Allies

by Wolf Riedel

  Kurt sat on the southeastern parapet of the compound looking at the dusty road winding its way toward the Pakistani border. From here the road was almost indistinguishable from the desert on which it lay; merely a slightly harder packed ribbon of tan gravel from which the larger chunks of rock had been swept to its verges separating it from the equally tan fields and hills beyond.

  He hauled a large grey handkerchief out from where he had tucked it between his tactical vest and his body armor. Breathing had become somewhat easier as the cold was wearing off. The trouble now was the free flowing mucus that accompanied his sinus passages starting to drain.

  “I wouldn’t sit there too long,” said a voice behind him. “The locals can’t shoot for shit but every once in a while even they can get lucky.”

  Kurt turned around and looked behind him where Lesperance’s face and shoulders were visible coming up the ladder that led to the roof top that the parapet was mounted on.

  Lesperance finished the climb and made his way across the roof to squat down next to Kurt.

  “Now we’re just a larger target,” said Kurt. He estimated the distance to the tiny village bazaar that sat at a bend in the road below as maybe three hundred meters. Scruffy fields extended eastward for maybe a kilometer where a meager meandering stream still showed some of the spring’s moisture. By now most of the usable water was coursing underground feeding the still tiny shoots emerging from the soil rendering the landscape a quilt of pale green shades. In another month or so the colors would intensify as the crops matured. For the time being however the most positive thing one could say is that the land showed potential, if not promise.

  Lesperance stared out onto the bleak landscape. “It’s hard to believe anyone would actually choose to live here,” he said. “They do you know. They’re so tied to their families and this shitty land that the thought of doing anything else is completely foreign to them. Everything is tied to the tribe here.”

  Kurt had been hoping for this. A chance to talk to Lesperance without his entourage of McLean and Roper. He and O’Donnell and Shirazi had met this morning at breakfast to discuss their interviews and to develop the day’s strategy.

  After lunch the day before, O’Donnell and Shirazi had slipped away to talk to the various troops in the compound while Kurt had stayed with Lesperance. His two shadows had stayed with him and, when O’Donnell finally managed to finesse Roper away for a private talk, McLean had stayed attached to Lesperance like a limpet. Kurt hadn’t wanted to pull rank to tell him to get the hell out; he believed that you trapped a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar and wanted to keep everyone at ease and to keep the conversations open as long as he could. It was a time to be patient.

  The day before, Shirazi had found a definite split within Lesperance’s team. At least four of the augmentee members had hinted at concerns about what was going on but Shirazi had gotten the impression that they weren’t about to voice them openly to some strange Canadian. He’d suggested that O’Donnell take the day to pick up where Shirazi had left off and interview them in more detail while Shirazi would push to have McLean and Roper take him and Paulson’s team to do a patrol of the local villages to get a better appreciation of the ground truth. That had worked, and they’d left thirty minutes ago, right after lunch. Kurt had been casually warming Lesperance up before heading up to the roof of the main building to take some air and look around. He’d calculated that it would just be a matter of time before Lesperance joined him up here.

  “It’s very different from Iraq. Isn’t it?” Lesperance stated then checked himself. “I guess as a Canadian you haven’t been there, have you?”

  “You’d be guessing wrong,” said Kurt recalling his tour as an exchange officer with the British SAS in 2003 as well as a number of liaison visits since then, but there was no need to share the details with Lesperance. He did want to keep him talking however.

  “I spent some time there when Bremer issued Coalition Provisional Authority Order Two and disbanded the Iraqi army,” he said.

  Lesperance sat down on the roof with his back against the parapet. He pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his chest pocket and offered one to Kurt. Kurt shook his head. Lesperance took one for himself and lit up.

  “That was one giant rat-fuck that was,” Lesperance said shaking his head sadly. “That almost singlehandedly ensured that we’d be in a sectarian war. At least we finally got Zarqawi. That should help.”

