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Soldiers try talking Taliban out of fighting

CHINAR, Afghanistan — The U.S. paratroopers sat down with Afghan elders and police to a shared lunch meant to foster relations. But even before the roast lamb had been mopped up, the Americans made an unnerving discovery: a cache of rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and a land mine.

Soldiers, suspicious that the weapons could belong to militants, raced to remove them from the police storage facility. The pleasant mood fostered over a meal was shattered. Even as Lt. Col. Brian Mennes ordered his 82nd Airborne paratroopers to calm down, he acknowledged the general sense of alarm.

“I think the fact that they have mines and mortars is a little suspicious,” Mennes said. “We’re going to take the dangerous stuff. Otherwise, we’re going to be in for a long couple weeks,” hinting that the police weapons could be aimed at U.S. positions just outside town.

Mennes and other U.S. leaders sat down for the meal knowing well that some of the men in long, dark beards and black turbans were enemies playing nice. But in order to get a foothold in the area, the Americans had to talk with the Taliban.

“When you roll in here with 800 heavily armed men, it can cause a lot of anxiety. Until you [talk with them], they’re real standoffish,” said Mennes, who leads the 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment based at Fort Bragg, N.C.

U.S. and NATO soldiers are increasingly holstering their weapons and attending traditional Afghan lunches and tribal meetings known as shuras, an embrace of local customs in a country where conversation over tea is a national pastime.

The goal: to gather intelligence, advertise the aid and development that NATO and the Afghan government can bring, and talk transitory Taliban fighters into disarming. The counterinsurgency strategy is based on weeding out what NATO calls Tier 2 Taliban — poor farmers or jobless villagers that the hard-core, ideological Tier 1 Taliban conscript.

“We don’t actually want to kill the Tier 2 people. We want them to be a part of the country,” said Squadron Leader David Marsh, a spokesman for the NATO-led force.

“We think if people trust us, they will share intelligence with us that will help them in the long run,” Mennes said. “The economy has to grow. Security has to grow. If I come in and kill everyone, it does nothing.”

But the American-Afghan lunch showed how tricky such sit-down meetings can be.

The U.S. paratroopers discovered the weapons after meeting with dozens of Afghan elders in this isolated mountain town earlier this month on the border between Helmand and Kandahar provinces, a place where U.S. or NATO troops have never been. The area is described as Taliban country, and U.S. and NATO officials know the local police cooperate with the hard-line militia.

This village in particular will prove a tough task in the short-term, because troops are staying here only a couple weeks. Their primary mission is to watch over a key route the Taliban is using to ferry fighters and equipment into Helmand, where mostly British forces are carrying out NATO’s latest mission, Operation Achilles.

NATO’s top commander in the south, Maj. Gen. Ton van Loon, let it be known to provincial-level officials that troops were to arrest the district police chief here for his ties with the Taliban, so he fled, leaving only a deputy police chief for Mennes to meet with.

“The Taliban is there. There’s no doubt about it,” said Zach Khan, Mennes’ cultural adviser and translator. He was born in Pakistan but grew up in the U.S.

Fertile poppy fields grow all around the police compound, and Capt. Said Farad, an Afghan army commander working with Mennes said the last three government-appointed district chiefs here have been killed.

“Nobody will kill the current chief because he has a deal with the Taliban,” he said.

Town elders tell the Americans in unison that they want clean water and electricity. A man in a black turban and long, gray beard says that whatever locals are doing — a possible reference to poppy cultivation or day-fighting with the Taliban — is done only out of poverty.

“We will do whatever we can to help you, but we want our stomachs to be full,” an elder with a long white beard says.

An Afghan police commander from outside the region traveling with Mennes said it was possible the region is sympathetic to the Taliban because it has never seen the benefits of legitimate government.

“The problem is that they’ve been asking government for what they need, water and electricity, but no one has heard them so far,” said police commander Ashiqullah Daqari.

A representative from the U.S. Agency for International Development is on hand to talk about possible projects, including wells and even a road. Troops hold a medical outreach program where medics examine Afghans.

But Mennes knows to make no promises, because U.S. troops will pull out once Operation Achilles is over.

“I can’t expect them to turn in their neighbor because I know what they’ll do after we leave,” Mennes said.

The cache of weapons found at the police compound points to what might happen: the 80 RPGs and 50 mortar rounds could be used against locals who engage too closely with the Americans — or against government or NATO forces in the future. And as Mennes’ soldiers help inventory the weapons, a dull grumble spreads through the troops, many of whom feel talking to the locals isn’t the way to go.

“I’m all for respecting culture and negotiations, but we should have just come in here and cleaned up,” said Spc. Joshua Burrell. “This is an infantry battalion on a leash right now.”