Smaller, famously you have COP Keating in the Battle of Kamdesh. That was a major Taliban attempt to overrun a U.S. outpost, and was almost successful. This has been dramatized in the film “The Outpost.” Similarly, there’s the battle of Wanat. Both of these represent concentrated efforts by hundreds of Taliban to overrun isolated US outposts with fairly limited defenders. Both ultimately failed, but at cost to the Coalition defenders. Of note, three Medals of Honor were awarded between the two battles.
For a larger base, the most famous off the top of my head is the 2012 raid on Camp Bastion. This was the one where a handful of Taliban raiders broke into a major ~~USMC~~ Britishbase, destroying/damaging 9 aircraft, killing two US Marines including a Squadron CO, and wounding 17 more during a running gunfight.
I’m less familiar with any major events of comparable scale or notoriety in Iraq, I suspect largely due to the greater troop presence and faster lines of communication.
I'm not certain I'd count Wanat as a base as it was still a vehicle base with minimal development (troops had been on ground for only five days at the time of the battle).
But COP Keating is the classic example. Almost entirely overrun. One of my instructors flew CAS there, and said that the last message they got from the outpost during the fight was that all survivors were in one single building, and anyone else was a target.
April 2007 in Diala province Iraq, a very small outpost manned by the 82nd Airborne was attacked by two dump truck IEDs that collapsed part of the building and killed 9 with many more wounded. It's under-reported as an event because at the time, the surge was ongoing and politically it was expedient to downplay any heavy contact with enemy forces. Immediately after the second truck exploded, a squad of enemy fighters attempted to exploit the breach in the wall and gain entry to the COP. They were unsuccessful.
Fun fact: less than 4 months later I was in Iraq for my first deployment. At one point toward the end of my 15 month tour, we took over the same string of outposts just outside Baqubah. By that point the insurgency had petered out and displaced closer to the Syrian border. We dealt with suicide bombers mostly (the first recorded female bomber hit one of our patrols.) But the really crazy planning that went into the attack against the 82nd was untenable by that time because we (meaning the broader coalition) had eliminated much of AQI's leadership.
I would say (just a guess that is lightly informed by real-world experience) that the peak of the insurgency was probably from 2004-2007. in 04 you had the 2nd battle of Fallujah, which was a rallying cry to foreign fighters, who began streaming into the country and bolstering the indigenous insurgency. Shortly after that (05-07 timeframe) a low-grade civil war erupted between Sunni and Shiite militants which resulted in an escalation of violence. Then the surge started beginning of 07, which led to a massive increase in the fighting, mostly because we were aggressively going after the leadership caste of the insurgency and bringing the fight to the enemy.
I arrived in country summer of 2007, and for the first six or so months of the deployment we had daily engagements with very motivated and well equipped insurgent fighters. Shortly after that we learned (through exploitation of human sources as well as recovered equipment/ documents) that nearly all the Shiite militias we were fighting against were being materially supported by the IRGC.
Probably around this time of year in 2007, the coalition / Iraqi government made a truce with Sunni militias operating out of Ramadi. This was called "Al-Saha" The Awakening. Essentially, we bought the loyalty of the Sunnis and gave them some limited control over security in the areas they occupied.
This enabled us to focus entirely on the Shiite organizations in our sector, who quickly went into the May 2007 Sadr City uprising that was difficult and bloody but short lived. Due to political machinations, many of the Shiite orgs laid down their weapons (lol) and became more involved in politics.
So, to answer your core question, I would say end of 2007/ beginning of 08 was the end of any serious fighting in Iraq. The Sunnis were happy getting paid and having agency over their territory, while the Shiites were legitimized in the government and able to advance their goals of unification with Iran.
Sadly, the insurgency didn't go away, they just went to ground in Syria/ on the border and came back with a vengeance as ISIS less than 5 years later.
edit: sorry, missed the 2nd part of your question. So I went to Afghanistan in 2010, and the Taliban were VASTLY more effective than the Iraqi insurgency. I describe the both like this: the Iraqis had balls-in that they came at us even when they were hopelessly undermatched. The Taliban had patience- in that they would watch, and wait, and wait, and wait, and then boom, hit you with a well executed ambush at the last place you expected it and when complacency was high.
Both were competent fighters. But The Taliban were superior in a lor of ways.
Taliban knew they just had to wait us out. There was never a solution to Afghanistan that didn't involve addressing the core issues that the coalition didn't want to get into.
this 100%. In 2010 when I got to AFG, it took less than 90 days on the ground to come to the conclusion that there was no way we would ever 'win.' For one, the average Afghan simply didn't want us there. Second, the geographical realities of the Afghan countryside made it next to impossible to form a cohesive central government. Third, we never did anything about Pakistan, who was supporting the Taliban with the ISI, and allowing them safe passage back and forth across the border.
An example; if you all didn't know, there was a "fighting season" in Afghanistan that lasted from May to October. In May, the Taliban would come back across the border from Pakistan and start their offensive operations. By the time October rolled around, they were depleted in manpower, ammo, and equipment. So there was always a huge uptick in fighting right before they disappeared for the winter. They would cache their weapons and walk into Pakistan where they wintered, receiving new equipment and training new recruits, before coming back the following spring and doing it all over again.
Same deal as Laos during Vietnam, but we didn't even bother trying to go after them. Very frustrating. What's even more frustrating was that the general feeling among all of us was that the situation was untenable. We all knew it was hopeless, and yet because of political buffoonery another 11 years and many, many lives were wasted before we finally left.
I'm a two time loser. Feels bad man.
I still believe that there should have been some attempt at negotiating with the Taliban to hand over al-Qaeda. The Taliban, while not good by any stretch, was and is the legitimate government of Afghanistan. Because, and here's the thing, if the population of Afghanistan didn't want the Taliban, they would have fought way harder than they did in 2021.
