CHAPTER 18

Camp SHIR ZAI, Kandahar, Afghanistan

Tuesday 11 Jul 06 1500 hrs AFT

The trip over from KAF to the ANA’s facilities was a short one of just a few kilometers across the sandy plain but it might as well have been a thousand.

One couldn’t really call the area desert in the way that one thinks of shifting sand and dunes; what it was was bone dry hard packed grit generously covered by stones. What continued to make it startling for Phil were the relics and debris of the Soviet era which still littered the sides of the road: a fenced compound filled with discarded trucks, tanks, artillery and rocket launchers, old abandoned and partially demolished apartment buildings and barracks, scrap and garbage on the side of the road. The road itself was only distinguishable from the terrain on either side by the fact that the larger stones had been pushed to the side by a bulldozer.

KAF itself was austere but by comparison to Camp SHIR ZAI it was a luxury resort. There were the same B-huts and containers, the same fencing and control points but everything looked a little off. It was like seeing a dowdy aunt standing next to a runway model. The concrete barriers were crooked; as if someone either forgot or refused to level the ground before they were positioned. The vehicles standing around were old and battered commercial pattern rather than the modern military ones. Far fewer of the earth filled Hescos barriers provided protection from rocket and mortar fire and again, these too seemed haphazardly set out.

The base was flat and, typically, the fine talc-like dust blew everywhere.

Not far away a company of soldiers were doing drill; their movements sharp and reminiscent of the Soviet-style movements of the old Afghan army. One soldier was clearly not performing well enough which resulted in a sharp slap upside the head from one of his NCOs.

They had experienced problems in finding the ETTs who they wanted to talk to principally because TF PHOENIX was undergoing a rotation. The staff they were talking to now hadn’t been here back in April, consequently they didn’t know the individuals who had been involved and it had taken some time to find out who had already rotated back to the States and who was still here. On every rotation there should be a left seat: right seat hand over phase where the outgoing personnel took their incoming counterpart around for a week to teach them their job. Unfortunately, Air Force manifests were built on filling seats and rarely respected the needs of the people on the ground and all too often the handover didn’t occur because an incumbent had already been rotated out or was scheduled to take the same plane out that his replacement had just arrived on.

They had eventually tracked down one ETT that they were looking for and he was waiting for them now at the 205 Corps TOC.

 

— § —

 

Captain Guntar Newmar was a slight, prematurely balding, twenty seven year-old Kentuckian who had been born and raised in Middlesboro, a town of ten thousand just west of the Cumberland Gap on the Tennessee line. Friends in high school had encouraged him to join the National Guard and his athletic abilities made it easy to enroll as an infantryman in DELTA Company of the 2^nd Battalion 149^th Infantry.

His father, a Vietnam veteran, had been supportive and had convinced him that life as an officer would help him make his way in the world and would help pay for the four years he expected to spend on the Corbin campus of Eastern Kentucky University. Graduation with a degree in education brought him home to Middlesboro as an elementary school teacher and platoon commander.

The routine changed with 9/11 as teaching took second place to military training. A deployment to Afghanistan as an augmentee to the 223^rd MP Company brought him into contact with an offer for a superior teaching opportunity in Louisville which he accepted on his return together with a transfer to the Headquarters and Headquarters Company of the 149^th Armor Brigade and a promotion to Captain.

Barely a year later, in the summer of 2005, he had returned to Afghanistan; this time as a member of an Embedded Training Team.

Phil’s group, having once again cleared their weapons in one of the ubiquitous clearing barrels, had been ushered past several American and Afghan sentries who guarded the TOC’s perimeter and been brought to the conference room where Newmar already had coffee, chai and cookies waiting. Within a few seconds the level of courtesy had already far surpassed that shown by the Brits.

Newmar stood and presented himself to Phil, “Captain Newmar, Sir.”

“Sit down Captain, sit down,” said Phil gesturing towards Newmar’s chair. Newmar did so as the others shrugged off their weapons and body armor and joined him around the table.

While Shirazi started pouring coffee, Phil launched into business.

“Captain, I’m here on an AR 15-6 investigation into the incident at Sangin on the night of 2/3 April.”

“Yes Sir. I understand but wasn’t there already one … and a CID investigation?”

