Unspoken Abandonment (8 page)

Sometimes I wonder if I
a
m the only one who feels this way, but I
know I
see it in some of the other guys
as well
. We
wi
ll come back from
a
mission and guys will say things like, “I just want to leave this place alive.”
Never did I imagine it would be like this.

I think I had it in my mind that we
woul
d be in the middle of nowhere, twiddling our thumbs all day. The reality
though, is we are a combat unit,
attached to the Third Special Forces Group, in the most dangerous place in the world, and
it scares the living shit out of me
. Sometimes
I
a
m very afraid. I never show it, and I always do my job, but sometimes I think the fear slowly chips away at me. Every time we leave the compound,
either something happens
or we see something that just makes
my
heart stop and
forces
me to
pray it
i
s not about to happen. Then
I
breathe a sigh of relief when it turns out to be ok, and
I
wait for the next thing to happen. It
i
s never ending, but every night I do my duty on the wall, and almost every day I go out on patrol in the city.

The patrols are
n
o
t physically demanding;
in that aspect
,
they
a
re easy. We patrol on foot, in three or four man teams,
just walking around the streets
and
looking for anyone or anything suspicious. I am a machine gunner and I always carry my M249. I just wish I was able to carry more ammunition than I can fit in my rucksack.
I worry that if we get locked down in a fire fight, I
wi
ll run out of ammo
far
too
quickly
.
I sent an email to my wife asking her to send me a
plain
black backpack that I can wear in reverse
on my chest
, to carry a few more drums of ammo, but I still have
n
o
t received it yet.
Every email she sends says, “No haven’t sent it yet, but I will tomorrow.” It was tomorrow five days ago, and I need that thing now.

I also asked her to send me a new holster for my 9mm, because the issued holster basically sucks. She emailed back saying she can
not find one, so I a
m guessing that means I
a
m not getting it. From the sound of
things
, I probably w
ill no
t be gettin
g the backpack either. Sometimes I
a
m not sure what to say besides, “
W
hatever.”

March 12,
2003
:

Tonight seems as though people are getting ready for something. All night long, cars have been driving past the compound,
with people
yelling
from them
and honking their horns. A convoy of vehicles circled the compound four or five times. The vehicles were old pickup trucks with people crammed into the back of each truck. Someone in the lead truck was waving a Taliban era flag.

A little later, less than thirty minutes after the trucks circled the compound, I heard three rapid explosions within a half mil
e of the compound. Within minutes of the explosions, I heard an exchange of gunfire. T
he volley of gunshots lasted fo
r about thirty to forty-five seconds before they stopped. Our radio lit up with reports that another
unit’s
security patrol was taking sniper fire from an unknown number of hostiles. Within minutes the situation was over, and the other unit was reporting one American casualty. Then it was dead calm for the rest of the night.

An
Afghan guard
, Khalid,
speaks broken
English,
and I asked him w
hy some Afghan people
are
so hostile towards the Americans
,
when
we are only here to help this country.

He said the
causes
of Afghanistan’s problems are
very compl
icated
. He said the vast majority of Afghans want the stability that America is trying to bring. He explained how the Afghans
, young and old,
fought to the death to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan, and would have fought until every last Afghan was dead. He then said, “If we didn’t want the Americans here, we would fight just the same. We don’t fight. Most of us don’t fight, anyway.” He told me that if the Afghans did not want us here, we would
be constantly engaged in battle.

The Afghans want freedom just as much as we enjoy ours. However, Afghanistan is not made u
p of one single group of people
but several different tribes. Every tribe has different ethnic, religious, and cultural beliefs, and they rarely see eye-to-eye. Each tribe wants the entire nation of Afghanistan to be molded
around
their own ideals
,
and because of this they fight constantly.

The warlords take advantage of these rivalries by stimulating fighting between these groups for their own benefit. The fighters are essentially the warlord’s personal army, and they become pawns in a
greater
game of chess. If
one
particular
tribe or
warlord benefits from
the
people fighting with the Americans, they shift their anger towards us and get everyone riled up. To stop this, a lot of these warlords have been offered positions in Afghani
stan’s new, emerging government
as well as top police and military positions. This game creates a power struggle for everyon
e trying to come out the victor, with as many spoils as possible.

When you take all of this and add in religious extremism, you have a breeding ground for terrorist activity. Groups like
the Taliban,
Al Qaeda
,
and
the Holy Islamic Jihad have used this power struggle along with misinformation to
turn people against America and the new Afghan government. They have turned this country into a powder keg that is set to explode.

