Pat Proctor's Latest "Report from Afghanistan" Posted at ArmchairGeneral.com

The next installment in Pat Proctor's series, "Special Report from Afghanistan," called "The Last Offensive," is up at ArmchairGeneral.com. To see the article, click here. Here is an excerpt:

Next year, Ghazni City will be honored as the 2013 Center of Islamic Culture. This spring and summer, to the south of the city, in the dusty villages and fields along Afghanistan’s Highway 1 ― the critical artery between Kabul and Kandahar ― Task Force Devil (1st Brigade, 82d Airborne Division) fought the last major offensive of the Afghan war to drive the Taliban out of Ghanzi Province.

Pat Proctor has been deployed to eastern Afghanistan with the US 1st Infantry Division since April 2012. Before he left, he agreed to write a series of articles for Armchair General magazine. You can see other articles in this series here.

Another "Report from Afghanistan" from Pat Proctor

The next installment in Pat Proctor's series, "Special Report from Afghanistan," called "The Battle for Kunar," is up at ArmchairGeneral.com. To see the article, click here. Here is an excerpt:

More than any place in eastern Afghanistan, Kunar province illustrates the difficulty of handing the fight over to Afghan national security forces while the war still rages. Across the province, a patchwork of U.S. and Afghan security forces are serving: Task Force Mountain Warrior (4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division), security force assistance advisor teams (SFAATs) from Strike Brigade (2d Brigade, 101st Airborne Division), two battalions of 2d Brigade, 201st Afghan National Army (ANA) Corps, three battalions of the Afghan Border Patrol, and hundreds of Afghan uniformed police. They struggle to hold the cities and villages along the narrow Kunar River valley against the constant pressure of Afghan and Pakistani Taliban insurgents who flow back and forth across the porous border with Pakistan through countless mountain passes along Kunar’s eastern border.

Pat Proctor has been deployed to eastern Afghanistan with the US 1st Infantry Division since April 2012. Before he left, he agreed to write a series of articles for Armchair General magazine. You can see other articles in this series here.

Pat Proctor's latest "Special Report from Afghanistan" available at ArmchairGeneral.com

The next installment in Pat Proctor's series, "Special Report from Afghanistan," called "The Frontier of Freedom," is up at ArmchairGeneral.com. To see the article, click here. Here is an excerpt:

The Red Warriors are giving the insurgents as good as they get. Every week they add to the long list of insurgents killed or captured in northern Kunar. Yet, Lt. Col. Scott Green, the Red Warrior’s commander, would be the first to say that this isn’t enough. With an endless supply of young men from madrasas in Pakistan and the U.S. set to leave at the end of 2014, his most important job is not killing insurgents, but preparing the Afghans to continue the fight without him.

Pat Proctor has been deployed to eastern Afghanistan with the US 1st Infantry Division since April 2012. Before he left, he agreed to write a series of articles for Armchair General magazine. You can see other articles in this series here.

Pat Proctor's Newest "Report from Afghanistan" up at ArmchairGeneral.com

ArmchairGeneral.com has just posted another article by Pat Proctor, "Report from Afghanistan: A Turning Tide?" To see the article, click here. Here is an excerpt:


In Nerkh, as in the rugged northeastern reaches of Kunar and Nuristan and the arid plains of northeast Ghazni, Hezb-i-Islami is walking a precarious tightrope, declaring opposition to the Taliban where it has worn out its welcome, ambivalence to an Afghan government with tentative public support, and public hostility but private détente with coalition forces. If they can bring along those Afghans loyal to Hezb-i-Islami through thirty years of association with their tamim, this might just be the beginning of a turning tide in the decade long war in Afghanistan.

Pat Proctor has been deployed to eastern Afghanistan with the US 1st Infantry Division since April 2012. Before he left, he agreed to write a series of articles for Armchair General magazine.  You can see other articles in this series here.

The Journal of Strategic Security has just published an article by author Pat Proctor, "War without Violence: Leveraging the Arab Spring to Win the War on Terrorism."

"After a decade of war, the United States has failed to eradicate the threat of salafist jihadism. No matter how hard it tries, the United States cannot kill its way to victory in the war on terrorism. Sweeping changes across the Middle East—dubbed the "Arab Spring" by the media—have presented the West with a unique opportunity to pursue an alternative approach. Rather than engaging in war (politics through violence), the United States should engage in mass politics (war without violence) to compel the Arab world to reject the salafist jihadism idea."

To read the entire article, click here.

Read Pat Proctor's "Report from Afghanistan"

Author Pat Proctor just posted a new article at ArmchairGeneral.com. The article, titled "Report From Afghanistan, Part One: One Enemy, Many Faces," is the first in a series of reports he will write while deployed to Afghanistan. It discusses the many different insurgent groups contending against coalition forces, the Afghan government, and even one another.

To read the article, click here.

Pat Proctor deploys to Afghanistan

Pat will deploy this week with the 1st Infantry Division (the storied "Big Red One"). The division will assume responsibility for eastern Afghanistan during this critical period in America's decade long war. See the full story at FoxNews.com. An excerpt...

“The headquarters spent a year in southern Iraq, returning to Fort Riley in January 2011, but has never deployed to Afghanistan. ‘We had to wrap our heads around a different country, a different people,’ said Lt. Col. Patrick Proctor, the division's chief of plans. As part of that effort, key officers on the division headquarters staff visited Afghanistan in September, October and December to be briefed by U.S. and Afghan officers and get a better lay of the land. Proctor and [division commander, Major General] Mayville made a final visit last week.”

To read more about the deployment, see the 1st Infantry Division Post, 16 March 2012.

To post a message for Pat as he leaves and keep up with the latest developments in eastern Afghanistan, go to Pat's FaceBook page.

Also check out Armchair General magazine beginning in May 2012. Pat will be writing a series of “Dispatches from the Front” over the course of his deployment.