CHAPTER 11

Musa Qaleh, Afghanistan

Saturday 8 Jul 06 1400 hrs AFT

The trip to Musa Qaleh had been uneventful. Norowz Mohamand had opted to take one of the group’s Kawasaki motorcycles rather than a car or pick up truck. No weapons except a pocket knife. No military gear of any type; just a blanket, a spare change of clothes and some bread strapped across the handle bars. No money except a few Afghani with which to bribe the local police if necessary; but not enough to make him look like anything other than the itinerant worker going up to work on his cousin’s farm that he pretended to be .

He had started early in the day and the seventy kilometers between Panjwaii and Gereshk had taken just two hours on Highway A1. Only two checkpoints had slowed him down but had not proven to be an obstacle.

He could have bypassed Gereshk by branching off the A1 onto Route 611 to Sangin and from there followed the Musa Qaleh River but that would have needlessly taken him through the middle of an active area. Too many checkpoints.

Instead he had driven all the way to relatively peaceful Gereshk and from there taken the dirt track that passed as the main route north. The sixty kilometers of undulating scruffy ground was dotted with numerous small villages that drew just enough ground moisture from the numerous seasonal streams that flowed from the mountains in the distant northeasterly Now Zad region. While not lush, the fields were already showing a fresh second growth of crops put in after the completed poppy harvest.

There had been no checkpoints; even entering the town there had been none.

Musa Qaleh was not a large town—at best fifteen thousand—with another twenty-five thousand strung out in some twenty villages and two hundred other settlements scattered along the narrow green strips of land on either side of the Musa Qaleh River. The river originated some thirty kilometers in the mountains to the north of the town and ran for another thirty or so to Sangin in the south where it joined the Helmand River. The district administrative center, its market area and most of the shops and residential areas lay on the east side of the river; on the west bank lay what was primarily an agricultural green zone.

The population here was almost exclusively Pashtun; the economy heavily dependent on the drug trade.

Now in the early afternoon, with the sun at its highest, Norowz rode into the town coming from the green farmlands on the west side of the river’s ford. The riverbed itself was almost five hundred meters wide but at this time of year the river here consisted of only three shallow, narrow, muddy rivulets separated by large sandbars.

The Kawasaki made easy work climbing up out of the river’s east bank. Norowz avoided the most obvious refuse and sewage ditches which flowed down from the shops that lined either side of the street leading northeast into the market area. Two hundred meters in a sharp turn to the east gave him a clear view through the market to a spire that marked the center of a T junction just ahead. As he approached closer, signs of recent fighting became more obvious; abandoned shops, bullet pock-marked walls. A little further and he could see all the way to the district compound; a ramshackle group of cement and mud buildings comprising the police station, a medical clinic and a prison all connected with a three meter tall wall. The walls too bore signs of recent fighting.

Norowz paused only briefly enough to identify three obvious manned sangars—one on the tall prison, one facing the market and one on a building outside the compound—before making his way northward on a small trail between the buildings.

 

— § —

 

“Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatu Allah,” Norowz said embracing his host.

“Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatulah wa barakatuh. How was your trip my brother?”

“God was kind,” replied Norowz. “The road was easy and the interruptions were few. I had no need of any of the safe houses along the way.”

“We have indeed been fortunate here,” said his host as he steered Norowz to a carpet and cushions set out under a porch in a compound in the north end of the town. A young man came to serve them chai and biscuits and fruit. “Helmand’s puppet governor has demanded that the British defend the populated centers. They have foolishly agreed and are all tied down at Lashkar Gah, Gereshk, Sangin, Now Zad and here. Everywhere else is our ground.”

“I wish the Canadians were on as tight a rope in Panjwaii,” said Norowz. “They have been much more mobile and have much better equipment then the Americans ever had. Their armored cars provide them with good mobility and firepower. Still once they dismount we are much faster on foot than they are and can easily blend in with the population when we have to give ground.”

“Here they rarely patrol. When they do, we hit them hard until their helicopters or jets come in. Then we too disappear. We raid their outpost whenever we can but we’re short of numbers. What can you bring in?”

Norowz leaned back on his cushions and regarded his host and the two men with him. He had known of them by name but knew none personally. All three, like him and the three other men in the room, were in white shalwar kameez with black vests and wide black turbans. Their beards full, their eyes intense. Their AK 47 lay beside each of them on the floor within easy reach; as did the rifle and magazine pouch vest that had been given to him upon arrival.

