The Outpost An Untold Story Of American Valor Part 5

Official notification had been delayed because the recovery and identification of the men's bodies had taken some time; Fenty's remains were among the last to be found. He had been strapped into the inner c.o.c.kpit area, which had burned red-hot for hours after the crash. There wasn't much of him left.

"Gretchen, I know I'm not supposed to ask this, but was it Joe?" Kristen asked.

"Hey, I'm just a wife," Gretchen said.

Kristen heard something at the screen door.

Maybe that's just the heater clicking on, she thought.

Through the top panes of the gla.s.s-and-wood door, she saw that the screen door was swinging open.

Maybe that's just the wind blowing the door, thought Kristen.

No, someone was at the door. She opened it.

Two men were standing there: an Army chaplain and Lieutenant Colonel Michael Howard, a neighbor and friend of Joe's.

Everything that she had been trying to push out of her mind was true.

Howard grimaced and shook his head.

Kristen began to wail. Gretchen came over, lifted the baby from her arms, and carried her into the kitchen.

For Ben Keating, who had been arguing with Fenty about whether the Army should hold two joes responsible for the wind's having destroyed an expensive piece of reconnaissance equipment, the commander's death was a tragedy cloaked in an ugly irony.

On May 5, Keating had emailed his father, insisting that he was not going to seek the toughest punishment for the soldiers. "Misguided or not, I think it requires some courage to refuse to fry these guys for LTC Fenty, even though he's intimated that that is what he wants," Keating wrote, "simply so that he can show his superiors that we play hardball in 3-71 CAV."

Just after he hit Send, Keating was called to the operations center, where he heard of his commander's fate. The man he was so angry at was now dead.

Three days later, he sent out another email, this one to his friends and family: From: Ben Keating8 May 2006 All,I want to thank you for the kind words, thoughts and prayers that you offered in the last seventy-two hours. I would have called or written sooner, but there was a mandatory blackout period that is just being lifted for our soldiers now....As you probably also know, our Troop suffered the loss of three great young men and the Squadron is struggling with the loss of our Commander, LTC Fenty. It has been a difficult few days; we've been blessed with the exceptional leadership of the Squadron XO, MAJ Timmons, and the Command Sergeant Major, CSM Byers. That these two have held up in the face of losing one of their best friends and mentors is a testament to G.o.d's presence here.This is a surreal environment under typical circ.u.mstances; it's an absolutely impossible place to process emotions and feelings in a time like this. Grief will come for most in the days and weeks ahead. The real issue we deal with now is a sort of awakening to the danger here. For three months we've traversed this country's most historied IED routes and patrolled in towns with known enemy threat without incident. The realization that we are mortal and operating in a high-risk area has. .h.i.t home hard.We placed our soldiers on a C-1722 this afternoon; I served as a pallbearer for the Commander's casket. Again, an experience that you've seen played out on the news many times; not an experience you ever expect to find yourself in. Even as we took the flag-draped containers off the trucks and began our slow procession in front of a thousand soldiers, I was emotionally detached. As we climbed the ramp, however, and placed the ten coffins in the cargo hold, the tremendous loss swept over every one of us in the plane's belly. It is certainly a moment I'll never forget, and one I pray never to repeat. this afternoon; I served as a pallbearer for the Commander's casket. Again, an experience that you've seen played out on the news many times; not an experience you ever expect to find yourself in. Even as we took the flag-draped containers off the trucks and began our slow procession in front of a thousand soldiers, I was emotionally detached. As we climbed the ramp, however, and placed the ten coffins in the cargo hold, the tremendous loss swept over every one of us in the plane's belly. It is certainly a moment I'll never forget, and one I pray never to repeat.I can tell you that the certain knowledge that I was in your thoughts and prayers was a great feeling. I have [drawn] and continue to draw strength from the relationships I share with you all. I look forward to renewing each of them on my return, and that too will give me the strength I need to lead my Troop through this difficult period. Thank you all so much,With Love-Ben

Keating remained irked by Fenty's "moral courage" comment, even after Timmons rea.s.sured him that it had not been made with the degree of seriousness that Keating had projected onto it. The truth was that Fenty had been legitimately concerned that the lieutenant's affection for his men might cloud his judgment. Empathy could be a good thing, but a successful leader did not let emotion get in the way of hard decisions.

