The Battle of Kamdesh was fought in Afghanistan during the Afghan War. It is an occurrence in the ongoing NATO campaign of the Operation Enduring Freedom since the year 2001. It was one of the bloodiest battles the USA forces engaged in during this campaign against the Taliban insurgents. The Taliban insurgents, assisted by local Nuristan militias, attacked Kamdesh, which is an American combat outpost, located deep in the Nuristan tribal Areas. They carried out a well-coordinated attack on the outpost, leading to a breach and an overrun of the post. This paper, seeks to analyze why, when, how, and what were the resulting impact of the battle.
The battle happened on October 3, 2009 at Keating, an American combat outpost, near the Kamdesh town in Nuristan province. Nuristan province of Afghanistan is located in the eastern part of the country and is largely inhabited by the Nuristan communities. They exist in four major groups, but are largely subdivided on the basis of religion, clans, and personal beliefs. It is a population of hostile people who vigorously resist foreign aggression and so would not tolerate America’s presence in their land. Their involvement in the attack of the Keating command post was inevitable and must have provided a lot of support, logistics, planning, fire power and command (Kelly, 2011).
The insurgents had arrived in the neighboring villages of the camp deep in the night and started grouping together with the Nuristan militia men. Their first step involved evicting the civilians in the village on an impending attack on the Keating combat outpost. Following analysis showed that the villagers might not have moved out of the area during the attack. The attack started at dawn when the insurgent...
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...mp were awarded medals of Honor.
The Battle of Kamdesh was one of the bloodiest battles the USA forces engaged in during this campaign against the Taliban insurgents.
References
Books, L. (2010). Battles of the War in Afghanistan by Country. Washington: LLC Books. Retrieved November 05, 2010, from books.google.co.ke/books?isbn=1158057407
Kelly, D. M. (2011). The Kunar Adt and the Afghan Coin Fight. Bloomington: AuthorHouse. Retrieved November 05, 2010, from books.google.co.ke/books?isbn=1456753045
Tapper, J. (2012). The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor. New York: Little, Brown. Retrieved November 05, 2010, from books.google.co.ke/books?isbn=0316215856
Weiss, M., & Maurer, K. (2012). No, Way Out: A Story of Valor in the Mountains of Afghanistan. New York: Penguin Group US. Retrieved November 05, 2010, from books.google.co.ke/books?isbn=1101560762
The novel Prince of Afghanistan by Louis Nowra (2015) explores two Australian soldiers, Casey and Mark who are involved in a mission to rescue hostages captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan. However, due to the unfortunate death of Casey, being killed by a Taliban rocket, his dog, Prince is left behind with no carer, other than Mark. With the brutality of war, and the race against hunger, danger and time, they both must rely on each other for survival. As the story reflects upon Australians engagement with Asia, it conveys themes of friendship, trust and the nature of courage and heroism through the character, character development and the relationship among each other.
Operation ANACONDA was the last major stand-up battle between al Qaeda fighters and conventional Coalition military might in Afghanistan. It was a classic example of the need to change American war fighting strategy and doctrine to meet the demands of current conflicts. Operation ANACONDA was the name for the operation that took place between the 2nd and the 19th of March 2002 in the Shah-i-Kowt Valley. The operation is well documented as a major American and Coalition victory despite the challenges faced with gathering intelligence, command and control issues, initial planning flaws, and negative actions that took place both on the ground and in the air.
The battle I will be discussing is the battle of Tora Bora. The engagement took place in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan from December 12, 2001 to December 17, 2001. The units involved were from the CIA, numerous Special Forces groups, Pakistani soldiers and local anti-Taliban fighters. The mission given to the forces was to kill Osama bin Laden from the caves, leave the body with the Taliban and disrupt the Al Qaeda organization by removing their leader. The intent was to infiltrate the cave system, remove bin Laden and return home.
On December 24th 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. On that day began a war which wreaked incredible havoc and destruction on Afghanistan for 10 long years. The Soviets stormed in with thousands of troops at the request of the troubled Afghan Communist regime. The Russians believed this be a neat surgical military operation. They were wrong.(Boggs) The only resistance to the Soviet invasion were men known as the "mujahideen" known to many as freedom fighters. They are multinational; some even from America, doing everything in their power to repeal the Soviet horde. The Soviet invasion frightened neighboring countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, so they unofficially allied with the United States. The U.S. provided the weaponry, training, etc., Saudi Arabia recruited the fighters (mujahideen) which were sometimes based in Pakistan. They all agreed on the need for armed resistance against the Soviets. The U.S. decided to tap the religious vein of the rebels, creating a zealous religiously driven guerrilla organization; well armed and trained by CIA officers with the goal of returning Afghanistan to Islamic purity.
Combat Outpost Kahler was a small, remote outpost in northeast Afghanistan adjacent to the village of Wanat in the Nuristan Province, manned by 48 U.S soldiers and 24 Afghanistan National Army soldiers and their three U.S Marine Corp advisors. It was attacked on July 13, 2008 by a significantly larger number of Taliban insurgent forces that used stealth, camouflage, communications discipline, and rapid movement over extremely rough mountainous terrain to establish positions close to the COP’s perimeter. The insurgents used coordinated rocket propelled grenades, small arms and heavy machine gun fire, and mortar barrages to inflict heavy casualties on the outpost. Ultimately, nine U.S soldiers were killed and 27 U.S and four ANA soldiers were wounded. To understand why this battle occurred and how it could have been avoided one must understand a few other things.
