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NURISTAN Province, Afghanistan (NY Times) – Nothing in the documents made public offers as vivid a miniature of the Afghan war so far — from hope to heartbreak — as the field reports from one lonely base: Combat Outpost Keating.
The outpost was opened in 2006 in the Kamdesh district of Nuristan Province, an area of mountain escarpments, thick forests and deep canyons with a population suspicious of outsiders. The outpost’s troops were charged with finding allies among local residents and connecting them to the central government in Kabul, stopping illegal cross-border movement and deterring the insurgency.
But the outpost’s fate, chronicled in unusually detailed glimpses of a base over nearly three years, illustrates many of the frustrations of the allied effort: low troop levels, unreliable Afghan partners and an insurgency that has grown in skill, determination and its ability to menace.
Some early reports from the area were upbeat. Although it was obvious from the outset that there were so few troops that the outpost, like others of its kind, could barely defend its bunkers and patrol at the same time, much less disrupt a growing insurgency, the dispatches carried notes of cheerful confidence when they described the campaign for local hearts and minds.
Before long the optimistic reports about handouts of milk and soccer balls and the good will of the local residents gave way to a realization that insurgents controlled almost everything up to the outpost’s gates.
“These people are hated by God,” the letter said, according to a translation in the intelligence summary. “Soon we will start our operations.”
OBAMA’S WAR – SUMMER 2009
In the summer of 2009, as President Obama explored options for continuing the war, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, then his new commander in Kabul, revisited the idea of dividing the limited available forces and distributing them in remote outposts. New thinking took hold: forces were to be concentrated where they could have the greatest effect.
Combat Outpost Keating, along with several other tiny firebases in eastern Afghanistan, was ordered to shut down. By fall, the United States was quietly withdrawing from part of its archipelago of little posts. But before Combat Outpost Keating could be closed, the insurgents struck.
Early on Oct. 3, they massed for a coordinated attack, pounding the little outpost with mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades and raking it from above with heavy machine-gun fire.
A FRANTIC CALL FOR HELP
Forty minutes into the fighting, he reported that the observation post was about to detonate its Claymore mines — a sign that the attackers were almost at its walls. “They are that close to the wire,” the soldier typed.
Eight minutes later he reported that the attackers were breaching Keating’s last defensive ring. The post was at risk of falling, and having the fighting go hand-to-hand.
“Enemy in the wire at keating,” he typed. “ENEMUY IN THE WIRE ENEMY IN THE WIRE!!!”
Insurgents entered the outpost.
… The outpost had held on, but barely. Eight soldiers were dead. Almost two dozen others had been wounded. Several Afghan soldiers and guards were killed or wounded, too.
The Americans evacuated their casualties. Over the next days they declared the outpost closed and departed — so quickly that they did not carry out all of their stored ammunition.
The outpost’s depot was promptly looted by the insurgents and bombed by American planes in an effort to destroy the lethal munitions left behind.
U.S. troops pulled out of Kunar province early April 2010, abdicating control of the Taliban supply route from Pakistan through the Koralgan Valley of Death. The Obama administration must have stopped the search for Osama Bin Laden, holed up in this extended mountainous region on the AfPak border.
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The full leaked database contains 92,201 records of individual events or intelligence reports. This is our selection of 300 of the key ones. We have ensured none includes information identifying intelligence sources or putting Nato troops at risk.
≈ Cross-posted from BooMan’s fp story — Massive Leak-Dump of Afghan Files ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
The International Security Assistance Force said there were about 90 improvised-bomb strikes, 120 bombs found and 290 armed attacks on the highway from May 6 to June 10 this year.
The destruction of bridges and culverts on the highway forces drivers onto dirt byways, turning what had been a five-hour trip when the road was built into one of some 12 hours.
Repairs are urgently needed, and last week the USAID awarded a contract for rebuilding nine bridges to The Louis Berger Group, a U.S. company that will use Afghan firms as subcontractors. Since that contracting process began, however, three more bridges have been blown up.
