CHAPTER 4
Despite my discovery of the Kabul social scene in late 2004, I couldn’t seem to separate work and life because there was no real division. My job was the international equivalent of the police beat, and something was always going boom. On my previous trips overseas, I had to summon short bursts of energy, like a sprinter, but now, six months into this job, I felt like I was running a marathon. As I struggled to pace myself and to hop countries like New Yorkers hopped subways, I realized I was in no way prepared for my boyfriend’s impending move. So I told him the truth, or at least most of it—that I was never home in New Delhi, spending most of my time in other parts of India or Afghanistan or Pakistan or Kyrgyzstan. But he didn’t listen. After more than two years of dating, he wanted a long-term commitment. I still wasn’t sure. It wasn’t just the demands of work. As the child of divorce, I was wary of signing a one-year lease on an apartment, let alone pledging lifelong fidelity. And the excitement of Kabul pulled me like a new lover. It felt epic, nudging me toward ending this safe relationship. Part of me was much more interested in enrolling in the crazy adrenaline rush of Kabul High than in settling down.
So I told Chris he probably shouldn’t come. The next day, he bought a plane ticket. With a new beard and a couple of grubby bags, he showed up at my Delhi apartment early on a December morning. After six months apart, we tried to reclaim our relationship, buying a plug-in Christmas tree, shopping for gifts near skinny Indian Santa Clauses furiously ringing bells, spending a long weekend at an Indian vacation spot. But even there, I continually checked the Internet. A broken-down revolving restaurant that proudly advertised it didn’t charge extra for revolving couldn’t distract me from work. Back at the apartment for the holiday, Chris convinced me to take a break.
“It’s Christmas,” he said. “Try to relax. The world won’t blow up.”
I reminded him of the year before, when an earthquake devastated a town in Iran the day after Christmas. It had been my first experience covering such a massive disaster.
“There you go,” he said. “It could never happen two years in a row.”
So the next day, a Sunday, I spent the entire day in pajamas, reading newspapers and a novel, watching movies. That evening, an editor called in a panic.
“I assume you’re writing a story about the tsunami.”
I uttered the words every editor fears.
“What tsunami?”
And then I was gone again, looking at bodies, flying in an empty plane to Sri Lanka, bouncing between disaster zones, trying to make sense of a natural catastrophe that had wiped away more than 230,000 lives in an instant. So much for the world not blowing up. It always did, when nobody expected it, and often in the week between Christmas and New Year’s.
Chris and I tried to keep our relationship moving forward. He occasionally traveled with me on stories in India, although I was usually too busy to spend time with him. He didn’t get a job; he didn’t even look for one. He didn’t work on his screenplay. He talked about studying Buddhism and spent an inordinate amount of time researching liberal conspiracy theories involving Bush, Rumsfeld, and summer camp. I spent more and more time on the road, until finally, while planning a romantic getaway to Paris, I realized I didn’t feel romantic in the slightest. That’s when I hopped on a plane to a place where Chris would never follow—Kabul. Compared to the reality of dealing with my boyfriend, Afghanistan seemed like a vacation.
I decided to apply for my first “embed,” the Pentagon-devised program that attached journalists to military units. Critics called the program a blatant attempt at propaganda. Journalists considered it the only way to cover an obvious part of the story—the troops. And what better diversion from a flailing romance than running away with the U.S. Army?
This posed a challenge—given the intensity in Iraq, where sixty-seven U.S. troops were killed in the fighting in May, any story in Afghanistan, where three U.S. troops were killed the same month, would likely grab little attention. Only about 18,000 U.S. troops had deployed to Afghanistan, mainly doing combat operations, and another 8,000 troops from other countries handled peacekeeping. True, more foreign troops were here than the year before, but the number was still nothing compared to Iraq, with 138,000 U.S. troops and 23,000 from other countries. Afghanistan was the small war, even if many were casting it as the “good war” compared to the badness of Iraq.
