American Spartan

by Tyson, Ann Scott

  Ultimately, Noor Afzhal rejected the Taliban regime, too, and in particular, its strict version of Islam. It was this transition that paved the way for his alliance with Jim in 2003.

  One late-summer morning we sat on a cot outside the arbakai tent and drank milk tea.

  “How do you balance decisions for the tribe when a conflict arises between Islam and Pashtunwali?” I asked Noor Afzhal.

  “This is not an easy question,” he replied as he looked up toward the mountains. “I should say that as a Pashtun I would always follow Islam, but honestly Pashtunwali comes first,” he said. “Yes, that is true.”

  What impressed me most about Noor Afzhal was his ever-enduring Pashtun ways, which somehow allowed for great pragmatism and moderation at the same time. Upon his return to Mangwel after years in the metropolis of Karachi, he had become more worldly, and that likely explained in part how he was able to show such tolerance and openness toward an American woman in his midst.

  As my time neared to make a trip to the United States, Noor Afzhal seemed to understand, but appeared sad and asked when I would come back again.

  “I would like Jim and you to live here in Mangwel, and visit your country when you want to,” he said.

  I smiled at him and took a sip of tea. He had no idea how appealing his words sounded to me, but I could make no promises.

  “Father,” I replied simply, “I will see you soon.”

  CHAPTER 20

  ONE WARM SPRING EVENING under a sky brimming with stars, Noor Afzhal rose from a wooden cot in the courtyard of his Mangwel qalat. The village was quiet except for the soft chorus of neighbors’ voices and a donkey braying in the distance. He stepped through a doorway and walked past the front gate to the hujira, or guest room. There he slipped off his plastic sandals and sat cross-legged on a carpet. Reclining slightly against a large cloth pillow, he was content to be surrounded by his sons and grandsons.

  Jim sat in his usual spot, by Noor Afzhal’s left side.

  Raza Gul, Noor Afzhal’s youngest and most cheerful son, rolled out a rectangular plastic mat on the floor. Then a ten-year-old grandson came through the door carrying a basin and a long-spouted water pitcher, or loota. He placed the basin in front of each man in turn and carefully poured water over their outstretched hands, then offered them a towel. Raza Gul returned with a stack of warm, homemade wheat bread and placed one of the flat rounds in front of each man. Boys followed with large metal platters of fragrant rice and smaller plates of stewed chicken. They hunched over and began eating, breaking off pieces of bread and dipping it in the chicken stew, and scooping up rice with their right hands and pushing it into their mouths with their thumbs in the Afghan manner.

  Noor Afzhal ate heartily. His health had revived since Jim brought a heart surgeon to the village to examine him and prescribe medicine for his heart and high blood sugar. Jim watched the elder’s intake of sweets, constantly checking to make sure he was drinking his tea without sugar. Noor Afzhal was visibly stronger and more robust than when Jim had met him in Jalalabad a year earlier, in the summer of 2010. He walked farther and sometimes sportily rode on the back of Azmat’s motorcycle.

  Jim tore off a piece of chicken meat and turned to Noor Afzhal.

  “You are getting younger and I am getting older, wailay, why?” Jim asked him.

  “It’s because you have taken the responsibility,” said Noor Afzhal with a smile.

  After they finished eating, Raza Gul took away the food and folded up the plastic mat with the leftover bread. A short while later, another grandson arrived with a pot of green tea and a tray of glasses. Then Jim’s favorite of the grandsons, an active boy with a mischievous grin whom he nicknamed “Little Malik,” came in, and Jim called him over to play.

  “God made a mistake,” Jim told Noor Afzhal, taking a sip of tea. “I should have been born in Afghanistan.”

  “God does not make mistakes,” Noor Afzhal replied, not missing a beat. “You were born in America so you could come here and help us.”

  The longer Jim stayed in Mangwel, the more he emerged as Noor Afzhal’s de facto eldest son and his biggest protector and ally, even within his immediate family. Noor Afzhal set aside a room inside his qalat for Jim. He promised Jim the rights of a son, including the inheritance of a portion of his land. Jim, too, began to call the Mohmands his tribe and Mangwel his home. He was Mangweli—a son of Mangwel, everyone said. Jim was clearly empowering Noor Afzhal. But he also had to carefully calibrate how to use his growing influence, as he was drawn deeper into internal issues that simmered within the family and tribe.

