2002: Pastghanistan

CW: This story contains depictions of war, civilian casualties, and the trauma of military occupation.

2002: Pastghanistan

By W Goodwin

War-tuned vehicles rumbled out of Kabul city every day. I really wanted to ride with those badass guys and cover the action, but they thought I needed to work up to it, prove myself, show this woman reporter was up to the rigors of hanging with the soldiers. To start, they assigned me to the city, but I threw a tantrum and got placed with a ‘presence patrol’ consisting of a couple of low-key civilian cars heading out once or twice a week to pursue what the Commanding Officer termed “positive contacts” with the locals. I quickly learned the C.O. was using ‘p-patrols’ to keep new in-country journalists like me separated from live fire.

I understood why they felt that way about me. This was my first stint as a war correspondent, and to make my situation more tenuous, I was older than most of the journalists in the Kabul press core. At that point in the Coalition’s presence in Afghanistan, I was also the only femalereporter in-country. It didn’t take a genius to recognize the military harbored a deep aversion to having women in war zones, and I heard they were not even assigning female soldiers to combat groups.

So there I was, four days out of New York City, my first day in Kabul, and sleeping alone in an apartment designated for female reporters. Every morning I was there, I rose early, dressed in my Patagonia and North Face, stuffed my rosary beads into a pocket of the mandatory flak jacket, and headed over to the commissary. I picked up a pre-packed meal and went to the motor pool to meet my assigned team.

When I found the two beat-up Toyota SUVs, their engines were running. The six soldiers making up this presence patrol were dressed in civies and, to my surprise, included a woman. It was clear they were itching to get going. In a flood of first names and military abbreviations, they all quickly introduced themselves, and then directed me to the back seat of one of the vehicles. Two of the soldiers piled into the front while the woman and the other three men climbed into the second SUV. We lurched out of the compound and head for, as I remembered from last night’s briefing, the deep valleys and steep mountains east of Kabul. I had heard concerns Bin Laden might be hiding there, but I was more amped than anxious.

Ten minutes out, the already dense traffic seemed to congeal, and our two-car convoy staggered to a stop. My guys’ intel had failed to note a big event taking place in the sprawling camelmarket on the eastern edge of town.Dust, horns, and shouting filled the air. From the chatter I heard on the radios, it was obvious my guys were surprised and irritated by the stoppage, and their casual demeanor instantly veered into tension and vigilance. Witnessing them instantly morphing into full alert withwindows down, and hands on sidearms dissolved any illusion I had of being relatively safe in Kabul. Suddenly things felt seriously dangerous.

We were at a standstill when my attention was drawn to a white-bearded man sitting nearby in the shade of a bullet-pocked wall. His cheeks bore the scars ofsmallpox, and I imagined I saw a life of winters and wars in his eyes. He perched atop a three-legged stool, an alms bowl and a small green melon at his feet. A wooden crutch, leather pad worn and sweat-stained, lay atilt against the wall. A clay water pipe rested on the ground next to him, and he held an unlit wooden match between two dark fingertips. The man caught me staring at him, and his brows lifted, and for a heartbeat, his neutral look became a squinty-eyed glower. Perhaps it was his reaction to the odor wafting from the camel lots, or maybe he was one of the many Afghans offended by foreigners in their country. As we began to roll again, the old man’s neutral look returned. He struck his match and fired up the water pipe. His would be the first Afghan face I remembered.

Leaving the market and its thousand snorting beasts, unlicensed camel jockeys, and amorphous crowds of men who probably all had motives to shoot us, weaccelerated away from Kabul. Outsideof town, except for occasional military vehicles and a few donkey carts, the road was ours. The two-lane highway was patched and sun-bleached like the roads on the reservation where I grew up. An hour passed and the thump-thump of our tires on the macadam had me trancing-out, and I was wondering if the SUV was the same model as my father’s car. Then, appalledto suddenly find myself daydreaming, I snapped to attention. The SUVs were slowing...

