Afghan commanders: Operation Anaconda a failure

AP via canoe.ca ^ | March 17, 2002

[dixie sass]

Ping

[JamesWilson]

"Americans don't listen to anyone," said Cmdr. Abdul Wali Zardran.

What?

[SauronOfMordor]

The Afghan commanders have their own agenda, which may include taking bribes to allow the Talibunnies to escape. By being kept in the background, we are hurting their cash flow

[ImpBill]

No offense taken. Sounds as if you know and have experience on how the "game" is played. I continue to have "faith" in the current command but "faith without works" is short lived. Rummy seems to tell it like it is, but the Command needs to zip up the lips of these IO's and certainly needs to keep the "press" in the dark, only allowing "them" to play their little guessing games, which are consistently wrong.

I wish I could ignore the nagging surges I am feeling, but I can't. And we simply can not be drawn into another "guerrilla war" without end. I am all for using tactical WMD if that is what it takes to put a punctuation mark on this thing. Either that or simply pull out now and build "Fortress America".

I am smelling incrementalism and it is more pungent than Napalm in the morning.

[grimalkin]

When I was in the military, we had a name for leaders such as these, but I can't repeat it on this site.

My father (who is a Vietnam vet) just told me a few. He also had some advice: don't trust flakes... makes sense to me.

[Beenliedto]

If we had listened to them during the entirety of this operation, we'd be in deep s**t.

And of course we're not.

[The Wizard]

sounds to me like these guys were shown up and have had to take a back seat to real fighting men.....

[EODGUY]

Since you dad and I are of the same era, I am confident the names he gave you are the same ones I couldn't print.

EODGUY

[Beenliedto]

Our forces are in Afghanistan to rout and destroy terrorists

And, of course, to secure the country politically so that construction of the pipeline can begin.

[Jefferson1776]

Let's just declare victory and leave. Been done before under George the First and the people fell for it.

[Eternal_Bear]

Let Afghans fight Afghans. It's been a tribal mess for thousands of years. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda have been smashed. The remnants can be handled by other Afghans. Time to declare mission accomplished and leave like the Brits and the Russians did. Let's not wait around for a Gandamakh. Do we really want to keep that place as a colony?

[CrossCheck]

This is the third source I've seen this morning that indicates that we managed to kill around 50 of the bad guys, not the 400-500 mentioned by others. I certainly don't know which is correct, but I'd sure like to know. I think we ignore what the Afghanistanis are saying at our peril. They've been at this business for years.

[EODGUY]

When I use the term "forces", I only include those military men and women below command staff level. They are the ones who are where the action is and risk their lives.

Politicians and politically motivated command staff lapdogs may indeed see this as a two-pronged war, one to eliminate terrorists and the second to create a political environment that will grant the US access to Afghan oil deposits.

The true warriors are the ones who suffer when local military leaders elect to turn tail and attempt to cover their cowardly backsides by demeaning the successes of our forces.

[Whilom]

We'll have to restrain our emotions and listen to good sense and experience if we are to succeed in suppressing Taliban and al-Qaeda elements in Afghanistan. Apart from the terrorists, two contending forces are opposed here. One is the U.S. military, which has the strong inclination to "go big on the ground" because that's where promotions are for mid- and senior-level officers. The other is the media, including most of the U.S. media, which has the strong inclination to report negatively about all U.S. military activity. Some of them want to see us defeated in Afghanistan because that would serve their political agenda in the U.S.

While Afghan miliary commanders are willing, even eager, to portray U.S. forces as inexperienced and their leadership as inept (we are, after all, foreigners as are al-Qaeda), there is more than a grain of reality in their view. As long as the terrorists have a sanctuary in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, they cannot be defeated by bombs and frontal assault in Afghanistan -- as the Russians learned. Afghans have a hunch that we will soon tire of tearing up the landscape and go somewhere else. I have a hunch they are right.

If we let the U.S. military move large land forces into Afghanistan and "fight the last war," we will greatly regret it. If we let the media establish the measures of success then act as referee in this conflict, we will greatly regret it. (One example: the media have already gone far in establishing that if U.S. forces suffer any casualties in any firefight, the terrorists win it.)

There are no big promotions for military bureaucrats in successful waging of war against determined, experienced guerillas. The rules are few but implacable. You cannot permit them to have a sanctuary for resting, regrouping, and resupplying. You cannot bring them to set-piece battle where our superior technology is overwhelming. You can use superior technology as it was used at the Whale's Back -- to make a regrouping force disperse. Frontal assault is a useful device in further encouraging the guerilla force to disperse, but the key elements are blocking and tracking by mobile small-unit tactical teams of special forces trained especially for this kind of warfare. This we failed to do in Gardez, where Afghan troops were the (porous) blocking force that permitted the guerillas to disperse into surrounding villages or flee into sanctuary in Pakistan's nearby Northwest Frontier Province. (You have to remember that our Afghan allies are interested in their own success and survival, not ours.) Thus, we expended a great deal of force for little visible result. Ergo, in the media's reporting, we lost the battle (further proof being that Americans were killed).

We will have other chances, that's for sure. The Afghans and al-Queda will be there just as long as we want to stay. Apart from utter genocide (killing everyone in Afghanistan), there is no way to bring this kind of conflict to a successful military conclusion </> with a permanent resolution. To succeed we must accomplish a temporary conclusion with a temporary resolution -- reduce Taliban and al-Qaeda effectiveness for the short-term to where they cannot dominate Afghanistan and cannot organize terror strikes against the U.S. on our soil. To succeed in the long-term we must succeed step-by-step in the short-term. The battle at the Whale's Back was not a step in the right direction.

[vannrox]

"Operation Anaconda...is an incredible success," said Maj. Bryan Hilferty, spokesman of the U.S. 10th Mountain Division.


Afghan commanders... stated that...the recent U.S. offensive against al-Qaida fighters in eastern Afghanistan failed


The Afgans are angered that the US no longer relies on the Northerm Alliance to battle the enemy. The US forces started to minimize the intelligence given to the N.O. commanders, and regulated them to minor activites when the mountain of evidence of their complicity with the enemy become overwhelming.


Initially, it was thought that the Taliban escapes were accidental. Then it was believed that it was part of the culture there. Then, it was found out that payoffs and bribes were involved. The final event was when over 5000 Taliban prisoners, captured by US forces, were turned over to the N.O. for treatment. And then, after a period of two nights they were released.


Since then, the N.O. has been left out of all military action. Their involvement is minimized, because their trustworthyness has been compromised.

[B4Ranch]

I haven't seen any evidence that we are getting permission from the UN to bomb selected targets.........YET! This certainly effected our bombing success in NV.

[ImpBill]

Well I don't know about the UN, but I do recall in the "other war" that we had all sorts of different "fire zones" of which not many were "free fire zones". Many we had to have permission from regional civilian authorities (rife with cong influence), regional military authorities (man of whom were not to be trusted), and in other instances only a Bridage CO or higher could get and then give us permission to "rain death" on the little buggers. I could lauch into a war story here but will stiffle it.

Bottom line is that each day we are in Afganistan "cleaning up" I get the "mission creep" heebie jeebies.

[Free the USA]

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[Snow Bunny]

Hi my dear friend.Thank you for the ping. I agree with your post so much. Thank you!!!!!