AFGHAN MARKSMEN-FORGET THE FABLES

http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/afghan-marksmen-forget-the-fables/


More on Taliban and marksmanship-all those 'Murikans out there thinking they're Daniel Boone but play video games, or can't even hit a deer at 100 yards or just wound it and let it suffer for days in agony... when Barry Sotero and his welfare minions come for your guns in the coming American Gottendammerung scripted by the major shareholders of the fed... you'll regret not taking your rifle marksmanship more seriously.

Quote from the commentary that is most telling:

After reading this article and reading the other posts I feel obligated to add to this post. Having worked with the Afghan Militias and operating in the southern regions on different occassions I found that the new Afghan soldier/ police officers are all notoriously bad shots. This is due to several reasons. First was the introduction to automatic fire and weapons to the battle field. The other is the belief that Allah will guide your bullet. Having recovered many many caches of weapons while in country we always found stores of Mausers and Enfield rifles in the caches but failed to find many AK 47/74 type weapons. This is due to the status symbol the AK brings to the soldier. Because of this the younger soldiers were never taught to really shoot or even maintain their weapons. The old spray and pray marksnmanship now comes to play. Many of todays taliban were born during the Russian or Post-Russian era in Afghanistan. The older veterans are tired of fighting. On one such occassion we had taken some of the mausers and ammunition to the range. One of our hired workers who was approximately 50 yrs old came along to clean up the area and help. He may have also been curious! During the event we were practicing marksmanship with captured weapons and ammunition. The American soldiers were really impressed with the accurracy of the bolt action rifles and their range. I had noticed our Afghan worker had started coaching some of our troops and offered him the chance to shoot. He accepted and proceeded to school the American soldiers on marksmanship. I later found he had been Mujhadeen fighting the Russians. After offering him a position with our militia he proceeded to turn us down. He said he was tired of fighting and just wanted to keep his position supervising the kids we hired for general labor and trach collectors on our base. The older Afghans who learned to shoot with old single shot and bolt action rifles still know how to shoot and shoot well. Fortunately for us, they are tired of fighting and not interested in choosing any side in this conflict. Our worst nightmare would be a couple hundred older soldiers with the old Mausers and the knowledge to use them. Our problems would greatly multiply fast as would our casualty rates.


A quality Mauser in 30.06 or some other common chambering and LOTS of dry fire and airsoft replica practice, and common sense tactics can overcome a LOT of deficiencies of any resistance movement.

Reread that above quote, read the article and comments.

Afghan Marksmen — Forget the Fables
By C.J. CHIVERS
via Nefafoundation.org A screen grab from a propaganda video released by the Taliban, reportedly from a training camp in Afghanistan along the Pakistani border.

The recent Marine operations in and near Marja brought into sharp relief a fact that contradicts much of what people think they know about the Afghan war. It is this: Forget the fables. The current ranks of Afghan fighters are crowded with poor marksmen.
This simple statement is at odds with an oft-repeated legend of modern conflict, in which Afghan men are described, in clichés and accounts from yesteryear, as natural gunmen and accomplished shots. Everyone who has even faintly followed the history of war in Central Asia has heard the tales of Afghan men whose familiarity with firearms is such a part of their life experience that they can pick up most any weapon and immediately put it to effective work. The most exaggerated accounts are cartoonish, including tales of Afghan riflemen whose bullets can strike a lone sapling (I’ve even heard “blade of grass”) a hilltop away.

