DLR'sCock
06-05-2005, 03:51 PM
Despite Years of U.S. Pressure, Taliban Fight On in Jagged Hills
By Carlotta Gall
The New York Times
Saturday 04 June 2005
Gazek Kula, Afghanistan - For weeks, sightings of Taliban fighters were being reported all over the rugged mountains here. But when Staff Sgt. Patrick Brannan and his team of scouts drove into a nearby village to investigate a complaint of a beating, they had no idea that they were stumbling into the biggest battle of their lives.
On May 3, joined by 10 local policemen and an interpreter, the scouts turned up at a kind of Taliban convention - of some 60 to 80 fighters - and were greeted by rockets and gunfire. The sergeant called for reinforcements and was told to keep the Taliban engaged until they arrived. "I've only got six men," he remembers saying.
For the next two and a half hours, he and his small squad, who had a year of experience in Iraq, cut off a Taliban escape. Nearly 40 Taliban and one Afghan policeman were killed. "It's not supposed to be like that here," said Capt. Mike Adamski, a battalion intelligence officer. "It's the hardest fight I saw, even after Iraq."
During the last six months, American and Afghan officials have predicted the collapse of the Taliban, the hard-line Islamists thrown out of power by American forces in 2001, citing their failure to disrupt the presidential election last October and a lack of activity last winter.
But the intensity of the fighting here in Zabul Province, and in parts of adjoining Kandahar and Uruzgan Provinces - roughly 100 square miles of mountain valleys in all - reveals the Taliban to be still a vibrant fighting force supplied with money, men and weapons.
The May 3 battle was part of an almost forgotten war in the most remote corners of Afghanistan, a strange and dangerous campaign that is part cat-and-mouse game against Taliban forces and part public relations blitz to win over wary villagers still largely sympathetic to the Taliban.
An Afghan informer, who did not want his name used for fear of retribution, has told American forces that the Taliban ranks have been rapidly replenished by recruits who slipped in from Pakistan. For every one of the Taliban killed on May 3, judging by his account, another has arrived to take his place.
With a ready source of men, and apparently plentiful weapons, the Taliban may not be able to hold ground, but they can continue their insurgency indefinitely, attacking the fledgling Afghan government, scaring away aid groups and leaving the province ungovernable, some Afghan and American officials say.
Still, the former commander of United States forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Barno, described the insurgency as in decline in an interview on April 26 and predicted that a government amnesty offer would fatally split the Taliban in coming months.
In April and May, in a new push to flush out and end the insurgency, American forces began probing the final bastions of Taliban control in this unforgiving landscape. They have succeeded in provoking some of the heaviest combat in Afghanistan in the last three years, killing more than 60 Taliban fighters in April and May, by one United States military estimate.
After a winter lull, the Second Battalion, 503rd Airborne Infantry, which arrived at the Lagman base in Zabul from its base in Vicenza, Italy, found its new post hopping with activity, Capt. Jonathan Hopkins, the battalion adjutant, and others said.
Suspected Taliban fighters burned the district headquarters in Khak-e-Iran in mid-March. An American platoon was ambushed in the Deychopan district on April 15. United States Special Forces were in a sizable fight in the Argandab district on April 18, killing eight men suspected of being Taliban and capturing a mid-level commander. Two Taliban commanders led attacks on the police station at Saigaz, the seat of the Argandab district, on April 21 and 22.
"There are three to four healthy cells, with 30 to 60 fighters in each; that's 120 to 240 people altogether," said Captain Adamski, estimating the total Taliban strength in the area, though accounts from local people indicated higher numbers.
In the battle on May 3, the 60 to 80 Taliban fighters encountered by Sergeant Brannan and his scouts were well armed and well prepared, with weapons caches and foxholes dotting an orchard where the heaviest fighting took place.
The Taliban fought to within 150 yards of American positions and later hit one of two armored Humvees with a volley of rocket-propelled grenades that set it on fire, Sergeant Brannan said. Specialist Joseph Leatham, in the turret, kept firing as the vehicle burned, allowing his comrades to get out alive.
When the first American helicopter arrived as reinforcement, it came under fire and was forced to veer away. "I had one magazine left," Sergeant Brannan said. "I had enough for another 15 to 20 minutes."
In all, the battle lasted seven hours. Ten Taliban fighters were captured, and five Afghan policemen and six American soldiers were wounded.
