Share

[Because of the extraordinary response to Maj. Jim Gant's paper, One Tribe At A Time, I've decided to leave it up all week in the "Number One Slot."  My ongoing interview with Chief Ajmal Khan Zazai will pick again next Friday; the Chief has been in Kabul all week, meeting with U.S. and British commanders, and we haven't had time to speak. So all's well that ends well!]

The downloadable and open-able .pdf of One Tribe is here, on the right. On a personal note, let me say again that I consider it a privilege to offer this document in full, not only because of my great respect for Maj. Jim Gant, who has lived and breathed this Tribal Engagement idea for years, but for the piece itself and for the influence it is already having within the U.S. military and policymaking community.

One Tribe At A Time (85) Major Jim Gant’s “One Tribe At A Time” to your computer

One Tribe At A Time is by no means a super-pro Beltway think tank piece. What it is, in my opinion, is an idea whose time has come, put forward by an officer who has lived it in the field with his Special Forces team members–and proved it can be done. And an officer, by the way, who is ready this instant to climb aboard a helicopter to go back to Afghanistan and do it again.

Questions and comments

At the moment, Maj. Gant is at Fort Polk, Louisiana, getting ready to deploy to Iraq, where he will lead an Iraqi commando battalion. He’ll be available in the meantime, however (depending of course upon time demands), to answer questions or take criticisms. Just respond in the comments section below. And I myself have further thoughts I’d like to offer on this subject in the coming weeks.

Here’s a quick one:

The most common response I anticipate to the Tribal Engagement concept (and it’s a valid criticism, shared by Maj. Gant) will go something like this: “Yeah, this is a great idea–but where are we going to find the men to implement it?”

Men for the job

Tribal Engagement Team members, should this concept be adopted, would be called upon to commit for multiple tours under the loneliest, harshest and most hazardous conditions imaginable. To succeed with the tribe they are assigned to, they would have to demonstrate impeccable combat credentials and, even rarer, possess the “people skills” to establish and maintain rapport across a cultural chasm—Western to Tribal Afghan—that has defeated every outside entity from Alexander the Great to the British and the Soviets. The task would be extraordinarily difficult, dirty and dangerous, and in the end would almost certainly be rewarded neither by career advancement (because the enterprise would be unprecedented and outside the normal channels of military promotion) nor by recognition from the public at large, who in all probability will rarely hear of it and wouldn’t understand or appreciate it if they did.

How can we identify and attract such men?

Do you remember this tiny, three-line ad from the London Times, December 29, 1913?

Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honour and recognition in case of success.

5000 volunteers queued up in response to this advertisement, posted by Ernest Shackleton seeking crewmen for his Antarctic expedition.

I may be wrong, but I don’t think our young American warriors would respond with any less enthusiasm than their British cousins did a century ago to a similar call. Do you?

Again, many thanks to Maj. Jim Gant for writing One Tribe At A Time, to Printer Bowler for designing and editing the .pdf and to Callie Oettinger for managing the outreach. I’m proud to put this document in circulation with as much reach as this modest blog can offer. We all hope it proves of interest and of use.

Share

The US/CIA experience in Vietnam should give us plenty of evidence that there are more advantages to running COIN operations in today’s global war on terror than in conducting conventional warfare option. It is even more evident that if we were to plan and execute a sound ‘pacification’ plan in Iraq or Afghanistan, then there must be some elements of COIN at play to help balance out how we mitigate growing insurgent operations. They are smarter and faster at learning U.S. order of battle so how we fight is not a big secret.

In Vietnam the same problem was encountered by the CIA as the North Vietnamese already had extensive documentation of CIA doctrine in conducting air drops, employing stay-behind units, etc. without the benefit of helping that country make changes from within. Obviously, the CIA was fairly confident it could continue to make drops and lose team after team yet they did not factor in the possibility their teams had been compromised time after time. Maybe sheer dumb luck made some missions successful and still, they were failures for a long-term solution.

