One Tribe at a Time: The Paper that Changed the War in Afghanistan (5 page)

I, of course, agreed. I grabbed three of my men, we got in several pick-up trucks with Malik Noor Afzhal and his men, and began traveling up towards the beautiful mountain range behind Mangwel (with just weapons, no body armor) towards Pakistan. We drove up a valley and past an Afghan cemetery with many large flat rocks emplaced into the ground. We noticed many graves. Off in the distance, what appeared to be an old village had been destroyed.

The vehicles parked and we all got out, Malik Noor Afzhal grabbed my hand and we walked hand in hand up a small valley into the mountains. We turned at a small bend and there was a beautiful waterfall. He told us to drink the water.

He then came next to me and said (through my interpreter), “Jim, the last time I saw a person with a face like yours (meaning white) the Russians killed eighty-six men, women and children of my village.”

He continued, “This is my old village. We fought the Russians. They never took my village. We are ready to fight again if we have to.” He looked and finished with, “You have great warriors with you. We will fight together.”

We stood there for a few minutes and looked back into the valley, where you could see the old village and the new one. It was a remarkable moment that cannot be put into any metrics or computer program
that defines “success” today. But it was. The bond continued to grow.

Below is a photo that captured that moment, as we were about to leave.

This was taken just before Sitting Bull took me up to “Old Mangwel,” his old village the Russians had destroyed. Fifth from the left is Sitting Bull holding my M-4 with me at his side. My team member standing is SFC Travis Weitzel. Kneeling in front of me is SFC Mark Read and far right kneeling is SFC Scott Gross. We handed our weapons over to them for the photo.

It was also this night where, in great detail, I explained to Malik Noor Afzhal why we referred to him as “Sitting Bull.” He was not only captivated by the story of this great
American Indian warrior and leader of his people, but it was a great honor to him that we viewed him in that way.

I want to interject a couple of situations that might also tell of the relationship that was built with Malik Noor Afzhal and my team. He and Dr. Akhbar were very open with their homes and families. I spent countless hours playing with Dr. Akhbar’s small children and the malik’s grandchildren and great grandchildren. The malik used to say to me, “Jim, I am getting too old. Play with the children today. They love you.” So do you know what my primary task would be for the day? I would play with the children—for hours.

The little girls and I would walk around the village holding hands and laughing at “stuff.” They would teach me Pashto and I would teach them English. We would be watched by literally hundreds of younger children and women as we played. I often
thought that these play sessions did more for our cause in Konar than all the raids we did combined.

Their families became our families

Playing with the kids. A lot of trust was built between my team and the tribe by the way we treated their children.

Another very enjoyable, insightful and important part of our conversations was discussing the war against the Soviets with the malik and his men. I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed it and learned from it. The tribesmen loved to explain in detail, to us and in front of each other, their great exploits on the battlefield against “the Bear.”

One of Sitting Bull’s mujahedeen commanders describes ambush tactics they used against the Soviets. I loved these sessions and I learned a lot. The tribesmen enjoyed being able to tell us stories of their great battles.

My men developed their own personal and professional relationships with the people. Each one had his own following. When we would drive up to the village, different sets of children, young people and elders would run up to different members of the team, calling them by name.

Here is a brief quote from Captain Dan McKone, my medic and gunner during my time in the Konar. He has won three awards for valor. No warrior understands Afghanistan better than he does. (He is there now advising the ANA):

Mangwel was a high point in my time as a soldier, no doubt. Our team’s (ODA 316) ability to connect and establish a relationship based on friendship and trust has yet to be replicated…and it sounds like the army is not going to try it again. I remember strongly, that for me, I felt that we wanted to develop cooperation, not
dependence. This was very true for me and my relationship with Dr. Akhbar. We, as a team, wanted to support him and, of course, through him add to Sitting Bull’s ability to provide for his people more than just promises, to show concrete dividends for having a positive friendship with an outside force. As Dr. Akhbar ran a for-profit clinic in the village, and appeared to have credibility as the village doctor, we could not do anything to undercut his credibility, or his ability to make a living. How things would have panned out over a longer period of time would have been great to see. Alas, it was not to be.

Then SSG McKone’s relationship with Dr. Akhbar was a key to our team’s success in Mangwel. Dan’s now a captain and winner of three awards for valor.

In between or Armed Reconnaisance patrols and operations with Sitting Bull’s warriors, we experienced the exact opposite of war with the tribe’s children. In short, they loved us and we loved them. A big bright spot was when several hundred dollars’ worth of toys arrived from my wife and other members of my team’s families. It was a happy holiday for the kids and everyone else in the village. The smiles on their faces made us all the more honored to be there. I’m in the top photo with Sitting Bull and a happy girl. Below, my team and I were at the girls’ school handing out much needed supplies.

While all of this was going on, we were getting an amazing amount of actionable intelligence from Malik Noor Afzhal’s intelligence people, his kasheeka. We received a lot of information from locals at our firebase on a daily basis, but most of it was worthless. The information we got from Malik Noor Afzhal and his men was correct one hundred percent of the time. Their intelligence nets and early-warning systems were superior.

For example, my ODA was engaged in a significant enemy contact in the late evening in the summer of 2003 in the Pesch Valley, about twenty-five kilometers north of our firebase and sixty kilometers from Mangwel. The very next morning at around 0800, Dr. Akhbar and several other elders came to our firebase to check on us as they had heard we were attacked.

When I asked them how they had found out, they simply answered, “Word travels quickly here.”

Over time, it became very clear that the relationship we had built with the tribe was causing them to become a target for HIG (warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s armed party, Hezb-e Islami) in the area. We could not stay in the village twenty-four hours a day due to our other mission requirements.
In retrospect and with many more years of experience under my belt, not setting up our base in Mangwel was a mistake.