Badlands
Posted by Michelle Tan on September 28th, 2008 filed in Michelle Tan: Notes From Afghanistan
Scott and I are now in Shah Joy, southeast Afghanistan, with Team Nomad, which is charged with mentoring the district’s Afghan police.
This is an unforgiving place, surrounded by mountain ranges accessible only through dry, hard packed dirt roads. The villages we visited today with the Afghan police were isolated and desolate, poor and humble, primitive and yet potentially dangerous.
As we made our way to these villages, we knew we were being watched. Radio chatter proved Taliban fighters were watching our every move. It was disconcerting, for sure, but what is even more troubling is, as any soldier ever deployed here or Iraq knows, the enemy could be anywhere.
He could be the seemingly harmless villager who walks up to you with a smile. He could be the man posing as a farmer with an AK-47 hidden under his clothes. He could be the child forced by the enemy to lob a grenade at the passing convoy.
In this mission to stabilize Afghanistan without alienating the local population, the complexity of the fight can be frustrating.
I deal with and talk to soldiers every day for my job. It never gets old and it never ceases to amaze me when I watch them work. As an unarmed observer on the battlefield, their ability to think and make life or death decisions under fire gives me comfort. A lot of comfort.
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