Twilight for Qaddafi?

With the U.S. and NATO's thumb firmly on the scale, the balance of power in Libya seems to be shifting steadily toward the rebel forces. That's bad news for the Qaddafi family, though their lack of attractive alternatives to fighting on makes it unlikely that they will simply surrender.  This outcome is also not that surprising, as the Libyan military was never a first-class fighting force and it was not going to have real trouble standing up to the rebel forces once they started getting lots of outside help. The danger, however, is that the rebel forces will not be able to consolidate control over the entire country without a lot more fighting, including the sort of nasty urban warfare that can get lots of civilians killed.
As with the invasion of Iraq, in short, the issue wasn't whether the West could eventually accomplish "regime change" if it tried. Rather, the key questions revolved around whether it was in our overall interest to do so and whether the benefits would be worth the costs. In the Iraqi case, it is obvious to anyone who isn't a diehard neocon or committed Bush loyalist that the (dubious) benefits of that invasion weren't worth the enormous price tag. There were no WMD and no links between Saddam and al Qaeda, and the war has cost over a trillion dollars (possibly a lot more). Tens of thousands of people died (including some 4500 Americans), and millions of refugees had to flee their homes. And for what? Mostly, a significant improvement in Iran's influence and strategic position.
In the Libyan case, same basic question.  Hardly anyone thinks the Qaddafi family deserves to run Libya, and few if any will mourn their departure. But assuming the rebels win, will the benefits of regime change be worth the costs? Secretary of Defense Gates has reported that the war has cost the United States about $750 million thus far, which is not a huge sum by DoD standards but not exactly trivial in an era of budget stringency. More troubling is the cost to Libya itself: NATO and the US intervened to ward off an anticipated "humanitarian disaster" (which might or might not have occurred and whose magnitude is anyone's guess); what we got instead was a nasty little civil war in which thousands may already have died (and the fighting isn't over yet). So we can look forward to lively debate on the wisdom of this intervention, with advocates claiming that we prevented a larger bloodbath and skeptics arguing that there was never any risk of a genocide or even a deliberate mass killing and that our decision to intervene actually made things worse.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration is about to hit the 60 day deadline imposed by the War Powers Act, and so it is marshaling a lot of clever lawyers to find some way to keep the war going. But here's a radical suggestion: why not just go to Congress and ask for authorization? Such a step would be consistent with the U.S. Constitution, and President Obama made this very point himself before he became President. As he told the Boston Globe in 2007: "the president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." And if the case for this war is so strong and it is so clearly in our vital interests to do it, surely the articulate advocates in the Obama Administration won't have any trouble convincing Congress to go along.
At the same time, the US and NATO had better be thinking long and hard about what they are going to do if and when Qaddafi falls. As we are now seeing in some other contexts (e.g., Egypt), revolutionary change is usually chaotic, unpredictable, and violent, and it creates opportunities for various forms of mischief. These dangers loom especially large in Libya, due in good part to the lack of effective political institutions and the likelihood that some of the people we are backing now will want to settle scores with loyalists. And that possibility means there's also a risk of the same sort of loyalist insurgency that sprang up in Iraq, possibly rooted in long-standing tribal divisions.
So if the liberal interventionists who got us into this war want to make their decisions look good in retrospect, they had better have a plan to ensure that political transition in Libya goes a lot more smoothly than it did in Iraq. And you know what that means, don't you? We'll be there for longer than you think, and at a higher cost than one might hope. But no worries; it's not as though we have any other problems to think about (or spend money on) these days.

Twilight for Qaddafi?

With the U.S. and NATO's thumb firmly on the scale, the balance of power in Libya seems to be shifting steadily toward the rebel forces. That's bad news for the Qaddafi family, though their lack of attractive alternatives to fighting on makes it unlikely that they will simply surrender.  This outcome is also not that surprising, as the Libyan military was never a first-class fighting force and it was not going to have real trouble standing up to the rebel forces once they started getting lots of outside help. The danger, however, is that the rebel forces will not be able to consolidate control over the entire country without a lot more fighting, including the sort of nasty urban warfare that can get lots of civilians killed.
As with the invasion of Iraq, in short, the issue wasn't whether the West could eventually accomplish "regime change" if it tried. Rather, the key questions revolved around whether it was in our overall interest to do so and whether the benefits would be worth the costs. In the Iraqi case, it is obvious to anyone who isn't a diehard neocon or committed Bush loyalist that the (dubious) benefits of that invasion weren't worth the enormous price tag. There were no WMD and no links between Saddam and al Qaeda, and the war has cost over a trillion dollars (possibly a lot more). Tens of thousands of people died (including some 4500 Americans), and millions of refugees had to flee their homes. And for what? Mostly, a significant improvement in Iran's influence and strategic position.
In the Libyan case, same basic question.  Hardly anyone thinks the Qaddafi family deserves to run Libya, and few if any will mourn their departure. But assuming the rebels win, will the benefits of regime change be worth the costs? Secretary of Defense Gates has reported that the war has cost the United States about $750 million thus far, which is not a huge sum by DoD standards but not exactly trivial in an era of budget stringency. More troubling is the cost to Libya itself: NATO and the US intervened to ward off an anticipated "humanitarian disaster" (which might or might not have occurred and whose magnitude is anyone's guess); what we got instead was a nasty little civil war in which thousands may already have died (and the fighting isn't over yet). So we can look forward to lively debate on the wisdom of this intervention, with advocates claiming that we prevented a larger bloodbath and skeptics arguing that there was never any risk of a genocide or even a deliberate mass killing and that our decision to intervene actually made things worse.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration is about to hit the 60 day deadline imposed by the War Powers Act, and so it is marshaling a lot of clever lawyers to find some way to keep the war going. But here's a radical suggestion: why not just go to Congress and ask for authorization? Such a step would be consistent with the U.S. Constitution, and President Obama made this very point himself before he became President. As he told the Boston Globe in 2007: "the president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." And if the case for this war is so strong and it is so clearly in our vital interests to do it, surely the articulate advocates in the Obama Administration won't have any trouble convincing Congress to go along.
At the same time, the US and NATO had better be thinking long and hard about what they are going to do if and when Qaddafi falls. As we are now seeing in some other contexts (e.g., Egypt), revolutionary change is usually chaotic, unpredictable, and violent, and it creates opportunities for various forms of mischief. These dangers loom especially large in Libya, due in good part to the lack of effective political institutions and the likelihood that some of the people we are backing now will want to settle scores with loyalists. And that possibility means there's also a risk of the same sort of loyalist insurgency that sprang up in Iraq, possibly rooted in long-standing tribal divisions.
So if the liberal interventionists who got us into this war want to make their decisions look good in retrospect, they had better have a plan to ensure that political transition in Libya goes a lot more smoothly than it did in Iraq. And you know what that means, don't you? We'll be there for longer than you think, and at a higher cost than one might hope. But no worries; it's not as though we have any other problems to think about (or spend money on) these days.

