Our bullet sponges in Afghanistan

NY Times:

The small stone castle, sandbagged and bristling with weapons and American soldiers, rises from a rock spur beside the Landai River. Mountains lean overhead.

Once a hunting lodge for Mohammad Zahir Shah, Afghanistan’s last king, the castle is home for a year for an American cavalry troop, an Afghan infantry company, a Navy corpsman and two American marines. In the deadly contest for Afghanistan’s borderlands, it plays what might seem a singularly unattractive role. The position lies exposed near the bottom of a natural amphitheater deep within territory out of government control.

Insurgents hide in caves surrounding it and in villages nearby, operating unhindered almost to the castle’s concertina wire and lobbing mortar shells toward it at will. The steep slopes facing the walls are littered with shattered boulders and trees blown to splinters by the artillery and airstrikes with which the soldiers have fought back.

The Americans’ mission is to disrupt the Taliban and foreign fighters on supply paths from Pakistan’s tribal areas. Col. John Spiszer, the commanding officer for the larger task force in the region, distilled how the mission often worked. The American presence, he said, is a Taliban magnet, drawing insurgents from more populated areas and enhancing security elsewhere.

First Lt. Daniel Wright, the executive officer of the American cavalry unit — Apache Troop of the Sixth Battalion, Fourth Cavalry — put things in foxhole terms.

“Basically,” he said, “we’re the bullet sponge.”

...

The fighting is so frequent, and the terrain so rugged and heavily populated by insurgent spotters, that the outpost’s patrols dare not venture far.

On Saturday, insurgents fired on Apache Troop for an hour in the morning with a mix of mortar shells, rockets and large-caliber sniper fire. The soldiers fought back until they thought the attack had ended. Then the Taliban opened fire again.

Fighting broke out again at 1 p.m. During the exchange, a mortar round landed at the base of the castle’s southern wall and exploded with a thunderous crack, shaking the compound. About 15 long seconds later, a radio operator called to the other bunkers over the two-way radios. “Everyone’s O.K.,” he said.

Shortly before 5 p.m., the insurgents struck again with rocket and automatic rifle fire aimed at engineers who were moving equipment near an observation post. After a firefight that lasted about five minutes, they slipped away in the fading light.

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Because of the severity of the terrain, and the insurgents’ quickness, there is little ability to fight at close range.

“I’m just so tired of seeing muzzle flashes at 800 yards,” said Gunnery Sgt. Daniel McKernan, who trains and advises the Afghan Army here. “This is like Vietnam. Hike around these mountains and you never see them. But they are always out there. And they always attack you.”

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Colonel Spiszer, the regional commander, said in an e-mail message that despite the difficulties, keeping the Taliban focused on the outpost had advantages, because the task force could mass firepower and fight with less risk to civilians than in other places.

“Due to the remoteness of the area we are better able to use our advantages in fires — mortars, artillery, attack helicopters and close air support — to fight and usually defeat the enemy pretty decisively,” he wrote.

The outpost, he suggested, was both a foothold in the region and a statement. Withdrawing from it, he said, would allow the Taliban to claim it had driven the Americans back, as they did when the task force closed another remote outpost earlier this year.

On Thursday, residents of Kamu, a nearby village, warned the outpost that insurgents were planning a larger assault. Twenty enemy fighters had been seen congregating in one village, one man said, and 40 in another.

The insurgents had at least six mortar tubes, he said, and were being helped by the Pakistani intelligence service, which is a common and unverifiable claim here. Their mortars were being moved into place by donkey, he added. (The man’s name was withheld to protect him from being killed as an American collaborator.)

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At one point in the article the story diverges into the Iraq as a distraction meme that apparently many of the troops buy into. That is a mistake. As the story makes clear, the terrain in Afghanistan in this area in particular is much more favorable to the enemy than it was in Iraq. Had al Qaeda concentrated its resources in Afghanistan it would have been a much more difficult fight and we would have still had Saddam making mischief in Iraq. Strategically we would have been worse off if we had not gone into Iraq. In addition, Iraq distracted al Qaeda and resulted in a strategic defeat for al Qaeda.

However, one of the mistakes made by the administration is not engaging in a rapid increase in the size of our forces after 9-11. The Clinton cuts in the 90's were also a huge mistake. We clearly need more troops period. You can see the obvious force to space problems when troops have to act as bullet sponges rather than being able to clear and hold space. Gen. Abizaid was a big proponent of economy of force operations and he kept the number of troops too low in both theaters. It is not clear to me why he has never been held accountable for that. There has been a lot of finger pointing at Tommy Franks who was long gone and still taking blame for an inadequate number of troops in Iraq.

The good news from this story is that despite the enemies attempts, they have been ineffective in producing casualties among the bullet sponges. Only one soldier has been evacuated out of the country with severe injuries.