  Kurt turned around, slid off the parapet and sat down next to Lesperance. Their heads were now below the parapet and no longer in the line of sight of anything but their own compound below.

  “My guess is that we’ve sown the seeds of something much bigger to come,” Kurt said. “Besides killing a bunch of them, all that we’ve accomplished is taken all the shitheads from all over the country and put them together in one or two jails where they can talk and network and plan the future. Essentially what we’ve done is created thousands of unemployed and well-trained Sunni army officers looking for a cause and revenge. That and we’ve packed them together in a couple of breeding grounds of Sunni extremism. Zarqawi may be dead but the people who created him are still in business.”

  “You guys don’t have any troops to Iraq, do you?” The tone was accusatory as if there was a lack of Canada pulling it’s weight out there.

  “We did in 1991 when Iraq invaded Kuwait and the UN authorized a war,” replied Kurt. Kurt tried not to get too combative but wasn’t about to rollover and play dead here either.

  “We weren’t part of Bush Junior’s personal war against Saddam,” he replied. “Besides we were already here in Afghanistan when you guys started pulling back and, quite frankly, we never thought that Iraq was a legitimate deal. Let’s just say that the evidence of weapons of mass destruction was thin at best for us.”

  Kurt’s concern that his response would shut Lesperance down was born out as the younger officer sat quietly, almost pouting, as he fiddled with his cigarette.

  “So,” said Kurt trying to rekindle the flow. “I think we agree that Afghanistan is different. How would you suggest we deal with the insurgency here?”

  Lesperance continued to sit quietly as if trying to convince himself that the Canadian was even worth speaking to. In the end he couldn’t help himself; couldn’t hold back. Kurt was sure that this subject was one where Lesperance was sure that his thought processes were vastly superior to that of the staff at SOCCENT. Kurt could sense that Lesperance wasn’t about to pass up the chance to educate some rear area dickhead.

  “The problem we have,” Lesperance said,,“is that this is a country based on a tribal structure and that any attempts to create a strong central government is bound to fail as the government inevitably becomes corrupt at the expense of the tribes. We’ll never win in Afghanistan unless we learn to use the existing cultural structure of the country to our advantage. We need to use the tribal system. Instead of bringing in conventional forces what we need is a force that’s almost exclusively Special Forces, like us, trained and equipped to work amongst the people.”

  “A model foreign internal defence mission,” Kurt offered.

  “Exactly,” said Lesperance. “But with a smattering of counter terrorism. But the main element is to live amongst and engage local tribal groups with training, equipment, funding to ensure that they have the ability to defend themselves against outside threats. Once you achieve success for one tribe, neighboring tribes will want to participate too and pretty soon you are expanding your control.”

  “Sounds a bit like the British ink blot strategy with a side-order of the domino theory.”

  Lesperance frowned sensing more than just a hint of sarcasm.

  Kurt mentally kicked himself for letting his mouth run away from him again.

  “You’ve used this theory here?” he asked. “With success?”

  “Oh yes,” said Lesperance quickly warming again to the topic. “We started several years ago when we were sent down here to keep an eye
on the border. It became clear fairly quickly that the guy with the most potential to work with us was Mahomed Khan from Khalkari.” He waved across the compound in a generally northerly direction. “Khan has both allies and enemies in the area. His group already had some power here; left over weapons from the Russian war and a viable lashkar organization. We built on that with additional weapons and ammunition; some training and mentoring.”

  “What about the other tribes in the area?” asked Kurt.

  “Khan is a Toki Ghilzai. His people have the most legitimacy here with their possession of this land going back hundreds of years. The others are interlopers who bit by bit moved in and grabbed property. For us the biggest challenge, mentally, was to come to grips with their concept of Pashtunwali. The idea of a central government for Afghanistan is virtually foreign to the locals, but the honor code system that has governed tribal and inter-tribal conduct is deeply ingrained. It’s the key for us to forming alliances. The problem that ISAF has now is that it supports the central government to the exclusion of the local ones. We’re building a national army that is marginally effective and a police force that’s a model of corruption both of which totally alienate the locals. That needs to change. We need to get very tightly integrated with the locals like we’ve done here.”

