COMBAT OUTPOST ZORMAT, Afghanistan – Gauging the perceptions of Afghans isn’t just for the professionals of the Human Terrain Teams. On a trip through the Zormat bazaar and the nearby farm villages of Salehkhil and Meshwal, opinions varied, but two basic themes emerged: security is poor and the Afghan government is untrustworthy.

Two vendors — one a fruit-and-veg guy, the other a meat man — at the squalid, dusty Zormat bazaar had divergent perspectives on business. The greengrocer said things were going pretty well, but the Afghan National Police weren’t letting prospective customers get to the market.

I didn’t exactly understand, but he was reluctant to elaborate, possibly because the ANP were walking through the market. The Hooligans, however, bought a bunch of produce, especially cilantro — “gashneech” in Pashto — so First Sgt. Antonio Leija Jr. could make his patented pico de gallo, which proved top-notch later that evening. The butcher, who hung up carcasses of goats and cows despite the lack of business, said he had barely sold anything in five or six months. People are too afraid of IEDs and suicide bombers to come to his market, he said.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Salehkhil is a barely-mapped village outside the city of Zormat. Ostensibly fertile, the ground alternated between cracked and arid dirt, with the occasional prickly brush crunching beneath the Hooligans’ boots. Spread far out across the flat ground –- the mountains of Paktia Province were so far in the distance they owed Salekhil postcards -– were a few large clay homes, called kalats, that looked like decaying castles.

One was the home of an older man who gave his name as Zareen. Did he have access to the government if he found himself in danger or needed to resolve a dispute? “We’ve had no problem up to now, but have no access to call ANP or ANA,” Zareen said through translation. Asked if his life had improved in the seven years since the U.S. arrived, he replied, “When the coalition forces came, they wanted to help Afghanistan, but some people don’t want to help Afghanistan or develop Afghanistan.” He wouldn’t elaborate. “You know better than us,” he said.

His brother, a craggy-faced man with trim brown hair and a long sandy beard, said he was disillusioned with the Kabul government and his local shura council, which didn’t bother to meet today despite a scheduled session.

“All of them are people of the area,” he said through translation, “and they just promise, they don’t implement. When the government says it will help, it just steals stuff. There are steps of corruption: [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai, then senior people, then the governor, then the [district commissioner] — they all steal. There is nothing left for the people.”

In neighboring Meshwal, a greener and seemingly more prosperous village, Amerdin, a stout, middle-aged man in a white cap, invited the N. Blaine Cooper, the Holligan lieutenant, to sit in the shade of his garden while he listed his grievances and reminisced about the Taliban.

“During the Taliban, security was very good and there was no corruption,” he said. “Now, security gets worse day by day, there are lots of bribes and corruption. We wish the coalition forces came to Afghanistan to build security and road projects, but nothing happened.”

He grew impatient when Cooper told him that the government needed to deliver public-works projects: “The coalition forces in Afghanistan must give projects to people in this area — schools, clinics, water wells, you must do this.” He continued, “You must do like the Taliban government — and keep security.”

When I asked if he would support additional U.S. troops to provide security, Amerdin looked as if he bit into a lemon. “We don’t need coalition forces for security; we need ANA and ANP to keep security,” he said. “If they put military posts in the area, we’d help them, the ANA and ANP. But we don’t want a military checkpoint here because there is security.”

Amerdin’s neighbor, a thin man with a grey and black beard who wouldn’t give his name, invited the platoon to sit in the garden of his massive kalat while his brothers, sons and friends joined in the conversation. He reacted with equanimity when asked his major concerns. “We don’t have any concerns, from the Taliban or from the government,” he said.

His big issue was the need to repair his karez, a sort of underground irrigation system that carries run-off water from the mountains to nourish the land. If the government could fix his karez, he said, he’d consider himself well served.

“During the past seven years, the security of the area, from the pump station to Zormat, is getting better,” he said. “Other areas that we hear about on the radio are bad — but not here.”

The Department of Defense announced today the deployment of two additional units to Afghanistan. A Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) that could have up to approximately 2,000 Marines will deploy to Afghanistan in November 2008 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. The MAGTF is composed of a headquarters and ground combat, aviation and logistics elements from units across the Marine Corps. The 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, from Ft. Drum, N.Y., will deploy approximately 3,700 soldiers to Afghanistan in January 2009 to increase the capabilities of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). These units were previously scheduled to deploy to Iraq.

