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Confidence Echo was an operational sector of the United States military's Operation Confidence hearts-and-minds mission in eastern Afghanistan. The sector was named for Echo Base, a US Army forward operating base (FOB) established just north of the village of Surobi. The Americans built a dirt road off the Lashkargah-Khost Highway to access Surobi, hoping to win over the locals and prevent the Taliban from acquiring a base in the region. However, on the thirteenth day of the operation, the Taliban first appeared in the area. The Americans responded by surveilling the area with drones and eliminating the Taliban cadre with an airstrike, but, a day later, more Taliban arrived, warranting another airstrike which annihilated the cadre. On 8 April 2012, Surobi changed its allegiance to the Anti-Coalition Militia, leading to Surobi becoming a stronghold for the Taliban insurgency. On 22 April 2012, a squadron of Buffalo MRAPs, codenamed Whiskey Squadron, was destroyed by an IED while driving down the dirt road from the Lashkargah-Khost Highway to Surobi. On 3 May 2012, a US Army company entered Surobi with the objective of collecting intelligence on the Taliban and restoring order to the area, and they swept the area for IEDs as a Husky mine-clearance vehicle and a Buffalo MRAP formed a convoy and cleared the whole Surobi Road of landmines. On 15 May, as a US patrol returned to Echo Base, the patrol was ambushed by Taliban fighters, and another Taliban cadre, this time in the mountains north of the base, and, on 20 May, several Taliban cadres were spotted in the mountains to the east of Echo Base. The US Air Force proceeded to kill several insurgents in an airstrike, scattering the cadres among the mountains. Militia cadres continued to harass the base from its vicinity, with the Americans employing airstrikes to pound Taliban targets. On 27 May, an American Apache attack helicopter was damaged by a Taliban RPG while flying over the Echo sector. The base was eventually placed under a state of siege as Taliban and militia forces planted IEDs along the Surobi Road, surrounded the base, and made it impossible for American or Afghan companies to leave the base. On one occasion, a US Army company was annihilated after leaving the base to attack a force of Taliban attackers to the north. On 15 July 2012, the Afghan National Army's Fox Tolai squad was annihilated by the Taliban after arriving in Surobi to provide security to the locals, and a Taliban attack on the base succeeded in inflicting significant casualties on American soldiers before the Taliban ran off.

In 2013, the Echo sector experienced renewed fighting amid a new Taliban offensive. The beleaguered defenders soon faced an attack by militia led by Izat Montazeri, but the defenders annihilated the attacking anti-coalition militiamen after a spirited defense. By then, the American public and politicians had tired of the war and stopped approving more military expenditure for the operation, depriving the Americans of their air support.

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