Targeted killings and two worlds in Afghanistan: inside the Takhar attack

On September 2, 2010, ten men in northern Afghanistan were killed in an air attack that was a targeted killing, part of the U.S. Special Forces ‘kill or capture' strategy. The U.S. military said it had killed the Taliban deputy shadow governor of Takhar, who was also a ‘senior member' of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU): one Muhammad Amin, as well as "eight or nine other insurgents."
Many Afghans, including senior government officials, were incredulous. Many knew the man who had actually been targeted -- who was not Muhammad Amin, but Zabet Amanullah. He had not fought for the Taliban since 2001 and had been out campaigning for his nephew in Afghanistan's parliamentary elections with more than a dozen other men, mainly extended family members. That very morning, as per usual, he had called in to the district police chief to check on security before the election campaign convoy set off. The strike was an "obvious mistake," said the provincial governor, Abdul-Jabar Taqwa. "He was an ordinary person and lived among normal people," said the Takhar Chief of Police, Shah Jahaan Nuri. "I could have captured him with one phone call."
U.S. Special Forces got the wrong man, but despite overwhelming evidence, they have remained adamant that they were correct. Senior Special Forces officers' gave me lengthy accounts of the attack, including the intelligence behind it. That has allowed a piecing together of what went wrong.
Intelligence analysts were monitoring the calls of Muhammad Amin in early 2010 -- and confirmed that he really was the Taliban deputy governor of Takhar. They came to believe that one number he had called in Kabul was passed on to him. They believed he began to use this phone and to ‘self-identify' as Zabet Amanullah. In other words, they believed Muhammad Amin was using the name ‘Zabet Amanullah' as an alias.
Friends and family have confirmed that Zabet Amanullah, who was living in Kabul, was in occasional telephone contact with active members of the Taliban, but this is not unusual in a country where fortunes change and it is prudent to stay in touch with all sides. Zabet Amanullah also kept in touch with senior members in the government. What may have looked like a suspicious cluster of calls and contacts, in reality, proved nothing about the actual conduct of the caller. Zabet Amanullah's life, lived quietly and openly at home in Kabul, has been documented in detail. I met him in 2008 when he had just fled Pakistan where he had been working on a human rights project. He had been detained and severely tortured by the Pakistani intelligence agency, he believed, because he was a former Taliban commander who was not fighting.
The Special Forces unit denied that the identities of two different men, Muhammad Amin and Zabet Amanullah, could have been conflated. They insisted the technical evidence that they were one person was irrefutable. When pressed about the existence -- and death -- of an actual Zabet Amanullah, one officer said, "We were not tracking the names, we were targeting the telephones."
Yet in the complex political landscape of Afghanistan, it is not enough to track phones. It is certainly not enough to base a targeted killing on. The analysts had not built up a biography of their target, Muhammad Amin ---where he was from, what his jihadi background was, and so on. They had not been aware of the existence of a well-known person by the name of Zabet Amanullah. They had not had access to the sort of common, everyday information available to Afghans watching election coverage on television. They had not made even the most basic background checks about a target they had been tracking for months. Instead, they relied on signals intelligence and network analysis (which attempts to map insurgent networks by monitoring phone calls), without cross-checking with any human intelligence.
Dealing with the U.S. military, it has felt like we are from parallel worlds. Their Afghanistan, where knowledge is often driven largely by signals intelligence and reports provided by a very limited number of local informants, with a very narrow focus on insurgent behaviour, and the normal, everyday world of Afghan politics. In the case of the Takhar attack, these two worlds simply did not connect.
The human cost of killing ten civilians and turning forty women and children into widows and orphans is great. Legally, the magnitude of the intelligence failings may have been so great that the U.S. military violated the rules of war, whereby combatants must take all feasible precautions to protect civilians. However, there are strong indications that the flaws in intelligence highlighted by this case are systemic. Indeed, General David Petraeus spoke about this, about the U.S. military's lack of a "granular understanding of local circumstances," by chance, on the very day of the Takhar attack.
For the U.S. military, simply reiterating that they were right, in response to overwhelming evidence to the contrary is not an adequate response and will hardly reassure Afghans that similar mistakes will not be made in future.
Kate Clark, a senior analyst at the Afghanistan Analysts Network, is the author of an investigation into the Takhar airstrike, from which this is excerpted. The investigation was featured in PBS' Frontline's "Kill/Capture" documentary. Join the AfPak Channel at 1:00pm EST on May 11, 2011 for a live chat about the film with Frontline journalists Stephen Grey and Shoaib Sharifi.

Targeted killings and two worlds in Afghanistan: inside the Takhar attack

On September 2, 2010, ten men in northern Afghanistan were killed in an air attack that was a targeted killing, part of the U.S. Special Forces ‘kill or capture' strategy. The U.S. military said it had killed the Taliban deputy shadow governor of Takhar, who was also a ‘senior member' of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU): one Muhammad Amin, as well as "eight or nine other insurgents."
Many Afghans, including senior government officials, were incredulous. Many knew the man who had actually been targeted -- who was not Muhammad Amin, but Zabet Amanullah. He had not fought for the Taliban since 2001 and had been out campaigning for his nephew in Afghanistan's parliamentary elections with more than a dozen other men, mainly extended family members. That very morning, as per usual, he had called in to the district police chief to check on security before the election campaign convoy set off. The strike was an "obvious mistake," said the provincial governor, Abdul-Jabar Taqwa. "He was an ordinary person and lived among normal people," said the Takhar Chief of Police, Shah Jahaan Nuri. "I could have captured him with one phone call."
U.S. Special Forces got the wrong man, but despite overwhelming evidence, they have remained adamant that they were correct. Senior Special Forces officers' gave me lengthy accounts of the attack, including the intelligence behind it. That has allowed a piecing together of what went wrong.
Intelligence analysts were monitoring the calls of Muhammad Amin in early 2010 -- and confirmed that he really was the Taliban deputy governor of Takhar. They came to believe that one number he had called in Kabul was passed on to him. They believed he began to use this phone and to ‘self-identify' as Zabet Amanullah. In other words, they believed Muhammad Amin was using the name ‘Zabet Amanullah' as an alias.
Friends and family have confirmed that Zabet Amanullah, who was living in Kabul, was in occasional telephone contact with active members of the Taliban, but this is not unusual in a country where fortunes change and it is prudent to stay in touch with all sides. Zabet Amanullah also kept in touch with senior members in the government. What may have looked like a suspicious cluster of calls and contacts, in reality, proved nothing about the actual conduct of the caller. Zabet Amanullah's life, lived quietly and openly at home in Kabul, has been documented in detail. I met him in 2008 when he had just fled Pakistan where he had been working on a human rights project. He had been detained and severely tortured by the Pakistani intelligence agency, he believed, because he was a former Taliban commander who was not fighting.
The Special Forces unit denied that the identities of two different men, Muhammad Amin and Zabet Amanullah, could have been conflated. They insisted the technical evidence that they were one person was irrefutable. When pressed about the existence -- and death -- of an actual Zabet Amanullah, one officer said, "We were not tracking the names, we were targeting the telephones."
Yet in the complex political landscape of Afghanistan, it is not enough to track phones. It is certainly not enough to base a targeted killing on. The analysts had not built up a biography of their target, Muhammad Amin ---where he was from, what his jihadi background was, and so on. They had not been aware of the existence of a well-known person by the name of Zabet Amanullah. They had not had access to the sort of common, everyday information available to Afghans watching election coverage on television. They had not made even the most basic background checks about a target they had been tracking for months. Instead, they relied on signals intelligence and network analysis (which attempts to map insurgent networks by monitoring phone calls), without cross-checking with any human intelligence.
Dealing with the U.S. military, it has felt like we are from parallel worlds. Their Afghanistan, where knowledge is often driven largely by signals intelligence and reports provided by a very limited number of local informants, with a very narrow focus on insurgent behaviour, and the normal, everyday world of Afghan politics. In the case of the Takhar attack, these two worlds simply did not connect.
The human cost of killing ten civilians and turning forty women and children into widows and orphans is great. Legally, the magnitude of the intelligence failings may have been so great that the U.S. military violated the rules of war, whereby combatants must take all feasible precautions to protect civilians. However, there are strong indications that the flaws in intelligence highlighted by this case are systemic. Indeed, General David Petraeus spoke about this, about the U.S. military's lack of a "granular understanding of local circumstances," by chance, on the very day of the Takhar attack.
For the U.S. military, simply reiterating that they were right, in response to overwhelming evidence to the contrary is not an adequate response and will hardly reassure Afghans that similar mistakes will not be made in future.
Kate Clark, a senior analyst at the Afghanistan Analysts Network, is the author of an investigation into the Takhar airstrike, from which this is excerpted. The investigation was featured in PBS' Frontline's "Kill/Capture" documentary. Join the AfPak Channel at 1:00pm EST on May 11, 2011 for a live chat about the film with Frontline journalists Stephen Grey and Shoaib Sharifi.

"Kill Capture": A live chat with PBS' Frontline

Tonight (May 10), PBS' Frontline is airing "Kill/Capture," a six-month investigation into the U.S. military's program of targeted killings in Afghanistan. The military says these raids have taken some 12,000 insurgents off the battlefields of Afghanistan over the last year, and represent a crucial part of the U.S.'s strategy in the country. Afghan government officials, Afghan communities, and human rights groups, on the other hand, have objected to the raids on the grounds that they alienate the local population and are unduly harsh. The question is: will the kill/capture missions help end the war in Afghanistan?

