by Doug Stanton
The men dropped their rucks and made a security plan for the night. Ben Milo and Sam Diller would climb up onto the roofs of the rooms in opposing corners of the fort. They would keep in contact by two-way radio and switch out with another team member after two hours.
As Milo walked to his post, he noticed that an Afghan soldier was following him. Milo was actually trying to find a latrine. Milo turned and said in English that he had to take a piss and then he pantomimed the motion. The Afghan shrugged and kept following close behind.
Milo found two holes dug in a corner of the fort, near a main front gate. The holes were separated by a flimsy wood partition. There was no door. He unzipped and the Afghan turned his back and waited.
The man then followed Milo onto the roof. Milo had to tell him forcefully—using what was called in the Army the “pointy-talky” method of communication—that he needed to leave. The team had made the decision that their security would be their own problem. Milo gave him a gentle shove, but the man wouldn’t budge.
He stood to Milo’s side as Milo settled into guard duty, which involved scanning the horizon for anything that looked like it shouldn’t be there: lights, movement, sounds. He could hear footfalls outside the fort’s walls as Dostum’s men roamed back and forth, also on lookout. Milo wondered what was making his new friend so anxious. He wondered if the soldier was planning to whack him. He settled in for an uneasy night.
Down in the courtyard, J.J. and Nelson sat on a carpet near the half-dug water well as Nelson peppered the CIA officer with questions about Dostum. J.J. told Nelson that he’d been surprised to learn that Dostum moved around the country by horseback. They were practically a nineteenth-century militia fighting a modern war.
Dostum’s men were low on bullets and needed blankets and food. The previous two weeks of U.S.-led bombing of Taliban positions had done nothing but lower their morale. Only the United States’ propaganda machine seemed more organized: from transport planes circling the country, fitted with banks of electronic listening gear and a broadcast radio station, the Americans had been beaming messages to the Afghan people, messages the Taliban found comical: “Surrender Taliban invader! Give Afghanistan back to her people!”
Nonetheless, Dostum habud remained pragmatic and energetic.
This surprised Nelson. He said he thought Dostum was crippled with diabetes and failing eyesight, among other things. He was worried that he’d keel over as soon as the fighting started.
The truth was, Nelson learned, that no one had been paying much attention to Dostum before the attacks on September 11. He was, in fact, healthy as a horse. Until the previous April, he’d been comfortably living in exile in Turkey with his family (he was married with two young sons). He had returned in the spring when Massoud was losing ground in the Panjshir Valley and as Mohaqeq struggled in the south (in the area where Nelson and J.J. were now sitting, the Darya Suf Valley). Dostum had arrived to try to save the day.
It was meant to be a triumphant return. His exile from the country four years earlier, in 1997, had been ignominious. He’d been driven from the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, his stronghold, as the result of a double-cross by one of his own commanders, a man named Ahmed Malik. Malik had suspected that Dostum had been responsible for his brother’s death (an accusation Malik could never prove), and in revenge Malik made a deal with the Taliban to let them enter Mazar-i-Sharif and capture the town, as long as he could share power with them in the aftermath. And as long as they kicked Dostum out of Afghanistan.
As the Taliban poured into the city, Dostum had to flee for his life. He sped in a small convoy of remaining supporters to the border town of Heryaton, forty-five miles north of Mazar-i-Sharif. From this city, a bridge led across the Oxus River to safety in neighboring Uzbekistan.
Upon reaching the bridge, Dostum was forced out of his vehicle at gunpoint. Manning the checkpoint were Malik’s men, who relished this insulting turn of events for the previously omnipotent warlord, a man whose own home in Mazar was palatial by comparative terms, with flocks of peacocks imported from France wandering in the gardens and American liquor stocked in crystal decanters on mahogany bars.
Dostum and his men had to drop their weapons, empty their pockets of money and valuables, and walk across the bridge in shame. The men guarding the bridge taunted them as they left.
With Dostum out of the picture, Malik, however, had experienced a sudden change of heart and decided he didn’t want to share power with the Taliban after all. After the Taliban moved into the city as victors, Malik launched an attack.
