The War In The Shadows
On Afghanistan's wild border, in search of a quicksilver enemy
While Morrow is talking, another squad climbs the mountain behind the village and finds that the Pakistanis had not encroached across the border, as the villagers had claimed. But farther south, the soldiers had found a Pakistani border post on Afghan soil. There, in a recent firefight, Pakistani border guards had laughed as the men sprayed the Americans with bullets and fled over the imaginary line, the Americans prohibited from following them.
As evening falls, the platoon is joined by the task force's commander, Lt. Col. Harry Glenn III. Morrow and platoon leader Corbett gather around his humvee to hear reports from the field. A voice crackles over the radio, recounting a battle that has been raging for four hours just a few miles south. Two dozen Afghan and CIA fighters are locked in combat with fighters who had infiltrated from Pakistan on one of the many "jingle trucks," as troops call the bell-festooned trucks, and then had transferred to four-wheel-drive pickups. A-10 warplanes flew to the scene, but the fighters are too intermixed for them to fire. Camp Salerno had launched all of its Super Cobra and Huey helicopter gunships, which emptied their ammunition on the attackers and set a truck ablaze.
But the battle rages on. Morrow asks Glenn for permission to reinforce the American and Afghan fighters. His artillery and the trucks'MK-19 and .50-caliber guns can't make it into the mountains, but the platoon has squad automatic weapons, M-203 grenade launchers, and two dozen M-4 rifles--enough firepower to swing the battle. Glenn demurs. "By the time you hike into the mountains," he says, "it will be over." By dawn the next day the assailants have scattered--back across the border, back into Pakistan. Four Afghans have been wounded. One is dead.
Glenn has been sending out small units to draw bin Laden's supporters into the open. But like all insurgents, they pick and choose where to fight, so his main focus is on drying up support for them. "We need to continue to maintain the pressure on his organization and his networks," he says. "That will eventually cause him to make a mistake."
Promises. It is hot, hard, and tedious work, and measuring progress isn't easy. But after six months in Afghanistan, Glenn's men have become accustomed to the vagaries of this shadow war. As the young GIs mount up to head back to Camp Salerno, there's the usual bellyaching and daydreams of home. In the past 72 hours, they have hoofed it up many mountain ridges, lugging 70 pounds of gear in 100-degree heat in search of an enemy who will not show himself. At Jalahalel, a hill village ridden by leishmaniasis, a parasite-born disease, residents ask why a promised school hasn't been built. "It would be better not to make promises," Colon says, to no one in particular, "if we're not going to deliver."
The journey's last stop is the hostile madrasah. Morrow asks to tour the premises. The mullah grudgingly agrees. Soldiers ring the perimeter. A few enter with Morrow. Two Afghan militiamen tag along, their faces wrapped and hidden behind sunglasses. "The soldiers scare the children," the mullah complains. "You should tell them they have nothing to fear from us," Morrow replies. The children, unlike the rest of the kids encountered on this patrol, won't talk, not even to the goofy Rigby. The "terp," as the grunts call their Afghan interpreter, sums up the atmosphere. "This is a perfect place for al Qaeda to hide and to launch rockets from," he says. "No one knows what goes on here, and they want to keep it that way."
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