In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan (29 page)

Alarmed at the violence, Neumann argued that the U.S. Congress should at least double the current aid to Afghanistan since, “if we take our hand off too early, it can still come apart on us.”
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Neumann asked for approximately $600 million for the fiscal year 2006 supplemental budget, but he received only $43 million, of which $11 mil
lion was for debt reduction for Afghanistan.
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He was outraged. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which vehemently opposed increased aid levels for Afghanistan, proved a major hindrance to funding. In his outbrief with President George W. Bush, Ambassador Neumann was blunt: “I would use a JDAM on OMB if I could,” referring to the joint direct attack munition, a guidance kit placed on the tail of a bomb that converted it from an unguided, or “dumb,” free-fall bomb into an accurately guided “smart” weapon. President Bush reportedly chuckled.
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Frustrations with OMB were not limited to U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. U.S. policymakers in Iraq were also frustrated with what L. Paul Bremer, administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, referred to as the petty “small-change struggle” with OMB bureaucrats.
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In a memo to Secretary Rumsfeld, for example, Bremer contended that the “assertion by OMB that it has authority over how Iraqi monies are used is an overreach of U.S. government authority.” OMB, he said, is “making efforts to speed up rehabilitation of the Iraqi economy more difficult and time consuming,” and he pleaded with Rumsfeld to “change this.”
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Rumsfeld had asked John Hamre, a former deputy secretary of defense under President Clinton, to go to Iraq with a team to assess the situation on the ground. In a private note to Rumsfeld, Hamre argued: “I was astounded to hear the constraints your low level folks live with to get money and contracts. It is taking up to 10 days for OMB to approve fund requests after you approve them.” He urged Rumsfeld to “take this opportunity to get OMB off your back now when the White House knows that we have problems in Iraq and need to give the CPA Administrator all the flexibility he needs.”
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Epic Battles

The years 2006 and 2007 witnessed some of the most intense battles since the Taliban was overthrown in 2001. Fighting became so fierce that British soldiers had to fix bayonets for hand-to-hand combat in Helmand Province against well-equipped Taliban militants. Beginning
in January 2006, troops from NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) started to replace U.S. troops in southern Afghanistan. The British 16th Air Assault Brigade, later reinforced by Royal Marines, formed the core of the force in southern Afghanistan, along with troops and helicopters from Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands. The initial force consisted of roughly 3,300 British soldiers, 2,500 Canadians, 1,963 Dutch, and forces from Denmark, Australia, and Estonia. Air support was provided by U.S., British, Dutch, Norwegian, and French combat aircraft and helicopters.

The British recognized the Taliban threat. “We underestimate, at our peril the resilience of the Taliban and its capacity to regenerate,” a British assessment acknowledged. “The Taliban gain influence and control of the population through coercion, intimidation, and their extensive tribal ties across Helmand.”
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In early February 2006, Afghan forces, backed by U.S. warplanes, engaged in intense fighting in the Sangin district of Helmand Province. The battle began the evening of February 2, when approximately 200 Taliban fighters targeted an Afghan police convoy. American A-10 ground-attack aircraft and B-52 bombers and British Harrier jets supported Afghan ground forces over two days of fighting, which resulted in about twenty Taliban deaths and seven Afghan police and soldiers killed. On February 13, four U.S. soldiers were killed when their Humvee was hit by a remote-controlled bomb while they were patrolling with Afghan National Army forces in the southern province of Oruzgan. The patrol then came under attack from small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, forcing it to call in U.S. Apache helicopter and B-52 bomber support. On March 1, one U.S. soldier was killed and two were wounded in a clash with Taliban insurgents in Oruzgan, after a roadside bomb destroyed a U.S. vehicle and U.S. forces engaged the insurgents. A week later, another roadside bomb killed four U.S. soldiers in eastern Afghanistan.