The leader of this group was Mullah Abdul Rahim Akhund, the Taliban’s governor for Helmand. While Mullah Dadullah Akhund commanded most of the foreign fighters in the South, Abdul Rahim had overall command of the fighters coming from the local communities here. With him were two of his more senior field commanders, Mullah Gafoot and Abdul Rasaq. The others in the room were two minor field commanders and Abdul Rahim’s chief of intelligence.

Norowz avoided the question because he didn’t yet have a clear enough picture of the enemy to be dealt with here. He had no intention of committing himself or his men to this fight until he was assured that Helmand’s fighters were already fully committed and overextended; he had no intention to let any of his men die just to help out the local opium cartel.

“How many do the puppets have here?” Norowz asked.

Abdul Rahim glanced over to Rasaq who set his chai glass down on the carpet next to a small kettle and a bottle of water.

Rasaq nodded, “It’s gone back and forth. The garrison here consists of a National Police detachment of some seventy policemen under the command of one Abdul Wulley. They see themselves more as a local militia and haven’t really worked as police in the past. Many of them worked with us on the poppy harvest this spring. They are universally hated by the local population. Their commander used to be Taliban but we have no respect for each other. We frequently talk to him with our phones; taunt him is more like it.

“In mid-May, after the harvesting was finishing, we were very close to driving them out of here but then they sent in over two hundred militia and around twenty-five British. We had some losses and pulled back and after a few days so did the British.

“Then the Americans started having a battalion of their infantry start operating between here and Baghran. We had to spread out and move up and down the river valley constantly. We didn’t have much to contribute here to finish taking the town. The British stayed away then as well.

“The middle of last month, an American supply convoy got lost between here and Gereshk and we were able to trap and attack them, but then the British brought in a whole company by helicopter and hit us with gunships and jet fighters. We fought them and eventually drove them all out with heavy casualties. Once they were gone we started to concentrate against the town again which still held the ANP and some Americans. About a week later the same twenty-five British with armed Land Rovers came back into the town and the last Americans left.

“At this point we now have British troops at their base north of Gereshk and also in Gereshk, in Lashkar Gar, Now Zad, Sangin and here. We have been fighting them heavily in Now Zad and Sangin and they are getting weaker there.”

“How do they support these outposts?” asked Norowz.

“They haven’t been resupplying by road,” replied Rasaq, “only by helicopter and we shoot at them whenever they get near. They are coming less and less often; the British helicopter pilots do not have the same courage as the American pilots. We’ve been putting in nightly raids to make them use up their ammunition so that we can attack them full-out when they are at their weakest.”

“Is it working?” asked Norowz.

“It is just a matter of time before we overrun an outpost, they withdraw or we shoot down a helicopter.

“A few says ago they tried to push a ground patrol in here but we set up an ambush for them and they turned around and went back and sent in reinforcements by helicopter instead. All in all they now have maybe fifty British and seventy police in their compound here. They have light, medium and heavy machine guns and can call on field artillery, gunships and jets.”

“And you. What do you have here?”

“For weapons we are mostly light but with some mortars and a recoilless rifle,” replied Rasaq. “The numbers vary as we are trying to keep them tied down at Now Zad, Sangin and here. We move people around; we reduce in some places and just keep up small nightly raids so that we can concentrate for an attack at a single point.

“We’ve made it a bad ten days for them in Sangin. Ten days ago we killed two of what we think were their special forces when they came to capture the martyr Mullah Sazhaddin shaheed, may God bestow his blessings upon him. A week ago we killed two more of them in their compound in Sangin with a rocket and three days ago we killed another on a patrol just outside their base. We have also wounded dozens of them. Their morale has never been lower while we gain strength daily with new foreigners fighting for us and with your men. When will they be here?”

Norowz again avoided the question. “What have our losses been?”

The three looked at each other. Abdul Rahim shrugged. Rasaq said, “They’ve been heavy as well. Hundreds. We’ve got a steady stream of evacuations going back to Pakistan. Sangin in particular has cost us dearly.”

That admission was the first time that Norowz felt some sympathy for his western neighbors; the first time he considered them something other than simply drug lords protecting their assets. He would call back tonight to Tofan and finalize the move of their main party.

“I’ll go around tonight and tomorrow and scout out their positions. Do you have a guide for me?”