And/or that urban warfare is less likely to kill you than jungle warfare.
They are both dangerous in different ways - which is why armies train their units to operate in different terrain (and terrain is a consideration in METT-T). In both cases and even before the shooting starts, the IEDs planted by the insurgents
need not be on the floor and can be planted in buildings (with the whole building rigged to blow), street lamps, walls, trees, soil mounts, and other less obvious locations like garbage or leave heaps. In jungle terrain, the Vietcong are noted for building hard to find booby traps with no metal content in them. Insurgents in Iraq have engaged coalition forces in close combat in urban terrain, with extensive use of IEDs in an attempt to channel coalition forces into kill zones.
In jungle warfare, especially operations in primary forests (where you cannot see the sun in the sky because of the thick-jungle canopy), the jungle itself is
always trying to kill you, even if you are not being hunted by an enemy in a closed environment where visibility is limited. Terrain features like ridge-lines, sources of clean drinking water, means of resupply of ammo and food become important considerations as part of military operations in primary and secondary tropical forests. Below is the National Geographic video of Singaporeans at jungle confidence training in Brunei's primary forests: [nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AcjQX7wHeE"]Ep 13: A Bird in Hand (Every Singaporean Son II - The Making of an Officer) - YouTube[/nomedia]
If you watch the above video, you will get what I mean about the jungle being a closed terrain. What a lot of people don't realise is how hard it is to find the enemy in the jungle. I can provide you with a 6 figure map grid reference to junction of two secondary jungle trails. Most proficient armies can hide a platoon of over 30 men to dominate area; and even if you are allowed to search in the day, and given an hour, you as a civilian will have a hard time finding the fighting positions of over 30 men - it is just very hard to see clearly in even secondary jungles. In jungle warfare, both insurgents and armies have to blend into the jungle. Below is a National Geographic video of cadets at training in the jungle, and in one of the training missions, they transit from the jungle into an urban environment. The video starts with insertion of the cadets by two Chinooks. You can see the mistakes being made as they try to conduct an appreciation of the situation under simulated fire; but they will learn from their mistakes, as it is only a training course. [nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5Sa4aIKnIY"]Ep 20: The Final Test (Every Singaporean Son II - The Making of an Officer) - YouTube[/nomedia]
In urban warfare, threats can appear in all directions. Appreciation of the situation is difficult, with the insurgents trying their best to blend in with the local population. Understanding the human terrain becomes another dimension - which means cultural sensitivity and local language skills is important. You cannot fight an insurgency in an urban environment without understanding the people or tribes that live in that urban area (who may or may not be the enemy). Unfortunately intelligence/data driven discussions on counter-insurgency warfare is boring. Intelligence/data driven approaches mean creating alliances to win over local populations. Thereafter, an army operating in this type of area, get to fight what General Charles C. Krulak (see his 1999 article on "
The Strategic Corporal: Leadership in the Three Block War") calls the three block war (see this 2004 article, "
Afghanistan: Winning A Three Block War" for some background).
If you read the above 2004 article by the former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations, the narrative of the war in Afghanistan is very different from what you see in the main-stream media. While the generals running wars are not always right (and the enemy also gets a vote), if you took the trouble to find out the details, the media, often engages in reporting that distorts the actual situation on the ground. If you read news reports on the latest suicide attacks, you will NOT know that the character of many suicide attacks in Afghanistan is very different from that of Iraq. In Iraq, even groups of little children were fair game, whereas, in Afghanistan, the attacks are often aimed at harder targets, like the army, police or government officials (and much less directed at just civilians, though civilians are still often collateral damage in these suicide attacks). Which is why you can have
incredible pictures emerging from Jalalbad of an Afghan Army EOD expert disarming the suicide vest worn by a captured insurgent to save his life. If you just read mainstream press reports, you will not understand the ethnographic map of Afghanistan, which naturally affects the pattern of the insurgency on the ground. The conventional media wisdom is to focus on reporting the fighting in Pastuns areas, but what is missed is that not all Pastun tribes support the insurgency. The common media narrative is that the US surge in Afghanistan will fail and the coalition efforts there are futile, or at least just as futile as the efforts of the Soviets of the past. But this sort of fast food media narrative, is just very incomplete and not intended to do justice to the actual efforts made.
There is a cultural difference in the way the insurgencies is conducted in Iraq versus Afghanistan. There is also a vast difference between the Afghan insurgency faced by the Soviets, in contrast to the insurgency faced by ISAF. I would agree that the journey to the ANA lead had not been easy. During 2012 at least 1,170 ANA troops were killed, along with 1,800 Afghan police who lost their lives to insurgent attacks. However, there is hope and as Brian Glyn Williams said at page 177 of his 2012 book:
"Although it is tempting to compare the Soviet experience with that of the United States and its Coalition allies... it should be noted that there are vast differences between the two wars. The Soviets, for example, did not have the support of the Tajiks, Hazaras, and a vast swath of the Pastuns... In the 1980s the Hazara lands were a hostile neutral zone, and the Tajik and Pastuns lands were up in arms against the Soviets. Today, by contrast, the Panjsher Valley and areas north of Kabul are comparatively safe areas for U.S. and NATO troops... the Soviet conscript army of roughly one hundred thousand was forced to fight in many areas (for example, the Panjsher, Shomali Plain, Taloqan, Jalalabad, Kabul environs, Herat) where the United States and its allies do not fight today..."
As
Maj. Gen. Robert "Abe" Abrams said in a US Department of Defense News Briefing held on 13 March 2013:
"In the contentious districts of R.C. South, Zhari, Panjwayi and Maiwand, today you see a blanket of Afghan flags flying over the compounds of a people that are confident in the capacity and capability of their security forces. The ANSF are becoming increasingly independent... They continue to develop an air mobile capacity through the Afghan Kandahar Air Wing that is capable of conducting limited offensive and sustainment operations, and with an intelligence fusion capability, enabled by an extremely broad and deep human intel-gathering network... For example, there are over 300 counter-IED awareness instructors spread across the Afghan national security forces here, training front-line soldiers and police officers basic action upon observation and location of IEDs. The Afghan forces found and cleared rate has dramatically improved as a result over the last two years to almost 70 percent consistently.
In June of 2012, there were eight ANSF EOD teams validated for independent operations. Today, there are 38 total validated across their force. Fire support and artillery integration is an important part of ANSF development. They have 21 of 32 of their D-30 howitzer sections manned and certified; 11 of those 21 were certified in the last three months. Recently, one of those sections had their first successful fire mission in support of Afghan troops in contact, an incredible confidence-builder for the ANA and an equal demoralizer for the enemy.
The ANSF are adequately manned, and we have three U.S. security force assistance brigades here that provide 83 advisory teams across all the pillars, man-to-man coverage, as I call it, at every kandak (army unit) or battalion level and all the brigade headquarters..."
Please have a look at the sources provided and we hope you will enjoy watching the videos and reading the articles provided, as you grow in your knowledge base on the fundamentals of warfare. Beyond my gratitude to the usual countries (eg. Australia, Brunei, Germany, India, Thailand, Taiwan, United States and New Zealand) that host training facilities for the conduct of annual exercises for the Singaporean Army, as a Singaporean, I am also really grateful that the US Army Pacific has sent combat veterans, who served in Afghanistan (for training exercises like
Ex. Lightning Strike and
Ex. Tiger Balm, with the links to pictures provided), to help our conscript army refine the level of proficiency in small arms tactics.