Qalat

QALAT

The AMF (Afghan Militia Force) was losing all of its big weapons and direct fire weapons to the DDR program. DDR was the “Disestablishment, Disarmament and Reintegration” program the Afghan government established to disarm the militias and reintegrate them into society after decades of fighting. One of the locations where there were lots of ordnance stored was a town called Qalat. Qalat is located in the Zabul Province, between Qandahar and Gazni provinces.  The province has long been a hot bed of Taliban/Al-Qaeda resistance, so it was not a friendly town…it was bandit country for sure.

Our job was to go up there destroy everything they had short of 7.62mm (AK-47) rounds. On a previous visit one of my mates had found 6 AGS-17 grenade launchers, similar to our MK-19 40mm grenade launcher, except in the 30mm version. These were very hard to come by and we found out that some of our “friends” could use them. So we decided to go there and retrieve them before blowing them up. The trick was to get them out without the garrison commander messing with us…which meant we had to have a show of force. For us that meant we had to go to the firebase and somehow ‘con’ our way into getting a patrol to provide security. First we went to an American company providing security for various NGO’s (non-government organization-us excluded, of course) and asked to have two security vehicles escort us to Qalat and back. Since the regional manager was a good drinking friend of ours he immediately agreed with us…it is good to have the only bar in town!

As always my teammate and I were loaded for bear, I think we took everything in our arsenal. We then drove up to Qalat, escorted by our “security force” consisting of two vehicles with 4 guards each. These guards we were sure had been Taliban at one time, so of course we didn’t trust them as far as we could throw them. We entered the firebase and immediately started sweet talking the commander into giving us some assistance. He must have thought we were “somebody” since he kept calling us ‘sirs’. All he saw was two Americans looking ragged by any standards, carrying lots of weapons and asking very nicely for his assistance. No only did he agree to it…but he gave us 4 HUMVEES loaded with soldiers, and two gun trucks (HUMVEES with .50 cal mounted on top). Now we were in business!!!

The cache of ordnance was located on top of a hill where the AMF had sort of a ‘fortress’. We rolled in there with an impressive show of force and meaning business. We immediately drove to the bunker we knew had the items we wanted, and told this very frightened officer that he had ten minutes to produce the keys or we were cutting the lock. As he scampered off to search for the keys everyone took positions, making sure that instead of keys he didn’t bring armed soldiers. Without much waiting, the individual returned with the keys and proceeded to open several doors. Mike and I just rushed in with flashlights on and started taking everything we wanted, including extra AK-47s.  The entire job lasted approximately 10 minutes, and as soon as we finished we closed the doors and locked them. Now the tricky part was to get a clean get away. We headed for our vehicle in the front of the fortress and got our troopers ready to move out. I started counting vehicles and noticed we were one short. The lieutenant (LT) in charge of the patrol was still in the rear with vehicle problems…not good. I called him on the radio and told him to put a move on it.

At this point the Operations Officer of the camp came out and started acting squarely with us. He was demanding to see authorization, to which my teammate replied that the fact that the soldiers where with us was enough prove that we had it, but he wasn’t buying it. I kept an eye on the situation while telling the LT he needed to get his ass up to our location so we can leave. I was beginning to worry about the operations officer blocking our way out.  Needless to say I was getting a bit antsy.  There weren’t that many AMF soldiers in the fortress, and I was certain that we could have taken them out, but there was only one way out of that place and I was not about to start an international incident.

Time started to pass by very quickly, and with every tick tock of time the AMF soldiers kept growing restless. The operations officer was definitely not buying my buddy’s bullshit. At this point, I got on the radio and told the LT to get up here ASAP. He very unwisely told me to standby. Well, that’s what it took to set me off. I literally pulled the driver out of the HUMMER and jumped in, racing back to where the dumb-ass was at. Now, I am not sure if the LT was used to having civilians yell at him but I came out of that vehicle cursing and yelling. I let him know that he had 5 minutes to get his HUMMER going or I was leaving him behind, whether he was in charge or not. Of course, the sight of an armed, angry, yelling puertorrican must have inspired fear in this young 2^nd Lieutenant, because the next noise I heard was the sound of the HUMMER coming to life.

As we raced to the front of the fortress I noticed the operations officer yelling at Mike, definitely not a good sign. However, as Mike heard the vehicles rolling towards him, he immediately started to run towards the now blocked gates. He quickly removed the barrier and jumped head first into my truck. The rest of the army HUMMERS quickly followed us as we departed the fortress.

The army escorted us out of Zabul province and we made it back to Qandahar without further incidents. But it was close!!!

House Mine

Kandahar, March 2004 

We were out on our day off looking for trouble…no, actually we had nothing to do so we decided to go out into Kandahar and do some “sightseeing”. Around 1100 we were still driving when our phone rang. Some sergeant was calling that someone had found a mine while digging the foundation for a new house. Great we thought, finally some action. Since we were only about 10 minutes away we decided to take the call and flipped the truck around.

When we arrived the sergeant gave us a guide and a ‘Terp (interpreter). The first thing the ‘Terp did was to ask us where were our bodyguards, and after laughing we told him we didn’t have any, we were it. He didn’t seem too happy with that idea. Next thing he did was to ask us if we were really going to get close, I told him that not only was I getting close to the mine, I was going to pick it up and put in the truck between my feet. He really wasn’t happy now at all. As we started following the directions from our guide we noticed he was taking us directly behind the old Al Qaeda house, which didn’t amuse me all. Mike and I started talking possibility of booby-traps, since they have been found in plenty of occasions in the area.

