THE PLANK SEPTEMBER 22, 2009
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This is the sort of thing that's awfully hard to explain to the American people:
In early July, Afghan President Hamid Karzai asked senior U.S. officials to dispatch a company of about 100 U.S. soldiers to Barge Matal, a village in the northern half of the province that is home to fewer than 500 people. Taliban insurgents had overrun the community and Karzai was insistent that that U.S. and Afghan forces wrest it back from the enemy. "I don't think anyone in the U.S. military wanted to be up there," said a senior military official who oversees troops fighting in the village.
Senior military officials had hoped to be out of Barge Matal in about a week, but the deployment has stretched on for more than two months as U.S. and Afghan forces have battled Taliban insurgents. Some insurgents seemed to be moving into the area from neighboring Pakistan solely to fight the U.S. troops there, said military officials. At least one U.S. soldier has been killed and several have been wounded.
The Post says McChrystal is moving U.S. troops from such remote areas and relocating them to population centers where they can be put to better use. This makes sense. In particular, it would be quite helpful if those troops can provide security for reconstruction projects--roads, generators, water pumps--which show Afghans what the U.S. and the central government can do for them. And perhaps if people in these now-unpatrolled remote areas see the good things happening elsewhere, they will be less hospitable to the Taliban. Regardless, I certainly wouldn't be keen to die for a tiny town simply because Karzai--whose motives can't be trusted--insisted on its defense.
2 comments
Here's a fix for the current strategy in these remote locations. Once the village has been taken, we send in mining teams, subcontractors from Pakistan perhaps, who will create a series of underground tunnels at least 20 m deep, with accommodations for our people and the entire population of the village their livestock everything, with a sufficient stockpile of food and water for at least a week. Then when the Taliban attempt to retake the village, our people along with the residents immediately retreat underground. Once the insurgents move into the village and establish themselves, our forces then fire and cluster bomb the entire location laying waste to the entire mountainside. Flame rinse repeat if you will. Then our people and the villagers emerge and reestablish operations and everyday life. Ideally you would wipe out the entire insurgent force each time, eventually winning by attrition.
- AaronBBrown
September 22, 2009 at 11:17am
Reminds me of a story in Marshal Zhukov's memoirs about the Battle of Moscow in December 1941. According to the memoirs, Stalin heard on the radio that the Germans took a town near Moscow called Dedovsk and insisted that the Russians immediately counter-attack and retake the town. Zhukov, who was leading the theater-wide defense of Moscow, inquired with his local commanders and found out that the Germans were not in Dedovsk but did take a nearby village named Dedovo. Since Zhukov couldn't contradict Stalin but also couldn't risk Stalin finding out that he was mistaken about anything, Zhukov personally gathered up some troops and tanks and led a counterattack that cleared a platoon of Germans out of the village, then reported to the Kremlin that the Germans were expelled from both Dedovsk and its nearby villages. If Hamid Karzai is reading this somewhere, he probably wishes he had that kind of power over generals!
- wildboy
September 22, 2009 at 11:27am