How The U.S. Quietly Lost The IED War In Afghanistan

U.S. Army Pfc. Shawn Williams is evacuated after being injured by a roadside bomb in Kandahar Province on Jun. 17, 2011. Credit: DoD photo

By Gareth Porter,

Although the surge of “insider attacks” on U.S.-NATO forces has dominated coverage of the war in Afghanistan in 2012, an even more important story has been quietly unfolding: the U.S. loss of the pivotal war of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to the Taliban.

Over the 2009-11 period, the U.S. military suffered a total of 14,627 casualties, according to the Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System and iCasualties, a non-governmental organisation tracking Iraq and Afghanistan war casualties from published sources.

Of that total, 8,680, or 59 percent, were from IED explosions, based on data provided by the Pentagon’s Joint IED Defeat Organisation (JIEDDO). And the proportion of all U.S. casualties caused by IEDs continued to increase from 56 percent in 2009 to 63 percent in 2011.

The Taliban IED war was the central element of its counter-strategy against the U.S. escalation of the war. It absorbed an enormous amount of the time and energy of U.S. troops, and demonstrated that the counterinsurgency campaign was not effective in reducing the size or power of the insurgency. It also provided constant evidence to the Afghan population that Taliban had a continued presence even where U.S. troops had occupied former Taliban districts.

U.S. Pentagon and military leaders sought to gain control over the Taliban’s IED campaign with two contradictory approaches, both of which failed because they did not reflect the social and political realities in Afghanistan.

JIEDDO spent more than 18 billion dollars on high-tech solutions aimed at detecting IEDs before they went off, including robots, and blimps with spy cameras. But as the technology helped the U.S.-NATO command discover more IEDs, the Taliban simply produced and planted even larger numbers of bombs to continue to increase the pressure of the IED war.

The counterinsurgency strategy devised by Gen. David Petraeus and implemented by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, on the other hand, held that the IED networks could be destroyed once the people turned away from the Taliban. They pushed thousands of U.S. troops out of their armoured vehicles into patrols on foot in order to establish relationships with the local population.

The main effect of the strategy, however, was a major jump in the number of “catastrophic” injuries to U.S. troops from IEDs.

McChrystal ordered much more emphasis on more dismounted patrols by U.S. forces in fall 2009. The Taliban responded by increasing the number of IEDs targeting dismounted patrols from 71 in September 2009 to 228 by January 2010, according data compiled by JIEDDO.

That meant that the population had more knowledge of the location of IEDs, which should have resulted in a major increase in IEDs turned in by the population, according to the Petraeus counterinsurgency theory.

But the data on IEDs shows that the opposite happened. In the first eight months of 2009, the average rate of turn-ins had been three percent, but from September 2009 to June 2010, the rate averaged 2.7 percent.

After Petraeus replaced McChrystal as ISAF commander in June 2010, he issued a directive calling for more dismounted patrols, especially in Helmand and Kandahar, where U.S. troops were trying to hold territory that the Taliban had controlled in previous years.

In the next five months, the turn-in rate fell to less than one percent.

Meanwhile, the number of IED attacks on foot patrols causing casualties increased from 21 in October 2009 to an average of 40 in the March-December 2010 period, according to JIEDDO records. U.S. troops wounded by IEDs spiked to an average of 316 per month during that period, 2.5 times more than the average for the previous 10-month period.

The Taliban success in targeting troops on foot was the main reason U.S. casualties from IEDs increased from 1,211 wounded and 159 dead in 2009 to 3,366 wounded and 259 dead in 2010.

The damage from IEDs was far more serious, however, than even those figures suggest, because the injuries to dismounted patrols included far more “traumatic amputation” of limbs – arms and legs blown off by bombs – and other more severe wounds than had been seen in attacks on armoured vehicles.

A June 2011 Army task force report described a new type of battle injury – “Dismount Complex Blast Injury”– defined as a combination of “traumatic amputation of at least one leg, a minimum of severe injury to another extremity, and pelvic, abdominal, or urogenital wounding.”

The report confirmed that the number of triple limb amputations in 2010 alone had been twice the total in the previous eight years of war.

A study of 194 amputations in 2010 and the first three months of 2011 showed that most were suffered by Marine Corps troops, who were concentrated in Helmand province, and that 88 percent were the result of IED attacks on dismounted patrols, according to the report. In January 2011, the director of JIEDDO, Gen. John L. Oates, acknowledged that U.S. troops in Helmand and Kandahar had seen “an alarming increase in the number of troops losing one or two legs to IEDs.”

Much larger numbers of U.S. troops have suffered moderate to severe traumatic brain injuries from IED blasts – mostly against armoured vehicles.

Statistics on the total number of limb amputations and traumatic brain injuries in Afghanistan were excised from the task force report.

