Seldom do I waste time with rebutting articles, and especially not from publications like Rolling Stone.  Today, numerous people sent links to the latest Rolling Stone tripe.  The story is titled “THE KILL TEAM, THE FULL STORY.”  It should be titled: “BULLSHIT, from Rolling Stone.”

The story—not really an “article”—covers Soldiers from 5/2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team (SBCT) in Afghanistan.  A handful of Soldiers were accused of murder.  It does in fact appear that a tiny group of rogues committed premeditated murder.  I was embedded with the 5/2 SBCT and was afforded incredible access to the brigade by the Commander, Colonel Harry Tunnell, and the brigade Command Sergeant Major, Robb Prosser.  I know Robb from Iraq.  Colonel Tunnell had been shot in Iraq.

The brigade gave me open access.  I could go anywhere, anytime, so long as I could find a ride, which never was a problem beyond normal combat problems.  If they had something to hide, it was limited and I didn’t find it.  I was not with the Soldiers accused of murder and had no knowledge of this.  It is important to note that the murder allegations were not discovered by media vigilance, but by, for instance, at least one Soldier in that tiny unit who was appalled by the behavior.  A brigade is a big place with thousands of Soldiers, and in Afghanistan they were spread thinly across several provinces because we decided to wage war with too few troops.  Those Soldiers accused of being involved in (or who should have been knowledgeable of) the murders could fit into a minivan.  You would need ten 747s for the rest of the Brigade who did their duty.  I was with many other Soldiers from 5/2 SBCT.  My overall impression was very positive.  After scratching my memory for negative impressions from 5/2 Soldiers, I can’t think of any, actually, other than the tiny Kill Team who, to my knowledge, I never set eyes upon. (more…)

Michael Yon
20 June 2010
Chiang Mai, Thailand

Recent violence focused world attention on the Kingdom of Thailand.  As the attention flowed in, foreigners poured out, even though fighting was tightly localized and not focused on travelers.  Tourists literally had to search for trouble to find it.  Of course, some did.

Like other famous countries, Thailand seems to be annotated in peoples’ minds by a single footnote.  This is akin to trying to describe the contents of an Encyclopedia using a single, all-encompassing sentence.  If asked, many people might summarize Americans as rich, arrogant, imperialistic Christians, while we might describe ourselves as peaceful, freedom-loving and generous to a fault.  Likewise, Thailand wears its own name tag – especially so in the touristy areas – yet intricate realities of both countries naturally defy broad strokes. (more…)

Brunei, Afghanistan, Nepal, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam
Published: 08 June 2010

A Gurkha Idea

Among the more interesting coalition forces fighting in Afghanistan are the legendary Nepalese Gurkhas. Trained and fielded by the British, as they have been since colonial days, Gurkhas are a fascinating admixture: today, they are elite soldiers used to traveling the world. But many of them grew up barefoot and poor in remote and primitive mountain villages in the high Himalayas—places that closely resemble parts of Afghanistan, geographically and culturally. Forefathers of some of today’s Ghurkas fought in the Afghan region during earlier wars. Gurkhas understand impoverished life in a harsh environment, though Nepal has enjoyed material progress in recent decades that is mostly unrealized in Afghanistan. Unlike forces from Europe or America, who often regard Afghanistan as an outpost of 13th Century life, Gurkhas can provide a link between primitive Afghan standards of development, and the possibilities for progress, with insights and connections that might elude most Westerners. (more…)

We all are aware that war leads to difficult situations.  In regard to detainees, we’ve seen terrorists released only to strike again. Yet in the interest of justice we are concerned about detaining potentially innocent people.  Difficult times, difficult answers.  In summary, some detainees at Bagram are trying to use American courts to chisel their way out.

Last year, a group of people were asked to join in offering an opinion to the court.  Those were: Special Forces Association, U.S. Army Ranger Association, Senator Lindsey Graham, Col. (ret) Abraham German, Wade Ishimoto, Prof. Andrew Nichols Pratt, Dr. Dennis Walters, Rear Admiral (ret) George Worthington, Michael Yon and Senator Ryan Zinke.

The good attorneys who are trying to keep us from getting blown up by repeat offenders emailed today.  The above parties received the following message from Attorneys David Rivkin and Carlos Ramos Mrosovsky:

Dear Gentlemen,

We are very happy to report a tremendous success in the Maqaleh litigation before the D.C. Circuit.  Last Friday, the panel of three judges handed down their decision, as well as an opinion by Chief Judge Sentelle, which reversed the district court and ordered that the Bagram detainees’ habeas petitions be dismissed.  We have attached Judge Sentelle’s opinion for your review.

