Politics Daily

The Afghanistan War: Tactical Victories, Strategic Stalemate?

David Wood — 2011-02-13T22:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Terror, Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan, Military

The top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, likes to describe the tactical gains his troops are making against insurgents. But a stream of independent data and analysis suggests a wide gap between those battlefield gains and the strategic progress needed to convince a skeptical President Obama, Congress and the public to stay with the war effort for at least three more years.

Recently, for instance, Petraeus asserted that his forces "achieved what we set out to achieve in 2010, which was to reverse the insurgency momentum.'' He has said that Taliban insurgents "are losing momentum in some key areas'' and noted that many are turning themselves into Afghan authorities.

Women in Combat: Study Recommends Ending Military's Last Male Bastion

David Wood — 2011-01-18T22:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Obama Administration, Afghanistan Journal, Congress, Military, Analysis

Heather Pfleuger -- an exuberant, all-American, girl-next-door -- was transformed when she arrived in Afghanistan. She'd shrug into her body armor, strap on her helmet, yank on gloves, goggles and scarf, and slide down behind her turret-mounted Mark-19, a 40mm grenade launcher. From there, she could kill an armored vehicle and everybody in it a mile away.

When she whooped with glee and led a convoy outside the wire, local Afghan fighters, hard men who'd faced down the Russians and the Taliban, fell respectfully silent.

"Specialist Pfleuger can hit anything,'' her squad leader. Sgt. Kevin Collins, told me proudly. "I feel sorry for anyone who gets in her sights.'

That was nine years ago, when Pfleuger was deployed to eastern Afghanistan with the 511^th Military Police Company. At the time, I wrote a story boldly asserting that with women like Pfleuger easily accepted in the ranks, doing well at war and liking it, the argument over women in combat "is over.''
It wasn't over. In fact, it's about to heat up again. A study commission chartered by Congress is poised to send up to Capitol Hill a recommendation that the last remaining barriers to women - those that formally exclude them from infantry, armor and special forces -- be removed.

Those "close combat'' troops -- roughly 14 percent of the military -- are the ones that most jealously guard the all-male cohesion and camaraderie they insist makes them effective in the chaos and stress of long-term exposure to combat.

Never mind that some 200,000 women like Pfleuger have served in wartime Iraq or Afghanistan, that 134 have been killed and 721 wounded in action. With women attacking insurgents with strike fighters and helicopter gunships, machine guns and mortars, riding shotgun on convoys through IED territory and walking combat patrols with the infantry, the Defense Department and the military services have labored mightily to define just what it is that women cannot volunteer to do.

That hasn't been easy, given that in today's wars there are no front lines and no safe rear areas, as the saga of Army Pvt. Jessica Lynch aptly demonstrated (a 19-year-old supply clerk, she was captured and hospitalized by Iraqis after her military convoy got lost in 2003 and her truck crashed during an ambush).

The Army has tried to block women from joining units that "engage an enemy . . . while being exposed to direct enemy fire, a high probability of direct physical contact with the enemy's personnel, and a substantial risk of capture.''

That seems to precisely define the situation of Army Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester, an MP, who won the coveted Silver Star for her actions in a firefight in Iraq in 2005. When the convoy she was escorting was caught in an ambush, she leapt out and attacked an enemy trench. Then, with her squad leader, she cleared two trenches, killing three insurgents with her rifle. At the time, she was 23 years old.

Getting the award for heroism "really doesn't have anything to do with being a female," she told reporters. "It's about the duties I performed that day as a soldier."

A group of female Army cooks apparently felt the same way. They were deployed to Iraq where they discovered all the cooking was done by civilian contractors. Instead, they were pressed into service as infantry and came home proudly wearing the highly prized Combat Infantryman Badge, earned only by participating in a firefight with the enemy while a member of or assigned with infantry or special forces.

That's a piece of evidence cited by the Military Leadership Diversity Commission, the group of retired senior military personnel, academics and other civilians whose recommendations on lifting the barriers will be published this winter.

Despite the boots-on-the-ground reality that women serve well and honorably and bravely in combat, what looms ahead are months of contentious congressional hearings and hot-tempered talk show shout-fests and angry op-eds, just like the season of "Don't Ask Don't Tell' of 2010.
And this time, the pivotal House Armed Services Committee is led by GOP conservative Buck McKeon of California, who opposed allowing gays to serve openly in the military.

As with the "Don't Ask" debate, the argument will come over whether the presence of women, in small units that must operate for extended periods under fire, would be disruptive.
Would women - if any actually volunteered for and could qualify for an infantry unit -- actually break its tight cohesion and cripple its fighting spirit?

"There's a growing number of women out there who have served 'outside the wire' on combat missions,'' said a woman who served on active duty in Iraq as an Army intelligence officer. "We carried a full basic load of ammunition and fired the SAW [squad automatic weapon, a light machine gun], .50-cals [heavy machine guns] and M-4 [rifles]) to protect our fellow man and to defeat the enemy,'' said this young officer, who asked not to be identified by name because of her current job. "We have endured the same harsh living conditions as men, where hygiene isn't exactly a priority,'' she said.

To insist that gender goes unnoticed in such small units would be "inane,'' she said; there is a "familial'' relationship among the soldiers. "Those who serve for the sake of serving and take pride in their jobs do not feel threatened by sexual orientation, race or gender,'' she said.

In basic officer training, this young woman was offered the chance to take the physical exam for acceptance into Ranger school, the Army's legendarily tough commando course. She and two other women aced the test - even though they were barred from attending the male-only school or to join Ranger units.

"The truth is that very few women and few men can meet or exceed the desired standards of an Army Ranger,'' she said. "But some can, and they should be given the opportunity."
In its brief for lifting the barriers, the commission cited research that it said found no negative impact from allowing women to serve in close-combat units. It cited a RAND study which found that "gender differences alone did not appear to erode cohesion.'' The study was published in 1997, well before women began taking a larger role in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That and similar studies are "wrong!'' said retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, a combat veteran, historian and former commandant of the U.S. Army War College. "They simply don't understand the nature and character of close combat . . . the 'Band of Brothers' effect,'' he said recently on Fox TV news.

Scales, an expert on small combat units, said in fact there is no research that settles the question, and that allowing women into such units, in wartime and without knowing how it would affect combat effectiveness, would be risky.

"I've studied this for three decades,'' Scales said. "The bottom line is nobody knows -- the elements that make up cohesion in a firefight simply aren't known. And to rush into this, in my opinion, could damage cohesion.''

And so the battle is joined. Stay tuned.

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As Afghan War Lengthens, Fresh Troops Deploy

David Wood — 2010-09-19T23:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan, Military

FORT POLK, Louisiana -- In the dwindling days before it deploys to combat in Afghanistan, these things are occupying the minds of 2-30 Infantry: the beer-can grip, the care and feeding of mules, and the eye shield.

Since the men of the 2^nd Battalion, 30^th Infantry Regiment got home from Iraq 19 months ago to steamy Fort Polk, it's been a constant push of training, including a month of mock combat in the bitter February cold of Wyoming to prepare them for the Afghan winter. They've done battle drills day and night, in small groups and large; sharpened their skills at compass navigation through wilderness, and calling in medevac choppers. They can disassemble and assemble the M240 Bravo machine gun blindfolded, and they can recite the rules of engagement as laid down by their commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus. They've filled out wills, gotten their teeth checked. Some have gotten married. Now the sergeants are piling on more training to keep their minds occupied until it's time to go.

Everybody's a little fidgety and tense.

It's well known that President Barack Obama has ordered a "surge'' of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan -- bringing the total American force there to 100,000 -- and that he's promised to begin withdrawing troops next summer.

Less obvious is the work of the units on the move to replace those currently in Afghanistan on staggered one-year tours. To meet the complex manpower-demand schedule (which includes replacing the 50,000 troops in Iraq and thousands more deployed elsewhere), the Army and Marines move battalions and brigades around like chess pieces. Thus within a few weeks, the 4^th Brigade of the 10^th Mountain Division of Fort Polk -- including its 2^nd Battalion 30^th Infantry -- will climb aboard military jetliners and depart for a year in Afghanistan. The brigade's heavy weapons and other equipment has already shipped. Four other brigades may be in the rotation this fall as well, hoping to be home for Christmas 2011.

For the 2-30 infantry battalion, as for the others, the final days are a frenzy of last-minute training, getting name tags sewn on rucksacks, shopping for gear (knives; combat gloves), finishing paperwork and wishing the whole dang parade would just get going. "Aaaarrrgggh!'' said a young officer, brandishing a thick sheaf of personnel forms, "I'm never going to get out of here!''

The Beer-Can Grip Out on the rifle range, the battalion's Charlie Company is practicing marksmanship for the umpteenth time, shooting its M-4 rifles and M240 Bravo machine guns at paper picnic plates stapled to metal forms at distances of two football fields away to five football fields away across rolling meadows. Sergeants are watching with binoculars, yelling out, "Too far left ... right ... just short ... Pretty good shot!''

The beer-can grip, explains Staff Sgt. Kevin Sawyer, a squad leader, is what you use to cushion the gun barrel if you're shooting from a concrete window sill, for instance. You curl your fingers around in imaginary beer can and rest the barrel on your hand, and shoot. Otherwise, says Sawyer, if you rest the gun barrel directly on the concrete, "the harmonics will cause the barrel to waver, and you will miss.

"Really,'' he insists, as a reporter and a private look skeptical. "Beer can grip.''

Mules A problem confronting combat commanders in Afghanistan is mobility. The Pentagon has shipped over thousands of heavy armored vehicles to protect troops from roadside bombs. The MATV is a fine vehicle, less prone to rollover than the larger versions used in Iraq, but is still cumbersome.

The problem is, if you have to send troops across ravines and up hills along goat trails to get to the Taliban, you have to walk, and if you have to carry a lot of gear, the answer is mules. The Army has mules in Afghanistan. But how do you use and take care of the things?

"We sent 30 guys off to mule packer's school,'' said Lt. Col. Chris Ramsey, commander of 2-30. "I'll have at least four donkeys,'' he says, perhaps meaning mules (mules are the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse). "They'll extend our range, we can get people further out.''

Mule packer's school, a two-week course, is run by the Marines at the Mountain Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport, California. Textbook is the manual published 10 years ago by the Army's Special Warfare Center and School. The Army discharged its last mules in 1956, but recently has found them indispensable. Mules and other pack animals can climb anywhere a person can and continue "indefinitely,'' the manual says, as long as soldiers bring along the 10 pounds of grain and 14 pounds of hay a mule needs every day.

Mules are useful for carrying out wounded as well. But the battalion's newly trained mule drivers are learning not to do what they've seen in the movies. "Do not drape a wounded man head-down across a saddle,'' the manual advises.

The Eye Shield In dappled sunlight under tall pines, Spec. Steven Zimmerman, a medic, is reviewing combat first-aid techniques with soldiers of 2^nd platoon, Charlie Co. This is a class that normally commands fitful attention; today the men of 2^nd platoon, who will shortly be on the battlefield, are rapt.

"OK, gunshot wound to the chest, you want to seal that off, tape down all four sides,'' Zimmerman reminds them. He is a slight young man and earnest, talking quickly. "Always check for the exit wound. Don't try to clean'em up, just get 'em on the chopper. The heat from an explosion will cauterize a wound, and it'll fuse clothing to the skin. Don't try to peel it off, that IS his skin now, just get 'em on the chopper.

"OK, if you have something where the eye is hanging out, you want to cover up both eyes, moisten up that gauze, put that eye in the eye shield and tape it up; they're gonna have to do surgery on that one."

What if somebody bites off his tongue, a trooper inquires. "Put it on the bird with him,'' Zimmerman says without hesitation, "and tell him to calm down.''

"OK, abdominal wounds, evisceration, his bowels are hanging out. You never want to push 'em back in, OK? Get him on the stretcher and pile them on his stomach, wetten it to keep it moist and cover it up. Take away everything he could eat or drink because that would kill him. When you get him on the stretcher, bend his knees up to lessen the pressure on his abdomen.

You don't want to put pressure on his abdomen, you want to keep the dressing tight enough to keep his intestines in.''

At this a sergeant jumps up. He'd had enough of the gore. "Hey look y'all, he says. "We're gonna be chill. We got God's blessing. Ain't nothing gonna happen to us. All of us are going out, and all of us are coming back.''

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For Men Going to War, Thoughts of 9/11 and One Last 'Date Night'

David Wood — 2010-09-12T12:21:00+00:00

Filed under: Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan

LAKE CHARLES, La. -- There was some muttering in the ranks when the battalion commander scheduled a dress ball for 9/11. After all, this was one of the last weekends before the men of the 2nd Battalion of the 30^th Infantry Regiment wrench themselves away from wives and babies and girl friends, and with heavy packs and body armor and weapons, depart for Afghanistan. Some of the soldiers wanted to go raise hell instead of dressing up and having to behave in front of the battalion commander and his wife.

