The Tender Soldier: A True Story of War and Sacrifice

by Gezari, Vanessa M.

  Lala exemplified a certain kind of old-school Afghan official whose survival depends on patronage. He griped that the Americans took his intelligence informants for granted, underpaying them and spending too much money on fuel, roads, and other “useless things.” Lala had a better idea. “Give some money to those Taliban,” he suggested, “and buy them.” Lala had consolidated his power in Maiwand by making himself valuable to the Americans, and he knew that in some corners, Paula Loyd’s killing had not been forgotten. He had met with her the day before she was attacked, he told me. He had been on his way to Kandahar, and they had planned another meeting when he returned. He never saw her again.

  A few weeks after I talked to him, Lala and the Americans arrested Bank. He was detained for a time at Kandahar Airfield. But although the Afghan police had told U.S. soldiers that they had multiple tips incriminating him, the Americans couldn’t make the charge stick. They had arrested Bank in part because he had tested “weakly positive for explosives,” a young American intelligence officer told me later. But the more they learned about him, the clearer it became that the tips that had incriminated him might have stemmed from a personal dispute between Bank and one of the Afghans who had informed on him. “This is just one example of the many situations we have to deal with when working with tips from locals and our Afghan National Security Force counterparts,” the intelligence officer told me. “Many times they offer great information that leads to IED finds and legitimate detentions but, on occasion, there are situations such as this where the information just simply doesn’t pan out.” The Americans turned Bank over to the Afghan intelligence service, which promptly let him go.

  The allegation that Bank and Abdul Salam were brothers also turned out to be wrong. It had been based entirely on the single, brief statement of an Afghan informant, the same informant who had reported seeing Bank detonate a bomb that struck an Afghan army patrol. “As best we know, Bank Mohammad has three younger brothers, a younger sister, and lives with his mother and father,” the American intelligence officer told me. “None of our information provides any possible connection to Abdul Salam.” Abdul Salam had become a symbol. He stood for violence against Americans in Maiwand, and anyone related to him was guilty by association.

  No Human Terrain Team was operating in Maiwand when I visited in 2010, but the soldiers had inherited a fair amount of information from their predecessors. Their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Denny, acknowledged that there was much he didn’t know—might never know—about Maiwand. “Who really controls the governance here?” he wondered aloud during one of our conversations. “Where is the shadow government for the Taliban? Who really pulls the strings?” By late 2010, the American objective in Afghanistan was to get out as quickly and cleanly as possible. Denny’s job, as he saw it, was to train the local Afghan army unit so his men wouldn’t have to come back.

  In the United States, the Human Terrain System’s administration had been overhauled. In the spring of 2010, the project had come under scrutiny from Congress and the Army, which found that it suffered from inadequate government oversight, an overreliance on unaccountable contractors, and “unprofessional conduct” that included racism and sexual harassment. Human Terrain System workers submitted time cards that exaggerated their hours, yielding annual salaries between $224,000 and $280,000 and allowing workers to take almost six months of paid leave after completing nine-month tours. The government had spent $28 million a year on a contract with a social science research unit, the quality of whose reports was “frequently questioned.” It was paying contract instructors $1,200 to $1,500 a day even though they received “extremely negative student feedback.”

  All this had transpired on Steve Fondacaro’s watch, and, faced with a mess it had helped to create, the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command cut him loose. Fandacaro had been the right person to start the enterprise, an Army official told me, but the experiment had spun out of control. Fondacaro had always said he didn’t want the Human Terrain System to be corrupted by the Army’s DNA. “He was right to a degree,” the official told me. “But at some point, it has to accept some of the DNA to be recognized as a child.” Montgomery McFate quit soon afterward. She seemed exhausted. “I want to retire to obscurity and raise llamas and go surfing,” she told me. Instead, she moved to Rhode Island, where she teaches at the Naval War College. The Training and Doctrine Command tapped one of its own to lead the Human Terrain System forward, and the program quietly began turning itself into an institution. By 2013, its sleek new web site described it as a “sociocultural intelligence enabling capability.”

  Clint Cooper had returned to Afghanistan briefly after Loyd’s attack to serve on another Human Terrain Team, but he had left the program in the spring of 2009 and returned to Sierra Vista, Arizona, where he worked for the Army Culture Center, writing handbooks for soldiers about Afghanistan and Pakistan. By 2012, he was traveling often to train deploying soldiers, teaching them basic cultural cues, how to exchange polite greetings, in his words, how to “understand the Afghan frame of mind.” As so-called insider attacks by Afghan security forces multiplied, he told soldiers that Afghans had distinct ideas about personal space, honor, and pride. If one of their Afghan counterparts were unhappy, he hoped the Americans would at least see it coming.

  Don Ayala had gone home to New Orleans and returned to painting, between regular visits to a court-ordered psychologist and his probation officer. Although he had been sentenced to five years’ probation, Nachmanoff convinced the court to release him from the system after only two and a half. In 2012, Ayala and Santwier moved back to Southern California to be close to their families. When I visited, they were still moving in. We ate dinner on a card table in the unfurnished living room, their pack of regal copper-colored ridgebacks snoozing nearby. Since his conviction, Ayala had patched together stints in telecommunications and short-term jobs training close-protection officers, but applying for steady, full-time work terrified him. He hated the idea of being rejected because he was a convicted felon. He thought often of the three lives that had ended that November day.

