Transcription of an interview conducted with Lieutenant Colonel Dave Womack, Commanding Officer, 1st Bn, 506th Inf Regt. on Dec 4th, 2010 in bldg A2 of FOB Kushamond.
By Vincent J. Curtis
Q. I am here with Lieutenant Colonel Dave Womack. Can you tell me a little about yourself?
A. I command 1st of the 506 infantry, which is western Paktika, roughly the size of Connecticutt. I am from Roanoke, Virginia, I’m 40 years old, and been married about 19 years.
Q. From the battalion’s perspective, what can you tell me about the enemy here?
A. Our mission statement is to try to neutralize the enemy. Down here, that’s very difficult. You’ve seen how open it is, and what we’ve learned is it only takes a few Taliban to, really, disrupt a village and hold sway. As much as the villagers may try to change that, it’s problematic. That’s our challenge.
Q. In simple terms, what does ‘neutralize’ mean?
A. We’re trying to prevent the enemy from holding sway, and whether its kill or capture, or whatever our operations accomplish, get ‘em out of here.
Q. How many Taliban are in this area, what’s the size of the enemy force here?
A. I can’t say for sure because there are so many varying degrees. I think that the biggest thing we can focus on is to get some of the Taliban who are facilitators, that are true believers. I think that there are a lot of opportunists and criminals who call themselves Taliban are opportunists, but to give you the total number, I don’t know, I think that there are only a handful of true believers.
Q. So are we talking of hundreds of operatives, or do they number in the thousands?
A. I think that there’s probably only a couple hundred around here, this large an area.
Q. You divided the Taliban up into two groups. Facilitators, what are they? Would they be people who live in villages all the time and are just friendly, or is that another category.
A. No. A facilitator to me implies that they have freedom of movement, that they are tied in, with the capability to bring in foreign fighters, and weapons, munitions.
Q. And the transients, the ones that don’t actually live in the area and just come through, that’s the hard core group you were speaking of?
A. I think that’s generally a fair statement.
Q. Who would then be most responsible for intimidating the local population, the ones that would try and attack the ISAF forces?
A. I would say that that wouldn’t necessary be the facilitator, although they can do both. They have soldiers who execute intimidation operations, and they are quite good at it.
Q. What sort of intimidation operations? What sort of thing do they do to assert that they are in control, that they are the dominant power?
A. You read a lot of stories in the press about how they are skilled at going through and holding sway in a village. But what we’ve seen is that they come through and they forcefully enter qualots and homes, that they take their food, and that they impress the locals not to do anything to support Afghan development.
Q. If the Taliban are not really offering governance, if they are just there to look after their own survival by preying on the local population, and entertaining themselves or perhaps demonstrating military power by attacking ISAF forces, why are we worried about them politically? What the gain? Why should we be concerned about them as a political force?
A. That’s a little bit above my paygrade. But I will tell you my assessment that I don’t know we are overly worried about them politically.
Q. Is some kind of religious fanaticism ultimately what their cause is all about? Is that how they justify to people everything they do?
A. Its not that simple, but I think that’s part of it.
Q. What sort of weapons do they have in their possession that they can use against us?
A. They like to use various small arms. They use RPGs, they have a lot of things that were left over from all the fighting that has gone on continuously in this country. There’s not a great shortage, and one of our goals is to create inflation for weapons supply. And we know we’re doing that. We just keep driving the cost of those weapons up.
Q. Speaking of weapons, where do they get them? Are these just leftovers, or are they being supplied from an outside power?
A. I don’t believe its hard to get weapons anywhere in the world these days, unfortunately. There are plenty of enterprising businessmen that, I’m sure, are willing to profit off it that may or may not believe in the cause. We know that they get supplies.
Q. Taking it further, if they are able to purchase supplies from outside the theatre, that must mean they are getting financing from outside the theatre.
A. Well, I’m just a little old battalion commander in western Paktika here, but I think they very well could. Part of the strategy for defeating all these terrorists, whether you’re talking about al Qaeda or different sub-factions of al Qaeda, we know…follow the money. Clearly that is one way of defeating the organization.
Q. What is your estimate of the enemy’s intent? What do you think they are going to do in this theatre over the next three to six months?
A. I think the enemy is trying to discredit [garbled] They are going to try to disrupt US forces, because that’s all they are capable of. Disruptive operations. Focus on information operations. They still hold some credibility. They have the capability to influence things. But everytime they go for a spectacular attack they’ve been defeated. But they’re going for the information operations picture, trying to generate support, trying to show they are a viable threat, whether they are looking to establish conditions for peace, negotiate from a position of power, you know, to be determined.
Q. Are your operations attempting to counteract that directly, or is there some different purpose?
A. No. We are trying to neutralize them, period.
Q. Does that mean trying to defeat their information operations? If they try to demonstrate that they’re strong, you turn around and demonstrate that you’re stronger?
