2 Soldiers "Missing"

[rygD]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/06/afghanistan-2-coalition-s_n_348158.html

I know many may not care.  Just pisses me off.   A lot of the details are not being released, but let me put it this way...they aren't so much missing as we are not allowed to do what it takes to get them back.  Cain, perhaps with your better understanding of politics, you can explain it to me.  Anyway, as soon as we get them back, I will be helping send them home.

[KopyKat253]

Im not an expert on scuttlebutt, but that reads kind of like misdirection. I wouldn't be surprised if that story changes a dozen times or simply doesn't get any follow up.

go ahead and say it

Not everything is conspiracy

But how do we really know what isn't?

[rygD]

They are some of our guys, and where I work I get all the details.  I know more than most about what is going on.  What further pisses me off is that most of the people we have lost this time around are because of stupid shit like this...

[KopyKat253]

what about the 25 injured? did the river just go through a bad part of Afghanistan?

[rygD]

It's called a recovery mission.  Did you read anything past that number?  The main reason for the increase in troops right now is so that we have more people to train the ANSF, so that they quit relying on us to do all the fighting, so that later we can reduce our numbers.

[Cain]

It could be McChrystal's new rules for engagement are the issue here.  Under the new counterinsurgency guidelines that were used to some success in Iraq (well, ignoring for the moment the Anbar Awakening and ethnic cleansing), when the choice is between harming civilians but getting insurgents, or letting insurgents get away but not harming civilians, then the latter takes precedence over the former.

If, and I know I'm speculating a lot here, the captured soldiers are being held in an area where a rescue mission has the potential for large civilian casualties, it could be the case they are attempting other means for getting them back.  Who actually has them is also an issue.  The HuffPo says they're Taliban, but the HuffPo are morons.  Badghis is a bad neighbourhood, Abdul Malik Pahlawan used to run that place, and he makes Dostum look trustworthy by comparison.  Furthermore, any "Taliban" activity that far north is almost certainly being sponsored heavily by the ISI, Pakistani intelligence.  It's a little too far afield for the Haqqani Network, but they are still suspected in having a role in the shooting of five UK soldiers not that long ago, and that attack is outside of their usual territory too, so they may be expanding, or looking to avoid the coming crackdown on the Iranian border with Afghanistan, or both.  Defecting Afghan troops, criminal organizations and inter-warlord rivalries cannot be ruled out either.

Political sensitivity to what actually may be happening, plus the guidelines for counterinsurgency as a general doctrine are the two most likely culprits for why there is no action happening now.  Why they were taken, and by who, need to be clearly defined first, then how to get them out becomes the issue.  Some factions of the Taliban can easily be bought off, and entering negotiations with them can be the start of a wider relationship to decouple them from the insurgency (again, like Iraq).  If I'm right that the ISI are mostly sponsoring the Taliban in this region, then they need to rely heavily on local fighters, and therefore on local greivances.  If the US military can somehow solve those issues, then it could flip the province entirely, like Anbar was.

[KopyKat253]

It's called a recovery mission.  Did you read anything past that number?  The main reason for the increase in troops right now is so that we have more people to train the ANSF, so that they quit relying on us to do all the fighting, so that later we can reduce our numbers.

I did read past that number. and it looked like guess work.
However, your speculations, Cain, Make a lot of sense considering that the "article" never out and stated that our boys were pows. Just that one was seen in a propaganda video. I don't know what 25 UN & ANSF wounded has anything to do with troop increases. Hell, they wont even tell us what the ratio of UN to ANSF wounded is.

[rygD]

Cain, just to clarify, they are not alive.  The problem isn't finding who has them, the problem is trying to get into the area.  That is why it sucks.   Someone tries to go look for them and they end up leaving when things start to suck.  If we were not here in this capacity we wouldn't be dealing with that, but some of the local guys just don't want to play.  I see this often such as when they "lost" a vehicle, and their General pretty much just sat there saying "You need to get my truck back" when more than likely it was his guys that gave it away...I thought that was the opposite of what we were trying to do.

[rygD]

It's called a recovery mission.  Did you read anything past that number?  The main reason for the increase in troops right now is so that we have more people to train the ANSF, so that they quit relying on us to do all the fighting, so that later we can reduce our numbers.

I did read past that number. and it looked like guess work.
However, your speculations, Cain, Make a lot of sense considering that the "article" never out and stated that our boys were pows. Just that one was seen in a propaganda video. I don't know what 25 UN & ANSF wounded has anything to do with troop increases. Hell, they wont even tell us what the ratio of UN to ANSF wounded is.

OPSEC, idiot.

[rygD]

Sent one home today/yesterday (depending on where in the world you are).