First, the CIA did not know the North Vietnamese had been consistently studying its methodology and quickly executing countermeasures and mostly obtained this information from the Chinese. Second, incursions carried out into a closed society must accompany a much more comprehensive plan. Once on the ground, units would have to depend on their limited training and then if they landed close enough to populated areas they were instructed to stay low for short periods of time gathering information. But then there was no plan in how to approach locals other than maybe clerics or family members and that alone always posed a great risk to the team members, thus really not accomplishing much but to get them killed or captured and tried.

There was little consideration for exploiting political and ideological angles within the population; at least just not right away. Eventually this reality would manifest itself fully. The suggestion by the CIA to President Kennedy was to engage the population with these psychological techniques, to create the illusion that there was a nascent revolutionary movement at play within North Vietnam and create the threat from within. This approach would have been a proper complement to paramilitary operations, since that could have been the second stage; to actually carry out clandestine operations, sabotage, and a direct attack on the government machine.

There was some of this work involved in the post-invasion stability operations in Japan and Germany, and these are two success stories that need to be studied more. When the allies moved in looked around and started to guide these countries into a post-war, they already had a plan, the intelligence base to tell them where to begin securing the population (borders) supervising local police and basically keeping track of everything the locals did before a turn-over could take place.

So how do we carry out these incursions and do we conduct part sabotage/assassination (just as the Israelis did) while we conduct aggressive PSYOPS campaigns? Even disinformation and propaganda efforts must carry a purpose and that is to engender in the local population the need to fight for their future. Initially the CIA’s intention was to help the Vietnamese become independent from any foreign intervention in the end and this is the basis for stability operations.

The employment of irregular forces (indigenous) is of great importance because they have a vested interest in not only fighting an insurgency such as Iraq, but also to gradually wean themselves from foreign intervention, which is the main purpose of introducing stability operations (nation-building). This has not always been a well carried out concept, as we seem to engage countries with cultures totally different from ours and often we fail to recognize that those differences will affect the outcome of any conflict and how that culture will survive post-conflict/invasion.

The absence of the rule of law is the first factor that must be either established or maintained if already present in the targeted environment. Efforts of pacification were disrupted constantly by the VCI by threatening those people and agencies working on re-building the country with military attacks. Though the allies were able to fight the VCI successfully and provide protection for these activities imagine any NGO working in the field or that matter civil affairs unit while under fire. The first thing that should be provided to the non-combatant population is security. They either get it from their government with foreign assistance or they fall under the rule of insurgent groups and historically the populations do not well at all. That was a critical development in Algeria where the French government allowed more than one political fringe group to develop and begin conducting counterintelligence operations separate from government support then had to try and control more than one group with civilians at greatest risk who were ultimately main victims of hostilities. The French allowed Algerian populations to be stripped of their identities in order to make counterintelligence efforts more difficult and people were chased away from their homes by all factions so there was no security for them.

The Iraq parallel

We’ve tried this endeavor before and had been successful which I wonder if much thought was given to the application of the principles involved in stability operations in addition to the rule of law is the continuity of governance, this includes social and government services, local services, trash pickup, electrical power, potable water, police, border/population control, etc. The greatest examples are post-invasion Germany and Japan. In both cases military police were deployed to conduct law enforcement operations while there was a controlled environment of the population and local government that enabled social growth and the beginning of rebuilding their infrastructure. This could not be done if hostilities were still a consideration, from either conventional or insurgent forces. In the case of Iraq those elements of security and of continuity of governance were absent, combat forces thrust into the realm of law enforcement duties were lacking in training and experience; the difference between fighting a shooting war and maintaining law and order have had a long-term impact on life here. Reconstruction efforts can easily slow down or stop in the presence of violence, whether from insurgent activity or rampant criminality or a combination of both. This has been the case in Iraq.

The VCI also operated openly in populated areas unlike insurgents in Iraq, who opt for a more covert approach but then in some areas they do make themselves known throughout neighborhoods. Iraq insurgents don’t show the highly organized military organization as did the VCI in that the Iraqis did not form a shadow government to run counter to the local government but then there was none to speak of for a while so I guess the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) at first tried to establish a fresh government once Saddam’s regime elements were removed causing a chaotic situation which grew out of control.

