BOB KABOB AND SNUFFY JACK

Col. Robert K. Brown, Founder, Publisher and Editor of Soldier of Fortune Magazine, is writing his memoirs.  It’s about time, as Bob turned 80 a couple of months ago.

Bob and I have been good friends since 1977, when we met as guests on the Merv Griffin Show and instantly hit it off.  The most memorable adventure we had together was in Afghanistan with the Mujahidin fighting the Soviets.  That was in 1988, and Bob asked me to recount it for his book.  I thought I’d share it with you.

Early on in the Reagan Presidency, I began working with my buddy from our Youth For Reagan days (Reagan’s original campaign for California governor in 1966), Dana Rohrabacher and other friends in the White House, such as Constantine Menges on the National Security Council, on a strategy that became known as The Reagan Doctrine.  (That wasn’t our name for it – we just called it FTC… Foil the Commies, or something like that.)

My role was to "go inside" captured guerrilla-held territory in those Soviet colonies where anti-Soviet insurgencies had emerged, such as the Contras in Nicaragua, UNITA in Angola, RENAMO in Mozambique, the EPLF/TPLF in Ethiopia, the KPNLF in Cambodia, the Hmong in Laos, and most of all, the various groups of Muj in Afghanistan.

I did this all through the 80s, and Dana and I often talked of his going inside with me at some time.  His chance came after he left the White House to run for Congress in his California home town district, and got elected.  He celebrated by coming with me and Bob, who I’d been promising to take inside as well.

We convened in mid-November, 1988, at Green’s Hotel in Peshawar, Pakistan.  Bob had an ex-Green Beret bodyguard with him named Andy.  Besides Dana and me, there was Charley Schnabel, Charlie Wilson’s Chief of Staff.  I’d been telling Charlie the CIA was lying to him about which Muj groups were worth supporting, and he sent Schnabel to see if I was right.

(See Charlie Wilson and Ronald Reagan’s War, December 2007.)

There we were met by a Muj commander I had become close to, Rahmatullah Safi.  He had been a Brigadier General in the Royal Afghan Army and a primary military advisor to King Zahir Shah before the 1979 Soviet invasion.  He had some 8,000 Muj under his command.

The five of us had grown beards, and when we donned our turbans and shalwar kameez pajamas, we could pass as natives.  We drove with Safi and a few of his men up into the Khyber Pass to the town of Landi Khotal.  It brought back memories of my first sojourn through the Khyber in 1963, where I was surprised to see marijuana abundantly for sale in most stalls in the bazaar.  It still was but we weren’t interested.  We were close to Afghan border now, so we had to slip off on to a dirt track through the mountains to the Kabul River where it formed an unguarded border.

More of Safi’s men were there with a makeshift rowboat to carry us across the river and into Afghanistan.  Then we commenced to walk, heading for the battle that was going on in Jalalabad, about 40 miles away.  It took us two days, as we had to take circuitous mountain trails, avoiding any still-inhabited villages, only stopping in isolated chaisanas (tea houses).  We passed through a number of ruins – villages that had been turned into rubble by the Soviets.

At one point, Safi cautioned us.  "We are approaching a well.  There may be others around.  Do not say a word or they will know you are a feranji, foreigner.  There are bad people here, Arabs who say they have come to fight for us, but they lie.  They insist we must believe in their Islam, not ours.  They get into fights with us, and they may try to kill you for they hate Americans."

In all the times I had been with the Muj, I had never encountered this before.  Safi saw my puzzlement.  "The Arabs came here recently and are nothing but trouble."  He pointed off into the distance.  Several kilometers away I could make out some white tents.  "They camp there," he said.  "They are led by a man named Bin Laden."  It was the first any of us had heard of Osama.

We were walking across an empty stretch of ground when a Soviet MiG 23 buzzed us, letting loose a ZAB-500 napalm bomb.  We darted like rabbits into a ditch nearby as it hit with this amazing conflagration of heat, smoke and fire.  And noise.  Brown, though, was oblivious to the noise as he had his hearing aid turned off.  He thought this was so cool he had to take a picture.

So he jumped up out of the ditch and ran to the pillar of fire.  As he was clicking away, he failed to notice that the MiG had come around for another run.  He further failed to hear everyone yelling at him at the top of our voices to get his ass back in the ditch.  As the MiG was bearing down upon him, one of the Muj bolted out, ran his shoulder into Bob’s gut and pile-drived him back into the ditch.

As they tumbled in, the napalm hit, missing us but if Bob had still been standing, he would have been actual toast.  As the adrenalin rush wore off, Safi began to laugh.  As we all knew, an Afghan’s favorite meal is pieces of lamb on a skewer roasted over a fire, called a kabob.  "You were almost a kabob," he exclaimed. 

