Speak softly, carry a big gun
Into the hinterland with the Special Forces
Operating in a region effectively beyond the reach of Hamid Karzai's fragile government, the Green Beret team is "the law" in a valley that has never been particularly friendly to foreigners. It was here that the mujahideen resistance against the Soviet Union began, and even the Taliban had difficulty maintaining control over the local tribes. Before their mission began, ODA 936's members were informed by the CIA that the valley was "the West Virginia of Afghanistan," a place where deep-seated clan loyalties make promoting a central government a tough sell. Residents make their living from the endless acres of opium poppies cultivated on the valley floor and bristle at edicts from Karzai's government forbidding poppy harvesting after this year. For now, this is one battle the Special Forces plan not to get in the thick of.
Since December, the goal has been to secure the villages closest to Camp Blessing, then gradually expand the U.S. sphere of influence outward. It is a counterinsurgency strategy the British employed with great success in Malaysia during the 1950s, and U.S. Special Forces are taking the same approach in similar bases along the Pakistani border and in central Afghanistan. To build trust, the Green Berets try to keep the door-kicking to a minimum, and ODA 936 has very purposefully used different tactics from the Army Rangers and 10th Mountain Division soldiers ("the men with helmets," the locals call them) who swept through the Pesch in force in November.
Of course, Al Capone's adage that you can go further with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone certainly applies here, and the Special Forces unit ensures that its presence is felt. The soldiers constantly run armed patrols through the valley alongside the Afghan special-forces soldiers they trained, through villages where the smell of burning wood mixes with the sweet scent of opium poppies ripening for the harvest. Each night, marines in mountain observation posts fire mortars and .50-caliber machine guns into the distance, a not-so-subtle message that can be heard for miles.
Hearts and minds. Those villages that turn in weapons caches and provide intelligence about enemy movements get something in return: clinics, schools, and footbridges paid for with U.S. funds now being spread liberally throughout eastern Afghanistan. Even the Special Forces unit chaplain, a Mormon who in civilian life teaches folklore at Brigham Young University, is part of the hearts- and-minds effort. He meets with the mullahs in Pesch Valley villages to renovate dilapidated mosques and prods them to use their moral authority to turn locals against the insurgency.
In their more relaxed moments--sporting beards, baseball caps, and sandals--the soldiers of the Utah-based unit might be easily mistaken for heavily armed ski bums. The unit has only minimal contact with its superiors at Bagram Air Base, near Kabul, and even less contact with the world outside Afghanistan. (The soldiers learned of the recent bloody fighting in central Iraq only when two journalists visited the base.) The daily rhythms of their camp bear little resemblance to those of a normal American military base. Friday, rather than Sunday, is the day of rest, when calls to prayer from the local mosques echo across the ancient valley, amplified by new speaker systems paid for by the U.S. government.
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