But it was a small war. That spring of 2005, the Taliban were like mosquitoes, constantly irritating, occasionally fatal. Roadside bombs continued to kill soldiers, but helicopter crashes had proved more dangerous. Sure, the Taliban blew up things in the south, but so far they mostly blew up themselves, and their attempts to use recalcitrant donkeys as suicide bombers only provoked laughter. It was a known fact: Afghans and Pakistanis were probably the worst suicide bombers in the entire spectrum of militants.
A photographer and I flew by helicopter to the Orgun-E base in Paktika to embed with U.S. soldiers. Paktika was almost the size of New Jersey, an extremely poor province with no paved roads and few schools, a mountainous and desolate wasteland plopped along the border with Pakistan, right across from the mountainous tribal agencies of North and South Waziristan, otherwise known as Terrorist Haven, the vacuums of Pakistani authority where the Taliban held sway. The U.S. philosophy had been explained to me at Bagram Airfield, the largest U.S. military base in Afghanistan—the troops “drained swamps,” which meant hunting down militants, while “emboldening local leaders and the population.”
As long as I was running away from my problems, I wanted to get out on the front lines, where the swamps were being drained. My goal was a town called Bermel, which the Taliban had seized earlier, cutting off the police chief’s head. U.S. and Afghan troops had recaptured the town and were fighting the bad guys nearby. (I later found out that this was known in military parlance as “troops in contact,” or TIC, or “tick.” I would learn that everything in the military had an acronym. The IED was an improvised explosive device, or a roadside bomb. The BBIED was a body-borne improvised explosive device, otherwise known as a suicide bomber. And the DBIED was a donkey-borne improvised explosive device, otherwise known as a really stupid idea.)
Yes, I wanted to get my war on, because I had no idea what I was talking about, what war was really like. To fill my spare time, and to make sure I didn’t have a spare second to think, I even lugged along something to set the mood, a miniseries about war, Band of Brothers. I planned to be all war, all the time. But as soon as I stepped off the helicopter and met the base media handler, I figured out I was in the wrong place. It soon became obvious that he was unlikely to send me anywhere.
“When you go to the bathroom at night, be sure to take your photographer,” my handler told me. “There are only three other women here.”
I wasn’t sure who or what, exactly, he was worried about, and I didn’t know the proper protocol, so I just smiled and nodded. I knew if he wanted the male photographer to shadow me to the bathroom, we would never be flown to the fighting nearby, close to the border with Pakistan. Every day I asked for a “bird,” figuring that if I used military slang, it would help. Every day I was told no. And I could see why—soldiers were actually fighting the Taliban down near Bermel, and as journalists, we were the last priority for the precious air slots available, slightly below mail. So instead, the photographer and I were sent out on trips with a platoon of combat engineers who were so bored that the leader carried copies of The Complete Guide to Investing in Rental Properties and Own Your Own Corporation with him on patrol.
“Oh, it’s going to be a long, boring day,” he said at the beginning of one. Then he realized that sounded bad. “That’s a good thing.”
That day alone, we visited five villages. The soldiers had several missions. To find out about Afghans in army uniforms robbing so-called jingle trucks, the acid-trip trucks from Pakistan that transported most food and supplies in the region and featured fluorescent fantasy paintings and dangly metal chains that clanked together and sounded like “Jingle Bells.” To find out about a nearby IED. To find out about an alleged insurgent named “Hamid Wali” or maybe “Mohammad Wali,” no one seemed sure—names here frankly as common as Jim or John Wilson. And always, their mission was to win hearts and minds, to convince the Afghans that they were there only to help.
We started by walking around a market in Orgun, where stalls sold everything from pirated DVDs to live chickens. One soldier bought a teapot for $3. A staff sergeant tried to build rapport with the shop owner, who wore a pakol, a traditional hat that resembled a pie with an extra roll of dough on the bottom.
“We’re just trying to collect information about a robbery that happened less than a week ago,” the staff sergeant told Pakol. “Local nationals in green uniforms robbed a jingle truck on Highway 141.”
The optimistically named Highway 141 was a one-lane dirt road. Pakol looked suspicious. “We don’t know. We come here early in the morning. We leave here late in the evening. We haven’t heard anything.”
