Bitter Fruit

[don]

US Forces Leave Afghanistan's Korengal Valley

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 9:47 a.m. ET
KABUL (AP) -- U.S. troops are pulling out of Afghanistan's perilous Korengal Valley as part of a new focus on protecting population centers, NATO said Wednesday, ending a mission that saw some of the most intense fighting of the nearly nine-year American presence in the country.
The isolated mountainous region of caves and canyons on the eastern border with Pakistan has been the scene of near daily exchanges of fire between NATO and insurgents, who use it as a route for infiltrating weapons and fighters into Afghanistan.
While militants will likely portray the withdrawal as a defeat for foreign forces in Afghanistan, NATO termed the move a ''realignment'' resulting from changing strategies to deal with a Taliban-led insurgency that has strengthened and gripped once stable parts of the country.
The shift reflects new thinking among commanders that forces are best used to protect the civilian population rather than placed in scattered outposts highly exposed to militant activity and difficult to resupply and reinforce.
''This repositioning, in partnership with the Afghan National Security Forces, responds to the requirements of the new population-centric counterinsurgency strategy,'' Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez, joint commander of international forces in Afghanistan, said in a statement e-mailed to media. ''The move does not prevent forces from rapidly responding, as necessary, to crises there in Korengal and in other parts of the region, as well.''




The Vietnam Wars: ‘Matterhorn’

By SEBASTIAN JUNGER
Every war novel must at some point confront a central contradiction. Only the truth has any real value, but the truth about war is that it contains nearly unbearable levels of repetition, boredom and meaninglessness. To write honestly about war, you should make readers feel they have endured those things as well.


Karl Marlantes’s first novel, “Matterhorn,” is about a company of Marines who build, abandon and retake an outpost on a remote hilltop in Vietnam. According to the publisher, Marlantes *— a highly decorated Vietnam vet — spent 30 years writing this book. It was originally 1,600 pages long; now it is 600. Reading his account of the bloody folly surrounding the Matterhorn outpost, you get the feeling Marlantes is not overly worried about the attention span of his readers; you get the feeling he was not desperate or impatient to be published. Rather, he seems like a man whose life was radically altered by war, and who now wants to pass along the favor. And with a desperate fury, he does. Chapter after chapter, battle after battle, Marlantes pushes you through what may be one of the most profound and devastating novels ever to come out of Vietnam — or any war. It’s not a book so much as a deployment, and you will not return unaltered.




US Forces Leave....

Korengal, in eastern Kunar province, has a reputation as one of most dangerous areas in the country, with a rugged mountainous terrain that makes it a perfect insurgent hunting ground. Three Navy SEALs were killed in an ambush there in 2005, while a helicopter carrying special forces sent to rescue them was shot down, killing 16 American troops in one of the deadliest single attacks on the U.S. military since the war began in 2001.
Since then, insurgents have used the cover of caves and trees to attack small American units patrolling the valley, a hotbed of Taliban support whose native tribes speak a distinct language -- Korengali -- and adhere to the austere Wahabi brand of Islam most prevalent in Saudi Arabia, and practiced by Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. The area's 4,500 residents have long been hostile to central authority and outsiders, even those from other parts of Afghanistan.
The pullout, conducted by helicopter and carried out in secret over the past week, frees up about 120 soldiers who had been largely confined to hilltop battlements consisting of plywood, sandbags and stones.
There was no immediate word on where they would be reassigned to. Officers said one base at the northern end of the 6-mile (10 kilometer)-long valley would remain staffed to block insurgent movements into the Afghan interior.(US forces have never advanced further than half way up the valley. Estimates are it would take a battalion to attempt it.)




‘Matterhorn’ ....

The story is told from the point of view of a young second lieutenant, Mellas, who joined the Marines for confused and vaguely patriotic reasons that are quickly left in tatters by military incompetence. At great psychic and physical cost, Mellas and the rest of Bravo Company, Fifth Marine Division, climb a steep mountain near the intersection of Laos and the DMZ separating North and South Vietnam, then build an outpost capable of withstanding enemy artillery. As soon as they finish, they are told to abandon it because they are needed for a large operation farther south. There ensues a multiweek stagger through impenetrable jungle, the company plagued by lack of food, lack of ammunition and inadequate resupply. One man is killed by a tiger. Another dies of cerebral malaria. Starving to death and bearing a dead friend on a pole, the men of Bravo Company finish their mission and are allowed a brief rest at one of the main support bases.
Soon enough, however, they are ordered to retake Matterhorn, which has since been occupied by the enemy. It is there, on the flanks of their own outpost, that the horror and absurdity of war are finally played out. “After three hours of debate they finally realized that there was no perfect plan,” Marlantes writes as the company plots its assault. “Somebody was going to get killed.”


http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010...anistan&st=cse

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/bo.../Junger-t.html

[don]

Re: Bitter Fruit

A note on the above. I read the initial Afghan report in the Times paper edition. It was front page and extensive. Well written and researched, with plenty of examples of the difficulties and losses incurred in holding this position. When I decided to post excerpts from this piece, interwoven with the 'Nam story, I found the NY Times archived (only a few days ago) copy had been drastically edited, not once but twice, and was worth maybe 25% of the original. This is not SOP.

