Going in small in Afghanistan
A Monitor reporter joins with small teams of US troops that are trying to distance border villagers from insurgents in a key battle zone in the war on terror.
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GOMAL, AFGHANISTAN –
With gold turbans and eyes ringed in black, the Afghan men squat in a circle in the dust, listening intently to the first US soldiers to appear in this desolate border outpost for at least a year.
"We are not like the Russians. We won't come here and bomb everything," a soldier tells them. "I have many men and many bombs, and I can bring them all," he says, as an Apache gunship swoops overhead. "But I'm not going to. I want only to use them against the bad people."
The Afghans respond initially with hard looks and few words. A tribal elder, taken aside and asked whether he knows of any Taliban or Al Qaeda fighters in the area, answers simply, "No."
"It's too dangerous," an Afghan interpreter whispers to me, "Asking that question is like announcing this man's death in the newspaper!"
The 10th Mountain Division mission into uncharted territory of Paktika Province illustrates a stark dilemma facing US forces as they push deeper into Afghanistan's lawless borderlands: How to persuade Afghans to risk their lives and divulge guerrilla whereabouts in return for a promise of security and development.
"The citizens here have had one choice: We're with the Al Qaeda, or we're dead," says Lt. Col. Mike Howard, the top US commander in Paktika. Villagers in the border districts of Gomal, Barmal, and Gayan are "completely ungoverned" and easily bribed or forced to supply guerrillas with food, shelter, and proxy fighters, he says. "Our challenge is to give them [another] choice."
To do this, US ground troops are expanding their presence in Paktika and other troubled regions of eastern and southern Afghanistan, policing more widely and aggressively. The US strategy means shifting away from large-scale sweeps and slow, top-down planning ill-suited to fighting insurgents, some officers say. Instead, smaller, more agile units - including Special Forces teams linked with Afghan militia - are branching out to win over villagers and flush out guerrillas.
"We can't hunker down in the firebases," says Colonel Howard, whose 1-87 Infantry Battalion now makes frequent, unpredictable forays far beyond its fort-like outposts at Orgun and Shkin. Last month, 1-87 joined Operation Avalanche, a series of overlapping missions along the Pakistani border that involved some 2,000 of the 13,000 US troops in Afghanistan.
Two of 1-87's missions, to Gomal and Barmal, illustrate the risks and rewards of the new approach. The first foray was to learn about the enemy; the second tried - successfully - to lure them into a fight.
Gomal
'Tell us when bad people are coming'
At first light, the convoy of 10th Mountain Division troops winds down a steep road from the mud ruins of an ancient Afghan fort, its ghostly form overlooking the parched bed of the Gomal River as it snakes toward Pakistan.
The windswept landscape is some of the most barren the troops have seen in Afghanistan. Dry gullies and rocky hills dotted with shrubs that smell of juniper stretch as far as the eye can see.
"Keep your eyes on the high ground," Staff Sgt. Mark McCalister yells to the soldiers jostling in the open back of his cargo Humvee, as the road climbs into hilly terrain.
But the only forms appearing on the ridgelines are lifeless ones: Stones stacked by shepherds to look like wolves; or, farther on, wooden poles festooned with flags that mark Afghan warriors' graves.
Indeed, what draws US forces to this unexplored part of Paktika on Dec. 3 is an anomaly of sorts: A sparsely inhabited district with well-tended roads - roads leading to border crossings such as Khan Pass that have for centuries served as conduits for Afghan trade, and that today are known to be frequented by Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
Along the way, soldiers halt and search vehicles - from overladen Pakistani trucks gaudily painted and tasseled, to small white pickups filled with bearded men.
After several miles, the convoy stops at the biggest community around. It's a family village, or
korani, consisting of a few mud huts, a camel tethered outside of a shop selling banana tea biscuits, and a gas station with no gas.
"Not too far from here, bad people attacked us. You all heard about that," a US soldier tells the gathered tribesmen. "They were staying there and no one told us," he says. The villagers nod.
