via Nefafoundation.org

The recent Marine operations in and near Marja brought into sharp relief a fact that contradicts much of what people think they know about the Afghan war. It is this: Forget the fables. The current ranks of Afghan fighters are crowded with poor marksmen.

This simple statement is at odds with an oft-repeated legend of modern conflict, in which Afghan men are described, in clichés and accounts from yesteryear, as natural gunmen and accomplished shots. Everyone who has even faintly followed the history of war in Central Asia has heard the tales of Afghan men whose familiarity with firearms is such a part of their life experience that they can pick up most any weapon and immediately put it to effective work. The most exaggerated accounts are cartoonish, including tales of Afghan riflemen whose bullets can strike a lone sapling (I’ve even heard “blade of grass”) a hilltop away.



Without getting into an argument with the ghost of Rudyard Kipling, who was one of the early voices popularizing the wonders of Afghan riflery, an update is in order. This is because the sum of these descriptions does not match what is commonly observed in firefights today. These days, the opposite is more often the case. Poor marksmanship, even abysmally poor marksmanship, is a consistent trait among Afghan men. The description applies to Taliban and Afghan government units alike.

Over the years that Tyler Hicks and I have worked in Afghanistan’s remote and hostile corners, we have been alongside Afghan, American and European infantrymen in many firefights and ambushes. These fights have involved a wide set of tactical circumstances, ranges, elevations, and light and weather conditions. Some skirmishes were brief and simple. Others were long and complex, involving as many as a few hundred fighters on both sides. One result has been consistent. We have almost always observed that a large proportion of Afghan fire, both incoming and outgoing, is undisciplined and errant, often wildly so. Afghans, like most anyone else with a modicum of exposure to infantry weapons, might be able to figure out how to make any firearm fire. But hitting what they are aiming at, assuming they are aiming at all? That’s another matter.

There are exceptions. The Taliban snipers in Marja were one recent example. We will revisit them here soon. Now and then a disciplined Afghan soldier or police officer also bucks the trend. Credible accounts of Northern Alliance fighters in the 1990s and early 2000s chronicled impressive shooting skills among seasoned Panjshiris. But the larger pattern is firmly established and consistent with the experience and observations of countless soldiers and Marines we have passed time with, including many people who have trained and fought beside Afghan security forces during the past decade.

Today At War will share a few observations about inaccurate Taliban rifle fire. Naturally, this will deal with what can be assessed of incoming fire; we do not embed with Taliban units and thus we have no chance of an unfiltered side-by-side look at their marksmanship habits. (Watching videos that the Taliban and their sympathizers post on the Internet or circulate in bazaars has its limits; these are self-selected excerpts chosen in part to show Taliban prowess. Taking them at face value would be much like trying to measure the American Army’s performance in the field by watching a recruiting ad, or like sitting through some of the cheery PowerPoint presentations that officials in capitals serve up for visitors.) The next post in the series will discuss several factors that contribute to poor Taliban marksmanship. A post soon thereafter will address the shooting skills and habits of Afghan soldiers and police officers. That third post will cover more fully what can be seen of outgoing fire, accounts that are possible because Afghan government shooting is readily observable, at least for those who log enough weeks in rural firebases or on patrol.

Let’s start with a few rough numbers. During the month and a half we spent in Helmand Province, Tyler and I combined firsthand observations with queries to officers commanding Marine rifle companies we worked beside. Three of these companies had been engaged in what, by the standards of the Afghan war, was heavy fighting. Here is what their experiences turned up.

Before the full offensive into Marja began, the Marine ground unit engaged in the most regular fighting with the area’s Taliban was Bravo Company, First Battalion, Third Marines. The company served for a little more than two months on what Marines call the “forward line of troops.” In this capacity, it rotated platoons through positions several miles to Marja’s east, a pair of lonely outposts on the steppe overlooking Route Olympia, which was the road leading into Taliban turf. The Taliban had an interest in watching for American movement along this road, and the Marines patrolled constantly near it. Thus the tactical climate was violent and busy. The insurgents harassed the outposts and frequently skirmished with Marine patrols.

In this contest, the Taliban also had the sort of local advantages common in guerrilla war. They knew the network of irrigation canals and used them as trench lines. They littered the fields and small terrain features with hidden bombs rigged to pressure plates. They deployed spotters with radios on motorcycle patrols, which tried to find the Marines and relay word of their movements and activities. They also chose when to fight, and often opened fire on the Marines in the late afternoon, when the sun was low in the sky. Why? Because Marine patrols originated to the Taliban’s east, and as the Marines walked generally westward across the flat steppe toward the area where the Taliban hid, the Marines were walking into the angled sunlight, which illuminated them perfectly for the Taliban, but forced the Marines to look into hard light, and squint. This was an environment in which small-arms clashes were almost inevitable, and in which the Taliban would often get to fire the opening shots. It should have been a place where the Taliban might succeed. What did the numbers show? By early February, when Marine units began massing for the push on Marja, Capt. Thomas Grace, Bravo Company’s commander, estimated that his platoons had been in at least two dozen firefights, often in open terrain. Some of the fights lasted several hours. At least one lasted a full day and into the night. How many of the company’s Marines and the Afghan soldiers who accompanied them had been shot? Zero.

