In My Father's Country (44 page)

It seemed like a minor adjustment, but I liked the impact made with
just this one task, and it made me realize how much more there was outside the wire that I could positively influence. Sitting in the office, talking to the occasional Afghan laborer, who most likely wasn’t being completely honest in answering my questions, fearing losing his job if he was, felt like a waste of my position, and I was getting very impatient.

The start of my deployment at Salerno was very rocky, and there were many days during those first couple of months when I almost packed my stuff and said good-bye to the country that was making my life unbearable with the hold it had on me. I didn’t understand what it wanted from me, and I yearned for the simplicity of my American life. I climbed up the hill almost daily to figure out my next step, hoping to find some kind of guidance from the spirits of the past. The goal of connecting with people who lived in this isolation offered to them by the majestic and imposing mountains seemed exhausting. Why did I feel the need to do it? Why couldn’t I find happiness like millions of other Americans living in America? Those nights of answerless questions were when I would most often dream about Baba. I remember one dream vividly: I was running (I am always running in my dreams), and I knew that someone malevolent was behind me, and gaining. I came across a wall made of mud, and I tried to climb it, but I couldn’t get a hold because the mud kept becoming dust that was falling in my eyes and keeping me from looking up. Then Baba leaned over the wall, smiled at me, and reached out his hand. I woke up knowing I was being guided by him, or by my father, or maybe by them together. That feeling of being watched over stayed with me throughout my physically exhausting but emotionally energizing deployment. I never felt invincible—nobody is on that kind of unforgiving terrain—but I did feel blessed knowing that I had a purpose to fulfill, and that I would be given the help from above that I would need to fulfill it.

T
HIRTY-ONE

O
ver the course of the next fifteen months, I worked with the kind of single-mindedness that drives Mamai and my siblings insane. My personal aim became clear: Talk to Afghans and discover the redeeming qualities of Afghans for which my father gave up his life. But there was a parallel objective as well—to use the knowledge gained in the process to smooth out the discord that was growing—and continues to grow—between my native and adoptive nations. The commander saw the benefit of sending me out into remote villages with a company of soldiers who were tasked to support my research. In the process, I would help the soldiers build lasting relationships with the villagers and encourage them to revisit and see how their relationships could be built upon and passed to incoming units.

Although the process of learning and understanding the human terrain of Afghanistan would always be grueling and frustrating, the job would have been a lot easier in 2005 than it was in 2008 and 2009. In the decadelong fight against terrorism, there were mistakes made—not necessarily by the soldiers on the ground but by the policy makers in Washington, D.C. What
had
really happened from 2004 when I signed the first contract to deploy to Afghanistan to change the cries of the Afghan children running alongside our Humvees from “I love you” to “Fuck you”?

THE UNIT I
was attached to at that time had been on the ground long enough to be curious about the Afghans but hadn’t had the time to satisfy their curiosity. One day, when Jason asked me to come to his office, I went in not knowing what he had decided to task me with, but I knew I would potentially have all the resources of the brigade dedicated to it. He would be issuing a fragmentary order, or FRAGO. FRAGOs are how the army leadership issues tasks and orders to its soldiers and officers.

Jason wanted to talk about the Khost-Gardez Pass road, which is the only route in or out of eastern Afghanistan. The road is narrow and winds through the provinces of Khost, Paktya, and Paktika, connecting them to one another, and to the outside world. It took ten years of fighting for the Soviets to pave the K-G Pass road; within weeks after the Russians were gone the local tribes had ripped it up and sold pieces of the road on the other side of the border, just to show spite. By the time I got to Khost, in 2008, USAID dedicated $160 million to open and repave the road but could not maintain security for the crew working on the road. Therefore progress had been excruciatingly slow and a sore topic of conversation with the surrounding villagers. The insurgents had immediately realized the opportunity this road presented. The way to stop a United States–funded project, or any project in Afghanistan, is to plant roadside bombs and IEDs and kill local laborers to intimidate the rest to quit. Jason had decided to make security and stability of the pass his brigade’s priority, and I was tasked with what seemed to be yet another mission impossible: to find out why villagers around the road were so “pissed” at the United States, which was only trying to make their area more accessible by finishing this road. Why did they seem to be against the Americans when there was so much to be gained economically by allying with us?