In 2011, U.S. fatalities from IEDs fell to 204 from 259 in 2010, and overall fatalities fell from 499 to 418. But the number of IED injuries actually increased by 10 percent from 3,339 to 3,530, and the overall total of wounded in action was almost the same as in 2010, according to data from iCasualties.

The total for wounded in the first eight months of 2012 are 10 percent less than the same period in 2011, whereas the number of dead is 29 percent below the previous year’s pace.

The reduction in wounded appears to reflect in part the transfer of thousands of U.S. troops from Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where a large proportion of the casualties have occurred, to eastern Afghanistan. The number of IED attacks on dismounted patrols in the mid-July 2011 to mid-July 2012 period was 25 percent less than the number in the same period a year earlier, according to JIEDDO.

The Pentagon was well aware by early 2011 that it wasn’t going to be able to accomplish what it had planned before and during the troop surge. In a telling comment to the Washington Post in January 2011, JIEDDO head Gen. Oates insisted that the idea that “we’re losing the IED fight in Afghanistan” was “not accurate”, because, “The whole idea isn’t to destroy the network. That’s maybe impossible.”

The aim, he explained, was now to “disrupt them” – a move of the goalposts that avoided having to admit defeat in the IED war.

And in an implicit admission that Petraeus’s push for even more dismounted patrols is no longer treated with reverence in the ISAF command, the August 2010 directive has been taken down from its
website.

Via: "IPS News"

The Poor Man's Artillery

What IEDs Can Do

By CLANCY SIGAL
September 16, 2010
Courtesy Of "CounterPunch"

The IRA tried to kill me on three separate occasions. Nothing personal, just that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time when the Provos' deadly "mainland campaign" against Brits took the form of planting IEDs, improvised homemade bombs, in central London where I lived. In Picadilly, shrapnel from a device inside a letter box grazed my head; the same month, a McDonald's I walked past on Oxford Street blew up; and still later, outside a Sloane Square pub, glass shattered at my feet after an explosion. Such an intense level of exposure and vulnerability left me shaken.

The Provos had resorted to the "poor man's artillery" of IEDs because they were outnumbered and outgunned by the British army and Ulster constabulary. How else were they to achieve their political agenda other than by indiscriminately killing British civilians?

I read Afghanistan casualty lists almost every night, and my rough calculation seems to agree with the Pentagon's: that IEDs – jerry-built, cleverly-disguised roadside bombs – cost way more American (and Afghan) lives than snipers, mortars or RPGs. According to NATO and the Department of Defense, despite General Petraeus's soothing assertion that the incidents are "flattening out", since 2007, the number of Taliban IEDs has increased nearly 400 per cent, and IED kills by that same 400 per cent and IED-crippled troops by 700 per cent. At least 30 per cent of combat soldiers, in Iraq and Afghanistan, are at risk of potentially disabling neurological disorders from IED blast waves – without suffering a scratch.

But percentages don't bleed. For yourself, look up the casualty lists from your own state or district, add up the IED "kinetic events", and study, really look at, the names and photographs of the dead soldiers who suddenly seem part of our own families. The harsh lesson is that no foreign invading army like ours can beat a "backward" native people who, for a few dollars and in five minutes, can build a dish pan, copper wire, a left-over 155mm Soviet shell and a bit of Semtex or C-4 and fertilizer into a killer IED hidden in potholes, among garbage and even inside animals.

It's terrifyingly easy for a soldier to get blasted apart by these devices. You don't even have to step on a pressure plate any more, just walk by an innocent-looking rock and – bang! – you're shredded by remote control. Increasingly, these things are set off by text messages from afar. Jihadists may be typecast as primitive "ragheads" on TV news, but they have learned to be thoughtful and high-tech assassins.

In his latest Oval Office speech, President Obama, in paying anodyne tribute to the troops, glancingly referred to "the signature wounds of today's wars, post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury (TBI)". Let's pause a moment on TBI, where a visible wound may not show but the person's brain has been shaken as in a Mixmaster by the faster-than-speed-of-sound blast of an IED explosion. No helmet or body armor yet invented can protect from its peculiar one-two punch that causes, on the battlefield or much later, microscopic cellular and metabolic damage, leading to blindness, deafness, memory loss, premature ageing and destruction of neurons that cannot be replaced.

As the pediatric surgeon and Vietnam veteran Ronald Glasser says, "the symbol (of the new IED-dominated battles) is not the cemetery but the orthopedic ward" and neurological unit. Strangely, army commanders are extremely reluctant to award Purple Hearts for IED wounds, which can be hard for combat medics to diagnose in the heat of battle. Even skilled field-hospital emergency doctors may miss the insidious danger signs. If a soldier looks unscratched, just a little dazed, military culture demands he or she be shipped back to fight again. Troopers themselves may be reluctant to report symptoms, fearing career damage or being seen as a goof-off.

