THENEWYORKER, OCTOBER 28, 2019 43
bound behind his back. He was thrown
to the ground and kicked repeatedly.
His mother, who was inside at the time,
told me, “I had my baby in my arms. I
didn’t understand why they were killing
us. I didn’t understand who they were.”
After the men left, Rabbani discovered
that his eleven-year-old brother, Layakat,
and his ten-year-old brother, Shaokat,
were dead. Next door, three of Rabba-
ni’s cousins, one of whom was thirteen,
had also been killed. The family’s car
and tractor were ablaze, and all their
animals had been shot.
An Afghan government official who
is in contact with Zero-Two told me that
the unit had confirmed its role in the
raid, and had attributed it to bad intel-
ligence. A forthcoming Human Rights
Watch report on C.I.A.-sponsored units
in Afghanistan investigated more than
a dozen raids, in nine provinces, and
found that victims were sometimes tar-
geted for having given food to insur-
gents, or for living in areas with insurgent
activity. Patricia Gossman, the report’s
author, told me that such clandestine op-
erations were “causing appalling civilian
casualties, but, because they happen
largely in rural areas, they are off the
radar.” When I asked the American de-
fense official if the U.S. tracked any of
Zero-Two’s military operations, he said,
“They’re not military operations.”
I met a number of other survivors of
Zero-Two raids who described similar
scenes. One of them was Hela, a ten-
year-old girl, also from Shirzad District,
who gripped her right thumb in her left
fist and spoke breathlessly while star-
ing wide-eyed into space. Hela said that,
a week earlier, she and her father had
been sleeping on the veranda of their
house when aircraft woke them. “It
sounded like a waterfall,” she said. “Like
rushing water.” Their gate exploded.
“My father told me not to cry. A light
came on his face, and they shot him.”
Hela said that her father, Saeed Wali
Khan, had gathered timber from the
mountains and sold it as firewood.
An elderly man named Lal Jan, from
another village in Shirzad District, said
that the gate to his family’s compound
was blown open and everyone was or-
dered to come outside. Eight of his male
relatives were immediately executed, as
drones circled above. Their car and some
motorcycles were set on fire. According
to Lal Jan, three Americans were there.
“I could see them,” he told me. “They
were speaking English.” One of the in-
truders bound Lal Jan’s hands behind his
back. “I asked them why were they doing
this to us—we were only farmers. The
person standing over me said, ‘The in-
formant fucked us.’ ” Lal Jan was hooded
and brought to Jalalabad Airport, where
Zero-Two is based. After being locked
in a shipping container for three days, he
was released. People from his village had
petitioned the governor to intervene—
no other men in the family remained to
preside over the burial of its dead.
None of the victims I spoke to had
received any form of redress. Because
the C.I.A. does not acknowledge any
involvement with the Zero units, it is
unknown whether such incidents have
led to investigations, changes in protocol,
or disciplinary action. The chances seem
slim. In a 2017 speech, Mike Pompeo,
then the agency’s director, declared that
“the C.I.A., to be successful, must be ag-
gressive, vicious, unforgiving, relentless,”and added, “President Trump gets this.”
Last year, the chief prosecutor of the In-
ternational Criminal Court requested
an investigation of possible war crimes
by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, including
abuses by the C.I.A.; the U.S. State De-
partment revoked the chief prosecutor’s
visa and threatened the court with sanc-
tions. Trump has pardoned an Ameri-
can soldier convicted of murdering an
Iraqi detainee, and lobbied for the ac-
quittal of a Navy seal accused of fatally
stabbing a teen-age P.O.W. in Mosul.
Due process from the Afghan gov-
ernment appears equally unlikely. Last
month, a Zero-Two raid killed four
brothers in Nangarhar Province, pro-
voking protests in Jalalabad. President
Ghani vowed to “bring the perpetrators
to justice.” So far, this has not happened.I
n July, I visited the site of another
Zero-Two raid in Nangarhar, in the
town of Shahidan Mina. The place had
a forsaken feel, with empty, dusty streets
and half-built houses. In December,“I don’t feel ready to commit to a cocoon, either, but do you ever worry
we’ll wake up one day and be forty and still caterpillars?”