in "Afghanistan's national girls soccer team in hiding after terrorist blast", New York Post, September 3, 2021.
Representative Has Words about President Biden. House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Mullin said that the White House and Department of Defense are lying about the ability of U.S. citizens to access the Kabul airport during the noncombatant evacuation operation. Fox News, September 3, 2021.
Podcast about Task Force Dunkirk. Lt. Col. (Ret.) Russel Worth Parker is interviewed about what some private sector groups are doing to assist those wanting to depart Afghanistan. Pick Up The Six, SoundCloud, September 2, 2021. A lot of chat about Team American.
3. Milley: Afghan forces ‘not designed appropriately’ to secure nation in ‘lessons learned’ following withdrawal
I concur, General Milley:
"The Army itself – the army and the police forces were a mirror image in many ways – and we created and developed forces that looked like Western forces," Milley explained. "I think one of the big lessons learned here is maybe those forces were not designed appropriately for the type of mission."
My thoughts:
4. Assessment - must conduct continuous assessment to gain understanding - tactical, operational, and strategic. Assessments are key to developing strategy and campaign plans and anticipating potential conflict. Assessments allow you to challenge assumptions and determine if a rebalance of, ways and means with the acceptable, durable, political arrangement is required. Understand the indigenous way of war and adapt to it. Do not force the US way of war upon indigenous forces if it is counter to their history, customs, traditions, and abilities.
Milley: Afghan forces ‘not designed appropriately’ to secure nation in ‘lessons learned’ following withdrawal
foxnews.com · by Jennifer Griffin , Caitlin McFall | Fox News
Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin speaks with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman on vetting Afghan refugees
In an exclusive television interview with Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin, General Mark Milley said that one of the "lessons learned" from the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was the pitfalls realized in the Afghan security forces.
"The Army itself – the army and the police forces were a mirror image in many ways – and we created and developed forces that looked like Western forces," Milley explained. "I think one of the big lessons learned here is maybe those forces were not designed appropriately for the type of mission."
The general, who spoke to Fox News at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany, said the fall of the Afghan government occurred much sooner than officials had expected, despite thorough planning in the withdrawal of U.S. forces.
"The collapse of the Afghan army happened at a much faster rate and [was] very unexpected by pretty much everybody," he said. "And then with that is the collapse of the Afghan government."
"Afghanistan has always been a very difficult issue," he later added.
The general told Fox News that a lack of faith in the government by Afghan citizens ultimately enabled the Taliban takeover.
"One of the fundamental issues I think clearly is the corruption in the government…the government itself not having the legitimacy in the eyes of the people," Milley said. "You saw what happened at the end. The senior government elites, they all just literally bugged out."
Milley said that despite the frustration that Americans have expressed following what President Biden described as a "messy" withdrawal, the U.S. was still able to coordinate the rapid evacuation of 124,000 Americans and Afghans.
The administration has said it will continue its efforts to evacuate all Americans, Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) holders, and at-risk Afghans who wish to leave.
The general further sought to assure all service members and the families who lost loved ones in the War in Afghanistan that their efforts were not made in vain.
"War is a horrible, terrible thing," he said. "But I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that the troops that have fought in this for 20 years – they made a difference.
"They protected the United States from a kind of terror, from a terrorist attack for two decades," he added.
Milley also recognized the 13 service members who were killed during a suicide bombing in Kabul during the final days of the evacuation.
"Those 13 that were killed the other day at Abbey Gate, they didn't die in vain, they died so that others will live free," he added.
foxnews.com · by Jennifer Griffin , Caitlin McFall | Fox News
4. Pakistan’s Support to the Taliban is One of the Greatest Feats of Covert Intelligence
The subtitle itself is quite an indictment though I think that may be a little unfair. I am confident our intelligent community long ago recognized Pakistan's complicity in supporting the Taliban (and as I understand it creating the Taliban, though I will leave that to experts). Even though I am not an Afghan specialist I have read many open source reports over the decades decrying Pakistan complicity even as the author notes here by one of our nation's experts on the region
I think this comment at the end of her article from a reader is illustrative of the failure of many to heed expert analysis.
As usual very nicely explained by Christine Fair, with many points unknown to the world. What will be the fate of common Afghan people? What happens to women and girl education? Leaving Afghanistan is ok but you need to address this issue.
Excerpts
Christine Fair writes that Washington failed to understand the perturbing nature of Pakistan’s interests in Afghanistan, and ignored very early signals that Musharraf had in fact done a U-turn on its U-turn on the Taliban. This assessment, though correct, does not capture the whole sordid story.
Pakistan’s support to the Taliban prior to 9/11 was not a closely-guarded secret. When analysts say that the Taliban regrouped across the border in Pakistan at the end of 2001, from where they waged an insurgency for 20 years, they forget that the ‘border across Pakistan in FATA’ was not a black hole where the Taliban simply got lost.
The US was using Pakistani air bases and was in full contact with the Pak military. It stretches credulity to believe a nation that spent over $500 billion during 2001-13 on intelligence – as revealed by the Washington Post – and $527 billion more during the next seven years, was so utterly inept that it had no idea of Pakistan’s relationship with the Taliban for over two decades. Logically, only two conclusions are possible: either the famed capability of US intelligence is a hoax or, finding itself mired in a faulty strategy in Afghanistan, Washington was left with no option but to ignore what Pakistan had been doing.
It was an open secret that Pakistan had given safe haven and support to the Taliban while overtly denying their presence on Pakistani soil except in the FATA on the border with Afghanistan. The Pak army even had the gall to claim that they had carried out a 20-month long operation in the area and cleared it of the Taliban.
Pakistan’s Support to the Taliban is One of the Greatest Feats of Covert Intelligence
It stretches credulity to believe that the US, which spent over $1000 billion on intelligence from 2001-20, was so utterly inept that it had no idea of Pakistan’s relationship with the Taliban for over two decades.
The presence of the Inter Services Intelligence chief in Kabul this week is an in-your-face reminder of Pakistan’s role in protecting and promoting the Afghan Taliban during the course of the latter’s war with the United States.
Pakistan’s aim throughout was to use the Taliban as a proxy to curtail Indian influence in Afghanistan. and, circumstances permitting, to perhaps escalate violence in Kashmir.
During this period, India invested $3 billion worth of goodwill in Afghanistan – building civilian infrastructure like dams and schools – but its efforts came to naught in a matter of few days. This is because the Indian strategic establishment’s military assessment of the war in Afghanistan – which relied on ‘wisdom’ borrowed from the United States – was wrong from the very beginning. It should have been clear to New Delhi that something was fundamentally flawed in the American strategy when the 21,600 pound MOAB (Mother of All Bombs), the 15,000 pound Daisy Cutter and 2,000 pound Thermobaric bombs failed to break the will of the Taliban to continue fighting. However, India persisted with American blinkers on its vision.
We did not wake up even when the Taliban, beginning in 2005, stopped engaging the Americans in direct combat and started laying emphasis on asymmetrical warfare tactics like suicide bombing and IED attacks. We could never appreciate the fact that the US counterinsurgency strategy floundered because ‘securing’ the territory won or liberated proved enormously difficult, both operationally and in terms of cost.
What Pakistan has gained and stands to gain
On the other hand, by helping the Taliban come back to power, Pakistan has ensured that its eastern frontier is rendered safe from two of its old fears: Afghan alignment with India; and a refugee flow that could cause destabilisation among Pakistan’s Pashtuns. The Taliban have also, as Anatol Lieven points out, given the Pakistani military an assurance that they will not, at least for the time being, support any Pashtun Islamist rebellion within Pakistan.
Contrary to what some Indian diplomats think, the mere fact that the Taliban still do not recognise the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is not likely to make much difference to the equation. The Durand Line might not be buried but there are issues and forces much larger than that which are at work, and its ghost cannot haunt Pakistan to its detriment.
On August 17, Noor Wali, the emir of the TTP (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) congratulated the Taliban. However, so far there is no indication that the Taliban will help the anti-Pakistan establishment TTP merely on grounds of ethnicity. Even if morality is not their strong suit, they know that fighting Pakistan on Pakistani soil would be materially different from fighting the US on Afghanistan soil.
More importantly, the Taliban know that the Pakistani army had never gone whole hog in its 2003 counterterrorism operations in the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) bordering Afghanistan against pro-Taliban insurgents enjoying a safe haven there. Gen. Musharraf undertook the action basically to appear to be doing a favour to the US under its pressure. However, as K. Alan Kronstadt et al had pointed out in their 2008 study for the Congressional Review Service, long-held doubts existed about Islamabad’s commitment to some core US interests and the operations were largely ineffectual with the militant groups having only grown stronger and more aggressive in 2008. Finally, I do not think that too much should be read into the release of TTP ex-deputy Maulvi Fakir Mohammad from a Bagram prison. When the Taliban freed hundreds of prisoners, there was no good reason that they would hang on to a TTP leader.
Pakistan’s 22-month long counterterrorism operations in North Waziristan were undertaken after 2014 far more seriously and were effective too, having killed some 3,400 militants. However, by that time their concerns were different. The fate of Afghanistan was sealed by then. In 2011 itself, Robert Gates had confirmed that the US was holding reconciliation talks with the Taliban; two agreements were signed in March-April 2012. This time, Pakistan knew that investments from China would not materialise if Chinese workers kept getting killed.
How US intelligence floundered in Afghanistan
Christine Fair writes that Washington failed to understand the perturbing nature of Pakistan’s interests in Afghanistan, and ignored very early signals that Musharraf had in fact done a U-turn on its U-turn on the Taliban. This assessment, though corrret, does not capture the whole sordid story.
Pakistan’s support to the Taliban prior to 9/11 was not a closely-guarded secret. When analysts say that the Taliban regrouped across the border in Pakistan at the end of 2001, from where they waged an insurgency for 20 years, they forget that the ‘border across Pakistan in FATA’ was not a black hole where the Taliban simply got lost.
The US was using Pakistani air bases and was in full contact with the Pak military. It stretches credulity to believe a nation that spent over $500 billion during 2001-13 on intelligence – as revealed by the Washington Post – and $527 billion more during the next seven years, was so utterly inept that it had no idea of Pakistan’s relationship with the Taliban for over two decades. Logically, only two conclusions are possible: either the famed capability of US intelligence is a hoax or, finding itself mired in a faulty strategy in Afghanistan, Washington was left with no option but to ignore what Pakistan had been doing.
It was an open secret that Pakistan had given safe haven and support to the Taliban while overtly denying their presence on Pakistani soil except in the FATA on the border with Afghanistan. The Pak army even had the gall to claim that they had carried out a 20-month long operation in the area and cleared it of the Taliban.
In 2016, Sartaj Aziz had admitted in a talk at Washington’s Council on Foreign Relations, “We have some influence on them because their leadership is in Pakistan, and they get some medical facilities, their families are here. So we can use those levers to pressurise them to say, ‘come to the table’.”
Had the US not given up on Taliban by then, could they have not pressurized Pakistan or used their HUMINT to take those leaders out? Were they so naïve as to blindly believe in the claim of the Pak army regarding military operations against the Taliban in FATA? Could US intelligence not verify their claims? If they chose not to verify, it was their mistake. Apparently, the ISI was so persuasive that they took the US for a ride or the US had run out of options.
Later also, it was indeed very clever of the ISI to make it clear that Pakistan could not negotiate with the Taliban on behalf of the Afghan government.
ISI gained its expertise during mujahideen war
The US-driven mujahideen war against the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s was one of the most brilliant covert operations ever designed in the history of warfare and intelligence. The CIA’s covert operation was called ‘Operation Cyclone’, in which they recruited, armed and trained fighters on a massive scale—according to some estimates, the mujahideen casualties were in the range of 150,000 to 180,000. It cost the US about $20 billion in that era.