I wonder, and would like to get some feedback on this, if some of you who have worked in this field directly could clarify how coalition forces could have gained more ground here by utilizing a COIN approach after the invasion and early enough in the game. Before the mass exodus of government personnel, the sacking of businesses and attacks on police stations and police elements – and I do consider the fact that the potential for those attacks was unfortunately ignored as a possibility – would have been more advantageous because the people of Iraq, though living in authoritarian but controlled environment, would have been more keen on participating in their own liberation afterwards. COIN can easily influence positive or negative political and social change in a country and an effective tool to aid in establishing the stability process.
A combined approach

I don’t want to complain without offering some sort of theoretical plan just as a mental exercise. I could see introducing COIN operations during conventional hostilities to help build an intelligence foundation we could use once things de-escalate enough to begin the stability phase. I’m not saying that using elite units to carry out sabotage missions while others carry out pure SPYOPS within the population could not work. First we would have to link up with the locals and build the necessary networks and we know from experience that native forces and other government structures will have to come into play because the nature of nation building is to return that country to an improved state of peace.

By removing the threat to security in this effort we’re increasing our success rate, of course, this cannot be edged in stone as the nature of warfare is ever changing and not every threat to our operations can be mitigated ahead of time. Perhaps there should be a series of scenarios, preferably worst case scenarios already worked out to aid in the introduction of NGOs as well as a trained and capable constabulary waiting to deploy. Combat troops should have some exposure to law enforcement training but that is not their main purpose and only a civilian constabulary should be in place to assist with these duties.

In essence, had we employed of COIN action before the loss of law and order as it stood before the invasion, the overall environment might have been more accommodating to a continuation of routine life in Iraq while helping them re-build. It’s just a theory but COIN would have been more effective in pushing the Iraqis into wanting their situation to return to some level of normalcy. Just like the Northern Vietnam PSYOPS campaigns, the objective would be to create a real or illusionary revolution or political movement to get the population to be more receptive to change and to reject helping the insurgency. A strong government in place is another necessary element which did not exist in Iraq post-invasion unlike the Vietnamese who had at least strong leadership from the top and was able to rally the people to be part of the fight. This could only be done with the balanced combination of COIN and local support. I think if this is not currently the doctrine to use COIN along with all other military and clandestine resources then that could be the future of warfare; prepare them ahead of time for what’s to come – whatever many outcomes we can devise – unlike current doctrine which to me, appears to mitigate problems as they come up…little or no vision of potential issues.

Sources:
The Coalition Provisional Authority’s Experience with Governance in Iraq, Celeste Ward, United States Institute of Peace, May 2005, www.usip.org
The Coalition Provisional Authority’s Experience with Public Security in Iraq, Robert Perito, United States Institute of Peace, April 2005, www.usip.org
U.S. Police in Peace and Stability Operations, Robert Perito, United States Institute of Peace, August 2007, www.usip.org

Targeting the Taliban
By Michael Fowler

The simplest and safest way to thwart an enemy’s ability to conduct war is to destroy their supply lines. This is an old and useful tactic from the time of King Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562) of Babylon. His armies would surround their hapless victims who had taken refuge in forts, cut off all supplies, including water and food, until famine weakened their army, and then attack. This is a brutal but effective military ploy. We have been in Afghanistan for eight years—and neither the Bush administration nor the Obama administration has effectively utilized this strategy.

The solution to winning the war in Afghanistan is to destroy the Taliban’s ability to make war, causing the decimation of the Taliban war machine. The Taliban’s supply lines are the poppy fields. Eliminating those fields as a source of income would strike a fatal blow to the Taliban.

The Taliban are mafia drug-lords wrapped in Middle-Eastern freedom-fighter apparel. They generate $100 to $150 million annually by imposing “taxes” on opium farmers.Selling and exporting opium raises $700 to $800 million annually for the Taliban. This allows for the purchase of arms for insurgency, terrorism and black-market tyranny. Worldwide, Afghan heroin fuels 93 percent of a $65 billion trade, far surpassing all of Mexico, Southeast Asia and South America combined. The United Nations estimates between 15 to 21 million people use this highly addictive drug. Afghan heroin alone kills over 100,000 people each year, outweighing the U.S. combat losses of Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Grenada and Vietnam combined.

