Victory Point

by Ed Darack

  Cooling and his staff, upon studying the after-action reports of the Third Battalion of the Sixth Marine regiment (whom 3/3 was replacing in their November 2004 Afghan deployment) as well as their on-the-ground experience once in-country, realized that one of their greatest operational hurdles would be maintaining an ever-productive relationship with locals in areas where SOF conducted direct-action raids. The Marines of 3/3 worked day and night to establish and strengthen ties with the Afghan people as soon as they hit the ground in AO Trinity, developing strong bonds over weeks and months that led to multisource human intelligence. This “HUMINT” led to scores of weapons-cache discoveries and the identification of enemy hideouts. Just as important—more important in the minds of many—3/3’s COIN campaign fostered bonds of trust and friendship between the Marines and the locals, helping to legitimize the national government in the minds of Afghans living in some of the farthest recesses of the Hindu Kush.

  But a one-hour direct-action raid by a SOF team that captured or killed the wrong—i.e. innocent—target and left piles of smoldering collateral damage in the form of dead livestock and destroyed homes would undermine—even destroy—the benefits of months of 3/3’s work with locals. Cooling noted during his research that some of the SOF hits relied on what he and his staff considered to be questionable intel gleaned not from numerous counterbalanced and cross-referenced sources (as Cooling mandated before his Marines conducted any kinetic operation), but from single individuals, whom some SOF teams “ran” through monetary payouts and used repeatedly without cross-checking their statements. Furthermore, these units weren’t required to share intel with either Cooling or Cheek preoperation, often assuming the posture that their missions were of such a degree of importance and specialty that disclosing their information with a conventional unit might compromise them—as they felt that conventional forces couldn’t maintain operational security to a high enough degree to be entrusted with such intel. And by USSOCOM doctrine, these teams didn’t have to share intel anyway—even if a compelling reason surfaced, such as the need to compare their information with that of the Marines for accuracy to ensure that an intended target really was who they thought he was, and not an innocent noncombatant—allowing the individual who should have been the target to slip into the night as he heard the raid going down a few houses down from his location. Cooling knew that relying on single-element or even a small number of HUMINT sources risks a unit being led astray by the personal grudges a source may harbor against another villager, or just plain financial greed.

  While the vast majority of the SOF units operating in RC-East worked with exceptional professionalism, Cooling knew that at any moment—and without notice—a misdirected hard-hit raid might go down and ruin weeks or even months of COIN work of untold value. But he also knew of the doctrinal brick wall he and his staff faced: SOCOM could have units undertake missions whenever they wanted, wherever they wanted, and however they wanted, with or without informing 3/3 or Task Force Thunder; and in theory, even without informing CFC-A Command, which ran the entire Afghan Theater. Frustrated by the nonintegration of SOF with conventional forces, and by the extreme difficulty—sometimes impossibility due to unannounced operations—of simply deconflicting a conventional unit’s plans with those of SOF units, Cooling and his staff brainstormed avenues to partially integrate and to fully deconflict operations so that both his battalion and any SOF team undertaking simultaneous missions in a given area not only wouldn’t interdict each other, but would actually aid each other, fostering a synergy of mutual effort. Cooling viewed SOF teams as uniquely capable and ultraspecialized but absolutely vital entities in the larger war-fighting machine—much like an AH-1W Super Cobra, an artillery battery, or a Marine scout/sniper team, any of which he could directly control as part of a MAGTF. But by doctrine he couldn’t control a SOF team—directly. So the hard-charging Texan, who’d graduated near the top of his class at the U.S. Naval Academy, worked with his staff to create his own way to utilize special operations forces—for the benefit not of just his battalion or those SOF teams with which 3/3 would work, but for the entire war effort in AO Trinity.

