"A Sherman can give you a very nice... edge."- Oddball, 
I heard about this earlier (CBC I think). I doubt it's the beginning of a Phase III operation. Unfortunately, the report is very vague on who the "insurgents" were. Maybe the CJTF-82 newsfeed will have some more details.
Combat Outpost Penetrated in Afghanistan, 9 dead
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25663321/
No one else seems to have brought this up yet.
It appears that this remote unit (not sure if PLT or CO) had the perimeter breached by Taliban before being repulsed by the defenders and aircraft.
I am suprised that "several hundred" Taliban were able to mass and do this kind of assault. Will be interesting to find out if the perimeter was inflitrated first and then assaulted externally (infiltration), or if the perimeter was overrun by attacking militants.
Not a good sign when the enemy is massed and organized enough to do this.
Are we in/headed for Phase III insurgency in Afghanistan? I haven't read about such pitched battles of this scale before in OEF. From reading "Bear Went Over the Mountain" I know this was common for the Russians.
Thoughts?
I heard about this earlier (CBC I think). I doubt it's the beginning of a Phase III operation. Unfortunately, the report is very vague on who the "insurgents" were. Maybe the CJTF-82 newsfeed will have some more details.
Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
Senior Research Fellow,
The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
Carleton University
http://marctyrrell.com/
I think it's more a sign of how pathetically undermanned we are in Afghanistan. I'm confident the problem will be addressed though I fear we may get a band aid instead of all the troops we need.Originally Posted by Cavguy
B) Don't stop now Gian. Your message needs to be heard.
C) We need COIN in Pakistan. Even better if the Pakistanis do it, but until we get a "population centric approach" in Pakistan the bad guys will be able to run away every time we have a tactical advantage.
Mixed messages, R.A.
C. trumps A. (There is no 'A' but I'm guessing the first paragraph could be one) and B is of marginal, if any, relevance in this case. I doubt C. can or will be fixed in the near term therefor A will be of only limited utility.
I'd also suggest that A. is incorrect in that a Company or Platoon sized outpost will always be tempting to the bad guys. The option is to do a Sanchez and cluster in large, well defended bases -- that should be a non-starter. War is risky, you can obviate the risk by excessive concentration on force protection (or Mass...) but that will rarely be effective. You've got to put the troops out to get the job done and Platoons, even Companies, will be risked when one does that -- it goes with the territory.
CNN reported that an "observation platform" was overrun. The base itsself wasn't. Someone who knows what they're talking about can comment further, but it sounds to me like someone may have made a fatal mistake. Sounds like the platform was set up so that the bad guys could generate an intense volume of fire on it from civilian buildings, but the good guys couldn't return fire en masse because of the civilians.
Details are still sketchy, but if the deceased were more worried about being amongst the population than ensuring they always had a firepower advantage, then B is very relevant. (Assuming my assumptions are correct of course, which they may not be.)
unit size and tactics
NY Times just posted article on the battle:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/wo...afghan.html?hp
Article provides details on the US/Afghan positions and militant tactics and plan. The US occupied the base only a few days ago, and were not finished with construction. They left their previous base because of repeated attacks. They also believe a airstrike that killed civilians may have turned many of the local populace against the US/ANA, though the area is easily infiltrated by fighters.
"The Taliban insurgents who attacked a remote American-run outpost near the Pakistan border on Sunday numbered nearly 200 fighters, almost three times the size of the allied force, and some breached the NATO compound in a coordinated assault that took the defenders by surprise, Western officials said Monday.
The attackers were driven back in a pitched four-hour battle, and appeared to suffer scores of dead and wounded of their own, but the toll they inflicted was sobering. The base and a nearby observation post were manned by just 45 American troops and 25 Afghan soldiers, two senior allied officials said, asking for anonymity while an investigation is under way."
"American and Afghan forces started building the makeshift base just last week and its defenses were not fully in place, said one senior allied official. In some places, troops were using their vehicles as barriers against insurgents.
The militants apparently detected the vulnerability and moved quickly to exploit it in a pre-dawn assault in which they attacked from two directions, American officials said."
While I would not characterize them as common, friends of mine who have served in Afghanistan have told me that their bases have been attacked in larger scale attacks similar to this one from time to time though perhaps not as large. The Fox News arcticle mentions that Chechens are known to operate in the area. That might explain the success of this attack. I am told that ordinary Afghans are not particularly spectacular fighters but the Chechans are brutal and very competant.
