Jim was one of a limited number of U.S. officers with standing approval from his command, under what was known as a Level One CONOP, to navigate the country on low-visibility operations. He took full advantage, driving Afghan-style vehicles, wearing Afghan clothing, and carrying an AK-47. Since he never wore body armor, neither did I. Although traveling as Afghans had its risks, at times it was a huge advantage; in that guise we bypassed suspected bombs and once pushed straight through a Taliban ambush on an Afghan army convoy.
“Let’s go!” Jim said, turning to a blond, bearded American in a tan Afghan suit who was hunched over the wheel. A friend Jim nicknamed “Mullah,” the driver was a former Special Forces sergeant who was on Petraeus’s counterinsurgency advisory team and was writing about local security efforts.
“Roger that, kimosabe,” the driver replied. “And good to meet ya, Ann,” he said, grinning at me in the rearview mirror as he put the truck in gear and stepped on the gas.
The truck rolled slowly down the road through the small military town that was JAF, past brigade headquarters bristling with antennas, chow halls, and gyms fortified with concrete T-barriers, yards stacked high with shipping containers, and convoys of heavily armored vehicles. Then we turned down a narrow side road that ended at a gate made of chain-link fence. It was locked.
“Shit!” Jim said. “Where’s my guy?”
We were trying to get out—just as Jim had come in—through the low-vis gate at JAF, a back door to the high-security base intended to allow Afghan sources to come and go quietly and quickly. The gate had far less traffic and fewer guards than the base’s main gate and was used both by the CIA and Special Forces.
Jim climbed out, paced for a minute, and lit a cigarette. Five minutes later—it seemed like forever—a Special Forces intelligence soldier in civilian clothes came hustling toward the gate.
“Sorry, man,” he said, pulling a key out of his pocket.
“No worries, bro,” Jim said, tossing down his cigarette butt and crushing it with his sandal. He climbed back in the truck and off we went.
Mullah swerved past a serpentine series of concrete barriers to the outer wall of JAF and drove through a final checkpoint manned by Afghans. I let out a sigh of relief. We’d made it—at least over that first hurdle. Now, what awaited us in Jalalabad?
In an instant, we escaped the drab, monochrome base and were swallowed up by the teeming, kaleidoscopic streets of Jalalabad. We passed fruit and vegetable markets and small shops laden with tea, spices, and big sacks of rice. Clothing stalls fluttered with brightly colored dresses and woven garlands of paper flowers that Afghans wore at weddings and other special occasions. Groups of schoolgirls walked by dressed in flowing black uniforms topped by ghostlike white head coverings that extended to their arms.
As I soaked in the city, Jim looked out his window, scanning the crowded streets for danger. Had we triggered an insurgent early warning network when we left the base? He knew the enemy watched all the gates, even the low-vis one. All it would take was for a spotter to flag our vehicle and target it with a VBIED, or vehicle-borne improvised explosive device—his biggest concern. He ran through a mental list of other threats and contingencies for each: a U.S. military or Afghan checkpoint, a vehicle breakdown, friendly Afghan intelligence picking us up and passing it on to an American unit that would mistakenly target us . . . or simply a random attack.
Yet as we passed down roads in central Jalalabad swarming with rickshaws, bicycles, sedans, and minivans, we were largely unnoticed by the Afghans passing us just feet away. Jim had learned—and taught his men—the tactical fine points of avoiding looking like an American: no wristwatches or Oakley sunglasses, the right Afghan headgear, M4 carbines kept out of sight. Jim had also consciously toned down the heightened sense of danger he projected, deliberately looking through the Afghans rather than at them, not locking their eyes with his killer gaze as he once had.
The landscape opened up as we approached the outskirts of the city, two-story buildings and high-walled compounds falling away and turning into open dirt lots with views of mountain ranges in the distance on either side. Mullah turned down a long gravel drive toward our destination: a large, secluded guesthouse known as the Taj.
