American Spartan

by Tyson, Ann Scott

  One of the Mangwel arbakai, with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder, swung open a small door cut in the gate. Niq paused for a second, then walked through, followed by the elders. He tossed over his shoulder the cream-colored Afghan blanket that he wore over his ochre tunic and strode into the arbakai tent, which served as a meeting room.

  Moments later, Jim came in, and after a terse greeting sat down across from Niq and looked him in the eye.

  “So the people of Kawer want local police now?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Niq replied.

  “Are you sure?” Jim pressed.

  “Yes,” Niq said. “We already have ten men who want to join.”

  “Insurgents have used Kawer to move through,” Jim continued. “Don’t say you don’t know about that, because you do. I will not go ahead with this unless someone stands up and says they will not let the enemy operate in that area. Being ‘Taliban’ is not the issue. I am concerned with people who are trying to kill Americans, to kill Afghan security forces, and to stop development from coming,” Jim said. He was drawing a distinction that was difficult for many Americans to grasp, but one that meant everything to these Pashtun tribesmen. In their minds, “Taliban” at this juncture in history translated loosely as fellow Pashtuns who were not happy with the corrupt Kabul government and foreign military intervention. That unhappy group was a very large subset of the tribal people and sympathized with the Taliban. All Taliban were not necessarily active insurgents. Often families contained some adult males who were serving in the Taliban and others who worked for the government. Tribal leaders including Noor Afzhal sometimes referred to Jim, in a positive way, as “Taliban.”

  “So what are we going to do?” Jim asked.

  “Give me a map,” Niq said.

  One of Jim’s soldiers handed him a map of Kawer, and Niq spread it on the floor and traced over it with coarse, thick fingers.

  “We can put in checkpoints in these hills, and patrol from our houses like the arbakai do in Mangwel,” Niq said. “I will secure Kawer and chase the bad guys to Maya.” He vowed to push insurgents out to a remote highland area beyond the top of the Shalay valley on the Pakistan border.

  “I am tired of everyone saying we are bad in Kawer,” Niq went on. “We can’t tolerate it. I want some respect. I want you and elders and government people to come there and drink tea, and for roads to be paved, wells dug, and retaining walls built.”

  Jim watched Niq intently.

  “You want what I want,” he said.

  “All the people say I am a bad guy. But if we don’t do this now, no one will. I am on your side. If the Taliban shoot me, just bury my body,” Niq said.

  Jim knew then. Niq was the commander he was looking for. But he held off on making an agreement.

  “I’ve been waiting a long time for someone to come from Kawer and say they wanted local police,” he said. “Now, show me you mean what you say.”

  One morning later that week, dozens of arbakai from Mangwel joined Jim and his soldiers for a show of force into Kawer. Wearing chest racks of ammunition and their black uniform vests, the arbakai patrolled single file along raised dirt paths between the fields of corn and vegetables to Kawer, and then swarmed through the village to Niq’s qalat. There, the arbakai stood guard while Niq and Jim met with more Kawer elders, and then Niq led Jim to his proposed locations for checkpoints.

  Jim was satisfied.

  “We will move ahead,” Jim told Niq. “I and my men will fight alongside you.”

  Within days, Jim and his men had armed and trained fifty Afghan Local Police for Kawer. Niq launched the arbakai on aggressive patrols and positioned them in the high ground above the Zombieland road. Whenever insurgent activity was reported, Niq and his men responded immediately, without Jim calling first. The atmosphere in Kawer changed dramatically almost overnight. Village men began descending on Niq’s qalat to ask him if they, too, could become arbakai and defend Kawer. “Everyone is coming to me. Now the people want a hundred Afghan Local Police!” Niq said with a gruff, booming laugh.

  Niq was quickly proving himself one of Jim’s most capable arbakai commanders.

  THE TALIBAN REACTION TO Jim’s inroads with the Konar tribes was broad and deep, underscoring the power of his strategy.

  Jim never missed an opportunity to invite the Taliban to either talk or fight. “I have food in one hand, a knife in the other,” he would say.

