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### MTG

To understand what you are seeing here, please see the Afghan War Diary Reading Guide and the Field Structure Description
Afghan War Diary - Reading guide

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

Understanding the structure of the report

- The message starts with a unique ReportKey; it may be used to find messages and also to reference them.
- The next field is DateOccurred; this provides the date and time of the event or message. See Time and Date formats for details on the used formats.
- Type contains typically a broad classification of the type of event, like Friendly Action, Enemy Action, Non-Combat Event. It can be used to filter for messages of a certain type.
- Category further describes what kind of event the message is about. There are a lot of categories, from propaganda, weapons cache finds to various types of combat activities.
- TrackingNumber Is an internal tracking number.
- Title contains the title of the message.
- Summary is the actual description of the event. Usually it contains the bulk of the message content.
- Region contains the broader region of the event.
- AttackOn contains the information who was attacked during an event.
- ComplexAttack is a flag that signifies that an attack was a larger operation that required more planning, coordination and preparation. This is used as a quick filter criterion to detect events that were out of the ordinary in terms of enemy capabilities.
- ReportingUnit, UnitName, TypeOfUnit contains the information on the military unit that authored the report.
- Wounded and death are listed as numeric values, sorted by affiliation. WIA is the abbreviation for Wounded In Action. KIA is the abbreviation for Killed In Action. The numbers are recorded in the fields FriendlyWIA, FriendlyKIA, HostNationWIA, HostNationKIA, CivilianWIA, CivilianKIA, EnemyWIA, EnemyKIA
- Captured enemies are numbered in the field EnemyDetained.
- The location of events are recorded in the fields MGRS (Military Grid Reference System), Latitude, Longitude.
- The next group of fields contains information on the overall military unit, like ISAF Headquarter, that a message originated from or was updated by. Updates frequently occur when an analysis group, like one that investigated an incident or looked into the makeup of an Improvised Explosive Device added its results to a message.
- OriginatorGroup, UpdatedByGroup
- CCIR Commander's Critical Information Requirements
- If an activity that is reported is deemed "significant", this is noted in the field Sigact. Significant activities are analyzed and evaluated by a special group in the command structure.
- Affiliation describes if the event was of friendly or enemy nature.
- DColor controls the display color of the message in the messaging system and map views. Messages relating to enemy activity have the color Red, those relating to friendly activity are colored Blue.
- Classification contains the classification level of the message, e.g. Secret

Help us extend and defend this work

Reference ID | Region | Latitude | Longitude
--- | --- | --- | ---
AFG20070218n597 | RC EAST | 33.62928391 | 69.39308167

Date | Type | Category | Affiliation | Detained
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
2007-02-18 00:12 | Non-Combat Event | Meeting | NEUTRAL | 0

| Enemy | Friend | Civilian | Host nation
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
Killed in action | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0
Wounded in action | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0

`

    Rahmatulla Rahmat , Paktya Governor

    - The PRT CDR informed the Governor that the two up-armored SUVs should be available for him by mid-March.  The Governor was very happy to hear this

    - The PRT CDR explained that CF would like to assist him by lobbying the Afghan government to increase his budget to meet his monthly expenses since the security operations fund program is going to be discontinued.  He agreed to provide a typical monthly budget for us by Wed.  This will be sent up the chain to CJTF-76 for discussions in Kabul

    - Last week, Gov Rahmat mentioned that someone was already working on the Gardez to Sharona road.  The PRT CDR requested additional details.  He called one of his directors and found out that DRRD was working on upgrading a section of it, but no one is paving it.  The road is about 60km and is currently #3 on TF Furys priority list for Paktya province.  It needs to remain on the list and needs to be paved.  In conjunction with paving the Gardez-Chamkani-Pakistan road and the Sharona-Ghazni road, this will complete a major trade route from Pakistan to the ring road, easing/improving trade and benefiting three provinces

    - Gov Rahmat once again emphasized the importance of paving the Gardez-Chamkani-Pakistan road.  This road will benefit nine districts and 90% of the Paktya population.  It is also essential to trade with Pakistan.  This remains his top road project priority

    - The Director of Agriculture provided the majority of the information needed to complete statements of work and prepare for a bidders conference to locate contractors to implement job creation and agriculture support projects for the $500K provided by CJTF-76.  The bidders conference will be held on Wed.  The Governor would like us to contract with village elders when possible

