From the WSJ,

For five years, U.S. troops fought their way up and down the cedar-studded slopes of the Korengal Valley. The ferocity of the fighting inspired a videogame scenario, thrust the remote valley into the media glare, and famously forced a soldier to fight in his underwear. In all, 42 U.S. troops have been killed here.

On Wednesday, the fight for Korengal officially ended when the final U.S. soldiers were airlifted from a ridge above this collection of stone buildings, sandbagged bunkers and jury-rigged plumbing built up on the grounds of a former lumber mill. The Americans pulled out because they determined that instead of bringing a measure of stability to Korengal, they had largely proven “an irritant to the people,” said the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

Korengal Valley

The Korengal Valley has been one of the thorniest spots in Afghanistan. Regardless of the stated reasons for leaving, I can’t help but think the enemy will view this as a victory. They outlasted the infidels, and will still be there.

Here are previous posts I’ve done on the Korengal Valley. Included among them is the story ABC’s Nightline did¹, and the article the New York Times did².

• Korengal Valley photo essay
• Welcome Home, 173rd
• IEDs and the Korengal Valley
• More on the Korengal Valley²
• The 173rd in Kunar Province¹
• A war with teeth
• With the Taliban
• The Korengal Valley

Update: As I was saying…

The day job runneth over again, so in lieu of a roundup, here are a few photos from Afghanistan…

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A Guardsman shouts information back as the men of 7 Platoon, 2 Company, 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, go through a compound assault [Picture: Corporal Dan Bardsley RLC, Crown Copyright/UK MOD 2009

Mentoring and Reconstruction Task Force Two at the foothills of the Zhar Ghar mountain range prepares to roll out on patrol in the Baluchi valley. (photo from Australia DoD)

A U.S. Marine talks with village elders through interpreters while on patrol in the small town of Dahanah neighboring Now Zad in Helmand province, Afghanistan, June 25, 2009. Marines, assigned to Gulf Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, engage in firefights in Now Zad on a regular basis, but also focus on improving the quality of life for civilians in neighboring towns. (U.S. Marine Corps photo)

U.S. Marines with 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 3, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, along with approximately 650 Afghan soldiers and police officers from the Afghan national security force, prepare to board CH-53D Sea Stallion and CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters at Forward Operating Base Dwyer, Afghanistan, July 2 (photo by Philippe E. Chasse)

In this post last September, I mused:

One thing I’ll be interested to see from Gen Petraeus as he spins up as CentCom commander is if we start to hear more about Iranian involvement in Afghanistan. We sure heard more about Iranian involvement in Iraq after he took command there.

That post was occasioned by a Telegraph report about Iran sending powerful “Dragon” landmines into Afghanistan. Reports of Iran supporting our enemies in Afghanistan are not new, and nor should they be a surprise, given Iran’s involvement in Iraq.

Western Afghanistan

2007 saw a flurry of such reports. The US military became quite explicit about publicizing Iranian weapons turning up in Afghanistan. (See also this CFR report about Iran and Afghanistan.)

• April 2007 – Gen. Pace says “We have intercepted weapons in Afghanistan headed for the Taliban that were made in Iran.”
• June 2007 – Secretary Gates says he had seen new intelligence analysis over the past couple of weeks “that makes it pretty clear there’s a fairly substantial flow of weapons” from Iran across its border to assist insurgents in Afghanistan. (The CSM also had this good report summarizing other incidents.)
• September 2007 – U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte says Washington has complained to Beijing about Chinese weapons shipments to Iran that appear to be turning up in the hands of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
• January 2008 – A cache of arms seized in a raid in western Afghanistan on Thursday included 60 Iranian-made mines, according to the local Governor.

I’m just going to throw some dots against the wall and let my betters decide if they can be connected. In recent days, in putting together the daily roundups, I’ve picked up an apparent increase in action in western Afghanistan, and I just wonder if Iran is up to old tricks. If you’re a weapons facilitator in western Afghanistan, where’s a likely source of weapons for you?

