Flight Risk: The Coalition's Air Advisory Mission in Afghanistan, 2005–2015

FLIGHT

RISK

TITLES IN THE SERIES

Airpower Reborn: The Strategic Concepts of John Warden and John Boyd

The Bridge to Airpower: Logistics Support for Royal Flying Corps Operations on the Western Front, 1914–18

Airpower Applied: U.S., NATO, and Israeli Combat Experience

The Origins of American Strategic Bombing Theory

Beyond the Beach: The Allied Air War against France

"The Man Who Took the Rap": Sir Robert Brooke-Popham and the Fall of Singapore

THE HISTORY OF MILITARY AVIATION

Paul J. Springer, editor

This series is designed to explore previously ignored facets of the history of airpower. It includes a wide variety of disciplinary approaches, scholarly perspectives, and argumentative styles. Its fundamental goal is to analyze the past, present, and potential future utility of airpower and to enhance our understanding of the changing roles played by aerial assets in the formulation and execution of national military strategies. It encompasses the incredibly diverse roles played by airpower, which include but are not limited to efforts to achieve air superiority; strategic attack; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions; airlift operations; close-air support; and more. Of course, airpower does not exist in a vacuum. There are myriad terrestrial support operations required to make airpower functional, and examinations of these missions is also a goal of this series.

In less than a century, airpower developed from flights measured in minutes to the ability to circumnavigate the globe without landing. Airpower has become the military tool of choice for rapid responses to enemy activity, the primary deterrent to aggression by peer competitors, and a key enabler to military missions on the land and sea. This series provides an opportunity to examine many of the key issues associated with its usage in the past and present, and to influence its development for the future.

FLIGHT

RISK

THE COALITION’S AIR ADVISORY MISSION IN AFGHANISTAN, 2005–2015

Forrest L. Marion

Naval Institute Press

Annapolis, Maryland

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

© 2018 by Forrest Marion

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

978-1-68247-336-8 (hardcover)

978-1-68247-361-0 (ebook)

Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). Printed in the United States of America.

26  25  24  23  22  21  20  19  18 9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

First printing

To the air advisors, U.S. and coalition:

"All gave some, some gave all."

And in memory of my beloved and beautiful sister,

Kathryn Ann (1962–2017),

who finished her course well.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FOREWORD

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

1  AFGHAN AIR POWER, 1919–1989: A Pattern Emerges

2  AFGHAN AIR POWER, 1990–2005: Sustained, Splintered, and Stricken

3  2005–2010: "Building Air Power for Afghanistan"

4  JANUARY–APRIL 2011: Cautious Optimism, Treachery, and Unanswered Questions

5  MAY 2011–JULY 2013: Recovery, New Aircraft, and Old Issues

6  AUGUST 2013–DECEMBER 2014: An Accelerated Departure, Almost

7  2015: A Failing Institutional Air Advisor Mission?

APPENDIX 1  Report, Brig. Gen. David W. Allvin, USAF, to NATC-A ALL, NATC-A Commander’s Guidance, March 2011, released 3 April 2011

APPENDIX 2  E-mail, Lt. Col. Frank D. Bryant, USAF, to [various 438AEW personnel], C2 Update and RFI on C2 Shortfalls, 16 April 2011

APPENDIX 3  List of Air Advisor Operational Losses and Contractor Losses in Afghanistan, 2011–2015