[FRED]

Re: Bitter Fruit

A note on the above. I read the initial Afghan report in the Times paper edition. It was front page and extensive. Well written and researched, with plenty of examples of the difficulties and losses incurred in holding this position. When I decided to post excerpts from this piece, interwoven with the 'Nam story, I found the NY Times archived (only a few days ago) copy had been drastically edited, not once but twice, and was worth maybe 25% of the original. This is not SOP.

Interesting. Do you have the before and after versions of the NYTimes archive? Did you try looking here for the original?

[Rajiv]

Re: Bitter Fruit

Everything that you extracted from the article is still there -- no changes. What is it that went missing?

I am presuming therefore, that what was in the paper edition was a lot more extensive than the internet version. Is that it?

[makimanos]

Re: Bitter Fruit

I think this is the first step to end the campaign.
History is always repeated.
Even the Great Alexander stalled foe three years in Afganistan.
He had to marry Roxane to pull out.

[bpr]

Re: Bitter Fruit

Did you only read the first page of the book review?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding this, but I think Junger's (probably overstated*) conclusion contradicts the intent of this thread:

One is left feeling that facile comparisons of Afghanistan to Vietnam amount to a mockery of Vietnam. I don’t know if that was the author’s intention, but it is a helpful note during America’s anguished debate about what to do in the war we’re fighting now. “Matterhorn” is a raw, brilliant account of war that may well serve as a final exorcism for one of the most painful passages in American history.

The comparison of Vietnam to either ("any," if you want to include Pakistan) of our current quagmires must turn a blind eye to the order of magnitude of difference (10x) in domestic casualties.

Vietnam was far bloodier for the American soldier than the current wars.

I think a far more relevant comparison is in the USSR-Afghan conflict, which, while far less bloody (about 15k casualties for the Soviets over ten years), proved to be a far more important strategic loss for the Soviet Union.

This is, of course, a difficult sell on the American people, comparing themselves to the USSR of only 30 years ago, a decided enemy that was defeated. Not to mention the geographically-isolated U.S. and its myopic worldview.

The comparison, however, must be stark and optimistic for the Afghan people.

* I say overstated because it's unlikely that war fiction, which is a niche genre in American letters, will change the overall population's understanding of the war. This may be a great book, but if Dispatches didn't do it, this book won't either.

[bpr]

Re: Bitter Fruit

I think this is the first step to end the campaign.
History is always repeated.
Even the Great Alexander stalled foe three years in Afganistan.
He had to marry Roxane to pull out.

Vietnam is not the comparison, though.

Alexander, maybe (I don't know the history). USSR, definitely. Pull out, save face. But Vietnam comparisons will alienate a very large population of U.S. veterans that endured a conflict that was far bloodier.

[don]

Re: Bitter Fruit

Everything that you extracted from the article is still there -- no changes. What is it that went missing?

I am presuming therefore, that what was in the paper edition was a lot more extensive than the internet version. Is that it?

Perhaps the difference in content reflects changes in the paper's marketing strategy- I've notice "paper-edition only exclusives" popping up here and there in several newspapers, as they grope for a solution to the fee-free conundrum. Though abbreviated, the online edition of this article does carry the core intent of the print edition.

[flintlock]

Re: Bitter Fruit

Perhaps the comparison to Vietnam is more appropriate if you consider the financial cost? Both are/were huge financial drains. The terrain and modern technology used in Afghanistan allow for the lower casualties. Jungle fighting is close up and deadly. Both involve wars fought with an unpopular government as an ally. In both wars you saw a populace with dubious loyalties. Both were insurgencies. Though Vietnam had a conventional aspect Afghanistan lacks. Both had a neighboring country to offer sanctuary to insurgent forces. Both had funding and support from outside the country. Both wars fought in rough and inhospitable terrain, with large undeveloped and roadless tracts, requiring large helicopter support.

Perhaps the biggest difference I see in the two wars is that Afghanistan is fought with a volunteer military, not conscript. Hence the lack of war protests we saw in Vietnam. And probably the reason this war will go on for quite a bit longer.

[don]

Re: Bitter Fruit

Perhaps a final, and fitting, ending to Korengal...

Farewell to Korengal
By
SEBASTIAN JUNGER

LAST week the United States military pulled out of the Korengal Valley in eastern Afghanistan. Six miles long, sparsely populated and of dubious strategic value, the Korengal was the scene of some of the most relentless fighting of the Afghan war. American forces have been there in one form or another since the summer of 2005, when Taliban fighters cornered a four-man Navy Seal team on a nearby mountain and killed three of them. They then shot down a Chinook helicopter with 16 commandos on board. All of them died.

