by Wolf Riedel
Major Koshan Dostum, like many of the ANP and ANA, was a Tajik, a predominantly Farsi speaking people of Persian decent that made up roughly twenty-five percent of the Afghan population and which resided in and around the country’s four largest cities and predominantly in the northern and western regions.
In his late forties, Dostum was robust and muscular standing around six foot three and affecting western dress of tan denim pants, a blue vest worn over a tan shirt and sturdy boots. A green and white checked shemagh draped around his neck accented his bright green eyes. His almost blond hair and beard were neatly trimmed.
Kurt had met Dostum before and knew well that the man’s office and conference facilities would mirror the western style with an ornately carved large wooden table and green leather, high-backed, swivel chairs. The artwork around the room, on the other hand, showed a definite Persian motif.
While a native Farsi speaker, Dostum was also fluent in Pashto and English, the latter due to his having studied English literature at Kabul University decades ago when it still functioned. The destruction of the Afghan’s education system, as much as anything else, had engendered a deep and abiding hatred in the man for everything that the Taliban were and represented; a perverted and corrupt interpretation of Islam fomented by the Pakistani ISI to prey on the illiterate and deeply religious, mostly Pashtun, population.
Dostum greeted his guest with typical Afghan hospitality and ushered them into his conference room already stocked with chai and an expansive meal of naan, a rice pilaf of turnips, carrots and meat, a soup with meat and a variety of vegetables, steamed meat dumplings, deep-fried mince meat cakes, yogurts and fruits and numerous other dishes.
Pleasantries were exchanged while they ate and much time was spent on discussing family and friends. Kurt had long ago accepted the fact that in Afghanistan, rushing into business discussions without the proper exchange of pleasantries was plain bad manners.
First and foremost, Dostum expressed how particularly pleased he had been when he had heard that his old friend Phil Sambrook had been promoted and taken command of SOCCENT. Unlike the President of Afghanistan who all too frequently expressed both anguish and outrage against the night-time operations that both the black and white special forces troops engaged in, Dostum was a firm believer in exploiting the Taliban’s weakness for night operations and hitting them hard in the homes that they sought refuge in. He saw and appreciated the necessity and practicality of such operations notwithstanding that he had some feelings for the civilians who had been caught up in these operations—either family members of the insurgents or innocents caught up through coercion or a false exercise of melmastia, the hospitality principle under the Pashtunwali code of life. He took solace from the fact that many of those effected were just as liable to be on the line with the Taliban carrying ammunition and water for them as well as planting IEDs at night. In the end it was the Taliban who were the cause of these deaths and injuries by disguising themselves as locals and using them as shields in the first place.
After an hour they had eventually turned to the purpose of Kurt’s visit; assistance with the ground truth of the situation in Zabul. While Dostum’s area of responsibility was the province of Kandahar, obtaining proper intelligence as to the threat there needed an extensive understanding of the situation in the bordering communities, especially Zabul which provided a gateway for insurgents entering Dostum’s province. Kurt was well aware that the Major had established an extensive HUMINT—human intelligence—network there which was routinely augmented by the coalition’s SIGINT and GEOINT—signals intelligence and geospatial intelligence—resources.
“What concerns us most,” said Kurt, “is the situation in the Shamulzayi and Atghar districts of Zabul and in particular the military situation there. How are the forces arrayed there and what has been happening the last half year or so.”
“I presume, since you come from SOCCENT, that you’re most concerned about the area covered by your ODA at POWDER.”
Kurt nodded.
“Your man there is supposed to be an expert at internal defence, they say,” said Dostum.
Kurt nodded again. “So I’ve been told,” he said. “I’ve also been told that there’s some dispute as to whether or not he’s been successful.”
Now it was Dostum’s turn to nod.
“The dispute very much depends on whose side you’re on,” he said. “And by that I’m not saying he’s supporting the Taliban directly but there are factions and then there are factions.”
“Go on, please,” said Kurt.