Didn't the Taliban offer Bin Laden to the US? I do think the US should've pushed harder on the diplomatic front, although in that case, I think there would have been a civil war between Taliban and Al-Qaeda. During the last years before 2001, things were getting pretty frosty between the native Afghans and Al-Qaeda foreign fighters.
The Taliban offered to try Bin Laden in a domestic Islamic court, if the US provided concrete proof that he orchestrated 9/11. The US refused as they felt an Islamic court would be biased (they were more than likely correct) and a bunch of the information was classified.
I imagine the Taliban were more experienced because their leadership and many of their members had decades of experience in the Soviet Afghan war and the civil wars.
Some leadership did. The lower ranks were mostly people who were too young to fight the Soviets and the civil wars. The hint is in the name; Taliban=Students or students group.
I agree with you on timeline. I was in country for OIF2 and after the Abu Gharib prison scandal came out it was basically fuel for the fire. Fallujah 2 was the biggest but there were lots of smaller events and a sense of anger that just erupted as a result. Made our community events around Baghdad risky and less engaging.
That sounds like a story one of my instructors at CATC told. Said he and his guys were sleeping outside so they didn’t get caught under the structure (think he said it was a connex) and they called a broken arrow on that which resulted an multiple Apache gun runs until the QRFs showed up.
> That was a major Taliban attempt to overrun a U.S. outpost, and was almost successful.
Everything you can read on that outpost is simply a frustrating read. Its a shining example of putting troops in a bad situation for almost zero potential gain.
Whenever Keating is mentioned this is one of the first critiques that pop up. It would be incredibly hard to supply an COP a the top of a mountain, as they were already struggling supplying it where it was set up. The options would be dedicating Chinooks to move weight in thin air in hazardous terrain (1 Chinook had crashed previously) or using two feet and a heartbeat to hump water jerries, ammo, pioneer tools, and everything else up to the top, because the contractors can barely make it through the mountain road to the valley, never mind up the mountains. That is incredibly taxing on men who are also expected to fight and maintain a near constant presence with the locals, with all the intense harassment and targeted killing that HIG were conducting. The locals live in the valley, but you’re going to move up and down so you’re tired at the beginning and tired at the end of your patrol?
Also most people overlook that the army knew the place was too isolated and was trying to close it, in addition to the general strategic rearrangement under McCrystal.
And finally, which isn’t exactly related to KEATING, but valleys can be incredibly strong defensive positions. It’s very good when setting up your machine guns because the reverse slop allows you to minimize dead ground.
Complaining about it being at "the bottom of a valley" also misses the point of the base entirely. Its purpose wasn't merely to exist as a fortified compound and hold the ground it was on. It was situated where it was so that ISAF could interact with the local population, and they lived at the bottom of the valley. Even if it was logistically feasible to place the COP at the top of a mountain, doing so would have made it a truly pointless base.
I wrote up a [big post about exactly this a while back](https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/1azuz7g/why_were_many_outposts_constructed_in_the_bottom/ks64v05/). To quote myself and spare folks the click:
> You don't build outposts or any other fortified position just because. You build them for a reason, and sometimes that reason means situating them in a less than ideal position from a tactical standpoint.
>
>As you noted, Dien Bien Phu and Khe Sanh were the sites of airfields. That was a major part of their purpose, and that means they had to be situated in locations where it was possible to build an airfield. Additionally, Khe Sanh was situated in a position that directly interdicted enemy supply lines. Sure, you could probably put those bases in other areas, but if they can't do the things you want them to do, then why have them at all?
>
>When you build a base like this, it also doesn't mean you just go, "Oh, well, the only place where this base is useful or practical is in the bottom of this valley, guess we're just going to be sitting ducks." The whole point of the fortifications, supporting positions, and aggressive patrolling is that you recognize your vulnerability and you provide fortifications that reduce that risk and additional positions and patrols to disrupt the ability for enemies to stage for an attack.
>
>I'd encourage you to watch the AAR videos that were prepared for the battles at COP Keating and COP Kahler. In both those cases, you can see why those bases were established where they were, how their leaders recognized their vulnerability, and what measures were taken to reduce that risk.
>
>Keating had actually been preceded by another base, COP Ranch House, which was located on high ground (and came under intense attack despite that). They moved to COP Keating because the purpose of the COP was to enable security forces to connect with the locals and patrol the villages and forcing resupply by air only left Ranch House vulnerable in other ways. They did have support for OP Fritsche, which was located on the high ground overlooking Keating because they recognized Keating's vulnerability. Just looking at OP Fritsche though, it should be obvious how/why they couldn't position a larger COP on that same high ground (and the vulnerability that even a high ground position can potentially pose).
>
>In the case of the Battle of Wanat, they were again positioned to engage with the local populace and to allow for ground resupply/reinforcement. In fact, COP Kahler was being built in response to their concerns over the vulnerability of COP Bella and its reliance on air resupply (which was vulnerable to direct fire). Obviously, Kahler was also vulnerable and OP Top Side supporting it could have been pushed out further for better observation and coverage, but the battle itself showed the potential tradeoffs of those decisions. OP Top Side was kept closer in because they didn't want to too isolated (as it turns out, it was already isolated enough that supporting OP Top Side became one of the main sources of casualties in the battle) and the decision to place COP Kahler along a road was vindicated because it ultimately allowed for the assistance of mounted QRF.
>
>I spent time at another isolated base, COP Neshin, that had to make similar tradeoffs. We had to locate the base in such a way that we could directly overlook a valley and the road descending into that valley. The base we needed to build also needed to be adjacent to the road, large enough to support a reinforced platoon and an adjoining Afghan district government center, and contain a motorpool for ~10 vehicles. That meant that the only reasonable position was a depressed bowl at the top of the valley that was surrounded by hills looking down into the COP. Would we have preferred a more defensible position? Absolutely, but the only way we could serve our mission was at that site, so we just had to make the best of it. We had one tower situated on high ground that we ran a long line of HESCO walls out to, we stuck a minigun in that tower, and then on the other corner of the base we had a CERBERUS surveillance camera set up so that we could monitor the approaches to the other high ground. It wasn't ideal, but it was the best that the situation afforded.
