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| Afghanistan |
U.S. troops wait outside a woman's home in Kandalay, Afghanistan, while Afghan National Army troops check the inside during a joint patrol on Aug. 8, 2011.
Main Story
A crack. A thump. And then a small dust cloud rises through the slanting morning sunlight where a U.S. sergeant has knocked over a locked wooden gate and archway while trying to get into a pomegranate orchard to do a weapons-cache sweep. For the Americans, it's routine duty; for the Afghans, it's routine encroachment on personal property. During another patrol, a farmer yells at troops as they walk through his newly planted okra patch, crushing the light green plants into the muck. On yet another patrol, an explosives-disposal team blows up a cache of Soviet-era antipersonnel mines in an orchard — and seven pomegranate trees as well.
These are small incidents and losses — especially from the perspective of service members who have spent a year fighting for their lives in one of Afghanistan's most vicious war zones — but agriculture is the lifeblood of the Arghandab River Valley and frequent occurrences like these begin to add up, angering the population. And though people are now happy with the security situation, resentment over crushed crops and property could eventually boil over. This is the surge today, a counterinsurgency war of big wins and thousands of small losses — both incidental and structural — that could eventually decide the fate of the war.
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| US Troops |
