I see my old battalion assigned to Helmand again and I wonder: What is the point?

By Stephen Carlson, Washington Post, February 27, 2016:

The Pentagon recently announced that an undisclosed number of U.S. soldiers will be sent to Helmand province in southern Afghanistan in a “force protection” role. It’s a minor story, perhaps, considering the overall number of troops deployed to Afghanistan is not expected to increase beyond 9,800 and the troops will replace a unit already there. But it’s a shift at the tail end of a war most Americans do not even remember is happening anymore. The war is over, President Barack Obama said. Who cares about a lousy transfer of what’s been reported to be about 500 U.S. troops?

The soldiers in question are with the 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division, which is the unit I served with during two tours in Afghanistan. And they are heading towards one of the deadliest battlefields NATO endured in its never-ending mission in Afghanistan. U.S. Marines and the British military, in particular, paid a terrible price against intransigent locals and Taliban fighting hard to hold onto what they consider their homeland.

Nearly a thousand coalition troops lost their lives in Helmand, including hundreds of U.S. Marines. Now, after declaring a specious victory and leaving Helmand to the tender mercies of a corrupt government and the Taliban, the Pentagon is worried about the province, after pulling out and declaring victory. What kind of farce is this supposed to be? And remember, we’re not entirely sure just how many troops are heading there, or exactly what they’ll be doing. “Force protection” covers so much ground that it could mean practically anything.

In a teleconference earlier this month from Afghanistan, Brig. Gen. Wilson Shoffner, the deputy chief of staff for communications for the Operation Resolute mission, was vague in describing the mission.

“I’m not going to get into the details of the disposition of the particular units that are here, but I will say it is a normally scheduled unit rotation, and part of that unit will be operating in Helmand, and we are increasing the number of advisers that we have in Helmand province,” Shoffner said. “We’re also deploying soldiers, we’re positioning soldiers to provide force protection. And I’ll go as far as that.”

Obama was partly elected on the idea that he was going to end the wars that President Bush pushed us into. He partially succeeded. He accomplished most of his troop withdrawals, but now there has been an explosive revival of the Taliban in Afghanistan. It does not matter how much time passes, we still seem to be stuck in 2004. And now the Pentagon “surging” a few hundred troops back into Helmand province may be the greatest joke of all.

We might as well tattoo “We are here for appearances” on their foreheads. After 14 years, thousands of lives, and untold billions of dollars, now a battalion that had been deployed five times before and lost over a hundred lives is being held out as a fig leaf for a failed war. Soldiers from 10th Mountain have been in Afghanistan since the early days of Operation Anaconda in 2002. And it seems they will be there until the end, whenever that might be.

I served with 2-87 in the godforsaken mountains along the Pakistan border in Bermel in 2006 and again in 2009 to the volatile province of Wardak. Now I see my old battalion assigned to Helmand and wonder what is the point. What will a few hundred troops do now that tens of thousands of troops over many years could not before?

The Afghan National Army has been essentially rolled over by the Taliban in Helmand, among many other areas. The Afghan National Police are a grim, widely corrupt militia that includes child soldiers.

The town of Marjah in Helmand, where U.S. Marines paid a heavy price taking it from the Taliban following the troop surge, is now 90 percent controlled by the Taliban. Just last month, an American soldier was killed and two others wounded alongside heavy Afghan casualties there.

More than a hundred British soldiers lost their lives trying to secure the district of Sangin in Helmand. This endeavor they largely succeeded, but that is almost all gone now. The Afghan government controls a few government buildings and a couple small army outposts. The Taliban patrol the town’s center and own the countryside. On Feb. 6, the Afghan soldiers defending the government buildings suffered 9 dead, 7 wounded, and three captured. The day before, it was 4 dead and 7 wounded.

It is little more than a lopsided siege, and a single battalion of U.S. troops in a “non-combat” role are not going to reverse the collapse that is coming. By 2010 there were nearly 20,000 Marines in Helmand alongside thousands of British and other coalition troops, and it still took years to even moderately pacify the province.