It appears that our amicus brief was right on target.  While both the government and counsel for the detainees made “bright line” arguments — that is, they argued that habeas rights should always or should never apply on U.S. military bases overseas — the court refused to accept either extreme position. Instead, it focused on the “practical factors” which were emphasized in our brief.  In this regard, the most important language appears on page 22 of the decision: ” . . . we hold that the third factor, that is ‘the practical obstacles inherent in resolving the prisoner’s entitlement to the writ . . . weighs overwhelmingly in favor of the position of the United States.”  The court then concluded that the fact that Bagram is located within an active theater of war weighed strongly against extending habeas rights to detainees held there.  Given the court’s emphasis on the “practical difficulties” side of the analysis, we feel confident that the involvement of amici who could speak with ultimate credibility as to those difficulties cannot but have made an immense impact.

At this stage, it is too early to know whether counsel for the detainees will seek a final appeal to the Supreme Court.  Even if she does so, however, we believe that, given the unanimous nature of the D.C. Circuit panel’s decision and its well-reasoned character, the Supreme Court is most unlikely to grant this request.  Overall, the D.C. Circuit’s Maqaleh decision represents a significant victory.

Thank you again for your participation in this amicus briefing project.  Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

Best regards,
David & Carlos

BAGRAM OPINION
BAGRAM JUDGEMENT
AMICUS

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Michael Yon
P.O. Box 5553
Winter Haven, Fl 33880

Published: 9 May 2010

If normal life were a river, most days would likely be a slow-moving, meandering passage.  But when a life squeezes into the gorge of war, there can be a deafening whitewater, falls and yet bigger falls, slams against stones, falls again and underwater no air and over the falls again and time stretches and compresses and seems to defy normal experience and over the falls again and you drown or don’t.  Some people come out the other side exhilarated and want to do it again and again, while others are terrified, and yet others will just do what needs to be done.  The persistence of the memories wrought would seem to leave clocks drooped over limbs or floating away. (more…)

Under Cover of the Night, with 1-17th Infantry

11 April 2010

During a mission there is no “pause” button.  It’s on until it’s over.  Recently, Charlie Company 1-17th Infantry conducted a mission that included visiting villages in the Shah Wali Kot district of northern Kandahar Province.

The main threats in this area are bombs and mines.  Many vehicles have “mine rollers” on the front that are designed to detonate the bomb before it gets under the vehicle.  The bombs often are big enough to completely obliterate any tank or armored vehicle ever built.  During the mission, a mine roller on a Stryker broke, causing Charlie Company to overnight in the desert.

Night photo looks like broad daylight.

After finding a suitable RON (rest overnight) location, the task was security and making a plan for the night.  With a full moon rising the Taliban could easily slip silently through the folds and creases of the land and strike.  The Taliban likely already knew our strength.  Tracks from the heavy Strykers would show our direction of travel, as would villagers along the way.  Of course, if the enemy followed the tracks they would eventually lead to a hail of devastating fire.  Most of the enemies are too smart for such mistakes.  More likely, the enemy would try to anticipate our next move and get bombs in front of our most probable routes.  They had all night.  Our people up that game by pushing out snipers and observers who might be watching the Taliban—even from miles away—ready to kill them on our routes.  Winning and losing deadly little skirmishes depends heavily on expertise, and luck.  We and the enemy have great advantages and disadvantages. (more…)

Easter Sunday, 2010
Anywhere, Afghanistan

Back in December, C-Co  1-17th Infantry battalion had been in about the worst place in Afghanistan.  There is stiff competition for the position of actual worst place, and I am sure there are many contenders that remain unknown, but the Arghandab was one of them.  The battalion had lost more than twenty soldiers, and C-co alone had lost 12 with more wounded.  In December 2009, C-Co was moved north into Shah Wali Kot and has been running missions here for more than three months.  I’ve only been at Shaw Wali Kot for a week.

