"At War: Notes From the Front Lines"

A good blog from the NY Times. Latest piece:

Toggling Between Fighting and Outreach in Afghanistan
By C.J. CHIVERS

However the Afghan war is faring over all, across the wide and varied expanse of Afghanistan, with all of its political and cultural complexity, one thing is abundantly clear: toggling between fighting and outreach can create head-spinning scenes. Some of these scenes underline the difficulties inherent in a counterinsurgency doctrine that mixes lopsided violence with attempts to make nice. But they also simultaneously demonstrate that the efforts to follow the doctrine far from Kabul, out on remote ground, have become a central part of how the war is waged, even as the merits of the doctrine are quietly debated.

One example was in mid-February, when Kilo Company, Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, was still isolated and alone in the agricultural strip in northern Marja, a region of small villages between patches of open steppe and irrigated poppy fields. The old-school fighting between Kilo Company and the local gunmen and Taliban fighters had consumed a large part of each day for several days running. Both sides had settled into rifle and machine gun battles across the farmers’ fields. The Marines were also using their 60-millimeter mortars and calling in helicopter attack gunships and occasional air or rocket strikes, pushing off the insurgents while continuing down their list of tasks: seizing a bridge and bazaar, selecting a site for a large Afghan police outpost, clearing roads of mines, and more. Each day was basically a rolling gunfight, punctuated by the larger explosions of supporting arms.

In the darkness before sunrise one morning, Col. Brian Christmas, who commands the battalion, landed by helicopter at the small compound that Kilo Company had temporarily occupied for its command post. He wanted to visit an elderly Afghan man who a few days before had suffered a terrible loss: his family had been inside a compound that was mistakenly struck by a ground-to-ground guided rocket. Twelve civilians had been killed, five of them children, and one man remained missing, presumably buried under the rubble.

At dawn, a small foot patrol set out with the colonel to visit the ruined home...

If American counterinsurgency doctrine is sound, and to have a chance of succeeding in Afghanistan – two assertions that remain subjects of debate within the ranks – then the contest for public sentiment among Afghan civilians will arguably be more important over the long run than the relative effectiveness of each side’s martial skills. A series of recent posts looked closely at the Taliban’s equipment, tactics and marksmanship, including their recent use of snipers in Helmand Province. Fighting skills and fighting methods obviously matter to the outcome of the American and Afghan effort against the Taliban. In many ways, the quieter and less spectacular struggle for popular sentiment is much harder to measure, or the measurements (numbers of voters registered, numbers of local men coaxed into joining small governing councils, etc.) feel disconnected from the ways Afghan villages actually make decisions and tend to their affairs.

The decision with Abdul Ghani’s detention [guess what it was] is the sort of action that is difficult both to assess and to make extrapolations from. How much do actions like this influence the war? No one can quite be sure. But a sizeable contingent of officers on the ground believe that the potential gains from such a gesture can outweigh the risks...

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Abdul Ghani, wearing a green jacket, is greeted by friends and family after being released by Marines who had detained him in Marja.