U.S. soldiers' mission shows Afghan war's uncertainties

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U.S. soldiers with the 101st Airborne Division's 1st Battalion, 320th Field Artillery Regiment take aim at unseen militants during an operation to seize Babur, a Taliban-controlled village in Kandahar province's Arghandab valley.


U.S. soldiers' mission shows Afghan war's uncertainties
By Dion Nissenbaum | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Friday, August 13, 2010

ARGHANDAB, Afghanistan — Setting out on one of their final patrols in Afghanistan, the U.S. Army and Afghan soldiers waded through waist-deep streams, scampered over crumbling 9-foot-tall mud walls and were closing in on a suspected bomb-making factory when their mission came to an unexpected halt.

Fifty yards short of their target, an Afghan soldier had been stung in the head by a bee. Now he wanted to abort the mission and head back to base.

American soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division rolled their eyes as they told the pained Afghan fighter that scrapping their mission wasn't an option.

"He's like a little girl," one of the U.S. soldiers said with disdain as a medic persuaded the glaring Afghan to press on.

After months of deadly and often demoralizing fighting alongside mediocre Afghan forces in one of the Taliban's most intractable strongholds outside Kandahar city, the Americans in this Army company are asking themselves if it had been worth it.