Since the US was extremely particular about ‘plausible deniability’ for the entire operation, they had no option but to involve the ISI in recruiting, arming and training the mujahideen. Since the training had to be imparted secretly, the invented the device of the madrasa. The CIA and ISI opened a large number of such ‘Islamic schools’ in the remote, border areas. Instead of religious education, they were given military training there. Arms for the mujahideen were arranged from the illicit arms bazaar across the world. Weapons were shipped to Pakistan and from there they were sent over land to the fighters in Afghanistan. Brig. Mohammad Yousaf has described the operation in detail in his books, Afghanistan: The Bear Trap: The Defeat of a Superpower and Silent soldier: The man behind the Afghan jehad General Akhtar Abdur Rahman Shaheed.
The whole operation was brilliant in theory. There was but a small undesirable side-effect. And the world is paying the price of that side-effect even now. ISI, being closely involved in the whole process, pilfered a great quantity of arms. Citing arms-trades specialist James Adams in his book, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, John K. Cooley writes that between the delivery point at Karachi to the border checkpoints of the Pakistani army from where they were meant to be distributed to the Mujahideen, the ISI pilfered about 50% of the arms, which ended up either in their warehouses or sold off in international black market.
During the Battle of Kandahar (2011) as a part of 2011 Taliban Spring Offensive, foreign-aid officials leaving the city at the time or shortly before fighting broke out, reported seeing grease paper everywhere as the Taliban removed the wrappings from the packed weapons. It is understood that the weapons had come directly from ISI warehouses. An idea of the scale on which Pakistan siphoned off money can be had from a revelation by Andrew Elva of the Federation for American Afghan Action, who had claimed before the US Senate that between 1980 and 1981 itself, the ISI had siphoned off $700 million out of $1.09 billion in aid earmarked by the Congress for the rebels. The still unexplained 1988 Ojhri arms depot explosion in Rawalpindi may also have been part of this process.
ISI’s crowning glory
In the 20 years from 2001 to 2021, the ISI pulled the wool over the American eyes with such panache that, despite a constant uncomfortable feeling all along about what they had been doing, the Americans could never pin any clear blame on Pakistan. Having earned their spurs in the Mujahideen War, the ISI, while pretending to be an ally of the US in their two-decade long war in Afghanistan, pulled the rug from under their feet.
They duped the only superpower in the world. They made them believe that they were undertaking counterterrorism operations against the militants hiding in FATA in 2003, whereas they cleverly avoided putting all their might behind it. They continued to equip the Taliban with weapons from the Mujahideen War. The smallarmssurvey.org publication ‘Surveying the Battlefield: Illicit Arms in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia’ infers from an analysis of the seized caches that most Taliban weapons were of older models. It also says that in 2005, the Afghan Defence Ministry had reported 475 seizures of weapons, including more than 2,000 rockets, 4,000 land mines, and 5 million cartridges on the border with Pakistan. Similarly, in January 2007, Afghan forces found 40 truckloads of machine guns, explosives, and rockets belonging to the Taliban that were hidden in mountain caves near the border with Pakistan. Obviously, the ISI had ‘made’ them ‘survive’ the 2003 military operations! As Stephen Tankel discloses in his US Institute of Peace study, they established a pattern of military incursions into FATA followed by peace deals that empowered the pro-Taliban Pashtun militants. These included a February 2005 peace agreement with Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan and the September 2006 Waziristan Accord in North Waziristan.
From a purely professional angle, what Pakistan has achieved in Afghanistan today has to be regarded as one of the greatest feats of covert intelligence. If anyone deserves to celebrate the Taliban victory, it is surely the ISI.
5. Suicide attack targets soldiers in Pakistani city of Quetta
Karma for Pakistan?
Suicide attack targets soldiers in Pakistani city of Quetta
CNN · by Asim Khan and Sophia Saifi, CNN
Quetta, Pakistan (CNN)Three people have died and 15 were injured in an attack on paramilitary troops in the city of Quetta in Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan.
Quetta is the capital of Balochistan province near the Afghan border. The province has seen a decades-long insurgency by separatists who demand independence from Pakistan, citing what they say is the state's monopoly and exploitation of the province's mineral resources.
The District Inspector General of Police for Quetta, Azhar Akram, confirmed to CNN that the attack was caused by a suicide bomber and took place early Sunday morning at a checkpoint of the Frontier Corp, the paramilitary troops stationed within the city of Quetta.
The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), claimed responsibility for the blast in a statement released to CNN.
While there have been targeted attacks by the TTP on the Frontier Corp in July, the deadliest recent assault carried out by the militant group was in April, when a blast outside a luxury hotel in Quetta killed four people and injured 12 others.
Read More
Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the incident in a post on Twitter Sunday.
"Condemn the TTP suicide attack on FC checkpost, Mastung road, Quetta. My condolences go to the families of the martyrs & prayers for the recovery of the injured. Salute our security forces & their sacrifices to keep us safe by thwarting foreign-backed terrorists' designs," the tweet read.
Journalist Asim Khan reported from Quetta with Sophia Saifi in Islamabad.
CNN · by Asim Khan and Sophia Saifi, CNN
6. The Navy SEAL Who Went Rogue
I too am bullish on the Navy SEAL/Special Warfare leadership. I think there are many who get it (at least those with whom I have served). I certainly won't engage in SEAL bashing because of the actions of Gallagher the few like him.
Excerpts:
And yet even though he believes that Gallagher and his immediate superiors escaped justice, Philipps comes to a surprisingly upbeat conclusion. The Navy senior brass are shown as trying to do the right thing while being caught between their duty and the demands of a commander in chief oblivious to military values. One senior officer, Capt. Matt Rosenbloom, is downright heroic. Gallagher and his negligent superior Portier left the Navy shortly after the trial. While some members of Alpha did as well, others, including some of those most vocal about the rogue chief, remained. The eminently sane SEAL leaders — typified by Adm. William McRaven, architect of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden — are still in control. The pirates, in other words, lost, despite the cheering of the Fox News anchors and Mar-a-Lago acolytes who, one may safely assume, have never seen a knife sink into human flesh. If this is the military side of the deep state at work, long may it live.
The Navy SEAL Who Went Rogue
By Eliot A. Cohen
nonfiction
Eddie Gallagher after his acquittal, July 2, 2019.
ALPHA
Eddie Gallagher and the War for the Soul of the Navy SEALs
By David Philipps
This is a book about a man, two events and an institution. The man is Eddie Gallagher, the Navy special operator accused of murdering an Iraqi prisoner of war in Mosul in 2017; the events are the killing itself and the subsequent military trial at which he was acquitted, while attracting the enthusiastic support of President Donald Trump; the institution is the Navy SEALs, the elite special operators of the United States Navy.
Gallagher is, curiously, not that interesting save as a study in the definition of sociopathy. In Philipps’s meticulously assembled and brilliantly written account, he is not a warrior driven mad by the stress of combat, a good guy gone rogue or a victim of a brutalizing culture. Rather, he is a lousy shot (by SEAL standards, that is), a poor planner, a glory hound, a petty thief, a popper of tramadol and other opioids when he can get them and a cunningly effective manipulator of those around him. Philipps leaves little reason to doubt his conclusion that Gallagher really did plunge that special knife of his twice into the ISIS prisoner’s neck. But he also reveals that the killing was only the culmination of years of indiscipline, recklessness, tactical incompetence and bragging about, among other things, shooting a girl in order to get a terrorist.
There are other distinctly drawn characters too, including two who deserve calling out by name: Lt. Jacob Portier and Lt. Cmdr. Robert Breisch, superiors who were too intimidated or seduced by Gallagher, or too in awe of the reputation he had cultivated to take seriously accusations raised by his subordinates in Platoon Alpha of SEAL Team 7. In some ways, they are the more disturbing figures here, officers who shirked their duty to maintain good order and discipline.
The killing itself is recounted in the context of the bloody, destructive reconquest of Mosul from the Islamic State organization that had seized it from a crumbling Iraqi Army. The Iraqis were to take the city back supported by Special Forces units from the United States and allied countries. In theory, the special operators were to stay a kilometer back from the front lines. In practice, Gallagher ordered his men to turn off the tracking devices that would have allowed his superiors to see that he was taking them to the front and beyond. The fighting was brutal but, in the case of Alpha at least, not about close combat. Instead, it was a matter of bombing, booby traps, sniping and grenade barrages as well as drone attacks (from both sides — ISIS had successfully weaponized their own hobbyist quadcopters). The culminating event was the knifing of the prisoner in the presence of Iraqi troops (who did not much care) and Gallagher’s own hardened but horrified subordinates, who had long before concluded that he was dangerous, incompetent and out of control.
The trial, which took place in 2019, is more of a set piece: the dogged N.C.I.S. agent who assembles the evidence, the sinister consigliere whom Gallagher uses to get witnesses to pull back their story, the obnoxious but brilliant defense lawyer, the stumbling prosecutors, the jury, exclusively male, primarily enlisted, including one SEAL who Philipps asserts lied about having no prior relationship with Gallagher.
The trial is followed by a further set piece, in which Donald Trump leans on the Navy high command to inflict no penalties whatsoever on Gallagher, including reduction in rank and the removal of the prized SEAL Trident pin. Fox News personalities brayed in his defense, and the secretary of the Navy who tried to steer a middle course was eventually dismissed; he was caught between the demands of the service and the rage of a president who knew that his people loved the Gallagher type, and who rather liked murderous thugs who supported him.
But the most interesting part of this remarkable and engrossing book examines the SEALs as an institution and as a subculture within the military. The Special Operations community in the United States military consists of many subgroups — Delta, the Army’s elite, which is not the same thing as Special Forces (the Green Berets), as well as Air Force and Marine special units. The SEALs are different in several respects. They grew out of the underwater demolition teams of World War II, a roughneck outfit at odds with Navy culture from the outset. They operate chiefly on land (although they swim in and out if there is an opportunity to do so), and they have long had a reputation for pushing the limits of legality and indeed military ethics.
One of the more famous SEALs, Richard Marcinko, founded SEAL Team 6, an elite within an elite. He titled his memoir “Rogue Warrior,” and that’s what he was, which may explain why he was eventually convicted and jailed for conspiracy to defraud the government. But he merely embodied a culture that Philipps describes as piratical, and that went back at least to Vietnam, when the SEALs — far from anything like a regular chain of command — fought their own war as they wished, with little oversight and less concern for the rules. That included, at times, the rules that say you don’t kill prisoners and you don’t intentionally kill civilians.
Special Operations units must consist (and do) of individuals who push perseverance, courage and combat skills to the limit. They attract either some of the most eminently sane and honorable people one will ever meet, or the other kind — and Eddie Gallagher was most definitely of the other kind, though he was not alone. Yet both types remain human, and the misjudgments, betrayals and misconduct that Philipps documents bring that home. James Thurber’s Walter Mitty fantasized about heroic adventures: The kinds of people who join the SEALs get to live them, and while most remain thoroughly grounded in reality some end up in the grip of fantasies, including dark and hideous dreams that they turn into reality.
And Special Operations units have this characteristic too: They are small, insular and often loosely supervised by the far more disciplined and rules-based hierarchies that characterize the armed forces — which is why conventional officers are often appropriately wary of them. The result in the SEALs in particular was an institutional culture of omertà. The most dispiriting thing about this book is the way it shows just how deep that code of loyalty and silence, even about crimes, can run. In this reality of an opaque institution’s insularity shaped by a unique and difficult mission, the special operators are not so special. Think of pedophile priests protected by the Roman Catholic Church.
And yet even though he believes that Gallagher and his immediate superiors escaped justice, Philipps comes to a surprisingly upbeat conclusion. The Navy senior brass are shown as trying to do the right thing while being caught between their duty and the demands of a commander in chief oblivious to military values. One senior officer, Capt. Matt Rosenbloom, is downright heroic. Gallagher and his negligent superior Portier left the Navy shortly after the trial. While some members of Alpha did as well, others, including some of those most vocal about the rogue chief, remained. The eminently sane SEAL leaders — typified by Adm. William McRaven, architect of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden — are still in control. The pirates, in other words, lost, despite the cheering of the Fox News anchors and Mar-a-Lago acolytes who, one may safely assume, have never seen a knife sink into human flesh. If this is the military side of the deep state at work, long may it live.
