KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – In Kandahar it's all a matter of footing. Where you step and where you don't.
The Taliban have mostly eschewed direct firefights in the face of overwhelming fire power, but they can make a pressure plate out of two blocks of wood taped together with a metal connection wired to a 9 volt battery and a farmer's jug filled full of Homemade explosive. The kind of stuff that can be concocted using fertilizer and metal byproducts.
Then there was the morning the Afghan soldier called LaRasha brought in a the whole contraption – pressure plate, wires and jug of explosive, that he'd just dug up from outside the compound US troops were occupying. The US guys asked him to take it outside. LaRasha usually leads the patrol. He gives his rifle to another soldier and holds the mine detector out in front.
Villagers say they stare at the US soldiers because, “sometimes they fire at us.”
A few weeks ago Charlie Company pushed far down a dirt road and set up a patrol base in an abandoned compound and started sand-bagging it. Initial the patrols were to “clear” nearby compounds. In other words, asking locals a few basic questions and then blowing up some empty grape huts.
[After one mine damaged a “specialized route clearing vehicle”], a day later a US 225-kg bomb was dropped on two individuals digging at the same IED spot at night; a few days later, a man was killed digging there again in daylight.
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