“It makes me so damn angry to see those constant pictures of young soldiers working through all those damn fields of Afghanistan being blown up by IEDs left and right. I’m angered that this generation hasn’t learned any of the basics of how to fight with tribes.”

Jordan’s contention that flooding in tens of thousands of conventional troops into the fray in southern Afghanistan is a “wholly inappropriate” response to the current crisis. “Let the tribes fight the tribes. It’s the only system that has historically worked all over the world.”
If nothing else, Jordan suggest the US is failing to pick up any of the lessons of “the monumental exercise of CIA covert support to drive the Soviet Union superpower forces into an ignominious defeat without the use of any US military ‘boots on the ground’”; nor even Lawrence of Arabia’s stirring of Arabian tribes, not to mention the marshalling of irregular revolutionary forces in the American war of independence (I was less convinced on his latter point; my family fought on the other side!). His remarks came as a series of influential voices point out that we’re not getting it quite right.
As CNN’s Zakaria has pointed out: “Obama says the mission in Afghanistan is the defeat of Al Qaeda. The CIA director says that there are at most 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. This means that the US will spend $1 billion to fight each remaining Al-Qaeda member there this year alone. Do we need to be fighting such a MAJOR war there for so few Al Qaeda?”
Jordan added:

“How can, he asked, the current US and NATO generals believe that putting “boots on the ground” – the boots of young inexperienced soldiers – generally unfamiliar with such irregular combat is a good strategy?”

Jordan followed up his call with an email in which he wrote: “I vacillate between anger and sadness as I watch TV, seeing young NATO troops being sent out on foot or in vulnerable vehicles on dirt tracks in the Afghan countryside to be killed – easily – by IEDs or snipers. OK, that could happen in the towns or cities also, but let the Afghan fighters do the countryside and mountain tracks, with a few grizzled covert veterans who know best how to protect themselves and their men while providing some modern support to the cooperating tribal fighters.“
“These tactics and strategy should lead to eventual tribal settlements among the Afghans that leaves the “good guys” (NATO’s side) in charge in this ancient nation with NATO troops gone, but with some covert support to keep the “good guys” fully equipped and funded.  After all, although there is no such thing as “unconditional surrender” in this part of the world, and al-Qaeda no longer has their main base there.”

Yemen
Talking earlier, Eric had his own memories of tribal warfare in Yemen in the 1960s. In those days, while the British and French were covertly working with tribes in the hills, when two American USAID officers were imprisoned, the Pentagon’s knee-jerk response was to propose at a Washington meeting a parachute-drop of a Green Beret team to raid the prison to free the two Americans. The operation was killed when Eric, asked to comment on the plan, told the mulit-agency gathering that the bright young Colonel and all his men would likely return in body bags. Eric suggested there was indeed a much simpler solution – parachute a smaller team to the nearby desert camp of a notorious tribal chieftain and get his men, with gold coins and a few of the latest automatic weapons to win their attention, to perform the mission on America’s behalf.

The Incas
Eric also pointed out that recent archaeological evidence showed most of the Incas were killed by other Peruvian tribes, not by Francisco Pizarro’s invading Spanish. (Most Incas were eliminated with big stones and clubs, not with swords or spears). “So the Spanish had worked out tribal warfare strategy and tactics hundreds of years ago.”

Afghanistan 2010
In Afghanistan, Eric suggests, it is “criminal” for young NATO soldiers to be told to patrol through fields and villages arranged perfectly for deadly ambushes among a population that will never learn to a) like them, or even b) tolerate them.
The problem is the total failure to cultivate the continuing covert capability to handle and manage this kind of irregular combat, least of which is learning the relevant languages.
In the early 20th Century, British political officers working the north-west Frontier came to their jobs with generations of experience. Now, as an intelligence reports to the Washington Times, “commanders still have not found the key to shifting the loyalties of Pashtun tribal leaders away from the rigidly Islamic Taliban and toward the democratic government of President Hamid Karzai.
“We’re fighting a cultural battle we have yet to come to grips with,” the official said. “We don’t get the Pashtun mindset. We can’t figure out how to work through the system of corruption.”
In other words, this stuff is hard ::: all the more reason to mean it is primarily a job for a small  group of elite operators – committed to very long term engagement with this problem.

