As the Army reviews the investigation into a deadly Afghanistan battle for which several officers reportedly have been reprimanded, one of the service’s most-decorated veterans cautions that determining officer accountability in war is a “tough issue.”
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Veterans Vocal on Wanat Battle Fallout
The arrests of top Taliban figures in Pakistan abruptly halted secret U.N. contacts with the insurgency at a time when the efforts were gathering momentum, the U.N.’s former envoy to Afghanistan said Friday.
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Arrests Halt UN Contact With Taliban
A new threat environment means a transformed National Guard should maintain its force after drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
WASHINGTON — Attacks on U.S. and allied forces with makeshift bombs in Afghanistan are 50 percent more lethal than three years ago, reflecting insurgents’ use of more powerful explosives and the increased vulnerability of troops who patrol more on foot than in the past. Lt. Gen. Michael Oates, director of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, told a House subcommittee that the casualty rate was “disturbing” and half that of troops attacked by IEDs in Iraq. Overall, IED attacks have doubled over the past year in Afghanistan, Oates said. It was even worse when comparing February 2010 to February 2009, attributed in part to a Marine-led offensive in the town of Marjah in Helmand province. This year, insurgents planted 721 bombs compared with 291 last year. Those attacks killed or wounded 204 troops this February compared with 51 in February 2009. Oates cited several advantages that Afghan insurgents had over U.S. forces: • Reliance on fertilizer-based explosives that lack metal components frustrates attempts to detect buried bombs. • U.S. forces traveling in heavy vehicles are forced to travel on the few improved roads in Afghanistan, making them easier targets. “This facilitates a successful enemy tactic of emplacing large explosive charges buried in the middle of the road or in culverts,” Oates said. • The counterinsurgency strategy pushed by Gen. Stanley McChrystal stresses protecting Afghan civilians and requires troops to be in close contact with them. The downside, Oates said, is that “separated from the protection of an armored vehicle they are also more vulnerable to casualty from an IED.” Oates, in a USA TODAY interview, said winning the trust of Afghans will ultimately provide the best protection for U.S. troops. Afghans will identify insurgents and provide tips on where they have planted bombs. Meantime, Oates said, the military will focus on fielding new all-terrain Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles designed specifically to protect troops in Afghanistan. Surveillance aircraft will monitor roads, troops will be trained to find and defuse bombs, and the networks that produce IEDs will be attacked. “There is no silver bullet,” he said.
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JIEDDO 3-star: Afghan IED attacks more lethal
HONOLULU — The guided missile cruiser Chosin is due to return to Pearl Harbor from a deployment to the Western Pacific and the Middle East. The ship and its 340 enlisted sailors and 35 officers are scheduled to return Thursday. Chosin served as the air defense commander for an aircraft carrier strike group operating off Afghanistan during the deployment. It supported more than 2,600 combat sorties into Afghanistan. The cruiser also supported anti-piracy operations in the Horn of Africa.
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Chosin on its way back to Pearl Harbor
MARJAH, Afghanistan — Crouched on packed earth at a barricaded Marine encampment, the village elders issued their complaint: U.S. troops had killed an innocent 14-year-old boy. Secretly, the Marines didn’t believe them. No matter. They apologized, called the death a tragedy and promised to offer a condolence payment to the boy’s family. It’s all part of a strategy that sometimes involves swallowing their pride in an effort to persuade wavering Afghans to turn away from the Taliban. Since U.S., Afghan and NATO forces wrested Marjah from the Taliban, they’ve been going to extraordinary lengths to cultivate townspeople who had lived under insurgent control for years. That’s a tall order in a place where many Taliban fighters still hiding here are from Marjah — supported or at least tolerated by the surrounding communities. Winning over the population, including former Taliban fighters, is considered more important than hunting down insurgents. The strategy is expected to serve as a model for a bigger operation planned for later this year around Kandahar, the largest city in the south. In order to make the locals happy, the Marines use money everywhere it seems like it can buy a little goodwill. Shopkeepers are paid for locks broken in the fighting and farmers for damage to their fields when helicopters land. Marines have disbursed more than a quarter million dollars in battle-damage payments in central Marjah alone, said Maj. David Fennell, head of a group of civil affairs Marines handling the disbursements. They’re also trying to be careful about where they tread. The Marines moved a new battalion base out of an abandoned high school when residents complained they were living in a building that they should be for students. Then they decided to shrink the new base to accommodate locals who were worried about its walls cutting off a footpath. When residents decided they wanted enough room for a vehicle to get through, they agreed to reduce the size of the base some more. And sometimes the strategy involves accepting the word of village elders, some of whom may be Taliban sympathizers themselves, to keep the peace. That’s what unfolded Monday night as three Marine snipers hid knee-deep in water in a ditch, watching for militants at a spot where they’d found two bombs in the past week. The snipers saw people moving around a building believed to be an insurgent hideout. Then someone released dogs that charged them. In the middle of this, the snipers saw a male with a shovel and a yellow jug — the type insurgents use for bombs — on the roadside. They shot and killed him, then started taking rifle fire from a nearby building. The Marines rushed out of the area and