US Army Special Forces units continued to quietly operate in Afghanistan when conventional troops withdrew around 2015. These soldiers have worked closely with Afghan commandos and government partners to hold the hard-won and fragile stability. What happens when they leave the country this summer? How has this war continued unnoticed by the American people and what was the role of the media, the military, and policymakers in building a better public awareness of ongoing operations in Afghanistan?
Episode 31 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast explores the story of American special operations forces in Afghanistan since 2015 through the lens of Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Donati’s new book, Eagle Down: The Last Special Forces Fighting the Forever War. Our guests address these questions based on their extensive experience in Afghanistan. One is a journalist who lived and reported from Afghanistan for five years, the other is a seasoned US Army Special Forces officer with over seventy months in-country. They will argue that Army Special Forces, also known as Green Berets, have been instrumental to preserving stability in Afghanistan since 2015, and their departure will leave a concerning void in the security and functionality of the country. They also discuss the role of the media in influencing policy in Washington, and the responsibilities that the military, journalists, and policymakers have to build a detailed understanding of conflicts such as the one in Afghanistan. Our guests conclude by discussing this “forever” war’s impact on policymakers and practitioners.
Jessica Donati covers foreign affairs and national security for the Wall Street Journal in Washington, DC. She joined the newspaper as the bureau chief while reporting from Afghanistan between 2013 and 2017. She previously worked for Reuters in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. She was part of the team that reported on the war in Libya, working on a series chosen as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 2012.
Colonel Brad Moses is a US Army Special Forces officer with nearly two decades of operational experience. Brad commanded the 3rd Special Forces Group from 2016 to 2018, conducting enduring operations throughout North and West Africa. Brad most recently served as the deputy chief of staff for strategy and policy, United States Forces Afghanistan and Operation Resolute Support.
The hosts for this episode are Abigail Gage and Shawna Sinnott. Please contact them with any questions about this episode of the Irregular Warfare Podcast. The Irregular Warfare Podcast is a product of the Irregular Warfare Initiative, a collaboration between the Modern War Institute and Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project—dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. You can listen to the full episode below, and you can find it and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, TuneIn, or your favorite podcast app. And be sure to follow the podcast on Twitter!
Image credit: Sgt. Paul Sale, US Army
Colonel Brad Moses at 29:00 stated that 20 years in Afghanistan have given US SOF Green Berets "experience and technological advances that they didn't have several years ago." OK, true.
But the photo in this article tells all too…a US SOF on the left and an ANA soldier on the right, both aiming M4 carbines.
What is the problem? Recent photos show the Taliban walking in a single file with six fighters carrying RPK 7.62mm machine guns. Low-tech, simple, and weighing just 11 lbs, the RPK has a 75-round drum magazine. HOW many Talibans are in that column carrying RPKs, SVDs, and PKMs? And the US SOFs stick with the M4 when the USA is awash in all sorts of guns? To counter the Taliban squads armed with machine guns, US SOFs, Marines, and soldiers would probably need the M-16A2 LMG, M240L, M60E4 or M60E6, or a SCAR-H machine gun (800m)! A sniper rifle may have made a difference out to 800-1,000m, but a sniper rifle carries only five rounds per clip.
So taking Col. Moses' 29:00 comment, how then can the US SOFs and ANA soldiers battle an unconventional enemy with 1,000m range, and 75 rounds x 6 RPK = 450 7.62mm rounds unleashed at once with just 5.56mm M4s that fire only out to 350m and carry a 30-round clip? The Blue Forces can't, and in 20 years, I am surprised that the USSOCOM didn't see through this, or know that the M240 is 25-pounds and will never counter the lighter RPKs. It's as if US DoD should have cloned the Russian 7.62mm RPK and PKM and issued the US version to all US and ANA soldiers to do away with the analogy of "Never bring a carbine or a rifle to a machine gun fight."
The US SOF did try a similar "RPK approach" to this with the 2011 RPG shootdown of a CH-47 Chinook in Afghanistan. The QRF SEALs, respectively, on board were rumored to carry mostly 5.56mm SAWs with 100 to 200-round ammo boxes and 800m range, not M4s. Had the SEALs landed safely, they may have made a huge difference in the firefight with light machine gun fire.
So, now with 6.5mm Credmoor and the new NGSW, the DoD is finally addressing the range and firepower issue that has plagued Afghanistan with a new next-gen gun that can reach 1,000m with pinpoint accuracy, even if a NGSW LMG. But that is for peer nations' combat.
