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The Other Conflict Continues to Take a G.I. Toll
By David Rohde
The New York Times
Monday 24 November 2003
As Sgt. First Class Vernon Story's column of Humvees climbed a desolate ridge a mile from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border here on Sunday morning, the sergeant got the feeling that someone was watching. The five unexploded land mines he and his men had found along this same ridge in a firefight with Taliban rebels here less than two months ago lingered in his mind.
"Hey, don't be driving down the tracks," Sergeant Story warned his driver.
Just after he spoke, the front of his Humvee abruptly lurched into the air as a mine or remote-controlled bomb detonated under the right front tire. It severed the lower left leg of a young soldier in the front passenger seat and tossed the 6,000-pound vehicle violently on its side. Sergeant Story, seven soldiers and four journalists traveling with them in the back of the vehicle were thrown to the ground.
Scrambling to his feet, his face cut, the sergeant cursed, suspected an ambush and ordered his men to fire at the surrounding hillsides.
No one shot back.
So went a typical engagement in the grinding conflict for the 10,000 American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, overshadowed by the larger conflict in Iraq.
Casualties are not as high here, but fatal clashes with a shadowy enemy continue.
"It's aggravating," Sergeant Story, 34, said in his southern drawl, referring to guerrilla attacks that have killed five Americans and four Afghan soldiers along the border with Pakistan in the last eight weeks. "It's very frustrating."
The risks are by no means limited to ground forces. On Sunday at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, at least five American soldiers were killed when their helicopter crashed.
So far this year, 9 of the 10 American combat deaths have occurred in this area around Shkin, an isolated military base three miles from the Pakistan border.
Sunday morning's attack on Lozano Ridge, named after an American soldier killed here in April, was the latest in a series of strikes by pro-Taliban fighters who launch missiles, plant mines and mount fierce ambushes against American forces within miles of the Pakistan border, according to American military officials. After the engagements, the gunmen are often seen retreating toward Pakistan.
Lt. Col. Michael Howard, the commanding officer of two American bases along the border, said that Pakistan's government was trying to control the border, but that it was impossible to seal off such mountainous terrain.
"You've got a president who is committed; you've got a military who is committed," Colonel Howard said, referring to Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. "They've got a lot of challenges like everybody else."
The Americans here face their own challenges. Sergeant Story and his soldiers, stationed in Shkin, are fighting on some of the bleakest terrain on earth. It is a jarring existence that mixes the primitive and the modern, intense boredom and intense fear.
By day, they inhabit a world of brown earth, brown mud-brick houses and translucent blue skies. By night, temperatures drop below freezing, and bands of stars blaze across a sky unspoiled by man-made light.
Their battleground is a swath of dozens of miles of arid plateau, 7,000 feet above sea level in eastern Afghanistan, lined by hills and mountains to the east and west. They can patrol for days without incident, but then, without warning, be ambushed by gunmen on barren hillsides covered with boulders and bushes.
The soldiers relax only when inside their base, a bubble of Americana in a sea of Afghan dust. On Sunday night, a few hours after the mine explosion, Sergeant Story and other soldiers sat in a crude mud-brick mess hall watching the Dallas Cowboys-Carolina Panthers game via satellite on a widescreen television.
The soldiers eat burgers, fries and baked beans for dinner. They have been watching "Bulletproof Monk" and other Hollywood movies on a DVD player, over and over.
The desolate terrain here aids the Americans in some ways. Unlike urban Iraq, this part of Afghanistan affords few places for guerrillas mounting ambushes to hide.
But their effort is slowed by a problem also confounding American forces in Iraq — limited intelligence on the enemy. Military officials said villagers generally provided little information about pro-Taliban fighters, who threaten to kill those who collaborate with the Americans.
"They are all afraid for their lives to give us information about who is coming over the mountains," said Sgt. Katrina Presley, 24, from New Castle, Del., who helps run weekly meetings with local villagers.
Maj. Dennis Sullivan, the base commander, said the Taliban fighters were not making military headway. But aid groups and United Nation officials contend that Taliban guerrillas are now circumventing well-armed American forces and attacking soft targets, like aid workers and Afghan policemen. They say the attacks have slowed reconstruction projects in eastern and southern Afghanistan.
Villagers living around Shkin complain that they are not receiving enough aid. American military officials said two schools and a well were being built in the area with United Nations funds.
Despite the dangers, American soldiers said they were eager to come to Shkin. Sunday's explosion occurred while Sergeant Story was escorting a new group of soldiers who will be replacing his unit. Most interviewed expressed enthusiasm. Seen as the posting with the best chance to engage in combat in Afghanistan, soldiers said coming here allowed them to "do their job."
One young soldier called Shkin a "once in a lifetime" opportunity. Asked for what, he said "to kill."
But some soldiers who have served here for months admitted the experience had changed them. Sgt. Christopher McGurk, a 29-year-old native of Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn, saw one of his soldiers, Pvt. First Class Evan O'Neill, 19, of Haverhill, Mass., die in battle on Sept. 29.
