Only a tangle of razor wire marks the entrance of a remote Afghan army checkpoint that might soon be shuttered as the government closes vulnerable outposts after years of losses to Taliban fighters and desertions.
The post in Wardak Province west of Kabul has been hit before, and its sagging blast walls and teetering sandbags make clear the vulnerability of the 13 troops living there for weeks on end.
Now, after years of brutal attacks and mass desertions from similar checkpoints, the Afghan government is acting on long-standing US requests to close them.
Photo: AFP
The aim is to shutter outposts where troops are often left like sitting ducks for Taliban attackers and consolidate them onto larger bases — several of which are under construction.
The plan is for troops to lead offensive missions, taking the fight to the Taliban instead of trying to survive day-to-day in often deplorable living conditions with little outside support.
The “checkpoint is a failed tactic,” Afghan Army General Dadan Lawang said recently at a US base in Paktia Province, south of Kabul.
About 50 percent of military casualties occur at checkpoints, he said, a grim number considering tens of thousands of Afghan troops have been killed or wounded since the end of 2014 — losses the massively depleted Afghan military can ill afford.
“We want to draw down all those checkpoints and establish strong bases now,” Lawang said.
The idea of closing checkpoints has been taboo in Afghan politics for years.
A tiny fort flying the black-red-and-green national flag sends a message that the government holds an area, and Afghan politics is built on a patchwork of alliances with regional power brokers, many of them in remote places.
“To maintain an alliance sufficient to remain in office ... the president of Afghanistan has often preferred to push troops out into locations that make no military sense, but are politically important,” said Stephen Biddle, a professor at Columbia University in New York who has written extensively about Afghanistan.
US Army Brigadier General Kevin Admiral, who heads the US military’s Task Force Southeast, said it was challenging to finally change the Afghan military’s view.
“They have a lot of political pressure at the local level with district governors and parliamentarians who have said this is our only visible representation of [the government] in these remote areas,” he said.
For US General Scott Miller, who leads NATO’s Afghanistan mission and the US war effort in the country, the closure of checkpoints is crucial for the Afghan military.
“They don’t lose people in [offensive] operations, they kill Taliban,” Miller told US military officials at a recent meeting. “You want to hear my [tactical] priorities? Talk about checkpoints.”
To hammer his message, Miller makes frequent trips across Afghanistan, bringing local military commanders to show them troops’ living conditions.
On a visit last week to the Wardak checkpoint, Miller said he wanted to open Afghan commanders’ eyes to the perilousness of such outposts.
The camp, where troops sleep in converted shipping containers with smashed windows, is a short distance from Highway 1 — a key route for sending goods and supplies into Kabul and around the country.
However, despite its strategic location, troops at the checkpoint and others like it often go without regular food or pay because of mismanagement and corruption.
On Miller’s visit, US snipers and soldiers secured the isolated facility’s perimeter and one Afghan soldier complained to his higher ups about not having been paid for three months.
Acting Afghan Minister of Defense Asadullah Khalid blamed a documentation issue and said it would be fixed.
His staff handed out several US$100 bills to soldiers from a wad that Khalid said was a gift for Eid al-Fitr, the festival marking the end of Ramadan.
“I want to make sure that everyone sitting on a checkpoint gets a paycheck and food,” Miller said. “It’s a leadership issue. These are things we take for granted.”
While critics agree Afghan checkpoints have little tactical value, they differ over whether withdrawing troops to bases will make them more willing to fight.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
RSS