Angry Planet - Rumors of Peace While Embedded With Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan

Episode Date: July 3, 2018

Afghanistan is America’s longest war and the cynical view is that it’ll never end. Marty Skovlund Jr. doesn’t think that’s true. He just returned from Afghanistan where he embedded with American Special Operations Forces on the ground and though he says the war he saw now looks a lot like the war he himself fought years ago, there’s plenty of reasons to hope.Skovlund Jr. is a documentarian, writer, and journalist. He’s a frequent guest of the show and wrote about his recent embed in Afghanistan for Coffee or Die Magazine in a piece titled “The Valley of Boys: How a Lone Special Forces Team Is Fighting ISIS in Remote Mountains of Afghanistan”You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollege.co. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. So right before I got out with this ODA in the village right next to them, ISIS came down out of the mountains into the village for kind of this, I would call it like a day raid into the village, and literally just took a random guy out of the crowd and beheaded him in front of the entire village.

Sent 50 or 60 villagers packing because they were terrified. you don't really see that with the Taliban so much. You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts, Matthew Galt and Jason Fields. Hello, and welcome to War College. I'm Matthew Galt. And I'm Jason Fields. Afghanistan is America's longest war, and it's also one that the media seems to pay the least attention to. Not so with Marty Scoveland, Jr.

Scoveland is a journalist, documentarian, and a former U.S. Army Ranger. He's also been in and out of Afghanistan both as a soldier and journalist. He's just back from a trip where he embedded with an American Special Forces team in a remote region of Afghanistan for Coffee or Die magazine. Marty, thanks so much for coming back on the show. Thanks again for having me. It's always a pleasure to be on this. The last time you were here, you delivered what I think is probably one of the most optimistic

views and visions of America's war in Afghanistan that I think that I've heard recently. And I'm wondering if after your recent trip, if that has changed or has it stayed the same? Well, I think, you know, the last trip that I did, it depends on how optimistic it is, depends on how you feel about the war. I think because one of the things that I said was,

you know, we're not leaving Afghanistan ever, I don't think, or at least not any sooner than we're leaving Germany or Korea or any other places. that we've kind of got this permanent stake in countries that we went to war with. And one of the things that I was wrong about that I think of that, I'm glad that I was wrong about is that I thought 2018 was going to be the deadliest year in many, many years for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. And that hasn't proven to be true.

So I'm glad that that didn't come to fruition. And the reason I thought that is with the deployment of the SFAB, the first security forces assistance brigade, you know, advising the regular A&A, which, You know, we've seen, last time I was there, I reported mainly on commandos and Afghan special operations. And those guys, I think, are doing pretty well compared to what I think most would usually associate with the Afghan military. With the first S-FAB going in there to start advising and embedding with, you know, the conventional ANA where that quality isn't quite there yet and where it's also a lot harder to screen who's in those forces, you know, are they actually bad guys, you know, are green on blue? attacks kind of go up. That hasn't been the case. So I'm happy that that, I'm happy that I was wrong about that. But this time around, though, last time I was looking at a lot of this,

what I'd call 30,000 foot stuff. The report that I did was very much on it. So how's it going over there? And I said, you know, I think the military strategy more or less kind of makes sense, but there's still these larger problems in Afghanistan that military strategy alone cannot solve and ultimately you know we can win every fight on on the battlefield but it's not going to matter unless we address these other larger issues right and this time around it was a little bit different i very much was focused on the guys on the ground their fight and and not even uh every man's fight on the ground there but specifically this special forces oda and and where they're at out in eastern nangahar you know it's it's them in this small compound and you know isis is on the other side of the

