Watching Afghanistan fall
Stationed with a battle-scarred U.S. Army troop in the mountain region where Osama bin Laden supposedly hides, with the insurgency on the rise, I witnessed why the other war is going to hell.
By Matthew Cole
from Salon.com
Feb. 27, 2007 | At 9 p.m. on my first night at the U.S. Army base in Kamdesh, I was shaken awake by a 105 mm howitzer round. Then a symphony of incoming and outgoing fire sounded. BO-OM! BO-OM! BO-OM! Tat! Tat! Tat! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! From the pine- and cedar-lined mountain slope that loomed over the base, several insurgents were firing down on us with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47s. The line of Humvees ringing the base spotted the insurgents and began shooting back. For 10 minutes U.S. forces blanketed the ridgeline above with machine-gun and rifle fire and RPGs. A soldier manning a $500,000 thermal-imaging device (LRAS) the size of a large microwave, spotted the silhouette of Afghans holding weapons and radios -- the mark of a Taliban or al-Qaida insurgent, rather than just an average Kalashnikov-toting Afghan civilian -- and began pulling the trigger of his machine gun.
After the first round of fighting, the soldier yelled that he had confirmed at least one death. "I saw that motherfucker through the LRAS!" he screamed, breathing heavily, his adrenaline high. "I saw him explode into a bunch of pieces! Parts were everywhere!" He smiled.
As the volleys began to subside, Sgt. Matthew Netzel guessed aloud that roughly five insurgents had been killed. "I think there are more up there, but we're not certain yet, 'cause we don't know how many there were to begin with," he said. As they fired, U.S. forces launched slow-falling flares that lit up the wooded area they were firing upon, hoping to illuminate the insurgents' positions. But there were no more insurgents to be seen. The echo of automatic-weapons fire stopped bouncing through the valley and most of the soldiers went back to sleep. It was just another night in Kamdesh. The base averages three attacks per week.
The next morning, a group climbed up the mountainside to look for casualties but found none. "They usually clean their bodies up before we can get to them," Lt. Benjamin Keating, a 27-year-old from Maine, told me. "They will pull the bodies, scrub bloodstains, and sometimes they pick the shells up too. We never know how many we killed or who they were. They're like ghosts." The inability to know how many and who was killed has made it hard for U.S. forces to identify whom they are fighting -- Arabs, Afghans or other groups. When they can, a confirmed kill requires a digital photo of the dead man's face. But those are few and far between.
(The rest is here.)
By Matthew Cole
from Salon.com
Feb. 27, 2007 | At 9 p.m. on my first night at the U.S. Army base in Kamdesh, I was shaken awake by a 105 mm howitzer round. Then a symphony of incoming and outgoing fire sounded. BO-OM! BO-OM! BO-OM! Tat! Tat! Tat! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! From the pine- and cedar-lined mountain slope that loomed over the base, several insurgents were firing down on us with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47s. The line of Humvees ringing the base spotted the insurgents and began shooting back. For 10 minutes U.S. forces blanketed the ridgeline above with machine-gun and rifle fire and RPGs. A soldier manning a $500,000 thermal-imaging device (LRAS) the size of a large microwave, spotted the silhouette of Afghans holding weapons and radios -- the mark of a Taliban or al-Qaida insurgent, rather than just an average Kalashnikov-toting Afghan civilian -- and began pulling the trigger of his machine gun.
After the first round of fighting, the soldier yelled that he had confirmed at least one death. "I saw that motherfucker through the LRAS!" he screamed, breathing heavily, his adrenaline high. "I saw him explode into a bunch of pieces! Parts were everywhere!" He smiled.
As the volleys began to subside, Sgt. Matthew Netzel guessed aloud that roughly five insurgents had been killed. "I think there are more up there, but we're not certain yet, 'cause we don't know how many there were to begin with," he said. As they fired, U.S. forces launched slow-falling flares that lit up the wooded area they were firing upon, hoping to illuminate the insurgents' positions. But there were no more insurgents to be seen. The echo of automatic-weapons fire stopped bouncing through the valley and most of the soldiers went back to sleep. It was just another night in Kamdesh. The base averages three attacks per week.
The next morning, a group climbed up the mountainside to look for casualties but found none. "They usually clean their bodies up before we can get to them," Lt. Benjamin Keating, a 27-year-old from Maine, told me. "They will pull the bodies, scrub bloodstains, and sometimes they pick the shells up too. We never know how many we killed or who they were. They're like ghosts." The inability to know how many and who was killed has made it hard for U.S. forces to identify whom they are fighting -- Arabs, Afghans or other groups. When they can, a confirmed kill requires a digital photo of the dead man's face. But those are few and far between.
(The rest is here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home