[ WP ] An alien invasion meets its match where so many conquerors have before : In the mountains and hardy people of Afghanistan .

This place is beautiful in the winter. 
 
 My first deployment to Afghanistan was back in 2023. Hardly a decade after the withdrawal of American combat units from the first Afghan campaign – a conflict sparked by the public outcry for justice in the the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks – ethnic Uzbek and Tajik separatists in the north of the country declared themselves for Abdul Rashid Dostum, warlord of Balkh province and one of the preeminent generals of the Northern Alliance that had fought against the Taliban in the late 1990 ’ s. 
 
 Unhappy with what he saw as a corrupt central government in Kabul that ignored the grievances of the northern territories while blithely exploiting its staggering mineral riches, Dostum called in his retainers and, seemingly overnight, consolidated an army of hardened fighters against the central government. Their goal, Dostum claimed, was to follow in the footsteps of the still-young Islamic Republic of Kurdistan and establish a sovereign state that had direct control over its own mineral and petroleum reserves, as well as – of course – the profits from their sale. 
 
 With the growing conflict threatening Western mining interests in the region, the United States was forced to broker a ceasefire between Kabul and the separatist forces led by Dostum. 
 
 I was part of the first wave of peacekeeping forces sent to the country as part of the terms of the ceasefire agreement. In return for Dostum ’ s peaceful withdrawal from the capital, Kabul agreed to administer the northern territories as a special autonomous region with its own government centered at Mazar-e-Sharif, Dostum ’ s seat of power. We were there to ensure the peaceful transition of power, and to oversee what was to become the new government ’ s first democratic elections. 
 
 I was only a private then. When I wasn ’ t digging ditches or fixing radar and navigation equipment on our helicopters, I was on guard duty. 
 
 I didn ’ t mind it much, really. You get a hell of a view from some of those guard towers. 
 
 Now, don ’ t get me wrong. The landscape there is nothing but boring, brown, and bland on its bad days, and God knows there are plenty of those. But on its good days, it ’ s gorgeous enough to take your breath away. 
 
 I remember taking my post at one of the south-facing guard towers one morning early January. It had rained all day and night before, and by the time I rolled out of my cot and made my way to my station it was cold enough that the parts of the ground that weren ’ t muddying up my boots were covered in a thin, lightly crunching layer of frost. 
 
 The darkness of early morning obscured everything but the distant lights of vehicles convoying their way back to base after long overnight patrols. But when my eyes finally adjusted to the slowly growing sunlight peaking over the foothills to the east, I was mesmerized by what the light of dawn revealed. 
 
 The precipitation from the day before had transformed the dull, listless range of mountains to our south – barren of anything but dried-brown dust and craggy rocks – into magnificent snow-covered massifs towering over our sprawling encampment as if to swallow us whole. 
 
 “ This is what it must feel like to face a tsunami, ” I thought. 
 
 The ground, which only yesterday had been painted with the same powder-brown dust that plagued the mountains, had sprouted into a thin but vibrant layer of green that spread far out in every direction until it reached the horizon or touched the base of the foothills. The short, straggly blades of grass defiantly pushing out of the frostbitten earth had appeared overnight, in the dead of winter, as if by magic. 
 
 And it really was magic, every bit as much then as it is now. 
 
 But this time, things are different. This time, even the magic of the Afghan landscape can do nothing to assuage the cold, prying dread and suffocating fear of what is to come. There is nothing that can; not at this point; not since the First Contact, and in the days that immediately followed, when – for the first time – we fully understand what it was going to cost us. 
 
 This is a fitting place to make our stand. It is Afghanistan, after all – deadly as it is beautiful. This is where conquerors, gods, and empires come to die. And by this time tomorrow, I may very well add my bones to this grave. 
 
 ( To Be Continued... )
