by Nir Rosen
A stout, bearded sergeant called Ahmadullah was placed in command until a replacement for Farid could be found. Ahmadullah, a former schoolteacher, had joined the police after he was threatened by the Taliban, the Americans told me. He and his senior men gathered around Westby and Dyer along with many of the police, who were on the verge of a mutiny after hearing that they had to go back to Highway 601. The mood was tense; the policemen had only hours earlier been collecting Farid’s body parts off the road. “Today they lost their commander who they really respected,” Westby texted to Jasper on the Blue Force Tracker (BFT), a computer in his vehicle that allowed him to communicate with other forces in the area.
The Afghans insisted they lacked ammunition, and the men of Prowler were confounded by the number of machine-gun and RPG rounds that were unaccounted for. The Afghans told them that twenty-seven RPG heads had been destroyed in Lieutenant Farid’s vehicle as well thousands of rounds of machine-gun ammo. The Americans were skeptical that Farid had been carrying such a huge number of rounds; he was coming back to get more supplies, so his truck should have been empty. “They’re claiming a suspicious amount of ammo is missing,” Enriquez said. The police didn’t want to go because it was a British operation, and they felt like the Americans didn’t care about Farid’s death. “To restore their confidence, they have to go wipe out some Taliban location,” Sergeant Kilaki said.
The Americans weren’t happy about going on the mission either. “This is a bullshit British mission,” said Dyer. “It’s obvious the Brits don’t give a fuck about the men,” Enriquez said. Westby persuaded the British to postpone the operation until the following day. “Sir, it’s almost a mutiny right now,” Westby told Jasper, who agreed to postpone. “He doesn’t want a mutiny,” said Westby. “They’ve lost nine guys in seven days, and they need to do weapons maintenance.”
Because British clinics were full with their wounded, and the British media were focusing on the numerous British casualties, including a dead lieutenant colonel, the British decided to cancel their clearing operation in Popalzai. The Afghan army didn’t feel like going on the mission anyway.
Instead, Westby focused on replacing the highway patrol checkpoints. He spread a blanket on the floor and split open a watermelon, sitting with four senior policemen to discuss the next day’s mission. They thanked him for postponing until the morning and they discussed where they might set up their new checkpoint. The Afghans couldn’t read the map even to tell that the blue undulating line was a river. One of the checkpoints on 601 had recently been attacked, with eleven Afghan policemen killed. Sergeant Abdulahad—an Afghan police officer from the Provincial Reserve—expected heavy Taliban attacks when we arrived. He worried that they wouldn’t have enough supplies. Westby, meanwhile, tried to figure out how to get them money so they could buy food and fuel. Westby explained to the policemen that they had to depart at 7 a.m. so the highway policemen could be relieved in time to make it to their flight for training.
“When we get to the area where the diversion through the villages is, that’s where we will definitely have contact with the Taliban,” Abdulahad said. “It’s all dirt roads there, and the Taliban put many IEDs on the roads, and it will be hard to see them.” He was unenthusiastic about the mission and came up with numerous reasons not to do it. He suggested a different route through the desert along the river, which would take an entire day.
Westby was baffled but maintained his aplomb. “I think we are strong and we can attack them back,” he said. “We have enough firepower with our trucks, and I can radio for helicopters.”
Abdulahad explained that they were not scared of the Taliban but of IEDs. His men did not have armored vehicles like the Americans, and he worried that the sandy and rocky roads would be perfect cover for IEDs. Westby finally persuaded them to go, but then they raised more objections. There were many Taliban checkpoints, Abdulahad objected, and his men didn’t have enough ammunition. There were only thirty-three Provincial Reserve men on the base that night, Westby said, so when the remaining twenty returned the following day they could solve the supply problems and join the rest of the team. The Afghans reluctantly agreed, having run out of objections. Westby painstakingly made sure each one of them knew his task and would do it.