He was aided by 5,000 Hazara troops eager to avenge centuries-old animosity between themselves and the traditional ruling class of Afghanistan, the Pashtuns, who made up the Taliban ranks.
The Hazaras were led by a fierce warlord named Ismail Khan (Mohaqeq’s predecessor), and alongside Malik’s men, this combined force killed between 6,000 and 8,000 Taliban in a matter of several weeks.
A year later, remustered and reloaded, the Taliban returned with a vengeance.
At 9 a.m. on August 8, 1998, they entered Mazar-i-Sharif firing their weapons wildly in the air. The locals in the middle of the city thought the gunfire was the sound of yet another sectarian gun battle. When they looked up from their work, they saw hundreds of trucks racing through the dirt streets bearing Taliban fighters, all of them dressed in their usual black turbans. This was their first signal that something was terribly wrong.
Some of the trucks had machine guns bolted in the back and men leaped up at the mounts and started firing wildly, spraying the street, houses, anyone caught in the open.
“I came out of my shop,” recounted one resident, and “I could see people fleeing. People were running and being hit by cars. Market stalls were overturned. I heard one man say, ‘It’s hailing!’ because of the bullets.”
By early afternoon, the Taliban started searching house-to-house for Hazaras. They broke down doors, smashed TVs, tore paintings from the walls, and dragged men into the street and shot them. They broke into hospitals and slit the throats of Hazara patients. They raped Hazara women who ate handfuls of rat poison in the aftermath, preferring death to the shame of their violation.
Broadcasting from loudspeakers around the city, they urged residents to convert on the spot from the Shia version of Islam (the Hazaras’own) to the Sunni brand, practiced by the Taliban.
“Last year you rebelled against us and killed us,” explained one Taliban announcer. “From all your homes you shot at us. Now we are here to deal with you.”
Cars were stopped at checkpoints and anyone possessing weapons was arrested. “How many Taliban did you kill in Mazar?” they taunted.
If the suspect could prove that he was a Pashtun (or a Tajik, the other main tribe in the area), either by reciting his prayers in the Sunni manner or by producing an ID card listing his religious affiliation, he was let go.
Otherwise, he was executed.
Residents throughout the city heard an ominous warning on their transistor radios: “Wherever you go, we will catch you. If you go up, we will pull you down by your feet. If you hide below, we will pull you up by your hair.”
Burial of the dead was forbidden. Bodies piled up in the streets. Residents who tried fleeing the city were cut down on the highway by Taliban jet fighters, holdovers from the Soviet era of occupation. So many people died in the road that cars had to drive over the bodies.
No one imagined the city could fall so quickly, least of all Malik, who was now a hunted man, a man with his own share of blood on his hands.
One of his counterparts, a Hazara named Al Mazari, had invented what came to be known among Afghans as “The Dead Man’s Dance.” The macabre practice involved beheading a captured Taliban soldier, pouring gasoline down his neck, and then lighting the fuel. The flaming corpse would jerk and writhe, a life-size puppet crackling in its own juices. Malik managed to escape a similar fate and fled Mazar-i-Sharif. (He took temporary refuge in Iran.) In 1999, Al Mazari was captured by
the Taliban, tortured, and thrown from a helicopter.
As for Dostum, he had escaped death thus far by switching sides whenever his own seemed to be losing. He was a volatile sovereign, but he remained a genial opportunist, and it was this trait that made him a pliable ally.
When Nelson looked up from the conversation, it was nearly dawn. He and J.J. had talked for almost three hours. J.J. explained that Dostum would be riding into camp at eight that morning. Nelson looked at his watch. He was anxious about the meeting. There were still several hours to wait.
He climbed up on one of the roofs overlooking the compound to get the lay of the land. The fort was positioned atop a 500-foot hill, on the east side of the valley. It was nestled in close against a copse of poplar trees, their trunks growing tall and straight, towering above the walls. They looked as big around as flagpoles and their branches clicked against each other in the rising morning breeze. A half mile away, a river winked in the morning sun—this was the Amu Darya, the rushing course they had followed south in the helicopter. Swift, vinegar-hued shadows raced across the valley floor to the river, hit the opposite valley wall, and climbed out of sight.
