Explaining My Time in Afghanistan

Every time I talk about my experiences in Afghanistan I have a hard time getting all of the salient points into a quick conversation. I am especially aware of the boredom factor for the listener when I get going on the topic. This probably explains why veterans of any sort seem to bond with fellow veterans, especially those who are familiar with the same area and conflict. One big fact that it is hard to get across is the difference between Afghanistan and Iraq.

To begin with there is often an unfair comparison between Iraq and Afghanistan and the assumption is that they are very similar combat zones. When all is said and done, Iraq was a pretty modern country that had some significant infrastructure prior to the current conflict; especially the roads. Anytime you have overpasses and cloverleaf exit ramps you have to admit that you have the makings of an excellent network. What I’ve seen in training materials of the built-up areas outside of Baghdad makes me believe that there are some basic similarities in Afghan and Iraqi villages. Cities are a whole different story. Kabul on its best day could never be compared to Baghdad on its worst. Electricity in Kabul is spotty, years after the last intense fighting there. Running water is a luxury with most neighborhoods using aging wells and streams for their sources of water.

Nothing like a good road system exists in Afghanistan. Portions of “The Ring Road” are hard asphalt and easy to drive on but years of war and neglect have eroded most of the hard-surface roads to the point where they are in very bad shape. The Taliban didn’t like roads so they were loathe keeping these instruments of western influence in good shape. The Ring Road shows on maps as just that, an inner ring that sits inside the border with some offshoot roads that cross into other countries. The roads, trails, and paths that connect the thousands of small villages to the Ring Road are where we spent most of our time. The best of these resemble the long driveways you may see in Kansas or Nebraska that lead back to a remote barn or possibly the unpaved driveway up to the farm house. If we could confine our travels to these roads we would be in pretty good shape. The trouble is we can’t. If you want to get to a village you need to follow rutted and pitted paths and seasonally dry riverbeds where no MRAP will ever go. In a lot of cases we were never able to get Engineer road clearing vehicles up some of these roads so we relied on our Afghan troops to tell us where and when we could travel.

When you are not in the mountains the good and the bad roads are under constant observation by insurgents who have favorite sites where they will emplace their IEDs or set up an ambush. Cover and concealment are everywhere even though it takes an outsider a few trips to begin to appreciate where to look. If you are in the mountains everywhere is a potential site for an overwhelming force to be within pistol shot distance to the road you are traveling on. Look on YouTube if you want to see how easy it is to observe and attack one of our convoys. Read about the British evacuation of Kabul in 1842 or look to the Russian evacuation in 1989 if you want an appreciation of how good these guys are in using mountains to their advantage. (Hint - the word "evacuation" used in both examples should be a point to stress. Afghans have been extremely successful in kicking foreign powers with far superior weapons and tactics out of their country...)

Because we were combat advisors and mentors to the Afghan Army and Police we were with them on their missions. If the whole group came under attack they would respond by exiting their vehicles and fighting on foot. Our ETTs (Embedded Tactical Trainers or Embedded Training Team members – the terms became interchangeable) would accompany the leaders on these combat missions. In addition to providing advice to the leadership we would also provide them with artillery and close-air support as well as MEDEVAC communications. Our team members were the bridge between the operational Soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division (or another coalition force) and the Afghan National Army (ANA).

The 201st Corps area covered from Bamian Province east through the Kabul area and continued over to the Pakistan border, covering a large chunk of the central country. The eastern zone area of operations (EZAO) included about 150 miles of Pakistan border from the Khyber Pass north. We had three brigades assigned to this area, each with five Kandaks (Battalions). In a perfect world each brigade and Kandak would have from 16 to 18 Soldiers or Marines assigned to them as ETTs. Our world was far from perfect. Inasmuch as we were supplemented by Navy and Air Force personnel who had restrictions about operating outside the wire, our war-fighting mentors stayed pretty busy. In a full year in this assignment in the 201st Corps an ETT spent roughly half of that time “downrange” or actively engaged in combat operations. The rest of the time our people were at either Camp Black Horse in Pol-E-Charkhi or Camp Dubs in Darulaman (both are in the suburban Kabul area). While in camp in the Kabul area the Afghan soldiers were in training, taking leave, or engaged in other activities that cannot be done while downrange. This basically parallels the red and amber training cycles of American units.

