Angry Planet - Optimism in America’s Forever War

Episode Date: December 18, 2017

Marty Skovlund Jr. first went to Afghanistan as an Army Ranger. This year he returned as a journalist. His reports offer a sharp contrast to the main narrative about a place that’s been at war for decades. He sees some hope in the form of Special Operations forces, along with well-trained commandos and police units. But are these really signs of peace to come?Check out Skovlund’s excellent reporting on the War in Afghanistan over at Task and Purpose.You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. You can reach us on our new Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. We're not leaving in Afghanistan anytime soon. I have a young three-year-old daughter. She joins the military. She'll probably go to Afghanistan.

You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts. Matthew Galt and Jason Fields. Hello, welcome to War College. I'm Matthew Galt. And I'm Jason Fields. Afghanistan is America's longest war and, supposedly, an absolute nightmare. The Taliban continue to gain ground, and American soldiers continue to lose their lives. Or at least that's the current media narrative anyway.

Here with us today to talk about Afghanistan is Marty Scovlin Jr., a documentarian, journalist, and U.S. Army vet. He was previously on the show to talk about his time, during the last days of the Standing Rock protests. He's just back in the States after embedding with Afghan Special Operations Forces, where he covered the war for the website task and purpose. Marty, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me on, guys. It's always a pleasure.

It's always a pleasure to have you here, too. So let's get some basic stuff out of the way. Who are you there with and where exactly were you in Afghanistan? Well, I was over there embedded with American and Afghan Special Operations Forces under the NATO Special Operations Component Command Alpha, or for sure, NSOC alpha. We went around to a couple of different locations, everywhere from Hamid Karzai Airport to Camp Commando,

just southwest of Kabul, as well as over to Bogram and in a few other places. So I got around a little bit. I got to see a few different places and, you know, kind of get a sense for what's going on in the different places in the country. And you were there previously, is that right? And in what capacity? Yeah. So I, you know, I was in First Ranger Battalion and two of my deployments were to Afghanistan. The first time in 2007, I was based out of Jalalabad. And then the second time was in late 2009 out of Salerno near coast.

So I was there as a ranger doing special operations raids, that sort of thing. So it's kind of unique for me to be able to come back now eight years later, you know, since my last deployment, it's been, you know, now as a journalist. And I think it's kind of a unique perspective to view the war through as both a combatant and a, what is supposed to be a neutral third party, you know, journalist. And a lot of times, you know, there's a lot of journalists that go over there. There's a lot of soldiers, Marines, sailors, et cetera, that go over there. I think it's pretty unique to be able to go over there as somebody who, you know, covering the war as somebody who has previously fought in the same war. So it was a pretty interesting

lens. How do you think that colors your expectations and your job? This is kind of the thing that I said to sell myself on the embed, to be honest with you, was, you know, there's a lot of nuance that I think is missed from the typical journalist that goes over there. I don't mean that in a derogatory fashion one way or the other. Just there is, there's a lot of nuance and context that is missed. Just because of the fact that you're, you're only getting half the conversation. Everybody knows that the military kind of has their own language. And for me, I get the whole conversation when I talk to people or I'm listening to other military members talk amongst themselves, whereas I think, you know, a lot of journalists

they go over there and there's a lot of catching up that you have to play with vernacular and the different ways that guys talk. And also, you know, there's even simple things, too, like, you know, nonverbal communication is 70% of communication. And military guys hold themselves a little bit differently, conduct themselves a little bit differently, and what may come across as a guy in a bad mood to one person may just come across as a consummate professional to somebody who's used to that. So it definitely, I think I got a larger piece of the pie, you know, as far as what I was able to observe by being somebody that had previously, you know, served in the military. Do you think they treated you differently, too, when they found out that you had been?

You know, like I said, I think it helped a little bit in me getting the embed. But once I got over there, it very much, one of the things that I found is I'm an outsider now. I am a journalist that was not lost on anybody. Anytime I was introduced to somebody, whether that be at the Chow Hall or just walking around. Like it was a, by the way, Marty here is a journalist here embedded net. It was almost kind of like watch what you say around him, guys, when I would be escorted around. And so it was kind of weird in the idea of like, oh, wow, I'm not. of the good old boys club anymore.

