In The Graveyard of Fuel Tankers
For the first time in this conflict it appears that Taliban fighters are moving out of the “Southern Triangle” of Nangarhar Province and attempting to interdict the road to Kabul. The latest attack was on 6 August and it occurred much further east than the series of attacks last summer which we think emanated out of Laghman Province and features the impressive shooting of The RPG Mechanic. The 6 August attack happened in broad daylight at around 0800 in the morning (I just missed it having left that day for Kabul at 0700) and the ambush team stayed on scene to fight with the ANP for around an hour pulling out only after American soldiers arrived on scene.
This was the targeted tanker - it took multiple hits to the cab and tanker from small arms fire and an RPG hit to the external fuel tank behing the cab
Shem Bot with the able assistance of Canadian John went out to have a look see and he reports the following: 20 or so bad guys moved into a refugee settlement from the ridge line of the Tor Ghar mountains (Black Mountains.) They dug hasty fighting positions and whacked a fuel tanker then stayed around to fight with the ANP who have been set up along the road living in poorly made fighting holes since last fall. This kind of thing causes the traffic to halt and back up which essentially blocks the road and isolates the fight. Afghans always fill all lanes and road shoulders to push up as close as humanly possible to a road blockage knowing full well that by doing so they will extend the length and time of the blockage. It is some sort of congenital reaction to orderly lines or the concept of waiting ones turn. I have seen Afghans jumping a 100 person line at the Dubai airport look mystified when they are forced to go to the back of the line to wait their turn. Anyway an ambush like this will normally make the movement of reinforcements into the fight impossible. But somehow within an hour the American Army had worked its way through the jam and was able to join the fight with their mortars and heavy machineguns which forced the bad guys to retreat.
RPG strike - not the work of the Mechanic who would never waste a rocket like this - he consistently hit the cabs killing the drivers last summer...we have no idea what he had against fule truck drivers but I bet Steven King could come up with a good story line about it
There is a problem with this whole scenario and that is how the hell do a squad of Taliban move over the Tor Ghar mountains, dig in and ambush a fuel tanker, break contact when the Americans show up and withdraw back over the mountains without being hit by 300 to 400 rounds of 30mm cannon fire by an Apache? I think I found out the answer inadvertently when I was down south with the Marines last week. The Marines are shooting rockets – a lot of them and I was chatting up the 3 who told me he has been meeting with spacemen. Pray tell why? I asked and he told me the new generation of the Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) goes so high that you have to de-conflict the missile track with satellites and other stuff hanging out in space. I then asked why shoot rockets and he said because we cannot get clearance to use Tac Air fast enough given the new ROE put in place by Gen McChrystal.
It seems to me that the Taliban understands this ROE change and know that as long as they are operating near civilians we will not whack them. How else do you explain 20 armed guys moving several kilometers in broad daylight through the densely populated, strategically important Kabul river delta? A year ago there would have been so many attack birds stacked over these deadbeats they would have needed an airborne controller to keep them from hitting each other.
Michael Yonis down south with the Marines and sent this very cool picture of a CH-47 landing in brownout conditions. It takes a ton of both skill and guts to land a bird in these kinds of conditions
This cannot be considered good news and it will make it much easier for the Taliban to actually backup some of the BS they have been spouting lately about cutting the roads during the upcoming presidential elections. Air-power is how we fight when we want to be asymmetrical and we are good at it. However our FOB bound operational mindset has created opportunities for Afghan score settling which is how we have been tricked into bombing wedding parties or warning the only physician in Nuristan to flee his clinic and then killing him and all the nurses and midwife too as they pulled out in their vehicle. Due to our over reliance on technology and local informants we have created a more level playing field for the bad guys who clearly understand they are, for now, safe from our ground attack aviation assets. Just in time for the elections too….unbelievable.
