The Dogs Are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan by Graeme Smith
Authors: Graeme Smith
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Afghans—seem to agree on that point. Many of them say Afghanistan actually needs much more help.
This was technically correct, but wrong in spirit, like telling an obese person with an eating disorder that they will die if they stop consuming food: a biological fact, but misleading. Doubling the number of foreign troops in southern Afghanistan in the early spring of 2006 had only served to highlight self-defeating policies that would continue to plague the rest of the mission: the absurd war against poppy fields; NATO’s troubled relationship with Pakistan; and the difficulty of working shoulder to shoulder with untrustworthy Afghan forces, among many others. None of these challenges were ignored by the international troops. The British officer who tried to explain the narcotics policy always seemed on the verge of breaking into laughter at the insanity of his own words. The troops understood much of this, but somehow the understanding on the ground never percolated up the chain of command, or the information never got digested into an effective change in direction, or all of the negative signals were drowned out by the noise of the soldiers’ habitually positive thinking. Once set in motion, NATO pressed forward with a sense of inevitability. My next trip would be a case study in the resilience of that military brand of optimism.
Canadian soldier in a sandstorm
CHAPTER 3
OPTIMISM JUNE 2006
The first bang rocked our troop carrier and bounced my helmet off the metal interior. I fumbled in the pocket of my flak jacket for an audio recorder, and switched it on just in time to register the screeching crash of a second jolt as everybody inside the vehicle tumbled sideways. People were shouting in the dark cabin—“Are you okay?” and “We’re okay!”—as the diesel engine cranked up to a high pitch and our driver raced us away from Kandahar’s latest suicide bombing. Only when the motor whine died down did the Canadian soldiers pause to check for damage. I heard somebody say: “He’s bleeding from the mouth a little, but it’s nothing too serious, no teeth lost.” After a few minutes we kept moving, pressing toward the objective for the day.
The mission was to transport journalists to a victory ceremony (of all things) in the Panjwai valley, where international troops believed they had defeated a major Taliban offensive. Recent fighting had been surprisingly intense, with an estimated nine hundred killed in the first six months of 2006—half of them in the month of May—the first of many record-breaking heights of violence. Several of the most serious battles happened in Panjwai district, the region southwest of Kandahar city where I had been drinking tea with local elders on my previous visit—the district that a US military officerhad described as a model for the rest of southern Afghanistan. Now it was erupting into violence. As the back hatch of our vehicle creaked open and we stumbled into the sunlight, I could see that things had changed: the town of Bazaar-e-Panjwai now had extra roadblocks on the main street, and Afghan security forces had new firing positions among piles of sandbags on the roofs of government buildings. Our convoy was blackened and scarred by the explosion. Charred pieces of human flesh stuck to the armour. A television reporter wrinkled her nose at the sight, and I asked her: “Can you believe they were trying to sell me a story about how things have gotten better in Panjwai?”
The human remains spattered on the vehicles probably belonged to the suicide attacker, but may also have been remnants of the four civilians who died in the blast. The bomber had been lurking in an alleyway before ramming his black sport-utility vehicle into our convoy near a major intersection in Kandahar city. Many of the journalists were angry about the incident, feeling that civilians would not have died if the military hadn’t been dragging us around the battlefield for a photo op. We figured the
This was technically correct, but wrong in spirit, like telling an obese person with an eating disorder that they will die if they stop consuming food: a biological fact, but misleading. Doubling the number of foreign troops in southern Afghanistan in the early spring of 2006 had only served to highlight self-defeating policies that would continue to plague the rest of the mission: the absurd war against poppy fields; NATO’s troubled relationship with Pakistan; and the difficulty of working shoulder to shoulder with untrustworthy Afghan forces, among many others. None of these challenges were ignored by the international troops. The British officer who tried to explain the narcotics policy always seemed on the verge of breaking into laughter at the insanity of his own words. The troops understood much of this, but somehow the understanding on the ground never percolated up the chain of command, or the information never got digested into an effective change in direction, or all of the negative signals were drowned out by the noise of the soldiers’ habitually positive thinking. Once set in motion, NATO pressed forward with a sense of inevitability. My next trip would be a case study in the resilience of that military brand of optimism.
Canadian soldier in a sandstorm
CHAPTER 3
OPTIMISM JUNE 2006
The first bang rocked our troop carrier and bounced my helmet off the metal interior. I fumbled in the pocket of my flak jacket for an audio recorder, and switched it on just in time to register the screeching crash of a second jolt as everybody inside the vehicle tumbled sideways. People were shouting in the dark cabin—“Are you okay?” and “We’re okay!”—as the diesel engine cranked up to a high pitch and our driver raced us away from Kandahar’s latest suicide bombing. Only when the motor whine died down did the Canadian soldiers pause to check for damage. I heard somebody say: “He’s bleeding from the mouth a little, but it’s nothing too serious, no teeth lost.” After a few minutes we kept moving, pressing toward the objective for the day.
The mission was to transport journalists to a victory ceremony (of all things) in the Panjwai valley, where international troops believed they had defeated a major Taliban offensive. Recent fighting had been surprisingly intense, with an estimated nine hundred killed in the first six months of 2006—half of them in the month of May—the first of many record-breaking heights of violence. Several of the most serious battles happened in Panjwai district, the region southwest of Kandahar city where I had been drinking tea with local elders on my previous visit—the district that a US military officerhad described as a model for the rest of southern Afghanistan. Now it was erupting into violence. As the back hatch of our vehicle creaked open and we stumbled into the sunlight, I could see that things had changed: the town of Bazaar-e-Panjwai now had extra roadblocks on the main street, and Afghan security forces had new firing positions among piles of sandbags on the roofs of government buildings. Our convoy was blackened and scarred by the explosion. Charred pieces of human flesh stuck to the armour. A television reporter wrinkled her nose at the sight, and I asked her: “Can you believe they were trying to sell me a story about how things have gotten better in Panjwai?”
The human remains spattered on the vehicles probably belonged to the suicide attacker, but may also have been remnants of the four civilians who died in the blast. The bomber had been lurking in an alleyway before ramming his black sport-utility vehicle into our convoy near a major intersection in Kandahar city. Many of the journalists were angry about the incident, feeling that civilians would not have died if the military hadn’t been dragging us around the battlefield for a photo op. We figured the
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