"Kill/Capture" features research by Kate Clark, whose work we have regularly featured on the AfPak Channel, at the Afghanistan Analysts Network, which has just released a devastating new report investigating a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan's Takhar province in the fall of last year, claiming that civilians were killed in a case of mistaken identity. The report is based on interviews with survivors of the airstrike, witnesses, Afghan officials, and U.S. Special Forces officers. The U.S. military insists the strike killed a senior member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Who was killed in the Takhar strike, and why?

Given that a targeted American raid recently killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, we have lots of questions about how these operations are authorized and carried out, and what their impact has been on both the insurgency in Afghanistan and the Afghan communities in which they occur.

Join us tomorrow (May 11) at 1:00pm EST here for a live chat with Frontline's Stephen Grey and Shoaib Sharifi. Grey is a London-based journalist who has been reporting on the Afghan war since 2007, and Sharifi is an award-winning journalist with extensive experience in Afghanistan. Watch a preview of the film here, and be sure to tune in this evening for the full show.

"Kill Capture": A live chat with PBS' Frontline

Tonight (May 10), PBS' Frontline is airing "Kill/Capture," a six-month investigation into the U.S. military's program of targeted killings in Afghanistan. The military says these raids have taken some 12,000 insurgents off the battlefields of Afghanistan over the last year, and represent a crucial part of the U.S.'s strategy in the country. Afghan government officials, Afghan communities, and human rights groups, on the other hand, have objected to the raids on the grounds that they alienate the local population and are unduly harsh. The question is: will the kill/capture missions help end the war in Afghanistan?

"Kill/Capture" features research by Kate Clark, whose work we have regularly featured on the AfPak Channel, at the Afghanistan Analysts Network, which has just released a devastating new report investigating a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan's Takhar province in the fall of last year, claiming that civilians were killed in a case of mistaken identity. The report is based on interviews with survivors of the airstrike, witnesses, Afghan officials, and U.S. Special Forces officers. The U.S. military insists the strike killed a senior member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Who was killed in the Takhar strike, and why?

Given that a targeted American raid recently killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, we have lots of questions about how these operations are authorized and carried out, and what their impact has been on both the insurgency in Afghanistan and the Afghan communities in which they occur.

Join us tomorrow (May 11) at 1:00pm EST here for a live chat with Frontline's Stephen Grey and Shoaib Sharifi. Grey is a London-based journalist who has been reporting on the Afghan war since 2007, and Sharifi is an award-winning journalist with extensive experience in Afghanistan. Watch a preview of the film here, and be sure to tune in this evening for the full show.

The white man's jihad

Up in the north of England, a trial is being heard against a group of men allegedly at the core of a cell recruiting and radicalizing individuals to fight in Afghanistan. The group, part of an ongoing trickle of people from the U.K. attracted to fighting in South Asia, is notable because it counts amongst its ranks a white convert, the latest in a long line of such individuals who have been drawn to militancy in South Asia. These reports of white converts in the region are naturally of particular concern to Western security services: their capacity to blend effortlessly back into the West makes them highly attractive weapons for groups seeking to launch terrorist attacks.
Back in mid-2009, an older moderate Muslim convert in London told me that his theory behind converts in terrorist cells was that they played a key role as catalysts. The presence of a convert, usually a zealous individual who had moved from a troubled past as drug addict or petty criminal to Islamist extremist, would reinforce the group's internal dialogue and help push them deeper into their militant ideologies.
The group who bombed London's public transport system on July 7, 2005 is the archetypal example of this. Convert Germaine Lindsay, originally of Jamaican descent, was the most overtly violent and radical of the group and may have played a role stirring the others on. According to information released during the recent Coroner's Inquest into the bombings, he was likely involved in a gun crime incident prior to the bombing, he was reported to have been active in promoting radical groups in Luton. Additionally, he was a close student of the radical preacher Abdullah el Faisal. His presence amongst the otherwise Pakistani-Beeston group would have been as an outsider, but one who was brought into the closest of confidence, suggesting an outsized influence.
In a separate case in East London, Mohammed Hamid, also known as "Osama bin London," was a "revert" who found his religion after a life of drugs and became a key figure in a radicalizing network training, amongst others, the July 21 team who tried to bomb London two weeks after the successful July 7 cell. And there are other examples. Looking at other failed plots linked to Waziristan, the 2006 plot to bomb airlines concurrently on transatlantic routes counted a couple of converts amongst plotters, and the 2007 plot to attack a U.S. airbase in Germany was conducted by a group of mostly Caucasian German converts.
On the battlefields of Afghanistan and Pakistan, however, these light-skinned converts face a high degree of skepticism: for example, Rahman Adam, aka Anthony Garcia, one of the plotters involved in the 2004 plot to blow up a British mall using a fertilizer based explosive, was initially turned away from training camps for being "too white." Adam was in fact of Algerian origin and a born Muslim; he was just very pale skinned.
Prior to al-Qaeda's attacks of September 11, 2001, the route for converts to training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan was much easier to tread. James McLintock, nicknamed the "Tartan Taliban," first joined the jihad against the Soviet Union in the late 1980s after, by his account, he met a group of young Saudi hotheads on a flight to Pakistan as he made his way to visit a University friend. Enjoying this first taste of jihad, McLintock became a feature of the European jihadi scene, joining the fighting again in Bosnia and returning regularly to Afghanistan. Back in the U.K. alongside fellow convert and jihadi traveler Martin "Abdullah" McDaid, McLintock began running study circles at the Iqra bookshop in Beeston, northern England and training camps in the nearby Lake District that were attended by some of the July 7, 2005 cell.
And in the years immediately before September 11, there was a stream of converts who showed up and were accorded quite high levels of trust by al-Qaeda. In 1997, having converted a few years earlier in Orange County, California, Adam Gadahn made his way to Pakistan and then to Afghanistan. Using contacts he had made in the U.S., he arrived and seems to have been able to fill a vital early role as translator of Arabic material into English. By 1999 converts seemed to be arriving into South Asia from all directions. Sometime in the middle of the year Christian Ganczarski, a German-Polish convert who used the same network to get to Afghanistan as the Hamburg Cell that produced Mohammed Atta, a leader of the 9/11 group, arrived in Quetta, Pakistan and after a trip back to Germany to fetch his family, moved into Osama bin Laden's compound in Afghanistan, where he acted as the I.T. guy. At around the same time, itinerant Australian jihadist David Hicks showed up and trained with Lashkar-e-Taiba near Lahore -- he tried to go and fight in Kashmir, but ended up going to train at the Al Farouq camp near Kandahar the next year, where he met a bunch of fellow peripatetic westerners including British convert Richard "shoe bomber" Reid. Early 2000, Jack Roche, a burly Australian-Brit who had converted and joined the Indonesian al-Qaeda affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah, showed up on the recommendation of Hambali, the operations chief for the Indonesian group, to train and learn explosives and got to sit down and eat with Osama bin Laden.
Post-9/11 converts have continued to play a role in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but few appear to have continued to rise into senior roles as they had before. According to British security sources, one of the most senior was British-born Hindu convert Dhiren Barot, who was incarcerated in November 2006 in the U.K. after a long career as a jihadist foot soldier. Starting with fighting with Lashkar-e-Taiba in Kashmir in 1995, an experience he wrote about in his 1999 magnum opus "The Army of Madinah in Kashmir," Barot went on to help 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed with his global jihadist planning.
Since 9/11 instead white converts in Afghanistan and Pakistan have mostly been foot soldiers, with the militant groups there more skeptical of converts as potential Western intelligence agents. The Caucasian-seeming Rahman Adam was unable to go and train until he had connected with established jihadist Omar Khyam. An exception to this seems to have been Bryant Neal Vinas, a Queens, New York-born kid who converted to Islam, who made his way to training camps in Pakistan in September 2007 seemingly using networks from the U.S. to establish contact with radicals. It took him a bit longer to establish his bona fides, but eventually he got to meet with an array of high- and mid-ranking al-Qaeda fighters who immediately saw his potential as an operative who could easily blend back into the West.
The Waziristan-based Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) seems to have recognized this potential in a group of German converts who showed up to fight alongside them in the mid-2000s. Having trained a group of them, they sent a cell led by converts Fritz Gelowicz and Daniel Schneider to target the U.S. base in Ramstein, Germany. Other converts linked to the group instead fell in battle, including Eric Breininger who in April 2010 died in Pakistan, while the group was initially motivated by the death in Chechnya of fellow convert Thomas Fischer in late 2003. Another just disrupted alleged German network included another convert and helping funnel fighters to South Asia.
And the trickle goes on. In July 2010, Khalid Kelly, infamous Irish convert and former member of British extremist group Al Muhajiroun, returned home to Ireland having claimed he tried to join jihadists in Pakistan (although he was interviewed in the Times in November 2009 saying he was training to go to and fight in Afghanistan). In Kelly's own words, however, "as a white convert, I stuck out like a sore thumb," so he returned to Ireland instead. Others met with messier ends: according to Pakistani intelligence reports two white British converts were killed in a drone strike in Datta Khel in December 2010.
The pre-9/11 days of converts showing up and getting to meet al-Qaeda leaders are over, but these light-skinned jihadis remain a key potential threat that militant groups will attempt to actively recruit. They both help show off the group's ongoing international appeal while also acting as excellent weapons to strike deep in the West. And until the overall threat has been eliminated, they will continue to be a feature of it.
Raffaello Pantucci is an Associate Fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR). 

