Category Archives: Afghanistan Tour

The pot calling the kettle black-UPDATED

Image courtesy of www.bigstockphoto.com

That was the saying I grew up with when one person or group accused another of something that the original party was known to be guilty of.

Afghan investigators accused the American military Saturday of abusing detainees at its main prison in the country, bolstering calls by President Hamid Karzai for the U.S. to turn over control of the facility and complicating talks about America’s future role in Afghanistan.

The investigators also called for any detainee held without evidence to be freed, putting the U.S. and Afghan governments on a collision course in an issue that will decide the fate of hundreds of suspected Taliban and al-Qaida operatives captured by American forces and held indefinitely.

I read this over the weekend and was floored. I could not believe that anyone in the Afghan Government could honestly make this kind of accusation with a straight face. This is a country that essentially has no military justice system so they lock up their soldiers for infractions in the same place that they lock up detainees, in a Conex container. A standard shipping container with no power, toilet, heat, etc. Yes when a commander wants to punish a soldier or group of soldiers they lock them up in there for hours to days at a time.

If they capture enemy on the battlefield and they can’t easily get them back for interrogation the Afghan Army (and I assume some of the police) lock them up in the same type of location.

Karzai took Washington by surprise Thursday when he ordered that the U.S. military turn over full control of the prison outside Bagram Air Base within one month, a seemingly impossible deadline given U.S. security concerns about the prisoners and the Afghan government’s weak administrative capacity. The countries had been working on phasing a transfer of responsibility of the prison, which hold 3,000 detainees, over two years.

Not only do they lock them up in conex container, among other places but they also abuse them worse then I have ever heard about in this country. This is abuse I have seen first-hand. Continue reading →

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New Campaign Star Approved for OEF Medal

A new phase has been approved for the Afghanistan Campaign Medal (ACM) that will allow qualifying troops to add an additional campaign star. ACM campaign stars recognize a Servicemember’s participation in Defense Department-designated military campaigns in the medals area of eligibility. Servicemembers who have qualified for the ACM may display a bronze campaign star on their medal for each designated campaign phase in which they participated. These stars are worn on the suspension and campaign ribbon of the campaign medal. The new campaign phase is labeled “Transition I” and is in effect from this past July through a future date to be determined. For more information or to view the four previously approved ACM phases, please go to: www.armytimes.com/news/2011/11/military-new-campaign-star-approved-for-afghanistan-medal-110211w/

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Another very sad day in Afghanistan

It looks like Saturday has turned into another sad day for Coalition and our Afghan partners in Afghanistan.

Two suicide bombers, one of them a woman, blew themselves up, claiming at least four lives while an Afghan soldier shot dead four people, including three NATO soldiers, in Afghanistan Saturday, officials said.

A woman suicide bomber blew herself up next to the department of National Directorate for Security in Kunar province capital Assadabad, killing one person and injuring five others, including three policemen, an official told Xinhua.

The second suicide bomber blew up his explosives-laden car around 11.30 a.m. near a NATO convoy in Darul Aman road in the western part of Kabul Saturday morning, police spokesman Hashmat Stanikezy told Xinhua.

Meanwhile, an Afghan soldier opened fire and killed four people, including three NATO soldiers, and their local interpreter in Uruzgan province, said General Abdul Hamid Wardak, Afghan army commander in the southern region.

Reports are now coming out saying the VBIED (car-bomb) in Kabul killed 13 American service-members. When I first heard that I wondered “why 13?”, as it seemed like a weird number. You really can’t cram 13 in a HUMVEE or MRAP and since it was a convoy I doubt they could blow up three MRAPs from one VBIED. However I am now hearing it was an attack on a bus.

It was one of the Armored buses called a RHINO.

In Kabul, the suicide bomber targeted an armored bus that was part of a convoy of mine-resistant armored military vehicles traveling on a road in the southwest end of the city. NATO said there were “several” causalities among its forces and Afghan civilians, but did not provide details.

The Afghan Ministry of Interior said three Afghan civilians and one policeman died in the Kabul attack. Eight other Afghans — two members of the Afghan security forces and six civilians, including two children — were wounded, said Kabir Amiri, head of Kabul hospitals.

The attack occurred near the ladmark Darulaman Palace, the bombed-out seat of former Afghan kings. Continue reading →

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Too long in coming

Army Capt. Will Swenson has been recommended by the top U.S. general in Afghanistan for the Medal of Honor after widespread speculation about why his heroism had gone unrecognized, according to a published report.

Swenson braved enemy fire on Sept. 8, 2009, with Marine Cpl. Dakota Meyer, who will receive the nation’s top valor award Thursday at the White House. Meyer, now a sergeant in the Individual Ready Reserve, told Marine Corps Times recently that it was “ridiculous” Swenson already hadn’t received some form of valor award.

“I’ll put it this way,” the outspoken Meyer said in an interview. “If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be alive today.”

Marine Gen. John Allen, the top commander in Afghanistan, took a personal interest in the fierce firefight in Ganjgal, Afghanistan, that led to Meyer’s award, according to a report published on The Wall Street Journal’s website Wednesday night. The record of the battle was reopened last month, and “given the four-star general’s personal interest, sworn statements attesting to Capt. Swenson’s valor were quickly found.”

