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View Full Version : Battle that changed air strike rules



bobdina
07-02-2009, 07:30 PM
By Trista Talton
ttalton@militarytimes.com
Upwards of 300 Taliban fighters descended on Gerani village May 4, set on terrorizing the local civilians as they had in the past.
Afghan National Security Forces operating in central Farah province decided it was the perfect time to strike, ignoring the commander of a Marine special operations team who had advised his allies to wait and spend a few days planning a more deliberate operation, according to a report released June 19 by U.S. Central Command.
But the Afghans were eager to pounce. Along with a team of U.S. advisers, they stormed toward the village determined to flush the enemy. A ferocious, hours-long battle ensued, ultimately setting off a chain of events that left several civilians dead following U.S. airstrikes and once again put military commanders on the defensive in the ongoing debate over when and how coalition troops employ close-air support.
CentCom’s report concludes that the May 4 strikes, called in by a team from Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, were justified and that neither the ground forces nor the aircrews involved should be reprimanded. But the report also notes that during the last two of the seven strikes carried out that day, innocent Afghans died as a likely result of the troops’ failure to identify them within the swarm of enemy fighters.
The military estimates that 78 Taliban fighters and 26 civilians were killed in the attacks, though its report notes the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission counted 86 civilians dead. Following the incident, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the escalation of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, where more than 10,000 members of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade now operate, should reduce the need for airstrikes moving forward.
Officials hope the CentCom report will serve as a “lessons learned” for troops who might find themselves in a situation similar to the one MarSOC Marines and their allies encountered in and around Gerani. A look at events that led to the battle there that day:
A history of violence
Gerani is located in Farah province’s Bala Baluk district, a known Taliban stronghold that is home to more than 100,000 Afghans. Marines know the area well. In November, the nearby city of Shewan was the scene of an eight-hour firefight between an estimated 250 insurgents and a platoon from 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, out of Twentynine Palms, Calif. The battle, which all the Marines survived, resulted in a reported 50 enemy fighters killed — and it ended when the insurgents dropped their weapons and ran for their lives.
It wasn’t long, however, before more fighters reassembled in the area. In April, the governor of Farah province asked Afghan security forces to intervene after the Taliban began threatening villagers and forcing local farmers to pay a “poppy tax,” according to CentCom’s report.
Two days before the May 4 incident, Taliban fighters ambushed coalition forces along a highway leading to Farah. In a separate attack that day, insurgents atop a school in Dizak village, roughly five miles from Gerani, fired rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons on a U.S. embedded training team. U.S. and Afghan forces sustained no casualties, the report said, but the stage was set for a showdown.
Outnumbered, not outgunned
When Afghan security forces learned that as many as 300 Taliban fighters had amassed in Gerani, they shrugged off the MarSOC commander ’s advice and took about 200 men, including members of the Afghan National Police and a small number of embedded coalition advisers, to confront the enemy. No Marines were part of that group, the report says.
A military source in Afghanistan familiar with the incident told Marine Corps Times days after the battle that Taliban commanders met across the border in Quetta, Pakistan, to plot their strategy for Gerani. Their objective, the source said, was to provoke U.S. forces and compel them to call for closeair support. The Taliban’s hope all along was for massive civilian casualties, and they had resolved that if the airstrikes didn’t accomplish their goal, then they would kill the civilians themselves and pin the blame on the Americans. One way or another, the source said, the Taliban was determined to turn public sentiment against the U.S. and its allies.
As Afghan forces and their coalition advisers neared Gerani, they passed about 300 civilians who reported being run out of their village, the CentCom report says. Soon after, around 12:30 p.m., three Afghan National Police vehicles trying to reinforce a highway checkpoint came under attack, initiating the battle that would last more than nine hours.
After about 2½ hours of heavy fighting, the Afghan forces had sustained some casualties. A Navy corpsman also was hurt when he came to the aid of a critically wounded Afghan first sergeant. They decided to call in the Marine quick-reaction force.
Once in the mix, the Marines “employed a variety” of ground and air weapons, including four Navy F/A-18F Super Hornets, according to CentCom’s report. The Hornet pilots first dropped flares in a show of force. They followed with a series of strafing and bombing runs, “striking a total four targets along the enemy’s front line,” the report reads. “In each case,” it says, “the ground force commander directly observed the … strikes.” But the airstrikes failed to completely suppress the enemy fire.
Around 7 p.m., as ground forces awaited a medical evacuation helicopter, an Air Force B-1B Lancer replaced the Super Hornets. The B-1’s aircrew spotted a group of adults moving behind the enemy’s front line “definitively and rapidly in evenly spaced intervals across difficult terrain in the dark,” the report says.
The ground force commander determined that the group, which had moved to what would later be identified as a mosque, was a threat to coalition troops. The B1 dropped three 500-pound bombs, obliterating the building and killing a number of Taliban — but no civilians, CentCom officials concluded.
The bomber ’s next target was a building complex less than a mile away. Around 8:45 p.m., it dropped two 500-pound and two 2,000pound bombs. Thirty minutes later, it dropped a 2,000-pound bomb on another building. Fighting subsided after that, the report says.
These last two strikes were the likely source of the civilian casualties, the report says