The CONSOLIDATION OF THE Takhteh-Pol area and the blocking of Highway 4 had been our immediate preoccupation for the first two to three days since Foxtrot entered the village, but the capture of Kandahar remained our primary objective. This was true for Echo team as well, which was pushing southward with Hamid Karzai’s forces toward Kandahar from the Tarin Kowt area
Kandahar was not far from Takhteh-Pol, only a little over an hour’s drive, but standing in our way was an estimated 400 determined and dug-in al-Qa’ida and Taliban fighters who occupied the Kandahar airport that sat alongside Highway 4 east of the city. The capture of the airport would be an important key to the taking of the city. An immediate ground attack by Shirzai’s forces against the airport would likely be unacceptably costly in terms of casualties, and we ruled it out for the time being. Instead we decided to lay siege to the airport using ODA-directed airstrikes, providing time to soften up its defenses.
Toward this end, on December 1st, Shirzai’s forces, despite meeting some resistance, pushed out the western security perimeter around Takhteh-Pol and established a strongpoint at a concrete bridge on Highway 4 that spanned the dry riverbed of the Arghastan River. The bridge was only about two or three kilometers from the main airport complex and had line-of-sight across generally open terrain. The ODA set up an observation post at the bridge and began to call in air strikes, rotating ODA members back to Takhteh-Pol for rest purposes. Takhteh-Pol was about a 25-minute drive from the bridge, and our compound there continued to serve as the command post.
A force of Shirzai’s fighters was still maintained to the east of the village to guard against an attack from the direction of Spin Boldak, while other security and observation elements were scattered around at key points of what had become a very large perimeter covering many miles. Shirzai’s force was not large enough to cover it completely, so unavoidably there were holes in the defensive line, if it could be called a line at all, and it was possible an enemy force could slip past to attack our command post at Takhteh-Pol. Despite these deficiencies, priority had to go to keeping the bulk of Shirzai’s fighters in the vicinity of the bridge to deter an attack against the ODA’S observation point which was calling in a rain of death on the enemy on a near continuous basis.
As strikes against the airport got underway, we settled into a routine at the compound. One of the constants was that there was always at least one American awake 24 hours a day. At night this took the form of a one-hour rotating shift. The ODA members were not included due to their own rotation schedule for calling airstrikes. This left the members of Foxtrot, and three or four military Special Ops personnel who joined Foxtrot a couple days after we moved into Takhteh-Pol, to keep watch. Everyone got at least one shift a night and usually one person had to pull two.
Reflective of the generally relaxed and democratic leadership style I used with this team of experienced professionals, any one of whom could have done as good of a job, maybe better, as team leader, I proposed our shifts be for two hours. A longer shift would mean everyone would get a full night’s sleep every other day. Unfortunately, my wisdom was lost on the team and I was voted down.
During the night watch, a fire was kept with a pot of coffee or tea gurgling over it. Each one of us, in turn, sat by the fire, usually wearing a black fleece jacket and baseball cap. We were kept company by the pilots’ chatter on the radio we monitored as air strikes were carried out, and we would listen to the corresponding deep rumbling of the ordnance detonating in the distance.
Another constant, at least for me, was that I was armed at all times. Even at the command post I always carried the Glock-19 on my belt. At night I slept with it by my side and with my AK-47 leaning against the wall an arm’s reach away. I, and most of the other Americans, took these precautions due to the constant threat of possible attack on Takhteh-Pol by al-Qa’ida or Taliban forces. But there was also a real concern of an insider attack against us by one or more of the Afghan fighters with whom we were working. We were not in a position to vet any of them and were completely relying on Shirzai’s assessment that we could trust our lives to the armed Afghans who were constantly around us.
One afternoon Mike, myself, and a couple of others were outside in the compound courtyard when a deafening barrage of AK-47 fire erupted a few feet away on the other side of the compound wall. Having no idea of what was happening, I ducked into the small building where I slept and grabbed my AK-47 and took a defensive position in the doorway, thinking the firing indicated we were under attack. Mike was still in the courtyard and had moved up against the wall opposite from where the firing was going on. Very bravely, he lifted his head momentarily above the wall to see what was happening and then lowered it, shaking it as he did. We weren’t under attack—the Afghans had just decided to test their weapons and hadn’t advised any one inside the compound of their plans. Although it was a false alarm, it reinforced for me that we always had to be ready for the unexpected, and that meant being armed at all times and places. The incident also highlighted the fact that the Afghan force we were with was not very disciplined and not well trained in the safe handling of weapons. On several occasions when there was no evident threat, I saw Afghans walking about with their fingers on the triggers of their AK’s. Muzzle control was an even bigger problem, with the barrels of their rifles often being carelessly slung about pointing in one unsafe direction or the other. I actually believed that the chances were as good or greater that I or another member of Foxtrot would be accidently wounded or killed by one of Shirzai’s men as by any deliberate attack by al-Qa’ida or the Taliban.
