Forward Operating Base Chapman, also known as Camp Chapman, was a

United States Armed Forces The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is the ...

Forward Operating Base A forward operating base (FOB) is any secured forward Operational level of war, operational level military position, commonly a military base, that is used to support strategic goals and tactical objectives. A FOB may or may not contain an airfi ...

located at the site of a former Afghan Army installation and was situated in

Khost province Khost (Pashto/Dari: ) is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the southeastern part of the country. Khost consists of thirteen districts and the city of Khost serves as the capital of the province. To the east, Khost Province is bord ...

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

, on an airstrip 2 miles east of

Khost Khōst ( ps, خوست) is the capital of Khost Province in Afghanistan. It is the largest city in the southeastern part of the country, and also the largest in the region of Loya Paktia. To the south and east of Khost lie Waziristan and Kurram in ...

. The site was also used by the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

and was near Forward Operating Base Salerno, a large military base formerly used by U.S. special operations forces. The base was named for Sergeant First Class Nathan Chapman, the first U.S. soldier killed by enemy fire during the Afghanistan war, in 2002. Chapman was killed while fighting alongside the CIA.

History

The CIA's base in Khost was set up at the beginning of the U.S.-led offensive against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in 2001, and began as an improvised center for operations. A military base at the beginning, it was later transformed into a CIA base, a U.S. official said. According to a U.S. military source, Forward Operating Base Chapman was also used as a base for the Khost

Provincial Reconstruction Team A Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) was a unit introduced by the United States government, consisting of military officers, diplomats, and reconstruction subject matter experts, working to support reconstruction efforts in unstable states. PRT ...

(PRT), a military-led development group. According to an individual who was in the PRT and took part in the relocation; this team left in 2011 and moved to FOB Salerno. In recent years, the base, one of the most secretive and highly guarded locations in Afghanistan, evolved into a major counterterrorism hub of the CIA's paramilitary

Special Activities Division The Special Activities Center (SAC) is a division of the United States Central Intelligence Agency responsible for covert operation, covert and paramilitary operations. The unit was named Special Activities Division (SAD) prior to 2015. Within S ...

, used for joint operation with CIA, military special operations forces and Afghan allies, and had a housing compound for U.S. intelligence officers. On Wednesday, December 30, 2009, the

Camp Chapman attack Forward Operating Base Chapman was a United States Armed Forces Forward Operating Base located in Khost province, Afghanistan. As a prominent U.S. base, it was a repeated target of terror attacks. There have been at least seven attacks; th ...

was executed by suicide bomber Humam Khalil al-Balawi who was a Jordanian

double agent In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organi ...

loyal to al-Qaeda-linked

Islamist extremists Islamic extremism, Islamist extremism, or radical Islam, is used in reference to extremist beliefs and behaviors which are associated with the Islamic religion. These are controversial terms with varying definitions, ranging from academic unde ...

. Seven people employed by or affiliated with the CIA, including the chief of the base, Jennifer Lynn Matthews as well as a Jordanian intelligence officer, died in the attack. It remains the second-deadliest incident ever for the CIA after the

1983 United States embassy bombing The April 18, 1983 United States embassy bombing was a suicide bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed 32 Lebanese, 17 Americans, and 14 visitors and passers-by. The victims were mostly embassy and CIA staff members, but also included several U ...

. Almost three years later, on December 26, 2012, a suicide bomber, possibly with ties to the

Afghan Taliban The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state (polity), state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalist, m ...

(who claimed responsibility via a spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, claiming those who served American forces at the base were the target) and/or the

Haqqani network The Haqqani network is an Afghan Islamist group, built around the family of the same name, that has used asymmetric warfare in Afghanistan to fight against Soviet forces in the 1980s, and US-led NATO forces and the Islamic Republic of Afghanis ...

, killed three Afghans (their status was not specified) who were outside the perimeter of the base, which is near a military airport. U.S. bases in Khost, in particular Camp Salerno, have frequently been targeted by insurgents. In most cases, however, suicide attackers do not succeed in getting past the main entrance of a base. According to U.S. officials, Forward Operating Base Chapman appears to have implemented less stringent security measures than other U.S. military bases, aiming at establishing trust with informants. Subjecting informants to mistrust and excessive suspicion would reduce the amount of information received from them. In 2021, in the lead-up to the

withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan The United States has conducted two withdrawals of United States troops from Afghanistan: *Withdrawal of United States troops from Afghanistan (2011–2016), draw down of United States Armed Forces in the Afghanistan war *Withdrawal of United State ...

, the Taliban twice targeted the base. In the first attack rockets landed nearby wounding seven civilians. During the second attack a water tower on the base was hit, but no U.S. personnel were hit.

References

{{Reflist Military camps in Afghanistan Installations of the Central Intelligence Agency Military installations of the United States in Afghanistan