US Green Beret service member killed in Afghanistan

(Sept. 17)A US Green Beret service member has been killed in action in Afghanistan. The death was announced in a release by NATO's Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan.

Identity of the deceased not at first released

Although an official confirmed the soldier was a Green Beret, the official did not specify the unit to which he was attached. Another official said that there were no indications that the death was any type of incident with any member of Afghan forces firing on him.

The soldier could not be identified until his family had first been notified for 24 hours. However, he is identified later on the appended video.

Casualties this year

So far this year there have been 16 US troops killed in Afghanistan according to Defense Department figures. More than 80 US personnel have been wounded in combat. 2019 has been the deadliest for the US since operations were scaled down in 2015.

Peace talks have broken off after agreement reached in principle

The Taliban carried out attacks just as an agreement was reached in principle between the Taliban and the US. Both sides had been attacking each other during the talks but the talks still had been progressing well. However, after one of the attacks Trump angrily rejected the talks when one US soldier was among the casualties.

The last US soldier killed before the Green Beret was Sargent 1st class Elis Ortiz 34 who died when a vehicle-borne iED exploded near his vehicle in Kabul.

On Monday Sept. 9 Trump called off any talks: "President Trump appeared to pull the plug Monday on the possibility of peace with the Taliban, declaring talks with the militant group “dead” and leaving Afghan leaders in the dark on just what happens next. Speaking on the White House lawn before departing for a political rally in North Carolina, Trump said last week’s Taliban-claimed bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, drove him to cancel a covert meeting at the presidential Camp David retreat in Maryland that was planned for Sunday."

Current situation

At present there are about 14,000 US service members in Afghanistan with many additional international allied troops. Their role is to advise and assist Afghan forces and to fight terrorists such as ISIS and Al Qaeda.

Prior to the peace talks, President Trump had been considering a reduction in US troop levels perhaps down to 8,600. A reduction was planned in the first phase of the agreement in principle as well. Now it is not clear what reduction if any there will be. During his campaign for the presidency Trump promised to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

After repeating that as far as he was concerned the peace talks with the Taiban are dead, Trump added that US troops have hit the Taliban "harder in the last four days than they've been hit in ten years".

Previously published in the Digital Journal

This year US Special Forces deployed to 147 countries

The US special forces are some of the best trained, best equipped soldiers in the world. Many are experts in weapons, intelligence gathering and even medicine on the battlefield.

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Although critics point out that some special forces operations have failed, a statement on the US Army Special Forces Command boasts:“In the last decade, Green Berets have deployed into 135 of the 195 recognized countries in the world. Successes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Trans-Sahel Africa, the Philippines, the Andean Ridge, the Caribbean, and Central America have resulted in an increasing demand for [Special Forces] around the globe.”

The Army’s Special Forces or Green Berets are among the best known of America’s elite forces,. However there are many other groups including the Navy Seals and Marine Corps Raiders as well as hordes of logisticians, analysts, and planners. The growth in US Special Operations Command(SOCOM) has been phenomenal: In 2015, according to Special Operations Command spokesman Ken McGraw, U.S. Special Operations forces deployed to a record-shattering 147 countries – 75% of the nations on the planet, which represents a jump of 145% since the waning days of the Bush administration. On any day of the year, in fact, America’s most elite troops can be found in 70 to 90 nations.

Linda Robinson, a policy analyst at the Rand Corporation, thinks that it may be a mistake to have so many deployments of special forces. She suggests there should be a more thoughtful and focused approach and cited long term missions in the Philippines and Colombia as more successful special ops. Given what happened in the Philippines this January to a group of commandos trained by the U.S., the Philippine operation may have its critics as well. An elite U.S.-trained force attacked an encampment of Muslim rebels in the middle of the night hoping to capture or kill a high value target. They did not tell local authorities or the regular forces about the attack. They ended up attacking at the wrong place but roused a large group of rebels who ambushed the forces, killing 43 and causing a huge scandal since there was a ceasefire with the group attacked. No regular or local forces were able to rescue the hapless elite unit for some time since they knew nothing about the attack.

A recent failure of Special Forces training programs was the $500 million program run by the Green Berets to train a New Syrian Force of 15,000 moderate rebels over several years. This force would exclusively fight the Islamic State in Syria. Only two small groups ever made it into Syria before the program was ditched in favour of supporting and training rebels fighting the Islamic State already inside Syria. The first group was quickly over-run by the Al-Qaeda linked Al-Nusra front and their equipment captured. The second group simply gave up its arms to the same group in return for safe passage.

Some operations go so badly, they damage an already tarnished image of the U.S. abroad. A recent example is the bombing of a hospital in Kunduz — Doctors Without Borders has called a "war crime." While it has been characterized as a mistake it seems the attack was deliberate as a high value Pakistani intelligence operative was thought to be in the hospital:American special operations analysts were gathering intelligence on an Afghan hospital days before it was destroyed by a U.S. military attack because they believed it was being used by a Pakistani operative to coordinate Taliban activity, The Associated Press has learned. 

Afghanistan killings: What happened remains unclear and many questions remain

The details of this incident are quite unclear but most accounts say that there was one lone gunman who left a base near Kandahar in the early hours of Sunday morning. Some accounts say around 3 AM.

How is it that this soldier apparently a sergeant was allowed out of the base alone and armed at this time of night? None of the accounts of the event explain this at all. Surely security would be tight at this base.

Some accounts talk of his leaving his command post at this time. Was the command post inside the base or outside the base or what exactly was he supposed to be doing? Again some accounts say that an Afghan soldier noticed his leaving the post and notified superiors. They then had a head count and found indeed that a soldier was missing and sent out a patrol.

According to some accounts he surrendered to this patrol as he was coming back to the base. According to other accounts he gave himself up when he got back to the base.

Many of the villagers reported that there were helicopters hovering over the area. A member of parliament said:The residents of Panjwai district in the volatile Kandahar province said they showed no resistance during the mass murder - because they have become used to regular night raids by both foreign and Afghan forces."We have learned that our houses will be searched at night, and we just cooperate," . A resident said: "Americans are always threatening us with dogs and helicopters during night raids."

A number of residents of the villages attacked say they saw more than one soldier during the shooting. Many reports omit such reports or simply note them in passing. An exception is this Reuters report. Here is a sample quote:""Neighbors said they had awoken to crackling gunfire from American soldiers, who they described as laughing and drunk."They were all drunk and shooting all over the place," said neighbor Agha Lala, who visited one of the homes where killings took place. ""

Other witnesses report only one the one soldier. Some have claimed that the two villages attacked were several kilometers apart. It is strange that after firing and killing in on village he was able to walk to another and start in again. Some have concluded that this shows there was more than one attacker.

Questions arise as to which observations are correct. The official line and mainstream headlines all spout the official correct version of one attacker.

An interesting sidelight is that the alleged attacker seems to be associated with the Green Berets or Navy Seals. These groups were on a village stabilization operation. These special operations troops pair with villagers and become in effect a sanctioned and armed neighborhood watch no doubt designed to intercept Taliban. I wonder if this had anything to do with the incident?

The whole affair is murky and no one seems to be clarifying anything but instead are propagating an official line that conflicts with a considerable amount of eyewitness testimony. Since the incident a NATO airstrike has killed three more civilians. See this article.