KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — It was almost dusk Oct. 25 on the Iranian border of Afghanistan's Farah province. Soldiers from the Afghan border police's 4th Brigade and a border police mentor team mostly composed of scout Paratroopers from Troop A, 4th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team (Task Force Fury), 82nd Airborne Division, had been travelling for more than 15 hours on the fourth day of a six-day mission. It was the first time that a BPMT had ever inspected the checkpoints along the Iranian border; previous BPMTs had too few personnel and equipment to make such an operation feasible.
The Paratroopers had started the day wearing night-vision goggles and were preparing to put them back on. Sgt. Tony Alig was explaining the finer points of Murphy's Law; anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
"Murphy works overtime," Alig said. "You know what? At the end of the day, when we're all tired and wanting to bed down, and when the sun is coming down, I bet you we get into contact. That would be just perfect."
No more than 15 minutes later the distinctive pop of automatic fire from a Kalashnikov rifle sounded in the distance.
The radio crackled and one of the other vehicles reported.
"All Yosemite elements: contact," the truck commander said.
Ahead, the ABP sprang into action, diving off their pickup trucks and rushing into formation to return fire. Six trucks, barely visible through dust and fading daylight, sped away over the border.
"What did I tell you?" Alig said. "I'm going to start putting Murphy on roll call."
The expedition took the Paratroopers over almost 700 miles of road, trackless desert, mountains, dry lake beds, and a stretch of highway nicknamed "Improvised Explosive Device Alley." Many of the locations that the Paratroopers traversed had never been seen by American Soldiers before, said Lt. Col. Victor Hamilton, commander of the BPMT.
Iranian soldiers guarding the border were also surprised by the border mission. Early in the operation they started shadowing the passing convoy. There was a brief standstill when the parallel roads on either side of the border closed to less than 200 meters. After pausing for a few minutes, both sides continued on their way.
Afghan soldiers on the frontier live a bare-bones existence. Some checkpoints are manned by only one or two squads. In most cases there are no people populating the desert around check points for dozens of miles. The Afghan soldiers meet adversity with perseverance.
"These are hard people," Hamilton said. "They live a 1790s American life. They do their own cooking, they sleep on the floor. Some have no blankets, no electricity, no water, but they do the best they can with what they've got."
Soldier Malikshah has a wife and son at home. But like his comrades, he's spent his entire four-year career manning a small outpost in their home province of Farah by a giant intermittent lake called Hamun-e Saber, and he's proud to be a policeman.
"We share everything that happens in our lives. If you don't share your story, you can't pass the night," Malikshah said. "Sometimes we miss home. If we get permission we can go home for three or four nights ... It's very hard to be away from my family, but I have to work."
Not unlike Malikshah, Pfc. Justin Baker joined the Army to support his son. Leaving America and experiencing Afghan hospitality and the Afghan way of life has been an eye-opening experience, he said.
"It's like they took a page out of the Bible and added Toyotas and cell phones," Baker said.
Often considered an afterthought to Afghanistan's other security forces, the ABP has the mammoth task of stopping illegal traffic from crossing the border. Ninety percent of the world's opium originates from Afghanistan. Drugs trafficked out of the country help fund insurgency while weapons and fighters are smuggled in across the borders.
The ABP faces big hurdles on the way to becoming an effective organization, Hamilton said. The first is the difficulty of resupplying many border outposts because of their extreme isolation, Hamilton said. The second is equipment. There aren't enough radios, and weapons are often old and weathered. Fuel is also scarce. The third hurdle is trained personnel. There are few specialty Soldiers to repair important equipment when it breaks. Units that can't spare the manpower to send recruits to training often don't have enough non-commissioned officers to train the Soldiers there, and it's difficult for experienced Soldiers to advance in rank.
Hamilton hopes to jump these hurdles first by acquiring better equipment and supplies for troops on the frontier, and second by advising senior ABP officers to change the pay and promotion system to be more appealing to Soldiers. The desired result would be a better NCO corps and less desertion and quitting.
"They really want to do the right thing for the Afghan people," Hamilton said. "But they don't have the equipment and training to operate with confidence."
The Paratroopers must gain the ABP's trust before they will accept advice, Hamilton said. During the border tour ABP soldiers and their advisors became closer by eating at the same tables, living in the same conditions and, despite the language barrier, even sharing jokes.
"I don't know anybody in the states who would let a total stranger into their house and cook unbelievable amounts of food for them," Baker said. "These people don't have anything, but they'll offer the shirt off their back."
Alig, who served in Iraq from 2003-2004 and 2006-2007, said that although his unit integrated the Iraqi army in operations during the surge, he never had so much interaction with allies as now, he said.
The Afghans pulled over to wave their American friends goodbye when the mission was over. Alig and his fellow Paratroopers had feeling it wouldn't be long before the ABP invited them to work together again, he said.
"When we went separate ways at the end of the mission [the Afghans] told us 'We like you guys. We think you're funny. We can't wait to go on another mission with you,'" Alig said.
| Date Taken: | 10.25.2009 |
| Date Posted: | 11.15.2009 13:37 |
| Story ID: | 41616 |
| Location: | KANDAHAR, AF |
| Web Views: | 303 |
| Downloads: | 245 |
This work, Pioneers go west in Afghanistan; Advisors make first NATO inspection of Afghan border posts, by SGT Stephen Decatur, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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