"We determined we were not going back, we were just gonna live in the village."  That decision made late in the night inside a mud-walled house compound by CPT Dennis Call and LTC Kenneth Mintz changed the battle against the Taliban in the Argendahb river valley west Khandahar city.

The Zahray District of Khandahar province and specifically the town of Sangasar north of the Argendahb river near where CPT Call's Soldiers operate is the spiritual homeland of the Taliban.  Mullah Omar had his first Mosque here and in 1994, after Omar and a few local madrassa students hanged a local strongman who raped two girls from the barrel of an old Soviet tank, formed the Taliban in his Sangasar mosque.  After the hanging other residents of the district and Khandahar city began requesting Omar and his band to dispense rough Islamic justice.

1-32 Infantry's area of operations is near the village of Nalgham where the area between the river and Highway 1 is the widest.  Open source map from the University of Texas.

In less than two years the Taliban grew from a few conservative mullahs and students to a military force backed by Pakistani intelligence and funded by the major opium drug lords and the trucking mafia.  The turning point for the Taliban came by a simple business deal.  After the Soviets left, the communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan regime fell and the Mujahedeen Commanders took over.  In many places local tribal based warlords and strongmen took over their areas pushing out what remained of the traditional Khan and Malik tribal leadership.  The warlords along Highway 1 which runs from Chamen on the Pakistan border all the way through Herat and then north into the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan charged extortionate tolls on cargo trucks or just plain hijacked the trucks.  This made sanctions busting into Iran, opium trafficking and all other forms of smuggling less profitable and terribly unpredictable.  The Taliban offered an alternative--security and a flat rate toll on Highway 1.  The Pakistani Interservices Intelligence Agency bought into the idea as did the drug lords and the trucking mafia.

It was the Taliban's first step down a slippery slope from a group of religious leaders dispensing harsh Islamic justice to a criminal enterprise with a thin Islamic veneer.  Maintaining that veneer is part of the reason the Taliban is fighting the US and Afghan government forces so hard in Zahray.

Sun Tzu, the Chinese military philosopher writes in the Art of War about desperate ground--ground that one side of a war must hold, that it cannot lose.  The Zahray district has no true strategic importance.  It is just grape, poppy and wheat fields bordered by Highway 1 on the north and the dry Argendahb river bed on the south.  Beyond the river is the vast Regestan desert.  

Raisin grapes, being harvested this time of year Zahray, grow in dense rows of dusty green vines.  In most of the world, grape vines grow in rows supported by wooden posts, rope and twine.  In Zahray, the vines are draped over four-foot tall mud walls.  Poppy grows pell mell and is a dry crackly brown this late after the harvest.  The villages are small, austere affairs; a rambling collection pale brown mud-brick walled compounds with what passes for a living area built on one side.  Twenty families, two small sparsely stocked shops and a rundown Mosque would be a big village in Zahray.  To the sensible, traditional, geographically oriented military mind there is nothing worth fighting over here except maybe a couple bridges over the sandy river bed.  To the mind of young madrassa student, it is worth dying for.  

What makes it desperate ground to the Taliban is a mosque the US military recently cleaned up and refurbished:  Mullah Omar's old Mosque.  Insurgency and counterinsurgency are physical battles with bullets and bombs and battles of perception.  It is a competition for, at a minimum, the passive support of the population and hopefully the active cooperation of the population.  The people will usually side with the strong horse.  If the Taliban totally lose Zahray, if they lose their spiritual homeland, the hit they take in public perception is more damaging than killing hundreds of fighters, which is why they are sending hundreds of fighters against the US Army battalion operating in Mullah Omar's old town.

A soldier pulls security along a wall enclosing a field of grape rows.

Since arriving in Afghanistan the Soldiers of Task Force Spartan, the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division whose motto is 'with your shield, or on it' has been locked in vicious combat against the Taliban.  The 1-32 Infantry 'Chosin' commanded by LTC Kennth Mintz is the battalion taking on the Taliban in their spiritual center and the main effort for the Task Force's drive to the river.  CPT Call's Combat Company, based deep in the farm fields near the river, is the battalion's main effort--the very tip of the Task Force Spartan spear.

For the first weeks of their deployment Combat Company patrolled what they called the killing fields--the grape, wheat and poppy fields near Nalgham.  The other three companies in the battalion did the same thing sending soldiers out day after day.  So far the battalion has taken more than 40 casualties mostly to IEDs.

"It is an absolute mine field out there," said LTC Mintz as we walked down route Montreal, a dusty road that is so littered with IEDs and booby traps Mintz is abandoning it and bringing in engineers with bulldozers to cut a new road through the fields.

