Kabul 2x2 Shotgun Wargaming

Time to pull out the Salamander wargame matrix.

When I talk “wargame” I am not talking about something that is done with a board with a bunch of little pieces being moved around, that is a Tactical wargame. No, what I am talking about is a grey-matter wargame at the Operational and Strategic level.

For those who don’t follow me on twitter, I outlined how this works a couple of weeks ago, 

For those not in "the guild" - "Blue" here are the good guys, the "Red" here are the bad guys. I'm only going to do 1 combination and 1 round. I'll define that for you; "1 combo" is how you run Blue vs. Red in the matrix you see here. You simplify Blue & Red in to two Courses of Action (COA); 1) Most Likely (defined by habit, requires least initial effort or risk by the party & assumes pliability of opponent to your will), 2) Most Dangerous (unexpected weighting of risk & action within ways & means, but not habit). The "turn" is one cycle of "Action-Reaction-Response." Different wargames have different structures & like religions, there are many confessions. 

This is how I ran things usually for NATO, heavily influenced by my German & Dutch Army peers, along with a few things of my own. I am doing this by myself playing both sides when - which is not canon or habit - I would prefer two 4-person teams plus an umpire, but you get what you pay for.

Let me quote for you from my Bible;

Here we are for today’s War Game for 26AUG21. This really needs to be done at least daily, if not twice daily from here on out through the quickening. 

Let’s define our COA.

Blue Most Likely: Tuck and Go

- Blue will stick to the 2359 Kabul time departure on 31AUG21. Senior officer will be the last boot on the last aircraft out. Equipment not usable will be destroyed in place

Blue Most Dangerous: Hungnam

- Blue will refuse to stick by the 31AUG21 deadline due to incomplete evacuation. While asking for more time, Blue will posture aggressively toward, and react accordingly, to any attempt to shrink the airport perimeter by Red.

Red Most Likely: Mujahid Delight

- Red will make every effort to seem the reasonable and honorable partner. Random incidents will be condemned as “rogue elements” or the newly minted ISIS-K forces. Every effort is made to look as positive and helpful as possible inside the framework of helping foreign forces extract themselves from Kabul.

Red Most Dangerous: Gandamak Thirsty

- Red wants to maximize the humiliation of Western and specifically American forces. While maintaining a, “we are doing our best” outward appearance, the security perimeter around the Kabul airport will be allowed to deteriorate. Various direct and indirect threats will be allowed to occur in the days leading up to 31AUG21 and if they cascade, will be permitted to go forward. As of 0000:01 01SEP21, Taliban and allied forces will take control of the entire airport and disarm any other forces by any means necessary.

As I am a one man show, and we don’t have time today to spend an hour fleshing out the result of each wargame. Here are the results of the four wargames conducted in my brain bucket for discussion.

BML vs RML: Quite Humiliation

- This is the best result as seen by the Biden Administration. Everyone follows the rules like the Model UN they did when they were 16-yrs old. Norms were obeyed, and the next week can be spent discussing how awesome the numbers were and any Americans left behind, well, they were warned so that’s on them.

BML vs. RMD: Doorgunner Wave

- US forces never make it to 2359:59 31AUG21. The security environment falls apart in a collapsing series of shrinking perimeter lines demarcated by the bodies of combatants and noncombatants killed by everything from small arms to VBIED. Maybe a C-130 but perhaps a CH-47 will be the last unit out, taking fire as it leaves. American dead and wounded were probably left behind, but that is unknown.

BMD vs. RML: Inside Straight

- US bluff to stay after the deadline works. While Taliban checkpoints are holding firm, no efforts are made to take the airport by force. Isolated security incidents happen, but nothing that threatens evacuation. Further qualified evacuees continue to arrive at Kabul airport though a variety of means.

BMD vs RMD: Osama’s Pride

- Taliban calls US bluff. With a short statement, “The United States violated our agreement. They have no honor.” or something to that effect. At 0000:01 01SEP21 a pell-mell attack on the airport conducted from all sides with a last stand at the tower or other fortified building. Taliban and international press, along with untold numbers of phone video, live stream the entire event for hours on end. Most captured Americans executed live except for female civilian and military personnel who are seen loaded in to vehicles leaving the airport.