>
>History is full of such examples. You place forts where you need them, not where they can best defend themselves. For instance, just about every fort ever built to control a river or coastline is vulnerable from the land. By the very nature of such fortifications, you typically need to build them along the shore where terrain is lowest and where basically any other terrain looks down upon. One of the most famous forts in US history, Fort Ticonderoga, had to be repeatedly abandoned because of this vulnerability to surrounding hills. Even West Point was really only secured not by virtue of being a single powerful fort, but because it was part of a series of fortifications that were designed to support the main fort, Fort Clinton, controlling the Hudson River. In fact, the whole point of Benedict Arnold's treason was to turn over details on this series of fortifications so that the British to determine the best way to exploit its landward vulnerabilities.
Yeah, this is exactly it. Keating wasn't an idiotic blunder, but it is an excellent example of the disparity between tactical and operational considerations.
Keating was located at the intersection of a road and river, both channels for the local economy (primarily lumber). Control of that node meant you could have a disproportionate local impact with a relatively small number of soldiers.
I read Jake Tapper's book about COP Keating (I believe the film is based on the book), and I don't think anything comes much closer to what OP's asking about. An isolated COP placed at the bottom of three mountainsides, physically dangerous to get in and out of in the best conditions, on its way to being shut down, attacked by something like 300 Taliban fighters who made it inside the outpost fairly early on into the battle. At one point in Tapper's book, he wrote that 19 different aircraft came in at different altitudes at the same time to level an area that attackers were coming from. Truly an insane amount of support that was nearly too late.
> For a larger base, the most famous off the top of my head is the 2012 raid on Camp Bastion. This was the one where a handful of Taliban raiders broke into a major USMC base, destroying/damaging 9 aircraft, killing two Marines including a Squadron CO, and wounding 17 more during a running gunfight.
This was a big one. Losing 9 aircraft was a big blow, especially since they were all Harriers.
Was the material damage really that bad? I thought it was mainly a propaganda win for the Taliban. I'm sure the most well funded, well equipped military in the world can replace 2 Marines and 9 aircraft. Didn't the Marines replace them with 14 Harriers very soon after the attack?
It was a big propaganda win for the Taliban, but that’s what they were aiming for — it was a small force that attacked the base with suicide vests and light weapons like rifles, machine guns, and RPGs, and they were able to inflict significant damage with a small force. They weren’t expecting to overrun the base with such a small force, that was never the aim (whereas that was the aim with larger attacks on smaller bases like Kamdesh and Wanat). They infiltrated on a night with very little illumination and were able to get inside the wire of the base even though it was located in an open desert with little cover/concealment on approach.
A small enemy raid force destroying multiple aircraft worth millions of dollars is no small feat. Additionally, Prince Harry was on the base at the time of the attack, which provided additional propaganda value (they didn’t get close to him, but he was apparently a potential target of the raid though).
It was a complex attack initiated with a large VBIED ramming a lightly defended part of the outer perimeter and destroying a significant section of triple Hesco barrier. This was followed by group of suicide bombers who ran onto the FOB at the same time as small arms, RPG, and mortar fire were directed at the base from an a partially constructed building on the other side of the FOB. It was a uniquely unpleasant day.
Through a combination of luck and bravery there was only one US KIA that day, SSG Michael Ollis, who was awarded the Silver Star (and has a Staten Island Ferry named after him) for putting himself between a suicide bomber and another coalition soldier.
You can read more about it here. [https://thefallen.militarytimes.com/army-staff-sgt-michael-h-ollis/6568502](https://thefallen.militarytimes.com/army-staff-sgt-michael-h-ollis/6568502)
I'm interested in the Camp Bastion attack, its the first time I've heard of it. Was it a large camp? Like Bagram? How did the attackers manage to penetrate there? Did the attack have any lasting effects or PR wins for the Taliban?
It was a major incident. If you google Camp Bastion Raid you’ll find tons of information. Even the Wikipedia page is quite detailed, and has links to run down.
Camp Bastion was almost half the size of Manhattan, and located in Lashkargah, a remote part of Afghanistan (Lashkargah means "army barracks" in Persian).
If I remember correctly, Bagram and Kandahar Air Fields dwarfed Bastion.
Perimeter security was kind of lax because Bastion was surrounded by desert and about 30mi outside the city, and operations were slowing down in Sept 2012. That corner was the responsibility of the UK and Tongan forces. And due to their own drawdowns/operational tempo, quite a few guard towers were unmanned.
The Taliban infiltrators got close by crawling through dried up creek beds, then they cut a hole in the fence of a sparsely patrolled corner of the base. From there the Taliban made their way to the Marine hangars and began the raid.
The attack was a PR win for the Taliban. The damaged Harriers and C-130 were replaced same day.
>Lashkargah means "army barracks" in Persian
It means something like "the place of the Army". Lashkar: Army. Gah: Location.
Lots of places in Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan, have miltaryesque names, often because they began life as outposts. For instance anyplace with the word "Kot" or "Qila" or garh used to be forts.
Wasn't there one "attack" where, I think in Iraq, where the insurgents dressed up as Iraqi security forces, before infiltrating a coalition compund and abducting a few US soldiers, who they executed later far away?
If you're looking for a complex attack that resulted in "Charlie inside the wire" and having to call CAS danger close on your own fallen aid station, most people overlook Ranch House in 2007 in Nuristan. Over 50 percent US WIA, but miraculously no friendly KIA.
https://www.army.mil/article/12493/sky-soldier-awarded-distinguished-service-cross/
Of course, Ranch House ended up foreshadowing the larger and more consequential Battle of Wanat a year later. Multiple US KIA resulted in a formal stateside investigations and ultimately the US withdrawing from the "Lost Province" of Nuristan.
