Bermel Bazaar 2002

We were told it was going to be like the Bakaara Market in Mogadishu. The potential for a fight was high. We had been falling asleep with Blackhawk Down in the background for weeks. We knew what that meant.

My rifle company, Bravo Company, had been chosen to be the clearing force to go into the market. If there was going to be a fight, we were going to be smack in the middle of it. Alpha and Delta companies would be on the outside, making sure no one came in or out while we cleared.

My boss, Marty Schweitzer, was concerned after Operation Mountain Sweep that the time it would take to get everyone on the ground if we all flew out of Kandahar would tip our hand. After two days of rehearsals, Bravo Company boarded helos and flew out of Kandahar Airfield to a place called Orgun. There was a firebase there with a company from another battalion and some special forces guys. We were supposed to act like we were in Orgun to relieve my friend John Miller and his company. In reality, we were just trying to shorten the distance.

We flew out of Kandahar on my birthday, September 4th, and spent four nights in Orgun, sleeping in an Afghan yurt and pretending like we were going to stay there in case someone was watching. On the morning of the 8th, we flew to Bermel Valley to clear the bazaar.

There were over 200 buildings and over 300 individual shops. We needed to clear them all. Alpha and Delta, along with my boss and some radio intercept folks were set on the ground when we landed. Speed was the plan. All three of my platoons on line, their progress being coordinated and controlled by me and my second in command, Matt McGinley.

When I say we rolled through there like a hurricane, I am not exaggerating. We estimated in our rehearsals that clearing the entire bazaar would take around five hours. We cleared it all in less than three.

In the midst of it all, the radio intercept folks picked up some traffic from an al Qaeda financier inside the bazaar. He was telling someone the Americans were there and he was surrounded. Some eagle eyes out on the perimeter spotted a man in the lumber yard on the edge of the bazaar on a radio acting frantic. I sent one of the platoons to snatch him up and they did, quickly. That gentlemen found his way all the way to Guantanamo Bay. THAT is how important he was.

Through our rehearsals we talked and walked through how we were going to handle interacting with Afghan women in the bazaar. We knew they would be there and we wanted to continue to honor Afghan customs and not disrespect their women. Our plan was to clear a shop, move women from the next shop into the one we just cleared and then keep moving. It was working, right up until an unexploded Soviet hand grenade fell out of a woman’s burqa as she moved from one shop to another. That was the LAST operation we conducted without having female US Soldiers with us to search women and children.

Other than our shotguns being used to blow locks off doors and chests, there wasn’t a shot fired that day. It wasn’t the Bakaara market like we were told it would be. That was okay with me. We caught the financier and THAT was important.

We flew out the next morning, but not to Kandahar. We were on our way to a new base that we would build in Khost, even closer to the border with Pakistan. That was our home for the next six weeks where we based near continuous combat operations.

In 2013, I flew back into Bermel to visit a camp up on a hill. Below it was the bazaar. The lumber yard was still there. The market still bustling. It was like we had never been there.

I am confident we made a positive impact that day. Small as it was, it was a dent in the 20 years of combat that came after.