My Share of the Task(226)

                He walked off, the crowd pressed close around him. He clasped the hand and shoulders of greeters. As I lost site of Karzai into the huddle of people that glided away, out of the corner of my eye I saw a man approach. The first thing I noticed when I turned were the shoes, stepping gingerly through the mud. Beneath the skirt of his salwar kameez were black patent leather shoes with long, slender toes that to me seemed absurdly out of place. I looked up at his face. His wide smile parted his ruddy, almost maroon cheeks and black, wooly beard. With outstretched hand, Sher Mohammad Akhundzada introduced himself to me.

                I was surprised that he had approached me, although I probably shouldn’t have been. Even the appearance of a genial relationship between he and the ISAF commander could send a powerful, potentially frightening message to the throng of locals streaming out of the mosque—the kind of message that could undermine the change we were promising.

                “It is good to see you,” I told him with a smile, and quickly turned to catch up with Karzai.

                I walked with the president through the nearby bazaar. While we were in a small shop, with curious residents surrounding us, Taliban rocket fire impacted some distance away. It was far enough off to have been little immediate danger. But it signaled the Taliban’s awareness of Karzai’s visit and their intent to target him. With the crump of the rocket, President Karzai looked at me inquisitively. When I shrugged, he smiled back and continued his conversation as if oblivious to any hazard.

                I caught up with Kosh, and asked him what he thought. He’s good, Kosh said, impressed. Karzai was thickening his Kandahari accent, giving his folksy greetings a twang I couldn’t hear.

                Meetings like these put tremendous pressure on Helmand’s Taliban, who since the town’s anticlimactic clearing had regrouped and were intimidating the liberated people. Their threats were making it difficult to convince the scared citizens to use the local government being slowly erected. Much of the menacing came from local insurgents, whom Marjah’s people knew were playing the long game. But other more grisly attempts to terrify came from the Mullah Dadullah Front. This large, roving mahaz still bore the imprint—fanaticism and cruel tactics—of Dadullah, a man we’d killed two years earlier. Around this time, unsettling news of beheadings arose in the district. It appeared Quetta’s newly appointed military chief Qayyum Zakir—who had stolen across the border from Pakistan for a midnight pep talk to Marjah’s Taliban before Moshtarak—had dispatched the Dadullah Front to contest our front-page effort to reclaim and rebuild Marjah.

                That evening, we marshaled the president and the polyglot collection of travelers in a muddy field to board helicopters back to Kandahar. But the desert skies turned dark, and a steady rainstorm moved in. Worried about getting the entire party stuck in Marjah, I stood outside with our team coordinating aircraft as President Karzai waited inside the small Marine base, rain plunking on the roofing. After a time, the first MH-53 descended into the tight landing zone and we boarded. President Karzai and I sat near the front of the aircraft, next to open windows through which machine guns protruded for protection. As we flew through the now-black night sky, the downpour and wind battered President Karzai and me mercilessly and I shivered from the chill. Directly across from me, Karzai sat motionless. His only move was to reach into his pocket and produce a dry handkerchief that he didn’t use to wipe his face—but instead reached across the aisle and handed to me.


* * *

                As I’d anticipated, because of its timing after President Obama’s December speech, the fight for Marjah, never in doubt militarily, became a litmus test for the validity of our strategy in Afghanistan. On display was our ability to conduct effective counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. It also tested the performance of Afghan soldiers, and the Afghan government’s commitment and ability to bring legitimate governance to a skeptical population. Finally, the action offered the chance to examine whether it was possibile and appropriate to sharply limit the use of our overwhelming advantage in lethal fires. That judgment would have accompanied the operation regardless of where we’d conducted it.