For much of 2007 and 2008, I was an embedded reporter with a platoon of airborne infantry at a remote outpost called Restrepo, which was attacked up to four times a day. Many soldiers had creases in their uniforms from bullets that had brushed them. In one firefight a bullet hit a sandbag six inches from my head.

The psychological pressure was enormous. “I’ve only been here for four months and I can’t believe how messed up I am,” one soldier told me. “I went to the counselor and he asked if I smoked cigarettes and I told him no and he said, ‘Well, you may want to think about starting.’”

There were around 20 men at Restrepo — part of a 150-member unit called Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team — and the possibility of getting overrun by the enemy was openly discussed. The men slept next to their guns and sometimes with their boots on. More than 40 American soldiers have died in the Korengal Valley.

Now, the military has retreated, saying that the valley is too isolated and that the American presence was possibly pushing the locals to side with the Taliban. This raises some questions: If the Korengal was really worth fighting for, why would we ever pull out? Or, conversely, why did we go there in the first place? Like the soldiers at Restrepo, I was looking at the war through a tiny keyhole, and have no way to answer such overarching questions. But I do know that several important points must be acknowledged.

First, a significant proportion of enemy fighters in the Korengal were foreigners who had come to Afghanistan to wage jihad. There were Pakistani cellphone numbers painted on rocks around the valley as a recruiting tool for potential volunteers; there were Arabic graffiti urging local men to join the fight. These foreigners presumably would have fought the Americans wherever they found them; if we had avoided the Korengal they would simply have shifted the battle elsewhere. (To a better place? A worse one? I doubt even the Taliban could say.)

Furthermore, I was told that one of the reasons for establishing a base in the Korengal was to prevent militants from using the valley to stage attacks on the vastly more important Pech River Valley, immediately to the north. The Pech was a major corridor for moving men and supplies, and after American bases were established in the Korengal, attacks at Pech dropped off significantly. The Korengal may not have been important per se, but arguably the Pech was, and there may have been no way to strategically separate the two.

War is a complex endeavor that has no predictable outcome: ill-equipped militias can defeat modern armies, huge battles can hinge on luck or bad weather. Expecting commanders to make strategically correct decisions every time is not a realistic criterion for evaluating the war.

Some 30,000 British soldiers were killed and wounded in the folly that became known as the Battle of Dunkirk, and yet the Allies went on to win the war. There is no way to know how World War II would have unfolded without Dunkirk. And there is no way to know what would have happened in Kunar Province — or in Afghanistan as a whole — had several hundred local and foreign fighters not been tied up in the Korengal by American forces.

That said, the emotional repercussions of the pullout cannot be discounted. One of the young men I was with at Restrepo is now in a unit that is about to deploy to the Chowkay Valley, immediately to the south. Enemy fighters would come up the Chowkay and then into the Korengal to attack the American positions. Having fought for over a year and nearly lost his life in a battle now deemed pointless, this young man seems unlikely to throw himself into the fight in the Chowkay with the same determination.

I’m a civilian, though — not a soldier — and I may be entirely wrong. The men at Restrepo seemed to make “sense” of combat in a completely personal way. They were not interested in the rest of the war and they were not much concerned with whether it was just, winnable or even well executed. For soldiers, the fight is what gives a place meaning, rather than the other way around.

In that sense, the Korengal was literally sacred ground. Every man in Battle Company lost a good friend there, and every man was nearly killed there. These soldiers did not require “strategic importance” or “national interest” to give the place value — it already had that in spades.

Outpost Restrepo was named after Juan Restrepo, a platoon medic who was killed on July 22, 2007. He was one of the best-liked men in the platoon, and his death was devastating. The men took enormous pride in the outpost they built, and they can now go online and watch videotape of it being blown up by an American demolition team. It is a painful experience for many of them, and in recent days, e-mail messages have flown back and forth as the men have tried to come to terms with it. One man became increasingly overwrought from watching the video over and over again, wondering what all the sacrifice had been for. Another soldier finally intervened.

“They might have pulled out but they can’t take away what we accomplished and how hard we fought there,” he wrote to his distraught comrade. “The base is a base, we all knew it would sooner or later come down. But what Battle Company did there cannot be blown up, ripped down or burned down. Remember that.”

Sebastian Junger, a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, is the author of the forthcoming “War” and co-director of the documentary film “Restrepo.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/opinion/21junger.html

[flintlock]

Re: Bitter Fruit

Last night HDNET re-broadcast a show about the Korengal originally aired last fall. I believe the name of the show is "Dan Rather Reports". Unbelievably rough terrain. Goats would have a hard time there.