U.S.-Backed Militia Fortifies Afghanistan's 'Heart of Darkness'

This is the first installment in a three-part series.

PAKTIKA, Afghanistan -- The insurgents came on foot, in broad daylight, to the simple mosque nestled among the mud-walled homes of Marzak, a tiny village embraced by mountains in northern Paktika province, on the border with Pakistan. The fighters -- non-Afghans, all of them -- muscled their way into the mosque and seized a man named Mohamed Amin.

Part 1: RevengePart 2: Rogue Cops Part 3: Volunteer -- Or ElseIt was August, Ramadan, the holiest month of the year for Muslims. Amin was in the middle of his prayers when the Taliban dragged him out onto the unpaved street, accused him of spying for the Americans and, in front of Marzak's horrified villagers, put a bullet in his head.

Amin was no informant, according to multiple sources. The Americans and the Afghan government had rarely set foot in Marzak. The U.S. had only occasionally sent their commandos into the surrounding mountains. But one of those commando raids had recently decimated a group of foreign Taliban, and the extremists were determined to punish someone, anyone, before the coming winter made movement all but impossible.

They chose Amin because he was "vulnerable," according to Ish Khan, an Afghan government cultural adviser specializing in this region. Amin's brother is one of Marzak's powerful elders, but Amin himself was an everyday guy.

Badal, or revenge, is a guiding principle here. But when Marzak, a stronghold of the Afghan-born Taliban, retaliated for Amin's murder, they didn't just wait to capture and kill a passing foreign Talib. No, Marzak sought revenge on a strategic scale, by seizing the opportunity presented by the harsh winter to forge an alliance with Kabul and Washington -- an alliance that could transform this key Afghan region in the waning years of the U.S.-led war.

The story of that alliance is one that connects many of the major threads in the complex narrative of the decade-old Afghan war: the isolation of rural Afghan communities in some of the world's most unforgiving terrain and weather. The schism between Afghan-born Taliban and their crueler foreign-born compatriots and between Afghan tribes sharing the same land. The Afghan government's struggle to extend its influence. The sparseness of NATO's resources as it eyes a steady drawdown through 2014. The U.S.-led coalition's last-ditch plan to shore up Afghan security by arming and training local militias. The dangers these militias pose over the long term.

The players in the unfolding drama include: Marzak's powerful, but guarded, elders; the young men who volunteered, or were forced, to staff the town's brand-new, government-sponsored local police force; one scheming local cop with a score to settle; his rival, the town's most fearsome fighter; a small team of American and Afghan troops sent, in the middle of winter, to establish Marzak's first government outpost; and Amin's 13-year-old son, who at the first opportunity marched right up to the Americans and demanded they give him a gun, so he could kill Taliban.

The story is barely beginning. Its first few chapters, and a epic prologue involving one of the Afghanistan War's biggest firefights, have already been written. The climax will likely come this spring, when the snow melts and the foreign Taliban once again stream over the Pakistani border towards Marzak -- and this time discover armed men standing in their way. The falling action comes in two years, when the departure of U.S. troops leaves Marzak to stand on its own ... or fall to Talibs seeking a little badal of their own.

The Heart of Darkness

An isolated, impoverished community whose meager economy is sustained only by their sheep, the pine nuts the villagers gather on the mountain slopes, and an occasional traveler, Marzak isn't much to look at.

But in military terms, it's priceless. The Pashto-speaking village, population just a few thousand, lies astride one of the few protected foot paths connecting Pakistan's restive tribal areas to Afghanistan's Highway 1, which links most of Afghanistan's major cities.

If you're some Waziri extremist from Pakistan with ambitions of suicide bombing a hotel in Kabul, or a Chechen foot soldier hoping to reach Kandahar in time for the fighting season, you're going to have to hike the Marzak path or another like it. (Other Taliban routes include the one through nearby Margah, home to one of the most intensely attacked U.S. outposts in all of Afghanistan.) "We're a transit route," says Maj. Eric Butler, an intelligence officer for the U.S. Army's 172nd Infantry Brigade, deployed to Paktika.

The Marzak foot path is remote enough that the government and the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force rarely patrol it, and wide and flat enough for men carrying weapons and supplies. By U.S. standards, it's "nasty terrain," Butler says. At the height of winter, with a foot or more of snow of the ground and temperatures dipping below zero, the path is impassable to everyone.

When it is passable, the Marzak path, and Marzak itself, are some of the Taliban's most precious assets. Lt. Col. Curtis Taylor, commander of forces in western Paktika, tries to get inside the head of a Talib marching in from Pakistan. "You're coming through the mountains, two days on foot, and here's this village that's been isolated -- no government."

Transiting Talibs force village residents to house, feed and supply them. If there's something the Talibs want that the villagers don't offer up, the Talibs simply take it. A Human Terrain Team (the Army's cultural researchers) cited the Taliban's theft of Marzak's sheep as one of the village's major underlying complaints.

