In many areas of the country, phone service is cut off, usually by the Taliban, at sundown. And in August, the Taliban announced that they would begin targeting employees of the state-run provider Salaam Telecom, saying the company’s workers are “tied to intelligence agencies.”

In many areas under Taliban control, simply owning a smartphone can create suspicion that someone is an intelligence agent. That means even though people often use phones to check on loved ones after a terrorist attack or security operation, some have chosen to give up on them altogether.

But even if you throw away your mobile phone, avoid bumping into a US soldier on patrol, and can keep your biometric information to yourself, you can still get caught up in the war.

Mother load

The device that fell on a small village in Nangarhar’s Achin district, an hour’s drive along a treacherous road from Jalalabad, in April 2017 wasn’t just any bomb. The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, or MOAB, weighed 21,600 pounds (9,800 kilograms) and cost $170,000. It was the most powerful non-nuclear weapon ever used, capable of destroying an area the size of nine city blocks. It quickly became known as the “Mother of All Bombs.”

The Afghan government tried to justify the strike by saying it had killed at least 94 ISIS fighters. But former president Hamid Karzai called it a prime example of how the US was using Afghanistan for what amounted to experimental warfare. “This is not the war on terror but the inhuman and most brutal misuse of our country as testing ground for new and dangerous weapons,” he wrote on Twitter.

Afghan residents clear rubble from their homes. NOORULLAH SHIRZADA/AFP/Getty Images

Nabil, the former intelligence chief, agrees. “Did they ever use such a weapon anywhere else in the world? No,” he told me. “It’s clear that Achin was just a convenient place for them to test out their weapons.”

The government claims that the bomb killed foreign fighters from a number of countries. But in the days and weeks following the bombing, the village itself was still under the watch of the US military. Journalists were not allowed within 10 kilometers, and it became clear that local military and government officials had not been given access either. In the two and a half years since, journalists and investigators have still not been able to get to the exact site of the attack in order to decipher what happened.

So why was such a large bomb used? A few days after MOAB dropped, Vice President Mike Pence suggested one motive: as a demonstration of power. “Just in the past two weeks,” he said in an address in Seoul, “the world witnessed the strength and resolve of our new president in actions taken in Syria and Afghanistan. North Korea would do well not to test his resolve or the strength of the armed forces of the United States in this region.” He added, “The era of strategic patience is over.”

Uninvestigated

All this is made worse because the US military has not always been transparent about its operations. Human Rights Watch said in a 2018 report that neither the American nor Afghan governments have been doing enough to investigate possible violations of the laws of war.

Afghans on the ground agree. I have spoken to hundreds of people since 2015, in provinces all over the country. Each time, they have said that not enough people have inquired about strikes in their areas. And even when there are independent reports, they are accused of political bias by officials in Kabul and the US-led coalition.

Emran Feroz, an Afghan-Austrian journalist and author who has been tracking aerial operations in Afghanistan since 2011, concurs: “The central problem is most of these strikes are conducted under the cover of night in hard-to-reach areas, often under the control or influence of groups like the Taliban, which makes it very difficult for anyone to go and investigate in a timely manner.”

Nearly 20 years in, and with the conflict once more intensifying, there are no signs of an ending. Diplomacy between the Taliban, the Afghan government, and the Trump administration seems to be making little progress. Trump, who claimed to have canceled a secret meeting with the Taliban on US soil planned for September, has vowed to halt talks so long as Taliban fighters keep attacking Afghan civilians and US forces.

As long as military intelligence is weak, however, it is not just the Taliban that Afghans have to fear. In July, the deaths of at least seven civilians, including three women, led to protests in the Eastern province of Maidan Wardak, where residents threatened to boycott the upcoming presidential election unless action was taken. But the outcry has done little to change military action. In September, at least 30 civilians were killed in a US drone strike near a pine nut field in Khogyani. Provincial officials say the attack was meant to target a hideout of ISIS forces, but residents say it was civilians who paid the price once again.

Nabil, the former intelligence chief, says the best way to improve things is to shift away from technology and back toward proper intelligence gathering. “We have to be better than the Talibs—we must ensure that we protect civilian life at all costs,” he says. During his tenure at the National Directorate of Security, he says, aerial operations were allowed to take place only when he had verified information on suspected targets. “You can’t go from the word or suspicions of just one or two people. You must do your due diligence, otherwise you end up in a situation like today where civilians are constantly being killed by our own forces,” he told me.

Khalid and Naimatullah agree that the increasing frequency of strikes serves no purpose. “Even people in the villages know where the Taliban and Daesh [ISIS] are, but why is it that civilians keep dying in these attacks?” they asked.

“I was 16 when I saw someone die from a drone strike,” said Naimatullah. “Since then I’ve cleaned up so many bodies, their blood, their brains. My heart is stone now, because it’s always innocent people dying.”

Ali M. Latifi is a journalist based in Kabul.