In an Oct. 25 battle, a wounded American slowly bled to death as Sergeant McGurk cared for him under fire. The son of a 28-year Army veteran, the sergeant feels that he has done his duty and is thinking of leaving the Army and becoming a New York City police officer. "Once you're involved in a situation like that," he said, "you realize it's for real."
Sergeant Story, a father of three, constantly jokes and refuses to discuss the personal risks.
"I can't answer that question," he said. "Never thought about it. Never. Never."
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U.S. Wages War on Afghan Opium Crop
James Astill
The Scottsman
Monday 24 November 2003
The United States is scrambling for allies in a major international campaign to destroy Afghanistan’s coming opium crop - predicted to be the country’s biggest ever - having concluded that Afghan drugs now represent al-Qaeda’s principal source of income.
The US initiative, revealed to The Scotsman by a senior official in Kabul, deals a crushing blow to existing British efforts to curb Afghanistan’s opium output, which have failed to prevent an explosion in poppy production since the fall of the Taleban two years ago.
According to separate reports by the United Nations and the CIA, around 3,600 tonnes of opium resin were grown this year in an unprecedented 28 out of Afghanistan’s 32 provinces. The crop earned Afghanistan’s poppy farmers and traffickers around £2 billion - more than 50 per cent of Afghanistan’s GDP.
This year’s harvest was up on last year’s bumper poppy crop - the first since the Taleban’s fall - despite two devastating crop diseases, a government eradication campaign and British-led efforts to train local police and provide poppy farmers with alternative livelihoods - at an estimated cost of £65 million.
"The Brits will stay in the lead but we’re facing the fact that their efforts have had absolutely no impact on opium tonnage whatsoever," the US official said. "Meanwhile, we’re seeing that this issue affects our counter-terrorism interests. It has become more and more clear that the principal source of financing for al-Qaeda and the Taleban is Afghan drugs."
According to the plan, the US would persuade a moderate Muslim ally, either Turkey or a Balkan state, to deploy around 400 soldiers to Afghanistan, to provide security for a similar number of Afghan counter-narcotics police.
Sweeping Afghanistan from south to north, the eradication team would arrive in each province during the two-week window in the opium poppy’s growth cycle when it can be ploughed up without regenerating.
US intelligence sources believe this would serve the dual purpose of destroying at least 25 per cent of Afghanistan’s poppy crop, and flushing many Taleban and al-Qaeda operatives from cover.
"This is going to be the biggest pheasant drive you’ve ever seen," the US official said.
A British diplomat in Kabul yesterday confirmed the plan, but questioned whether a foreign force could be deployed in time for the next opium harvest.
"To start eradicating in the south, you’d have to be ready by February, which looks unlikely," the diplomat said. "If we know anything about this country it’s that everything takes time."
The US’s sudden attention to Afghanistan’s drug production represents a major shift in its conduct of the war on terror. Previously, it left counter-narcotics to its European allies, chiefly Britain, 95 per cent of whose heroin derives from Afghan opium, according to Tony Blair.
British and Afghan officials in Kabul privately complain that their efforts have been badly compromised by the US’s ongoing military campaign against the Taleban and al-Qaeda.
The US employs local warlords to prosecute its war, including many allegedly involved in opium production. US special forces in southern Hilmand province last week told The Scotsman that they routinely patrol through opium fields, but had no orders to interfere.
The US’s change of tack is less a response to Britain’s failed counter-narcotics effort, than its own failure to quell the Taleban and its allies, analysts in Kabul say.
During the past year, the Taleban has reorganised and returned from its rear-bases in Pakistan, and now loosely controls pockets of south-eastern Afghanistan. Its influence extends across much of Afghanistan’s prime poppy-growing land, in Hilmand, Kandahar and Nangarhar provinces, including the fiefs of many of America’s supposed local allies.
Northern Afghanistan’s poppy-growing areas are proving a similar draw for America’s enemies. According to western intelligence sources, opium production in northern Badhakshan province is now heavily controlled by Hizb-e-Islami, a fundamentalist group allied to al-Qaeda and the Taleban, and linked to Chechen rebels.
Badhakshan’s opium production rocketed by 55 per cent this year, making it Afghanistan’s third most productive poppy-growing province.
"America’s efforts to defeat the Taleban through local proxies has failed on the back of some very compromised intelligence," said Vikram Parekh of the International Crisis Group, a think tank. "The Taleban will be defeated by good governance and law enforcement, and that includes counter-narcotics."
Failing drastic measures of the kind the US is planning, most analysts expect Afghanistan’s next opium crop to top the record haul of 4,500 tonnes, set in 1999. "There’s no doubt we’re about to see a record-breaking crop," said Abdul Ghaus, the beleaguered chief government counter-narcotics officer in Jallalabad, capital of Afghanistan’s most productive poppy-province, Nangarhar. "The British are doing nothing to prevent it."
Few analysts dispute that Afghanistan needs more forthright measures to counter its opium explosion. Yet a blanket eradication scheme would risk beggaring thousands of farmers, to America’s cost.
"The Taleban are operating in the south-east because they have support there," said Mr Parekh. "By destroying opium crops without offering any economic support, America could end up turning virtually the entire population against it."
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