“I think the first thing that you have to accept is that the majority of Zabul is desperately poor, even by Afghan standards. At all times, there is a great struggle for resources at play amongst the various villages and their local leaders.
“For the most part the population is Pashtun, mostly of the Ghilzai. In the Atghar district they are mostly Hotaki Ghilzai while all around them are Toki Ghilzai. In Atghar, and even extending into southwestern Shamulzayi, you will find some Duranni Pashtun including a number of Noorzai which as you know predominate here in the Panjwayi, Zhari and Maywand districts.
“Your man has taken up with several of the local Toki Ghilzai who are attempting to squeeze out their remaining Noorzai neighbors. Since the Noorzai occupy several locations along a strategic valley and the border, the Noorzai have become easy targets for what you could call a whisper campaign that they are the elements that keep the border traffic open for the Taliban.”
“And this isn’t true?” asked Kurt.
“Oh yes it’s true, but not much more nor less true than for any of the other tribes along the border,” said Dostum. “They’re all related to people on the other side and they’re all, more or less, followers of extreme fundamentalism. Poverty is a fertile ground for the Salafist mullahs. The Noorzai there are not, however, what you would call major players in the insurgency. Their efforts are few and not intense unless it’s for the purpose of expanding their own holdings or control. They’re all quite content to allow passage of fighters from Pakistan to Uruzgan or to Kandahar and Helmand but they don’t add much in the way of their own forces to any concerted or coordinated Taliban campaigns.
“They’re opportunists,” said Kurt.
“Very much so,” Dostum agreed. “But the Noorzai don’t have much opportunity. Out of a quarter million people in Zabul, maybe a thousand are Noorzai. They’ve allied themselves somewhat with the Hotaki Ghilzai mostly in joint opposition to the Achakzai from the south near Spin Boldak.
“You know that Mullah Omar is a Hotak?”
“It slipped my mind,” said Kurt with a grin.
“Well, he is, as are other high placed Taliban. But most of the true Taliban in Zabul are small groups of Kandahari of various tribal associations; maybe a thousand grouped into less than a hundred delgai who tend not to join together to cooperate but live their own existence, frequently in conflict with each other. They rarely respond to directives from Quetta.”
Dostum held up his hand in frustration with himself.
“Look. Here is the key. Westerners tend to look at southern Afghanistan as a region torn by tribal conflict at the level of what you sometimes call the ruling class Durrani Pashtuns and the impoverished Ghilzai Pashtuns. Or even amongst the Duranni as between the Panjpai Duranni on the side of the insurgency and the Zeerak Durrani on the side of the government. With respect, that’s simplistic and not the way we Afghans tend to look at the question.
“We see it as a conflict between oppressors on the one side and the oppressed on the other. Local leaders are always looking for ways to dominate or marginalize their opponents and rivals; for land, for water, for control of the drug trade or the trucking trade or whatever. This is where you have a problem when you start creating and supporting tribal militias like your Lesperance is doing. He’s not creating a local defence force against some faceless foreign Taliban insurgent but instead giving power to one group of villages to dominate and oppress their neighbors
, steal their land and animals, their water or their fields. He’s become infatuated with some of the locals and has chosen them to become mini warlords, under the guise of securing the border.”
Dostum held up a finger.
“But,” he added, “he’s not making the border any more secure.”
CHAPTER 33
Southwest Airlines Flight 2448
Wednesday 14 Mar 07 1415 hrs CDT
The codes on their boarding cards had virtually assured them of being scattered around the aircraft. Southwest didn’t provide assigned seats; just code letters which grouped passengers based on some random pattern that Mark had yet to decipher. Each of Sal, Sage and he had been assigned a different letter meaning they would each be boarding at separate times to select their seats from whatever ones were still unoccupied. Mark’s code had been called last ensuring that all the preferred aisle seats at the front of the plane had already been filled. Sal and Sage were sitting about half way down, some six rows apart on opposite sides of the plane, Sage, who had boarded first, sat next to a window and Sal on an aisle. The seats next to Sage were already filled by a woman and a small child while the two seats next to Sal were empty. Mark quickly grabbed the window seat and looked back at Sage and silently pointed to the remaining seat. She looked at the already well-settled child and shrugged helplessly. Mark sat down with the faint hope that, with a bit of luck, the middle seat would look too unattractive for any of the few remaining passengers who were still boarding behind them.