7. US Special Operations Command has given up on its 'Iron Man suit,' but it's still looking for other high-tech upgrades for its operators
US Special Operations Command has given up on its 'Iron Man suit,' but it's still looking for other high-tech upgrades for its operators
Stavros Atlamazoglou Sep 3, 2021, 8:24 AM
US Army Special Forces soldiers conduct fast-rope training on a roof during a night training event for Exercise during African Lion 2021 in Tifnit, Morocco, June 15, 2021
US Army/Sgt. Jake Cox
- The Pentagon is looking to keep its edge over rivals by giving US troops the best tech out there.
- US Special Operations Command has been leading the way, often providing real-world testing for various weapon systems and technology.
- With its Hyper Enabled Operator program, SOCOM aims to equip special operators with technology to better understand the battlefield without impairing their ability to fight.
10 Things in Politics: The latest in politics & the economy
For years, the Pentagon has been looking to maintain its competitive edge over its near-peer competitors by outfitting US troops with the best technology out there.
The US Special Operations Command, known as SOCOM, has been a pioneer in this effort, often providing real-world testing for various weapon systems and technology that eventually is widely distributed among conventional forces.
This effort stalled amid decades of fighting technologically inferior enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the return of great-power competition, this time with China and Russia, has brought the need for technological superiority to the fore.
Central to this push for tech is SOCOM's Hyper Enabled Operator program, known as HEO.
SOCOM has already experimented with equipping commandos with advanced weaponry and sensors. In 2013, the command introduced the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, or TALOS.
TALOS was an Iron Man-style exoskeleton meant to give special-operators several advantages over adversaries. The program was canceled after a few futile years, but the concept lives on in the HEO.
New technology for new threats
Naval Special Warfare forces demonstrate how to operate a RQ-20B Puma unmanned aircraft system in Koror, Palau, July 21, 2021.
US Navy
The HEO program is designed to equip special operators with the technology necessary to understand what is going on around them without impairing their ability to fight or creating cognitive dissonance.
According to SOCOM acquisition officials, the HEO seeks to create commandos whose decision-making is aided by data analytics, creating cognitive overmatch and, among other things, ensuring real-time situational awareness — knowledge of what's going on around you — and connectivity with other operators, tactical commanders, and even headquarters.
"SOCOM's HEO program may well become the most important program in the SOF community in light of the Pentagon's shift from Afghanistan and counterterrorism to great-power competition," Herm Hasken, a partner and senior operations consultant at MarkPoint Technologies, told Insider.
"I would envision small-unit SOF teams providing persistent and continuous access" during initial operations meant to shape the perceptions of opponents and bystanders in "gray spaces" or those between competition and conflict, added Hasken, who has extensive experience with special operations and the intelligence community.
A US Army Special Forces soldier reloads his M4 carbine during a live-fire range at Panzer Kaserne, Germany, April 16, 2021.
US Navy/Lt. Robert Kunzig
Such operations will yield "insight into near-peer military critical infrastructure. This is to respond to near-peer anti-access/[area]-denial strategies through major lines of communication, particularly in the Pacific Region," Hasken said.
Anti-access/area-denial, or A2/AD, weapon systems are meant to create "bubbles" around strategic areas so rival forces, such as US Navy aircraft carriers, won't be able to approach.
US strategists are particularly worried about Russian A2/AD systems across Eastern Europe and Chinese A2/AD systems across the western Pacific.
In a testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this year, Gen. Richard Clarke, the SOCOM commander, stressed the need to deploy cutting-edge technology to special operators both for offensive and defensive reasons.
For the former, SOCOM wants its commandos to be able to or "see and sense the battlefield" without losing a step. For the latter, SOCOM wants to reduce their digital and electronic presence to make it harder for adversaries or their proxies to target US operators.
A US Special Force soldier establishes radio communication with Royal Thai soldiers during Exercise Cobra Gold, February 29, 2020.
US Army/Sgt. Garret Smith
"Our [HEO] initiatives seek to accelerate gains in our ability to provide power, protection, and force projection at the tactical edge," Clarke said at the hearing.
An additional feature is the ability to communicate with locals and partner forces through an advanced talk-to-translate device, removing the need for an interpreter. With special-operators already deployed in scores of countries, this will greatly increase their effectiveness in dealing with locals and winning them over.
For example, a Special Forces operational detachment deployed in Kenya to train local forces and conduct counterterrorism operations against Al Shabaab could use certain sensors and communications devices to collect information and "atmospherics" on Chinese troops or activities nearby.
Any data collected would be quickly processed and analyzed, informing both the special operators' mission in the country and the Pentagon's planning back in the US.
Getting the right gear on time
MC-130J Commando IIs with 1st Special Operations Squadron off the coast of Okinawa, January 6, 2021.
US Air Force/Capt. Renee Douglas
The acquisition process is a big part of HEO program. Technology is evolving fast, and SOCOM doesn't have the luxury to be too bureaucratic when it comes to cutting-edge systems that special-operations troops need in the field.
There doesn't need to be an open conflict for special operators to deploy overseas, and they often encounter competitors or their proxies in third countries.
"SOCOM continues to look at multiple means by which new technologies can be introduced to the command for evaluation," Hasken said, advocating "the immediate establishment" of a proving ground that can develop and evaluate electronic-warfare, information-warfare, and cyber-warfare technologies to support special-operations forces' core missions.
A US Navy SEAL reloads a custom Glock 17 pistol at a range during exercise Sea Breeze 21 in Ukraine, July 8, 2021.
US Army/Sgt. Patrik Orcutt
"This will also require the ability to move beyond just adjustments in procurement. It also requires a thorough examination of other obstacles," added Hasken, who spent time at the National Security Agency as SOCOM's chief cryptologist.
A lot of these systems already exist in the private sector. US military commanders have been making greater use of off-the-shelf technology, and companies like MarkPoint have sought to develop new commercial technologies to fill capability gaps for special-operations and cyber communities.
SOCOM's establishment of the Joint Acquisition Task Force is a step in the right direction, but Hasken said it also needs resources that will allow it to accelerate its ability to design and test prototype tools and send them into the field for further evaluation and integration.
Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate.
8. Flexing the Quad
This assessment about paying any price and bearing any burden is one that policy makers and national security professionals have to ponder and contend with.
Excerpts:
If the events in Afghanistan have made anything plain, it is that the American people — not Washington, not the Biden administration, but the American people — are no longer prepared to “pay any price, bear any burden” in the cause of liberty. It is not even clear that the American people are prepared to pay any price and bear any burden in the pursuit of their own interests against their confirmed enemies. In such a situation, the intelligent course of action is to bolster our allies and those nations around the world that share our values.
A cynical argument for this is that an assertive and well-armed Japan is a terrifying problem for Beijing and that a confident and competent European Union is our best bet for keeping Vladimir Putin and his heirs in check. As noted: Tokyo is a lot closer to Beijing than Washington is, and Berlin a lot closer to Moscow. A less cynical, but also true, argument for it is that American interests do, in fact, have a universal aspect, that the interests of the free world are also our interests.
To understand this is not sentimentalism — it is pragmatic. Because the rest of the 21st century is going to be dominated by one set of values or the other: Either liberal-democratic values will prevail because the liberal democracies work together to ensure that they do, or authoritarian nationalism will prevail because the liberal democracies die from exhaustion.
Flexing the Quad
September 5, 2021 6:30 AM
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The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold flies the Battle Ensign underway during the annual U.S.-Japan Bilateral Advanced Warfighting Training Exercise in the Philippine Sea, March 1, 2021. (Mass Communication Specialist Second Class Deanna C. Gonzales/US Navy)
Japan wants to arm itself against China, and we should help.
NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE
I
t is 7,000 miles from Washington to Beijing, but it is only a little more than 1,000 miles from Tokyo to Beijing. If it sometimes seems that Japan is taking China seven times more seriously than is the United States, the explanation may be as simple as that.
Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, is on his way out, and his most likely (though not certain) successor is a former foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, who embodies the increasingly assertive national-defense mentality of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Kishida has suggested that Japan requires, among other armaments, missiles that could be used to preemptively disable Chinese missiles that might be directed at Japan.
If you will forgive a little inside baseball, here is an anecdote that might be instructive: A Japanese diplomat, in a conversation reported by China analyst Gregory Kulacki in the Diplomat, expressed skepticism about the credibility of the so-called nuclear umbrella offered by Washington, and declared that “the only cooperative nuclear arrangement that would satisfy him would be for the United States to supply Japan with U.S. nuclear weapons, train the Japanese military to deliver them, and give the Japanese government the authority to decide how and when they will be used.” That diplomat, a Kishida ally, went on to become vice minister of foreign affairs with a portfolio that included the issue of “extended deterrence,” suggesting that his ideas are not seen as off-the-wall.
Japan had a great deal for which to atone after World War II, and, because it is the only country against which nuclear weapons so far have actually been deployed, its people and its politics are especially attuned to the dreadful nature of such instruments. But it may also be the case that the Japanese have overcorrected in the direction of pacifism — and in the direction of a reliance on the United States that at times is politically electric in Japan, which already is in the process of expanding its military capabilities, and whose leaders have declared the situation in Taiwan a “red line” for Japan–China relations.
As Kulacki notes, Japan has twice formally reconsidered its national posture vis-à-vis nuclear weapons, and has twice rejected the pursuit of them. But the last such review was in 1995, and much has changed since then. The China of Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin was a brutal, single-party police state, as it is today, but it was one that much of the world mistakenly expected to develop in another direction. Xi Jinping’s China is a different thing and apparently, from Tokyo’s point of view, a more worrisome one.
Japan is one quarter of the “Quad,” the informal grouping of four countries — the United States, India, and Australia are the others — intensely concerned about Beijing’s neo-imperial ambitions and working to coordinate responses to them. Japan has a great deal of power — economic power, cultural power, technological power, and even some military power. But its military capabilities are artificially constrained by historical considerations that have been overtaken by events. A well-armed Japan — possibly a nuclear-armed Japan — would be good for the Japanese, good for the United States, good for the Quad, and good for the world. It would need a defter touch than U.S. diplomacy has exhibited in recent years — our position toward Japan’s military normalization should be one of support and encouragement, not one characterized by the petty hectoring with which we too often treat our NATO partners.
Speaking of which . . .
Japan is not the only country with a leadership change imminent.
It hardly makes the news in the United States, but the Leader of the Free World is about to retire: German chancellor Angela Merkel, who for 16 years has been an anchor of liberal-democratic values, has reached the end of her career, and it is far from obvious that her conservative Christian Democratic Union will hold on to power after she exits the stage. Her anointed successor, Armin Laschet, made an ass of himself after deadly floods earlier this summer; the Green candidate, Annalena Baerbock, took off like a rocket before promptly crashing into a couple of petty, Bidenesque scandals (income reporting, plagiarism), and now is third in the polls; Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the finance minister and vice chancellor and a member of the center-left Social Democratic Party, finds himself, against expectations, the most popular candidate. Though there are some concerns that Scholz might align himself with far-left elements, there is little reason to think that the election of any of these candidates would presage a radical change in German foreign policy. But some major changes might be to Washington’s liking: Baerbock’s Greens are implacably hostile to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and have suggested that it could be shut down for political reasons even once it is operational.
Our European allies are dismayed by developments in Afghanistan. They had believed, naïvely, that the end of the Donald Trump administration would mean a more cooperative model of foreign relations in Washington, but President Joe Biden undertook the panicky and headlong U.S. surrender to the Taliban without even pretending to consult them, threatening Europe with, among other things, another refugee crisis.
The Europeans, like the Japanese, are increasingly of the opinion that the United States is no longer reliable as an ally or — worse — credible as an enemy. With U.S. foreign policy having been almost entirely subordinated to day-by-day domestic political calculation, the Europeans are, like the Japanese, looking to expand their own capabilities and their capacity to maneuver independent of the United States. And we should encourage our allies to do so.
