In My Father's Country (40 page)

Nor do the Americans in Afghanistan know and understand the ethnic tensions in Afghan society. Perhaps it’s hard for an American to understand the importance to Afghans of tribal affiliations, but Afghan history is full of ethnic turmoil of one kind or another. The American soldiers and civilians who went to Afghanistan more than a decade ago went there with the mind-set of the American melting pot, a society that had been formed
because
of its differences. However, the reality on the ground in Afghanistan was very different.

It was true that tribal hierarchy as it had existed prior to the Soviet invasion was no longer in place. It was true that Pashtuns were not as united as they had been before the Russian invasion. It was also true that the Pashtuns, Hazaras, Uzbeks, and Tajiks were scattered all over the country, their network fragmented beyond recognition. Maybe it was for all those reasons that no matter where I went there was an inborn distrust of the
other
. I would spend hours in Pashtun villages, listening to the conspiracies against the Pashtuns by the Farsiban. And I am sure that if I had made it to Farsiban or Hazara areas, I would have heard identical theories, with the perpetrators being the Pashtuns. In order to not become part of the ethnic struggle for control, the American soldiers had better learn to take what they are told with more than a grain of salt.

With the introduction of millions of dollars of donations coming in from all over the world, the distrust and competition among these ethnic groups has only worsened. Our enemy, the insurgency, or the Taliban, or Al-Qaeda, whatever we call it, is using this mistrust of the other to incite violence, and where there is violence, there is instability, and where there is instability, there is no governance. According to the COIN doctrine, bringing the masses to governance is the only way to win an insurgency, but how can America win over the masses when the biggest ethnic group in Afghanistan feels slighted by the American actions of the last decade? One of the main reasons why we have regressed in Pashtun areas is because the Pashtuns accuse the Americans of favoring the Farsibans. No matter what the reality, and one can argue it either way, it is important to understand that the Pashtuns’
perception
of this favoritism is just as damaging to the U.S. efforts in Afghanistan as if it were a fact. Let’s face it: The Kabul central government has no outreach in these remote villages, but our chances of success might have doubled (or more) had the Pashtun villagers viewed us as friends, not foes.

This is not to say that the Pashtuns are united. I wish they were; it is easier to form an alliance with a united group. The Pashtun tribes are feuding among themselves, too, for the country’s limited resources—the land, the trees, even the mountains. These are centuries-old feuds between subtribes, and they will be playing out a long time after the Americans have left the Pashtuns’ land. Having said that, it is even more crucial for the Americans in Afghanistan to be conscious of the tribal dramas that make up the environment into which they are sent to live and work.

To make matters even more complicated, our COIN tactics needed to take into consideration the fact that there wasn’t simply one insurgency creating the instability. There were many types of “bad guys” contributing to the public’s displeasure with Karzai’s government. The Division Command at BAF ordered us to collectively call these groups Enemies of Afghanistan (EoA) or Anti-Afghan Forces (AAF).
Taliban
is an incendiary word, a word so heinous that our brigade was commanded never to utter it. I understood but was saddened by that. Once upon a time
it was a perfectly good word, a word of respect.
Talib
means “student,” specifically a student of the Koran. My Baba was a
Talib
, and a wise and thoughtful man.

The AAF now included the mujahideen, such as Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, who had bravely booted out the Russians with the help of Americans and who had become folk heroes representing the glory of resisting and defeating superpowers. Then came the old Taliban movement of the 1990s, that young and ambitious group of Islamic scholars who took over and established a short-lived government, which was recognized internationally by many countries, including the United States. Their rule was severe, perhaps more strict than I would have liked to live under, but—strangely enough—it worked, in a society that was craving the strict hand of law following the years of lawlessness. These were the good old days when gasoline was 5 rupees a gallon and men could leave their compounds for night prayer without worrying that someone was going to break down their door and rob them or rape their women. The rules were enforced and everyone knew what to expect, which is the biggest deterrent to crime and instability in the absence of a central authority. When Afghans in 2009 expressed their nostalgia for the Taliban, this was generally who they were reminiscing about. And this is also what the AAF promise to restore once they take back Afghanistan from the infidels.