  Jim joined the Afghan family at a particularly delicate time, when the question of Noor Afzhal’s succession was in the offing. In Pashtun tribes, the overarching structure is stable, but leaders wield power informally and there are few rules governing succession of maliks. Chiefs must continually prove themselves to their followers and adversaries, making tribal leadership inherently uncertain. Adding complication and intrigue are the tribal blood feuds, cycles of killing and revenge that rival the drama of an ancient Greek tragedy. In the case of Noor Afzhal, his younger brother, Dost Mohammed Khan, was vying to take his place. A school supervisor who had spent several years at a boarding school in Kabul, Dost Mohammed Khan had worked as an educator and shopkeeper in other towns for many years. In the fall of 2010 he had opposed Noor Afzhal by voicing reservations about Jim and his team moving into Mangwel, arguing it would make the village less secure. Jim realized the depth of the rivalry when Dost Mohammed Khan asked him for a rifle. Jim had given Noor Afzhal more than one handsome gun, a greatly empowering gesture for Pashtuns. But Noor Afzhal privately warned Jim not to give his younger brother a weapon.

  “Do not give him the rifle,” Noor Afzhal said. “He will kill me with it.” Jim agreed to withhold the gift, and warned that Dost Mohammed Khan would regret it if he so much as touched Noor Afzhal.

  Another candidate to succeed Noor Afzhal was his second son, Asif, who had worked as a contractor for development projects at COP Penich and Mangwel. Asif was always joking and came across as incapable of being serious, but one-on-one he was just the opposite. He had gone to school until eighth grade, longer than his two younger brothers. At the age of thirty-seven, he was an effective manager, working hard to build up his own network through his contracting jobs. Asif’s personal life had been marred by tragedy. He had lost two sons, one who was stillborn and another who had died in infancy. And he had suffered a horrific accident while harvesting wheat in 2005. He had caught his left hand in a threshing machine, which chopped off most of his fingers. He was very self-conscious about his mangled hand, and always wrapped the portion of it that remained in a bandage.

  Noor Afzhal favored Asif to take his place, and Jim, as always, backed up his decision. A tribal jirga was convened to consider the matter. One factor favoring Asif in the decision was how important patrilineal relationships were in Pashtun culture. The tribal leadership had been under Noor Afzhal’s direct line for the last century. Moreover, the village elders realized that Jim, an immediate source of significant patronage, was allied with Noor Afzhal. The jirga convened and endorsed Asif as a malik and the successor to Noor Afzhal. After the succession conflict was resolved, Jim gave Dost Mohammed Khan an AK-47.

  But with Noor Afzhal still in power, conflicts began to arise between father and son that exposed the generation gap between them.

  Noor Afzhal was a traditional malik whose authority was rooted in his solid judgment and ability to settle disputes between his people and with other clans or tribes. His power was based in Mangwel and nearby rural communities of the Mohmand tribe. He lived by the code of Pashtunwali. He remembered the relatively peaceful Afghanistan of the 1960s and 1970s, and opposed the radical extremist dogma of the Taliban.

  Asif, on the other hand, was forming connections well beyond Mangwel with urbanites in Jalalabad and elsewhere with whom he shared commercial interests through his contracting work. Unlike Noor Afzhal, he carried
a cell phone, wore sneakers, and learned to speak some English. Asif was part of the generation of Afghans who remembered nothing but chaos and war—the same generation that gave rise to the Taliban. He had grown up with many young men who became Taliban insurgents, and he realized that after his father died, he would likely have to deal with them one way or the other.

  For Pashtuns, a man’s honor is derived largely from that of his father until he establishes his own reputation. Asif, still living in his father’s shadow, pledged to carry on his traditions. “I will follow the way of my father. He is the expert,” he said. But Asif took on the responsibilities reluctantly. “Maliks are bullshit!” he would say privately in English, only half jokingly.

  After Asif was selected, Jim moved publicly to bolster Asif’s power, while quietly mentoring him behind the scenes to encourage him to make good decisions.