The white man's jihad

Up in the north of England, a trial is being heard against a group of men allegedly at the core of a cell recruiting and radicalizing individuals to fight in Afghanistan. The group, part of an ongoing trickle of people from the U.K. attracted to fighting in South Asia, is notable because it counts amongst its ranks a white convert, the latest in a long line of such individuals who have been drawn to militancy in South Asia. These reports of white converts in the region are naturally of particular concern to Western security services: their capacity to blend effortlessly back into the West makes them highly attractive weapons for groups seeking to launch terrorist attacks.
Back in mid-2009, an older moderate Muslim convert in London told me that his theory behind converts in terrorist cells was that they played a key role as catalysts. The presence of a convert, usually a zealous individual who had moved from a troubled past as drug addict or petty criminal to Islamist extremist, would reinforce the group's internal dialogue and help push them deeper into their militant ideologies.
The group who bombed London's public transport system on July 7, 2005 is the archetypal example of this. Convert Germaine Lindsay, originally of Jamaican descent, was the most overtly violent and radical of the group and may have played a role stirring the others on. According to information released during the recent Coroner's Inquest into the bombings, he was likely involved in a gun crime incident prior to the bombing, he was reported to have been active in promoting radical groups in Luton. Additionally, he was a close student of the radical preacher Abdullah el Faisal. His presence amongst the otherwise Pakistani-Beeston group would have been as an outsider, but one who was brought into the closest of confidence, suggesting an outsized influence.
In a separate case in East London, Mohammed Hamid, also known as "Osama bin London," was a "revert" who found his religion after a life of drugs and became a key figure in a radicalizing network training, amongst others, the July 21 team who tried to bomb London two weeks after the successful July 7 cell. And there are other examples. Looking at other failed plots linked to Waziristan, the 2006 plot to bomb airlines concurrently on transatlantic routes counted a couple of converts amongst plotters, and the 2007 plot to attack a U.S. airbase in Germany was conducted by a group of mostly Caucasian German converts.
On the battlefields of Afghanistan and Pakistan, however, these light-skinned converts face a high degree of skepticism: for example, Rahman Adam, aka Anthony Garcia, one of the plotters involved in the 2004 plot to blow up a British mall using a fertilizer based explosive, was initially turned away from training camps for being "too white." Adam was in fact of Algerian origin and a born Muslim; he was just very pale skinned.
Prior to al-Qaeda's attacks of September 11, 2001, the route for converts to training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan was much easier to tread. James McLintock, nicknamed the "Tartan Taliban," first joined the jihad against the Soviet Union in the late 1980s after, by his account, he met a group of young Saudi hotheads on a flight to Pakistan as he made his way to visit a University friend. Enjoying this first taste of jihad, McLintock became a feature of the European jihadi scene, joining the fighting again in Bosnia and returning regularly to Afghanistan. Back in the U.K. alongside fellow convert and jihadi traveler Martin "Abdullah" McDaid, McLintock began running study circles at the Iqra bookshop in Beeston, northern England and training camps in the nearby Lake District that were attended by some of the July 7, 2005 cell.
And in the years immediately before September 11, there was a stream of converts who showed up and were accorded quite high levels of trust by al-Qaeda. In 1997, having converted a few years earlier in Orange County, California, Adam Gadahn made his way to Pakistan and then to Afghanistan. Using contacts he had made in the U.S., he arrived and seems to have been able to fill a vital early role as translator of Arabic material into English. By 1999 converts seemed to be arriving into South Asia from all directions. Sometime in the middle of the year Christian Ganczarski, a German-Polish convert who used the same network to get to Afghanistan as the Hamburg Cell that produced Mohammed Atta, a leader of the 9/11 group, arrived in Quetta, Pakistan and after a trip back to Germany to fetch his family, moved into Osama bin Laden's compound in Afghanistan, where he acted as the I.T. guy. At around the same time, itinerant Australian jihadist David Hicks showed up and trained with Lashkar-e-Taiba near Lahore -- he tried to go and fight in Kashmir, but ended up going to train at the Al Farouq camp near Kandahar the next year, where he met a bunch of fellow peripatetic westerners including British convert Richard "shoe bomber" Reid. Early 2000, Jack Roche, a burly Australian-Brit who had converted and joined the Indonesian al-Qaeda affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah, showed up on the recommendation of Hambali, the operations chief for the Indonesian group, to train and learn explosives and got to sit down and eat with Osama bin Laden.
Post-9/11 converts have continued to play a role in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but few appear to have continued to rise into senior roles as they had before. According to British security sources, one of the most senior was British-born Hindu convert Dhiren Barot, who was incarcerated in November 2006 in the U.K. after a long career as a jihadist foot soldier. Starting with fighting with Lashkar-e-Taiba in Kashmir in 1995, an experience he wrote about in his 1999 magnum opus "The Army of Madinah in Kashmir," Barot went on to help 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed with his global jihadist planning.
Since 9/11 instead white converts in Afghanistan and Pakistan have mostly been foot soldiers, with the militant groups there more skeptical of converts as potential Western intelligence agents. The Caucasian-seeming Rahman Adam was unable to go and train until he had connected with established jihadist Omar Khyam. An exception to this seems to have been Bryant Neal Vinas, a Queens, New York-born kid who converted to Islam, who made his way to training camps in Pakistan in September 2007 seemingly using networks from the U.S. to establish contact with radicals. It took him a bit longer to establish his bona fides, but eventually he got to meet with an array of high- and mid-ranking al-Qaeda fighters who immediately saw his potential as an operative who could easily blend back into the West.
The Waziristan-based Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) seems to have recognized this potential in a group of German converts who showed up to fight alongside them in the mid-2000s. Having trained a group of them, they sent a cell led by converts Fritz Gelowicz and Daniel Schneider to target the U.S. base in Ramstein, Germany. Other converts linked to the group instead fell in battle, including Eric Breininger who in April 2010 died in Pakistan, while the group was initially motivated by the death in Chechnya of fellow convert Thomas Fischer in late 2003. Another just disrupted alleged German network included another convert and helping funnel fighters to South Asia.
And the trickle goes on. In July 2010, Khalid Kelly, infamous Irish convert and former member of British extremist group Al Muhajiroun, returned home to Ireland having claimed he tried to join jihadists in Pakistan (although he was interviewed in the Times in November 2009 saying he was training to go to and fight in Afghanistan). In Kelly's own words, however, "as a white convert, I stuck out like a sore thumb," so he returned to Ireland instead. Others met with messier ends: according to Pakistani intelligence reports two white British converts were killed in a drone strike in Datta Khel in December 2010.
The pre-9/11 days of converts showing up and getting to meet al-Qaeda leaders are over, but these light-skinned jihadis remain a key potential threat that militant groups will attempt to actively recruit. They both help show off the group's ongoing international appeal while also acting as excellent weapons to strike deep in the West. And until the overall threat has been eliminated, they will continue to be a feature of it.
Raffaello Pantucci is an Associate Fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR). 

