1-26 Inf. Along the Afghan-Pakistan Border

[S-2]

A remarkable series of photos. 31 in all. Great look at the war on just the other side.

Korengal With 1-26 Inf

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Excellent series of pictures.

Thank you for posting.

 

[Kasrkin]

LOL, I dig the skull faced gunner.

 

[S-2]

My mind, in looking at these photos, kept going back to Loe Sam and the contrasts therein.

What's obvious in contrast are a few things. Our men are more thoroughly and uniformly equipped. The only oddity I saw were the two marines without camoflauged helmets. That may have resulted from mentoring ANA/ANP elements. The Pakistani soldiers visible in the streets of Loe Sam carry a more simple battle kit.

My thought there immediately cried," They need less!". Why? They move as a part of a larger force. The Pakistani battalion commander had a temporary C.P. I guarantee that the 1-26 Inf C.O. is in a command post and struggles to see his platoons and their leaders. Again, why?

The next thought that struck was about the respective battles and where.

Loe Sam was a battle along a highway on the valley floor. It is a lines-of-communication fight to the district capital and encompasses small towns (Loe Sam) and built-up areas mixed with intermittant farms. The militias had interspersed themselves along this valuable route and held it's traffic and, thus people hostage.

As such, the key terrain is the low terrain. That's not to say that climbing the overlooking valley foothills and peaks won't find the enemy. But in Bajaur the enemy is now extended down into the more concentrated populace.

In Kunar, by contrast to even Bajaur, the road net is non-existant minus ONE newly-built road of some ten miles. Here, the population lives one step removed from the stone-age along near-vertical slopes of narrow and deep valleys heavily covered in scrub and what seems to be juniper.

The altitude, while high, isn't foreboding. Even the locals must live where there's some chance to sustain themselves. The land is simultaneously empty and full. Villages appear hanging on slopes next to terraced field which are likely centuries-old. Here, it's the high ground that dominates as it's only there where there's a CHANCE of observation and, thus, engagement.

Why chance? Both terrain and modest folds break line-of-sight. Here, btw, NVG's are deadly, at least out to their (secret) limits. Particularly thermal at night. While in many parts of Afghanistan, shabnamah rules the night, here U.S. forces reek hell on night movement by virtue of long range observation with enhanced NVG capability.

As such, most firefights with moving units happen at daytime. U.S. forces are routinely mortared or rocketed at night. Rare, though, the night assault or convoy infiltration.

It's a smaller and more de-centralized fight too. It's a more lonely fight with a claustrophobic and isolating quality. Conditions for those troops are primitive, at best. There's a greater reliance on small unit actions and a great deal of stress placed on young leaders absent somebody to turn to NOW. See WAPO-

A War's Impossible Mission-WAPO

What most disturbs me about Bajaur aren't the air-strikes and combined-arms assaults on a prepared and trained enemy entrenched and otherwise fortified within communities. Not at all as they're utterly necessary unless you fervantly believe another chit-chat would make things all better. If not, then there's no recourse IMHO other than the present. Given their preparations and determination in battle, they seem to find Bajaur valuable and wish to make it theirs.

That's frightening because what I do worry about is the need for more operations like Loe Sam. What's that suggest for all the unapproached areas? To what extent are there other serious, committed, unrecalcitrant enemies prepared and willing to replicate Loe Sam?

It's odd. The war just a few kilometers west is an outpost war fought by small units that patrol ridgelines and operate from tiny platoon cantonments which are VERY temporary. East in Bajaur, it's battalion task-forces with supporting armor and artillery moving against entrenched enemy along roadways on the valley floor. Same enemy, different fights. Both, successful or not, determined by very different conditions within the space of miles.

 

[fatman17]

It's odd. The war just a few kilometers west is an outpost war fought by small units that patrol ridgelines and operate from tiny platoon cantonments which are VERY temporary. East in Bajaur, it's battalion task-forces with supporting armor and artillery moving against entrenched enemy along roadways on the valley floor.

