Tom-

Great posting.

Can't help reflecting that blame here goes to the very top, to commander in chief. Impression: Army and Administration focus on Iraq loaded up that zone with people and gear. Promotions flowed/flow, as did/does money. Strong infrastructure, strong emphasis on force protection, every effort to optimize success. In contrast, Afghan campaign waged on the cheap, few promotions, little in way of gear or support compared to Iraq, and little interest or effort to deal with the pol part of pol-mil in the region.

Making Wanat victim of our profound blunder in grand strategy and the ready acceptance by Army of the easier path. If we're learning lessons, let's study the corporate Army's top-level performance since first into Afghanistan.

Double posting - my bad.

Tom:

What is your point, or baseline criticism, in these postings?

What becomes clear from these reports, which you have yet to acknowledge, is that the Army has in fact learned and had ingrained into them the principles of pop-centric Counterinsurgency; an approach that you have been a huge advocate of in your writings over the past three years. In fact the report shows that the platoon and its higher headquarters were doing their damndest to follow those principles of population security, via living amongst the people even when it put them at tactical risk. I recall that one of the paradoxes of Coin as written in FM 3-24 says something like sometimes the more you protect yourself the less secure you are!! Well, can’t we acknowledge that that was exactly the principle these men were following?

It seems that you want it both ways. That you demand an Army that is transformed around the Coin principles of Galula; OK, you got that at Wanat. But then on the other hand when the Army has made that conversion you mire yourself down into the tactical details of the engagement but fail to acknowledge that at least demonstrated by the actions at Wanat the Army has become the Army that you seem to desire; aka the "Surge" Army. David Galula would have accepted what happened at Wanat as the price of doing business in population-centric Coin, why can’t you?

Gian,
Thanks for reading the blog.

My point is to look at a series of questions about this small action. Many of those questions are raised by the Army's own 15-6 report.

Some of the questions have to do with counterinsurgency, and many do not. Yes, I do think that there is some evidence that the battalion was trying to use some principles of counterinsurgency, but there also is evidence that they were doing so incompletely, or even haphazardly, without a full grasp of the COIN approach, and probably without enough troops to do it.

I also think there are questions that go well beyond doctrine. Whatever the mission was, did they have enough people and resources to do it? Is this incident emblematic of the undersupported war in eastern Afghanistan?

Best,
Tom Ricks

6

Everyone in this string seems comforable with the redacted 15-6 'we was set up' narrative. Mr. Ricks called Wanat "an ambush".

The 'sudden' appearance of well led and potentially overwhelming enemy at VPB Wanat seems something of a brigade command excuse. If you accept the 'every Wanat building damaged, but no civilian casualties' part at face value, then villagers ought to have been seen leaving, with elderly, children and animals, bedding, food. My guess is that the Wanat OP reported such observations, and they were passed back to battalion. The 15-6 characterizes an elder evacuating his family from an adjacent 2-story house, and warning of an attack, as a generic, not useful. Yet the elder seemed to feel that his intel was actionable.

A half hour before the 4:30 am attack kicked off, 70 US and Afghan paratroops were geared up and dispersed in entrenched fighting positions on a 360º perimeter. Charlie Company's captain ordered his 120mm mortar to fire on an exposed enemy maneuver element, in anticipation of imminent attack. As the mortar team was taking aim, the first rocket barrage came pouring in from close range, revealing enemy strength around the prerimeter. The captain then got 155 heavy artillery putting a (hopefully) prepared fire plan onto the Wanat grid, within three minutes of the initial attack. For certain a 'holy shit' way to meet the dawn, but CF paratroops weren't caught napping.

Stripped of The Rock's sacrifice, heroism and unacceptable casualties, the attack on Wanat VPB is more descriptive of a micro Khe Sanh than Pearl Harbor. Khe Sanh was fought on ground chosen by the defenders, a place the enemy would attack.

Was it surprising that the enemy exploited our aviation crew rotation cycle at dawn, hit before heavy engineering gear and troop reinforcements arrived, used their knowledge of physical and human terrain to press close before opening fire, concentrated men and weapons sufficient to even the odds? Yes. But an expected attack of surprising strength against our base is not the same as an ambush sprung on a patrol.

On p2, the 15-6 states

"The Freedom of movement experienced by the AAF in Waygul District would not be possible without the passive and active support of the local population and the weakness of the government"

The version of the report I can read makes no tribal or religious characterization of that population, or any Afghan group or player in the drama. It doesn't mention what I was told here on Mr. Rick's blog, that Wanat sits right on an active ethnic conflict line, where Pashtun's pushed into Nuristani land during the previous decades of war. If ethno-tribal divisions played absolutely no role in enemy recruiting of local support, or how the attack developed, THAT would be unusual, and worth remarking on. NO mention is either a display of ignorance, or a play on the ignorance of the reader.

