Don't worry - many US soldiers have been treated to these tactical/practical realities: i.e., at the fb 'Restrepo' in the Korengal - (side valley - Kunar region across from Mohmand territory - approx.) the soldiers there told US news services that they were amazed at the physical dexterity/endurance of the fighters they were opposing as they had watched them scale a multi-thousand foot mountain in cheap plastic flip-flops in under half an hour! We have to train our boys to endure whereas the local tribesman is born to endurance; - the very idea of us 'out-toughing' them on their own turf was preposterous from the outset - a notion founded in purblind arrogant ignorance!
These problems are well known to any discerning military mind and trainer but again, when we need to be making our troops a lot hardier, political parlour games (i.e., so as to permit female participation) are denuding training of any serious rigor - and the Pentagon openly admits this claiming that with all the hi-tech gear we have now soldiers don't need to be as strong as they used to be which, of course, is ludicrous. The critical thing that those born to hardship have over us is simply that - they take hardship in their stride - it's part of their everyday life - sleeping on the cold slope of some ridge in Afghanistan or in Waziristan - with only their clothing to keep them warm (along with their butts dug into a hole in the ground) is entirely normal and thoroughly acceptable to a tribesman but to our guys it is something exceptional - it's not the norm even when they have done some training to prepare them for that. The great strength of the poor, the meek and lowly of this earth is that they know how to suffer whereas the fat cats do not and thus I believe the Good Book is entirely correct when it states that the meek will inherit the earth (because, for one thing, the rich and greedy will have murdered each other off [LoL]).
As you have probably gathered by now - I have always had an enormous respect for the Afghan/Pakistan tribesman their scouting, skirmishing and rifle skills are second to none - we could learn a lot from them but, sadly, we won't owing to the silly belief that we think we are smarter because we have a bunch of gadgets.
Subject: FIGHTING THOSE FARM BOYS ON THIER HOME - GOOD LUCK!
xyz
: I have been in a number of areas where I would not want the local people to be my enemy. We Westerners tend to spend most of the day on our arse, while in many places the people are on their feet most of the day trying to survive.
- When I was in El Salvador, the camposinos were like mountain goats - I was young, tough, pumped iron, had played football in college - and there was no way I could keep up with them.
- When I climbed to 16,000 feet in the Rwenzori Mountains/Mountains of the Moon - after one day stubbornly carrying a 40-50 pound pack to about 7,000 feet - against the advice of the Bakonjo, I knew I could not make it another 7 days and humbly gave up my pack to carry a light day pack, while fat Stanley left me in the dust carrying a heavy pack, and runners were sent up and down the mountains to bring the guys cigarettes
- The Baka Pygmies I hunted with in Cameroon used to tell me, we are the Kings of the Forest. The day we wish to revolt, no government soldier can catch us in the forests of the Congo Basin. They ran through the forest like duikers, while every branch and spine snagged my clothes and they had to cut a path for me so I could make my way
- Hunting bongo with the Tikar Hunters of Kong, Cameroon, I couldn't carry the bongo skin 50 yards that Ouagga carried for 20 km
America/Europe and even South Africa are no longer the countries of farm boys that fought in WWI, WWII and in the case of South Africa also the Anglo-Boer Wars or the more recent bush wars. And today, even the farm boys in these countries spend most of their time sitting on tractors and in air-conditioned combines - unlike in developing countries where they hoe the ground by hand or with an ox//mule driven plow. We are soft, as you say & rely on high tech and that will only get you so far.
When you fight a guy who can go all day with little or no water or food, who you are fighting in his backyard, who can drink out of a waterhole that would make you sick, when you are carrying a 60 pound pack with your food/survival gear and all he has is an AK47 and ammo, when the local villagers will feed and house him - you've lost the war before it started - the elements/terrain and spirit of the people are against you - you are in their garden and they don't need a GPS or compass and most importantly both psychologically and physically they are superior. Your officer may be highly educated, but one must remember, your are born with an intelligence and you get an education - plenty of smart people who never made it to school and I would hate to fight them on their own turf. I have always said, in Africa, if I had to fight a bush war - give me a team of rural poachers over the best trained soldiers. My hunting buddy in South Africa - Peter Nieuwoudt was in 32 Battalion for 4 years in the Angolan Bush fighting the Cubans and Russians - these are the kind of guys he was with, sleeping in a shallow hand-dug pit each night, no fires, living off the land and some dropped rations - and they handed it to the Cubans/Russians!
