The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor

by Jake Tapper

  Although referred to as a single village, Kamdesh actually comprised four distinct communities: Upper Kamdesh, Lower Kamdesh, Papristan, and Babarkrom. (Two other, outlying villages, Binorm and Jamjorm, were separate from Kamdesh and had non-Kom Nuristani populations.) On the map, Kamdesh was only a mile distant from Urmul, but the topographic reality meant that the two-thousand-foot climb would take about three hours—for Americans, at least; even geriatric Kamdeshis could make their way up the mountains like spry goats. Of course, it helped that they weren’t carrying eighty pounds of gear apiece.

  At dawn, Swain awoke, checked his perimeter again, then opened and ate an MRE—short for “meal ready to eat,” the basic ration for troops in the field—and headed for the Afghan National Police station down the road. Outside the station sat the hollow shell of a Soviet armored personnel carrier, once used to transport heavy guns, cargo, or half-platoons of Soviet fighters. Nuristani folklore included many tales about how the locals had stood up to the Soviets in the 1980s. They’d attacked the invaders with clubs, stolen their guns, and later ambushed their armored vehicles—or so the stories went. At least five abandoned such vehicles were scattered around the immediate area like trophies, or monuments to an empire’s hubris.

  One of the many carcasses of Soviet vehicles, this one right outside the outpost. (Photo courtesy of Matt Meyer)

  At Swain’s request, an Afghan policeman ran up the mountain to Kamdesh to fetch the district administrator to meet with the Americans. Swain wanted to explain the Army’s plan to bring in a provincial reconstruction team—or, in the case of underdeveloped Nuristan, essentially a provincial construction team—to help develop the region. Swain intended to ask the man for his help.

  He looked around while he waited. This was a gorgeous part of the world. He gazed up at the steep green mountains and then down into the blue Landay-Sin River. He could see right through the water, all the way to the bottom. Part of him wished he had his kayak and fishing pole.

  The Landay-Sin River and its valley. (Photo by Ross Berkoff)

  Hours later, the policeman returned with the administrator for Kamdesh District, Gul Mohammed Khan—by reputation effective, well connected, and, to some, suspect for his ties to HIG. He, Swain, and a small group of American soldiers and Nuristanis sat in an orchard where small oranges hung from trees. Looking tired and seeming stoned, Mohammed recounted to Swain some of the history of Kamdesh. When asked about insurgents in the area, he insisted that the valley was relatively peaceful, save for the feud between the Kom people and the Kushtozis over water rights and other grievances.

  Swain explained what the U.S. military wanted to do in the region. This didn’t get much of a reaction from Mohammed. When Swain added that the soldiers would set up camp nearby as the PRT was being built, the district administrator seemed ambivalent.

  While preparing to hand over his area of operations to Colonel Nicholson three months before, Colonel Pat Donahue had made it clear that he didn’t think it made much sense to send troops into Nuristan. First, the United States simply didn’t have enough soldiers in the country to establish a strong presence there: Regional Command East was a sprawling, mountainous territory roughly the size of North Carolina, and the U.S. force numbered only about five thousand troops.

  Second, Nuristan Province was incredibly isolated, and its terrain forbidding, with jagged mountains rising as high as eighteen thousand feet. Operations there were grueling; there weren’t many functional roads. Third, there wasn’t much of a threat involved. Nuristanis were insular, Donahue believed; they didn’t like anybody. The men with guns there seemed more like local militias protecting their homes than anything else.

  His replacement, Mick Nicholson, saw Nuristan quite differently.