  Kurt understood the problem as did everyone else up the chain of command. Afghanistan had a long history of corruption within the central government. Corruption had frequently resulted in revolt from local communities. However, empowering the tribes at the expense of the central government was not the answer either. Some of the most progressive reforms for Afghanistan had come in the 1920’s when the then king, Amanullah Khan abolished slavery and the burqa and began to introduce universal co-education. It was the local tribal and religious leaders, however, who pushed back to the point where the king had to abdicate.

  Kurt had to admit that the current Afghan government was not only corrupt but predatory. On top of that the coalition’s counterinsurgency strategy had been lacking cohesion. When Eikenberry had taken over command of the US forces in 2005 he had moved his headquarters out of the embassy in Kabul and back to the base at Bagram and greatly reduced civilian-military cooperation. Anti-Taliban efforts were a hodge-podge of mostly uncoordinated activities by ISAF in the west and south, the US in the east and the special forces and CIA fighting their own war all over the place. The US’s new counterinsurgency strategy, written by Petreaus’s team just before he took command in Iraq, was in its infancy and lacked universal buy-in. Kurt had heard the situation described in the halls of SOCCENT as military mismanagement. In that type of environment a Lesperance could easily arise.

  Kurt looked at Lesperance. He didn’t give voice to his thoughts. There was no sense in debating Lesperance’s vision with him. He was as firmly convinced of the rightness of his cause as Kurt was convinced that Dostum was right; the whole country was a cacophony of power struggles between strongmen who had differing agendas within which bettering the lot for the people played no real role. The principle objectives were seizing and retaining power; everything else was secondary. Kurt, like Dostum, believed that the best chance for general reform for the population came through creating a strong central government that once it was secure enough, could initiate widespread reforms. Lesperance’s vision might help to reduce some local Taliban influence but would leave the people to live under the will of low-level despots who ruled with no real authority except their own interpretation of Islam and the force of arms.

  “Is that how you chose who to support then?” asked Kurt. “By finding the tribe with the longest historical claim in the area?”

  “That plays a large part,” said Lesperance. “That and the potential to unite the other tribes.”

  “What about the local drug economy?” asked Kurt. “My understanding is that Khan is one of the biggest drug warlords in this part of the Zabul.”

  Lesperance shook his head with a slight smile on his lips.

  “To a large extent that is the propaganda that comes out of Zabul’s government.” Lesperance spread his hands. “I can’t lie. Here like everywhere else the farmers’ incomes come both from marijuana and opium poppies as well as their food-based crops. They’re desperately poor here and the only way that they can make a living is through drug production. We’ll never get rid of that as long as there is a market for it in the west. If we try to eradicate it here like they’ve tried in Helmand all we’ll do is alienate the very locals we need on our side. What we need to do is to support the locals in their economic efforts.”

  Kurt thought that this was about as close to an admission that he would ever get from Lesperance that his team was involved in the drug trade. He acknowledged to himself that it could just as easily be interpreted as being a statement that there was a big role here for agricultural aid projects.

  Kurt’s head went up over the parapet and looked north to where he could hear the faint crackle of musketry. Out of the corner of his eye, on a ridge further to his left he saw a puff of smoke erupt followed a few seconds later by the rattle and bang of an incoming rocket.

  CHAPTER 46

  Calle Río Purificación, Reynosa, Mexico

  Monday 19 Mar 07 0330 hrs CDT

  While on the surface everything had appeared ready much earlier, there had been a number of coordination issues that had slowed down the actual deployment of the force. Mark, Sal and Sage had cooled their heals sitting on the steps of the Comandancia while officers and NCOs and police officers bustled in and out. At one point Garza had come out to grouse but then shrugged the delays off to a lack of communication with the undercover scouts staking out the compound.

