The morning sky in Kabul is never exactly a normal color. It’s a hazy, wan, milky mess, more gray than blue, nature’s true palette obscured by the smoke of a million morning cook fires and the exhaust of this broken-down city’s assemblage of rattletrap rolling stock. And then there’s the dust.
We’re on the outskirts of Afghanistan’s capital awaiting a chopper that will carry us into Taliban country; the coffee I’m downing might be the best I’ve ever had. Leave it to the Italians to concoct a delicious espresso even in a war zone.
The sudden, guttural thumping of helicopter blades overhead says it’s time to go to work. We depart the comfort of the base mess hall, strap on our body armor and head for the airfield.
I’m with two other guys who will make this assignment possible: U-S Army Lt. Col. Web Wright is my guardian angel and answer-man; Akbar Shinbari, my indefatigable cameraman, fixer and source of local knowledge. Col. Wright is one of those walking contradictions our armed forces seem so good at producing; intelligent, soft spoken, polite-and really scary-looking when he dons his battle gear, slips on a pair of Oakleys and straps a holstered automatic to his chest. With hands clasped in his lap as if meditating, jaw squared and eyes obscured, he just oozes an air of serene danger.
Wright clamps on his helmet and Kevlar vest and looks like a man not to be messed with. I bundle myself in my NATO-issue Kevlar and headgear and look like a dork. Akbar’s video confirms this. But Akbar-perhaps the most genial photographer I’ve ever worked with-is much too kind to say so. I’ve heard that the Afghan culture is very welcoming of strangers, and right now there’s nobody stranger in Kabul than me.
We leave the mess hall and notice a forest fire has broken out in this high desert. As our Land Cruiser rolls toward the airfield, a towering cloud of smoke is boiling skyward, a brown pillar now supporting the milky sky. But there is no fire and the tower is not smoke. It’s dust kicked up in the rotor wash of the giant Chinook waiting impatiently for us to climb aboard.
The blades are as wide as desktops and thumping over our heads. Unconsciously, I duck down. Maybe I’ve watched too many episodes of M*A*S*H; this craft is so big those rotors wouldn’t touch me if I did my best basketball leap. Its jet engines are screaming and hurling powerful streams of exhaust directly at us as we approach from the rear. The blades pound; the combination of exhaust blast and rotor wash from above has the kerosene-tainted air convulsing wildly in waves that push and swirl. I walk unsteadily, like a drunk, until I’ve climbed past the machine gunner in position on the boarding ramp and find myself safely inside this flying bus.
We’re off the ground within seconds. I’ve noticed that virtually no piece of military hardware stays put for long in Afghanistan. Such targets are too easy to hit if they’re standing still.
We head south from Kabul, flying low, maybe three-hundred feet off the ground. We climb only to clear the spiked teeth of a mountain range, and even then, the big ship hugs close to the forbidding landscape, all escarpments of rock from base to peak. No trees, no grass-just jagged, angry stone.
The chopper drops down the other side and into the Musahy Valley, an unbelievably flat, wide expanse. We fly across it very fast, and yet despite all the ground we cover, I see exactly one paved road. The scenes dashing by below look almost Biblical. Goats scatter as the thunderous machine roars overhead. Flat-roofed houses with walls of mud and straw punctuate fields in which children are working. An occasional cow bucks and flees in terror.
For a time the valley is verdant and green; then we fly over a long stretch that shows dry and gray as the moon. The one advantage of such a bleak landscape, or so it would seem to me, is that it offers no hiding place to insurgents. There are no houses, no trees, no boulders below us. The three men stationed at this ship’s very large machine guns-one on each side behind the pilots and the one mentioned earlier on the Chinook’s tail boarding ramp-have a moment to relax their minds, if not their weapons.
We land. Quickly we’re out of the chopper and it takes off on another mission. As its thunder fades down valley and we head toward the small NATO outpost the Italians have established here, Col. Wright speaks but five telling words: “Welcome to the eighth century.”
I look around and it’s easy to see what he means. Absent the Italians’ base, its vehicles, sandbags and razor wire, there isn’t anything in sight that appears to have been made by machine. A large herd of sheep is grazing unfenced in a pasture, tended by what looks to be a teen. Children are running in our general direction, apparently believing the chopper must have disgorged something interesting.
We set out on a foot patrol with a small contingent of Italian Alpine troops who’ve made the valley their home. Akbar and I are warned to keep to the middle of this walking convoy of less than a dozen men. Gunners in the front will act as scouts, along with an explosives-sniffing dog that bears some resemblance to a German Shepherd. More heavily-armed soldiers will trail behind us. A small aerial drone–wingspan maybe three feet–is launched to fly ahead and beam back pictures that are monitored in a situation room at the base. If there’s trouble, we’re told to get down, stay flat and look for cover if any can be found. In this peaceful valley of gurgling creeks and bleating sheep, surrounded by peaks under a cloudless sky, it doesn’t seem like violence should intervene. But in this part of Afghanistan, I will learn, trouble is never far away.
To be continued…
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