The Afghan informer, who walked for three hours to see the American troops when he heard in late May that they were in Gazek Kula, said that a local Taliban commander, Mullah Abdullah, had led the Taliban in the fight. The mullah escaped with his deputy, Sangaryar, by jumping in the river and floating downstream, the informer said.
After the battle, he said, the Taliban sent out word that local men should help bury the dead. Mullah Abdullah and his deputy were there as they buried 19 bodies, 14 of them representing the commander's entire fighting unit.
But news of the fight traveled fast, and dozens more fighters crossed from Pakistan to shore up the Taliban ranks, the informer said. Mullah Abdullah now had a new force of 40 men.
Three other leading Taliban commanders in the province - Mullah Muhammad Alam, Mullah Ahmadullah and Mullah Hedayatullah - had more than 200 fighters between them, with more reserves in Pakistan, he said.
The informer said that he knew Mullah Abdullah well and that the mullah had been a guest in his house. But in late April the mullah and his men detained him, accusing him of spying for the Americans. They seized his satellite phone and rifle and threatened to kill him, but let him go because of shared tribal links.
Sgt. First Class Kyle Shuttlesworth, 45, a veteran soldier who is counting the days to retirement, said that the American forces here had tracked many men infiltrating from Pakistan, but that since they crossed unarmed, the Americans had no cause to detain them. "We are trying to work out where they get their weapons," he said.
Some in the area accused Pakistan of fueling the insurgency. Though ostensibly an American ally, Pakistan is viewed with suspicion here by some American military and Afghan officials for its failure to stem the flow of Taliban recruits.
"The Taliban will be finished when there is no foreign interference," said Mullah Zafar Khan, the Deychopan district chief. He blamed mullahs and others in Pakistan for inveigling young people into join the fight. "Pakistan is giving them the wrong information and telling them to go and do jihad," he said.
The governor of the province, Delbar Jan Arman, said the answer was to unite the local tribes and strengthen the government, since the Taliban were profiting from a power vacuum. "The reason is not that the Taliban are strong," he said. "The government is not so strong in these areas."
Sergeant Shuttlesworth said part of the American strategy was to engage the local people. Distributing aid and providing jobs in reconstruction projects were paying dividends in the next district, he said, with many people coming forward to offer intelligence on the Taliban.
The soldiers have to learn to switch from aggression to friendliness, he said, "like turning off and on a light switch." It is a slow and tricky job. At Gazek Kula, the American forces at first encountered a wary, silent population that shut itself indoors and turned out the lights.
After bunking in a deserted farmhouse, Sergeant Shuttlesworth and the unit's commander, First Lt. Joshua Hyland, still pale from his recent desk job, chatted with villagers for hours the next day in the small bazaar, joking with children, who at first would not accept even a cookie.
"The Taliban are not here, so there will be no fighting," Sergeant Shuttlesworth told the villagers. "We are here to talk to the people, see if you have enough food, if the children are healthy. We are here for a few days, not to harass the people."
The villagers said the Taliban passed through every so often and demanded food. "The Taliban come only for one night," Wali Muhammad, 33, a wheat trader, said. "They are not a security problem."
Others complained that the Taliban had gathered them in the bazaar and warned them not to run a school, support the government or accept foreign aid. The children said the Taliban had warned them that school would turn them into infidels.
"Twenty days ago there were 10 Taliban in this room," a former policeman, Abdul Matin, 40, told the Americans sitting on the floor over a glass of tea in his home.
They came in a group of 100, he said, and spread out around the village. They had satellite phones and plenty of money, offering one man $2,000 to work as an informer. They were gone before dawn and have not been back since, Mr. Matin said.
"The people support the Taliban because they don't loot and they respect the women," he said. But he added, "The whole district wants to help the Americans, because our country is destroyed."
Lieutenant Hyland urged the villagers to vote in the parliamentary elections scheduled for Sept. 18 and elect someone honest. "Power for the people comes through democracy," he said. "It has to start with the strength of the people, even if it is dangerous for you."
American units have encountered Taliban every few days since the May 3 battle, Sergeant Shuttlesworth said. The battalion suffered its first fatality on May 21, when Pfc. Steven C. Tucker, 19, of Grapevine, Tex., was killed by a roadside explosion in the south. It is there that insurgents cross on their way from Pakistan to join up with the Taliban in the mountains.
The American forces keep probing, hoping to lure the Taliban out of the craggy mountain passes. On a recent five-hour trek, Sergeant Shuttlesworth took his men, along with 10 local police officers, down the narrow river valley near here, trying once again to tempt the Taliban into revealing themselves.
