The Wrong Kind Of Clear

By Steve Hynd

The counter-insurgency paradigm for Af/Pak, as it was for Iraq, is "clear, hold and build". We've seen often enough that this paradigm has hit problems in Iraq, particularly with the "build" part - corruption and graft stopping construction or a total failure of the effort to build reconcilliation between feuding factions. But British troops have found, in Afghanistan, a new flaw - this time in the "clear" portion of the COIN mantra. The locals, getting wind of a major British operation and knowing full well that the "collateral damage" this would entail would be inflicted on them and their children, got the hell out of Dodge and left the field entirely to the Taliban.

The aim was to claim a lawless part of Afghanistan's troublesome south for the distant and disliked government far away in Kabul. They would seize the area, put up fortifications to limit movement and impose some order and authority.

But, despite the strict secrecy that cloaked the operation, the local people seemed to have got wind of it and � scared by the prospect of intense fighting � voted with their feet.

The day before the soldiers began their operation, drones monitoring the area showed people evacuating their homes, leaving Babaji in the hands of militants.

During the first three days of their two-week stay in the area, which will end when troops from the Welsh Guards relieve them, the men of the Black Watch battalion endured persistent attacks of small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. With the enemy hiding at a distance, in bushes and abandoned compounds, most soldiers never saw their foes. Only the snipers and the men monitoring the live video feeds from circling drones got sight of their quarry.

"They are so well camouflaged you can't see anything," said Rob Colquoun, a section leader, in charge of a team of snipers who killed 18 Afghans in one afternoon.

... "Running around, getting into fights and killing a few enemy is all very well and good, but my main concern at the moment is that we haven't talked to any local nationals or really got out our main message to the community that this time we are here to stay," said Major Steele.

If there's no-one there to "build" for, COIN's "clear, hold and build" doctrine has a problem.

The Brits eventually found an old man who hadn't evacuated with the rest and three senior officers promptly and comically descended upon him to do their "population centric" bit. He wasn't having any of it.

"Last year a big British bomb in Nowzad killed 600 people," he said. "Another 170 were killed at a wedding party."

..."I'm 80 years old and I have seen many governments and none of them have been any help. Why should I believe that this one will help?"

So the officers split for their forward operating base (FOB) before they could be attacked and take casualties. Later that day, the UK troops called in an American B-1 bomber to clear one guy out of a deserted compound which had been someone's home. It isn't just among US officers that FOBbit-based, casualty averse "force protection" instincts get in the way of "hearts and minds".