Insurgent Bombings Rise as U.S.

Eases off
the Taliban
America's most elite troops are largely ignoring the
Afghan militants who once sheltered al Qaeda.

BY SEN D. NAYLOR-AUGUST 14, 2015

Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, and other elite American troops spent almost nine years
hunting down Taliban fighters throughout Afghanistan. Late last year, that mission
changed: Except in a narrow set of circumstances, they were told that the Taliban were
effectively off-limits. Afghan civilian casualties from high-profile Taliban attacks
promptly skyrocketed.
With the United States gradually winnowing its presence in Afghanistan, the sharp
increase in the number of high-profile mass casualty Taliban attacks, like the wave

of bombings that rocked Kabul last week and killed at least 70 people, highlights one
of the toughest policy choices facing a White House eager to close the door on
Americas longest war.
Put simply, the question boils down to whether the Taliban, which sheltered al Qaeda
in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks but have never struck Western targets outside
Afghanistan, should be considered a terrorist organization on par with the other groups
that troops from the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, work to track and
kill. With the U.S.-backed Afghan government trying to restart stalled peace talks with
the Taliban, the answer, for the moment, is no.
The end of our combat mission means that we no longer target belligerents solely
because they are members of the Taliban, said a U.S. military official in
Afghanistan. To the extent that Taliban members directly threaten the United States
and coalition forces in Afghanistan, provide direct support to al Qaeda, or pose a
strategic threat to the [Afghan national security forces], we will take appropriate
measures to keep Americans safe and assist the Afghans.
The policy directive taking Taliban fighters who dont fit into those three vague
categories off JSOCs target list went into effect Jan. 1, according to two military
officials familiar with the matter. In many ways, it effectively turned back the clock to
the early days of the Afghan war.
For the first five years after the 9/11 attacks, JSOCs task force in Afghanistan focused
solely on pursuing al Qaeda targets. But in 2006 that target set expanded to include
the Taliban, allowing JSOC to fit its lethal efforts into the wider framework of the
coalitions counterinsurgency campaign. In the years that followed, operators from
SEAL Team 6 the unit that killed Osama bin Laden and the 75th Ranger
Regiment relentlessly hammered the Taliban, killing hundreds of militants, though
never eradicating the insurgent group as a fighting force.
Late last year, however, orders came down from Washington that the task force was to
revert to a purely counterterrorist focus by Jan. 1, according to the two military officials.
This meant its targeting authorities would extend only to al Qaeda and its affiliates,
said an Army officer familiar with special operations in Afghanistan. The Taliban came
off the list.
Military officials said it was impossible to gauge how much the policy change has
impacted the overall level of Taliban violence. Taliban attacks for the first seven
months of 2015 are down about 9 percent compared with the same period last year,
said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Wilson A. Shoffner, a spokesman for the American-led
NATO mission in Afghanistan. But the number of civilians killed or wounded in suicide
and complex attacks by Afghan insurgents during the first half of 2015 is up 78 percent
compared to the first six months of last year, according to the United Nations
Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.
Shoffner declined to comment on any aspect of American counterterrorism efforts in
the country.

At least one Taliban affiliate continues to be targeted by elite U.S. forces. The Haqqani
Network, which operates in eastern Afghanistan from its haven in Pakistans tribal
areas, has long been linked with al Qaeda. JSOC has continued to hunt members of
the group, albeit only when the task force can lay out a painstakingly detailed case
that the targeted individual falls within JSOCs counterterrorism authorities, said a
Special Forces officer who is briefed regularly on operations in Afghanistan. Whether
the recent naming of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the network, as the Talibans
new deputy commander, will further complicate JSOCs ability to target the group
remains to be seen. Meanwhile, as a nascent Islamic State presence has emerged in
Afghanistan this year, it has also been added to JSOCs target list, said a U.S. special
operations official.
Because al Qaeda targets are most likely to be found in eastern Afghanistan, or
across the border in Pakistans tribal areas, the change in those [targeting] authorities
in turn changed the footprint of JSOC forces in Afghanistan, said the Army officer
familiar with special operations in Afghanistan. The task force, which had never had a
significant presence in western Afghanistan, pulled out of its facility at Mazar-i-Sharif
airfield in northern Afghanistan and scaled back significantly at Kandahar airfield in the
countrys south. It retained a presence in the east, albeit on a smaller number of
outposts than before.
The redistribution of the elite JSOC forces and the changes in who they focused on
killing came against the backdrop of a steep drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
President Barack Obama has promised that only 1,000 troops will remain when he
leaves office in January 2017; at the height of the war, in 2011, there were 101,000.
By summer 2014 the downsizing had already required the task force to change its
tactical approach. The helicopter raids that had characterized many of its missions in
Afghanistan had fallen out of favor, in part because there were no longer as many
troops to conduct them or enough helicopters to carry them to the targets, the Army
officer said. Another limiting factor was the requirement to take a certain number of
Afghan special operations forces on each raid, as there was a very limited supply of
those troops.
In place of the night raids that had become its hallmark, JSOC upped its use of
airstrikes, or kinetic strikes, as JSOC personnel call them.Kinetic strikes went
through the roof, the Army officer said. Thered be days wed do four to six kinetic
strikes.
That tempo has not let up. The task force is on pace to double the rate at which it kills
high-value individuals using kinetic strikes, compared to how many it was killing that
way five years ago, said the U.S. special operations official. But while a greater
reliance on airstrikes avoids risking American lives on dangerous raids, the tactical
shift also brings disadvantages: The task force doesnt get the opportunity to capture
and interrogate its targets, nor to collect items of intelligence value, such as laptops,
phones, or written records.
There are also far fewer troops left to interrogate captives or to examine items seized

