Word: willfully
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It was, in fact, a no-brainer, a perfect metaphor. The Taliban closed schools; the Americans opened them. That this particular school was located deep in the enemy heartland, in a district - Zhari - that was 80% controlled by the Taliban, an area the Russians called the Heart of Darkness and...
No one - no one - wanted to reopen the Pir Mohammed School more than Jeremiah Ellis. He had worked on it for months; he figured it would be Dog Company's legacy in Senjaray. It fit perfectly into the Army's new counterinsurgency doctrine: protect the people, provide them with security...
But nobody showed up for work the following week. Ellis asked the elders what had happened. There was a problem, he was told. "We need to pay the workers ourselves," he was told. "We can't be seen having you pay the workers. The Taliban will cut our heads off...
He asked if Rahman could give us a tour of the property. He didn't reveal the purpose of the exploration; he didn't want to give the Taliban advance warning of his intentions. But, as Ellis expected, the roof of the compound was a perfect observation post. When the...
...evacuated from Senjaray, Ellis led a patrol into the local bazaar. "The initial mood of the population as we went into the bazaar was hostile," Ellis e-mailed me that night. "We asked them to follow us to a meeting place so we could talk, but they were not willing. I then went stall to stall in the bazaar and met with groups of elders. I explained the following: 'I have fought for many years now and seen my own Soldiers and the enemy killed and it never has affected me as much as this event this morning. The thing...