The attack Dad witnessed occurred in midafternoon as a NATO supply convoy passed through a village between the Gilan and Moqur districts. Insurgents detonated a roadside bomb and then fired machine guns and rockets from both sides of the road, apparently firing from the roofs of houses, Dad said.
Insurgent tactic
Security concerns about Afghanistan’s main highway, or ring road – portions of which stretch from the capital in east-central Afghanistan to Kandahar in the south, and from there to Herat in the west – have risen dramatically.
In 2008 a bus carrying 50 people traveling from Kandahar to Herat was ambushed by Taliban forces. Days later, a purported Taliban spokesman announced that 27 of the passengers had been executed after a Taliban court determined that they were Afghan National Army troops.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
(Al-Jazeera) – A rocket attack on a village in Afghanistan last week killed at least 45 civilians, including women and children, a spokesman for Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has said.
Waheed Omar said an investigation was underway to determine who was responsible for Friday’s reported attack in Sangin district.
“Our understanding is yes, there was a rocket launched. Yes, it hit a civilian house where many people sought refuge and yes there were around 45 to 50 people killed.”
Helicopter attack
Reports surfaced on Saturday that a helicopter gunship fired on villagers who had been told by fighters to leave their homes as a firefight with troops from Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) was imminent.
According to witness accounts, men, women and children fled to Regey village and were fired on from helicopter gunships as they took cover.
‘No evidence’
The BBC said it sent an Afghan reporter to Regey to interview residents, who described the attack and said they had buried 39 people. Civilian casualties are an incendiary topic in Afghanistan, though surveys have shown that most casualties are caused by Taliban attacks.
Colonel Wayne Shanks, an Isaf spokesman, said the location of the reported deaths was “several kilometres away from where we had engaged enemy fighters”.
Isaf forces had fought a battle with the Taliban, Shanks said, but an investigation team dispatched after the casualty reports emerged “had accounted for all the rounds that were shot at the enemy”.
The Siege of Sangin lasted between June 2006 and April 2007
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
WASHINGTON DC (ABC News) – Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said the documents released so far “reflect the reality, recognized by everyone, that the insurgency was gaining momentum during these years while our coalition was losing ground.”
The Taliban’s resurgence led Obama to announce in December 2009 a major increase of forces to Afghanistan as part of a new civil-military strategy, Lieberman pointed out.
Shortly after the documents were posted on the Internet, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said they raised questions about whether the U.S. was pursuing a realistic policy with Afghanistan and Pakistan. He said they showed the urgency of making the “calibrations” necessary “to get the policy right.”
Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, called the leak disturbing.
“The damage to our national security caused by leaks like this won’t stop until we see more perpetrators in orange jump suits,” Bond said.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."This war was lost when it was started.
The fourth and fifth generation warfare now being used against traditonal powers cannot be fought agaionst in a traditonal manner. To do so is to make defeat inevitable and expensive. The practioners of the modern forms of war realise that the military bureacratic establishments are the countries own worst enemy and just use it against them.
It is now a matter of how devastating or not the defeat will be. Of course it wont be described as such by the media or the military who go on about things like how we won every engagement of company level up, whihc is of course utterly irrelevent in winning a war especially in this day and age with opponents fighting a very different battle and willing to take defeat in traditonal battle knowing it is meaningless.
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Jason Burke is a foreign affairs correspondent for the British Sunday The Observer, and worked from within Pakistan and Afghanistan. His most recent book is On the Road to Kandahar, Travels through Conflict in the Islamic World (Allen Lane, 2006) © Prospect Magazine.
