Free One Hundred Victories by Linda Robinson Page B

especially ideal ambush point formed by the convergence of walls, a hedge, and a building just after the road crossed the river. The brigade commander in Zhari had built a concrete wall that was twelve miles long, with the aim of impeding insurgent movement between Zhari and Panjwayi. White was skeptical that this tactic, which had been successfully used by US units in Iraqi cities, would work here. It seemed to be pushing the enemy further into the Panjwayi area and making it more dangerous.
    One day as White’s convoy approached the bridge, it slowed down to pass two checkpoints, an American one and an Afghan one. He radioed the two vehicles behind him to be ready to hit the gas as soon as they were off the bridge. Their last trip through this spot had been a close call. They had come under attack by insurgents with RPGs. They passed through the ambush without taking a hit, but unfortunately, a Stryker behind them was struck, and men inside were killed. This time, the men floored the gas and sped through the chokepoint without incident. Later that day as White returned through Panjwayi from Maiwand, he stopped at the Panjwayi district center to talk to the team there. Just after he left, a car bomb went off at the gate of the district center. The Panjwayi district governor had been the intended target. The governor escaped, only to be killed in another attempt the next spring. {45}
    The gauntlet successfully run that day, White rewarded his comrades with a stop at their favorite restaurant in Kandahar City for a grilled chicken dinner before they returned to their base at the airfield. Their armored RG vehicles pulled up in front of the restaurant, and White went in to order the meals while a few soldiers stood guard by the trucks. The others carried the takeout cartons of chicken and rice pilaf to the median and sat down in the grass to eat. Curious Afghan men crowded around, and bold children sat down next to the soldiers, who were digging into the cartons and pulling apart slabs of chewy nan bread. Only a few moments passed before the first soldier shared his meal with a doe-eyed little girl at his elbow.
    It was a lively Saturday night. Colored lights festooned shop awnings as Afghans strolled the sidewalks. The city was safer in 2011 than it had been the year before, and Kandaharis had begun to go on weekend jaunts—but it was still not at peace. The violence was targeted, and it very often found its mark. Earlier that very night, the Provincial Reconstruction Team next to the governor’s palace had come under attack.
    The Taliban, which was taking a beating in the countryside, soon turned to a strategy of assassination. Four killings in the spring and summer of 2011 had profoundly shaken Kandahar and the Karzai power network stretching from Kandahar to Kabul. Kandahar’s police chief, its mayor, the president’s half-brother, and Karzai’s oldest confidant and family friend, Jan Mohammad Khan—the former governor of Uruzgan—were assassinated one by one. Khan was killed by attackers, including one suicide bomber, who stormed his home in Kabul. At the funeral, the grief-stricken Karzai fell sobbing into the old Pashtun’s grave. As the drumbeat of killings continued, the governor of Kandahar, never a brave soul, refused to come out of his palace. The president’s half-brother Ahmed Wali Karzai had been the real power of the province, and now that he was gone a power vacuum opened up.
    The only leader in Kandahar left standing was Abdul Raziq, the controversial young border policeman who became the acting provincial chief of police. It did not take long for the Taliban to target him. On January 11, 2012, Bill Carty, the special operations battalion commander who had replaced Chris Riga, visited Raziq at the police headquarters in downtown Kandahar to discuss increasing the number of recruits permitted to join the growing ALP force. An Afghan in the outer office demanded to see Raziq but was denied entry.