The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan (29 page)

That autumn in 2008 was a violent time in Afghanistan, with some of the worst violence the war had seen up to that point. I’d gone there to do a story on the Forgotten War. Afghanistan had not been getting regular media attention for years, overshadowed by Iraq. The soldiers I spoke to would go on leave and tell their friends they were fighting in Afghanistan, and would be told: I didn’t even know we were in Afghanistan anymore. Kabul at that time had the sense of a city under siege, with the Taliban
operating a shadow government in districts surrounding it. After spending a month in the country, the contours of the impending disaster became fairly clear: With Obama’s election and Iraq winding down, the war was about to take center stage in the foreign policy world, the grumblings on the ground for more troops would get louder, and the Forgotten War would soon be remembered with tragic consequences.

Within the surreal confines of the Safi Airways cabin, the question I’d left with the last time I was there returned to me. Why are we here?

Spending over a week with McChrystal and his team in Western Europe had caused me, briefly, to rethink my answers. The excitement and the feeling of being on the inside made me give them the benefit of the doubt. Sure, the war had become morally dubious, ridiculously expensive, and would likely fuel anti-American terrorism for years to come—but they were such cool guys, and they were nice to me… Why not just give them a chance, like a number of my colleagues always did? Part of me wished I could just take what they said and be done with it—there’s hope, it’s getting better, it makes perfect sense to be there, sort of. Their confidence and expertise was persuasive. If they believed in the mission, then why couldn’t I?

Perhaps the problem was me, not the war. Maybe I had some kind of character flaw or mental defect that prevented me from going along with the military’s line. The war is going to be difficult, hard, probably will fail, but McChrystal gets it because he reads books about Winston Churchill and Vietnam and has an iPod and is really good at killing people. Why couldn’t I ignore the doubts even his staff had about the war? McChrystal himself had serious reservations, it seemed, telling me he thought the war was “questionable.” Another senior advisor told me: “If Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular.” McChrytsal regularly said that even Afghans couldn’t understand Afghanistan—what chance did we have, then?

The more time that I spent outside the bubble—and it had only been a matter of days now—and the closer I got to landing in Kabul, I couldn’t
shake my own skepticism. It returned, in full force. No matter how professional or competent or dynamic McChrystal and his team were, the task they had set out for themselves was so obviously doomed.

A loud noise pinged over the flight’s intercom. The fasten-your-seat-belt light went on. The German pilot announced we would begin our descent.

The plane looped down over the Kabul International Airport, passing over the city surrounded by sunbaked and craggy mountains that looked reddish brown from above. A few thousand feet below us, American helicopters sliced across the sky, looking like expensive windup toys, the first signs of the war. The airport was divided into two halves, one side for the civilians, the other for the military. On the military side, large cargo planes rested idle, while American Blackhawks and Chinooks touched down alongside jets with United Nations markings. On the civilian side, antique-looking Russian helicopters and out-of-service commercial jets parked abandoned on the far side of the runway.

Our plane touched down. I was the third one off, stepping down onto the tarmac. In the news magazine world—when there was a newsmagazine world of
Time
and
Newsweek
and
U.S. News & World Report
—there used to be something called a tarmac opener, or “tarmacer,” as I heard editors call it. It was the name given to the first scene of a story that opened with a dignitary or president getting off an airplane in whatever strange country the magazine was writing about that week.
President Dipshit Dumbshit stepped off the plane onto the tarmac at the Xanadu International Airport into ninety-degree heat, looked around at the handful of paid supporters there to meet him, and said, “We’ll get the rebels this time
…
”

A tarmac opener for my arrival went through my head:
The hungover correspondent held the handrail as he descended the steps of the plane, greeted only by baggage carriers in blue jumpsuits and a bus driver waiting to take the new arrivals on the three-minute drive, standing room only, to the terminal. It’d been eighteen months since he’d last set foot in Kabul, and in that time the situation in Afghanistan had gone from horrible to really horrible.
After getting his passport stamped and visa declared valid, he waited by the luggage carousel. The correspondent reached for a cigarette, then noticed newly plastered
N
O
S
MOKING
signs. The Americans have really fucked up this country, he thought. Last time I was here, at least I was allowed to smoke inside the airport.

