This is the second installment in a three-part series.
PAKTIKA, Afghanistan – Mohamed Aman came bearing a list. The lean, middle-aged native of Marzak – an isolated Afghan village sitting astride a key Taliban supply route in northern Paktika province – showed up at Forward Operating Base Sharana in late 2011, with 45 names scrawled on a sheet of paper.
Part 1: Revenge
Part 2: Rogue Cops
Part 3: Volunteer – Or ElseJust a few weeks prior, Marzak's elders had forged an unlikely alliance with the Kabul and Washington. Marzak had been a pro-Taliban town. But the villagers had rebelled against the abusive, foreign-born Taliban fighters after the Talibs killed an innocent man they accused of spying for the Americans.
A U.S. Army infantry company, Alpha 2-28, planned to build a patrol base in Marzak in January and begin training a local police force. The goal was to put a defensive force in place before spring, when the Taliban would surely return in large numbers. Capt. Jim Perkins, Alpha Company commander, couldn't afford to waste a minute. He needed decent recruits for Marzak's Afghan Local Police force – and he needed them fast.
Aman (pictured, above) knew someone who worked at FOB Sharana. Through his friend, Aman managed to score a meeting with Lt. Col. Curtis Taylor, Perkins' commanding officer. Aman told Taylor that the names on his list belonged to men who were willing and able to join the ALP in Marzak.
At the time, Aman's list seemed to improve Marzak's prospects. It was only later that Perkins discovered that most of the names were bogus. In fact, Aman hadn't lived in Marzak for quite a while. After an unspecified dispute with someone in the village – "some weird tribal dynamic," is how Perkins describes it – Aman had fled to the city of Sharana, Paktika's capital, and had been living in a hotel.
"Still, it got the ball rolling," Perkins says of Aman's list. As a reward for helping out, Aman was offered a leadership position within the Marzak ALP.
In late January, Perkins comes to regret that decision. Aman's feud in Marzak threatens to derail the local police program at its most critical and vulnerable moment: graduation day for the first batch of recruits. The night before the trainees officially become cops, Aman stages a miniature coup – and a quarter of the trainees follow him.
Aman's police insurrection is precisely the thing Taylor and Perkins feared the most when they built their Marzak strategy upon the fledgling ALP initiative, which began in nearby Logar province last year. "We can't let this thing become a tribal militia," Perkins says a few days before Aman's revolt.
How Perkins handles Aman raises serious doubts about the ALP's future across Afghanistan. In Marzak, the Mohamed Aman affair is a particularly foreboding sign. Washington and Kabul are counting on local cops to help defend Marzak when the Taliban return in the spring. Because of Aman, the village's defense is anything but assured.
Patrol Base from Scratch
In early January, Alpha 2-28 and their attached Military Police and Afghan troops stormed into Marzak inside the bellies of twin-rotor Chinook helicopters. The village is 9,000 feet above sea level – too high for most helicopters and high enough that even the powerful Chinooks are sluggish. Worse, as they flare for landing, their rotor blades kick up a white wall of powdery snow. "White-out," as soldiers call it, can be fatal for copter crews and their passengers.
The Chinook carrying the MPs almost succumbed to the conditions. "The pilot had a white-out and missed the LZ," recalls Spec. Tom Bell. "He veered left and then right." Through luck and excellent airmanship, the chopper landed safely and the MPs spilled out. The sight of an abandoned boys' school – gutted and desolate – greeted them. The school, converted into a patrol base, would be their new home.
>The airdrops are as dangerous as bombing runs, and nearly as dramatic.
An armada of supply helicopters followed the troops into Marzak, dropping off construction supplies, food, water, ammunition and, critically, several jet engines modified as high-powered heaters. Supplementing the helicopters, a small force of civilian-operated Caribou transport planes zoomed just a hundred feet over the school and released bundles of supplies secured to quick-opening parachutes. These so-called "Low-Cost, Low-Altitude" airdrops are as dangerous as bombing runs, and nearly as dramatic. But even by the standards of remote Paktika province, Marzak is remote: "the Paktika of Paktika," one soldier calls it. Air drops are they only way to get the gear here.
Surrounded by a growing mountain of material, the Americans got to work. They filled sandbags, covered up windows, hammered plywood together to make guard shacks and guard towers and strung razor wire in a wide cordon around the school.
