Colonel: unit is making progress
FORT DRUM — With two months left in a yearlong deployment to Wardak and Logar provinces in eastern Afghanistan, soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team still must "sprint to the finish," brigade commander Col. David B. Haight said via a video link Wednesday.
It was 11 a.m. at the brigade headquarters building on Fort Drum and 8:30 p.m. at Forward Operating Base Shank in Wardak province just south of Kabul. Col. Haight spoke from his office there, furnished like a cross between a summer camp lodge and an executive's suite with flags of the United States, the Army and the 10th Mountain Division hanging on plywood walls above a leather couch that seemed improbably plush in a war zone. Maps of the region hung on another wall.
The interview followed a recent two-day visit by 10th Mountain Division and Fort Drum commander Maj. Gen. James L. Terry; a sudden, de facto re-election of Afghan President Hamid Karzai after his challenger dropped out days before a runoff election; and a spate of media attention to the brigade.
Recent press reports included stories in the Times of London and USA Today about what two of the unit's chaplains said was widespread despair among soldiers.
In speaking of the need for the brigade to sprint to the end of its deployment, Col. Haight repeated Wednesday a message he sent directly to troops Oct. 12 in a letter aimed at boosting spirits, expressing gratitude and fostering a broader, motivating view of the unit's part in the war effort. Of the brigade's approximately 3,500 troops, combat-related incidents have claimed 24 lives since May.
"I never meant for that (letter) to go platinum in USA Today," Col. Haight said, adding he writes such letters to his soldiers regularly. "When the article came out, I said, 'Well, it's probably time for one of those anyway,' so I wrote that letter just to kind of let them know ... I know that this is tough. There was a reason we were sent here."
The commander also tempered the chaplains' assessment of the brigade's morale, calling it overall "very high."
"I'm not going to sugar coat this — there are some horrific things that happen in combat ... If you have an MRAP (mine resistant, ambush protected) vehicle and it's ambushed by two IEDs and it's destroyed and you have a guy, he may have been injured, he's being treated, and he's lost two of his best buddies — all in a millisecond — that's pretty tough. Not many Americans deal with loss like that. Who is he going to turn to? He's going to turn to the chaplain."
"Chaplains — they may speak to 100 percent of the battalion ... but each one of those guys, it is on his worst day," he added.
A major challenge to troop morale cited by the two chaplains is the difficult battle to win the hearts and minds of a frequently hostile Afghan populace.
That also cuts to the heart of an effective counterinsurgency fight, Col. Haight said. The dilemma of how to balance ongoing combat with close work with the Afghan people to build partnerships and loyalty hit home for the brigade with the tragic death of Sgt. Aaron M. Smith at the hands of an Afghan police officer. Another American soldier was also shot and killed in the attack in early October. The officer escaped.
"We haven't caught him yet; we caught some guys who may have been working with him. And he's really kind of out of our jurisdiction now; the Afghan police are trying to find him," Col. Haight said. It's unclear what spurred the attack: whether it represented planned enemy infiltration, enemy threats to the man's life or his family's, or an anomalous instance of mental illness.
The hiring of police officers is handled by Afghans, he said.
The incident "made for a few touchy days there where our guys are looking crosswise at the police and letting them know, 'Hey, look, we are going to protect ourselves and our equipment.'"
Press reports Wednesday morning brought news of another attack by Afghan police officers, this one on British forces working alongside them. Five soldiers were killed in the attack Tuesday.
Afghan police "are not a very good or trusted institution yet," Col. Haight said. "But they're a better-trusted institution than they were 10 months ago, and 10 months from now they'll be better than they are today. We are making progress."
Col. Haight said he is most proud of how the brigade entered two provinces neglected by U.S. troops that became safe havens for insurgents and began to put in place the infrastructure for continued stability.
"In the end," he said, "we've got it so that Wardak and Logar are places where the government can now start to work and thrive, and we can start getting some economic development occurring."