Once back home, soldiers very often have to struggle for treatment. Congress is eager to vote the Pentagon $20bn for JIEDDO, the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Organization – who thinks up these names? – whose own boss, general Michael Oates, confesses is only marginally useful. But when it comes to money for medical research into the little-known effects of TBI, the government drags its feet.

At the moment, despite evidence that 30 per cent of our battlefield casualties are bomb-concussion cases, the military and the Veterans Administration make it as hard as possible to get help. President Obama boasts that "because of our drawdown in Iraq, we are now able to go on the offence" in a deteriorating Afghanistan, which translates into more visible and invisible wounded. Soldiers lose their lives, arms, legs, eyes, even faces. We can see those terrible wounds. But concussed, TBI-suffering soldiers also lose parts of their minds sometimes without even knowing it. Until they get home and can't remember their daughter's name.

Clancy Sigal is a novelist (Going Away) and screenwriter (Frieda) in Los Angeles. He can be reached at clancy@jsasoc.com

IED Threat Known Before War

By Peter Eisler, USA TODAY
Updated 5h 27m ago (12/10/2008 11:14 AM)
Courtesy Of USA Today

WASHINGTON — Military leaders knew the dangers posed by roadside bombs before the start of the Iraq war but did little to develop vehicles that were known to better protect forces from what proved to be the conflict's deadliest weapon, a report by the Pentagon inspector general says.

The Pentagon "was aware of the threat posed by mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) … and of the availability of mine resistant vehicles years before insurgent actions began in Iraq in 2003," says the 72-page report, which was reviewed by USA TODAY.

The report is to be made public today.

MRAP REPORT: Official summary (PDF file)

Marine Corps leaders "stopped processing" an urgent request in February 2005 for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles from combat commanders in Iraq's Anbar province after declaring that a more heavily armored version of existing Humvee vehicles was the "best available" option for protecting troops, the report says.

Marine officials "did not develop a course of action for the (request), attempt to obtain funding for it or present it to the Marine Corps Requirements Oversight Council for a decision on acquiring" MRAPs, the report says.

The military continued relying mainly on Humvees until May 2007, when then-incoming Defense secretary Robert Gates called procurement of the MRAPs his top priority. Since then, the Pentagon has spent more than $22 billion to buy more than 15,000 of the vehicles.

When field commanders first began requesting MRAPs, military officials saw the armored Humvees as a more immediate option to countering IEDs, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said. "The threat has evolved and our force protection measures have evolved with it," he said.

The Marines requested the inspector general's investigation in February after an internal report accused the Corps of "gross mismanagement" of the urgent request for MRAPs. Hundreds of Marines died unnecessarily because of delays in fielding the vehicles, said the Jan. 22 study by Franz Gayl, a retired Marine officer and civilian science adviser.

Two U.S. senators — Democrat Joe Biden of Delaware, now the vice president-elect, and Republican Kit Bond of Missouri — demanded an investigation after details of Gayl's study were published.

"The Pentagon was aware of the threat IEDs posed to our troops prior to our intervention in Iraq and still failed to take the steps to acquire the technology needed to reduce the risk," Bond said after reviewing the report. "Some bureaucrats at the Pentagon have much to explain."

USA TODAY detailed the Pentagon's failure to move quickly on MRAP development in a series of stories last year. Gates credited one of those stories with sparking his interest in the vehicles.

Marine commanders in Iraq's then-volatile Anbar province sought 1,169 MRAPs in the February 2005 urgent request. "There is an immediate need for an MRAP vehicle capability to increase survivability and mobility of Marines operating in a hazardous fire area," it said.

The inspector general's report says that Marine officials advised Marine Corps commandant Michael Hagee at the time that armored Humvees were the "best available, most survivable" vehicles to meet the request.

MRAPs are far more resistant to IEDs and landmines than armored Humvees because they're higher off the ground and rest on a V-shaped hull, which deflects blasts from the vehicle's underside.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Congress | Iraq | Pentagon | Marines | Anbar | Defense Secretary Robert Gates | Humvees | Defense | Geoff Morrell | IEDs | Robert Gates | V-shaped | MRAPs | Mine Resistant Ambush Protected | Franz Gayl | Marine Corps Commandant James Conway | Naval Audit Service | Michael Hagee | Republican Kit Bond of Missouri | then-Marine

LIGHTER VEHICLES:Pentagon looking for MRAP hybrid for Afghanistan

DELAYS: Sen Kennedy hammers Marines for ignoring MRAP request from field

LIFESAVERS: Gates calls MRAPs lifesavers, says USAT story piqued his interest

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