New York:
Nothing in the documents made public on Sunday offers as vivid a miniature of the Afghan war so far -- from hope to heartbreak -- as the field reports from one lonely base: Combat Outpost Keating.
The outpost was opened in 2006 in the Kamdesh district of Nuristan Province, an area of mountain escarpments, thick forests and deep canyons with a population suspicious of outsiders. The outpost's troops were charged with finding allies among local residents and connecting them to the central government in Kabul, stopping illegal cross-border movement and deterring the insurgency.
But the outpost's fate, chronicled in unusually detailed glimpses of a base over nearly three years, illustrates many of the frustrations of the allied effort: low troop levels, unreliable Afghan partners and an insurgency that has grown in skill, determination and its ability to menace.
The outpost was small, isolated and exposed to high ground, one compound in a network of tiny firebases the American and Afghan governments built far from Afghanistan's cities. The area, near the border with Pakistan, was suspected of being an insurgent corridor.
Some early reports from the area were upbeat. Although it was obvious from the outset that there were so few troops that the outpost, like others of its kind, could barely defend its bunkers and patrol at the same time, much less disrupt a growing insurgency, the dispatches carried notes of cheerful confidence when they described the campaign for local hearts and minds.
"It was clear our meeting had produced tangible results," the outpost reported in December 2006, after the Americans distributed pencils, notebooks, erasers and pencil sharpeners in a nearby village, along with prayer rugs and winter gloves for children.
Later, after a larger handout of clothing, first-aid kits and school supplies to villagers, the report summarized the pitch to local residents: "Our friendship grows every day." It also noted that the "positive nonlethal effects" of the donations "stimulated a frank discussion on security issues."
The security situation was, in a word, bad. The road to the base was overlooked by high ground; all traffic was vulnerable to ambushes. Most of the movement of supplies and troops was done by helicopters, which were exposed to ground fire.
Transport helicopters were scarce. Attack helicopters, which might provide fire support if the outpost was attacked, were based at Jalalabad -- more than a 30-minute flight away.
Before long the optimistic reports about handouts of milk and soccer balls and the good will of the local residents gave way to a realization that insurgents controlled almost everything up to the outpost's gates. The Afghan forces held little promise: the Americans training them noted that local police chiefs complained that their officers were not being paid and that most of them "will not work, they will walk off the job." The reports describe how the insurgents gradually moved to cut off the outpost, physically and socially.Feb 17, 2007: Armed men in Afghan Army uniforms ambushed three Afghan trucks as they left a nearby base after delivering supplies. The drivers were allowed to live. But one had been wounded by shrapnel. The insurgents sliced off the others' ears.
April 29, 2007: Men who identified themselves as "We the Mujahedeen" posted so-called night letters on a mosque. The handwritten letters complained about American infidels and the "sold-out mullahs," contractors, police officers, soldiers and officials who worked with them. It listed the names of Afghans who worked as the outpost's security guards.
"These people are hated by God," the letter said, according to a translation in the intelligence summary. "Soon we will start our operations."
Insurgents Send a Message
The local villagers tore up the letters. The next day, six insurgents stopped a car owned by Fazal Ahad, the leader of a local council, or shura, that cooperated with the Americans on security issues, as he drove with other council members down a canyon road. The insurgents sent a brutal but measured message to the villagers.
"The fighters secured Fazal Ahad and told the others they could leave now and live, or follow them and die," said the military's report of the incident. After the released men fled, villagers reported hearing a gunshot. Fazal Ahad was dead.
The outposts in outer Nuristan Province had become defensive positions kept alive by helicopters that would typically fly only at night. Local residents were caught between sides. Development was idled. The reports compose a portrait in futility: the enemy was strong, the post's ranks were small and counterinsurgency efforts had no traction. The area was more treacherous, and less safe, than when the push into the canyons had begun.
In the summer of 2009, as President Obama explored options for continuing the war, Gen Stanley A McChrystal, then his new commander in Kabul, revisited the idea of dividing the limited available forces and distributing them in remote outposts. New thinking took hold: forces were to be concentrated where they could have the greatest effect.