Charlie Company headed on a mission to visit villages that had seen no formal western guests for at least the past five years, according Company Commander Max Hanlin.  The soldiers drove to an area maybe two kilometers from the first village, parked, and walked in.  The surrounding desert was so dry that only the hardy and small plants survived—often with thorns, and probably foul-tasting (and poisonous).  How else can a plant expect to survive when the favorite Afghan meat is mutton, and foraging isn’t easy for the lambs?  There was the occasional brown lizard or grasshopper, but on the whole it’s simply rocky desert.  The place is barren but not entirely lifeless. (more…)

Some troops in Afghanistan go months without a shower. Major Ryan O’Conner, XO of the 1-17th Infantry, now in Kandahar Province, said that during a previous tour his Soldiers fought half a year without so much as a dip in a creek. Shortages of drinking water affected combat operations. (more…)

FOB Frontenac, Afghanistan
28 March 2010

Under an early morning sky, a red glow is cast from the lights on an Air Force water drilling rig.  A new MATV, or “MATV All Terrain Vehicle,” is being deployed to Afghanistan to combat homemade bombs, the favorite weapon of the Taliban. (more…)

Kandahar Province, Afghanistan
25 March 2010

Dogs have been trained to carry bombs to attack enemies for decades.  The Soviets and others have used dogs as low-tech smart bombs.  Yet canine platoons likely would rebel if they caught scent they were being duped to die.

Today, more sophisticated people employ men (mostly) to deliver bombs in Afghanistan.  Gullible souls are selected, conditioned, trained and deployed.  Malleable minds are identified then loaded with psychic software that uses their minds to create a vision.  Evil persons of superior intellect identify the raw material—that raw material might be an engineer from a stable family—and trains them to fetch myths. (more…)

Kandahar, Afghanistan
23 March 2010

The mission required crossing a bridge that had been blown up a couple hours earlier by a suicide car bomber.  The attacker hit a convoy from the 82nd Airborne, killing American soldier Ian Gelig.  Now with a hole in the bridge and recovery operations underway, our mission was cancelled.  So I called the Air Force to see if they were busy.  Yes, it turns out, the Air Force is busy every day, but Captain Kristen Duncan took me down to the ramp where the A-10 “Warthogs” are parked. (more…)

MAJ JF Sucher, MD FACS USAR MC Surgeon, 909th FST

Kandahar, Afghanistan
15 March 2010

In David Galula’s 1964 book, Counterinsurgency Warfare, THEORY AND PRACTICE, he states:

“The ideal situation for the insurgent would be a large, land-locked country, shaped like a blunt-tipped star, with jungle-covered mountains along the borders and scattered swamps along the plains, in a temperate zone with a large and dispersed rural population and a primitive economy.”

Mr. Galula described Afghanistan almost perfectly.  Instead of jungle-covered mountains are some of the most extreme folds on Planet Earth: The “abode of snow,” the Himalaya.  Afghan elevations dwarf Mount Rainier, and make the great Colorado Rockies look like the Pygmy Snow Hills. Meanwhile, down in Kandahar and Helmand Provinces, Galula’s “swamps” are the “Green Zones,” where most of the current fighting occurs.

Yet the experienced Mr. Galula omitted a crucial factor describing the Afghan war: A heavily armed, warring amalgam of peoples, some of whose national sport and pastime is guerrilla war. British officer John Masters variously described in “Bugles and a Tiger: My life in the Gurkhas” that life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for Afghans includes vendettas, guerrilla warfare and lots of guns. (more…)

American Colonel Writes to Spanish Colonel

15 March 2010
Kandahar, Afghanistan

Responding to a document first published here on 08 March, U.S. Army Colonel Robert J. Ulses writes to Spanish Army Colonel Jesus De Miguel Sebastian.

The letter from Colonel Ulses contradicts the previous memo by a U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel.

yon letter 3 15 –

Risking liberties to read between the lines, the letter might translate: “Situation rectified.  Moving to tamp down the controversy.  Let’s move on.”

Clearly it’s social grease, designed to spackle over rough spots.  Spots that could have gotten our troops killed.  I’ll ask some of our people in the next week or so if the situation has improved.  You’ll be the first to know. (more…)

Need Bullets? The shortest distance between South Carolina and Kandahar is about 7,500 miles. (As the rocket flies.)

Shah Wali Kot, Afghanistan
11 March 2009

The military axiom that “amateurs talk strategy while professionals talk logistics” has special meaning in Afghanistan. During the Soviet war, though the Bear comprised Afghanistan’s entire northern border, the Afghan resistance was frequently able to block Soviet logistical operations, which were dependent on scant roads, tunnels and corridors. Captured Soviet logistics convoys often supplied the Mujahidin.

Logistics in landlocked Afghanistan are exceptionally tough because the country is a transportation nightmare of impassable mountains, barren deserts, and rugged landscape with only capillary roads and airports.

When we lose a bridge, we can’t just detour twenty miles to the next one, as we might on the plains of Europe.  In Afghanistan, there might not be another route for hundreds of miles. Conversely, Afghan fighters, who have used guerilla warfare tactics for decades—centuries even—lack our tanks, vehicles and massive supply lines, leaving them less dependent on infrastructure.  Most of the guerrillas we face are from the immediate area. Their corn comes from their own stalks; ours comes from other continents. (more…)

Monday, 08 March 2010
Kandahar, Afghanistan

Yesterday, an American involved in the war effort handed me a document. It was an email from a Lieutenant Colonel in the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan. His unit is in combat seven days a week. To be clear, I did not get the email from the officer and I have never met him.