Afghan gov't troops, the local gov't, AAF fighters, and Wanat collaboraors are all aware of tribal affiliations in their allies and opposition. It's as much a part of the picture as the ANA platoon at Wanat being 'paratroops', and mentored by marines.

Those Marine mentors, and The Rock Paratroops were getting local ethno-religious information on the enemy, and on Wanat's Nuristani scene, vs the Pashtun orientation around nearby Camp Blessing, where the company and QRF was based.

Did the Nuristanis see The Rock, the ANA paratroops, and the ANA Commandos as aligned with their down-valley Pashtun rivals? Was The Rock relying on Pashtun translators and intel? Given their earlier casualties incurred during pacification efforts up-valley, and deep mistrust of the Wanat ANP post, was the Nuristani end of the Waygul marked as a hostile population?

The one ultra-slim post-action characterization of the attackers that makes it into the 15-6 is of one 'foreign looking' body. A contributor here went for the inference, that meant Arab or Chechen Terrorist. Maybe yes, and deniably 'maybe.' But Nuristani's are noted for a diversity of eurasian appearances within a clan. 'Foreign looking' is a pretty weak sop, given the totality of ethnic intel that's being left out. Who's cammies did he wear underneath, and was his outer disguise Nuri or Pash?

What was the quality and origin of enemy ordnance, relative to other Rock engagements, and the arms surplus the Wanat ANP were maybe selling? "AAF" seems a thin and generic characterization, given the price TF Rock paid to hold the ground and sift the evidence for answers pointing back to an enemy base.

Before the Wanat combat, one of our survivors is quoted as hearing a local say 'bad people to the West, shoot them on sight' . The paratrooper must have been asking himself what tribal filter is generating the statement, and who the 'bad men' were. The significance of the quote turns on the nature and intent of the source, which is left out. Lots of scores to settle in Afghanistan, and nothing is more deniable than a US air or artillery strike. Our guys know that, and work at not being manipulated or misdirected.

Every version of the civil war matrix that has racked Afghanistan for the last 30 years has been defined by a differing regional, tribal and religious character of the factions. If a bad police chief or Wanat elder or ANA PL is not aligned with either the Pashtun or Nuristani, that's unusual and worth remarking on.

Is the 15-6 blind spot, the entho-religious 'don't ask, don't tell', a willful ignorance, indicative of strategic blindness? Or is it in the service of 'all loyal afghans welcome our support' political correctness, like the ever-missing enemy casualty estimate? (The Rock's mauled platoon wasn't balanced against 'you should have seen the other guys' estimates? Only friendly casualties and dead terrorists'are fit fare for home audience consumption.) Fine. But who were those guys we killed, that killed us?

I'm not suggesting that identities of Pashtun-Nuristani-Tajik-Korengali-Sunni-Shiite-Wahabi-Sufi tell the whole Wanat/Waygul story, or are more important to a platoon-company level combat than how to deal with tomorrow's attack. I am saying that a Bagram command-level 15-6 retelling of the combat environment that makes absolutely no mention of tribal-religious alingnments in the Waygul players is remarkable for that blind spot.

My reading tells me that strategic surprise or failure is often a product of strategic blindness. And just as often retold as lack of intel.

I'm reminded of the vignette of AQI arch-terrorist Zarqawi's near capture, in 2005. As he prepared to dive alone out of his car and evade the pursuit, the thing he asked his driver was 'What tribe runs this area?" TE Lawrence must have asked the same question many times. Every band he led, every hole they watered at, had a distinct tribal character. That is the knowledge Zarqawi needed to stay alive, find cover in the human terrain, and continue his war.

Tribal knowledge is vital to us, if it's vital to our enemy. It wasn't until our force in Anbar came to grips with the futility of continuing a war of attrition, were ALLOWED to exploit tribal knowledge and divisions. began to protect surviving Sunni Sawa, fighters who were openly hostile to the US occupation, that the war in that province turned the corner.

My assumption is that The Rock was aware and working within the tribal context, before and after Wanat, the way a top carpenter notes differences in his wood, at a glance. But the mission statement in Bagram's 15-6 comes very close to boiler-plate 'connect the population to Kabul, defeat AAF" language that could justify any mission. It goes 9/24 pages setting the stage for the battle, without so much as a tribal caveat or op-for AAF characterization. Is the command-staff writer in Bagram ignorant of Nuristan? Or is addressing 'what kind of war is this?' a subject where information control doctrine calls for preserving the ignorance of the readers?

In my readings on Wanat, I see a lot of What happened and How it happened but not a lot on Why it happened. LTC Scott A. Downey and CPT Zehra T. Guvendiren wrote a great article on ISR lessons learnded in Iraq. One lesson was to avoid the What/How PIR trap and instead ask Why in order to determine Who and then appropriate measures can be taken.