Combat Outpost Keating, along with several other tiny firebases in eastern Afghanistan, was ordered to shut down. By fall, the United States was quietly withdrawing from part of its archipelago of little posts.
But before Combat Outpost Keating could be closed, the insurgents struck.
Early on Oct 3, they massed for a coordinated attack, pounding the little outpost with mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades and raking it from above with heavy machine-gun fire.
Groups of gunmen rushed the post's defensive wire. They simultaneously hit a smaller observation post nearby. At least 175 enemy gunmen were involved in the offensive; some accounts described a force twice that size.
The first classified summaries of the attack are a frightening record of a small unit caught at the juncture between old and new ways to fight the war. They depict American troops isolated and overwhelmed on enemy turf. The reports include excerpts of real-time computer messages to headquarters typed by soldiers in the outpost and accounts of pilots who attacked the insurgents from the air.
At first, the outpost reported that Keating and the observation post were "IN HEAVY CONTACT."
Typing in the casual familiarity of Internet chat, on a secure server, a soldier immediately asked that an "Air Tic Be Opened."
That was military jargon for shifting available close-air support to troops taking fire. The sense of urgency was clear; the reason chilling.
"We need it now," another soldier typed. "We have mortars pinned down and fire coming from everywhere."
The battle escalated from there. The outpost relayed details. "We are taking casiltys," the first soldier typed within minutes -- the first reports of wounded troops. He added: "GET SOMETHING UP!"
The consequences of decisions made in distant headquarters were now taking shape for young enlisted men. The enemy had the high ground. The outpost had the low ground. The troops were outnumbered, and starting to drop. Fire support was far away.
The arrival of attack helicopters, the outpost was told, would take time. "IT'S A 40 MINUTE FLIGHT."
The outpost asked about jets.
"We are taking fire from inside urmul village," it reported. "Our mortars are still pinned down unable to fire."
Jets were on the way. Soon a soldier was describing where aircraft should drop their ordnance. "Multiple enemies running through" the Afghan National Police station "and fire coming from the mosque," he typed.
He added, "The police station is shooting at us."
A Frantic Call for Help
Forty minutes into the fighting, he reported that the observation post was about to detonate its Claymore mines -- a sign that the attackers were almost at its walls. "They are that close to the wire," the soldier typed.
Eight minutes later he reported that the attackers were breaching Keating's last defensive ring. The post was at risk of falling, and having the fighting go hand-to-hand.
"Enemy in the wire at keating," he typed. "ENEMUY IN THE WIRE ENEMY IN THE WIRE!!!"
An entry soon after was a model of understatement: "We need support."
Insurgents entered the outpost. The American attack helicopters began to arrive, joining F-15s and an aircraft with jamming equipment to block the insurgents' two-way radios. One of the pilots' initial reports described, in laconic terms, flying through gantlets of fire, and occasionally finding a shooting gallery of insurgent targets.
Hellfire missiles were fired on the local mosque, from where soldiers on the ground said the insurgents were firing. The mosque was destroyed.
As bombs exploded above and around the base and helicopters made strafing runs, the soldiers consolidated in a building that was not burning and began to counterattack.
As the four-hour mark of the battle approached, a higher command noted that soldiers at the outpost reported that they "have retaken another bldg, can't push any further due to lack of manpower."
Outside the perimeter, the insurgents still fired.
At the nine-hour mark, the higher command summarized word from the ground: "Only one building left that is not on fire. Have consolidated all casualties at that location."
Late in the day, American reinforcements were shuttled by helicopter to nearby terrain. They bounded downhill toward the outpost. The fighting by then had stopped.
The outpost had held on, but barely. Eight soldiers were dead. Almost two dozen others had been wounded. Several Afghan soldiers and guards were killed or wounded, too.
The Americans evacuated their casualties. Over the next days they declared the outpost closed and departed -- so quickly that they did not carry out all of their stored ammunition.
