Nir Rosen - Aftermath

We passed another blown-up culvert only a few hundred meters away from the police checkpoint. Westby wondered how the police hadn’t seen it happen. “They were sleeping,” said Kilaki. Westby conceded that they didn’t have night vision. The bypass took us over a canal. We leaned to the right and nearly tipped over. Locals struggling with their vehicles warned that the alternative bypass went through a Taliban-controlled area where they had their own checkpoint. “The village you go through just 800 meters away is Taliban territory,” Westby wrote on the BFT. We passed another destroyed piece of road and then another IED crater. Westby decided to keep all the checkpoints open. Colonels Shirzad and Jasper had ordered one police commander to stay at a different checkpoint with the British army. He didn’t trust the British, so he refused. He finally agreed but then went to town instead. “It wears on you, these guys,” Westby sighed.

“The PR have no radios to communicate from checkpoint to checkpoint,” Westby texted to Jasper. “Vehicle radios don’t have enough range, food water fuel ammo resupply still an issue. PR not equipped to be self-sustaining here, no cooking equipment, only one CP has a well.” Westby was still hoping the remaining PR would come that day, but he doubted it. “They’ll come up with some excuse,” he said. Westby gave the PR additional jugs of water so at least they wouldn’t die in the heat. Most of the PR had not been paid for months, he told me. They didn’t have radios, so they would have no way of notifying the Americans if they were attacked. He hoped their vehicle radios worked and tried to explain to the PR squad leader that communication was essential. Westby didn’t expect his own position to be attacked because the Taliban probably saw that there were Americans there.

Lieut. Col. Jasper De Quincy Adams showed up. He was young, handsome, and full of energy. He complained about the highway police commander. “When locals interact with him, they think the Taliban are better,” he said, worrying that the commander delegitimized the government. “We’ll turn this around by aggressive patrolling,” he told Westby. “Your mission is all about deterring and disrupting.” He wanted Westby to lay ambushes and take the fight to the enemy. “I think that Popalzai needs to be patrolled very aggressively,” he said. “Have large numbers of patrol and ambush.” Jasper’s men followed us and fixed the holes in the road, filling them with dirt. Jasper complained that about twenty of the twenty-five recruits had tested positive for opiates. “That’s why the road is full of IEDs,” Westby told me. “They’re high all the time.”

The men of Team Prowler broke the mud walls with sledgehammers so that they could fit their Humvees inside. Then they parked on all sides so that they could have 360 degrees of coverage. They broke the tops of walls so they could fire better. Garbage littered the compound, including sheeps’ hooves and bones, the remnants of previous meals. The Americans tried to clean it all up and set it on fire. Westby told me he didn’t think everybody in the villages around Highway 601 was Taliban; some were just normal civilians.

The commander of one of the checkpoints got on the radio to announce that his men had seen a Corolla full of Taliban with weapons. The commander met with local villagers by his checkpoint and explained that they were a different police unit replacing the old one to establish security. “It’s good initiative,” said Westby. That night the men drove up and down the road and found a suspected IED. It was too dark to do anything about it. They did a recon by fire, meaning they shot at the house where they suspected the trigger man might be hiding, but nothing happened. If anything detonated, they would have annihilated the suspected firing point.

The next morning the team drove to a compound they suspected had been used by the men who placed the IED. They dismounted with the PR, walking past green fields into the first mud compound. On one corner by the road was a spy hole and another hole at the bottom with two ant trails coming out of it. Inside was a cornfield, a marijuana field, and harvested poppy plants. Several of the police on patrol didn’t wear their body armor and stood casually in fields of fire. Team Prowler kept pushing ahead. We passed by large poppy fields. The plants were dry and harvested. The police came across three small brothers who pointed to a narrow path between two mud walls and said five armed Taliban had just moved north of the compound. But Dyer didn’t pursue the Taliban because he didn’t want to be channeled through the narrow path.

The men found a mosque with mattresses and a room with corn kernels, bags of nitrogen, and a car battery. The nitrogen could have easily been used for fertilizer or explosives. While the Americans were poking around inside the mosque, the police sat in the shade beneath nearby trees. Some of them filmed the patrol with their camera phones. “I need those men from Lashkar Gah to get in some Rangers and drive their sorry asses out here,” Westby complained, and asked Mansur, the translator, to radio them. Back at the mud checkpoint Westby briefed his men. Their mission was to “deter and disrupt enemy forces burying IEDs,” and the “center of gravity is Popalzai.”

That night Dyer led an ambush by the mosque, where the team suspected the Taliban were sleeping. They hoped that when the Taliban tried to leave, the ambush team blocking the narrow path between the mud walls would kill them. They drove without lights in blackout. Dyer told the men to make sure the ANP had no cigarettes, didn’t play music, and didn’t talk. “Enforce light and noise discipline,” he said. “Throw some fucking grenades. We’re not there to arrest people, just fucking kill people.”

“The Hazara fighters are better than these lazy bones sleeping all day,” said Westby, referring to the Pashtun police. “And they’re better shots,” Dyer added. Westby estimated there would be five to ten Taliban in the mosque. Somehow I doubted the Taliban would be there. They weren’t stupid: they did not sleep in the same place every night, and they would know that the Americans had found their hideout.

At 3 a.m. they started getting ready. “I hope we catch these sons of bitches with their pants down,” Kilaki said. “I’ll be so pissed if there’s nobody fucking there,” said Campos. There were supposed to be only six police dismounts on the ambush, but twice as many got out of their vehicles to join the five Americans who went on the ambush. Westby got out of his Humvee to resolve the problem. “It just goes to show that no matter how many times you prep ’em . . .” said Kilaki. “They all thought they were going on patrol,” Westby said with a laugh. “I just explained it to their commander, and they nodded north and south.” An unmanned Predator drone was flying overhead, but Team Prowler had no way of talking to those controlling it.

As it happened, the mosque was empty. Several Afghans walking by on the way to their fields or morning prayers were taken down the alleyway. “They can fuckin’ sit and shut up,” Dyer said. “I wish I was the dismount watching the people come out all spooked,” Campos said. “On the Fourth we had the women crying,” said Kilaki. “Yeah, I know,” said Campos. “I saw the women coming out, tears all down their faces. Shut the fuck up! We’re doing you a favor.”

When the rest of Team Prowler joined the ambush team, I found the Afghan men sitting and waiting to be let go. They were middle-aged and elderly. They asked to pray several times, and finally Dyer let them conduct their ablutions and pray on the grass. One of the old men told me that they were all very bothered by the Taliban. “They come here to shoot,” he said. “They don’t let us irrigate our fields. When the Taliban shoot from this area, the Americans and police come and we have to run away. Our neighbors were bothered by the Taliban, and they fled. We have to take our women and children away when the police respond to Taliban ambushes.” Another old man chimed in. “Three months ago the Taliban set up an ambush on the road,” he said. “The police entered our houses, they stole our sheep and everything from our houses. We complained to Lashkar Gah police headquarters, and they gave us back two motorcycles and one sheep but not the rest of our things. We had a shop, and they took all the merchandise from it.”