Post-Brexit, France is the only EU country with a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council and the veto power that goes with that. The EU would like to see Germany added as a permanent Security Council member, and this project deserves the energetic support of the United States. A more powerful European Union serves U.S. interests generally, and, in this case, the move would dilute the power of permanent UNSC members China and Russia — a win-win for Washington.
If the events in Afghanistan have made anything plain, it is that the American people — not Washington, not the Biden administration, but the American people — are no longer prepared to “pay any price, bear any burden” in the cause of liberty. It is not even clear that the American people are prepared to pay any price and bear any burden in the pursuit of their own interests against their confirmed enemies. In such a situation, the intelligent course of action is to bolster our allies and those nations around the world that share our values.
A cynical argument for this is that an assertive and well-armed Japan is a terrifying problem for Beijing and that a confident and competent European Union is our best bet for keeping Vladimir Putin and his heirs in check. As noted: Tokyo is a lot closer to Beijing than Washington is, and Berlin a lot closer to Moscow. A less cynical, but also true, argument for it is that American interests do, in fact, have a universal aspect, that the interests of the free world are also our interests.
To understand this is not sentimentalism — it is pragmatic. Because the rest of the 21st century is going to be dominated by one set of values or the other: Either liberal-democratic values will prevail because the liberal democracies work together to ensure that they do, or authoritarian nationalism will prevail because the liberal democracies die from exhaustion.
9. Why the West must stay engaged in Afghanistan
The question is how do we engage? The UN?
Excerpts:
On the other hand, as French terrorism specialist Wassim Nasr pointed out on France24, the Taliban will be wary of their young fighters being drawn off to ISIS-K.
“If the Taliban are deemed too soft on the strict application of Sharia law, or too inclusive with Shia and minorities, this could hollow out their ranks,” Nasr said. Nor can they be seen too close to the Americans in counter-insurgency.
But if only to head off a humanitarian disaster that could send them more waves of refugees, Western countries can’t ignore Afghanistan. Iran faces another human refugee wave and continuing floods of heroin.
The same goes for Pakistan – with the added fear of “blow-back” terrorism from the local allies of the Taliban its intelligence service fostered. Russia with its Chechens and China with its Uighurs have specific security worries.
The more India’s Narendra Modi bears down on his Muslim minority, the more of a tempting target his country becomes for Afghanistan-based terrorists.
The US and its allies are unlikely to go back into Kabul soon, as much as the Taliban are hanging out for recognition. Continuing drone strikes would make a US envoy’s position very difficult and dangerous.
China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan have kept their embassies open, and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates will be there. It’s not a great lineup for political and social liberalism.
It looks like a time to boost UN agencies, and “good office” diplomacy from more detached powers like Japan and Muslim nations like Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh.
Why the West must stay engaged in Afghanistan
The Taliban has not changed its extremist stripes but is showing a surprising pragmatism in its early dealings with its sworn enemies
It’s been a glum welcome for the return of Taliban rule in Kabul: desperate crowds at the airport hoping to join the American-led airlift out, fearful women staying at home, men letting their beards grow, chaos as cash runs out.
Contrast that to the joy in the Western city of Herat in November-December 2011, after the city’s money-changers ousted the Taliban – perhaps the first case of armed bankers liberating a city – at a meeting of the local writers’ society.
Then, Mohammed Nasir Kafesh came out as the author of a satirical poem that had infuriated the Talibs, and Leila Razeqi told of how, after being expelled from university as a woman, she’d organized tutorials for herself and friends under the guise of a sewing circle.
After the United States, Canadians, Europeans and Antipodeans spent two decades trying to build up an alternative government of liberal Islamic persuasion, only to see it promptly collapse as the final military support was removed, should these powers have anything more to do with Afghanistan?
Two factors suggest they have little choice but to do so.
One is that even worse versions of militant Islam lurk in the wings. The August 26 suicide bombing at the gate of Kabul’s airport showed the Taliban and the Western allies have a common enemy, the Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K), the regional offshoot of the ISIS monster that grew out of the turmoil of Syria.
The bombing killed 13 American servicemen and women, but among about 160 Afghans dead were 28 Taliban fighters maintaining a cordon around the airport. While my enemy’s enemy may not exactly be my friend in this case, at least they have a common cause of wiping out this threat.
Afghan refugee children at the Afghan Basti refugee camp on a winter day outside Islamabad, Pakistan, on December 18, 2020. Many countries now fear a flood of refugees. Photo: AFP / Muhammed Semih Ugurlu / Anadolu Agency
The other factor is that Afghanistan is on the brink of a massive famine.
A US congressional report on April 30 said that as a result of Covid-19 and rising urban poverty levels, 16.9 million people were facing a “crisis” of food insecurity, including 5.5 million people experiencing “emergency” levels – the second highest in the world after the Democratic Republic of Congo – with almost half of children under five years old projected to face acute malnutrition in 2021.
Reports say it’s worsened.
During a trip in 2001, this reporter went to a sprawling refugee camp called Maslakh between Herat and the Iran border. It contained about 150,000 people from the drought-stricken northwest of Afghanistan, with 1,500 arriving each day.
On the fringes, families who’d not yet managed to get rations from the administrators were watching their very young and very old die on the bare scrabble plain.
The Americans have already begun talking to the Taliban. Donald Trump’s administration started two years ago, skirting then-president Ashraf Ghani’s elected government in Kabul. It reached an exit deal by agreeing to release 5,000 hardcore Taliban prisoners and without getting the Taliban to talk directly to Ghani.
On August 23, Central Intelligence Agency chief William Burns flew into Kabul and met the Taliban’s political wing head Abdul Ghani Baradar, presumably to talk about problems in the evacuation operation, and perhaps longer-term issues.
It can’t have been warm – the outfit that rained Hellfire missile strikes from drones talking to the one that set off roadside bombs – but it showed some pragmatism.
Two days later, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Biden administration was not abandoning Afghanistan, but was merely shifting its focus from military power to diplomacy, cybersecurity and financial pressure.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken talks about the situation in Afghanistan at the State Department on August 30, 2021. Photo: AFP / Jonathan Ernst
He said the administration has worked hard to build alliances and that the US would continue to work with allies both in Afghanistan and elsewhere. More recently, Blinken has said the US embassy would talk to the Talibs from Qatar. Britain said it would do the same.
By financial pressure, Blinken meant the US tap on money. Afghanistan has some US$9.4 billion on foreign reserves – held in US institutions. In addition, it has some $450 million in special drawing rights at the International Monetary Fund, also effectively controlled by US and European governments.
If the Taliban ask for funds to cover food and fuel imports to address famine, can they be refused?
Much depends on how the Taliban live up to their promises. One is not to let Afghanistan become a base for violent jihadism externally, and how firmly it tackles IS-Khorasan, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and al-Qaeda remnants.
At a meeting in Tianjin with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, Baradar seemed to promise it would not allow Uighur jihadists to operate into Xinjiang. The Taliban told Iran they would not persecute Hazaras and other fellow Shiite minorities again.
So far the Taliban have stuck to their deal with the Americans. The last US evacuation aircraft flew out of Kabul without interference. General Kenneth McKenzie, the US Central Command chief supervising the airlift of some 122,000 people, said his dealings with the Taliban had been “pragmatic.”
There appears to have been some shared intelligence that averted other ISIS-K attacks. The Taliban did not protest all that strongly when US drones fired missiles at ISIS-K targets inside Afghanistan after the August 26 bombing.
Residents and family members of the victims gather next to a damaged vehicle inside a house a day after a US drone airstrike in Kabul on August 30, 2021. Photo: AFP / Wakil Kohsar
It would help also if the Taliban showed themselves more inclusive of other forces. Some are willing to deal. Hamid Karzai, the president installed after the US helped oust the last Taliban regime in 2001 and like most of the Taliban leadership an ethnic Pashtun, is one figure back in Kabul talking to them.
Abdullah Abdullah, a veteran of the old Northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban front in the 1990s, and a senior figure in the ousted Ashraf Ghani government, is another.
Ahmad Shah Massoud, the son of the legendary anti-Soviet mujahideen warlord of the same name killed by al-Qaeda suicide bombers in 2001, is negotiating from his Panjshir Valley home ground north of Kabul, joined by Amrullah Saleh, the vice-president in Ghani’s government.
It doesn’t look like Massoud has won any concessions. On Tuesday, senior Taliban leader Amir Khan Motaqi said the Taliban had made many efforts to negotiate with leaders of the opposition forces in Panjshir, “but unfortunately, unfortunately, without any result.”
Taliban forces have the valley surrounded, and clashes are already reported. “We are still trying to ensure that there is no war and that the issue in Panjshir is resolved calmly and peacefully,” Motaqi said.
Even without this challenge, the Taliban could suddenly find themselves stretched to hold the entire country. In Jalalabad and other cities, protesters have been waving the red, green and black flag of the fallen Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, risking Taliban gunfire.
Old warlords like Herat’s Ismail Khan and Mazar-i-Sharif’s Rashid Dostum are back in play.
It would also obviously reassure the outside world if Taliban leaders stick to their promises of an amnesty for former government soldiers and civil servants, allowing women to work and girls to study with only head-scarves or cowls rather than the full-body burqa shroud, that some music and journalism will be allowed.
Afghan women hold placards during a protest in Herat on September 2, 2021. The defiant Afghan women said they were willing to accept the all-encompassing burqa if their daughters could still go to school under Taliban rule. Photo: AFP
Many with long knowledge of the Taliban will believe all this when they see it. Reports are starting to filter in of arrests, and women dismissed from their jobs.
Afghanistan is vastly changed from 2001. It then had very few telephone lines. Now 90% of the 40 million Afghans have access to mobile phones, with 12 million using data services.
Even illiterate people have smartphones and Facebook accounts set up by village phone shops. Journalism and entertainment television are thriving. Cities are full of young Afghans who returned from study and work experience overseas. Taliban leaders themselves are adept users of social media.
One example of this change comes from the story of Obaidullah Baheer, recounted in The Economist’s 1843 magazine. He is a grandson of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, founder of the fundamentalist Hezb-e-Islami group who fought against the Soviets, rained rockets on Kabul when it was held by the moderate Northern Alliance in the 1990s, then opposed the American presence after 2001.
For some time, well before the US withdrawal, Hekmatyar has been living quietly in Kabul. Baheer, his grandson, received a master’s degree in international relations in Sydney and has been teaching at Kabul’s American University.
Of course, all of this could be turned off. But now safely in power, would the leadership rob themselves of this channel to the population, as well as all its potential developmental leaps in e-commerce and banking?
Afghan resistance movement and anti-Taliban uprising forces stand on the back of a pickup truck as they gather in Abshar district, Panjshir province, on August 28, 2021. Panjshir remains the last major holdout of anti-Taliban forces. Photo: AFP / Ahmad Sahel Aarman
On the other hand, as French terrorism specialist Wassim Nasr pointed out on France24, the Taliban will be wary of their young fighters being drawn off to ISIS-K.
“If the Taliban are deemed too soft on the strict application of Sharia law, or too inclusive with Shia and minorities, this could hollow out their ranks,” Nasr said. Nor can they be seen too close to the Americans in counter-insurgency.
But if only to head off a humanitarian disaster that could send them more waves of refugees, Western countries can’t ignore Afghanistan. Iran faces another human refugee wave and continuing floods of heroin.
The same goes for Pakistan – with the added fear of “blow-back” terrorism from the local allies of the Taliban its intelligence service fostered. Russia with its Chechens and China with its Uighurs have specific security worries.
The more India’s Narendra Modi bears down on his Muslim minority, the more of a tempting target his country becomes for Afghanistan-based terrorists.
The US and its allies are unlikely to go back into Kabul soon, as much as the Taliban are hanging out for recognition. Continuing drone strikes would make a US envoy’s position very difficult and dangerous.
China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan have kept their embassies open, and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates will be there. It’s not a great lineup for political and social liberalism.
