Policy — 8 Enemy Deaths, 46 Shootings: War by the Numbers

Key Highlights

• He’s done laundry twice, mailed five letters and received two. He’s spent 378 hours on post and 256 hours on patrol. He’s crossed 140 miles (230 kilometers) of thorny bomb-laced farmland and waist-high trenches of water on foot.  Along the way, he’s ripped eight pairs of pants, ruined two pairs of boots, and downed 1,350 half-liter bottles of water. His platoon has killed at least eight militants in battle and nine farm animals in crossfire. The rugged outposts he’s lived in have been shot at 46 times.
• At many bases, Marines sleep outside on cots inside hot-dog shaped mosquito nets. There are no toilets — just “wag” bags, no showers — just pouches you can fill up with water warmed by the afternoon sun. Fleas are such a problem, many Marines have taken to wearing flea collars made for cats or dogs around their wrists and belts.  “It’s definitely a culture shock,” Lance Cpl. Benjamin Long, 21, of Trussville, Ala. said of life for incoming troops. “Some people come here and they think we’re living like cavemen.”
• Troops routinely patrol weighed down with 80 or 90 pounds of gear — armored jackets, rifles — traversing a harsh terrain of water-filled trenches. The canal system was built by American aid money half a century ago; today both insurgents and coalition forces use them as cover to avoid or stage attacks.  “All the guys out here have lost weight,” Martin said, speaking of the pace doing three patrols a day, then back-to-back six-hour post shifts the next. It “really beats you up.”

Analysis – SFTT has consistently highlighted the fact that when our frontline troops are deployed that there “is no downtime…it’s a constant gruel,” as well as highlighting the austere conditions they operate from and the burdensome nature of the gear the troops are directed to wear.  Bottomline, while combat is, at the end of the day “war by numbers,” shame on us all if we lose the perspective that organizing violence in a desperate land is a human endeavor where outside and distant observers oftentimes lose sight of the mundane nature of sacrifice made on their behalf.

Policy – U.S. military treats many soldiers’ wounds ‘in theater’

Key Highlights

• A growing number of soldiers like Milton are being treated for non-life-threatening wounds and sent back to combat without ever leaving Afghanistan. Army doctors and commanders say the practice speeds recovery and gets injured soldiers back to their units more quickly than sending them to Germany or the United States for treatment. Caring for the wounded in Afghanistan helps their morale, they say, by keeping them more connected to their buddies.
• Milton was injured during a supply mission in July. He was traveling in one of the Army’s heavily armored mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles when a bomb detonated beneath it and blasted the front end skyward. Then the vehicle slammed to the ground, and “all I remember is grabbing the gunner” in the rooftop turret to keep from being thrown out, Milton said.  He suffered a compressed spine. Army medics gave him painkillers so he could remain with his squad, because his dwindling unit needed every available man. That suited Milton, who couldn’t stand the thought of leaving.  “I didn’t want to be evacuated,” he said. “I had to be there for my soldiers.” But the drugs only masked his injuries, and his back gave out three weeks later as he was carrying a soldier who had collapsed from the heat. Doctors prescribed more painkillers, but he stopped taking them, convinced that they exacerbated his injuries.  “They had me so doped up before that I didn’t know I was injured,” he said.

Analysis

• The policy of treating non-life threatening wounds in theater is flawed – while the trooper recovers there is no battlefield replacement and the unit that suffers the temporary loss must fill the position internally or redistribute the tasks that the wounded trooper was responsible for.
• Keeping the non-life threatening wounded in theater to recover, while meant to provide morale, by “keeping them more connected to their buddies,” at the end of the day has a deleterious effect on the organization’s medical capabilities because resources that are required to treat them (i.e. prescriptions, monitoring, access to medical care, etc) are diverted from core-mission medical tasks and requirements (i.e.  combat medic support, building medical capacity of the local populace).

Policy – General Petraeus says progress is faster than expected in Afghanistan operation

Key Highlights

• Military officials and Afghan leaders have reported increasing stability in large swaths of the area that had been firmly in the grip of insurgents a few weeks ago, although they acknowledge that they remain contested by pockets of Taliban holdouts.
• Petraeus emphasized that kill-and-capture operations are part of his counterinsurgency strategy. He said the ramp-up in Special Operations forces activity has been matched with increasing effort in all parts of the overall mission, from training Afghan security forces to rebuilding the country’s infrastructure.  “W e have increased, and we are increasing, every component of a comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign,” he said.
• Petraeus did not provide new details about the embryonic reconciliation talks between the Afghan government and some Taliban leaders. He also shied from talking about an ongoing dispute between the government and foreign diplomats over the use of private security guards to protect development workers. President Hamid Karzai has issued a decree banning private guards from protecting aid workers starting Dec. 17, a decision that has led several development firms to begin shutting down their programs. U.S. officials estimate that up to $2.5 billion in foreign assistance projects could be shuttered, and as many as 40,000 Afghan jobs lost, if the ban is not rescinded.  The development projects – from roads to schools to local government reform – are central to the military’s counterinsurgency strategy, a way to win Afghan support after soldiers clear out insurgents. In a bid to preserve these programs, American and foreign diplomats are lobbying Karzai intensely to exempt development firms from the ban on private security.

Analysis –  SFTT continues to monitor a proverbial back-and-forth on the progress (or lack thereof) in Afghanistan.  While it appears it is too early to conclude that there has been a shift in strategy that focuses exclusively on counter-terrorism versus counter-insurgency – SFTT and other observers will be hard pressed to accept Petreaus’ comments as anything more than wanting to fight an endless round of COIN in perpetuity.