The following is a fictitious report to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff
summarizing the War in Afghanistan. To date, the events described
have come to pass. No one knows if the future events described will occur.
We can only hope for the best.
JOINT CHIEF’S OF STAFF INTRODUCTION
The US entered the territory of Afghanistan in
the last days of September 2001 with the
mission of "rendering ineffective the Al Qaeda
terrorist organizations and their Taliban allies
controlling Afghanistan.” Thus, with this
extremely vague goal and limited military
planning time, the US peoples were cast into a
bloody war that would last for nine years, one
month and eighteen days. The war took the
lives of 55,000 US citizens and did not result in
the desired victory for the government.
At the same time, the unsatisfactory political
and military-strategic results of the war should,
in no way reflect adversely on the quality of the
US armed forces, especially in the area of
operational art and tactics. During the course of
the war, US operational art and tactics
developed under the particular conditions of
Afghanistan – the physical geography, the local
economy, the peoples, the history and the
internal and foreign affairs of the last decade.
In light of the defining military-political missions
and ongoing combat, the conduct of the
US-Taliban War can be divided into four phases.
PHASE 1 (October 2001 – December 2001)
This phase began with the entry of US forces
into Afghanistan, their stationing in garrisons,
and their final organization for securing bases
and various installations. During this phase, the
enemy deployed comparatively powerful forces
against the US forces. The US forces (Special
Forces and air assets) did not avoid direct
conflict with them. The US forces fighting
alongside Northern Alliance forces, took the
most difficult missions for themselves. The
Northern Alliance forces were poorly trained to
conduct independent actions and attacked only
after US bombardment guaranteed success in
the fulfillment of operational and tactical missions.
PHASE 2 (January 2002 – February 2007)
Active combat characterized this phase. US
forces undertook combat on a wide scale,
mainly employing only US forces, but also
conducting joint actions with units of the former
Northern Alliance and newly constituted Afghan
Army. By the start of this phase, the enemy,
having suffered heavy losses, was switching to
guerrilla tactics and moving into the mountains.
Principally, these tactics consisted of avoiding
combat with superior US forces; conducting
surprise action against small groups; and
refusing to fight conventional, positional warfare
while conducting widespread maneuver using
autonomous groups, and detachments. If the
Taliban were unable to avoid combat, they
reverted to close combat where it was difficult,
if not impossible, to use air strikes and artillery
fire against their dug-in firing positions. Under
these circumstances, the US forces attempted
to conduct “combat operations” with a clear
superiority in forces and means.
PHASE 3 (March 2007 – November 2008)
During this phase, the US conducted a
two-step conversion from primary active
combat to supporting reconstituted Afghan
Army forces with aviation, artillery and engineer
subunits. US airmobile, airborne and light
infantry forces became the reserves to raise the
morale and warrior spirit of the friendly Afghan
forces. US Special Forces continued to operate
to stop the supply of weapons and ammunition
from across the border. During this phase, US
authorities began withdrawing forces from the country.
PHASE 4 (December 2008 – December 2010)
This phase marked by US forces’ participation
in the Afghan government’s program of national
reconciliation. During this time, the US forces
conducted virtually no offensive actions and
went into combat only when attacked by the
Taliban or when supporting combat by Afghan
forces. During this phase, the US forces
prepared for their total withdrawal.
END
Interestingly, this “fictitious” account is quite
true. The original story is, of course, a summary
of the 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghan War. The
report above was gleaned, with no major
editing, from the original study prepared for the
General Staff of the Soviet Union and published
under the title “The Soviet-Afghan War: How a
Superpower Fought and Lost” (pages 12-14).
The only changes made (other than
grammatical) were as follows …
All dates were shifted 22 years and 11
months ahead. Soviet became US
Various unit and command designations
changed for appropriate country
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
(DRA) became Northern Alliance or
reconstituted Afghan Army Mujahideen
forces became Taliban forces
It is quite frightening to realize just how similar
our nation’s actions have been and appear to
be heading when compared this way. Phase I
was nearly identical, if not in details, then in
outcome, to the Soviet invasion in 1979 and
early 1980. The recently concluded “Operation
Anaconda” is a classic Phase 2 type operation.
Our efforts to reconstitute an Afghan national
army are the first steps toward Phase III.
One can only hope that this does not happen and
the rest of the story turns out to indeed be fiction.
D.A. Friedrichs