In another email to his father, Keating delved into his complicated feelings about the loss of his commander, noting that he had

struggled with where my relationship with LTC Fenty was at the moment he died. There have been a lot of things going on inside this head and I've had to work hard to make sense of it all. I was undeniably angry with him; I was writing an email to you, the first paragraph of which was pretty scathing of the man, at the moment he was losing his life. I was hurt, because I still respected the man a great deal and I honestly believe that at some level he meant what he'd said-to some degree, he questioned my integrity. I was frustrated because in my mind he had become nothing short of some diabolical mastermind who had created a problem set with too many impossible conditions and then beaten up those underneath him for being unable to solve it, all the while refusing to change any of the conditions though it was well within his power to do so.Ultimately, I never did make sense of it all, and I'm not sure I'm meant to. I do know that my relationship with the man was a rocky one. We very rarely saw eye to eye on anything from personnel to investigations. But I respected the man, and I would think that he appreciated and respected my abilities as well. I learned a great deal from him and perhaps that is all I am supposed to take away from this. I am not going to feel guilt over where we were at when he died-it wouldn't do any good. Nor am I going to harbor any ill will towards him-and expect he would provide me the same if the roles were reversed.

He continued:

I honestly haven't felt any dread as this incident forced us all to inspect our own mortality. I feel as though the Lord fully intends to bring me home safe and put me to work someplace else.

He signed off by telling his father that he would call home soon. In an email to his mother, Keating contemplated the death of Brian Moquin, who had found a home in the Army:

From a discussion I had with him before he went out on that mission, I think he was a long way from having Christ in his heart. But there is no doubt in my mind that the Holy Spirit was at work in a young man with an awful lot of potential during the trials of his final week. What I do know is that he died as a member of a family that loved him very much.

CHAPTER 7

Monuments to an Empire's Hubris

The administrator for Kamdesh District, Gul Mohammed Khan, seemed stoned.

Could that be right? Could he be high?

Captain Aaron Swain, commander of Cherokee Company, stood at the Afghan National Police station near Urmul, in Nuristan, talking to the local leader, whose eyes were glazed like pastries. Swain knew that smoking hashish was a fairly common form of recreation in eastern Afghanistan, but he was still surprised, since it was early in the morning.

It was June 2006, and 3-71 Cav had a new commander: Mike Howard, the man who had broken the news of her husband's death to Kristen Fenty. From Atlanta, Georgia, he'd been commissioned from ROTC at Mercer University in Macon and joined the Army as a poor kid looking for a way to contribute to his country. Ross Berkoff and Staff Sergeant Jared Monti had both served under Howard during their previous 10th Mountain tour and, upon learning who their new leader would be, had joked with each other that the rest of their unit was in for a rude awakening. Howard was a brilliant tactician with a deep understanding of counterinsurgency, they thought, but in terms of "command presence" and "command philosophy," he was the polar opposite of the man he would be replacing. Joe Fenty might have been stringent, but in demeanor he had been laconic, sometimes even Zen. Howard was irascible, with a quick temper that could turn in a blink from cold to downright predatory.

Howard had served in Afghanistan twice before, but this would be an especially trying a.s.signment. The dynamic of taking over for a commander who had been killed was frequently difficult, and for Howard, Joe Fenty had not been just another officer. To nearly all who'd served with him, Fenty had been an inspiring leader, and to Howard he'd also been an across-the-street neighbor and friend. Howard consulted with senior officers and decided to follow through with what Fenty had been working on, having concluded that it wasn't the right time to come barging in with grand new ideas. Joe Fenty's vision, then, would become Howard's own.

