Command Sgt. Maj. Iuniasolua Savusa, left, and 1st. Sgt. Harold Hill at FOB Monti, talk with local Afghans. "We’re here to help," Savusa says. (Nancy Montgomery / Stars and Stripes)
KABUL — It was a routine foot patrol. The soldiers in their night-vision goggles and body armor went single file from Camp Phoenix outside the wire, though darkening fields, beside houses, over ledges, through mud and sewage and to the right of a stinking stream called for obvious reasons “Shit Creek.”
They were vigilant and stealthy, communicating with hand signals.
Dogs barked, crickets chirped and bad odors wafted. An Afghan man occasionally passed by, wraithlike in the dusk.
Several of the soldiers of Company D, 634th Logistics Task Force, assigned to the 33rd Brigade Combat Team, had volunteered for the presence patrol.
Although someone had recently tried to lob a grenade over the fence, no one had threatened a foot patrol in the past six months.
“The people have never been rude to us,” said squad leader Staff Sgt. Henry Baez Jr., an Illinois native and National Guardsman who goes by “Jay,” and plans on a career as a legislator. “They’re just a few hundred years behind us.”
“I wouldn’t say a bad thing about them. Except for the adolescent boys. We don’t get along with the adolescent boys.”
Adolescent boys, part of Afghanistan’s traditionally misogynistic culture, routinely make obscene remarks to female soldiers on patrol. But none were about, and the patrol continued on silently.
The soldiers crossed one highway — the most dangerous part of the patrol, their squad leader had told them in their briefing, where in the past it had been necessary to shoot “a ton of dogs” and at two cars — without incident. True, the lieutenant had tripped and fallen, twice. But noted Baez, “That was good for morale.”
Then things turned complicated.
The patrol prepared to again cross a busy road at the end of the mission just meters away from their base. A soldier sent to stop traffic saw that a certain vehicle appeared not to be stopping. So he fired a rifle shot into the car’s grill.
The car, still some distance away, came to a screeching halt.
Baez approached. The driver was unhurt. Even the radiator seemed OK.
Baez asked through an interpreter why the man hadn’t stopped when he saw the soldier in the road waving his arms. Confusion, the Afghan man replied.
Apologies and handshakes were exchanged, and the man drove off.
Next up, his soldiers. Baez reassured them that their actions had been correct, it was proper to fire, they must not hesitate to protect themselves. “You did the right thing,” he said. “You stopped the vehicle. ... Our lives have been in danger three times. Three times we fired. Today was day three.”
But after the soldiers scattered, Baez confided, “This is a nightmare for me.”
He wondered why he hadn’t seen a tracer round and hoped to God the bullet hadn’t ricocheted.
Baez, whose squad had been on more than 250 patrols since arriving in December, and who had himself been on three missions that day, was looking at a long night, with reams of paperwork. He was looking at having to explain to superiors why one of his soldiers fired on a car.
The incident illustrates the tension for sergeants to somehow find the right balance between counter-insurgency techniques designed to respect and protect Afghans, while also ensuring that their own troops are not unnecessarily endangered — and while performing patrols the way they’ve been taught, single file, spaced apart.
Soldiers now coming into Afghanistan are counseled repeatedly to act less like occupiers and more like respectful guests. Don’t force vehicles off the road, they’re told. Allow vehicles to pass your convoys. Don’t knock men’s turbans off their heads.
Sometimes it sounds easier than it is, and troops feel caught in-between.
“This isn’t a war,” said one. “It’s PR central.”
When Command Sgt. Maj. Iuniasolua Savusa, the top enlisted soldier in Afghanistan, heard about the squad’s eventful foot patrol, he was not a happy man. In fact, he put his face in his hands and shook his head.
“We don’t shoot at vehicles,” Savusa said. “Yes, they’re supposed to defend themselves if threatened. But crossing the street? You stand and wait. Find a crosswalk. Present yourself like you are here to help.”
