U.S. Pulls Out of Afghan's 'Valley of Death'

KABUL, Afghanistan, April 14, 2010 -- The beautiful, cedar-lined Korengal Valley has never been successfully occupied by a foreign force or even controlled by a central government, but the United States has spent five years fighting ferociously in the remote eastern Afghan gorge, only six miles long and two miles wide.

Forty-two service men died in the valley where, at one point, nearly a fifth of all the fighting in Afghanistan took place. Countless articles and television reports -- many which won awards -- focused on how difficult the warfare was in the area, dubbed by troops "The Valley of Death." Even a video game featuring a Korengal firebase saw more than $300 million in sales the first day it was released.

But today the United States announced it is giving up on the Korengal Valley, moving the 130 or so troops stationed there to more populated centers. It is an admission that the valley, even though it was used as a supply route for insurgents, was never the right priority for U.S. troops fighting a counterinsurgency, and that the American presence itself was part of the problem.

"We're not living in their homes, but we're living in their valley," Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the head of all foreign forces in Afghanistan, told a small group of reporters last week during a visit to the valley. "There was probably much more fighting here than there would have been" if U.S. troops had never come, he said, according to the Wall Street Journal.

"I care deeply about everyone who's been hurt here. But I can't do anything about that. I can do something about people hurt in the future."

McChrystal has made protecting the population centers central to his strategy in Afghanistan since arriving last spring, and the Korengal simply did not fit into that. Only 4,500 people live there and they largely stuck to themselves, speaking their own dialect of Pashto, focusing on their timber trade and never participating in national politics.

And so with few resources in the area -- despite a threefold increase in American troops in Afghanistan -- McChrystal and his team have decided to close down seven small, remote firebases in and around the valley, so more troops could be spent protecting cities, farming centers, and transportation routes.