Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan — The U.S. Army sergeant sat on a wooden bench wedged among the monotonous barracks at Camp Phoenix, inhaling deeply from a cigarette while reflecting on the course his life has taken and the shambles Afghanistan has become.
As he spoke, it became clear the Afghan-born 25-year-old had paid a price for being tied to two worlds.
American soldiers, sailors and Marines based in Afghanistan, thousands of miles from loved ones, find the separation heart-wrenching. For the sergeant at this base on the outskirts of Kabul, being five miles from family was even worse.
The sergeant's parents, siblings and other relatives live a stone's throw from Camp Phoenix, where he recently wrapped up a two-year posting. But he could not visit them, given the danger to himself, his family and the mission, although they did talk periodically on the phone.
As far as neighbors in Kabul are concerned, this tall, square-jawed man left for America in 2005. If word had spread in this tribal society with very few secrets -- gossip here flies faster than the wind -- that he'd joined the U.S. Army, Taliban militants could well make an example of his family. The risks are huge, so he asked that he not be named, given what he said is a $1-million-plus price tag on his head.
"I haven't seen them since 2004, even though they're 20 minutes away," he said of his family. "It's really, really hard. But if the bad guys learned about me, they'd probably kill them."
Shortly after recounting his story, his tour of duty ended and he shipped back to the U.S., putting 14,000 miles and months, if not years, between him and what he hopes will be his eventual homecoming. He is in touch with his family every few weeks by phone.
Much of the sergeant's life, marked by near-constant turmoil in Afghanistan, has been about bridging worlds. Even during the darkest years of Taliban control, his father, a structural engineer, and mother, a kindergarten teacher, made education a priority, confident that Afghanistan would one day rejoin the global community.
They sent their two sons and six daughters to secret home schools to study English, foreign literature and other secular subjects, defying rules that girls focus solely on religion.
"It's a very tight family," said Greg Motz, a police officer in Evansville, Ind., a National Guardsman who served with the sergeant in Afghanistan. "His mother and father sacrificed a lot for his education."
The sergeant was jailed twice under Taliban rule. In the late 1990s, he was caught shaving his beard -- forbidden by the hard-line regime -- with the vanity of a teenager hoping it would grow back thicker.
In the second instance, at great personal risk he had helped an American accused of being a CIA agent, leading to his own arrest as a suspected collaborator. During the ensuing interrogation and beating, he lied about his identity to protect his family.
In a lucky break, the central jail was full that day so he was detained in a house, from which he escaped while guards prayed.
After the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, his language skills were in demand, and he landed a civilian job with the U.S. military as an interpreter, or "terp" in military-speak. In addition to English, he speaks Pashto, Dari, Persian, Urdu, French and Arabic.
American military colleagues describe him as sincere and ethical in a region where they feel relationships often trump morality. Soon he was asked to join Special Forces missions, local training exercises and hearts-and-minds operations.
"He wasn't afraid to look a commander in the eye and correct him until he presented the proper courtesies," said Steve Fippen, another Indiana police officer and former National Guardsman in Afghanistan. "He'd also explain to the Afghans that American men aren't used to holding hands. He was an invaluable bridge."
Even as he spanned the cultural divide, he watched their backs, colleagues said. Soon they were sharing operational details with him before missions, even posting him behind the machine gun when the patrol stopped for rest. "Let me just say, that's not the case with many other interpreters," Motz said.
On one patrol about seven years ago, armed villagers became aggressive. He told them to back down or the Americans would tear their village apart looking for bad guys, Fippen recalled.
"We were outgunned," Fippen said. "But he bluffed, and it saved us. He's a great young man."
