[Vision2020] Lost Innocence (Sharana, Afghanistan)

[Tom Hansen]

>From "The Sandbox", a command-wide milblog, featuring comments, anecdotes,
and observations from service members currently deployed to Iraq and
Afghanistan, at:

http://gocomics.typepad.com/the_sandbox/

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LOST INNOCENCE
Name: 1SG Troy Steward
Posting date: 3/19/07
Stationed in: Sharana, Afghanistan
Hometown: Amherst,NY
Milblog: www.bouhammer.com 

It was a new day, and time for more village patrols, where we pull in, talk
to the locals and elders, and let them know about the upcoming Shura. We
press them on Taliban presence and safety in the village, blah, blah, blah
-- all the same stuff. The adults may or may not tell you anything. Kids are
still the best source of information. They will tell the truth as long as
they don't think they will get in trouble for it. 

Jawed has a good eye for who to talk to, and through many missions has
repeatedly picked the right man or boy out of a crowd and been able to get
some type of intel from them. On this day we went through about five
villages. Somewhere along the way Face pulled me into the shade of a tree,
which was a nice relief, and we just hung back and let the ANA and the 10th
MTN work most of the people for intel. Jawed spotted this one little boy who
was about 10-12 years old. Jawed told me later he was just not acting the
same as the other boys, and we soon found out why.

Through Jawed talking to him we found out that the boy's father had been
murdered by Taliban just 12 days earlier. Apparently the boy's father worked
for the government of the province and was home one night when the Taliban
came into the village. I guess it did not take long for the locals to tell
the Taliban that he was a government employee. They busted into his house
and started beating him and questioning him in front of his family. They
made the whole family, including the boy, watch him get beaten like a dog.
After they beat him really badly, he admitted that he worked for the
Governor of the Province, and they took him out to the field behind the
house. According to the boy's words they hit his father with something in
the head and split it in two pieces. The boy was quite descriptive about
this, so it made us think they must have hit him in the top of the head with
an axe.

The boy was somber and not begging us for things like other boys did -- we
ran the rest of them off repeatedly while talking to him. He also told us
that none of the local men would help the family with retrieving his
father's body from the field, and even the Mullah of the mosque we were
sitting right next to refused to give funeral rights or hold a funeral
procession because the man worked for the government. This means the whole
town is dirty, or the whole town is scared to death of having the same
happen to them. Either way it just pisses you off to think you are trying to
help these people, give them winter food and supplies and take care of them,
when they won't even help a man's family out after he was just brutally
murdered. 

I almost never personally give out food or water when we are stopped,
because I don't want all the kids begging me. But this time I made it a
point to give the kid some snacks and some bottled water. Not because he
gave us the info, but because for one of the first times since I have been
here I felt sorry for a local person that is not in the ANA. Normally they
are all just in the way and always considered a threat. This time I felt bad
for the kid, truly bad for him, and it just made me think what a sucky start
to a life he has had. I figured the least we could do is give him some good
water and the tasty treats that we take for granted, hoping maybe they would
put a smile on his face. 

In countries like this where the people are destined for poverty, sickness,
and possibly early death just by being born here, you have to block out all
your emotions or it will eat you up. Each of these people has a sob story,
but not one you can listen to. The enemy on the battlefield is just a target
of opportunity, and not someone's father, son, or brother. They are a target
that must be eliminated, and when you see them drop, you just mark that as
another one that can't kill you. 

I am not a liberal, bleeding-heart type of person (in case you haven't
figured that out yet), but I am a human being that has a family back home
and people I love and care about, both family and not family. I am not a
cold-hearted killer, but I am a soldier. The only way a soldier makes it
through the places and events that we must walk through is to remove the
emotion and spirit from the people that are around us. It is easy with
adults, actually very easy, but with kids it is not. When you hear a little
boy laugh or a girl giggle, you are reminded of the innocence these kids
deserve, but will never realize. They are destined to a life one tenth of
which would drive a kid in our country to years of Prozac and therapy. It
makes the kids hard mentally. They are not allowed to enjoy being kids. 

When you are in a field trying to drag your father's split-head body to a
burial spot because nobody else will help you, your innocence is left in the
field with your father's soul.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil
and steady dedication of a lifetime." 

--Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.