A Battlefield Tourist

The First Step

Dec 20 at 7:07pm by David Tate

Getting ready for this embed will be relatively easy since I still have all my survival gear from Iraq, 2007.  The biggest hurdles come in other places, like juggling finances, profession and everything else needed to be a “family man”.

As I mentioned earlier, I was hoping to be in a position to take this part time job back to full time, but economically, it just would not be a prudent move at this time.  So like last time, I needed to hope for the blessings of others in order to make something happen.

People often ask how I do this, or do that, or whatever, and it is a hard question to answer because I am sure I do it my own, unique way (relatively speaking).

The Decision

I had put together a list of embeds, with month of interest, sometime last month.  The first embed was decided to be western Helmand Province for several reasons.  The two bigs ones are that Helmand is a very active province with Marines in it.  That tells me that Helmand is the tip of the spear.  Second, the mountains and snow in Kunar at this time of year is likely much more of a problem.

Strategic reasons include the coalition’s announced “winter offensive”, which should be underway at any given time.  I expect it to be much like Operation Mountain Storm (March 2004), but on a bigger and more offensive scale.  Because I expect it to be a big deal, the historic value of it to me, and Getty Images, makes the trip much more worth it (in regards to what can be lost).

My guess is that the Americans will work hard on the military initiative while other member countries, and the Afghans, will focus hard on the hearts and minds work.  The 3-4 month effort will culminate in the spring when as many as 30,000 extra Americans (plus several thousand other member country troops) should be close to being in place. 

History Lesson

In July 2004, immediately following Mountain Storm, the Americans launched Operation Lightning Resolve, which essentially just extended the work of Mountain Storm all the way into the election season as the 10th Mountain gave way to the 25 Infantry Division.  That is how Afghanistan is shaping up today.

I expect the same type of strategy in 2009, except the offensive initiative will be used more liberally and aggressively.  The Americans will be working hard to fully disrupt winter staging areas within Afghanistan, then bring in large amounts of troops to fill the security vacuum with the hopes of allowing the government army to spread as smoothly as possible into contested areas and beyond.

The only difference five years later is that there will be more than three times the troops in Afghanistan, more than seven years after this experiment in democracy began.