"We are the bait," he told the local police chief. "Are you ready to fight?"
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By Carlotta Gall
The New York Times
Saturday 04 June 2005
Gazek Kula, Afghanistan - For weeks, sightings of Taliban fighters were being reported all over the rugged mountains here. But when Staff Sgt. Patrick Brannan and his team of scouts drove into a nearby village to investigate a complaint of a beating, they had no idea that they were stumbling into the biggest battle of their lives.
On May 3, joined by 10 local policemen and an interpreter, the scouts turned up at a kind of Taliban convention - of some 60 to 80 fighters - and were greeted by rockets and gunfire. The sergeant called for reinforcements and was told to keep the Taliban engaged until they arrived. "I've only got six men," he remembers saying.
For the next two and a half hours, he and his small squad, who had a year of experience in Iraq, cut off a Taliban escape. Nearly 40 Taliban and one Afghan policeman were killed. "It's not supposed to be like that here," said Capt. Mike Adamski, a battalion intelligence officer. "It's the hardest fight I saw, even after Iraq."
During the last six months, American and Afghan officials have predicted the collapse of the Taliban, the hard-line Islamists thrown out of power by American forces in 2001, citing their failure to disrupt the presidential election last October and a lack of activity last winter.
But the intensity of the fighting here in Zabul Province, and in parts of adjoining Kandahar and Uruzgan Provinces - roughly 100 square miles of mountain valleys in all - reveals the Taliban to be still a vibrant fighting force supplied with money, men and weapons.
The May 3 battle was part of an almost forgotten war in the most remote corners of Afghanistan, a strange and dangerous campaign that is part cat-and-mouse game against Taliban forces and part public relations blitz to win over wary villagers still largely sympathetic to the Taliban.
An Afghan informer, who did not want his name used for fear of retribution, has told American forces that the Taliban ranks have been rapidly replenished by recruits who slipped in from Pakistan. For every one of the Taliban killed on May 3, judging by his account, another has arrived to take his place.
With a ready source of men, and apparently plentiful weapons, the Taliban may not be able to hold ground, but they can continue their insurgency indefinitely, attacking the fledgling Afghan government, scaring away aid groups and leaving the province ungovernable, some Afghan and American officials say.
Still, the former commander of United States forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Barno, described the insurgency as in decline in an interview on April 26 and predicted that a government amnesty offer would fatally split the Taliban in coming months.
In April and May, in a new push to flush out and end the insurgency, American forces began probing the final bastions of Taliban control in this unforgiving landscape. They have succeeded in provoking some of the heaviest combat in Afghanistan in the last three years, killing more than 60 Taliban fighters in April and May, by one United States military estimate.
After a winter lull, the Second Battalion, 503rd Airborne Infantry, which arrived at the Lagman base in Zabul from its base in Vicenza, Italy, found its new post hopping with activity, Capt. Jonathan Hopkins, the battalion adjutant, and others said.
Suspected Taliban fighters burned the district headquarters in Khak-e-Iran in mid-March. An American platoon was ambushed in the Deychopan district on April 15. United States Special Forces were in a sizable fight in the Argandab district on April 18, killing eight men suspected of being Taliban and capturing a mid-level commander. Two Taliban commanders led attacks on the police station at Saigaz, the seat of the Argandab district, on April 21 and 22.
"There are three to four healthy cells, with 30 to 60 fighters in each; that's 120 to 240 people altogether," said Captain Adamski, estimating the total Taliban strength in the area, though accounts from local people indicated higher numbers.
In the battle on May 3, the 60 to 80 Taliban fighters encountered by Sergeant Brannan and his scouts were well armed and well prepared, with weapons caches and foxholes dotting an orchard where the heaviest fighting took place.
The Taliban fought to within 150 yards of American positions and later hit one of two armored Humvees with a volley of rocket-propelled grenades that set it on fire, Sergeant Brannan said. Specialist Joseph Leatham, in the turret, kept firing as the vehicle burned, allowing his comrades to get out alive.
When the first American helicopter arrived as reinforcement, it came under fire and was forced to veer away. "I had one magazine left," Sergeant Brannan said. "I had enough for another 15 to 20 minutes."
In all, the battle lasted seven hours. Ten Taliban fighters were captured, and five Afghan policemen and six American soldiers were wounded.
The Afghan informer, who walked for three hours to see the American troops when he heard in late May that they were in Gazek Kula, said that a local Taliban commander, Mullah Abdullah, had led the Taliban in the fight. The mullah escaped with his deputy, Sangaryar, by jumping in the river and floating downstream, the informer said.
