(Photo: In their effort to avoid improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, U.S. soldiers struggle through thick marijuana fields on a mission to surround a hostile town. (James Foley/GlobalPost)
ZHARI, Kandahar, Afghanistan — In Kandahar it’s all a matter of footing. Where you step and where you don’t.
Foot patrolling in this area will make you paranoid, if you think about it. You watch how soldiers step. They always take the hard path. It’s tantamount to Army doctrine here in Zhari district of Kandahar. More than one sergeant has asked me if I know the threat, halfway through a patrol.
A lot of zigzagging through the plowed, hardened fields rather than a straight file, trudging straight into the stalks of corn rather than taking the around path, stomping into marijuana patches. The worst are the grape walls, hardened mud some four-five feet high. They climb over those.
While 2-101st Brigade keeps pushing further south and west in one of the largest operations of this nine-year war, the Taliban have mostly eschewed direct firefights in the face of overwhelming fire power and air support, but they can make a pressure plate out of two blocks of wood taped with a metal connection wired to a 9 volt battery and a farmer’s jug filled full of Homemade (HME) explosive. The kind of stuff that can be concocted using fertilizer and metal byproducts.
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