Published: 6 October 2008
From four Provinces, Afghanistan

I left embed with British forces in Kandahar, and flew to Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand Province.  Helmand is the biggest opium source of the world today.  I write these words from Nangarhar, where bin Laden had made his home.

Lashkar Gah

Western attitudes about the Afghans are interesting.  There seems to be a general feeling of affection towards most Afghans, and I find the Afghans approachable and easy to get along with.  The food I’ve eaten in different provinces is excellent, and I also enjoy talking with Afghanis.  Many soldiers, journalists and foreign workers have expressed similar experiences here.  Tom Ricks, the outstanding American journalist who authored Fiasco (a very important book about the Iraq war), spent some of his childhood years in Afghanistan.  Tom emailed me about Afghanistan, saying: “I love the country…”  On another occasion, Tom wrote to me about his childhood here:

“When I was a kid we used to go down to the Helmand for Christmas, stopping in Kandahar for milkshakes at the American USAID outpost there.  It was lovely that time of year. Lashkar Gah was a Little America out in the desert. The big dams north of there were built by the Americans in the '50s--the subject of James Michner's novel Caravans.”

(Tom is holed up working on a new book: The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-08, which I am looking forward to reading.)

The US poured great resources into Afghanistan during the 1950s.  Americans built large houses from brick (such as this one), and hired local staffs.  A house-boy who worked in this building in the 1950s learned English from Americans, and he missed them badly after they left.  I’ve talked with him for some hours in 2006 and again in 2008.  For years he searched for the American woman who helped teach him English.  Finally, through a journalist, he was reunited with her family.  He showed me recent letters from America, which letters indicated a great fondness on both sides.  The “house boy” is now a cook, in the same house, and it’s clear that those letters are among his prized possessions.  The Americans built Kajaki dam in the 1950s, and supplied electricity to places that never had it, and helped build a large irrigation system that later was used to grow massive amounts of opium poppy, which of course funds the Taliban who support al Qaeda.  Strange how that played out.

Afghans say that in the old days, there were no walls around the houses when the Americans were here en masse.  But then the Soviets invaded and walls went up.  I asked several Afghans who was worse, the Soviets or the Taliban.  One man said the Soviets were far worse.  The Soviet approach to counterinsurgency bordered on genocide, but that strategy backfired.  The Soviets left under a hail of bullets, and their loss of the war in Afghanistan helped bring down the entire Soviet Union.  British soldiers told me that they held joint patrols with some of the Eastern European troops, who still use Soviet-style vehicles.  When the people saw the Soviet vehicles coming, they threw rocks at them, though they did not throw rocks at British vehicles.

Other Afghans told me the Taliban, and years of civil war, was even worse than the Soviet invasion.

Paved roads are a visible sign of progress and security.  But Afghans, British and Americans who are paying attention tell me that government influence ends where the pavement ends, which means most of Afghanistan.  Worse, many of our (NATO) folks never leave the bases.  There were people at the PRT (Provincial Reconstruction Team) in Lashkar Gah who did not even know this road was paved.  That might not sound like a big deal, until we consider that this road runs straight to the PRT.

Rush hour in Lashkar Gah.  Over in Kandahar, an officer from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) who is working with our Special Forces, told me that his country is putting $50 million dollars into an Afghan road project.  Talking with citizens from UAE makes me want to skip town and head to Dubai where it’s safe and the Arabs are very hospitable, though many Afghans I talk with don’t seem to like Arabs.  When my western friends talk bad about Arabs, I think of places like UAE or Qatar where we are extremely welcome and safe. The idea that we are in a global religious war is untrue.  Certainly there are wars unfolding that have religious basis, but this is not World War III.  We are not in a war against Muslims, and the vast majority of Muslims are not at war with us.  Islam is experiencing a culture-wide religious and political civil war, much like the wars that accompanied the Reformation in Europe.  We are trying to put out the flames of the Islamic civil war.  Yet sometimes we make it worse.

The British had warned not to go it alone.  It is to their great credit that they spend so much effort to save a writer.  Yet there is another world outside the wire that must be explored to develop a nose for this war.  Astronauts don’t get paid to play in simulators; likewise, war correspondents must venture into the unknown.

So far, Afghanistan is easier to cover than Iraq.  In Iraq, going alone would have been suicidal.  Unless you could afford your own personal bodyguards, there was no alternative to embedding with the military.  Traveling on my own is not suicidal here, just very dangerous.  And it reaps enormous benefits.  The information flows at a much faster rate, and I get a tactile sense of what’s really going on.  In Iraq, only companies like New York Times with gigantic budgets could dare allow their writers to go it alone.   Yet in Afghanistan, if a writer is willing to accept higher levels of risk, he or she can break out of the military cocoon.

And float like a butterfly.

Please support this mission by buying Moment of Truth today, or by making a direct contribution. Without your support, the mission will end. Thank you for helping me tell the full story of the struggle for Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

01 October 2008
Mazar i Sharif, Afghanistan

Some days ago I visited the bazaar at Jalalabad, and took a bunch of colorful photographs and met many friendly people.  Walking through Jalalabad, one could almost forget there was a war.  But for the most part, this war is today being fought not in the cities, but the villages and small family compounds where most Afghanis live.

