Vowell vowed to take time to remember, on Memorial Day and Veterans Day, his men who lost their lives. “With their names inscribed on bracelets I now wear, I will remember and reflect. Then it’ll be time to put them away and focus forward until the next holiday, where I’ll bring their names out and remember yet again. It is how I will cope.”
Vowell now serves as operations officer on the 101st Airborne Division staff, a post once held by David Petraeus. Vowell’s picture hangs on the wall a few places down from Petraeus’s at division headquarters. “Not a day has gone by,” Vowell said, “that I don’t try to live up to his legacy and what would most certainly be his expectations.”
ALONE AND IN LIMBO, Major Fernando Lujan walked a hot and dusty road with Afghan forces from the 215th Corps in Nad-e Ali, Helmand Province, near Marjah. Like the handful of other integrated advisers on the ground, Lujan had developed a nuanced feel for the capabilities of the first Afghan forces patrolling independently in the transition sectors Karzai had identified in March. The security investigation Colonel Tanzola had initiated against Lujan and his colleagues on the Counterinsurgency Advisory and Assistance Team (CAAT) had been quietly buried, but so had the offending twenty-page report on his Zabul embed. Nonetheless, relations with the Marine colonel had improved. Tanzola had agreed to start processing Afghan-CAAT memos and including Afghan advisers like Major Kosh Sadat, Petraeus’s Afghan special forces aide, in CAAT communications. But Lujan had not yet succeeded in getting a Special Forces officer to replace himself in his work with the Afghans. He had little confidence that anything he had built over the past year would remain when he returned after rotating back to Washington.
A year earlier, as the Marines fought to solidify their hold on Marjah, Nad-e Ali had been a particularly bad place. U.S. and other NATO troops would almost surely draw fire once they’d moved a couple of hundred yards off any base, but now Lujan moved freely across the countryside, embedded in Afghan units, without incident. The poppy harvest was just ending, which meant the fighting season was about to resume. Lujan kept waiting for some spectacular attack, but it hadn’t happened—yet. He traveled from base to base with Afghans in a single Ford Ranger. This was totally counter to ISAF rules, which required him to move only in armored vehicles or MRAPs. Tanzola was under the impression that this was what Lujan was doing, but Lujan knew that waiting for armor to arrive would completely erode his credibility with the Afghans. He was taking more risk than he really wanted to, in terms of both his safety and his career, but he was doing what he needed to do to accomplish the mission. Besides, no one had said no.
He also knew that he had only one chance to make an impression on the Afghan commanders of the 215th Corps, who had seen plenty of U.S. advisers before him. After one embed with Afghan forces, Lujan was beside a stream when a group of Afghan soldiers surrounded him. They were curious about this American in an Afghan uniform who spoke their language and treated them respectfully. The hair on Lujan’s neck stood up. They pummeled him with probing questions.
“Are you a spy? What do you think of America? Are you trying to control our country? You’re an infidel.”
Lujan stayed calm. He responded in Dari. “No, I am not here to tell you what to do,” he said. “And we’re not leaving soon. I’ll be here for years,” he continued, trying to explain the Afghan Hands initiative. “I work for the corps commander, and I want to learn from you.” The situation was defused, but he remained cautious. Nobody knew exactly where he was right now, and he had very limited communication capability. But these were risks he was willing to take to build rapport and illustrate to the Afghan troops that he trusted them and genuinely wanted to help.
He’d been received by the 215th Corps commander in Helmand only because the commander of the 205th Corps, in Kandahar, with whom Lujan had bonded, had sent word to Helmand that “Jagaran (Major) Farid”—the nickname he’d been given—could be trusted. Lujan’s initial briefing in Dari did the trick. He was in with the commander. For the embed, Lujan asked for two officers to work with him—one from operations and one from intelligence. The ops officer, an older man, wore a belt buckle with a Soviet hammer and sickle—he had helped ambush the Soviet unit as a mujahideen fighter back in the 1980s. The intelligence officer had been in the military since he was fourteen and was skilled at mining intelligence from everyone he met on the streets and in villages. He spoke Pashto, Dari and Uzbek. If only the U.S. government had a cache of officers who could do the same, Lujan thought.
In his travels, Lujan had spent time observing the relationship between British troops and the Afghans. The Brits were trying what Lujan thought of as “tough love” with the Afghans, attempting to foster independence and avoid a dependency culture. But Lujan thought the disparities in living conditions were hard to justify. The British operated from bases with tents, air-conditioning, Porta-Johns and satellite television. Next door, the Afghans lived with open latrines and trash burning in open pits, the smoke blowing into the soldiers’ sleeping areas. The Brits told Lujan that the disparity didn’t affect their relationship. The Afghans asked him, “Why won’t they help us?” Lujan thought the Brits would be better off doing what Flynn had done in the Arghandab River Valley, treating the Afghans as equals and partners. He also thought the Americans and other international partners could do more to improve logistical support for Afghan troops. The theory at work was that denying the Afghans the matériel support ISAF received would keep them from becoming dependent on the foreigners. But Lujan thought the inequities were troubling in their own right.
