Brian Lande – Tact & Tactics

Life on the FOB – Exiting the “Red Mist” – Afghanistan Day 17

Posted on April 16, 2011     Leave a Comment

“Cheeky, gabbie, bastards,”  C.SGT R. said and not knowing if I misheard the color sergeant because of his Scottish accent or unsure whether or not he was just making something up to mess with me, I said,  “What the fuck are are you talking about?” “Cheeky, gabbie, bastards, that’s what they are!” C.SGT R. reiterated, “That’s how we pick the ‘chatup man.'” “The what?” I turn to one of the Smudges (a nickname in England for the last name Smith) looking for some kind of assurance as to what C.SGT R. is saying. “Yeah, the ‘ch-a-t-up man’,” Smudge articulates to me. “Gotch’ya. So what is the chatup-man? I have never heard this before.” C.SGT R., says, “Oh, you know that is that point man in a unit. He’s the chatty guy that is tactically there, perceptive, you know. He’s the smooth guy that likes to run his mouth a lot. We make him point on our patrols in the South [of Afghanistan]. You know, when you go into the village, the chatup man runs point. That’s how we always run units.” C.SGT R. says this like its the most natural thing on the earth, like the sun rising in the East and setting in the West, as if for time immemorial, the “Chatup Man” has simply been a feature of soldiering.

The pay off of doing “observant participation” fieldwork  is that by immersing yourself as deeply as possible in the problematic under investigation, you move from the front stage of peoples’ public displays to the backstage, where impression management is less guarded, and where venacular terms that only have meaning for other members of the group under study are used. And so it took nearly 16 days of spending nearly 10 hours a day with combat advisers — participating in everything form work, the gym, dinning at the DFAC, tea, to pranks — to find out about the “chatup man.” This in spite of the fact that nearly everyday I had been asking about how and why some people were better at intercultural interactions than others. Back to the “chatup man.”

After learning about the “chatup man” I finally cornered C.SGT R. at the Brit Club. While other soldiers came in and out of the tent, making tea, and watching music videos on the television, C.SGT R. tells me about the chatup man. “He’s usually our most senior guy that we got, with the most confidence, and is really switched on as a soldier. Alright? The way we used to work it was, back in Northern Ireland, he would be the VCP [vehicle chekpoint]  man and he would be the guy we would have stop the vehicles. We evolved it from that to Afghanistan and made  him the pointman, one of the lead scouts that we’d send out to make contact with someone. More than anyone, it would be this guy. More than anything he [the chatup man] would be a senior private soldier and he would be, you know, educated; not educated, but you know, had street smarts and experience, street savvy, you know. And the section commander (like a U.S. platoon SGT) picks the chatup man. So, as the senior sergeant I would look at my guys and see that this one is really good at talking to people and if anything were to happen to the section commander or squad leader he would take over the reigns.  Basically he can hold a conversation and when people come around they are the ones that are ‘hey you, what’s happening!’ and can hold a conversation and are comfortable doing so. They are also switched on awesome soldiers. But unlike the other guys who don’t know what questions to ask [at a checkpoint] they have no problem.”

The Chatup Man is part of the social and spatical organization of the squad

Importantly, and contrary to the way that most people describe the “socially intelligent,” the feats of the “chatup man” are not individual but collective in nature. C.SGT R., describes how a unit deploys the “chatup man.” “For example, at a checkpoint, the commander puts his hand out to stop the vehicle, but he dosen’t make the approach. The chatup man comes in from the side and approaches the driver.  These days its now done with an interpreter but you can still practice it just as well with your own people and achieve the same goals. Good manners is everything. Be polite and not be too aggressive or too angry when you’re speaking to people. Its basic really, whether its in England, the States, or here [Afghanistan]. He’s not mister angry! But he can turn up the tempo if he needs to.”

