Free One Hundred Victories by Linda Robinson Page A

very reliable anti-Taliban leader who was respected in the district. Hayes also suspected that the new Ezabad leader might partly be motivated by the prospect of skimming off some of the money or other benefits that he could access by being an ALP commander. Daoud, a short man with deeply sunburned skin and white hair, said his family had lived there for two hundred years. When asked in an interview how many men he thought he would need to secure the village when the special operators moved on, Daoud answered, “None.” Asked to explain, he said, “Ten days after the Americans leave, they [the Taliban] will take over Maiwand. We got along with those people before, and we will again.”
    Daoud did not want the Taliban to take over again—they had shot and wounded his brother, and he did not agree with their strict Islamist rule. He was not fatalistic so much as practical. “If a central government is established, I am willing to work for it. In the time of the king the laws were obeyed, and the maliks took care of the problems. If there is no government, we will need to adapt,” he said, adding, “We are good at quick adaptation.” His brother Mahmoud chimed in. “We have to live here. That means we have to have an understanding,” he said.
    As they prepared to hand off Ezabad to the incoming team, the special operators took satisfaction from the projects that had come to fruition. The school was a wild success. Even the poorest Afghans were eager for their children to be educated, knowing that it was the path to a different future. The school in the qalat was bursting at the seams with boys of all ages—girls attending school was still a bridge too far in this most conservative Pashtun bastion. The teacher, who had come from Kandahar, was assisted by the educated adult son of one of the ALP commanders. The road to the district center was now humming with traffic, although the new gravel road led to speeding, and at least one crash that took the lives of two of the ALP children who worked in the qalat as kitchen helpers. Abdullah Niazi, the gifted Category 3 interpreter who worked with the team, waved the papers triumphantly as he concluded the laborious process of obtaining thumbprints from every Ezabad head of household to complete the formal application for a ministry-funded school with schoolteachers.
    All the men were exhausted after a grueling eleven months in the outback, and many wives were ready for their husbands to leave the force. The team had been deployed for nineteen of the past twenty-four months. Dan Hayes and his wife were hoping to start a family, and Parker’s first child had been conceived during their brief six months at home. He had not yet seen her. Rob, the weapons sergeant, had only seen his daughter for six weeks of her young life. “She thinks I’m a computer,” he said. “She walks over and points to it and says ‘Daddy.’” Jimmy, the medic, joked about ordering his three young children to stand at ‘parade rest’ in the kitchen at home, but he could not wait to see them. As he shaved his tattooed arms, Parker speculated that their last few days would be uneventful. “I think fighting season is winding down. The Taliban are focused on getting their crops in.” Although the insurgents still held most of Maiwand, Hayes believed they had created an inkspot that would spread, if tended properly. Time would tell if their hard labor had produced a lasting foothold in one of the toughest districts.
    SUMMER OF ASSASSINATIONS
    There was no such glimmer of light next door in Panjwayi, however. Scott White, the company commander who oversaw the teams in western Kandahar, liked to go on the resupply convoys because it gave him a chance to see his teams and assess the threat environment firsthand. Powerpoint briefings at staff meetings could never fully convey the gritty realities. But the supply trips were risky. The road through Panjwayi was a virtual shooting gallery, with one