A gradual disintegration is spreading across Afghanistan. According to the United Nations, 2015 saw over 11,000 civilian dead or wounded, the heaviest casualties suffered since the war began in 2001. Improvised explosive devices, suicide bombers, and hit-and-run attacks on soft targets are relatively cheap and easy for the Taliban, and they take a heavy toll on civilians simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. Afghan government forces are not exactly noted for their precision firepower either. As in every war, it is the innocent who suffer the most.

U.S. Army Gen. John Campbell, the outgoing commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, testified to Congress on Feb. 4 that without changes “2016 is at risk of being no better, and possibly worse, than 2015.” He has recommended wider rules of engagement and more embedding with Afghan forces. These recommendations could have come from any testimony from the last 14 years.

It is clear that beyond some residual forces and already appropriated reconstruction and aid funds, the United States has essentially washed its hands of its Afghan venture. Troops, money, and occasionally blood, will continue to be spilled into Afghanistan for years to come, perhaps for decades, but it is difficult to see any scenario beyond a bloody, worsening deadlock that will only get worse by the year.

“Now more than ever,” Campbell said, “the United States should not waver on Afghanistan.”

We have already wavered, and 2-87’s deployment to Helmand is merely the window dressing trying to cover the mistakes of the past.

Stephen Carlson served two tours in Afghanistan as an infantryman with the 10th Mountain Division. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Read More

After Obama Apology, Medical Charity Presses Probe Request

Associated Press, Oct. 8, 2015

KABUL, Afghanistan–A day after President Barack Obama apologized for a tragic U.S. airstrike that killed at least 22 people at a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in northern Afghanistan, the medical charity said Thursday it is continuing to press its demand for an independent investigation of the incident.

The Oct. 3 airstrike took place as Afghan forces were fighting to retake the strategic northern city of Kunduz, which was overrun and briefly held last week by the Taliban. The insurgents, who have been massing around the city for months, launched a multi-pronged attack that took authorities by surprise.

Obama on Wednesday apologized to the organization and said the U.S. would examine military procedures to look for better ways to prevent such incidents.

But scarce details on the erroneous strike have only fueled growing condemnation by MSF, as the charity is known under its French acronym, and other aid groups. Along with a dozen hospital staffers, 10 patients were also killed.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday in Kabul, MSF’s general director, Christopher Stokes, reiterated the group’s demand for the probe, saying it would be important and a precedent for non-government organizations working in conflict zones worldwide.

Stokes said MSF wanted the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission “to get the facts of what happened, the truth.”

The IHFFC is based in the Swiss capital, Bern. It is made up of diplomats, legal experts, doctors and some former military officials from nine European countries, including Britain and Russia. Created after the Gulf War in 1991, the commission has never deployed a fact-finding mission.

MSF, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization that provides medical aid in conflict zones, is awaiting responses to letters it sent Tuesday to 76 countries that signed Article 90 of the additional protocol to the Geneva Conventions, seeking to mobilize the 15-member commission. The Conventions lay out rules on conduct in armed conflict, mostly on protecting noncombatants.

For the commission to be mobilized, a single country would have to call for the fact-finding mission, and the U.S. and Afghanistan–which are not signatories–must also give their consent.

MSF says it has had no response yet from any country.

“It would show a distinct lack of courage if none of the 76 signatories come forward,” Stokes said.

The MSF hospital in Kunduz is no longer operational, which has put severe burden on the city, MSF and Afghan officials have said.

Of the 105 patients who were in the hospital at the time of the bombing, nine have yet to be accounted for; and of a total of 461 staff, 24 are still missing, said Guilhem Molinie, MSF’s representative in Afghanistan.

The organization expects there are still 24 bodies in the debris of the building that was bombed, he added.

Three children who were among the 10 patients who perished were members of the same family, admitted the night before the bombing after their car came under fire, Molinie said.

