Command Changeover in Af-Pak: 'old school' gives way to 'anthropologist with guns'

The top US military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David D. McKiernan, was sacked yesterday after both the Pentagon and the White House decided that "fresh thinking" was needed to win the war. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has named as his successor Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal. He [SecDef Gates] stressed "nothing went wrong" during McKiernan's 11-month tenure as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan -- a period described by the National Intelligence Estimate as a "downward spiral of violence", with a steady deterioration of security and rising casualties among both American troops and Afghan civilians; a period bookended by the two most massive losses of civilian life in the 8-year war: the air strike on Herat strike last August that killed 90, and last week's Farah Province strike, which appears to have killed 147. The decision [to replace McKiernan] was almost certainly taken before the civilian deaths in Farah. Analysts take it to be less a personal indictment of McKiernan and more a result of growing U.S. apprehension over the war in Afghanistan, compounded by concerns in neighboring Pakistan. Other Defense officials however, speaking on condition of anonymity, concur that McKiernan did fall short as the commander of US forces in the region, due to his lack of bold, new operational plans and his reluctance to adapt successful strategies from Iraq. In his announcement of the change of command, Secretary Gates referred to a need for "new thinking and new approaches from out military leaders". Lt. Gen. McChrystal is regarded as a nimble thinker who is expected to more aggressively work to improve Afghan forces, overhaul military intelligence collection and institute organizational changes that McKiernan resisted. According to one military source in South Asia, McKiernan is "old school" while McChrystal is more an "anthropologist with guns". Lt. Gen. McChrystal was as recently as a month ago considered a strong candidate for the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, until he came under fire for alleged abuses committed against detainees by Special Forces in Iraq, which were under his command. McChrystal is widely viewed as having been responsible for hunting down and killing Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the fabled head of al Qaeda in Iraq, but he is also implicated in dozens of allegations of detainee abuse by elite troops, including deaths involving members of the Navy Seals and the Army's Fifth Special Forces Group. In one of the Army-related cases, military investigators later concluded that an Iraqi military officer in American custody died of "blunt force injuries and asphyxia."