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6/27/2015 Helmand-based Afghan soldiers largely abandon counterinsurgency patrols taught by coalition forces - Stripes

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A row of armored personnel carriers sits idleoutside the town of Gereshk in Helmandprovince during what turned out to be a fauxAfghan army patrol, May 12, 2015. Officialssaid they lack the resources to continue the

Helmand-based Afghan soldiers largely abandoncounterinsurgency patrols taught by coalitionforces

Afghan soldiers with the army's 215 Corps sleep inside their armored personnel carrier on their return fromwhat was supposed to be a patrol in Helmand province on May 12, 2015. During a three-day Stars andStripes visit to Camp Shorabak, soldiers only ventured out on supply convoys and to conduct bare perimetersweeps.JAD SLEIMAN/STARS AND STRIPES

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By Jad SleimanStars and StripesPublished: May 31, 2015

CAMP SHORABAK, Afghanistan — Addressingmore than 60 soldiers at the largest military base involatile Helmand province, an Afghan commanderpreached classic counterinsurgency doctrine:patrol through a nearby village to constrict Talibanmovements, assure citizens’ safety and gatherintelligence.

It was the type of speech Western forces would givetheir Afghan trainees ahead of nominally Afghan-led joint patrols. The expectation of the NATO-ledcoalition, after more than a decade of fine-tuningthe strategy in Afghanistan, was that Afghanswould continue such operations after the foreignerswithdrew.

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type of counterinsurgency patrols common

during the coalition's presence in Helmand.

JAD SLEIMAN/STARS AND STRIPES

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The goal was to prevent the Taliban from regaininga hold in cleared areas, particularly Helmand,where more than 900 coalition troops —mostlyU.S. Marines and British forces — were killed.

But seven months after the last Marines and Britishtroops left Helmand, the similarities betweencounterinsurgency operations then and theAfghans’ take on them today ended with that peptalk. The entire mission that day would quicklyturn out to be a photo-op.

The bread-and-butter counterinsurgency patrols,carried out daily during the coalition’s height, haveapparently fallen out of favor amid mountingcasualties suffered by the Afghan National SecurityForces.

At Camp Shorabak, when Lt. MuhammadAzizullah, the Afghan commander, barked anorder, his men sprinted toward 14 U.S.-suppliedarmored troop carriers and Humvees andclambered inside.

The turret gunners racked their 50-caliber machineguns before the convoy thundered down thehighway past shuttered coalition bases toward thevillage of Gereshk, about 25 miles to the south.

On the town’s outskirts, they stopped on a desolatestreet and a handful of soldiers got out. They milledabout their parking spot for about half an hour,then turned the vehicles around and began thereturn trip.

After repeated questioning as to why so many menand vehicles drove an hour to park and then returnto base, Azizullah finally conceded, “It’s just for thepictures.”

Violence up, patrols down

During a three-day Stars and Stripes visit to CampShorabak, contingents of Afghan soldiers who leftthe base were either running supply convoys orconducting bare perimeter sweeps, officials said,essentially patrolling the remnants of the bases theWestern soldiers used to occupy.

The ANA boasts an estimated 180,000 men, about40,000 more than the coalition had during theheight of its combat involvement in the war, butAfghan military officials say that’s not enough.

“The Americans and British had helicopters flyingevery day, and what they were doing — going out to the villages and holding shuras —was fantastic, but we do not have the same equipment and facilities,” said Col.Mohammad Zazay, an ANA spokesman at Shorabak. “If there isn’t a battle going on, wedon’t need to patrol around and meet with locals. It’s all quiet here.“

Only it wasn’t. In early April, Gereshk, destination of the photo-op patrol, was the sceneof a complicated surprise Taliban attack that involved digging secret tunnels andultimately killing the area police chief while leveling a checkpoint. It was precisely thetype of attack counterinsurgency operations are designed to prevent, or at leastanticipate.

But the Afghans may have other concerns.

“A way to avoid your men being killed is to stop patrolling, stop creating targets ofopportunity for the Taliban,” said Matthew Henman, managing editor at the London-based IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre. “But then the wholecounterinsurgency mission is fundamentally undermined.”

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The consequences can be dire. On May 25, the Taliban laid siege to the Now Zad districtpolice headquarters, some 40 miles north of Shorabak, killing 19 police and sevensoldiers, according to The Associated Press.

Unwillingness to patrol also was seen on the highway the Shorabak soldiers convoyeddown, which was dotted with ANA checkpoints. Although some checkpoints hadrecently taken fire from villages visible from the road, officials said the soldiersmanning them rarely ventured into those villages. Instead, they reinforced sandbagdefenses around the checkpoints.

