U.S. soldiers surrounded by enemies as locals throw rocks, curse troops in Afghanistan
James Gordon Meek DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
"Did you see that?" a G.I. asked a buddy over the headsets inside a vehicle at the rear of the armored column one recent morning.
"Yeah, he just threw a rock," his sergeant replied from the front passenger seat.
The children of Kandahar don't greet U.S. and NATO trucks with flowers. They often hurl rocks in the crumbling mud-brick neighborhoods where the U.S. aims to crush the insurgency by year's end.
This ancient southern city is critical not only because the Taliban started here but also because it's where its post-9/11 insurgency took root. It also is near Quetta, in Pakistan's tribal zone, where the Taliban leadership runs the Afghan war and recruits many fighters from the region's madrassahs, or religious schools.
Our armored vehicle growled slowly - agonizingly slowly - through narrow streets lined with vendors hawking dust-covered produce from nearby farmlands. As the yellow silt of Kandahar City dust sifted down through the open turret, the gunner switched from his mounted heavy .50-caliber "Ma Deuce" machine gun to his more nimble M-16 rifle.
In the heart of the city, where Osama Bin Laden and his henchmen plotted the Sept. 11 attacks a decade ago, children gave American troops the finger.
"F---in' Kandahar," the young soldier at the wheel muttered.
The U.S.-led coalition was supposed to begin an offensive here this summer to flush out pockets of the Taliban, but that's been put off. Troops have been conducting "clearing operations" on the outskirts of the city in areas like the Arghandab valley, where fighting has been intense.
The sergeant commanding the patrol was nervous that suicide bombers might try to get close enough to attack the convoy by posing as Afghan police.
Several pickup trucks belonging to the Afghan National Civil Order Police
(ANCOP) were recently stolen, he said.
"If you see something, gunner, don't be afraid to talk," he instructed.
Minutes later, an Afghan police pickup truck raced past the American vehicle. The sergeant screamed the gunner's name into the headsets and barked, "You gotta let me know when people are passing us!"
"My bad," the turret gunner replied. "I thought they had the right of way."
August 16, 2010