Sorting Friends From Foes

“No Taliban here,” the police chief said.

“No, never,” the sub-governor added. “This is the safest place in all Afghanistan.”

Marine 1st Lt. Jeremy Wilkinson, the snuff-dipping commander of Whiskey Company, was skeptical. Every week, U.S. troops are ambushed by gunmen in these hooded passes along the border with Pakistan.

“Well, everyone says there aren’t any bad guys around,” the lieutenant told the two ostensible allies as they squatted on their haunches, stolid and implacable. “But how come we keep getting attacked?”

The Afghans had no answers. Wilkinson and his men moved on, penetrating deeper into the Pushtun tribal highlands on a mission emblematic of the shifting U.S. effort in Afghanistan, where both the enemy and the truth are elusive.

Three years after the fall of the Taliban, American forces have seized a measure of control over the restive border region. They have built alliances with local police and militia leaders, buying allegiance through training, equipment and humanitarian projects. The Taliban, defeated but not entirely broken, has support among the ethnic Pushtun mountain tribes here.

Insurgents continue to flow into Afghanistan along ancient donkey trails and rocky ravines from Waziristan, Pakistan’s lawless tribal region where Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding. Commanders like Wilkinson lead regular forays into remote canyons, trying to seal infiltration routes and divine the intentions of tribes at war with one another -- and sometimes with the Americans.

Wilkinson, a sturdy, sandy-haired man of 29, is weary of dealing with the mountain Pushtuns, and can sound jaded at times. Yet he also expresses faith in the value of straight talk, noble intentions and a helping hand.

“I don’t lie to them, so I expect them not to lie to me,” the lieutenant said. “But it doesn’t always work that way.”

Two years ago, a Times reporter traveled the border with combat teams of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. Their focus was on finding and destroying weapons caches, sealing and searching villages and arresting suspected Al Qaeda members.

Today, with the biggest weapons caches already found, Wilkinson’s Marines conduct mostly “soft knock” missions. Aggressive raids and the pursuit of Al Qaeda leaders -- including Bin Laden -- are left to a secret U.S. Special Forces unit operating from a secure base near the provincial capital, Khowst.

The Marines are focused on Taliban fighters and the Pushtun tribesmen who support them. Compared with U.S. forces here two years ago, they operate from a relatively secure foothold.

“The area has improved dramatically over the past two years,” said Maj. Gen. Eric Olson, the operations commander for coalition forces in Afghanistan, citing better security and support from local police and militias who once fought the Taliban.

U.S. forces certainly have more control here than in Iraq. Where the Iraqi insurgency is deep and broad, support for the Taliban is confined to pockets such as the border region and south-central Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda fighters -- mostly Arabs and Chechens -- are based in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, Olson said. It is mostly Taliban fighters, not foreigners, who receive aid and sanctuary from fellow Pushtuns as they slip back and forth across the porous border -- a frontier U.S. troops are not permitted to cross except in certain cases of hot pursuit.

For the Marines of Whiskey Company, maintaining security and beating back the Taliban require regular patrols into the remote mountains, where they face hostile villagers, roadside bombs and rocket attacks.

The troops, from the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, are based at Camp Salerno, a burgeoning military city near Khowst. Two years ago, Salerno was a rough tent camp. Today, it has satellite TV, internet connections, a PX, barbershop and a mess hall that serves hot meals -- and steak and lobster on Friday nights.

The Marines encountered the district police chief and sub-governor in Magar, a remote hamlet carved from a mountainside at 7,500 feet. In the mud-and-stone dwelling that serves as the office of the sub-governor, Khanan Mangul, hangs a dusty portrait of interim Afghan President Hamid Karzai. But Wilkinson had dealt with Mangul before and did not fully trust him.

“The sub-governor is a little wishy-washy,” said Wilkinson, older and more self-assured than most lieutenants, having served nearly eight years as a Marine enlisted man. “He tends to blow with the wind.”

Wilkinson is wary of being manipulated, and he understands the precarious nature of his mission. In a sense, allegiance to the U.S. also is for sale, wrapped in the fragile promise of a generator or well or four-wheel-drive truck.

“You can’t buy an Afghan,” he said after listening to the sub-governor. “But you sure as hell can rent one.”

Wilkinson had more confidence in the police chief, Kalim Khan, a stout, bull-necked Pushtun the Marines had nicknamed “Unibrow” for his thick black eyebrows. Some of the information provided by Khan on previous visits proved to be true -- a pleasant surprise.

The lieutenant relies on civil affairs and military intelligence teams, and on two local Afghan “terps,” or interpreters, code-named John and Bob for their protection. The civil affairs team assesses humanitarian needs and doles out assistance. The intelligence team pokes around for information about the Taliban.

In Spera, a mountain hamlet two hours by dirt track from Khowst, the teams encountered sullen elders in dark turbans who complained about the lack of paved roads, electricity and running water. They also were angry about searches of their homes by U.S. forces.

Spc. Chris Ifill, a civil affairs reservist who was a college junior in Philadelphia just a few months ago, let out a sigh. He’d been in Afghanistan only a few weeks, but he’d heard it all before. He told the elders that if they would just point out Taliban fighters and sympathizers, the Americans wouldn’t have to conduct searches.

“Until your people stop turning their heads when they see something instead of telling us what they know,” Ifill said, “we won’t have the security we need to provide humanitarian assistance.”

The bearded faces of the elders were inscrutable.

“Can we get a new truck?” Adrim Gul, a village militiaman, asked abruptly.