I must have come across his reports before, however today I read his article in a Dutch newspaper about the resurgent Taliban and the allied forces fighting the wrong enemy to defeat international terror. One cannot have a policy to save the Afghan nation from the Taliban, the Taliban are Pashtun and represents 50% of the population and is spread across the AfPak border region into the Northwest Frontier. His account: Misreading the Taliban . Another fine article …
For President Obama Afghanistan is staring to resemble the BP oil spill. It’s looking like a real PR disaster for the Obama administration. Everybody is focusing on the extraordinary bust up between General McChrystal and the Obama White House following leaks of a forthcoming interview that the General gave Rolling Stone magazine. That interview was a real shocker. [This article was written before the WikiLeaks – Oui]
If I remember correctly the White House replaced General McKiernan because he was seen as a latter day General McClellan. General McChrystal was seen as more of a gung ho commander. It looks like Obama made a big mistake in going for a wild card like McChrystal. Obama appointed him after sacking McKiernan and now he has to wear him.
But there is more happening on the Afghan front than this Korea like spat between the commander in chief and his theatre commander. For example Richard Holbrooke just visited Marjah, which seems to have been a disaster in itself. It looks as if the Osprey helicopter carrying Holbrooke came under Taliban small arms fire. Recall that Marjah was supposed to have been pacified.
Do we need a reminder of the British military campaigns in the Near- and Far-East?
After tension between Russia and Britain in Europe ended with the June 1878 Congress of Berlin, Russia turned its attention to Central Asia. That same summer, Russia sent an uninvited diplomatic mission to Kabul. Sher Ali Khan, the Amir of Afghanistan, tried unsuccessfully to keep them out. Russian envoys arrived in Kabul on 22 July, 1878, and on 14 August, the British demanded that Sher Ali accept a British mission too.
The Amir not only refused to receive a British mission under Neville Bowles Chamberlain, but threatened to stop it if it were dispatched. Lord Lytton, the viceroy, ordered a diplomatic mission to set out for Kabul in September 1878 but the mission was turned back as it approached the eastern entrance of the Khyber Pass, triggering the Second Anglo-Afghan War. A British force of about 40,000 fighting men was distributed into military columns which penetrated Afghanistan at three different points. An alarmed Sher Ali attempted to appeal in person to the Tsar for assistance, but unable to do so, he returned to Mazari Sharif, where he died on 21 February 1879.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Exactly the Taleban are Afghans NATO are not. Same as Hezbollah are Lebanese, the Mehdi army are Iraqi and Hamas Palestinian. These are the people of the countries and not the “alien force” western propaganda makes them out to be. They must be part of the solution in each case while the occupiers and outsiders never ever will be part of the solution but part of the problem. However, western media spins it to make thos totally obvious reality seem anything but which justs helps serve to lengthen wars that result in humilaiting defeat. The Vietnam lesson was never learned and denial will take many many more humilaitions and maybe the destruction of the US economy before it disappears. This is a tragedy for all people including Amercians.
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KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – A second U.S. Navy sailor who went missing in a dangerous part of eastern Afghanistan was found dead and his body recovered, a senior U.S. military official and Afghan officials said Thursday.
The family of Petty Officer 3rd Class Jarod Newlove, a 25-year-old from the Seattle area, had been notified of his death, the U.S. military official said on condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to disclose the information.
Newlove and Petty Officer 2nd Class Justin McNeley went missing last Friday in Logar province. NATO recovered the body of McNeley — a 30-year-old father of two from Wheatridge, Colorado — in the area Sunday.
The sailors were instructors at a counterinsurgency school for Afghan security forces, according to senior military officials. The school was headquartered in Kabul and had classrooms outside the capital.
NATO officials have not offered an explanation as to why the two service members were in such a dangerous part of eastern Afghanistan.
This photo, displayed on a leaflet that was distributed by the U.S. military to civilians inLogar province, shows missing U.S. Navy sailor Petty Officer 3rd Class Jarod Newlove. (AP)
Afghanistan: Creation of a Warlord Democracy
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."A counter insurgency school for the afghans is a ridiculous concept. They are the occupied power and the quislings (as they see them) in such a school are redundant
The recent leak exposes everything – war crimes, civilian massacres hidden, propaganda we receive is BS, hearts and minds lost ages ago, war is a disasterous defeat already