by Shane Bryant
‘Hey, man, when did you get it?’ He handed me the puppy and I took a look at it.
‘When I was on vacation.’
I showed the pup to Benny, who sniffed at it, but otherwise didn’t seem too bothered by him.
Bari was a pretty good guy. He’d been at Cobra since before my first visit, which meant that by the time I ended up back at the FOB, he’d been there for nearly two years. He’d loyally served a number of teams during that time. The fact that he was living in the team compound, instead of in the terp hooch in the main Afghani compound, by the time I returned to Cobra was testament to his ability to fit in and to his professionalism. He had his own room, two doors down the hallway from me, and internet access, courtesy of the team.
He was in his mid twenties, and, like many of the other terps, he’d got a decent education and learned English while studying in Kabul or Pakistan. It was interesting, I thought, that the SF guys, including the Australian SAS, grew beards in acknowledgment that facial hair was usually a sign of maturity and of respect for old customs in the outlying villages of Afghanistan, yet many of the Afghani government soldiers and terps, like Bari, were clean-shaven in defiance of the Taliban’s former harsh laws on such matters.
Bari rode along on all our missions, armed with an AK. When the shooting started, he would always join in, and a couple of times he was allowed to get behind a 240 and have a go at the Taliban. He’d get stuck into it and the fact that he would show a bit of aggression was another reason the Americans liked him.
Bari had parlayed his close relationship with the Americans into a business one; as well as being the terp, he was the middle man in some commercial deals. He had got himself into the business of vehicle rentals, and was part of an operation that leased four-by-fours to Cobra for use on and around the base. He also owned a jingle truck, which he used to haul stuff to and from the base, again on a contract basis. Bari was on the make, but no-one begrudged him making a few bucks. It did seem, however, that Bari’s closeness to the foreign soldiers had caused some envy, or animosity, among the Afghanis working for the government. As well as living in the US compound, he tended to avoid his countrymen when he wasn’t out on missions.
‘You can help me train my dog, yes?’ Bari asked me.
‘Sure.’ I went through my spare gear and found him a collar, a dog lead, and a couple of tennis balls, and started giving Bari a few basic pointers on training his puppy.
Unlike most of the other terps and ANA, Bari never showed any fear around Ricky and Benny, and seemed interested in them. Bari would happily jump in the back of a gun truck with my dog and me, but none of the other terps would want to and, if they had to, they’d sit in a corner as far from the dog as they could. It was no real surprise that Bari had found himself a puppy while on vacation.
Several times, Bari came out to the range where Mike, the combat controller, and I were training with Benny, so that he could pick up tips on how to work with his dog. I wanted Bari to bring the dog up properly and look after it, as most Afghan dogs lead a pretty hard life.
I saw some beautiful dogs when I was out on missions, and I saw some that were in a terrible state. Generally, the Afghanis did not treat their dogs well, and dogfighting was still common in the villages. The owners would cut their dogs’ ears and tails off, so as to deny its opponent in a fight something to get hold of. It was hard for me to believe that people could be capable of such cruelty, even in Afghanistan, where killing seemed to be a national pastime. I never went to a dog fight, and never would. I think it’s barbaric to make an animal suffer as a form of sport. I love animals, and so I’m a softy when it comes to seeing a dog, or any other animal, in pain.
Occasionally, when I was searching a village or compound with Ricky or Benny, a local Afghan dog would start snarling or try to pick a fight with my dog. I couldn’t afford to have my partner distracted during a search, so I’d find a rock and chuck it at the other dog, to send it on its way.
Before Apis was shot, I was on board a gun truck on a mission Guy and I had been sent on. He and I were taking it in turns to search, and he and Apis had dismounted. Over the intercom radio, I got word that a huge Afghan hound was hassling Guy and Apis. They tried tossing stones at it but it kept coming for them. Sadly, the SF had to shoot it, as it was becoming a threat to Guy, his dog and the mission. I heard the gunfire from further up the line – it had taken five 5.56-millimetre bullets from an M4, fired into the dog’s head, to put it down. It wasn’t a sad situation, but a stark reminder that we and our dogs were in Afghanistan to do a job, and that our mission, to search for explosives and IEDs was paramount.
