I stood on a concrete platform, my elbows resting atop the high, thick, mud-brick wall that surrounded our rented house, on guard duty at our temporary base in the heart of the western Afghan city of Farah. With an M16 at my side, I was sweating and filthy under the murderous July sun, my bowels twisted by what my fellow soldiers called the “Farah flu,” but also by fear. I worried I would never see my wife, family, or small Iowa farm town again.
It was 2004, early in America’s war in Afghanistan. The memory of the Sept. 11 attacks burned more sharply in those days, and I resented the orders that confined my infantry unit to a reconstruction mission. I wanted to seek and destroy the evil Taliban, the allies and sometime hosts of those who had contributed to the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent people on 9/11.
My time in Afghanistan was difficult. I’ll never forget scrambling to the roof of our house as machine guns were going off down the street, nor the happy, waving Afghan boy on an adjacent roof and the way I finally had to aim my rifle at him to scare him away to safety. The image of an Afghan girl named Shaista who had been terribly burned is forever etched into my mind. Through an interpreter, she begged us to let her die. Her incredibly older husband seemed completely unaffected, and when my interpreter shouted at him, I found myself hoping he’d try to hit her so that I could shoot him for what he’d allowed to happen. I remember the bombing at the Farah U.N. compound, so loud, even from the safe distance at our base.
Back to that hot morning, manning my post. I noticed an Afghan teenager approaching on the bumpy dirt street. “Hello,” he said. “I am Jawad Arash. How are you? I am wanting English to speak for to study.”
I was surprised to encounter an English-speaking Afghan and pleased to have someone to talk to while standing guard, but when he moved into the shade next to my wall, I remembered my months of training at Fort Hood, Texas, how the Army had warned about complacency and suicide bombers.
“Back away from the wall,” I said sharply.
“Why?” Jawad said. “Hot day. More cool here. I will not hurt your wall.”
I repeated my demand, and Jawad stepped back into the blazing hot sunlight.
It was a rough beginning to what would become one of my longest and most cherished friendships, with a man whose life is in grave danger now thanks to the Biden administration’s hasty withdrawal.
Recently, I co-wrote a novel with Jawad. That book, Enduring Freedom, is so closely inspired by real events that it’s almost a novelization of my experiences in the war in Afghanistan, Jawad’s suffering under the Taliban, and his interactions with American soldiers. Back in May, in interviews we were doing on the book, Jawad expressed gratitude for the American military presence that freed him from Taliban control and allowed him to pursue an education. Jawad’s a true friend, ally, and Afghan patriot. He believed that through education and enlightenment, his people would build a better Afghanistan. He believed American promises for peace, hope, and freedom.
Now in this new Taliban hell, Jawad and his family fear for their lives. If the Taliban discover he’s co-written this book, they will kill him. Or worse.
As I write this, the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating rapidly and changing by the hour. My social media messenger is lit up by the desperate pleas of Afghan friends and allies we’ve now abandoned.
“Salaam. My friend. I security guard. Jalalabad PRT. 2003. 2009. You friend. America all my friend. You help? Very bad. Taliban. My family. My friend? Please help.” Six years of working side by side with our soldiers, protecting our people. Now, he’s trapped and terrified, a Taliban target. Jawad and his family struggle to find a way to flee Afghanistan to safety. I try to do what I can to help, but at this point, I am mostly helpless in this except to pray.
He is far from the only one, for as the months of our tour wore on, my fellow soldiers and I embraced our reconstruction mission. It soon became clear that Afghans were a kind people who had been brutalized throughout the 1980s, when the Soviet Union stormed the country with tanks, helicopter gunships, and millions of land mines in an effort to expand its evil empire. We understood they had suffered further still under deadly, harsh Taliban rule. My team leader recalled the old Western movies and compared us to the cowboys in the white hats: We stopped highway robbers, ordering them to return stolen money to travelers. We helped expand and supply schools. We delivered food, blankets, cookstoves, seed, and toys to people all over Farah Province. Old, torn-up roads were repaired. Cellphone towers went up. I helped rig explosives to destroy piles of old Soviet land mines and other ordnance. The Taliban had nearly vanished, old wars were at last being swept away, and the rebuilding had begun. There was a sense of possibility.