And besides, many of the young troops were in grade school when the Twin Towers were attacked and the Pentagon was burned -- events spectacular and disturbing on television but not connected to their young lives.

Until now. Nine years later, the nation is dispatching them into 12 months of combat in the place where the 9/11 terrorist attacks were planned and rehearsed and where the president and their commander-in-chief has said there must be no enduring sanctuary for terrorists.

For these 800 soldiers and their families, 9/11 is not just an anniversary but the central factor in their lives, as it is for the 100,000 American troops already fighting in Afghanistan and tens of thousands more currently training for their own rotations into the war.

So it seemed fitting that this battalion, 2-30, commemorate and celebrate together as a family, one last time, before buckling down to the year ahead which will be perilous and exhausting for the soldiers and demanding and lonely for the families left behind.

"I want us all never to forget that people died on 9/11 and a lot of people have sacrificed since then,'' said Lt. Col. Chris Ramsey, the battalion commander.

"And to party,'' added an aide.

So the wives and girl friends shopped for ball gowns and new shoes and glitter, and the soldiers raced to finish their last bit of training and tend to aching feet bruised from a 25-mile road march Thursday night. They packed for the weekend and left the children with neighbors and all made the two-hour trek from home at Fort Polk down to the casino-resorts of Lake Charles, Louisiana.

And there in a darkened ballroom, the hundreds of soldiers in their bemedaled dress uniforms and their wives and dates in rustling silk all stood for a 31-year-old baritone, Spec. Becaccico Jerro, who sang "The Star Spangled Banner."

And things started to come together.

"Nine-eleven is sacred to everybody in this room,'' Ramsey said. "In a few weeks, we will be headed off to combat to finish off what happened nine years ago.''

And with that, a somber mood dropped like a veil over the gathering and what followed, a recitation of the unit's history, a formal acknowledgment of fallen comrades, and toasts to the president, to the Army and to themselves and to "the ladies'' present.

The mood deepened as retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a highly decorated combat veteran and honorary commander of the regiment, rose to speak of courage and sacrifice in battle. In the dim ballroom light, Lauren Rothlisberger sat with her 3-month-old daughter, Brynn, on her lap, lightly stroking her arm while her husband, Capt. Paul Rothlisberger, commander of Charlie Company, clasped his daughter's tiny hand and listened intently.

"It's astounding that elite units like yours go into combat with a minimum of casualties,'' McCaffrey said. "Take care of each other during what for some will be your sixth combat deployment. Integrity, courage and commitment ... you are the best people we've ever had in uniform. Thank God for who you are and what you stand for.''

Then, for Ramsey, their commander, it was time to lighten up. The approaching year "is going to be mentally and physically demanding," he said. "But this is date night for you ... have a good time while you're here!''

With that, a disc jockey detonated mega-decibels of Earth Wind & Fire, Def Leppard, Partners in Crime and Radiohead, and couples crowded to the dance floor and the cash bar and the party accelerated into the night.

First Sgt. Heath Furbush, the 39-year-old "grandfather'' of his infantry company, did a brief but credible break-dance exhibition before retiring to the sidelines with a beer.

"I think 9/11 has definitely brought the Army together,'' he said. "This is not a one-year stint and then you get out. It goes on.''

And is he getting tired of the repeated deployments?

"I've been doing this since I was 19,'' he said, smiling ruefully. "This is all I know.''

For Michael Wagner, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 went by almost without notice. He was in the seventh grade in Aurora, Illinois. "It really didn't hit me for a couple of years,'' said Wagner, now a private first class. "The Army is something I always wanted to do but I never had the guts'' to enlist.

"I was scared of separating from my family,'' he explained. But thinking more and more about 9/11, he figured "I had to do something.'' When he gets to Afghanistan next month, Wagner will be an assistance machine gunner with Alpha Company.

Junior soldiers like Wagner, too young to carry their own shocking memories of 9/11 but old enough now to pay part of the price for the mission that grew out of it, are the special responsibility of senior non-commissioned officers, the sergeants charged with making sure they have the tactical skills, the equipment and esprit to survive and prevail in the battles they will fight this year.

After he's done all he can do, said Sgt. Maj. Odell Ford, "the way I handle the responsibility is to do a lot of praying. I think of all the things that could happen, and I do a lot of praying -- and a lot of worrying.''

At dawn Sunday, bleary-eyed soldiers were already starting to drag themselves down the hotel corridors, looking for rides back to Fort Polk. "My buddy's passed out and I gotta wait for him to wake up,'' said a young trooper.

They'll all be back on base Sunday night, for Monday morning begins another intense week of training. Nine-eleven may have been yesterday, but the real war in Afghanistan looms dead ahead.

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Pentagon's 'Don't Ask' Survey: Soldiers in Afghanistan Are Just Not That Interested

David Wood — 2010-08-23T23:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Gay Rights, Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan, Military, Middle East

Combat troops in Afghanistan had less opportunity than those at home to weigh in on the potential repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell'' law on gays and lesbians in the military, Defense Department officials acknowledged.

The Pentagon, under pressure to repeal the law from President Barack Obama, Congress and its own top leadership, this summer launched what spokesman Geoff Morrell described as a "scientifically supported'' effort to survey "a large representative sample of our force'' to determine how they felt about allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly.

That outreach included e-mailing detailed questionnaires to 400,000 service members, holding dozens of closed-door forums with troops, and opening anonymous online comment and chat-room sites. The e-mail surveys contained 103 questions about each recipient's job satisfaction, unit morale and how unit cohesion and combat readiness would be affected if gays and lesbians were allowed to serve openly.

The surveys, which were designed and distributed by a private contractor, are being forwarded, together with recorded and collated information from the chat rooms and forums, to a military task force headed by Army Gen. Carter F. Ham and Jeh Johnson, the Pentagon's general counsel. The task force's findings will be critical in determining how the Defense Department will respond if Congress repeals the law barring open gays and lesbians from military service, as well as its 1993 interpretation, "Don't ask, don't tell.''

Ham said last month that people who received the surveys were demographically selected on the basis of age, rank, service, military specialty, marital status and other data to ensure the responses came from a broad cross-section of the force. Half the surveys were sent to active-duty troops, and half to members of the National Guard and reserves.

I've just returned from a month in the combat zone, where I was embedded with soldiers from three different battalions in northern, central and southern Afghanistan.

In conversations with hundreds of soldiers, I met one -- only one -- who had received the e-mail questionnaire. "Oh, yeah, I think I got it a few weeks ago -- haven't really looked at it,'' this young lieutenant said.

Given the heated passion this issue has aroused on both sides, I was a little surprised at his ambivalence. On second thought, though, I realized that it made sense: in a war zone, the range of things you care about is narrow: risk, food, comfort. On the few bases with dining-hall TV service, I've watched a Fox News broadcast playing on a big-screen TV with a crowd of soldiers eating and joking and paying no attention to the news.

That tracks generally with the Pentagon's final tally of returned e-mail questionnaires. Of the 400,000 surveys mailed out, only 109,883 were returned by the Aug. 15 deadline -- just over 1 in 4.

David Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland and director of the Center for Research on Military Organization, said that rate of return is pretty good considering that people in military service tend to be focused on the job at hand -- especially in a war zone.

"It's also the case that they simply don't see 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' as an issue,'' Segal said.

Still, none of the approximately 100,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines serving in Afghanistan was invited to express his or her opinion in the 77 closed-door town hall meetings held by Pentagon officials this summer. Those were reserved only for "garrison'' troops, those who are not deployed in the war zone. In these sessions, held at military posts across the country and in Europe, 20,325 people voiced their ideas and opinions.

The Pentagon felt that holding these meetings in the war zone "would be a distraction'' from combat, said Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith. The Pentagon does not know how many e-mail surveys were returned from military personnel serving in Afghanistan or Iraq, she said.

In my own conversations with soldiers, most looked baffled when I asked if they'd had a chance to let Pentagon leaders know how things would change for them if openly gay or lesbian service members were allowed to serve.

"It wouldn't be a big deal,'' shrugged one infantryman to whom I promised anonymity. He said he knew several gays in high school and had served in the Army alongside a gay soldier, and not given it much thought.

Another soldier, a cavalry scout, said he was concerned that allowing openly gay soldiers to serve in a combat unit would expose them to danger. "I'd be afraid they'd get beat up in the shower,'' he said. But he added: "Maybe that's just me. I grew up in a place where we didn't know any gays. Personally, I'd be OK with it.''

Defense Department spokesman Morrell said last month that the Pentagon has made every effort to capture opinions like these.

"We're not playing games here, guys,'' he said at a Pentagon briefing for reporters. "We're trying to figure out what the attitudes of our force are, what the potential problems are with repeal, what the potential opportunities there may be available to us as the result of appeal. But we won't [get] any of that conclusively, scientifically, unless we get this survey done, unless there is full and active participation from those who it's been sent to, and unless there is not outside influence on their answers.''

The low participation of troops in Afghanistan, though, was seen by pro-repeal activists as evidence that the question is largely settled.

"It's not a question of whether people had a chance to weigh in or not. It's just not a priority. People are ready to change this policy, and the low response rate shows that,'' said J.D. smith, co-director of Outserve.org, an underground network of gay and lesbian active-duty service members.

But Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness and an outspoken activist for banning gays and lesbians from military service, said the low interest in the Pentagon's surveys and town forums was because "they never asked the question that really matters: Do you support retention or repeal of the law?''

The Pentagon "deliberately excluded that question,'' she said, "and the message has gone out that the Department of Defense has taken sides, and they don't even care about the opinions of active-duty members who support the current law.''

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Dr. Laura Schlessinger -- First Amendment Champion?

Mary C. Curtis — 2010-08-18T23:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Scandal, Media, Race Issues, Woman Up, Culture, Afghanistan Journal

Though Dr. Laura Schlessinger says she intends to end her radio talk show when her contract expires in December, she isn't going quietly. On "Larry King Live," she gave her reasons. "I want to regain my First Amendment rights," she said.

"I want to be able to say what's on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry, some special interest group deciding this is the time to silence a voice of dissent and attack affiliates, attack sponsors. I'm sort of done with that."

This comes after she labeled as perhaps "hypersensitive" an African-American woman upset at disrespect from her white husband's friends and family. The caller also got a lecture about President Obama, racism and the acceptability of the N-word. Schlessinger apologized for saying the N-word "all the way out -- more than one time," but considering her defiant tone when answering King, another broadcast personality moving on to other challenges, maybe that apology was not entirely sincere.

The First Amendment Schlessinger invokes means she talks, and everyone else shuts up. My take on her N-word soliloquy primarily criticized her lack of response to the caller, who saw her problem take a back seat to the good doctor's political and social world view.

So now, Dr. Laura will move on to blogs, YouTube and other projects, with many followers who agree with everything she said, judging from some of my e-mails. They insist that Schlessinger should be held up (or down) to the same standards as R-rated rappers and comics. A few made lame comments, such as the guy who asked if I ate watermelon with my white in-laws. (Does anyone think jokes about black people eating watermelon are funny?) And quite a few lamented the end of "free speech," as defined by Schlessinger on King's show.

I agree that she has the right to say anything she wants to, and she exercised that right. She wasn't arrested. Government agents didn't come knocking at the radio station door. She berated a caller to her show -- not for the first time -- and nothing happened, at first.

But every other American has those same rights -- to speak up, to criticize, and to comment. Listeners can disapprove - loudly. Sponsors can decide if they want their products to be associated with what Dr. Laura is selling. (General Motors and Motel 6 had already pulled their show sponsorship, the AP reported.) Anyone who has ever worked a job knows that a certain behavior, or fashion sense, will bring reprimands and termination. That's how it works. As a conservative supporter of the free market, Schlessinger certainly knows that.

I don't understand exactly what Schlessinger means as she defends her actions -- that she can talk, and you have to take it? That there won't be consequences? Sounds like the behavior of a garden-variety bully, not a defender of the Constitution. A lot of people judged Dr. Laura's comments as incendiary as yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. The First Amendment was there - despite what she now says - to protect her words, and theirs.

So many of my e-mails recall a halcyon time when people could string every ethnic and religious slur end to end (then they proceed to do just that) without rebuke. Apparently, being courteous to fellow Americans is driving a lot of folks crazy. Are they just too lazy to broaden their vocabularies? Read a dictionary, I say. There are words to fit every occasion. But if that's too much trouble, by all means, go up to the biggest, meanest people you barely know, and insult them. Say what's on your mind. Just don't be surprised if they exercise their First Amendment right to be offended.

