The Afghan War Diary (AWD for short) consists of messages from several important US military communications systems. The messaging systems have changed over time; as such reporting standards and message format have changed as well. This reading guide tries to provide some helpful hints on interpretation and understanding of the messages contained in the AWD.
Most of the messages follow a pre-set structure that is designed to make automated processing of the contents easier. It is best to think of the messages in the terms of an overall collective logbook of the Afghan war. The AWD contains the relevant events, occurrences and intelligence experiences of the military, shared among many recipients. The basic idea is that all the messages taken together should provide a full picture of a days important events, intelligence, warnings, and other statistics. Each unit, outpost, convoy, or other military action generates report about relevant daily events. The range of topics is rather wide: Improvised Explosives Devices encountered, offensive operations, taking enemy fire, engagement with possible hostile forces, talking with village elders, numbers of wounded, dead, and detained, kidnappings, broader intelligence information and explicit threat warnings from intercepted radio communications, local informers or the afghan police. It also includes day to day complaints about lack of equipment and supplies.
The description of events in the messages is often rather short and terse. To grasp the reporting style, it is helpful to understand the conditions under which the messages are composed and sent. Often they come from field units who have been under fire or under other stressful conditions all day and see the report-writing as nasty paperwork, that needs to be completed with little apparent benefit to expect. So the reporting is kept to the necessary minimum, with as little type-work as possible. The field units also need to expect questions from higher up or disciplinary measures for events recorded in the messages, so they will tend to gloss over violations of rules of engagement and other problematic behavior; the reports are often detailed when discussing actions or interactions by enemy forces. Once it is in the AWD messages, it is officially part of the record - it is subject to analysis and scrutiny. The truthfulness and completeness especially of descriptions of events must always be carefully considered. Circumstances that completely change the meaning of an reported event may have been omitted.
The reports need to answer the critical questions: Who, When, Where, What, With whom, by what Means and Why. The AWD messages are not addressed to individuals but to groups of recipients that are fulfilling certain functions, such as duty officers in a certain region. The systems where the messages originate perform distribution based on criteria like region, classification level and other information. The goal of distribution is to provide those with access and the need to know, all of the information that relevant to their duties. In practice, this seems to be working imperfectly. The messages contain geo-location information in the forms of latitude-longitude, military grid coordinates and region.
The messages contain a large number of abbreviations that are essential to understanding its contents. When browsing through the messages, underlined abbreviations pop up an little explanation, when the mouse is hovering over it. The meanings and use of some shorthands have changed over time, others are sometimes ambiguous or have several meanings that are used depending on context, region or reporting unit. If you discover the meaning of a so far unresolved acronym or abbreviations, or if you have corrections, please submit them to wl-editors@sunshinepress.org.
An especially helpful reference to names of military units and task-forces and their respective responsibilities can be found at http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/enduring-freedom.htm
The site also contains a list of bases, airfields http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/afghanistan.htm Location names are also often shortened to three-character acronyms.
Messages may contain date and time information. Dates are mostly presented in either US numeric form (Year-Month-Day, e.g. 2009-09-04) or various Euro-style shorthands (Day-Month-Year, e.g. 2 Jan 04 or 02-Jan-04 or 2jan04 etc.).
Times are frequently noted with a time-zone identifier behind the time, e.g. "09:32Z". Most common are Z (Zulu Time, aka. UTC time zone), D (Delta Time, aka. UTC + 4 hours) and B (Bravo Time, aka UTC + 2 hours). A full list off time zones can be found here: http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbreviations/timezones/military/
Other times are noted without any time zone identifier at all. The Afghanistan time zone is AFT (UTC + 4:30), which may complicate things further if you are looking up messages based on local time.
Finding messages relating to known events may be complicated by date and time zone shifting; if the event is in the night or early morning, it may cause a report to appear to be be misfiled. It is advisable to always look through messages before and on the proceeding day for any event.
David Leigh, the Guardian's investigations editor, explains the online tools they have created to help you understand the secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/datablog/video/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-war-logs-video-tutorial
Reference ID | Region | Latitude | Longitude |
---|---|---|---|
AFG20090401n1216 | RC SOUTH | 31.61405754 | 65.6901474 |
Date | Type | Category | Affiliation | Detained |
---|---|---|---|---|
2009-04-01 07:07 | Explosive Hazard | IED Explosion | ENEMY | 0 |
Enemy | Friend | Civilian | Host nation | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Killed in action | 5 | 0 | 3 | 4 |
Wounded in action | 0 | 0 | 17 | 0 |
At 020245ZAPR09 Narrative updated on advice from RC South PRT who were involved on site. To be used as principle description.
The Provincial Council Compound was attacked at appox 0717Z on 01APR09. 1x red Toyota Surf entered the unguarded outer gate, approached the inner gate, 4x INS dressed in ANA uniforms and carrying AK-47s dismounted. They took cover behind the chicanes. The Toyota then drove forward through the chicanes and then detonated just beside the guard tower at the inner gate. The 4x INS then entered the compound, 2x INS entering each building, each INS had a suicide vest. INS were throwing grenades and firing their weapons.
In bldg one, the first INS was shot and killed by the ANP, the second INS detonated his vest. One vest from bldg one was exploited by CIED.
In bldg two, the INS entered shooting and throwing grenades. As they walked to the back of the building the first INS detonated his vest, killing the second INS. One vest from bldg one was exploited by CIED.
The vests were rigged with ball bearings for shrapnel and had 3 fail safes. A switch was taped to each wrist and a grenade fuse pull was on the center of the chest.
When PRT arrived at appox 0815Z, the ANP Chief of Security was the On-Scene-Commander and he quickly handed over the scene to the PRT due to the 2x live vests. There was a lot of debris and body parts scattered over a wide area. Provincial Chief of Police arrived shortly thereafter. Once the two vests were made safe and area was checked for secondaries, 49 took the CoP forward to the scene. One of his bodyguards stepped on a detonator which exploded and injured his foot (CAT C). PRT Medic treated on scene and ANP moved him to Mirwas Hospital. CoP agreed to allow PRT to exploit the scene for evidence. CIED began to exploit the 3x scenes(front gate, bldg one, and bldg two). NDS arrived appox one hour later and then left. There was significant damage to the guard tower and both buildings on site. All surrounding buildings suffered blast damage, Mandagak guest house had all its windows blown out.
AWK came to the scene, he reported 7 dead(not including the 5x INS) and 17 wounded. Killed were the Director of Education and Deputy Director of Health. The GoK held a press conference on site with C/S 99, the RoCK and local media.
PRT departed scene at appox 1230Z after handing scene back to ANP.
Updated BDA: 3x LN killed, 17x LN wounded, 5x INS killed, 4x ANP killed 2x buildings damaged, 1x gate destroyed. NFTR. Event closed at 1851Z.
Event closed at 1851Z on 01APR09.
ISAF # 04-0018
Report key: 61880A5E-1517-911C-C53C44372480CE0C
Tracking number: 20090401072041RQR5520000800
Attack on: ENEMY
Complex atack: TRUE
Reporting unit: Paladin JOC Floor
Unit name: OCCP / TF Kandahar
Type of unit: GIROA
Originator group: Paladin JOC Floor
Updated by group: J3 ORSA
MGRS: 41RQR5520000800
CCIR: (ISAF) FFIR 2. - FATALITY TO ANSF OR INJURY TO > 5 ANSF
Sigact: J3 ORSA
DColor: RED