“Gen. Allen has since forwarded a Medal of Honor recommendation, saying it was the right thing to do despite a lapse of two years,” the report said.

As the story says (www.navytimes.com/news/2011/09/military-medal-of-honor-william-swenson-report-ganjgal-hero-recommended-091411w/) this has taken too long to make happen and I along with many others are highly suspicious why it took so long for this recommendation to go forward.

This delayed recommendation has several scandalous facets to it. First and foremost is that even thought Dakota Meyer was nominated for and received the Medal of Honor, CPT Swenson was not even put in for an Army Commendation Medal, much less anything near MoH or the MoH itself. As documented in multiple sworn statements, CPT Swenson was side by side, performing the same heroic actions as Dakota Meyer. Continue reading →

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Harboring the enemy makes you the enemy

I saw a story with a disturbing headline yesterday and I have to admit after reading it, I don’t seem to find anything wrong with this if it happened.

Villagers in Afghanistan say they were forced to walk ahead of Afghan and U.S. Soldiers along roads in areas believed to be mined by the Taliban.

National Public Radio reports villagers said the Afghan and U.S. troops pulled them from their homes one evening in early September and forced them to walk in front of the troops for more than a mile in the Panjwai district, southwest of Kandahar city.

No one was injured, but if the incident happened, it would appear to violate the Geneva Conventions governing treatment of civilians, NPR said.

Sure that may initially sound bad to the casual and ignorant observer, but the reality is that most of these people (especially those in places like Panjwaj district) are harboring and allowing Taliban and enemy fighters to operate there.

Regardless if it was Afghan soldiers or US soldiers who came up with this idea and executed it, the reality is that for a area to be a Taliban stronghold means the local populace supports them, which in turn makes them the enemy for the time-being.

The Panjwai district had been a Taliban stronghold until the U.S. troop surge in 2010 started to displace insurgents, NPR said. The Taliban now use roadside bombs and suicide bombers to fight there, said Faizal Mahmud, the deputy head of Panjwai’s council of elders. Continue reading →

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10 years ago today

It is hard to believe that ten years ago today we started the war in Afghanistan in retaliation to the attacks on our county on 9/11/11. I don’t think anyone in our country could have guessed this war would still be going on ten years later. Ten years of war and over two million Americans who have served in both Afghanistan and Iraq over that ten years, with thousands of them having served more than once.

There is no doubt our military is strained and tired, but boy they have experience in their craft like no other time in our country’s history. There is without a doubt our military is the best trained and experienced they have ever been. However that experience has come with quite a price, and I am not talking about money either.

Ten years and of living and fighting there and we are still ignorant of the people and their culture.

Former U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal said, on the eve of today’s tenth anniversary of the invasion, that the forces had a ‘frighteningly simplistic’ understanding of the country back in 2001.
And he said in remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations, reflecting on his period in charge of the coalition forces in 2009-10, that even after a decade they still lacked the knowledge required to bring the conflict to a successful end.

He said: ‘We didn’t know enough and we still don’t know enough. Most of us – me included – had a very superficial understanding of the situation and history, and we had a frighteningly simplistic view of recent history, the last 50 years.’
He said troops did not know the country’s languages and did not make ‘an effective effort’ to learn them when they arrived.
And he added that vital military resources were diverted to Iraq which could have been put to good use in the conflict.
Of the remaining tasks to be accomplished, he said the most difficult may be creating a legitimate government that ordinary Afghans can believe in.

Read more HERE

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Book Review: The Lions of Kandahar

Thanks to the many hours of personal time spent blogging, I have been lucky enough to have publishers and authors send me books to read and review. I have a stack of them next to my bed and I usually spend at least a few minutes every day reading. Some are good and some are just awesome. When I say “awesome” I mean can’t put it down awesome.

One of the books I just finished qualifies as “can’t put it down AWESOME”. It is called the Lions of Kandahar and is written by Special Forces Major Rusty Bradley and Kevin Maurer.

I have received a few books that talk about some awesome battle that nobody has heard about or what a tide-turner in the war on terror. Usually when they say that, my eyebrow raises with skepticism. The subtitle on this book does not say that, it just states “The Story of a Fight Against all Odds”. However once you get into the book reading about this one significant battle then it comes clear that the battle of Sperwan Ghar in Kandahar Province Afghanistan was truly a battle that shaped the war there not only that year but for years to come.

I am a big fan of James F. Christ’s books about huge but unknown battles in Afghanistan in his series that he has written about Embedded Training Teams (ETT). I am a fan, not only because I was an ETT, but several of them are written about battles that happened when I was there and many include people I know. Rusty’s book stuck with me for some of the same reasons. Even though he has multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq this book is written about one specific battle that happened in 2006, the same time I was there. In fact this battle was part of a larger operation called Operation Medusa. At the same time that Medusa was happening I was involved with Operation Mountain Fury which was a shaping operation for Meduda. So this book did strike a chord with me for that reason also. Continue reading →