July 15, 2008
Taliban Breached NATO Base in Deadly Clash
By CARLOTTA GALL and ERIC SCHMITT
KABUL, Afghanistan -- The Taliban insurgents who attacked a remote American-run outpost near the Pakistan border on Sunday numbered nearly 200 fighters, almost three times the size of the allied force, and some breached the NATO compound in a coordinated assault that took the defenders by surprise, Western officials said Monday.
The attackers were driven back in a pitched four-hour battle, and they appeared to suffer scores of dead and wounded of their own, but the toll they inflicted was sobering. The base and a nearby observation post were held by just 45 American troops and 25 Afghan soldiers, two senior allied officials said, asking for anonymity while an investigation was under way.
With nine Americans dead and at least 15 injured, that means that one in five of the American defenders was killed and nearly half the remainder were wounded. Four Afghan soldiers were also wounded.
American and Afghan forces started building the makeshift base just last week, and its defenses were not fully in place, one of the senior allied officials said.
In some places, troops were using their vehicles as barriers against insurgents.
The militants apparently detected the vulnerability and moved quickly to exploit it in a predawn assault in which they attacked from two directions, American officials said.
It was the first time insurgents had partly breached any of the three dozen outposts that American and Afghan forces operate jointly across the country, according to a Western official who insisted on anonymity in providing details of the operation.
The surprise attack underscored the vulnerability of American forces in Afghanistan, which are increasingly stretched thin as they are dispatched to far-flung and often isolated mountainous outposts with their Afghan allies. The United States now has about 32,000 troops in Afghanistan, about one-fifth the number in Iraq, even though Afghanistan is half-again as large as Iraq.
American commanders and NATO military officials said the assault had also reflected boldness among insurgents who had benefited from new bases in neighboring Pakistan.
It underscored the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, where the number of war casualties has jumped this year and where American commanders have said repeatedly that their force is too small.
The fact that the base, on the western side of Kunar Province, was staffed by just 70 soldiers was first reported Monday by The Los Angeles Times. The death toll amounted to the worst single loss for the American military in Afghanistan since June 2005 and was one of the worst since the Taliban and their Qaeda associates were routed in late 2001.
American and Afghan soldiers inside the base were hit by flying fragments from bullets, grenades and mortar shells that insurgents fired from houses, shops and a mosque in a village within a few hundred yards of the base, several officials said.
At the lightly fortified observation post nearby, American soldiers came under heavy fire from militants streaming through farmland under cover of darkness. Most of the American casualties took place there, a senior American military official said.
American warplanes, attack helicopters and long-range artillery were urgently summoned to help repel the militants.
But the insurgents made it so far that a few of their corpses were found inside the base's earthen barriers, and others were lying around it, Tamim Nuristani, a former governor in the region, said after talking to officials in the district.
The attack was unusually bold. Taliban and other militants in Afghanistan rarely attack better-armed allied forces head on, preferring suicide bombs and hit-and-run ambushes against foot patrols and convoys. But they have made occasional attempts to overrun lightly staffed or otherwise vulnerable outposts.
"Quite clearly they wanted to overrun the outpost," the Western official said of the insurgents. "It was a well-planned surprise attack."
The United States and Afghanistan have been establishing dozens of military outposts, often in remote areas controlled by the Taliban or their allies. "We're looking at places to stop the flow of insurgents and establish relations with the local tribes," a senior American military official said.
Allied and American officials said the attack began at 4:30 a.m. Sunday. Fighters who had infiltrated the hamlet of Wanat overnight and ordered the villagers to leave opened fire on the outpost from the west and southwest.
At roughly the same time, American officials said, another group began the second prong of attack, firing on the observation post from the east. Some fought through to the main outpost a few hundred yards farther.
American ground commanders immediately called in artillery and airstrikes from a B-1 bomber, as well as A-10 and F-15E attack planes. Apache helicopter gunships and a remotely piloted Predator aircraft fired Hellfire missiles at the insurgents, military officials said.
Many of the village houses were damaged in the strikes, but there were no civilian casualties because the villagers had left, Mr. Nuristani said.
Insurgents have been present in the area for months, including Pakistani militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group that was originally formed to fight in Kashmir, he said.
The American and Afghan army soldiers had moved into the base at Wanat just days before, after abandoning another base higher up a side valley where they had come under repeated attack from insurgents.
"But this even surprised me that so many Taliban were gathered in one place," Mr. Nuristani said.
He said some local people might have joined the militants since a group of civilians were killed in American airstrikes on July 4 in the same area. "This made the people angry," he said. "It was the same area. The airstrikes happened maybe one kilometer away from the base."
Mr. Nuristani strongly criticized those airstrikes, saying that 22 civilians had been killed. The provincial police chief confirmed that at least 17 civilians had been killed. The American military said planes had struck vehicles of insurgents but it has announced an investigation. Days after his comments, Mr. Nuristani was removed from his post.
He said that the security in the region of Nuristan and northern Kunar Provinces was precarious and that insurgents had freedom of movement from the border with Pakistan through 60 miles of Nuristan to the base at Wanat. "They can bring men, weapons and cars," he said.
Local people and police have also battled insurgents in Barg-e-Matal, in another part of Nuristan, and complained that they were not getting enough help from the central government.
NATO officials gave little further detail of the attack on Monday. "It has been quiet overnight," said Capt. Mike Finney, a spokesman for the NATO force in Kabul. "The insurgents had been pushed away."
Carlotta Gall reported from Kabul, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Abdul Waheed Wafa contributed reporting from Kabul.