We are only kidding ourselves in Afghanistan, even with the supply routes open - unless we wish to be there forever, and if what I suspect is unfolding as we train proxy armies in Burundi, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia and now likely Nigeria - probably many places I am not aware of - if they destabilize these areas as They (our Western Governments - not the people - the System is broken and no longer represents the man in the street) have in Afghanistan and if They think They can send in a bunch of young boys from suburbia to fight the locals on their home turf - they are in for a rude awakening!
xyz
It takes no great wit to realize that the war in Afghanistan has always been dangling by a strategic thread that can be snapped at any time the slightest whim so moves the Pakistani government! Forget even the Russian land links - without the port of Karachi - very few heavy war materials/supplies (i.e., such as fuel, afv's, replacement parts, etc.) can reach US/NATO forces and certainly not anywhere near the quantity necessary to maintain the US way of war which, btw, has always been tail-heavy (i.e., at least ten guys in the rear {and probably a great deal more] with goodies to maintain one trigger-puller up front). The whole campaign, from its inception, has been a thinking man's (i.e., a strategist's) nightmare as it was utterly dependent on an ambivalent ally - on a very good day; and on a bad day? Well just look at Torkham, etc. On a very, very bad day when the Pakistani Government/Army decide the whole venture is going to cost them their very existence - the war, effectively, will be turned off! The trouble with the US modern gadget way of fighting war is that it is absolutely dependent on a massive supply chain to keep all the whirligigs going and, moreover, it has hidebound US military planning to a set of blinkered, managerial rules and regulations which always revolve around tactical details (i.e., they are kept perpetually focused on the tactical 'trees' while being forced to ignore the strategic 'forest' [in Agha's excellent words - US strategic thought is a barren woman]). Any general-staff officer of the old Prussian school of, let's say, 100 years ago would have taken one look at the strategic lay of the land and how any potential conflict would be fought there and then laugh at any such idea for a long-term successful campaign. Put another way, Afghanistan was and is 'fool's gold' - it glitter and attracts the eye of the modern western military man as it appears to be a place where modern gadget-force can win at virtually no cost to the aggressor but such vanity ignores the country's land-locked nature and, more importantly, the nature of its people. There have been several instances where the hi-tech tools were not available to US and NATO forces, such as at some of the British Platoon-House fights in Helmand and American outposts in the Kunar area and, as a result, the troops that fought there developed a very healthy respect for their lightly-armed but highly mobile opponents. One of the great ironies here being that, while their ground troops were being stale-mated in running gun battles with Mohmands and related kin in the Kunar area -the Pentagon types actually talk about taking the ground-battle fight to the Waziris Mahsuds!???? Well, if you can't beat the 'B' team fighters of this region how in hell are you going to do anything at all against the 'A' team????? The profound stupidity and arrogance of current Pentagon military thought leaves one picking one's jaw off the floor - in a sort of dazed, incredulous shock. I say this because it would seem that the British experience of over 100 years of fighting in this area has been utterly ignored as if the rules simply do not apply to the US because they have some computerized gadgets? But in the end - the gadgets fail or cannot be brought to bear where they need to be in time and some sharp-shooting Mahsud, with little to no education other than an unmatched mountain fighter's skill/cunning, plugs a well-educated US officer with a 50 rupee bullet (perhaps less) and, once again, Kipling's 'Frontier Arithmetic' insists on having its way.
xyz
http://www.scribd.com/doc/61839666/Indo-Pak-Wars-A-Pictorial-History
http://www.scribd.com/doc/21686885/TALIBAN-WAR-IN-PAKISTAN-AFGHANISTAN-A-WRITERS-PERCEPTIONS-FROM-2001-TO-2011
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22457862/Military-Decision-making-and-leadership
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22151765/History-of-Pakistan-Army-from-1757-to-1971-PRINTING-ENABLED-Do-acknowledge-to-the-author
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22455178/Letters-to-Command-and-Staff-College-Quetta-Citadel-Journal
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23150027/Pakistan-Army-through-eyes-of-Pakistani-Generals
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23701412/War-of-Independence-of-1857
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22107238/HISTORY
http://www.scribd.com/doc/21693873/Indo-Pak-Wars-1947-71-A-STRATEGIC-AND-OPERATIONAL-ANALYSIS-BY-A-H-AMIN-THIS-BOOK-CAN-BE-PRINTED-FROM-THIS-SITE
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