98 posts tagged “afghanistan”

.

Why Winning Matters

by Chuck Holton His blog....Boots on the Ground

I don't claim to be an expert on the war in Afghanistan. But for the last month or so, I've had the privilege of living with a bunch of people to whom I would give that classification - men and women who are in the war zone, putting their lives on the line every day.

And from my conversations with these experts, I've come to the conclusion that there are three main reasons why winning in Afghanistan is vital to our nation and to all those who claim the Christian faith. (Let me be clear that I don't count those two groups as one and the same, but neither are they mutually exclusive.)

Two of the reasons we need to win are practical, and one is philosophical.

1. The Taliban

If the world body were to abandon Afghanistan tomorrow, the country would revert to Taliban rule in very short order. This isn't because the Afghan people necessarily desire to live under extreme Sharia law. But without anyone to protect them from the Taliban, these brutal extremists will have free reign over much of the country, with the Panjshir valley a notable exception.

The opium trade would flourish, giving the Taliban millions in cash with which to extend their military reign of terror, and America's enemies like Al Qaeda would have won a vital strategic location from which to plot and execute attacks on our interests around the globe.

2. Opium

Ninety percent of the world's illegal opium comes from Afghanistan. Not only does every kilo of heroin produced there materially benefit those who have sworn to destroy us, every kilo actually DOES possibly destroy some small part of Western civilization by ruining lives that might otherwise be productive.

We need to be in Afghanistan for the same reason we need to be in Colombia - and have been for more than two decades. Heroin is an insidious weapon that poisons free societies. We need to be investing heavily in countering this threat around the world - not just in Afghanistan, but especially there.

3. Freedom

For some people in America, saying "we're over there fighting for freedom" has become a worn-out phrase since 9/11. But from a Christian standpoint, consider this: There isn't a single established Christian church in Afghanistan today. About 99 percent of all Afghans are Muslim.

And they should have every right to BE Muslim if that is what they choose, but that's the point - there is no choice in Afghanistan today. If an Afghan wants to be Buddhist, or gnostic, or Christian, or anything other than Muslim, he either hides his beliefs or potentially forfeits his life.

The last time I checked, our Declaration of Independence still reads,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...

I see nothing in this assertion that excludes men who don't happen to be Americans. I'm not saying this war is some kind of religious crusade to spread Christendom to the uttermost parts of the earth - but I'm saying America was founded on the belief that every man deserves the right to control his own destiny. And that's not a right enjoyed by most Afghans today.

Why does this matter to our national security? America has always stood as a beacon of hope for the opressed around the world. It is this fact that has made our nation great - we stand for liberty. Many countries enjoy bountiful natural resources. Many cultures embody a strong work ethic. These traits don't set the United States apart - liberty does.

Once that light begins to fade - so too will America.

American Troops in Afghanistan Losing Heart, says Army Chaplin

American soldiers serving in Afghanistan are depressed and deeply disillusioned, according to the chaplains of two US battalions that have spent nine months on the front line in the war against the Taleban.

Many feel that they are risking their lives — and that colleagues have died — for a futile mission and an Afghan population that does nothing to help them, the chaplains told The Times in their makeshift chapel on this fortress-like base in a dusty, brown valley southwest of Kabul.

“The many soldiers who come to see us have a sense of futility and anger about being here. They are really in a state of depression and despair and just want to get back to their families,” said Captain Jeff Masengale, of the 10th Mountain Division’s 2-87 Infantry Battalion.

“They feel they are risking their lives for progress that’s hard to discern,” said Captain Sam Rico, of the Division’s 4-25 Field Artillery Battalion. “They are tired, strained, confused and just want to get through.” The chaplains said that they were speaking out because the men could not.

The base is not, it has to be said, obviously downcast, and many troops do not share the chaplains’ assessment. The soldiers are, by nature and training, upbeat, driven by a strong sense of duty, and they do their jobs as best they can. Re-enlistment rates are surprisingly good for the 2-87, though poor for the 4-25. Several men approached by The Times, however, readily admitted that their morale had slumped.

“We’re lost — that’s how I feel. I’m not exactly sure why we’re here,” said Specialist Raquime Mercer, 20, whose closest friend was shot dead by a renegade Afghan policeman last Friday. “I need a clear-cut purpose if I’m going to get hurt out here or if I’m going to die.”

Sergeant Christopher Hughes, 37, from Detroit, has lost six colleagues and survived two roadside bombs. Asked if the mission was worthwhile, he replied: “If I knew exactly what the mission was, probably so, but I don’t.”

The only soldiers who thought it was going well “work in an office, not on the ground”. In his opinion “the whole country is going to s***”. Read the rest of the article here.