Without getting into an argument with the ghost of Rudyard Kipling, who was one of the early voices popularizing the wonders of Afghan riflery, an update is in order. This is because the sum of these descriptions does not match what is commonly observed in firefights today. These days, the opposite is more often the case. Poor marksmanship, even abysmally poor marksmanship, is a consistent trait among Afghan men. The description applies to Taliban and Afghan government units alike.
Over the years that Tyler Hicks and I have worked in Afghanistan’s remote and hostile corners, we have been alongside Afghan, American and European infantrymen in many firefights and ambushes. These fights have involved a wide set of tactical circumstances, ranges, elevations, and light and weather conditions. Some skirmishes were brief and simple. Others were long and complex, involving as many as a few hundred fighters on both sides. One result has been consistent. We have almost always observed that a large proportion of Afghan fire, both incoming and outgoing, is undisciplined and errant, often wildly so. Afghans, like most anyone else with a modicum of exposure to infantry weapons, might be able to figure out how to make any firearm fire. But hitting what they are aiming at, assuming they are aiming at all? That’s another matter.
There are exceptions. The Taliban snipers in Marja were one recent example. We will revisit them here soon. Now and then a disciplined Afghan soldier or police officer also bucks the trend. Credible accounts of Northern Alliance fighters in the 1990s and early 2000s chronicled impressive shooting skills among seasoned Panjshiris. But the larger pattern is firmly established and consistent with the experience and observations of countless soldiers and Marines we have passed time with, including many people who have trained and fought beside Afghan security forces during the past decade.
Today At War will share a few observations about inaccurate Taliban rifle fire. Naturally, this will deal with what can be assessed of incoming fire; we do not embed with Taliban units and thus we have no chance of an unfiltered side-by-side look at their marksmanship habits. (Watching videos that the Taliban and their sympathizers post on the Internet or circulate in bazaars has its limits; these are self-selected excerpts chosen in part to show Taliban prowess. Taking them at face value would be much like trying to measure the American Army’s performance in the field by watching a recruiting ad, or like sitting through some of the cheery PowerPoint presentations that officials in capitals serve up for visitors.) The next post in the series will discuss several factors that contribute to poor Taliban marksmanship. A post soon thereafter will address the shooting skills and habits of Afghan soldiers and police officers. That third post will cover more fully what can be seen of outgoing fire, accounts that are possible because Afghan government shooting is readily observable, at least for those who log enough weeks in rural firebases or on patrol.
Let’s start with a few rough numbers. During the month and a half we spent in Helmand Province, Tyler and I combined firsthand observations with queries to officers commanding Marine rifle companies we worked beside. Three of these companies had been engaged in what, by the standards of the Afghan war, was heavy fighting. Here is what their experiences turned up.
Before the full offensive into Marja began, the Marine ground unit engaged in the most regular fighting with the area’s Taliban was Bravo Company, First Battalion, Third Marines. The company served for a little more than two months on what Marines call the “forward line of troops.” In this capacity, it rotated platoons through positions several miles to Marja’s east, a pair of lonely outposts on the steppe overlooking Route Olympia, which was the road leading into Taliban turf. The Taliban had an interest in watching for American movement along this road, and the Marines patrolled constantly near it. Thus the tactical climate was violent and busy. The insurgents harassed the outposts and frequently skirmished with Marine patrols.
In this contest, the Taliban also had the sort of local advantages common in guerrilla war. They knew the network of irrigation canals and used them as trench lines. They littered the fields and small terrain features with hidden bombs rigged to pressure plates. They deployed spotters with radios on motorcycle patrols, which tried to find the Marines and relay word of their movements and activities. They also chose when to fight, and often opened fire on the Marines in the late afternoon, when the sun was low in the sky. Why? Because Marine patrols originated to the Taliban’s east, and as the Marines walked generally westward across the flat steppe toward the area where the Taliban hid, the Marines were walking into the angled sunlight, which illuminated them perfectly for the Taliban, but forced the Marines to look into hard light, and squint. This was an environment in which small-arms clashes were almost inevitable, and in which the Taliban would often get to fire the opening shots. It should have been a place where the Taliban might succeed. What did the numbers show? By early February, when Marine units began massing for the push on Marja, Capt. Thomas Grace, Bravo Company’s commander, estimated that his platoons had been in at least two dozen firefights, often in open terrain. Some of the fights lasted several hours. At least one lasted a full day and into the night. How many of the company’s Marines and the Afghan soldiers who accompanied them had been shot? Zero.
Farther west along Route Olympia is an intersection known as Five Points, so named because several dirt roads meet there. The juncture provides access to northern Marja. Marine Expeditionary Brigade-Afghanistan, the command that planned the attack on Marja, deemed this essential terrain for securing the region. In January, another unit — Charlie Company, First Battalion, Third Marines – was assigned to fly in by helicopter and seize and hold the intersection. This happened in February, a few days before the larger assault began. It prompted a determined Taliban response.
