The Tender Soldier: A True Story of War and Sacrifice

by Gezari, Vanessa M.

  “As a member of a 5-person”: “BAE Systems: Human Terrain System,” recruiting pamphlet, November 3, 2008. The brochure also emphasizes the “positive, lasting impact” that Human Terrain Team members can have by helping to create an “unclassified” database that will be “easily accessible to organizations and individuals involved in stability operations.” Though program administrators often referenced such a database, I saw no evidence of it during the time I spent with Human Terrain Teams in Afghanistan between early 2009 and the end of 2010; instead, they stored their reports on a secret system accessible to members of the military and others with a government-issued clearance.

  gave their Human Terrain Team members guns: John Green and Sonya Brown, interviews by author, January 21, 30, and 31, 2010. When he resigned from the Human Terrain System in 2009, anthropology grad student Ted Callahan noted among his concerns the “[c]omplete lack of tactical training (to include weapons training), which puts HTS personnel and the military units supporting them at greater risk.” Callahan, “HTS Assessment,” correspondence. On the issue of firearms training, Callahan wrote: “HTS needs to confront the issue of weapons. Most participants will opt to be armed in Afghanistan, yet HTS irresponsibly shifts the burden to the host [brigade] of ensuring that HTS personnel are qualified to carry a weapon. This allows management to dodge the tricky (for some) ethical issue of civilian academics being armed by saying that it is ‘an individual decision.’ However, in many cases, the [brigade] will assume that HTS personnel are qualified to be issued a weapon, without independently verifying it. At a minimum, training should involve basic weapons handling, shooting, and maintenance, for both the M9 [pistol] and the M4 [rifle].”

  When Ayala completed his training: Ayala, interviews by author, May 4 and August 19, 2009. “I thought it was very fraudulent,” Ayala told me. “It was a liability. . . . We all said, ‘One day this will come back and bite them in the butt.’ ”

  On my first morning there: Interview with an anthropologist who asked to be identified only as “Dr. Wilson,” February 24, 2009. Wilson subsequently quit the program. He later rejoined and was severely wounded when a buried bomb exploded beneath him during a patrol in southern Afghanistan.

  When we met again many months later: Dr. Wilson, interview by author, September 25, 2009.

  The team had been reconstituted: Karl Slaikeu, interview by author, March 21, 2009; Stephen James “Banger” Lang, interview by author, March 22, 2009; and “Spen,” interview by author, April 2, 2009. For Slaikeu and Lang having never been to Afghanistan, see Gezari, “Rough Terrain.” For Slaikeu taking Loyd’s place on the team and Lang taking Ayala’s, Slaikeu, interview by author, April 7, 2009.

  The psychologist was a tall man with wire-rimmed glasses: Slaikeu was six foot three. For this and other elements of his appearance, see Gezari, “Rough Terrain.” By the time Slaikeu arrived in Afghanistan, he told me that he had been thinking about the “oil spot” theory of spreading security in a conflict zone “for years.” During his Human Terrain training at Fort Leavenworth, he was “delighted to find” that this approach was a key counterinsurgency technique, and he latched on to it. At the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana, ahead of his deployment, Slaikeu’s obsession with the “oil spot” approach prompted colleagues to start calling him “Oil Spot Spock.” By the time he landed in Maiwand, he had drafted the better part of a paper on the strategy’s utility in Afghanistan. “It was rather bold of me to think of writing such a paper so early in the game,” Slaikeu told me self-deprecatingly, but I saw little evidence that being in Afghanistan significantly changed his view of what was needed there. His embrace of the “oil spot” approach, like so many initiatives proposed by newcomers seeking to make their mark on the war, seemed aimed at impressing higher-ups rather than addressing the very complicated problems Afghans faced in Maiwand. Slaikeu, interview by author, April 7, 2009.

  One afternoon, I watched as he tried to convince: Meeting with Slaikeu, Lang, Canadian CMIC officers, and USAID representative Brian Felakos, March 23, 2009.

  Later, I asked one of the Canadians: A Canadian soldier who asked not to be identified, interview by author, March 23, 2009.