made it back to their base. Tuesday morning the elders arrived to complain. They identified the person who was shot as a boy trying to collect water for his mother. Officers of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, apologized, describing the death as a tragedy and offering a condolence payment to the boy’s family. Not that they believed the elders. “The kid looked taller than me. He appeared, not to be a kid,” said Sgt. Ben Parker, a 24-year-old from Atlanta who was one of the three snipers and stands at 5-foot-8. Lt. Shawn Miller, the executive officer of Alpha Company, met Wednesday with town elders, who raised the issue of the boy’s death again. Miller apologized but pointed out that bullets were being fired and his Marines were being chased by dogs. Miller said he could see the shots from where he was at the nearby base. “If you could see the bullets, why couldn’t you see he was a child?” one of the elders asked. “This was a tragedy,” Miller said, again, to the group of about 10 assembled bearded men. “Because of a very sad misinterpretation, an innocent person was hurt.” He also said, for the second day in a row, that the Marines would pay his family. During Wednesday’s meeting, the Afghan army commander attached to Alpha Company passed no public judgment on the boy’s innocence, but berated the elders for not watching over their children better. “Why did someone send him out at night to get water? Why are you letting your children out like that?” Capt. Iqbal Khan asked. After the meeting, Khan said he would not say that the men were lying, but that the evidence was not in their favor. “First, 8 p.m. is not a proper time to go out and get water for the household. Second, the boy must have been older because parents wouldn’t send such a young boy out like that,” Khan said. Most suspicious: Though Miller has offered condolence payments to the boy’s family, no one has come forward to claim them. “The father is the only one who hasn’t shown up,” Miller said. Parker says he doesn’t mind his commanders going out and apologizing for a shooting. He and the officers are sure they killed an insurgent. “We haven’t had any bombs in that spot since,” Parker said. Related reading • Taliban using fear campaign in Marjah
See more here: Marines move gingerly to win support in Marjah
The Army has found a new way to transport its MRAP-All Terrain Vehicles to Afghanistan, according to the service’s top logistician. Up until a week ago, the Army had been flying the vehicles directly from its integration facility in Charleston, S.C., said Lt. Gen. Mitchell Stevenson, deputy chief of staff for logistics. On March 8, the Army began a “multimodal concept of operations,” dividing the long trip up using ships and aircraft, Stevenson said. “We sent 130 M-ATVs by ship,” to a U.S. ally in southwest Asia, said Stevenson, who declined to name the country. Once the vehicles arrive, they will be loaded onto a C-17 aircraft and flown six hours to Afghanistan. The whole trip takes about three weeks and is less expensive, he said. “The nice part about that concept of operations is that the C-17s can make multiple turns in a day and it’s a lot easier than flying that one leg all the way from the United States,” he said. Another 170 vehicles will be shipped this way later in March, according to Stevenson. “We want to get up to 1,000 per month,” he said. Oshkosh, the vehicle manufacturer, produces about 1,000 M-ATVs a month. “The problem right now is not that we can’t ship 1,000 a month, the problem is they can’t absorb 1,000 a month there,” Stevenson said. “You get the M-ATV into a place like Bagram or Kandahar, that’s fine, but then you’ve got to get it to the soldier who needs it and that takes a little bit of effort.” It’s also a brand-new vehicle that requires troops to be trained to use and maintain it, he said. Army logisticians now deliver 500 of the vehicles per month, Stevenson said, and aim to reach 1,000 per month by this summer. In February, the Army tried shipping 10 M-ATVs through the Pakistani port of Karachi. Many of the supplies needed by forces in Afghanistan come through that port and then travel over land into Afghanistan. The vehicles arrived without a problem, but because of the speed with which the forces in Afghanistan need M-ATVs, the Army is going to continue flying them in, he said. The Army has also fitted about 600 of the Cougar variant MRAPs with new suspension systems designed for Afghanistan. The Cougars were pulled out of Afghanistan and brought to Kuwait where there is a maintenance facility, Stevenson said. They have since been shipped back to Afghanistan by air.
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SAN ANTONIO — A Defense Department official under investigation for allegedly running an off-the-books spy program says the operation was authorized and saved lives in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In an interview published Thursday, Michael D. Furlong told the San Antonio Express-News that military superiors approved using private contractors to gather information about potential attacks on U.S. interests. Furlong says the intelligence prevented two assassinations of Afghan leaders. The New York Times reported this week that some of the information was used to track down and attack militants, but Furlong said he “didn’t take this information and go directly to a kill.” Pentagon officials say Furlong’s program raises questions and warrants further review. Furlong is now a senior civilian employee at Lackland Air Force Base but says he’s been locked out of his office. Related reading • Pentagon investigating alleged spy operation
Visit link: Official says DoD authorized alleged spying
The U.S. Marine Corps’ investigation of the February death of an Indiana Marine in Afghanistan concludes that he was fatally shot when an Afghan security contractor fired shots at a group of Marines.
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Report Alleges Afghan Contractor Shot Marine
The nation depends upon women, both military and civilian, at all levels of the Defense Department, from the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan to the upper echelons of military command, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said.
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Gates Notes Contributions of Military Women