Lions of Kandahar (5 page)

“Shef, I am so sorry to hear about your guys,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said, looking down. The tears welled up in his eyes.

He needed some breathing room. I knew in my gut that Shef had been handed a shit sandwich on that mission. We agreed to meet later to plan for the convoy back to the firebase.

While I had been getting the update brief, Bill had taken charge. He sent part of the team to draw medical equipment and ammunition and inspect our trucks. The rest broke down the pallets from the aircraft while Bill went to meet with the embedded tactical trainers (ETTs) who would be attached to the team. I met him over at their headquarters.

Mostly National Guard soldiers, ETTs spent their whole tour mentoring Afghan Army units. The trainers helped plan missions, made sure the Afghans had the right supplies, and served as a bridge between the Afghans and their Western partners.

The ETTs had a huge poster of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders tacked to the wall of their bland, plywood-walled headquarters: white vests, tight shorts, big, um, smiles. I paused to admire the Texas handiwork, and then rapped heavily on the wooden door. “Come on in,” yelled someone from a back room.

Bill sat on one of three threadbare couches arranged in a horseshoe around the television in the center of the room.

“Sir,” he said, “this is Chris and Sean. They will be attached to us for this rotation with our ANA unit.”

Both men were from the Oregon National Guard and couldn’t
have been more different. Sean’s massive six-foot-three-inch frame made him look more like a lumberjack than a soldier. I could imagine him in a red-and-black flannel shirt and wool hat, swinging an axe. His partner, Chris, was slighter and looked small next to him, but Chris had the look of complete focus. I got the sense immediately that he knew exactly what he was doing.

I asked both soldiers, point-blank, their opinion of the situation in Kandahar. They exchanged looks before responding. I knew instantly what would be said, but I listened anyway: Taliban fighters were in Kandahar in greater numbers; they operated practically in the open and our coalition partners didn’t stop them. By now it was beginning to sound like a broken record.

That night, we finally got moving. My team would be operating from the same firebase as on our last rotation, so we knew the route, or so we thought. Just after dark, we checked our gear, lined up the trucks, and headed toward the main gate, which was guarded by coalition soldiers. Some of our Afghan National Army soldiers were waiting for us at the gate’s massive entrance. Remembering us from the previous rotations, they jumped out of their trucks, arms open, their faces bright and their smiles huge. Several rounds of hugs and back-slapping later, we were finally ready to drive out of the gate. I was glad to know that the rapport we had built with these men had stood the test of time. I was feeling good for the first time since our arrival. We locked and loaded all weapons and the convoy began to move.

Shef’s team took the lead. It felt really good to be out again. The leash was off. But I was concerned that the route would take us south of the city through an area we had previously tried to avoid.

Go with it
, I thought,
be flexible
. It was Shef’s show.

The main road was quiet and there was very little traffic. Unlike in America, Afghanistan is dark, pitch-black. There are very few streets, let alone working street lamps. Few of the houses or buildings in the
city have lighting other than hearth-style campfires inside. Even with our night-vision goggles on, I could barely see beyond the main road.

Three miles later, we came across the first ANA checkpoint, set up at a bridge that crossed a broad, dry riverbed. The ANA had built two machine-gun nests out of sandbags on either side of the crossing. We came to a slow stop and an ANA soldier came out from behind the sandbag wall, hands in the air. He had no weapon and looked rattled. “Don’t continue down the road,” he warned us.

“Whew, this guy may have pissed his pants or worse,” one of the soldiers on Shef’s team said over the radio.

At least he didn’t leave his post, I thought. Some discipline is better than none. The Afghan soldier told Shef that about an hour earlier a dark Toyota Hilux truck had approached with its lights on, blinding him. When it got close, six men with AK-47s jumped out. Shoving the muzzles in his face, they told him the road was closed and they’d attack anyone who didn’t obey. Then they stripped him of his rifle, took the little bit of money in his pocket, and loaded the truck with ammunition.

We cut our primary lights and relied fully on our night-vision equipment. Touted as a new alternative to traveling through the center of Kandahar, the road took us south of the city through the slums, a place for the dregs and homeless and now a haven for Taliban fighters. It was also a primary drug-smuggling route, and caution was the watchword. We had gone into this area a year earlier to hand out medical supplies, and even then we’d been warned to be very careful.

The convoy wove its way through the maze of compounds. The rutted dirt roads reeked of sewage. Piles of garbage, some several feet deep, ran along the compound walls. The dark, hidden alleyways and streets made me nervous considering the prevalence of suicide bombers in Kandahar city. We knew too well how suicide bombers operated. They hide in the black corners, behind walls, and in traffic-congested streets and attack like cowards, killing indiscriminately. To
them, killing dozens of innocent people just to wound one of us was acceptable.

The bombers usually wore white and shaved their heads. Captured Al Qaeda training manuals say that followers are allowed to break all their religious laws and betray their beliefs to put themselves in a position to attack us. For our enemy, the rule book is something they make up as they go along. No wonder my hair is turning gray.

“What the hell are we doing, Captain?” Bill called over the radio. “This is a perfect ambush area, and known enemy activity to boot.”

“Sit tight, boys, and let’s see how it plays out,” I responded. The team hated situations like this, when they knew I was just trying to be positive on the radio. We all knew Bill was right to be concerned.

