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Editor's note: These Marines' tour was one of the most brutal of the entire war. In its first three weeks in Afghanistan's Sangin district, the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines got into more than 100 firefights, and sustained 62 casualties. The insurgents managed to negate the Marines' night-vision gear, and rendered their traditional close-combat tactics useless. Things got so bad, the 3/5's superior officers even suggested pulling their troops back.
That didn't happen. Instead, the 3/5 went after the militants, hard. They went on the offensive constantly. They leveled booby-trapped compounds without apology. They didn't bother with school-building until the insurgents were back on their heels. Nor did they mess with the poppy growers; the Marines had more than their fair share of enemies.
When the 3/5 came home, they told counterinsurgency historian Mark Moyar all about their deeply unconventional approach to what was already an unconventional war. An excerpt from Moyar's 74-page after action report follows.
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On Oct. 13, the day 3/5 took control of Sangin, the first Marine patrol to leave the wire came under fire 150 feet from the perimeter. One member of this patrol was shot dead. Within the next four days, another eight Marines died.
The extent of the resistance encountered in Sangin surprised many of the Marines. It was stronger than any Taliban resistance that Marines had witnessed previously in Afghanistan. During prior major Marine operations in Helmand, the insurgents had fought toe-to-toe for a few days and then relied primarily on IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and small hit-and-run ambushes. The insurgents in Sangin kept attacking in large numbers, and regrouped for counter-attacks after the initial volleys instead of dispersing.
To maintain morale, officers and NCOs kept their Marines focused on the need to defeat the enemy and avenge the fallen, and kept them active so that they did not have time to mope. "You really can't prepare a Marine to lose his good buddy or see another one of his buddies with both his legs blown off," said Captain Chris Esrey, commander of India company. "The best way to overcome that is to get right back out on a patrol the next day because it doesn't happen every time you go out."
Shock of the New
The insurgents were similarly surprised by the behavior of their new enemies. In the face of numerous and often gruesome casualties, Marine officers refused to reduce the frequency of patrols into dangerous areas or decrease the fraction of patrols conducted on foot, which remained constant at ninety-five percent to the end of the year. When confronted by insurgent fighters, the Marines did not fire warning shots or back away in order to avoid harming civilians or insurgents, but instead kept fighting until the enemy was destroyed or driven off.
The insurgents were also caught off guard by the willingness of the Marines to go on the offensive in areas that coalition forces had previously avoided. When the insurgent forces attempted to mass in areas outside the "security bubble" for attacks into the bubble, the Marines arrived in force and inflicted heavy losses. After a few such incidents, the insurgents stopped assembling in large numbers, which reduced their ability to ambush the Marines and intimidate the population.
The Marines initially patrolled in squad size, but found that one squad was not enough because the enemy was attacking in larger numbers than anticipated. They needed more firepower, and they needed more men to continue the patrol after sustaining initial casualties, for it took close to a squad to evacuate a single casualty. Consequently, they started using two squads for all their patrols. This shift would cut the number of patrols in half, a huge hindrance in a campaign that depended upon intensive patrolling, but it would not prove an insurmountable obstacle.
The magnitude of the IED threat forced the Marines to patrol in a fundamentally different way than infantrymen patrol in most counterinsurgencies. As they had learned from Marines with prior experience in Helmand, the Taliban prepared ambush zones by emplacing IEDs in all the places where soldiers were likely to move when under fire. As a consequence, the Marines had to be much more cautious in employing traditional fire-and-maneuver tactics. They had to maneuver more slowly, or not at all.
One observer commented, "All the conventional Marine Corps tactics of enveloping and closing with the enemy are impossible in this environment. Your only choice is to fight from current location due to threat of IEDs." Accuracy and potency of firepower became paramount. So did the ability to make creative use of cover, since the best cover was most often rigged with IEDs.
They Own the Night
The prevalence of IEDs also kept the Marines from patrolling at night. The Marines’ night vision equipment did not provide adequate visibility to spot many of the telltale signs of IEDs, so night patrolling would have entailed many additional casualties, which could not be worth the benefits gained since the insurgents themselves seldom operated at night. Despite enormous U.S. expenditures on counter-IED technology, detection devices accounted for just ten percent of the IEDs that 3/5 detected and disarmed during its time in Sangin. The insurgents had devised methods of constructing IEDs that even the most advanced devices could not detect. The Marines identified the other ninety percent by visual means—by spotting small clues that revealed a device or served as a warning sign to civilians to stay away. The ability of the Marines to see these IEDs was greatly enhanced by predeployment training programs that bolstered their situational awareness, particularly the Combat Hunter program.
