7 posts tagged “1-503”

Tuesday July 15, 2008 12:59PM Sports Illustrated -Peter King-Monday Morning QB

Roger Goodell sounded totally spent over the phone from Afghanistan, but he also sounded totally exhilarated at the same time. That's what taking a one-week trip to the twin war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan last week did for him.

"A life-changing experience,'' he told me Friday, late at night his time, and early afternoon my time. "I'm absolutely exhausted, but it's one of the most rewarding things I've ever gotten to do.''

Friday is when Goodell, Osi Umenyiora and Drew Brees helicoptered into FOB Tillman, a base just 700 meters from the Pakistan border, and a base close to -- and very similar to -- the one that was attacked by Taliban extremists early Sunday morning, resulting in the deaths of nine American soldiers.

This Tillman base, as with many others in the Afghan war, is invented and built to gain a foothold in an eastern area of the country that sees an attempted daily influx of Taliban. The American troops must intercept the Pakistanis, then determine whether they're either harmless (Bedouin tribesman, perhaps, or simple shepherds), or militants invading the country to try to drive out the Americans.

It's not always easy to tell, and it's not always easy to prevent the Taliban from secretly crossing the border and engaging in firefights with the Americans. On Sunday morning, somehow, the militants crossed the border, gained access to the small base and used grenade launchers and machine guns to kill nine and wound 15 American troops.

All of which made the will-Brett-Favre-play-or-won't-he stuff dominating the football news rather insignificant to the Goodell party, back on American soil Monday.

"The news was a lot more personal than it would have been a week ago,'' said Goodell, back at his Manhattan desk Monday afternoon. "And my first thought was: 'Did I just meet these kids?'

Goodell said at FOB Tillman, 10 troops stood lookout on one hill near the base and 14 on another hill close by. These sentries were charged with securing the border and stayed atop the hills for days at a time. The base commander told Goodell that about eight kilometers away on the previous day, 70 soldiers from the base engaged insurgents in a firefight with no American casualties. On Sunday, men and women from the nearby base weren't so lucky.

"What impressed me so much,'' Goodell told me, "is of all the men and women we met at so many different bases, not a single one complained about anything -- not their missions, not about how long they were there, nothing. It's inspiring. We are so fortunate to have so many great people in service to our country. And I felt how meaningful and important the NFL is to these people.

"One of the most sobering moments of the tour was our return to Bagram Airbase [the main U.S. base in Eastern Afghanistan] from FOB Tillman. Shortly after we landed we were driven to an area on the flight line to take part in a Fallen Comrade Ceremony for two of our soldiers. Our entire group stood in a line on the airfield along with hundreds of other soldiers, paying our respects as the coffins were loaded into a cargo plane. It was absolutely quiet and emotional. My heart goes out to all the families as well as their fellow soldiers."

I saw one of those on my USO trip to Afghanistan in March. Unforgettably emotional. I get choked up thinking about it four months later. I've got to applaud Goodell, Brees and Umenyiora for taking this trip, particularly so close to the season. I felt a searing gratitude from everyone I met in the military in my week overseas; I can only imagine how a marquee quarterback, a Super Bowl champion and the commissioner of the game were made to feel.

Not to get on my flag-waving soapbox here, but I'd really love to see a couple of coaches and more high-profile players go next year. Regardless of your feelings about these conflicts -- and I admit I'm a card-carrying dove if there ever was one -- we cannot do enough to show the men and women risking their lives how much we appreciate what they do. Stepping outside the cocoon of the NFL to do that is something more of our football heroes should do.

This is the company that I support thru www.anysoldier.com. It really was worth the 27 minutes it took to watch. -LIG

Posted by MaryAnn at http://soldiersangelsgermany.blogspot.com/

On patrol with the 173rd ABCT on the Afghanistan-Pakistan Border

link

Border Complicates War in Afghanistan
Insurgents Are Straddling Pakistani Line

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 4, 2008; A01

SPERA DISTRICT, Afghanistan -- As a cold darkness enveloped the tiny U.S. military camp just inside Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, word spread that Taliban fighters were on the move nearby, planning an attack.

Capt. Chris Hammonds expected it. In a mud-brick command center, the 32-year-old Army Ranger pivoted between a radio and a map, tracking reports of approaching Taliban. Several explosions soon ripped through the night as U.S. forces hit the suspected Taliban positions, including a cross-border guided-munitions strike on a compound about a mile inside Pakistan where senior associates of Siraj Haqqani -- considered one of the most dangerous Taliban commanders -- were thought to be meeting.