You know, it's like people were kind of wary around me. And on the other side of it, too, though, was once they got, I think in a lot of instances, once they got used to me and saw that I wasn't necessarily out to get them, I wasn't going to write down every single little thing that they said. And not that I was giving them any advantage I would give anybody else. I'm just not that guy that's going to play the gotcha game. And I think once they figured that out, they loosened up a little bit, as well as when I could start kind of talking their language.

and they noticed a difference in the questions that I asked as opposed to the questions a lot of other guys ask, where when we were, just as a example here, when we were viewing the different aircraft at the special missions wing, which is the Afghan Air Force's special operations element, aviation element. I go up to one of these MI17 helicopters, and off the back of it, I see two fast ropes hanging off the back in. And that may just look like two ropes to a typical journalist, but to me that is very indicative of the capability, the direct action capability of Afghan soft, the fact that they are being trained on fastrope insertions. And when I talked to the pilots about them doing, you know, landing right on top of buildings and guys roping on top of buildings, that's one of those key little indicators

to me of what a unit is capable of doing. Or when I viewed the, they actually have their own intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft now, the PC12. And I think they were kind of surprised when I asked them, do your ISR birds have air to, uh, air to ground SIGAN targeting capabilities. And I don't think they're used to being asked questions like that. But it was almost nice for them where they could kind of talk shop a little bit and talk to somebody who was going to understand what they were saying without them having to water it down. Actually, if we get into the meat of that, were you talking to Afghan pilots or were you talking

to Americans or other NATO members who were flying over Afghan forces? Afghan pilots. They have got those guys are, excuse my language, but they are shit hot. I was very impressed with what I saw all of the pilots. And I don't think most people even realize that Afghanistan has their own aircraft, never mind their own special operations trained pilots. And that goes for the ISR birds as well as the actual troop carrying helicopters that are flying around their commandos and other special forces,

Afghan special forces units. And these guys are doing, they're flying undernods at night doing hot infills and hot exfills on approximately 40% of the missions they fly. I mean, these guys, the one of the pilots that I talked to actually had a scar on his face and I asked where it came from. And it was a piece of a round that he took right through the cockpit glass on one of the last infills that they did when there was an attack on the hospital in Kabul that you guys may have heard about from the news. And they took fire from the building as they were coming into land right on top of it. And this is a pilot's got a scar right on his face. And these guys were extremely, extremely professional.

They spoke better English than a lot of Americans do, to be completely honest with you. Some of them, you could barely even tell that there was an accident. accent there. Yeah, I was very impressed with what I saw from the pilots. All right, so what's changed since the last time you were there? What do you see that's different now? Oh, man, there's it was weird because there's

a lot that's the same, but there's a lot that's really different. And one of the big differences that I noticed right off the bat was now when you fly in between the bases, it's all contractor air. It used to be you would hop on an army, you know, whatever aviation brigade was over there on one of their

Chinook helicopters to fly in between bases and now it's white CH-46s, which are a much smaller version of the 47, flown by contractors. And that was kind of the first, like, weird thing when we got ready to fly from Resolute support headquarters in Kabul over to Bogram. And we go out to the airfield, I'm expecting a big green helicopter with guys in army uniforms and instead it's a smaller white helicopter with 12 seats in it. And the crew chief has a handlebar mustache wearing jeans and a t-shirt and rocking an aviator sunglasses. It just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, It almost seemed like something out of a movie.

That was one of the things that first jumped out at me. One of the other big differences, though, as it pertains to our strategy in Afghanistan, is the last time I was there was very much a conventional fight. We had conventional forces all over the country. This was at the time when we were ramping up to the highest troop levels of the law in Afghanistan, 100,000 plus guys in country. And now, you know, you couldn't go to any base in the country without seeing guys rolling out the wire to go to patrols.

and that sort of thing. Now, I literally didn't see anybody leave the wire with my own eyes the entire time I was there. And that was shocking. All the conventional guys that are there are pretty much relegated to the bases to provide, you know, security functions and things like that. And from what I understand, the only guys really going out of the wire are the Special Forces advisors who are embedding with Afghan commandos on missions. And even those guys, in a lot of instances, aren't leaving the line of last cover and concealment.