With their own base increasingly secure, the troops turned their attention to an equally decrepit girl's school a couple hundred yards away. Similarly reinforced, the girls' school would become Marzak's first and only Afghan government outpost, manned 'round the clock by the ALP.
Aman's list of potential ALP recruits was worthless, but more than 50 other men stepped forward, or were "volunteered" by the village elders. The initial batch of ALP trainees ran the gamut, from true volunteers to unwilling conscripts, from trigger-happy dilettantes to hardened tribal warriors. There was even one developmentally disabled man. When the MPs finally figured out why the man always seemed a little disoriented, they took away his weapon and eased him out of the program.
The recruits' motives varied as widely as their backgrounds. The experience of an ALP recruit in nearby Sar Howza is typical. "I was beat up by the Taliban several times," the recruit told an Army Human Terrain researcher. "Now I have weapons and the support of the government."
Noor Salam is a herder in his 30s. Tall and lean with a long beard, he stands out among his shorter, stockier neighbors. The Taliban tried several times to recruit Salam. When he rejected their overtures in no uncertain terms, the extremists decided to disarm him.
They asked Salam to attend a jirga, a sort of tribal judicial hearing. Custom requires the attendees to turn in any weapons. When Salam handed over his AK, the Talibs seized it. Furious, he joined the ALP along with eight of his brothers. The Americans made him a squad leader.
Vengeance, ISAF can work with. A raw thirst for personal power, on the other hand, poses a problem. "We can expect to see ALP commanders and elders exploiting the ALP as a means for increasing ... their influence and power," one Human Terrain report warned.
Aman showed every sign of having joined the ALP for all the wrong reasons. But he'd helped move the program forward during its tenuous early days, so the Americans made him a squad leader, too. Perkins says he immediately had misgivings about Aman.
"We'll Kill Them in Large Numbers"
It's the third week of January. Inside the razor wire at the boys' school-turned-patrol base, the MPs are hard at work training the police recruits. At a makeshift firing range at the base of a snow-crusted hill, Sgt. 1st Class Scott Herring, a 38-year-old single father from Mississippi, teaches the trainees to handle their government-issued AK-47s. Incredibly in this sometimes lawless country, many of the recruits have never touched a weapon ... and it shows.
When Herring grows frustrated, Nawab Khan, an Afghan commando sent from the city of Orgone to help the Americans, takes over. To show the trainees the proper way to hold and fire their weapons, he kneels with his own AK and shoots five rounds into a bottle of red Kool-Aid, 25 yards away. He puts the first four rounds into the top of the bottle, and the fifth into the bottom where the Koolaid is pooled. There's a burst of red liquid.
>'Sometimes you just have to hold your breath.'
Later, surrounded by boxes of MREs in a schoolroom converted into a chilly kitchen, Khan recalls his experiences on the front lines. In 2006, he was the sole survivor of a suicide bombing that killed 25 people, including his friend and commander. Khan wears a patch on his left arm that reads, "In Memory Shaheed Sardad KIA 26 Nov 2006 Orgone." On his right arm, there's another patch: "Taliban Hunting Club."
Khan's hands bear the scars of a lifetime at war. Some fingertips are missing – shot off. A thumb curls at a weird angle, the result of another bullet passing through his palm. He says he has high hopes for the Marzak recruits.
As Khan is finishing his story, Perkins comes into the kitchen with Noor Khan, chief of the district's federal police. "We'll be in a good position come spring," Perkins says, echoing the growing optimism at this embryonic patrol base.
"We'll have the ALP," Perkins continues. "When the Taliban comes out in the open, that's when we'll kill them in large numbers."
On the evening of Jan. 22, Perkins sends the new cops to their newly built outpost at the nearby girls' school. It'll be their first night on their own, standing guard over their village. Are they ready? "Sometimes you just have to hold your breath and hand them a magazine," Perkins says. A brief graduation ceremony is planned for the morning. Mullah Anwar, Marzak's senior elder, has been invited to speak.
That night, on a fold-out canvas cot wedged between boxes of dustless chalk and textbooks emblazoned with the UNICEF logo, Perkins sleeps soundly. He doesn't know that Aman is staging a nighttime insurrection that threatens to destroy the budding alliance between the once pro-Taliban Marzak and the U.S.-led coalition.
In the morning, Anwar and the other elders send an urgent message to Perkins. They will not be attending the graduation ceremony. Suddenly local support for the ALP is in question.
