TAROK KOLACHE, Afghanistan — Two aerial photos tell the story of this tiny village in the southern province of Kandahar. One shows a deceptively bucolic collection of mud huts amid pomegranate orchards. The second shows a field of dirt and shorn tree stumps — the same hamlet after being pulverized by 25 tons of explosives.
U.S. Army Lt. Col. David Flynn, commander of Combined Joint Task Force 1-320th, called in airstrikes to level Tarok Kolache in October after spending 100 days fighting for control of the Arghandab River Valley, a fertile farming area and Taliban bastion.
Seven of his men were killed and dozens wounded in orchards and towns the Taliban laced with improvised bombs. In one small area, Flynn said, his men encountered about 200 bombs — or one every 40 yards.
“We were fighting in a veritable minefield,” Flynn said.
While the bombardment in October ended the battle for Tarok Kolache, the battle of perception had just begun.
The village was deserted at the time of the bombing, but criticism of the strikes was intense.
Afghan government officials said destroying the village was excessive. Human-rights activists compared the strike with Vietnam-era carpet bombings and said it smacked of collective punishment.
Flynn defended the strikes as a necessary evil due to the Taliban’s use of Afghan homes as fighting positions. But NATO feared such justifications would be lost on people in Kandahar, where the Taliban has staunch support.
So Flynn decided on what he hoped would be a more persuasive response.
On a recent spring day, he arranged a helicopter trip to Tarok Kolache for reporters to see the opening of the village mosque and construction of 14 homes that will replace all the buildings destroyed in October, at a cost of $500,000.
Construction of about 200 more homes is underway in the region, including three other Arghandab valley villages that were extensively damaged — Lower Baber, Kosher Safla and Charcolba.
The U.S. military also is planning to fund the planting of 300,000 pomegranate trees to restore damaged orchards in the region.
The destruction in Arghandab valley — where villages of mud and straw were often caught between the Taliban’s improvised explosives and NATO’s 500-pound bombs — was so extensive that Flynn’s unit decided to act as community development consultants and pay claims on a collective basis. In each village, they are consulting with landowners, tenants and government officials about the rebuilding.
Flynn said U.S. troops have effectively disrupted insurgents’ movements in southern Afghanistan by setting up new Afghan combat units and a chain of combat outposts in Kandahar province.
But as the spring fighting season begins, it remains unclear how deep or lasting the military’s efforts will be, or whether the people of Arghandab valley will shift their loyalties away from the Taliban.
Tarok Kolache farmer Asadullah Alkozia, 25, was unimpressed by the American efforts.
He said the new trees would not replace his losses because it can take up to five years for them to bear fruit.
“We grew those trees for 35 years,” he said.