Our current policy of agricultural transformation allows the cultivation of opium poppies until economic incentives prompt farmers to take up other crops such as pomegranates and grapes. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2009 Annual Report, opium production has doubled under U.S. occupation and is so bountiful that the Taliban has reportedly stored 12,000 tons of opium, which can supply the entire world for three years. We need a new plan.

If the poppy fields in Afghanistan were eradicated, this would annihilate the Taliban’s primary source of funding. This in turn would eliminate their ability to corrupt the Karzi government, buy arms, cause terror, protect al-Qaeda and buy foreign influence. It is the single, clearest solution and would end the havoc in southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan while devastating world heroin trafficking in a matter of weeks. This is a win-win strategy.

Proponents against the eradication of Afghanistan’s poppy fields argue that world demand will only increase production in other areas, making poppy destruction a useless endeavor. “If Afghanistan were suddenly wiped out as a producer of opium—by bad weather or a blight or eradication efforts—other parts of the world would simply emerge as new producers,” said Founding Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance Ethan Nadelmann. This assumption, while based on the law of supply and demand, ignores the difficulties associated with expanding any type of production from clearing and preparing new land and setting up irrigation. Moreover, counter-drug operations performed in the United States and elsewhere use crop eradication as a means. Focused on the drug factor alone, Mr. Nadelmann misses the larger point: Destroying Afghan’s poppy fields would bankrupt the Taliban, preventing them from resupplying arms and killing Americans.

Others believe increased Taliban recruitment is the primary objection to field destruction. U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates are both on record saying that destroying the poppy fields would strengthen the Taliban and that every disenfranchised farmer would become a Taliban recruit. That may be the case with the devastation of one or two fields, but it will not be the case with total destruction of any and all poppy fields.

A counterargument to this is that when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan almost three decades ago, opium production increased in response to increased arms expenditures. This shows that the economic needs of the insurgent army drive production. Moreover, eight-years of permissiveness have allowed the Taliban to strengthen their forces to an all-time high. In fact, 2009 was the highest loss of life for U.S. and NATO forces. Permitting opium production did not eliminate or curb the Taliban. Another point is that when seasonal cultivation ends, the Taliban gains strengths as most of the opium farmers become fighters and take up arms after the harvest.

One of the fiercest arguments against the destruction of Afghanistan poppy fields is that if opium production is eliminated it will destroy the Afghanistan economy. First, no one makes that argument for Mexican drug-dealers or marijuana cultivators in California. Second, if the crops were removed the Taliban would collapse, Afghanistan would become safe and foreign investment money would flow into that country. More to the point, Afghan farmer’s gross revenues from opium is about $1 billion dollars according to 2007 U.N. estimates, while our 2007 U.S. Military operations cost taxpayers $35 billion. Therefore, the plan should be: burn the fields, crush the Taliban, send the boys home, send one billion in aid and save $34 billion a year.

The U.S. dominates the air in Afghanistan. Poppy fields grow in full sunlight, and forests do not obscure the poppy fields. Eradication efforts will not be hampered by a lack of discovery. Modern herbicides are quite safe and effective, as well as the use of tractors to plow the fields under. When the Afghan farmer is faced with the choice of taking U.S. assistance to grow legal crops or face total eradication of his crops and imprisonment, he will be far more motivated than he currently is to switch his crops.

In the past, the United States did not have the ability to eradicate those fields. Now, we are the occupier of Afghanistan and have the capacity and the duty to destroy this trade. Every poppy that grows empowers the Taliban with more artillery that will be used to kill American soldiers and Marines. No one has more power than Mr. Obama to dispatch the largest source of heroin export in the world. If he really wants get out of Afghanistan and cares about our troops, he must destroy those fields.

-Michael Fowler is the director of Veterans for Academic Freedom, a former Force Recon Marine, instructor of Christian apologetics, author and talk-radio host.