The IEDs triggered by low metallic pressure plates barely detectable with a metal detector, remote radio control and command wires, are everywhere; in walls, trees, the middle of fields, grape rows, grape walls and the huts where grapes are dried to raisins.  The grape rows are the most deadly of the killing fields.  If soldier walks between the vine draped walls, they are canalized and easily shot or steered into an IED.  Or they can clamber over the walls in their heavy body armor, covering maybe 150 meters in half an hour and be fine targets for the Taliban's rifles.   There is literally no safe place to be in Nalgham.

“When we arrived in our sector I thought that we could generate OPTEMPO (operational tempo) against the enemy, and deny him freedom of movement and influence through consistent patrolling,” Mintz told me reciting almost text-book counterinsurgency and one General Petraeus’ rules for defeating an insurgency.  “I thought that we could establish rapport with the population, and keep the enemy on his heels through an active patrol schedule.  What I discovered is that the enemy is where we are not - that he essentially controls those areas that we are not patrolling, and that his influence is enduring.”

Mintz who had previous deployments in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq is the prototype of the modern infantry commander-- a graduate of West Point built like a college football tight end who speaks with precision and is to combat tactics what famed NFL coach Chuck Noll is football fundamentals.

“Our dismounted patrols consistently made direct fire contact from the villages themselves where we are limited with what weapon systems we can employ while we we’re moving through the enemy IED engagement area in the fields,” Mintz said.

The casualty rate was taking a toll on the ability of the platoons to patrol outside the wire and a psychological toll on the Soldiers.  By late April LTC Colonel Mintz was working hard on a tactical solution that mitigated the IED threat and let him take the fight to the Taliban.

"He directed us to come up with plans, proposals, operational schemes to keep his soldiers safe and accomplish the mission of defeating the Taliban.  One of the actions the commander wanted developed was village based," said MAJ Brian Ducote the plans and operations officer for 1-32.  In 2007 I was embedded with Ducote's infantry company in Baghdad.  He doesn't work the streets much now in 2011 "my job is to take the vision of the commander, his tactical sense of the battlefield and translate that into operations."  The commander, Mintz, is an officer who will put his men into the fight, a winning fight, knowing there will be losses, but Chosin wasn't winning much in the killing fields of Nalgham.

Mintz told me, “Over the course of the first two months we sustained heavy casualties from dismounted IEDs in the enemy's engagement area, and we were not able to deny the enemy his ability to move freely and operate.”

Afghan Army Officer, CPT Dennis Call, JD Johannes, LTC Kennth Mintz

In military terms the battalion was at a decision point--the physical place, time or set of conditions where a commander has to decide which course of action to take.  I sat in planning sessions with Ducote and the battalion staff and heard him mentor young officers on how your heart has to be with the soldiers.  "The commander's heart is with the Soldiers," he said of Mintz, "and when your heart is in the right place, everything flowing from it will be good."

The hearts of Combat Company's soldiers were dark on the night of April 28th as they sat in a mud-walled compound after a harrowing day in the killing fields.

Third platoon had been sent out on an ambush mission near the village of Sarquelia south of Combat Outpost Nalgham.  When crossing the old route Montreal an IED exploded killing one soldier and wounding two others.

Corporal Preston Dennis, one of the most well liked soldiers in Combat Company, was mortally wounded.  

"He was one of the best team leaders in the platoon," CPT call said as we talked under the shade of mulberry tree not far from route Montreal.  "The First Sergeant and I made the decision to go out there with the QRF (Quick Response Force) to get our arms around that Platoon so they could push through what just happened to a soldier everyone knew and liked."

After the medevac the platoon secured two mud walled house compounds.  A hasty search found IED making materials, homemade explosives, a pressure plate and triggering device.  CPT Call decided to hold the place for the night so an Explosive Ordinance Disposal team could gather evidence.  The Soldiers of third platoon took up positions and built hasty fortifications to secure the compounds.

CPT Call and the Company First Sergeant talked with the Platoon Sergeant and squad leaders.  "It was clear that we needed to take a slower, more deliberate and village based approach like LTC Mintz and I had been talking about a few days before."

Call was an enlisted man before completing college and earning his commission.  At 36, he is old for a Company Commander and previously served a tour of duty in Iraq.  "I had a platoon sized patrol base, PB Yabana, dead center in the city of Samarra."  This was in 2005-2006, before the Surge and massive shift in forces to smaller outposts across Iraq.  Living among the people, heavy fighting and dealing with a psychologically fragile platoon was nothing new for Call.

"I told them, 'Hey, we're gonna stay here for now.  We'll discuss what happens tomorrow when we get to that, but for now we'll secure this.'"