A new four-wheel-drive truck recently provided by the Americans had been driven off a cliff by a police officer, killing the district police chief’s nephew and destroying the vehicle.

Ifill reminded the elders that a U.S. helicopter had flown survivors of the accident to Camp Salerno for treatment. Then he hinted that a new truck could be on the way, provided the flow of useful information improved.

The elders murmured and spat. They picked at their calloused feet and scraped their teeth with matchsticks.

“We’d like a tractor also,” Gul finally said.

Another elder asked for chairs for the village school, where children sit cross-legged on a dirt floor. Ifill wrote out a note on a scrap of paper, asking election officials to donate leftover polling station chairs, and signed his name.

He gave the elder the note, along with a tiny medallion of St. Michael, the patron saint of paratroopers. It showed an angel stomping a devil.

“What is this?” the elder asked. As the interpreter struggled to explain, Ifill ended the meeting, leaving the elders hunched over the medallion.

That night, Wilkinson sent sniper teams up the surrounding ridges, hoping to intercept Taliban fighters crossing the border five miles away. He also sent teams to search vehicles plying the narrow dirt tracks.

They found nothing. Wilkinson figured that if there were any Taliban in the area, the arrival of a noisy military convoy of 13 vehicles and 73 armed Americans would have frightened them off. But he also knew that two major infiltration routes were nearby.

Wilkinson and his men spoke often of confronting and killing Taliban fighters. They were frustrated by the insurgents’ refusal to fight head-to-head battles, and by their reliance on roadside bombs and hit-and-run attacks. They considered such tactics unmanly, and unworthy of true warriors.

Wilkinson also was growing tired of local elders claiming there were no Taliban around. U.S. satellite and signal intelligence strongly suggested otherwise, he said.

“This canyon is one of the hottest places in the country right now,” he said.

That night, the village elders in Magar invited Wilkinson and his interpreter to an iftar, the breaking of the Ramadan fast. Wilkinson, his automatic rifle in hand, climbed a stony hillside at dusk and sat cross-legged on the floor of a mud dwelling.

On a scuffed sheet of plastic, a crowd of men sat around a spread of goat meat, a stew of potatoes and beans, and the Afghan flatbread called naan. They filled and refilled Wilkinson’s cup with green tea.

Walikha Khan, a black-bearded villager who said his brother Barakh had been shot and arrested by U.S. forces six months earlier, warned Wilkinson that the villagers were not afraid of fighting. His father and grandfather had killed rival tribesmen over the years, he said, and he was prepared to fight any invaders -- tribesmen or Americans.

Khan said rival tribesmen were falsely claiming that Taliban were active in his village.

“Don’t make the mistake the Russians made,” Khan said. “They had informers and they arrested the wrong people and it turned everyone against them. This can happen to the Americans too.”

Wilkinson calmly sipped his tea, but he took Khan’s threat seriously. He asked Khan whether he could guarantee the Marines’ safety. Normally, village elders make a grand show of assuring U.S. forces that they will protect them; Pushtun tribal codes require visitors to be provided hospitality and sanctuary.

“I don’t want to guarantee your safety,” Khan replied, “but I’ll try.”

It was the first time Wilkinson had not received an absolute guarantee. He wanted to show Khan he wasn’t cowed.

“That’s OK,” he said. “We hope someone starts a fight. We’re always ready.”

That night, Wilkinson posted sniper teams and observation posts on the ridges surrounding his base camp. He sent patrols up and down the canyon. There was no attack.

The next morning, as the patrol prepared to leave Magar, Wilkinson had his mortar team fire nearly 20 high-explosive rounds into the surrounding canyons. If anyone was lurking and waiting to detonate roadside bombs, he hoped the explosions would drive them off.

The mortars soared into the blue sky, exploding in clouds of gray smoke, their delayed boom echoing off the canyon walls. The entire male population of Magar squatted at the edge of the hamlet to watch.

Wilkinson believed that some of the villagers were Taliban supporters. “Two out of 10 people here hate you and want to kill you,” he said. “You just have to figure out which two.”

The patrol arrived safely at its final base camp, on a rocky escarpment above a streambed. Wilkinson sent out teams to search vehicles plying the dirt switchbacks and trails carved into the mountainside. They found nothing.

It had been a fairly uneventful mission, with many more to follow. They had found evidence of Taliban, but no Taliban. They had fired mortars, but no shots. They had made no arrests and confiscated no weapons.

“Hey, sometimes just showing a presence, seeing what the community needs, asking questions -- sometimes that’s enough,” Wilkinson said. “We’ll be back.”

Throughout the night, the Marines listened to the grinding gears of overloaded trucks chugging over the streambed, to the tolling of bells around the necks of grazing camels, to the bleating of goats scouring the barren hillsides for tough wild grasses, and to the insistent braying of donkeys. Long before dawn, the cocks began to crow.

Sometime in the night, the radio team received a message: The brother-in-law of a Marine in Whiskey Company had just been killed by an explosive device in southern Afghanistan. The Marine took the news hard, and Wilkinson decided to get the young man back to base right away so that he could be flown out to help return the body.

It wasn’t the first time a combat death had affected the company. “I hate to say it,” he said, “but just about everybody here knows somebody who’s been killed or wounded.”

Long before first light, Whiskey Company was packed and ready to move out. Headlights cutting through the dust, the convoy snaked slowly along the narrow switchbacks, headed back down the mountain to the sanctuary of the camp called Salerno.