The short URL for this article is this https://bit.ly/3z8bJBT
As we read in the New York Times:
President Biden’s top advisers say they were stunned by the rapid collapse of the Afghan army in the face of an aggressive, well-planned offensive by the Taliban, that now threatens Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital.
Well-planned? Stunned?
The non-uniformed, turbaned, sandaled, guys on the back of pick-up trucks taken from the Afghan Army, armed with AK-47s, or maybe even a rocket attachment to their rifle, did “well-planned”?
Did you notice the Talibs do not have radios? How do they do it without back-and-forth communications? They also seem to not be on the phone all the tme? Solution: Auftragstaktik!, https://bit.ly/3m1Czbk
In Auftragstaktik (based on Auftragsthinking, which needs thinking!) you tell the soldiers what is needed, and they go and do it using their own judgement — Fingerspitzengefuehl. Fast, Blitzkrieg! Without the time wasting micromanagement burden of the commander knowing at every moment where everybody is, on the one side, and constantly reporting back , on the other side.
Still stunned and surprised? Even after the lessons from ISIS 2014 http://nyti.ms/1UzW87 , when ISIS was staging non-centrally planned attacks on daily targets of opportunity, and routing the American educated and armed Iraqi Army, the US still do not get it?
One classical example for this target of opportunity tactic would have been Erwin Rommel in North Africa: The German Africa Corps was never able to bring enough supplies over the British dominated sea; they lived of British supplies grabbed with daring raids. So did ISIS.
Another example, the “Battle of the Bulge” failed for the Germans, because unbeknown to them, the US had laid a pipeline with the advancing troops, so there was no stock of gasoline to be grabbed by German tanks.
ISIS non-planning strategy was based on giving individual small groups and their leaders freedom of action, (Auftragstaktik), including the freedom to rape and murder. Complete trust into them killing and enslaving the right people. The people in the cubicles in Washington and Army bases and elsewhere did not apply the lesson to Afghanistan. They kept on building Afghanistan Security Fotces (ASF) in Americas image: air power. Result: Have you seen a picture of the US-liberated Raqqa? Cowards, the Turkish President Erdogan called the Americans, completely destroying cities they “liberated”, in a way to make them uninhabitable and non-functioning.
So for the last 20 years, the ASF have been made dependent on US-high-tech warfare, on 18,000 air force contractors alone, at a cost of $300 Billion (of the total of $1600 Billion to contractors as far as I could figure out) when it was clear that the fight would be decided by AK-47 and Motor-Cycles, maybe even pick-up trucks, and on village based psychological warfare, on foot, in the name of Allah! And the US excluding the Pashtuns and their hereditary War Lords from the effort, thus maximizing resistance! All the while 235 years ago a Johnn Ewald described in great detail, learning from American Patriots, how to deal with insurgencies , see below in more detail [ https://bit.ly/3j7Mom6 ].
How many contractors did the Russians pay in Iraq to maintain their fighter planes? Any? And how much money did the US military-industrial complex suck up in Afghanistan, transferring it back to the US? “The Nation’s” estimate is that 80-90% of the $2.3t expended flowed back to the US via the Military-industrial Complex.
The ASF’s fighting “prowess” was based on air power, sustained by those 18,000 contractors, now reduced to a 200, which are supposed to allow the ASF the use that air power. This is our version of supporting ASF. Two hundred, wow! I wonder how many rounds of ordinary ammunition has AFS shot in the last 5 years?
So in summary: the rapid advance of ISIS in Iraq 2013-2016, since the takeover of Falluja in 2013, seems to have left no trace in the US military mind. Nothing to think about, while it was clear to German military analysts that ISIS was following a pure Auftragstaktik playbook: maximum liberty for the troops at the bottom. Small surprising raids into enemy territory, grabbing weapons, money, material, and recruiting or enslaving (as the case may have been) people, to prepare for larger action. Actions which have to be resisted forcefully at the local level, not by airstrikes hitting the innocent. Since rules for airstrikes were loosened 2017 under Trump, the number of civilian victims, including children and women, has tripled. And the Taliban slowly advanced, village by village.
