Foxtrot in Kandahar

by Duane Evans

  When the convoy preparations were complete, the pickups and larger trucks pulled into position to begin the road march. This was an important moment for me, one that I had been moving toward in fits and starts ever since I first saw the awful images of the attacks at the World Trade Center. Had it only been 12 weeks? It seemed so much longer.

  The dual cab of my pickup was full of passengers and equipment so I climbed into the pickup bed. As I did, I noticed that the two burlap sacks of horse feed were in the back of the pickup in front of me. Two heavily armed SEALs who had recently joined us were adjusting them for use as seats during the ride into Kandahar. Well, at last they are being put to some use, I thought.

  I wore a black stocking cap on my head and sand goggles to protect my eyes from the dust that was sure to come. I sat in the rear corner of the pickup bed with the butt of my AK-47 braced against my lap and the barrel pointed upward. I imagined I looked like a character from a “Mad Max” movie.

  The convoy was finally formed and the signal to move out given. This was the moment we had all been waiting for and it was exhilarating; at least that was how I felt. One of Shirzai’s fighters was sitting on top of the closed tailgate of a nearby pickup. I didn’t think that was such a good idea. When the truck’s turn to move came, it lurched forward and the Afghan fell off backward and landed with a dull thud and a puff of dust. The convoy stopped three feet after starting. It was not the dramatic departure I had envisioned. The fighter got back in the truck laughing, no worse for the wear, and we started forward again.

  About halfway to the bridge, I saw the two SEALs stand up in the truck bed and toss the bags of horse feed out of the pickup onto the side of the road. The seat idea wasn’t working out. The bags looked sad and forlorn laying there on the barren plain as we rolled past, and I contemplated the unlikely journey those two products of Iowa had made.

  We reached the bridge and drove across, passing the turn-off to the airport that had already been largely secured by Shirzai’s fighters. Continuing on toward Kandahar we began to see the effects of our bombing campaign. Along sections of the highway there were destroyed and burned out vehicles. Bodies twisted and dismembered were littered here and there; their contorted positions suggested the idea of a giant hand having violently flung them onto the ground like rag dolls.

  An unnatural stillness lay over the entire scene, a seeming after-effect of the deadly violence that had suddenly visited. Whatever the cause, the stillness was palpable and it commanded my attention as we passed through the area.

  Ahead of us I spotted a body that appeared to be sitting upright on a paved portion of the road. A few feet behind it, was the burned out hulk of a large truck, its tires completely melted off. As we drove by, I saw the body had no bottom half, and its upper torso somehow balanced upright. A large stain of what I could only imagine was blood darkened the pavement around it.

  Had he been driving the truck when the bombs began to rain down? Did he try to make a run for it? The grotesque image begged these questions and more.

  Passing out of the zone of destruction, we began to encounter some buildings along the road. Soon there were more of them, and we knew we had reached the outskirts of Kandahar. We were alert, thinking anything could happen. As we penetrated further into the city, the road narrowed. There were Afghans walking about, but we had yet to see a single vehicle. The pedestrians shot us occasional glances, but nothing more. Their expressionless faces gave nothing away about how they felt about our entrance into their city.

  A bit further we started to encounter an occasional car or pickup, and soon a convoy of five or six pickups came down the road toward us from the opposite direction. As the two convoys passed each other, each slowed down due to the narrowness of the street. Like ours, the trucks in the other convoy were full of heavily armed men. We were so close we could have reached out and touched each other. If there was ever a modern opportunity to play Sioux warrior and “count coup,” this was it. They looked at us. We looked at them. Who are these guys? Taliban? I thought to myself. If anyone had started shooting it would have been a bloody mess. No one did. The episode reminded of a scene from the film “The Longest Day” in which a German and an American patrol pass right by each other neither firing a shot. I remember having thought it was a ridiculous scene that never could have happened.

  Passing through a market area, the pedestrian and vehicular traffic became much more congested. A shopkeeper looked up at us and scowled, gesturing at us with a knife. This native was not friendly.

  Finally we reached the Governor’s Palace where Shirzai had once held power before being deposed by the Taliban. High, thick walls surrounded the palace compound that included two main buildings separated by a courtyard with a small decorative water fountain. Shirzai moved into his old building, and Foxtrot team and the ODA moved into the other one.

  Shirzai’s fighters established a security perimeter around the palace’s exterior as we set up our communications gear inside its protective walls. I could now transmit the message I had been waiting to send.

  “FOXTROT IN KANDAHAR. ALL PERSONNEL ACCOUNTED FOR.”

  We were the first team to make it into the city, and I thought it ironic that the date was December 7th, the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor 60 years earlier. For me, December 7th would no longer be a day of infamy, but a day of triumph.

  But I also thought about that day in September that had started it all and had set the path that I and the other men around me had taken since. And, as extraordinary as it was that I was now standing in Kandahar some three months later, it seemed right that I was there, and I would not have wanted to be anywhere else.

