Long before the Dutch military reconstruction mission began in Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province in 2006, Nikko Norte was already there, and one day, he found himself in de midst of a heavy firefight. After the mission truly began, he witnessed numerous shootings, discovered roadside bombs, and spent a day with a suicide bomber who, as luck would have it, had only killed himself during an attack. Nevertheless, Nikko was—and remains—convinced that there was no real enemy for soldiers to fear in Uruzgan. Through their cowardly modus operandi, Dutch soldiers ended up creating their own enemy—one that was not made up of Taliban fighters.

 

Incompetent intelligence officers, incapable interpreters, misinterpreted rules of engagement and Afghan customs, misled journalists, and soldiers who served too briefly in Uruzgan, ventured too little beyond the gates of their safe camps, and embraced fear as their advisor. A reconstruction mission turned into a campaign of terror—the people of Uruzgan its victims.

 

Since 2001, the West has brought little but misery to Afghanistan. A shame—and beyond that, the West could have learned so much from, for example, the Afghan pashtunwali. Nikko fought tooth and nail to reverse the spiral of violence the Dutch armed forces had needlessly set in motion. After his time in Uruzgan, he wrote Unpredictable Past—an old-fashioned adventure novel with a serious undertone—which sparked questions in the Dutch parliament and led to court cases. The story of a man who put the one-man patrol into practice in Uruzgan, had more adventure thrust upon him than he bargained for, was promoted from sergeant to captain during the two years he served there, and went returned home with both a deep sense of guilt and an equally deep sense of respect and love for the people of Uruzgan.

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