Stryker Brigade News

Michael Yon Dispatch

Dec-13-2009 » Filed Under: 5/2 SBCT

Yon has a new dispatch embedded with the 5/2 SBCT, "Arghandab & The Battle for Kandahar".

Afghan elections were scheduled for 20 August 2009. With the Canadians effectively neutralized by enemy resistance, the 5/2 Stryker Brigade combat team was tasked to operate in Arghandab to help facilitate voting. The Brigade Commander, Colonel Harry Tunnell, had little intel on the region. (Though I have found 5/2 soldiers reading and discussing everything they can find on the Soviet experience.) The enemy started by making small bombs but those were not effective against Strykers, and so they kept upping the charges to a thousand pounds or more. Enough to destroy any vehicle on the planet.

Early in the tour, two soldiers were killed about twenty minutes apart by IEDs. Their buddies “knew” that the soldiers had been killed, but the bodies could not be found. The U.S. military will practically stop the war to look for a missing soldier. Every available asset was sent to Arghandab and they gained huge intelligence and flooded the place for the first time. Remains were found and the men joined America’s honor roll. The Taliban suffered humiliation.

The enemy is not defeated, but our people were now operating among them. U.S. casualties continued during the next three months but there are indications that the enemy is today in disarray. The enemy became afraid to sleep indoors where they might be killed by an airstrike—or by U.S. soldiers, who have a tendency to burst in during periods of maximum REM sleep. The Taliban were terrorized and began sleeping in the orchards at night, rigging homes with explosives, which they arm at night. (I’ve heard similar reports from Pakistan. Pakistanis have said that drone strikes are demoralizing and terrorizing the Taliban, and though drone strikes are controversial, some Pakistanis want to see the strikes increased.)