Unfortunately, American soldiers would hear the word
Taliban
and, unless they have an exceptionally talented interpreter, assume that the villagers were talking about the Taliban who were setting up mines and road bombs for killing the soldiers. Unless an interpreter told them otherwise, the soldiers would grow to detest and distrust the Afghans with whom they were sent to build relationships. How could I blame the soldiers for not wanting to get to know the villagers they thought were planting IED in the road? This is where it becomes essential to have interpreters who can not only translate words but also share the history and context behind the conversation. I firmly believe that without that knowledge our soldiers would be better off not talking to any Afghans at all.

Another group of insurgents fighting against the United States is the second wave of Taliban, led by the younger generation, including people like Jalaluddin’s son Sirajuddin. One of my first missions at Khost was to visit a village in Paktya that happened to be Sirajuddin’s hometown. As is the case in many villages, its people felt completely disconnected from the central government. The elders believed that if Karzai wanted their allegiance, he should involve their respected leaders (such as Jalaluddin Haqqani) in his government. After all, Jalaluddin had fought the Russians bravely with fearlessness and honor, qualities Pashtuns admire and require in their leaders.

In Pashtun culture respect for the father is automatically transferred to the son, but these villagers weren’t so sure about Sirajuddin, and the elders were reluctant to transfer their loyalty. Sirajuddin had grown up in Pakistan, was bought by that country’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and—according to the villagers—did not seem to harbor the same love for his people and country that his father did. He was working for the
other
. Regardless of whether he was targeting foreign soldiers or his own people, his methods were considered sadistic. Sirajuddin, they thought, was not like his father, and did not deserve their trust. He fought beneath the cloak of Islam but was after money and power, no better than the infidels he claimed to target.

There is a third type of insurgent, too: foreigners who believe that they are doing jihad by assisting the local insurgents in overthrowing the GIRoA, a puppet regime of the infidels. They might be Uzbeks, Tajiks, Pakistanis, Iranians, or even the rare Westerner who has allied himself with the new Taliban. They might be misguided in their wish to do jihad against the invaders, but they provide the kind of blind faith needed for suicide bombers. In my opinion, this is the hardest group of insurgents to fight; you cannot defeat an enemy who welcomes and desires death during a firefight.

But this isn’t all. Add to the mix fighters for hire, who for 100 rupees will, at a determined hour, remotely detonate an IED; boys in the villages whose mothers and sisters are starving, who fight because
they don’t feel as if they have a choice; opium traffickers with their own henchmen; and garden-variety criminals and smugglers who thrive on the ongoing chaos of the region. After spending five years in Afghanistan, it is my opinion that, when it comes down to it, there are very few hard-core Taliban fighters who want their seventy virgins, and everyone else is in it for other economic or political reasons.

ASIDE FROM FAILING
to understand either the lives of the “good guys” or the affiliations and motivations of the “bad guys,” there was the same problem I’d noticed the first day my feet hit the ground in BAF: the dire lack of Pashtu-English speakers. There was an army-wide push to gain cultural understanding of the Afghans, but language had been left out of the equation. How could we expect to understand the complex cultural environment without the right linguistic tools? We had several CAT I interpreters who’d been assigned to HTT. Ehsan was from Khost, a twenty-two-year-old father of two who’d studied English in Kabul—but having only one qualified interpreter for a team of six or seven analysts and social scientists was an unreasonable arrangement. Two Farsi speakers were installed in our office who spoke little Pashtu or English, which meant I witnessed firsthand how much was lost in translation when one of them was interpreting for my teammates.

This language barrier and the dearth of knowledge of the region’s history, both recent and distant, had created an environment ripe for failure, in which our soldiers were expected to fight for the hearts and minds of villagers. Was it reasonable to expect them to succeed when they weren’t armed with the right weapons?

I came to Khost knowing little about the battles that our soldiers were fighting on these linguistic and cultural fronts. As a former CAT II, I knew many other CAT IIs who claimed to have been native Pashtu speakers but couldn’t carry on a conversation in Pashtu that was longer than two sentences. My Letter of Authorization, issued by the army, stated my title as research manager, hired to manage a social database, but that was not what I found myself doing. What I knew about Afghanistan
had not been taught to me in a class or training course. It would have been impossible for me to tell the soldiers with certainty which tribe to believe, or whose side to take in a centuries-old tribal feud, or any of the other information I knew they needed to complete their mission, but I could try to make them aware enough of the environment they were going to be operating in so they would have a better chance of coming home alive.