APPENDIX 4  Air Advisor Memorial

NOTES

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

ILLUSTRATIONS

Photos

A mujahideen fighter with a hand-held Stinger

Brigadier General Barat and Col. Jim Garrett

An ANAAC An-32 flight crew in 2009

Brig. Gen. Walter D. Givhan with U.S. air advisors

Colonel Ghulam Mustafa Tayer addressing ANAAC personnel

Brigadier General Givhan attending graduation of Afghan cadets

Brig. Gen. Michael R. Boera on a visit to Bagram Air Base

Mi-17 maintenance squadron personnel attend roll call

Two Kandahar Air Wing Mi-17s

Lieutenant Colonel Prejean at the controls of an Mi-17

ETCPO Dale P. Dahlke and Kandahar Air Wing members at work

Villagers observe an Mi-17 helicopter that has landed

Lt. Col. Mark J. Reents provides security at the landing zone

A U.S. air advisor attempts to maintain safety and order

Capt. George H. Slook during a break on an Mi-17 mission

Colonel Andersen with an RC-26 aircraft at Duke Field, Florida

Lithuanian airman Major Antanas Tony Matutis

Brig. Gen. John E. Michel

A Russian transport delivers new Mi-17V5 helicopters

AAF Lieutenant Khial Shinwari displays the Afghan flag

Artwork on wall, 438th Air Expeditionary Wing’s Forward Operating Base

MSgt. Tara Brown

Walkway to wall containing names of fallen air advisors

Tables

1.1  Afghan Air Force unit designations, 1940

1.2  Major Afghan Air Force unit designations, 1977–1979

3.1  Number of Afghan Air Corps/Air Force aircraft, 2006–2014

5.1  Afghan Air Force missions, September 2011

5.2  Numbers and locations of AAF aircraft, late 2012

6.1  CASEVACs by AAF aircraft, 26 October 2013 to 31 January 2014

6.2  CASEVACs by AAF aircraft, December 2014

Maps

1.1  Afghanistan

5.1  Major Ethnolinguistic Groups of Afghanistan

FOREWORD

It has famously been said that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, and that assessment is being hotly debated as we continue to experience America’s longest war. The United States entered Afghanistan with pure combat in mind in 2001, but it soon added the role of advisor and mentor to afford Afghanistan the ability to sustain the fight on its own. Almost two decades later, there is scant evidence of Afghanistan’s ability to defend itself from threats, both external and within its borders.

At issue in Flight Risk is the decision to employ and rely on military advisory missions to prosecute operations in support of counterinsurgency warfare. In examining the air advisory mission of the U.S. Air Force and its coalition allies in Afghanistan, Forrest Marion—twice deployed as historian to cover this mission—provides a focus that has implications far beyond military history. Rather, this work provides a clear picture of the tenuous balance of cultural sensitivity and professional mentorship needed to enable an ally to respond to external threats, fight its internal enemies, and develop an infrastructure for future independence.

Having led a task force to identify and isolate corruption in the almost $7 billion annual contracts in Afghanistan during 2010, I was particularly impressed with Flight Risk’s unwavering focus on the pernicious influence of corruption, personal and institutional, as well as on the blight of insider attacks in undermining the effectiveness of the overall advisory effort.

Flight Risk will serve as an important reference not only to military historians, but also to those interested in achieving real success in conflict environments where the sustained capability of America’s allies to maintain internal stability is recognized as real strategic success.

Kathleen M. Dussault

Rear Admiral, USN (Ret.)

Henderson, NV

13 October 2017

PREFACE

From the middle of January 2009, when I was asked to volunteer for activation as a U.S. Air Force Reserve historical officer and to deploy as the historian to the commanding general, Combined Air Power Transition Force–Afghanistan (CAPTF-A, or CAPTF), the mission grabbed my attention. As a former Air Force helicopter pilot whose adversary aircraft training in the 1980s included the Soviet Mi-8 Hip helicopter, the prospect of providing historical coverage to an outfit flying the Russian-built Mi-17—the export version of the Hip—was appealing to say the least. Arriving at the end of February 2009, I doubled as the CAPTF’s historian and the initial historian for the 438th Air Expeditionary Wing (438AEW). My boss, then Brig. Gen. Walter D. Givhan, wore two hats as the commander of both entities. As he said, Afghanistan had become the priority, and we must record these events and lessons for posterity or we will break trust with those who follow us.¹ Working for him and his vice commander, Col. Jim Garrett, was a superb experience as the close-knit CAPTF/438AEW air advisor team sought to build air power for Afghanistan. Less than two years later, in early 2011, I deployed again to the same position. By then the air advisor operation had increased in size and numbers of aircraft and was dispersed to more locations around the country. There were both major accomplishments and challenges in the early months of 2011, but 27 April was a day not only of treachery and terrible loss but also of long-term impact regarding the Afghan Air Force’s command and control (C2) and the prospects for the AAF’s professionalization, as the following chapters suggest.