  “I am with you, brother,” Jim told Asif one evening as they ate a meal of lamb kebabs Asif bought in one of his frequent trips to Jalalabad.

  But the next day, as if testing his new status, Asif directly challenged Noor Afzhal as they, Jim, and other soldiers met at the qalat and discussed development projects for Mangwel. Asif wanted to build a well for a friend of his who did not live in the village. Noor Afzhal protested. Any wells should benefit Mangwel, he said, but the village already had enough. Other projects, such as irrigation ditches, would benefit the entire village more, he said. “You must solve problems for the people, they are depending on you for that,” Noor Afzhal told Asif. The criticism stung.

  “You are an old man,” Asif lashed back. “Your brain is not working anymore.”

  That night, Noor Afzhal could not sleep. He asked his wife and other sons if his mind was failing him. The next day, he asked Jim his opinion. “Your mind is good,” Jim told him. “If your mind becomes weak, I will tell you, and I will protect you even more then.”

  Soon afterward, Asif came to Jim, asking how to mend the rift.

  It was the most serious crisis yet between father and son. Jim decided to address it by telling them each separately the same story, about a conflict he had with his own father. Jim sat down first with Asif.

  A few years earlier, he said, he had gathered the men from his Special Forces team, those he loved and respected most, for one last party. He invited his father to join them. But in the middle of the party, his father, who was drunk, blurted out that he used to beat Jim up when he was a boy. Jim was furious. “Yes, you did,” he told his father. “But if I wanted to, I could beat you now.”

  He told Asif, “It was the worst thing my father ever did to me. I didn’t talk to him for two days, and then put him on an airplane. I love my father dearly. He loves me dearly. We make mistakes,” Jim said. “He wishes for all he is worth that he hadn’t said that to me, because it hurt me and embarrassed me. It shamed me and took my honor. But then, I turned around and embarrassed him and shamed him and took his honor as well,” he said, speaking to Asif using the language of Pashtunwali. “Neither one of us was the better for it. We both lost. Sons and fathers love one another, but they both make mistakes.”

  Next Jim related the story to Noor Afzhal, and the rift with Asif seemed to dissipate.

  Only time would tell what kind of malik Asif would become. He had a reckless side that one day caused a near disaster. Jim and Ish were walking down the main road through Mangwel, having received a report that a suicide bomber was on his way to the village. Just then, around a curve in the road, he heard gunfire and cars approaching. Jim took aim down the road with his AK-47. The first car came into view, with men shooting out the window with rifles. Jim tightened his finger on the trigger and was about to fire on the vehicle. He waited an instant to gain a better view. Just then he spotted Asif riding in the front seat. It was a wedding party, and Asif and his friend were reveling. Asif hadn’t notified the Tribe 33 team about the celebratory fire, a customary part of Afghan weddings. Jim lowered his rifle, angry beyond words. He shuddered at how close he had just come to killing his Afghan brother and Noor Afzhal’s chosen heir. Asif sheepishly apologized.

  Not long afterward, Asif got into a fistfight with his brother Azmat in the qalat. The brothers clashed over an issue that was distressingly petty for Jim but one he nevertheless understood—trash. The people of Mangwel were so poor that almost any reusable commodity coming from the qalat was of value—scrap wood from crates of supplies, empty plastic water bottles, the metal casings of bullets fired on the range next to the qalat. A conflict escalated between one of the laborers on the qalat, who worked for Asif, and one of the arbakai, who worked for Azmat, over some of these resources. Heated words between the brothers turned to blows before some of the arbakai pulled them apart.

  Later that day, Jim brought the two brothers together. “I have come from America to help you. I will fight anyone for you. I will die for you. But I am not here to see my brothers fight,” he said. They lowered their heads; the shame implicit in his words was clear.

  Then Jim pulled out two 9 mm pistols and racked a round in each of them. He handed one to Asif and one to Azmat.

  “They work,” he said. “Here are three magazines apiece. Next time you fight, don’t fight with your fists.”

  As Jim played a greater role within the family, Noor Afzhal decided that Jim, too, should become a malik of Mangwel—and so made him one. “You are my malik,” Noor Afzhal told Jim one day at his home. “I make decisions for the tribe. You make decisions for me.”