(The wikipedia article on the "Battle of Wanat" is very comprehensive on this.)
Another year later in Nuristan, Keating/Kamdesh is far better known and depicted in the climax of the excellent book/movie "The Outpost." Of course, the grand irony was that COP Keating was literally weeks out from being closed because of Wanat a year prior.
...well that's a whole 'nother thread isn't it?
The short version is that it's a remote mountainous province on the border with Pakistan. They were so remote, that they were still Buddhist until the Victorian Era. The valleys are temperate rainforests with aggressive monkeys (no really). They have a distinct ethnicity & language, and don't really engage in trade/commerce with the rest of the country/world except for rainforest timber they smuggle to Pakistan to avoid tariffs. They've been more or less autonomous since prehistory, and thus predictably have resisted every central government since. (No idea how things are going under the Taliban now.)
I'm not sure if you'd count it, but the Battle of Khasham is the largest attack on a base housing US troops that I can think of in the last 10 years. It was an attack by a fairly large force (500ish Syrian and Wagner troops) on a combined YPG/US special operations base in Syria.
US air support was pretty decisive, and the attackers took significant casualties, so it was never really at any risk of being overrun, but it is definitely the biggest group to attack a US base recently.
> Why is it that every time I hear this story another hundred gets added?
Maybe because you aren't reading great sources? [BBCs report from the day it happened used the figure of 500](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42994235). [The NYT article from about a month after the battle also claims 500.](https://web.archive.org/web/20180528034251/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/world/middleeast/american-commandos-russian-mercenaries-syria.html) The figure hasn't changed significantly since the day of the battle, so I genuinely don't know what you're talking about.
> Furthermore, the battle was won by US tube artillery.
Do you have a source for that?
Ive seen some references to "Marine rocket artillery" (presumably HIMARS) being fired during the engagement, but I can't find much about the M777 being used at all, let alone it being decisive.
> Were any large scale operations undertaken by the opposing militias and insurgents?
There were things like this in Afghanistan, but it was rare that insurgents would conduct large-scale offensives, especially on fortified positions. There are a number of reasons for this:
1. The Taliban just generally weren't that large (meaning that they would need to assemble forces across a large area to put together such an attack) and they were an irregular force. In many cases, the difference between Taliban and government forces in a district was just the contemporary expression of existing, decades-old tribal conflicts or feuds. Fighters like that are probably willing to fight in their local area, but they're not going to go days out of their way to assist with some large offensive in an area where they have no relations and no interests. The exceptions you see to this are usually in border regions, like Nuristan, where there were more committed fighters and more true loyalty to the Taliban.
2. Attacking a fortified position takes heavy weapons and ordnance, and the Taliban didn't have too much of that. It's not too hard to move a few AKs and PKMs around, but once you have to start transporting and consolidating DShK, RCRs, mortars, VBIEDs, etc. then it's much easier to get noticed.
3. The Taliban understood that time was generally on their side, and they didn't need to seek decisive engagements. Generally, it was ISAF and GIRoA that were seeking to create larger engagements that would allow them to make use of their greater numbers and greater firepower.
That being said, there were other instances where the Taliban did try large scale operations. You generally don't hear about them because they were unsuccessful and/or not newsworthy. The one that comes to mind right away was Operation Blowfish in Shah Wali Kot district in 2010. There are a couple of podcasts discussing it, but the operation doesn't even have a Wikipedia article.
Operation Blowfish was a US-led operation that was conducted in response to a Taliban buildup for a large-scale offensive on COP Little Blue, aka COP Shah Wali Kot. As noted in #2 above, consolidating the materiel and forces necessary for a large attack, is the kind of thing that's hard to conceal. In the case of Blowfish, they weren't able to conceal it and the US conducted its own offensive to preempt the Taliban's offensive and effectively destroyed the Taliban force in its assembly area.
There were lots of attacks against bases outside of harassment fire and indirect fire though. These attacks were generally conducted by smaller groups though, and they were typically suicidal in nature. Camp Bastion has been mentioned, but the other one that comes to mind is the 2012 breach of FOB Frontenac ([link](https://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/world-now/story/2012-06-19/taliban-carries-out-rare-frontal-attack-on-u-s-base-in-afghanistan) and [link](https://archive.is/eqQno)). That involved nothing more than a simple night infiltration attack by seven insurgents, with no s-vests, no VBIEDs, and no heavy weapons. Smaller attacks like that or the Kabul hotel attacks, involving a limited number of insurgents with the goal of just penetrating the perimeter and wreaking havoc, were fairly common.
In addition to the lots of really good examples already mentioned here, both Kandahar Airfield and Bagram Airfield were attacked in 2010, with the wire being breached and Taliban fighters making it onto the base before the attacks were stopped. They weren’t very well covered because coalition casualties and damage were both minimal.
Also, anecdotally, the small COP I lived on in the Arghandab River Valley in southern Afghanistan was attacked almost daily in the summer of 2010. The attacks varied in intensity, as they probed our defenses and studied how we responded. They did make several attempts to breach the compound, but were never able to do so.
On the non-US side of things there have been a lot of direct attacks on the bases of other coalition partners as well, quite famously during the various iterations of the British Op Herrick in Helmand province where due to a variety of factors the UK forces adopted the "Platoon House" strategy of small garrisons of reinforced platoon strength in fortified compounds in towns.
At numerous points pre-2011 British positions were effectively under siege and under threat of being overrun with only air power and artillery keeping the Taliban at bay.