the Afghans themselves are actually doing primary assault and that sort of stuff from what I was told. So it's that dynamic of its truly an Afghan-led war right now, that was shocking for me. I kind of thought that was just political spin that we were being told back over here. But going over there and actually seeing it with my own eyes was kind of shocking. Well, you just preempted my main question that I had for you. Because reading the articles that you sent back, which are really well written and fascinating, It still seemed, no, it's absolutely the case. It was still surprising to me because they seemed very positive,

especially about the Afghan forces. And I guess at least I've had a very jaundiced eye since this war has been going on on ad infinitum, you know, just thinking like if you hear a positive report, I expect that it's actually covering something more negative. And if they tell me the Afghans are fighting, then it's probably, meaning they're bringing more U.S. troops in. That's not what you're seeing at all, right? No.

It's something like 70% of offensive operations right now are conducted by Afghan special operations units autonomously without any advisors attached to them at all. What I was told by some folks that I talk, you know, the nice thing about going back over there is, you know, the military is a small community, and even eight years later I was running into guys that I served with, which is great because then you kind of get an,

an unvarnished look at what's going on. What you're shown by the public affairs officer, you kind of wonder, oh, is he only showing me the good stuff? But when I run into guys that I knew, then I get kind of a much more peer-to-peer, hey, this is how it's going for us over here. And what I was told is that pretty much the only operations that American soft personnel are accompanying them on

are the ones that are very high-value targets, where they want to be able to get American assets, like close air support, and higher level ISR, that sort of thing, to bring those American assets on board, they need to bring American soldiers with them. And so those are the main missions that American SF are going out on. And that's very interesting that Afghans are actually doing that amount of missions by themselves without any Americans with them. It's just shocking to me. But, you know, you go out there and you talk to some of these guys. And I think for the first time, you know, a decade later or a decade and a half later,

We're starting to see the fruits of all the training and advising we've done previous to this. Back before that was even the main strategy, when SF was over there just training up commandos and stuff, we're starting to see the fruits of that now where those commandos that we were training up as young guys 10 years ago are now senior NCOs that are now doing the training. We're not even actually doing the main training of Afghans in Afghans anymore on the soft side. We're still doing it on the conventional side and for special skill sets for soft like snipers or higher level medical or EOD training, we still do that. But the main CQB out at the range, small unit tactics and stuff like that, those are Afghan commando

NCOs teaching their own guys, which is incredible. I mean, I saw it in action. These guys know what they're talking about. They were the epitome of professionalism. Now, I want to touch on, though, when you talk about something positive coming out of Afghanistan, one of the things that I'm emphasizing in the long form pieces that I'm writing is I feel good about the military strategy for the first time in a very long, time. It actually, it makes sense. The trying to

train-advised assist mission makes sense. The way we're approaching that makes sense. The problem is, though, is that success in Afghanistan cannot hinge solely on a good military strategy. We've seen it in other places where you can win every battle on the battlefield and still lose the war. And ultimately, Afghanistan right now has bigger problems than just the Taliban than just hemorrhaging guys on the battlefield. We've got a swelling population. Kabul is the fifth fastest growing city in the world right now. and the economy is not growing at the same pace.

Opium, the opium trade, the illicit opium trade accounts for over 400,000 jobs. You couple that with the fact that over 60% of Afghanistan's population is under the age of 19. That's a bunch of young kids that have no future prospects from a growing economy. So where's the only paying gig in town to go supplement the Taliban's force generation model, which is bad news for us on the military fund? So we can have a rock solid military strategy in the country and still spin our wheels if we don't get their economy moving in the right direction and curb some of the corruption and other issues that they're seeing in the country. And there is some progress on the corruption fronts and things like that. But, you know, Afghanistan's GDP only grew by 2% last year.

That's not fast enough to keep up with the pace of population growth. And not to mention, they're living longer too. So these are significant problems that can't be solved by the military alone. So I'm wondering then if you went, well, as you were talking to Afghans, what was their opinion of those things? What was their opinion of the illicit opium trade? Was their opinion of the population growth? How do they see these problems getting resolved? Every Afghan that I talked to, which was outside of my taxi driver from Kabul airport was, you know, that was a whole different thing, flying into a country and then going out and hailing a taxi.