  Cooling, however, didn’t want to control the SOF units; he just wanted to ensure that his battalion’s COIN efforts wouldn’t be undermined. So he and his operations officer, Major Drew Priddy (also a Naval Academy graduate), developed their own operational model, not one where missions would be planned to “employ” SOF under 3/3’s command, or for special operations teams to take the lead over the battalion’s Marines, but one where SOF and 3/3 would work as equal players for the benefit of the overall operation—each, in essence, would work for the operation. The two most salient issues Cooling and Priddy faced in developing operations of this novel style were command and control, and intel—called C2I. The two officers wanted to be able to craft missions that adhered fully with the concept of unity of effort, and as much as possible with unity of command, and also to share intelligence with SOF teams in order to determine which targets had the highest probability of being actual “bad guys” and which ones might have been incorrectly identified. But while the concept seemed to them to be an effective work-around to the situation in AO Trinity, they’d have to get “buy-in” from the teams themselves as well as the nod from Major General Olson. So Cooling went to Colonel Cheek and then to CJTF-76 headquarters at Bagram Airfield, and Priddy arranged face-to-face meetings with members of the ODAs and ODBs, Navy SEALs, and a group of Army Rangers—Task Force Red—at 3/3’s headquarters at Jalalabad Airfield.

  Priddy received warm responses from Special Forces and the Navy SEALs, who fell under the command of CJSOTF-A. Task Force Red also found the new operational model agreeable, but the Rangers worked directly for SOCOM and had no official area of operation—they went anywhere SOCOM directed them, so working with them on such missions would prove more difficult. Cooling had success as well—with Cheek, a vociferous advocate for Cooling and Priddy’s plan, and with Major General Olson, who immediately embraced the model. The ops began . . . sharp, well-vetted intel rolled in, 3/3 and SOF units weeded out bad guys, and the Marines’ COIN campaign flourished. The battalion primarily worked with Special Forces and Navy SEALs, who found the model to work as a powerful “force multiplier,” enabling them to achieve far more than they could have achieved if working alone. Cooling and Priddy had effectively adapted the essence of a MAGTF and applied it to build a conventional-forces-SOF team. During the planning stages of each operation, SOF and 3/3 would pore over each other’s intel, develop a general “scheme of maneuver,” and then execute. Because they’d incorporated SOF into their operations, Cooling and Priddy elevated the saliency of their missions, grabbing the attention of Olson, which paid the dividend of gaining 3/3 access to scarce aviation assets, essentially placing the A back into the “MAGTF” the Marines emulated in-country. So in addition to balancing SOF intel with theirs to ensure that the direct-action raids were limited, contained, and mitigated collateral damage, the battalion gained additional resources to which they would not otherwise have had access, helping them to operate more or less as a MAGTF.

  Typically, SOF would undertake the first phases of an operation as 3/3 supported them by cordoning off a village while a direct-action team took down a target. Once SOF’s part of the mission was complete, they’d “exfil” (typically by helicopter), and 3/3’s Marines would conduct a Medical Capabilities mission (a MEDCAP), where medical supplies and health care would be doled out; during one operation, 3/3 aided over five hundred villagers in a remote part of AO Trinity with everything from simple bandages to inoculations, to casting broken limbs, to enabling locals to better care for themselves by stocking basic medicinal aids and information on how to use those aids. The Marines would then continue to maintain security in a region and undertake various humanitarian assistance missions, typically handing out school and other supplies. 3/3’s operations typically spanned a week or more in duration, with the “kinetic” portion lasting just the first few
hours.

  Myriad noncombat-oriented agencies formed integral components in 3/3’s greater COIN efforts in Afghanistan. Chief among these were the PRTs, or Provincial Reconstruction Teams. Tasked with digging clean wells, building roads, schools, and mosques, and helping to maintain other vital infrastructure in the tiny villages throughout AO Trinity, 3/3 employed the PRTs as one of their most effective and long-term COIN “weapons.” During an operation, Marines would list the needs of a village, pass that information to one of the PRTs, and within weeks, the lives of the villagers would improve. 3/3’s leadership would also meet regularly with other agencies, both of the Afghan and U.S. governments, and nongovernmental organizations like the Red Cross and others associated with United Nations relief workers and U.S. AID.

