Fire fights punctuate bouts of boredom at Kunar outpost

Combat Outpost Badel, Kunar- Up on the hill overlooking the verdant farmland and distant mountains, is a burnt cooking pot. In the pot is a bubbling goulash of Meals Ready to Eat (MRE’s)- veggie burger, Chicken Alfredo, meatloaf and gravy, Chicken Cavatelli, pork chop, raisins, Slim Jim’s, local potatoes and peppers. The soldiers served their feast up in emptied Cheerios bowls.

“We started doing it at Outpost 2 when the guy who brought donkeys up and down the hill for re-supply kept getting threatened by the Taliban. So all we had left was MRE’s. We had been trying to avoid eating them,” said Sgt. Matt MacFarlane of 2nd platoon of Charlie Company 1-32 Infantry, describing how the platoons culinary ambitions began. “But it turned out pretty good.”

(Spc. Bailey takes a bite of their homemade MRE stew sprinkled with an occasional insect.)

Second Platoon set up the Badel outpost in March with a few strings of razor wire and some corralled MRAPs. The Narang valley was rife with wood smugglers using illicit profits to fund weapons. The Taliban used the riverbeds as passageways, the spines of nearby mountains were routes to safe houses, said SSgt. Jonathan Demler.

Now the Platoon along with D Company occupy the hilltop 24-hours a day. They have enough 50 Cal. machine guns, grenade launchers and shoulder fired missiles on the hilltop to fend off a small insurgent army. And the weapons don’t collect dust.

“The elders nearby always say the same thing,” SSgt. Demler said, “we’re glad you’re here, we feel safer, but we can’t tell you where they (Taliban) are, we’re afraid.”

The outpost has disrupted some of their distribution networks. One indication is the price of a black market AK-47 has jumped drastically. Security has improved, but at the same time they’ve attracted attention, Demler said. The Taliban has put up posters to warn the locals of talking to the Americans. The outpost gets intelligence they’ll get attacked just about every night. Not that they need it.
(c) Simon Klingert (Afghan soldiers reload their Dshka rounds similar to those of a U.S. 50 Cal.)

The interpreters pick up Taliban radio chatter in the surrounding mountains, a garbled mix of coded language in Pashtu saying bring the “doctor” and how is the “cow”.

Clearly they were setting up a machine gun attack somewhere in the mountains. Whether they were planning to attack COP Badel, it was hard to say.

The soldiers fought boredom by "kitting up" in their helmets and body armor and timing sprints up the hill. By the time they devised a torture test of running up the rocks and scaling a Hesco barrier, it was dusk. The most dangerous time of the day. Minutes into the second race, an RPG explosion sounded nearby and shots rang out.
(c) Simon Klingert (Afghan Army soldiers set off mortars; red tracers can be seen in the air.)

The soldiers ran to their positions, set for interlocking zones of fire, and began pouring lead towards the adjacent mountain top. Red tracers flew into the darkening sky. The Afghan Army, attached to the outpost, assisted on either side by firing mortars and their own guns.

“Harassing fire,” the soldiers called the enemy attack. The Taliban don't stay and fight against overwhelming odds. They might have fired two RPG rockets and a drum of PKM machine gun rounds. They'd probably disappeared a quarter of a way through the return barrage.

As night fell the air was still charged with adrenaline, but there weren’t too many war stories. The soldiers are used to "the spray and pray" attacks by now, and consider it only nice break from the overall boredom.

The bad thing was the firefight scared the surrounding villagers from attending an election-planning Shura at the outpost that night, which was probably the intent of the attack. The district cease-fire coordinated with mountain elders the day before had lasted all of one day. And the local power broker who had orchestrated it, was supposedly attacked by a rival to discredit him.

As the glowing red gun barrels cooled, it’s clear the big problem is still security. Slow improvements are coming to Kunar- among them, the new roads, small construction projects, business grants and the joint presence of Afghan and U.S. Military bringing a new level of trust. Soldiers respond to problems that are called in. For example, they will spend the night in a village where a local video business was burnt to the ground by Taliban.

“When we first meet with people, they think you’re only there for security,” said Platoon Leader Lt. Ryan Feeney. “They say everythings ok. But when they realize you can hand out projects, they say we need a well, a clinic, a school etc. The education level is such that they think you’re a vending machine.”

Half the battle is educating leaders on how to use the allocated money and ensuring it's spent properly. The 1-32nd infantry is starting to mentor the more secure districts on monthly budget plans and offering small business grants, Lt. Feeney said.