Upon the recommendation of commanders on the ground, the Secretary of Defense approved this request, which will increase the level of forces and military capability for NATO-ISAF and aid in the training and development of the Afghan National Security Forces.

The United States continues to be NATO-ISAF’s largest troop contributor, and remains committed to leading the offensive in counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan, training and equipping the Afghan national security forces and assisting with reconstruction. Force levels in Afghanistan are conditions-based and will be determined in consultation with the Afghan government and NATO.

There was much argument and disputation as to what officially constitutes a Hooligan song.The basic consensus, in the words of one Hooligan, was that the company listens to “everything except Mariachi, and Diaz listens to that.” Others told me that the only way I’d capture the platoon’s musical taste is if I went by the gym at 2 or 3 a.m., and I have no intention of doing that.

With those caveats out of the way, here’s a reasonable approximation of a Hooligan Top Ten. The methodology was simple: I wrote down what they shouted out, pending that at least one other person seconded the choice and no one immediately shouted/laughed it down. Add the following to your iTunes library:

1. Van Morrison, “Domino.” Why? “Because it’s an awesome song,” said Staff Sgt. Rannalt Bahr, the only person I’ve ever met who recognized a tattoo I have on my back as being a quote from a Refused song — and who has his own Refused tattoo. (Bahr: “Every day I listen to ‘Rock And Roll’ by the Velvet Underground.”)

2. Ram Jam, “Black Betty.” You know that one? It’s like an oldie. If I sang it to you, you’d recognize it. You’ve heard it a million times, I promise. I had no idea whose song it was.

3. Killswitch Engage, “My Curse.” There was broad agreement about Killswitch, but this was only one of several songs proposed.

4. The Doors, “The End.” Despite the unfortunate Vietnam overtones.

5. Toby Keith, “The Taliban Song.” I hate Toby Keith and yet this song is indisputably awesome. Apparently Toby played a show over here not long ago and did performed “The Taliban Song” with special soldier-lyrics.

6. Core Blund, “I Wanna Be In The Cavalry.” No idea who this is.

7. Journey, “Worlds Apart.” No comment.

8. “The Sweeney Todd Song That The Mom Sings To The Kid,” Sweeney Todd official motion picture soundtrack. No one could figure out what this song is actually titled, and that’s probably for the best.

9. “Most Things On The Rock Band Soundtrack,” Rock Band official soundtrack. And may I say: Good choice. The Rock Band song selection features many top-notch 90s-era jams. I personally rediscovered Hole’s “Celebrity Skin” thanks to the popular video game.

10. “The Debbie Does Dallas Soundtrack,” Debbie Does Dallas official motion picture soundtrack. By popular consensus, at least one Hooligan was conceived while this played.

Amazingly, the Smiths’ “Sweet And Tender Hooligan” has been unfairly neglected.

It’s a stark picture of what it’s like to live in one of the provinces used as an infiltration route for insurgents from Pakistan, and where many locals feel abandoned by the Kabul-based government of Hamid Karzai:

* Historically strong reliance on tribal structures
* Traditions of local autonomy, tribal governance and inter-tribal dispute resolution
* Predominately Pashtun composition, with a concentrated Tajik presence in Orgun District
* Historical issues with food security — 96 percent of Paktika families took out a loan to buy food in 2005; 84 percent of Paktika residents had problems satisfying their food needs 3-6 times in 2004
* Low literacy rate (only 2 percent, the second lowest in Afghanistan)
* Low school enrollment rates and low female-to-male literacy ratios
* Heavier reliance on mullahs and other community leaders for information flow compared to other areas (71 percent for Paktika compared to a national average of only 39 percent)
* Heavy deforestation and water insecurity
* Rural composition and reliance on subsistence agriculture, subsistence animal husbandry and labor migration out of the province and out of the country
* Reliance on wood, brush and manure for household cooking and warmth; and lamp oil for lighting
* Lack of electricity (only 1 percent have access to public electricity; only 6 percent access to any electricity at some point in the year)

The portrait of a region ripe for unrest.

A description of a region ripe for unrest.

By 7 p.m., it’s pitch black out here, and to leave a lighted area like the dining facility results in a few seconds of total blindness.

Salerno does not accommodate you with any lights, presumably because they’d make the base an easy target for the rocket-wielding insurgents in the nearby mountains. The predictable result is a desperate attempt among base residents not to slam into concrete barriers, wooden footbridges and each other.

