A couple days after I arrived at Bagram last August, I lined up an interview with Maj. Gen. John Campbell, the commander in eastern Afghanistan, so I could ask him if he was going to keep his forces in the seemingly intractible violence of Kunar Province hellholes like the Pech Valley. Then I googled and saw Dianna Cahn had scooped me in Stars & Stripes. Did the Campbell interview anyway and hopefully built on her work.
Read this beautifully written New York Times piece for an overview of the impending departure, and then read Joshua Foust for a subtle and straightforward assessment of its merits. Campbell's reasoning is simple: the Pech is marginal to U.S. interests; the people only fight the U.S. because we're there; the costs of staying are high and the benefits are dubious; why are we here again? If only that kind of thinking could rise from the tactical level to the strategic. (...He said as he endorses this call for a no-fly zone over Libya)
What's striking is the silence surrounding it. Afghanistan, for all it's meant as a repository of U.S. lives and treasure, remains a war few people actually give a shit about. Abandoning territory to an area rife with insurgents could be expected to generate controversy. People could argue a perspective and other people would critique it, even using harsh language. That's all the more expected in an area as painful to soldiers and Marines as the Pech has been. But instead... nothing. Unless, that is, you've served in what the Times calls the "slotlike canyons" of Kunar:
As the years passed and the toll rose, the area assumed for many soldiers a status as hallowed ground. “I can think of very few places over the past 10 years with as high and as sustained a level of violence,” said Col. James W. Bierman, who commanded a Marine battalion in the area in 2006 and helped establish the American presence in the Korangal Valley.
Not to be sentimental, but perhaps we should build a monument? It seems cruel that the overwhelming suffering of the Pech -- "at least 103 American soldiers have died in or near the valley’s maze of steep gullies and soaring peaks, according to a count by The New York Times, and many times more have been wounded, often severely" -- should be obscure. Perhaps such a monument could encourage us to think more strenuously about the wisdom of going into places like the Pech from the outset.
Finally, one of the Times reporters on this story is Wesley Morgan, a guy I was lucky to come across at Bagram when I was assigned to the same Hotel California bunk he was staying in. An exceptional reporter, he's crisscrossed eastern Afghanistan for the paper and I don't think he's graduated college yet. Keep an eye out for everything he writes. You won't be disappointed.