This wasn't supposed to happen here. U.S. forces and the people living around the massive Bagram Air Field got along, allegedly. They cooperated on all kinds of projects. Yet somehow, the Taliban managed to launch one of their biggest, most complex assaults of the year, on this seemingly-friendly ground. Now, one American contractor is dead and a dozen U.S. troops are wounded.
Taliban insurgents sporadically launch rocket attacks against the sprawling base, which was originally built by the Soviets during their war against the U.S.-backed mujahideen in the 1980s. Most of those attacks are ineffective, but this takes things to a new level. For starters, this is in relatively peaceful Parwan Province, not Afghanistan's violent south. And it points to a much more worrisome issue: The state of relations between the coalition and the local population.
This past summer, I spent some time with soldiers of the 82nd Division Special Troops Battalion, who helped patrol some of the surrounding communities as part of what the military calls "Bagram outreach." The coalition runs a variety of development schemes in the area, spending money to pave roads, refurbish schools and dig wells. It's not done out of altruism: The military wants people in local communities to tell them where insurgents can stash rockets or bomb-making materials, and spreading around development funds is part of the intel-collection process.
An example: I went on an operation in the village of Gojurkhel, which had been identified as a point of origin for a recent rocket attack. U.S. troops had first swept the village with the Afghan National Police and with working dogs; they then followed with a KLE ("key leader engagement") and HA ("humanitarian assistance") mission. The whole point was to deny sanctuary to insurgents in a settlement just outside the base, and hopefully win a few friends.
Some of the outreach is focused on ethnic Pashtun communities, which feel they have been left out of the local reconstruction bonanza. I tagged along with a U.S. company commander, who set up a KLE with elders in the village of Qaleh Dewana. As he explained the mission to me, Qaleh Dewana had been overlooked in the past by coalition patrols, and he wanted to build rapport in an community that is key to base security. (Air Force troops, incidentally, are taking a greater share of this mission: The video embedded here, shot by David Axe, features interviews with some of the Bagram security force.)
The fact, then, that the Taliban were able to stage a complex assault – instead of just propping up rockets and setting them off by timer – is troubling. It suggests that insurgents were able to move around the communities near Bagram, perhaps relying on local supporters.
Regardless of how the attack was staged, the base's relationship with the local population has sometimes been fraught. Back in 2005, a large riot broke out outside the gates after detention of six villagers by U.S. forces during operations in the neighboring province. The presence of a large detention facility – which the military is apparently expanding – may also be a sore point. Allegations of prisoner abuse there, including the brutal deaths of two detainees in 2002, probably haven't help burnish Bagram's reputation.
[VIDEO: David Axe/War Is Boring]
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