I picked up my one checked bag. An Afghan man waited at the exit to check the baggage tickets, making sure no one stole the incoming luggage. I’d hired a security company to pick me up from the airport. The security company specialized in providing protection for media organizations. I’d worked with them off and on for five years. As a twenty-five-year-old, I’d gone to their media hostile environment course in Virginia, where I learned how to not get kidnapped and the best way to put on a tourniquet—wrap it really tight. On my last two trips to Iraq, I’d stayed at their compound in Baghdad. It worked out well, and I decided I’d stay in their Kabul media center this time. It was where CNN had its bureau—renting out an entire floor—and visiting journalists could reserve rooms. The company did airport pickups and drop-offs, included in the price for a room.

I switched on my T-Mobile and texted my contact at the security company.

I placed my bag through an X-ray machine and walked out into the airport lobby. I’d made it inside the country. I looked around and spotted a young Afghan man wearing a knit tuque, cargo pants, and hiking boots. He looked like the guy. I made eye contact and he nodded. He introduced himself as Raheem. He grabbed my black wheeled luggage and we headed outside.

The security company relied on Afghans to operate within the airport.
Raheem was hooked in to the scene—every third person we passed on the sidewalk in front of the airport, he knew. I had a question I’d been wanting to ask. There were always stories about the airports, how money and drugs were regularly flown out of the country on a daily basis. Yet there were always four or five security checkpoints. I asked Raheem how they did it.

“I mean, how do you smuggle bags of cash or drugs or whatever out of here?”

He laughed, as if I’d asked one of the more obvious and apparent questions.

“Baksheesh,” he said. “Bribes. You just give one of these guys cash, and they escort you around all the security.”

I nodded. Made sense.

We passed a green guardhouse. On the other side was the parking lot. Rickety trolleys, wheels missing and banged up, littered the lot. Men selling Afghan currency from cigar boxes had small stands up to sell money to the new arrivals. I lit a cigarette.

“Mike?”

A British guard dressed in tan fatigues extended his hand. We shook.

“Thanks for picking me up,” I said.

“Jimmy,” he said.

We got into a beat-up white SUV. In the backseat there were two bottles of water, a medical kit, and a set of body armor. It was Kabul, not Baghdad, so there was no need to wear the armor, or even have armed guards. Still, out of habit, I sat in the backseat, slouching down.

Jimmy was talkative, and as we rolled out of the airport, he gave me the rundown on the latest security developments. In most countries, you ask about the weather; in Afghanistan, it was the latest kidnapping or roadside bomb. There were reports that a Canadian journalist had been snatched in Kabul. The city had been quiet the last week, though there were persistent reports that five car bombs had snuck into the city.

“Sunny with a chance of shrapnel,” Jimmy said.

Jimmy was former Special Forces. He was now hustling a couple of
contracts. Besides occasionally freelancing for the media company, he’d done high-profile personal security details for A-list Hollywood celebrities while they traveled in the Middle East. He had another contract to help the Americans train Afghan security forces at a base not far from Kabul.

I told Jimmy I’d been hanging out with McChrystal—that they’d been telling me about the progress the new strategy was making.

He turned around in his seat, looking at me, eyebrows raised.

“It’s all pretty fucking hopeless,” he said. “You need a thousand McChrystals. I don’t have the heart to tell the Americans that. I don’t want to hurt their morale.”

The car wound through Kabul traffic. The government had set up the Ring of Steel, a circle of military checkpoints around the city, focused to prevent insurgents from penetrating deep into the capital. Raheem drove us through a maze of knee-deep potholes, dirt roads, and anything-goes traffic circles. Every few blocks, we passed groups of men with AK-47s, checking cars, smoking, waiting outside heavily fortified compounds or on the streets waving down vehicles.

Our car got stopped. An Afghan police officer asked to go through my bag. Raheem told him to go fuck himself. The cop persisted. I opened my bag. He tossed through my clothes, then waved us on.

“He’s looking for alcohol,” Raheem explained.