The U.S. military usually strikes across the border only when taking accurate fire from Pakistan, and standard practice calls for informing the Pakistani military about threats from its side. But Hammonds argued that the Pakistani military checkpoint was "under siege" from the Taliban and that Pakistani officers -- fearful of retaliation -- could tip off the insurgents.

The rare strike averted an imminent Taliban attack, Hammonds said, but across the border a starkly different account emerged. "Two women and two children got killed, so whatever was assessed was not correct," said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, a spokesman for the Pakistani army. No Taliban were meeting in the family compound, he said. The Pakistani government issued a protest, and demonstrations erupted. "We were never informed about the strike," Abbas said. "This has serious implications for operations."

The March 12 incident highlights how, more than six years into the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, efforts to stabilize the country increasingly focus on the rugged frontier area straddling the border with Pakistan. Over the past 18 months, Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters have exploited peace deals by Pakistan's government to create an unprecedented haven in the region, U.S. officials said. From there, insurgents have escalated attacks in Pakistan and in eastern Afghanistan, leading the United States last year to double its troop presence along more than 600 miles of frontier.

Recent high-level talks among the three countries have called for more intelligence-sharing and coordinated operations along the border. Last Saturday, the first of six new border coordination centers -- with officers from the three nations -- opened at Torkham at the Khyber Pass, a "giant step" forward, said Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez, the top U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan.

But despite such efforts, front-line commanders such as Hammonds still grapple with key obstacles -- including unreliable Afghan and Pakistani soldiers, ambivalent villagers, and even disputes over where the true border lies. Commanders said they need at least 50 percent more U.S. troops and more reconstruction money. At current levels, they said, it will take at least five years to quell insurgent attacks, which increased nearly 40 percent in eastern Afghanistan last year, including a 22 percent rise in attacks along the border.

"This combat outpost will get attacked within the next week or so, with rockets or small-arms fire," said Hammonds, commander of Attack Company, 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment. "They can't stand that we are in this location."

The U.S. outpost -- which Hammonds and his forces set up a month ago in an insurgent safe house nicknamed the "Taliban Hotel" -- is part of an effort to stem the flow of fighters moving along routes from Pakistan's North and South Waziristan and other Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Collaboration is growing between Taliban commanders in Afghanistan such as Haqqani, who has tribal roots in Paktika province, and Pakistanis such as Baitullah Mehsud, a commander in South Waziristan who is reorganizing the Taliban with help from agents in Pakistan's intelligence service, according to U.S. military officials. Mehsud, the CIA has said, is responsible for the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto in December.

Taliban fighters and facilitators plan and resupply in Waziristan towns and then move across the border to launch attacks as far inside Afghanistan as Kabul. Overall attacks in eastern Paktika province rose about 30 percent last year, and have more than quadrupled since 2003, according to military data. Attacks by improvised explosive devices have risen tenfold since 2003, and suicide bombings, unseen before 2006, numbered seven last year.

"The threat of suicide-borne IEDs and IEDs are everywhere. It's far more significant than in the past," said Lt. Col. Michael Fenzel, commander of the 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. Roadside bombs killed 10 of the battalion's 12 soldiers lost since May. The insurgents "have an IED division, a suicide-bombing division, and everything else supports those two things," he said.

Throughout last fall and winter, Fenzel's battalion conducted operations in eastern Paktika and southern Khowst province to establish closer ties with villagers and to help block the influx of fighters with the spring thaw. His troops are building several outposts, already pushing the fighting closer to the border and away from populated areas.

A new outpost two miles from Afghanistan's border with South Waziristan has drawn a large volume of mortars, rockets and small-arms fire away from a base in a large town farther inland. On the night of Nov. 24, Capt. Rob McChrystal recalled, he and his infantry company were manning the outpost when scores of Taliban converged on them. McChrystal, of Charleston, S.C., said he waited until the insurgents came within 200 yards before he attacked with artillery and aircraft fire.

"I expect a lot more of the same this spring," he said. "They'll attempt another direct-fire attack because the [outpost] is a thorn in their side."

In the latest operation, in the Kowchun Valley just north of Paktika, Hammonds's company staked out a position above a narrow streambed that snakes through a gorge into North Waziristan, the scene of dozens of firefights between U.S. troops and the Taliban. From his base, Hammonds can see for miles into Pakistan. Haqqani "is extremely upset and can't get anything through," said Fenzel, citing U.S. intelligence.

But because of a shortage of U.S. troops, Hammonds's company can stay in the area only for several weeks. He doubts that Afghan and Pakistani soldiers will be able to control the route once he leaves.

