The Tender Soldier: A True Story of War and Sacrifice (38 page)

He didn’t doubt the worthiness of his mission:
“I definitely learned a lot about culture, a lot about Afghanistan, Afghans, Afghan thinking, and a lot about mind-set and pride. I knew how to push the buttons, so to speak,” Cooper told me. “I don’t know why, but sometimes I feel guilty for some of those things. I never abused anybody. I never tortured anybody. But I screwed a lot of people.” Cooper, interview by author, April 20, 2010.

For a kid raised on cowboys and Indians:
He had expected interrogation to be “just a matter of gathering information and passing it on to where it needed to go.” It didn’t turn out that way. “I don’t think I was expecting the internal struggle or conflict, the whole shaking up of your morals.” Cooper, interview by author, April 20, 2010.

Cooper returned from Afghanistan a changed man:
Clint and Kathy Cooper, interviews by author, April 20–22, 2010.

They moved to Sierra Vista, Arizona, at the edge of Fort Huachuca:
Fort Huachuca is home to the Army Intelligence Center, where Cooper worked with HUMINT teams before joining the
Human Terrain System.

Coyotes howled at night, rattlesnakes slid:
According to
http://www.nnirr.org/drupal/migranttrail
, more than six thousand people have died crossing the border since the 1990s. See also Edward Schumacher-Matos, “Immigration Reform Is Within Our Grasp. Meanwhile, People Die,”
Washington Post,
July 22, 2010.

He started seeing a counselor:
Kathy Cooper, interview by author, April 22, 2010. When he finally received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder from a medical professional, “it was almost a relief,” he told me. “I finally know what’s going on and I can understand what’s happening here.”

Good experiences, good memories:
“I wanted to sit down and drink tea with them, not talk to them at gunpoint,” Cooper told me. Cooper, interview by author, April 22, 2010. According to a study of the Human Terrain System, Cooper was one of several people “attracted [to HTS] by the perception that they could counter-balance previous, more lethal activities by signing up for a program that emphasized non-lethality.” Lamb et al., “Human Terrain Team Performance: An Explanation, draft,” forthcoming 2013, 165.

Once during his time in Kandahar:
Cooper, interview by author, April 20, 2010. “I thought, man, we are just, like, totally failing as a military. And then I read about the Human Terrain System and I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ ” On another occasion, Cooper told me that U.S. troops “weren’t connecting the dots. The whole cultural thing was just missing. They were using the wrong kind of interpreters in different areas, and there were a lot of mistakes being made.” The Human Terrain System seemed to be filling “the gap, the thing that the military was missing.” Cooper, interview by author, April 22, 2010.

The project hired him immediately:
Technically, Cooper applied to and was hired by the defense contractor BAE, which, along with various subcontractors, employed Human Terrain Team members at that time. Cooper, interview by author, April 22, 2010.

Seven months later, he was in Afghanistan:
Cooper started training in Leavenworth in March 2008 and left for Afghanistan in August, landing in Maiwand in late September.

Someone directed them to a tent with a few cots:
The description of Loyd is from interviews with her teammates and photos taken shortly after their arrival.

Ayala had missed this place:
Unless otherwise noted, biographical details and quotes from Don Ayala in the section below are from Ayala, interviews by author, August 17–19, 2009.

Karzai was a royalist from Kandahar:
“Office of the President, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: Biography,”
http://president.gov.af/en/page/1043
, accessed August 15, 2012, and Coll,
Ghost Wars,
285–86.

A relentless diplomat who had been trying:
Karzai’s Washington contacts extended back to his days as a press, logistics, and aid worker with the anti-Soviet faction of Sibghatullah Mojaddedi during the jihad of the 1980s. Coll,
Ghost Wars
, 285–86.

In the 1990s, after the Soviets withdrew:
Ibid., 286. For his service under Rabbani, see
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/asia/july-dec01/karzai_12-03.html
, accessed August 15, 2012.

