By Steve Hynd
It doesn't matter what Petraeus says. From the BBC:
A Nato air strike is said to have killed at least 12 Afghan civilians, hours after the US commander urged his forces to avoid hurting non-combatants.
The Nato-led Isaf force said it regretted the "apparent" loss of life in Nangarhar province, where its forces had been conducting operations.
It said it would work with an inquiry ordered by President Hamid Karzai.
"Work with", not "agree with". After the initial denial and subsequent investigation comes the attempted damage control:
Afghanistan's government said a new investigation shows 39 civilians, all women or children, were killed in a Nato rocket attack last month, fewer than first reported but dozens more than foreign forces have conceded.
The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it has been checking reports of civilian deaths since the government first said nearly two weeks ago that over 50 people had been killed by a rocket strike in southern Helmand province.
Yesterday, an ISAF spokesman, Lt. Raymond Jeffery, said he had no information about the result or progress of any probe and could not comment on the 39 deaths reported by President Hamid Karzai's office late on Wednesday.
ISAF previously said an initial assesment showed six people died in an incident in the area and at the time in question, and that a "majority" were insurgents.
Those killed in the rocket were civilians who had crammed in a house after fleeing a clash between the Taliban and joint Afghan and foreign forces, the Afghan presidential office said in its statement.
And then, finally, comes the paltry payout without admitting culpability:
The families of 102 Afghan civilians killed or injured in a botched NATO air strike in Kunduz last year are to be paid $5,000 each in compensation, the German government announced Thursday.
Announcing the payments, a Defence Ministry hastily pointed out the money was not a legal obligation but a �support payment.�
The payments of $5,000 (�3,800) were intended to provide practical help to the relatives of those who died, and seriously injured survivors � a total of 102 victims � he said.
Why does this keep happening, time and again, no matter what the generals say? Nir Rosen has the answer:
The fact is that once you get down to the rifle squad, COIN does not make any sense. Soldiers, whose greatest concern is living through their deployments, are being asked to mix Wyatt Earp and Mother Theresa. In public they pay lip service to COIN because that is the way to advance. Less publicly, officers speak of going in to villages and �doing that COIN shit.�
But COIN is not going in for a few hours, calling a shura�a sit-down�with some elders, and heading back to base before the chow hall closes. COIN is dangerous, and the military is risk-averse. American casualties peaked in Iraq when the military got serious about protecting the people. COIN advocates have changed the language used by the top brass, but the bureaucracy is still dominated by old-school army thinking. All they can do is try to take COIN and graft it onto conventional doctrine.
"The troubles with COIN are institutional. The American military and policy establishments are incapable of doing COIN."
The troubles with COIN can really be boiled down to two simple statements:
1) Whether we talk about "enemy centric" COIN or "population centric" COIN, the actual truth on the ground is that it is all and always "force protection" COIN.
That is, the notion that its "better them than us" when push comes to shove. Troops will use airstrikes or spray bullets at pregnant women when they themselves are stressed, scared or under fire - and in places like Afghanistan that is always. Officers who buck this, and lose soldiers in the process, know their careers will be gloriously COIN-approved and very, very short.
2) Because of this, there can be no "kindler, gentler war.
The negative pressure of the force protection paradigm on the ground will always outweigh any fine words on paper about "hearts and minds". A deep-seated paradigm of force protection, aka Fobbitmania, means: airstrikes based on bad, bought intel; contracted mercs running over civilians with whole convoys; relying for an appearance of success on bribing already corrupt warlords; relying on security forces manned by criminals who are already in the pockets of warlords; corruption and bribe-taking within the military (Petraeus' aide Lt. Col Lavonda Selph et al); acceptable "collateral damage" ratios of 50-1 or worse; freefire orgies on civilians after attacks - and a whole lot more, none of it condusive to long-term success.
When the connection between theory and real-world outcome requires America to do so many things that are unlikely or impossible, you should know the strategy and it's theoretical foundations are in trouble.
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