American Spartan

by Tyson, Ann Scott

  Jim had picked eleven other Americans, eight Afghans, and X for the Chowkay mission. I was X in his operational plans. The new team was designated “Tribe 34.”

  It was February 21, 2012, the day violent Afghan protests had erupted outside Bagram Air Field in reaction to the accidental U.S. military burnings of the Koran. In the nationwide unrest to follow, two American military officers working as advisors at the Ministry of Interior would be shot in the back of the head by an Afghan co-worker, a total of thirty people would be killed, and two hundred would be wounded. Stateside support for the war in Afghanistan would fall to a new low.

  While protestors in Jalalabad burned an effigy of President Obama and screamed “Death to America, death to Obama, death to Karzai,” we planned to exit the secured gates of COP Penich the next morning. Then we would head ten miles northeast, into the Taliban-controlled capillary valleys that descended to the Konar River.

  American commanders would soon put all troops in Afghanistan on lockdown, but Jim pressed forward. Our final destination? A mud-brick Safi tribal qalat in a small village in Chowkay. The village was in the direct line of fire for Taliban holding the mountains above, highlands with well-worn insurgent routes through Konar and across the border into Pakistan.

  Despite the paranoia NATO forces now had about our Afghan allies, Jim knew we didn’t have the luxury to wait until religious passions simmered down. Before he left to become director of the CIA, Petraeus, then the head of all U.S. forces in Afghanistan, had given Jim the green light to engage the Safi tribe in May 2011. Jim pitched his plan in Mangwel when Petraeus visited to see how his village security initiative was working on the ground.

  “What are you waiting for, Jim? Go,” Petraeus said, right in front of Jim’s immediate chain of command. Jim got his second mission, but it had taken a critical nine months to get the order to move to the valley.

  With those months burned by bureaucracy and Jim’s two-year tour approaching its end, he had no time to spare. And the Taliban knew we were coming.

  Jim warned me and the rest of his team again and again before we left Penich that we would get hit by insurgents, and hit hard. The qalat in Chowkay was tiny, so Jim had carefully chosen which of his new infantry soldiers to take, selecting the most squared-away and gung ho among them. Jim decided early on that I could go, and I never hesitated, despite the heightened risk. I wanted to go. I was by then a core and relatively experienced member of his team. I provided valuable information and perspective, and had demonstrated my ability to navigate the Pashtun tribal culture and create valuable relationships with Afghan men as well as women. I knew the Safi leaders. And my presence as a woman would send a unique message of Jim’s trust in the tribe. I believed in the mission and wanted to document this critical phase. Mobilizing the fierce Safis was an indispensable part of the one-tribe-at-a-time strategy Jim had developed over his four-plus years in combat. He wasn’t going to pass up this chance to prove the plan would work.

  The Safis had dominated the oft-contested Konar Province for centuries. An uncompromising and war-driven tribe, they were at the center of the last major tribal uprising against the central government in 1947, the first to fight the Soviets in the Konar in the 1980s and the first to stand up to the Taliban there in the 1990s. It had taken years, dating back to 2003, for Jim to build his relationship with the Safi elder, Haji Jan Dahd.

  Jan Dahd was a shrewd leader and a warrior, brutal and yet generous. Also, he was a devout Muslim and staunch defender of Pashtunwali. Jim had been told by higher-ups that Jan Dahd was Taliban. They feared him because he would not roll over for anyone.

  One of the truest statements Jim ever heard about the cagy tribal leader was, “Haji Jan Dahd is not Taliban, he owns his own Taliban!” Jan Dahd was the only man Jim ever met whose clout transcended the Afghan government, the Taliban, and U.S. forces—he was two parts tribal leader and one part warlord. Jim believed he could trust him.

  Moving in with the Safi tribe marked the biggest challenge of Jim’s life—the last opportunity, as he saw it, to turn the tide of the war in eastern Afghanistan. But was Jan Dahd the man he said he was, with the power and will to take on the Taliban?