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What are the odds of the four? That I don’t know. 

Tomorrow’s matrix may be different, but wargaming like this isn’t to predict the future, but to make sure you are prepared for different combination of possible futures. Hopefully you’re close.

It appears that our wargames in June and July were not close. Maybe we have a new team running them now.

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UPDATE: right after this post went live, reports of the event at the Abbey Gate at the Kabul airport have come out. The odds of Gandamak Thirsty getting better odds weighting have increased.

Iraq as it is ....

Since Newsweek (or Newslate) put out its "Hey, Victory" article a bit ago, I've wanted to put out this post - but I kept away from it. Strange.

Thinking about it more, I've realized why. I'm angry. Why angry? Because the media like Newsweek did everything it could to undermine our victory during the most difficult times mid-decade. They took every chance to push the bad - yet are well over a year late with the good. Too angry to blog on a subject? Yes, too angry.

Angry? Yes, because most who paid attention called victory back in NOV .... NOV '08. Let me quote my post from 16 months ago.

If you need a reality check - go back to JUL 07 and see where we were. Almost everyone but GWB and a few others were ready to quit.

There was a time when few others would come out to support and many others had already admitted defeat, had hit the mattresses or had fallen into great despair.

I referred to this time as Gandamak; a place where the 44th Foot stood their ground to the end. That is the way I was starting to feel as the pro-Victory crowd thinned to almost nothing - and defeat was the direction that the President-elect and his Party wanted us to go.

Looks like we won just in time.

I was not alone, and am not a brilliant guy. I also put this out at the bottom of the post from '08.

Now, back to Afghanistan and fix what we allowed NATO to let fester.

If 'lil 'ole me gets this stuff, why can't the press? I don't even get paid for this gig.

Over at The Corner, K-Lo gives you a hint why - and outlines some more where my anger comes from.

Thomas Friedman today:

Former President George W. Bush’s gut instinct that this region craved and needed democracy was always right. It should have and could have been pursued with much better planning and execution. This war has been extraordinarily painful and costly. But democracy was never going to have a virgin birth in a place like Iraq, which has never known any such thing.

Thomas Friedman in 2006:

It is now obvious that we are not midwifing democracy in Iraq. We are baby-sitting a civil war.

...

leaving, while bringing other problems, might also make it easier to build coalitions to deal with post-U.S. Iraq, Iran, Hezbollah and Syria.

So, besides praying on it, what should I do with my anger? I don't know. I don't even have a clear target to aim it at. I knew from the beginning that the Left would try as much as it could to turn Iraq into a loss - just like they did with the Vietnam War. In spite of them, we have something we can call victory in Iraq - and the Left had nothing to do with that victory.

Perhaps it is their attempt now to claim the victory for their own that bothers me - but that is being petty on my part. All Americans should take pride in the sacrifice, effort, and perseverance of their nation in Iraq. We succeed and fail as a nation - all of us.

From here on out, Iraq's future is up to the Iraqis. We did our part. Sure, there are things we could do to undermine and throw away our victory - like the Congress undermined and threw away our victory in Vietnam in '72 by ending support for South Vietnam in '75 - but I don't see that coming any time soon.

In the spirit of national unity and my own peace, perhaps I should pivot on my anger and take the "better late than never" approach and give a pleasant nod to Newsweek. Perhaps. If nothing else - then let me end with a quote from their article by Hussam Ali and Salih Mehdi.

What outsiders tend to miss as they focus on the old rivalries among Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds is that sectarianism is giving way to other priorities. "The word 'compromise' in Arabic—mosawama—is a dirty word," says Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, who served for many years as Iraq's national--security adviser and is running for Parliament. "You don't compromise on your concept, your ideology, your religion—or if you do," he flicked his hand dismissively, "then you're a traitor." Rubaie leans in close to make his point. "But we learned this trick of compromise. So the Kurds are with the Shia on one piece of legislation. The Shia are with the Sunnis on another piece of legislation, and the Sunnis are with the Kurds on still another."

