Hide-and-seek in Helmand

  The conversation between Captain Allen McBroom of the Marines’ 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance and a villager from San Banadar in Afghanistan’s Southern Helmand Province was floundering. McBroom was fishing for information about improvised explosive devises (IEDs) planted in the area, but to every question the villager replied with the same flat denial of knowing anything. Just as the conversation was drawing to a close an explosion tore through the morning air: an IED blowing up some 200 meters down the road. Over the coming days this scene, of Marines’ questions being met with villagers declining to comment, was repeated time and again in what resembled a rather dangerous game of ‘hide and seek’ between the United States military and the Taliban, with both attempting to leverage the locals. Roughly a dozen IEDs were being found daily; pressure plate devices buried in the road designed to detonate as the victim