  Jim didn’t have the same deep relationship and history with Jan Dahd and other Safi elders that he had with the Mohmand tribe in Mangwel. The Mohmands had made Jim one of their own, a tribal malik. All he had with the Safis was an honorable and fearsome reputation, enough to ensure safe passage into the valley. He knew we’d be pummeled the moment we kicked up Chowkay dust. The question was, would the Safis back him now, when the bullets started flying? Jim was betting all of our lives that they would.

  To add to his burden, he also had to execute the strategy without strong supporters in the chain of command, and without the men he had meticulously groomed for the mission. He’d had his new infantry soldiers for less than two months, and he was exhausted.

  “Where we are going is not safe,” Jim explained to his unseasoned infantry team. Raw fear and excitement filled the room. In just the previous few months, he told them, insurgents in Chowkay had staged scores of attacks with mortars, rockets, machine guns, recoilless rifles, and IEDs, including several catastrophic hits on U.S. forces. Jim threw down the after-action reports from two major attacks in which the Taliban overran U.S. forces in the vicinity in recent years, and invited the team to read them.

  The Afghans among us included Abe, Ish, the mechanic Shafiq, and five silent mercenaries whom Jim hired without approval from higher command—breaking yet another Army rule. Jim must have sensed our hesitancy trusting heavily armed Afghans we’d never seen before.

  “The mercenaries are very well trained and loyal to us,” Jim said. “They are mean, evil motherfuckers.” They would bolster our initial protection. It was not unusual for senior tribal leaders to have bodyguards, and so the mercenaries would also add to Jim’s status as a man not to be trifled with.

  But Jim’s real focus as he spoke was not on the enemy but on the tribe we would live with. For the nervous young men in front of him, this was tribal engagement 101.

  “We will be living out of vehicles and under ponchos. We will survive on our wits and our relationships,” he said. “We can make no mistakes—not one . . . I am betting on the tribal connections I have built in Chowkay to protect us,” he said. “You had better hope I’m right.”

  Under a bright sun and almost cloudless blue sky, our patrol of eleven American soldiers and eight Afghans rolled out the gate of COP Penich the next morning. We crossed the Konar River at the White Mosque Bridge and entered Chowkay District and the territory of the Safi tribe. The road passed farmland and orchards lining the river valley and then twisted as it rose into foothills. On one steep hillside stood a large and isolated compound with a large patio overlooking the river. It was the home of Jan Dahd. On an adjacent hillside, across from an old stone fort, lay the village of Chinaray.

  Jim stopped, got out of the vehicle, and walked up to Jan Dahd’s qalat, where the tribal elder was sitting on his porch.

  “I am here. Is it all right if my men and I move into the village?” he said, in an act of deference to the Safi elder. The village of Chinaray was built on his land.

  “My brother, you are welcome,” Jan Dahd said.

  Our patrol stopped next to a narrow dirt road that led up the hillside into the village, and I got out. I was wearing a dark green U.S. military uniform and boots with my hair tucked up in a baseball cap because Jim did not want anyone who was watching to see a female moving into the Afghan qalat that day.

  We proceeded to a mud and brick qalat overlooking the Konar River. The tiny structure—the outer wall was about a hundred feet long and thirty feet wide—had the advantage of being a short walk from Jan Dahd’s home. But it was located in even lower ground than I imagined—backed up against steep, rocky mountains on its northern side. Two peaks, whose names in Pashto meant “Martyr Mountain” and “Dishka Mountain,” rose directly behind us. Along the mountain
ridgelines, small walls of rock created natural fortified fighting positions for the Taliban. They would be able to rain down fire directly into the compound.

  Jim got eighteen tribal fighters from Jan Dahd straightaway. They worked alongside Tribe 34 in nine-man shifts. So that made it twenty-six Afghans and twelve Americans against God knew how many Taliban in the mountains.

  As the team hustled to move in, I took Jim’s advice and sat down for green tea with the two ALP commanders, Mohammed Sadiq and Abdul Wali, in a corner room of the qalat. Although they seemed a bit surprised at an American woman in their midst, they treated me respectfully and did not hesitate to speak with me. Abdul Wali had large round eyes and a gentle smile. He originally came from the Badel valley, an insurgent stronghold just up the road, and had moved to Chinaray a few years before. The father of three daughters and three sons, he worked building houses with sand and rock before he joined the ALP. “Now this is my only income,” he said as his four-year-old son, Ishmael, played nearby.

