US Military Attacks Haqqani Network In Afghanistan

By C. J. CHIVERS
New York Times

CHARBARAN, Afghanistan — The first helicopter landed in the bluish gray gloom before dawn. More than 20 members of an American reconnaissance platoon and Afghan troops accompanying them jogged out through the swirling dust, moving into a forest smelling of sage and pine.

Three more helicopters followed, and soon roughly 100 troops were on the floor of this high-elevation valley in Paktika Province, near the border with Pakistan. They were beginning their portion of a brigade-size operation to disrupt the Haqqani network, the insurgent group that collaborates with the Taliban and Al Qaeda and that has become a primary focus of American counterterrorism efforts since Osama bin Laden was killed.

The group, based in Pakistan’s northwestern frontier, flows fighters into Afghanistan and has orchestrated a long campaign of guerrilla and terrorist attacks against the Afghan government and its American sponsors.

Its close ties to Pakistan’s intelligence service, and Pakistan’s unwillingness to act against the Haqqani headquarters in Miram Shah, a city not far from the Afghan border, have drawn condemnation from Washington and escalated tensions between two nations that officially have been counterterrorism partners.

Against this backdrop, the helicopter assault into Charbaran this past week highlighted both the false starts and the latest set of urgent goals guiding the American military involvement in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon plans to have withdrawn most of its forces from the country by 2014. Talk among many officers has shifted sharply from discussions of establishing Afghan democracy or a robust government to a more pragmatic and realistic military ambition: doing what can be done in the little time left.

In the tactical sense, this translates to straightforward tasks for units in the security buffer along the border. While they still have their peak troop presence, American commanders are trying to bloody the strongest of the armed antigovernment groups and to put thousands more Afghan police officers and soldiers into contested areas.

The long-term ambition is that Afghan forces will have the skills and resolve to stand up to the insurgency as the Americans pull back.

And yet, even while looking beyond 2014, American units must fight a day-to-day war.

One element lies in trying to prevent more of the carefully planned attacks that have shaken Kabul, the Afghan capital, several times this year. The attacks — striking prominent targets, like the capital’s premier hotel and the American Embassy — have often been organized by the Haqqanis, and have highlighted the Afghan government’s vulnerability and the insurgents’ resiliency.

Lt. Col. John V. Meyer, who commands the Second Battalion of the 28th Infantry Regiment, which used two companies to cordon off the Charbaran Valley and another to sweep the villages, called the operation “a spoiling attack to prevent a spectacular attack in the Kabul area.” It was also intended, he said, to gather intelligence.

The Charbaran Valley has become one of the main routes for Haqqani fighters to enter Afghanistan. They generally come in on foot, American officers say, and then, after staying overnight in safe houses and tent camps, they work their way toward Kabul or other areas where they have been sent to fight.

Mid-level Haqqani leaders also meet in the valley’s villages, American officers said, including near an abandoned school and the ruins of a government center that the United States built earlier in the war but that local fighters had destroyed by 2008.

It was 2010 when the last conventional unit entered the valley. An infantry company, it landed by helicopter and was caught in a two-hour gunfight as it left.

When the American and Afghan troops fanned out this time, their mission faced a familiar law of guerrilla war: when conventional forces arrive in force, guerrillas often disperse, setting aside weapons to watch the soldiers pass by.

The operation was also probably no surprise to the Haqqani fighters in the valley, American officers said, because during the days of preparation some of the Afghan troops probably leaked that the assault was coming.

As the soldiers climbed the hills — laden with body armor and backpacks heavy with water and ammunition — they almost immediately found signs of the fighters’ presence.

In the first house they entered, not far from the landing zone, only two women and several children were home. The men had all left.

Inside, the Afghan troops uncovered a case of ammunition fired by both PK machine guns and Dragunov sniper rifles. They also found two bandoleers of .303-caliber ammunition for the dated Lee-Enfield rifles that remain a common insurgent arm.

Capt. Nicholas C. Sinclair, the company commander, ordered the Afghan troops to confiscate the ammunition. The younger woman protested loudly.

“There have been many American soldiers here, and they always left it,” she said.

This, the Americans said, was most likely a lie. An Afghan police officer packed away the ammunition. The company walked off.

Later, at the now-abandoned school, which the Haqqani and Taliban fighters had forced to close, the soldiers were greeted by a taunting note written in white chalk above the main entrance.

“Taliban is good,” it read, in English.

The school, the soldiers said, was evidence of an earlier setback. According to those who advanced the counterinsurgency doctrine that swept through the American military several years ago, building schools was supposed to help turn valleys like this one around.

Instead, it was shut down by the same fighters who overran the government center and chased the police away. It stands empty — a marker of good intentions gone awry, and of time and resources lost before this latest battalion inherited duties in the province.

More signs of the fighters soon emerged. At the edge of the Charbaran bazaar, where the Haqqani and Taliban fighters were said to gather, Second Lt. Mark P. Adams, a fire support officer, glanced into a woodpile he was using for cover and saw a makeshift bomb.

The weapon — fashioned from 120-millimeter and 82-millimeter mortar rounds attached to roughly 10 pounds of homemade explosives — was powerful but not armed. It apparently had been hidden there but was meant to have been moved to a road frequented by the Afghan and American troops.

Staff Sgt. Robert Blanco, an explosive-ordnance disposal specialist, put a small explosive charge against it and detonated the bomb in place.

Soon the soldiers climbed a mountain, joining the rest of the battalion, to sleep in the relative safety of a higher ridge.

The next morning, as the sweep resumed, one elder, Ghul Mohammad, sat with First Lt. Tony E. Nicosia, an American platoon leader, as Afghan and American soldiers searched the shops a second time.

There was a ritual familiarity to their exchange, a product of a war entering its second decade.

“When you come here, that’s a big problem for us,” the elder said. “Because after you leave the

Taliban comes and asks us about you, and they take our food and are not paying for it.”

Whether this was true could not be determined from this conversation alone; many villagers, the Afghan and American soldiers said, support Taliban and Haqqani fighters.

The soldiers also said that at least some of the men gathered around them were probably fighters, at least part time, who had set down their weapons for the brief period that the Americans had a large presence in the valley.

“We understand your concerns and, hopefully, we can push some security in here,” Lieutenant Nicosia said politely.

Ghul Mohammad nodded. “I cannot do anything about it,” he said. “I want my God to bring security here.”

The Americans shouldered their equipment and began the walk to the next buildings, on the opposite side of the valley.

Throughout the operation, hidden fighters were occasionally heard over the two-way radios that Afghan interpreters were monitoring for intelligence. The guerrillas had threatened to ambush the reconnaissance company.

After the American and Afghan soldiers reached the opposite slope, the guerrillas managed their only attack: they fired four mortar rounds from outside the cordon.

The rounds exploded well behind the soldiers, near the abandoned school, causing no harm but making clear that Charbaran, which had fallen almost silent as the company moved through, remained out of government hands.