Search Results for: Afghanistan

The A-Team Killings

Longreads Pick

Did U.S. Special Forces commit war crimes in Afghanistan? Matthieu Aikins investigates the discovery of 10 missing Afghan villagers who had been buried outside a U.S. base. Officials say a translator was solely responsible, but he and other witnesses say there’s more to the story:

I tell Kandahari that multiple witnesses claim to have seen him participate in abusive interrogations, and that another had seen him execute Gul Rahim, but he flatly denies ever killing anyone. He says that he had left Nerkh soon after Batson was injured, after quarreling with Kaiser. The Americans were trying to frame him for their own crimes, he says. “They knew what was happening,” he says. “Of course they knew. If someone does something on the base, everyone sees it. Everyone knows everything that’s going on inside the team.”

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Nov 6, 2013
Length: 33 minutes (8,309 words)

Shades of Green

Longreads Pick

Excerpts from emails written home from a Marine in Afghanistan:

“The most dangerous times of any deployment are the first and last thirty days. In the first thirty days, you don’t have the experience to keep you from making stupid mistakes. Add to that the swagger that any young person might have when heading off to war for the first time, and you’ve got a potentially dangerous combination. In short, you’re too stupid to realize that your aggressiveness and confidence is what is most likely to get you killed.

“During the last thirty days, you have the benefit of five to six months of combat experience, but you are tired and have convinced yourself that you have everything under control. You’ve patrolled the same roads and talked to the same people for half a year, and all you can think or talk about is going home. In short, you’ve become too cocky to realize that letting your guard down is what will get you killed. In both cases, it is our hubris that is our most dangerous enemy.”

Published: Oct 19, 2013
Length: 13 minutes (3,453 words)

5 Stories on What Happens to Whistleblowers After They Speak Out

Above: Mark Felt

Julia Wick is a native Angeleno who writes about literature, Los Angeles, and cities. She is currently finishing an Urban Planning degree at USC.

With Chelsea Manning sentenced to 35 years in prison and Edward Snowden’s future still uncertain, it seems a pertinent time to look at what becomes of our whistleblowers after the initial flurry of publicity fades. On the public stage and popular culture, whistleblowers are both celebrated and reviled, categorized as snitches and traitors, and heroes and martyrs. They are almost always seen as symbols, but they are also often people whose lives are shattered. The U.S. has had some version of whistleblower protection laws on the books since 1778, but whistleblowers themselves have still often faced reprisal, have been left jobless and hounded, personally attacked and professionally discredited. Here are the stories of six famous whistleblowers, and their lives long after the press has picked up and left town.

1. “Anatomy of a Whistleblower,” by Laurie Abraham (Mother Jones, 2004)

Jesselyn Radack is a “Lifetime TV writer’s dream”—the mother of two young children and pregnant with her third who had privately struggled with MS since college. She was a government lawyer with the Justice Department’s ethics unit when a colleague asked her to look over the FBI’s interrogation of the John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban” captured during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. She spoke up about the impropriety of Lindh’s being questioned without a lawyer present, and quickly became emblematic of the Ashcroft-era treatment of whistleblowers, her life turned upside-down. And then she did the most unlikely thing of all—became an activist for whistleblowers across the nation. She is currently the National Security & Human Rights Director of the Government Accountability Project.

2. “Serpico on Serpico,” by Corey Kilgannon (New York Times, January 2010)

The cinematic version of Frank Serpico’s life—Serpico, starring Al Pacino in the title role—begins with Serpico being shot in the face during an attempted drug bust and ends with closing credits saying he is “now living somewhere in Switzerland.” Kilgannon’s profile of the honest cop who exposed NYPD corruption picks up four decades later, long after Serpico’s lost years in Europe. Bearded, bitter, and in his early seventies, this Serpico lives a monastic life along the Hudson, just a few hours north of his former city. Perhaps the most poignant scene involves a rewatching of the famous film, which Serpico has never seen in its entirety, on the reporter’s laptop in a small town public library, where “the real Mr. Serpico stared out the window, unable to watch—too painful, he said.”

3. “The Whistle-Blower,” by Pamela Colloff (Texas Monthly, April 2003)

Pamela Colloff’s character-driven profile of Enron whistleblower Sherron Watkins is a reminder of why fans of longform journalism love Texas Monthly. This is a deftly drawn and richly layered narrative of what life is like for a whistleblower who, despite being nationally-lauded, still finds herself rejected by the high-rolling Houston society set to which she once belonged.

