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| American GIs battle ‘ghosts’ |
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| sabri |
| 05/17/02 at 18:54:48 |
| [slm] KHUSHAI LALMI GHAR, Afghanistan, May 15 — The three men were acting suspiciously, running back and forth, pointing and ducking and carrying something into a streambed. Watching from a nearby hill, 1st Lt. Quinn Eddy and his men decided they could be hostile and prepared for a firefight. INSTEAD, THE THREE men ran away. The Americans, weighed down by 23 pounds of body armor plus many more pounds of assault equipment, could hardly give chase from 650 yards away. And since the suspicious men never pointed a weapon at them, under the rules of engagement, the soldiers could not shoot them. “That’s one of the frustrating parts of being over here,” Eddy sighed later. “You can’t tell who’s who.” Seven months since the United States began fighting in Afghanistan, that kind of fleeting, long-distance encounter has become more common than the massive airstrikes or large-scale ground assaults of months past. With no known large concentrations of al Qaeda or Taliban fighters to attack, the U.S. campaign has evolved into a sometimes frustrating search for a scattered, hit-and-run enemy that travels more easily and furtively than its pursuer. During a three-day operation called Operation Iron Mountain, more than 100 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division were flown into the brutally hot mountains here near the Pakistani border last week to put a stop to regular rocket attacks on a nearby U.S. base. In the end, they found mortar-firing stakes apparently planted by the three suspicious men and succeeded in preventing another attack from the area. But the enemy simply moved a few miles away and fired on the U.S. base anyway. The operation clearly demonstrated that U.S. forces can move at will and control any territory they choose, scaring off Islamic guerrillas unwilling or unable to mount a sustained counterattack. Yet for all their numerical and technological advantages, the Americans and their allies have yet to figure out how to battle a foe so practiced at concealment. The Americans are not the first to encounter such a dilemma in the mountains of Afghanistan. During their long, futile war here in the 1980s, Soviet soldiers referred to their Afghan adversaries as dukhi, the Russian word for ghosts, invisible spirits who attacked without notice only to disappear again into the countryside. Now American, British and Canadian ground troops deploy around the country for targeted strikes searching for their own dukhi. During three days here, not far from the volatile east Afghan city of Khost, the soldiers of the 101st Airborne, accompanied by a Washington Post reporter, inspected houses, discovered caves, set up roadblocks and even delivered humanitarian aid to woo local Afghans who might betray the enemy. They slept on rocks in the open air, waiting to ambush anyone setting off rockets. They were shot at only a few times and opened fire only to scare off wild dogs. “It’s a frustrating war,” Lt. Col. Patrick L. Fetterman, the commander of Operation Iron Mountain, said at the beginning of the mission last weekend. “The reason it’s so frustrating and aggravating is because the enemy is not fighting. We’re trying to find him and he’s trying to avoid us. So any time we go out, he fades away. It’s just like Vietnam. Any time he finds a weak spot, he flows in like water.” HOSTILE INTENT On Friday night, a dozen or so officers and top enlisted men gathered in Fetterman’s tent at Bagram air base to go over the plan for the mission that would commence the next morning. Maps were handed out, some in Russian. Three platoons from Fetterman’s 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment — 129 men in all — would descend from the skies to scour an area southeast of Khost designated Crocodile. Fetterman, 40, an affable, introspective West Point graduate and 18-year veteran officer, wanted to make sure his young soldiers did not get carried away in an area with many civilians and took pains to drill in the rules for shooting. “It’s not acceptable to just kill anybody who wanders into our firing area,” he lectured. Soldiers could fire only at those who demonstrated hostile intent. “Hostile intent means if he points in your direction or communicates it in some other means. It doesn’t just mean he has a weapon. Everybody in this [expletive] country has a weapon.” The soldiers would set up nighttime roadblocks to search every car coming north from the Pakistani border, a particularly dangerous task. “If the vehicle tries to roll through a roadblock that is clearly marked as a roadblock . . . they are now hostile,” Fetterman told his subordinates. “That’s hostile intent. They could hurt you with the vehicle. You are allowed to engage. I spoke to the lawyers about this.” Capt. Patrick Harkins, the Bravo Company commander, and