Latest Headline added 12/16/08:

Frustrations of America's 'long war'

Media: BBC

Byline: Martin Patience

Date: 16 December 2008

BBC News, Khost, Afghanistan

With their bazooka-like biceps, a group of US soldiers raised the

American flag on a small hilltop just a mile or so from the Pakistani

border.

The rugged, rolling landscape - and the fluttering Stars and Stripes -

brought to mind another US campaign more than 60 years ago.

Seizing their cameras, the troops recreated the iconic scene from Iwo

Jima, where six soldiers had raised the American flag.

While nobody is comparing this fight with the island-hopping campaign

towards Japan during World War II, President-elect Barack Obama is

making the lawless Afghan-Pakistani border one of his main foreign

policy objectives.

He has described the area as the central front on the war on terror -

and in the next year thousands of additional US forces will be deployed

to Afghanistan.

If commanders on the ground in Khost have their way, some of these new

soldiers will make their way to the border, although it is not clear if

this will happen.

Mesh

It is an insurgent's paradise here - the mountains seem to pile up

endlessly behind each other - creating plenty of places to hide in and

positions to attack from.

Just across in Pakistan there are hundreds - perhaps thousands - of

Islamic militants eager to fire a bullet into the heart of the US-led

project to build a stable, democratic Afghan state.

The job of the Americans strung out along the border provinces is

threefold; stem the flow of these insurgents into the country win over

the local population and beef-up and train the Afghan security forces.

As one American officer put it to me: "It's no longer just about killing

the enemy and breaking their stuff - it's also about the people."

In Khost province, the US military insists it has hit upon a

counter-insurgency model that is working. It has fanned out across the

province, creating what it calls district centres, in effect, small

military bases.

The idea is that you create a mesh - making it difficult for the

insurgents to travel from area to area.

Rolling patrols are meant to reassure the local population that there is

security and a permanent US presence.

Small reconstruction teams build projects that aid rural communities

such as schools and health clinics. New roads are also being built.

These efforts are intended to pull the locals away from the insurgency

and into the embrace of the Afghan government with a helping hand from

Uncle Sam.

While it sounds entirely workable on paper, on ground, the difficulties

of the process are laid bare.

Frequently patrols stop at local markets where an American officer

wanders the streets speaking to shopkeepers who look decidedly

uncomfortable with all the attention.

The officers' roll call of questions often has a just-out-of-Westpoint

feel to it.

How are you? How's business? Have there being any attacks? Followed by

the request: if you have any information please report it to the

district centre. But not many Afghans ever do.

Many of them are fearful of insurgent reprisals if they are seen to be

openly associating or passing on information to the US forces.

False name

On one occasion an elderly shopkeeper told an officer about a recent

Taleban attack on his neighbour's shop.

But as soon as a crowd gathered round to hang on his every word, the man

became reticent.

When asked his name - he replied Karem, which elicited a burst of

giggles from a gaggle of children standing beside him.

"Did you hear that?" an officer asked me. "He gave us a false name."

But winning the trust of the locals is not the Americans' only problem.

They put great store in joint patrols and mentoring the Afghan security

forces - considering these men to be the ticket out of here.

The Afghan national army, however, does not inspire confidence.

For a four-day operation its troops turned up at a base an hour and a

half late with no food or fuel.

And then while on the operation one of the Afghans wandered up to an

American officer like a sheepish schoolboy asking whether it would be

okay if he fired off his rocket-propelled grenade launcher.<