During the course of the Soviet-Afghan war between 1979 and 1989, 1986 was the turning point for the Soviet Union. Soviet Union General Secretary Gorbachev was convinced that the Soviet effort at rebuilding Afghanistan was failing: the Afghanistan government, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA), made little progress in reaching out to the population, economic aid did not reach its destination, and the majority population supported Mujahideen (Matthews 2011). The Soviet Union felt the DRA should take a leading combat role against the Mujahideen (Graw and Jalali 2001). The DRA’s Ministry of Defense decided to destroy Zhawar, a logistic transfer base at Khost Province that was responsible for 60% of Mujahideen supply, and named Lieutenant General (LTG) Nabi Azimi as the overall commander for the Afghanistan forces (Yousaf and Adlom 1992). Through the six steps operation process, LTG Nabi Azimi’s mission command failure by his inability at visualizing solution process for the problems, directing units with achievable goals, assessing the operation environment with accurate information, and leading the unit physically from the front overwhelmed his success in understanding the operational environment and describing his intent to subordinates units.
Witte, Griff. "Afghanistan War (2001-present)." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
Successful Counterinsurgency (COIN) operations entail a thorough understanding of the character of war in question and the perspectives, objectives, strengths, and weaknesses of the enemy. This essay identifies David Galula’s two Laws of Counterinsurgency that most reflect US COIN strategy in Afghanistan. It will compare Galula’s theory of Counterinsurgency to the two basic COIN theories of “Hearts and Minds” and “Cost/Benefit”. Finally, a basic COIN theory will be identified that most resembles Galula’s theory.
The President Obama’s 2009 West Point Speech and General Petraeus’s Commander of International Security Assistance Force counterinsurgency guidance outlined the United States Afghanistan counterinsurgency strategy.
September 11, 2001, Osama Bin Laden decided to “wake the sleeping giant.” The US immediately sent SOF units and CIA officers to recon the area and meet with the Northern Alliance. The primary battle leading up to this operation was Tora Bora, which was absent of conventional forces. Up until this point, the war on terror was predominantly a Special Operations fight along with Air Force for overhead support.3 SOF and the Northern Alliance had already displaced Taliban forces out of many towns and villages in northern Afghanistan to gain control of key terrain. Key towns in northern Afghanistan including Taloqan, Konduz, Herat, and Mazar-e Sharif took only three weeks to clear.4 The SOF units were making huge impacts across the country calling in air strikes. At the same time the SOF units were diligently...
Endersby, A. (2011, February 20). Afghanistan, invasion of. Retrieved May 23, 2011, from International Debate Education Association: http://www.idebate.org/debatabase/topic_details.php?topicID=145
Operation Anaconda took place as a part of the War in Afghanistan in early March of 2002. It happened in the Shahikot valley of eastern Afghanistan. The purpose of the operation was to take out enemy Taliban and al Qaeda forces that were gathered in the area. U.S. forces built a complex plan to achieve this end state. They planned to use a “hammer and anvil” attack that used U.S. forces as well as friendly Afghani armed forces to quickly kill or capture the enemy. Intel told commanders that the enemy was likely to retreat as they have in the past when driven back by fierce opposition. They estimated would be a three day battle. While the end state of this battle was a United States victory, it wasn’t achieved by the preplanned means. Instead, this battle lasted 17 days long and served as a learning point to the U.S. military. The mistakes seen in this battle did not reappear when later missions took place in the invasion of Iraq in 2003. This short analysis will go further into depth of what happened during March 2-18 2002, using some of the principles of war, and will serve as learning point for future missions.
An iron fisted dictator that used internal security forces to maintain his grip on power by suppressing any and all dissent was replaced by a weak and corrupt pro-American government. The new government lacked any real form of legitimacy and violence in the country intensified as armed Shia and Sunni extremist groups and militias battled each other and NATO security forces across the country.[11] Terrorists attacks such as car bombings and attacks by armed gunmen increased, and many pundits and think tanks started to question the Coalition’s ability to properly run the occupation. The situation in Afghanistan was not much better. In 2001, when the United States invaded Afghanistan, most of the country was in the hands of the Taliban. There was a civil war going in the north, where an alliance of Tajik tribes along with a smaller number of Uzbeks opposed the Pashtun dominated Taliban. [12] The most populous regions of the country including the nation’s largest city, Kabul, were controlled by the Taliban who enforced Shariah Law and prevented women from getting an education. When our leaders spoke of our involvement in Afghanistan they spoke of human rights, democracy and access to education for all. But the situation in Afghanistan went from bad to worse as the initially defeated Taliban bounced back and took control of their traditional strongholds in the south. Following a
Tanner, Stephen. Afghanistan: a Military History from Alexander the Great to the War Against the Taliban. Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2009. E-book.
Acting on what they had learned from studying previous American tactics, Somali militiamen fired RPG-7 rockets at the three Black Hawks in the air. One rocket struck the tail rotor of one of the Black Hawks and sent the aircraft spinning towards the ground and into one of the houses below. The fuselage then rolled over into an adjacent alleyway and came to rest. As the other Black Hawk came to the scene, it began disembarking soldiers from its open cabin by rope. As it was hovering, it too came under fire and was also struck by an enemy RPG. The helicopter was damaged but managed to limp back to the safety of the American base.(Baxter,