The house we went to was approximately 500 meters north east of Osama’s shack. Great, I thought. We got out of the truck and told our ‘Terp to stay put and watch our truck, which he didn’t have a problem doing. We opened the gates and found 6 locals around poking at the mine…immediately I shouted at them to stop what they were doing and get

the hell out of there. I am positive they did not understand a word of English but they got the point and left lickety-split.

We watched them leave and got down to business. While Mike covered me for the possibility of ambush, I started removing the earth from the top and immediately found a fuzed and armed TM-62 anti-tank Russian mine. Now the question was if it had been booby-trap. I started digging under it very carefully. Dig, look, dig, look, very tedious but necessary. With my AK-47 laying next to me, I kept an eye on Mike and he on me, he was standing around the front wall, looking at our approaches. As I cleared the mine section directly in front of me I found out that there was nothing under it. I then pushed all the dirt in, and moved to the other side, starting the same process. This side was a bit more difficult since it was lower. I started working my knife under the mine, feeling for tripwires, for anything hard.

At the third probe with the knife I hit something that sounded like metal, definitely hard and didn’t feel like a rock. My heart skipped a bit and I called Mike for a second opinion. The puddles of sweat were creating mud around me. Mike came over and after checking under the mine, agreed with me to keep digging all the way around and then get down and flat and try to see what it was.

I kept on digging and digging my hole to “China”. When I was confident that I could see underneath I stopped and took a look and sure enough, there was a rusted piece of metal under it. Shit I thought…more digging. Again, knife to earth for two more hours, the dirt was very hard and the day was getting hotter. I was sweating buckets and Mike kept yelling at me “hurry up you old fucker” my reply was always the same “bite me!” I knew he was just joking, but I was hot and dirty and tired. I dug a nice sized hole and was finally able to identify the object, it was an old nail…all that for nothing, but then again, one can never be careless. Saved the world again!!!!

I immediately removed the mine by hand and very carefully placed in the front of my truck right between my legs. We almost had to force the ‘Terp to get in. After a lot of talking, he finally agreed that it was safe. I picked up my AK and drove out to the PRT compound, where we dropped him off. Then it was to our house where we stashed the mine under my bed for future disposal. I sure slept like a baby.

Kandahar 2004

February 2004

After a month in Kabul and having completed teaching my courses I traveled to Kandahar. Arriving at the airport was a pleasant surprise. First of all, it was much warmer than Kabul and the US Army controlled the airport and had its air base there, so everywhere I looked I saw friendly U.S. troops, which is very nice after years working abroad with local military. The ride to the house took about an hour, thru wide open expanses of desert; goats and camels everywhere. It was a very nice break from Kabul’s claustrophobic confines. The road was full of types of houses I have never seen before. These dwellings looked like something out of Star Wars. They were low lying homes, as if built into the ground, with very little showing but the top third of the house, surrounded by what looked like mud walls to form a compound. Even though Kandahar is not as safe as Kabul, I felt better there, I felt right at home. The last part of the journey took me into the city proper. It was dusty, and filthy, people everywhere. Seemed like everywhere I looked everyone was carrying a good old soviet Kalishnikov rifle, the AK-47.

The first day in “Dodge City”, Kandahar, was spent visiting the various teams working around the city and taking a look at where I was to teach. Driving thru the city with Mike, one of my two teammates was certainly an experience. For one, he is strung very tight, and the driving conditions were not good at all. Mike certainly gave a new meaning to the phrase “road rage”. There were traffic jams, which are very conducive for ambushes. Needless to say we took our precautions and rolled the windows up so that no grenades could be thrown inside. We drove like mad men thru the town. Early in the morning it was very dusty and with the amount of traffic kicking up more dust our road visibility was very poor. It was a miracle of life that we didn’t run someone over, but it was damn close at times. The times spent completely stopped were tense moments for both of us. It seemed like there was an ambush waiting for us at any moment. Our eyes were constantly roaming our surroundings, looking for any signs of trouble. Every person was a potential bad guy, set on wiping out some Americans; our hands were never far from the triggers of our weapons. We had decided, as per our previous military training that if we couldn’t drive out of the shit, we would just get out and fight our way back to the house, calling for back up (rescue) from the Special Forces teams near by. Of course, that extreme measure never came, but this wouldn’t be the last time we would be in that situation.

Driving out of the city proper was a big relief. We first drove to the ASPs, the ammunition supply points that the coalition had completely obliterated. These were Taliban ASPs full of ordnance. When the air strikes came there was a lot of ordnance kicked out. I have never in my life seen so much ordnance scattered about. We literally had to walk on unexploded ordnance to get from point A to point B. While at the ASPs, we started to hear detonations, which we couldn’t tell if they were friendly or not. We then decided to high-tail it from there and back to the city. On the way Mike took me to the old Al-Qaeda house. This was located on the northern fringes of the city. The house now sits amidst a heap of rubble, having taken lots hits from bombs, since it was suspected that Bin Laden actually lived there, and he did for a while.

The teams clearing the house spend nearly a year going thru the entire place. Many booby-traps were found designed not to kill the EOD technician but to completely demolish the house and destroy all the evidence.