KORENGAL OUTPOST, Kunar province,
northeastern Afghanistan - As the battle rages,
Sergeant Wayne Amos screams for Apache helicopters
to bring down the house on his attackers. "We just
got hit," he cries, narrating the battle as it
unfolds. "It is crazy now, we took one RPG
[rocket-propelled grenade], a lot of small arms.
They are kickin' up now."
"Ten seconds, on
the enemy," he shouts as an order to his forces as
the "tat, tat, tat" of a 50-caliber machine guns
lays down a round of cover and a soldier dashes
into the road to fire a TOW missile launcher into
the rocky cliffs above.
Amos yells for a
pause - "cease fire" - as a pair of Apaches rolls
over the grid coordinates he has called in. The
hills light up once
more in
the videotape of the fight taken by Amos himself.
Just one of the recent "ticks" that Amos,
an Apache Indian and National Guardsman from New
Mexico, has been in against faceless
al-Qaeda-backed insurgents along Afghanistan's
border with Pakistan, the fight underscores the
intensity of the conflict with a nearly invisible
enemy.
It is rare - almost never - when US
forces get to count the dead enemy and take toll
of who precisely has been attacking them. "I
interact on a daily basis with an enemy that has
both local and foreign elements," says Captain
Loius Frketic, who commands a battalion known as
the "Able Main Warlords" in Kunar province's Pech
Valley. He is sure they are foreigners because he
can hear Arab voices on the radio communications
he intercepts. "But just what the foreign element
is bringing to the fight, I don't exactly know."
Al-Qaeda's senior leadership was last
targeted - two years ago - only 32 kilometers from
his base in the neighboring Bajaur district of
Pakistan. A few hours before that attack, Ayman
al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, is
believed to have slipped away. Until four years
ago, US intelligence experts believed that bin
Laden himself was traveling in Pakistan's
North-West Frontier Province in the company of
Zawahiri. Though the formerly inseparable pair is
believed to have split up - likely out of security
concerns - their paths may well still cross - at
least for secret meetings.
In such
meetings, senior al-Qaeda figures in Pakistan
often review videotapes of the fighting in
Afghanistan taken by surrogates and plan funding
for future operations.
For fighters in the
173rd Combat Team fighting in eastern Afghanistan
north of the Khyber Pass, just knowing that they
fight in proximity to the masterminds of the
September 11, 2001, attacks highlights their own
sense of a great divide: a split between what the
US forces can and must do in Afghanistan, and what
al-Qaeda is planning across the border in
Pakistan.
Platoon leaders in regular
clashes with insurgents here say that their foe is
under the direct sway of al-Qaeda. "When we are in
a village, we always know that al-Qaeda and the
Taliban will soon be back to try to undercut us
and try to one-up us," said Sergeant Mark
Patterson, whose platoon in the Korengal Valley
has been in some of the heaviest fighting anywhere
in Afghanistan. US forces based out of the "KOP",
or Korengal Outpost, face a higher concentration
of al-Qaeda-backed insurgents than most regions of
Afghanistan, not least because an Egyptian
lieutenant of al-Qaeda operates among them, say US
officers.
While US forces rarely see their
enemy, their mission is to fight for the hearts
and minds of the same people al-Qaeda and its
affiliates try to win over. While the insurgents
try to operate with the cover of the what Chinese
leader Mao Zedong once called the "sea of the
people", US forces are trying to pry away that
popular backing.
"We are constantly
pushing into areas where the enemy operates freely
- encroaching upon them and taking away their
population base," says Commander Larry LeGree, who
is charged with building roads into insurgent
strongholds in the foothills of the Hindu Kush.
The point of building so many roads into
remote areas along the Afghan border, say US
officers, is also to "create a firewall" against
al-Qaeda efforts to infiltrate with men and guns.
At the same time, the Afghan forces that are meant
to patrol these roads are being "mentored" by
their US colleagues.
Yet the firewall can
quickly turn into an ambush for US and Afghan
fighters in the low ground. There are so many
infiltration points available on the Pakistani
border - particularly as the snow melts - that
real issue is "who controls the high ground",
according to a senior Afghan security official.
Insurgents rarely attack US fighters
unless and until they have managed to position
themselves at a higher altitude than their foe. "I
would say that 95% of the time they hit us from
the high ground - when our backs are turned," says
Tanner Stichter, a soldier serving in the Korengal
Outpost. "We have a very difficult time finding
these foreign fighters - as they remain hidden."
The first response of US infantry when
they are hit from insurgent positions in the hills
above them is to call in air power and heavy
artillery. This is not always effective as
insurgents operate out of well-hidden redoubts -
often the same positions used by guerrilla
fighters in the war against the Soviets in the
1980s.
American forces, whose air power is
far superior to any in the world, often end up
pummeling the rocks in frustration. "I've watched
on - you know - Predator feeds from the drones
firing 155 shell after 155 shell and slamming into
a house," says Lieutenant Brandon Kennedy, a
recent graduate of West Point military academy.
"They watch fighters come running out of these
same structures. It is fairly difficult to
accurately engage these guys."
Both US
fighters and their Afghan proteges agree that they
could do with controlling more of the high ground
along the border with Pakistan.
"The US
forces, along with the Afghan army and police,
need to go on the offensive now - before the
weather breaks," insists police chief, Haji
Mohammed Jusef. "This time of year is the best
time for us to take the high ground and deny it to
the enemy."
These same peaks, however,
straddle the Durand Line, some of them positioned
in Afghanistan and others in Pakistan. It is an
international border that the US and Afghan forces
are obliged to recognize, but one which al-Qaeda
merely hides behind.
Philip Smucker
is a commentator and journalist based in South
Asia and the Middle East. He is the author of
Al-Qaeda's Great Escape: The Military and the
Media on Terror's Trail (2004).
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd.
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