4. “I’m the Guy They Called Deep Throat,” by John D. O’Connor (Vanity Fair July 2005)

No collection of whistleblower stories would be complete without a mention of Mark Felt, née Deep Throat, the source who leaked the details of Watergate to the Washington Post. Felt, who was ultimately responsible for the downfall of an American president, could easily be considered the ur-whistleblower of the last century. Written nearly three decades after the fact, O’Connor’s story finally exposed Felt’s identity.

5. “The Secret Sharer: Is Thomas Drake an Enemy of the State?” by Jane Mayer (New Yorker, May 23, 2011)

Long before Snowden made headlines, Thomas Drake had grave doubts about the NSA’s use of domestic surveillance. Drake, then a senior executive at the NSA, to The Baltimore Sun and was ultimately indicted under the Espionage Act. Mayer uses Drake’s story as a lens to explore the larger issues of warrantless surveillance in post–9/11 America, and though the piece itself is more than two years old and dealing with a case that has now been dropped, it is still relevant, perhaps unsettlingly so.


Photo via Wikimedia Commons

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The Call of Battle

Longreads Pick

After serving two tours in Iraq and returning to civilian life in 2006, the writer decides to embed as a journalist in Afghanistan seven years later:

“We humped the three kilometers back to the school. It was early afternoon and there was plenty of light left, so we loaded our packs into two ANA trucks and began our march back to the compound for the night. By then the Afghans appeared to have all but lost interest in the mission, scattered around us, groups of them disappearing behind qalats, walls, and buildings, then reappearing in smaller numbers. As we pushed on through another open field, in a wedge formation, machine-gun fire opened up about a kilometer away from a small village to our three o’clock. It was followed immediately by mortar fire. The gun rounds were close, kicking up dirt and rock as we rushed for cover. I jumped into a hole with Ray just as several rounds snapped between us, cracking inches from my head. ‘Holy shit, Ray!’ I gasped.”

Author: Matt Cook
Source: Texas Monthly
Published: Jun 30, 2013
Length: 35 minutes (8,993 words)

The Old Man and the Tee

Longreads Pick

A 29-year-old combat veteran returns home, then decides to try to walk on as a kicker for Wyoming:

“Noble took a job for his uncle’s hay-brokerage company, throwing bales from trucks into the barn lofts of thoroughbred horse farms, sometimes 720 of them a day. He told the stories of walking dusty streets and climbing mountains in Afghanistan, of recognizing Coke bottles full of sand with wires sticking out as IEDs. Stories of the other men of 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines, of air strikes and snipers, being on a squad searching for a month for a high-target member of al-Qaeda. Stories of friends getting wounded, and killed. He went to the bowling alley with his old buddies, and patrons stopped to talk to him, and he was feted with free meals and drinks, and when he went to a high school football game, he would be announced, then stand on the bleachers and turn around and wave and feel the applause turn to him instead of the field. The first few months were as though he were home on leave, as though he were still a hero, and then the novelty of his presence wore off, and everything went back to the way it had been before he left.

“He got bored, and he got angry. It felt as if there was nothing for him, as if he were still in high school, hanging out with his old friends, who hadn’t changed, and who, as time passed, treated him as though he hadn’t either. He went to bars and listened to arguments and complaints about problems that were petty compared with what he had seen. He did not want to be home anymore. ‘I’m not the type of guy who goes out to look at the stars and wonder about things,’ he says, but one night a few months after he came home, he did just that.”

Published: Jan 25, 2013
Length: 11 minutes (2,979 words)

Afghan Women Caught Between Modernity, Tradition

Longreads Pick

A teen girl who’s being forced into marriage attempts suicide:

“Just before she leapt from her roof into the streets of Kabul, Farima thought of the wedding that would never happen and the man she would never marry. Her fiance would be pleased to see her die, she later recalled thinking. It would offer relief to them both.

“Farima, 17, had resisted her engagement to Zabiullah since it was ordained by her grandfather when she was 9. In post-Taliban Kabul, where she walked to school and dreamed of becoming a doctor, she still clawed against a fate dictated by ritual.

“After 11 years of Western intervention in Afghanistan, a woman’s right to study and work had long since been codified by the U.S.-backed government. Modernity had crept into Afghanistan’s capital, Farima thought, but not far enough to save her from a forced marriage to a man she despised.”

Source: Washington Post
Published: Nov 28, 2012
Length: 8 minutes (2,117 words)

A writer joins her friend Ben Heemskerk, the owner of the Brooklyn bar The Castello Plan, as he organizes a group of community volunteers to help in the hardest hit areas post-Sandy:

On Monday the same thing started all over again. Our numbers were smaller, people were returning to work, and we’d lost our escorts, but our group now included an Army captain who had just returned from Afghanistan. By noon we’d been dispatched to a church parking lot on Beach 67th Street in Rockaway Beach.

