Interview by Carlos Lozada
Sunday, March 22, 2009; Page B02

*Why is an Aussie anthropologist coaching American generals on how to win
wars? David Kilcullen, an Australian army reservist and top adviser to Gen.
David H. Petraeus during the troop surge in Iraq, has spent years studying
insurgencies in countries from Indonesia to Afghanistan, distinguishing
hard-core terrorists from "accidental guerrillas" -- and his theories are
revolutionizing military thinking throughout the West. Kilcullen spoke with
Outlook's Carlos Lozada on why Pakistan is poised for collapse, whether
catching Osama bin Laden is really a good idea and how the Enlightenment and
Lawrence of Arabia helped Washington shift course in Iraq. Excerpts:*

*What is the real central front in the war on terror?*
*Pakistan. Hands down. No doubt*

Pakistan is 173 million people, 100 nuclear weapons, an army bigger than the
U.S. Army, and al-Qaeda headquarters sitting right there in the two-thirds
of the country that the government doesn't control. The Hardliner Islamic
Pakistani military and police and intelligence service don't follow the
civilian government; they are essentially a rogue state within a state.
We're now reaching the point where within one to six months we could see the
collapse of the Pakistani state, also because of the global financial
crisis, which just exacerbates all these problems. . . . The collapse of
Pakistan, al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear weapons, an extremist takeover -- that
would dwarf everything we've seen in the war on terror today.

*How important is it to kill or capture Osama bin laden?*

Not very. It depends on who does it. Let me give you two possible scenarios.
Scenario one is, American commandos shoot their way into some valley in
Pakistan and kill bin Laden. That doesn't end the war on terror; it makes
bin Laden a martyr. But here's scenario two: Imagine that a tribal raiding
party captures bin Laden, puts him on television and says, "You are a
traitor to Islam and you have killed more Muslims than you have killed
infidels, and we're now going to deal with you." They could either then try
and execute the guy in accordance with their own laws or hand him over to
the International Criminal Court. If that happened, that would be the end of
the al-Qaeda myth.

*President Obama has said that he will be "as careful getting out of Iraq as
we were careless getting in." Is his decision to remove combat forces by
August 2010 and leave 50,000 non-combat troops careful or careless?*

I think it is politically careful. The distinction between combat and
non-combat forces in a counterinsurgency environment is largely theoretical.
Anyone who is still in Iraq will actually or potentially be engaged in
combat.

*How much longer will the war last?*

The intervention ends when the locals can handle it. Right now they can't. I
think that within three to five years, we can say that the chance that the
Iraqis will be able to hold their own against their internal threats is
pretty high. So I'd say we have another three to five years of substantial
engagement in Iraq. But one other factor here is external interference. What
are the Iranians doing, what are the Saudis doing, what are the Jordanians
and the Syrians doing? The Iraq part is not the problem, it's the regional
security part that is the problem.

It's Petraeus. If this thing had [expletive] up, everyone would be blaming
Petraeus. You wouldn't find Keane and Odierno and Kagan and President Bush
and everyone else stepping forward. So I think the true father of the thing
was and is Petraeus.

*You argue in your book, "The Accidental Guerrilla," that if Petraeus had
been killed in Iraq, the impact on morale alone could have lost the war. Do
you fault President Bush for feeding the cult of Petraeus?*

Our biggest problem during the surge was a hostile American Congress. They
could have killed the thing. There was really nobody except [Senators]
McCain and Lieberman arguing for a continued commitment. So I don't fault
President Bush for pushing General Petraeus forward. I think what he was
trying to do was to find a figure with sufficient credibility to restore
hope within Congress and to gain a measure of support for the effort from
the U.S. domestic population.

*What are the lessons of Iraq that most apply to Afghanistan?*

I would say there are three. The first one is you've got to protect the
population. Unless you make people feel safe, they won't be willing to
engage in unarmed politics. The second lesson is, once you've made people
safe, you've got to focus on getting the population on your side and making
them self-defending. And then a third lesson is, you've got to make a
long-term commitment.

*Obama has suggested that it might be possible to reach out to moderate
elements of the Taliban, along the lines of the Anbar Awakening in Iraq.
Would that work?*

If the Taliban sees that we're negotiating for a stay of execution or to
stave off defeat, that's going to harden their resolve. . . . I'm all for
negotiating, but I think the chances of achieving a mass wave of people
turning against the Taliban are somewhat lower in Afghanistan than they were
in Iraq.

*Did the U.S. military take too long to change course in Iraq?*

I think it took them a historically standard period of time. In Vietnam it
took three to four years to reorient. In Malaya the British took about the
same amount of time. In Northern Ireland they took longer. The British in
Iraq took longer than the Americans in Iraq. And again, it was Petraeus. . .
. He put forward this whole change movement within the military. We were
almost like insurgents within the U.S. government. My marker of success is
that when I first arrived, we had to talk in whispers about stuff that is
now considered commonplace. The conventional wisdom now was totally
unorthodox in '04, '05.

*Does having a medieval scholar as a father affect how you see war?*

My father is a true believer in the Enlightenment. He always encouraged me
to develop an evidence-based approach to whatever you do. But the other
thing is, when I was 10 years old, my dad gave me a copy of a book by Robert
Graves called "Good-Bye to All That," which is about the first World War.
That was where I first encountered T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia. And as
a child I was steeped in Lawrence's way of thinking about tribes. In tribal
warfare you don't go directly to your objectives, you work through a ladder
of tribes. You go from one tribe to the next tribe to the next tribe to get
to your objective. That's what we tried to do in Iraq.

*In 2006 you wrote an essay on counterinsurgency called "28 Articles,"
one-upping Lawrence's "27 Articles." Do you consider yourself a modern-day
Lawrence of Arabia?*

No. I don't think there is a modern equivalent of Lawrence of Arabia. But we
can all learn from his thinking about insurgency. The other thing about
Lawrence is he understood and worked with the cultures that he dealt with,
and he spent the rest of his life advocating policies to support the welfare
of those people. He was one the biggest advocates of Arab independence, even
when his own nation's policies were against that.
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*Fellow Baloch brothers and sisters...

Today, this day and every day, your future is in your hands; your future is
Baluchistan, your responsibility is to safeguard your fatherland from every
crises and hold your head high and be proud to serve and protect your
country Balochistan and your people.

The elements of hate and destruction who continuously try to disrupt and
destroy our land and our people are going down to the drains of hell where
they originally came from, our encouragement comes from the way our
enemies.  We have studied, we have researched and seen their weak and
desperate attempts in the recent past, these elements of terror to the world
and Baloch nation have failed to stop the Freedom cry our Baloch nation.  We
must use our every resource to strive to struggle to gain our full
independence to secure our borders, our country the Independent state of
Baluchistan.

The KEY we need at the end of the DARK TUNNEL is: "1.Our Unity, 2. our
Struggle 3. To Freedom", we must UNITE at all costs. Its seems hard but its
not!!!

There is hope at the end of this dark and lengthy tunnel and that hope is
our ever lasting freedom. There is no turning back, our struggle mission
should include, erasing the Taliban State of Terrorist Fascist Hardliner
Pakistan out our land forever and for stake of humanity and our future
generations before it collapses and goes to hell.


Unknown Tip from unknown friend.*
Forever Green Our Fatherland Baluchistan