In response to Taliban penetration of the east, U.S. and ANA forces launched Operation Mountain Lion on March 25, 2006, in Kunar
Province, east of Kabul.
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On June 15, 2006, more than 11,000 U.S., British, Canadian, and Afghan troops engaged insurgents in southern Oruzgan and northern Helmand Provinces during Operation Mountain Thrust. The mission was designed to eradicate Taliban penetration in these provinces and establish a secure environment in which reconstruction could begin. Prior to the operations, these provinces had seen little military presence. During June and July, there was heavy fighting between NATO and Taliban forces, with the Taliban exhibiting a high degree of coordination in their combat operations. Despite the reported killing of more than 1,000 Taliban insurgents and the capture of almost 400 more, the Taliban continued to exert a presence in these areas. In early August, the Taliban mounted a number of ambushes against NATO forces.

As in many other operations, the insurgent response to Operation Mountain Thrust was to flee from the area and prepare to fight another day.
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This classic guerrilla tactic—especially against a more capable conventional adversary—was regularly used by mujahideen fighters during the Soviet War.

By the summer of 2006, the Taliban began to concentrate their efforts on southern Afghanistan—including Kandahar Province—in what would become one of the largest and most important battles of the war. “Truthfully, I was surprised by the resistance they put up,” said Canadian Major Geoff Abthorpe, commander of Bravo Company. “We came at them with what I perceived to be a pretty heavy fist.”
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The southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand represented the Taliban center of gravity. Since several key Taliban leaders came from Kandahar, they had one of their greatest support networks there. The Canadian military, which had just deployed to Kandahar, had not engaged in serious ground combat since the Korean War; their focus had been on peacekeeping operations in the Balkans and other locations. But they were eager to fight.

“I know about all this cultural sensitivity stuff,” said Canadian Sergeant John May. “But I am here to fight. If those [Taliban] are going to set ambushes and IEDs, I am going to kill them. That’s my job.”
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Operation Medusa

The Taliban had developed an important sanctuary in Panjwai and Zhare districts, located west of Kandahar City. The mujahideen had scored important victories there over the ill-fated Soviet 40th Army in the 1980s. Grapes and other fruit grew there, and the fields, vineyards, compounds, and ditches that dotted the landscape offered ideal defensive terrain for the Taliban, with a self-sustaining food supply.
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The city of Kandahar was the urban hub for Operation Medusa. The terrain was marked by Highway 1, which ran northeast to Kabul and northwest to Herat, and Highway 4, which ran south to Quetta, Pakistan. Kandahar Airfield, the headquarters of NATO operations in southern Afghanistan and a former Soviet air base, sat along Highway 4 to the south of the city. Panjwai and Zhare districts lay to the west, and the Arghandab River sliced through the area. The bulk of the activity during Operation Medusa took place in what became known as the “Pashmul pocket,” situated next to the town of Pashmul.

In July 2006, Canada’s Task Force Orion, with roughly 1,200 soldiers, saw a sharp increase of Taliban activity in Panjwai district. The local Taliban, who had long relied on small-unit attacks and ambushes throughout the area, were starting to control ground. The Taliban had allied themselves with local Nurzai tribes in Kandahar.
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On August 3, four soldiers were killed and ten were wounded near Pashmul in close fighting. Mao Zedong once wrote that insurgencies can be divided into three stages: (1) political preparation, (2) limited attacks, and (3) conventional war, typified by insurgents beginning to control territory and massing in large numbers. Lieutenant Colonel Omer Lavoie, commander of the Task Force 3–06 Battle Group, told his planning staff that this was “classic stage three of an insurgency.”