Special Force experiments.
Of course, as many have reported, many experiments are underway in engagement with tribal forces, not least of which experiments with Green Berets with the Local Defence Initiative.
Among the most powerful arguments for this approach are contained in Major Jim Gant’s “One Tribe at a Time Paper” and an essay called The Tribal Path by a group of former Royal Marines, including some members of the UK’s Special Boat Squadron.
The danger is that doing these wrong is worse than doing nothing – for instance arming local tribes works only if the resulting militia can be made to represent the entire community, not a local warlord whose domineering is precisely the reason so many support the Taliban (as I reported in my film from Kandahar) . In other words, there has to be a micro political process, dealing with tribal differences, that goes ahead of any kind of military work.

Jordan summarises his approach as follows:

Published on Afpak Channel. By Stephen Grey, June 15, 2010

U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Richard Mills takes over command of Helmand – Afghanistan’s most violent province — from the British this week, Britain’s Conservative-led government of David Cameron is busy in London wrestling with the question: just what has been going wrong?

The shake-up of NATO command structures in Afghanistan — which spins off a new divisional headquarters, Regional Command South West — from the British-led Regional Command South in Kandahar, now places almost all of Britain’s combat troops in Afghanistan rather uneasily under the leadership of an American.

With a force now of nearly 10,000, the Brits have been fighting in Helmand since the summer of 2006 and lost more than 290 troops. While it is perilous to consider the province’s woes in isolation from the entire country’s downward spiral, there is a need to ask why things have gone particularly badly in Helmand.

For the British, it is a matter of national reputation. Not is only is there a small matter of the British Empire’s three previous Afghan wars thought (wrongly, as it happens) to have been disastrous failures. There is also the widespread view, shared by a majority of the British Army itself, that the U.K. tarnished its reputation for counterinsurgency operations by getting wrong its campaign in Basra, Iraq, and requiring an embarrassing bail-out by the Americans in Operation Charge of the Knights in 2008.

Is Helmand another case of waiting for the Yanks to come?

As Prime Minister David Cameron attempts a review of the strategy, among the first to face the music are the most senior officers. On Sunday it emerged that the chief of the defense staff, an RAF man, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, is to be axed, presumably in favor of a man in khaki. The most obvious candidate is General Sir David Richards, a former NATO commander in Afghanistan, and currently head of the Army.

As painfully described in an investigation published last week by the Times of London, the charge against military top brass, and those like Stirrup who talked endlessly of constant progress on the ground, is of filtering complaints from field commanders and junior soldiers so that politicians under the previous Labour administration got spared the full picture of how badly things were going in Helmand and the many shortfalls, for example, of war-winning military equipment and in basic welfare for the troops and their injured. Britain went into Helmand, the article described, with its “eyes shut and fingers crossed.”

Adam Holloway, a former Guards officer and now backbench Tory MP, added in the Sunday Times: “There was a tendency under the Labour government to promote ‘politicians in uniform’ rather than officers willing to give frank advice about the strategic drift in Afghanistan.”

As Holloway implies, some of the criticism of senior commanders like Stirrup for failing to “back our boys,” rather misses the point. While the insufficiency of resources like helicopters, bomb technicians, and mine-protected vehicles was arguably a betrayal of the “military covenant” that a nation owes an armed forces bearing so much sacrifice, none of these deficiencies go far to explaining why the war has been going so badly.

So what did go wrong with British leadership in Helmand? What part did the U.K. play in the transformation of what was a quiet backwater of the country in 2006 into this violent quagmire which now requires a garrison of 20,000 foreign troops (twice what the Soviets deployed to the province)?

The British had deployed in 2006 with an original plan for Helmand that echoed key elements of what was to become Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s strategy. Its mission was to avoid combat and concentrate on protecting the population by providing basic security and fostering development in a narrow zone of central Helmand.

But the plan was not followed. As rebellion spread, the force of 3,300 personnel, representing an initial combat strength at first of little more nine platoons, were scattered across the district centers of northern Helmand. Pinned down in small Alamo-style outposts, their presence served as a magnet for the Taliban and an inspiration for general revolt. And, forced to defend themselves, they resorted to air strikes and heavy weapons that rubble-ized the centers of towns like Sangin and Musa Qala, and forced out the populations of Garmsir, Kajaki and Now Zad.

