War Is Boring

The Czech Provincial Reconstruction Team assigned to Logar, eastern Afghanistan, consults with Afghan National Army officers on the construction of new facilities for the ANA. Meanwhile, the Czech security detail visits the weapons range alongside some American troops.

For such a short journey, it sure did cover a lot of ground.

by KYLE MIZOKAMI According to the Daily Yomiuri, the GSDF is sending two Type 74 main battle tanks to the Fukushima Daiichi reactor to help clean up rubble and debris from the earthquake, tsunami, and explosions at the reactor site. The rubble and debris are hampering emergency efforts to repair the reactors. The GSDF is [...]

In eastern Congo, warring rebels and rogue government troops have displaced some 2 million people in a decade of fighting. The region’s vast size, thick forests and lack of infrastructure complicate humanitarian efforts. In all of Congo, there are just 300 miles of roads that amount to more than footpaths. A U.N. peacekeeping force is trying to change that.

DUNGU, Democratic Republic of Congo — When the Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army, attacked the town of Duru in eastern Congo two years ago, it took a convoy of U.N. peacekeepers and humanitarian workers 10 days by road to reach the devastated town. Representatives of the U.N. high commissioner for refugees found Duru residents in “urgent need of assistance.”

Well, not a river exactly. But 30 years ago, the valley surrounding the city of Bagram was lush from east to west, Afghans say. Today, you can stand at the NATO airbase adjacent to Bagram, look west and see green fields, look east and see nothing but parched, red earth. Afghans say the air base, built by the Russians decades ago, is to blame. The facility’s acres of concrete and steel have disrupted the natural flow of water across the valley.

There’s a new Afghanistan war plan. Last fall, NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal rolled out more restrictive rules of engagement, heralding a “population-centric” approach to the war. U.S. President Barack Obama announced more U.S. troops. While U.S.-led forces in eastern Afghanistan doubled their efforts to prop up faltering local governance, troops in the south identified [...]

To NATO, Afghanistan’s Parwan province is a backwater. Which is ironic, for it lies just north of Kabul, butts up against NATO’s main logistical hub at Bagram and is overwhelmingly pro-Western. If NATO truly is pursuing a “clear, hold and build” strategy, Parwan is already cleared and held, and is ready for building.

BAGRAM, Afghanistan — Standing on a mountaintop, 1st Lt. Maximilian Soto swept his arm from side to side, indicating a 400-square-mile expanse of fields, rivers and streams surrounding the village of Estalef in Parwan province, just north of Kabul. “All this,” he said, “is mine.” With a force of just 26 men from the Special Troops Battalion of the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, Soto provides security for a chunk of Afghanistan the size of a typical American county. “It’s quite difficult,” he told World Politics Review.

by DAVID AXE Fifty miles south of Kabul, in the Kherwar district of Logar province, lies a low valley ringed by sharp peaks. U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Gukeisen, commander of coalition forces in the province, calls it “basically a bowl.” To the roughly 1,500 American, Czech and Afghan soldiers in Logar, the Kherwar bowl [...]

It was a war we thought we’d won. But after eight years of escalating violence, the Afghanistan conflict has morphed into something perhaps unwinnable. U.S.-led forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to deny sanctuary to Al Qaeda, a goal we’ve largely achieved. But in years of occupation, Washington has apparently conflated counter-terrorism with nation-building. Now the [...]

by DAVID AXE Last week, Time asked if German troops were too soft to play a meaningful part in Afghanistan. More to the point: German rules of engagement, reflecting deep domestic opposition to a war role, are absurdly strict, and bode poorly for a bigger German contribution to the fighting. Milblog Bill and Bob’s Excellent [...]