Looking between the heads of the two soldiers in the front seat, I saw the highway ahead was going to split. On a sign perforated by bullet holes, I saw two arrows, one pointing left to the Khyber Pass, the other pointingright to Tora Bora. Without slowing, we veeredright. The pavement gave way to a gradedgravel road which soon degraded to a wash-boarded dirt track.

Ascending the dangerous world of the Safed Koh mountains, it seemed we were slipping into another dimension. This rugged area, known to shelter Taliban forces and probably Bin Laden himself, was an ill-defined area of inhabited features like small farms, mudbrick fortresses, and well-developed cave systems surrounded by mostly deforested, snow-topped mountains flanked by steep talus slopes. I saw rows of holes traversing the lower inclines. A briefing had taught me these holes provided access to some unique tunnels, called karezes. They were thousands of years old and used for carrying water from glaciers and mountain springs to the villages. A century ago, when the British tried to dominatethe region with an India-style Raj, Afghan resistance fighters used the karezs to escape or outflank British forces. They were so successful England had to excuse Afghanistan from forced participation in the British Empire.

Our two vehicles advanced ever deeper into the canyons and cliffs of the Safed Koh. A steep mountainside hemmed us in on the left, and a spooky drop-off fell thousands of feet into a narrow valley on our right. After a while we came to a man walking on the road. He carried a heavy burlap bag in one hand and a load on his shoulders. Our two SUVs slowed. The man heard us coming and glanced back. He moved to the edge but continued walking. We pulled even with the Afghan… windows down… gravel crunching… car and man moving at the same slow pace. The second SUV stayed back, covering my car from behind. We all stared at the man.

The load on the Afghan man’s shoulders turned out to be a young girl. She seemed to be asleep. The man wore the typical Afghan garb of long-tailed shirt, baggy pants, and vest. On his head at a rakish angle set a pakol cap, and he held what looked like a heavy duffle bag in one hand. Our guys exchanged nods with the man. He was not an obvious combatant, and we drove on without speaking to him. I noticed our driver accelerated carefully so as not to blow gravel or too much dust toward the man. Apparently, what I had heard about the presencepatrol guys getting empathy training was true.

A few minutes later, we stopped to examine the karezes and caves visible on the other side of the valley. A couple of my guys were looking at the cliffs throughtheir bins when the Afghan man we had just passedcaught up with us. He stopped as he reached the back of our second vehicle. The slumbering girl was still on his shoulders as he dropped the heavy bag he was carrying to the ground.In a flash, two of our guys were out and racing back to interdict. They gave him a perfunctory Sala’am Alekum before ordering him to move his bag over to the edge of the cliff, which he immediately did. Our female soldier, whose name was Jan, was also our translator, and she commanded him to open the bag while the men stood back with side arms drawn. She looked in, put a hand into the bag, then turned and said, “Some kind of seeds… No weapons… No explosives.”

He said his name was Gul Yar. The little girl on his shoulders was his daughter, Nahzy. Every time Gul Yar said her name, she opened her eyes, then shyly closed them again. Jan determined he spoke Farsi, Dari, and a little Pashto, but almost no English. In a soft but commanding voice, she stepped right up to Gul Yar and began interrogating him in Farsi and translating his replies for the soldiers. He claimed to be a farmer at , a villagewe had passed two kilometers back. Maybe it was his formal dignity or the way his eyes seemed more humane than the eyes of the old man I had seen outside the camel market, but I rather liked Gul Yar. I especially appreciated how carefully he held his daughter, who was awake and alert now. I knew I would remember these people too.

Jan continued grilling him. Where do you live? What do you do? Where are you going? What kind of seeds are those? Have you seen armed men on the road? Do you use the karezes to travel? Gul Yar seemed relaxed as he explained he was on his way to visit family members at , another village six clicksup the road. When he noticed our guys studyingthe karezes across the valley, he readily admitted he and his older children often worked on the water tunnels. The Afghan added something else and Jan translated: “Everyone shares karez duties.” I appreciated being enlightened by Gul Yar, but the guys seemed skeptical.

One of the soldiers said, “They all hide things from us,”

“Everyone lies,” said another.