Capt. Richard Leach, the unit intelligence officer, described the new operation. Over the last several weeks, unknown assailants had been firing rockets at the small U.S. base located at the Khost airstrip, which the Americans have dubbed Chapman Air Field after a Special Forces soldier killed in the area in January. Intelligence reports suggested that al Qaeda operatives had been crossing the border from Pakistan and paying local Afghans to launch the attacks. The enemy weapons were hardly technological wonders — just Chinese-made 107mm rockets launched by a homemade timing contraption made of two coffee cans, some water, aluminum foil and two D-cell batteries. The missiles had not hit anything, but Special Forces operating at Chapman had found four launch sites, and intelligence reports showed a pattern indicating that the enemy would try again over the coming weekend. The U.S. soldiers would search for weapons caches, set up an ambush and wait. “If we find the caches,” Harkins said, “we’ve found the enemy. Then they come to us.” ‘A LITTLE HUNTING’ “Hey, fellas, everything okay?” It was 6 a.m. on Saturday and Fetterman was checking on the mood of his troops gathering on the tarmac at Bagram. Each was wearing body armor, 60 to 80 pounds of gear and a heavy helmet covered with burlap and green ribbon for camouflage they call “iron hair.” Armed with M-4 assault rifles and 9mm handguns, they also carried night-vision goggles, knives, binoculars, canteens and some smoke grenades. “We’re going to have some fun,” Fetterman told them. “Maybe do a little hunting. Just listen to your NCOs [noncommissioned officers] and we’ll all be back here slapping high fives in two, three days.” Piling onto three CH-47 Chinook helicopters, the soldiers appeared impossibly young. Some had been reading “Harry Potter” novels in their tents just the day before. Yet they betrayed no hint of fear. As the choppers lifted off at 7:08 a.m. and headed south, many drifted off to sleep. Most knew better than to look out the windows to see how the choppers appeared to be flying straight into cliffs. Still, the ground-hugging, roller-coaster flight would take its toll: Two vomited. After a 55-minute flight, the three choppers settled down one by one in a flat, rocky area at the base of a mountain and unloaded. Fetterman had been irked that he was not provided an escort by AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, and now he was doubly annoyed to discover that the Special Forces and Afghan soldiers who were supposed to meet him had gone to a wrong landing zone. “This is typical,” he groused. Eventually, the Special Forces escorts showed up and provided trucks to take the soldiers to the areas where they would operate. They started in a southern area designated Texas and began marching toward a small compound of mud buildings flying the Afghan flag. It was not yet noon, but the sun was already scorching. By the end of the day, Harkins’s thermometer read 126 degrees, some of the battalion’s equipment had melted and three days’ supply of water was gone. “Get that gun up and trained on that vehicle up there!” a soldier shouted as they approached the mud building. Several men were jumping into a white pickup truck near the building and getting ready to leave. The Special Forces troops ran to intercept it; the men turned out to be aid workers from UNICEF. They had no more luck inside the compound. The Afghan men herded the women and children outside and made them wait under a tree while the soldiers searched. No weapons, no indications of enemy presence. Not far away, another squad found four caves but they too were empty of everything but trash and animal dung. “Damn it! Nothing here,” Fetterman exclaimed. “We’ll come back one more time in the morning just in case he thinks it’s safe.” ‘GOOD WORK’ A family walked by, oblivious to the U.S. force, a man in a white shalwar kameez, a woman balancing a red sack on her head and a small boy in yellow. The American soldiers stared as if they had never seen Afghans before, and, in fact, they had not. Locked in their bases in Bagram or Kandahar, most U.S. infantrymen fighting the war have had no real interaction with the local population. And so all appeared potentially hostile. “I feel like I’m on a safari,” one soldier said as their truck rumbled down the desert road. Sitting under a tree a little later, eating a Meal-Ready-to-Eat (MRE), the unit’s chief NCO, Sgt. Maj. Jim Smith, spotted a group of shepherds in the distance. “There was a bunch of Habibs over there a few minutes ago,” he said, using the soldiers’ name for Afghans. “I bet I could take down four with my M-4 and two more with my 9 millimeter before they could chamber a round. What do you think?” Smith, 43, a 24-year veteran, could be the sergeant major in any Hollywood war movie: gruff, gleefully profane, politically incorrect, and yet the young boys he shouts at revere him as a father figure. And just like the young soldiers, he was