Posted by
Saint Michael on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 5:39:05 PM
It all starts when you park your car in a foreign city where you can’t trust anyone but the guy next to you. Without that trust and that bond you cannot survive in a combat zone. Loyalty is something that needs to be earned and you have to prove yourself for people to trust you. That’s takes time.
As soon as you leave your vehicle you are surrounded by children. Half of them are looking for handouts and the other half want to be your bodyguard. It is well worth the $5 to have one of these kids keep everybody and I mean everybody at least 10 feet away from you.
I took one trip with an Army CID Agent who had very little field experience and had never experienced the swarm of children. He talked a lot and I mean a lot about how experienced he was but his actions and lack of preparation spoke volumes about his experience. He was freaked out that the kids were so close to him and he didn’t bother to bring any candy to keep them at bay. Two things every soldier needs in a combat zone are bullets and candy.
On my first trip I had recommendations from my predecessor on which kids could be trusted and which ones to stay away from. Hafise (pronounced off-ees) with the deformed arm was my favorite “bodyguard”. He kept all the other children away from us as well as any adults. Suicide bombers like to use the burkas as a way to hide bomb vests and it works very effectively. Hafise’s left arm was deformed and he had two small floppy fingers that obviously were not functional. I suspected that his mother probably was exposed to chemical weapons during the Soviet occupation.
It’s sad to see how the children are becoming street smart at such an early age when they should be in school (and there are plenty of schools in AF now). They have no fear of Americans and they know how to survive on the street. They also have an undying loyalty towards each other. They will protect each other through anything that gets in their way. These 10-12 year old boys have seen life and death at its ugliest moments and they survived. They survived because they take care of each and they trust each other.
As an Army Intelligence Officer working in Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan, I faced a lot of situations that would make normal people shudder, from suicide bombers, roadside bombs, ambushes, to kidnappings. Without the loyalty and trust of the guys I worked with, whether they were OGA, FBI, Soldiers, Sailors or Marines we had one thing in common, we had to trust each other. We knew we had to watch each others back and we knew that if we let our guard down we wouldn’t live long.