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I’ve been thinking a lot about a guy I used to work with. I’ll call him Jack. It was the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where red, white, and blue idealism clashed with medieval mentality and Wild West disorder. Whatever a person’s job was there, every American’s purpose was to promote democracy and law and order.
I stood steadfast in maintaining a black and white attitude, that my mission would keep Americans safe, but would also support the modernization of the region. I often worked with a fledgling criminal justice system, so I was adamant, adhering to the letter of the law. This mindset made me toss and turn many nights.
The house was not safe because the mother offered to turn the women over for money. And she allowed her son and others to rape them.
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Jack had a source, one that proved valuable over time, so over time he dug up whatever he could about this source. Former police officers, in the country as mentors, gave Jack a folder. “There’s a hundred complaints in there about your source. The local police get the complaints, but you know the drill: They do nothing because it’s their culture or because they’re involved, and we do nothing because it’s not our place.”—And because the source was well-connected to government officials that were well-connected to the upper echelons of American leadership.
American leadership was in the business of making policies and implementing them based on handshakes that soothed their egos, ignorant of deceit or blatant lies. Jack knew this, so Jack read the folder of complaints. His source’s mother was a provincial leader, surprising for a woman, but after a handful of pages, it was glaringly obvious why she was promoted. She ran a safe house for abused women, especially those that had been raped and were trying to avoid death in the name of family honor; however, the house was not safe because the mother contacted the families of these women and offered to turn them over for money. And before the exchange, she allowed her son and others to rape the women.
Jack couldn’t sleep, not until he accepted that the world is sometimes grey.
He met with his source. It took a few meetings to subtly broach the allegations, like a detective in a movie, eventually eliciting juvenile behavior. The source bragged with hand gestures and called the women whores, and even offered Jack an opportunity to take part. Like a detective in a movie, Jack kept his composure.
Jack later offered his source a high-paying job with an American company, one that required a lie-detector test, and promised his suddenly nervous source that the results could easily be manipulated, “And besides, I’m going to ask you if you’ve taken part in any activities to harm Americans.” The source relaxed.
After the test, Jack told his source to return in a couple of days to meet his new employer. In the meantime, Jack made sure the test results were what he needed them to be. He also wrote several intelligence reports, backdating some of them. When he was done, he had his own folder: several reports from several sources that claimed his guy was part of an extremist cell that conducted attacks against Americans, that the mother’s safe house was used for meetings, and that various provincial leadership financially supported the cell with the money American leadership gave them to rebuild local infrastructure.
Jack knew the drill. He knew what needed to be said in what way to get the attention of the people that mattered. He knew a failed lie-detector test would seal the deal. He knew he worked hard for his reputation and that no one important would question him.
The local police tried to question Jack’s accusations when his source was detained by the U.S. military, but the upper echelons were furious and their policies regarding threats against Americans were black and white. Jack’s source went away.
Jack never found out what happened to his source’s mother or anyone else complicit, but history told him that doors were kicked and people were detained and that freedom for those people would take a very long time. Jack crossed his t’s and dotted his i’s, making sure the sources behind his reports were real, using his own money to convince them to repeat verbatim whatever he wrote.
It was an exhaustive effort for Jack, one that prompted him to go home early, to hug his daughters a tighter, thankful for American ideals. He slept well knowing he put the supposed safe house in the spotlight, that the region’s women might find safety in the middle of warring cultures.
All along, I urged Jack, telling him we shouldn’t interfere with another culture because it interfered with our mission, that our targets were extremists. But that was then.
Now I’m home and current events tell me that women in America are not necessarily better off, that they’re targets, that justice is skewed.
I hug my adolescent daughters tighter, but also teach them about the world around us. I am optimistic that today’s women are changing our very culture—my daughters won’t be intimidated and will speak up. I’m thankful for these women.
I’m grateful for Jack for pushing back, reminding me what matters most, that right and wrong is the only thing that is black and white. I now sleep better because I no longer question myself for keeping Jack’s secret.
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