  The Cooling-Priddy operational model reached its zenith of success in early February of 2005 with Operation Spurs. Named in honor of the San Antonio Spurs basketball team (3/3 used sports-team names—primarily Texas basketball teams—for their major operations during their deployment), Spurs had Marines of India and Lima companies driving into the heart of the vicious Korangal Valley. Inserting by day via U.S. Army CH-47s, the grunts cordoned off target zones while U.S. Navy SEALs captured a number of known and suspected Islamic fundamentalist combatants. The operation culminated in a number of meetings with village elders (called shura meetings), and then a MEDCAP. 3/3 Marines maintained a presence in the Korangal for weeks after Spurs, continuing to pressure one particular individual who had proved to be cunningly elusive both to 3/3 and to the SOF teams who were there before 3/3’s arrival in Afghanistan. This individual was a man named Najmudeen.

  A known militant who based his efforts out of the Korangal Valley, Najmudeen held the distinction of having his name on a list of the most wanted Islamic extremist fighters not just in AO Trinity, or in RC-East, but in all of Afghanistan. SOF had been trying for over eighteen months to catch him through a number of failed direct-action operations. Cooling and Priddy soon reasoned that the best way to take him was not through quick hard-hit raids, but through a consistent campaign of pressure, forcing him over time to come forward. SOF commanders scoffed at this plan; they believed that Najmudeen could only be killed or captured, and that the militant would never surrender or pledge allegiance to the new government of Afghanistan. But in early April, CJSOTF-A Command jaws hit the floor when they learned the news that near the town of Nangalam, deep in the Pech River Valley, Najmudeen met Captain Jim Sweeney, India Company commander, halfway across a bridge, stating to Jim, “Welcome, my friend.” The battalion’s continuous platoon-level presence in the Korangal Valley over the course of three harsh winter months—an uncomfortably austere, drawn-out, and downright unglamorous mission (particularly when compared to SOF direct-action raids)—had forced Najmudeen to live in a series of small caves, where he fell gravely ill and lost all options but surrender. Weeks of subsequent debriefing yielded reams of actionable intelligence from the former militant, intel vital for future operations—including those ⅔ would undertake within a matter of weeks.

  In late March, after 3/3’s operational ingenuity had led to success and subsequent COIN progress, members of ⅔’s predeployment site survey arrived, including Colonel MacMannis, Tom Wood, and Scott Westerfield. As Westerfield dug into the intelligence-gathering side of things and Wood worked with Priddy to gain a full understanding of the way 3/3 developed joint operations with SOF, MacMannis realized that while there would be a change of battalions, the operational tempo must remain consistent. As soon as ⅔’s main element arrived in early June, they would prepare to launch a battalion-size operation against the greatest remaining threat in the region. And Scott Westerfield would spend the following months identifying that threat.

  3/3 had achieved success not just through operational ingenuity, but through consistency—keeping the pressure on the bad guys even through the dead of winter. Because it was now primarily a COIN fight, MacMannis felt it was far better to continue to coerce the enemy out of the hills and onto the government of Afghanistan’s side than to take them on kinetically. But with the spring thaw coming, the enemy was undoubtedly going to force the Marines to put rounds downrange, and with the operational model set forth by 3/3, the Island Warriors would have a full spectrum of opportunities open to them to win the fight.

  4

  INTO THE HINDU KUSH

  Marking the final stretch of their Afghan tour with yet two more successful battalion-level operations in the wake of Spurs, 3/3 maintained its vigorous tempo straight through to the bitter end of their OEF deployment. But while the battalion’s pace and outlook remained rock solid, the command structure under which the Marines of 3/3 stood in Afghanistan changed just weeks before ⅔ rolled in to replace them—and changed in a way that would dramatically affect the operational construct that Cooling and Priddy had developed and that ⅔ looked to adopt. New commanders replaced not one or two, but all three levels of command above 3/3 in Afghanistan, with Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry taking the reins of CFC-A from David Barno, Major General Jason Kamiya taking over CJTF-76 from Olson, and just two weeks before 3/3 officially handed over authority to ⅔, Colonel Patrick Donahue of the 82nd Airborne (known in-country as Task Force Devil) assuming command of RC-East from Gary Cheek. And while Donahue and his staff would ensure a smooth transition for ⅔, working to provide all types of support from intel, to aviation, to artillery for the Marines for both their COIN campaign as well as kinetic ops, Major General Kamiya, after assuming command of CJTF-76 in mid-March, seemed to favor an operational balance weighed less heavily on the counterinsurgency fight and more on aggressive counterterror missions. Further influencing the way 3/3 (and soon thereafter ⅔) would be able to plan and undertake operations, a new CJSOTF-A commander took over—one who sought strict adherence to USSOCOM doctrine—doctrine stating that SOF teams could operate with complete independence of conventional forces—and never “for” them (or their operations)—although SOF could be supported by conventional units. And while Olson had praised the operational model in which 3/3 and SOF worked together—and the SOF units themselves found the arrangement to work excellently for them—Kamiya seemed to agree with the new CJSOTF-A commander. Furthermore, and of equal significance, Kamiya sought a greater focus on the Tora Bora region (roughly seventy miles to the southwest of the Pech and Korangal Valley areas), where he felt that forces under his control should pursue direct-action counterterror campaigns, necessitating that 3/3 Marines reduce their presence in the Korangal in order to push into the Tora Boras—at the likely cost of allowing extremist forces to more aggressively move into and around the important corner of the Hindu Kush, virtually assuring a retrogression of the stability 3/3 had worked so hard to achieve in that area.