Finally, after all my years in Afghanistan, I found a professional meeting that would also get me closer to my personal objective. I was excited and nervous. I knew the reputation of the Zadran, the tribe that dominated the regions around the K-G Pass, how isolated they were up on
their mountain. Even among the willful reputations of all the Pashtun tribes, the Zadran are known as the mountain tribe, immovable like the mountains. They had no industry and they grew their own food. The rest of the world was of no use to them. They were not interested in building any alliances with outsiders. We would drive though a village and not see a single soul, but we knew that people came out once we left. It is an indescribable feeling to go through a town that doesn’t want to be seen. It could be a scene from a zombie movie.

For the next fifteen months I flew among Khost, Paktya, and Paktika, the axis of insurgency through which attacks are conducted in all of Afghanistan, on a singular mission: to hold simple, constructive conversations with the Pashtuns to find out why they didn’t want to work with the Americans and what had turned them away from us. On the ground we traveled in a convoy of no fewer than ten Humvees and several ANA trucks. I dressed like the soldiers, in camouflage fatigues, body armor, and army-issued boots that became the most comfortable shoes I’d ever worn. I even walked like a soldier, constantly checking my surroundings while moving very fast. I still have to consciously slow down when walking with Najiba or a friend. I wore my nine-millimeter holstered while on the FOB and both the pistol and my M-4 when outside the wire. Once, a friend and commander in the Afghan National Army even lent me his AK-47, so that I could “fit in with all the other armed Pashtuns in the mountains.”

Decisions had to be made before I set out on my first mission. Where should we start? That was simple—where we already had an existing U.S. presence in the form of a combat outpost (COP) to support our mission. We decided on a remote COP in Paktya, and the name alone should have prepared me for an experience of a lifetime: Wilderness. Our team consisted of two new social scientists, one CAT I interpreter, and me. We flew to PRT Gardez, in the capital of Paktya, first and were expected to convoy to Wilderness. Once we got there we were briefed that to get to Wilderness we had to go through K-G Pass valleys, most of which had nicknames like Ambush Valley and IED Central. In short, we were promised quite literally a very explosive passage. I contacted Jason
in Salerno and updated him on our plans to convoy down the K-G Pass. He got briefed by his soldiers in that valley daily and was well aware of the dangers. After the media frenzy over Michael’s death, Jason decided not to take any more chances with civilians, so we air-assaulted to Wilderness.

I had thought that the PRTs were the smallest, coziest U.S. presence on the ground in Afghanistan. I was wrong. COP Wilderness was tiny in comparison, nestled in a sandy valley, with mountains so close that one had to climb them to get a signal for our mobile phones. A civilian contractor had been shot and killed by a sniper just the week before we got there, while trying to get a signal. I didn’t use my civilian phone even once the whole time I was there. Although I was not wearing civilian clothes, I still attracted a great deal of attention as the only woman on the COP. There were no bathrooms for women, since a female presence had never been anticipated there. The soldiers were very sweet and respectful, especially when they found out that I was a Pashtun. They would all empty out the bathrooms when they saw me waiting outside. For my part, I drank and ate very little while at Wilderness.

The lieutenant who was in command of the post was twenty-eight but looked a lot older. No doubt Afghanistan had aged him. He briefed my team on what he knew about the people in his AO, which was not much because for some reason not known to him, “these dudes just don’t like us.” HTT’s presence made perfect sense to him, and that made our job easier. Together we planned daily missions for the next five days, which was the duration of this first overall mission. I explained the process to him, and described how we would carry out daily missions, if operational requirements permitted, and would report back to recap and to learn quick lessons for the next one. At the end of the five days, I would go back to my office at Salerno, take a week to analyze the data I had collected, and present a PowerPoint to him and his soldiers via video cam. I would also brief Jason and his primary staff back at Salerno. In the following two to three weeks I would write a detailed analysis, which would be anywhere from fifty to a hundred pages and get distributed to all the soldiers in the area. This product would also become part of an open-access
database for all U.S. military and other elements who wanted to read up on the region.