Ridgeline. And they're getting resupply maybe once every two weeks, depending. They're eating MRIs twice a day. They go to the bathroom in a bag. And it's just very, it's just a complete clash with what you would expect American service members, how they would be fighting, how they would be living 17 years into a war where we're very well established. All right, well, tell us a little bit more about this most recent trip. So on this most recent trip, I embedded with the special forces team. I can't get more specific than that, you know, as per the request by the U.S. military, that, you know, they're concerned about operational security. But they were in, you know, eastern Afghanistan and Nangahar province, very close to the Afghan-Pak border. And they're not really so

much concerned with the Taliban as they are ISIS-K in that region. And to kind of give you a frame of reference for where I was at, I was within driving distance of where they draft the Moab. Oh, you mean the mother of all bombs? the big conventional bomb that they dropped that made headlines that we actually used the thing. And so this is very close to that area, the cave system that they were targeting with that larger bomb I saw firsthand. And when I went out on these combat patrols with them, you really see what these guys were up against in the region where these cave systems that they've built and the terrain that they're in. It's just impossible to attack conventionally because they can move so easily undetected. And it doesn't even matter if you've got, you know, thermals or anything like that.

It's just there's only so much you can do when you've got guys that are literally burrowing through mountains, you know. And that's what these guys are up against. They're out there by themselves pretty much. It's just a special forces, the ODA, you know, I don't know, a platoon or so of conventional soldiers to help with security. And that's about it. I mean, they're out there. They just, you know, you can walk from one side of their compound to the other in under 30 seconds. That's how small it is.

and it's just this really remote austere place and they're running missions day and night dropping bombs and mortaring the the ridge lines above them because again ISIS is just on the other side of them and so they'll come up and shoot down at them so they have to constantly run these terrain what they call terrain denial missions and then go out and do patrols every day

just to make sure that they're checking out all the different places all the different caves and everything like that It's just pretty eye-opening that we're still doing this sort of stuff at this point in the war. And I don't mean that derogatorily or optimistically. It just kind of is what it is and kind of exemplifies the kind of challenges that we face. You're trying to fight a war in a place like Afghanistan in this part of the world. It's just really, really eye-opening.

But these guys have a great attitude about it. I'll say that about what they're doing. Very quick question. You mentioned ISIS K. And I just wonder what the K is. I guess I know what ISIS is, but. Yeah, ISIS of the Khorasan, I think, or the Khorasan Caliphate. And so it's just a, it's an offshoot of ISIS in the larger Caliphate.

It's largely made up of foreign fighters that aren't native Afghani. Some of them are, there are certain, from what I've been told, there are certain, there are certain factions of the Taliban leadership who kind of saw the opportunity in rebranding as ISIS and being able to tap into that larger money pot and logistical, you know, getting the logistical help and all that of the larger ISIS organization. That was obviously pre the fall of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. But they're still holding on in Afghanistan, mostly because they can, mostly because it's not nearly as easy to target them as it was in Iraq and Syria.

So they're holding on to these certain valleys. And pretty much what the Afghan military, with the support of U.S. special operations and air power is doing, is pushing them up further and further up into those valleys, into the mountains, up against the, up against the Pakistan border. Because Pakistan doesn't want anything to do with them either. And this is one of the interesting things about this entire area is, you know, the Taliban, there's differing opinions on them. Some people think we should go to the table and negotiate. Some people think that we should not negotiate. some Afghans are pro-Taliban, some are anti-Talban.

And obviously, Pakistan and other regional powers all have their different takes on how much or if they support the Taliban. ISIS is a completely different animal. The Afghan government, the average Afghan, the Taliban, the U.S., Pakistan, everybody wants nothing to do with ISIS. And so the further we've pushed them up against that Pakistani border, they're now being squeezed between either facing the, you know, Afghan, military and U.S. military or facing the Pakistani military, which is waiting there for them, because they don't want them in their country either. So it's a very interesting dynamic going on that is completely unlike what the fight against the Taliban is like. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? Because I was wondering about what some of the material differences are between the

Taliban and ISIS-K. How different is that fight? So the Taliban, when you look at it, the Taliban could be your young militant or the ideologist. The Taliban could be your local narco-traffers or your opium farmers. The Taliban could be just the local warlord who sees it as his play to be coming, to come into power in his region or in his province or his district, right? So the Taliban can be a lot of different things. And some of them are ideologues. Some of them are not.

