The Taliban Shuffle (6 page)

I decided to apply for my first “embed,” the Pentagon-devised program that attached journalists to military units. Critics called the program a blatant attempt at propaganda. Journalists considered it the only way to cover an obvious part of the story—the troops. And what better diversion from a flailing romance than running away with the U.S. Army?

This posed a challenge—given the intensity in Iraq, where sixty-seven U.S. troops were killed in the fighting in May, any story in Afghanistan, where three U.S. troops were killed the same month, would likely grab little attention. Only about 18,000 U.S. troops had deployed to Afghanistan, mainly doing combat operations, and another 8,000 troops from other countries handled peacekeeping. True, more foreign troops were here than the year before, but the number was still nothing compared to Iraq, with 138,000 U.S. troops and 23,000 from other countries. Afghanistan was the small war, even if many were casting it as the “good war” compared to the badness of Iraq.

But it
was
a small war. That spring of 2005, the Taliban were like mosquitoes, constantly irritating, occasionally fatal. Roadside bombs continued to kill soldiers, but helicopter crashes had proved more dangerous. Sure, the Taliban blew up things in the south, but so far they mostly blew up themselves, and their attempts to use recalcitrant donkeys as suicide bombers only provoked laughter. It was a known fact: Afghans and Pakistanis were probably the worst suicide bombers in the entire spectrum of militants.

A photographer and I flew by helicopter to the Orgun-E base in Paktika to embed with U.S. soldiers. Paktika was almost the size of
New Jersey, an extremely poor province with no paved roads and few schools, a mountainous and desolate wasteland plopped along the border with Pakistan, right across from the mountainous tribal agencies of North and South Waziristan, otherwise known as Terrorist Haven, the vacuums of Pakistani authority where the Taliban held sway. The U.S. philosophy had been explained to me at Bagram Airfield, the largest U.S. military base in Afghanistan—the troops “drained swamps,” which meant hunting down militants, while “emboldening local leaders and the population.”

As long as I was running away from my problems, I wanted to get out on the front lines, where the swamps were being drained. My goal was a town called Bermel, which the Taliban had seized earlier, cutting off the police chief’s head. U.S. and Afghan troops had recaptured the town and were fighting the bad guys nearby. (I later found out that this was known in military parlance as “troops in contact,” or TIC, or “tick.” I would learn that everything in the military had an acronym. The IED was an improvised explosive device, or a roadside bomb. The BBIED was a body-borne improvised explosive device, otherwise known as a suicide bomber. And the DBIED was a donkey-borne improvised explosive device, otherwise known as a really stupid idea.)

Yes, I wanted to get my war on, because I had no idea what I was talking about, what war was really like. To fill my spare time, and to make sure I didn’t have a spare second to think, I even lugged along something to set the mood, a miniseries about war,
Band of Brothers
. I planned to be all war, all the time. But as soon as I stepped off the helicopter and met the base media handler, I figured out I was in the wrong place. It soon became obvious that he was unlikely to send me anywhere.

“When you go to the bathroom at night, be sure to take your photographer,” my handler told me. “There are only three other women here.”

I wasn’t sure who or what, exactly, he was worried about, and I
didn’t know the proper protocol, so I just smiled and nodded. I knew if he wanted the male photographer to shadow me to the bathroom, we would never be flown to the fighting nearby, close to the border with Pakistan. Every day I asked for a “bird,” figuring that if I used military slang, it would help. Every day I was told no. And I could see why—soldiers were actually fighting the Taliban down near Bermel, and as journalists, we were the last priority for the precious air slots available, slightly below mail. So instead, the photographer and I were sent out on trips with a platoon of combat engineers who were so bored that the leader carried copies of
The Complete Guide to Investing in Rental Properties
and
Own Your Own Corporation
with him on patrol.

“Oh, it’s going to be a long, boring day,” he said at the beginning of one. Then he realized that sounded bad. “That’s a good thing.”

That day alone, we visited five villages. The soldiers had several missions. To find out about Afghans in army uniforms robbing so-called jingle trucks, the acid-trip trucks from Pakistan that transported most food and supplies in the region and featured fluorescent fantasy paintings and dangly metal chains that clanked together and sounded like “Jingle Bells.” To find out about a nearby IED. To find out about an alleged insurgent named “Hamid Wali” or maybe “Mohammad Wali,” no one seemed sure—names here frankly as common as Jim or John Wilson. And always, their mission was to win hearts and minds, to convince the Afghans that they were there only to help.