It was a new racket, which had been pioneered by ambitious guards at the airport. The main concern of the security forces manning the X-ray machines wasn’t weapons or explosives—it was booze. The airport cops would take the alcohol, sell it to another contact who would then sell the booze back to foreigners on the city’s black market. So foreigners who tried to smuggle in whiskey, if they were caught, could end up buying back their whiskey (or someone else’s whiskey) days or weeks later. The cop was looking for a piece of the action. I didn’t have any booze, and Raheem wasn’t going to give him any bribes. The cop closed the car door and we drove on.

Jimmy explained there were fears among the expat community that Kabul would soon go dry. Karzai had launched one of his periodic crackdowns against Western vice. He’d ordered a raid on a popular restaurant, taking the waitresses into custody—four women from Kyrgyzstan. He had their vaginas examined by a medical professional to see if the women were prostitutes. He’d also issued an edict that alcohol would not be tolerated in Kabul any longer. There were two schools of thought as to why he did this: One was that it was a politically popular and easy way for him to burnish his fundamentalist credentials. Targeting intoxicated Westerners was a convenient and low-cost way to do so, sure to get local media attention. The other blamed a recent story in
Time
magazine about the city’s famous nightlife. The story was one of those evergreen pieces of journalism that would pop up every six months or so—descriptions of the Kabul party scene, the Mexican and Indian restaurants, the after-hours bars. The Westerners who lived in Kabul hated those stories—it brought unwanted attention to their lifestyles, making it harder for them to get high and drunk without harassment.

We stopped in front of the media compound. Raheem hit the radio. A reinforced steel door protecting the driveway swung open, and we pulled inside. The compound was set up in an imposing house, four floors and a roof deck with a small courtyard out front. It was located in a wealthy neighborhood, surrounded by lavish mansions built with drug money, including one pink monstrosity for rent just down the street, a style known as “narcotecture.” Most of the homes looked like beachfront palaces in Miami if designed by coke fiends. Dried palm leaves and barbed wire extended up from the courtyard wall to give more privacy. The add-ons also prevented anyone from tossing explosives into the courtyard or trying to overrun the place. Four or five Afghan security guards milled about, AK-47s swung over their shoulders. On the roof, makeshift plywood television studios for CNN and European networks peered out over the city, perfect for live shots with a backdrop of Kabul. Raheem grabbed my bag and put it in my room in the basement.

I sat down at the desk and opened my laptop. There was some paperwork to fill out: blood type, emergency contact back home, and a section on what questions I should be asked to confirm I was me in case I got kidnapped. Name of dog. Name of first elementary school. Name of favorite hip-hop star. I hooked up to the house’s wireless network and checked my e-mail. A friend had forwarded me a link to a YouTube video that had something to do with Lady Gaga.

I clicked on the link.

An Army platoon stationed in western Afghanistan had produced a remake of Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” video. The video had gone viral. It slowly uploaded on my computer. I sat back and watched.

A title flashed across the screen: T
ELEPHONE
: T
HE
A
FGHANISTAN
R
EMAKE
. A slightly overweight white soldier with red hair stood next to another with blond hair, staring into each other’s eyes. They were both dressed in olive T-shirts and camouflage Army pants, the usual loungewear on base. The music begins, the soldiers mimicking a lover’s quarrel in a cramped plywood headquarters hut. They start acting out the lyrics.
Hello hello baby, you call and I don’t hear a thing… 
The blonde touches the red-haired soldier on the nose—he collapses. The Gaga dance beat starts—the soldiers begin a frenzy of movement, jumping jack–style dances moves, lip-synching the entire time. It cuts to just the red-haired soldier dancing alone. A dartboard hung on the plywood garage wall is to his left, an M-4 assault rifle leaning against the wall. The scene changes to a garage on base—Beyoncé, a guest singer on the track, breaks in. An African-American soldier lip-synchs to her rhyme. The rest of the squad dances in the background—the red-haired kid has taken his shirt off and wrapped himself up in duct tape. Another has on tight black briefs with a sign attached to his head that says S
TEAM
. Two cardboard cutouts of telephones hang on the garage door.
I should have left my phone at home because this is a disaster
… The video goes on for three minutes and forty-six seconds. The credits roll, promising more videos to come—apologizing for the delay because of the frequency of missions.