Urban counterinsurgency can be incredibly dangerous, yet the population has a common life.  City dwellers are dependent on civil services like water, sewage and electricity; they often have specialized roles in complex economies.  Their feelings and opinions form a political aggregate which both the democrat and terrorist must heed.   These elements of common life give the urban population a center of gravity which can reach a tipping point and shift, either toward the insurgent or the government.  In Iraq, most people live in cities or towns.  When the center of gravity in certain communities began shifting against Al Qaeda and other groups, the shifts had a profound impact on the war.  Also, Iraq, as Afghanistan, has powerful tribes which can behave like “voting blocs.”  Often they vote with bullets.

In Afghanistan, the cities are mostly won (for now), despite terrorist attacks that are often planned and supplied from militants in Pakistan.  For instance, I am today in Mazar i Sharif and have been going all over the city for several days with zero dramas.  I will not hesitate to walk on the street or go to restaurants.  The people are incredibly friendly and welcoming.  In places like Jalalabad and Mazar i Sharif, it’s easy to see why so many foreigners, including Americans, tend to like Afghans.  And even if the city dwellers are just as disgusted with the Afghan government’s corruption and our serial mistakes as an occupying power, it’s not so easy for them to turn away from the government, which they rely upon for so much.  Rural Afghans, by comparison, are much more autonomous, both logistically and in spirit, though so far I am finding most of them to be very hospitable.  These are the people that Taliban are bringing over to their side, either by sympathy, threats, or some combination of factors.  Just some days ago I was without the military very close to where the 10 French soldiers were killed near Sarobi.  I talked with men from the village of Speer Kundy, just near where the soldiers died.  I also obtained video and photos of Taliban wearing the French uniforms and carrying the French weapons.  Out of respect for the French, I have no plans to publish this material.  One of the men told me that the Taliban were trying to capture some of the French, who kept fighting after they were wounded, so the Taliban killed them.  Others were captured then killed.  The villagers said they hate the Taliban (though I am nearly certain that at least one man was Taliban), and they hate the Coalition.  They didn’t seem to have anything against the French, or the Americans.  They just want to be left alone.  But they also said that about half of the Taliban who fought the French were foreigners.  I talked with the men in the middle of bad-guy country, and their phones kept ringing.  They clearly have much outside contact.

If we’re going to win this war, we will have to win over the rural Afghans.  One compound at a time.

According to some estimates, nationwide the literacy rate is just over 25 percent, and much lower in these rural areas.  But again, I’m finding on the ground, the folks tend to be very friendly even when I don’t have a gun, and there are no soldiers around.

Many Taliban grow up in compounds like this.  The word “Taliban” can be a vague term, used to describe local insurgents, foreign jihadists and everything in between.  A man with a gun is generally called Taliban.  But a civilian security expert named Tim Lynch told me that if a man is wearing tennis shoes, he’s mostly likely Taliban of some sort.  Sure enough, in the videos and photos of Taliban wearing French gear and carrying their weapons, most of the Taliban were wearing tennis shoes.

Isolated from other habitations, a lone compound makes an inviting target for an airstrike when enemy are believed present.  We greatly depend on airstrikes due to lack of ISAF and Afghan soldiers.  Yet civilian casualties are turning the locals against us. The men from the village where the French soldiers were killed, told me that airstrikes had accidentally killed about 200 animals, including 27 cows, and they were never compensated.  I do not know if the numbers are accurate, but I sensed the men were being truthful that animals were killed.  They said four people from a nearby village were killed from an airstrike during the fighting, and they gave specifics which made me think they were likely telling the truth.  The men also said they liked the French and the Americans before the fighting, but they hate us now.

These compounds offer a strong contrast to large American houses with front lawns ringed by picket fences.  The people who live in these compounds might seem very different from us, but they want basically the same things:  to earn a living and raise their families. But yet again, the Afghan people are caught in the crucible of history, and their homes are battlefields.  War is part of the character of many of these people.  They are not all innocent victims.  The ones I am meeting are very friendly, but fighting is life to them.  Afghanistan is a primitive patch of Earth.  By comparison, Iraq is very developed and modern.  Still, it’s easy to see why so many westerners like Afghan people.  They can make you feel welcome, so long as you aren’t shooting at them.

Please support this mission by buying Moment of Truth today, or by making a direct contribution. Without your support, the mission will end. Thank you for helping me tell the full story of the struggle for Iraq and Afghanistan.

24 September 2008
Jalalabad, Afghanistan

The shawal kameez is standard wear for Afghan men.  Since I plan to spend a great deal of time exploring Afghanistan unembedded, I headed into downtown Jalalabad to pick out the material and get fitted by a local tailor.  My Afghan guide and I walked through the markets for nearly two hours.  The only western presence we encountered was when two American OH 58 Kiowa helicopters flew high overhead, and I wondered for a moment if I might know the pilots.

Jalalabad is mostly safe, and I felt no threats walking the backstreets and the crowded bazaar, save for one time my danger bell chimed.  There was a young man wearing a black shawal kameez with a bandage on his head and one eye puffed closed.  He gave a long hard look with his one good eye, and I stared back.  But the other thousands of people I saw either seemed to ignore me or were overtly friendly.  I felt safe.  When I travel in northern India, if someone says “hello” in an urban environment, I am immediately suspicious about what’s coming next.  Yet here in Jalalabad, dozens after dozens of people said hello, or gave a thumbs up, and that was it.   Sometimes we shook hands and they just said goodbye and walked away smiling.