disappointed not to find an enemy to engage. “We watched ‘Black Hawk Down’ before we came and that’s what we expected,” said Staff Sgt. Michael Young, 26, a squad leader from Washington. Now if he talked with friends shipping out, “I’d tell them not to expect any major battles because that’s pretty much done. To me, it seems more like a peacekeeping mission to keep what we have.” The two roadblocks the first night turned up a few weapons but not much else. Overnight sentries reported eight to 10 rounds fired in their general direction at 1:30 a.m. but not close enough to pose a serious threat. The three suspicious men at the objective area designated Oregon got away, and nothing much was found in the Kansas objective area either. On Sunday, Fetterman tried a different tactic, joining Special Forces at a local school where the 400 students meet outside every day because they have no building. The soldiers strung up three old parachutes to provide a shaded class area, and donated pens, pencils, notebooks and ground mats. “It’s good work,” Fetterman told the Special Forces commander, “even if it’s not what we came here to do.” “You’re probably doing more today to go home soon than humping around all the mountains around here,” answered the Special Forces commander, a major who gave his name as Jon M.B. “They see you doing this one day and the next they come to you and say, ‘You’re the guys looking for caves, right? I know one with weapons the Taliban left there.’” Uncovering such caves, however, can be easier than destroying them. The four found in the Texas area the day before refused to collapse. Lt. Jason Bartlett first threw a grenade in one, to no effect. Then his team of engineers tried four more times, loading the largest cave up with more than 50 pounds of C4 explosives and 63 mortar rounds and even firing rocket-propelled grenades to set them off. The result? “We made it bigger for them,” Bartlett sighed. “Now you know why they beat the Soviets.” ‘LIKE VIETNAM’ The sound of an explosion cut through the silence at 3:40 a.m. on Monday. Most of the soldiers were asleep on the ground, but Smith, the sergeant major, was up in an instant. “Is that an explosion?” he called out into the darkness. “Yes, Sergeant Major,” answered Spec. Brian Buss, the radio man. Within moments, information came over the radio. Another rocket had been fired at the U.S. base at Khost — this time landing just 400 yards from the target, closer than ever before. With the CIA’s unmanned Predator and other reconnaissance airplanes flying overhead, it did not take long to pinpoint where the rocket came from — about five miles to the west, well outside the Crocodile operation area. “They felt pressure from us here so they launched from somewhere else,” Smith said. “Can’t stop a three-man team from running around. All they did is move further west. ... How do you stop that?” More details began trickling in. Fetterman was up, as were most of his top staff members. There was nothing for them to do but seethe. They had no vehicles to go chasing the assailants and, besides, intelligence reports indicated that the rockets were generally set several hours before going off, meaning the enemy was almost certainly long gone. Several of the soldiers offered their ideas, which mostly revolved around putting more men on the ground. Smith focused on the rules of engagement, which prevent soldiers from shooting unless they are being threatened. The three suspicious men they saw did not qualify. “The only way is to say if they act stupid take them down,” he said. “Problem is you can’t do that. Not in this country. ‘Cause everyone acts stupid.” ”[Expletive] bastards!” fumed Leach, the intelligence officer. “Life was a lot easier when everyone wore a uniform,” Fetterman said. “Then you know who you can kill and not kill,” Smith agreed. Fetterman got a report from aides. Not a single car came through the two roadblocks overnight. “We had no movement in here last night. That means their ‘intell’ is better than ours. They know where we are and we didn’t know where they are.” Fetterman sat back and reflected some more. “It’s very much like Vietnam — partial success,” he said. “We pushed them out but they’re smart enough to figure out how to react to what we’re doing.” “It’s one of those times when you accomplish your task but fail the mission,” added Capt. Daniel Kidd, 28, a top aide to Fetterman. Smith did not like that assessment. “We didn’t fail our mission,” he retorted sharply. “Our mission was to search and clear Operation Area Crocodile. We did that.” But he did not sound all that convinced. He scrunched up his face in frustration. “Well, it could have been worse. They could have launched from right over there.” The sun began to creep above the horizon. The soft dawn light revealed a field filled with rustling soldiers with no enemy to fight. The temperature began to rise, hinting at the broiler to come. And the infantry men continued to hash out what