    - Bonozai Returnee Settlement.  Gov Rahmat stated that he has talked to the President and several ministers about the $500 per family compensation for the 314 families that need to be relocated from outside the ANA base to the Robat returnee settlement.  He could not find any department that was willing to fund the compensation package.  The UN, NGOs and CF have all said in the past that they would not fund it either.  MoD/203rd Corps will provide trucks and labor to help them move and the PRT has submitted a funding request to build a school in Robat.  However, a donor for the compensation still needs to be found.  This is important because the villagers put three years of labor and resources into building Bonozai after the government told them they could have the land.  Relocating and starting over will be expensive for them and they have little income.  The Gov stated that it was important that they move in March.  There are only 1,100 plots of land left at the Robat site and they are expecting about 2,000 more families to move to Robat from Pakistan this year.  If the Bonozai families do not move soon, the land will be given to other
    returnees.  DoS will up-channel this issue to the Embassy

    - Provincial meeting on 20 Feb.  The Governor briefed that he expected around 700 people to attend a meeting at the Mayors Wedding Hall on Tuesday, invited the PRT and BSTB to attend and requested assistance with security.  There will be 13 speakers and the topics to be discussed include:  national unity, human rights, improving security and how the people can help, how to implement democracy, how the people can help the government and how to rid the province of all remaining illegal drug activity.  BSTB will get with the PCC to coordinate security.  The PRT will support

    - The PRT CDR informed the Governor that Avain Bird Flu had been detected in Pakistan and there was concern that it would cross the border into Afghanistan.  We requested he let us know if any signs of the problem were detected in Paktya  to include indicators such as five dead birds in one area.  Gov Rahmat stated that he already planned to have a meeting with all the District Commissioners Monday and he would pass the information on to them and ask for their help in detecting it

    - The PRT CDR relayed the RTCs concern that only 28 of the expected 75 recruits showed up for training on the 16th.  The Governor said he would find out why from the Provincial CoP and work with him to ensure there are a total of 75 present for the next class

    - The PRT Eng updated the Governor on the status of developing the Top 20 projects.  The Governor mentioned that the President had congratulated Ahmad Abad on receiving funding for the dam/hydro-electric project.  There appears to be confusion that because it went out for bid by the PRT in order to determine the cost, that some believe it was actually approved for funding.  Apparently this also happened with the Gardez to Sayed Karam road paving project (phase 1 of the Gardez-Chamkani-Pakistan project).  In this case, a contractor is spreading the word that he was awarded the project.  The PRT Engineer stated he had not informed any contractor that they were selected for either project and has told all that submitted bids that the funding was not approved.  The Governor stated that he would find out who the contractor is and stop him from spreading the rumor.  Note:  the PRT started having bidders conferences prior to submitting PNFs due to past problems where bidders conferences were held after the funding was approved and we later found out we did not have near enough money for the project.  Considering expectation management, we need to review this CoA

    - The Governor stated that he had contracted for a well/water supply project at the new University site and expected work to start next week.  He plans to solicit funding support from several provinces in the region for assistance in building the University.  He would still like the PRT to construct the security wall as soon as possible

    - 4 BSTB CDR invited the Governor to the ToA on the 21st.  He also stated that the Special Forces unit in
    Chamkani had captured some insurgents and was wondering if they could be transferred to Gardez and secured in the Afghan prison here.  The Governor will look into it.  LTC Baker then provided an update on the inter-government facility to be built at FB Wilderness; construction should start in mid March.  Finally, he mentioned the recent violence in Zormat and expressed his regret for the loss of an ANP soldier.  He assured the Governor that CF planned to increase their presence in Zormat in the near future

    - Paul Belmont, DoS, stated that he needed more details for the proposals for use of the $500K Good Performance Award money.  He stated his assistant, Ajmal, could sit down with the Governor and help him fill out the forms.  Paul mentioned that Ajmal would also help the Governor fill out the Visa forms for the International Visitors program.  It was decided that Ajmal and Shabir (PRT interpreter) would go to his office tonight and assist him and the   ... Remarks are continued in the comments section ...

` `

    Report key: AF3F6A64-5B78-4B17-BF50-8E8A76D98FFA
    Tracking number: 2007-051-072037-0038
    Attack on: NEUTRAL
    Complex atack: FALSE
    Reporting unit: -
    Unit name: -
    Type of unit: None Selected
    Originator group: UNKNOWN
    Updated by group: UNKNOWN
    MGRS: 42SWC3645721122
    CCIR:
    Sigact:
    DColor: GREEN

`