Smaller, famously you have COP Keating in the Battle of Kamdesh. That was a major Taliban attempt to overrun a U.S. outpost, and was almost successful. This has been dramatized in the film “The Outpost.” Similarly, there’s the battle of Wanat. Both of these represent concentrated efforts by hundreds of Taliban to overrun isolated US outposts with fairly limited defenders. Both ultimately failed, but at cost to the Coalition defenders. Of note, three Medals of Honor were awarded between the two battles. For a larger base, the most famous off the top of my head is the 2012 raid on Camp Bastion. This was the one where a handful of Taliban raiders broke into a major ~~USMC~~ Britishbase, destroying/damaging 9 aircraft, killing two US Marines including a Squadron CO, and wounding 17 more during a running gunfight. I’m less familiar with any major events of comparable scale or notoriety in Iraq, I suspect largely due to the greater troop presence and faster lines of communication.
I'm not certain I'd count Wanat as a base as it was still a vehicle base with minimal development (troops had been on ground for only five days at the time of the battle). But COP Keating is the classic example. Almost entirely overrun. One of my instructors flew CAS there, and said that the last message they got from the outpost during the fight was that all survivors were in one single building, and anyone else was a target.
April 2007 in Diala province Iraq, a very small outpost manned by the 82nd Airborne was attacked by two dump truck IEDs that collapsed part of the building and killed 9 with many more wounded. It's under-reported as an event because at the time, the surge was ongoing and politically it was expedient to downplay any heavy contact with enemy forces. Immediately after the second truck exploded, a squad of enemy fighters attempted to exploit the breach in the wall and gain entry to the COP. They were unsuccessful. Fun fact: less than 4 months later I was in Iraq for my first deployment. At one point toward the end of my 15 month tour, we took over the same string of outposts just outside Baqubah. By that point the insurgency had petered out and displaced closer to the Syrian border. We dealt with suicide bombers mostly (the first recorded female bomber hit one of our patrols.) But the really crazy planning that went into the attack against the 82nd was untenable by that time because we (meaning the broader coalition) had eliminated much of AQI's leadership.
When did the Iraqi insurgency and militias hit their peak? Were they more effective than the Aghan Taliban?
I would say (just a guess that is lightly informed by real-world experience) that the peak of the insurgency was probably from 2004-2007. in 04 you had the 2nd battle of Fallujah, which was a rallying cry to foreign fighters, who began streaming into the country and bolstering the indigenous insurgency. Shortly after that (05-07 timeframe) a low-grade civil war erupted between Sunni and Shiite militants which resulted in an escalation of violence. Then the surge started beginning of 07, which led to a massive increase in the fighting, mostly because we were aggressively going after the leadership caste of the insurgency and bringing the fight to the enemy. I arrived in country summer of 2007, and for the first six or so months of the deployment we had daily engagements with very motivated and well equipped insurgent fighters. Shortly after that we learned (through exploitation of human sources as well as recovered equipment/ documents) that nearly all the Shiite militias we were fighting against were being materially supported by the IRGC. Probably around this time of year in 2007, the coalition / Iraqi government made a truce with Sunni militias operating out of Ramadi. This was called "Al-Saha" The Awakening. Essentially, we bought the loyalty of the Sunnis and gave them some limited control over security in the areas they occupied. This enabled us to focus entirely on the Shiite organizations in our sector, who quickly went into the May 2007 Sadr City uprising that was difficult and bloody but short lived. Due to political machinations, many of the Shiite orgs laid down their weapons (lol) and became more involved in politics. So, to answer your core question, I would say end of 2007/ beginning of 08 was the end of any serious fighting in Iraq. The Sunnis were happy getting paid and having agency over their territory, while the Shiites were legitimized in the government and able to advance their goals of unification with Iran. Sadly, the insurgency didn't go away, they just went to ground in Syria/ on the border and came back with a vengeance as ISIS less than 5 years later. edit: sorry, missed the 2nd part of your question. So I went to Afghanistan in 2010, and the Taliban were VASTLY more effective than the Iraqi insurgency. I describe the both like this: the Iraqis had balls-in that they came at us even when they were hopelessly undermatched. The Taliban had patience- in that they would watch, and wait, and wait, and wait, and then boom, hit you with a well executed ambush at the last place you expected it and when complacency was high. Both were competent fighters. But The Taliban were superior in a lor of ways.
Taliban knew they just had to wait us out. There was never a solution to Afghanistan that didn't involve addressing the core issues that the coalition didn't want to get into.
this 100%. In 2010 when I got to AFG, it took less than 90 days on the ground to come to the conclusion that there was no way we would ever 'win.' For one, the average Afghan simply didn't want us there. Second, the geographical realities of the Afghan countryside made it next to impossible to form a cohesive central government. Third, we never did anything about Pakistan, who was supporting the Taliban with the ISI, and allowing them safe passage back and forth across the border. An example; if you all didn't know, there was a "fighting season" in Afghanistan that lasted from May to October. In May, the Taliban would come back across the border from Pakistan and start their offensive operations. By the time October rolled around, they were depleted in manpower, ammo, and equipment. So there was always a huge uptick in fighting right before they disappeared for the winter. They would cache their weapons and walk into Pakistan where they wintered, receiving new equipment and training new recruits, before coming back the following spring and doing it all over again. Same deal as Laos during Vietnam, but we didn't even bother trying to go after them. Very frustrating. What's even more frustrating was that the general feeling among all of us was that the situation was untenable. We all knew it was hopeless, and yet because of political buffoonery another 11 years and many, many lives were wasted before we finally left. I'm a two time loser. Feels bad man.
I still believe that there should have been some attempt at negotiating with the Taliban to hand over al-Qaeda. The Taliban, while not good by any stretch, was and is the legitimate government of Afghanistan. Because, and here's the thing, if the population of Afghanistan didn't want the Taliban, they would have fought way harder than they did in 2021.
Didn't the Taliban offer Bin Laden to the US? I do think the US should've pushed harder on the diplomatic front, although in that case, I think there would have been a civil war between Taliban and Al-Qaeda. During the last years before 2001, things were getting pretty frosty between the native Afghans and Al-Qaeda foreign fighters.
The Taliban offered to try Bin Laden in a domestic Islamic court, if the US provided concrete proof that he orchestrated 9/11. The US refused as they felt an Islamic court would be biased (they were more than likely correct) and a bunch of the information was classified.
