Free Lions of Kandahar by Rusty Bradley

needed to renew and continue to build our relationship. We needed a level of trust that could sustain the pressures of combat.
    I let everyone know we would be leaving for KAF in twenty-four hours. The damn mission had not even been formally announced, but I had to get the Afghans on board. We held a team meeting in the small mud TOC, and almost all the comments started with, “But Captain …” We had no choice but to make the mission work, so we called a chai session with the Afghan leadership in their compound.
    Shinsha, the Afghan commander, and Ali Hussein, my scarred protégé, came and joined me and Bill on the floor of their main mud hut, which was used as the ANA headquarters. Over boiling-hot tea, I started by channeling my best football-coach-before-the-big-game speech. I played heavily on the centuries-old unwritten tribal code of Pashtunwali, an ancient ideology that governs the actions of Pashtun tribe members. They believe that when they die, they will be judged by their god, Allah, by however closely they have followed the Pashtunwalicode. I hammered home the blood feud with the Taliban (
badal
), the duty to honor the family (
nang
), the love of the Pashtun culture (
dod-pasbani
), and their sworn oath to protect it (
tokhm-pasbani
).
    “Will your people remember your names? Do you want to live under the heel of Taliban rule again?” Then I bellowed, “You are the Lions of Kandahar! You are the protectors of southern Afghanistan! We have fought and bled with you many years. Will you not fight with me now?” My Afghan comrades, dressed in fatigues and sitting cross-legged on the floor, seemed fixated on what I was saying.
    “No country has ever helped Afghanistan like America. Did we not help you defeat the Russians?” I asked.
    Then I told them this was their chance to get
badal
, or revenge, for what had happened to Shef’s team and heal an open wound. That’s what they desperately wanted. Narrowing their eyes, they grunted and nodded.
    Ali turned to Shinsha.
    “Wali na?”
he said.
    Now came the hard part. We had to figure out how to tell them about the mission without giving up too much detail. I figured we could give them just enough information to shape their ideas into plans we had already made, making them think that it was their plan. If it was their plan they would keep it quiet, knowing that a slip of the tongue would tip off the Taliban. Loyalty in Afghanistan can be bought, and we knew the Taliban had spies in the Afghan Army. Hell, we knew there were Taliban at the firebase. We just didn’t know who they were. I explained that none of the soldiers could leave the base, all the weapons needed to be locked away, and all cell phones and the barracks office phone had to be confiscated.
    Shinsha asked us to leave. He wanted to talk with his commanders dispersed around the room. He knew I spoke some Pashto; this was his subtle way of being polite. We ducked out of the hut. When we returned, they agreed to join the mission and to all of my requests.We ended up with a volunteer force of almost sixty soldiers and nearly ten solid leaders out of more than one hundred ANA. The rest of the unit was getting ready to go on leave.
    In the meantime, Jared had talked again to Bolduc and knew a little more about the operation. The planners back at KAF wanted us to block Taliban escape routes out of the district, which I preferred to tagging along with a Canadian unit for the whole operation. We would need to sneak into the district to retain the element of surprise and initiative.
    Briefed on the basics, and with the Afghans ready, I approached Jared about the trip back to KAF, where we would be brought into the complete plan for the operation. Jared had commanded my team several years earlier when he was a captain and remained in good standing with the unit—he got the “wink, wink, nod, nod” from the operators when they heard about his return. He stood six feet tall and was in good shape.