S-2, well put! not odd though but real.
this clearly shows the contrasting styles of "training" being imparted on the two armies. the PA more attuned to "conventional, set-piece battles" while the US (as far back as i can remember) small units, searching patrols by the likes of the legendary Green Berets and Army Rangers, backed by helicopters = Counter-Insurgency.

Now this is the type of training which the PA regular forces need badly to be more effective in clearing out the various districts of the FATA. the quicker the better. here the US needs to quickly provide the agreed equipments e.g: cobras, NVG, comm sets etc along with the training (which has started) and I believe the PA high command has finally realised that this capacity building is vital for successfully thwarting the militants with their hit and run tactics.

 

[fatman17]

AP IMPACT: Pakistan offensive shows slow success

By KATHY GANNON - Associated Press Writer SABAGAI, Pakistan -- From atop a craggy hillock, the silver-haired Lt. Col. Javed Baloch gestures toward a small black opening in a sandstone outcropping. It's the mouth of a cave.

Two minutes later a powerful explosion rattles the hillock, and a massive plume of grayish-white smoke rushes skyward.

Cave by cave, the Pakistani army is trying to blow up the underground labyrinth running from tribal areas toward the border with Afghanistan to keep militants away.

This is the front line of Pakistan's battle against militants on its own soil. The three-month-old offensive is the country's most aggressive effort to date, countering U.S. and Afghan charges that it is not doing enough to root out Taliban and al-Qaida fighters who crisscross the border. It is also the Pakistani military's first foray into the Bajur region, where militants are dug in and have in places set up a parallel administration.

An Associated Press team traveled with the Pakistani military deep into a tribal area late last month, almost to the Afghan border. The operation shows the army can put pressure on militants and even wrest some territory back from them, but it may never be able to drive them out from a rugged area of nooks and crannies. More militants are already sneaking in from Afghanistan as reinforcements, and U.S. troops in Afghanistan have installed 68 motion sensors along the border to try to detect them.

The battle is for Bajur, a key base and transit route for Arab and other foreign militants headed for Afghanistan. Here a CIA drone once targeted al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, without success.

Any progress, however, is now in danger from an unexpected front. The recent terrorist attack in Mumbai has raised the prospect that Pakistan might shift troops from its tribal regions to the border with India. Both sides want to avoid a confrontation, but emotions are running high.

In the meantime, the Pakistani army has used helicopter gunships and fighter jets to blast entire villages in Bajur to rubble, driving 250,000 tribesmen out of their homes and burying 82 of their own soldiers. Pakistan has battled militants in tribal areas before, but never with such intensity.

"I feel hurt. There is so much destruction. That is why always we are trying to prevent war, but we were left with no choice," Baloch says.

He bristles at any U.S. questioning of the will of Pakistani soldiers to fight the militants.

"Listen, I have picked up the bodies of my dead soldiers and carried them out. I haven't left a body behind. Do you think this is something we do without pain in our heart?" he asked. "I tell everyone who is saying we aren't doing enough, 'Send your brothers, your fathers, your uncles and I will take them into battle with me. I will show them.'"

The convoy of Pakistani soldiers rumbles out of Khar on a crisp morning, a slight mist hanging in the air.

It was from here, the capital of Bajur, that the army had launched its offensive on Sept. 8. Previously, only the ill-equipped Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force, was deployed in Bajur.

"Since it was ignored, not easily accessible, it was an ideal breeding ground," says Gen. Tariq Khan, the commander of the Frontier Corps.

In August, the Frontier Corps fought militants in one village in Bajur but was driven out with several dead and many more wounded. That's when the army was called in.

The army has since wrested control of the key road link from Khar, clearing the road of insurgents. As of late last week, troops were taking their offensive into the Mohmand tribal belt that borders Afghanistan.

The signs of battle litter the roadside: flattened markets, bomb craters and mud homes scarred by mortar fire.

At Nazirabad, six miles (10 kilometers) from Khar, troops faced a two-day battle against nearly 100 militants. Insurgents popped up from fields of shoulder-high corn stalks to launch rockets or fire bursts with Kalashnikov rifles, then seemingly disappeared, says Maj. Kamal, who gave only his first name. Two soldiers were killed and 22 wounded.

