'We Pushed the Fight into the Enemy's Own Back Yard'
Fla. National Guard Special Forces Recount Afghanistan Mission
By Senior Airman Thomas Kielbasa / Florida National Guard Public Affairs
OCALA, Fla. (June 29) – It was a tough mission in a tough country.And for more than 100 Special Forces soldiers from the Florida National Guard, serving in Afghanistan on the “frontlines” in the global war on terrorism was not a cliché, but a grim, dangerous reality.
During nearly nine-months in the mountainous Middle Eastern-nation, the soldiers were shot at by insurgents and had frequent mortars and rockets fired at their bases. They even had one man killed in a vehicle accident outside of the capitol city of Kabul in January.
The soldiers from the 3 rd Battalion, 20 th Special Forces Group, returned to their home stations in Ocala and Wauchula in mid-June, putting the rigors of the deployment behind them and picking up the lives they left behind.
Two members of the Ocala-based A Company – Chief Warrant Officer Mark Jensen and Master Sgt. Dan Kinkel – were among the unit's Green Berets who were scattered throughout Afghanistan's remote eastern provinces during the deployment. Their mission was simple to describe, but more difficult to accomplish: aid the Afghan National Army in combating insurgent guerillas, and establish friendly relations with the local population.
According to both Jensen and Kinkel they accomplished both objectives, and left the area a safer place than when they arrived. As a two-person team they operated mainly in the eastern Khost and Paktika regions near the eastern border with Pakistan, first serving as advisors to the Afghan National Army, and later conducting combat operations in the dangerous area.
“Neither of us really anticipated getting to do what we got to do,” Jensen, who has served 12 years in the National Guard, explained. “We anticipated going over (to Afghanistan) and being held in the rear area; working in a staff function. I was really surprised to get there and realize ‘they're going to deploy us the same as they deploy the active duty units. They're going to give us the same opportunities and let us do our mission.'”
By using interpreters the team overcame language barriers between them and the Afghanis, and was soon out on mounted patrols with Afghan National Army soldiers in areas thick with insurgents. Some of the soldiers from the newly formed Afghani army had even been trained earlier that year by other Florida National Guard soldiers from the 2 nd Battalion, 124 th Infantry Regiment.
“We got to do some unconventional warfare,” Kinkel, a 20-year-military veteran, noted. “We actually got to do what we were trained to do: take indigenous forces on combat operations.”
Those operations took the team into about a dozen fire-fights with enemies (Al Qaeda guerillas and remnants of the Taliban) in the mountains. Eventually the number of attacks and ambushes by enemy insurgents dwindled off, due mainly to the Special Forces' increasing reputation in the area.
“We intimidated them to the point where they weren't going to attack us any more because it was too costly,” Kinkel noted.After the team grew acquainted with the country, people and terrain, they developed and refined specific counterinsurgency tactics to use on the enemy.
“Our goal was to deny sanctuary to the enemy by going into this unfriendly area and living there,” Kinkel said, “and making the people there stand up and fight against the insurgents that were putting pressure on them.”
The Special Forces and the Afghani soldiers moved deep into the lawless regions on the eastern frontier of Afghanistan and established a small camp where they lived with the locals and began developing relationships. There they helped develop a rudimentary village council, and encouraged the locals to elect a mayor and police chiefs.
“We used those tactics to the best of our ability to create…law where there was none,” Jensen said. “We helped them to create civil structure by working with the local elders and with the local tribal leadership.”
At first the local people weren't very receptive to their team, but as time wore on the team felt they were gaining acceptance.
“At first they wouldn't even say ‘hello' to you or even look at you, but as time went by they became more and more friendly, and eventually locals were inviting us over for dinner at their houses,” Kinkel explained. “We definitely won over their trust.”
The efforts helped bring a type of peace to the region that hadn't been there in quite some time; the locals were now living under the blanket of security provided by the Special Forces and the Afghan National Army.
“Places that no one could ever go before without getting attacked became peaceful because the enemy was so focused on what we were doing on the border they didn't push further into Afghanistan,” Jensen said. “The places where we had tribal support – where the tribes were on our side, those places were violent when we got there; by the time we left those places were peaceful. To a certain extent we pushed the fight into the enemy's own back yard, instead of fighting where they wanted us to fight. They were trying to deny us that tribal support that we had.”
When the team left the eastern region of Afghanistan in May with the rest of the Florida National Guard Special Forces, it was replaced with other local soldiers and another American team.
Jensen explained his team's presence in the region was needed to pave the way for upcoming national elections in September – the country's first post-Taliban elections. Without the lasting peace in the region that had been established by the U.S. forces, he said, “They're not going to hold an election in an area that is dangerous.”