What Fenty and his team-Byers, Timmons, Berkoff, and others-had been helping plan was the establishment of a U.S. presence in Nuristan. Howard now ordered Swain to search around the Nuristan village of Kamdesh for a location where a provincial reconstruction team, or PRT, could set up shop. PRTs were a key component of America's counterinsurgency strategy, one singularly focused on economic development. Distributed throughout district centers and in other key locales throughout Afghanistan, the teams were made up of service members, foreign service officers, and construction experts who would work with locals to help their regions grow through jobs, roads, and other projects-thus, the theory went, winning over hearts and minds. Among military officers, PRTs were trendy, a status that had been cemented when one PRT leader, Navy Commander Kimberly Evans, sat in the First Lady's box at President Bush's State of the Union address earlier that year. The new outpost in Nuristan seemed a fitting base for a PRT.

There was a road that ran between Naray and Kamdesh Village, but it was narrow, and Swain doubted it would be strong enough to withstand the weight and width of Humvees. Thus, in order to scout out a site for the regional PRT, he rented a few Toyota Hilux pickup trucks, which were relatively plentiful in the area, and some all-terrain vehicles, or ATVs.

The first time Swain and his team rolled out of Forward Operating Base Naray, they made it only a dozen miles up the road, to the village of Barikot, before half of the trucks broke down. They went back to Naray to regroup and try again. This time they used just the ATVs-Polaris Sportsman MV7s, painted Army green. As the sun set, Swain and around a dozen troops put on their night-vision goggles and began motoring north, then west. Snyder and his Special Forces team, who were on a separate mission, also joined them, likewise driving ATVs. Two platoons of Afghan National Army (ANA) troops-some thirty Afghans in total-and about six U.S. mortarmen followed in Ford pickup trucks.

They stopped briefly at Barikot, which was on their way, s, swh o Swain could ask the deputy head of the Afghan Border Police, Shamsur Rahman, to come along. Rahman and Swain had developed a strong relationship during a previous operation and had partic.i.p.ated together in shuras with the Kotya elders. Rahman was well connected and hailed from Lower Kamdesh Village. He would be an a.s.set on a trip like this.

Rahman wasn't at the station in Barikot-he was on leave-but his boss, Afghan Border Police Commander Ahmed Shah, was there, and Swain considered him a friend as well. Shah cautioned Swain not to go up to Kamdesh Village. "It's a bad place," he said. The road was dangerous; insurgents had tried to blow up his jeep on a recent tour. Swain thanked his friend for the warning, and the team took off again. It was dark by now, so the enemy, presumed not to have night-vision goggles, would be at a disadvantage.

They stopped near the hamlet of Kamu to drop off one of the ANA platoons, under orders to keep watch on a known IED-maker who had a home there. That section of the road was a prime place to hide an IED, and Swain wanted to take precautions to make sure his expedition wouldn't get hit on its way back.

By 2:00 a.m. local time, Swain, Snyder, and their teams had arrived at the hamlet of Urmul, northwest of and down the mountain from Kamdesh Village. They set up security and tried to grab some sleep. After an hour or two, Snyder shook Swain awake. Snyder thought the plan was for both of their teams to hike up the mountain together to Kamdesh Village, and he wanted to get going before it got too hot. A groggy Swain didn't quite understand what Snyder was talking about; he informed him that while his mortarmen would turn the tubes in that direction and offer fire support if needed, Cherokee Company was going to stay at the bottom of the mountain. The 3-71 Cav troops were there, after all, to find a new location close to the road for a U.S. base and a provincial reconstruction team, not to take a four-hour mountain hike. Snyder said that he and his men were going to head out. Swain told his fire-support officer, Sergeant Dennis Cline, where to aim his mortars if the Special Forces troops needed them. He checked the perimeter and then tried to go back to sleep, worrying that the Special Forces troops would mess up his mission to make nice with the locals, as had been known to happen before.

