those [Taliban] are going to set ambushes and IEDs, I am going to kill them. That’s my job.”38
Operation Medusa
The Taliban had developed an important sanctuary in Panjwai and Zhare districts, located west of Kandahar City. The mujahideen had scored important victories there over the ill-fated Soviet 40th Army in the 1980s. Grapes and other fruit grew there, and the fields, vineyards, compounds, and ditches that dotted the landscape offered ideal defensive terrain for the Taliban, with a self-sustaining food supply.39
The city of Kandahar was the urban hub for Operation Medusa. The terrain was marked by Highway 1, which ran northeast to Kabul and northwest to Herat, and Highway 4, which ran south to Quetta, Pakistan. Kandahar Airfield, the headquarters of NATO operations in southern Afghanistan and a former Soviet air base, sat along Highway 4 to the south of the city. Panjwai and Zhare districts lay to the west, and the Arghandab River sliced through the area. The bulk of the activity during Operation Medusa took place in what became known as the “Pashmul pocket,” situated next to the town of Pashmul.
In July 2006, Canada’s Task Force Orion, with roughly 1,200 soldiers, saw a sharp increase of Taliban activity in Panjwai district. The local Taliban, who had long relied on small-unit attacks and ambushes throughout the area, were starting to control ground. The Taliban had allied themselves with local Nurzai tribes in Kandahar.40 On August 3, four soldiers were killed and ten were wounded near Pashmul in close fighting. Mao Zedong once wrote that insurgencies can be divided into three stages: (1) political preparation, (2) limited attacks, and (3) conventional war, typified by insurgents beginning to control territory and massing in large numbers. Lieutenant Colonel Omer Lavoie, commander of the Task Force 3–06 Battle Group, told his planning staff that this was “classic stage three of an insurgency.”
“Basically, they want us to become decisively engaged,” he said. No one, least of all the Canadians, had expected the Taliban to conduct conventional operations. Since 2002, the Taliban had used asymmetric tactics, such as ambushes and roadside bombs, to target NATO and Afghan forces. “I have to admit that this is not where I expected to be,” Lavoie explained. “For the last six months I trained my battle group to fight a counterinsurgency, and now find that we are facing something a lot more like conventional warfare.”41
Over the last two weeks of August, Taliban forces became increasingly aggressive. They ambushed several convoys and regularly mortared Patrol Base Wilson, about twenty-five miles west of Kandahar City. They appeared to be looking for a fight, hoping to draw Canadian forces into a pitched battle. One of their most provocative moves was to take control of Highway I in Kandahar, setting up checkpoints and threatening the city. A legitimate government does not permit an insurgent group to administer a major roadway. The Canadian Expeditionary Force Command asserted: “The securing of these routes…was a vital phase in [Operation] MEDUSA.”42 NATO intelligence reports indicated that hundreds of Afghan civilians were fleeing Kandahar on a daily basis in fear of the Taliban.43
In an effort to roust the Taliban from one of their most important sanctuaries, the Canadian planning staff designed an effort to clear the eastern pocket of Panjwai district. The battle group they commanded consisted of three infantry companies, an artillery battery, a squadron of engineers, and an armored reconnaissance troop. Aerial reconnaissance assets monitored enemy movement when they moved in the open. By late August, a combined force of soldiers from the Canadian Task Force 3–06 Battle Group, Afghan National Army, United States, Dutch, and eventually Danish forces waited for H-hour—when the operation was set to begin. The Canadian brigade staff issued a warning to all noncombatants who lived in Panjwai to leave immediately. This left Taliban alone in the area, waiting for the fight they had surely been expecting.44
Air operations commenced on September 2, 2006, while ground forces positioned themselves in a pincer formation north and south of the district. Canadian artillery, made up of Echo Battery, 2nd Regiment Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, fired hundreds of 155-millimeter rounds into the area of operations. Apache helicopters from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom fired rockets and 30-millimeter cannons. Harrier jets from Britain’s Royal Air Force and F-16 Falcons from the Royal Netherlands Air Force dropped 500-pound bombs, and B-1B Lancer bombers from the U.S. Air Force dropped precision-guided munitions. As the attack unfolded, Canada’s Charles Company, under the command of Major Matthew Sprague, positioned itself at Ma’sum Ghar, across the Arghandab River from Pashmul. They established a firing line looking northwest toward the “white schoolhouse,” a known Taliban strongpoint.45 Bravo Company, under the command of Major Geoff Abthorpe, provided a screen in the north along Highway 1.
