Afghan traitors aided attacks on US forces

NY Times:

An internal review by the American military has found that a local Afghan police chief and another district leader helped Taliban militants carry out an attack on July 13 in which nine United States soldiers were killed and a remote American outpost in eastern Afghanistan was nearly overrun.

Afghan and American forces had started building the makeshift base just five days before the attack, and villagers repeatedly warned the American troops in that time that militants were plotting a strike, the report found. It said that the warnings did not include details, and that troops never anticipated such a large and well-coordinated attack.

The assault involved some 200 fighters, nearly three times the number of Americans and Afghans defending the site.

As evidence of collusion between the district police chief and the Taliban, the report cited large stocks of weapons and ammunition that were found in the police barracks in the adjacent village of Wanat after the attackers were repelled. The stocks were more than the local 20-officer force would be likely to need, and many of the weapons were dirty and appeared to have been used recently. The police officers were found dressed in “crisp, clean new uniforms,” the report said, and were acting “as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.”

The attackers were driven back after a pitched four-hour battle, in which American artillery, warplanes and attack helicopters were ultimately called in. Still, the militants fought in ways that showed imaginative military training, if not sophisticated weapons.

In the midst of the battle, American soldiers were at times flushed out into the open when they fled what they thought were grenades, but were in fact rocks thrown by Taliban attackers, the report said. The day before the attack, the militants began flowing water through an irrigation ditch feeding an unused field, creating background noise that masked the sounds of the advancing fighters.

The base and a nearby observation post were held by just 48 American troops and 24 Afghan soldiers. Nine Americans died and 27 were injured, most in the first 20 minutes of the fight. Four Afghan soldiers were also wounded.

The intensity of the attack was so fierce, the report said, that American soldiers shot at insurgents as close as about 15 yards away, often until their weapons jammed, and at militants who shimmied up trees overhanging their positions to shoot at the Americans.

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“The enemy normally conducts probing attacks prior to conducting an all-out, large-scale attack,” the report said, quoting the investigating officer as concluding that it “was logical” to think that an initial probing attack would involve only about 20 militants seeking to gauge defenses and the reaction of American and Afghan forces.

However, the report criticized the “incredible amount of time” — 10 months — it took the NATO military authorities to negotiate arrangements over the site of the outpost, giving adversaries plenty of time “to plan coordinated and complex attacks.”

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At the time of the attack, American and Afghan forces were still building fortifications of sandbags and earthen barriers around the main outpost and a small observation post about 100 yards away. In some places, those troops were protected only by strands of concertina wire and a ring of gun-mounted, armored Humvees, the report said.

The militants apparently detected the vulnerability and moved to exploit it. On the evening of July 12, the militants slipped into the village, undetected by the Americans, ordered the villagers to leave and set up firing positions inside houses and a mosque.

At 4:20 a.m. on July 13, the militants struck with a fusillade of heavy machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades, destroying the Americans’ most potent weapons: 120-millimeter mortars and a TOW missile launcher.

At the same time, the militants blasted the observation post with rifle fire and more grenades. Within 20 minutes, all nine Americans inside the observation post were dead or wounded.

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The observation post took the brunt of the attacks and suffered most of the casualties. Superior fire power won the day.

It is hard to know what to make of the report of the police in a nearby village. There is certainly a suspicious contrast between the appearance of their uniforms and their weapons. In a normal combat situation you would expect the opposite, i.e. clean weapons and dirty uniforms. Good troops clean their weapon as soon as it is safe to do so.

The most unusual aspect of the attack to me was the size of the Taliban force. It was two or three times as large as the normal Taliban groupings and should have been easier to detect when moving to contact. If they were from an adjoining village as suggested by this report, wouldn't the local villagers have recognized them? The report indicates the locals had been warning of an attack which suggest they might know some of the attackers.

One scenario that makes some sense is that Taliban fighters from Pakistan joined the police in the nearby village in the attack and used their weapons. This would allow them to slip away and not be detected by openly carrying arms. It would also give them the local knowledge needed to avoid detection while moving to contact.