After the battle, he said, the Taliban sent out word that local men should help bury the dead. Mullah Abdullah and his deputy were there as they buried 19 bodies, 14 of them representing the commander's entire fighting unit.
But news of the fight traveled fast, and dozens more fighters crossed from Pakistan to shore up the Taliban ranks, the informer said. Mullah Abdullah now had a new force of 40 men.
Three other leading Taliban commanders in the province - Mullah Muhammad Alam, Mullah Ahmadullah and Mullah Hedayatullah - had more than 200 fighters between them, with more reserves in Pakistan, he said.
The informer said that he knew Mullah Abdullah well and that the mullah had been a guest in his house. But in late April the mullah and his men detained him, accusing him of spying for the Americans. They seized his satellite phone and rifle and threatened to kill him, but let him go because of shared tribal links.
Sgt. First Class Kyle Shuttlesworth, 45, a veteran soldier who is counting the days to retirement, said that the American forces here had tracked many men infiltrating from Pakistan, but that since they crossed unarmed, the Americans had no cause to detain them. "We are trying to work out where they get their weapons," he said.
Some in the area accused Pakistan of fueling the insurgency. Though ostensibly an American ally, Pakistan is viewed with suspicion here by some American military and Afghan officials for its failure to stem the flow of Taliban recruits.
"The Taliban will be finished when there is no foreign interference," said Mullah Zafar Khan, the Deychopan district chief. He blamed mullahs and others in Pakistan for inveigling young people into join the fight. "Pakistan is giving them the wrong information and telling them to go and do jihad," he said.
The governor of the province, Delbar Jan Arman, said the answer was to unite the local tribes and strengthen the government, since the Taliban were profiting from a power vacuum. "The reason is not that the Taliban are strong," he said. "The government is not so strong in these areas."
Sergeant Shuttlesworth said part of the American strategy was to engage the local people. Distributing aid and providing jobs in reconstruction projects were paying dividends in the next district, he said, with many people coming forward to offer intelligence on the Taliban.
The soldiers have to learn to switch from aggression to friendliness, he said, "like turning off and on a light switch." It is a slow and tricky job. At Gazek Kula, the American forces at first encountered a wary, silent population that shut itself indoors and turned out the lights.
After bunking in a deserted farmhouse, Sergeant Shuttlesworth and the unit's commander, First Lt. Joshua Hyland, still pale from his recent desk job, chatted with villagers for hours the next day in the small bazaar, joking with children, who at first would not accept even a cookie.
"The Taliban are not here, so there will be no fighting," Sergeant Shuttlesworth told the villagers. "We are here to talk to the people, see if you have enough food, if the children are healthy. We are here for a few days, not to harass the people."
The villagers said the Taliban passed through every so often and demanded food. "The Taliban come only for one night," Wali Muhammad, 33, a wheat trader, said. "They are not a security problem."
Others complained that the Taliban had gathered them in the bazaar and warned them not to run a school, support the government or accept foreign aid. The children said the Taliban had warned them that school would turn them into infidels.
"Twenty days ago there were 10 Taliban in this room," a former policeman, Abdul Matin, 40, told the Americans sitting on the floor over a glass of tea in his home.
They came in a group of 100, he said, and spread out around the village. They had satellite phones and plenty of money, offering one man $2,000 to work as an informer. They were gone before dawn and have not been back since, Mr. Matin said.
"The people support the Taliban because they don't loot and they respect the women," he said. But he added, "The whole district wants to help the Americans, because our country is destroyed."
Lieutenant Hyland urged the villagers to vote in the parliamentary elections scheduled for Sept. 18 and elect someone honest. "Power for the people comes through democracy," he said. "It has to start with the strength of the people, even if it is dangerous for you."
American units have encountered Taliban every few days since the May 3 battle, Sergeant Shuttlesworth said. The battalion suffered its first fatality on May 21, when Pfc. Steven C. Tucker, 19, of Grapevine, Tex., was killed by a roadside explosion in the south. It is there that insurgents cross on their way from Pakistan to join up with the Taliban in the mountains.
The American forces keep probing, hoping to lure the Taliban out of the craggy mountain passes. On a recent five-hour trek, Sergeant Shuttlesworth took his men, along with 10 local police officers, down the narrow river valley near here, trying once again to tempt the Taliban into revealing themselves.
"We are the bait," he told the local police chief. "Are you ready to fight?"
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