  In the Pech Valley in Kunar Province, south of Nuristan, Nicholson had witnessed the hits inflicted on 1-32 Infantry by an enemy well armed with IEDs and rockets, which the Army was convinced were coming from Pakistan. Nicholson, Fenty, Byers, Berkoff, and others had talked about the influx of these armaments from across the border. Kamdesh was close to the road where three of the valley systems from the north merged on their way from Pakistan; if 3-71 Cav could secure a location near this road, the men decided, it might be able to disrupt the threat to 1-32 Infantry in Kunar Province—and to Americans and Afghans in Kabul. Given that American policy forbade troops from entering Pakistan, where so many enemy forces were safely ensconced, Nicholson also figured that if the brigade could set up outposts in adjacent Nuristan, the United States might have more success in killing insurgents, possibly even members of Al Qaeda.

  The task in Kamdesh District now fell to Nicholson’s new commander of 3-71 Cav, Mike Howard. The brigade didn’t have enough troops to heavily garrison the entire region, so deployment would have to be strategic and selective. Since his arrival at Forward Operating Base Naray, Howard had spent quite a bit of time talking with Nuristan’s governor, Tamim Nuristani. Nuristani’s grandfather had been a famous general who fought the British in the Third Anglo-Afghan War, in 1919, and his father had been mayor of Kabul until the Communists took over—at which point Nuristani himself, then in his early twenties, had gone to the United States. He’d driven a cab in New York City, opened a fried chicken joint in Brooklyn, and later owned a chain of pizzerias in Sacramento called Cheeser’s. After the Taliban fell, he’d returned to Afghanistan and worked his way into Karzai’s good graces until eventually Karzai appointed him governor.

  For months, Nuristani had been pushing for the United States to put a PRT in the provincial center of Parun, but American military commanders had visited the area and deemed it too isolated, as it was accessible basically only by air or on foot. Nuristani’s second choice was Kamdesh Village. He told Howard that if he could get the Kom people residing in Kamdesh District on the side of the Afghan government, the rest of eastern Nuristan would follow. Nuristani himself was Kata, so he didn’t personally have much sway over the elders of Kamdesh—in fact, quite the opposite. But that was all the more reason to locate the PRT near the largest and most influential Kom community, to improve the chances of the combined United States and Afghan government forces’ being able to win over a population naturally skeptical of its governor. Additionally, from the Americans’ perspective, putting a base by the road to Kamdesh not only would stop the insurgents from using that road but also would protect the only means of resupplying the camp itself.

  Here in particular, proximity to a road was a crucial feature of the PRT’s potential location, because air assets were relatively scarce in Afghanistan. The Pentagon and the Bush White House were focused on Iraq, so that was where the helicopters were. It irked Nicholson. In his area of operations, he was responsible for eleven different provinces, seven million Afghans, and almost three hundred miles of border with Pakistan—and for all of that, he had only one brigade of troops and one aviation brigade. That was it. By contrast, there were fifteen troop brigades in Iraq, and four aviation brigades. It didn’t make sense to him.

  “Iraq is smaller and has fewer people than Afghanistan,” a frustrated Nicholson would say, trying to explain how nonsensical was the relative dearth of resources in Afghanistan. “And by the way, this is where the war started.”

  Swain still didn’t know where near Kamdesh Village he should put the PRT. He and his troops hopped on their ATVs and drove around a bit, looking for some suitable land, but every possible location either was already being used or was inhospitable to construction.

  They went up the road to the west, to Urmul. As they were walking up the mountain from there, on the way to Kamdesh Village, they came upon a school. It looked legitimate. Photographs of Afghan President Hamid Karzai were hung on the wall, a good sign that the locals were supportive of the new government in Kabul. The Americans walked back down the hill and down the road and saw a medical clinic. The sign said it housed an antituberculosis program sponsored by Norwegian Church Aid and the Norwegian Refugee Council. This must be where the bad guys
came to get cleaned up before they headed to Pakistan, Swain mused.

