The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor

by Jake Tapper

  Army spouses are taught to be there for one another, and Sarah Faulkenberry tried to console Karen Pfeifer. Although the two of them had become friendly while stationed with their husbands in Germany, on one level, Sarah was a bit surprised to get her call. But she knew that Karen had been raised in a foster home and didn’t have much of a support network beyond her husband, his family, and her brother, a Marine at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. Adding to Karen’s feelings of isolation and panic was the fact that she was seven and a half months pregnant.

  Eventually, just as Sarah herself had been able to accompany John from Germany back to Washington, Karen met her own husband in Germany and flew in a medevac plane with him from Landstuhl to the United States—though instead of landing in the nation’s capital, they continued on to San Antonio, Texas, where Chris was to undergo further treatment at Brooke Army Medical Center. The Air Force officers almost didn’t let Karen fly because she was thirty-four weeks pregnant and they were worried she’d go into labor during the flight, but ultimately they relented. She told them she was getting on that plane to be by her husband’s side, and they weren’t going to be able to stop her. If she did go into labor, at least there would be medical staff on board to look after her, thirty thousand feet in the air.

  Up the mountain at Observation Post Warheit, Dave Roller and the men of 1st Platoon were getting used to a lifestyle even more spartan than the one down the hill at Combat Outpost Keating. Hygiene had become a relative term: six weeks into their stay at Warheit, Roller had yet to use any shampoo and was still on his first bar of soap. The troops bathed in a mountain stream; that part was kind of fun. Roller hadn’t worn deodorant in three months, and he rotated his socks, shirts, and uniforms on a monthly basis. The platoon had run out of forks and spoons so many times that it was common to see soldiers sticking any spoons they found into their pockets for later use, or licking forks “clean” so other soldiers could use them.

  There were no longer any women permanently stationed at either Observation Post Warheit or Combat Outpost Keating; with plans scotched for a PRT in Kamdesh, First Lieutenant Candace Mathis’s MP unit was not replaced. Since Afghan women universally hid from U.S. soldiers, the 1st Platoon troops literally hadn’t seen a woman in months—except for Roller, of course, through his scope before the battle at Saret Koleh. It was an odd sensation for the Americans—as if men were the only ones left on the planet. Whenever this one particular female Apache pilot flew in the area, soldiers would crowd around the radio just to hear her voice. They’d never seen her, but they were all convinced she was gorgeous.

  The two tribes had been trying to kill each other for years and years now, but Navy Commander Sam Paparo was going to give diplomacy one more shot.

  Paparo was head of the area’s provincial reconstruction team, which was located about a hundred miles distant from Kamdesh, at Kala Gush, in western Nuristan. Insurgents had continued to try to exploit the bitter rivalry between the Kom and the Kushtozis, stoking the dispute that had begun decades before over water rights and persisted ever since. After burning down a Kushtoz village in 1997 and displacing its twelve hundred or so residents, the Kom had placed mines throughout the ruins so the villagers couldn’t return. It was in the midst of an attempt to encourage the groups to reconcile that Fazal Ahad, head of the erstwhile Eastern Nuristan Security Shura, had been killed.

  Paparo had been working with the United Nations Mining Action Centre for Afghanistan to make Kushtoz hospitable once again. Before that agency could take any action, however, the dispute between the two ethnic groups had to be resolved, and the area made secure enough to allow the U.N. workers to do their jobs in safety. Each of these tasks was considerable. But that was what he and his colleagues were there to do, Paparo told himself. Even if the conflict was generations old and the land insecure, the United States was there to bring peace and stability.

  In August, at Parun, the district center of Nuristan, Governor Nuristani, along with some national government officials, hosted a conference to map out a development plan for the province. The governor also invited representatives of the Kom, from Kamdesh Village, and the Kushtozis to come and discuss ways of settling their dispute over water rights. One of the possible solutions being proposed had long been debated by the PRT at Kala Gush: building a canal that would serve both communities. Paparo hoped that a canal might resolve the initial basis for the dispute, though State Department official David Katz had counseled him to refrain from involving the United States in the squabble in any way—the Americans would inevitably become entangled, whether they wanted to or not, Katz said, which would end up making the feud even more difficult to sort out. In any case, at Parun, the matter went unresolved, as the Kom argued that the Kushtozis had no right to the water that would flow through such a canal.