When we shopped for a few items, such as the material for the shawal kameez, there was none of the hard selling or pushy shopkeepers that can be found in many Asian countries.  The atmosphere was altogether peaceful.  One shopowner was a Sikh, and I asked if he was from India, but he was Afghan.  In India and the U.S., I’ve always had good luck with Sikhs.  They tend to be honest and straightforward.

There are even some Hindus here.  Interestingly, down south in Kandahar, Helmand, Oruzgan, up in Kabul, and out here in Nangarhar province, most everyone seems to hate or at least greatly distrust the Pakistanis.  Yet when I ask Afghans what they think of Indians, every Afghan I have asked, and that would be many, express affection for Indians.  I ask the Afghans, “You don’t care that most Indians are Hindus?”  “No, no, we don’t care.  We are Muslims and they are Hindus, but we like India.  The Indian people are welcome here.”  Yet the Muslims in Afghanistan do not like the Muslims in Pakistan, while the Hindus in India, in my experience, equally despise Pakistan.  Yet Americans who travel to Pakistan (I have yet to go myself), have always given me positive reports about the people.  From a distance, it looks like all Pakistanis hate all Americans.  Yet, again, the Pakistanis I meet around Asia have always been hospitable and even gracious to me.  I am convinced that we often go to war based on mostly false perceptions of each other.

We kept strolling around the market.  Dozens more people smiled, while many wanted their photos taken, or wanted to shake hands quickly and walk away.

Some of the foodstuffs I could identify, but others left me clueless.  There were many stands selling peanuts.  I was getting hungry, but was told that Afghans do not boil peanuts, so we kept going.   It’s Ramadan so the Muslims are not eating or drinking during the day time.

Gun store.  What kind of guns are these?

Anybody know?  Please leave comments.

Whatzis?

I came across a coin (at least that’s what I think it is) in the bazaar.  It looked very old, and so I took a few photos, hoping that a reader might be able to identify it.  Maybe it’s a real coin, or perhaps a counterfeit.

And so it was just another day in Afghanistan, shopping in the bazaar, talking with the people, seeing all sorts of things, some I could identify, others I couldn’t.  Luckily, I can ask readers around the world – Whatzis?

Please support this mission by buying Moment of Truth today, or by making a direct contribution. Without your support, the mission will end. Thank you for helping me tell the full story of the struggle for Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

Published: 22 September 2008

Living with British troops of 2 Para at FOB Gibraltar and watching them fight, I witnessed one of the great paradoxes of Afghanistan.  The troops are fighting hard and killing the enemy.  They are professional and extremely competent.  Their morale is high.  They are doing a great job.  And we are losing the war.

Their troubles with a local sniper demonstrate some of the complexities and frustrations of this war, which the British public don’t even call a “war.”  The British soldiers know this is a real war, but the British at home characterize it as a “conflict.”  Meanwhile, Americans at home seem to mostly have forgotten about Afghanistan, though luckily they are starting to wake up.  Yet it’s obvious here on the ground that this situation could deteriorate into something far worse than we ever saw in Iraq.

On 02 September, the enemy sniper was at it again, and so five British snipers (in the photo above, one sniper was behind me) were searching for probable firing positions.  At one point, there was credible information that the Taliban told the sniper that they could provide him an American scope.  The sniper said he was happy with his iron sights.  He was a terrible shot, but sooner or later he might get lucky.

The Brits know exactly who the sniper is.  About half a dozen fruit trees occluded fields of fire, so the soldiers cut them down.  The Brits offered to pay for the trees, but were bound by regulations on how much they could pay.  Major Adam Dawson told me the amount was something like $20 per tree, which of course is tantamount to zero.  Achmed, an Afghan neighbor, came to collect the money, but the owner of the fruit tress had told Achmed not to accept payment.  The owner was livid, saying: “I can’t believe Achmed let them cut down my trees!  I’m going to go @#%& his wife!”  I don’t know if anything happened to Achmed’s wife, but I do know that the Brits said the owner of the fruit trees bought himself a sniper rifle.  He’s been shooting at Gibraltar ever since.

The British go by a chart that details how much they are allowed to pay for certain items they destroy.  A tree, a car, a house, even a life—everything has its price.  In Iraq, the payments truly could assuage anger at times.  Few transgressions inflame the passions more than a sincere feeling of being manhandled and treated unjustly.  The perception of injustice—especially coming from Americans or British, who many people see as monetarily omnipotent—can earn a bomb in the road, or a bullet in the head.

During 2005, the 278th Tennessee National Guard spent considerable time one day in the boonies of Iraq’s Diyala Province trying to find a shepherd to pay after they accidentally ran over a sheep with a Humvee.  I also saw shepherds in that same area, on numerous occasions, waving down the 278th to show them mines or ammo they found.  Time and again the shepherds collected large amounts of ammo, and sorted it by type for easy accounting and destruction.  The 278th paid the shepherds and blew up the caches out near the Iranian border.  Everyone was happy.  The Iraqis made money.  We didn’t get blown up.