had happened. Smith was still perturbed. How could they do their job, he wanted to know, if the military was not prepared to do what was necessary? “Our job is to close with and destroy the enemy,” he said. “You can drop bombs on them all [expletive] day. But until we’re ready to accept putting out squads ... ” “We’re not willing to do that,” interjected Fetterman. “I know that.” “We got into their decision cycle,” Fetterman offered, again searching for the positive outcome. “We made them do something they didn’t want to do. We got some more intell.” “But bottom line, we didn’t kill the [expletives],” Smith said. He scowled again. The conversation faded to grim silence. Off in the distance, they suddenly heard a burst of machine-gun fire. And then another. It came from the direction of the city, miles away, possibly factional fighting among the locals. Nothing related to their mission. Nothing for them to do. They sat down again and waited for the helicopters to come take them back to their base. “Ah, this sucks,” Smith sighed. “Didn’t get to kill nobody and they still got to fire their rocket.” Then he posed the ultimate question to the group. “When have we completed our mission in Afghanistan?” No one had an answer. www.msnbc.com [wlm] |
| 05/17/02 at 18:56:23 |
| sabri |
| Re: American GIs battle ‘ghosts’ |
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| mwishka |
| 05/18/02 at 15:40:40 |
| “Didn’t get to kill nobody and they still got to fire their rocket.” i can't even come up with any ideas small enough to reply to this. i'm afraid i'd write for the rest of the day if i say everything there is to say about this article. i'll only say this: there is no place in the world for a "sports" mentality except on the sports field. there are no teams, there are no terrorists, there are very very few good soldiers who retain their sanity once they reach the battlefield - especially if they're viewing it as a "playing field". once people are trained to kill, unless they're also trained at the same time that they're doing so with honor and respect, they become incorrigible, no longer able to live normally or peacefully in a peaceful society. soldiers in the US (and i suspect most countries use similar methods) are first destroyed personally, then reassembled with a different mentality. i do think it's true that you could see this as a parallel to coming to islam (wait! don't react yet, finish reading.... whew). and of course, i have yet to experience the fullness of this process, but i think every society has to recognize that when a person undergoes a change in the essence of their being, as when in islam a person surrenders themselves to god, becoming no longer a mere individual, but a humble willing and reliable servant of god, that person is no longer the person they were before. these soldiers, now humble and willing killers having become servants of a dark and sinister war machine, have lost - given up - the essence of their humanity. this is one of the loose ends of war. without re-training, these pliant killers no longer belong in any civilian society. they are no longer the people they were before. i hope no one is disturbed by my analogy. i don't use it disrespectfully, but to make the point of the completeness, the depth of such a change in a person. mwishka |
| Re: American GIs battle ‘ghosts’ |
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| bhaloo |
| 05/18/02 at 23:01:43 |
| [slm] [quote author=mwishka link=board=ummah;num=1021676088;start=0#1 date=05/18/02 at 15:40:40] i do think it's true that you could see this as a parallel to coming to islam <SNIP> i hope no one is disturbed by my analogy. i don't use it disrespectfully, but to make the point of the completeness, the depth of such a change in a person. [/quote] I completely disagree and it is a very poor analogy to be making. To make such an analogy, that a trained killer, is like someone that humbly accepts all that is Islam and obeys it fully makes no sense. Training someone to be a cold-blooded killer without any morals or ethics (basically brainwashing them) is COMPLETELY diferent from someone that sees the truth, that understands what is happening in the world, that understands the purpose of life, that understands why things happen, and why things are the way they are. Islam is perfect and makes complete sense. A long time ago when my faith in Islam wasn't that strong (due to a lack of knowledge), I studied, I studied other religions as well to learn about them, and the numerous scientific miracles foretold in the Quran (centuries before scientists discovered them), and things started to come into place. And talking with priests and christian missionaries increased my faith in Islam even more so. There is not even an ounce of doubt in my mind about Islam. |
| Re: American GIs battle ?ghosts? |
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| Dawn |
| 05/19/02 at 08:13:49 |