Farther west along Route Olympia is an intersection known as Five Points, so named because several dirt roads meet there. The juncture provides access to northern Marja. Marine Expeditionary Brigade-Afghanistan, the command that planned the attack on Marja, deemed this essential terrain for securing the region. In January, another unit — Charlie Company, First Battalion, Third Marines — was assigned to fly in by helicopter and seize and hold the intersection. This happened in February, a few days before the larger assault began. It prompted a determined Taliban response.

Once the Taliban realized the Marines had leapt by air over their outer defenses, they clustered near Five Points and fought Charlie Company intensely, especially in the first few days. During this time, according to the company commander, Capt. Stephan P. Karabin II, his Marines were in about 15 firefights. Again the Taliban had certain advantages. They knew the ground well enough that their fighters stashed small motorcycles in canals that had been drained. After ambushing the Marines, they sometimes dropped into a dry canal, ran through the maze, jumped on their bikes, started the engines and blasted away at speeds that no one pursuing on foot could hope to match. Smart tactics. But the Taliban did not always run. They often held their ground and fought, perhaps feeling protected by the canals that did contain water, which typically separated them from the Marine patrols they chose to fire upon.

To change the character of the fighting, Captain Karabin ordered his Marines to patrol on foot with their .50-caliber machine guns. These would be lugged along in pieces, and when a firefight began, the Marines assigned to them would put them together, mount the weapons on their tripods, load belts of ammunition and open fire. (A M2 Browning machine gun and tripod weighs nearly 130 pounds; this does not include the weight of the ammunition.) The heavy guns tilted the fighting more fully in the Marines’ favor. But the fact that M2s were used this way said something about how the Taliban fought; some of this fighting was pitched. How many of Charlie Company’s Marines were struck by Taliban bullets in these engagements? Once again, none.

Neither of these companies was spared casualties. Four separate bomb blasts killed two Marines from Bravo Company and wounded nine Marines from Charlie Company. But the Taliban’s rifles were another story. Together the two companies were in about 40 firefights against the main guerrilla force in a nation that is considered, by the conventional wisdom, to be a land of born marksmen. And not a single bullet fired by the Taliban found its mark.

Obviously, American and Afghan soldiers do get shot, which brings us to the third Marine company, which suffered the effects of more accurate fire. As Charlie Company was fighting at Five Points, Kilo Company, Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, was inserted at night by helicopter into three landing zones in northern Marja, where it was soon met by what may have been the stiffest Taliban resistance of the offensive. For nearly 10 days, Kilo Company was engaged in small-arms fighting. In the first four or five days, the fighting was widespread, often with several firefights occurring simultaneously as different patrols and different platoons on different missions were locked up in skirmishes at once. On the second day of fighting, one skirmish alone, between two platoons and large groups of Taliban fighters, lasted off and on from early morning until night.

Within a week or 10 days, eight of the company’s Marines had been shot, two fatally, and two Afghan soldiers had been shot as well, including one who died. This is a large number compared with the experiences of the other two companies, but it is a small number when set against Kilo Company’s size, and when considered in the context and the volume of Taliban fire.

First, about the size. In all, Kilo Company had on the order of 300 men assigned to it, including engineers, dog handlers, bomb disposal and intelligence specialists, interpreters and an Afghan infantry platoon. (Note: Embed rules forbid precise descriptions of unit and team sizes, so the numbers of the various units that made up Kilo Company on this mission are mashed together here and rounded.)

Now the context. On many days, Kilo Company’s patrols would be ambushed while crossing flat, open ground, with no vegetation concealing the Marines’ movements and no place to take cover without running a couple of hundred yards or more. Often many Taliban gunmen would open fire simultaneously, and a large number of rounds would fly into the area where the patrol walked. Rounds would snap and buzz past helmets. Rounds would thump all around in the dirt. But usually no one would be struck. It happened again and again.

When Marines did get hit, it often appeared that the fire came from PK machine guns or the local contingent of snipers – not the riflemen who make the Taliban’s rank-and-file. One day, after a few hours of fighting in which the Taliban had not yet hit any Marines, a corporal from Second Platoon stood upright, exposing himself above the waist and looking over a wall as bullets flew high overhead. He didn’t flinch. “What’s everybody ducking for?” he said. He cupped his hand to his mouth and shouted an expletive-laden taunt at the Taliban gunmen shooting from concealment on the opposite side of a field. The editors would never allow the corporal’s words to be printed here. But they amounted to this: You guys can’t shoot.

Yes, some of this was probably adrenaline and undiluted cockiness, the kind of behavior that Marines can thrive on. But this cockiness was not just attitude. It reflected a discernible truth. Much of the incoming fire was not coming close. (Later in that same fight, some of the fire did come close, as at least one sniper arrived on the Taliban side; we’ll show video of that soon). But at this point in the battle, any number of adjectives might be applied to the Taliban fighters on the far side of the open ground. They were resourceful, organized, clever, brave. In the main, however, they could not shoot.

For those of you who have served in Afghanistan, or been exposed to gunfighting there via other jobs, your input would be welcome. One of the company commanders shared his insights in an interview soon after the fighting at Marja tapered off. In the annals of the Afghan war, Afghans are supposedly crack shots, some of the best marksmen on earth. Captain Karabin, a veteran of the war in Iraq, summed up neatly a rifle company’s experience that pointed otherwise. “I used to say in Iraq that I’m only alive because Iraqis are such bad shots,” he said. “And now I’ll say it in Afghanistan. I’m only alive because the Afghans are also such bad shots.”