The Taj was run by Dr. Dave Warner, a brilliant and irreverent hippie from California who was rumored to have ties to the intelligence community. Dave was the only person I’d met who had received an honorable discharge from the Army for using hallucinogens and failing a rehabilitation program. I checked in with Dave regularly, as I was technically working for him, and he and his organization were providing cover for my presence with Jim in Afghanistan. Dave had an MD and a PhD and ran an offbeat organization called the Synergy Strike Force, which carried out Internet-centered development projects in Afghanistan. Dave considered himself the supreme ninja warrior of the government-contracting world—and had the deals to prove it. For critical periods, Dave provided me with official Defense Department letters of authorization and funds for travel. In exchange, I would assist with some education development projects in the village of Mangwel. Jim was taking me to Mangwel to live with him the next day. That night, in a brief respite, we were going to enjoy being back together.
A single Afghan guard stationed in front of the Taj waved us past, and the main gate swung open. They were expecting us. We pulled up to the side of the building, its grounds replete with well-tended flowering plants, giving it an exotic feel. We stepped down a walkway and into a grassy courtyard. On one side was a bamboo bar with a patio and lounge chairs. Beyond that was a small but deep swimming pool. The Taj at the time had one of the only bars in eastern Afghanistan. It served as an enclave where like-minded foreigners and Afghans working for various nongovernmental organizations could relax and share information outside the constraints of the conservative Muslim society. If Graham Greene or Sean Flynn were alive, they’d be at the Taj. We settled into our room, with high ceilings, a double bed, and a private shower. I pulled an orange, lemon, and lime out of my bag along with a bottle of Jim’s favorite tequila, Patrón, that I’d picked up at the duty-free store in Dubai. He mixed us a couple of margaritas and we sipped them by the pool, and then spent the first part of the night dancing on the roof to Jay-Z. Mullah put on a favorite slow dance song for us. As I swayed in Jim’s arms while the sun dipped behind the distant mountains, I felt happy and excited about our trip to Mangwel. After a couple more drinks, we went to bed.
The Taj was only lightly guarded, and that night, as usual, Jim slept with his M4 carbine and AK-47 rifle next to him. But a few hours later, a loud explosion rattled the windows of our room, waking us up. In the darkness, we heard a U.S. helicopter swoop overhead, followed by more explosions. Rockets. Jim jumped up, shirtless, and grabbed his rifle.
“Stay here!” he told me, and handed me his 9 mm pistol. “Shoot anyone who comes through that door!” He went out of the room and tried to get up to the roof to see what was going on, but the door to the upstairs was locked. He listened and heard no activity at the Taj. So he came back and barricaded our room with chairs, a table, and every other piece of furniture he could push against the door. He pulled a couple of grenades out of his ammo pouch. With no way of knowing whether the Taj was safe, he stayed awake and on edge the rest of the night.
In the early morning darkness, Jim suddenly got violently ill as a result of some combination of liquor and pharmaceuticals he’d taken the night before. Sitting on the floor under a steaming shower, recovering, he wiped his face with a wet cloth. I showered and sat next to him. He looked at me with distant eyes.
“Ann, you need to know something before we get back to Mangwel,” he said slowly. “I am so deep into this now. Deeper than when you were here before. The tribal elders are coming to me. They trust me,” he said.
Since arriving in Afghanistan just under a year earlier, Jim had worked as both an advisor and a commander to help expand the local security program to more than a thousand Pashtun tribesmen in eastern Afg
hanistan, including Mangwel.
“I’m afraid this won’t end well,” Jim confided, his voice low and anguished. “When the U.S. bails out of here, these people who have sided with me, and believed in me, are going to be slaughtered.”
I looked at him intently. Jim trusted his gut because it almost never let him down—many times it had kept him alive. The problem was, even if Jim was right, we both knew there was no turning back now.
The next morning, Jim pressed ahead with his mission. We drove from the Taj to the heavily guarded Jalalabad palace of Gul Agha Sherzai, the governor of Nangarhar Province. Located down a long drive lined with carefully manicured hedges and gardens, the palace was a symbol of Sherzai’s opulence and power. Sherzai fought alongside U.S. Special Forces in the southern province of Kandahar during the 2001 campaign to overthrow the Taliban regime, earning his name, which means “son of a lion.” He was one of several influential strongmen Jim was meeting to push his tribal strategy forward. Sherzai had been accused of corruption as had many senior Afghan officials. What mattered was getting the power into the hands of the local tribes, and Jim believed Sherzai could help with that. Jim had gained approval to set up Afghan Local Police in three districts of northern Nangarhar, but government officials there were interfering with the ability of local tribal elders to select men for the job. Jim had not gained authorization from his U.S. military command to travel to Jalalabad and meet with Sherzai, but he knew that unless Sherzai intervened, the local police program would fail in northern Nangarhar. So he reached out to Sherzai directly and was invited to the palace.