Read More

God’s powerful answer to prayer among the Taliban’s people group in Afghanistan

By Mark Ellis, Godreports, October 8, 2014

Last year the U.S. Center for World Mission began equipping thousands of churches in Latin America to pray for the Pashtun, one of the biggest least-reached people groups in the world.

The Pashtun number over 30 million and the Taliban are included within this ethnic group in Afghanistan. “If you are wondering whether prayer really makes a difference, in this particular case, we have the proof,” says David Taylor, with the U.S. Center.

A Christian radio ministry had been broadcasting for years to the Pashtun and were receiving about 60 responses to their program each month.

“As soon as thousands of churches in Latin America began praying for the Pashtun, this radio program began receiving hundreds and then thousands of responses each month,” Taylor exclaims. “Like the Bible story of the disciples whose nets could not handle all the fish, this ministry is now asking for help from others to handle this unexpected interest in the gospel!”

In a related miraculous incident, some of the churches praying for the Pashtun are located in El Salvador. In one of these Salvadoran churches, a man was dying of HIV AIDS.

“He decided to come to the Wednesday prayer meeting which was focused on the Pashtun,” Taylor recounts. “As he was praying for them he felt the Holy Spirit come upon him and move throughout his body. He felt as though he had been healed. The next day he went to the doctor to have his blood checked. When the nurse came back with the results she was beaming. His blood was completely clean of HIV!”

Read More

Interview: Karzai says 12-year Afghanistan war has left him angry at U.S. government

By Kevin Sieff, Washington Post, March 2, 2014

KABUL—Hamid Karzai was in the midst of negotiating a security agreement with the United States when he met a 4-year-old girl who had lost half her face in an American airstrike.

Five months later, the Afghan president’s eyes welled with tears as he described visiting the disfigured little girl at a hospital. He took long pauses between words. Sitting behind his desk Saturday night, the man who has projected a defiant image toward the West suddenly looked frail.

“That day, I wished she were dead, so she could be buried with her parents and brothers and sisters”—14 of whom had been killed in the attack—he said.

In an unusually emotional interview, the departing Afghan president sought to explain why he has been such a harsh critic of the 12-year-old U.S. war effort here. He said he’s deeply troubled by all the casualties he has seen, including those in U.S. military operations. He feels betrayed by what he calls an insufficient U.S. focus on targeting Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan. And he insists that public criticism was the only way to guarantee an American response to his concerns.

To Karzai, the war was not waged with his country’s interests in mind.

“Afghans died in a war that’s not ours,’ he said in the interview, his first in two years with a U.S. newspaper.

In Karzai’s mind, al-Qaeda is “more a myth than a reality” and the majority of the United States’ prisoners here were innocent. He’s certain that the war was “for the U.S. security and for the Western interest.”

Such statements elicit scorn and shock from U.S. officials, who point out that Americans have sacrificed mightily for Afghanistan—losing more than 2,000 lives and spending more than $600 billion in the effort to defeat al-Qaeda and the Taliban and rebuild the country.

Some Americans call Karzai a delusional leader, an ally who became an adversary during the 12 years of his presidency.

In the latest blowup, he has refused for months to sign a security agreement that his government had negotiated with the United States that would permit a residual U.S. force to remain here beyond 2014. He has added several new demands in exchange for signing the deal.

But in a phone call with Karzai last week, President Obama said he will accept having the winner of Afghanistan’s April presidential elections sign the pact. Karzai indicated that he views that as a best-case scenario. He won’t have to submit to U.S. demands—such as the continuation of counter­terrorism operations—but the popular security agreement will probably still be finalized.

“It’s good for them to sign it with my successor,” the Afghan leader said.

On the security agreement, as with several other issues, Karzai’s antagonistic approach seems to have succeeded, in the sense that he has forced U.S. officials to move deadlines—and even to reshape policy.