The turnaround has been dramatic. "The political process is very combative," says a senior U.S. adviser to the Iraqi government who is not authorized to speak on the record. "They fight—but they get sufficient support to pass legislation." Some very important bills have stalled, most notably the one that's meant to decide how the country's oil riches are divvied up. But as shouting replaces shooting, the Parliament managed to pass 50 bills in the last year alone, while vetoing only three. The new legislation included the 2010 budget and an amendment to the investment law, as well as a broad law, one of the most progressive in the region, defining the activities of nongovernmental organizations.

The Iraqis have surprised even themselves with their passion for democratic processes. In 2005, after decades living in Saddam Hussein's totalitarian "republic of fear," they flooded to the polls as soon as they got the chance. Today Baghdad is papered over with campaign posters and the printing shops on Saadoun Street seem to be open 24 hours a day, cranking out more. Political cliques can no longer rely on voters to rubber-stamp lists of sectarian candidates. Those that seem to think they still might, like the Iranian-influenced Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, have seen their support wane dramatically. Provincial elections a year ago were dominated by issues like the need for electricity, jobs, clean water, clinics, and especially security. Maliki has developed a reputation for delivering some of that, and his candidates won majorities in nine of 18 provinces. They lead current polls as well.
...
In Iraq today, conditions seem more likely to reinforce than to undermine the gains so far. Iraqis have been hardened by a very tough past and now, coming out the other side of the infernal tunnel that is their recent history, many share a sense of solidarity as survivors. "Identities in Iraq are fluid, but there is more of a sense of an Iraqi national identity," says Middle East historian Phebe Marr, whose first research trip to the country was in 1956.

You notice this, for instance, at the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra, where conductor Karim Wasfi manages to extract harmony from Kurds, Christians, Sunnis, Shiites, and Bahais. Some of the women musicians wear the hijab, or headscarf; others do not. During the height of sectarian violence in 2006, almost half of the orchestra fled the country. Those who stayed behind got death threats, and one was killed. During one concert they had to play against the contrapuntal percussion of a firefight just outside the hall—but play they did. "It was about survival," says Wasfi.

Wasfi now says there are audiences asking for the symphony to perform even in conservative religious towns like Karbala, in southern Iraq. And bigger cities like Baghdad and Basra are regaining their old cosmopolitan airs. Abu Nawas Street along the Tigris River is once again lit up with lively restaurants serving broiled fish and beer. Liquor stores that had closed up shop during the height of the civil war now stack cases of Heineken and boxes of Johnny Walker Black in front of their doors. University students, once cowed by militias like the Mahdi Army, are feeling freer. Sawsan Abdul Rahman, an English major at Mustansiriyah University, says in the past she felt obliged to cover her head. "I wear a miniskirt now," she says.

I think my friend Skippy - who I have disagreed with on Iraq for years and I will grant was right on some details - will agree that, in a fashion, we can call a mini-skirt in springtime a victory of sorts.

Is a war worth a mini-skirt? In a macro-sense; yes.

Victory at Gandamak?

If you need a reality check - go back to JUL 07 and see where we were. Almost everyone but GWB and a few others were ready to quit.

There was a time when few others would come out to support and many others had already admitted defeat, had hit the mattresses or had fallen into great despair.

I referred to this time as Gandamak; a place where the 44th Foot stood their ground to the end. That is the way I was starting to feel as the pro-Victory crowd thinned to almost nothing - and defeat was the direction that the President-elect and his Party wanted us to go.

Looks like we won just in time. From Instapundit,

"THE WAR IS OVER AND WE WON:" Michael Yon just phoned from Baghdad, and reports that things are much better than he had expected, and he had expected things to be good. "There's nothing going on. I'm with the 10th Mountain Division, and about half of the guys I'm with haven't fired their weapons on this tour and they've been here eight months. And the place we're at, South Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there's nothing going on. I've been walking my feet off and haven't seen anything. I've been asking Iraqis, 'do you think the violence will kick up again,' but even the Iraqi journalists are sounding optimistic now and they're usually dour." There's a little bit of violence here and there, but nothing that's a threat to the general situation. Plus, not only the Iraqi Army, but even the National Police are well thought of by the populace. Training from U.S. toops has paid off, he says, in building a rapport.