Jan continued to press the man for information about the caves in the cliffs on the other side of the valley, caves where Gul Yar and his daughter may, or may not, have lived themselves. I was learning, besides the problems presented by our different languages, the locals oftenlied to westerners out of defensive habit or even just to show off by implying he knew warlords and wealthy landowners. Gul Yar might simply have been bragging; warlords were folk heroes in the Safed Koh.

The soldiers with the binoculars later told me they saw entire families, electronics, and all kinds of equipment inside the spiffed-up caves. I was beginningto see how language, historical distrust, and strategic secrets gummed up communications in Afghanistan.

Iwas surprised when myguys offered Gulyar and Nahzy a ride, and even more surprised when he accepted. When they climbed in beside me, they filled the car’s interior with the smell of wood smoke. Nahzy sat next to me. She immediately fixed on the Saint Christopher medal I always wear.

Gul Yar seemed deferential and politein a junglee sort of way, junglee being a term dating back to the old British Raj. It is pretty much a racist term referring to tribal people living in the outback far from the nearest villages, and I frequently heard soldiers use it. Life was rough out there, and sometimes the soldiers attended to different mores than we were accustomed to back home. I used the term here because it is part of the truth.

As Nahzy and her father were getting out, I quickly pulled off my Saint Christopher’s medal and slipped it over Nahzy’s head… Did not even think about it. She gave me a brief, but sweet, little smile.

After we dropped off Gul Yar and Nahzy, the Army Specialist named Jan revealed her intimate knowledge of the military’s actions by describing how, during the previous month, Coalition units tasked with stopping al-Qaeda operatives from using the tunnels had cleared the area. I suspected she was saying that just to reassureme the area was safe, but it made me wonder what sorts of hardships not having a functioning karez would cause the locals.

While I had her ear, I asked Jan how she had come to be in a combat role even though women were banned from direct assignment to ground combat units. She said, “A few female soldiers are ‘temporarily attached,’ as they say, to certain all-male units. They encourage us not to speak openly about the work we’re doing, but I can tell you I’m here mostly to search local women at checkpoints and during home raids. It helps that the Army taught me Farsi.”

Just before sunset, we came to a crude, camouflaged forward operating base manned by a squadof heavily armed, rugged-looking soldiers. I supposed they were the American equivalent of junglees. My guys pitched tents, including one just for Jan and me. We ate MREs for dinner and crashed.

I was awakened at dawn by a lot of chatter on the radios. They delivered critical new intel involving more Coalitionbombing coming soon. The soldiers hurriedly deconstructed and packed up the camp. We hit the road again with the rising sun.

On the ride back to Kabul, I found myself in a ‘real’ convoy. At the front were three loud, Mine-

Resistant, Ambush-Protected vehicles packed with the heavily armed soldiersfrom the forwardbase. Behind them came our sorry pair of old SUVs, and behind us, a fourth MRAP. When we got back to Kabul that afternoon, Commandbriefed us on the heavy bombing that had taken place during the day by Coalition aircraft flying over the very places we had just driven through.

***

The next day I returned to the same area, this time embedded with an “active patrol.” I rode in a MRAP and wore full body armor with a helmet. At eachof the villages I had seen during my first patrol, I saw craters. I saw corpses. I saw tatters of cloth in the still-smoking mudbrick rubble. At first the only livingthings I saw were ravensand goats… but then a few womenappeared. They moved like specters,their pleated chadors fluttering in the breeze as they wrapped their dead in white fabric.

***

Before I left Afghanistan, the C.O. placed me in nine more patrolsto the Tora Bora region.I asked around.I looked everywhere. Even with help from Jan and military intelligence, I never saw or heard a single word about Gul Yar or Nahzy. Then, on my next-to-last trip into those mountains, an officer showed me a tarnished Saint Christopher’s medal a villager had found and given to one of our local contacts. It was mine.

And the war went on, saecula saeculorem.

Afghanistan would never again be the same. The place I had begun to know was Pastghanistan.

[Note to editors/judges: the author’s b&w image of Gulyar and Nahzy taken in Tora Bora is available.]