Once the Taliban realized the Marines had leapt by air over their outer defenses, they clustered near Five Points and fought Charlie Company intensely, especially in the first few days. During this time, according to the company commander, Capt. Stephan P. Karabin II, his Marines were in about 15 firefights. Again the Taliban had certain advantages. They knew the ground well enough that their fighters stashed small motorcycles in canals that had been drained. After ambushing the Marines, they sometimes dropped into a dry canal, ran through the maze, jumped on their bikes, started the engines and blasted away at speeds that no one pursuing on foot could hope to match. Smart tactics. But the Taliban did not always run. They often held their ground and fought, perhaps feeling protected by the canals that did contain water, which typically separated them from the Marine patrols they chose to fire upon.
To change the character of the fighting, Captain Karabin ordered his Marines to patrol on foot with their .50-caliber machine guns. These would be lugged along in pieces, and when a firefight began, the Marines assigned to them would put them together, mount the weapons on their tripods, load belts of ammunition and open fire. (A M2 Browning machine gun and tripod weighs nearly 130 pounds; this does not include the weight of the ammunition.) The heavy guns tilted the fighting more fully in the Marines’ favor. But the fact that M2s were used this way said something about how the Taliban fought; some of this fighting was pitched. How many of Charlie Company’s Marines were struck by Taliban bullets in these engagements? Once again, none.
Neither of these companies was spared casualties. Four separate bomb blasts killed two Marines from Bravo Company and wounded nine Marines from Charlie Company. But the Taliban’s rifles were another story. Together the two companies were in about 40 firefights against the main guerrilla force in a nation that is considered, by the conventional wisdom, to be a land of born marksmen. And not a single bullet fired by the Taliban found its mark.
Obviously, American and Afghan soldiers do get shot, which brings us to the third Marine company, which suffered the effects of more accurate fire. As Charlie Company was fighting at Five Points, Kilo Company, Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, was inserted at night by helicopter into three landing zones in northern Marja, where it was soon met by what may have been the stiffest Taliban resistance of the offensive. For nearly 10 days, Kilo Company was engaged in small-arms fighting. In the first four or five days, the fighting was widespread, often with several firefights occurring simultaneously as different patrols and different platoons on different missions were locked up in skirmishes at once. On the second day of fighting, one skirmish alone, between two platoons and large groups of Taliban fighters, lasted off and on from early morning until night.
Within a week or 10 days, eight of the company’s Marines had been shot, two fatally, and two Afghan soldiers had been shot as well, including one who died. This is a large number compared with the experiences of the other two companies, but it is a small number when set against Kilo Company’s size, and when considered in the context and the volume of Taliban fire.
First, about the size. In all, Kilo Company had on the order of 300 men assigned to it, including engineers, dog handlers, bomb disposal and intelligence specialists, interpreters and an Afghan infantry platoon. (Note: Embed rules forbid precise descriptions of unit and team sizes, so the numbers of the various units that made up Kilo Company on this mission are mashed together here and rounded.)
Now the context. On many days, Kilo Company’s patrols would be ambushed while crossing flat, open ground, with no vegetation concealing the Marines’ movements and no place to take cover without running a couple of hundred yards or more. Often many Taliban gunmen would open fire simultaneously, and a large number of rounds would fly into the area where the patrol walked. Rounds would snap and buzz past helmets. Rounds would thump all around in the dirt. But usually no one would be struck. It happened again and again.
When Marines did get hit, it often appeared that the fire came from PK machine guns or the local contingent of snipers – not the riflemen who make the Taliban’s rank-and-file. One day, after a few hours of fighting in which the Taliban had not yet hit any Marines, a corporal from Second Platoon stood upright, exposing himself above the waist and looking over a wall as bullets flew high overhead. He didn’t flinch. “What’s everybody ducking for?” he said. He cupped his hand to his mouth and shouted an expletive-laden taunt at the Taliban gunmen shooting from concealment on the opposite side of a field. The editors would never allow the corporal’s words to be printed here. But they amounted to this: You guys can’t shoot.
Yes, some of this was probably adrenaline and undiluted cockiness, the kind of behavior that Marines can thrive on. But this cockiness was not just attitude. It reflected a discernible truth. Much of the incoming fire was not coming close. (Later in that same fight, some of the fire did come close, as at least one sniper arrived on the Taliban side; we’ll show video of that soon). But at this point in the battle, any number of adjectives might be applied to the Taliban fighters on the far side of the open ground. They were resourceful, organized, clever, brave. In the main, however, they could not shoot.
For those of you who have served in Afghanistan, or been exposed to gunfighting there via other jobs, your input would be welcome. One of the company commanders shared his insights in an interview soon after the fighting at Marja tapered off. In the annals of the Afghan war, Afghans are supposedly crack shots, some of the best marksmen on earth. Captain Karabin, a veteran of the war in Iraq, summed up neatly a rifle company’s experience that pointed otherwise. “I used to say in Iraq that I’m only alive because Iraqis are such bad shots,” he said. “And now I’ll say it in Afghanistan. I’m only alive because the Afghans are also such bad shots.”
COMMENTS