It looks like a time to boost UN agencies, and “good office” diplomacy from more detached powers like Japan and Muslim nations like Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh.
10. Beijing revs up South China Sea domination strategy
Excerpts:
Down the road, however, the US and like-minded powers, including key frontline states in Southeast Asia such as the Philippines and Vietnam, might have to consider more decisive measures.
Those could include diplomatic pressure, increased joint drills near and around disputed areas, military fortification of islands held by and rapid development of minimum deterrence capabilities of smaller claimant states, and intensified economic sanctions against Chinese elements involved in aggressive and unlawful activities in the South China Sea – all to dissuade Beijing from imposing an exclusion zone.
Some hard choices will have to be made in months and years to come, as China imposes its will on smaller rival claimants and gradually turns an international body of water into a de facto Chinese lake.
Beijing revs up South China Sea domination strategy
China's new foreign shipping law is the next step towards creating an exclusion zone in the contested waterway
This expert Q & A first appeared on Asia Times’ weekly Southeast Asia Insider newsletter. If you are not a subscriber, please sign up here.
China enacted a new maritime law on September 1 requiring multiple classes of foreign vessels traversing Beijing-claimed waters to provide detailed information to state authorities and take aboard Chinese pilots. Analysts say the legal requirements are clearly aimed at the United States and its allies’ military presence in disputed waterways.
The US Pentagon has called the new law a “serious threat” and violation of international law. It is unclear how aggressively and how widely the new law will be enforced, and over how wide of a geography, or indeed If China’s “territorial waters” will be interpreted to include nearly all of the hotly contested South China Sea.
Asia Times’ correspondent Richard Javad Heydarian shared his insights on China’s multi-phased strategy to dominate the South China Sea with the Southeast Asia Insider.
Do you expect China’s new foreign ship law to be enforced across the entirety of China’s nine-dash line claim?
Without a question, China’s default strategy is bit-by-bit, gradual domination of adjacent waters – or at least areas covered by the nine-dash line, which extends across two-thirds of the South China Sea basin – short of triggering armed confrontation with rival states and, more crucially, drawing in major powers such as the United States.
This so-called “salami-slicing” strategy has been an unqualified success throughout the past decades, so I expect China to keep pushing the envelope through a combination of para-military, quasi-legal, and ultimately military measures, which allow it to dictate the texture and direction of the South China Sea disputes for the foreseeable future.
Why do you think China imposed the law now and how does it fit with its wider strategic ambitions in the waterway?
I think we are increasingly moving towards the fourth phase of China’s domination strategy in the South China Sea. The first phase was the demarcation of Beijing’s areas of claims, roughly extending from the early-1970s to 2013, as China dominated the Paracel Islands (taken away from former South Vietnam), wrested control of Scarborough Shoal (taken away from the Philippines in 2012), and solidified its position on key land features within the Spratly Islands.
A satellite image of China’s work on a 3.1-kilometer runway in the disputed Spratly Islands. Photo: EyePress via AFP / Digital Globe
The second phase began in late 2013, with President Xi Jinping overseeing massive reclamation activities, which radically changed the geology as well as geopolitical tempo of the disputes, as a whole host of low-tide elevations and rocks were transformed into massive islands.
The third phase, beginning in around 2015, was the rapid militarization of these artificially-created islands through the deployment of advanced missile systems and establishment of kilometers-long airstrips capable of hosting large military aircraft.
The fourth phase, which began in around 2019, is the systematic deployment as well as empowerment of Chinese coast guard and para-military forces to swarm, intimidate and, if necessary, use coercive force against rival claimant states.
The introduction of the controversial coast guard law earlier this year and, most recently, the new foreign vessel law are quasi-legal maneuvers to give a veneer of legitimacy and formality to this new phase of China’s domination strategy.
For now, China seems to be still evaluating the pros and cons of moving to the final phase, which would be the establishment of a Chinese exclusion zone across the entire area, most dramatically through the establishment of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) via activation of its sprawling network of military bases across the South China Sea basin and beyond.
This would clearly be a tad too risky, potentially drawing in major powers, so Beijing is still sticking to its “salami-slicing” approach until it feels confident enough to drop the gauntlet.
Do you expect the law’s implementation to stoke more confrontation in the South China Sea?
So far, we see that the US and its allies, including the Quad powers, are examining various counter-measures against China’s domination strategy in the South China Sea, especially the usage of “gray zone” provocation under the fourth phase.
Thus, the increased frequency of American Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) as well as access patrols by other Indo-Pacific powers from Britain and France to India, Japan and Australia.
Much is at stake here, especially for smaller Southeast Asian states, which rely on the South China Sea for their food security. Livelihoods of millions of families along coastal regions of the Philippines and Vietnam will be further negatively affected by these latest Chinese restrictions.
As for the broader international community, this is about upholding rule of law and freedom of navigation in global sea lines of communications. Allowing China to get away with its tightening grip on an international waterway will have dire long-term consequences for a “free and open” order in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.
China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy soldiers patrol at Woody Island, in the Paracel Archipelago in the South China Sea. Photo: Agencies
Down the road, however, the US and like-minded powers, including key frontline states in Southeast Asia such as the Philippines and Vietnam, might have to consider more decisive measures.
Those could include diplomatic pressure, increased joint drills near and around disputed areas, military fortification of islands held by and rapid development of minimum deterrence capabilities of smaller claimant states, and intensified economic sanctions against Chinese elements involved in aggressive and unlawful activities in the South China Sea – all to dissuade Beijing from imposing an exclusion zone.
Some hard choices will have to be made in months and years to come, as China imposes its will on smaller rival claimants and gradually turns an international body of water into a de facto Chinese lake.
11. US, China dueling for power on the Mekong
Excerpts:
The Joe Biden administration is also putting emphasis on the Mekong-US Partnership, seen in US Vice President Kamala Harris’ visits to Singapore and Vietnam earlier this month.
Chinese cargo ships sail on the Mekong near the Golden Triangle at the border between Myanmar, Laos and Thailand in March 2016. Photo: AFP
While in Singapore, Harris said that “our partnerships in Singapore, in Southeast Asia, and throughout the Indo-Pacific are a top priority for the United States.” She also spoke against China’s excessive claims in the South China Sea, a message she repeated during her subsequent trip to Vietnam.
But the odds are arguably stacked against Washington on the Mekong. China is moving ahead faster and with more determination than the US in asserting its influence on Mekong River nations.
Because China sits at the river’s headwaters and has shown its power to turn it off at will, the MRC, Mekong-US Partnership and Japan’s initiatives seem destined to become sideshows in another rising contest for regional influence.
US, China dueling for power on the Mekong
The two superpowers have launched competing initiatives to win hearts, minds and control on the vital river
When China announced in early August a new US$6 million for new development projects in Myanmar, the sum was trifling in Beijing’s wider $1 trillion global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
China’s Foreign Ministry said the funds will be used for animal vaccine projects, agricultural development, science, disaster prevention and, surprisingly given the absence of foreign visitors amid a raging Covid-19 outbreak and political crisis, tourism.
But while the funds are a rounding error in the financial context of the two sides’ wider relationship, replete with multi-billion dollar plans for rail, road and port development, they represent a potential game-changer for Mekong nations including Myanmar.
The funds will be earmarked for projects under the Mekong-Lancang Cooperation (LMC) framework, China’s rival answer to the Western-initiated and funded Mekong River Commission (MRC).
The MRC has existed since the late 1950s and works directly with the governments of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam to jointly manage the river’s shared water resources and sustainable development.
Lancang is the Chinese name for the Mekong River. The LMC was established in November 2015 and brings together China, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, or all the riparian countries from the river’s headwaters in Tibet to its exit in the South China Sea, a distance of nearly 5,000 kilometers.
The LMC explicitly excludes traditional Mekong nation donors including Japan and the United States.
The Xiaowan dam in China’s southern Yunnan province on the Mekong. Image: Facebook
In July 2016, or less than a year after the LMC was formed, Carl Middleton and Jeremy Allouche, two Western scholars writing for the Italian journal the International Spectator, stated that “the countries sharing the Lancang-Mekong River are entering a new era of hydropolitics…[the LDC] proposes programs on both economic and water resource development, and anticipates hydro-diplomacy via China’s dam-engineered control of the headwaters of the Mekong.”
That’s the crux of the matter: China controls both the flow of water and development funds and there is very little downstream Mekong nations can do apart from cooperating with Beijing’s ambitions and designs for the region.
There are at least 11 Chinese dams on the river’s headwaters before it flows south and forms the border between Laos and Myanmar. And more are currently under construction.
Since China began constructing its cascade of dams in the early 1990s concerns have been raised in downstream Laos, Thailand and Vietnam about how water levels on the Mekong rise and fall widely when China opens and closes its dams.
On February 12 this year, water levels fell to particularly low levels that parched swathes of the river due to outflow restrictions from Chinese hydropower dams upstream, Reuters reported. Last October, Beijing agreed to provide year-round data on its dams and water flows but what has been released to date has been incomplete, according to reports.
Wide water flow fluctuations caused by China’s upstream dams, Reuters reported, “affect fish migration, agriculture and transportation that nearly 70 million people rely on for their livelihoods and food security.”
Chinese Communist Party-controlled media columnists have reacted angrily to suggestions that it is behaving irresponsibly.
Graphic: Stimson Center
Hu Yuwei, a columnist at Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece Global Times, wrote on May 10 that China’s “dam threat” is based on “weak evidence.”
He refuted “groundless claims” by outsiders and wrote that “drought downstream was mainly caused by reduced precipitation and extreme weather conditions.” China, Hu wrote, is “a responsible upstream neighbor” to downstream countries.
Others, however, see an emerging water war pitting China against downstream Southeast Asian nations that Beijing could leverage to push its wider agenda in the region, including controversial projects envisioned in its BRI.
Indian security analyst Brahma Chellaney has claimed that Beijing is using the Mekong’s flow as a “weapon” to strengthen its power downriver. International Rivers, a Thailand-based NGO, has said the MRC-LMC rivalry has made the debate on the Mekong’s future “more politicized and polarized.”
Indeed, the Mekong’s region’s geopolitics are intensifying as yet another theater in the rising geostrategic rivalry pitting the US and its regional allies against China.
On August 6, Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi held a video meeting with Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam to discuss what analysts see as countervailing development projects on the river.
The annual meeting was scheduled to take place in March but was postponed because of the February 1 coup in Myanmar.
Holding it too soon after the military takeover would have been seen as an endorsement of the coup, and Motegi notably urged Myanmar’s junta to release people detained since the military takeover.
He also pledged medical support for the region on top of around 5.6 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines and $68 million worth of medical equipment including oxygen concentrators provided by Japan.
In 2020, four years after China established the LMC, Washington created the Mekong-US Partnership to expand the work of the Lower Mekong Initiative, an earlier forum created in 2009 to counter the spread of China’s influence down the river and into Southeast Asia.
Water levels often run low on the Mekong River downstream from China dams. Photo: AFP Forum / Paritta Wangkiat
The partnership claims to have “improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the Mekong region” and in 2020 expanded its cooperation and programs to address “emerging challenges” related to economic connectivity, transboundary water and natural resources management and non-traditional security, including issues related to health security, pandemic response and cyber security – a laundry list of issues emanating from China without specifically naming it.
On August 2, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosted the second ministerial meeting of the partnership and the first under the anti-China alliance-building Joe Biden administration.
Brian Eyler, director of the Southeast Asia and the Energy, Water, and Sustainability Program at the Washington-based Stimson Center think tank, was quoted in media on August 12 as saying, “the US emphasis on transparency and inclusivity as part of the Mekong-US Partnership is enabling productive outcomes in the Mekong region and decreasing China’s accountability gap in its own backyard.”
To be sure, Washington’s involvement on the Mekong is not new. The MRC is actually a legacy of Cold War-era rivalry between the US and Soviet Union. But the MRC has since become increasingly weak, ineffectual and anachronistic, hence the new US initiatives.
