Outpost Restrepo in The Korengal Valley

Outpost Restrepo in the Korengal Valley

Outpost Restrepo is located in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. Described by CNN as the most dangerous place in the world. It’s one of the most desolate and arid places in the whole of Afghanistan, a rough, ragged terrain with sparse vegetation, a hostile valley where it’s hot and dusty in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. A documentary was made of our American troops who were stationed there for 15 months. The company, under daily fire saw but one Taliban fighter (with the emphasis on SAW) and the man who saw him thought it would be his last.

photo by author, my grandson at Bagram in Afghanistan.

The Taliban move through this terrain and population silently and unseen. In one scene the company is fired upon from 360 degrees and it’s surprising that any of the men came out alive. The company leader is Captain Dan Kearney. They established their outpost at a strategic point on the Taliban battle route. The enemy was caught off guard and the men dug in at nightfall building fortifications with earth. The successful maintenance of Outpost “Restrepo” named after 20 year old Pfc. Juan S. Restrepo the company’s first man to die, turned the tide in the hostile valley but the locals remain uncharted territory. The documentary is also named “Restrepo.”

Kearney holds weekly meetings with local leaders who are poor, aged and decrepit. There is great poverty in the region. One man has lost a cow, entangled in razor wire it had to be shot. Kearney offers him the cows weight in rice, beans and sugar, which should be worth more to the man than money, but the man wants money. Some of these people fund the Taliban and it’s difficult to know who is the enemy and who is friend.

15 months is hard, hard duty at Outpost Restrepo. Debriefings of the survivors were conducted after they were flown to Italy. It’s almost impossible for them to speak of the death of the friends they fought with.  Emotions run strong and deep. They remember Restrepo in the guitar lessons he gave and his book of flamingo songs.

They reminisce of an operation called, Rock Avalanche, where a Taliban fighter could remain unseen yet close enough to wrest a man’s weapon from him. The company was under fire three, four, five times a day. At one point in the documentary, Kearney speaks to his men not of patriotism, but of finding and killing those who have killed their friends.

 At the end of the documentary the American troops have withdrawn form Korengal Valley and Outpost Restrepo. No reason is given. The documentary raises the questions, How can this war possibly be won? Has anything been accomplished by the suffering and dying of our sons and daughters?

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