“The first was for commander Task Force PHOENIX,” replied Phil. “while the police investigation merely indicated no criminal charges were due. This investigation comes from Commander SOCOM because there was Special Forces involvement and there were issues unresolved by the other investigations.”

“Understood, Sir.”

“Why don’t we start at the beginning? When did you get here and what was your role?” Phil wanted to take the young officer through a few throw-away questions first just to set his mind at ease and to start getting him to open up.

“Yes, Sir. That would have been the winter before last. This rotation of PHOENIX is headed up by the 53^rd Brigade out of Florida and they supplied the manpower for the headquarters and a lot of the training teams but not all. A number of State Guard units were tasked to provide additional teams. Kentucky got the nod for six sixteen-man teams, so ninety-six in all, plus a few individuals here and there. We did a couple of weeks training in Kentucky and were then sent down to Camp SHELBY in Mississippi where our training started mid-March of last year for a couple of months and by last July we were in-country where most of us got sent down here to Regional Command South.”

“What was your assignment?

“Well, the Corps here is designed to have four brigades and a commando battalion but when we got here only the 1^st and 2^nd Brigades were stood up. The 1^st was here at SHIR ZAI and the 3^rd was over at Qalat, Zabul which is up the A1 Highway toward Kabul. They’ve been standing up the 3^rd Brigade too but at this point it’s still just a headquarters and most of their troops are in training.

“My team was sent to be the mentors for the 2^nd Kandak of the 1st Brigade. The 1^st Brigade works mostly with the special forces guys. We’d have a company assigned to an ODA, but we also worked a bit with Task Force BAYONET and more-and-more recently with the Canadians.

When TF BAYONET was here, they didn’t have many infantry. What they had was an artillery battalion called TF GUN DEVIL. They had a few guns but mostly they worked doing infantry-like patrols. When they did, they worked a lot with the 4th Kandak; the combat support one. Most of our real infantry stuff was with the special forces until the Canadians came with their mechanized infantry battalion.”

The flow of the conversation was going fairly well. O’Donnell was keeping copious notes and taping the interview on a small digital recorder and Newmar had lost his nervousness. It was time to get down to business.

“What about you personally?” asked Phil.

“First Sergeant Don Davidson and I were assigned to the 2^nd Kandak’s 3^rd Company and we stayed with them pretty much the whole tour. Our operations have been pretty much all over the place.”

“Tell us when you first heard about Operation RIVER DANCE,” said Phil.

“That would have been around mid-March, Sir. We hadn’t been tasked for it then but the rumors were running around that Karzai and Daoud were insisting on a poppy eradication program along the Helmand River valley. The crops were just coming up and were getting close to harvest.

“Our guys weren’t happy about that because Helmand had been relatively peaceful while most of the crap was going on up in the northern part of Kandahar and Uruzgan. We didn’t want to leave the fight there and we figured eradicating poppies would just stir up the locals in Helmand because poppies are their main cash crop.

“Anyway we got an INT briefing that they were sending down a kandak from the 207^th Corps up in Herat to do the job. A kandak with their own ETTs and their own ODA from up there as well.

“There are ISAF folks just west of Helmand, Italians and Spanish, but they flat-out refused to join in even though there was nothing going on in their sector even though we were pretty busy running down bad guys. That’s the trouble with the ISAF guys, most of their governments don’t let them fight. The Canadians on the other hand have been great scrappers here; they got into the fight real quick. They don’t like being in base camps, like the European countries do, but want to get out into the field and take the fight to the Taliban and with their LAVs they can really kick some ass. We could sure use some of our Strykers or Bradleys over here.”

“You were mentioning getting information on RIVER DANCE,” Phil wanted the discussion back on track.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry, Sir. Well the big thing about this operation is that we didn’t work with any of the coalition forces on it. The whole thing was an Afghan operation using their army and various police forces. The ETTs go where our ANA guys go so we went along when our guys went. And an ODA or two as well. But there were no coalition folks: no Americans from Task Force WARRIOR, no Canadians, no Brits, no one.

“In the early part of March, my company and another one from the 2^nd Kandak were tasked to move to Lashkar Gah. The companies were short folks so we got topped up by ANA from the 4^th Kandak and then jumped into our Rangers and a couple of old Soviet Kamaz supply trucks and took off. One thing was that we were pretty short of gear. We just had a few up-armored HMMWVs amongst us and a few satellite phones.