  Sadiq sported a pakol pushed back to expose a fringe of curly black hair over his forehead, giving him the look of a French artist. Like Abdul Wali, he was from the Badel valley, where he used to be a shepherd. He bought a small four-jerib plot of land in Chinaray and farmed wheat, corn and vegetables. Sadiq was the more senior ALP commander, and carried himself as such. As a teenager, he had fought with Jan Dahd against the communist regime of Afghan president Mohammed Najibullah, and had vivid memories of dogs eating the dead bodies of Afghan soldiers strewn across a field after a big battle in Khewa District, Nangarhar Province.

  Jim’s plan was first to establish a foothold in the qalat at Chinaray, and from there recruit hundreds of Safi tribal police in a span of about three weeks. He would then push those police up to observation posts to secure the high ground behind the qalat, the main road, and eventually the surrounding district.

  When we arrived in Chowkay there were only thirty-nine ALP out of the three hundred that had been approved, an illustration of the anemic results of the Special Forces team tasked with this mission before us. The team had proven unable to move into a village from behind the walls of FOB Fortress.

  In the first hours and days, we depended completely on the tribesmen living with us in the qalat to protect us. But Jim knew once the Taliban started attacking, that force would not be enough to keep us from being pinned down. To prevent that, he rapidly trained groups of about fifty Safi tribesmen—spending only one day enrolling, training, and equipping each group, not the three weeks mandated by the U.S. military. Every Pashtun tribesman worth his salt knew how to shoot an AK-47, so Jim jettisoned that part of the training program, as well as the parts that were supposed to teach them about “personal hygiene” and the Afghan constitution. Jim’s attitude was, Jesus, this is a war and we’re telling the greatest living warriors how to fight!

  After training the first group, Jim gathered the new ALP and their commanders outside the qalat. The local police stood in two rows of twenty, their rifles slung in tandem over crisp khaki uniforms. Sadiq and Abdul Wali stood between the rows, with Jim at the top, looking out at the police and beyond to an old stone fort and river. The police trained their eyes on Jim, their faces proud and intent.

  “What you are doing matters,” Jim began. “What you need to do is very simple. Protect yourself. Protect your qalat. Protect your village. Protect your valley. Protect your tribe.

  “Do not misuse the power that you have. You have guns, you have power now. And pretty soon there will be more local police than any other force in this area. Do not misuse that. You are powerful now. Your commanders, the local people, your tribal leaders, myself, and the government have shown you special trust. Do not break that trust.

  “Tell everyone that you come into contact with, I did not come here to fight. I came here to help the people. But if someone wants to fucking fight, they know where I am.

  “Last thing: if you get into trouble and you need us, we will be there.” Jim went to shake each of the arbakai’s hands, his white Afghan tunic billowing in the wind.

  The first group of about fifty was assigned to man two observation posts on Martyr and Dishka mountains. Amir Mohammed, a Safi tribal commander of twenty of the new police, was the only one to raise a concern. The thirty-five-year-old commander with a long auburn beard stepped forward to speak with Jim.

  “If you want to fight the enemy, you can’t fight them with AK-47s. You have to have PKM machine guns and RPGs,” said Mohammed, who would be responsible for Martyr Mountain. Jim agreed. One way or the other, Amir Mohammed would have the firepower he needed.

  To get the guns necessary for the tribal police, Jim broke other rules. He and Ish wrested hundreds of AK-47s from corrupt local Afghan government officials who sought to control the guns. They handed out the rifles to the tribesmen, giving them back a symbol of honor. Next, he asked his command for PKM machine guns for the force to defend the high ground. Then they scraped and borrowed to provide food, water, blankets, tents, and other critical gear for the Afghans.

