Sadiq was particularly upset when the team members showed up for dinner with their armor and radio headsets on.
“When they came to dinner they were wired,” he said. “I couldn’t stand these new guys.”
Fleming imposed new restrictions on where the arbakai could go within the qalat, and soon expelled them from the qalat altogether. He and U.S. Army investigators questioned commanders Zia Ul Haq, Sadiq, and others, fingerprinting them and making them take lie detector tests, estranging the tribesmen even more.
One of the first nights, Fernando was in the operations center when Mahmud Dwaher, the arbakai who had carried Abdul Wali to safety after he was shot, came to get the extra pair of night vision goggles and its battery that Jim had always let the ALP use to assist them in guarding the qalat. But that night, when Dwaher came into the operations center to pick them up, Fleming bristled.
“No more,” he told Fernando. “That’s a no-go. They don’t come in here.”
So the following night when Dwaher showed up, Fernando had to hold his arm out to stop him before he stepped inside.
Dwaher gave him a surprised look, and Fernando felt so ashamed he turned away.
The new team further unraveled Jim’s empowerment of the tribe and local people by insisting upon handing the ALP weapons and ammunition back to the District Center, and retraining and re-vetting the local police, according to several Afghans involved.
In perhaps the most serious misstep of all, Fleming fired Abdul Wali, who had fought so bravely and suffered a gunshot wound as he risked his life to protect the qalat and everyone in it. Abdul Wali was still limping from his leg wound at the time he was released.
Fleming and his men refused to buy food and water for the arbakai. Unaccustomed to the austere living conditions on the qalat, they would themselves drive to FOB Fortress to eat in the chow hall and take showers there, or to pick up meals, according to U.S. soldiers and Afghans who remained there. Fleming was the same captain who had asked Jim details about a supposed chow hall and gym on the qalat.
Seeing the growing divide, Jim’s U.S. soldiers who remained there grew increasingly worried about some sort of retaliation by the Afghans.
Frustrated, Fernando went to speak with Fleming.
“I don’t recommend you guys throw that divide in there,” he said. “What we did with Major Gant worked. We slept with them, ate with them, trained with them, fought with them—what you are doing is offensive for us. You are Special Forces—isn’t this what you signed up to do, to train indigenous forces? Why aren’t you doing it?” Fernando asked.
Fleming was particularly suspicious of Ish, a miscalculation that stunned Fernando, as Ish was doing everything he could to avert a disaster at Chowkay.
When Ish called Fernando, Fleming grew irate.
“Why is he calling you?” Fleming asked Fernando. “Why does he have so much control?”
“Dude, don’t you realize these guys are about to walk?” Fernando asked him.
“Ish is the only guy who can glue these guys back together,” Fernando said. “He is willing to help keep them on board.”
Worries about the growing schism on the qalat were so pronounced that some of the U.S. team members voiced fears for their safety. Soon after Jim and Dan were removed from their positions, the two Special Forces soldiers on the team, Staff Sgt. Ed Martin and Sgt. 1st Class Tony Carter, whom Jim was recommending for an award for valor, were recalled from the Chowkay post.
As they prepared to leave one morning, Ed and Tony pulled Ish aside.
“You know the lieutenant is coming to pick us up and take us to Penich,” Ed said, referring to Roberts. “I know you guys are really pissed off, but please don’t attack, because we will be in that convoy,” he said.
“Are you crazy? Of course we won’t attack!” Ish replied.
Meanwhile, there were no Taliban attacks on the qalat, but the observation posts up on the ridgeline were hit often by insurgent fire. Fleming’s team did not fire in support of the posts, and did not provide adequate supplies—including ammunition—for the arbakai who were manning them, according to members of the arbakai, Ish, Sadiq, and Zia Ul Haq.
Sadiq and the arbakai were at the end of their ropes. Soon afterward, the arbakai abandoned the observation posts, and insurgents started again shooting directly at the qalat. One of Fleming’s men was shot, as was a young Afghan girl who lived in the village.
“They will not stay in Chinaray,” Sadiq said.
