by Jake Tapper
Roller had ordered up T-shirts emblazoned with Newsom’s sardonic take on their difficult mission of helping the good guys and killing the bad guys in this land of gray. “Bravo Troop—Engaging Hearts and Minds,” the front of the shirts read. “Two in the chest, one in the head,” proclaimed the back.
Captain America wouldn’t send his troops out on patrol unless he was willing to go out himself, so some days he went as many as three times. Everyone was spent, and his men cursed him for it.
Occasionally there would be run-ins, but it seemed clear that the insurgents were off their game. Trust led to cooperation; information came in; lives were spared. Counterinsurgency was working. Indeed, Preysler had become such an enthusiastic supporter of his lieutenant colonel’s efforts along those lines in Kamdesh that Kolenda often found himself having to manage his boss’s expectations. At one point, Colonel Preysler went so far as to suggest that other units could take some lessons from 1-91 Cav—advice that did not go down so well with at least one of the other battalion commanders. At Forward Operating Base Fenty, in Nangarhar Province, Preysler even came up with a “grand vision” that he detailed in “Nangarhar Inc.,” a sixty-two-page plan calling for $3.2 billion to be pumped into the region to pay for roughly seven years’ worth of infrastructure development projects—though the colonel would be the first to admit that he had no idea where that $3.2 billion might come from.
With his leadership now more encouraging of his efforts, and violence nearly nonexistent in his area, Kolenda figured that things were about as good as they could get. The situation remained fragile, he knew. There wasn’t any question that some of those being brought into the confidence of the Hundred-Man Shura were allied or associated with “bad HIG.” But Kolenda, ever the optimist, believed this was part of a deliberate effort, by Abdul Rahman and other key shura leaders, to “turn” some of these more nefarious characters and thereby gain greater credibility with the enemy, with the ultimate goal being a laying down of arms. Others in Bulldog Troop were more skeptical, thinking the Hundred-Man Shura members were hedging their bets by supporting both sides.
In May, a number of shura leaders came to Camp Keating to meet with Hutto, Kolenda, and Governor Nuristani. The elders were irate about what they viewed as the empty promises made by President Karzai. He had told them the government would provide funding for the Hundred-Man Shura and local police, but so far, he’d given them nothing. Bulldog Troop covered their food and transportation costs for specific meetings, but the elders also needed money for other trips and internal meetings.
Kolenda doubted that the Afghan president would ever deliver, despite the billions of dollars the United States had supplied to his government. His administration was born vulnerable and then atrophied in its crib. As even Karzai himself had admitted in 2007, “the Taliban are not strong. It is not them that cause the trouble. It is our weakness that is causing trouble.”42
Kolenda wasn’t willing to let all his hard work, all this promise, vanish because of Karzai’s incompetence and corruption.
So he didn’t let it happen. He pledged to the elders that 1-91 Cav would provide them with funding until the Afghan government ponied up. The leadership of the 173rd Airborne had earlier approved Kolenda’s request for a “governance fund” to pay expenses incurred by shura members in connection with their official activities, but he’d been waiting to tell the elders about it until he felt they’d proven themselves to him. The signed documents from Mohammed Jan, the decreasing levels of violence, the absence of illegal checkpoints on the road, the significant decline in the price of local goods due to improved security, and the shura’s frequent interaction with people in the villages, with 1-91 Cav, and with Afghan forces—all of these things told Kolenda that the Hundred-Man Shura was showing itself to be a viable partner.
A view of Combat Outpost Keating from the northwestern mountain. (Photo courtesy of Dave Roller)
Lieutenant Colonel Chris Kolenda tells the Hundred-Man Shura that 1-91 Cav will enter into an agreement with them. (Photo courtesy of Bulldog Troop)
After lunch, Kolenda and Hutto changed into Afghan clothing that the elders had given them. When they returned, the elders cheered. A voice in English cried out, “You are a good guest. You are a good guest!”
Kolenda looked up, stunned to hear a Kamdesh elder speaking English. Aktar Mohammed, from Mandigal, now moved closer to Kolenda and, with perfect diction, expressed his appreciation for the respect the Americans showed the Nuristanis, as well as their support of the people. Hutto and Kolenda, he announced, were to be made honorary citizens of Kamdesh. The elders had already given Hutto the name Abdul Wali, meaning “servant of the governor,” and now they bestowed upon Kolenda the name Ahmad, “highly praised one”.