He says the big problem everybody is talking about now is corruption. But hey, we have that here, too. He'll be heading to Afghanistan next week. "Afghanistan is a bad situation, but on Iraq I can't believe things have turned out so well."

He thinks that Obama will be able to pull troops out, and send some to Afghanistan, without creating problems in Iraq. Michael will be reporting from Afghanistan soon, and sending back video, so stay tuned. Things aren't going swimmingly there.

In the darkest times, one of the few bloggers out there that I felt covering my stern at Gandamak - Greyhawk.

I've been saying "we won" for some time now, so no argument on that point from me.
...
Folks who are arriving late to the "war is over and we won" bandwagon might want to get caught up. There are several places you could start here, but I suggest my post-election outlook for Iraq. It might be a bitter pill to swallow for Republicans, but therein I'll explain how you fumbled at the goal line.

Skippy, you owe me a beer.

Now, back to Afghanistan and fix what we allowed NATO to let fester.

The sober view from AFG

The US cavalry is coming; faster please.

“We're seeing history repeat itself,” said Haroun Mir, co-founder of the Afghanistan Centre for Research and Policy Studies and a former aide to Ahmad Shah Massoud, the assassinated Mujahidin commander. “The Taleban's trying to cut the main roads to Kabul to target supplies for foreign forces, just like the Mujahidin did with the Soviets. If the highways are cut even for two days, it could also create riots in the city.”

Kabul is vulnerable to blockades because it is surrounded by mountains and has to ship in supplies on three roads leading north, east and southwest. The British learnt this the hard way during the siege of Kabul in 1841, documented by Lady Florentia Sale in A Journal of the Disasters in Afghanistan. “Khojeh Meer says that he has no more grain,” she wrote on December 3, 1841. “He also says that the moolahs have been to all the villages and laid the people under ban not to assist the English and that consequently the Mussulman population are as one man against us.” A month later, the British began their retreat from Kabul.

In the 1980s it was Soviet forces encircled in Kabul by the Mujahidin. They withrew in 1989. In 1996 the Taleban took Kabul after capturing Wardak and Jalalabad and blockading the capital. Isaf, the International Security Assistance Force, says that circumstances are different today: it has superior air support and logistics to the Soviets and the Taleban. The militants, though, have experience on their side, thanks to former Mujahidin commanders who have blockaded Kabul before.

Gandamak.

Here is what is going on around Kabul, not unrelated to what the French ran into last week.

Ismatullah stood at the crossroads in the dusty Afghan town of Maidan Shah, squinted in the blinding noon sun and stroked his long, grey beard. 'What the governor said in our meeting was very good,' he said diplomatically. 'He quoted the Koran very correctly. But I am not sure how much power he has. Now I am going home - and the Taliban control my district, not him.'

The tribal elder lives only a few miles from Maidan Shah, in a part of Afghanistan which, until a few months ago, was considered under the authority of President Hamid Karzai's central government.

Both articles are well worth your read. We have a lot of work still to do in AFG. NATO, sadly, politically and therefor militarily culminated last winter ... this will be up to the USA to win with help from the Brits and other auxilliaries where they can.

Call it

Yep.

Michael Yon calls it.

The war continues to abate in Iraq. Violence is still present, but, of course, Iraq was a relatively violent place long before Coalition forces moved in. I would go so far as to say that barring any major and unexpected developments (like an Israeli air strike on Iran and the retaliations that would follow), a fair-minded person could say with reasonable certainty that the war has ended. A new and better nation is growing legs. What's left is messy politics that likely will be punctuated by low-level violence and the occasional spectacular attack. Yet, the will of the Iraqi people has changed, and the Iraqi military has dramatically improved, so those spectacular attacks are diminishing along with the regular violence. Now it's time to rebuild the country, and create a pluralistic, stable and peaceful Iraq. That will be long, hard work. But by my estimation, the Iraq War is over. We won. Which means the Iraqi people won.