His strong criticism of the civilian casualties caused by American attacks, for example, forced the U.S. military to revise its tactics, producing a dramatic decline in the number of noncombatants killed by American forces (although Taliban-inflicted casualties have increased).

His demands that the United States hand over the Bagram prison were eventually met, allowing Karzai last month to release dozens of high-profile detainees despite U.S. protests. Those experiences reaffirmed his conviction that public criticism of the United States is often his most effective diplomatic tool.

“I had no other weapon to resort to, no other means to resort to, but to speak publicly and get attention that way. In other words, I was forced to yell,” he said.

Karzai reiterated that he will not manipulate the April 5 presidential election. He has told his older brother to withdraw his candidacy to avoid the perception of interference. Qayum Karzai has refused, but he acknowledges what most Afghans believe:

“Without the president’s support, it will be impossible to win,” Qayum said.

Every day, candidates and elders plead for Hamid Karzai’s backing, pouring into his office and calling his aides as the election nears. Although his influence on the U.S. war effort is waning, he has never been more relevant, or at least more talked about, in Afghan political circles.

“People do come to me, a lot of people, every day rather. Groups of people, individuals—they ask me” for support, Karzai said.

Now that he has decided to leave office, he is reckoning with the same question that many Americans are asking: Was the war worth it?

“I am of two hearts here. When I see good, I am in approval. When I see the losses of Afghan people, our children, maimed and killed, I’m in disapproval,” he said, speaking in English. “Maybe I can give you an answer of yes or no two, three or five years from now, when my emotions have subsided. Right now, I’m full of emotions.”

Karzai is at his most emotional—and most hostile—when civilian casualties occur. Even his critics don’t doubt the sincerity of his feelings, although they might disagree with his conclusions.

He said Afghanistan’s “common cause” with the United States dissipated because of such casualties. He has also said that U.S. forces should have done more to target Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan, rather than conduct operations in Afghan villages.

Karzai denied that he’s more vocal about U.S.-inflicted civilian casualties than those caused by the Taliban. But he has done little to dispel that characterization.

During a visit to the White House in 2010, he carried a photo of what he described as a family whose members were “just gazing with fright and fear” during a U.S.-led night operation. He showed it to Obama.

“I said, ‘President, this is what I’m trying to end, the intimidation of Afghan families at night, in the name of fighting the Taliban.’?”

Asked about Obama’s response, Karzai shrugged, indicating it was unsatisfactory. Then he said: “So we are really an angry people.”

One criticism of Karzai is that his anger has interfered with his ability to govern a country whose institutions have grown exponentially since he took office. Thanks primarily to the U.S. effort, Afghanistan now has a large security force and bureaucracy.

As U.S. funding tapers off, Karzai’s successor will have to keep those institutions alive on a much slimmer budget.

“Foreign assistance brought an expensive way of life to Afghanistan,” Karzai said. “This way of life is not sustainable. Afghanistan has to live by its means.”

Specifically, that means a smaller army built based on “efficiency and affordability,” Karzai said.

But without foreign funding, it’s unclear whether Afghanistan could afford an army that could keep the Taliban at bay. Maintaining Afghan forces at their current size will cost about $4 billion per year. In 2013, the Afghan government collected only $1.7 billion in revenue.

After leaving office, Karzai won’t go far: The government has built him a house a few miles from the presidential palace.

But before he steps down, Karzai has a few more messages to convey to his American partners. As he escorted two Washington Post journalists out of his office Saturday evening, he said: “To the American people, give them my best wishes and my gratitude. To the U.S. government, give them my anger, my extreme anger.”

Read More

We Destroyed Afghanistan: Americans Can't Remember, Afghans Will Never Forget

By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com, October 1, 2013

The Afghan War is officially winding down. American casualties, generally from towns and suburbs you’ve never heard of unless you were born there, are still coming in. Though far fewer American troops are in the field with Afghan forces, devastating “insider attacks” in which a soldier or policeman turns his gun on his American allies, trainers, or mentors still periodically occur. Civilian casualties continue to rise. “Surgically precise” U.S. air and drone strikes still mysteriously kill Afghan civilians. And as U.S. combat troops withdraw, Afghan-on-Afghan fighting is actually increasing, with the U.S.-trained army taking almost Vietnam-level, possibly unsustainable casualties (100 or more dead a week), while the police are similarly hit hard.

