What is going on in Sherzad District? Part 2

One of the coolest things about living in Afghanistan is the sense of history which surrounds one as you trek off the beaten path. In the rural districts the daily routine of the people has altered little in hundreds of years. It is easy to find the sites of historic battles or ancient ruins which few westerners have seen. The hospitality of the Afghans is constant reminder that the capacity for good in people transcends the evil which constantly searches for cold hearts or idle brains in which it can embed and grow. An armed society is a polite society but the Afghans take politeness to an extreme that is at times bewildering.

Yet the Afghans have never been able to govern themselves effectively. Despite their culture of warm hospitality to guests and strangers their political culture remains polarized, vicious, and deadly. These are tribal lands with a small percentage of “haves” and a large population of “have not’s.” The “haves” are the leaders with positions determined at birth and not resented by people at the village level because they do not “have” that much more than their fellow tribal members. The “have not’s” do not agitate politically because they spend most of their lives trying to find the next meal they are not like American poor with health issues stemming from morbid obesity. Poor people here die of starvation daily. Poor children die of exposure during the harsh winters even on the streets of Kabul. Watching the polarization of the American electorate from afar during this presidential campaign has me thinking about politics a lot lately.

This is what real poverty looks like. Remember these kids who stand little chance of reaching adulthood the next time you hear NPR or CBS or the racial grievance mongers carrying on about the poor in America.
This is what real poverty looks like. Remember these kids who stand little chance of reaching adulthood the next time you hear NPR or CBS or the racial grievance mongers carrying on about the poor in America.

And speaking of politics guess what the first topic of conversation was when I joined the elders of Sherzad district for a lunch meeting last Thursday? If you guessed Barack Obama you are correct and I am not making this up. Talk about weird but let me set the trip up before I get to that.

Traveling into contested tribal lands is a bit tricky. I had no doubt that the Malicks from Gandamak would provide for my safety at our destination but I had to get there first. The time tested decision making matrix us outside the wire types use in situations of this nature is to look at what the State Department is doing  and do the exact opposite. The State Department insists on brand new armored SUV’s with heavily armed contractor escorts fore and aft. I went with an old beat up Toyota pick up, no security escort, local clothes and a local driver.  Given the amount of Taliban activity in the Southern Triangle that is the only reasonably safe way to get in and out of isolated villages like Gandamak.

The first of three downed bridges between Gandamak and Jalalabad
The first of three downed bridges between Gandamak and Jalalabad

The road into Gandamack required us to ford three separate stream beds. The bridges which once spanned these obstacles were destroyed by the Soviets around 25 years ago. We have been fighting the Stability Operations battle here going on seven years but the bridges are still down, the power plants have not been fixed and most roads are little better then they were when Alexander the Great came through the Khyber Pass in 327 BC. The job of repairing and building the infrastructure of Afghanistan is much bigger than anyone back home can imagine. It is also clearly beyond the capabilities of USAID or the US Military PRT’s to fix given their current operational MO.  These bridges are still down (as of 2015) and may never be fixed in our lifetimes.

Also destroyed 25 years ago - how do we expect the farmers to get their produce and livestock to market over this? What the hell have we been doing for the past seven years? I watchd the tallest building in the world go up in Dubai, with about 300 other super sky scrappers over the past four years but we can't even repair a few stone bridges in seven; check that, make it 14 years?
Also destroyed 25 years ago – how do we expect the farmers to get their produce and livestock to market over this? What the hell have we been doing for the past seven years? I watchd the tallest building in the world go up in Dubai, with about 300 other super sky scrappers over the past four years but we can’t even repair a few stone bridges in seven; check that, make it 14 years?

It took over an hour to reach Gandamack which appeared to be a prosperous hamlet tucked into a small valley. The color of prosperity in Afghanistan is green because vegetation means water and villages with access to abundant clean water are always significantly better off than those without. You can see the difference in the health of the children, livestock and woman (which is the correct order of importance for the tribes.)

