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Experts: McChrystal will refocus Afghan war

Forward Operating Base Lagman, Qalat, Afghanistan — In selecting Lt. Gen. Stan McChrystal to run the war in Afghanistan, Pentagon leaders have chosen an exceptional officer who is likely to shake up things in Kabul immediately, according to a handful of U.S. experts.

But from some quarters, there was criticism of the way that the man McChrystal is replacing, Army Gen. David McKiernan, commander of U.S. and NATO forces, was ousted.

McChrystal is a career special operations officer who served several tours in the 75th Ranger Regiment and rose to command the unit in the late 1990s before taking charge of Joint Special Operations Command — which controls the military’s most secretive special operations units — for an unprecedented five years from 2003 through 2008.

That tenure coincided with the war in Iraq. It was McChrystal’s troops who hunted down Saddam Hussein, his sons Uday and Qusay, and al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

JSOC’s headquarters is at Pope Air Force Base, adjacent to Fort Bragg, N.C. But McChrystal spent much of his time in command forward, leading the hunt for high-value targets in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One man who witnessed McChrystal’s hard-driving style and mission focus up close during that period was Maj. Greg Cannata, who served a six-month tour as a staff officer in McChrystal’s Iraq task force and is now the senior U.S. officer in Task Force Zabul, headquartered at this remote hilltop base.

Cannata described McChrystal as “an outstanding choice” to command the U.S. and coalition effort in Afghanistan.

“There are a lot of things that I took away from my time in his command and have now felt myself, even involuntarily, instructing them to other people, because they’re really valuable lessons,” Cannata said.

In particular, he cited the task force’s “Find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze,” or “F3EA,” approach to the manhunting mission, and McChrystal’s single-minded focus on that mission.

In Iraq, it was the norm in McChrystal’s task force for the higher headquarters to provide assets down to subordinate elements to empower them to be successful, rather than to centrally hoard those enablers, Cannata said. “That’s what I look forward to from Gen. McChrystal coming” to Afghanistan, he said.

One Pentagon official noted that when Defense Secretary Robert Gates plucked McKiernan from his position as head of U.S. Army Europe to run the war in Afghanistan 11 months ago, it preceded a major effort by Gates “to solicit serious and lasting European commitments for Afghanistan.”

Those efforts have “come up well short of expectations,” the official said, with the result that McKiernan’s European contacts and expertise had outlived their usefulness, and fueling the view that a new approach was needed — one to which McChrystal’s special operations experience is more suited.

‘The numbers problem’

“One key for McChrystal ... is to begin to solve the numbers problem in southern and eastern Afghanistan,” said Seth Jones, an Afghanistan expert at the Rand Corp. and author of the forthcoming “In the Graveyard of Empires — America’s War in Afghanistan.”

“There currently are not enough coalition and Afghan national forces to hold territory and protect the local population,” Jones said. “This likely means turning to one place: local tribes and villages to defend themselves from Taliban advances.

“It has the potential to set Afghanistan back several decades if done poorly and set in motion the civil war that ripped apart the country in the early 1990s. But it may also have the potential to improve local security if done through legitimate tribal institutions. McChrystal’s Special Forces background means that he may be more attuned to this type of unconventional approach.”

A former defense official said that people in Gates’ office, on the Joint Staff, in the U.S. Central Command operations directorate and in the U.S. Embassy in Kabul were “surprised” at McKiernan’s “inability to envision a truly [counterinsurgency] program.”

Some of the changes he expects McChrystal to make: “Look for [unclassified] special operations forces, particularly Special Forces, to play a greater and more visible role in ‘hearts and minds’ and foreign internal defense. Also look for a more visionary approach to the [counternarcotics] problem.”

The former defense official noted that the Central Command chain of command included no “decision-makers” who were special operations officers.

“Look for Stan to change that, at least in theater,” he said.

A U.S. government counterinsurgency expert who asked that his name not be used said higher headquarters staffers in Afghanistan should brace for their new boss’s arrival.

“There is likely to be a shakeup in the senior-level staffs — an increase in their workloads and tempo of their operations, while trimming away all but the most essential personnel, especially as he establishes his ‘rotational staff’ system,” the expert said.

McKiernan’s departure

But an Army officer with long experience in the Afghanistan theater was less sanguine about what improvements McChrystal would be able to deliver, and was highly critical of the way the Pentagon leadership handled the announcement of McKiernan’s replacement.

“I’m just appalled at the way McKiernan was treated,” the officer said. “It was an incredibly shabby performance by Gates and especially by [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike] Mullen. ... It did not have to be couched in terms of relief at all. They could have said that they wanted to get the new commander in prior to the election cycle, etc.”

McKiernan had been expected to stay in command for another year. Gates described his replacement as “an accelerated change of command” during a House committee hearing May 13. “There was certainly no intent to convey anything negative or to denigrate him in any way.”

But the Army officer with long experience in the Afghanistan theater compared McKiernan’s treatment with that of Gen. George Casey, who was replaced as commander of Multi-National Forces-Iraq in February 2007.

“Casey’s tenure in Iraq was not nearly as successful as McKiernan’s in Afghanistan, yet he was rewarded with the Army Chief of Staff job,” the Army officer said. “McKiernan was having a positive impact on the execution of the campaign, had identified the forces required and was in the process of carrying out needed reorganizations when they fired him.

“In the beginning of McKiernan’s command tenure, the Pentagon didn’t resource him, and then when they finally agreed to resource him with what he said he needed, they fired him before he could fully execute his plans for those resources — half of which hadn’t arrived in country yet.”

The officer questioned what impact McChrystal would be able to make. “There may be some cosmetic things, but there’s not really much McChrystal can do differently,” he said.

However, the officer said that at least McChrystal will not suffer from the lack of resources that McKiernan did.

Indeed, Gates and Mullen will be obliged to fully resource McChrystal, the officer said.

“They’ll have to. If McChrystal fails, it’s all on them.”

There was little concern that McChrystal’s background in the Rangers and at JSOC, which have the reputation of being “hyperkinetic” direct-action forces, would prevent him from embracing the nuances of “population-focused” counterinsurgency doctrine, in which the primary goal is protecting the population, rather than killing the enemy.

Cannata said that based on his experience with McChrystal’s task force in Iraq, intelligence was given a far higher priority than lethal force. The task force in Iraq “was partly a kinetic force, ... but it was much more a finesse force than anything else. That’s why I think General McChrystal will be an outstanding choice.”

Others also said it would be a mistake to write McChrystal off as a gung-ho door-kicker. “Stan’s Ranger experience won’t help, necessarily, but his quick mind, lack of ego and willingness to look outside his [officer basic course] training will,” the former defense official said.

The Army officer with long experience in the Afghanistan theater said he is confident that McChrystal “is both smart and mature enough” to see the differences between JSOC’s manhunting mission and the counterinsurgency fight in Afghanistan “and realize it’s a vastly expanded problem set.”

“He’s a good man, he’ll do a good job — just don’t expect miracles from him,” the officer said. “Nobody can provide miracles in Afghanistan. It’s a hard slog.”