  One day at the unfinished compound where the PRT personnel were encamped, Paparo heard a skirmish erupt just outside the gate—thankfully, a fight without armaments. He and other troops from the PRT ran to the entrance of the camp and saw two ancient men beating the life out of each other. Each elder—one Kom, one Kushtozi—was brandishing a large rock, and as the pair rolled around on the ground, each pummeled the other’s skull with his stone. Paparo and the U.S. forces balked for a minute; laying hands on these elders might create a whole other host of issues, they knew. But it really looked as if the seniors were prepared to fight each other to the death, so the Americans at last intervened, pulling them apart. Both men had nasty cuts and bruises on their heads.

  The physician’s assistant at the PRT was a Navy lieutenant commander whose previous deployment had been on the White House medical team. Not so long ago, he’d been in Washington, treating the leaders of the United States and their families—the Bushes and Cheneys, the Clintons and Gores—and now here he was in eastern Afghanistan, patching up the lacerations of a couple of old men who were fighting over water rights.

  It was a long way indeed from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

  The joke about “military intelligence” being an oxymoron was so old as to be beyond a cliché, but Lieutenant Colonel Kolenda and Captain Joey Hutto had in fact begun to seriously doubt the intelligence and conventional wisdom about Kamdesh. They’d been briefed that the insurgents they were fighting against were primarily from Pakistan, which squared with the notion that the fight in the valley related to the larger showdown with Al Qaeda, that all of this had something to do with 9/11. But over time, the 1-91 Cav officers had made a number of observations that called that conclusion into question:

  The fighting stopped during the planting and the harvest and then flared back up again afterward. It didn’t seem logical that Pakistanis would defer to the local agricultural calendar.

  On their hand-held radios, the insurgents spoke in the local dialect, Nuristani, which was relatively obscure and difficult to learn.

  The insurgents seemed to know every nook and cranny of the surrounding terrain.

  The local elders with real influence refused to meet with either the Americans or the district administrator, Anayatullah; those “elders” who did come to the shuras with 1-91 Cav were members of a dwindling group of Anayatullah’s cronies.

  Despite both the severely depressed local economy and the relatively high pay offered by the Americans, the number of locals who now worked at Combat Outpost Keating, Combat Outpost Kamu, and Observation Post Warheit could probably be counted on one hand. This could be explained in part by the fact that some young men had begun providing security for the illegal timber-smuggling industry that President Karzai had inadvertently boosted when, concerned about deforestation, he banned the felling and export of trees. But anecdotally, the Americans had also heard that other locals were either working as guards for gem smugglers or joining yet another local growth industry: the insurgency.

  Putting the pieces together, Kolenda and Hutto realized that they were facing nothing less than a popular insurrection.

  They weren’t the only ones. In the Waygal Va
lley, southwest of Combat Outpost Keating, the 173rd Airborne Task Force ROCK troopers were likewise having difficulty with the natives. Near the village of Aranas, twenty-two U.S. troops, along with some ANA soldiers and Afghan Security Guards, occupied a combat outpost called the Ranch House. Before dawn on August 22, RPGs and small-arms fire hailed down upon them; within minutes, it became frighteningly clear that the enemy planned to overrun the camp. Soon the troops at the Ranch House operations center lost contact with their men at the guard posts. The Afghan Security Guards—locally hired contractors—fled altogether, allowing the insurgents to breach the wire. Then more than three dozen ANA troops ran off toward the western side of the base, and the encroaching insurgents grabbed their ammunition and even some of their RPGs.

  Thankfully, A-10 Warthogs arrived on the scene fairly quickly and, under the direction of First Lieutenant Matt Ferrara, began beating back the insurgents with “danger close” runs on enemy positions within the base. The Warthogs provided enough cover for Chosen Company to regain control. By the time the firefight came to its end, an ANA soldier and an Afghan Security Guard had been killed, and half of the U.S. troops had been wounded. The defenders felt certain that their antagonists were not Pakistanis.