Completely disregarding the ISIS lesson, the US continued plowing ahead nationally, keeping AFS dependent on air power, and estranged from the population, separated into “secure” compounds. And now left to the mercy of the Taliban. Local ASF units who have struck deals with local Talibs, often with Village Elders as intermediaries, to protect their families have done a rational thing. And not such a strange thing considering that the US contractors have paid off the Taliban for years to not attack the supply convoys at the tune of more than $100,000,000. As the contractors said: we are working with the CIA and we are fearful of the FBI.
After the Camp David Agreement in 2020 between the Trump Administration and the Taliban (which excluded the Afghan Government and ASF) the local forces knew Americans would desert them, just as the US deserted the Kurds. The cynical abandonment of the Kurdish forces, which had born the brunt of the fight against the Islamic State, and the green light given by Washington to Turkey to pursue them, also raised the question of how much confidence could be invested in the word of a United States/ which reserves the right to change its priorities without consultation of its allies.
Unlike the German military hierarchy, which requires the co-called I.a to approve any major action, and not follow stupid orders, the US President is a dictator. In WW2 General von Manstein’s I.a vetoed Manstein’s plan in 1943 to fly into the encircled Stalingrad to either convince General Paulus to disregard Hitler’s order to stay and break out, or to shoot Paulus and take over.
Or SS General Reinefarth in 1945 disregarded Hitler’s order to stay in Küstrin as fortress, and after polling his officers, managed to break out with 1300 men.
What Trump did with the Kurds, and started to do with the Afghans in Camp David, Biden felt obliged to finish. Which maybe was stupid, but there were plenty of people in the chain of command who could have refused. Just as Obama was stuck with the agreements George W Bush hastily struck with el-Maliki in 2008.
And as correctly assumed by the Afghans, we now indeed have deserted the ASF, who did fight as long as Americans supplied them with ammunition. Look at their casualty numbers in June [ https://nyti.ms/3iWCjrZ ], compared to the zero casualties of US Forces.
Because you see, in the US there are 2 foolproof ways to raise the popularity of a President. First when you start a war, and then after enough time, when you end a war. Bring the Boys home! Republicans have it down to science, and get the better of Democrats every time. .
But overseas, in Europe for example, US reputation gets another hit: Because for Europeans american cynical treachery culminates with the Biden claim that the US and its allies gave Afghans “every chance to determine their own future”, but ultimately “could not provide them with the will to fight for that future”.
A close look at the casualty numbers tells the Europeans, which had also had (NATO) troops in danger, and have lost relatively more people, the truth:
In the last 17 months:
US military casualties: Zero.
Afghan military casualties: about 4400.
Afghan civilian casualties: about 2500.
Trump great diplomatic achievement: not supporting the ASF with ammunition, as to speed up the Taliban takeover, and so the end the war faster. Except for the US it was not really a war anymore, more a police action, which did not endanger the often quoted sons and daughters. Already with the Kurds, it was more a back-up role, also away from the danger.
The day-to-day details for the last 10 months are even more telling, they show that the claim “ASF not willing to fight” is slanderous fantasy. Look, for example, just at the latest day-to-day breakdown, and the total numbers of May 2021, [ https://nyti.ms/3iWCjrZ ].
The US even left their Interpreters to the mercy of the paper pushers at the Immigration Service – and the US Senate, where Republicans filibustered the evacuation financing! The US has not been able to contact and extract even the 20,000 interpreters and their families, and maybe we never will get all out. For US Afghan employees the paperwork, based on inaccessible internet forms, has to be completed first, while the Germans started to evacuate everybody (and their families) who has ever worked for them, because naturally the paperwork was completed when they were hired, years ago. And Spain is offering intermediate shelter for any Afghan (and their family) who ever worked for EU states. Shameful once more to be an American of German Immigrant back ground, who gets to hear from German friends.
When the Senate deadlocked over Republican refusal to financing, the President did not issue an executive order. Canada and Germany can act, but the US cannot. Many years ago, when, I myself being a GS-13 academic exchange visitor (originally a NATO Fellow) at the Naval Postgraduate School, with a stack of recommendations by the Office of Naval Research, Navy Captains and Nobel Prize Winners, to deserve a Green Card, I had an encounter with a GS-7 SF Immigration Clerk, who flatly refused to physically accept the application. That was the revenge of the (normally powerless) GS-7, my colleagues said. Just as the GS-7 class of bureaucrats prevented Visas to be issued 1939 to Jewish children in Europe, so the US equivalent of the British Kindertransport never happened, they do it again. And unlike the French the US is unwilling to help anybody to get to the airport.
