INTRODUCT I ON I Passing It On Fighting the Pushtun on Afghanistan’s Frontier ii PASS I NG IT ON INTRODUCT I ON iii Passing It On Fighting the Pushtun on Afghanistan’s Frontier By General Sir Andrew Skeen (1932) A Republished and Annotated Edition of Passing It On: Short Talks on Tribal Fighting on the North-West Frontier of India with a Forward and Lessons Learned Editors Lester W. Grau & Robert H. Baer Foreign Military Studies Office Fort Leavenworth, Kansas IV PASSING IT ON The views expressed in this book are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. © 2010 United States Government, as represented by the Secretary of the Army. All rights reserved. The Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, is an open source research organization of the U.S. Army. Founded as the Soviet Army Studies Office in 1986, it was an innovative program that brought together military specialists and civilian academics to focus on military and security topics derived from unclassified, foreign media. The results were unclassified articles and papers that provided new understandings and broad access to information from a base of expertise in the U.S. Army, Department of Defense, and foreign and U.S. defense communities and universities. Today FMSO maintains this research tradition of special insight and highly collaborative work. FMSO conducts unclassified research of foreign perspectives of defense and security issues that are understudied or unconsidered but that are important for understanding the environments in which the U.S. military operates. FMSO’s work today is still aimed at publication in unclassified journals and its research findings are taught in both military and civilian venues in the United States and around the world. FMSO is organized in the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command under the TRADOC G-2. Foreign Military Studies Office 731 McClellan Avenue Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027 [email protected] INTRODUCT I ON V Contents Forward . VI Editors’ Introduction . IX ________________________________________ Passing It On By General Sir Andrew Skeen . 1 Preface . 3 Contents and Summaries . 4 Foreword . 7 1 - General . 9 2 - Still General . 19 3 - Introducing Detail . 29 4 - The Vanguard and the Transport . 36 5 - The Flank Piquets . 44 6 - The Flank Piquets and the Rear Guard . 54 7 - Taking Up Camp . 61 8 - Taking Up Camp - Enemy Sniping and Assaults . 73 9 - Permanent Piquets . 81 10 - When a Column Moves . 95 11 - Attacks and Withdrawals . 101 12 - Foraging and Demolition . 111 To Sum Up . 119 ________________________________________ Conclusion . XXV Photos . XXXV Bibliography . XLII Index . XLIV V I PASS I NG IT ON INTRODUCT I ON V ii Foreword The American infantry battalion is now a well-established actor in the Afghan theater. So why would the Foreign Military Studies Office and the Maneuver Center of Excellence resurrect a book from 1932 for the leaders of those units? Well, the book is about fighting Pushtun tribesmen in the remote regions of Afghanistan/Pakistan — an unchanged battlefield and an opposing force consistent in the difficulties it has caused for great armies over millennia. This book, originally published as a guide for British lieutenants and captains, demonstrates that improvements in technology—much of it available to both sides —have had only a modest impact on infantry fighting in this rugged terrain. However, it also demonstrates that the key to enhancing basic infantry effectiveness is using the terrain effectively, maintaining force security and understanding the mountain people. General Sir Andrew Skeen spent decades dealing with this frontier. His combat experience in the Afghanistan frontier region was extensive, but he also saw action against the Boxers in China, in Somaliland, Gallipoli and the trenches of the Western Front in World War I. His final field posting was as the Chief of the General Staff of the Army of India. “Passing it on” is about passing on his experience in this turbulent region to the lieutenants and captains who were then dealing with the problems of mountain combat against Pushtun tribesmen. His advice is still relevant to what our soldiers are facing today. The mission of the Foreign Military Studies Office is to research and present foreign ideas and perspectives to better understand present and future problems. Occasionally we visit the past to find those ideas and perspectives. This 1932 book is not so much a step backwards as the (re)discovery of a useful map for now and the future. We hope it will be of value to our readers. Tom Wilhelm Director, Foreign Military Studies Office Fort Leavenworth, Kansas V iii PASS I NG IT ON Editors Les Grau is a retired infantry Lieutenant Colonel who fought in Vietnam and trained as a Soviet Foreign Area Officer. He has published over 100 articles on tactical subjects and three books on