Photo by PHC Dolores L. Parlato Marine Corporal Christopher Chandler at Walter Reed Army Hospital, receiving Purple Heart medal at Walter Reed Hospital. In 2001, the young Corporal lost his foot after stepping on a land mine in Kandahar, Afghanistan. image:40998:4::0

Some might say that's long overdue. The war has been a mess, both militarily and in terms of reporting.

The war in Afghanistan has been characterized by the cross border sanctuaries of the Taliban’s suppliers and allies, safely feeding the war from Pakistan. Tactical initiative has often passed to the Taliban, too, and the current fighting is part of their “fighting season” strategy. They started the present round of combat, which is roughly their version of a Tet-style offensive.

Criticism seems pretty lethargic, at best, about actual combat information. I've been watching Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion, and the frequent departures from military issues and physical realities to diplomatic blather are becoming progressively more irritating.

If military commentaries about Iraq have been largely muted by official euphemisms, in Afghanistan, nobody's even been interested, until now. Not much of policy basis, if people have to get killed before anyone pays attention, after six years of war.

The Afghanistan conflict, militarily, has been a potpourri of nations, and a schemozzle of policies. The British recently received severe criticism from the Americans, for negotiating with Taliban forces in Helmand Province. The various factions in Afghanistan are occasionally on speaking terms, more often not.

Meanwhile, the troops have to play hide and seek not only with the Taliban, but their own campaign strategies and methods.

Some of those methods have been very counterproductive. Allied troops have arguably been helping the problem get worse by the road bound, not to say hidebound, tactics which have been steadily causing casualties from IEDs, RPGs, and other local attractions. This is a method of fighting the mujahadin learned against the Soviets, and the Allies seem to be making the same mistakes.

The BBC article on the fighting in Kunar Province, on the north eastern border with Pakistan, highlights another issue, the sitting duck approach of “outpost” fighting:

Insurgents used rockets, mortars and machine guns to attack the remote Afghan army and Nato outpost.

Isaf (International Security Assistance Force) and Afghan National Army forces responded with small arms, machine guns, mortars and artillery, the statement said.
Fighter jets and Apache helicopters were also deployed. Reports quoting Afghan officials say there may also have been civilian casualties.

Nato says the rebels suffered heavy casualties. It did not name the attackers but there has been a sharp increase in Taleban attacks in the country, and in that region in particular.
So an infantry attack, repelled with air and artillery fire, “caused heavy casualties”, however unspecified, and possibly civilian casualties as well. 28 casualties were suffered by the defenders, including the nine Americans, over several hours of fighting.

That’s a long time for an infantry firefight, particularly with heavy fire support for the defenders. The standard weapons used by the Taliban, like AK47s, RPGs, and a menagerie of recoilless rifles and other weapons, have effective ranges of about 400-1000 metres, max. Several hours at that range would generate a lot of casualties, in fact it’d be suicidal, particularly with Apache helicopters and other interested spectators in the area. Mortars, which have longer ranges, wouldn’t be safe from air attacks, either.

Apparently the defence held, and that was the tangible result. If you leave out the hand wringing exercises, there’s not much substance in the story.

As analysis, this is more like a crossword than a report. The world is getting a lot of selective information from Afghanistan, barely correlated, and not a lot of hard data.

The New York Times article on the same subject has a bit more information about the attack. Original sources didn’t even name the nationalities of the other casualties, but the NYT has figured out they’re “almost certainly” Americans.

Meaning it requires reading two of the top news services in the world, just to get any sort of factual information about one company-level firefight, and who got hit.

This is where most people get their news, and their understanding of the issues which are driving the war in Afghanistan. That, in turn, is driving political marketing of national policies. Not a particularly efficient exercise, either way.

The New York Times also raises repeatedly the point that the tribal border areas with Pakistan are the main reason for the Taliban’s resurgence:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, after conferring with President Bush and Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, directed Admiral Mullen to add the stop in Pakistan. Given that this was Admiral Mullen’s fourth trip to Pakistan this year and his second in two months, the admiral’s talks with Pakistani officials underscored the Bush administration’s increasing concern over the rising violence in Afghanistan and its links with the Pakistan tribal areas.

Pakistan, for its part, has complained that American forces have repeatedly hit Pakistani territory, in particular on June 10, when United States air and artillery strikes killed 11 members of the Pakistani paramilitary force, the Frontier Corps, manning a border post.
General McKiernan did not comment on the June 10 attack since a three-party investigation into the border clash had not yet been concluded, but he was very clear that militants were using their sanctuary in Pakistan to fire across the border and that the NATO and American forces had the right to fire back. “We have the ability to protect ourselves,” he said.

“The point that I am trying to make is that the border security situation is not good, and that border runs for 2,500 kilometers,” or about 1,500 miles, he said.

From which we can assume that combat situations have been sufficiently unambiguous to turn into something requiring airstrikes and artillery to be fired into Pakistan. While Pakistani troops in the area, in a defensive position, presumably innocent of any wrongdoing, happened to be killed.

Informative, isn’t it?

It’d be difficult to add any more levels of ambiguity to that one incident.

Nobody expects detailed combat reports, or in depth interviews with the shell craters.

It would, however, be nice to have something resembling a coherent picture of a war which involves over 50 countries.

It might even be considered refreshing, particularly in Gruntland, if something resembling military objectives were defined.

Nor is it being made clear that the tribal homelands are inhabited by a collection of very poor people, with a lot of heavily armed freeloaders on their turf.

Someone might like to mention that all those millions from opium production obviously aren’t going to fighting a jihad against anything but gracious living deprivation.

The antiquated weapons being used in combat against International Security Assistance Force troops could be bought at a rummage sale anywhere on Earth for a lot less than the billions the opium is getting.

...But that'd be expecting too much, wouldn't it?