  When Paula Loyd traveled to Afghanistan for the last time, she left behind detailed instructions in case anything should happen to her. She wanted to help bring young Afghan women to the United States to study at Wellesley College, and not just any women, but members of some of Afghanistan’s most disadvantaged communities: girls from the southern provinces of Kandahar and Zabul, and ethnic Hazaras. Loyd stipulated that the scholarship recipients had to return to Afghanistan after completing their education, a noble goal but practically difficult for young Afghan women from poor backgrounds who, after four years studying in the United States, might find it almost impossible to go back to the way things were. “Your daughter was a remarkable public servant, and I know her work changed lives and helped us forge a better future for the people of Afghanistan,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote to Loyd’s mother in 2010. “Her spirit will live on in the wonderful work you will do and through her legacy, and in her honor, the women and girls of Afghanistan will know a brighter future.”

  Finding young Afghan women from disadvantaged backgrounds who spoke enough English to meet Wellesley’s entry requirements proved difficult, but in the years since Loyd’s death, her mother and stepfather have worked hard to secure her legacy. By 2013, they were helping an Afghan girl attend Choate Rosemary Hall. She plans to apply to Wellesley.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First I thank the Afghans who shared their country and their stories with me. Without their patience and hospitality, this book would have been impossible. For their brains and guts, for protecting me and making me laugh, I am especially grateful to Muhib Habibi, Farouq Samim, Najib Sharifi, Waheedullah Massoud, Danish Karokhel, Bilal Sarwary, and Hassina Sherjan.

  The main characters in this book participated actively in its writing. Tremendous thanks to Patty Ward and Frank Muggeo for helping me preserve Paula Loyd’s memory; to Don Ayala and Clint C
ooper for wanting the story told and trusting me to tell it; to Andi Santwier and Kathy Cooper for their graciousness; to Montgomery McFate, Steve Fondacaro, and Mike Warren for opening the Human Terrain Teams in Afghanistan to my scrutiny; to Michael Nachmanoff for help with the legal parts of the story; and to Rob Albro and Kerry Fosher for their insights about anthropology and its troubled relationship with the military.

  I benefitted from the kindness of hundreds of soldiers and marines in Afghanistan who fed and sheltered me, shared jokes, songs, and stories, and sometimes gave up their cots so I wouldn’t have to sleep on the ground. They are too numerous to mention, but I am grateful to them all. Thanks to the commanders who hosted me in their battlespace, especially Colonel Mike Howard, Lieutenant Colonel Dan Hurlbut, and Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Denny of the U.S. Army; and Lieutenant Colonel Bill McCollough of the Marine Corps. I am grateful to Generals Mike Flynn and David Petraeus for finding time in the middle of a war to share their thoughts about the role of culture in military intelligence. For their powerful insights and good spirits in challenging circumstances, and for reinforcing my faith in what America could accomplish abroad, I thank Alberto Fernandez, Matt Pottinger, Kirsten Ouimette, Jimmy Story, Trevor Voelkel, Ted Callahan, Alec Metz, Robert Holbert, Steve Lacy, Cas Dunlap, and the Kandahar CAAT of 2010.

  Several years ago, I walked into Gail Ross’s office convinced that I had the best story of my life. She immediately understood, and her support has never wavered. I am immensely grateful for her guidance and warmth, and for Howard Yoon’s editorial skill. I could not have written this book without the intellectual clarity and dedication of my editor, Priscilla Painton. Her curiosity and persistence made me stretch time and again, and she came to believe in this story as passionately as I did. Mike Szczerban offered a critical structural suggestion that transformed this book spectacularly in the eleventh hour; he was also a complete pleasure to work with. My conversations with Elisa Rivlin were among the most challenging and enjoyable aspects of the production cycle. I am grateful to Jonathan Evans and his copy editors for their meticulous attention to the manuscript and for accommodating my many questions, and to Sydney Tanigawa for helping make this book a reality. My heartfelt thanks to everyone at Simon & Schuster, and especially to Jonathan Karp for his inspiring leadership.

  Writers need encouragement, genial colleagues, peace and quiet, and enough money to keep the lights on. I am exceedingly grateful for the support of the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, where I have been especially fortunate in the camaraderie of Jon Sawyer and Nathalie Applewhite. In the fall of 2010, the MacDowell Colony invited me to the New Hampshire woods and gave me the keys to a cabin where James Baldwin had once written. I will always be grateful for the peace I found there, and for the brilliant artists and writers I met. Thanks to Sydney Trent at the Washington Post, for assigning me the story that evolved into this book; to Colin McMahon of the Chicago Tribune for having faith in a young freelancer many years ago in Afghanistan; and to Bill Duryea, Kelley Benham French and my former colleagues at the St. Petersburg Times for making me a better storyteller. Sara Breselor’s stellar research skills saved me from many errors and significantly deepened some aspects of this story; her dedication and engagement provided a measure of companionship in a largely solitary effort. My deepest thanks to the Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan, especially to Charles Eisendrath and Birgit Rieck, for the lasting gift of time and renewal. I am grateful to Susan Douglas, Tony Collings, and the faculty, staff, and students of the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan, where I’ve had the pleasure of teaching and learning this past year.

