Report from Afghanistan: 30 Oct. 09 - "Do you have enough gas to get back?"

Friday, October 30 2009

I’m not exactly sure where Congress and the President are on the subject of the Troop serge.  Personally I am on the fence myself.  More troops would be nice, but out here in the West I have no idea where we’d put them; as I have said in the past, the infrastructure out here barely supports us.  More troops in  RC South would possibly free up more of my Brigade to come out here, but I doubt that. We could use the help though.

Our mission is to train and mentor the Afghan Army and Police forces. It is probably the most important mission out here in the A-stan.  If we can get these people to defend themselves and feel secure with their own government then we can go home. Pretty simple.  So you’d think. 

There are two trains of thought or mentality out here. There are guys like me that think these guys will only be as good as they want to be. We can train them all day, we can push their staffs to use American style planning, logistics and accountability.  That will only last as long as we are watching.  We can show them how to do something, but the more we do it for them, the less they want to do it and/or expect us to do it for them. We become an enabler.

 They never learn. They send Soldiers out without enough food, without enough ammo, without a plan to keep them warm or re-supplied, because they know the Americans won’t let them fail. And most guys just can’t bear to see that. So they work themselves to death, forcing these guys to plan using all the crap we use, power point, working groups, targeting meetings. 

Me?  ” Hey, you knuckleheads better think about what you’re going to do when you get to where you’re going. Do you have enough gas to get back?”

” Where’s the boots we gave you? Your Kandak commander sold them? Too bad. What does his Brigade commander say about that? Oh, He took a kick back from that? Well I guess you’ll all walk bare foot, or go AWOL and then  when he doesn’t have Soldiers  the Corp Commander will have his ass for A, not having Soldiers B, not getting his cut and C, making him ask the Ministry of Defense for more stuff.”

 Oh hang on, you’ll just tell the Americans you don’t know where the stuff went and they’ll give you more.

Hey Mr. ANP it’s your fight. It’s us or the Taliban dude.  You better figure it out quick. I’m going home someday Haji. We’re taking all of our free stuff home with us and your government is going to have to start paying for it somehow.  Sometimes I wonder what’s going to happen when we do leave. Will they come up with some type of live and let live agreement with the Talib? Let them have their shadow governments like they do in a lot of these little villages? I think The Taliban have learned that helping Al Qeda is not good business. Those damn Arabs brought the Americans into all of this and ruined a good thing.

We can kill Taliban until our arms are tired. We have been killing a lot of them lately. To the point that they are stunned and have been hunkering down trying to figure out what happened. We not only killed quite a few leaders down in Shewan Village, we killed the number one gangsta and about 50 of his buddies here in Herat too, then while the factions were sorting themselves out to see who was next in charge, we whacked the next in line before he could even get started, the guy after that had enough and gave up, along with 70 of his buddies. They promised not to fight the government and turned in their weapons.

We bombed a few last week up north while in a TIC and ‘lo and behold attacks in the local vicinity stopped. We’ve given the local police some confidence. Some police chiefs in the districts are really just old War lords and their Policemen are their old Mujahedeen from the Russian days. The Afghans are a tribal society. They just wear uniforms and drive Land Rovers and wear bling that would make a Banana Republic Dictator blush. You’re in the Chicago land area so I’d bore you with tales of their amateur level corruption. What I always keep in the back of my mind is that it’s their Country. What do THEY want? If they want to be like America, then they can come to America. Other than that, hey whatever works for you Haj.

We lost 10 guys in a helicopter wreck last week. As much as the local Taliban Commander tried to claim he shot it down, the reality of it was instrument failure.  That Taliban Commander was getting his little band of Talib scrubbed from the face of the earth, he lost around 120 fighters. They weren’t in any condition to fire on the birds let alone conduct a counter attack.  I know this as true fact; I watched the whole thing on a plasma screen.  The mission was completed when the helicopter took off and hit a mountain. It was dark, there was a lot of dust and we watched as it slowly ground into the mountain on takeoff. 

So there you have it in a nutshell, the last three weeks of OCT in Afghanistan.  Next edition I’ll cover what it’s like working with NATO. We are under the command of the Italians out here, but work with the Spanish, Lithuanians, Albanians, Slovenians, Bulgarians and some weird cats from the US Navy.