We’d be heading out, and I’d say to the Boss, “We can’t go because you don’t have your helmet on. Until you do, we’re not leaving.” He’d have a little tantrum, put it on, then we’d go.
MOTHER
Something had changed on August 3 and we all knew it, but for a long time we couldn’t figure it out. Ian Hope had hit the hornet’s nest at the white schoolhouse. After charging around the region for six full months, he had better insight than anyone about what was going on. He was the first to realize that things had changed and that it was bad. The Taliban had come to the conclusion that they could finish us off.
Insurgents are rebels fighting against either a government or an invading force. Typically they use hit-and-run techniques, because they don’t have the strength or firepower to conduct an all-out battle using conventional tactics. Their approach is to disrupt, confuse and frustrate their foe rather than destroy it. Military doctrine holds that when insurgents move from guerrilla to conventional tactics, it’s an indication that they have gained confidence in their ability to resolve the campaign quickly in their favour. That’s what was going on here, but no one was talking to us about it. We were being kept in the dark. I was dealing with the Asadullah Khalid, Governor of Kandahar Province, on a daily basis, and yet he hadn’t confided in me. The Taliban was moving into his region to kill us all and then lay siege to his own city, and he was just talking about how long it takes to get grapes to market.
It sank in slowly: they think they can beat us. As our intel came together day by day, we formed a clearer picture of where they were and what they were up to. Now it was up to us to decide what to do in response.
I had to figure out how to fight a force digging in for a conventional battle. We hadn’t been trained or deployed for anything this big. That was not our mission. Ours was counter-insurgency—and nation-building within a counter-insurgency. We just weren’t manned, equipped or armed to do a major assault. But there we were. No use complaining. Better just do something about it.
This is how the rough planning of Operation Medusa started. I took the time to think. Running through my head were things like this: I just know they want to give me the biggest, blackest, bloodiest eye they can. They want to kill lots of us, and they’re now confident they can do a ton of damage.
I started reassessing how many casualties we were going to suffer, musing that the Taliban probably had already done their own assessment. I couldn’t afford many casualties. Beyond the obvious waste of young Canadian lives, it would be unacceptable back home. And if I lost the battle, which the Taliban fully expected, they would achieve all their aims. I looked at disposition charts that showed where they were and realized if I went in and attacked first from either the east or the north, I’d be attacking them in their positions of greatest strength. By attacking from the south instead, the Arghandab River would be both a tough obstacle and a considerable advantage. The flow rate was not high at the time, but a river crossing was always risky during an advance, and yet the river would be as much of an obstacle to the Taliban as it would be to us.
The Arghandab would give us some distance. We could stand off and observe first, then fire as required with our LAV (light armoured vehicle) cannons and artillery, and drop ordnance with air support. We could also use our surveillance technology to our advantage. We’d know where they were, and they sure as hell wouldn’t be moving fast or far once this thing began. An approach from the south would be difficult, but less risky than one from another direction.
My second consideration was the intensity of the upcoming battle. I saw it this way: Against five hundred bad guys led by their top ten commanders, this is going to be a hard fight with a lot of killing. I have to minimize the amount of killing of my own soldiers.
Avoiding deaths was not only mandatory—in today’s political climate there are deep ramifications any time our soldiers fall. I needed to keep casualties to a minimum, yet I had to risk soldiers’ lives to get this thing done. So how would I fight this? I could go the conventional way and just storm in and shoot my way through each objective in turn, but I didn’t have the combat forces I needed to do that, and I knew I wasn’t going to get more any time soon. I thought, My hands are tied, my feet are tied, and I’m gagged and blindfolded. How do I beat them?
Then I remembered that I had seen this exact scenario before, not in my own career but in Les Grau’s history of the British and Russian campaigns in Afghanistan. In The Other Side of the Mountain, Grau observed that attacking forces always rely on conventional tactics when they fight Afghans on their own turf, and every time they lose. When the Brits tried it in 1839, they sent in nearly 20,000 soldiers. They fought a conventional war while the Afghans fought a guerrilla war. Basically, the Afghans acted like insurgents in their own country. Never once did they mass for an attack. Instead they used small raiding parties, ambushes in mountain passes, quick attacks on city streets. The Afghan fighters blended in with their own population. No uniforms. The Brits could never tell who was the enemy until a second or two before they were slaughtered. Three years later, there was only one British soldier left alive. Twenty thousand guys went in and only one came out. No fucking way I was going to do that.
I’m not going to win by rolling in and fighting this guy, I reasoned. I have to find another way. I’m going to go slow. He’s wearing the watch but we’ve got the time. I’m going to stand off. I’m going to observe. I’m going to listen in. I’m going to fly over and get a full surveillance picture. I’m going to use psychological ops. I’m going to move my own guys around, confuse him, make him wonder where we are and what we’re up to. I’m just going to take my time, and then every time he sticks his head up, I’m going to whack it off.
The Taliban was adopting a conventional defensive position, and I would refuse to take the expected conventional offensive position. I decided we would become the insurgents. I thought, He’s turned out to be like me so I’m going to become him. I’ll attack him, but I’ll do it in an unconventional way. I’m going to play whack-a-mole. And that’s what I told the guys: “I got it. We’re reversing our roles. Let’s go plan it out.”