On the morning of Jan. 10, 2012, five Taliban insurgents wearing stolen army and police uniforms stormed a government complex in Sharana, the capital of restive Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan. Their goal: to strike a meeting of the province's top civilian, police, military and intelligence officials -- essentially decapitating the provincial government of one of Afghanistan's most important regions.
They failed -- barely. Defeating just five insurgents barricaded in a stairwell required a chaotic seven-hour gun battle up and down three stories of a telecommunications building. Two civilian hostages and three policemen died in the tumult of the assault's first few hours, as impatient Afghan leaders -- whom the U.S.-led coalition deliberately allowed to take the lead -- sent lightly armed cops on an almost suicidal frontal attack aimed at retaking the captured facility. Even that required the firepower of supporting U.S. Army troops and the intervention of a Polish commando unit, along with their Afghan trainees.
The obscure Sharana battle, reconstructed by Danger Room over the past year, offers a preview of what Afghanistan will look like after 2014, when all but a handful of U.S. and NATO troops leave. To temper expectations of how Afghan forces will perform when they're in charge of the war, U.S. officials often use the term "Afghan good enough." Tom Donilon, President Obama's national security adviser, told The New York Times that the goal of "Afghan good enough" is an Afghanistan that "has a degree of stability."
Sharana shows what "Afghan good enough" is likely to mean. But that meaning varies by interpretation. It was messy, with an unclear chain of command, impulsive leaders, inadequately prepared forces and equipment, and needless death. It required foreign help. But it worked. All the attackers were killed and most of the hostages freed. It was far from perfect. It was Afghan good enough.
'The Insurgents Had Very Strong Positions'
Paktika, a mountainous province of 400,000 people bordering Pakistan, is a Taliban super-highway. Insurgents by the hundreds inch along Paktika's narrow mountain passes until they reach a passable road. "We're a transit route," explained Maj. Eric Butler, an intelligence officer for the U.S. Army's 172nd Infantry Brigade, deployed to Paktika in 2011 and 2012.
In 2012, the 172nd planned to reinforce Paktika's border defenses, hopefully buying space for Gov. Mohibullah Samim to firm up security before the U.S. withdrawal. With time running out, the studious Samim met in the drab capitol city, Sharana, with his top lieutenants to discuss security. Samim invited the provincial police chief, Dewlat Khan; Shehzada Khan, a colonel in the Afghan intelligence service; and Afghan army Lt. Col. Malang.
They met at Samim's compound, next to a telecommunication building near the heart of the mud-and-concrete city. To protect such an obvious target from attack, Afghan and coalition forces flooded Sharana. They included two small American elements from the 172nd, additional U.S. troops, and a number of Apache gunship helicopters were stationed nearby. Elite Afghan special policemen, trained by a platoon of Polish commandos and part of the SWAT-style Paktika Provincial Response Company (PRC), were on standby. Afghan army soldiers, and regular police, and paramilitaries from the national intelligence agency patrolled Sharana and manned roadside checkpoints.
But the meeting's main line of defense was its secrecy. And someone blabbed. Early on Jan. 10, five Taliban fighters donned stolen Afghan security forces uniforms -- three army and two police. Three of the militants strapped on high-explosive suicide vests. They piled into a Afghan army truck, also stolen, with their AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades and headed into Sharana. They knew exactly when and where Samim's powwow was being held.
The five plotters did not act alone. Across the city still waking from its chilly slumber, men sympathetic to the insurgency took up positions with assault rifles and RPGs.
It was 8:45 in the morning and Sharana was bitterly cold. The five Talibs' disguises and stolen truck got them nearly to the governor's compound. But a policeman at a checkpoint outside the compound grew suspicious. Realizing their cover was blown, the insurgents floored it. They crashed through the checkpoint as policemen opened fire.
The gate to the governor's compound was closed and guarded by two cops. The Talibs gunned down the policemen, killing both, and rammed the gate. Alarms sounded all over the city. The insurgents realized they would never wipe out the provincial leadership. So they rewrote their plan on the fly and hastily stormed the telecom building, a blocky structure with a central stairwell and orange pillars out front.
Two employees tried to run. The insurgents shot them dead. They took four other workers hostage and began fortifying the building. "The insurgents had very strong positions to defend," said one Polish army commando officer present at the battle. "They [the insurgents] expected attacks would come at the main entrance."
They were right. The initial counterattack, which took place some four hours after the first shot was fired, was a nearly suicidal frontal assault by the regular police, the least ready of the available coalition forces. It was personally ordered by Samim, with police chief Khan merely consulting.
