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### PROJECT CLOSEOUT

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
--- | --- | --- | ---
AFG20061019n388 | RC EAST | 33.62928391 | 69.39308167

Date | Type | Category | Affiliation | Detained
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
2006-10-19 00:12 | Non-Combat Event | Project Closeout | NEUTRAL | 0

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

`

    SAYED KARAM MOSQUE OPENING

    1. General.  On 19 Oct 06, I attended the Sayed Karam Mosque Opening Ceremony in Paktya Province.  The Ceremony included several speeches and an official ribbon cutting to open the mosque.  On this visit, I accompanied three Members of the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs including the General Chief of Mosques, the Deputy Chief of Mosques and a Ministerial Reporter.  Several Afghan National Media who had committed to participating unexpectedly did not show up at the airport and therefore did not go.

    2. Aim.  At the request of TF Spartan, central government reps and I attended the event IOT create the IO conditions to counter insurgent propaganda regarding the coalition being anti-Islamic and to highlight the Islamic nature of the IRoA.  Further, the event created the conditions to promote a unified bond for reconstruction and development between the coalition forces and the IRoA.  Additionally, we were seeking to promote the legitimacy of the central government by having appropriate representatives who were able to speak to their provincial counterparts and discuss applicable issues.

    3. Ceremony.  The following are points of interest:

    a. A simple yet effective event, there were approx 50 pers in attendance with minimal public participation due to security concerns.  In addition to the central government reps, the event was well attended by numerous provincial and district officials, including the Acting Governor, the Provincial CoP, the District Commissioner, Religious leaders and elders from the area.

    b. Speeches were made by the Deputy Governor, the Provincial Director of Communications, the District Commissioner, the District Mullah, the Chief of Mosques from MoHRA, I and the PRT Com.  The key messages and central themes of all of the speeches emphasized that: the people of Paktya want and aim to achieve peace and stability; the time is now to work together to move forward with reconstruction; and, Afghanistan has seen difficult days however the opening of mosques is a healthy sign of improvement, as children are being taught the true, proper teachings of Islam  not war.

    c. Upon completion of the speeches, we all moved to the mosque and the ribbon was cut, officially opening the mosque.

    d. Despite the fact the intended Afghan National Media did not participate, the event was well attended by local and our PAO.

    e. A girls choir sang at the ceremony and were afterwards presented with gifts (school backpacks).

    f. Most importantly, this event was lead by Afghans.

    5. Misc Points.  The following points were noted in discussions with several people:

    a. In speaking with the PRT XO, his assessment is that the Provincial CoP, Gen Rahofi, should be rated as Red  he is extremely corrupt, not respected by subordinates and since he is from outside the province, he has no strong ties with many communities.

    b. There are no solid indications of a new Governor being named.  I asked the sub-governor when he would be confirmed in the governor post and he reply by saying that some members of the PC had recommended his name to the GOA. His answer was indicative that he was not confident to be the chosen one. This was confirmed by the PRT XO. The PRT XO also noted that through a UNAMA contact, he has heard that the list of potential Governors for Paktya held by the central government was at 3-4 pers and may now be cut down to one name (this is not corroborated).

    c. A new member of the provincial government is in place  a provincial director of Economy who will hopefully kick start the PDC.  The PRT XO indicated that the Deputy Governor does not fully understand the PDC process, making it more difficult to move forward.

    d. Some Mullahs are still afraid to publicly speak out against the assassination of Governor Taniwal several weeks ago due to fear of retaliation.

    e. Having observed the level of attention given to the CoP BG Rahofi by the Governor, I suspect that the governor may count very much on Rahofis support to do his job or he is manipulated by Rahofi for other reason.

    7. Overall Assessment.  This was a successful event and our aim was achieved.  IO and PSYOPS will have to actively pursue options to exploit this event.  TF Vanguard and the PRT did a fine job of providing security for this event. The Governor does not have the right level of respect and support to be effective.

    8. Actions recommended.

    a. To engage the US Embassy IOT put pressure on the GOA to have the Paktya Governor named as soon as possible.

    b. IO, PSYOPS and PAO will produce products exploiting this event.

    c. Recognizing the importance of these events and the effects they can bring, we must continue to push the requirement to have such events submitted as CONOPs in a timely manner.

` `

    Report key: 8B86A50A-A5C0-4A6F-9B1B-65FFAFEB0921
    Tracking number: 2007-033-011142-0778
    Attack on: NEUTRAL
    Complex atack: FALSE
    Reporting unit: CJTF-76
    Unit name: CJTF-76
    Type of unit: None Selected
    Originator group: UNKNOWN
    Updated by group: UNKNOWN
    MGRS: 42SWC3645721122
    CCIR:
    Sigact:
    DColor: GREEN

`