The Marines used explosives to clear some of the areas most thickly infested with IEDs. They took care to ensure that no civilians were nearby before detonating the charges, but the damage to civilian property was significant, considerably more significant than what most adherents of "population-centric" counterinsurgency would have condoned. To clear roads that were pocked with IEDs, they detonated 350-foot line charges, each foot of which was laced with five pounds of C4 plastic explosive. The explosions from the line charges usually blew out the windows of nearby houses. In certain cases, the Marines destroyed abandoned roadside compounds that insurgents were using to implant IEDs, or blasted walls down to gain access to compounds when the entrances were rigged with IEDs. One company commander destroyed a mosque that had wires running to it.
The Marines paid compensation for most of the damage, or rebuilt the structures themselves, though they did back a new policy announced by the district governor that no compensation would be paid for damage to
property whose owners were found to have abetted the insurgents. In defense of the battalion's actions, Morris told the Associated Press, "You can be nice about it and try to leave everything the way it is and allow the Taliban to own it, or you can change some things and actually plant the Afghan government flag out there and provide legitimate security."
In addition, civilian casualty and damage claims were paid only when they could be verified firsthand. The Marines ended the practice of paying compensation to anyone who claimed civilian casualties or property damage, insisting that claimants bring them concrete evidence or direct them to it. Among the many advantages conferred by the Marine willingness to operate throughout the district was the ability to visit all sites of alleged civilian casualties and property damage. As the Marines quickly discovered, greed and Taliban pressure had spawned numerous bogus claims. The ability to disprove these claims undercut the Taliban’s propaganda and Karzai’s complaints, and ended the flow of compensation money to fraudulent claimants who were in cahoots with the enemy.
Retreat?
Because of the high rate at which 3/5 was suffering casualties, higher headquarters encouraged General Mills to withdraw the battalion from Sangin for a period of physical and psychological recuperation. Mills and Morris both rejected the proposal. The Marines of 3/5 said that they wanted to finish what they had started, and Mills and Morris thought that pulling them out in the middle of the struggle would be the most demoralizing action possible.
In January 2011, local insurgent commanders sought permission from the Taliban leadership in Pakistan to pull out of Sangin. Permission was denied. The Taliban high command decided instead to inject commanders and fighters who were natives of Pakistan or other parts of Afghanistan. Because of either a lack of will or lack of capability, however, the new arrivals did not engage the Marines with the intensity witnessed during the battalion’s first months. There was a sharp drop in insurgent attacks. For the remainder of the Marine battalion’s tour, the insurgents relied mainly on IEDs to hinder and hurt the Marines and their Afghan partners.
The influx of outside elements into the insurgent leadership was one of several factors responsible for the decline in popular support for Sangin’s insurgents that became evident in January. Others included the heavy costs of war to families that supported the insurgents, the repeated insurgent military defeats, and a shift in U.S. policy pronouncements from emphasis on a 2011 drawdown to a 2014 transition. The allure of foreign development aid for those supporting the government also exerted influence, which was intensified when Governor Mangal brought some of Sangin’s elders into other parts of Helmand to see what they were missing.
The most dramatic change in allegiance came from the Alikozai tribe, which had borne the brunt of the losses during the fighting in the Upper Sangin Valley. At the beginning of January, following negotiations with Morris and the Afghan district and provincial governors, leading figures of the Alikozai reached a peace agreement with the government. Under the terms, the Alikozai would stop fighting the Marines and the Afghan security forces, hand over IEDs and foreign fighters, provide representatives for a district governance council and keep open the road to Kajaki. In return, the Americans would provide development aid and ensure that Afghans participate in any home searches involving the Marines. The Alikozai did not have to turn over their weapons, and they vowed to return to violence if the Americans and the government did not hold up their end of the bargain.
It is also worth noting that reconciliation had occurred despite the lack of major progress in governance or development. The insistence of the Marines on reciprocity had halted most development projects. A handful of new development projects had been started in the town, but when the insurgents killed a few of the Afghan workers, the remainder quit. Efforts to develop governance capacity also accomplished little during the first months of the deployment.
