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A Ragtag Pursuit of the Taliban
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Police Sgt. Obaidullah, 20, had decided to stay. Six months earlier, Obaidullah, who like many Afghans goes by one name, was living at his family home in Kabul. Now, he found himself taking advice from American soldiers wearing dark sunglasses and carrying rifles that cost the equivalent of six months of his police salary.
The other day, Obaidullah, three other Afghan police officers and a small team of U.S. soldiers walked for about a half-hour along irrigation dikes, dirt roads and row upon row of rice paddies. Long-legged and broad-shouldered, Obaidullah strode toward a group of men squatting in a rice paddy a few dozen yards from where a bomb had recently been found. He questioned the men a few minutes. The interrogation produced no information.
Obaidullah walked on to the next village, and then the next. He shook hands, shyly introducing himself to shopkeepers and elders along the way. This was the way the U.S. advisers had taught him to patrol.
Like many people in this rural northeastern corner of Afghanistan, Obaidullah suspects locals aren't the only ones responsible for violence in his country. He believes that Pakistan is aiding the Taliban insurgency. "The Taliban were bad people," Obaidullah said with a shrug as his patrol began walking toward the next village. "They destroyed this country. They're not Afghan. They're Pakistani. No Afghan would do that to his own country."
Afghan and NATO officials agree that there has been a sharp increase in the number of foreign fighters in Afghanistan. The majority of the fighters, they say, come from Pakistan, after having received training in refugee camps or Taliban bases in the tribal areas between the two countries.
About a mile down the road, an old man picnicking with his family near a small mosque waved Obaidullah over. He complained in a cracking voice about the Taliban in the district. Everyone, he said, knows who is behind all the trouble here.
"Our enemy is obvious; it's Pakistan. Every Afghan is trying to rebuild this country. Look at this road," the man said, flinging his arm out in frustration. "Look at the clinic and the shape it's in. The only reason it remains this way is because of Pakistan. I know who my friends are and who my enemies are."
Every Jungle Has Its Fox
At the U.S. forward operating base in Kunduz, New York Guard Capt. Brian Higgins, 30, stared at a map in the communications center. The map was studded with clusters of red pushpins that marked the spots where roadside bombs had either exploded or been uncovered in recent months. Tiny mug shots of various bearded men with turbans were also pasted to the map.
Back in the United States, Higgins works a plainclothes street crimes detail with the New York City police. Much of what he learned about developing a counterinsurgency he picked up from 10 years in the National Guard and six years of working the police beat. Just like civilian criminals in the United States, the insurgents here aren't always easy to identify, Higgins said.
"At a certain point, it becomes detective work," Higgins said. "The enemy is moving among the people."
For U.S. police trainers such as Heintz, part of the job entails teaching Afghan police to recognize and confront insurgent elements in their midst. Alliances forged in wars past have made for strange bedfellows in post-Taliban Afghanistan. As in the rest of the country, few people in Chahar Darreh's small power elite are what they really seem. Many carry with them a complex history of deals done, lives lost, trusts betrayed. For Afghan police, defeating the insurgency means first unmasking the enemy.
Taliban commanders and other warlords used to run this province. Many of them remain in the area. Some are now businessmen; some are landowners; some are criminal defense lawyers. Hasta Khan, a former commander who fought under the infamous warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is all three.
