Advise and assist or hold back and hope?

When Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta recently announced that U.S. forces in Afghanistan would be transitioning from "combat operations" to an "advise and assist" role sometime in 2013, some applauded and others decried what they saw as a shift in U.S. policy.
 
Actually, there was no shift. Although Panetta did not explain it clearly, the plan all along has been to do something akin to what we did in Iraq, where we shifted to "advise and assist" late in 2010 in anticipation of exiting in December 2011. Similarly, in Afghanistan, U.S. forces will  shift to "advise and assist" in 2013 in anticipation of leaving in 2014.
 
Consistency notwithstanding, however, it’s still a terrible policy. In fact, our experience shifting to “advise and assist” in Iraq should serve as a cautionary tale. Once combat operations officially ended in Iraq, the new operating environment had deadly implications for U.S. troops.

Because the Iraqis had purportedly taken the lead on security operations, U.S. Forces had less freedom of action to conduct patrols on their own. Worse, the Iraqis became reluctant to participate in combined patrols with U.S. forces, because they experienced more attacks in the company of Americans than on their own. And once combat operations had ceased, the legal status of the use of force by U.S. soldiers became less clear, causing the military leadership to adopt  a more risk-averse posture. All these factors contributed to a deterioration in security for U.S. forces and Iraqis alike.
 

American soldiers left their bases less frequently and stayed closer to them on patrol. They spent more time in their vehicles and less on foot. In many cases, if a vehicle was still mobile after being hit with an improvised explosive device (IED), U.S. forces would drive on rather than get out to establish security and investigate.
 
When U.S. forces did leave their bases, they were often  required to maintain weapon status "amber" (loaded magazine, round not chambered) or even "green" (no magazine in the weapon). It should go without saying that entering a hostile area without a loaded weapon is a bad idea, regardless of State Department assurances to the world that the zone is secure.
 
It didn’t take long for the enemy to recognize the changes in U.S. posture under “advise and assist” and respond accordingly. With almost unlimited freedom of action around U.S. bases, adversaries quickly increased the frequency of rocket and mortar attacks on these stationary targets.
 
They even went so far as to develop what became known as improvised rocket-assisted munitions (IRAMs) -- for example, a large water heater packed with explosives and attached to a rocket engine. Such weapons won't fly far and are not very accurate. But they don’t need much in distance or accuracy when we are self-limiting our defensive measures and the enemy can get within a few hundred meters of the perimeter wall of a base.
 
Iraq also quickly became an experimentation and training ground for different types of IEDs, including explosively-formed penetrators (EFPs), a particularly lethal type of improvised munition that will penetrate even the most heavily armored vehicles. EFPs were responsible for most U.S. casualties in the last year of our operations there.
 
If the U.S. military adopts (or is forced to adopt) the same half-hearted approach in Afghanistan that marked the end of operations in Iraq, this situation can only repeat itself. The U.S. will take unnecessary casualties while emboldening the enemy.
 
The only way to establish real security is to take positive control of the territory around you. Hiding out on bases and inside vehicles creates a no-man's land that actually invites aggression.
 
As we draw down in Afghanistan, at the very least our senior leaders should learn from our  mistakes in Iraq. They should allow US Forces to engage actively and dominate the enemy until they day we leave.
 
If we are going to self-constrain our operations in our final few months in Afghanistan so much that we render ourselves ineffectual – well, then we should just accept the reality of political defeat and bring the troops home.
 
Barrett, former director of strategy for the White House Homeland Security Council, is a principal with the D.C.-based consulting firm Diligent Innovations. Brown, a defense analyst with extensive experience in national security studies and systems engineering, is a consultant with Diligent Innovations.

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