This was the process for the rest of the missions, with the exception that I tried to present in person to the company that had supported me—as the dialogue that followed proved so crucial to the soldiers’ understanding. Unfortunately, due to restrictions on movement, I wasn’t always able to have these in-person discussions.

Back at Wilderness, we decided which village to go to, which by chance happened to be the one in which the Haqqani family was rumored to reside at the time. It was early evening by the time we made all the mission-related arrangments and decided to start bright and early the next day. The sergeant major offered to give me one of the newly built rooms, but it was a little too isolated for my comfort, so I declined. I wanted to be with my team in case we had incoming or were attacked. So I, the CAT I interpreter, and the two social scientists were all told to sleep on cots in a large room that was being turned into a gym. It didn’t have doors or windows, and I remember staring out through the door frame at the mountain peaks, trying to see the sniper who I was sure was hiding up there. The next day Mark, our youngest social scientist, teased me, saying that I had given him the fright of his life when he had woken up and seen that I was sleeping with one eye open, staring out at the mountains.

The next day we left the wire as the sun was just rising from the horizon. As soon as we arrived at our first destination, we were surrounded by eager children. This was a good sign, because the way children treated us was a strong indication of the adults’ attitude toward us. The soldiers circled my team, pulling security, with my team members helping out. We had decided that I would lead this mission, since our objective was so broad and we just wanted to gauge the people’s thoughts. It would be better if we didn’t have to depend on an interpreter. We pulled up to the village in the heart of Haqqani territory. Instantly we were mobbed by bright-eyed, shoeless children. This was again a very good sign. I loved talking to the children. They were always so open and frank, and there was no question that they were offering their real thoughts. I addressed
them in Pashtu, which sent them into a frenzy. One of the little boys asked what we were doing there.

“You mean here in your village, or here in Afghanistan?”

“No, no, we don’t care why you are in Afghanistan. We just want to know why you are here in our village!” the boy answered, almost rolling his eyes.

“I know why they are here!” an older boy interjected. “Yes, they are here looking for Osama,” this know-it-all declared, proud of his knowledge. My program’s mandate specifically forbade us from looking for “bad guys,” but if the Afghans brought it up, should I pursue the topic, or change it? I was there to talk to Afghans, so if they wanted to talk about Osama, I would too.

“What do you know about Osama?” I asked.

The soldiers heard Osama’s name, and it had gotten their interest. The lieutenant in charge asked his own interpreter what was being said. Interpreters should always translate what’s going on, without their unit having to ask,
What are they saying?
But right then I didn’t have time to lecture him.

“Well, he lives in that house. See that white
qalat
with the green gate? He lives there. Do you want to talk to him?” A little boy wearing no sandals offered to go get him.

Hmm, my first mission, and I’m going to capture Osama! This was an unexpected turn of events, but if they wanted to hand Osama over, how could I say no?

“Yes. Please go tell Osama that Miriam wants to talk to him,” I answered with a straight face. The little boy took off, dust flying all around him, and I watched him go into the
qalat
with the green gate. The soldiers stood with smiles on their faces, eager to see what would unfold. A couple of them wondered if we should all share the reward on Osama’s head equally, or if I should get more because I was the one talking to the boys. The other boys were all talking at once, some of them asking me if I was going to beat up Osama, and I told them that I didn’t really want to but if he forced me, I would. While we were standing there talking, the shoeless boy returned, but not alone. With him was a six-year-old
boy, who was missing his pants
and
sandals, and who looked like he had just been woken up.