"So from now on, Col. Brown, you are to be known in Afghanistan as Bob Kabob."

Laughing never felt so good for all of us.

We finally trekked into Safi’s encampment on the outskirts of Jalalabad. I had been in the city in 1963. It was the largest city in eastern Afghanistan, famous for the massacre of thousands of British and Indian (mostly Indian) troops in 1842 during the First Anglo-Afghan War.  This was the source for the myth of Afghanistan being "the graveyard of empires."  The real history of Afghanistan is that it’s been steamrollered by conquerors for millennia (since Cyrus the Great in 550 BC).  Afghanistan is The Doormat of Empires (June 2010).

The encampment was hunkered down in a ravine.  The Muj had set up a Chinese Type 63 107mm multiple rocket launcher on a nearby ridge.  Late in the day, we climbed up to the ridge where Safi pointed out the target:  a small Soviet base a few clicks away, right on the edge of the city.  His spies had informed him that a number of Soviet officers were there right now.

Two dozen of the 40-pound rockets had been taken out of their wooden crates, each containing a high-explosive charge of 3 pounds, and the fuzes inserted.  The distance and azimuth to the Soviet base had been determined, and the launcher was elevated to the firing angle matching the range and elevation. Safi’s men placed the rockets into the launcher’s dozen tubes.

"This is in your honor, Congressman," Safi announced to Dana.  He looked at Schnabel. "And in honor of Charlie Wilson."  He set off the electric firing, and in a few seconds, all 12 rockets fired in a sequence of loud whooshes.  Traveling at over Mach 1, a few seconds later they landed on target.  The Muj in charge of the launcher were not focused on the clouds of white smoke, which we saw well before we heard the rockets’ impact.  They were reloading.

After they nodded to Safi it was ready again, he looked at me, then at Brown.  "This is for my friend, Jack – and Bob Kabob."  The second launch rubbleized the Soviet base.  With that, Safi announced, "Now, it is time to leave.  There will be a reply."

We barely made it back to the ravine when the shells started hitting and shrapnel was whizzing through the air.  But we remained safe in deep caves dug into the ravine’s side.  We spent the night there, eating nan (Afghan bread), drinking tea, the Muj laughing and joking with one another.  Safi and his men were pleased.  His spies had come back to report that a number of Soviet officers and soldiers had been killed.

"We must leave very early tomorrow morning," he warned.  "The barrage they will rain down upon us will be ferocious."

We were up and off at daybreak.  We had made our way only partly out of the ravine, which ran for a couple of kilometers, when the barrage started. It was huge and with explosions all around, we ran as fast as our legs would go.  When we got out of range, we found a place to rest and made a little fire for tea.  Schnabel said he needed something stronger than tea to get him going again.  He asked a Muj for a pinch of what was in this little tin he had.

I thought it was chewing tobacco, but Charley said not quite.  "They call it snuff, or at least I do.  It’s got opium and other stuff in there that fires me right up.  I’m older than you guys, and this is what keeps me going." He put the pinch between his cheek and gum.  He was so tired he could barely move.  Yet a few minutes later, he was up and dancing around.  "Man, I’m ready to go!" he said with a big grin.

I was tired too, and so impressed that my brain hit the off switch.  "I’ll try some of that," and pointed at the Muj’s tin.  I inserted the pinch as both Dana and Bob said they didn’t think it was a good idea.  I waved them off.

I did feel a rush of energy as we headed out of the ravine – but as we came to this steep part and the trail narrowed, all of a sudden the world started spinning.  I was a total Space Cadet who couldn’t walk straight or barely walk at all, which meant I was going to fall off a cliff.  I sat down, realizing I had made a truly foolish and dangerous mistake.  I was paralyzed.  "Damn it, Wheeler, I warned you," Dana admonished me.  Safi bent down to explain, "Jack, we cannot stay here.  Can you walk if two of us help you?"

I nodded.  Two Muj pulled me to my feet, and I stumbled down the trail with them on each of my arms.  When we got to the bottom, Safi insisted I drink as much water as I could.  The effect started to wear off.  Once Brown saw I was OK, he called out loudly, "Well, I may be Bob Kabob, but Wheeler here will now be known in Afghanistan as Snuffy Jack."

For 25 years now, those have been our nicknames for each other.

Safi was still quite worried over a Soviet attack.  "There may be a MiG, or they could send a Spetznaz team out by helicopter to hunt for us.  We must move fast."  We had been fast walking for about an hour when a Muj arrived to tell Safi that a truck was waiting for us up ahead.  By the time we got to it – a beat-up captured Russian truck – we were wiped out.  I was still recovering and was really glad to climb into the truck’s cab.