How my negligent discharge in Iraq pretty much ruined my Army career

By A Former Officer
Best Defense bureau of anonymous guest columns
The post on Friday regarding negligent discharges provoked comments expressing the gamut of emotions from exasperation to empathy. It elicited a strong reaction within myself for personal reasons I'll explain shortly. My story begins with a personal experience early in my career, during OIF I, and continues with observations on the matter throughout a second deployment in 2006-2007. What I hope to illustrate is just how drastically the Army has changed its views on weapons safety since 2003, and how, for all those changes, dangerous the environment remains due to a failure to conquer the overarching problems -- specifically, inconsistency in training and an immature regard for weapons.
I have the ignominious title of being perhaps the first officer to have a negligent discharge in OIF history. To make the sequence of events as brief as possible, the incident occurred about my third or fourth week in country. I had just been assigned to my platoon, only 22 days after being medically discharged from Ranger School for a back injury. I was put in the D Company because I was still limping and being in a vehicle allowed me to serve in some meaningful capacity. It wasn't long before I did the same thing everyone did after two or three weeks of MREs and K-rations -- I ate the local food. With a system still weakened from Benning, it only took 24 hours after that for me to react the same way everyone else did after their first bite of local cuisine -- I grew violently ill. I developed wretched diarrhea and you can imagine what happened. A convoy was heading to the main FOB to hit the shower tent and I hopped on it in haste. We arrived at the front gate of the FOB, where everyone hopped out of the vehicles to clear their weapons. In my delirium, I pulled the charging handle back to eject the chambered round before removing the magazine, thereby charging a new round. When I pointed the rifle at the ground and pulled the trigger, it went off. The MPs at the gate immediately accosted us, got my info, and reported it to my company commander, who was already on the FOB.  
My company commander, just off a stint as a platoon leader in the Ranger Regiment, immediately sought to remove me from the company. My battalion commander showed clemency and instead declared that my punishment would be to dig a grave behind our company's outpost. My company commander explained to me that I was only to work on the grave at night and in an inconspicuous location. The idea was to keep the matter discreet. However, the unspoken punishment was that I was never accepted among the company's officers. My company commander rarely spoke to me except to criticize some mistake I made, gave my platoon the worst assignments, and ultimately wrote me a bad OER. My battalion commander, while counseling me on that first OER, told me in no uncertain terms that the company commander's remarks were unfair and obviously colored by that single incident.  
For my part, I spent the week after the incident trying to figure out what went wrong with the weapon. I gave it to the unit armorer for a full inspection. I never told my company commander about my physical condition before the incident. Not because I was afraid of further punishment for eating the local food (it was against the rules), but because I was embarrassed to admit I'd soiled my pants. A few months later, one of my soldiers experienced a similar incident. He was punished severely by doing rifle PT for hours in the sun -- in full view of the entire company. I did nothing to stop my NCOs from taking their action because I was afraid my own incident would be brought up and I'd be humiliated again. After the deployment, at an officers' beer call, a few of my former "fellow" lieutenants from the company put on a skit reenacting the incident. It was vindictive and humiliating, and it was meant to be.  
I spent much time reflecting on the incident, especially in the context of a friend's discharge while in Infantry Officer Basic Course in 2002. He was manning an M249 machine gun during the blank-fire iteration of a live-fire exercise when the weapon went off. They nearly kicked him out of the Infantry. His saving grace was that his training NCO had told him to put the weapon in the "half-cock" position -- a safety measure that wasn't in any manual and was highly disputed for its safety. It would be 2004 before I saw the Army release official guidance forbidding the half-cock position and mandating that the weapon be set to "safe" properly. The whole procedure had been invented because of the M249's stigma for accidentally firing while on safe with a round charged. The Army finally quashed this nasty rumor with the new guidance, but the Officer Basic Course continued to use it in my class, which took place after my friend's. All that aside, I remember the sense of disgrace my friend felt and how he was ostracized for the rest of his class. Today he's a highly successful officer, decorated for service as a company commander in combat.  
It was on my second deployment that I realized just how severe the problem was in the Army. Traveling to multiple FOBs across Iraq, I noticed that no two weapons-clearing areas were the same, nor had the same rules. Furthermore, the tenant units all had their individual procedures for placing weapons on safe. At every echelon, from squad to Corps, I heard the question asked at least once-- "If the weapon fires into the clearing barrel, why do we punish the soldier? He followed proper procedure, didn't he?" No one attempted to say "because the weapon wouldn't have gone off if he had followed proper procedure from the beginning." No one attempted to give any answer at all. Some units forewent pulling the trigger at all, with commanders and NCO leaders at every level declaring they weren't going to put their troops at risk of being punished for doing the right thing. I once saw a photoshopped image of a clearing barrel with Admiral Akhbar from the Star Wars movies standing in front of it, making his famous declaration that "it's a trap!" It was posted in an office in the Green Zone. 
Another change that struck me between 2003 and 2005 may have seemed trivial semantics to many, but was profound in demonstrating the Army's efforts at getting a handle on the problem. My incident was labeled an "accidental discharge." By 2005, that term had been officially replaced with "negligent discharge." It left the impression that the Army was institutionally no longer willing to consider that people have accidents. Every misfiring of a weapon was categorically an act of carelessness, and would be treated as such.  
I have no other basis for the following conclusions than my experience and observations. However, I feel that what I've seen and heard is substantial enough to at least be considered by the Army. It is my considered opinion that the Army continues to have accidental and negligent weapons discharges because of a culture that equally indulges in bravado and shame. One needs to look no further than that iconic scene from Full Metal Jacket of the Marines marching through the squad bay, one hand carrying a shouldered weapon and the other grabbing their genitalia, to understand the psychological and cultural association of weapons with manhood in the military profession. This bears significant consequences for the safety mindset. An infantryman, regardless of rank or experience, is taken for granted to know how to properly and safely maintain any weapon he's handed, and any oversight of that handling is viewed as an affront to his manhood. He's a big boy, playing by big boy rules. Of course, the Drill Sergeant Hartman analogy also explains why anyone who experiences an incident is treated so harshly. He's committed a breach of manhood; literally, and excuse the crass language, shooting his load too early. This may explain why so many accidents cited in the comments occurred with experienced NCOs who probably had at least one previous combat tour. These individuals are regarded as knowing what they're doing. Keep in mind the stigma that goes along with the extra precautions taken with first-timers. They're referred to as "cherries;" another sexual innuendo. If a pilot puts his helicopter down for a "hard landing," his unit closely reviews the incident and recertifies him on that training before slating him to fly again. If a unit experiences a fatality in a vehicle rollover, nearly every unit in theater is directed to conduct safety training on those procedures. But if an individual has an accidental or negligent discharge, the incident is "taken care of" as swiftly and quietly as possible -- as much for the benefit of the soldier as for the entire unit.
Though it is not as pronounced in the real military as the caricature in the Kubrick film, the prevalence of the mentality is obvious in the combat arms world. Culturally, we insist on believing that no one is a virgin. Institutionally, and perhaps influenced by that same culture, we disdain anyone who can't keep it in their magazine. As it is often said by our safety officers, safety is a state of mind. Until the existing mentality can be overcome, there can be no development or implementation of a policy that really gets to the matter of safety.  
I have submitted the preceding thoughts and observations anonymously. At the time the skit was performed, I wish I'd stood up in that group of officers and told everyone that, for all my shame, the incident was no laughing matter. That I'm still reluctant to identify myself today, because I feel assured others will assault my position as motivated by personal bias, should perhaps indicate the severity of the issue.