They all have their own motivations for being part of the quote-unquote Taliban, right? ISIS is much different. ISIS is completely driven by ideology. ISIS mainly attracts foreign fighters. The Afghans tell me a lot of times when they hear them over the radio or come across their bodies, things like that. They're not even from the region. They're not from Pakistan. They're not from Afghanistan.

They come from all over the world. And most of them, especially when they hear them talking, there's no way for me to quantify this other than this is what I was told by Afghanistan. fighting on the ground is most of them seem like they have are mentally unstable people just the way that they talk the way that they act um their drug addicts or or mentally unstable folks and i think that's very interesting whereas the Taliban on the other hand is much more your regular afghan that has a different take on on what the direction of the country should be and i think those are the two biggest differences kind of where they come from and their goals iS when they come into a region so right before I got out with this ODA in the village right next to them, ISIS came down out of the

mountains into the village for kind of this, I would call it like a day raid into the village and literally just took a random guy out of the crowd and beheaded him in front of the entire village. Sent 50 or 60 villagers packing because they were terrified. You don't really see that with the Taliban so much. The Taliban does these high profile attacks against, you know, in Kabul and some of these larger district centers. But they kind of realized that we need to keep the people and the villages on our side.

Otherwise, we have no place to go back to, right? ISIS doesn't care. They're not their people. They're coming in there. They terrorize. They're brutal. And as far as the fight against them goes, they are a lot of them very, they're not afraid to go toe to toe with American or Afghan forces. As we saw, so right before I left with the embed, we went out on an actual combat mission and got into about a two-hour firefight with ISIS, ISIS K in this valley. And, you know, one Afghan was killed, a couple of were injured. Multiple IEDs went off. RPGs. We had multiple F-16s and Apaches run almost completely out of ammo. It was quite the spectacle as far as, you know, being a journalist embedded with the Special Forces ODA goes, but they're very willing to fight. And I was recently told that those guys went back out to the same valley more recently. And it was even worse. It was an even bigger firefight. It was an even bigger engagement. So those guys are not afraid to go toe to toe. They're not playing the long game like the Taliban is. You make it sound like, and I've heard this before, and I just want to clarify it for our audience, Taliban can kind of be a catch-all term for kind of anybody that's against the central government?

I think so. I think a lot of people kind of fall into that category where, and this is just my personal analysis of the situation, but it kind of seems like it's one of those, you're either for us or against the sort of situations. You're either for the government, you know, the government of Afghanistan, the legitimate government of Afghanistan, or you're against. against us, and if you're against us, you're probably aligning with the Taliban. Yeah, that's kind of the way it comes across. All right, can you tell us a little bit more about this specific area you're in? You're along the border region with Pakistan. That's one of the most dangerous areas in the country, right? You know, we were in eastern Nangahar, I would say, 60 kilometers, give or take, east of

Jalalabad, pretty far up, pretty high elevation. I could literally see the Afghan-Pakistan border from where the compound was, so we were that close. Again, I think it was between five and ten kilometers away. And, you know, you've got, we were in the Momand Valley, and the Momand Valley is right next to the Baghdara Valley. Baghdara is, you know, filled with ISIS. They control that. Up to the point that I left, you know, like I said, I know they've continued to engage in that area. And the Momon Valley has been largely cleared.

completely safe. It's not completely but it is largely safe. Villagers have started to return to their homes. The American forces in the area of which, like I said, it's just this ODA and their conventional counterparts. But they, you know, can

live relatively safely. You know, they have to go through a lot of effort to keep people off the ridgelines that overlook the valley, but for the most part, they've got that area somewhat under control. Now, the neighboring valleys, that's a very much bad guy territory. It's very, very dangerous for them to go there.

It's still, you know, it's very off-year terrain. Just to get to the position that we got into where we got into the firefight, it was a pretty strenuous climb up a mountain. So these guys are not in areas that are easily accessible, but they still do control a lot of these border valleys, I guess you could say. Another thing I want to make clear to the audience is that when we talk about that border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, porous is the wrong word, but it's almost fluid. You know, it's kind of one of those things where I don't think the Afghans or the Pakistanis really drew a border there. It's just kind of like that's where the spine of the mountains run. And so we call that the border.

