This photocopy of an image of Abdul Razaq, the killer of the three Marines, was given to the writer by a Marine in Helmand.
Abdul Razaq looks off a balcony of the Kabul Military Training Center. It is winter, about nine months before he would murder three U.S. Marines. There is a photo of him leaning on the rail in mismatched fatigues. He is drawn, slender, with dark brows and a cowboy mustache. By this time he has seen combat. He has been a mercenary guarding trucks in Musa Qala and a policeman in Girishk, and now he is training to soldier in the Afghan National Army.
It is cold on that balcony but a good place to smoke one of the cheap Pine cigarettes he favors. Inhale, look downtown, where children walk through traffic swinging improvised braziers. Poor kids, like he was. They promise that their incense's smoke wards off trouble, bestows good fortune. The blessings are transactional. Passengers and drivers will sometimes--if they are superstitious or generous, longing or desperate--slip a bill into the streaked, begging hands in exchange for a few wisps through the car window. The rest of the smoke rises, becoming inseparable from Corolla exhaust, sweet hashish, IED burn-off, incinerated sawdust, the city's gray blanket.
Abdul Razaq exhales and steps out of the cold, back to his training.
Aug. 10, 2012. Three special-forces Marines were dead in Afghanistan, and initial reports conflicted. Tolo, a leading local news organization, located the incident in Sarwan Qala, Sangin district, Helmand. The New York Times, in Khannan. Agence France-Presse reported that the shooter invited Marines to join him for iftar, the breaking of Ramadan's daily fast, before striking. On Fox News, an Afghan army officer placed the attack at a U.S. base. Others put it at a checkpoint. Al-Jazeera reported that the attacker was disguised, London's Telegraph that he was a police commander. Singular in its consistency was the name of the alleged shooter: Asadullah.
But they all had the wrong man.
The Marines withheld comment pending investigation--likewise, as always, the names of the dead. Three days later, after the names were released, the San Diego Union-Tribune ran a version of events as told by an anonymous special-forces Marine. According to this account, the shooting occurred shortly after an on-base meeting with local elders. A uniformed Afghan appeared unescorted at the tactical-operations center. Challenged, he shot a gunnery sergeant in the back, then blasted through the door, fatally wounding a staff sergeant and a captain. He shot a fourth Marine in the arm and escaped. There was no mention of the Afghan's name, what happened to him or why he did what he did. And after the Union-Tribune piece, there were no new reports. Only obituaries.