The army found an extensive network of caves and tunnels reminiscent of those dug in the 1980s by Western-backed anti-communist rebels in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. In one compound of nine mud homes surrounded by a high wall, the army found six underground rooms and a maze of tunnels.

Kamal climbs a precarious steel ladder that leads to a lookout. Peering over sandbags lined up against the mud wall, he points toward a dark speck in a series of eroded sandstone hills.

"That's another cave. The tunnel runs from here, 100 meters to there."

More caves lie at the end of a 20-foot-deep (6.1-meter-deep), narrow mud staircase barely wide enough for a thin person. Inside the small underground rooms, the army finds bedding and weapons, from anti-tank guns modified to fire 22 mm mortars to homemade bombs planted by roads and detonated from afar as military vehicles pass.

The Nazirabad compound was one of several hubs established by militants in Bajur, Kamal says.

"We were expecting a lot of resistance, but these tactics - the tunnels. I never expected this," he says. "One room could hold five or six men."

Every day, Kamal's men search the caves to make sure the militants don't return.

The Bajur operation is an example of cooperation between the U.S. and Pakistan, with U.S. forces on the Afghan side of the border providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to Pakistani forces.

"The Pakistani army's drive to retake this Taliban hotbed demonstrates to the world that they are serious about tackling the threat of terrorism," says Brian Glyn Williams, associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Massachusetts.

However, Bajur is just one part - the northernmost of seven major jurisdictions - of the vast tribal belt that borders Afghanistan. The scorched-earth tactics in Bajur contrast with the softer approach taken farther south in another tribal area, Waziristan, where most of Pakistan's 70,000 soldiers are based. U.S. officials have questioned whether Pakistan is accommodating the insurgents in Waziristan rather than rooting them out.

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen, visiting Pakistan last week, praised the Bajur offensive but also encouraged the military to step up efforts elsewhere.

Roughly nine miles farther, the convoy stops at Loi Sam, set in the middle of undulating corn fields.

This town has been flattened. The market that dominated the town square was pummeled to ruins. Electricity poles list to one side. The only gas station is half collapsed; giant holes mark where the pumps once stood.

It was early October when the army backed by fighter jets and helicopter gunships drove the militants out of Loi Sam. But less than a week later, the militants were back, firing at soldiers from the buildings that remained standing. Only after a fierce air assault did the army take full control.

From Loi Sam, it's a short drive past seared fields and ruined villages to Sabagai, barely two miles from Afghanistan.

A white banner hanging inside a militant's former home in Sabagai is signed by "relatives of the martyrs of Kashmir." The banner is worrisome evidence of coordination among militant groups in the tribal area and those battling India in the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Two secret meetings revealed earlier this year by the AP also suggested militants are pooling their resources. Several militant groups - including Lashkar-e-Taiba, blamed by India in the Mumbai attacks, and Jaish-e-Mohammed, another group with links to Kashmir - met to settle differences and forge common goals, according to a militant and a Pakistan military official.

The militants also called for a recruitment drive among the relatives of fighters killed in Kashmir. The banner in Sabagai suggests the drive has met with some success.

The persistence of the militants is sobering. Baloch gazes toward the towering peaks that embrace Bajur and straddle both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"They are still out there," Baloch says. "They are everywhere around us. ... The best we can do is make it difficult for them to move and to have free run of the area."

 

[fatman17]

Pakistan needs improved gear to fight Taliban’

* Newsweek quotes Pakistani officials as saying army needs remaining Cobras delivered fast
* US expert says Pakistan has ‘reasonable basis for complaint’

LAHORE: The Pakistan Army urgently needs improved gear the US has been promising for years to eliminate the Taliban from the country, according to a Newsweek report on Sunday that cited top Pakistan military officials – with pressure on the country more than ever to crack down on the Taliban in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks.

New Delhi has been blaming Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba for the attacks, but the organisation itself has denied involvement. India has gone as far as pointing a finger at Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, and several of its parliamentarians have been calling for war with the neighbour.

But international experts – including some in India – have been hinting that Islamabad could not have been involved.