  Slaikeu had been issued an assault rifle: Slaikeu, interviews by author, March 21 and April 7, 2009. “There was no weapons training,” Slaikeu told me. “There was no operational security training.” His teammate, Lang, agreed: “We had no weapons training in the program, and no discussions about operational security, no discussions about many different things.” Lang, interview by author, April 8, 2009. Said a third team member: “We were told we were going to get weapons training. . . . But as it turns out, we did not get any weapons training. It was optional. I think some companies would give a five-hundred-dollar reimbursement for . . . like, a Saturday-afternoon or maybe a two-day shooting course for five hundred dollars . . . which is better than nothing, but come on.” “Spen,” interview by author, April 2, 2009.

  The former Marine who had replaced Ayala went by the nickname Banger: Observation and conversation with Lang, March and April 2009.

  Early in my visit, when I was just getting to know the Human Terrain Team members: The barbecue took place on March 21, 2009. See Vanessa Gezari, “Kill the Goat,” Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, April 1, 2009, http://pulitzercenter.org/blog/untold-stories/kill-goat, accessed July 19, 2012.

  He had grown up on a farm in Iowa: Lang, interview by author, March 22, 2009.

  The commander came from Logar, near Kabul: Lieutenant Abdul Saboor, interview by author, March 21, 2009.

  Hazaras have long occupied the lowest rung: See, for example, Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 17–27.

  A year later, after a lengthy deployment: Lang, correspondence, July 12, 2010. Pashto is the language spoken by members of the Pashtun ethnic group.

  A more culturally knowledgeable member of AF4: “Spen,” interview by author, April 2, 2009. Although Spen’s familiarity with the region meant that he operated like a social scientist on the team, he was technically a Human Terrain Analyst, as Cooper had been. Like other Human Terrain Team members, he had found the training “tremendously lacking.” Among his concerns was the absence of any physical fitness test for deploying team members, and in this he was not alone. “There are people in this program who are going to put people’s sons and daughters in danger because they’re too slow, they’re too old, or too fat to be out embedded with a group of soldiers. I think [physical fitness] should be part of the hiring process,” Spen told me.

  By far the most serious problem, in his view: Ibid.

  “Wadaregah, motherfucker!”: Notes from a patrol with soldiers of the 2–2, March 21, 2009.

  Like the original members of AF4, many were paid very well: The $250,000–$350,000 figure is based on interviews and published accounts, but in reality the number may have been even higher. The BAE program manager for the Human Terrain System told the Center for Naval Analyses that under the contractor system, “a Senior Social Scientist with 1 year of field research experience could make $390K–$420K with differentials and overtime. . . . As government employees, he estimates they would get about $200K–$250K with differentials and overtime.” The study also notes that Department of Army Civilians were subject to a “pay cap which limited total pay, overtime and comp time to $234,000 per year.” Salaries varied depending on which contractor the team members worked for, but Karen Clark, the program’s chief of staff during this period, confirmed the range cited here. Clinton et al., “Congressionally Directed Assessment of the Human Terrain System,” 88, 142; Gezari, “Rough Terrain”; and Hugh Gusterson, “Do Professional Ethics Matter in War?” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 4, 2010.

  But in early 2009, the Human Terrain System: Steve Fondacaro, interview by author, June 16, 2010, and Campbell Robertson and Stephen Farrell, “Pact, Approved in Iraq, Sets Time for U.S. Pullout,” New York
Times, November 16, 2008. For specific consequences for Human Terrain System field team members of Iraqi descent, who would have had to disclose the location of any relatives living in Iraq, putting them at risk, see Clinton et al., “Congressionally Directed Assessment of the Human Terrain System,” 141. For changes contractors faced under the agreement, see “New Status of Forces Agreement Subjects Government Contractors to Iraqi Law,” http://www.gibsondunn.com/publications/pages/NewStatusofForcesAgreementSubjectsGovernmentContractorstoIraqiLaw.aspx, accessed July 20, 2012.

  An official from the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command emailed: “Memorandum: Offer/Acceptance of Employment as Human Terrain Analyst GG-12,” Robert Reuss, Defense Intelligence Senior Leader, Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff, G-2, Headquarters United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, February 9, 2009. This deadline may have been extended—the Center for Naval Analyses study says team members were given a month. Clinton et al., “Congressionally Directed Assessment of the Human Terrain System,” 141.

  About a third of the project’s field team members quit in disgust: Noah Shachtman, “Mass Exodus from ‘Human Terrain’ Program; At Least One Third Quits,” Wired: Danger Room, http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/04/htts-quit/, accessed July 25, 2012. See also Clinton et al., “Congressionally Directed Assessment of the Human Terrain System,” 76.