Exactly why the civilian governor directed a tactical street battle remains a mystery. The chain of command in Sharana that morning reflected the weakness of government institutions in Afghanistan's outlying provinces after a decade of coalition reform efforts. Samim could disastrously take charge of a gun battle because, simply, there was no one to stop him.
Equally unclear is why Samim believed lightly armed police and intelligence agents would be able to defeat dug-in, heavily-armed insurgents by charging straight through the front door of a fortified building into the enemy's field of fire. The governor either overestimated his cops' capabilities; underestimated the Talibs' fighting prowess; or both. Apparently no one even considered that there might be side or back entrances to the telecom building that would be safer for the rescue forces. The Americans sought to make Samim's enthusiasm, however ignorant, a virtue.
'They're the Ones Who'll Be in the Lead'
With the governor's life in danger, the coalition rushed to respond. A squad from the 172nd's 9th Engineer Battalion snatched up Samim from his meeting and spirited him two blocks down a main road to an emergency response center.
While the engineers retrieved the governor, U.S., NATO and Afghan troops surrounded the telecom building. Street cops, Afghan army troops, Afghan intelligence paramilitaries, 20 members of the PRC and U.S. soldiers from the the 172nd's 3rd Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment soon outnumbered the Talibs ten to one.
As the team assembled, insurgents opened fire from the telecom building's third story. Their supporters, who had earlier taken up positions around Sharana, took potshots at the cops and troops manning the cordon.
The gathering coalition force fired back at the telecom building's hijackers, blasting chunks of paint and concrete from the facade. Unspecified and unarmed U.S. spy planes swarmed overhead, as did two Apache gunship helicopters, which raked the roof of the telecom building with 30-millimeter cannon rounds.
Amid the tumult, the governor was soon joined in his command bunker by police chief Dewlat Khan and spy boss Shehzada Khan. It's not clear that the chiefs made any meaningful contribution to counterattack plan. Two NATO reports obtained by Danger Room, plus the testimony of one battle participant, attribute the major decisions made in the command center either to Samim alone or to Samim and police chief Khan jointly. It was like the governor of a U.S. state personally planning and directing a hostage rescue in the state's biggest city while his police commissioner watched.
Samim was decisive. He was also hasty and amateurish.
The governor told the Afghan army, the most well-armed of the native security forces, to back away from the telecom building. Witnesses had accurately reported some the insurgent attackers wearing army uniforms, and Samim wanted to avoid any confusion. He did not consider that the insurgents were contained inside the telecom building in known positions, minimizing the risk that Afghan soldiers might mistake each other for the enemy.
Samim gave the lead for the counterattack to the Paktika police along and the intelligence paramilitaries. Neither group was trained or equipped to directly assault heavy enemy defenses. (Some of the Taliban attackers were wearing police uniforms, apparently unknown to the governor and his advisers.) The police lacked adequate weapons, body armor, communications, tactical skills and even helmets. Afghanistan's roughly 150,000 uniformed police are responsible for "maintaining public order and supporting rule of law through community-based policing," according to an April Pentagon report (.pdf). They are not infantrymen.
Better forces were available. The Polish-trained PRC was equipped like a light infantry force, trained like law enforcement, and could double as commandos -- if their foreign backers helped. Samim ignored them. He also ignored the Polish commandos who rushed into Sharana to find out what was happening. When they radioed a request to join the battle, they were denied. "Due to the complex situation, the tactical operations center wasn’t eager to give us permission to get into the action," the Polish officer recalled. Samim did, however, let them put snipers on nearby rooftops.
If the U.S. and NATO officers on the scene had a problem with Samim's questionable plans, they kept silent. For months, their leaders told them that true success in the war meant getting the Afghans in charge of it. "We'll be there for support, we'll be there for guidance, but they’re the ones who will be in the lead and conduct the operations," U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta would say mere weeks after the Sharana battle.
The impulse of U.S. troops in war is to respond directly. Lt. Col. Curtis Taylor, 3-66's commander, happened to be in Sharana when the fighting broke out. As gunfire rained down, Taylor thought like an infantryman, and shot back with his M-4 carbine. “I burned through a whole basic load" of ammunition, Taylor told Danger Room a few weeks later.
But after he'd exhausted his initial load of ammo, Taylor started thinking more like a commander. He made his way down the bullet-pocked street to the governor's command post and joined Samim in a video conference with Col. Edward Bohnemann, commander of the 172nd, to discuss the unfolding crisis. Despite the consultation, the counterstrike would be Samim's call. Half an hour later, the governor stuck to his original plan and ordered the police and the paramilitaries to fight their way up the telecom building.
It was a disaster.