BUT THE POLICE were not ready at 7 a.m. “New leadership and lack of motivation are making the PR slow this morning,” Westby texted to his headquarters on the BFT. “I’m sure some of these dudes are scared shitless,” one soldier from Team Prowler said as the PR slowly lined up. “Before Farid got killed, the men were usually on time,” Enriquez told me. “I’m sick and fucking tired of waiting,” Westby told his men, hiding his frustration from the Afghans. “Not getting paid, the high-op tempo, the casualties, are taking a huge toll on their morale,” Westby texted to Jasper. Thirty-six Afghans from the PR finally got into seven Ford Rangers, and the fifteen men from Prowler along with their two interpreters joined the convoy in four Humvees.
We left, eventually, at 8:13 a.m. Highway 601 was a new road and the driving was smooth, with the PR hopping out every few minutes to look inside culverts for IEDs. At 8:40 Sergeant Gus radioed from the front of the convoy to announce that the Taliban had blown up a new part of the road. “There’s pretty significant damage,” he said of the culvert that had been blown up. “It’s pretty fucked up here. It looks like we’re gonna have to take a bypass.” It took fifteen minutes to figure out how to bypass the road. Sergeant Dyer wanted to clear the compounds in the area to see if there was any sign of the Taliban and to look for command wires that could detonate an IED.
“I like Sergeant Dyer’s enthusiasm, but we don’t have time to clear every compound that’s two hundred meters from the road,” Westby said.
“Look for freshly dug ant trails” on the dirt road, Westby ordered. They would be signs of command wires leading to an IED. “That culvert was 1,100 meters from an ANP checkpoint, and they couldn’t keep it protected,” Westby said in wonder of the blown road, and there was another ANP checkpoint 1,500 meters after it. The diversion exposed traffic to the nearby compounds, he wrote in his BFT. “Textbook setup for pressure plate IED and command wire IED from those compounds.”
Kilaki asked Westby if they should stop at a nearby ANP checkpoint. “I’ve got a feeling he’ll say what he always says,” said Westby. “There’s Taliban all around us! They’re all over!” We stopped at a schoolhouse that had been converted to a checkpoint. It was surrounded by concertina wire and sandbagged positions. The night before, it had been attacked by the Taliban. We reached another blown-up part of the road, and the vehicles rolled down into the desert, driving through a moonscape, passing sheep and their herdsmen and the mud compounds they shared.
We stopped at a checkpoint with mud walls. Outside were the charred carcasses of destroyed vehicles, including a police Ranger. It too had been attacked the previous night and early that morning by Taliban who shot machine-gun fire and RPGs from motorcycles and Toyota Corollas. “North of us the Taliban have a checkpoint,” one of the highway patrolmen told me. Originally from the north, he had been in the police for a year and a half and had lost nearly a hundred comrades. “We have a graveyard for the police not far away,” he said. Many police were not wearing uniforms or boots. They warned that if any of the checkpoints were abandoned, then the next day the road would be full of IEDs. The men left two Rangers and their occupants behind with only half a can of water and no food. “These motherfucking idiots, like Goddamn children,” Westby complained, exasperated that their commanders gave them no supplies. Ahmadullah and many of his men were not wearing their body armor.
We passed another blown-up culvert only a few hundred meters away from the police checkpoint. Westby wondered how the police hadn’t seen it happen. “They were sleeping,” said Kilaki. Westby conceded that they didn’t have night vision. The bypass took us over a canal. We leaned to the right and nearly tipped over. Locals struggling with their vehicles warned that the alternative bypass went thro
ugh a Taliban-controlled area where they had their own checkpoint. “The village you go through just 800 meters away is Taliban territory,” Westby wrote on the BFT. We passed another destroyed piece of road and then another IED crater. Westby decided to keep all the checkpoints open. Colonels Shirzad and Jasper had ordered one police commander to stay at a different checkpoint with the British army. He didn’t trust the British, so he refused. He finally agreed but then went to town instead. “It wears on you, these guys,” Westby sighed.