Now committed to defending a vast geographical area (and persuaded by President Karzai that any withdrawal would hand the Taliban a major victory), over successive years, Britain’s Task Force Helmand tripled in size but, despite reinforcement by Danes, Estonians and American units, was always outstretched by the spreading rebellion. British troops and their Afghan partners have never been in sufficient strength in any one place to dominate the ground effectively and provide the kind of basic security required to implement the central elements of an effective counterinsurgency approach, like reform of local government or meaningful development work. While the U.K. trumpeted its “comprehensive approach” — the unified application of both civil and military power — the slogan was a parody of reality.

The population of Helmand is highly-dispersed, scattered among the compounds that dot the “Green Zone,” as the irrigated land on either side of the Helmand River and its tributaries is called. While the British-led Task Force could cling on to the major towns like Sangin, Gereshk, and Lashkah Gah, real population security depended on securing the land that stretches between them.

Wedded at first to a conventional mindset, British operations initially sought to break the back of the Taliban revolt with endless and bloody “sweeps” up and down the Green Zone. The Taliban got suppressed for a few weeks or months and then came back. Troops came to refer to this disparagingly as “mowing the lawn.”

The sweeps got followed by another approach of “ribbon security” — an aspiration of constructing a chain of Forward Operating Bases up and down the Green Zone to provide a more extensive enduring presence — up the Helmand from Gereshk to Sangin and then ultimately upstream as far as the strategic hydroelectric dam at Kajaki.

The approach was flawed. There were never enough troops for such ambition. And the overstretch got worse by the fall of 2008, when the revolt started spreading to previously relatively-quiet central Helmand and the gates of the provincial capital, Lashkah Gah. In the assaults that began in July 2009, the British drained resources from Sangin and pushed troops into the central Babaji and Malgir districts west of Lashkah Gah. They were joined now by U.S. Marines who took over Garmsir, Nawa, and the southern Helmand district of Khan Neshin. The U.S. Marine presence has been expanding ever since, leading to today’s change-of-command.

Foreign interventions like the Iraq and Afghan campaigns have proved Donald Rumsfeld’s truism that you “go to war with the Army that you have.” Whatever the mistakes made in the early days, success depends on the speed and wisdom with which you assess and then adapt.

The charge then against British commanders is that despite the sacrifice and heroism of their troops, they failed to alter their strategy and their people fast both from conventional war to counterinsurgency; and secondly to a more nuanced approach that tailored activity to the finite resources available. Constrained by political demands to portray an ever-rosy but false picture of relentless progress, they were condemned to what retired former Helmand commander, Maj. Gen. Andrew Mackay, has called “an endless muddling through.”

For all that, as a counterinsurgency campaign, the war in Afghanistan is yet young. For U.S. commanders, there is little cause for smugness. If the British in 2006 arrived with a conventional mindset, they were confronting an insurgency already set aflame by a then hyper-conventional U.S. command and a U.S. political alliance with drug barons and unpopular corrupt warlords, all in the name of counterterrorism.

And if the principal cause of British failure has been the routine of taking a given resource and spreading it as thinly as possible to the point of being ineffective, then the U.S. surge shows signs of adopting the identical rule-of-thumb. As battalions dig in across the country in new towns and villages, it has to be asked if the offensive comes way ahead of a meaningful plan to make their inevitable sacrifice worthwhile.

As General McChrystal has made plain, the key is to adapt to an approach geared to the roots of rebellion and the security of the population. As my recent experience on the ground indicates, putting all that into practice is proving as difficult now for American troops as their British cousins.

The forgotten conclusion from their early defeats in the Afghan wars drawn by a few wise minds in the British Empire administration was that, in a complex cultural environment like Afghanistan, about which they had to admit they knew very little, sometimes “masterful inactivity” was a better option than gallantly intervening and making things worse.

Stephen Grey is the author of Operation Snakebite: The Explosive True Story of an Afghan Desert Siege (Viking Penguin, 2009), and a foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times of London. He will be speaking at the New America Foundation on Wednesday June 23 at 4:00pm; details and RSVP here.

One quite senior person (like everyone, nameless for obvious reasons,) disagrees strongly with the point advocating the abolitin of the UK’s six-months tours. He says they are by far the best thing for soldiers in combat, and not least of which by far the best way to avoid PTSD, according to academic research. (Am looking into that). Also senior people are starting to do one year tours like the Americans.

