Battle in Nuristan, Part II

Further to this post by Brian Platt at The Canada-Afghanistan Blog about a major attack on US troops,

Battle In Nuristan

excerpts from one by BruceR at Flit:

Today's essential Afghan reading

Hands down, Tom Ricks' description of the battle of COP Keating.

It was tempting at first to write this off as the latest in what looked like an annual attempt to overrun an American outpost in Nuristan (Ranch House, 2007, Wanat, 2008, now this), but this one is actually more troubling than those others...

The complete rout of the ANSF in location reported in this piece would be unfortunate, but not unexpected. We need to be absolutely clear: there is nothing, nothing we have created or will likely be able to field in any corner of the Afghan army in the next two years, or even longer, that could have withstood an attack as determined as this on its own. Only resolute and highly trained infantry backed up with nearly unlimited precision-capable artillery and air assets, could have confidently remained in this position as long as they did.

The only hope for Afghan military leadership if a foe of this quality remains at the end of our time in country (assuming that were any time soon) would be to adopt tactics and operational doctrine significantly different from what we've been using and teaching them to hold the eastern mountains, because these tactics will demonstrably lead to their deaths in large numbers; and/or to hope that in the absence of Western troops, the enemy wouldn't be quite as determined as this crowd clearly was to seek their adversary's annihilation....

Read the whole piece. More on co-location with the ANA at the Update here (though the above battle is not a happy example).