Thanks

For putting your experience out there like that. The article develops something that I tried to say on my post from the earlier Birdzell article.
A large majority of infantry leaders 2001-2003 were basically bluffing when it came to their ability to handle their weapons in combat. There weren't very many infantrymen who had carried a loaded weapon for any significant period of time back then. There was a zero defect culture around NDs and if you had one, you must be defective.
Before depIoyment, I never carried my M4 loaded unless I was on a qual range or one of a handful of live-fire ranges. I never carried a loaded M4 inside a vehicle, a latrine, or slept with one until I got to Iraq. I never brushed my teeth or shaved with my loaded M4 slung before Iraq. I was fortunate enough not to have an ND, but that may have been because I almost never cleared my weapon while in theater.
In my own experience, I knew two different platoon leaders who had NDs in Iraq. Both were given field grade NJP by the battalion commander and nothing else. They weren't relieved. I don't remember the form of the punishment, but it wasn't anything as outlandish as digging a grave.
I think your commander handled your ND poorly by allowing it to become an informal punishment and then a skit. It should have been a field grade NJP either that day or the next day at the latest. You could have taken the hit on the chin and then got over it. It shouldn't have become an ongoing thing between you and your commander and peers.
And those two PLs who I knew? Both completed company commands and are probably up for O-4 soon.

JPWREL

4:09 PM ET

May 16, 2011

Frankly, there is nothing

Frankly, there is nothing simpler than the dropping of a magazine and the clearing a weapon whether it is an M4 or an M9. Perhaps it is time for the Army to focus on more on robustly training their people to be ‘disciplined professional soldiers’ rather than the emphasis on ‘warriors’, which is largely self-flattering BS.

 

VOODOO

6:54 PM ET

May 16, 2011

Nothing simpler

I have never had an ND, nor do I ever intend to, but there's a REASON they happen, and its the Army's fault. Training environments often require soldiers to clear unloaded rifles and pistols before entering buildings. The entire concept is intended to build reflexive muscle memory. The problem is that when you clear a weapon 1000 times WITHOUT dropping the magazine (because there is no magazine loaded in the training environment, not even an empty one), you bypass the crucial magazine drop step of the clear, 1000 times. So when you're sick, tired, or distracted, your muscle memory kicks in, and it kicks in wrong, thanks to the idiotic training practices of the big Army.

 

TYRTAIOS

7:37 PM ET

May 16, 2011

Good for you Voodoo

Ah ha, training by the numbers (rote) instead of stressing the use of cognative thinking toward situational awareness? You are the first person to address what may be wrong as opposed to pissing and moaning about punishment. . .good for you.

 

VICTOR

1:06 AM ET

May 17, 2011

Could not agree more.

Could not agree more. Training over and over without a magazine - in basic, in training environments, at home stations, and on FOBs where the status is GREEN (all the big ones I've seen in Iraq between '05 and '09 were almost always GREEN) is counter-productive. It seemed during my rotations that the greatest number of NDs in our brigade were the result of pulling a trigger at the clearing barrel after charging a weapon but failing to drop the magazine first.

 

DEVIL DAWG

4:29 PM ET

May 16, 2011

Topic Du Jour

Thanks for your story. I empathize, but ultimately disagree that people have accidents with their weapons. People are negligent with their weapons by not being careful, not treating the weapon with respect, and not following the four weapon safety rules.
Michael Yon has a good article up on Line of Departure today regarding the subject.
http://goo.gl/UsxDc

 

BLACKFOOT

4:49 PM ET

May 16, 2011

first impressions

Thanks for sharing your story. I don't want to totally discount your theory about culture, because there is probably something to it. That said, I would chalk up your miserable post-ND experience to a few other factors:
- The fact that you had an ND after only a month or so in the unit. First impressions stick. I've seen soldiers, NCOs, & officers overcome an ND, but they'd been around a while and had established their reputations first.
- A shitty company CO. Whatever other positive traits this guy may have had, he failed you on two levels: first, he is PERSONALLY responsible for failing to train you to a level that would have reduced the probability of an ND, regardless of sickness. Second, for not picking you up, dusting you off, and setting you straight afterwards--he tried to take the easy way out of this leadership challenge, and it shows.

 

64DRIVER

5:40 PM ET

May 16, 2011

Grave digging as punishment

Holy crap. That is bizarre and inappropriate to say the least. From a DA-selected battalion commander.

 

ERIC_STRATTONIII

7:05 PM ET

May 16, 2011

I am all for physical NJP/EMI

It works and it allows you to punish a guy who is a good mug but who screwed up instead of having a paper trail on him his whole career. Paper trails are for the guys who need it, NCOs and OICs should have more discretion, the USMC is the only branch that still allows it be paid out like the way the author got it and I like it!

 

TOM KENNEDY

8:06 PM ET

May 16, 2011

Corrective training

Eric,
There's a couple of problems with that:
1. It's illegal.
2. It doesn't really address the problem with the Soldier.
Everyone's heard of the 'corrective training' = smoking a Soldier instead of going through the formality of an Article 15. It's the way of the Army, NCO's in particular. The difference is that a company commander or battalion commander should never punish a Soldier without due process.
If you do that as a commander and disguise a punishment as corrective training, you are opening the door to abusive practices from your junior leaders. You also expose yourself to unnecessary career risk if the Soldier decides to raise your practices up to the IG.
After thinking on it, I agree with the other posters who recognized a failure to accept responsibility, but I think the article is more about how to react to an ND in your unit.

 

ERIC_STRATTONIII

12:53 AM ET

May 17, 2011

Tom

It is illegal in the Army, not the USMC and when done in the manner that it was done I do no think it opens itself up to wide spread abuse afterwards. I saw a USMC Gunny do a similar thing in Iraq to his guys when they screwed up, they had to dig a fighting position 6x3 6 ft deep and with a grenade sump. His group was one of the better ones on camp and eventually the area around his building looked like a criss cross of WWI trenches at the end of 6 months. No one dug one twice. Article 15's or any council chit should be an option and not the only one, that is just my opinion and I have seen them used far to often used years down the road, it is a reason most in my community will shred them if the guys comes around because we do not trust senior leadership to use them correctly, seen to many witch hunts to do so. I just think there should be other options and EMI should be one of them.

 

GREATWHITE

5:52 PM ET

May 16, 2011

Am I the first to get bit in

Am I the first to get bit in the face by the pure self vindication and blameshiftery of this article?
The bottom line is you were not in control of your weapon. It's one of the simplest responsibilities of an officer, and a goddamn infantry officer nonetheless. First you blame the delirium of illness, then you claim to have spent a week trying to understand what caused the weapon to fire, including consulting the armorers (when the weapon functioned as it's supposed to), then you blame the company commander for not ignoring your fuckup, then you blame your peers for laughing at you, and then it's the military mindset via some convoluted sexual psychological dodge....
Never once in this article did you say "I fucked up. I fired a round when and where I did not intend." Maybe that's why your CO thought you were a shitbag.
The part of your article worth consideration:
Institutionally, and perhaps influenced by that same culture, we disdain anyone who can't keep it in their magazine. As it is often said by our safety officers, safety is a state of mind. Until the existing mentality can be overcome, there can be no development or implementation of a policy that really gets to the matter of safety.
Of fucking course we disdain anyone who NDs. And not because of any freudian bullshit, but because IF YOU FIRE A ROUND WHERE AND WHEN YOU DO NOT INTEND, IT CAN KILL SOMEONE.
And that's the mentality anyone that gets issued a weapon needs to have. And it's a mentality that needs to be hammered home at every level through NCO leadership and officers setting the example. That's our role.

 

TOM KENNEDY

6:34 PM ET

May 16, 2011

Hm.

Good point. I still support NJP for non-casualty ND incidents.

