Why one Afghan village tells you everything you need to know about how bad things are over there

So here is why the small, remote village of Ganjgal in Afghanistan tells you everything you need to know about why the U.S.-led occupation of the country seems so doomed to so many.

Ganjgal is a rocky, hillside village in the Kunar Province, not far from the Pakistan border. Four U.S. Marines were killed there last week in an ambush. McClatchy Newspapers correspondent, Jonathan S. Landay, an excellent combat reporter, was embedded with the unit that entered the village in the Sarkani district and walked into the ambush. Landay's harrowing account is required reading in order to understand just how bad things are over there.

I have a unique background on Ganjgal. I reported from the small village for The Boston Globe on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 and it provided the centerpiece of my reporting on the perils of the U.S.'s "forgotten war" in Afghanistan. It was 2006, and I wrote about how insurgents fired rockets down on the Forward Operating Base (FOB) that is adjacent to the village. The attack shook us and we awoke to U.S. and Afghan forces returning fire into the darkness at an unseen enemy. The local U.S. commander was surprised by the attack because the village was considered sympathetic to the Americans who were set up in the FOB next door. In fact, in the trite shorthand that goes with war, the US commander called them "our friendlies."

Back then, I met with the village elders from Ganjgal in the following days and learned how  the attack went down. It turned out the village had permitted — or at least not stopped — Pakistani militants setting up the rocket attack because the village was angry that several of its elders had been captured and detained. These men from Ganjgal were being held in Bagram on no charges, the village elders told me. There were allegations of torture and brutal treatment. There was a mistrust brewing between the village and the FOB and you could feel it taking shape back then.

Now, it is my understanding from several sources who have been on the ground there in recent months, that  those same village elders who were detained have never been released from Bagram. So it is perhaps no surprise that there is an open hostility between Ganjgal and the nearby FOB.

In every village in Afghanistan where insurgents are engaged in battle against the U.S. and the coalition, there is a back story like this one. The only way the U.S. will ever be effective in Afghanistan is for its troops to know these back stories, to understand where the hostility of that village comes from. And then, to have the courage and the wisdom to honestly investigate whether in fact its village elders were wrongly accused and unlawfully detained.And if they establish that is the case, they should work hard to correct the error and secure the men's release. That will go a very long way in turning that village around to become what General Petraeus calls, "reconcilables," or what the local commander I met two years ago called , "our friendlies."

He sure wouldn't use that term for the residents of the village now.

http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/worldview/090914/why-one-afghan-village-tells-you-everything-you-need-know-about-how-bad