Luck had run out and an elderly woman stopped next to Sal and pointing had asked, “Is that seat taken?”
Mark had reluctantly offered her the window seat and had been somewhat relieved when she politely declined and took the middle one and thereby ensured that there’d be no discussions about the case during the flight.
At least she’s skinny, he’d thought looking at her tiny frame. Ninety pounds at best, he’d estimated.
The take-off and first leg of the short—one and one half hour—flight had been uneventful with Mark engrossed in reading a paperback novel he’d brought along just in case.
“Do you like Connelly’s work?” a voice asked.
Mark was momentarily confused and looked at the woman in the seat next to him.
“Excuse me,” he said.
“I asked if you liked Connelly’s work,” she asked again pointing at the novel. “City of Bones. That’s not his latest one but I’ve always liked it, especially how tenacious Bosch is in that one when he’s going after a long dead child’s killer. At what point of the book are you now?”
“The point in the garage where the female cop gets shot,” he replied.
“Ah, yes,” she nodded. “I’d better not say anything more or I’ll spoil it for you.”
She settled herself into Sal’s side of her seat so that she could face Mark more easily.
“From your accent you’re not from N’Orlins, are you?” she asked.
“No ma’am,” he replied. “Just passing through. I presume you’re from there though.” Her accent was quite thick.
“Oh my, yes,” she replied. “Born and bred there.”
Mark had a brief smile. He knew that the idiom born and bred meant born and raised but use of the phrase had always brought him back to an argument he’d had with another recruit during basic training who insisted that the phrase should be bred and born indicating that you were conceived and born in a certain place and that born and bred therefore, by reversing the words meant that you were born and did all your conceiving in that place. Notwithstanding that Mark knew better, since then, the use of the phrase always conjured up fleeting images about the subject that he’d rather not have.
“My daddy owned a hotel right in the middle of the French quarter which I still run. My husband helped me run it after he retired from the police right up until his death.”
“Your husband was with the NOPD?” Mark asked.
“Oh, yes,” she replied with a gleam. “He joined when the force was still all white and retired not so long after that court case in ’73 when they forced them to take on the blacks. But by then the downtown part of the city was changing anyway. All the white folks were fleeing to the suburbs. We stayed because the Quarter was where all the tourists were coming and we were still making a good living from the hotel and Earl’s pension.”
Mark tried hard to suppress his discomfort. His father had told him about his time in the army in Vietnam before he had become a New Hampshire State Trooper. He’d admitted how he’d had his own issues about African-Americans back then but he’d still been totally amazed how deeply ingrained the hatred was amongst the southern boys he’d served with. It hadn’t been an easy time his dad had told him. Mark had to admit that, while infinitely better, there were still issues. What had surprised him most of all was the casual way her voice had dripped with venom when she said the blacks; she might as well have used what was now commonly being referred to as the n-word.
“How did your hotel hold up during Katrina?” he asked trying to turn the conversation away from where it had been heading.
“Oh. We were high and dry,” she waved her hand off dismissively. “All the major flooding was west and north of us. Where we are is about seven feet above sea level, so it wasn’t even close to being a problem. Our biggest problem was the mandatory evacuation order that they issued for the city. There was no way I was leaving my home to the looters. We had lots of food in the hotel and a back-up generator. A lot of our stuff wouldn’t spoil even if our power went out. On top of that we filled all the bathtubs with enough clean water so that we were good for a month.”
“We?” Mark asked.
“Two of my staff live in the hotel full-time. They decided to stay with me and helped guard our belongings.”