One other factor that complicated our lives was that our ETTs operated in areas that were not controlled by an American unit and commander. We had an outpost in a very active area where our Soldiers and their Afghan counterparts supported French Special Operations personnel. Those ETTs had to first learn how the French operated so they could ensure their Afghans provided predictable support to the French. In other Corps areas to the south and west, the only Americans in the fight were ETTs and Special Forces. On the police mission our ETTs routinely worked with Germans, Danish, Swedish, Canadian, and many other cops from all over the world. In all, some forty nations have personnel in Afghanistan. Not all of them contribute as much as some but this is a NATO mission with UN presence so there are plenty of well-intentioned people under foot looking for a relevant job. Some just observe and visit PXs and bazaars at as many FOBs as possible. They take pictures and volunteer to assist with Humanitarian Assistance (HA) missions so they can show evidence that they actually worked in the field.

The routine of an ETT depends on where you are stationed and at what level you are working. At Task Force level the higher ranking officers and NCOs may have more than one counterpart to work with and that counterpart may deal with several coalition Soldiers on any given day. As much as possible there is an attempt to match someone with specific skills in an area with an Afghan counterpart who can use the experience in order to do his job better. Drill Sergeants from the Army Reserve worked with Drill Sergeants from the ANA at the Kabul Military Training Center. National Guard instructors from several different states worked in classroom facilities and as range instructors at the same location. Staff officers and NCOs would work at Ministry of Defense level down through Corps headquarters to assist with staff and TOC operations. Engineers, Medics, and Military Police would align themselves to assist their Afghan allies with those functions.

Those of us assigned to Infantry units worked down to platoon level wherever those platoons happened to be. When manning the EZAO positions, our Soldiers and Marines could be lucky enough to be in a camp where there was an American presence and possibly a mess hall and a field shower setup. Most, however, were in small fire bases and combat patrol bases where the only food was the Afghan hot meal or an MRE. Living conditions at those outposts were Spartan and dangerous. There is little attention in the Afghan culture to creature comfort and field sanitation. No refrigeration is readily available and what electricity is available is from small generators that only operate a few hours each day. While there were rotations set up to get our ETTs out of these remote sites for a shower and hot meals, sometimes weather and insurgent activity would prevent rotating troops. In those cases the only thing we could do was resupply from the air as often as we could. One of my staff sergeants could not get out of the mountain outpost he was in for almost 5 months. I had to read him his promotion order to Sergeant First Class over the satellite radio link. His only ways to keep clean were hand wipes and water heated over a fire.

My job as the Command Sergeant Major had me on the road most days visiting sites where my Soldiers and ANA were in position. My mission was twofold; I was the mentor to my ANA counterpart but equally as important was the fact that I had about 120 Soldiers, Marines, Airman and Sailors in about 20 different sites that I was responsible for visiting and assessing to see how effective they were in doing their jobs. A lot of times I was tapped as the escort for Chaplains, VIPs, and trainers that would want to see the locations where we were set up. Sometimes I was accompanying CSM Abdul Rahim, my counterpart in the 1st BDE, 201st Corps (ANA). More often than not he was tied up with his General attending to some administrative issue at Corps or ANA headquarters. On those occasions where there was no ANA with us we would generally operate with two up-armored HMMWVs and do our site visits. My crew consisted of me as the driver, my interpreter (Terp for short) working the maps and a gunner from our security force (SECFOR). Our SECFOR was from Charlie Company, 1st Battalion of the 180th Infantry Regiment, 45th IBCT, OKARNG – a great bunch of guys. Because we were only two gun trucks and lightly manned on most of our trips our best defense was constant motion coupled with speed, daylight, and waiting until the road had been well-traveled. Because we were operating in 10th Mountain battle space I would stop at most locations where they were to ensure that I had good intel on my route and to remind them that I was there. All traffic was on one frequency and all convoys were required to file a convoy plan but I found that maintaining a face-to-face relationship with all friendly outposts and FOBs allowed me to get them to know who “Panther 7” was and sometimes I could help them out by carrying supplies, mail, and personnel for them.