“I’ve even had guys that after a contact [a fire fight], you know, he’s been shot at and he goes into a village and is like ‘oh hey, where you been, what are you up to, oh right okay’ and uses that… basically shooting the shit, with the locals and all that, rather than charging in, guns up, shout’n ‘where’s the fucking Talioban!” C.SGT R. says that self-control is key to being British infantry, not only for the chatup man but for everyone in the unit. That means, he says, “avoiding the Red Mist.” Red mist, he says, is the rage or anger that comes from being frustrated in social encounters. His example is the frustration of being called names, insulted, having objects thrown at him while holding a line during a riot or public disorder in Northern Ireland. What C.SGT R. thinks distinguishes the chatup man from the average soldier with self control is “seeing the big picture. And that is just from experience. There is no course to become a chatup man. Its just up to the leaders to see him.” While the chatup man is usually someone just promoted to Lance Corporal, C.SGT R. also says that the chatup man can be a soldier fresh out of training so long as he demonstrates the appropriate traits.”

Red mist, the color sergeant goes onto explain, is the loss of emotional control and he equates it with anger, rage, impatience, loss of self-control, getting tunnel vision, and the inability to see long term consequences of actions here-and-now. Red mist, however, is not simply meant as a descriptor of an assemblage of emotional and perceptual experiecnes. It is a term generally used by the color sergeant and other combat advisers to refer to the social consequences of loss of control. For example, the color sergeant describes a situation in Northern Ireland. “There, ya know, we were securing the lines during public distrubrances [riots]. And we’d be all kited out and there with our shields. And one of the guys, he couldn’t shake one of the guys out in the mob. He’d just stare at the guy while he was getting abused by him, ya know, cursed at, insulted, told his a fag, throwing shit at him, and so on. Well this private soldier, he let the red mist take control and he broke the line. Ya never break the line. That puts everyone in jeopardy.”  In this case red mist is a moral issue because it violates the integrity of the soldier’s group. But in other cases red mist is consequential because it offends the outgroup, potentially even creating enemies. ” We had this happen in Iraq. The guys, they forget that a lot of Iraqis and even Afghans are educated, maybe in the UK or, here, in Pakistan. They speak English, so you can’t be popp’n off. We had some people in Iraq who were being rude and insulting with Iraqi’s in earshot. And that caused us some real problems.” In the South [of Afghanistan] though red mist can be something as simple as a Dear John letter. I had that happen to a private soldiers and you can tell. So I pulled him back and tasked him for another job because when we go into a village I couldn’t have him caught in the red mist and, you know, maybe shout’n at a kid or lossing his temper for no reason. We put a lot of time with the villagers and the farmers and it would be stupid of us not to pay attention to our guys like that.”
“In North Ireland is where we learned about this, and of having the chatup man. You do a VCP (vehicle control point) and you have some hot head storm up the car and sayd ‘get out of the car! Take off that jacket!’ You know, rude and like how you wouldn’t want them to talk to you or your mother. Now you think that driver is going to tell you if there is a VBIED (vehicle born improvised explosive device) about to blow you up. Fuck no!”

I ask C.SGT R. if the chatup man is sucessful because of his cultural awarness. He says, “I mean that helps but a lot of what I am talking about would have applied equally well in Northern Ireland or Iraq. Its not about the culture its kind of common sense. Don’t treat people different than you want to be treated. That’s pretty good. Maybe not solve everything but, you do that, and the people will treat you the same. All this “hearts and minds” shit. Its really just common sense.” The color sergeant continues with an anecdote about his time in Iraq as a chatup man. “We were out and about doing a VCP and all of a sudden a mob formed behjind us. I was contacting a driver at the VCP and I saw what was happening. So I was just professional and courtious. I told him, through my interpreter,  ‘hey there is some trouble behind us, why don’t you take route so-and-so to get to your destination.’ So the driver thanks me and says, ‘That man in the black hood is the ring leader.’ Well with that information I went into the crowd and found the leader. He was just pissed off that there was trouble with the electricity and he hadn’t found anyone in the coalition to complain to about his problems. So I listened to him and told him I would try to fix the problem and planned to meet again so I could tell him about my progress. Worse thing is to promise something and disapear. But that was it. Crowd went away, no one hurt. You just got to keep calm, be aware, and chat with people normal like and you got a chatup man!“

