A 3rd Squadron Stryker guards the Wolfpack Wall on Sept. 30. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)
MAIWAND DISTRICT, Afghanistan — For years, insurgents have used the trees and crops in the farmland along the Arghandab river valley as cover, clandestinely trafficking weapons and fighters in and out of Kandahar on foot and in vehicles.
U.S. forces hope a new impediment will force them through checkpoints or out into open terrain where soldiers can engage them.
The Wolfpack Wall, a mile-long Hesco barrier, follows the bank of a wadi, or dry stream bed, and cuts across a strip of marijuana and poppy fields in Maiwand district, Kandahar province.
Hesco containers are large, wire mesh boxes, shipped flat, which are assembled and have a plastic bag inserted and filled with dirt.
Alongside the barrier, erected by U.S. Navy Seabees late last month, there's a trench dug as an extra obstacle.
The river valley has strategic value for both sides in a war that has become more intense in recent weeks, with thousands of U.S. and Afghan troops arriving to push out the Taliban.
"The area links Kandahar to Helmand and Pakistan," said 3rd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment commander Lt. Col. Bryan Denny. "It's a key place to close down."
The wall is designed to force insurgents into open desert, where soldiers monitoring the area from strategically placed outposts or cameras on unmanned aircraft hovering overhead can spot them.
Members of 3rd Squadron, known as the Wolfpack, allow ordinary Afghans to move through the farmland using openings in the six-foot-high Hesco wall, made some 12 feet high considering the terrain and a parallel trench.
But the Taliban isn't going quietly.
Since the Wolfpack started the operation, several soldiers have been injured and many of their armored vehicles damaged by bombs buried in and around the wadi.
"The bombs in the wadi have been large," Denny said.
A week into the operation to clear the area, Denny reported six soldiers injured when their Stryker armored personnel carrier was flipped by a roadside bomb; a platoon leader wounded when he stepped on a Chinese anti-personnel mine; three engineers injured in explosions that destroyed two Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles; and an additional soldier injured when the wrecker sent to pull out other damaged vehicles rolled over a bomb.
At a recent meeting with Afghan government and security officials from Maiwand to talk about operations in and around the wadi, Denny said he's seen women and children emplacing IEDs in the area at night.
"The American Army doesn't shoot women and children," he told the Afghan officials. "We target military males emplacing these weapons, but as professionals in the security business you know how frustrating it is to see men who would use women and children in this capacity. It shows little regard for the lives of these people."
Once the Taliban is out of the area, U.S. forces and local officials will try to get aid projects for the farmers, Denny said.
"Even though the farmers there grow a lot of things that the government of Afghanistan would rather they not grow, I want to be responsive to their needs," he said. "There are some bad people there. We are working hard to separate the insurgents from the people who are trying to just farm."
Staff Sgt. Jason Redick, 31, of Lapeer, Mich., a platoon sergeant, spent 72 hours stuck in the wadi when the wrecker rolled over a bomb. He said soldiers are in a tough fight with insurgents who crawl along drainage ditches to get into the wadi and place IEDs.
The motor pool at Combat Outpost Terminator, just north of the wadi, was a graveyard of damaged military vehicles, including an MRAP that had been cut in half by one bomb.
"Every one of those vehicles, you look at them and say: ‘How did anyone live?' " Redick said. "It just blows my mind."
The Wolfpack response to the IED attacks included firing mine-clearing line charges along the length of the wadi in an effort to detonate buried IEDs.
"It will hopefully stop us from having these near tragic occurrences in this wadi system," Denny said.
Each time a line charge fired, the noise of the explosion reverberated across the surrounding fields and a fireball shot 300 feet into the air.
"We've got secondary detonations (suggesting that hidden IEDs had detonated)," said a soldier over the radio after one of the blasts.
The Wolfpack Wall will be a "strainer" that keeps bad people out of the area and lets good people through, Denny told Maiwand governor Obaidullah Bawari during the wadi-clearing operation.
"This is a very strategic place," the governor said. "That's why the enemy is trying so hard to defeat you."
A 3rd Squadron Stryker guards the Wolfpack Wall on Sept. 30. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)
An Afghan soldier patrols near the Wolfpack Wall on Sept. 30. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)
Staff Sgt. Jason Redick, 31, of Lapeer, Mich., a platoon sergeant with 3rd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment peers into a wadi near the Wolfpack Wall on Sept. 30. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)
Third Squadron commander Lt. Col. Bryan Denny patrols near the Wolfpack Wall, in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan, Sept. 30, 2010. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)
Third Squadron commander Lt. Col. Bryan Denny patrols near the Wolfpack Wall on Sept. 30. The container in the background marks the point in the wadi where soldiers expect to be targeted by enemy small arms fire. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)
Third Squadron commander Lt. Col. Bryan Denny talks to an Afghan marijuana farmer near the Wolfpack Wall in Maiwand district on Sept. 30. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)
Lt. Col. Bryan Denny, commander of the 3rd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, goes to survey an area after a MICLIC, or mine-clearing line charge, was detonated to clear the wadi of bombs. (Roy Ragsdale/Courtesy U.S. Army)
A mine clearing line charge is detonated in the wadi in Maiwand district, where the 3rd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, has built a Hesco barrier to force insurgents out into the open. (Roy Ragsdale/Courtesy U.S. Army)
