Generals liked to use the same tactics that had worked in past wars, which, unfortunately, didn’t often work in new wars. The Intel establishment, including the CIA, did the same, but with somewhat better results. And nothing succeeds like success.
The combat units, like the one he’d served with in Iraq, weren’t completely innocent of ignoring the Geneva Conventions from time to time,but the CIA didn’t consider themselves bound by the military rules of war. Kidnapping, torture, murder—whatever it takes. And Brodie was not overly judgmental about these tactics. If you’re fighting a brutal, unconventional enemy, you use brutal, unconventional methods. But there is a line that should not be crossed. Unfortunately, different people saw the line in different places. Phoenix had crossed the line. And no doubt, so did Flagstaff. He looked at Taylor. Did she know this? And when did she know it?
She seemed to be thinking about the same questions and said, “It felt wrong. Even though Trent told me I was doing important work that would save the lives of American soldiers.” She looked at Brodie. “And maybe it did.”
“Maybe.” Actually, you could save even more American lives if the Pentagon ever figured out how to end the wars it started. Baghdad fell in three weeks. Kabul in a month. A testament to American fighting capability. The problems came in sticking the landing, in not letting these things grind on for years and years until morally dubious programs like Phoenix and Flagstaff became almost inevitable.
Taylor continued, “I put my written reports in a designated locker back on base. A report a week. Someone retrieved these reports, but I never saw who it was.”
“Not Trent. He was back in the States, where being out in the field meant mowing his lawn.”
She shot him an angry look. “I’ve known a lot of combat veterans, and if you think Intel guys can be arrogant and cynical, you should listen to yourself.”
Brodie did not reply.
“And moody. When they’re not drinking too much.”
“We’re all trying to work our way home, Maggie.”
She took a breath, looked at him, and said, “I know.”
Well, he’d thought that it was going to be sex that screwed up their professional relationship, but it might be the baggage they both carried—the PTSD thing, which he didn’t totally believe in, but which like other things he didn’t believe in—ghosts, Santa Claus, and God—must be real if everyone kept talking about it.
Meanwhile, he was violating his own rules about interrogations, whichis what happens when you’re emotionally or personally involved with the subject. “I interrupted you.”
She seemed to be collecting her thoughts, then continued, “About four months into my tour, our convoy headed into a village called Mirabad. A collection of mud huts in a river valley between the highlands, which were infested with Taliban. This area had gone back and forth between government and Taliban control. Our Civil Affairs unit hadn’t been making much progress there, and Mirabad was particularly resistant to converting all its opium fields to crops.” She added, “We’d been in Mirabad about five times, and the village elders were sometimes hostile and sometimes hospitable—it was a game to see how much they could get out of us. Also, they were trying to walk a thin line between the Americans and the Taliban.” She paused, then continued, “A few weeks before, three American helicopters had taken ground fire from the vicinity of Mirabad, and one of the crew got hit and died later of his wounds, so we were cautious as we approached. Our platoon of about thirty personnel rode in five vehicles. For security purposes, these visits were never preannounced to the village or to Afghan authorities. In fact, we’d just gotten our orders that morning to go to Mirabad, so they didn’t know we were coming. The purpose of our visit that day was to speak to the village elders about burning the remaining poppy fields. We had Afghan currency to pay for the burned poppies and we had wheat and barley seed with us. Our orders, as usual, were to be polite but firm, to offer the carrots and show the stick, and all that… but when we got there… the village was empty…” She looked at Brodie.
Nothing like an empty village, recalled Brodie, to get the adrenaline pumping. Usually you were about to get ambushed.
“At first,” she said, “we thought the villagers had fled when the hard-core Taliban fighters came out of the hills and saw that half their poppy fields were gone.”
Where have all the flowers gone?
“Then we noticed bullet holes in the mud huts, and blood spatters…”
Where have all the soldiers gone?
“We couldn’t make sense of it. We were tense… ready for a fight… then this old man comes out of the wheat field and he’s crying… and he’s screaming at us…” She took a breath and continued, “Our translator toldus that four helicopters landed in the middle of the night, on each side of the village… American soldiers came into the village and went from house to house, pulling out all the men and the young boys… anyone who looked old enough to be a Taliban fighter, boys as young as twelve or thirteen… those who resisted were shot on the spot… including some women who tried to intervene… the rest of the men were taken to a drainage ditch at the edge of the village… about fifty or sixty young men, boys, and all the village elders, except this one who had hid, and they… shot them.”
Gone to graveyards, every one.
Operation Phoenix had been more surgical, targeting only the Viet Cong infrastructure in the villages. Operation Flagstaff sounded like Phoenix with a meat cleaver.
Maggie Taylor was composing herself, and Brodie listened to the torrential rain beating on the balcony.
Taylor continued in a flat, distant tone of voice: “We had dealt with complaints of U.S. soldiers killing civilians, and it was usually accidental—collateral damage. Or these complaints were made-up—a story to get compensation from the Americans. That was part of what we did in Civil Affairs. Pay for dead people, dead livestock, bomb-damaged houses… but what this old guy was saying… this was something else.”
Indeed it was. It was, in fact, a hard lesson delivered to the villagers, and by extension to all the surrounding villages, that there was a price to pay for providing a cash crop and part-time fighters to the Taliban. They certainly wouldn’t do that again.
Taylor gulped some of her cola, and continued, “This elder is crying… he says he lost four sons… and he shows us a big mound of freshly dug dirt and tells us it’s a mass grave of all the men and boys the Americans killed… the women dug the grave… with the help of some men from nearby villages. We still weren’t believing this and we wanted to see the bodies, but the elder says no, Islamic tradition prohibits digging up the dead, but he shows us all the shell casings that the women had gathered… from American M5 rifles… and he shows us a pile of blood-soaked clothing… he says men from the surrounding villages had stripped the bodies and wrapped them in burial shrouds… and then he takes us to the drainage ditch and we can see the water, red with blood…” She closed her eyes. “Our translator, aschoolteacher from Kandahar, was very upset, and he’s looking at us like we owed him and the elder some explanation.” She added, “It was awful.”
Brodie looked at her, wondering how long it took her to see the connection between that massacre and her reports to her erstwhile boyfriend.
Taylor stayed silent awhile, then continued, “We told the elder that we’d report this to our superiors and that military investigators would be coming to speak to him and to the women who’d survived, and we left. Quickly.” She added, “We were all pretty shaken by this, and most of us still didn’t believe we’d seen evidence of a civilian massacre by American soldiers…” She looked at Brodie. “I mean, the Afghans were notorious for lying to get compensation. They’d blame the Americans for Taliban killings and even for natural deaths.”
And then came the denial.The Americans couldn’t have done that. I couldn’t have done that. It’s what you have to say to yourself.
Brodie made eye contact with her. “Maggie, it seems obvious from what you’ve told me that what you saw, and what you heard from the witness, was strong evidence of a mass murder perpetrated by American troops.”
