Word: senjaray
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...rules has been a hunkering down, a decidedly less aggressive attitude about going after the enemy, from the air or from the ground. "Day by day, we're watching the Taliban put in IEDs, creeping up toward the town," Ellis says. "I'm losing two inches of Senjaray every day." The effect on morale has been brutal. "Maybe half the guys in Dog Company spent their last tour in Iraq, in Ramadi, in 2007," says First Sergeant Jack Robison. "That was a great tour. When we arrived, the place was a disaster. We cleaned it up. After a year...
When I arrived at Combat Outpost Senjaray on the afternoon of April 2, Ellis had just received terrible news. "You're not going to believe this, but they just [freakin'] postponed it," he told me. "The staff at RC-South found this regulation that says you can't build a security outpost that close to a school. It would endanger the kids." Ellis was agog. He had briefed the commanding general of RC-South, Nick Carter, on the project, and he was in favor. But General Carter was on leave - and his staff didn't want to take the risk...
...another delay, ostensibly of five days, but Ellis knew it would be longer than that. The Canadian bomb-disposal unit couldn't wait around. It had to go on to other projects. "This is becoming a joke," said one of the troopers who escorted me out of Combat Outpost Senjaray the following day. "It ain't gonna happen...
Disaster A week later, Ellis was still waiting for the operation to be approved, when disaster struck - and a signature Afghan disaster at that. At about 5 a.m. on April 12, an American convoy passing through Senjaray on the Ring Road slowed on the curve in front of Dog Company's outpost. A passenger bus came up behind the convoy, traveling at a rate of speed the Americans deemed suspicious. The convoy tried to signal the bus to stop; the soldiers apparently used hand signals and pen flares, but fired no warning shots according to the McChrystal protocol...
After the wounded were treated and evacuated from Senjaray, Ellis led a patrol into the local bazaar. "The initial mood of the population as we went into the bazaar was hostile," Ellis e-mailed me that night. "We asked them to follow us to a meeting place so we could talk, but they were not willing. I then went stall to stall in the bazaar and met with groups of elders. I explained the following: 'I have fought for many years now and seen my own Soldiers and the enemy killed and it never has affected me as much...