Men have been shot while asleep in their barracks tents. There is literally no safe place in the Korengal Valley. The fighting is on foot and it is deadly, and the zone of American control moves hilltop by hilltop, ridge by ridge, a hundred yards at a time. Nearly one-fifth of all combat in Afghanistan occurs in this valley, and nearly three-quarters of all the bombs dropped by nato forces in Afghanistan are dropped in the surrounding area. The Korengal is widely considered to be the most dangerous valley in northeastern Afghanistan, and Second Platoon is considered the tip of the spear for the American forces there. They are well aware that everything has an end point, and that in their country end points are bloodier than most. Afghans-who have seen two foreign powers on their soil in 20 years-are well aware of the limits of empire. The situation has gotten so bad, in fact, that ethnic and political factions in the northern part of the country have started stockpiling arms in preparation for when the international community decides to pull out. Suicide bombings have risen eightfold in the past two years, including several devastating attacks in Kabul, and as of October, coalition casualties had surpassed those of any previous year. That money helps bankroll an insurgency that is now operating virtually within sight of the capital, Kabul. The Afghan opium crop has flourished in the past two years and now represents 93 percent of the world’s supply, with an estimated street value of $38 billion in 2006. It seems to go on for a long, long time.īy many measures, Afghanistan is falling apart. ![]() That’s all I remember for a while-that and being incredibly thirsty. The next burst comes in even tighter and the video jerks and yaws and Piosa screams, “A tracer just went right by here!” Soldiers are popping up to empty ammo clips over the top of the wall and Piosa is shouting positions into the radio and tracers from our heavy machine guns are streaking overhead into the darkening valley and a man near me shouts for someone named Buno.īuno doesn’t answer. “Contact,” Piosa says into his radio and then, “I’m pushing up here,” but he never gets the chance. Piosa is about to leave the cover of the stone wall and push to the next bit of cover when I hear a staccato popping sound in the distance. It captures everything my memory doesn’t. I’m carrying a video camera and running it continually so that I won’t have to think about turning it on when the shooting starts. Also: more of Hetherington’s photos from Afghanistan.||| ||| Photos: View a Web-exclusive slide show of Hetherington’s soldier portraits from Afghanistan. Piosa and his men were here to talk to the local elder about a planned water-pipe project for the village, and I can’t help thinking that this is an awful lot of effort for a five-minute conversation. The summer air is thick and hot, and everyone is sweating like horses. The soldiers have taken so much fire here that they named this stretch “the Aliabad 500.” Platoon leader Matt Piosa, a blond, soft-spoken 24-year-old lieutenant from Pennsylvania, makes it to a chest-high stone wall behind the village grade school, and the rest of the squad arrives behind him, laboring under the weight of their weapons and body armor. ![]() We only have to cover 500 yards to get back to the safety of the firebase, but the route is wide open to Taliban positions across the valley, and the ground has to be crossed at a run. All 16 commandos on board died.ĭusk is falling and the air has a kind of buzzing tension to it, as if it carries an electrical charge. In 2005, Taliban fighters cornered a four-man navy-seal team that had been dropped onto the Abas Ghar, and killed three of them, then shot down the Chinook helicopter that was sent in to save them. The valley is six miles long, and the Americans have pushed halfway down its length. The Taliban essentially own the Abas Ghar. ![]() They say the Taliban are waiting for us to leave the village before they shoot.īelow us is the Korengal River and across the valley is the dark face of the Abas Ghar ridge. Signals intelligence back at the company headquarters has been listening in on the Taliban field radios. We are in the village of Aliabad, in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, and the platoon radioman has received word that Taliban gunners are watching us and are about to open fire. The locals know what is about to happen and are staying out of sight. The 20 men of Second Platoon move through the village single file, keeping behind trees and stone houses and going down on one knee from time to time to cover the next man down the line.
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