After that, you're on your own.

Click here to follow Mary C. Curtis on Twitter.

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Afghanistan Journal: Down on the Boardwalk at Kandahar Air Field

David Wood — 2010-08-14T17:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan, Military

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- It may look a little shabby. But when a soldier leaves a remote combat outpost where life is fragile and amenities are scarce, and convoys safely past IEDs and ambushes, and it's been weeks or maybe months since he's had a pizza or shopped for toothpaste or baby wipes, then the Boardwalk at Kandahar Air Field starts looking like the Mall of America.

KAF, as it's known, is the major U.S. and NATO military hub and base in southern Afghanistan. The men who work at its secretive and bunkered command center say KAF has the busiest runway in the world, with 5,360 takeoffs and landings a week. No reason to doubt that, given the shrill whine of four-engine cargo liners, robot drones, helicopters and fighter jets in the air. Twenty-six thousand people have learned to live here despite the noise.

And they live relatively well, with air-conditioned offices and sleeping quarters, five massive dining halls, occasional rocket attacks, and all the dust you can inhale.

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Kandahar Air Field Boardwalk

Soldiers and civilians dance the salsa at Kandahar Air Field. KAF, as it's known, is the largest military base in southern Afghanistan with a population of about 26,000 soldiers and civilians. The base has many of the same services as a small American city.

Kandahar Air Field Boardwalk

The 'PX' sells everything from candy bars to ammo pouches to electronics, like the digital cameras seen here.

Kandahar Air Field Boardwalk

Troops can choose floor hockey, here, or beach volleyball on the acre of land enclosed by the boardwalk.

Kandahar Air Field Boardwalk

Rec rooms filled with flat-screen TVs give the troops a chance to relax and play video games.

Kandahar Air Field Boardwalk

Arrayed along the boardwalk are a kaleidoscope of restaurants, including T.G.I. Friday's, with its familiar red and white stripes, KFC, Mama Mia's Pizza and a French patisserie.

Kandahar Air Field Boardwalk

Along the boardwalk are a clutch of shops selling Afghan rugs, textiles, soapstone candlesticks, garish paintings and other items. It also features a barber shop, a tailor and a coffee shop.

Kandahar Air Field Boardwalk

The Boardwalk is actually a boardwalk, a raised sidewalk of . . . boards, enclosing an acre of sand dust. Arrayed along the boardwalk are a kaleidoscope of shops, including T.G.I. Friday's ("Here It's Always Friday'') in its familiar red and white stripes, KFC, marked by a long line of hungry GIs; Mama Mia's Pizza and the French patisserie.

Along the boardwalk are a clutch of shops selling Afghan rugs, soapstone candlesticks, garish paintings and whatnots, electronics stores (cell phones and MP3 players are big sellers), a barber shop, an Afghan tailor shop with a ghastly suit in the window, and the Green Beans coffee shop.

Take your latte and sit on the bench here and watch the floor hockey and beach volleyball games being played out on the acre of sand that the boardwalk encloses. There are soldiers watching volleyball and there are soldiers watching women play volleyball. In the hockey rink, Canadians predominate.

And on come our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, some in workout shorts, gym shoes and T-shirts (M-4 carbines slung over their shoulders because this IS a war zone), strolling along clutching KFC milkshakes with the glazed look of glutted consumers one sees at dawn on the sidewalks of Las Vegas. And not just Americans. Here come Norwegians, Slovaks, Germans, French, Albanians, Aussies, Italians, Armenians, Croatians and Canadians. Bearded guys with ropey muscles, fatigues with no insignia, and serious weapons strapped on must be Special Forces. Guys whose jeans and sagging beer bellies mark them as contractors.

At one end of the boardwalk the crowds pour down steps and onto the shoulder of the dirt road, flowing like a swarm of starving army ants toward the ultimate destination here: the PX, post exchange, i.e., store.

Push through the door and swallow hard: Here's a bit of the American Dream. Not much but enough. Towels and shampoo, cigarettes, and dip. There are souvenir ball caps (''Infidels R Us''), action-thriller DVDs, Afghanistan T-shirts, mini-flashlights, chips and jars of salsa, extension cords, flashlights, deodorant, ammo pouches and holsters, baby powder, headlamps, laptops, candy bars by the gross. Magazine racks: Maxim, Iron Man Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Hand Guns magazine, Men's Health ("Sex Tips!''), Army Times. Socks, backpacks, knives, canned Vienna sausages, batteries, cigars.

And happily exhausted shoppers emerge with their white plastic bags, snapping open that new can of Monster, sporting that new ball cap. They flow along the shoulder of the road, beside the traffic inching along in its own curtains of dust: a convoy of five armored personnel carriers, each with a scarf-swathed turret gunner sweating behind his .50-cal, two armored flatbed trucks piled with crates of ammunition belted down tight, dust-coated SUVs, a minibus of Marines, a giant forklift with hefting a pallet of shrink-wrapped cargo.

It's dusk now and the boardwalk's twinkling lights beckon; time for one more iced latte and one of the new cigars, and just sit and watch the passing crowds, gaze into the distance and think about nothing.

Convoys back to the war start leaving at 4 a.m.

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Homeward Bound: Only Perk on Flights Out of Afghanistan Is the Seat Itself

David Wood — 2010-08-10T23:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan -- The American air travel experience has deteriorated, all right. E-ticket lines are bedlam, checked bags cost extra and flights are packed. Space in the overhead bins? In your dreams. In-flight meals (the ones we once complained bitterly about)? A distant memory. Well, c'mon. Pull up your socks, stop sniveling and let's get a little perspective by joining crowds of American troops going home on leave from Afghanistan.

Think you're stressed out about making your flight? These guys, halfway through a 12-month combat tour, have two weeks with their families -- travel included -- and that precious time's ticking away. They've gathered at dawn at Mazar-e-Sharif, the big NATO military air hub in northern Afghanistan, for a C-130 cargo flight (ISAF 88) to Kabul, where they'll overnight in tents, then get a military flight through Kuwait and on to Atlanta or Baltimore, change planes for . . . Uncountable exhausting hours later: Daddy's (or Mommy's) home!

Flight ISAF 88, cancelled yesterday, is indefinitely delayed as of 6 a.m. this morning and it's getting on toward lunchtime, not to mention that ISAF 88 is overbooked, an announcement says, and stand-by passengers, standing by in their body armor and backpacks and helmets, start shucking their gear and looking for a place to slump down and sleep because who knows? Here in this echoing basketball-court-size waiting room, other refugees from yesterday's cancelled flights are already sprawled across most available chairs and sofas and slumped against piles of body armor and backpacks and duffels and weapons. They've been here since, when? Day before yesterday, says a red-eyed corporal. Somebody is hopelessly poking though a pile of reading material on a table, tatters of old German newspapers, a Stars & Stripes newspaper from June and a dog-eared book of crossword puzzles, all half-done. Somebody's run to the DFAC (dining facility, or mess hall) and come back with a stack of white Styrofoam containers with scrambled eggs, congealed grits and cold turkey sausage. You can get a tall cup of coffee here for a buck; bottled water is warm, but free.

Outside in fiery sunlight, a Canadian military C-130 has pulled in and shut down its two port engines and its loadmasters are hollering and sweating to get pallets of cargo out and pallets of cargo in, forklifts chugging and straining, and here comes somebody with a sheaf of papers, that's the manifest, the list of would-be passengers, and the loadmasters, working against the superheated dust of midday and the scream of turbine engines, are shaking their heads, no way -- 162 pax (passengers)?

Uh-uh.

Stranded but hopeful homeward-bound soldiers, confined inside, are peering out at this tableau, blasting the loadmasters with streams of "Yes you can!'' brain waves. And the loadmasters wearily climb up the ramp and kick things around and move this here and start pulling down the red canvas sling seats running in four rows fore and aft along the fuselage, and count: 158, move that over here, 159 . . . 162! But not an inch to spare!

Nobody will believe this stroke of fortune until wheels-up, but 161 fingers-crossed soldiers plus one journalist file out and squeeze themselves and body armor and helmets and carry-on backpacks into the plane and carefully navigate tiny twin aisles and wedge into a seat and squirm into the seat belts. Carry-on is held on one's lap, sweaty thigh against thigh, face to face and kneecap butting against kneecap, crammed into four long rows, and everyone's leaning back, breathing deeply: We got this far! The temperature swells and sweat slides from under helmets and down necks during long tense minutes, until new vibrations indicate the port engines are starting and the rear cargo ramp closes up with a thump, and in the dark -- no windows! - passengers sense the plane turning. Then sudden acceleration pushes everyone over 45 degrees and more thumps indicate the gear is up and BY GOD WE ARE ON OUR WAY! And hosannas of thanksgiving are said silently to the loadmasters.

Ninety minutes later, 162 passengers are standing in Kabul watching a forklift slide pallets from the C130, wheel them up and then gingerly lower them down beside the passenger terminal: 162 bags, delivered safe. No extra charge.

And as they wing their way on homeward, that economy-class seat on United or US Airways doesn't look so cramped, after all. Check the bag? Glad to. Ten-minute delay, no problemo. Free ice-cold soda and peanuts? This is living!

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The Struggle for Afghanistan: Counting Progress in Small Steps

David Wood — 2010-08-08T23:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan

DEH-E-BAGH, Afghanistan -- In this small corner of violence-wracked Kandahar, the counterinsurgency campaign devised and now commanded in Afghanistan by Gen. David Petraeus has produced a small island of promise, with the beginnings of good security, competent local government and active citizen participation.

That's the good news. But for the Obama White House, seeking to wind down a nine-year war whose public support is evaporating, there is bad news: it has taken five years to achieve these gains here. Millions of dollars of development projects have been lavished on this modest district of 70,000 people.

And for the American troops here, the 1^st Squadron, 71^st Cavalry Regiment, progress has cost five battle dead and 10 seriously wounded over the past 90 days.

This is a good news story, but one to sober any expectation that the determined U.S. counterinsurgency campaign centered on Kandahar will have a quick payoff. Here in the district known as Dand, commanders are pushing hard to produce concrete results by December, when President Barack Obama and his top advisers will assess the war's progress.

"But this is a long-term plan, a generational fight,'' said Lt. Col. John M. Paganini, the 1-71 Cav commander. "The model works . . . but it takes a long time.'' Acknowledging hopes in Washington that some U.S. troops can be withdrawn starting next July, he added, "You're expecting a 20-year counterinsurgency campaign in a year?''

A Canadian soldier who works closely with local villagers put it more succinctly. "We ain't winning no hearts and we ain't winning no minds,'' said Sgt. Leo MacDonald, a veteran civil affairs expert. The village elders "aren't going to change their beliefs. I'm focusing on the schools. It's going to be the next generation that turns this country around.''

That there has been progress is hard to deny. One of Kandahar Province's 17 districts, Dand, sits just south of Kandahar city and nestles up against major Taliban strongholds to the west and south. Paganini has put his headquarters at the Dand district center, where the governor and his staff work; an Afghan National Police unit is headquartered in the same fortified compound. (On arrival here, visitors are told: at the first warning of attack, hit the ground; at the second, sprint for the bunkers.)

The counterinsurgency campaign here strives for three war-winning goals: that villagers are actively participating in the community, that local government is meeting their needs and that outside development money is being funneled through the local government.

That builds on Petraeus' belief that a counterinsurgency war cannot be won by killing the enemy, but by providing both security to isolate people from the insurgents, and inside that security bubble, more effective government and development.

"Look, people here fear three things: poor government, insurgents, and us. Where does it get me to shoot an insurgent in the face -- does that bring the people better government?'' asked Paganini, a decorated combat veteran with nine deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. "When you give people good government, they isolate themselves from the enemy.''

As for the Taliban, he said, most of them will stop fighting once they see hope for a better life within the community.

The key, he added, is "you have to do security and good government and development all simultaneously.''

All development projects here, including repairs to school and health clinics and road work, must be proposed by the villages and approved by a representative of each village who serves on a district development council.

At a council meeting last week, a dozen bearded men in robes and sandals sat around a long conference table arguing about how to spend about $75,000 offered by Paganini to fix up mosques throughout the district. The chairman, Haji Juma Khan, had a list of the mosques needing repair. "But what if there are too many projects and not enough money?'' he asked.

"Then it's too many projects for the budget,'' said Paganini, who was sitting off to the side. "You come back and list the projects in order of priority, and you can do them until the money is gone.''

That provoked gales of laughter, and the elders threw their hands in the air in mock exasperation. But they went off to do it. Eventually the repairs will be done by Afghan workers, paid through the district governor's office, and the elders will preside over elaborate ribbon-cutting ceremonies. The victory will not be the repairs, but that the villagers decided what to do, and that it was done through the representative district government.

