With a mixture of brawn and brains, Marine special operators continue to push their way into villages in Afghanistan, setting up shop alongside Afghan special forces to train those living there to defend their own turf from the Taliban.
The concept, known as village stability operations, also shapes the operations of Navy SEAL and U.S. Army Special Forces teams. Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command conducts village stability operations in Helmand province and several provinces in western Afghanistan, training local Afghan police.
Conducting VSO is a "varsity-level" skill requiring special operators to think independently while working in small teams that must protect themselves from outside attacks, said Maj. Gen. Paul Lefebvre, who retired as commander of the special operations command on Aug. 24. The villages -- or "platforms," as operators call them -- are selected based on their strategic value and using intelligence gathered for months.
"In some cases, we're going into places where we have to fight our way in, but we're fighting our way in not because of what it does to disrupt the Taliban or reduce the Taliban threat but because it gives us the white space to be able to operate with the people," Lefebvre said. "Once we push that threat back enough to work with the people, you can begin to look at what factors of instability are in a location."
The mission can lead to interesting arrangements among special operations units. Last year, for example, Marine Special Operations Company Alpha, 1st Marine Special Operations Battalion, deployed from Camp Pendleton, Calif., fell in on a headquarters in Herat province, said Maj. Andy Christian, who commanded the unit. Its Marines were joined by about 100 soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Division, one Navy SEAL team and three Army Special Forces operational detachment alphas, which each consist of about a dozen operators.
Typically, one of the special operations teams in a company is paired with an Afghan commando unit to push into new areas, with the other teams moving in after to conduct village stability operations and stay in the villages, he said.
Village stability operations also can be rife with surprises. In one case, the governor of Sangin district told Marine forces that one of his villages, Puzeh, was populated by members of a large tribe, the Alikozai. That was true, but Marine operators found there actually were five distinct sub-tribes that didn't all get along with each other.
"It takes a very smart and intellectual person to be able to understand that tribal dynamic," said Christian, now the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Command liaison officer for the special operations command. "A good analogy is it would be like the Hatfields and the McCoys, and if you sway too much popular opinion toward the Hatfields, then the McCoys might get angry."
Each team works alongside personnel from the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other organizations to decide what villages need to develop.
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