My host for the day was the older brother of my driver Sharif. When I first met Sharif he told me in perfect English “I speak English fluently.” I immediately hired him and issued a quick string of coordinating instructions about what we were doing in the morning then bid him good day. He failed to show up on time and when I called him to ask WTF it became apparent that the only words of English Sharif knew were “I speak English fluently.” You get that from Afghans. But Shariff is learning his letters and has proven an able driver plus a first rate scrounger which is a vital for the health and comfort of his ichi ban employer.

The Maliks (tribal leaders) from Gandamak and the surrounding villages arrived shortly after we did. They walked into the meeting room armed; I had left my rifle in the vehicle which, as the invited foreign guest, I felt obligated to do but being without my flame stick wasn’t alarming to me.  Gandamak is Indian Country and everybody out here is armed to the teeth.  I was an invited guest, the odds of me being harmed by the Maliks who invited me were exactly zero.  That’s how Pashtunwali works. The order of business was a meeting where the topic was what they need and why the hell can’t they get some help, followed by a tour of the hill outside Gandamak where the 44th Foot fought to the last man during the British retreat from Kabul in 1842 and then lunch. I was not going to be able to do much about what they needed but I could listen politely which is all they asked of me.  Years later I would be in the position to lend them a hand when they really needed it but at the time of this meeting my agenda was a tour of the Gandamak battlefield.  I have enjoyed visiting old battlefields since I was a kid and would go on staff rides with my father to Gettysburg, The Wilderness battle field and Fredricksburg.  I especially enjoy visiting the battlefields that not many people can visit and to the best of my knowledge I’m the only westerner who visited the Gandamak site in the last 30 or so years.

Sharif's Great Great Grandfather and son waiting on the Brits to make it down from Kabul
Sharif’s Great Great Grandfather and son waiting on the Brits to make it down from Kabul

As the Maliks arrived they started talking among themselves in hushed tones and I kept hearing the name “Barack Obama.” I was apprehensive; I’m surrounded by Obama fanatics every Thursday night at the Taj bar. It is unpleasant talking with them because they know absolutely nothing about the man other than he is not Bush and looks cool. They are convinced he is more then ready to be president because NPR told them so. Pointing out that to the NGO girls that Obama can’t possibly be ready to be the chief executive because he has zero experience at executive leadership is pointless and I did not want to have to explain this to the Maliks. They have time and will insist on hashing things out for as long as it takes for them to reach a clear understanding. I have a wrist watch and a short attention span; this was not starting off well.

As I feared the morning discussion started with the question “tell us about Barack Obama?” What was I to say? That his resume is thin is an understatement but he has risen to the top of the democratic machine and that took some traits Pashtun Maliks could identify with so I described how he came to power in the Chicago machine. Not by trying to explain Chicago but in general terms using the oldest communication device known to man a good story. A story based in fact; colored a little with little supposition, and augmented with my fevered imagination. Once they understood that lawyers in America are like warlords in Afghanistan and can rub out their competition ahead of an election using the law and judges instead of guns they got the picture. A man cold enough to win every office for which he ran by eliminating his competition before the vote is a man the Pashtun’s can understand. I told them that Obama will probably win and that I have no idea how that will impact our effort in Afghanistan. They asked if Obama was African and I resisted the obvious answer of who knows? Instead I said his father was African and his mother a white American and so he identifies himself as an African American which is confusing  because most black Americans identify themselves as African American but they have little, if any, concept of Africa. In Obama’s case he really was an African and American and must know something about Africa because he didn’t know shit about America.  I had succeeded in totally confusing my hosts (and myself) and they just looked at me for a long time saying nothing.

