Victory Point - Ed Darack [49]
“Can anyone else confirm what he is saying. I believe him—but I need to confirm with another source.”
Shaded relief map of the Sawtalo Sar region, including the Korangal Valley, the Shuryek Valley, the Chowkay Valley, the Narang Valley, the Pech River Valley, and the Kunar Valley
Bobby and L.C. continued talking, then the former mujahideen gestured for Regan to jump into his truck. L.C. drove the lieutenant to the home of another man who was involved in security of the region. He confirmed everything L.C. had told Regan, adding also a list of Ahmad Shah’s relatives who didn’t support the terrorist, and told Regan two of Shah’s aliases: Molawi Ibrahim, Ismael, Mullah Mohammed Ismael, and Commander Ismael. “Thank you, thank you both, I’ll see you again.” Turner noted a list of the village’s needs to pass to battalion HQ, then headed back to brief Westerfield.
“You’re amazing, Turner. Absolutely amazing.”
“Thanks, sir. Just doing my job, though.”
“Get a picture of him?”
“No. They didn’t offer one.”
“That’s fine. What you’ve given me is what we need to proceed, it’ll get Tommy Wood rollin’ on the final op plan.”
Westerfield pored over Turner’s notes, compiling a detailed picture of Shah, his small cell, and his area of operation. To Westerfield, the terrorist leader clearly was using his Pashai background to co-opt the locals in the Korangal, who clung to their Safi beliefs. But Shah’s connections seemed to span a broad fundamentalist spectrum, from the Pashtun-dominated Taliban to the Arab-rooted apocalyptic al-Qaeda. But because he spent time—actually lived in—Hekmatayar’s Shamshatoo, Westerfield believed that Shah’s primary allegiance, and substantial financial, personnel, and armament support, came from HIG or associated Pakistani connections. Hekmatyar, who was known in the late sixties to throw battery acid on women who dared to show their wrists and ankles while walking down streets in Kabul, proved to be a continuing thorn in the side of democratic evolution well into the twenty-first century in the region. Far more important—from a tactical standpoint—than his specific connections, Shah seemed to have established a firm network: safe houses, financial aid, arms caches, paid runners and observers, which he intended to utilize to dash the prospects in the Kunar that the Marines had come to secure: the upcoming safe, unfettered democratic national elections.
Gazing at 1:50,000 scale maps of the specific region where Turner reported the location of Shah’s operations—in and around the village of Chichal and the summit of Sawtalo Sar—Westerfield immediately realized that he was staring at the catbird seat for any insurgent or terrorist cell in the region. Sawtalo Sar is a domineering massif, a north-south-trending five-mile-long phalanx of twisted, dark earth that rises over 6,000 vertical feet from its water-lapped base on the Pech River to its apex at 9,282 feet above sea level. Chichal village, a loosely defined medley of stone houses and large timber smuggler-built mansion compounds, lies near the very summit of the peak. An extensive trail network, splaying out from the main “Super Highway” trail that runs along the crest of the peak’s north ridge, interconnects the village’s houses, pastures, and terraces. The mountain is densely covered in Himalayan deodar cedar and broad-leaf ferns on its upper shoulders; numerous rock outcroppings grant vistas of the Pech Valley, the Korangal Valley (of which the peak defines the eastern wall), and the Shuryek Valley, of which Sawtalo Sar forms the western periphery. From Chichal and Sawtalo Sar’s summit, Westerfield noted that Shah could control a number of small units of his team, ambushing convoys, emplacing rocket attacks, and lobbing mortars into villages, through his ICOM two-way radio.
Topographic map of the summit region of Sawtalo Sar
Needing further detail than his maps supplied,