We started by walking around a market in Orgun, where stalls sold everything from pirated DVDs to live chickens. One soldier bought a teapot for $3. A staff sergeant tried to build rapport with the shop owner, who wore a pakol, a traditional hat that resembled a pie with an extra roll of dough on the bottom.

“We’re just trying to collect information about a robbery that happened less than a week ago,” the staff sergeant told Pakol. “Local nationals in green uniforms robbed a jingle truck on Highway 141.”

The optimistically named Highway 141 was a one-lane dirt road. Pakol looked suspicious. “We don’t know. We come here early in the morning. We leave here late in the evening. We haven’t heard anything.”

The staff sergeant tried another question.

“IED on the way to Sharana?”

“We don’t know about this,” Pakol said. Then he waited a beat. “If we see mines or something, we’ll let you know.” He waited another beat. “But if you want tea, we’ll give you tea.”

With no objections, Pakol blew out dust from a few cups and poured from a pot boiling on a gas canister. We all sipped green tea.

“Did you come to help us or what?” Pakol asked, after the first cup was gone. That was Afghan tea protocol. Always wait for a cup of tea to ask a serious question. Pakol then ticked off his complaints, the things he wanted the Americans to fix.

“The dust is really bad,” he said.

“There’s always gonna be something,” the staff sergeant replied.

With that, we left the shop. As we trudged along, everyone stared at us, making it difficult to shop. I knew why: Here were men in army uniforms, flak vests, and helmets, twenty-first-century soldiers carrying guns, looking like unbeatable futuristic fighting machines, establishing a perimeter, looking, checking, in the middle of a fifteenth-century dusty souk. I walked in the middle, wearing a headscarf beneath my helmet, trying to bridge two cultures. I looked at the translator, a nineteen-year-old kid from Kabul. He had wrapped a scarf around the bottom of his face like a Wild West bandit and put on sunglasses and a baseball cap.

“What’s up with the outfit?” I asked him.

“So the people don’t know me,” he said. “The Afghans here say you are not a Muslim if you work with the Americans.”

We left town and drove on. Suddenly someone spotted a suspicious white bag in the middle of the road. Our four-vehicle convoy lurched to a slow stop. Sergeant Ben Crowley, a smart aleck who
thrived on making everyone laugh, jumped out of his Humvee. He looked through the scope of his rifle at the bag. No wires poked out, nothing indicated bomb. He moved closer, his gun pointed at the bag. I guess I should say the suspense was killing us, but that would be a lie. Boredom was killing us. I hopped out of my Humvee and walked up to Crowley.

“You gonna kill it?” I asked, staring at the bag. Traffic lined up behind our convoy.

“Bag of dirt,” Crowley said.

“You locked and loaded?”

“No.”

That was our usual exchange, even though soldiers were always supposed to have a round in the chamber, ready to fire. We climbed back into our Humvees and bumped down the ruts that passed for roads at a whopping ten miles an hour, the fastest we could go, making our sad, slow escape into the beige sameness of Paktika. We soon set off on a foot patrol near a mud-walled compound. The soldiers from the Afghan National Army (ANA) went first, in a move to respect the local culture and show that Afghans were taking charge of security. A kid ran inside the compound. Other children started crying.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” said a boy, crying inside the doorway.

A neighbor, a man, walked over.

“The men aren’t here. They went to town.”

A little girl started crying. “I’m scared,” she said.

For a hearts-and-minds mission, even one designed to embolden local leaders, this one was starting to fall apart. The Americans decided to fall back.

“Why did you guys come here?” the neighbor asked.

“We’re leaving,” the translator said. “I don’t know.”

Then he turned to me. “It’s so difficult. The people don’t want to talk. They are scared. They say, ‘We are gonna go to jail.’ ”

I knew this from Afghans—they feared that once the American
soldiers showed up at a compound, someone would be carted away and locked up for no reason. This rumor had spread after raids had led to detentions in other villages. In this mostly illiterate country where the rural areas had little in the way of media, news still spread largely through rumor, through word of mouth. Many Afghans had also used the Americans to carry out their own personal vendettas, dropping a dime on some rival who had nothing to do with the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, or any of the other insurgent groups who didn’t want foreign troops in Afghanistan.

