"Let me relate a short anecdote which reinforces this point. On encountering a village deep inside one of these sanctuaries, one of our early patrols were asked by the village elder why it had been so long since the Russians had returned to the village..." [JK: the Russians left Afghanistan in 1989]

Guess they missed the New York Times coverage - which is probably just as well. Regarding their opponents:

"The enemy we faced included hard-core Taliban leadership and their supporters, local militants intent on retaining power and criminal groups involved in protecting Afghanistan's prolific drug industry. Now these groups were so intertwined as to be virtually indistinguishable and were therefore loosely termed as the Anti-Coalition Militia or the ACM."

In my previous post, I noted that opium per se fell into the "not our problem" category, and only association with the Taliban was a problem. That is still my position - and here, that association got some people deservedly targeted. More re: our enemies later, during the Q&A:

"In terms of the - what's our intelligence telling us, well, we don't talk about intelligence matters, as you know, Brendan, but I will say that most of the people that we're fighting are young Afghans, nearly all Pushtans, and I think most of them would come from the province of Oruzgan [JK: i.e. local Pashtuns]. The leadership probably has a wider origin in some cases."

The Brits were less reticent about that last bit, specifying Pakistani cities including Quetta as the locus of Taliban/al-Qaeda command-and-control for Afghanitan.

So, how did the Aussies do - and how did they go about it?

"Let me give you some facts. Of the 395 days the Special Forces Task Group was deployed, Australian Forces were in the field in harm's way and remote from their secure operating base for some 306 of those days."

No FOBbits here, and a lot of venturing right into enemy territory. Why? Because winning in warfare requires both overmatch and intelligence. Good intelligence requires contact and presence. As Maj-Gen Hindmarsh notes:

"Launching out intermittently from safe bases was not the answer. Existing and patrolling in depth over lengthy periods and I'm talking about weeks, smack in the centre of the ACM havens, was a tactic the SAS employed that the enemy did not expect; and it did have the desired effect of unsettling them psychologically and undermining their ability to function with their normal expected impunity in these areas.

Whilst the ACM had an excellent early warning network, the SAS with its ever-increasing familiarity with the environment and displaying characteristic audaciousness and skill were regularly able to penetrate to attack Taliban leadership. This heralded a second phase for the deployment, with the Task Group actively targeting to good effect ACM key leaders in carefully planned and coordinated direct action operations involving both SAS and the Commandos."

That's what happens when you start to really know the terrain and the people, who then begin telling you things that can fit in with things you have already seen. Each contact builds up more intelligence. Patterns emerge, and... well, you see where it leads. Winds has discussed the whole "little fish to big fish" chain and how it works.

Now, what do we mean by conact?

The Special Forces Task Group was involved in 139 combat incidents with the enemy. These incidents ranged from skirmishes with small groups of ACM to pitched battles involving hundreds of fighters over a number of hours, often so intense with the hasty aerial ammunition re-supplies where necessary. The Task Group over the course of the 12 months employed over 217 offensive air support missions that provided direct fire support to the troops when they were in contact with the enemy."

That sounds dangerous...

"In retrospect you could say we're extremely fortunate not to suffer any fatalities over the course of the deployment. We had a total of 11 wounded in action - a combination of gunshot and fragmentation wounds."

It helped that these are some of the world's best soldiers, but yes, luck also played a big role here.

With respect to tactical matters and weapons faced:

"Now thankfully the Coalition has faced far fewer surface to air missiles than the Russians did. What has become far more prolific, however, is the now ubiquitous rocket-propelled grenade, the RPG.

This relatively cheap unsophisticated weapon system caused most of the casualties suffered by the Task Group during this deployment. In one incident during the early phase of the commitment in which two Special Forces members were awarded the medal for gallantry, SAS Patrols were engaged from all sides by synchronised volley fire from multiple RPG grenadiers over a number of hours.

The cumulative effect of exploding RPG munitions was described as akin to fighting within a mortar barrage. Now throughout the tour it was common practice for the ACM to respond to our presence with well-placed RPG attacks, supported by heavy machine guns, mortars and recoilless rifles and of course large volumes of small arms fire.

The battle I just referred to involved all of that with a relatively small SAS Force, virtually surrounded for upwards of six hours by a couple of hundred ACM, hell bent on scoring an early and decisive victory over the Australians.

As it turned out the ACM suffered heavily in that engagement thanks to a combination of superior and more disciplined combat skills of our soldiers, together with timely Coalition offensive air support. This event and its outcome set the tone for the rest of the deployment, with the ACM periodically seizing opportunities to quickly mass and attack our forces, invariably at great cost to themselves."

The briefing as a whole has a few description like this. The zero deaths figure is little short of amazing. How about IED land mines?

"Now the other key change from our earlier experience in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002 is the now widespread use of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. In a country littered with the detritus of war, IEDs are a cheap and effective way of fighting an insurgency campaign.

The greatest concern for the Taskforce was the introduction into Afghanistan of techniques learnt by insurgents in Iraq."