  Noor Afzhal gave Jim a gray turban and began involving him in tribal jirgas. Jim mainly attended the assemblies that involved concerns between Mangwel and neighboring areas, such as disputes over land, water, and grazing. He tried to leave problems within Mangwel to the village elders. Pashtun tribes are strongly egalitarian, and ordinary men have the right to speak their views at the jirgas. Afterward, the elders discuss the issue and together make a collective decision. Many U.S. military officers have attended jirgas and spoken at them, but what was different in Jim’s case is that he was consulted as another elder of the tribe.

  Jim’s increasing sway within the family and Mohmand tribe put him at the center of a complex and shifting equation. He was now a son, brother, and malik of the tribe—but was also the only one who could reasonably act as an outside, honest broker. He wanted to wield his influence to strengthen the tribe and advance his mission, but if he overstepped he could easily go from empowering the tribe to ruling it. He had to constantly calibrate where to assert himself, where to hold back. And he had to remind himself that what might appear to be petty, tribal politics was anything but trivial to the Afghans around him and could make or break the entire endeavor.

  “I had used what I called my ‘enemy eye’ for many years to see my actions from the enemy’s vantage point. But now I had to see myself through the eyes of friends. I found it vastly more difficult,” he told me.

  Guiding Jim’s every move was his deepening understanding of Pashtunwali and, to a lesser degree, Islam. Every day, he scrutinized the people, their proverbs, and events for nuggets of insight into the Pashtun tribal code. What he learned guided how he operated moment to moment, how he made friends and dealt with enemies.

  The fascination with Pashtunwali came naturally to Jim. He identified deeply with how a Pashtun man defended his honor by fighting for his land, the women in his home, the rifle on his shoulder—collectively known as namoos. The world of the tribe was one of bright colors, where the slightest insult could escalate into a life-or-death fight. It was a primitive world, one that was harsh and brutal but also starkly beautiful. Jim was living his dream, free from many of the constraints of modern civilization. He sometimes wondered what it would be like to convert to Islam, marry a Pashtun girl, and settle down in a qalat in Mangwel. With a knife on his hip, he was surviving in an austere land largely on his courage and his wits, surrounded by comrades, a family, and a tribe that he had grown to love. What more could he want?

  At the center of this world was ghaira
t, or honor. In America, the word was almost quaint, an anachronism, Jim felt. But Pashtuns lived for it, and joining the tribe for him was like going back in time. A violation of honor was considered peghor, or “shame.” That in turn required badal (revenge), often through killing or other physical violence or destruction, in order to regain lost prestige. Such feuds gave young Pashtun men a chance to prove their mettle. Tribal law and custom had its conciliatory aspects—for example, balancing the punishment for whatever crime was committed against honor. The dark side of Pashtunwali, for the tribesmen as for Jim, was the relentless competition for ghairat. To be in honor’s thrall meant there could be no rest.

  Once, a malik of the neighboring village of Chamaray, Mohammed Hanif, insulted one of Jim’s men, Staff Sgt. Ryan Porter, when Port was visiting Hanif’s qalat to check on economic development projects. Port and teammate Sgt. 1st Class Tony Franks had worked tirelessly to carry out projects in the area. Hanif complained to Port that the Americans had done nothing for Chamaray. In fact they had refurbished many wells, built six footbridges, hired thirty-one local men as arbakai, and brought security to the village. Jim knew that to disparage a guest in one’s home is the height of disrespect, flying in the face of the Pashtun obligation to practice melmastia, or “hospitality.” And since Port was representing him, it was an attack on Jim’s honor. There had been other problems with Chamaray, such as some celebratory gunfire that included a few stray rounds fired at the Tribe 33 qalat. The people of Chamaray were ethnic Tajiks but followed Pashtun ways. Jim summoned Hanif to the qalat, letting him know to bring the AK-47 and knife that Jim had given him.

  Under a cloudless sky the next day about 9:00 a.m., an hour before the meeting, Jim stepped out of the Tribe 33 qalat wearing a soiled set of Afghan clothes. It was already uncomfortably warm. Jim walked alongside the outer wall of the qalat toward a twenty-foot-wide, five-foot-deep pit where the team dumped and burned trash. He shooed away a dog and started rummaging through the garbage. He wanted to stink.