Meanwhile, as TomDispatch regular Ann Jones points out, our second longest war has already played Houdini, doing a remarkable disappearing job in “the homeland.” Almost 12 years after it began, no one here, it seems, is considering how to assess American “success” on that distant battlefield. But were we to do so, what possible gauge might we use? Here’s a suggestion: how about opium production? In 1979, the year America’s first Afghan war (against the Soviets) began, that country was producing just 250 tons of opium; by the early years of the post-9/11 American occupation of the country, that figure had hit 3,400 tons. Between 2006 and the present, it’s ranged from a 2007 high of 8,200 tons to a low of just under 5,000 tons. Officials of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service now claim that 40,000 tons of illicit opiates have been stockpiled in Afghanistan, mostly to be marketed abroad. As of 2012, it was the world’s leading supplier of opium, with 74% of the global market, a figure that was expected to hit 90% as U.S. combat troops leave (and foreign aid flees). In other words, success in an endless war in that country has meant creating the world’s first true narco-state. It’s a record to consider. Not for nothing, it seems, were all those billions of dollars expended, not without accomplishments do we leave (if we are actually leaving).

Read More

Afghan Diplomats Defect as Western Withdrawal Nears

By Hasnain Kazim, Der Spiegel, June 24, 2013

A total of 105 Afghani diplomats were meant to report for duty at the Foreign Ministry in Kabul on Saturday. They were being rotated out of their foreign postings as scheduled, and it was time to return to headquarters. Yet just five of them have resurfaced. The others have apparently remained in the countries where they had been posted, among them several employees of the Afghan Embassy in Berlin.

Sources at the Afghan Foreign Ministry have informed SPIEGEL ONLINE that embassy staff members have said they would apply for asylum in their respective host countries or at least apply for an extension of their service until the presidential election in spring 2014. “They are hoping that there is more clarity about the future of our country by that point," said an employee of the ministry. “I feel as though there has been an exodus. No one wants to return to Afghanistan," said the employee, who added that they couldn’t be faulted for wanting to stay away from “the situation in the country."

According to recent surveys, most Afghans believe the country will sink into chaos and violence and expect that civil war will break out once Western forces withdraw at the end of 2014. For months, the Taliban and various other ethnic groups have been arming themselves in preparation for a fight for power in the country.

Many Afghan diplomats are the sons and daughters of high-ranking politicians who are also trying to go abroad as soon as possible and stay there until the situation in Afghanistan becomes clearer.

International foundations and organizations that organize educational trips and conferences for Afghans abroad have also become more cautious recently. They know that more and more trip participants will disappear. It is said in Kabul that several Afghan teachers never returned from a trip organized recently by the German government. And a high-ranking official from the Afghan Foreign Ministry called home during a trip to Canada to say that he wouldn’t be coming back.

"I can confirm this trend," says Tinko Weibezahl, the head of the Kabul office of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. “In recent months some of our most qualified contacts have left the country. The refugees are above all “the highly educated, who were much more optimistic about the future a year ago," Weibezahl says. Government ministers, lawmakers and senior military officials are also attempting to get their families out of the country.

The story of the hopeful future of an Afghanistan that stands on its own two feet, that is safe and peaceful and democratically governed, “is just a story that the West likes to tell us," says a senior official from the presidential palace in Kabul. “This story has just one catch: Most Afghans don’t believe it."

Read More

Afghanistan: "It's Just Damage Limitation Now"

By Mark Thompson, TIME, September 19, 2012
Briton Ben Anderson is a documentary filmmaker (the BBC, HBO, the Discovery Channel), but he turns to the written word in No Worse Enemy: The Inside Story of the Chaotic Struggle for Afghanistan. The book offers a gritty—and grim—assessment of the war.

