Many will remember that way back in December 2001, immediately following the infamous Battle of Tora Bora, Bin Laden and many of his Al Qaeda buddies escaped US forces using two different routes: one over the mountains into Pakistan, and the other south into the areas of Gardez (where we are now) as well as the little nearby village of Zormat.
The Taliban also have a significant presence there to this day, and as we walked through the streets with our military escorts we wondered who they were among the hundreds of people we saw there. Here's just a little of what we saw while walking alongside our military escorts:
The villagers are already used to seeing US soldiers in their neighborhood, and most of them seem to appreciate our presence there. Suicide bombers are a constant threat, so this is hardly surprising. Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) are also a very serious ongoing problem for local civilians, Afghan law enforcement and security personnel, and NATO forces; we saw several civilian vehicles that had been destroyed by IEDs, including this one that's now home for this sleepy stray dog:
Back on the street the many shop keepers and street vendors are always eager to sell you their wares, and are in fact fairly aggressive salesmen, although MPs can rarely take the time to stop to buy anything:
Over several days I only saw a few women in Zormat, and all of them were escorted by male members of the family. If you look carefully at this photo you'll notice the little child glancing at the MPs while zooming past my camera with his parents on a motorcycle:
At any rate, everybody in the village knows that the MPs are on their way to train and otherwise work with the Afghan police just beyond this same street, and that their long-term security rests with the the local police. Gordon will be writing a bit about the police training program in Zormat in the next couple of days, so stay tuned for more!
No comments:
Post a Comment