“The PR have no radios to communicate from checkpoint to checkpoint,” Westby texted to Jasper. “Vehicle radios don’t have enough range, food water fuel ammo resupply still an issue. PR not equipped to be self-sustaining here, no cooking equipment, only one CP has a well.” Westby was still hoping the remaining PR would come that day, but he doubted it. “They’ll come up with some excuse,” he said. Westby gave the PR additional jugs of water so at least they wouldn’t die in the heat. Most of the PR had not been paid for months, he told me. They didn’t have radios, so they would have no way of notifying the Americans if they were attacked. He hoped their vehicle radios worked and tried to explain to the PR squad leader that communication was essential. Westby didn’t expect his own position to be attacked because the Taliban probably saw that there were Americans there.
Lieut. Col. Jasper De Quincy Adams showed up. He was young, handsome, and full of energy. He complained about the highway police commander. “When locals interact with him, they think the Taliban are better,” he said, worrying that the commander delegitimized the government. “We’ll turn this around by aggressive patrolling,” he told Westby. “Your mission is all about deterring and disrupting.” He wanted Westby to lay ambushes and take the fight to the enemy. “I think that Popalzai needs to be patrolled very aggressively,” he said. “Have large numbers of patrol and ambush.” Jasper’s men followed us and fixed the holes in the road, filling them with dirt. Jasper complained that about twenty of the twenty-five recruits had tested positive for opiates. “That’s why the road is full of IEDs,” Westby told me. “They’re high all the time.”
The men of Team Prowler broke the mud walls with sledgehammers so that they could fit their Humvees inside. Then they parked on all sides so that they could have 360 degrees of coverage. They broke the tops of walls so they could fire better. Garbage littered the compound, including sheeps’ hooves and bones, the remnants of previous meals. The Americans tried to clean it all up and set it on fire. Westby told me he didn’t think everybody in the villages around Highway 601 was Taliban; some were just normal civilians.
The commander of one of the checkpoints got on the radio to announce that his men had seen a Corolla full of Taliban with weapons. The commander met with local villagers by his checkpoint and explained that they were a different police unit replacing the old one to establish security. “It’s good initiative,” said Westby. That night the men drove up and down the road and found a suspected IED. It was too dark to do anything about it. They did a recon by fire, meaning they shot at the house where they suspected the trigger man might be hiding, but nothing happened. If anything detonated, they would have annihilated the suspected firing point.
The next morning the team drove to a compound they suspected had been used by the men who placed the IED. They dismounted with the PR, walking past green fields into the first mud compound. On one corner by the road was a spy hole and another hole at the bottom with two ant trails coming out of it. Inside was a cornfield, a marijuana field, and harvested poppy plants. Several of the police on patrol didn’t wear their body armor and stood casually in fields of fire. Team Prowler kept pushing ahead. We passed by large poppy fields. The plants were dry and harvested. The police came across three small brothers who pointed to a narrow path between two mud walls and said five armed Taliban had just moved north of the compound. But Dyer didn’t pursue the Taliban because he didn’t want to be channeled through the narrow path.
The men found a mosque with mattresses and a room with corn kernels, bags of nitrogen, and a car battery. The nitrogen could have easily been used for fertilizer or explosives. While the Americans were poking around inside the mosque, the police sat in the shade beneath nearby trees. Some of them filmed the patrol with their camera phones. “I need those men from Lashkar Gah to get in some Rangers and drive their sorry asses out here,” Westby complained, and asked Mansur, the translator, to radio them. Back at the mud checkpoint Westby briefed his men. Their mission was to “deter and disrupt enemy forces burying IEDs,” and the “center of gravity is Popalzai.”
That night Dyer led an ambush by the mosque, where the team suspected the Taliban were sleeping. They hoped that when the Taliban tried to leave, the ambush team blocking the narrow path between the mud walls would kill them. They drove without lights in blackout. Dyer told the men to make sure the ANP had no cigarettes, didn’t play music, and didn’t talk. “Enforce light and noise discipline,” he said. “Throw some fucking grenades. We’re not there to arrest people, just fucking kill people.”
“The Hazara fighters are better than these lazy bones sleeping all day,” said Westby, referring to the Pashtun police. “And they’re better shots,” Dyer added. Westby estimated there would be five to ten Taliban in the mosque. Somehow I doubted the Taliban would be there. They weren’t stupid: they did not sleep in the same place every night, and they would know that the Americans had found their hideout.
