An insight into counterinsurgency from the Afghanistan Milblogs

I've found some new Afghanistan milblogs thanks to this very useful resource.

• 'The word 'infantry' just doesn't seem to cover everything we do here' according to a US Infantry Platoon leader in Afghanistan. He discusses the provision of medical supplies, the role of the US Army in winning hearts and minds for the Afghan government and 'collateral damage'.

• Over at 'Bill and Bob's Excellent Afghanistan Adventure', an old hand has some new faces to look after. Some of them, he says, just don't get counterinsurgency:

'I think that he thought that he was going to be hunting Taliban every day. Snooping around the rocks, tossing grenades into every suspect cave opening and generally scaring the living hell out of everything; walking like some kind of KISS band member through quivering Afghan villages who will toss their Talibs out in the street just so that this otherworldly killing machine will be satisfied and leave them alone.'

• While LTC Rich Phillips knows that counterinsurgency can't begin until you've found a way out of your room at base...

NATO troops in Afghanistan - the ins and outs

Lots on Afghanistan in the news today after David Miliband and Condoleezza Rice visited Afghanistan to try to patch up relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Back in Europe, US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, is in Vilnius trying to convince the other 26 defence ministers in the NATO alliance to step up their commitment.

Background:

• Here's all you need to know about the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. How many troops there are, where they are, where they're not...
• The Guardian (UK) looks at the problems facing the NATO mission, including NATO tensions, deployment issues, testy relations, Taliban and drugs.
  

Mainstream Coverage:

• Robert Gates in Vilnius urges NATO members to at least some send equipment if they can't send troops into combat. (AFP)
• Should we stay or should we go: the Canadians are due to vote on an indefinite commitment to Afghanistan. But only if NATO agrees to deploy an extra 1,000 troops. (National Post)
• It's all quiet on the northern front, which is why Germany want to send an extra 200 troops there rather than anywhere else. (Deutsche Welle)
• The Economist (UK) says its time for the sniping to stop. Internal sniping that is, not Taliban sniping...
  

From the Blogs:

• Meanwhile, far away from the diplomatic circus 'Sensei Katana', a member of the RAF, has been settling into his new temporary home in Kandahar. He offers his own assessment of troop numbers at the base he is at and, in the final sentence of the extract here, inadvertently gets to the heart of the problem:

"Kandahar is definately an American base with nearly as many Canadian forces as well. Next in size would be the Dutch, with us Brits coming in at 4th place. There are also Romanians & Estonians too. There are a couple of other nations but they really don’t have enough of a presence to make any real impact."

Afghanistan on BBC's Newsnight

I've just watched the Afghanistan piece that Newsnight have done on BBC 2. They decided to go with the angle that the US have agreed to help out reinforced British troops in Helmand province.

So the Newsnight team opted to have US General Wesley Clark (who spoke a lot of sense by the way) and former UK Secretary of Defence, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, discussing US and British military roles after a package by Diplomatic Editor, Mark Urban.

The problem was that this all became a bit of an Anglo-American love-in with Rifkind and Clark interrupting one another to pay tribute to US and British military strategy, forces, equipment etc respectively.

Presenter Kirsty Wark floundered around trying to bring up some sort of disagreement between the pair, pressing the line that US troops have better technological support compared to most British infantry units. Interesting? (To a specialist perhaps). But how relevant is this to the real news story here?

As I was watching, I felt that this discussion had become a poor sideshow to the two main issues: namely NATO's organisation and military structure in Afghanistan and the role of NATO's member states in implementing military strategy.

I wanted to hear from the Danes or the Germans or the Italians. I wanted to hear from a senior member of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Basically, I wanted to hear from somebody, (almost) anybody representing a different point of view on the story, not two people batting for the same team.

But then you can't always get what you want...not least when it comes to Afghanistan, as the UK and US governments are finding out.

I used to write 'history' - where Culture Secretaries never change.

I'm finding that keeping up to date is less of a losing battle; more a state of permanent defeat. At the beginning of January, I started a draft introduction for my research project on blogging. After a few weeks of reading around some of the issues I was missing out, I went back to this early draft.