I met an American sniper who trained Afghans in the Eighties. He said it took him ages to convince them to shoot from a prone position, which they felt was cowardly. Guess not much has changed.


Yes, the skills of Afghani marksmen are greatly exaggerated. Here is what is not greatly exaggerated:
a. Their fear of dying
b. Their tendency to bully the weak with extreme prejudice (average Afghans are more afraid of Afghan police than they are of Americans)
c. Their refusal to surrender

Perhaps a, b & c trumps being a poor shot.

Fascinating post. Thank you. I hope that you will attempt to explain why the Taliban fighters are not able to improve their marksmanship (training, discipline, etc.). I will now, sadly, return to my desk-bound work day.



This isn't the first time I have seen this reported. A year or two ago an interview with Canadian soldiers in Kandahar said the same thing. That is that Taliban are generally poor shots. They also said they tended to use repetitive tactics and if on the same ground even the same locations. The Talibans advantages are low investment in fighters, knowing the ground, being use to harsh conditions and there requiring little in the way of supply and not needing to hold ground. When they hold a position generally this should be described as a poor tactical decision



A substantial percentage of individuals world wide suffer from myopia, which probably is the case amongst the Taliban as well; in general, the developing world has a limited or nonexistent prescription eye ware use, and I think it's generous to consider Afghanistan "developing". I doubt the Taliban's health care coverage, such as it is, has a very generous prescription policy. Additionally, the high altitude of Afghanistan increases the likelihood of cataracts due to increased ultraviolet exposure and again, there are probably limited cataract extractions, Ray-ban or Oakley options as well. Lacking extant shopping malls replete with optical shops and sun glass kiosks, and often squinting, half-blind, and sun burned, it's amazing that the Taliban do as well as they do. And I'm fairly certain that they don't get their daily multivitamin - thus their night vision, in the absence of vitamin A, is not going to be too good. Certainly nothing to compete with a night vision scope common to the Marines.

However, this does emphasize the generally wretched health options available to the Afghani.