Afghanistan—The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan; The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War (coauthored with Ali A. Jalali); and The Russian General Staff’s The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost (translated with Michael Gress). He has a doctoral degree in Military History with a concentration in Central Asia and South Asia. Bob Baer is South Asia Analyst (2009) at the Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, KS. Bob served as a military contractor, training Pashtun Levy Security Forces, in the North-West Frontier of Pakistan (2008). Bob is a graduate of Georgia Military College, and served as an Infantry Officer in the U.S. Army. He is a graduate of the Center for Advanced International Studies, University of Miami (MA, Asian Studies) and holds a Doctorate in Public Administration (DPA, Public Policy) from Nova Southeastern University. Bob is a registered professional archaeologist (RPA), with undergraduate and graduate credentials in archaeology and ancient history from the Universityof Leicester, UK, and the University of Oxford, UK. Bob has completed more than 200 archaeological investigations world-wide, the majority of which were in the underwater environment. INTRODUCT I ON I X P ASSING IT ON EDI to RS ’ IN T R O DUC T I O N Warfare has evolved over thousands of years, but in many aspects, has remained the same. This is particularly true in the mountainous regions along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the region that the British named the North-West Frontier. The hill-country and mountains of this region presented a difficult and often deadly battlefield for forces unfamiliar or untrained in fighting in this rugged and inhospitable terrain. Today, United States and NATO Coalition forces are engaged in a conflict in Afghanistan and along the border of the Pakistan tribal area that poses the same challenges encountered by the British in the nineteenth and first three decades of the twentieth century, and again by the Soviet Union during its nearly decade-long conflict in Afghanistan (1979-1989). As in previous conflicts, modern weapons provide a ‘tactical edge,’ but it is still the individual soldier engaging in combat on the ground that wins battles and consolidates victory. Afghanistan and the tribal area of Pakistan pose unique problems for the United States and their NATO allies. While modern forces prevail in flat open planes or desert terrain, in the hills and mountains of Afghanistan, and the frontier territory of Pakistan the guerrilla tactics utilized by Pathan (Pushtun) tribesman against the British Indian Army, the Soviets, and now the NATO coalition forces have changed little. In 1932, General Sir Andrew Skeen, who first served on the North- West Frontier of India in 1897 and 1898, in the Third Afghan War of 1919 and the subsequent Waziristan Campaign, published a handbook for young officers titled, Passing It On: Short Talks on Tribal Fighting on the North-West Frontier of India. Skeen’s book was first published in Britain in 1932, and went through several editions. It is out of print.1 The Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas has re- published Passing It On, believing that Skeen still offers valuable insight into unconventional war fought on mountainous terrain. 1. General Sir Andrew Skeen’s Passing It On: Short Talks on Tribal Fighting on the North- West Frontier of India was first published in 1932 in Delhi, India, and ran in three editions. Another edition of 250 copies was published in 1978 by Nisa Traders of Quetta, Pakistan. X PASS I NG IT ON The frontier border region continues to have strategic importance for Pakistan where Afghanistan, and the conflict in Afghanistan has spilled over into Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA). Coalition forces in Afghanistan and Pakistani forces in western Pakistan are engaged in a conflict that General Sir Andrew Skeen would understand all too well. Despite the evolution of modern weaponry, the terrain and the tactics of the tribal Pathan fighters are the same as encountered by Skeen and the Indian Army in the border conflicts of the late nineteenth and first three decades of the twentieth century. This republication of Passing It On has three sections; the first is a short biographical background of General Sir Andrew Skeen, and a brief description of the conflicts that pitted the British Indian Army against the Pathan tribesmen of Afghanistan and the frontier region of India. The second section of this book is Passing It On. The manuscript has been footnoted to help with terms and events from the Skeen Era that might not be readily understood by the contemporary reader. The manuscript ends with a ‘lessons learned’ section that offers tactical tips extracted from Passing It On that remain applicable to fighting in Afghanistan and the tribal area of Pakistan.