Initially known as the Mekong Committee, the MRC was established in 1957 under a statute endorsed by the United Nations, but conceived by Raymond Wheeler, a retired US lieutenant general who fought the Japanese in Southeast Asia during World War II.
The model was the Tennessee Valley Authority, one of president Franklin Roosevelt’s grand New Deal schemes in the 1930s that built dams along the Tennessee River and brought electricity, irrigation and flood-control benefits to several US states.
But transplanting the idea to Southeast Asia – especially amid the instability of the Cold War and later the wars in Indochina – didn’t achieve the same results.
China was never a partner to the MRC’s forerunner, nor was Myanmar, as the move was then part of a wider strategy to unite the pro-Western regimes in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam against communist China and North Vietnam.
Washington’s new initiatives, on the other hand, have been constrained by a new geopolitical landscape where Laos and Cambodia are much closer to China than the US, and post-coup Myanmar is once again sliding back into China’s orbit.
While the US and other Western countries have condemned political repression not only in Myanmar but also Cambodia and to a lesser extent even Vietnam, China raises no qualms in light of its own human rights record.
Then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Chinese companies of “exploitative practices” in the Mekong River, for which he blamed the China Communications Construction Company as a big offender. He also said the Chinese Communist Party was responsible for an increase in human, wildlife and drug trafficking in the region.
The Joe Biden administration is also putting emphasis on the Mekong-US Partnership, seen in US Vice President Kamala Harris’ visits to Singapore and Vietnam earlier this month.
Chinese cargo ships sail on the Mekong near the Golden Triangle at the border between Myanmar, Laos and Thailand in March 2016. Photo: AFP
While in Singapore, Harris said that “our partnerships in Singapore, in Southeast Asia, and throughout the Indo-Pacific are a top priority for the United States.” She also spoke against China’s excessive claims in the South China Sea, a message she repeated during her subsequent trip to Vietnam.
But the odds are arguably stacked against Washington on the Mekong. China is moving ahead faster and with more determination than the US in asserting its influence on Mekong River nations.
Because China sits at the river’s headwaters and has shown its power to turn it off at will, the MRC, Mekong-US Partnership and Japan’s initiatives seem destined to become sideshows in another rising contest for regional influence.
12. Taliban special forces bring abrupt end to women’s protest
Why should we legitimize the Taliban's "special forces" by calling them special forces? They are thugs and criminal and human rights abusers. They should not be bestowed with the name special forces.
There is resistance potential in Afghanistan but there is also a stronger coercive capability in most places now.
Taliban special forces bring abrupt end to women’s protest
PBS · by Kathy Gannon, Associated Press · September 4, 2021
KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban special forces in camouflage fired their weapons into the air Saturday, bringing an abrupt and frightening end to the latest protest march in the capital by Afghan women demanding equal rights from the new rulers.
Also on Saturday, the chief of Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency, which has an outsized influence on the Taliban, made a surprise visit to Kabul.
Taliban fighters quickly captured most of Afghanistan last month and celebrated the departure of the last U.S. forces after 20 years of war. The insurgent group must now govern a war-ravaged country that is heavily reliant on international aid.
The women’s march — the second in as many days in Kabul — began peacefully. Demonstrators laid a wreath outside Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry to honor Afghan soldiers who died fighting the Taliban before marching on to the presidential palace.
“We are here to gain human rights in Afghanistan,” said 20-year-old protester Maryam Naiby. “I love my country. I will always be here.”
As the protesters’ shouts grew louder, several Taliban officials waded into the crowd to ask what they wanted to say.
Flanked by fellow demonstrators, Sudaba Kabiri, a 24-year-old university student, told her Taliban interlocutor that Islam’s Prophet gave women rights and they wanted theirs. The Taliban official promised women would be given their rights but the women, all in their early 20s, were skeptical.
As the demonstrators reached the presidential palace, a dozen Taliban special forces ran into the crowd, firing in the air and sending demonstrators fleeing. Kabiri, who spoke to The Associated Press, said they also fired tear gas.
The Taliban have promised an inclusive government and a more moderate form of Islamic rule than when they last ruled the country from 1996 to 2001. But many Afghans, especially women, are deeply skeptical and fear a roll back of rights gained over the last two decades.
For much of the past two weeks, Taliban officials have been holding meetings among themselves, amid reports of differences among them emerging. Early on Saturday, neighboring Pakistan’s powerful intelligence chief Gen. Faiez Hameed made a surprise visit to Kabul. It wasn’t immediately clear what he had to say to the Taliban leadership but the Pakistani intelligence service has a strong influence on the Taliban.
The Taliban leadership had its headquarters in Pakistan and were often said to be in direct contact with the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Although Pakistan routinely denied providing the Taliban military aid, the accusation was often made by the Afghan government and Washington.
Faiez’ visit comes as the world waits to see what kind of government the Taliban will eventually announce, seeking one that is inclusive and ensures protection of women’s rights and the country’s minorities.
The Taliban have promised a broad-based government and have held talks with former president Hamid Karzai and the former government’s negotiation chief Abdullah Abdullah. But the makeup of the new government is uncertain and it was unclear whether hard-line ideologues among the Taliban will win the day — and whether the rollbacks feared by the demonstrating women will occur.
Taliban members whitewashed murals Saturday that promoted health care, warned of the dangers of HIV and even paid homage to some of Afghanistan’s iconic foreign contributors, like anthropologist Nancy Dupree, who singlehandedly chronicled Afghanistan’s rich cultural legacy. It was a worrying sign of attempts to erase reminders of the past 20 years.
The murals were replaced with slogans congratulating Afghans on their victory.
A Taliban cultural commission spokesman, Ahmadullah Muttaqi, tweeted that the murals were painted over “because they are against our values. They were spoiling the minds of the mujahedeen and instead we wrote slogans that will be useful to everyone.”
Meanwhile, the young women demonstrators said they have had to defy worried families to press ahead with their protests, even sneaking out of their homes to take their demands for equal rights to the new rulers.
Farhat Popalzai, another 24-year-old university student, said she wanted to be the voice of Afghanistan’s voiceless women, those too afraid to come out on the street.
“I am the voice of the women who are unable to speak.” she said. “They think this is a man’s country but it is not, it is a woman’s country too.”
Popalzai and her fellow demonstrators are too young to remember the Taliban rule that ended in 2001 with the U.S.-led invasion. The say their fear is based on the stories they have heard of women not being allowed to go to school and work.
Naiby, the 20-year-old, has already operated a women’s organization and is a spokesperson for Afghanistan’s Paralympics. She reflected on the tens of thousands of Afghans who rushed to Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport to escape Afghanistan after the Taliban overran the capital on Aug. 15.
“They were afraid,” but for her she said, the fight is in Afghanistan.
PBS · by Kathy Gannon, Associated Press · September 4, 2021
13. The Afghanistan Papers review: superb exposé of a war built on lies
Excerpts:
The Afghanistan Papers is a book about failure and about lying about failure, and about how that led to yet worse failures, and so on for 20 years. The title and the contents echo the Pentagon Papers, the leaked inside story of the Vietnam war in which the long road to defeat was paved with brittle happy talk.
“With their complicit silence, military and political leaders avoided accountability and dodged reappraisals that could have changed the outcome or shortened the conflict,” Whitlock writes. “Instead, they chose to bury their mistakes and let the war drift.”
As Whitlock vividly demonstrates, the lack of clarity, the deception, ignorance and hubris were baked in from the beginning. When he went to war in Afghanistan in October 2001, George Bush promised a carefully defined mission. In fact, at the time the first bombs were being dropped, guidance from the Pentagon was hazy.
The Afghanistan Papers review: superb exposé of a war built on lies
In the summer of 2009, the latest in a long line of US military commanders in Afghanistan commissioned the latest in a long line of strategic reviews, in the perennial hope it would make enough of a difference to allow the Americans to go home.
There was some excitement in Washington about the author, Gen Stanley McChrystal, a special forces soldier who cultivated the image of a warrior-monk while hunting down insurgents in Iraq.
Hired by Barack Obama, McChrystal produced a 66-page rethink of the Afghan campaign, calling for a “properly resourced” counter-insurgency with a lot more money and troops.
It quickly became clear there were two significant problems. Al-Qaida, the original justification for the Afghan invasion, was not even mentioned in McChrystal’s first draft. And the US could not agree with its Nato allies on whether to call it a war or a peacekeeping or training mission, an issue with important legal implications.
In the second draft, al-Qaida was included and the conflict was hazily defined as “not a war in the conventional sense”. But no amount of editing could disguise the fact that after eight years of bloody struggle, the US and its allies were unclear on what they were doing and who they were fighting.
The story is one of many gobsmacking anecdotes and tragic absurdities uncovered by Craig Whitlock, an investigative reporter at the Washington Post. His book is based on documents obtained through freedom of information requests, most from “lessons learned” interviews conducted by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (Sigar), a watchdog mandated by Congress to keep tabs on the hundreds of billions flowing into Afghanistan.
In the Sigar files, and other interviews carried out by military institutes and research centres, Whitlock found that soldiers of all ranks and their civilian counterparts were “more open about their experiences than they likely would have been with a journalist working on a news story”.
Blunt appraisals were left unvarnished because they were never intended for publication. The contrast with the upbeat version of events presented to the public at the same time, often by the very same people, is breathtaking.
The Afghanistan Papers is a book about failure and about lying about failure, and about how that led to yet worse failures, and so on for 20 years. The title and the contents echo the Pentagon Papers, the leaked inside story of the Vietnam war in which the long road to defeat was paved with brittle happy talk.
“With their complicit silence, military and political leaders avoided accountability and dodged reappraisals that could have changed the outcome or shortened the conflict,” Whitlock writes. “Instead, they chose to bury their mistakes and let the war drift.”
As Whitlock vividly demonstrates, the lack of clarity, the deception, ignorance and hubris were baked in from the beginning. When he went to war in Afghanistan in October 2001, George Bush promised a carefully defined mission. In fact, at the time the first bombs were being dropped, guidance from the Pentagon was hazy.
It was unclear, for example, whether the Taliban were to be ousted or punished.
“We received some general guidance like, ‘Hey, we want to go fight the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan,’” a special forces operations planner recalled. Regime change was only decided to be a war aim nine days after the shooting started.
The US was also hazy about whom they were fighting, which Whitlock calls “a fundamental blunder from which it would never recover”.
Taliban fighters atop a Humvee vehicle celebrate the departure of US troops this week. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Most importantly, the invaders lumped the Taliban in with al-Qaida, despite the fact the former was a homegrown group with largely local preoccupations while the latter was primarily an Arab network with global ambitions.
That perception, combined with unexpectedly easy victories in the first months, led Bush’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to believe the Taliban could be ignored. Despite offers from some leaders that they were ready to negotiate a surrender, they were excluded from talks in December 2001 on the country’s future. It was a decision the United Nations envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, called the “original sin” of the war.
Rumsfeld declared there was no point negotiating.
“The only thing you can do is to bomb them and try to kill them,” he said in March 2002. “And that’s what we did, and it worked. They’re gone.”
Not even Rumsfeld believed that. In one of his famous “snowflake” memos, at about the same time, he wrote: “I am getting concerned that it is drifting.”
In a subsequent snowflake, two years after the war started, he admitted: “I have no visibility into who the bad guys are.”’
The Taliban had not disappeared, though much of the leadership had retreated to Pakistan. The fighters had gone home, if necessary to await the next fighting season. Their harsh brand of Islam had grown in remote, impoverished villages, honed by the brutalities of Soviet occupation and civil war. The Taliban did not represent anything like a majority of Afghans, but as their resilience and eventual victory have shown, they are an indelible part of Afghanistan.
Whitlock’s book is rooted in a database most journalists and historians could only dream of, but it is far more than the sum of its sources. You never feel the weight of the underlying documents because they are so deftly handed. Whitlock uses them as raw material to weave anecdotes into a compelling narrative.
He does not tell the full story of the Afghan war. He does not claim to do so. That has to be told primarily by Afghans, who lived through the realities submerged by official narratives, at the receiving end of each new strategy and initiative.