We had not driven 100 yards when the driver lost control of the vehicle, as the steering wheel spun aimlessly.  The steering cable had snapped.  We got out and wearily began trudging again.  It was at least 30 miles or more now back to the Pak border, and we could not stop until we got there.  The hours wore on.  I had put myself back together again and could handle it, as I had walked many a mile with Muj over the last few years.  Bob and Andy were fine, and the snuff really worked for Charley.  Dana was struggling.

Nothing to eat didn’t help either. The sun set, the stars began to come out, and we didn’t stop.  There was no moon, and we marched on in the dark.  We entered this gully.  As we walked through it, I began to hear something, a tinkling. Suddenly, this huge shape emerged out of the darkness.  We were all in a line, perhaps 40 or so, heavily armed, and no one was concerned. I realized what I saw was a camel. 

It was the first of a caravan of over 50 camels, all heavily laden with weapons and supplies for the Muj at the Battle of Jalalabad.  The camels like giant shadows passed silently by within inches of us.  The only sounds were the soft tinkling of camel bells, muffled so you could barely hear them, and the occasional "hut-hut" spoken barely above a whisper by the camel drivers.  The only light was starlight.

I was awestruck.  As the caravan vanished into the gloom behind us, I said to Brown who was right in front of me, "Bob, people buy your magazine to read about experiences like this."

Without turning back to look at me, he responded, "You dumbass, Wheeler – I own the magazine so I can have experiences like this!"

We kept on going into the night.  Safi came up to me and said, "Jack, I am worried about Dana.  He says he can’t continue."

"What do you want to do?"   

"You four continue on with the main group.  I and a few of my men will stay with Dana.  I’ll keep trying to convince him we have just a short ways to go."

He couldn’t see my smile.  "It’s not a short ways, is it?"

"It’s another couple of hours.  If I tell that to Dana he’ll give up.  We can’t carry him and we don’t have a stretcher.  So I’ll have to trick him into it."

"Good luck.  But if you need us, send a man to come bring us back, promise?"

Dana will never forget those last hours as long as he lives.  Safi kept telling him it was close, that there was a tractor waiting to take us to a border village, that he thought he saw the tractor light, that he thought he could hear its engine.  Dana begged Safi to let him sit down by the trail with an AK, and to get him in the morning if the Shuravi (Soviets) hadn’t found him.  No dice.  Safi somehow kept him going.

Finally there really was the sound of an engine and a tractor light in the distance.  Dana made it and of course we ribbed him unmercifully, telling him he looked like what comes out of a dog’s alimentary canal.  We spent the night in a Pushtun village less than a mile from the Pak border.

The headman of the village was one of Safi’s commanders, Moly Shakur.  We talked to him the next morning about the Soviet occupation of his country.  He kept repeating the word dinratur, dinratur.  Safi didn’t understand either.  Then he got it. 

"He’s talking about your television reporter Dan Rather.  Moly was the one who took him ‘inside’ – as you can see it was a tiptoe as we’re a few minutes’ walk away from Pakistan – so he could be ‘Gunga Dan.’  We all know about it."

Safi then translated for Moly Shakur.  "Dinratur asked why we are fighting a war we cannot win?  We had to explain to Dinratur like a small child…" he put his hand out palm down three feet above the ground… "that we fought the great superpower of the last century, the British, and beat them; now we must fight the great superpower of this century, the Shuravi, and we will beat them too."

Dana, Bob, Charley, Andy, and Safi knew what I was going to say, as it was my Afghan motto, so they all joined in to shout, "Mordabad Shuravi!"  Death to the Soviets.  Moly Shakur loved it.

Before we left, Bob took our picture:

When my oldest son, Brandon, was at VMI, he took a course on Modern Military History.  When the professor lectured on the Soviets’ war in Afghanistan, he showed the class a number of slides.  One of them was this picture, describing those in it as examples of Afghan Muhahadin.  Brandon raised his hand.  "Yes, Cadet Wheeler?"

"Professor, only two of those men are Afghan – the one in the middle, a commander named Moly Shakur, and the man in behind.  The man on the right is Congressman Dana Rohrabacher – and the man on the left is my father."

"Are you quite sure of this, Cadet Wheeler?"

"Oh, yes, Professor.  I recognize my own father.  We have that picture at our home, and Mr. Rohrabacher has it framed in his office."

Regretfully, I have no picture of Bob and me, disguised as bearded Afghans, during the best adventure we ever had together.  But there is no doubt whatever that we’ll ever forget it.  I’ll always treasure the experience we had, just as I’ll always treasure my friendship with Bob Kabob.