Although referred to as a single village, Kamdesh actually comprised four distinct communities: Upper Kamdesh, Lower Kamdesh, Papristan, and Babarkrom. (Two other, outlying villages, Binorm and Jamjorm, were separate from Kamdesh and had non-Kom Nuristani populations.) On the map, Kamdesh was only a mile distant from Urmul, but the topographic reality meant that the two-thousand-foot climb would take about three hours-for Americans, at least; even geriatric Kamdeshis could make their way up the mountains like spry goats. Of course, it helped that they weren't carrying eighty pounds of gear apiece.

At dawn, Swain awoke, checked his perimeter again, then opened and ate an MRE-short for "meal ready to eat," the basic ration for troops in the field-and headed for the Afghan National Police station down the road. Outside the station sat the hollow sh.e.l.l of a Soviet armored personnel carrier, once used to transport heavy guns, cargo, or half-platoons of Soviet fighters. Nuristani folklore included many tales about how the locals had stood up to the Soviets in the 1980s. They'd attacked the invaders with clubs, stolen their guns, and later ambushed their armored vehicles-or so the stories went. At least five abandoned such vehicles were scattered around the immediate area like trophies, or monuments to an empire's hubris.

One of the many carca.s.ses of Soviet vehicles, this one right outside the outpost. (Photo courtesy of Matt Meyer) (Photo courtesy of Matt Meyer)

At Swain's request, an Afghan policeman ran up the mountain to Kamdesh to fetch the district administrator to meet with the Americans. Swain wanted to explain the Army's plan to bring in a provincial reconstruction team-or, in the case of underdeveloped Nuristan, essentially a provincial con construction team-to help develop the region. Swain intended to ask the man for his help.

He looked around while he waited. This was a gorgeous part of the world. He gazed up at the steep green mountains and then down into the blue Landay-Sin River. He could see right through the water, all the way to the bottom. Part of him wished he had his kayak and fishing pole.

The Landay-Sin River and its valley. (Photo by Ross Berkoff) (Photo by Ross Berkoff)

Hours later, the policeman returned with the administrator for Kamdesh District, Gul Mohammed Khan-by reputation effective, well connected, and, to some, suspect for his ties to HIG. He, Swain, and a small group of American soldiers and Nuristanis sat in an orchard where small oranges hung from trees. Looking tired and seeming stoned, Mohammed recounted to Swain some of the history of Kamdesh. When asked about insurgents in the area, he insisted that the valley was relatively peaceful, save for the feud between the Kom people and the Kushtozis over water rights and other grievances.

Swain explained what the U.S. military wanted to do in the region. This didn't get much of a reaction from Mohammed. When Swain added that the soldiers would set up camp nearby as the PRT was being built, the district administrator seemed ambivalent.

While preparing to hand over his area of operations to Colonel Nicholson three months before, Colonel Pat Donahue had made it clear that he didn't think it made much sense to send troops into Nuristan. First, the United States simply didn't have enough soldiers in the country to establish a strong presence there: Regional Command East was a sprawling, mountainous territory roughly the size of North Carolina, and the U.S. force numbered only about five thousand troops.

Second, Nuristan Province was incredibly isolated, and its terrain forbidding, with jagged mountains rising as high as eighteen thousand feet. Operations there were grueling; there weren't many functional roads. Third, there wasn't much of a threat involved. Nuristanis were insular, Donahue believed; they didn't like anybody. The men with guns there seemed more like local militias protecting their homes than anything else.

His replacement, Mick Nicholson, saw Nuristan quite differently.