After reading this article and reading the other posts I feel obligated to add to this post. Having worked with the Afghan Militias and operating in the southern regions on different occassions I found that the new Afghan soldier/ police officers are all notoriously bad shots. This is due to several reasons. First was the introduction to automatic fire and weapons to the battle field. The other is the belief that Allah will guide your bullet. Having recovered many many caches of weapons while in country we always found stores of Mausers and Enfield rifles in the caches but failed to find many AK 47/74 type weapons. This is due to the status symbol the AK brings to the soldier. Because of this the younger soldiers were never taught to really shoot or even maintain their weapons. The old spray and pray marksnmanship now comes to play. Many of todays taliban were born during the Russian or Post-Russian era in Afghanistan. The older veterans are tired of fighting. On one such occassion we had taken some of the mausers and ammunition to the range. One of our hired workers who was approximately 50 yrs old came along to clean up the area and help. He may have also been curious! During the event we were practicing marksmanship with captured weapons and ammunition. The American soldiers were really impressed with the accurracy of the bolt action rifles and their range. I had noticed our Afghan worker had started coaching some of our troops and offered him the chance to shoot. He accepted and proceeded to school the American soldiers on marksmanship. I later found he had been Mujhadeen fighting the Russians. After offering him a position with our militia he proceeded to turn us down. He said he was tired of fighting and just wanted to keep his position supervising the kids we hired for general labor and trach collectors on our base. The older Afghans who learned to shoot with old single shot and bolt action rifles still know how to shoot and shoot well. Fortunately for us, they are tired of fighting and not interested in choosing any side in this conflict. Our worst nightmare would be a couple hundred older soldiers with the old Mausers and the knowledge to use them. Our problems would greatly multiply fast as would our casualty rates.



I'm not sure what the point of this article is... The only time I was under the impression that Afghans were good marksmen was when I was much younger, reading the books of Rudyard Kipling (mentioned in this post). At no point in the 5 years that I've been in the Army have I heard anything suggesting that basic, "rank-and-file" insurgents were anything other than extraordinarily poor marksmen (not to take away from their savvy as insurgents, or their courage). It is also common knowledge that the insurgents are capable of fielding veteran snipers. The snipers--usually foreign fighters--were and are universally respected--but are not accorded reputed skill due to their nationality, but to their training.

This common knowledge extends to indirect capabilities. Based on stories and extensive experience, the insurgents are mostly untrained at firing rockets or mortar systems; those exceptional crews who can employ those systems effectively are usually targeted and neutralized pretty quickly.

The insurgents are, for the most part, inaccurate riflemen for the following reasons (I'm drawing on 2-year-old firsthand experience):

1) their training is inadequate. Any rifleman who properly-zeros his weapon, fires it regularly, and keeps it well-maintained should be able to hit a point target at 75% of the rifle's maximum effective range (say, 150m for an AK-47 and 225m for an M4. Rough numbers). The insurgents do not properly zero their weapons, maintain them adequately but not exceptionally, and don't practice taking well-aimed shots.
2) there is a strong strand of fatalism in their philosophy that dictates that all actions are in God's hands, hence the phrase "Inshallah." One can imagine with little difficulty what effect that has on someone firing a weapon system.
3) all insurgent weapons are capable of firing on the full automatic setting, even their rifles (AK-47). The U.S. Army conducted research following Vietnam that established that the extraordinary volume of fire and expenditure of ammunition versus enemy killed or wounded was due to poor fire discipline with a then-fully automatic M16. Since that time, there has been a "burst" setting, which all riflemen are dissuaded from using in favor of taking well-aimed shots.
4)Many of the Afghan insurgents are from agricultural communities where there is no need for a background with firearms (save with tribal disputes). They are not hunters. They are young, so have no military background from the Russian war on which to draw. If you took a farmer from Idaho who'd never fired a weapon, gave him a rifle, let him shoot it for a couple weeks, then threw him into battle against any professional army, he wouldn't do very well.
5) we are well-trained in small-arms tactics, one of the principals of which is to deliver a strong volume of fire at known or suspected enemy positions as quickly as possible to suppress enemy fire. Once enemy fire has been suppressed--not stopped, but suppressed--the accuracy of enemy fire is reduced dramatically, as their primary concern becomes seeking or maintaining cover, rather than inflicting casualties.

