Fighting the Taliban, worrying about Va. Tech
Posted: Thursday, April 19, 2007 3:00 PM
By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent
JALALABAD, Afghanistan -- Col. John Nicholson, commander of Task Force Spartan, has a lot on his mind:
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He must lead a brigade of some 3,500 U.S. soldiers in the rugged and lethal eastern Afghan mountain ranges near the border with Pakistan.
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His tour of duty and that of his men has been extended from one year to 15 months, without prior notice.
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The winter lull in the war against the Taliban is over and – once again – Taliban fighters and al-Qaida operatives are infiltrating from Pakistan into his “area of operations” in large numbers.
But this is not what was preoccupying this West Point graduate, who has led his brigade through at least three major military offensives in Taliban country during the past year. What was disturbing him, he confided to me after we caught up at Jalalabad Air base on Wednesday, was that his daughter just lost her best girlfriend. Her former high school classmate, Erin Peterson, was one of the 30 killed in Norris Hall, on the Virginia Tech campus.
‘’She is calling me and asking how I cope with death here in Afghanistan,’’ said the man who lost several close colleagues, as well as his Pentagon office, on 9/11. ‘’We are working through a lot of pain. It’s hard. What is also tough is that my 12-year-old boy is also asking me about death. Why am I here? Why all the violence?’’
Here is a man who, every day, has risked life and limb so that a people as innately alien to America as remote, rural, Afghans can improve their lives. This has involved building a new road or school or bridge, or clinic, or flushing out Taliban rebels from their villages.
'It's just crazy'
But as he spoke, it seemed as if his bedrock of belief in the very system he is trying so hard to bring to Afghans had been shaken by recent events back home. “We are supposed to be bringing a sense of purpose, of democracy and values to these people, and yet, look at how lacking in values we can be ourselves. It’s just crazy,” he said.
Nicholson has seen vast improvements in the security and economic situation here in the past 12 months. The Taliban have been uprooted from many of its sanctuaries. Afghan children have returned to school. The elderly are getting help in clinics. Mothers, increasingly, survive childbirth. Most importantly, villagers are beginning to believe in their own local government officials, as well as in the emerging Afghan security forces. The bullet points rolled off his tongue. The war in Afghanistan, he implied, was there for the winning. But he had no such apparent confidence – at least not this day – when he spoke about his own country’s week of trauma.
Even a warrior like Nicholson, who loves America and all that it represents, seemed to be struggling inside: a confused patriot and father.
NBC News correspondent Jim Maceda, who is based in London, is on assignment in Afghanistan.
