'This War is Just Getting Started'

"This war is just getting started. Everything up to now has just been a warm-up."
 
That's how Michael Yon, new media war correspondent and author, sums up the current state of the war in Afghanistan.  "There's going to be an increase in the fighting through the rest of this fighting season," Yon said in an August 12 podcast interview with Military.com Editor Ward Carroll. "And then next fighting season, in 2010, we'll see the most intense fighting we've ever seen since the war began."

According to Yon, a former Army Green Beret, if the U.S. is serious about winning and stabilizing Afghanistan it will not be a 10-year commitment but a 100-year mission.
 
Since he was first invited to embed with American forces early in the Iraq War, the first "blogger" to do so, Yon has spent most of his time reporting from the war zones.  This trip he has been in Afghanistan for about six weeks, spending time with Lithuanian troops before settling in with 2 Rifles, a British infantry unit. He plans on staying "in country" until Christmas, he said, and will embed with U.S. Marine units after he leaves the Brits. 
 
Michael Yon stops by the Editor's Desk.

The 2 Rifles is currently operating out of the village of Sangin along a river valley in northern Helmand province. The area is called the Green Zone, he said, but it has nothing in common with Baghdad's area that shares the name.  This zone is "green" because it's lush from the river water, and it's anything but secure.

"This is a very contested area," he said with small arms fire and at least one rocket launch audible in the background as he spoke over a satellite phone late at night in Afghanistan. "A helicopter was shot down about 500 meters from where I am now last month."

The Brit unit has taken about 15 KIAs and quite a few wounded in the past four months, he said, but morale among the fighters remains high. "That's one reason I asked I've asked to stay with them. It's difficult to stay with a unit that has low morale, but this one is a joy to be with."

These days the mission in Helmand is primarily to create security for the civilian populace, as both allied and Taliban forces try to set conditions on the ground for national elections just one week away.

In some parts of the country there has been progress made against the Taliban insurgency and some residents clearly do not want to see the U.S. and NATO forces leave, he said. But the opposite is true for the area he is now reporting from.  And he fears that given the lack of troops, the situation won't improve anytime soon.

While the U.S. continues to debate how many additional forces it will send - another 21,000 have been committed, and one key adviser to Gen. Stanley McChrystal has floated the idea of adding another 45,000 beyond that - the British are dealing with their own problems -- a lack of troops and helicopter transport.

Beyond that both countries are frustrated by the fact there are too-few Afghan troops and police.  In one nearby province there isn't a single Afghan National Army soldier assigned.

Where 2 Rifles operates, the British unit is supposed to have 100 ANA troops at its side, but in fact they have just 36, Yon said.

"The Taliban ultimately are more powerful than we are at that moment [here], but progress is being made," he said. "In reality we don't' have enough troops to undertake what needs to be undertaken here."

"In this area … if you're not in the area 24/7 you don't own it, the enemy does."

See more coverage from Military.com contributor Michael Yon.