It is getting worse

When I got to Afghanistan in May of 2006, the guys we joined up with who had been there for about 10 months were telling us that the past winter was one of the most active ever since 2002. As my tour progressed now during my tour we saw a summer happen with a significant increase in enemy activity. We saw more sophisticated IEDs, more brazen attacks and more civilian casualties happen.
As the winter came on to us we continued to see attacks happen. Not as many direct attacks, but still a rash of IEDs, suicide bombers, and other types of enemy activity continued to plague us through all the winter months.
As the spring approached we knew the enemy activity would pick up and of course it did. The enemy are mostly fair weather fighters, so as the weather got better more of them came in from Pakistan to Afghanistan in order to fight us. Around the time we were leaving we saw the attacks increasing again, which is what we expected. We called it “getting into the hot season” not only because the temperature was getting warmer but also because the enemy activity also increased, hence getting hot.
I follow a lot of the news coming out of Afghanistan, not only on the US media outlets but I also monitor a lot of the news coming from foreign media outlets too. Many other countries like Ireland, China, Australia and Italy to name a few cover Afghanistan like the USA covers Iraq. In addition to watching the media stories, I also stay in contact with some of my terps that worked with me over there and other US soldiers that I worked with whom are still there. Between all of those sources of info I can easily see why they are saying that there is an easy 30% increase of enemy activity this year over any previous year since we went into Afghanistan back in 2001. The reality is that there is an active recruitment effort going on in the Madrassas and in the poor communities to have young men join the anti-coalition movement and attack coalition forces.
For someone that spent a year over there trying to kill as many bad guys as possible and losing a year of life at home, it is especially frustrating to see the situation continually get worse. It makes me question whether I did any good over there. Today I heard that the Marines were thinking about pulling out of Iraq and deploying all of their Marines to A-stan instead. I think that would be a great things since we really need another Brigade sized force in order to take the fight to the enemy over there. Afghanistan is a huge country, and another brigade or two separate brigades might really help make the difference in moving things forward and eliminating the enemy.
As my own brigade gets ready to deploy in 2008 in order to run the Task Force Phoenix mission I cannot help but think about my friends, my former soldiers and even my own son who is deploying with the Brigade and how the fighting continues to get worse. Either we need to get enough forces there or say enough is enough.

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