In the Pech Valley in Kunar Province, south of Nuristan, Nicholson had witnessed the hits inflicted on 1-32 Infantry by an enemy well armed with IEDs and rockets, which the Army was convinced were coming from Pakistan. Nicholson, Fenty, Byers, Berkoff, and others had talked about the influx of these armaments from across the border. Kamdesh was close to the road where three of the valley systems from the north merged on their way from Pakistan; if 3-71 Cav could secure a location near this road, the men decided, it might be able to disrupt the threat to 1-32 Infantry in Kunar Province-and to Americans and Afghans in Kabul. Given that American policy forbade troops from entering Pakistan, where so many enemy forces were safely ensconced, Nicholson also figured that if the brigade could set up outposts in adjacent Nuristan, the United States might have more success in killing insurgents, possibly even members of Al Qaeda.

The task in Kamdesh District now fell to Nicholson's new commander of 3-71 Cav, Mike Howard. The brigade didn't have enough troops to heavily garrison the entire region, so deployment would have to be strategic and selective. Since his arrival at Forward Operating Base Naray, Howard had spent quite a bit of time talking with Nuristan's governor, Tamim Nuristani. Nuristani's grandfather had been a famous general who fought the British in the Third Anglo-Afghan War, in 1919, and his father had been mayor of Kabul until the Communists took over-at which point Nuristani himself, then in his early twenties, had gone to the United States. He'd driven a cab in New York City, opened a fried chicken joint in Brooklyn, and later owned a chain of pizzerias in Sacramento called Cheeser's. After the Taliban fell, he'd returned to Afghanistan and worked his way into Karzai's good graces until eventually Karzai appointed him governor.

For months, Nuristani had been pushing for the United States to put a PRT in the provincial center of Parun, but American military commanders had visited the area and deemed it too isolated, as it was accessible basically only by air or on foot. Nuristani's second choice was Kamdesh Village. He told Howard that if he could get the Kom people residing in Kamdesh District on the side of the Afghan government, the rest of eastern Nuristan would follow. Nuristani himself was Kata, so he didn't personally have much sway over the elders of Kamdesh-in fact, quite the opposite. But that was all the more reason to locate the PRT near the largest and most influential Kom community, to improve the chances of the combined United States and Afghan government forces' being able to win over a population naturally skeptical of its governor. Additionally, from the Americans' perspective, putting a base by the road to Kamdesh not only would stop the insurgents from using that road but also would protect the only means of resupplying the camp itself.

Here in particular, proximity to a road was a crucial feature of the PRT's potential location, because air a.s.sets were relatively scarce in Afghanistan. The Pentagon and the Bush White House were focused on Iraq, so that was where the helicopters were. It irked Nicholson. In his area of operations, he was responsible for eleven different provinces, seven million Afghans, and almost three hundred miles of border with Pakistan-and for all of that, he had only one brigade of troops and one aviation brigade. That was it. By contrast, there were fifteen troop brigades in Iraq, and four aviation brigades. It didn't make sense to him.

"Iraq is smaller and has fewer people than Afghanistan," a frustrated Nicholson would say, trying to explain how nonsensical was the relative dearth of resources in Afghanistan. "And by the way, this is where the war started."

Swain still didn't know where near Kamdesh Village he should put the PRT. He and his troops hopped on their ATVs and drove around a bit, looking for some suitable land, but every possible location either was already being used or was inhospitable to construction.

They went up the road to the west, to Urmul. As they were walking up the mountain from there, on the way to Kamdesh Village, they came upon a school. It looked legitimate. Photographs of Afghan President Hamid Karzai were hung on the wall, a good sign that the locals were supportive of the new government in Kabul. The Americans walked back down the hill and down the road and saw a medical clinic. The sign said it housed an ant.i.tuberculosis program sponsored by Norwegian Church Aid and the Norwegian Refugee Council. This must be where the bad guys came to get cleaned up before they headed to Pakistan, Swain mused.