“Basically, they want us to become decisively engaged,” he said. No one, least of all the Canadians, had expected the Taliban to conduct conventional operations. Since 2002, the Taliban had used asymmetric tactics, such as ambushes and roadside bombs, to target NATO
and Afghan forces. “I have to admit that this is not where I expected to be,” Lavoie explained. “For the last six months I trained my battle group to fight a counterinsurgency, and now find that we are facing something a lot more like conventional warfare.”
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Over the last two weeks of August, Taliban forces became increasingly aggressive. They ambushed several convoys and regularly mortared Patrol Base Wilson, about twenty-five miles west of Kandahar City. They appeared to be looking for a fight, hoping to draw Canadian forces into a pitched battle. One of their most provocative moves was to take control of Highway I in Kandahar, setting up checkpoints and threatening the city. A legitimate government does not permit an insurgent group to administer a major roadway. The Canadian Expeditionary Force Command asserted: “The securing of these routes…was a vital phase in [Operation] MEDUSA.”
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NATO intelligence reports indicated that hundreds of Afghan civilians were fleeing Kandahar on a daily basis in fear of the Taliban.
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In an effort to roust the Taliban from one of their most important sanctuaries, the Canadian planning staff designed an effort to clear the eastern pocket of Panjwai district. The battle group they commanded consisted of three infantry companies, an artillery battery, a squadron of engineers, and an armored reconnaissance troop. Aerial reconnaissance assets monitored enemy movement when they moved in the open. By late August, a combined force of soldiers from the Canadian Task Force 3–06 Battle Group, Afghan National Army, United States, Dutch, and eventually Danish forces waited for H-hour—when the operation was set to begin. The Canadian brigade staff issued a warning to all noncombatants who lived in Panjwai to leave immediately. This left Taliban alone in the area, waiting for the fight they had surely been expecting.
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Air operations commenced on September 2, 2006, while ground forces positioned themselves in a pincer formation north and south of the district. Canadian artillery, made up of Echo Battery, 2nd Regiment Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, fired hundreds of 155-millimeter rounds into the area of operations. Apache helicopters from the Neth
erlands and the United Kingdom fired rockets and 30-millimeter cannons. Harrier jets from Britain’s Royal Air Force and F-16 Falcons from the Royal Netherlands Air Force dropped 500-pound bombs, and B-1B Lancer bombers from the U.S. Air Force dropped precision-guided munitions. As the attack unfolded, Canada’s Charles Company, under the command of Major Matthew Sprague, positioned itself at Ma’sum Ghar, across the Arghandab River from Pashmul. They established a firing line looking northwest toward the “white schoolhouse,” a known Taliban strongpoint.
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Bravo Company, under the command of Major Geoff Abthorpe, provided a screen in the north along Highway 1.

On September 3, Charles Company was ordered to cross the Arghandab River and move into Pashmul. Enemy resistance was stiff. The Taliban set up an ambush and destroyed several Canadian vehicles, killed four Canadian soldiers, and wounded nine in intense fighting. Explosions echoed across grape and pomegranate fields, and clouds of dust rose amid the greenery and mud houses. The Taliban used layered defensive positions with trenches and fought with recoilless rifles, mortars, RPG-7s, and machine guns.
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Under supporting fire from artillery and with close air support directed by forward air controllers, Charles Company made a tactical retreat back to the original Ma’sum Ghar firing line. They left behind three damaged vehicles: a bulldozer, a Mercedes Benz G-Wagon, and a LAV III in the vicinity of the white schoolhouse.
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The LAV III is an 8x8 wheeled vehicle that carries a 25-millimeter cannon and can reach top speeds of more than sixty miles per hour. It is vastly more rugged than the G-Wagon, a four-wheel sport utility vehicle also used in the field. Neither was a great loss, but the troops were unnerved by their retreat. On the same day, a British Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft had crashed, killing all on board. Despite these losses, aerial bombardment and artillery fire continued, along with fire from LAV IIIs and Coyote reconnaissance vehicles.

On September 4, close air support sorties engaged Taliban targets in the Pashmul pocket, including the white schoolhouse, which was leveled by a 500-pound bomb. That same day, Charles Company suf
fered another setback as a U.S. A-10 Thunderbolt mistakenly targeted Canadian forces, strafing the position of Charles Company with 30-millmeter high-explosive incendiary rounds. The attack killed Private Mark Graham, a member of Canada’s 4x400-meter relay team at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. “He was such a strong and sweet man,” his fiancé wrote in a statement after his death. “He had strong morals, values, ethics and they showed in everything he did.”
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In addition, thirty Canadians were wounded that day, including several senior noncommissioned officers and the company commander, Major Sprague. A Board of Inquiry report convened by Canadian Expeditionary Force Command found that the U.S. pilot had lost his situational awareness. He mistook a garbage fire at the Canadian location for his target, without verifying the target through his targeting pod and heads-up display. The forward air controller reacted immediately to the friendly-fire incident, screaming, “Abort! Abort! Abort!” on his radio.
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