There are at least three different commands running foreign military in Afghanistan. ISAF is under NATO command. U.S. troops  in the south are under U.S. CentCom command and U.S. special forces running all over the country are under Who Knows’ orders. (Additionally there are CIA units working with Afghan army freelancers, warlords and contractors.)

The result of such a disunity of command is stuff like this:

In a separate incident, foreign and Afghan forces killed a man and his two children and during a raid near Kabul, police and witnesses said. Angry men gathered at the victims’ house in the Utkheil area east of the capital, where the three bodies were displayed inside a mud-walled compound. The man’s wife was wounded in the operation, said Yahya Khan, a cousin.

…
The raid in the eastern outskirts of Kabul was conducted by U.S. troops backed by Afghan intelligence agents, said police officer Qubaidullah, who like many Afghans goes by one name. He said the raid killed a man and two of his children and wounded his wife.

…
U.S. coalition spokesman 1st Lt. Nathan Perry said no American troops took part in the operation. NATO-led forces said they had no information about the raid and could not confirm their troops participated either.

So neither NATO nor the U.S. regulars have any idea what happened a few miles from their headquarters? (BTW – since when is a 1st Lieutenant allowed to be a official spokesperson on such a sensitive issue?)

This again seem to be some special operation folks who work together with Afghan special operation folks on ‘special’ targets and regularly screw up. Nobody who matters in the overall Afghanistan endeavor is informed of what they did.

Note that the recent bombing that killed 90 civilians, confirmed by the UN and is still denied by the U.S., was also a mixed special operation mission.

While I think that all foreign forces should leave Afghanistan, even the folks who think otherwise must see that such a disunity of command and hodgepodge of various operations is a recipe for disaster.

‘Unity of command’ was hammered into the heads of junior officers and NCO’s as sine qua non when I was in the military. Any other structure leads to chaos.

But the U.S. is blocking any effort to achieve command unity in Afghanistan. Why any non-U.S. country’s politician and senior military officer submits forces to Afghanistan unless that point is solved is beyond me.