Town ready to honour POW
Hero’s welcome planned but questions remain over how sergeant was captured by Taliban
The little mountain town of Hailey in the rural state of Idaho is readying a hero’s welcome. Its single shopping street is lined with bright yellow balloons and signs to greet Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl when he finally returns home after five long years as America’s only prisoner of war in Afghanistan.
“Bowe is free at last!” reads one banner. “Our prayers have been answered!”
At Zaney’s coffee house, where the 28-year-old worked before joining the military, well-wishers embrace and admire the large poster board covered in a half-decade’s worth of handwritten messages of support.
“To those of us in Hailey, Bowe is certainly a hero,” said Sue Martin, the owner of Zaney’s and Bergdahl’s former boss.
But behind the scenes of small-town celebration is a darker and more complicated story about a young soldier who allegedly abandoned his post after growing disillusioned with America’s wars and the potentially illegal deal struck by the White House to free him.
President Barack Obama was accused of putting US troops in danger by agreeing to release five Taliban leaders to secure the freedom of Bergdahl.
Republicans said they had little confidence in Obama’s promise that the freed detainees could be prevented from rejoining the fight in Afghanistan.
“I believe this decision will threaten the lives of American soldiers for years to come,” said Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee.
The biographies of the Taliban prisoners released from Guantanamo Bay show the heavy price that America was compelled to pay for Bergdahl’s freedom.
All five were pillars of the Taliban regime until its downfall in 2001. As recently as 2008, all were officially classified as “high risk” detainees who still threatened “the US, its interests and allies”.
The men were also assessed to be of “high intelligence value”, according to their Pentagon files, later disclosed by WikiLeaks.
Bergdahl was raised in a cabin with no phone in Idaho’s Wood River Valley, a sparse and rugged corner of the American west. He and his sister were home-schooled by their father, Bob Bergdahl, an intense woodsman who trained them to shoot and survive in the wild.
For the past five years, Bergdahl has been a tireless campaigner for his son’s release, lashing out in frustration at Obama and even trying to contact the Taliban on his own.
Bergdahl took an unusual route into the US military, studying ballet and joining a sailing expedition from the Atlantic to the Pacific before trying to enlist in the French Foreign Legion. Only after being rejected by France did he join the US Army. He deployed to Afghanistan in 2009 full of idealistic conviction that he and his comrades could push back the Taliban and improve life in the long-subjugated country.
But hopefulness soon gave way to despair after his unit began to take casualties and he saw how US troops treated the Afghans they were supposed to be saving.
“These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid,” he wrote in an email to his parents on June 27, 2009.
Three days later, according to
Rolling Stone magazine, the 23-year-old soldier simply walked off his base in Patika province, carrying a knife, his diary and a small camera.
He was captured almost immedi- ately and — despite a frantic search by US troops, drones and helicopters — smuggled into Pakistan by Taliban fighters.
A Pakistani militant commander says Bergdahl developed a love for Afghan green tea, taught his captors badminton, and celebrated Christmas and Easter with the Islamists. He grew fluent in Pashto and Dari. He was transferred between various militant factions along the volatile Afghanistan-Pakistan border, finally ending up in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal district, according to militant sources.
Chuck Hagel, the US Secretary of
Defence, said the first priority is to restore his health before American intelligence officers begin to debrief him in the hope of extracting valuable information on the Taliban.
He declined to comment on the possibility that Bergdahl could face a court martial for desertion when he finally returns to the United States.
“This is a guy who probably went through hell the last five years,” Hagel said. “Let’s focus on getting him well and getting him back with his family.”
The White House said Bergdahl’s health had been failing and it had no choice but to act quickly and in secret to save his life. “We found an opportunity, we took that opportunity,” Hagel said. “I’ll stand by that decision.”
Back in Hailey the battles seem far away and the only news that matters is that their missing son is coming home.
Martin was out fishing when the US Army called to say Bowe had been freed. She raced back to town to find people in the streets and fire engine sirens blaring in celebration. “Some people were popping champagne corks and and some were deeply reverent. But everyone was joyful in their own way.”
The signs are that Obama had more than the fate of one man in mind when he decided to free the five men.
The White House statement announcing the exchange hinted as much, voicing hope that “Sgt Bergdahl’s recovery could potentially open the door for broader discussions among Afghans”.
By demonstrating a channel between the US and Taliban, via Qatar’s mediation, is open, the episode shows a negotiated settlement of Afghanistan’s conflict might be possible as America and its allies prepare to leave.
— Telegraph Group Ltd, AFP