"We used to do projects so people would like us,'' Paganini said. "I'm not doing that. I'm not concerned with whether people like me or not because I'm going to be leaving here. What I do care a lot about is whether they like their government.''

What takes time in this kind of counterinsurgency work is building trust with local villagers. The "Three Cups of Tea'' approach detailed in Greg Mortenson's best-seller about building relationships and schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

That's central to the work of Keith Pratt, a 55-yeatr-old vintner from Sonoma, California, with a heavy beard and an infectious enthusiasm. He volunteered to work with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Dand, once known for its abundant table grapes.

"I go out into a village and here I come with a beard and no weapon, and people are curious and we start talking shop, and there's two, 10, 50 farmers crowding around, and we go inside and sit somewhere, talking about vines and irrigation and crop yields, talking shop," he said. "They are really hungry for knowledge.

"The elders love my beard. They take it as a sign of respect, they always give me a huge hug . . . there's nothing better.''

Often, village elders will come by the Dand district center just to talk. "We'll sit around with tea and cigarettes and talk for hours, just about nothing,'' said Canadian Sgt. MacDonald. "That's the best part of this job, building relationships with these people.''

This counterinsurgency is a sharp reversal from the short-term projects initially favored by U.S. commanders here and in Iraq, when the idea was to pay military-age males to work on construction or clean-up. It was believed that employment would discourage them from working for pay for the insurgents.

"Problem with that was, we found some of our workers planting IEDs,'' MacDonald said.

Patience is required instead, because progress comes in small steps. In southern Dand district, an Afghan police captain came to an American officer and asked for help. While many Afghan police are content to sit idly at their posts, this one wanted to take his eight men on a long foot patrol, but he had only eight men. Could American troops watch his headquarters for a few hours?

"Holy crap - that was amazing!'' Paganini said of the Afghan officer's initiative.

In the village of New Mashoor, the malik, or voluntary mayor, does not openly side with American and allied forces. But he has organized a village watch program to provide security so the district can begin development projects there. The Taliban recently roamed freely in New Mashoor. Now, if four Taliban show up, 20 villagers will gather and tell the Taliban "to get lost,'' a U.S. officer said. "And then they'll call the Afghan police.''

In a northeast corner of Dand district, security is provided entirely by the Afghan police, aided only by Canadian advisers. Under the umbrella of that security, the village has undertaken its own development planning and has submitted to Juma Khan, at the district development council, a proposal to pave a seven-kilometer stretch of road -- precisely the kind of initiative Paganini hopes to nurture.

But against such success stories are setbacks and a lot of unfinished business. There are no local prosecutors or court system, so criminals are either let go for lack of evidence or sent to Kandahar city where they disappear. Nor are there enough Afghan police.

And violence is still present. The district governor, Ahmedulla Nazek, narrowly survived an assassination attempt Aug. 2. And just outside the district's borders, the violent war continues to rage.

"We are surrounded here in the district,'' MacDonald said. "In other districts, when you go outside the wire you get shot at immediately. There is no project work going on out there. No one will meet with you.

"This is an excellent place for us to be working,'' he said. But if U.S. and coalition troops are thinned out and withdrawn, "unless the Afghan police get stronger, this place will shrink and shrink, and then go under.''

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Afghans' Fear of Reprisal Stands in the Way of U.S. Strategy

David Wood — 2010-08-07T23:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Barack Obama, Terror, Obama Administration, National Security, Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan, Military

ROHANI, Afghanistan -- President Obama's problem in Afghanistan is Abdul Nabib.

At first, Abdul Nabib was insistent: no Taliban anywhere around. The elderly man grinned, perhaps at the baldness of this lie, revealing a row of missing teeth. He squatted comfortably on the hard-packed earth, draped in soiled white robes with a long beard to match. He squinted into the hard sunlight. We are perfectly safe, he said.

That was hard to credit, and Capt. William Alfonzo Biggs Jr., a U.S. cavalry commander, gave a grunt of disbelief. This squalid, adobe-walled village, lacking running water and electricity, among other things, is just south of Kandahar city. There and across this region, the Taliban are putting up hard, violent resistance to the growing U.S. and allied military presence. A key Taliban strategy is threatening Afghans against having any dealings with Afghan or Western security forces or the Afghan government. Those who do are punished.

Just down the road from here, two men were hanged by the Taliban, another beheaded. Earlier this week, a suicide bomber narrowly missed the district governor, killing instead six children in a fiery explosion.

The Obama administration's Afghanistan strategy depends on American troops being able to convince men like Abdul Nabib to ignore Taliban threats and to embrace Afghan security, government services and the cornucopia of development projects offered by the international community.

That's the strategy. Fear stands in its way.

Biggs had come in search of a villager who would agree to oversee a development project already approved and funded for Rohani: reconstruction of badly eroded lanes through the village -- a need that its elders had once said was their highest priority.

No go. The village's two maliks, or mayors, had fled. Most elders had scattered. No one else would volunteer.

The sun beat down and a foul stink rose from a clogged ditch. A crowd of ragged children craned their necks to watch U.S. Army helicopters clatter overhead. At the entrance to the village, four of Biggs' armored gun trucks growled at idle and his troopers stood guard. Biggs asked whether girls were allowed in the village school.

Instead of answering directly, the old man burst into a tirade. "We are in the middle!" he cried. "We can't say anything to you, and we can't say anything to them." What he meant: Americans push education for girls. The Taliban forbid it.

Biggs handed him a stack of cards, each bearing the location and phone numbers for the local police. "If you have trouble, call these numbers," he said.

Nabib reacted with alarm. "But what if they ask about these?"

"Hide them," said Biggs.

"But they search everyplace -- more than you," said Nabib.

Aha, said Biggs. "So there are Taliban in the village!"

"Being really honest, yes, definitely they come sometimes. But we can't tell you where they are," the old man said. "After sunset they come. We don't come out of our compounds.

"We are living in fear."

"We have no power to face them or you," he complained. "We are just like a soccer ball being kicked by both sides."

"We are not here to kill insurgents or anyone," said Biggs. "We are not here for you to join our team, but just to deliver government and security to your village."

The old man snorted. "They are also telling us this same speech, that they are here to protect us," he muttered.

"I look around and I see pumps, wells, irrigation ditches - the insurgents didn't build them," Biggs retorted. "We did, your government did. The insurgents don't do that. We do. We have other projects planned, better roads. We can't do that because the Taliban have scared people away."

His voice rose in frustration. "We're just here to help!"

The Taliban, already effective at this kind of intimidation, is nonetheless bearing down even harder. Its command recently issued a new 69-page field directive ordering Taliban fighters to kill anyone cooperating with foreign troops or the Afghan government, according to officials of the International Security Assistance Force, the allied high command.

An ISAF spokesman quoted the directive from Taliban chief Mullah Omar as threatening those who support the Afghan government: "We will not leave you alone." (The spokesman cannot be identified under ISAF media regulations.)

Omar's directive is no idle threat. This year has seen a 75 percent leap in the number of Afghan civilians killed by IEDs, according to an analysis in Washington by USA Today. In Kandahar, civilian deaths have jumped 132 percent since last year, as the Taliban cranks up its campaign of intimidation.

Biggs took one of the cards and scrawled his cell phone number on it and thrust it back at the old man. "Use this any time you need us," he said. Nabib handed the card off to one of the young men squatting beside him.

"We talk to you now," Nabib said. "I guarantee this evening the message will be out" that the village had cooperated with the Americans. He handed all the cards back to Biggs.

"If you end up dead, I know this face and this face and this face," Biggs said, pointing to young men in the group.

He buckled on his helmet. "Tell the insurgents that Captain Biggs is here and will be here every night if necessary."

"I have already been told to leave this village," Nabib said as he struggled to his feet. "I already have the warning."

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In the Fight for Afghanistan, the Taliban Have the Advantage of Time

David Wood — 2010-08-01T23:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan

FARYAB PROVINCE, Northern Afghanistan -- Just after dawn on July 23, teams of American soldiers, Afghan security forces and Norwegian combat advisers closed in along goat trails on the mountain hamlet of Maydanak, a remote Taliban stronghold in northern Afghanistan. As U.S. troops held the 7,000-foot-high ridgelines, the Afghans descended to clear the village, and began taking fire.

The heated, nine-hour battle that ensued, and its aftermath, captures the nagging problem the Obama administration faces here and across Afghanistan.

On the battlefield, the enemy can be outfought. As the U.S. battalion commander, Lt. Col. Kyle Marsh, said days after the battle, "The Taliban have been kicked in the jimmies.''

But then what?

American and Afghan forces can push the Taliban back temporarily into the hills where they will wait, as they have for nine years. Keeping them at bay requires more: building Afghan-led security for places like Maydanak, bringing in projects like wells, connecting villagers to local government -- all difficult, frustrating and time-consuming.

The ultimate U.S. goal, securing Afghanistan permanently against Islamist extremists, requires the one thing that neither U.S. nor Afghan commanders seem to have: the time to enable Afghans themselves to sustain security and government on their own.

In guidance issued July 27, Gen. David Petraeus, the top allied commander in Afghanistan, urged his troops to develop solid relationships with Afghans. "The people need to know we will not abandon them,'' he wrote.

But in December, just four months away, top Obama administration officials will meet to review the war's progress and deliberate on how best to wind it down. Within 12 months, President Barack Obama has said, he will begin withdrawing some of the 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. It is not likely the Taliban will be defeated by either deadline. Nor, U.S. and Afghan field commanders say, will Afghan forces be ready to take over.

"July 2011? We can't take the football down the field in that amount of time,'' said Marsh, who commands the 3^rd Battalion, 6^th Field Artillery Regiment which cross-trained as infantry before it arrived here in April. "We are starting to get there,'' he said. "No one here wants the Taliban. But people fear the Taliban more than they trust the government.''

The fight at Maydanak ended convulsively when American jets bombed a hilltop where the Taliban had set up defensive positions (a U.S. drone had determined no civilians were present). Four or five Taliban were killed. A man claiming to be a shepherd was injured and was taken by U.S. troops for medical treatment.

The operation was the most recent in a series of successful probes against the Taliban by Marsh's battalion, in a region that until recently was viewed by the U.S. command as an unimportant backwater.

As the Taliban gained momentum, the battalion and its parent organization, the 10^th Mountain Division's 1^st Brigade, were dispatched to northern Afghanistan in April. A second war-fighting unit, the 4^th Combat Aviation Brigade, came in July, bringing 59 transport and attack helicopters, the first day-night, anywhere-anytime firepower and medevac capability in the region. (There are German helicopters here but they are not allowed to operate at night or land anywhere that hasn't been cleared of IEDs).

The American muscle arrived just in time, for the Taliban had recently attacked and occupied villages in southern Faryab Province and were pushing northeast into several important market towns along Afghanistan's major highway, the Ring Road.

Although few in number, perhaps 100 to 150 hard-core fighters, the Taliban are powerful and vicious enough to bring down the provincial government if unchecked, commanders here say.

"When we got here things were definitely tipping,'' said Capt. Jake Morano, who led the battalion's Alpha Battery in the attack on Maydanak.

The plan is to meet with Maydanak's elders, get their ideas for development projects and encourage the Afghan police to make regular patrols into the village.

But U.S. troops have not been back to Maydanak, and they've been unable to set up a meeting with the elders. And there are too few Afghan army troops and police to provide a continuing presence in Maydanak. They don't have enough motorcycles to get around (as the Taliban do), and their war-fighting strategy -- destroy the enemy and never mind the consequences -- is sharply at odds with the hearts and minds counterinsurgency strategy dictated by Petraeus.

Across Faryab Province, where Uzbeks, Tajiks and Pashtun jostle uneasily and Taliban fighters mix with narcotics and arms runners, there are 1,900 Afghan National Police. Precisely 1,024 have no training at all, Marsh said. The NATO command runs a training program, but at the current rate it would take until the year 2021 to train the province's police, assuming no one deserts or retires.

Norwegian army officers who live and work daily with the police find that remedial work is required. "It's at the level of, 'What is a map? What is north?' We've had a very hard time getting that across,'' said an officer who asked to be identified only as Chris. "They're not good at planning. Bringing enough water for an operation, they don't get that.''

But they are determined fighters and like to collect combat trophies. "They'd charge up a mountain just to bring back two Taliban horses, where we'd just shoot them,'' said the Norwegian officer. "They are more willing to risk civilian casualties. An [Afghan] officer once said we should go into this village and tell the people if they go with the Taliban we will bomb them, men, women and children.

"For them, this is all-out war," he added. "Not so much hearts and minds. This is their way. We cannot make them like us.''

The shortage of trained and equipped Afghan security forces means the security bulwark against Taliban intimidation in back-country villages is not physical, but "virtual,'' Marsh said. "You hold through influence, through building relationships with the elders, by coming when they call.''