The senior officer added:  “The key is your first point: political will is key. This is a war and if you want to succeed you had better do it properly!”

All I would add here is that no-one is suggesting long tours for combat troops. But what doesn’t make sense is the endless revolving door headquarters (and the nonsense that you can get to grips with a place like Helmand in six months). I hear plenty of voices suggesting that a Northern Ireland system of a permanent headquarters seems to make more sense. Those doing staff jobs aren’t in the same boat as those in the line of gunfire. A straw poll of  Army officers also indicates alot of dissatisifaction that although the UK military is supposed to be on an ‘operational footing’ there is little evidence of that in practice.  Mst people come back and do pretty irrelevant jobs after war tours in Afghanistan or Iraq. It hardly seems the career structure is geared towards winning.

Another officer in the ‘thick of it’ writes in some detail. He was commenting on a slightly earlier draft, so some of his points were already taken on board.

But, as he writes, “it’s too easy to produce a shopping list of cockups thus far, and without addressing the why and how we got here, it risks the easy option of ‘everyone before was incompetent – now its time for a new broom’.  With this approach, all current stakeholders become defensive, and will entrench to protect their reputations and narratives (CDS, senior MOD, DFID, FCO etc).  Therefore acknowledgement of context up front may be of use: Difficulty in maintaining a coherent internationalist approach with the distraction of Iraq from 2003-2009, a unilateralist US administration and a paralysed UK political machine. Also – we all need to recognise the limits of what UK plc can achieve – we are junior partners to a US led coalition campaign. And the reality is that (General Stan) McChrystal needs to demonstrate delivery to President Obama and the US Congress before the Democrats get punished for remaining bogged down in Afghan before the Mid-Terms in Nov.  Hence real pressure to deliver in Marjah, and growing concern at  how Kandahar will play out.  The limitations of the military instrument are stark set against the most complex Afgh tribal/criminal/governance/insurgence/spiritual Gordian knot!”

Re the demand for strong unified strategic leadership, he asks: “Isn’t this happening now under McC, as the NATO proconsul, and (the UK’s Mark) Sedwill as his civil equivalent?  And surely the real ‘sensible end to the war’ is owned by the GOvernment of Afghnistan delivering better security, and not disenfranchising southern pushtuns by its own corruption? This lends itself more to an embedded mentorship ‘management consultancy’ role for the West to build capacity, rather than a single Caesar.”

And adds “…. the quality control of command appointments is nothing without home base political support, and adequate resourcing.  UK %GDP on Defence remains at interwar period/Crimean levels…lessons from history are clear.: si vis pacem para bellum!”

The point we are making in the piece has been the absence of a joined up UK political approach, or even simple attention by political classes. That’s been the missing piece.

On suggested reforms of the Army, he writes.

“This is entirely fair, but if we adapt now for Afghan, we’ll still be preparing for the last war, and not the next one.  It is the height of indulgence – and the Western Miliaries recurring sin – that Commanders have the right to choose the war they want to fight.  If we’d been adapting since the end of CW, we’d have seen and neutralised AQ before they got off the ground by conducting full spectrum capacity-building/int led CT ops/Civ Mil high prestige ‘narrative captor ops’ to secure political and reputational depth.  Conflict reflects its era, and we now (and ever more) will need to be ‘more than soldiers’.  ”

And on our somewhat cheeky demand for a  ‘cull’ of those in the command chain.

“Totally with you on this – but see my initial comments – who will buy into this? What politico has the experience and credibility to argue with senior mil? Todays political class are by and large professional shmoozers who have started as SPADs, then minced about the PR/Media/Comms/lobbying circus before collecting their patronage and supporting the machine.  The more high profile ex-mil MPs have burned their reputations by being mavericks (Patrick Mercer etc) – and were also fairly junior.  Show me today’s Eisenhower who has succeeded in both Mil and Pol fields.  But you’re right to highlight our staid, entrenched senior leaders (who spent 20 years guarding golf courses in Germany to get to the top!).

“The answer (I think) is some form of 360 degree reporting, to genuinely identify the stars of the future (like me!).  But to work, it would need to guarantee anonymity – which is not FOI/open reporting/employment law compatible.”