The staff sergeant tried another question.
“IED on the way to Sharana?”
“We don’t know about this,” Pakol said. Then he waited a beat. “If we see mines or something, we’ll let you know.” He waited another beat. “But if you want tea, we’ll give you tea.”
With no objections, Pakol blew out dust from a few cups and poured from a pot boiling on a gas canister. We all sipped green tea.
“Did you come to help us or what?” Pakol asked, after the first cup was gone. That was Afghan tea protocol. Always wait for a cup of tea to ask a serious question. Pakol then ticked off his complaints, the things he wanted the Americans to fix.
“The dust is really bad,” he said.
“There’s always gonna be something,” the staff sergeant replied.
With that, we left the shop. As we trudged along, everyone stared at us, making it difficult to shop. I knew why: Here were men in army uniforms, flak vests, and helmets, twenty-first-century soldiers carrying guns, looking like unbeatable futuristic fighting machines, establishing a perimeter, looking, checking, in the middle of a fifteenth-century dusty souk. I walked in the middle, wearing a headscarf beneath my helmet, trying to bridge two cultures. I looked at the translator, a nineteen-year-old kid from Kabul. He had wrapped a scarf around the bottom of his face like a Wild West bandit and put on sunglasses and a baseball cap.
“What’s up with the outfit?” I asked him.
“So the people don’t know me,” he said. “The Afghans here say you are not a Muslim if you work with the Americans.”
We left town and drove on. Suddenly someone spotted a suspicious white bag in the middle of the road. Our four-vehicle convoy lurched to a slow stop. Sergeant Ben Crowley, a smart aleck who thrived on making everyone laugh, jumped out of his Humvee. He looked through the scope of his rifle at the bag. No wires poked out, nothing indicated bomb. He moved closer, his gun pointed at the bag. I guess I should say the suspense was killing us, but that would be a lie. Boredom was killing us. I hopped out of my Humvee and walked up to Crowley.
“You gonna kill it?” I asked, staring at the bag. Traffic lined up behind our convoy.
“Bag of dirt,” Crowley said.
“You locked and loaded?”
“No.”
That was our usual exchange, even though soldiers were always supposed to have a round in the chamber, ready to fire. We climbed back into our Humvees and bumped down the ruts that passed for roads at a whopping ten miles an hour, the fastest we could go, making our sad, slow escape into the beige sameness of Paktika. We soon set off on a foot patrol near a mud-walled compound. The soldiers from the Afghan National Army (ANA) went first, in a move to respect the local culture and show that Afghans were taking charge of security. A kid ran inside the compound. Other children started crying.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” said a boy, crying inside the doorway.
A neighbor, a man, walked over.
“The men aren’t here. They went to town.”
A little girl started crying. “I’m scared,” she said.
For a hearts-and-minds mission, even one designed to embolden local leaders, this one was starting to fall apart. The Americans decided to fall back.
“Why did you guys come here?” the neighbor asked.
“We’re leaving,” the translator said. “I don’t know.”
Then he turned to me. “It’s so difficult. The people don’t want to talk. They are scared. They say, ‘We are gonna go to jail.’ ”
I knew this from Afghans—they feared that once the American soldiers showed up at a compound, someone would be carted away and locked up for no reason. This rumor had spread after raids had led to detentions in other villages. In this mostly illiterate country where the rural areas had little in the way of media, news still spread largely through rumor, through word of mouth. Many Afghans had also used the Americans to carry out their own personal vendettas, dropping a dime on some rival who had nothing to do with the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, or any of the other insurgent groups who didn’t want foreign troops in Afghanistan.
We left. Almost immediately, the Humvee in front of us broke down. It had been in the shop for a broken fuel pump twice that week. Now it was dead again, choked with the dust that coated everything, somehow working its way beneath fingernails, into the corners of mouths, behind ears, without even trying. We tied up the Humvee to tow it. The soldiers swore. Everything here took forever. Everything moved at the pace of a Humvee towed by red tape over a moonscape. It was one step forward, four steps back. Thus impaired, lugging more than five tons of dead weight, we rolled on to the next village, finding a hostile man working near a ditch.