in such missions. The overall number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has shrunk from
30,000 in July 2014 to 9,800 today. The numbers of both conventional and JSOC
troops will remain at roughly their current levels for the rest of 2015, with the
withdrawal resuming next year. The drawdown will resume in 2016, but no decision
has yet been made on its pace, said Shoffner.
Army Special Forces non-JSOC troops whose mission is to train their Afghan
counterparts have also seen their numbers slashed, from five battalions in 2012 to
less than a battalions worth of soldiers now, said the Special Forces officer who is
briefed regularly on current operations in Afghanistan. The bottom line is its a
dramatic, dramatic difference in numbers, he added.
Although Special Forces units remain in southern Afghanistan, the gradual effect has
been to pull back from the provinces. The plan was to focus everything on Kabul, the
officer said.
The war has been coming to the Afghan capital all the same. Over the past three
months, there has been a 40 percent increase in improvised explosive device attacks
and a 6 percent increase in high-profile attacks in Kabul compared to the same
period last year, Shoffner told Foreign Policy. This trend was punctuated by a series of
major insurgent attacks this past week, including a truck bomb that exploded in the
Shah Shahid neighborhood, a suicide bomber who struck at the police academy, and,
on Monday, an assault on Kabuls airport. Dozens died, and hundreds more were
wounded.
The capitals exceptionally bloody few days also included a strike at the heart of U.S.
special operations forces in Afghanistan: Camp Integrity, a base near Kabuls airport
that houses the headquarters of the Special Operations Joint Task Force
Afghanistan. That attack began at 10:15 p.m. Friday, when several insurgents
assaulted the base using bombs, grenades, and small arms. Coalition forces
eventually beat back the attack, killing four insurgents, but not without significant loss.
In addition to eight Afghan contractors who died, a Special Forces soldier, Master Sgt.
Peter A. McKenna Jr., was killed by small arms fire. His death handed the Taliban a
propaganda coup.
They managed to kill a special operations force serviceman in active combat, said
Kate Clark, the country director for the Afghanistan Analysts Network. Thats really
difficult to do in Afghanistan.
The attack on Camp Integrity should not have come as a surprise, said the Special
Forces officer. Everybody said it was so vulnerable, he said. It was in a horrible
location. It was probably just a matter of time.
Shoffner preferred to accentuate the positive. While the Taliban are increasingly
turning to high-profile attacks, what the public doesnt hear about in the media is for
every attack that occurs, the number of attacks that the Afghan security forces have
prevented, he said.
The American Special Forces in Afghanistan who are not part of JSOC are focused on

training Afghan commandos rather than conducting raids themselves. Shoffner said
they work with smaller units of Afghan troops than their counterparts from the
American militarys conventional forces. And in sharp contrast to JSOCs counterparts
in Iraq and Syria, Special Forces troops in Afghanistan can accompany the units they
train on missions.
Still, Shoffner said they are forbidden from accompanying them on their objectives,
meaning they must hang back when the commandos conduct their final assault. While
the U.S. troops can call in airstrikes if required, the Afghan forces now have their own
machine gun and rocket-equipped Mi-17 and MD-530 helicopters for such missions,
as well as their own intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft, said
Shoffner. We are very, very encouraged by what we see of the Afghan special
operations forces, he said. In fact, we believe that they are the best in the region.
Many members of the special operations community are far less sanguine. The
Special Forces officer briefed regularly on operations in Afghanistan described the
situation as a house of cards likely to crumble when the last U.S. troops withdraw.
Perhaps ironically, it is the dark clouds on the horizon the rise of the Islamic State in
Afghanistan coupled with the uncertainty over the future of the on-again, off-again
peace talks with the Taliban that raises the possibility that the SEALs, Delta Force
personnel, and other elite troops might remain in Afghanistan beyond 2017.
I think our decision-makers are going to want to keep our people there to avoid a
repeat of what happened in Iraq, the U.S. special operations official said.
Photo credit: SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images
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