This morning, I was having a quick read through my original effort, (while trying to ignore the noise from a huge construction vehicle stripping the road outside.) Several paragraphs down I arrived at a small section on Culture Secretary James Purnell's plans for public service broadcasting in the UK.

Seeing as Mr Purnell's now moved to the Department of Work and Pensions, I fear most of this is rather redundant and will have to be scrapped. I don't even know who the new Culture Secretary is...It must be Wikipedia time.

Contact in Iraq and other links

From the American Milblogs:

• Lt G at Kaboom experiences his first contact in Iraq...

• ...while Frontline Fobbit begins his journey back home to the USA with a 28 hour journey to Kuwait.
  

In Iraq:

• Last of Iraqis, doesn't like the new national flag...

• ...and nor does Great Baghdad.
  

On blogging:

• A Kenyan blogger believes 'bloggers are the ultimate source of primary information in Kenya today'.

Reading today - Web 2.0, 4 Rifles, doctors and 'operationalising independent variables'

It's all rather quiet on the blogging front. Maybe the bloggers have joined the other 300,000 people in the UK who call in sick on the first Monday in February.

Admittedly, I've cut my searching time for today because I have lots of 'methods' reading to do. (It's as exciting as it sounds). Here's a few links for lunchtime:

• The BBC Pronunciation Unit tells us how to say Web 2.0 without making a fool of ourselves. Nobody in their right mind would call it 'Web two dot zero', would they?
  

• Michael Yon delivers Part VII of his series covering 4 Rifles in Basra last year. (Michael's website is down at the time of writing.)

• And the 'this-is-totally-unrelated-to-my-project-link' concerns the revealing abbreviations that UK doctors apparently use about their patients: from TFTB (Too Fat to Breathe) to UBI (Unexplained Beer Injury).

Blood out of a Stone Act 2000 Part II (could be one of many)

I had a couple of visits to my blog yesterday from Ministry of Defence IP addresses but I obviously don't know if they were anything to do with my FOI request. (My blog is mainly about reporting war after all - it's not unfeasible that somebody in another department might have stumbled across it). If it was to do with my FOI request then it would be better to contact me directly in any case so I know what's going on.

And seeing as no one has done this, well over two months after my initial request, I've decided to officially complain to the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

Apparently I'm supposed to complain to the MoD first, before complaining to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). I can't really see the point of this in my case, (if the MoD won't contact me, how am I supposed to find out the result of my complaint?) so I'll be sending on my complaint to the ICO in due course. Here are some 'highlights' of the email I sent to the MoD:

"This is an official complaint regarding the handling of my freedom of information request. On 29th Nov 2007, I requested several pieces of information...

"The deadline for a response to this request is listed as the 3rd January. This deadline passed and, as I'm sure you are aware, this represents a breach of Section 10 of the FOI Act 2000. Section 16 also states that an organisation has a duty to provide advice and assistance. (I have hardly had any assistance at all as the following clearly demonstrates.)

"I have still had no contact from the MoD whatsoever in regard to my request. I am appalled by the manner in which my request has been handled. I would prefer not to have to spend time complaining, as it creates more paperwork for everybody involved. But the fact that nobody from the FOI team has had the common courtesy to even acknowledge my request, any of my follow up emails, or the messages that were no doubt left for them, leaves me with no other option.

"I am not particularly hopeful for a response to this correspondence. I am aware that I should wait for an internal review of the handling of this complaint by the MoD, before I can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office. But I am fed up of waiting, and unless I receive a reply to my request later today, I will be forwarding this email to the ICO in due course."

Update 4.30pm

I have finally had a response acknowledging my 'unsatisfactory experience'. Somebody else from the Information Access Office at the MoD is now chasing it up for me, promising a response as soon as possible from a member of the FOI team and an explanation for the delay. Let's hope it materialises.

(I should just point out that I've nothing against the MoD. Last year, I was very fortunate to be allowed access to film a Territorial Army battalion on exercise and SaBRE, an arm of the MoD that helps TA soldiers and their employers, were very helpful in agreeing to do an interview).