Author: Kristen L. Rouse
Publication: The New York Times
Date: March 16, 2009
One afternoon in April 2006, my Army unit
got word that the hospital at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, might need help
carrying possibly dozens of litters from medevac helicopters into the emergency
room.
The story gradually filtered in: the Taliban
had attacked a primary school just east of us in Asadabad. The school taught
young boys and girls together in an open courtyard outside a mosque. One rocket
made a direct hit on the children as they sat in class. A second rocket exploded
nearby. Seven children were killed. Thirty-four were wounded.
We had arrived in Afghanistan only a few months
before and it hadn't occurred to us that schoolchildren would be among the
Taliban's targets. But we soon learned that the Taliban routinely burned school
buildings, assassinated teachers, and even singled out the children themselves
for maiming, dismemberment and attack. As the Taliban see it, boys should
not be educated beyond rote learning of narrow theology, and girls must not
be educated at all. The Asadabad attack - although one of the most severe
to date - was hardly unique.
In the end, only a half-dozen of the children
were flown from Asadabad to Bagram for advanced care, and we weren't needed
to carry litters after all. But we still wanted to help. We made paper toys
and took them to the few who were awake and able to move around. Some of the
boys and girls were fine, but it seemed most of them weren't. We smiled and
visited with them for a few minutes, but ultimately I found it hard to look.
It has been two years and one month since
I returned from Afghanistan, and I hadn't thought of those children in a while.
But the news last month that Pakistan conceded the Swat Valley to the Taliban,
and with little apparent objection from American officials - it's been getting
to me. The valley's a mere 70 miles or so east of Asadabad. And when I heard
that the Taliban proceeded to shut down nearly 200 Swat Valley schools - well,
it's been keeping me up at night.
It's also made me get back in touch with many
of the soldiers I deployed with, sharing stories and talking about Afghanistan's
future. We hold diverse views about the war and about what should happen next.
But I can tell you this much: many of the veterans I know are outraged at
the possibility of the United States negotiating with the Taliban as if they
were just another Afghan political party and not a criminal gang that inflicts
and enforces the most extreme ignorance, poverty and violence upon innocent
people - upon schoolchildren.
It was actually Jeanette Martinez who reminded
me about the children in Asadabad. She was a medic from my unit assigned to
support combat troops in the eastern mountains bordering Pakistan, and she
was on the scene in Asadabad right after the attack happened. Jeanette said
that at first she thought the call on the radio was a drill. But she soon
found herself with other medics and corpsmen amid dozens of injured children,
organizing their limited medical resources and triaging the children who might
make it from those who wouldn't.
Jeanette remembers handing a ventilation bag
to a Marine who had helped to carry a little boy to a shaded spot in the yard.
She remembers showing him how to place the mask over the boy's mouth and use
the bag to keep him breathing. She knew the boy wouldn't make it. When she
checked in on them later, she found the Marine overwhelmed with tears, dutifully
squeezing the bag as he watched the boy die.
Jeanette also told me about a little girl
she helped to take from the yard into a mud-brick building they used as an
impromptu clinic. The girl had an open head wound. Jeanette began treating
the girl but quickly realized the magnitude of her injury.
She told me: "They wanted me to fix her,
suture or staple her closed. But I could see her brain, and had no idea how
to properly close that wound. She was the toughest little girl I've ever seen.
Didn't cry or anything; she was awake, just looking around. Victim of the
Taliban's way of thinking."
- Kristen L. Rouse, a first lieutenant in
the Army National Guard, served in the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan
from 2006 to 2007.