But at another American unit, I recall officers grumbling and haggling over how much they would pay Iraqis for ammo they were turning in.  These weren’t the rich Iraqis who sent their kids to Sandhurst or Paris for school, but the poor, uneducated ones who worked in dirty places where they sometimes found explosives, or perhaps earned some money planting them.  And I thought what a shame—those Iraqis might, after all, sell the same explosives to terrorists, or get paid more to just bury bombs in the roads.  Such bombs killed or wounded literally tens of thousands of Americans and Iraqis.  But there is a natural tendency among people the world over: few among us seem to like to pay poor people a fair price for anything.  We think poor people should work for next to nothing and be happy for it.  I have seen this kind of contempt for the poor throughout the world.  Rich Iraqis do it to poor Iraqis.  Rich Americans to poor Americans.

In Afghanistan, it’s probably only a matter of time before the man who lost the trees shoots a British soldier, or a British soldier shoots the man’s head off, all for a pittance.  The British soldiers are extremely competent, professional, and treat the Afghans well.  They are soldiers that the British public should be proud of, and Americans are always proud to call them friends and allies who can be relied upon when bullets start flying.  But the accounting department at home is putting these British soldiers into a rough situation and creating lethal enemies.

C-Company, 2 Para, has fired 17 Javelins in combat during this tour.  The soldiers are very fond of the missile system, and are reticent to talk bad about Javelins for fear they will not get any more.  But out of those 17 Javelins, one went errant, and another failed to launch.  The other 15 struck their targets.

The 2 Para soldiers take pride that they assault through the Taliban ambushes.  During one particularly fierce battle, the 2 Para men were closing in and ready to destroy the Taliban who had ambushed them, but a British Apache helicopter—apparently not realizing the soldiers could move so fast—accidentally fired on the soldiers.  Nine were wounded, but luckily, none killed.  The accident happened in July, but troops still mentioned the incident to me at least once a day while I was at FOB Gibraltar.  They showed no anger toward the Apache crew, but in each case seemed disappointed that they hadn’t been able to continue the attack.  The soldiers told me that the Taliban ambush had been well executed, and it took much effort for the Brits to maneuver into positions to pin the enemy, and prepare for a final assault to kill them.  But that’s right when the Apache fired.

Losing the Good War

As in Iraq, the media battle in Afghanistan is of vital importance.  Domestic and international opinion can affect—or even determine—the outcome of this war.  Right now, in the United States, Afghanistan is seen as the “Good War,” the one that was forced upon us, while Iraq was a war of choice.  We’ll see how long that feeling can be sustained in America and Britain, while casualties mount and the war drags on.  The Taliban have embarked on a strategy to split off our allies.  Forces from countries seen as weaker in their support of the war are being targeted.  If the Taliban can succeed in getting, say, France to withdraw from Afghanistan, they will have landed a blow to our effort, with serious consequences to the war here, as well as the NATO alliance.  I read a secret document detailing the deaths 10 French soldiers who were killed during a Taliban ambush.  American “Green Berets,” and much airpower, were involved in helping to break the attack on the French.  Yet from the secret document and other reports that ring credible, the French lacked the necessary tools – sufficient communications gear, for example – to mitigate the attack.  Some of the French apparently had run out of ammunition and were captured, killed, and their uniforms stripped.   Several showed signs of being killed at close range.  One of them had his throat slit.

The Taliban is apparently actively trying to split off the Canadians, and may well succeed.  Some serious military thinkers feel that Afghanistan is not of sufficient strategic consequence to continue fighting for, and it’s clear that much of the Canadian public is ready to quit.  Enemy leadership is fully aware of this, and are trying to exploit the Canadian weakness.

So far, the British are hanging tough.  While their troops’ morale is high, back home in the United Kingdom there seems to be a growing resentment that the Afghans do not appreciate the price the British are paying, in blood and treasure.  Many of the British soldiers have served multiple combat tours.  And Afghanistan is more dangerous than Iraq for British troops.  There were very few suicide bombings in the areas where the British served in Iraq.  Now they are faced with this threat in Afghanistan.

On FOB Gibraltar, some 2 Para soldiers told me about their own experience with a suicide bomber.  They were on patrol when a man holding a bag over his shoulder walked toward them.   (A suicide bombing that killed the three other soldiers from 2 Para at nearby FOB Inkerman had put them on alert.)  A British soldier said that he told the man to stop.  The man pulled the bag in front of him.  “And disappeared,” said the soldier.  I asked if his ears were okay, and the soldier said they were fine.  It was amazing that he didn’t get fragged.  A soldier further back in the file got fragged in the hand, but luckily the injury was minor.  They told me they brought the bomber’s leg back to the FOB.  Usually the dogs get what’s left of the suicide bombers, and the bombs in Iraq seemed to be like a dinner bell for stray dogs. The soldier who told the man to stop said the man looked confused just prior to exploding.  Was he doped up on some opium derivative?  This happened frequently in Iraq, as car bombers drove erratically before detonating (sometimes with their hands duct-taped or handcuffed to the steering wheel) or vest-bombers appeared disoriented or stoned, blowing up without engaging a target.