ON THE MORNING OF March 16, Jim was escorted to a sterile, Bagram clinic. Doctors drew his blood and took a urine sample for mandatory alcohol and drug tests—both returned negative. Then he went to a command-directed psychological evaluation.
The psychologist, an Air Force lieutenant colonel, peered across a desk at Jim and quizzed him on his drinking habits and whether he was suicidal.
“I was in combat. I drank and took pain medications,” Jim said matter-of-factly.
For much of the rest of the day, he was left alone.
Then suddenly, at about 7:00 p.m., Corley burst into Jim’s room.
“Something is wrong. You need to see Linn right away,” he said.
Corley rushed Jim to Linn’s office. There, Linn stood behind his large desk. Normally cool and collected, Linn was visibly shaken.
“We have information that you are planning attacks on VSP Chowkay!” Linn said, referring to the Tribe 34 qalat. Linn apparently had received intercepted conversations from arbakai in the observation posts above the Chowkay qalat, in which the arbakai voiced anger at the U.S. military for taking Jim away. That, coupled with the paranoia of Fleming’s team, led Linn to make the unfounded accusation. Linn handed Jim a piece of paper—a counseling statement—that said Linn had reason to believe Jim was planning and coordinating attacks on the qalat in Chowkay. Linn then told Jim to sign it.
Jim felt as though he had been punched in the chest, recoiling even as his heart filled with rage.
“You must be out of your minds!” he said. “I’m not signing that shit! I would never plan attacks on U.S. soldiers. I would die for those men out there,” he said as tears of anger began streaming down his face. “I would die for the men out there now.”
The room was silent.
Jim struggled to regain his composure. The thought struck him that his commanders had an utterly distorted picture of him—they had no comprehension of what he had done in Chowkay.
“I asked the Afghans in Chowkay to protect those soldiers, and if you let me, I will call right now and reiterate that,” Jim said.
Linn agreed, and an aide brought Jim a phone.
Jim called Ish, while Linn and the others listened in.
Ish answered the call in his room in Jalalabad. I was sitting beside him. My heart leapt when I heard Jim’s voice. I put my ear close to the phone and listened. I had no idea who else was with Jim, but given the protective order, I dared not speak.
“Haji Jan Dahd and Haji Jan Shah know that they have to protect those soldiers, don’t they?” Jim asked Ish.
“Yes, sir, I told them,” Ish said.
“I need you to tell them again,” Jim said. “You must make sure they know they have to keep them safe.”
His voice was urgent, almost desperate. I realized if anything happened to one of his men, Jim would never recover.
“How are you, sir?” Ish queried.
“I am all right, brother. Please, just do what I asked,” he said.
“I will go to them tomorrow, sir.”
Ish hung up the phone, and immediately made plans to return to Chowkay to see the tribal leaders on Jim’s behalf.
In the office, Linn looked at Jim, his eyes narrowed.
“Everything in my body is screaming at me not to believe this is true,” Linn said. “But I am going to resist that and accept what you say.”
Linn reasserted that Jim was to be under escort at all times, and sent him away.
THE NEXT MORNING, ISH made the dangerous trip alone
back to Chowkay, where he took Capt. Fleming to meet with Jan Dahd and Jan Shah.
“The captain is so worried that the ALP will put down their weapons,” Ish explained. “They need to understand that you will protect them with your lives.”
The Safi tribal leader stroked his long gray beard.
It was then a matter of Pashtunwali, and specifically of nanawati, by which a person must grant shelter and refuge to anyone who enters his house—even an enemy. These new Americans, however distasteful and culturally ignorant, were living on his land, with men from his tribe. He was duty bound to be hospitable and protect them, and especially if Jim, through Ish, was asking him to.
“You are new here,” Jan Dahd said. “At one time, we didn’t know Jim. He was an American like you. He was so good with us, asking our opinion about everything. That is why we miss him. We want you to do the same things, so when you leave we will miss you, too.”
Fleming appeared relieved.