The first two chapters (1919–1989, 1990–2005) provide the background to the study’s focus on the air advisor campaign in Afghanistan from 2005 through 2015, a mission continuing through 2017 and perhaps well beyond. While the eight decades preceding 2005 established a pattern of Afghan air power’s heavy dependence upon outside assistance, during periods of limited or no foreign aid (the early 1930s, World War II, mid-to-late 1990s) Afghan resourcefulness and perseverance enabled them to continue flying on a small scale. In the wake of the U.S./coalition air campaign that neutralized the Taliban’s limited air assets in late 2001, a pro-Western Afghan government constituted in 2002 managed to conduct limited flying activities prior to the start of the air advisor work with Afghan airmen. Later, the air advisory campaign plan called for the Afghan Air Force (AAF) to grow to about eight thousand personnel and 150 aircraft by 2016. The West’s objective was that the AAF was to be capable, professional, and sustainable when U.S./coalition advisors and funding were largely withdrawn.

Chapter 3 (2005–2010) addresses the beginning of formal air advising in a joint/combined context and the U.S. Air Force’s institutionalizing the mission with the activation of the Kabul-based 438AEW under the U.S. Air Forces Central Command (USAFCENT). By late 2010, progress in terms of AAF aircraft and personnel accessions (as well as increased air advisor personnel), and the massive buildup at Shindand Air Base in western Afghanistan, was impressive, but significant challenges accompanied the progress. The AAF’s professionalization and C2 were particular concerns, and the 438AEW developed various initiatives intended to advance the host nation’s air force in those critical areas.

In the spring of 2011 (chapter 4), major institutional change in C2 appeared to be on the verge of taking hold when on 27 April, nine U.S. air advisors were killed at the Air Command and Control Center (ACCC) at Kabul International Airport. The attack was the worst single-incident loss of U.S. Air Force personnel in a deployed location since Khobar Towers in 1996 and the worst insider attack against U.S. forces since 2001 (and remains so today). As discussed at length, two separate Army Regulation 15-6 investigations (2011, 2013) failed to uncover evidence of organized corruption contributing to the attack despite the well-known presence of at least one criminal patronage network as well as certain power brokers within the AAF itself, none of which were acknowledged in the 2011 report. The situation was reminiscent of an investigation of high-level drug trafficking in the South Vietnamese government some four decades earlier in which the U.S. embassy, according to author Alfred W. McCoy in The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, could ‘find no evidence’ because it studiously avoided looking for any. I am fully convinced that was the case in 2011.²

Between May 2011 and July 2013 (chapter 5), the air advisors recovered from the attack of 27 April, increasing force-protection measures while continuing to advise Afghan airmen and managing the addition of new, Western aircraft into the AAF inventory. Meanwhile, the hoped-for institutional command and control improvements from the spring of 2011 languished, as did hopes for professionalization overall. Production of Mi-17 pilots struggled to keep pace with aircraft accessions.

In August 2013, the team of incoming commander Brig. Gen. John E. Michel suddenly faced the possibility that all air advising would cease as of the end of 2014, necessitating a quickly revised plan to enable the AAF to meet minimal requirements on its own according to a drastically shortened timetable and reduced funding (chapter 6). The worst-case scenario did not play out, and air advisors remained beyond December 2014. In any case, Michel’s four-hundred-day plan facilitated the production of hundreds of at least entry-level qualified AAF aircraft maintenance personnel, while Afghan Cessna C-208 Caravan crews increasingly embraced the casualty evacuation mission. But C2 and other culturally informed functions continued to pose major problems, particularly to the long-term prospects of AAF professionalization and sustainment.

Other issues might have been addressed in this book, such as the acquisition details of the failed C-27A Spartan program and the politically volatile, Russian-built Mi-17; the degree of the USAF’s institutionalization of the air advisor mission; and the likelihood of professionalization in a region producing up to 90 percent of the world’s opium. Those topics remain for other historians to grapple with.

A note on sources may be helpful. While the first two chapters rely almost entirely on traditional sources interspersed with several oral history interviews, the chapters covering 2005 through 2015 rely heavily upon official historical documentation collected or written by 438AEW-deployed historians. Those histories are held at the Air Force Historical Research Agency (AFHRA) at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, although some of them are recent enough that they have yet to be accessioned into the AFHRA collection. All are cited so they can be readily located, but unfortunately in many cases the original documents contain classification and/or administrative markings that, at least for now, make the overall document inaccessible to the general public. All chapters underwent an appropriate review process to ensure the information they contained was cleared for public release.