This is a definitive version of the war seen through American eyes, told by Americans unaware their words would appear in public. It is a cautionary tale of how a war can go on for years, long after it stops making any kind of sense.
14. How Taliban's Win Might Influence Radical Muslims in Southeast Asia
Excerpts:
Mainstream Muslims in Malaysia worry about how the Taliban will treat Afghan women, said Ibrahim Suffian, program director with the polling group Merdeka Center in Kuala Lumpur. Women throughout Muslim Southeast Asia are able to work and attend school.
Radical Muslims in Malaysia have “applauded” the Taliban’s victory, though, and the government of the largely Muslim country will pay close attention to any cross-border influence of Afghanistan’s new leadership, Suffian said.
“I’m sure they’re monitoring what’s happening,” he said. “I think there is a long-term concern that this will inspire more radicalized conservative types … to study religion in Pakistan and parts of India, so I think that has a long-term effect on the Muslim community here.”
Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines still have more control over local extremists than did the Afghan government that was deposed last month, Cau said. The Philippines would even allow entry to Afghans fleeing from fear of persecution, a presidential office spokesman in Manila said.
About 20 Muslim rebel groups still operate in the southern Philippines, a region known for five decades of periodic violence and 120,000 deaths, though the formation of a Muslim autonomous region in 2018 has eased some of that tension.
How Taliban's Win Might Influence Radical Muslims in Southeast Asia
By Ralph Jennings
September 03, 2021 03:31 PM
ALAMEDA, CALIFORNIA - The Taliban victory in Afghanistan could inspire radical Muslim groups in Southeast Asia to take up arms once more against their own governments, analysts say, and officials are on alert for potential violence.
Scholars say Muslim rebel fronts, such as the Philippine-based Abu Sayyaf, a violent rebel organization known for kidnapping tourists, and the Indonesian militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, a suspected plotter of the deadly Bali bombings of 2002, will feel empowered by the August 15 ascent of the Taliban to carry out localized attacks such as bombings.
"Taliban or no Taliban, we have always considered local extremism as a big concern," Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana told the Philippine News Agency on August 27. He noted agreements with Indonesia and Malaysia to share information and protect their sea borders.
Media outlets quote Indonesian officials as saying they, too, are on guard, and a counterterrorism police detachment is monitoring social media for any clues. Indonesia and Malaysia are predominantly Muslim countries. Many in the southern part of the Philippines are Muslim as well.
FILE - Police escort a suspected militant at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Indonesia, March 18, 2021. Suspected militants arrested in raids at that time were believed to be connected to Jemaah Islamiyah extremists.
Al-Qaida's backing
Extremist groups advocate Muslim independent states in Southeast Asia, a region of 660 million people that includes several key U.S. allies. Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah, among others, have been backed by al-Qaida, a terrorist organization that the Taliban once allowed to shelter in Afghanistan, according to Southeast Asia scholars.
“In terms of kinship and solidarity for these groups, there is a degree of support,” said Enrico Cau, Southeast Asia specialist with the Taiwan Strategy Research Association, referring to the Taliban.
“Although the Taliban doesn’t have a direct influence in the region, of course they exert a certain amount of indirect influence, which can be capitalized by the groups that are actually present in the region like al-Qaida or Abu Sayyaf,” Cau told VOA. Al-Qaida has helped rebels before in Indonesia and the Philippines.
Who Leads the Taliban?
Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada is Taliban’s supreme leader, a position he took following the death of his predecessor, Akhtar Mansour, in a 2016 US drone strike
Fighters with the Taliban, an armed religious-political movement, quickly captured almost all of Afghanistan on their way to taking the capital, Kabul, 20 years after U.S.-led forces ousted the group from power.
“This was superb for morale across Southeast Asia,” said Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington. “They’ve watched the Taliban driven from power, driven into Pakistan by the Great Satan — this feared nation the United States — and they watched the Taliban persevere, go up against a superpower and just with their discipline, their focus, their religious fervor, drive America out of the country.”
The Taliban, Abu Sayyaf, al-Qaida and Indonesia-based Laskar Jihad follow Wahhabism, a strain of Islam that is “responsible for creating” extremists and terrorists, University of Hawaii-Manoa faculty member Federico Magdalena wrote in a 2003 analysis.
Laskar Jihad’s Indonesian founder trained in Pakistan and fought with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan against the former Soviet Union in the 1980s. Terrorist leaders Abdujarak Abubakar and Khadaffy Janjalani trained in Afghanistan before forming Abu Sayyaf in 1991, the Philippine defense secretary said.
Shift to Mideast
The training of Southeast Asian militants shifted to Iraq and Syria after U.S. forces routed the Taliban in 2002. Eventually governments in Southeast Asia arrested hundreds of rebels, Abuza said, and weakened their power.
The Taliban influence “is more tangential now,” he said. “Very simply, since the Taliban was driven from power in 2002 and war on terror really began in Southeast Asia with arrest of hundreds of militants, it’s hard to make a case that those ties remain to this day.”
Those militants could get new support now from Afghanistan, but it would likely be squelched quickly this time, experts say. Government leaders are prepared, while most of their populations prefer a liberal, moderate type of Islam that discourages armed struggle.
“Srategically speaking and ideologically speaking, they’re different,” Cau said.
FILE - Muslims pray spaced apart to help curb the spread of coronavirus outbreak during an Eid al-Fitr prayer marking the end of Ramadan at Al Akbar mosque in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia, May 13, 2021.
Mainstream Muslims in Malaysia worry about how the Taliban will treat Afghan women, said Ibrahim Suffian, program director with the polling group Merdeka Center in Kuala Lumpur. Women throughout Muslim Southeast Asia are able to work and attend school.
Monitoring developments
Radical Muslims in Malaysia have “applauded” the Taliban’s victory, though, and the government of the largely Muslim country will pay close attention to any cross-border influence of Afghanistan’s new leadership, Suffian said.
“I’m sure they’re monitoring what’s happening,” he said. “I think there is a long-term concern that this will inspire more radicalized conservative types … to study religion in Pakistan and parts of India, so I think that has a long-term effect on the Muslim community here.”
Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines still have more control over local extremists than did the Afghan government that was deposed last month, Cau said. The Philippines would even allow entry to Afghans fleeing from fear of persecution, a presidential office spokesman in Manila said.
About 20 Muslim rebel groups still operate in the southern Philippines, a region known for five decades of periodic violence and 120,000 deaths, though the formation of a Muslim autonomous region in 2018 has eased some of that tension.
15. Forget Asia-Pacific, it’s Indo-Pacific now. Where is that?
A view from Australia.
Key point:
Whether they’re in the region or not, everyone is now looking to the Indo-Pacific. It is more than a colourful map.
Forget Asia-Pacific, it’s Indo-Pacific now. Where is that?
As nations jockey for power, the geopolitical map is being redrawn. Where does Australia fit? And who are our friends in this new world?
Mermaids and monsters ply the seas in a colourful map belonging to former diplomat Rory Medcalf. The map was created by Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius in 1571, just decades after the globe had been first circumnavigated, and yet it is strikingly modern, says Medcalf “monsters and mermaids aside”.
The map frames a section of the world: the Persian Gulf is at left, a sprawling India and China are in the centre and North America is at top right. Australia is a little mauve island at the bottom, labelled “Beach”.
Quaint it may seem but, in some respects at least, the map shows what we know today as the Indo-Pacific.
Indo-Pacific, a term once used mostly by marine biologists and bio-geographers, has become common parlance among diplomats, bureaucrats and politicians, finding particularly free and full expression at events such as G7 meetings. In Cornwall in June, talk of the Indo-Pacific was there at every turn. “A free and open Indo-Pacific is essential to each of our futures,” said US President Joe Biden. “The Indo-Pacific is the epicentre of strategic competition,” said Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. “Nowhere,” said Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne, “is change happening more rapidly than in our region, in the Indo-Pacific.”
In August, as Biden defended the US exit from Afghanistan, Vice President Kamala Harris was in south-east Asia affirming her nation’s “proud part” in the Indo-Pacific – “some of our closest allies and strongest partners are here”. When the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty recently marked its 70th anniversary, Morrison told Parliament, “ANZUS is the foundation stone of Australia’s national security and a key pillar for peace and stability in our Indo-Pacific region.”
So, what does Indo-Pacific mean? Where does it begin and end? And who are Australia’s friends in this region today?
Why do we need a new term to talk about where we live?
There was a time, not so long ago, when we said Australia was part of the “Asia-Pacific”. While there were never any hard and fast borders attached to the term, it implied a focus on nations in and around the Western Pacific Ocean: the Pacific islands, south-east Asia and up into Japan and China. In a bid to evolve Australia from its Anglo-American and European-facing world view, prime minister Paul Keating contended in 1993 that Australia needed to “look to the Asia-Pacific because that is where our great opportunity is. It is where our future lies”.
At that time, our most powerful ally was the United States, and its supremacy was unchallenged in the region. But for about a decade, this has been changing.
China, under President Xi Jinping, has become more assertive. There has been controversy over islands and reefs in the South China Sea being turned into military bases and airstrips. Beijing has moved to reassert control over Hong Kong decades ahead of an undertaking that the “administrative region” would remain under one-country, two-systems until 2049. And Xi has publicly said that it is time for Taiwan to also come back to the fold.
And other concerns are now part of the picture too, not least the ongoing threat of Islamic terrorism, the rising challenge of far-right extremism, and challenges posed by authoritarian countries such as Russia and North Korea. There is more talk of “grey zone” warfare, those aggressions such as cyber attacks and disinformation campaigns that fall between what we traditionally view as war – with its open, kinetic aggression – and peace.
The Prime Minister has declared that Australia is facing the most challenging security environment since the end of World War II.
Amid all of this, the United States is in decline relative to China, across several measures of economic and military power – enough to shake decades-old assumptions about its domination in this region.
The world’s second-most populous nation after China, India, has transformed from a South Asian power with a non-aligned foreign policy into a nation increasingly capable of influencing and shaping outcomes in the wider region. This is even while domestic issues, including widespread poverty, hold it back from being a peer competitor with China, which has become the world’s second-largest economy after the US, claiming to have eliminated absolute poverty in 2021, the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party.
Seas around the world are becoming sites of geopolitical jockeying and the Indian Ocean is no exception. Off the west coast of Australia, big changes are afoot. The ocean is home to major commercial shipping routes that connect the Middle East and East Asia via the Malacca Straits. Beijing’s navy has been growing its presence in this ocean, linked to factors such as its growing reliance on Middle East oil shipments and its objective to spread its influence to the east. It has launched infrastructure blitzes in Sri Lanka and throughout east Africa as part of Xi’s signature foreign policy Belt and Road Initiative, the “Road” referring to the Maritime Silk Road used to transport goods from Africa across the Indian Ocean and up into China via south-east Asia.
Enter the Indo-Pacific.
Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton used the term in 2010 but Australia was the first country to refer to it in official documents – the 2013 Defence White Paper makes 58 mentions while the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper defines it. By Australia’s reckoning, the Indo-Pacific ranges from the eastern Indian Ocean to the Pacific, connected by south-east Asia, home to nine of Australia’s top 10 trading partners. But the boundaries are not fixed.
Countries such as the US and India define the Indo-Pacific as the entire Indian Ocean region, extending to Africa’s east coast. The European Union’s ambassador to Australia, Michael Pulch, says European nations define the region “a bit larger”. “We define it from starting at the west coast of Africa, and ending in the South Pacific,” he says. Despite, or perhaps because of its fluidity, the term has been adopted by India, Indonesia, Japan and the 10 countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Medcalf, a national security analyst who wrote the book Contest for the Indo-Pacific: Why China Won’t Map the Future (2020), says the Indo-Pacific does have “a recognisable core in maritime south-east Asia – the sea lanes, the archipelago of Indonesia, the South China Sea”.
