Gun Deal

The black Land Cruiser approached the meeting point fast, perhaps too fast. Something was definitely not right. I chambered a round in my Glock and was feeling the first drops of sweat racing down my forehead. I pulled out of the side of the road and made a U-turn to be able to follow the Land Cruiser. In a matter of 200 meters we must have passed 5 or 6 policemen just sitting idly, not even paying attention to the two identical Land Cruisers speeding by. Too many police, not a good thing.

The day before we had gotten word from a “friend” we called Black Pajama, that he had some weapons for sale. This being Afghanistan could only mean one-thing…illegal weapons. Which was fine by us because there just wasn’t a gun shop we could stroll in and buy AK-47’s.  Through our interpreter we learned that Black Pajama wanted us to go to a meeting place in front of a hotel. Having been here for over three years I knew this hotel was located on the northwest side of Kabul, an area controlled by Northern Alliance people…Ahmad Shah Massood’s people. That afternoon we made contact with Black Pajama and asked him why he couldn’t just bring the weapons to our villa, it is safe and secure, he shouldn’t have any problem at all. He send message back saying that even though he is very well connected all around, he didn’t want to risk getting caught with 40 AK-47’s and assorted hand guns and ammunition in territory not controlled by his people. Can’t say that I blame him.

As I approached Black Pajama’s black Land Cruiser my eyes were everywhere, on the police to my left, to the men exiting the hotel front door on my right, the vehicles coming around the traffic circle right behind me. I was looking for all possible threats and avenues of exit in case we have to make an emergency exit. I know my partner was doing the same. Gun running is not an easy thing to do anywhere in the world, let alone in Afghanistan.

The original plan was for us to pull up behind Black Pajama and for my partner to jump in his vehicle and check out all the weapons, while I stayed in our Land Cruiser and watch his “six” just in case the deal goes south. Dave would check the weapons, bring them to our vehicle, I would give him the $6,000 in cash I had in my vest and he would give the money to Black Pajama, everything in front of the police. We estimated 30 minutes max, in and out. But like any good plan, this one was about to change drastically.

As soon as I parked behind him, Black Pajama got out of his vehicle as did my translator, and they hugged and smiled and laughed like long lost brothers. By their body language and gestures we figured that we were to follow Black Pajama somewhere else to do the deed. After a few minutes of cordialities we followed him through the dirty and dusty streets of West Kabul. Winding in and out of neighborhoods that I had never been in before; thousands of eyes staring at us; racing to keep up with Black Pajama who was driving like he owned the place. One thing that impressed us was that at a very busy intersection he just drove to the middle and blocked traffic so we can cross and keep up with him. Now that is something an amateur does not do, this guy definitely knew what he was doing. That sort of made us feel a little bit better; however, I was having a hard time remembering all the turns, was it three to the left and then two to the right? I have to say that if anything had happened I would have had a hard time getting out of there quickly.

We made a right turn into a very dusty and foul smelling street and pulled over in front of the third house on the left, what we were assuming was his house. We all got out of our vehicles and while Black Pajama opened the front door, we scanned both sides of the streets making sure we didn’t see anything suspicious.  We entered the courtyard and proceeded to his living room. The room was furnished with a multitude of comfortable sofas and chairs. I took a seat next to the door and Dave sat facing it and to the side. We had the entrance covered. To say that we wanted to do the deal and get out of there fast was an understatement. But it was not to be, the cigarettes, nuts, fruits and tea came out and our translator started to shoot the bull with Black Pajama in the best Afghan tradition. My cell phone rang and it startled me, it was one of our mates calling to check on us as agreed. He had been calling every 20 minutes to make sure we were still alive. Every new sound made me look around, every time the door opened I got a bit jumpier, we had to do the deed and get out of there. From a 30-minute plan, we were into two hours and we still haven’t seen a damn weapon.

I started the bargaining by asking him if the weapons were here. “Of course!” He said. Never forgetting that we were in his house, I politely asked if we could see a “sample”.

We proceeded down very narrow steps to his basement, to his very dusty and dark basement. This time I went down first and Dave brought the rear, our hands never far off our weapons. In the basement, covered with old carpets and two centuries of dust we found hundreds of ammo cans. So far so good, Black Pajama had the ammo. Now we needed to see weapons.

