Operation Dark Heart by Shaffer Anthony

Author:Shaffer, Anthony [Shaffer, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Published: 2016-02-10T16:00:00+00:00

13

THE “HEART OF DARKNESS”

I’M a big fan of movies. One of my top ten favorites is Apocalypse Now, based on the novel by Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. The movie, set in Vietnam, tells the story of Army Capt. Benjamin Willard, played by Martin Sheen, who is sent into the jungle to assassinate Special Forces Col. Walter Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando. Kurtz has gone AWOL and is believed to be insane.

I first saw it in Lisbon and, while I didn’t get it as a kid—other than the fact that it was a realistic and visually stunning war movie—it stuck with me.

I got it now.

In the movie, the mood darkens as Willard’s boat navigates up the fictional Nung River, and Willard’s obsession with Kurtz deepens. The movie chronicles Willard’s travel through a surreal world of war and revelation, much like I was finding myself in the middle of Afghanistan. There were a growing number of parallels between the Vietnam War and our efforts in Afghanistan. Scary parallels.

I thought about the stunning stuff the foreign analyst had shown us. The Al Qaeda Hotel. I thought about Willard’s journey up the river and into the “heart of darkness.” Maybe we were going to have to do something to get at these guys where they lived; the remote area where Kurtz called his home was as remote as Wana was to us.

Operation Dark Heart. That’s what this would be.

Over the next twenty-four hours, I mapped it out: a long-term operation to destabilize the Taliban and al Qaeda and reduce their ability to reconstitute and train. ** *** **** ***** * *** ********** ** ***** *** ****** ********** *** ***** **** ** ** *** ****** ****** **** ** ******** ********* ********** ******* **** ** ***** *** **** ****** I can’t go into too much detail, except to say that we would know everything that was going on there.

I’d learned a lot about the Taliban since being in country. They were vulnerable—and not just militarily. They were focused on reestablishing their extreme form of sharia, or Islamic law, across Afghanistan, but their partners in crime, al Qaeda, had a broader, more global agenda—fighting the United States and its allies and overthrowing Western-friendly regimes in the Middle East.

We could use that against them.

I was typing furiously at this point. We needed to accomplish three goals.

First, enhance the intelligence from the Al Qaeda Hotel in Wana by conducting tactical operations. ************ *** ***** ************ ***** *** *** *** **** ** **** ******* **** ******** ******* * ******* ***** ** ************* ***** ************ ******* ***** ** * ********

Second, understand everything going on there in such a detailed way that we could plan bold psychological operations. Exploit the differing ambitions of the Taliban and al Qaeda and their allied terrorist organizations. Sow confusion and hostility among their leaderships by posting anonymous night letters in Pakistani villages known to be Taliban and al Qaeda strongholds. To intimidate and influence them, we needed to move like shadows to disrupt them and make them fear for their own mortal existence.

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