The local interpreters had an idea of what was going on outside the wire, but like most Afghans, they were stuck in the middle of it. They too were unsure of whom they could trust, so they kept their mouths shut and let our soldiers make cultural mistakes that, in my view, could have been easily avoided. I came into the program having had no local ties to our Area of Operations (AO) other than the language of my forefathers. I didn’t live there, and neither did my family. This gave me the freedom to explain relationship dynamics of a Pashtun tribe without feeling like I was being disloyal to the Pashtuns or feeling like I was taking sides. My loyalties were not as easily manipulated by the tribes around me.

T
WENTY-EIGHT

O
n a clear day in late March, just a few weeks after getting to Salerno, we received word that Colonel Jason McAffee, the incoming brigade commander, wanted to meet the team. Seated around a big table at his TOC were Audrey; Billy; Tom, the research manager whose contract was ending and whom I would be replacing in a few months; Evan, the team leader who’d recruited me; Michael, the HTT’s social scientist; and me.

Jason sat at the end of the table. Tall, with salt-and-pepper hair and a narrow face, he looked like he might have been a science teacher in a previous life. I was the last one to introduce myself.

“I’m Saima, from Portland, Oregon, originally from Afghanistan.”

“Aha! I’ve found my Pashtu interpreter.”

“I’m the research manager, sir, but I’d be happy to find you a good interpreter.”

“So you’re from Oregon?”

“Yes.”

“My kids love to vacation there. We like to kayak. Do you kayak?”

“I don’t even swim, sir.”

“No? That’s amazing.”

“My uncles thought there was no reason to learn, since Afghanistan has no ocean.”

He laughed. No one else said anything. The air was charged with their disapproval. I glanced at Evan, who was looking down at his hands folded on the table. We had discussed this already. We’d agreed that while I would have no need for my own interpreter, I wouldn’t be anyone else’s. But Evan remained silent. Jason was his commanding officer.

“You find me that interpreter,” Jason said, “and I’ll let you off the hook.”

“No problem,” I said, thinking, This could be my
Mission: Impossible
.

Later, back at the HTT office, Michael said, “You know that guy is huge, right? He’s in charge of six provinces.” I knew that Jason led a task force of five thousand American, Czech, and Polish troops serving the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in eastern Afghanistan. His area of command extended over six eastern provinces, including Khost.

“I know,” I said. “I’m still not going to be his interpreter.”

“This is a man who’s used to getting what he wants. I’m just concerned that this is going to make the whole team look bad.”

I’m headstrong, but I knew Michael had a point. A few days later I went to Jason’s office. I stood before his desk and told him that I knew good Pashtu speakers were hard to come by, and that I had meant it when I said I would find him the best one I could. He sat back and smiled. He called in the sergeant first class in charge of the linguists. “Saima is tasked with finding me an interpreter. Help her in any way she needs.”

I took my mission seriously. I liked Jason, especially since he’d used the word
tasked
when asking me to find him an interpreter, a verb generally reserved for soldiers—that meant that he thought of me as one of his soldiers. The sergeant first class rounded up every CAT II on the base. There were a handful of Farsibans who spoke not a word of Pashtu. One young punk from Kabul defended himself by saying that everyone in Khost spoke Farsi anyway, so what was the big deal? Once, back in Jalalabad, Judy had said she thought I was the only female in the entire country who was fluent in both Pashtu and English. I was beginning to think maybe I was the
only
interpreter who spoke both Pashtu and
English fluently. My best choice was an older
engineer-saab
from Virginia. His Pashtu was excellent, but he spoke English like a third-grader. Meanwhile, word traveled fast. I was getting a reputation for outing all the faux interpreters, the people who were trying to pass off their Farsi as Pashtu. Unit commanders who were having trouble with their interpreters would come to the office, asking me to vet their CAT I’s. The soldiers and the interpreters started calling me the interpreter terminator, or IT for short.