According to the Newsweek report, the army insists it is doing all it can in the war on terror with the limited equipment it has, but for the country to do more, the US urgently needs to deliver the promised goods.

“We are on a war footing,” says the national-security chief, Gen (r) Mahmud Ali Durrani. “But [the US] supply chain is working on a peacetime basis ... you have to support us at much greater speed.”

Senior Pakistani officials say Washington promised, in 2004, to deliver 20 Cobra helicopters within two years. But four years have passed, and only 12 have been delivered. The Newsweek quoted the officials as saying that Pakistan needed the remaining eight Cobras in a hurry.

“We’re burning them up at quite a rate,” says a senior Pakistani official. “We use them aggressively in combat almost daily.” Complaining to the Americans seems to do at least some good, he says, as lately, they have expedited the release of spare parts for the existing fleet of Cobras.

The report says that Pakistan still has a long backlist of items the army needs in the war on terror – including precision-laser target designators for F-16 fighters, helicopters and infantry to minimize collateral damage from strikes against militant hideouts; laser-guided bombs and ammunition for use with the targeting devices; and night-vision aviation goggles; jamming equipment to protect military vehicles from improvised explosive devices; and electronic eavesdropping equipment to find and monitor Taliban communications.

Citing a congressional staff expert on US arms sales, the report says the Pakistan military has “a reasonable basis for complaint, but that’s universal, not unique to Pakistan”. Nevertheless, he says, the delays probably arose at least in part from Washington’s impatience at the previous regime’s “reluctance to take decisive action” against the Taliban.

The congressional source says, “There’s a drill that’s as old as the hills, which is you do the slowdown of deliveries ... I think a lot of this came to a head prior to the changeover of government in Pakistan, so things may be getting better now.” The report concludes that Pakistani troops can only hope so.

Pakistan became a ‘frontline ally’ of the US in the war on terror after the 9/11 attacks. US officials, however, have been repeatedly calling on Pakistan to ‘do more’ to rein in the Taliban, especially in the Tribal Areas.

http://www.thedailytimes.com.pk

 

[Imran Khan]

its really nice images and info thanks S-2.

 

[S-2]

"this clearly shows the contrasting styles of "training" being imparted on the two armies."

"fighting", yes. "training", no. I think conditions dictate the approach. Loe Sam differs from the Korengal and so too the solution set. I doubt our forces could approach the existing circumstances subtantively different. In fact, we'd do so without any armor. Given the fight, a protected and mobile 105mm cannon providing LOS direct-fire HE onto a persistantly dug-in bunch of nasties just can't be beat. Immediate, accurate, and devastating.

That moves things right along, Mr tanky-guy!

We've got nothing of the sort but our fight doesn't demand it-yet. Further south in Kandahar and Helmand the Canadians and Brits find that stuff real useful and face problems similar to the Loe Sam fight.

I believe that our trainers possess valuable small-unit skills but their greatest utility might be with equipment training teams and maybe some SOF techniques to keep these guys in the hills instead of down on the valley floor among the general population and commercial transport routes.

In that regard, we may be too late in both Pakistan and much of Afghanistan. Our battle in Kunar is not only different than in Bajaur, though separated by only a few kilometers. It's also far different than that fought by others throughout Afghanistan. Most of the fighting in Kandahar involves LOCs and green-zones. So too Helmand. So too Gardez. Keeping the loop highway open was a Soviet problem. It's now becoming a NATO problem. Not many roads and those which exist are vulnerable to interdiction at myriad points.

You just have to cut the road. You don't need to hold it. Retreat and, again, cut it elsewhere. The terrain, OTOH, in Khost, Paktia, Paktika, Kunar and Nangahar is subtly different. The road nets (particularly Nangahar/Kunar)are non-existant and the valley floors steep, narrow, and covered to a surprising degree. Only small groups move about here. Firefights are mutual surprises and violent-often at near point-blank range.

Otherwise engagements are a kilometer across as the crow flies and five if you wish to get your hands on those guys on the other hillside.

 

[fatman17]

That moves things right along, Mr tanky-guy!

boy that hurts !!!