The Pentagon may pull troops from Afghanistan in the next five years as part of ongoing negotiations with the Taliban, potentially putting an end to a conflict in Afghanistan that is dragging towards its 18th year. As we look back at a complex war and nation-building effort overseen by three U.S. presidents, and resulting in the deaths of 3,566 western coalition forces personnel, there are many important points to consider. The unique and encompassing perspectives we cannot forget are those of the veterans and current service members who bore the weight of battle and thus have an intimate understanding of the Taliban’s tactics and capabilities.
The service member and veterans I interviewed for this piece were not only American but also representatives from some of our closest coalition allies. All but one have something else in common: They fought in the hotly contested district of Sangin, in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province.
Located in the Pashtun Taliban’s heartland in southern Afghanistan, Sangin is home to several green zones which produce much of the opium the Taliban sell to fund their military effort. Because of the area’s strategic geographic location and the ties of senior Taliban to the area, the Taliban have focused mighty efforts on protecting Sangin, in particular by using deadly improvised explosive devices to impede coalition forces’ freedom of movement around the district.
Casualties in Sangin were correspondingly high. As British forces fought to maintain a hold over the area between 2006 and 2010, Sangin was responsible for 106 of the total 456 British casualties in Afghanistan.
U.S. Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment took over the battlespace from the British in October 2010 as part of President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan surge. Also known by their nickname, “Darkhorse,” the 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment lost 25 Marines, with an additional 184 Marines wounded during the course of their deployment. Of those wounded, 34 Marines “returned home as single, double, and triple amputees.”
During Darkhorse’s deployment, Marines began to gain momentum in the district, and by the time American forces retrograded and passed over control to Afghan National Security Forces in May 2014, Sangin was becalmed, though not wholly tamed.
By March 2017, however, the district which claimed the lives of so many in the coalition forces and ANSF fell back to the Taliban.
Chris Oldfield, a staff sergeant and Royal Engineer search adviser in the British Army, spent the summer of 2009 in Sangin. He was tasked with searching for IEDs and helping battle commanders identify where IEDs were likely to be hidden. During Oldfield’s deployment, the IED threat “was huge and constantly rising.” Though he and his fellow service members did their best to hold territory, they were never given “sufficient boots on the ground” to get the job done. Additionally, because of strict rules of engagement and a “shortage of suitable equipment,” Oldfield always felt as though his team were fighting “with one arm behind our backs.”
When he returned home from the war, Oldfield was angry. But with the passage of years, his bitterness has worn away. The Taliban, he says, “were simply an enemy we were to fight.” While he believes peace talks are the way forward, he feels his fellow veterans “will see these talks as yet another betrayal.” In Oldfield’s opinion, the real betrayal was perpetrated by politicians, who used servicemembers’ sacrifices to play a game they never cared to win.
Like Oldfield, Patrick Faram believes that most veterans, as well as the Taliban, will not like the idea of peace talks. However, having grown up in conflict-ridden Northern Ireland, he understands the value of coming to the table. “Sometimes,” he says, “you have to sit down with the butchers to have peace for future generations.”
Most veterans I interviewed share the opinion of Toby Woodbridge, who spent the summers of 2007 and 2009 in Sangin. “Despite the sacrifices of British, U.S., and other allied forces,” Woodbridge stated, “ultimately there isn’t a military solution to forward progress [in Afghanistan.]”
Cameron Murphy is one of several who believes in peace talks but considers that Afghanistan “needs more division to facilitate peace, not less.” Like many who have studied Afghanistan’s long history of failed centralized rule, Murphy believes “Afghanistan should not be and should never have been a unified country.” Though “cutting our losses is … necessary at this point,” Murphy elaborates that bringing the Taliban “into the fold” will have consequences, including possibly shattering the tenuous Northern Alliance. His suggestion is to “let the Taliban have the Pashtun areas,” but ensure that Afghanistan’s minority populations of “Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, and others [remain] together.”
Steve Rice, like Murphy, says a divided Afghanistan “pragmatically … makes sense,” because, for the various Afghan ethnic groups, “It’s always been tribe over nationhood.” Rice believes, however, that the UN and NATO may consider it a “strategic loss,” if Afghanistan does not remain united in the future.
Of those I interviewed, Mark Kavanaugh was the lone voice to take a harder line regarding a peace deal, which he considers “a hard thing to agree with, considering what the Taliban have done.” He takes particular issue with the Taliban’s “dirty fighting tactics,” and their use of the opium crop to maintain a stranglehold on areas like Sangin. Kavanaugh suggests eradicating the opium crop, a solution which has been considered and tossed out several times during the 17-year conflict, to eliminate the Taliban’s fundraising mechanism before allowing them to take part in governing Afghanistan.
The veterans of Sangin represent just a small cadre of the diverse coalition fighting forces which took on 34 Afghan provinces over a period of nearly two decades. Just as Afghans’ experiences vary from region to region, province to province, district to district, and season to season, the experiences of those who fought at various points and in different locations are likely to be unique.
Today, the war in Afghanistan is being continued by a generation of fighters 17 years removed from those who hit Afghan soil in 2001, fresh on the heels of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. They, however, are no less weary of the tired conflict.
Sergeant Brandon Schultz, who is currently on his first deployment to eastern Afghanistan’s Kabul province, also considers peace talks with the Taliban a positive step. Schultz, and many of his fellow service members, believe the conflict in Afghanistan has become a “never-ending cycle,” costing too much in terms of “lives and money.” It has been a mistake, he says, that we have stayed in the country this long, particularly when there are threats, like Islamic State Khorasan, which “can actually harm America and her people.”
The veterans and service members who offered input for this piece are united in their support for an end to the conflict in Afghanistan, though all lament the lives lost in pursuit of a military victory which could have been, but never was.
As diplomats consider a peace deal with an enemy which has wrought much carnage on American and coalition troops, as well as on their fellow Afghans, it is important they keep in mind the sacrifices made across generations during these long years of war.
Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance writer from the Detroit area. She is thankful to Sgt. Schultz, and to the administrators and members of the Sangin Valley Gun Club, for their input on this piece.