And that came next; he asked us to follow him outside the house, so moving up the narrow stairs from the basement to the ground floor, I was wondering what was in store for us now. From the room we had been eating at, we followed him to the front and outside of the house, to the back of his Land Cruiser. He opened the truck and lo and behold he had the weapons in the back of his vehicle all along. There were are least 50 AK-47’s there, all covered with an old carpet. Getting a bit nervous for standing in the middle of a street in Kabul looking at AK-47s, I asked him if we could take eight inside and check them out. He immediately agreed to it and told his “boy” to take them in, while Dave and I kept our eyes everywhere.

Again, being polite and trying not to offend we asked if we could take the weapons apart to further inspect them, “koneshna” he said, using the Russian word for “Of Course”. We proceeded to tear the weapons apart and checked them; they were all good weapons, very good actually, compared to what I had seen in the last 3 and half years in Afghanistan.

The weapons looked as if they had been buried for a long time, there were dirt and leaves in them. I mentioned that to Black Pajama to which responded “well what do you expect? I had to keep them hidden for many years!” I guess we had to laugh at that.

What we wanted to do then was test fire the weapons, he said no problem, he asked his helper to get us some magazines so we can test fire them. I asked him were did he intend for us to shoot the guns and he said “In my backyard of course!” That’s where we had to draw the line and accept his word that the guns were good.  We were not about to shoot eight AKs in the air in the middle of Kabul. There is an old saying that whatever goes up, must come down…eventually.

To show our appreciation for what he was doing for us and his hospitality, I pulled one of my .45 cal magazines and emptied in my hand and gave the bullets to him…all 14 of them. I knew he had a Colt .45 but had no rounds, so I decided to give him some of mine, knowing that I still had two other full magazines. He was very moved by the gesture and embraced me and told me that we were now real friends.

So now the payment. We asked him if he wanted the money now or later, he said he would come to our villa later and get it from us. What about the guns? He said he trusted us now and that we could take the guns with us; he really didn’t want to go to our side of the city and risk getting stopped by the police with the guns in his trunk.

After placing the weapons and ammo in the back of our Land Cruiser we got ready to go, but I realized that everything was exposed in the back. Dave asked Black Pajama for something to cover the weapons. He came out with a carpet.

My translator said something to the effect that the deed was done and we were finished. What I was thinking was that it ain’t over until it’s over, and for us that was when we drove into our villa and the front gate was closed and locked. We still had to drive across the city and anything could happen: the police could stop, unlikely; we could get a flat tire, likely; or worse, this could all be a set up and Black Pajama might call the police and tell them about us, highly unlikely. Needless to say I drove as fast as possible without drawing too much attention and made it to our villa in record time. As soon as the gates closed we all let out a sigh of relief, it was over.

Attack!

It was time for me to go home. I had been in country now for 5 months and the holidays where fast approaching. The problem was that everyone was in the same boat, and day by day there were fewer of us Security Coordinators left in country. Therefore the few of us staying until the last possible day had to cover for the guys that had already left.

I got sent to the Kajiki Dam site for two reasons: I started that project back in August and because I had a good working relationship with the permanent coordinator, Bill. After a day’s turnover Bill was gone and I was in charge of the project. The first thing that happened was that my boss in Kabul emailed me and told me that they just got information of a threat of attack to the Dam site. Great I thought, I haven’t been here two days and now I am going to get attacked. Not what I wanted to happen a week before going home.

First order of business was to inform all the managers so they can take charge and be accountable for their people. Things were not right though, I could feel something was in the air. After being in country for almost a year, you can read peoples’ behavior, and amongst all the locals working with us there was certainly something wrong. They would not look at me in the face and where otherwise very evasive. Not good I thought. After making my initial notification to all the managers, the next thing I did was to head to my room to check my equipment.

I closed the door and laid out all my kit on the bed. I made sure I had at least 4 fragmentation and 2 smoke grenades and that their safety pins where all in place; I then checked all my AK-47 magazines to make sure they were full; and finally took my rifle and handgun and checked them and gave them a thorough cleaning. There was no way in hell that I was going to lose it in this country due to a faulty weapon, I knew better than that. Having done all that and being satisfied that everything was in order, it was time for the next thing: check all my posts.

I called my assistant Noor Agha and informed him what was happening. I told him that we would be checking all the posts and not to tell anyone. I didn’t want to let anyone know that we knew…they just might hit us harder. We started from my place and I immediately noticed things were not right, the first check point we came to was empty!

This was the check point closest to my house and where all the ex-pats live. After sorting this one we moved to the next one, the one separating us from the village. The funny thing was that all the soldiers from the first check point were at the second one. What was going on? They all knew, that’s what. And once could sense it in the air that they were nervous.