This is all common knowledge among soldiers, and has been for years. I guess I'm just wondering what the angle is for this article, who the intended audience is. Civilian fans of Rudyard Kipling who have no friends in the military and have thusly not been over-exposed to returning veterans' combat stories? If so, it probably doesn't require an extended expose, maybe just a couple pages with the salient points highlighted, and summarized as follows: people unaccustomed to using a particular tool are as a general rule not very good at using said tool. With a nod to Kant, who says that Experience without Theory is blind (or a bad shot), while Theory without Experience is mere intellectual play.

It could be that I'm the one who's backwards. What are the "oft-repeated legends" of the Afghan riflemen you reference? I've never heard them--outside ancient history / literature--maybe I'm just out of touch.



Being in a military unit doesn’t mean that one is proficient with a rifle, consider any individual from any unit in our own armed forces. Outside of military / militia activity how much shooting is done by civilians in Afghanistan? How much long range hunting. competitive marksmanship? I’ll guess little. What type of weapons are being used, scoped rifles designed to engage targets at longer ranges, say at least out to 500 meters, or AK47s?

I enjoyed target shooting and use to shoot ‘high power rifle’, the typical ranges were 200, 300 and 600 yards, iron sights, slow and rapid fire in shooting different positions with no rests. I recall people sometimes showing up with SKS/AK47s, and they gave up at the 300 yard line if not earlier. These were people who had the opportunity to practice, may have been proficient otherwise, but were handicapped by a weapon designed for shorter ranges.

Comparing Afghans to Marines regarding marksmanship isn’t really fair, as it would also be unfair to compare soldiers or sailors coming out of basic training from the US forces to Marines coming out of boot camp. I recall spending one week in boot camp ‘dry firing’, just learning how to hold the rifle and sight it, before spending a week qualifying. Then we also had the opportunity to fire during infantry training. All marines were required to qualify with their issue weapons at least once a year, as a basic tenant was that every Marine was a rifleman. We had a lot of expert rifleman as the M16 was easier to qualify with than the M14 or the M1 Garand, something seen currently in high power rifle target shooting as the M16 seems and the civilian versions seem to be favored over the traditional, older rifles mentioned.

An interesting comparison on marksmanship would be to compare the Afghans engaging the Marines with US trained and equipped Afghans.



Had the friendly Afghans who had been working with us when we invaded the country been supplied accurate weapons at the start of the conflict, we may very well have won this by now. The worlds best mountain fighters need the most accurate weapons to bridge the gap to their vaulted historic skills again.

I think we're going to have to face the fact that our military as a whole is being run very poorly. Too much for the guys on top, too little for the common soldier. Instead of dismantling the Afghan forces allied with us and training them anew, all we need have done was supplement their own natural abilities, then have them train our soldiers in the secrets of the the place. It's their country after all.



Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for Afghans that couldn’t shoot straight, but I seriously doubt that all of them are that bad. Maybe the recent generation of the mujahidin is handicapped, but maybe the previous generation some 25 years ago was real hard core – they managed to kick the Soviets out. And that’s no joke – Russians had some of the most effective paratrooper formations reinforced with spetsnaz. But for all I care, let them stay dumb and blind, and maybe it will save a few American lives who are trying to help these shmucks.



I remember from a British observer of the pre-9/11 Afghan civil wars. The US had just gone into Afghanistan for the first time and there was a lot of speculation about the supposed high fighting qualities of the Mujahadeen/Taliban. He rejected the idea that the Afghans were expert fighters and stated that most Afghan clashes were a lot of firing with very few casualties, followed by mutual disengagement.


A rrifle is a tool, tools have specific uses, and tools require practice. My theory is that culturally Afghans treat a rifle as more of an accessory, like a handbag, something every male is expected to carry but not necessarily become an expert with.


Ben is right. if you look at the various video clips of the Taliban, al Quaeda and any other third world army or liberation front, the weapon is invariably the AK-47. The AK, while a robust and soldier proof weapon, is not designed as a marksman's weapon; unlike previous generations of bolt action and first generation semi-automatice weapons. it is an assault rifle, intended to put out a high volume of fire that will force the other guy to keep his head down until you can get close enough to not miss. It has a fixed 200 meter site and reflects the Red Army doctrine that if you put enough metal in the target area, you will eventually get a hit just by sheer random chance. The net result is the spray and pray approach to marksmentship around the world. Clips of Russian troops and third world militias invariable show them spraying the area with their AK's rather than using controlled, aimed fire.