Sensible soldiers keep magic-marker-sized LED flashlights clipped to their belts — available for only $8.68 at the on-base PX while supplies last — leaving little discs of red or blue light on the chunks of white stone that carpet Salerno. The moon is the closest thing to a floodlight.

The darkness makes people revert to a childlike state of fear. Well, I’ll speak for myself. At the media operations center my first night here, another journalist, who stepped outside for some fresh air, walked in with a look of concern on his face.

“Did you hear that?” he asked. I hadn’t.

When I walked outside to investigate, it turned out his alarm was completely justified. A loud — very loud — whining howl emanated from somewhere in the nearby brush: Eeee-yaaaaaaal, eeee-yaaaaaaaal.

As soon as one call began to die down, several more sounded off. Whatever was making that noise — a wolf? — it had brought along its family, friends, neighbors and co-workers.

Tired and hungry as I was, I didn’t travel halfway around the world to be eaten by something. I stayed at the center until closing time, then tiptoed to my tent, heart racing, eyes trying to adjust to the dark.

Forward Operating Base Salerno, Afghanistan (Flickr: nicearmyguy81)

FORWARD OPERATING BASE SALERNO, Afghanistan – Spartan compared to Bagram, Salerno is a large, no-nonsense base about 12 miles from the Pakistan “border” — more on that later — that houses Task Force Curahee.

Curahee is largely comprised of the 4^th Brigade Combat Team of the 101^st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, as well as an aviation battalion, a Polish battle group and a handful of the diplomatic-military-development units known as Provincial Reconstruction Teams.

All told, Curahee has about 5,500 people to control Khost, Paktia, Paktika, Logar, Ghazni and Wardak provinces. This is a battlespace of 25,000 square miles -– about the size of West Virginia –- with a population of maybe four million people. The Afghan National Army isn’t as competent as it needs to be. But it’s regarded as a more reliable partner than the police force. “The whole thing is economy of force,” said Maj. Patrick Seiber, Curahee’s public-affairs chief, summing up the manpower available for the task force’s mission.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

There’s a variety of different responsibilities in an area that has become notably more kinetic — military-speak for “violent” — in recent months, as the Afghanistan war has intensified in general.

Southwest of us, in eastern Paktika, is what Seiber described as “the main area for the border fight.” It’s about 150 miles of straight entranceway into Pakistan — where Taliban, Al Qaeda and affiliated insurgents have free passage into Afghanistan.

The border isn’t actually a border. There are no fences, no walls, no structures dividing one country from another in the part of the world controlled by the Pashtun tribes. The fighters move up from Paktika, attempting to get to Gardez in the north and cut off Khost to the east. Their ultimate destination is Kabul, the capital.

Curahee has only one battalion in eastern Paktika. Seiber noted that, in Iraq, there would be a division devoted to stopping infiltration — the difference between hundreds of soldiers and more than 10,000.

The fight in Khost was quieter in August than it has been recently, something that Seiber attributed to the task force’s success against insurgents and the strength of the provincial governor, Arsula Jamal, who’s a believer in what the major called “conflict resolution.”

But that’s not to say it’s placid here. Three weeks ago, over two days, insurgents attacked Salerno itself, using car bombs and fighters rigged with detonation vests. The casualties were mostly Afghan villagers who work on the base. Seiber and his team remember typing press releases about the attack, only to hear rockets go off in the background, prompting rewrites.

Spencer's route through Afghanistan

The base is a target for rocket attacks from the mountains ringing it — and also from inside Pakistan. Seiber said he couldn’t comment on the rise this year in U.S. attacks across the border into Pakistan, but confirmed, “We can fire in self-defense out across the border.”

But the major effort in Khost is the construction of the Khost-Gardez Road. Unlike much of Afghanistan, Khost is a fertile province — Salerno and its environs are notably greener than Kabul or Bagram — with wheat being a major crop. (We didn’t discuss poppy, Afghanistan’s principal export besides violence.)

There’s no reliable way, however, to bring Khost’s harvest to market. That’s where the 98-kilometer road comes in: the LBG Co. won a $101-million contract in April to build a modern road over 20 months. Jamal says that the road will turn Khost into “another Herat,” referring to the prosperous trading center on the Iranian border, because from Gardez, Khost can be linked to Kabul.

Insurgents, accordingly, have shifted their efforts into attacking road construction. Their objective, Seiber surmised, is “to show people the government is not interested in their well-being.”

Seiber is blunt about the force at Curahee’s disposal. “We can’t just put everybody along the border or everybody along the road,” he said. “We have to figure out: where do we assume risk?”