Michael J. Totten calls it.

The war in Iraq is all but over right now, and it will be officially over if the current trends in violence continue their downward slide. That is a mathematical fact.

Fair.
There is still hard work to be done. Still more blood and treasure, in smaller amounts, that needs to be invested - but the tipping point is past. We can still screw this up - but from feeling like Gandamak to here was a long and sometimes lonely path for those who remained focused on victory in Iraq.

Now we need to look a little, no a lot, closer at AFG - which BTW the US military is already months ahead of the politicians, pundits, and media on. You will have to trust me on this. South Asia needs a lot of work - and we need to do it without crushing the post-culmination NATO alliance forces there either.

Keep pushing.

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UPDATE: Greyhawk and Rusty see it too.

Hegseth off the top rope

Yes, yes, Great Caesar's Ghost - yes!

Democratic leaders in Congress — and on the campaign trail — should take a lesson from the Maliki government. Swallow your pride, admit you were wrong about the surge, and get behind our courageous military.

Some courageous Democrats will do just that, others will continue to trumpet MoveOn.org talking points. The members who embrace MoveOn should remember that the American people may not like the war in Iraq, but they hate losing. Now that we’re winning, they won’t stand for talk of defeat.

In the meantime, the real credit must go to the courageous leaders who had the conviction to commit to Iraq when the outlook was bleak. Thank you, President Bush. Thank you, General Petraeus. Thank you, Ambassador Crocker. Thank you, Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman. Thank you to the 165,000 troops in Iraq. And thank you to the 3,921 fallen heroes of the Iraq war…your sacrifice was not in vain.

Funny, while dodging the hail of lead from Jezail, it looks like some reinforcements are showing up at Gandamak.

They aren't saying "I was wrong," - not they are taking credit.

The view from Gandamak

Is getting a lot better. A lot better.

In a dramatic turnaround, more than 3,000 Iraqi families driven out of their Baghdad neighborhoods have returned to their homes in the past three months as sectarian violence has dropped, the government said Saturday.

Saad al-Azawi, his wife and four children are among them. They fled to Syria six months ago, leaving behind what had become one of the capital's more dangerous districts—west Baghdad's largely Sunni Khadra region.

The family had been living inside a vicious and bloody turf battle between al-Qaida in Iraq and Mahdi Army militiamen. But Azawi said things began changing, becoming more peaceful, in August when radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his Mahdi Army fighters to stand down nationwide.

About the same time, the Khadra neighborhood Awakening Council rose up against brutal al-Qaida control—the imposition of its austere interpretation of Islam, along with the murder and torture of those who would not comply.

The uprising originated in Iraq's west and flowed into the capital. Earlier this year, the Sunni tribes and clans in the vast Anbar province began their own revolt and have successfully rid the largely desert region of al-Qaida control.

He11s own soundtrack

From Age of Hooper, a nice view of what want to surround me at my own political Gandamak. Like the good folks at LGF say,

Bad protest songs! Really bad protest songs! Infantile cheerleading chants! The drum circles! The horrible drum circles! Lesbians! Prostitutes! Pogo sticks! Giant puppets on stilts!

I'll take my friends. Oh, one last note - they should be careful they don't upset the Diversity Bullies because if I counted 'Diversity' like they do - well - the Left need more lectures (by and to themselves) about the value of Diversity.

The Table at Damascus

Again. A little voice is starting to whisper in my head - a little voice that is telling me that we may not make it to SEP, and if we do - it may not matter.

Two very sober voices, Capt. Ed and Allah are hearing that voice, as well as the Good Lt, and they point out some things going on that will trump anything Gen. Petraeus and MNF-I may be doing on the ground.

Remember the Centers of Gravity in Iraq; none of them are military. The center is cracking.

House Republican moderates, in a remarkably blunt White House meeting, warned President Bush this week that his pursuit of the war in Iraq is risking the future of the Republican Party and that he cannot count on GOP support for many more months.