There were a couple of Afghan hounds that lived around Cobra that were named Tali, after the Taliban, and Carl, after the Carl Gustaf anti-armour weapon. They were pups when I was first at Cobra with Ricky, but had grown to be fairly big dogs by the time I made it back to the FOB.
Tali and Carl had been adopted as unofficial mascots by the SF team, and roamed the compounds at night as extra security. They hated Afghanis and when the gun trucks rolled out of base, Tali and Carl would follow us. Carl would usually give up after a while and walk back to base, but Tali would cover huge distances, up to five or six kilometres, trotting along behind the convoy. When we reached our night harbour position, Tali would hang around, keeping curious Afghani kids away from us.
During one mission that I wasn’t on, Tali got too close to Lee and Spaulding and tried to bite Lee. Perhaps she was jealous of Spaulding, but the upshot was that one of the SF put Tali down because she was becoming potentially dangerous. This was a shame, as Tali had been a dog that was playful and protective at the same time, but it was a similar situation to that of someone getting a pet and then not caring for or training it properly. There was really no place for Tali or Carl on a FOB, particularly when there were other dogs there that had a job to do. As much as the SF guys loved dogs, nothing could ever get in the way of a mission.
At the same time Bari got his dog, one of the medics adopted a puppy but, like many dogs in disease-ridden Afghanistan, it soon contracted distemper and he had to put it down. It was just another example of the difference in care between strays and our working dogs. Dogs such as Ricky, Benny, Apis and Spaulding were in tip-top condition, and looked after by handlers who lived with them 24 hours a day. Soldiers love pets, but they can’t always be there for them and, eventually, a dog’s owner would have to rotate home.
It saddened me to see any dog being put down but that was life in this sometimes brutal, always unforgiving country.
Bari persisted with his dog’s training, but it wasn’t progressing well, as the puppy continually crapped in his room. I could sense he was losing interest in the animal. Sadly, the dog contracted distemper, not long after the team medic’s pet did, and it also had to be put down.
Even though we didn’t now have the connection through the dog, Bari and I still chatted occasionally. I was working on my computer one day when he knocked on my door frame. ‘Hello, Shane, hello, Benny,’ he said. Bari had his laptop clasped under his arm. ‘Shane, I have pictures of my vacation, if you are interested?’
‘Sure,’ I said. Anything to break the monotony of life on the FOB in between missions, I thought.
‘You have pictures of your vacation?’ he asked me.
I clicked on a folder of pictures on my laptop that I’d taken during my last vacation. I showed Bari some shots of the beach at Port Kembla, the new, old, house I’d bought and was renovating, a picture of Nat, and a group shot of all my kids and me.
‘You have many children; that is good, yes?’
‘Yes, very. I miss ’em.’
He nodded. ‘Australia looks so beautiful. I would love to go there one day and see it.’
I wasn’t surprised that he thought Australia was beautiful. As much as I liked the wild beauty of Afghanistan’s empty plains and jagged mountains, I couldn’t imagine living there permanently.
Bari clearly wanted to get out of his ow
n country and the US soldiers at Cobra were trying to help him achieve his dream. He’d put his life on the line for a succession of SF guys and, in recognition of his commitment, the current team had applied to get him US citizenship. If all went according to plan, Bari might very well visit Wollongong one day, as an American tourist.
It was Bari’s turn to show me on his laptop pictures of his recent vacation to Pakistan. I wasn’t anticipating I would be wowed but they were something different.
Fucking different. ‘Have a look at this beautiful picture, Shane . . .’
I was expecting to see a scene of snow-capped mountains or something, but instead he started up a video that had been shot on a Handycam. It was of a young, attractive, coffee-coloured girl, smiling at the camera and doing a bit of a dance. She started undoing the buttons of her blouse and, with Bari encouraging her from behind the camera, she showed her bare breasts. What the fuck?