What was pretty clear, an attack was coming. Unfortunatly, an assumption was made on How (an inderect probing attack) because nobody asked, Why? Why then? Why Wanat?

Although Wanat was a new Vehicle Patrol Base, troops were not expanding into new territory. Instead, they were retreating, or contracting, from an overextended and more exposed position further up the Waygal Valley at Bella. They were going closer to Camp Blessing not further from it.
They already had several encounters and some surprise attacks at Bella and Aranas. Still, none were as large as Wanat.

The most recent conflict was a probing indirect attack at Bella on 7-4-08. Although enemy forces were not known to use vehicles in the area, two vehicles were seen at the time of the attack and destroyed by Air Support in Aranas after fleeing Bella. They contained 17 civilians, Dr.'s and staff at the Bella clinic fleeing the fighting.

The enemy was able to leverage this incident and use it to get much closer than before to coalition forces. This negated the need for probing attacks and allowed local support and facilitation.

Coalition forces assumed they knew the Why, Because we're in a War, but they should have asked why here, why now? They might have learned that some locals thought they were too willing to bomb first and ask questions later. Some thought a debt had to be paid. Some were willing to flee their homes but also leave their doors open to an incoming enemy. It wasn't because they were in Wanat. It was because they just left Bella. It was because they were supposed to protect the population, not destroy their best and brightest.

If they understood why, they could have anticipated some local support for the enemy. They could have spent more time in town talking to locals, supportive of us or not. Instead of assuring the local supporters they were ready for an attack, they could have asked for support and given them tasks to perform. They might have learned of the security meeting coalition forces weren't invited to. They might have learned that this wasn't going to be the usual probing indirect attack.

By asking why, our forces could have taken apprpriate steps. By asking why, we can take those steps now. Protect the local population. Earn their trust. Enlist their support in defeating the enemy.

Gentile wrote:
"the Army has in fact learned and had ingrained into them the principles of pop-centric Counterinsurgency; "
I think its pretty clear that the outcome at Wanat is something that we want to avoid, that is to say, easily avoidable casualty levels. Clearly, mistakes were made at Wanat. Are those mistakes being learned from? It seems like the only thing that was COIN related here was asking the locals about placement of the FO "Base". Thats nothing much. And clearly, if you're in a remote, mountainous, non-pashtun area, and all of a sudden a massed pashtun force carries out a crepuscular attack, then you've failed in any respec to the local population, they didn't bother to tell you about the attack (or it was never 'taliban' anyway and it was locals).

Walking Wounded said:
"Before the Wanat combat, one of our survivors is quoted as hearing a local say " bad people to the West, shoot them on sight' ."
Now I suspected that against proper COIN procedures, but for the life of me I just don't get why a guy that says something like that with US troops around isn't shot dead. He's clearly not on our side, he's clearly rallying people against us when we're not around, hell he's rallying people against us when we are around. When a guy like that hears that someone else in the town saw taliban fighters in the hills or whatever, he'll shame them into keeping it a secret.
And not for nothing, but if foreign troops occupied my town, and some guy was all like 'you ferners should be shot down' and they /didn't/ execute him outright, I'd be thinking 'these guys are a bunch of pansies'. Or at least I'd say 'hey, what else did dummy over there expect /but/ to get shot for saying that'.

"That is the knowledge Zarqawi needed to stay alive, find cover in the human terrain, and continue his war. "
Its kinda odd too because, I at least feel that americans, we come from a pretty diverse country, and maybe moreso that Britishers or Euros or other peoples, we're pretty darned aware of our own ethno-sectarian divisions; and for most of us, and maybe its a guy thing, its something you razz your friend about, and they'd rag on you back with it. So you'd think that we're almost specially advantaged to talk about and deal with the ethno-sectarian divisions in places like Afghanistan (keeping in mind that we can't easily /see/ the divisions that the locals instanly recognize). Instead its like we're mute about it.

As an admirer of Tom Ricks and his book “Fiasco” in particular, I am very glad that I have found this site. The discussion is really at a level superior to that found elsewhere. This engagement brings to mind my RVN experiences as both a Special Forces “A” Team XO and as an analyst with ARPA in RVN. I even had occasion to work with the 173rd when they arrived in-country in 1965. They were extremely well prepared and had read and integrated every “Lessons Learned” document we had sent to Okinawa. It is easy to see that the troopers in this engagement maintained this tradition and were courageous, disciplined, experienced, and repeatedly exercised initiative under fire.