Up the valley, Nelson knew that perhaps as many as 15,000 Taliban troops were dug into countless hideyholes, hilltops, and fortified bunkers capable of holding hundreds of men.
Behind him lay the unfettered wilds of deeper Afghanistan, stark mountain country, a land accessible only by donkey and horse.
The plain was packed mud, nearly blond in color, striped with swaths of grazing grass along the river. Nelson heard a rooster crow and he thought that this landscape seemed like something in a John Ford movie. He remembered watching those movies as a kid. In college, he’d even kept a poster of John Wayne on his dorm-room wall.
Now he heard horses neigh in a paddock attached to the fort and they stamped the ground, and he wondered if he and his men would be riding soon across the wild country before him.
Mitch Nelson was standing near the fort doorway alongside Pat Essex when he heard Spencer, outside the wall, shout: “Pat, Mitch, you better get out here!”
Spencer had just stepped outside, holding a cup of coffee and wondering when Dostum would show up. He suddenly heard the beat of hooves, felt a thudding vibration in the warm ground beneath his brand-new hiking boots. Then he looked up to the surrounding hills and saw men popping up in the sun, crouching there, in ragged, loose-fitting black pants, scarves wrapped around their heads. These were lookouts, he guessed, as they began signaling down the valley the arrival of something, or someone, by firing their AKs in the air. The sharp reports rang in the still morning and moved down the valley toward where Spencer stood. Then seven riders stormed up and shouted, “He is coming, the General is here!” and they waved back, down along the white rocks in the riverbed, a thin tongue of green water lolling under the sun, wiggling its way downstream.
Spencer took the last swig of coffee from the metal cup he’d pulled from his rucksack, knocked the cup dry against his pants leg, then called again over his shoulder to Nelson and Essex.
Inside the fort, Essex turned to Milo, Diller, and Black. “We’re gonna go outside,” he said. “You guys stay here. And you be ready in case something goes wrong. You be ready to take care of business.”
Diller and the rest nodded. They took up positions in the four corners of the fort, on the roofs.
Essex and Nelson walked out the door and over to Spencer.
“He’s here,” said Spencer.
“Where?” said Essex.
“There he is,” said Spencer, nodding upriver.
A white horse emerged from a curtain of dust. The man in the saddle, immense, strong-shouldered, holding the reins in one hand while his other rested gently on his leg, looked straight ahead, the horse churning beneath him while the man floated atop.
Riding along the edges of the river, their gear and weapons clattering, were about fifty more horsemen.
They entered the camp and pulled up in front of the Americans. They sat atop their horses and looked down at them.
Oh boy, here we go, thought Essex. We either just got a whole lot of new friends, or we’re surrounded.
The lead horseman wheeled his horse to a halt and the animal stilled as if turned to stone.
Nobody moved. Nelson, Essex, and Spencer had no idea what was going to happen next.
Two Afghans ran out and grabbed the reins and the tall, dark-haired man swung off the saddle. He was wearing a long, gray, woolen robe slit up the sides, a red smock, turban, and leather riding boots.
“I am General Dostum,” he boomed in English. “I am glad you have come!”
Nelson, Essex, and Spencer were standing in a line, their weapons slung across their chests, their hands at their sides, a sign of comfortable submission, trust, and readiness. Out of the corner of their eyes they watched Dostum’s men, waiting for them to make any sudden movement with their guns.
The big man walked up and stopped before Nelson. The general was over six feet tall, weighing maybe 240 pounds. He had a short beard peppered with gray and limpid eyes that swirled into dark focus as he gazed at Nelson.
“An honor,” said Nelson. He put his right hand over his heart and said, “Salaam alaikum. Peace be unto you, brother.”
“And peace be upon you, friend,” said Dostum. “Now we will go and kill the Taliban.”