We were ushered into a large reception room lined with plush chairs and tables laden with cups of tea and platters of almonds, dried chickpeas, and raisins. A moment later a heavyset man with a thick black mustache walked in and sat at the head of the room, next to Jim. It was Sherzai. As often happened in such meetings, the two men established their credentials as warriors.
“I had fifty Special Forces guys fighting with me in Kandahar,” said Sherzai, referring to the 2001 battle to take the Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan. Jim’s boss, Bolduc, later worked with Sherzai in Kandahar. “Aircraft were dropping bombs everywhere,” he said.
Jim wanted to know where Sherzai stood on the local police. He explained the government interference in northern Nangarhar, and asked Sherzai for his advice.
“More than a hundred years ago when Afghanistan had a king, there was no national army or police force. It was just a tribal army, like you are building now,” Sherzai said, taking a puff of his cigarette. President Karzai, he explained, had been opposed to the American plan to raise tribal police. “At first, Karzai was concerned that tribal forces would just get the weapons and break the law, but I took the tribal elders to see him and we convinced him to support it,” Sherzai said. “It is important for the tribal elders to guarantee who becomes arbakai. I will invite all the district leaders and tribal elders from northern Nangarhar here to discuss it.”
“That is a good idea,” Jim said. “I will be here when they meet.”
Another step forward.
We moved into a vast dining room with a long wooden table, where dozens of Sherzai followers sat down to a lavish meal of soup, rice, chicken, and spinach with Jim and me. Jim and Sherzai traded jokes about growing up and being beaten by their fathers. I discussed tribal history with Sherzai and one of his advisors. Meetings with Afghans always involved long periods of social conversation and brief spurts of business. Jim knew that and practiced it religiously, never wearing a watch to such meetings. It was one of his twelve principles for working with Pashtuns.
We said goodbye and got back into the Hilux to head for Mangwel. Jim handed me the 9 mm pistol in a holster to wear under my gray-blue burkha, the flowing cloak that Afghan women wear to cover themselves when outside of the home. With only a small, netted opening for my eyes, it was sweltering but necessary. Jim was concerned about not triggering the insurgent early warning networks as we left Jalalabad. Having a woman in a pickup truck without a burkha would be noticed. We crossed the Behsud Bridge over the Kabul River and headed northeast along the Konar River. The biggest threats on the route from Jalalabad to Mangwel were roadside bombs and direct-fire ambushes. If we were spotted at the bridge, an insurgent there could phone ahead and identify the truck, saying we were the only white Hilux headed their way. Down the road, the Taliban could lay out an IED watched by two or three attackers with a machine gun—and we would be done.
We passed through farming villages and ripening cornfields and crossed the Konar River at the Spin Jumat, or White Mosque Bridge. Ten minutes from there, the road twisted as it curved around the ambush spot nicknamed Zombieland. After that, we entered the territory of the Mohmand tribe and came to the first rectangular, mud-walled homes of Mangwel. At the far end of the village, we turned down a dirt road to the qalat where Jim and his team lived with the arbakai—and now I too would stay. I was excited but apprenhensive. I knew I had to win acceptance from them all.
I got out of the truck in my Afghan dress and stood there, unsure what to do next. Just then, a small Afghan man with green eyes approached, smiled at me, and greeted me respectfully. I recognized him as Jim’s old friend from 2003, Umara Khan.
“Tsenge yay, khor? How are you, sister?” he said, placing his right hand over his heart.
“Ze khaiem, manana. I am fine, thank you,” I answered in Pashto, imitating him and putting my hand on my heart. Other tribesmen looked on but kept a distance.