Despite the checkpoints, the road itself is not safe. An Afghan intelligence officer atShorabak, who appeared to have been drinking, recommended traveling only during thebusier morning hours to avoid pop-up Taliban checkpoints and improvised explosivedevices.

A few days after the faux patrol, just beyond Gereshk, a Humvee blocked the road and apair of Afghan soldiers frantically signaled traffic to back off. Moments later, anenormous blast briefly obscured the sun and rained rocks and dirt on stopped vehicles.One of the soldiers fired off a couple of bursts toward a man he thought was acting as aspotter. It was not clear if the insurgents or the ANA had set off the bomb, which wasplaced nearly equidistant from two ANA checkpoints only a 20-minute drive apart.

Cognizant of the danger, civilian traffic blazed along the motorway at speedsapproaching 90 mph in the belief, locals said, that they might be able to outrun an IED’sblast.

Having so many checkpoints may actually work against the ANA by “tying down” theforce, reducing its mobility and demanding it hold more ground than it can handle, saidKabul-based conflict analyst Graeme Smith.

Clear, hold, buildAmerican counterinsurgency doctrine of the last several years involves three steps:clear, hold and build. The goal is to remove insurgents, then earn the support and trustof residents, key to learning if militants are attempting to return. To that end, soldierswould regularly patrol through former hotbeds, not unlike city cops walking a beat in atough neighborhood.

These operations made up the bulk of coalition efforts in Helmand as Western soldiersstruggled to overcome deep-seated mistrust of foreigners.

Though they may be fellow Afghans, ANA soldiers face similar barriers to winning overlocal populations because of ethnic differences. The ANA is mostly made up of northernAfghan ethnic groups, while Helmand is home to Pashtun, who have different customs,language and a strained history with the northerners.

The challenge for the ANA, said Henman, is convincing the locals it’s the governmentthat will provide long-term support and deserves their allegiance, not the Taliban, whoare also largely Pashtun.

The Afghans celebrated their ability to clear an area earlier this year, when three Armycorps chased the Taliban out of portions of the Sangin valley in northern Helmand inOperation Zulfiqar.

“Hundreds of insurgents got killed and wounded [during Zulfiqar], so if I have tocompare the security in the province of last year to now, I’d say it’s much better now,”said Gen. Dadan Lawang, commander of the Shobarak-based 215 Corps.

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Mike Murray, deputy commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan-Support, also praised the combat prowess the ANA demonstrated during Zulfiqar,noting Afghan forces conducted operations almost completely on their own whilehandling complex tasks such as helicopter medevacs and artillery coordination. But, hecautioned it’s still too early to celebrate.

“I think the long-term success of [Operation Zulfiqar] will really be determined by howwell they connected with the population and the long-term security in that area and thathas yet to be seen,” he said at Bagram Air Field. “I don’t think we’ll know the truesuccess of Zulfiqar for months to come.”

Meanwhile, the Taliban in Sangin have managed to re-enter cleared areas.

At Shorabak’s surgical clinic, Sangin is a touchy subject. An Army officer stopped asurgeon from discussing the influx of casualties he’d recently seen from the area, but a

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medical technician later estimated that casualties have jumped 50 percent over thesame period last year.

Sgt. Shir Ali, a patient at the clinic, described the battle in which a rocket-propelledgrenade struck his Humvee May 11 and severed a comrade’s legs.

“We destroyed many houses, but some were still standing,” Ali said. “And now theTaliban use these local people’s houses as a shelter and fire on us.”

Sangin, long a Taliban hotbed, is only one of an increasing number of fronts strainingthe ANA nationwide.

“It’s obvious that some of these massive clearance operations are not leaving behindlingering stability,” Smith said. “The job of the ANSF is not to win this war, their job isto find a line that they can hold and then hold it.”

Meanwhile the ANA is losing men and money. Analysts and military leaders havewarned their mounting casualty rate is unsustainable, and their U.S.-funded operatingbudget has been roughly halved over recent years.

But the soldiers at Shorabak don’t seem to be losing any sleep over such concerns. Inone vehicle during the convoy’s return from Gereshk’s faux patrol, only the driverremained awake while the others slept. The turret gunner — who should have beenscanning for threats — was snoring softly.

[email protected]: @JadASleiman

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ADVERTISEMENT Helmand-based Afghan soldiers largely ...Afghan army patrol, May 12, 2015. Officials said they lack the resources to continue the Helmand-based Afghan soldiers largely