  I am lucky to have generous, tough-minded friends who know how to listen. Anjali Kwatra, Nara Schoenberg, Candace Rondeaux, and Delphine Schrank read early versions of this book. Their insights litter its pages and their company on long walks, over many dinners or during afternoons of Lego Ninjago with Calvin and Zephy freed my mind and nourished my soul. Travis Holland and Doug Ollivant also graciously read portions of this book in draft form and offered valuable feedback. For their support and companionship along the way, I also thank Kathleen Flynn, Marc Kaufman, Vicki McClure, Scott Dempsey, Mark Oppenheimer, John Schidlovsky, Anita Huslin, Sam Roe, and the Knight-Wallace Fellowship class of 2012, especially Phillip Morris and Sarah Robbins.

  My brother Sam Gezari’s visual sensibility shows in every part of this book, from the cover to the typefaces. His affection and support, and his willingness to indulge in marathon games of Words With Friends, have sustained me through long days of writing and revision. When I set off to freelance in India in my twenties, my father, Walter Gezari, tried everything he could think of to talk me out of it and bring me home. Over time he has become my steadfast supporter. This book is dedicated to him and to my mother, Janet Gezari, who has been my most exacting and appreciative reader for as long as I can remember. From the beginning, she encouraged me to travel the world and chart an unconventional path, though I’m sure my long engagement with Afghanistan caused her moments of regret. Her brilliant mind, girlish delight in the physical world, and fierce love for me have been indispensible in writing this book, and in many other aspects of my life.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  © DEBORAH COPAKEN KOGAN

  Vanessa M. Gezari has been writing about Afghanistan since 2002. Her reporting from four continents, nine countries, and many corners of the United States has appeared in The Washington Post, The New Republic, Slate, and others. A 2012 Knight-Wallace Fellow, she is the James Madison Visiting Professor on First Amendment Issues at the Columbia Journalism School. This is her first book.

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  NOTES

  My story / gets told: Maulana Jalal al-Din Rumi, “Sometimes I Forget Completely,” The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1995), 47.

  Prologue

  It follows the program through the height of American involvement: For the number of U.S. troops deployed to Afghanistan here and below, Ian S. Livingston and Michael O’Hanlon, “Brookings Afghanistan Index,” May 16, 2012, 4.

  Chapter 1: Election Day

  In the desert west of Kandahar: This chapter is based on interviews with Don Ayala; Clint Cooper; the Afghan interpreters known as Jack Bauer and Tom Cruise; and soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Regiment, of the Army’s 1st Infantry Division. I have also drawn on witness statements, diagrams, crime scene photographs, and other documents included in a report on the events of November 4, 2008, prepared by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command and obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Some documents in the Army file later resurfaced as court records, and in a few instances when the Army redacted pertinent information, I have relied on the more complete version of a document submitted in federal court. I used other court records, as well as photos Ayala and Cooper took during their time in Maiwand, as secondary sources. Finally, I have relied on my field notes, photographs, and video and audio recordings from visits to Maiwand in March and April 2009 and October 2010, when I slept on the same bases as Loyd and her teammates and walked the patrol route they walked on November 4, 2008.

  the soldiers thought their mission would be an easy one: Clint Cooper described it as a “routine patrol to the Maiwand District Market and the village of Chehel Gazi which was located just south of the market. . . . We walked through the bazaar and set up a perimeter in an open area just inside the village. We were interested in fi
nding out the value of commodities within the bazaar. Several days previous we’d been through the bazaar polling local merchants about the cost of various grains, fuel, bread, as well as other items. We were also trying to map out the local leadership structure as well as to find out more about a coalition of merchants working together within the Bazaar. There were dozens of children walking through the area on their way to school and we were handing out pens to the older kids and candy to the smaller children. Villagers would be roughly screened by soldiers at the perimeter and Paula and I would talk to them. People were very friendly and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.” Cooper statement, U.S. Army Report of Investigation 08-CID369–43873–5H1.

  On this day they would be photographing: “We were mapping out north Chehel Gazi, doing the entire town in sections.” Specialist Justin Skotnicki, interview by author, March 24, 2009. In his statement to Army investigators, the platoon leader, Lieutenant Matthew Pathak, described the work of the soldiers and Human Terrain Team members that day as “intel gathering efforts.” Statement of Lieutenant Matthew Pathak, November 4, 2008, filed in federal court, 1:08-cr-00474-CMH, May 1, 2009.

  ‘God protect us and bless us for this day’: Don Ayala remembered the words of their prayer on November 4, 2008, this way. Clint Cooper recalled: “We’d pray for safety and protection and that we would know what to do and what to say and be able to determine what the people were in need of—that we’d be well accepted.” Ayala, interview by author, August 19, 2009, and Cooper, interview by author, April 22, 2010.