At 3 a.m. they started getting ready. “I hope we catch these sons of bitches with their pants down,” Kilaki said. “I’ll be so pissed if there’s nobody fucking there,” said Campos. There were supposed to be only six police dismounts on the ambush, but twice as many got out of their vehicles to join the five Americans who went on the ambush. Westby got out of his Humvee to resolve the problem. “It just goes to show that no matter how many times you prep ’em . . .” said Kilaki. “They all thought they were going on patrol,” Westby said with a laugh. “I just explained it to their commander, and they nodded north and south.” An unmanned Predator drone was flying overhead, but Team Prowler had no way of talking to those controlling it.
As it happened, the mosque was empty. Several Afghans walking by on the way to their fields or morning prayers were taken down the alleyway. “They can fuckin’ sit and shut up,” Dyer said. “I wish I was the dismount watching the people come out all spooked,” Campos said. “On the Fourth we had the women crying,” said Kilaki. “Yeah, I know,” said Campos. “I saw the women coming out, tears all down their faces. Shut the fuck up! We’re doing you a favor.”
When the rest of Team Prowler joined the ambush team, I found the Afghan men sitting and waiting to be let go. They were middle-aged and elderly. They asked to pray several times, and finally Dyer let them conduct their ablutions and pray on the grass. One of the old men told me that they were all very bothered by the Taliban. “They come here to shoot,” he said. “They don’t let us irrigate our fields. When the Taliban shoot from this area, the Americans and police come and we have to run away. Our neighbors were bothered by the Taliban, and they fled. We have to take our women and children away when the police respond to Taliban ambushes.” Another old man chimed in. “Three months ago the Taliban set up an ambush on the road,” he said. “The police entered our houses, they stole our sheep and everything from our houses. We complained to Lashkar Gah police headquarters, and they gave us back two motorcycles and one sheep but not the rest of our things. We had a shop, and they took all the merchandise from it.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that. You can rest assured that this is a different police,” said Westby. “Tell him we apologize for the disturbance, but we’re adamant about keeping these people out.”
“I am an old man,” one of them said. “If we talk to them, the Taliban will slap us. The Taliban sometimes come here and demand money. If we refuse, they’re going to kill us.”
The old men asked if they could go take their vegetables to the market. The Americans agreed. Westby t
old them that if they gave information on the Taliban that led to arrests, they would receive money. “If the Taliban see us talking to you, they will slaughter us tonight,” one of the men said. “The Taliban don’t tell us when they are coming. We’re sitting in our homes, and all of a sudden they come and we hear shots. The Taliban don’t sleep here. They come here like thieves.”
“Let them understand that we’re not the bad guys,” Westby told his translator. “We’re trying to stop them from doing what they are doing. The best way to accomplish that is by a partnership. We can’t keep coming here every day.”
“We can’t notify the police, but we’ll send some small child to tell the police,” one of the old men said.
The sun rose, golden over the shrubs, as we made our way back to the checkpoint. The police had mentioned seeing a Taliban car. “What was that about a Taliban car?” asked Kilaki. “The ANP think everything is Taliban,” Westby replied. “I don’t think they fuckin’ know. They’re so eager to impress that sometimes they call everything Taliban.”
The police at the next checkpoint radioed to say there were Taliban around. “They’re over there, and they’re over there, and they’re over there, but we can’t go on that road because it’s all IEDs, but the road is full of civilian traffic,” Westby said, mocking the useless information he got from the cops.
A highway patrol commander called Torabas came by with his men. He and his men had just seen two Corollas full of Taliban in the distance. I asked him how he knew. He had been living here for two years, he said, and he recognized their faces. All the hills north of our position were said to be controlled by the Taliban, but the police were too scared to go there. I asked Torabas why the Taliban were so popular in Helmand. “The Taliban are supported by the British,” he said, insisting that he had seen the British military drop fuel supplies to the Taliban. “Nobody likes the Taliban here,” he said. “It’s only out of fear. When the Taliban see people talking to the police, they kill them. They are here only by force, and many people dislike the police. Some police steal from houses. Before we recruited uneducated people who had no training.” About fifty of his men had been killed by the Taliban since he took command.