Come Back to Afghanistan by Said Hyder Akbar

Author:Said Hyder Akbar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2009-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

18

WE DRIVE BACK FROM KURANGAL in the rain. It's like being in a Humvee commercial, the car bucking through a spectacular setting. We're on the floor of the Pech Valley. It's a real valley—you can see its outlines—not some gigantic metro area referred to by the term. Gold-colored mountains rise up on either side of us like walls. Trees are clustered here and there, but for the most part this place is open. It's a lush stripe of land, as green as a golf course fairway—with landmines in place of sandtraps.

No matter where you go in Kunar, the trip home takes longer than the trip out. The road you travel in on is almost always the one on which you return. Anyone who saw our convoy pass this morning has had plenty of time to plant a mine in our path, so the Americans are being extra-vigilant. A threat has already stopped us once.

After lunch we said our goodbyes and started back down the mountain, the villagers' pickups bumping over the lips of unevenly laid rock. Suddenly we stopped, and the Americans got out of the cars, stationed themselves in lookout positions, and started yelling commands at one another: / want to make sure we're looking that way, all right? Mark, set 'em up. Concentrate. Maintain awareness over there.

I slid out of my seat. "Is there something going on?" I asked John.

"Yeah, there's a wire across the road down there," he said.

"Hey John, send Hyder down here!" a soldier yelled, and I jogged to meet him. "There's a possible 1ED explosive in the road—that's why we stopped," he explained. (An IED is an "improvised explosive device.") The soldiers were "watching a ridgeline for the bad guys," and they wanted me to ask some of the Afghans to move out of the way.

The group shifted, and I asked, "Is that cool?"

"Yeah, yeah," the soldier said. "I just need some space here." The whole area felt tight. We were hemmed in by mountains, and the pickups crowded the narrow road.

An American wearing what looked like a very small metal detector approached. Then he flopped down on his belly and began slithering toward the wire. The Afghans broke into laughter, including Rauf Mama, who offered, "Just let me yank it. Trust me. We don't have to waste so much time."

"Can you please move away from the area? He's trying to concentrate," an American scolded. The Afghans quieted down once they realized the guy's feelings might be getting hurt. But the spectacle only confirmed their impression that the Americans are too cautious.

In Kunar the U.S. troops are viewed as tense—quick to raise alarm—which hurts their reputation. (I talk to Doug about Sammy Sosa and come to this conclusion: Hey, these guys are so vulnerable—they're just like us! The Afghans see a technician with an electronic box on his belly and arrive at the inverse: Hey, these guys are so vulnerable—they're not at all like us!) In a place where institutions are weak, people are going to align themselves with who's strong.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.