"You're in the middle of an ANA mutiny," Hammonds said one afternoon, referring to the Afghan National Army, as Afghan soldiers from the 203rd Battalion piled into pickup trucks and quit the camp. The Afghans left after learning that the operation, originally to last nine days, would continue for weeks. The exodus underscored Hammonds's belief that Afghan army units cannot guard the border because they rotate every three to six months and they lack enough local knowledge. "The key to securing the border is to remove the ANA completely," he said.

Instead, Hammonds favors the Afghan border police, but eastern Paktika now has only 66 percent of its 857 authorized border police officers and, until December, they were led by a corrupt commander who colluded with the Taliban.

A greater frustration, he and other U.S. troops said, is that they cannot trust their Pakistani counterparts. "The Pakistan military is corrupt and lets people come through," Hammonds said. Pakistani forces reportedly told insurgents the location of his observation post, and when U.S. troops in a firefight call the Pakistani military for help, he said, "they never answer the phone."

Pakistan's Frontier Corps, which mans several border checkpoints, is viewed as nearly an enemy force. "The Frontier Corps might as well be Taliban. . . . They are active facilitators of infiltration," said a U.S. soldier who spoke on the condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Last May, after Maj. Larry J. Bauguess Jr. of the 82nd Airborne Division attended a meeting to ease frictions between Afghan and Pakistani forces in the Pakistani frontier town of Teri Mengel, he was shot dead by a Frontier Corps guard, military officials said. The U.S. military in Pakistan is funding a multimillion-dollar program to train and equip the Frontier Corps.

U.S. troops face a mixed reception as they offer aid and seek intelligence from local villagers. In the town of Potsmillah, residents spat at Hammonds's soldiers, while in Sra Kunda, they accepted shoes, prayer rugs and offers of a new porch for their mosque.

But in the Kowchun Valley, where there are few roads and no electricity or schools, villagers are loyal to their tribes, which straddle the border. Sra Kunda's 50 families survive by gathering wood and selling it in Pakistan, or tending meager plots of rain-watered wheat. Residents keep Pakistani time on their watches, use Pakistani rupees and frequent markets across the border. "We don't know whether we're from Pakistan or Afghanistan," said Nakib Balibi, 18. "So we just go on Pakistan time."

I support soldiers at FOB Tillman, this article is about the 1-503rd in Afghanistan

see link here:  http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/03/tension_and_tea_alon.php

Tension and tea along the Pakistani border

Traveling along the "Taliban Superhighway," Captain Navarro's squad patrols the area to the east of Forward Operating Base Tillman.

Outside the wire, Captain George Navarro of the 1st Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment, an embedded tactical trainer for the Afghan National Army, led his Afghan squad on a patrol to the area east of Forward Operating Base Tillman in the Paktika province. The mission -- a search for a local Taliban leader and a suspected enemy cache -- took the squad through several small villages close to the Pakistan border.

This area of eastern Afghanistan, known as Spera, is rocky terrain. Steep mountains, valleys, and riverbeds punctuate the landscape, and stands of trees that vary from sparse to dense make for great places for insurgents to hide. The trail Navarro and his patrol squad traveled was one of the most heavily trafficked paths in the area and was used by the Taliban to smuggle weapons, explosives, and suicide bomber volunteers back and forth across the porous Pakistan border. The compound where Navarro and his men were staying has been occupied by the US military for only a week and is known as the "Taliban Hotel" for its reputation as a major staging hub for the Taliban in Paktika and the surrounding provinces.

To the uninformed, the area looks serene, but the current state of calm does not reveal the recent battles fought in the valley, with up to 40 Taliban killed at a time. From the radio chatter over the previous days, Navarro knew the Taliban were watching him and his men. Yet, the patrol moved along, mindful that the hills had eyes.

This area is still one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan. After the US took the Taliban Hotel -- a qalat, or typical Afghan compound or home, near FOB Tillman -- and its strategic high places above the valley during an assault, the Taliban leadership was very upset. Five of their top area commanders have been meeting to decide on the best way to take the compound and the area back. Being outgunned from the ground and the air, the Taliban are sending "hundreds" of Taliban fighters in an attempt to overrun the valley. Captain Hammond, commander of the outpost, said it's not if they will attack, it's when.

The border store

Continuing along the "Taliban Superhighway," the patrol passed through several small clusters of qalats. In places, the valley was no more than 20 feet wide with sheer stone walls. Close to the Pakistan border, by a shallow river at the bottom of a steep narrow valley, Navarro and his squad found a small, nondescript building that turned out to be a store. The area was sparsely populated, and the ground was littered with trash from cigarette and candy wrappers. Either the locals were chain-smoking, snackaholic litterbugs, or there were large numbers of nervous and hungry people traveling by this little building.