Fahim had been Massoud’s security chief:
Coll,
Ghost Wars,
286–87 and 461–62. For more on Fahim, see “Center for American Progress: Profiles of Afghan Power Brokers,”
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/10/afghan_power_brokers.html
/#4, accessed August 15, 2012.

In 1999, appalled:
Some attribute the murder of Karzai’s father to the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI.

Arab bombers posing as journalists assassinated:
Coll,
Ghost Wars,
582, and John F. Burns, “Afghans, Too, Mark a Day of Disaster: A Hero Was Lost,”
New York Times,
September 9, 2002.

The men on the Karzai Protective Detail believed:
“We loved how the villagers and everybody greeted the president,” Ayala recalled. “It was very emotional, a very, very proud moment to be a part of this history. . . . He was a good man. He treated people very well and he treated us very well. . . . [T]he guy grew on you. . . . We definitely didn’t want to lose him on our watch. . . . You don’t want to be part of that; it would be hard to live with. So we took pride, but we ended up liking the man.”

He went with Karzai to inaugurate:
Karzai officially reopened the Salang Pass in December 2003 with U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, about a month before
Ayala left his job with Karzai’s protective detail. See Associated Press, “Vital Tunnel Reopens Between North and South Afghanistan,” December 28, 2003, and UNHCR, “Chronology of Events in Afghanistan, December 2003,”
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/pdfid/407bdce54.pdf
, accessed September 15, 2012.

A natural mentor, he counseled:
See letter of David J. Hazarian, Regional Security Officer, Diplomatic Security Service, U.S. Consulate, Peshawar, Pakistan, and former shift leader of the Karzai Protective Detail, to Judge Claude M. Hilton, filed April 23, 2009, in federal court: “Don exhibited a mature understanding of complicated Afghan cultural sensitivities and treated all those he encountered with respect, dignity and honor. Don was especially effective at dealing with the Afghan members of President Karzai’s security detail, the Department of State, and Dyn Corp personnel. They looked up to Don and he responded in kind with professional conduct and insightful mentoring.” See also letter of Scott Lynton, former member of the Karzai Protective Detail, to Judge Hilton, April 12, 2009: “He would gain the attention of our Afghani-counter parts [
sic
] (presidential body guards). . . . They were very keen to talk and listen to [Ayala]. He was basically their personal trainer in all issues.”

He wrote poetry on his bedroom wall:
Letter of Angelica Ramos, Reuters, to Judge Hilton, April 15, 2009, and letter of Scott Lynton: “He would write his own poetry based on his life experience. He would display his poetry by writing on his room wall.”

They called him “Don Juan”:
Ayala’s radio call sign was “Don Juan.” See also letter of Scott Lynton: “When we finished work for the day, we had a bar that we could use to unwind and socialize. There was always a group of working professionals around our operation, the majority of which were females. They would frequent our establishment once or twice a week for cocktails at our bar. This is where I witnessed how Don Juan earned his name and how he could be a true gentleman. He established quality relationships with his female friends and made his sincerity shine. It was almost as if he was a shrink for the women he befriended, trying to understand and appreciate who they were and make them feel better about what ever [
sic
] was troubling them. This was not your typical behavior for contractors on the KPD, especially the single men who were looking for something more than a social drink with the available pretty reporter.”

They called him the “Minister of Hugs and Kisses”:
Letter of Stephen Hohl, former member of the Karzai Protective Detail, to Judge Hilton, filed April 23, 2009, in federal court; letter of Jeffrey P. Hinton to Judge Hilton, April 15, 2009; and letter of Scott Lynton: “Don would literally give hugs and kisses to our counter parts, which was the traditional cultural showing of appreciation and respect to others. Most of us would decline this gesture for various reasons. Don had no problem expressing his appreciation and compassionate side.”

When a friend back home offered:
Letter of Karen Rodriguez to Judge Hilton, March 27, 2009.

He left Afghanistan in 2004 and spent:
Ayala was part of an international team that advised protective services personnel for the Iraqi president and a handful of other top Iraqi officials. Ayala, interview by author, August 19, 2009.