As with any such effort, I have accrued numerous debts since 2009, when I began the work that eventually evolved into this book. While I cannot hope to mention each individual whose timely assistance or encouragement I received, I would be remiss not to name several, beginning with my colleagues at AFHRA: Dr. Charlie O’Connell, the agency’s director, who facilitated my deployments to Afghanistan and later allowed me to work on the book as my primary duty for well over a year; Dr. Dixie Dysart, agency deputy director, for her support and pointing me toward several useful studies; Mr. Thomas Rehome, who expertly transferred, saved, and copied forty oral history interviews; Ms. Vickie Jones, whose IT expertise maintained my access to the agency’s classified and unclassified systems; Mr. Jerome Ennels and his team, who managed the accessioning of the all-important 438AEW histories; Ms. Maranda Gilmore and Ms. Tammy Horton, often my only coworkers in a lonely classified reading room and to whom I turned for technical (including photo selection) assistance or checking out a new chapter idea; Mr. Carl Bailey (oral histories photographic support); Mr. Robert Brown (scanning appendices); Ms. Cathy Cox and Mr. Sylvester Jackson (scanning oral histories); and Mr. Andrew Johnson (security issues and mailing chapters). The agency’s assistance to me was characteristic of the sterling team effort that AFHRA consistently provides its many and varied customers in the interest of preserving and disseminating U.S. Air Force history.

At the U.S. Air Forces Central Command history office at Shaw AFB, South Carolina, Ms. Kathi Jones, Mr. Mike Gartland, and their team supported my 2009 and 2011 deployments from predeployment through postdeployment and beyond as the project evolved. Without their patience and gracious assistance, especially with certain hard-to-track-down 438th documentation, this manuscript’s periodization would likely have been truncated and closed at about the year 2012. One unsolved mystery was the identity of the individual who managed to send critical supporting documentation (including what became appendices 1 and 2) to Shaw AFB that I had saved in the spring of 2011 but was unable to send electronically in my closing days at Kabul, one of several providential engagements without which this work would have suffered.

I am greatly indebted to each one who sat for an oral history interview, talked with me over the phone, or communicated with me via e-mail (sometimes all three). Most were current or former 438AEW members, but some were sister service members, AAF members, and coalition air advisors. Many such interactions proved invaluable to filling gaps in the historical record and offering perspectives unavailable elsewhere. In several cases, interviewees provided helpful comments on portions of the manuscript, and on occasion provided imagery/photographs as well; these included Rhude Cherry, John Conmy, Douglas Drake, Fred Koegler, Melissa Moon-Brown, Brian Reece, Greg Roberts, George Slook, and Sally Stenton. My good friend Sally’s support for this project was instrumental, especially as Lieutenant Colonel Stenton generously shared her many contacts with the families of our fallen and others involved in 27 April and its aftermath and provided encouragement and a sounding board on many occasions.

To my fellow 438AEW historians who deployed to Afghanistan and traversed the country in the course of your duties, your efforts have been invaluable. Without the monthly record of wing activities that each historian collected and chronicled, the present work would have been impossible. Thank you for all you did, working and living under the same difficult and dangerous force-protection conditions with the wing, sister service, and coalition members you served alongside. In chronological order of their deployed service, all other 438AEW historians between May 2009 and January 2015 were as follows: Pete Law, Stan Gohl, Jim Malachowski, Rob Michel (2010), Doug Lantry, the late Doug Beckstead, Dan Williams (there were none between December 2011 and June 2013), Paul Hibbeln, Ken Sloat, Ray Heard, Rob Michel (2014), and Curtis Swift.