Kolenda signs the Commitment of Mutual Support. (Photo courtesy of Bulldog Troop)
That evening, in Kamdesh Village, there was a celebration. It was a night that would mark the high point of the Americans’ relationship with the people of Kamdesh.
The troops continued to remain vigilant, but the calm meant that they could take some time to enjoy life. They held rib and chili cookoffs. One soldier was put in charge of camp beautification. Flower gardens and a vegetable garden were cultivated. The outpost’s roofs were made completely waterproof, and the full-service showers operational. Walls were covered with every color of paint the men could get their hands on. A new gym was constructed, and ground broken for a new, air-conditioned dining hall.
Lieutenant Colonel Kolenda makes his entrance in Afghan garb. (Photo courtesy of Bulldog Troop)
And then the enemy adjusted his tactics.
In May, insurgents in Lower Kamdesh fired a few large-caliber rounds at Combat Outpost Keating—the first attack with a large-caliber weapon in that area since the July 27, 2007, ambush at Saret Koleh, almost a year before. Perhaps the most ominous aspect of the action was the specific weapon used. At first, the men of Bulldog Troop couldn’t place it—the explosions were louder than the usual insurgent 7.62-millimeter fire from an AK machine gun, though not as loud as RPG blasts—but then they realized what it was: an immense Dushka machine gun, of the type last seen during the Saret Koleh ambush in the spring of 2007 and, before that, in the Chowkay Valley in 2006. This suggested outside help, likely from Pakistan.
Over the course of a week, there would be one or two Dushka rounds fired, and the shooters seemed to know what they were doing. Bracketing is a process whereby shooters shoot a round over a target, then a round short of it, then keep calibrating back and forth until they have an exact fix on the spot they want to destroy. In this case, the insurgents, over several days, were bracketing the landing zone at Combat Outpost Keating, presumably so they could take out the next chopper that came in.
Shortly after the first Dushka shot, Hutto demanded that the Kamdesh elders come down to Camp Keating. When they arrived a few hours later, he was furious. How could a heavy weapon like a Dushka be in Lower Kamdesh without their knowing about it? It was, he snapped, unacceptable.
Just then, as if to punctuate Hutto’s point, a large-caliber round from the Dushka struck a sandbag near the elders.
Abdul Rahman promised he would take care of it.
After the elders returned to the village, the Dushka fire stopped. Rahman later told Hutto that the gun was no longer in Lower Kamdesh. But it soon became clear enough that the Dushka, and the insurgents firing it, were still around and active; they’d just moved out of Kamdesh Village proper. Hutto was not satisfied, and he let Rahman and the other elders know it. A few days later, a soldier at Observation Post Fritsche spotted an insurgent dragging the Dushka up a mountain west of Agasi. After further reconnaissance, Roller radioed it in, and a five-hundred-pound bomb found its way onto the enemy’s head. No more Dushka.
But then came the mortars.
CHAPTER 20
“We Will Go to Kamdesh Next”
The mortar round whistled through the air and landed a few hundred yards away from 3rd P
latoon. The men had just left Combat Outpost Keating on a patrol. Newsom had been taught in Ranger school that the worst thing to do during a mortar attack was to stay in one place, so they ran and found cover.
“Hey Bulldog-Six, this is Three-Six,” he radioed to Hutto. “We’re taking mortar fire.”
“What?” Hutto asked. He couldn’t believe it: the insurgents had now gotten their hands on mortars, which were capable of firing immense rounds from a considerable distance, even out of the line of sight. This was no small thing; in fact, it was a potentially lethal development. After some crater analysis, Newsom’s men determined that the mortar had come from the north and was a white-phosphorous smoke round, very accurately fired.
Hutto reached out to the Hundred-Man Shura, whose members expressed concern as well. They said they didn’t know where the mortars were coming from, and they swore the insurgents were not Nuristanis—a claim backed up by the fact that the enemy chatter the Americans had started picking up was in Urdu.