But, you know, on one side you've got Pakistani, it's called like Autonomous Tribal Region, a part of Pakistan. And then in Afghanistan, it's not really under control by much of anybody outside of just the local people that are there. And a lot of them, like I said, they might be Taliban. They might be ISIS. They, you know, there's many areas that have nobody at all. So, yeah, it's, I mean, I don't think you would be wrong to call it porous, but it's also very fluid. Yeah, it's, you know, what one neighbor might call the border, you know, the other might not. So it's kind of a strange concept for anybody that I think comes from Western culture.

And also, isn't it true that you have the same ethnic group on both sides? You have Pashto, who are the majority of majority Afghan group. but they also stretch into that part of Pakistan too, don't they? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, these tribes don't necessarily recognize the borders that Jeroa or, you know, Western nations have drawn for them. But, and there's multiple, I mean, there's multiple, it's not just pastures that are on the border there. It depends on what part of the border you're in an Afghanian system, but in this area,

I believe it's largely a pattoon. But, yeah, it's, you know, it's, you know, it's. It definitely is one of those things where the border kind of depends on who you ask. All right. Another thing I wanted to hit on is you were saying that the war now, or at least the war you saw this time around, looks a lot like the war from the beginning. Yeah, it's kind of funny. Since coming back about a month ago, I've talked to a few different friends, you know,

that are or were in the military and deployed back around, you know, in the last. first couple of deployments right after 9-11. And I kind of described to them what the living conditions were like and what the missions were like. And they're like, oh, man, it sounds like 2002. It sounds like 2003. You know, and I wasn't in the military at the time. I can't speak from firsthand experience of what that was like then.

But when I run what my experiences were with this embed with the Special Forces ODA by guys who did deploy back in that time period, they pretty much say it sounds like you're describing exactly what my deployment was like, where they go in, take over a local house, pay off the house or whatever from whoever lived there, take that over and make that their little compound and then just kind of live there and see what happens. And that's kind of what this ODA is doing. Not that they're not being proactive, but they're very much reacting to the local environment and controlling things at a very local level. It's not this thing where there's a huge fob there and you've got multiple things going on. It's not like that at all. It's just this very

small imprint. And they're one of only, I can't say how many ODAs are in country currently out there right now, but there are only one ODA of very few ODAs in the country that are out in the field like this. The presence that we have out in the field is just not what it was at the peak of the war, is not what it was when I was deploying there, where it seemed like we had a conventional platoon on every hilltop just about and in every valley. It's not like that anymore. They're the only Americans around for miles and miles and miles. You know, they are a long way to, you from help if they need it. You know, I should have asked this right at the beginning, but what's an ODA?

Sure. So Special Forces teams are 12-man teams called ODAs, which stands for operational detachment alpha. And just to give kind of a brief overview of that, they're a 12-man team that has two of every MLS, you've got two engineers, you've got two weapons sergeants, you've got two medics, so on and so forth. They are meant to be able to go out. And this is what I think is the most interesting part about the story is they are

doing the quintessential special forces mission out there working by through and with the local people doing foreign internal defense and and really doing what special forces was designed to do back when it was first stood up back in the 50s and that's the thing that I think is really interesting about it but yeah you've got this one operational detachment elf out there a team sergeant who's a usually a master sergeant and a team leader who's usually a captain who lead the team and everybody else on the team is usually uh you know a staff sergeant or above sometimes you'll see a regular sergeant, I think. But normally it's staff sergeant and above. And, you know, they're all guys that are kind of mid-career, usually soldiers, have been in for a little bit.