Some aspects of the Afghans’ performance were troubling as well. He didn’t think the Afghan soldiers spent enough time communicating with Afghan villagers to understand their needs. Several Afghan officers told him that they would never sit and have tea with the locals, because it would invariably be a trap, or they would be poisoned. Lujan also came away from the embed feeling that these Afghan forces were overconfident. They would walk the same routes day after day, a poor operational practice they had adopted merely because they hadn’t been hit recently. They had a good intuitive feel for the countryside, but whenever Lujan would ask them precisely where they were on a map, they were always a mile or two off, which would have made calling in a quick-reaction force or artillery in the event of an attack a nightmare.
But Lujan believed ISAF and its Afghan partners were clearly winning. In his mind, there was no denying that they had taken terrain, and the initiative, from the Taliban. He heard this from Afghans everywhere he went: “‘Things are better. Last year we couldn’t even move two hundred meters down the road without being fired upon or hitting an IED. Now we can move all over our area. The Taliban are much weaker here. Local villagers are starting to be brave enough to send them away.” The change was real and palpable. Lujan also noticed a big difference between older Afghan officers and the new generation of younger ones. The younger officers were incredibly brave, throwing themselves into battle and sleeping on tiny bases with little but wire barriers protecting them. They were truly committed, and they gave him hope.
AS ISAF BEGAN to focus on the disruption campaign in the rugged mountains along the Pakistan border southeast of Kabul, the Currahee Brigade of the 101st Airborne joined forces with the Duke Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division in Paktika Province to clear terrain and shut down two infiltration routes from Pakistan. This area would not be ready for transition to Afghan control anytime soon, but the disruption mission remained critical until ISAF could reinforce the economy-of-force effort there. It was critical that the insurgents be forced to fight their way into Afghanistan and suffer losses as they did so.
A large-scale air assault launched the last major engagement fought by the Screaming Eagles in 2011. Captain Ed Churchill’s D Company of the Currahee Brigade’s 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, were flown into forbidding terrain on May 14 aboard twin-rotor Chinook helicopters. Insurgent fighters watched, gathered their weapons
and prepared to ambush their visitors. At 1:15 P.M. on May 16, insurgents opened fire on the company’s 3rd Platoon with machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire from four positions along a steep ridgeline. The barrage was so intense that Sergeant First Class Adam D. Petrone could see bullets striking rocks and shrubs around him as he dashed from position to position, desperately attempting to gain some semblance of fire superiority.
Churchill’s Dog Company had been assigned the task of securing two engagement areas and shutting down one of the infiltration routes, called “Route Civic.” Churchill was almost a mile away, on a hilltop overlooking the battlefield, when the insurgents opened up on 3rd Platoon. Just three hundred yards from the Pakistan border, Sergeant First Class Petrone left his fortified position and bounded across twenty-five yards of open ground to where Private First Class Christopher W. Mioduszewski was manning the only machine gun between the insurgents and his platoon’s exposed flank. Petrone showed him the insurgents’ positions, and Mioduszewski opened up with his MK-48, firing on multiple targets with his weapon set on cyclic, then rapid. Under fire himself from twenty-five insurgents, he covered a sector of nearly sixty-five degrees for three minutes, enabling 3rd Platoon to regain the initiative, move to covered and concealed positions and return fire. After Mioduszewski’s barrage, Petrone dashed back to his original position and radioed Captain Churchill with a battle update.
Insurgents continued firing a machine gun from the ridge, pinning down his men in three positions. When Petrone finally figured out where the fire was coming from, he marked the location with tracer fire for Private First Class James R. Morrison, the platoon’s best shot with a recoilless rifle. Morrison ran twenty yards through enemy fire to a spot from which he could set up his weapon, crouched and then fired two quick shots at the insurgents, who were as close as fifty yards away. The initial ambush was broken. Sporadic fire continued throughout the day as Churchill and Petrone called in air strikes and 105-mm artillery. But the insurgents, dug into caves and other rock formations on the side of the mountain, were shielded from 30-mm cannon fire and 2.75-inch rockets. At 7:00 P.M., Churchill called in an attack by a fighter bomber, which dropped a five-hundred-pound GPS-guided bomb on the insurgents’ position. When the bomb malfunctioned, the plane dropped another, silencing the enemy for the next several hours.
At 1:00 A.M. on May 17, Dog Company’s 1st Platoon and Headquarters Platoon moved to reinforce Petrone’s 3rd Platoon. In the darkness, Mioduszewski spotted the enemy with his night-vision goggles and fired on them as the platoon leader called in air strikes. When the enemy approached to within fifty yards of the company’s perimeter, Morrison left his primary position and maneuvered with his 90-mm recoilless rifle, firing at the insurgents at point-blank range.
As the company consolidated its position, Apache helicopters fired on an insurgent spotted near the area where the bombs had been dropped. The pilots soon realized that they were taking fire not from insurgents but from a Pakistani military base just over the border—the same base from which the insurgents had launched their attacks. After one helicopter was hit by small-arms fire, the other opened up on the Pakistani base. Insurgent fire then ceased for the rest of the day, allowing all of Churchill’s units to clear their objectives and establish a unified company position.