As a research manager, Ayala was taught:
Ayala, interview by author, August 19, 2009. By the “Kevin Bacon game” he meant the idea that there are six degrees of separation between Kevin Bacon and anyone working in Hollywood. The software was known as MAP-HT. It was the first, largely unsuccessful iteration of a program designed to be used by Human Terrain field teams. Ayala liked playing with the software in training but found it useless in the field: “[A]s fast as we were going on patrols, we never really had time to sit there and build a network of people.” During my time with Human Terrain Teams in Afghanistan between March 2009 and November 2010, I did not see a single team member use the software. An updated version fielded in 2010 was said to work better, but I found no evidence of anybody using that either. See also Yvette Clinton, Virginia Foran-Cain, Julia Voelker McQuaid, Catherine E. Norman, and William H. Sims, “Congressionally Directed Assessment of the Human Terrain System,” Center for Naval Analyses, November 2010, 35–36.

Warren had worked for Blackwater and other:
Mike Warren, interview by author, March 20, 2009. The Kabul to Kandahar road was mainly funded by USAID, but Japan also contributed.

There was a reason that people like Ayala:
Ayala, interview by author, August 18, 2009. The purpose of the Ranger Indoctrination Program was to “weed out the weak,” he told me.

What the Army needed, Ayala thought:
During training at Leavenworth, Human Terrain System officials celebrated civilian social scientists as the most important part of the mission. “But in the combat zone, they were not,” Ayala said. “They were good. They helped. They wrote good reports. But being in the combat zone, being out in the field itself is a different story. To survive in conflict, you’ve got to be aware of your surroundings. You got to be aware of what can happen. You got to be aware of the guys you’re with, the military, and you got to be in shape to go on foot patrols and stuff like that.” Ayala, interviews by author, April 19 and May 4, 2009.

Ayala was no anthropologist, but:
That Ayala did this more than once is evidenced by letters from his supporters to Judge Hilton. In one of our interviews, he recalled a night in Kansas City when he and other Human Terrain trainees went out to a bar, where a man menaced them and Ayala talked him down. “Not to toot my horn, but the things I was going to school for, the ethnography, I put it to work right there and turned him from an enemy to a friendly.” Ayala, interview by author, April 17, 2010.

She knew what she was talking about and:
Mike Warren told me: “She was as straight, honest, and sweet as you can get. She could be as stubborn and hardheaded as a mule when she was fighting for something she believed in.” Warren, interview by author, March 20, 2009.

She was in excellent physical shape and had village savvy:
Ayala, interview by author, August 19, 2009.

‘Make sure you stay next to Don’:
Frank Muggeo, sentencing documentary submitted in support of Don Ayala in federal court, 2009. Although Ayala claimed that his job description didn’t specifically include protecting his teammates, his experience as a bodyguard made that role natural for him. “Paula trusted Don to protect her out there,” Mike Warren told me. Warren, interview by author, March 20, 2009.

The apparent success of the surge in Iraq had vaulted Petraeus:
By the fall of 2008, according to the
Times,
NATO, the U.S. military, and the Bush administration had all undertaken reviews of Afghan strategy. “Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates stressed that while it would be a primary task for General Petraeus to ‘keep us on the right path in Iraq,’ an immediate challenge was ‘bringing coherence to our own strategy’ in Afghanistan.” Thom Shanker, “Petraeus Steps Into New Role as Head of Central Command,”
New York Times,
October 31, 2008.

They urged the recently appointed NATO commander:
Joshua Kucera, “McChrystal Represents a New Direction at the Pentagon and in Afghanistan,”
U.S. News & World
Report,
May 18, 2009.

But McKiernan was an old-school commander:
McKiernan had already told his superiors that he needed more troops, but they weren’t immediately forthcoming. See Charles D. Allen, “Lessons Not Learned: Civil-Military Disconnect in Afghanistan,”
Armed Forces Journal,
September 2010,
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2010/09/4728929
, accessed August 16, 2012.

“We can’t kill our way to victory”:
Mullen made this comment before the House Armed Services Committee on September 10, 2008, just ten days before Ayala and his teammates landed in Kandahar.