Eagle Down

by Jessica Donati

  Dr. Nasim couldn’t remember a time when Afghanistan hadn’t been at war. He had been a year old when the Soviets invaded in 1979. He remembered fleeing his home to hide in caves when Soviet warplanes bombed his village. The anti-Soviet mujahideen, backed by the CIA, were just as bad. They killed his father after he refused to let a commander marry one of his young nieces. Then they came back two months later and shot his aunt dead in front of her young son. Now the Soviets were gone, but the Americans were here, and the mujahideen leaders had become fabulously rich taking lucrative posts in the US-backed government.

  Still, Dr. Nasim loved his country. It was hard to choose to leave. The latest outbreak of fighting revived a nagging feeling of guilt and a sense that it would be best for his children to start a new life abroad. The Toyota strained with the weight of the women and children packed into the back as he pulled onto the road and joined the exodus of cars leaving Kunduz.

  The first checkpoint they encountered was Taliban. The fighter waved them through after glancing at the burqa-clad women and the cluster of children around them. The next one was controlled by Afghan police, who, waving and shouting angrily, stopped the car.

  “Where are you going in such a rush?” one of the men demanded, a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher swinging from his shoulder.

  “I have my car full of women,” Dr. Nasim told him. “I have to get them out of the city.”

  The policeman peered into the car and glared at the passengers suspiciously. Ten women and children were squeezed into the back and front seats. He swore loudly but let them pass. The rest of the journey to Takhar went without incident. Dr. Nasim dropped off his passengers at the home of relatives and turned back to Kunduz. It was bad enough leaving the city, but would he be able to return to it without being arrested or shot? He had to try. The hospital needed him.

  He spotted an elderly man walking along the road in the direction of the city, and slowed the car. Dr. Nasim would be less of a threat to the Taliban or the Afghan police in the company of an old man.

  “Brother, where are you going? Do you need a ride?” he asked.

  “Thank you,” the man replied gratefully.

  The man was trying to get home after checking on family in the districts. The Taliban stopped the car again on the way back, searched them, and let them pass.

  Dr. Nasim went home to pick up some toiletries and then drove to the hospital, planning to stay at his office for as long as the hospital remained open or until the fighting stopped. Médecins Sans Frontières’ trauma hospital in Kunduz was the only Western-standard facility of its kind in northeast Afghanistan. It offered free, lifesaving treatment to Afghan victims of injuries sustained in war and other traumas. Patients with life-threatening wounds and their families often traveled for days just to be treated there. The hospital afforded their only hope of survival.

  That night, patients streamed into the waiting area, overloading the doctors. One of the Afghan surgeons picked up his mobile phone and dialed Dr. Evangeline Cua, an expatriate surgeon who worked at the hospital. It was after one a.m.

  Dr. Cua was at the residence for staff, located only a few minutes away. She had her own practice in the Philippines but had taken a break to work at Médecins Sans Frontières in Kunduz over the summer. It had been an intense several months. She wasn’t used to seeing children with gunshot wounds or injuries from a roadside bomb. But she learned from her Afghan colleagues, and she felt that she was living her dream of scrubbing up every day as a surgeon to save lives. The call woke her up.

  “Hello,” she said, worried. “What’s going on?”

  The Afghan surgeon described how patients were flooding the hospital. They needed her help.

  “The city is under attack,” he told her.

  She was terrified but wanted to help. The French manager at the residence ruled it out.

  “It’s too dangerous to leave now,” she said. “We have to wait until daylight.”

  Dr. Cua lay back in bed and thought about the seven-minute drive to the hospital. What would happen if the Taliban stopped them on the way there? Would it be better to sit in the car and wait? Or should she take her chances, get out, and run?

  She thought about home. She was from a small town in the Philippines and had never imagined being at the epicenter of the Afghan war. She became a surgeon after seeing the impact her mother had as a midwife in poor rural communities. She had wanted to be a surgeon for as long as she could remember. She came into contact with Médecins Sans Frontières when a massive 2013 typhoon struck the Philippines. It was the worst storm in the country’s history.