Reporting the deaths of three British soldiers in June, the Independent newspaper called suicide bombing “a terrifying new phenomenon in this conflict.”  The suicide attacks are hardly new.  The first two suicide attacks that I was close to in Afghanistan happened in April 2006 at the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Lashkar Gah.  Those were the first two in Lashkar Gah, but that was more than two years ago.

The Independent reported that “troops serving in Helmand had a one-in-36 chance of not surviving a six-month tour of duty.  During the Korean War, the death rate stood at one in 58.  In Vietnam, it was one in 46; during the Falklands War it was one in 45.”

We cannot win a war of attrition in Afghanistan.

Furthermore, the war is not just in Afghanistan, and should more appropriately be called the AfPak war.   Al Qaeda got monkey-stomped Iraq, and their center of gravity is now back with its central leadership in the lawless Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) over the border in Pakistan.  Insurgencies often rely on porous borders in lawless or friendly lands to support their efforts and give them safe haven when things get too hot in their target country.  While many people argued that Iran was to blame for much of our problems in Iraq, that cross-border threat was vastly exaggerated.  Yes, the Iranians supplied Explosively Formed Projectiles (EFPs) that killed our troops, and supported and trained some Shiite militia groups.  Yet the main threat to Iraq’s stability was internal, and greatly exacerbated by al Qaeda.  In Afghanistan, the situation is much worse, and more complicated.

“Although the insurgency has support in and draws strength from elements within the Afghan community, the support of foreign-based networks in providing leadership, planning, training, funding and equipment clearly remains crucial to its viability.”  That’s what the UN Secretary General said on 06 March 2008.  Pakistan is key to the immediate future of Afghanistan.  Political turmoil in Pakistan has undermined its already inconsistent and mostly ineffective efforts against the Taliban, who continue to cross the border back and forth.  We use that border too.  Some 80 percent of the supplies to our troops pass through one of the most dangerous regions of Pakistan.

Meanwhile, let’s not forget India.  If Pakistan tips from instability into chaos, it could feel more threatened by India than anyone else.    The recent bombing of the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan killed more than 40 people, and was apparently an effort to stoke latent hostilities between these two enemies.  Both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons.  Just this last Saturday, two days ago, a massive bomb destroyed the Marriot hotel in Islamabad, killing about 40 people.

All this, and much more, adds up to an extremely delicate political and strategic challenge.  Of course we need more troops in Afghanistan.  But along with an increase in troops, we need a coherent strategy, one that considers the unique circumstances in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and the larger region.  We can win every engagement and still lose the war.  That’s why we see continued tactical successes against the Taliban, and high morale among troops like 2 Para who are fighting them every day, while the overall situation grows worse.  The soldiers are doing their job.

Back in 2003, General David Petraeus realized that the Iraq War was as much about politics and money than anything else.   After he took command in early 2007, we saw victory in Iraq.  (General Petraeus will not declare victory in Iraq, but I will do it for him.)  General Petraeus also realizes that the AfPak war will largely be fought in the politosphere.  Once General Petraeus has a chance to fully take the reigns at Centcom – which is exactly where America and our allies need him – a wise person will do well to listen closely to what he says.

General Petraeus has ordered a Joint Strategic Assessment Team (JSAT) to evaluate Centcom’s area of responsibility.  He did this upon assuming command in Iraq, and that JSAT significantly contributed to the new strategy that proved successful beyond our wildest dreams.   Heading the Centcom effort will be Colonel H.R. McMaster, a brilliant officer whose command of 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Tal Afar in 2005 was seen as a model for counterinsurgency in Iraq.  The JSAT will be an opportunity for General Petraeus to develop a new strategy for AfPak, while not ignoring our responsibilities in Iraq, and elsewhere.

One of General Petraeus’ first challenges in AfPak will be organizational, creating at least unity of action, if not unity of command (which at this point is beyond his power), in order to better coordinate the strategic efforts of the different forces engaged in Afghanistan.  More than forty nations are here to “fight” the Taliban in Afghanistan.  While Centcom only controls the American contingent, General Petraeus’ political and diplomatic skills will be needed in order to keep the alliance together and make it more effective.  His experience in mentoring the Iraqi Security Forces also should prove valuable in fielding a stronger Afghan counterpart.

In Iraq, the money challenge was to rebuild the economy.   In Afghanistan, the economic infrastructure is largely non-existent.  Opium cultivation accounts for a great part of the Gross Domestic Product, and much of that money goes to the Taliban either through direct profits or tribute.  Helmand Province, where FOB Gibraltar is situated, produces more than half of the opium in Afghanistan.  According to some reports, the Taliban is present in all thirteen districts of Helmand Province, and controls six of them.  In areas like Helmand where opium production is on the rise, security becomes much more precarious.   During 2007 and the first few months of 2008, Helmand saw more direct fire, indirect fire and IEDs than any other province. There is a direct correlation between opium cultivation and security risk.  Yet if we destroyed the opium crops, we would only be turning the locals into enemies.