The way forward is not allowing the very same senior military and civilian leaders directly responsible for creating the Big Box FOB method of warfare to place even great constraints on the junior men doing the fighting. They are not changing the Rules of Engagement (ROE) because those rules proved ineffective at protecting men in contact by pounding the bad guys to parade rest. They are changing the rules based on pressure concerning civilian casualties and in doing so they use statistics which are completely wrong. Let me provide a quick example to prove what I say is true. A convoy of fuel trucks are attacked by Talib fighters and in that attack 20 PSC guards and 15 tanker drivers are killed. Are they civilian casualties or military combatants who have fallen in the good fight? Under current polices (which are not standardized among the UN, military, ANSO or Afghan security forces) they are civilians. Looking at the same dynamic from our perspective an isolated village provides food, shelter, safe haven, weapons and ammo storage and grade A hashish to Taliban fighters. Those fighters later attack an Afghan police checkpoint and a predator follows them back to their local safe harbor allowing it’s controllers to call in fast movers and light the place up. The compound owner, his wife and kids are killed in the ensuing air strike….are they civilians or fighters?
I have been a consistent and harsh critic of the way we have used air strikes which have resulted in the killing of innocent civilians and only innocent civilians. That stems directly from the over reliance on technology and “trusted” government officials which can be traced directly to senior officers practicing the risk avoidance paradigm which serves them so well in the peacetime military. That is bad tactics and bad tactics offend me as I am a purist and also a realist when it comes to the art of war. Riskless war is the fools gold of our high tech era. The Captains Journal, using excerpts from Vampire Six and the FRI blog has the best write up on the topic I have seen right here.
Expended brass in one of the fighting positions used on the 6 August tanker ambush. 20 armed men should not be allowed to walk anywhere in Afghanistan without feeling the heat of an airborne targeting laser on their neck just before the lights go out for good. Photo by The Shem Bot
In war people die; the currency spent by battle commanders is blood. Many of those who perish are innocents which is why the professional does not enjoy war, seek combat or prolong conflict. Our leaders are prolonging conflict by restricting the use of our decisive combat arm. They say they are doing this to avoid civilian casualties yet we know from history that this is a consideration to which we pay lip service only when it is convenient to do so. Do you think those same commanders were worried about civilian casualties when they had an American platoon surround and in danger of being overrun at Wanat last year? Of course not – they leveled that village and I’m glad they did because those cats were all combatants in my eyes. Of course the children inside that village were innocents and no military professional wants to be forced into killing innocents but the enemy has a vote in how battles turn out too. In war people die; that is why it is called war. It is in everyone’s best interest to get this shit over quickly and to beat the enemy decisivly. It is not important how wars start; how the end is critical. When the enemy is beaten and knows he is beaten wars end. Until we reach that point we will spend blood, our blood, their blood and the blood of innocents. The longer this is allowed to continue the more we are going to bleed….it is now as it always has been which is why we need to finish it. And the only way to finish it is to kill the Big T Taliban when and where we find them regardless of how many innocents are in the blast radius.
Comments | 
Bravo! The last paragraph says it all. I agree. War should never be seen as a long term engagement, yet I feel as though we are lacking decisive pack leaders with a central focus.
I can say on the stateside, there are very serious things that will happen if we keep treating this conflict as a combination social exercise and philosophical debate. The first is more lives will be lost. The second is that the public it will continue to move off the radar of the vast majority of Americans who don’t serve. Once people stop caring, 8 years can easily turn in 16. And those fighting will have an increasingly hard time at re-integrating back into civilian life, as well as seeing their needed health benefits whittled down by a congress perpetually out to “save taxes” (as happened with Vietnam vets). And the voices of dissent (whether or not they agree with one another, after all, there’s diversity in the ranks) will grow weaker and seem more marginalized.
Tim,
The loss of our TACAIR has not missed the Taliban, they are sure to adapt their TTPs and start ‘hugging’ civilians as they ambush and attack their targets. The one sad estimation I see combat commanders make is to label these guys as ‘dumb’ or ‘incapable’, these idiots can and will continue to fight and they are not tied to some FOB or retarded CONOP process that makes their ability to move mired in bullsh!t from on high. These low tech idiots are fighting their fight on their terms, and we continue to play into their hands due to politics and risk aversion.
