The Taliban Shuffle by Kim Barker Read Free Book Online Page B

if you work with the Americans.”
    We left town and drove on. Suddenly someone spotted a suspicious white bag in the middle of the road. Our four-vehicle convoy lurched to a slow stop. Sergeant Ben Crowley, a smart aleck whothrived on making everyone laugh, jumped out of his Humvee. He looked through the scope of his rifle at the bag. No wires poked out, nothing indicated bomb. He moved closer, his gun pointed at the bag. I guess I should say the suspense was killing us, but that would be a lie. Boredom was killing us. I hopped out of my Humvee and walked up to Crowley.
    “You gonna kill it?” I asked, staring at the bag. Traffic lined up behind our convoy.
    “Bag of dirt,” Crowley said.
    “You locked and loaded?”
    “No.”
    That was our usual exchange, even though soldiers were always supposed to have a round in the chamber, ready to fire. We climbed back into our Humvees and bumped down the ruts that passed for roads at a whopping ten miles an hour, the fastest we could go, making our sad, slow escape into the beige sameness of Paktika. We soon set off on a foot patrol near a mud-walled compound. The soldiers from the Afghan National Army (ANA) went first, in a move to respect the local culture and show that Afghans were taking charge of security. A kid ran inside the compound. Other children started crying.
    “I don’t want to talk to you,” said a boy, crying inside the doorway.
    A neighbor, a man, walked over.
    “The men aren’t here. They went to town.”
    A little girl started crying. “I’m scared,” she said.
    For a hearts-and-minds mission, even one designed to embolden local leaders, this one was starting to fall apart. The Americans decided to fall back.
    “Why did you guys come here?” the neighbor asked.
    “We’re leaving,” the translator said. “I don’t know.”
    Then he turned to me. “It’s so difficult. The people don’t want to talk. They are scared. They say, ‘We are gonna go to jail.’ ”
    I knew this from Afghans—they feared that once the Americansoldiers showed up at a compound, someone would be carted away and locked up for no reason. This rumor had spread after raids had led to detentions in other villages. In this mostly illiterate country where the rural areas had little in the way of media, news still spread largely through rumor, through word of mouth. Many Afghans had also used the Americans to carry out their own personal vendettas, dropping a dime on some rival who had nothing to do with the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, or any of the other insurgent groups who didn’t want foreign troops in Afghanistan.
    We left. Almost immediately, the Humvee in front of us broke down. It had been in the shop for a broken fuel pump twice that week. Now it was dead again, choked with the dust that coated everything, somehow working its way beneath fingernails, into the corners of mouths, behind ears, without even trying. We tied up the Humvee to tow it. The soldiers swore. Everything here took forever. Everything moved at the pace of a Humvee towed by red tape over a moonscape. It was one step forward, four steps back. Thus impaired, lugging more than five tons of dead weight, we rolled on to the next village, finding a hostile man working near a ditch.
    “Who is your president?” asked a sergeant major, testing the man’s knowledge.
    “Karzai,” replied the hostile man, who had muddy feet. He paused. “Why are you here?”
    “Ensuring safety and security to the Afghan people,” the sergeant major said. He nodded. “The ANA is here today.”
    Muddy Feet looked at the sergeant major as if he were impaired. Of course he knew who was president. Of course he knew the ANA was there. He was not stupid. He was not blind. And this conversation was not off to a good start.
    “We agree President Karzai is our president,” Muddy Feet said, somewhat carefully. “We appreciate our ANA soldiers. You’re looking for caches? You’re going to search for weapons? You should get permission