To protect their precious foot path and way-station, the Talibs established several encampments in the surrounding mountains. Khan estimates there were five groups as of late 2011. The Talibs in the camps would harass and beat Marzak residents who ventured upslope, and steal their pine nuts.

Which is not to say Marzak actively opposed the foreign Taliban -- at least, not before Amin was dragged into the street and shot. Despite their problems with the foreigners over the years, many Marzak residents consider themselves Taliban, albeit in what they see as the truer, strictly native meaning of the word.

The fringes of Marzak society have even produced some bona fide terrorists. A madrassa on a hilltop just outside of town conditioned two students to become suicide bombers.

Local sentiment, the heavy presence of foreign Taliban, plus the town's inaccessibility and harsh winter weather led Capt. Jim Perkins, who ultimately headed up the mission to establish a government base in Marzak, to dub the community Afghanistan's "Heart of Darkness."

Perkins' alliance-building mission was the first directly aimed at Marzak. But it wasn't the first major military operation in the surrounding area. Operation Anaconda, the U.S.-led attempt to ensnare Taliban fighters in March 2002, played out in the mountains just north of Marzak; 15 coalition troops and as many as 800 Taliban died. Another U.S. attack last July resulted in a running battle that Taylor says was "one of the biggest fights of the year" in Afghanistan.

Hills Run Red

Operation Marauder Rapids kicked off on July 23, when a contingent of U.S. Special Forces -- possibly from the secretive Task Force 130 -- infiltrated a bowl-shaped valley just one mountain ridge away from Marzak. The one-day operation, prompted by fine-grain intelligence likely provided in part by aerial surveillance, targeted one of the foreign Taliban groups encamped outside the town.

It was a bloodbath. Estimates of Taliban dead range from 80 to 120. One American died. In the aftermath, U.S. troops dragged no fewer than 60 bodies into Marzak and "stacked 'em in the street," Taylor says. Villagers identified just two of the dead as locals. The rest, Taylor says, were "Waziris, Chechens, Arabs."

The foreign Taliban's tactical defeat seemed to empower Marzak's elders. After Marauder Rapids, village leaders made some tentative overtures to the coalition, feeling out prospects for some kind of alliance. Then, when Amin was murdered, "everything froze," Taylor says. Marzak was clearly traumatized.

But Taylor sensed that the village elders were ready for a change -- and that the time was right to do something dramatic. Marauder Rapids had weakened the foreign Taliban in the Marzak area. The only extremists left in and around the village were the "low-level leaders and idiots," Butler says.

Combat losses, plus the rapidly approaching winter, meant it would be tough for the Talibs to respond to anything the coalition and Marzak did until spring. "We need to do something permanent about this place before the Taliban comes back," Taylor recalls thinking.

Consulting with provincial and district leaders, Taylor devised a plan. Send Alpha Company, led by Capt. Perkins, into Marzak with orders to build a permanent base on the edge of town. Keep one of Perkins' platoons there through the winter and into the summer, steadily reinforcing the base's defenses via aerial resupply, and seeding smaller observation posts and checkpoints in and around town.

A mixed force of U.S. Army Military Police and Afghan commandos, soldiers and national police were assigned to accompany the infantry. Their job: to stand up a local security force under the auspices of the year-old Afghan Local Police initiative. Launched in nearby Logar province last year, the ALP program equips local volunteers with AK-47s, uniforms, a few weeks of basic training plus a monthly paycheck equivalent to around $225.

The ALP is supposed to provide static, street-level security, freeing up the Afghan army and national police to pursue the Taliban. It's a strictly defensive force -- and one fraught with risk. The American-led coalition has tried several times to form local security units. The Afghan National Auxiliary Police, a program similar to the ALP that was launched in southern Afghanistan in 2007, was unceremoniously disbanded just a year later after the local cops started taking orders from tribal warlords.

Taylor worried the same thing could happen with the ALP. "We can't let this thing become a tribal militia," he said. Preventing that from happening was Perkins' job. He and his men were told to reconnoiter the town, pick a location for the new base and hold a meeting, or shura, with the town elders, in order to present them with Taylor's ALP plan.

Perkins and his troops marched into Marzak from Combat Outpost Sar Howza, on foot, in mid-November. The 10-mile trek across steep mountains and rocky valleys, and the nights spent sleeping in a riverbed, were some of the worst experiences of the 29-year-old Perkins' decade-long Army career -- rivaling the day, early in his current deployment, when an improvised bomb struck an Afghan police truck right in front of his own vehicle.

The riverbed grew colder as darkness fell. In Marzak in the winter, the temperature can plummet 30 degrees in the hour after the sun sets. Soldiers cuddled for warmth, inspiring an endless series of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"-era jokes. No one slept much.

In the morning, Alpha Company's real mission began.

"Like Something out of Footloose ... "

Perkins (above, right) has a boyish face, permanent, dark stubble and a bulky frame. He says he has lost 30 pounds climbing Afghanistan's mountains. He hails from suburban Michigan. His father was a helicopter door gunner in Vietnam.

