Afghan Villagers Told: Volunteer ... Or Else

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

PAKTIKA, Afghanistan -- "I feel like the Taliban," Sergeant First Class Herring says. It's late January in Marzak, a village in remote northeastern Paktika province, near the border with Pakistan. Herring, a 38-year-old U.S. Army Military Policeman with a nasally Mississippi twang, is leading a patrol of U.S. and Afghan soldiers and Afghan police on a mission that makes the Americans decidedly uncomfortable.

Part 1: RevengePart 2: Rogue Cops Part 3: Volunteer -- Or ElseTheir job: to assist the Afghan troops in doing whatever it takes to get the elders of Marzak, a once pro-Taliban village that lies astride a key extremist supply route, to "volunteer" another 25 young men to staff a new Afghan Local Police force that the International Security Assistance Force hopes will permanently secure the town and the supply route.

Herring tries the proverbial carrots, first. He mentions the monthly, $225 paychecks the ALP earn, and the weapons, ammo and supplies they get from the Afghan Ministry of Interior. He promises investment from Kabul if the police unit gets enough volunteers. He warns against the coming spring, when the snows will melt and the Taliban, recently pushed out of the area by U.S. Special Forces raids, will come streaming back into Marzak.

And he reminds village residents of the all the abuses the foreign-born Taliban heaped on them over the years: beatings, theft, extortion, banning music and dancing and, in August, murdering a local man suspected of being a spy for the Americans. (He wasn't.)

Plus -- and this is critical -- the Taliban forced men and boys to take up arms against the coalition. Several of Marzak's police recruits say they are unwilling Taliban "veterans." Two local men died along with at least 100 foreign Taliban in a huge firefight with U.S. Special Forces in July.

When American's carrots fail to work, the accompanying Afghan forces resort to sticks. That is, threats -- not unlike those the Taliban used in its the own forced recruitment.

The forceful approach is effective. The coalition not only gets the 25 volunteers it needs to round out the local police force, it gets a few extra recruits, too -- some of them mere teenagers.

That's when Herring shakes his head, says he feels like an extremist himself, and tells his men to follow him back to base.

Three weeks into the latest phase of a desperate, last-ditch coalition effort to secure a vital village, Herring and the other soldiers from the 172nd Infantry Brigade have experienced their share of surprises, setbacks and small victories. Struggles, comprises, half-measures -- after more than a decade of war, the Americans are accustomed to these things. But from their point of view, the Marzak recruitment drive crossed a line.

The late-January recruitment is a Pyrrhic victory for the U.S.-led coalition. Herring gets his recruits, thus solving the short-term problem of an understaffed local police unit. But over the longer term, Marzak's ALP must be self-sustaining -- an unlikely prospect as long as trainees have to be strong-armed into joining.

"We need to be thinking about how this thing looks in three years," Lt. Col. Curtis Taylor, Herring's commander, says of the ALP. But Taylor's battalion has just seven months left in Afghanistan. Afghan soldiers and national police will remain, of course -- and another American unit is likely to take 2-28's place at least for another year.

Still, Marzak's direction momentum coming out of 2-28's mentoring will likely determine its long-term future. Not to mention, the Taliban are likely to return to Marzak in the spring, whether or not the local cops are ready ... or motivated to fight.

Coalitions, then a Coup

It's safe to say that, for Taylor, the Marzak campaign is personal. For six months it has been one of his top priorities. And it has tested one of Taylor's core command principles.

Since late last summer Taylor has slurped countless cups of hot, milky chai in scores of sit-downs with senior NATO and Afghan officials, military and police leaders from several nations and Marzak's elders, mullahs and military-age men. Relationship-building is the key to winning the war, Taylor says. "If you can't understand that, I have no use for you," he tells soldiers who gripe that they don't do enough fighting.

It took three months of negotiations between Taylor and his point-man Capt. Jim Perkins on one side, and Marzak's cautious elders on the other, just to establish a coalition facility in the village -- and weeks of back-breaking labor in near-zero temperatures to build the base up from scratch..

But build it the Americans did, with a big boost from helicopter crews and cargo plane pilots delivering a steady stream of material to the isolated outpost. However, the base was pointless without a local security force to man it on a long-term basis. Recruiting local cops has proved at least as difficult as getting into Marzak in the first place.