The Right of War
By Z. Morad

Is the current war really the biggest mistake of all time? Are the Republicans Fascists? Imperialists? Warmongers? Is the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan really the worst mistake in US history? Although there was a time when Americans generally agreed that their country was a force for good, that time is not now. With such a huge disconnect between knowledge of the war and the average citizen, such beliefs are seductive. After all, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan today don’t adversely affect the average citizen; there is no draft, and no one is buying war bonds or recycling their jewelry. To the majority of the populace the war is largely a spectacle, one that is often discussed by the leftist pundits with a snide quip and casual disregard of seriousness of the situation. What is never put into perspective is the sheer and absolute horror of those that were forced to live under the regime of Saddam Hussein. I guess mass murder is a lot easier to ignore when you get all your news from the Daily Show.

Yet the term ‘war-criminal’ is not one that you will ever hear to describe Saddam; rather it is reserved for the former President and the members of the Armed Forces. Many ultimately question whether the war in Iraq was really just, and the story of the Iraq war is one that is often portrayed as another mercenary exploit in a long history of US imperialism. However, if Fareed Zakaria is to be believed in his Future of Freedom, democracies (including our Republic) never war amongst themselves due to their shared heritage of liberty, but that war between the democratic and non-democratic forms of government are not only likely but inevitable.

A close look the history of warfare, both that of United States and various European powers since their democratization suggest that this is true; democracies loath to fight each other and tend ally against these non-democracies, which are of course inevitably various forms of tyranny. Take for example WW2, a fight that is sometimes referred to the Left as the last “good” (or just) war that United States was involved in. Would the decision to stop Hitler’s warpath have met with success if the same leftist pundits that we have now been around during the 1940’s? The Great War was also a war against a murdering tyrant that resulted in a long and costly occupation, but with fall of the Berlin Wall and the perspective of history, can there be any doubt that the cost was worth it? By applying today’s sophistry to the past, we should conclude that we as a nation had no right to invade Berlin, and that intervention in Europe was simply too long and inconvenient to justify action, consequences be damned. Perhaps FDR would be the one called a “war criminal” while the press quietly ignoring Hitler’s death camps.

It might be said the so called “pacifism” that holds sway with the American public is not so much for peace as it is simply against war: no act of tyranny, oppression, or genocide is enough to justify acts of military intervention, no crime horrific or egregious enough to spur the political Left into action. As John Stuart Mill said,

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

However, in the Golden Age of “pacifism at any cost”, no such truth can exist and there is no such thing as a Just War. To those that advocate anti-war, an immediate peace is more important than the anarchy and genocide that would ensued as result of the premature withdrawal of a US presence, yet the anti-war crowd insists that they are ultimately moralists. No, instead conflict itself is seen as the great evil, and those with the conviction strong enough to fight against injustice in lands abroad are considered fools, murderers, and pawns; completely deserving of any harm or ill fate that comes their way.

However, the truth is that United States has a history of engaging with foreign powers as civilizing acts of a morally superior foreign policy; we can see clear examples of moral axioms dictating US intervention in the decision to help the Allied forces during WW2, and in the conceptualization of the Monroe Doctrine and Nixon’s policy of Détente. Iraq and as result Afghanistan are no exceptions. Perhaps I am wrong however, and it was presumptuous of the United States to infringe upon Saddam Hussein’s right to torture and gas his own people. Those that believe that the war in Iraq is a moral failing of the United States must ultimately ask themselves the following, “Do tyrannies have a moral right to exist?”

If the answer is no, than how can waging war against a dictatorship be unjust? As the Greek philosopher and military writer Tacitus once said, “A bad peace is worse than war”. In the time of Antiquity it was correctly understood that war was not the greatest of evils, that there are moral principles worth fighting for, and that quietly tolerating despotism and injustice is far worse than the bloodiest of battles. Bare with me for the sake of argument and ignore for the moment the accusations of war profiteering and the confusion over WMD’s; was it really wrong to end the repressive and murderous reign of psychopathic tyrant? With all the spin and political maneuvering, it is easy to ignore the sheer magnitude of Saddam Hussein’s crimes against humanity. Or could it that dictators have an inalienable right to oppress, and the United States really is in the wrong? —ZM

By Michael Fowler

Edmund Burke said, “All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.” Whereas pacifism—as promoted by Leo Tolstoy, the moral hero of the left—demands that good men do nothing even in the face of genocide.