The outpost's depot was promptly looted by the insurgents and bombed by American planes in an effort to destroy the lethal munitions left behind.
The outpost was opened in 2006 in the Kamdesh district of Nuristan Province, an area of mountain escarpments, thick forests and deep canyons with a population suspicious of outsiders. The outpost's troops were charged with finding allies among local residents and connecting them to the central government in Kabul, stopping illegal cross-border movement and deterring the insurgency.
But the outpost's fate, chronicled in unusually detailed glimpses of a base over nearly three years, illustrates many of the frustrations of the allied effort: low troop levels, unreliable Afghan partners and an insurgency that has grown in skill, determination and its ability to menace.
The outpost was small, isolated and exposed to high ground, one compound in a network of tiny firebases the American and Afghan governments built far from Afghanistan's cities. The area, near the border with Pakistan, was suspected of being an insurgent corridor.
Some early reports from the area were upbeat. Although it was obvious from the outset that there were so few troops that the outpost, like others of its kind, could barely defend its bunkers and patrol at the same time, much less disrupt a growing insurgency, the dispatches carried notes of cheerful confidence when they described the campaign for local hearts and minds.
"It was clear our meeting had produced tangible results," the outpost reported in December 2006, after the Americans distributed pencils, notebooks, erasers and pencil sharpeners in a nearby village, along with prayer rugs and winter gloves for children.
Later, after a larger handout of clothing, first-aid kits and school supplies to villagers, the report summarized the pitch to local residents: "Our friendship grows every day." It also noted that the "positive nonlethal effects" of the donations "stimulated a frank discussion on security issues."
The security situation was, in a word, bad. The road to the base was overlooked by high ground; all traffic was vulnerable to ambushes. Most of the movement of supplies and troops was done by helicopters, which were exposed to ground fire.
Transport helicopters were scarce. Attack helicopters, which might provide fire support if the outpost was attacked, were based at Jalalabad -- more than a 30-minute flight away.
Before long the optimistic reports about handouts of milk and soccer balls and the good will of the local residents gave way to a realization that insurgents controlled almost everything up to the outpost's gates. The Afghan forces held little promise: the Americans training them noted that local police chiefs complained that their officers were not being paid and that most of them "will not work, they will walk off the job." The reports describe how the insurgents gradually moved to cut off the outpost, physically and socially.Feb 17, 2007: Armed men in Afghan Army uniforms ambushed three Afghan trucks as they left a nearby base after delivering supplies. The drivers were allowed to live. But one had been wounded by shrapnel. The insurgents sliced off the others' ears.
April 29, 2007: Men who identified themselves as "We the Mujahedeen" posted so-called night letters on a mosque. The handwritten letters complained about American infidels and the "sold-out mullahs," contractors, police officers, soldiers and officials who worked with them. It listed the names of Afghans who worked as the outpost's security guards.
"These people are hated by God," the letter said, according to a translation in the intelligence summary. "Soon we will start our operations."
Insurgents Send a Message
The local villagers tore up the letters. The next day, six insurgents stopped a car owned by Fazal Ahad, the leader of a local council, or shura, that cooperated with the Americans on security issues, as he drove with other council members down a canyon road. The insurgents sent a brutal but measured message to the villagers.
"The fighters secured Fazal Ahad and told the others they could leave now and live, or follow them and die," said the military's report of the incident. After the released men fled, villagers reported hearing a gunshot. Fazal Ahad was dead.
The outposts in outer Nuristan Province had become defensive positions kept alive by helicopters that would typically fly only at night. Local residents were caught between sides. Development was idled. The reports compose a portrait in futility: the enemy was strong, the post's ranks were small and counterinsurgency efforts had no traction. The area was more treacherous, and less safe, than when the push into the canyons had begun.
In the summer of 2009, as President Obama explored options for continuing the war, Gen Stanley A McChrystal, then his new commander in Kabul, revisited the idea of dividing the limited available forces and distributing them in remote outposts. New thinking took hold: forces were to be concentrated where they could have the greatest effect.