Mudville Gazette is doing a wonderful work of keeping up to date reporting about our much appreciated troops in Afghanistan

.

.
These great images are taken by Chuck Holton. You can see more of these great images here.

.
Taliban Fighters Attack Outposts, U.S. Troops Killed in Battle
The Washington Post

Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 4, 2009; 11:55 AM

KABUL, Oct. 4 -- Firing rockets and rifles, Taliban militiamen attacked American and Afghan military outposts in a daylong siege on Saturday that killed eight U.S. soldiers and two Afghan security forces in one of the deadliest battles in months, according to U.S. and Afghan officials.

.

Over a village in southern Afghanistan, an American helicopter circles and lands. Armed men jump out and huddle near a compound wall. A translator speaking through a megaphone announces a police action and says the men are coming in.
It's one of the most politically unstable corners of the world, but the men aren't on a typical mission for troops in Afghanistan. In fact, they aren't even soldiers, and, despite what it looks like, this is not a U.S. military operation. This is the American Drug Enforcement Administration....
.

.

08/29/2009 - U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Greensage provides security during a reconnaissance patrol in the Nawa district of the Helmand province of Afghanistan Aug. 29, 2009. Greensage is assigned to Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment and deployed with Regimental Combat Team 3 to conduct counterinsurgency operations in partnership with the Afghan National Security Forces in southern Afghanistan. (DoD photo by Lance Cpl. Phillip Elgie, U.S. Marine Corps/Released)

.

Pat Dollards

MIANPOSHTEH, Afghanistan — For seven hours, the Marine sniper team waited, crouching behind a concrete block in a dusty courtyard, at the edge of an adobe compound. They were pretty sure that a group of local Taliban militants was on the other side of the compound wall. But the snipers couldn’t strike until they had some proof.

So they stayed there, in silence. They downed energy drinks to stay awake. They urinated in bottles and defecated in bags, so they wouldn’t leave evidence of their presence behind.

Team leader Sgt. Erik Rue kept himself sharp by running scenarios in his head of what could happen next: What if the Taliban burst in, guns blazing? What if they enter unarmed? What if there are children in the way? What if the courtyard is overrun by the militants? Where do we go then?

U.S. Marines and Taliban guerrillas have battled in the villages and compounds of this farming community nearly every day for eight weeks. It’s become one of the epicenters of America’s renewed war effort in Afghanistan. But during most of those shootouts, the two sides have been hundreds, even thousands, of feet apart. On Tuesday, they fought at point-blank range.

And despite all those hours of what-ifs, Rue and his team couldn’t have predicted how this gunfight would play out. By the time it was over, at least two men were dead. Another took a bullet to the chest but escaped unharmed. And another had his gun shot out of his hands. Four more survived what should have been a lethal bomb blast. “It was a fuckin’ pretty eventful day, to say the least,” Rue says.

After waiting for so long, the sniper team decided to try something new to flush out their targets. Rue — a smallish, slight military brat with a clean-shaven head and world-weary brown eyes — whispered into his radio to his headquarters, about a mile away.

Bring some helicopters overhead, he said, and make a low pass. The guys over the compound wall might start shooting at the helos. And then we’ll have proof of their hostile intent. The helicopters — already circling over another group of Marines engaged in a firefight — began to swoop in towards the snipers’ position. They made their pass.

But the men on the other side of the wall didn’t take the bait. If they had guns, they didn’t bother shooting them at the Cobra gunship and the Huey attack chopper.

Staff Sgt. Doug Webb was getting sick of waiting. The tattooed, twitchy Long Island, New York, native wanted to figure out if these guys were Taliban or not. Right now.

He scooted into a small room, adjacent to the courtyard. On the western wall of the room, at floor level, was a yard-wide “mousehole.” Webb lay his chest on the floor, and stuck his face in the hole.

At first, all he could see were ankles and feet. All he could hear were four male voices, speaking Pashto. Then he recognized a single word: “Taliban.” Webb looked up, and saw that one of the men had a vest packed with ammunition. And an AK-47.

Webb came back into the courtyard — and almost got shot himself. He surprised his teammate, Sgt. Nick Worth, who drew a pistol on him. “Whoa!” Webb whispered. Worth returned the gun to its holster.

“Man, I just saw a guy with an old-school mujahideen chest rig and a weapon,” Webb whispered excitedly. But the guy — and his three pals — appeared to be walking away from the snipers on a north-south trail, at the compound’s edge. If the snipers were going to attack, they had to do it right away,

“Fuck it. Now or never,” Rue said. He sent three snipers to the roof, and ran out of the courtyard with three others: Sgt. Ryan Steinbacker, Cpl. Fred Gardner, and Worth. They entered an east-west alleyway, perpendicular to the trail that Webb had spied through his mousehole.

