Contact Charlie: buy it, read it

If I hadn't been traveling on business last week, I would have posted about this sooner. In fact, I have a few posts rattling around the cavernous space between my ears, but have had no time to put fingers to keyboard in well over a week now...ah, well, it's a free blog, and you get what you pay for.

That certainly applies to Chris Wattie's new book, Contact Charlie: the Canadian Army, the Taliban, and the Battle that Saved Afghanistan.

Buy it. Read it. Encourage others to do the same.

Yes, yes, I know Mark posted someone's review the other day, and I'm glad he did. But I'm going to do one better - I'm going to post an excerpt, with Wattie's permission of course.

Now, for full disclosure: I've corresponded with Chris and lunched with him a couple of times. We even sat together on a "Media and the Military" roundtable for JCSP 35 at the Canadian Forces College today. That's not why I'm so enthusiastic about the book; on the contrary, I wanted to get to know Chris better because I got a chance to preview the book during the draft stages and enjoyed it so much.

More of that after the excerpt, though, taken from Chapter 10:

Despite the disturbing signs of a Taliban build-up in the region and the boldness and aggression of their fighters in meeting the Canadians head-on, the American commanders in faraway Bagram were not convinced of the seriousness of the threat. Instead of continuing their work in the Panjwayi, Task Force Orion was ordered to join Operation Mountain Thrust, a major coalition offensive that spanned the five southern and several eastern provinces. The operation would be planned and directed by the U.S.–led coalition task force that commanded all allied combat units in Afghanistan.

Mountain Thrust involved dozens of American, British, Afghan and other coalition units, more than ten thousand soldiers in all, spread across thousands of mountainous kilometres. The operation was designed to flush the Taliban out of the strongholds where the U.S. generals were convinced they were hiding. The Canadian role in the mission was relatively minor, a series of moves through the mountains north of Kandahar City, and Hope could barely contain his frustration at being forced to leave the ongoing battle in the Panjwayi.

Listening to Hope’s briefing, Bill Fletcher could tell his commander was angry, much as he tried to hide it. “We know damn well the enemy up there doesn’t want anything to do with us,” he thought, looking at the large-scale map that laid out the planned movements of the Canadian battle group through the mountains. "We’re being sent up there and our work down here’s not finished.” The situation was particularly irritating for Hope for a few reasons. After a month of on-again, off-again fighting, the Canadians were finally beginning to see results from their running battle with the Taliban in Panjwayi. Seyyedin had been the longest and most intense firefight to date, and although a handful of Taliban had managed to slip out of Charlie’s grasp, fleeing the grape-drying hut just before the bomb hit, all had been hurt. Charlie Company had killed, captured or seriously wounded an entire Taliban cell. Furthermore, for weeks Hope had been telling everyone in the Canadian and U.S. chain of command who would listen about the danger in the Panjwayi. Even before the more than two weeks’ fighting that climaxed in the battle at Seyyedin, Hope had personally told Major-General Benjamin Freakley, the general in overall command of coalition forces in southern Afghanistan, about the Taliban’s build-up in Panjwayi. He had gotten nowhere: the Americans just weren’t listening.

Hope had returned to KAF on May 29, straight from more than a week of fighting in the Panjwayi, to brief Canadian brigade commander, Brigadier-General David Fraser, about the fighting in his area of operations. He alit from his LAV as soon as it rolled to a stop in the Task Force Orion compound, a small corner of the sprawling base where the Canadians parked their vehicles and kept most of their ammunition and supplies. Clutching a roll of maps in one hand, Hope marched directly to the two-storey white building built out of converted sea containers that served as brigade headquarters. His hands and face were coated with dust and his camouflage uniform was stiff with sweat and dirt from nearly a week of constant wear. He trotted up the rickety metal stairs to the second-floor office of the brigade’s chief of staff, Colonel Chris Vernon, and without preamble, unrolled his map of the Panjwayi on his desk.

