2-508 PIR AFGHANISTAN 2009-2010

by Hedi Vogt
Associated Press

   ARGHANDAB VALLEY Afghanistan — The US forces’ enemy is almost invisible in parts of this lush valley in southern Afghanistan. It comes not as gunmen but as bombs planted on footpaths wedged into walls nestled in trees and hidden under bridges.
   The Bravo Company soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry have gotten caught up in only one significant firefight in the six months they've been stationed in a 1.2-square mile area just north of Kandahar city.
   But nearly every day they find — or step on — homemade bombs. As a result they've had some intense on-the-job training in bomb-spotting so they can continue to keep patrolling and keep die Taliban from threatening local villagers.
  The military operation is completely different just a two-hour hike to die north or west. In northern Arghandab schools are being set up and agriculture subsidies are making friends of farmers. To the west paratroopers are in nearly daily firefights with insurgents who ambush patrols and assault combat outposts.
   Bravo Company’s dogged fight for control of the southern end of the Arghandab river valley illustrates a key difficulty facing US forces as they work this summer and fall to squeeze the Taliban out of their spiritual heartland. The battle for Kandahar city and its environs is not one fight but many.
   "You’ve got three different problem sets," said the top US general in the south, Brig Gen Ben Hodges — referring to the city lawless southern districts with vast expanses of desert and areas like Arghandab that at least have some government presence.

Localized skills

   So each company has to develop very localized skills for their specific fight.
   For Bravo company it’s the fight against homemade bombs — known as improvised explosive devices or IEDs — which accounted for about 40 percent of US fatalities in 2009 according to an Associated Press tally of NATO reports.

   Three soldiers in the company have been killed by buried explosives and almost every soldier has encountered one.
  Typically, troops depend on ordnance disposal teams for bomb experts. Those teams are in Arghandab too, but in Bravo Company tire average soldier has spent a lot of time learning to spot or even just feel out bombs. They describe a sort of sixth sense that develops after encountering so many.
   "We’re looking for booby traps, trip wires or just the absence of the normal" said Lt Ross Weinshenker, 24, who commands one of the two platoons that patrol out of the company’s main combat outpost.
  And the hidden killers don’t discriminate. They also accounted for 60 percent of the 600 Afghan civilian casualties from January through June this year NATO says.
   To counter the threat posed by IEDs the US Defense Department is delivering $3 billion worth of additional equipment. Ashton Carter, U..S. Defense Department undersecretary for acquisition technology and logistics, told reporters Thursday at NATO headquarters in Kabul.
   The Pentagon has doubled the number of tethered surveillance blimps being sent to Afghanistan this year to 64 providing troops a bird’s eye view of certain areas, Carter said. So for, 6700 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles have been delivered to Afghanistan and the Defense Department is continuing to send unmanned aerial vehicles so every route-clearance patrol will have the benefit of full-motion video overhead.
   Such technical solutions can help, but Bravo Company has developed its own on-the-ground detection methods to save life and limb. Capt. Adam Armstrong, the company commander, said that 20 of its approximately 150 soldiers stationed in Arghandab have been wounded. Many have been hit multiple times — wounded enough for a quick trip to nearby Kandahar Air Field to check on a concussion or a shrapnel injury but nothing serious enough to keep them away more than a few weeks. Sometimes the constant vigilance wears on die soldiers.
   “Hope I get deployed to Iraq after this, I could use a vacation," joked Pvt Micah Kahn, 23, of Nashville Tenn. "You know what you do in Iraq? Work out, Drink water, None of this losing a leg and watching it blow away”.

[The Wichita Eagle. Wichita, KS, 09 Jul 2010, Fri, Page 2]