  Finally the order to go was given. Troops scrambled into the backs of the pickup trucks and engines turned over; headlights came on and one by one the convoy pulled off the parade square and made their way to the main gate and the highway into the dark of the night.

  The three of them had traveled again in the back seat of Garza’s SUV. Mark’s face was pressed against the window scanning the neighborhoods they traversed as the car sped a few kilometers down the four-lane Porfirio Diaz. Tall light standards spaced out along the median provided a dim light. Next to him Sal was tracking their progress on a city map.

  Sal leaned over to Mark.

  “Have you noticed that everyone here except for the three of us are carrying assault rifles?” he had asked. “All we’ve got is our pistols.”

  “The plan is that we don’t leave the SUV until everything is secured,” Mark had replied. “We shouldn’t need any weapons at all.”

  “Yeah well I’m a firm believer in firepower,” Sal had said. “Especially when the bad guys got lots. . . . Coming up to the Libramiento Matamoros-Monterrey intersection.”

  The ground had become more open. The small, well-spaced, hardscrabble businesses had temporarily given way to brush and dark fields as the road divided to left and right. A short one kilometer dash had brought them to a hard left down Revolucion which took them across a canal and had then issued out on Río Purificación. Ahead he had seen the army pickups dispersing and the troops baling out into firing positions.

  The SUV had parked in the middle of the median next to a stake semi trailer with flat tires. Here the median was mostly just dirt but it was wide—at least sixty feet wide—wide enough to be used as a parking lot for a dozen broken down trucks and trailers. On the south side of the street dozens more occupied an expansive lot. Mark couldn’t be sure if it was a junk yard, a sales lot or a repair facility.

  Telephone poles lined the street each of which sported an anemic amber street light that barely illuminated the road. It was sufficient, however, to allow Mark to read the hand-lettered two-foot square sign next to the car advertising a tacqueria one block to the south. Trees and bushes were randomly scattered amongst the conglomeration of sheds, adobe shacks and cinder block structures. Most were single storey but their target for the night, just visible two blocks ahead, was a two-storey block str
ucture with only a few barred windows, a steel roofed lean-to, and a compound surrounded by a solid, six-foot, high-quality steel picket fence.

  Garza exited the car and ran forward without a word. The driver, a uniformed PFP officer also exited with his G3 and took up a watching position to the front.

  Sage looked across to Mark and gave a now what the fuck do we do? shrug.

  In response Mark got out of the vehicle, walked to its back and had a look around. Behind him Sage and Sal got out and closed the doors of the car to turn off the dome light.

  Behind them—at the target—a crack of automatic weapons fire erupted leading the three of them to duck down behind the tailgate of the SUV. The driver similarly ducked down behind the left front quarter panel and pointed his G3 toward the target compound. A block further up, an army pickup stood in the middle of the intersection, soldiers squatted behind it peppering the target building with their assault rifles.

  “Notice anything?” asked Mark.

  Sage shrugged in the negative.

  Sal shook his head.

  “What?” he asked.

  “When you do a cordon and search operation, the cordon is supposed to have two parts, an inside cordon to keep the target pinned down and an outside cordon to keep reinforcements out. There’s no outside cordon that I can see,” he said pointing to the area all around them while pulling his pistol.

  Sage and Sal followed suit and pulled theirs as well.

  Mark pointed to the right rear of the SUV. “Sal cover the right side from that army pickup to back behind us straight up the road we came down.”

  “Gotcha,” said Sal and moved into position.

  “Make sure you’ve got a fall back position if something comes up behind us,” Mark said. He turned and looked at Sage.

  “Can you get down between the wheels of that semi-trailer and cover the other side of the street?” he asked.

  “No sweat,” she said.

  “Good,” Mark said. “I’ll roam around between the two of you and keep an all around watch.”