On Morano's patrols through the region, stopping in small villages reachable by road, he tries to convince the elders to tell the Taliban they are no longer welcome. "The elders are more powerful than they think they are,'' he said. "If you stand up, they won't come back.''

That's easy to say, said the local police chief in the village of Shakh, where the Taliban burned a youth center this spring. "People do not like the Taliban, but they do not have weapons,'' Ayad Ghias told me. A stocky, sunburnt man of 40 who spent five years in a Taliban prison, he added. "It's too bad they can't get support from the government.''

He introduced me to Rasul, a 35-year-old melon farmer who volunteers with the local militia that fought the Taliban alongside the outnumbered police.

"When the Taliban attacked, the police weren't strong enough so we jumped in,'' said Rasul, who was wounded in the fighting. A former Afghan soldier, Rasul and his militia get no government support. Although President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan recently authorized a paid militia of 10,000 across the country, Faryab Province was allotted only 500 positions, leaving most militiamen here to find weapons and ammunition on their own.

As part of the U.S. "virtual'' presence strategy, Morano recently brought the district governor to meet with village elders in Shakh. Together, the Afghans decided they would like to renovate the badly damaged youth center. Morano purchased four computers, desks and chairs as a donation, and they were delivered in an Afghan police truck in a late July ceremony.

"The Taliban are against knowledge, against your youth,'' Mohammad Sadiq, the district governor, said as two dozen local elders in attendance nodded gravely.

"At first people didn't want us around,'' Morano said. "They said every time you come, the Taliban come afterwards. I tell people that we don't come to fight but to bring development and the Taliban don't want that for you.

"Now when we come around, people are welcoming. People are starting to invite us in for tea. So I think we're getting there, but we have a long way to go yet.''

But is there time?

"The Taliban have years and years,'' said an allied officer with multiple tours in Afghanistan. "We have weeks and months.''

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Afghanistan Journal: War at the End of the Road

David Wood — 2010-07-31T23:00:00+00:00

Filed under: International, Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan, Military

Plumes of dust hung in the air as our convoy of armored vehicles crawled along the broad valley floor. As we approached the watchtowers and steel gates of Fort Gormach, a firefight with the Taliban broke out high on the steep hills along our left flank. A day later, we held up our departure while American F-16s dived on Taliban positions, which had taken U.S. and Afghan forces under fire. Perched on the fort's high walls, Afghan soldiers cheered wildly as three clouds of dark smoke rose where the 500-pound bombs had struck.

The U.S. Army's Forward Operating Base (FOB) Gormach is named after the nearby town in far northwest Afghanistan. This FOB is instantly recognizable as the modern version of the Old West stockades from which the Army campaigned against small bands of Indians, who raided and terrified cattlemen, sheep herders and dusty farm settlements, much as the Taliban do here today, often on horseback. The Indian wars, in their final phase, went on for 30 years.

Chow has improved since then (breakfast: two pieces of bacon, one sausage patty, one piece of bread, a cup of grape juice, and canned peaches, measured out by Staff Sgt. Malcolm Mullen of Hope Mills, North Carolina). But climb up to one of the steel watchtowers -- clamber up a 20-foot mound of dirt, balance along a 12-foot plank, then up steel steps -- and the Indian wars fort comes into view: A large rectangle of fortified walls anchored by the corner towers, enclosing an acre of heavy gravel. Rows of tan tents, a cook shack from which Mullen produces two hots a day, a line of steel shipping containers for storage, a concrete pad and awning for the mechanics, a four-seat plywood latrine baking in the sun, a parked fleet of armored vehicles, and several bunkers of steel and massive 8x8 timber to protect against incoming rockets and mortars.

A generator injects air conditioning into the tactical operations center (TOC) tent but nowhere else; in heat that commonly reaches 120 degrees (one time, 140, a soldier boasts), troops swelter on cots in dust-blown tents. There is no running water, little shade and only a rudimentary weight room for diversion. There's a refrigerated trailer for food storage, but it's busted. Mullen keeps everything, even canned stew, in a freezer (defrosting, in this heat, is no problem).

Beyond the FOB walls, this is the scene: Biblical hamlets of flat-roofed adobe dwellings and walled barnyards of goats and chickens; men and women bent at the waist scything and hand-threshing wheat; caravans of donkeys staggering under loads of grain and hay. In the distant hills, half-dissolved in the haze, are villages that can be reached only on foot or horseback, and gun-smugglers, fields of opium poppy, and Taliban, who until the U.S. Army arrived in April, enjoyed safe haven here.

From this modest home, war is waged against them by Headquarters Battery, 3^rd Battalion 6^th Field Artillery, 1^st Brigade Combat Team, 10^th Mountain Division, Capt. Stefan Hutnik of Marietta, Georgia, commanding. Hutnik takes me into one of the bunkers to talk; outside the crowded TOC it's the coolest place on the FOB.

This is a great job for a 32-year-old Army officer, Hutnik says. He's on his third tour in Afghanistan and this time he feels progress. He operates closely with the next-door Afghan army battalion, planning and executing joint operations. He sends out multiday patrols. He works with local politicians and elders to slowly shift the momentum here from Taliban-dominated to Taliban-unfriendly.

But it's hard living, and troops rotate here for six days at a time from Meimaneh, three hours away, where the U.S. FOB boasts hot water, air conditioned tents, and washer-dryers.

Out here, says 26-year-old Sgt. Brandon Beard, whose upbringing in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, didn't prepare him for the heat, "You try and get in the shade, you lose a lot of weight and you wait for wintertime,'' he said. Beard plans to move to Alaska.

Gormach is literally the end of the road. The internationally financed construction of Afghanistan's Ring Road, which nearly circumnavigates the country, stops just east of Gormach. The Ring Road, despite Taliban opposition, has heralded improved security, which in turn has encouraged the blossoming of markets and commerce and some government services. South Koreans built a magnificent stretch of Ring Road approaching Gormach from the east; the two-lane macadam with bright white lane markers cuts through ridgelines and soars across dry river beds. But Chinese workers, who took over from the Koreans, were regularly kidnapped by the Taliban outside Gormach. Eventually they fled and the pavement devolves into a crude dirt track.

You think this is bad? a soldier demands. "We had a patrol base set up a few miles from here, we had only two George Foreman grills and some meat. We'd go into the village and pay $5 for a garbage bag full of bread, sometimes vegetables. No one ever got sick from it. You gotta come down off your pedestal sometimes. The people out there in the villages have a deep-seated desire to know if there is a human being inside all our armor.''

Up in the watchtower, Pfc. Mason Daniels is a man with a mission. A generator mechanic on guard duty, he crouches behind an M240 machine gun that swivels on a tripod set on sand bags. He straightens up and scans the horizon with binoculars. "Nothin','' he announces with disgust. Daniels is thin with sandy hair and freckles and backwoods West Virginia in his voice.

When Daniels was 10, his uncle, Army Sgt. 1^st Class Donald Bowles, was serving as a sniper with U.S. Marines in southern Afghanistan where he was killed by a Taliban rocket-propelled grenade. Nine years later, Daniels is back for revenge." Why I joined the Ahmee,'' he explains.

Daniels is itching to put some 7.62mm slugs from the machine gun into a Taliban. "I want them to be killed," he says. "Not give up, because they can come back. Killed!''

Angrily, he checks below and freezes. Here comes a donkey laboring under the weight of two men. One of them, Daniels asserts, is carrying a weapon. He snatches the radio, calls his sergeant, reports the possible Taliban almost under his nose. "I hope Sarn't says 'Engage,' '' Daniels tells me. "It's a bad day for these guys, because I ain't had much sleep and not in a good mood.''

The two men and donkey disappear behind the outer walls of Fort Gormach. Hidden from view, they could proceed unseen along any of a network of dry streambeds -- whether they are sneaky Taliban or local farmers.

Sarn't does not say "Engage,'' but Daniels is not convinced. Up go his binoculars. He whacks the sandbags. "C'mon!'' Minutes pass with no sign of men or donkey.

Hutnik's patrols are out somewhere in the hills, climbing in full combat gear. Inside a stifling tent, three Afghan soldiers stand and nod as an American sergeant explains through an interpreter how to use a sand table to rehearse tactics. In Gormach town, Hutnik's staff officers, unzipped from their sweaty body armor, sip tea with the elders, seeking agreement on possible development projects, the currency of counterinsurgency.

The sun seems immobile in the sky. It hammers on the steel roofs of Fort Gormach's watchtowers. Heat dances and shimmers above its gravel. Off-duty soldiers play listlessly at cards under a camouflage net. A soldier staggers out of the baked plywood privy, but little else moves. Daniels sourly scans the horizon. As in the Old West, the war grinds on.

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Afghanistan Journal: Entering Ali Khel With Supply of Lady Gaga and Dusty Chowder

David Wood — 2010-07-26T23:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Foreign Policy, National Security, International, Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan, Military

ALI KHEL, Afghanistan -- "I wanna take a ride on . . . your disco stick,'' Lady Gaga sings over the platoon radio net. "I wanna take a r-i-i-i-de . . .''

"Clear right,'' the turret gunner interrupts. "Go -- watch the bicycle!'' and 1st Platoon Charlie Co. -- swathed in its body armor and helmets, kneepads and gloves and shatter-resistant Oakleys and earphones and strapped snugly, squeezed, really, with its weapons and ammo and Gatorade bottles into its somewhat air-conditioned and bombproof (it hopes) armored vehicles -- lumbers left and down an embankment.

Now with care, 1st Platoon guides its way through a steel gateway into its new home, First District Headquarters, Afghan National Police (ANP), Kunduz City, Northern Afghanistan, Major Abdul Majid commanding. A faded lime-green cement building and a half acre of newly crushed gravel, surrounded by a new high stone wall and coils of gleaming razor wire, two steel guard towers and a cook shack huddled against a rear wall.

From here, 1st Platoon's two dozen troopers and the Afghan police wage war against the Taliban, the latest chapter of Operation Enduring Freedom (2001 - ). War in this context is not video-game shoot-'em-up. Mostly it's being hot and dirty and being patient with the counterinsurgency thing of providing visible security for the locals and finding projects like well-digging and wall-building. Joking around with the ANP but always being vigilant because the Taliban is out there. Not as a threat. As an opportunity.

"If we go out tonight and kill some Taliban, it will make every minute of this deployment worthwhile,'' declares Sgt. Eric Price. That's pretty much how 1st Platoon feels. Let us at the enemy and then we can go home.

But instead: Barely has 1st Platoon shucked its helmets and stripped off its body armor, snapped open a warm can of Dr Pepper and lit up or tucked in a wad of dip and high-fived a couple of ANP buddies than comes the order to move out, and it's back into the body armor and helmets, clamber back into the vehicles and plug into the platoon net (Li'l Wayne! Johnny Cash!). Off goes 1st Platoon, jouncing in its armored behemoths down a rutted country lane past gawking barefoot kids and ancient bearded grandpas with looks of what the ?

First Platoon dismounts in the village of Ali Khel (Taliban-friendly, says the intel) and fans out with its M-4 carbines courteously pointed down but, let's face it, scanning for Taliban in the gathering crowd of gaping onlookers. The lieutenant goes to confer about a project: the village elders, crowding around in dusty robes and carefully tucked head scarves, black eyes blinking, long gray beards twitching, hands clasped behind backs, want to build a retaining wall alongside an irrigation ditch, with a "restroom'' on top. That's the way the interpreter has it: "restroom.'' For women? the lieutenant inquires. Solemn blinks all around. No, no, says the interpreter wearily. Only men. Doh!

Next project is a well, to be dug on the site of a new mosque. The twist: the site fronts an imposing compound that belongs to a guy named Shirin Agha, currently not home. He is the cousin or brother of a Taliban commander, or maybe he IS the Taliban commander. Anyway, says the lieutenant, we'll get this well dug and name it after him. Shirin Agha Well! He nudges the village chief, a Dom DeLuise look-alike with a bushy black beard and a tiny pillbox cap. Shirin Agha Well! The chief chuckles heartily but his grin fades.

Back to First District HQ just in time to dismount into a dust storm. First Platoon climbs down into shrieking wind that bends trees and blasts streams of dusty grit into every sweaty fold of skin and clothing and on into the freeze-dried seafood chowder that 1st Platoon has glumly yanked out of a carton of MREs. Zip off the top, pour tepid water into the foil container and try to keep the dust out of it for 10 minutes while it swells into actual food, and while 1st Platoon investigates what else the Army has put into this thing (Chuckles, crackers and jalapeno cheese spread and powdered cappuccino).