On September 3, Charles Company was ordered to cross the Arghandab River and move into Pashmul. Enemy resistance was stiff. The Taliban set up an ambush and destroyed several Canadian vehicles, killed four Canadian soldiers, and wounded nine in intense fighting. Explosions echoed across grape and pomegranate fields, and clouds of dust rose amid the greenery and mud houses. The Taliban used layered defensive positions with trenches and fought with recoilless rifles, mortars, RPG-7s, and machine guns.46 Under supporting fire from artillery and with close air support directed by forward air controllers, Charles Company made a tactical retreat back to the original Ma’sum Ghar firing line. They left behind three damaged vehicles: a bulldozer, a Mercedes Benz G- Wagon, and a LAV III in the vicinity of the white schoolhouse.47 The LAV III is an 8x8 wheeled vehicle that carries a 25-millimeter cannon and can reach top speeds of more than sixty miles per hour. It is vastly more rugged than the G-Wagon, a four-wheel sport utility vehicle also used in the field. Neither was a great loss, but the troops were unnerved by their retreat. On the same day, a British Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft had crashed, killing all on board. Despite these losses, aerial bombardment and artillery fire continued, along with fire from LAV IIIs and Coyote reconnaissance vehicles.
On September 4, close air support sorties engaged Taliban targets in the Pashmul pocket, including the white schoolhouse, which was leveled by a 500-pound bomb. That same day, Charles Company suffered another setback as a U.S. A-10 Thunderbolt mistakenly targeted Canadian forces, strafing the position of Charles Company with 30 -millmeter high-explosive incendiary rounds. The attack killed Private Mark Graham, a member of Canada’s 4x400- meter relay team at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. “He was such a strong and sweet man,” his fiance wrote in a statement after his death. “He had strong morals, values, ethics and they showed in everything he did.”48 In addition, thirty Canadians were wounded that day, including several senior noncommissioned officers and the company commander, Major Sprague. A Board of Inquiry report convened by Canadian Expeditionary Force Command found that the U.S. pilot had lost his situational awareness. He mistook a garbage fire at the Canadian location for his target, without verifying the target through his targeting pod and heads-up display. The forward air controller reacted immediately to the friendly-fire incident, screaming, “Abort! Abort! Abort!” on his radio.49
“I had been off to the side and heard the A-10 sound. I hit the ground, and when I got up I saw all the [injured] laying there,” said Corporal Jason Plumley.50 An aerial medevac team rapidly arrived. In less than thirty-six hours, Charles Company had lost much of its leadership at the officer and noncommissioned- officer level. All four of its warrant officers had been either killed or wounded. Captain Steve Brown was suddenly in charge of a company that had a corporal acting as company quartermaster and a sergeant as company sergeant major. There was a lull in ground operations after the friendly-fire incident, and the north, along Highway 1, then became the main theater of operation.51
So-called friendly fire is an unfortunate reality on the battlefield. Two years earlier, U.S. Army Ranger Pat Tillman had been accidentally killed by his own platoon members in eastern Afghanistan. A long-haired, hard-hitting safety with the Arizona Cardinals in the National Football League, he held the franchise record of 224 tackles. Tillman turned down a three-year, $3.6 million contract in the spring of 2002 to join the U.S. Army with his brother, Kevin. As he remarked the day after the September 11 attacks: “At times like this you stop and think about just how good we have it, what kind of system we live in, and the freedoms we are allowed. A lot of my family has gone and fought in wars and I really haven’t done a damn thing.”52
But the circumstances of his death were contentious. Initial reports stated that Tillman was killed by hostile fire, but a month later the Pentagon notified the Tillman family that he had died because of friendly fire. The family alleged that the Department of Defense delayed the disclosure out of a desire to protect the image of the U.S. military, and a subsequent Pentagon investigation concluded: “Corporal Tillman’s chain of command made critical errors in reporting Corporal Tillman’s death,” and “Army officials failed to properly update family members when an investigation was initiated into Corporal Tillman’s death.”53 A similar congressional report found “serious flaws” in the Pentagon’s investigation and suggested that “the combination of a difficult battle in Fallujah, bad news about the state of the war, and emerging reports about Abu Ghraib prison” may have created a motive to obfuscate the details of Tillman’s death.54