The first batch of local cop recruits was a mixed bag. Some were true volunteers. Others ... not so much.

The initial consignment of trainees included a few fierce tribal warriors, some uneducated laborers who'd never before touched a weapon, plus a mentally ill man (who was gently eased out of the program) and another man, a squad leader, who tried using the police force to carry out some mysterious personal vendetta against village residents.

The squad leader, Mohamed Aman, marched his 11 cops into Marzak one night and ordered people he accused of being Taliban to leave town. They weren't Taliban -- and besides, Aman didn't have the authority to kick out anyone.

Aman's attempted insurrection threatened to alienate the elders that Taylor and Perkins had worked so hard to win over. Perkins raced to mend ties ... and promptly fired Aman, a move that came causing another potential coup -- this one by Aman's squad, as they threatened to quit unless their leader was reinstated. Perkins carefully talked the men down.

The clock is ticking. Spring will likely see hundreds of hard-core Taliban return to Marzak, itching for battle. Beyond that, ISAF has just two fighting seasons left before the regular American forces plan to depart Afghanistan for good.

There's no doubt Marzak needs cops, and fast. But how far is the coalition willing to go to bring in new recruits? And in the long term, does it do any good to enlist unwilling fighters?

Switching Sides

It wasn't long ago that Marzak's elders were promising full support for the ALP. That was a precondition for ISAF even attempting to stand up a police unit in the isolated village. "It's critical to the ALP that people say they want this," Perkins says.

In the year since the coalition stood up the first ALP unit, in nearby Logar province, some police recruits have stepped forward all on their own. But at least as many are forced to join by their tribal elders, as has occurred in Marzak. "The men say they don't want to be here," Taylor says. "But your dad made you be here!" is the coalition's response, according to Taylor.

"Conscription from within the tribe, sponsored by a local elder, is not a big deal," Taylor explains. In that sense, the elders' support is more important than the consent of individual police recruits. Never mind that Marzak's adult male residents, almost to a man, cite Taliban bullying as one of their major motivations for siding with ISAF. If the coalition bullies them, too, what's to stop them from switching sides again -- or trying to take no side at all?

Many elders don't even seem to take into account recruits' feelings and wishes. "The ALP are volunteers," insists Ghulam Moidin, a Marzak elder and brother of Mohamed Amin, the man the Taliban murdered in August. A former Taliban booster, Moidin is now one of ISAF's top allies in Marzak.

The power of Marzak's elders over individual men guided ISAF's initial forays into the village. In November, company commander Perkins and one of his platoons marched 10 miles from their main base in the town of Sar Howza to attend a shura -- a sort of tribal policy meeting -- with senior elder Mullah Anwar and 400 other prominent Marzak men. "They stood up and said, 'We want the ALP,'" recalls Perkins, a stocky 29-year-old from suburban Detroit.

Spurred on by the elders' support, Perkins and company returned to Marzak in early January ... and stayed.

True to their word, the elders sent over around 50 people for the first round of ALP training at Perkins' newly-established Marzak patrol base. After weeding out the grossly incompetent, the mentally ill, the vengeful 13-year-old son of the man murdered in August ... and Aman ... the coalition was left with 46 policemen. Perkins says the Marzak ALP needs 100 men. Herring says 75 will do, in a pinch. Short of that, Marzak's defense could be impossible come spring, the Americans say.

But it would take the elders' continued support to bring in that many recruits. And like many long-lived Afghans in a country with a tradition of war and foreign invasions, Mullah Anwar and the other elders have been careful to hedge their bets. Some of the elders even asked Perkins to detain them overnight, so that they could plausibly claim the coalition had forced them to cooperate. Detention by the Americans is, after all, a form of Taliban street cred. "A lot of people are sitting on the fence," Perkins admits.

And after Mohamed Aman's insurrection, the elders' already-tentative support for the police program waned even further -- to say nothing of the enthusiasm of the potential recruits. Suddenly, 46 men was looking like a manpower ceiling, rather than the floor. It was this erosion of support that spurred Herring's recruitment drive ... and the Afghan troops' rough tactics.

Aman's vigilantism probably accounts for much of the shift in sentiment, but there were possibly other factors. Most prominently, a tribal rivalry. Marzak's people hail from the Kharoti tribe, which nurses ancient grievances with the neighboring Zadran tribe. In arming Marzak, ISAF risks pouring fuel on a simmering tribal conflict -- a danger Taylor says he weighed, and accepted.

