One of the problems I had with arguments over the so-called "oil spot strategy" in Iraq was that it focused too much on defending the civilians that live around you. If you ignore what is outside your local perimeter, you just allow the enemy to organize, train, and plan outside those oil spots--and then hit those oil spots again and again.
The origin of this false choice is Vietnam where we went out into the border areas to fight main force North Vietnamese army units while the Viet Cong terrorized the South Vietnamese civilians we were supposed to be protecting. Yes, we needed to protect the civilians directly (and eventually we did), but the solution was not to abandon keeping the big enemy units away from the South Vietnamese cities. The solution was to do both jobs until the South Vietnamese could. And we finally did. Only Congress and the Left kept us from winning the Vietnam War.
Fighting the enemy far from the civilians is not counter-productive to securing the civilians. The problem in Iraq was that we relied on Iraqis to protect the oil spots directly while we hit the enemy further out to pursue them and keep them off balance. The Iraqi security forces weren't capable of doing that, so that's why we had to take on the job in the surge.
Task Force Iron Duke's commander describes his mission in Afghanistan quite well if you think of it as a defense in depth of the people:
In November, the Afghan National Army added a battalion in this region, and in February we added one of our own with the 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment from the 10th Mountain Division, who's ably been interdicting the enemy's ability to freely move from safe havens in Pakistan and back over in Afghanistan, specifically the Kunar province.
In May, we welcomed an agribusiness development team from Kansas into the Laghman province to assist with farming and livestock development. And earlier this month, we added the 759th Military Police Battalion, also from Fort Carson, like the 44 ID, and they're here to partner with the Afghan uniformed police, in all of our four provinces and 50 districts. All these new assets are here, and they're giving people faith in their government and hope for their future.
We've continued our efforts in Operation Lionheart, which I spoke to you about last year, which is the operations along the border with Pakistan where we conduct complementary operations, making it difficult for the enemy to function and eliminating their safe havens. I believe we are showing great signs of success with this within the central Kunar region especially. The combination of the Pakistan military operations, 1st of the 32nd Infantry interdiction, and 1st of the 26th Infantry combat operations have taken a serious toll on the enemy and have kept the dangerous Korengal Valley calm for most of the past two months.
We've continued efforts on what we call Operation Open Highway, where we've dedicated ourselves to protect the main avenue for supply, Highway 1-Alpha, also known as Highway 7, with a grand -- a grand trunk road, which runs through Nangarhar and Laghman. But it really is the main road through the Khyber Pass from Pakistan to Kabul. It is essential that supplies and citizens are able to traverse the road freely, both for the country here and for the NATO forces. We've successfully encouraged and incorporated Afghan security forces to do the vast bulk of this mission.
We've also provided humanitarian assistance to earthquake victims here in Afghanistan. In April, an earthquake in Nangarhar destroyed more than 200 homes and damaged hundreds more, leaving 650 families, almost 7,000 people, homeless. Our U.S. Air Force Nangarhar Provincial Reconstruction Team delivered immediate relief supplies, such as water, beans, rice, flour and blankets, to the disaster area in Sherzad district, which was hit the hardest. But in truth, the Nangarhar provincial government, in conjunction with relief agencies, ably handled this crisis.
Our 64th Calvary Regiment, also with the local government up in the northern Kunar and eastern Nuristan region, participated in the distribution of wheat and grain from the Afghan Ministry for Rural Regional Development and the World Food Program to prevent hardship in these remote areas during the past winter.
In addition, the task force has obligated $102 million in CERP funds to date this year on development, with the primary focus being transportation and education. This is on top of a total of 162 million (dollars) from last year. We've developed over 540 miles of improved roads, and 97 schools are either completed in construction or in the process. Roads are providing security, micro-commerce and access to services, and also access to the government and for the government.
Forces partnered with police to protect the people where they lived.
Forces provided humanitarian and development aid directly to the people.
Troops defended the highway to allow people to make a living.
Troops fought on the border fight the enemy in their bastion and to interdict the border to keep reinforcements and supplies from entering the area of operations to threaten the people in their homes.
His troops work with indigenous forces as much as possible.
And forces outside his control, Pakistani forces and our drones, hammer the enemy in their sanctuary across the border.
This is defense in depth. This works. And it all has to work to keep the war from dragging on for decades with our forces at the tip of the spear. We can't just sit in the "oil spots" and expect to win the war. Concentrating our forces in the cities and villages would just cede to the Taliban the rest of the country right into Pakistan.