A. They do that all by themselves because without regard they are killing Afghan civilians. Not so say we’re perfect. Unfortunately, you know this is war and combat and bad things happen. But the difference between us and the Taliban is we take ownership of it. If we make a mistake, we go back in and we tell ‘em, “hey look, we screwed this up. We’re here to atone for it, make it right.” We’re very sensitive to their culture, with Pastunwali. In our area alone, they’ll attack US or Afghan forces, the collateral damage among civilians… The civilians know that. They’ll use protected places like mosques to fire at us from. All the evidence is there, and even the locals know it. We’re seen examples of locals saying ‘no, you can’t go in here. We know what you’re going to do and it’s a holy mosque, leave it alone.’ But that goes against everything they’re trying to espouse. They say one thing but their actions speak differently. Its maddening when you read from their senior Mullah Omars, guys like that, they’ll talk like ‘hey look, we’re on your side, we’re on Islam’s side,’ but they’re actions are totally counter to it and most locals see right through that.
Q. Two things fall from that. Is their primary method of intimidation murder or is it something less?
A. To answer your question, both. They have murdered Afghan forces and they have murdered civilians. They certainly aren’t going to gain much sway doing that, but we know they do that – we’ve found the bodies. But I think generally, it’s less severe than that. And I understand, going in on an unarmed civilian, you’ve got an AK, they don’t. That’s intimidation right there.
Q. The civilian population, they’ve been effectively disarmed? At one time the story was every man had an AK.
A. I think Afghans still maintain weapons for personal protection.
Q. So why don’t they use them?
A. Who knows?
Q. I understand the villagers are quite prepared to let their village elder be beaten up or intimidated by a squad of five or ten guys, and there are at least as large a force of men there who if they had weapons would be able to say, ‘hey wait on.’
A. Well, I guess the only thing I could do is put it in context. They’ve been in thirty years of war. I’d like to believe that we would behave differently if we were in that position when our families were threatened. I guess the right answer is what can we do to help them. There is a new initiative, Afghan Local Police, and we other things more traditional here, Locals standing up for protection. So I’m not going to say its happening or that it hasn’t happened. Its not happened to the extent that we would like because that would bring about, obviously, more security. Womack’s opinion is that thirty years of war has numbed some people. They are professional survivors, Afghans. They’ve seen Russians, Taliban. So they’re professional survivors, and I’m sure they’re a bit cynical. You know, when we way we’re here to help, it doesn’t resonate with them like it does others.
Q. You mentioned Mullah Omar, and his political message being that they’re on the side of Islam, is anything being done here, or is it necessary that anything be done here to counteract that, to try to convince people that that is not the case?
A. We try to do it by our actions. And I tell ‘em, judge me, judge my soldiers by our actions., they’re actions. We have religious tolerance, we have Muslim soldiers, and they’re not persecuted. So please, judge us by our actions, we’re very culturally sensitive, whether it be religious, through Islam, or whether it’s just cultural things, in regards to women. Obviously they see things a little differently than we do. But we respect that, and try to adjust. And we won’t see eye to eye on everything, and there are some things we’re not going to negotiate on. If it involves force protection, I’m going to draw the line. Now, I’ll try to do it in a way that mitigates any problem,. Now we have female engagement teams that will search women, because hey, I’m a bad guy, I’m going to dress up as a woman. We saw it in Iraq, we’re seeing it in Afghanistan. We’re going to make sure that we search, you know, women.
Q. How would summarize the sort of operations you’re going to do on a day to day basis to complete the battalion’s mission?
A. We’re obviously focused on empowerment, and how do we do that, well we partner with ANA/ISAF. We know that we’re not going to fight our way out of this so we’ve got to empower our partners, in the Afghan army, police, national NBS, which is a great intel platform. We’ve got to build that capacity so that they can do it themselves and that we’re supporting them.
Q. So, it then essentially it boils down to a combination of cordon and search operations and humanitarian aid operations, so is that it?
A. Well, no. I wish that was it. I would rather not do cordon and search, I rather get out of that. I would rather work through the Afghans. I will tell you cordon and searchs in general. We’re in a position now where we’ve got a lot of good intel, so we would rather do precision operations that really disrupt less people that have a higher probably of success. We’ve seen it on small scales where we’re the support by fire for the Afghans, where the Afghans are the ones doing everything. And I’ll tell you, the Afghan search teams search the Afghans, we don’t. We empower them. I would like it to be a unilateral Afghan operation., with us as QRF, providing them with capabilities the coalition has access to and they’re not there yet.
Q. Do you think you have enough intelligence support to do your work?
A. I do, and some areas are better than others. Each place is different. Where we are now in Kushamond, the place is wide open and probably not as well refined an intel picture, but in some places, it is very clear. So the goal is to try to get there. Afghans do it better than we do. Afghans know who doesn’t belong and who belongs. You know, we don’t.
VJC: Well, that concludes the interview and thank you sir for your time. Its much appreciated.
DW: Thank you for coming down here.
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