  Jim believed reintegrating the Taliban was vital to any lasting peace in Afghanistan. He also realized that the formal reintegration program run by the Afghan government and U.S. military was slow, bureaucratic, and corrupt. As a result, it was destined to fail, because it could only appeal to a narrow subset of the Taliban. It required the former Taliban to hand over their weapons and publicly renounce the insurgency, yet it allowed the government to arrest them at any time. So, working quietly through the tribes, Jim reached out to the Taliban using his own, more sophisticated, nuanced, and ultimately flexible approach—one that was riskier and more time-consuming but which offered more options for both him and them. For example, short of public reintegration, a Taliban member could become a source of intelligence or could even conduct “red-on-red,” or surrogate force, operations against other insurgents. In many cases Jim’s approach was not one approved by his command, but now that outreach was paying off.

  The most positive shift, and the one Jim sought from the start, was to push some Taliban to switch sides and work with him as arbakai. Niq and others epitomized this trend.

  Switching sides could be incredibly dangerous, though, and required some minimum level of protection from retaliation. For some Taliban, breaking with the insurgents proved much more complicated. That was the case for Mohammed Jalil, a middle-aged malik of the Mohmand tribe who worked for the government but was also closely tied to the Taliban, as well as for Obeidullah, a young Taliban commander who belonged to the Safi tribe across the river in Chowkay.

  It was early September 2011 when Jalil walked into the meeting room at Noor Afzhal’s house one afternoon and sat down across from Jim. The Muslim holy month of fasting known as Ramadan had just ended. Mangwel had a festive, relaxed atmosphere as families feasted and visited friends and relatives. Boys in colorful new cotton tunics and pants raced through the village laughing and playing with plastic toy AK-47s. The village was more secure, and there was a tangible sense of normalcy that hadn’t existed only a few months before.

  Despite the celebratory mood, Jalil looked gaunt and glum. His large, powerful figure was stooped, and he had dark circles underneath his eyes. As it turned out, Jalil had just been temporarily released from jail for the holiday.

  Jalil and his family belonged to the Mohmand tribe, and Noor Afzhal welcomed him as such. Officially, Jalil was deputy director of the local government shura, but his ties with the Taliban ran as thick as blood. Two of his brothers, Abu Hamza and Momen, were midlevel commanders of the Afghan Taliban. Jalil was a passive supporter of the Taliban, part of what Jim called the Taliban “underground.” Jalil and his family had roots in the Shalay and neighboring Walay valleys. There was an ongoing feud between Jalil’s brothers and rival insurgents from the Pakistani Taliban led by Jim’s nemesis Abu Hamam. Overlying all of these relationships, however, were the tribal imperatives of Pashtunwali.

  Afghans living in the high rugged valleys were isolated from the settled towns below. With no forces to protect them, they had little choice but to provide Taliban fighters with food, water, shelter, and refuge if they needed it, or face beatings or other retribution, and Jalil’s family was no different. As a rumor spread in the late spring of 2011 that Jim and his team were going to set up arbakai in the Shalay and Walay, pressure on the local people intensified. Jalil went to Shalay to fetch his son’s bride for their wedding and found himself surrounded by Hamam’s Taliban fighters. They accused Jalil of supporting the arbakai plan and threatened to cut off the head of the bride’s father in retaliation. It was a blow to Jalil’s namoos, o
r honor, because the bride belonged to his son. At the time, Jalil went to see Jim, complaining about Hamam and the absence of any security forces in the Shalay.

  “When I am up in the Shalay, they say I am working for the government. When I am down here, they say I am Taliban!” Jalil fumed. “I just want my family to live safely with no one bothering us.”

  Nevertheless, Jalil faced continual questioning from American and Afghan forces because of his Taliban ties. In August, during a search of his home and fields, Afghan soldiers found two rifles and a rocket-propelled grenade booster, and arrested him. Afterward, a large group of elders from the Walay and Shalay valleys came to see Jim in Mangwel to ask for his help in releasing Jalil. They appealed to Jim’s tribal affiliation to win his support.

  “You are Mohmand. I am Mohmand. You are a man. I am a man. We guarantee Mohammed Jalil will not do anything bad if you get him released,” said Malik Mirwais, from Shalay.

  “I will do my best,” Jim said. As usual, he also asked the elders to let the Taliban commanders in the Shalay know he wanted to meet with them.