He discussed the situation over the radio with LTC Mintz and the platoon's non-commissioned officers.  Through the night the Soldier's work on fortifying the compound kept them busy and allowed the shock and raw emotions to cool.

"Initially third platoon didn't think they could mentally or emotionally handle it.  Over the night they saw that going back would make Dennis's death almost meaningless.  We'd be giving up what his blood had seized," Call said.  "As we talked about it their mood drastically changed, they saw that going back to the COP was almost like giving up."

LTC Mintz, who had no desire to send his men back through the killing fields, made the decision.  “I decided to take a village based approach, and take a "bite" into enemy influenced areas by establishing permanent strong points in villages.”

In one early attack on the strong point, the Soldiers of Combat killed seven Taliban fighters.  "The whole battalion A.O. was quiet for ten days after they lost seven men," Call said.  It is verification of just how few Taliban fighters are actually available.

US Soldiers still patrol outside the wire of the villages and maneuver through the fields, but without the long walk from the outpost to the village which has shifted the fight from IEDs to more small arms fire-fights.  “I was trying to find, fix, and finish the enemy with patrols before, now he was coming at my strong points from the same fields that we used to step on IEDs in,” Mintz said.

"We knew that Nalgham was a hub of enemy activity that we had to get after," said COL Patrick Frank, the commander of Task Force Spartan.  There were already platoon sized strong points over watching key roads and junctures, "but strong point Dennis, was the first one in a village.  That set of events that evening really put into place many of the subsequent things that have happened in Nalgham."

Command Sergeant Major James Carabello, JD Johannes, Colonel Patrick Frank. The paper hanging on the wall is a letter to the Taliban.

Counter insurgency is a competition for the people, not grape, wheat or poppy fields.  In the Argendahb valley, the people live in village clusters of 10 to 20 families.  To control the population, the Taliban has built up a mini-secret police state with informers in just about every village.  The informers just inform, outsiders come in to do the dirty work.  There are actually very few Taliban fighters so the network of informants and facilitators is crucial to machinery of mobile intimidation.

Because the full-time Taliban fighters don't live full-time in the village and move camouflaged by the population, clearing operations that do not establish a permanent presence are usually a waste of calories.  What works are the tactics I saw COL Frank use when I embedded with him in Baghdad during the 2007 troop surge. 

In the Ammal section of Baghdad, Frank's soldiers, slowly and methodically cleared out areas, built outposts, strong points, check points and laid down concrete barriers to control movement, "we cut a DMZ," Frank said.  Once a few blocks were sealed off and everyone who lived there enrolled in biometrics "we continued to push further and further sought until we were into the heart of Jaish al Mahdi."  The Spartan Brigade's operational theme of 'to the river' is a rural re-creation of the slow march through Ammal that will cut off the mobility of the enemy in the Argendahb leaving the informants and facilitators stranded to fend for themselves.

By living in the villages the soldiers of 1-32 have reversed the Taliban's game plan.

In most parts of Afghanistan it is US Soldiers getting shot at from behind the walls of a village, but in Nalgham the tables have been turned.  The Taliban is out in the open and the soldiers are behind the walls using their superior marksmanship skills and mortars to out-gun the Taliban.  

In an ironic twist, the soldiers of Combat company have turned the Taliban’s IED killing fields into a defensive barrier--crossing open terrain littered with old pressure plate IEDs to attack US Soldiers in a fixed position is almost always a losing proposition for the Taliban.  If they don’t get shot they are frequently blown up by their own mines.

The tactic of living in the villages was proven on another level as well.  The villagers began to accept their new well-armed-uniformed neighbors.  Combat company was slowly gaining the trust and passive support of population.  

With the village of Sarquelia locked down, Combat moved into the villages of Put Kelay and Seydan.

"We did a full out, high intensity combined arms breach," Call said of the move into Seydan.  "It was essentially a mine field.  They had kicked the populace out and had IEDs in the houses, the compounds, the fields.  There were no villagers at all."

Some houses were so riddled with bombs the EOD teams practically blew the houses up while destroying the bombs.

Seydan was also home of the Taliban's Tactical Operations center.  Call deliberately targeted it in the breach into Seydan.  "It was a fairly bold move," Call said of the operation, "but the people saw that we would target the Taliban directly, take something and keep it, that we were not leaving."

Gradually, the residents moved back to the villages. "They were inconvenienced by our presence.  As much as they griped and complained about getting searched coming in and out of the village they understood why were there and why we did it," Call said.

It was text book counter insurgency.  Live in the village, seal off the village, one way in, one way out, only the residents are allowed in and everyone is searched.  Now a few small shops are open again and children are out on the streets of Seydan.