The flipside is, it doesn't take 100 Kharoti fighters to deter the Zadran. In fact, traditional tribal protection forces called arbaki had a strength of around 40 men, coincidentally the number of ALP recruits Marzak initially offered up.

Marzak's first batch of ALP graduated from training on Jan. 23. The next day, Perkins flew back to Sar Howza to attend to his other platoons, leaving Herring and the platoon sergeant in charge. Herring was expecting the second batch of 50 men. Two days later, just 11 recruits had trickled in.

The next afternoon, Herring rounded up a mixed group of American and Afghan soldiers, Afghan national cops and ALPs and walked into Marzak, looking for an explanation. "We need good, strong men," he said to every military-age man he passed. "What about you?"

An elder intercepted the patrol. He made excuses for the young men. Some were religious students, others were too busy working in the local shops, he said. Nevertheless, he promised to send in the balance of the recruits by 11 in the morning.

When 11 comes and goes with no new recruits, Herring decides to take matters into his own hands. But it's his comrades in the Afghan security forces who push the boundaries of what's acceptable.

The Cache

For the Military Police, the moment for gentle recruitment and conversation is over. It's time for a harsher method of enlistment. The frustrated sergeant begins assembling a mission meant to put a little pressure on Marzak's elders. The Americans will lead the patrol; the Afghan troops will be the muscle. Everyone's accounted for except for Ali Mohamed, the short-statured, newly minted ALP platoon leader. Failing to find Mohamed anywhere, Herring gives up. The patrol departs without him.

Weirdly for a village with thousands of residents, practically no military-age men are out on the streets as Herring and his patrol march through. The Afghan troops question the older men who poke their heads from mud-walled compounds to gawk at the parade. Word is, all Marzak's young men are hiding in compounds on the edge of town -- as if they didn't want to be dragooned into service a group of heavily armed soldiers. "They knew we were coming," Herring muses.

Climbing to the roof of a mosque that hosted shuras in the past and which offers a commanding view of the surrounding village and mountains, Herring settles in for what he knows will be a long wait. He sends out his Afghan soldiers and cops to round up village elders or, barring that, ALP-eligible men. The Afghan forces are supposed to bring the elders and potential recruits to the mosque for a good talking-to.

After an hour or so, Mohamed makes a surprise appearance, trudging into town with several ALP patrolmen, each shouldering a heavy backpack. Mohamed opens the backpacks and pulls out a two-foot-long artillery shell and more than 100 rounds of 14.7-millimeter ammunition.

He explains to Herring that, early in the morning, he got a tip from a villager that the Taliban had been hiding weapons in the mountains around Marzak. So he went to see for himself.

Herring praises Mohamed for his initiative but encourages him, next time, to tell ISAF what he's up to -- one, so the coalition can help out; and two, so the Americans' Apache helicopters don't accidentally kill the ALP after spotting them stalking around the countryside with bomb-making materials.

Finally, the elders come wandering over, rousted from their homes and shops by the Afghan troops. Herring reminds them of their promise to send more recruits. "There are no more men," one elder responds.

"We can't do this alone," Herring shoots back.

Back and forth, the sergeant and the bearded elders repeat their positions. Herring ups the ante. "You help us secure the town, and the government will invest money in it." He cites the Taliban's abuses, including the regular beatings they doled out on Marzak's men. Herring sweetens the pot with all the supposed benefits of an ISAF alliance.

The American points to the Taliban weapons cache Mohamed discovered in the mountains. That, Herring says, is the kind of thing a strong ALP force can do.

Sure, the elders respond, but what about the Taliban? They won't just beat up any armed men they see when they return to Marzak in the spring -- they'll kill them. The young men are afraid, the elders say.

"I'm afraid every day," Herring says. He explains that, with enough ALPs plus the backing of the U.S. military and the Afghan army and national police, Marzak can resist any invasion. "You need that critical mass," Herring stresses.

"You guys are not staying forever," an elder reminds him.

"No," Herring replies, "we're staying until our Army is gone for good. We don't know when that will be." That's not true, of course. Washington has already capped the overall U.S. force in Afghanistan and plans to withdraw all regular combat troops by the end of 2014. Combat operations might end as early as next year. The elders may not watch CNN, but they know the Americans have one foot out the door.