Anderson embedded with U.S. and British troops for months in the southern part of the country from 2007 to 2011. He details corruption, incompetence, fear—by both allied troops and Afghan civilians—and a Groundhog Day kind of existence., where a battle fought for days has to be fought again, later. Most distressingly, he argues that the American and British publics are getting a misleading picture of progress on the ground. Battleland conducted this email chat with Anderson last weekend.

Why did you write No Worse Enemy: The Inside Story of the Chaotic Struggle for Afghanistan?
I’d been travelling to Helmand for five years, first in 2007 with the Brits, then later mostly with the U.S. Marines, covering every major operation since the war in the south was taken seriously.

Despite new troops, extra resources and new polices, it kept getting worse.

It was more dangerous for me and the troops I was with, Afghan security forces didn’t seem to be improving, and perhaps most importantly, locals were not being won over but instead were complaining of civilian casualties, damage to their homes, being inconvenienced and disrespected, or preyed upon by the Afghan police.

Yet in the second half of 2010, statements from Kabul, Washington and London kept talking of progress, goals being met and the Taliban being on their last legs.

This was the exact opposite of what I had been seeing, so I felt that I had to write this book.

I felt compelled to create a simple, honest and accurate portrait of what the war really looks like, on the ground, on the frontlines, where the policy met the Afghan people. I wanted to show how vicious the fighting was—veterans of Fallujah told me it was worse in Helmand…

I also wanted to show that the troops weren’t the violent automatons they are often thought to be and that they are often the exact opposite. There were plenty of guys who just wanted to kill anyone that looked like Taliban, for sure, but I also met many men who were thoughtful, compassionate, intelligent and even hilarious no matter how bad the situation was. Most of the men I met were also willing to question what, if anything, they were actually achieving, which really impressed me.

What is the book’s bottom line?
Despite the incredible hard work, bravery and suffering of our troops, despite the massive Afghan civilian casualties, despite the hundreds of billions spent, we have not achieved our goals in Afghanistan.

Essentially, we’re supposed to be clearing an area of insurgents and then persuading locals to choose us and our Afghan allies over the Taliban. Most areas where we are based have not been cleared of the Taliban and even if they had been, we’re fighting to introduce a largely unwelcome government.

The Afghan army cannot provide security on its own, the Afghan government is spectacularly corrupt and the police are feared and hated, for good reason.

So even if the military part of the strategy goes perfectly to plan (and it never does) the locals don’t want what we are offering.

It’s a hard pill to swallow, but I’ve been told countless times that locals prefer the Taliban to foreign forces and the Afghan government, particularly the police. I should point out that I’ve spent most of time in Afghanistan in Helmand and Kandahar, where the war has always been fiercest.

How different is what you saw on the front lines compared to what we’re being told back home?
It’s completely different.

Operation Mushtaraq in Marjah was a prime example.

General [Stanley] McChrystal’s claim that the operation was “Afghan-led” is one of the most ludicrous claims I’ve ever heard. It depressed me that the claim was accepted.

The same thing happened when Defense Secretary [Robert] Gates said that the Taliban had been routed from their homeland in Kandahar and Helmand. This claim was repeated by journalists I had once respected and followed. Again, it was the exact opposite of the truth.

You’re British: how does the mood about the war in the U.K. differ from that in the U.S., if it does (and if you’ve been in both places long enough to make a fair comparison)?
It’s the same in both countries. The vast majority of the public seems to have no idea how rough it is in southern Afghanistan, for our troops and the Afghan people.

People seem to want the troops home, and have no interest in anything beyond that. The last U.S. Marines I was with—3/5 in Sangin, suffered horrendous losses: 35 killed and 140 seriously injured, and I’m talking about double, triple and even quadruple amputees. Yet no one in the U.S. even seemed to know about it.