  For Kolenda and Hutto, the attack on the Ranch House reemphasized the need to take every precaution possible to protect such vulnerable outposts in remote areas. Aggressive patrolling and the cultivation of positive relationships with the local population had to be top priorities. But those measures alone wouldn’t suffice. Bulldog Troop would also need to conduct regular outpost defense drills specifically to prepare for the worst-case scenario: a breach, or “enemy in the wire.” The men would have to be ready.

  Having shed his Army uniform and bulletproof Kevlar, wearing just a T-shirt and short pants—as if he were headed out to football practice on the Coral Gables High School practice field—Dave Roller left Observation Post Warheit with a few of his men to meet with a group of Kamdesh elders. It was mid-September, but the July 27 battle at Saret Koleh remained fresh in his mind, a scar that time would never fully heal.

  The makeshift landing zone. (Photo courtesy of Alex Newsom)

  Desperate, angry, and tired of getting shot at, Roller was ready to give this counterinsurgency business a try. Bostick had been a fantastic commander, but his strength was really more in the kinetic side of things, in fighting, thought Roller. Hutto, in contrast, had spent years working in special operations on unconventional warfare in Latin America, and he regarded counterinsurgency outreach as being common sense. He’d been encouraging his 1st Platoon leader to extend a hand toward the residents of Kamdesh Village. So Roller and his guys took a couple of cases of water with them as a gift, and they all sat down in a circle with the local elders, and Roller, through an interpreter, told the Afghans that he wanted to learn more about them so he could better be of service.

  The Kamdeshis didn’t understand at first. The Americans wanted to help them? Why would conquerors want to help those whose country they were occupying? Why would invaders reach out to them in such a way? It made no sense.

  Roller tried to explain that he and his men all had families back in America. He pointed to Sergeant First Class Michael Burns and Staff Sergeant Zachary Crawford. “These men are fathers just like you,” he told the elders. “They’re husbands and fathers whose wives and children are scared for their lives. They have families that they’re responsible for providing for, but they’ve chosen to be here in Kamdesh to help you.” His own parents were terrified he’d be killed, he said, but he and his troops thought it was important to help the people of Nuristan. He was trying to get the Kamdesh elders to see him and his men as real people, with real emotions. Indeed, he was convinced that to the villagers, Americans—with their camouflage helmets, body armor, huge guns, and sunglasses masking their eyes, their bodies festooned with confusing technological devices—appeared robotic, nearly inhuman. That was why Roller had worn his gym clothes to this meeting, so he would look not like an Army officer or any other sort of authority figure but instead like just a young man—a kid, really—who was there to help them, almost as if he were with the Peace Corps.

  Observation Post Warheit. (Photo courtesy of Rick Victorino)

  In August, during his first week at Camp Keating, Hutto had asked Kenny Johnson, in charge of contracting, to call a meeting with local vendors to discuss various development projects. Some of these projects were funded by the PRT, while others were financed through a special discretionary sum meted out by the commander—in this case, Hutto and Johnson. The distinction meant nothing to the locals who were competing for the money.

  The next week, Hutto began making the rounds and holding shuras in local villages, starting with Urmul, followed by Kamdesh. In Urmul, residents made clear their disdain for Kamdesh District’s administrator, Anayatullah, who’d taken Gul Mohammed Khan’s place. Among the reasons for their antipathy was the fact that Anayatullah’s family had been chased out of the area years before; it seemed curious to them that the son of an ostracized family should have been appointed to such a position. The villagers also complained that he was corrupt and didn’t look out for their interests. Hutto told the Nuristanis that the United States wanted them to take control of everything—their own governance, development, and security—and suggested that if they did that, the Americans would show more deference to their autonomy and territorial sovereignty. But by the same token, they would also be responsible for any bad guys in their midst who fired upon Camp Keating or attacked the patrols that Hutto was sending out at such a frenetic pace. The villagers seemed receptive to these terms.

