Fighting In Afghanistan

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
FNC
May 12, 2008
Special Report With Brit Hume (FNC), 6:00 PM
BRIT HUME: U.S.-led forces killed a number of militants along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border over the weekend. And on an Islamic website today, al Qaeda said that one of its prominent leaders died in that fighting. The increase in violence is a reminder of the challenges faced by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, especially in one region where activity continues to foment just beyond the border.
Correspondent Dana Lewis has that story.
DANA LEWIS: The 101st Airborne Division is spinning up in eastern Afghanistan. On the grounds here for only a month, head of operations Brigadier Gen. Mark Milley takes us on an airborne tour of his forward operating bases. They dot the valleys and mountaintops, approaching the Pakistan border.
Eighty percent of the violence here occurs in 10 percent of the 14 provinces under his control. Milley describes the enemy his soldiers encounter a dozen or more times a day as, quote, “the most brutal, vicious, unremorseful enemy that any country has faced in recent memory.”
BRIG. GEN. MARK MILLEY [101st Airborne Division]: Willingness to murder innocent men, women and children that actually have nothing to do with the conflict, that are just there.
LEWIS: Soldiers on the ground here automatically receive combat patches because Afghanistan is without any question a combat zone. In top secret briefings, U.S. ground troops tell their boss how the Afghan army is getting stronger. They report reconstruction is on track. More and more each passing month, the Afghan government is making its presence felt in remote areas – all cornerstones of counterinsurgency operations.
MILLEY: The government clearly has a set of programs out there that in my opinion offer hope to the people of Afghanistan, and the enemy doesn’t offer anything except destruction and death and violence.
LEWIS: Step by step progress in eastern Afghanistan, but American commanders say they are under no illusion about what’s going on the other side of these mountains, on the other side of the Pakistan border. It is still being used as a launch pad, a training area for the insurgency. Some people call it “Talibanistan” or “al Qaedastan.”
A half dozen different groups, including the Taliban and al Qaeda, have what some American intelligence sources describe as virtual free reign in Pakistan’s tribal areas. New talk of a government agreement with tribal groups interpreted by U.S. commanders will mean that Pakistan army will give insurgents even more freedom to hit Afghanistan. Division commander Lt. Gen. (sic) Jeff Schlosser –
MAJ. GEN. JEFF SCHLOSSER [101st Airborne Division]: Historically, they have not proven to reduce the level of violence on the border.
LEWIS: On the contrary?
SCHLOSSER: On the contrary. Policy issue and the political issue – it’s beyond me, but it is a source of frustration.
LEWIS: For the first time, our camera is allowed into the JOC, or Joint Operation Center, at Bagram Air Base. Here, the entire eastern part of Afghanistan is commanded using intelligence, communications with soldiers in the field, and feeds of unmanned drones which give real-time, high-tech windows to the mountains and the enemy along the border. Daily violent incidents add up.
SCHLOSSER: Right now, we have about 17 to 20 on a daily basis, okay? And I think that will easily double.
LEWIS: Both generals predict an upswing in violence this year in eastern Afghanistan. Those Screaming Eagles combat patches will be hard earned, they say.
In Gardez, Afghanistan, Dana Lewis, Fox News.
 
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