Inside an Afghan battle gone wrong (V): Neglecting the misgivings of those given the mission

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Sunday, February 1, 2009 - 2:09 AM Share

By this point, we've seen that the company commander, the platoon leader, and the platoon sergeant all had misgivings about the deadly Wanat mission in eastern Afghanistan last summer. They feared that the enemy had been tipped off, that the mission was inconsistent with counterinsurgency doctrine, that they didn't have enough people to execute it properly, that it was coming too near the end of their unit's deployment, and the commanders and staff above them were distracted by the turnover to the replacement unit.

This is from the sworn statement that the officer who was the best friend of Lt. Jonathan Brostrom, the platoon leader at Wanat, gave to an Army investigator:

He told me he did not like it. . . 1^st Lt. Brostrom told me he wasn't sure why they were trying to do this mission so close to the end of the deployment . . . . [He] was surprised and disappointed at the same time that they were trying to push this mission. I asked who ‘they' was and he couldn't tell me if it was coming down from BDE [brigade], BN [battalion], or just his company commander, but he knew he wasn't fond of the idea and nor were his men. 1^st LT Brostrom expressed concerns to me about the number of men he was taking with him for the mission. . . . and that he was also concerned about the terrain surrounding the area. When I asked him about the terrain he said it was like Bella [another outpost], but he would have no OPs [observation posts] up above him.

The lack of those higher observation posts would allow the enemy to creep to the edge of the new American outpost at Wanat during the night of July 12-13.

Brostrom also told his friend that he had raised his concerns with his company commander, who had taken some steps to mitigate some of the problems. The friend was so worried that he spoke to his own company commander, telling him, he recalled, that, "I didn't like the fact that it was only one platoon and there was no plan to insert Americans onto the high ground to establish OPs, especially with how much enemy activity had gone on the prior missions." The two officers agreed that Brostrom's company had competent leaders, so assumed that the company's officers "would have the same concerns and identify and mitigate the risks."

On the morning of July 13, this officer would be part of the reinforcements sent to relieve Brostrom's beleaguered platoon. His friend was dead by that point.

The lesson: Yes, commanders need to show a spirit of confidence. But they shouldn't let that "can-do" spirit prevent them from taking on and weighing the honest doubts of those being sent on the mission. That doesn't appear to have happened here.

U.S. Military/ SPC JORDAN CARTER

Read On:

Inside An Afghan Battle Gone Wrong: An Investigative Series

What happened at Wanat? (I)
Did we tip our hand to the enemy? (II)
Did the troops have what they needed? (III)
Underestimating the enemy (IV)
Neglecting the misgivings of those given the mission (V)
How the Army handled the matter (VI)
What it tells us about the Afghan War (VII)

EXPLORE:AFGHANISTAN, WANAT

(4)

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ROCKPARATROOPER

3:57 AM ET

February 4, 2009

LT John Brostrom - A Great PL, Hero, and Friend - Not a Prophet

WALKING WOUNDED

8:10 AM ET

February 2, 2009

Brave freedom fighters

According to the wiki article, Nuristan was the first to take up arms against the Soviets, as a province.

Mullah Omar's Taliban is said to be predominantly a Pashtun movement. It's not been clarified whether the Wanat attack was Pashtun fighters, from Pakistan, indiginous Nuristani insurgents, or a mixture of each, in alliance with the Wanat police and insurgent villagers. The enemy order of battle hasn't been illuminated much, by the 15-6 or the discussion here. As we used to hear once shooting started in Iraq, 'they're terrorists now...'

The 15-6 puts Wanat just 8 Km South of Bella, where TF Rock had suffered some pretty severe casualties, and Bella was likely stalked for another major attack until that outpost was closed and Wanat VPB opened.

The US and Afghan paratroops acquited themselves bravely and well under withering fire. But something's wrong with the picture, when the hunters become the hunted in a big way. Our guys had to 'place a heavy volume of fire on the AAF and all of the buildings in Wanat, to include the Bazaar, hotel and mosque' (p18), just to barely stay alive in the town they were hoping to be protecting and connecting to the national gov't.

One thing I noticed in reading about the 173rd is that the deployed regiment may have been split between two different task forces. Detached units, especially elite troops, tend to get driven hard if the assets are temporary for that chain of command. Is this a weakness of a mix-n-match brigade system of scheduling deployments.

NYGDAN

2:58 PM ET

February 5, 2009

Towns

Walking Wounded said:
"Our guys had to 'place a heavy volume of fire on the AAF and all of the buildings in Wanat, to include the Bazaar, hotel and mosque' (p18),"
I hadn't realized that they were being shot at by the town. Doesn't this make it much less likely to be taliban and more likely to be locals? That might jive well with the skills of the attackers, if the Nuristanis there still have memories from the soviet days.

" just to barely stay alive in the town they were hoping to be protecting and connecting to the national gov't."
Well, at least thats a way to know for sure that they don't want any part of the central government. Guess the decision on whether to destroy the town or not rests on how vital the central government is to the overall strategy.

OLDRANGER

8:36 PM ET

March 5, 2009

"1st Lt. Brostrom told me he

"1st Lt. Brostrom told me he wasn't sure why they were trying to do this mission so close to the end of the deployment"

This does not sound like a complaint about the mission. It sounds like a complaint about a mission.