My relationship with the Pashtun men in Mangwel was an extremely delicate matter. Mangwel was light-years away from the cosmopolitan city of Jalalabad—it was a traditional, rural Pashtun village that had changed little in recent centuries. It had no electricity, running water, or computers. Its people still lived and breathed the strict tribal code of Pashtunwali. Under that code, a Pashtun man had to fight for his honor at all costs by protecting what was his—his land, his women, his guns. Jim had gathered all the arbakai in a tent on the qalat before my arrival and told them about me. I was his wife, his khuza, and he expected them to respect me and protect me as such, he said. In bringing me to Mangwel, Jim was taking an incredible risk. If any of the tribesmen disrespected me in the slightest, he would be honor-bound to fight them, a conflict that could endanger his hard-won relationship with the Mohmand tribe. I could also inadvertently provoke such a conflict if I did not take care to live according to Pashtunwali—to cover myself in the baggy clothing of rural Pashtun women, to always walk behind Jim in Mangwel, to act demurely around Pashtun men, and follow many other rules that were foreign to me. The sun dipped behind the mountains, and I settled in for my first night.
Early the next morning, Jim came to me excitedly. “Sitting Bull is here to see you!” he said.
I pulled on a black embroidered dress, billowing maroon pants, and a scarf that I had bought at an Afghan market in Virginia, and followed Jim into a tent on the qalat. Noor Afzhal stood from a cot to greet me, touching his chest with his hand. He smiled and offered me a rich, sugary flatbread with homemade butter, plus milk tea—all carefully transported from his home.
“Welcome,” he said in a deep voice.
“I am very happy to be here,” I replied in Pashto. I gave him a gift—a warm vest—and some sweets for his wife.
“Have some tea,” he said, filling my glass cup from a silver kettle.
As we talked, we heard the patter of rain on the tent roof and then the rumbling of thunder in the distance.
“You are good luck, you bring the rain,” Noor Afzhal told me.
“Do you like it here?” he asked.
“It is beautiful,” I said. “The mountains and river remind me of my home.”
Noor Afzhal smiled again and took a sip of tea. Then his face grew serious.
“Jim is my fifth son, and you are my daughter-in-law,” he told me. “Here you must follow Pashtunwali and live the Pashtun way.”
“I understand, and I will,” I promis
ed. I was the first American woman Noor Afzhal had ever met and allowed into his village this way.
Jim’s decision to bring me to Mangwel marked an ultimate sign of his trust in the tribe, and Noor Afzhal’s willingness to accept me also signaled Jim’s status with the tribe.
But I had to play my role as a strange hybrid of an American and an Afghan woman. And apart from morphing as best I could into a Pashtun wife, I had to continue to hide my presence from military authorities and other prominent visitors to Mangwel, and also to accept Jim’s total control over where I went and when. Jim decided whether I went on missions or not—he bore the overwhelming responsibility of having the woman he loved in his care in a war zone, a burden that, try as I might, I could never completely understand. It was as it should be. Still, for a war correspondent used to pushing the limits—wearing combat boots and baseball caps and rolling out the gate on every mission—it was sometimes easier intellectually than emotionally to stay in my place.
The first day in Mangwel, I moved into our tiny room in the qalat. Jim and I lived inside an eight-by-sixteen-foot room built inside a shipping container. The container was sequestered at the end of a narrow corridor in one corner of the qalat. The floor of the room was tilted, and inside there was just enough room for a bed and a few shelves. A sign on the door read: “TOP SECRET—Stay the fuck out if you do not have a TS SCI clearance—TOP SECRET.” Jim and his team and a handful of close confidants were the only elements of the U.S. military who knew I was living there. No senior officer in Jim’s chain of command was aware of it. Whenever generals, senators, Obama administration officials, or other VIPs came to visit Mangwel, I stayed in the room. It was a particularly strange feeling because I knew most of the visitors and had interviewed them repeatedly—and they knew me by name as well. I was itching to grill them on everything I was learning about the strategy in Mangwel, but I had to stay out of sight and bite my tongue.
The same was true for missions. When planning missions, Jim referred to me as “X.” I would check his mission diagrams, drawn with colored markers on butcher paper on an easel in the operations center—to see if there was an X in one of the vehicles or not. In the beginning, I would ask him if I could go. Later, I learned not to.
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