  In the spring of 2009, the Obama administration: “Obama’s Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, March 2009,” remarks by President Barack Obama, March 27, 2009, http://www.cfr.org/pakistan/obamas-strategy-afghanistan-pakistan-march-2009/p18952?breadcrumb=%2Fpublication%2Fby_type%2Fessential_document, accessed July 20, 2012.

  Obama had already agreed to send 21,000 more troops: Obama, “Obama’s Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, March 2009,” remarks, March 27, 2009, http://www.cfr.org/pakistan/obamas-strategy-afghanistan-pakistan-march-2009/p18952?breadcrumb=%2Fpublication%2Fby_type%2Fessential_document, accessed July 20, 2012. For the total number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan being more than 60,000 after the addition, see Karen DeYoung, “Obama Announces Strategy for Afghanistan, Pakistan,” The Washington Post, March 28, 2009. Nine months later, after General Stanley McChrystal took command, the president would approve an additional “surge” force of 30,000 troops, bringing the total number of forces in Afghanistan to more than 100,000 by the summer of 2010. Eric Schmitt, “Obama Issues Order for More Troops in Afghanistan,” New York Times, November 30, 2009. See also “Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation on the Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” December 1, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-address-nation-way-forward-afghanistan-and-pakistan, accessed July 20, 2012.

  Training for Afghan security forces: See Obama’s March 27, 2009, speech and “White Paper of the Interagency Policy Group’s Report on U.S. Policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Spring 2009, http://www.cfr.org/pakistan/white-paper-interagency-policy-groups-report-us-policy-toward-afghanistan-pakistan/p18959, accessed July 20, 2012.

  As one year slipped into the next: A kitchen fire can be tackled with a small extinguisher, General Stanley McChrystal told Congress that year, but a house fire requires bigger guns. “In Afghanistan, the insurgency grew as they recovered after 2001,” McChrystal told the House Armed Services Committee. “Their shadow governance, their presence among the people, was not met by increases in Afghan national security force strength levels or in coalition forces. So what I’m saying is, we lagged behind that.” Remarks by General Stanley McChrystal before the House Armed Services Committee, December 8, 2009, http://www.isaf.nato.int/article/transcripts/transcript-u.s.-house-armed-services-committee-hearing-on-afghanistan.html, accessed July 20, 2012.

  By 2009, even pro-Western Afghans: Vanessa M. Gezari, “The Secret Alliance,” New Republic, August 19, 2011.

  That summer, then–Secretary of Defense Robert Gates fired the commander: “Officials said it appeared that General McKiernan was the first general to be dismissed from command of a theater of combat since Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War.” See Yochi J. Dreazen and Peter Spiegel, “U.S. Fires Afghan War Chief,” Wall Street Journal, May 12, 2009, and Chandrasekaran, Little America, 53.

  McKiernan was said to be too plodding: That the war was profoundly underresourced is clear from Obama’s March 2009 remarks on the strategy, McChrystal’s assessment, and from dozens of other official and press accounts. McKiernan had been asking for more troops in Afghanistan for months before Obama took office, but President George W. Bush declined to act on the request in the final days of his second term, leaving the decision to Obama. See Chandrasekaran, Little America, 50.

  General Stanley McChrystal, then director: Between 2006 and 2008, McChrystal commanded the Joint Special Operations Command and Joint Special Operations Command Forward. Much of the command’s work during that time involved targeting high-level insurgents in Iraq, and McChrystal was sometimes personally involved in the raids. Forces under McChrystal’s command were credited with capturing Saddam Hussein and finding and killing Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi. See “Biography of General Stanley McChrystal,” Council on Foreign Relations, http://www.cfr.org/afghanistan/biography-general-stanley-mcchrystal/p19396, accessed July 20, 2012; and “In Hunt for Terrorists in Iraq, General Is No Armchair Warrior,” Washington Times, October 2, 2006.

  “All ISAF personnel must show respect”: McChrystal’s exhortation may seem obvious, but it is hard to convey how earth-shattering it was for an American commanding general in Afghanistan to write these words in an official document that was leaked to the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, albeit in the eighth year of the war.

  A small number of British forces: This is based on interviews with marines during a three-week trip to Helmand in September 2009, especially members of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, in Nawa. See also Chandrasekaran, Little America, 45–46, 48–50.

