War Is Boring

Staff Sgt. Richard Rodriguez was on a mission. On March 27, the stocky military policeman from the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division led a group of American and Afghan security forces on a foot patrol through the town of Baraki Barak, 50 miles south of Kabul. (See video above.)

They attacked in a human wave, hundreds strong. It was October 30, 2010 in the town of Margah, in the remote province of Paktika along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan. Just months prior, the U.S. Army had shifted about 50 fresh infantrymen into a tiny, neglected outpost outside Margah’s main bazaar. The reinforcements, part of the Barack Obama administration’s Afghanistan “surge,” doubled the manpower at the outpost — and provoked a massive Taliban reprisal.

The Taliban come at night to Afghanistan’s contested districts. They seek out residents suspected of cooperating with the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force and the Afghan government. The Talibs leave written notes — “night letters,” they’re called — warning the accused against further collaboration.

LOGAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan — On April 15, 2002, in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, at least five U.S. Army soldiers from a Explosive Ordnance Disposal team — a military bomb squad — were working to dismantle a stockpile of old, Soviet-designed 107-millimeter rockets. The munitions had been discovered during the U.S.-led invasion targeting the Al Qaeda terror group and its Taliban protectors.

Fox Co., 2-506 Parachute Infantry Regiment patrols around Margah in Paktika province, eastern Afghanistan, in April 2011.

Fox Co., 2-506 Parachute Infantry Regiment, air-assaults into northern Bermel district, Paktika province, eastern Afghanistan, on a reconnaissance mission on April 4 and 5, 2011.

Watch as soldiers from Fox Company, 2-506th Parachute Infantry Regiment are ambushed in Paktika province near a site the Taliban calls “Red Mountain.”

1st Lt. Jason Wright from 3rd Platoon, Fox Co., 2-506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, based at Combat Outpost Margah in Paktika province, Afghanistan, in April 2011 leads a tour of the outpost’s observation post that was overrun by Taliban in October.

MARGAH, Afghanistan — The gunshot sounded like splitting wood. The American paratroopers, scattered across the hills of this rough border town in eastern Paktika province, dove for cover behind rocks, mud walls and irrigation ditches. A few seconds later, they trained their weapons on their attackers’ location.

PAKTIKA PROVINCE, Afghanistan — The two tan-painted U.S. Army CH-47F Chinook helicopters broke away from each other at the last moment and headed for neighboring mountaintops in this rugged province bordering Pakistan. They flared as they landed and dropped their ramps. From each raced a platoon of heavily-armed paratroopers from Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, plus a squad of Afghan National Army soldiers.

by DAVID AXE The US soldiers were prepared for many things, but not for this. On April 7, heavily-armed members of 2nd Platoon, Fox Company — part of the 2nd Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry — walked into the town of Margah, in the mountainous eastern half of the strategic Afghan border province of [...]

by DAVID AXE It was a hopeful speech in a striking setting. On March 21, the first day of the Afghan New Year, Afghan Vice President Abdul Karim Khalili — a regal looking man with wireframe glasses and a salt-and-pepper beard — addressed a crowd of hundreds gathered at an ornate, blue-domed mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif [...]