• Feb 17 – CentCom: Afghan National Police, assisted by Coalition forces, killed three militants, Feb. 17, while searching the compound of a known improvised explosive device facilitator in the Bakwa district, Farah Province, which is located in western Afghanistan
• Feb 17 – CentCom: Afghan National Army Commandos with the 207th Commando Kandak, assisted by Coalition forces, killed five insurgents while searching the compound of a suspected weapons facilitator in the Qala Ga District, Farah Province, located in western Afghanistan approximately 80 km from the Iranian border.
• Feb 17 – AFPS: A coalition forces precision strike today killed a militant commander affiliated with the Hezb-e-Islam Gulbuddin organization and other Taliban commanders near Gozara district in Herat province. The militant commander was believed to be responsible for increasing violence in Herat over recent months
• Feb 16 – AFPS: Afghan and coalition forces killed two Taliban leaders and detained a suspected weapons facilitator in operations yesterday, military officials reported. Afghan National Army soldiers and coalition forces killed a Taliban commander during an early morning search of a suspected insurgent compound near the village of Khak-e-Safid in Farah province.
• Feb 15 – AFPS: Afghan National Army commandos and coalition forces captured a suspected weapons facilitator in the Anar Dara district of Afghanistan’s Farah province yesterday, military officials reported.
• Feb 15 – Bloomberg: Iran is helping Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, said General David Petraeus, who is in charge of U.S. forces in the Central Asian nation and Iraq. Petraeus gave no details of the Iranian assistance, which he described as taking place at “a small level.”
• Feb 14 – Pentagon: The Department of Defense announced the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Staff Sgt. Daniel L. Hansen, 24, of Tracy, Calif., died Feb. 14 while supporting combat operations in Farah province, Afghanistan
• Jan 29 – AFPS: U.S. Marines with Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force Afghanistan cleared a route between two Afghan districts, aiming to improve safety and encourage commerce in the area. Operation Gateway III involved the clearing of Route 515, a 26-mile stretch of road between the Delaram and Bakwa district centers in Afghanistan’s Farah province.
• Jan 15 – Al Jazeera: A senior Afghan army commander and 12 other military officials have been killed after a helicopter crashed in western Afghanistan. The M-17 helicopter was on its way from the western province of Herat to the neighbouring province of Farah when it went down.
• Jan 7 – AFPS: Coalition forces and Afghan commandos today killed six militants during a raid on a compound in Farah province’s Kakhi Safyed district. Among the militants killed were a leader believed to have conducted attacks on Afghan and coalition forces and the alleged chief bodyguard for a high-level Taliban commander. The bodyguard is suspected of providing bombs and bomb-making materials to militant forces in the province’s Bala Baluk district.

In the recent report that the US has/had been using the Shamsi airfield in Baluchistan has a Predator base, I noted that the location (kmz file) of this airfield was much close to Iranian soil than it is to North and South Waziristan. I’m sure this wasn’t lost on Iran, either.

Iran has accused the US of supporting the Sunni Jundallah insurgents that operate in and around SE Iran, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we were to some extent.

In December 2005, there were reports of an assassination attempt against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he was visiting Zahedan in Sistan-Baluchistan province. Jundallah took responsibility for a February 2007 attack in Zahedan that killed 18 Revolutionary Guards. In June 2008, 16 policeman were abducted by Jundallah, and in December, Jundallah said they had been killed. Just recently on January 25, Jundallah killed 12 Iranian policemen near Saravan. (See this post for more on Abdulmalik Rigi, Jundallah’s leader.) I’m sure the US does not mind one bit if Jundallah causes trouble for Iran on Afghanistan’s rear flank.

Part of the strategy behind the surge in Iraq was to go hard after the Iranian-backed forces special groups in Iraq. Is something similar taking place in Herat and Farah Provinces? What is going on in the wastes of western Afghanistan?