'The Afghan Leadership Made Time-Sensitive Decisions'
Samim's assault force charged into the building as U.S. soldiers popped smoke grenades to give them cover. The concealment helped the cops reach the front door, but inside they were totally exposed. A hail of insurgent bullets and hand grenades rained down from the stairs above, forcing the rescue team back onto the smoky street.
Samim immediately ordered another attack. Again the motley assault team charged through the front door. This time they got to the stairs before grenades and gunfire forced a retreat. One policeman died from shrapnel to the head.
His death wasn't entirely in vain. The confusion from the second direct assault allowed two of the four hostages to escape, apparently through a side door. The troops manning the cordon shifted their fire to cover the fleeing civilians.
It was now 2:00, and the Polish commandos were practically begging to get involved. As they prepped their equipment, they began studying the schematics of the telecom building, and found something that eluded Samim: a fire escape -- possibly the exit the two hostages had used to escape. "These stairs gave us the possibility to attack from an unexpected side," the Polish officer said.
With a dead cop and little to show for it, and with the day growing late, a humbled Samim finally turned to the Poles and the PRC. With daylight fading, he asked the Poles to take charge. "The governor was determined to attack as soon as possible because he believed that after dark, the insurgents would kill all of the hostages and try to break out," the Polish officer recounted.
Polish and NATO commanders quickly signed off on the commandos' direct involvement. The PRC commander and the Polish operators briefed the governor at 2:25. As soon as Samim and Khan approved of the plan, the combined Polish-Afghan rescue force sneaked around the side of the telecom building and got into place. Just 15 minutes after getting the green light from the governor, they attacked.
"We had information that the corridor behind the door on the side of the building was empty," the Polish officer said. "We decided to use a 40-millimeter grenade from an HK underslung launcher to blow the door at the end of the stairs. The range between our position and the door was so short that we thought the grenade might not arm."
It did, splintering the door. In rushed 24 special policemen in old-school U.S. desert camouflage, strapped with Kevlar armor and AK-47s. Eight Polish commandos accompanied them. They hustled down the hall into the insurgents' improvised stronghold. The flank attack had succeeded where two frontal assaults had failed. Coalition forces were now deep inside the telecom building.
Realizing they were under attack from a new angle, the militants reacted quickly. "As we rounded the edge of the corridor, one of the insurgents opened fire from the second room on the left side and halted us," the Polish officer recalled. "He used the door frame for cover while he fired and we were unable to hit him with our fire."
The commandos improvised. One lobbed a flash-bang grenade, forcing the Taliban shooter behind cover. "We used this moment to take rooms on the right side of the entrance," the officer said.
Now the combined Polish-PRC assault team had the Talib surrounded. "One of our operators had a good position to wait for the insurgent to appear," the commando leader said. "When the insurgent showed his weapon and shoulder and started shooting again, the operator eliminated him."
Stepping over the dead body, the assault force raced down the hall, clearing rooms on both sides as they went. They came upon two insurgents wearing suicide vests and shot them before they could detonate. They also found the bodies of the other two Talibs -- both apparently dead of wounds received earlier in the fighting -- and freed the two remaining hostages.
It was 3:24. The battle was over. But the building wasn't secure. Unbeknownst to Samim and the Poles, one of the insurgents had rigged his suicide vest as a booby trap. A U.S. military explosive ordnance disposal team discovered it two days later when it exploded during their inspection of the telecom building, injuring two of them.
But Samim needed a win -- above all, a P.R. win. Just seven minutes after the Poles and the PRC killed the last insurgent, the governor sent a spokesman into the building with a camera. He took propaganda shots of the grinning Afghan SWAT team flashing thumbs-up signs in front of the bullet-pocked facade. The Poles were out of the frame.
The spokesman gathered his material "in time for the nightly news to share the [Afghan National Security Forces] and [government] story," according to a NATO report of the Sharana battle obtained by Danger Room. The story was that "the Afghan leadership made time-sensitive decisions, in cooperative and collaborative efforts to re-establish security within Sharana."
What NATO elided was the wisdom of those decisions. Samim took his city back, but at the cost of several lives that might otherwise have been saved. And he could only do it with big assists from the Americans and Poles.
Those assists are getting rarer. NATO troops are withdrawing. Chuck Hagel, the likely next U.S. secretary of defense, told the Senate on Thursday that "training and advising Afghan forces" will be a residual mission even after 2014, but there won't be many Americans to do it. That means fewer checks on bad decisions by blustering Afghan leaders; more suicidal attacks by green, ill-equipped Afghan troops; and more needless military and civilian deaths. And that's just for the hopeful cases, like Sharana, when "Afghan good enough" really is good enough.
Andrew Balcombe, a reporter for The Counter Terrorist, contributed to this story.
