Sons’ choices sow peril for Afghan farmer

Reporting from Kuhat, Afghanistan — 

One son has worked for American soldiers. Another stands accused of joining the Taliban.

For Sadullah, a weather-beaten farmer whose wheat fields flank a U.S. Army combat outpost here, daily life hinges on a precarious balance. And on Sunday, the balance tipped.

Sadullah spent the morning crammed with eight other Afghans in a taxi bound for the Arghandab district center just west of Kandahar. He intended to plead with the district governor for the release of his son, Haji Mohammed, 18, arrested last week by U.S. and Afghan soldiers for working for the Taliban.

But the taxi was rocked by a roadside bomb, killing three of the men and two of the children inside. Sadullah was bloodied and bruised but survived, along with three other injured men.

Roadside bombs have killed far more American soldiers than any other weapon in the Afghan war. But they are capricious, killing and maiming Afghan civilians as well.

In the case of Sadullah, 50, who like many Afghans uses one name, there is the obvious irony of an insurgent bomb wounding the father of an accused insurgent. But more intriguing is where Sadullah went for help after his release from a Kandahar hospital Sunday afternoon.

Faint and bloodied, he staggered into the U.S. combat outpost, whose soldiers are often hit by roadside bombs while venturing outside to try to build relationships with villagers like Sadullah.

The encounter underscored the delicate dynamics at work between base and village as the U.S. military attempts to woo Afghans away from the Taliban in Kandahar province, the Taliban’s spiritual home.

Spc. Phillip Singleton, the platoon medic at Combat Outpost Kuhat, tried as best as he could to help Sadullah. He removed an IV needle still in his arm, left there by the Afghan hospital. He diagnosed him with a concussion from the bomb’s blast wave.

Sadullah sat against a blast wall. He looked awful. His dirty blue shalwar kameez tunic was streaked with blood. A cheek was caked with dried blood. He moaned and held his narrow, balding head in his sunburned hands.

Sgt. 1st Class Jeremiah Mason, the base’s platoon sergeant, tried to console him. Mason had met Sadullah several times as part of the platoon’s efforts to build the trust of local elders. He urged him to stop worrying about his jailed son and focus on his own recovery.

Sadullah, a bony man with an unkempt black beard, seemed more distressed by his failure to free his son than by his near-death encounter with a powerful roadside bomb.

“I just wanted to meet the district governor face to face and tell him our story,” he said in a faint voice. “I’m not a rich man. All I want is to be left alone to farm my fields with my sons.”

At his side was a second son, Bachaga, 17, who did construction work at the base until he quit recently, fearing Taliban retribution. Bachaga said he didn’t know why his brother cast his lot with the Taliban, but the decision held serious consequences for him.

If a rumor spread by villagers is to be believed, Haji Mohammed said the Taliban should kill any Afghan working for the Americans, including his own brother.

The platoon commander, 1st Lt. Jordan Ritenour, said he doubted Haji Mohammed ever uttered such a thing. And Sadullah said his jailed son was a good boy who had been led astray by the Taliban — against his father’s wishes.

If his son is freed but still professes allegiance to the Taliban, Sadullah said, “I will beat him with my own hands.”

Haji Mohammed was arrested by U.S. and Afghan soldiers from the combat outpost after they received a tip that he had returned to Kuhat after leaving to join the Taliban. He was interrogated and turned over to Afghan authorities for trial.

Sadullah said he can’t afford to pay a bribe for his son’s release, an all-too-common practice in an Afghan government laced with corruption. In any event, Mason said, there was little chance that Haji Mohammed will be released, bribe or no bribe.

On Sunday morning, 1st Lt. Ritenour learned more about Haji Mohammed from Haji Beardad, a wizened, white-bearded, nearly toothless elder who is the most powerful figure in the village. The lieutenant has built a solid working relationship with the old man, visiting him regularly in his lush pomegranate garden and receiving him on visits to the base.

Over chai in the garden Sunday, Haji Beardad told Ritenour that Haji Mohammed had indeed become a committed Taliban foot soldier. He spoke while inspecting a coloring book, part of a haul of toys given to children in the compound by Singleton, the medic.

“He said the Taliban came to the kid and said, ‘You live around the Americans; why aren’t you fighting jihad?’ ” the lieutenant said later. “They said it was every young Muslim’s duty to fight the Americans.”

Mason said he believed that Haji Mohammed returned home to prove that he was committed to jihad.

“The family is a good family,” he said. “I think it’s a case of a young Pashtun male wanting to prove himself as a man.”

Whatever his son’s motivations, Sadullah said, he did not care to be trapped between the Americans and the Taliban. He liked having the Americans as neighbors, he said, so long as his son is returned to him.

If his son was released, Sadullah promised, he would make him work with his other sons in the wheat fields every day. Farming is a dangerous occupation here in the Arghandab Valley, where many fields are studded with homemade bombs or land mines.

“The Americans can see us every day, working right there,” he said. “How can any of my sons go to the Taliban if they are watched like this?”

Worn out by talking, Sadullah closed his eyes and let out a soft moan. He seemed about to fall asleep.

Mason told Bachaga to take his father home and force him to rest in bed. Bachaga rose to help Sadullah stand up, assisted by two more brothers, Jimagul, 13, and Ali, 9. Jimagul, known to the soldiers as “Jimmy,” walks with crutches from a broken knee that the American soldiers said was set improperly by a local doctor.

Before he left, Sadullah found the strength for a parting comment: “After I heal, I will find a way to get my son back.”

Mason told him to have his sons bring him to the base every day so that the medic could check on him. He was concerned about the effects of the concussion.

Sadullah nodded and, guided by the firm hand of skinny little Ali, trudged slowly home to regain his strength.

david.zucchino@latimes.com