U.S. troops in Afghanistan's Nuristan Jun 13 12.mp4

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• published: 13 Jun 2012
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U.S. troops call it the "dark side of the moon". Nuristan, the "land of light", has become a landscape of opportunity for Taliban and al Qaeda insurgents looking to tighten their grip on this unruly province, largely untouched by foreign or Afghan troops, in the twilight of NATO's Afghan war. Carrying supplies including mortars, ammunition and heavy machine guns - a company of U.S. soldiers visit a tiny Afghan army post near Kamdesh village overlooking icy peaks and plunging river valleys as hostile as they are breathtaking. With U.S. intelligence pointing to as many as 1,800 Taliban possibly massed here to attack, the soldiers wrestle to set up weapons over a square the size of a backyard, while Afghans soldiers point out distant fires where they believe the Taliban are positioned. Troops start the day firing mortars on those positions as Afghan soldiers are asked to test fire their weapons in case of an attack. American soldiers withdrew from Nuristan in 2010 after around 300 insurgents overran an isolated combat outpost near Kamdesh village on October 3, 2009, killing eight soldiers and wounding 22. The former U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, decided then to give up remote outposts and shift American troops to protect larger population centers. Major Jared Bordwell and his 1-12 infantry soldiers have returned to Kamdesh under a shift this year in NATO's strategic focus from the Taliban's southern heartlands to target supply routes and havens in the east, and also to back a former enemy turned warlord ally, former Hezb-e Islami insurgent strongman, Mawlawi Sadeq. They also coach Afghan soldiers based there in everything from weapons care to their own health. "We want to make sure, one they were set in here in the right position to help reinforce the AUP (Afghan Uniformed Police) up here and the Arbekai (local militia) in Kamdesh, as well as they are set up for success up here due to the fact that some of the challenges up here from terrain as well as from logistics. We just want to continue that partnership and make sure that whatever they do they are set up for success and it isn't a catastrophic failure," Bordwell says. It was through here, hard against Pakistan's border, that the Taliban shifted men and weapons for a suicide assault on Kabul's diplomatic and government quarter in April, circling beyond the reach of U.S. and Afghan positions to the south in neighbouring Kunar, coalition commanders say. But with Nuristan now a key Taliban staging post and haven, the province is an inaccessible but vital pocket for U.S. forces based next door in Kunar, with only a few hundred Afghan soldiers and police over an area of 5,800 square kms, half as big as Rhode Island. As many as 2,500 Taliban are thought to be in the area, controlling almost all districts, and around 300 are foreign, mostly Pakistanis or Chechens, Afghan commanders say. The Taliban hopes to use Nuristan as a safe refuge to export its operations, they say, moving eventually back down into Kunar to reassert control and push out from there. The U.S., Afghan forces and local officials hold regular meetings to discuss issues. "The security was really bad here before but with the ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces) and the help of ISAF security is better around Kamdesh village but we need more help to open the main road and help the people and support them with food and everything that they need because they don't have enough. The common people need more help," says the now chief commander of Hezb-e Islami Gul Mohammad Khan Baryaly. Some people have already left Kunar as refugees, moving to villages in Kunar and triggering what some call a "mini-humanitarian crisis". "They moved from here because of some pressure from the Taliban, because the village was surrounded by the Taliban so they moved to save their lives, they did not have any support or any food, nothing, so they moved down to Kunar Province to save the families," says Baryaly. "There are a lot of Taliban around. If the (U.S.) supports the Afghan government it will be very good in future. If not, it will be worse," says local Afghan militia member Mohammad Ghazi. In addition to the artillery fire, U.S. troops call air strikes on Taliban fighting positions, with Apache helicopter guns firing incendiary white phosphorous rockets into caves below thought to be hiding points for an insurgent heavy machine gun. Only weeks ago a U.S. bomber dropped a 2,000 pound bomb on another ridge where Taliban fighters were hitting the Afghan army post and Kamdesh below with an anti-aircraft cannon. But U.S. officials say rather than killing the insurgents, the firing is more of a deterrent to let the Taliban know their weapons can reach them.