“We set up at the airfield at Lashkar Gah and my company’s role was kind of as a reserve, we ran convoys and guarded the camp. The other company went to cover eradication programs south down the Helmand while two other companies from the 207^th from Herat worked north along the river moving up towards Sangin.

“There were designated eradication boxes planned on the map and each company of roughly one hundred would have maybe another one hundred ANP with them and maybe five to ten bulldozers run by one of the two contract companies, either DynCorp or Hastati, who would do the plowing of the fields. The police would deal with the locals, the contractors would plow and the ANA covered the perimeter to provide security. As things progressed they moved from box to box.”

“Who ran the operation?” asked Phil.

“The operations center was set up in the governor’s compound in Lashkar Gah. The whole thing was run by a group there including the governor of Helmand, the chief of police for the province, a couple of guys from our Department of State—the guy I dealt with was Tom Balantine, I think he was a deputy or chief of staff or something; he wasn’t their top guy. Oh yeah, and the contractors, of course. I only dealt with one which was the guy from Hastati, Steve Alba. The State guys seemed to be in overall charge because they had a couple of senior army guys there, a colonel or two and some enlisted staff, and they seemed to implement what the State guys directed. There was a point where the senior State guy left and after that communications seemed to break down somewhat.”

“How were communications generally?”

“Well, after he left there wasn’t as much info passing. That wasn’t unusual but for this op it was really weak; it was crappy at best. Our group had Blue Force tracker but not everyone was tied in. It did allow us to do text messaging and we had TACSAT phones but it wasn’t so much the means of communication but the planning and direction.

“On the one hand I reported back up my ETT chain to the 1^st Brigade back here, but they had no operational control. The Canadian Task Force AEGIS which was supposed to have overall operational control for the entire South had been completely bypassed by Kabul and State. They had not been involved in this operation at all. The principal orders came from the State guy and his staff and they were often conflicting with what either the ANA or police or contractors were getting. It was a little nerve racking not knowing what other ops were going on, especially as the Talibs were starting to ramp up their attacks.”

“So how did you end up in Sangin and what happened there?”

 

— § —

 

Newmar sat back and let out a deep sigh.

“Sangin came after the head State guy had left and when things started getting really shaky.

“After being in reserve for a while, I was told we were heading south down the river to beef up the eradication ops down there. Funny thing was my ANA company commander came back and said the chief of police had told him we were going north to Musa Qaleh. In the end it was Musa. We were being sent up there to support ongoing operations that were done using the ANP and the Afghan Border Police and a company from the 3^rd Kandak of the 1st Brigade of the 207^th Corps.

“The company from the 3^rd had their own ETTs, a couple of guys from 3^rd Battalion of the 124^th Infantry from the Florida Guard by the names of Jim Lister and Mike Hickerson. Even together with those guys we were still pretty short of ETTs and especially HMMWVs. All told we had the two companies of ANA and about a hundred each of ANP and ABP. There were maybe sixteen tractors run by the Hastati guys. We pretty much learned right away that things were fucked up.”

“How was that?”

“Well it was the cops that were running the show. Our two companies set up on the ridge lines around the Musa Qaleh River valley—the river there flows south and runs into the Helmand at Sangin. Anyway we just sat on the ridges and kept security around the whole box being plowed. The cops worked in the valley with the plows which would run through the fields with their blades and cut and crush the plants.

“We noticed right off on the first day that the plowing was pretty erratic; some fields would get a good cut, others just a little bit and quite a few were just skipped completely. My company’s Afghan commander, a pretty switched on guy, a Dari called Hamzad from up north, went down to have a look and came back that evening and over chow explained what was going on.”

“And what was that?” asked Phil.

“He said basically that there were a whole lot of fields exempt from being plowed. Most of those belonged either to the chief of police or to key guys in his faction up there. Those fields were off limits completely.

“Second there had been direction from the governor that only fifty percent of the fields were to be cut because otherwise all the farmers would be without any cash for the year and that would blow the lid off the place. So basically the police were down there telling the farmers that if they paid off the police—I think the going rate was ten thousand Afghanis—then they would skip their field. On top of that they were stealing from the locals, food, blankets, pretty much anything they fancied including, the ANA told us, young boys. That pissed off both Hamzad and us ETT guys because here we were—the ANA and Americans—making it look like we were part of the shakedown deal that was going on in the valley.

