War Is Boring

In January 2008, Captain Christian Dwarshuis was in charge of the Dutch Operational Mentor and Liaison team at the Forward Operating Base (FOB) Kyber. His job was to help the attached Afghan National Army (ANA) unit conduct security operations in the area.

For six years free-lance war correspondent David Axe has been traveling from battlefield to battlefield — from Iraq to Afghanistan, from East Timor to Darfur,” Radio Netherlands Worldwide reports. Actually, I’ve never been to Darfur — only Chad, near Darfur. Anyway …

In the summer of 2007, I spent a week in Uruzgan, southern Afghanistan, reporting on the Dutch occupation of that desert province. It was my first trip to Afghanistan as a freelance war correspondent, and I was stoked for some action. It was either fate’s cruel sense of humor or spitefulness on NATO’s part that I wound up in Uruzgan. The Dutch had been there a year with hardly any fighting—and that was exactly how they liked it. “You can’t win hearts and minds by shooting at people,” one Dutch commander said.

Today Uruzgan province is mostly safe around the main population centers, a far cry from when the Dutch first came here four years ago. The Dutch troops have worked hard to establish good relations with the local population and, when they must, they and their Australian counterparts have fought, died and been maimed and injured along with their Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police comrades.

After five years, $2 billion in direct costs and the loss of 24 soldiers, the Dutch military is finally leaving Afghanistan. The Netherlands’ 2,000-strong task force officially departs the southern province of Uruzgan on August 1. U.S. troops will fill in.

by DAVID AXE The Nigerian man who attempted to blow up an American airliner bound for Detroit on Christmas Day routed through The Netherlands. “The preparation of the failed attack against passenger flight NW 253 Amsterdam-Detroit was fairly professional,” the Dutch investigation into the terror attempt concluded, “but its execution was amateurish.” This is evident [...]

In November 2008, the Dutch army’s Mart de Kruif was promoted to the rank of major general. On the same day, he took over the 12-month command of NATO Regional Command South in Afghanistan and its more than 40,000 coalition troops. He spoke with War Is Boring European correspondent Andrew Balcombe about the U.S. “surge,” [...]