After reading this brief article, I went to Wikipedia and read their account and the 15-6 document stripped of recommendations and appendices. In my experience, there appear to have been numerous failures of command from the top down to the platoon leader. I assume that the CF’s shortage of troops contributed to their error. The brigade commander changes his position in a “Stars & Stripes” article and says that they had intended to build a COP. The 10 months of negotiation, regardless of local conditions, is too long and contributed to the inevitable. The brigade commander should never have been given control over other organizations like the PMT in his AO. Had he or his subordinates been COIN oriented, they would have undertaken some development projects before even entering into negotiations. Surely a well would have benefitted the village as well as the COP later. A better method of waste disposal could have been created. In general, improve the life of the villagers. If the works were destroyed by the Taliban - all the better.

I am unable to compare the viability of Belle versus Wanat, but it’s unclear what advantages Wanat offered - maybe proximity. “Stars & Stripes” has a good graphic showing the location of the future COP and the avenues of attack used by the Taliban. Without using the “key terrain” of the roofs of the 2 story structures, I can neither see a good OP location nor a place to provide overwatch. Maybe it was thought that being only 5 miles away from the main base made the position tenable.

Placing a TOP uphill from their position seems tactically unsound as it takes away almost 10% of the platoon’s strength. The TOP accounts for 5 of the 9 dead and a significant number of the wounded. It was here that the heroic platoon leader was killed along with several senior NCOs. Here too, the heroic company commander exposed himself to heavy fire checking to see if the casualty reports were in fact accurate. (The 15-6 author in CYA mode thought that he had to defend the Captain's return to the CP - that's ridiculous.) One thing we learned early in RVN was that the enemy accurately surveys your position. As a result, we prepared alternate positions for all crew-served weapons. Then we shifted the weapons after nightfall. Regardless, the troopers were able to hold their positions even though enemy fire came from multiple directions and from the key terrain of the 2 story structures in town and nearby ridgelines.

The platoon failed to act upon clear indications that trouble was on the way. Key among these was the departure of the women and children. The men were not present either. Maybe they were the ones who deposited the weapons in the police station upon their return. The elder told them that an attack was coming. The commander should have expected and prepared for the worst and no one should have characterized the potential attack as a probing attack. What current information was that based upon? Perhaps the ROE prevented their firing upon the "men with backpacks with something in their hands." How often do you see civilians wander about at dawn with backpacks? The opening of the sluice gate could have been questioned. What was the purpose of the two road blocks – did they report the exfil of the civilians? Those troopers could have roamed the town as one unit and perhaps they would have seen the enemy entering buildings and the mosque. Our pilots have night vision gear as should our troopers. Surely an AH-64 could have pulled surveillance at dawn and twilight. The enemy's intelligence was well coordinated and accurate. They knew that we had a change-over of pilots at the time they chose to attack. Have you ever seen a police force change shifts all at once? What I have observed is that most overlap shifts by 1 hour. This gives them twice the manpower during peak traffic hours and there is always coverage 24/7. Employed in an aviation unit this offers no window of opportunity for the enemy. They also chose to remember the Vietnam War lesson of "hug the belt." This takes away from us the "King of Battle" - the artillery. I believe I was taught that artillery accounts for 80% of conventional battlefield casualties. That technique also limits the employment of fixed-wing support. Reflecting on this, I'll bet we taught them that when they were fighting the Russians.

It is not mentioned whether or not the platoon registered final protective fires (FPF) with the 155mm unit at the base camp. I assume that they could relay the GPS points that defined their perimeter and the location of the TOP without actually firing smoke. Psychologically, it would have been desirable to actually fire registration rounds with smoke. The good news is that they called in fires danger-close and no trooper was hit. This suggests that they were well dug in and the platoon leader had accurately mapped his position with GPS.

Somewhere, the question of why the enemy didn't ambush the relief force was raised. The answer is simple. They had no desire to engage a superior force with air cover in daylight. If we assume that they attacked the outpost with the traditional 3 to 1 ratio of attackers to defenders and lost about 50 killed and others wounded; they'd be down to about 125 combat effectives - not enough. Of course, I assume that they used everyone they had in the attack.

The profound insights offered by some contributors as to the ethnic and tribal makeup of the area doesn't help our troopers who have already been committed. Rather, the S-2s should have used this information to influence the commanders in their decision-making and should have guided the location of the COP. They probably tried.

In every discussion all should remember that a critique of decision-making is no reflection on the performance of troopers in combat. In fact, they made the best of a rotten situation and their perseverance took the field. Let's not make this mistake again. I wonder what the replacement unit is doing.

Either in the comments of the person who wrote so knowledgeably about PMTs here or by following one of the links at the bottom of the Wikipedia entry. I joined last night and did allot of reading in a hurry so my memory (CRS) isn't good. It stuck out because it is so contrary to RVN lessons learned.