The Soldier Testimony Project

US Army Flight Surgeon Ryung Suh reflects on challenges to his motivation to serve in Afghanistan, unconventional warfare, and the conflict’s parallels with Vietnam. To read the full article, please click here.

It isn’t easy to question our nation’s campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq among fellow soldiers - it makes few friends and elicits suspicious looks. Yet, all of us privately reflect on the same things: Will the world be safer because of our fight? If we prop up a transitional government, will our nation’s long-term interests be served? If we achieve our military objectives, will the people here be given greater dignity and peace? Haven’t we made great strides with the new Afghan constitution and planned elections?

Americans asked and answered those same questions in Vietnam. Americans assumed they were injecting democratic virtue into the political system - that South Vietnam’s 1966 elections led to a fairly representative constituent assembly that, in turn, led to a Constitution with a bill of rights, land reform, and labor union provisions.

Despite American optimism that we were making real progress, we failed to understand the nature of the Vietnamese people and the historical, cultural, and social context that made our familiar institutions less relevant for them. In the end, we learned that social and political revolution is slow work, and we learned that largely unilateralist intervention often lacks staying power.

Different times, different places - I know. But the arguments sound so familiar as I watch the C-17 fly away with our dead into the windblown desert sky.

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There are practical challenges as well. How will we separate the enemies from innocent civilians? When an aviator in an Apache helicopter sees an Afghan man walking away from an explosion site with two sheep in tow, is he observing a sheepherder or an Al Qaeda attacker? We’ve dropped bombs on Taliban targets whose cellular phones direct our hit and, consequently, we’ve had to deal with unintended civilian deaths. We have Afghan civilians building our volleyball courts and hauling our trash, knowing that many relay critical operational information to our enemies (some were caught using mirrors to guide in rocket attacks).

How long can our strategy be considered effective? Have the Vietnam war and other guerrilla wars not taught us a better way?

Losing the passion for the cause or lacking a belief in the wisdom of current strategies, a soldier wants at least to know that his or her efforts aren’t wasted - that someone is safer, suffering has been alleviated, opportunities for dignity and happiness have been created.

Each day I tell myself that my efforts here are not wasted, that there is a reason I’ve missed my four children’s birthdays again, missed another anniversary with my wife, watched from afar as my parents have suffered major illnesses alone. There is a reason I continue to serve without complaint.

Watching those flag-draped coffins, however, made me uneasy. I can still justify the sacrifices that I have made my family bear in the name of this war on terrorism. I can still see the nobility of this profession - a soldier’s calling to serve in time of war in defense of his country. Despite some doubts, I still have faith that our leaders are wise and strong and worthy of our support. I can even still see patriotic families proud of the ultimate sacrifices made by their sons and daughters on the fields of battle.

Increasingly, however, what I cannot see is moral clarity in my position here. Death and sacrifice can be honorable things. But death can often highlight the moral ambiguities and political uncertainties inherent in our military campaigns. Appeals to my sense of patriotism, professionalism, and love of country do not seem sufficient to quell the discomfort of it all.

On a mission in the Shuraik Valley of Afghanistan’s Kunar Province in June 2005, Navy SEAL Michael Murphy was faced an ethical dilemma: what to do with an Afghan shepherd who saw his team and could compromise them. To access the full series of articles, please click here.

If he were allowed to leave, the herder might tell insurgents in the area of their presence, putting their lives in jeopardy. Taking him prisoner would slow their movements and could bring others out to look for him. Aborting their mission would risk the lives of those who would have to come to extract them and possibly allow an important insurgent leader to go free.

Murphy made clear to the others that killing the shepherd, a noncombatant, to ensure his silence was not an option.

“You know what, we are not murderers,” he told the three others SEALs. “We’re not just going to kill someone.”

They would spare the herder and take their chances.

While much of what transpired after the goat herder was allowed to go his way is not known, at about 2 p.m. the four SEALs found themselves all but surrounded by several dozen heavily armed Taliban fighters, whose familiarity with the rugged terrain allowed them to slip in unseen.

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In the fighting, an official investigation found, Axelson, Dietz and Murphy suffered multiple gunshot wounds, plus blunt-force injuries incurred as they jumped and tumbled down the ravine. Dietz was hit 16 times, including gunshot wounds to both thighs and both shoulders, his chest, jaw and head. Axelson had been hit with gunfire at least 22 times, including one shot that struck the back of his head. Murphy was hit at least seven times: bullets pierced his arm, leg, abdomen, back and his face below his left eye.

As darkness fell, Luttrell, bleeding from several wounds and apparently unable to communicate with his command, hid from his pursuers. When the sun came up days later, an Afghan shepherd walked out of his mountain home after hearing a strange noise in the woods. He found Luttrell, wounded and scared, and after persuading him that he meant no harm, took him to his home to protect him from his pursuers.

Luttrell had now been saved twice. And, if it was the first herder who betrayed them, it was now a second herder who saved the sole survivor.

In this video, also available here, American soldiers witness an AC-130 airstrike on a nearby civilian apartment complex in Baghdad. Neither the Army nor a human rights group present at the time of the November 13, 2003 attack know for sure whether or not any civilians were killed. (You may have to watch a brief advertisement before the video loads.)