“Who is your president?” asked a sergeant major, testing the man’s knowledge.
“Karzai,” replied the hostile man, who had muddy feet. He paused. “Why are you here?”
“Ensuring safety and security to the Afghan people,” the sergeant major said. He nodded. “The ANA is here today.”
Muddy Feet looked at the sergeant major as if he were impaired. Of course he knew who was president. Of course he knew the ANA was there. He was not stupid. He was not blind. And this conversation was not off to a good start.
“We agree President Karzai is our president,” Muddy Feet said, somewhat carefully. “We appreciate our ANA soldiers. You’re looking for caches? You’re going to search for weapons? You should get permission from our government.”
Muddy Feet had just tripped a magic switch. He mentioned “caches,” as in “caches of weapons.”
The sergeant major looked at the translator. “Why did he bring up caches, when we didn’t even talk about it?”
The translator shrugged.
“I think you’re going to check in our houses,” Muddy Feet said, correctly reading the situation. He shook his head. “That’s wrong.”
A boy in a Scooby-Doo T-shirt walked up and stared at me. The sergeant major and Muddy Feet stared at each other.
“I’m not afraid of you,” Muddy Feet said.
“He’s hiding something,” the sergeant major said to the translator.
An elder walked up. How did I know? He had a turban and a beard, and all the Afghans parted for him deferentially. The sergeant major turned to the man in charge.
“I’ve got one question for you,” the sergeant major said. “One of your village members brought up the word ‘cache.’ Do you know anything about a cache?”
“I don’t know,” the elder said. “I came here fifteen days ago from Karachi.”
“Oh, Pakistan!” the sergeant major said, as if that made everything clear. “So you can tell me about the Taliban or Al-Qaeda coming across the border.”
The elder stared at him. This was awkward. The Afghan soldiers were sent to search Muddy Feet’s compound. They did, finding nothing.
“Tea?” the elder asked.
“Sure,” a staff sergeant answered before the sergeant major could say anything. “I’m here to socialize. Whatever he wants.” He took off his helmet.
“Take care of your helmet,” Muddy Feet said. “Someone might steal it.”
We all walked inside a nearby compound, into a sitting room near the front. Mop-haired girls with kohl-lined eyes and bright orange and green dresses poked their heads around a corner to giggle and stare. We dropped onto cushions in a room. All the Americans took off their helmets and body armor and rested them and their weapons against the wall.
“Whenever you want to come here, you can come here,” the elder told them.
A boy poured the sweet milky tea from a thermos and quickly handed us each a cup.
“Some questions,” the staff sergeant started. “Do you know about any jingle-truck robberies?”
The elder thought, looked at the ceiling. “Whoever did it, they’re not Afghans. They might be from another country.”
“What about an IED?”
“I don’t know, I was not here,” the elder said.
“If you have any problems in the village, come to the base,” the staff sergeant told the Afghans. They nodded. Sure they would.
Mission accomplished, we stood, and after lacing up our boots at the door, walked out.
“Let’s go sing ‘Kumbaya,’ ” the staff sergeant said, before heading back to the base. I was pretty sure he was joking.
Everywhere we went, we heard the same story. No jingle trucks. No IEDs. No one named Wali.
The roads were so bad that convoys could barely go anywhere. It raised an obvious question—three and a half years after the fall of the Taliban, out near a small U.S. military base in a onetime Taliban haven near the border with Pakistan, little had been improved, like roads and power. The soldiers seemed to be marking time, handing out candy and meeting with elders who just talked about how much they needed. The soldiers were forced to double as aid workers, and aid was noticeably absent. Still, I was told it was better than before—these were the first U.S. soldiers many villagers had seen in two years. Just outside the base, a new cobblestone road named “The Road of the Future” was being built. At about a mile and a half long and with a U.S. price tag of $200,000, it would be the province’s first cobblestone road—slight progress, and an indication of how much effort and money was needed for the smallest of improvements in Afghanistan.
