On the ground in Afghanistan

Results of Thursday's balloting in Afghanistan's second-ever presidential election may not be known for weeks -- and it will be no surprise if Hamid Karzai wins a second term as leader of "a nation burdened by warfare, pervasive corruption, a booming drug trade and seemingly intractable poverty," as characterized by Laura King of The Associated Press.

Granted, Afghanistan's weak central government reflects all the difficulties you'd expect in a region where there is no tradition of democracy, where a small fraction of adults can read, and the people have been governed for centuries by local tribes. So we shouldn't have great expectations about the pace or scope of positive change, no matter who emerges as president.

The ongoing, seemingly impossible, challenge of imposing order on a rugged and unruly country is hard to grasp for us, so many thousands of miles away. But if you'll invest 20-30 minutes, there's no better piece I've come across than C.J. Chivers' "The Long Walk" in conveying both the on-the-ground experience for U.S. troops and a big-picture explanation of just what we are trying to accomplish there.

Writing in the August issue of Esquire, Chivers describes 40 hellish hours with Company B, a column of 125 infantrymen, as they set out on a mission in the Korangal Valley, a mountainous region of forests and spires that passes as Afghanistan's jungle.

At the same time, he poses the fundamental question: What is the United States military doing in Afghanistan?

The question, when not framed as a pejorative, has many answers. Depending on the soldier and the unit, at any given moment the military is likely doing one of four things. It is hunting for, and hoping to capture or kill, the top-tier Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders and their coteries. This is a direct extension of the original mission, the one that brought the United States back to Afghanistan in 2001 and that remains fired by the paired desires of justice and national security and, though the public-relations specialists do not frame it this way, a desire for revenge.

Simultaneously, the United States military is working with foreign governments, nongovernment organizations, and American agencies to build a nation where ten years ago a nation existed principally in name. This reconstituted Afghanistan, anointed a democracy by foreign influence as much as by domestic will, is supposed to develop with popular consent into a self-sufficient central government and provincial governments and district governments, with honest ministries serving all three, and courts, and a diverse economy, and passable roads and reliable electricity and potable water, and robust exports besides illicit drugs. To use the term now in favor — what one officer called the "flavor of the decade" for a nation that in recent decades has seen Islamism and warlordism and communism — this new nation is also supposed to recognize and run by rule of law, rather than by many other rules, opaque to most Westerners and largely unexplored by the United States, by which Afghanistan used to run, and often still runs, and might prefer to run if anyone were able to measure such things.

And as this reordered nation is assuming a shape that remains tentative and wormy with corruption, the United States is pursuing a third primary mission, which is to create foundations for indigenous security. This includes a national police force and an army with enough skilled soldiers to integrate fire support and operate an air corps and stand up to an insurgency in battle anywhere. It also includes an intelligence service that can penetrate and understand myriad groups — local, regional, and transnational — that make up that insurgency, as well as the drug networks that control the shadow economy, which fuels much of the war.

Last, or perhaps first, the United States military is doing what many people imagine it to be doing most: It is fighting that war. This is where Company B fits in. The long-term plan for Afghanistan is to build a competent and sturdy government and to hand off the country's affairs to this government in time. This will take many, many years. While those years pass, an essential military mission, year in and year out, is to keep the roads open and cities secure so commerce flows and Afghans can live their lives. As part of this, the military operates remote firebases and outposts far from the main roads and cities, with hopes of keeping insurgents busy away from much of the population. Each is home to squads, platoons, or companies — part of a defense-in-depth of blocking positions, or, as one colonel called them, Taliban magnets, with the organizing idea being that it is better to have the Taliban concentrating forces around a distant outpost than in Kabul, Jalalabad, or Kandahar. Company B, which occupies the Korangal Outpost and several small firebases nearby, is one of those magnets.

That's just a sample of the intelligent reporting and clear writing you'll find in this compelling piece. Click here for the article and photos by Tyler Hicks.