On the points about strategy, we argued for the need to ‘give attention, not necessarily more resources’, suggesting the point was to achieve maximum effect with the resources available and there was no point sending in an influx of new troops if ground commanders spread them out too thinly.

My correpondent writes: “This conflates multiple issues.  TFH was always under-resourced – but particularly when Ed Butler chose to ‘support Daoud’ (ie chase a DSO) rather than comply with John Reid’s intent of a low impact security bubble around Lash to enable development…and thus ink-spots.  The real issue here is the lost art of command at senior levels, and investing too much pressure/responsibility onto too small forces .  Helmand should always have been a Div/Corps task – but we’re too small – resources again.

We obviously don’t agree on anything – but interesting to hear an obviously well thought-out point of view from an ‘insider’. Apologies for a bit of summarising going on here. (PS: I strongly disagree with point re Ed Butler; there is certainly a lot to debate in hindsight on the tactical front, but believe his motives were are  100 per cent on the mark.)

ANDREW MACKAY WHEN IN COMMAND OF TASK FORCE HELMAND

Exclusive: As David Cameron gathers experts and ministers for “secret” Afghan talks, former Helmand commander Andrew Mackay and Operation Snakebite author Stephen Grey set out 10 key points for the PM’s agenda.

As the new prime minister, David Cameron now has an historic opportunity to engage in a fresh and innovative reassessment of the mission in Afghanistan. Today he will hold a Chequers summit of his National Security Council about the UK’s strategy in Afghanistan. It comes as the United States takes control of about 8,000 British troops in Helmand Province as part of a Nato restructuring.

We believe success in Afghanistan will be dependant on a) a coherent relationship with the US b) an agreed strategy within Nato clearly communicated to the public, c) an agreed approach to address the weakness of government in Afghanistan and d) a root and branch re-examination over the coming months into the contribution made on the diplomatic, military and development fronts by the UK in support of the Afghanistan mission.

Officials, diplomats and generals have often made a habit of telling politicians what they want to hear, rather than the candid truth about why we have failed to make the necessary progress in Afghanistan and why we have betrayed thus far the great sacrifices made by Britain’s armed forces.

Ahead of Cameron’s Afghanistan “shura” at Chequers, we offer some suggestions in the following 10-point agenda. It is based on our own experiences and conversations with those at the frontline of this conflict, whether inside or outside the military.

If he exercises too much caution in altering course, it will be time to start planning Nato’s exit and preparing for the consequences.

A TEN POINT AGENDA:

1) Leadership and will

Without UK “political will” all is lost; with it everything is possible. It has been an absent commodity for too long and we have been content to muddle through. The country is at war and requires wartime strategic political leadership that unifies the diplomatic, military and development objectives.

2) Sustainable strategy
a) In talks with our allies, the UK should promote a sustainable approach that achieves greatest effect with a lighter, more expert touch allowing us to devote troops/resources/sacrifice equal to Afghanistan’s moderate strategic importance. Only such an approach can be sustained for the lengthy period required to achieve success.

b) The US presidential pledge to begin withdrawal from 2011 is flawed, and every effort should be made to link withdrawal with success, rather than some artificial timetable. Those tangible successes of our current military efforts are being undermined by an impossible political imperative.

c) Our current approach of fighting to sustain and prop up a corrupt central government with a very weak mandate is an ugly mirror of the approach of the Soviet Union and will thwart all attempts at a coherent strategy unless fully and meaningfully addressed.

d) While nothing precipitous should be contemplated, of far greater importance than any new military offensive is the development of a credible political approach to bolster support for provincial government within Afghanistan and follow the path of tribal engagement (particularly among the Pashtun), the removal of criminals from power, and the withdrawal of our unconditional support for the unpopular. There is no solution without reconciliation of the Taliban.

e) Bolster the chances of a political settlement by supporting removal of UN sanctions against all senior Taliban leadership; signal willingness to see a Taliban role in future government in Afghanistan; make clear that all Nato troops will withdraw as soon as a stable political settlement has been agreed and bedded in.

f) All of the above indicates why politics are central to this campaign and constant engagement is essential.