It’s the same in the U.K. now. I’d be surprised if one in 20 people here or in the U.S. could begin to explain why we are still there.

U.S. and allied generals tells us things are getting better inside Afghanistan, and they believe that by the time allied combat troops leave by the end of 2014, Afghanistan’s own security forces will be able to defend the nation. Do you believe them? Why or why not?
I’ve seen no evidence to suggest the ANSF are ready to take over.

You have to understand that it’s not a national security force. It’s the Northern Alliance, the historical enemies of the southern Pashtuns and the Taliban.

In the rush to get to Iraq, we handed control of the army, police and intelligence agency to the Northern Alliance, and the same old warlords whose behavior had led to the Taliban’s rise to power in 1996.

I think we were doomed to fail from that moment on. Southern Pashtuns often see the security forces we’re supporting as being almost as foreign as us and there for vengeance.

I was in the Arghandab valley in 2010 and the 101st Airborne were very nervous about clearing a village called NMK because they knew it would be laced with IEDs.

A few days before the operation, some Afghan soldiers ran into the village alone, and came back a few hours later, delighted. “How did you do it?” asked the American captain, astounded. “Did you offer the locals $50 for each IED they revealed, like we trained you?” “No,” said the ANA captain, excitedly, “we told them `show us the IEDs or start digging your own grave’.” That sums up the situation pretty well. Sadly I think that the phrase “transition” is a euphemism covering up our failures.

When were you last with US troops in Afghanistan? What was their general mood and morale?
January 2011, with 3/5 in Sangin. There were so many IEDs you had to watch every step and literally walk in the footprints of the guy in front of you.

The Marines were leaving trails of bottle tops or sweets to mark cleared paths. I didn’t see a bullet fired in anger, it was just IEDs.

Marines love to fight, but no one wants to go out on eight-hour patrols every day, through ice cold mud, when nothing ever happens apart from occasionally seeing one of their buddies get blown up.

Surprisingly though, morale wasn’t that low. I don’t think most troops in Afghanistan are fighting to achieve anything anymore. They’re just fighting for each other, trying to get themselves and their friends back in one piece, and maybe get some revenge against someone who may have killed or maimed one of their colleagues.

What was the worst thing you witnessed in Afghanistan?
I can still remember the exact expression on the faces of too many different families, either terrified of the fighting going on in and around their homes, or traumatized by the loss of their loved ones.

I’ve seen many Afghans who have lost almost their entire families to errant air strikes or rocket attacks. Some were given huge wads of cash as condolence payments, some actually showed me the corpses of their brothers, sisters or children.

You can only say “I’m sorry we killed your family, but we’re here to help you” so many times…

If you were in charge, what three changes would you make in Operation Enduring Freedom?
I think it’s just damage limitation now.

There is no silver bullet, there hasn’t been for at least five or six years.

People are worried about civil war after we leave. I think it’s already started.

I’d like to see some honesty used on the rare occasions when Afghanistan is discussed. And while the military effort draws down, I’d like to see a serious long-term commitment to the kind of development projects we should have started back in 2001.

What is going to happen to Afghanistan beginning in 2015?
I think the Taliban will be in control of many districts in the south almost immediately. I think that various warlords will once again have their fiefdoms and that this will be exacerbated by the reduction in foreign aid.

I think Afghanistan will disappear from our newspapers and will remain one of the poorest, most violent and corrupt countries on earth.

Paradoxically, the withdrawal gives me a tiny bit of hope that the insurgents in the south will stop fighting and laying IEDs once we’re no longer providing them with targets. But it’s a damning indictment of our efforts if the best thing we can do is leave.

Read More

A Day Job Waiting for a Kill Shot a World Away

By Elisabeth Bumiller, NY Times, July 29, 2012

HANCOCK FIELD AIR NATIONAL GUARD BASE, N.Y.—From his computer console here in the Syracuse suburbs, Col. D. Scott Brenton remotely flies a Reaper drone that beams back hundreds of hours of live video of insurgents, his intended targets, going about their daily lives 7,000 miles away in Afghanistan. Sometimes he and his team watch the same family compound for weeks.

