My Share of the Task(229)
The corduroy terrain of Zhari was almost a metaphor for these infantrymen’s war. The could see eighteen inches to their left and right, and rarely more then fifty feet to their front or rear. Above, only a slice of sky. Fighting was bloody, and unsatisfying. Rarely was there a hill to take, or a stalwart enemy to take it from. Any progress I could see from a wider view of Afghanistan was impossible to discern from their mud-walled world. War has often been that way. Like leaders before me, I was asking soldiers to believe in something their ground-level perspective denied them. I was asking them to believe in a strategy impossible to guarantee, and in progress that was hard to see, much less prove. They were asked to risk themselves to bring improvements that might take years to arise. Although war is a product and instrument of national policy, that reality feels distant and theoretical to the soldier leaning exhausted against a mud wall. As a commander, I was asking them to believe in me. Whether they did was often hard to judge.
Later that evening I got two more e-mails, one from Arroyo, and another from Corporal Ingram, the team leader. Both thanked me for patrolling with them that day. I responded, thanking both for all they were doing. I was grateful to Sergeant Arroyo for having the courage to send his initial note to ensure a fellow leader understood the situation on the ground.
A month later I got another e-mail from Staff Sergeant Arroyo informing me that Mike Ingram had been killed not far from where we’d patrolled. I remembered the young corporal’s quick smile and agile movements through the muddy terrain, and his mature insights on the local population. I traveled back to the outpost in Zhari. I felt like I needed to see and listen to the platoon again. I knew it would be a difficult visit—they would be smarting from a big loss. With us would be a reporter from Rolling Stone who was periodically interacting with our team, to give him an appreciation for the difficulty of the task they faced.
We met on a hot afternoon, gathering inside the fortified walls of their small compound. The body armor was off. Some quietly sipped water as I spoke, then invited questions. As on so many visits, there were a few standard questions before the queries became blunt and frank. As I expected, they were frustrated. Some were openly bitter over their loss and the seeming impossibility of their mission. Why are we here, Sir? What’s the point? I listened and we talked. I couldn’t solve the platoon’s problems that day, or curtail their mission. The district had to be secured. For many, I lacked the eloquence to assuage their concerns and could only explain the strategy they were a part of. I tried to show them I understood, and cared.
As we flew back that night I compared in my mind leading these soldiers in this counterinsurgency campaign with my experience in TF 714. There were many similarities. America’s military in 2010 was stunningly professional and the past decade of combat had produced a seasoned force. But there were also differences. In TF 714, most notably in Iraq, although our special operators had fought almost every night, we largely chose the time and place of the fight. When our helicopters landed, our operators normally had the benefit of surprise, the cover of night, and intimate knowledge of whom they would find on their objective. Over time, even as friends were given over to Arlington, we could both see and feel the impact we were having on Zarqawi’s organization. The bulk of fighting in Afghanistan in 2010 yielded no such mental analgesic. Progress couldn’t be measured by direct attrition of a terrorist network. Combat often erupted unexpectedly: A boom and a plume of dust or the crack of bullets from the distance, yelling, rushing to maneuver, return fire, then silence. Then the same thing the next day. And the day after that, until the geysers of dust claimed a friend, or the bullets clipped a mentor. And then back out yet again.
* * *
The Kandahar Convention Center was a world apart from the sun-cracked mud trenches of Zhari only a few miles away. But it was here within the whitewashed plaster walls and the low ceiling of its basement meeting room that much of our ability to secure Kandahar rested. In an expansion of the pattern we’d set with Moshtarak, we sought to prepare the ground for securing Kandahar by fully engaging President Karzai and leveraging his influence with Kandahari leaders to solidify their support. Now, on April 4, 2010, some fifteen hundred of them filled the room. I felt out of place in my light green combat uniform in a sea of traditional Afghan clothing: Blacks, grays, dark maroon, and, at one point, a flash of azure as three burkas shuffled through and settled to the ground in a curtsy. I compared it to my small February meeting with Marjah elders; Hamkari, as the effort to secure Kandahar was called, was a whole new, and vastly different, ball game.