* * *
Every few nights a detail was formed to go out into the desert to receive a parachute resupply of guns, ammo, and other equipment. Though it was counter-intuitive, owing to the provisions of Title 50 authorities, CIA was responsible for the provision of lethal material, and the Special Forces team was responsible for non-lethal supplies.
One night, among the supplies received, were two big bags of horse feed. Some teams up north did have horses, and I was a little jealous about that. Having grown up with horses, I had this romantic idea about using them in Foxtrot’s activities in the South. But the only steeds we had were the dual-cab, 4-wheel drive kind, and they didn’t eat grain. As was standard practice, we sent a routine message back listing the supplies received. Before I pushed the send button to release the report, unbeknownst to me, one of the team members had added a special parenthetical note next to the entry about the bags of feed to insure Headquarters understood Foxtrot was a non-equestrian team. It read: “We don’t have any fucking horses.” It was the first and only time in my entire career that I had ever seen the “F” word in a CIA cable, as profanity is strictly prohibited in official correspondence. So I was taken aback to see it as plain as day in a cable that I had just released to my Headquarters, though I couldn’t help but laugh.
Obscene cable or not, I was actually glad we had the horse feed. The sweet smell of the grain, and the sight and feel of the rough burlap bags provoked boyhood memories of feeding our horses using a red Folgers coffee can to scoop the grain out of a bag identical to the ones stacked against the compound wall. As the days passed, I sometimes found myself coming up with reasons to walk past them, just so I could inhale the nostalgic fragrance. In some ways the smell seemed more powerful in reminding me of my youth spent in New Mexico than the sight of the azure Afghan sky and the brown earth beneath it.
* * *
After John’s arrival he became Foxtrot team’s de facto commo officer. As with everything else he did, he was very organized and strict about how things were accomplished. One day I was trying to draft a cable to Headquarters on the team laptop and had trouble logging in with the password. After one too many attempts, the computer’s security feature kicked in and locked up the computer. John, who I had already learned did not take fools lightly, was perturbed by my technical ineptitude.
“From now on, I will log into the computer. You don’t touch it until I say it is ready.”
I felt like I was back in the Army as a brand new second lieutenant, and John was my platoon sergeant trying to protect me from myself. And just like I did with my platoon sergeant, I followed John’s direction.
Pat also had a similar experience with John involving the computer, and he did not take it as well as I had. Pat came to me furious, complaining about the way John had talked down to him.
“I swear I will deck that asshole if he pulls that shit again,” he said.
Fortunately, it never came to fisticuffs between the two, but it could have, as I had no doubt that Pat would be true to his word. And John, well—John was John.
* * *
Late one afternoon a cable came in from Uzbekistan. I knew the chief there, and he was forwarding an intelligence report that was sent to his base but not to Foxtrot team. The report said that the Taliban’s II Corps based in Kandahar was planning to launch a surprise attack against Takhteh-Pol that very night.
I had to shake my head. Foxtrot team occupied Takhteh-Pol and yet no one had thought to put us down on the dissemination line of the report—this despite the fact that all the other CIA teams in Afghanistan, none even close to Takhteh-Pol, had received it. It was not the first time that something like this had happened, and at times it seemed to me that Foxtrot was the “forgotten team.” I had to believe that at least part of the reason for this mistake was that we had not been up on the communications net sending and receiving CIA traffic for very long, but still, given the importance of the report—possibly a life and death matter—failing to send the report to Foxtrot team was an egregious error.
We knew our security line was thin, and that a concerted enemy effort, if it was not detected early, could punch through, or depending on its location, just saunter through. We advised Shirzai of the threatened attack. With all his fighters already on the line, all he had left were his Hazara cooks, the only non-Pashtuns among his force, to send out and reinforce the lines.
The Hazaras were of special interest to me. They spoke Dari so when I first learned that there were some of them with Shirzai, I was hopeful I could speak to them using my Farsi, a closely related language. I spoke Farsi at a professional level, however, meaning it was proper Farsi and was intended for an educated audience. The Hazaras with us were illiterate, backcountry people and spoke Dari with a thick colloquial accent. They called my Farsi “Khatab-e-Farsi” (book Farsi). In my attempts to converse with them, they seemed to understand me, but I could understand scarcely a word they said. They enjoyed our conversations, however, if their outbursts of laughter were any gauge.
That night as I watched the Hazaras march out of the compound to reinforce the line, I saw they had traded their cooking pots and utensils for grenades, AKs, and RPGs, which hung from them like pieces of industrial-sized jewelry. No longer cooks, they had transformed into formidable warriors.
The consensus opinion among the members of Foxtrot team was one of skepticism about the Taliban being able to pull off an attack. Still, our lines were vulnerable, and as a precaution I told everyone to start getting their gear together in case we had to abandon the village in extremis. Under this contingency, the plan was to fall back to the defensive position we had occupied the night before we had captured Takhteh-Pol.
As everyone started to go pack their rucksacks, John cautioned that the Afghans were watching, and if they got the idea that the Americans were getting ready to leave, it would weaken their determination to fight. He had a good point, so I modified the plan; we held off packing but made sure we could lay our hands on our gear quickly if we had to move.