‘This is a girl I met in Pakistan,’ Bari grinned.
I took another look. Everything I’d learned about Muslim people and their culture told me that this Pakistani edition of Girls Gone Wild was totally wrong. I put it down to Bari wanting to fit in. When there was booze on the base, he would take a drink. He also swore, and ate pork – something he made a point of mentioning. Maybe he thought Americans liked to show each other pictures of their naked girlfriends. If that were the case, I hadn’t seen any.
I didn’t know what to say to him, other than ‘Um . . . nice’.
I would sometimes eat with the ANA and Afghan Security Group guys. They were hospitable people, but also very nosey. Over a meal of lamb and rice, washed down with Pepsi or bottled water, they’d start asking me if I was married, how many kids I had, how old the kids were, what their names were, and anything else they could think of.
Like Bari, the Afghanis were fascinated by life in Australia and if you struck up a conversation, via an interpreter, with one guy, the next thing you knew, there would be half a dozen of them there, all asking you questions. They also weren’t afraid to talk politics and history.
‘Ask him what he remembers about when the Russians were here,’ I said to an interpreter one day. I wanted him to put the question to an Afghani soldier who looked old enough to have been a young man during the Soviet invasion.
‘This man says that was a good time,’ said the interpreter. ‘Are you sure?’ That was the last thing I had expected to hear an Afghani say.
The soldier nodded his head, saying, via the interpreter: ‘It was a good time for our country, when the Russians were here. The Russians built roads and dams and housing, and our women were free to wear skirts and high heels and make-up, and to go to schools and university.’
The other soldiers grinned and nodded at the references to women not having to cover themselves. I’d seen some stunning Afghani women, with beautiful, piercing blue or green eyes, when I was on foot patrol or searching a village. While the women were generally very shy and hidden from view, if their husbands or fathers weren’t around some of them would stick their heads out their front doors and peek at us, while others would gather in groups of three or four and stare at us. We were told not to make eye contact with the women, but it was obvious that some of them were just as curious about us as we were about them.
The soldier’s comments about the Russians got me thinking. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that the coalition was trying to do what the Russians had tried, and failed, to do. We were supporting a moderate government and, while the Americans were encouraging the Afghanis to embrace democracy rather than communism, their agenda was similar. We measured progress in the same way the Russians did – how many roads and schools we could build, and how many women could get away with wearing western clothes and getting an education. The Russians, depending on whose view of history you took, were either trying to expand their empire, or to bolster a friendly government and create a buffer between them and the rise of radical Islam. Weren’t we doing exactly the same thing?
Most of our interpreters, or tajiman, as they called themselves, had learned English in Kabul or Pakistan, either in school or university, and their grasp of the language varied enormously.
‘Mr Shane, can I ask you a question,’ one of the terps who was on call outside the SF headquarters at Cobra asked me one day.
‘Fire away.’
‘What is nougat?’
‘Nougat?’ I had to think for a moment. ‘Nougat? It’s a lolly, I think.’
‘A lolly? Please?’
‘Um,’ I scratched my head. ‘A sweet.’
‘Sweet? It is good, yes?’
I shrugged. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘One of the Americans, he called me his “nougat”.’
‘He what?’ This was weird, I thought, even for an SF dude, and they sometimes displayed an odd sense of humour – for example, shitting in kitty litter or wearing their beards as wigs, as George had. ‘What did he say to you?’
‘He said, “What is up, my nougat?”.’
I racked my brains. Nougat. Noogar. Niggah? ‘Ohh. Did he say, “Wassup, my nigger”?’
‘Yes,’ the interpreter beamed, ‘yes, “What is up, my nigger?”. That is good, this nigger, yes?’
I worked hard to hold in my laughter. ‘Yes, very good, in context.’ And, of course, in a very non-politically correct way, I’m sure it was.
There were some very good interpreters in Afghanistan and some very bad ones.
