Four years ago, the British and NATO launched Operation Eagle's Summit in Afghanistan. They wanted to get 80 tons of turbine up to the Kajaki dam. The dam provides electricity to Helmand province and to Kandahar.
Rather than drive the 30-mile "Hell's Highway" up from Sangin, the British plotted a safer route coming from Kandahar.
To deliver the turbine, they paid off local tribes for safe passage. They conducted a Special Operations clearing campaign along the route. They launched massive air and artillery and rocket bombardment. They leapfrogged a security cordon of helicopter troops along the sides. They set minesweeping troops and equipment out in front. They flew gunship cover overhead, and drones.
And they slowly drove the truck convoy on the safer route from Kandahar to the dam.
"It was the first time in 21 years that I have used every single asset available to me," including mortars, artillery and helicopters, [Sgt-Major John Brennan] said.
Independent
The
Independent says that millions of pounds of explosives were used in the operation. And that the Taliban fired back three times.
The operation was deemed a success:
"As a template for the rest of this country, it's shown that when we want to, at a time and a place of our choosing, we can overmatch the Taliban, no question," said Lieutenant-Colonel James Learmont of 7 Para Royal Horse Artillery.
ABC Australia
And the success was deemed as symbolic:
[Prime Minister Gordon] Brown said: "It is yet another example of the skill and courage of our forces, but also a reminder of the fundamental purpose of why they are there - the long term development of Afghanistan, giving the people a stake in the future."
BBC
Four years later, the delivered and symbolic turbine sits uninstalled. Concrete now needs delivered. And the power lines over to Kandahar rebuilt.
This Place Used to be Nice
The Kajaki dam on the Helmand River was completed by USAID in 1953. The dam provided irrigation water to the canals of Helmand province. The regional development project was modelled after the Tennessee Valley Authority, from the New Deal. King Mohammed Zahir Shah had a house near the dam, with a view.
In 1975, power generation was added, also by USAID. Since then, the dam has seen military control by the Soviets, the Mujahideen, the Taliban, the British, and the U.S.
"Every time you see something like this, it makes you realize this place used to be nice," said the platoon sergeant with Golf Battery, standing on one of the cliffs overlooking the dam's spillway.
"Once you look around, you say 'Wow, this place has a lot of history to it.'"
Military Times
Of recent conditions in the area, the
New York Times goes
Apocalypse Now:
Over the years, Kajaki has been reduced to a ghost town. From the tops of the mountains that form its spacious valley, the village looks like a kind of postapocalyptic tableau: uncultivated fields and the ruins of razed homes; abandoned roads pocked by blasts from I.E.D.s; the uprooted stumps of bulldozed trees; the ransacked, shuttered stalls of what used to be a large bazaar; and roving packs of jackals that fill the empty nights with a mournful howling. But even as the people have absconded, the fight in Kajaki has raged on. It has raged on because the fight has never really been about the people. It has been about the dam.
New York Times
Speaking Frankly
Sangin district, Helmand province has the highest casualty rates in the war. Unit casualties can match those of World War II. This is true for both the British, who held Helmand until 2009, and the U.S. Marines, who hold it now.
Unit casualty rates on the insurgency side, against concentrated U.S. firepower and air support, would be hard to fathom.
To convey the mindset of the Marines in Sangin, former-Marine David Morris goes Apocalypse Now:
But among many of the Marines I patrolled alongside -- and 3/5 certainly stands paramount among these -- there was a tendency to get hip to the madness, the horror and rot of it, to embrace the darker angels of human nature to a degree that made your skin flush hot for a moment
Foreign Policy
Is this prose too purple? Is it too hip in its cultural reference to horror and rot? Are the Marines in Sangin, fairly judged, really
like that?
The 3/5 Marines that Morris patrolled with were combined with an elite Marine reconnaissance battalion, in an operation to clear insurgents from "Hell's Highway," Route 611.
Here are some of the elite reconnaissance Marines, posing for a publicity photo:
Charlie Company, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, U.S. Marine Corps, in Sangin district, Helmand, Afghanistan.
He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is detestable. And it has a fascination, too, which goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination--you know.
Heart of Darkness
When the photo with the symbolism became scandal, the Marine Corps issued a statement:
I want to be clear that the Marine Corps unequivocally does not condone the use of any such symbols to represent our units or Marines.
The local command to which the Marines in the photo were assigned investigated this issue last November. They determined that the Marines in the photo were ignorant of the connection of this symbol to the Holocaust and monumental atrocities associated with Nazi Germany. To ensure the Marines involved fully understood the historical use of the SS symbology, a formal instructional class was prepared and delivered by unit leadership.
United States Marine Corps
The
Washington Post, in a positive piece with a theme of signs of progress, describes the 3/5 and reconnaissance Marines in the clearing campaign along the road up to the dam:
"We started stacking bodies like cordwood," said an officer in Sangin, who like other Marines asked for anonymity to speak frankly.