Navarro's Afghan squad searched the store and brought out a man in his 20s who worked there. After questioning him for a minute, they made him lie on the ground and put him in handcuffs. "What do you know about the Taliban? Do you see Taliban coming through here? Have you EVER seen a Taliban?" He claimed he did not know anything and denied ever seeing any Taliban. No one believed him.

An Afghan soldier translates for Captain Navarro while interrogating the father of the young man in cuffs in the background. Click to view.

The men from the squad called to an old man who was standing in front of a qalat and motioned for him to come down to the talk to the squad. The man came with three children in tow. He happened to be the young man's father and the children belonged to the young man in the handcuffs.

Both men were questioned about the store's clientele. It was obvious the shoppers were passing back and forth across the border, and the main people who used this remote border crossing were the Taliban. Both men claimed they did not know anything about the Taliban, but Navarro and the ANA soldiers knew better; the evidence was clear and besides, the captain had seen the activity with his own eyes in the preceding months. After about 30 minutes, Navarro realized that they were wasting time. They removed the cuffs from the young man and moved on.

Tea on the border

The patrol continued down the riverbed about 60 yards in spread formation where the ANA made contact with the Pakistani border guards who were watching from their shack in an elevated position. As each side shouted for the other to stand down, the heated exchanges rose in intensity.

With both sides holding their guns at the ready, the ANA soldiers shouted, "Lower your weapons!" as the Pakistanis yelled back, "YOU lower YOUR weapons!" The tension mounted as the hurried demands back and forth increased in volume and vehemence over several minutes. Navarro moved to the front waving his hand in greeting, smiling broadly and showing his weapon turned upside down as a sign of nonhostile intent. The squad was in a very poor tactical position with at least 10 border guards having the high ground, lurking in the shadows of the evergreen trees, circling around to flank the squad along with the dozen or so directly in front of the group behind large rocks for cover.

After several tense minutes, the border commander, a major in the Pakistan Army, came out and was friendly, actually overly friendly, and very talkative and clearly nervous. Navarro was amicable but persistent in asking the major about the Taliban leader they were looking for, and the questions seemed to make the major anxious. Every time the Taliban was mentioned, the border commander nervously lit another cigarette.

After a few minutes of talk, the Pakistani major invited Navarro and his men to have tea. The captain chose four of his best fighters to join him and the commander. Cautiously, Navarro and his Afghan soldiers accompanied the major and his border guards down the river about 100 yards and around a bend to where the riverbed widened. The Pakistanis had set up a table covered with a checked-patterned cloth and surrounded with chairs. The captain and the major took their seats, exchanged pleasantries, then began to chat about the border situation. Soon after, a soldier brought out a tray with glasses filled with a very sweet orange "energy drink" followed by chai served in porcelain teacups on little saucers.

Sitting next to a known Taliban infiltration route, the Pakistan commander pledged his undying cooperation to secure the border and bragged about how he has protected the American forces from Taliban attacks. His overtures were as overly sweet as the tea. He apologized about having to cancel a recent Border Flag Meeting but insisted that it wasn't he that canceled the meeting and spoke about how much he wants to reschedule it. The major wanted very badly to meet with the outpost commander Captain Hammond to talk about further cooperation. He even talked about wanting to install a land line between his border checkpoint and the FOB Tillman for direct communication, and Navarro agreed to run it by Hammond. Yet, Navarro pressed the major on the Taliban leader he was searching for -- the "rascal" as the major called him -- and the border commander nervously lit up another cigarette. They tentatively set up a meeting for the next day.

After about 20 minutes, Navarro indicated it was time to move on. Further pleasantries were exchanged between the men before Navarro and his squad hiked west, back along the Taliban Superhighway. But first, the ANA soldiers stopped by the border store to buy cigarettes and snacks before heading back to the FOB.

Epilogue

Captain George Navarro of the 1st Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment, an embedded tactical trainer for the Afghan National Army, near the Pakistan border. Click to view.

The following morning, Navarro learned that during his patrol there had been about 45 Taliban just across the Pakistan border ready to ambush him and his men. Twenty were actually moving into attack and were within seconds of doing so but pulled back when contact was made with the Pakistan border guards. Navarro guessed the border commander acted nervous because he probably knew all this. They had been in a very exposed, very bad tactical position walled in by the steep walls of the valley. Navarro knew he had been lucky.

The meeting that Navarro and the Pakistani major discussed did not happen. Captain Hammond thought if the squad had returned as planned, the Taliban would have been waiting to ambush the men. An 82nd Airborne soldier had been killed in that spot earlier this year.

Besides, more Taliban could be heard over the radio. This group was to the west of the outpost. And they numbered around 100.