  33

  Paying the Freight

  John SOON REJOINED US at the Governor’s Palace and reported he found the destroyed convoy Mullah Omar was suspected of riding in, but there were no bodies at the site. Local residents had already collected them and brought them into their small village. Mullah Omar was known to be missing an eye he had lost in the war against the Soviets, so with this in mind, John had the grisly chore of checking to see if any of the bodies had this identifying characteristic. It wasn’t CSI but it was John’s field expedient way to determine that Mullah Omar was in fact not among the dead.

  Immediately we began to search the Governor’s Palace compound for booby traps and anything of intelligence value. Al-Qa’ida and the Taliban had occupied this place until very recently, and we assumed they had probably left a surprise or two for us. In the courtyard, a young Afghan fighter was digging through a pile of discarded items when there was a muted “pop” and he let out a scream. His thumb was a bloody mess. We suspected he had picked up a detonator cap and somehow set it off, but we really didn’t know what had caused the small blast. A medic from the ODA tended to his wound and was able to save the thumb.

  Surprisingly, we did not find any other explosive material, hidden or otherwise. We did find numerous boxes of what appeared to be receipts and other miscellaneous forms and papers. Additionally, an Afghan volunteer brought in some boxes of documents he claimed to have taken at gunpoint from an al-Qa’ida member who he caught leaving the rubble of a bombed-out al-Qa’ida safe house. We paid him for his efforts, and Mark secured all the material and began to sort through it on a systematized basis.

  Because there was so much of it, Mark performed a triage of sorts with priority going to anything that might be threat-related. The boxes of Taliban receipts were put aside, and he focused on the remaining material. Using an isolated room in the Governor’s compound, the material was spread out into different piles on a large Afghan rug. Literally sitting on the floor among the documents, he began the tedious review. This was complicated by the fact that the material was not in English. Despite these challenges it wasn’t long before he found something of extreme importance—a plan to carry out an attack in Singapore against the U.S. aircraft carrier Carl Vinson and its crew while they were on shore leave. Other targets such as embassies and U.S.-affiliate
d businesses were identified as well.

  The plan was complete with sketches, a video casing, and accompanying surveillance reports. The icing on the cake was a list of cellphone numbers for the members of a Southeast Asia-based al-Qa’ida-affiliated terrorist cell, which was to carry out the attack. Based on this information, Mark drafted up an intelligence report that Foxtrot sent out under immediate precedence. The captured material was considered to be of such importance that within a few days Mark would hand-carry the material to Islamabad for handover to an FBI representative, thus ending Mark’s service as a Foxtrot team member on a very high note.

  Collecting intelligence that could be used to pre-empt a terrorist attack, particularly one on the scale of the attack planned against the U.S.S. Carl Vinson, was the highest goal of an intelligence officer, and it was precisely the reason we were in Kandahar. To my mind, that one intelligence report alone paid Foxtrot’s freight to get there.

  Another interesting, but much less important, find was a black 4-door armored BMW sedan that belonged to the Taliban’s leader, Mullah Omar. Parked under some trees, no doubt to keep it from being seen from the air, it was completely covered in a thick coating of bird shit. The prodigious amount of excrement baffled me as I hadn’t seen a single bird since I had entered Afghanistan. I suspected there was a metaphor hidden in this mystery, but I didn’t bother to figure it out.

  The BMW obviously had not been driven in quite some time, and after it was checked for explosives we tried to get it started, without success. The Brits saw this as a challenge and continued to try to diagnose the problem but to no avail. The car refused to start.

  * *

  Although it took some weeks, the intelligence contained in Mark’s report would be used to track down and arrest a large al-Qa’ida-affiliated cell in Southeast Asia, thereby neutralizing the threat against the Carl Vinson and perhaps other targets as well. According to a 12 January 2002 Washington Post article, Singaporean authorities gave credit for the prevention of the attack to intelligence collected in Afghanistan by “coalition forces” in December 2001. This was believed to be the first instance where intelligence collected in Afghanistan was used to prevent a terrorist attack outside the country.

  Though we did not know it at the time, also among the captured documents was a filled-in al-Qa’ida membership application form by Jose Padilla, who would be dubbed the “dirty bomber” in press reporting. Mark would one day testify in disguise at Padilla’s trial regarding the chain of custody of the application form. The form proved to be a crucial piece of evidence in linking Padilla to al-Qa’ida, and in leading to his conviction on terrorism charges. The successful conviction of Padilla was not an insignificant success in the war on terror, and Foxtrot team’s contribution to it represented yet another payment of bills incurred in getting to Kandahar.

  34

  Link-up with Echo Team

  Hamid KARZAI AND ELEMENTS of Echo Team, along with the SF Command and Control Element, arrived in Kandahar on 8 and 9 December, and took up temporary residence at Mullah Omar’s compound on the western edge of the city. Shirzai was asked to come to a meeting with Karzai and some local tribal leaders. Foxtrot team was anxious to link up with Echo team, and a few of us accompanied Shirzai to Mullah Omar’s compound.

  Upon arrival we saw crowds of people walking around, many of them members of the international press that had descended on the town with Karzai’s arrival. It was not something we had anticipated or desired. With the exception of a Navy SEAL officer who accompanied us, we wore civilian clothing and were fully armed Westerners. It was impossible to keep a low profile as we walked around trying to find where the meeting was to take place and to locate Echo team. At some point we noticed a crowd headed in the direction of a large building, and the SEAL officer and I merged in with it. As we walked through the walled entranceway, I noticed that international news correspondent Nick Roberts was walking right beside me, a film crew close behind.