“The next day we went down and talked to the farmers and told them no more paying, and we basically took over some control over the cutting so that roughly fifty percent of every field was being cut.”

“Did you report back what had been going on?”

“Yeah but nothing came of it. Balantine did come out but what he fuckin’ told us was that the ANP were there to do their job and we were to do ours and not theirs.

“By the night of the 2^nd of April we had lost most of the control over the plowing and the police were back up to their old tricks, missing whole fields or just scrapping maybe ten percent. By that time both of our ANA companies were on the ridge west of the village of Chughak which is maybe four klicks north of Sangin. The police and plows were in the valley south of the village ready to move down to Sangin the next day to plow more fields there. My guess is they were spending the evening negotiating with the villagers for the next day’s cuts.”

“Did you know that there were Brits in the area?” asked Kurt.

“No not at all. The funny thing is everything was quiet along our stretch of the river while at the same time we could see back to Sangin’s administrative center by the river and where FOB WOLF was and there were all kinds of shooting and explosions going on there day and night. As far as we knew there were no friendly forces on the north bank. We heard some vehicle noises after last light but it’s not unusual for that to be happening; there are lots of pickups and jingle trucks all over the place.”

“When did you first know of them?” asked Phil.

“Well it wasn’t so much when we first knew. It’s more like when were we first aware of a situation which eventually led us to know,” said Newmar.

“Around zero one hundred hours we heard shooting about a klick to the south of us. We had a liaison from the ANP with us and he got the word on his phone that some of his people down in the valley were engaging Taliban up on the north bank of the river. They were asking us for help. Jim’s company was prepared to move forward but Hamzad flat out refused. He said there was no way he was going to do a night fight with a whole bunch of trigger-happy ANP out there. I agreed with him and tried to talk Jim out of it but got nowhere with it. I left my First Sergeant with Hamzad and our company and went forward so as to give Jim an additional HMMWV for fire support.”

“Did you call the contact in to anyone?” asked Phil.

“I personally didn’t but I was there when Jim’s sergeant called it in.”

“To who?” O’Donnell interjected.

“Back to the CP at Lashkar Gah.

“Anyway Jim’s company moved forward along the ridge line in column to keep control and when they were within a couple of hundred meters or so of where the fire was coming from on the ridge, Jim shook the column out into line, his HMMWV was on the south end of the line and mine on the north with the ANA between us.

“I think they—the guys that ended up being the Brits but who we thought at the time were Taliban—saw us before we saw them and we started taking some fire. Our ANA took cover and returned fire.

“I don’t think we’d been engaging them more than five minutes when Jim and I got the call from Don in back. Don had been talking to an ODA on the other side of the river who said that there was a report of Brits engaged in a TIC in our area and to break off our contact.

“That’s when Jim got hit. He’d left his vehicle to try to get his company to disengage and fall back. Eventually they did but in addition to Jim there was an ANA rifleman killed and an ANA sergeant wounded.”

“What happened next?”

“We pulled back on the ridge and kept a tight hold on our people’s weapons. We got the word from the ODA—MUSTANG something . . . MUSTANG 53 I think it was—over on the other side of the river in Sangin that a Canadian Quick Reaction Force was coming in from FOB WOLF and they would sweep and clear out any Taliban there and join up with the Brits.

“We threw out a ton of IR glowsticks to mark our perimeter and pretty soon you could see a whole lot of IR signatures make their way through the valley. There was another quick firefight down there—my guess it was between the QRF and the ANP—and then things quieted down. Just as soon as we could we got our casualties down to the QRF to MEDEVAC out.”

“That’s the three casualties: Jim and the two ANA?”

“Right. When we got down there they were already working on the Brit wounded. Oh yeah. There was a wounded ANP guy there too.”

“An ANP?”

“Yeah. I guess the QRF or ODA must have found him down there.”

“Did you ever get an explanation from the ANP as to what happened?”

“Oh yeah. Hamzad got in their face the next day and they said they had a platoon that they had sent ahead to set up for the next day’s sweep. Hamzad figured that it was pure bullshit. Those guys don’t move around at night unless they’re up to no good but we figured it was probably just moving on to shake down more farmers. There were a number of fields and compounds just below where the Brits were and the next eradication box lay just across from there on the other side of the river.”