We have been successful in killing many Taliban, and even taking out some of their leaders, yet the insurgency is splitting off into a distributed network that is learning how to survive and adapt.   While the Taliban used to stage pitched battles which they would invariably lose, now they are fighting asymmetrically, mostly against the Afghan National Security Forces and civilians as part of a strategy of political attrition seeking to discredit the Afghan government.  This strategy includes terrorist attacks, kidnapping for profit, murdering humanitarian aid workers, and developing criminal enterprises that intimidate the local populace and bring in needed revenue.

The enemy grows stronger with each season.  Recently, I drove through a village between Kabul and Jalalabad with two very experienced expats, who pointed out Taliban as we drove through the village.  The Taliban were close enough to hit with a rock.  We were close enough to be hit with a rocket.  They were in the open.  We were in the open.  We were in an unarmored, single vehicle, and so did not draw much attention.  About two minutes down the road were Afghan soldiers.  Along the road from Kabul to Jalalabad were charred places where, I was told, vehicles had been ambushed.  Every single person I talk with in Helmand, Kandahar, Kabul and Jalalabad -- whether Afghan or expat --  can see that the Taliban are growing stronger, and nobody respects the government in Kabul.  It’s patently obvious that we are losing this war.

03 September 2008

A patrol launched from FOB Gibraltar.  The objective was to tempt Terry into a fight, which he gamely accepted.  As mentioned in the Death in the Corn: Part I of III, the 2 Para have only a handful of major modes: fight, exercise, clean weapons, eat and sleep.  Their gym is slap in the middle of three mortar pits, and one mortar is even set up inside the gym.  (Several smaller mortars are not in pits, and were set up after the 81mm mortars started having “hung rounds,” which means the mortar bomb gets stuck in the tube and does not fire.)

In five months, the crews have fired about 2,500 high explosive (HE), white phosphorous (WP) and illumination rounds through their 81mm mortars, to devastating effect.  It is known that the enemy has been trying to figure a way to target the mortars in these photos, but the reality is that the enemy will likely have to keep suffering the barrages.  Taliban in the open are often simply at the mercy of the mortar.

Today, a serious mission was afoot, and the mortar crews were following the progress of the infantry by constantly aiming the mortars at targets that would support the infantry as they advanced.  At least one jet was overhead and also a British Apache was on station.

This was another serious fight, with some close calls for 2 Para soldiers out there on the ground.  At least nine Taliban were almost certainly killed, and another was wounded.  The locals reported, “Many Taliban killed.”

I was taking some notes for this dispatch when the sniper started early, firing over FOB Gibraltar for the fifth day in a row.  He started early, recklessly and foolishly with about 10 shots, between about 1220 and 1225 in the afternoon.  He seemed to be begging to get shot, but still nobody could see him.

04 September, 2008

That morning a dicker was watching a patrol.  A British sniper had him in the crosshairs, and the rangefinder put him at 820 meters.  The Taliban dicker was behind a wall, and was visible only from mid-belly up.  The time was 0715 when a British sniper squeezed the trigger, launching a .338 bullet that arced to the target, striking the dicker in the neck.  He fell.

Just over an hour later, another dicker, this one at about 800 meters, took a British 7.62 bullet in the buttocks. The man was dressed in black.  He fell.

Incredibly, both men had survived the snipers.  Locals brought the shot men to the British, who treated them as if they were wounded soldiers.  Journalists are not permitted to photograph or interview captured enemy combatants, but I did ask Major Dawson if I could observe how they were being treated.  Major Dawson obliged immediately.  Both men were conscious and lucid.  The British soldiers, the doctor and medics, were treating the prisoners diligently and respectfully, and given that my visit was on about 30 seconds’ notice, it was a candid moment.

And so a medevac helicopter was called and took one man away to be treated at the trauma center.  A second helicopter came for the Taliban dressed in black.  The British are dangerously short on helicopters, yet three times I saw the British call helicopters for wounded men, who in each case I thought were either Taliban or at least their allies.  I boarded the helicopter with some British soldiers and the Taliban prisoner, and we roared out of FOB Gibraltar.

The story of 2 Para and 3 Para will never be fully told.  But it’s obvious that they did their duties as soldiers, in so many missions that I was briefed on but have not described here, such as helping deliver the critical turbine to the Kajaki dam.  Despite the bad trajectory of the war in general, there have been some stunning successes.

The British soldiers will not quit.  Despite hardship and loss in Iraq when their own press veritably disowned them, the soldiers kept fighting in Iraq (there really was some serious fighting down there in Basra), and their morale was far higher than the British media would have us believe.

My first month back in Afghanistan leaves mixed impressions.  Clearly we are losing and the clock is ticking.  But then, we nearly lost Iraq in 2006, yet that war was turned around at the very brink of disaster.  Losing doesn’t mean lost.  It means try harder and try smarter.  Keep slugging and keep thinking.

Days after I left FOB Gibraltar, word came that Jason Rawstron, a British soldier from 2 Para had been shot in the head and killed.

