I listened to a few minutes on the radio from a Pakistani journalist: 'The people are getting tired of these cross-border excursions by Americans from Afghanistan.'
A complaint the Afghans are familiar with.
Not just supplies ..
What's a D-30? A Soviet 122-mm howitzer - tosses 22 kilogram shells up to 15,000 meters. Makes a really big boom.
' ... target, troops in the open .. '
A complaint the Afghans are familiar with.
(Lt. Colonel Chris) Nash said his embedded training team, ETT 2-5, and their allies from the Afghan Border Police's 1st Brigade fought "a significant fight" in late June 2007 in the Agam Tengay and Wazir Tengay valleys in the Tora Bora mountains of southern Nangarhar - the same region in which al-Qaida forces fought a retreat into Pakistan from prepared defenses in the winter of 2001-2002.
"I had six [Marine] guys on a hill," Nash said. "They weren't surrounded, but in the traditional sense they might have been."
At a critical point in the battle, the Pakistanis flew several resupply missions to a Taliban base about 15 to 20 kilometers inside Afghanistan, Nash said. None of the Marines witnessed the helicopter flights during the four days they were there, he said in a Sept. 19 email. Rather, the supply flights had been reported to them by Afghan soldiers and local civilians in the village of Tangay Kholl.
Not just supplies ..
"What [the Pakistanis] bring to the fight is not only tactical expertise, but [because of] how they're arrayed along the border, they can easily provide support by fire positions that our enemies are able to maneuver under," Nash said. "We were on the receiving end of Pakistani military D-30."
What's a D-30? A Soviet 122-mm howitzer - tosses 22 kilogram shells up to 15,000 meters. Makes a really big boom.
' ... target, troops in the open .. '