He reads a lot. In January he read My Life with the Taliban, an autobiography of former extremist bigwig Abdul Salam Zaeef. "I like to get different perspectives," Perkins says. A report by a Human Terrain Team praised his efforts to win over his Afghan partners, noting that he spent Aug. 30 celebrating the end of Ramadan with Afghan National Army troops at their compound in Sar Howza.

Perkins trained as a tank commander and drives his platoon's Gator ATV as though it were a 60-ton M-1 Abrams -- that is, with utter disregard for obstacles and roads. In Afghanistan, he finds himself in command of an infantry unit: Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment, part of the 172nd.

Alpha 2-28 is the usual assortment of weirdos, maniacs and loudmouths that you usually find the infantry -- and they would probably happily claim those descriptors.

There's Sergeant First Class Andrew Flynn, 2nd platoon's moustachioed platoon sergeant, who really, really hates to waste food. He'll stand over soldiers as they eat, forcing them to take second and third helpings of reconstituted beef gravy or Spam-like ham slices. In Marzak, he's one of many soldiers to come down with a violent but brief-lived virus. After recovering, he happily describes vomiting "like it's The Exorcist." He spends morning cooking up eggs for his famished soldiers.

Spec. Dustin Scrimager and Pvt. 1st Class Jamel Rogers are medics, 25 and 21 years old, respectively. They witnessed the same improvised explosive blast that Perkins did, and it seemed to set the tone for their deployment. They were attending a class one day at their outpost in November when suddenly there were bleeding bodies everywhere. The Taliban had ambushed the new district sub-governor with bomb loaded with nails and screws; the outpost was the nearest medical facility. Scrimager and Rogers raced to save anyone they could. Of nine patients, two including the sub-governor were dead on arrival; two more eventually died. Scrimager recalls holding one Afghan boy's brains in his hand.

Pvt. Anthony McCarthy, a machine-gunner from Miami, is loud, ridiculous and fearless. On a dare, he took a dose of sweat-inducing hot sauce ... in his rectum. He mulls over the prospect of massive firefights once the Taliban come streaming into Marzak in the spring. "Fuck it," he says, "We're going to be famous."

As the sun slowly thawed their frozen bodies, Perkins' troops marched into Marzak for the first of many shuras. The meeting would determine the future of the Marzak alliance.

With wizened, toothless senior elder Mullah Anwar presiding, some 400 of Marzak's most prominent citizens assembled. Despite the foreign Taliban's abuses and Amin's murder -- and despite the rare, and brief, window of opportunity presented by Marauder Rapids and the winter -- Marzak was on the fence.

"Elders will join whatever side is more powerful -- government or Taliban," a Marzak man who later joined the ALP explained to a Human Terrain researcher. Marzak apparently wanted to believe that the Americans were stronger ... and here to stay. But they needed proof.

Perkins was trying to assure Anwar and the other elders of the coalition's commitment, but the words rang hollow. Then there was a rumbling of distant rotors: the deep whop-whop of American helicopters streaming in to resupply Perkins' troops. "I couldn't have timed it better. I said, 'We're here to stay,' and right then we had helicopter after helicopter flying over."

The accidental aerial display helped convince Marzak. They approved the formation of an ALP unit and offered up two unused schoolhouses for a patrol base and ALP checkpoint. When the shura ended, the villagers busted out drums and began dancing. The Taliban had banned dancing and music. Now the ban had lost its power. "It was like something out of Footloose," Taylor says.

The villagers were particularly excited about the checkpoint, which some referred to as an observation post. "When people see the OP, they will realize it's secure, will support the ALP," the anonymous police recruit said.

The ALP, in turn, would represent a government foothold in Marzak -- one that could survive even after the Americans withdraw. An enduring government presence might keep the Taliban out, and deny them use of one of their favorite routes into Afghanistan's interior. That, at least, is what Taylor was hoping for when scripted the Marzak strategy.

But translating that theory into reality required a Herculean effort from U.S. troops. They had to build a base, from scratch, in the dead of winter, relying entirely on aerial resupply that, as often as not, is grounded by the cold, the snow and the clouds.

Meanwhile, they tried to mold a bunch of uneducated villagers, many of them Taliban sympathizers, into some semblance of a government police force. The barriers to that transformation are numerous: language, culture, logistics and time.

Most of all, no one could be certain that, in arming Marzak, they weren't arming potential enemies of the U.S. and the Afghan government. The village had its own reasons for allying with its former enemies, not all of which Taylor and Perkins could predict.

November's recon lasted five freezing, miserable days and nights, after which the weary Americans marched the 10 miles back to Sar Howza. They rested, refitted and refined their plan. In early January, they returned in greater numbers -- and stayed.

By then, the mission to capture Afghanistan's Heart of Darkness was already in jeopardy.

Tomorrow: How a rogue cop threatened to undermine Marzak's alliance with U.S. forces.