  After Jalil was freed from jail for the holiday, he immediately went to see Jim. Jalil was downcast after his time in the miserable Afghan prison in Asadabad where he was being held, and wanted to get out. Most of all, though, he felt a deep sense of dishonor because the Afghan soldiers had taken his weapons. He wanted them back.

  “This is peghor,” he said, using the word that means “shame” in Pashto. “Maybe a hundred years from now someone will talk about how they took my weapons and I didn’t do anything. I can’t tolerate that. A man can kill or be killed for that. So it’s not that those weapons are priceless—it’s about peghor.”

  “I understand completely,” Jim told him. Soon after, Jim went to Asadabad to try to track down Jalil’s weapon, but in vain.

  On a chilly day in late December, after a fresh blanket of snow had fallen on the mountains surrounding Mangwel, Jim and Abe got into a pickup truck and went to visit Jalil in prison. A few days earlier, Jalil’s brother, Taliban commander Abu Hamza, had been shot and killed leaving a mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan, and that was one reason for Jim’s trip. The prison lay north of Asadabad, past the mouth of the Pech River valley, and was often attacked by insurgents.

  A warden led Jim through the high prison walls overlooked by guard towers and into his office. After a short wait, Jalil was brought in, his hands and feet shackled, his spirit broken.

  “Take them off,” Jim told the guard, who removed the shackles. “Brother,” he told Jalil, “it is good to see you.”

  Jalil’s face lit up. He kissed Jim on the cheek.

  “Commander Jim,” he said. “No one has come to see me, not even my own sons, but you come? My life is yours from now until the day I die.”

  “I will help your family until you are released,” Jim told Jalil, who had a six-month term. He said he would give Jalil’s son about 20,000 Pakistani rupees a month.

  A guard came in with green tea in glasses on a tray. But Jalil refused to drink it—it was one small way that he could show strength and gain a modicum of honor in front of Jim.

  Once again, Jim saw a chance to open a dialogue with the Taliban.

  “Abu Hamza, your brother, is dead,” Jim said. “You are in prison. The pressure is on your family. I want to speak with your brother Momen. I’m not going to kill him or capture him.”

  “He won’t listen to me, but I will try,” Jalil said.

  Jalil was in a vise between the Afghan government and his Taliban brothers that he was unable to escape. But the relationship Jim forged with him created yet another inroad into the Taliban—one that months later would bear fruit.

  ACROSS THE KONAR RIVER in Chowkay, Taliban commanders from the powerful Safi tribe also decided to cooperate with Jim.

  One was a low-level Taliban commander named Obeidullah, called Obeid for short, who contacted Jim in the fall of 2011.

  A soft-spoken nineteen-year-old too young to grow a full beard, Obeid was part of a new generation of Afghans who joined the insurgency after the Taliban regime fell in 2001. He was drawn to fight for economic rather than religious reasons. Obeid’s father, Per Mohammed, was a subcommander to Safi tribal leader Jan Dahd and fought with him against the Russians as well as against the Taliban. He was killed trying to stop Taliban forces from crossing the river into Konar in a major battle at the Kama Bridge in 1996. Per Mohammed shot three Taliban trucks with rocket-propelled grenades but was then killed by a volley from a Russian PKM machine gun. Given how his father died, it was telling that Obeid later felt compelled to join the Taliban.

  Obeid lived near the Konar River in the village of Barabat, where his mother, two brothers, and two sisters farmed corn, wheat, and rice on a small plot of land. Obeid loved swimming in the Konar River in the hot summer months. To provide fuel for his family to burn, he would cut reeds and grass growing on river shoals and tow it on a wooden raft to the banks.

  One summer morning in 2009, when Obeid was sixteen years old, his cell phone rang. A strange man’s voice greeted him. “I am Haqyar, I fought alongside your father,” the man said. “I hear you are a good swimmer.”

  The hair rose on Obeid’s neck. He knew about Haqyar—he was a former mujahideen, about forty years old, who had joined the Taliban.

  “I will pay you to bring something across the river,” Haqyar continued.