“The margins will shift according to the issue at hand … If we’re talking about China building military bases on the east coast of Africa, that’s an Indo-Pacific issue. If we’re talking about the day-to-day diplomacy and politics of east African countries with one another, that’s their issue,” says Medcalf, now the head of the National Security College at the Australian National University.
Only Russia and China consistently reject the term, says Medcalf, with the two countries seeing the enlarged definition of the region as an attempt to bring in more countries to contain them.
Isn’t this all just semantics?
If this all sounds a bit rhetorical, Medcalf points out that the Indo-Pacific is no less “invented” than the Asia-Pacific – but the Asia-Pacific “marginalised or excluded” India and the Indian Ocean. It is “a place, an idea and a wave sweeping global diplomacy,” he says of the Indo-Pacific. “It reframes an Asia-centric region to reflect growing connectivity and contest across two oceans.” Rather than one superpower being in charge, or two butting heads, it involves “an expansive array of new partnerships”.
“We thus have a metaphor for collective action, code for a globally vital region where China can be prominent but not dominant.”
It also cuts through questions about Australia’s place in Asia. “Here, at last, is a definition of our region in which Australia unequivocally belongs, transcending the old debate about whether or not Australia is an Asian country.”
India, meanwhile, has its own reasons for wanting to be on the Indo-Pacific map. An ancient civilisation, as is China, it lives in an uneasy symbiosis with its northern neighbour, dependent on China for goods such as machinery, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals. The nations share a border that runs through the Himalayas, the exact boundaries of which are so contested that fatal hand-to-hand fighting has broken out between Indian and Chinese troops there recently.
“Concern in India about China’s regional ambitions have grown sharply in recent years and are now amplified again by the brutal border clashes of past months,” says Medcalf. “India sees itself as a civilisational peer of China, even if its economy is much smaller.”
As for Australia’s relationship with India, the two nations signed a strategic partnership in 2009, which led to them sharing in joint military exercises and more regular dialogue between its political leaders. The relationship is still hampered by the lack of a free trade agreement, though, with India’s protectionist instinct making it difficult to contemplate a deal.
Still, Richard Maude, a former Office of National Assessments boss who wrote the 2017 White Paper defining our version of the Indo-Pacific, says the importance of India to Australia is clear “as an increasingly substantial bilateral relationship in its own right and as a partner in shared efforts to build a multi-polar region rather than one dominated solely by China”.
India will engage with the region “on its own terms”, he says. “[India] doesn’t do alliances and values strategic autonomy. But competition with China is nonetheless driving stronger convergences between India and its fellow Quad members.”
What’s the Quad and where does it fit in?
Made up of Australia in the south, Japan in the north, India in the west and the US in the east, the Quad, or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, encapsulates the Indo-Pacific world order. The Quad was conceived in the wake of the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 when the four nations co-ordinated relief. Its members didn’t meet until 2007, when they also conducted a large naval exercise with Singapore. An unimpressed Beijing saw the grouping as an “Asian NATO” designed to contain China. In any case, the Quad did not gain traction and the Rudd government announced its demise in 2008.
But the years that followed were dominated by China’s shows of strength in the region such that officials from the four countries met five times between 2017 and 2020, with each nation’s leaders finally meeting in 2021, a get-together Maude describes as a “dramatic leap forward for the Quad” and “one of the most significant developments in Indo-Pacific security architecture in recent years”. The 2021 meeting did not mention China by name; rather, members committed to deliver equitable COVID-19 vaccines to the region and collaborate on tackling climate change and driving technological innovation.
All the same, “the Quad has a signalling function”, says Maude. “It demonstrates to China that its aggression and zero-sum diplomacy in the region are creating a balancing coalition against China: the very thing that China fears. It similarly demonstrates resolve to other countries in the region feeling the press of China’s power, notably south-east Asia.” Japan, the US and India invited Australia to join their Malabar naval exercises in 2020, bringing a military dimension to the group, even though the exercises are not done under the Quad banner.
While the Quad’s rebirth occurred under former US president Donald Trump, Maude says the Biden administration’s early and obvious commitment to the forum has given it new energy and a practical agenda. “It is helping move the Quad from something that simply signals to a group that can act,” he says. “Importantly, the key initiatives coming out of the recent summit were about supporting the region at a time of need, not overtly about pushing back against China.”
Medcalf says responding to the COVID-19 outbreak in India was an important test for the Quad. The US had been criticised for not releasing surplus COVID-19 vaccines to India. “After some initial hesitation, they are all in,” Medcalf says. “I think the record will show that Australia played an important role in encouraging the US to assist its fellow Quad member in distress.”
Asked whether the Quad will form into a hard-headed security alliance like NATO or a soft multilateral grouping like ASEAN (see below), Medcalf says for now it is “something in between” and its future depends on China’s actions. “The more China seeks to coerce individual countries in the region … the stronger the Quad is likely to get and the more that the countries of the Quad will be willing to take the steps of strengthening ties.”
Of course, some of the Quad members already have longstanding ties. The US and Japan have had a security treaty since 1951. The 70th anniversary of the ANZUS treaty was celebrated on September 1. While the US, Australia and New Zealand have participated in wars in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, the ANZUS alliance has been invoked once, when the Howard government used it as the basis for its participation in the invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11 terror attacks.
“The alliance with the US remains fundamental,” says Medcalf, “because of not only the relative convergence of values, especially in a post-Trump America, but because of the exceptional strategic power and weight the US brings to helping Australia protect itself. The simple fact is that Australia could contribute to its defence but does not have the capacity to defend itself in a major conflict, he says.
Medcalf says there is no expectation among Quad members that they would go to war together in the case that, for example, hostilities escalated over a crisis in Taiwan. He says it would be more likely Australia, Japan and the US would work together in a military confrontation and India would be an “optional in or out”. “If [India’s] relations of mistrust with China continue to worsen, we shouldn’t be saying there is a strict limit to what the Quad can do together,” he says.
He points to the potential for a “Quad-plus” arrangement to deal with specific situations as they arise. Countries including New Zealand and Vietnam were added to phone hook-ups among Quad countries in March 2020, but the idea of a Quad-plus is still in its early days.
What does ASEAN do?
The 10 nations of south-east Asia have their own forum that works with other powers. ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, is an economic union made up of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam that is also a key regional forum for dealing with geopolitical issues. Australia became the first of ASEAN’s 10 dialogue partners in 1974 and participates in most of its forums.
ASEAN is regularly criticised for its lack of effective action in dealing with challenges in the region, most notably in its response to the recent military coup in Myanmar. ASEAN has released statements urging an immediate halt to the violence in Myanmar but has not moved to put direct pressure on the country’s military government through sanctions. Medcalf says ASEAN is significant mainly because of what it symbolises; “a commitment among the 10 countries at the geographic core of the Indo-Pacific to preserve stability and coexistence among themselves and to act as a diplomatic convenor for the wider region to discourage major power rivalry”.
But while it has the respect of other countries as a relatively neutral ground for diplomacy, it has its weaknesses, he says, providing restraints on China’s power “but not enough by itself”. Medcalf says the limits of ASEAN is one of the reasons why “minilateral forums” such as the Quad are forming. “Those minilateral forums are more effective at rapidly co-ordinating and you don’t have to abide by the consensus rule of ASEAN.” Medcalf warns ASEAN’s members could look elsewhere to get things done.
The East Asia Summit consists of the ASEAN countries as well Australia, New Zealand, India, the US and Russia. When the EAS was established in 2005, China tried to block Australia and New Zealand from joining but the two countries got on board with support from Japan, Singapore, Indonesia and other south-east Asian countries. When the US joined in 2010, and Russia joined with the encouragement of China, the EAS encompassed all points of the Indo-Pacific.
Does the Commonwealth still matter?
The Commonwealth – the 54 nations that once made up the British Empire – is not entirely obsolete but it has been fading in significance over the past few decades. Back in the days of apartheid, the Commonwealth played a key role in imposing economic sanctions against South Africa, with its then-secretary general Sonny Ramphal an important voice in campaigning against racism and the denial of human rights in the country.
It is difficult to see the institution being used today as the key vehicle to drive change on the international stage. Still, Medcalf says it is not worth jettisoning the Commonwealth as an institution because it has some “latent value” in standing up for democratic principles and the protection of democratic institutions. “That is certainly part of the glue and heritage of most Commonwealth countries,” he says. “And many important Commonwealth countries are in the Indo-Pacific.”
Where does Europe factor in all this?
The heightened attention on the Indo-Pacific does not mean other allies in Europe are no longer important. Britain’s exit from the European Union means it is looking to forge closer economic relations with countries further afield, including Australia – Canberra has secured a free trade agreement with Britain and negotiating one with the European Union.
The EU is also developing its own Indo-Pacific strategy. Pulch, its top diplomat in Canberra, says “we don’t see ourselves as coming back” to the region because in many ways it never left.
“Many European countries have longstanding relationships with the region, and that includes also partly as colonial powers in the past but also as traders, as countries that have cultural links and so forth,” he says. “But the focus is sharper these days because we all recognise the importance of this region for the stability and prosperity of the entire world … two-thirds of the global growth will come from the Indo-Pacific.
“So we think that we can bring a lot to the table here, for countries in the region in forms of investment, in forms of trade, development, aid but also as a provider of security and support of the multilateral-rules-based system, which was under strain, as we know.”
Medcalf says Europe has become increasingly relevant in the Indo-Pacific with Brussels now seeing China as a systemic rival, particularly in the battle for cutting-edge technologies such as 5G. “There is the beginning of a global consciousness that’s bringing European powers back to the Indo-Pacific, he says. “Now, that doesn’t mean their navies are going to come back in force, but it all makes a difference in standing up for the rules-based order in the region because most of the clashes and conflicts here are going to be grey-zone – coercion short of war, rather than all-out war.
“The very fact that European technologies at the moment is the main alternative to 5G is one way that Europe can make a strategic difference in the region. Europe also retains high levels of trust in south-east Asia and can provide options other than Chinese investment and development assistance.”
Closer to home, Medcalf says Australia needs to invest in institutions such as the Pacific Islands Forum and the Indian Ocean Rim Association. “One strong argument is that Australia should consolidate and strengthen its position as the convenor of choice among many of these organisations because we’re in just about all of them and we still have capacity and credibility in most of them as well.”
Whether they’re in the region or not, everyone is now looking to the Indo-Pacific. It is more than a colourful map.
Strategic friends: a quick guide to other alliances
- The Five Eyes group of the US, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand was formed in 1941 to share secrets and signals intelligence. It has expanded into a diplomatic grouping used to campaign on issues such as human rights, issuing joint statements criticising China over crackdowns in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, for example. New Zealand has questioned this expansion, arguing multilateral partnerships are the forums for diplomacy, and has been absent from some statements on China since 2020. Medcalf says Five Eyes is a “force multiplier” for Australia, and offers vital early warnings in any conflict so members “don’t need to waste resources against security threats that are imagined”. He says Australia doesn’t need to choose between groupings such as the Quad or Five Eyes. “A lot of the exciting work will be done on how to converge these new co-operative arrangements with another so that we get the benefits of both.”
- New Zealand has differed with Australia over how to handle China as well as over Australia’s deportations of Kiwi citizens on character grounds. But trans-Tasman relations stretch back to before Australia was a country: soldiers from Australia and New Zealand have been fighting together since the Boer War.
- The G7, or Group of Seven richest democracies – the US, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan – has also re-emerged in significance after its meeting in June in Cornwall (to which Australia, South Korea and South Africa were also invited). It has agreed to counter China’s Belt and Road scheme with its own infrastructure blitz for developing nations through a multibillion-dollar plan known as the Build Back Better World (B3W) initiative.
- The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, to be hosted by New Zealand in 2021, focuses on economics and trade but could play a key role in reaching consensus in the Indo-Pacific.
- The Five Power Defence Arrangement, between Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and the United Kingdom, has conducted military exercises together since its formation in 1971.
- The Quadrilateral Defence Co-ordinating Group, or “the other Quad”, includes the US, Australia, New Zealand and France and conducts regular defence exercises in the region.
Let us explain
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
