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ROKHA, Afghanistan As the suicide bombers threaded their way past patchwork farms and snow-dusted mountains here in eastern Afghanistan, they had to stop for directions. It was 4 a.m. and, apparently in need of help finding their target, they pulled up to a police station and asked the overnight guards, Which way to the Americans?
There was really only one answer: Forward Operating Base Lion, a small roadside outpost that is one of the last vestiges of the United States presence in the stable and fiercely independent Panjshir Valley. After years of the areas being overlooked by insurgents, the war finally found its way here on Saturday morning.
The five assailants rammed a car loaded with explosives into the bases red front gate and for half an hour in the chilly predawn buffeted the base with rocket-propelled grenades. At least two of the attackers were able to breach the walls, running a few feet inside before being cut down by American and Afghan bullets.
For the insurgents, the attack was a clear defeat: No Americans were killed or wounded. All five assailants whose trip toward the base was recounted by the Afghan provincial intelligence chief were killed or blew themselves up.
But outside the base, Afghans worried that the attack had somehow pierced the inviolability of the Panjshir Valley, a place that in years past had fended off both the Soviets and the Taliban. More important than ripping a hole in the front gate, the attack punctured a belief that the war existed only somewhere else, far from these sheer mountain valleys.
Thats the symbolism they were trying to attack, said Lt. Col. Dan Gajewski, who commands the small military development support team stationed at the base, that Panjshir is a safe, secure place that the Taliban can never get to.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/world/asia/failed-attack-on-us-base-rattles-panjshir-valley-in-afghanistan.html?_r=1
"oo amerikan kidar milangay"
There was really only one answer: Forward Operating Base Lion, a small roadside outpost that is one of the last vestiges of the United States presence in the stable and fiercely independent Panjshir Valley. After years of the areas being overlooked by insurgents, the war finally found its way here on Saturday morning.
The five assailants rammed a car loaded with explosives into the bases red front gate and for half an hour in the chilly predawn buffeted the base with rocket-propelled grenades. At least two of the attackers were able to breach the walls, running a few feet inside before being cut down by American and Afghan bullets.
For the insurgents, the attack was a clear defeat: No Americans were killed or wounded. All five assailants whose trip toward the base was recounted by the Afghan provincial intelligence chief were killed or blew themselves up.
But outside the base, Afghans worried that the attack had somehow pierced the inviolability of the Panjshir Valley, a place that in years past had fended off both the Soviets and the Taliban. More important than ripping a hole in the front gate, the attack punctured a belief that the war existed only somewhere else, far from these sheer mountain valleys.
Thats the symbolism they were trying to attack, said Lt. Col. Dan Gajewski, who commands the small military development support team stationed at the base, that Panjshir is a safe, secure place that the Taliban can never get to.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/world/asia/failed-attack-on-us-base-rattles-panjshir-valley-in-afghanistan.html?_r=1
"oo amerikan kidar milangay"
