Contact Charlie by Wattie Chris

Author:Wattie, Chris [Wattie, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-77180-304-5
Publisher: Iguana Books
Published: 2019-01-07T16:00:00+00:00

PART 3

Seyyedin, June 12, 2006

CHAPTER EIGHT

"Nowhere to squirt."

Pashmul

June 9

0900 hrs

Ian Hope sat cross-legged on a ridge overlooking the Panjwayi District Centre, sipping hot, sweet cha with Captain Massoud and three unusual guests. The men were all lifelong residents of the Panjwayi, two of them in the traditional white khameez and Pash- tun turbans and their leader wearing the blue-grey uniform of the ANP. All had thick, black beards and lined, weather-beaten faces. They eyed the Canadian lieutenant-colonel curiously as they sipped their tea in the shade of an old, burned-out Soviet T-62 tank. Hope treated them deferentially, listening closely, frequently asking their opinions through his translator and solicitously offering more tea whenever the level of steaming amber liquid in their glasses got low. The men were all in their late middle age but looked older, faces and bodies wracked by years of hardship and war. All three were former mujahedeen, veterans of the long civil war against the Soviets, and Hope had brought them to Panjwayi Centre for his own private battlefield tour.

Like all old soldiers, these loved nothing better than an attentive audience, and they soon warmed up to the ferrenghi colonel with the strange, pale eyes. Their leader was an Afghan police officer, an acquaintance of Captain Massoud who had spent nearly ten years as a guerrilla fighter, ambushing Soviet troop convoys and fighting them on the ground. Hope wanted to hear all about their battles, particularly in the Panjwayi—a hotbed of mujahedeen activity during the war and an area which the Soviets had never successfully pacified. Towards the end of the war in 1989, Russian troops did not even dare to venture into the region. Hope, a student of military history in all time periods, had a hunch that he could learn much about the Taliban by exploring how the mujahedeen had fought the Soviets.

The three former mujahedeen sipping tea with Hope quickly got over any reluctance to talk and were soon chattering excitedly about their battle for Panjwayi in September 1982, speaking almost too quickly for the translator to keep up. Even the burned-out tank they were using for shade became a subject for discussion, and some argument, among the three veterans over who had knocked it out and when. “That tank was dug in,” their leader eventually told Hope. “We fired a lot of RPGs at it.” They volunteered to walk the Canadian colonel around the district centre and show him how they had attacked, infiltrated and eventually captured it. The Soviets had sent a brigade—up to five thousand soldiers, with tanks and armoured personnel carriers—to recapture the town, resulting in a fierce battle that cost the Soviets hundreds of casualties. Hope marvelled at the mujahedeens’ ingenuity as the men showed him how they had moved into the town in secret by knocking holes through the walls of adjacent compounds until they had an effective secret tunnel into the district centre.

Hope casually asked about the rest of the Panjwayi, particularly Pashmul, the collection of villages

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