  The team’s leader was Steve Lacy: Lacy had been a captain when I met him in Leavenworth. By the time I saw him in Afghanistan, he had been promoted to major.

  Camp Leatherneck occupied an expanse of fine sand and rock: The Desert of Death, or Dasht-e-Margo in Pashto. See Kristina Toderich and Tsuneo Tsukatani, “Water/Pasture Assessment of Registan Desert (Kandahar and Helmand Provinces),” Discussion Paper No. 606, Kier Discussion Paper Series, Kyoto Institute of Economic Research, October 2005, http://www.kier.kyoto-u.ac.jp/DP/DP606.pdf, accessed July 20, 2012; and Declan Walsh, “Desert of Death Takes Its Toll on Beleaguered Troops,” Guardian, July 7, 2006.

  AF6 had been sent to Helmand too early: Dunlap, interview by author, August 23, 2012.

  Dunlap flew north to Bagram: Ibid.

  The Marines disliked the idea: The concept of a Marine Female Engagement Team, known as a FET, was still germinating. Some Marine officers looked at the women on the Human Terrain Team and assumed it was just another version of the FET. They figured both teams would serve the same purpose: to reach out to Afghan women, provide medical and other services, and gather whatever intelligence they could about local politics and the insurgency.

  Unable to conduct the village and area assessments: AnnaMaria Cardinalli, “Pashtun Sexuality,” Human Terrain Team (HTT) AF6, Research update and Findings, 2009, and Dunlap, interview by author, August 23, 2012. For years in various parts of the country, night letters had supported a highly effective insurgent campaign to intimidate local people into resisting the advances of NATO forces and the fledgling Afghan government. Dunlap showed the British how to craft responses that would appeal to Afghans’ concerns for local sovereignty, their hatred of Pakistanis, and their adherence to central tenets of Pashtunwali, the traditional code of the Afghan south. Dunlap, “Shabnamah 1SEP09 Babaji wNotes,” a sample coalition night letter to be distributed in Babaji to counter Taliban propaganda, correspondence. For background on the use of night letters in Afghanistan, see “Lessons in Terror: Attacks on Education in Afghanistan,” Human Rights Watch, July 2006, http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/afghanistan0706.pdf
, accessed August 20, 2012. See also Declan Walsh, “ ‘Night Letters’ from the Taliban Threaten Afghan Democracy,” Observer, September 18, 2004.

  They worked because they belonged to the place: Dunlap told me that the term night letter (shabnameh in Persian) was used to refer to the resistance tactic of large groups of people standing on rooftops at night yelling “Allah-ho-Akbar,” or “God is great,” as a means of protest. Afghans did this during the war against the Soviets; it was also a hallmark of the Iranian Revolution in 1979. The concept of shabnameh resurfaced in Iran during the antigovernment uprisings of 2009 and 2010. Dunlap, interview by author, August 23, 2012, and “The Iranian Night Letter,” http://theiraniannightletter.blogspot.com, accessed January 10, 2013.

  A few days after I arrived at Leatherneck: The patrol took place on September 4, 2009.

  She had grown up in New Mexico: Cardinalli, interview by author, February 24, 2009, and “AnnaMaria,” http://annamaria.ws/bio.htm, accessed July 23, 2012.

  At Notre Dame, she had written a PhD dissertation: Cardinalli, interview by author, February 24, 2009, and AnnaMaria Cardinalli-Padilla, “El Llanto: A Liturgical Journey into the Identity and Theology of the Northern New Mexican Penitentes and Their Spiritual Siblings” (PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, April 2004).

  When hijacked planes hit New York and Washington: Cardinalli, interview by author, February 24, 2009.

  had written that the “secrecy”: Cardinalli-Padilla, “El Llanto,” 7.

  Later, she would describe her dissertation: Dr. AnnaMaria Cardinalli, “Cardinalli Resume July 09.”

  “Being an activist type, I had a lot of preconceptions”: Cardinalli, interview by author, February 24, 2009.

  It had grown out of a medical mission: Cardinalli, “Human Terrain Team (HTT) AF-6 Patrol Report and Findings,” September 4, 2009; Captain Jennifer Gregoire, “Mission Summary,” on the August 19, 2009, FET and MEDCAP mission to Settlement 1; and Cardinalli, “Human Terrain Team (HTT) AF-6 Patrol Report and Findings,” August 18, 2009.