"
Soldiers who fought there have thought long and hard about the place, which marked them indelibly. Of more than a dozen present and former servicemen interviewed for this article, not one thought it was a mistake to close the outpost; the mistake was to have kept soldiers there for so long even after it was clear to those on the ground that not much was being won. Still, it is hard to let go.
“I never thought we should have been there,” said Maj. James Fussell, a former Army Special Forces officer who spent chunks of time in the Korangal Valley, both in 2004-5 and again in 2008-9. “So leaving there isn’t going to make me upset, but I know some of my colleagues may feel differently about that. There are elements of the military that fought there for whom it has become holy ground because of how many men were wounded and killed there.
Specialist Robert Soto, who spent a full 12 months at the Korangal Outpost with B Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry. “It’s tough, but we accept that it’s probably the right decision. But individually, we just agree that this strategy should have come out a long time ago and saved so many great soldiers’ lives.”
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http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/leaving-the-korangal-valley/?pagemode=print&scp=8&sq=afghanistan%20valley&st=cseClosing the Korangal Outpost after four years was a tacit admission that setting up a base in the isolated valley was a mistake.
Forty-two Americans died fighting in the Korangal Valley and hundreds were wounded, according to the military. Most died in the period from 2006 to 2009. Many Afghan soldiers died as well, and in larger numbers, since they had poorer equipment. In a war characterized by small, brutal battles, the Korangal had more than its share, and
its abandonment has left soldiers who fought there confronting confusion, anger and pain. “It hurts,” said Specialist Robert Soto of Company B, First Battalion, 26th Infantry, who spent 12 months in the valley from 2008 to 2009. “It hurts on a level that — three units from the Army, we all did what we did up there. And we all lost men. We all sacrificed. I was 18 years old when I got there. I really would not have expected to go through what we went through at that age.”
During the period Specialist Soto served there
half of his platoon was wounded or killed, according to the unit’s commanding officer. “It confuses me, why it took so long for them to realize that we weren’t making progress up there,” Specialist Soto said.
Korangal Outpost was the third area of eastern Afghanistan where combat outposts closed: In 2007 and 2008 two posts and a smaller satellite base were closed in the Waygal Valley of Nuristan Province; in 2009 two posts were closed in the Kamdesh region of Nuristan. Along with the main Korangal outpost, five satellite bases closed; at least two, Restrepo and Vimoto, were named for soldiers who died there.
Perched on a steep hillside sprinkled with gnarled trees, Korangal Outpost is little more than a dozen structures made of stone and wood and is heavily sandbagged. It is a primitive-looking place built into the hillside, like the nearby villages. Farther down the valley tower the deodar cedars that the Korangalis cut down to make their living.
The vulnerability of these combat outposts was hardly surprising. Though sparsely populated, Kunar and Nuristan Provinces have a long history of strident resistance to outsiders. Kunar was one of the first places to rise up against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, giving the area the label of “cradle of jihad.”
Much of the American mission in the last couple of years has been to try to get the reclusive people who live here to recognize the Afghan government and work with it. In some places that approach is reaping modest results. Not so in the Korangal. The Korangalis speak a language unrelated to Pashto or Dari, the two main Afghan tongues. They practice a conservative brand of Islam and have repeatedly rebuffed American offers of aid......
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The Korangal Outpost was opened to root out Taliban fighters hiding deep in the mountains, according to soldiers who fought there.
Even before then, it was apparent that the valley’s inhabitants were hostile to outsiders. In June 2005 a four-man Navy Seals team was ambushed on a ridge above the valley; three members were killed, and a helicopter sent to rescue them was shot down, killing eight more members of the Navy Seals and eight other servicemen. snip
“We’re not going to go deep into these valleys and bring them into the 21st century in a couple of months,” said Colonel George, who determined early on that keeping forces in the Korangal and in the Kamdesh region was not an effective way to use resources or win over local people.
Major Senti concurred. “Realistically no one needs to be there,” he said. “We’re not really overwatching anything other than safeguarding ourselves.”
The current company commander, Capt. Mark Moretti, Company B, Second Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, said he still hoped that his efforts to connect the Korangal elders with the district center in Nangalam would bear fruit, but other soldiers expressed skepticism.
Looking back, soldiers say the effort shows how choices made from a lack of understanding or consultation with local people can drive them into the arms of the insurgents.
“We had the best intentions, but when you don’t fully understand the culture” it is impossible to make the right choices, Major Fussell said. snip
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/world/asia/15outpost.html?scp=1&sq=afghanistan%20valley&st=cse"Since then, insurgents have used the cover of caves and trees to attack small American units patrolling the valley, a hotbed of Taliban support whose native tribes speak a distinct language -- Korengali -- and adhere to the austere Wahabi brand of Islam most prevalent in Saudi Arabia, and practiced by Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.
The area's 4,500 residents have long been hostile to central authority and outsiders, even those from other parts of Afghanistan. The pullout, conducted by helicopter and carried out in secret over the past week, frees up about 120 soldiers who had been largely confined to hilltop battlements consisting of plywood, sandbags and stones.
There was no immediate word on where they would be reassigned to. Officers said one base at the northern end of the 6-mile (10 kilometer)-long valley would remain staffed to block insurgent movements into the Afghan interior.
Taliban spokesmen could not immediately be reached for comment.
Deaths of U.S. troops in other remote corners of the country have also driven the push to reassign troops to population centers, with
eight Americans killed in an Oct. 3 gunbattle that broke out when hundreds of insurgents stormed a base in mountainous Nuristan province just north of Kunar. In 2008, U.S. and Afghan troops abandoned a remote outpost elsewhere in Nuristan after militants killed nine American soldiers in an assault. snip
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/14/world/AP-AS-Afghanistan.html?_r=1&scp=5&sq=afghanistan%20valley&st=csewhy are our brave troops being sacrificed for this insane occupation? how is this helping to de-radicalize populations?
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