  She joined the French aid organization for two months to help deliver medical care, and then applied to join their international staff after being impressed with their work. When they offered her the mission in Afghanistan, her parents objected at first out of concern for her safety. But another Filipino doctor who was already working in Kunduz helped her convince them to let her go. She kept in touch with her family through her sister and posted regularly on Facebook to reassure them that all was well.

  Dr. Cua didn’t tell her parents how difficult it was to see the war’s young victims or about the sense of community that grew among the staff at the hospital. She worked there on weekdays and spent her free time at the Médecins Sans Frontières residential compound. They weren’t allowed to go out, so the expats living there found ways to stay entertained, organizing cooking nights, movies, and group exercise. It was a diverse collection of people from all over the world.

  Dr. Cua constantly feared being kidnapped by the Taliban on the way to the hospital. The doctors treated every patient the same, no matter what side they were on. She worried that the Taliban would demand preferential treatment. But the longer she cared for them, the more she came to realize that members of the Taliban were just like the other patients. They were afraid, respectful, and had the same kind of concerned relatives as everyone else. The main difference was that Taliban members were often discharged against medical advice, sometimes even before they got to the recovery room, because they feared the government might come for them.

  She tried to sleep, knowing she had a long day ahead. But she couldn’t stop fretting about the journey to the hospital and what awaited her there.

  AS THE HOSPITAL BRACED for a flood of patients caused by the Taliban attack on the city, Josh Middlebrook, a Delta on the Kunduz team, was busy taking stock of medical supplies. Josh had been living at Camp Pamir for about a month, and it was his fourth tour in Afghanistan, including two fifteen-month tours as an infantryman. He had never expected to spend so much time there. He had joined the military to go to Iraq after dropping out of college. He wanted to do something meaningful with his life. He had considered journalism but decided the army was the fastest route to Iraq.

  The army recruiter told Josh his grades were good enough to try for any job. He hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  “I want to join the war in Iraq,” he said.

  “Okay, infantry then,” the recruiter told him.

  Nine years later, he still hadn’t been to Iraq. He was barely aware of the war in Afghanistan before joining the army. But he had grown to love the country in a way that was tied to the hope and loss experienced over years of deployments. The tour had been troubling from the start. Because of the strict rules limiting their operations outside the base, neither Josh nor any of the team had been to Kunduz city. Their mission to train and advise the Afghan commandos was difficult to execute as the elite soldiers were scattered across northeast Afghanistan at checkpoints because government officials didn’t trust the regular army and police.

  Josh’s team initially expected to run missions out of the US Army’s northern headquarters in Mazar-e Sharif, but they ended up restoring a permanent US presence at Camp Pamir on the outskirts of Kunduz city. It was located inside the Afghan army’s 209th Corps headquarters. As in Helmand, security in the northeast was declining, and US military commanders wanted them to keep
an eye on things.

  Josh had lobbied the team sergeant to fortify the camp in case of an attack. Like other abandoned American bases, Camp Pamir was a mess. It was supposed to have closed a year earlier and had been stripped down. It didn’t even have armored vehicles. Josh was eventually cleared to travel back to Mazar-e Sharif aboard a C-130 transport plane to see what equipment and provisions were available. He took a couple of guys and loaded up the plane with four Humvees and as much ammunition as the pilots would let them carry back to Kunduz.

  That was two weeks ago. It was starting to look like those supplies would come in handy. The team had been preparing for the worst since receiving the first reports of contact between the Taliban and government forces in the early hours of the morning. Since then, the Afghan commandos had reported that the police had abandoned the main entry points to the city and were fleeing in droves to the airfield at the 209th Corps base, hoping to make an escape. The thud of mortars and the rattle of gunfire seemed to be getting closer. It sounded like the northern section of the city had fallen, and the rest seemed likely to follow soon. The Afghan commandos were the only force left on the main highway between the base and the city.