When my younger sister in the 60s had a phase of Mao-Little-Red-Book-Revolutionism, my father (who wrote his Thesis of State about the Teutonic Knights) wryly explained to her that the other side of the coin in Revolution is the Summary Execution. International Law tolerates the killing in war zones of people not in uniform, but carrying guns. But Americans favored the blowing up of Talibs in pick-up trucks with drones, over direct confrontation. Since Taliban avoided the congregation of many trucks, few were deterred from terrorizing villages they occupied on foot.
Shooting years ago a few Taliban caught with guns, but not in Uniform, might have worked wonders. But so there was never any downside for them in terrorizing the population, demanding food, forbidding schooling for girls older than 12, forcefully marry off attractive woman. Great time for their young religious hooligans.
Over 200 years ago, much was learned quickly from a similar collapse, which was rapid, and initially nearly complete, namely the Prussian military collapse after their defeat by Napoleon at Jena and Auerstedt 1806. The collapse is described with great acuity, and no excuses, by Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz, Royal Prussian Field Marshal, in” JENA TO EYLAU”, New York 1913. As Google eBook https://bit.ly/2Xr2TBj
In contrast to US excuses about the ISIS and the Taliban collapse, the Prussians responsible got together and analyzed what happened. In 1806, just like now in Afghanistan, local forces surrendered without fight to the French, because in the Chaos after the defeat there was no specific Royal Order to fight on specific locations. Something already Frederick the Great had lamented about, that his leaders in the field unnecessarily waited for orders, losing valuable time, when they really could make a decision right then themselves. From this group (including Stein, Scharnhorst, Clausewitz, Gneisenau, Queen Louise of Prussia (!, yes, she played an important role), grew what became known as Auftragstaktik.
In short order the Reformer influenced the mind set of the Army, down to the corporals, because they eliminated the nobility requirements for officers, and Lieutenants and Captains were elected by the regiments. They gave everybody more responsibility, and power; promotions were now based on performance (and popularity). They also opened up all professions, including the military, for Prussia's 70,000 Jews.
No, it was not Moltke 60 years later who invented or implemented Auftragstaktik. The modern professional military class insists that the farmers of East and West Prussia in their Landwehr battalions could not possibly have implemented it. But the Prussian Landwehr practiced it 1807-1815 (see the comment quoted from Peter Brandt below), in particular the rural cavalry, under the very eyes of Napoleon’s spies, and continued throughout the century.
Auftragsthinking permeated the whole army over many generations, and was probably the most important contribution to Prussian success in the Wars of Unification, in particular 1870/71 against France. . There are many remarks from Prussian Princes, including the later King and Kaiser Wilhelm I, observing maneuvers on the ”excellent performance of the common soldier if one lets him perform.” Most famous maybe is the retort Prince Frederick Charles (nephew of Wilhelm I), when during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, a Prussian officer defended himself from reprimand by arguing that he was simply following orders: “His majesty has not made you an officer to follow stupid orders.“
The insistence on the important role of Moltke reminds me of diatribes I have heard at Stanford’s Hoover Institution belittling the role of the Patriots (and their Indian Allies) in the revolutionary War. More than 200 years later the successors of the Continental Army have still have a chip on their shoulders.
But Auftragstaktik really was a product of the American War of Independence, based on the observations by the Hessian Captain Johan Ewald about the much admired (by him) tactics of the American Patriots and their Indian Allies. A 185 page book published in 1785 (later American Title: Guerilla Warfare) it was highly recommended by Frederick the Great in the year before his death to his commanders, and was later influencing Carl von Clausewitz’ thinking. Ewald’s thinking is very well paraphrased in a 2015 Naval Postgraduate Thesis [ https://bit.ly/3j7Mom6 ], Johann Hindert, “German Views of Irregular Watfare”.
Like US National Guard until 1918, Prussian Landwehr trained independently in their towns and villages, and elected their own officers. Peter Brandt, the son of Chancellor Willy Brandt, describes in “Preussen, zur Sozialgeschichte eines Staates: Eine Darstellung in Quellen” (Preussen, Versuch einer Bilanz, 1981), how 1813 the Prussian Landwehr (especially the rural cavalry, admired by the English for the quality of their horses) streamed out of the villages of East and West Prussia, trained and ready and eager to fight Napoleon, who had devastated their villages on the march into Russia 1812.