Life on the FOB – Afghanistan Day 9: Viva La France

Posted on April 6, 2011     Leave a Comment

Yesterday was spent doing ambush training with Taff and Smudge, two IBS sergeants. Not much action as the ANA were only able to get through one ambush scenario before they and the IBS gave up. As much as the cultural differences between the ANA and the UK soldiers impede training, the conflicts between ANA officers and instructors cause as many problems. Hierarchies seem much more unsettled among the ANA than among the IBS members. A couple of days ago, on the 100m range, a Major usurped Mahid, a SGT and instructor. Mahid spent the remainder of the day sulking and being generally pissy and obstructionist as a result. The Major certainly did not help improve the quality of the training since he was not even qualified to train in the first place. Rather SGT K. had to spend his time chasing after the Major to correct his many mistakes, mistakes that would not have been made if Wahid had been left to conduct the training.

Yesterday the issue changed and became one over schedaules. The ANA instructor for ambushes, Najuibullah, has been operating off of a 3 month old training scheduale that the British combat adivsers had tried to get rid of several times. Smudge, through one of the interpreters, confront Najuibullah and said, “Why are you still using this? We told you it is wrong. The training is out of order. There is a natural sequence to training and we have given you a scheduel that makes the training work better?” Najuibullah, started shouting “Ney, ney, ney!” [No, no, no!] and through the translator I learned he was arguing, “But if I use your scheduale and my superiors show up, I will get yelled at for not following this scheduale [pointing at his out of date scheduale]. So I can’t use the new one.” An officer who was supervising the instructor pulled Najuibullah aside and, the interpreter explained, tells him, “But this way is better and that is what matters.” One of the advisers tells the interpreter “crawl, walk, run.”

Nonetheless, Najuibullah sulks off.  Smudge says,  “I hope he doesn’t have any live rounds [referring to two combat advisers killed the day prior by a ANP student], cause I embarrassed him yesterday [over finding him smoking hashish during training].”

I rotated out to the French today. Not surprisingly, the challenge of trying to make sense of the Brits/Americans and ANA is challenging as it is. But throw in the fact that I don’t speak French or Dari, and today took much more effort to wade through.

The French soldiers I worked with today were all infantry, and have served everywhere from Sierra Leon, French Guinea, Ivory Coast,  Bosnia to Kosovo. Like the Brits, most of the men I spoke to had spent at least 10 years in the service. However, Laurent, the officer I spent most of today with, had spent 20+ years in the French military. Laurent served as my primary translator. He was a good spirited fellow, in his forties, and very funny (even when I couldn’t understand his jokes). When Laurent talked to someone, whether an ANA instructor or a fellow French soldier, he had the habit of grabbing onto their arm to make a point or to drive home the punch line to a joke.

Colonialism came up repeatedly today, though I never initiated the discussion of it. Laurent or one of the SGTs would bring up France’s colonial legacy not so much as a point of pride  but as an important historical experience that shaped a French soldier’s ability to move and be successful in  counter-insurgency. Laurent believed that because of France’s colonial legacy, and the variety of countries France had historical placed soldiers, that not much training was needed to prepare a French soldier for a counter-insurgency (COIN) like environment. Like a Johnny Cash lyric, Laurent told me, “I’ve been everywhere man! Africa, Bosnia, this is no different! You have to build rapport.” I asked Laurent what about the Afghan soldiers he works with differentiates them the most from the various African soldiers he had worked with. He searches for the right words in English and finally grabs a cigarrette out of his armor carriers pocket, lights the cigarette, and then raises his index finger to signal to hold on another minute. He reaches back into his carrier pockets, searches, and finally pulls out a small French-English dictionary.  Finally, he grabs his cigarette, and jabs with his finger (cigarrette sandwiched between his other fingers of the same hand) and with ash flying everywhere victoriously says, “Pride! They are a Pride people!”

I ask Laurent what he means by this and he says, “In Ivory Coast, when we teach, the instructors are happy to listen. But here, if I say something to an instructor, if I say it to his facce, direct, and in front of the students, it hurts his pride and he [the instructor] is lost for months! He will not listen to you again.”