That was an experience. That was a new experience for me. but pretty much everybody else I talked to was in some form or another in or involved with the Afghan military. So I was primarily talking to soldiers and airmen and that sort of thing. So maybe their view is a little bit, just as in America, you know, somebody who's served in the military has slightly different viewpoints than the average citizen. But the guys that I talk to, they are sick of constantly having to live in fear. They're over it. They're a younger generation.

They're better informed. their literacy rates are higher. They have access to the internet and cell phones. They get it. They're not being swooned by the Taliban like they were back in 2000 in the 90s when you just had to believe what the Taliban told you because that was the only information that you were getting. Now they get it.

They understand that the Taliban is a bunch of narco terrorists and that it's not going to do any good for their country. And they would rather fight for a free and sovereign Afghanistan that's governed by a constitution and by a legitimately elected government, they want those things because they understand that they're never going to be safe in their own country or have a good future for their kids without that. And so they're just, they're motivated to go out and kill Taliban. President Ghani will tell you that they want, they're using a fight fracture talk strategy. But the guy on the ground, the commando on the ground, he wants to go over there and cave in dome pieces. He wants to

make the Taliban pay for what they've done. I talked to the colonel of the School of Excellence for the commandos there at, well, camp commando. But I asked him what his experience with the Taliban has been. And he's had them plant IEDs in his backyard three different times. His wife's leg was blown up. His son almost died. He himself has been shot multiple times by the Taliban. He's over it.

He doesn't want to mess with this stuff anymore. So the faster they can defeat the Taliban, the better. And they're not thinking about populations well. They're not thinking about a lot of those other things because they're in the military. They're sole focuses. they want to go kill bad guys and make their home country a safer place, their home province, their home village. What does reintegrate or die mean? So that is kind of the more unvarnished version of President Ghani's strategy of, hey, you've either got the option of reintegrating yourself back into normal Afghan society, leaving the Taliban, leaving narco-terrorism, or you're going to die.

There's no two ways about it. And they're killing them at a unprecedented rate. And that's why you see the increase in A&A casualties and stuff like that. They've done more offensive operations in the last year than in their entire history since 9-11. And so they're killing the Taliban at an unprecedented rate. And they're not really taking a lot of prisoners. So it's kind of either, hey, you either secure your future by reintegrating into Afghan society or you stick with the Taliban and at some point we're going to catch up with you.

That's pretty much their attitude. Why do you think, Jason, do you want to take the commando question? Well, yeah, I guess it's a two-prong question. You spent time with the Afghan commandos, and you speak of them as being an effective fighting force. And I wanted to know what you see, the difference is between the commandos and the regular army. And is there any hope for the regular army? Usually a regular army is the larger force, right? Yes.

and they still are the larger force. They're just not doing as many operations as the commandos. Basically, the Afghan government is going with what works. And right now the commandos, the GCPSU, which is the police special operations unit, similar to like our HRT, I guess you can compare it to. They're sticking with what works. And right now the commandos, you know, they don't deal with things like the desertion rate that you see in the A&A. You know, the commandos have a 97% retention.

It's better than a lot of American military units. The guys that are commandos, have volunteered to be commandos, and they had to do three years in the regular army first before they could try out for commandos. They're of a higher caliber. They go through an extra 14 weeks of training where they do everything from, you know,

basic marksmanship, advanced marksmanship, up to live fires and shoot houses. Some of those shoot houses I walked through were nicer than shoot houses I've seen in America. So they have higher training. They're more motivated. They've got better vetting, I guess you could say. Now, the commandos themselves, the regular commandos, they are at a higher level than the regular A&A forces, but they're still not what you would maybe put on the par of Americans saw, right?