Ultimatum

It's cold on the rooftop. The sun is halfway to the horizon now, hinting at the even colder night to come. Tired, chilly and frustrated, Herring is doing his best to appeal to the elders' reason, sense of responsibility and their mistreatment at the hands of the Taliban. On top of that, he showcases Mohamed and his haul of confiscated Taliban weaponry as examples of what Marzak can achieve with a full-strength police force.

But the sergeant's soft sales pitch just isn't working, and the Afghan soldiers grow impatient with the impasse. Acting on their own initiative, they issue an ultimatum to the assembled elders. Cough up 25 men, or report to the patrol base themselves to become ALP, they say.

It's an ugly ultimatum the Americans can't voice on their own -- and one they can't easily block.

On one hand, the ALP is officially a volunteer outfit. And while tribal troop consignments can blur the definition of "volunteer," for political reasons the Americans must be careful about endorsing forced enlistments, however common (and accepted) they might be.

On the other hand, the ALP is also officially an Afghan program, funded and equipped by the Ministry of Interior and managed on the ground level of Afghan soldiers and national police. In practical terms, that means the Americans are heavily involved at every step, as virtually no Afghan agency is yet fully independent.

But again, the fiction of Afghan control is important for political reasons. So when the Afghan troops start threatening Marzak's elders, there's not much Herring can, or will, do about it.

In any event, the threats do the trick. Elders and Afghan troops scamper off. Military-age men appear in doorways or come shuffling toward the mosque with soldiers or elders at their elbows. There's not much need for a sales pitch anymore. Herring counts heads ... and smiles. He’s got his 25 and then some.

But the smile fades as he watches Afghan soldiers literally chase a young man down the street. The Americans are still trying to pretend that the ALP is entirely a volunteer outfit, but the Afghans have clearly abandoned all pretense. The Afghan soldiers even drag several teenagers into the patrol's cordon, intending to march them off into police service.

That's a step too far for Herring. He orders the boys released. "Too young!" he barks. As the startled teenagers scuttle away, Herring gestures for the patrol to follow him out of the village, adult ALP recruits in tow.

Thanks to some heavy-handed tactics, Marzak will have a fully staffed police outfit and, according to ISAF, the ability to resist a Taliban attack. But the villagers' continued ambivalence a decade into a grinding war that, for the Americans, is rapidly winding down, is a foreboding sign.

Marzak -- not exactly a liberal town -- entered into a tentative alliance with the U.S.-led coalition after the Taliban went too far stealing from, conscripting, and even killing village residents. While far gentler than the Talibs, the Afghan and U.S. troops sent to Marzak to help protect the village nevertheless use some fairly extreme tactics themselves. Under American supervision, Afghan soldiers essentially force unwilling men to join the local police. Boys, too, if not for Herring's intervention.

Of course, Marzak's elders did promise to staff the police unit -- a promise they only halfway fulfilled, at first. That reluctance, more than any patrolman quota, should give U.S. and Afghan leaders pause. At the end of the day, the ISAF troops in Marzak are able to tease, nudge and ultimately strong-arm the village into keeping its word -- but barely.

The recruitment tactics on display in Marzak that late-January day aren't pretty. From the American point of view, they might uncomfortably echo the insurgents' own coercive methods. But they're certainly more acceptable than the prospect of a Taliban takeover and subsequent bloodbath, the likely results if Marzak doesn't take steps to defend itself.

Questioned at his base in the provincial capital of Sharana, Taylor stresses the importance of the elders' support for the ALP, though not the consent of the individual recruits. He seems to acknowledge that standing up ALP units in restive eastern Afghanistan is like making sausage: As much as you desire the finished product, watching it being made isn't very appealing.

Moreover, the battalion commander voices the question that American military and political leaders and everyday citizens have been asking themselves for a while now -- the question that Herring's experience in Marzak only underscores.

With Americans lending a little leadership and a lot of support, Afghan forces have managed (in their own unforgiving fashion) to staff a local police force in a vital town. As long as U.S. troops are there to train, supply and motivate Marzak's cops, it seems likely they'll fight to defend their homes, even if some of them are not strictly volunteers. ALP platoon leader Mohamed, stomping miles through knee-deep snow to dig up buried Taliban weapons, is a living example of that potential.

But, Taylor asks, "what happens when we leave?"