Search

When Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) commenced in October 2001, the U.S. Special Forces (SF) were the first U.S. military unit on the ground in Afghanistan, utilising their Unconventional Warfare (UW) capabilities. Despite their significant role at the initial stage of the military campaign, SF began to encounter numerous challenges from as early as 2002 and throughout OEF. Based on an analysis of forty-five master's theses authored by SF officers, this paper discusses the structural-organisational and cultural-conceptual challenges. These obstacles led to the marginalisation of SF's UW efforts. Scholarship on special operations forces (SOF) often regards the period of the so-called global war on terrorism (GWOT) as U.S. SOF's golden age focusing predominantly on the activities of SOF units linked to the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command rather than on SF. By examining the challenges faced by SF, this article aims to contribute to a more nuanced discussion of SOF efforts during GWOT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After two decades of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US military has shifted to preparing for large-scale combat operations. However, it would be a mistake to discard hard-earned lessons from these conflicts. Despite contemporary advances in technology and important differences between current US competitors and the Soviet Union, irregular warfare will play a prominent role in the new era of strategic competition. It was a prominent form of US-Soviet competition during the Cold War, is already used extensively by the United States and its competitors and remains attractive given concerns about escalation between nuclear-armed powers. Given the continued relevance of irregular warfare, we focus on two main lessons from the US experience. First, since irregular warfare is about influencing populations and achieving political goals without large-scale combat operations, influencing and working alongside the partner is the primary mission. The second lesson follows directly from the first; if irregular warfare is ultimately about achieving policy goals with an economy of military force, IW is a team sport requiring joint and interagency collaboration to be effectively implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A personal narrative is presented which explores the authors experience of influencing the US to pivot from counterinsurgency and irregular warfare.

Copyright of Canadian Foreign Policy Journal (CFPJ) is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Twenty years after the most devastating terrorist attacks, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the immediate takeover of the country by the Taliban represent the greatest strategic success for Al-Qaeda and the global jihadist movement since 9/11. Understanding how to implement a military strategy in Afghanistan has a number of key features. First, the nature of irregular warfare makes it extremely diffi cult to assess the eff ectiveness of a strategy, leading coalition forces to rely on partial, incomplete, or misleading tactical and operational data to measure strategic progress. Without obvious strategic values, neither civilians nor military leaders can gain a clear understanding of strategic progress in an operational environment characterized by obscurity and societal fragmentation. Second, the military’s attempts to provide decision-makers with the justifi cation for tactical actions taken and the strategic value of operational control of territories, constantly providing positive assessments of tactical and operational progress, led to a picture of the surreal operational environment, which strengthened the approach. strictly military of the second phase of the joint mission in the theater of operations Afghanistan [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

US military intervention in Afghanistan was decisive and forceful, however, the Taliban's insurgency inevitably transformed U.S. military doctrine and strategy from conventional military intervention into Counterinsurgency's kinetic and non-kinetic operations. U.S. strategic and operational methodology despite exhausting all possibilities; troops' surge, air dominance/surveillance, non-kinetic peace building operations, failed to dislodge the threat of Taliban violence. An effort is made to identify the underlying factors contributory to the failure of the U.S. strategy, tactics and other challenges faced despite having unparalleled military superiority. This paper further probes the U.S. military strategic repositioning, social structure with the warlords and critically examines how the conflict drifted from intervention into Counterinsurgency irregular warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article highlights the difficulty of creating a code of ethics in anthropology, particularly one that appropriately addresses the nuanced nature of the military and the anthropologists who conduct research and disseminate information in the context of war. The article consults one of the most important books on this topic, George R. Lucas' Anthropologists in Arms (2009), along with several other relevant texts, and examines the ethical complexities and dilemmas American and European anthropologists faced during their involvement in both World Wars, as well as those faced during Vietnam and the more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The article also examines the military's recruitment of cultural experts, the methods used to culturally engage combatants, and the criticisms against social scientists who choose to work as so-called military anthropologists. The anthropologists in this article risked academic exile conducting what some consider an adulteration of academic principles. The article contributes to the discourse regarding unconventional warfare and the methods used by the armed forces to better understand the cultural nuances of people, and to highlight the need for the development of a better anthropological code of ethics that accounts for the challenges of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conclusion of a conflict, called by some American analysts as "America's Longest War", after the withdrawal of the majority of NATO military forces, requires a careful analysis of the conditions and security environment that ISAF mission, International Security Afghan Forces, leaves as legacy to the Afghan military forces. The transfer of authority towards a strong government, recognized by most Afghan provinces, and benefiting from the support of national military forces able to cope with terrorist and insurgent threats on its own, are the minimum and necessary conditions leading the country towards a stable and secure environment and towards a sustainable development. Given these realities, any approach on the consequences of the transition towards self-sustainable governance becomes interesting and timely for any military political study. These are the prospects that we propose in our paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author offers his insights about the British Forces involvement in the wars in Afghanistan, South Africa and Egypt. He relates details of the wars and observes the mismatch of applying a European model in dealing with the Afghans and Zulus. He notes how the adversaries are able to move more flexibly with less sophisticated system. He discusses the lessons about adapting to irregular warfare, about having the right clothing and equipment, and about the character of British Forces.

The article focuses on the U.S. Armed Forces' Irregular Warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq since September 11, 2001. According to the author the method used by the U.S. military in these wars do not adhere to the same notion used in past wars like that of the 1990-91 Gulf War. He adds that after from a post-Osama Bin Laden point, the motivation of the war carried out the U.S. seems to be irregular from that of the previous wars before it that has a definable beginnings, middles and ends and a defeat of one party.