What followed was (I think) a long discussion about Africans; were they or were they not good Muslims. I assume this stems from the Africans they may have seen during the Al Qaeda days. I think the conclusion was that the Africans were like the Arabs and therefore considered the local equivalent of scumbags. They talked among themselves for several more minutes and I heard John McCain’s name several times but they did not ask anymore about the pending election praise be to God. They assured me that they like all Americans regardless of hue and it would be better to see more of them especially if they took off the helmets and body armor because that scares the kids and woman folk. And their big MRAPS  scare the cows who already don’t have enough water and feed so scaring them causes even less milk to be produced and on and on and on; these guys know how to beat a point to death.

Maliks of Sherzad district
Maliks of Sherzad district

We talked for around 35 more minutes about the anemic American reconstruction effort, their needs and the rise in armed militancy. The American military visits the district of Sherzad about once a month and remain popular with the local people. They have built some mico hydro power projects upstream from Gandamak which the people (even those who do not benefit from the project) much appreciate. The US AID contractor DAI has several projects in the district which the elders feel could be done better if they were given the money to do it themselves but despite this DAI is welcomed and their efforts much appreciated. When I asked who had kidnapped the DAI engineer (a local national) last month and how we could go about securing his release (which was another reason for my visit) they shrugged and one of them said “who knows”?  That was to be expected but I felt compelled to ask anyway.

The elders explained, without me asking, that  they are serious about giving up poppy cultivation but they have yet to see the promised financial aid for doing so.  Thus they will grow poppy again (if they get enough rain inshallah). They need a road over which to transport their goods to market. They need their bridges repaired, and they need their irrigation systems restored to the condition they were in back in the 1970’s. They said that with these improvements would come security and more commerce. One of them made a most interesting comment and that was something to the effect of “the way the roads are now the only thing we can economically transport over them is the poppy.” A little food for thought.

At the conclusion of the talking part of the meeting the senior Maliks and I piled into my SUV and headed to the Gandamak battlefield.

The Last Stand of the 44th Foot
The Last Stand of the 44th Foot

The final stand at Gandamak occurred on the 13th of January 1842. Twenty officers and forty five British soldiers, most from the 44th Foot pulled off the road onto a hillock when they found the pass to Jalalabad blocked by Afghan fighters. They must have pulled up on the high ground to take away the mobility advantage of the horse mounted Afghan fighters. The Afghans closed in and tried to talk the men into surrendering their arms. A sergeant was famously said to reply “not bloody likely” and the fight was on. Six officers cut their way through the attackers and tried to make it to British lines in Jalalabad. Only one, Dr Brydon, made it to safety.

The Gandamack Hill today
The Gandamack Hill today

Our first stop was to what the Maliks described as “The British Prison” which was up on the side of a pass about a mile from the battlefield. We climbed up the steep slope at a vigorous pace set by the senior Malik. About halfway up we came to what looked to be an old foundation and an entrance to a small cave. They said this was a British prison. I can’t imagine how that could be – there were no British forces here when the 44th Foot was cut down but they could have established a garrison years later I suppose.  Why the Brits would shove their prisoners down inside a cave located so high up on the side of a mountain is a mystery to me and I doubt this was story behind what looked to be a mine entrance.  It was a nice brisk walk up the a very steep hill and I kept up with the senior Malik which was probably the point to this detour.

Enterance to the "Brit Jail
Entrance to the “Brit Jail
Heading up the slope to the Brit jail
Heading up the slope to the Brit jail – not an easy walk

After checking that out we headed to the battlefield proper. We stopped at the end of a finger which looked exactly like any other finger jutting down from the mountain range above us. It contained building foundations which had been excavated a few years back. Apparently some villagers started digging through the site looking for anything they could sell in Peshawar shortly after the Taliban fell. The same thing happened at the Minaret of Jamm until the central government got troops out there to protect the site. The elders claimed to have unearthed a Buddha statue there which they figured the British must have pilfered in Kabul. By my estimation there are 378,431 “ancient one-of-a-kind Buddha statues” for sale in Afghanistan to the westerner dumb enough to buy one. The penalties for stealing ancient artifacts are severe; messing around with that stuff is not something reasonable people do in unstable third world lands. Nor is buying fake “one of a kind” Buddha statues.

