Khogyani District, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan. Looking south to the Tora Bora (Koh-i-Safed) mountains.
Carmen Gentile reports from Nangarhar.
KHOGYANI, Nangarhar province, Afghanistan — The platoon sets out on a moonless night to patrol a nearby village where Taliban gunmen are known to lurk.
Though normally accompanied by their Afghan counterparts, U.S. forces operate alone on this night. An insider attack that killed two U.S. officers just a day earlier in a nearby province prompts forces at Forward Operation Base (FOB) Connolly to take extra precautions. Because of the threat of follow-up attacks, patrols with Afghan soldiers and police are temporarily suspended.
USA Today
By major U.S. policy statement, missions in Afghanistan are now Afghan led. Afghanistan has taken over responsibility for its own internal security.
But in actual field practice, this can mean U.S. led missions with Afghan
Though normally accompanied by their Afghan counterparts, U.S. forces
assistance.
This patrol wasn't Afghan led. It wasn't Afghan assisted either. It was a sole U.S. operation. But let's move on.
1. Insurgents in the Area
A funny thing happens in the reporting. Here is a complete description of insurgents in the area, as quoted on-the-record from military officials:
insurgents in the area
Major Drew Davies
And here is the reporter's own description of insurgent groups in the area:
Taliban
Taliban
Taliban
Taliban
Taliban
Taliban
various factions of the Taliban
other militant groups
Taliban
Taliban
Taliban
Taliban
Taliban
Taliban
Taliban
Taliban
Carmen Gentile
Nangarhar has all sorts of insurgent groups. Hezb-i Islami Gulbuddin. Hezb-i Islami Khalis. Haqqani network, which is a splitter faction from the Khalis splitter faction.
Tora Bora Military Front, which is another splitter faction, and is run by a Khalis son.
If an insurgent group is actually Taliban, it could be Afghan Taliban or Pakistan Taliban. For Pakistan Taliban, there are some splitter factions from that.
Or then again, an insurgent group might just be local tribal. The people around the Khyber Pass, fighting off the invading armies, as they have since the beginning of armies invading through the Khyber Pass. If it's tribal, in Khogyani district Nangarhar, it might be an insurgent group of the Khogyani tribe. And then any of various clans. Or perhaps it's Shinwaris. Or someone else.
Or it might even be a militia associated with various Government of Afghanistan politicians. Who would temporarily count as an anti-Government insurgent group, when they are assassinating or intimidating other Government of Afghanistan politicians. They would do this because of local politics. Which can get pretty complex.
Major Drew Davies, considering the USA Today audience, outlines these complexities pretty well.
insurgents in the area
Carmen Gentile, the reporter, with the 15x Taliban stuff, does not.
In war reporting, small picky details, like who is doing the fighting, used to be important. Apparently, this no longer matters.
Rant over, about Taliban versus the actual local insurgency groups, about who we are fighting against. Let's move on to who we are fighting with.
2. CIA Headquarters, Kabul
But first, a small digression.
Last Monday, insurgents launched an attack on CIA Headquarters in Kabul. All the U.S. newspapers, in their headlines, made this into an attack on the Afghan Presidential Palace, covering up the real target.
The information clampdown continues.
On Saturday, Karzai told Cameron that a subsequent Taliban attack on the presidential palace "will not deter us from seeking peace".
AFP
Hamid Karzai, in English, had not spoken of an attack on his own Presidential Palace. Sharing a podium with David Cameron, he had spoken of the attack
near it.
About whether the shooting was at or near the Presidential Palace, Hamid Karzai, President, ought to know. But in war reporting these days, small picky details like who was the target of the shooting don't matter.
So having not learned, from our newspapers, who our enemy is, and having not learned what our enemy is shooting at, let's really move on to the question of who we are fighting with.
3. Our Guys in Nangarhar
Afghan men raise their weapons as they vow to defend their village against Taliban in Dur Baba district of Nangarhar province on August 27, 2012.
Major Jim Gant, of the Special Forces, once came up with a plan:
One Tribe at a Time: A Strategy for Success in Afghanistan.
U.S. commanders, in charge of an area that is a hotbed of insurgency, would draw up a tribal map. The commander would then identify and seek out the important tribal elders. The commander and the tribal elders would talk. The commander would convince the tribal elders to take up with the U.S. against the insurgency. The tribe would go along with the tribal elders. And the region would not be a hotbed of insurgency anymore.
A strategy for success.
The tribespeople around the Khyber pass had actually heard of Major Gant's plan before. The idea is not all that original.
The thoughts and ideas that I will put forward in this paper are mine alone.
Major Jim Gant
Our guy on the cellphone, in the photo above, might have called the Major up, to tell him some good stories. That the plan is often not so successful, history shows.
In Nangarhar, the U.S. had settled on the Shinwari tribe. Not getting actual Shinwari tribal leaders to go along with the plan, the U.S. went with the leaders of a particular clan. Our guys in Nangarhar were then set up as a local anti-Taleban militia. They got advice from the U.S., on how to fight, and how to deal with the local situation. Plus guns
Niaz said the Interior Ministry gave him pickup trucks, 50 bodyguards and 100 rocket-propelled grenades, while U.S. Special Operations forces helicopters flew in ammunition and food.
Washington Post
and lots of cash. It turned out as one of the major clusterfucks in the war.
Operating alone, troops approach a high-walled compound and halt. Through their interpreter, they alert anyone inside that U.S. forces are in their midst. Moments later, gunfire erupts from the compound. Hundreds of rounds are fired from both sides and several grenades tossed. No one is killed or wounded.
In the aftermath of the fight, U.S. forces learn that a member of the Afghan Local Police (ALP) are inside, along with several others including women and and elderly man. The men are taken away for questioning. ALP leaders insist it was a case of mistaken identity and that their man meant no harm.
USA Today
Our guys in Nangarhar, shooting at us, is a minor clusterfuck. But one tribe at a time brought major disaster.
"It really stirred things up," said one State Department official in Kabul
Washington Post
Like say, the trench warfare. Village guys, in trenches, trying to protect against the land theft the guns of our plan had stirred up. With differing opinions about who was doing the thieving.
Or the crop burning, against the tribal enemies. This was an explicit part of the original deal.
they wanted to unite to oppose the Taliban and stamp out opium cultivation
Washington Post
But, as in the CIA Headquarters story, the war is now being Afghanized.
Company commander Capt. Justin Liesen says some of the village elders surrounding Connolly remain on the fence when it comes to choosing between the Taliban and Afghanistan's central government, which some resent for destroying opium poppy crops, an essential to the survival of many Afghans in this area.
USA Today
The original U.S.
clusterfuck decision to allow our guys to burn
the other guy's Taliban crops, is now being transitioned to Afghan central government
blame responsibility.
The main theme of Carmen Gentile's embedded reporting, is that whoever we are fighting against, and whoever we are fighting with, he's not saying, but the war is going kind of sort of almost nearly well.
And despite the recent altercation with the ALP, who are trained by a small U.S. Special Forces unit, he says that relations between the Americans and Afghan forces here have improved during their recently completed tenure at Connolly.
"There are plenty of success," says Liesen. "There are some frustrations, sure, but there are successes too."
USA Today
4. Summary
We have been at war in Afghanistan for twelve years. But newspaper reporting about the war won't even tell us
- Who we are fighting against
- Where we are fighting
- Who we are fighting with
- Why we are fighting
That's the war reporting from Nangarhar.
And 1, 2, 3, what are we fighting for. Isn't there a song about that someplace?