The task force’s answer, hewing to classic counterinsurgency strategy, is within the population centers. But 5,500 soldiers to protect four million people is a daunting ratio. “We’re spread thin,” Seiber said. “That’s the take-home.”

The potential good news is that the Army brigade recently scheduled to arrive in Afghanistan by January will probably come to Curahee’s neighborhood. Seiber cautiously anticipated that the brigade will operate in the Logar-Wardak area, near the dangerous stretch of highway that connects Kabul to Kandahar.

If it does, that means Curahee will be relieved of about half its battlespace, allowing it to focus on the Paktia, Khost and eastern Paktika hotspots. During this time, however, Curahee will lose its Polish battle-group. The Poles are slated to take control of part of Ghazni around November, so the base will divest itself of about 500 combat troops.

Even if the brigade comes to Curahee’s relief, I asked Seiber, will these roughly 5,000 troops be enough to control insurgent infiltration from Pakistan, guard the road and protect the Afghan population from attacks? His answer: “We’ll see.”

Tomorrow I’m scheduled to visit Gardez, where I should get a better sense of what the so-called “border fight” is like.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this piece contained a number of minor errors.  Maj. Patrick Seiber’s name was written “Sieber,” Arsula Jamal was referred to by the single name “Jamal,” and the Logar-Wardak area was mistakenly called the Logar-Ghazni region.  We regret the errors.

Now I know what he meant.

It takes about an hour and a half to fly southeast on a Chinook helicopter from Bagram to Forward Operating Base Salerno in Khost Province. (I gave up on the prospect of a C-130.) During the flight. you unspool about 5,000 years’ worth of progress on the highlight reel of human civilization. The terrain is an almost endless chain of mountains, with virtually no greenery jutting out from the mountainface — just an ashy, arid, bleached tan color stretching out over the horizon.

Mostly that surface is uninhabited, even in the valleys. The population centers that do exist feature maze-like structures that cut into the hills with frail strips of single-story construction that wind around each other and stop abruptly.

I counted exactly three high-rise buildings in 90 minutes. The first time I saw a building with any color – a sharp blue – it jarred me into noticing how monochromatic the landscape is. That building, it turned out, was attached to a military outpost where we briefly stopped.

A Chinook is loud, tight and uncomfortable. About 25 soldiers, contractors and reporters — along with one stately bomb-sniffing German shepherd — strapped into either side of the helicopter’s belly. Our legs were bent into unnatural positions, thanks to the baggage stacked up in the center of the bird. Two other passengers were seated between me and Sgt. Clark — one of the Chinook’s gunners.

Before we left, I overheard a crew member tell Sgt. Schon, her counterpart on the other side of the helicopter, that there was a rocket-propelled grenade threat on the flight route. I looked at the German shepherd, Cinco, and considered his panting face to be good luck.

About a half-hour into the flight, I craned my neck, stiff as it was from my body armor, to look out the window behind me. I saw a mountain, swept almost entirely by a silky tan sand, its peaks maybe 20 yards away from us. It jutted up and down like a vital sign measured on hospital equipment — no subtle inclines, just sharp heights and severe drops. Yet the mountain looked smooth, as if a footprint was the most absurd thing it could encounter. I thought I was watching a scene that would be unthinkable to witness from the earth’s surface.

That thought evaporated when Clark opened fire. She let out three bursts, the second the shortest: da-rrrrruck-duck-duck-duck-duck; duck-duck; drrrrruck-duck-duck-duck-duck-duck-duck.

I jutted my head around, trying to see who she was firing at from the different available windows, but I couldn’t see anyone. A few seconds later Schon joined in: duck-duck-duck; da-rrrrruck-duck-duck-duck-duck-duck.

Whether the mountain hid our RPG threat I’ll never know.

Will it take more troops, or are we beyond the point where more troops can be beneficial? Will crossing the border into Pakistan stanch the Afghan insurgency, or will it just destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan? Will Washington look to double down on its commitment to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, or is Karzai part of the problem?

All these questions need to be informed by on-the-ground reporting, so that’s what The Washington Independent is going to bring you.

I should be in place within a few days (traveling to Afghanistan takes a while) and am set to stay until Sept. 19.

I’ll go from the Pakistan border back to the capitol city of Kabul, talking to whomever I can. And because Joe Scarborough called me a Cheeto-dust inflected liberal blogger, I’ll be filing as frequently as technology permits to The Streak. Watch this space for what, insh’allah, will be some cool visual razzle-dazzle as well.