I wasn't there so I can't say, but many true soldier stories published about Afghanistan proves and shows that outnumbered, out-ranged, and overwhelmed and suppressed, the 5.56mm M4 and M-16A4 weren't the proper guns for Afghanistan in many conflicts, and thus required the use of US and NATO air support and artillery to push back the 1,000m away enemy. Sure, talking tactics is amateurish. but it does show how and why the Taliban can sustain a firefight without running out of ammo (like the ANA commandos) just by the choice of weapons that the Taliban carry into battle.
Bro you have no idea what your talking about, I was a 3/3 guy. The RPK is trash and the locals carrying them are not trained to shoot them accurately. Will will put up my M4 all day against them as I'm highly trained to not just waste ammo firing all over the place with no aim. We do have scars and they can convert from 5.56 to 7.62., but with all the cool guy stuff on them it's not as compact. Stop watching all the movies, I was out there for 5 years of my life and just look at the numbers they speak for themselves. Exactly you weren't there and weapon system have nothing to do with it, it's all about highly skilled training, which translates on the battlefield.
This has been going on for millennia. There were Roman soldiers talking about the "Good Old Days" in Germania, Greeks in Egypt and MIngs talking about the Great Wall. The more things change the more they stay the same.
Whether we are talking about here at home or there overseas, "forever wars" — for the U.S./the West — these have always been, and still continue to be, best understood in "maximizing economic growth" terms and thus in "continuous modernization" terms.
Explanation:
At this junction, you might ask, why would such seemingly positive endeavors as "maximizing economic growth" and "continuous modernization" lead to forever wars — both here at home and there overseas?
The answer to this question is that such endeavors tend to be unendingly "revolutionary" in nature and, thus, tend to — unendingly — threaten the status quo and those who benefit most from same.
Here are some quoted matters which, I suggest, make this such "cause" and "effect" relationship clear:
“Capitalism is the most successful wealth-creating economic system that the world has ever known; no other system, as the distinguished economist Joseph Schumpeter pointed out, has benefited ‘the common people’ as much. Capitalism, he observed, creates wealth through advancing continuously to every higher levels of productivity and technological sophistication; this process requires that the ‘old’ be destroyed before the ‘new’ can take over. … This process of ‘creative destruction,’ to use Schumpeter’s term, produces many winners but also many losers, at least in the short term, and poses a serious threat to traditional social values, beliefs, and institutions.”
(From the book “The Challenge of the Global Capitalism: The World Economy in the 21st Century,” by Robert Gilpin, see the Introduction.)
“The apparent relationship between poverty and backwardness, on the one hand, and instability and violence, on the other, is a spurious one. It is not the absence of modernity but the efforts to achieve it which produce political disorder. If poor countries appear to be unstable, it is not because they are poor, but because they are trying to become rich. A purely traditional society would be ignorant, poor, and stable.”
(See Samuel P. Huntington's famous 1968 book “Political Order in Changing Societies” Page 41)
“2. Construct:
a. An IDAD (Internal Development and Defense) program integrates security force and civilian actions into a coherent, comprehensive effort. Security force actions provide a level of internal security that permits and supports growth through balanced development. This development requires change to meet the needs of vulnerable groups of people. This change may, in turn, promote unrest in the society.
The strategy, therefore, includes measures to maintain conditions under which orderly development can take place." (Item in parenthesis above is mine.)
(See our very own Joint Publication 3-22, “Foreign Internal Defense,” dated 17 August 2018 — look to Chapter II, “Internal Defense and Development.”)
Bottom Line Thought — Based on the Above:
As each of the quoted items above appear to indicate:
a. Based on the never-ending "change"/"modernization" demands of such things as capitalism, globalization and the global economy,
b. "Forever wars" — against those who are continually and never-endingly adversely effected by such "change"/"modernization" demands (think the more-traditional, the more-conservative elements of every state and society, to include our own) — these such wars must be seen as being — not "aberrant" and unusual — but, rather, "normal" and routine. (In fact, they probably should be seen — literally — in terms of "the cost of doing business?")
From this such perspective, one might suggest that the Old Cold War — wherein the U.S./the West spent more time fighting the worldwide "revolutionary"/"modernization"/"change" efforts of the Soviets/the communists — THIS was the aberrant and unusual period.
And, when the Old Cold War ended on or about 1990, we could, and did, return [with a vengeance] to pursuing our own "revolutionary" and "modernization" efforts — both at home and abroad. (Thus, the current "resistance to change" revolts that we now see in both such locales.)