After the chowder has soaked for 10, 1st Platoon sullenly scrapes up a couple of mouthfuls before it spies a tiny puppy bouncing across the gravel. Chowder is forgotten as 1st Platoon leaps and scrambles and dives to get the pup, which is hoisted into loving arms and stroked and fawned over and even fed . . . seafood chowder! Surely a first for our Afghanistan pup, but he eagerly laps it up, dust 'n' all.

Middle of all this, platoon sergeant, the admired and feared Ultimate Authority, finds trash in a gun truck turret. Trash! IN THE TURRET! Not even if screaming Taliban were vaulting over the walls would 1st Platoon scramble with such terror and rightly so. The ANPs have just laid out slices of cool, fresh melon, but 1st Platoon's junior troopers are dropped for push-ups, sharp gravel digging into hands, muscles straining, limbs atremble. The ANP men, with no habit of exercise, watch with amusement and compassion. After 30 minutes the juniors are smoked and will, the sergeants tell themselves, remember not to leave trash anywhere!

Time and the dust storm pass and 1st Platoon, with its Afghan police partners, goes out for a night patrol, hoping to find some Taliban. No luck: they settle in after midnight, exhausted in their damp uniforms, curling up on cots set out on the gravel. The moon re-emerges from the rag-ends of the dust storm and sinks toward the horizon.

Hours later in the warm darkness, 1st Platoon silently rouses itself, rising from its cots and buckling on its body armor and helmets, checking its weapons. It waits silent and motionless, as a cooling breeze stirs nearby leaves.

First Platoon does not sleep through the night. This is war, and the war goes on, and on.

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A Hot War Rages in the 'Peaceful' North of Afghanistan

David Wood — 2010-07-24T23:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Barack Obama, Terror, Obama Administration, Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan

KUNDUZ, Northern Afghanistan -- The battle was fierce and went on for hours. Blazing sun hammered American infantrymen and Afghan police wading thigh-deep across rice paddies. Mortar shells burst above them, puncturing the air and water with steel shrapnel. Volleys of machine-gun and small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades skimmed the surface, fired by Taliban fighters, dug in behind low earthen walls.

This is the supposedly peaceful north of Afghanistan, largely bypassed as Gen. David Petraeus, the top allied commander, concentrates his forces against the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, 400 miles to the south. But there is a hot war going here nonetheless, and a modest contingent of U.S. forces and Afghan police are fully engaged.

Lt. Matt Vinton of Akron, Ohio, 24 and fresh from officer training and Army Ranger school, told me days after the battle how he maneuvered his eight men using the scant cover of rice paddy dikes and low brush. Slowly, they edged their way unseen up the chest-deep water of irrigation canals toward the Taliban.

They returned fire as they closed on the enemy, and lofted smoke grenades to mark the Taliban positions for the U.S. gun trucks parked 300 yards behind them. Their crews opened up with the heavy stuff, .50-caliber machine gun and M-19 grenade fire. When Vinton's team and the police stormed the enemy compound they found Taliban dead, and in an adjacent home, a dozen Afghan men, women and children, unharmed and "clearly relieved to have us come,'' Vinton said later.

Advancing on a second bunker complex, Vinton's team and the 20 Afghan police got into "a very heavy firefight,'' taking sustained shelling from a tree line to the north and east. Eventually, Vinton's gunner got close enough to fire a half dozen high explosive grenades directly into the Taliban positions. The enemy went silent. Casualties: U.S. and Afghan, none ("Not a scratch,'' grinned Vinton). Taliban: six dead, including a Taliban commander.

This battle, which took place at the hamlet of Alefberdi on July 12, was unusual in one respect. "This was the first big fight we got into together with the Afghan police,'' said Vinton, a linebacker of a man with reddish blond hair and an easy grin. "In the beginning, they [the Afghans] were very tentative, but as the firefight went on they could see we were really willing to be there with them. By nightfall they'd taken charge of the situation.''

That's sweet news for the allied high command in Afghanistan and for the Obama White House. Both are banking on the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police (ANP) being able to take over security, enabling President Barack Obama to begin withdrawing some U.S. forces beginning next July.

The bad news is that northern Afghanistan, from Herat Province east to Badakhshan, a stretch of some 700 miles, is a wild and insecure place with pockets of hard-core Taliban, their sympathizers and mixed insurgent-criminal gangs. According to local police officials there are traces of al Qaeda here as well. There are vast areas here that neither Afghan nor U.S. forces venture, "places even the Russians couldn't get to,'' an American officer said.

The region also holds the major cities of Mazar-e-Sharif and Kunduz, a vibrant farm center and university town with knots of chattering schoolgirls, women in bright turquoise robes and white scarves, ancient bearded farmers and young business sharpsters in western suit jackets. Security for them and others is tenuous. Hazara, Tajik and Pashtun ethnic groups mix uneasily across the region, and the Taliban commonly probe with raids, suicide bombings and IED attacks.

And they are vicious. In Baghlan Province to the south of Kunduz, Taliban fighters sacked government buildings July 21 and overran a police command post. The six Afghan police on duty were beheaded, the NATO command said.

The battle at Alefberdi, 40 miles northeast of Kunduz and only six miles from the Tajikistan border, came a day after the Taliban attacked a local police post, killing all but one. The responding U.S. and Afghan police attack cleared the area of Taliban -- but there are too few forces to hold it.

"We are woefully short,'' said U.S. Army Col. Sean Mulholland, deputy commander of the regional headquarters of the allied International Security Assistance Force.

In an interview in Mazar-e-Sharif, Mulholland described a situation in which joint Afghan-American forces, despite aggressive operations, are barely holding their own.

"Nobody's pulling out of here in July 2011,'' he growled. At least, he added, not until the Afghans can field more police.

In the interim, the U.S. command moved an infantry battalion into this region in April, ballooning the American combat force here from 90 to more than 800 soldiers. It is the third Afghan deployment in eight years for the 1^st Battalion, 87^th Infantry, of the 10^th Mountain Division's 1st Brigade (the battalion also fought two combat tours in Iraq, making five yearlong deployments in eight years).

The battalion, including Vinton's platoon in Alpha Company, is partnered with Afghan police. They are considered by U.S. commanders as decently equipped and well-led. Many have years of experience fighting as mujaheddin against the Taliban. The strategy is to live and operate with the Afghan police, said Lt. Col. Russell Lewis, battalion commander. To that end, the battalion is building 10 combat outposts where its platoons will live with Afghan police full time. Meanwhile, joint operations go day and night.

"We are their partners; we live, train and operate together,'' Lewis said. "We don't sit on the sidelines like a coach and say here's what you should be doing. We go together.''

A key commander in the July 12 battle of Alefberdi was the regional police commander, Razzaq Yaqubi, a heavy man with deep-set black eyes and a deceptively sleepy demeanor.

Razzaq assembled his men before the assault, telling them this was an extremely dangerous mission and anyone who wanted to leave was dismissed. "Everyone wanted to go into battle,'' he told me later, clearly proud. After his speech, Razzaq put on his helmet and body armor and climbed into his truck to lead the assault.

In the past year, Razzaq has managed to add 500 police to his force, bringing it to about 1,500. He set up new highway checkpoints and a quick reaction unit for emergencies. But he is short-handed and his men are busy. "We are on the front lines against the enemy, against narcotics, against corruption, against criminal gangs and the front lines of enforcing the law,'' he told me during a rare stopover in his ornate office in Kunduz city. "My men don't have even one free hour.''

But in contrast to last year, when Razzaq lost 30 soldiers and 35 wounded, this year so far two of his police have been killed and several wounded. He said his men are "self sufficient'' in operations. But they are stronger, he added, when they work with the Americans.

In the battle of Alefberdi, the Taliban "lost a lot of credibility,' Lt. Col. Lewis said. "They lost the battle. And according to the police, people told them they were no longer welcome in the village.''

Whether or not the local villagers have switched sides, Lewis and others say that each operation, with Afghans and Americans working together, adds to local perceptions of security.

"We aren't going to kill our way out of an insurgency,'' Lewis said. "But people are watching, and being perceived as having won the fight builds confidence in the eyes of the people, and extends the reach of the government.''

Lewis' battalion will be here a year. When I asked him what would happen when it leaves, he brought up Iraq, where he served for a bloody year in 2005-2006. He'd gone back there last fall. "I went to places that nobody in 2006 dreamed would be stable," he said. "People clearly saw the police as the trusted authority.

"I see some of the same indicators here. Some people are bringing their disputes to the police for resolution. They're seen as a credible, legitimate force. To say this place is solvable in six months, that'd be naïve. But I am an optimist. I think it can be achieved.'' With only 100 days of experience here, he added, "I know enough to see the potential is there.''

No one here will guess how long U.S. forces will be needed, but the command is acutely aware of the political clock ticking back in Washington, with an impatient Congress and the July 2011 date set by the White House looming like the gathering dust storms that periodically scour Kunduz.

But Colonel Mulholland, a veteran special forces commander, left me with this advice: "You have to be out there all the time, every day. Otherwise the weeds grow close to the fence . . . and you're trapped.''

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Hunting Taliban on Night Patrol, Soldiers' Senses Stay on High Alert

David Wood — 2010-07-22T22:18:00+00:00

Filed under: Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan

ZA KHEL, Afghanistan -- Just as Cobra patrol is about to push off, the bright half moon sails into chunks of dark cloud and the late-night sky dims. "Good,'' somebody mutters. Less light for Taliban snipers. The front gate groans open, a voice says "Good luck'' and Cobra swings onto a dirt road with a line of trees on one side and open fields on the other. The dark figures sliding along the road's edge are Cobra's Afghan police, carrying assault rifles. The lighter ones ghosting along are Cobra's American infantrymen (Charlie Company's 1^st Platoon, 1^st Battalion, 87^th Infantry Regiment, 10^th Mountain Division), with M-4 carbines.

This is a joint U.S. Army and Afghan National Police (ANP) combat patrol into Taliban country. Joint patrols with Afghan police are the meat and potatoes of what U.S. forces are doing in northern Afghanistan. This is not training. This is not Americans leading Afghans. The ANP here are experienced and hardened fighters -- and now combat partners with American infantrymen.

Commanding this patrol: Abdul Majid, the bearded commander of ANP District 1, of Kunduz City, and 1^st Lt. Steven Solaya, platoon leader, of Dallas.

Barnyard dogs mark the patrol's progress as we glide at a deliberate pace through a world of gray, from deep ebony shadows to the charcoal fields of beans to the pale silver of the high mud-brick walls that mark off village garden plots. Weapons are on safety, heads are on swivel. Water gurgles somewhere along an irrigation ditch, and a frog suddenly croaks. Boots crunch gravel. Eyes strain for a telltale wire that would trigger the bright flash of a homemade bomb. Gun muzzles scan the night, ahead and behind.

One purpose brings the patrol out this night: to keep the village secure from the Taliban, providing a friendly cop-on-the-beat presence. And, if the opportunity arises, to kill Taliban. The Taliban come in the night to work their intimidation, to hunt Americans and Afghan police, to demonstrate that they can't protect the villages.

We pass sleeping farm compounds, warrens of mud-brick walls and cramped rooms where perhaps children dream and men, hearing their dogs stir, blink into the darkness and wonder what trouble has come.

Occasionally a bluish-white spot glows in the distance, marking an American infantryman peering through his night vision device. The police use their naked eyes. Sweat drips from under helmets. Men shift their body armor to ease sore spots. We pause, standing motionless. Crickets chirp and a distant dog yowls. Ten minutes pass and we move on, past the place where the Taliban engaged a patrol in a firefight the other day, and then a hard left turn and across a ditch where the Taliban last week detonated an IED.

At a crossroads, we stop and crouch behind low bushes at the foot of a high cement wall. The Taliban often cross the river nearby and wait until long past midnight to make their way into the village. We are waiting for them. It is quite likely each group, we and the Taliban, is crouched in silence, sweating, breathing lightly, waiting for the other to move first. Sometimes the Taliban, sensing an armed enemy waiting, will simply melt away.

An hour passes. A shadow creeps along a wall across the lane: an ANP. A dog approaches, barks and retreats. The silence deepens. Time stretches. An infant cries suddenly, quite close. From the wall above us, light spills from a window, as do the sounds of a mother's soothing voice and the rustle of bedclothes. Then, silence. With our heavy boots and body armor and killing weapons, we are enfolded into the warm intimacy of a mother breastfeeding her child. We wait, scarcely breathing. The child coughs, cries once, and is again comforted.

"Hey! Movin,'' comes a sharp hiss from Sgt. 1^st Class Doug Covell, 35, platoon sergeant. Weapons clank, men grunt to their feet, stretch aching limbs. The patrol assembles into combat formation and moves off silently, warily scanning irrigation ditches, side lanes and other potential ambush sites. Behind us, the lit window falls dark.