More mortar attacks followed, professional assaults launched from unknown locations but generally consisting of just a few rounds. New intelligence suggested that several mortars were now in the hands of insurgents throughout Nuristan and Kunar Provinces, and that the enemy had brought in a Pakistani mortarman to train the local talent how to use 82-millimeter Soviet-style weapons. Whenever the rounds came in, Hutto and his men would fire back, but the mortars were coming from too far away to let them pinpoint their target, and the enemy fighters were constantly moving around. This was not good at all.
One possible location for the enemy mortar tube, intelligence officers believed, was the mountains to the north, on the way toward Mandigal. But where, exactly?
Since joining 1-91 Cav the previous summer, Lieutenant Kyle Marcum had been frustrated by the limited number of paths the troops used on their patrols from Camp Keating. He was sure there were other routes on the mountains that they hadn’t yet discovered. Marcum and Newsom now decided to start blazing a new trail north to Mandigal, figuring that sooner or later they would find an existing path that would allow them to sneak into the area and possibly observe the enemy mortar crew at work.
As a first step, Newsom and 3rd Platoon set up an overwatch while about eight guys from 2nd Platoon bushwhacked until they stumbled—as Marcum had suspected they might—upon a substantial trail running all the way north to Mandigal. Encouraged, Marcum, Newsom, and more than a dozen other troops left Camp Keating on the night of June 14, hiked undetected up the newly discovered path, camped out, and waited for the enemy mortar crew to show itself. They’d been in their position for roughly two hours, camped in the dark mountains, when, around midnight, Newsom spotted something through his night-vision goggles. “Am I crazy,” he asked Marcum, “or do you see a light moving way up on the mountain over there?”
Marcum looked in the direction in which Newsom was pointing: someone carrying a flashlight appeared to be darting along on the side of the mountain, scurrying from one spot to another, back and forth. They called in the grid to Hutto, back at the operations center at Camp Keating. Hutto checked: it was a location that intelligence officers had already identified as a possible enemy position.
“But why would this guy be running back and forth?” Marcum and Newsom asked each other. Having fired mortars themselves, they figured the most logical explanation was that an insurgent was resupplying the mortar tube from a hidden cache somewhere in the mountain, stockpiling a supply.
Marcum and Newsom called Observation Post Fritsche and asked 1st Platoon to fire the 120-millimeter mortars, giving them the grids. But it was dark, and this wasn’t a matter of firing from one end zone to another; the terrain was jagged. The U.S. mortarmen tried, but their mortars ended up missing their target.
Choppers were seldom where they were needed when they were needed—Combat Outpost Keating was just too remote, and the resources in Afghanistan were spread too thin—but as luck would have it, Marcum was able to pull in an Apache that was on its way to their base for a resupply. He explained the situation to the pilot while Newsom used his infrared laser to point precisely to the insurgent’s location. The Apache let loose. Nothing and no one was left standing.
As he settled in for the night—they’d pull out come daybreak—Marcum felt his conscience gnawing at him. He wasn’t sure whether they’d sent that Apache to kill an insurgent who was part of a mortar team or just some innocent Afghan out walking with a flashlight. It was an anxious, sickening feeling. The next day he’d know for sure if what he and Newsom had done was right: either the locals would be lined up weeping and complaining, filing financial grievances and perhaps even shredding the Hundred-Man Shura compact, or they would be quiet, and the mortars would stop.
It was a tough night for Kyle Marcum.
The sun rose slowly, and then quickly, and then it began beating down on Marcum, Newsom, and their patrol as they hiked back to Combat Outpost Keating. No villagers ever came to complain about the Americans’ having killed an innocent man. In this case, no news really was good news.
The mortar attacks stopped. Just a few more weeks and they could all go home.
“Why aren’t they here?” Kolenda asked Abdul Rahman.
It was June 21, and Kolenda had come to Combat Outpost Keating to meet with the Hundred-Man Shura, as he’d been doing every three to four weeks since February. As the elders entered Combat Outpost Keating or Forward Operating Base Naray, Kolenda would check off the villages represented. The absence of a given village’s representative would likely have indicated that something was not quite right there, but there had been full attendance—no absences—at all previous meetings. This time, though, the elders from Bazgal and Pitigal were nowhere to be seen, and Kolenda wanted to know why.