The AK is emblematic of the trend away from "real" rifles, such as the M-14 and FN FAL, firing large calibre, highpowered rounds over long ranges and associated marksmentship training toward the saturation fire approach. Good shooting requires practice, discipline and lots of ammunition -i.e. money and more importantly time. lots of time, invested in training . The focus today is all too often on quantity, simply pushing people through quickie courses to get the numbers, rather than quality that comes from taking the time to get it right. this has been a reqcurring complaint with regard to the Afghan forces.



An interesting if a a bit over done post. The enemy is not 10 fee tall -- imagine that! I just spent a month in P2K wandering around the 4/25 AOR. The experience there is similar -- Taliban open fire at 300+meters, realizing they have maybe 10 minutes before their world comes to an end. Spray and pray is the operative concept. They fire and run away -- quickly. The objective is to get us to respond w/indiscrimate indirect fire and cause civilian casualties, period. All the soldiers I talked to had little concern with being shot, but getting blown up by an IED -- a different matter altogether. The Taliban have successfully taken this weapon and used it to change the battlefield -- denying us freedom maneuver, forcing us into large, ponderous convoy operations to keep outposts resupplied, and forcing us away from the people we're supposed to be defending as we rumble around in our behemouth MRAPs.



I've never heard legends of Afghan marksmanship. I've been under the impression that it's the difficult terrain and persistance of the afghan militiaman that makes Afghanistan such an imposing place to fight a war.

One thing you might want to pursue is the impact of experience on the accuracy of afghan fighters. I would tend to assume that the innacurate shooters are the ones who are young and have little to no experience/training (which is if you think about it, is all marksmanship is: experience and training). Perhaps some of the older Afghans who have been fighting for 30 + years are much better shots than the 17 year-old farm kid they're fighting alongside.

Couldn't we also assume that many of the expert and veteran fighters have been killed (the war has been going on for 8 years after all, and we have been inflicting substantial casualties on the insurgents) and the core of the rank and file militia replacing them today are inexperienced kids?

I think there are numerous factors at play here and I would be reluctant to say that Afghans, on the whole, are bad shooters. No statement that broad can be true.


I remember my father telling me that automatic weapons from his day(World War II) were not accurate. While the US was way behind Germany and even Britain in deploying automatic weapons among infantry, I doubt that the extreme shuddering and jolting they cause, is helpful, and it makes aiming more than problematic, leaving the gunner to just point and shoot in a general direction. I know this happened among US troops at times in Vietnam , where the enemy was often invisible.
Modern infantry weapons are a pain to carry and all that ammunition is heavy. No one want to die and thus only fools will expose themselves,(no matter what anyone says).
While once, a rifle was a valuable and difficult to obtain treasure. Something passed from father to son like a holy relic, almost.
Powder had to be obtained and shot, and guns got off only one shot at a time in those days. It is possible men cultivated their aiming skills then, and made greater efforts to excel at it even if they were myopic.
With the advent of cheap, automatic machine guns, less value may now be placed on accuracy than on firepower. Battles are faster paced(motorcycles in a ditch-Americans with helicopters). Who has time (or eyes) to take careful aim.
Anyway, I am sure that many of the great stories about the aim of American riflemen on the "frontier" were as overblown and colorful as the stories about Afghan aim.
Besides, how could the Brits explain being beaten by a bunch of myopic farmers who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn? Make them supermen with rifles, of course!



Marines have the best marksmanship and they train hard to make every bullet count since you have to carry every round. No other organization trains average combatants to this level of marksmanship. It is a key element in Marine doctrine that every Marine is a rifleman. Good for our troops that the current Afghan combatant does not get good basic marksmanship training.



