By AZAM AHMED
FEB. 15, 2014
CHAK, Afghanistan — In a deserted village off Highway 1, southwest of Kabul, an Afghan Army bomb disposal team was unearthing its 15th bomb of the day when sniper shots began to rain down.
Some soldiers bolted for cover under the flimsy canopy of the village bazaar. Others fired at the mud buildings where they believed the sharpshooter was holed up.
A rocket specialist, Sgt. Sayed Wazir, set a 107-millimeter rocket on a flat stone in an open field, taped a wire to the rocket, screamed a prayer and touched the tips of the wire to a car battery. The missile streaked toward the village.
So began another skirmish in the battle for Highway 1, a crucial artery of communication and commerce that links the capital, Kabul, with the major cities. A 1,300-mile ring road that stitches the country together, the route is a prime target for insurgents and highwaymen, its control coveted by all sides, its defense an acid test for efforts to secure the country’s future.
After spending billions of dollars upgrading and repaving Highway 1, the international military coalition is now leaving its protection almost entirely to Afghan forces like these, the soldiers of the Afghan Army’s Sixth Battalion, Fourth Brigade, 203rd Corps. They patrol one of the world’s most dangerous roads like beat cops, responding to domestic disputes and traffic accidents, as well as hidden explosives and sniper fire. Their struggles, which are many, offer glimpses into the road war’s new contours.
As the rocket soared, splitting the azure sky with a fiery trail, the soldiers shouted with delight. They watched as it flew well over the village and then into a mountain several miles beyond. Sergeant Wazir fired four more rockets, each less accurate than the last. Then he returned to his truck, where he sat peeling an apple as sniper shots continued to crack the air.
The heart of the battle runs through the insurgent-infested countryside of Wardak Province, where brazen ambushes, mines and magnetic bombs exact a toll on trade and travel in and out of the capital.
On the eastern edge of Wardak, Highway 1 unfurls in a nearly straight line southwest to Ghazni, with flat farmland on either shoulder that abruptly rises into rugged mountains. Villages tucked at the joint of mountain and farmland offer clear vantages for gunmen to harass passing convoys or Afghan security checkpoints. That situation is what sent soldiers tramping in the freezing rain one recent morning: An outpost in the Nerkh District, a highly contested area, had been fired on.
The soldiers split up to encircle Chagar, the village that was the source of the shots, as clouds clung to the snow-topped mountains above the village. A spray of bullets broke through the din of the highway as one company immediately came under fire.
Chagar’s hulking medieval walls, rising as high as 50 feet, make an uneasy geography for intruders. After a cursory search of the village, soldiers entered the mosque and used its loudspeakers to summon a meeting of the village elders, attendance mandatory.
A flock of older men materialized, miserable in the rain, and claimed only to have heard the shots. Of those who fired the shots, they knew nothing.
Lt. Col. Mohammad Daowood, who commands the Sixth Battalion, was unconvinced. Rejoining his troops outside the village, he pointed to a pair of flag-draped shrines on the mountainside. “Burial sites for Taliban leaders,” he said. “From this village.”
At the next village, Shahabuddin, a farmer who declined to give his last name for fear of retaliation, invited the soldiers into his home for a respite from the mud and rain. In a sun-filled parlor lined with windows, the man’s sons laid out large disks of bread, bowls of bean stew and fresh yogurt. The farmer spoke ruefully of days crouched on the floor of the house, fearful of stray bullets, and of years of harassment from the Taliban and Afghan soldiers alike.
“I don’t care who wins this war,” he said. “I just want peace.”
Peace is a tall order. The army’s efforts have focused on keeping the highway open most of the time and imposing a measure of order around it. But questions remain about whether that can be sustained, let alone expanded.
With limited resources, the Afghans have had to make choices about what to secure. Though the immediate environs of the highway can resemble a police state, despite the bomb craters that pockmark the asphalt everywhere, the jagged hills and river-fed orchards of the Chak District a few miles away feel like no-man’s land. Most of the district’s officials live in Kabul, and the only semblance of a local court is run by the Taliban, who post their edicts on bazaar walls. The army has a company stationed in the dilapidated district center and sends a mission to resupply the soldiers once every three months.
The Sixth Battalion’s march into Chak met its first ambush near the end of the first day. As the troops approached the village of Dasht-e Langar, muzzle flashes popped from a distant hillside. A mortar team responded by lobbing shells at the village, while other soldiers opened up with vehicle-mounted .50-caliber machine guns. Pretty soon everyone was firing, to the annoyance of Colonel Daowood, a rare Afghan believer in conserving ammunition.
In the midst of the firing, a truck pulled up and Sergeant Wazir hopped out. He set up a rocket on a dirt shelf, angling it in the general direction of the village, screamed a prayer and closed the circuit. The rocket burst forth, and soared — over the road, over the village, and over the mountain beyond.
That night, the men commandeered the home of a Taliban commander who had fled. Spread out on the floor, the leaders grumbled about the cold and the lack of electricity. Beneath a light bulb powered by the car battery, the officers ate what the soldiers ate: bread, a boiled potato and a single dry cube of lamb each. The men traded war stories, of a militant stripped to his underwear and forced to walk through his village and of a soldier who took up with a Taliban commander’s daughter.
The Sixth Battalion devotes much of its effort to finding the improvised bombs planted frequently along the edge of the highway and on the district roads that serve as tributaries.
At another village the next afternoon, on a dirt road several miles from Highway 1, the soldiers pounded on the door of a home until a young man emerged. When Colonel Daowood asked about improvised bombs, the youth shrugged.
“O.K.,” the colonel responded, “if any of my soldiers are killed by a mine driving down that road, I’m going to come back and kill you.”
By 3 p.m., the soldiers had found their 18th bomb of the day.
The sun was setting when they reached a village called Bambaee and met euphoric soldiers from the garrison company, stationed up the road at the district headquarters. At the edge of the village they came across a Toyota Corolla with a young man inside, nursing a gunshot wound to the leg and asking permission to drive to the provincial hospital.
Village elders stood near the Toyota. An army officer stood off to the side, fuming, because his men had been fighting the man all day, he said.
Afghan Army field commanders are supposed to arrest suspected insurgents and turn them over to the government in Kabul, but these days the government often simply releases them, to the great frustration of the commanders. So now, they say, they often resolve the cases themselves, either letting the suspects go or killing them on the spot.
Colonel Daowood greeted the elders and asked about the young man in the car, Sharifullah. “The Americans are no longer here,” the colonel told the elders. “The only way these guys can stay in your villages is because you let them.” After warning the elders further, Colonel Daowood said the Toyota could drive on, and his soldiers watched as it bounced away, its lights searching out the approach to Highway 1.
Haris Kakar contributed reporting.
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