Laurent, CPT Muktar, and a translator evaluate the ANA NCO’s battle drills. CPT Muktar had asked Laurent, “good or not so good?” Laurent refused to answer, asking CPT Muktar, instead, what he thought. Reluctantly, CPT Muktar makes a thumbs up with one hand and a thumbs down with the other, “so, so.”

The French advisers find a lot at fault with the ANA instructors and the students. The primary issues is that the students and teh instructors show up late or go AWOL with, to the French advisers, alarming frequency. A common sentiment was put this way by an adviser, “The instructors would rather appear stupid in front of their students than ask us for help.” I asked the adviser for an example: “You see, yesterday we do the M249. I ask the night before, ‘do you know how to use the M249.’ And the instructor, he says, ‘I do.’ And of course, yesterday, he [the instructor] does not know what to do with it! If the day before, he just ask me some questions. He probably be okay. But the students, now they don’t know the M249.” I ask the adviser if he had stepped in to correct the instructor. “Oh no. We are advisers not trainers.”

The fine line between advising and training is not so fine to the French advisers. Rather, it seems a bright line.  To a much larger extent “culture” plays a role in justifying non-participation. The French advisers will not interfere with the training at all, no matter how disastrous the training is going because they don’t want to risk hurting the pride of the instructors. Another instructor says, “They don’t want my experience, they just want my materials. I give them M16s and they don’t say thank you they say, ‘why don’t you give me an AK-47?” Or ‘why don’t you give me your gun?'” Laurent explains to me, a phenomena that the Brits also spoke about, “Insha’ Allah.” Laurent says, “They don’t aim their rifles, they just point and say, ‘Insha’Alla, if my enemy is supposed to die, then the bullet will hit him.’ The Afghans, you know, they aren’t like us: planning, everything is urgent. No. They just live for the day. They don’t project into the future.” One of the advisers, stands in an upright lotus position, arms out, thumbs touching the index and middle fingers, and says “ooommmmm. You have to be zen. Everything is slow.”

A French soldier demonstrates the zen comportment needed to work with ANA

Laurent, continues, “We have to try not to think in the European system but the Afghan system. The have their own mentalite and tactics. They are not ours. But we have to try and understand what they do.” It is not obvious how far the adviser have gotten with this project, inspite of their talk. Most of their comments about the ANA typically regard having no idea why, for example three squads will face each other (like a three sided box) while assualting an objective. But the advisers assume that there is a reasonable explanation from the ANA’s point of view, but they claim they just haven’t figured it out yet. And so the advisers swing back and forth between outward displays of trying to understand the ANA and lots of shrugs, and “merde!” and other backstage displays of disbelief and frustration with the progress of training.

Several of the French advisers used Dari words throughout their communications through the interpreters. Laurent says, “Its not so important to actually know Dari but to be able to use it to build good relationships. You show that you are trying and people appreciate it. Now, because we build rapport, we can just give some advice and they [the instructors] don’t just get mad. They sometimes listen.” Laruent also describes his strategy as “diploimatic.” “We have to be diplomatic. You don’t just give them orders. Do this now do this. But you have to give it as suggestions: ‘Maybe you do  this.  Maybe you try this? Whatever you like.’ But you make it so they have to decide.”

Laurent also says religion plays a role in the difficulties they have when training. “Children, the only way they know how to learn is how they learned to read the Qur’an. They just read and memorize. That is how you see the ANA being taught by the instructors. They just have them read about something and then expect them to go do it.  In the classes, the instructors just read directly from the lesson plan. But they don’t show them [ANA students] how to do it. You try to tell them they need to do demonstrations and to do drills but they just won’t do it because that is not how they learned the Qur’an.” Arguably,  the same critique could be made of the Western traditions emphasis on “rational thought.” The assumption being, that people are rational beings, like computers, and if give the proper ‘code’ they will execute properly. Consequently, far too much training excludes situated learning in favor of rote memorization of facts.

Another adviser says that Islam also impacts fighting style and thus training. Speaking of ambush training, an adviser says, “In their culture they believe that you have to see the enemy’s face, to see the eyes. So even though we teach them to engage from 300m with accurate fire with their rifles, they would rather wait until the enemy is next to them.  The students, a few months ago had an incident with a grenade because of this. They don’t train to fight from far away so when they throw grenades they throw them close by. All the time in training they throw the grenade and are still standing in the kill area, no matter how many times you tell them. Two died because of this. But we still can’t get the instructors to change the training. For them, without being able to see your enemy you aren’t showing courage.”

