Word: commander
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...Company's legacy in Senjaray. It fit perfectly into the Army's new counterinsurgency doctrine: protect the people, provide them with security and government services, and they will turn away from the insurgency. Unlike many of his fellow officers in Zhari district, and many of the troops under his command, Ellis really believed in counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine...
...still does, but he's more skeptical now. The past four months in Senjaray have taught him how difficult it is to do COIN in an area that is, in effect, controlled by the enemy - and with a command structure that is tangled in bureaucracy and paralyzed by the incompetence and corruption of the local Afghan leadership. Indeed, as the struggle to open the school - or get anything of value at all done in Senjaray - progressed, the metaphor was transformed into a much bigger question: If the U.S. Army couldn't open a small school in a crucial town...
...became clear that the 1/12 was more comfortable with traditional soldiering than with counterinsurgency, the skepticism about its efficacy grew in the higher ranks of the military command. The 1/12 was hunkered down at its headquarters, a remote outpost called Forward Operating Base James Wilson, and the brass wanted it out securing the populace. Since the populace was concentrated in Senjaray, that seemed a logical place to start - and Jeremiah Ellis seemed the perfect candidate to lead the way. "He's one of the smartest officers we have," one of Ellis' superiors told me. "But he can take that enthusiasm...
...also necessary to protect the town. That intersection was the Taliban's way in, and as soon as the enemy found out that we wanted to reopen the school, they began to concentrate their forces on the area as well." Indeed, sources up the chain of command told me that the Taliban were moving forces into the Arghandab Valley, in anticipation of the summer fighting season...
...School Ellis began his efforts to open Pir Mohammed in late January. To get permission to reopen the school, he needed the approval of three separate command structures - his battalion superiors, the Canadians who ran Task Force Kandahar and their NATO superiors at Regional Command-South, the NATO regional command for southern Afghanistan. He also needed the approval of the local, district and regional Afghan government authorities. That part wasn't too bad. Ellis was a gung-ho briefer. On Saturday, April 3, I watched him describe the school operation to a group of Canadian generals. "That...