Where Afghan War Was Transferred Long Ago

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/29/world/where-afghan-war-was-transferred-long-ago.html

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DANGAM, Afghanistan — The official conclusion of the international combat mission in Afghanistan arrived Sunday, but for the Afghans fighting in this remote border district the symbolic end to America’s 13-year war brought little change.

For the past two weeks they have been locked in a battle with insurgents who have overrun a part of the country so remote from Kabul, the capital, that the border of Pakistan is visible from its sole military base. There are no Americans here, and there have not been for a while now.

If the architects of the transition to the new international mission were looking for examples to inspire people attending the rather sedate transfer ceremony in Kabul, this distant area of Kunar Province might be one.

Coalition forces congregated in a Kabul gymnasium for the ceremony to herald the onset of the next phase of the Afghan operation, Resolute Support, during which 12,500 coalition troops will advise Afghan forces and continue targeting terrorist groups along with the periodic Taliban threat. But it was the efforts of Afghan forces in Dangam that seemed to underscore the different character of the new mission.

In a statement on Sunday, President Obama thanked American forces for their service and sacrifice in Afghanistan and noted that American troops, diplomats and aid workers had “helped the Afghan people reclaim their communities.” But he went on to say that it was time for Afghans to “take the lead for their own security.”

An array of Afghan security forces, including the army, three different branches of the police and the intelligence service, mingled on the main forward base here in the Dangam district, which until recently was nearly bereft of any government forces. On Sunday, they lobbed mortar shells and fired shots from an antiaircraft gun into a distant mountain, sending small tendrils of smoke and dust into the clear sky close to where they claimed the Taliban were positioned.

The Afghan forces were on their own, coordinating at least somewhat against an enemy that has inflicted record casualties against them this year. But the Afghans have their own way of operating. That point was made clear when a news conference organized at the forward base here was delayed because the antiaircraft gunner refused to stop firing.

Commanded by a superior officer to halt so the news conference could proceed, the soldier whispered contemptuously under his breath at the officer. The soldier’s friends were fighting in the area and had asked him to continue firing on the Taliban positions.

The Afghan commanders made much of the Taliban advance in Dangam, claiming that thousands of insurgent fighters had joined forces to wreak havoc on villagers who defied them. Their American counterparts, accustomed to hearing wild exaggerations invoked to summon air support and additional resources, searched the area with surveillance aircraft and found no sign of a large insurgent force.

In that way, the situation in Dangam was representative of the new phase of the war: the utter confusion about what is happening where, and why. Afghan officials claimed that the Taliban had committed acts of brutality, including beheadings and scorched-earth campaigns against helpless villagers. They said the Taliban were carrying out the first phase in their plan to overrun the surrounding districts, or were securing the area for a training camp.

“This war is fundamentally different from the war we’ve experienced over the past 13 years,” said Matthew Sherman, a senior coalition adviser. “It’s being fought through Afghan eyes by Afghans, and as a result there are different motives, different interpretations, different reasons and different abilities.”

The truth appeared to be this: Some anti-Taliban residents had decided to keep the insurgents from their villages. Their defiance prompted the Taliban to send a few hundred fighters into the area to launch an attack. Check posts set up by the villagers to safeguard the area were overrun. At least some houses were burned, residents and officials say, and nearly 20 people were killed, including members of the security forces.

“There are maybe 200 Taliban fighters, and they have fled the villages now and are moving back toward the border,” said Col. Wali Ahmadzai, the commander of the Second Brigade of the 201st Corps, which is in charge of Kunar.

Colonel Ahmadzai said the number of Afghan security forces far exceeded the number of Taliban fighters.

Perhaps the most telling element of the day was that the orchestration of a visit by journalists was handled entirely by Afghans. Until days ago, bases were under fire and the Afghan forces were struggling to contend with the mountainous terrain.

But by Sunday, the Afghan intelligence agency had managed to collect more than a dozen journalists and fly them in Afghan helicopters flown by Afghan pilots into an Afghan base in the Dangam district.

From there, the security forces provided an armed convoy to take the visitors to the district’s main forward operating base, where journalists were able to interview commanders and soldiers posing with heavy weaponry amid the breathtaking scenery of the mountains along the border with Pakistan.

The speeches were filled with florid prose about brave Afghan soldiers and their prowess in defeating the Taliban, a presentation that coalition advisers handling the transition ceremony might have been proud of. An hour later, the same pilots flew the journalists to Asadabad, the capital of Kunar, to interview the provincial governor as well as elders from the Dangam district. Afterward, the helicopters took everyone back to Kabul in time for the evening news.