War Is Boring

by DAVID AXE Off and on for a decade, the Afghan government and its allies in the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (IASF) have tried to convince Taliban fighters to lay down their weapons and rejoin mainstream society. But so-called “reintegration” has proved difficult, to say the least. Across Afghanistan, government authorities have reported only a handful [...]

Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment trains up a new Afghan Local Police unit in Marzak, a key border town.

On January 10, insurgents assaulted and captured a telecommunications building in the city of Sharana, in the southeastern province of Paktika. The assault, which claimed the lives of 10 people, demonstrated both the growing capabilities of the Afghan military and the insurgents’ continued ability to strike hard where least expected.

I’m in Paktika Province, Afghanistan, with the Army’s 172nd Infantry Brigade. Photos here.

Twice in the span of a month, the Taliban has unleashed human waves on one of the U.S. Army’s most isolated Afghan outposts. Twice, the American soldiers guarding the tiny fort have beat back the attackers, killing scores of extremists while suffering no losses of their own.

I was embedded with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan in March and April. I spent time with the 101st Airborne Division in eastern Paktika Province, along the border with Pakistan, an infiltration route for insurgents.

On May 1, a 12-year-old suicide-bomber blew himself up in a bazaar in the village of Shakeen, killing four people, including provincial councilman Sher Nawaz. The attack, in Bermel district of Paktika province, in eastern Afghanistan along the Pakistani border, was apparently meant to signal the official beginning of the Taliban’s annual “spring offensive.” Just before the attack, a Taliban spokesman had announced the commencement of the offensive to Western media.

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.

by DAVID AXE RAMSTEIN AIR FORCE BASE, Germany — The 88-foot-long cargo hold of the massive airlifter has been converted into a makeshift intensive care unit. Metal stanchions hold collapsible stretchers fitted with heart monitors. Defibrillators, pumps, intubation kits, oxygen bottles and other equipment lie ready in their hardened cases. For the scheduled seven-and-a-half hour [...]

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.