The other aspect of that is they have Afghan special forces, which require a minimum of three years service in the commandos before you can try out for them. They're a higher level unit, and they very much mirror American special forces where their main mission is training, advising, and working. through village people and stuff like that, it requires a more experienced, more confident soldier. And then there's also the Kitejas, which is kind of like the tier one element of the commandos. The Ketahas are very much direct action guys. They're going after the high value targets, that sort of thing. And then the GCPSU, the general command of police special units, or they're more commonly referred to as the triples. The triples are the guys that are doing a lot of the high risk stuff. You know, like when General Mattis,

or general, excuse me, Secretary of Defense Mattis came to the country and took IDF out at Kabul. The triples were the guys that responded to that attack and killed the guys who launched the mortars. So they're doing a lot of that high-risk stuff, as well as they were the ones that did the hospital attack response. So you've got these guys that are very, very effective and very much different than the rest of the A&A. Now, to answer the second part of your question, the U.S. Army has recently stood up the first S-FAM, the security forces advisory brigade. They recently, they've made more headlines because of the controversy around the unit than what their actual mission is. You know, the controversy being they were going to be issued what essentially was a green beret, which caused a lot of consternation within the veteran and special forces community. But their actual mission is to try to replicate the success in Afghanistan that American SOF has had with Afghan SOF in the regular conventional forces of the Afghan army.

They're saying that the ANA is never going to be as successful as the commandos, were as far as coming along because they've never had the advantage of American advisors training them. And certainly not over years and years and over a decade at this point like the commandos have had. So what they're doing now with these new S-FABs is taking guys who can now start to do the train, advise, assist mission with regular conventional A&A guys. And that's where we see the bulk of the problem. You know, the Ministry of Defense in Afghanistan is not all a rosy picture. I paint a rosy picture of Afghanistan, and that's because they deserve it.

They're having good effects and they're doing a great job. The rest of the A&A still has a lot of issues that they need to work through from desertion, corruption, et cetera. They recently replaced five out of the six corps commanders in the Afghan army. They're doing a lot of picking the weeds, so to speak, amongst the commanders and senior enlisted. And then the hope is to then bring in American advisors that can advise on the conventional level. So it remains to be seen whether that'll be successful or not. I think we will, because of that mission, see a rising green-on-blue attacks next year, though. What do you think is going to happen and why?

Yeah, I think all signs point to 2018 being one of the most violent years in the war that we've seen. We're seeing a Taliban that is not meeting the strategic goals that they lay out. A lot of people don't realize the Taliban, their public affairs, you put out a yearly plan of what they want to accomplish. And last year they weren't able to accomplish it. That's frustrating them. They recently had to switch to, in the last year they had, one of their big strategies was using high profile attacks against civilian targets. What they found was that started to turn the civilian populace against them.

Go figure. And so now they just recently switched their strategy to focusing only on conducting high profile attacks on police and military targets. And that's where we saw a bunch of their police officers were killed in a massive offensive a couple of weeks ago. That was right after I got back home. And that was because of their change in strategy. I think the more they're targeted and the more we start taking money away from them on the, on the narcotics side, and the more the Afghans themselves are pressuring them, as well as the fact that now America has committed to an open-ended commitment, basically we're not leaving Afghanistan. From what I saw, we're not leaving Afghanistan any sooner than we're leaving Germany, Italy, or Japan, or Korea. Okay.

So that's one thing. But the Taliban, I think, is going to become increasingly desperate, which will lead to more and more high-profile attacks, as well as the fact that Iran, Pakistan, and Russia are still giving them support. And that's where they're a red cell unit, the Taliban's red cell, which is like their version of special operations, those guys have nods. They have lasers for their weapons. They have funding. Those guys are going to keep going at it. So as the Afghan army increases their operations, 2018, I think we're going to see California. I think we're going to see casualties go up as American conventional advisors integrate with Afghan conventional army members.

We're going to see green on blue attacks go up because of that because those guys aren't vetted as well and more can slip through the cracks there. And I just think there's a lot of opportunity there as well as ISIS has basically been defeated in Afghanistan, which was a huge distraction for the Taliban because they were at odds with each other. So now the Taliban is able to kind of readjust and refocus on what they want to be. on, which is the legitimate government of Afghanistan and foreign forces. You've been reporting on this for task and purpose, and you've written a lot of really wonderful kind of short pieces, but you just had a long form one come out. Can you tell us what it's about? You know, the premises, so how's it going over there? I think a lot of Americans, or at least the ones that still care that were even in Afghanistan, and I mean

that in the most derogatory fashion that you can take it. Um, uh, you know, uh, you know, people wonder, like, so how's it going? We see the reports and everything like that. But then you also kind of wonder, well, if we've gotten American president, that's pretty unpopular with the media right now. So it's kind of wonder if the media is painting everything bad in order to make the president look bad. You know, at some people, I'm not saying that's my position, but I know that's a lot of people's position on the media right now.