Either the intelligence was bad, or the Taliban changed their minds, for there was no attack against Takhteh-Pol that night.
* * *
One day, the ODA got a message that their headquarters wanted to send to our location a Special Forces Command and Control Element (CCE) of 15 personnel commanded by a lieutenant colonel. Neither Hank nor myself thought it was a good idea for the same reasons that I had not wanted all five CIA paramilitary officers to join us. It just didn’t make sense. In the case of the CCE, what was there to command and control? In all of southern Afghanistan, there were only the two ODA’s co-located with Foxtrot and Echo teams, for a total of around 23 Special Forces personnel, and they were doing quite well on their own, thank you. Did they really require a headquarters element to supervise them? To bring that many people into tiny Takhteh-Pol would significantly increase the American presence, making a bigger bulls eye with no discernible mission benefit. With my support, Hank pushed back on the idea and the CCE did not come to Takhteh-Pol, but instead joined the ODA with Echo Team and Karzai.
* * *
Mark and I decided to drive out to the observation post on the bridge one morning. We cleared it with Hank, as that was his operational area, and I knew he did not want non-essential personnel hanging around the bridge while his ODA called in airstrikes. At the last minute, one of Shirzai’s senior advisors, who we referred to as “Engineer Pashtun,” joined us. He mentioned he had to be back in Takhteh-Pol in a couple hours to be present at a meeting with some local tribal elders that Shirzai was hosting. I told him we would get him back in time.
We made the drive on Highway 4 crossing a wide expanse of desert terrain that gently sloped to the bridge over the Arghastan River. The highway was severely deteriorated and most of the way it was simply a dirt road, so movement was slow. Upon arrival at the observation post, we watched as high flying jets were vectored in to drop their bombs on designated targets around the airport complex. I could see a small force of Shirzai’s fighters driving forward toward the airfield in pickup trucks. They parked and dismounted the pickups and continued forward on foot to probe the al-Qa’ida defenses. They were a considerable distance away from the bridge, perhaps 1,000 meters or more, but close enough to see without the aid of binoculars. Aircraft were circling overhead ready to provide close air support.
Suddenly, the Afghans began to withdraw, appearing to take fire from unseen enemy positions. The ODA combat controller kneeling on the ground beside us called for close air support to protect their retreat. He craned his neck to look up at the incoming attacking jet.
“No, this is wrong. That bird ain’t tracking right,” he said.
The jet let loose with machinegun fire and the rounds began chewing up the ground around the Afghan fighters and the pickups.
“Abort, abort, those are friendlies!” he told the attacking aircraft.
We were thinking the worst—that there would be casualties—but we lucked out, or the Afghans lucked out. Miraculously, no one was hit.
After spending a little more time at the bridge I told Mark and Engineer Pashtun that we needed to get back if he was going to make his meeting. As we prepared to leave, the observation post received word from the Afghans that they suspected the enemy might be planning to mount an attack. We waited for a while but could see nothing from our position to help assess the situation. I thought it was unlikely that al-Qa’ida would attempt a direct attack against the bridge as it was broad daylight, generally open terrain, and aircraft were already on station striking targets. I was more concerned that on our return trip our one-pickup convoy would be vulnerable should there actually be an enemy force maneuvering in the area. I told Mark and Engineer Pashtun that we had better get going, and we loaded up and headed back to the village. It was an uneventful trip back to Takhteh-Pol, and we arrived in time for Engineer Pashtun to make his meeting with Shirzai and the local leaders.
Later, Mark approached me and said that he was worried that we could have lost credibility with the ODA by not staying at the bridge given the report of a possible attack. I had not considered it from that perspective at the time, but he had a point. I felt badly that I had not thought about it before if it might have put us in a bad light with the ODA. Although no attack on the bridge occurred, it was a mistake on my part all the same.
* * *
Occasionally, Shirzai’s fighters found documents on the bodies of Taliban and al-Qa’ida that had been killed in the bombings or in the firefights that sometimes took place. These were passed on to us for reporting to Headquarters. One day we received a batch of around 15 passports collected from the dead, which was a higher number than usual. In addition to the passports, there were passport-sized photographs of the deceased. It was evident from the photographs that the men were trying to change their appearance from the photos in their passports. Some had shaved their beards or changed their hairstyle, or in some cases, put on or taken off a pair of glasses. My assumption was this had been done in anticipation of using the photographs to obtain other identity documents under false names.
Probably half of the dead were holders of Turkish passports, the others were Saudis or Yeminis, and a couple of them were from Morocco. I was surprised at how young the men were, most no more than their early 20’s. As I typed up the identifying data taken from the passports and looked at the photographs of the young men, I wondered about the thought process they went through to arrive at a decision to leave their homelands to come to Afghanistan to fight, and in their cases, to die. They certainly didn’t look like fanatic religious ideologues. I suspected some of them had no idea of what they were getting into.