The U.S./coalition air advisory entity in 2011 was designated the NATO Air Training Command–Afghanistan, or NATC-A. To many of the families of the NATC-A Nine who perished on 27 April 2011—Phil Ambard, Jeff Ausborn, Dave Brodeur, Tara Brown, Frank Bryant, Ray Estelle, Jim McLaughlin, Nate Nylander, and Charles Ransom—thank you for your willingness to talk with me even though it meant another painful reminder for you. In several cases, I am grateful for the friendships that grew from that difficult beginning. My intent is that this work, among other things, may provide a small measure of closure with respect to certain of the unanswered and, by now, unanswerable questions about that day. I also thank the families of Matthew Fineran, Walter Fisher, and Jason Landphair, the three U.S. contractors killed on another day of treachery at Kabul International (29 January 2015) even as they performed security duties in support of the air advisor mission in the combat theater. In remembering those twelve in addition to the two air advisors who died in a helicopter mishap on 11 October 2015—Gregory Kuhse and Phyllis Pelky—we do well to remind ourselves, as David French of National Review, writes, that courage is never truly wasted. It returns incalculable value to brothers-in-arms, to the military, and to the nation.³

The staff of the Special Collections and Rare Books at the Dr. C. C. and Mabel L. Criss Library, University of Nebraska at Omaha, pointed me toward several helpful studies. Professor Brian Glyn Williams of the University of Massachusetts–Dartmouth shared his expertise, contacts, and a valuable unpublished manuscript. At Maxwell AFB’s Air University, Ms. Hyla Pearson spearheaded timely chapter reviews and Mr. Mark Moore of the Muir S. Fairchild Information Research Center provided a valuable advisory bibliography. Ms. Wendy McDonald of the Air Advisor Memorial Foundation graciously provided the appendix highlighting the serene, thought-provoking memorial at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey. I also benefited greatly from reviews of the manuscript conducted by Col. Don Bethel, USAFR, Mr. Lawrence Brodeur, Mr. Frank Bryant Sr., Col. Rhude Cherry, USAF, Rear Adm. Kathleen Dussault, USN (Ret.), and Dr. Lawrence Grinter, each of whom provided valuable comments and encouragement. Many thanks to Dr. Paul J. Springer and Dr. William T. Dean III, who provided insights and critiqued the entire manuscript on behalf of the Naval Institute Press (NIP), and thanks to Paul Merzlak, NIP editorial director, and his excellent staff for shepherding the manuscript through the publication process.

Last but not least, thank you to my former dissertation director and friend, Paul H. Bergeron, who has taught me more than he knows, and to my dear wife April, and our sons Nathan and Timothy and daughters Bethany and Hannah, for their love and support. When this project began, the latter four were children or very young adults, but now you have done away with childish things; I’m proud of you.

Forrest L. Marion

Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell AFB, Alabama

11 September 2017

INTRODUCTION

Officers in an advisory capacity, unit advisors … really had a much tougher job than fellows in the regular units, a much tougher job.

SO CONCLUDED GEN. MATTHEW B. RIDGWAY, supreme commander of the United States Far East Command, as he reflected on the role of American advisors in the U.S. Military Advisory Group to the Republic of Korea (1951–1953). In the decades since 1950, the U.S. military establishment has found itself on several occasions working closely with foreign militaries whose governments faced insurgencies if not also external threats. As part of U.S. activities, at times referred to as counterinsurgency (COIN), foreign internal defense (FID), or other terms, its forces conducted training, advising, assistance—or all three—on behalf of militaries whose governments were under assault. In the pre-2001 era, four of the U.S. Air Force’s (USAF) advisory efforts took place in the Republic of Korea (1950s), the Republic of Vietnam (1960s–early 1970s), and on a small scale, El Salvador (1980s–early 1990s), and Tunisia (1995). The historical literature of these efforts offers help and hints for students of the USAF’s air advisory mission in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2015 (an ongoing mission).¹

An important work that addresses three of the four missions is Robert D. Ramsey’s Advising Indigenous Forces: American Advisors in Korea, Vietnam, and El Salvador (2006). Aside from the political outcomes, in short Ramsey views the U.S. advisory effort in Korea as successful, in Vietnam as unsuccessful, and in El Salvador as mixed. In Korea, placing the Republic of Korea Army under U.S. command, specifically the Eighth U.S. Army, was perhaps one key to the successful advisory experience. Ramsey notes, similar to the experience of U.S./coalition advisors to the Afghan Air Force (AAF) a half-century later, the establishment of the one-on-one counterpart system of advising, the wrongheaded view of advisor duty as routine, problems of the language barrier and cultural awareness, the importance of rapport and mutual respect between advisors and advisees, and the difficulties of short advisor tours.²