This photo is taken from the Poland Ministry of National Defence ISAF Afghanistan site.

well in Afghanistan, from Poland Ministry of National Defence

Yesterday the Boston Globe had an exceptional photo essay by John Moore on the Korengal Valley. It’s well worth a look. (h/t Memeorandum)

Yesterday was Veteran’s Day (or Armistice or Remembrance Day, depending on where you live), a day set aside to honor those who have served in the military. Today, on the day after, it seems appropriate to share some photographs of U.S. soldiers currently in the thick of war in Afghanistan. Getty Images photographer John Moore spent some time recently in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, near the Pakistani border, with Viper Company of the 1-26 Infantry, and brought back these images, documenting what he saw. The final two photographs do not involve Korengal, but are striking examples of these difficult and complex times, and the sacrifice of one American family.

Here are previous posts I’ve done on the Korengal Valley. Included among them is the story ABC’s Nightline did¹, and the article the New York Times did².

• Welcome Home, 173rd
• IEDs and the Korengal Valley
• More on the Korengal Valley²
• The 173rd in Kunar Province¹
• A war with teeth
• With the Taliban
• The Korengal Valley

This past week, PBS Frontline did a long program on the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The program has some spectacular footage, and there is a great deal of supporting material on the website, including interviews and so forth. This is from the synopsis:

The next president of the United States will inherit a foreign policy nightmare: wars on two fronts, an overstretched military, a resurgent Taliban and a reconstituted Al Qaeda based far from America’s reach.

In The War Briefing, award-winning FRONTLINE producer Marcela Gaviria and correspondent Martin Smith offer harrowing on-the-ground reporting from the deadliest battlefield in the mountains of Afghanistan, and follow the trail to the militant safe havens deep inside the Pakistani tribal areas, probing some of the most urgent foreign policy challenges facing the next president.

You can view the video online. They don’t appear to be embeddable, but I’ll post links to the chapters.

CHAPTER ONE -  A Deadly New Battlefield

Seven years on, the Afghanistan war has deteriorated markedly. In the Korengal, the U.S. Army’s Bravo Company battles the heart of the resistance. [readers here will remember the Korengal Valley]

CHAPTER TWO -  A Strengthening Taliban

Its resurgence is fueled by opium money, growing dissatisfaction with Karzai’s government. Yet on the ground, there’s insufficient U.S./NATO troops.

CHAPTER THREE – The Counterinsurgency Strategy – Close Up

By protecting Afghanis and improving their lives, the men from Bravo Company hope to change the conditions in which the Taliban and Al Qaeda thrive.

CHAPTER FOUR – The Challenge Just Over the Border…

The Taliban and Al Qaeda have safe haven in Pakistan’s tribal areas due to longstanding Pakistan-Taliban ties and the region’s turbulent geopolitics.

CHAPTER FIVE – New Threat: “The Taliban Movement of Pakistan”

The Taliban who’ve come out of the tribal areas have now set their sights on the rest of Pakistan and aim to overthrow the government.

CHAPTER SIX – Afghanistan and Pakistan – In the Balance

For the next president the stakes are very high. And it’s not just Afghanistan and Pakistan – what do we do with the region as a whole?

Update: Over at Captain’s Journal, Herschel Smith takes a look at reaction to this story.

If something is OPSEC, then it can’t be released. If it isn’t then it’s free game. Period. It shouldn’t be any more complex than that. TTPs can be OPSEC too, and the decision simply must be made as to whether the information is or isn’t OPSEC. Then we can move forward with the information, commentary and analysis.

Our position on special forces has been made clear before. We are a Marine blog. In the Marines, no one is special – or everyone is special, depending upon your perspective. Infantry is king, and every billet supports infantry.

On Sept 14, Kate Clark had a piece in the Telegraph subtitled “Taliban claim weapons supplied by Iran.” From the article,

The comments by the commander, who would not be named but operates in the south east of the country where there has been a surge in Taliban attacks, were a rare admission of co-operation between elements within the Iranian regime and forces fighting British and American troops in Afghanistan.

“There’s a kind of landmine called a Dragon. Iran’s sending it,” he said. “It’s directional and it causes heavy casualties.

….