Vernon, a telegenically handsome British Army officer with a crisp public school accent and a shock of wavy grey hair, had a reputation as a keen military mind. Moreover, he was an experienced soldier, having served in the U.S.–led Operation Iraqi Freedom. He and Hope got along well and had a mutually high regard for one other, so Vernon listened closely as the Canadian pointed out the dozens of places his troops had made contact with the Taliban and described each in detail. Vernon frowned with growing concern at the picture Hope was painting: clearly there were more Taliban in the Panjwayi than anyone at the brigade or U.S. headquarters had suspected.

“Wait here,” he said after Hope had finished, scowling at the map. "The general is in camp on a visit: he ought to hear this.”

Hope knew who Vernon meant: Major-General Freakley, the commander of the U.S. 10th Mountain Division and the direct superior of Canadian Brigadier-General Fraser, Hope’s immediate boss. He sank wearily into one of the office chairs and waited, running a hand through his thinning hair, which had taken on the consistency of bleached steel wool.

Freakley had a reputation as a general who kept his staff running hard to keep up. His role as commander of the Mountain Division had created in him something of a fixation with Afghanistan’s mountains as the natural sanctuary for the Taliban. And his previous experience had only hardened this opinion. In 2002, he had been part of Operation Anaconda, a failed attempt to trap and destroy the last major pocket of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in the rugged mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Anaconda had cleared the insurgents out of the Shahi-Kot Valley, but most of the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies had escaped due to poor coordination between the coalition forces and Afghan troops. One of that operation’s mistakes was the failure of American intelligence to properly locate the enemy, incorrectly predicting that they occupied several large villages in the valley. In fact, the valley floors were empty when coalition forces began swooping in by helicopter and many troops — most of them American — were caught in Taliban kill zones that were swept by fire from positions in the mountains and hills. Ironically, Anaconda was the first major combat operation that included a Canadian unit—the 3rd Battalion of the PPCLI — and among the soldiers protecting the troops on the valley floor was a Canadian sniper team, armed with a .50-calibre long-range sniper rifle. During the operation, Corporal Rob Furlong, of Newfoundland, set a world record for the longest sniper kill in history when he shot a Taliban machine gunner at a distance of 2,430 metres.

Freakley was determined to succeed where Anaconda had failed, and his staff had put together an ambitious series of operations that would send the Canadians all over northern Kandahar Province looking for Taliban. As Hope waited for the general, he wondered how Freakley would take the news that the enemy was much closer than he thought.

A few minutes later, Freakley strode into the room trailing a small crowd of staff officers in his wake. Vernon and a handful of Canadian brigade officers brought up the rear. The general was a big man with a booming voice, blunt features and a personality that took up all the space in a room. Hope was immediately conscious of his own shabby appearance and ripe smell—it had been days since he had had a shower. But Freakley smiled broadly and enclosed Hope’s hand with his own when the Canadian colonel rose to his feet. He waved him to a chair near the head of a long plywood table and eased into one himself. “Tell me everything,” he said.

Hope turned his map of Panjwayi around so it was facing Freakley and repeated what he had told Colonel Vernon about the obvious build-up of Taliban in the Panjwayi and the Canadian battle group’s attempts to disrupt them. “There are probably two hundred enemy fighters there,” he said, and watched as a sceptical frown formed on the general’s face.

Hope pointed out five villages where Charlie and Bravo Companies had separately contacted large groups of Taliban within the space of a few hours: obviously they couldn’t be in that many places at once. Freakley remained silent, but his frown deepened. Clearly, nobody had told him about the Taliban’s build-up in Panjwayi.

Hope carried on, detailing the ANA and ANP operations in the area and finally laying out what he had gleaned from Captain Massoud and his network of informants. “The Afghans are saying that the Taliban have chosen to build a base of operations in Panjwayi for one of two purposes: either to conduct multiple pin-prick attacks every day along the routes into Kandahar and in the city outskirts itself, disrupting us and causing worry amongst the locals, or to conduct one large-scale spectacular attack into the city.”

Hope took a deep breath. “They want to seize something symbolic—like the stadium, the palace, or the [United Nations] compound—and fight a bloody battle in the streets of Kandahar that they would lose, but which would have an effect similar to the Tet Offensive.”