We left. Almost immediately, the Humvee in front of us broke down. It had been in the shop for a broken fuel pump twice that week. Now it was dead again, choked with the dust that coated everything, somehow working its way beneath fingernails, into the corners of mouths, behind ears, without even trying. We tied up the Humvee to tow it. The soldiers swore. Everything here took forever. Everything moved at the pace of a Humvee towed by red tape over a moonscape. It was one step forward, four steps back. Thus impaired, lugging more than five tons of dead weight, we rolled on to the next village, finding a hostile man working near a ditch.

“Who is your president?” asked a sergeant major, testing the man’s knowledge.

“Karzai,” replied the hostile man, who had muddy feet. He paused. “Why are you here?”

“Ensuring safety and security to the Afghan people,” the sergeant major said. He nodded. “The ANA is here today.”

Muddy Feet looked at the sergeant major as if he were impaired. Of course he knew who was president. Of course he knew the ANA was there. He was not stupid. He was not blind. And this conversation was not off to a good start.

“We agree President Karzai is our president,” Muddy Feet said, somewhat carefully. “We appreciate our ANA soldiers. You’re looking for caches? You’re going to search for weapons? You should get permission from our government.”

Muddy Feet had just tripped a magic switch. He mentioned “caches,” as in “caches of weapons.”

The sergeant major looked at the translator. “Why did he bring up caches, when we didn’t even talk about it?”

The translator shrugged.

“I think you’re going to check in our houses,” Muddy Feet said, correctly reading the situation. He shook his head. “That’s wrong.”

A boy in a Scooby-Doo T-shirt walked up and stared at me. The sergeant major and Muddy Feet stared at each other.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Muddy Feet said.

“He’s hiding something,” the sergeant major said to the translator.

An elder walked up. How did I know? He had a turban and a beard, and all the Afghans parted for him deferentially. The sergeant major turned to the man in charge.

“I’ve got one question for you,” the sergeant major said. “One of your village members brought up the word ‘cache.’ Do you know anything about a cache?”

“I don’t know,” the elder said. “I came here fifteen days ago from Karachi.”

“Oh, Pakistan!” the sergeant major said, as if that made everything clear. “So you can tell me about the Taliban or Al-Qaeda coming across the border.”

The elder stared at him. This was awkward. The Afghan soldiers were sent to search Muddy Feet’s compound. They did, finding nothing.

“Tea?” the elder asked.

“Sure,” a staff sergeant answered before the sergeant major could say anything. “I’m here to socialize. Whatever he wants.” He took off his helmet.

“Take care of your helmet,” Muddy Feet said. “Someone might steal it.”

We all walked inside a nearby compound, into a sitting room
near the front. Mop-haired girls with kohl-lined eyes and bright orange and green dresses poked their heads around a corner to giggle and stare. We dropped onto cushions in a room. All the Americans took off their helmets and body armor and rested them and their weapons against the wall.

“Whenever you want to come here, you can come here,” the elder told them.

A boy poured the sweet milky tea from a thermos and quickly handed us each a cup.

“Some questions,” the staff sergeant started. “Do you know about any jingle-truck robberies?”

The elder thought, looked at the ceiling. “Whoever did it, they’re not Afghans. They might be from another country.”

“What about an IED?”

“I don’t know, I was not here,” the elder said.

“If you have any problems in the village, come to the base,” the staff sergeant told the Afghans. They nodded. Sure they would.

Mission accomplished, we stood, and after lacing up our boots at the door, walked out.

“Let’s go sing ‘Kumbaya,’ ” the staff sergeant said, before heading back to the base. I was pretty sure he was joking.

Everywhere we went, we heard the same story. No jingle trucks. No IEDs. No one named Wali.

The roads were so bad that convoys could barely go anywhere. It raised an obvious question—three and a half years after the fall of the Taliban, out near a small U.S. military base in a onetime Taliban haven near the border with Pakistan, little had been improved, like roads and power. The soldiers seemed to be marking time, handing out candy and meeting with elders who just talked about how much they needed. The soldiers were forced to double as aid workers, and aid was noticeably absent. Still, I was told it was better than before—these were the first U.S. soldiers many villagers had seen in two years. Just outside the base, a new cobblestone road named “The
Road of the Future” was being built. At about a mile and a half long and with a U.S. price tag of $200,000, it would be the province’s first cobblestone road—slight progress, and an indication of how much effort and money was needed for the smallest of improvements in Afghanistan.