A decade later in Vietnam, U.S. advisors worked with the Republic of Vietnam armed forces. Assessing the results mainly from the early to mid-1960s, before large-scale combat and Vietnamization became the main effort, Ramsey writes, Despite some familiarization with the Vietnamese language, few advisors developed what they considered adequate proficiency. Training was too short; the language was too difficult. A district advisor declared that language skills are ‘the single most important prerequisite for success’ and that a ‘raw fact is that there can be no more advisors than there are people able to communicate,’ either advisor or interpreter. While some might argue the point, after 2005 a number of air advisors to the AAF could have said the same thing, even though many Afghan Air Force members were expected to learn English.³

As in Korea, in Vietnam the U.S. advisory group leadership seemed unable or unwilling to recognize that such duty required something more than personnel with the appropriate rank and occupational specialty. It required empathy, independence of mind, even an unmilitary philosophical or reflective bent. And again, advisors served no more than one year, often eleven months, and only six months with the same Vietnamese unit, not enough time to motivate most to make a real attempt to learn some Vietnamese and to understand the culture. Viewed from the Vietnamese perspective, by the end of the war some commanders had worked with 20 to 30 advisors, and each transition initially brought a degree of unsettledness into the unit. Later, one study of advising in Afghanistan referred to the same phenomenon as mentor fatigue. Ramsey observes the widespread lack of respect for one another on the part of both Americans and Vietnamese; each tended to view the others’ culture as inferior.⁴

In the 1980s, the United States conducted a military advisory program in El Salvador in an effort to assist the latter’s armed forces to stave off an insurgency supported by neighboring Nicaragua and other outsiders. The small USAF advisory team worked with the Salvadoran Air Force to increase its helicopter medical evacuation and airlift as well as rotary- and fixed-wing gunship capabilities. As with the Afghans twenty-five years later, some Salvadoran pilots trained in the United States or elsewhere, while others trained in their home country. Even so, in 1987 the El Salvador Air Force had only 70 active pilots for 135 aircraft, a problem nearly replicated later in the AAF. In another parallel, the difficulties of ramping up the English-speaking skills of El Salvadoran pilots hindered their flying training. Although the government managed to avert defeat, one writer concluded that after a decade of working with El Salvador’s armed forces, It proved impossible to professionalize the [El Salvador Armed Forces] to American expectations. In 1995, the newly reactivated 6th Special Operations Squadron (6SOS) deployed two advisor teams to El Salvador mainly to train host nation A-37 fixed-wing aviators and T-67 helicopter and maintenance personnel.⁵

In one short case study from the decade prior to 2001, in 1995 the Air Force Special Operations Command’s 6SOS deployed air advisors to Tunisia to support a program that was used to provide six surplus HH-3E helicopters to that country’s government. Despite the language barrier and the problems of Tunisian personnel turnover, poor logistics, and lack of documentation, the 6SOS team succeeded in training four Tunisian pilots and two flight engineers, in addition to forty-five maintenance personnel that were capable of performing basic flightline tasks. The mission was short-term, however, and the question of professionalizing the host country’s air force—a long-term project—went unaddressed. It was another decade before the same question was asked by U.S. planners regarding an advisory mission with the air service of Afghanistan.⁶

Operation Enduring Freedom and Developments in Afghanistan, 2001–2005

In the aftermath of al Qaeda’s 11 September 2001 attack against the United States, the Pentagon quickly determined the Taliban government of Afghanistan had provided the training and operational base for the Islamist terrorist plot that struck at the heart of America’s financial and governmental leadership. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld obtained approval from President George W. Bush to prepare a military response using a light footprint that employed U.S. special operators working in concert with Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives on the ground alongside the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance militia in the mountainous northern reaches of Afghanistan. The alliance had been under Ahmed Shah Massoud’s leadership until his assassination by al Qaeda just two days before 11 September. Not surprisingly, the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, purportedly the mastermind of 9/11, to the United States, and the U.S./coalition forces, formed for the purpose of an expected military response, made plans for air strikes against Taliban targets that were to be closely coordinated with the U.S. special operations ground elements.⁷