I took a moment of private silence, and later saw this:

Lieutenant Colonel Joe O’Sullivan, Commanding Officer 2 PARA paid tribute to Private Jason Rawstron on the night of his death:

Early this morning C (Bruneval) Company were conducting a patrol from their base at Forward Operating Base GIBRALTAR when they were engaged by the Taliban, and in the exchange of fire Private Jason Rawstron was killed.  Jason Rawstron began his service with C (Bruneval) Company 2 PARA, and although he later moved to the Assault Engineer Platoon, it was to Bruneval Company that he returned for the Battalion’s tour in Afghanistan.  Bruneval is the Parachute Regiment’s first Battle Honour, and Jason Rawstron, like all of his friends in today’s Bruneval Company and across the Battalion, was every bit the Paratrooper of that first Bruneval Company 66 years ago; tough, resourceful, fearless under the fire that he had experienced so often and never knowing defeat.  He joins eleven other members of 2 PARA Battlegroup who have given their lives for their friends and what they have been asked to do in this part of Helmand.  Bruneval Company and all of us in 2 PARA Battlegroup will mourn Jason Rawstron and our hearts go out to his family and friends at home.  We hope that what he was, and what he and friends and his battalion stand for and have achieved in this most demanding of summers will in some small way bring them comfort at this most painful time.

Utrinque Paratus

 

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To read the first two parts of this series:

 

Death in the Corn: Part I of III

Death in the Corn: Part II of III

Please support this mission by buying Moment of Truth today, or by making a direct contribution. Without your support, the mission will end. Thank you for helping me tell the full story of the struggle for Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

22 September 2008

Afghanistan

NATO and the French military continue to deny that a secret report exists concerning the loss of ten French soldiers last month in Afghanistan.  For the record, I have no intention of publishing any part of the secret report.  Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper heavily cited the report, and I merely confirmed that the report does in fact exist, that the newspaper article accurately reflected the contents of the report, and warned that if NATO and the French military maintained their position that the report was either inaccurate or nonexistent, they might find themselves contradicted by its publication.  More importantly, the document was handed to me with zero expectation that I would keep it secret.  In fact, there seemed to be an expectation that I might publish something, though I did keep it secret, other than to verify the Globe and Mail story.
Below is my original post:

20 September 2008

I was able to carefully read the secret NATO/ISAF report cited in this news story, which does a good job of reporting the facts in the report.   Photographs published in the report showed very accurate fire on vehicles, which supports the claim that the Taliban are becoming more proficient with their small arms fire.  The document also indicated that the Taliban had used armor piercing bullets in the ambush.  The French soldiers were completely unprepared for this level of combat.  Apparently, the survivors were rescued by American forces, including “Green Berets” who were nearby.

Michael

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We can’t win this war if the people at home think the military here is deceiving them.

One of the reasons we succeeded In Iraq was that, for the most part, the American and British militaries had an open and truthful approach to journalists.  They let us see the good, the bad, and the ugly, though few journalists spent much time down in the “trenches.”  From the perspective of working journalists, most of us didn’t believe we were being systemically deceived by the military (except for a few notable exceptions).  This was especially true beginning in early 2007 when General David Petraeus took command.  Sure, the military constantly tried to shunt journalists to school openings, water projects and hug-fests, but that was fair play.  They wanted to get their message out.  Most of us saw nothing wrong with that, except that few journalists care to cover school openings or new clinics.  The military was trying to emphasize the positives (of which there were many) while journalists were more apt to cover the negatives (again, there were many).  Car bombs were more likely to get airtime and column inches.
   
Here in Afghanistan, I sense a storm brewing between NATO and the media.  The official denial of the secret report on the 18 August Taliban ambush on French forces is not an isolated incident.  There have been other instances which give the impression of a pattern of denial and cover-up.  NATO credibility is critical in this war.   Support is already weak in several NATO countries.  The Afghani and, even more so, Pakistani populaces are often skeptical of our efforts and question our honesty.  For example, when the U.S. was recently blamed for the deaths of nearly 100 innocent people in a single attack, the basic facts of the case were highly disputed.  Who are the people supposed to believe?  Because they know the impact on the propaganda war, the Taliban routinely lies about casualties, exaggerating the number of civilians killed and claiming their own fighters were civilians.  If NATO is found to be spewing propaganda, they will not be able to counter Taliban propaganda.  Western journalists here already do not believe the Taliban or al Qaeda.  We know they lie.  But enemy shams do not translate into NATO credibility.  Frankly, I do not know who to believe about the alleged killing of nearly 100 people.  I wanted to believe our side, but they don’t always inspire confidence.  If we didn’t kill 100 innocent civilians, why not invite some journalists out to the village to verify the facts for themselves?   And if we did kill them by accident, why not  just admit it?

In Iraq, Al Qaeda and other groups undermined themselves.  Our people wrestled away the high ground, but it was a long, hard fight, requiring diligence, discipline, and a sometimes painful honesty.    In Afghanistan, maintaining our credibility could be even more difficult than in Iraq.  Many people, such as Pakistani cab drivers, will likely never believe a word we say.   That comes with the territory.  What NATO cannot afford is to be seen by fair-minded journalists as being no more trustworthy than the enemy.

Denials like the ones recently made by NATO and the French military only undermine credibility and create an atmosphere of cynicism and distrust.  If both the Taliban and NATO are propaganda machines, the Taliban wins.  Also, these denials put the burden of proof on those journalists who have written about the report.  The Globe and Mail and I now must prove that the document exists, otherwise our own credibility is undermined.

