A trigger puller's frustration- counter-insurgency in Kunar

(left to right: Sgt. Lopez, Sgt. Lazaridi, Sgt. Dolce, Sgt. Camarillo and Spc. Powell, photo- Sgt. Camarillo)

Deployed to Kunar again.  That's where many of Able Company's soliders learned they were going this December.  They'd last been here in '07-'08, most living on small outposts they built themselves in the Pesh and Korengal Valleys, surviving an extraordinarily violent resistance.  It was a different kind of fight then. 

Maybe there's a saying, you can take the the infantryman out of the fight, but you can't take the fight out of the infantryman.  The problem in the valleys of southern Kunar, they're not out of the fight.  They still trade bullets for bullets, but many young combat veterans feel they're not able to use the force they once could to eliminate an enemy who they don't see, but who's bullets and rockets come in almost every other night just after sundown.

They're back to the same kind of outposts, but in interviews with 2nd Platoon Able Co., soldiers say they're now fighting the Taliban with one hand tied because of new rules when you can call for artillery, call for fires, who you can shoot, who you can't, when and where.  They're asked to win over the local population, and it means pulling guard for more project and key leader meetings, and less charging into the valley for a fight.  But they still have to shoot their way out of mountain ambushes, while getting less bombs and artillery to bail them out as the Taliban maneuver on the high ground, or shoot down at their outposts from multiple positions, as they did yesterday when 15 soldiers fended off sustained sniper fire for over four hours.  And they spend more time wondering why they're here, if they're winning.

Able Company of 2-503rd Battalion used to measure their victories in body counts, Ssgt. Trevor Petsch put it, "as vulgar as that may sound," he said. "I'm used to a two-way firing range while I'm here.  You go up in the mountains, kick some a--, come down and feel good about it."  Things have changed.  The Battalion received a new mission, as almost all infantrymen fighting in Afghanistan have- to support the Afghan people and to hold back on shooting near the civilian population.  The problem remains- with distances of over a 1,000 meters in a fight, it's hard to tell who's the enemy and who isn't.

"We're kind of out of our element," Ssgt. Petsch, 28, said. "We don't receive the extensive training required in order to build a government, to help these people, who have no idea how to run a government, and to kind of show them how, and that's basically what we're asked to do."

(photo: Spc. Gino Manguino, 18, pulling guard in the rain, Outpost Badel)

"I love a good fight," said Sgt. David Camarillo, 25, "And I know a lot of guys out here love a good fight, sometimes you're begging for it.  I mean you get bored out here.  You're wondering what the hell you're doing out here, if you're making a difference." Camarillo explained it as the mentality and training of guys who joined the infantry.  Trigger pulling is second nature by a second deployment. "It's so much more simple to pull a trigger and kill somebody and go back to the base and smoke a cigarette, or whatever, it's a lot more complicated now.  A lot more thought process goes into whether you should pull the trigger."

New restraint sounds like a good idea, especially when most know that accidentally killing Afghan civilians can turn whole villages and regions against a unit, but in the process of the new counter-insurgency fight, many of 2nd Platoon, Able Co. veterans feel like they're accomplishing far less.

"You know, a lot of guys said if we were more aggressive, they'd respect us more," said Lt. Richard Hill, 24, of 2nd Platoon Able Co. "but they did that for 15 months last deployment, taking the fight to the enemy...We're the premier force in the world, the problem is they (Taliban) use our size against us.  If something goes wrong, they blame it on the Americans.  This is a guerrilla war and it comes down to who the people believe are going to help them- us or the Taliban."

In other words, one misplaced bomb, one kid killed from a raid gone wrong, can derail months of counterinsurgency hand shaking and humanitarian aid.  On the other hand, when it takes 10 minutes for officers to approve artillery support for soldiers under sniper and rocket attack, Lt. Hill said, "You need to have the trust of the guys on the ground."

(Sgt. Larrison holding up an RPG rocket fin that landed by the food shed.)

As much as the sergeants sound like killers, they also understand a big stick only goes so far. "It's not a firing range.  People live here.  They raise their kids over here," said Sgt. Pavel Lazaridi, 25, "They've been here for hundreds, thousands of years.  It's their home.  I do understand that, but at the same time it conflicts with my job, with what I like to do.  I want the Taliban to fear us, I want them to know, hey, we have big guns and we're not afraid to use them, and if you come close to us, we're going to kill you.  But we can't do that because there are people all around us."

"In the long run RoE (the more restrictive rules of engagement) will help, I hope it will," Lazaridi said, "But in the short term, as to our tasks- to secure the valley, to push the Taliban out, I want to use our power, their fear.  I want them to know not to mess with us."

Yes, trigger pullers don't like diplomacy, they don't feel it's they're job. "We just sit out here and get shot at, and then go talk to the people who did it," Sgt. Aaron Dawson, 22, said.

But the officer-level strategies often come down to ground-level platoons to implement in tactics- the nuances of how little force and how much incentives to doll to local power brokers, who they don't trust. "As much as we try, I don't think it's working, not for lack of effort..." Sgt. Dawson, said, "the Afghan people are so corrupt and so far behind the times that they really just look out for themselves."

2nd Platoon veterans who specialize in machine and sniper guns like Spc. Benjamin Powell, 21 and Ssgt. Seth Taylor, 33, admit they don't like counter-insurgency fight at all.  They're used to two or three patrols a day, many ending in sustained firefights.  Spc. Powell said out of four years in the Army, he will have spent two in Afghanistan.  And now, "We've spent six months pulling guard," he said, an underestimation by almost any measure, but not compared to the intensity of their last deployment, when Powell came in as the youngest soldier in theater and had a literal trial by fire in his first days on the job when he still didn't know how to operate a mounted .50 Cal.  Now he's running classes on weapons systems for the younger guys, yelling in their ears as they reload to simulated combat stress, and it's hard not to see his point.

Yesterday. during the sniper attack, 2nd Platoon's skeleton crew got support from artillery, mortars and Apache helicopters lighting up the mountainside, and they needed it. "It was almost like last deployment," Powell said, with a smirk. "It was fun, but I was like when are they going to run out of ammunition... I'm going on leave in 12 hours."

Ssgt. Taylor, who almost hit a suspected spotter with his sniper rifle in the same contact, wishes they could push out their own safety zone instead of waiting for the fight to come from the enemy. "It's so much easier to destroy the enemy and feel an accomplishment," Tayor said. "Not that I like getting in firefights...Counterinsurgency just takes so much longer to see any results."