And, yeah, you know, a little bit more laid back by, but all very competent soldiers. It sounds like we were returning to the original mission of special forces, kind of like you said, the 1950s-style mission. Can you tell the audience what that's about and why that might be more effective in a place like Afghanistan? Yeah, so the original intent of special forces, and I don't mean special forces, the way that most people use it as kind of this catch-all term for all special operations units, but literally the Green Berets, literally the, you know, the special, the U.S. Army special forces, their original intent was to be these guys that kind of had everything organic to the ODA

that they would need. You know, like I said, they've got their engineers, they've got their medicates, They've got their weapons guys, their communications guys. And they can go forward of the front lines, behind enemy lines, or even to countries where there is no other American presence in the country. And just kind of make it happen, right? That's kind of their marching orders, is just go make it happen. That's kind of what these guys are doing. They're going out to this province where there wasn't really an American presence before,

and they're using what they have. They're using their own ingenuity. and the toolbox that they've got between their ears to try to advance American objectives in that country. And I think it's smart because this is really what that country needs. One valley is not the same as the other. One province, you know, what is important to the farmer down in Helmand is not important to the rancher or the, you know, the shepherd up in the mountains of eastern Nangahar, right, or in coast? Which is all, neither of them have the same goals or personalities as somebody, you know, the kid that lives in downtown Kabul, right? And so I think we, for a while they ran into this kind of catch-all strategy of where we were just going to use this very conventional mindset.

And we really got away from how we approached the war in the very beginning, which was a limited direct action, counterterrorism capability. And then special forces ODA is outdoing what they do best. And it seems like we're kind of getting back to that. and allowing these guys to go out and do what they need to do. And, you know, you'll talk to any of these guys and they'll, you know, tell you they want more of this or need, you know, more elbow room on that. You know, that'll never change, I don't think. But it seems like they're doing the classic Special Forces mission.

And Afghanistan did not start as a conventional war. And I don't believe that it should have ever been fought as a conventional war. And it kind of seems that we're getting back to its unconventional roots where we were by through and with the local people. We train up the Afghan military to the best of our abilities. And we go out and evaluate every district, every province, every village independently and address the problems inherent to that area independently as per the direction of these special forces ODAs. Right. It's kind of moving from the hammer back to the scalpel. I think so.

I don't even know if it's, I think maybe we're putting down both the hammer and the scalpel and saying maybe we need to read a book. you know, I don't, you know, direct action is not their main thing. That's not to say there's no combat going on. There absolutely is. But it just seems like there's a more thoughtful approach being taken right now because we've said, okay, we're not leaving, or at least not leaving anytime soon. So we might as well take our time and do this the right way

instead of trying to throw a mass amounts of conventional troops at this hoping the problem will go away. But we've already seen that that doesn't work. I think the powers that be over there know that one that's politically untenable right now, but also it just doesn't work. So I think there's a little bit more thoughtful approach being taken. I've been reading about some recent peace efforts, including a ceasefire that happened over the holiday at the end of Ramadan. And I just was wondering if you heard anything about peace that's sort of springing up from the grassroots or any signs of hope on that front.

Yeah. So while I was in the country, I definitely heard different people, different military officials, talking about, you know, big things on the horizon. And they were always, they never said specifically what they were talking about. Just the impression was given to me that there was something interesting going on behind the scenes that they weren't totally sure was going to happen. I have a feeling that the different things that we've been seeing in the news lately were, have been in the process of being engineered for quite a few months at this point. And I think everybody's wise to say like, you know, Taliban peace talks and ceasefires and, you know, yeah, we'll see, right? And I think that's completely appropriate. What I do think about that, though, is that, and I think this is what the military leaders, the U.S. military leaders see it as, too, is it's one more chink in the armor of, I think, the Taliban's resolve as far as coming to the table and kind of ceasing these high-profile attacks.

stuff. One thing that I thought was really, really interesting was when the ceasefire happened, the Taliban going out to take selfies with the Afghan soldiers. And apparently they got in some hot water with Taliban leadership about it. It's funny to talk about this because it seems like something you'd be reading out of the duffel blog or something like that. But it just kind of goes to show that like I think that the rank and file wants peace in Afghanistan. They want to get along. We talk about, well, Americans are tired of war. I think there's a lot of Afghans that are tired of war, too. So I'm starting to wonder if

