Have you ever looked into the eyes of a killer?  For the past four days I have.  I don’t think many people that will read this have ever looked deep into the eyes of someone who wants you dead.  I know some of my family members who served in the army or were police officers would have had this experience, but for those of you who have never caught a glimpse into these kinds of dark eyes, I hope to God you never will.

One night recently at 2100 hours we came under attack from approximately twenty Taliban fighters. They shot rockets, threw grenades, shot mortars and fired weapons.  The siren sounded, we suited up and got into the fight.  Return fire came in waves.  The attack was on the east side of our FOB, but we had to remain cautious from all other angles.  It was dark and we lit up the sky with flares. Once location and distance of the enemy was determined, an all-out assault on the objective was called in.  We hit ‘em heavy and we hit ‘em hard. Once the shooting stopped, the Afghan National Army set up a perimeter around the compound where the fire was coming from and started to conduct searches for the attackers. They found Taliban bodies all over the place throughout the compound. Finally, they found two survivors from our retaliation. Good guys- 18, Bad Guys- 0 if you want to keep count.

One survivor was a scared 18-year-old kid who was clutching a grenade he didn’t know how to operate, and the other was a 25-year-old that had been severely burned all over his face and his arms.  Later on during one of my interrogations I found out that the rocket he was trying to shoot at us with had exploded in his face and caused the injury. I’ll get into that in a minute. But what an idiot- I could only smirk at his pain as I watched the medics treat him. Anyway, they rounded up the two Taliban fighters and brought them to my team for interrogation. As I’m lead interrogator on the FOB, during the interrogations I’d conduct on these two I was also to be training and certifying another soldier who would be assisting me. 

When I was young, my Dad taught me something very valuable.  He told me that no matter what it was I did, to always be honest.  That honesty, he said, would be more rewarding than telling a lie that might well haunt me for a long time. This honesty is a value that people on this side of the world have not learned, and like my Dad, I don’t tolerate someone who lies to me. So, by that, I guess a detainee shouldn’t try to lie to me in an interrogation, right??

This was an 18-year-old-kid who had so much future ahead of him. A future that consisted of farming, making mud homes, walking five miles to buy bread, taking care of his younger brothers, finding a wife and having children of his own to settle down next to by candlelight every night and drink dirty water. To be honest, tough as it might sound, this is what a good life is for 90% of the people in this country. Somewhere along the way, though, he had to meet the wrong people and make a bad decision. Very similar to the decision young kids back home might make when someone offers them drugs. There seems to be a lot of peer pressure in this business. So, his decision made, this kid got a gun, a few grenades, and now figured that he could beat us. Ohhhhhh brother, this kid had to wish he had been taken out after he’d met me.  I had 96 hours with him and made every minute count. ‘I didn’t know the plan’, ‘I don’t know where the guns came from’, ‘My leader didn’t tell me his name’ and on and on he went with lie after lie after lie.

A 25-year-old with no family. Made his living from selling and trading weapons and killing. A rocket couldn’t have exploded in the face of a more deserving person. When the medics brought him into the jail, his skin was practically peeling off his face and arms. He could hardly open his eyes from the swelling. While he was being treated I asked him some questions. I’ll give him this, he was a cocky guy with big balls. He admitted right away that he was a member of the Taliban and that his mission was to kill as many of us as he could, just as he had done in the past. At this point I thought to myself that he might have been better off lying to me because he was going to wish he had lied once I got some time with him. So I just sat there and watched this guy suffer in pain as we treated his wounds from his own stupidity. It took two days until he was medically cleared for me to meet with him. Now he was in jail and in our care, and he had just tried to hurt my brothers/fellow soldiers/me. He had a smirk on his face like he was untouchable and proud of what he had tried to do. Wrong attitude, buddy. I can’t go into any details here but use your imagination and I’m sure I covered it. I just sat there for a moment and asked myself, “What would Jack Bauer do?” Well he found out.  But this brings me to the point of looking deep into the eyes of a killer. This guy had the deepest, black of black eyes I’ve ever seen. At times I was as close as two inches from his face. Our eyes locked and I just prayed he would make a move. Often I’d find myself getting lost in his eyes and could see an emptiness and an endless tunnel of evil unlike I’d ever seen before.  At this point I truly realized how these people are no joke. They are brainwashed and completely sucked of their soul.

You see it happen in movies, but I saw it two inches from me.  It was pure evil.

Well, I have to end this letter here.  I have not slept in a few days and need to hibernate for a day or two.

Enshalla
Sam

*Not his real name. Winters is an interrogator in the U.S Army based in Afghanistan.