Word: battalions
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...From the start, the people here said they wanted better security and the school," said Captain Jeremiah Ellis, the commander of Dog Company of the 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division, the 120 soldiers who represented the American presence in Senjaray. "We are required to ask certain questions on patrol: What are your problems here? What do you need? It's called a TCAF interview, for some reason." Ellis, a young man well acquainted with the uses of, and need for, irony when dealing with the command structure, raised an eyebrow and smiled. Later, I looked...
...April began, the reopening of the Pir Mohammed School seemed imminent. Ellis had gotten all the elements in place, including a Canadian bomb-removal team. His superiors at battalion headquarters thought that reopening a school in the Taliban's front yard was such a feel-good story that a reporter should be around to record it. I happened to be in the neighborhood, and Captain Ellis graciously invited me - and photographer Adam Ferguson - along for the ride...
That task is more difficult because the 1/12 battalion hasn't exactly had a terrific rotation in Afghanistan. "We've been asked to do a lot of different things," says Major Korey Brown, the battalion's executive officer. "They detached us from our brigade, which is headquartered in eastern Afghanistan, and sent us out here to Zhari district to be storm troopers - that's what General Vance called us - and that's what we were trained for, that's what we like to do. To find, fix and finish the enemy." But the mission changed with the arrival of General...
...1/12's problems were compounded by a practically nonexistent local government, led by a district governor who insisted on keeping his office at the battalion's forward operating base, rather than among the people. "And then the Afghan army regiment we were supposed to partner with was diverted to Helmand province, for the battle in Marjah," says Brown. And the so-called civilian surge - the civil and economic development component of the offensive, led by the State Department - arrived late and weak. "So the 1/12's been out there, pretty much alone," a State Department official based in Kandahar told...
While admitting that it lost eight fighters in the three-hour attack, a Maoist spokesman justified the massacre in a three-page faxed statement, saying, "The CRPF battalion deployed in [Chhattisgarh] were killing innocent people, burning villages, raping women and displacing ... people. We also wanted to take revenge of the killing of our top leaders." (See how India's schools have been caught in the cross-fire in the fight against the Maoists...