The scouting party returned to the Afghan National Police station. Swain looked around the small surrounding compound. This right here might work, he thought. It was by the road, and there was a potential helicopter landing zone right outside the gate, next to the river. Obviously, the site-at the bottom of three steep mountains-wasn't the best place in the world for a base; security would be a concern. But Swain knew that Howard had plans to send at least an entire company-plus mortarmen and snipers-to defend the PRT. It could be properly protected, Swain reasoned, and if they had to put the PRT next to the road, it was going to be at the bottom of the mountains in any case. Moreover, in this location they could be next to the police station, partnering with the government, and Urmul-where the district administrative offices were headquartered-was just down the road to the southwest. Kamdesh Village was right up the mountain to the south. Nothing that the United States did in Afghanistan could be deemed perfect, but this might be good enough, at least for now.

Snyder and his Special Forces troops were up the mountain, eating lunch with the elders of Upper Kamdesh. Snyder told them about the PRT that Swain was planning on setting up down the mountain, and the elders did not like the idea one bit. Kamdesh was too small, they said. They didn't want U.S. troops nearby.

That's interesting, Snyder thought. It wasn't what the elders had been telling his second in command, or the leaders of 3-71 Cav, over the previous few weeks during shuras at Forward Operating Base Naray, when plans for the PRT were being discussed.

Snyder and his team finished their meal and left their host's house.

"You know, they can't attack us now for three days," Snyder's engineer told him.

"Why not?" Snyder asked.

"We just broke bread with them," the engineer explained, repeating a myth about the region.

As they walked, the children of the village followed them, chanting and yelling, all the way to the edge of Upper Kamdesh. Snyder found this odd. "What are they saying?" he asked his interpreter.

"I can't understand it," the man replied. "They're saying it in Nuristani." The language was incomprehensible to most Afghan interpreters, who were conversant in Pashto and Dari but not in the specific dialect used by these particular hill people. Nuristanis spoke five different languages in all, and within those five, there were a number of discrete dialects.

Adding to Snyder's unease was the behavior of a Kamdesh elder who'd announced that he would join them on their walk down the mountain. The man suddenly turned away from the Americans and proceeded to take a different path. A little farther down the mountain, one of the Kamdesh policemen who were accompanying Snyder and his troops told the interpreter, in Pashto, that he and his men were now out of their jurisdiction, so they, too, were going to break off.

Weird, thought Snyder. And then, a few yards later, tracer rounds started streaming past them: they'd been ambushed.

At first, the bullets did little more than kick up dust. The Special Forces were trained to turn to face their attackers in such situations, orienting their breastplates toward the enemy fire and pushing forward, firing their weapons, to gain dominance.

The insurgents had an answer for this, though: as the Special Forces troops came forward, the enemy fighters sent out small children to stand between them and the Americans.

The Americans held their fire, and the insurgents scrambled away.

One of the Afghan Security Guards with Snyder's group had been shot in the leg. The bullet had hit an artery, and he was bleeding profusely. Snyder and his troops took him into a nearby building and radioed Swain, who in turn called Forward Operating Base Naray and ordered a medevac. One of the Special Forces medics tried to keep the Afghan guard alive, but he soon bled out and died. Sometimes it happened that fast.

Down the mountain from Snyder, Swain unfolded his map and tried to figure out where the insurgents who had ambushed the Special Forces would run. Guessing that they might go southeast of him on the road, past the medical clinic and the school, he ordered Platoon Sergeant Steven Brock to head down there with a mix of American and Afghan troops to head them off. He would meet them there in a few minutes, he said. Meanwhile, a few angry Special Forces troops had returned to Kamdesh Village and detained some elders, demanding answers-an action that embarra.s.sed the Kamdeshis in front of their community.

Special Forces scouts conducting surveillance from surrounding mountains saw a number of Afghan men darting around, and they called this intel in to Snyder, who also began getting similar reports from Apache pilots in the area. Could be innocent, he thought. But likely not.

"We kicked a hornet's nest," Snyder radioed to Cherokee Company. "We're getting out of here." They got on their ATVs and headed back toward Naray. Swain and his men followed suit not long after.

The Americans had been on the road for only a few minutes when Swain saw an RPG coming right at him.