Anyway, the American public and politico’s cannot have it both ways — winning wars without civilian casualties is a fallacy. No decent Marine or Soldier wants to kill an innocent civilian, but like any guerilla war it’s hard determine good guy from bad guy in Afghanistan. My experiences in Afghanistan have taught me that if we simple “unleashed the dogs” and pushed the fight from RC South and RC East to inside the Pakistan border by five kilometers would see a less capable Taliban fighting force….I will quickly digress since this thought in itself is an even larger fallacy considering our political and military decision machine!!
In the end, I still think our ticket out will come from the same methodology as in Iraq — buy some limited time of relative ’stability’, train the locals (police and Army), and then leave calling it a success and whatever the end game (i.e. civil war, which we will see in Iraq and once again along sectarian lines (Shia, Sunni, and Kurd)) it won’t be our fault since we did what we were suppose to — bought time for the Afghans to fix this problem themselves. I expect to see SECSTATE and POTUS beating up on Karazai in the Fall as they demand he take more steps to ensure the security of his own nation. Pay attention to the game plan because it will look a lot like how we whipped PM Maliki around in the press almost two years ago…
The Taliban will remain an entity within Afghanistan and not restricted to the south either. One eyed Omar has stated several times he wants the whole enchilada (circa pre-9/11) with the Taliban in control of Kabul. Expect violence to spike in an effort to disrupt and more importantly discredit the upcoming election process. Then I expect the Taliban will follow our script once POTUS shows his cards in the Fall/Winter. I expect an announcement from the White House within four months or so following the Afghan elections (by the end of the year, beginning of next as we enter mid-term U.S. election cycle) where the administration will announce a tentative end to this so-called Afghanistan “surge”…read this to mean “we’re not staying for much longer” and if their on point beating up Karazai at the same time to “take action” then we move further along from disavowing ourselves of any long term failure in Afghanistan.
The Taliban will probably reduce operations this winter allowing us some ’success’ which will prompt us to claim success and ultimately leave sooner. The Taliban can and will await our certain withdrawal from the country. Once the U.S. presence diminishes it will be game on like Donkey Kong and the ANA and ANP will start getting their asses handed to them and quickly the Taliban will retake what was theirs starting in the south. I expect this to happen either next summer or the Fall of 2010…no later since we will be entering the U.S. Presidential election cycle and the POTUS will not have much to tout as success in Afghanistan. Remember he claimed to ’surge’ and then turn this thing over, so he has to do this within one term…the second term is never guaranteed.
I guess this is what we call counter-insurgency today. I am sure many pundits out there will disagree and tell me that we are making success across Afghanistan and I do not doubt this… I am certain there are small successes occuring every day in villages and cities all across Afghanistan but these are not mutually supporting accomplishments and in the end we still lack an over-arching grand strategy (economic, military, and political) that will see Afghanistan through the next 10 years.
I really hope I am wrong and all my assessments prove false…
“Politics is the tail that wags the military dog” — Anonymous
Stay safe out there.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 08/10/2009 News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.
Tim,
Saw you quoted by the CSM online following the latest Taliban suicide car bomb attack in Kabul today. Interestingly, Reueters is reporting that GEN McChrystal will deliver his assessment of the situation following the elections. All this is reading like a poorly written strategy of finding the solution before identifying the problem. President Karazai and his two swindling brothers (esp. Ahmed Wali, who by the way speaks under DoD contract for events overseas and in CONUS at a price of about $2,000 a day!!) could be run out of town for a start. Then POTUS names Ambassador Eikenberry as interim ruler/leader of Afghanistan and we try martial law for a while conducting an effective COIN strategy (which would include chasing out every corrupt politician and security official) while at the same time putting in place those leaders and officials who have the best interest of Afghanistan writ large vice these dopes they have running Kabul today.
Anyway, mirror imaging this latest attack it appears the Taliban have struck their enemy’s heart of security — Kabul. If they can sneak a car bomb within 100 meters of ISAF headquarters what does that portend for the future?
