On paper, the plan for the foot patrol looked perfectly safe. A stroll through a couple of villages. Introductions to a few village elders. A two-mile drive back to the guarded walls of the Afghan police headquarters. Easy.
But the first missions of a deployment have a way of going terribly wrong. And so the company commander huddled with his platoon leader in the hours around dawn, checking potential ambush points, charting evacuation routes, worrying about every possible equipment failure.
There was one variable, however, they could do little to control: the trustworthiness of their Afghan police partners.
In small groups and to themselves, soldiers from the First Battalion, 87th Infantry, quietly fretted. Were those villages really friendly, as the Afghan police claimed? Were those roads really free of mines? What would happen if a police officer tipped off insurgent fighters to the platoon’s movements?
Just a week before, a different platoon in the battalion had hit a mine while accompanying the Afghan police along a dirt road. Some soldiers wondered whether the police had led the Americans into a trap.
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By: Brant
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