Graduation Day
Details trickle in. As Perkins slept, Aman ventured from the checkpoint with his 11-man squad. He knocked on doors at several homes in Marzak, accusing the residents of being Taliban and ordering them out of town.
The accused weren't actually Taliban – at least, no more so than anyone in conservative, isolated, embattled Marzak. No, Aman's complaints were personal. And in any event, he was way outside the very limited scope of his authority as an ALP squad leader.
It was apparently Aman's plan all along to exercise this vendetta. Noor Salam, for one, is not surprised. He says he never trusted Aman.
Aman's victims appealed to the village elders. The elders closed ranks against Aman – and against the Americans.
>The elders closed ranks – against the Americans.
Perkins is furious. "Take his AK," he tells Herring. "Tell him we need people who are professional and rational."
Before Herring can carry out the command, Perkins reconsiders. It could be risky disarming Aman in front of his men. Better to reassure the elders, proceed with the graduation ceremony, then quietly escort Aman away.
Perkins passes a message back to Anwar, practically begging him to attend graduation. The sun shines brightly on the snow-caked girls' school as Perkins awaits the elders in the company of Herring, Nawab Khan, Noor Khan and the rest of the U.S.-Afghan team. Behind them, on the roof, Aman busies himself laying sandbags. He doesn't know how much trouble he's in.
Anwar walks carefully up the icy path from the village, looking physically frail but radiating authority. Perkins greets him. "This is not the kind of thing that's supposed to happen," Perkins says. He promises to deal with Aman.
Anwar nods. "We trust your decision."
The 46 local cops who completed their training stand in ranks with their weapons – Salam at the head of his squad, Aman at the head of his. Anwar faces them, looking tiny in his brown shawl and cream-colored turban. "You take care of the people, and we the elders will take care of you," he says.
"Best we could hope for," Perkins breathes. The ALPs salute with their rifles, the ceremony ends and Herring tells two of his MPs to take Aman's weapon and escort him from the outpost.
Confronted with the consequences of his actions, Aman screws shut his eyes. He looks like he might cry. He begs for another chance. But Perkins is firm.
Stand By Your Man
That night, Aman's squad asks for an audience with Perkins. They meet him at the patrol base, in the blue-carpeted room the national cops sleep in. There's a kettle for chai and mats and pillows strewn about for bedding. Perkins sits in stocking feet, having left his boots by the door, per Afghan custom.
The local cops take turns pleading on behalf of their disgraced squad leader. "Mohamed Aman is a brave guy," one says. "We're disappointed that the guy we stood up with now has no options." To a man, Aman's squad threatens to quit unless Aman is reinstated.
>'I'm not going to respond to threats,' he says, panic in his eyes.
There's panic in Perkins' eyes, but his voice – and his position – is steady. "I'm not going to respond to threats," he says. Aman will not be returning to the Marzak ALP. But Perkins is willing to give the former squad leader another chance ... in a different community. He promises to take Aman back to Sar Howza and slot him into that town's local police unit as a basic patrolman.
Aman's squad seems satisfied. They thank Perkins and file out into the freezing night.
Was the squad's threat real? Would they have quit out of loyalty to a petty man exercising a pointless personal vendetta? Would they have jeopardized a strategic town's best chance at defeating its Taliban oppressors? Perkins isn't sure.
One man's rash actions. A moment of trust involving two very different men, a 29-year-old American and a 70-something Pashtun elder. Consequences. Threats. Compromise. The small drama that played out in Marzak on Jan. 23 had potentially strategic consequences.
Marzak is critical to blocking Taliban infiltration of Afghanistan in the waning years of the U.S.-led intervention. The Afghan Local Police are critical to securing Marzak. The success of the ALP hinges on men setting aside their personal grievances and doing their duty. Never mind grand strategy and clever tactics and sophisticated weaponry. In this war, people make all the difference.
This time, enough people made the right decisions. Marzak is still in play.
The day after graduation, Perkins flies out with Aman, bound for Perkins’ main base in Sar Howza. He leaves Herring and his other sergeants in charge. With Aman's insurrection behind them, the coalition force in Marzak can turn its attention to the next big challenge. "We need 75 ALPs to make this work," Herring says as he marches into Marzak seeking new recruits. Just 46 cops are on duty.
An elder meets Herring on an icy path, and says precisely the words the American does not want to hear: "We have sent enough men."
Tomorrow: The volunteers vanish.