Combat Outpost Keating, along with several other tiny firebases in eastern Afghanistan, was ordered to shut down. By fall, the United States was quietly withdrawing from part of its archipelago of little posts.
But before Combat Outpost Keating could be closed, the insurgents struck.
Early on Oct 3, they massed for a coordinated attack, pounding the little outpost with mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades and raking it from above with heavy machine-gun fire.
Groups of gunmen rushed the post's defensive wire. They simultaneously hit a smaller observation post nearby. At least 175 enemy gunmen were involved in the offensive; some accounts described a force twice that size.
The first classified summaries of the attack are a frightening record of a small unit caught at the juncture between old and new ways to fight the war. They depict American troops isolated and overwhelmed on enemy turf. The reports include excerpts of real-time computer messages to headquarters typed by soldiers in the outpost and accounts of pilots who attacked the insurgents from the air.
At first, the outpost reported that Keating and the observation post were "IN HEAVY CONTACT."
Typing in the casual familiarity of Internet chat, on a secure server, a soldier immediately asked that an "Air Tic Be Opened."
That was military jargon for shifting available close-air support to troops taking fire. The sense of urgency was clear; the reason chilling.
"We need it now," another soldier typed. "We have mortars pinned down and fire coming from everywhere."
The battle escalated from there. The outpost relayed details. "We are taking casiltys," the first soldier typed within minutes -- the first reports of wounded troops. He added: "GET SOMETHING UP!"
The consequences of decisions made in distant headquarters were now taking shape for young enlisted men. The enemy had the high ground. The outpost had the low ground. The troops were outnumbered, and starting to drop. Fire support was far away.
The arrival of attack helicopters, the outpost was told, would take time. "IT'S A 40 MINUTE FLIGHT."
The outpost asked about jets.
"We are taking fire from inside urmul village," it reported. "Our mortars are still pinned down unable to fire."
Jets were on the way. Soon a soldier was describing where aircraft should drop their ordnance. "Multiple enemies running through" the Afghan National Police station "and fire coming from the mosque," he typed.
He added, "The police station is shooting at us."
A Frantic Call for Help
Forty minutes into the fighting, he reported that the observation post was about to detonate its Claymore mines -- a sign that the attackers were almost at its walls. "They are that close to the wire," the soldier typed.
Eight minutes later he reported that the attackers were breaching Keating's last defensive ring. The post was at risk of falling, and having the fighting go hand-to-hand.
"Enemy in the wire at keating," he typed. "ENEMUY IN THE WIRE ENEMY IN THE WIRE!!!"
An entry soon after was a model of understatement: "We need support."
Insurgents entered the outpost. The American attack helicopters began to arrive, joining F-15s and an aircraft with jamming equipment to block the insurgents' two-way radios. One of the pilots' initial reports described, in laconic terms, flying through gantlets of fire, and occasionally finding a shooting gallery of insurgent targets.
Hellfire missiles were fired on the local mosque, from where soldiers on the ground said the insurgents were firing. The mosque was destroyed.
As bombs exploded above and around the base and helicopters made strafing runs, the soldiers consolidated in a building that was not burning and began to counterattack.
As the four-hour mark of the battle approached, a higher command noted that soldiers at the outpost reported that they "have retaken another bldg, can't push any further due to lack of manpower."
Outside the perimeter, the insurgents still fired.
At the nine-hour mark, the higher command summarized word from the ground: "Only one building left that is not on fire. Have consolidated all casualties at that location."
Late in the day, American reinforcements were shuttled by helicopter to nearby terrain. They bounded downhill toward the outpost. The fighting by then had stopped.
The outpost had held on, but barely. Eight soldiers were dead. Almost two dozen others had been wounded. Several Afghan soldiers and guards were killed or wounded, too.
The Americans evacuated their casualties. Over the next days they declared the outpost closed and departed -- so quickly that they did not carry out all of their stored ammunition.
The outpost's depot was promptly looted by the insurgents and bombed by American planes in an effort to destroy the lethal munitions left behind.
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