In early October 2001, Operation Enduring Freedom commenced. Within two months, the Taliban abandoned Kabul and other major cities in Afghanistan and retreated to their traditional mountain redoubts, where they awaited an opportune moment to renew operations against the foreign occupiers, as they viewed them. The Afghan minister of interior from 2003 to 2005, Ali A. Jalali, wrote that the Taliban regime was shattered, the al-Qaeda establishment broken up, and its leadership forced to run. Winning the peace, however, proved more challenging.⁸

Aware of the historic ethnic enmities in Afghanistan, the U.S./coalition forces sought an ethnically balanced post-Taliban government. The reality, however, was that the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance based in the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul—Massoud’s stronghold during the 1980s’ Soviet-Afghan conflict—managed to control most of the new government’s administrative organs, largely because its militia occupied Kabul following the Taliban’s unexpected abandonment of the city in early November 2001. In the following month’s Bonn Agreement, the Northern Alliance took the lion’s share of the new administrative arrangement. Beginning in December, a six-month Afghan Interim Authority (AIA) governed the country, allowing time for a traditional Afghan grand council known as a Loya Jirga to be held (June 2002) for the purpose of agreeing on a transitional authority pending the election of a representative government within two years. In the meantime, the U.N. Security Council deployed roughly five thousand military personnel under the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to Kabul.⁹

Hamid Karzai, a moderate Pashtun leader, was selected to head the AIA. He went on to lead the transitional authority prior to his election as the country’s president (2004). For the most part, however, Karzai’s reach was limited, and he was unflatteringly referred to as the mayor of Kabul. Meanwhile, the Northern Alliance’s Tajik faction retained control of the military, police, and intelligence functions. Regional warlords and local commanders maintained their private armies and administrations outside the capital where they held real power, conditions consistent with Afghan history and that held implications for the U.S./coalition advisory effort with the Afghan Air Force beginning in 2005.¹⁰

While in 2002 and 2003 poor security outside the major cities hindered foreign investment and infrastructure improvements, the same could not be said for poppy cultivation, which flourished in a number of provinces, funding regional warlords and local commanders. Afghanistan again became the world’s leading opium producer; Helmand Province in the south accounted for nearly 40 percent of production worldwide. In April 2002, in an address at the Virginia Military Institute—alma mater of George C. Marshall—President Bush had announced a major U.S.-led rebuilding effort in Afghanistan that harked back to the post-1945 Marshall Plan for economic recovery in Europe. The deployment of U.S./coalition provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs), each consisting of approximately one hundred military and civilian personnel, constituted a major initiative designed to jump-start infrastructure improvements and economic recovery in the country’s north and west (the Taliban were strongest in the south and east). But despite such optimism, by the end of 2002 al Qaeda had opened new training camps in remote Kunar Province to the east, which several years later became the scene of bitter fighting between U.S./coalition and anti-government forces. In July 2010 Kunar also was the scene of a major humanitarian mission conducted by U.S. air advisors and Afghan airmen.¹¹

U.S./coalition plans called for an Afghan army of 70,000 troops (later including an air corps of 7,000), but by the end of 2003 fewer than 6,000 soldiers had been trained, perhaps in part because of foot dragging on the part of the Tajik-dominated defense ministry, which perceived a revitalized and ethnically balanced Afghan army as a threat to its military dominance. Security deteriorated further in the first half of 2004, by which time the U.N. considered one-quarter of the country’s administrative districts to be high-risk areas. In response, the Bush administration increased the U.S. ground force commitment in Afghanistan to 22,000; ISAF, which as of 2003 fell under NATO, increased its strength from 5,000 to 6,250. Noted author Ahmed Rashid refers to a two-year period, from spring 2002 to summer 2004, during which the United States ignored Afghanistan particularly in terms of intelligence gathering, instead pouring its vast resources into Iraq.¹²

The increase in U.S./coalition troop strength facilitated the holding of the October 2004 national elections in which Karzai was chosen president of Afghanistan. In December, Karzai was inaugurated and he named his cabinet, with key posts going to Pashtuns. Afghanistan scholar Larry Goodson wrote that the new cabinet suggested a possible deepening of ethnic divisions. Events in the coming years validated his concern. The escalation of violence by antigovernment forces in 2005 to the highest level since early 2002 only heightened the seriousness of the ethnic rivalries within the Kabul-based government, even if the lack of the government’s presence and capacity in many parts of the country facilitated that violence.¹³

