One Hundred Victories (31 page)

In many of these respects, the Philippine mission very closely resembled what the US mission in Afghanistan was becoming. The Afghan government was asserting its sovereignty as the Filipinos had from the outset. Although Afghans appreciated American and coalition help, they wanted to run their own war. And they did not want foreign commandos storming into Afghan homes in the middle of the night; the Americans had never grasped how deep a cultural affront this was to the Afghans. The mission was becoming one of US support to Afghans taking the lead, an arrangement that would be formalized with the end to coalition combat operations by 2014, if not before. If the United States stayed on past 2014, its military headquarters would transition from being a war-fighting headquarters to being an advisory assistance group, and the US ambassador would become the primary interlocutor with the host government.

Russ and other 1st Group operators had ample experience working under similar restrictive conditions, not only in the Philippines but also in Thailand and Indonesia. Thailand had been a partner in regional security endeavors since the Vietnam War; it also faced its own brewing insurgency in its south that was rooted in historical, ethnic, and religious tensions. Special operators had been training and working alongside Thai military forces for decades; many of them had signed up for a grueling jungle warfare course as part of the relationship-​building and to burnish their own fighting and survival skills. In the past decade, after a long-standing ban on military-to-military engagement was lifted, special operators had also begun to conduct training in Indonesia. This training provided critical on-ground contacts for the United States in the world’s most populous Muslim nation (over 200 million)—the fourth most populous country in the world. US special operators also participated in a massive training exercise called “Cobra Gold” that was held in Thailand each year with half a dozen Asian nations.

The operators from 1st Group knew that their experience was highly relevant, so they shrugged off the wisecracks from other special operations units that had been heavily involved in the combat operations of the past decade. It was true that Afghanistan was a more lethal environment than Asia, but the degree of restraint needed as the United States shifted from a combat to an advisory role favored their background. In any event, Russ and most of the team members had tasted the combat environment on one or more tours in Iraq.

Before deploying, ODA 1114 studied Paktika’s human and physical terrain, drawing on topographical maps and intelligence reports to identify the wadis and valleys that the insurgents used and the key chokepoints for heading them off. As the team settled into Super FOB, they made quick headway in the receptive district of Zarghun Shah. It was a good warm-up exercise for the team: the district was near the provincial capital and not very insurgent-infested. In addition, the deputy director of the Afghan intelligence service hailed from the district, and he wanted to ensure the program’s success there. Soon the team had a burgeoning force led by an energetic Afghan who had worked with the Afghan intelligence service and on road-building projects. In consultation with the team, he arrayed his force in checkpoints to block insurgent traffic from the east, monitoring his charges daily. His only lament, he said, was that he did not know how to read or write; he hoped that the program would include literacy classes one day. His deputy was literate, however, so he handled the payroll and recordkeeping duties.
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The team’s next target was a more difficult one, the district of Yahya Khel. The team members piled into their heavy armored vehicles, the MATVs, for one of their regular meetings with the elders there, but they avoided the direct route. Route Dodge, the main east-west road, was a notorious road seeded with mines that had killed and maimed coalition troops and civilians. They veered off the hardball asphalt onto a dirt road, and then off that road into a field, for a teeth-jarring ride over mounded irrigation channels. They would chart a different path for each visit to foil would-be attackers.
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Arriving at the district center, the team entered the gate and backed up the vehicles to “combat park” them for quick exit should an attack occur. A conventional unit had once been housed here, and the lookout tower above the concrete walls was pockmarked with bullet holes. The fighting here had been so fierce that the unit had been pulled out the previous year. As the meeting time approached, a steady stream of people filed in, including elders on foot or in cars, policemen in green trucks, and the district subgovernor, who lived elsewhere and came to work when he thought it safe enough.

As soon as the shura began, one elder complained about how the team had ridden roughshod over their fields. It was entirely understandable: repairing the damage would require backbreaking labor. The dirt mounds that channeled the water when they irrigated their fields would have to be reformed. “We would like to ask that you please not drive on the fields,” said a wizened man in a pouf of a turban, with a tuft of cloth jauntily sticking out of the top like tail feathers on a bird. Each tribe wore turbans made of a different fabric, and each man expressed his personal style in the way he tied it. The fabrics were lustrous cottons with stripes and sheen, and a rainbow of subtle colors. The most numerous clan in the room all wore turbans of pale yellow cloth.

The elders who came to the meetings or spoke up were not always the most powerful figures. The latter often hung back to exercise their influence more discreetly. Several elders expressed concern that the ALP would be overrun. One especially vocal elder said, “Two hundred is not enough. There are four routes the Taliban can use.” He recounted the attacks they had suffered in the past year. At the end of the discussion the official shura leader, Haji Yar Mohammed, sought to rally the others. Three of his sons had joined the ALP. “We will fight all of Pakistan if we have to, with your help,” he said, and Russ started clapping to support him. After the shura, the sixty-year-old elder added, “I have a rifle in my house and am ready to fight, too.”

The first of two objectives in the meeting was to nominate local representatives to link into the provincial offices that were responsible for bringing education, health, and other services to the district. The civil affairs officer who was the one-man District Augmentation Team explained the process and the requirements several times. Jason Russell, the team leader, tried to steer them to a choice based on merit: “You want to pick your best-qualified, most educated person because he will be able to bring the government projects to the village.” During the meeting, the chief warrant officer unobtrusively snapped photos of villagers who had crammed into the room. The operators knew many Taliban were very likely in their midst.