About 100 meters from this check point is Tangin, a known pro-Taliban village. It was  separated from us by a 100 meter long bridge. So what I have in my hands is a threat of an attack by the Taliban, possibly coming from the village that is only 100 meters away, and I am guarded by 150 very nervous and trigger happy soldiers that for all I know could all be Taliban or ex-Taliban (as if that mattered).

It was around 5pm when we returned to our house, after checking all the posts. It was going to be a cold, dark and windy night, not good for us but very good indeed for them. And the darker it got, the more nervous I got. The problem is that since I was responsible for the safety of 10 foreigners, I could not show weakness, I could not show how nervous I was. I needed these guys to trust me. If the shit hit the fan I needed these guys to obey every order I gave, for their safety.

Around 8pm I gave everyone an update on the situation and told them what I had done to ensure their safety. One of the things I did was to move my assistant to the room next to mine so he could help me defend if needed. I also moved the QRF (Quick Reaction Force-8 heavily armed soldiers) next to our building and placed them on standby all night long. Noor Agha and I moved all of our kit to the roof around 10 pm and started taking 2 hour shifts.

It was dark, very, very dark. I only had one set of night vision goggles and not very good at that, they were old, but at least it was something.  I cannot remember being this nervous in a long time. I could feel it in the air, something was very wrong. We spent the rest of the night awake, the hell with the 2 hour shifts, I wanted to be awake and be able to respond immediately.

Every sound, every little something we looked, straining our eyesight, straining our hearing against the noise of the passing river 50 meters in front of us. Every shadow a possible bad guy, every branch an enemy Kalishnikov pointed at us. It was nerve wrecking to say the least. Because of the time of year, darkness was long, very long. The first rays of welcomed light came around 6:30am, and not too soon.  And with the light came relaxation, we didn’t get hit in the dark so that was a blessing, we could relax at the thought that a night attack didn’t come.

Matter of fact, no attack ever came while I was there. The Taliban often likes to play the game of threatening an attack to see what you will do, and we know it. The problem is that we don’t know when the real thing is coming so we have to react every time for the safety of the people we protect.

The Mujahadeen Commander

Written in Herat City, Afghanistan

May 2005

His gaze was intense, his clear blue eyes burning with an intense fire fueled by years of fighting. His hands were strong and rough like sand paper, no doubt from thousands of firefights, shooting his trusty AK-47 assault rifle. As we sat on big cushions in a small, dark, smoky room in the back of one of his restaurants, we drank green tea and ate bread, he spoke to me of hard living; living in the mountains with nothing but the bare necessities; of coming down to Herat under the cloak of darkness and in disguise; of not trusting anyone but his close circle for fear of betrayal to the enemy; of losing over 600 soldiers, 96 in his own personal staff. He spoke of being close to getting captured on several occasions, and barely escaping certain death…by decapitation. But even while speaking of this, he said it with a smile on his face, for he knew that he and his band of fighters outlasted and defeated the “Bear” and the “Students”.

As he described events in the not too distant past, the look in his face betrayed the glory of having won battle after battle, of having won the war, or in his case…the wars. The Commander talked easily and freely about skirmishes with the Soviets, about setting ambushes 50 meters from them, about spending time after time not letting them get more than 50 meters away. When I asked him why so close, he responded that during that time the Soviets had airplanes and helicopters in the sky constantly, like fire-flies, everywhere, day and night. They had to stay that close because they knew that the Soviets wouldn’t bomb themselves, so, ironically, there was safety being extremely close to the enemy.

The commander and his group fought every day for 20 odd years….everyday. Every minute was a struggle to survive, to stay ahead of the enemy, to stay alive. Every dawn brought a new set of problems; a new challenge to overcome. Sometimes they would run out of ammunition, sometimes the ammunition was bad, sometimes the weapons were faulty. Other days it was plain and simple…there was no food to eat. And still they forged ahead, led by this indomitable, fearless, formidable mujahideen. And they fought until the day the enemy was conquered…and then what?

I asked the commander what happened to him and his mujahideen after the Soviets left, after the fall of the Taliban, after there was no more enemy. He said that along with his soldiers he stayed under the command of his old commanding officer, Ismael Khan, who once again became governor of Herat. Khan rewarded his trusted field commander by making him head of his own security. Needless to say, he is still “someone” in the city.