The Landwehr was so well respected that for example Bismarck (anybody ever seen him out of uniform) joined it, and not the regular Army for his required service. Since he had more than 10 years of schooling, he was only required to one year of service, instead of the normal 3. That is Prussia for you: Education über Alles. Bismarck was very athletic, got a medal for rescuing a fellow soldier in a rapid river, and left as Captain. He was promoted Major when he became Ambassador in St. Petersburg, maybe only because the major’s uniform had yellow collar and epaulettes and was more representative. All his life Bismarck proudly wore the Landwehr Uniform (and the Pickelhaube), and joked about what all he could do to people in his Landwehr Uniform.
Acting in the spirit of Auftragstaktik was not alien to the US military. Before the Spit-and-Polish took over the US Army, there were good examples what locally trained, locally recruited together, militia leaders could do. (Martin van Creveld, FightingPower, [ http://amzn.to/29jfdb7 ])
One example for correctly applied Auftragsthinking would be Capt. Harry Truman in WW1. Truman, a volunteer in the National Guard, who with bad eyesight only could enter the military by memorizing the eye chart. In1918 he was put in command of an artillery Battery, after the men had elected him officer. The regiment was comprised mostly of men from the Kansas City area.
Of his many known defiance of ill-advised orders, maybe the best known is when he ordered his artillery battery to fire out of sector, which was strictly forbidden. One day Truman observed German cannons on his left flank, setting up to fire on the infantrymen that his was supporting. He ordered his men to fire on them, after the Germans had removed their horses, so they could no longer withdraw. He gave them the choice: abandon the guns or die.
The enraged Colonel in charge of the sector severely reprimanded Truman for his disobedience. When facing the same situation the next day, Truman had his men again fire on a German battery outside his sector. Truman’s disobedience of his command was enough reason for court martial, if not for the intervention of Gen. John J. Pershing.
The attitude of the spit-and-polish line officers was not much different for the court martial started against Capt. Dwight Eisenhower 1923 for writing a memo proposing to replace cavalry with mechanized forces. Disobedient thinking, the worst crime imaginable in the US military, a crime, in my judgement, only second to the crime of fraternization between Officers and Men.
For reading up on Auftragstaktik I recommend to start with Vandergriff, “What is Auftragstaktik”, https://bit.ly/2XvEN8G , because he is one who got the gestation of Auftragstaktik about right, even so he overlooked Queen Louise’s influence. Her early death in 1815 is one of the largest disasters which befell the Prussian State, because without her influence, the King drifted under the influence of reactionaries like the Austrian Metternich, and the promised constitution never materialized.
More specific to the topic on hand would be:
- How ISIS build the Machine of Terror, March 6, 2016 http://nyti.ms/1UzW87p
- An elusive command philosophy, Joerg Muth, https://bit.ly/3m1Czbk
- Martin van Creveld, Fighting Power, http://amzn.to/29jfdb7
- Stephen Bungay, The Art of Action, http://bit.ly/294ayad (just the foreword may be enough)
The mindset of US Military in insisting in Afghanistan to have a classical national army, in the US image, is astonishing. For example, the Civil War was fought with State based troops. To this day the people of Maine are proud of the 20.th Maine, a Unit comprised of “extra” men, and commanded by Literature Professor Joshua Chamberlain. It was not, Chamberlain noted, one of the state’s favorite fighting units — no county claimed it; no city gave it a flag; and there was no send-off at the station.
Germany, for example, did not have a National Army until 1919, until the victors in WW1, especially the French, in their infinite wisdom, insisted on one Reichswehr, instead of Bavarian, Hessian, etc. troops. This “tribe” based mode would have fit Afghanistan with its ethnic variety very well, and could and would have included the Pashtuns (34% of the population), which comprise about 60 tribes, each of which occupies a particular territory.
How will the US do the next time? Spending again 100s of $Billions on the industrial-military complex? Sacrificing 60,000 of “liberated” soldiers, while carefully protecting US personal.
Rainer Pitthan, Palo Alto