Hamid KARZAI AND ELEMENTS of Echo Team, along with the SF Command and Control Element, arrived in Kandahar on 8 and 9 December, and took up temporary residence at Mullah Omar’s compound on the western edge of the city. Shirzai was asked to come to a meeting with Karzai and some local tribal leaders. Foxtrot team was anxious to link up with Echo team, and a few of us accompanied Shirzai to Mullah Omar’s compound.
Upon arrival we saw crowds of people walking around, many of them members of the international press that had descended on the town with Karzai’s arrival. It was not something we had anticipated or desired. With the exception of a Navy SEAL officer who accompanied us, we wore civilian clothing and were fully armed Westerners. It was impossible to keep a low profile as we walked around trying to find where the meeting was to take place and to locate Echo team. At some point we noticed a crowd headed in the direction of a large building, and the SEAL officer and I merged in with it. As we walked through the walled entranceway, I noticed that international news correspondent Nick Roberts was walking right beside me, a film crew close behind.
Inside was a huge room with a massive Afghan carpet covering the floor and a couple dozen gray-bearded crossed-legged Afghan elders sitting around it. Standing behind them three rows deep were observers, many of them members of the press awaiting Karzai’s arrival. I spotted an Afghan I recognized from when I was with Echo team in Jacobabad. I walked over and kneeled down beside him and asked where the Americans were. His English was almost non-existent but even that was better than my Pashto, and he somehow managed to tell me where the team was.
As I stood up to leave, Karzai entered the room from the other side and spotted me. Calling out my name he walked across the center of the room and warmly embraced me.
I was happy to see Karzai again but the moment was anything but inconspicuous, as all eyes in the room were watching him. I told Karzai that we would talk later, and I quickly left to find Echo team. While my encounter with Karzai was taking place, the SEAL officer walked over to Nick Roberts and asked that his film crew not photograph any of the Americans present, a request he complied with.
I found Echo team in a small building in another part of Mullah Omar’s compound. They had clearly made themselves at home. As I stepped through the door, a fresh pot of Starbucks was brewing on the coffee maker and the opening notes of the song “Thank You” by Dido filled the air from a portable CD player. I had not heard a female voice in weeks, and as Dido’s lyrics began, she slayed me. I stopped in my tracks just to drink in the sensuousness of her voice. It was heavenly - tantalizing, in fact. Until that moment I had never fully appreciated just how sexy a woman’s voice could be and her song smote me.
A few of the team members were there, and it was great to see them again. After catching up on our respective situations, I talked to them about what happened with the errant bombing. Don, the deputy team chief for Echo, shared with me that when the bomb hit he was sitting a few feet from a plate glass window typing a report in a building located a short distance from the observation post that had been destroyed. He told me that an instant before the explosion, it felt like a hand had grabbed his shoulder and shoved him forward under the window just before it was blown into the room. He said had he not been thrown forward, the flying glass would have shredded him. It was a strange, inexplicable thing, he said. The bombing had only happened a few days before, and I could see he really didn’t know what to make of the event and was still processing it.
The other stories I was told about the bombing confirmed what I had imagined. It had been a nightmare for everyone. But despite the brutal circumstances, they had all pulled together—the CIA officers, the SF soldiers, and a special operations element that was with them at the time—to deal with the catastrophe of the mass casualty event. The closest air medevac capability was part of a Marine Expeditionary Unit designated Task Force 58 located in the south of Helmand province near the Pakistan border. This location was identified as Forward Operating Base-Rhino. The MEU was the only U.S. conventional ground force in Afghanistan, and its mission was to block the escape of enemy fighters trying to cross the border in the area. When the Marines denied the request for an immediate daylight Medevac, Colonel Steve Hadley with the Air Force Special Ops Squadron in Jacobabad had responded with a helicopter air rescue, the first ever undertaken in daylight in Afghanistan. His courageous decision against standing directives prohibiting daylight flights over Afghanistan, and the employment of his medical skills at the scene and during the air extraction, had undoubtedly saved the lives of some of the severely wounded Americans and Afghans. If a Most Valuable Player award were given for support to the U.S. efforts in southern Afghanistan in 2001, Steve Hadley would have my vote hands down.
After spending some time with Echo team, and stopping to listen to Dido one more time, I rejoined Karzai with a couple of other Americans. This time we met in a more private setting in a residence on the compound. Karzai was with several family members whom he introduced to me. They were all very cordial and it was a nice meeting. Karzai was getting ready to fly to an international meeting to formally accept his selection as the head of an interim Afghan government. On the eve of his departure he was relaxed, and as we sipped tea and talked about what was ahead, there was an atmosphere of optimism in the room. I didn’t want to take up too much of his time, and when I made my exit, Karzai stepped outside with me for a moment.
In the distance, kites that had been banned by the Taliban and had not been flown for years were fluttering high over the rooftops. Perhaps inspired by the sight of them I told Karzai, “I think God is smiling on Afghanistan today.”
“Yes,” he said. “I think so as well.”