They tended to be young and often I wondered whether they were giving us the full story. I’d be listening to ANA or, sometimes, Taliban spotters talking to their commanders over the intercom radio, and the Afghanis would talk for ages. I’d ask an interpreter to translate a five-minute conversation and he’d say something like ‘This man says he has nothing to report.’
Some Afghanis seemed genuinely to hate the Taliban, while you had to wonder about the motivation of other soldiers who were fighting for the government. There was an Afghani police commander at Deh Rawood; he was a middle-aged guy, who had a reputation for being a real hard arse. I asked around about him and the word was that his family had been killed by the Taliban, because he was working for the government. The policeman had rounded up a few of his mates, so the story went, and gone hunting for the Taliban who had shot his wife and children. Apparently, he found the rebels, and he and his men killed them all. The Americans greatly respected him for his motivation, his local knowledge and his no-nonsense manner.
By and large, though, I got the feeling from talking to the ETTs who worked with the ANA that the coalition advisers had their work cut out for them in getting the Afghanis motivated to take the fight to the enemy. You couldn’t blame them for being reluctant, I suppose. They were expected, rightly, to get stuck into the dirty business of clearing compounds and houses, and if there were going to be coalition casualties during a TIC, the odds were that they would be the Afghanis and the ETTs. Also, the Afghanis loyal to the government were probably concerned about retribution from the Taliban against them and their families if they were ever caught.
Commentators always like to compare what is happening in Afghanistan with the Vietnam War, but I don’t know how valid that is. One thing about the conflicts that does seem to be the same is that the war in Afghanistan is not one that the Americans and their western allies can win by themselves. Victory, if that’s even possible, will only come if the Afghani people can decide for themselves once and for all that they don’t want to live under Taliban rule, and if they then develop their army, police and civil authorities enough that the Taliban can never again gain the support of the people.
For every business-minded, loyal Bari, or the police commander who wanted to kill as many Taliban as possible to avenge the shooting of his family, there was a traditional farmer out in a village somewhere who saw nothing wrong with the Taliban’s fundamentalist approach, or a wild-eyed boy who wanted to emulate his dad’s heroic deeds against the Russians by killing as many coalition s
oldiers as possible before he went to Allah.
Lee and I needed some help from the Afghanis at Cobra to keep our dogs’ training interesting and relevant for them. We went down to the ANA compound and sought out the commander. In true Afghani style, he was very polite and hospitable, inviting us to sit down and drink some chai with him before we could get down to business.
The commander was a stocky guy with dark wavy hair and a neatly trimmed moustache. After the pleasantries were out of the way, I asked him if we could borrow some of his troops’ ammunition and weapons, such as RPG rounds, grenades and any explosives they had. Our training aids, I explained, were getting contaminated. Lee and I were always using the same spare chunks of explosive to train our dogs, and they were getting too used to the smell of Lee and me on the stuff they were looking for. As the ANA used the same weapons as the Taliban did, and as the soldiers who used them would smell the same as Afghanis fighting for the other side, Lee and I figured the dogs’ training would be more useful for them if we used Soviet-made munitions.
The commander agreed, and also offered the use of his compound for training. We took RPG rounds and other types of ordnance, and buried them out the back of the FOB, in the open area we used as a rifle range and drop zone for the C-130 resupply missions, and later stashed some stuff in the rooms the Afghani security forces used. The dogs found the new locations and scents fascinating, and we completed some good, rigorous training with them.
A couple of days later, the Afghani commander had a meeting with the team in their compound there. As he strode across the compound, the commander saw my dog and me, and detoured to come and say hello. Knowing that Benny could be unpredictable, I pushed him to one side as the commander approached us. As the Afghani officer reached out his hand to shake mine, Benny leaped up and bit him. I apologised profusely and called the medic out to bandage the commander’s hand, but he was seriously pissed off.
Benny was funny like that. Whereas Ricky liked to bite any Afghani he met, Benny was very selective. I could usually work him off-lead, even in villages and compounds, but every now and then he’d single out someone from the crowd who he didn’t like. I wondered if he were picking up on something; some ill feeling towards me or the guys I was working with.