“I don’t know,” Rahman said. He said that he had spoken to both of them just a few days earlier and was expecting them to be there.
Kolenda found that troubling. It might mean that large groups of insurgents from Pakistan or somewhere else had entered those villages and were preventing the elders from attending the shura. Pitigal in particular was easily accessible from Pakistan.
After the meeting, quietly, Lieutenant Colonel Shamsur Rahman, an Afghan Border Police commander from Upper Kamdesh who had very close ties to the villagers, reported that a big Taliban action was scheduled for the next morning. Several hundred insurgents planned to attack the brand-new Afghan Border Police outpost at the Gawardesh Bridge, Camp Kamu, and Combat Outpost Keating—all at once.
At about 2:00 a.m. on June 22, a soldier at a new observation post called Mace,43 located on a mountaintop overlooking the Gawardesh Bridge, was startled to see more than seventy insurgents moving along a ridgeline. Radio chatter confirmed their intentions. These men were speaking languages other than Nuristani, but even without that clue, the Americans would have known they weren’t locals by the way they hiked atop the mountain: Nuristani insurgents would never walk in formation along a ridgeline because it would make them too conspicuous.
Aircraft rolled in—a combination of F-15s, Apaches, A-10 Warthogs, and even the heavily armed AC-130 gunships. Bombs were dropped, and the large force of insurgents was wiped out. The main attack had been annihilated before the Taliban fired even a single shot.
Their being spotted so early on threw off the insurgents’ plan to synchronize their various attacks. They next tried Combat Outpost Kamu—now called Combat Outpost Lowell, after Jacob Lowell—but thanks to Shamsur Rahman’s tip, all of the Americans were on high alert, and a patrol got the jump on the attackers. Close air support eliminated a second enemy force spotted south of Kamu.
Kolenda and Hutto were likewise on alert at the operations center at Camp Keating through the early morning, guzzling coffee, radioing troops, and reading Instant Message–like chat on the mIRC system used for battlefield communications.
Newsom staggered into the operations center at about 5:00 a.m., bleary-eyed and confused as to why Kolenda and Hutto were there. (The lieu
tenant had been briefed in a general way about the warning, but his platoon was not standing guard that night, so he was less intensely focused on the situation than the others were.) Hutto started to fill him in, but his update was cut short by a call from a guard who’d seen some movement up on the northwest mountain, near the spot nicknamed the Putting Green. Hutto beckoned Marine Lieutenant Chris Briley, the new ANA trainer who’d assumed Ingbretsen’s job a couple of months before, in to the operations center.
“Chris,” Hutto said, “we’ve got a couple of guys we picked up moving around the Putting Green area.”
“Really?” Briley asked. “Because I was going to take an Afghan patrol up there.” If he were to do that, his team might be ambushed.
“Why don’t you go to the opposite side?” Hutto suggested, referring to the Northface. From the northern mountain, Briley and his troops would be able to see what the enemy was up to on the Putting Green.
The night had yet to fully lift, so Briley and his ANA platoon were still under the cover of darkness when they left the wire, walking through and past the landing zone. Just outside the LZ, a loud explosion shook them. At first, Briley thought a U.S. mortar must’ve accidentally misfired, but then he made out the telltale smoke of an RPG blast: launched from the Putting Green, the grenade had missed them by only about fifty yards. Because it was dark—too dark for the enemy to have seen them from the Putting Green, he thought—Briley became convinced that someone must have alerted the insurgents when the patrol left the outpost, giving them a general area of where to target. Briley and the Afghans ran up to the Northface and began firing their machine guns at the small group of insurgents on the Putting Green. There were fewer than ten enemy fighters there, steadily aiming small arms and RPGs at Combat Outpost Keating. Briley called in the information to Newsom, who relayed it to Kenny Johnson. Seeing where Briley was firing—he was using the same weapon his Afghan soldiers used, a PKM, and every fifth round he fired was a tracer round—Johnson hit the enemy location with mortars. Close air support soon arrived; A-10 Warthogs strafed the enemy, a bomber dropped a two-thousand-pounder, and that attack, too, was over.