With roughly 100 combat convoys while in EZAO I had a few occasions where things got a little frosty. My first encounter with an IED occurred in early July of 2006, shortly after I had arrived in country. We were taking a circuitous route to Camp Phoenix from the Kabul Military Training Center. On a wide open road, buried in a culvert was a command detonated IED that was punched a full minute too soon. An Afghan taxi, occupied by the driver as well as a male and female civilian, was over the culvert when the device was detonated directly under the rear axle. The explosion caused the vehicle to flip up in the air rear first and land on the roof. The driver was injured but alive. The couple in the back seat was not so lucky. I was the passenger in a Ford Ranger pickup that was not armored and we were accompanied by a brand new up-armored HMMWV that had no crew-served weapon or gunner in the hatch. We became entangled in traffic and were painfully aware that we were sitting ducks in the event of a second device or an ambush. I got out of the vehicle and forced the stalled cars and trucks as well as pedestrians out of the center of the road so we could push through the jam. The officer I was with asked me why I had left the security of the truck rather than wait for him to push through the traffic around the blast. I had to remind him that the Ranger was not armored and that I was in no more danger than he was but at least we were moving.

On three more occasions I was in vehicles that were actually hit by roadside devices. One damaged the windshield of the truck I was a passenger in. Two more both struck the rear portion of the truck I was driving. On one of those I lost my left rear tire. On the second I lost both rear tires, the rear mounted spare and three 5 gallon fuel cans that were on a rack on the tailgate. On both of those occasions the run-flat feature of the tactical tires came in very handy.

Two other times in the Pesh River valley proved to me the value of the gun on the roof. I was involved in what has become known as a TIC (Troops In Contact). A TIC differs from a firefight only in its duration. A firefight is several minutes of mutual exchange of small arms fire. A TIC is where the insurgent launches an attack, generally with an RPG, and then we return fire. Once we start shooting the bad guys retreat into the rocks. Our M240B machine gun fires a 7.62 belt of ammunition. That’s same size round as the AK47 that the insurgent is using. Firing an M2, 50 caliber machine gun generally terminates any further fire from the ambushers. It’s big, ugly, heavy, and hard to clean but likewise hard to beat when you need to return meaningful fire. The only other weapon that we sometimes carried that engendered that kind of respect was a Mark 19, 40 MM grenade launcher. That’s a machine gun for grenades and, when it works, it’s nice to have on a convoy. Unfortunately it’s hard to keep working and there were so few available to us that I seldom saw one.

While my guys frequently would go outside the wire on day and night patrols with their ANA, they would often come under fire and on several occasions we suffered casualties in both our coalition and ANA ranks. Assaults against our established positions were initially uncoordinated and ineffective. Around the September-December, 2006 time frame it was not uncommon to have one mortar round or one rocket impact near one of our positions with absolutely no follow-up. The ETTs in the south saw much more aggressive actions against our positions. In Kandahar and Helmand it was a frequent problem with indirect fire followed by an infantry assault against a hardened position. As we left the country in June of 2007 we were beginning to see much more activity from the insurgents all along the border. Snipers began to coordinate their efforts and were responsible for fifteen ANA deaths near the town of Kamu close to one of our larger bases near the Kunar and Nuristan provincial boundary. The ETTs embedded with the British and Canadian troops were as much fighters as they were mentors. The entire year they worked there they were always in a fight somewhere. That area has never calmed down because it is truly a stronghold for the Taliban sympathizers.

In recent months we have seen a marked increase in aggressive activities against coalition forces followed by a lull. I don’t expect that lull to last forever. The “Spring Offensive” that we hear about each year is, in my opinion, just a renewed effort after the miserable winter weather in the higher elevations. If we do start to see a draw-down in Iraq I see an increase in foreign fighters in Afghanistan. Anywhere you can fight Infidels is good especially if you can hitch-hike across Iran and pick up a few supplies and some more people along the way. Again, my opinion…

Keep your head up, chin down, and don’t volunteer for anything!

Sarmajor