| [quote author=bhaloo link=board=ummah;num=1021676088;start=0#2 date=05/18/02 at 23:01:43] I completely disagree and it is a very poor analogy to be making. To make such an analogy, that a trained killer, is like someone that humbly accepts all that is Islam and obeys it fully makes no sense. [/quote] I don't think mwishka was implying here that the analogy was one of the nature of the transformation but of the fact that there WAS a transformation -- in the case of Islam, for the betterment of the individual, and in the case of a human-turned-war-machine, for the total detriment of both the individual and society (once that individual is no longer in a war environment). Both reflect a total transformation (therein lies the similarity), but the natures of the two transformations are probably about as opposite as one can find. Peace, Dawn |
| 05/19/02 at 08:18:41 |
| Dawn |
| Re: American GIs battle ‘ghosts’ |
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| mwishka |
| 05/19/02 at 08:14:38 |
| hi bhaloo. i completely agree with you about the utter difference between the processes of reaching a state induced by brainwashing and a state reached consciously and by the exertion of one's free will. though my point was not about the process, but the end result, and though i chose this analogy as one about true core change that would be transparently obvious to people here, and i emphasized the differences between function, and my lareger concern is the failure of societies to deal with the automatons they've created, what should i do with this? hmmm....should i chop it all apart, or delete it or replace it with a new analogy? i'll come back and do something to it - provided i can get back in..... mwishka |
| Re: American GIs battle ‘ghosts’ |
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| Marcie |
| 05/19/02 at 10:39:04 |
| Hi Mwiskha, I understood your analogy and I think that it is a good one. :-* Just thinking about the changes that have occured and are still occurring in my own life since becoming a Muslim. The way in which I think and see the world have changed drastically. Marcie Ps. I would love to see one of your molecule diagrams. |
| Re: American GIs battle ‘ghosts’ |
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| mwishka |
| 05/19/02 at 13:48:08 |
| um, came back to do...something here. now not sure what to do.... i should have been screened before being allowed to become a member here, since, unlike my given name - which is nice, my REAL name is "most-trouble-making-woman-on-the-planet"....... uh oh. (yep, i get myself into all kinds of trouble all the time, most of it quite innocently, but trouble all the same.) well, kashif, since you're the moderator here, if you want to take this all out back up to the article, that's ok with me. though both dawn and marcie seem to be comfortable with what i've written, if other people are not, maybe it should go. i can certainly see how my analogy can be seen to have negative associations, in several ways. not only just the fact of it, but it could be seen to have meanings i did not intend to ascribe to it, such as any relationship between submission to god and my use of the word 'pliant'. eek! (an appropriate exclamation for dismay over the mere presence of one representing my assumed species......) mwishka (marcie, i'll throw in some chemical structures somewhere here. have several tidbits from new studies people might be interested to know about/be scared by, but can't say when i'll get it done. i'll put up a little "science briefing", but have to go to my lab right now.......) |
| Re: American GIs battle ‘ghosts’ |
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| se7en |
| 05/19/02 at 22:20:34 |
| salaam, I think maybe bhaloo dislikes the analogy because it draws a similarity between someone who has shut off their intellect in blind loyalty to something, with a Muslim. Islam doesn't teach us to turn off our minds in blind submission.. the opposite of that in fact :) If anything it teaches us to turn *on* our minds, in study of the world around us, reflection and contemplation of our innerselves.. because through this truth is made manifest, and we believe Islam will inevitably harmonize with the truth. The many verses in the Qur'an that speak about contemplation and study indicate this. I can understand your apprehension.. bhaloo is a bit fierce. ("bhaloo" is the Urdu word for bear, you know) but don't worry, if you tell him you like the Lakers he'll treat you just fine. :P salaam :) ps - maybe we should call you Can't Help but Ask Really Mature and Intriguing questions? ;) ;D |
| 05/19/02 at 22:36:06 |
| se7en |
| Re: American GIs battle ‘ghosts’ |
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| ltcorpest2 |
| 05/19/02 at 23:09:12 |
| if you tell him you like the Lakers he'll treat you just fine. Hey, I used to work for the lakers, had the best seat in the house too. right under the basket |
| Re: American GIs battle ‘ghosts’ |
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| muqaddar |