3) Encourage free debate
Many of the best ideas for getting us out of this mess are currently being developed by those at the lower ranks of the military yet they are ignored. They have no conduit for expressing better (and more controversial) ideas and are required to submit articles, papers and views on a wide range of subjects for bureaucratic and unnecessary approval.

These are the individuals with the direct experience, who understand the consequences of war and are the least heard, the most patronised, yet have the greatest level of accountability. The National Security Council should have all service chiefs attend when discussing Afghanistan.

4) Understand the nature of the conflict

We are in an era of behavioural conflict where are seeking to force adversaries, corrupt politicians and an insecure population to make better choices. We will never “kill our way to victory” in Afghanistan.

In this population-centred conflict we need strategies and policies that help people both individually and collectively to make the right choices. The UK ability to conduct “influence” operations among the population is a mess and is incoherent. The population is the prize.

5) Reform the British Army
The army has been slow in updating its ethos or procedures from the Cold War. It needs to dedicate to perpetual adaptation: capable of radically transforming itself to be able to fight and win the counter-insurgency wars we have been fighting for nearly a decade.

Abandon peacetime-based career-centred six-month deployments. It needs to create an institution that can conduct operations across all spectrums, one that is a weapon of engagement with all populations across the globe, not merely a fighter of industrial warfare.

6) Purge the chain of command
The UK will fail to formulate a coherent and forward-looking strategy if it relies on the same organisational rigidity. Senior leaders got us into this mess. Too many individuals have been making the wrong decisions, in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Accountability is absent and comfort zones have been reinforced.

Adaptation is a prerequisite for success yet we have stifling bureaucracy; organisations that are unchanged in their outlook, smug in their authorities and determined to guard against any change.

A cull should be instigated of the senior commanders not fit for their role in the war at hand (and who may have played an unhelpful contribution to the unsuccessful conventional-orientated campaign so far); promotion systems need to be torn up and replaced with those apt for a war; those fit for command should not be kept waiting to assume responsibility.

7) Give more attention, not necessarily more resources
More troops and helicopters, for example, mean nothing when employed by commanders in pursuit of vainglorious but misguided strategy – or spread too thinly to achieve any real effect.

The problems will be stated elegantly by all your advisers. Solutions are far harder to come by; the principle deficiency is a lack of good ideas for solutions and a willingness to see through their implementation.

(Five-year-old Ashton Peterson welcomes home his father Sergeant Carl Peterson, of 2nd Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment – Getty)

Establish a stabilisation force
Put together civilian experts – from development workers, to engineers, to anthropologists – and (crucially) select them by excellence to deploy to hostile environments at short notice. They will provide substance to a “comprehensive approach”.

They need to be comfortable with the military and be relaxed about military command and not be regulated by “duty of care rules” that restrict their ability to operate alongside soldiers. In other words, to do their job they need to be able to venture outside the front gate of a forward operating base.

9) Equipment
For too long we have operated a deeply flawed policy of relying on Urgent Operational Requirements (UOR) for buying equipment. UOR was intended for the unforeseen, requirements in Afghanistan are now foreseen.

What kind of equipment policy demands that equipment to train on in this country cannot be afforded and is subsequently in short supply? A UOR policy achieves just that. What kind of policy ensures that sustainability of equipment in theatre creates resupply difficulties? Yes, a UOR policy. What kind of policy sends equipment in long after it was needed? UOR.

10) Care of the injured
A nation that sends its men and women into battle has a total commitment to care for them when the consequences of those battles unfold.

A nation that places too much emphasis on charity to do so fails in that commitment. A nation that allows injured personnel and their families to fight alone in receiving appropriate care fails those individuals. A nation that witnesses our prisons and streets being populated by former servicemen fails in that commitment.

Author Stephen Grey writes about how “warlords” control the Afghan city of Kandahar, a population centre deemed by Nato to be its number one target in its battle with the Taliban.

Declared by President Obama as this yar’s top priority in the ongoing war in Afghanistan, Kandahar is the country’s second city and the heartland of the Taliban rebel movement.

It is the centre of Nato operations this summer. I spent much of the last two months in and around the city, embedded first with Nato troops and then stepping “outside the wire” to operate independently, trying to read the temperature of a place that is frequently described in news reports as the Taliban’s greatest “stronghold” in the country.