That's technically incorrect; the technique comes from Lebanon, and ultimately from Iran who taught it to Hezbollah. There are consistent and credible reports that Iran is playing the same role, along with supply of advanced materials, in both Iraq and Afghanistan. To continue directly:

"IEDs became far more technical, were constantly updated to defeat known Coalition protection and detection systems and the use of suicide attacks, something extremely uncommon in Afghan culture increased in regularity. Mines of course remained a constant concern. Afghanistan remains one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. But our experience on this tour was that the ready supply of explosives from mines would be more likely used as an IED component, rather than in the traditional buried form.

This is highly unsurprising, and would be true no matter where the West was fighting al-Qaeda and/or other Islamists. Lessons of war as well as instructions and objectives are disseminated globally, using international communications networks that their socieities could not build but which they can parasitize. Foreign combatants bolster this role by acting as cadre, and supportive states provide additional materiel, training, and instruction - and occasionally personnel.

That's the Islamist model for this war, and has been since the 1980s. Wherever we fight Islamism and al-Qaeda, our enemies will adapt, experiment, and spread the lessons elsewhere within the global jihad - just as they do when we are NOT fighting them... vid. the 1990s as Exhibit A.

Of course, they aren't alone in such efforts; civilized societies have their own learning curves. One wag has referred to Afghanistan as "The Commando Olympics," and the label is not inapt. Note the points in the briefing referring to 5-6 nation operations, and comments along the lines of "the lessons of this will be studied in staff colleges for years." He meant Australia, but this will also be true in the other participating countries. There are also small but significant regular forces from many nations deployed there, in an environment that statistically is about as dangerous as Iraq. This experience and exposure is forcing shifts in military equipment and priorities around the world, as well as in training and tactics.

Speaking of commandos, it wasn't all fighting for Australia's SAS and their Commado backups. Nor was it all about fighting, though killing Taliban, Taliban leaders and their allies was essential. To be on the ground in unfamiliar territory requires allies. So...

"Of course, as important as these operations were, the long-term future of Afghanistan requires far more than just a kinetic approach. In true special operations forces tradition, the SFTG also became actively engaged with Afghan villagers, officials and key leaders. The task group attempted to balance their operations through a strong program of supporting combat operations with non-combat effects; that is, through hearts and minds activities - activities such as medical and veterinary support, enhancing the capabilities of local schools, and assistance with humanitarian needs, highlighted to the local population that the Special Forces Task Group was just as concerned with the plight of the everyday Afghans as it was with ridding the land of the anti-Coalition militia."

American Special Forces, and indeed SF in general, work this way. They leverage this work to get information and assistance as they go (like being welcomed into villages et. al.), and may also train locals to fight in order to raise hostile forces against the enemy. For instance:

"Our patrols delivered large quantities of humanitarian stores. The task group also worked extensively with the Afghan National Army and the Afghan Highway Police, frequently fighting side by side with them. There existed a mutual respect. We found them courageous and tough, and I know they enjoyed working with our Diggers who showed them typical Aussie compassion and friendship. This interaction provided a force multiplier effect to the Australian operations."

Overall evaluation? They did what was required in order to make humanitarian assistance and long-term improvement possible - because unless the bad guys are dead and disrupted, it isn't:

"Now, in summing up, I believe the task group has been able to set the conditions under which the Australian Reconstruction Task Force (RTF) will have the best possible chance of conducting successful operations. Ultimately, our success can be measured by the difference that has been made to the people of the Chora and Tarin Kowt districts - areas where only recently the task group was fighting pitched battles with the ACM, and where the RTF intends to operate. People in these districts now openly welcome the Coalition and express their gratitude for the removal of the ACM. Commercial centres and schools have been reopened and the fear of intimidation or extortion has, for the moment at least, diminished considerably.

To ensure this remains the case, and as with any counter insurgency operation, there needs to be a strong enduring security presence, initially provided by Coalition forces, but ultimately by Afghan National Security forces. This will allow the reconstruction work to be undertaken in the short term and the local Afghan people to be empowered to protect themselves and build their communities in the long term."

Note the Reconstruction Task Force, similar to the USA/NATO Provincial Reconstruction Teams. These circumvent the basic uselessness/corruption of 'Toyota Taliban' NGOs generally, and especially in dangerous areas. The accomplish this by embedding paramilitary assistance that can survive and work in dangerous areas and failed states, in an approach somewhat similar to the traditional Cuban model though not yet refined to that degree. It's an important future trend

"In conclusion, was the overall Special Forces Task Group deployment a success? Did it achieve the objective of disrupting the ACM's ability to operate within its sanctuaries? I would say emphatically yes. Oruzgan is a big province, and we could not hope to cover the entire area simultaneously with the troops we had at our disposal. But we did go where we felt the key and most threatening ACM enclaves were, and the task group was relentless in maintaining the pressure in these areas to good effect. Its ability to operate independently and remote from friendly ground forces for long periods of time, coupled with the outstanding field craft and combat skills of the soldiers, enabled it to constantly keep the ACM off balance in their own backyard. Although difficult to quantify, the indirect effect of this was to disrupt the Taliban's overall capacity to prosecute insurgence operations elsewhere. Now, this is a good outcome."

Good on ya, Diggers! There's actually a lot more, including some fairly riveting descriptions of hairy operations that came extremely close to disaster (but didn't). Worth reading the whole thing.