“If you lay an ordinary mine, it will only cause minor damage to Humvees or one of their big tanks. But if you lay a Dragon, it will destroy it completely,” he said.

A “Dragon” is the local nickname for a type of weapon known internationally as an Explosively Formed Penetrator (EFP) or “shaped charge” and has been used with devastating effect in Iraq by Iranian-backed groups. It is shaped so that all the explosive force is concentrated in one direction – the target – rather than blasting in all directions and weakening its impact.

(Also, the BBC had a piece with Clark in which you can hear the interview referred to here. I have a podcast of that which you can listen to at the end of the daily roundup for Sept 18.)

Army Chief Warrant Officer Sammy Rodriguez, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, makes quick work Jan. 23, 2008, of preparing a damaged vehicle for recovery to a forward operating base in the Korengal Valley, Kunar province, Afghanistan. (photo by Sgt. 1st Class Eric Hendrix)

Today, the Pentagon released this,

Capt. Bruno G. Desolenni, 32, of Crescent City, Calif., died Sept. 20 in Kandahar, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle. He was assigned to the Joint Forces Headquarters, Element Training Team, Oregon Army National Guard.

(Also killed were two Afghan interpreters, and Maj Bill Krei was injured.)

A blog at OregonLive has a touching post about Capt de Solenni, and it describes the attack this way,

And here is an excerpt from an email to his friends by CPT Dominic Oto, who somehow survived the same blast. “Come to find out some more interesting facts about our IED Blast. After talkng with Jerry Glesmann, my buddy and the guy who dragged me out of the wreackage of our vehicle. The IED that hit us so far as been the biggest one they have seen in the southern part of Afghanistan. It destroyed and flung a 37,000 pound vehicle 20 feet into the air and it slid 70 feet. There is shrapnel in all the vehicles behind mine and the last one was more then 500 feet from our backend when it exploded. Again, I have no idea how I am alive and escaped with only minor injuries.”

That’s a powerful explosion. Was it a Dragon?

In addition, there have been several fatal IED attacks in Afghanistan recently. (The dates are the date of the DoD news release.)

9/22

The Department of Defense announced today the death of two soldiers who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. They died Sept. 20 in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when their vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device. They were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
 
Killed were:
- Staff Sgt. Nathan M. Cox, 32, of Walcott, Iowa
- Pvt. Joseph F. Gonzales, 18, of Tucson, Ariz

9/22

The Department of Defense announced today the death of four soldiers who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. They died Sept. 17 in Gerdia Seria, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when their vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device.
 
Killed were:
- Sgt. Joshua W. Harris, 21, of Romeoville, Ill., who was assigned to the 2nd Battalion 122nd Field Artillery, Illinois Army National Guard, Robbins, Ill.
- Capt. Bruce E. Hays, 42, of Cheyenne, Wyo., who was assigned to the Wyoming Joint Forces Headquarters, Wyoming Army National Guard, Cheyenne, Wyo.
- 1st Lt. Mohsin A. Naqvi, 26, of Newburgh, N.Y., who was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 11th Infantry, Fort Benning, Ga.
- Staff Sgt. Jason A. Vazquez, 24, of Chicago, Ill., who was assigned to the 2nd Battalion 122nd Field Artillery, Illinois Army National Guard, Sycamore, Ill.

9/16

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a sailor who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Eichmann A. Strickland, 23, of Arlington, Wash., died Sept. 9 from injuries suffered when the vehicle he was driving hit an improvised explosive device in Afghanya Valley, Afghanistan.

I don’t have statistics in front of me, but from looking at this for awhile now, this feels like quite an uptick in IED fatalities in Afghanistan over this short of a time span.

I’m not saying all, or even any, of these incidents were caused by Iranian mines, but I’m sure the US military there is keeping a close eye on this.

One thing I’ll be interested to see from Gen Petraeus as he spins up as CentCom commander is if we start to hear more about Iranian involvement in Afghanistan. We sure heard more about Iranian involvement in Iraq after he took command there.