  Over the next several months, Hutto and Kolenda began establishing close working relationships with elders in the area, and they urged their lieutenants to do the same—whence Roller’s excursion from Observation Post Warheit. At Kamdesh, Mawlawi Abdul Rahman had become a prominent elder. Rahman was fairly quiet and not really comfortable speaking in large forums. He wore the only pair of photochromic lenses—glasses that turned dark in the sun—that the Americans ever saw on a Nuristani. He was polite and so indirect that it was sometimes a task to figure out where he stood on an issue. The men of 1-91 Cav knew that Rahman had been a student of Mullah Sadiq’s—the HIG leader who went underground in 2006—but they liked him. Hutto, Kolenda, and their ANA counterparts hoped that Rahman might even persuade Sadiq to encourage HIG fighters’ partnering with the Afghan government and the ISAF forces.

  Lieutenant Dave Roller meeting with Kamdesh elders. (Photo courtesy of Dave Roller)

  The Americans were firm, but they could be deferential, too, when they needed to be.

  Marine Master Sergeant Scott Ingbretsen, in charge of training seventy-two ANA soldiers at Combat Outpost Keating and Observation Post Warheit, tried his best to convey the sense that he worked for the Afghans, that it was the ANA commander, Lieutenant Noorullah, who made the decisions for his company. Raised as an Air Force brat, Ingbretsen, now thirty-eight, had joined the Marines because they accepted his application before the Air Force did. He’d done three tours in Iraq, combating IEDs as an explosive-ordnance disposal technician—one of those guys who would be depicted in the 2008 film The Hurt Locker, which many in the field would deride for its unrealistic portrayal of such specialists as out-of-control rogues. Ingbretsen approached Nuristani politics and pride with the sensitivity of an expert trying to defuse a bomb. When he first met his ANA company, a platoon sergeant was giving a class on hand and arm signals. Afterward, the Afghan sergeant asked him what he’d thought of the class, adding, “I’m sure you’re going to change the signals.” Ingbretsen reasoned that he’d been preceded as a trainer for that ANA company by any number of other individuals from any number of other countries, most, if not all, of whom had forced the troops to learn their particular motions.

  “It probably makes more sense for me to learn your hand signals,” Ingbretsen replied. “There are more of you than there are of me.” That went over well. Bo
mb defused.

  Many of the men in Ingbretsen’s company had been fighting since they were young teenagers, either as mujahideen or on the other side, as allies of the Soviets. So he figured his job was to professionalize the new Afghan troops—to make sure they understood the importance of representing the Afghan government in ethical and respectful ways. Some of their previous experiences had encouraged habits that were difficult to break. For example, many Afghans had seen that Soviet enlisted men were neither trusted nor respected by their officers, so, following that model, their own enlisted men were considered pretty much personae non gratae. When the usual conflicting tribal, ethnic, and village loyalties were added to the mix, ANA officers and their sergeants hardly stood as paragons of harmony and discipline.

  On their first major patrol after their arrival in the area in September 2007, Ingbretsen and his ANA troops visited a couple of small villages, including Upper Kamdesh, where Lieutenant Noorullah sat down with Mohammed Gul, the malik, or conduit between the village and the Afghan government. Gul was angry—very angry. He told Noorullah how the Americans had, the previous year, bombed a local village; children had died, he said. Noorullah didn’t know how to respond. He looked at Ingbretsen, who asked him for permission to speak. It was granted.

  Ingbretsen was contrite. “We come from a good country,” he said humbly. “The United States wants to do good things for your people. But mistakes happen. All I can do is apologize.”

  The malik looked at the American. “Don’t be sad,” he said. “It’s okay.” He invited Ingbretsen and Noorullah to dine with him that night.

  Similarly, on another occasion, former district administrator Gul Mohammed Khan invited Hutto to his home in Upper Kamdesh for dinner. It was an impressive spread, as these things went, but Mohammed didn’t hold back, laying into Hutto about civilian casualties, night raids, and house-to-house searches. Special Forces teams and other Americans had been coming into Nuristan for years, and it seemed to the Kamdesh elders that all they knew was brute force.