The photographer and I spent most of our time sitting inside the forward operating base, called a “FOB,” like the other fobbits, the nickname for people who spent all their time inside the wire. I watched all of Band of Brothers. I worked out in the gym. I drank a lot of water and went to bed early every night. I actively avoided calling or e-mailing Chris, falling back on the excuse that I was at war, after all. Being here was like being at the Afghan version of a spa, with no liquor, plenty of sleep, little stress, and little Internet access. I didn’t have to worry about the daily news. I didn’t have to worry about anything.
Mainly I hung out. I talked to the soldiers in my engineering platoon, including Crowley, a North Carolina native who blew apart any soldier stereotype I had. He had earned an anthropology degree, started graduate school in England before running out of money, and joined the army to be able to afford to go back. He was bright and, at twenty-eight, older than the other soldiers. He was cute, with slightly exaggerated ears and a big smile. Like other soldiers here, he complained to me about the difference between Iraq and Afghanistan, about the amorphous process of winning hearts and minds and meeting villagers instead of fighting bad guys. He handed out candy to kids, yanked off his helmet to wiggle his ears, won a game of “bloody knuckles” with an Afghan boy, played “Dixie” on his harmonica, and accidentally tossed a pen into a pile of cow manure when he was trying to give it to a kid. (The kids, predictably, dove into the manure, fighting over the pen.) Crowley was funny.
“Iraq is like a war,” Crowley told me. “This is like a summer camp.”
And later, he was more serious. “The army doesn’t put a lot of effort into us here,” Crowley said. “It seems like the military as a whole doesn’t care about the welfare of soldiers in Afghanistan. Here, we get a lot more complacent. I don’t ever chamber a round in my rifle anymore. Because I know nothing’s gonna happen.”
How complacent were these troops? They told us we didn’t need to wear our body armor and helmets on patrol, that they weren’t necessary. Everyone complained about how Afghanistan was a “forgotten war.” They even got generic letters about Iraq from troop-supporting strangers back in the United States.
On patrol, I spent time near Crowley because he was so open and easy. Sometimes he talked about his fiancée and his ex-wife. He was leaving the base in a few days for vacation and was getting married in a week. It was an experience I would repeatedly have, where male soldiers, many starved for female company or for a new ear to listen, would tell me things that they shouldn’t necessarily have revealed. Divorce, infidelity, loneliness—they would tell me their secrets and watch me take notes. In return, I would give them nothing—no information about my personal life, my past loves, my own flaws. One soldier in Crowley’s platoon, always an outcast, always teased for not holding his weapon correctly, sat down with the photographer and me in the mess hall one afternoon and spilled out how he never should have joined the army.
“I’m just not the world’s best soldier,” the young man said. “If there’s a way to mess something up, I manage to find it.”
It created a dilemma. I knew that the soldiers might suffer for their indiscretions. But at the same time, some of their indiscretions would be the most powerful stories. With Crowley’s fellow soldier, the one who wasn’t cut out for the army, I chose not to quote him. It was a judgment call. I didn’t want to be responsible for anything bad that might happen.
Being on an embed created other problems, such as being dependent on the very people you wrote about, and naturally wanting them to like you, and wanting the military not to blackball you. The soldiers took care of us. They sent a translator to the market to buy sunglasses and sweaters for us. They were American like me. They reminded me of Montana. They yelled at Afghan men who tried to take my picture with their cell phones. “What would you do if we tried to take a picture of your women?” one soldier said to a smiling Afghan, who snapped the picture anyway.
Regardless of any of this, I wrote the story that was right in front of me—the “forgotten war,” the bored soldiers, feeling left out of the Iraq action, and Crowley, unlocked and unloaded. He left for vacation, to get married, the same day the photographer and I flew back to Bagram Airfield.
The story got a lot of reaction. I realized how carefully everyone read anything about the troops. Through an unspoken agreement, I was expected to leave out the boredom and the fact that Crowley repeatedly was not locked and loaded. I told my critics that I just wrote what I saw. I moved on.
I had no idea what would happen.