While people here complain that we have not yet made Afghanistan "Safe for Democracy", our troops go quietly about their business. (As "Quietly" as Airborne can go!)From "Stars and Stripes."
Sweep through Afghan villages uncovers arms stashed in wall
By Steve Liewer, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Friday, September 13, 2002
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, Near the end of a day of fruitlessly searching homes and people, the squad of "Red Devils" from the 82nd Airborne Division knew it was on to something.
The troops found no men in the battered mud-brick house, only seven women and children. But they did find several magazines of AK-47 machine-gun ammunition and some grenade canisters, not your usual domestic décor, even in war-weary Afghanistan.
Then one of the soldiers spotted something strange under a staircase: a newly repaired wall. The Red Devils tore in.
"We saw some fresh mortar," said Louis, a Special Forces sergeant who joined in the raid. "Behind the wall, there was an abundance of antitank rounds, grenades, small-arms ammunition."
The discovery of the arms cache climaxed a three-day sweep in the Bermel Valley called Operation Champion Strike.
In the first prong of the attack, members of the 3rd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Division, also deployed to Kandahar, swept through a bazaar believed to be an al-Qaida recruiting area over the weekend. They searched about 200 stalls at the bazaar, blowing locks off doors with shotguns if the keys couldn't be found. They questioned 14 men and sent eight to the detention center at Kandahar Airfield.
Capt. Patrick Willis, the battalion's military intelligence officer, described one of those detained as a "high-value target," a financier for the terrorist movement.
"If he didn't work personally for al-Qaida, he was an associate who supplies them," Willis said.
Then, on Monday and Tuesday, the Red Devils, from the 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, hit the adjacent villages of Margah and Sharip-khail, 170 miles south of Kabul, near the Pakistan border.
They were searching for high-ranking members of Afghanistan?s former Taliban leadership, who reputedly lived in a compound on a hill next to the villages.
Ten days earlier, a Special Forces team had visited the village and been fired upon, said Lt. Col. David Gerard, the battalion's commanding officer.
The first soldiers landed from CH-47 Chinook and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters about 7 a.m. local time, fully prepared for a hostile reception. But not a shot was fired at them. They surrounded and searched the hilltop compound of the suspected Taliban leader, but no one was home.
Near midday, as a second lift of troops arrived from Kandahar, they approached Margah, a village of perhaps 20 houses.
The village elders cooperated fully with the Red Devils. The men and children waited quietly outside and were searched, while the women were searched by Spc. Kristine Franc, 20, of Omaha, Neb., a military police officer who joined the combat mission especially for this purpose.
In Margah, the soldiers found plenty of single-shot rifles, some of them antique British Enfields almost a century old. Those rifles were returned to their owners shortly before the Red Devils left town Tuesday morning. They also presented gifts of clothing, food, medicine and school supplies.
About 3 p.m., a team of soldiers moved on to the third objective, a flour mill and some adjacent houses in Sharip-khail. A team of Afghan militia forces soldiers had surrounded it already. Now a team of U.S. Army Special Forces psychological operations specialists sat cross-legged on the floor with the village elders, who served them sweet tea, called chai, according to local custom.
One year ago, members of al-Qaida came to America and destroyed two very tall buildings. Many Americans died ? 3,000 of them,? said Sgt. Louis, who spoke for the Americans through a translator. ?My friends and I are here to find and kill these men.?
But, Louis explained, they also wanted to help Afghanistan. They would leave some supplies if the villagers cooperated.
?We?re not here to take your hunting rifles or your Kalashnikovs or your pistols,? Louis said. ?We are looking for land mines or large weapons ? things that can be used to kill American forces.?
A village elder with a dark green robe, black beard and brown turban said the village would cooperate.
?Most of the Afghans sitting in this room are educated, they?ve been to university,? he said. ?They follow the news on the radio. They know the good and bad of Afghanistan.?
The Afghans waited patiently outdoors while Louis led a small team of infantry back to search a house between the villages. One hour dragged to two, and a cold breeze blew off the mountains. The Special Forces troops standing guard griped about the long delay and pulled out camouflage poncho liners to wrap around the children.
There was a reason for the wait. In the nearby house, the Red Devils excitedly uncovered the weapons cache. They searched the rest of the house but found nothing else. Some soldiers stayed there to guard the site until morning, when combat engineers could take the weapons to the desert and blow them up.
All together, said Maj. Scott Harris, the battalion?s plans officer, the cache included 17 107 mm rockets, 12 hand grenades, an anti-tank mine, some AK-47 rifles, a bag of money, some small-arms ammunition, and some documents that are being examined for links to the Taliban and al-Qaida.
Tuesday morning the soldiers finally wrapped up their search of Sharip-khail, finding nothing else. Gerard met with the village elder to ask about the people who lived in the house with the weapons cache. He told them two men lived there but had left recently, and that the families had little to do with the other villagers.
?[The elder] really wanted to distance himself from these people,? Gerard said after the meeting. ?He seemed sincerely happy that we came here.?
Gerard said he believed the same two men had fired on the Special Forces team 10 days earlier and had fled afterward. He was pleased with the cooperation and friendliness of the villagers, and he was not disappointed at failing to find the Taliban leader they sought.
?The overall assessment of this area is pretty benign,? Gerard said. ?Those that oppose peace, we?ve got them on the run. The fact that they are on the move is preventing them from planning further terrorist attacks.?
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