“You were armed?” he asked.
“Oh my, son,” she said shyly. “Don’t think that because I’m an old lady I can’t take care of myself. We had guns and lots of ammunition and Earl had taught me well over the years.”
Mark looked over at Sal who looked back and gave him a smile and a wink.
The rain was coming down in sheets like only a storm on the Gulf Coast could. They had seen nothing of Louisiana or of the city during their descent. From when they had dropped into the clouds from a bright day, there had been nothing but a thick blackness barely letting them see the rain water being driven horizontally along the windows by the plane’s slipstream. It had only been as they approached the terminal that they started to see the glimmer of the taxiway’s lights and finally those of the gates.
Mark, Sal and Sage deplaned quickly. The fury of the rain’s hammering on the sheet metal roof of the bridge connecting the plane to the terminal and, subsequently, that above Concourse B made it clear just how heavy the downpour was.
“Sounds like the Big Easy isn’t that happy that we’re here,” said Sal looking up at the ceiling as they made their way to the end of the concourse and descended an escalator to the baggage claims area.
“That’s handy,” said Sal. “Carousel 1 is right here . . . And that’s probably our reception party.”
Mark, following just behind Sal, looked down and saw an individual wearing khaki trousers, a light blue polo shirt and a holstered automatic strapped to his hip standing next to the carousel and looking up at them. Mark pegged him at around a hundred and seventy and probably around five eleven. The trim mustache and blonde crew cut supported Sal’s original assumption.
Mark stepped past Sal and held out his hand. “Special Agent Hoover?” he asked.
“Yup. Call me Jay,” he replied taking the hand. “You must be Chief Winters.”
“I am and this is Staff Sergeant Sal Watt and Detective Sage Baumgartner from the Tampa PD.” Sal and Sage nodded in Hoover’s direction.
Hoover nodded back and then tilted his head toward the baggage carousel.
“You’ve got luggage to come off the plane?” he asked.
“Yeah and we need a place to unpack our h
ardware as well,” replied Mark.
“You can do that at the car before we head out.”
Sal looked at the doorway leading to the parkade and saw the sheets of water coming down. “We’re going out in this shit?” he asked.
“Sure. No problem,” replied Hoover. “These things move through pretty quickly.”
Not quickly enough for Mark. The trip from Louis Armstrong NO International to the NOPD headquarters was barely thirteen miles but had taken well over a half an hour. Hoover had explained that there were two routes: Highway US 61—Airline Drive—that led almost directly east to the city’s center; and the I-10 expressway that, while slightly longer, had none of the traffic lights and cross traffic of US 61.
In the end, they should have taken the shorter road.
Whether the storm front had stalled over New Orleans or whether it was just moving slowly in the same direction that they were on the interstate was impossible to determine. The net effect was that they drove the whole way in a deluge of rain that fell straight down. Visibility was next to zero; at best they could see the tail lights of the car ahead of them but only if they stayed within one car length. Beyond that there was nothing except darkness. The windshield wipers on the SUV slapped furiously but fought a losing battle. Mark had sat up front, clearly disturbed by the lack of control he had in the situation; dependent entirely on Hoover’s driving skills. They had moved along at barely twenty miles an hour which was still entirely too fast for Mark. At the same time, he considered that the only other alternative, pulling over, was next to impossible and undoubtedly highly dangerous in the traffic that continued to push its way through the curtain of rain.
Things only lightened up once they had left the I-10 and crept along Tulane Avenue and took the turn onto S. Broad Street for a short one block ride looping around one way streets into the parkade attached to the NOPD headquarters building.
Mark’s brief glimpse had left him unimpressed. A modernistic structure, consisting of a glass enclosed main floor with maybe four more stories of concrete clad upper floors cantilevered on thin concrete pillars that were positioned some ten or twelve feet outside the glass panes on the ground floor. In Mark’s view they were soft spots making the building vulnerable to collapse.