Nearly everyday Call circulates through the villages talking to anyone and everyone about anything and everything to develop a rapport with them.  One of the things he always steered the conversation toward was the importance of the residents providing security ranging from armed resistance against the Taliban to tipping off the Afghan Army and Police stationed in the villages about Taliban presence.

"The local village elders started talking about it amongst themselves, and one day they just all showed up and said ‘we’re now the Weapons Shura,’" Call said.

Shai Wali, COL Patrick Frank and CPT Dennis Call.  Shai is a leader of the Weapons Shura.

Across Afghanistan there are pockets where the local men have taken up arms to protect their villages from the Taliban.  Most of these places, like Jaji Maidan in north east Khost province, are places where the tribal network is strong and the Taliban or other insurgent networks have not had much presence.  

The Nalgham Weapons Shura is headed by Haji Abdou Wali, a man the US officers acknowledge has mixed motives, but Afghanistan is not a country of black and white, it is a gray scale continuum.  Abdou Wali is for now a lighter shade of gray.

"His main effort now is to bring village and tribal leaders back to the area," Frank said.  Most of them live in Khandahar city.  "He chastises them.  He says women still live in the villages and are braver than the men."

A member of the Weapons Shura and JD Johannes.  It was JD's last mission Outside The Wire on this four-month trip.

Members of the Weapons Shura are a rag-tag bunch to be sure, just a few men with AKs who will occasionally man a check point.  The Sons of Iraq were also fairly sketchy looking in their infancy along the Euphrates river valley south of Ramadi in the Spring of 2007.  The real test of their viability will come after the Taliban deliberately attacks them.  If the Weapons Shura comes back out the next day, they are for real, if they fade away it will be another in the long list of disappointments in Afghanistan.  They are though the real solution.  The Taliban can obviously survive the US led coalition, they can survive the Afghan national security forces, but they cannot survive if the people rise up against them too.

In 2007 Frank said the knockout punch in the West Rashid area of Baghdad would be providing essential municipal services like water, sewer, garbage pick up, schools and hospitals.

COL Frank says the fight in the Argendahb is about defeating the Taliban and the confidence of the villagers that they too can beat the Taliban.  "And then will their leaders come back from Khandahar city?  Can we convince them to come back and lead their people?"

"We often think of the coin fight at a 360 fight, but in some places it can become linear, almost conventional.  In this area it has been a linear fight," Frank said.  The next moves for Task Force Spartan's march to the river are hardly touchy feely COIN, they are hard nosed, old fashioned counter insurgency that date back to late 18th century when the French General Lazare Hoche quelled the rebellion in the Vendee.  Frank is open about the broad outlines of what he will do next because he knows the Taliban cannot stop his soldiers.

"We're gonna build of a wall down there [on the river] so we'll have some traffic control in place between Zahray and Panjway.  That wall will allow pedestrian and vehicular traffic at the traditional crossing points," Frank said when I interviewed him on camera in his office.

It is text book COIN straight out of the field manual and in Iraq it all but strangled the ability of Al Qaida and Jaish al Mahdi to hide and move among the people.

"Kenny Mintz and the soldiers of 1-32 have been doing it here with route Montreal, he's establish 12 check points between COP Ahmed Khan and Nalgham and he's gonna continue to push that south until he's sitting on the Argendahb river."

I talked with the squad leaders in some of the small village strong points where the living is rough, the bottled water 100 degrees and the food MREs or local flat bread and raisin grapes about the strategy of living in the villages with their partners in the Afghan Army.

"We're winning.  We're taking the people away from the Taliban," one dusty and deeply tanned Staff Sergeant told me.

CPT Call says the night of April 28th was a watershed for Combat Company.  "They became extremely committed to staying.  The Company went from being almost devastated to excited about turning the fight in our favor."

The Task Force Spartan creed.

Winning, victory--words rarely associated with the war in Afghanistan are frequent among the Officers and Staff NCOs of Task Force Spartan.  There are banners hanging all over larger bases and even some COPs in Spartan territory the text of which mirrors a hand written poster that hung in COL Frank's operations center in Baghdad.

The original version of the poster.  I first saw it in May of 2007.

"When historians write about American actions in Afghanistan, they will focus on the 2001 invasion and our operations in 2011.  You are a part of History--Your Victory will be recorded."

The new version of the Victory sign.

If Task Force Spartan’s strategy continues to prove effective, the decision made by CPT Call and LTC Mintz the night of April 28th to hold the desperate ground CPL Preston Dennis gave his life for may be recorded in history as a turning point in the fight against the Taliban in the Argendahb river valley.

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