  In mid-March, 3/3 kicked off Operation Mavericks, which the battalion planned and executed as an analogue of Spurs. Utilizing Navy SEALs, the Marines focused on villages in northern Laghman province, destroying an extensive al-Qaeda cave network, capturing eighteen suspected insurgents and terrorists, and undertaking extensive humanitarian relief efforts to help locals during a spate of devastating floods. Mavericks once again proved that operations planned with careful, detailed SOF-conventional-forces integration could yield outcomes often greater than the sum of the participating units’ capabilities. Operation Celtics followed in May, its latter phases focusing Marines on the Tora Bora region—as Kamiya had ordered. But no targets could be found—and no confirmed target list had been passed to 3/3 from their higher command levels. Meanwhile, enemy activity in the Korangal Valley steadily burgeoned as the Marines reduced their presence there to support Celtics and winter gave way to summer.

  And while 3/3 continued their run of successes throughout the spring of 2005—killing, capturing, and forcing the surrender of numerous insurgent leaders and their henchmen—other, lower-level operators who aspired to regional and global Islamic extremist notoriety sought to fill the voids. Mortar, rocket, and IED attacks (most inaccurate and inef
fective, but menacing nonetheless) grew in frequency in the spring throughout the Pech Valley region, undertaken by a few of what intel revealed to be small-time operators based out of the Korangal Valley area. Having been apprised by 3/3’s intel officer of a series of target individuals through both HUMINT and signals intelligence (SIGINT), Drew Priddy set out to develop another operation of the Spurs model in which 3/3 would work with Navy SOF to capture or kill the insurgents responsible for the recent “spring thaw” attacks and henceforth work to further stabilize the Korangal, the hypocenter of insurgent and terrorist activity in the Kunar province.

  In developing the mission’s foundation, Priddy contacted Navy SOF (NAVSOF), known in RC-East as Task Force Blue, aka the SEALs and their direct, organic support—in this case members of SEAL Team 10 and their attached units. With the successes 3/3 had attained by working with NAVSOF in Spurs and Mavericks in mind, Priddy felt confident that he and TF Blue’s chief planner could formulate an op that would clear the Korangal of the identified targets and stabilize the region with Marine presence, interdicting other budding extremist elements from establishing new toeholds there. Priddy’s Task Force Blue equivalent, Lieutenant Commander Erik Kristensen—who hadn’t yet worked with Priddy but who coincidentally graduated with him in the same Naval Academy class in 1995—seized the opportunity to work with 3/3, and he and Priddy, communicating by phone and secure e-mail, immediately began to build a ‘shell’ of an operation that at that point had the tentative working name of Stars, after the Dallas Stars professional hockey team. The two planned Stars in the same vein as Spurs and Mavericks: share intel, vet a specific target list, kick off with NAVSOF “shaping” the objective through reconnaissance and surveillance; then, as Marines conduct a wide cordon of the area of interest, a SEAL direct-action team takes down those targets that NAVSOF has positively identified in the first phase of the mission. NAVSOF then exfils, and Marines continue “presence operations,” undertaking humanitarian assistance and MEDCAP missions.