Afghanistan's Eastern Front
Along the Pakistani border, al Qaeda and Taliban fighters take their best shots
KUNAR PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN—Sprawling on a rug in his embattled police station near the Kunar River, Police Chief Mohammed Youssuf eagerly boots up his laptop computer. Images appear on the screen—a Kalashnikov assault rifle firing wildly at enemies shooting back from hiding places in the craggy mountainside—along with a soundtrack that has the rapid clack-clack-clack gunfire punctuating a stream of shouted obscenities. Two U.S. soldiers crawl through underbrush toward an enemy position behind a cleft in the rocks. Overhead, two Apache helicopters spin in circles as they fire machine-gun volleys against the insurgents and, finally, unleash a Hellfire missile, which hits with a burst of smoke and flying rocks.
This is no video game. Youssuf, 33, recorded these scenes during a recent battle in which he fired off his rifle with one hand while gripping his video cam in the other. In the eight-hour fight, which followed an attack on a U.S. supply convoy, American and Afghan forces killed four suspected al Qaeda militants and captured a fifth. A dozen others escaped back across the border to their refuge in Pakistan.
As mountain snows melt and wildflowers bloom, Afghanistan's future depends in no small part on what happens along an ill-defined border, the Durand Line, which separates Afghanistan and Pakistan. A month of reporting along the mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan indicates that despite a growing ability of Afghans to govern themselves and an expanding NATO-led peacemaking force, the enemy is steadily gaining strength. Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their various affiliates are poised to strike against what little stability this war-wracked country has achieved in the past five years. By most accounts, including from sources inside Pakistan, the al Qaeda and Taliban redoubts are flourishing just across the border, beyond the permitted reach of forces in Afghanistan. From the vantage point on the Afghan side of the border, there is little to show that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's declared crackdown on militants and claimed pacification amounts to much.
Goat paths. In Khost and Kunar provinces, there are five major mountain passes that link Pashtun tribesmen across the line. But there are also dozens of buzrao, or goat paths, that humans on foot, dirt bike, or donkey can navigate night and day. As more Taliban and hard-core al Qaeda types filter in to mount guerrilla attacks, hundreds of fresh U.S. forces deploy and disperse into small fire bases along the frontier. Although they are embedding with what commanders say are improving Afghan police and Army units, the U.S. troops are also exposed as targets.
In Kunar and Nuristan provinces, troops from the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division are poised for a tough spring. They say they've created a "magnet for the bad guys" in the Korungal Valley, whose boulder-strewn mountainsides provide ideal terrain for insurgents because of the myriad hiding places and escape routes. "We've cleared them out once, and now they are coming back for a fight," says Lt. Col. Christopher Cavoli.
If Afghanistan is slipping toward an abyss, as many residents on the border insist, U.S. commanders don't see it that way. "I don't have any fears," says Lt. Col. Scott Custer of the 82nd Airborne Division, whose great-great uncle was the famous George Custer, who lost his life at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. "I'm sure we can get the job done militarily."
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