KABUL – Only a tangle of razor wire marks the entrance of a remote Afghanarmy checkpoint that may soon be shuttered as the government closesvulnerable outposts after years of losses to Taliban fighters anddesertions.
The post in Wardak province west of Kabul has been hit before, and itssagging blast walls and teetering sandbags make clear the vulnerability ofthe 13 troops living there for weeks on end.
Now, after years of brutal attacks and mass desertions from similarcheckpoints, the Afghan government is acting on long-standing Americanrequests to close them.
The aim is to shutter outposts where troops are often left like sittingducks for Taliban attackers and consolidate them onto larger bases ─several of which are under construction.
The plan is for troops to lead offensive missions, taking the fight to theTaliban instead of trying to survive day-to-day in often deplorable livingconditions with little outside support.
The “checkpoint is a failed tactic”, Dadan Lawang, an Afghan army general,said recently at a US base in Paktia province, south of Kabul.
Some 50 per cent of military casualties occur at checkpoints, he said, agrim number considering tens of thousands of Afghan troops have been killedor wounded since the end of 2014 ─ losses the massively depleted Afghanmilitary can ill afford.
“We want to draw down all those checkpoints and establish strong basesnow,” Lawang told *AFP*. The idea of closing checkpoints has been taboo inAfghan politics for years.
A tiny fort flying the black-red-and-green national flag sends a messagethat the government holds an area, and Afghan politics is built on apatchwork of alliances with regional power brokers, many of them in remoteplaces.’No military sense’
“To maintain an alliance sufficient to remain in office… the president ofAfghanistan has often preferred to push troops out into locations that makeno military sense but are politically important,” said Stephen Biddle, aprofessor at Columbia University in New York who has written extensivelyabout Afghanistan.
US Army Brigadier General Kevin Admiral, who heads the US military’s TaskForce Southeast, said it was challenging to finally change the Afghanmilitary’s view.
“They have a lot of political pressure at the local level with districtgovernors and parliamentarians who have said this is our only visiblerepresentation of (the government) in these remote areas,” he said.
For General Scott Miller, who leads Nato’s Afghanistan mission and the USwar effort in the country, the closure of checkpoints is crucial for theAfghan military.
“They don’t lose people in (offensive) operations, they kill Taliban,”Miller told US military officials at a recent meeting. “You want to hear my(tactical) priorities? Talk about checkpoints.”
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To hammer his message, Miller makes frequent trips across Afghanistan,bringing local military commanders to show them troops’ living conditions.
On a visit to the Wardak checkpoint last week, Miller said he wanted toopen Afghan commanders’ eyes to the perilousness of such outposts.
The scruffy camp, where troops sleep in converted shipping containers withsmashed windows, is a short distance from Highway 1 ─ a key route forsending goods and supplies into Kabul and around the country.
But despite its strategic location, troops at the checkpoint and otherslike it often go without regular food or pay because of mismanagement andcorruption. And if an attack does come, back up may never arrive.Wad of cash
On Miller’s visit, US snipers and soldiers secured the isolated facility’sperimeter and one Afghan soldier complained to his higher ups about nothaving been paid for three months.
Asadullah Khalid, Afghanistan’s acting defence minister, blamed adocumentation issue and said it would be fixed.
His staff dished out several $100 bills to soldiers from a wad that Khalidsaid was a gift for Eid.
“I want to make sure that everyone sitting on a checkpoint gets a paycheckand food,” Miller told *AFP*. “t’s a leadership issue. These are things wetake for granted.”
While critics agree Afghan checkpoints have little tactical value, theydiffer over whether withdrawing troops to bases will make them more willingto fight.
Closing checkpoints “essentially cedes ground to the Taliban and gets the(Afghan security forces) onto larger bases, where they often hunker down,”said Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense ofDemocracies think tank in Washington.
But Colonel David Butler, a US military spokesman in Kabul, said Afghantroops “are doing more independent operations and are more effective duringthose operations.” -APP/AFP
