Afghan Journal

U.S. troops walk a dangerous line in Arghandab

A member of the U.S. Army's explosive ordinance disposal unit scans the area around a burning M-ATV armored vehicle after it struck an improvised explosive device (IED) near Combat Outpost Nolen. Pic by Bob Strong, Reuters

The walk to besieged U.S. Combat Outpost Nolen is only 700 metres in a straight line, but for the soldiers who walk it every day it is an extraordinary feat of fitness and defeating their own fear in one of Afghanistan’s riskiest front lines.

The only road, a dusty farm track known as “Route Phillies”, is blanketed in roadside bombs designed to kill or maim soldiers, and occasional larger bombs make them dangerous too for even heavily armoured trucks.

To skirt that, troops opt instead for a zig-zagging obstacle course across grape fields separated by four metre-high mud walls, walked in full combat gear and in savage 45C heat.

Can NATO troops ever get their message across to Afghans?

michael georgy

Jun 16, 2010 05:00 UTC

A Canadian soldier chats with children in southern Afghanistan.Reuters/Denis Sinyakov

I was with Western forces the other day as they tried to persuade a  group of Afghan farmers to come to them for help if they saw  Taliban militants plant an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) or  intimidated them.

An Afghan mission that went wrong

Sanjeev Miglani

Oct 30, 2009 13:07 UTC

Reuters Kabul correspondent Jonathon Burch is currently on an embed with the U.S. Army’s Stryker brigade in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province. On October 27,  seven soldiers from a platoon of the Strykers, named after an eight-wheel armoured combat vehicle, and an interpreter were killed in a bomb attack on the outskirts of Kandahar city.

Jonathon was accompanying them at the time and here’s his story :

The mission was simple. Some 20 U.S. soldiers were to patrol a riverbed in the dead of night, camp until morning, and provide backup to Afghan troops and their Canadian mentors in a clearing operation in Chahar Bagh village, an insurgent hotbed on the outskirts of Kandahar City.