The War In The Shadows
On Afghanistan's wild border, in search of a quicksilver enemy
KHOST, AFGHANISTAN--Camp Salerno's dark quiet was punctured by a whoosh and a boom, followed by a siren's shrill wail. Soldiers grabbed helmets, donned night-vision goggles, and scrambled for the bunkered command center. As the first of three explosions rent the night, the base's Super Cobra helicopter gunships lifted off in search of the attackers.
The attack was just one salvo in the escalating campaign to wipe out al Qaeda and the Taliban fighters who still make use of this dusty border province, their historic stronghold. The road from Kabul to Khost favors the guerrillas, as the Soviets learned to their peril when they failed to penetrate the 10,000-foot mountains that loom above. The Khost-Gardez pass, still the scene of ambushes, leads to Camp Salerno, the U.S. military's largest forward operating base near the Pakistani border. The three rockets fired by the unknown attackers landed between Salerno, home to 1,100 troops from Task Force 1-501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, from Fort Richardson, Alaska, and Chapman, the nearby Special Forces base named for a Special Forces soldier who was killed in the bloody Operation Anaconda battle here, just over two years ago.
The day after the rocket attacks, U.S. troops sallied forth from Camp Salerno to offer medical checkups and first aid to residents of nearby villages, who eventually led the soldiers to the craters where the rockets hit. The troops have been making inroads in the valley around Khost, once a hotbed of support for Osama bin Laden. But finding the attackers in the mountains is no easy matter. They prop crude artillery tubes in high mountain crevices and rig them with simple timers. By the time the devices detonate, the shooters are long gone.
The hunt for bin Laden here relies largely on three-to-five-day patrols by platoons to the high mountain border crossings. Second Platoon, Blackfoot Company set off on April 13, riding on welded metal benches in 2.5-ton trucks for the bone-jarring trip over rutted tracks and rock-strewn canyons called wadis. The soldiers dismount at a tiny village called Lakan to talk to the elders, but the streets are all empty. Leading the way down a narrow alley with high mud walls, the squad leader, Sgt. Ed Colon, whispers to his colleagues, "Black Hawk Down." The former Ranger was referring to the ambush in Somalia in 1993 that left 18American soldiers dead. Colon, on his third tour in Afghanistan, is a Puerto Rican native who hails from the Bronx. He has a handsome face and a broad smile, but it's his shaved head that attracts all the attention. In the alley, finally, some kids peep around a corner, and Colon's pal, Sgt. Chris Rigby, a medic who looks like Mel Gibson, screws up his face in a way that transcends all language, delighting the youngsters. By the time the patrol reaches the village marketplace, the elders emerge to invite platoon leader Sgt. Chris Corbett, a thin, 16-year veteran from Chattahoochee, Fla., to share tea on a rope bench dragged into the shade.
"Kill and destroy." Despite the tea and pleasantries, the soldiers remain on high alert as they take their leave from Lakan. Task Force 1-501st suffered its first casualty since Vietnam after just such a scene two weeks earlier. Spc. Paul Riley was shot in the left hip in an attack that announced the start of the Taliban-al Qaeda's own spring offensive. The theater commander, who came to pin a Purple Heart on Riley, told the troops: "We've got a plan for them. That's about all I can say now." The operations officer of the 1-501st was less coy. "Our plan is to kill and destroy the al Qaeda and Taliban remnants," he said. Without tips from local Afghans, however, they stand little chance of finding them in this land of soaring mountains and high-walled mud compounds.
The Americans' search is complicated by the studied evasiveness of many Afghans. Capt. Brent Morrow understands why. Twenty-five years of war have bred a survival mentality and a culture of switching sides. "They fear retribution," he says, "from the Taliban and al Qaeda."
Next stop is a madrasah. Two hostile mullahs exchange words with Captain Morrow outside its gates. Shots from AK-47s echo off the mountain walls, and the soldiers set off to investigate. Two hot and rocky mountain ridges later, the soldiers discover the source: a wedding party's celebratory firing into the air. It's a time-honored Afghan custom, festive but also jitters-inducing.
The convoy rolls on, led by a humvee whose titanium armor is designed to deflect explosions caused by land mines and improvised explosive devices. At Harounkhel, a fortresslike village hewn from stone, Morrow and the platoon are welcomed by an English teacher, a man once imprisoned by the Taliban. An informant who passed along some useful information is given a satellite dish and a radio, a big deal in a country where communications are a challenge, to say the least. That night, the soldiers build "Ranger's graves" as the sun sets, piling stones 18 inches high to protect them from the cone-shaped spray of shrapnel, should grenades be lobbed into their wadi.
The platoon is roused at daybreak for the final jolting leg of the patrol. Its destination: the border town of Babrak Tana. The village's mud-front porches are packed with Pakistani goods and open-air beds rented to travelers. The soldiers copy the call registry of one resident's Thuraya satellite phone while the Pashtun tribesmen known as cuchi reel off a litany of complaints. The oldest man says: "For two years you Americans have come and written down a lot, but you never bring us anything." Morrow isn't taking any guff. "You say al Qaeda and Taliban are not here, but we know they come through here. We know there are cuchi who take money to hide them and their rockets and to fire the rockets from these mountains." Then he makes his pitch: "We understand you are afraid, but to make this area more secure you must take some risks. Tell us when they are here, and we will do our best to help you." He gives his phone number to an English-speaking teacher and leaves sacks of precious school supplies as a parting gift.
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."
This story appears in the May 10, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.