Then Jan Shah told Ish that he and a large group of elders were going to see Konar governor Fazlullah Wahidi and after that Afghan president Karzai to ask for Jim’s return to Chowkay.
“I don’t think that is a good idea,” Fleming told Jan Shah.
“You should be proud,” Jan Shah countered. “Jim is an American and it’s not every American that we support like this.”
A day later, Jan Dahd, several ALP commanders, and about forty tribal elders from Chowkay and Khas Kunar descended on the office of Wahidi in Asadabad to appeal for Jim’s return. Wearing blankets and turbans, they sat in a circle in chairs set out on Wahidi’s lawn and stood in turn to speak on Jim’s behalf.
“Jim was the only American who really wanted to help the Afghans,” said Jan Dahd, who sat next to Wahidi. “If the Americans want to take their forces out of Afghanistan, they should take out the Americans who are killing innocent civilians, not the ones who are helping us.
“Jim knows the situation in Khas Kunar and Chowkay. He trained the ALP, and if you don’t send him back, the ALP may quit and never work with the Americans again. We are really happy with Jim. We have security because of Jim. We want him to come back, or everything will fall apart.”
Wahidi was impressed. “I have never seen so many tribal elders come and ask me about bringing back an American,” he said.
The group was planning to arrange a meeting with Karzai, but Ish asked them to hold off because of concern that at the time such a meeting could spark a worse backlash by the U.S. military against Jim and Dan.
AS AFGHAN ELDERS CLAMORED for Jim’s return, Lt. Col. Kirila, the man leading the probe of Jim and Dan, sat down to draft the report of his Article 15-6 investigation.
MAJ Jim Gant had been in Afghanistan for 22 months straight. In that time, MAJ Gant has performed very well in support of CJSOTF-A Operations. He is also a Silver Star winner and has been awarded for valor on two other occasions. It is the opinion of the Investigating Officer that his previous successes in Iraq and his mission success in Mangwel discouraged others from questioning his increasingly erratic behavior. In fact, it is my impression that his incredibly emotional response to the Suspension from Duty letter from COL Schwartz was indicative of a sense of relief that his Afghan odyssey was over. The resultant situation is one of considerable disappointment for the Special Forces Regiment as well as the officer and the men he led.
Among other recommendations, Kirila called for a “detailed Psychological Assessment for MAJ Jim Gant and possible re-evaluation for TBI. The 16 JAN IED strike that MAJ Gant experienced may be a contributing cause to some of the observed symptoms of inability to sleep and extreme mood swings.”
ON MARCH 20, JIM was taken for his second command-directed psychological evaluation.
The following day, his escort came to his room to take him to the office of the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) at Bagram.
“Get your uniform on and come with us,” the escort said. They walked Jim to the CID office, where a CID agent read the charges against him. Jim said he would not answer any questions, and reserved his right to consult a lawyer.
Then the agents took him into a coffee area where young enlisted soldiers were socializing, had him take his shirt off, and photographed him and his tattoos—for identification, they said.
His headache got worse. The Internet was down. He was cut off from the world. He felt incredibly spent and off-kilter. His mind was trying to wrap itself around what was happening. Like a Global Positioning System, it kept loading and loading, but was unable to get a read on where he was—or where I was.
“I feel like I have lost you,” he wrote to me in his blue journal, “and that all we had was a dream in a distant world, in the deepest ocean, in the farthest space.”
IN JALALABAD AT NIGHT, I felt intense loneliness as I listened to the wind that marked the coming of spring rattle the dusty storefronts, billow through the curtains, and howl into the big, high-ceilinged room I stayed in at Ish’s house.
The house was dark, the wind alive, like a spirit swirling around me. I could not sleep. I missed Jim terribly. As the dawn drew closer, I listened to the clip-clop of donkey hooves and rickshaws passing on the road, alert for the sound of heavier vehicles. The atonal voice of a mullah rose from the nearby mosque with a call to prayer.
By day, I had a front seat to the tragedy that was unfolding all around.