Before long, U.S./coalition staffers were developing air training and advising plans intended to contribute first to security in Afghanistan (assisting Afghan ground forces) but also to demonstrate presence and capacity to the populace (humanitarian aid, carrying election ballots). But in 2004 that effort was not yet under way. On 29 May, in what Ahmed Rashid called the single biggest loss for U.S. forces since 9/11, four special operations members were killed when their vehicle struck a land mine near Kandahar. One of the four was Capt. Daniel W. Eggers, a 1997 graduate of The Citadel who was on his second Afghanistan deployment. The following year, the U.S./coalition headquarters, situated in a once-upscale section of the capital known as the Kabul Compound, was redesignated Camp Eggers in his honor. Camp Eggers became the headquarters of NATO Training Mission–Afghanistan (NTM-A) and its air advisory component, the Combined Air Power Transition Force (CAPTF). It was fitting that the U.S./coalition training-advisory organizations had for their home a camp named for a Green Beret whose Special Forces command was perhaps the best-known and most highly respected advisory entity in modern military history. In the years just ahead, the work and trials of Camp Eggers–led advisors frequently reinforced General Ridgway’s conclusion half a century earlier that advisors had a much tougher job than fellows in the regular units. And in some ways the risks were greater too.¹⁴

THE YEAR 1919 SAW the first use of aircraft in the country of Afghanistan. The new leader, Amanullah Khan—idealist, modernizer, anticolonialist—had decided to invade British Indian territory in an attempt to instigate a general uprising against the British, which led to the short-lived Third Anglo-Afghan War. Although brief, the war had a significant outcome: Afghanistan’s independence from British control over its foreign affairs.¹

During the conflict’s most significant operation, in early May between Jalalabad and Peshawar, a timely British response by ground forces precluded a tribal uprising in the latter, since 1849 the main British military base in the North-West Frontier Province. The Afghan government in Kabul had hoped for such an uprising to stir a wider insurrection. Several days later, as the British pushed Afghan forces from strategic terrain they had occupied, Royal Air Force (RAF) BE2C aircraft—although unreliable and limited in performance—assisted the ground forces by bombing and machine gunning the retreating Afghans. Summarizing the RAF’s role in the 1919–1920 operations, first against the Afghans and a few months later against Wazir and Mahsud tribesmen, British military historian Brian Robson wrote that one significant aspect to the conflicts was the arrival of the aeroplane as a major factor in Frontier warfare.²

British use of aircraft to bomb targets in Jalalabad and Kabul impressed Amanullah so much that after the war he sought his own air force. The king’s interest in air power may have been heightened when an RAF Handley Page V/1500 bombed the royal palace, which apparently frightened and scattered Amanullah’s harem into the city’s streets. Aside from the military use of air power he had witnessed firsthand, the Western-oriented king must have appreciated that in a country as rugged as Afghanistan and possessing few roads, the use of aircraft also could prove useful for civil, economic, and humanitarian purposes, a perspective that continued to inform air-oriented observers of that country a century later. In any case, in October 1919 Amanullah secured from the new Soviet ruler, Lenin, the promise of an aviation unit to be sent to Kabul.³

It was two years later, however, before the Soviets delivered, sending three aircraft—a Farman, Nieuport, and Sopwith—by train to Termez, just across the Afghan border, along with about two dozen Russian personnel. As events turned out, the Farman was destroyed before it arrived in Afghanistan. The other two aircraft eventually reached Kabul by caravan and were flown by the Soviets, but there was no training of Afghans. In the meantime, a landing field and hangar had been built, apparently in the Khwaja Rawash area just north of Kabul (later Kabul International Airport).⁴

The following year, 1922, the Soviets sent two more Nieuports and several other aircraft to Kushke, where their progress toward Afghanistan halted when the Russians learned that Amanullah’s government had reservations about allowing their personnel into Kabul. Also that year, two Caproni Scouts were shipped from Italy, but they turned out to have been damaged en route and most likely were never flown. But soon Amanullah’s efforts to build a small air force began to bear fruit.⁵

Birth of the Afghan Air Force: 1924 to 1939

In August 1924, in response to a