Pamela Constable at The Washington Post in Kabul has more, and her stuff seems to back up Tobia’s. According to her account, the guards — whom an unnamed Kandahar source told her were “like special-operations forces” — burst into the Kandahar police station and demanded the release of a detained comrade who had been taken in on forgery charges. The police resisted and a shootout followed. Which company do these guards work for, and what’s its relationship to the U.S.-led coalition?

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.

As it turns out, this tiny, austere base in Paktia hasn’t been mortared recently, thanks to protective measures taken by its residents, Alpha Company, the 1-161 Cavalry from Ft. Cambell. But the IED threat is no exaggeration. Since May, insurgents have planted the homemade bombs all throughout the few roads in the area. The company’s response, following the wheat harvest, has been to avoid the roads as much as possible. While soldiers will face occasional indirect fire, after May 10, 2008 – more on that day later – the insurgents primarily target Alpha Company through IEDs, not shootouts.

Zormat is a challenging environment for the company. Alpha Company has responsibility for a 30 kilometer-by-60 kilometer slice of Paktia, sharing space with an illiterate, agronomy-dependent population almost entirely cut off from modernity. According to members of the company, tribal law is the rule – there are easily ten tribes in the area, including at least one nomadic tribe, and the company isn’t sure how large the population exactly is in its area of operations – and the people here think in terms of conditions in their immediate surroundings. Notables at the weekly shura, or council, seek to deliver schools and clinics in their villages even if there’s another clinic just up the road. “Immediate gratification” is a term company members used to describe the locals’ mindset.

About half the people here were born in Pakistan, said the commander of Alpha Company’s 1st Platoon, Lt. N. Blaine Cooper. Cooper — a tall, broad-shouldered, and mustachioed 25-year old native of Tulsa who favors wrap-around shades – said the attitudes of people here toward the Taliban and the U.S. varies, with one town saying security is “great,” while the next one is “hesitant to talk [to the company] because they’re afraid of who’s listening.” The Taliban’s activities in the towns consist largely of intimidation, demanding food and quartering from the populace, while spreading money around to plant IEDs. Zormat sits atop a route for insurgent infiltration running north from Pakistan through Paktika Province in the south; seeking to cut off Khost Province to the east; and hoping to run all the way up to Kabul. As a result, the company sees Taliban commanders coming from outside of the area and hiring locals as foot soldiers. The platoon sergeant, Forrest Robertson, a gung-ho 30-year old from Wamego, Kan., describes as the typical Taliban soldier as “a local, a farm kid” with strong religious sensibilities.

Southwestern Paktia is greener and more fertile than much of Afghanistan, but the locals aren’t interested in bringing their harvests to market. Befitting the immediate-gratification ethic here, subsistence agriculture is the rule, with relatively poor hydrology effectively preventing large-scale farming even if an enterprising farmer decided to expand.

The Taliban has used the destitution of the area to its advantage. Locals typically tell the company that “when the Taliban was in control, prices were lower, crops were better, the economy was better,” Cooper said. Indeed, six weeks ago, Cooper’s platoon, which calls itself the Hooligans, distributed humanitarian aid – beans, rice, blankets, radios, school supplies, cooking oil and the like – to a city called Tatanak about 7 kilometers to the north. A few hours after the Hooligans left, the Taliban burned the haul. The following week, when Cooper’s soldiers returned with another load of goods, “the people refused to take it,” he said. If the villagers perceive a link between their scarcity and the Taliban’s destruction of aid supplies, it’s not apparent to Alpha Company.