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An American soldier from Task Force 2-2 crosses a plain on the outskirts of Pir Zadeh, a village in Maywand district between the city of Kandahar and Helmand Province. All the soldiers at basic are told, "Get behind cover, shoot, run, shoot," said Lt. Terrence Paul Dunn, who led the patrol to Pir Zadeh. "They're not taught at basic training, 'This is how you do a handshake and this is how you drink tea with the Afghan population.'"

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Stephen James “Banger” Lang, a member of the Human Terrain team in Maywand, stands guard near a gap in a mud wall in Pir Zadeh. A poppy field blooms behind him, awaiting the spring opium harvest.
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Dr. Karl Slaikeu, known to his teammates as Doc, heads out on patrol in an MRAP, an armored vehicle meant to mitigate the effect of improvised bombs or IEDs. Karl joined the Human Terrain Program after his Marine son deployed to Baghdad, because he saw few other ways for ordinary citizens to contribute to the war effort. “My son and other people were over there, boys and girls, giving their lives, and what were we doing?” he asked.
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An Afghan man and a little girl stand at the edge of a wheat field outside Pir Zadeh, watching American soldiers pass. When the soldiers first approached the man, they asked him to lift his clothes so they could see if he had a bomb strapped to his chest. Banger, one of the Human Terrain team members, thought the approach could turn locals against the Americans. He made a mental note to advise the soldiers to find a less obtrusive way to search villagers.
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Soldiers from Task Force 2-2 search a villager for explosives and weapons in a wheat field in Pir Zadeh. They were patrolling the bazaar near the base on January 8 when a suicide bomber detonated. Now, they took no chances, searching villagers thoroughly and patrolling with their guns up, even though this posture alarmed locals and seemed to contradict the battalion’s larger mission: to win villagers’ trust and cooperation in fighting the Taliban.
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Banger, a member of the Army Human Terrain team in Maywand, pauses to talk to a shopkeeper in Pir Zadeh while children look on.
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Dr. Karl Slaikeu, a member of the Human Terrain Team in Maywand, takes notes on a conversation between Lt. Terrence Paul Dunn (far left) and a village elder in Pir Zadeh. The old man complained that the Taliban were harassing him and asked the soldiers to give him a gun. “Maybe the next time the Taliban will shoot me,” he said.
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An American soldier pours Pop Rocks into the hands of children in Pir Zadeh, a village in Maywand. The children's faces crinkled in surprise when the candy hit their tongues.
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Banger and Karl, two members of the Human Terrain team, interview children with their Afghan-American interpreter. "Do you guys go to school at all?" Banger asked. "No," one of the bigger boys said. "Would you like to go?" "Sure," the boy said. "Why not?"
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Banger, a member of the Human Terrain team in Maywand, greets villagers in Pir Zadeh through an Afghan-American interpreter. Members of the Human Terrain team were mindful of disturbing villagers in the middle of the day, when they were watering their fields. After a quick hello, the Afghans returned to work.
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Banger, a member of the Human Terrain team in Maywand, cuts open an opium poppy in the village of Pir Zadeh. Farmers harvest sap from the poppy bulbs, which is processed into heroine. Last year, 98 percent of Afghanistan’s opium was cultivated in Kandahar, where Maywand is located, and six other provinces in the south and west of the country.
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Captain Trevor Voelkel makes his way to the outskirts of Pir Zadeh after patrolling the village with his men. Keeping the soldiers motivated in a low-intensity counterinsurgency was a challenge, he said. “They came into the infantry to carry a rifle, and I’m going to be on the front lines and I’m going to kill Taliban,” Voelkel said. “I wish it was the wars of old – they’re there in those uniforms, we’re here. That makes it easy. This is such a complicated and tough fight.”
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Published August 22, 2009

On a bright March day, two members of an Army Human Terrain team in southern Afghanistan joined soldiers from the Second Battalion, Second Regiment of the First Infantry Division, known as Task Force 2-2, in a patrol to Pir Zadeh, the friendliest village in the unit's operating area.

A senior social scientist with the Human Terrain team, Dr. Karl Slaikeu, had asked for this patrol. He was looking for a village that, with concerted U.S. effort, could serve as a model of security and development, and he thought Pir Zadeh might be just the place. The Human Terrain team's mission was to get a feel for the area and meet the village elder, who seemed to like Americans.

Eight years into the war, the soldiers of Task Force 2-2 were the first international troops to patrol Maywand in significant numbers. The Human Terrain team was tasked with helping familiarize them with Afghan culture, agriculture, tribal politics and the vagaries of the local economy. Most days, the sand flats and wheat and poppy fields between the city of Kandahar and Helmand Province were deceptively quiet. It was easy for the troops to drift into complacency, to lose their edge. But that would have been a mistake. Maywand was a key transit area for fighters and drugs, and the Taliban controlled it, intimidating people who knew the local government couldn't protect them.

For the two Human Terrain team members joining the patrol to Pir Zadeh, Maywand was a place of known risk. The previous fall, a Human Terrain social scientist named Paula Loyd, a bright, big-hearted Texas blonde with degrees from Wellesley and Georgetown and years of experience as a soldier and aid worker in Afghanistan, had been interviewing villagers in Maywand when an Afghan man doused her with gasoline and set her on fire. Paula died in January, the third Human Terrain social scientist killed in the field in eight months. Karl Slaikeu, a 64-year-old psychologist and conflict resolution specialist from Austin, TX, had been sent to take her place.

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