Gunfight at the OK Corral

Bamyan is a peaceful, stable, secure place to live and work, not just relative to the rest of Afghanistan, but compared to a lot of places -- there are no places in town that are off limits, whereas there were neighborhoods in New Orleans that I just would not go. Those neighborhoods largely don’t exist anymore, but you know what I mean.

So, what’s with this headline? Funny you should ask. As part of the overall security posture of the province, the Afghan Government (Ministry of Defense) shipped 200 - odd Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers here. I am not entirely certain where they are from, but I think Kandahar. Wherever they came from, it was most definitely an area where less peacekeeping, and more warfighting was called for. These guys have seen ACTION.

Should be no problem, right? Disciplined troops are deployed wherever to preserve overall security, or at least that’s the theory. Only a couple of holes in that idea: 1) discipline is not, ahem, a strong suit for these guys, and 2) the ANA soldiers are almost entirely Pashtun ethnicity, while the population in most parts of Bamyan, including the Afghan National Police, is Hazara.

Flashback to earlier notes: as I mentioned, Bamyan is the unofficial capital of Hazarajat, where all of the Hazara minority people live. Hazaras, akin to Mongolians in appearance, largely Shia Muslim, have been the second-class citizens in Afghanistan for hundreds of years, and most ethnic groups in Afghanistan have no problems continuing to treat them that way. The Taliban were predominately Pashtuns from the Southern parts of Afghanistan. Add all that up, and what do you have? A recipe for trouble, that’s what.

As per their security directive, the ANA formed Vehicle Checkpoints (VCPs -- you knew there had to be an acronym) on strategic locations near the Provincial Counting Center in Bamyan. All vehicles would be required to stop at the checkpoints, and show the proper identification. Those vehicles without the appropriate i.d. would not be allowed through.

Seems pretty straightforward, and, to our relief, everything stayed quiet, at least at first. The night before the elections? Not so quiet. I’m going back to my hooch, getting ready for bed, when I see red flares arcing across the sky. What’s with the flares? I asked. Duh. I’m not military -- they weren’t flares, but tracer rounds. The Alert signal goes off, and we all drop everything, grab our body armor and helmets, and take up our posts in various bunkers throughout the camp.

Up on the wall, we saw fireworks like I’ve never seen before. Muzzle flashes EVERYWHERE. It’s what Ahnold’s stupendous 50 caliber machine gun moment in Commando would be if it happened at night (Somebody told me last night Ahnold killed 105 people in that movie. The guy who discovered this has wayyyy too much free time.) Wow. Somebody has to be dead, at least so I’m thinking. Only on the A-Team do you see people fire that many bullets fly without ever hitting anyone.

Amazingly, no one was injured. Given where some of the bullets went into the vehicle and out again, it really does seem miraculous. I am less incredulous about the Magic Bullet theory and JFK, now that I have seen entry and exit points for bullets that defy rational explanation (I know, I know, there is a perfectly sound physics explanation, but this is not CSI Bamyan -- you’ll have to wait for the video.)

It took a while to reconstruct events (stuck in that body armor for 2 hours -- that stuff gets heavy!), but here is what happened. (If I got this wrong, it is my own fault, no one else). So long as people respected the VCP process, it seemed to work smoothly. The local ANP Deputy Chief of Police, however, did not see that these rules necessarily applied to him. His driver ran the checkpoint at night, the ANA opened fire, and then all of the ANP at the Counting Center came out to support their comrades in arms (leaving their posts, I might add). Dozens of people were all firing at each other.

Well, I’ve had my one experience, right? Now I can boast of being out in the "hot zone" along with all the tough guys! Wrong. I would be quite happy for that armor to be useless luggage for the rest of my time here. (You’ll pardon me if I don’t refer to it as dead weight -- makes me uncomfortable.) Some of my colleagues at other PRTs have a much different experience, with nightly rocket attacks so routine you can almost set your watch to it. One of my colleagues was saying that, given the choice, he prefers being in a tent, because of space, but ultimately chooses to stay in a hooch because schrapnel is less of a concern. (!!!!) This is not my Afghanistan experience, and, honestly, I am happy with that. I will admit I came to Afghanistan to engage in what we like to think of as frontier diplomacy, but you can keep the combat stories. (One U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel is considering applying for a Combat Action Badge based on our little event, but I think we have dissuaded him.) The Deputy Defense Minister, in town at that time, gave his best Rodney King, pleading with ANP and ANA soldiers to work together as brothers for "one Afghanistan."

I probably know better than most when something falls on deaf ears. That plea for unity surely did. Every great hit from Hollywood deserves a sequel, right? (These days, every mediocre movie gets a sequel too -- what’s up with that? I blame Michael Eisner and the entire Straight to Video phenomenon.) We got a second dose of ANA-ANP love fest, not a week later. Wrapping up work a couple of Fridays ago, I am online chatting with my wife, when I hear that ever-so-distinctive ‘pap pap pap pap’ off in the distance, and, a few seconds later, more paps in answer. Rats, rats, rats, rats, big #@%% rats! Run back to the hooch, grab the armor and the helmet, and head straight for the bunker. Vuja de all over again.

This time, an off-duty ANP officer refused to give up his weapon after the ANA demanded it. (He did not have any type of identification or permit for it, as would be the case with your neighborhood police officer or state trooper.) He fired his weapon into the air to scare them off. Bad move. The ANA guys grabbed him, grabbed his weapon, and then proceeded to beat the stuffing out of him. (The ANP officer’s lung collapsed later that night from his beating.)

Those random bullets brought the reserve ANA guys out of their compound, running hither and yon, firing at whatever happened to be moving. Did they know what was going on? No. Did they wait to find out before running out, guns blazing? You guessed it -- also no. Like I said, this particular group of ANA soldiers is not exactly the most disciplined soldiers on the planet.

This second incident triggered the local government. In a meeting the following day, Provincial Governor Sarabi was as mad as I have ever seen her. Given that this seems to be a culture that prides itself on courtesy, on face, her blowup was all the more surprising. Defense and Interior Ministry officials were called up for an investigation, and all of us sat down with local shura leaders a few days’ later to head off a potentially incendiary protest. (We were successful, this time. Just keep talking, eventually people get tired, or drink too much tea, or something. They run out of gas.)

To be fair, it takes two sides to have an argument. Hazara and Pashtun people may not see eye to eye, but at some point they will have to realize that they are all from one country. If Afghans do not develop a sense of national identity, rather than tribal or ethnic identity, this experiment’s chances are not good, no matter how hard we (the US, the UN, NGOs, other donors, all of us) work to get this country onto the same sheet of music. Everybody knows that you cannot create a nation, or a national identity, overnight. The real question is how much breathing room with events give Afghanistan? Can it tread water long enough? Time will tell.