Free The Dogs Are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan by Graeme Smith

medication. It was amazing that his dazed patients could even reach his office, up a steep flight of stone steps to the second floor of an old building in the central market. The waiting area was crowded and dirty. Behind a stained lace curtain, in his tiny consulting room, the doctor whisked around with a theatrical air, wearing a white coat and a stethoscope around his neck. His scraggly hair, gap-toothed smile and bloodshot eyes made him look like an avatar for all the madness of the city. I asked him whether anxiety levels were rising in Kandahar, and he strongly agreed. I’d assumed he would criticize the Taliban for causing the distress, but instead he blamed outsiders for meddling in his country. His patients had lost hope for the international mission, he said. “They hear on the radio that the whole world is trying to help Afghanistan, but they see no improvement. I’m a doctor, I’m educated, and they always ask me. I tell them, no, please don’t hope. It will get worse.” I wanted to chronicle the ways his patients suffered, the psychological effects of slain relatives, smashed homes, harrowing escapes. He preferred to rant about the foreigners’ mistakes. “Ninety per cent of women here are happy with the burka,” he said. “But the foreigners are saying they’re not happy with this clothing.” That evening, back in my tent at the military base, I omitted those quotes from my article about his clinic. They didn’t fit my story about a city under siege by unwelcome militants.
    But, in some ways, a siege mentality had taken hold. I was driving through the northeastern side of the city when I heard an explosion from the direction of a nearby NATO military base. This wasfollowed by a crackle of bullets, and everybody on the street appeared to reach the same conclusion at once: the Taliban had finally started their urban war. People ran for their lives, running so hard they left their sandals behind. I jumped out of my car and walked against the flow, getting closer to the thick column of smoke billowing into the blue sky. I could see foreign soldiers taking shelter behind a mud wall as a flurry of concussions threw up more dust. “The Taliban are attacking the city,” a teenager shouted. My driver, a brave ex-soldier, tugged at my sleeve. He didn’t speak English but I understood his growl, “
Razi che zhu
!” (“Let’s go!”) We joined the mob hurrying away.
    But we had all misunderstood: it was just another suicide bomber, one of dozens in the city that summer. The bomb detonated near a military vehicle and set it on fire. The rapid pops and banging sounds had been caused by the ignition of overheated ammunition inside the burning vehicle, a phenomenon known as a “cook-off.” A soldier was killed in the attack, and the troops who rushed to the scene accidentally shot dead a young boy. The Taliban were not invading after all, but tension in the city had reached a fever pitch.
    Everybody knew a battle was coming, but it still felt like high drama when the international troops finally declared war. NATO had formally taken responsibility for southern Afghanistan earlier that month, and Kandahar’s main base now included troops from Canada, Britain, Australia, Denmark, Romania, Estonia, Portugual and the Netherlands. But it was an American commander, Colonel Steve Williams, who served as the voice of the coalition during a press conference at the end of August. He warned villagers west of the city to evacuate immediately because of an impending assault. It was easy to guess why the American had been selected to deliver the message: other countries in the NATO alliance were describing their presence as a humanitarian gesture. A British minister infamously predicted the military surge would happen without a shot fired, andthe Canadian military was pushing journalists to write about medical programs. By contrast, the Americans advertised their willingness to draw blood. The US colonel aimed his words