We turned a blind corner. The L-shaped road was lined with mud walls for more than 150 feet on both sides, with a heavily wooded area just beyond the walls providing an escape route for attackers. It was just the spot I would have picked for an ambush. In the glow of our night-vision headlights and spotlights, the group of twenty or so men waiting around the corner looked like a Taliban recruiting poster, dressed in the traditional all-black turbans and dark olive clothes. We had been going so slowly, and without our primary headlights on, that they never saw or heard us coming. They initially looked puzzled, but quickly realized we were a military convoy.

Some immediately threw their hands in the air and some hid their faces. Most just stood there, stunned. The hasty call came over the radio to be ready for a fight. I didn’t see any weapons, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Several Taliban ran for the cover of a nearby irrigation ditch. Someone requested permission to open fire. I almost said yes, but before I could respond an ANA soldier jumped off his Ford Ranger truck and swung his AK violently, flashlight in hand. The rifle struck a Taliban square in the face and he fell onto the dusty road. The ANA soldier screamed at the Talibs to go get their weapons
and fight like men. The Taliban sat or huddled, hissing and sneering like hyenas, gnashing their teeth, making hand gestures toward the Afghan soldiers. After all my time in the country, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing—it was medieval. The hatred on their faces could not be disguised. This was the enemy we all sought, up close and personal—and without weapons. We could not do a damn thing about it.

The Talibs didn’t move. The Afghan soldier quickly searched several of the better-groomed men, then swore at them one more time and hopped back in the truck. Those who were well groomed were likely the subcommanders, or were tribally affiliated with those who had favor among other Taliban commanders. The rougher-looking members of the group had probably just been brought across the desert or smuggled across the border in a vehicle trunk. As long as they were unarmed, we couldn’t touch them. It was the ultimate frustration of legitimate counterinsurgency.

Shef gave the order and the convoy slowly moved on, toward the city and away from the group of Taliban. I really, really wanted to move faster, to get the area behind us as soon as possible.

About twenty minutes later we stopped. The TOC called over the radio and warned us that the group of Taliban we had run into had their weapons now and were talking about a new ambush site in intercepted radio calls. But we weren’t far from the firebase and I was beginning to feel comfortable again. We got under way again and not long after, we made the final turn toward home, Firebase Maholic.

The convoy movement taught us several lessons. First, the Taliban now operated openly in the city and at night without fear. Second, their ranks were being reinforced with new personnel and supplies. Third, they had little fear of the ANA checkpoints.

But it also taught the Taliban their own lesson. Someone different had returned to the battlefield.

WELCOME BACK

I
t was three a.m., but Juma Khan and the other ANA soldiers, about thirty of them, were too pent up to sleep. They boiled chai and wandered around the firebase, waiting. The word of our arrival had spread rapidly among the Afghans after I had called the base to tell them we were on our way. The “long beards” of 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group—their
rora
, their brothers—were coming again to fight by their side.

Ours wasn’t the typical relationship. As had been made clear to us on numerous occasions, Afghan soldiers historically distrusted ISAF and other coalition forces because of their perceived lack of commitment and capricious attitude toward the country and its people. We were inherently different. We ate, slept, lived, and breathed with the Afghan people as if we had done so all our lives, immersing ourselves in their language and culture. It was not a perfect fit, but we tried in earnest to show respect and still project the power of the United
States. Respect goes a long, long way in Afghanistan; you have to give it to get it. The ANA regularly expressed their respect for us because we did our best to abide by their customs and culture. This was reassuring, considering what was regularly being projected in the media. We were, after all, at war. My team and our ANA-partnered units worked cohesively on how to operate jointly among the Afghan people against the Taliban. Fighting the foreigners such as Al Qaeda was a different story. The Afghans understood that it was better to help the Americans fight than to get between them and their enemies.

It was comforting to see the glow of the firebase as we turned onto the paved road that led to its gates. It sat on a plateau and had a commanding view of the northern half of the city. As we got closer, I could see shadowy figures in the high concrete guard towers set at intervals along the stone walls, providing welcome additional protection from the rockets and mortars that occasionally fell. It took a few minutes for our eyes to adjust to the camp’s low-level lighting as we traveled through the front gate. The Afghan guards, trained by civilian contractors, looked professional and were well equipped. I felt safer here than at Kandahar Airfield. This was like coming home.

The ANA surrounded our trucks as we rolled into the motor pool, patting the hoods, clapping, and dancing, their dark faces lit by brilliant smiles.
This is what it will look like when we kill bin Laden
, I thought. The Afghans reached into the truck and pulled me out, into their giddy midst.
Crap, I’m gonna have to dance
, I thought. I hated doing stuff like that—I would hear about it for days afterward from my teammates. And someone always had a camera. My e-mail would be clogged with images of my face pasted on the bodies of belly dancers, break-dancers, and other imaginative surrogates.

The dancing led to chai, and soon everyone on the team had a scalding cup in his fist. From the center of the crowd, I saw Juma Khan.

Juma Khan had enlisted as a private in the ANA and worked his
way quickly up through the ranks. Unfortunately, he was illiterate like most Afghans and couldn’t be promoted higher than sergeant, no matter how brave he was in battle. He smelled like a campfire and wore a white T-shirt and loose-fitting pants. Barely five feet tall and one hundred pounds soaking wet, he always led his countrymen from the front. I looked down and noticed his pair of worn, white Nike sneakers, a gift from when I’d first met him. He refused to replace them.