They reached the intersection, and saw one man in the distance to their left. Luckily, he didn’t see them in the alleyway. Then, a second man, wearing brown tunic and a black hat, turned the corner. He was maybe five feet from the snipers. His eyes widened with surprise.

“I gave him half a second. He swung around his AK,” said Worth, who was carrying a Benelli 1014 shotgun. “Then I put four buckshot rounds in his chest.” Rue added a few more shots. The man crumpled to the ground.

A third man in a white robe was in the distance, about 150 feet to the north. He raised his AK-47 and fired at the snipers. Steinbacker dropped to one knee and shot the man with his M4. He dropped.

Almost immediately, a barrage of bullets came flying in directly at the snipers, from the cornfields in the west and from the trees to the east. Clearly, there were more than four militants on the area. Many, many more. And some of them could shoot.

Lance Cpl. Justin Kuhel, positioned on the roof, had the M203 grenade launcher blasted out of his hand. Lance Cpl. Justin Black, next to him, took a shot in the center of his chest. It spun him around. He collapsed on his forearms.

“It felt like I got hit with a hammer,” Black says. He reached his hand underneath his armor plates. Luckily, there was no blood.

But Black was clearly in trouble. “After I got hit, I’m laying there. And I saw rounds hit right in front of me. I thought, ‘Man, this might be it.’”

It was another now-or-never point for the Marines. The fire from the corn was about to separate the sniper groups from one another — and make them much easier to pick off. “Pull back! Pull back!” Rue yelled.

They ran back to the courtyard, and took up guarding positions at the entrances. “Hey, are you all right? Are you all right?” the snipers asked each other.

They gawked at Black’s perforated chest plate, and wondered how the hell he was still alive. The snipers knew he wasn’t the only lucky one; that storm of lead from the cornfield could’ve killed any of them. “I felt invincible until then,” Black says. “Then it’s, ‘Aw, fuck. I can get shot.’”

The gunshots died down, for a minute. Rue’s mind turned to those two Taliban bodies, outside on the trail. American forces could glean valuable information from their weapons, their documents, their radios, their fingerprints. But the Taliban were famous for removing their dead almost instantly.

Once again, it was now-or-never time. Rue and Webb went out to get the bodies. The Marines grabbed the first dead militant by the ankles, and dragged it back into the courtyard. He had his AK-47 still slung across his chest, and a rice bag, filled with ammunition.

Again, the Marines took fire from at least two different positions in the corn. Again, the fire died down. It was time to make a run for the second body. They hurled themselves into the alleyway, and made a right on the trail.

Ordinarily, Marines here have avoided these obvious footpaths; local militants have turned the trails into death traps, filled with improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. But there was no time to cut through the fields. As they moved, Webb noticed a purple sack. “I bet this guy left us a little present,” he thought. “That’s probably a bomb.”

That’s when the thing exploded.

A thunderous boom rang out. A cloud of dirt engulfed the snipers. Webb fell forward. “I saw a white flash and stars, like I got hit in the face,” he says. Days later, he’s complaining of memory losses. Webb and several other members of the team have been diagnosed with concussions. But somehow, none of them were seriously hurt.

“That’s fucking it! Everyone back inside!” Rue shouted. In a daze, they stumbled back to the courtyard.

Not long after, a handful of infantrymen from a Marine platoon wandered into the compound. They were later joined by the rest of their squad, and a second unit from nearby Echo company.

The firefight continued. But now it was the Taliban who were outgunned. The Cobra and the Huey blasted thousands of rounds into the treelines and buildings that the militants were using as firing positions.

That allowed the sniper team a chance to exit the battle, nearly 12 hours after they had first slipped into that courtyard. Scampering along the side of a canal, they walked out as they entered — in silence.

Rue, for one, is still surprised they made it all back intact. “Being that close to the IED blast and everyone walking away — that’s a miracle,” he says. “Receiving such heavy fire down an exit point without getting shot — that’s a miracle. And two guys getting shot and not getting hurt. That’s in the category of a miracle, too.”

Echo company and the Taliban are still battling around those compounds, more than 36 hours after the sniper team’s initial attack. But the conflict has returned to its normal routine. The two sides are back to firing at each other from hundreds of yards away, not right up-close.

And the sniper team has been confined to base to recover from that harrowing morning.

.

.

.

Thousands of Marines have descended upon the Helmand River valley in Afghanistan, a Taliban stronghold that is known for poppy growing.
.

.

.