Tension and tea along the Pakistani border

Traveling along the “Taliban Superhighway,” Captain Navarro’s squad patrols the area to the east of Forward Operating Base Tillman.

Outside the wire, Captain George Navarro of the 1st Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment, an embedded tactical trainer for the Afghan National Army, led his Afghan squad on a patrol to the area east of Forward Operating Base Tillman in the Paktika province. The mission — a search for a local Taliban leader and a suspected enemy cache — took the squad through several small villages close to the Pakistan border.

This area of eastern Afghanistan, known as Spera, is rocky terrain. Steep mountains, valleys, and riverbeds punctuate the landscape, and stands of trees that vary from sparse to dense make for great places for insurgents to hide. The trail Navarro and his patrol squad traveled was one of the most heavily trafficked paths in the area and was used by the Taliban to smuggle weapons, explosives, and suicide bomber volunteers back and forth across the porous Pakistan border. The compound where Navarro and his men were staying has been occupied by the US military for only a week and is known as the “Taliban Hotel” for its reputation as a major staging hub for the Taliban in Paktika and the surrounding provinces.

To the uninformed, the area looks serene, but the current state of calm does not reveal the recent battles fought in the valley, with up to 40 Taliban killed at a time. From the radio chatter over the previous days, Navarro knew the Taliban were watching him and his men. Yet, the patrol moved along, mindful that the hills had eyes.

This area is still one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan. After the US took the Taliban Hotel — a qalat, or typical Afghan compound or home, near FOB Tillman — and its strategic high places above the valley during an assault, the Taliban leadership was very upset. Five of their top area commanders have been meeting to decide on the best way to take the compound and the area back. Being outgunned from the ground and the air, the Taliban are sending “hundreds” of Taliban fighters in an attempt to overrun the valley. Captain Hammond, commander of the outpost, said it’s not if they will attack, it’s when.

The border store

Continuing along the “Taliban Superhighway,” the patrol passed through several small clusters of qalats. In places, the valley was no more than 20 feet wide with sheer stone walls. Close to the Pakistan border, by a shallow river at the bottom of a steep narrow valley, Navarro and his squad found a small, nondescript building that turned out to be a store. The area was sparsely populated, and the ground was littered with trash from cigarette and candy wrappers. Either the locals were chain-smoking, snackaholic litterbugs, or there were large numbers of nervous and hungry people traveling by this little building.

Navarro’s Afghan squad searched the store and brought out a man in his 20s who worked there. After questioning him for a minute, they made him lie on the ground and put him in handcuffs. “What do you know about the Taliban? Do you see Taliban coming through here? Have you EVER seen a Taliban?” He claimed he did not know anything and denied ever seeing any Taliban. No one believed him.

The men from the squad called to an old man who was standing in front of a qalat and motioned for him to come down to the talk to the squad. The man came with three children in tow. He happened to be the young man’s father and the children belonged to the young man in the handcuffs.

Both men were questioned about the store’s clientele. It was obvious the shoppers were passing back and forth across the border, and the main people who used this remote border crossing were the Taliban. Both men claimed they did not know anything about the Taliban, but Navarro and the ANA soldiers knew better; the evidence was clear and besides, the captain had seen the activity with his own eyes in the preceding months. After about 30 minutes, Navarro realized that they were wasting time. They removed the cuffs from the young man and moved on.

Tea on the border

The patrol continued down the riverbed about 60 yards in spread formation where the ANA made contact with the Pakistani border guards who were watching from their shack in an elevated position. As each side shouted for the other to stand down, the heated exchanges rose in intensity.

With both sides holding their guns at the ready, the ANA soldiers shouted, “Lower your weapons!” as the Pakistanis yelled back, “YOU lower YOUR weapons!” The tension mounted as the hurried demands back and forth increased in volume and vehemence over several minutes. Navarro moved to the front waving his hand in greeting, smiling broadly and showing his weapon turned upside down as a sign of nonhostile intent. The squad was in a very poor tactical position with at least 10 border guards having the high ground, lurking in the shadows of the evergreen trees, circling around to flank the squad along with the dozen or so directly in front of the group behind large rocks for cover.

After several tense minutes, the border commander, a major in the Pakistan Army, came out and was friendly, actually overly friendly, and very talkative and clearly nervous. Navarro was amicable but persistent in asking the major about the Taliban leader they were looking for, and the questions seemed to make the major anxious. Every time the Taliban was mentioned, the border commander nervously lit another cigarette.

After a few minutes of talk, the Pakistani major invited Navarro and his men to have tea. The captain chose four of his best fighters to join him and the commander. Cautiously, Navarro and his Afghan soldiers accompanied the major and his border guards down the river about 100 yards and around a bend to where the riverbed widened. The Pakistanis had set up a table covered with a checked-patterned cloth and surrounded with chairs. The captain and the major took their seats, exchanged pleasantries, then began to chat about the border situation. Soon after, a soldier brought out a tray with glasses filled with a very sweet orange “energy drink” followed by chai served in porcelain teacups on little saucers.

Sitting next to a known Taliban infiltration route, the Pakistan commander pledged his undying cooperation to secure the border and bragged about how he has protected the American forces from Taliban attacks. His overtures were as overly sweet as the tea. He apologized about having to cancel a recent Border Flag Meeting but insisted that it wasn’t he that canceled the meeting and spoke about how much he wants to reschedule it. The major wanted very badly to meet with the outpost commander Captain Hammond to talk about further cooperation. He even talked about wanting to install a land line between his border checkpoint and the FOB Tillman for direct communication, and Navarro agreed to run it by Hammond. Yet, Navarro pressed the major on the Taliban leader he was searching for — the “rascal” as the major called him — and the border commander nervously lit up another cigarette. They tentatively set up a meeting for the next day.

After about 20 minutes, Navarro indicated it was time to move on. Further pleasantries were exchanged between the men before Navarro and his squad hiked west, back along the Taliban Superhighway. But first, the ANA soldiers stopped by the border store to buy cigarettes and snacks before heading back to the FOB.

Epilogue

The following morning, Navarro learned that during his patrol there had been about 45 Taliban just across the Pakistan border ready to ambush him and his men. Twenty were actually moving into attack and were within seconds of doing so but pulled back when contact was made with the Pakistan border guards. Navarro guessed the border commander acted nervous because he probably knew all this. They had been in a very exposed, very bad tactical position walled in by the steep walls of the valley. Navarro knew he had been lucky.

The meeting that Navarro and the Pakistani major discussed did not happen. Captain Hammond thought if the squad had returned as planned, the Taliban would have been waiting to ambush the men. An 82nd Airborne soldier had been killed in that spot earlier this year.

Besides, more Taliban could be heard over the radio. This group was to the west of the outpost. And they numbered around 100.

Tags: Afghanistan, Pakistan