| 05/21/02 at 06:44:58 |
| [slm] hmm reminds me of Sheikh hamza yusuf said about western society being obsessed like the romans with worshipping weapons (the romans worshiped their swords) and 'going for the kill' eg a making a profit in business is called 'going for the kill' killing somebody for a pay packet and killing somebody because they have taken away your liberty or are oppressing you are two different things. A muslim is like the murabitun a monk and a warrior , killing is always subservient to forgiving ..as the prophet once refused to fight even through the odds were on the sides of the muslims and called one of the sahaabi a 'warmonger' for advocating war |
| Re: American GIs battle ‘ghosts’ |
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| bhaloo |
| 05/21/02 at 13:07:26 |
| [slm] [quote author=ltcorpest2 link=board=ummah;num=1021676088;start=0#8 date=05/19/02 at 23:09:12]if you tell him you like the Lakers he'll treat you just fine. Hey, I used to work for the lakers, had the best seat in the house too. right under the basket[/quote] Got any free tickets for Friday's game. :P What did you do for the Lakers? Play basketball? :D |
| Re: American GIs battle ‘ghosts’ |
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| ltcorpest2 |
| 05/21/02 at 20:38:58 |
| i worked for them while i was in college when they were at the forum. Our crew put up the court and took care of the electronics (24 second clock, scoreboard type of stuff), but during the game, we had to be on standby just in case something went wrong. so we would sit underneath the basket. the guy sitting next to me was paying $350.00 per ticket, and I was getting paid $17.00 per hr and got a free dinner too! It was a great job for going to school. I used to drive the Zamboni for the Kings also. That was fun!! It is sad, when they were at the forum i knew everyone there and could always get into games even after i left, but now I do not know anyone at the staples, so i haven't been to any games since they moved. After so many years of free tickets, i could never pay money. |
| Re: American GIs battle ‘ghosts’ |
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| sofia |
| 05/21/02 at 22:36:41 |
| As-salaamu 'alaikum wa rahmatullah - I'd have to concur with mwishka on this one, too, with a clarification. Reminds me of something Hamza Yusuf Hanson said about how the President's bodyguards are trained to jump in front of him if someone threatens his life. It's *not* something a normal human being would do. Quite the opposite, actually. Back during the Prophet's (s) time, when the Muslims were finally given permission by God to fight and defend themselves against those that fought against the Muslims, there were men and women who instinctively jumped in front of the Prophet (s) in order to save his life during battles. No training (to jump in front of the Prophet) necessary, in fact he was protected by God anyways. Now, one can easily say: Hmmnnn, fighting for a nation/secular leader vs fighting in the way of God, what's the bloody difference? In one battle, Ali (r) was able to corner one of his fiercest opponents. When Ali had the upper hand and the man realized he would be killed, the man spit in Ali's face. Ali left him. When the man later asked him why he didn't kill him when he had the chance, Ali replied that he would have killed him at that point out of anger/his own revenge, rather than in the way of God, so he let him go. It is said that this same man converted to Islam because of this act. In contrast, Usamah bin Zaid, also once had the upper hand. His opponent started to say the shahada (testimony of faith), but Usamah killed him anyway. The news later spread to the Prophet (s), who reprimanded him. The Prophet (s) asked him, "You killed a man who said 'la ilaaha illAllah?'" and Usamah said, "Yes, he only said it so I wouldn't kill him." He kept asking him, "You killed him after he said, 'la ilaaha illAllah?'" until Usamah wished he had never been a Muslim before that day (so he would not have committed that sin while a Muslim) and repented to God. In another report, it is said that the Prophet (s) also asked him, Did you take out his heart to see whether or not his faith was true? (ie, it is only Allah who can determine one's level of faith). What's the point? Only that what you are fighting for/defending has to be closely examined for the right intent for it to be accepted by God, from an Islamic point of view. Otherwise, you have done wrong. One of the first lessons a Muslim has to learn is that all deeds are judged by their intentions. So when a Muslim asks what the intention is for the wealthiest, most "powerful" country in the world to attack the "weakest" country in the world, don't say you weren't warned of this "odd" curiousity. And mwishka, don't be fooled: Bhaloo=teddy bear. Reech=bear (in Urdu). |
| 05/21/02 at 23:23:32 |
| sofia |
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