Give the Afghan Army a Governance Role
Give the Afghan Army a Governance Role – Bing West, Wall Street Journal opinon.
The only way to reach Viper Company of the 26th Regiment, First Infantry Division, is by helicopter. When I fly in, Capt. Jimmy Howell greets me. “I’m holding a shura [meeting of village elders],” he says. “We won’t be shot at until they leave.” The steep-sided Korengal Valley, 70 miles northeast of Kabul, is the scene of the war’s fiercest fighting, claiming 57 American lives over the past three years.
Sure enough, an hour after the elders leave the shura, 30-millimeter shells strike the outpost. Cpl. Marc Madding, an Afghan army adviser, begins firing .50 caliber rounds at the enemy position, laughing as an Afghan soldier scurries from the latrine with shells bursting behind him. Capt. Howell adjusts mortar and artillery shells on the hillside, followed by an A-10 aircraft dropping 250-pound bombs. It’s another afternoon in the Korengal, the hot spot in a district that’s recorded some 1,990 similar engagements since mid-2005.
Overwhelming American firepower forced the wily fundamentalist insurgents to maintain a respectful distance. A few days earlier, an enemy unit had let down its guard and lost 15 combatants to a well-staged American ambush. Most of the fundamentalists killed were from villages that frequently receive food and medical aid from the U.S. Army outpost. The following day, an American soldier was killed outside a nearby village…
More at The Wall Street Journal.