In this New York Times Magazine feature, a reporter seeks to understand why Coalition tactics in Afghanistan lead to so many civilian casualties and, more broadly, how the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan has failed. Read the full article here and key excerpts below.

As far as “the kids” are concerned, the insurgents are ghosts — so the soldiers’ tactics often come down to using themselves as bait. The insurgents specialize in ambushes, harassing fire and hit-and-run attacks. NATO’s military advantage in such a war is air power. The soldiers don’t hesitate to call in Big Daddy (who, in today’s military, often flies in with the voice of a female pilot). But while these flying war machines are saviors to the soldiers, they cannot distinguish between insurgents and civilians…

Kearney kept his soldiers on a tight leash at first. Col. John Nicholson, a brigade commander with the 10th Mountain Division, had promised the Afghans he would not bomb their homes. When Kearney and the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team officially took over from the division’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team on June 5, they kept that promise. “My guys would tell me they didn’t know which houses they’re shooting from, and I’d tell them they can’t shoot back into the villages,” Kearney recalled. “They hated me.” The insurgents were testing the new captain, he suspected, by deliberately shooting from homes. On July 10, the Korengalis ambushed his soldiers from one house they often used — a three-story mansion on a fertile outcropping, with balconies overlooking the valley, that belonged to Haji Matin, a timber baron turned insurgent leader. It had been the scene of fighting in the past.

When Kearney’s moment of decision came, two of 2nd Platoon’s sergeants, Kevin Rice and Tanner Stichter, had been shot, and the fight was still going on. Kearney could see a woman and child in the house. “We saw people moving weapons around,” Kearney told me. “I tried everything. I fired mortars to the back side to get the kids to run out the front. I shot to the left, to the right. The Apache” — an attack helicopter — “got shot at and left. I kept asking for a bomb drop, but no one wanted to sign off on the collateral damage of dropping a bomb on a house.” Finally, he said, “We shot a javelin and a tow” — both armor-piercing missiles. “I didn’t get shot at from there for two months,” Kearney said. “I ended up killing that woman and that kid.”

Kearney could often sound cold-blooded, like when he’d march into the mess tent in shorts, improvising rap lyrics about killing bad guys. But then he’d switch to counselor, trying to salvage a soldier’s marriage, or he’d joke with a Korengali elder about arranging a marriage between his own infant son and the elder’s daughter to make peace. The performances steeled him against shouldering so much mortality. As he put it, “The only reason anyone’s listening to me in this valley right now is ’cause I’m dropping bombs on them.” Still, he wasn’t going to let himself shoot at houses every time his unit took fire: “I’d just create more people that hate me.”

Photographer Toby Morris captures an image of interrogation during the Iraq War in 2006. Click here, navigate to Projects > Iraq News for this and other images.

Ángela, recruited to the guerrilla group FARC-EP in Colombia at age 12, recounts her experience being forced to shoot and bury a friend. Children are routinely used to carry-out executions. Read the full Human Rights Watch Report here.

I had a friend, Juanita, who got into trouble for sleeping around. We had been friends in civilian life and we shared a tent together. The commander said that it didn’t matter that she was my friend. She had committed an error and had to be killed. I closed my eyes and fired the gun, but I didn’t hit her. So I shot again. The grave was right nearby. I had to bury her and put dirt on top of her. The commander said, “You did very well. Even though you started to cry, you did well. You’ll have to do this again many more times, and you’ll have to learn not to cry.

This video contains testimony from child soldiers as well as other Ugandans affected by the ongoing conflict between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Ugandan government. Former child soldier Joseph Okwir states that “I refused, but I was told that if I didn’t do it, I would be killed. So I took the machete and cut the man into pieces myself.” To help children like Joseph rebuild their lives, Canadian Physicians for Aid and Relief (CPAR), trains them to use information and communication technologies (ICTs).

In this video, a former child soldier from Sri Lanka recounts how he was forced to serve as a child soldier with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), more commonly known as the Tamil Tigers. There were 75 children in his unit, and he was older than at least 17 of them. In the video, he states that he faced sexual harassment and abuse from the LTTE militants, which eventually drove him to escape.

This video was created by Imaginación, a nonprofit organization that works to reintegrate former Colombian child soldiers into society. Although the video focuses on the work of Imaginación, it also contains brief interviews with former child soldiers.

Testimony of Madeleine from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who was forced to join the Mai-Mai militia as a soldier at age eleven. More information is available here.

“On my first day at the camp, the training was very hard. I don’t even know how I learned to kill. At first we didn’t have any guns. We used machetes and sometimes we used arrows. Then, once we killed the enemy, we took away their guns. Sometimes we cut their throats. When I got my first gun, it was hard. My body was shaking. I was scared. Then it became a joy to have a gun and kill. I was feeling really good. It was a war. I couldn’t even tell you how many I killed. I just kept leaving bodies behind and moving on. The used to give us marijuana to make us kill without fear. Smoking and drinking made us feel happy. It gave us a ferocity similar to animals.”