  Jim constantly drilled into the team the need to befriend the Safi tribesmen—to eat, drink tea, talk, and play cards with them. Wearing a pakol and Afghan tunic, his beard long and his face almost haggard from fatigue, Jim appealed to us to have faith in his approach in Chowkay and hold the Afghans close.

  “What I am telling you is: trust me,” he said, surveying the sober faces of the Americans and Afghans crowded into the operations center. “You want security tonight? Then eat with the local police. I am telling you, it’s not their mortar positions, machine guns, or RPGs. None of that shit is going to matter. It’s helping people with their everyday lives, it’s talking to people, it’s treating people well,” he said.

  Despite the lockdown imposed on U.S. troops earlier that day because of spreading anti-American protests, he said, some of the team was going to violate the rule and leave the qalat. “In fact, I am leaving the qalat right now,” he announced. “I am going to see Haji Jan Dahd to shoot the shit after dinner.”

  The very next day, Jim came to me as I was sitting bundled against the cold in a corner of the qalat in my makeshift chair—a piece of scrap lumber I’d set on two bricks. I shared a windowless, mud-walled room in the qalat with Jim, Abe, Ish, and Shafiq. It was one of four connected rooms lining the side of the qalat closest to the mountains. The rooms faced onto a central courtyard. We slept under thick Afghan blankets on Army cots and hung our coats and rifles on long nails I hammered into the wall. But since the room was dark and I loved the sunshine, I spent most of my days outdoors. I chose to work in that particular corner because it was one of the few spots in the courtyard sheltered from possible gunfire from the mountains behind us. Unlike the only other protected corner, it was also not in a direct line of fire from the qalat gate.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” Jim said. I put my notebooks and computer inside and followed him out the qalat gate. The only weapon he carried was his 9 mm pistol in a shoulder holster. We walked down the dirt road, now covered with gravel, and crossed the main paved road, with me staying slightly behind him. After passing the old stone fort, we strolled down a path toward the river and the other side of Chinaray. The sky spread out before us above a range of snow-capped blue mountains on the other side of the valley, as the Konar River snaked silver beneath them. The village seemed poor even by Afghan standards, its small qalats made of stone and surrounded by rocky, barren plots of land with a few withered trees. A couple of Afghan men standing nearby who were building a stone wall saw Jim and he waved at them.

  “Tsengayay, jore, wror, how are you, brother?” he greeted them, and stopped to chat. “I see how hard you are working,” Jim said in Pashto. “I want you to know I am not here to make your life more difficult. I am here to help you.”

  “We know who you are,” they said. “And thank you. Our lives are very hard, and our days are long. We will do all we can to help you. Please come and have tea with us.”

  We moved on, a
nd came upon a group of boys and girls. Jim sent me ahead to speak with them. I did, and before long their mothers and sisters began coming shyly out of nearby qalats to talk with me, too. Even a pregnant woman approached me, but she hid behind a rock so the men in the distance could not see her. They had never spoken with an American before. I asked the children about their families and school.

  As dusk fell we walked to the school and visited the home of one of the teachers, speaking with him and his relatives until it grew dark. Just then I noticed an Afghan taxi pull up on the main road above us and stop, letting out three men. My heart started beating faster. The biggest threat we faced living in the qalat was a suicide bomber on foot or with a vehicle. I had been traveling in Afghanistan long enough to know that it took no time for word of our walk to spread—one phone call to the insurgents and we were done. I stepped a little faster as we crossed the road in front of the taxi headlights and headed toward the qalat. Just then, a few of the ALP came out to meet us and escort us back.

  I felt relieved as we entered the gate to the qalat. I was rarely rattled that way, but both Jim and I knew that our solo walk through Chinaray was risky. How risky, we were not sure. We had several things going for us—our walk was completely unexpected by the people, they already knew who we were, and they undoubtedly knew of Jim’s relationship with Jan Dahd. Yet our reception in Chinaray remained uncertain. Perhaps the only way to know for sure was simply to go, as Jim did. In doing so, he reaped huge gains. He had once again demonstrated the ultimate trust in the Afghans, walking among them with his khuza, his wife, tacitly entrusting her safety to them. He also wanted to show them that he was one of them and they had nothing to fear from him.