Confidence Golf was an operational sector of the United States military's Operation Confidence hearts-and-minds mission in eastern Afghanistan. The US Army established Golf Base as a forward operating base in the environs of the village of Lam, which was located on the south bank of a winding and narrow river situated in the middle of a mountain range. Hoping to win hearts and minds, the Americans forged a road through the mountains in an attempt to reach Lam, only to find that Lam was unreachable from their road. The American command simply decided to connect their newly-built Golf Base to Eran (in the Confidence Fox operational area) by extending their dirt road, and they used Golf Base as a heavily-fortified observation post rather than as a method to enforce law-and-order in Lam, which remained uncontacted. The remote Golf sector and Confidence Bravo near Lashkar Gah saw the least fighting of Operation Confidence, and the US Army never made an effort to provide Golf Base with a sizable garrison. However, by 27 June 2012, the base began to regularly sight Taliban cadres moving in from Pakistan in the east as part of a major Taliban offensive in the region. The base occasionally fired its mortars at Taliban cadres and forced them to flee deeper into the mountains, but fighting in the Golf sector was rare.
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