These fighters hide and blend in among Afghanistan’s population of thirty-four million people. They come out to fight very quickly, and then melt right back into the population. They wear no uniforms, have no insignia, and they are very hard to find. The area between Kabul and the Pakistani border is filled with these fighters. Fighting one second and gone the next.
Their weapons of choice are improvised roadside bombs, car bombs, explosive mortars, and rocket attacks.

These people who are against the ideas of the western nations
are
now see
ing
a light of hope
for many people
in Afghanistan. New schools and hospitals are opening all the time, and there is slowly a new way of thinking in Afghanistan. They want to crush that hope and attack any target they can.

This place is very complicated and has many issues, with extreme violence often being the result of those issues. It
i
s to the point that violence is the only way of life many Afghans now know. Like Sean said when I first got here, this place is fucked up.

March 13,
2003
:

The midnight shift was slow tonight.
We had rain almost all night, and
I
a
m assuming it kept everyone inside. Around six o’clock in the morning, a convoy of SUVs came rushing to the compound. A very popular national news figure
,
(name has been removed)
,
came to the compound to include some of our operations in a story he is doing.

We had no idea he was coming, and after shift he spent time talking to a few of us.
I
went to the dining room to have breakfast where
I
got to eat with him, and he actually turned out to be a very nice guy. He was eager to meet with
everyone,
and
he
was happy to shake hands and take pictures. It definitely added an interesting
and positive
twist to the day.

They put together a team to provide additional security for his trip to an area called Gardez. This is a notoriously dangerous area, and the ride out there is known to be very risky. There are a lot of Taliban supporters in that area and reports of active Al Qaeda camps. I decided not to volunteer for this one and got to take the day off.

I went to the gym,
and then
got cleaned up. I caught up on writing some letters home
, and
then I cleaned
my weapons
and sorted my gear. Now I
a
m here writing
and
thinking about
going
to bed early. If I go to bed now, I
wi
ll get a good seven hours of sleep before I need to get back up for the midnight shift. This will be the first time I
ha
ve gotten more than four hours of sleep in almost two weeks.
I guess that means, “
Good night.
”

March 14,
2003
:

It was raining again, so
it made for another long, lonely night keeping watch in the OP. Around seven o’clock this morning, a bicyclist got hit by a car, along the west wall of the compound, right in front of my position. The bicyclist did
n
o
t appear to be hurt too bad, and he ended up
provoking
a yelling match with the driver of the vehicle. Before long, it erupted into an all out brawl between the two of them. Within minutes, there were eight or nine
other guys joining in the fight.
They were all
just random people
on
the street
, and
they
started joining the fight.

A group of us exited our
OPs
and gathered along the wall. Half of the goal was to get into a ready position in case this fight was a distraction for something bigger about to happen, and the other half was to just watch the fight. Very quickly, the powers that be decided the brawl was too close to the compound and presented too much of a security risk, and we were ordered to disperse the crowd immediately. We threw two canisters of CS gas into the crowd and as soon as the gas hit the crowd, they scattered.

After shift
, my squad was assigned a mission that
took us towards the Pakistani border. The Pakistani government is supposed to be an ally of the United States, but the people of Pakistan see things much differently. The road leading out to our destination is very dangerous and goes right through some very hostile areas. Several convoys have taken enemy fire recently on this route, by snipers
supposedly
train
ed
in Pakistan.

After about two and a half hours out of Kabul, the ride was very boring until the road began to follow the path of an old dried-out riverbed. The road curved through a pass with ten to fifteen foot rock ledges on either side of us. Our convoy consisted of six HUMVEEs, and I was the gunner for the third vehicle. I knew that entering the pass was dangerous as shit, but we had no way around it.

Half way through the half-mile-
long pass, the lead vehicle stopped and I heard a burst of shots ring out. The lead vehicle was mounted with a fifty caliber machine gun, and the sound thundered through the pass as the gunner returned fire.
They were around a slight bend, and we could
n
o
t see
exactly what
was going on. My field of fire was to the left side, and I kept my mounted M249 fixed upwards at the top of the rock ledge.

As the fifty caliber stopped firing, I could hear the squad leader on the radio yelling, “Move, move, move! Don’t bottle up in here. Get the fuck out!” The trucks started moving through pass, as fast as we could. As we pulled through the curve, I could see two men
,
with cloths covering their faces, about one hundred feet to the left of the convoy. Every gunner in the convoy began firing, and the two snipers pul
led back to behind an old wall. It was obvious that we
ha
d
n
o
t hit them. The Sergeant made the call not to chase them down because they could be luring us into a greater trap, and we had a mission that needed to be finished.