The Fable may still be right but in a perspective. Afghans of today and those from the past (Like Rudyard Kiplings') must be different in marksmanship skills keeping in view the arms they have been handling. I remember most tribesmen (age 7 & above) carry rifles and engage in competitive target shooting as part of a wedding ceremony. The same people carry assault rifles (AK 47) now, mainly because of the cost of ammunition. The fashion now is to put more & more stary bullets into the air rather than excelling in target shooting. Thus skills vary with the kind of arms they handle and the culture that evolves with time. Majority of the Afghan army are low paid poor people with a low morale and weak will to fight their own people (especially in the pro & anti Islam psychological paradigm). So the level of their marksmanship is the result of their own circumstances.



Awesome, Mr. Chivers, awesome!

It is scary but to the point. It is not to say that they are sub-standard soldiers but are not well-enough trained in weaponry that would give them the skills that are required for the modern battlefield. The reasons for this are obviously pointed out in the story and comments.

It is nice to see the myths of the Afghan prowess at turfing the multitude of would-be conqueror invaders being exposed for the facile comment that it is. Knowing your adversaries' abilities does much to make the fight easier to work with. There are no bases from which the Taliban/al Qaeda murdering terrorists can muster their troops for target practice which is a good thing. They don't have these bases because they have been deprived of these because the Allied Troops have been chasing them around for years.

For years, much like the 'Killer of Empires', there is the myth of the murdering terrorists being called anything and everything that can be construed as not bestowing their ilk with the reputation of the murdering terrorists that they are.

America, Canada and many other nations could become the same if we did nothing to remove serial killers from our midst. These purported leaders of the war against the infidels are nothing more than serial killers in the disguise of Holy men.

You can call a spade a shovel and still get the concept to be understood.

God Bless the Troops. God Keep them Safe.



It's absurd to believe that an average Afghan is a better shot than an average foreigner. Being a good marksman is not genetic; it takes training and exposure to develop skills.

Most Taliban foot soldiers -- the ones who do the fighting in the trenches -- and Afghan police and army soldiers are uneducated, unemployed and often the least respected members of society. They fight because they have few other prospects. Expecting them to be legendary marksmen is not only a mistake but an unfair expectation.



The US weapons are manufacturered to tighter tolerances, and equiped with the best optical sights. Ordinance specialists who maintain the weapons travel with each large military unit. US Marines in particular will fire several thousand rounds in practice bfore deployment and will fire wepaons at least once per week to insure function and once per month to insure accuracy.

How can poor tribesman compete against that? Instead of the conslusion that Afghans are lousey shots, the correct conclusion should be that they are smart tacticians in not going muzzle to muzzle with Marines but instead relying on IEDs and intimidation.



At the age of sixty I vividly recall my teenage years, when Vietnam rarely left the evening news reports. At that time I could not comprehend why teenagers of my age were being sent to Asia to fight and die in a foreign war. I and my friends often talked about the daily count of body bags being brought back to air bases around the USA, especially in 1969 when I was eighteen. Years later having read why and how America became involved in the conflict, I came to one conclusion, Politian’s care little for those who they represent, image and prestige for them is the order of the day. It’s apparent that a news blackout has ensured that the repatriation of fallen US soldiers being brought back from Afghanistan is being enacted with orders from those who have never risked their lives for their country and have no intention of doing so. Having watched recently two programmes aired by National Geographic, concerning the Afghan conflict which included the forlorn sight of relatives visiting Arlington cemetery and a shocking insight at a casualty clearing station, my heart goes out to those involved in this unwinnable conflict. As a young boy my late father often told me about the American GIs who came to Walsall in 1943, in the preparation for the D-Day landings, generous and brave men who often bought a round of drinks in the pub, most British working men had little money at that time. The same GIs in their thousands headed south, crossed the English Channel and fought their way into Germany. I don’t forget those brave soldiers, who gave me the chance to live in freedom. Throughout Europe I have often visited cemeteries, where so many American soldiers lie, yet as the years go by those who gained freedom at their expense soon forget the past and its conflicts. I hope the present conflict will soon end, and the dreams of many will not be destroyed by the evilness of the few.