The meeting, which ran for an hour and a half Tuesday afternoon, was disclosed by participants yesterday as the House prepared to vote this evening on a spending bill that could cut funding for the Iraq war as early as July. GOP moderates told Bush they would stay united against the latest effort by House Democrats to end U.S. involvement in the war. Even Senate Democrats called the House measure unrealistic.

The Iraqis start to appear beyond hope.

Iraq’s parliament session Thursday ended abruptly amid quarreling in the chamber that reflects the tensions between Sunnis and Shiites and the dissatisfaction among politicians with the Nuri al-Maliki government.

Bickering and chaos erupted after a parliamentary delegation read a graphic report describing and cataloguing the tribulations of displaced Shiite families who fled their homes in Diyala province, north and east of Baghdad, for Karbala — a city in the south considered holy by Shiites.

Parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani — a controversial Sunni who is not liked by all for his blunt and undiplomatic personality — asked the delegation to present parliament with its recommendations on the problems the families are facing on Saturday. He said the recommendations would then be forwarded to the government.

But the delegation members interpreted al-Mashhadani’s handling of their concerns and his grinning manner as dismissive and disrespectful, and they didn’t like the way other lawmakers greeted the report.

And contradictory.

A majority of Iraqi lawmakers have endorsed a bill calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops and demanding a freeze on the number of foreign troops already in the country, lawmakers said Thursday…

The Iraqi bill, drafted by a parliamentary bloc loyal to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, was signed by 144 members of the 275-member house, according to Nassar al-Rubaie, the leader of the Sadrist bloc.

The Sadrist bloc, which sees the U.S.-led forces as an occupying army, has pushed similar bills before, but this was the first time it had garnered the support of a majority of lawmakers…

Al-Rubaie said he personally handed the Iraqi bill to speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani on Wednesday.

And when it comes down to nuts and bolts, as Capt Ed describes, the end-game is closer than you may think.

If the Iraqis walk away from the Assembly without any of that getting accomplished, and then spend two months without making any effort at all, the war effort is over. The surge will be a dead letter in Congress, and almost certainly Republicans will start to consider defunding as an option as well as Democrats. Dick Cheney understands this, which is why he made a surprise visit to Maliki to explain the situation in small words.
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So far, the Republicans pledge to hang tough on the supplemental and not allow a 60-day funding scheme to pass, and even the Senate Democrats don't much care for that strategy. However, that agreement holds danger for the Bush administration. The Democrats would cheerfully give two more months of funding to get to the beginning of the fiscal year in order to get Republicans behind them for a September showdown on the continuance of the war. If Maliki and the Assembly take two months of vacation in the middle of it, they'll probably return just in time to wave good-bye to the American troops in Baghdad.

This can be won. We are making progress, but the politician's feet of clay is crumbling in front of our eyes. Is my Gandamak at hand? I'm watching the Iraqi lawmakers - and I think of the good people of Iraq - but in my mind I see more and more, in both the US and Iraq, the Table at Damascus.

Know your Afghan history

With the questions I have received on my often referenced Gandamak, Hopkirk, and The Great Game,I know a lot of you either don't have the time or the inclination to read this outstanding tome or were ill-served by the teacher's unions.

Well, instead of cursing the dark - I would like to light a candle. Grab and adult beverage and get comfortable. Give yourself an hour and join me in listening to Professor Kathleen Burk's lecture at Gresham College in the UK. Click here for the video by itself that you can, with RealPlayer, go full sized to see her maps and slides. She covers the bold faced subjects of the book, and is one of the best overview of The Great Game and the last 150 years of that part of the world and the Power Players that it has consumed.

If you like her lecture - you can get a few thousand dollars worth of college lectures here that covers Romans, Vikings, French, German, English, and other Great Powers.

Rummy in Iraq

I know I am more and more alone here - but here is the Rumsfeld I know.

One here of him with Marines (no one tells woman Marines the smile rule, I guess), and some Iraqi Army officers.

How do I feel about Rummy? This is close. And yes, I know that we few remaining Rummy fans are like the 44th Foot at Gandamak - I'm OK with that. Looks like I'll have SMASH with me on the last stand. He has a nice first person report here from the Puzzle Palace.