And now, after almost four years since the defeat of the Taliban and with his boss and comrade in arms gone to the new Afghan government in Kabul, this old jihad fighter is building and dedicating a museum to his fallen comrades. He is building The Mujahideen Museum in Herat. There are tanks, helicopters, artillery pieces and landmines amongst many other things to be displayed when it opens. The best part is that these are not replicas or training items, but the real thing. One can still see the scorch marks in the ordnance and the bullet holes in the helicopters.

When I visited the site on February 2005, there was a fresh blanket of snow on the ground and it was cold, very cold. The snow covered everything, as if concealing it and keeping it ready for action; however, the commander, now a general, told me the reason for this museum is that he wants future generations of Afghanis to remember what they all went through, the sacrifices his comrades made. He wants them never to forget how they persisted against all odds and beat the mighty Red Army. He wants to do this by showing his Afghan brothers the “tools of the trade”, the tools of destruction.

One great example is the Soviet Mi-24 HIND helicopter gunship sitting in the front of the museum. The HIND was one of the most feared Soviet military machines. It caused fear with the destruction it projected. Even my translator, upon seen it kicked it a few times. When I asked him why he did that, he simply responded “because it killed many Afghans, I hate it”. No one was safe nor could escape the Hind’s lethal power. In the end, the Mujahideen downed over 300 HINDS with shoulder fired, surface to air missiles.

I was told the museum items have been inerted and demilitarized for safe display. The last thing the General said to me was there will always be another fight that needs winning. I am sure that should Afghanistan be invaded or involved in another war, the General would take his place amongst the great leaders and take up arms once again and defeat whomever needs defeating…along with his ‘museum’.

Rocket Attack

The sounds I was hearing were not hard to mistake. I had heard them before, and was not amused to hear them again. One big one followed by two smaller ones. The house shook a bit and instinctively I dove for cover next to a wall, landing with a big thump that knocked the wind out of me. I didn’t get a chance to see the fire balls in the middle of the night. The rockets had apparently flown over our house and struck somewhere in the city, not far from us.

After letting the dust from the roof settle around me I ran upstairs and found my boss ready and waiting for me. We dashed out of our compound like mad men, heading straight for ground zero. We arrived there in less than 5 minutes, thru streets full of mud and houses ravished by decades of war. The impact site was an area called TV Hill; it was already full of onlookers, everyone yelling who knows what. The adrenaline at this point was flowing freely thru my body. In the cold of the night I was beginning to sweat profusely.

The rockets had impacted on an old cemetery causing no visible damage; another rocket hit an abandoned house. Thru our interpreter we let everyone know we were not soldiers but ordnance technicians there to help them. It was very difficult moving everyone back to a safe area. We looked around with our flashlights around the impact sites to make sure there were no unexploded ordnance laying about that might harm others.

We couldn’t determine where the rockets had been fired from and since Kabul is not a very safe place to be, especially at night (or at any other time for that matter) we decided not to push our luck and returned to the safety of our house. The residents, as well as all us foreigners got lucky this time. At the house I sat down in front of the television with a cold beer, not paying attention to the program. Now that the immediate danger was over and the adrenaline rush was gone, I started thinking “what the fuck is going on here? This is supposed to be a secured country!” My knees started shaking, and my palms got very sweaty. That was my second night in country, welcome to Afghanistan.

That’s Afghanistan, a young democracy in a very old country. The U.S. led coalition liberated the Afghan people from a very restrictive and suppressive Taliban regime, based on a strict adherence to the fundamentalism of the Koran. The Taliban government was backed in ways by the Al-Qaeda terrorist group, and even now a few years after the liberation, the Taliban is still wrecking havoc with the citizens. There are still kidnappings, beheadings, extortions, attacks and so forth, of both locals and foreigners.

There are three main reasons for the continued attacks. First, the famous inhospitable terrain allows the insurgents to move almost at will over the country, making it extremely difficult for our soldiers to capture these small pockets of resistance. Secondly, we are dealing with militants with religious motivations, waging a “Jihad”, a holy war against the infidels.  And lastly, the fact that the people of Afghanistan have never been conquered for long. This last reason is probably the most important. Through out the centuries, the Afghans have resisted every invasion. They will continue to resist forever, to the death if necessary. They have resisted and beaten every major country that has invaded, from Alexander the Great, the Mongols, the British Empire and the Soviet Union to name a few. Countries that are far superior militarily and technically.

It is not the wealth of the country, or its military superiority that counts in this country, it is the will of the people. The will to keep their country free, the will to exercise their right to choose their lifestyle without it being imposed by anyone.

 A year after that first rocket attack, they are still coming, but with less frequency. They will continue to come, of that I am certain.