  As Josh inventoried the medical supplies, one of the team’s local interpreters, Ehsanullah, approached him. Looking stricken, he explained that the Taliban were ransacking the city, searching homes for government workers and their families, and separating the men from the women. The interpreter’s wife was eight months pregnant and at home with his father, who worked on maintenance at the camp. Once the Taliban figured out that the family was connected to the US military, they were sure to kill them both.

  “Holy shit,” Josh said. “How much time have we got?”

  Ehsanullah looked close to tears. “They’re going house to house right now,” he said.

  Josh hadn’t anticipated anything like this and had to think quickly.

  “Tell your father to get in a car,” he said. “If he can drive to the edge of Kunduz Airfield, I’ll find a way to smuggle them onto the camp.”

  Ehsanullah looked grateful and left to make calls. Josh didn’t have a plan, but the Afghan army controlled the outer perimeter of the camp. It was about a three-kilometer drive to the entrance. Josh could drive down to meet the family. The interpreter reappeared a couple of hours later.

  “They’re heading here right now,” he told Josh.

  Josh took a truck and drove with Ehsanullah to the gate. As they neared the outer wall, he realized he’d made a mistake. The 209th Corps headquarters was crowded with unidentifiable men out of uniform, many of them carrying big guns. He didn’t know if they were soldiers, police, or Taliban. Some of them jeered and pointed their weapons at him.

  “Fuck you, America!” they shouted. “Fuck you, America!”

  Josh realized that the Afghans were surprised to see an American. They thought the Americans had withdrawn from Kunduz. Seeing him there was a huge insult. If American soldiers had been holed up at the base all along, it meant they were letting the city fall without a fight. American forces could easily stop an attack with airstrikes. Josh wasn’t used to being separated from his teammates, and now he was alone in a crowd of angry Afghan men. They all looked like potential Taliban to him. He felt very exposed and far from the safety of the US Special Forces camp.

  “Fuck you, America!” they kept repeating.

  He didn’t know which way to look. There were guns pointed at him everywhere. He was sure that someone would shoot him in the back at any moment. He gripped his rifle, determined not to go down without a fight, and pointed it at the crowd. He could feel their resentment and couldn’t blame them. The situation made him angry as well. There seemed to be some commotion at the gate.

  “Take the gun, and keep it pointed at whoever has the biggest gun,” he told Ehsanullah while heading to the gate. “I’m going to get your family. Don’t take your finger off the trigger!”

  A Toyota Hilux pickup truck containing Ehsanullah’s father and wife had rolled up at the entrance to the base, where it was being held by the Afghan soldiers, who refused to let them in. It was bad enough that the Americans had been sitting on the base doing nothing this whole time. And now they wanted to pluck this guy’s family out of the battle and leave the rest of them behind?

  This is bad, Josh thought.

  He had no idea how to negotiate the family’s release in his broken Dari and Arabic, but he had to try. Looking inside the Hilux, he could see Ehsanullah’s wife in a burqa and her father-in-law in the front. At the checkpoint, everyone was shouting at each other.

  A second vehicle appeared behind the Hilux, and more Afghan soldiers jumped out. It was the Ktah Khas, the elite Afghan Special Unit from Kabul. They undertook the most specialized missions, often alongside US Special Operations, and commanded respect from everyone. Josh couldn’t believe his luck. The Special Unit joined in the argument about the interpreter’s family. It was growing heated, and Josh had no idea what was going on.

  “They say you can go,” one of the Ktah Khas told him.

  Josh didn’t stick around to discuss it further.

  Ehsanullah jumped into the Hilux with his family and followed Josh’s truck back to Camp Pamir, past large crowds of Afghan forces amassing at the 209th Corps headquarters in a variety of uniforms and civilian clothes.