In the office at the adviser “cottage” the advisers show me mock radios they made approximately 5 months prior. The adviser says, “They have few materials, but they won’t do anything about it, even when they need to train.” He points out that the NCOs have to learn how to opearte radios but there are no radios to train on.  “They won’t adapt. So we built them a radio out of card board and parts so they could see how to use the radio and practice. But when we tell them they need to do the same they won’t.”

The adviser laugh when they retrieve the ANA instructors attempt to show how to use the radio. “This is what they made after three months!” a adviser said with a surprised look on his face.

I am surprised by the account that the advisers give of what they perceive to be their success in advising. An instructor says, “We French, we are a Latin people and so we have an easier time with the Afghans than the Americans!”

Life on the FOB – Afghanistan Day 7 (end of week roundup)

Posted on April 3, 2011     1 Comment

I have spent the majority of the past week with the combat advisers of the Infantry Branch School. For the purposes of my trip, to study intercultural interactions in a military setting, the IBS has been a perfect laboratory. Not only do the advisers interact, daily, with the various peoples that make up the ANA (Pashtos, Tajiks, Uzbeks, etc.) but the IBS is made up of Brits, New Zealanders, an American, the French, and the Germans. The Brits are composed, themselves of English, Welsh, and Scottish.  In other words, heterogeneity is the name of the game, and trying to both work together, and to teach across social divides is simply the status quo. No doubt, to the advisers, the training could go smoother and more rapidly, but perhaps they do not realize how much of an achievment it already is that their workday world manages to move along at all. Even one of the ANA captains, CPT. Y (he did not want his name or picture taken) said, via an interpreter, that “the Pashto, the Tajiks, everyone makes it work.” Getting at what “makes it work” is what I hope to understand better upon leaving Afghanistan.

A British adviser observing ANA instructors at work

One SGT, from New Zealand, that I have been watching, is the quintessential “good stranger.” SGT K. is friends with everyone: the ANA, the interpreters, the Brits, the Americans, the French, even the Russian contractors. Traveling around with SGT K. means observing or participating in exchanges of: “hey bro!”, “Whats up mate!,” not to mention ‘thumbs ups,’ shouting out windows with a big smile and a wave, and the use of broken Dari to let ANA troops, marching on the side of the road, know that he sees them and is saying hello. Above all, SGT K. is engaged with everyone regardless of the national or cultural origins.  Even when gestures that he uses are not “culturally” correct, such as the ‘thumbs up’ he still gets at a smile back from the ANA. One of the interpreters tells me that SGT K. stands out because, even though his language skills are poor, “he tries” and “treats everyone like a man.”

I think that there is the assumption that the difficulty that comes from intercultural occasions like the Brits mentoring the ANA is that there are two relatively stable cultural systems that clash during situated encounters.  Such a view is dramatically oversimplified, for even with the Brits it is quite apparent that the very notion of what they ought to be doing, day to day, is quite unsettled, their notions of what counts as being a competent adviser is frequently contested and is certainly conditional on the lines of activity they are embedded in at the time.

This was quite explicit during the morning drive from the FOB up to the 25m range. Sgt. S. tells Sgt. K. about the difficulties he was having with the ANA instructors and students the day before. “They tell us that we should just advise. But where is that line between advising, mentoring, and training? I think you have to step in and step out. I mean, if I just advise, and the instructors aren’t training the students, then what go is it to the students?” Sgt. K. responds, “Its about survivability. If we are just advisers and we don’t step in, we aren’t doing them [the students] any good when they go down south [to Helmund or Kandahar] and they can’t fucking clear a stoppage. Our obligation isn’t to the instructors its to the students. Advising is just one way to get there: Advise, mentor, and train. All three are important, I think. The problem is that you advise, advise, advise, and the instructors, they just ignore you. Sometimes they listen, or you have to push it up the chain [of command, both British and ANA] and by then, its two weeks, and you don’t have the students anymore. You sometimes have to mentor. You got to pull ’em aside [the instructors] and show ’em or you have to jus’ do it yourself and train the students. Ya have to do it bro!”