Washington Post
Speaking frankly about the Marines in the photo. It's the fascination of the abomination. And it goes to work on them. You know?
Speaking Diplomatically
Ambassador Ryan Crocker retired in July. Alissa Rubin interviewed him for the New York Times. Rubin asked whether the Bush administration policy of including warlords in the Afghanistan government was a mistake:
On whether, in retrospect, it was a mistake to include warlords in the government at the beginning after the Taliban were ousted:
There's no question it's a problem. It's limits of influence. There were so few forces here, allied forces, back in '02 that we weren't really in a position to control or influence very much of anything.
That said, we saw the problem early on.
New York Times
We saw the problem early on. But ten years later, and we still have the problem. Rubin diplomatically asked about whether the current Obama administration policy of including warlords in the Afghanistan government is a mistake:
On whether warlords are operating from within the government:
That's also part of the problem of the compromises that need to be made to produce a relatively stable, or at least relatively unified, nation. Fahim was, I think, critical in the aftermath of the Rabbani assassination in keeping the northerners on our side. He stuck right by Karzai; he made some very positive statements for national unity.
...
You know this better than almost anybody: Afghanistan is enormously complicated, more so than Iraq, and it rivals Lebanon and it's a lot bigger and has a lot more actors. Karzai has had to play a very difficult balancing game.
New York Times
The Ambassador is talking high level here. The warlords we and Hamid Karzai have installed all over the highest levels of the Government of Afghanistan.
The Marines in Helmand deal with lower level powerbrokers and warlords as a daily matter. Sarwar Jan, for example. Bing West, a former Marine and a defense official under Ronald Reagan, tells the story:
"Sardar, we're not the Government. We're leaving."
"No. You must come back every three months—and remove Sarwar Jan."
"That fucker again" Jason mumured.
Sarwar Jan had served as chief of police during the three years that Now Zad was besieged. On his rare visits to the town, the Taliban had never shot at him. He was a protege of Sher Mohamed Akhuadzada, the former governor of Helmand.
The Wrong War
Sarwar Jan was sacked for inefficiency and corruption as Now Zad chief of police. He was then installed as chief of police in Garmsir.
Three weeks ago, in Garmsir, Sarwar Jan's assistant shot and killed three Marines. On the same day, a police officer shot and killed three Marine Special Forces in nearby Sangin.
In the Reagan defense official's story about the problem of Sarwar Jan and the problem of the Afghan police, the Marines, two years ago, had said they were going to fix it:
"Sardar, you are not listening. Captain Terrell and I will straighten out the police." he said.
The Wrong War
Money as a Weapon
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton provides an estimate of spending in Afghanistan, that about 3% goes to civilian aid versus military operations. Budget-cutting legislators, funding a war fought under COIN, will fund not an essential part of the doctrine.
I was so surprised and disappointed to hear yesterday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is making a massive investment in power infrastructure in another country, by awarding a $94 million dollar contract to provide reliable power in Afghanistan.
Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)
There is a strong argument that the West has simply not attempted to put the Afghan humpty-dumpty back together again -- it has fought a war instead.
Small Wars Journal
But in Afghanistan, by official doctrine, money is the war. Money is how we fight. We have "
Field Manual 23-5, U. S. Rifle, Caliber .30, M1." And we have "
Money as a Weapon System - Afghanistan (MAAWS-A) Commanders Emergency Response Program (CERP) Standard Operating Procedure".
Looking in the Mirror
Afghanistan is seen as culturally mired in a hopeless corruption. The place is backwards. Afghan corruption prevents U.S. progress.
But in seeking the causes of corruption in Afghanistan, Anthony H. Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies tells us, look in the mirror.
What common story of missing millions in Afghanistan could match the common U.S. story of missing billions? What Hamid Karzai of the world could match a Mitt Romney?
Our own military doctrine calls for clear, hold, and build. Not the other way around. Not, in an area, deliver the turbine, then send in the Marines. Operation Eagle's Summit, the plan for the dam, was known from the start to be failure. And we proclaimed it as success, to the public and the press.
There is a massive difference between the kind of relatively low-cost corruption, fees, and charges that Afghans have paid in the past and the level of corruption in today's Afghanistan. Afghanistan has always had a large black economy, and Afghan officials, the military, and police have long taken bribes or charged illegal fees. Like at least two-thirds of the countries in the world, this has long been the way the Afghan government and economy operate. What is different from the past is the sheer scale of today's corruption. Virtually all Afghans believe it cripples the government, creates a small group of ultra-rich powerbrokers and officials at the expense of the people, and empowers a far less corrupt Taliban by default.
Center for Strategic and International Studies
"The Americans have failed to build a single sustainable institution here," he said. "All they have done is make a small group of people very rich...."
New Yorker
All we have done is to concentrate the money in the hands of a few. Afghanistan has seen 30 years of war. But it has never before seen the current style of American corruption. And this place used to be nice.
Uninstalled turbine at the Kajaki dam.