I do not know where these foundations came from. Back in 1842 the closest British troops were 35 miles away in Jalalabad and there are no reports of the 44th Foot pulling into an existing structure. We were in the right area – just off the ancient back road which runs to Kabul via the Latabad Pass. My guides were certain this finger was where the battle occurred and as their direct ancestors participated in it I assumed we were on the correct piece of dirt. I would bet that the foundations are from a small British outpost built here possibly to host the Treaty of Gandamak signing in 1879 or for the purpose of recovering the remains of their dead for proper internment.

Site of the final battle
Site of the final battle
Foundation from an unknown building on Gandamak Hill
Foundation from an unknown building on Gandamak Hill

The visit concluded with a large lunch and after we had finished and the food was removed our meeting was officially ended with a short prayer. I’m not sure what the prayer said but it was short. I’m an infidel; short is good.

Man I love Kabuli Pilau - and eating with my hands
Man I love Kabuli Pilau – and eating with my hands. Mehrab Siraj, a close friend and the Manager of the Taj guesthouse is sitting to my right

Post Script

The Maliks of Sherzad district never received the attention they wanted from the US Government or the Afghan authorities.  Instead the Taliban came to fill the void and started muscling their way into the district back in 2011. By early 2012 things were bad enough that my old driver Shariff called me to see if there was anything I could do about getting the Americans to help them fight off the encroaching Taliban fighters.  I was in the Helmand Province by then dealing with my own Taliban problems and could offer him nothing. That bothered me then and it bothers me now but that’s life.

In August 2012 my old friend Mehrab was gunned down by Taliban outside his home. By then several of the men I had shared a pleasant lunch with back in 2008 had also perished fighting the Taliban. Gandamak is now Taliban territory, the poppy now the main source of income. It will be a long time before a westerner will able to visit the old battlefield again.

10 Replies to “What is going on in Sherzad District? Part 2”

  1. Tim, thanks for telling it like it is. Sure wish I’d stumbled upon your blog years ago. You make me proud to have served in the Corps.

    Semper Fi

    Scott

  2. I feel ya brother —

    “The PBS special contained footage of gigantic crowds of armed Waziristan tribal fighters screaming for death to America which is an intimidating thing to see. But Afghanistan is not Waziristan.yet. A window of opportunity remains for us to get the people solidly behind us which will strip away the ability of Taliban affiliated fighters to move or live in the districts. To take advantage of this window we are going to have to find a new approach, we can no longer shovel in more of the same and expect results. The window is open but we don’t think it will stay open for much longer.”

    …………

    Thanks for the most interesting story about the battle of the 44th /

  3. What a day. Great pictures of the Gandamak battlefield. It’s so easy for me to picture what those guys went through. You are right; the world has never seen anything quite like us before. That is one of the reasons that to compare us to the Soviets is to miss the point.

    You did a great job of depicting how it is to sit and talk with Afghan elders; how civil and curious they are. They are also quite reticent about certain subjects, like the DAI engineer. It’s odd but not surprising that the Afghans would be so interested in who we elected president. Well, they are going to see if this is a good thing for Afghanistan or not.

    Good questions on the bridges and roads and so on. Seven years is a lot of time to make a bit more of a difference. Getting out into the villages once a month or so doesn’t make the impact on either infrastructure, medical needs, or security that would make the Afghan villagers more happy to see Americans.

    Great posting! Keep ’em coming, please.

  4. Fantastic post Tim. Your going to give Michael Yon a run for his money if you keep this up. LOL

    You know, I love the Roman Road concept that Nagl talked about awhile back. And it sounds like that is what you were hinting at in your post. It is such a simple concept, and it makes total sense. Here is his quote from an interview:

    Compared with Iraq, two major differences stand out: geography and opium. How can an effective counterinsurgency best address these problems?