As dusk approached on May 18, the insurgents attacked again. They had reestablished three positions on the mountain above the force and were firing with machine guns and small arms. Churchill ran to the company’s easternmost gun position, directed automatic weapons and the 60-mm mortars to fire at all three insurgent positions, then ran back to his command post and called in air strikes and artillery. There was a lull, and Churchill reported to battalion headquarters. Minutes later, the insurgents attacked again, raining effective machine-gun and small-arms fire down on the eastern end of the company’s perimeter. Churchill ran back to the east, assessed the situation, organized fires and returned to the command post. First Lieutenant Chase M. Derbin played a similar role, moving from cluster to cluster to direct machine-gun fire at the insurgents from the company’s southernmost position. After the second attack was defeated, a sergeant in the Afghan Border Police fighting alongside the Americans saw insurgents running to the Pakistani military base on the Pakistan side of the border, dragging injured and dead comrades.
When Apaches arrived overhead, they saw two Mi-17 helicopters on the Pakistan side of the border, but the Pakistani aircraft turned south and headed down the border. The battle was over. Churchill’s company had blocked Route Civic and disrupted insurgent operations in the gap between the Gayan and Spera districts. There were no further insurgent attacks during the company’s final five weeks in Afghanistan.
As a result of the operation, the insurgents had lost their ability to affect the population, as well as the ability to move men, weapons and equipment across the border. The population had seen the enemy attack the Americans and their Afghan partners twice, and twice be defeated. Twenty-one insurgent fighters had been killed, with six wounded. Now Churchill worked with his partners in the Afghan military to move immediately into the villages and initiate security operations. Their message was simple, and powerful: We are here to protect you.
AMID THE NOISE and hubbub of Café Milano, the best place at ISAF headquarters, in Kabul, for cappuccino and free WiFi, Brigadier General H. R. McMaster spoke with confidence. With Petraeus’s strong support and help, he had assembled a small army of military and civilian go-getters, including top investigators from the FBI, the DEA, State and Treasury. But before they could begin fighting corruption, they had to understand the nature of the organizations they were up against. They soon realized that they were looking at organized crime—criminal networks fueled by international aid that often made even more money trafficking in Afghanistan’s number-one export, opium. And those working with the insurgents could then purchase Afghanistan’s top imports: weapons and fertilizer, for use in making roadside bombs. McMaster’s team had to understand how these networks worked with one another internally, and how they worked externally with criminal syndicates in Pakistan and places like Dubai.
As ever, the Afghans understood their country far better than the Americans ever would, so working closely with trusted Afghans was the key. With Afghanistan invariably ranked as one of the world’s most corrupt nations, McMaster and his cohorts also had to find a way to talk about and describe the problem without insulting their hosts. They finally constructed a narrative that everyone could buy into: Corruption in the country was the by-product of thirty years of conflict. Vast amounts of international assistance had flowed in without adequate oversight, and the government lacked strong institutions that might have been able to ensure transparency and accountability. Part of the problem stemmed from how the wars had been funded in the past—by dumping huge amounts of money on proxy forces, followed by various political settlements that empowered the warlords, whose corruption then solidified their strength and power. The Afghans—at least those working with McMaster—could see how corruption robbed the state of revenues, perpetuated dependence upon international aid, weakened institutions, undermined the legitimacy of the government and eroded international support.
The first key to Shafafiyat’s progress had come through the counterinsurgency contracting guidance that McMaster had drafted and Petraeus had edited and then signed on September 8. Before that, the Americans were ostensibly letting contractors operate the way they did back home—hiring a prime contractor and letting him police all the subcontractors. It was too much work to do otherwise. But in Afghanistan, McMaster learned, you had to know who the subcontractors were, because some of them were skimming money and underwriting the Taliban. Petraeus said in the counterinsurgency manual that “money is ammunition,” and McMaster was finding that U.S. aid had—unintentionally, through inadequate contracting practices—been giving ammunition to the enemy. Now, in accordance with the contracting guidance, to
win a contract, a contractor had to name all of his subs; and McMaster now had sufficient intelligence to figure out who the subs were—and to track them on the job. As Petraeus noted in the contracting guidance, “If money is ammunition, then we need to get it into the right hands.” Now, if strange things started happening to the money, there were real consequences: suspension and debarment, which meant no more lucrative contracts for three to four years. “If you want to make money with contracts, you better start policing your own end of the business, right?” McMaster said. “Because if you get debarred, you’re not gonna have that business opportunity.”
When McMaster had started his work nearly a year earlier, more than a few eyebrows had been raised by those in Kabul’s vast international mission: Why were Petraeus and the military focusing on corruption? Didn’t Petraeus have enough to worry about on the battlefield? Petraeus and McMaster, however, had quickly recognized that if the so-called criminal patronage networks were not taken on, they would destroy the very Afghan governmental institutions to which ISAF and the international community were soon to begin transferring important tasks. The mission was not, therefore, optional; it was critical to the overall effort. So McMaster had launched his assessment, and made progress, recognizing over time that Petraeus’s ability to achieve “unity of effort” among all the players—military and civilian, Afghan, American and international—allowed for the progress through his task force.
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