Fort Drum troops test trust with Afghan police

The second article in a series of profiles of Fort Drum’s 1-87th Infantry Battalion in Afghanistan is up on the New York Times website today.

It’s a fascinating narrative of Drum troops and Afghan police tentatively feeling each other out in the midst of rugged terrain, wary civilians, and insurgent gunfire:

As they prepared to depart, the platoon made a crucial decision: to use a different return route, recommended by the Afghan police.

The road was narrow and slick with mud. One of the trucks bumped into a wall, cracking it. Less than a mile later, another truck slipped off the road and nearly flipped over in a ditch. The platoon tried to use a winch and a hook to pull the truck back onto the road, but it was too heavy. Captain Bell called for a salvage team.

At first, curious villagers, most of them Pashtun, emerged to chat with the soldiers. A little girl gave Private Moody a flower. A towering man with hands the size of catcher’s mitts posed for photographs with Captain Bell.

“We are happy to have them here now,” a villager said through a translator. “But if they kill a single civilian, people will turn against them.”

You can listen to author Jim Dao talk about his embed with these Fort Drum troops here and here.  And we’ll hear from him again next week.