The photos I published on the 21 September of the damaged Afghan Police vehicle were not from the secret report.   Those photos were from a separate, non-classified source.  Exactly how the damage was sustained was unknown by the source, but it could have been an accident during the fighting.

The French and NATO should come clean, make a straightforward accounting of the facts and move on.  Yet this morning, here’s the news:

BRUSSELS, Sept 21, 2008 (AFP) - NATO denied Sunday that French soldiers
had been ambushed by better armed Taliban fighters in Afghanistan last
month but expressed concern about increasingly sophisticated
cross-border attacks.

"We have no information and have seen no information that would indicate
that the French forces were in any way ill-equipped for this mission,"
chief NATO spokesman James Appathurai said.

Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper, citing a "secret" NATO report, said
Saturday that Taliban fighters who ambushed French soldiers on August 18
-- killing 10 of them -- were well-trained and better armed than their
enemy.

But Appathurai said: "I am in a position to say that there is no such
report, either from NATO or from ISAF," the International Security
Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

"Neither the secretary general (Jaap de Hoop Scheffer) nor indeed NATO
headquarters has any knowledge of such a report's existence. After some
research we are still unable to find any evidence of such a report," he
said.

I get the foreboding sense the AfPak war might become far worse than Iraq ever was.  Everything here feels wrong.  In Iraq, I didn’t trust the enemy to tell the truth, but found that our side was generally honest.  Here in Afghanistan, the enemy is deceitful, but why should I trust NATO when their story keeps changing?  Now the French Defense Minister admits there was a report, but says it was not official, just a “fragmented” email expressing “a personal opinion.”

'Account' of ambush of French troops in Afghanistan: minister

1 hour ago

PARIS (AFP) — France's defence minister confirmed Monday the existence of a NATO officer's "account" of a deadly ambush of French soldiers last month, after a newspaper cited what it said was a report that said the force was ill-equipped.

Herve Morin told RTL radio the description of the battle in Afghanistan was a "fragmented written account done in the heat of the moment the day after or 48 hours after the operation, using elements at the officer's disposal."

    Yet it gets worse.  The sixth paragraph of today’s denial:

There had been no official report "but there was email correspondence between an ISAF officer and command HQ in Kabul, in which the officer expressed his personal opinion on what happened during the ambush," the source said.

The French and NATO should make their own on-the-record statements instead of using journalists as their messengers who can later take the blame for any “misinterpretations.”   They should say exactly what was “wrong” about the report and the Canadian newspaper article.  There might not have been an “official report”, but that seems to be a rather meaningless distinction, except that the obvious intent is to discredit the source.  Same with calling it an email (do French soldiers still file their reports on paper?)  The secret report was a genuine After Action Report.  The document was not an email missive done on the fly, but a detailed eyewitness account, written in an official manner that I have seen many times before.  NATO and the French officials are almost begging someone to publish the actual document.   

 

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21 September 2008

Yesterday (20 September 2008), I linked an article in the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail concerning the Taliban ambush of French troops in Afghanistan on August 18.  The article was based on a secret report that I have read very carefully.  The Globe and Mail article described the contents of the report accurately.  Now the French military and NATO claim that the Globe and Mail article is wrong.  The headline over The Associated Press story reprinted in the International Herald Tribune reads: “France denies troops ill-equipped in Afghanistan.”

The AP article contained these quotes:

The newspaper is "totally wrong," Capt. Christophe Prazuck, spokesman for the French military, said Sunday.

"There is no formal report from NATO or ISAF of which we are aware on the events that took place at Surobi," NATO spokesman James Appathurai said.

The French military would be well advised to use circumspection before making such comments.   And NATO’s statement that there is no formal ISAF or NATO report of which they are aware, sounds like a classic non-denial denial, leaving them plenty of room to re-explain themselves when presented with additional evidence.  If NATO and the French persist in making these claims, the secret report, written by American Special Forces who were present, could find itself on the internet.  Certain embargoed details in the report are even more troubling than the facts that were published in the Globe and Mail article.

The loss of ten French soldiers is bad enough.  Let’s not make it worse with cover-up.  Truth leaks faster than helium.  It happened with the mythologized death of Pat Tillman.  And it will happen in this case.

Please support this mission by buying Moment of Truth today, or by making a direct contribution. Without your support, the mission will end. Thank you for helping me tell the full story of the struggle for Iraq and Afghanistan.

20 September 2008

I was able to carefully read the secret NATO/ISAF report cited in this news story, which does a good job of reporting the facts in the report.   Photographs published in the report showed very accurate fire on vehicles, which supports the claim that the Taliban are becoming more proficient with their small arms fire.  The document also indicated that the Taliban had used armor piercing bullets in the ambush.  The French soldiers were completely unprepared for this level of combat.  Apparently, the survivors were rescued by American forces, including "Green Berets" who were nearby.

Michael

A secret NATO review obtained by The Globe and Mail shows that the French who were killed in August did not have enough bullets, radios and other equipment. By contrast, the insurgents were dangerously well prepared...

Click here to read the entire story by Graeme Smith on Globeandmail.com

 

Please support this mission by buying Moment of Truth today, or by making a direct contribution. Without your support, the mission will end. Thank you for helping me tell the full story of the struggle for Iraq and Afghanistan.