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The point sounded simple. Under a poster of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Governor Naeem asked the people of Sangin to support reintegration, which would in turn facilitate development projects like the district highway and a new Kajaki Dam turbine. Chairman Rabbani called on the Taliban to reintegrate. Lesser officials echoed them through bouts of deafening feedback. Behind the podium, local elders sat in easy chairs marked for Cunningham and other embassy staff.
At the meeting's conclusion, the officials thanked God and the assembled and returned to the Sangin district governor's compound. Elders hurried over to free flat bread and stew. Assistants packed up the banners and speakers; everything was going back to Lashkar Gah. When the courtyard cleared, programs and printed Koran verses were strewn about the ground.
On the mezzanine, Bashir and his men ate a late lunch. A pair of NDS officers stopped by for a smoke. Bashir's men offered them soft drinks.
"Don't drink too much," said one. "You'll leak when you get to Fatikhan."
"I'm drinking Pepsi," joked the other. "It will all come out as gas."
A call came over the radio. The convoy was departing. Bashir and his men packed into their Toyota Hilux. They sped through Sangin's narrow bazaars out into the beige countryside, back toward Fatikhan.
Several trucks behind, a squat ABP commander, Ghulam Rasul, shouted to the gunners in his bay. Intelligence reported potential ambushes in two places, he said, and Taliban in possession of an 82-mm antitank gun. The convoy would thus circle the barren backside of Fatikhan.
It was impossible, at times, to see through the dust kicked up by the truck ahead. But all passed the village without incident. Rasul and his group halted. The dust had cleared, and the road was paved again, but the front of the convoy--including the ANP and Bashir's ASF--had sped out of sight. They could not be raised. The NDS, at the back of the convoy, seemed far behind. The ABP, for the moment, was alone.
Rasul tried to make a call, but he had no reception. He barked for another phone. For a few tense minutes, officers exited their vehicles and loitered, some silent, some laughing. Shots cracked in the distance. When the rear of the convoy reappeared, the ABP officers jumped into their cars and squealed off.
A few minutes south, bullets struck Rasul's truck. The ABP returned fire as the convoy condensed into a traffic jam behind a cluster of abandoned mud buildings. At a wall's edge, Bashir windmilled a long arm, urging the various forces along. But there was little progress beyond the buildings. It seemed safer behind them. Though outgoing fire dwarfed incoming, both were consistent.
Stuck behind an armored humvee, Rasul stepped down to the asphalt. He walked at ease among the crowd of machine gunners, apparently issuing orders. As some of the vehicles broke cover, Rasul's driver wove ahead and lost his commander in the fray.