The second objective was to select Afghan Local Police commanders. The shura had already voted previously to form a local police force, but the Afghans were at odds over who would lead it, with their choices reflecting the rivalries among the three subtribes in the area. The elders were unable to reach a consensus. After a hearty lunch was served, the Afghans and the team set off to survey a vacant clinic nearby—no medical personnel were available to staff it. One of the sergeants who had been strolling in the bazaar while the shura was taking place returned, chewing on a warm piece of fresh nan bread. He marveled at how much had changed since the team had first visited Yahya Khel a month before. The bazaar had been closed, but now that local police had been nominated and trained, the shops lining the main street were open and bustling. Old men sat on chairs outside their little kiosks, selling vegetables, aluminum and plastic kitchenware, and clothing.

The team was feeling good. Russ and his weapons sergeants had overseen the training of the local police for the two districts. They had 174 recruits in their first class, which made the group the largest yet trained by any team in Afghanistan. The week before, the team’s company, battalion, and CJSOTF commanders had all flown in to attend the graduation and validation ceremony along with a phalanx of Afghan officials. It was an auspicious start to the team’s tour, but something bothered the company commander. His “spidey sense” went off as he surveyed the graduating class. He did not feel that all the looks in the crowd were friendly. That premonition proved to be correct. There was a bad apple in the barrel.
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Less than two weeks later, a contingent of the new local police settled in for the night shift at their newly constructed checkpoint. They sat in the crude plywood lookout tower drinking chai tea. One of the policemen had slipped a drug into the tea, and they were soon fast asleep. He picked up a gun and shot them all dead—nine in all—and then took their AK-47 rifles and fled in the new pickup truck they had been issued.

The team quickly discovered who the perpetrator was—a former Taliban fighter who had been accepted into the class on the insistence of the elders. The team had not wanted to include the man

once they learned of his past. The youth had gone through the official Afghan reintegration program after being approved by the provincial peace council. Afghan intelligence vetted him and approved his admission. The elders believed he had been a wayward youth but was genuinely finished with the Taliban. He had been complicit in the killing of his own father, a friend of Yar Mohammed, but the elders believed the son’s conversion was genuine. Russell’s team was unaware of this familial treachery at the time of his recruitment. The operators were ultimately persuaded by the other recruits’ willingness to accept him as one of them. But as they delved into his past after the killing, they learned that the son had approved the Taliban decision to kill his father, who was an outspoken critic of the Taliban. He was upset with his father for trying to get him to leave the insurgency. The Afghan police followed the fugitive’s trail, but he was gone, very likely to Pakistan.

The crisis brought the provincial governor and the police chief to Yahya Khel. They summoned Commander Aziz from Orgun to accompany them. It looked as though the Yahya Khel local police might fall apart. Suspicion and recriminations rippled through the ranks. Who had supported the killer? How was he able to escape without help? The policemen, although they had known each other for years, began pointing fingers, suspecting each other of active or passive support for the insurgents. One of the nine killed was a commander, and as clan politics again surged to the fore, no one could agree on who should replace him. At the provincial police chief’s request, Aziz stayed on for several days to provide additional security and participate in meetings with the elders. Aziz left behind a squad of his men to work with the team as they sought to find a new commander and shore up the shaky morale. Doubts sown here could affect their prospects throughout western Paktika.

Team ODA 1114 moved into a mud-walled compound they rented about two kilometers away from the Yahya Khel district center and worked to hold the line. Their priority was persuading the police not to quit, but they were diverted by attacks on their compound. The Taliban were not going to let them move in uncontested. The team members knew they were being watched, and they tracked the insurgents’ chatter on the scanner. The special operators’ movements over the wide flat valley were easy to spot. Fighting season had kicked off in earnest, and the team’s qalat made a perfect target. Insurgents pummeled the compound with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, and small arms fire. At night they would creep in to plant IEDs on the approach to the compound. The team repelled the attacks and, using the Afghan Local Police lookouts in their nearest checkpoint, spotted the holes that were dug the night before. The IEDs were the biggest problem; the victims were the very villagers whom the team was trying to protect. The team treated the wounded and petitioned for an ordnance disposal technician, who was sent to live with them. The villagers began to report IEDs to them as well.

The local police of Yahya Khel were put to the test not long thereafter, when the Taliban attacked the bazaar on May 10, 2012. The local police quickly shepherded the children in a nearby school to safety and helped repel the attack, along with Aziz’s men and national police. It appeared to be a galvanizing moment, as the village rallied around its local defenders and expressed fury at the Taliban’s assault. The US State Department lead at the provincial reconstruction team and a rare American fluent in Pashto, Jess Patterson, said that she read reports that the residents of Yahya Khel spat on the corpses of the dead Taliban that remained behind in the market. They left them there to fester, refusing to bury them. She followed events in Yahya Khel closely because two of her team members had been killed by a bomb there.
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Jason Russell, the team leader, feeling the pressure from his superior officers, decided to split the team and send half to a third district. He stayed with half the team to help Yahya Khel move ahead, while Russ took the other half to the third district to begin the process all over again. They did not have time to fully equip and field a force there, but Jason felt satisfied with what the team had accomplished. The local police had survived their worst insider killing yet and rebounded. Western Paktika had an Afghan Local Police force of 511 by year’s end, which provided an indigenous line of defense separating the badlands of the border with Pakistan from Highway One.
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Later, looking back at the team’s experience in western Paktika, Jason said, “I think there is a tipping point in each district where the realization sinks in, when enough recruits come forward, enough Taliban are killed, or enough attacks are repulsed, that they think they are going to win.” He reflected, “Somewhere in there was a point when momentum shifted to the government side. The Taliban had had the power until then.” The force he was leaving behind could count on some good commanders. “As long as they stick together I think they will make it,” he concluded.