SFC W
PPPPPPP. The seven Ps always are with us.
People will do that. Poor planning kills more than poor execution. Shame we're not all infallible but we aren't; errors will be made -- and more numbers of troops just mean more errors.Possibly true; some of the pictures I've seen of the siting and construction of OPs leave me furious that such tactical incompetence is allowed; that and the tendency to bunch up or herd. ALL the western Armies are bad on both those points. That's why I keep ranting about better training and concentrating on the basics, it's the little things that get you killed and it is criminal to have to learn how to do it right while under fire when that just is not necessary....Sounds like the platform was set up so that the bad guys could generate an intense volume of fire on it from civilian buildings, but the good guys couldn't return fire en masse because of the civilians.Not sure B is relevant even in that case. Gian wants High Intensity Conflict / warfare training and advocates greater application of force -- I presume the latter is that to which you refer while I was essentially referring to the former. I did that because the harsher application of force is not an option. Rightly or wrongly international consensus and current US Government guidance is to minimize civilian casualties even to the extent of increasing own casualties. This, if that is the case, will be just one more out of many in both theaters where our attempts to minimize civilian casualties has increased our own. Whether you, Gian or I -- or the Troops in contact -- agree or not is immaterial; that's the guidance and it is highly unlikely to change barring an existential war.Details are still sketchy, but if the deceased were more worried about being amongst the population than ensuring they always had a firepower advantage, then B is very relevant. (Assuming my assumptions are correct of course, which they may not be.)
I suspect they were more worried about minimizing civilian casualties than they were about being among the population though the OP was established in that location in an effort to control the population. As I've said elsewhere, controlling the population isn't all that easy, may not be all that desirable and as I said above, it entails putting Platoons out where they become targets -- the option being to adopt a fortress mentality (which IMO is not at all a good idea). Counterinsurgency is not fun or nice, mostly due to that factor; if it's done correctly, the friendly casualty count is always going to go up (one reason why doing it right was deliberately avoided by many senior people in the early days in both Afghanistan and Iraq). The seven Ps? Piss Poor Prior Planning Promotes Poor Performance. They've been around even longer than I have...
Possibly, but check out this thread. Absent new movement, reports of Chechens in significant numbers in Afghanistan are questionable, if not myth. IIRC, the infamous 'Chechens' at Anaconda turned out to be Uzbek. The Afghans would call non-Arab foreign fighters 'Chechens', which led to the mix up.
High intensity ops in Afghanistan
The bad guys have massed before in Afghanistan. When I served there in 2006-7, the US border outposts were from time to time subjected to attacks that required the employment of claymores and final protective fires - that pretty much defines for me high-intensity, if only on a localized scale. We thought these were typically used to mask the infiltration of larger/high-value groups across the border. And in and around Helmand province there were Canadian-led assaults against large numbers of bad guys. They used the ruined irrigation system as ready-made entrenchments, covered obstacles with fire, and held-back reserves capable of rudimentary fire and maneuver. Eavesdropping reminded me of the NTC at times, with engineers being used to breach obstacles, danger-close air support, and integration of artillery with maneuver.
It's one reason the Canadians shipped tanks to Afghanistan.
Sorry to hear that. Would be interested in what the story is that can be told short of SIPR. (Or on SIPR, PM/email me).
Niel
The Taleban operated in Kandahar and Helmand Provinces and other parts of the South in groups of some 400, possibly even 500, on occasion. Practically as Light Infantry Battalions, and at times they would manoeuvre groups of around 100 to ambush Allied troops, using the high ground (go figure). That mostly ended after Operation MEDUSA in the summer of 2006, and with the exception of Musa Qala, the Taleban more or less cooled it after that, until recently of course. As Eden noted, the willingness of the Taleban to come out and go toe-to-toe in a pseudo-conventional slugfest was what compelled the Canadians to drop the light stuff and go back to MBTs and tracked APCs; it also caused them to evacuate their more exposed outposts, permanently.
It seems that Pak Army junior officers (presumably no longer on Active Service) are displacing Arab and Central Asian (especially Tajiks) types as the main instructional cadres for the Taleban. This is not a good development. And I am getting the feeling again that some of the seemingly exaggerated news reports that came out of the Korengal Valley a few months ago were perhaps not as inaccurate as subsequent official reports asserted.
Under statement!