 

SOLDIERSDIARY

6:21 PM ET

May 16, 2011

the article

Sounds like a PFC wrote that article...agree with GREATWHITE on this one. Not to mention the author fully admits to violating policy on eating local food, then giving a sob story about how it made him sick and that is what caused the ND. Perhaps if he followed policy, ate his MREs (and should have been enforcing his soldiers to do), the entire incident would have never occured. But hey, everyone else was doing it...well, not so much, there are plenty who in OIF I ate MREs and were reationing water, yet still never had a ND.
My second favorite part is when he admits to doing nothing to stop the NCOs because he was afraid of his own humilation...nothing like not being a leader because you are afraid of how you might be perceived by your subordinates and peers.
What this "author" just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in his rambling, incoherent response was he even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this thread is now dumber for having read to it. I award him no points, and may God have mercy on his soul.

 

STEVE_M

6:37 PM ET

May 16, 2011

Weapon unfamiliarity

As an enlisted USAF member, we are trained on M16 enough for a basic familiarity since you might touch a weapon once every couple years if your job doesn't deal with weapons. For my role, I was issued an M9, a weapon I had about 4 hours of experience with. While I have more experience in gun safety than most from before my military time (a bit of range shooting and deer hunting), the lack of training shows.
The military needs to stop believing that it can train everybody into an expert in 4-8 hours in a controlled environment (this goes for more than weapons). A hundred thousand or more "warriors" are expected to flawlessly operate. If you follow universal gun safety rules, then the risk of injury from an accidental discharge is incredibly low since you're pointing in a safe direction.
"Keep wearing that reflective belt because we don't trust that you can look both ways before crossing the street. We're still going to give you that weapon though, no matter how little training you have."

 

GEO FRICK FRACK

6:40 PM ET

May 16, 2011

comments

1. Sounds like the CO commander and personnel had this guy's number before and after the ND. Hierarchical organizations have a collective intelligence that's right some of the time.
2. I was at the Republican Palace and New Embassy in the recent past, and it's my impression that an officer or soldier assigned to staff duties who did an ND into a sand barrel or rubber cannister could have slinked away with nothing more than embarassment. Maybe there were self-reporting or eyewitness-reporting requirements, but the Palace was such a hive of activity that personnel could have discharged the round, and drifted away before anyone did anything. Maybe a nearby officer or NCO would have acted? That being said, I would not want to be around an ND under any circumstances.

 

6OGUREZ

4:36 AM ET

May 17, 2011

point 2

Frack,
At the Palace from 03-07 you could definitely slink off after an ND, especially if the ND occurred outside the middle or south wing. At the north wing, forget it, the Marines will send the report to their Embassy CoC which then goes to their DoD functional equivalent for follow up. In the one instance I can recall, the civilian investigator wrote it up and left it at that. However, the offender's CoC was much harsher.
At the New Embassy, I doubt you could escape notice, the place is blanketed by cameras and multitude of guards.

 

ERIC_STRATTONIII

6:43 PM ET

May 16, 2011

SoldiersDiary and Greatwhite are spot on

Not once was there a "mea culpa" and the attempt to make a correlation between a macho, hyper-sexual military culture and that it somehow causes NDs has to be one of the biggest stretches I have seen on here and people come up with some doozies! Do you really think that by being PC, non-macho in the combat arms that somehow we will have fewer inidents of NDs? Wow?! You should be pissed tested for whatever it is your "dropping" to make you think that.
BLUF-you made a huge mistake, own up to it.
One ND in a career should not have haunted you for your entire career but the fact that you still make excuses says a lot and the real reason they continue to happen is we do not train our troops enough and then we micro-manage them in and out of combat zones in regard to weapons handling. Training falls on the NCOs, they need to do a better job.
Also, I do not know who came up with the idea of "Pulling the trigger" to see if there is a round in a weapon, how about pointing it in a safe direction, locking the slide or bolt back and LOOKING inside it!?! On pistols, there is even a buller indicator on the side you can feel, do a press check, etc....but a bloody pull of the trigger is what a guy who has not touched a weapon in a decade or more suggests to do for safety.

 

6OGUREZ

4:24 AM ET

May 17, 2011

trigger pull- why

Eric,
The reason given to me for pulling the trigger at the END of the weapon clearing process was to relieve tension on the buffer spring in the M16-type weapons. This will put that empty weapon system in storage condition. As for the M9 or pistol, I don't know why the trigger would be pulled.
Finally, back in 06 in Kabul, there was a sign over the clearing barrel that read something like "Days since last ND". First off, I see never saw that counter go to double digits but worse, in fact, a bullet hole in the the sign. So you can imagine the state of the actual clearing barrel...

 

JIM GOURLEY

7:03 PM ET

May 16, 2011

Mea Culpa... For What?

Here's the thing that sticks out to me-- he did what he was supposed to.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it proper procedure to pull the trigger? I mean, if you do everything right, you shouldn't need to pull the trigger. But it's a standard procedure everywhere we go.
So why are we even calling this a "negligent" or an "accidental" discharge in the first place, when it's plain as day that it was intentional? We train to do it. We mean to do it. We fill the barrel with sand fully knowing that it goes in there to have something else other than someone's leg catch the round.
So if we're going to punish people for putting a bullet in the barrel, why put the barrel there in the first place? Why not just take the barrel away and tell everyone to leave the trigger alone?
It's like putting a hidden camera above the barracks amnesty box and slamming guys for using it based on the argument that they never should have had the stuff to begin with. Procedurally, you negate your failsafe.

 

ERIC_STRATTONIII

7:12 PM ET

May 16, 2011

The trigger is a last ditch effort

It is a stupid method but it is not intended to go off, you are supposed to check it prior and the trigger pull was "intended" to be a last minute failsafe in case you did not perform the check correctly and the only people I ever really saw do it gave me heart attacks and they were always a support person. As one SGM explained to me as I stood in dis-belief, "it prevents those who do not do the prior procedures from slacking" The bloody thing is only going to go off if you pull the trigger anyway, the whole idea that you have to have an empty weapon just confounds me at all times, you are in a freaking war zone. The procedure also varied base to base, in OIF in 04' at the gate, a simple barrel check was done, no pulling the trigger, then once on base you had people doing the trigger pull prior to going into the DFAC, OEF, same thing on some bases and on others nothing. Again, goes back to training and trusting your people.

 

PSUBECKS

7:03 PM ET

May 16, 2011

AD or ND, infantryman or otherwise

As someone who has experienced the loss of a friend downrange due to a negligent discharge, I certainly understand the severe consequences of a momentary lapse of judgement. While there is no excuse for not ensuring positive control of one's weapon, I feel the Army culture surrounding handling one's assigned weapon is fundamentally flawed.
As a company commander preparing my Soldiers for a tour in Afghanistan, I was embarassed as the amount of times I had my Soldiers draw both weapons and ammunition. We do it so infrequently that Soldiers are not comfortable handling their firearms, magazines and live ammunition. There are issues at each echelon of training- platoon to division- that inhibit us from practicing responsible, safe weapons handling. The most considerable constraint is availability of ammo.
Until there is a better way to get Soldiers more time with the equipment they'll be using downrange, Soldiers will remain uncomfortable, untrained and risk-adverse when it comes to chambering a round or clearing their weapons. Without each Soldier being properly trained, the culture surrounding NDs and their punishments will not change.

 

COURTNEY MASSENGALE

7:04 PM ET

May 16, 2011

The "what if" game

Lest we lose sight of the reason why NDs are taken seriously...
What if, in the haste to avoid embarrassment, he ordered the vehicle to pull over before properly clearing the gate?
What if, instead of being distracted while negotiating a clearing barrel, he was distracted while exiting the vehicle?
What if the weapon had discharged anywhere in that area other than the clearing barrel?
“I was distracted” is not an excuse regardless of the circumstances. At that moment, he cared more about a latrine than weapons safety. And that moment is devoted SOLELY to focus on weapons safety. How focused do you think he was in the preceding minutes?
Those soldiers are damned lucky that the barrel got the bullet instead of one of them.

 

CHRISTOPHER.BOYER3

8:09 PM ET

May 16, 2011

The story doesn't match the question

The question is: If a soldier fires a round into a clearing barrel after following clearing procedures, is his chain of command justified in punishing him? Unfortunately, this article does little to shed light on the question.
I can only speak to my experience as an armor officer. I don't think I've ever seen a clearing barrel that didn't have specific clearing instructions listed on or near it.
Why wasn't an NCO checking his weapon as he went through clearing procedures? I always make sure there's a second set of eyes watching me as I go through clearing procedures, and I make sure my NCOs supervise my soldiers as they clear their weapons.
As for being an outcast - that's life in the Big Ten. If you make a stupid mistake, own up to it, and move on. At the end of the day, you're still supposed to be setting the example.

