26 May 2013
Chamkani, Afghanistan: The US soldiers were climbing the steep ridgeline, fractured shale cracking underfoot and sweat pouring off their faces, when their Afghan allies up ahead took off without warning.
They scanned the mountainside below for movement before spotting one of the Afghan policemen heading straight down into the valley below. Exhausted from the uphill hike, the Afghans had evidently decided to try a shortcut. The Americans reluctantly followed.
"You can't fight it," said the US company commander, Capt. Scott Harra, stepping through a narrow creek bed flanked by stone walls. The joint team had hours of hiking still ahead before reaching the villages they were supposed to search, but now the sudden detour had left them vulnerable to ambush, the high ground abandoned. "Look at what we're doing here. We're basically just following them." After more than a decade at war in Afghanistan, the Americans are moving fully into a support role this year: shifting to "Afghan lead" in security operations a year before the official end of the international military mission here. An intensive effort to train the Afghan security forces - soldiers, policemen, intelligence officers - to be self-sufficient has become a focus for the remaining US units like the Third Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division.
They scanned the mountainside below for movement before spotting one of the Afghan policemen heading straight down into the valley below. Exhausted from the uphill hike, the Afghans had evidently decided to try a shortcut. The Americans reluctantly followed.
"You can't fight it," said the US company commander, Capt. Scott Harra, stepping through a narrow creek bed flanked by stone walls. The joint team had hours of hiking still ahead before reaching the villages they were supposed to search, but now the sudden detour had left them vulnerable to ambush, the high ground abandoned. "Look at what we're doing here. We're basically just following them." After more than a decade at war in Afghanistan, the Americans are moving fully into a support role this year: shifting to "Afghan lead" in security operations a year before the official end of the international military mission here. An intensive effort to train the Afghan security forces - soldiers, policemen, intelligence officers - to be self-sufficient has become a focus for the remaining US units like the Third Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division.
A week in April spent with the brigade, accompanying Afghan forces in the eastern provinces of Khost and Paktia along the Pakistani border, offered a direct look at the evolving training mission, for better or for worse.
The brigade, known as the Rakkasans, has again and again been at the vanguard of the US war effort in some of the toughest parts of Afghanistan and Iraq over the years, and some of its soldiers and officers have had as many as six combat tours. Most returned home this month to their base at Fort Campbell, Ky. On this last deployment, though, they were ordered to ride along while the Afghan forces drive and try to find their own way to take on security responsibilities that will allow a final US withdrawal from the war.
"With regards to our brigade, that's how this war is going to end," said Col. R.J. Lillibridge, the Third Brigade's commander, who has deployed five times since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "It's not going to be some huge battle. It's going to end quietly."
Lillibridge has adopted a mantra. He uses it to explain why he no longer gives helicopter rides to Afghan officers when they go on leave, why he refuses to give his counterparts fuel when they run out, and why he stands by as their leaders plan and lead missions that appear, at least on the surface, somewhat dubious. "We can't care more than the Afghans do," he said.
That philosophy was on display the morning the Americans accompanied the Afghans to search two villages in a remote part of eastern Afghanistan.
The troops began their steep climb at dawn, more than 40 US soldiers trudging behind roughly a dozen Afghan policemen. After two hours the men had scaled 2,000 feet. The collective gasps of soldiers carting body armor, weapons and ammunition meshed with the crunch of the rocky soil below their feet.
By the time the Afghan forces had abandoned the ridgeline, the trek was less than a third of the way finished, setting a tone for the rest of the mission, in which almost nothing went according to plan. The soldiers navigated the narrow valley for nearly an hour, slipping along the stone as a crystal stream gushed by. The men scanned the tree line above for snipers as a pair of Apache attack helicopters hovered overhead.
The valley fed into a gravel path leading to the village they were meant to search. The Americans suggested resuming the mission, but the Afghans had another idea: They wanted to clear a different compound, where they believed insurgents might be storing weapons.
A short walk later, the men arrived at a barren hill leading up to a sun-bleached rock spur. Four Afghan policemen began scaling the loose earth, the Americans, again, reluctantly following.
After a halting half-hour hike to the top, the prize was an abandoned donkey stable - no contraband to be found.
Later, back at the base of the hill, a US platoon leader, 1st Lt. Benjamin Johnson, politely debriefed the Afghan police forces who had led the way that day.
"What do you think we could have done better?" he asked the men, who stood near their trucks, chewing on slabs of cake and bread.
"Next time, I think we should put in less effort and get more out of it," one policeman responded.
In this phase of the war's scheduled end, the younger soldiers in this storied US combat unit are especially struggling with their relegation to a support role. Some felt they had missed the war and were consigned to cleanup duty in the aftermath of the most active era for the U.S. military in decades.
"I tell these guys they were just born a decade too late," said Maj. Tyler Anderson, a battalion executive officer for the Rakkasans who has served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Our role in this country has evolved. We have to be close enough to give them confidence, then wean them off the support."
Anderson paused for a moment: "That all sounds great and wonderful, but will it work out that way? I hope."
On the ground, the way it works varies from district to district. Some units are capable of taking the fight to the Taliban on their own. In others it is hard to imagine the Afghans conducting missions without Americans by their side.
"The collection of Afghan National Security Forces is kind of like the bar scene from 'Star Wars' - you never know who's going to come out," Lillibridge said. "Still, with every fighting season and with every operation, they get a little better."
One of the brigade's other companies had a similarly distracted day on patrol with the Afghan forces.
The US soldiers left before daybreak. The cold night air lingered over the men as they concluded a final mission briefing. When they arrived at the Afghan base, in the Syed Khurram district of Paktia province, they found the soldiers and policemen sipping chai, spread out across the compound, a series of modular buildings clustered on a barren patch of sloped land.
The planned departure time came and went, as the predawn haze cleared to show gray sky.
"The hardest part is letting go," said Capt. Jeff Scott, the US company commander, with a chunk of tobacco tucked in his lower lip. "This is the mission. We leave when they're ready."
The Americans joined up with an Afghan intelligence officer near the village of Barah Sejenak, a collection of mud homes surrounded by fields of grass and stone. They searched caves for weapons caches but found nothing except litter here and there.
Returning to meet the Afghan forces an hour later, they discovered the commander, Col. Mohammad Zazai, asleep in his truck midmission. Nearby, an Afghan soldier straddled a creek, washing his hair, sending a trail of shampoo suds down the meandering stream.
"This is as good as it gets right now," said 1st Sgt. Joshua Hunt, on his third deployment to Afghanistan since 2002.
"It's progress. You should have seen what it was like when we got here."