  A few days later at around midnight, Haqyar met Obeid by the river and gave him five AK-47s, two rocket-propelled grenades, and a Russian machine gun. Obeid put them on a jala, or raft, and covered them with a tarp. He had never swum across the river at night before and was a little scared. But he waded into the rushing water and together with a friend nudged the raft across using sticks because they had no rope. They hoisted the raft onto the opposite bank and, soaking wet, picked up the weapons and carried them to a house in the Taliban-held valley of Badel. When they arrived a man handed Obeid 30,000 Pakistani rupees, enough to feed his family for a couple of months.

  “I was so happy. I had a job,” Obeid recalled thinking.

  For two months, he continued making the shipments, and word spread of the brave young man who swam the Konar for the Taliban.

  Then his cell phone rang again. This time it was Taliban commander Abu Hamam himself.

  “I have heard of you,” Hamam said. “Meet me in Maya.”

  Obeid walked up a red-dirt path high into the Shalay valley and beyond into the insurgent territory of Maya near the Pakistan border. There, some of Hamam’s fighters took him to a small house where they had lost comrades in a firefight not long before. Hamam walked in. Obeid was impressed by his strong build, long hair, and large beard.

  “Come with me and be my friend,” Hamam told him, and offered him a Russian machine gun.

  Obeid decided on the spot to leave school and join Hamam and his men.

  “When I saw that weapon, I was happy. I just wanted to have the gun,” Obeid recalled.

  But when he returned home to gather some things, his brothers were furious and beat him.

  “The Taliban killed your father, and now you are going to join them?” his older brother yelled.

  Obeid left, angry, and spent the next few months in the mountains with Hamam. He admired Hamam’s cleverness and strength, learning he had experience in the Pakistani military and also had studied karate for ten years. Obeid went with Hamam to the Shalay valley when Hamam and his men were shooting mortars at COP Penich, but mainly his jobs were to cook and gather wood.

  “Let me go with you!” Obeid pleaded.

  “You are too young,” Hamam responded.

  After five months, Obeid’s desire to fight led him to join another, more senior Pakistani Taliban commander, Abdul Wali. Abdul Wali was also a member of the Safi tribe that resided in Pakistan. They met at Abdul Wali’s home in the village of Kandaro in the Mohmand Agency of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Obeid initially liked Abdul Wali. He was tall with a thin beard
, about twenty-seven years old, and well educated, according to Obeid. Obeid would stay in Pakistan for two years, fighting against the Pakistani military. He was paid, 10,000 or 20,000 rupees at a time, and sent money home to his family.

  But when Abdul Wali started pressing him to return to Afghanistan to kidnap Afghans for ransom, Obeid refused. He stole away, saying he was going to see his family in Afghanistan, and never returned.

  “It was the first time I went home,” Obeid recalled. “I told my brother that I didn’t want to be Taliban anymore, and my family was so happy.” From then on, his family had to support itself by farming alone.

  In November 2011, Obeid went to Safi tribal leader Jan Dahd and his son Jan Shah and asked them to help him start a new life. Obeid brought with him nine of his fighters, and they turned over all their weapons to the government. Then Obeid asked to meet Jim, and they sat down in Jan Shah’s safe house, a qalat in Asadabad.

  “I can help you,” Obeid told Jim. “We can kill the people who need to get killed, and arrest those we need to arrest.”

  Obeid and Jim began talking about establishing Afghan Local Police with Safi tribesmen in his home village of Barabat. As a former Taliban, Obeid had the advantage of detailed knowledge of who the insurgents were, where they lived, and how they operated—and would be effective at targeting their networks. With Obeid flipping, the local police could lead other Taliban fighters to follow suit. He also knew which tribesmen he could trust to defend the village and surrounding area. Obeid’s close ties with the strong Safi tribal leadership and Jan Dahd amplified the potential for reintegrating the Taliban.

  Obeid started providing Jim with highly credible intelligence on the insurgency. A few weeks later, Jim gave Obeid an AK-47 so that he could better protect himself. Obeid would need it.

  One day Obeid’s phone rang. He answered, and immediately recognized Abdul Wali’s staccato voice.

  “I am going to kill you,” Abdul Wali said, and hung up. A chill ran down Obeid’s spine. It would not take long for Abdul Wali to make good on the threat.