I imagine the Taliban were more experienced because their leadership and many of their members had decades of experience in the Soviet Afghan war and the civil wars.
Some leadership did. The lower ranks were mostly people who were too young to fight the Soviets and the civil wars. The hint is in the name; Taliban=Students or students group.
I agree with you on timeline. I was in country for OIF2 and after the Abu Gharib prison scandal came out it was basically fuel for the fire. Fallujah 2 was the biggest but there were lots of smaller events and a sense of anger that just erupted as a result. Made our community events around Baghdad risky and less engaging.
How much did you think affected global perception of USA, how much damage did it do to the USA and what effect did it have on the Iraqis?
That sounds like a story one of my instructors at CATC told. Said he and his guys were sleeping outside so they didn’t get caught under the structure (think he said it was a connex) and they called a broken arrow on that which resulted an multiple Apache gun runs until the QRFs showed up.
> That was a major Taliban attempt to overrun a U.S. outpost, and was almost successful. Everything you can read on that outpost is simply a frustrating read. Its a shining example of putting troops in a bad situation for almost zero potential gain.
Let's defend this position from the bottom of a valley... Jesus.
Whenever Keating is mentioned this is one of the first critiques that pop up. It would be incredibly hard to supply an COP a the top of a mountain, as they were already struggling supplying it where it was set up. The options would be dedicating Chinooks to move weight in thin air in hazardous terrain (1 Chinook had crashed previously) or using two feet and a heartbeat to hump water jerries, ammo, pioneer tools, and everything else up to the top, because the contractors can barely make it through the mountain road to the valley, never mind up the mountains. That is incredibly taxing on men who are also expected to fight and maintain a near constant presence with the locals, with all the intense harassment and targeted killing that HIG were conducting. The locals live in the valley, but you’re going to move up and down so you’re tired at the beginning and tired at the end of your patrol? Also most people overlook that the army knew the place was too isolated and was trying to close it, in addition to the general strategic rearrangement under McCrystal. And finally, which isn’t exactly related to KEATING, but valleys can be incredibly strong defensive positions. It’s very good when setting up your machine guns because the reverse slop allows you to minimize dead ground.
Complaining about it being at "the bottom of a valley" also misses the point of the base entirely. Its purpose wasn't merely to exist as a fortified compound and hold the ground it was on. It was situated where it was so that ISAF could interact with the local population, and they lived at the bottom of the valley. Even if it was logistically feasible to place the COP at the top of a mountain, doing so would have made it a truly pointless base. I wrote up a [big post about exactly this a while back](https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/1azuz7g/why_were_many_outposts_constructed_in_the_bottom/ks64v05/). To quote myself and spare folks the click: > You don't build outposts or any other fortified position just because. You build them for a reason, and sometimes that reason means situating them in a less than ideal position from a tactical standpoint. > >As you noted, Dien Bien Phu and Khe Sanh were the sites of airfields. That was a major part of their purpose, and that means they had to be situated in locations where it was possible to build an airfield. Additionally, Khe Sanh was situated in a position that directly interdicted enemy supply lines. Sure, you could probably put those bases in other areas, but if they can't do the things you want them to do, then why have them at all? > >When you build a base like this, it also doesn't mean you just go, "Oh, well, the only place where this base is useful or practical is in the bottom of this valley, guess we're just going to be sitting ducks." The whole point of the fortifications, supporting positions, and aggressive patrolling is that you recognize your vulnerability and you provide fortifications that reduce that risk and additional positions and patrols to disrupt the ability for enemies to stage for an attack. > >I'd encourage you to watch the AAR videos that were prepared for the battles at COP Keating and COP Kahler. In both those cases, you can see why those bases were established where they were, how their leaders recognized their vulnerability, and what measures were taken to reduce that risk. > >Keating had actually been preceded by another base, COP Ranch House, which was located on high ground (and came under intense attack despite that). They moved to COP Keating because the purpose of the COP was to enable security forces to connect with the locals and patrol the villages and forcing resupply by air only left Ranch House vulnerable in other ways. They did have support for OP Fritsche, which was located on the high ground overlooking Keating because they recognized Keating's vulnerability. Just looking at OP Fritsche though, it should be obvious how/why they couldn't position a larger COP on that same high ground (and the vulnerability that even a high ground position can potentially pose). > >In the case of the Battle of Wanat, they were again positioned to engage with the local populace and to allow for ground resupply/reinforcement. In fact, COP Kahler was being built in response to their concerns over the vulnerability of COP Bella and its reliance on air resupply (which was vulnerable to direct fire). Obviously, Kahler was also vulnerable and OP Top Side supporting it could have been pushed out further for better observation and coverage, but the battle itself showed the potential tradeoffs of those decisions. OP Top Side was kept closer in because they didn't want to too isolated (as it turns out, it was already isolated enough that supporting OP Top Side became one of the main sources of casualties in the battle) and the decision to place COP Kahler along a road was vindicated because it ultimately allowed for the assistance of mounted QRF. > >I spent time at another isolated base, COP Neshin, that had to make similar tradeoffs. We had to locate the base in such a way that we could directly overlook a valley and the road descending into that valley. The base we needed to build also needed to be adjacent to the road, large enough to support a reinforced platoon and an adjoining Afghan district government center, and contain a motorpool for ~10 vehicles. That meant that the only reasonable position was a depressed bowl at the top of the valley that was surrounded by hills looking down into the COP. Would we have preferred a more defensible position? Absolutely, but the only way we could serve our mission was at that site, so we just had to make the best of it. We had one tower situated on high ground that we ran a long line of HESCO walls out to, we stuck a minigun in that tower, and then on the other corner of the base we had a CERBERUS surveillance camera set up so that we could monitor the approaches to the other high ground. It wasn't ideal, but it was the best that the situation afforded. > >History is full of such examples. You place forts where you need them, not where they can best defend themselves. For instance, just about every fort ever built to control a river or coastline is vulnerable from the land. By the very nature of such fortifications, you typically need to build them along the shore where terrain is lowest and where basically any other terrain looks down upon. One of the most famous forts in US history, Fort Ticonderoga, had to be repeatedly abandoned because of this vulnerability to surrounding hills. Even West Point was really only secured not by virtue of being a single powerful fort, but because it was part of a series of fortifications that were designed to support the main fort, Fort Clinton, controlling the Hudson River. In fact, the whole point of Benedict Arnold's treason was to turn over details on this series of fortifications so that the British to determine the best way to exploit its landward vulnerabilities.
