Word: mcculloughs
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Khalik had just finished inking his thumbprint onto a "Reintegration Agreement," which had been provided by McCullough and the local District Governor, Abdul Manaf, in whose fortified, shabby office we sat. The agreement, which Manaf had read aloud on account of Khalik's illiteracy, was printed in English and Pashtu. (See intimate photos of the war in Afghanistan...
Khalik, dusty in a torn shalwar kameez, looked relieved as McCullough released his ink stained hand. His village elder, a long gray-bearded man named Haji Assidullah - who had just signed the corollary "Reintegration Sponsor Agreement" - gave him a reassuring smile. A Marine took Khalik from the room and then walked outside to retrieve another detainee, to repeat the process...
Three days before, according to McCullough, Khalik had been among several Afghans caught in the middle of a Taliban attack on a U.S. battalion's foot patrols, on the road between the Helmand villages of Bagrabat and Hazarapas. "My men were walking on the road," he told Haji Assidullah and his fellow elder Jon Mohammed. "The car with these men [the detainees] sped up, drove right at them, didn't stop, almost hit two of my men, then the car behind that one stopped. Three men got out and started firing at my men. Two others on the side...
...Some of them are dead," McCullough said...
...them to an attack. So ostensibly, there is no need to "reintegrate" them at all. But the "re-integration agreement," which also contains a clause in which the signatory volunteers his biometric data, is part of the Afghan government's attempt to reconcile with the forces inimical to it. McCullough said that supporting the Afghan government was paramount to his mission. But the reintegration forms, he explained later, "are not us, they are GIRoA. We helped them clean it up, gave them ideas, used our computers." (See portraits of Gitmo detainees...