“I see mothers with children, I see fathers with children, I see fathers with mothers, I see kids playing soccer,” Colonel Brenton said.

When the call comes for him to fire a missile and kill a militant—and only, Colonel Brenton said, when the women and children are not around—the hair on the back of his neck stands up, just as it did when he used to line up targets in his F-16 fighter jet.

Afterward, just like the old days, he compartmentalizes. “I feel no emotional attachment to the enemy,” he said. “I have a duty, and I execute the duty.”

Drones are not only revolutionizing American warfare but are also changing in profound ways the lives of the people who fly them.

Colonel Brenton acknowledges the peculiar new disconnect of fighting a telewar with a joystick and a throttle from his padded seat in American suburbia.

When he was deployed in Iraq, “you land and there’s no more weapons on your F-16, people have an idea of what you were just involved with.” Now he steps out of a dark room of video screens, his adrenaline still surging after squeezing the trigger, and commutes home past fast-food restaurants and convenience stores to help with homework—but always alone with what he has done.

“It’s a strange feeling,” he said. “No one in my immediate environment is aware of anything that occurred.”

Routinely thought of as robots that turn wars into sanitized video games, the drones have powerful cameras that bring war straight into a pilot’s face.

Although pilots speak glowingly of the good days, when they can look at a video feed and warn a ground patrol in Afghanistan about an ambush ahead, the Air Force is also moving chaplains and medics just outside drone operation centers to help pilots deal with the bad days—images of a child killed in error or a close-up of a Marine shot in a raid gone wrong.

Among the toughest psychological tasks is the close surveillance for aerial sniper missions, reminiscent of the East German Stasi officer absorbed by the people he spies on in the movie “The Lives of Others.” A drone pilot and his partner, a sensor operator who manipulates the aircraft’s camera, observe the habits of a militant as he plays with his children, talks to his wife and visits his neighbors. They then try to time their strike when, for example, his family is out at the market.

“They watch this guy do bad things and then his regular old life things,” said Col. Hernando Ortega, the chief of aerospace medicine for the Air Education Training Command, who helped conduct a study last year on the stresses on drone pilots. “At some point, some of the stuff might remind you of stuff you did yourself. You might gain a level of familiarity that makes it a little difficult to pull the trigger.”

Of a dozen pilots, sensor operators and supporting intelligence analysts recently interviewed from three American military bases, none acknowledged the kind of personal feelings for Afghans that would keep them awake at night after seeing the bloodshed left by missiles and bombs. But all spoke of a certain intimacy with Afghan family life that traditional pilots never see from 20,000 feet, and that even ground troops seldom experience.

“You see them wake up in the morning, do their work, go to sleep at night,” said Dave, an Air Force major who flew drones from 2007 to 2009 at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada and now trains drone pilots at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

Some pilots spoke of the roiling emotions after they fire a missile. (Only pilots, all of them officers, employ weapons for strikes.)

“There was good reason for killing the people that I did, and I go through it in my head over and over and over,” said Will, an Air Force officer who was a pilot at Creech and now trains others at Holloman. “But you never forget about it. It never just fades away, I don’t think—not for me.”

The complexities will only grow as the military struggles to keep up with a near insatiable demand for drones. The Air Force now has more than 1,300 drone pilots, about 300 less than it needs, stationed at 13 or more bases across the United States. They fly the unmanned aircraft mostly in Afghanistan. (The numbers do not include the classified program of the C.I.A., which conducts drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.) Although the Afghan war is winding down, the military expects drones to help compensate for fewer troops on the ground.

Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, said it was “conceivable” that drone pilots in the Air Force would outnumber those in cockpits in the foreseeable future, although he predicted that the Air Force would have traditional pilots for at least 30 more years.

Read More