(Though, I might add accusations that Iran is sending weapons into Afghanistan are hardly new. For instance, see here, here, here and here.)

The Sydney Morning Herald describes an incident in Afghanistan where a district chief and ally of President Karzai was accidentally killed.

Australian special forces troops in Afghanistan have accidentally killed a district governor and two of his bodyguards in a botched raid that will pose a further setback to the battle against the Taliban insurgency.

The provincial police chief, General Juma Gulab Khan, confirmed last night that Australian troops in the southern province of Oruzgan had surrounded a house they suspected of harbouring Taliban fighters and shot a district chief, Rozi Khan.

He said Rozi Khan, a former police chief, had gone to the house of a friend who thought his house was surrounded by Taliban militants. In fact, the house had been surrounded by Australian troops

The Defence Force said of the incident last night that special forces troops may have accidentally killed several Afghan police near the provincial capital, Tarin Kowt, but had been returning fire in self-defence.

Today, the Australian DoD issued this response,

The Australian Defence Force (ADF) is working closely with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Afghan authorities who will launch a joint ISAF / Afghan Government investigation into the incident that occurred on 18 September. The ADF will also conduct a full investigation.

Initial ADF reporting indicates that the Special Operations Task Group (SOTG) patrol was moving on foot towards a subsequent activity when they were fired on from a number of locations by unknown attackers. The SOTG patrol returned fire in self-defence.

Initial assessment indicates that the SOTG personnel acted in accordance with their Rules of Engagement and that their actions were appropriate and proportionate in what was a complex and lethal environment.

The ADF can confirm that Chora District Governor and tribal leader, Rozi Khan, was among those killed.  It is not possible at this time to determine that he was killed by ADF fire.

A number of groups, including Afghan National Police personnel, were in the vicinity of the incident.  No ADF personnel were wounded, however initial reporting indicates that a number of local nationals were killed or wounded in the exchange of fire.  The identity of these additional personnel will be determined as part of the investigations that are now underway.

After a long, tough 15-month deployment to Afghanistan, the 173rd ABCT is finally home. From Stars and Stripes,

Hinojosa and about 60 other soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team — mostly members of the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment’s Headquarters and Headquarters Company — returned to Italy on Monday after a 15-month deployment to Afghanistan.

Their return means only about a dozen Sky Soldiers remain in the country, according to Col. Charles Preysler, brigade commander. Most of them are shepherding equipment and will be returning shortly.

Spc. Richard Ingledue, C Company, 2-503 Inf. Battalion, 173d ABCT, takes a moment with his daughter Taylor, 7, after a redeployment ceremony for the 173d ABCT advance party Photo by Sgt. Justin Nieto, SETAF Public Affairs

The transfer of authority ceremony to their replacements, the 3rd Bridage, 1st Infantry Division, was July 22, and the colors were cased a few days later.

Col. Charles Preysler,Task Force Bayonet commander and Sgt. Maj. Womack case the 173rd ABCT colors for the last time until their return to Caserme Ederle Vincenza, Italy. Photo by Staff Sgt. Adora Medina

If there’s an outfit that’s had a tougher fight in Afghanistan, I don’t know what it is. (See Kip’s comments at abu muqawama as well.) By my count, and it certainly may be inaccurate, the 173rd has suffered 54 KIA since 2005. Nine were killed just a couple weeks ago in an ambush. (Spc. Ingledue, shown in the photo above, is mentioned in the linked article talking about his comrades.)

Sgt. William G. Cromie was recently awarded a Silver Star for action in Kunar Province. A couple of FOBs there were recently renamed. FOB Naray was renamed for Maj. Thomas Bostick, and Command Outpost Kamu was renamed for Spc. Jacob Lowell.

I’ve had a number of posts on the 173rd. I’ll collect them here. Included among them is the story ABC’s Nightline did¹, and the article the New York Times did².

IEDs and the Korengal Valley
More on the Korengal Valley²
The 173rd in Kunar Province¹
A war with teeth
With the Taliban
The Korengal Valley