Free Operation Dark Heart by Anthony Shaffer Page A

centralized government control that most Afghans ever saw—and the police were often as corrupt as Casablanca ’s Captain Renault, also ill-trained. Still, they frequently were all that stood between the Taliban and central government control of a village and, in many instances, entire provinces.
    In the video, the attackers moved closer and closer, scrambling down the mountainside, the narrator explaining in whispers. The transcript laid out in chilling detail their plan of attack. We will kill the infidels. This will be part of a string of victories over them. Inshallah .
    They checked their weapons, then one guy gave the word and they moved down the hill, firing as they went, the camera bobbing as the video guy scrambled to keep up. Both policemen turned to look, expressions of shock on their faces. One tossed his cigarette aside and was shot and killed almost immediately. The other guy was hit and knocked down. The attackers were shouting and firing, the gunshot sounds distorted into something unrecognizable by the cheap microphone on the video camera.
    The second policemen struggled to get to his feet, speaking pleadingly to the attackers. He tried to pull something from his breast pocket.
    They shot him in the head.
    I leaned forward. “Whoa,” I said.
    Not much of a fair fight—twelve to two in this encounter—and this sort of thing was being repeated dozens of times per week as the Taliban’s ambitions became real and their minions were on the move.
    After the murders, the attackers celebrated, mugging for the cameraman, smiling and dancing around, weapons above their heads. They rifled the pockets of the dead policemen.
    If these deadly teams gained control of police stations, they pretty much had control of the village as long as they could cut a deal with the elders. The message to the elders was unequivocal: Play ball with us or die. A persuasive approach. It didn’t take much in these remote areas to grab control over enough villages to give you effective control of the province. Newly elected president Karzai was weak—he was known sardonically in Afghanistan as the “mayor of Kabul”—with little control outside the capital. The Taliban were taking full advantage of that lack of strong central control.
    They were also replacing their disorganized hit-and-run attacks against U.S. forces with better-coordinated assaults, and more sophisticated ambushes on softer targets: police officers, foreign and Afghan aid workers, and contractors.
    The body count, as well as the intimidation, was rising.
    In March 2003, an International Red Cross water engineer was grabbed by a member of the Taliban in Oruzgan Province in southern Afghanistan, the home province of Taliban chief Mullah Omar. The Talib who captured the engineer called up Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah and, on orders from Dadullah, shot him to death.
    In May, two engineers working for a German aid agency were critically wounded by remote-controlled bombs that exploded near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. Two members of a foreign ****** team were also murdered that month when a suicide bomber in a car pulled up next to their bus as they were headed for Kabul Airport and then detonated himself. Dave was spared being caught in the blast, but came upon the scene just seconds later.
    In June, four German peacekeepers were killed when a car bomb detonated in Kabul, and six guards working for a U.S. contractor overseeing the reconstruction of the road between Kabul and Kandahar were killed by gunmen in August.
    Leaflets or “night letters” were also appearing in towns and villages. They showed up more often than not nailed to a village’s central “bulletin board,” and where no board existed, they were nailed to schools, offices, and other community locations—all done under the cover of darkness. They’d creep into these villages overnight to prove the point of their invincibility. The night letters gave the Taliban credit for the attacks and