Petraeus hands over a 'political hot potato'
By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - United States special operations forces in Afghanistan, whose
commando raids and airstrikes against suspected Taliban targets have caused
large numbers of civilian casualties that have angered Afghans, have quietly
been put under the "tactical control" of the commander of US and North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) forces in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, for
the first time.
An order issued last Tuesday at the direction of Central Command (CENTCOM)
chief General David Petraeus gives McKiernan authority over all operations by
special operations units stationed in the country, as Colonel Gregory Julian,
McKiernan's
spokesperson, confirmed in an e-mail to Inter Press Service (IPS). The order,
which has not been made public, modifies previous command arrangements which
had excluded US special operations forces from McKiernan's command authority.
Although the order follows a period of rising Afghan protests against special
operations raids, there is no indication that Petraeus intends for the change
in command arrangements to bring about any fundamental change in such raids.
Nevertheless, it appears that those raids have become a political hot potato,
which Petraeus prefers to be in McKiernan's hands rather than his own,
particularly as Afghanistan heads into a politically charged period leading up
to a presidential election in August.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is certain to make his criticism of such raids
and their cost in civilian deaths an issue during the campaign.
In December, Karzai complained publicly about two such special operations raids
in Khost and Zabul provinces, one of which the US military admitted had been a
"tragic case of mistaken identity" that resulted in the killing of civilians.
A United Nations report released in February blamed such raids as part of the
reason for a major increase in civilian deaths in Afghanistan in 2008.
The rise in criticism apparently led the special operations command in
Afghanistan to reduce the number of those attacks briefly last month. Vice
Admiral William H McRaven, the head of the Combined and Joint Special
Operations Task Force-Afghanistan (CJSOTF-A), had ordered a dramatic reduction
in the raids for two weeks beginning in mid-February, according to a report in
the New York Times March 10.
But the targeted raids have now returned to their normal level, which may be as
many as dozens per week, according to the Times. US officials claimed to the
Times that the military had adopted new procedures aimed at reducing civilian
casualties, but failed to provide any specifics about what those procedures
were.
The new order is the latest indication that neither McKiernan nor Petraeus, who
is his boss, have been eager to take responsibility for the special operations
raids and their human and political consequences.
The day before the order was issued, Julian told IPS in an e-mail that special
operations units were already operating as though such an order were in effect.
They had begun operating on that basis ever since the USFOR-A (US
Forces-Afghanistan) headquarters was established on October 2, 2008, said
Julian.
However, McKiernan had shown no evidence of being ready to exercise command
authority over the special operations forces' commando raids and air strikes
against suspected Taliban targets after the establishment of that command. In
mid-October, two weeks after the new command was officially created, John Burns
of the New York Times reported that a new directive from McKiernan to field
commanders applying the more restrictive NATO policy on air strikes did not
apply to the special operations forces in Afghanistan, because they were not
under McKiernan's command.
And last week, Julian confirmed that a lull in the special operations raids had
occurred in February, but denied that McKiernan had issued the order, again
implying that they were not under his authority.
Both incidents suggest that McKiernan was content to have the CJSOTF-A, which
comes directly under the command of CENTCOM, continue to carry out plans for
the controversial targeted raids without his reviewing them in advance.
But Petraeus apparently prefers to have McKiernan bear the direct
responsibility for operations that are likely to generate even greater Afghan
and international outrage over the continued killing of civilians. In the
absence of Tuesday's order, Petraeus' command authority over the Joint Special
Operations headquarters in Afghanistan would have put him squarely in the line
of fire were the raids to become a major political issue.
The order, however, puts McKiernan between Petraeus and the issue.
The US command in Afghanistan has not always been so tolerant of the killing of
innocent civilians by special operations forces commando raids and airstrikes
as it is now. The commander of all US forces in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005,
General David Barno, imposed day-to-day control over special forces raids and
ended targeted airstrikes altogether.
Colonel David W Lamm, who served as chief of staff for Barno in Afghanistan,
recalled in an interview with IPS that Barno had exercised "veto authority"
over strikes against Taliban targets by special operations forces. "We had a
SOCOM [Special Operations Command] liaison officer in our HQ who briefed Barno
every day," said Lamm, now chief of staff of the Near East South Asia Center
for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.
As reported by IPS last October, Barno ordered an end to targeted airstrikes in
early 2004. Now director of the same center, Barno explained that he had
decided to stop the use of pre-targeted air strikes because the civilian
casualties they caused were "strategically decoupling us from our objective",
said Barno. "It caused blowback that undermined our cause."
Such targeted airstrikes were resumed after Barno was replaced by General Karl
Eikenberry in 2005. Eikenberry was nominated by President Barack Obama last
week to become the next ambassador to Afghanistan.
Lamm said he believes the tactical control over special forces operations was
lost when the command in Afghanistan technically became part of a NATO
operation in 2006. The result of that loss of control, said Lamm, was that
special operations teams would "go and do something, and the Afghans or US
forces then have to go in and deal with the second and third order effects of
their operations".
Barno believed that killing local Taliban leaders might not have significantly
reduced the Taliban's capabilities. The Taliban organization was "like a
starfish, not like a spider", Barno argued. "Even if you killed the leadership
- except for the very top guys - they would be quickly replaced."
Barno's conclusion about the questionable value of targeted attacks on the
Taliban was confirmed in a recent classified study of intelligence operations
in Iraq and Afghanistan by the Rand Corporation, prepared for the US Joint
Forces Command, which was based on interviews with more than 90 US and allied
military officers and intelligence experts.
The study, revealed by Wikileaks last month, quoted one intelligence specialist
as saying, "We also spent a lot of time, money, blood, and treasure on going
after MVTs [medium-value targets] and HVTs [high-value targets] ... and I don't
think it had a great deal of effect on the Taliban because they are not
hierarchical. If we killed one guy, they just replaced him in about 10
minutes."
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing
in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book,
Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was
published in 2006.
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