  The scouting party returned to the Afghan National Police station. Swain looked around the small surrounding compound. This right here might work, he thought. It was by the road, and there was a potential helicopter landing zone right outside the gate, next to the river. Obviously, the site—at the bottom of three steep mountains—wasn’t the best place in the world for a base; security would be a concern. But Swain knew that Howard had plans to send at least an entire company—plus mortarmen and snipers—to defend the PRT. It could be properly protected, Swain reasoned, and if they had to put the PRT next to the road, it was going to be at the bottom of the mountains in any case. Moreover, in this location they could be next to the police station, partnering with the government, and Urmul—where the district administrative offices were headquartered—was just down the road to the southwest. Kamdesh Village was right up the mountain to the south. Nothing that the United States did in Afghanistan could be deemed perfect, but this might be good enough, at least for now.

  Snyder and his Special Forces troops were up the mountain, eating lunch with the elders of Upper Kamdesh. Snyder told them about the PRT that Swain was planning on setting up down the mountain, and the elders did not like the idea one bit. Kamdesh was too small, they said. They didn’t want U.S. troops nearby.

  That’s interesting, Snyder thought. It wasn’t what the elders had been telling his second in command, or the leaders of 3-71 Cav, over the previous few weeks during shuras at Forward Operating Base Naray, when plans for the PRT were being discussed.

  Snyder and his team finished their meal and left their host’s house.

  “You know, they can’t attack us now for three days,” Snyder’s engineer told him.

  “Why not?” Snyder asked.

  “We just broke bread with them,” the engineer explained, repeating a myth about the region.

  As they walked, the children of the village followed them, chanting and yelling, all the way to the edge of Upper Kamdesh. Snyder found this odd. “What are they saying?” he asked his interpreter.

  “I can’t understand it,” the man replied. “They’re saying it in Nuristani.” The language was incomprehensible to most Afghan interpreters, who were conversant in Pashto and Dari but not in the specific dialect used by these particular hill people. Nuristanis spoke five different languages in all, and within those five, there were a number of discrete dialects.

  Adding to Snyder’s unease was the behavior of a Kamdesh elder who’d announced that he would join them on their walk down the mountain. The man suddenly turned away from the Americans and proceeded to take a different path. A little farther down the mountain, one of the Kamdesh policemen who were accompanying Snyder and his troops told the interpreter, in Pashto, that he and his men were now out of their jurisdiction, so they, too, were going to break off.

  Weird, thought Snyder. And then, a few yards later, tracer rounds started streaming past them: they’d been ambushed.

  At first, the bullets did little more than kick up dust. The Special Forces were trained to turn to face their attackers in such situations, orienting their breastplates toward the enemy fire and pushing forward, firing their weapons, to gain dominance.

  The insurgents had an answer for this, though: as the Special Forces troops came forward, the enemy fighters sent out small children to stand between them and the Americans.

  The Americans held their fire, and the insurgents scrambled away.

  One of the Afghan Security Guards with Snyder’s group had been shot in the leg. The bullet had hit an artery, and he was bleeding profusely. Snyder and his troops took him into a nearby building and radioed Swain, who in turn called Forward Operating Base Naray and ordered a medevac. One of the Special Forces medics tried to keep the Afghan guard alive, but he soon bled out and died. Sometimes it happened that fast.

  Down the mountain from Snyder, Swain unfolded his map and tried to figure out where the insurgents who had ambushed the Special Forces would run. Guessing that they might go southeast of him on the road, past the medical clinic and the school, he ordered Platoon Sergeant Steven Brock to head down there with a mix of American and Afghan troops to head them off. He would meet them there in a few minutes, he said. Meanwhile, a few angry Special Forces troops had returned to Kamdesh Village and detained some elders, demanding answers—an action that embarrassed the Kamdeshis in front of their community.

  Special Forces scouts conducting surveillance from surrounding mountains saw a number of Afghan men darting around, and they called this intel in to Snyder, who also began getting similar reports from Apache pilots in the area. Could be innocent, he thought. But likely not.

  “We kicked a hornet’s nest,” Snyder radioed to Cherokee Company. “We’re getting out of here.” They got on their ATVs and headed back toward Naray. Swain and his men followed suit not long after.