The email is about the abysmal, unsafe conditions which some of our most dedicated troops are living in, at a remote base run by the Spanish military in Afghanistan. All deletions [xxx] are by me. I have the entire email. The serious and disturbing allegations are found in the second and third paragraphs.

Please note, that the failure to support permanent US troops at this Spanish base constitutes real negligence about their ultimate safety. And that comes on top of a degree of harassment that is shocking among allies.

The message begins:

Gentlemen,
I just finished spending a couple days with TF [xxx] at [xxx] and visiting all of our sites that we have troopers located at. Great progress continues to be made in the [xxx], but several items need some help ASAP:

(more…)

By Peter Almond

It was one of the most complex military logistical and medical operations ever undertaken – and it saved the life of a young British soldier critically injured in Afghanistan.

It involved hundreds of doctors, air and ground crews of several nations, travelling many thousands of miles, revolutionary and experimental medical equipment, several planes and helicopters and communications between three continents and cost millions of pounds.

For months, details of the massive operation to save one man’s life have been shrouded in secreMcy. The injured soldier was not shot by the Taliban but was almost certainly wounded accidentally at his camp near Sangin in Helmand province in late July last year.

It is understood that Soldier X – he is not being identified at the request of his family – was not wearing body armour at the time. The Ministry of Defence has declined to offer any explanation.

The respected American journalist Michael Yon, himself a former US special forces soldier, reported on his blog that he heard the shot and saw a flurry of activity and a medical evacuation helicopter taking Soldier X away.

Click to view full image

Then began a most incredible effort to save his life. (more…)

U.S. Air Force Nurse, Lucy Lehker, comforts an ‘unknown’ Canadian soldier after he was badly wounded in Afghanistan.

Dear Michael Yon,

Today we were sent your story of February 14, 2010. The “unknown” Canadian is our son Danny.  He is a 23-year-old soldier from Vancouver, Canada.

Your photographs were extraordinary and have impacted so many people here in Canada. There has been an outpouring of affection for the Americans who helped Danny in his moment of need.  For that, we thank you for recording these acts of kindness into history.

(more…)

Flight Medics prepare the aircraft to receive patients.

Around Afghanistan
22 February 2010

“Johnny Boy” Captain John Holland was walking out to the aircraft just as I arrived at the flight line.

Captain Holland asked, “Are you ready?”

“Yes Sir.”

The Marjah offensive—billed as the biggest US/NATO/Afghan assault on the Taliban ever—had begun.  With it, the attention of nearly all the reporters covering Afghanistan is focused on Marjah.  Yet fighting continues across the country, in provinces with names unfamiliar to most people.  Men and women are wounded.  Some die.  Some are saved by dedicated medical crews, and by the pilots who fly into combat to ferry wounded to some of the best trauma facilities in the world, right here in Afghanistan.  This story is about the people who care for our troops, wounded correspondents, and many other people, day in, day out. (more…)

18 February 2010
Kandahar, Afghanistan

On Feb. 9th, in a field near a road, an Afghan soldier squatted to relieve himself.  He picked the wrong spot. A bomb exploded, blowing off a leg, and he died.  Captain John Weatherly, Commander of Charlie Company of the 4-23 Infantry at FOB Price in Helmand Province, mentioned that in passing as he described the series of events that led to the death of Specialist – now Sergeant – Adam Ray, a vigorous 23 year old, born in Tampa, Florida.  The bomb the Afghan stumbled upon was near the IED that struck Adam.

Without the thousands of culverts underneath, the roads of Afghanistan would be flooded and washed away during the snow melts and rains.  In safe countries, drivers pay as little attention to culverts as we would to telephone poles.  As a practical matter they are invisible to us.

In the war zone that is Afghanistan, life and limb depend on noticing normally mundane things like culverts.  They are a favorite hiding spot for the Taliban to plant bombs intended to kill Americans driving the roads.  Hundreds, even thousands of pounds of explosives can be stuffed inside, launching our vehicles into the sky, flipping them over and over, sometimes killing all.  And so, in some areas, soldiers on missions must stop dozens of times to check culverts for explosives.  Since we do this every day in front of thousands of Afghans, they know our patterns.  In addition to planting bombs in culverts, they plant mines and other bombs near culverts, to get men who stop to check. (more…)