The parking lot was empty when we arrived except for one National Grid truck; National Grid is the contract operator that works with the Long Island Power Authority, whose power lines run onto the Rockaway Peninsula. Rockaway is the one part of New York City not served by Con Edison. The National Grid truck had set up a table where people could charge their phones.

It was difficult not to conclude based on our surroundings that the neighborhood had not been served at all. Within five minutes of us setting up our goods in the empty lot, and without any real outreach needed, crowds began to appear—batteries, flashlights, disinfectants, diapers and blankets were getting snatched up quickly. It’s at this point the need began to feel overwhelming, and the frightening suspicion that help, official help in the form of city officials or large established disaster-relief organizations, was not going to arrive, started to sneak up on us.

“After Sandy, A Great and Complex City Reveals Traumas New and Old.” — Glynnis MacNicol, Capital New York

More from Capital New York

After Sandy, A Great and Complex City Reveals Traumas New and Old

Longreads Pick

A writer joins her friend Ben Heemskerk, the owner of the Brooklyn bar The Castello Plan, as he organizes a group of community volunteers to help in the hardest hit areas post-Sandy:

“On Monday the same thing started all over again. Our numbers were smaller, people were returning to work, and we’d lost our escorts, but our group now included an Army captain who had just returned from Afghanistan. By noon we’d been dispatched to a church parking lot on Beach 67th Street in Rockaway Beach.

“The parking lot was empty when we arrived except for one National Grid truck; National Grid is the contract operator that works with the Long Island Power Authority, whose power lines run onto the Rockaway Peninsula. Rockaway is the one part of New York City not served by Con Edison. The National Grid truck had set up a table where people could charge their phones.

“It was difficult not to conclude based on our surroundings that the neighborhood had not been served at all. Within five minutes of us setting up our goods in the empty lot, and without any real outreach needed, crowds began to appear—batteries, flashlights, disinfectants, diapers and blankets were getting snatched up quickly. It’s at this point the need began to feel overwhelming, and the frightening suspicion that help, official help in the form of city officials or large established disaster-relief organizations, was not going to arrive, started to sneak up on us.”

Published: Nov 10, 2012
Length: 21 minutes (5,330 words)

The Scariest Little Corner of the World

Longreads Pick

A look at the city of Zaranj, near the Iran-Afghanistan border, where Afghan migrant workers are smuggled into and deported from Iran:

“A few years ago, Iran designated the province that borders Nimruz a ‘no go’ area for foreign residents and shortly thereafter began erecting a 15-foot-high concrete wall that now runs more than half the length of its 147-mile border with Nimruz. The Iranian border police — manning guard towers, each within sight of the next — were also said to have changed. There came increasing reports of Afghans being shot and killed by the same authorities who once benignly waved them through. While most of these stories are unverified, they nevertheless reinforced a growing sense that the old road to a new life was now closed. Today migrants who come to Nimruz must travel another 10 hours south into Pakistan, then cross from there into Iran. The journey consists of three legs. Afghan-Baluchi smugglers take you part of the way; Pakistani-Baluchi smugglers take you a littler farther; Iranian-Baluchi smugglers finish the job. For the first stretch — a narrow dirt road through uninhabitable, lunar flatland — roughly 300 drivers share a rotating schedule, each working one day a month. These were the men preparing to depart from Ganj, bristling at my questions about the bomb.”

Published: Oct 18, 2012
Length: 33 minutes (8,366 words)

An Iraq war veteran becomes blind during combat, and learns how to live on:

When the doctors told him the blindness was irreversible, he felt a rage and despair that made him feel like his head would explode.

Castro began therapy a week after waking up, and he only halfheartedly endured the rehab sessions with a 6-foot-tall girl he called ‘Katie the Physical Terrorist.’ The first time she asked him to stand, he couldn’t. He could barely lift a one-pound dumbbell.

Evelyn tried to focus him on the positives. Obliterated as his body was, his brain was OK — remarkable considering that traumatic brain injury, or TBI, has become the trademark of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and that thousands of soldiers sent to Walter Reed had to battle it. But in a way Castro wished he’d not been spared, because an intact brain meant the other thing he could actually see was exactly how much his life had been ruined. He’d ask, ‘What kind of man can I even be?’

“Blind Ambition.” — Brandon Sneed, ESPN The Magazine