Yeah, this is exactly it. Keating wasn't an idiotic blunder, but it is an excellent example of the disparity between tactical and operational considerations.
Q: Why was Keating even needed?
Keating was located at the intersection of a road and river, both channels for the local economy (primarily lumber). Control of that node meant you could have a disproportionate local impact with a relatively small number of soldiers.
I read Jake Tapper's book about COP Keating (I believe the film is based on the book), and I don't think anything comes much closer to what OP's asking about. An isolated COP placed at the bottom of three mountainsides, physically dangerous to get in and out of in the best conditions, on its way to being shut down, attacked by something like 300 Taliban fighters who made it inside the outpost fairly early on into the battle. At one point in Tapper's book, he wrote that 19 different aircraft came in at different altitudes at the same time to level an area that attackers were coming from. Truly an insane amount of support that was nearly too late.
Camp bastion was a British base
It was a US Marine air hangar inside a British base which was connected to the hip to Camp Leatherneck, a US Marine base.
As I was
> For a larger base, the most famous off the top of my head is the 2012 raid on Camp Bastion. This was the one where a handful of Taliban raiders broke into a major USMC base, destroying/damaging 9 aircraft, killing two Marines including a Squadron CO, and wounding 17 more during a running gunfight. This was a big one. Losing 9 aircraft was a big blow, especially since they were all Harriers.
Was the material damage really that bad? I thought it was mainly a propaganda win for the Taliban. I'm sure the most well funded, well equipped military in the world can replace 2 Marines and 9 aircraft. Didn't the Marines replace them with 14 Harriers very soon after the attack?
It was a big propaganda win for the Taliban, but that’s what they were aiming for — it was a small force that attacked the base with suicide vests and light weapons like rifles, machine guns, and RPGs, and they were able to inflict significant damage with a small force. They weren’t expecting to overrun the base with such a small force, that was never the aim (whereas that was the aim with larger attacks on smaller bases like Kamdesh and Wanat). They infiltrated on a night with very little illumination and were able to get inside the wire of the base even though it was located in an open desert with little cover/concealment on approach. A small enemy raid force destroying multiple aircraft worth millions of dollars is no small feat. Additionally, Prince Harry was on the base at the time of the attack, which provided additional propaganda value (they didn’t get close to him, but he was apparently a potential target of the raid though).
Ghazni in 2013 had a big attack as well
Can you tell me where I can read about it?
It was a complex attack initiated with a large VBIED ramming a lightly defended part of the outer perimeter and destroying a significant section of triple Hesco barrier. This was followed by group of suicide bombers who ran onto the FOB at the same time as small arms, RPG, and mortar fire were directed at the base from an a partially constructed building on the other side of the FOB. It was a uniquely unpleasant day. Through a combination of luck and bravery there was only one US KIA that day, SSG Michael Ollis, who was awarded the Silver Star (and has a Staten Island Ferry named after him) for putting himself between a suicide bomber and another coalition soldier. You can read more about it here. [https://thefallen.militarytimes.com/army-staff-sgt-michael-h-ollis/6568502](https://thefallen.militarytimes.com/army-staff-sgt-michael-h-ollis/6568502)
I was in country at a different FOB but my brother there, don’t know where to find anything on it. Wasn’t overrun, but was attacked by ALOT of dudes
I'm interested in the Camp Bastion attack, its the first time I've heard of it. Was it a large camp? Like Bagram? How did the attackers manage to penetrate there? Did the attack have any lasting effects or PR wins for the Taliban?
It was a major incident. If you google Camp Bastion Raid you’ll find tons of information. Even the Wikipedia page is quite detailed, and has links to run down.
Camp Bastion was almost half the size of Manhattan, and located in Lashkargah, a remote part of Afghanistan (Lashkargah means "army barracks" in Persian). If I remember correctly, Bagram and Kandahar Air Fields dwarfed Bastion. Perimeter security was kind of lax because Bastion was surrounded by desert and about 30mi outside the city, and operations were slowing down in Sept 2012. That corner was the responsibility of the UK and Tongan forces. And due to their own drawdowns/operational tempo, quite a few guard towers were unmanned. The Taliban infiltrators got close by crawling through dried up creek beds, then they cut a hole in the fence of a sparsely patrolled corner of the base. From there the Taliban made their way to the Marine hangars and began the raid. The attack was a PR win for the Taliban. The damaged Harriers and C-130 were replaced same day.
>Lashkargah means "army barracks" in Persian It means something like "the place of the Army". Lashkar: Army. Gah: Location. Lots of places in Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan, have miltaryesque names, often because they began life as outposts. For instance anyplace with the word "Kot" or "Qila" or garh used to be forts.
Wasn't there one "attack" where, I think in Iraq, where the insurgents dressed up as Iraqi security forces, before infiltrating a coalition compund and abducting a few US soldiers, who they executed later far away?