 

GREATWHITE

9:17 PM ET

May 16, 2011

If everyone fires a round

If everyone fires a round after following clearing procedures, the clearing procedures are fucked up. Hold the command accountable.
If someone fires a round after following clearing procedures, they didn't follow clearing procedures. Hold the individual accountable.
Do I think pulling the trigger should be part of clearing procedures? Hell no.
Points to Christopher Boyer. NCO supervision, personal responsibility on all levels, officers set the standard. Good to reaffirm not everyone in the Army is a shitbird like anonymous the whiner.
And to psubecks, lack of ammo is a bitch, and a battle I don't expect to win, but having or not having ammunition shouldn't be a gamechanger for weapons safety. Respect the weapons all the time, handle them properly, enforce proper clearing even when all you've done is snap in, and when ammo arrives keep doing the same shit. Marines and soldiers will perform to their training; the habits they're ingrained with won't magically change once they get ammo, once they deploy, or once they hit their first firefight.

 

 

MARINE 1

9:42 PM ET

May 16, 2011

The Author"

In the Corps we call discharges, ND, for (negligent discharge). When they occur, the perpetrator is negligent to one degree or another. As for the Army officer, your story of being sick etc really only serves to be an excuse frankly. However bad it was, and I am trying to empathize, being sick, tired, hurt, psychologically stressed out due to being in a firefight, all these may be factors in one's lack of mental preparedness, but they are not excuses. We train the way we do in the military to be mentally prepared and disciplined for (exactly) those situations when our thinking is off, we count on our training to prevent us from forgetting or making absent minded mistakes.
And for not speaking up when you witnessed behavior from NCO's toward other soldiers that you felt uncomfortable with, again, an exact moment when character and moral courage come in. I can understand your personal humiliation, but situations like what you witnessed will occur throughout your career, you as an officer need to step up and take a moral stand if you feel something is not right. It won't be easy, and I am not saying it is, but it is damn sure right. If you don't you are living a lie and will only look at yourself and never feel good about your decisions.

 

MGUNNS

10:53 PM ET

May 16, 2011

Clearing barrels

I never could understand the Army's policy of pulling the trigger. What happened to "finger straight and off the trigger until ready to fire"? That policy is asking for trouble.
We had a retired/recalled USA LTC assigned to a PRT who "declared war" on a clearing barrel. Nothing was done about it officially, but I know he didn't rate much respect from the Marines afterward.

 

RVN SF VET

11:32 PM ET

May 16, 2011

A WEAPON IS ALWAYS LOADED

Therefore, finger always outside the trigger guard, save to fire intentionally. Outside the gate in a city-type environment, all weapons should have a round in the chamber with safety on and finger outside the trigger guard. This is to avoid shooting the guy in front of you or someone in your vehicle. At an FOB or similar, you should never have to clear your weapon except to clean it. Therefore, when clearing; you expect to see a round fly out of the chamber after you have instinctively removed or dropped your magazine.

 

 

SOAP MCTAVISH

12:50 AM ET

May 17, 2011

in my experience (to clarify)

unfortunately, you have to clear your weapon about every 50 feet...to go to the chowhall, some MWR facilities, etc.

 

BLACKFOOT

12:45 AM ET

May 17, 2011

2nd reading

After a second reading, I'll retract my speculation above that there might be something to the "culture" argument from the post. There clearly isn't, as other commenters have pointed out. My other two points stand, to which I'll add two more:
- Way too much time spent dwelling on the "humiliation" and "shame" after the ND. Get over it and get on with your job, or quit. A months-long anxiety attack isn't doing your soldiers any favors, as the reluctance to make a correction due to fear clearly shows. And fellow LTs engaging in some post-deployment ball-busting? What's wrong with that? At that point, it IS a laughing matter, so laugh it off, and then tell a "no shit, there I was" story about one of THEIR screwups.
- "the Army was institutionally no longer willing to consider that people have accidents" --> that's because 99.9% of these sorts of "accidents" are in fact caused by negligence. Including this one. Inadequate training and idiotic clearing procedures contributed, but only one person flipped the selector switch and squeezed the trigger.

 

RUFF JUSTICE

1:32 AM ET

May 17, 2011

Bullshit

Take responsibility for your actions. We don't care if you crapped your pants... no excuse. You are supposed to set the example. Man up and own up to to your failure. If there is anything we should hold ourselves accountable on, it should be the most basic responsibility to employ our personal weapon systems.
Glad you are no longer in our Army.

 

DOPE ON A ROPE

2:11 AM ET

May 17, 2011

This article would have been

This article would have been much more entertaining to read if it was narrated by Matthew Broderick and had a laugh track.
So yes, I think ole' Bullseye the INF LT probably got what he deserved, which I guess was a bad (albeit masked) OER and his ass ragged at a dining in. BFD, dude.
On the lighter side of NDs in OIF I, our company commander at the time was a repeat negligent dischargee, engaging in firefights at every opportunity with his 9 mil and the barrel. It happened, dead serious, two times in one week. He didn't appreciate when he got spoofed at the dining in either, though it was hilarious. We imitated him going up to clearing barrels and doing the whole Saving Private Ryan scripture quotation every time he pulled the trigger.

 

TEDDY406

3:19 AM ET

May 17, 2011

Why clear weapons in the first place?

I've never understood why we clear weapons in the first place. We don't make police officers clear weapons when they walk into restaurants in the States. How many stories do you hear about police service weapons randomly going off in Waffle House? A loaded M9 or M-16 is just as safe as an unloaded one as long as you are following the three safety rules.

 

6OGUREZ

4:41 AM ET

May 17, 2011

Why clear weapons in the first place=- trust and turf

I would say it involves both.

 

PLAXICO BURRESS

4:42 AM ET

May 17, 2011

weapons clearing

I don't see what the big deal is with all this weapons safety BS...carrying a loaded gun is important, combt zone or not, really, what kind of trouble can you get into without proper gun training and clearing procedures...besides, nightclubs don't have clearing barrels.
-Plax

 

SOF217

10:59 AM ET

May 17, 2011

Rote learning of Weapons Clearing

The when training thousands of soldiers is always breaking it down to the lowest common denominator. You have to train to the dumbest solider, not the brightest.
Rote muscle memory is important, and the weapons clearing process should be changed to include visual checks of the weapon before pulling the trigger. In Israel, an infrantryman physically sticks his hand inside the magazine entry point- if there is a magazine there, can't do that, he would then drop the mag.

 

BILL KELLER

11:27 AM ET

May 17, 2011

Concealed weapons on campus...

....would not the passage of such laws be considered a negligent discharge? Or IGs which fail to act on hotline alerts to position misuse or fraud, is that ND? Or acquisition source selection boards that permit external guidance for decision making? Maybe flag or general officers who silently execute illegal orders or mouth untrue executive positions and cost estimates or operate gulags could be included among the definitions for negligent discharge participation.

 

SICSEMPERTYRANNIS

4:29 PM ET

May 17, 2011

Proposed ND policy

ND into a clearing barrel = handled by NCO’s & individual weapons training
ND into safe location (i.e. weapon pointing in safe direction) = NCO’s & individual weapons training
ND into unsafe direction/round cannot be accounted for = NJP & individual weapons training
ND resulting in injury = court-martial
Adjust based on circumstances of ND.
Thoughts – NDs are the result of negligence and should be punished both to serve as an example for others and to allow the offender to redeem himself in his & others eyes. However, the punishment should fit the crime, an article 15 for a person who NDs into a clearing barrel strikes me as unjust. Essentially the service member screwed up, but because he/she was following all the other rules no one else was placed in danger. I’ve seen the opposite approach – battalion-level NJP for every ND, it hurt morale and did not slow the number of NDs. Better training is the best way to stop/reduce NDs.

 What You Think ???