I spoke with Ish, Abe, and Imran and through them interviewed as many Afghans as I could about the events in Konar. Jan Shah came to visit the house, and I spoke with him for hours one night about his life and that of his father, as well as the Safi tribe’s reaction to the removal of Jim. From brief phone calls from Dan and other U.S. soldiers, I pieced together what was happening with the investigation. I had only fleeting news about Jim.
But while he was isolated in a virtual prison behind the walls of the U.S. military base, I was in a position to fight, for all of us.
As I worked every day to stay free of U.S. authorities, to safeguard my material, and to report the rest of the story, I felt incredibly fortunate to be surrounded by my Afghan family—under the protection of Abe, Ish, and Imran, who treated me as their sister.
Each morning as we drank milk tea and ate flatbread together, I gained the strength to face whatever lay ahead. I was welcomed as a guest but also made to feel like a member of the household. The female relatives oiled and braided my hair and decorated my feet and hands with henna. We spoke Pashto together and I taught them some English words. I watched them cook, and learned about the division of labor in their huge household. I played catch with their children and showed them how to ride a bicycle in the courtyard. I experienced for a short time the sequestered life of an Afghan woman, remaining indoors virtually at all times. Only at dusk was I allowed to climb the stairs to the roof and peek out, my head and face covered by scarves, and drink in the view of distant green fields and mountains.
ON THE NIGHT OF March 24, Schwartz summoned Jim to his office.
Under escort, Jim arrived in the headquarters building, in the hallway that was lined with plaques to the fallen Special Operations personnel. He immediately noticed that the faulty award for his late teammate, Chris Falkel, had never been corrected in spite of him asking for it twice before. It infuriated him.
Jim walked into the office, looked straight at Schwartz, who was sitting behind a big desk, and saluted.
“Major Gant reports as ordered,” he said.
Schwartz did not even look Jim in the eye. Instead, he began reading from a piece of paper.
“You are a disgrace to Special Forces,” Schwartz began, and proceeded to dress Jim down in a loud and aggressive voice. “I am recommending a general court-martial, and the revocation of your Special Forces tab.”
Jim was to return under escort to Fort Bragg, where he was to report to the United States Army Special Operations Command. The no-contact order with me remained in effect.
INDIRECTLY, I GOT WORD that the Article 15-6 investigation against Ji
m and Dan had been completed. About ten days after I arrived in Jalalabad, I started making preparations to get out of the country. One obstacle was that I had no entry stamp on my Afghanistan visa. Abe began calling his contacts in Kabul airport security forces to help me slip through.
One morning I said goodbye to Imran, Ish, and the rest of their family. Then Abe, Shafiq, and Abe’s cousin, the mercenary Basir, loaded my bags into their small navy blue hatchback. I pulled on my burkha and got in the backseat. We drove through Jalalabad toward Kabul, along one of the most dangerous roads in the country, in part because of eighteen-hundred-foot cliffs. We followed the Kabul River, and after some time the road began to climb steeply as we went through the Kabul Gorge, known for insurgent ambushes. We passed by the carcasses of destroyed Russian tanks and also some U.S. military vehicles.
As we got closer to Kabul, police checkpoints became more frequent. Abe had allowed me to lift the head covering of my burkha for some stretches but warned me to replace it before each checkpoint. We managed to pass through all of them without a problem and then drove into the streets of Kabul, which were relatively deserted because of a holiday.
After buying my plane ticket and having lunch, we pulled into the airport parking lot with a short time to wait. We had decided that I would try to talk my way through the passport inspection, as I had done that once before. My worry about getting through security was eclipsed by the gut-wrenching sorrow of having to say goodbye. I realized what I needed to do, to make it all right. As Abe walked me alone to the airport terminal, I took from around my neck the Spartan shield that Jim had given me in Washington more than two years before.
“This is from Jim and from me,” I told him as I placed it in his hand. “You have proven your bravery and your friendship to us every day. You are our brother and you have protected me with your life. We love you and we will never forget you. I have worn this shield for a long time, and before me Jim wore it, too. I am not giving it to you, I am lending it until we see you again.”
American Spartan Page 38