Afghan Army shows a tiny bit of promise on a mission

"Do I remind you of your son?" LaRasha asked the village elder.  The elder nodded. 

"So how would you feel if your son hit an IED?" LaRasha said.

The older man looked down. "Ok, I shouldn't be telling you this but there's an outsider, a Pakistani around here.  He lays IEDs every night."

LaRasha drank his tea and announced he was going after the Pakistani.  That morning he'd dug an IED out of the dirt outside the compound with a combat knife.  They'd heard noises the night before.

We were the furthest South into the "green zone" that the 1-75 CAV squadron and their Afghan Army (ANA) counterparts had been and all we'd had so far is one grenade thrown at us.  So far the joint patrols had been limited to clearing a few compounds a hundred meters away. 

The U.S. Captain decided he didn't want his soldiers out past dark in an area that could be heavily mined. The risk is high enough during the day.  I decided to go with the ANA.  It would be my last patrol of the year.

We headed out through a grape row. I was told to stay with the chainsmoking ANA Captain not wearing a helmet.  La Rasha took one group straight down the road, his mine detector in front.  It wasn't going to be the safest patrol.

"That's the best your going to see in an ANA," Lt. Reilly McEvoy of 1st Platoon said of LaRasha.  "When we first met him in training, he showed us a certificate the Marines gave him for being in Marja."

After getting a tip from a neighbor, we approached what looked like a farming village.  LaRasha shot off some rounds.  He was trying to get the villagers to freeze and come talk to him.  We could see several men shying away. 

"Three Taliban over there," LaRasha told me in English, "You stay, Captain."

Taking a pistol, he and three soldiers climbed a wall and disappeared into a marijuana field.  It was dusk. I knew I wasn't going to stay with the Captain.

(Photo: ANA often dress colorfully and don't seem to have uniform standards.)

I'd been living with 1st Platoon HHT in a courtyard filled with chickens and goat fur.  These occupied qulats the infantry lives in as part of the ongoing operations to clear the rough zones above Kandahar, resemble a traveling carnival.  What with tired, dirty Americans, ANA gathering the chickens, interpreters making jokes in Dari, engineers lighting bombs off every half hour outside.  Watching weed fields burn from the roof.  Elders complaining about blowing up so and so's property.  A captain from Florida tearing half a sheet out of his notebook as a U.S. checkbook.  Choppers beating through all hours of the night.

LaRasha walked up on four men lounging in chairs, outside of what he said was a mosque and detained them.  He picked up one of their friends in the the village, who he said was Helmandi, or maybe even Baluchi.

I had wanted to go out with the ANA ever since a photographer proposed it as a way to get down to Kandahar to see operations, skipping the media waiting list.  It never materialized. I didn't arrive until August, then Ramadan hit, rendering me on maybe the hottest outpost in Zhari, with the infantry not patrolling on day patrols out of respect for fasting Afghan police.

(Photo: ANA are known for lacking discipline on patrols, but are asked to do some of the most joint dangerous jobs- such as leading in front and searching down tunnels, pictured here.)

So it was appropriate my last patrol was with the ANA.  It gave me a glimpse of what might be the U.S.'s only lasting contribution to Afghanistan- training, supply and mentoring a national Army that will have to completely sustain itself in the next few years.  Well, not exactly.  The U.S. expects to spend $6 Billion a year training Afghan forces even after it begins pulling out combat forces in 2011, according to an AP article.

And this was the first time the Afghans attached to HHT 1-75 had decided they were going after a bad guy.  It shows the importance of getting native soldiers who can speak the language and know the culture, off the Forward Operating Bases and out into the problem towns etc.  Captain Krayer said it was the first patrol the ANA had gone on without the U.S.  Also the first one they'd acted on their own intelligence gathering.

I've seen U.S. forces try to place Afghans in critical areas in Kunar and down in Kandhar after larger offensive operations.  In most cases the ANA/ or Afghan Police failed to hold the area- following Eagle Strike in Kunar the ANP supposedly abandoned their positions after a few weeks.  And in one of the most contested clearing operations in a heavily IED-ed strip called Macwan here in Kandahar, where two U.S. have been killed and many more wounded, the ANP are still dragging their feet on putting up an outpost.

Still, I can't forget the speed and control the ANA were able to use in apprehending the suspects.  Some U.S. guys later joked they still would be out there trying to blow through grape walls if it had been done jointly.  The U.S. would surely have done it safer, but probably wouldn't have been able to identify the suspects, much less nab them.

Later that night I would fly out of the green zone.  We waited in a graperow with the five hooded suspects Captain Krayer had decided to ask his command to take in.  Maybe LaRasha and the ANA had detained the guys and insisted they were suspicious, to impress the U.S.  But at least they showed the initiatitive.  This is how a partnership works between the world's best and one of its least experienced armies works.  It's mostly messy.   At least the 1-75 CAV and most of 2-101st Brigade soldiers knew the names of a lot of their Afghan counterparts and could speak a few more words in Pashtu than the average soldier.

Around midnight we were still sitting in the cold, leaning against the graperows.  Waiting for the chopper to come in to drop enough water, about 10 bottles per, to get through the next day of clearing compounds.  A popular sergeant was joking about if the detainees  were ready for the American space machines to come for them.   "They probably know exactly what a chopper is,"Lt.  McEvoy said.  

(Photo: one of the detainees being searched.)

Finally the rotors hovered over us.  I found myself holding onto one of the blind folded men as the soldiers inside the whirling bird struggled to fix the seats for them.  He was shivering, whether from cold or fear, and I grabbed his bicep more securely, whether to show I could handle him or show him not to be afraid.  I wasn't sure.  Then I strapped myself and helped strap some detainee down.  I was the only one in back who could watch Zhari dissapear in the rotor wash and moonlight.

(Photo: ANA soldier bearing a full case of water and teapot for a stay in the green zone.)