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Policeman, Soldier, Anti-Taliban Fighter: A Small Success Story

David Wood — 2010-07-21T22:19:00+00:00

Filed under: Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan -- When the Taliban fought their way into his village, a young man named Noor Mohammed fled with a few friends to the mountains above this bustling market city in northern Afghanistan. While the Taliban conducted reprisal killings and went around smashing radios and confiscating children's kites and forcing women into full-cover burqas, Mohammed foraged for food, bargained weapons from smugglers, and joined the armed resistance.

"We had no choice,'' he said. I asked him what those years were like. "My stomach was always empty,'' he replied.

His fortunes began to change one day when an American plane flew over and dropped military rations and clothing.

Today, Noor Mohammed drives a Ford Ranger pickup emblazoned with the insignia of the Afghanistan National Police. He's a compact guy in his neat, slate-blue uniform. He has an easy smile and favors wrap-around sunglasses, and wears a service revolver in the small of his back. It is not bravado: He is 30 years old and has been fighting the Taliban for half his life.

His truck, like dozens of others parked in a Kunduz police compound, is kitted out with a heavy-duty roll bar, large blue flasher, siren and machine-gun mount. Mohammed rides into battle against the Taliban with seven other police officers packed into the pickup and his weapon, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher (a Russian RPG-7), strapped behind his seat.

With a little help from the international coalition, the police here have built a credible security force, with well-trained men and decent equipment. At present, the Kunduz police work as full partners with infantrymen of the 1^st Battalion, 87^th Infantry, a unit of the 10^th Mountain Division.

Police in northern Afghanistan are not traffic cops or law enforcement officers. They are combat soldiers and call themselves soldiers. They are, as their commander, Gen. M. Razzaq Yaqubi, told me, on the "front lines'' of combat with the Taliban. They have seen some serious fighting here lately, and, together with 1-87, have routed the enemy.

But when U.S. and allied forces begin to withdraw -- and it's likely the draw-downs will begin here in northern Afghanistan -- security will rest in the hands of guys like Noor Mohammed. That's a gamble, of course. But I like the odds.

So much has been written about petty corruption among underpaid Afghan police, I asked Mohammed if he was happy with his pay. "Oh, it's okay,'' he said through a translator. "For the work we are doing, of course it's not enough. But it is enough for me to support my family.''

But he went on to say that pay is not the issue. "I am doing this for my children, for my government, for my country,'' he said. "I could be doing a lot of other things. But we volunteered to do this. We are not going to allow the Taliban to take over this place.''

I asked him why people here put up with the Taliban. "People are scared,'' he said, squinting against bright sun. "They have to cooperate with the Taliban; if not they will be killed. No one wants the Taliban but they are scared of being killed.''

And where are his six children? "In a safe place,'' he said.

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Americans: Empower Women. Taliban: Kill Women

David Wood — 2010-07-19T23:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan -- In Afghanistan, where women have traditionally been treated as shut-ins and worse, 29 Afghan women are taking a daring step: They are the first volunteers to undergo training to serve in the all-male Afghan national army.

Two American women, Rebekah Martinez and Jennifer Marcos, are among a cadre of U.S. Army Reserve drill sergeants spending six months away from their families to train the Afghan women here.

Meanwhile, the Taliban's spiritual leader, Mullah Omar, reportedly has issued new orders for his Taliban fighters to begin again targeting women cooperating with Americans or helping their own government. Assassinations, suicide bombing and IED attacks may follow, on the women -- and on their families.

When the U.S. Army drill sergeant community heard that Afghan women wanted military training, it leapt at the chance. Volunteers were sought. Martinez came from Longview, Texas, where she is a police officer. Marcos flew from Salt Lake City, where she works with prison inmates. Two weeks after signing up they were in Afghanistan.

"It's pretty exciting -- we couldn't get here fast enough,'' Marcos told me one day recently in Kabul, where they are about halfway through the 20-week course.

Basic for women here is nothing like U.S. Army basic or, for that matter, the entry training given to male Afghan soldiers. The women meet in a classroom in downtown Kabul -- indoors, away from prying eyes. They do not mingle with men. They take meals in a separate mess hall. They have a tiny, secluded patch of earth for exercise, where they have learned, with some giggling, to do push-ups. They've been introduced to the 9 mm pistol and been taught combat first aid. They study leadership and English, and do computer work. Harder academic subjects will come later.

Most of the women are poor. Already they have lived hard lives. Some have seen family members killed. All have been touched by war. They seem driven to rise above their pasts. Some have children; signing up with the military puts their kids at risk, too. But they are determined. "They have heart,'' Marcos said.

Martinez added, "They want to get out there and work hard to prove they can do it.''

Mullah Omar, the one-eyed cleric who rules the Taliban, would smash this opportunity. Omar is a world-class misogynist. When he was in power in Afghanistan, education for girls and women ended (officially, that is; many courageous women continued to teach in hiding). Girls schools were burned. Social justice, for women, went back to the Stone Age. Women were banished from public life and severely punished for such transgressions as speaking to a man.

According to a July 16 dispatch by McClatchy Newspapers, U.S. intelligence officials intercepted a directive from Mullah Omar ordering his fighters to "capture or kill'' women and Afghan civilians working with the Afghan government or the allies. The story said a Taliban spokesman dismissed the report as American propaganda.

The women are undeterred. Eventually they will take jobs in the Afghan army in finance and logistics. Those skills are badly needed. But their actions shine a light far beyond their military desk jobs. Already their determination to step forward -- and the Afghan army's eagerness to accept them -- is encouraging others to come forward. And the ripples spread, unseen.

The benefit goes both ways. The Afghan women's quiet determination has touched the Americans deeply.

"A lot of us want to come back as civilians and help,'' Martinez said. "We see how much these girls want something different, and how willing they are to work hard for it. We've grown really close to them and want to see them succeed.''

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Afghanistan Journal: Local Troop Training Fast-Tracked as U.S. Drawdown Looms

David Wood — 2010-07-16T17:15:00+00:00

Filed under: National Security, Afghanistan Journal, Military, Middle East

KABUL, Afghanistan -- With a full-throated roar, 2,000 proud new Afghan soldiers swung across a parade ground in an enthusiastic if imprecise goose-step formation. The latest graduates of the Afghan army's basic training course, they will soon head off to fight the Taliban, as their commanding general announced, "in the name of Almighty Allah.''

These new troops, smartly outfitted with American combat boots, uniforms and M-16 rifles, are the result of a determined push by the U.S. and allied command to "surge'' more Afghans into in a stalemated war in which American and European troops are doing most of the fighting.

By Aug. 1, the Afghan army will have grown to 134,000. That milestone is being reached two months early, thanks to an Afghan army pay raise that attracted new recruits and the injection into the basic training course of hundreds of battle-hardened American infantrymen as trainers and mentors. Training for Afghans has become tougher, stricter, more condensed. Fresh, well-equipped troops are charging out into the fight at a rate of a new 800-man battalion every 15 days.

"I am very proud,'' said Brig. Gen. Aminullah Pateani, commander of the Kabul Military Training Center, a 22,000-acre tract in the desert and barren mountains above Kabul. Pateani, one of the army's brightest young officers, added that the quantity and quality of his new troops "have come a long way.''

Until recently, basic training for Afghans has been substandard. Last January, only 1 in 3 soldiers finishing basic training could hit targets with a rifle. There was no standardized instruction, no graduation exercise to test their skills. Then the 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry (2-22, or "Triple Deuce") was sent in. Its soldiers, veteran combat troops from the 10th Mountain Division, poured into the training fields here, working with Afghans to set up a new curriculum, setting new standards and engaging in hands-on training of Afghan army trainers and instructors.

Today, 96 percent of basic trainees are hitting their rifle-range targets. Physical fitness standards have been set, and the curriculum beefed up with coursework on counterinsurgency, combat first aid, checkpoint operations, communications and basic combat maneuvers. Now the U.S. infantrymen have stepped back from a direct role in the training, which is all done by Afghan officers and senior enlisted soldiers, overseen and mentored by the Americans.

"I know we are making effective progress -- I see it every day,'' said Lt. Col. Michael Loos, who commands the Triple Deuce battalion.

All this is good news for the Afghan and allied commands, and for the Obama White House, which has promised to begin a withdrawal of U.S. troops next July. Fielding well-trained Afghan troops, who can gradually take over security operations from U.S. and allied forces, is the administration's "exit strategy.'' Eleven months remain to get it done.

So far the Afghan army's surge of new troops looks promising. But the sparkling parade-ground performance can be deceiving. The new Afghan army faces huge problems, according to senior U.S. and NATO officers and soldiers involved in the training, and it's not clear these can be resolved in time.

What's been achieved so far, Loos observed, "is good only if it lasts.''

For starters, only 14 percent of the Afghan army is literate -- meaning they can read at a third-grade level. That means the vast majority cannot use a map, read road signs or simple instructions or follow a training manual -- sharply restricting their ability to advance beyond basic soldier skills. (Many new recruits show up for basic training having never seen a light switch or a faucet.)

Accurate shooting remains a problem. About half the Afghans need glasses because of chronic malnutrition. But few wear them because glasses are expensive and difficult to get -- and because wearing glasses is considered a sign of weakness. To try to overcome this problem on the rifle range, U.S. instructors moved the targets in from 300 meters to 250 meters. Did that help? I asked Maj. Rich Garey, executive officer of 2-22. He paused and considered his answer. "Let's just say there are challenges yet to be overcome,'' he said.

Petty corruption and lethargy seem to infuse the ranks, U.S. and allied soldiers say. Last week, the Afghan trainers were issued 5,000 gallons of fuel; two days later, 2,000 gallons were missing, said a French officer, Capt. Mattieu Juttet. Soldiers in the new Afghan battalions are issued everything from shower sandals and socks to armored Humvees. "Half the stuff we give them they sell, and we have to resupply them -- so we're paying for it twice,'' muttered a U.S. soldier involved in supply.

The American trainers have worked hard to cram what used to be 14 weeks of basic training into eight -- it was shortened to increase the production of new soldiers. Even so, Afghan instructors knock off work in the early afternoon. "They'd all leave at noon if we'd let them,'' said one frustrated infantryman. "In our Army we train until the task is done; here, they train until 1500 (3 p.m.), and leave no matter what.''

One day recently, Sgt. Adam Taddeo, a 25-year-old from Miami, was sitting disconsolately on an ammunition box as a dust storm approached across the desert floor. He had planned a full, hard day of field training, but the battalion of recruits he advises sat idle, heads bent against the wind. Once again, his Afghan instructors had not shown up. "At first I thought the problem was me,'' he said. "But it turns out this is just the way it is here.''

Many of these problems could be overcome with a strong cadre of sergeants in the ranks. But the Afghan army is short 12,000 non-commissioned officers, according to Brig. Gen. Gary S. Patton, deputy commander of the NATO training mission here. Patton told me he expected that accelerated training of NCOs wouldl fill that gap by December 2011.

That's if the Afghan army can keep attrition under control. Last fall it was losing a third of its troops every year, because of retirements, battle casualties and desertions. Now the attrition rate is just under 20 percent a year against a goal of 14 percent, Patton said.

A deeper issue is loyalty. Perhaps most recruits believe the oath they swear to the Afghan government. But U.S. and allied officers acknowledge that insurgents probably lurk in the ranks.

In the most recent of several similar incidents, on July 13, an Afghan soldier opened fire on British troops near Lashkar Gah in southern Afghanistan, killing three and wounding four. The gunman, who had used a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, got away and was taken in by the Taliban, according to a Taliban statement.

The incident was troubling enough for U.S. and allied troops fighting in joint operations that Gen. David Petraeus, the new war commander, issued a statement reminding troops to "ensure that the trust between our forces remains solid in order to defeat our common enemies."

Afghan recruits are screened, with a background check to see if their names show up on a database of insurgents and criminals, and they must bring two letters of recommendation from their home village. But the database is spotty, the letters can be forged, and American officers concede the screening is "not rigorous.''

Further out in the unknown future is the issue of cost. By 2011 the United States will have spent roughly $20 billion building the Afghan army. NATO estimates it will take $1.8 billion a year to sustain the Afghan army at its current size, a cost beyond Afghanistan's modest finances. And plans are for the army to expand to 171,000.

Despite these incipient problems, U.S. soldiers working here retain a high degree of optimism and satisfaction. Many of them have served at least one combat tour in Afghanistan; Lt. Col. Loos, the battalion commander, is on his fourth tour.

"I am really passionate about this, that we are making a difference,'' he told me one evening in the cooling dusk. "This may be the most important thing I've done in the Army.''

His executive officer, Maj. Garey, said: "You can go out and kill or detain a bad guy here, but his brother and his family immediately pop up to take his place, so you have only a short-term gain.'' The new focus on training Afghan soldiers, he said, "really feels like it will have a lasting effect.''

