Afghanistan Journal: War at the End of the Road

Plumes of dust hung in the air as our convoy of armored vehicles crawled along the broad valley floor. As we approached the watchtowers and steel gates of Fort Gormach, a firefight with the Taliban broke out high on the steep hills along our left flank. A day later, we held up our departure while American F-16s dived on Taliban positions, which had taken U.S. and Afghan forces under fire. Perched on the fort's high walls, Afghan soldiers cheered wildly as three clouds of dark smoke rose where the 500-pound bombs had struck.

The U.S. Army's Forward Operating Base (FOB) Gormach is named after the nearby town in far northwest Afghanistan. This FOB is instantly recognizable as the modern version of the Old West stockades from which the Army campaigned against small bands of Indians, who raided and terrified cattlemen, sheep herders and dusty farm settlements, much as the Taliban do here today, often on horseback. The Indian wars, in their final phase, went on for 30 years.

Chow has improved since then (breakfast: two pieces of bacon, one sausage patty, one piece of bread, a cup of grape juice, and canned peaches, measured out by Staff Sgt. Malcolm Mullen of Hope Mills, North Carolina). But climb up to one of the steel watchtowers -- clamber up a 20-foot mound of dirt, balance along a 12-foot plank, then up steel steps -- and the Indian wars fort comes into view: A large rectangle of fortified walls anchored by the corner towers, enclosing an acre of heavy gravel. Rows of tan tents, a cook shack from which Mullen produces two hots a day, a line of steel shipping containers for storage, a concrete pad and awning for the mechanics, a four-seat plywood latrine baking in the sun, a parked fleet of armored vehicles, and several bunkers of steel and massive 8x8 timber to protect against incoming rockets and mortars.

A generator injects air conditioning into the tactical operations center (TOC) tent but nowhere else; in heat that commonly reaches 120 degrees (one time, 140, a soldier boasts), troops swelter on cots in dust-blown tents. There is no running water, little shade and only a rudimentary weight room for diversion. There's a refrigerated trailer for food storage, but it's busted. Mullen keeps everything, even canned stew, in a freezer (defrosting, in this heat, is no problem).

Beyond the FOB walls, this is the scene: Biblical hamlets of flat-roofed adobe dwellings and walled barnyards of goats and chickens; men and women bent at the waist scything and hand-threshing wheat; caravans of donkeys staggering under loads of grain and hay. In the distant hills, half-dissolved in the haze, are villages that can be reached only on foot or horseback, and gun-smugglers, fields of opium poppy, and Taliban, who until the U.S. Army arrived in April, enjoyed safe haven here.

From this modest home, war is waged against them by Headquarters Battery, 3^rd Battalion 6^th Field Artillery, 1^st Brigade Combat Team, 10^th Mountain Division, Capt. Stefan Hutnik of Marietta, Georgia, commanding. Hutnik takes me into one of the bunkers to talk; outside the crowded TOC it's the coolest place on the FOB.

This is a great job for a 32-year-old Army officer, Hutnik says. He's on his third tour in Afghanistan and this time he feels progress. He operates closely with the next-door Afghan army battalion, planning and executing joint operations. He sends out multiday patrols. He works with local politicians and elders to slowly shift the momentum here from Taliban-dominated to Taliban-unfriendly.

But it's hard living, and troops rotate here for six days at a time from Meimaneh, three hours away, where the U.S. FOB boasts hot water, air conditioned tents, and washer-dryers.

Out here, says 26-year-old Sgt. Brandon Beard, whose upbringing in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, didn't prepare him for the heat, "You try and get in the shade, you lose a lot of weight and you wait for wintertime,'' he said. Beard plans to move to Alaska.

Gormach is literally the end of the road. The internationally financed construction of Afghanistan's Ring Road, which nearly circumnavigates the country, stops just east of Gormach. The Ring Road, despite Taliban opposition, has heralded improved security, which in turn has encouraged the blossoming of markets and commerce and some government services. South Koreans built a magnificent stretch of Ring Road approaching Gormach from the east; the two-lane macadam with bright white lane markers cuts through ridgelines and soars across dry river beds. But Chinese workers, who took over from the Koreans, were regularly kidnapped by the Taliban outside Gormach. Eventually they fled and the pavement devolves into a crude dirt track.

You think this is bad? a soldier demands. "We had a patrol base set up a few miles from here, we had only two George Foreman grills and some meat. We'd go into the village and pay $5 for a garbage bag full of bread, sometimes vegetables. No one ever got sick from it. You gotta come down off your pedestal sometimes. The people out there in the villages have a deep-seated desire to know if there is a human being inside all our armor.''

Up in the watchtower, Pfc. Mason Daniels is a man with a mission. A generator mechanic on guard duty, he crouches behind an M240 machine gun that swivels on a tripod set on sand bags. He straightens up and scans the horizon with binoculars. "Nothin','' he announces with disgust. Daniels is thin with sandy hair and freckles and backwoods West Virginia in his voice.

When Daniels was 10, his uncle, Army Sgt. 1^st Class Donald Bowles, was serving as a sniper with U.S. Marines in southern Afghanistan where he was killed by a Taliban rocket-propelled grenade. Nine years later, Daniels is back for revenge." Why I joined the Ahmee,'' he explains.

Daniels is itching to put some 7.62mm slugs from the machine gun into a Taliban. "I want them to be killed," he says. "Not give up, because they can come back. Killed!''

Angrily, he checks below and freezes. Here comes a donkey laboring under the weight of two men. One of them, Daniels asserts, is carrying a weapon. He snatches the radio, calls his sergeant, reports the possible Taliban almost under his nose. "I hope Sarn't says 'Engage,' '' Daniels tells me. "It's a bad day for these guys, because I ain't had much sleep and not in a good mood.''

The two men and donkey disappear behind the outer walls of Fort Gormach. Hidden from view, they could proceed unseen along any of a network of dry streambeds -- whether they are sneaky Taliban or local farmers.

Sarn't does not say "Engage,'' but Daniels is not convinced. Up go his binoculars. He whacks the sandbags. "C'mon!'' Minutes pass with no sign of men or donkey.

Hutnik's patrols are out somewhere in the hills, climbing in full combat gear. Inside a stifling tent, three Afghan soldiers stand and nod as an American sergeant explains through an interpreter how to use a sand table to rehearse tactics. In Gormach town, Hutnik's staff officers, unzipped from their sweaty body armor, sip tea with the elders, seeking agreement on possible development projects, the currency of counterinsurgency.

The sun seems immobile in the sky. It hammers on the steel roofs of Fort Gormach's watchtowers. Heat dances and shimmers above its gravel. Off-duty soldiers play listlessly at cards under a camouflage net. A soldier staggers out of the baked plywood privy, but little else moves. Daniels sourly scans the horizon. As in the Old West, the war grinds on.