Swain swerved to avoid the incoming rocket and kept driving. It exploded safely behind him. But the battle had commenced.

The glorious Landay-Sin River flowed to their left as they headed downstream, running for their lives. To the north, beyond the river, was a ridge from which insurgents were shooting at them. The 3-71 Cav troops braked their ATVs with a screech, took cover, and began firing back. Sergeant David Fisher-who'd fixed the laser on Daoud Ayoub in the Kotya Valley-had mounted a machine gun on his ATV, and now he yanked it off, ran up the hill to his right, and started firing at the enemy. Swain crouched behind a rock wall and called Forward Operating Base Naray on his radio: "Tell the Apaches to come back," he said. Cline's mortar team fired their tubes in hand-held mode, aiming for the hillside.

After a few minutes, Swain received bad news about the Apaches: they couldn't come back because they were already engaged in another mission. It was the nature of the beast-there were never enough aircraft in Afghanistan.

"We need to get out of here," Swain told his men. "We can't get air cover." So Fisher provided the only cover available, firing up the mountainside as the rest of the team sped away. He kept shooting even as he jumped on the ATV bringing up the rear, driven by Brock, and zoomed off. Luckily, the insurgents were far away-and they weren't particularly good shots.

Just another day at the Afghanistan office.

After the Marines landed on Guadalca.n.a.l and the Solomon Islands during World War II, General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz led a charge toward j.a.pan by "island hopping" in the Pacific Ocean, hitting New Guinea, the Gilbert Islands, the Marshalls, the Marianas, Guam, Tinian, the Palaus, and the Philippines. They bypa.s.sed some of the enemy's stronger points on their way to Emperor Hirohito, but they built up momentum and eliminated possible threats by taking that path.

Michael Howard now wanted to attempt a version of that strategy-village hopping, Berkoff called it-by clearing out the enemy from communities on the way from Forward Operating Base Naray to the new outpost that 3-71 Cav would be setting up in Kamdesh to support the PRT. In their village hopping, the 3-71 Cav troops would first hit Gawardesh and then proceed westward to chase away and/or kill the enemy, it was hoped, in Bazgal, Kamu, and Mirdesh.

Gawardesh, a border village, was home to Haji Usman, a timber smuggler and HIG commander. His two jobs were not unrelated. In 2006, President Karzai, worried about deforestation-more than 50 percent of the country's forests had disappeared since 1978-banned logging and timber sales within Afghanistan. Instead of ending these practices, however, the ruling merely drove them underground, pushing timber gangsters into the arms of insurgent groups such as HIG and the Taliban. There was only one "official" border crossing point in this region, near Barikot, so insurgents used the mountain pa.s.s leading into Gawardesh from the Chitral District in Pakistan to illicitly funnel in supplies and men. Karzai's lumber ban set the conditions for consolidation: trucks and donkeys would transport timber into Pakistan and come back bearing guns and RPGs.

According to standard procedure, before 3-71 Cav pushed into Gawardesh to meet with the elders there, a smaller group from the squadron would go up to make sure no traps had been set for the Americans. Howard ordered Staff Sergeant Chris "Cricket" Cunningham, the twenty-six-year-old leader of Cherokee Company's kill team, to join up with Jared Monti in running a squad of forward observers. Their snipers and scouts would take two days to hike to a ridge overlooking Haji Usman's house near Gawardesh. Only after Cunningham gave the go-ahead would the rest of 3-71 Cav roll in.

After high school, Cunningham had been looking for a way out of Whitingham, Vermont, when one of his older brothers suggested that he join the Army. "Don't sign any papers until they give you one that says 'Ranger' on it," his brother told him-advice that Cunningham followed. Like Byers and Fenty, Cunningham was a rare member of 3-71 Cav who wore the coveted Ranger scroll on his right shoulder, indicating that he had actually served with the Ranger Regiment rather than merely gone through the course.