Oral History Of Iraq & Afghanistan: Capt. Christian Mitchell

As Told To Sydney Freedberg Jr.

Saturday, Oct. 24, 2009



Capt. Christian Mitchell
30 Years Old
U.S. Army, 2003-present
Served in Iraq, Jan.-July 2005; Eastern Afghanistan, Nov. 2007-Nov. 2008

• Oral History Project

The son of an Army non-commissioned officer, Georgia native Christian Mitchell was commissioned through ROTC, the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, in 2003 -- just in time for the Iraq War. Wounded in Iraq, he volunteered for adviser duty in Afghanistan, where he served alongside Afghans ranging from infantry privates to brigade staff officers.

My father's a retired command sergeant major in the Army, so I'd been around the military my whole life. And being from the South, you know, it's something that's kind of ingrained in you.

I had been wounded pretty bad in Iraq in 2005. I was pretty eager to get back [in action]. They had a heavy load of taskings to send guys on [adviser teams]; it was the highest priority assignment. I volunteered to go on condition I could go to Afghanistan. I'd always been kind of fascinated by Afghanistan, just reading through history.

When I got in there I sat down with the key leaders in the Company. I found that the first thing was we need to foster trust in each other. So I told them about myself and my family, learned about them and their family, and really tried to learn about them: how many in the same company were Pashtun, how many were Tajiks, if there was Hazaras there. It was a lot of time just sitting around talking. We talked a lot of politics. They had a lot of questions about American culture; I had a lot of questions about Afghan culture. Once I'd established that foundation and we'd established trust and friendship, it made things much easier.

A lot of the problems I saw with some of the advisers is they went in not treating them as their equal or looking down at them. I was there as a company-commander adviser. We're equals -- I'm not really there to tell him what to do.

[The Afghan company had two commanders in the time Mitchell was there:] Captain Atullah was the first one, and then the second one that came in was Captain Baqi.

[Atullah,] the first captain, he had some political pull and ended up just getting a better assignment somewhere closer to home, towards Kabul, because most of these guys that went out east were from the Kabul area. There was always some competition to get back towards Kabul and get a better job.

I was kind of sad to see him go because he and I had built a pretty strong friendship. He was doing the right things as a company commander, and it was getting a lot better. The first thing was, he had a sense of nationalism; he wanted to expand the presence of the government, he genuinely wanted peace and stability. He was brave; he was a lead-from-the-front kind of guy, almost to a fault. And he listened to his NCOs [non-commissioned officers], which is a thing that doesn't happen commonly there, where the non-commissioned officers are treated like, "Bring me some tea" or "Wash my truck."

He had a lot of experience. He was an older guy; he had fought the Russians, he had fought the Taliban. He was with the Northern Alliance. He was Tajik -- he was from up around Panjshir. He knew enough about logistics, cared for his guys, wanted advice, wanted to get better.

[As for Baqi, the second commander,] I would say he definitely paid some money or something for his rank and got put in there. Buying rank, buying promotions, stuff like that -- it's pretty common in the Afghan army, and it's frustrating, because you'll have guys in critical positions who aren't competent and nobody'll remove him because he paid this and he knows this guy.

[Baqi,] he took all the pride out of the company. He was incompetent. He wouldn't listen -- he would make a decision and nothing would persuade him. If his first sergeant or any of his NCOs or his lieutenants came up, he wouldn't listen to them. Even, to an extent, he wouldn't listen to me.

Pretty much every time we went out we were guaranteed to make some kind of contact. Most of the time it was a lot of ambush kind of stuff -- a lot of direct fire from concealed positions in the hills while we moved along, trying to pin us down while they maneuvered around on our flank. It got frustrating because we were pretty much clearing the same ground every time. We'd do a patrol, they'd reoccupy and we'd have to clear it all again.

[The Afghan soldiers], most of 'em were laying down pretty good rates of fire, and the NCOs were moving along pointing out targets. These guys were amazing; they could walk all day and take that terrain all day and it didn't faze 'em. They had maps and stuff, they knew how to read a map and plot a grid. I always had a GPS -- I taught them how to use it, they liked using that. [But] they had kind of an innate sense of the local geography, all these little places that weren't even on the map they knew how to get to.

Interacting with the civilians -- I was in contact probably at least once a day at a minimum -- moving around, just out and about, stopping, talking to the people out on the side of the road farming or moving stuff from one place to another.

It seemed like most people that I talked to, the number one priority for them was stability and security. And a lot of them, they were on the fence. They told me they don't really know what's going to happen and they were scared to commit to the government in case we pulled out and left and the Afghan army couldn't stand on its own and the Taliban came back -- they'd be in a world of trouble.

Some places there was no government presence -- they weren't receptive at all because they were under enemy control.

The majority of people that I talked to, they were friendly -- it doesn't seem like they regarded me too suspiciously. They, I think, for the most part accepted the government but were still a little wary of the outcome. The government reach wasn't strong enough there to fully convince them. They were still a little leery of that.

The people seemed to respect the army and there weren't any problems. It was definitely better with the first commander. The second one, I know he had caused some problems with him being in the smuggling business and going in the town and stirring some stuff up. But for the most part the people respected the ANA [Afghan National Army] a lot more than they did the police.

[The police] -- there's a couple of outposts there, but they really didn't do much. I had a friend who worked with the police. They were always in town, causing trouble, stealing stuff. There were a lot of problems with arresting males for no reason and then using them for their pleasure and then releasing them for a ransom.

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