    One has to bear in mind that Afghanistan has never in its history had a strong central control of the country. It has never had the infrastructure that is required to reach out from Kabul into the whole country. The challenge in Afghanistan is extraordinary. When the Romans faced an insurgency in a distant province the first thing they did was build a road. And a key part of our counterinsurgency in Afghanistan is building roads so the government is able to reach the people. Then it is important to defeat corruption and create a government that is responsive to the needs of the people. The opium problem finances the insurgency and incites corruption from government agents. The road answer also helps that: We can’t convince farmers to grow wheat rather than opium unless they can ship the wheat to the market. In that terrain if you have to feed a family you can ship a whole lot more opium out on the back of a mule than you can wheat.

    http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=2672

    The other area that I think is important is telecommunications. Protecting cell towers and protecting the great networking and commerce tool called the mobile phone is vital. I also say make them cheap and plentiful and get those things out there in the hinterland. And with a phone, farmers and merchants can connect with buyers way beyond their standard networks.

    With the mobile phone, good roads, power, and bridges, we could see some good progress. Ah, dreaming….. Good stuff. Semper Fi.

  5. Hi Tim,

    I have to congratulate you for this blog. I have hardly seen any profound and demonstrative blog like yours.

    I served for the German Bundeswehr two times in Mazar, and I fell in love with this beautiful country. Hopefully I have the possibility to return.

    Next month I’m going to gain a new experience. I’m going to serve in Iraq, I’m already excited. I work there for a private contractor (Spelato Security Engineering; sse-security.com). It’s a new company, ehich pays good money for traveling around and telling them about the events on the ground. So they can make assessments for private enterprises like oil companies. I think it should be a new and valueable experience.

    Sincerly yours,

    Peter

  6. Thank you Tim for an actual blow by blow description of life interspersed with history in your sector of this globe. Your link will take the place of ‘Kaboom’ now that CaptG is writing his book.

    I would hope that you will do so as well. How I pray your generation would hurry home and bring the real stories to the world before it’s too late. I desire for all of you to take over all of the remaining positions of government and journalism as the last of the despicable 60’s generation dies and turns to dust. Stay Safe

  7. Great, vivid, engaging post. Should be read by many, especially those who have no clue what’s going on in this war but like to pretend they do.

  8. I found your site on Bill Roggio’s LongWarJournal. Thank you so much for being in Afghanistan, for really seeing and listening, and bless your heart for your observations about poverty. I looked at your pictures of that UN refugee camp and almost shoved my fist through my monitor. Today, the UN unveiled a mural (!) for which “they” paid $23 million. And our troops! Thank you for all the good things you write about them. They are the Greatest Generation. More skills, savvy and teamwork than we’ve ever seen. I’m looking forward to your next post.

  9. Tim:

    I too came over to your site from a link at the Long War Journal. Interesting reading as I have not kept up much with what is going on in Afghanistan. Was an A-team medic in nam and have spent most of the time since doing health care development work in SE Asia, so I understand what you are saying. Places and people change but the basics of getting to know the situation on the ground and tailoring efforts to meet the needs of the people never change.

    I had hopes a few years ago that the emphasis on special ops, what with its own separate command, was heralding a new era of awareness in the military and government. I think to an extent this has happened in Iraq, as many units, including you jar heads are involved in community development activities. However, having regular units listen to sensitivity lectures is not the same as having all your team members thoroughly trained and indoctrinated in working with other cultures from the level of the provincial governor, down to the village elders, and the people themselves, while living in the local community on the local economy as well.

    In addition, special ops is not special forces and instead of being at the forefront of activities they have become marginalized to the point where they are not even mentioned by special ops command. As much as I admire the seals putting admirals in charge of special ops command simply demonstrates the focus which is find the bad guys, followed by bang bang shoot ’em up. While very important in its way, it will not win the long war which is strictly dependent on the support of local populations.

    Just like vietnam, Al Quada and the Taliban can not defeat our forces militarily; but the war is certainly ours to lose through stupidity, just when victory has become obtainable with the exercise of simple and straight forward measures.

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