Liberal pacifism is subversive theology designed to disarm Christians from ethics. It is rhetoric expounded to Christians not to fight against evil by people who reject Christianity, rather than a moral code. Christians can and must fight when fighting is more ethical than not fighting. It was ethical to fight the Nazi’s to free the world from Hitler’s jack-booted brutality; it was ethical to fight the North Vietnamese Army to prevent the killing and enslavement of millions of Vietnamese.

Iraqi woman at mass grave in Iraq

When the history of the Liberal pacifists is examined all that is seen is blood. Anti-war activists successfully protested and forced the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam that resulted in the killing of 1.4 million Vietnamese by Ho Chi Min’s forces. Vietnamese “boat people” were dying in the Pacific, while President Jimmy Carter did nothing. As Serbians attempted to fight off the Islamic Crusade, the left made up false reports of genocide, needlessly destroyed bridges, hospitals, and defended the bombing on Easter. When American Forces freed Kuwait from Saddam, the pacifists cried foul. Iraqis were freed from Saddam’s genocide of over 400,000 and leftists wanted the United States to pull out and leave them to the wolves as President Barack Obama’s administration is doing as we speak. Yes, they are pacifists, with other people’s blood.

Fr. Stanley S. Harakas, dean emeritus of Holy Cross School of Theology in Boston stated, “The just war theory holds that war is an evil, and seeks to make it less so.” This was Patrick Henry’s appeal in his Give me Liberty or Give me Death speech, “Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace– but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! …Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle?” When war exists, fighting it or standing in ethical opposition to it is to reduce its effects. To prove this, I need only submit millions of Russian Orthodox corpses killed by those who earlier extorted Tolstoy’s pacifism. Moral authority cannot be claimed when standing aside in permissiveness to allow murder.

Liberal pacifism is the soothing lie of communists who know that so long as people still believe in God and ethics, communism cannot win. They have learned that killing millions will not effectively change culture. They now believe that the best way to change culture is to corrupt its theology rather than eliminate it outright, because man is a “religious animal.”

Pacifism cannot be justified from Christian ethics, so they corrupt them. Pacifists will point to the Old Testament teaching of “Thou shall not kill.” Yet, they show themselves hypocrites when three pages later the explanation of the law is, “Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.” (Exodus 21:17), a law they will reject. Thus, “Thou shall not kill” refers to murder and manslaughter.

Pacifists proclaim, “Turn the other cheek” as Christ taught. Christ also approved of the Law of Moses, and when Roman soldiers confronted him and asked the open question, “What about us?” He did not tell them to lay down their weapons of war and killing, rather “your pay is enough,” do not use extortion. (Luke 3:14) When Christ says turn the other cheek, this is not permission to allow others to murder, rape and pillage, nor is it the end of civil authority.

Liberal pacifism is not the pacifism of Quakers who refuse to be involved and separate from society. Quakers believe in the totality of scripture. Whereas Liberals only use “thou shall not kill” as the one law they wish to use to fetter all that resist them. Meaning “thou shall not kill me.”

The faith of a Liberal pacifist is one who has abandoned all of God’s tenets and adopted the law of witchcraft, “harm none, and do what thou will.” They erroneously assert themselves as the highest moral authority and above Christianity because “small-minded Christians still believe in killing. Therefore we, the pacifists, are superior in our morals;” morals that only extend as far as their own noses.
Pacifism of liberals is merely a weapon to disarm their opponents in order to take control of the levers of power. They are not truly interested in morals but in the acquisition of power over the people. How else can their actions be justified? Thinking that liberals believe in pacifism is as foolish as Neville Chamberlain’s belief in Adolf Hitler’s peace treaty. Pacifism as preached by liberals is only a seduction to allow the promulgation of evil, whereas love as preached by Christians is to destroy evil.

-Michael Fowler is the director of Veterans for Academic Freedom, a former Force Recon Marine, instructor of Christian apologetics, author and talk-radio host.

http://www.ebireflections.org/index.php?vol=001_vol&iss=007_issue&section=03_foreign_affairs&item=01_foreign_affairs.html#id03_foreign_affairs