A switch in strategy ordered last year by General Stanley McChrystal, the Nato and US commander in Afghanistan, has turned attention from heavy fighting in rural areas like northern Helmand where most British troops are based, to the main centres of population, which McChrystal now declares to be “the centre of gravity” of the military campaign.

The theory goes that if the bulk of the population are made to feel secure, they will resist the temptation to support the Taliban.

Real development can then take place, and the people may start to support the Afghan government, and the insurgency will wither away. But how do things seem on the ground?

The first thing to realise is that any kind of Nato offensive has as much potential to make things worse as it does to make things better.

The city of Kandahar is an un-easy, fear-ridden, and violent place. Government is weak and corruption is rife. But Taliban stronghold it is not. Yet.

This is not Helmand where a simple walk out of a base in Sangin valley, for instance, is a prelude to a certain gun battle. For now, there is no part of the city where the Afghan government’s army and police cannot venture.

The Taliban’s agents may intimidate, and they may send their fighters in to mount suicide bomb blasts against government buildings. But this is like Saigon was in the Vietnam War, or perhaps Palermo at its worse.

The checkpoints are still nominally held by the government. By declaring Kandahar to be target Number One, Nato also seems to be goading the Taliban to come and declare war in a city that although in dire straights has until now been largely un-scathed by major fighting.

The population may not thank McChrystal for his trouble. For now, though, who then rules this city? The surprising thing I found is that the real power in the city seems to lie not with the Taliban but, say locals, with a series of different armed groups.

Like some mafia capital, the real decisions here, say locals, are made by powerful “warlords”, commanders of armed bands, and dominant tribes who are said by all to have grown rich from the swelling contracts to work with Nato troops, and particular United States forces.

On a daily basis, there are reports of political assassinations, of raids on people’s homes, of kidnapping, and of robbery on the roads. But, as I saw one tribal elder bravely tell President Hamid Karzai, when the Afghan president visited, here “it’s just too easy to blame the Taliban for everything.”

Members of a militia set up by American special forces to guard villages around Kandahar (Credit: Stephen Grey)

The word that Kandaharis use all the time is “militia” – a term for irregular forces that sums up gunmen who may appear here in the uniforms of private security companies, as members of the police or other government force, or out of uniform as thugs-for-hire to extort or intimidate.

Most disturbing was the frequent suggestion that the reason for the power exerted by these groups was their close relationship with both the US military and other parts of the coalition, including intelligence agencies.

Although the US and coalition officially condemn any form of “militias”, insisting they work only with groups that are approved and licensed by the Afghan government, in reality many of the gunmen who “belong” to the powerful warlord clans of the city have been enlisted for help by Nato.

Armed militias may be found as guards at coalition gates or as guards that protect Nato supply convoys, in the guise of interpreters and other staff at coalition bases, and as special units attached to coalition special forces and intelligence teams.

Two powerful warlords, for instance, have seized most of the “government” property in the city used by Nato. One controls construction projects. Another has a powerful influence on who gets employed at the huge Kandahar airbase.

According to those I interviewed, most of the power held by the militia leaders stems not from their links to the Afghan government but from the hundreds of millions of pounds of contracts awarded by the military and Western civilian agencies which these men conspire to monopolise.

Sometimes I wonder if it might be more useful to send a brigade of expert auditors to Kandahar to vet the contracts, than to send a division of soldiers. The film I ended up making – to be broadcast tomorrow – explores those links between the Nato coalition and what might be called the “Gangs of Kandahar”.

We will post more details up tomorrow, but I think it’s quite a fresh take on the instability and injustice that lies behind this war in Afghanistan.

Before I explored this subject, I was told that few would dare to appear on camera to discuss such subjects.

At least one local journalist has been killed for raising these issues. But there were many we did find who care enough and were courageous enough to speak out.

Stephen Grey’s investigation on Kandahar was filmed and produced by Stephen and Afghan journalist N.R., (who cannot be named in full) with additional research by Oliver Laughland.

By Stephen Grey in Kandahar.

The supreme leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, has indicated that he and his followers may be willing to hold peace talks with western politicians.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, two of the movement’s senior Islamic scholars have relayed a message from the Quetta shura, the Taliban’s ruling council, that Mullah Omar no longer aims to rule Afghanistan. They said he was prepared to engage in “sincere and honest” talks.

