In Afghan War, Officer Flourishes Outside the Box

˜Maverick lieutenant colonel uses unconventional arsenal against militants

Lt. Col. Thomas B. Gukeisen talks to his men at the Altimur Forward Operating Base in Logar province, Afghanistan. Gukeisen, who commands 600 soldiers, is operating by his own ideas about counterinsurgency warfare. (Photo credit: Dario Lopez-Mills / AP)

Dec. 19, 2009

ALTIMUR, Afghanistan – You may wonder how Thomas Gukeisen made it to lieutenant colonel, and by age 39 at that.

He breaks Army rules and operates by his own rendition of counterinsurgency warfare whose arsenal includes Afghan poetry, chaos theory and the thoughts of a 17th-century English philosopher.

A towering, rough-and-ready 205-pounder, the officer from Carthage, N.Y., peppers his sentences with unprintables and reads Karl von Clausewitz’s classic on war in the original German.

The high-ups seem to like what they see. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who commands U.S. forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq, has visited his sector, as have Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry. …

Gukeisen wages his war across 620 rugged square miles of Logar, a strategically important province bordering Kabul where he has implemented what he calls an “extreme makeover.”

Rather than rigidly applying the current mantra – Clear, Hold, Build – he has held back from trying to clear large, Taliban-influenced swaths of territory, focusing instead on areas he believes are ripe for change, and then injecting aid where it counts most. Combat, he says, is driven by reliable intelligence and limited to eradicating Taliban fighters. …

Six months later, he says, nearly half the 400,000 people of Baraki-Barak, Charkh and Kherwar districts, along with half of Puli-a-Alam, are within the bubble. He says roadside bombs, attacks and other violent incidents have dropped by 60 percent while intelligence from locals about the insurgents has soared by 80 percent. …

“… COIN (counterinsurgency) is graduate-level warfare. You need those collegiate thinkers,” he says. “I think the Army is coming back to the soldier as scholar and statesman.” …

Full story

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FROM THE ARCHIVES: One Year Ago – December 20, 2008

Iraq: Coalition Troops Forced Out

One-year retrospective: One year ago today, I reported that Iraq’s parliament had voted to reject a draft law allowing troops from Britain, Australia, and several other countries to remain in Iraq beyond the end of 2008.