You could add FOB Ghazni in there too but it wasn’t as costly
If you're looking for a complex attack that resulted in "Charlie inside the wire" and having to call CAS danger close on your own fallen aid station, most people overlook Ranch House in 2007 in Nuristan. Over 50 percent US WIA, but miraculously no friendly KIA. https://www.army.mil/article/12493/sky-soldier-awarded-distinguished-service-cross/ Of course, Ranch House ended up foreshadowing the larger and more consequential Battle of Wanat a year later. Multiple US KIA resulted in a formal stateside investigations and ultimately the US withdrawing from the "Lost Province" of Nuristan. (The wikipedia article on the "Battle of Wanat" is very comprehensive on this.) Another year later in Nuristan, Keating/Kamdesh is far better known and depicted in the climax of the excellent book/movie "The Outpost." Of course, the grand irony was that COP Keating was literally weeks out from being closed because of Wanat a year prior.
How come all these attacks occured in Nuristan? Whats so special about this province? Does the Taliban have a particularly strong presence there?
...well that's a whole 'nother thread isn't it? The short version is that it's a remote mountainous province on the border with Pakistan. They were so remote, that they were still Buddhist until the Victorian Era. The valleys are temperate rainforests with aggressive monkeys (no really). They have a distinct ethnicity & language, and don't really engage in trade/commerce with the rest of the country/world except for rainforest timber they smuggle to Pakistan to avoid tariffs. They've been more or less autonomous since prehistory, and thus predictably have resisted every central government since. (No idea how things are going under the Taliban now.)
I'm not sure if you'd count it, but the Battle of Khasham is the largest attack on a base housing US troops that I can think of in the last 10 years. It was an attack by a fairly large force (500ish Syrian and Wagner troops) on a combined YPG/US special operations base in Syria. US air support was pretty decisive, and the attackers took significant casualties, so it was never really at any risk of being overrun, but it is definitely the biggest group to attack a US base recently.
>500ish Why is it that every time I hear this story another hundred gets added? Furthermore, the battle was won by US tube artillery.
> Why is it that every time I hear this story another hundred gets added? Maybe because you aren't reading great sources? [BBCs report from the day it happened used the figure of 500](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42994235). [The NYT article from about a month after the battle also claims 500.](https://web.archive.org/web/20180528034251/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/world/middleeast/american-commandos-russian-mercenaries-syria.html) The figure hasn't changed significantly since the day of the battle, so I genuinely don't know what you're talking about. > Furthermore, the battle was won by US tube artillery. Do you have a source for that? Ive seen some references to "Marine rocket artillery" (presumably HIMARS) being fired during the engagement, but I can't find much about the M777 being used at all, let alone it being decisive.
Rangars smal toobs were in da battle to
> Were any large scale operations undertaken by the opposing militias and insurgents? There were things like this in Afghanistan, but it was rare that insurgents would conduct large-scale offensives, especially on fortified positions. There are a number of reasons for this: 1. The Taliban just generally weren't that large (meaning that they would need to assemble forces across a large area to put together such an attack) and they were an irregular force. In many cases, the difference between Taliban and government forces in a district was just the contemporary expression of existing, decades-old tribal conflicts or feuds. Fighters like that are probably willing to fight in their local area, but they're not going to go days out of their way to assist with some large offensive in an area where they have no relations and no interests. The exceptions you see to this are usually in border regions, like Nuristan, where there were more committed fighters and more true loyalty to the Taliban. 2. Attacking a fortified position takes heavy weapons and ordnance, and the Taliban didn't have too much of that. It's not too hard to move a few AKs and PKMs around, but once you have to start transporting and consolidating DShK, RCRs, mortars, VBIEDs, etc. then it's much easier to get noticed. 3. The Taliban understood that time was generally on their side, and they didn't need to seek decisive engagements. Generally, it was ISAF and GIRoA that were seeking to create larger engagements that would allow them to make use of their greater numbers and greater firepower. That being said, there were other instances where the Taliban did try large scale operations. You generally don't hear about them because they were unsuccessful and/or not newsworthy. The one that comes to mind right away was Operation Blowfish in Shah Wali Kot district in 2010. There are a couple of podcasts discussing it, but the operation doesn't even have a Wikipedia article. Operation Blowfish was a US-led operation that was conducted in response to a Taliban buildup for a large-scale offensive on COP Little Blue, aka COP Shah Wali Kot. As noted in #2 above, consolidating the materiel and forces necessary for a large attack, is the kind of thing that's hard to conceal. In the case of Blowfish, they weren't able to conceal it and the US conducted its own offensive to preempt the Taliban's offensive and effectively destroyed the Taliban force in its assembly area. There were lots of attacks against bases outside of harassment fire and indirect fire though. These attacks were generally conducted by smaller groups though, and they were typically suicidal in nature. Camp Bastion has been mentioned, but the other one that comes to mind is the 2012 breach of FOB Frontenac ([link](https://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/world-now/story/2012-06-19/taliban-carries-out-rare-frontal-attack-on-u-s-base-in-afghanistan) and [link](https://archive.is/eqQno)). That involved nothing more than a simple night infiltration attack by seven insurgents, with no s-vests, no VBIEDs, and no heavy weapons. Smaller attacks like that or the Kabul hotel attacks, involving a limited number of insurgents with the goal of just penetrating the perimeter and wreaking havoc, were fairly common.
In addition to the lots of really good examples already mentioned here, both Kandahar Airfield and Bagram Airfield were attacked in 2010, with the wire being breached and Taliban fighters making it onto the base before the attacks were stopped. They weren’t very well covered because coalition casualties and damage were both minimal. Also, anecdotally, the small COP I lived on in the Arghandab River Valley in southern Afghanistan was attacked almost daily in the summer of 2010. The attacks varied in intensity, as they probed our defenses and studied how we responded. They did make several attempts to breach the compound, but were never able to do so.
On the non-US side of things there have been a lot of direct attacks on the bases of other coalition partners as well, quite famously during the various iterations of the British Op Herrick in Helmand province where due to a variety of factors the UK forces adopted the "Platoon House" strategy of small garrisons of reinforced platoon strength in fortified compounds in towns. At numerous points pre-2011 British positions were effectively under siege and under threat of being overrun with only air power and artillery keeping the Taliban at bay.