After a few months, we occupied a completed base outside of Farah, but soon, the town rapidly expanded around us in a wave of new home construction. I remember boys trusting us enough to play soccer on the grounds in front of our outer gate. Hundreds of Afghan children smiled so brightly when we gave them what might have been their first toys. Teachers were excited for the school supplies we offered in new buildings we’d financed. I’ll never forget how, on presidential Election Day in October 2004, my fellow soldiers and I drove past a line of hopeful voters wrapped all around the block.
“Thank you! Thank you!” the voters shouted in heavily accented English, proudly waving their registration cards. I admired their courage and dedication, standing up to the Taliban to seize their right to vote.
And I’ll never forget a young Afghan girl named Zulaikha and the way she finally smiled in a way she never had before, after we’d secured needed surgery to correct her cleft lip. The last time I saw her, she was leaving our base on the back of a truck. She could not hear me or understand English, but I promised her I would do all I could to tell her story. That promise, and the inspiration of her quiet courage and dignity, eventually led to my first novel, Words in the Dust. My whole life I dreamed of being a writer, and a brave young Afghan girl named Zulaikha made my dream come true.
I left Afghanistan in 2005 when my tour ended, but Afghanistan did not leave me.
It has now been 20 years since the beginning of our war in Afghanistan. But now, Joe Biden has ordered America to retreat from that country, betraying our Afghan allies and abandoning millions of good people to the brutality of the Taliban.
For years, readers have asked what ultimately became of Zulaikha. Now, I know. If she’s still in Afghanistan, she’s back in a Taliban nightmare, without any rights or hope of any control over her own life. If the Taliban find out we helped her, they’ll probably kill her. Or worse.
As I post updates from my Afghan friends on social media, always careful to conceal their locations and identities, I encounter comments that say, “Well, American military forces couldn’t stay in Afghanistan forever.”
I do not suggest our military should have remained in Afghanistan forever. We should have stayed only as long as our forces have remained in Germany or Japan after World War II. Too long? OK. Then our forces should have remained in Afghanistan only as long as they’ve remained in Korea after the Korean War. Still too long? Fair enough. Our forces should have been given at least half that time. It takes a long time for an entire generation of Afghans to develop an educational system and envision new and better ways of living in a society that had been torn apart by the Soviet Union and the Taliban.
At the absolute very least, interpreters, truck drivers, cooks, security guards, and other Afghans who risked their lives to help American forces should have been carefully and safely evacuated before they were betrayed by the final order to retreat.
My high school American history textbook featured the famous Hubert van Es photograph of the fall of Saigon in 1975. Desperate people scrambling aboard a helicopter fleeing the deadly reprisal of the communists after America betrayed and abandoned our South Vietnamese allies. Later, especially after serving in the war in Afghanistan, I wondered what it must have been like for our Vietnam War veterans, who sacrificed and devoted all of themselves to that mission, who suffered wounds or lost their brothers in arms, to witness the fall of Saigon, to have everything they fought for laid to waste.
Now I know.
My soldier friends suffered firefights. A man with whom I served still struggles with the nightmare memory of the death of a soldier in his squad — rest in peace, James Kearney.
To all the service members killed or wounded in this mission, to all who served, and to their families: I salute you. Always.
American soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen fought so hard, suffered much, and, working with good Afghan people who trusted us enough to believe in a better Afghan future, offered so much hope. Now, with Biden’s order simply to give up and hand Afghanistan to the Taliban, I’m sick with worry for my Afghan friends and for millions of suffering Afghan people. And one crushingly painful thought echoes unceasingly through my mind about this mission in Afghanistan that has been such a big part of my identity for the past 17 years, a big part of so many of our lives and the hope of the Afghan people for the past 20 years:
It was all for nothing.
Trent Reedy served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns.