In observing SGTs K. and S. you can see the difference in how they interact with the ANA. SGT K. is constantly “bull shitting” with the ANA (students, instructors, NCOs, and officers). Only when he is observing the instructors in action is he relatively still and silent. But typically, as soon as the instructor is done teaching a group he is right back into action. SGT S. is just as eager to be a good adviser but it is clear that he is not yet as comfortable with the ANA. His movements and engagements are more stilted, more forced, and typically more abrupt. He also is more standoffish, typically hanging out in the background while SGT. K. is in the foreground running about. On the other hand there are good security reasons for this. It is not uncommon for ANA to turn their weapons on their advisers. Not to long ago 5 US advisers will shot by an ANA instructor. While the media has portrayed such shootings as being about Taliban embedding themselves in the ANA, the advisers tell a different story. Another one of the advisers, CPL G. told me, “Nah, its rarely about infiltrators. usually what happens is that one of the advisers berates ’em [the instructor or student] real harsh. And ya’ know, when ya do that ya have to know that if you shame them they will comeback five times harder. And that c’n mean they’re going to have to kill ya.”

The first problem of the day is that the ANA SGT Major has absolutely no idea where the 25m range. It isn’t clear to me if this is a matter of him not knowing where the range is or not knowing that it is a “25m” range. It seemed like this simply was not how the ANA NCOs referred to the ranges. Upon getting the ANA platoon to be trained on site, SGT K. used sticks, stones, and drawing in the dirt to try and explain to the ANA instructor how to arrange the troops so that he could observe everyone.

Adviser explains how to arrange students for best instruction

The instructor promptly ignored SGT K. and instead had everyone line up in a straight line and he stood behind them. After several dry fire drills where the instructor missed students make critical errors, SGT K. calmly waved over the instructor and the interpreter and asked if the instructor would mind if he tried leading a group through the dry fire drills. He qualified the request by saying, “If you like it, you can try it too,” so that it did not sound like he was ‘ordering’ the instructor. SGT K. expalined, “It just doesn’t work to tell them what to do. You have to put it out as a suggestion and hope they take it. They [Afghans] are very stubborn people and you can’t make them do anything. They have to want to.” SGT K. lays out the students on an an angle and stands in front of them, with a clear view of their weapon system and their bodies. He explains to the interpreter how to give commands of execution  and proceeds with the drill. When it is time for the next group, the ANA instructor continues with SGT K.’s methods.

When it comes time to do live fire, SGT K. says, “This is the first time they will shoot at paper targets. Usually they [ANA] are just sent up to a hillside range and told to fire their weapons. You see all kinds of things, like shooting from the hip.” SGT K. sets up 25m zeroing targets. The first group up tries to zero their weapons from the kneeling position. Not suprisingly, the students are all over the paper targets. With the next group, SGT K. convinces the ANA instructor that having the students laying prone will improve their shooting and make him [the instructor] look better. Sure enough the students do dramatically better.

Something I did not expect about the students is that they love having their picture taken and they love fliping through our cameras and their own. So when the students do well and “qualify” (it is informal) by shooting 20+ out of 30, SGT K. has each student stand by their target and takes a photo of them. To one stern looking ANA student he says with a big smile and slap on the students shoulder, “Hey man! Loosen up! Smile! You’re not an American Marine!” to which I cracked up.

When the adviser and I go and shoot, the issue of American’s being “wound up” comes up over and over again, with the advisers assuming an exaggerated tactical pose while doing shoot and move drills or simply standing on the line getting ready to shoot. They even comment that the US Army’s practices for clearing weapons demonstrates a to much seriousness and a lack of confidence in soldiers. SGT S. says, “We have 16 year old soldiers. If they can qualify on their weapons and we trust them to carry ’em and fight then we aren’t going to clear and check their weapons 3 or four times. We trust ’em to raise their hand and let us know when their weapons are cleared.” This kicks off an interesting discussion about the relative cultures of risk in the US, UK, and NZ.