  Soon after, around three p.m., Josh’s team reported that Kunduz had fallen. Inside the city, a chaotic scene played out. Taliban fighters emptied jails and looted abandoned police and army compounds, seizing stockpiles of weapons, including antiaircraft guns and ammunition, all supplied by the United States. At least thirty Humvees, forty Ford Rangers, and even two Russian tanks fell into their hands. The thriving jewelry bazaar was ransacked for gold. The building that housed the United Nations, which had already evacuated expatriate staff and told local staff to stay home, was set on fire. Columns of black smoke billowed into the sky through the day as Taliban squads carrying lists of government workers searched residences.

  NEWS THAT KUNDUZ had fallen traveled faster in the media than through the chain of command. Senior US military commanders in Afghanistan were still unaware of the gravity of the situation by the evening. As the city descended into chaos, the Special Operations Joint Task Force (SOJTF) Afghanistan, which coordinated all US and NATO Special Operations, was focused on a large-scale operation in Helmand. At six p.m., the deputy commanding general for operations, Brigadier General Tony Bauernfeind, was interrupted during a videoconference with a message to call off the Helmand mission because all US air assets needed to be urgently diverted to Kunduz. The US military didn’t have enough assets and personnel in Afghanistan to fight in two places at once.

  Brig. Gen. Bauernfeind turned around the helicopters carrying US Special Forces to Helmand midflight.

  In Washington the loss of Kunduz was an embarrassment. The Taliban had scored their greatest victory since the start of the war, and Kabul’s sudden collapse exposed the flaw in the claim that the government could simply take over the war after the United States left Afghanistan. Major news outlets carried photos that the Taliban had tweeted of themselves celebrating in the streets. Many brandished Kalashnikovs with ammunition belts strapped to their chests and wore only sandals on their feet. The city’s red-and-white traffic circle, surrounded by cheering crowds, became the symbol of its collapse to the Taliban.

  Across the northeast part of the country, other Taliban fighters, seeking to capitalize on the momentum, escalated attacks, laying ambushes on the routes along which Afghan army reinforcements were arriving from Kabul and elsewhere. Suddenly, it seemed possible that other provinces might fall next, like dominos, resulting in the collapse of the rest of the northeast.

  President Obama wasn’t whipsawed by current events, but National Security Council staff worried that the city’s collapse could fuel the arguments in favor of leaving Afghanistan as planned. If the Afghans couldn’t demonstrate an ability—or even willingness—to hold ground after the
billions of dollars invested there, it seemed as though the time had come for the United States to cut its losses and leave them to it.

  CHAPTER 7

  Kunduz Clearing Patrol

  CONOP

  GEN. CAMPBELL, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was irate. The timing of Kunduz city’s collapse could not have been worse. He was due to travel to Washington later that week to present his recommendation for US troop levels at a National Security Council meeting chaired by President Obama. The case for an expanded US mission rested on the need to preserve the stability of Afghanistan and avoid a resurgence of al Qaeda and the risk of another terrorist attack on the homeland until the Afghan government was ready to hold ground alone. He was also due to testify at the Senate Armed Services Committee about the state of play in Afghanistan.

  Gen. Campbell had worked for months with National Security Council staff at deputies’ meetings and at meetings with the principals to present a strong case for holding off the US troop withdrawal. Skeptics of the Afghan war were sure to argue that the fall of Kunduz demonstrated that the government was losing capacity rather than improving, and that no amount of US military support would ever stabilize the country.

  The US had spent over $65 billion on the Afghan army and police alone, yet it appeared that a small force of ill-equipped Taliban had overrun a major city. It was unclear how many government soldiers and police were on duty in Kunduz at the time of the Taliban’s attack. Some seven thousand were on the US-funded payroll, but a large proportion was evidently missing or dead—or perhaps had never existed at all. The rest appeared to have fled, leaving behind only the Afghan commandos to defend the city.