Norfolk,
Over a long period on SWC and elsewhere comment on the official and unofficial linkages between the Pakistani state and the Taliban have appeared. Invariably with ISI being the culprit, although large chunks of it's manpower are seconded from the Army.
Now this indication. The Pakistani Army allows for long periods of leave, for harvesting and the like - Stephen Cohen's book has several paragraphs on this, from memory for other ranks and not officers. It has been suggested by those who study the Pakistani Army that increasing numbers of officers have been radicalised, although the Army officially disowns this.
Or is this just a public airing of the suspicion that the long established ISI / Army support for the Taliban has taken a new form?
I am reliably informed from open sources and analyst(s) that nothing has changed - support for the Taliban remains a national policy decision? Policy in this area remains the perogative of the military (Army).
davidbfpo
Yes, I was a tad sloppy in trying to express my thoughts. While ISI (along with trainers/operatives attached from the Army) have had their hands in this for decades, what worries me about it is the relative (and absolute) decline of the Arab/Caucasian/Central Asian cadres that used to predominate in the training camps, and their supplantment on a large scale by former Pakistani officers. The ties have been there for the better part of three decades, but Pakistani involvement has perhaps not been this high or this vital to the Taleban since the 90's. With the deaths of so many of the Arab, Chechen, and Central Asian cadres over the past several years, the war has become rather less a war against al-Qaeda and its Taleban supporters per se, and more and more a proxy war with powerful official elements within Pakistan itself. A war that is increasingly as much about internal dynamics within Pakistan as in Afghanistan.
Last edited by Norfolk; 07-15-2008 at 11:33 PM.
Think before writing
In this case you're writing about current ongoing operations, so please consider operations security and respect for the families of the fallen, some who may not have been notified yet. This tragic incident is germane to small wars, but it is the wrong time to discuss it unless it is via secure means.
US troops pull out of Afghan base after attack
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULTBy AMIR SHAH
Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- U.S. and Afghan troops have abandoned a remote outpost in eastern Afghanistan where militants killed nine American soldiers this week, officials said Wednesday.
Compounding the military setback, insurgents quickly seized the village of Wanat in Nuristan province after driving out the handful of police left behind to defend government offices, Afghan officials said.
Some 50 officers were headed to the area to try to regain control, said Ghoolam Farouq, a senior provincial police official.
Sorry if this was posted elsewhere....is this true?
I apologize, I did not in any way intend to breach OPSEC. What I have been writing about comes from newspaper reports (and particularly Canadian ones - and also on my old Regiment's public site) over the past couple years. The specific events that I described occurred two years ago.
Edited to Add:
As to the alleged Pakistani ex-junior officers in the training camps, that was also reported in the papers, not taken from official sources. Once again, my apologies.
Last edited by Norfolk; 07-16-2008 at 09:15 PM.
I don't think he was specifically targeting you - he was also reminding me and RYNO to deal sensitively with operational details of casualties, and in the appropriate forums.
A good reminder from time to time.
Thank-you. Just the same, as you said, a good reminder to watch what I say.
I have read a number of accounts of what happened. All open source and accounts vary wildly.
It seems the only thing they have in common was a temporary outpost was overun resulting in 9 US dead and 15 wounded. Some say 4 ANA were wounded as well. Reports of militant casualties are from 15 to 100+. They, for the most part, are also reporting that ISAF patrols will continue in the area. Some are reporting that the militants held the outpost. Some reports are stating that they have moved on.
The reported size of militant force has been placed at 200+ vs 45 US and 25 ANA. Even with those parameters the 101st did a good accounting for themselves and gave them hell.
Some reports says 'Taliban' some say insurgents some say enemy combatants. Truth is it was probably a breif joining of various groups (my theory). This outpost could very well have been seen as a threat to keeping the border open which is something the various criminal elements, smugglers (gems, wood, drugs, humans), Taliban and militants want in common.
Good old fog of water that is being stirred up by reporters who don't know jack from shinola.
To me it is looking more and more like a joint raid against an outpost that could have had a detrimental effect for various counter government groups.
My concern is 1) where was the air support during the attack? 2) if the militants did take the outpost after the US pulled it's soldiers then why wasn't it hit by artillery or air power 3)
Final thought: One thing that is clear is that the perpetrators of the attack need to be tracked down swiflty and hit hard by boots on the ground and not by air power. Don't let this incident become a precident or rally cry.
Last edited by Darksaga; 07-17-2008 at 09:52 AM. Reason: Edit to add final thought
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