  Inside was a huge room with a massive Afghan carpet covering the floor and a couple dozen gray-bearded crossed-legged Afghan elders sitting around it. Standing behind them three rows deep were observers, many of them members of the press awaiting Karzai’s arrival. I spotted an Afghan I recognized from when I was with Echo team in Jacobabad. I walked over and kneeled down beside him and asked where the Americans were. His English was almost non-existent but even that was better than my Pashto, and he somehow managed to tell me where the team was.

  As I stood up to leave, Karzai entered the room from the other side and spotted me. Calling out my name he walked across the center of the room and warmly embraced me.

  I was happy to see Karzai again but the moment was anything but inconspicuous, as all eyes in the room were watching him. I told Karzai that we would talk later, and I quickly left to find Echo team. While my encounter with Karzai was taking place, the SEAL officer walked over to Nick Roberts and asked that his film crew not photograph any of the Americans present, a request he complied with.

  I found Echo team in a small building in another part of Mullah Omar’s compound. They had clearly made themselves at home. As I stepped through the door, a fresh pot of Starbucks was brewing on the coffee maker and the opening notes of the song “Thank You” by Dido filled the air from a portable CD player. I had not heard a female voice in weeks, and as Dido’s lyrics began, she slayed me. I stopped in my tracks just to drink in the sensuousness of her voice. It was heavenly - tantalizing, in fact. Until that moment I had never fully appreciated just how sexy a woman’s voice could be and her song smote me.

  A few of the team members were there, and it was great to see them again. After catching up on our respective situations, I talked to them about what happened with the errant bombing. Don, the deputy team chief for Echo, shared with me that when the bomb hit he was sitting a few feet from a plate glass window typing a report in a building located a short distance from the observation post that had been destroyed. He told me that an instant before the explosion, it felt like a hand had grabbed his shoulder and shoved him forward under the window just before it was blown into the room. He said had he not been thrown forward, the flying glass would have shredded him. It was a strange, inexplicable thing, he said. The bombing had only happened a few days before, and I could see he really didn’t know what to make of the event and was still processing it.

  The other stories I was told about the bombing confirmed what I had imagined. It had been a nightmare for everyone. But despite the brutal circumstances, they had all pulled together—the CIA officers, the SF soldiers, and a special operations element that was with them at the time—to deal with the catastrophe of the mass casualty event. The closest air medevac capability was part of a Marine Expeditionary Unit designated Task Force 58 located in the south of Helmand province near the Pakistan border. This location was identified as Forward Operating Base-Rhino. The MEU was the only U.S. conventional ground force in Afghanistan, and its mission was to block the escape of enemy fighters trying to cross the border in the area. When the Marines denied the request for an immediate daylight Medevac, Colonel Steve Hadley with the Air Force Special Ops Squadron in Jacobabad had responded with a helicopter air rescue, the first ever undertaken in daylight in Afghanistan. His courageous decision against standing directives prohibiting daylight flights over Afghanistan, and the employment of his medical skills at the scene and during the air extraction, had undoubtedly saved the lives of some of the severely wounded Americans and Afghans. If a Most Valuable Player award were given for support to the U.S. efforts in southern Afghanistan in 2001, Steve Hadley would have my vote hands down.

  After spending some time with Echo team, and stopping to listen to Dido one more time, I rejoined Karzai with a couple of other Americans. This time we met in a more private setting in a residence on the compound. Karzai was with several family members whom he introduced to me. They were all very cordial and it was a nice meeting. Karzai was getting ready to fly to an international meeting to forma
lly accept his selection as the head of an interim Afghan government. On the eve of his departure he was relaxed, and as we sipped tea and talked about what was ahead, there was an atmosphere of optimism in the room. I didn’t want to take up too much of his time, and when I made my exit, Karzai stepped outside with me for a moment.

  In the distance, kites that had been banned by the Taliban and had not been flown for years were fluttering high over the rooftops. Perhaps inspired by the sight of them I told Karzai, “I think God is smiling on Afghanistan today.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I think so as well.”

  35

  Raids, Rubble, Rocks, and Lingerie

  Within A COUPLE OF days, Echo team had moved to another compound on the opposite side of the city from Mullah Omar’s, and the SF Command and Control Element joined us at the Governor’s Palace. A couple more SF A teams also arrived and set up with us as well. With the addition of the new personnel, the American presence in the compound swelled to around 75 people.

  One of the first orders of business was to arrange the handover of Kandahar Airport from Shirzai’s fighters to the Marines moving up from Forward Operating Base-Rhino in southern Helmand province. The goal was to do this while drawing as little attention as possible to the fact that U.S. Marines were in the Kandahar area. To achieve this, an SF element met the Marines in the middle of the night and escorted them around the outskirts of Kandahar to the airport where the handover took place. Just so the Marines did not forget who was there first, the ODA had already painted its radio call sign “Texas 17” high up on the airport’s water tower.