A senior US military source said the remarks reflected a growing belief that a “breakthrough” was possible. “There is evidence from many intelligence sources [that] the Taliban are ready for some kind of peace process,” the source said.

At a meeting held at night deep inside Taliban-controlled territory, the Taliban leaders told this newspaper that their military campaign had only three objectives: the return of sharia (Islamic law), the expulsion of foreigners and the restoration of security.

“[Mullah Omar] is no longer interested in being involved in politics or government,” said Mullah “Abdul Rashid”, the elder of the two commanders, who used a pseudonym to protect his identity.

“All the mujaheddin seek is to expel the foreigners, these invaders, from our country and then to repair the country’s constitution. We are not interested in running the country as long as these things are achieved.”

The interview was conducted by a reputable Afghan journalist employed by The Sunday Times with two members of the shura that directs Taliban activity across the whole of southern Afghanistan, including Helmand and Kandahar provinces. It was arranged through a well established contact with the Taliban’s supreme leadership.

Looking back on five years in government until they were ousted after the attacks in America on September 11, 2001, the Taliban leaders said their movement had become too closely involved in politics.

Abdul Rashid said: “We didn’t have the capability to govern the country and we were surprised by how things went. We lacked people with either experience or technical expertise in government.

“Now all we’re doing is driving the invader out. We will leave politics to civil society and return to our madrasahs [religious schools].”

The Taliban’s position emerged as an American official said colleagues in Washington were discussing whether President Barack Obama could reverse a long-standing US policy and permit direct American talks with the Taliban.

If the Taliban’s military aims no longer included a takeover of the Afghan government, this would represent “a major and important shift”, the US official said.

The Taliban objectives specified on their website had already shifted, Nato officials said, from the overthrow of the “puppet government” to the more moderate goal of establishing a government wanted by the Afghan people.

In the interview, the two leaders insisted that reports of contact between the Taliban and the Kabul government were a “fraud” and stemmed from claims made by “charlatans”. Up to now, no officially sanctioned talks have taken place, they said.

They laid down no preconditions for substantive negotiations, saying simply that the Taliban were ready for “honest dialogue”. Another Taliban source with close links to the Quetta shura said the movement was willing to talk directly to “credible” western politicians, including Americans, but not to intelligence agencies such as the CIA.

This source said that although the Taliban’s unwavering objective remained the withdrawal of all foreign troops, their preconditions for talks might now be limited to guarantees of security for their delegates and a Nato ceasefire.

According to a Nato intelligence source, Taliban representatives have established direct contact with several ministers in President Hamid Karzai’s government. But they refuse to have any direct contact with Karzai, whom they regard as an “illegitimate puppet”.

During an interview that lasted for several hours and was interrupted only by the coming and going of messengers on motorbikes, our reporter heard nothing from the Taliban leaders to suggest that the movement was weary of war, as some western analysts have claimed.

Instead, he was told that the Taliban believe they are winning and are able to negotiate from a position of strength. Asked about a forthcoming Nato offensive in the Kandahar region, a local Taliban commander who sat alongside the two scholars boasted: “We’re ready for this. We’re going to break the Americans’ teeth.”

The Taliban leaders said that lessons had been learnt from Nato’s last big offensive in the Marjah area of Helmand province earlier this year. When Nato gave advance notice of the operation, the Taliban were lured into sending too many fighters to the area, some of whom died.

The leaders said that in Kandahar a plan to counter Nato had already been prepared.

“There will be no surprise there,” said Abdul Rashid. “We have our people inside all positions in the city, in the government and the security forces.”

He added that America already had enough problems “to haunt her” and fighting in Kandahar would only turn more people against it.

“People don’t trust the foreigners because they are backing the warlords. People are fed up with crime and brutality and that’s a big problem for the Americans. We’re well positioned, with supporters everywhere.”

As they prepare for the traditional summer fighting season, the Taliban leaders are placing as much emphasis as Nato on winning the hearts and minds of the population.

Abdul Rashid said there had been Taliban commanders who had financed their campaigns by taking bribes to give safe passage to Nato supply convoys or from drug smugglers. But the Taliban’s leadership had ordered a halt to this.

“What we do is not for a worldly cause — it is for the sake of Allah. More important than the fighting for us now is the process of purification. We are getting rid of all the rotten apples,” he said.