Building a competent and capable Afghan army, he said, "could be our ticket out of here.''

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Afghanistan Journal: Why I Wouldn't Have Written the McChrystal Story

David Wood — 2010-07-03T23:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan, Haiti, Stanley McChrystal

I'm going back to Afghanistan to report on the war. But after the McChrystal fiasco, what the heck are the rules?

This will be my fifth time in Afghanistan since 2001. I'll be hanging out with several battalions of the 10^th Mountain Division, whom I've traveled with and reported on for going on two decades in places like Somalia, the Balkans and Afghanistan.

So this will be familiar ground. Except for the new cloud of uncertainty that came between soldiers and journalists after Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his top aides jocularly derided the Obama administration and others, in front of a reporter. Result: Rolling Stone Magazine won a place in history for its sensational story last month on "The Runaway General,'' and the general was forced into ignominious retirement after a brilliant career for what he may have assumed was off-the-record barstool banter.

Now what? As a war journalist, my M.O. has always been simple: live with the troops, from privates to generals, and report as accurately as I can. Two goals: 1. Have fun. 2. Give readers an upfront view of the troops and the war so they get a better gut feel for the conflict, and perhaps rethink the conventional wisdom.

But it's an awkward position. Embedded reporters like me inevitably become friends with the troops that we're covering. After all, we share the heat and dust, the sticky MREs, the boredom and the danger. We make them visible to their families and friends back home. Everybody likes to see his picture in the paper. And the troops keep us safe. "Thanks for being with us -- it takes a lot of balls to go out there without a weapon,'' a Marine corporal told me once. "But just remember, we always had your back covered.''

The price is, you have to be willing to risk those friendships if it comes to that. Sometimes, it comes to that (I'm thinking of the towering, red-faced, clenched-fist sergeant major who tore after me once for something I wrote). But I always ask myself, if I'm not willing to write straight and honest and take the consequences, what am I doing out here?

Of course it's more complicated than that. Covering war is not press-conference reporting, divided neatly into questions and bland answers from an "Authority.'' This is trickier (and way more interesting). Embedded reporters are not quite inside the Band of Brothers, but we're alongside. Through some mental gymnastics, troops forget I'm a journalist even though I have my notebook open. And they love to talk. Ask a grunt what he does, and you'll get the technical specs of his weapon, the unprintable details of his latest amorous conquests and his opinions of his platoon sergeant, the grand strategy of the United States, and on members of Congress.

And in the heat and stress and confusion of military operations, people say things without stopping to consider how it'll look in print. One evening in Haiti, after a day of searching for putrefying bodies in the earthquake rubble, a sergeant confided that he and his paratroopers -- hardened combat veterans -- were all going to a mental health counselor when they got home. I used that in a story because it encapsulated the stress the troops were feeling. But I didn't name either the sergeant or the unit.

The trick is to separate out wheat from chaff. No, private, I'm not going to quote you on whether Richard Holbrooke ought to be replaced. No thanks, major, for your acerbic views on Hamid Karzai; I'll talk to somebody who deals directly with the Afghan president and has a credible assessment.

Much of what I hear (and write down) is just outrageous enough or majorly funny that I can't resist, even if I have to clean it up. A Marine major in southern Afghanistan once wearily complained to me that he has spent his entire adult life "eating out of a plastic bag and [defecating] in a hole in the ground.'' I used the quote but it wasn't an "interview'' and I didn't use his name.
After the smoke cleared from the McChrystal affair, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates issued new guidance to his top commanders, requiring them to clear any interviews first with his office, the New York Times reported Friday.

That's for the generals. The Pentagon has long required reporters requesting to cover military operations first to sign a lengthy "media ground rules'' document.

My copy, from ISAF ( the International Security Assistance Force, the allied military command), is touchingly earnest in its attempt to specify what must and may not be done.

Don't divulge details of upcoming operations, it advises, unnecessarily. Don't give away secrets to the enemy. OK. But also, Don't say two F-16s strafed enemy positions (as it does in an Air Force press release). Say "fighters'' or "fixed wing aircraft,'' and instead of saying "two'' you must say "many'' or "few.''

Go ahead and laugh (you could violate the rules by quoting the military's own press releases!), but I have had friends thrown out of the country for violating these rules. Rumor has it that the Defense Department has battalions of lawyers searching the news for violations. And I wouldn't be surprised.

The ISAF rules also demand that "all interviews with service members will be on the record.'" I presume this is an attempt to head off random quotes and make everybody think before they speak. The problem, of course, is the definition of "interview.'' If a guy on the next seat in the latrine complains about his weapon misfiring, is that an interview? If you go on shore leave with boisterous gang of Marines and end up in a drunken brawl in which allies are loudly insulted, is that off the record? (Not that I necessarily speak from experience.)

And what of Michael Hastings, the freelance journalist who sank Stan McChrystal's career? Did he sign every page of his ISAF Media Ground Rules? I bet he did -- and then went on to make up his own. Maybe he told himself that hanging around a Paris bar with the guys wasn't "an interview.''

I've been in that situation many times as an embedded reporter. Being around when soldiers take off their game face provides some of the richest stuff of war reporting, getting past the vapid press releases and briefing summaries and getting deep insights into what's going on and how people feel about it. I would fight for that kind of access. Any reporter would.

But I would not have used the McChrystal quotes. Here's why.

Embedded with the 1^st Battalion, 6^th Marines in southern Afghanistan two years ago, I spent hours and days sitting in a conference room while the Marines planned a huge upcoming operation. It wasn't long before I realized the operation was being delayed because of bickering and confusion in the allied command. The Brits disliked the intent of the operation; generals in Kabul disagreed with generals in Kandahar about what ought to be done; there was squabbling among the Canadians and others about who was to do what.

Military operation delayed by command confusion? That, I thought, was a story worth telling.

I wrote it from the notes I'd taken openly (without declaring to each person in the room, "This is an interview!''). Officers senior enough to be held to account, I quoted by name. I spared the names of a few junior Marines, not wanting to blight their young careers. I was careful and accurate. The story caused a sensation when it hit the streets (that was back in the olden days when newspapers were delivered to doorsteps). Washington called, demanding to know what the heck was going on with the command structure. The Marine command was livid and put me on a plane to Kabul.

Within a few days, however, I was allowed back to go into combat with them -- they reluctantly granted that the story was accurate, and wanted someone around to record what they were doing.

And the Defense Department quickly moved to straighten out the tangled lines of authority in the allied command.

The difference with the McChrystal quotes? A story on flaws in the command structure mattered; lives would depend on how smoothly the commanders worked. Off-hand comments, made in private, about Joe Biden? Not important enough to break a confidence. Surely, Hastings overheard more significant and compelling stuff from his month with the general. If McChrystal and his staff had deep and bitter disagreements with the White House, Hastings should have written that story. But he chose to go with the trash-talk as the more sensational story.

There are those who disagree vehemently with this. New York Times columnist Frank Rich, for example, fulminates about how regular beat reporters (that would be me), drunken with access to top officials, would never dare jeopardize their standing by writing a critical story. An opposite view comes from his conservative colleague, David Brooks, who bemoans the rise of "kvetching'' as journalism. Hastings, Brooks writes, "essentially took run-of-the-mill complaining and turned it into a direct challenge to presidential authority.''

The argument can and maybe should go on. Meantime I'll take my ISAF media ground rules with me to Afghanistan, but I'll navigate by the old standards: fairness, balance, accuracy. If I've got to burn a bridge, I'll be home early.

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Army Report: GIs Outgunned in Afghanistan

David Wood — 2010-04-02T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Guns, Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan

American troops are often outgunned by Afghan insurgents because they lack the precision weapons, deadly rounds, and training needed to kill the enemy in the long-distance firefights common in Afghanistan's rugged terrain, according to an internal Army study.

Unlike in Iraq, where most shooting took place at relatively short range in urban neighborhoods, U.S. troops in Afghanistan are more often attacked from high ground with light machine guns and mortars from well beyond 300 meters (327 yards, or just over three football field lengths). The average range for a small-arms firefight in Afghanistan is about 500 meters, according to the study.

Unless U.S. troops under attack call in artillery or air strikes and risk civilian casualties, the only way they can fight back is with long-distance precision shooting -- a capability currently in short supply among infantry units, according to a study done at the Army's School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., by Maj. Thomas P. Ehrhart.

According to Ehrhart's paper, Army infantrymen do not regularly train and practice shooting at distances of more than 300 meters. The round fired from their M4 carbines and M16 rifles, the 5.56mm bullet, don't carry enough velocity at long distances to kill.

While the Army has moved recently to equip each infantry company of about 200 soldiers with nine designated marksmen to overcome this problem, they don't often carry weapons with sufficient killing power at distance, and there aren't enough of them, Ehrhart reports.

Army spokesmen had no immediate comment on Ehrhart's paper, which was released by SAMS last month and given wider circulation by defensetech.org and the Kit Up! blog on military.com.

Most infantrymen in Afghanistan carry the M4 carbine, a version of the standard M16 rifle, but with a shorter barrel. It was designed to allow soldiers to operate from cramped armored vehicles and in the city neighborhoods of Iraq. But the shorter barrel robs the weapon of the ability to shoot accurately at long distances, because the bullet doesn't acquire as much stabilizing spin when it is fired as it does in a longer barrel.

Soldiers commonly are taught in training to use "suppressive fire,'' in effect returning enemy attacks with sprays of gunfire, which are often ineffective in Afghanistan.

One reason is the ineffectiveness of the most commonly used round, designated the M855. Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, was once accidentally shot in the chest with an M855 round from a light machine gun; rather than being killed, he walked out of the hospital several days later.

Ehrhart recalls seeing a soldier shot with a M855 round from a distance of 75 meters in training. Twenty minutes later he was "walking around smoking a cigarette.''

Such incidents may be flukes, but they do illustrate that the rounds can lack killing power. Most infantrymen are equipped to fire the M855 round from their M4 carbine, M16 rifle, or the SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon), a light machine gun. When a firefight erupts in Afghanistan, they are unable to fire back accurately at more than 200 or 300 meters, leaving it to soldiers with heavier weapons -- the M240 machine gun, 60-mm mortars or snipers equipped with M14 rifles.

"These [heavier] weapons represent 19 percent of the company's firepower,'' Ehrhart wrote, meaning that "81 percent of the company has little effect on the fight.

"This is unacceptable.''

One quick fix, he suggested, is to equip the designated marksmen within each company with a powerful weapon that can kill at long distances, the M110 sniper weapon, which is effective out to 800 meters.

These rifles are expensive -- about $8,000 apiece. But you could outfit every infantry squad in the Army with two M110 rifles for the price of one U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor supersonic stealthy fighter, Ehrhart noted.

Ironically, American doughboys in World War I were better trained and equipped for Afghanistan-style firefights than today's GIs.

"The U.S. infantry weapon has devolved from the World War I rifle capable of conducting lethal fire out to 1,200 yards, to the current weapon that can hit a target out to 300 meters but probably will not kill it,'' Ehrhart wrote.

The School of Advanced Military Studies, where Ehrhart was a student last year, trains the Army's brightest young officers for senior leadership. His unclassified paper, written last year, does not reflect official Army positions. But the paper has rocketed around in military circles and has been read avidly in some units preparing to deploy to Afghanistan.

But even before his report began circulating widely, some Army units were acting on the hard-learned lessons from Afghanistan, where the Army has been fighting for almost nine years.

Several weeks ago I watched an infantry battalion of the 10^th Mountain Division's 4^th Brigade Combat Team working on live fire maneuvers in central Wyoming.

One key focus, according to Command Sgt. Maj. Doug Maddi, was to hone soldiers' skills in high-angle and long-distance shooting -- precisely the skills not widely required in regular Army training, according to Ehrhart.

Where normal Army marksmanship training is often conducted on level ground against pop-up targets, Maddi and the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Chris Ramsey, had their men shooting up towering ridgelines and down steep inclines, and at distances out to 600 meters.

The battalion's troops, wearing their full battle kit, also were firing live rounds while running, and while running with heavy packs, up and down the steep Wyoming ridges

"We're here to replicate the environment of Afghanistan,'' said Ramsey, who brought his battalion to Wyoming from its home base at Fort Polk, La. "We don't get this kind of terrain at home.''

Ramsey told me he had not read Ehrhart's paper before his battalion deployed to Wyoming for a month's training in early February. Polishing those skills was "intuitive,'' he said. But he said the paper now has been read across the battalion.

At a meeting with reporters this week, Army Secretary John McHugh was asked whether he was familiar with the Ehrhart report. McHugh said he was not, but after hearing a brief description, he said he would track down the paper and read it.

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