Nelson breathed a sigh. They hadn’t been killed or kidnapped. Yet.
The general burst into the fort in a flurry of shouts and orders, and immediately several attendants spread two carpets on the dirt berm near to the water well.
On closer inspection, in the daylight, Nelson saw that the hole was quite large, about thirty feet across, and that it was filled with chalky green water, probably fed by a spring bubbling at the bottom. Nelson guessed it also contained rainwater, though rainfall in this part of Afghanistan was less than four inches a year. The crude hole was meant to supply drinking water for the camp. Nelson remembered the filters they’d bought by phone from a camping store, all while sitting in the comfort of their team room back at Fort Campbell. Those days seemed a long time ago.
The general’s attendants set ornate glass bowls containing pistachios, almonds, apricots, and chocolates on the carpets. They bowed swiftly and left, refusing to meet Nelson’s eyes. Nelson watched as an aged Afghan man in an outdoor kitchen in a corner of the courtyard drew a brass kettle from a fire. Nelson was starved and wanted to reach and grab a handful of the food. He resisted the urge, realizing it would be rude. He watched as the old man hobbled from the fire with the kettle, trailing a rich plume of steam, and knelt at the carpets. With great ceremony, he poured pale yellow tea into chipped cups set in saucers.
Nelson realized the ceremony was as old as war itself. Some corner had been turned. He and his men were inside a guerrilla camp; they were guerrilla fighters now. And they were about to meet their warlord.
Dostum sat first, taking a seat at the head of the red and green carpets. The berm’s elevation above the floor of the courtyard, about five feet, gave the forty-seven-year-old general a commanding view of the goings-on around him.
Nelson sat next, to his left, a place of honor, while Spencer crouched down beside Nelson, on his knees. J.J., dressed in green camo pants, green shirt, and hiking boots, hovered at Dostum’s shoulder. Nelson and Spencer made a display of unslinging their rifles and laying the stout, lethal-looking M-4s, with their muzzle ends pointing away from the center of the group, on the carpets beside them.
They kept their 9mm pistols holstered and strapped to their right legs. They were dressed in U.S. Army tan fatigues with their insignias and names removed, as they had been for the flight in by helicopter. This was a reminder to them that their mission was classified and that only a few people in Afghanistan, including the men around this camp, and only select military planners back in the United States, knew that they were here.
Nelson had tucked a black and white cotton scarf inside his shirt, a first attemp
t at donning the local mufti. He and Spencer had started growing beards a few days earlier at K2, but they both looked pale, sunburned, and bleary-eyed from too little sleep. Nelson wore a loose, wide-brimmed “boonie” hat that flopped down over his eyes, while Spencer’s billed parade cap was pushed back at a jaunty angle. They watched patiently as one of Dostum’s advisers, a stocky, studious-looking man in black wire-rimmed glasses and groomed beard, took a seat at Dostum’s right. Next to the adviser, across from Spencer, was Dave Olson, sitting with one leg cocked up, his arm resting on his knee, as if at a campfire. He was wearing a traditional black shalwar kameez over green camo pants. Olson planned to translate when the adviser couldn’t find the words.
After everyone was seated, they were ready to begin.
Nelson cleared his throat and explained to General Dostum that he had a gift for him. The gift was from all the people of the United States, he said, but he was honored to present it personally. He gestured to the bags of horse feed stacked nearby in the courtyard. (Someone on the team had tried sifting through the grain and picking out the worms.)
Dostum looked at the bags and then back at Nelson. Olson translated.
“I don’t need food for my horses,” Dostum snorted. “My men are hungry. They also need blankets.”
Spencer could see that Nelson was taken aback. Spencer and Essex had agreed they would keep an eye on the less experienced Nelson. They’d have to guide him through awkward moments like this when offhand statements might carry larger portents. Was General Dostum unhappy? It was impossible to tell.
“General,” Spencer spoke up, “we have brought you another gift.” And here he reached into one of the black bags brought off the helicopter and produced a bottle of Russian vodka.