The attack was a particularly heavy ambush five weeks earlier that killed two American contract employees of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and two Afghan militiamen. It unfolded about 20 miles to the east at Khan Pass, according to US soldiers and Afghans who were both there and in Gomal.
On the morning of Oct. 25, a group of about 30 Americans and Afghans in eight Toyota Hi-Lux pickups was headed south along the border on a patrol toward Khan Pass. The day before, the group had detained a number of arms smugglers in the vicinity, and was returning to the area.
Suddenly, around 7:00 a.m., an intense barrage of fire from heavy machine guns, AK-47s, and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) bombarded the convoy from several positions on the high ground on either side of the road.
"My Hi-Lux and the front Hi-Lux were under attack," recounts Hamid, a stately Afghan fighter and former mujahideen from Paktika who has worked with the Americans for 1-1/2 years. "The enemy had a wedge formation. They were all prepared and experienced fighters," says Hamid (not his real name).
The fighting was close, with more than 20 suspected Al Qaeda firing down from positions as near as 30 to 40 meters away. "It was hand-by-hand fighting," Hamid says. "He could see my hand, and I could see his hand."
An RPG landed a few feet from Hamid and knocked him to the ground. He took cover and shot 14 rounds from his AK-74 assault rifle, killing, he believes, an Arab fighter. But then Hamid took three bullets himself. "I heard helicopters" and passed out, he recalls.
Meanwhile, some of the Afghan militia had bounded to the high ground, flanking and killing several enemy fighters. In all, 18 suspected Al Qaeda were killed, including Arabs, Chechens, and Pakistanis.
After a lull, the fighting reignited from a ridge and system of wadis beneath it when 1-87's Alpha Company arrived to clear the ambush site following a frenzied, 3 1/2 hour drive south from Shkin.
"These were Al Qaeda," says Staff Sgt. Jeffrey Davis of Alpha Company, noting the fighters' black tunics and diehard stance. He moved two armored Humvees to a saddle in the terrain to fire grenades into the wadis. Then, after pulling his men back to a safe distance, he used the vehicles to guide in an A-10 Thunderbolt plane that silenced the enemy with a 30mm Gatling gun.
By that time, two CIA employees, William Carlson and Christopher Glenn Mueller, had been fatally shot, along with two Afghan militiamen.
Back in the Gomal village, with Khan Pass fresh in their minds, the US soldiers scan the tribesmen's faces. "We know a lot of important people travel this road," one says. "You need to tell us when the bad men are coming."
To elicit information, the Americans offer the villagers immediate benefits: On-the-spot medical treatment, an invitation to a border clinic at Shkin, and free blankets and radios. For useful intelligence, the reward is often cash. Cooperation, by fostering security, will enable international aid groups to move in, they stress.
"We can help this area even more" than Shkin, which has gained a new clinic, a well, and businesses, the soldier says.
The villagers' reaction in this wheat- and corn-farming community is ambiguous. "Under the Taliban, things here were peaceful and good. Now, it is also good," says a tribesman named Maraha, as his neighbors squabble over the blankets. "We just want help," he says, adding that the village has no doctor and the local school was burned down.
This passive outlook bolsters the impression of US soldiers that Paktika villagers, whipsawed by decades of war, "will help whoever is in town at the moment," says platoon leader Lt. Bob Stone.
The tribal leader, Haji Sarver, blames any violence in the area on "people coming from Pakistan." He acknowledges, however, that many residents of the Gomal area "live in both Afghanistan and Pakistan."
"That's the reason these people are unbelievable," an Afghan interpreter tells me bluntly in English.
The mistrust goes both ways, however. Villagers are unsure when or if the Americans will return. A string of vehicle breakdowns, including a broken Humvee sling-loaded by helicopter down the road, underscores that US forces can police here only so often.
"If these villagers tell us something, maybe people will come the next day and kill them. Everyone is afraid," says Hamid, still limping slightly from his Khan Pass wound.
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