this ceasefire and those selfies and this march and some of the different little things that we're seeing that all kind of seem like isolated incidents, isolated incidents. I wonder if they're starting to create this bigger picture of, hey, maybe Afghans are getting tired of the constant war. And if we're saying that we're not going to leave anytime soon, maybe they're thinking, all right, maybe we need to figure out some sort of a solution here because I'm sick of, you know, burying my family members. I don't know. That's maybe a little bit

optimistic. I don't think a ceasefire is going to hold. I don't think a much is going to end the war, but I think all of these things together are interesting. And I think they show the chinks in the armor of, you know, of Afghanistan as far as being this completely unwinnable, never able to achieve peace sort of place. Are you going to go back? I sure hope so, if they'll have me. I think what I hear from a lot of media members, it's difficult to get an embed these days. It's difficult to get that invite. And specifically with what I've doing,

I've been very fortunate that they've allowed me to go out and kind of embed with their special operations troops because really they're the only game in town at this point. Most of the conventional soldiers aren't really leaving the base or out there. Like I said, it's not like it was 10 years ago. It's not like it was in 2010, 2011. So if you want to be on the ground and actually see combat or see where the rubber meets the road with this war, you need to be with special operations troops. And they're difficult.

That community, just coming from that community, I can tell you firsthand, they're not generally open to journalists being in their ranks, you know. And there's a lot of mistrust there. And especially in the environment that we're in just as a country right now as America, there's a lot of mistrust towards journalists and the media. That's even more so within the special operations community. And so I hope they'll keep having me back. I would love to keep reporting on this issue. And I think it's important, even if, you know, as you mentioned in the beginning, even if most Americans don't care as much as they used to or as much as they should,

I still think it's important. And we're spending a lot of treasure and we're still losing lives in that country. So I think it should be reported on. And just from, you know, just from a human interest angle, look, we've still got guys that are out there living with ISIS surrounding them. You know, going to the bathroom in bags, eating two MREs a day, and having to fire mortars at the land around them 24-7 just to keep the bad guys off the hills.

You know? I mean, this is still going on in that country. And a lot of people don't, I don't think, understand that. It just doesn't have the massive American conventional presence that it used to have. It's not the conventional war that it used to be, that it should have never been. And you're covering this for Coffee or Die magazine? I've not heard of them before. Can you tell us a little bit about them?

They're brand new, and actually this Afghan story will be one of our first big stories post-launch. We just launched a week and a half ago. Basically, Black Rifle Coffee Company, which maybe a lot of Americans don't know about in general, but I know the veteran community just about everybody has heard of them at least. They came to me and said, hey, we want to start a kind of a lifestyle magazine, and would you be interested in running it, and what would that look like? And I kind of told them what my interpretation would be. and they went for it, thankfully.

And so we've got stories about Afghanistan, you know, from this M-Bed trip coming out. We've got a lot of interesting profiles of, you know, a lot of different blue-collar type people. You know, most of Black Rifle Coffee companies demographic is kind of this blue-collar or more conservative readership. And the way I'm approaching it is I would like to find stories that are the common ground between their existing demographic and everybody else.

I don't want this to be exclusive to the people that already follow them or, you know, be preaching to the choir, so to speak. I'd like to find these stories that are common ground and draw more people in and just tell really good stories and do really good reporting. And we've brought on, you know, about 11 writers so far and some really great editors. And I think we've got some good stuff going. So definitely, I'm sure most have not heard of it, but I think you'll be seeing a lot from us in the coming months. Marty Scovlin Jr. Thank you for coming back on the show and telling us about Afghanistan. Thanks for having me on, guys. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, listeners. That's it for this week's episode of War College.

If you'd like to hear more from Marty Scovlin Jr., Google Coffee or Die Magazine, the title of the piece is The Valley of Boys, How Alone Special Forces Team is Fighting ISIS in Remote Mountains of Afghanistan. If you like the show, please feel free to leave a comment behind, review on iTunes. It really helps other people find the show. You can find us on Twitter at War underscore College. I also tweet at at MJG, A-U-L-T. We are also online at warcollege.colle and Facebook at Facebook.com forward slash war college podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and we will see you next week.