Mellie

We moved often at night, and felt perfectly safe. We used our headlights, as there was occasional Afghan local traffic and their headlights would wash out our nods.

Long story short, shooting caused more problems than it solved. We got in fights, but never with anyone who we were passing on the road. In some areas we waived traffic over, but that was usually on the one-lane roads. Most Afghans will pull over and slow down if not stop. We never saw fit to shoot at them, and it worked well for us. As time went on, we would just pick our way through even Kabul traffic rather than make a big to-do about it, and that worked well, too.

Keep it up, Tim!

Do you know anything about the reliability, truthfulness, and political inclination of the “Frontier Post” published in Peshawar? Available online.

Excellent article and greatly appreciated. I do have two questions.

You write that the Taliban “are not Al Queda” and they understand that the populace will absorb only so much abuse before they “tip.” I understand that Karzai’s government is failing miserably and the people are desperate for some measure of order even if it comes at a cost, e.g., the Taliban system, meaning strict Shariah. What is the evidence of restraint on the part of the Taliban which indicates that they in any fashion moderate their authoritarian and brutal behavior (relative terms, I understand) when they are in control of a region?

Secondly, what hope is there for any eventual success in the military effort when there seems to be so little secular influence in the country? That is, Afghans seem tribal, divided, largely uneducated (and both the educated and uneducated corrupt) but, above all, Islamic. Does not Islam militate against the establishment of any sort of polity which we would consider an adequate outcome for the costs of this war? How should the ISAF or the US deal with this?

The above may seem like more than two questions but there are really only two.

I hope you and your colleagues have a memorable and safe Christmas.

I was wondering, can the military set up some kind of “caution” signs a little further up the road in situations like this so people know to slow down? Or would this big way to big of a telegraph for Taliban or insurgents? You can’t stop a vehicle on a dime — especially if you are driving fast. Seemed like the drivers were noticing the security at about the same time the guy or gal was sending a warning shot down range.

In Iraq we move most of our convoys at night. See the Oct 23 2008 interview
with USMC Maj. Gen. John Kelly (commanding general, Multinational Forces-West) in which he said

“We started a share-the-road program where no longer would Iraqi traffic have to do anything particularly different when they came upon military convoys. That was a big change. Moved most of our convoys — I think something on the order of 95 percent of all military movements, administrative, logistics movements, and that includes the contract convoys — they all move late at night, certainly after 21:00 or 9:00 at night and they’re off the roads by 5:00 a.m. The average Iraqi, of course, is home in bed in at that particular point in time, so they don’t even see much traffic, much military activity in the province anymore.”

I’m not sure about the rest of Iraq but would imagine that they do likewise.

As such, I wonder; do the units in Iraq and Afghanistan exchange ideas? I fear they don’t. What insight do you have into this, Tim?

When Petraeus too over at MNF-Iraq, he and Odierno insisted that the units under their command coordinate better, exchange ideas, etc. Hopefully now that Petraeus is at CENTCOM we’ll see more of that between ISAF/OEF and MNF-Iraq.

Troops Ordered Not To Defend Themselves Against Suicide Bombers

You can bet the 15-6 investigation will mention any standard Force Protection measures the convoy commander failed to implement if anything bad happens.

Night movement whenever possible is a good idea.