Victory Point - Ed Darack [145]
With some precincts throughout the Kunar, Nangarhar, and Laghman provinces reporting an incredible 100 percent voter turnout rate and the average for the region no less than 70 percent—without a single ballot box being compromised—the Second Battalion of the Third Marine Regiment, continuing the work of their sister battalion, 3/3, and those before them, realized a true moment of victory. Shah didn’t strike; he couldn’t strike. The Marines had quashed him and his operation.
Following the successful elections, ⅔ continued to build the region’s security, maintaining a presence in the Korangal and other hot spots. Subsequent to ⅔’s time in the area of operation, the First Battalion of the Third Marine Regiment would oversee the construction of the first permanent base in the Korangal Valley. The Chowkay, too, where Grissom had wanted to build an outpost, would eventually see the construction of a small base.
Shortly after the election, General Michael Hagee, the commandant of the Marine Corps, and Marine Corps Sergeant Major John Estrada, paid a visit to ⅔, venturing to the forward operating base at Mehtar Lam, where they pinned on nearly a dozen Purple Heart medals. The Commandant and Sergeant Major then journeyed to Asadabad and to Camp Blessing, where a grinning Joe Roy received his Purple Heart. Numerous members of ⅔ were also nominated for combat awards, including the Bronze and Silver Stars for their incredible bravery.
Once recovered, Shah again attempted to wield influence over the Kunar and Nangarhar provinces, but he was never able to reinvigorate his campaign to the status he achieved after the Red Wings ambush and MH-47 shoot-down. Spending more time in Pakistan than in Afghanistan after his crushing defeat during Whalers, Ahmad Shah died the death not of a vaunted warrior, but of a petty criminal, at the age of thirty-eight, near Peshawar, Pakistan. He had attempted to raise money by kidnapping the son of a wealthy Afghan cement magnate, but the authorities interdicted him, killing him and one of his minions near the Afghan border on April 11, 2008.
But the real measure of victory for the Marines would be the continuing push for security and stabilization throughout the Kunar, Laghman, and Nangarhar provinces. While the Korangal would continue to be a vexing pocket of insurgent activity, the region in general saw a steady, rising tide of development. Roads are slowly being paved; even cellular telephone towers have migrated into the depths of the Pech. The Afghan government, with the help of coalition forces, continues to build schools, drill wells, and develop infrastructure throughout the populated sections of the Hindu Kush.
The first order of business in the process of nation building is the stamping out of violent insurgencies, effectively laying the groundwork for stability; schools and roads can’t be built in an area where 82 mm mortars and 107mm rockets rain down regularly. Ahmad Shah’s group—even at its peak—represented not a broad-based resurgent movement but a sharply focused and ardently fired cancer, a threat not of metastasis but of stunting through localized necrosis. That is to say, Shah never really stood a chance of spreading his ideology throughout Afghanistan, but he could have handicapped the process of nation building through his destabilizing acts in the Kunar. To stop him, the Marines had had to go kinetic.
In the long run, though, “the key terrain was people and mind-sets,” according to Rob Scott, not geographic features like valleys and ridgelines. Drawing on lessons hard-learned throughout