The words had barely left Hope’s lips before Freakley became visibly agitated. “I don’t want to hear that!” he barked dismissively. “That’s a bad analogy: don’t use those words again.”

The 1968 Tet Offensive, a series of attacks launched by North Vietnam deep into the southern half of the country, was still a sore point with many U.S. Army officers. The Vietnamese had coordinated attacks by regulars and Viet Cong guerrillas throughout South Vietnam, hitting U.S. military bases, South Vietnamese government installations and even the U.S. Embassy in downtown Saigon, which had been considered impregnable. Although a resounding military defeat for the communist North Vietnamese, Tet was a public relations victory. The American public had been told that the North was losing, but televised images of fighting in the heart of Saigon helped shift public opinion against the war, and it is now considered a turning point in the conflict.

Despite Freakley’s discomfort, Hope believed the analogy was entirely correct. The Taliban wanted to attack Kandahar not to take and hold the city, but for the psychological effect such an attack would have on public opinion in Canada and other NATO nations. He was taken aback by Freakley’s reaction and paused for a moment until the general calmed down. After a minute, Freakley’s attention returned to the map in front of him and he began quizzing Hope in detail about the Taliban’s activities and locations in the Panjwayi. Hope was puzzled. The American general seemed genuinely surprised to hear about such a large massing of the enemy almost literally under the coalition’s noses, but for months now the Canadians had been sending in regular reports on their operations and what they were up against. He and Vernon exchanged looks. Was it possible the information wasn’t making its way to Freakley? Hope glanced down the table at the general’s staff officers. From the looks on their faces, Hope surmised that Freakley’s staff were not happy with what their general was hearing, and even less happy that it was coming from a Canadian.

Freakley told Hope that he needed to watch this build-up by keeping forces engaged in the districts. The Canadian colonel pointed out that Task Force Orion was due to be withdrawn from the Panjwayi in just over two weeks in order to embark upon Operation Mountain Thrust. He gently suggested that the general alter his plan and allow the Canadians to remain in Panjwayi. Freakley thought this over, then countered with a suggestion of his own: the Canadian battle group could leave the bulk of its attached ANA troops in the Panjwayi to keep an eye on the Taliban, taking only a few Afghan troops with them when they went north.

Hope paused, wondering just what the general had been told for the past few months. The Canadian task force had been complaining almost daily about the shortage of ANA troops assigned to their area. “Sir,” he said carefully, “we only have a maximum of fifteen or twenty ANA there with us now.”

Freakley exploded. His face reddened and he slammed his fist down on the table. “Why the hell am I only finding out about this now?” he shouted at everyone in the room...

I'm not sure either Chris or Christie appreciate the comparison, but I see Contact Charlie and Fifteen Days as two sides of the same coin. Both books deal with the same cast of characters going through the same events, as part of Task Force Orion. But where Christie's book put you in touch with the emotions of those who were there and those who were left behind, Chris' book reads more like a campaign history.

In fact, when I reviewed Fifteen Days, I said this:

I also found myself aching for some of the X's and O's of the events described - maps and arrows that showed just what the troops were trying to accomplish in each of the stories of fierce and deadly combat. But I quickly realized that hope was an unreasonable one: this book isn't a campaign history, it's a selection of personal snapshots, an emotional collage. One day I hope to read a campaign history of Canada's experience in Kandahar, but this book was never intended to be that history.

Although I'm sure he didn't intend it this way, Wattie's book tells the rest of the story that Blatchford got to first, with maps and a chronological layout that answered my plea to the letter.

Most Canadian journalists could write everything they know about the CF on the head of a pin, and still have room to dance there. Wattie is one of the rare breed in this country who actually know a thing or two about the CF, and are willing to put that knowledge to productive use in educating the Canadian public.

This book does just that: it tells ordinary Canadians about a critical period in the most intense military mission Canadians have undertaken since Korea, and it does it in a compelling and fascinating fashion.

Seriously, buy the book. You won't regret it.