And so I think a lot of people just genuinely want to know, like, how's it going over there? And so this piece kind of hits on that. It talks about the strategy. It talks about the big ideas, the four-year roadmap, the economic implications, all these things that are going on at the higher level. And I think if you've kind of dropped off on the topic of Afghanistan in the last couple of years, like a lot of people have, you know, because we basically had drawn down to almost nothing toward the end of the Obama administration. If you haven't heard much and kind of want a primer on, so what's going on right now, I think this piece will be pretty good for you. as well as it'll probably bring a lot of things to light that a lot of people haven't thought of before. Like, for example, we're saying that Afghanistan, our continued presence in Afghanistan is because we have a vital national interest in the success and stability of Afghanistan, right?

Which is what our government, multiple presidents have said that, right? If we have a vital national interest in Afghanistan and that interest hinges on the military success, on the success and stability of Afghanistan, and if the economy is one of the biggest, hinge points for stability in Afghanistan, then why do we not have a free trade agreement with Afghanistan to make imports and exports easier with that country? Why don't we have a free trade agreement? It's been brought up in Congress multiple times and gone nowhere. Interestingly, notably, in Colombia, where we have also fought a counter-insurgency, a counter-narcno insurgency at that, just like the Taliban. We've been successful in Colombia, up to this point, went through some rough times back in the 90s especially, but we've been successful

in Colombia. Columbia is largely stable today. We have a free trade agreement with them. It's pumped tons of money into their country, which now means that young Colombians don't have to make that choice between do I join the FARC, do I join the drug cartels, or do I go get a regular job? Because the jobs are available. In Afghanistan, a lot of the people don't have that choice. How come we don't have a free trade agreement with Afghanistan? And so there's a lot of points like that that I bring up in my article. I'll ask the same question that we ask everyone when they come on to talk about Afghanistan. And you've kind of already answered it, but I have to ask again, how does this thing end and when does it end?

We are not looking for, despite what any politician says, we are no longer looking for a win in the traditional sense in Afghanistan. What we're looking for is stability. And what stability means is 80% of the population under the control of the legitimate government of Afghanistan. So stability will take a long time. We're not leaving in Afghanistan anytime soon. I have a young three-year-old daughter. If she joins the military, she'll probably go to Afghanistan. My youngest sister, she's an AIT in the Army right now.

She'll go to Afghanistan. We're not leaving Afghanistan. Our troop levels and our commitments in Afghanistan may wane and wax depending on the, you know, the political leadership of the time. But I don't think we're going anywhere anytime soon. I think that the goal is not winning its stability. How long will stability take? Well, it's never going to be stability like we know in Western Europe or North America.

But what it can be is stability for Afghanistan, an acceptable level of stability for the typical Afghan. And I think that's achievable. I think right now I am cautiously optimistic is what I would say. And that's the best I think we can hope for. We have to kind of wait and see. Let's see how this four-year roadmap plays out. Let's see how the training and advise mission goes on the conventional side. Let's see. There's a lot of work that still needs to be done. But we pretty much, our choices are either we commit to help them, commit to make them stable with very few American military in the country. I think the levels we're at right now are about where we want to stay.

And that 10 to 15,000 range, that's about where we want to stay. So we commit to see long-term stability for Afghanistan. But if we were to leave right now, we'd pull the chair right out from underneath the government and it would go right back into Taliban control. within a matter of years. And that wouldn't be good. So, you know, I'm cautiously optimistic given the current strategy, but there's a lot that needs to be done. And a lot of that needs to be done. It has to happen outside of the military strategy. Marty Scoveland, Jr., thank you so much for joining us. You can find his stuff, his stuff about his in bed in Afghanistan on task and purpose.com. Thanks for listening to this week's show. We really hope you enjoyed it. And if you did, you can let the entire world know. by writing a review on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get this podcast.

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