The improved security situation permitted the district governor to fill twelve civil service vacancies. Educational requirements for these positions had to be lowered when it became clear that the Afghans with the preferred educational levels all lived in Lashkar Gah, Kabul or other cities and had no interest in working in a place like Sangin. Local recruitment, however, brought the valuable advantages of local knowledge and personal connections. The district governor convinced representatives from Sangin’s main tribes to participate in a 25-man district governance council that had a significant voice in the running of the district’s affairs.
The spring saw the first Marine recruitment of local self-defense forces, through the Interim Security for Critical Infrastructure (ISCI) program. The district police chief used CERP [Commanders' Emergency Response Program] funds to pay ISCI members for nonmilitary work, and in return they provided information and armed resistance to Taliban intrusion. Many Sangin residents said they wanted to participate in the program, but most of them demanded weapons, and, when the Marines said that ISCI recruits needed to use their own weapons, declared implausibly that they had none. As a consequence, only six men entered the program initially.
The big question was how strong and active the insurgents would be in May when the poppy season ended. The battalion that replaced 3/5 in April, the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, continued counterinsurgency operations along the same lines as those of 3/5. April and May were quiet in Sangin, with the Marines sustaining only a handful of casualties. The gains that 3/5 achieved in security, governance and development are holding as of this writing, in late June 2011. All of the major tribes in Sangin are now participating in governmental programs that promote local governance. Rapport between Afghan security forces and the population is much improved; even those individuals with lingering insurgent sympathies are showing the Afghan forces respect, by directing their acts of violence at the U.S. Marines instead of at Afghan soldiers and policemen.
What Worked
A. Military successes stimulated reconciliation and population mobilization. The population-centric COIN that preceded the Marines had relied on political outreach and economic development to convince Sangin’s residents to abandon the insurgency and join the government side. Military force was minimized based on the theory that violence would create "accidental guerrillas," kill off potential negotiating partners and alienate the insurgents so much that they would never consider reconciling with the government. This approach accomplished little. In fact, the counterinsurgents’ aversion to the use of force and their eagerness to negotiate most likely discouraged a political compromise because they suggested that the insurgents could win a complete victory by waiting the foreigners out. As it turned out, the Marines made much greater progress in reconciliation and population mobilization because their military successes raised the costs in lives and property that communities and families paid for supporting the insurgency and convinced the opportunists that the coalition would prevail.
B. The Marines put stabilization ahead of transition. Preceding military commanders and civilian officials had sought to facilitate transition by assigning greater responsibility to Afghans. The Marines concluded that the enemy was too strong and the Afghan government too weak to permit a successful transition under these conditions. Instead, they decided to take the lead in security operations in order to set the conditions for ultimate success. By reducing violence and permitting government officials freedom of movement, they put the government on a viable path to sustainable transition. This shift in approach mirrored the shift in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, when initial efforts to transition responsibility to Iraqis failed so spectacularly that the Americans chose to retake the lead in security until the situation stabilized. In both instances, a de-emphasis on transition actually improved the prospects for transition and shortened the amount of time required for a successful handover.
C. Development aid was provided only when coalition personnel could visit the projects. The Marines stopped the funding of development projects in areas that could not be visited. This shift ensured that coalition personnel could verify firsthand whether projects were proceeding as intended, and disabused Afghans of the notion that the coalition was a collection of suckers. The Marine willingness to operate throughout the district greatly facilitated on-site inspections.
D. Counternarcotics took a back seat to stabilization. The Marines decided that they had too many enemies already to engage in large-scale counternarcotics activities. Much of the population depended on the opium industry for its livelihood, and could be expected to cling to insurgency more strongly if that livelihood were at stake. Counternarcotics could wait until the government had enough personnel and adequate security to undertake robust counternarcotics measures. Marine COIN operations did, however, have a large impact on the narcotics trade because many of the insurgents they captured or killed had been involved in it. Nevertheless, the narcotics industry continues to thrive in Sangin, and it now poses a vexing problem across Helmand, for the power brokers required for reconciliation, and at some level the officials of the Afghan government, are deeply invested in it will strongly resist actions that would harm the narcotics business.
Update 8:43 am 7/13/11: Moyar, it should be noted, has previously served as a consultant to the International Security Assistance Force, NATO's military command in Afghanistan. Moyar's employer, Orbis Operations, is also "continuously engaged in work for ISAF," he says.
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