Stay safe out there…
I think one thing which we can learn from history is that long term engagements (such as Operation Banner in Northern Ireland, Britain in Aiden & the Yemen, etc) is that they tend to be very bloody and that all sides lose legitimacy with civilians as time passes and the atrocities build.
At the same time, a long term conflict tends to dissolution and moderate even the most hawkish of commander regardless of the side they sit on. The question is how long will it be before the various groups in Afghanistan currently opposing NATO will turn to the negotiating table and ballot box rather than pick up the gun? Years? Decades? Definitely no time soon.
Bloody indeed… I don’t think these various groups that oppose NATO will never NOT pick-up the gun. The history of Afghanistan shows that when all else fails fall back on the tribe and the gun. American intervention is mostly seen as temporary in the eyes of most Afghans and Pakistani’s. They have seen us come and go before (our support to the jihad ended once the Soviets withdrew) so they are simply awaiting the withdrawal of US support (again). In the meantime, the Taliban are more than happy to wage their own campaign to rally against the ‘foreign invaders’ which is a unifying theme among the disparate groups in Afghanistan.
Between our intervention efforts and the Taliban’s jihad is the fight over perception. US mil-gov must be perceived as improving Afghanistan long term (this fight is and will be waged in the American media which will parrot whatever they hear from US officials in Kabul, Bagram, and D.C.)…free lancing journalists from the MSM ended in Vietnam. The military and government will not allow indepent MSM reporters to caravan the countryside telling their own story…anyway…
Near term look for a lot of US-Afghan “partnering” at the tactical and operational level with a focus on securing population centers and Lines of Communications. A big push in increasing the size of the ANA, ANP, and ABP is happening now! What will be ignored is how these institutions will be infilitrated and corrupted from within and again the metric for success isn’t the abolishment of the opium trade, destroying the Taliban/HQN/AQN safe havens (which are all in Pakistan), or ensuring a non-corrupt political entity is left to steer the ship but rather the perception that our efforts were successful.
In the final analysis conditions will be measured through perception and political realities here in the United States. If POTUS should get a resurgence in popularity and the Dems should hold the majority following the mid-term elections then you will see some room for shifting time lines should the Afghans and the bad guys not follow our script. If POTUS is getting hammered because the war is costing too much and the political perception at home among voters is unfriendly toward Afghanistan and POTUS in general then expect the perception spin machine to churn faster. Currently, the USG Integrated Civ-Mil Campaign Plan is timed out to around 2011-2012, so expect them stay on message within those dates.
2009-2010 expect to hear success after success that US forces are routing the Taliban in the Helmand River Valley and throughout Kandahar Province. In part, this is accurate but even the tactical commanders will admit they are mostly dispersing the bad guys and not really destroying/defeating them. This Fall/Winter expect an increase in US-Afghan patrols and security outposts throughout Afghanistan (mostly in cities)while at the same time beefing up MSR security.
2010-2011 expect to see substantial increases in the numbers of ANA, ANP, and ABP in uniform as we dump billions into funding these units. Also some moves toward reducing opium production but this will be limited and not forever. There is way too much money to be made by the warlord drug dealers and NATO and US forces are too small in number to do it all — secure population centers, train and partner with Afghan forces, and go after irreconciliables while at the same time counter-drug production is too much for even a surge force to accomplish.
2011-2012 expect to see decreases in Taliban attacks due to allowing the Taliban to exist in some shape or form will be inevitable. The ‘irreconciliables’ will have been rounded up and gone. Good luck finding someone that can tell you the difference between a reconciliable Taliban and one that isn’t… My guess is the smart ones will stop publically decrying death to Americans until after we leave. The more die hard ones will fight on regardless…and those safe havens in Pakistan? Probably still intact and operating as usual…
Anyway, we call it what we call it but I tend to believe the last time the US military defeated anyone with any lasting and changing effect was WWII against the Axis in Italy, Germany, and ultimately Japan. The ‘win’ in all this machination is short term perceptions of success driven by political standings and polls at home.