Young Afghans with powerful gazes, pausing to watch a passing war machine. Bearded men tilling the soil, their implements ageless. Children playing, in concrete-lined canals or the gaps between crumbling buildings.
So often, these are the quick glimpses through which U.S. soldiers see Afghan village life — captured through the bulletproof glass of their armored vehicles, or in furtive glances stolen on walking patrols meant to show a “presence.”
For troops from Illinois, the Afghan countryside unfolds through a prism of threat or no threat, and if an impression is shared, it often is bewilderment at a place so alien to lives forged in Algonquin, Plainfield or Macomb. They pass by without stopping, lacking a reason to interact directly, or the means to communicate.
In one village after another, the streetscape through which the Americans pass is a living anachronism, a series of timeless scenes. Men sell vegetables, firewood and dirty, scrounged car parts in shops built of mud brick and shaded by reeds. Women and girls balance a family’s provisions in baskets atop their heads.
As in centuries past, the Afghans’ sun-beaten faces return the glances as another foreign army rolls past.
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Tribune on the front lines
Reporter James Janega and photographer E. Jason Wambsgans are following Illinois National Guard troops in Afghanistan. Read more at chicagotribune.com/afghanistanwarblog
Glimpses of Afghanistan
An audio slide show offers a view into a war-ravaged land: chicagotribune.com/afghanlife