  The Americans had been on the road for only a few minutes when Swain saw an RPG coming right at him.

  Swain swerved to avoid the incoming rocket and kept driving. It exploded safely behind him. But the battle had commenced.

  The glorious Landay-Sin River flowed to their left as they headed downstream, running for their lives. To the north, beyond the river, was a ridge from which insurgents were shooting at them. The 3-71 Cav troops braked their ATVs with a screech, took cover, and began firing back. Sergeant David Fisher—who’d fixed the laser on Daoud Ayoub in the Kotya Valley—had mounted a machine gun on his ATV, and now he yanked it off, ran up the hill to his right, and started firing at the enemy. Swain crouched behind a rock wall and called Forward Operating Base Naray on his radio: “Tell the Apaches to come back,” he said. Cline’s mortar team fired their tubes in hand-held mode, aiming for the hillside.

  After a few minutes, Swain received bad news about the Apaches: they couldn’t come back because they were already engaged in another mission. It was the nature of the beast—there were never enough aircraft in Afghanistan.

  “We need to get out of here,” Swain told his men. “We can’t get air cover.” So Fisher provided the only cover available, firing up the mountainside as the rest of the team sped away. He kept shooting even as he jumped on the ATV bringing up the rear, driven by Brock, and zoomed off. Luckily, the insurgents were far away—and they weren’t particularly good shots.

  Just another day at the Afghanistan office.

  After the Marines landed on Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands during World War II, General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz led a charge toward Japan by “island hopping” in the Pacific Ocean, hitting New Guinea, the Gilbert Islands, the Marshalls, the Marianas, Guam, Tinian, the Palaus, and the Philippines. They bypassed some of the enemy’s stronger points on their way to Emperor Hirohito, but they built up momentum and eliminated possible threats by taking that path.

  Michael Howard now wanted to attempt a version of that strategy—village hopping, Berkoff called it—by clearing out the enemy from communities on the way from Forward Operating Base Naray to the new outpost that 3-71 Cav would be setting up in Kamdesh to support the PRT. In their village hopping, the 3-71 Cav troops would first hit Gawardesh and then proceed westward to chase away and/or kill the enemy, it was hoped, in Bazgal, Kamu, and Mirdesh.

  Gawardesh, a border village, was home to Haji Usman, a timber smuggler and HIG commander. His two jobs were not unrelated. In 2006, President Karzai, worried about deforestation—more than 50 percent of the country’s forests had disappeared since 1978—banned logging and timber sales within Afghanistan. Instead of ending these practices, however, the ruling merely drove them underground, pushing timber gangsters into the arms of insurgent groups such as HIG and the Taliban. There was only one “official” border crossing point in this region, near Barikot, so insurgents used the mountain pass leading into Gawardesh from the Chitral District in Pakistan to illicitly funnel in supplies and men. Karzai’s lumber ban set the conditions for consolidation: trucks and don
keys would transport timber into Pakistan and come back bearing guns and RPGs.

  According to standard procedure, before 3-71 Cav pushed into Gawardesh to meet with the elders there, a smaller group from the squadron would go up to make sure no traps had been set for the Americans. Howard ordered Staff Sergeant Chris “Cricket” Cunningham, the twenty-six-year-old leader of Cherokee Company’s kill team, to join up with Jared Monti in running a squad of forward observers. Their snipers and scouts would take two days to hike to a ridge overlooking Haji Usman’s house near Gawardesh. Only after Cunningham gave the go-ahead would the rest of 3-71 Cav roll in.

  After high school, Cunningham had been looking for a way out of Whitingham, Vermont, when one of his older brothers suggested that he join the Army. “Don’t sign any papers until they give you one that says ‘Ranger’ on it,” his brother told him—advice that Cunningham followed. Like Byers and Fenty, Cunningham was a rare member of 3-71 Cav who wore the coveted Ranger scroll on his right shoulder, indicating that he had actually served with the Ranger Regiment rather than merely gone through the course.