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Notes
1 Obaid Younossi et al., The Long March: Building the Afghan National Army (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2009).
2 Interview by Jack Watling with senior British officer responsible for Afghan National Army (ANA) training, London, August 2017.
3 BBC News, ‘Army Halts Plans to Ditch “Be the Best” Slogan’, 24 December 2017.
4 Mark Esper, opening statement to Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing, 16 July 2019, <https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Esper_07-16-19.pdf>, accessed 19 June 2020.
5 Sean McFate, The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 116–17.
6 Interview by Jack Watling with senior British officer responsible for ANA training, London, August 2017.
7 BBC News, ‘Iraqi Army “had 50,000 Ghost Troops” on Payroll’, 30 November 2014.
8 Interview by Nick Reynolds with US J4 officer and senior non-commissioned officer (NCO) advising ANA 201st Corps, February 2020.
9 Interview by Nick Reynolds with US J1 officer advising ANA forces, February 2020.
10 Interview by Nick Reynolds with US J4 officer and senior NCO advising ANA 201st Corps, February 2020.
11 Interview by Nick Reynolds with US officer and senior NCO advising ANA forces, February 2020.
12 Interview by Jack Watling with officer responsible for overseeing training of Malian forces on the French staff, May 2020.
13 Mark Moyar, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam (London: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), p. 327.
14 Witty, ‘The Iraqi Counterterrorism Service’.
15 Interview by Jack Watling with former UKSF officer who served in the Oman campaign, London, January 2020.
16 Sayyid Muhammad Rizvi, Khums: An Islamic Tax (Toronto: Islamic Education and Information Center, 1984).
17 Interviews by Jack Watling with militia personnel and clerics, and author observation of several burials of shuhada (martyrs) in Wadi Al-Salam in autumn 2017; similar systems of enticement including offers of residency rights have been extended to Hazara Afghans by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to fight in Syria. See Tobias Schneider, ‘The Fatemiyoun Division: Afghan Fighters in the Syrian Civil War’, Middle East Institute, Policy Paper 2018-9, October 2018.
18 Interviews by Jack Watling with Iraqi officials regarding retention in the Popular Mobilisation Forces, autumn 2017 and 2019.
19 Interview by Jack Watling with senior British officer overseeing training to the Yemeni Coast Guard, June 2017.
20 Ben Wheatley, ‘Surviving Prokhorovka: German Armoured Longevity on the Eastern Front in 1943–1944’, Journal of Intelligence History, June 2020.
21 Interview by Nick Reynolds with US J4 officer and senior NCO advising ANA 201st Corps, February 2020; interview by Nick Reynolds with US officers advising Afghan Logistics Command, February 2020.
22 Interview by Jack Watling with officer on the French staff responsible for overseeing training of Malian forces, May 2020; consistent with observation by Jack Watling of Malian Armed Forces operations in June 2015.
23 Pollack, Armies of Sand, pp. 275–308.
24 Conflict Armaments Research, ‘Mines and IEDs Employed by Houthi Forces on Yemen’s West Coast’, September 2018.
25 Barak A Salmoni, Bryce Loibolt and Madeleine Wells, Regime and Periphery in Northern Yemen: The Huthi Phenomenon (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2010), pp. 252–54.
26 Interviews by Jack Watling with Yemeni officers who remained loyal to Saleh and had received training in Russia, the US and the UK, 2016–18.
27 Conflict Armaments Research, ‘Mines and IEDs Employed by Houthi Forces on Yemen’s West Coast’.
28 Earlier mining had been carried out using various designs, and this continued in some localities, but largely relying on Yemeni soldiers trained prior to the conflict. The mining of the western coast had a significant impact on the rate of advance of UAE-backed Yemeni forces approaching Hodeidah in spring 2018.
29 Jack Watling and Nick Waters, ‘Achieving Lethal Effects with Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’, RUSI Journal (Vol. 164, No. 1, 2019), pp. 40–51.
30 Relying on limited numbers of pop-up attacks. See Frazin Nadimi and Michael Knights, ‘Iran's Support to Houthi Air Defenses in Yemen’, Policy Watch 2953, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, April 2018.
31 Alan Kuperman, ‘The Stinger Missile and U.S. Intervention in Afghanistan’, Political Science Quarterly (Vol. 114, No. 2, 1999), pp. 219–63.
32 Interview by Jack Watling with a former European diplomat who directly witnessed the programme, September 2020; confirmed in author interview with French officer, June 2020.
33 Interview by Jack Watling with senior Kurdish intelligence official, September 2016.
34 Christopher M Stoppel, ‘Evaluating the Train-Advise-Assist Mission Impact on Engineering and Facilities Management in the Afghan Air Force’, Air and Space Power Journal (Winter 2019), pp. 33–34.
35 A conclusion supported by a RAND study. See Christopher Paul et al., What Works Best When Building Partner Capacity and Under What Circumstances? (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2012), p. xvii.
36 Interviews by Jack Watling with officers overseeing the programme, Baghdad, October 2019.
37 MacFarland, remarks at the American Enterprise Institute, 00:26:00, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWHffWl0DUY>, accessed 17 June 2020.
38 Nadwa Al-Dawsari, ‘Tribes and AQAP in South Yemen’, Atlantic Council, MENASource blog, 5 June 2014.
39 Interview by Namir Shabibi with UK counterterrorism official working in Yemen and shared with and transcribed by the authors, May 2018.
40 Interview by Jack Watling with signals trainer to the ANA, December 2019.
41 Interview by Nick Reynolds with US Army officer who served as J2 advisor to the Iraqi Army’s 14th and 15th Divisions, February 2020.
42 Interviews by Jack Watling with UK, US and Yemeni officials, officers and personnel directly involved in the process, 2017–18.
43 Interview by Jack Watling with UK trainer working with Iraqi forces, January 2020.
44 Interview by Jack Watling with brigadier in the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior responsible for intelligence, Baghdad, September 2019.